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Richard Dawkins: The God Delusion

beer good said:
Why can't it be enough that it's good to be alive,
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Why can't there be more?
beer good said:
Well, again,you haven't read the book so I guess it's understandable that you don't know what's in it.
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True. I have the paperback, in a small pile of to read books. I did watch two long interviews with RD last year when he was doing the rounds for his hardback launch so I do have a good idea what the book is about.
beer good said:
As was mentioned earlier, he does write about a lot of things that DO undeniably exist and can be proven. For instance, the existence of religion, the main focus of the book, is undeniable.
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Much the same as Dan Brown.


beer good said:
Well, I know I watched Kill Bill yesterday, so there is a past. And I plan to eat some chicken in an hour or so, so there better be a future.
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.............and you are measuring all this by something called time which is a measurement invented by man, much the same as a mile.
 
Um, sorry, why exactly are people engaging with chris302116 on this topic? Didn't we establish that (s)he's just a troll last year back on this thread? Suddenly adding the string of religious nuttiness to his/her bow surely just exacerbates this.
 
Shade said:
Um, sorry, why exactly are people engaging with chris302116 on this topic? Didn't we establish that (s)he's just a troll last year back on this thread? Suddenly adding the string of religious nuttiness to his/her bow surely just exacerbates this.
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Madame Bovary should never have published. I haven't read the book my self but this Amazon review suggests how tedious it is:
Reviewer: A reader
Garden-variety romance - even more tedious than Austen or Bronte. Suitable only for teenage girls.
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You can take that how you want to, but since it is one of your three favourite books you may want to disagree. This is how you defended your comments about your distaste for the James Bond novels which you had not read.

You have provided the link, so if there is anyone remotely interested in last years thread about James Bond or your less that favourable comments about reading material that hasn't
exactly been troubling the literary prize juries,
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, which is what most of us on this forum read........it's there.

As for spamming up this thread I guess we are both guilty; me for responding to your daft post and you for being childish. Since you are reading The God Delusion I am going to drop out of this thread and you can get the thing back on course with very literal and un godly thoughts. After all who wants someone disagreeing with the majority and adding
religious nuttiness
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to a thread that has nothing to do with God.
 
Stef said:
One comment was that it's not true that suicide would be in the minds of those who believe in God, again, I didn't say that, I said if the believers had 'certain proof' of God's existence, of course they don't commit suicide now because it's only a 'belief' not a 'proof'. It's their hope they're right that drives them to live on.
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I don't think that you understood what I was saying, possibly because I didn't present it clearly enough. Many Christians do in fact believe that they have certain proof of his existence. This can be the Bible, a 'personal encounter' with 'God', or events that they have percieved as miracles. Just because you don't see any clonclusive proof for his existence does not mean that other (more fantatical) people feel the same way.
And as I said, they don't commit suicide. No 'true' Christian ever would - the Bible states that it is a sin.
 
Thank you MonkeyCatcher for further explaining your point.
But that's what I was saying as well, it's the 'belief', either in the existence or non existence of God, that gives us the need to stay alive.
Possible extinction was only in case of 'certain proof'.
 
Interesting commentary by Dawkins in regards to Pascal's wager argument. Believing just to save your head isn't real faith. On top of that, what if you are wrong and God is really Allah or a tollbooth worker from Jersey named Nancy? The safe bet is to say: "Hey, there were so many, I purposely didn't choose a "false" one in order to be right." If he didn't understand that, he's probably not someone that you would want to be around anyway.
 
this is in reply to 'beer good'.

By the way I liked many of your ideas. Your last question, what would be 'certain proof'. Fortunately it's something that we will never have. We need our brain and our emotions to be continually stimulated by that uncertainty. Really it's an imponderable.
It's the natural way of life.
Actually the scientific world has already explained how a big bang is triggered but not how the necessary ingredients came to exist in the first place.
We also know that eventually our solar system will die and other will be born, in this endless cycle of life and death. We really don't need to know why because our imagination is all we need. We can choose to believe what our imagination is capable of.
And we certainly come a long way, we now have freedom of 'belief', at least in many parts of the world, I feel sorry for those poor souls who were or still are forced to believe in something they didn't agree with and so many killed for their beliefs.
 
Stef said:
But that's what I was saying as well, it's the 'belief', either in the existence or non existence of God, that gives us the need to stay alive.
Possible extinction was only in case of 'certain proof'.
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But many people do believe that they have certain proof. They believe that the Bible is certain proof, or that their 'personal encounter' with 'God' is certain proof, or that their witnessing of 'miracles' is certain proof.

Not everyone is as skeptical as you are ;)
 
On the subject of life being pointless without God, people may be interested to read The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker. As the title suggests, it deals with the mistaken belief that the mind is a blank slate at birth, devoid of any innate traits, but in particular, many of his arguments as to why the lack of a God-given soul doesn't lead to nihilism and despotism are relevant to this thread. Stef in particular might find these arguments enlightening.

Religion Explained by Pascal Boyer does exactly what it says on the tin. In essence, he shows how numerous cognitive systems in a normal healthy brain are vulnerable to being parasitised by a small group of concepts that are common to all religions worldwide. If these systems have been exposed to such concepts without an individual first having been trained to think rationally, then religion is apt to take root.

How the Mind Works, also by Pinker, explains these cognitive systems in more depth, showing how rational reasoning is anything but innate. The mind has evolved for specific tasks in the environment in which it evolved (ie: hunting and gathering on the African plains), but the lifestyle we lead today is very different, so the cognitive systems in the mind have to be co-opted for tasks they were not designed for, and sometimes fall down on the job.
 
I have just got around to starting my copy of The God Delusion.

At the start of the book Richard Dawkins is trying to convince us the Albert Einstein did not believe in God. He does this by giving quotes Einstein made relating to God and then giving his own interpretation as to what Einstein meant. He has also cherry picked the quotes.

Whether Albert Einstein believed in God or not is still up for debate, but if it were proved that he did, then this would be a thorn in Richard Dawkins God Delusion side.

I think Albert Einstein did believe;-


My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind
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Albert Einstein
 
legendarytimesbooks.com

Great book - if you enjoy Richard Dawkins, he also wrote "The Blind Watchmaker - Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design". Talks about how natural selection and a nonrandom process (Darwin) is the blind watchmaker in nature. Interesting book about evolution.
 
chris302116 said:
At the start of the book Richard Dawkins is trying to convince us the Albert Einstein did not believe in God. He does this by giving quotes Einstein made relating to God and then giving his own interpretation as to what Einstein meant. He has also cherry picked the quotes.
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I haven't read Dawkins but I have read Isaacson's recent biography of Einstein, where he devotes an entire chapter to Einstein and God, in addition to touching on the subject in other parts of the book, mostly to contrast Einstein's view with those of others.

In exactly what God did or did not Einstein or you or I believe? I take the Hindu view that we cannot know what God is (and even whether God is) but we can take many different approaches to the question. As I read it Einstein's path was the study of nature and its underlying principles or rules. In that he saw the powerful reality of things which some people (you? I? Einstein?) also identify with God.

For people so inclined, God is not some specified construction within a specific tradition, but a possibility.
 
I understand what you are meaning but in the end it boils down to a yes or no. Is there a God.

Albert Einstein refers to God as the illimitable superior spirit , he knew that God existed.
 
silverseason said:
I don't think we can know, which is why I use the term "possibility." Whatever is is, and my opinion or answer of yes or no won't change it.
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Of course not, your answer won't change a thing because you would be guessing. You have a 50% chance of guessing correctly............unless you believe in God then you know there is a God................or if you don't believe, then there is no God.
 
No answer

chris302116 said:
Of course not, your answer won't change a thing because you would be guessing.
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My answer won't change anything because my answer is not only that I don't know but that I can't know. So both yes and no are equally valid and equally meaningless. I don't know/can't know what I am saying yes to or what I am saying no to.
 
silverseason said:
My answer won't change anything because my answer is not only that I don't know but that I can't know. So both yes and no are equally valid and equally meaningless. I don't know/can't know what I am saying yes to or what I am saying no to.
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Spoken like a true Agnostic.

But then no one does know............it has to be a question of what you believe or don't believe.
 
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