Saturday 23 July 2011

Deeply corrosive to science!

Have you ever seen the delightful talk that Richard Dawkins gave at TED a few years ago?  If not, I strongly recommend that you watch him at work in times before The God Delusion was published.  Many of the familiar arguments are rehearsed here and it is fun to see how they developed.



I loved some of the comments and enjoyed all the subtle English humour in this video.

For example, Dawkins claimed to be 'strictly agnostic about the tooth fairy . . . but it isn't very likely . . . is it?"

He also admitted (if that's the term) that Creationists have got one thing right.  Evolution is hostile to religion and deeply corrosive to religious faith.

He went on to say that religion is deeply corrosive to science too.

"Religion's trivial, supernatural, non-explanations blind people to the wonder of real explanations.  Religions teach obedience to authority, the power of revelation and the benefits of faith.  In doing so they inoculate people against the actual evidence using 'the poverty-stricken arsenal of the religious imagination".

3 comments:

Hilary said...

ah yes "obedience to authority, the power of revelation and the benefits of faith" whereas humanism and ahtheism etc teach what...anarchy perhaps? the poverty of simply believing only what one can see, hear, touch, feel and smell? (although of course that excludes surely anything that cannot be verified experimentally such as evolution and the origin of life)...and the hopelessness of faithlessness?

Plasma Engineer said...

Atheism has only one thing in common with anarchy and that is that they both start with an A (in English at least). By using that technique, known as 'poisoning the well', you devalue your argument greatly.

Even if I accept your (I think deluded) assertion that evolution lacks evidence (which I don't or one moment) I wonder what experimental evidence is offered for the alternative?

The origin of life is still partly mysterious, but by no means is it impossible to make better hypotheses than 'so god did it'.

Hopelessness of faithlessness indeed! Just because you want to hope for something, that doesn't make it true. I prefer to think of the liberation of faithlessness.

Did you read "Religion's trivial, supernatural, non-explanations blind people to the wonder of real explanations" in the post? Does that sound like hopelessness?

It doesn't to me.

Hilary said...

Ah I was simply using the same sort of logic that you use in many of your arguments against Christianity :) now I know that it's called 'poisening the well' I'll mention it to you next time you use this logic... :)