On 31 May 2014, at 23:36, LizR wrote:
On 1 June 2014 00:06, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote:
On 31 May 2014, at 12:04, LizR wrote:
On 31 May 2014 21:35, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote:
To oppose religion and science transforms science into a religion.
On the contrary, non confessional theology has to come back in the
academy, that's all. The problem is not religion, it is the
authoritative arguments. Some atheists club are worst than
catholics is the way they dismiss evidences. They confirmed my
felling that atheism is just, like Christianism, a variant of the
Aristotelian theology.
I think Dawkins is talking basically about authoritative arguments.
He clearly has in mind the insistence that "god did it", which
stops people being able to think of alternative explanations. I
agree with him on this, even if I am personally agnostic and not a
militant atheist - god is not an explanation, it merely pushes the
question back a step.
Q Why is there something rather than nothing?
A Because god made the world.
Q So why is there god rather than nothing?
A Don't blaspheme! (or whatever)
Which is exactly similar to my atheist opponents:
Q Why is there something rather than nothing?
A Because of the physical laws.
Q why are they physical laws?
A oh! that's philosophy (meaning: bullshit).
Actually I agree - Dawkins' views can indeed be turned on himself,
in a deconstructionist sort of way. But if you bear in mind that
he's railing against institutionalised religion what he says is
true, imho.
I follow Dawkins on this, and apparently he seems to have qualified
himself recently more as an agnostic than as an atheist. A problem
here is that atheists disagree on the meaning of "atheism". Some
include agnosticism, some (like in my neighborhood) don't. To prevent
misunderstanding I will use "strong atheism" and "weak atheism".
Some people attributes my "academical difficulties" with what I wrote
in the introduction of "Conscience & Mécanisme" where I explain the
interest of modal logic by illustrating the difference between "not
believing in God" (agnosticism in the common sense) and "believing in
the non existence of God" (strong atheism); that is the difference
between ~[]g and []~g. Natural language hides often that nuance. The
same with the word "like". If you say that you don't like spinach,
people will understand that you dislike spinach, not that you are
neutral (like if you did not know what spinach is).
Bruno
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