Gay, right?
I was watching heaven and earth (with gloria hunniford) and christopher hitchens was on talking about how religion is evil and shit. He's obviously an arrogant slimeball.
I havnt read "the god delusion", but when I said that it was ridiculous to say that anyone that believed in some sort of god was deluded, some guy said "but they are."
What a stupid attitude.
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Dawkins is ace though
Is the book actually any good?
The title makes me wince, and it seems to be "the new davinci code"
He's not that ace
he's a biologist, not a philosopher and quite a lot of his arguments area deeply flawed.
I <3 Dawkins
athiest fundamentalists are generally smug cunts
who don't appreciate that religion (true or not) can have positive benefits in peoples lives and that some people still need the crutch and 'propose' that religion can provide for them.
also, they aren't open to any other point of view - such as, if their is a god who was able to create everything and all time ever then such a being would be so utterly beyond the bounds of human comprehension that we could and will never ever know whether or not she/he/it existed
absolute crap
if you read the god delusion you'll find all three of your critcisms are acknowledged and answered.
to summarise
re: 'fundamentalism'. it's hard to be fundamentalist about not believing in something. Generally atheists say 'i don't believe in god cos there's no evidence he exists'. therefore if they ever experienced convincing evidence they'd change their minds. a fundamentalist wouldn't say the same. how often have you heard a creationist saying 'if there was evidence for evolution I'd believe it' then someone presents them with evidence and they say 'well that contradicts the bible so it must be wrong.'
re: benefits in people's lives. it's patronising to suggest that people need to embrace a big lie in order to be happy - which is effectively what you're saying when you say 'people still need the crutch'. No one denies that religion makes people happy. but that doesn't make it true.
re: god being beyond comprehension. completely true. but this doesn't, in itself, prove anything. there are convincing explanations for everything previously attributed to god's actions. if you don't believe them then you can go and check how those conclusions were arrived at. for example if you don't believe that thunder is caused by clouds banging together then you can go and read the research that proves that it is.
Most areas of scientific study are pretty much beyond human comprehension but we can do our best. Have you ever read about quantum physics? pretty intensely baffling and you can't ever really get your head round it. But there's evidence for it which can be tested and shown to be accurate - up to a point, enough of a point to enable us to build things like computers. Don't you think science would have found some evidence of god by now if he was out there?
I acknowledge 100% the idea that there may be something 'supernatural' beyond the universe we can. by definition we can't know that. Even richard dawkins concedes that he's an agnostic deep down. precisely because of his scientific rationalism he will only ever say 'there is almost certainly no god'.
i'm not convinced attacks on religion are the way to go. nor that they're really effective but i hate this crap about 'fundamentalist' atheists. and the fact that religion seems to have this special status where its exempt from thorough criticism.
religious fundamentalists pull no punches when attacking evolution and humanistic secular morals so why should atheists pussyfoot around them in return?
The thing is...
...anyone who claims to have any kind of definite answer on religion or whether God exists is talking utter bollocks. They might believe in God existing or not existing, or have faith in God existing or not existing but they don't know and they can't know.
If everyone just admitted they didn't know the answers I think the world'd be a much better place.
Of course no-one can be certain
That God exists or don't, but that doesn't mean you can't be an atheist.
Atheism is a statement that the universe we have been put into makes perfect sense without putting the question of God into the equation. Therefore God might exist but doesn't NEED to exist. Which is totally rational. Although obviously that's not the way every atheist sees it.
Anyone who believes that any belief in a God or Gods is irrational are not the kind of people I'd like to meet, but thankfully most people don't think like that. It's just a radical minority who we all seem to pay more attention to because their beliefs are so different.
Personally, I find any form of fundamentalism fascinating.
But atheism can be a very beautiful mindset, just like any other person who follows their beliefs positively but doesn't actively seek to correct others. I think it would be wonderful to live my life and not leave anything to chance, to create my own rules based on my rational thinking and apply them to everything I do, making sure that my life is lived to the fullest because it's not tied to what I think will happen after I die.
^ this
I'm also quite fond of Bertram Russell's 'Celestial Tea Pot' argument, which states that, for example, "I believe that there is a small tea pot orbiting the earth, and I worship it, and just because you can't see it doesn't mean I'm wrong". Which is basically how religion appears to me. I'm not sure I'd call myself a 'hardcore' athiest, but I really don't believe in God or any kind of religion.
the two extremes of theism/atheism are equally as bad
although it's sometimes difficult to express atheism, due to all the argument thrown back, there is no need for 'hardcore' atheists, as no matter what people like dawkins think, nothing will change. religious people won't suddenly become atheist.
a calm, thoughtful atheist argument is much better, considering others views on their religion.
For me (without wanting to get into an argument I've had here a million times)
that's why agnosticism is the way to go :)
Yeah, basically.
Athiesm suggests that athiests think they know the answer, which is contradictory to their "open mindedness" they profess to gain from their athiesm.
At the same time agnosticism seems to many like a cop out.
probably the safest way to go
but that's not to say both sides shouldn't challenge one another. i wouldn't want to be subject to catholic laws imposed in some countries like El Salvador, but just because i said i didn't believe that i should be imprisoned for 40 years due to an abortion, doesn't mean i would be left out of the rule.
religion has it's own laws, and i guess i believe in justice, therefore i would argue against such things that happen in El Salvador, as i believe it goes against human rights.
therefore i argue not against the benefits of having faith in something, but the pure ridiculousness of doctrine when it's used to feed laws that go against human dignity, such as anti-abortion.
(instead of 'human rights', i mean intrinsic dignity/worth)
But that's not necessarily a religious argument
I think in circumstances like that it becomes an ethical one.
I also think agnosticism still gives you the right to challenge people's view, although you get to do it to both annoying atheists and annoying religious people :D
it is an ethical argument, but the laws are imposed due to certain beliefs that go with religion
therefore one can attack with a religious argument.
i get pretty passionate/angry in religious debates, as both sides can throw stuff back at each other, then it gets nowhere.
and i couldn't settle with agnosticism, just because it is the most comfortable way to go, as we shouldn't just be satisfied with what we have now, and we should learn more about each side by discussing it, but it does get dizzy and doesn't go anywhere.
none of what i've just written makes sense apart from in my head. ahah sorry.
anywho, boo yaaaa religion iz wikid.
(i don't know why i wrote the last sentence)
It's not a case for me that I'm
agnostic because it's the most 'comfortable' way. I believe that's it's the only rational way to be in an argument such as the religious one.
For every argument that there isn't a God, a counter-argument can be made to argue there is and vice-versa.
No-one can offer proof of why they believe so surely saying we can never know (due to the nature of God) is the only option.
I am, however, a sceptical agnostic, meaning I lean quite strongely towards the atheist's arguments.
yeah i guess you're right,
it's really difficult to try and prove your point of view against counter arguments. i'm definitely going to hell, YES!!
I'd say it's purely the social role of religion,
and a socially-based desire to be nice and hover between popular stances, which motivates this argument.
Rather than any real equality of the two arguments at a philosphical level.
If you have a world-view in which beliefs must be justified by evidence, and extraordinary beliefs by extraordinary evidence - then it's a no-brainer. IMO.
if you examine the rest of your beliefs
on non God related stuff - they're probably a lot less like that than you think / hope. that worldview may be right, but you should acknowledge it as an ideal rather than a simple reality.
For sure
not saying I'm perfect!
But, if someone was to point out to me a belief of mine which is unjustified by evidence - especially an extraordinary belief - I'd like to think that I'd be provoked to reconsider it
well put
sometimes we need things pointed out, fo' shizzle
agnosticism
seems like a good cop out. but you're still going to hell for it. :p
yeah your fucked either way with agnosticism!
...
Many of these posts seem to imply that religious arguments are just as convincing as scientific ones. There isn't any evidence for gods or religion and much of it has been disproved by science, evolution and the length of time the universe has been in existence. Of course it will be a long time before science can explain everything but that doesn't mean that religion is right.
Furthermore atheism doesn't seem as dangerous as religion in a fundamentalist way as religion relies on unbreakable certainties and values which can lead to the fundamentalism that can be seen in some Islamic countries at the moment or at least inflame the situation.
i agree, but people also are prejudiced against people who follow a religion
whilst this is not necessairily atheist and caused by atheism. The Holocaust stemmed from anti semitism and atheism.
Agnosticism seems a bit vague to me
Why should I step over backwards to dignify a highly improbably (yet technically not absolutely disproveable) stance with the term 'agnostic'?
I'm not 'agnostic' with respect to the tooth fairy, for example. Even though I couldn't 100% disprove her existence.
This is one of dawkin's arguments. I kinda like him and I like that someone out there is willing to be a dick about this stuff.
Haven't read the book though, I hear he gets some of his philosophical/theological arguments a bit mixed up. Which is a shame as I can't imagine it detracts that much from the point, but gives opponents an easy way to dodge the issue...
i havent read it either
because i hate him.
It's not that he's so extremely atheist i dont like. It's his style of argument. He seems willing to twist everything to fit his point. And always wants to "win", rather than get to a helpful conclusion. it's the kind of attitude that knocks all the subtlety and interest out of debate. and reduces everything to extremes.
I'd never want to buy his books and give him money or attention, in the same way i'd never buy or watch anything michael moore has done.
I agree he can be a dick about it,
personality-wise.
I like his books on biology though, and I like that he's trying to do something about the sorry socially-unacceptable marginalized state of atheism in the US.
Surely he's just a good old fashioned polemicist?
he's taken too seriously for that
and takes himself too seriously.
polemics are like extended piss-takes arent they?
The bottom line is:
you can't prove it either way. Just wait and see.
Should I 'wait and see' about the tooth fairy too?
heh
it confers no particular advantage on you to think you have 'certainty' in this area
It confers more advantage than to go out of my way to sit on the fence
There are an endless number of highly-improbable-but-not-disprovable assertions.
Why should one of them ('the god of one particular religion exists') get special treatment?
Occam's razor is an essential tool which all of us apply on a regular basis. But somehow religion seems to get an exemption. I'd rather people think about why they're giving it this exemption before claiming to be an agnostic.
that's a fair point also
i think it comes down to how much out of your way you see yourself as going. and for someone who prides themselves on their scientific mind / worldview, it probably would be quite a lot.
The point, though, is that I don't claim to have 100% certainty
I think really we're just debating semantics here.
Some seem to think that 'atheist' means "person who is 100% sure god doesn't exist".
Whereas the correct (IMO) definition is "someone who thinks that the existence of god is so unlikely and/or unjustified by evidence as to be a worthless empty assertion for all practical purposes"
This appears to be the definition dawkins uses
when he talks about agnosticism vs atheism
yeh
i think many of us on this thread are talking about smug people who give a bad name to that definition. and dawkins has exhibited traits of such a person, but seems to have mellowed a little bit.
ESCHATOLOGICAL VERIFICATION
John Hick
agreed
i don't get this
the issues of there being a god and there being an afterlife don't have to go together. they just do in many belief systems.
Re:Dawkins ...It amazes me
that anyone can get away with writing a book about a subject they know absolutely nothing about
In the beginning was the word and the word was God
That's exactly what God is - a word
Question is, what does that word represent?
Religions tend to dictate to their followers the definition of that word and are political entities in that they seek to control their followers covenance with God by being the authoritarian conduit
Science can easily disprove the historical notion of God being a bearded benevolent figure that created us in his image and willed into existence the stars and planets - but that is NOT disproving the existence of God, merely disproving the historical interpretation of what God is
Physics tells us that there are four basic forces that govern the universe and since this has been written in stone scientists everywhere have been searching for the Unified Field Theory - the so-called Theory of Everything - that ties these four forces together to discover the key to the physical universe
To my mind this is the search for God because what God really represents is the entirety of everything, the completeness of all that exists in the Universe whether measurable or beyond comprehension
When people thing that it's lazy to ascribe to God anything that they can't explain then I think they're missing the point which is the the concept of God is extremely useful in understanding that there will always be mysteries in the universe and that the mysteries are part of what makes the universe
So, in this interpretation you absolutely cannot deny the existence of God without denying the existence of the Universe and thus yourself
God is a philosophical device and Dawkins knows nothing of philosophy - he is an empiricist
and you know what? science is as much a religion as any other
Well, it's easy to redefine 'god'
to some vague metaphysical notion of "stuff which we don't yet understand" or "anthropomorphisation of the universe".
This is the sense in which non-religious scientists sometimes talk about god. Eg Einstein talking about god not playing dice with the universe. I'm perfectly happy with this although you need to make it clear that you're redefining 'god' to this vague thing rather than a specific religious sense.
I don't think this goes very far to countering the arguments of someone like Dawkins though.
well
Dawkins argues from a uniquely Abrahamistic and dogmatic interpretation of God and not all religions subscribe to that view and not all people who hold an interpretation of God are religious anyway so his argument is flawed from the outset
as for 'it's easy to redefine God'... this is central to the issue as he's arguing against a rather outdated concept of God and through his lack of philosophical and theological knowledge (not to mention a narrow concept of linguistics and mythology) what could otherwise be an enlightening exercise becomes largely redundant
i think this is very true
it's easy to set up a straw man of what dogmatic relgious belief is like.
arguing against creationism is fair enough. but I'm sure lots of church of england and american liberal christians, would take issue with that too.
He's arguing against the kind of god
which a large proportion (majority?) of the world's population believe in.
Vague metaphysical notions of god are a bit of a cop-out in my opinion. A way for people who aren't really religious at all to be able to claim some nice fuzzy spiritual sort of belief without committing to any meaningful specifics.
It's more god as a metaphor than god as a concrete set of beliefs.
That said I'm perfectly ok with it provided people make it clear that they're using 'god' in this vaguer sense.
That said it would be nice
if he did address some more modern takes on theology in his book.
I haven't read it so can't really comment. But yes attacking the old testament notion of god is a bit of an easy target.
i hate this
you make a nice convincing arguement about empiricism and physics and TOE's and then stick this 'science is a religion' crap on the end. it's absolute bollocks to say that.
the reasons people believe in science and the reasons people believe in religion are completely different. science isn't perfect. in fact the whole scientific method is built on centuries of proving itself wrong. but at least it's based on something other than whimsy and wishful thinking and believing what yr told to believe.
it's such a glib thing to say that because science isn't infallible that means it's a relgion too. science acknowledges its fallibility at every turn.
exactly
they're completely different things. science isnt a religion at all, it's a method, and a subject at school, and a way of approaching things.
I'd also add, that i dont think science can disprove the notion of a beared man starting the universe, because it's so difficult to get to a scientific explanation of before the big bang.
and that i dont really think there are scientists everywhere trying to find the theory of everything. In fact, I'd imagine most of them would be skeptical that such a thing might be possible.
hmm
"the reasons people believe in science and the reasons people believe in religion are completely different" - true
but as political entities they operate in many similar ways - there are fundamental differences of course but then there are fundamental difference between Zoroastrianism and Jainism - doesn't mean that one is a religion and the other isn't
I'd also add to this that during the first 3 centuries of Christianity (for example) the teachings were enormously dynamic and constantly revisionist and stagnated considerably once they became formalised
science is a hundred or so years away from this and I hope it never happens but it certainly could - especially if it progresses us to travelling to other planets and coming into conflict with the long held scientific notions of other beings
The philosophy of science
is based around the notion that, to be meaningful, an assertion must be falsifiable by evidence.
As a scientist, to say you believe something, you have to say "I believe this to be the case, but the following evidence is what it would take to convince me that I'm wrong".
This is what completely differentiates it from religion in my view.
That and the whole process
of constantly seeking new evidence to invalidate existing theories and to support newer refinements which come closer to the truth.
If science ceased to be honest about this process then it ceases to be science.
^this is a very narrow, simplistic and idealistic view of science
ie science as a pure discipline rather than scientific research being subjected to all the biases of heirarchy, vested interests and public and private research grants that it is in the real world
That's not the point
of course science in practise doesn't always live up to this. But it helps to have a clear philosophical definition of what is and isn't science, otherwise your thinking becomes muddy.
You might well say "when scientists start to ignore the principles of the scientific method then what they do can become somewhat like religion". Fair enough.
In a similar way I could say "sometimes when priests go against all the principles of their religion and molest children, what they do can become criminal'. That doesn't mean that "preisthood is just another kind of criminality'. heh.
analogytastic
OOH YEH
It's a bit one I know ;)
.
^bad
.
nah i liked it
it held water and was amusing. all that you want from an analogy, right there.
but it does if
it becomes a common practice which isn't frowned upon - it discredits the entire enterprise
But if someone's arguing from a point of view
which specifically disapproves of the bad practise - then it doesn't discredit their argument.
on what
are you basing the idea that science is grinding to a halt?
It reached such a point once before around the time Newton established the classical model of physics which was overturned completely by the revolutionary ideas of quantum physics. classical physics was canonical before then but now it's utterly rejected. the shift takes a long time.
and now the first stirrings of a post-quantum model are emerging. there's no reason to think that science isn't going to completely re-establish itself again any number of times before doomsday.
And I know there's diversity and evolution within beliefs of christians but saying so boils down to the courtier's reply. "How can you say the emperor has no clothes on when you haven't read up on the details of his invisible lace pantaloons?". If god doesn't, in fact, exist then all the variation and counter argument in theology has been pretty much a complete waste of time, surely?
I'm not saying science IS grinding to a halt
just that it could and it necessarily will at certain points but as long as it is free from oppressive political control or directed research and maintains a healthy cost-benefit ratio it should be able to break free and lurch forward from dogma (as in the example you gave)
but (at the moment) we live in the real world of an advanced capitalist consumer society so I'm not sure I share the same 'blind faith' in science that you seem to have
;)