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The God Delusion

Postby salanor » December 3rd, 2007, 3:49 am

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Postby Leslie » December 3rd, 2007, 5:16 am

"What are you laughing at?"
"At myself. My little puny self," said Phillipa.
--Rumer Godden, In This House of Brede
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Postby AllanS » December 3rd, 2007, 5:50 am

“And turn their grief into song?" he replied. "That would be a gracious act and a good beginning."

Quid and Harmony: a fund-raising project for the Fistula Hospital, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. www.smithysbook.com
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Postby postodave » December 3rd, 2007, 5:15 pm

So I drew my sword and got ready
But the lamb ran away with the crown
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Postby Adam » December 4th, 2007, 3:01 am

"Love is the only art that poorly imitates nature."
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Postby AllanS » December 4th, 2007, 3:20 am

“And turn their grief into song?" he replied. "That would be a gracious act and a good beginning."

Quid and Harmony: a fund-raising project for the Fistula Hospital, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. www.smithysbook.com
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Postby salanor » December 5th, 2007, 12:16 am

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Postby salanor » December 5th, 2007, 12:59 am

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Re: The God Delusion

Postby salanor » December 6th, 2007, 10:04 am

I am intrigued that, in all the criticism of "The God Delusion", the Dawkins proposition that religion is the root of evil has escaped attention. The "unholy trinity" of Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris has been very vocal in promoting religion as the primary driver behind many of the "bad" things that are happening today, 9/11 prominent amongst them.

In this, they join the right wing spokesman D'Souza in the belief that belief and non-belief in God can make people act to cause suffering to others. Hitchens cites holy wars, Iraq amongst them, and D'Souza Stalin's regime, as "evidence" that religion or opposition to religion kills people.

I find it incredible that Hitchens, a former Marxist / materialist and noted historian, takes such a line. Racism (tribalism), economic oppression and competition for resources and land all stand as much more credible sources / causes of conflict. I wonder how Hitchens, faced with the American Civil War, responsible for more American deaths in war than all other American casualties in all wars in which Americans have fought since combined, can construe such a war as holy? And how does D'Souza account for it as an atheist war? Is it good enough for either of them to be nice and selective about which wars they choose as evidence?

Clearly, as a new American, Hitchens is allowed to ignore the Civil War and D'Souza is allowed to re-write it. It is difficult to believe that either has such prominence in American public debate. One can only conclude that, as may be the case here in this forum, passion over the "God is Dead" question overcomes the quest for a rigorous critique of history or the role of religion.

Given the obvious deep and extensive knowledge of history (especially the history of religion) in this forum, where's your criticism?
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Re: The God Delusion

Postby alecto » December 6th, 2007, 5:03 pm

Sentio ergo est.
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Re: The God Delusion

Postby salanor » December 7th, 2007, 4:33 am

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Postby postodave » December 7th, 2007, 5:16 pm

So I drew my sword and got ready
But the lamb ran away with the crown
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Postby alecto » December 18th, 2007, 9:11 pm

Dawkins gives a clear (no-reactionary) defense of why he dislikes religion at:

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/203/story_20334_1.html

It does not contain many "extreme" statements (i.e. ones containing "all" and "every" etc. which are usually false) and deals directly with the problem of "revealed religion".
Sentio ergo est.
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Postby postodave » December 19th, 2007, 8:40 pm

So I drew my sword and got ready
But the lamb ran away with the crown
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Postby alecto » December 19th, 2007, 9:27 pm

The scientific method is, in a nutshell: if you want to find out of something is true, test it.

This is what we do in virtually every everyday venture. If we want to find if the clothes truly fit, we try them on. If we want to see if its true that we'll like dish X, we taste it. In the courtroom, we can't literally do this very often. It's difficult to test the past. But we try to get as close to it as possible. We do not accept heresay if possible, but try to find "hard evidence." Some say the scientific method is recent, but you can find stories of people using it in ancient writings. But very often, when discussing nature, philsophers such as Aristotle are usually discussing what other people have said, not what they found out. So we say science is new, but it really isn't. We just apply the way we always shopped for shoes to things like natural philosophy now. And it works really really well.

Now scientists have picked up a very big gun, so to speak, and shot themselves in their own foot, by going off and saying something like this: "science seeks facts, not truth." That's hogwash. The kind of thing scientists are trying to figure out is what nearly every person is trying to figure out if he or she asks a question like "is X true." The only exception, and it's the one that pissed Dawkins off so much, is religion. In religion, we distinguish two sorts of things, facts and truth. Scientists bought into that for some reason. It's not the way we use the word - except within religion - so scientists have got themselves within religion even while saying what they do is separate.

In the days of the Church Fathers, religion was thought about more scientifically. Like in the courtroom, you couldn't get at some of the things you might want to test, but you would do "thought experiments" like this: compare Jewish religion to Greek religion and ask yourself: what kind of world would these gods really make? Which do we live in? It worked quite well, in the long run, to convince people that tis world could not have been built by anything like what the Greek gods are described as being.
Sentio ergo est.
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