Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, and Hinduism

[71 dB]

I find that my experience of art is about both.

Yes, of course we do learn too. What I mean is art is an "ineffective" method to learn new things.

[DavidRoss]

Some religions maybe but for example the monotheistic Abrahamic religions are custom-talored to dominate people. They are  psychologically so well camouflaged that even in the 21th century many are unable to see that.

If you'll forgive me for pointing out the obvious (again!), you've just revealed (for the umpteenth time) quite a lot about your ignorance and the prejudices that reinforce it, but you've said nothing even slightly informative about anything else.

Take it from one who made all the same tired, sophomoric arguments against religion when I was a teenager:  it's very easy to discover the vast beneficial influence of religion in the world if only you open your mind to seeing it.  (Whoops!  We're right back to people who are unable to see things--even when they're obvious and many kind souls help point them out!)

How bizarre that so many here take the blessings they enjoy as a consequence of the West's Christian heritage so much for granted that they are blind to their source!  One hardly need be a Christian of any sort, or believe in the special divinity of Jesus, or even believe that Jesus ever even existed, to recognize the profound, penetrating influence of Christianity on Western (and now global) civilization.

[71 dB]

It's very easy to discover the vast beneficial influence of religion in the world if only you open your mind to seeing it.

When I open my eyes I see members of sexual minorities struggling for their rights. Yeah, real benefits... 

How bizarre that so many here take the blessings they enjoy as a consequence of the West's Christian heritage so much for granted that they are blind to their source!  One hardly need be a Christian of any sort, or believe in the special divinity of Jesus, or even believe that Jesus ever even existed, to recognize the profound, penetrating influence of Christianity on Western (and now global) civilization.

How much is the "Christian" heritage responsible for what our civilization is today? I believe most beneficial progress has happened thanks to intelligent free-thinking individual often striggling against the conservative influence of the church and religion.

[DavidRoss]

When I open my eyes I see members of sexual minorities struggling for their rights. Yeah, real benefits... 

How much is the "Christian" heritage responsible for what our civilization is today? I believe most beneficial progress has happened thanks to intelligent free-thinking individual often striggling against the conservative influence of the church and religion.

Again, you are telling us very much about the severely restricted limits of your own knowledge, intelligence, and wisdom.  Until you are willing to remove the blinders from your eyes, no one can help you to see anything other than the tiny sliver of reality you're willing to look at.

[71 dB]

Again, you are telling us very much about the severely restricted limits of your own knowledge, intelligence, and wisdom.  Until you are willing to remove the blinders from your eyes, no one can help you to see anything other than the tiny sliver of reality you're willing to look at.

So, basically you are saying I am an atheist because I am so stupid and if I was smart I was religious? Richard Dawkins is limited and stupid too, is that right? 

[Elgarian]

To me art is about creating something new rather than learning something new.

You think we don't learn anything by reading a great novel, or a great poem, or watching a Shakespeare play, contemplating a great painting, or listening to Elgar's music? I'm astounded. The entire history of the reception of art is against you in this, I think.

I don't believe irrational thinking could save us from possible limitations of science. That's a completely crazy suggestion!

I didn't suggest it. That's a muddled misrepresentation of what I said. I pointed out that the philosophy of Whitehead (who was surely one of the great logical thinkers) addresses the question of the limitations of science, and must surely be worth considering if we're tempted to believe that science is the One True Way to knowledge. Please consider what you're saying here: you say you insist on an entirely logical approach to acquiring knowledge of the world, yet don't find it worthwhile to read a great logician's critical analysis of the method we use to acquire it? Is that logical? Or scientific?

Dawkins isn't that good as a writer but he knows what he is writing about. He really justifies his thoughts.

When he talks about biology, he knows what he is talking about. When he draws philosophical or theological conclusions, he does not. He is a great attacker of the straw men of religious thought.

I have always believed that philosophy is science based on logic.

But philosophy is not 'science based on logic'. Philosophy exists as a discipline quite distinct from that of science.

Science is just superior candidate for the best (and probably the only) route to the truth

This is where I came in, but I don't have the stamina to keep going round the same old circle yet again. I'll leave you with the quote from Whitehead in my signature:

"Much philosophic thought is based upon the faked adequacy of some account of various modes of human experience. The final outcome of philosophic thought cannot be based upon the exact statements which form the basis of special sciences.
The exactness is a fake."

[DavidRoss]

So, basically you are saying I am an atheist because I am so stupid and if I was smart I was religious? Richard Dawkins is limited and stupid too, is that right? 

No, that is not what I am saying.  Although you clearly fail to appreciate your own intelligence, you are just as clearly bright enough to grasp virtually everything under discussion throughout this site if only you would apply yourself to learning rather than to applying your own prejudices in defense against learning.

As for Dawkins: yes, he is limited and stupid.  We are all limited, Poju, and none of us are especially bright.  Those who fail to realize this, like Dawkins, are therefore stupid--and by choice, at least to the extent that crippling arrogance is a choice and not organically pathological.

[Elgarian]

art is an "ineffective" method to learn new things.

I see you repeat this incredible statement here in a slightly different form. Forgive me, but my goodness... what an impossibly restricted notion you must have of what constitutes 'new things'. When you first heard Elgar's 1st symphony, The Spirit of England, or the violin concerto ... did you truly learn nothing? I just can't believe that you mean what you seem to be saying.

[DavidRoss]

I see you repeat this incredible statement here in a slightly different form. Forgive me, but my goodness... what an impossibly restricted notion you must have of what constitutes 'new things'. When you first heard Elgar's 1st symphony, The Spirit of England, or the violin concerto ... did you truly learn nothing? I just can't believe that you mean what you seem to be saying.

One thing of note that is not immediately evident from his posts is that Poju is not a native English speaker.  He's a Finn.  To some extent, his difficulty in grasping nice distinctions owes to that.

[Elgarian]

One thing of note that is not immediately evident from his posts is that Poju is not a native English speaker.  He's a Finn.  To some extent, his difficulty in grasping nice distinctions owes to that.

Ah!!! Thanks David! A timely and most helpful intervention!

71dB - my apologies if I haven't made sufficient allowance for that. Your English is so good that I was completely unaware that it isn't your native language.

[71 dB]

You think we don't learn anything by reading a great novel, or a great poem, or watching a Shakespeare play, contemplating a great painting, or listening to Elgar's music? I'm astounded. The entire history of the reception of art is against you in this, I think.

I don't learn anything about the big bang while listening to Elgar or any other music. I need to read books of physics for that. That's what I mean. What I learn from Elgar has relevance for me personally. Most people don't even care about Elgar.

I didn't suggest it. That's a muddled misrepresentation of what I said. I pointed out that the philosophy of Whitehead (who was surely one of the great logical thinkers) addresses the question of the limitations of science, and must surely be worth considering if we're tempted to believe that science is the One True Way to knowledge. Please consider what you're saying here: you say you insist on an entirely logical approach to acquiring knowledge of the world, yet don't find it worthwhile to read a great logician's critical analysis of the method we use to acquire it? Is that logical? Or scientific?

I did read about Whitehead in Wikipedia today for an hour or so. I got the impression he wasn't that right about things. For example he has weird (false) theories about gravity. 

When he talks about biology, he knows what he is talking about. When he draws philosophical or theological conclusions, he does not. He is a great attacker of the straw men of religious thought.

Really? I disagree. 

But philosophy is not 'science based on logic'. Philosophy exists as a discipline quite distinct from that of science.

Ilkka Niiniluoto, the professor of theoretical philosophy at the University of Helsinki says philosophy is exact science based on logic. Perhaps he is wrong?

[71 dB]

One thing of note that is not immediately evident from his posts is that Poju is not a native English speaker.  He's a Finn.  To some extent, his difficulty in grasping nice distinctions owes to that.

Actually I have difficulties to grasp whole ideas because of that.   That is one reason why I have been so lost in this thread.

Also, I think Finns in general are much less religious than for example British or American people. In Finland being an atheist and criticizing the church isn't a big deal.

71dB - my apologies if I haven't made sufficient allowance for that. Your English is so good that I was completely unaware that it isn't your native language.

Wow, that is so flattering! Thanks!  

My high-school English teacher should read this. I was a "hopeless" case back then. I learned my English in university.

[Elgarian]

I don't learn anything about the big bang while listening to Elgar or any other music.

That doesn't surprise me. How could you possibly do so? But knowledge about the big bang is not the only kind of knowledge there is. The arts are enormously important vehicles for communication, and a great deal of learning is done through them. Really significant shifts in our perceptions of the world occur through the arts; that's not a matter of opinion, but a fact of cultural history. Maybe this is, as David suggests, a language problem - it seems so obvious that I can't believe there could be any disagreement on the matter.

I did read about Whitehead in Wikipedia today for an hour or so. I got the impression he wasn't that right about things. For example he has weird (false) theories about gravity.

Well, science moves on. Whitehead was a man of his time. But I've been talking about his philosophy, not his understanding of gravity, and his logic still has to be attended to.

Really? I disagree [about Dawkins].

You disagree about whether Dawkins understands philosophy? But to anyone who does have a little knowledge of philosophy, it's clear that he doesn't. You disagree that he sets up religious straw men in order to knock them down? But that is his standard tactic.
 

Ilkka Niiniluoto, the professor of theoretical philosophy at the University of Helsinki says philosophy is exact science based on logic. Perhaps he is wrong?

Are we involved in some translational issue concerning the word 'science' here? I'm using the word as describing a specific process of observation, hypothesis-forming, prediction-making, then hypothesis testing, and so on - in other words, the 'scientific method'. But philosophy - and for convenience I extract a rough definition from Wikipedia - is "the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, truth, beauty, law, justice, validity, mind, and language." Now, we could quibble about that definition, but it certainly isn't 'science'. So I don't understand the statement made by Ilkka Niiniluoto, unless there's an ambiguity in translation. He is specifically interested in the philosophy of science, I see - so the problem may indeed be one of translation.

[71 dB]

That doesn't surprise me. How could you possibly do so? But knowledge about the big bang is not the only kind of knowledge there is. The arts are enormously important vehicles for communication, and a great deal of learning is done through them. Really significant shifts in our perceptions of the world occur through the arts; that's not a matter of opinion, but a fact of cultural history. Maybe this is, as David suggests, a language problem - it seems so obvious that I can't believe there could be any disagreement on the matter.

We see here that there is different kind of knowledge. The question is what kind of difference. Scientific knowledge is formulated. Not all knowledge is. In many cases knowledge is too complex for us to formulate.

Well, science moves on. Whitehead was a man of his time. But I've been talking about his philosophy, not his understanding of gravity, and his logic still has to be attended to.

yes, science moves on. The world moves on too. In my opinion mankind has been ready to abandon religion for about 100 years now. We are behind the schedule (religion doesn't want to let go as it is created to dominate us). That's also Dawkins' message.

You disagree about whether Dawkins understands philosophy? But to anyone who does have a little knowledge of philosophy, it's clear that he doesn't. You disagree that he sets up religious straw men in order to knock them down? But that is his standard tactic.

Give me a break, please. Dawkins is a highly educated and intelligent man who has spend decades of his life thinking about these issues while communicating with other smart, educated people like Dan Dennett (a philosopher!) Dawkins is right and religious people are pissed off because of that.
 

Are we involved in some translational issue concerning the word 'science' here? I'm using the word as describing a specific process of observation, hypothesis-forming, prediction-making, then hypothesis testing, and so on - in other words, the 'scientific method'. But philosophy - and for convenience I extract a rough definition from Wikipedia - is "the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, truth, beauty, law, justice, validity, mind, and language." Now, we could quibble about that definition, but it certainly isn't 'science'. So I don't understand the statement made by Ilkka Niiniluoto, unless there's an ambiguity in translation. He is specifically interested in the philosophy of science, I see - so the problem may indeed be one of translation.

Scientic methods vary. One does biological research differently from theoretical studies of Math. The fundamental idea is the same: You take the best possible knowledge (observations included) available and using that you try to

1) remove errors/inaccuracy of your knowledge.
2) deduct new knowledge

If philosophers aren't doing that (science) then what the hell are they doing with our tax money?

[DavidRoss]

Also, I think Finns in general are much less religious than for example British or American people. In Finland being an atheist and criticizing the church isn't a big deal.

I don't know how to compare religiosity of Finns with Brits or Yanks.  Being an atheist and criticizing the church may be a trivially common in America and Britain (damn near required for teenagers still, I suspect) but many of those who think they are atheists and enjoy criticizing the church make a very big deal out of it--witness these incessant threads at GMG alone, and the constant attention-seeking squawking of imbeciles like Maher and Dawkins.   "The lady doth protest too much" in most such cases to make their claims of disinterest credible.

Are we involved in some translational issue concerning the word 'science' here? I'm using the word as describing a specific process of observation, hypothesis-forming, prediction-making, then hypothesis testing, and so on - in other words, the 'scientific method'. But philosophy - and for convenience I extract a rough definition from Wikipedia - is "the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, truth, beauty, law, justice, validity, mind, and language." Now, we could quibble about that definition, but it certainly isn't 'science'. So I don't understand the statement made by Ilkka Niiniluoto, unless there's an ambiguity in translation. He is specifically interested in the philosophy of science, I see - so the problem may indeed be one of translation.

Science, of course, both as method and as individual branches of study employing that method, is a subset of philosophy and no more defines that enterprise than harmony defines music.

[Elgarian]

In my opinion mankind has been ready to abandon religion for about 100 years now.

At no stage in any of these discussions have I been arguing a case for religion of any kind. (We've never reached a point in these discussions at which that might be a feasible prospect, even if I were inclined to pursue it.) I merely raise philosophical objections to the view that science is capable of giving adequate answers to all the questions we ask. That is, I ask that science be as scientifically sceptical about its own process, as it is about the hypotheses that it generates.

But what's clear to me (and it must surely be clear to you too) is that we've reached a complete breakdown of communication over these matters, and there's no point in continuing further. We'd merely go round in an endless loop of misunderstanding.

[Elgarian]

Science, of course, both as method and as individual branches of study employing that method, is a subset of philosophy and no more defines that enterprise than harmony defines music.

Thanks. While I reached for my sledgehammer, you cracked the nut.

[71 dB]

At no stage in any of these discussions have I been arguing a case for religion of any kind. (We've never reached a point in these discussions at which that might be a feasible prospect, even if I were inclined to pursue it.) I merely raise philosophical objections to the view that science is capable of giving adequate answers to all the questions we ask. That is, I ask that science be as scientifically sceptical about its own process, as it is about the hypotheses that it generates.

But what's clear to me (and it must surely be clear to you too) is that we've reached a complete breakdown of communication over these matters, and there's no point in continuing further. We'd merely go round in an endless loop of misunderstanding.

As I said, there are many kinds of knowledge depending on how much we can formulate our questions. Religious "knowledge" tends to force itself everywhere, in place where it doesn't belong. Scientific knowledge doesn't do that. It's passive. Scientist must work hard to get answers from science. Also, science is (or at least tries to be) about the truth but it is not sacret like religions are.

Why not give philosophy a try? What harm can it do if it fails? As if there were better tools. If we don't get answers then we just have to live with that.

 

[71 dB]

I don't know how to compare religiosity of Finns with Brits or Yanks.  Being an atheist and criticizing the church may be a trivially common in America and Britain (damn near required for teenagers still, I suspect) but many of those who think they are atheists and enjoy criticizing the church make a very big deal out of it--witness these incessant threads at GMG alone, and the constant attention-seeking squawking of imbeciles like Maher and Dawkins.   "The lady doth protest too much" in most such cases to make their claims of disinterest credible.

"Imbecile" Dawkins does justify his war against religion very well. Just as we need to fight against harmful drugs in society, we must fight the harmful effects of religion.

[Elgarian]

Why not give philosophy a try?

I said I wouldn't keep this debate going, and I won't. But at this point I must allow myself to splutter!