I was given The God Delusion and have tried reading it twice, just can't get through it. Which is a shame because The Selfish Gene truly altered my life in an important way. Amazing book and his work on evolution is really important.
As far as atheism being the only "intelligent" world view to have, well, I guess it depends on how you define intelligent. If you take rationality as a basic supposition of intelligent, then no, religion is not at all intelligent. I don't understand your point about the existence of God being a scientific hypothesis. God is supposedly a being with certain defining characteristics. Why would it be laughable to say that you should be able to set up an experiment to explore the existence a being with those characteristics? Once upon a time the heavens, the motion of the sun and earth, the flow of blood in our bodies, growth of a baby in its mother..these were all things which were firmly said to be outside the understanding of mortals, that it was all the realm of philosophers and those that study the Will of God. The sphere which religion gets to call its own, unassailable by science, has shrunk at a remarkable speed over the last couple hundred years. It seems as foolish to say that anything is outside the realm of science as it does to say that science will inevitably explain everything. Judah On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 6:42 PM, Mary Jo Sminkey <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Funny stuff. He's an interesting fellow, never herd of him before > > Wow, never heard of him? "The God Delusion" is a fairly well-known book, > certainly among atheists but in many other circles as well....if you read any > Christian apologist text you'll often find it mentioned. I agree with the > comment that he's pretty obnoxious. It's one thing to make a decision to > choose atheism over religion or making an argument that there is no > scientific basis for a belief in God...but he takes it to much further > extremes with statements like this about it being the only "intelligent" or > "healthy" world view to have. Or this one...that the existence of God is a > scientific hypothesis....seriously?? I have a hard time listening to anyone > that makes such indefensible statements. > > It's also a pretty serious fallacy to point to the actions of extremists as > representative of the whole of the religious community, particularly when you > understand that most religions *are* fundamentally peaceful at their core. > There are certainly just as many examples in history of evils done in the > lack of religion, or as part of religious oppression. We certainly see MANY > extremists that act outside the bounds of religion, I personally think that > religion has very little to do with it, they just always find *some* reason > to justify their actions, sometimes it's religious and just as often it's > not. Hitler, Stalin, Kmer Rouge, take your pick. > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Want to reach the ColdFusion community with something they want? Let them know on the House of Fusion mailing lists Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:308258 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.5
