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Read other letters about this article
'Isn't nature splendid?'
Yes, no argument here.
'So let's call that splendor "god"!'
Um ... OK. I won't, but whatever floats your boat.
'Dawkins wrote a whole book called Unweaving the Rainbow about
how splendid nature was, but didn't call it "God". That's
because he's a fundamentalist.'
Er ...
The thing about reductionism isn't that it thinks everything
is small and essentially pointless ... it's that it thinks that all the big and splendid things came about by a series
of quite simple physical stages. The universe of science is
literally billions of times bigger and more complicated and
richer than the bronze age religious view of the universe,
but it seems to be governed by only a handful of physical rules, replaying and combining.
If there are people who can't find meaning or morality
without imagining a god imposing those things on them ...
well, that's a serious limitation on their part. 'God did it all' as the answer to every question is the biggest act of reductionism of the lot.
