gday wysG`evening,
1. i don`t think nature `expects` us to respect the planet.
2. Why nature allowed the expansion of thought and (for want of a better word) intelligence in the first place is unknown and certainly not self preserving but more self destructing.
3. So it makes me wonder why thought has been allowed to continue when life does not need thought to exist.
I'm with this old fashioned theory (400year old"I do not think it is necessary to believe that the same God who has given us our senses, reason, and intelligence wished us to abandon their use, giving us by some other means the information that we could gain through them." ibid., p. 226
--Galileo Galilei (1564--1642)
survival of the mentally fittest? - I dont know either, lolWysiwyg said:So it makes me wonder why thought has been allowed to continue when life does not need thought to exist.
Your posts suggests that before you became a believer, you had not formulated the above set of questions to ask yourself. Is this right?Hopefully, my final post in this thread:
It is very easy to discuss all this abstractly. I've spent years studying philosophy and religion in both formal and private settings. I've been an atheist. I'm now a believer. There are others who have gone the opposite direction. I am now far more interested in the practical outcome of belief or disbelief.
I now find for me that the important questions are....
Am I a better person?
Am I less selfish?
How can I positively impact others?
How can I use my wealth to get the best bang for my buck in terms of funding organisations working to eradicate poverty, preventable disease, sex slave trade, education and development in third world nations, worthwhile causes in Australia etc?
2. like you, (and Richard Dawkins) I am also interested in the practical outcomes of these beliefs - and there's a heap of evidence in his lectures that suggest that belief can lead to big problems - total scientific blindness for a start.
Your posts suggests that before you became a believer, you had not formulated the above set of questions to ask yourself. Is this right?
Do you not think it's possible to be, e.g. less selfish, positively impact on others, and use your wealth responsibly without believing in a God?
But I agree wys - the personification of god or nature is totally "optional"-
but (IMO)
whether or not nature is involved , in the end "morality" demands that we look after the planet and the others in the third world and the animal kingdom and wildlife generally who also rely on it (IMO).
survival of the mentally fittest? - I dont know either, lol
m8 - I am so so sick of people telling me how intellectually deficient Dawkins is -Do you think disbelief naturally lends itself to a positive and helpful way of life? Hmmm....Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and no doubt more. It is ridiculous to argue that because some believers despise science and act atrociously, then all belief is wrong. There is nothing remotely logical or sensible about that claim. Unbelief has more than its share of atrocity but I would be embarrassed and displaying irrationality to use that as an argument that therefore unbelief should be rejected. And Dawkins is not a poster child for progressive discussion between different worldviews. I'd suggest spending more reading time with guys like Michael Ruse or Quentin Smith. Dawkins is about as intellectually inspiring to a well-read theist as Answers-in-Genesis is to a thoughtful unbeliever. Fundamentalists of any persuasion generally shut down dialogue.
http://www.csicop.org/si/2007-02/fundamentalists.html
I'm pleased we agree that religion is irrelevant to whether or not someone is capable of doing a good deed.Of course it's possible. Not only possible but actual. I know of people who have no belief in God or at least are agnostic yet are models of generosity and compassion.
A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
--Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
what's your opinion of Hovind?
now there is an ignorant bore of the first order. (IMO)
and so easily proven to be wrong on almost everything he says.
m8 - I am so so sick of people telling me how intellectually deficient Dawkins is -
I still wait for one twig of evidence that something he said is wrong.
what's your opinion of Hovind?
now there is an ignorant bore of the first order. (IMO)
and so easily proven to be wrong on almost everything he says.
Do you believe in god.
Jeez mate, your sounding a bit like a... disciple?m8 - I am so so sick of people telling me how intellectually deficient Dawkins is...
Believer in what MS+T? Please define your God for us. I don't think I've heard about your God yet, and I'm very interested in learning about another one. Cheers, kennasHopefully, my final post in this thread:
It is very easy to discuss all this abstractly. I've spent years studying philosophy and religion in both formal and private settings. I've been an atheist. I'm now a believer.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2007/002/1.21.html
http://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/The_Dawkins_Delusion.aspx?ArticleID=50&PageID=47&RefPageID=11
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19775
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=7803
Hovind...hmmm. Not my idea of a dinner party guest.
don't see much evidence there ... plenty of emotive claims of courseThe God Delusion is an extended diatribe against religion in general and belief in God in particular; Dawkins and Daniel Dennett (whose recent Breaking the Spell is his contribution to this genre) are the touchdown twins of current academic atheism.
This is nonsense - Dawkins has interviewed atheists in USA bible belts who are ostracised!! meet like a mob of social outcasts . plenty of you tube on that .1 Dawkins has written his book, he says, partly to encourage timorous atheists to come out of the closet. He and Dennett both appear to think it requires considerable courage to attack religion these days; says Dennett, "I risk a fist to the face or worse. Yet I persist." Apparently atheism has its own heroes of the faith—at any rate its own self-styled heroes. Here it's not easy to take them seriously; religion-bashing in the current Western academy is about as dangerous as endorsing the party's candidate at a Republican rally.
No argument from me there -Dawkins is perhaps the world's most popular science writer; he is also an extremely gifted science writer.
maybe less science than his other books - of which there are many - science at a detail which this critic wouldn't even begin to understand probably (not saying I could either - I'm not a University professor - and Oxford after all is hardly a mug's school for also-rans)(For example, his account of bats and their ways in his earlier book The Blind Watchmaker is a brilliant and fascinating tour de force.) The God Delusion, however, contains little science;
it is mainly philosophy and theology (perhaps "atheology" would be a better term) and evolutionary psychology, along with a substantial dash of social commentary decrying religion and its allegedly baneful effects. As the above quotation suggests, one shouldn't look to this book for evenhanded and thoughtful commentary.
But is it true or not .....In fact the proportion of insult, ridicule, mockery, spleen, and vitriol is astounding.
(Could it be that his mother, while carrying him, was frightened by an Anglican clergyman on the rampage?) If Dawkins ever gets tired of his day job, a promising future awaits him as a writer of political attack ads.
Dawkins is an outspoken antireligionist, atheist, secular humanist, and sceptic, and he is a supporter of the Brights movement.[1] In a play on Thomas Huxley's epithet "Darwin's bulldog", Dawkins' impassioned advocacy of evolution has earned him the appellation "Darwin's rottweiler". [2]
MS, I'd be amazed if more than 5% of people around here agreed with you that Dawkins and Hovind are equally convincing.Dawkins is about as convincing as Hovind. Why is that so surprising? Do you have a prior commitment to Dawkins?
It proves nothing. - and I could care less how long you have studied philosophy or anything else ...People actually still think this is a logical objection?! There are only three possibilities.
1) The universe created itself
2) The universe is uncreated
3) Something/someone created the universe
1) is impossible. It would need to exist prior to itself in order to create itself.
2) has been shown wrong. The universe had a beginning.
3) hence, something/someone created the universe
While this does not prove God, it shows the universe had a creator.
So whether or not you like it, ultimately everyone makes certain basic assumptions about reality which are untestable and unprovable. Pick one. Just don't consider yourself more logical, rational or enlightened because you picked a different one to someone else.
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