How does richard dawkins define religion

Well when you introduced this line of discussion you raised the poetic side of the title, because at the same time you said maybe that went with my desire to be clear. But you'd be surprised how many people do not actually want to be understood at all but, I regret to say, want to create some sort of an impression. The Extended Phenotype , as you rightly say, makes no attempt to be poetic, but it does encapsulate very precisely the central message of that book in a way that would be clear to the people that it was mostly aimed at, which was my professional colleagues.

Well 'purpose' is a difficult word, and it's much misunderstood. As humans with consciousness, we have purposes which we actually visualise in our minds and we see in our mind's eye something that we wish to achieve. We're looking into the future, and attempting to achieve something. Purpose is used by biologists in a very different way, but the resemblance comes because the products of Darwinian natural selection look so stunningly as though they have been designed for a purpose.

And so something like a wing or a foot or an eye really does carry the most incredibly powerful illusion of purpose. Since Darwin we've understood where that illusion comes from, but it's such a strong illusion that it's almost impossible to resist using the language of purpose. Well there clearly is, and it's clearly a very strong part of our psyche. And I of course as a Darwinian would see it as yet another thing that has evolved.

So just as we've evolved sexual desire, just as we've evolved hunger, we have also evolved a sense of purpose. And the sense of purpose in our wild ancestors would've been hugely useful because you can imagine a purpose of setting out on a hunt, a purpose of looking for a water hole. Those are all very, very useful things, and the human brain was, I don't doubt, selected by Darwinian selection to develop this sense of purpose.

I don't know, but my guess is no. The way I would answer that question is to say that the human brain was selected to develop something which manifests itself as religion under some circumstances. If I take an analogy of If you put it like that, clearly there isn't any.

But if you say instead 'What is the Darwinian survival value of having the kind of brain which under some circumstances leads moths to fly into candle flames? The only lights you would see if you were a night-flying moth would be things like the moon and the stars, and they are at optical infinity, which means that their rays are coming parallel.

And if you have a rule of thumb in your brain that says 'Steer a steady angle of say 30 degrees to the rays of the moon,' that's a very useful thing to do, because that keeps you going in a dead straight line. That rule of thumb is then misapplied to candles, which are not at optical infinity, where the rays are radiating outwards.

And if you follow the same rule of thumb, of keeping an angle of 30 degrees to the candle's rays, then you'll simply spiral into the candle and burn yourself. So we have rephrased the question. We've said it was the wrong question to say 'Why do moths fly into candle flames? The right question is 'Why do they have the kind of brain which in the wild state made them do something which, in the human-dominated state where there are candles, makes them fly into candle flames?

Now in the case of religion, I think there was something built into the human brain by natural selection which was once useful and which now manifests itself under civilised conditions as religion, but which used not to be religion when it first arose, and when it was useful. Yes there very possibly are. I should qualify that by saying that as a Darwinian, usefulness to communities is not what it's about.

Darwinism is all about usefulness to individuals, or rather their genes, to be more precise. So usefulness to communities is an added benefit, and I'm sure you can list benefits to communities that accrue from religion. I expect you can probably list disbenefits as well. But benefits or not, I don't think that's why it evolved.

I think that's a kind of incidental bonus. I don't particularly mind being a bogeyman - I do mind being a fundamentalist. I think a fundamentalist is somebody who believes something unshakeably, and isn't going to change their mind. Somebody who believes something because it's written in their holy book. And even if all the evidence in the world points in the other direction, because it's in the holy book they're not going to change. I absolutely repudiate any suggestion that I am that.

I would, like any other scientist, willingly change my mind if the evidence led me to do so. So I care about what's true, I care about evidence, I care about evidence as the reason for knowing what is true. It is true that I come across rather passionate sometimes - and that's because I am passionate about the truth.

Passion is very different from fundamentalism. I mean if that's true, I don't mind it. I do get very impatient with humbug, with cant, with fakery, with charlatans. And so sometimes I am perhaps less polite than might be desirable. But it comes not from fundamentalism but from a passionate belief in the power of evidence.

Einstein, for example, frequently used the word 'God' in very clearly what was not a 'Sunday School' way. It was somewhere between deism, the belief that some sort of intelligence started the universe going and then stepped back and did nothing else, which actually I don't think Einstein believed in, and a sort of pantheism, where he was using the word 'God' as just a name for the laws of nature, the laws of physics, for which he had a deep reverence, as do I.

Stephen Hawking ends up his famous book by saying 'Then we would know the mind of God' and that's precisely like Einstein.

It's a metaphor, a personification, it's a poetic way of expressing 'Then we should know everything, then we should understand everything. Stephen Hawking and Einstein: neither of them believes or believed in a personal God. I certainly don't believe in a God who answers prayers, forgives sins, listens to misfortunes, cares about your sins, cares about your sex life, makes you survive death, performs miracles - that is most certainly a God I don't believe in.

Einstein's God, which simply means the laws of nature which are so deeply mysterious that they inspire a feeling of reverence - I believe in that, but I wouldn't call it God. I know little about Buddhism; meditation as a kind of mental discipline to manipulate your mind in beneficial directions, I could easily imagine.

In reciting a mantra in a repetitive way - it's entirely plausible to me that might have some sort of trance-inducing effects which could even be beneficial. I have done it, and it didn't do anything for me, but I gave it a go. But it certainly has nothing whatever to do in my mind with a belief in anything supernatural.

I mistrust the uses of words like 'evil' which suggest a kind of personification of them. I'm happy to use a word like 'evil' of a particular individual. I'm happy to say that Adolf Hitler was evil, Adolf Hitler did evil things, but too many people once again, leap to the conclusion 'Oh there must be some kind of spirit of evil which entered into Hitler,' or 'There's a spirit of evil abroad'. That I think is unhelpful, putting it mildly. Natural selection, It has no mind and no mind's eye.

It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.

Natural selection is like artificial selection, except that, instead of humans doing the choosing, nature does the choosing Natural selection, nature , is constantly choosing which individuals shall live, which individuals shall breed [CL 2] [emphasis mine]. So am I really trying to persuade you that a blind, unconscious process, evolution, can build animal optics that rival human technology?

But chance with natural selection, chance smeared out into innumerable tiny steps over aeons of time is powerful enough to manufacture miracles like dinosaurs and ourselves This is a misleading way to talk.

Dawkins' selfish gene is also misleading, as it seems to oscillate between being treated as a metaphor and not being so treated. In one place he refers to 'The metaphor of the intelligent gene' [EP, p15], but in another place he responds to criticism of the term 'selfish' by saying:.

When biologists talk about 'selfishness' or 'altruism' we We define altruism and selfishness in purely behaviouristic ways But despite the disclaimer, the phrase 'selfish gene' is metaphorical since 'a word or phrase denoting one kind of object or action is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them'.

Dawkins depicts faith as simply reflecting the 'will to believe'. So he dismisses certain Creationists' claims that the Paluxy River 'footprints' show humans and dinosaurs were around at the same time, claiming they saw it because they wanted to see it. They believed it because it fitted with their world-view. They were blind to the truth that was staring them in the face.

But this a bad reason for rejecting anyone's views, as it tells us nothing about the truth or falsity of what they believe. One can both want to believe something and it can be true. The grounds for rejecting this particular claim since withdrawn are provided by geological and other evidence, not by whether anyone wished to believe it or not.

Some of life must be devoted to living itself; some of life must be devoted to doing something worthwhile with one's life, not just to perpetuating it. But this stands in complete contradiction to his other assertion that 'propagating DNA So the most basic claims of religion are scientific.

Religion is a scientific theory. Dawkins' puzzling claim that 'religion is a scientific theory' underpins assertions like, 'I see God as a competing explanation for facts about the universe and life' [RTP, p46] and 'God and natural selection are, after all, the only two workable theories we have of why we exist'.

However, while Dawkins uses the terms 'scientific theory', 'religion' and 'religious theory', he offers no demarcation criteria for scientific or religious theories which would enable us to evaluate his assertions.

There is no logical conflict between reason-giving explanations of mechanisms, and reason-giving explanations of the plans and purposes of an agent, human or divine. This is a logical point, unaffected by whether one does or does not believe in God oneself. In collapsing the distinction between these two types of explanations and treating them as alternatives, Dawkins is committing a type-error in explanation.

In fact he is making the classic type-error -Coulson's 'God-of-the-gaps'- which tries to plug 'god' into the gaps which science is not yet able to fill! Dawkins' alternatives, 'Either admit that God is a scientific hypothesis It is difficult to conceive how even a superficial reading of, say, the New Testament Gospels could lead one to compare their value with stories about fairies and river sprites!

To say, 'If God has a more solid basis than fairies, then let us hear it' [RTP, p47] implies nobody has yet thought or written about Christian evidences!

Dawkins has ready access to the whole theological collection of the University of Oxford if he wishes to avail himself of its resources. But evidence for God is not the same as watching intently for little people at the bottom of the garden on a mid-summer's night! In case it should appear otherwise from this critique, no personal animosity is intended or felt. Richard Dawkins is an excellent communicator and I like his relaxed and clear lecturing style.

However, I have criticised the quality of many of his arguments on four main counts:. Student conference Healthcare Sunday. Join one of our. Facebook Groups. Draw strength and encouragement by meeting up with like-minded members in your church, community, region, workplace, specialty or via social media.

I think this is often how the phrase is used. The experience of seeing can be different from the reality of what is actually there to be seen.

Unless they claim that the inaccurate imagined image, is not just an image, and insist that it is the underlying reality. The egotistically perceived priority bubble around individuals, is only a disproportionate distorted image of reality. Anyone seeking objectivity, should certainly strive to overcome this inaccurate compartmentalization in their understanding of reality.

Neither the individual, the Earth, nor the Solar System, is the main feature and centre of the universe! Grammar the meaning of a word by reference to its function within a sentence rather than to a world outside the sentence. Nope I am absolutely saying or implying no such things , and have made no statements to that effect, just made a simple point about the use of words. Again you are arguing with an imaginary opponent!

It is utterly clear you think reality is stuff all the way down and that language has colloquial and contingent meanings. Here of all places we should use speech clearly and carefully. It is shutting down the prospect of downsizing, of renting, of plucking up courage to leave your lousy job, your lousy wife and feckless kids, the lousy town. It is a jest about the breadth and depth of reality.

It is become a singular personal thing. Why should you or I care about this? Well, solipsism is bad all around. It is a very specific filter to our future thoughts. Daily I try and improve the clearness of my language and believe part of our problem especially here! Reality all that there is to be sensed or infered about existence and reality my current most pressing concerns deserve separate words. The religious use this muddle of meanings in colloquial speech all the time in their various apologetics.

Religion clearly does evolve and change. Hundreds of different branches of Christianity for example. Loads of different interpretations of Holy books. For example last week there was a programme on Christianity and attitudes to sex detailing the fact there is absolutely nothing about it in the New Testament until you get to Paul writing at a time when they were expecting the end if the world.

Abstinence as an ideal added on later by various adherents such as St Augustine. Nicked largely from Greek ideals rather than NT ones. Followed by a bit of women hating added on later to shift blame from those finding abstinence difficult. All religious texts are a mixture of attitudes from nasty to nice, often contradicting each other.

Not all religious thinking is based on moral authority either as you shift from the extremists to the more thoughtful you see a marked shift in the accompanying morals. Apart from extremists and literalists religious morality and ethics seem to mirror the rest of societies for a large number of believers. Likewise religious theories of reality in most cases are adapted for religion. It is, as Steve suggests, only forums like this that seem to think it does or should.

Yes but crucially not as fast as politics, say. Its evolutionary processes can only come about through painful schism. In appealing to absolutes it denies evidence driven changes to dogma. Only once you have the breakthrough idea in Quakerism of individual moral authorship because God made you to have the facility do you get a freeing up to evidence and a proper moral process.

The Quaker paper on sex and sexism was well ahead of the moral curve. This is why I think a definition of religion should less strongly identify say Quakerism as a religion.

That it has in some sense through previous schisms finally absorbed enough rational and evidence based thinking to lose most of its religious character to become something like humanism with some quaint language. Nowhere near enough.

And sadly with the new fundamentalist backswing, people are ceding moral responsibility to others all over again. Catholics are undeniably way more moral than their church. Sadly it is the intitution that has acquired the politcal clout. Though the Vicar of Dibley is very nice and the real Reverend Richard Coles one of the most compassionate individuals on the planet, again his Institution is 50 years behind on many moral aspectics.

One day the C of E might become dogma free. You are not an American, plainly. There is little to fuss over in much of Europe, but much of the rest of the world is parasitised by religion and particularly by its core epistomologies of godmade morals, original sinners, the saved and justice to come.

Many just go with the flow, but that unthinking approach can be very dangerous where political and religious ideologies are taking over their societies. Unfortunately this is frequently a fudge of reality and dogma.

Realism with a bit of nonsense mixed in, simply becomes slightly more credible nonsense. They just have faith-based assumptions. It is the gullible acceptance of unevidenced views, without concern for checking evidence which causes many disputes and damage.

Grammar is the rules governing the use of words. Grammar is only concerned with the logical rules for using words, not their meaning, which is semantics. Also, because of 1 , it completely oversees something that all religions do: boss you about using those beliefs as a handle.

This is really not the case. A late evening attempt of mine could be: Religion is a set of postulated beliefs and thus rituals shared by a community which can be used to manipulate the general behavior by one or more individuals. We have an endearment for our champions like Shakespeare who catapulted our language and drama to greater heights but there also was born an ability to confuse and complicate ourselves with the advancement.

One can observe a tree and simply see its beauty and that is a wonderful, there are also those who are stirred to understand all there is to know about it within its confines like respiration, photosynthesis, decay, etc. We have the ability to become quite floral and wax rhapsodic with language but it serves us to remember our basic realities as concerns ourselves generally. Trying to understand the world scientifically, devoid of superstition, is the tool that has brought us the most advancement and enlightenment, and the arts, in all their beauty, has been the cherry on top.

But I would add this, those who convince themselves that supernatural concepts are interacting with them in the real world have fallen prey from our abilities to ponder above and beyond the actual world we live in and that is the troubling fact.

If Dawkins refuses to answer it by saying he is only interested in truth, that would be like a student saying he is not interested in the examination question. Yes, he said he would believe in God if there is evidence for him to do so.

Just as there was an evolutionary reason for each phisical organ coming to existence, what could be more reasonable to use evolution to explain the fact that all cultures had developed religion? When man had reached the stage to coexist, religion, as a spiritual organ like the second heart became neccessary. An agnostic-who-explains-religion-with-evolution Report abuse. I suspect that if Mr. Dawkins somehow gained access to a time machine and saw that the abandonment of religious belief lead to a future in which all people do is murder and eat each others brains, upon return to the past he would refrain from his previous criticisms of religion.

He might advocate for more liberal types of religious belief. Regardless of whether that premise has any basis in reality. The fact that it is a preoccupation of people who frequent these types of forums does not make it a major issue for the rest of mankind.. You mean like antivaxers, anti lgbtq etc? I look on it as a contact sport for the brain. Most of it splitting quantum size differences.

Sometimes saying stuff that is very profound. So much so, that even I can understand it. And most people do. And this particular one has inspired me to think, or at least give thinking a read hot go. I tried to fix it if it is broken. Or shoo away the bad guys. Horses for courses. Go for it guys, but it does through to the keeper with me.

To simply point out the fact most people are not greatly interested in such things is all I said, nothing more. I hope you agree I fully answered your question. Corroborated, copper bottomed evidence is to be believed. But countless scientists have explored and continue to explore this idea.

I simply think you need to read a little more. A little bit of psychology. Skinner discovered that animals including humans can have their behaviours modified by training, associating either a nice or nasty stimulus with approved or disapproved behaviours carrot or stick respectively.

The carrot approach is called positive reinforcement and the stick negative reinforcement. Both he found worked, but what he discovered also is that positive re-inforcement worked better and for longer. Total tyrannies are effective in creating externally well behaved societies like North Korea but at great costs to the subsequent flourishing of those societies. In earlier days, through the invention of agriculture, from 10,BCE onwards, it was undoubtedly the case that in a reciprocal process, a fearsome singular god was crafted to help unite people and get them to trust others to do their bit.

Farming was the first real division of labour [apart from obvious gender related tasks] involving critical timing, skill and execution…. But though it contained sticks, carrots were essential also.

The trouble for monotheistic religion is that the bulk of its carrots and sticks, a civil, stratified society with justice immediately administered and not deferred!

Thats, evolution for you. You may be 2, years too late in your hypothetical! As Wilkinson and Pickett demonstrate in just the way you intend the more carrots and the more equally shared the more the society gains in robustness and flourishing. Forgive me, I suspect you are quite young and have had a good idea. To take it to mean I am saying secular education leads to fundamentalism is bizarre to say the least.

Your imaginary opponent would come up with something much better.! Just to be clear here, amongst the many theories of reality held by a religion are theories about the definition of Good or Evil. It if is talking about the moral coherence of societies, then altruism is certainly a feature.

There are of course many social animal societies which show no evidence of gods. You have concocted a hypothetical question in a fantasy world which does not exist, so any answer is pure speculation. That is purely your assertion. It could just be that he is not interested in debating cream-cheese bridges. It does seem to be a ridiculous counter-factual question, which most would consider not worth asking.

Societies without a god or gods, do not collapse, and there is no evidence that a fear of gods is necessary for the functioning of societies. Not at all. Recognising practical effects including those of irrational thinking , on societies is making decisions on evidence. The fact that religions have been historically used to manipulate cultures — often to the great detriment of the population — is not in dispute. This is not a reason to accept having our societies manipulated by religions, or thinking that religions are necessary.

Religions involve a huge diversity of beliefs and functions within cultures. When man had reached the stage to coexist, religion, as a spiritual organ like the second heart became necessary. Human ancestors coexisted, long before they evolved into men or even evolved into mammals. While religions clearly have some functions within some societies, there is no evidence that they are necessary.

The human appendix was historically significant in our evolution, but mine was a problem and surgically removed years ago. It has never been missed! You still have not answered my question as to which of the thousands of gods with their contradictory claims, you are agnostic about!

I rather imagine superempirical as something imagining itself better than it is. And that is the point, really. Those coining such ideas actually intend this superiority. We should be clear in exposing their unempirical overreach. I think your definition a little too broad maybe encompassing animal rites activists meat is murder so lets hurt someone and brag about it and shot-drinking youths drunk is good so lets hurt ourselves and brag about it. A religion to be such, must contain at least one nominally immutable, superempirical hypothesis about the nature of existence, where a choice of such hypotheses are known empirical or superempirical , the which becomes reflected in personal and cultural values and behaviours.

I actually think all that is needed… Report abuse. A poet can do this quicker than a philosopher, but consensus will require sentences. The word will then be diluted, even self-refuting, and the concepts unzip as previously, in the minds of the readers. I actually think it is a waste of effort, like Esperanto. It works the other way. What did Pinker say on this?

And who mentioned WLC? The three letter emetic. How what all kicked off? The square brackets are yours not mine, and it is you committing the same grammatical error again!

Lived reality does not have to be physical, again you conflate and try and force the 1st meaning onto the 2nd meaning. Yes correct use of the word grammar, because you confuse the 2 different applications of the term reality,. That when it is used meaning physical reality when the associated explanatory grammar are scientific terms like atoms, molecules. With that when it is used to designate a lived experience, and associated explanatory grammar is terms like paying the mortgage, the worry about those feelings of dread, feeding the cat etc.

The word is religion and we are trying to get a sentence out of it that means the same….. So, Bardi, you the poet. No pressure. Nil desperanto. Coin us some rachengeld. Religion is…. When I was young I was scared glimpsing the stuff of my own insides in the butchers. It all fits so slitheringly together.

In short he addresses the question by saying even if religion was found to be of some benefit he would still not believe it because it is not true. A belief can have a positive benefit and be false. Even if as you suggest it was essential for us to believe it, it would give no, zero, zilch support that it was true.

If you want to find out if an argument is flawed turn it around and see if it is equal valid given a different set of circumstances in other words would the opposite be true also so here is your argument spat back at you. What if it was discovered that holding no faith in anything was the only way for the humans on the earth to not descend into anarchy.

Would it not be rational to never take anything on faith. See exactly the same as yours with a different spin. You first have to establish that society will collapse without faith. You have not done so so your argument is not even wrong. There is a Green cosmic blob of transparent jelly lime flavoured that feeds on Quantum energy and craps out solar systems. Does my ability to believe it or your inability to disprove it make it likely to be true?

Or useful? Clearly not. Imagination is necessary for us to project what might happen tomorrow, this allows us to store food for winter, imagine new tools and weapons, invent ways of making fire etc. It also allows us to invent gods. This does not mean gods are necessary just because we are capable of imagining them. In fact it could mean the exact opposite.

No it is dignified to treat history with the respect of looking at it as accurately as I can, warts and all. This means I will happily acknowledge both the good and bad that may have occurred as part of religion. Mostly bad by the way. It also means that I should question any dogma presented before me, if it is useless I can disagree with it and still acknowledge its existence. I can acknowledge the existence of the Catholic Church, even admire some of its buildings and art and music commissioned in its name but still hate that it was done by stealing from the poor.

I think you may need to read a little more about evolution before you make this claim. You claim their is a religious organ. Please point me to it. Evolution works by changing the bodies of organisms please point me to the religious organ and show how it evolved. How about, Religion is the commitment to a form of life following a series of non-evidence based tenets, which attempt to resolve the actual problems of life by reducing them instead to being problems about interpreting the tenets of the Religion itself.

I see where you are going with that. I think reducing problems to one of interpretation is certainly a characteristic of ideologies, possibly made stronger where what is to be interpreted is less distinct.

Whats nice about this is the way it opens the door to spectacular parasitism by the shamans who claim they can see clearly to read. Even psychological effects work by physical neurological processes.

Reality is a continuous physical scale of matter energy and forces, across scales from subatomic to astronomical. There is no confusion. I have clearly stated the physical scales of human activity are within the vastly greater and vastly smaller continuum of scales of physical reality.

Grammar is about sentence construction. There is nothing unclear about my sentence constructions. All of which happen by the movement and interactions of atoms. The human level of scale, is a section from the middle of the total range of magnitude of the space-time continuum. The assertion that there is an opposition rather than an overlap, is entirely a confused concept of yours, due to the discontinuous concepts you have of physical material reality. All I have to say is that the bad ideas in religion s that some people seem to hold so dear must have consequences!

Grammar is not just that, it is the rules governing the use of language, a simple point you are seemingly unable to comprehend. Google it and please learn about the complexity of Grammar rather than rely on simplistic notions.. For the billionth and umpty ninth time we all agree it is stuff all the way down, no one is saying any different apart from your imaginary opponent.

The two usages are not in conflict with each other, they are just different usages. Dawkins works indirectly for Satan. Satan is real. Satan is the ruler of the world, this is why our rulers are satanic. A side to this issue of religion, which has been discussed to some degree—but not enough, in my opinion—is the following: 1 the mystical beliefs of religions or mythologies are obviously fictions although many do unfortunately believe literally in them , yet many of these beliefs could be reasonable foci for contemplating some kind of ethical or social issue.

This is an idea probably best expounded by Joseph Campbell: myths i. If one takes the metaphor literally, this obscures any apprecation of its value. In this way, religion could be secularly appreciated as a type of scholarly study of literary fiction. Whole systems of therapy can be established which take such things literally. For example, the interpretation of dreams, or arguably the entire psychoanalytic theory. The vividness of the memory adds to its motivic significance. Almost any image in a dream could be associated with almost any life theme.

This is the challenge — to find a way to keep this therapeutic effect, that the mind can produce, while not literally falling into irrelational belief. I think we can be instructed by how children do think of myths such as Santa Claus or the tooth fairy — we can have a gentle, playful view of them, maybe have a sincere respect for the idea embodied in the myth such as being generous , and even in the historical figure St. Nick — or Jesus , while not literally believing in magical sleds that race across the world distributing presents.

One reason I think it is important to consider keeping religions, but modifying them secularly, is because there is such a rich cultural infrastructure, with beautiful architecture, art, music, together with family histories and memories e. There could even be a gym for the kids to play basketball in a wholesome environment. So we could keep the infrastructure, just drop all the literal fictional belief.

Keep the ethics and altruism and music, and drop the dogma. You can label those experiences superstition and delusion, but somehow they continue to interest people. Why are you so incurious about those experiences? I have found them fascinating to study and hugely revealing of our mental processes and their import to culture and creativity.

Yet you will treat them as sacred and learn nothing from them. I would rather treat them as sacred than analyze them to death in a lab, because that approach destroys the magic of the experiences. Newton did not unweave the rainbow. If it is broken for you by someone else looking inside and finding something more marvellous about humanity and why we are the way we are, then you treasured a feeble fantasy, not even a strong one.

How bizarre to think a reality is broken thus. Keep your magic. Newton was a religious mystic, as was Einstein — rational, brilliant scientists, but also inspired mystics. So even among the great idols of rationalism and scientism, the mystical, transcendent impulse reveals itself. Newton was a man of his time. None were irreligious around him though he spent his time trying to de-mystify a lot of Christian thinking. He was one of the first to dismiss trinitarianism and we could reasonably describe him as a unitarian.

He was somewhat aspie we might say now, entirely solipsistic and inclined to think that all great minds were as scrupulous and truth seeking as he. He slowly got to work through a lot of the charlatanism in Christianity, paring it down to something more rational, but there was so much alchemy to get through and some of it seemed to work the chemistry part.

Master of the mint, the prospect of making gold would have brought glory quite beyond the wealth he would have little use for. He was hugely vain… Report abuse. Trip happy hippies, and shaman! And here alan reveals the myopia and pathology of the hyper-materialist, as if everything of value can be measured in technology, numbers and physical construction.

Who do you think produces the great art, literature, spirituality and even much of the science that gives life value for most of us? I think this sort of contemplation is useful, but prefer the likes of Aesop, where possible links to mysticism are avoided and the fictitious nature of the stories is obvious.

References to religious texts are more analogous to contemplating a scene from a novel or folk tale, and reflecting on ethical themes. Religious texts can at least be viewed as interesting literary works. The evolution is towards a religious service having a social, altruistic, and community bonding role, a setting for ethical reflection, but with less dogma.

In this sense, scientific rationality, as it inexorably accumulates, becomes a memetic selection pressure. The extinction of the entire religious infrastructure would seem wasteful though—there is much beauty and positive potential allowed for by the architectural structures and other aspects of traditional practices. But other corners of religious practice, of course, are maintaining or even entrenching further irrationality, extremism, and mysticism etc.

If this site itself is perceived to be simply an angry rant against all religious infrastructure, it could cause unnecessary polarization and delay the progression of optimal growth of non-religious memes.

This reminds me of other aspects of political change for example, reducing pollution. If anti-pollution lobbies are framed as an angry rant against big business, for example, the anti-pollution movement may get substantially slowed down, because those in big business will likely be turned off.

If one can frame the issue in a way that attracts the largest number of those in the population in the pollution example, we can see a positive example of some right-wingers in the US embracing solar power, in a sort of libertarian motivation , then the atheistic meme has the highest chance of growing most rapidly in all corners of the population.

In the religious example, I think posts like this one are very, very important, as they have the potential to appeal to those who are not already atheistic to begin with—thus it optimizes the growth of memes for rational thinking, while at the same time allowing for a gentle replacement of vacuous religious awe with a kind of Einsteinian or Carl-Sagan-esque awe for nature.

If religion makes claims about the physical world it would be fair to consider as though as if it were of epistemological concern too, despite theology is not anymore in the field of any area of knowledge perhaps literature, psychiatry, psychology, etc. It could be of epistemological concern too as far as people are capable of doing retarded claims as the Earth is 6. Not to mention that education is relevant to social life political relations among people living together.

BUT i tend to agree: mainly it is political, with all the concerns the words carries just because no one would take ignorance seriously. How far should you go in restricting the use of the language? By restricting the use of the language you may make it impossible to implement needed features in the program.