Richard Dawkins

[the.crooked]

You my friend need to read more. Assuming that because I make specific claims that I don't understand it is just as ignorant as dismissing them offhandedly.

 

 

Read into:

 

 

Quine

Bas van Frassen

Ian Hacking

Weittgenstien

Kuhn

 

and I can continue this list if you like.

[boogie hands]

what cracked just mentioned is something that dawkins devotes an entire chapter to in the god delusion. if memory serves, in this particular chapter he actually states that science is not perfect but regardless, does provide an overwhelming amount of probability about the way our world functions which is something that religion has not been able to do in its many, many centuries of existence. if this is viewed as blanket dismissal its no ones fault but religions. when analyzing the probability of god you cannot take everything that we have learned through thousands of years of study and place it on the same level as religion and expect it to result in an honest assessment. anyone who would do so is simply putting religion on the same untouchable pedestal it has been on since its creation, which is insulting to science, the process of understanding and even religion, if it is the unshakable force it is made out to be.

[pornbooth]

michael shermer, editor of skeptic magazine, wrote a recent article concerning popular athiest authors approach to battling irrational thought. while i side more with the hitchens/dawkins/harris midset, its always healthy to peek thru different lenses.

 

Since the turn of the millennium, a new militancy has arisen among religious skeptics in response to three threats to science and freedom: (1) attacks against evolution education and stem cell research; (2) breaks in the barrier separating church and state leading to political preferences for some faiths over others; and (3) fundamentalist terrorism here and abroad. Among many metrics available to track this skeptical movement is the ascension of four books to the august heights of the New York Times best-seller list—Sam Harris’s Letter to a Christian Nation (Knopf, 2006), Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell (Viking, 2006), Christopher Hitchens’s God Is Not Great (Hachette Book Group, 2007) and Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion (Houghton Mifflin, 2006)—that together, in Dawkins’s always poignant prose, “raise consciousness to the fact that to be an atheist is a realistic aspiration, and a brave and splendid one. You can be an atheist who is happy, balanced, moral and intellectually fulfilled.” Amen, brother.

 

Whenever religious beliefs conflict with scientific facts or violate principles of political liberty, we must respond with appropriate aplomb. Nevertheless, we should be cautious about irrational exuberance. I suggest that we raise our consciousness one tier higher for the following reasons.

 

 

1. Anti-something movements by themselves will fail. Atheists cannot simply define themselves by what they do not believe. As Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises warned his anti-Communist colleagues in the 1950s: “An anti-something movement displays a purely negative attitude. It has no chance whatever to succeed. Its passionate diatribes virtually advertise the program they attack. People must fight for something that they want to achieve, not simply reject an evil, however bad it may be.”

 

2. Positive assertions are necessary. Champion science and reason, as Charles Darwin suggested: “It appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against Christianity & theism produce hardly any effect on the public; & freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men’s minds which follow from the advance of science. It has, therefore, been always my object to avoid writing on religion, & I have confined myself to science.”

 

3. Rational is as rational does. If it is our goal to raise people’s consciousness to the wonders of science and the power of reason, then we must apply science and reason to our own actions. It is irrational to take a hostile or condescending attitude toward religion because by doing so we virtually guarantee that religious people will respond in kind. As Carl Sagan cautioned in “The Burden of Skepticism,” a 1987 lecture, “You can get into a habit of thought in which you enjoy making fun of all those other people who don’t see things as clearly as you do. We have to guard carefully against it.”

 

4. The golden rule is symmetrical. In the words of the greatest conscious****ness raiser of the 20th century, Mart****in Luther King, Jr., in his epic “I Have a Dream” speech: “In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrong****ful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline.” If atheists do not want theists to prejudge them in a negative light, then they must not do unto theists the same.

 

5. Promote freedom of belief and disbelief. A higher moral principle that encompasses both science and religion is the freedom to think, believe and act as we choose, so long as our thoughts, beliefs and actions do not infringe on the equal freedom of others. As long as religion does not threaten science and freedom, we should be respectful and tolerant because our freedom to disbelieve is inextricably bound to the freedom of others to believe.

As King, in addition, noted: “The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.”

 

Rational atheism values the truths of science and the power of reason, but the principle of freedom stands above both science and religion.

[the.crooked]

Boogie-

 

 

What I am talking about are epistemological issues in rational thought. I am not pulling things out of my ass here. I have spent most of my life preparing for a study in physics and recently in philosophy. I still love science and mathematics, but it is not the end all that people like Dawkins think it is. That is all I am arguing.

 

However, do not mistake that I am arguing for religion. I think all belief systems are only as good as the desicions it allows you to make. As I have discussed in other threads rational thought, particularly in the form of employing scientific ideals, does not always lead to the best social desicions.

 

Pragmatic value is what I believe in. And yes, for those of us on here that are athiest, science provides that pragmatism. However, to believe that science is necessarily OBJECTIVE FACT, is just plain wrong.

 

I provide names of philosophers and thinkers in science and otherwise that will back up what I am saying but I only keep hearing appeals to people like Dawkins who are no better than any other type of fundamentalist.

 

South park had it right guys, go watch that episode. Perfect sardonic response to this entire thread.

[the.crooked]

oh, and thanks for the article from the skeptic.

 

 

good read.

[boogie hands]

youre definitely a smart guy and im not accusing you of pulling things out of your ass by any means. im just pointing out where people like dawkins come from and that he and others are not viewing science as the end all be all. for many its simply a much, much better avenue to follow when trying to make sense of life and because its based on reason its the perfect reference point in this debate.

 

ps - the dawkins parody on south park was good. i think it simplifed dawkins argument to fit their format but hey, its still something to laugh at. i was actually kind of bummed that dawkins couldnt find any humor in it. thats a little suspect.

[Cracked Ass]

crooked-

I am not sure that either of us has made ourselves clear to the other. We're probably close to being on the same page, but I'll articulate in more detail where we differ by addressing your points from this post.

____________________

Science makes claims of "objective truth," if you are a realist about scientific theory. Rather the explication of reality in whatever scientific langauge is being used in a given period of thought becomes canonical. It is the truth of the moment. As you say, if come what may something displaces current scientific thought, then it becomes the current idiom of truth. This is the form of science, but that very progression favors against science as being pursuant to anything beyond a pragmatic interpretation of reality. Thus we arrive whence we started in that science, is no better than an interpretation of a given dogma of any religion. For reality is the base in which science speaks, where it is god for religion.

 

I assume you drew a prefabricated definition of "objective truth" from somewhere in your reading list. I have not read your list so you should know what I think of the phrase. I don't like the word "truth" in there at all. I don't claim that science has anything better than what you denigrated it down to - a "pragmatic interpretation of reality" (hereafter abbreviated as PIOR). But religious dogma has NOTHING, not an iota of reproducible knowledge. I'll take PIOR over any religious canon the same way I'll take Ramen over starving to death. Go titrate the corrosive chemicals NaOH and HCl of equal molarity and volume and tell me what you get. I bet lots of money I don't have that it's drinkable salt water. I did this experiment and got the same result as many thousands of people before me, leading me to confidence in predicting the same result for other would-be experimenters. Where in religion do you get this predictability, this testability? Did the pseudo-Islamic extremist who blew up a busload of people get his 77 virgins in the afterlife? No living human knows. Was my grandfather punished after death for the proscribed act of eating fish one Friday? No living human knows.

 

 

truth then as a deductive product of logic, is scientific. but truth is shown to be false in different idioms, even within science. The terms of relativity are, in effect, incommensurable to those of newtonian mechanics. Thus historians of science like that of Thomas Kuhn never really take a position on realism or anti-realism in science. For they recognize to do so would to be to fall into the same trap of saying what truth is. To ride the line is better. To appreciate the differences in metaphysical dogma, be it science to religion, is a way to develope a full conception of reality. For it is in those differences of theory which all attempt to do the same thing, that we see what it is that's actually being searched for.

 

This started off strong and then fell on its face. I like Kuhn's avoidance of the loaded word 'truth'. I'm not aware of Dawkins ever asserting that science has the absolute truth, and if he does, I differ. I'm happy with PIOR. Real scientists freely admit how few of the answers they have, and what degree of certainty their less tested proposals deserve (hypothesis, theory, law, PIOR, but not "truth"). But for anti-scientists to see scientists' uncertainty as an opening through which they can cram their 2000-year-old book of fairy tales is the worst kind of weak-minded, semantic copout. If the pursuit of knowledge is analogous to counting to infinity, then the score is science 1197342, religion negative 63. Science's score - mounting steadily with each observation and experiment - is nowhere near infinity, and in fact we don't know how high we need to count, but it beats the hell out of fables and superstition. Side note: if you insist on science as being nothing more than an evolving canon, take note of how it forced changes in CHRISTIANITY'S canon: in 1996 AD, the Vatican finally admitted that Galileo was right about the earth revolving around the sun. Who knows what they'll cop to in the next five hundred years - but each one will be a step closer to zero from deep negative numbers, and maybe they'll even enter positive territory one day.

[the.crooked]

Yeah, I think we are gravey.

 

My big issue was I was studying physics to understand why I was here and how I got here. When I found out it wouldn't tell me that, I started to see it as no different than religion in its ability to "truthfully" tell me things. Appealing to probabilities as well I find problematic. Each event is either this or that. Things will happen or they won't. The sun may rise tomorrow following the entire history of humanity's noticing of it, but it may not.

 

 

Again, I am an athiest that does not push for any strong validity in religion.

 

When I speak of science in the way I do, it is an all things considered sort of thing. I am not knocking the everything science has given us. I just prefer to recognize it in its evolving and never ending structure than as something which will reach an end point.

 

 

And you are absolutely right about psuedo-science sneaking in. I wrote several papers on why the scientific community needs to openly address issues like ID and other bullshit contrivances. I got into an argument with a professor at my school who was pushing for a leze fair (sp?) stance on the subject, as stating well science knows that this isn't real. Which, I am probably close to Dawkins in this perspective, is dangerous. You must protect the method of science agains that which mimics it to push inadequate ideas.

 

Also, I should say that I sort of look at science in this way: it is like what is supposed to happen when you read Koans and what you are to draw about language for them. To see things as they are. Not to lose appreciation for or hate rationality and language, but just to appreciate them as that. Mediated and incomplete. It is sorta like the capping phrase:

 

"At firs mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers. Then mountains are not mountains and rivers are not rivers. Again mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers."

 

 

My love of science and technology has never waned, just changed in why I love it.

 

Does that give a better perspective on my views?

[Cracked Ass]

Sure does.

I had to laugh at your reason for studying physics. Not to be insulting, just at the almost naive purity of your motive. Physics doesn't have the answers for why we're here and how we got here. Physics won't have those answers for a long, long time. Not in our lifetimes. And the old saw about how we may blow ourselves up before we find out still holds true.

The fact that science deals in cross-checking and rigor, but ultimately relies on probability, predictions, and models rather than "certainty", is the mantle you must don if you want to find out anything at all about the universe. It's those who crave certainty who abandon science and flock to sacred texts. There's a relief there, but in my opinion a cowardice as well. They fear uncertainty too much to accept the vastness of the unknown and unravel it thread by thread as scientists do. Then they have the nerve to preach about humility, when nothing is more humbling than doing your little crumb of a lifetime of scientific work in one tiny specialized field, adding a few modest discoveries to the lexicon of knowledge, a lexicon which itself is still a drop in the bucket of what there is to know. It is religions who are arrogant in their assertion that humans are the next best thing to the inventor of the universe, this "god" who gave them brains and gonads and then instructed them not to use either.

I rant. I know we're better off with pornbooth's recommendations of shedding light not heat. But I'm so tired of listening to tirades of religious drivel that when I hear somebody like Dawkins firing back with some vitriol backed by rationality, I can't help but high-five.

[the.crooked]

No doubt.

 

Like I said, my issues are all things considered.

 

 

And you are absolutely right, it was a naivety. I followed science since a young age. I mean I am still young (21 in a couple weeks), but I ain't no idiot when it comes to my own metaphysical truth.

 

 

I am drawn to arguments of nihilism because the rely on personal choice in moral values above anything else.

 

Nietzsche (sp? I am drunk)

Quine,

Deleuze

Bergson

Davidson,

Lao Tzu

Koans

Etc.

 

 

tons of philosophy which hits the points i appreciate all from different perspectives

[fermentor666]

ps - the dawkins parody on south park was good. i think it simplifed dawkins argument to fit their format but hey, its still something to laugh at. i was actually kind of bummed that dawkins couldnt find any humor in it. thats a little suspect.

 

 

 

Well, to be fair, they did depict him having butt-sex with a she-male.

[the.crooked]

Whatever, it was fuckin hilarious.

[dowmagik]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=AHqu7VMAcZc

clip from dawkins latest tv program, the enemies of reason. at 2.30 he briefly talks about an experiment i found fascinating...

[russell jones]

The sun may rise tomorrow following the entire history of humanity's noticing of it, but it may not.

 

 

Again, I am an athiest that does not push for any strong validity in religion.

 

When I speak of science in the way I do, it is an all things considered sort of thing. I am not knocking the everything science has given us. I just prefer to recognize it in its evolving and never ending structure than as something which will reach an end point.

 

 

And you are absolutely right about psuedo-science sneaking in. I wrote several papers on why the scientific community needs to openly address issues like ID and other bullshit contrivances. I got into an argument with a professor at my school who was pushing for a leze fair (sp?) stance on the subject, as stating well science knows that this isn't real. Which, I am probably close to Dawkins in this perspective, is dangerous. You must protect the method of science agains that which mimics it to push inadequate ideas.

 

Also, I should say that I sort of look at science in this way: it is like what is supposed to happen when you read Koans and what you are to draw about language for them. To see things as they are. Not to lose appreciation for or hate rationality and language, but just to appreciate them as that. Mediated and incomplete. It is sorta like the capping phrase:

 

"At firs mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers. Then mountains are not mountains and rivers are not rivers. Again mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers."

 

 

My love of science and technology has never waned, just changed in why I love it.

 

Does that give a better perspective on my views?

 

Been getting more into Zen lately?

 

The statement about the sun rising is profound. It is an effective bulwark against certainty, and a good illustration of the limits of science.

 

The only fundamental answer I have found in my life is now. The wholeness of the now and the completeness of the now is more profound than any explanation of origins. I wish I could be wise and a cat at the same time, so I could appreciate my catness. Every time I get close to now, I can experience it for a limited amount of time, only for it to slip away because of my idiotic smart ass of a brain. But I need it, to understand when it happens and how great it truly is. No analysis here, just long pauses.