The God / Dawkins Delusion

[Sick Boy]

That part where he suggests that if agnostics were to have a team t-shirt, it would read "I just don't know" is amazing. If the image of a bunch of agnostics standing around in matching sloganized shirts wasn't good enough, he had to go and make them t-shirts.

It's almost like he thinks Socrates recognized his own acknowledged ignorance as being fundamental to his wisdom just so that he could have a convenient excuse for being an absolute berk.

 

[Dr Awesome]

I think, at it's most basic and fundamental level, religion provides people with a placation to the big questions of the universe. All they have to do is go somewhere once a week and say a few things, be blessed by a holy man or face a certain direction. In return, their soul is saved for all eternity, they are provided with ethical and moral values, and a sense of belonging (cosmically and otherwise).

It's a pointless waste of time even engaging fundamentalists of any denomination with an argument based on facts. Even today, people disbelieve in evolution and the fossil record - two of the most grounded theories in all of science, each with so much overwhelming evidence supporting them, and none* to the contrary.

Imagine for a moment, that scientists or mathematicians could conclusively prove via irrefutable evidence and formulae, that there was no god(s). Do you think people would leave the churches, mosques, shrines, temples and synagogues in a gigantic wave of enlightenment?

Jus' Sayin'

 

[Mr. Tea]

Jus' Sayin'

Well it couldn't ever happen, even in principal, so I'm not sure it really has any value as a counterfactual. But if it some could, consider that science has already proven beyond all reasonable doubt that the living species that exist today evolved from older species over the course of billions of years yet some people still cling to young-earth creationism, so I think it'd be unwise to underestimate the human capacity of willfill self-deception.

Conversely, we could ask if scientists would abandon their space telescopes, particle accelerators and genome projects if millions of supernovae suddenly appeared in the sky, spelling out 'HEY ASSHOLES, I EXIST, ALREADY!'?

 

[Martin Dust]

HEY ASSHOLES, I EXIST, ALREADY!'?

That made me laugh, proper.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Yes, but I don't think that it...what believers feel religion offers that other activities can't.

alrite, so rather than making a categorical statement that "science (or other secular activity) can't offer what religion offers", say "some people feel they get something fm religion which cannot be duplicated elsewhere". which is a different proposition, as well as one not unique to religion. on a point-by-point basis clearly there is not any single element religion offers that cannot be found elsewhere; maybe nothing else captures the particular blend of elements that religion has, but the same can, again, be said for any comparably involved secular pursuit. (basing your claim on what religious believers think is a bit biased too innit - perhaps I should claim the moral/spiritual/etc benefits of science based on a survey of biochemists or similar, no?)

To justifiably feel that you're getting the 'straight dope' in science takes smarts and years of hard graft; a religious n00b can talk to God or be visited by the supernatural from the off...

aside from the very narrow view you're taking of "science", you're still (esp. for someone who seems to be so concerned with categorization & precise language) just making vague offhanded claims. what is this "straight dope" exactly? I explain basic tenets of molecular biology to laypeople all the time in conversation w/o much difficulty. sure, only a v. few people can appreciate physics at the highest level; the same could be said for various orders of religious esoterica, tho. everything has an entry-level, followed by higher levels. your "talking" to God is another person's understanding of DNA (the basics of which can explained, I'd think, in about 15 minutes).

all the business about science only uses you & so forth - believe, I know the pressure on post-docs (yet another reason I'd never want to do a PhD in the hard sciences) in terms of getting academic positions. again tho, this is an incredibly limited & narrow view of "science" & what it offers.

You need to refute what follows the 'because' to make it seem less likely

no, I don't. it's not something one has to refute in the same sense that a lawyer refutes an argument in a trial; the latter is based on evidence, this is all logician's tricks & hypotheticals. being that Bostrom (et al) is a v. clever dude, they're good logician's tricks, but that's about it. where is he/others obtaining this probability from? i.e. garbage in/out, etc

also, as Matt said, the argument that no one's slapped him down in the literature imparts validity is not a good one. there are all kinds of crackpot theories that flit along unabated b/c no one wants/cares enough to spend the time slapping them down; this is, admittedly, a more serious endeavor than, say, the Flat Earth Society, but perhaps most people just don't care?

Well, use your imagination

yeh, as I said to begin with, it's an interesting thought experiment. I ask again, suppose you proved conclusively tomorrow that this was the case. the impact on day-to-day life would be...?

and there already is a reason for everything to exist - existence: a hydrogen molecule exists to be a hydrogen molecule; a transcription factor exists to turn on a particular gene; a fruit fly exists to be a fruit fly. atoms form molecules form cells form tissues & organs form organisms form populations etc etc simple organization proceed to complexity w/each advancing layer form a whole greater than the sum of its parts. if you want something else, fine, but don't ever suggest that that lack of desire to search for extraneous meaning is due to a lack of "imagination".

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

This discussion reminds of the guy - apparently some kind of professor, unbelievably - who declared that the LHC had a 50% chance of destroying the world "because it'll either happen, or it won't".

that is the most awesome thing I've heard in a hella long time. who is this guy, so we can go get wasted together? "there's a 50% chance of me scoring w/that hot girl, b/c it'll either happen or it won't. there's a also a 50% chance of me vomiting all over myself, b/c it'll either happen, or it won't."

I'm going to start living my life by this happen/won't maxim

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

other things that will happen/won't

-super-intelligent zebras enslave the human race
-Obama peels off the rubber mask and reveals that he is, in fact, Vladimir Lenin
-California sinks into the Pacific Ocean
-England wins the World Cup in our lifetimes

happen/won't is great. pisses all over the simulation hypothesis doesn't it?

 

[Mr. Tea]

Yeah, I've got a 50% of getting Angelina Jolie in the sack tonight - pretty cool, huh? If my head doesn't unaccountably explode between now and then, that is, which unfortunately is also 50% likely to happen.

Edit: the guy's name is Walter L. Wagner - he's even set up a nifty website! http://www.lhcdefense.org/

Apparently "61% of over 250,000 participants in an AOL survey say that operating the LHC is not worth the risk" - well you can't argue with that! I wonder what the survey questions were: I'm guessing "Would you be [A] very concerned, or not very concerned, if the DOOMSDAY MACHINE being built buy those LATTER-DAY FRANKENSTEIN CRACKPOT MADMEN destroyed the ENTIRE WORLD?"

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Yeah, I've got a 50% of getting Angelina Jolie in the sack tonight - pretty cool, huh? If my head doesn't unaccountably explode between now and then, that is, which unfortunately is also 50% likely to happen.

you also have a 50% chance of your head exploding while you're in the sack w/Ms. Jolie. happen/won't -> it's invincible.

Apparently "61% of over 250,000 participants in an AOL survey say that operating the LHC is not worth the risk" - well you can't argue with that!

well, AOL surveys are a notorious repository of advanced scientific knowledge

 

[mixed_biscuits]

on a point-by-point basis clearly there is not any single element religion offers that cannot be found elsewhere.

God? A basis for morality? An over-arching purpose to the existence of everything?

aside from the very narrow view you're taking of "science", you're still (esp. for someone who seems to be so concerned with categorization & precise language) just making vague offhanded claims. what is this "straight dope" exactly? I explain basic tenets of molecular biology to laypeople all the time in conversation w/o much difficulty. sure, only a v. few people can appreciate physics at the highest level; the same could be said for various orders of religious esoterica, tho. everything has an entry-level, followed by higher levels. your "talking" to God is another person's understanding of DNA (the basics of which can explained, I'd think, in about 15 minutes).

Hmm yes, but it's a mistake to think that the apogee of religious experience is 'understanding' - the zenith is surely the feeling of communion with a supernatural power. And it is this feeling that is potentially available to all at any time, quite unlike the nec plus ultra of scientific experience (which I would propose might take the form of a moment of synthetic understanding and subsequent progress), which has intellect and much hard work as pre-requisites.

Dawkins seems to be saying to us, 'leave your religious friends and family and follow me into the fantastic adventure playground that is rational enquiry and understanding.' Well, I'm sorry, but I have neither the wit nor resources to negotiate the playground. And nor do 99% of us.

Of course, for Dawkins, that's probably fine. He doesn't care whether the majority of his followers are barely conscious, his aim is to unseat the clerics who hold the masses in their thrall and replace them with sensible people who know what's what.

there are all kinds of crackpot theories that flit along unabated b/c no one wants/cares enough to spend the time slapping them down; this is, admittedly, a more serious endeavor than, say, the Flat Earth Society, but perhaps most people just don't care?

Yes, but it's a theory that is presumably amenable to being contradicted effectively, as it takes very simple assumptions and makes very clear steps and was then published, having been through peer review; it's not some idle speculation he pulled out from the back of his wotsit.

Furthermore, there are attempted rebuttals.

But this is a problem of psychology first and foremost: to accept a rational conclusion that is prima facie whacky.

I ask again, suppose you proved conclusively tomorrow that this was the case. the impact on day-to-day life would be...?

I suppose it depends on how conclusive proof was reached. Perhaps the simulation will be found to have been created in order to preserve ur-humans threatened with extinction digitally (this will make people feel special and they will recycle more); perhaps the simulation was created to run disaster scenarios and gauge the efficacy of various responses (this will make people feel a little used and also scared); perhaps the simulation was created for the Nontando 3DS (this will make people suicide).

To explore my speculation properly, you would need to ask people other than yourself, in order to move towards a confirmation that they would be left similarly unmoved.

and there already is a reason for everything to exist - existence: a hydrogen molecule exists to be a hydrogen molecule; a transcription factor exists to turn on a particular gene; a fruit fly exists to be a fruit fly. atoms form molecules form cells form tissues & organs form organisms form populations etc etc simple organization proceed to complexity w/each advancing layer form a whole greater than the sum of its parts. if you want something else, fine, but don't ever suggest that that lack of desire to search for extraneous meaning is due to a lack of "imagination".

No, what I implied was only that a reticence to imagine implications of the simulation argument suggests a lack of imagination.

I'm quite happy with the meaninglessness, being a rationally-motivated agnostic who feels like an atheist. It's just that so many others seem to feel differently.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Imagine for a moment, that scientists or mathematicians could conclusively prove via irrefutable evidence and formulae, that there was no god(s). Do you think people would leave the churches, mosques, shrines, temples and synagogues in a gigantic wave of enlightenment?

I've written a crap playlet to speculate on the fallout:

- There's no God? From where do I get meaning for my life now?

> Oh, that's fine, you may have lost your God but you have gained liberty - you can create meaning for your life in whichever way you see fit. Go to town, man!

- Right I'm back now, I've cracked this meaning problem: I've created this nebulous father figure whose role it is to ennoble us and give us a purpose. I shall call him 'Todd.' He's got a white beard btw.

> Oh, for Christ's sake.

 

[nomadthethird]

What I find funny is that Spock and Data are very often obviously discomfited or even downright pissed off.

But males experience anger; that means it isn't really an emotion. At least, it's not like the other wimpy ones that women admit to having. [Male thinking is the definition of rationality, in the common usage, and so, (see how this works?) what men think is always more rational than what women or other men think.]

Re Dawkins: he's not asking anyone to "follow" him, or become a scientist. He simply thinks higher of people than you do, I suppose. He thinks that most people have the basic intellectual resources necessary to look at the world rationally and to live without superstition- it's just that many people have been lied to from a very young age by representatives of large, powerful institutions that have a vested interest in keeping the world ignorant. Institutions that, in fact, at one time ruled the world on the backs of the ignorance and poverty of most of the world's population. Many of which are still largely regressive political forces, hell bent on keeping women subordinate and brown/othered people oppressed.

So, you're making a strange strawman argument. No atheist I've ever run into, least of all Dawkins, expects anybody to give up Jesus and then replace him with engineering satellites in geostationary orbit. They do, however, expect people to, when they hear the facts, give up on long-held beliefs about afterlives and magical sky wizards in order to try to focus on building a better life for people on earth. And yes, since we're living in the era we call the information age, most atheists do think there's no excuse for the sorry failures in public science and math education we're seeing in the first world, but that's a side issue.

 

[nomadthethird]

Apparently "61% of over 250,000 participants in an AOL survey say that operating the LHC is not worth the risk" - well you can't argue with that! I wonder what the survey questions were: I'm guessing "Would you be [A] very concerned, or not very concerned, if the DOOMSDAY MACHINE being built buy those LATTER-DAY FRANKENSTEIN CRACKPOT MADMEN destroyed the ENTIRE WORLD?"

Let me guess. AOL's survey question went something like this...

LHC: Scientific progress or like the Tower of Babel, too risky?

Edit: Speaking vaguely of math and science: How much fun is calculus? It's the first math that's made intuitive sense to me... I even read about some mathematician who thinks we should start teaching it to 2nd graders, because of all advanced maths its central tenets are intuitive and young kids have no trouble picking them up. If there were three of me I'd want to spend a lot more time on physics and math.

 

[Richard Carnage]

Re Dawkins: he's not asking anyone to "follow" him, or become a scientist. He simply thinks higher of people than you do, I suppose. He thinks that most people have the basic intellectual resources necessary to look at the world rationally and to live without superstition- it's just that many people have been lied to from a very young age by representatives of large, powerful institutions that have a vested interest in keeping the world ignorant. Institutions that, in fact, at one time ruled the world on the backs of the ignorance and poverty of most of the world's population. Many of which are still largely regressive political forces, hell bent on keeping women subordinate and brown/othered people oppressed.

So, you're making a strange strawman argument. No atheist I've ever run into, least of all Dawkins, expects anybody to give up Jesus and then replace him with engineering satellites in geostationary orbit. They do, however, expect people to, when they hear the facts, give up on long-held beliefs about afterlives and magical sky wizards in order to try to focus on building a better life for people on earth. And yes, since we're living in the era we call the information age, most atheists do think there's no excuse for the sorry failures in public science and math education we're seeing in the first world, but that's a side issue.

BOOM. Nail on the head, Nomad. Mixed Biscuits seems to be implying that it is his personal choice not to fully understand the science, and prefers a life of ignorance because he is either too lazy, or not bothered enough, to follow the scientific argument of why there isn't a God. We're not talking a 20% likelihood, we're talking billionths of a percent, if that. I'm definitely being too generous here. I respect people's independence in making their own decision about it, but I sure as hell don't respect them for choosing to conform to something that has unleashed stain a of oppression and conflict on the world! I just find things like Christians bemoaning people like Scientologists fucking funny. Just because they had a headstart on the brainwashing process! It's more plausible that the Earth started off as some sort of Noah's Ark for an alien race... Hang on - that's Scientology, right?

 

[Richard Carnage]

How much fun is calculus?

From this statement, I can tell that you've never done triple integrals.

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

 

[mixed_biscuits]

They do, however, expect people to, when they hear the facts, give up on long-held beliefs about afterlives and magical sky wizards

Yes, people might then accept that the story that religions might tell is false, but that still leaves itches that need to be scratched - and because science does little to help people to scratch the itch, religion would recur as a creative response to existential angst, justified not by rigour but by results.

When I refer to the inaccessibility of science to the vast majority, I mean the difficulty for most of being able to understand science's answers to the same questions that religion answers, not the difficulty of being able to understand how science makes God very unlikely (putting the simulation argument to one side for a moment). Readily comprehensible stories are replaced by incredibly gnarly narratives: Genesis by counter-intuitive Big Bangery; straight ethical injunctions by fundamental ethical uncertainty and so on.

In other words, the religious would find science's 'negative project' (there is no God) easy to understand (albeit difficult to swallow), yet would find science's 'positive project' (to answer fundamental questions to which religion previously gave answers) to be somewhat less accessible.

 

[nomadthethird]

Yes, people might then accept that the story that religions might tell is false, but that still leaves itches that need to be scratched - and because science does little to help people to scratch the itch, religion would recur as a creative response to existential angst, justified not by rigour but by results.

When I refer to the inaccessibility of science to the vast majority, I mean the difficulty for most of being able to understand science's answers to the same questions that religion answers, not the difficulty of being able to understand how science makes God very unlikely (putting the simulation argument to one side for a moment). Readily comprehensible stories are replaced by incredibly gnarly narratives: Genesis by counter-intuitive Big Bangery; straight ethical injunctions by fundamental ethical uncertainty and so on.

In other words, the religious would find science's 'negative project' (there is no God) easy to understand (albeit difficult to swallow), yet would find science's 'positive project' (to answer fundamental questions to which religion previously gave answers) to be somewhat less accessible.

If you have to make up fairy stories to stratch some itch- whatever, go for it, I won't stop you. I happen not to have this itch, so I have no clue what you're talking about. But I'm not going to sit by mute while fundamentalists take over world governments with their white male privilege centered "values systems". Not. gonna. happen.

What good has religion's "straight ethical injunctions" done for the world, really? Other than be employed to justify some of the most outrageous crimes against humanity?

From this statement, I can tell that you've never done triple integrals

Yikes, no... definite integrals at infinity is about as far as I got. What's fun about calculus is that it's when you realize that math isn't about sums and accounting, necessarily. What it can do is much more expansive than that.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

If you have to make up fairy stories to stratch some itch- whatever, go for it, I won't stop you. I happen not to have this itch, so I have no clue what you're talking about. But I'm not going to sit by mute while fundamentalists take over world governments with their white male privilege centered "values systems".

No, I'm fine itch-wise - as I said, personally, I feel like an atheist. I'm pointing out what I think are flaws in some of the current attempts to coax believers away from their practice. Surmounting these difficulties would make it easier to weaken the value systems that you, I or AN Other might take issue with.

 

[grizzleb]

As I said way back, isn't there a way to separate an attack upon the multitudinous forms of organised religion that do negatively impact people's lives in various forms already outlined- oppression, segregation, bizzare and pointless rules etc, and the actual act of some form of belief. It seems to me that they are two pretty distinct arguments to be having - one of them is concrete and winnable, the other nebulous and intractable. It would be helpful to this whole debate from my perspective if instead of focusing on whether or not x and y really happened the argument was focused on actually challenging some of the harmful effects that organised religion has.

For example - instead of the British Humanist Society (iirc) putting ad's on buses saying "There's probably no God" (which is crass and immature imo), they could better spend their money by placing ads saying "X amount of people die in Africa every year of AIDs, and yet the Vatican is against the use of condoms".

Fuck arguing with them about theology, lets do them at morality...

 

[mixed_biscuits]

For example - instead of the British Humanist Society (iirc) putting ad's on buses saying "There's probably no God" (which is crass and immature imo), they could better spend their money by placing ads saying "X amount of people die in Africa every year of AIDs, and yet the Vatican is against the use of condoms".

Fuck arguing with them about theology, lets do them at morality...

Yes, but that would just lead to a never-ending tit-for-tat, with contradictory adverts proclaiming, 'Christian charities save X amount of people every year' or 'X people died under anti-religious governments.' Neither side would gain any converts. It would be another negative project, failing to deal with the problem of replacing the positive things that people feel religion does for them.

As for morality, atheists are on to a loser. Since areligious value judgements cannot be definitive, atheist claims to have the moral upper-hand are ultimately comparatively weak. A believer would see renouncing God as equivalent to renouncing the means by which they could confidently say that something is immoral.