The God / Dawkins Delusion

[droid]

oh yes the cold hard light of science that only the very brave and strong are able to stand... how noble.... how self-agrandising.

Yeah, as if Dawkins isn't going to be shitting himself and whimpering to the lord on his deathbed like the rest of us...

 

[nomadthethird]

oh yes the cold hard light of science that only the very brave and strong are able to stand... how noble.... how self-agrandising.

I'm not saying it's noble, or that only scientists know the truth. Buddhists are pretty good with it.

I'm just saying. Making up stories about a perfect parent in the sky is infantile.

 

[luka]

you just reminded me of a poem i hate thats all. like i said i think its self-aggrandising and juvenile. in terms of an attitude to take towards life/universe/etc
not knocking science as a project or defending sky daddies or anything.

 

[Benny Bunter]

Nope, not heard of that - I meant Shogun by James Clavell. But it's a fictionalised account of real events, which could well have inspired other books I suppose.

Ah right, just noticed you said it was a novel. You should really check out Samurai William by Giles Milton then for the real story, or indeed pretty much anything by him. Wonderful popular history writing.

Sorry about going OT though, carry on...

 

[rob_giri]

I'm not saying it's noble, or that only scientists know the truth. Buddhists are pretty good with it.

I'm just saying. Making up stories about a perfect parent in the sky is infantile.

This is such a typical atheist response. The thing is of course is that this 'atheist tenet' is right (but bleatingly obvious) - most of the manifestations of institutionalized religion, and the standard 'concept of God' are nothing short of a con, that play into infantile desires for a father-figure, to bestow meaning into a meaningless world. This is true - and suffices to say, I think that most religious fervour will be looked upon (correctly) as mental illness in years to come.

But what atheists don't realize is that that is not the end of the story, at all. Religion didn't arise purely out of this sort of human ignorance. Religious traditions arose out of mystical practices and magical ritual - practices that allowed the participator in ancient societies (and indeed the participator today) to go beyond the limitations of their perceptive faculties and into spheres of awareness that reveal one to be intimately connected to all of life, and to have the possibility of becoming more connected and 'more human'. This is not merely a 'concept' - so don't think saying you are nothing but worm food is somehow intelligent, it is just a concept and has not arisen out of the sincere emotional experience of what it means to be truly alive and to be part of a greater living process. It is simply regurgitated knowledge that is dull and has arisen out of a lazy mind.

 

[rob_giri]

The atheist in the end fails because he is, metaphorically, trapped in his head. The atheist is imprisoned by an intellectual certitude that there is no possibility beyond the mundane spheres of his limited awareness, too arrogant to admit his awareness is limited in the first place, too afraid to accept that his perceptual limitations can be transcended and experimented with, and too lazy to muster the real will to honestly and sincerely address, on a level of deep conscience, the reality of what it is to be connected and engaged with the living presence of his very being.

The atheist fails because atheism is not a system of knowledge or a way of living, or a way of life that truly welcomes the apparent uncertainties of existence - but rather it is just 'not' something - 'not' institutionally religious, in the same way that someone can be 'not capitalist'. It is simple for someone to claim they are anti-capitalist or anti-fascist - but it is much harder and takes much more guts to actually stand for something. In the case of politics it would mean then to use practical intelligence to formulate ideas about new forms of governance and production. In the same sense, a response to being atheist would not be merely to mull about and repeat the same tired and smug atheist slogans - but would mean to actually face the ontological uncertainty of life with the balls to explore the possibilities of perception.

If one does this with great commitment (and all great mystical traditions suggest this), one eventually discovers the emptiness of life - but not the dry intellectual 'emptiness' that atheists talk about like babies screaming for the bottle - but an emptiness which is itself living, growing, and intimately connected to every fibre of one's being.

This experience is, funnily enough, originally where the 'concept of God' came from. Ancient texts were allegories and stories which were intended to evoke the feeling of this sort of mystical experience - but were, in time, bastardized and dogmatized by fearful and repressed human societies until the religious institutions that we know today were formed.

Atheists are always winging and screaming about the 'concept of God' as if they understand what the 'concept of God' is and think they are more intelligent than people in churches because of their supreme understanding of relativity. They ultimately fail because, for the most part, they are the only one's playing around with concepts - God is not a concept at all (mostly) to truly spiritual people, but a feeling and a living reality that is not validated by theological logic but by the grace of the heart and the light of an empty mind. An atheist cannot conceive of how it could be possible to truly live without constructs and live open to the life-process of the world, just as a repressed follower of religion who has never truly questioned the constructs of his church cannot. In the end they both fail, whilst the things carry on in the world of the living.

And in the end it's one of those things. Religious tradition is mostly held up by outdated notions of the spiritual, and people have every right to want to be 'anti-religious' - but to walk around as an atheist, feeling smug that you are comfortable with being worm-food, and deluding yourself into believing you are sincerely open to the strata of perception possible for one with a open mind and heart, is truly infantile and ultimately pathetic.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Yes, us atheists are far too scared to admit that our perceptual limitations can be transcended. That's why space telescopes, electron microscopes, particle accelerators, weather satellites, supercomputers and the Human Genone Project notably don't exist. Also, scientists can't cope with anything outside the mundane spheres of their limited awareness, which is why they never talk about parallel universes, quantum entanglement, black holes or the origin of space-time itself. Oh no siree, if we can't see it with our bare unaided eyes, it doesn't exist. I personally don't even believe in the back of my own head.

 

[Dr Awesome]

Touché.

 

[grizzleb]

There's a problem here because both sides of the argument automatically think there is more worth in beleiving what they beleive - that the moral/epistemoligal high ground are the same thing, and also the easiest place to be. Who wants to be wrong? I beleive in that which is false...

BTW Tea I love that ripe sarcasm. 8)

 

[Mr. Tea]

But that's a category error, because science doesn't deal in belief; it deals in hypothesis, theory and empirical evidence. I don't "believe" the Earth is round and not flat, I know it is round because there is incontrivertible evidence to suggest this. I don't "believe" in evolution by natural selection, I consider it overwhelmingly likely to be correct because it is internally consistent, doesn't require supernatural agency and, again, is amply supported by the available evidence. If you want to take the Popperian view, you can say that it hasn't been falsified yet - and, to go out on a limb here a bit, I think it is unlikely ever to be falsified.

And if you want to talk about religious beliefs, that's fine, because all the established religions have highly complex systems of scripture, theology and myth. But rob_giri isn't bigging up any one particular religion or even established religion in general (and I'll him credit for that, at least), his "beliefs" seem to amount to a conviction that there's this deep interconnectedness between things and a kind of unified "life process", and that this might as well be called God. Is that fair, r_g? I'm not trying to misrepresent you here.

 

[grizzleb]

I agree with all that tea, there's so many complexities to this that belief was probably a foolish word to use in that context. I meant more basically that people should be a bit more humble on all sides. The things that you pointed out have nothing to do with the idea of a God, or of some spirituality or whatever, anything that does encroach from a scientific point of view does. You can argue with Creationists that humans came about as the result of evolutionary processes, and you can argue with flat-earthists that the earth is round. You can't really argue from whence came the universe. I think that's a subjective stance, but it's just one you take...and shouldn't go about feeling as if it is more noble to take this that or the other view. If that's moral relativism then cool, I don't mind admitting that I don't really know and that maybe you are all better people than me because you doooo...

 

[Mr. Tea]

I agree with all that tea, there's so many complexities to this that belief was probably a foolish word to use in that context.

Yeah, fair enough - would "worldview" be more appropriate? I'd certainly call science a "worldview", though of course it's a process and a methodology as well. Also, so as not to muddy the waters any more than necessary, I should acknowledge that rob was talking about atheists, not scientists per se; having said that, I think atheism has become a widespread view largely because of scientific advances over the last few centuries, and it's probably fair to assume any given scientist is more likely than the average person to be an atheist or at least an agnostic (which could be said to be a more 'scientific' opinion to hold than outright atheism, I suppose).

You can argue with Creationists that humans came about as the result of evolutionary processes, and you can argue with flat-earthists that the earth is round. You can't really argue from whence came the universe. I think that's a subjective stance...

I think you can, though, and you can use empirical evidence to back up those arguments. A hundred years ago Einstein supported a steady-state model of the universe for what you might call metaphysical, even spiritual, reasons; this model has been rejected for decades by all serious cosmologists because observations made since that time contradict it. And solid observational evidence has been around since at least the early 19th century that the Earth is at the very least millions (we now know billions, of course) years old, which flatly contradicts the creation myth in the holy books followed by most theists worldwide.

If that's moral relativism then cool, I don't mind admitting that I don't really know and that maybe you are all better people than me because you doooo...

Nah, if I'm better than you it's because I make amazing breakfasts. Though for all I know, maybe you make amazing breakfasts too.

 

[scottdisco]

Tea puts blue cheese in his scrambled eggs, Grizzleb.

i am agnostic on religion but very much a man of faith wrt Tea's brekkers.

 

[grizzleb]

Yeah, fair enough - would "worldview" be more appropriate? I'd certainly call science a "worldview", though of course it's a process and a methodology as well. Also, so as not to muddy the waters any more than necessary, I should acknowledge that rob was talking about atheists, not scientists per se; having said that, I think atheism has become a widespread view largely because of scientific advances over the last few centuries, and it's probably fair to assume any given scientist is more likely than the average person to be an atheist or at least an agnostic (which could be said to be a more 'scientific' opinion to hold than outright atheism, I suppose).

I think you can, though, and you can use empirical evidence to back up those arguments. A hundred years ago Einstein supported a steady-state model of the universe for what you might call metaphysical, even spiritual, reasons; this model has been rejected for decades by all serious cosmologists because observations made since that time contradict it. And solid observational evidence has been around since at least the early 19th century that the Earth is at the very least millions (we now know billions, of course) years old, which flatly contradicts the creation myth in the holy books followed by most theists worldwide.

Yeah worldview was what I was getting at. The point I was trying to get at is that everything inside the big-bang is up for grabs in terms of argumentation. Some people who 'believe' in whatever version of whatever faction of whatever offspring of whatever cult will say that such and such a sacred text is just allegory and metaphor, and that evolution fits harmonically with the idea of a creator God (or a 'non'-God - an impersonal non-thing which gives substance to everything and shimmers in the crackle of a fire or the electrical impulses which give rise to a flood of tears or some such romantic, nauseating (but still not morally inferior/superior) position.) And there are some who argue that the bible is word for word FACT. Those people you can argue with by using evidence, but evidence for these people is almost an incitement for belief - that to go against the evidence is a stance which is moral and brave in its cosmic stupidity. Of course you have the worst - which are the ones who create phony scientific logic which 'proves' that there is some sort of evidence for their beliefs. The point I try to make is, we don't really know what happened prior to the big-bang, and to assign morality to the ideas people hold about what did or didn't happen is daft - morality can be guaged by behaviours and not by what one believes at this basic level.

To say that 'oh those people who believe are arrogant' or 'those who don't beleive are arrogant' is I think a bit lacking in humility. Of course, by making a point here I'm negating my own argument - so that's why I'm assuming the position of having historically, empirically even, made worse breakfasts than Tea has.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Your piety and devotion have been noted, Brother Scott, and will not go unrewarded when the Faithful awake to the Hangover of Apocalypse and I shall prepare for them the Great Fry-Up.

 

[Martin Dust]

I shall prepare for them the Great Fry-Up.

Does Stephen know?

 

[mixed_biscuits]

I think it is more likely that we (and other beings, all evolving happily) have been created than not, as all that is needed is for a universe like ours to have been brought into existence is a reasonably advanced civilisation, a few computer programmers and a large hard disk.

 

[DannyL]

But if science is a worldview and one that can be contrasted, albeit clumsily, with religion you have to recognise that they are two completely different projects. Science doesn't do the good things that religion does - provide a sense of personal identity, orientation, meaning and community. Religion can't do the good things that science does - make technology work and explain the Universe. This is what I was trying to get at upthread - any assault on religion or attempt to rid the World of the evils it causes has got to occupy the positive spaces in people's lives that it now occupies. How to live life, not how things work. Any atheist project is doomed to failure otherwise.

 

[grizzleb]

I think it is more likely that we (and other beings, all evolving happily) have been created than not, as all that is needed is for a universe like ours to have been brought into existence is a reasonably advanced civilisation, a few computer programmers and a large hard disk.

From whence came the non-computer world? Infinite regress going on there.

 

[Mr. Tea]

I think it is more likely that we (and other beings, all evolving happily) have been created than not, as all that is needed is for a universe like ours to have been brought into existence is a reasonably advanced civilisation, a few computer programmers and a large hard disk.

There are serious mathematicians, physicists and philosophers who hold views like this - dunno if that's what you were getting at, or just having a laugh.

Edit: I was just about to make the same point grizzleb just made - I should add that the models some physicists talk about don't really require a "creator" as such, it's more an impersonal conjecture that the universe is in some sense "a simulation of itself", a vast quantum computer, cosmic Turing machine and so on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_universe