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-12-
Why is it that every atheist I know has studied religion, its history, its teachings and its implications to a far greater extent than all the people who claim that god exists? Surely it should be the other way round. It isn’t and it says something.
-11-
Lets all hope that the sugary piece of musical beige by the X factor winner will NOT make it this year as Christmas number 1 and that the GLORIOUS track Killing In The Name by Rage Against The Machine will win its place in the no 1 spot.
-10-
So far I am about two thirds of the way through Richard Dawkins’ world famous The God Delusion. It is a fascinating, methodical and well-written ultimate atheist argument and I am enjoying it far more than I reckoned. I imagined it to be sensationalist, angry and far more hostile to religion. In truth is seems to be the logical and rational anti-religious arguments in the book, being so difficult to dispute (without dropping all reason and rationale) that have caused the severe reaction from religious figures.
The section specifically applicable to my project is the chapter: The Roots of Religion. Here Dawkins dictates his views on the main reasons as to why people are religious in face of the vast absence of any evidence and the nonsensical nature of the arguments for his existence.
One of the most logical and powerful argument for the non-existence of God is as follows:
- The universe is a vast, unimaginably complex, beautiful, fantastic and truly spectacular entity.
- A supposed ‘creator’ or designer would have to be even greater, more powerful and more complex than this universe to be capable of creating it.
- This designer would have to:
- Have spontaneously originated from nothing
or
-Have been created itself (then begins the implausible infinite regression into the creator of the creator etc, this is very improbable)
or
-Exist outside the universe in a dimension in which the need for a beginning, an origin, or a ‘prime movement’ is not necessary.
- These criteria make god an unnecessary, superfluous addition and very unlikely. If an allowance is made for god to originate from nothing, or have never needed an origin, (for whom we have no evidence for his existence), then it is much more logical, and probable that the simpler and less complex universe (for which we have a great deal of evidence for its existence) could have originated from this same spontaneous start or also not needed a definitive beginning.
- To conclude, ‘God’ as a ‘creator’ of the universe is not only less likely to exist than not exist, but is highly improbably and a completely unnecessary ‘luxury’ addition to the logical mechanisms of the origin of the universe.
-9- The Definition of Science
What has become slowly apparent from reading various Internet articles, extracts from books, television debates and talking to people about religious views and its conflict with science is that the people supporting the religious side usually don’t grasp what science actually is.
A common line of argument seems to be “You can’t solely try to disprove God with science and solely try to prove the potential origin of life with science because science isn’t the only valid way to find the answers to questions. You can’t analyse a literary text or an impressionist piece of art with science, so how can you truly determine God’s existence purely with science?” This argument is not just flawed but it is ignorant and wrong. A person of this argumentative persuasion does not understand that a naturalist (or super-naturalistic) concept (i.e. anything that isn’t derived from human invention or imagination) and its truth is fundamentally different to a construct of our developed human consciousness, art, music etc, and they are in fact admitting by use of this argument, or arguments of a similar tread, that God is an entity more akin to these products of humanity.
When required to analyse these products of humanity, then yes, science is not a universally valid method (however many aspects applicable to the social sciences indeed are). However science is a concept much misunderstood. It is not a subject comparable to the Arts and Humanities although they may employ scientific methods in their operation. Science is the simplest discipline to describe and perhaps the hardest discipline to properly master. The title ‘Science’ implies something specific and defined by academia, colleges and classrooms and nothing more. However, in truth, Science is simply discerning the answer to an intelligent question by intelligent, rational, testable and responsible means. In effect, any question asked about anything that is not a product of human emotional and communicative expression is obviously best answered by intelligent, rational, testable and responsible means and therefore by science. A person claiming that God is not applicable to this ‘scientific’ (which is really a misnomer as mentioned above) type of testing then must resign to the fact that God to the product of human emotional and communicative expression, which then places anyone who attempts to use this argument in position of self contradiction if a belief in God is one they hold.
-8-
I have just returned from a rather expensive trip to Blackwell’s to buy a selection of books for general wider reading but also with the project in mind. The relevant ones are: The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins, God is not Great - Christopher Hitchens and The Blind Watchmaker - Richard Dawkins. I know this selection seems to be from the two biggest and most clichéd atheists out there but surely that means I should read these benchmark books as well as exploring the less well known and less controversial but perhaps more insightful. Hopefully I will finish the books before the new year and they will be sufficiently suitable to my project.
Science is interesting. If you don’t agree you can fuck off.
Project title update:
Why is mankind so obsessed with, and absorbed by, religion?
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