h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi Smithy!

I had a look-see in the conversation on atheism and culture, to see the reaction of my farewell!

But I won't go back willingly . At some point you walk away from arguments when you lose respect for the attitude of the other side, when it looks like it is so fixed and fundamental that you cannot make progress. Then you are just wasting your time, I'm sure you must have come across situatons like that.

In the most recent posting one critical chap after being chastened by a poster, revised classic 'faux-pas' definition of faith:

"Atheism involves a lack of belief in gods, presumably for most people because they don't see evidence for gods existing." This is very similar to the tautological defintions that I presented as being pathetic.

What this chap (and his spelunking crew) cannot seem to recognize is that his worldview is replete with faith-statements; such as an undeclared materialistic view, and of the primacy of verificationist rationality in reason, the assumption that adaptionist evoltionary can derive all of man's faculties, that the consciousnes is a physicalist construct, and that those cognitive faculties are adequete to arrive at objective truth. And I think I could go on - but I am not his analyst.

He sets these up as his 'gods', in a kind of an axiomatic pantheon of 'gods with no name'. And since they have 'no name', they cannot be 'god's' and according to his little definition he has no-faith element in his reasoning.

Bilge & Balderdash!

His view as to what comes first the 'cart of reason' or the 'horse of faith', misses the point. In my view they are symbiotic to the extent you cannot divide them in space or time. Reason requires Faith, and Faith requires Reason.

I have had enough trying to educate folks who do not want to think outside of their box, they may think it comfortable but to my view looks like a padded cell.

To be honest my stamina for maintaining a voice of reason, as a voice crying in the wilderness, is somewhat drained. I intend not to give it a rest.

As for your comments...

Why do I think that removing faith from reason is "very dangerous and doomed to failure" .

1/ The abadonement of faith is dangerous, becuase IMO it seeks to obfustucate the fact that faith is inherent in all worldviews, thus it is either an insincere ideology or it is an ignorant one. In such circumstances where "reason" ideologies have become the basis of culture we can see "the dialectic of materialism in the history of science" of Marxism, also the Eugenics of National Socialism. Even the Reign of Terror of Robespierre in the French Revoltiun that etablished 'temples of reason', and then cut off the heads of dissenters. It leads to the unfortunate predictable human egoism and selfishness of total certainty made of man's ideals. This is a bit of a Frakenstein monster allegory. The totalitarian manifestations are recorded in the Black Book's of the 'Enlightenment'. You can see this now in the Fundamentalist Darwinism of folks like Dennet and Dawkins, who articulate religion as a viral disease, who look to the OAA reqion of the brain as it seat. What next, action to remove the virus? The hubris of fundamentalist exists in Atheists as fully as it does in some Theists. Make no mistake about it - left to itself it is a danger we need to speak out against.

2/ Its doomed to failure because man wil not give up his meaning for beads and glass. The sense of nouminous is embedded in man. By trying to trample it under foot you only give rise to matyrs and suffering, which is well understood to provide the heroes and and models for the younger generation who look on and see tyrants forcing their will on a people that only want to be set free by truth.

O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting

fingers of
purient philosophers pinched
and
poked

thee
, has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy

beauty . how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
(but
true

to the incomparabe
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover

thou answerest


them only with

spring)

e. e. cummings

***************************************

Wherever there are humans
You will find flies,
and Buddhas.

Issa

Pilgrim: >But I won't go back willingly<

How about at gunpoint then? We Yanks are always armed to the teeth you know!

Just kidding! I understand that it's exhausting, not to mention probably unrewarding.

All these fundamentalist atheists and theists desperately trying their best to use reason or faith ALONE, may be just playing out the great cosmic joke unwittingly. They may be best off having a beer and sharing the laugh together (and useing both modes), to be able to share the Cosmic Joke (see below)

As Milton says in Paradise Lost ...

Others apart sat on a Hill retir'd,
In thoughts more elevate, and reason'd high
Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and Fate,
Fixt Fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,
And found no end, in wandring mazes lost.
Of good and evil much they argu'd then,
Of happiness and final misery,
Passion and Apathie, and glory and shame,
Vain wisdom all, and false Philosophie


Puts it into context - I think Milton was saying all this "high reasoning" and rationalization about "Providence, Foreknowledge, Will and Fate" is ultimately meaningless. Miltons Paradise Regained makes a good read as well.

What is the Cosmic Joke...

The renowned Astrophysicist Robert Jastrow has expressed this joke as 'For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peaks; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries! 'God and the Astronomers' (1992) pp.106-107