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'Real knowledge is to know the extent of ones ignorance.' Confucius.

Interesting that Dawkins claims he didn't choose the title for the controversy and it was the stations choice.

RE: "the world ... without religion"

I don't see that 'ever' happening, as that lesson is a major core of learning how Reality works. Take that out of the learning lab and the learning opportunities attached to that topic disappear.

That reminds me of that blasphemy contest that those skeptical noninquirers ran. The winning results was, "There's no religion like no religion." I kind of like it.
Love
Bette

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All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

Thanks Lena,

I couldn't agree with Dawkins more: religionists are lunatics, sometimes dangerous, often unpleasant, but sometimes not so bad. We have piles of them out here, and for the most part I regard them as toxic and I avoid them as much as possible.

But people absolutely will have their belief systems. If somehow religion were erased, something else would eventually come to take its place, and meanwhile chaos and anarchy would be the rule.

And Dawkins doesn't seem to see that his science-istic belief system has control of him with about the same intensity as the religionists. ..and you can see it in some of the clips: he would about like to just bash some of some of those other kooks!

The argument that science is "the product of reason" and therefore "true" (or at least, not demonstrably false) and therefore should trump religion (or anything else) is not solid. : Science, when it works as it should, seems to regularly disprove earlier ideas. More (and TOEist theory seems as though it would have to agree), whether doing data queries or assembling tools of agency, the way we model our searches or tools is of at best secondary relevance to the purity or clarity of intent. More, to declaim against 'faith' seems silly twice: It was "faith in reason" that initiated the renaissance (so I am told at least), and faith oft-times will accomplish what reason, with its relative lack of fire and passion often will not.

Too, you could say that science, however clever, is reckless: It comes up with all sorts of magical devices and then puts them in the hands of brutes, so that we have thugs with missiles and H-bombs and nerve gas,etc.

And scientists can be just as selfish, petty, vindictive and brutal, as any other human, and their works can result in as many deaths and other tragedies, intentionally or otherwise.

I'm going to continue to hide out in my belief system that says that belief systems are okay as long as you see them as tools and don't take them too seriously, or identify with them, and can be at ease switching among them as situational demands indicate, and also that humans are, generally, partially nuts.


All just my opinion and may well be somewhat in conflict with the ideas of others that post on this BB.

-Montana

I absolutely agree with you. Dawkins is a zealot as much as his opponents are.

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'Real knowledge is to know the extent of ones ignorance.' Confucius.