Dawkin's God Delusion

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Originally Posted by Lionel Ritchie

That article is nonsensical.

Seems to claim Dawkins work is worthless because he doesn't know enough about theology. Dawkins will rightly claim that that's as irrelevant as his not being up to speed on the Harry Potter series. The only difference being that if there's a crucial vote to be taken soon on any number of issues ...Education, Stem cell research, right to life, right to die -news and current affairs programs from here to worlds end aren't going to drag JK Rowling on for her tuppence worth.

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The difference is this; Theology is not akin to astrology or the exegesis of Harry Potter novels - it is a study undertaken by serious people. Many of the foundational figures of the rationalism that Dawkins privileges were also deeply interested in theology - Descartes, Kant, Rousseau and so on. If people you respect in one area also appear to have a deep interest in something else, then it would seem to be the least one could do to pay the tribute of respecting that pursuit as sincere and un- ephemeral. Anyone who reads Augustine or Origen or Aquinas - or more modern philosophers of religion such as levinas or Marion - will grasp immediately that, whatever the validity of the ultimate claims, we are in the presence of real thought.

Works such as Dawkins - and that of even more egregious figures such as the silly AC Grayling - play a loose game, equating a 'common sense' idea of rational with its philosophical counterpart, and assuming a match between the two. Actually, it is extraordinarily difficult to work out any definition of reason that isn't simply tautologous - and reason is of no more help in saying anything useful about 'truth' - as opposed to 'facts' - than religion.

I'm sure quite a few astrologists think they're serious people too. The simple fact remains that both fields consist almost entirely of theories and philosophies; and that scientists view fields in that category as nonsense until they come up with a few facts and proofs.

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Originally Posted by dahamsta

I'm sure quite a few astrologists think they're serious people too. The simple fact remains that both fields consist almost entirely of theories and philosophies; and that scientists view fields in that category as nonsense until they come up with a few facts and proofs.

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And why should science be the only model of truth? even if an ultimate 'scientific image' of the world were available, certain, very ordinary things would remain inexplicable - or at least the scientific explanation would have no bearing on the situation. Understanding pheromenes and formal ideas of beauty is not going to give you a satisfying account of why you fell in love; neither will formal theories about art explain the aesthetic particular.

Science is a conceptual model, one that hopes to be self- correcting; it hopes to present a coherent and internally consistent picture of the world - not the world itself. I would argue that the importation of instrumental reason - reason considered as a tool - into areas where it's use is akin to learning to swim from a book - is the cause of much annoyance and idiocy in the world.

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Originally Posted by dahamsta

I'm sure quite a few astrologists think they're serious people too. The simple fact remains that both fields consist almost entirely of theories and philosophies; and that scientists view fields in that category as nonsense until they come up with a few facts and proofs.

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That said Dawkins cannot produce any solid proof that there isn't a God, he can produce theories, but so can the Church, depends who you believe really. As for Dawkins saying that he is his own man and his ideas are his own, well I still have to question why he feels the need to ram down the throat of people in the same way that hardline Christians try to ram their ideas down peoples throats.

From a personal standpoint I think anyone who says that religious people are idiots is just trying to provoke negative attention towards themselves. There is absolutely no need for Dawkins to use such a strong term and to lord himself over people. I'm sure he wouldn't appreciate the Pope calling him an idiot for not believing and would head straight to the media to have a moan about it if he did.

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Originally Posted by Lionel Ritchie

Well I am an atheist and just for a flavour of why some atheists "care so much about people believing in God" I'll have a stab at the fact that here in Ireland Bertie Ahern would be commiting career suicide if he announced tomorrow he was an atheist, in the USA there are powerful people lobbying to have creationism taught alongside evolution in Science classes as an "equal faith position" and in the UK Blairs government are allowing creationist adherent nutcases like Reg Vardy invest money in schools in return for the right to appoint members to managment committees of schools in deprived areas of the north-east. Vardys aim is thought to be similar to the US scenario above.

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Honestly I still don't think any of those are valid reasons for attacking someone's beliefs on a personal level. In those instances you should attack Irish society on the Bertie issue (although I disagree with you as regards to him being an atheist being career suicide), you should criticise the religious right in America as any right minded person does, and you should point out the Blair-Vardy connection as just another instance where New Labour has let Britain down. I think what Dawkins sets out to do is attack religious people on a personal level, and thats where he loses me to be honest.

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Originally Posted by finlma

Well said Lionel. Atheism is seriously frowned upon in this world. For some reason its not right in our society to question religion. People are happy to believe that a man can walk on water, turn water into wine and have a virgin as a mother and expect people not to question it. Beggars belief to be honest.

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Are you serious? "It's not right in our society to question religion"? Do you honestly think we're still living in 1950's Ireland? Religion and the role of religion in society is questioned practically every day in the media. On a ground level I'm constantly either questioned, or pretty much attacked, as to why I'm wearing a cross. Maybe this depends on what side of the religion/science debate you sit but I think it's getting to a point in our society where being religious is frowned upon and you are seen as some sort of ignorant bigot for wearing a cross, a society where the atheists have taken the mantle of the Catholic's holier than thou attitude

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Originally Posted by jebus

That said Dawkins cannot produce any solid proof that there isn't a God, he can produce theories, but so can the Church, depends who you believe really.

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How many times do we need to go over this. Dawkins as any atheist will tell you that they cannot categorically disprove the existance of god. This does not mean that belief that god exists is as valid as belief god doesn't exist. The bottom line is that the existance of a god is extremely improbable. So much so that you can say with relative certainty that there is no god. You can't prove that Zeus and his associated gods are not living invisibly at the top of mount olympus but you surely don't think that its as likely that they are as it is that they aren't. Similarly the idea of a giant invisible rooster holding the earth up can't be disproved and its just as valid as the idea of god.
I'll give you 100 Euro if you can disprove my rooster hypothesis.

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Originally Posted by jebus

Are you serious? "It's not right in our society to question religion"? Do you honestly think we're still living in 1950's Ireland? Religion and the role of religion in society is questioned practically every day in the media.

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The role of organised religion is questioned to an extent but irrational belief is a no go area.

SOS,
I'm very familiar with theology and philosophy. I studied philosophy in UCD including an elective course in the philosophy of religion. Most philosophy is nonsense to be honest, that includes Descartes. Aristotle who lived nearly 2.000 years before Descartes was nearly 2,000 years more advanced in his thinking.

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Originally Posted by BohsPartisan

the idea of a giant invisible rooster holding the earth up.

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You mad b@stard.

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Originally Posted by BohsPartisan

The evidence is there that god does not exist.
God was a figment of the human imagination.

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does that not contradict this.......... (and yes, i edited the above post to condense it)

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Originally Posted by BohsPartisan

How many times do we need to go over this. Dawkins as any atheist will tell you that they cannot categorically disprove the existance of god.

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Dawkins himself will not categorically deny God's existence, but you, in your first post, seem to do so.

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Originally Posted by osarusan

does that not contradict this.......... (and yes, i edited the above post to condense it)



Dawkins himself will not categorically deny God's existence, but you, in your first post, seem to do so.

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If you're 99.999999999% sure it often sounds as if you are 100% sure. There is little difference. Its the old concept of proving beyond reasonable doubt.

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Originally Posted by BohsPartisan

Similarly the idea of a giant invisible rooster holding the earth up can't be disproved and its just as valid as the idea of god.
I'll give you 100 Euro if you can disprove my rooster hypothesis.

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If I took a huge sword and slashed at the space under the earth, slashing a space wider that the diameter, then if there was an invisible rooster, I'd kill him. You just said he was invisible, not "uninjureable". (there is a word, but its 4 am here, i am tired)

100 euro............should I pm you my address?

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Originally Posted by sonofstan

And why should science be the only model of truth?

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I'm sorry to be rude, but it's comments like this that push legitimate discussions over the edge. It's just nonsensical. Look the word science up in a dictionary.

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Originally Posted by dahamsta

I'm sorry to be rude, but it's comments like this that push legitimate discussions over the edge. It's just nonsensical. Look the word science up in a dictionary.

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why is it nonsensical? - i never said scientific truth wasn't 'true'; i just mean that certain things are 'true' in ways that are not narrowly scientific. Read the rest of the post.

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Originally Posted by osarusan

If I took a huge sword and slashed at the space under the earth, slashing a space wider that the diameter, then if there was an invisible rooster, I'd kill him. You just said he was invisible, not "uninjureable". (there is a word, but its 4 am here, i am tired)

100 euro............should I pm you my address?

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I require a video of said injury. Oh hold on, he's invisible... :p

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Originally Posted by BohsPartisan

SOS,
I'm very familiar with theology and philosophy. I studied philosophy in UCD including an elective course in the philosophy of religion. Most philosophy is nonsense to be honest, that includes Descartes. Aristotle who lived nearly 2.000 years before Descartes was nearly 2,000 years more advanced in his thinking.

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the second sentence above is a hardly sufficient condition for the first - it is open to question whether D4IT undergrads in the philosophy dept. ever get even slightly familiar with the subject*TBH; I should know - I teach them......

Also... can a mod do something about the misplaced apostrophe in the thread title? guy's name is 'Dawkins' so it should be 'Dawkins' God Delusion'

*not suggesting this is true of you, of course

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Originally Posted by BohsPartisan

Aristotle who lived nearly 2.000 years before Descartes was nearly 2,000 years more advanced in his thinking.

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What's 2000 years less advanced than the natural existence of slaves and the natural inferiority of women?:eek:

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Originally Posted by Poor Student

What's 2000 years less advanced than the natural existence of slaves and the natural inferiority of women?:eek:

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Aristotle was a Materialist. He understood that our consciousness begins with the material world. Descartes did not. In other ways as you say Aristotle was a creature of his time, he could not have been otherwise. I'm merely saying that in his mode of thinking Aristotle was more advanced than Descartes, not that all his ideas were correct.

SOS,
Yeah I know what you mean. There are some areas of what I was supposed to have studied that I know SFA about because I didn't bother. Witgenstein for example.

Watch South Parks Go God Go episodes Part I & II & everything is clear. :D

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Originally Posted by jebus

As for Dawkins saying that he is his own man and his ideas are his own, well I still have to question why he feels the need to ram down the throat of people in the same way that hardline Christians try to ram their ideas down peoples throats.

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Dawkins doesn't ram anything down the throat of anyone. You can listen to him if you want and don't otherwise. Its not only hardline Christians that ram religion down peoples throats - schools teach religion to our kids every day.

Exactly. If I ever have kids I don't want religion anywhere near them, which is another reason this subject is so important to me.

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Originally Posted by BohsPartisan

Exactly. If I ever have kids I don't want religion anywhere near them, which is another reason this subject is so important to me.

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The kiddies don't have to do religion in school. I never bothered

It's not really ramming down the throat when you have a choice ;)

(This has just been my experience of school. I apologise if anyone else has had children in schools where religion is compulsory. But I doubt such a place exists)

It was rammed down our throats at school. The majority of schools are still owned by the catholic church.

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Originally Posted by Lim till i die

(This has just been my experience of school. I apologise if anyone else has had children in schools where religion is compulsory. But I doubt such a place exists)

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95% of primary schools in Ireland are Catholic and teaching religion is enforced. Its not that easy to opt out.

Woo! Check out the big brain on SoS.

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Originally Posted by sonofstan

The difference is this; Theology is not akin to astrology or the exegesis of Harry Potter novels.

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Subjective. But go on...

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Originally Posted by sonofstan

... it is a study undertaken by serious people.

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Serious or no -they're still barking up the wrong tree.

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Originally Posted by sonofstan

If people you respect in one area also appear to have a deep interest in something else, then it would seem to be the least one could do to pay the tribute of respecting that pursuit as sincere and un- ephemeral.

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Respect or no -they're still barking up the wrong tree.

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Originally Posted by sonofstan

Anyone who reads Augustine or Origen or Aquinas - or more modern philosophers of religion such as levinas or Marion - will grasp immediately that, whatever the validity of the ultimate claims, we are in the presence of real thought.

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Ah good ol' Tommy Aquinas "the world looks just great -therefore someone HAD to have designed it". There was nobody in the presence of real thought the day he thought up that nugget. He was a man of his time as we all are so I'll leave him at that -but much modern religious philosophy seems to about trying to shoe-horn the middle-eastern fairytales it obsesses with and of course derives from into the unfolding information we have about the universe.

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Originally Posted by sonofstan

Works such as Dawkins - and that of even more egregious figures such as the silly AC Grayling - play a loose game, equating a 'common sense' idea of rational with its philosophical counterpart, and assuming a match between the two. Actually, it is extraordinarily difficult to work out any definition of reason that isn't simply tautologous - and reason is of no more help in saying anything useful about 'truth' - as opposed to 'facts' - than religion.

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:confused: (sucks biro) ...um ...could you repeat the ...um ...stuff about the things :)

I like this. From here. Think I'll buy the tshirt.

adam

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Originally Posted by finlma

95% of primary schools in Ireland are Catholic and teaching religion is enforced. Its not that easy to opt out.

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Regardless of whether schools are Catholic or not it is a constitutional right of every child to get 30mins of religious education every day. Therefore all schools (including Educate together multi denominational schools) are required to teach it.

Saying that in most Educate Together schools the focus of the religion time is moral education or educating children on different faiths and what others believe rather than telling them to believe something.

I will qualify as a teacher in a few months and the fact that i will more than likely be forced to lie to children is sickening.

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Originally Posted by Lionel Ritchie

much modern religious philosophy seems to about trying to shoe-horn the middle-eastern fairytales it obsesses with and of course derives from into the unfolding information we have about the universe.

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such as?

Most modern religious philosophy that i know of doesn't do anything of the sort, but do tell.

BTW, since i seem to be getting hopped on here as the lone voice of irrationalism, can I ask those of you who appear to hold that science can explain everything to explain aesthetic experience - liking a piece of music or a movie - or your mood or whatever in some way that doesn't simply reduce the mind to a mechanical model stripped of the 'feel' of consciousness? All I've said is that scientific explanations of certain phenomena that matter to us are simply inappropriate because they remove all traces of freedom from descriptions of our actions and experience, and, even if it is true that we are robots, and free will is an illusion, it doesn't in the end matter because we act as if freedom were possible, and therefore explanations of actions and experience only make sense if described 'as if' we were free. Our language presupposes intentionality and free subjectivity; a language that would describe an entirely deterministic worldview would not be a recognisably human language.

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Originally Posted by BohsPartisan

The majority of schools are still owned by the catholic church.

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They're not; they're controlled by the church. The state has built most of them, the state funds them, the state then hands over control to the Church to indoctrinate the children, to make moral judgements on whether they employ divorced teachers, gives over time to communion/ confirmation classes etc. All state funded schools should be non denominational, and should not have priests as decision makers on their boards.

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Originally Posted by sonofstan

such as?


can I ask those of you who appear to hold that science can explain everything to explain aesthetic experience - liking a piece of music or a movie - or your mood or whatever in some way that doesn't simply reduce the mind to a mechanical model stripped of the 'feel' of consciousness?

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Most of these can be explained as evolutionary by products. I'll go into it in greater detail when I'm not so busy. (don't take this as being a determinist arguement)
Also I don't think Science can completely explain everything now. However there was a time when Science couldn't explain lots of things that were once unexplained and attributed to supernatural causes. I doubt human science will ever explain absolutely everything either because our limits are also science's limits. Again this doesn't mean that the supernatural is a substitute for the gaps in our current knowledge.

SoS,
any chance you would provide some arguements for us to actually refute because otherwise its like we're trying to shoot a bat in the dark here.

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Originally Posted by Macy

They're not; they're controlled by the church. The state has built most of them, the state funds them, the state then hands over control to the Church to indoctrinate the children, to make moral judgements on whether they employ divorced teachers, gives over time to communion/ confirmation classes etc.

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My mistake. This is even worse!

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Originally Posted by BohsPartisan

SoS,
any chance you would provide some arguements for us to actually refute because otherwise its like we're trying to shoot a bat in the dark here.

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All I'm trying to show is this; Dawkins' argument appears to rest - I'm open to correction - on the premise that religious faith holds certain things to be true that are verifiably impossible on the basis of scientific explanation, and therefore, people who profess religious faith are either stupid or dangerous or both. This rests on the further premise that scientific method is the only means of arriving at any kind of defensible truth.

My argument is this; certain features of ordinary experience, while explicable or potentially explicable scientifically, have aspects which are not open to such explanation, but which appear meaningful to us.

If this is the case, then either a) this apparent meaningfulness will disappear in the light of a future explanation - just as the portentiousness of comets and shooting stars was explained away one they became astronomically comprehensible, or b) there are certain aspects of our experience as rational, embodied creatures that can not be explained in terms of material causation; which further entails c) that, since our explanations of the world are, themselves, aspects of that world, then certain aspects of the world are not amenable to scientific explanation (at least to us). And since we are the only rational creatures we know of, we must either adopt a God's eye view and asssume that in the light of some, non- human reason, it all makes sense, or else admit that reason -or at least our reason - has boundaries. Neither position is comfortable.

If science is not capable of providing us -perhaps ever -with a total explanation of everything, then metaphysics remains at least a defensible human pursuit; it may be wrongheaded in many of its conclusions but it may not deserve the massive condescension of a Dawkins. And I remain an atheist and I have a fairly robust faith in science.

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Originally Posted by sonofstan

If science is not capable of providing us -perhaps ever -with a total explanation of everything, then metaphysics remains at least a defensible human pursuit;

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Correct me if I'm wrong here. You seem to be saying that If we can't yet explain something scientifically then any fathomable fancy is a substitute for knowledge?
In that case Scientology is as valid a philosophy as christianity, or should I add the Flying Spaghetti Monster or the Invisible Earth Supporting Rooster. Perhaps the idea that all physical reality was created by Satan to defy God and thus should be destroyed is a valid position (And unfortunately that idea is not an invention of mine). Can you see where I am going with this? If its ok to make sht up, why not evil sht (evil used as a concept and not a universal value).

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Originally Posted by BohsPartisan

Correct me if I'm wrong here. You seem to be saying that If we can't yet explain something scientifically then any fathomable fancy is a substitute for knowledge?
In that case Scientology is as valid a philosophy as christianity, or should I add the Flying Spaghetti Monster or the Invisible Earth Supporting Rooster. Perhaps the idea that all physical reality was created by Satan to defy God and thus should be destroyed is a valid position (And unfortunately that idea is not an invention of mine). Can you see where I am going with this? If its ok to make sht up, why not evil sht (evil used as a concept and not a universal value).

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All hail the Invisible Earth Supporting Rooster.

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Originally Posted by Macy

They're not; they're controlled by the church.

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Not true Macy - the Catholic Church owns most of the land that primary schools in Ireland are built on but the state (somewhat) supports the schools. I'm a primary school teacher and I detest having to teach religion - I try to teach morals rather than anything about a God. Have to give some extra tuition (also known as lies) to the kids on the days the priest or nun is coming in.

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Originally Posted by BohsPartisan

Correct me if I'm wrong here. You seem to be saying that If we can't yet explain something scientifically then any fathomable fancy is a substitute for knowledge?
In that case Scientology is as valid a philosophy as christianity, or should I add the Flying Spaghetti Monster or the Invisible Earth Supporting Rooster. Perhaps the idea that all physical reality was created by Satan to defy God and thus should be destroyed is a valid position (And unfortunately that idea is not an invention of mine). Can you see where I am going with this? If its ok to make sht up, why not evil sht (evil used as a concept and not a universal value).

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I think all he is saying is that we shouldn’t totally rule something out just because at the moment we cant prove / disprove it , as there are many many things that defy logic and cant be proven it doesn’t mean they don’t exist . collective consciousness ( I’ve no idea if that’s how you spell ) for example.

Or what I spend lots of time thinking about is where does the will to live come from , to explain it now you can say it’s a by product of evolution , but what made the very first bacteria want to survive ? why have tiny particles from an explosion billions of years ago joined together to create planets and life forms why does this keep happening if something isn’t either controlling it or pre-programming this to keep happening .

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Originally Posted by John83

All hail the Invisible Earth Supporting Rooster.

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Blasphemy!!! Ancient texts written 300 years after the fact then translated from aramaic into greek and from there into middle-German during the 16th century confirm it is NOT a mere rooster but a C0ck!!!

All hail the C0ck!!!! :eek:






I don't like this religion anymore:(

I guess the rooster being a C0ck was one of those important things we don't want to know.

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Originally Posted by anto1208

I think all he is saying is that we shouldn’t totally rule something out just because at the moment we cant prove / disprove it ,

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But why just make something up to fill the gap in knowledge? Why not just say, we don't understand such and such at this point in time but we hope to understand it sometime in the future?
This wouldn't be such a big issue if there weren't so many people around the world believing things that they have never thought about why they believe them and if these beliefs didn't have such a hold upon billions of people.

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Originally Posted by BohsPartisan

Correct me if I'm wrong here. You seem to be saying that If we can't yet explain something scientifically then any fathomable fancy is a substitute for knowledge?
In that case Scientology is as valid a philosophy as christianity, or should I add the Flying Spaghetti Monster or the Invisible Earth Supporting Rooster. Perhaps the idea that all physical reality was created by Satan to defy God and thus should be destroyed is a valid position (And unfortunately that idea is not an invention of mine). Can you see where I am going with this? If its ok to make sht up, why not evil sht (evil used as a concept and not a universal value).

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No I'm not. What I'm saying is that Metaphysics - by which I mean 'thoughts of a resolving closure between self and world' - are possible; such thoughts are as subject to Occam's razor as any other. If the self is not entirely explained by nature, and nature is not simply an idealist fantasy of the self, then some kind of ground which can explain both seems worth thinking about. Any such thoughts need to be internally consistent and it seems likely that - Occam's razor - law of logical dependence and inference, as well as physical possibility should hold for this ground - or for the relation between this ground and that which it grounds; part of which is the physical world. But you can have your rooster if you want.

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Originally Posted by Lionel Ritchie

All hail the C0ck!!!! :eek:

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Aww now you've gone and turned it into yet another phallocentric belief system. Maybe I'll start worshipping the Mother Chicken instead. (The great prophet BP foresees a schism in his new religion based on the question of which came first, the chicken or the egg and simultaniously forsees the answer - the chicken and the egg are eternal beings co-existing seperately and in unity all at once)

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Originally Posted by BohsPartisan

But why just make something up to fill the gap in knowledge? Why not just say, we don't understand such and such at this point in time but we hope to understand it sometime in the future?
This wouldn't be such a big issue if there weren't so many people around the world believing things that they have never thought about why they believe them and if these beliefs didn't have such a hold upon billions of people.

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F**k knows why people do anything :D

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Originally Posted by BohsPartisan

Aww now you've gone and turned it into yet another phallocentric belief system. Maybe I'll start worshipping the Mother Chicken instead. (The great prophet BP foresees a schism in his new religion based on the question of which came first, the chicken or the egg and simultaniously forsees the answer - the chicken and the egg are eternal beings co-existing seperately and in unity all at once)

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Time and space are forms of intuition according to Kant - they don't have any existence outside our understanding - if that's any help .....

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Originally Posted by BohsPartisan

Similarly the idea of a giant invisible rooster holding the earth up can't be disproved and its just as valid as the idea of god.
I'll give you 100 Euro if you can disprove my rooster hypothesis.

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I'm confused by the point you're trying to make with your rooster hypothesis.

We've been to space and looked back at the earth from afar (from the moon, for example), and can see that there's no rooster. We've also flown satellites around the earth for the past 60 years or so which orbit very regularly. If the rooster existed and were invisible, chances are one of the satellites would have hit him, which we would have seen. If he's big enough to hold up the earth, his gravity would also cause calculation problems as we know (from scientific fact) that gravitational can be calculated anywhere in the universe, which doesn't allow for the possibility of an earth-sized rooster sitting under our planet.

So it can't be seen, can't be felt and can't be detected using scientifically proven mathematical formulae. Sounds like he doesn't exist.

Can I PM you my bank details or would you rather send a cheque? ;)

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Originally Posted by pineapple stu

I'm confused by the point you're trying to make with your rooster hypothesis.

We've been to space and looked back at the earth from afar (from the moon, for example), and can see that there's no rooster. We've also flown satellites around the earth for the past 60 years or so which orbit very regularly. If the rooster existed and were invisible, chances are one of the satellites would have hit him, which we would have seen. If he's big enough to hold up the earth, his gravity would also cause calculation problems as we know (from scientific fact) that gravitational can be calculated anywhere in the universe, which doesn't allow for the possibility of an earth-sized rooster sitting under our planet.

So it can't be seen, can't be felt and can't be detected using scientifically proven mathematical formulae. Sounds like he doesn't exist.

Can I PM you my bank details or would you rather send a cheque? ;)

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Maybe he's light years away and he's holding us up by sheer will. Or he's actually a very small but very strong rooster.