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Squee, I'd be most interested in hearing your reaction to the Beyond Belief 2006 conference.* Essentially, it is an extended discussion between mostly agnostics and atheists about the intersection between science and religion and the conflict that many feel occurs between the two.

I've often heard you profess your belief in absolutes of one variety or another, usually in the context of a discussion of morals, and I must say that I struggle with this concept almost as much as I do with the concept of a personal god. Likely this is because I think the one necessarily flows from the other, as I am sure you would agree.

Anyhow here is the link to the conference's site. There you can find small snippets of video and writings and google videos of the conference in its entirety. I've found it fascinating so far. In the event you would rather download the videos, you can do as I did and use your favorite torrent client.




*I should say that I'd welcome the reaction of others here as well. Smug comes to mind, for instance, probably because I know he too is catholic and simultaneously versed in science.

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trust god, not scientists.

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quote:

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Originally posted by dogcow
trust god, not scientists.

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Quite probably. Maybe if you ask nicely someone will split it off for you.

-m

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Ok.

I haven't read any of the Sullivan-Harris debates. Sullivan's last book though, The Conservative Soul, addresses the issue of doubt as a fundamental component to both faith and reason, as well as I've seen it addressed since Burke. And that sounds salient, to me. The problem exists when either faith or reason begin to operating without humility or with not enough recognition of their own limitations, or simply without enough healthy skepticism or simple recognition of the humanity inherent in either endeavor (in both the good and bad senses of it). Fundamentalism of any stripe is a dangerous thing, and it's a nice, secure naivety to gloss over that problem in secular reason and see it as somehow an innate failing of religious faith instead. Nice, secure, glossy, but a naivety nonetheless.

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You really ought to avail yourself of their debate. The idea of integrating doubt into faith comes up rather quickly. I'm not really sure how you came to think that practitioners of secular reason view fundamentalism as some sort of innate failing of religion alone. First, fundamentalism *is* a strain of religion. When people in general parlance talk about fundamentalism, they are talking about a type of religious attitude. I do agree that one can be fixedly dogmatic about non-religious beliefs however, and I am guessing that that is what you are referring to. If that's the case, based on what I have read of Harris, he doesn't suffer from that defect. I do, on the other hand, think he really takes Sullivan to task on this notion of "integrating doubt into faith".

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i don't see what limitations reason needs to recognise or where exactly does humility come into play with science. you're trying to invent an equal playing field there, paint, and there just isn't one. feel free to elaborate though.

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Well, to take a quick example of a secular kind of reason that I would say lapsed into fundamentalism, look at Marxism. Look at National Socialism. Look at authoritarian imperialism. Look at slavery (or institutionalized racism generally--look at South Africa until fairly recently). Look at ethnic civil wars (Rwanda comes to mind).

Fundamentalism simply means a total, all-encompassing belief absent doubt (indeed, often a system of beliefs designed to circularly freeze out any place for doubt and to systemically punish, in a variety of ways, those that would question the legitimacy of the system itself). There is nothing about the concept that chains it to religion, though that's not denying that religion is certainly a well known spawn of it. I'm not pitting religion versus science in the hackneyed sense of it, but it seems to me the danger of religious fundamentalism is not the religious part, but the fundamentalist part. And my point is there isn't anything intrinsic to fundamentalism that parses it off nicely with religion and religion alone. Some of the most shitty things done to other human beings in the history of the world have been done in the name of purely secular strains of fundamentalism--that's certainly been the case in recent human history (19th century on, say). I have no dog in the fight but to make that point, which is often lost as we corral religion and fundamentalism into the same stable and feel smug and secure that we're beyond one's reach because of the lack of the other.

I could go even further and say that non-religious fundamentalism tends to almost be a little more pernicious. If I knew that mankind was going to asplode itself in the future, and I had to put my money on how, fundamentalism would be a prime suspect, and probably not of the religious kind.

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someone would have posted this picture in this thread sooner or later. might as well be me

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what the hell do secular governments have to do with science? this isn't a 'body count between secular and religious dictators thread', paint.

also, 'secular kind of reason lapsed into fundamentalism' is hilarious.

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quote:

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also, 'secular kind of reason lapsed into fundamentalism' is hilarious.

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The must be a god. Bush keeps saying there's one.

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where did fundamentalism jump into this thread anyway?

i think what tesselated wanted to talk about is why there is such a discord between science and faith. where is this coming from? because, honestly, i don't see why any reasonable (sorry) person should have a problem combining the two.

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I don't think that science and religion have anything to do with each other, or at least, they shouldn't. Mostly the people breaking this rule are doing it from the religious direction, but there are people like Dawkins who appear as evangelical atheists and I don't understand what they think they are about.

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they shouldn't but they've always been contrasted against each other. i suppose it's that holly books, when taken literally, don't mix so well with science.

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Salman Rushdie was interviewed (video link, pops) by Bill Moyers last year on his series On Faith & Reason. It's an exceptional conversation. Equally exceptional is Moyers' interview with a guy I've never heard of, Colin McGinn. He's a clear headed guy. Both interviews are worth watching. The others interviewed were a little boring and sometimes nullified themselves with contradictions and digressions, but that shouldn't stop you from checking out Margaret Atwood.

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the rushdie interview is excellent.

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I definitely will have to check out the Rushdie interview. Thanks memdink.

Smug, I'm not sure you and I differ on this matter much, but I do think I would have agreed with you more strongly several months ago. It does seem to me that one of the central points Dawkins et al are making is that religious beliefs (or more generally beliefs without evidence) can have a corrosive effect on education and politics, both of which have enormous impact on the well-being of entire populations. That being the case, he wants to see the grip of religion lessened and replaced by a more rational world view.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Paint CHiPs
Fundamentalism simply means...

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quote:

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Originally posted by dogcow
where did fundamentalism jump into this thread anyway?

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quote:

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Originally posted by tessellated

Smug, I'm not sure you and I differ on this matter much, but I do think I would have agreed with you more strongly several months ago. It does seem to me that one of the central points Dawkins et al are making is that religious beliefs (or more generally beliefs without evidence) can have a corrosive effect on education and politics, both of which have enormous impact on the well-being of entire populations. That being the case, he wants to see the grip of religion lessened and replaced by a more rational world view.

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I certainly understand your reservations about the soundness of his motivations and, perhaps, his tone. There is a certain zeal about Dawkins that worries me even though I generally am in agreement with him. I mean, I consider myself an agnostic, but mainly I self-identify as agnostic and not atheistist because I feel I must out of logical necessity: I can't prove the non-existence of god etc. I hear what you are saying about religious moderates and I am in agreement. I don't think the average churh-goer is out to destroy science. Let me hasten to add, however, that I have noticed an astonishing ignorance of science amongst the faithful even when they are well-educated otherwise.

I must say though that I think the positive arguments for religion such as it provides comfort and moral guidance have been lessened in my eyes. I don't believe that religion is strictly necessary to furnish these things and so why have it all then if it carries the risk of harming a society?

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