[neopundit]

Banff wrote:

That's right I said everything ...murder , pedophilia , genocide , coveting , adultery , beastiality , rape , etc no other common literature can disagree with allowing any of the examples unless it was written today so to speak making it nothing more than a mimic with alterations .

You mean like the murder, rape, genocide etc that takes place in the Bible? Just checking.

[neopundit]

spikecomix wrote:

He himself stated a quote along the lines of ' without religion there will be good people doing good and evil doing people doing evil, but only with religion can there by good people doing evil.'

He even comes out and says that there will still be evil people doing evil!!

Dawkins means there would be "good" people doing evil. Like, say, a "good", faithful Christian/Muslim justifying the slaughter of thousands of innocent people. See, they are "good" because we consider them to have good morals. They are religious afterall.

[Zipperfish]

OK, finally got around to reading this book and I was not that far into it before I started to get annoyed with the preachiness of the whole thing. Dawkins is trying to do two things here--to persuade people to atheism through rhetoric, and to convince people of atheism through science.

But his rhetoric is too fraught with vitriol and contempt and is more reminiscent of a Wahabbi imam than an Oxford professor. He also has an annoying tendency to ascribe motivations and meanings onto others. Einstein made several statements about religion ("Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind", "God does not play dice with the universe"). But Dawkins bases his argument on what Einstein "really meant." He does this often with others too.

Frankly it was mean and nasty and therefore a chore to read.

Clearly the strongest part of the book was Dawkins discussion of evolution, which would be expected as he is an evolutionary biologist. He pretty much destroys many of the arguments theists use against evolution. However, there's more to the universe than evolution. For instance, I subscribe to the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum physics. In that interpretation, a number of parallel universes are created every time a subatomic event starts to happen--that would be quadrillions of parallel universes created every second just for the known universe. The Many Worlds Interpretation is, scientifically, completely valid.

I also believe--and not without evidence--that our universe may just be a bubble among a myriad of others. Or we may be living in four dimensions on the surface of a five dimensional sphere. Or the universe may be infinite, in which case everything is. The argument for a higher intelligence in the universe goes beyond the evolution of humans on Earth. Dawkins doesn't address this.

And indeed, you can use science to support the improbability of a "god." To show that the very idea is an illusion. But you can use science to show that the idea of free will is an illusion. The idea of self is an illusion. The idea of mass is an illusion. The idea of emptiness vs form is an illusion, the idea of existence vs non-existence is an illusion. The whole damn thing is an illusion. And then, when you finally get there, and you think you've found something new, you realize that this is exactly what Buddha realized some 26 centuries ago.

Many, including myself, hold that science is concerned with the natural world, and the supernatural is simply not within the realm of science (the Agnostics, among others). Dawkins saves a particular venom for this group. Our tolerance of religion is simply "craven." Here's the imam coming out, saying that it is not enough to believe in science; you must also war with those of different faiths.

Dawkins suffers from the same scientific arrogance that plagued Galileo. Indeed their premises are similar: where is there room for God in clockwork of the universe. His arrogance is perhaps best summed up by his statement of "when we finally reach the long-hoped for Theory of Everything..."

Really? Isn't that like waiting for the Rapture? We're never going to have a Theory of Everything--indeed I could write a book like Dawkins illustrating exactly this point.

[andyt]

At one time I would have happily debated this with you, but now let me just do the zen thing:

[Zipperfish]

andyt wrote:

At one time I would have happily debated this with you, but now let me just do the zen thing:

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig--which I read when I was around 18--pretty muchs forms my moral and philosophic outlook on life.

[andyt]

It certainly had an impact on me. I was into working on cars at the time, and the idea of expressing your relation to the universe by doing so appealed to me. Sort of the idea of dying into your work. But I don't see it as very Zen, at least not in a 'official' way. As a guide for morals I don't think you can go wrong with the heart of Buddhism - the 5 precepts, 4 noble truths, understanding of karma, emptiness, etc.

shit, you sucked me in - I was just going to do the zen thing.

[Zipperfish]

andyt wrote:

It certainly had an impact on me. I was into working on cars at the time, and the idea of expressing your relation to the universe by doing so appealed to me. Sort of the idea of dying into your work. But I don't see it as very Zen, at least not in a 'official' way. As a guide for morals I don't think you can go wrong with the heart of Buddhism - the 5 precepts, 4 noble truths, understanding of karma, emptiness, etc.

shit, you sucked me in - I was just going to do the zen thing.

Funny you should mention that. I'm going out tonight with a friend I haven't seen in 15 years--a singularly brilliant individual. My favourite memory of him was at engineering school at UBC. We were noth into the tao of Zen. We were oldewr students--third years, I think.

One of the first years, in a bid to impress, said that he was really into Zen too.

"So what is it you like about Zen?" my friend asks.

The guy launches into this long, abstruse explanation dragging in physicists here and philosophers there, and the end, my buddy sez, "You completely missed the point."

"Well, what is it then?" says the poor guy, all flustered.

My friend just looked at him. The guy looks at me, but I just take a sip of beer.

"Well what is it then?" the guy says again.

"I just told you."

"You didn't say anything," the frosh says.

"Egg-zack-ly."

True story. Can't wait to tell that onje tomight! Thaks for reminding me.

[Scape]

Tim Harford: Trial, error and the God complex

Quote:

Economics writer Tim Harford studies complex systems -- and finds a surprising link among the successful ones: they were built through trial and error. In this sparkling talk from TEDGlobal 2011, he asks us to embrace our randomness and start making better mistakes.

Seems to be a theme this god complex.

[DerbyX]

Scape wrote:

Tim Harford: Trial, error and the God complex

Quote:

Economics writer Tim Harford studies complex systems -- and finds a surprising link among the successful ones: they were built through trial and error. In this sparkling talk from TEDGlobal 2011, he asks us to embrace our randomness and start making better mistakes.

Seems to be a theme this god complex.

Video will not load. Just a black screen in the video browser.

[Scape]