One of my Facebook friends posted this to his feed today. Richard Dawkins waxing eloquent:
”The feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable. It is a deep aesthetic passion to rank with the finest that music and poetry can deliver. It is truly one of the things that make life worth living and it does so, if anything, more effectively if it convinces …us that the time we have for living is quite finite.”
“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?”
“An atheist is just somebody who feels about Yahweh the way any decent Christian feels about Thor or Baal or the golden calf. As has been said before, we are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.” Read the rest of this entry »
But don’t take my word for it. How about an Oxford professor whom you know and love? Richard Dawkins, of course! I found this 2 part video he did for the BBC in 2006. It’s a very good overview of his ideas and concepts of religion, evolution and atheism. See below for the descriptions of each episode.
From Michael Nugent in Ireland, I found the following and thought I’d spread the blasphemy around and share it with you. Here’s to hoping Ireland gets a bit of sense and repeals this dangerous and ridiculous law. It’s a giant step backwards for human progress, as is the UN blasphemy movement that’s been going on for awhile now. I’ve added some nice religious imagery for eye candy.
From January 1, 2010, the new Irish blasphemy law became operational, and those in Atheist Ireland began their campaign to have it repealed. Blasphemy is now a crime punishable by a €25,000 fine. The new law defines blasphemy as publishing or uttering matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby intentionally causing outrage among a substantial number of adherents of that religion, with some defences permitted.
This new law is both silly and dangerous. It is silly because medieval religious laws have no place in a modern secular republic, where the criminal law should protect people and not ideas. And it is dangerous because it incentives religious outrage, and because Islamic States led by Pakistan are already using the wording of this Irish law to promote new blasphemy laws at UN level.
We believe in the golden rule: that we have a right to be treated justly, and that we have a responsibility to treat other people justly. Blasphemy laws are unjust: they silence people in order to protect ideas. In a civilised society, people have a right to to express and to hear ideas about religion even if other people find those ideas to be outrageous.
Recently, the Morgantown Atheists hosted a satirical night of (re)Conversion where our Brights friend Rachel tried all the arguments she could think of to convince us to turn back to god. No one took her up on her offer. But she did go through a bunch of classical arguments that I thought I might share with you. It’s good to hear what people use as excuses for believing in god, and it’s good to have sound arguments against those beliefs.
Let’s start out with the Teleological Argument.
Teleology: the philosophical study of design and purpose. The supposition that there is purpose or direction in the works and processes of nature.
Teleological Argument: the Argument from Design: argues for the existence of god or a creator based on perceived evidence of order, purpose, design or direction in nature.
Here’s the basic argument:
The universe is too complex, orderly, adaptive, apparently purposeful or beautiful to have occurred randomly or accidentally.
Therefore the universe must have been created by a sentient, intelligent, wise or purposeful being.
god is a sentient, intelligent, wise or purposeful being.
Therefore god exists.
You can substitute just about anything in for the universe. The eye, humans, the fundamental constants of the universe, etc.
Many great men have used this argument over the centuries, but that doesn’t make it valid. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Cicero to name a few. Cicero started the Watchmaker Analogy:
“When you see a sundial or a water-clock, you see that it tells the time by design and not by chance. How then can you imagine that the universe as a whole is devoid of purpose and intelligence, when it embraces everything, including these artifacts themselves and their artificers?” (Cicero, De Natura Deorum, ii. 34) Read the rest of this entry »
Hey Everyone! About a week or so ago, I wrote about the Meaning of Life and also mentioned a set of videos by Richard Dawkins that my friend Rachel had told me about. I watched all 5 videos and thought they were interesting and enlightening so I am sharing them below.
I was on an evolution kick and also found a 3 part program on Nova called Becoming Human, all about the evolution of us. I can’t give you the videos here, but I’m providing the links so you can watch them on PBS’s site. They are very interesting, and were just aired on PBS in November, so they have some new ideas and research.
Becoming Human Part 1: First Steps: Six million years ago, what set our ancestors on the path from ape to human?
Becoming Human Part 2: Birth of Humanity: New discoveries reveal how early humans hunted and formed families.
Becoming Human Part 3: Last Human Standing: Many human species once shared the globe. Why do we alone remain?
Exploring a bit further, I found an interesting article about human evolution called Are We Still Evolving? This is a question that I have been pondering lately. Since we developed agriculture about 10,000 years ago, developed medicines, learned to cook our food, and developed technology, among some factors, more and more babies survive and grow up to reproduce. According to the article, about 98% of all babies born in the U.S., Europe or Japan survive long enough to reproduce and pass on their DNA, so survival doesn’t depend as much on genes.
But in third world countries, natural selection still favors mutations in dealing with deadly diseases. For instance, people with the sickle-cell mutation in the beta hemoglobin gene have a protection against malaria.
One example of more recent evolution in humans is lactose tolerance. This is evidence that we have evolved, even if it’s just in a small but significant way. Read the rest of this entry »
The other day I wrote to Anne in response to some questions she emailed me. She replied not long after in another email. Here is an excerpt (I’ve removed the more private information): (Note: I’ve added some happy puppies playing in the snow since this topic can be rather serious, and we are having the biggest snow in WV that I’ve seen since we moved here 5 years ago)
Thank you for answering my email. I am only 21 and it seams that I am searching for myself and what it is that I can believe. I see how people lie on a daily basis to make the even more entertaining than the event really was so I find it hard to believe anything that is told to me. Giving this way of living I find it tremendously hard to base my life and way of living around things that have been written in a book (the bible) that has been translated umpteen different times before coming to english. The thought that people let their lives revolve around something that was written 2000 years ago just amazes me. As humans are we so daft to do such a thing? The more I look into religion the more I am amazed at the living situations of some people in this world.
My dad did not express any beliefs of god when I was young because he is like me a firm non-believer until there is hard core facts to show him. He wanted me to believe what I wanted and didn’t want his opinions to influence me so he felt it best not to tell me anything. My mother… well she didn’t teach me anything about god or religion until I was 12 we went to church for the first time. She stuck me in Sunday school before a service. Now my father’s mother was catholic. She went twice on Sunday and Wednesday night. I stayed the night with her several times and went to church with her I believe when I was 7. That was enough religion for me. I still remember sitting in the pew looking around saying to myself “are these people really this crazy?!?”
I went to public schools in Indiana. I went to ten different schools before 9th grade so needless to say I was not well adjusted. I never really had any foundation so to say.
I have two children and I want to be able to educate them on religion and allow them to choose their own way. I don’t see the point in trying to force them to do things my way because they need to find out who they are maybe then they won’t have the same struggles that I do.
To answer your question no I was never taught the prevailing theories of how the earth was formed through natural cosmic events. As I said we moved a lot and the curriculum was different at each school there were several things I missed out on. That is why I am so ignorant on religion because I was never taught the scientific end of the world.
I don’t feel that I “NEED” a religion. I would just like to know a little more about why I am here on this earth. I feel there is a purpose for everything because it just doesn’t seam like we exist just to exist. There is some sort of purpose behind our being. So now my job is to find the why.
Thank you so much for this information!! You are right I will have many more questions for you. I want to look over the information you have given me and I want to do some additional research. (Internet based because I now live in the middle of BFE so no museums in my area and the library has a limited amount of books. Besides the fact, I am in the middle of the Bible belt so there will be virtually no literature supporting the thought that there could be an existence not provided by god.)
One of my Facebook friends posted this to his feed today. Richard Dawkins waxing eloquent:
