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Faith and Belief: Richard Dawkins evolves his arguments
- scapegraced 17y agoThis was a really interesting insight to Dawkins' character. Thanks for sharing.
- billybob 17y agoI heard an interview where Dawkins said something like "if there is a God, He must have evolved." Maybe he was joking, but it didn't sound like it. Evolution is a biological process. It would have no bearing on a being who created space and time. Biologists should not presume to trump philosophy and theology, any more than preachers should dictate which biological theories are acceptable.
- amichail 17y agoDawkins does not believe that theologists have any special insights to offer on the mysteries of life. In his view, anyone's opinion is just as good as that of a theologist.
- joubert 17y agoThe reason he says this, is that evolution by natural selection is the only process that we know of that describes how complexity comes to be.
- foldr 17y agoIt surely can't explain the basic complexity of the laws of physics, or the complexity of mathematical structures like the integers. There are plenty of complex things which have no explanation in terms of natural selection.
- unalone 17y agoIt's a mistake to lump philosophy with theology. Philosophy requires no "givens", which is to say it is a valid field without requiring you to make any assumptions to partake in it. Theology, meanwhile, requires you first to assume the existence of God, and I'm one of the many many people who think that's a ridiculous beginning to a field of study. It's like if Nietzsche began his books by telling you his concepts and thoughts were only worth consuming if you first assume that we're living on a gigantic turtle. Preposterous. I like religion-as-sociology, however, and there's where the "evolution of God" concept is most fascinating. If you haven't read Douglas Adams's speech "Is There An Artificial God?", it's worth the read. Evolution is a biological process. It would have no bearing on a being who created space and time. And bullets bounce off of Superman because he's from Krypton.
- amichail 17y agoWhat exactly are the accomplishments of philosophy, aside from logic which is better studied by mathematicians and computer scientists?
- khafra 17y agoPhilosophy is sometimes considered the parent of the sciences--just about every pursuit of knowledge used to be philosophy. Once they were systematized, testable, and useful enough to stand on their own, they became sciences.
- amichail 17y agoThat's like saying that the major accomplishment of religion is that it led to science.
- khafra 17y agoI don't disagree with that by much. Religious institutions in the past have preserved or advanced scientific discovery at times. The difference is that Philosophy consists of seeking the truth, institutionalized religion usually consists of defending the truth. Religions may spawn some scientific inquiry, but they have a lot of trouble letting their children go off and live their own lives, so to speak.
- chrischen 17y ago> There is no master plan. As much as I am an atheist, I still think no one can ever make that claim. He should have said, there is no evidence yet of a master plan, or there probably is no master plan. This same thing would apply to the existence of God. Unfortunately this logical fallacy (of prematurely concluding the nonexistence of something that theoretically can't be proved to not exist) beholds too many atheists.
- joubert 17y agoThere is no master plan in the same sense that there is magic cookie monster.
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- moss 17y agoNothing we believe about the outside world is unassailably justified by logic alone. Even the surest statements (that the sun will come up tomorrow, for example) are based on a fallible interpretation of the evidence available at the time. That's no reason to stop making statements--it turns out a preponderance of evidence is enough, generally. It just means some of your beliefs sometimes turn out to be wrong.
- chrischen 17y agoWhat about statements like 1*1 = 1. I can be sure about that, but unsure about something like the existence of God.
- pbhjpbhj 17y agoYour simple arithmetic is either a human definition or a part of a discovered system that we can't prove to be consistent and complete in itself.
- chrischen 17y ago1*1=1, the statement itself is a human definition. And so my point is if we define the universe as the world we reside in, and we define God as an entity mutually exclusive of the universe, then based on this definition God cannot be disproven. Assuming I exist because I am writing this right now, then the universe must exist because I must reside in something (and whatever that is is the universe). Now then God, what we have defined to be what is exclusive of this universe, cannot be disproven because we are in the universe. Therefore you cannot disprove God and this is infinitely impossible, whereas proving that the sun will come up tomorrow is not certain to be infinitely impossible yet.
- known 17y agoAll most all religions are based on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-fulfilling_prophecy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-fulfilling_prophecy
- pbhjpbhj 17y agoFor example, as I suspect any answer will be centred on criticism of a Judaeo-Christian world view (just a hunch) could you also give an example from another religion. I can't think of any of the top of my head. It's a good thing to base share price manipulation on though.
- catzaa 17y agoCan we keep these types of article of HN? Other sites (such as reddit) became pretty useless with people submitting these (and other) articles and turning the whole site into an unpleasant experience. Why not follow the same rules that we do when at work? Don't discuss politics or religion.
- pbhjpbhj 17y agoHa, he's going to have to rewrite that opening para for his kids book if he wants to base it on evidence. The evidence no more shows that Earth moves than it shows that it is static, unless you assume that humans and simplicity in our mathematical system is special.