The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
The Forum - On Line Opinion's article discussion area



Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

Main Articles General

Sign In      Register

The Forum > Article Comments > Why have a Global Atheist Convention? > Comments

Why have a Global Atheist Convention? : Comments

By David Nicholls, published 3/4/2012

Religion has gone too far and it is up to the non-religious to let them know that.

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. ...
  6. 52
  7. 53
  8. 54
  9. Page 55
  10. All
Thanks George,
in between acting as chauffeur over the last few days I've been reading the book fairly broadly, including part two, and I think I must have read it fairly substantially before because much of it's still familiar. And while I haven't read the earlier texts you mention, I'm familiar with the after-effects; indeed those working in the Humanities enjoy precious little respect from the lay or professional community since, and governments of all persuasion need very little encouragement to fire off yet another broadside at the Humanties. We've had the history wars and culture wars as well since and nobody who understands the arguments can possibly refute them; very few people do though (know the arguments) and they're too easily dismissed as "postmodernism", a wholly bad thing with nothing to recommend it, in the popular mind.
Looking at Sokal, I haven't said anything he'd object to. He only objects to extremes of relativism, constructivism and solipsism, in favour of a "modest realism". He's actually properly sceptical himself, and often qualifies his criticism with telling admissions, such as "we emphasise that we have no idea how widespread these positions are" and "I admit that we have no direct, unmediated access to external reality". He criticises Derrida for intruding on his turf, yet rationalises his own uneducated incursions into philosophy. He argues that scientists observe a "rough and ready realism", that we all adhere to for practical purposes, but acknowledges this shouldn't be taken for granted.
I think the problem is an old one; a prejudice that's all to eager to dismiss valid arguments along with the loose ones espoused by a few. Historians of science would recall when the shoe was on the other foot!
The New Atheist movement is case in point; a noisy cohort of Ditchkins-groupies eager to treat "religion" with the same contempt and ignorance that postmodernism is brushed off with. Religion is founded in nothing but irrationality too, it seems, while science is not to be gainsaid!
Posted by Squeers, Saturday, 21 April 2012 6:03:09 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Hi Dan,

Aren't some of us having fun ?!

Plate tectonics, continental drift - it all sounds so casual, fancy-free, bits of continents roaming around from place to place, bumping into each other, moving around a bit more, lifting up, dropping down, such fun.

Except that the process seems to be a bit more drastic and brutal that that: in the Indian Ocean earthquake on Boxing day, 2004, the plates moved a few feet, enough to cause a vast tsunami that killed a quarter a million people.

From the little I know, the process is incredibly slow, but when there IS movement, it can be catastrophic. Tectonic plates seem to take about two billion years to move from one pole to the other and back, i.e. to travel all the way around the world, i.e. they've done it maybe twice during the existence of the Earth. Not exactly ripping along: like Tony says, moving at about the pace that your fingernails grow - but also, not at a steady pace, more in jerks. Called Earthquakes.

The Gilgamesh story, that the Noah story is based on, is another charming story, the sort that people have been ingeniously dreaming up to explain mysteries for thousands of years. Sometimes these may be garbled versions of earlier oral accounts of something which people thought might/must have happened, with bits exaggerated, bits added, bits dropped out, the gist modified, more bits added, etc.

Keep it coming, Dan.

Cheers,

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Saturday, 21 April 2012 6:12:38 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Tony,
I’m quite aware that continental drift is today measured as slow to virtually non-existent. I know some of the standard theories. I still think there’s room to think differently. And as for a detailed hypothesis, I’ll leave that to those more qualified than myself. Others have done it elsewhere.

I see you entertaining hypothetical conjecture as to what God might have done differently or better or why he did what he did. Before such speculation, I would first like to consider what he allegedly did (what was written). For example, you say the flood waters rose for 40 days. But it also says that the flood remained high for five months. And in the verse just before the one which you quoted, there seems to be some indication of tectonic activity.

Gen 7:11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, on the seventeenth day of the second month–on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened.
Posted by Dan S de Merengue, Saturday, 21 April 2012 11:50:51 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
George and all,
Above, I recommended a slim volume by Simon Critchley as an antidote to the kind of one-sided world-view favoured by the New Atheists and religious fundamentalists—you can get the book for under $10 here, including postage: http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=critchley&sts=t&tn=continental+philosophy&x=0&y=0 –anyway I decided to take my own advice and have been re-reading it. It’s devoted really to the divides that separate our institutions and, as such, is bent on restoring some balance to the force—intellectual/spiritual (for want of a better word) forces that is—and all the issues debated in this thread are dealt with, including C P Snow, who was a novelist as well and was critically jilted by F R Leavis and, coincidentally, conceived his two cultures thesis after that.
It’s an accessible little book, and a thoroughgoing defence of continental philosophy in the science wars, that if read thoughtfully ought at least to give pause to both sides. Apropos empiricism, J S Mill was a rare individual who assimilated both sides, of what Critchley calls the Bentham/Coleridge divide—between utilitarianism and romanticism and “truth” and meaning—into his world-view. Once quizzed on his inconsistency he said, “I believe in spectacles”, then added “but I think eyes are necessary too”.
As I’ve said, I’m an atheist, in the sense that I don’t believe in any of the God’s we’ve invented, but I don’t want to throw the bathwater out with the baby, or rather the embryonic fluid-spirit in which the baby was nurtured. Whether the rationalists like it or not there’s an idealistic/spiritual/aesthetic aspect to human “being” that, imo, precedes the cultural watermark—BTW George, I think we were at cross purposes above with the term “constructivism”; I was referring to social constructivism of the subject, and not Sokal’s bugbear, the social-construction of science; though certainly, as I’ve argued, the major challenge for empiricism is filtering out social/historical corruption—also, like it or not, empiricism is mere instrumentalism without the animating and discriminating faculty of reason. Neither is reason empirically-derived or rational in itself; it’s an attitude, an affect that still must contend with its demons.
Posted by Squeers, Saturday, 28 April 2012 8:57:37 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Squeers,
>>I recommended a slim volume by Simon Critchley as an antidote to the kind of one-sided world-view favoured by the New Atheists and religious fundamentalists—you can get the book for under $10 here, including postage<<

Thanks for the tip. I just downloaded the Kindle version from amazon.de for EUR 4.88, and hope I shall learn something new. In my times, "modern" continental philosophy (as opposed to British analytical or logical positivism) was usually Heidegger and the ensuing existentialism, but maybe here it is something else.
Posted by George, Monday, 30 April 2012 9:07:00 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. ...
  6. 52
  7. 53
  8. 54
  9. Page 55
  10. All

About Us :: Search :: Discuss :: Feedback :: Legals :: Privacy