Richard Dawkins, 22nd Century Man
advancedatheist 30 Apr 2005
http://www.salon.com...kins/print.html
The atheist
Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins explains why God is a delusion, religion is a virus, and America has slipped back into the Dark Ages.
April 28, 2005
....
Fifty years ago, philosophers like Bertrand Russell felt that the religious worldview would fade as science and reason emerged. Why hasn't it?
That trend toward enlightenment has indeed continued in Europe and Britain. It just has not continued in the U.S., and not in the Islamic world. We're seeing a rather unholy alliance between the burgeoning theocracy in the U.S. and its allies, the theocrats in the Islamic world. They are fighting the same battle: Christian on one side, Muslim on the other. The very large numbers of people in the United States and in Europe who don't subscribe to that worldview are caught in the middle....
How would we be better off without religion?
We'd all be freed to concentrate on the only life we are ever going to have. We'd be free to exult in the privilege -- the remarkable good fortune -- that each one of us enjoys through having been being born. An astronomically overwhelming majority of the people who could be born never will be. You are one of the tiny minority whose number came up. Be thankful that you have a life, and forsake your vain and presumptuous desire for a second one. The world would be a better place if we all had this positive attitude to life. It would also be a better place if morality was all about doing good to others and refraining from hurting them, rather than religion's morbid obsession with private sin and the evils of sexual enjoyment....
Humans may not be products of an intelligent designer but given genetic technologies, our descendants will be. What does this mean about the future of evolution?
It's an interesting thought that in some remote time in the future, people may look back on the 20th and 21st centuries as a watershed in evolution -- the time when evolution stopped being an undirected force and became a design force. Already, for the past few centuries, maybe even millennia, agriculturalists have in a sense designed the evolution of domestic animals like pigs and cows and chickens. That's increasing and we're getting more technologically clever at that by manipulating not just the selection part of evolution but also the mutation part. That will be very different; one of the great features of biological evolution up to now is that there is no foresight.
susmariosep 30 Apr 2005
Be thankful that you have a life, and forsake your vain and presumptuous desire for a second one. The world would be a better place if we all had this positive attitude to life. It would also be a better place if morality was all about doing good to others and refraining from hurting them, rather than religion's morbid obsession with private sin and the evils of sexual enjoyment....
Halleluia! I have all that attitude, except I still have this fondness for religion, my kind of, which is rational, provisional, and optional.
I think that makes me a well-balanced intellectual.
You can be also when you reach intellectual maturity like me.
Modesty aside of course, but learn from me.
Susma
01 May 2005
You delve into agnosticism in "The Ancestor's Tale." How does it differ from atheism?
It's said that the only rational stance is agnosticism because you can neither prove nor disprove the existence of the supernatural creator. I find that a weak position. It is true that you can't disprove anything but you can put a probability value on it. There's an infinite number of things that you can't disprove: unicorns, werewolves, and teapots in orbit around Mars. But we don't pay any heed to them unless there is some positive reason to think that they do exist.
This is a rather unconvincing argument. There are an infinite number of possible claims of an unfalsifiable nature, each claim should not be approached with atheistic (absolute) disbelief. If each claim is approached agnostically and no legitimate supporting evidence or reasoned argument is brought forth, there would be no reason to believe in the claim and no need to refute it. Applying a spectrum of belief, one may assign an infinitesimal belief in the unsubstantiated finite reviewed claims of the infinite non-falsifiable claims. The unreviewed remainder would not be assigned any degree of belief until/if additional reviews of those remaining claims take place. Should a provisional degree of belief be applied to all unfalsifiable claims, all such claims would be approached with that amount of provisional belief. On an individual basis, provisional beliefs can be changed for individual claims as required, in response to evidence or reasoned argument.
These are my thoughts, figuratively shared aloud. If necessary, I'll prune this post for clarity.
Edited by cosmos, 04 May 2005 - 08:41 PM.
susmariosep 02 May 2005
These are my thoughts, figuratively shared aloud. If necessary, I'll prune this post for clarity. -- Cosmos
Please do, oh please do, for the sake of a brother with dense brain.
And I am waiting. Also don't forget to be 'beq' (briefly, easily, and quickly).
By the way, I am still waiting for you to visit Sense and Nonsense and help me with those dense texts there.
Susma
04 May 2005
Edited by cosmos, 04 May 2005 - 09:46 PM.
godsend 04 May 2005
Disbelief still equals a belief.
Atheism, like theism, represents a dogma concerning a specific metaphysical claim.
04 May 2005
Atheism, like theism, represents a dogma concerning a specific metaphysical claim.
Strong atheism (or absolute atheism) takes this position. You're correct.
Mind 04 May 2005
advancedatheist 04 May 2005
BEQ
Disbelief still equals a belief.
Atheism, like theism, represents a dogma concerning a specific metaphysical claim.
Atheism makes a specific claim about the contents and structure of reality, so it's not unlike the heliocentric theory of astronomy. Theism, like Ptolemaic astronomy, got bogged down because it had to add more and more arbitrary assumptions to try to patch all the embarrassing discrepancies that kept popping up. Descartes in the early 17th Century tried to clean up theism by deriving a god from a handful of plausible assmptions, but the project failed because his philosophy led to predictions about physics that Newton showed were wrong later in that century.
BTW, Abrahamic theists aren't in the least bothered by their "disbelief" in all the deities their religions have displaced. "But, but, what if Odin is real? If the Valkyries don't choose me when I die, I won't be able to hunt and feast upon the wild boar Schrimnir forever!"
Omnido 10 May 2005
Im Agnostic myself, and I find no weakness in it at all, other than having to make the wise admission that there exist things in the universe to which I will most likely (not saying never) have a conclusive, objective, and definitive answer or solution to.