| StoreTags: new, atheism, god, religion, science
Author: nagrom on January 04 2007 Viewed 11372 times. 12 people liked this blog. You can rate it below if you haven't already.
People who enjoyed reading this: emulsion, astroid, cbit, datathinner, soft, Doron, flies, bsr, GregTArtZ, mixedtape, everamzah, nicknotis
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Interview with Sam Harris, author of "The End of Faith".
Basically a very rational argument for questioning, not religious freedom, but the acceptance of religion in society.
Also, if you scroll down a bit, there's an article about the origins of public school, which I implore everybody to read before sending your kids off to be hammered into cubes.
Anybody who was intrigued by the public school blurb, you may be interested in this book on the subject by John Gatto: link (it's free online) | |
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01/05/07
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flies
it IS inappropriate for authority to tell people what to think even if they're stupid. On a personal level, it's almost always unproductive to engage a zealot in a rational discussion of why they might doubt their dogma. What you think is your business. How you behave toward others is another story.
it is totally appropriate to sanction people for the actions when those actions are against the greater good (the only way that i know of to make that kind of sanction feasible is through the rule of law). Whenever injustice is promoted/perpetrated by religions or the religious, the only thing we can do, the thing a government must do, is bring the offenders to justice.
I'm not sure if this responds directly to your point, which is an interesting one.
cbit said: "the point that sam harris and richard dawkins make is that religious moderates enable fundamentalism by reinforcing the attitude that it's inappropriate to critisise another's belief as soon as it happens to be a religious one."
01/05/07
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cbit
flies said: "it IS inappropriate for authority to tell people what to think even if they're stupid."
I agree. I'd say though that it's always appropriate to question any proposition, including another's beliefs (whether this may or may not be productive, or worth your time is another question, like you inidicated). In the case of religious beliefs it's not only appropriate but also relevant to question another's religious beliefs because the question of whether the particular supernatural being exists or not is relevant to you (as an inhabitant of the same universe): as dawkins puts it: a universe with an intelligent controlling power would be very different from one without.
01/05/07
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flies
i agree with what you said there, but i'm not sure how the moderates are enabling fundamentalism.
It just seems to me that the argument presented on that issue seems far too idealistic/naive, to think that nobody might go around living with some rigid sense of their place in the universe, or that those who do should be ready and willing to enter into dialogue about what makes living worthwhile.
01/05/07
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Doron
Maybe it is time to rethink the values of a society where you compete against another person for bread, knowing that there is enough bread for everyone.
The idea of looking at society through the lenses of ecology rather then the lenses of economy is very compelling. but it meets stiff resistance, our very economic basis is designed around the model of scarcity, its evident all around us even in the digital realm where scarcity is enforced against the very nature of the medium (DRM, copy protection, and copyrights etc etc...) our value of money is designed around the basis of competition (fiat currency)
Herbert Spencer , who coined the term survival of the fittest applied what he thought would be Darwinism to social theory he said:
"Thus by survival of the fittest, the militant type of society becomes characterized by profound confidence in the governing power, joined with a loyalty causing submission to it in all matters whatever." Companies which offer better goods and services survive better in the marketplace and tend to accumulate an ever-growing market share. Poorly-adapting companies will be forced out by better-adapting ones: "killed" by the competition.
So there is plenty of room for economic theory in my mind to still develop. and evolution well... its a sound scientific idea, but like many theories it can be skewed by metaphors and completly abused. i respect dawkins very much, i love his ideas, support many of them too. but it wont be a much better world in my mind.
01/05/07
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flies
if there's one thing that i can tell you about human history, it's that the rise and fall of civilizations is not subject to 'natural selection' or anything resembling it. seeing human behaviour in 'evolutionary' terms makes sense on the level of the individual, but not on the level of entire cultures.
edited: Jan 05 2007
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cbit
flies said: "but i'm not sure how the moderates are enabling fundamentalism."
i'd be interested to hear more about this idea too.. but here's what harris has to say about it (from a speech)
"the soul of religious moderation is this political correctness where everyone should be free to believe whatever he wants, about god. "Theres no harm, your beliefs are private". let me tell you why i think this is a dead end. First of all religious moderation gives cover to religious fundamentalism because we can not criticise religious literalism, religious extremism, because it's politically taboo, its considered uncivil. And this is really enforced by religious moderates. Religious fundamentalists will criticise every faith but their own, religious moderates balk at that. We can't call a spade a spade because of this taboo surrounding religion and i would argue that religious moderates are the greatest force propping up this taboo.
Another problem with religious moderation is that it's intellectually bankrupt. Just consider for a moment this notion that you should respect other peoples beliefs. Where else in our discourse do we encounter this? When was the last time anyone in this room was admonished to respect another persons beliefs about history or biology or physics? We do not respect other peoples beliefs, we evaluate the reasons for those beliefs. If my reasons are good enough for believing what i believe you will helplessly believe what i believe.
The proposal that religious belief is a taboo subject (immune from criticism) matches my experience in the uk and (increasingly) in the netherlands.
edited: Jan 05 2007
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p
The interesting part of this argument to me is that this problem has a simple solution. Kill everyone except for one person...then there is no war and no conflicts based on belief. The fact that there is more than one person on the earth seems to be the leading cause of war.
How do you attempt to remove religion from society? People won't just let it go...so are these people advocating a new holy war to diminish holy war?
And yes, atheism is a religion if it has a strict belief system based on faith in science (physics has a lot of holes...infinite divisability of space and the question of movement being one of them). Scientist have "beef" all the time for differing beliefs about physics (how else would it advance?)...so that religious moderation argument is way oversimplified.
Intolerance is the ultimate problem, with christains, with atheist, with my annoying neighbors. That and the cruelty towards others that we are capable of when we can justify our actions for good. By suggesting a purely secular society you only add rebellion. Not to mention the fact that this is another justification for self fullfilled end times prophecy, as removing religious freedoms is touched on in the book of revelation.
ps. I enjoyed the hell out of the thread. It's alot to think about.
edited for gramatical errors and spelling (which is probably still far from perfect).
01/05/07
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flies
btw the post article linked to at the top of bubba.com is quite good link and goes over some of the issues we're talking about
01/05/07
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nagrom
P, the idea that science is a "belief" is simply false.
Science is defined as "what is true".
We have a test for "what is true": whether it can be observed consistently.
Observation is what humans can do. They can perceive things, and think things about what they perceive.
From things they've seen, humans can fabricate illusions in their heads. They can formulate ideas independent of reality.
Although we may be able to think of explanations for what we observe, we can never know if these explanations are correct or not because they can't be. The inner world is subjective. Just because they "feel nice", or seem like they "make sense" doesn't mean you're dealing with reality. Outer reality (what you can see) is objective and "real". Inner reality (what you think and imagine) is subjective and can be created, destroyed, and changed by you.
If it makes you happy to live in an inner world you create, then that's great. Knock yourself out. Just don't go labeling the outer reality as the same thing as inner reality. It's a different world with different rules. Firm ones.
Personally, I prefer a world of objective truth. I prefer focusing on what can be observed to be real, not what I create to be real, although that's fun when I can trick myself into thinking its real (with drugs for instance).
The "belief" that science can explain everything is not a belief per se. Science by definition can explain everything.
You can say "oh, well gravity is just a theory..." But it doesn't matter if its a theory. It can be observed to be true. You can see it. Now, if it's not a field force and God is making it happen, that doesn't make the theory of gravity wrong, it just makes what we observed an illusion, in which case science would reevaluate itself and adapt to the new discovery.
01/05/07
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astroid
01/05/07
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bsr
funny, occam never believed god was something that could be gotten rid of, god was always one of the things that remained.
01/05/07
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nagrom
Also, P, it's more than lack of tolerance.
The Bible and the Koran literally say that atheists should be killed.
Never have atheists persecuted theists simply on the grounds of them being theists (or as you could argue, "mislead" or "maladjusted")
Hitler was practicing ethnic cleansing and the Communists were getting rid of theists because it was necessary for their crazy idea to work.
Nobody's arguing for a secular state. We're just arguing for the right to question the belief that the world began 6000 years ago and that I should be shot for not believing in God...
...just as it's okay to question somebody who honestly believes in the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
They're equally arbitrary and improbable!
01/05/07
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bsr
morgan: 'Outer reality (what you can see) is objective'
no, no and thrice no. not possible.
01/05/07
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nagrom
It's true astroid, there are a multitude of assumptions made.
But that is the beauty of science.
They are assumptions. Nothing is quite solid.
The assumptions are useful though. They let us make technology.
Just because we don't know what's going on doesn't mean we have to create arbitrary ideas that solve everything.
I advocate that we keep trying until we know everything. Each generation adds pieces to the puzzle.
Just because we haven't finished the puzzle yet doesn't mean it can't be finished.
01/05/07
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nagrom
bsr, you think everything is subjective?
That's quite remarkable. You're living in what you believe is an illusion.
Rather, in your world there's no such thing as illusions (there's no reality to contrast against "illusion")
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