Would Polytheism Be Better For Us ?

[Elgarian]

Is Christopher Hitchens wrong when he says:

"Monotheistic religion is a plagiarism of a plagiarism of a hearsay of a hearsay, of an illusion of an illusion, extending all the way back to a fabrication of a few nonevents..."

I think it's too devoid of meaning for it to acquire the dignity of being either right or wrong. It's a rant.

[Elgarian]

I'm just trying to get some clarification here.

To get clarification, I think you might need to start much further back. Most of the questions posed in threads like this (and many of the answers offered in response) are too muddled ever to be resolved successfully. This is either because what looks like a single issue is really several issues, often in conflict (along the lines of "Is the King of France bald?"); or because the statement of the issue contains category errors ("Is marmalade cruel?") which render it meaningless; or because the issue is stated in such a way as to make it appear irrefutable by excluding from consideration all responses that might be capable of refuting it (such as "science is philosophy").

Disentangling the questions and responses (yes, even one's own questions and answers) so as to be able to recognise and discard the nonsense is the single most important thing to try to do.

[Fëanor]

Pick a thread, any thread:

Miss Allen: Atheism Is Simply About Anger

Why Is America Still So Often Puritanical ?

Some aspects I love about the Christian religion

God Bless Sarah Palin !

The Pope speaks on the global financial crisis

The Two Doctrines I Believe In

An argument against Charles Murray ?

The immortality of the 'soul'

Einstein: The Bible Is Pretty Childish

Is There Something Degrading About It ?

And yet, Karl, you keep coming back for more. 

[karlhenning]

I consider it a public service, Bill.

Pick a thread, any thread; they're all the same, folks:

Miss Allen: Atheism Is Simply About Anger

Why Is America Still So Often Puritanical ?

Some aspects I love about the Christian religion

God Bless Sarah Palin !

The Pope speaks on the global financial crisis

The Two Doctrines I Believe In

An argument against Charles Murray ?

The immortality of the 'soul'

Einstein: The Bible Is Pretty Childish

Is There Something Degrading About It ?

[Homo Aestheticus]

Elgarian,

To get clarification, I think you might need to start much further back. Most of the questions posed in threads like this (and many of the answers offered in response) are too muddled ever to be resolved successfully. This is either because what looks like a single issue is really several issues, often in conflict (along the lines of "Is the King of France bald?"); or because the statement of the issue contains category errors ("Is marmalade cruel?") which render it meaningless; or because the issue is stated in such a way as to make it appear irrefutable by excluding from consideration all responses that might be capable of refuting it (such as "science is philosophy").

Disentangling the questions and responses (yes, even one's own questions and answers) so as to be able to recognise and discard the nonsense is the single most important thing to try to do.

Is it really the case then that Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, Harris and other writers are missing the point entirely ?  And are they also committing that many category errors ?     

Do any of their recent anti-theistic books have at least some merit in your opinion ?

[Joe_Campbell]

Elgarian,

Is it really the case then that Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, Harris and other writers are missing the point entirely ?  And are they also committing that many category errors ?     

Do any of their recent anti-theistic books have at least some merit in your opinion ?

DECIDE FOR YOURSELF.

[Elgarian]

Is it really the case then that Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, Harris and other writers are missing the point entirely ?  And are they also committing that many category errors ?

Well, I don't keep up to date on this stuff any more. The last thing I read by Dawkins was The Blind Watchmaker. But the short answer always was 'yes', and I very much doubt if that's changed, to judge from the bits I pick up by the wayside.

Do any of their recent anti-theistic books have at least some merit in your opinion ?

Dawkins is/was an excellent biologist, so I'm sure there's a lot of excellent biology in his books, just as there is in The Selfish Gene, which as a piece of scientific writing is a tour-de-force. But I find that one of the most disturbing things about all the evangelical atheists is their lack of self-awareness. They don't seem to recognise what's obvious to any objective reader of their writing - that they're driven not by logic, but by a psychological need to 'disprove' and even discredit or ridicule any opposing view. Dawkins's hatred of the religious distorts everything he writes. So the philosophical errors they make don't concern them: they're not permitted to concern them. To make sure of that, they make statements like the one Ernie made recently: 'science is philosophy' - which means that any potential subject matter that lies outside their closed system can be dismissed as non-scientific, therefore non-philosophical, therefore meaningless.

Once you've seen through this trick, there's no point in reading what else they have to say (unless it's being said entertainingly, and worth reading for its own sake), because it's mostly smoke and mirrors.

Of course to be fair, there's an awful lot of smoke and mirrors on the other side of the argument too.

[Fëanor]

... But I find that one of the most disturbing things about all the evangelical atheists is their lack of self-awareness. They don't seem to recognise what's obvious to any objective reader of their writing - that they're driven not by logic, but by a psychological need to 'disprove' and even discredit or ridicule any opposing view. Dawkins's pathological hatred of the religious distorts everything he writes. ...

Actually, I agree that Dawkins (and Hitchens) are "driven not by logic, but a psychological need to 'disprove' and even discredit or ridicule any opposing view".  I feel that impulse too, (as you know), and I have explained why this is if you'll recall.  (Is passion reserved for religious believers?)

However to be "driven not by logic" is not necessarily to be illogical.  Nor does distain for the contrary opinion necessarily render one's feelings "pathological".  Just because you don't like Dawkin's attitude doesn't mean he is wrong.  (Beware the "Appeal to Politeness" logical fallacy.)

Of course to be fair, there's an awful lot of smoke and mirrors on the other side of the argument too.

Needless to say, I agree.

[Elgarian]

However to be "driven not by logic" is not necessarily to be illogical.  Nor does distain for the contrary opinion necessarily render one's feelings "pathological".  Just because you don't like Dawkin's attitude doesn't mean he is wrong.

Well of course if you select the first part of what I said and omit what it was leading to, you get a convenient straw man to knock down as you did. So let's add the really important part back in:

"So the philosophical errors they make don't concern them: they're not permitted to concern them. To make sure of that, they make statements like the one Ernie made recently: 'science is philosophy' - which means that any potential subject matter that lies outside their closed system can be dismissed as non-scientific, therefore non-philosophical, therefore meaningless."

That's what you need to refute (as expounded further in my various posts on this subject), not my mere opinions about why they might take such a blinkered stand.

Footnote: I used the word 'pathological' in its more informal sense meaning 'compulsively motivated', but I can see there's ambiguity there, and in any case its use was unnecessary. I've changed it in my original post. Thank you for pointing it out.

[Fëanor]

Well of course if you select the first part of what I said and omit what it was leading to, you get a convenient straw man to knock down as you did. So let's add the really important part back in:

"So the philosophical errors they make don't concern them: they're not permitted to concern them. To make sure of that, they make statements like the one Ernie made recently: 'science is philosophy' - which means that any potential subject matter that lies outside their closed system can be dismissed as non-scientific, therefore non-philosophical, therefore meaningless."
...

Pardon me please. I assure you I didn't intentionally set up a straw man.  I (mis)construed that you meant that if a person is "driven not by logic" that their logic is at least suspect.   But I suppose I was wrong.  Then again if that's not what you meant, why raise the topic of motivation?  Neither Dawkins nor I nor most atheist skeptics have ever asserted that all motivations are or should be logical.

As for philosophical errors, it would better help your case if you reiterated one or two of Dawkin's rather than mentioning only Ernie's.

[Elgarian]

Then again if that's not what you meant, why raise the topic of motivation?  Neither Dawkins nor I nor most atheist skeptics have ever asserted that all motivations are or should be logical.

Well, I can't be sure that this is the only time that I've raised the issue of 'motivation', but I can be sure that it's something I've rarely, if ever, mentioned in these discussions till now. By contrast, the motivation issue is used as a weapon time and again in these debates by the evangelical atheism representatives, usually in the form of 'people believe because it makes them feel better' or some such. Just look back through the posts on these issues and you'll find that sort of stuff everywhere. Here at last I do mention motivation - only as a prelude to something else because it interests me, and not as part of my argument - and you jumped on it as if it mattered. Now, if that really is all you can find to take me to task for, then I think I must be doing OK.  

As for philosophical errors, it would better help your case if you reiterated one or two of Dawkin's rather than mentioning only Ernie's.

I mention Ernie's version merely because it expresses succinctly one of the most fundamental errors that underlie a great deal of what people like Dawkins say. It's something I've discussed repeatedly to the point of tedium in these threads, and I even now carry the summary of the refutation of it in my signature. It's not necessary for me to direct it at any specific statement by Dawkins or anyone else. Once it's properly understood, the general principle can be applied to any variant of the error that one might encounter. Yet in all these discussions, no one has displayed enough knowledge or understanding of Whitehead's case to be able to provide a counter-argument.

I've said enough and now I'm going to take a break from all this. After all, I really come here to discuss music! But please remember that at no time have I mentioned what my own 'religious' (or non-religious) standpoint is. I've raised all these objections to the statements made by yourself and others not in order to defend any particular 'religious' position; only to expose positions that aren't philosophically viable.

[Homo Aestheticus]

Wrong. Read more archeology. Note the following.

1)The Bible is inconclusive as to which Pharaoh was involved in Exodus. It uses a name that is not part of the Egyptian lineage. Often names become altered from language to language.

2) In trying to define whether the event took place, rather than there being no possibilities, historians cannot come to a consensus as there are several possible candidates.

3) You would not find anything about it in the official Egyption versions of history, as they were adroit propagandists. They did not record battles they lost, or if they did they changed the outcomes. They expunged the first recorded monotheist, Pharoah Akenaten, from the public records, even destroying his city.

4) Knowing this, archaeologists have looked for other evidence. They have found plague victims buried hurriedly that might tie in with the time of the Exodus. They have also found evidence of political problems arising from alterations in the way society functioned for periods that again they try to tie to an Exodus of useful servants on a large scale.

So, the matter is still open, rather than there being no evidence.

Mike

Mike,

Let's assume that this is all true... and that the meeting between Moses and God happened... And that the Rabbi is correct when he says: "That is why Jews were blessed with an historical event of unparalleled proportions.  The Revelation of G-d at Sinai and the transmission of His moral code - the only such public revelation"...

Isn't it insulting to those people to imagine that they had come that far under the impression that murder, theft, adultery, perjury, etc were o.k. ?

Do you know of any society that couldn't protect itself from those obvious crimes ?

Also, I find it strange that this monotheistic God says nothing about rape or slavery or genocide or protecting children from cruelty.

[knight66]

That is a beside-the-point set of observations.

The issue was whether or not there is any evidence for Exodus. As far as hard evidence is concerned, it is sketchy, inconclusive and open to interpretation. I saw a programme only this week where with the slightest of pretexts the relevent Pharaoh was said to be Ramasis I. Kite flying and they then struggled to find the evidence. What they found was then filtered through a determination to find what they set out to find.

There is exactly one mention of the people of Israel in all Egyptian carvings/writings. But as I said, we won't find the truth there, or in other solid sources. So, the mystery may never be solved, but neither has the story been disproved.

Mike