Science, Religion, Reason and Survival
Just 40 years after a famous TIME magazine cover asked "Is God Dead?" the answer appears to be a resounding "No!" According to a survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life in a recent issue of Foreign Policy magazine, "Why God is Winning."
Religions are increasingly a geopolitical force to be reckoned with. Fundamentalist movements — some violent in the extreme — are growing. Science and religion are at odds in the classrooms and courtrooms. And a return to religious values is widely touted as an antidote to the alleged decline in public morality.
After two centuries, could this be twilight for the Enlightenment project and the beginning of a new age of unreason? Will faith and dogma trump rational inquiry, or will it be possible to reconcile religious and scientific worldviews? Can evolutionary biology, anthropology and neuroscience help us to better understand how we construct beliefs, and experience empathy, fear and awe? Can science help us create a new rational narrative as poetic and powerful as those that have traditionally sustained societies? Can we treat religion as a natural phenomenon? Can we be good without God? And if not God, then what?
This is a critical moment in the human situation, and The Science Network in association with the Crick-Jacobs Center brought together an extraordinary group of scientists and philosophers to explore answers to these questions. The conversation took place at the Salk Institute, La Jolla, CA from November 5-7, 2006.
Sunday, November 5, 2006
Session 1(watch) -->
Steven Weinberg, Lawrence Krauss, Sam Harris, Michael Shermer
Session 2(watch) -->
Neil deGrasse Tyson; Discussion: Tyson, Weinberg, Krauss, Harris, Shermer
Session 3(watch) -->
Joan Roughgarden, Richard Dawkins, Francisco Ayala, Carolyn Porco
Session 4(watch) -->
Stuart Hameroff, V.S. Ramachandran
Monday, November 6, 2006
Session 5(watch)-->
Paul Davies, Steven Nadler, Patricia Churchland
Session 6(watch) -->
Susan Neiman, Loyal Rue, Elizabeth Loftus
Session 7(watch) -->
Mahzarin Banaji, Richard Dawkins, Scott Atran
Session 8(watch) -->
Scott Atran, Sir Harold Kroto, Charles Harper, Ann Druyan
Tuesday, November 7, 2006
Session 9(watch) -->
Sam Harris, Jim Woodward, Melvin Konner; Discussion: Harris, Woodward, Konner, Dawkins, Paul Churchland
Session 10(watch) -->
Richard Sloan, V.S. Ramachandran, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Terry Sejnowski
Comments
jackasses will still run for office on family-values tickets, wringing their hands over our collective sins and preaching salvation through proper voting. Our kind will still be here, reading Hume, Nietzsche, A J Ayer and Ayn Rand, and listening to the aforementioned jackasses telling us that atheism is a religion. They will always be here. We will always be here. I do not care if this whole sorry world succumbs to another dark age, there will still be a remnant that refuses to put their lights out.
The kind of change that Dawkins, Harris and others are proposing does not happen overnight. We didn't come by our imaginary friends overnight and neither will they be abandoned overnight.
Ultimately though it's social change we want, keep science and logic in the limelight long enough and all the theistic nonsense will fade into insignificance.
I'd rather the fundies ship off and colonize the moon or something rather than dig their heels in and try to keep a stranglehold on a civilization that is methodically moving forward despite their tantrum throwing.
The rest are all creatures, nothing more...
I doubt very much that any sentient being could actually create a universe. First of all, from what would it create things? And why? And how did it, itself, come into being? Yet another creator? No, I don't think so. That would make all the so-called creators "creatures" in infinite and increasingly absurd regress.
It's even more absurd to take such an unlikely being and burden it with human personality traits.
I find it easier and less headache-inducing to consider that energy and matter gradually organized into a form that we now recognize as the universe.
In the meantime... I haven't encountered any difficulties that required me to answer the "where does matter come from?" question. Even if the question is utterly unanswerable, I don't think it matters a heck of a lot. We live in the present, not in the distant past.
Shrugging one's shoulders and glibly answering, "Oh, (name of god) did it" is worse than having no answer at all.
What must we do to arrive at the same level of the self-righteousness bigotry that you have?
What does one need to do to perceive in one's mind, that the whole world is going to hell, except you and people that believe as you?
Amy:"My life was hopeless until I received Jesus as Lord and Savior."
So in what form did you receive the Lord Jesus as your savior, did you receive an e-mail or a post card or by carrier pigeon, what form did you receive your message to the point of surety that you were brave enough to come on here and tell us what and how we are to believe?
Are we to believe as you, simply because you say we are supposed to? There must be some form of proof, that we can rely on, that you can share with us infidels to keep us out of hell.
Are we to simply take your word that you have all the exact correct answers for our survival in the next world, simply because you say we should?
On what grounds do you posit your supreme authority?
Where were you exactly and how old were you, the first you heard the words, Jesus saves?
This website is about finding absolute truths and whole truths, can you prove to us what you say is absolutely true?
If not, then I suggest you have nothing further to say, on this website.
Except, I assume, your god.
HE never had a beginning and has always been "just there."
If having a highly complex "god" who is just there without a beginning is a reasonable explanation for everything, then having a universe full of matter that is "just there" without a beginning would have to be equally as reasonable.
I take that back. Those two statements are not equally reasonable.
Since we have a considerable amount of testable evidence demonstrating that there is a universe full of matter, but we don't have a single shred of testable evidence pointing of an invisible deity in the sky, the conclusion that it is possible for there to be a universe that just is without a beginning is much more reasonable than assuming a magical, mysterious, maniacal, monster that is undetectable by any means, but that just is, and that we know that it JUST IS, because poor, ignorant, filthy, tribal sand people from thousands of years ago wrote it down in a religious book.
May the Flying Spaghetti Monster at the center of the universe touch you with his noodley appendage.
You may not have real purpose in your life, but I do. My life was hopeless until I rejected Jesus as Lord and Savior. Jesus is doesn't exist and although I once thought he brought light to my life, it was a lie. Run away from the cult of Christianity now! Life is not hopeless! We are all with each other on this planet, we can became one with each other so that people will continue throughout history.
All our best and Merry Christmas to you, Amy. I really hope and pray you rethink how you're wasting your life by chasing after a mythological "god" created in the minds of Bronze Age savages before it is just too late.
The word "abhorrent" keeps coming up. Let me tell you what I find abhorrent: the Crusades; the Inquisition; witchhunts; persections of jews and heretics; humiliation of scientists and thinkers; extermination of Native Americans; lynchings of Blacks; beating and murdering of homosexuals.
The modern "christian" is but a pale copy of what that religion once was--the modern christian resembles his religious ancestors in the sense that a lizard resembles a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Catholics; Unitarians; Presbyterians; Lutherans; Methodists....all are about as dangerous as Eleanor Roosevelt. The monstrosity that we talked about is still around and very much alive. I live in the heart of Indiana Klan country and those fanatics are organized and armed to the teeth. They are awaiting their time, as they say. If the religious right (the religious reich) gets the power it craves, that time will come.
All over this country, Klansmen or otherwise--not all kooks wear white sheets--there are people who are prepared to deprive us of rights and dignity. They are not all as visible as Fred Phelps. One of you suggested "science and logic" as the remedy. Was that a joke? Among the lunatics I have been describing, science and logic are the tools of the devil. Philosophy is heathen. Tolerance is blasphemy. All of us who want to talk about reason are going to be silenced.
I do not imagine this. I am near these people every day; people who cannot complete a sentence without "nigger" or "queer" or "fag"; people for whom "fuckin'jew" is one word; people for whom abortion is murder. If you thought my comments were harsh, do not forget that the stake is a worse way to die than gas.
P.S. Is this the same Amy Marie who use to amuse us on the forums with her soft-porn fantasies about her affair with God Jr. - or just another deluded fundie?
The babble says," you have to become like a child". How else could you believe in the talking donkey and snake stories?
I now choose to be a rational adult,free to think for myself and it's,... FREAKIN GREAT!!
I highly recommend it!
They and their church leader with support of a badly written book have their people conned into thinking they have "knowledge" without research, inquiry, testing, or supporting data for their beliefs. They have been blinded into thinking not seeking answers IS the answer, and feel condescendingly wise when they tell us IT is simply so.
Everything is simple for them. It has to be. Their ego's really aren't strong enough to be able to handle a complex world or a complex universe that has all grown and developed over time. They can't function surrounded by complexity they have not bothered to try and understand. So they claim it's all simple. As though that erased all the evidence that tells us otherwise.
If there IS a supreme being or higher power....they are in no place to accept that being at all. Because such a being would be too complex for them to comprehend, let alone understand (not to mention probably wouldn't be anything like their infantile "holy" books suggest). Understanding a being like that begins with understanding WHERE IT CAME FROM and how it came to be.
Since the religious don't ask that, they will wind up declaring the first E.T. that ever comes into contact with us a god.
All have failed.
You will fail.
BTW, many of those brilliant dictators you mentioned were trying to destroy another religion so their religion would rule.
You theocratic fascists are so full of shit.
Bertram, nursing your persecution complex isn't helping anyone, least of all yourself.
Any institutionalized dogma, including those you mention, is antithetical to survival. At this point in history - 2006 - religion is the prime mover behind dogmatism.
"Needless to say, a rational argument against religious faith is not an argument for the blind embrace of atheism as a dogma. The problem that the atheist exposes is none other than the problem of dogma itself—of which every religion has more than its fair share. I know of no society in recorded history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable." ~ Sam Harris (full article here.)
Go to www.godchecker.com if you don't believe me. Awful LOT of gods and goddesses in human history. Some of them believed in for a lot longer than the current beliefs have even existed. Vast majority of them are now a distant memory.
Oh....what's that? YOURS is different? Uh-uh. Sorry. If you bother to look at the mythologies behind those pasts gods, you can't help but notice some familiar stories.
That's right. Your belief is a mere regurgitation of old beliefs. Nothing about Christianity is original....but you want to fantasize IT is somehow the one truth?
Barbie's Dreamhouse has nothing on yours.
All have failed.
You will fail. "
Then humanity is doomed to an endless cycle of meaningless divison, violence, ignorance and death. I sincerely hope your wrong, and I have reason to hope, all the statistics are sliding inexorably over to my side.
Besides, for religion to win it has to win EVERY time, we just have to win once, I like those odds, care for a wager?
Okay, that took awhile. mr cabot, I do not intend to speak for the rest of the x-xians, but I believe that religion is here to stay. There are lots and lots of meek, servile little cretins who are eager to get on their knees, and lots more who are just as eager to keep them there. I do not believe that is going to change. No, mr cabot, I am not trying to take away whatever darkage fantasy you so desperately cling to. Stay on your knees--you belong on your knees, jabbering your impotent litany.
And just who are those "brilliant and talented men" to whom you refer? I know about the tyrannts of the past and present, and call them john calvin or joe stalin, they have all come straight out of the gutter. Call it mein kampf or the word of god, it is all shit. And as long as there are cowards and weaklings in this sorry world, that shit is going to be around.
About the notion of "failure". No, I will not fail. I am living my life on my feet, as an atheist and a thinker, calling my own shots. My life is a success, in whatever ways success can be measured. My kind will always be in the minority. We are not going to eliminate religion any more than we are going to shovel sand against the tide.
And do not be overly concerned about labels. The important thing is that you live your life as you choose. Let the label come later....if it fits, wear it.
And, uh, Merry Xmas
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