https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eo2LHKRR8NQ

People first need to learn how to think then talk to Richard Dawkins.

Confused girl claims Dawkins makes science a religion it itself.
In what way?
It seems like you've made a cult, a Richard Dawkins cult.

His response is that science is the opposite of religion.
When in fact science is interested in evidence and is prepared to change its mind if new evidence comes in, which is the opposite of religion.

Does that kind of science actually exist? Or that kind of religion?

Testable religion is preferable to testy religion which most are.

Dawkins is right! Science is always open to change or update as additional evidence becomes available. Religious doctrines resist change. How could the Divine be wrong!

I feel like that is my approach to my spiritual and religious beliefs as well -- they are open to revision. This is why I would neve be a good fit for a rigid sort of church.

Richard Dawkins has helped me more than anything in recovering from the hols religion had on me, post mormonism. I can watch him for hours. Same goes for Christopher Hitchens.

Hear, hear. I wholeheartedly agree.

He says that science is open to change but then goes on to say:

"it's always going to be true that we are cousins of monkeys." He's obviously not being honest. And is trying to ascribe a rigid mindset to religious people that he himself holds and at the same time is trying to deceive everyone on that fact. This is sophistry in it's purest form.

So it bothers you that humans and chimps are cousins?

macaRomney Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> He says that science is open to change but then
> goes on to say:
>
> "it's always going to be true that we are cousins
> of monkeys." He's obviously not being honest. And
> is trying to ascribe a rigid mindset to religious
> people that he himself holds and at the same time
> is trying to deceive everyone on that fact. This
> is sophistry in it's purest form.

Really? That was the best you can do? When we find out that airplanes really can't fly, I'm sure science will change to accommodate the new information.

Look, if science is wrong there will be new data and the scientific understanding will clarify. If it turns out that monkeys are actually uncles and not cousins, I'm sure Mr. Dawkins will apologize and clarify.

Our understanding is clarified and refined over time with science. Sometimes a hypothesis is discarded when new evidence arises. That is not the process of SCIENCE changing, it is openness to change and update what we know.

Religion only "changes" when it has to adapt, usually due to scientific knowledge and civil rights advancements.

I can understand why Dawkins is a crotchety old fart now. He has to put up with inane comments like yours in droves, usually people who haven't bothered to actually read his work.

Dawkins is an angry intolerant man because he was sexually molested as a child at boarding school. He refers to the attacks on him as 'mild' despite involving genital contact, indicating he has never processed what actually happened to him. His psychological defense has been to create a strong persona which is confident, strong and in control unlike the little boy who was attacked.

It may be atheist, but it is still a cult. He charges people for access to him in his fan club. The cheapest option gets you a newsletter. If you pay out more money, you get to eat with him, and if you pay out a lot of money, you get a private audience with him. You couldn't make it up.

If only he knew as much about biology as you know about psychology!

When I was a child my father used to say that no one should take Marx's thought seriously because he was a lousy husband and father. I now know that that was an ad hominem attack: the suggestion that we must disregard his analysis, rather than taking it head on, because of who he is.

What Anon anon does here is exactly the same thing. Dawkins was abused as a child and is angry, hence we don't need to take his research and conclusions seriously.

What is so frightening about examining ideas on their own merits? Was the theory of relativity wrong because Einstein was a philanderer who treated his first wife terribly and sent a child away never to be seen again?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/30/2019 11:18PM by Lot's Wife.

Picasso was an assh*le* and his paintings are therefore terrible and worthless.


* Despite the lyrics of the song by Jonathon Richman the Modern Lovers

DaVinci sucked, too, because he dug up and dissected all those corpses--and, even worse, he was gay. Anything done by such an "artist" is trash.

By definition.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/30/2019 11:19PM by Lot's Wife.

macaRomney has now on multiple threads trotted out his old obscurantist canards. This is the man who thinks that the quadratic equation is a waste of time, that science and technology are not valuable academic pursuits, that Europeans "civilized" the Native Americans.

He is as far from scientific empiricism as one could possibly be. Here and on the other thread he declared that science is wrong on race. He wrote that Mormonism is closer to the truth than science because Mormonism teaches that race is real. Here he repeats his BS: science says that humans are related to primates, therefore science is wrong.

One has to be scientifically illiterate, and inveterately close-minded to reject the reality of genetics. macaRomney presumably goes to the doctor and gets flu shots, which are based on genetics; he obviously types on a keyboard that relies on not only the quadratic equation but also quantum mechanics. And yet science is wrong because it does not reach the conclusion he thinks it must about race.

Hie once said of him, "I weep for the education of some Americans." What is even worse than lacking a rudimentary education, however, is the arrogance of believing that one is better off for that fact.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

There is no question that the student in this exchange is confused and inarticulate. However, the question was not about science per se, but about Dawkins’ brand of science. Thus, her statement, “You make science into a religion” is what Dawkins’ needs to respond to here, not the merits or validity of science per se, which is indisputable.

Given that, we might begin by asking: When (if ever) does “science” become a religion?

The answer to this question is very straightforward: Science becomes a religion when it makes *metaphysical* claims about its epistemic stature, express or implied, that cannot be supported by its own demand for scientific evidence. For example, to suggest that science is the final arbiter of all truth is a metaphysical claim that is not supported by scientific evidence. So, with that said, we can ask whether Dawkins’ commitment to science goes beyond what is supported by science?

In his book, The God Delusion, Dawkins goes to great lengths to differentiate between “supernatural” religion involving a personal God, and Einstein’s “religion” that disavows such a being. He wants to affirm, or at least allow, the latter, while dismissing the former. This is what he says toward the end of this discussion:

“Let me sum up Einsteinian religion in one more quotation from Einstein himself: 'To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious.' [Dawkins responds:] In this sense I too am religious, with the reservation that 'cannot grasp' does not have to mean 'forever ungraspable.'”[Dawkins 2006:19]

Notice first that in Einstein’s comment here (and in many other places) he identifies his “religion” with a commitment to the transcendent. Thus, “there is something” behind our experiences that “the mind cannot grasp.” And, this transcendent “something” is not just some bit of knowledge we do not have yet. Whatever it is, it is reflected to us indirectly in “beauty and solemnity.” This is what being “religious” meant to Einstein, and precisely why he repeatedly used the word in describing his own beliefs. And it was most certainly NOT just a vague psychological “awe” about the laws of nature. It was a commitment to a reality beyond the reach of science. Such views were extremely common among scientists in the first half of the 20th Century.

Dawkins is not “religious” even in this Einsteinian sense. He subtly betrays the essential difference between his view and Einstein’s by his added caveat that he agrees with Einstein so long as ‘cannot grasp’ does not mean ‘forever ungraspable.’ In other words, Dawkins denies here and in many other places, that there is such thing as “transcendent” reality; a “something’ that is in principle beyond science. Thus, his views and Einstein’s are fundamentally at odds.

More importantly, this one statement by Dawkins logically entails a commitment to science that is metaphysical. He essentially is saying that there is no reality or knowledge that is in principle beyond the grasp of science. Such a claim is not scientific; i.e. there is no scientific evidence to support this claim. It is a form of religious-type faith!

Traditional religion takes Einstein’s transcendent “something” and identifies it with a personal, creator God. That is, of course, the “religion” that Einstein rejects. Einstein and Dawkins would agree that there is no evidence for such a being. But that is beside the point because there is no evidence for Einstein’s transcendent “something” either, whatever it may be. Einstein “senses” such a “something.” A traditional believer “senses” that this transcendent something is a personal God. In either case, scientific evidence has nothing to do with it. As such, Dawkins cannot attack traditional religion on grounds of a lack of scientific evidence while allowing Einstein his transcendent “something” that is also beyond science.

Dawkins’ inconsistency gets worse because all of science is itself dependent upon subjective human experience which is itself a transcendent reality that is beyond scientific understanding. Everything we experience, including in the scientific context, is dependent upon consciousness and human cognition, which is itself transcendent to science: It is not quantifiable, and its effects on physical reality are a complete mystery. This transcendent character of consciousness is undoubtedly part of what Einstein was talking about when he said in the above quote that there was something “behind our experiences.”

In the 1294-page edited book, The Cognitive Neurosciences (2009), neuroscientist Christof Koch stated:

“Consciousness is one of the most enigmatic features of the universe. People not only act but feel: they see, hear, smell, recall, plan for the future. These activities are associated with subjective, ineffable, immaterial feelings that are tied in some manner to the material brain. . . These firsthand, subjective experiences pose a daunting challenge to the scientific method that has, in many other areas, proven so immensely fruitful. The brute fact of consciousness comes as a total surprise; it does not appear to follow from any phenomena in traditional physics or biology.” [Koch 2009:1137]

In other words, by our present understanding of physical reality, consciousness is transcendent to science. It is mental not physical, and thus metaphysical and philosophical, and not scientific!

But bare consciousness is not the only transcendent aspect of human experience. Other human capacities are also transcendent to science, including human freewill, insight, and creativity. Regarding, creativity, Margaret Boden, the leading AI expert in this area stated:

“Mysteries, however, are different. If a puzzle is an unanswered question, a mystery is a question that can barely be intelligently asked, never mind satisfactorily answered. Mysteries are beyond the reach of science. Creativity itself is seemingly a mystery, for there is something paradoxical about it, something which makes it difficult to see how it is even possible. How it happens is indeed puzzling, but that it happens at all is deeply mysterious.” [Boden 1991:1]

Given the above, it is perfectly legitimate for Dawkins to appeal to scientific facts when challenging particular religious doctrines. But he cannot use science to disavow all of human experience, including religious experience, that does not meet his scientific paradigm. So, when he appeals to evolution, or science generally, as he often does, to undermine the validity of transcendent human experiences, whether they be of the Einsteinian type or the more traditional belief in God, he himself is engaged in religion, or scientism.

Evolution does not tell us everything that being human encompasses; not on its face or in its details. Moreover, it does not provide the full explanation of life or intelligence; far from it. To suggest otherwise is to make claims beyond what the scientific evidence supports. And to make the further claim that somehow science and/or evolution eliminates the reality of the transcendent is not only religious scientism, it is falsifiable by human experience itself.

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed." Einstein

"I am not an Atheist. I do not know if I can define myself as a Pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. May I not reply with a parable? The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza's Pantheism. I admire even more his contributions to modern thought. Spinoza is the greatest of modern philosophers, because he is the first philosopher who deals with the soul and the body as one, not as two separate things." Einstein

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_and_philosophical_views_of_Albert_Einstein#cite_note-22

"As “atheists” we give others, and even ourselves, the sense that we are well on our way toward purging the universe of mystery. As advocates of reason, we know that mystery is going to be with us for a very long time. Indeed, there are good reasons to believe that mystery is ineradicable from our circumstance, because however much we know, it seems like there will always be brute facts that we cannot account for but which we must rely upon to explain everything else. This may be a problem for epistemology but it is not a problem for human life and for human solidarity. It does not rob our lives of meaning. And it is not a barrier to human happiness."
Sam Harris, The Problem with Atheism

https://samharris.org/the-problem-with-atheism/

Considering the Harris quote, one problem with his acceptance and tolerance of mystery is his inability or refusal to associate any such mysteries with a genuine transcendent reality. This is what traditional atheists, like Dawkins, refuse to accept because it opens the door to religious thinking at the expense of hard scientific rationality. But, notwithstanding this difficulty, there is clearly much mystery in human experience that *does* suggest a transcendent reality--even within the realm of science, and Einstein and many others have pointed out!

Consider the following quote from Harris' essay in your link addressing spirituality and spiritual experiences:

"One problem with atheism as a category of thought, is that it seems more or less synonymous with not being interested in what someone like the Buddha or Jesus may have actually experienced. In fact, many atheists reject such experiences out of hand, as either impossible, or if possible, not worth wanting. Another common mistake is to imagine that such experiences are necessarily equivalent to states of mind with which many of us are already familiar—the feeling of scientific awe, or ordinary states of aesthetic appreciation, artistic inspiration, etc."

Notice that Harris does not tell us how *he* views such experiences either ontologically or epistemologically. (i.e. what reality they present, and what knowledge is acquired through them) We are told that they are possible, helpful, and even special (not mere emotions); and that atheists should take them seriously, and pay more attention to them, but he does not give us any hint of whether he thinks they point to a transcendent reality, as both Buddha and Jesus, and countless others, would claim. If he *doesn't* make such an acknowledgement, what could such experiences be, other than merely mundane brain states. And if he *does* acknowledge such a reality, he would get a great deal of pushback from his followers and admirers for believing in something "unscientific."

Here is the point, however: If the Buddha, Jesus, Einstein, and millions of religious believers of whatever stripe, claim to have such transcendent experiences, by definition they also claim the existence of some transcendent reality that underlies such experiences--regardless of how they might differ in the details. So, "Harris' dilemma" (as I call it) is whether as an "atheist" (of sorts) he can not only acknowledge the practical value of such experiences (as he does), but also acknowledge that there is indeed a genuine transcendent reality associated with them. I have never read him making such an acknowledgement, because if he did, his agenda to undermine religious faith would be considerably compromised.

All hail the king of "argumentum ad ignorantum." Hail! hail! Bemis.


*insert eye roll and heavy sigh here*


HH =)

"Harris' dilemma . . . is whether . . . he can not only acknowledge the practical value of such experiences . . . but also acknowledge that there is indeed a genuine transcendent reality associated with them."

The second part of that sentence does not logically follow from the first.

Is the experience inside the skull or outside?

I’m not sure Henry is on the right track. Sam Harris is quite open about his MDMA experience, so I doubt he has anything against the transcendent. It’s the uncritical thinking of most religion that he has a beef with. Followers let themselves be tools, which is a waste of human potential.

Never let who you are get in the way of who you could be. That’s why Mormonism had to go. Why for Harris religion had to go. Although he’s a religious leader of sorts. An Atheism evangelist who has painted himself into a corner because now he has a fan base to keep happy.

Is the experience inside the skull or outside?

COMMENT: The "experience" is always inside the skull; in the sense that it is a person that is having the experience, presumably through a brain. The question is whether the experience manifests or points to a reality that is outside the skull; i.e. that is transcendent. We assume that when we experience a tree, say, that there is some reality out there that causes or underlies that experience; i.e. an actual tree. Can we say the same thing about spiritual experiences?
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I’m not sure Henry is on the right track. Sam Harris is quite open about his MDMA experience, so I doubt he has anything against the transcendent. It’s the uncritical thinking of most religion that he has a beef with. Followers let themselves be tools, which is a waste of human potential.

COMMENT: Well, I am not an expert on Sam Harris, so you might be right. But again, my guess is that he readily acknowledges the "experience" (i.e. the internal quality or feeling) but am not sure he acknowledges any external transcendent reality that such experiences suggest. If you have a quote that would be helpful.
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Never let who you are get in the way of who you could be. That’s why Mormonism had to go. Why for Harris religion had to go. Although he’s a religious leader of sorts. An Atheism evangelist who has painted himself into a corner because now he has a fan base to keep happy.

COMMENT: Yes. And the point is that it is not easy to dismiss religion's transcendent claims on grounds of science or evidence, while holding on to your own brand of mysticism. Of course you can always criticize religion when it makes claims that are factually false or inconsistent with science, but a mere belief in God is not susceptible to such criticisms. When Harris acknowledges any sort of transcendent reality he is therefore putting himself in a corner with his fan base; as you say.

A lot of this is arguing over semantics.


For most of us, the value of Dawkins, Hitchins etc is to puncture the bubble of religion and wake people up to the fact that religious emperors wear no clothes. You don't have to engage in a debate as to whether science is a religion or whether Dawkins is a humourless grumpy atheist. Just use his works as a basis for making your own judgments about religion.

Personally I found Hitchins to be the best of them - cutting, arrogant, supremely intelligent and articulate. Doesn't mean I would have wanted to marry him though.

A lot of this is arguing over semantics.

COMMENT: No, its not semantics. There is no dispute about the meaning of the word "transcendent" in this context as applied to spiritual experiences. But it *is* philosophy! And remember, Harris prides himself in being a philosopher-neuroscientist, so he has to get his story straight.

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For most of us, the value of Dawkins, Hitchins etc is to puncture the bubble of religion and wake people up to the fact that religious emperors wear no clothes.

COMMENT: When such authors adhere strictly to criticizing religion on the basis of the inconsistency of certain religious beliefs with existing scientific evidence, and other facts of human experience, they are on solid ground. It is only when they take a broad view and criticize religious faith per se because it is "unscientific" that they run into trouble--as I have explained above.

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You don't have to engage in a debate as to whether science is a religion or whether Dawkins is a humourless grumpy atheist. Just use his works as a basis for making your own judgments about religion.

COMMENT: O.K. But if you are not careful, you will confuse their good arguments with their bad arguments. Dawkins' The God Delusion; Dennett's Breaking the Spell; Harris' The End of Faith; and Hitchens' God is not Great, ALL contain sweeping fallacious arguments against religion of the kind I have noted in this thread. They all engage in a form of religious scientism. Of course, whether they are old, grumpy or dead, is completely irrelevant.

Science is a method; religion a belief.

Can't really "believe" in science, it's not dogma.

10 'Dogmas' of Science - Rupert Sheldrake

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fCQ9I-mT-tU