This time, I was intrigued.
Richard Dawkins, an apparently well-known scientist, has made a case for atheism and has written several books that support his stance.
This book was a big bite for me to take, and it also flies in the face of everything I was taught to believe in.
But it's quite engaging and I am enjoying it!
In it, he attacks conventional wisdom of both science and religion, bashes religion, and makes quite a case for scientists. He claims that, above all at this point in the book, science is actually more open-minded than religion.
To paraphrase, he sees no difference between God, Santa, Thor or the boogie man.
He systematically, as a scientist would, picks apart theism, agnosticism monotheism and polytheism to a point where you say "yeah, that's right!".
He writes about a prayer experiment where people from other parts of the country were asked to pray for 3 groups of hospitalized patients. One group knew it, one group didn't, and one group received neither prayers or knowledge.
There was a difference: the ones who knew they were being prayed for got sicker!
How strange.
There is plenty more in this book, and I am not doing it justice by siting only this. But he makes very good points and I think at the end of this book, I'll be a better person.
I dunno...I had to write about something, and I may have stirred up a hornet's nest, but it's what I am reading and I think everyone should read it!
5 comments:
Dear man, I'm called Enio8 and I appear as blogger under campionario.blogspot.com
I'm Italian and mine is and unperfect American (also English!). On my posts I usually enjoy the help of an agree girl who speaks anglo-american tongues very well.
If I've understood like good your post, I believe that it's probably a question of (...) faith.
Seeked, asked, maybe screamed faith, that's God searching.
About the Faith (that is a God present!), I can only tell you God probably has already called you in the time, and you for your problems, job, family, etc. you wasn't ever in possibility to answer to Him.
Exactly for your actual "Divine" problems, the bit is that the Man is passing one else crise of his; for the same matter!
Try to link the Divinity, friend; for instance, don't think of your pride - it's a bit good for a Citizen, not for Jesus! - and try to use your own words for Him: He has always something to say, expecially for someone who stays above the World!
Only if I've correctly understood your post... Write to me! Enio8iibirnpd
I never read the book, so I can't say much about it. However, I did listen to a lecture of his online. After having stated about 10, to me, questionable things in the first 15 minutes I couldn't take it anymore and had to turn it off. I don't remember them all, but one was essentially: "President Bush is Christian. Bush is an idiot. Therefore all Christians are idiots." I studied logics at university, but I have to say that I missed that formula.
Second, applying "science" to faith questions is idiotic. Is sounds rigorous and like a good idea, but it's not. Like the "experiment" you gave an example of. I once read a proof of God's non-existence by a former class mate of mine. It went like this: Two people are competing in the same 100 meters race. Both believe in God and pray for a win. Obviously, both cannot win. Hence, God cannot exist.
It sounds scientific enough, but the argument is flawed beyond belief. The major flaw is of course the assumption that men control the actions of God. That prayer is a command, and not a plead. The same flaw is in your quoted experiment, only that it also includes human physiological factors making the whole thing even more complicated (read: vague).
I'm sure Dawkins is a great guy. My position is simply this (regarding Dawkins): If you want to question faith, or bridge communities, or have a deep discussion about reality and the universe in the large, don't come to the discussion table wearing commandos. It's off-putting. Wear a pair of regular pants for crying out loud.
I totally agree. He is quite militant! Having written what I did doesn't mean I necessarily support him, but it makes me think and I hope that is a good idea.
We'll see.
Yes, he believes strongly in science, but that doesn't make him militant. Their are many people out there who act more aggressively towards those who disagree with their faith than a soft spoken professor from Oxford. I must admit I do not see how giving a lecture and writing a book can be seen as aggressive. Aggression for me is a right wing Christian standing out side with a placard telling college students they are going to burn in hell because they are getting an education. Please explain where he has threaten and acted militant.
I would also like to say that I think science has been misrepresented. Your classmate's argument didn't even follow any scientific reasoning and was completely baseless. Dawkin's example was only a snapshot of his argument. His book expand a lot more on his argument.
The thoughts I would like to throw out are.....how much is our faith influenced by the culture in which we grow up? And, what makes one faith right and the other wrong when at the core (when we remove people) they all preach the same concepts?
I never said that writing a book and giving a lecture makes you militant. I'm just giving my personal experience with what I heard from Hawkins so far, and mainly this is the lecture I listened to online.
And, he is not militant in the sense that he packs a gun, no, he's just a sweet old man living in a cottage just outside Oxford with a kettle on the stove, but I'm just put off by the way he presents his arguments by constantly hinting that the other side are a pack of fools. But again, this kind of criticism of faith is what his idea is all about and what he believes, so that's what he does, but personally I don't find it very appealing.
I'm sure he has a larger argument, and I should probably read the book before saying anything, but I'm just irritated by fake science (being a scientist myself, although computer science). Experiments that sound very much like science, in the sense of: dropping numbers, having control groups, measuring, but basing all of this on great flaws in the fundaments of the experiment itself, it's assumptions.
I understand that there is a right-wing side of Christianity that get a lot of media attention. And that any part of Christianity always gets compared, or is equaled, to it. Personally, I'm so far removed from those ideas that it just feel completely irrelevant to be compared to them. That's why I feel it completely irrelevant for someone like Dawkins to start a discussion (which be basically did on the lecture I listened to) by saying something like: Bush is Christian. It's completely irrelevant to discuss the fact that Bush claims to be a God-fearing Christian, like he sets the standards of what being a Christian is. That's what bugs me the most.
If anyone want to attack any faith, do it on the faith itself, and not by association. At least that's fair.
Summarizing the criticism of Christianity, leaving other faiths out of the discussion for the moment. Good arguments: I don't believe in incarnation, or I don't believe in miracles. Then I can understand your arguments. Bad argument: I did an experiment...
Cheerio,
Jake
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