I heard Rick Warren speak at TED, but I can’t remember anything useful from it. =)
I guess I’ll get a chance to hear him again at the Obama inauguration.
Dan Dennett also gave a rebuttal, disputing the claim that to be moral, one must deny evolution. His one policy request is to teach children the facts of all of the major religions.
LOL…yes, strange. Kinda’ wish Obama had gone another way, but he is being inclusive, I guess!?!
Love this quote from him: "I don’t have enough faith to be an Atheist."
Reminds of another quote: "On the other hand, people may have a generally positive view of science until it fails to explain the important questions. Then belief in God may be boosted to fill in the gap." from this study.
30 million mustn’t have enough faith.
Gives some a "Purpose-Drive Life" to evolve towards. ;^)
pegleg: yeah – telling people that they are special and magical sells well.
tifotter: criminals think most people commit crimes. Tax cheats think most people cheat on their taxes. I bet fakes think most people are fakes.
Craig: very interesting study. It reminds me of Dawkins’ earlier talk at TED. He had a similar gut feel, as captured in fellow TEDster Chris Alden’s excerpts from Dawkins’ talk:
"Religion is corrosive of science since it teaches people to accept the simple answers and ignore the real ones; and because creationists can’t attack evolutionary science, they attack evolutionists as atheists bent on undermining religion. And they are right: evolution IS truly undermining of religion. Darwinism IS corrosive to religious faith. "
I don’t understand why atheists think evolution disprove the existence of God. Nothing proves or disproves the existence of God. That is why faith is not a science.
I have not heard an atheist make a claim of disproof. Please point me to some examples. The myriad folks I have met lump god with any number of other possibilities for which there is no evidence. They agree with your conclusion that such matters are not open to proof or disproof… and frankly, therefore, are not that interesting.
Hi,
I was extrapolating from the talk you quoted above:
"And they are right: evolution IS truly undermining of religion. Darwinism IS corrosive to religious faith."
Why is only the provable interesting? What about literature? Art? Music?
Oh, I think they are quite enjoyable and interesting, as is the study of religion and how it propagates. I just meant that arguments about proving or disproving God’s existence are not that interesting.
It’s a short form of the celestial teapot analogy, from Bertrand Russell:
"If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time."
and referenced by Dawkins:
"The reason organized religion merits outright hostility is that, unlike belief in Russell’s teapot, religion is powerful, influential, tax-exempt and systematically passed on to children too young to defend themselves. Children are not compelled to spend their formative years memorizing loony books about teapots. Government-subsidized schools don’t exclude children whose parents prefer the wrong shape of teapot. Teapot-believers don’t stone teapot-unbelievers, teapot-apostates, teapot-heretics and teapot-blasphemers to death. Mothers don’t warn their sons off marrying teapot-shiksas whose parents believe in three teapots rather than one. People who put the milk in first don’t kneecap those who put the tea in first."
So, with this further quote, you can see how Dawkins would disagree with the extrapolation from his comments that atheists think they have somehow disproved god’s existence.
Ah. I think I misunderstood then what you meant when you referenced interesting/uninteresting. I agree with you that those arguments tend to be circular and pointless. They never get anywhere.
My own unique position, I guess, is that I believe that a supernatural power is responsible for the natural universe(s). But I do also believe that what we find about how things came to be ie. evolution of the species, cosmology etc. not only plausible, but fascinating and mind-blowingly beautiful.
Thanks for engaging with me on this.
Teapots?-) I’ve heard of gloves and toolbags circling the earth, but….
One of my profs, in days of yore, an atheist, once said "There is a kind of religion in science, it is the religion of a person who believes there is order and harmony in the universe, and every effect must have its cause, there is no first cause…
This religious faith of the scientist is violated by the discovery that the world had a beginning under conditions in which the known laws of physics are not valid, and as a product of forces or circumstances we cannot discover. When that happens, the scientist has lost control…
Consider the enormity of the problem. Science has proven that the universe exploded into being at a certain moment. It asks, what cause produced the effect? Who or what put the matter and energy in the universe? Was the universe created out of nothing, or was it gathered together out of pre existing materials? And science cannot answer these questions".
Robert Jastrow never did show much of a sense of humor, but I suspect he still enjoys the debate. (RIP) 😉
Great points, Leon and pegleg.
I just opened the latest Economist and found a topical forecast for 2009:
" [Galileo and Darwin’s] books poked their fingers in the eyes of the religious establishment so sharply that they provoked screams which are still heard today…
The echoing screams from these books are, oddly, loudest in America. It is a paradox that the world’s greatest scientific power is also the one that protests most audibly against the acceptance of scientific truths when they conflict with revealed ones. The coming year is likely to hear more screaming as science pushes further into areas that some people would prefer it kept its inquisitive nose out of.
One likely announcement, which may happen any day of the year, is of the world’s first artificial living creature. The announcer will almost certainly be Craig Venter, an American biologist who has been working on making such a creature for over a decade…
Perhaps the most controversial field of all is one after Darwin’s own heart: the evolution of religion itself. Some academics suggest that science and religion are different ways of looking at the same questions. Peaceful co-existence is the way forward. But that is not good enough for the evolutionists.
They see a propensity to religion as a natural human characteristic, like a propensity to language. Examining the biological and evolutionary causes of language is a respectable endeavour, so why not apply the same approach to religion? This sort of science seeks not to transcend religion, but to absorb it and reduce it to just another natural phenomenon that can be prodded, measured and explained. Such research is now going on apace—and set to provoke screams that will echo well beyond 2009."
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