WilliamWDelaney wrote:
If atheists ran the world, they would find some other stupid crap to believe in, and I have precedent for it.
Before philosophers of the 12th and 13th Centuries developed the concept that reason is in a different category from beliefs that are handed down by tradition, authority or gut reaction, there was this cult that had developed around Aristotelian philosophy. A man named Averrhoes, who was a very learned man himself, had claimed that Aristotle had discovered "all truth that is accessible to man." If they had won the day without there also being any change in how we look at the discovery of truth, we would still believe that the Sun orbits the Earth.
If you think that sounds crazy, systems of astronomy based on Ptolemy had immense predictive power. The arguments would run, "even if it were the case that the Earth orbits the Sun, such a model would not reflect the positions of the planets relative to the Earth, therefore the heliocentric model is inferior anyway." Those who are determined to defend a belief will find a way.
Religion is ultimately no more harmful on its own than marijuana, and I don't think that doing away with it would ultimately solve the core problem. The root of the problems that prominent atheists like Richard Dawkins are trying to point to is exactly the problem that 12th and 13th Century thinkers like William of Occam were trying to address. Only by addressing the root problem can we begin to address the illness of which religion is usually a harmless symptom if properly contained.
The root of the illness is exactly what William of Occam was trying to address. When people are confronted with a problem for which they have no obvious solution, they often try to invent one. We are not born with a perfect concept of how this inventive process works, though. When we cannot figure out how something works, we often invent explanations that appear to be logical. The problem is that we end up with the same mess that we do with Ptolemy's system: to support our invention, we can end up introducing all manner of new elements that we have no substantial evidence for, and we can miss the truth that would be right there in front of us if we were not so wedded to supporting an erroneous idea.
And the other problems run the gamut from wishful thinking to the idea that social status determines the worth of a given belief. A major human failing is thinking that something must not be true because it is unpleasant to think about. That's what we mean by "wishful thinking": in the case of wishful thinking, you are saying, "I don't want to accept it as true, therefore it must be obvious to everyone that it is false." Another peril is getting social status mixed-up with the worth of someone's ideas: a lot of the best scientists are paupers, actually, and many of them are extremely introverted.
Therefore, I refute the idea that widespread atheism would unto itself remedy all of the problems for which religion is often blamed. Furthermore, religious people often panic when anyone talks about taking away their pipe, so it is ultimately for the best if we focus on the promotion of sound reasoning. It might cause some people to see that religion is really a bunch of wishful thinking, but that's not the important thing really.
I agree. I don't think it in reality it would actually make much of a difference. I tend to think anyone who believes the world would have no wars if everyone were atheist are incorrect. War on the surface can be described in many ways of ideology or religion but it really comes down to greed and the will to take from one's neighbor being exercised with extreme prejudice. This does not require superstitious beliefs to prosecute. Nor does belligerent ignorance and blithe nature
_________________
Opportunities multiply as they are seized. -Sun Tzu
Nature creates few men brave, industry and training makes many -Machiavelli
You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do
15 Dec 2011, 7:46 pm
