Copyright ©1997-2008 Glenn Fleishman except as noted otherwise. All rights reserved. For permission to reprint, contact Glenn Fleishman at glenn at glennf.com. Photo © 2008 Laurence Chen; used with permission.
Copyright ©1997-2008 Glenn Fleishman except as noted otherwise. All rights reserved. For permission to reprint, contact Glenn Fleishman at glenn at glennf.com. Photo © 2008 Laurence Chen; used with permission.
Turning technology from mumbo-jumbo into rich tasty gumbo
� Confluence on Ice | Main | We Blog - No, Really, WE BLOG �Dave Weinberger made me happy with this observation today about hearing Richard Dawkins speak at the TED conference: It genuinely irks me that he recklessly conflates all religions as if they all reject science, all insist on blind faith, and all appeal only to the weak-minded. Deepak Chopra followed up by suggesting Dawkins was a fundamentalist and a bigot, and, Dave notes: He then spent his twenty minutes trying to erase science's distinction between observed and observer, using indeterminacy and quantum leaps as his proof points.
Atheists who treat atheism as a religion irk me, too. I used to be arrogant enough to think that I could sort out all of reality through my own filter. Growing older has presented me with more insolvable propositions that have opened my mind into understanding that there is no possible way to understand all of reality, nor dismiss the beliefs of billions of people. I've also started to appreciate that every single person's expression of religious belief or spirituality is different than everyone else's, dogmatic theologians and zealots aside. Even the strictest observer has their own thoughts and spin; dogma tries to deny these differences.
Posted by Glennf at February 24, 2002 2:09 PM TrackBack URL for this entry: I don't buy into the notion that dogma equates to belief. Dogma is often historically accreted on top of core beliefs. There's a lot of archeological, sociological, and textual evidence behind that. Many religions actually peacefully co-exist with the notion of many gods. The monotheistic culture of the west says "thou shalt have no other gods before me" - well, if there are other gods, which this posits, then our God is rejecting them, but not denying their existence. (Of course, the Aramaic or Hebrew or oral tradition may not have expressed it that way.) The motivation to believe in a higher power is inherent and outside of specific dogma. The manifestation of belief is complex. I don't think you can use reductionist reasoning to dismiss belief because it conflicts with other belief. As Douglas Adams wrote in Hitchhiker's Guide, the Babel fish is the ultimate proof of the non-existence of God - why? Because it so clearly gives away his existence! Posted by: Glenn Fleishman at March 7, 2002 12:54 PM Actually, you can't avoid "dismissing the beliefs of billions of people" because all the major religions disagree with each other - if you subscribe to any of them you are rejecting aspects of the others. For example: Do we live for ever in paradise after we die or are we reincarnated? Or do we just die? Is the Pope infallible? Is it OK to eat pork? We can either believe what are told to believe by the culture or religion we grew up with, or we can think for ourselves, and reject beliefs that are simply not supported by any evidence. That's not arrogance, it's just common sense. Sometimes a billion people can be wrong. Posted by: chrisw at March 7, 2002 11:44 AM At the risk of saying "me too," me too. I happily confess that religion, organized or otherwise, never worked for me. And for a long time, I thought all the people out there who were believers were just deluding themselves. Eventually I figured out that just because I don't have a connection to the divine doesn't mean that other people don't. Atheism might as well be a religion: it's an active belief in a lack of God, as I understand it. This is the opposite of science. Science is not predicated on belief--it is predicated on doubt. Posted by: Adam Rice at March 6, 2002 10:10 PM
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