Re: The Root of all Evil?
... for example, George Washington may or may not actually have cut down a cherry tree ... the story tells us something ... about America ... Yes, and so you need to judge evidence. Does the story tell us about the legend? This example is still whether the Geo. Washington story is more or less truthful -- but, as you say, it is not about the `fact' whether the child cut down a cherry tree. Its truth is about something else. To call your best action post-critical naivete is misleading. You need to be critical in your judgement. Does the story tell us about America? When? For whom? If you define factual as meaning `not legendary or mythical', that is fine, but that definition has nothing to do with judgement. Good novels are fiction; and if you judge them, they often tell truths. But don't think such novels are necessarily accurate in the same sense of that a history is intended to be accurate. You may know all this -- but what I heard suggests otherwise. For me, your talk about post-critical naivete sounds foolish. We may be having communications difficulties. The issue is whether people are `satisfied with inadequate answers' to legends and myths as well as to simple facts. Some old questions can be answered, like `what came first, the chicken or the egg?'. That is both a legendary question and a question of simple fact. I remember the question from when I very young. At that time, the question stumped me because I did not know about mutations or genetic material, only that chickens laid eggs and eggs grew into chickens. Nowadays, it is hard to imagine that anyone could have been stumped -- the child would parrot the adult -- since if you think in terms of mutations, you figure that the egg came first, laid by a proto-chicken. Other old questions cannot be answered well. Thus, one famous question is `is there life after the end of life?' If you say that the second meaning of the word `life' is different from the first meaning of the word, then without any trouble or judgment, you can say yes, no, or maybe. (I was taught this; I think this is the usual form, with the phrase `the end of life' shortened to the word `death'.) On the other hand, if the word's meaning is intended to remain consistent, then you can only say no. (By the way, I remember being taught the story of Geo. Washington and the Cherry Tree in school. But rather than focus on his honesty, I remember focusing more on his having cut down the tree -- we cut down and sold Christmas trees, and cutting down the wrong tree was definitely a mistake. Should the young George Washington have cut down a different tree?) -- Robert J. Chassell [EMAIL PROTECTED] GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8 http://www.rattlesnake.com http://www.teak.cc ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
The Root of all Evil?
A new television documentary about religion presented by Richard Dawkins on C4 in the UK. I personally think Dawkins is too soft on religion, but it's interesting to read a moderate viewpoint on the subject. This is an interview with Dawkins in Radio Times magazine introducing the programme. Why do you think religion is dangerous? The way it encourages a knd of childlike slavish obedience is very negative. It teaches people to be satisfied with inadequate answers to profound questions. Thanks to science, we now have such an exciting grasp of the answers to such questions, it's a kind of blasphemy not to embrace them. You blame religion for causing wars. Why do you think this is? If you're told from the cradle that it's a virtue to believe in something in spite of the lack of evidence, that leaves you with nothing but faith. So there is nothing people of opposing faiths can do but disagree. That is bound to cause confrontation. What evidence is there that religious fundamentalism is on the rise in the USA as well as in the Middle East? There is the astonishing fact that in the USA not a single member of Congress will admit to being an atheist - and they wouldn't be elected if they did. Yet if you look at the country's intellectual elite, especially the scientists, 90 per cent of them are atheists. That mismatch is a strange phenomenon in a democracy. You imply that people who believe are deluded. Is that a good way to win them round? A good intellectual case can be made that the existence of a supernatural being is improbable. And anyone intelligent enough to understand that can be persuaded faith is without foundation. Many atheists, in the fight to keep creationism out of schools, decide it's best to say that believing in God and evolution isn't incompatible. But I'm a boat-rocker - I make the case that it's difficult to believe in God if you understand evolution. How do you feel about faith schools? Ghettoisation is a terrible danger for society. What hope is there when children are segregated and taught their own version of history, with the other people as the bad guys? You're bound to get tribal wars. Every time I hear phrases such as Catholic child or Muslim child, I flinch. There's no such thing. There is a child of Catholic or Muslim parents, who, when they're old enough to be able to decide for themselves, may choose to follow a religion. Isn't religion, for many people, as much to do with cultural identity as faith per se? Yes, that's true. Some Jewish friends, who admit to being atheists, embrace religion to maintain a tradition that's been going for 3000 years. I understand that. I was raised an Anglican and I still love the King James Bible. It's astonishingly beautiful English. If there were no religion, where would that leave morality? If your only reason to be good is that you're frightened of a great CCTV in the sky watching your every move, it doesn't say much for you as a person. There is something ancient about the impulse to morality, a strong empathetic tendency in the human mind, with clear Darwinian roots. This genetic empathy came first - religion climbed on the back of it. In _The Story of God_, Robert Winston claimed many scientists are spiritual. Do you agree? A lot of physicists, in particular, have a deep sense of mystery because they confront the elementary principles of the universe. Biologists like me see the extreme complexity of nature. One feels a great humility, knowing there is a lot we don't, and might never, understand. Religion is pathetic compared to the level of sophistication that physics and biology deal with. -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible. - Bertrand Russell ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Root of all Evil?
On Jan 5, 2006, at 9:39 AM, William T Goodall wrote: Why do you think religion is dangerous? The way it encourages a knd of childlike slavish obedience is very negative. It teaches people to be satisfied with inadequate answers to profound questions. Thanks to science, we now have such an exciting grasp of the answers to such questions, it's a kind of blasphemy not to embrace them. First of all, the Bible got that saying all wrong. The love of money is the *square root* of all evil was the original version, but, as it is well established that mathematics and religion don't mix, we now only have the shortened, perverted version that is so often quoted. It may also have been the love of money is the root of Oliver, but nobody can prove that Oliver even existed, so there you go. Seriously, though, I came across a new idea (for me, anyway) a couple of weeks ago. Marcus Borg, a leading member of the Jesus Seminar (and therefore much hated by the religious right) talks about a three- stage development in thought among people who want to have faith in God, but don't want to turn off their minds... Stage 1, typical of childhood, is pre-critical naivete -- the uncritical acceptance of whatever is told to you by authority figures, usually parents. Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the obvious connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Quaeda are the kinds of unprovable truths accepted in this stage. It is a useful and healthy tool for helping little ones survive in the world. In this stage, the developing mind is simply incapable of conceiving of the notion that things that come from above shouldn't be taken as fact. (It just occurred to me that the idea that God is above us, physically, probably originates in the fact that parents are much, much taller than children.) Stage 2, typical of young adulthood, is critical thinking, in which the growing mind begins to question the things that it had accepted as fact 'til then -- it is a winnowing process, during which obviously false stuff is laid aside and possibly true stuff is retained. It is not a wholesale rejection of everything given to us by our parents, teachers and leaders, but the development of intentional acceptance or rejection of ideas received from others. Apparently, in this stage in Western cultures, an equivalence of truth and factuality comes to dominate: if it isn't factual, it mustn't be true. Stage 3, posited by Borg (although it may exist elsewhere) is something he calls post-critical naivete: the ability to accept something as *true* without requiring that it be *factual*. So, for example, George Washington may or may not actually have cut down a cherry tree and not told a lie about it. It is not necessarily factual, but the story tells us something about George Washington (or what we want to think about him), or if the story functions as a founder's myth, something about America (or what we want to think about it) -- namely that he (or it) is honest (the irony of using an unfactual story to promote honesty notwithstanding). I think that Dawkins' fear of religion is sourced in his understanding that religions promote pre-critical naivete, which, for the vast number of believers, is quite true. I'm happy to report that there is a progressive movement in Christianity (and, no doubt, other religions, but I don't know anything about them except that the Jewish movement that surrounds Tikkun magazine seems quite progressive). That movement is trying (without necessarily using Borg's language) to view the Bible and religious ideas as being *true*, regardless of their factuality. The sun didn't *really* stand still in the sky for three hours (nor did the earth stand still in its rotation for those same hours), but the _story_ tells us something about what the writer of the story wanted us to think about Joshua's God. A lot of this progressive Christianity rests on the understanding that the Bible is a human product, not a divine one, and that it tells us what the people who wrote it thought about God, not necessarily what God thinks. I'm also happy to argue the relative merits of post-critical naivete -- it's kind of a slippery slope: just how much unfactuality are we supposed to allow before something is simply bullsnit? Anyway, thanks for an interesting post and an opportunity to post a much-too-long message of my own. Peace, Dave ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Root of All Evil
From: Ronn!Blankenship [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: Killer Bs Discussion brin-l@mccmedia.com To: Killer Bs Discussion brin-l@mccmedia.com Subject: Re: The Root of All Evil Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2005 19:13:00 -0500 At 07:04 PM Saturday 4/30/2005, Erik Reuter wrote: * Ronn!Blankenship ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Or the behavior of one who simply refuses to be an enabler to spammers. No spam. Pay attention. Sorry. I'm so broke this month I can't pay attention. *rimshot* I Told You I Know All The Old Jokes Maru Hard to forget when you've grown up with them... -Travis _ Powerful Parental Controls Let your child discover the best the Internet has to offer. http://join.msn.com/?pgmarket=en-capage=byoa/premxAPID=1994DI=1034SU=http://hotmail.com/encaHL=Market_MSNIS_Taglines Start enjoying all the benefits of MSN® Premium right now and get the first two months FREE*. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Root of All Evil
William T Goodall wrote: Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins explains why God is a delusion, religion is a virus, and America has slipped back into the Dark Ages. Currently, Dawkins is the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, a position created for him in 1995 by Charles Simonyi, a Microsoft millionaire. Micro$oft allied with atheists? I'd rather side with the creation-fundamentalists in this religious war :-P Alberto Monteiro ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Root of All Evil
On 5/1/05, Alberto Monteiro [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: William T Goodall wrote: Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins explains why God is a delusion, religion is a virus, and America has slipped back into the Dark Ages. Currently, Dawkins is the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, a position created for him in 1995 by Charles Simonyi, a Microsoft millionaire. Micro$oft allied with atheists? I'd rather side with the creation-fundamentalists in this religious war :-P Alberto Monteiro Microsoft is playing both sides now - it is paying Ralph Reed a $20K a month retainer. After a meeting with Rev. Ken Hutcherson, leader of a mega-church in Seattle who threatened a national Christian boycott, Microsoftie reversed its policy on supporting gay civil rights. Thank Allah the Merciful, I would have had to support Bill if he was the subject of a Christian right boycott. I really dodged a bullet on that. -- Gary Denton Easter Lemming Blogs http://elemming.blogspot.com http://elemming2.blogspot.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Root of All Evil
On May 1, 2005, at 8:43 AM, Gary Denton wrote: Microsoft is playing both sides now - it is paying Ralph Reed a $20K a month retainer. After a meeting with Rev. Ken Hutcherson, leader of a mega-church in Seattle who threatened a national Christian boycott, Microsoftie reversed its policy on supporting gay civil rights. Thank Allah the Merciful, I would have had to support Bill if he was the subject of a Christian right boycott. I really dodged a bullet on that. The cowardice evinced by MS is staggering in this case. They, like many in the current national legislature, have vastly overestimated the numbers of radical right-wing loonies out there. A fundamentalist boycott of MS products would dent their net by a maximum of 26% in the US, if the numbers I dug up are valid. http://www.religioustolerance.org/us_rel5.htm But there's another problem with the boycott MS stance: For the most part people who are using MS products already *own* them, which means the people participating in the boycott would have to stop using their PCs entirely. Not bloody likely; they have to use *something* to download all that perverse material so they can cluck their tongues and shake their heads woefully at how sinful *other people* are, never for once gaining any personal enjoyment from the activity, of course, of course. Thus boycotting MS is a little like organizing a book burning. In order to burn books you have to buy them (unfortunately no one's done me or my authors that favor yet), and of course the degree of negative publicity that surfaces acts as a backlash against the right-wing loony fringe. It's a corporation's dream -- you literally cannot buy that kind of advertising. MS fouled up. They should have stood firm. But they changed their position before that ludicrous broadcast that featured (among others) James Dobson, and so I think were laboring under the assumption that the fundies were a serious threat. -- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books http://books.nightwares.com/ Current work in progress The Seven-Year Mirror http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Root of All Evil
On 5/1/05, Warren Ockrassa [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The cowardice evinced by MS is staggering in this case. They, like many in the current national legislature, have vastly overestimated the numbers of radical right-wing loonies out there. A fundamentalist boycott of MS products would dent their net by a maximum of 26% in the US, if the numbers I dug up are valid. http://www.religioustolerance.org/us_rel5.htm But there's another problem with the boycott MS stance: For the most part people who are using MS products already *own* them, which means the people participating in the boycott would have to stop using their PCs entirely. Not bloody likely; they have to use *something* to download all that perverse material so they can cluck their tongues and shake their heads woefully at how sinful *other people* are, never for once gaining any personal enjoyment from the activity, of course, of course. Thus boycotting MS is a little like organizing a book burning. In order to burn books you have to buy them (unfortunately no one's done me or my authors that favor yet), and of course the degree of negative publicity that surfaces acts as a backlash against the right-wing loony fringe. It's a corporation's dream -- you literally cannot buy that kind of advertising. MS fouled up. They should have stood firm. But they changed their position before that ludicrous broadcast that featured (among others) James Dobson, and so I think were laboring under the assumption that the fundies were a serious threat. -- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books Quite right- what were they going to do to carry out their empty threat? Use communist Linux? Hardly! : ) ~Maru Might require them to strain their brains ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Root of All Evil
On May 1, 2005, at 10:46 AM, Maru Dubshinki wrote: MS fouled up. They should have stood firm. But they changed their position before that ludicrous broadcast that featured (among others) James Dobson, and so I think were laboring under the assumption that the fundies were a serious threat. -- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books Quite right- what were they going to do to carry out their empty threat? Use communist Linux? Hardly! : ) ~Maru Might require them to strain their brains The final line is the reason that can't happen, of course. You've got to be bright to use Linux. ;) (Ducking...) -- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books http://books.nightwares.com/ Current work in progress The Seven-Year Mirror http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
The Root of All Evil
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/04/30/dawkins/ Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins explains why God is a delusion, religion is a virus, and America has slipped back into the Dark Ages. ... Currently, Dawkins is the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, a position created for him in 1995 by Charles Simonyi, a Microsoft millionaire. Earlier this year, Dawkins signed an agreement with British television to make a documentary about the destructive role of religion in modern history, tentatively titled The Root of All Evil. -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ Aerospace is plumbing with the volume turned up. - John Carmack ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Root of All Evil
On 4/30/05, William T Goodall [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/04/30/dawkins/ Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins explains why God is a delusion, religion is a virus, and America has slipped back into the Dark Ages. ... Currently, Dawkins is the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, a position created for him in 1995 by Charles Simonyi, a Microsoft millionaire. ... Well duh. We don't need a documentary to figure out what Paul said about lucre and evil and Microsoft. ~Maru Is obvious! ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Root of All Evil
At 12:53 PM Saturday 4/30/2005, William T Goodall wrote: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/04/30/dawkins/ Cute (though hardly original) use of Photoshop, but who has a cost- and spam-free link to the actual article? -- Ronn! :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Root of All Evil
* Ronn!Blankenship ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: At 12:53 PM Saturday 4/30/2005, William T Goodall wrote: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/04/30/dawkins/ Cute (though hardly original) use of Photoshop, but who has a cost- and spam-free link to the actual article? That would be enabling either incredibly lazy or pathetically inattentive behavior. But I guess I feel sorry for those who were infected as children. So, co-dependent that I am, here you go... http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/04/30/dawkins/print.html The atheist Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins explains why God is a delusion, religion is a virus, and America has slipped back into the Dark Ages. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Gordy Slack April 28, 2005 | Richard Dawkins is the world's most famous out-of-the-closet living atheist. He is also the world's most controversial evolutionary biologist. Publication of his 1976 book, The Selfish Gene, thrust Dawkins into the limelight as the handsome, irascible, human face of scientific reductionism. The book provoked everything from outrage to glee by arguing that natural selection worked its creative powers only through genes, not species or individuals. Humans are merely gene survival machines, he asserted in the book. Dawkins stuck to his theme but expanded his territory in such subsequent books as The Blind Watchmaker, Unweaving the Rainbow and Climbing Mount Improbable. His recent work, The Ancestor's Tale, traces human lineage back through time, stopping to ponder important forks in the evolutionary road. Given his outspoken defense of Darwin, and natural selection as the force of life, Dawkins has assumed a new role: the religious right's Public Enemy No. 1. Yet Dawkins doesn't shy from controversy, nor does he suffer fools gladly. He recently met a minister who was on the opposite side of a British political debate. When the minister put out his hand, Dawkins kept his hands at his side and said, You, sir, are an ignorant bigot. Currently, Dawkins is the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, a position created for him in 1995 by Charles Simonyi, a Microsoft millionaire. Earlier this year, Dawkins signed an agreement with British television to make a documentary about the destructive role of religion in modern history, tentatively titled The Root of All Evil. I met Dawkins in late March at the Atheist Alliance International annual conference in Los Angeles, where he presented the alliance's top honor, the Richard Dawkins Prize, to magicians Penn and Teller. During our conversation in my hotel room, Dawkins was as gracious as he was punctiliously dressed in a crisp white shirt and soft blazer. Once again, evolution is under attack. Are there any questions at all about its validity? It's often said that because evolution happened in the past, and we didn't see it happen, there is no direct evidence for it. That, of course, is nonsense. It's rather like a detective coming on the scene of a crime, obviously after the crime has been committed, and working out what must have happened by looking at the clues that remain. In the story of evolution, the clues are a billionfold. There are clues from the distribution of DNA codes throughout the animal and plant kingdoms, of protein sequences, of morphological characters that have been analyzed in great detail. Everything fits with the idea that we have here a simple branching tree. The distribution of species on islands and continents throughout the world is exactly what you'd expect if evolution was a fact. The distribution of fossils in space and in time are exactly what you would expect if evolution were a fact. There are millions of facts all pointing in the same direction and no facts pointing in the wrong direction. British scientist J.B.S. Haldane, when asked what would constitute evidence against evolution, famously said, Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian. They've never been found. Nothing like that has ever been found. Evolution could be disproved by such facts. But all the fossils that have been found are in the right place. Of course there are plenty of gaps in the fossil record. There's nothing wrong with that. Why shouldn't there be? We're lucky to have fossils at all. But no fossils have been found in the wrong place, such as to disprove the fact of evolution. Evolution is a fact. Still, so many people resist believing in evolution. Where does the resistance come from? It comes, I'm sorry to say, from religion. And from bad religion. You won't find any opposition to the idea of evolution among sophisticated, educated theologians. It comes from an exceedingly retarded, primitive version of religion, which unfortunately is at present undergoing an epidemic in the United States. Not in Europe, not in Britain, but in the United States. My American friends tell me that you are slipping towards a theocratic Dark Age. Which is very disagreeable for the very large
Re: The Root of All Evil
At 06:46 PM Saturday 4/30/2005, Erik Reuter wrote: * Ronn!Blankenship ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: At 12:53 PM Saturday 4/30/2005, William T Goodall wrote: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/04/30/dawkins/ Cute (though hardly original) use of Photoshop, but who has a cost- and spam-free link to the actual article? That would be enabling either incredibly lazy or pathetically inattentive behavior. Or the behavior of one who simply refuses to be an enabler to spammers. -- Ronn! :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Root of All Evil
* Ronn!Blankenship ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Or the behavior of one who simply refuses to be an enabler to spammers. No spam. Pay attention. -- Erik Reuter http://www.erikreuter.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Root of All Evil
At 07:04 PM Saturday 4/30/2005, Erik Reuter wrote: * Ronn!Blankenship ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Or the behavior of one who simply refuses to be an enabler to spammers. No spam. Pay attention. Sorry. I'm so broke this month I can't pay attention. *rimshot* I Told You I Know All The Old Jokes Maru -- Ronn! :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
