Sam Harris won't give up venting and fuming over religion. He forgets, perhaps, that smoke gets in your eyes; it clouds perception, fogs thought. His take on religion is puerile, as is that of religious literalists and those whose cosmic-scientific vision eliminates the possibility of surprise or the advent of the unknown or least expected.
Rather than argue, as Harris does, that science and religion are inherently in conflict, I propose conversation. The word "conversation" is derived from the Latin conversio, which means turning around. When one enters into conversation, the only risk lies in seeing the subject from another point of view. The payoff is seeing the question more holistically, more fully, and perhaps more truthfully.
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French physicist Bernard d'Espagnat, who was awarded the prestigious Templeton Prize in 2009, offers a contrast to Harris' fierce hostility toward religion. Award organizers said his work in quantum physics reveals a reality beyond science that spirituality can help to partly grasp. In his writings, d'Espagnat asserts that modern quantum physics shows that ultimate reality cannot be described. Although he is non-religious, he embraces mystery, writing that it "is not something negative that has to be eliminated. On the contrary, it is one of the constitutive elements of being."
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D'Espagnat's approach to spirituality evokes that of the French philosopher André Comte-Sponville, another Roman-Catholic-turned-atheist. Comte-Sponville maintains that spirituality, free from any particular religious doctrine, is integral to human existence. The buoyant quality of his affirmative celebration of human experience perhaps owes itself to the deep humanist tradition in Roman Catholicism, which arises from its central teaching of the Incarnation and places great trust in a form of human experience in which spirituality -- call it mind, or brain, or soul -- operates positively. This vein of thinking in turn owes itself to its classical intellectual heritage: the original post-Gospel Christian thinkers and writers were, for the most part, Roman and Greek scholars who, in becoming Christian, brought with them a body of pagan philosophical and moral treatises. The humanistic wisdom they imparted became the intellectual framework for the Gospel message.
While free from the potentially limiting sphere of religious doctrine, Comte-Sponville admits that life is expectantly spiritual. His Little Book of Atheist Spirituality says all that Harris sadly misses and denigrates.
Michael Ruse: Religion As Morality: Is This the Way Forward in the Science-Religion Debate?
Elaine Howard Ecklund, Ph.D.: Why University Scientists Do Not Discuss Religion
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To many, religion means fundamentalist Christianity. While that is a form of Religion capital R), there are many more. In fact, since no two people think alike, every religious person practices a unique religious form (small r); therefore, any "conversation" about religion demands an appropriate definition of same.
While the same requirement holds for a conversation about science, there is a lesser divergence in scientific thought than in religion.
Still, scientists who bemoan the "evils" of religion seem ignorant of the subject (a poor scientific approach) and the religious who would engage in any science versus religion "conversation" seem unaware of the evolution of scientific knowledge and how it began as intellectual inquiry into the workings of God only to lead to the complete redefinition of God as Creator and controller into one where the only case that can be made for God is an initial cause and in the initial creative moment, that 10 (exp -43) seconds of the big bang that still baffles scientists. However this pertains to theistic religions alone, not the non-theistic forms, the ignorance of which is another error many "scientists" make in refutation of religion.
Or so it seems to me, which is the source of the conflict, opinion. Science is about knowledge and reason. Religion is how one, having scientific knowledge sees the ineffable and humans values which might be ascribed thereto.
"While this very personal choice to be atheist is understandable"
2000 years of condescension wrapped in 10 words... It's not personal, it's not a choice, it's simply never having (or having retreated from) felt the need to create an alternate reality, we observe, note the gaps, but don't get too worried about them, and live our lives. Until of course, the religious tell us how to live them, and thus the reason for no conversation...
And while mainstream religions DO demonstrate irrational beliefs (and therefore behaviors) that cause many to fear, there is also the very understandable fear of the ineffable - the unknown and unquantifiable - that many personality types just simply can not deal with.
It becomes the task of the believer to therefor demonstrate that there is nothing to fear in the ineffable by becoming a living demonstration of its completely benign qualities.
To communicate THAT to non-believers would tuly help.
I will never, ever understand why there always needs to be a "Vs." between the words "science" and "religion." I'm a Christian-- I believe in some form of God and some form of Christ. I also believe that evolution is a real thing and that science can explain most things on this planet. And I'm not even saying that religion can explain the things that science can't. I'm just saying, it's easy to reconcile science and religion, as long as you're not a zealot on either side of the issue.
Why is it so important for the religious right to make everyone believe what they believe? It's not going to solve anything. And though it's less extreme, I also don't understand why atheists want no one to believe in God, including those of us who, frankly, don't give a flying f*** if you believe in God or not.
Meh.
I was leaving a night class at Diablo Valley College and was walking to my car, up the hill towards the science building when I noticed 5 telescopes set up around the school’s planetarium. Four of them were Newtonian telescopes the other was Schmitt Cassegrain and it looked huge. I struck up a conversation with its owner and he invited me to look through it. He had it turned toward Jupiter. When I looked I saw Jupiter and four of its moons.
Very much as Galileo did so many centuries ago, in fact this star party was in honor of his birthday.
As I drove home, I thought of Galileo’s struggle with the Church and how he’d been forced to deny his own observations on the pain of death. He was forced to denounce the Copernicus model of the solar system known as Heliocentrism.
But I had looked through a telescope myself and I had seen what he’d seen. Galileo was right and Pope Urban VIII was wrong!
All religions practice a denial of reality and to the extent they do, there’s nothing the rest of us can say to them.
I'd like to respond to each of the dozens of comments posted to my plea for conversation between the believer and the atheist in place of argument , however I don't have the time to do so . I was wondering about their similarities or how their respective points of view might be mutually illuminating in looking upon the world of Nature. Admitedly there is significant differences among material atheists and those who espouse a spiritual dimension to human existence. I was careful to clarify the distinction between spirituality and religious doctrine. The latter was dismissed from my attempt to establish common ground. This is why I chose to make reference to d"Espagnat and Comte-Sponville, both of whom posit spirituality - brain, mind, or soul - free from reigious affliation and /or belief as positive contributions to undersatanding hunman existence.
One other point I think important for understanding religion as I see it free from dogmatic pronouncements is its mythical significance, Myth is not unreality - perhaps not material reality, but certaintly expressive of reality which escapes the grasp of mathmatical certainty and rules of rational logic. I suppose this falls within the sphere of poetry, art and drama where the subject extends beyond the mental frame of comprehension. I hope this helps clarify what I was attempting to express.
John Giuliani
Even the people who call themselves Christians think he's a little off for his beliefs. And they can't see how the rest of us lump them and him together.
Several millennia of relatively uncontested belief in fairy tales is finally under very close scrutiny. I don't blame the likes of Godisfemale for holding his or her beliefs because his or her grandfather and ancestors going back perhaps ten thousand years have had the upper hand in propagandizing such ideology--and those beliefs have more than not been reinforced with a sword or other power-wielding device.
But keep to your illusions. All I would ask is that you dutifully pay the taxes on the property of your church; that you do not demand that your Commandments be place in public buildings; that you do not invade a secular school board and rewrite history to benefit your make believe world . . . that you finally come to the realization that you, too, are an atheist when it comes to all other gods and beliefs not your own.
Say a prayer for me that I end up in the same heaven or hell with Geoge Bush and Dick Cheney.
We have a lot to discuss . . .
We have a lot to discuss "
Would you accept my offer of a prayer that you end up in the very same HEAVEN with them instead, hyjanks? With very little to discuss except, perhaps, of how mistaken we all were about our fear and hatred of each other, given our new experience of the completely safe and eternal nature of every single quanta in all the universe of universes that constitute God's infinite creation.
I had that conversation, I think, some 58 years ago with my mother. She insisted that Santa Claus existed. I looked unconvinced, I'm sure. Then she insisted that that quarter I found under the pillow was left by a fairy in exchange for my tooth.
And then time past and I found my mother not telling me these stories anymore, relying, instead on my inquisitive nature to discover things for myself.
Eventually, maybe a year after our "conversation", she stopped insisting that fantasmagorical things actually existed.
And the, as an adult, I studied religion to get an idea of the mind set of the religious set. Unfortunately for them yet fortunately for me, the first book I picked up was one on comparative religion where I discovered thousands of gods--each one with devotees who insisted that theres was the one and only. Since my logical mind determine rather easily that not every god can be the top critter of the Universe, I decided, then, that none of them are real.
I haven't looked back since, but am open to the day that Jesus comes down to swoop the True Beliver up to heaven--and finally leaving the rest of us alone.
I never "quested" for god because I determined very early on in my life that I didn't need a crutch; that I felt most comfortable taking responsibility for my actions.
So, tell us god, what exactly is your religious philosophy and how did you come to believe in your fanta . . . excuse me, beliefs.
Why did you feel the need to quest for a god?
we will stop arguing for all the good things
religion has done.
We will stop saying
that without religion
we can't be moral.
We will stop fussing
about whose beautiful view of the afterlife
is the most enticing.
It will be when we grow up
that we'll say it doesn't matter
if we have to say good-bye
to the "rich texture" of life
religion blesses us with;
because no matter
how wonderful it is
it just isn't true.
When your a grown up, that matters.