[quote=“Three Times Great”]
“A duck is a robot vehicle for the propagation of duck genes” (Dawkins);
[quote]
The premise of this argument is based on faulty logic I feel. (Not surprising seeing as its from Dawkins) Humans differ from other species in that although they still have the biological desire to reproduce, the mind has developed far beyond that of normal survival, It is there certainly, but due to complex structures such as society, as well as the ability to reason beyond our behavioral instincts. We as humans also more and more wish to pass on that which is virtually unique to our species, that of knowledge.
If it was as you say the world could indeed end up as you say. However humans basic desires are changing. Our brains and thoughts have been able to overtake and combat our instincts, and the most logical outcome is becoming as unpredictable as quantum physics.
i agree its certainly unpredictable. i also agree that Dawkins quote here is not self-evidently true. however, i argue that it IS true, and accept that others do not believe it is; however, accepting that DNA is the driving force of human life and that what “we” are as living breathing thinking organic beings is just a temporary shell for transporting and protecting the genetic line (the “real” species), in that case i think my OP stands (i.e. that, while nothing is certain and everything is unpredictable, it is nonetheless the case that this unpredictable scenario, in some form or another, is the most likely, even if it is still very unlikely [it is seemingly the case that it is less unlikely than other alternatives]).
we can challenge this concept of DNA and species if we like; i accept that there are reasons to think it is wrong. however, i also believe it is difficult to disprove. and either way, the issues here are interesting to think about, and the scenario i paint in the OP could more or less come true in some similar fashion even if Dawkins is indeed wrong.
Evolution is about self-survival and procreation, not the domination of all other lifeforms. There are no species that are running around destroying their environment other than humanity; but we are destroying due to ignorance, greed and lack of empathy for any species that’s not cute and cuddly. Nature didn’t make us like this, we did. The very environment that we wantonly destroy is the one and only that we and every other species depend on for survival. So after a species destroys all other life, what is it going to eat? Dirt? Each other? When cannibalism is the only source of nourishment, evolution is broken.
For the reasons above, no. But take out the part about dominating all life and humanity killing itself and then the scenario becomes remotely considerable.
this is only because no other species is capable of doing so. what makes you think that any species would stop its encroachment upon habitat/resources/food of others if there were no mechanism or resistance blocking this movement? the primary factors in species expansion is food supply and predation. given a food supply, species will fight for that niche within which the food exists: other species will fight as well, and competition will establish boundaries. predators will devour prey, prey will become scarce, predators will dwindle due to lack of food, prey will rebound back, and the cycle repeats. HOWEVER, imagine if 1) a species existed which can consume food anywhere on the planet, and 2) this species had no predators. why, then, would this species fail to expand itself, eventually (due to increasing population stresses), into every possible niche and environment? expansion is a natural instinct, and is only scaled back due to necessity (when expansion-behavior becomes detrimental [the benefits are outweighed by risks/losses] expansion is mediated-- otherwise, all life seeks to maximize its terrain/territory, particularly on the species-level.)
i do not believe that emotions have anything to do with the instinctive need to control your environment. it results not from ignorance or feelings or “greed”, but from the simple fact that the more relative control one has over nature and other species, the better one will survive. simple as that.
assuming my OP, the human species would no longer eat, because people will kill themselves once the coccoon is created, and the coccoon itself will run on the endless power of geothermal energy and centrifugal-force of the spin of the earth (and possibly other energy sources as well, such as a micro black hole or antimatter).
cannibalism is justified where there are no more viable options. but cannibalism will never become necessary for man in my example here.
assuming man gained the technological means to build a coccoon, why would man risk letting other life run amok on earth’s surface, possibly evolving to threaten man? what if a bacterium evolves which eats all metal, and the coccoon is at risk for destruction? what if a virus mutates from another animal which lies dormant forever in the atmosphere until it encounters cells with human DNA, upon which time it takes over and kills those cells? what if the coccoon takes 100,000 years to “perfect” sufficiently the human genome and therefore regenerate living men, only by that time another animal has evolved intelligence and become master of the planet with even more advanced technology than man has?
why would man take these risks? the answer is that he would not.
killing all life as best we can (sure, we will probably never get ALL life, but we could get 99% probably) is the only way to ensure completely (or as best as possible) that such scenarios do not happen. even 10,000 years may be sufficient for an organism to evolve intelligence, and certainly only a decade or less is sufficient for a virus/bacterium to evolve into a completely new form, given the right circumstances… you really think that man would take these risks, upon creating the coccoon and letting it run its course for an indeterminate amount of time, merely because he feels “love” for the “planet” in some vague hippie way? certainly not. the man of the future, the man of the coccoon will have no such feelings: his only love will be for himself and his species. all else is irrelevant unless it directly serves the benefit of himself or other men. and that which could threaten himself or his species would be wiped out without remorse, pity or regret.
The only way a species could meet the first requirement is by developing excessive amounts of both intelligence and technology; as humanity has. Having this level of intelligence allows us to realize that there isn’t an infinite amount of anything and that the slaughtering has to stop at some point before forcing a species into extinction. (Some people refuse to use their brain and thus we have sturgeon, buffalo, and various whale species hanging on the edge–and these are only a few I could come up with off the top of my head.) Why would a species fail to expand into every possible niche? Intelligence and technology allow a species to craft their own niche to their liking, e.g. cities.
It’s not emotions that has anything to do with it, it’s lack of emotions. We sit in our cities and consume resources until more need to be trucked in from wherever nature still exists. We don’t use all of them though, and the scraps get dumped outside the city (back into nature) as trash. Animals, not understanding what happened to their natural environment, either move further out as the urban sprawl pushes or into the city to adapt to a new lifestyle. We humans, being as territorial (read greedy) as we are, don’t like sharing our turf with that pesky raccoon, skunk, coyote, insert animal here and likely kill or trap them for being a nuisance. Meanwhile, we continue to consume all resources in the area and destroy life that already poses no threat to our existence; so arguing that we do it to better survive is incorrect. It’s hard to have empathy for creatures and plants that are seen as ugly if seen at all by us city-dwellers; so who cares?
So the mass extinction is going to take place all at once? I get pretty hungry if I don’t eat all day, so all life would have to be destroyed within a week or two. But hey, I don’t want to be hungry for that long so let’s just nuke the surface with thousands of bombs all at once…that ought to kill everything except viruses, bacteria, and those damned cockroaches. But wait, we didn’t think about what we going to eat when we emerge! The perfect man will starve to death or be forced to eat his test-tube-brothers right out of the starting gate. This seems to be pretty inhuman.
So what if they do evolve? We crushed them once and we’ll do it again. If we emerge from the cocoon as the ‘perfect being’ then it seems to me that nature cannot pose a threat no matter what lifeforms have come into existence during our slumber. Also, if we had the technology to create an AI cocoon to perfect our genome then why not build a second AI in the cocoon to perfect our technology? It only makes sense that the perfect being is equipped with the perfect technology.
Minimizing risk to the cocoon is one thing, killing all life is another. It’s easier to stay ahead of the ‘curve’ than to eradicate all life from an entire planet. Assuming that the AI cocoon could simulate our evolution, it should take into account possible evolutionary paths for life as we know it and counter them. If this doesn’t happen, then how can we claim to be the perfect human when we emerge? If we wanted to be relatively perfect, then why not kill all other life and stop at that point? Why even build the cocoon if we are unchallenged in our sterile environment?
Yes, I do think we would take many risks, not because of any hippie nature fetish, but because the same environment that threatens our existence also supports our existence.
The only way the OP future will work is if the AI cocoon can manufacture nutritious food from earth. And I would hardly consider that the pinnacle of our species’ existence.
For the record, I am not a hippie. I do believe in protecting our environment, so we can rape it for eternity in a controlled manner. A beautiful oak tree was destroyed to build my beautiful dining room furniture. I eat anything that tastes good, be it fruit, vegetable, chicken, cow, pig, or your new kitten–I’ll try anything once. But if we destroy everything in our wake, mankind won’t have resources in the future; thus we’re killing the future of our species as we kill our environment.
Sauwelios pretty much expressed what I think of this quote…
…but I can’t resist venting. It’s a shame so many wannabe-intellectual college kids praise this guy.
It’s ironic as well…
After hours upon hours of exhaustively researching The God Delusion they finally coming to a realization so lofty, so cutting edge, so exceptionally rational, that only a “bright” could understand it: God does not exist because we cannot directly observe God, and though God may exist, it is as porbably as a flying spaghetti monster or a teapot. In summary, to believe in God is ridiculous because the concept of God is ridiculoys.
So, fully enlightened and free from the delusion that all the other stupid people suffer from, they take the opportunity to spend their free time seeking situations and forcing conversations where they can adamantly bitch about how stupid most of the world is (soaring higher and higher with each half-baked analogy).
Why are they better than them? Because they don’t live their lives according to delusions. No, their every belief and action rests on marble rationality.
They see the world as it really is. That’s right, for these brights the true, absolute image and being of external reality is directly implanted in their minds.
Thinking and acting as if one is a “self” that has been that “self” since birth, and looking at “one’s body” in the mirror, or looking at a photograph from 10 years ago and thinking “that’s me” is a totally rational conclusion. Yup, no delusion there (after all, everyone thinks this way!). Nope, the self isn’t a delusion, nor is it the prime faith-based delusion and the major cause of suffering that every decent “religious” practice has sought to overcome . Dawkins and his brights have broken all chains of primitive thinking.
What a joke…
“As a critic of faith, Dawkins is thus pretty lame; as the bard of materialist myth, his only rival is Philip Pullman.” (Murrough O’Brien/Independent UK)
well, slaughtering has to stop at the point where it begins to detrimentally impact our own ability to survive/eat. i am operating under the assumption that once man is at the point of building the coccoon, he will have solved his personal energy-consumption problems, either by technological implants where the stomache is that manufacture or synthesize vital calories and nutrients, by using molecular assemblers to pop out food from a machine (like i star trek), or some other means.
it goes without saying that the degree to which man needs to consume from his environment directly is the degree that he will not destroy it.
what do you mean, refuse to use their brain? why is it automatically “bad” or a sign of stupidity just because we exterminate other species, even intentionally? all life ends up exterminating other life, we did it with the neaderthals.
life goes extinct all the time. i dont see why we should be concerned about this, unless that life is essential to our survival in some way.
i agree. however, this doesnt solve the problem of overpopulation, and in fact cities will only end up saturating when the rest of easier possible living spaces are filled. its just that, eventually, in the long run, assuming unchecked growth, species will populate wherever they are able to live. there is no intrinsic reason why they would not.
i agree. that is the essence of production, to which we should be eternally grateful for every benefit and comfort that sustains our lives presently, including this computer i am typing on.
animals dont care what happens to their environment. they adapt, or they perish. and even if they possess the cerebral/limbic system necessary to “care” in any real way, it doesnt matter anyways. they will fight to survive where they can, and flee where they cannot. thats just life.
the fact that man is able to push other animals away and sustain his existence in places like cities, of his own construction, is a thing of pride and great accomplishment, not something to be embarassed or upset about. we succeed where other animals fail: we are the top of the food chain. its a good place to be, considering the alternative.
indeed, this is quite a good thing. unless youd like to invite some bears or raccoons or mice or squirrels or frogs or birds or wild dogs or termites or flies or wolves or any other life into your house with you to share.
empathy is an emotion evolved to facilitate social cohesion and intercommunication/connection between people. it spreads out to apply to other animals to the extent that they resemble humans or (most likely) human infants in some way (thus triggering partially that same area of the brain where the empathy response is located)-- we also learn to empathize with other life over time, depending on prevailing social conditioning pressures.
but its not like that really means anything. it doesnt make another species valuable just because our brains generate a chemical response to them that makes us “feel” for them. its all the same to the animal, or to nature. life survives or perishes all the time, every day. just because humans are delusional and emotionally-miswired to shed tears over it doesnt mean that there is any problem with this fact, other than the disconnect within the human brain itself which allows such irrational and useless/harmful emotional responses in inappropriate situations.
well like i said, by the we should easily be feeding ourselves directly with wireless electromagnetic fields or foods created by molecular assembly in a star-trek-like synthesizer. i dont think it is unreasonable to assume such advances in technology at the time of the coccoon.
the thing is, though, that even though its LIKELY we will be more “evolved” than other life, evolution is unpredictable. we dont know if a virus or mold or fungus or bacterium or small insect will have evolved capable of wiping out human life or technology in some UNFORSEEABLE way. it just doesnt make any sense at all to take that chance, assuming that we dont need that life anyways, which i believe will be the case due to our ability to sustain and feed ourselves with our technology only.
thats a good point, i hadnt thought of that. i had only assumed that man would rebuild his cities and technology once emerging from the coccoon, or, more likely, that he would just “fly” on a thought or pure consciousness across the universe as some sort of god-beings or electronic angels… but youre certainly right, man would no doubt need some way to secure his advanced technology for himself upon emergence from the coccoon.
maybe a huge storage warehouse somewhere would hold it all, or at least the manufacturing ability to recreate it. or maybe, i think this is most likely, that as man is evolving virtually within a matrix-type environment in the coccoon, the technology that he creates there virtually would be scripted into the coccoon’s memory and transfered to automated productive apparatus somewhere on the planet (or under it), and recreated in real time. perhaps, once technology has then been surpassed, it will be liquidated and dissolved back into its molecular soup form and reformed into the newest mode of technological progress generated by the artificial virtual homo sapiens in the coccoon computer world/environments.
that way, when man emerges from the coccoon again, he will have whatever level of technology and progress available to him that he was used to in the virtual world. but, your idea of an automated “evolution of technology” is quite interesting, although it seems that in order to make sure this technology keeps in pace with the rapidly changing human body/brain it would need to be designed in sync with man’s evolution himself.
its the fact that evolution is unpredictable. in order to PREDICT how life would evolve we would need to know EVERY FACTOR in the entire terrestrial ecosystem as a whole, instantly and at every moment (along with indeterministic factors which would be impossible to know)… no matter how advanced our technology is, we cannot predict how any life will evolve, including our own. that is why the man who emerges from the coccoon will be completely different from anything we can imagine now.
likewise, there is just no way to ensure that a metal-eating bacteria or carbon-eating microorganism wont evolve and threaten humanity in some unforseeable way. much better to take no chances, especially since we wont need this other life anyways.
because we need to fly out across the galaxy and then the universe/other dimensions, in order to make sure that no alien life could come to threaten us. conquering our terrestrial world is not enough to ensure the future of humanity, we need to make sure that one day an alien race wont show up with bigger guns than we have. thats why the coccoon’s true purpose, other than preserving human DNA, is to perfect it to the point where we are a god-like being, and can easily destroy any other life our in the cosmos as needed. otherwise, our existence as a species is conditional upon the change that other more advanced alien life wont show up one day and kill us. and the entire point of the coccoon, and of our intelligent itself, is to make our existence as unconditional upon these types of factors as possible. its the reason intelligence evolved in the first place.
why not? im not sure what you mean here. it is very likely that at some point we will learn how to sustain our cellular processes with nothing but our own technology/energy systems, or that we will merge consciousness with machines sufficiently so that we no longer need to eat. or that we will develop food replicators and make all the food we want by assembling base elements together from the ground up via molecular assembly. we wont “need” our environment in the same way that we need it now. of course there will probably always be some aspect that we need, even if its just the planet itself in raw material form, but whatever that basic extent is is what we will not eliminate, out of necessity… regardless of what it is however, it will certainly not include any other life forms, not at the point where we are able to build the coccoon.
its just like i said, the extent that we need/depend on our environment will be the extent that we do not destroy that aspect of environment; im just operating on the assumption that this far into the future of technological progress we will be competely self-sustainable within our own technological systems.
so youre saying that it is logical and justifiable to believe in things for which we have absolutely no evidence?
how is belief in the FSM less justified than belief in god (assuming youve never met god-- i know i havent)?
actually, they take the time to try and educate the world about the fallacies and DANGERS of spending your life dedicated to imaginary beings and the systems of social control which utilize such beliefs to propagate domination and oppression upon man.
that is not what they claim. you seem to be (deliberately?) misrepresenting their case.
it does not logically follow that just because we falsify belief X as irrational/unjustified, that ALL BELIEFS are equally irrational/unjustified. your point here is not accurate to what people like Dawkins say, not at all.
once again. see above.
your emotionalism seems to be irrationally clouding your mind. why so invested in ridiculing Dawkins and other atheists?
technically self is an illusion created by psychological processes, which has been demonstrated by EEG and PET/fMRI examinations of human brains as we think/act/feel. different places in the brain do different things, and its all synthesized together to make us feel like its all “one thing”.
in addition, every cell in your body dies and copies itself. after a certain number of years, your entire body is “new”, i.e. new cells. and of course, below that is the level of quantum fields, probabilistic indeterminism, interconnection with all other life and reality on the same quantum level… are you saying that, despite all this, it still makes sense to view “self” as the irreducible primary atomistic “soul” that all ignorant mystic ancients thought it was?
should we go back to believing rain dances bring a good harvest, or the earth is the center of the universe, or the earth is flat? how is belief in God any different than these? i am actually curious, not just being sarcastic, i would prefer you explain it to me.
there sure is a joke going on here, i agree…
this guy obrien is not a scientist or intellectual, and reading his article (ironically reposted at Richard Dawkins.net because its so rediculous they just have to comment on it), he totally misunderstands every point Dawkins makes. the numerous comments on that page say it all, really.
Depends on what you mean by “believe”. If by “believe” in things you mean actually think they are true, logically-sound explanations or descriptions (that it is an “objective truth” that the human brain can process, rather than a myth the mind formulates/creates/subjectively interprets/experiences), then no, I don’t think it’s logical. If by “believe” in things you mean (actively) assume them to be true/think and act as if they are true (depending on which beliefs and which situations, of course), even if in the past you have thought about them and knew there wasn’t solid logic behind the belief, then yes, it could be a logical and justifiable (as in a pragmatic use of the belief, not the belief itself).
The point is that Dawkins is arguing against ridiculous and shallow ideas of God and faith. The FSM is a circular argument. He acknowledges that sure, we can’t know “God” doesn’t exist, just as we wan’t know a flying spaghetti monster doesn’t exist. A flying spaghetti monster sounds ridiculous because the mind’s meanings of these seperate words can’t integrate and combine their denotations into a logical result that preserves the fundamental understandings and associations of each word. Words, for the most part, express things that we can (agree we) see in the external world. The word “God”, for the most part, isn’t one of these words. So what he does is he defines “God” according to attributes that we cannot observe, he makes the point that to believe in something despite contradictory evidence is a delusion, and thus, because God cannot be observed/proven to exist, it is ridiculous to have faith. What Dawkins fails to understand is that “God” is best described as a kind of mindset/subjective experience (seemingly distinct from one’s habitual way of experiencing “reality”).
“Faith” is assuming the justification of certain beliefs, goals and actions so you can have a stable worldview/philosophy/focus/belief system to securely and productively interpret information and make decisions.
Nobody is going to logically demonstrate that “rape” and “murder” or walking around nude and defecating wherever you please or going to prison and becoming the prison bitch is “wrong” or “bad” or “right” without first accepting that the only measure “right” or “wrong” is a mind (which interprets/sees/feels “goods” and “bads” as existing in the external world, but you wouldn’t actually claim any of those things are “good” or “bad” in a context superceding a human subjective experience, right?). That which a mind deems “good” or “bad” is only so because it is sensed to promote “good” experiences or “bad” experiences.
Dawkins and you and I also utilize faith. The only difference is some people actively (and knowingly) use it (knowing it is is just a way of making sense of information for the ultimate purpose minimizing the potential for future “bad” experiences), and some people are on default; they picked up cultural beliefs and they think they are actually as things (outside their mind) are. Dawkins points out some ridiculous interpretations of “God” and refutes them. Though there are some people who actually believe these interpretations accurately express a being who has full power/contro/creation over the Universe, does anybody really need to make people aware of how irrational those people’s worldviews are? Dawkins is in the same boat with them (not being aware of the lack of rationality to his faith-based worldviews), the only difference is his delusion is the “new” mass psychosis.
I could say the same thing for Dawkins and his emphasis on the “Ultimate Purpose” to procreate/spread DNA, and then bring up how that requires people to get high-paying jobs, which requires spending a shit load of money on a University (so they can pay simple-minded jackasses like him to keep the cycle going) and stresses how important it is to find a mate, so you’ll have to buy a bunch of nice and trendy clothes and other expressions of one’s high status and “social fitness”.
Haha. I brought “they” up, either you don’t know the people I am talking about, or you are one of them and you aren’t aware of your errors.
I don’t think you understand my point. Not at all.
So invested? I checked a thread, curious about this “most logical outcome” and the first thing I read is an arrogant, ignorant quote by a man whose work has resulted in nothing about strengthening the ingroup-outgroup bias between theists and atheists. It was a self-serving text, and it’s been very successful with slightly-above average teens and young adults who need a credible explanation/excuse for why they’re so frustrated with the world. Dawkins ignores (he doesn’t understand) the positive potential of faith (as having faith is inevitable) and gives no credence to the vital role of one’s programming/habits in the “view”/experience of the “real” world. Many of these intelligent, frustrated kids could start finding some more thoughtful, introspection-stressing, emotionally/intellectually and creatively fulfilling philosophies that could have a major positive impact on the person’s life. All The God Delusion does is raise egos to a fever pitch.
It’s troubling to see this happen. I find it hard to believe (he actually thinks he’s making sound arguments for a good purpose, and) his books aren’t written for the purpose of brainwashing.
Oh you’ve GOT to be kidding. I laid on the sarcasm pretty thick in my text you just quoted.
this is how religious people believe in god (at least, its how the christian faith teaches you to believe in god, and its how all the religious people i know personally believe in god: as a literal objective truth).
im not sure what kind of people you think Dawkins is attributing belief in god to, but the vast majority of religious individuals do indeed take the concept of god as an objective truth. maybe youre different, and thats great, good for you… but you are the exception then, not the rule.
a useful lie is still a lie. that is Dawkins point. he never, NEVER says that belief in god cannot be useful or make life easier, in fact he acknowledges this often. its one main reason why people do believe in god, and Dawkins never denies this.
plus, imagine the intellectual vacuity and lack of honesty/integrity it would take to willingly sustain known lies/contradictions within your mind just because it “makes things easier” for you, so you dont have to face reality…
how is that “logical” again?
those are the typical, common ideas of god that most people have, yes.
god IS defined by attributes that we cannot observe (his “love, compassion, strength, creativity, omnipotence, omniscence, omnipresence”, etc).
and you seem to miss the point of the FSM argument. its obviously rediculous, because its an analogy to belief in anything contradictory. and common notions of a benevolent all-powerful god-being with a white beard who lives in a cloud-paradise and grants wishes if you “really mean it”, IS obviously rediculous.
thats pretty much it, yeah.
whoa, back up a second. WHAT? are you serious? that is absolutely not how the concept god is believed by religious people, do you even know any religious people?
maybe you have this semi-formed, vague, subjective “experience” understanding of “god”, and thats good for you, whatever does it for ya, but that is certainly NOT how religious people understand god. every major theistic religion teaches about god as objectively real, as real as we are, a true being that exists as concretely as we do.
you are just building straw men if you attack Dawkins on the grounds that the notion of god he attacks is not the one most people believe in.
no, that would be belief, not faith; such beliefs which require assumptions are based on empirical observations/experiences. religious faith is quite different.
…if i may say so, you seem to be just redefining “god” here and then saying “MY definition of god is rational!! cmon, Dawkins is stupid because he doesnt get MY definition of god!”. well, that may be, but youre definition is not common, not religious, and not part of any mainstream theistic religious teaching, which is what Dawkind WAS attacking: the traditional common notion of god. you may have some new-age “spiritual” “pragmatic” concept of god because it helps you get through the day not having to face reality head on, and sure thats fine for you i guess, but dont make the mistake of associating your own different view of god for what Dawkins is actually attacking.
i have no idea what youre trying to say here, sorry.
i do not. i utilize beliefs, most of which have assumptions within them which are based on empirical observations/experience/logical reasoning. just because many of the beliefs we have cannot be PROVEN, does not mean they are “faith”!
you can have imperfect reasons for believing in something and still be justified in believing in it. the difference with belief in god is that there are NO reasons, empirical, logical or otherwise to believe in him (and equally importantly there are good reasons NOT to believe in god). thats the difference from faith-based beliefs in god and assumptions-based beliefs of an ordinary kind: assumptions-based beliefs could indeed be wrong, but there is reason for believing them (consistent empirical/logical evidence) as well as no reason to NOT believe them (no empirical/logical reason not to believe i am sitting in a chair, for example) (or, the reasons for the belief outweight the reasons against)… faith-based beliefs lack empirical/logical reasons, and actually have empirical/logical reasons AGAINST them, yet nonetheless the belief is still held. thats the “faith” part of it. but faith has no part in ordinary, everyday beliefs which are reasonably justified given our daily consistent life experiences (but which, of course, could concievable still be wrong [i.e. for my belief that i am sitting in a chair to be wrong would entail no contradiction (i could be asleep or hallucinating), for example]).
if you think that there ARE reasons for believing in god, or that there are not any reasons AGAINST believing in god, then by all means, feel free to present them, im all ears.
yes, someone apparently does need to make them aware of how irrational their views are, because the vast majority of the worldls population believes these “irrational” (as even you define them here) worldviews (e.g., see Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism).
please explain the “lack of rationality” and “faith-based worldviews” that Dawkins advocates. its been awhile since ive read the God Delusion, but i dont remember any such things in it.
thats just biological fact.
none of that follows necessarily from anything Dawkins says, nor does he advocate for that stuff. please provide me some passages or evidence where Dawkins advocates for “spending a shit load of money on a University” or “have to buy a bunch of nice and trendy clothes”.
and even if he does make such claims, they are additional arguments than his thesis against belief in god. you could easily criticize Dawkins views on what human social interactions SHOULD be (whatever that belief is) while realizing that his separate arguments against belief in god are sound. they are not necessarily related.
i guess i do not know who you are talking about, then.
well, you could explain yourself, then.
saying “Because they don’t live their lives according to delusions. No, their every belief and action rests on marble” does not follow from anything Dawkins says. please provide passages or evidence where Dawkins says that his beliefs or actions are completely free of delusions, or “rest on marble”.
you cannot, because really youre just ranting here, nothing more.
the theories of theism and atheism are, necessarily, polar opposite ([theism] and ~[theism])… so naturally, there will be a strong “ingroup outgroup bias” from the perspective of one over the other.
the only way to avoid this would be to water down theism and atheism into some sort of half-ass contradicting “subjective experiencing” vague undefined notion of god… er, wait a minute, that sounds kinda familiar…
please show me how having faith is inevitable. also, please show me where Dawkins states that there are no positive aspects to faith.
i wouldnt know. i dont need to have “faith” to create positive philosophies for my life.
funny, thats what i thought religions did.
well, education is another purpose, one that seems far more rational, considering its a science book.
youll have to be more clear next time with the points you are trying to make, then. i respond to what you write here, nothing more.
I might think that a man who is living out on the street and hasn’t really eaten for days - the pleasure of a full belly might be more pleasurable to him than sex. Both sexual pleasure and the pleasure of eating or rather having been satisfied with a full stomach - are satisfactions that come to us in different degrees. They cannot be measured.
One man/woman might get the very fullest pleasure from sex and an orgasm - another man/woman might say ah, big deal, what was that all about
So really when it comes to pleasure it is in the eye of the beholder as is just about everything in life.
One might seek pleasure and happiness in sex and another in the most interesting book in the world to them, a philosophy book or a great murder mystery sitting on the floor before a warm and cozy fire and sipping a glass of wine. Two different people deriving the greatest of pleasure from two different places, both just as real to each other.
Where does the power come from? Knowing that they have the freedom to choose how they will live their life and live it in that way. well, maybe no, that may not be entirely true but then maybe it still is. Even if our freedom is taken away from us, we still have that inner power within us to choose how to live our life, despite the fact that our freedom has been taken away from us. We both will ourselves to and choose to continue our life in such a way that we are not defeated. It is only really ourselves that can defeat us. We may be defeated, but it is our human spirit and our heart and our mind that is capable of rising above it all to freedom. Okay, I seem to have digressed a bit here. Rant over.
I don’t have time right now to go into this, but I want to quickly clarify a couple things.
No, it’s not. The biological fact is that DNA is; explaining other biological facts as existing for the purpose/goal of passing DNA is a myth, an interpretation.
The point is that Dawkins ignores the source of myth–the human mind (which is a myth maker).
Right now, (one of the many) modern god(s) is “Genes”. You guys just don’t refer to them as “God”, though.
youre just personifying the DNA process, and then attacking this as if science said it. Dawkins or biology at large is not advocating any sort of “purpose/meaning” behind the genetic process of evolution. you are just making straw men in order to give youreself an excuse to attack Dawkins.
well, no one is building alters or praying to genes… misrepresenting scientific discoveries and knowledge as “religious” is a typical error that laymen make when they see science expanding into such powerful domains and new horizons. science makes a claim that is “atypical” or counter to orthodox traditional thinking, and suddenly science is “worshipping itself”. its an old trick, dating back to the catholics in medieval times. its sad that such empty groundless assertions are still made today, in light of all the amazing and unbelievable advances that science has brought to our world.
we can see genes. we can map them, move them, record them, analyse them, extract them from cells, merge them, model them in 3D… can we do any of that with “God”? no. of course not. you equating DNA to “God” is so absurd that it barely deserves a response. DNA is real, we can see it, touch it, measure it. can we do any of that with God?
belief in DNA is justified. belief in god is not. thats just the end of it. period. now, if you still CHOOSE to believe in god, go for it, its up to you; but thats what FAITH is. thats why its FAITH, because there are no REASONS for the belief.
but youre calling scientific theory and research “modern gods” is absolutely absurd, and betrays quite a childish, simplistic understanding of the scientific process itself. no one, not Dawkins or anyone else, is advocating building shrines or making sacrifices to DNA… the idea that DNA is the driving force behind life is a scientific theory, one that can be explored and examined and argued, debated one way or another. there is evidence for this view, especially since DNA is the blueprint for how living organisms are built and function. that clearly at least implies an underlying “purpose” (if you want to keep misusing that word) or primary causality. but of course, its a theory, like any other its just an idea… but its an idea with a LOT of evidence and research/experimentation behind it.
how much evidence/research/experimentation does the idea of god have behind it?
the only answer is to just laugh
science holds itself to STANDARDS OF EVIDENCE/REPLICABILITY/PRODUCTION/VERIFICATION. religion does not. this is why religion will never, ever be on the same level as science. religion will never create anything except oppressive regimes of social control and happy opiate fantasies.
and it really doesnt matter at all what outdated religious zealots or cowering mystics want to believe in order to make their lives easier to deal with— religion will one day go the way that the “flat earth” theory went, or the theory of the “4 elements”, or the “pineal gland”… lies are ALWAYS eventually exposed in the end, because reality is always the final arbitor of truth.
i think this is vastly flawed. if the ultimate goal for life is survial then why dont we just make a giant ball of very dense matter, throw it into space and call it our legacy? that doesnt satisfy me as im sure it doesnt anyone else. i feel the need to understand more than that. which raises the question why do i feel this way and what does it say about the nature of life, more so, man?
i just wanted to add im not stearing this toward religion.
i suppose you’re right to an extent. the problem i have with that is it stands to reason that eventually your going to come accross a defect. that is the nature of evolution is to learn through defects. i think its also very reasonable that a defect could survive in the universe. im going to throw it all out there and say i think there is a part of that doesnt fully function within the constrains of “strictly for survival”. case in point, curiosity. to put it into a question, why are we having this conversation right now?
Not really. Man will either wipe himself out with the rest of living nature (global warming, nuclear holocaust, driving the species he depends on to extinction, etc.) or only himself, leaving the rest of nature to carry on (perhaps rebuilding its diversity). Man has always had an inflated sense of his own prowess and destiny on this planet. He has yet to learn that he cannot survive without the ecosystem that nurtured him to fruition.
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sitting on the floor before a warm and cozy fire and sipping a glass of wine. Two different people deriving the greatest of pleasure from two different places, both just as real to each other.