Root of all Evil
Out of context: Reply #22
- Started
- Last post
- 260 Responses
- flagellum0
From a colleague:
"In order to be an atheist one must believe that nothing produced everything for no reason, that inert matter spontaneously generated life, that the personal came from the impersonal, that consciousness came from unconsciousness, that the equivalent of typographical errors turned rocks, atmospheric gasses and unspecified liquid concoctions into Chopin in 10^17 seconds (and the list could be expanded). It seems to me that this is “unscientific,” magical thinking if ever such a thing existed.
Frankly, I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist.
My thesis is not that atheism makes people bad, but that it is destructive (because it logically destroys any ultimate sense of purpose in life). Without a sense of self-sacrificial purpose, life loses meaning, and at that point untold miseries abound."
"Basically, Dawkins is promoting a certain epistemology that elevates science to scientism. Based on the promo, it appears that Dawkins wants us to accept that the only path true and reliable knowledge is what we know from the methods of science. If he were forced to put it as a premise it would be something like “only the scientific method can provide with true and reliable knowledge.” But how would he know that to be true? He can’t demonstrate it via the scientific method because the reliability of the deliverances of the method are what is at issue. He can’t rely on history and say something like “well, look at how much we’ve learned so far”, because there are many things we know that we didn’t learn from science. So what Dawkins wants is an intellectual world where A is “science is the only path to true and reliable knowledge” and non-A where in order to hold to that notion he must also accept that he has other avenues to true and reliable knowledge. In other words, it is all bluff and bluster. Just once I’d like some TV commentator force Dawkins and those of his ilk to explain how they can intellectually hold two contradictory ideas at the same time and say that they are the ones following logic and reason and those who disagree with them have abandon them. This show promises to be Dawkins at the height of his intellectual arrogance. The show should be placed in the comedy category."