Beyond Common Sense - religion tag

Supernatural Dimension

Sat, 12 May 2007 18:59:00 GMT

I listen to and like the BBC but they often do not seem to be willing to post comments contrary to their honored contributors. In this BBC article, a self-prophesed scientist claims all sorts of pseudoscience/religious nonsense: Here is my comment:

"There is already enough confusion among lay persons about science and the scientific method. This commentary by a medical 'scientist' only adds to and deepens the confusion. For starters, there is no struggle between science and the divine. Science assumes (almost) nothing, religion assumes everything (God thus the universe). Religion/the Divine/God/etc is in itself the product of our brains and thus is to be studied scientifically. The comment "[science] leaves more unanswered questions" almost seems to imply scientific investigation confuses rather than enlighten us. When we look at the moon through a telescope, our initial questions about the moon (does it have mountains, for example) are in fact answered. A curious mind, however, doesn't then dismantle the telescope and sit idly but builds an even more powerful telescope and starts asking finer questions, more questions. Lastly, science does give us certainty about ourselves and our origin. There is no supernatural "dimension" except in the conversations of human beings living in the four dimensional space-time. No amount of commentary, books (holy or otherwise) can hide the fact that no proof of supernatural phenomenon, much less God/the Divine, exist today despite how long these ideas lasted. Speaking of enduring ideas, humanity believed for millennia as they looked up at the night sky, stars are mere decorations not far off from where they stood."

Mary Midgley on The God Delusion

Sat, 05 May 2007 21:55:00 GMT

Midgley's critique of The God Delusion in the October 7-13, 2006 edition of the New Scientist magazine can be summarized as an embarrassing display of lack of understanding of Dawkins’ central arguments.

The Bigger Arrogant

Thu, 05 Apr 2007 05:30:00 GMT

Almost every conversation I’ve had with a religious person leads to the accusation that how could I be so arrogant, so boastful and limited in my imagination as to dismiss the existence of God. In fact, this accusation is so common that even Richard Dawkins has had to respond to it in many of the interviews and talk shows (at least in the US) he has been to … but never quite from the following perspective.

The truly remarkable arrogance is in fact to not dismiss God. That a mortal, feeble human being could be so immensely boastful and certain of its biological construction and mental capacity that it alone can ASSUME into existence a God for the universe thereby explain everything there ever was and ever will be in just one stroke ought to be arrogance incarnate.

The inherent complexity of the world and the capacity of the human mind to comprehend this complexity require extrapolations that are sometimes faulty. In light of such abundant research (even everyday experience) pointing to how easily the human mind could be tricked, to believe that the human mind is capable of such immense knowledge as to have the final explanation, God, for every facet of life is a truly remarkable arrogance (to borrow a term from The God Delusion, it is the Super Jumbo Jet of arrogance).