SubscribeWe should at least give Dawkins credit here for knowing what he rejects. Here we meet an atheist who understands the difference between belief and unbelief. As for those, like Armstrong, who try to tell believers that it does not matter if God exists -- Dawkins informs them that believers in God will brand them as atheists. "They'll be right," Dawkins concludes.
So the exchange in The Wall Street Journal turns out to be a meeting of two atheist minds. The difference, of course, is that one knows he is an atheist when the other presumably claims she is not. Dawkins knows a fellow atheist when he sees one. Careful readers of The Wall Street Journal will come to the same conclusion.
Mac fanboy: I love macs and I hate PCs!It's totally missing the point.
Other person: Well, but Macs are "personal computers" so PCs are good!
When I read it last weekend I just couldn't get past how Dawkins' deliberately dismisses the whole of theology and the gnosticism by saying something like, well if you redefine the idea of god as something other than my straw man then I have no argument for you (paraphrased and editorialized, btw). Seems a little lazy and disingenuous to me. He's a condescending fuck with no demonstrated ability for transcendent thought. His loss.It's not condescending, it's realistic It seems like the vast majority of religious people, at least in the U.S. and the U.K and probably the middle east believe in a personal god who is similar to the one described in their religious texts? Why should dawkins spend time debating people who he doesn't really disagree with in the first place, when there are so many people you do disagree with? Also It's a bit hilarious that you'd criticize someone for being both "condescending" and "no ability for transcendent thought" at the same time.
Well, what's your question? I'm talking about questions people have about the world that they can see and experience with their own senses without scientific instruments.science can answer pretty much any question about the observable world nowReally?
You can hate religion, but if you ignore the spiritual and psychic aspects of being human, you are decidedly ignoring a key dimension to being human.Well, what does being human have to do with what's outside the Human, atheists like Dawkins, I think, are talking about what's going on outside your head, not in it.
You can hate religion, but if you ignore the spiritual and psychic aspects of being human, you are decidedly ignoring a key dimension to being human. Kinda like cutting off your arms because you don't like to play baseball.To be fair, it's a little easier to prove that I have arms than it is to prove that I have a 'spiritual essence', rather than emergent sensations.
But by my way of thinking, atheists are pretty fundamentalist in their stance, too.Everyone who believes anything is a fundamentalist: they just disagree on what the fundamentals are.
Read that link carefully, because then you might understand better what the person who originally wrote John 1:1 was trying to communicate. Not only is God not a man, he's not a being.Of course, that assumes that one sentence out of the entirety of Christian scripture and teaching is the be-all end-all definition of what 'The Christian God' means. Orthodox Christians, for example, don't go for the whole 'Sola Scriptura' stuff that underlies a lot of strict literalism. They hold, roughly, that Scripture is meaningless outside the context of a collective body of believers, practicing spiritual rituals and interacting with each other.
He goes on to (admittedly with reluctance) concede that evolution has produced creatures all around the world that believe an individual should, "Do unto others..." whenever possible.Well, there are plenty of evolutionary hypotheses about why altruism would have created a selective advantage on a group of humans, who would be likely to share similar DNA.
I won't pretend to quote directly, but he basically implied that morality is a universal truth that we have discovered and not created. I was shocked.
because at the end of the road, it resulted in you, richard?And God's supposed to be awesome because he made a bunch of howling meat-bags that can't even get health insurance legislation passed?
now why would an avowed rationalist and skeptic make such an error as that unless some deep seated impulse was at work?I anthropomorphize my car. It does not mean my I believe that my car is a human being.
We cannot speculate about the Logos after the coming of Christ, who is the divine Logos in the flesh, and who sent the Holy Spirit to the world and "teaches us all things." The mystical experience spoken of by the classical Greeks is abstract and conceptual. That is, in ancient Greek philosophic contemplation, the soul or spirit goes outside the body to be liberated. Philosophy plays only a linguistic role in Orthodoxy, lending the use of its terminology after the terms have been transformed and purified of their secular meanings, "Christianized" philosophy and culture, as Father Georges Florovsky used to say. A master of spirituality, a monk of Mount Athos, describes this point in the following manner: "Many of the Greeks tried to philosophize, but only the monks found and learned the true philosophy." The Logos became flesh and revealed to humanity the divine revelation. He is the Truth and through him we can attain knowledge of the divine will. The metaphysical patterns of the philosophic speculation of the Christian revelation distort the divine mission of the incarnate Logos.The traditions, the rituals, are what purify or "Christianize" the terms. But the terms are most definitely meaningful. But note the absoluteness of the first sentence "We cannot speculate about the Logos..." We don't know and will never know. You have to master spirituality to get to the underlying meaning (which you never will because you can never really master it - it is "unknowable"). The orthodox talk about dwelling on the mystery, but the focus is on the dwelling part (the verb, the act) and not on the mystery which is not simply unknown but unknowable.
It could that the universe has always existed in some form or another, always obeying these laws and forces, but that is not totally satisfying to me.Why is it supposed to satisfy you?
We quantify and describe the way these bits interact with each other. In the case of a photon, we describe it as a particle, even though it has no geometric volume like a particle of dust would. We also describe it simultaneously as a wave, even though when observed in a certain way, it is more like a particle.No, we describe it as a particle wave duality. It's an analogy to particles of dust to make it easier for people to understand. But the fact that it isn't exactly like a particle of dust doesn't man that there is anything wrong with the analogy, the analogy is just there to make the math more relatable, to give people something to visualize in their heads.
But sooner or later, it appears, this reductionism breaks down to some fundamentals that we can't explain. Why does a photon travel at a constant speed? It just does. Its a "law." Why does mass attract mass? It just does. Its a "force." Furthermore, it remains to be seen if we can nail down a perfectly consistent, quantitative theory of everything. Like it or not, when you run your equations, certain axioms must be accepted on faith.No, no, no. Nothing needs to be accepted on "faith" The "laws of the universe" are mathematical equations derived from observations. Terminology like "the laws of nature" was coined centuries ago by people with all sorts of religious beliefs. Newton, in particular thought that science was a way to understand god.
What answers? With all due respect, jefficator, it does not sound like you had any actual questions to ask her. According to your story, Armstrong was telling a familiar parable/fable/analogy/story, and you sought to upstage her--to trip her up--by adding what you believe(d) to be a very clever paradox and twist to what she was saying. I think you may have been motivated more by attempting to have a "gotcha" moment than by wanting to enter into a conversation.Besides, Armstrong could have said "Well, we don't know if it was an elephant, that's just an example to help you visualize. It could have been anything".
"I agree with the "weak troll is weak" comment.Um, no. Acromion is right.
These people were very strong believers. They believed in their "communism", "maoism" or whatever. They killed anyone who disagreed with any part of their strong beliefs. One small component of their beliefs was atheism."
in “The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles” (1991), Emily Martin shows how scientists have superimposed cultural sex stereotypes inappropriately onto the process of fertilization, resulting in inaccurate descriptions of cell and molecular interactions, faulty understandings of the physiology of fertilization, and skewed research priorities.and there is the question of Newton's religious convictions. yes, he was wrong when it came to that, but nonetheless what came of his religious inspiration proved invaluable to future researchers. to dismiss them out of hand is to do a disservice to the history of science, and possibly also to any understanding of how research actually happens.
Yawn. "Epistemology", "knowing" and "objectivity" are things that only happen inside your head. Again, the problem here is that you don't understand the difference between your thoughts (inside your head) and the universe (which includes all the things outside your head). That's a pretty big mistake to make. "Truth" is another matter, but I would say that truth can never exist inside your head, and thus the consequences of labels can have no effect on it. Or, you could talk about the (incorrect) feeling of knowing the truth, which would be better called certainty. This of course is also only in your head.The consequences of the labels stay inside your head.This most certainly isn't the case, and its not due to some psychological error or failure of logic. It has to do with the epistemology of science and logic, ie what constitutes knowing, truth, and objectivity.
The objective purity and certainty you are seeking though science is a chimera.What on earth are you talking about? I'm not seeking anything, except to point out how ridiculous the nonsense you're spouting is.
Well for one . . . our theory of gravity is completely broken.How is it broken? Can you given an example of an experiment where standard theory would predict X but the actual result is Y?
I never know whether I should say "Agnostic" or whether I should say "Atheist". It is a very difficult question and I daresay that some of you have been troubled by it. As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one prove that there is not a God. On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because when I say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there are not the Homeric gods.A raison d'etre might be beyond us because the ultimate nature of reality transcends a "reason" in any sense that we can relate to, but science is a start in getting acquainted with what this nature might look, sound, smell, taste, and feel like, or even what it might be like, albeit framed in terms of abstract models of our mind. As pastabagel mentioned above, God, faith, spirituality, and theism for many is not about praising a separate ontological creator, but instead it is a reverence for a more transcendent notion of the ultimate; "the logos". Scientists and mystics feel the same sense of awe when they gaze out at the universe (or inward I suppose for the mystic), and I think that is an important thing to keep in mind instead of just drawing simple either/or dichotomies.
I might revel in the world of intelligibility which still remains to me, but although I have an idea of this world, yet I have not the least knowledge of it, nor can I ever attain to such knowledge with all the efforts of my natural faculty of reason. It is only a something that remains when I have eliminated everything belonging to the senses… but this something I know no further… There must here be a total absence of motive - unless this idea of an intelligible world is itself the motive… but to make this intelligible is precisely the problem that we cannot solve.
- Immanuel Kant
6.52 We feel that even when all possible scientific questions have been
answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched.
- Wittgenstein
What is the nature of that reality and how did you come to know it?Who says I know anything about it? What's the metaphor about being able to see only the shadows of things? I don't think we can every really "know" the true nature of the universe, all we can do is store a model of the universe that can fit inside of our heads (plus algorithms we can't actually fit directly into our heads, but which we can examine, create, and verify piece by piece, etc)
Why would you (or I or anyone) defend your (or mine, etc) version(s) of that reality (let's say a scientific version) over another (let's say unscientific or solipsistic), if not through sense-experience (empiricism), deductive/inductive/abductive reasoning (rationalism), and their ultimate combination (modern scientific inquiry)?Because it's fun? Also, arguing about ideas forces you to think them through and refine them.
So the question then is the way in which one's thoughts overlap, connect, match up with the world: one cannot say there are two separate and totally disconnected boxes (one's thought and the reality outside one's thought).I don't think they are completely separate, rather there is a one way input between the material world and the mind. And also, the mind can manipulate a small subset of the material world (it's body)
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posted by fire&wings at 5:38 PM on September 25 [2 favorites]