Search results

Please do Okay, but it's a strawman if you are asserting that as a position I have to take.

Some people will be puzzled by this insistence but Dawkins does seem to acknowledge it, even though I think it puzzles him too. Humans are meaning makers, meaning making is non-scientific. There doesn't need to be 'gaping holes in the psyche' - if you persuade people that their metaphysical...

I don't think either statement is nonsense. I, today, can sort of see that 'it is a fact that there is facts' is more persuasive than 'it is a fact that there are no facts'. I think as humans we are more inclined to spot the problem with the second statement more easily than the first - i.e. we...

Either both statements are potentially meaningful, or neither are. You're trying to have it both ways, I am not. The statement 'there are no facts' is part of a different narrative than 'there are facts'. But to the extent one is suggesting that one is saying 'it is a fact that there are no...

Yes sure, but why is that such a huge point? I don't really understand the significance of this kind of reductionism.

Just to clarify, although there probably be is a sense of territorial warfare, I think the continental philosophers charge against naive empiricism is pretty decent . As vimothy points out, someone like Dawkins essentially wants to argue from the false authority of the scientist. If he want to...

I recently had a dialogue with a vegan about amino acids. He found some quack John McDougall who has made a career out of promoting veganism, who reckoned he had addressed the issue. When you really, really look (as I did) - you find the studies he relies upon are from 1945 and 1928 and the...

No I'm not a Sikh. I'm a dancing yogi from a lineage that draws from Sikhism, as well as Hinduism. But I'm also a philosophy graduate. And I've given people shit for indulging huckster 'scientists' who babble on about 'reprogramming DNA'. I enjoy being both in and out of the tent, it's good...

The 'God' of Sikhism isn't much different really though.

2 and 3. I think I've suggested how Dawkin's views do lead to the 'life-affirming' and the 'we the living' type spirituality stuff. Zizek has talked about spirituality as the problem reframed as the solution - another link on...

Haha! I see the trap here, that I end up doing more or less what I'm ragging on Dawkins for doing. Because as IdleRich suggests, I'm a contrarian.

I can see how it seems cheeky, and I'm inclined to take it as a compliment. I think we've reached the impasse of 'there are no facts'. I am willing to accept that 'there are no facts' contains a trace of the very thing that it denies, but I maintain the notion of meaningless is wide of the mark...

I think reasonability, although innocently employed, is a weasel word. Yes it might be said to be reasonable that people do things, but that's distinct from those actions being based on reason alone. You sympthise with his actions, I get that. Honestly? Please clarify where..... Again maybe...

He supported the LibDems in 2010, mostly because of their secular persuasion. I think it's fair to say that he's to the left of much of his audience, which does contain a fair sprinkling of Randian sociopaths (though I accept most of them probably found "Atlas Shrugged" before "The God...

They have a belief about what is important. Either they think it's a fact that it is important, in which case it is because it resembles 'other facts' which itself was decided on their resemblance to 'other facts' and so on. Or the belief is somehow more directly pretending to...

Not directly no. There is a debate to be had around all that stuff and its 'cause', but, given the existence of Godwin's law and that it would be a further complication to the thread, I don't intend to pursue it at length They're more likely to do things full stop I think. I don't accept that...

Bingo

I agree, but my point is we are now in family resemblance, infinite regress, waheguru territory. My point wasn't that that they were completely analogue. The testing issue is on one side, the side that's all about testing (or at least pretends to be). I'm not saying anything quite as direct as...

At this point I assert that taking my 'there are no facts' statement in isolation is to burn a straw-man, but I appreciate that this is not deliberate. A perhaps more eloquent restatement of my position is that either both statements ('there are facts', 'there are no facts') are meaningful or...

That's not really side-stepping the problem though, it's merely making another assertion. You are saying 'indubitably', but it's not like you or Dawkins are proposing to hold double-blind trials on the hypotheses that religion has overall negative consequences or could conceive what such trials...