"It is a matter of grave importance that Fairy tales should be respected.... Whosoever alters them to suit his own opinions, whatever they are, is guilty, to our thinking, of an act of presumption, and appropriates to himself what does not belong to him." -- Charles Dickens
Physics discussions of primordial circumstances do very much resemble pseudo-religion. I mean, to massively oversimplify, it ultimately does come down to a bunch of particles spontaneously appearing and saying "fuck you I'm a universe".
@Darcy: But that's my point: It is no longer a scientific argument once you get past a certain point.
Also, when I say being, I mean it in reference to the Eriugena quote that I refer to earlier. There is being in the sense of that which is, within the context of this reality; then there is the sort of more abstract notion of what is. A creator-force is beyond the first sort of being, and past that point the first sort of being is irrelevant.
Physics discussions of primordial circumstances do very much resemble pseudo-religion. I mean, to massively oversimplify, it ultimately does come down to a bunch of particles spontaneously appearing and saying "fuck you I'm a universe".
that's a common misconception
The Big Bang was the time at which space started to expand, at which point the observable universe was crammed into a small (not infinitesimal) space
before that, if it even makes sense to talk about before that, we know nothing, but that doesn't mean the universe just spontaneously appeared
Physics discussions of primordial circumstances do very much resemble pseudo-religion. I mean, to massively oversimplify, it ultimately does come down to a bunch of particles spontaneously appearing and saying "fuck you I'm a universe".
that's a common misconception
The Big Bang was the time at which space started to expand, at which point the observable universe was crammed into a small (not infinitesimal) space
before that, if it even makes sense to talk about before that, we know nothing, but that doesn't mean the universe just spontaneously appeared
Exactly.
That's also what I've been talking about this whole time.
"It is a matter of grave importance that Fairy tales should be respected.... Whosoever alters them to suit his own opinions, whatever they are, is guilty, to our thinking, of an act of presumption, and appropriates to himself what does not belong to him." -- Charles Dickens
Duuude that's a huge subject. Start with Plato's Timaeus (Whitehead's Process and Reality could be useful in inspiring you not to write it off) for reasoning about knowable qualities of the creator. The Argument from Motion variant of the Argument from Causality appears by itself in Laws X. Aristotle's empirical physics have an eternal geocentric cosmos, but his reasoning about the necessity of an unmoved mover that starts at the beginning of Metaphysics XII is important.
If you ever read Aquinas's Five Proofs, the first is that old Argument from Motion and the second follows the logical implications of the universe being caused rather than eternal. But the subsequet proofs are based on reasoning about being (i.e. metaphysics), opening him up to charges that he hasn't proved the First Cause to be identical with Necessary Being (third) or the Supreme Being (fourth). Much Neoplatonism was based on logically clarifying the relationship between the Supreme Being and the creator of the universe.
Take the following religious apology: ‘I might hope to come to terms with my own death, but not that of terrible deaths. It is terror in confronting these past deaths, irremediably past, not my coming end, which makes me believe in God. Certainly, if my disappearance, by some chance, should be terrible, then I shall die hoping for myself what I hope for spectres. But I myself am but a spectre in waiting. I can be Sadducean for myself, and for others, but I will always be Pharisean for spectres. Or again: I might be rigorously atheist for myself, might refuse to believe in immortality for myself, but I could never do so for them: For the idea that all justice is impossible for the innumerable massed spectres of the past corrodes my very core, so that I can no longer bear with the living. Certainly, it is they, the living, who need help, not the dead; but I think that help to the living can only proceed given some hope for justice for the dead. The atheist might well deny it: for my part if I were to renounce this, I could not live. I must hope for something for the dead also, or else life is vain. This something is another life, another chance to live – to live something other than that death which was theirs.’
Now take the following, atheist response: ‘You want to hope, you say, for something for the dead. Let’s look closer,then, at what you promise them. You hope for justice in the next world: but in what would this consist? It would be a justice done under the auspices off= a God who had himself allowed the worst acts to be committed, in the case of criminal deaths, or who himself had committed them,in the case of natural deaths. You call just, and even good,such a God. But what would you think of this: the promise to live eternally under the reign of a being called just and loving, who has, however, let men, women and children die in the worst circumstances, when he could have saved them without any difficulty whatsoever; who has even directly inflicted such sorrows – And even this, He says, as a mark of his infinite(and thus mysterious, unfathomable)love for the creatures he thus affects. To live under the reign of such a perverse being, who corrupts the most noble words – love, justice – with his odious practices: isn’t this a good definition of hell? You say that in the dazzling presence of such a God, I will grasp the infinitely loving nature of his attitude to his creatures? You only succeed in exacerbating the nightmare you promise: for you suppose that this being has the power to spiritually transform me in such a radical fashion as to make me love He who allows such atrocities to occur, for having let those atrocities occur. This is a promise of a spiritual death infnitely worse than a merely bodily death: in the presence of God, I will cease to love the Good, for He would have the power to make me love Evil as if it were Good. If God exists, the exit of the dead is thus aggravated to infnity: their bodily death is redoubled in their spiritual death. To this hell you wish for them, I prefer, for them as for myself, nothingness, which will leave them in peace and conserve their dignity, rather than putting them at the mercy of the omnipotence of your pitiless Demiurge.’
We can see that each of these two positions is only supported by the weakness of the other: the atheist is atheist because religion promises a fearful God; the believer anchors his faith in the refusal of a life devastated by the despair of terrible deaths. Each masks his specific despair by exhibiting his avoidance of the other’s despair. Thus the dilemma is as follows: either to despair of another life for the dead, or to despair of a God who has let such deaths take place
Well, it would seem to me that, providing we suppose that the first cause is an intelligent, fully competent being (*I've currently got Timaeus open in a new tab and i'll be chewing through it for the next few days, but feel free to point me towards any passages that argue for such a being existing in favor of a non-intelligent or incompetent one*), that we would be able to gather a modicum of knowledge about the being from the world around us. And from what I am able to observe it would seem that this hypothetical competent, intelligent universe creating being really likes empty space and huge explosions.
Which is cool and all (*i'm not going to question the preferences of such a being*), but seems to run against the conception of a creator actively interested in humankind and its fate that one finds in most major religions.
I'm generally of the mind that impersonal or inscrutable creators make a lot more sense than anthropomorphic ones myself. I mean, omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent are all well and good, but none of those add up to anything like a human being to me in any way.
"It is a matter of grave importance that Fairy tales should be respected.... Whosoever alters them to suit his own opinions, whatever they are, is guilty, to our thinking, of an act of presumption, and appropriates to himself what does not belong to him." -- Charles Dickens
But what do you personally think? There's what other people believe, and personal conviction.
My personal conviction is that Neoplatonism was neither logically rigorous nor scientific like the Peripatetics (who are obsoletely scientific anyway) and that Judeo-Christian authorities don't get enough credit for accepting the Platonic-Peripatetic synthesis in a minimalistic way. We need realism, and thus an Eternal Mind to be thinking non-empirical truths like the principles of math and logic. Occam's Razor suggests treating that Logos as the same as the First Cause and the Form of the Good, rather than multiplying the entities we reason ourselves into belief in. And the Form of the Good not being subordinate to another eternal entity furthermore gives me confidence that suffering for doing good is rational.
i don't know the context for that remark, but the sexism in some Muslim communities is pretty horrifying tbh
it can be, but there is also quite a lot to be said for the right of women to choose how they are treated, and the community-at-large in many places (and especially amongst men and caucasians) tend to treat muslim women as if they have no agency.
But some women conform to those roles willingly, and are within their rights to do so.
I dunno, it just bothers me when this subject comes up because I feel like a rather specific problem (forced enforcement of certain gender roles for Muslim women in parts of the middle east) is often used as a broad condemnation.
Which isn't really what you're doing, so I don't know why I'm still talking about this.
Oh come on, did you expect Richard Dawkins to respect other people's customs?
Also, I think Western media puts too much emphasis on Islam's negative traits. I'm not denying that they're there; it's just that there's really some cognitive dissonance. Christianity has problems too and people turn a blind eye to that.
More people have said that and been killed than there are thorium decay products.
It's a lot more about the way the respective cultures interpret their religions than the content of the holy texts themselves, which are never 100% unambiguous in their meaning, and which taking very literally would be a bad thing.
It's a lot more about the way the respective cultures interpret their religions than the content of the holy texts themselves, which are never 100% unambiguous in their meaning, and which taking very literally would be a bad thing.
Serious Response: Miko hits the nail on the head, here.
Silly Response: What about the part about "give Miko a pie day"? Is that just a metaphor?
"But some women conform to those roles willingly, and are within their rights to do so."
Honestly, I don't see how this whole "women have the right to choose how they are treated" thing is even applicable to Muslims. It might be applicable to Muslim women living in non-Muslim dominated countries - and I do thing that they should be left alone - but in Muslim countries they don't have any choice to begin with. Can they just pack up and leave if they disagree with their country's customs? Certainly not. Then again, I am not big on cultural rights to begin with. Individuals have rights, not cultures.
" Christianity has problems too and people turn a blind eye to that."
"But some women conform to those roles willingly, and are within their rights to do so."
Honestly, I don't see how this whole "women have the right to choose how they are treated" thing is even applicable to Muslims. It might be applicable to Muslim women living in non-Muslim dominated countries - and I do thing that they should be left alone - but in Muslim countries they don't have any choice to begin with. Can they just pack up and leave if they disagree with their country's customs? Certainly not. Then again, I am not big on cultural rights to begin with. Individuals have rights, not cultures.
" Christianity has problems too and people turn a blind eye to that."
Dawkins doesn't, obviously :)
Dawkins and a lot of his "new atheism" fellows save a lot of their most hateful venom for muslims, and are known to indulge in criticisms of them that are racist/xenophobic in nature.
i will find examples sometime, but right now i am having a nice night and do not wish to put myself in a sour mood.
"Dawkins and a lot of his "new atheism" fellows save a lot of their most hateful venom for muslims, and are known to indulge in criticisms of them that are racist/xenophobic in nature."
Yes, I'm not arguing with that. And yes, it is his huge problem. What I am saying is that you can hardly accuse him of turning the blind eye to the flaws of Christianity, of all things.
And I thought the white man's burden was considered scandalously racist these days. Good job shooting yourself in the foot again, Richard "Nice Guy" Dawkins. :P
the harassment of women in European Muslim communities is a serious problem
of course this is true in Christian and secularized communities as well, and Dawkins is wrong to place undue emphasis on Islam, but the issue is not as black-and-white as i feel people are making it out to be
Comments
The Big Bang was the time at which space started to expand, at which point the observable universe was crammed into a small (not infinitesimal) space
before that, if it even makes sense to talk about before that, we know nothing, but that doesn't mean the universe just spontaneously appeared
Like I said. Massively oversimplify.
Also keep in mind that almost anything I say is likely to be about 40% minimum for lulz.
Duuude that's a huge subject. Start with Plato's Timaeus (Whitehead's Process and Reality could be useful in inspiring you not to write it off) for reasoning about knowable qualities of the creator. The Argument from Motion variant of the Argument from Causality appears by itself in Laws X. Aristotle's empirical physics have an eternal geocentric cosmos, but his reasoning about the necessity of an unmoved mover that starts at the beginning of Metaphysics XII is important.
If you ever read Aquinas's Five Proofs, the first is that old Argument from Motion and the second follows the logical implications of the universe being caused rather than eternal. But the subsequet proofs are based on reasoning about being (i.e. metaphysics), opening him up to charges that he hasn't proved the First Cause to be identical with Necessary Being (third) or the Supreme Being (fourth). Much Neoplatonism was based on logically clarifying the relationship between the Supreme Being and the creator of the universe.
to come to terms with my own death, but not that of
terrible deaths. It is terror in confronting these past deaths,
irremediably past, not my coming end, which makes me
believe in God. Certainly, if my disappearance, by some
chance, should be terrible, then I shall die hoping for myself what I hope for spectres. But I myself am but a spectre in waiting. I can be Sadducean for myself, and for others, but
I will always be Pharisean for spectres. Or again: I might
be rigorously atheist for myself, might refuse to believe in
immortality for myself, but I could never do so for them:
For the idea that all justice is impossible for the innumerable
massed spectres of the past corrodes my very core, so that
I can no longer bear with the living. Certainly, it is they,
the living, who need help, not the dead; but I think that
help to the living can only proceed given some hope for
justice for the dead. The atheist might well deny it: for my
part if I were to renounce this, I could not live. I must hope
for something for the dead also, or else life is vain. This
something is another life, another chance to live – to live
something other than that death which was theirs.’
Apparently, being white & male disqualifies you from deploring Muslim oppression of Muslim women in Britain.
This is all I will contribute.
he is just a bigot
i know nobody's pretending that misogyny is exclusive to Western culture, obviously
but i mean, in many communities, women are harrassed for not conforming; i wouldn't call that a 'choice'
But some women conform to those roles willingly, and are within their rights to do so.
I dunno, it just bothers me when this subject comes up because I feel like a rather specific problem (forced enforcement of certain gender roles for Muslim women in parts of the middle east) is often used as a broad condemnation.
Which isn't really what you're doing, so I don't know why I'm still talking about this.
Silly Response: What about the part about "give Miko a pie day"? Is that just a metaphor?
Honestly, I don't see how this whole "women have the right to choose how they are treated" thing is even applicable to Muslims. It might be applicable to Muslim women living in non-Muslim dominated countries - and I do thing that they should be left alone - but in Muslim countries they don't have any choice to begin with. Can they just pack up and leave if they disagree with their country's customs? Certainly not.
Then again, I am not big on cultural rights to begin with. Individuals have rights, not cultures.
" Christianity has problems too and people turn a blind eye to that."
Dawkins doesn't, obviously :)
hateful venom for muslims, and are known to indulge in criticisms of
them that are racist/xenophobic in nature."
Yes, I'm not arguing with that. And yes, it is his huge problem. What I am saying is that you can hardly accuse him of turning the blind eye to the flaws of Christianity, of all things.
see:
"hur dur I am le wite man savior of logic & freedom watch me totes pwn these oppressive backwards muslims lolololol"
of course this is true in Christian and secularized communities as well, and Dawkins is wrong to place undue emphasis on Islam, but the issue is not as black-and-white as i feel people are making it out to be
tweet #richardperkins at your local #restaurantatheistbros and get a #tastycounterculturalrevolution going