Richard Dawkins

At what point in the thread have I attempted to convince you of Karma? (though for reference, your statement means "channeling action through the human body" - which seems perfectly feasible to me, perhaps you were unaware that the word Karma means "Action")
I recall referencing my beliefs once, in a paragraph where I was making the point that a supernatural belief is not an indicator of general intelligence, or of a likelyhood to commit murder.

I am saying, as I have said from the beginning, that you cannot link belief in the supernatural to either the cause of atrocity, or any exceptional level of foolishness in the believer.
I have not once tried to use supernatural authority to argue my points, or said anything that would be out of place in Atheists discussion.
I have made fairly concise logical points.

Those that believe in the supernatural, are often possessed of very great minds, so cannot be considered fools wholesale.
That people with a religion have been shown to be happier and in greater psychological health than those without. Technically making them saner than those without supernatural beliefs.
That there really is no proven link between a belief in the supernatural, and a tendency to violence.

When I make these points, you simply ignore them, and call me a fool for holding a "supernatural" belief that I doubt you could accurately describe if called upon to do so.

Is your sole point that you do not like belief in the supernatural? Even though it is demonstrably harmless, and sometimes even beneficial.

 

Well I mean the original purpose of min in this thread was to talk about Dawkins. I don't think my own beliefs really afect that either way. If I was an atheist I'd stil dislike the guy. But I guess that got lost in the "foolishness".

And i mean, I think being able to just stop debating is the measure of a wise person. We both know neither of us will move anywhere, and we have not really progressed in any fort of knowledge, so it has been to no avail I still enjoy debating people even if no one "wins" or converts another person if at least I learn something about myself or about the world.

 

Agreed.

 

If we believe in evolution we know that it's highly improbable. We'll never know exactly because that would involve knowing precisely how many deaths contributed to our evolution, how many deaths didn't occur which could have jeapordised our evolution, likelihood of shifts in weather, climate, food supplies, etc.

It is, I think, reasonable to say that evolution is highly unlikely to repeat itself. It is highly likely that we will encounter planet after planet as we explore space where life has not got past its earliest stages, where helpful mutations never quite emerged, and where nothing ever happened.

Similarly, with Dawkins' multiverses, as I under it there is no reason to think that another universe will have emerged the same way ours has. It is possible, through fluke collisions of molecules and so forth, that no part of another universe will be able to support life, ever. Not only possible, but I'd imagine quite likely if there's a large number of them.

Well, the "supernatural" is a blanket term with nuances and connotations. It essentially points to things drawn from folklore and myth. I would argue that science fiction is the modern equivalent of such folklore and myth. In the absence of strange lands beyond the seas, we have strange planets. Having discovered that most humans are pretty similar, we have had to invent strange aliens upon whom to transpose our characteristics in order to deal with them as narrative.

Even if we believe in the possibility/likelihood of aliens, we need not assume that any human account of an alien encounter is accurate, any more than lacking proof of the non-existence of God would require someone to be a Christian.

 

Your argument is foolish. The concept of "proof" varies widely from one context to another. Scientists have one standard, courts another (or more, since there are different standards for civil and criminal trials). Unfortunately, for the most critical life decisions--who to marry, what job to take, what house to buy, what used car salesman to trust--there is never "proof". We fly by the seat of our pants on the basis of life experiences, intuition, and the best available evidence; and are often wrong. You don't impress me as a person whose judgments I'd want to take a chance on.

 

Hoatzin wrote:

If you believe that you also believe in the probability that aliens exist. Aliens need not be more intelligent than human, they just need to be a lifeform from a planet other than Earth. Even if we find only bacteria on one other planet the theory of alien life becomes fact, and it gives even better probabilities that intellegent life is or has existed on more than one planet. It also would throw the whole notion that humans are special and the center of god's attention into the garbage. It would infact strengthen the theory of evolution, because if life can independently arise in two separate places then it is probably a relatively common occurance throughout the universe. If it is relatively common than it may have evoled into some type of multicelled organisms in one of the other billions apon trillions of other other solar systems.

Think of extrasolar planets. The theory was that planets may exist around other stars but none were know to exist. Around 10 or so years ago the first planets around another star was found. In the last 10 years over 100 planets have been found. This leads to the fact that planetary systems throughout the universe are common. None of these planets were anything but gas giants and life on them would be very hard to exist.

For the first time though a planet that was not a gas giant was found. As our technology gets better to find smaller and smaller planets expect more to be found. As more and more are found expect that one day we might find one with liquid water on it. If we find one with water that would be a good place to go and explore (if technology permits) to see if any life there exists. That would be the best way of finding life because waiting by our radios for them to contact us is unlikely to happen. Other life may not be up to radio broadcast yet, or they may have surpassed our stage and may not want us or any other lowerforms like us to contact them. Or pehaps any other life forms that managed radio have died out along time ago.

 

Yeah. To me, the possibility of alien life falls squarely into the "unknown" category; belief in the aliens described by abduction stories seems very much in the realms of the supernatural. The psychology behind it is that same as the notion of a specific god rather than a possible one.

 

Well - I quite like Dawkins - he's a good example of the 'toff intellectual' type that is sadly a dying breed in britain.
I'm not so sure about his anti-religion stance - I think he's basing it all on c/anity and islam, and on that, I have to agree with a lot of what he says. However, I'm not sure any of it is really applicable to eastern religions, other than that they present social norms etc.

Some of his other ideas are quite interesting. And you have to admit, he has a very nice speaking voice.

 

It's interesting that you mention social norms. He seems to argue that those are bad, but seems to leave non-religious ones alone. I can't see any reason for him not to be equally critical of social norms that don't have a basis in the supernatural.

 

Have you read anything about his idea of 'memes'? These seem to be (if I've understood correctly, and I haven't gone deeply into this) sets of 'norms' which come about as an extension of the processes of biological evolution into the human social level. The equivalent of genes on the bio level.
I think Dawkins has had enough of society governed by norms based on religion, and wants us to evolve beyond them to new norms - aggh....I'm not sure about this, but it could be that the process by which norms are constructed has been largely unconscious in the past, hence expressed through dubious religious symbols, but now we're at the point where we can consciously construct our own norms.

In a way, if that is correct, it might fit in to some extent with Michal Foucault's idea of 'epistemies' as discreet 'packages'.

However, it all sounds a bit 'modernist' to me.

 

See, I believe he presents all norms as "memes" in his books. What I dislike about the man is that he does not posit these ideas in his more high profile media appearances, which means that a hell of a lot of people who are purely anti-religion do not know about them.

I do not know for sure whether he's anti-all memes, anti-meme, or what. Personally, I would like to see memes judged on their merits, not something as trivial as whether they originate from the supernatural or some other source. I feel they'd probably unavoidable though.

 

I think the fascinating thing about Dawkins' "memes' is that he conceptualizes them as basic units of cultural evolution which operate in a sense like viruses. Their basic purpose is to survive and reproduce, without regard to the well-being of their hosts or even society. Applying this to the evolution of Christianity, people often wonder how Jesus' simple teachings of peace, love and understanding morphed into the elaborate and often bellicose doctrines of the churches today. In the early years of the church, before the New Testament was put together, ideas about who Jesus was and what he stood for proliferated into a wide diversity of cults and factions. Broadly speaking, there were three basic categories: (1) the Nazerene/Ebionite faction, which saw Jesus as the Jewish messiah, fulfilling and preserving Jewish laws and traditions; (2)the Gnostic/Marcionite faction, which saw Jesus as the Logos, repudiating Jewish laws and traditions, and the bringing of enlightenment and esoteric knowledge about a deeper reality; and (3)the Pauline tradition of Christ as the Son of God, the divine sacrificial lamb who died for our sins. In Darwinistic fashion, these "memes" competed for dominance, and the Paulines won, by process of natural selection-- "survival of the fittest". As is true of the Darwinian model, the "fittest" meme is not necessarily the best in a moral sense, but one which is adaptive for survival in its environment. The merits of the three traditions can still be argued, and the Pauline way has certainly received its share of criticism. But it had competitive advantages over its rivals: unlike the Nazarene/Ebionites, it was willing to allow Gentile "Jewish wannabes" to become part of the Judaic tradition without observing the onerous dietary laws and circumcision; and unlike the Gnostic/Marcionites, it avoided complex Greek philosophical doctrines and de-humanized Jesus that had little appeal to the laity. So it spread throughout the Roman Empire, while the rivals stagnated and eventually disappeared (or were eradicated). Once that dispute was settled, the memes mutated again into multiple postions, and the process repeated itself, etc. Whether or not this process was guided by natural selection or Intelligent Design can be debated, but I think the evloutionary model has "legs".

 

I think he sees himself as a 'popularizer' of science - And I agree, he doesn't go into much depth in most of his media appearances. A couple of years back he did a uk tv series which was almost entirely negative - he was presenting his usual attack on religion, but not really saying what he'd like to replace it with.
However, I think we know pretty well that his basic position is that of scientific materialism, which in itself is often advocated by it's adherents with a zeal almost equal to that of some 'religious'. In some ways, Dawking risks falling into a view equally as narrow as those he criticizes and even holds up to ridicule.

I tend to agree that it's a bit of a side issue to speculate on the origin of memes. I tend to take a kind of woolly utilitarian view that we have to see what works and what doesn't and adjust things accordingly.

 

Well it's more that, if he's going to differentiate memes based on their origins, he might want to say why he's against the ones he is.

I don't think there's any question of that. Personally I find the religious more bearable, because they're accepting the mysterious, rather than professing certainty of it. Pretty rare that they'll outright ridicule someone for not following suit either.

 

We have a rare opportunity to watch cultural evolution in action. Dawkins has advanced the meme of atheism with vague possibilities of developing rituals to satisfy human needs for the "numinous". This meme is in competition with the Christian evangelical meme of Pastor Rick Warren et al, the moderate meme of mainstream Protestantism, the Catholic meme of Pope Benedict, the radical Islamic meme of bin Laden, etc. And we'll probably be able to see how it all plays out. Personally, I'm not betting on Dawkins, because even atheists on this forum seem to be turned off by a meme that offers left-brained rationalism at the expense of emotional security.

 

hmm, strange..

Dawkins in Lynchburg VA (part 2) The God Delusion

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=qR_z85O0P2M&feature=related

worth a watch if you can get it to work or find it

 

But isn't that what he's doing with his critique of religion? It would seem to me that he's against memes dreived from religion which he sees as a rather unpleasant fantasy.

 

Yes I like him a lot, because he's extremely intelligent, persuasive and articulate. He gets a hard time because he is perceived as arrogant, but usually from people who either haven't read or haven't understood what he is actually saying. The nuances, subtleties, humility and an awareness of limitations are all very clearly expressed, though obviously not in the sound bites most people hear...

 

I think in some of his more recent TV shows he has toned down the "arrogance" a great deal, and I've heard he is not really like that in day-to-day affairs.

He is an intelligent man, my problem with him is, and always will be, what I perceive as logical inconsistencies in things he says, and the fact that whilst usually very open-minded, he seems to allow himself to be blinded to an extent when dealing with the religious.

I do not think he makes the same logical failures in other areas of his thought, and is quite capable of not falling into such traps, but puts his pursuit of the secular take priority over clear thinking.

Also, whilst Dawkins may not be that bad, a lot of his self-professed followers really are a bunch of malign zealots, who treat the religious as second-class citizens, and often (wrongly) assume that a religious person is inherently less intelligent than they are.

 

Such as?

If we're talking about holding people accountable for having a following of malign zealots* I don't think any religion would exactly be free from blame there... vast numbers of people are malign imbeciles, no matter what they choose to believe, so I don't think this tells us anything relevant. As for the intelligence thing, I believe religiosity has been found to negatively correlate with IQ but again only a fool would make assumptions about a person's abilities based on their beliefs, though obviously some kinds of beliefs call into question a person's expertise in a particular area.


*edit: not that I accept this is so, I have seen/heard/read few of the 'malign zealots' of whom you talk, I would suggest there is a far smaller proportion of zealous bigots in the self-identifying atheist community than in most if not all religious communities...