Many thanks venerable one, I will peruse these during tomorrows work day, where I am expected to be productive, but will likely use the time to piss off my management … and do something useful instead.
(You always find the good stuff, what’s your secret?)
Ah, nevermind, I know you gots the majiks of the Sage!!!
A good documentary worth watching , and hes a funny guy , but his material is something I cant help feel is mostly irrelevant . He seems so tormented by religion and those who are religious . But Those people I know who are genuine atheists , I never hear them talk about God or religion , because its irrelevant to them , they already made up their mind there was either nothing at all , or that if there is something its not worth bothering about too much .
Since once we start to consider there might be a god we only end up arguing about it anyway .
I mean if you really believe in a God or something similiar , you wouldnt respond much of the time to what people say in opposition to it , not because your stupid and cant form a defense , but because you learn that its pointless . People must find their own truth , and it must be a truth which does not cause any harm to other people around them , so In many ways discussion is just pointless .
But It makes me smile that someone like Dawkins is so adamant a god doesnt exist . Because by making documentaries about it , and getting so heated up , you cant help but feel he and people like him are repressed in some way . They seem like Closet catholics to me , or closet hopefuls . And that goes for most of the documentaries Ive watched or noticed advertised , I often wonder why they cant just let it go . These art critics , historians and religious philosophers .
Nobody whos any fun to be with is bothering about them really .
It makes me smile that Dawkins has spent almost his whole life telling us one thing , that life is ultimately pointless !?! In that we crawled out from the sea , evolved by sheer fluke , and that all of mans wonderous achievments , science , art , poetry and music , although marvellous , are nothing more than the attempts of an evolving monkey to make sense of a universe where there is no real purpose other than existing , co-existing . Ironic !
I dont think any of its worth bothering about really after youve looked at it a few times , and at least made an effort to understand . I suppose you could say the path of the Arhat is a noble one .
Well-said, Dol. Beyond the sheer literal nonsense of “apologetics for atheism”, the motives of people like this are, indeed, interesting as psychological case studies. They are trying to turn a negative into a positive. It amounts to the denial of denial. That’s one denial too many.
Wow. That was an amazing post there DoL… I was really impressed with the following points…
He has repeatedly explained his motives of the search for real truth is part of his reasons for being tormented. Considering that the whole documentary is based around the events of 9/11 (the idea that religious fanticism leads to unspeakable harm for a false cause of good) may have caused him to feel that as the human race, we better wake up, grow up, and really look at our future as one people before we do something really stupid like blow up the world.
The scene where he goes to meet with other atheists is remarkable in the fact that rather than talking about a god or religion, they’re talking about the political pains that atheists suffer (inability to fit into society).
Dawkins covered this when he spoke of how as children, no matter what the “truth” is that is told to the child, that child will grow up feeling attached to that “truth” in some way as it was the first thing that child had to grasp in its observation of reality.
Great comment! I too find that most atheists would be ready to convert right away and begin following a given religious doctrine if they were just offered some valid scientific proof… hard evidence… Even myself, as an agnostic, I am never ready to just lay down and affirm that there is utterly no divine force in the universe, just as I am not ready to affirm that there is. I would love to find proof of either… for then my quest, my search for truth, would be at an end. However, is this not what life is? A constant search for the truth?
If you watched the end of it all, part 2.6 has it, then you find that Dawkins makes the case for how atheism and the view that atheists hold is not life-defeating, but life-affirming. True, they believe that nothing happens after you die; as if all what you did was for naught; but then, that’s just a matter of perspective. What is also true is that when you die, you leave behind your mark on the world; you contribute something. If you had children, you have assured your immortality. There is the distinct possibility that humanity will one day evolve out of the parameters of the human body and become beings of energy, perhaps even evolve to a point that would seem god-like, or even become god-like. The point is, we are not truely aware of our ultimate purpose or potential, and thus, we have no real way of looking at our lives other than what happens in our life now and what could happen when we die.
My secret, noble one? 'Tis no secret! One need only to search for thy ‘good stuff’ an ye shall find it! Surely ye shall find it indeed!
Wow Ned, I didn’t expect you to show up here. You have watched this documentary for yourself and come to that conclusion? Or are you simply reaffirming what others are saying like a sheep to the herd?
Really Ned, not all of what Dawkins is about is a perpetual negative political adversion. There are some good points he brings up, but if you either chose not to watch it and formulated a false response, or saw it and completely ignored the data he presented, then your comments are meaningless. Did you even see his points regarding how morality came before religion?
Not to mention, I don’t see how you can call it a ‘negative obsession.’ Perhaps an ‘obsession on negativity,’ but certainly not purely negative through-and-through.
I can understand why Dawkins is so worked up over religion. Most intellectual types that I know veiw religion with slightly patronizing bemusement most of the time, but it’s sort of like teasing a large animal until it attacks you. Dawkins is sharp enough to realize how dangerous it is at a time when most people are either drinking the Kool Aid or simply looking the other way hoping it’ll all blow over.
How has it come to this? The great one seeks to undo me with subterfuge and the occult!!! Shame and woe hath thy bedmates become!!!
Lies, damnable lies!!! Alas poor Fellatio, I knew her well.
the venerable one is a warlock, using majiks and hoarding the light for himself!!!
Either that or a rather crafty simian, who by stroke of natural selection has been lifted above the other lowly primates, to reign supreme, as the one great mind, in a sea of chattering, heedless mammalian minions?
I posted these videos on the main Philosophy forum a few days ago (there are links in it to google video, they’re hosted on there). It’s streaming if you have slow internet.
Anywho, I completely agree. I don’t see how people can be so non-chalant about a rising up of a belief system that is faith based. Anything goes. We don’t need silly facts or evidence, I can believe whatever the fuck I want to, for whatever reason I feel justified. How is that not ignorance?
How is that any different than the racist who hates blacks because he was raised with a belief? Not a belief based on facts, or evidence, just a silly belief the child was raised with? What happens when he starts hanging blacks, or goes on a killing spree?
Or what happens when somebody thinks they’ll get 17 virgins for flying a plane into a building? What happens when women are oppressed because they are held so sacred; so sacred that even having sex with them becomes a heavenly desire. A desire worth dying for, worth flying a plane into a building for.
Two errors I noticed he repeated, small, albeit errors nonetheless.
Where he most often uses the word “faith”, he shows evidence of religiosity.
Science is not a complete discipline, and in fact, is just as often at fault for error due to human failings, as are the great religions. He seems to ignore this point.
Other than that, a rather captivating perspective.
Thank you venerable SageSound, as always you bring us entertainment and information.
I thought he kind of touched on that when he told the story about the scientist who had been developing a theory for fifteen years, and an English (I think) researcher came and proved him wrong. The scientist who had been developing the theory thanked him for proving him wrong, for showing him the truth.
Yes, science has its faults and failures, but it is usually replaced with a more accurate portrayal of the truth. How much closer to the truth has religion gotten? Oh wait, people are still flying planes into buildings and murdering millions of their fellow Africans. Of course he didn’t mention science’s failings, the reason they are known failures is because success was achieved afterwards. Science celebrates and acknowledges failures that are replaced with more accurate portrayals of the truth.
Doth thy one who hath squandered thy great truths as a pack-rat huddled in the hermetic arts of seclusion dare feel thou should become undone? Nay! Thou should find thy great truths upon one’s own accord as the Immortal Ancients commanded: Thou shalt not recieve wisdom, but earn it for thyself!
I’m on a roll here…
Thou hast found me, thy hoarder of light who shares its most precious fruits and wonderous spendor with no one other than ~Dan! Whence wilt thou reprieve thyself from thy own self-doubt and inner-ignorance and climb thy mount most treacherous in all the land? Whence thou hast done this, thou shalt climb thy mount and reach the peak where the great truths lay await for thy taking; basking in thy glorious light!
Whew! This should be in the Creative Writing, no?
Your second point reminded me of something I wanted to put in my last post… While watching the first time around, I noticed something characteristic about atheists that Dawkins repeatedly reaffirmed; something I felt that while noble, was still a shortcoming of atheistic belief as equal as theistic.Atheists appear to put alot of stock, if not completely, in the concept of evolution. The amusing irony is that, in a sense, they have faith in the theory of evolution and in science to the end that it will eventually reveal all truth. What’s especially ironic about Dawkins is, he can’t seem to grasp why religious people have such fervant faith in things that retain no physical proof… faith that may be measured as equal as his to the ‘sanctity’ of science. Surely of course, an atheist would never kill for science… never crash planes into buildings or the such, but then you have to consider that atheists, as well as most people in the modern world today, have never faced the life or death situation for belief. If someone came up to you right now and pressed the barrel of a loaded cocked pistol to your head and said that you have a choice to die now or recant all that you believe and convert to the belief system of their choice, which would you choose? Naturally, you may likely choose to die. It’s a simple matter of how strong your faith is in what you believe.
Dawkins uses evidence ,not faith ,and knows full well that a very few scientists as scientists misbehave .He also knows full well that the egos of the religious are so tyed up in their faith that they discount any evidence .
Well, perhaps not all truth, but at least the truth behind our origins, and why things seemingly grow more complex. Or what’s on the outside of our universe.
If there was zero evidence for evolution, then it would be anybody’s guess how we got here. For some reason, the only scientific theory that people have a problem with is evolution. It’s blatant that it is because this theory causes a conflict of peoples’ beliefs.
I think the hardest thing for a scientist to do is break out of a belief system. Darwin started by searching for support of a creator, for perfection, and to his dismay, came up empty handed. He wasn’t a rabid atheist with a vendetta against religion.
Dorkydood, just how the religious call us dogmatic when we ask for evidence.Dawkins discusses how they charge us with being behind the times in “The God Delusion.” As Amiel Rossow @ Skeptic Society library shows the untenability of theistic evolution in his essay on the great Kenneth Miller. And at the forum there , Massimo Pigliucci ,discusses how Miller in the second part of his book on creationism goes against what he rebutted in the first part. It is so hard for people to accept a godless cosmos. And some believers are as Miller quite conversant with science and love it but cannot accept it as showing no purpose . =D>
The idea that atheists supposedly have “faith” in evolution is the favorite strawman religious people like to flog. There are mountains upon mountains of evidence pointing to life as it exists on Earth being the product of evolution by natural selection, but if anyone ever produced irrefutable evidence that the Theory of Evolution couldn’t be true, I would be forced to reject evolution instantly. My “faith,” if truly I have any, is in the idea that methodically applied science increases our knowledge of the Universe.
=D> Phaedrus, and in the human line alone there are so many ancestor lineages that it is hard to tell which are direct and which indirect ancestors to us. More evidence in our line is forthcoming no doubt . Then there is the serum and other evidence. =D>
LOL … funny how the scientific zealots take no account of their own indiscretion. LMAO
d00d, may I call you d00d?
Anyhow, that story is insubstantiated, so carries very little value as far as I am concerned.
Here’s another story, that shows a slightly different perspective.
Take a young man, say of about eleven, and we’ll call him Mastriani, for the purposes of the story. Say this young man had an uncle, who was a great intellect, and an empiricist by trade and education. One day, while Mastriani is visiting the uncle, and being a mischievous boy, getting into all of uncle’s chemistry reagents, making rather a mess of things.
Uncle decides he has had enough, and to save his lab area, tells young Mastriani they are going to a museum to meet a special friend of his, a fellow scientist and historical archaeologist from Greece. Off they go!!!
But what young Mastriani has no idea about, is that we aren’t going to the Museum to see the normal public display areas, but instead, the little known underbelly of natural history display institutions, the warehouse section.
Now granted, Mastriani is young, and when we arrive there, the warehouse appears to be miles long, stretching endlessly. Obviously, this wasn’t the case, but appearances can be deceiving. Then the uncle started to take the young nephew around, showing him many, many crates, with large catalogue numbers, but no descriptions like some of the other cases.
So the young Mastriani formualtes a query, “Uncle, what is in the boxes that don’t have anything but numbers on them?”
Uncle smiles and responds, “Those are called ‘scientific anomalies’?”
Young Mastriani is confused, “What are a enomenlies?”
Uncle, “Anomalies. (Remind me to smack your mother when we get home, she apparently isn’t keeping on your english studies). That is when scientists develop a theory, but then find evidence within their area of study, that doesn’t fit with, or support, the theory as they believe it should be.”
That was a good day in the life of young Mastriani, and although he wasn’t aware of it at the time, he had learned a valuable lesson.
Moral of the story: Scientists are subject to the same failings as people, and professionals, in any other human employment function. They come like everyone else, preformatted with egos. Sometimes, their work reflects this fact of life.
How’s that story work for you? Does it give you the warm fuzzies? It is a true story by the way.
Final point, d00d: In studies done on scientists in the U.S.A., forty to forty five percent are shown to have used poor methodologies and discipline in their empirical practices. Number one reason: politics of who is paying them, and getting results that suit the agendas of their financial benefactors.
It still comes down to little more than “faith”, regardless of which side you choose.
=D>