tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post5721089639278399577..comments2023-10-26T22:06:11.166+11:00Comments on Metamagician3000: Living with DarwinRussell Blackfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12431324430596809958noreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-9795842840893872242007-11-01T06:08:00.000+11:002007-11-01T06:08:00.000+11:00actually, that's brilliant. Thank you. I'm going t...actually, that's brilliant. Thank you. I'm going to pass that on to a couple of people.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-46139553608340706082007-11-01T05:40:00.000+11:002007-11-01T05:40:00.000+11:00tfIS4C Hello all!tfIS4C Hello all!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-75340392704966820392007-10-31T00:28:00.000+11:002007-10-31T00:28:00.000+11:00Please write anything else!Please write anything else!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-22906345164748208852007-10-30T20:35:00.000+11:002007-10-30T20:35:00.000+11:00Nice Article.Nice Article.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-62899845628580100732007-10-30T17:21:00.000+11:002007-10-30T17:21:00.000+11:00Thanks to author.Thanks to author.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-20879984880087056592007-10-29T01:51:00.000+11:002007-10-29T01:51:00.000+11:00actually, that's brilliant. Thank you. I'm going t...actually, that's brilliant. Thank you. I'm going to pass that on to a couple of people.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-7628102478986676422007-10-28T07:10:00.000+11:002007-10-28T07:10:00.000+11:00Good job!Good job!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-46665868341143939022007-10-28T06:21:00.000+11:002007-10-28T06:21:00.000+11:00Please write anything else!Please write anything else!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-40630977016164484572007-10-27T05:45:00.000+10:002007-10-27T05:45:00.000+10:00Hello all!Hello all!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-88805105515612155242007-10-27T05:20:00.000+10:002007-10-27T05:20:00.000+10:00Good job!Good job!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-41406695094919028932007-10-27T04:07:00.000+10:002007-10-27T04:07:00.000+10:008aEXjm Thanks to author.8aEXjm Thanks to author.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-67339771161338059292007-10-26T19:40:00.000+10:002007-10-26T19:40:00.000+10:00dz3cpj Your blog is great. Articles is interesting...dz3cpj Your blog is great. Articles is interesting!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-3279983432027916962007-09-24T11:27:00.000+10:002007-09-24T11:27:00.000+10:00Hi Russell, another interesting post. I'll have t...Hi Russell, another interesting post. <BR/>I'll have to check out the book. From your review it seems worth the time. I agree that the Dawkins we read about often on the web, isn't the Dawkins that wrote the God Delusion or I've seen via the web and books.<BR/><BR/>Brian English.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-45636353459429735742007-09-23T11:44:00.000+10:002007-09-23T11:44:00.000+10:00Re barefoot bum's points. I raised the issue about...Re barefoot bum's points. I raised the issue about Camus originally in an article about Camus, and I brought it up here because one of the points Kitcher makes about Dawkins is very similar to a point I make about Camus. The general point is that it might be easier to find meaning in your life - without religion or anything supernatural - if you are engaged in work that you find creative and consider important. If you are a peasant, ground down by repetitive work, things may seem very different. They may also seem different to an ordinary Western worker, preoccupied with feeding the mortgage and the kids.<BR/><BR/>The point is more a reminder to myself to be sympathetic to the situations of such people, since, whatever problems and frustrations I have in my own life, I'm in a very privileged situation in many ways. It would be unfair of me to be dismissive of others as living inauthentic lives. Even if I think that they <I>are</I> to some extent - and I find this unfortunate - I should view them with compassion rather than scorn, especially if they are victims more than victimisers.<BR/><BR/>Of course, you make a good point, though it's slightly tangential to what I was thinking of. Yes, some people are oppressed by religion. Far from disagreeing with that, I think that many people are oppressed by religion in many ways. On the other hand, I'm not going to say that every moderate religious believer is either oppressed by her religion (which may not have any of the nasty elements you mentioned) or that she is oppressing others. There's a lot of quite benign religion around, at least where I live, and I do think that it's worthwhile reminding ourselves that not all religious believers are either victims or enemies of reason. Even Dawkins emphasises that he engages socially with nice Anglican bishops who are not our enemies.<BR/><BR/>But I don't take the silly line of: "I don't recognise the kind of religion that Dawkins attacks." I definitely <I>do</I> recognise it. All too well.<BR/><BR/>The fact that my religious friends tend to have rather benign ideas does not blind me at all to existence of the hellfire-and-damnation kinds of fundamentalism that are so common (perhaps especially in the US), to the widespread rejection of science in the US and other parts of the world, or to the morality of guilt and misery preached by the Vatican leadership and the Catholic Church's worldwide network of conservative cardinals and bishops. I haven't gone soft on any of this.Russell Blackfordhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12431324430596809958noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-484108510598479162007-09-22T13:55:00.000+10:002007-09-22T13:55:00.000+10:00I have some thoughts on "Einsteinian religion", or...I have some thoughts on "Einsteinian religion", or what might better be called "appreciation of an Einsteinian God". However, I haven't yet hashed these thoughts out fully, so I can say little now beyond reporting a vague worry. More will follow, but I must lower my entropy first!<BR/><BR/><I>I don't see Dawkins as scornful of ordinary religious people, though he certainly is scornful of those who are dogmatic in their beliefs and impervious to rational argument, and to those use their dogmas as instruments of oppression. However, there's a straw man version of Dawkins being widely promulgated that makes him out to be angry, aggressive, and just plain nasty to religious folk. I think that any element of truth in this has been <B>greatly</B> exaggerated. He clearly doesn't suffer Ted Haggard gladly, but he is generally very considered and polite, even gentle, in debate.</I><BR/><BR/>Agreed on all counts. I've been re-reading <I>The God Delusion</I> lately, and I've been continually struck by the interesting points which have been overlooked or sidestepped in order to rail against a straw Dawkins.Blake Staceyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13977394981287067289noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-22353429258818599692007-09-22T10:49:00.000+10:002007-09-22T10:49:00.000+10:00I was hoping this post might have received some mo...I was hoping this post might have received some more comments over night. I think the issue of the future of religion (and how secularists like Dawkins, Kitchens ... and I, much further down the literary food chain ... should respond to its manifestations) is currently very important.<BR/><BR/>I'll address barefoot bum's points later. Before I go any further with the discussion, I should just make clear that the article I wrote about Camus was <I>extremely</I> sympathetic to his views. Someone reading my post without having read the article itself might assume it was critical of him. That's far from the case. It just struck me, yesterday, how much one of Kitcher's comments about Dawkins reminded me of a particular comment I had made a few years ago about Camus, in the pages of <I>Quadrant</I> magazine, well before the current "New Atheism" controversy started. It even crossed my mind that Kitcher may have seen my Camus piece, or the summary of it in the <I>Wilson Quarterly</I>, and been influenced by it at some level, doubtless subconscious, but I don't think so (I can't even remember whether the <I>Wilson Quarterly</I> mentioned the particular comment). More likely, we just had the same thought independently.<BR/><BR/>Similarly, I'm a great fan of Dawkins, and I've obviously "sided" with him in my post, while acknowledging that Kitcher has a point. One reason why I side with Dawkins here is that I think his critics often misread him ... and I believe that Kitcher does, too, to <I>some</I> extent.<BR/><BR/>I don't see Dawkins as scornful of ordinary religious people, though he certainly is scornful of those who are dogmatic in their beliefs and impervious to rational argument, and to those use their dogmas as instruments of oppression. However, there's a straw man version of Dawkins being widely promulgated that makes him out to be angry, aggressive, and just plain nasty to religious folk. I think that any element of truth in this has been <I>greatly</I> exaggerated. He clearly doesn't suffer Ted Haggard gladly, but he is generally very considered and polite, even gentle, in debate.<BR/><BR/>I don't think that Camus or Dawkins have shown the scorn for ordinary "battlers" (as we say in Australia) that I warned against. I raised it in the Camus article, because I think it's a temptation we can fall into if we go along with the general approach that Camus takes, especially if we are worried about authenticity (in the sense that comes up in existentialist and related thought). In the current context, I often see blog posts and comments that are far more scornful of ordinary religious people than Dawkins himself has ever been, so the temptation is definitely there. It's one that I sometimes feel; and it's good to see Kitcher writing about, for example, his experience with his own family, as a way of warning people against it. But I just don't see Dawkins as that kind of scornful person.<BR/><BR/>None of which has addressed barefoot bum's points. Later.Russell Blackfordhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12431324430596809958noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-59066689200813382642007-09-21T23:10:00.000+10:002007-09-21T23:10:00.000+10:00I'm not nearly so tolerant of religion as you impl...I'm not nearly so tolerant of religion as you imply Kitcher is, because I don't see the primary role of religion as maintaining hope; I see the primary role, rather, as enforcing fear.<BR/><BR/>As Norm Doering writes: <A HREF="http://www.totse.com/en/religion/christianity/notcrst1.html" REL="nofollow">Hope is the bait</A>, but <A HREF="http://www.totse.com/en/religion/christianity/notcrst2.html" REL="nofollow">Fear is the trap</A>.<BR/><BR/>Hope is pretty easy; it doesn't <I>require</I> the illusion of truth, it <I>inspires</I> the illusion of truth. Fear does, however, require the illusion of truth, and it is to maintain fear that the religious insist on the truth of their claims. Hope to truth to fear: Only rational, naturalistic thought can break this chain.<BR/><BR/>I think it's misleading to say that "belief in a providential deity is a source of comfort [to those who] lead lives that are pretty tough, circumscribed, and insecure." I think this sentiment ignores the fact that these people's lives are tough, circumscribed and insecure in no small part <I>because of</I> their belief in a providential deity. Specifically, they are oppressed by their fear of such a deity and their conviction that a privileged, priestly class can advise them as to how to placate this fearsome being and even intervene to obtain undeserved mercy.<BR/><BR/>I think you're creating a false dichotomy by comparing religious belief Camus' existentialism; I think (with apologies to A. C. Grayling) you're mistaking meliorism for perfectabilism. Religion isn't bad because it's keeping people from living up to an ideal, or even the standards of some French intellectual. Religion is bad because it keeps ordinary people in a state of fear and enables rank oppression and exploitation and the imposition of gratuitous suffering.Larry Hamelinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08788697573946266404noreply@blogger.com