Site Presented By
Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Yeah, because it is not like scientific principles led to the technology with which you condemn both religion and science in favour of nicey-nicey.
Look, we all condemn guys like Lieberman or Kleinman, the "Sensible Liberals." Well the religious left or new Agnostics are no different to those guys.
On the one hand you have the religious right frequently so far as to threaten our lives, and on the other hand you have us "Foaming at the mouth" atheist fundementalists daring to talk back and back up our cases with facts.
And right in the middle you have the "Sensible liberal" papsmear agnostics saying that while they detest the violence of the religious right, when us atheists who dare to stand up to it in less than complimentary terms? Well we leave you ashamed.
I have no problem with honest agnostics be they theist or atheist, those whose position is honestly founded in "I don't know" or even "I don't give enough of a shit to argue to the subject" but when agnosticism amounts to nothing more than self-righteously proclaiming "a curse on both your houses"? That I have problems with.
(Oh and note: Atheism and agnosticism aren't even describing the same thing, you can have agnostic theists and gnostic atheists. It works as follows in terms of the Christian God:
Agnostic atheist: I do not believe in God.
Gnostic atheist: There is no God.
Agnostic theist: I believe God is likely.
Gnostic theist: God exists.)
It seems to me he agrees with Dawkins but is trying to put a different slant on it.
Dawkins has said many times that he thinks the universe is a thing of awe and wonder and is to be marvelled at. Kauffman thinks this too but calls it 'sacred', or wants to give it the label 'God'.
So I don't really see, in practical terms, much difference in what he believes and what Dawkins believes. But there is a difference of approach: Dawkins is an aggressive atheist, believing that we'd all be far better off if religion were expunged from our societies, whereas Kauffman is looking for some common ground where religious and non-religious can share in the wonder of existence.
You takes your pick.
But Kauffmann makes important sense for the first half of the interview. Emergence is the scientific challenge of our day: the entire universe is an emergent phenomenon, and everything in it, from the periodic table to consciousness and everything in between. (According to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, the infinitely small, hot undifferentiated lump of the big bang should have produced nothing more than infinitely large, cold undifferentiated lump, not hydrogen even, and certainly not this marvellous world.) We need a science of creation.
But when he starts babbling about quantum consciousness, he loses my sympathy, and when he talks about hijacking words like 'God' and 'sacred' he seems to be losing his mind. Haven't all religious wars always been fought, not over God, but, precisely, over that meaning of the word 'God'? If we are to outgrow,as we must, both superstition and reductionism, we are going to need a different language, rather than recycling one with millennia of nonsense behind it.
I'll take Dawkins, and here is why:
If we doubt things, including ourselves, then we end up acting like better people because we are open to the idea that we may be wrong. For all of the aggressive wording of many of us, most of us, like Dawkins when he was interviewed on the subject, would turn theist if enough evidence presented itself.
The religious right on the same show however, proclaimed that no evidence could ever sway them - and that is the gap between atheism and religion.
What Dawkins said in The God Delusion was nothing new, it was basically a summary of a few atheist arguments, but just because it was nothing new didn't mean it didn't need saying. The ultimate argument for atheism is against faith, it is the idea that we need evidence in order to believe things.
This is the same gap that has the religious proclaiming that atheists can't experience wonder, or that we are essentially amoral, or that we are incapable of art (And you know what? It is the religious left that most frequently makes these claims) or that we are especially nasty bad people who eat puppies.
Meanwhile there are plenty of atheist artists out there, as well as atheists who dedicate their lives to studying the wonder of the world around us. The evidence points away from the claims that atheists are somehow less human, that we are somehow lesser beings to our religious brethren yet the claims still get made. Why? Because the religious accept it on faith.
Just like, not so long ago, a lot of Germans accepted on faith the idea that the Jews were subhuman.
I agree. I'll take Dawkins too.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Malaria is every bit as much a part of God as anything else! That's exactly it. The "ceaseless creativity" of Kauffman's "God" is just that: ceaselessly creative. It never stops evolving and subsequently new things, unpredictable things, emerge. Sometimes the things are viruses, and sometimes the things are cuddly, stuffed animals, but "God" doesn't give a shit because "God" isn't some being with a will--as is the God you won't let go of--"God", in Kauffman's estimation (and mine), is ever-present, ever-emerging, ever-ultimately-unknowable nature; the totality of the source and substance of the universe!
My mind just reels! at the thought that someone fighting the materialist battle hasn't ever had an experience where they felt dissolved into the beauty and vastness and simple/complexity of the universe in a way that caused them to know that they were greater than themselves. I just don't believe it! Most people feel that in some way at some point in time. It reels! more! that someone having had that experience would be so violently afraid of a symbol that could point to that experience.
Like it or not, that experience, when experienced as a religious person OR as a non-religious person, is the same essential experience. My laugh is essentially the same as your laugh, when I take a shit I am essentially having the same experience as when you take a shit. When I hear a baby laugh, I experience essentially the same thing that you do when you hear a baby laugh. When we feel at peace with our natural surroundings we're having the same essential experience.
Religious people see this through a lens of mythology. That mythology is not "God". Atheists see this through a lens of anti-mythology. That anti-mythology is not not-"God".
If the symbol is pointing to something different and new--it carries new, or shall we say 'evolved' meaning. To continue to use an old-fashioned Abrahamic interpretation of the word 'God' is not even arguing with Kauffman (or any of these letter writers), it is simply missing the point.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
Salon headlines in your mailbox
