Entertainment For Lively Minds
Science. The new religion. Who would want to be Hawkins?
Posted by chabsy on 2 September 2010 - 9:55pm.
Well blow me down, Stevie (God) Hawkins has said the Universe was caused by Physics, not God. I don't believe him, and I don't believe in God, so where does that leave me? Or him, come to that?
- More from chabsy.
- Login or register to post comments
-
I don't believe in god(s) either
But these theories which postulate 10^500 different universes "somewhere" seem to fail Occam's Razor. If your theory involves such vast multiplication of entities; then the god hypothesis isn't really any less likely.
(PS It's "Hawking". Sorry. Had to get that out.)
At the risk...
...of boring the shit out of all comers (which I probably do at the best of times anyway), I don't think the god hypothesis and the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics are trying to explain the same phenomenon.
The god hypothesis is an attempt to understand how the universe started. In that respect, its competitor is the Big Bang, and they both have the same ontological weakness - the argument from first cause. Religion has no answer to the question of what created God, which raises further questions of the validity of that causal argument. If everything has a cause, why is God so arbitrarily special as to not need one? It's a logical fallacy. Trouble is, so is the current understanding of the Big Bang, because it's so difficult to know what came before it. The reason I favour science over religion in explaining the origins of the universe is because science acknowledges that problem and is trying to address it, whereas religion just says "because".
The many worlds hypothesis (i.e. that all possible histories may exist in parallel) is a respectable interpretation of quantum theory, but it's not (unless I'm mistaken) completely mainstream yet, and certainly not an attempt to explain the universe's origin. And I don't necessarily think that it *does* fail Occam's razor - but you'd need a quantum physicist to back me up on that one, because I'm not about to embarrass myself by fudging it.
Sorry. That really was dull. Little factual nugget for those that didn't know, to liven things up: the many-worlds interpretation is often called the Everett interpretation after its originator. Who he? Hugh Everett, father of Mark, who's better known as E from Eels.
No risk of boring me
I wasn't referring to the 'Many Worlds' interpretation though, but string theory.
It was something I heard recently about string theory, that it's really a class of theories, with 10^500 mathematically valid solutions, each of which describes a universe. (I've been trying to find the reference for this, without success though). Seems to me that means we need a better theory, rather than needlessly adding universes! Hence the Occam's Razor reference.
I don't favour the 'god' hypothesis at all; rather I think that theoretical cosmology has gone so far beyond what is testable (and falsifiable) that at the moment, we're pretty much in the dark. However I'm confident that better theories will be developed. Pure speculation here, but maybe there's a paradigm shift of the scale of relativity and/or quantum dynamics coming? Hope so.
(By the way, I can bore anyone with my potted biography of Mark Everett... I saw Eels in Manchester on Saturday, and it was the Gig Of The Year so far for me. Blisteringly good.)
Do try to keep up
String theory begat supersymmetry. Supersymmetry begat superstring theory. Superstring theory begat M-theory - this month's Explanation of Everything.
Only eleven dimensions are currently necessary (the four Einstein was aware of plus seven tiny curled-up ones that we can't get anywhere near).
I can strongly recommend this book. It manages to be both more accessible and more detailed than the two Hawking tomes to date, with an approach that's much less "but if you think that's amazing, wait for this!" (and, therefore, genuinely amazing) than the writings of that Japanese-American bloke who pops up - usually getting in people's way in Times Square while he explains singularities - in every U.S. science documentary that's been made since 1996.
M-Theory?
Does it involve the universe being created in Heather Small's vertiginous hair?
'Tis true
I'm woefully behind on this stuff. But I'm starting a Physics course in January, so I'm grateful for any and all recommendations.
Proud!
I'm proud to be a member of this Massive - what a terrifically erudite post Mr Bear! More power to everyone's elbows! Keep it up chaps (that's all really).
Who is this
Stephen Hawkins? A cross between Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins?
God knows (or doesn't, depending on your point of view).
No guru, no teacher. Okay, maybe teacher, her and there...
You just assemble and inwardly digest the evidence from all the science people and the god people with a side-order of the great philosophical minds of humankind , and then come to your own provisonal conclusion, and where you have gaps, questions, disputes and doubts, keep on going. You may be forced to pick up the odd Ph.D. in theology, physics and philosophy along the way, but that is the joy of it.
Simples.
Just stay away from them thar Scientologists.
Hawkins?
He believes in a thing called love.
Coincidentally
The fact that national treasure Justin Hawkins is out of the public eye is proof itself that there is no God.
Guitar!
I knew I was on the wrong track
with Jennifer Hawkins. cheerleader for the Newcastle Knights, ex-Miss Universe and now spokesmodel (I could be wrong at any point in that chain).
But to the OP - would I want to be her....now there's a question.
Hawkins?
he believes in a thing called Zulus, thousands of 'em.
He's done the math
Most believers neither have nor could. Simple as that.
And, most unusually, this story as reported in the media is a gross over-simplification. All he said was that a sentient creator figure - "hmm, now it's time for a really humungous explosion, I reckon; that'd be just awesome" - is unnecessary to explain the universe and its origin; the laws of physics as they stand are quite capable of generating it on their own. I assume he's referring to M-Theory's "brane-collision" hypothesis to explain what set off the Big Bang. It's something I don't know a great deal about, but even so - having just read Brian Greene's mind-blowing, brilliantly accessible, but far from dumbed-down The Fabric of the Cosmos - I'm confident I know substantially more about it than the Pope or Chief Rabbi do.
I don't *know* how the universe was created
and neither does anyone else.
Various people have their ideas - some of which seem to me to have some merit but, so far, I've read nothing that convinces me either way. There's always unanswered questions.
Which is more likely - 10,500 parallel universes or that we are merely a speck of dust on the finger of some huge being living in an equally huge universe? No idea meself.
Me neither guv
Why is there something instead of nothing? How did nothing become something? Is the human mind too limited to grasp it? If I think too hard about it I need to lie down.
As a god (of sorts)
I have to concur with Lucifer on this one. (There's a turn up!)Mister Sam, you have pithily summed up the question that maddens me daily.
Think of it another way
Hawking's argument is that the amount of negative energy in the universe (in the form of gravity) is equal to the amount of positive energy in the universe.
So the two cancel each other out.
There are precedents for this, at least on the sub-atomic scale. Virtual particles can pop into existence out of nowhere, but still not violate the laws governing conservation of energy.
Not quite
He said that it wasn't necessary to have divine intervention to explain the universe. Which is true. It doesn't preclude it either.
Everyone as they were.
I'd hate to
live in a universe where the answer to everything was "physics". I'm not sure I could love a person who could rationalise everything or claim to be able to. I can admire and respect the arguments of Dawkins et al, even fully agree with and endorse them as laid out but I firmly believe that the tract of their argument can be very diminishing and limiting, particularly when making scapegoats of those who believe in something that they do not. It seems so limiting to our capacity as human beings to dismiss belief systems that cannot be explained by the atom, the quark or dark matter.
Unfortunately the rational argument has often risked being pushed to the margins of extremism by virtue of Dawkins - rightly in my opinion - bemoaning society's apparent ease in embracing belief systems and faith structures that seem increasingly flaky and unsupportable, particularly those that stand in direct contradiction to the facts of science that can legitimately be claimed as proven.
Rational scientists' attempts to trump all other arguments (the "coup de grace" that Dawkins boasted of in the light of Hawking's comments) risks alienating many in its audience if it pursues such lines of argument that belittle belief and faith when for many they are seen as natural expressions of the human condition. Science limits itself by allowing itself to be juxtaposed this way.
But then again "science" is a modern convention, less than 200 hundred years old whereas previously science used to be known as natural philosophy and from thereon, with Darwin's theory acting as the driving wedge, the schism between science and religion was widened and entrenched. It's a shame because the constant need to view science purely in rational terms seems limiting to our capabilities as human beings. The counter-arguments of science as espoused by Dawkins to ridicule and to negate belief systems because science flexes the rational side of our brains compounds the problem.
Some of the greatest advances of science were not prompted by a devotion to rationalism or indeed conventional logic but by a devotion to an enquiring mind that willingly accepted an aspirational or belief-based aspect to the questions being asked, a mind that didn't limit its scope of enquiry to rationalism but which embraced a far broader criteria by which to undertake what we would today call scientific enquiry, a mind that attempted to expose all its senses, pulses and emotions in pursuit of a greater knowledge and understanding. How else would a patent clerk be capable of shaping our view of the universe today?
Leaps of faith often were the catalysts for advancing science and therein lies the humanity of the process. The overt intellectualization of the argument for rationalism above all other modes of enquiry in science will only further ostracise science from the everyday and the tangible which is where natural philosophy attempted to place it. Nowadays science often seems to dwell in intellectual hinterlands of systematic laboratory regimes, complex equations built on complex concepts and virtual landscapes beyond our sensory world. Yes, that is science but it is not all that science can be in human terms.
It just seems to me that there is a balance to be struck here that is less to do with proving whether or not there is an entity called God but whether or not there is greater benefit to society to endorse a human mindset that places as much value in what it cannot yet understand or rationalise as well as those things that it can, that true understanding is only gained by being able to appeal to all parts of our human nature and not just those that can be extrapolated from the realms of rationalism.
We're not perfect though we may often find perfect answers to many questions through science but rationalist science poses many risks by dismissing our imperfections such as belief and faith as merely redundant foibles in the evolutionary process.
"a mind that didn't limit its scope of enquiry"
is, I'm afraid, far more likely to refer to a religious frame of mind than a scientific one - the temptation to close off inquiry with a "god did it" conclusion is very limiting indeed.
Science has to progress on the basis of what it can demonstrate, or at least reasonably infer, to be true, based on the twin pillars of Reason & Evidence. It's maybe unhelpful to think of science as a different entity from any other way of thinking, since it's just a particularly disciplined way of advancing human knowledge. But the key is always Reason & Evidence. Without those we don't have, and indeed cannot have, any advance in knowledge: to cheekily pinch a biblical analogy, that would be to build your house upon sand instead of solid rock.
By all means have "leaps of faith", "lateral thinking", "thinking outside the box", however it is described: but the mistake would be to think that that this the end of it. The leap of faith, or blue-sky thought or whatever, simply points to a possible path, and the Reason & Evidence take up the challenge to see if there might be something to that line of inquiry.
And I'm afraid, in my opinion, religion simply fails those tests and so cannot be relied upon to add to our knowledge of the wonders and mysteries of our minds, our bodies, our planet and the universe.
There is, of course,
a sliding scale of 'religious mind' - I know many people of faith who are as open to the possibilities of science as those without faith (in some cases are more knowledgeable and open). And then there are the fundamentalists, who would cheerfully drag us all back to a dark age. And many shades of mind in between.
As far as we know, once there was nothing, then something happened which caused a chain reaction, culminating in what we call 'life.' Whether we choose to call that 'something' God, or not, seems irrelevant to me. I have no problem with the concept or possible existence (or non-existence) of God. Religion, on the other hand, can be enormously problematic - and I do have my issues with that. I came to be the conclusion long ago that if we could separate God from religion, the world would be a better place.
If we could...........
If we could seperate God from religion, the world would be a better place.
I am with you on that. Very well put Adman.
Have an up arrow.
But that's still no reason for
dawkins et al to adopt a sneering "if you don't agree with me then you're some sort of ignorant cretin" attitude to those that disagree with his views. That just alienates people who might otherwise support him.
Absolutely right, stimpy
Attitude and accuracy are two different things! There's probably a music parallel here - how many times have we been put off liking a band because of the nature of their fans, whereas deep down we know we should look past that and just appreciate the value of their music? Or is that just me?
Speaking as a scientist...
I just don't recognise your picture of science. At all.
Speaking as a science-literate non-scientist...
...who's married to a scientist, I don't recognise A_B's portrait of science either.
For one thing, modern science certainly did not begin with Darwin. If it can be said to have begun at all, I'd plump for Newton and his contemporaries. Specifically I'd probably plump for the publication of the Principia Mathematica in 1687, but it's all a trail which leads back to the Greeks - at least in Europe, it does. And that trail leads further back to the basic hardwiring of the human brain: we were built to ask questions.
But anyway, that's splitting hairs. What I absolutely would take issue with is that "leaps of faith" have anything to do with scientific discovery or any formal Western school of logical thought. I mean, damn, we owe the beginnings of logic to Socratic method, which militates absolutely against "leaps of faith": it's all about challenging accepted wisdom, slaughtering sacred cows, going back to first principles. That has nothing to do with faith.
Scientific method is the opposite of faith. The direct opposite. Faith invites us to accept a hypothesis without evidence or rational enquiry. I'm not judging - I'll leave that to Dawkins because I'm not a fan of internet pissing contests - but that is what faith is. The classical Christian definition of faith is from Hebrews 11.1:
Now, I can just about get behind the idea of "faith" in the sense that a strong hunch might lead a scientist to form a hypothesis.
But what happens next in science is wildly different from a "leap of faith". What happens next is that the scientist tries his or her damnedest to destroy that hypothesis. He or she uses experimental research to try and disprove it. At the point at which s/he gets to the end of his/her experimental tether, that's when the findings get published. And peer reviewed. Meaning that every single specialist in the field is invited to also have a crack at destroying the poor bastard's hypothesis, which they often do. Square one.
When that's all happened, and the hypothesis has so far resisted experiment and peer review a few hundred times, that's when the hypothesis starts to get called a theory.
Theory is an incredibly strong word in science. It means that, as it stands, many - and probably the vast majority - of specialists in a given field have failed to disprove a hypothesis using every experimental tool at their disposal. It's as close as a scientist ever comes to any notion of a "fact".
So when the anti-science lobby try to use (just to take a current example) intelligent design as a counter to evolution, they often say "they're both just theories". No. Evolution through natural selection is a theory. Gravity is a theory. Conservation of Energy is a theory. Relativity is a theory. ID is a hypothesis which is untested, because untestable. Theory and hypothesis are not intellectually equal.
*draws breath*
So, no, Bisto - you talk a great deal of sense most of the times and almost every time you post, I up it. But this time, I disagree strongly. I don't think faith has any place in real science, and real science is infinitely more beautiful for it.
For me, rationalism isn't cold. I said earlier that we were built to ask questions, but unfortunately we were also built to answer them. As (we suspect) the most efficient and adaptable predators on the planet, we are exceptionally good at spotting patterns. It's part of our basic software, and enables us to make deductive leaps by synthesizing very disparate sensory evidence. That made us really clever. It's also why we see faces in clouds and dances in fires. Unfortunately, the side effect of being able to spot patterns everywhere is that we often see them where they don't really exist. I think faith is one of those illusions: we process a bunch of data and that leads us to connect some very tenuous dots and say "Oh. Obviously: there's somebody in charge of it all."
But that aside, rationalism - for me - emphatically does NOT rob the world of beauty. It adds to it. I don't pretend that human physics has all the answers, because it's entirely possible that the universe is only explicable through maths which our brains simply don't have the processing power to compute.
But that's not to say that *physics* itself isn't the answer to everything - we just might not be able to get our heads around it. I've never seen any reason to believe that there's anything more than physics though (that's not faith, btw: I have evidence!), and for me that makes the universe so much more mysterious and wonderful than simply doing the whole "more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio" routine allows for.
I understand your
argument. I have no argument against your support of rationalism and its inherent beauty. As I stated I admire and respect Dawkins' views.
My argument is with rationalism being pitched against faith and belief the way that is has been and its negative effects on how science is perceived as a result.
Or to put it another way, you make a convincing argument for having belief in science and in rationalism to find the answers. But science, physics in particular, requires the acceptance of certain meta-laws as immutable in order to justify the asymmetry of the universe. There's a lot of faith riding on those meta-laws in the scientific community.
Hmm.
Meta-laws? Mind clarifying?
No theory in science is immutable, AFAIK. Everything's subject to change in the light of new evidence. Look at what Einstein did to the Newtonian understanding of gravity, for instance.
But I might be missing something.
Death
to all false meta-laws.
"And here is the point,
C. Hitchens sums it up well with this in the context of the disagreements between Jay Gould and Dawkins on progressive evolution.
Sorry, I'm probably being dim.
I still don't quite understand what the meta-laws you're referring to are. Do you mean reason itself?
No, it's probably me
It's come to light again in the discussion of Hawking's new book and his hypothesis for the multi-universe. Paul Davies in The Guardian probably says it as well as anyone:
I'm not bothered about the equating of an unexplained God as being the same as an unexplained set of meta-laws but in the idea that there are underlying assumptions (faith?) that underpin either premise.
My interest stems primarily from asking these types of questions: if you extract faith or belief from science, does it risk diminishing science? If you deny such millenia-old characteristics of human nature as faith and belief in favour of rationalism do you risk elevating science to an apotheosis anyway?
I read Dawkins and I sometimes feel that he is asking me to do more than think rationally but to deny myself from thinking differently if it isn't rational thinking. Is that a good thing?
Fair enough.
Although, I guess, the supposition of meta-laws is a placeholder - they might have a "similar status to an unexplained transcendent god" for the moment, but I suppose the difference between faith and science requires scientists to try and change that status and explain the "meta-laws" too. The transcendent god just gets left alone to be transcendent - not only is religion not trying to explain him/her, it's also not really *allowed* to try. Even a fabulous thinker like Descartes copped out at this point, after all, which is my problem: ultimately, the faith-based mind stops asking.
Well, I don't think any of us CAN think completely rationally all the time. When I'm listening to "Revolver" or enjoying Mrs Bear's company or playing with my kids, I'm not rationalising. It would be awful if I kept trying to break down why I love my children, or why I respond to music the way I do. In daily life, there are definitely times where rational enquiry isn't appropriate. It's a bit like going out for dinner and constantly asking your date detailed questions about how they've made financial provision for paying the bill. There's a time and a place.
But for me, when it comes to the BIG philosophical questions, yeah: it's reason all the way. Nothing else satisfies, for me.
.
I think sometimes it's how you use language to conceptualise a philosophical idea, or in the past how humans used imagery, illusion, mysticism and eventually organised religion to explain "the unknown".
A classic example is Plato's Cave and Sun Allegories which I still feel explain so well how the process of thought, if properly undertaken, can educate and inform in order to gain knowledge without limiting oneself to a prescriptive method which I believe is implied by using rationalism alone. It's the way Plato creates room in his allegories both for metaphysics and epistemology: the idea that we can gain knowledge from our physical world but can also gain knowledge by being open-minded to how we gain knowledge!
With this in mind I can't accept your contention that the faith-based mind stops asking questions about "where it all began"; they perhaps ask those questions in different ways based on factors such as experience, scientific knowledge and their willingness, as Hitchens stated, to be open-minded. It is those who use the Bible (or other book) as the basis for ALL their a priori knowledge who close their minds to such questions.
But that self-restricting mind-set isn't monopolised by religion, by those who put their faith in faith/beliefs or by those who claim science - either explicity or implicitly (i.e. by using physics to delete God!)) is the A1 route to knowledge.
I'll agree...
...one hundred percent that closed-mindedness is a bad thing. Scientists who are prejudiced against anything that doesn't fit their preconceptions are doing science a disservice. Religious people who won't allow reason to crack their dogma are doing religion a disservice. The operative word is prejudice, and the reason I favour science is that good science is the opposite of prejudice (in its literal meaning).
And now I'm sure we've bored these nice people quite long enough. Always a pleasure, A_B.
:-)
If
I may just second your comment on prejudice which is bang on the mark with another bang on the mark quote by Samuel Johnson:
Prejudice, not being founded on reason, cannot be removed by argument
Cheers IB
Hmm.
"I'd hate to live in a universe where the answer to everything was "physics""
Erm.. Too late, Mr Bisto..
Although, to be strictly true, the foundation of physics is pure mathematics. And the foundation of pure mathematics is logic. And the foundation of logic is philosophy. And the foundation of philosophy is human thought. And the foundation of human thought is biology. And the foundation of biology is chemistry. And the foundation of chemistry is physics..
Two great certainties in life:
1) One of the things that defines us as humans is our desire to make sense of things, to understand, and to find meaning.
2) When someone finds some sense, understanding and meaning that works for them, they'll argue with all comers that theirs is the one true way.
Well, it wasn't worth saying twice.
Sorry.
It was like
Very profound.
The big difference between Science and Religion
is that science updates itself depending on new evidence. As I think Dawkins said in a God vs. Science debate, "We at least update our textbooks".
Arguments about science vs. religion are hampered by the fact that Science and Religion do not exist on the same axis, and have almost nothing in common with each other, so attempts to find common ground are futile. It's like finding common ground between odd numbers and the colour green.
Cheap accusations of science as being akin to a religion are invariably made by parties who have no idea about science or the scientific method.
"...science updates itself depending on new evidence"
Some religions are able to do this as well.
If your consider the Anglican reaction to Darwinism, for example. Certainly Darwin had his critics in the Anglican church - Samuel Wilberforce, the Bishop of Oxford being a notable example. However, as many clergymen were also part-time naturalists themselves, Darwin's science didn't come as a massive shock to them.
It is also accepted by many people of faith that God didn't literally make the world in six days, and that is is in fact billions of years old. This is a result of their acceptance of discoveries made by geologists before and after Darwin.
I'd say religion is capable of updating itself. Not always, of course, and that's when it becomes reactionary and dangerous.
"Science and Religion do not exist on the same axis"
I'm minded to agree with you, but it makes it all the odder than Dawkins seems to struggle so much with the concept of religion and faith. Assuming he'd like to be seen as a scientist then it's curious that he seems to have such contempt for people who have an interest in a completely different sphere of thought.
I think Dawkins' reaction would be twofold:
1. Religious faith is still interfering too much in purely scientific areas (evolution denial etc), and is not being challenged too strongly by some, at the risk of appearing disrespectful.
2. Religious faith generally demands a "swallow it whole" type of mentality (and I know this from long self-imposed personal experience). At some point, however, the real world intrudes and says "that's enough": that point may be quite early (eg the CoE naturalists of Darwin's time) or very late if at all (eg fanatical fundamentalism). The point is that it is the real world, not the religious faith, which puts the brakes on.
I'm aware this is a very thorny issue, which the Massive has covered before and not always in the chummiest of terms. It's also one where written exchanges are almost certainly a poor second to a friendly face-to-face discussion instead. So apologies if I ever appear patronising or dismissive - I genuinely don't mean to. But it's a topic with as much personal importance to me as to many of religious faith.
Others might of course say the opposite,
that science (in the person of Dawkins) is interfering in purely religious areas and that, these days, there's as much scientific fundamentalism as religious.
(For the avoidance of confusion; I'm not necessarily expressing my personal preference for one side or the other - merely making an observation)
So what exactly...
...are these "purely religious areas" upon which science can't have anything useful to say but that religion can?
Oh and this science fundamentalism; how many people have been stoned to death in the name of science recently?
If there are 'purely scientific areas' upon which
religion and the religious can't get involved then it suggests there are 'purely religious areas' upon which science (and scientists) can't get involved.
Stuff like, perhaps, the mysterious ways in which a deity may (or may not) move?
If there are 'purely scientific areas' upon which
religion and the religious can't get involved then it suggests there are 'purely religious areas' upon which science (and scientists) can't get involved.
Stuff like, perhaps, the mysterious ways in which a deity may (or may not) move?
That doesn't follow, Stimpy.
(Personally I thought m'lord Counterpane might have jumped a little hard there, tone-wise, but...)
Firstly, no-one's saying religious people can't get involved in science. They just need to learn the lingo (i.e. rational, logical enquiry), and understand that in science, bald assertion (God exists, lead can be transmuted magically into gold, gravity is caused by spacetime being distorted by objects which have mass, etc) isn't good enough. You have to provide experimental evidence to back it up. There are religious scientists who don't have a problem reconciling the two things, although I have to admit I would struggle.
Secondly, the purpose of science is to explain the universe. That's coincidentally the purpose of religion. Why shouldn't the two disciplines inspect and comment on each other? To the purely logical-rational mind, the idea that there are "no-go" areas in religion which science "wouldn't understand" just sounds like the mother of all cop-outs. Science has no "no-go" areas, but it'll tend to piss scientists off when someone who's supremely unqualified - i.e. hasn't done the maths, hasn't read the papers - attempts to knock down a scientific theory on faith grounds.
Example: the ID lobby trying to knock down evolution through natural selection. They simply don't know what they're talking about. They don't understand the timescales (largely because many of them deny the timescales despite reams of evidence). They don't understand the tiny, cumulative process by which mutation and adaptation becomes speciation. Finally, as I've said above, they don't understand the word "theory", and put their ID hypothesis on the same pedestal as evolution by calling it a "theory", which it ain't.
That's when scientists are likely to say "butt out", or at least "butt out until you've read some books".
"They just need to learn the lingo"
And the same is true for scientists when talking about religion.
Unless both sides treat each other with mutual respect then we won't get anywhere.
I fail to understand why Dawkins won't "play nicely" but feels the need to actively abuse those that don't share his views.
But...
...many of us were brought up speaking the religious lingo anyway, so are more qualified to opine on religion than a layperson is on science.
I understand completely why Dawkins won't play nicely. Because all around the world people are continually killing each other in the name of religion. And because religion has claimed for itself a special status of deserving "respect": being above criticism, above interrogation. Sure, he's confrontational, but he's just trying to roll back centuries of being unable to ask difficult questions because they might be "heretical".
He's deliberately trying to stick in people's craws. I don't always agree with the approach, but I do see what he's doing: he's creating an opening so that debate can begin.
I hadn't thought of him doing it for that reason...
but in doing so he's alienating the very people he should be trying to encourage to read his books.
I refuse to buy anything with his name on it purely due to the abuse and intolerance he directs at people of faith.
There are more effective ways of persuading people to listen to your points of view than banging on about how wrong they are. :-)
Dawkins jars
when he uses words such as "irrational" and "unreasonable" in his criticism of people who believe in God. But I'd rather he says it as he sees it than wrap his convictions in platitudes and suggestions of personal salvation if people only have the good sense to follow his lead.
Dawkins isn't pretending or claiming that he has all the answers, just that science has the capacity to find and give the answers rather than religion and on that scientific form of enquiry he bases his claim that God is redundant. Dawkins believes that science has reached a point where it can supersede religious explanations of how we came to be; it has gained enough evidence to dismiss the Nicene Creed.
But Dawkins is equally incapable of explaining why we came to be as any religious devotee. There are fundamental questions that neither science nor religion can answer but the key difference is that science doesn't claim to have the answer to something if it cannot support that claim with evidence. But how you proselytize that conviction is a completely different ball game.
Where science and religion can work together - I believe - is in examining the why, which is, I believe, more important a question to us as humans. As I declared earlier in this thread there is a risk inherent to dismissing faith and belief systems and arguing in the manner that Dawkins does that this is a straight choice to be made between science or religion. This is where I think he overshoots in his modus operandi and risks alienating the secularist. Most people want to feel that they are right about something rather than be told what is right and what is wrong.
The trick is how to make them feel that science is the right bet to make.
God was invented
by scientists who wanted to market their books.
I don't know what happened
or why, I'm just glad it did. For someone like me who finds travelling to the moon beyond my comprehension the beginning of time just hurts my head.
I don't believe in any God but if you believe then God does exist for you and that's fine. You only have to look at a cloud formation to understand why all over the world there was belief in a celestial being beyond the clouds before there was understanding.
I just think we ought to leave it be, because we might not like the answer if we ever find it.
.
I know. It might be Don't Come Home Too Soon.....
;)
Nope, sorry Dave
But I can't agree with your last point.
We humans are, so far as we know, the most complex phenomena in the Universe. Our brains are the only structures known to be fully self-aware, and capable of understanding the rest of the Universe. And that's an awe-inspiring responsibility.
To ignore that is to sell yourself short, frankly.
Surely the Universe is the most complex phenomenon
in, err, the universe? :-)
No
I think you'll find it's the multiverse that is the most complex phenomenon.
That and women.
Do you believe in Richard Dawkins?
I believe that all beliefs are human invention, including science. We project our beliefs onto the universe and act accordingly. What we 'see' is what we get. In this discussion, we just happen to be in a parallel universe where we all believe in Richard Dawkins. Ha!
I wouldn't want to get stuck in a lift with him
that's for sure.