The Godless Fundamentalist

I find Lakshmi Chaudhry’s account of atheist Richard Dawkins’ positions to be inaccurate and self-serving.

To my knowledge, never has Dawkins asserted that one needs to have “faith” in the scientific method.  The scientific method is a procedure—something one does—not the object of faith.  It makes as much sense to say that one has faith that when they bathe they wash behind their ears.

The practice of faith and the practice of science are polar opposites: the former relies on dogmatic resistance to change, and the latter thrives on change.  Yes, of course religious beliefs have evolved, but only over long time periods.  Religion and tradition may be considered synonymous over most individuals’ lifetimes.  By contrast, science challenges itself every second it is practiced, with the advancement of objective knowledge being the only goal, and all else, even the most tried-and-true theories, are always subject to revision as we develop our understanding further.  This is the very essence of the scientific method.

Dawkins would never suggest that the scientific method will reveal “all” in good time, a flawed premise which she then uses to assert that Dawkins treats science the same way religious extremists treat faith.  In a televised lecture, Dawkins specificially allowed that some things may remain forever unknowable.  However, he was clear that because some things may elude our understanding, that is no reason to ascribe them to some invisible man who lives in the sky.

I do agree with the proposition that religion does represent an integral part of what defines us as human and must be acknowledged as such.  But in my reading of history, the ones who have murdered to protect their views against challenge were, and still are, the religious zealots, not the scientists.  Conflating the two is profane.

The author’s comments on Dr. Dawkins are often typical of those who attack atheists.  The attacks attempt to equate atheism and belief in the scientific method as just another form of “religion” that is just as dogmatic as the faiths that are “disrespected”.  This approach reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of science itself and what it means to be an atheist or skeptic.  As a trained scientist, I understand that you can never prove a negative.  I cannot prove God exists, however, I would say that there has never been any real world proof that God does exist, and that all the scientific evidence would clearly point in the direction that no “personal God” that involves himself/herself in human events exists.

What does amaze me is that rationale people who would expect proof of any other extraordinary claims accept the existence of God with no proof whatsoever.  If I told you that I could fly or levitate, you would expect me to prove it by demonstrating it.  But if I were to tell you that an ancient book of susperstitious writngs is either the literal or metaphorical word of God it is accepted as true.  The reason for this is simple.  Religion gets you when you are young.  Very few people are wiling to question the set of beliefs handed down to them by their parents and culture. 

The beauty of science as a way to understand the world is that it requires that experiments be proveable and subject to the kind of scrutiny that religion forbids.  In science it is the “heretic” who overtturns the existing scientific understanding of the world who is rewarded, men such as Einstein and Darwin.  The scientist that developed a new theory that overturned either of these two’s theories would be immensely rewarded.  A religious heretic can look forward to the possibility of being killed.  Terrible things have been done using scientific knowledge, but that is not the fault of science, it is how it is used by humans.  The response to that line is religion has been manipulated by bad people too, however a wonder ful saying that I like to use follows “It goes without saying that bad people will do bad things, but for good people to do bad things takes religion.”

I will close with one more thought that I tell religious people when talking with them.  “You are just as much of an atheist as I am, I just happen to believe in one less god than you do.  When you realize why you reject all the other gods and religions, you will realize why I reject yours.”

This essay is mental slop. Religion means belief in the supernatural.
One can reject such a notion without being a total materialist.
We know the physical world exists, why not start there ?
If we say consciousness created existence we are stuck in a maze.
Who created consciousness if it didn’t exist out of the material world ?
Who created the god who created the god who created the god.............
If you say one god, who and when ? He or she ? Black or white ?
Moderate or rightwing of the GOP ?
Break down a- the-ism into three syllables and you’ll feel less frightened. An atheist is simply an a-theist.
I don’t think the intellectual schizophrenia the author endorses is admirable.
We have philosophy as an alternative to religion and most science originally out of philosophy when they became specialized enough.
Philosophy of science is with us today. Even if Dawkins is a totally
arrogant ass that doesn’t make a case for god.

I’m really surprised In These Times would print such a puerile essay. As many who argue against Dawkins, Dennet, Harris and the like, this essay begins from an assertion that God and revealed-religions are supported by objective evidence.  It is this foundation these authors suggest you re-consider. I suggest reading Dennet’s “Breaking the Spell” --but you must do it with an open mind, that is, “as if God might not exist” to understand his thought experiments.

This essay says the following: “Yes, the laws of nature and those of God might still exist without human beings....That the vast majority of us would find it difficult to choose between the two should be hardly surprising. The antidote to fanaticism is not a new puritanism of reason, but the contradictory, ambiguous, compromised reality of ordinary human experience.” Dawkins and his ilk are questioning, what evidence do you have for these “laws of God?” Scientists have plenty of objective evidence for their laws and theories.  What the essay really shows is a lack of understanding of much current scholarship--well referenced especially by Dawkins and Dennet, that shows the evolution of mind, of moral behavior etc.  The so-called “laws of God” come from books who derive their authority --essentially from the books themselves.  I would ask the author to pick any relgion she disdains--maybe Scientology is an example--word revealed from a supernatural source to a human.  She probably wouldn’t accept it. Why? not enough evidence.

On the contrary, she is simpy trying to express the balance that is necessary to manuever thru this dicotomy ."Taken together, (both religion and science) express our need to both submit and to control, to know and to believe, to be in the visible world and to transcend it.” Its about being a rational human being.  So what if the conclusions we come to are not neat and tidy.  Being a human is not that neat and tidy and neither must our thoughts and conclusions always be.  But western dualism —either or—thinking--- demands this of us. If its not this way --its that way . Your are either with us our against us. Lakshmi Chaudhry is succintly presenting us with a third more Humanistic approach.

There seems to be a movement around to label those who are unwilling to defer to religious sensitivities as “fundamentalist” atheists.

I don’t know who first came up with this catch phrase, but as is usual in such cases it is meant to confuse the issue with “framing”.

Atheists think that there is no proof for supernatural events. In fact the word itself means that which is beyond the natural. Since the only things that can exist in the real world are “natural”, supernatural things can’t exist by definition.

Since there is no supernatural then everything must be explainable (eventually) by science, The fact that science gets things wrong at times and needs to correct them shows that it is a continuing process that yields better results with time. This is opposed to the supernatural where events cannot be replicated or explained.

Those whose religious beliefs are weakest try to demean the scientific method by calling it “fundamentalist”. But dogmatic science is not a problem with science it is a problem with those who attach too much validity to the theory of the moment and are unwilling to modify their views when new data comes along. This is a failure in people, not the scientific method.

The method is easily explained. A theory is put forth which explains the known data as well as possible. If a single instance arises which contradicts the theory then the theory must be abandoned or modified. Science works by failure, not success.

Apologists for religion have the burden on them, not the other way around. Show the existence of the supernatural in a way that can be tested and is not just a group of historical anecdotes.

To show the fallacy of the religious method (appeals to history and authority) I offer this little essay that proves Santa Claus exists:
http://robertdfeinman.com/society/belief_standards.html

Well said.  It’s a mistake, in my opinion, to place science in opposition to religion, when it’s really an evolved extension ot it, a more rational religion which makes all of us acolytes at the altar of an Almighty Method, an Invisible Hand which determines the destiny of each and every one of us, if only a sufficiently complex model can be constructed to account for a manageably infinite variety of variables.  Religion was invented to promote solidarity and social cohesion for a civilization whose members are made constantly conscious of their individual mortality, and promised the relative immortality of the collective which survives them.  Utopian materialism is no less utopian than the kingdom of heaven..

In the end, Ms. Chaudhry still believes in fairy tales and invisible gods, and Mr. Dawkins does not. Mr. Dawkins can actually show us proof of his findings in his science, and Ms. Chaudhry cannot begin to prove the existence of invisible supernatural beings.

There’s nothing natural about the universe we inhabit, from the alphabet we use to construct our thoughts to the computers we use to communicate them.  Very few of us would survive in a natural universe.  In fact, most of us exist in a supernatural universe, and we are, therefore, the supernatural beings who exist within it.  Your failure to recognize this obvious phenomenon makes me, for example, an invisible supernatural being.

QED

I have been glad to read Dawkins’ writings in the past, for instance The Blind Watchmaker and The Selfish Gene. His conceptualization of memes as mental objects that “survive” or “become extinct” through processes not unlike natural selection is also a worthwhile offering. As for the root of all evil, however, how about a doctrinaire attachment to one’s own understandings, to the exclusion of even giving a respectful hearing to those of another? It’s that attachment to one’s own “rightness”, and by implication, the other’s irredeemable “wrongness”, that leads to truly harmful ideas like heresy as a criminal offense, Inquisition-style thought police, and a host of other excuses to use persecution and violence against those who see the world in a way that diverges from “our” unquestionable truth.

Also, to throw out the figurative baby of moral codes that de-emphasize the centrality of oneself, with the bath water of suffering spawned by the politicization of faith (which I think is central to the faults religion is tainted with), is short-sighted and prejudicial. Science, unfettered by the restraints of ethical standards, can wreak havoc in the hands of ideologues even as much as religion can. When the Nazis wanted to euthanize people with Down Syndrome or other conditions that were thought to pollute the gene pool (conditions like being a member of an ethnic minority), they were being scientific. They were being rather horrifyingly unethical, but by applying the concept of the beneficial cull to society, they were using materialistic methods to solving the problem they considered most threatening. The fact that their premises did not include classifying people with 47 chromosomes (or people of, for example, Slavic ancestry) as full human beings doesn’t mean they were being illogical or unscientific. Just ruthless. Scientists, rationalists, materialists, atheists, choose your moniker, are not immune from ruthlessness, any more than are mystics or romanticists. And I think any of the above, whether mystical or materialist, could become as destructive as, say, the Inquisition was, if they should get the conceptual bit of their own unchallengeable rightness between their teeth and begin to run roughshod over those they see as philosophical adversaries.

I disagree with Kuya here. I think the boundary line is between reason
and unreason. The Nazis were hardly great exponents of reason, there
is nothing in science that dictates murder. That is a human choice.
Hitler in fact was quite mystical and often said he was doing God’s
work, he was not an atheist. The Communists who have killed hundreds of millions according to some estimate, Mao alone
maybe 100 million, but their theory owes much to religion philosophically, the whole emphasis on attacking wealth & materialism,
the divine mission of the proletariat, history as a force in itself rather
made by individual human actors, the inevitability of communism, etc.
I don’t think atrocities per se are caused by people with strong views, they are caused by people with wrong views. I think people should be very firm and unyielding in rejecting evil, not mushy and compromising.
Also I think the anti-pleasure, anti-personal happiness, anti-individualism of religious moral codes were simply secularized by
the Communists and the Nazis & Fascists as well as many third world
despots.
Major Major’s comments are absurd. Of course, we live in a natural universe. How else could we survive ? The universe is law governed
and rational if we just use our brains to figure out things. Praying to
ghosts is not helpful.

I would agree, blondemike, that the Nazis owed much more to romanticism than rationalism in the bases of their ideology, and Hitler was mystical in so many of his thought processes (thank God, or he might have rationally decided to consolidate his gains in Europe made before June 1941, rather than invading the USSR so quickly, which was his major “overreach"… or made other more logical military decisions instead of the ones he did make, like using astrological “data” in planning military actions) but the systematic and efficient approach the Nazis used in culling undesireables reminds me more of a scientific mindset, albeit applied science of the sort a farmer might use in selecting which animals would be killed and which fed and bred. Perhaps the nuts-and-bolts of the operation would have been figured out by a left-hemisphere-dominant type (Himmler?), while Hitler had the role of impassioned idea-man and visionary.

“Culling undesireables"… doesn’t really sanitize “mass murder” as a euphemism, does it? Pretty spooky level of dehumanization, but of course that was their program. We do anything we want to those we don’t consider “people like us”.

I do still believe that the difference-in-results attributable to either mystics or rationalists lies most in the insistence upon holding fast to ethical limitations, e.g. doing no harm to those who aren’t harming oneself, rather than as an inherent superiority of moral effect that either one of the sides of the dichotomy might try to claim for itself. And we are hearing that claim, from both sides, aren’t we? In a self-servingly biased manner, I think, whichever side is doing the talking.

There’s nothing “natural” about civilization.  As I understand it, it evolved over the millenia to secure our ancestors from the constant threat of extinction from their “natural” predators (all those horns and claws and fangs which were combined to communicate the symbolic presence of a demon).  As such, we are naturally inclined to perceive the universe from a supernatural perspective, one which reflects a special imperative to dominate nature.  As our consciousness evolved, so did the precision of the language we used to explain our environment.  We no longer bury our dead to limit our exposure to predatory scavengers.  Many of them are extinct.  But the practical wisdom implicit to religious ceremony insured (to a significant degree) the survival of the species.  It still does.  Sometimes who you pray with is more important than who you pray to.

The author avoids smug reason and blind faith by embracing contradiction, ambiguity, and compromise.

Why?

Because neither the english bright nor the religious right are sufficiently polite.

Kuya, I agree with much of what you write. I’m not sure that Hitler was as
big into astrology as say Nancy Reagan and some historians like John
Toland claim he was better in his military forecasting than the much
overrated German General Staff. But there’s no question that his preemptive invasion of the USSR was a major error only exceeded
by his declaration of war on the US after Pearl Harbor. Japan itself
had a nonaggression pact with the USSR that held till Truman’s
criminal a-bombing.
There is an issue of rationalization, using reason in a very narrow instrumental sense to justify unethical or grossly immoral actions.
And I agree with you that whomever of whatever persuasion does this should be unequivocally opposed. I always hate vets who use the
terrible phrase “putting down” to rationalize killing cats or dogs.
Sometimes it’s an unavoidable last resort but I loathe the term.
My beef with religion is just supernaturalism, I just don’t believe in
god or miracles. Raised a Catholic, atheist since I read Ayn Rand’s
Atlas Shrugged at age 15, no beef against the Church, was an altar
boy, never molested.

Major, since we are part of nature whatever civilization we create is a
part of natural. The very term “unnatural” is wrong, a nuclear power
plant is as much a part of nature as a redwood tree. Auschwitz is a
part of nature and who said that all of nature has to be good ?
There is a nasty dominating part of nature and we as humans can
mitigate it to some extent or even eliminate hostle species like
dinosaurs or snakes. See Murray Bookchin’s The Ecology of Freedom
for an analysis of the roots of domination in human society.
Much of the Left has adopted a Nazi like reverence for the primitive
in nature, the Gaiia Goddess crap comes to mind.
People who actually have to survive in the wilds don’t share this
reverence. American Indians killed off most of the buffalo before
whitey came but don’t tell Noam Chomsky this, he’s stuck on the
Roussean Noble Savage paradigm.

Dawkins is, indeed , a fundamentalist.  He has an completely unproveable hypothesis , namely that god does not exist. Using the scientific method we would simply leave this question alone until we came up with some kind of experiment that would give evidence to support a hypothesis. He is in the EXACT same position as proponents of intelligent design.

I am not religious. however, i find the contempt some atheists have for religion to be the mirror image of fundamentalists contempt for non-believers. the rational approach is agnosticism and respect for others in general.

I don’t want to get hung up on the semantics of nature, other than to observe that many natural scientists are themselves prone to invoke the supernatural when confronted with the implications of their experiments.  Oppenheimer’s comparison of the human race to the god of destruction comes to mind, or Newton’s persistent efforts to transmute lead into gold, presumably the reason why he was placed in charge of the Royal Mint.  His conception of gravity, for that matter, invoked the miraculous phenomenon of action at a distance, and much of the research of modern physics (curved space, gravity waves) is an attempt to establish a more natural foundation for the theory.  Whether you call it natural or I call it supernatural is beside the point.  I use the term just to piss off the arrogant assholes who believe that their intelligence is a suitable substitute for the absence of empathy.  Let’s split the difference and call it extraordinary.  The point is that social organization requires social control, and I’m less inclined to trust the rational control freaks, if only because the consequences of their control strategies are more comprehensive than those of their less rational counterparts.  It’s one thing to recognize, for example, that the modernization of the Middle East will require a revoutionary cultural upheaval.  It’s quite another recognition altogether to attempt to retard the process with blockade and containment policies, or to accelerate it with with invasion and occupation.  But it’s certainly rational, one way or the other.

Some scientists come back to god for sure but that proves nothing.
Unfortunately a great many physicists are anti-intellectual, anti-integration, anti-philosophical and prefer a very narrow lab focus.
This doesn’t obviate that all life is part of nature so what we do is
per se part of nature. It can be bad as well good to reiterate the obvious.
It’s NOT rational to try to force change on another people, the Shah
tried that in Iran and look at the reaction. Ergo for the US invasion of
Iraq and Afghanistan.
Social organization does not REQUIRE social control, it often happens
that way but it’s not a “law” of nature, it is a choice taken by the human
part of nature.
We can oppose the arrogant controllers without succumbing to supernaturalism.

Two things bother me about recent comments. For one thing, Dawkins hypothesis is “you can’t prove god exists,” so it is misguided to put all of this effort and rancor and money into fightng about it or supporting it.  That is very different from saying he has proof there is no god.  He simply says the changes in infinitely small and go against every other principle we have regarding how nature/life works.  The second thing is the “attack the messenger” syndrome.  Dawkins and others are attacked for being sure of what they know--and sure of what they don’t know--and they have evidence for it. The physicist Lawrence Krause, who has been active in fighting anti-evolution forces said at a lecture one time, when debating the other side, sometimes their views really do not deserve respect, “they are just wrong” and you have to say so. That’s a lot different than being strident about something you have no proof for. 

Finally, I quote Daniel Dennett who has written several books on this same subject: “There is an asymmetry: atheists in general welcome the most intensive and objective examination of their views, practices and reasons.  …The religious, in contrast, often bristle at the impertinence, the lack of respect, the sacrilege, implied by anybody who wants to investigate their views.” (A case in point, Dawkins was recently confronted by Liberty U. students [Falwell’s school] about their supposedly 3000 year old dinosaur bones.  “Let’s send them out to be dated” was Dawkin’s rejoinder. 

Dennet goes on to say the religious “should welcome an investigation just as we skeptics want one, because if they are right, we skeptics will enthusiastically join their cause. “ He discusses the idea of miracles and that religion is a natural phenonomon.  If people attribute miracles to God, then proving so with the scientific method should be the perfect way to bring in a doubting world.  Since many religious don’t want their miracles checked, he says, “Refusing to play by these rules only creates the suspicion that one doesn’t really believe religion is supernatural after all.”

There is a quote attributed to anonymous: Philosopy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned.

timeforchange, I pretty much agree with you except for the idea that philosophical problems may be unanswerable. That’s a legacy of Kant,
who decided to limit reason in order to make room for religious faith.
His noumenal world like his categories are preposterous arbitrary
assertions that bear no relation to objective reality. Allegedly he was
trying to answer Hume’s absurdity that there is no regularity in causation but his answer was worse than Hume’s non-problem and western philosophy has been chasing its tail ever since.
I once tried to explain this to Chomsky and the arrogant bozo couldn’t
get it ! So much for the world’s most important intellectual !

aetheism is disbelief in god. agnosticism is lack of certainty. anybody who professes atheism is just as much a believer in the unproveable as are theists. Dawkins is both strident and rude in his unporoveable belief system - as are many fundamentalists.

other examples of the religion of science include “string theory”. First off, since it has not been subject to any verification by experimentation, it is not even a theory. Nor has it produced a single shred of technological advancement. Yet this “theory” has become de rigeur in physics departments everywhere. Can anyone refute that this is at all different than christian theologians arguing about how many angels can fit on the head of a pin?

scientists rarely like to admit where their knowledge ends. but, if you want to dig into it a bit you will find that science will never answer many of the ultimate questions which we use belief/religion to answer. anyone who claims otherwise is deluding themselves - and unfortunately in Dawkins case - deluding others as well.

were he truly a rationalist - he would have to say “i don’t know”. some egos can not handle that.

Au contraire. It is a real disservice to equate science with relgion in terms of how they work and how the practioners think.  Dawkins was recently quoted in Time magazine as saying “There could be something incredibly grand and incomprehensible and beyond our understanding.” He clearly believes there is insufficient evidence for any of the particular gods now in vogue, and certainly doubts strongly the existence of any, including his “something” in the above quote. 

I suspect the terms “atheist” and “agnostic” or on a sliding scale.  Atheist to me means someone who doesn’t believe there is any satisfactory proof to date there is a god, and deeply doubts, but can’t rule out, that such proof is obtainable.  However, even believers who are reading this are atheists when it comes to Zeus. 

Daniel Dennett, whom I quoted in an earlier post, is as skeptical as Dawkins, simply invites religions to play by the same rules as science.  String theory at least has mathematical support and is subjected to rigorous peer review.  I’ve read of some physicists who have said they hate the theory, don’t believe it, but still can’t find anything wrong with the math so they are stuck with it until something better comes along. Even the believers in it continue to probe and experiment and play with it to find out the truth. [Compare that to the bumper sticker, “God said it. I believe it. That’s that."] I attended a physics meeting not so long ago and the spectrum of physcists were all there expressing their views on string theory.  In the meantime, revealed religion is still where it was when Martin Luther said something like, “reason is the enemy of faith.” You won’t even find a forum where the likes of Falwell, Dobson and the like let in Jim Wallis and others of moderate religious persuasion debate their various arguments.

Science is the polar opposite of faith with the majority occupying the middle ground.

Morality is independent.

What ever you need to believe that results in you behaving in a good and decent fashion, go ahead and believe.

Morality should be a code of values based on reality, the external physical world of our senses. Anything else is a fraud.
Middle of the road is not a safe place to be, get run over that way.

Our civilization is suffused with the supernatural spirit of the living and the dead.  Just because you choose to ignore their presence doesn’t mean they don’t exist.  You’re reading these words on a monitor which was produced by thousands of people, from the people who acquired the raw materials to the people who manufactured the component parts to those who assembled them and shipped the finished product to your doorstep.  I’m sure you reject the labor theory of spiritual investment, but the spirit of the people who produced that monitor is right there in front of you, running an electrical current through the crt as you follow its phosphorescent trail across the aperture grill of the screen.  In fact, your monitor is the spirit of the people who produced it.  You’re just too preoccupied processing the output to notice it.

Excuse me but what are you talking about ? Did dead people contribute here after they died ?  I know the results of thought can live on forever but the actual people don’t.  There’s nothing supernatural about that.

“Morality should be a code of values based on reality”

Thus the strong should domimate the weak. We should all self optimize in whatever ways are best for ourselves. Really who needs morality? It merely protects those who cannot protect themselves.  (Hey, this is just the devils advocate in me writing.)

“other examples of the religion of science include “string theory”.”

Maybe but maybe not. There are experiments envisioned that may be able to distinguish not only if string theory (M Theory) is correct, but also which versions might be correct. Nothing wrong with theory getting ahead of data (as long as data can one day catch up!).

Lets not forget the obvious. Our lives would be meaningless if we were all completely rational. Who would want to live without love, taste, enjoyment? It is the non-rational that makes up our “souls” (even if the rational puts bread on the table).

“Unfortunately a great many physicists are anti-intellectual, anti-integration, anti-philosophical and prefer a very narrow lab focus.:

Utter nonsense! (Though i have no idea what anti-integration means in this context.) I will admit that we tend to be a bit socially retarded, though.

Love, taste, enjoyment are irrational ?
Just asserting “utter nonsense” after my comments about the anti-intellectualism of modern physicists is hardly an argument, much
less a rebuttal.
You seem like a typically screwed product of modern anti-philosophy.

It’s a fool who looks for logic in the chambers of the human heart.
Ulysses Everett McGill

At the beginning of this discussion Wisceptic stated What does amaze me is that rationale people who would expect proof of any other extraordinary claims accept the existence of God with no proof whatsoever.

That made me laugh! And cry.

Proof !? We ain’t got no proof. We don’t need no proof !
I don’t have to show you any stinking proof !!
(Or stinking badges.)

Has everyone forgotten what faith is?

Faith: Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.

Faith: Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.

Faith needs no proof.

When a son tells his father that he believes in him is he merely acknowledging his father’s existence or is he affirming his trust in his father?

What a tempest in a teapot . 

Without faith we’d never get out of bed in the morning.

Without reason we’d likely get run over by a truck as soon as we stepped out the door.

“I’m not gonna worry wrinkles in my brow
‘Cause nothin’s ever gonna be alright nohow
No matter how I struggle and strive
I’ll never get out of this world alive.”

Hank Williams

You’re missing the trees for the leaves, Mike.  I’m not sure of the situation in the Pacific Southwest, but out here in the Great Lakes most of them are definitely deciduous and at this time of the year they’re impossible to ignore.  The analysts are schooled in the skills of dissection, but the rest of us are essentially synthetic.  We need to locate ourselves at the center of some grand scheme of creation.  Otherwise, what’s a metaphor?

Semantics have become a problem in this discussion.  One doesn’t have “faith” in a truth (here defined as a fact). That is belief in or knowledge of… Similarly, a son doesn’t have faith in his father without some experience of how that father treats him. 

But “faith that needs no proof” does define reveled religion and that’s where the issue lies.  Born in Iran, you are likely a Shiite, a Saudi a Sunni, in the US one of a broad spectrum of Christians and so on.  Consider all the world-wide strife faith-without-proof has caused and is causing.  It really is not an exaggeration to say that religious faith is the one area where people “believe” or “accept” without proof. Would you invest your money, buy a product, etc., without proof? 

What if all the money, time and energy were spent on truly helping the family of man instead of on edifices, pomp and ceremony and recruiting others to their particular brand? 

And, finally, what brings so much of this into discussion today? In the old days it was only anti-religious philosophers such as Bertrand Russell. Now there are many scientists, and the reason is all of the breaktrhoughs in neuroscience.  People capable of only rational thought cannon function; they are brain-damaged.  Every decision requires emotion and the evolution of our brain development.  Again, best to read: Hauser’s “Moral Minds”, Damasio’s “Descarte’s Error"and “Feeling of What Happens.” The knowledge base on how the brain works and how our morality has developed intrinsically is far more advanced than most people realize. It is what made a “believer” out of me.

nobody is advocating the strong dominate the weak, blessed social retard.

the son is saying i wish you would act like a decent human i could be proud of, blessed afgantstand-you.

some dogs get up AND avoid traffic without reason or faith. how is that, blessed dim bulb?

why do we behave as we do, how can we change, and what should we try to become?

what should we try to become?

Less judgemental and confrontational?

More sympathetic and understanding?

Yeah ... that would be a start.

I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.
Baruch Spinoza

A son wouldn’t be telling his father he believed in him unless he had good reason to.

Don’t you think?

Posted by timeforchange on Dec 16, 2006 at 9:54 AM

The problem with belief in material realism isn’t so much that naturalistic explanations for observable phenomena are false, it is that it is a tautology.  It rests on the unprovable (and essentially non-material) assumption that only observable material phenomena are real.  The axiomatic tautologies of logic and reason and mathematics themselves have not been shown to depend on material bases to be true, but upon their degree of internal consistency.  Other noumenal entities that don’t necessarily have such rigorous underpinnings (e.g., irrational beliefs, intuitive hunches, objectless faith, and plain old misunderstanding of communications) are real in the sense that they can be primary causal factors of our thoughts and behavior.

Breakthroughs in neuroscience that explain how the brain functions in interpreting our sensations of the physical world are wonderful, and go a long way in understanding a lot of perceptual errors we make with our mostly poorly and ad hoc trained intuitive apprehension of reality, but they still do not address these many mind/body problems that persist in epiphenomenal theories of consciousness .

Nor do they help much in answering the perennial non-metaphysical, non-ontological and non-epistemological philosophical question of, ‘What is to be done?’

A son wouldn’t be telling his father he believed in him unless he had good reason to.

Don’t you think?
Canada Posted by David in Canuckistan on Dec 16, 2006 at 2:08 PM

I was thinking that if the father was a hopeless drunk and the son was saying it to encourage his dad to reform… but that’s a pretty good reason, too.  Even if it is only a matter of extending faith.

the son was saying it to encourage his dad to reform

Excellent reasoning, Luminous Beauty!

Someone is thinking.

Sisk, as an agnostic you’re an atheist too. An atheist is only an A Theist, if you don’t believe in god, your an a theist, not a theist.
Whomever asserts the positive, god exists or this holocaust happened,
bears the total onus of proof, I don’t have to disprove a thing, they have
to PROVE their positive assertion. A theism is not the same as theism.
LB, what is to be done ? is most emphatically an epistemological
question based on a metaphysical worldview, that we can do something.
David, I don’t understand what point you’re trying to make.
Major, nature whether beautiful or horrible does not prove a creator.
Existence comes first before consciousness and not vice versa.

Agnostic: One who believes that it is impossible to know whether there is a God.

Agnostic: One who is skeptical about the existence of God but does not profess true atheism.

Whomever asserts the positive, god exists or this holocaust happened, bears the total onus of proof, I don’t have to disprove a thing, they have to PROVE their positive assertion.

Mike, Who is asking you to disprove anything?

I can’t prove that God exists. That’s why I have faith God exists.

What don’t you understand about that?

I don’t know how to make it any plainer.

We are the creators and we celebrate our creation through the ceremony of religious worship.  That projective leap of illogical faith ensures our social solidarity and reinforces our individual subordination to the survival of the social constructs we create to sustain our continued collective existence.  Those constructs, in the aggregate, assume the attributes of divinity and are, literally, supernatural, or “above nature”, not because we are literally, individually or even collectively omnipotent, omniscient and immortal but because, in the aggregate and over the millenia, we construct the collective means by which we defeat or domesticate our natural competitors.  It’s a helluva definition of divinity, since our individual mortality remains undiminished and we keep shifting the focus of competiton, but it’s the only one we’ve got.

What can be more supernatural than the evolution of intelligence through the media of natural selection?  It’s the ultimate transubstantiation of lead into gold.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 16, 2006 at 4:43 PM

I don’t know about you, but I don’t really need fundamental answers to the questions of the nature and meaning, nor a method of classifying the knowledge of ‘reality-in-the-abstract’ in order to act.  Really!  As interesting as I find all that stuff, if one makes that the basis of how one lives one’s life, one will spend a lot of time either chasing one’s own tail or lying in a near-comatose state.  Probably both.

(I’m tempted to say, ‘been there, done that’, but I despise that phrase and, anyhow, it’s impolite to brag of one’s own suffering. “Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that, now-ow-ow-ow.")

What needs to be done is to make some simple decisions on how best to comport oneself and then get going before it’s all gone.

Just my opinion. 

You’re free to adopt any weltanschauung that feels comfortable.  Or uncomfortable, if that’s your thing.

imagination + applied social science = good and decent people

Barkless1,

I would like to better understand the definitions of the terms in your formula for good and decent people.

Please don’t be offended when I ask you these questions as they originate from a sincere desire to understand what you are trying to say.

Was it applied social science you were practicing further up this thread?

@ Posted by barkless1 on Dec 16, 2006 at 12:55 PM

Or was it that your imagination was running away along with your manners?

The same arguments made by Dawkins could be used as an argument against Gravity. We can observe its effects on objects and use it as a constant to solve equations. We have attempted to theorize the transmission of gravity. But we can not see,smell, or touch gravity nor can we identify how it exerts force on mass over the field of space. It cannot be subjected to the scientific method therefore gravity does not exist. All who believe in gravity are heretics and must be burned at the stake.

In fact, gravity has a variety of god-like attributes.  It acts on all things, therefore it’s omnipotent and omnipresent, and at all times, therefore it’s immortal.  On the other hand, we don’t normally regard gravity as all-knowing, or even moderately intelligent, therefore it’s not omniscient.  So we conclude that gravity is moderately god-like, but not sufficiently divine to warrant our worship, not unlike electromagnetics and the nuclear reaction (blessed be its name).

Felt, not just imagined, like gravity, etiquette is nonnegotiable. See posted by blondemike on Dec 14, 2006 at 11:20 AM, or Karen Pryor(1999): “[The] strength of the aversion can only be judged by the recipient.”

Thank you for your thoughtful response.

Posted by barkless1 on Dec 17, 2006 at 12:14 PM

Arf! Arf! 

Please, don’t shoot the dog!  Just because he has a novel interpretation of Kant that apparently even the foremost linguist in the world can’t decipher.

There’s something in the water down here in Yankistan that gives us the Capacity to Realize All Correct Knowledge and the Perfection Of Truth.  We’re Special.

Of course we’re rude.

David, your comments make absolutely no sense, you can’t prove that
something exists so as a result you have to believe that it exists !
I can’t understand it because it defies all reason and logic, those are our
tools for understanding the world and sane people evaluate their feelings with reference to their reason so they can try to figure out what
their feelings MEAN rather than treat their feelings as a primary and act
on them without intervening thought as you do.
LB, you are much smarter than many on this board so I leave you with
the suggestion that abstract issues are not recondite philosophy detached from the rest of the world. A theory is only valid to the extent that it correctly describes something in reality. If it doesn’t what good is it ?
Keynes said that the most hardheaded businessman is the slave of
some abstract theory (Adam Smith, Ayn Rand, etc.) and I think that’s true
of all of us, not just the far Right. How do you evaluate and prioritize the trillion different facts in reality without a theory ?
Texass, your living proof that a little bit of learning is a dangerous thing because we have ways to know about reality, we don’t about god because that concept is nonsensical. No one ever said that every thing
had to be physically verified in order to be true. We know through science that the world is round and rotates. We have instruments to observe and measure these things, we don’t for god.
Major, gravity can have certain attributes and now they can be observed
and measured, not the case with god. Furthermore, what alternative to
a lawful, ordered universe do you imagine ? This is natural, not supernatural. Religion is wrong metaphysically, thus wrong epistemologically since the epistemology (means of knowing) flows
from the metaphysics ( nature of the universe) and ethically since our
moral code has to be based on rationality which religion rules out
and wrong politically since politics has to be based on a rational, not
medieval ethics. What a bunch of bareassed loonies did in Palestine
two thousand years ago cannot serve as a moral guide for modern
mankind. Athestically it’s wrong because our ideals of perfection and
beauty cannot be based on unattainable standards forever outside
humankind’s reach.
Religion must be rejected (NOT outlawed) on all philosophic grounds.

Luminous Beauty and our new friend Barky,

Click. Click.

(Barkless1, I hope you don’t mind me calling you Barky and counting you as a friend as I don’t believe we are enemies. Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong)

Posted by blondemike on Dec 17, 2006 at 4:35 PM

“A theory is only valid to the extent that it correctly describes something in reality. If it doesn’t what good is it ?”

If it doesn’t answer the question of what is to be done, not much good at all.

“How do you evaluate and prioritize the trillion different facts in reality without a theory?”

According to theory, the left hemisphere of my fore-brain is hard-wired to do just that quite naturally without my help, thank you.  My job is to see that the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere get along.  In the realm of concrete moment-to-moment reality, not so much in the abstract theoretical one. 

In the theoretical one, since it is its home turf, my left hemisphere tends to go on jabbering without restraint, happily arguing with and picking over all the various theories to which it has been exposed, leaving my right feeling either all alone and totally left out, or else what attention it is given more that of being laid out on a dissecting table rather than being treated with the kindness and respect it deserves.

Thus, I ask, “What is to be done?”

David seems to make perfect sense to me. 

F’rinstance; I’m absolutely certain that behind all your self-righteous bluster lies a generous, caring and open-minded person, but from the impolitesse of your words and the vehemence of your arguments I can find nothing to prove it.

But I got faith in ye, laddie.

Mike,

Defying all reason and logic and making absolutely no sense is nothing new to me but it’s good to hear that I make sense to someone. (Thanks Luminous Beauty!)

I’m sorry that the definition of faith is beyond your understanding, Mike, but don’t worry too much about it as you do have some good people for company.

As for my sanity, I appreciate your concern, but rest assured that I do quite well judging with my heart first and my reason second. Sometimes I try to be more sane and reverse the process but it ain’t easy. It is a balancing act, to be sure. 

Luminous Beauty knows me well enough to know how much I like stories, telling and hearing, and this discussion has reminded me of a story that may illustrate the importance of this balance I speak of.

(There is a more familiar version of this story, but a friend of mine has told me of other rabbis that faced the same situation. This is their story.)

A great rabbi stands teaching in the marketplace. It happens that a husband finds proof that morning of his wife’s adultery, and a mob carries her to the marketplace to stone her to death.

The rabbi walks forward and stands beside the woman. Out of respect for him the mob forbears, and waits with the stones heavy in their hands. “Is there anyone here” he says to them “who has not desired another man’s wife, another woman’s husband?”

They murmur and say “We all know the desire. But, Rabbi, none of us has acted upon it.”

The rabbi says, “Then kneel down and give thanks that God made you strong.” He takes the woman by the hand and leads her out of the market. Just before he lets her go, he whispers to her, “Tell the lord magistrate who saved his mistress. Then he’ll know I am his loyal servant.”

So the woman lives, because the community is too corrupt to protect itself from disorder.

Another rabbi, another city. He goes to her and stops the mob, as in the other story, and says, “Which of you is without sin? Let him cast the first stone.”

The people are abashed, and they forget their unity of purpose in the memory of their own individual sins. Someday they think, I may be like this woman, and I wil hope for forgiveness and another chance. I should treat her the way I wish to be treated.

As they open their hands and let the stones fall to the ground , the rabbi pcks up one of the fallen stones, lifts it high over the woman’s head, and throws it straight down with all his might. It crushes her skull and dashes her brains on the cobblestones.

“Nor am I without sin,” he says to the peope. “but if we allow only perfect people to enforce the law, the law will soon be dead, and our city with it.”

So the woman dies because her community was too rigid to endure her deviance.

The famous version of this story is noteworthy because it is so startingly rare in our experience. Most communities lurch between decay and rigor mortis, and when they veer too far, they die.

Only one rabbi dared expect of us such a perfect balance that we could preserve the law and still forgive the deviation.

So, of course, we killed him.

-San Angelo, Letters to an Incipient Heretic

Adapted and excerpted from Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card

Perfect balance.
Impossible to achieve but worth the effort of striving for.

O Boy!  Story time!  Here’s one about faith.  Hope you enjoy it.

There is a Buddhist story I once heard about a young prince who was awakened in the night by cries of anguish from people with lanterns rushing about the palace wherein he resided.

A servant came to tell him that a tiger had entered the bedroom of the king, his father, and slain him. Without thinking or dressing himself, the prince grabbed his bow and quiver and rushed out into the jungle.

Silently stalking between the trees and looking everywhere, he spied in the shadows the movement of the tiger’s stripes, shifting with the animal’s breath and muscles as it gathered itself to strike. Again without thinking, the prince notched an arrow and let it fly.

Listening intently, he heard nothing. No thrashing about of the wounded animal or the rush of it leaping to attack. He saw the dim scene unchanged.

Approaching cautiously, he saw that what he thought was a tiger was really a large boulder, and what he thought was the movement of stripes was only the shadows from the restless movement of the wind through the trees. He also saw that his arrow had imbedded itself in the stone to its fletches.

It was the strength of his faith that imparted upon the prince’s arrow the power to achieve this incredible feat.

Religion must be rejected (NOT outlawed) on all philosophic grounds.

Mike, I think Kierkegaard might disagree with you. And several other philosophers and existentialists as well.

But religion aside, what about God, Mike?
Should God be rejected even if one rejects religion?

Story Time, indeed. This one is about knowing and What Fish Enjoy.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed it.

Zhuangzi and Huizi were strolling along the dam of the Hao Waterfall when Zhuangzi said, “See how the minnows come out and dart around where they please! That’s what fish really enjoy!”

Huizi said, “You’re not a fish — how do you know what fish enjoy?”

Zhuangzi said, “You’re not I, so how do you know I don’t know what fish enjoy?”

Huizi said, “I’m not you, so I certainly don’t know what you know. On the other hand, you’re certainly not a fish — so that still proves you don’t know what fish enjoy!”

Zhuangzi said, “Let’s go back to your original question, please. You asked me how I know what fish enjoy — so you already knew I knew it when you asked the question. I know it by standing here beside the Hao.”

“What Fish Enjoy” - Autumn Floods section XVII, translated Burton Watson

Understanding it is another matter.

I think you’ll find this appropriate:

I swallowed
some of the Beloved’s sweet wine,
and now I am ill.
My body aches,
my fever is high.
They called in the Doctor and he said,
drink this tea!
Ok, time to drink this tea.
Take these pills!
Ok, time to take these pills.
The Doctor said,
get rid of the sweet wine of his lips!
Ok, time to get rid of the doctor.

-- Rumi

I suspect this one is always appropriate:

This is a gathering of Lovers.
In this gathering
there is no high, no low,
no smart, no ignorant,
no special assembly,
no grand discourse,
no proper schooling required.
There is no master,
no disciple.
This gathering is more like a drunken party,
full of tricksters, fools,
mad men and mad women.
This is a gathering of Lovers.

-- ibid

Very much so ... thanks for sharing!

I find myself an instant fan of Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi.

As salt resolved in the ocean
I was swallowed in God’s sea,
Past faith, past unbelieving,
Past doubt, past certainty.

Suddenly in my bosom
A star shone clear and bright;
All the suns of heaven
Vanished in that star’s light.

... Rumi

Thanks again.
I will spend the rest of the evening reading Rumi’s poetry
and drinking a couple beers, after all ...

What a loss, loss, loss, loss it is
to remain sober among the intoxicated and the unconscious.

... Rumi

My reading of Rumi also brought me to the tale of the Blind Men and the Elephant and I thought I would link to it as I see it as being relevant to the tangent this discussion has found it’s way to.

There are several versions of the story and while Rumi had his take on it I particularly enjoyed this version below;

It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind

The First approached the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
“God bless me! but the Elephant
Is very like a wall!”

The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried, “Ho! what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me ‘tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear!”

The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a snake!”

The Fourth reached out an eager hand,
And felt about the knee.
“What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain,” quoth he;
“ ‘Tis clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a tree!”

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: “E’en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a fan!”

The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a rope!”

And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!

Moral:

So oft in theologic wars,
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!

by John Godfrey Saxe

A very good telling indeed! And a good deed in telling!

I’ve been all up in Bobby Burns’ shizzle.  Even Mikey oughta like this:

Is there for honest poverty
That hings his head, an a’ that?
The coward slave, we pass him by -
We dare be poor for a that!
For a’ that, an a’ that!
Our toils obscure, an a’ that,
The rank is but the guinea’s stamp,
The man’s the gowd for a’ that.

What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hodden grey, an a’ that?
Gie fools their skills, and knaves their wine -
A man’s a man for a’ that.
For a’ that, an a’ that,
Their tinsel show, an a’ that,
The honest man, tho e’er sae poor,
Is king o men for a’ that.

Ye see yon birkie ca’d a lord,
Wha struts, an stares, an a’ that?
Tho hundreds worship at his word,
He’s but a cuif for a’ that.
For a’ that, an a’ that,
His ribband, star, an a’ that,
The man o independent mind,
He looks an laughs at a’ that.

A prince can mak a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, an a’ that!
But an honest man’s aboon his might -
Guid faith, he mauna fa’ that!
For a’ that, an a’ that,
Their dignities, an a’ that,
The pith o sense an pride o worth,
Are higher rank than a’ that.

Then let us pray that come it may
(As come it will for a’ that),
That Sense and Worth o’er a’ the earth,
Shall bear the gree an a’ that.
For a’ that, an a’ that,
It’s coming yet for a’ that,
That man to man, the world, o’er
Shall brithers be for a’ that.

This article reminds me of a passage from Nietzche’s “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” which reads:

“The retired Pope had been speaking of the God he had served. ‘Away with such a God,’ spake Zarathustra. The retired Pope replied in turn, ‘Zarathistra, with such disbelief you are more pious than you believe. Some sort of God in you must have converted you to your godlessness. Is it not your very piety that no longer allows you to believe in a God?’”

David, you have given no intelligible arguments why I or anyone else should be believe in god. After all the fables and poetry this is what it
comes down to. If I don’t believe in god then why should I believe in
religion or vice-versa ?  I’ll look at the stories & poems later.
Thank you.
LB, if you believe the physical brain is hardwired to automatically do
your thinking for you then how come so many people fail to properly
achieve this alleged automatic process ?
We don’t start with the question, what is to be done ? First we have
to know what the situation is, if something needs changing, how it can be changed, whether we change it for the better or worse, etc.  You need
a view of what reality is (metaphysics) and what is our means for
dealing with reality (epistemology.) Ethics and politics come from this, not vice-versa.
I do agree with the late Murray Bookchin and the still present Noam Chomsky that this anti-reason, anti-integration, anti-intellectual and
anti-philosophy pop trend on the left is very dangerous and we are
throwing away our key to the universe, our reasoning power, by indulging this incredible mushy, no-mind, mystic crap.
If that makes me intolerant then I am intolerant of mental rubbish
and sloppy, unfocussed nonthinking.

This morning’s “This I Believe” essay on NPR was spot on.  This Rohr fella has something important to say.  Both to those who are nominally religious who believe they know it all, and those who are positively anti-religious, who also believe they know it all.

Whew ! Just read it, mental slop thinly disguised as profundity.
LB, stop flogging this Red Herring you invented.
NO one ever claimed to know it all. How could anyone ?
You could spend a waking lifetime and still not know everything
about physics for example.
The people who assert belief in a supernatural force never come up
with anything close to proof of same. It’s not my job to disprove a
negative, it’s the believer’s job to prove a positive assertion.
To assign equal blame to fools and thinkers is absurd.
I remember a discussion with one moron wherein this pinhead
asserted that Aristotle believed in moderation in everything.
Everything ? Extreme intelligence was as bad as extreme stupidity ?
Extreme integrity was as bad as extreme cheating ? What would a
person of moderate character be like ?

David, you have given no intelligible arguments why I or anyone else should be believe in god.

Mike, I see no reason to do so as I have seen no intelligible arguments as to why I or anyone else should not believe in God.

If you or anyone else doesn’t believe in God it’s fine with me.

I am here to have a discussion and try to understand other people’s opinions and share mine. Take what you want and reject the rest. That’s what I am doing.

During this discussion I have clarified the definitions of terms, like ...

Faith: Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.

... to support my assertion that Faith needs no proof.

And at the risk of repeating myself ...

I can’t prove that God exists. That’s why I have faith God exists.

As for stories and poetry, I find truth in them and there is a part of me that responds to it regardless of art or evidence. Let it be poorly told and I will still love the story. Let it be the most blatant fabrication and I will still believe whatever truth is in it, because I can’t deny truth no matter how it is presented

There are different meanings of the words truth and belief. I may understand a story to be true from a sense of truth deep within me. But that sense of truth need not respond to the story’s factuality - to whether it depicts a real event in the real world. My inner sense of truth responds to a story’s causality - to whether it faithfully shows the way the universe functions and, dare I say it, the way that God works his will among human beings with free will.

I’ll look at the stories & poems later. Thank you.

You are welcome. I hope that they facilitate understanding of some of the points we have touched on during this discussion as that is why I have shared them.

If I don’t believe in god then why should I believe in religion or vice-versa ?

I am not saying you should believe one and/or the the other or vice-versa. I was just asking for clarification of your statement about rejecting religion and if that rejection included God. Many people reject religion yet still have a belief in God or spirituality.

Back to intelligible arguments as to why someone could, or should, believe in God.
Hmm ... I will give it some thought and be back later today to share those thoughts.

NO one ever claimed to know it all. How could anyone ?

Mike, That’s it exactly.

How could anyone know for certain there is no God?

I will be back later with more thoughts on this as you have provided me the very argument I was looking for that might satisfy your request for an intelligible argument that you can understand.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 18, 2006 at 11:14 AM

“LB, if you believe the physical brain is hardwired to automatically do
your thinking for you then how come so many people fail to properly
achieve this alleged automatic process ?”

It has been shown in many cross-correlated anthropological studies that Kalahari Bushmen, Borneo Tribalists, Amazonian Headhunters and other such ‘primitive peoples’ who’ve never heard of Aristotle, are perfectly capable of intuitively discriminating between correctly and incorrectly formulated syllogisms.  My theory is, is if you will, that when we learn something of the axioms and postulates of the mechanistic theories of the logical process, that the sheer complexity and incompleteness of our knowledge leads us to make mistakes in application.

“We don’t start with the question, what is to be done ? First we have
to know what the situation is, if something needs changing, how it can be changed, whether we change it for the better or worse, etc.  You need
a view of what reality is (metaphysics) and what is our means for
dealing with reality (epistemology.)”

If we don’t start with the question, “What is to be done?” and keep it firmly in our minds, then we are in real danger of getting lost nit-picking over the details of our theorizing, and nothing gets done.  Say, hypothetically, you are standing in the road in front of an oncoming bus (a real bus, not an hypothetical bus), then I suggest you not waste a moment analysing the situation and get your butt out of the street. 

I confess, some consensual theoretical basis is fundamental to using language to communicate effectively, but I also suspect, not without reason, there are methods of communication that don’t rely primarily on externalized symbolic representations of meaning.  Even within language there is an intuitive sense of ‘getting it’, as in a joke (or mystic wisdom), for which analysis and explanation are inimical.

There is a trope among scientists and engineers that goes something like this, ‘In theory, theory works perfectly in practice; in practice, not so much’.  Any theory that you aren’t willing to modify or abandon on a moments notice, is a theory well on its way to becoming an irrational belief.  That takes a certain degree of faith in the unknown, don’t you think?

“I do agree with the late Murray Bookchin and the still present Noam Chomsky that this anti-reason, anti-integration, anti-intellectual and
anti-philosophy pop trend on the left is very dangerous and we are
throwing away our key to the universe, our reasoning power, by indulging this incredible mushy, no-mind, mystic crap.
If that makes me intolerant then I am intolerant of mental rubbish
and sloppy, unfocussed nonthinking.”

I, too, agree.  In order to be useful and effective, our non-thinking mind needs to be as disciplined, both by empirical reason and by that which Pascal meant when he said “The heart has its reasons of which reason knows not”, and as sharply focused as our thinking minds.

Blind faith as advocated by religion with the solution an omnipotent
consciousness as the creator of existence does not strike me as a
reasonable proposition. I have faith that the letter I just mailed will
be delivered because 99.99% of the time it is. It’s not the same as
faith in divine miracles.
I understand your bus analogy but that is an emergency situation that
we react by reflex or if instinct if human animals have instincts in the
same way other animals do and that’s not a settled question to date.
I totally agree that our emotions tell us something and should not be
discounted because they are not causeless. All I’m saying is let’s use
our reason to analyze our emotions if the particular emotion is worth
thought and see what sense we can make out of it. Usually our dreams
relate to some event or person in real life however fantastically they
may appear in our dreams. In some sense our mind never stops working.
I’m familiar with quote you give on theory and practice but my own take
is that a theory is nothing more than an attempt to explain practices and
to make sense out of what would be an endless series of concretes.
There are several theories that don’t make sense as theories, Christianity, Judaism and Islam are three that immediately come to my mind but there are many secular ones too as well as Buddhism which
is not nearly as benign as many westerners believe.
What is to be done ? is not as self-evident to everyone as it is to some
of us and then we do need philosophy to sort it out. All philosophy does
is try to integrate different strands into a coherent whole so we have the
information to make a reasonable choice.
Anyway, your comments are much food for thought and I thank you for
that.
If you could elaborate a bit more on the postulates and axioms that
you think led us astray I’d appreciate.  As I understand it there are very
few axioms and they are right or they are not axioms.
Postulates are a dime a dozen.

More than anyone else, Dawkins should recognize that such a universal behavior such as spirituality and religion is probably an evolved trait.

He would probably get much more traction if he examined why humanity can be so deluded rather than just saying religion is bad.

We have lots of behaviors that stretch rational control (drug use and sex for instance), and each one is associated with negative and positive issues.  Religion is the same way.

Through understanding the evolution and neurobiology of religion, hopefully we can determine mecahanisms to enjoy it better without suffering the negative conseqeuences.

I consider myself a “spritiually-aware atheist”.  I don’t seriously believe in the supernatural, but I enjoy my feeling of inborn belief the same way you can enjoy an become involved in a fictional movie without believing it when the lights come back up.

Posted by blondemike on Dec 18, 2006 at 12:22 PM

I remember a discussion with one moron wherein this pinhead
asserted that Aristotle believed in moderation in everything.
Everything ? Extreme intelligence was as bad as extreme stupidity ?
Extreme integrity was as bad as extreme cheating ? What would a
person of moderate character be like ?”

Actually, it is Epicurus who is credited with the very rational moral philosophy of ‘moderation in everything’.  From Diogenes Laertius, “You toil, 0 men, for paltry things and incessantly begin strife and war for gain; but nature’s wealth extends to a moderate bound, whereas vain judgments have a limitless range.”

Aristotle, was more into the pragmatic mean, in consideration of the inherent unprovability of empirically based inductive reasoning, as opposed to Plato’s rational idealism, that Absolute Truth could be perfectly deduced from contemplation of Ideal Forms in the noumenal realm.  Me thinks you are a closet Platonist. Or, worse, an Hegelian Idealist.

I believe you are confusing equivalence with moderation and thereby commiting a fallacy of equivocation.  An example of extreme immoderation would be calling those with whom one disagrees, ‘morons’ and ‘pinheads’.  Especially when neither party is all that clear on what he is talking about.

My own feeling is that errors made by those with extreme intelligence tend to be of more consequence, and therefore much worse, than the mistakes of the extremely stupid.

I’m a tad affronted with being accused of throwing out red herrings.  I have tried assiduously to keep my comments applicable and focused on the questions at hand.  Perhaps you should familiarize yourself with the meaning of red herring.  If you don’t ‘get’ the aptness of these stories and poems, don’t lay it at my door.  I’m making an honest effort to communicate here.  The onus is on you to make an honest effort to understand what I’m saying. (and vice-versa, of course)

“If you could elaborate a bit more on the postulates and axioms that
you think led us astray I’d appreciate.  As I understand it there are very
few axioms and they are right or they are not axioms.
Postulates are a dime a dozen.

The thing about systems of logic is that they are tautologies.  That is, the axioms that determine the parameters of their applicability are a priori assumed to be true.  The truth of that system is the degree to which it is internally consistent, not in the empirically inferred truth of their axioms.  Every such system is limited by the parameters of description they allow.  There are systems with just a few axioms and systems with many.  There is no known upper limit on how many axiomatic systems are possible.  The errors other-wise intelligent people make are not in these systems themselves, but in mistakes in following the rules of a given system, using contradictory or imprecise definitions in the terms of propositions being considered, or in trying to make conclusions about a subject using a system for which the understanding of the subject is beyond its bounds. 

Much like you, trying to understand mysticism, spirituality, and religion from within a philosophical tautology of materialistic realism, in combination with a lack of deeper understanding of what they actually mean, substituting instead, from an exoteric and superficial understanding, misguided notions of what you believe they mean, leaves you thinking they are meaningless constructs.

LB, my last comments were more than reasonable and not at all unfavorable towards you. Aristotle is the author of the statement
about moderation. Epicurus may have made a similar statement
but since I’ve already refuted the essence of that view I see no more
reason to dwell on it. In the conversation that I briefly related I was
very clear about what was being talked about.
As far as morons and pinheads go, I was never referring to you at any
time but to such morons and pinheads as Scorp, What The Heck,
Redhorse and sundry others here on other threads. I stand by my
characterization of these people and refer all interested to their moronic
postings for evidence of same. Not exactly rocket science.
I am correct in labeling that silly statement that claims that atheists
like myself claimed knowledge of all reality.  It’s a red herring, a straw
man, a nonsequitur that gets us nowhere.
A tautology is not necessarily a bad thing, I say we start with the fact
of existence, existence exists, and go from there rather than the idea
that we start with consciousness, a creator which just endlessly begs
the question of who created the creator, etc.
I haven’t had time to look at the poems to see if there’s anything to get
there. If I’m find them less than illuminating I won’t aprioi assume that
it’s my fault. Could be they are wooly. I’ll find out.
If the axioms aren’t axioms that can be exposed as Kuhn noted in The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions. But there are not many axioms,
only a few. Existence the main one. I’m beginning to wonder if you
understand what an axiom is after reading that there are no known
limits on them !
I do not see anything deep or profound about mysticism, religion and
supernatural spirituality. I recognize bunk when I see it and hear it.
We all have a spirit but that is not per se the same thing as religious
spirituality. And how am I supposed to understand anything without
reason and logic ?
I’m not a Platonist nor philosophical idealist but a critical realist.  I
believe in the integration of the rational and the empirical, not in modern
philosophy’s dichotmization of the two since Kant. So I’m much closer
to Aristotle. Hegel is the only western philosopher that I feel uncomfortable with in terms of explaining him. So I doubt I’m a
Hegelian. Bookchin was.

Browsing the science section of Border’s several months ago, I ran across a book entitled The God Gene whose author hypothesizes that belief in god is a naturally selected genetic trait which serves to ensure the survival of the species by encouraging the mass imagination of hope where, against the stark reality of our inevitable mortality, none exists.  Religion, therefore, and by extension, Science, provides us with the only realistic alternative we have: the opportunity to reinforce our social solidarity and create the cultural constructs necessary to generate the more limited hope that our individual lives have some modicum of meaning and contribute to the general welfare of the whole.

Thanks, Mike.  I haven’t had this much fun since I watched the surf sweep my Aunt off her feet in Bodega Bay, after she kept insisting on taking my photograph against the scenic background of the cliffs behind me.  She almost drowned because I couldn’t stop laughing long enough to pull her out of the water.

Axioms

These are just the axioms of the most well established mathematical theories.

LB, in philosophy, metaphysics & epistemology, there are just a very
few axioms, things from which you can go no further behind.
Wkipedia is a terrible source but I assume your correct here.
I wonder if we are talking about the same thing and how many of
these math axioms are really postulates.
Thanks, Major, but I can’t agree that religion is the equal of philosophy
or science which originally arose out of philosophical questions.

“I say we start with the fact
of existence, existence exists, and go from there rather than the idea
that we start with consciousness...”

Who says?  Do you realize that by constraining (axiomizing) the parameters of your investigation, you limit yourself to conclusions only consistent with your assumptions?  You can’t eliminate something’s existence, just by excluding it from the set of things you say exist.  This is the case of looking under the streetlamp for the watch one lost in the alley, because the light is better.

NO one ever claimed to know it all. How could anyone ?

Mike, That’s it exactly.
How could anyone know for certain there is no God?

... continued ...

Conversely, you might ask;
How could anyone know for certain there is a God?
And my answer as I mentioned previously is;
I cannot prove God exists.
Therefore my belief in God is faith in God.

(Luminous Beauty, I read the NPR This I Believe - Utterly Humbled by Mystery essay you linked and I agree it was spot on. Thanks for sharing it.)

Paradoxes don’t scare me anymore.
Richard Rohr

Like this paradox;
One can’t prove God exists and one can’t prove God doesn’t exist.
That’s why I have faith.

Mike, do you get it yet?

Someone posted: “More than anyone else, Dawkins should recognize that such a universal behavior such as spirituality and religion is probably an evolved trait.

He would probably get much more traction if he examined why humanity can be so deluded rather than just saying religion is bad. “

That is exactly what he did say.

I wonder if we are talking about the same thing and how many of these math axioms are really postulates.

Mike, Read and learn. If you can provide sources that contradict these Wikipedia entries I would be very interested in seeing them.

Postulate

The term postulate, or axiom, indicates a statement or assumption that is agreed by everyone to be so obvious or self-evident that no proof is necessary ...

Postulate vs. Axiom
The terms “postulate” and “axiom” are frequently used interchangeably as synonyms for each other ... The term “axiom” has been applied historically to those statements that are applicable to a variety of fields of knowledge ... On the other hand, postulates apply to one, more specific field of knowledge ...

See also; <