Richard Dawkins

If anyone is interested in reading much more on this please check out www.atheist.ie for the discussion forums and have a look in the video library for this documentary and many more of the earlier stuff from Richard Dawkins and others.

Bart, I would disagree with your assessment of athiesm vs. agnosticism.
It is the point made by Huxley, when he invented the phrase "agnosticism" to describe his position, but it overstates athiesm as a "positive belief in non-existence", and misstates science.

I used to be of your opinion, but no athiest i've met has stated that they are positively certain there is no god(s), but 'agnosticism' is too weak a position to hold.

Given no evidence for a theory, science is not in practice neutral between theories. Take the example of "Grue". Something Grue is the colour Green before 22 October 2007, after which it is Blue. We could say that grass is either Green or Grue, and all observational evidence is supports both theories. Tomorrow we will know better, but I could come up with a new theory Grue2 by changing the date ...

In practice in science there are an infinite number of theories fitting the known facts, but we are not agnostic as to them: we employ Occams razor to pick the simplest. We ignore all more complex theories unless forced to by the facts. This is what athiests do with the theory of God.

Bart, I would disagree with your assessment of athiesm vs. agnosticism.
It is the point made by Huxley, when he invented the phrase "agnosticism" to describe his position, but it overstates athiesm as a "positive belief in non-existence", and misstates science.

I used to be of your opinion, but no athiest i've met has stated that they are positively certain there is no god(s), but 'agnosticism' is too weak a position to hold.

Given no evidence for a theory, science is not in practice neutral between theories. Take the example of "Grue". Something Grue is the colour Green before 22 October 2007, after which it is Blue. We could say that grass is either Green or Grue, and all observational evidence is supports both theories. Tomorrow we will know better, but I could come up with a new theory Grue2 by changing the date ...

In practice in science there are an infinite number of theories fitting the known facts, but we are not agnostic as to them: we employ Occams razor to pick the simplest. We ignore all more complex theories unless forced to by the facts. This is what athiests do with the theory of God.

The thing is theories of God are not about the physical world in may people's minds. Not all religious and spiritual people believe in a God that directly intervenes and hence produces a physical effect. As I see it science has nothing to say on spirituality and religion. Science deals with the physical world and does so very well. That's what it's there for. Science has not been developed to deal with matter of the heart or the soul so applying it to them is stupid IMO.

I'll give you an example, how could science address a belief in reincarnation? How could it address a belief that when we die we move on to another universe? How would it address a belief that the earth as a whole has some form of conciousness or spirit? There are people who believe all these things for non-physical reasons. They may feel a connection to the earth or to a place or to a tree or what ever that they interpret as a soul or a conciousness. Science can't and shouldn't wade with both feet and go "sorry, you are wrong, there is no such thing and you are a loony". That's about as arrogant and obnoxious as fundamentalists insisting that gay marriage should be banned because God told them so.

Now, there are of course obvious examples of where science should play a role in tackling religion, but only when the religion or what ever makes claims about the physical world. I have to say this usually revolves around fundamentalists though. "The Bible says the earth is 6,000 years old so it is" etc.. It can play a role in analysing things like whether prayer has an effect on healing (not surprisingly the evidence suggests that it does not).

There's no point in arrogantly barging in and denouncing things without the evidence to back it up. An agnostic view on the world is much less confrontational and much more humble. I couldn't bring my self to call myself an atheist, I would feel I was being no different to a Christian or a Muslim or a Jew.

There are many things that need to be tackled and the sceptical movement through people like James Randi are doing that. Why does James Randi not immediately piss off people in the same way Dawkins does? IMO it's because he doesn't band the atheist drum and is a hell of a lot more humble. I'd argue that he's achieved a lot more than Dawkins and in a much better way. I look to people like Randi and Carl Sagan (another agnostic) as role models, not Dawkins.

Bart.

On Randi, Sagan and scepticism: agreed. This is a worthier target, and from the few episodes I've seen, what Dawkins has been targeting in his TV show.

But I disagree that Science and Religion are as separate as you point out. E.g. reincarnation implies a belief in a soul, a part of our existence, in our universe that moves on. Physics and neuroscience has something to say about that ...

(The Nobel Laureate ET Walton told a story of a lecture where he explained the Wilson Cloud chamber experiment: a chamber with a radiation source in it is rapidly evacuated, and you can see the radiation tracks as condensation forms on the ions in the lower-pressure air. A person in the audience urged him to repeat the experiment with a frog in the chamber, to see if they could see condensation tracks on the path of the soul leaving the expiring frog...)

But returning to Dawkins home turf of evolution, science vs religion (or more correctly, critical thought vs. faith) is currently slugging it out over creationism vs evolution. The existence of the theory of evolution, and more broadly physics, is leading people away from religion to a more secular life in which belief in religion is optional, and ultimately dropped (see the link from above to The Edge . Hence the fightback in evangelical religion to push creationism.
This battle is tiny in Ireland, is bigger in the UK (with creationism taught in the 'faith-based' schools pushed by Blair, etc.) but is huge in the US.
The "New Athiesm" is not trying to 'evangelize' a secular life: secularism was happening, creationism is the fight-back of the religious (in the US) and Dawkins is leading the fight against creationism.

amckinstry wrote: On Randi, Sagan and scepticism: agreed. This is a worthier target, and from the few episodes I've seen, what Dawkins has been targeting in his TV show.

In the show above Dawkins heads that way, that's a change for him, and one I like.

amckinstry wrote: But I disagree that Science and Religion are as separate as you point out. E.g. reincarnation implies a belief in a soul, a part of our existence, in our universe that moves on. Physics and neuroscience has something to say about that ...

It may have something to say in the future but right now it really doesn't. There is no physical evidence for a soul but there is also no way a scientist can say it does not exist. Conciousness is a mystery to science right now.

But returning to Dawkins home turf of evolution, science vs religion (or more correctly, critical thought vs. faith) is currently slugging it out over creationism vs evolution. The existence of the theory of evolution, and more broadly physics, is leading people away from religion to a more secular life in which belief in religion is optional, and ultimately dropped (see the link from above to The Edge . Hence the fightback in evangelical religion to push creationism.
This battle is tiny in Ireland, is bigger in the UK (with creationism taught in the 'faith-based' schools pushed by Blair, etc.) but is huge in the US.
The "New Athiesm" is not trying to 'evangelize' a secular life: secularism was happening, creationism is the fight-back of the religious (in the US) and Dawkins is leading the fight against creationism.

I have real issues with creationism. It's actually bigotry. It's wilful ignorance and a determined effort to bury science and indeed reality to protect a flawed world view. Don't confuse all religious people with those kinds of extremists. I seldom agree with the Pope or the RCC but even they do not deny evolution, and indeed, accept it. They see it as a mechanism by which God created, he set up the universe so that it would naturally support evolution.

It is vital to fight to protect science and indeed reality from being rapped by religious extremists, but you don't need to push atheism for that. The Dalai Lama is a great fan of science, the Pope even has an Observatory and his own astronomer. I fear that too many people tarring all religion with the brush of the extremists. When you do that atheism seems to be logically linked with the fight against creationism, it isn't, and to make it be linked you are alientating a lot of natural allies, all those religious people who accept reality! That's why I believe Sagan reached a lot more people than Dawkins ever will.

Bart.

But returning to Dawkins home turf of evolution, science vs religion (or more correctly, critical thought vs. faith) is currently slugging it out over creationism vs evolution.

Hang on a second. It's perfectly possible to have faith and also have a rational brain! Just because someone thinks there might be a god in no way means that they agree with creationism!

It may be convenient for christian bashing to equate belief in a bloke around Palestine a couple of thousand years ago with an implicit belief in creationism but its not valid. Especially since major christian churches have supported evolution for a long time.

There is this nice piece from an encyclical from Leo XIII from over 100 years ago that outlines how things should go: There can never, indeed, be any real discrepancy between the theologian and the physicist, as long as each confines himself within his own lines, and both are careful, as St. Augustine warns us, "not to make rash assertions, or to assert what is not known as known."(51) If dissension should arise between them, here is the rule also laid down by St. Augustine, for the theologian: "Whatever they can really demonstrate to be true of physical nature, we must show to be capable of reconciliation with our Scriptures; and whatever they assert in their treatises which is contrary to these Scriptures of ours, that is to Catholic faith, we must either prove it as well as we can to be entirely false, or at all events we must, without the smallest hesitation, believe it to be so."

i.e. if you have a faith in something and it can be shown to be wrong by science (eg creation happened in a week) then you need to accept what can be shown to be true. Christians then need to take the first bit of genesis with a more metaphorical meaning as its now known that its not literally true. A position adopted by many churches who include the book in their scriptures.

Similarly scientists can not show that god does not exist and arguing theology from a scientific viewpoint is just as bad as arguing science from a religious standpoint.

On reincarnation. Physics and neuroscience can show how improbable it is and how a 'soul' cannot be found much less somehow move from a dead person into a being about to be born. They cannot disprove reincarnation and really should not bother trying or dwelling on the point. As far is science is concerned the position should be that there is no evidence for it and so nothing to investigate further.