I don’t much like Dawkins either.
You are your religious buddies can gang up on the heretic as much as you want. I’m still right and you are still wrong.
You are all about 200 years out of date. The enlightenment actually happened. You guys are still in the dark
The “light” of the Enlightenment was thought to be reason. But Descartes never defined what the light was in which his reason appeared to him to be clear and distinct. It must have been the light of his consciousness.
Still, but for counterintuitive theories, our genesis as human beings in the cosmos is dark. Faith in God lights up their world for people of faith in a way that supports and is supported by their intuition. It doesn’t explain how and but it tells them why. In other words, it makes the unfathomable cosmos meaningful.
The sciences apparently don’t do that for them. That’s what you’re up against.
If the enlightenment paved the way for a fragmented view of human reality, it has failed miserably and will continue to fail. For the Earth to survive Man’s exploitative and competitive destruction of his environments the how of science and the why of religion must unite. Nihilism is not our destiny. Our fondest hope is that we realize the sacredness of ecosystems in time to prevent their demise. An ecosystem requires a plurality of participants. No one is totally right or totally wrong. If that were the case all human questions would be answered by now, and they have not been. Humans progress by asking why and why not; we do not rely on ready made answers, but on striving to realize the truth. If science alone had all the answers to what it is like to be human, we would already have entered a Brave New World utopia. Who does science comfort in times of despair? It may satisfy childish curiosity, but it cannot satisfy the soul. The soul needs music, laughter and a sense of meaningful existence.
Oh, but why argue. You can argue with a snake until you turn blue, but it will still bite you because it is his nature to do so.
The enlightenmnet gave you the computer you used to make a complete arse of yourself everyday.
On that basis it is an abject failure.
Before the enlightenment gave us the methodological tools to make vaccines and other medical treatments, an old git like you would have been long dead, even if you made it past childhood.
So keep hold of your fantasies. And enjoy them, curtesy of the people who have taken the trouble to think about the world and how it works so that morons like you can persist with their pathetic dreams.
Sculptor,
Why the venom–unless your entire self- image depends on your ability to dismiss all other points of view? IMHO, that’s a rather narrow perspective. Humans are much more than your perspective can allow. So the great inventions in science and technology have prepared us for a world in which our very existence is threatened? This came about because of a lack of universal agreements on morality necessary to perpetuate ecosystems. Science will not save us from ourselves. It supports the I at the expense of the we. What is it worth if you gain the whole world but lose your soul?
"The poverty of an objectivistic account is made only too clear when we consider the mystery of music. From a scientific point of view, it is nothing but vibrations in the air, impinging on the eardrums and stimulating neural currents in the brain.
How does it come about that this banal sequence of temporal activity as the power to speak to our hearts of an eternal beauty? The whole range of subjective experience, from perceiving a patch of pink, to being enthralled by a performance of the mass in B minor, and on to the mystics encounter with the ineffable reality of the One, all these truly human experiences are at the center of our encounter with reality, and they are not to be dismissed as epiphenomenal froth on the surface of a universe whose true nature is impersonal and lifeless."
J. Polkinghorne, “Belief in God in an Age of Science”
No one is doing that.
You are just tiltling at windmills.
“After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”“—Aldous Huxley.”
I grew up in poverty, living as folks did in the 1800’s, without running water, cooking on a wood stove, etc. My father played the banjo; Mother played harmonica. We always had music. What I miss most about growing up in those days is singing in church and playing in the woods. Music made the words real. God was in the woods.
If Zarathustra could not worship a God who couldn’t dance ; I cold never abide one who couldn’t appreciate music. While I appreciate what science and technology have given me, I would trade all my junk for my former way of living. It had God and music in it. I wasn’t poor.
Thanks to Iambiguous for an honest appraisal of what’s going on in this thread and for his honest statements concerning his beliefs.
As we travel into century 21, more and more scientists are admitting that belief in God has a place in human consciousness; that it provides personal meaning for the believer; and that it is not opposed to science, but can complement science.
You’re not doing that? You’re not trying to reduce human experience to what the sciences can say about it?
Indeed.
Sculptor,.
You are who you are. No one is trying to change you. My wish is that you allow others to express their own views of human reality without condemnation. You seem to hold as enemies those who believe science is inadequate to explain totally our nature and being. In that sense you are stuck in 20th century science as if science itself could not evolve. Others do not think like this, but if it gets you through the night and comforts you in knowing yourself, so be it.
No one is capable of not allowing others to express themselves. I’m not a moderator.
It’s just that you know deep down that you are fantasizing and are nervous about the value of your opinions as they are flaky in the extreme. Take your nerves and share them with others that share your fantasies by all means, but have the decency to allow me to have my opinion too.
I do not expect you to like it.
You are stuck in the 15th century.
I’m an archeologist and anthropologist by study, and have an MA in intellectual history.
Trust me, you are the one who is totally out of touch with reality.
You might also want to consider the phrase the pot calling the kettle black,
I also have an MA, but see no sense in boasting about it here. This is not a competition; it is an exchange of ideas. Your pseudo-psychology and name calling have no place here. There is nothing flaky about ideas, not mine, but as expressed by some current scientists, who are definitely living in century 21. If my ideas are fantasy, yours are indeed infantile. You have not yet even produced your explanation as to why there can be no God for billions of believers, other than to accuse the believers of being fools.
Looks like I struck a nerve by noting that your opinion apparently substantiates your identity. For the last time this thread is not about me; why make it about you? Have you no other means of rebuttal?
I’m not boasting. It’s a plea for you and others to stop being so arrogant as to treat me like I have no education.
Billions of “believers” also think that Macdonalds is good to eat.
Please acquaint yourself with fallacy ad populam.
The idea you are expressing of god is inherently incoherent, and a theory that does no work.
Here’s a great example of psychoogical projection:
" I struck a nerve by noting that your opinion apparently substantiates your identity. For the last time this thread is not about me; why make it about you? Have you no other means of rebuttal?"
You made it about me bu trying to pin a false identity on me, in a rather childish way, which anyone would find annoying.
The fallacy ad populum would have to include centuries of honest thinkers. I prefer the Arabian proverb that goes–If a man calls you an ass, consider the source; if two men call you an ass, consider the source ; if three men call you an ass, go out and buy a pack saddle. I’m not calling you an ass, I’m just considering the fallacy of your mentioned fallacy. A billion people can be right!
The treatment of you by me and others is based on the words you use to make a point.,e.g., calling others fools etc. It comes across as the ravings of a sophomore. Where did you learn debate? How is the idea of a God incoherent? And in what way does it not work?
I’ll treat you as an adult if you can treat others the same… No one is doubting your credentials in science education. You have shown, on rare occasions, good and insightful posts. It’s a pity those occasions are rare.
How many votes did Trump get?
Ad populum-- always a fallacy? Does not democracy or trial by jury depend on votes of the majority? Trump did not get a majority of the vote. There are those among us who believe he did. In politics and religion a majority can be wrong when it neglects the actual needs of any minority.
Belief in God has with it an historical record of experience as noted by a variety of educated people. Take, as examples C. S, Lewis, Paul Tillich, Albert Schweitzer, C.E Joad, etc. Belief in God is not an ad populum fallacy. It satisfies a human need for personal meaning in an age of rampant materialism.
Not as important as ‘where’ did he get votes. The Electoral College is an interesting and unique institution, and it has even been described as the “gift that keeps on giving,” because its main objective is to maintain the principle of the sovereignty of the individual state, according to the Federalist Papers. Without it, rural states would suddenly have no political power or voice while single states like California and New York decide what happens country-wide. That would cause our country to descend into anarchy, as has happened several times in history, and we know the results of such catastrophe and fragmentation. The Electoral College is the only system that gives smaller states the opportunity to have an effect on the future of their own people according to their unique interests as a state, as well as on the country at large.
How does this support or not support the ad populum theory as it pertains to belief in God?