A Tale of Two Tactics: Dawkins versus Dennett

[Phil153]

Do you believe in such a thing as objective truth?

This is a yes or no answer.

[John21]

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Do you believe in such a thing as objective truth?

This is a yes or no answer.

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no

[bunny]

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By demanding respect for their religion, moderates shelter fundamentalists. After all the fundamentalist is getting his ideas from the same book as the moderate. And the fundamentalist has actually read the whole book. Religion shelters bigotry. Moderates shelter fundamentalists.

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I dont demand respect for all religions - I think many of them are silly, illogical and dangerous - and should be denounced as such. I dont even really demand you "respect" my religion - I understand the objections you have. I am not sheltering religious extremists, I think they are dangerous and irrational.

To repeat my query - is my support for social welfare "sheltering" dictatorial communists? The fact that extremists use similar words to me does not mean we have similar beliefs.

[MaxWeiss]

I misread your post as well. When you said "I really doubt anyone would argue the point that Western Civilization has become more 'secularized'...." I thought you were arguing that we were going backwards and less secular, which is why I made the bet. I simply misread you post at that part. Surely you don't owe me money for that!!! (But if you really want to give me money....

[MaxWeiss]

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To repeat my query - is my support for social welfare "sheltering" dictatorial communists? The fact that extremists use similar words to me does not mean we have similar beliefs.

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If you support social welfare for religious reasons, it in a (albeit much smaller) way supports those who do other things for religious reasons. I do not wish to negate the great many good things many religions have done, but my point stands that thinking your book is somehow holy and better (in an absolute sense) than the books of those silly, illogical and dangerous religions, or to say that other religions or sects which use your book are flawed, makes absolutely no sense.

I always liked this Stephen Weinberg quote: "Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion."

No doubt many extremists would still be doing many bad things, even without religion, but once you take away the religious justification, the tolerance and ability to recruit others is greatly diminished.

[MaxWeiss]

The problem is those three intertwine.

Also, accepting and believing is for children. You must listen when your mother tells you not to walk off a cliff, because you just don't know better. As you grow older, you reflect and make a philosophy out of the cliff--you wonder why the cliff is there and why you fall. Then you investigate and find things like gravity and rock formation and erosion and understand "why" in the only useful sense.

Sometimes that second (Philosophy) and third (science) stage overlap (though not as much as people would like to think), but I am quite sure your order of importance of the three is backwards.

Accepting and believing for no other reason than being told shuts the mind down. It negates personal responsibility. It is not to be respected.


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Personally, I feel that if you're strong, you're strong enough to carry the stragglers.

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I know of no one who is strong enough to carry a "straggler" who has a nuke. Science can tell you no matter how strong you are, if you're close enough to that straggler, it's not going to matter.

Admiring the past is one thing, but hippie tree-hugging let's-all-get-along doesn't work when the other people have bombs and don't WANT to get along. Ignoring them won't work either. They aren't "weak members of the pack" They're [censored] mutated crack dogs of the pack who can do a lot of damage, whether you "unburden" yourself or not.

[thylacine]

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hI think. while his books on evolution are great, he's part of the reason evolution is having such problems being accepted by a lot of people.

[/ QUOTE ] I'm very sorry Rduke, but dawkins would not exist if people didn't have such problems accepting evolution. Athough I respect your opinion on matters regarding matter such as this, I'm afraid I believe I have solid ground to stand on, on that point. If you disagree I'll come up with a better argument.

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LOL teleological proof of the existence of Dawkins. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[vhawk01]

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hI think. while his books on evolution are great, he's part of the reason evolution is having such problems being accepted by a lot of people.

[/ QUOTE ] I'm very sorry Rduke, but dawkins would not exist if people didn't have such problems accepting evolution. Athough I respect your opinion on matters regarding matter such as this, I'm afraid I believe I have solid ground to stand on, on that point. If you disagree I'll come up with a better argument.

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LOL teleological proof of the existence of Dawkins. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

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If there really was such a person as Dawkins, whose sole purpose was to raise consciousness, why do we have so little raised consciousness in the world? Clearly this disproves Dawkins.

(Problem of ignorance disproof of Dawkins)

[bunny]

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thinking your book is somehow holy and better (in an absolute sense) than the books of those silly, illogical and dangerous religions, or to say that other religions or sects which use your book are flawed, makes absolutely no sense.

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I think they are wrong in their interpretation. Of course, the moderate position I am defending is not a literal interpretation (I dont even regard the bible as inerrant). Irrespective of what any book says, there is a truth of the matter with regard to "god stuff". I believe a certain set of statements and think people who think otherwise are wrong. How does this make no sense?

[MaxWeiss]

It makes somewhat more sense. And certainly more than many I've run across!