Richard Dawkins - Part II
I've just listened to the Infidel Guy podcast featuring Richard Dawkins. It was generally more of the same sort of stuff about evolution and intelligent design and all the usual stuff that Richard Dawkins says.
But then there was one astounding bit that I must comment on.
A caller to the Infidel Guy show asked (amongst other things) if it would be possible (in the future) for us to be so scientifically advanced that we might create a god...
Here is Richard Dawkins's response to that question: download mp3 file (700k file, 2 minutes audio).
In essence, he says that he can conceive of a being so far advanced of ourselves that our only response on meeting this being would be to fall down and worship it.
He qualifies this by saying that this is not 'God' in the biblical sense as this being would be natural, not supernatural, and this being would be the end result of some form of evolutionary process.
My take on this is that he therefore discounts the biblical God simply because someone had labeled God as 'supernatural'. I've commented on this issue before - the word supernatural is just a label and is relatively meaningless. If we define 'natural' as being 'all that is' then there is no supernatural, by definition. In that context God is 'natural'.
I have more thoughts to add on this matter, but no time to write them now... more to follow.
1 Comments:
I just happened to hit upon this site.
I read an ariticle in one of the Indian newspapers which was a reproduction of an article attacking Dawkins in Gaurdian. It was by some one called Madeline Bunting, who ever it was!
I wrote back my comments to the editorwhich of course was not published. Maybe my English was too bad.
I reproduce it as you seem to have doubts and of course lots of interest in lot many things - Maybe just like me!
It seems Madeline Bunting had made a least synonymous reference for what that maybe called as shrill, loud etc. The writings and expositions of Richard Dawkins are certainly not in that category and its no less an irony that Madeline Bunting uses statements as such which otherwise should have been directed towards those who simply thrive by making a buck on people’s credulity.
Imagine an Isaac Newton or a Galileo being castigated by Flat Earth society members (I am not sure if such a society exists, but going by the state of matters, there might be some) for trying to suggest that heavenly bodies such as our earth work based on certain decipherable laws and that which can be proved by mathematical equations, observations and experimentations. Naturally Newton’s assertions or rather the facts will sound shrill when compared to the ranting of the society member who might believe its all held by Tortoises all the way down or something like that depending on which denomination he or she belongs to.
Such blabber is certainly not a fact whereas talking about Gravity by a professor of Physics and asserting that any other explanation shall not be accepted till it undergoes the rigors of experimentations is certainly not a shrill sweeping generalization made out of anecdotal evidence.
Saying that one cannot see or feel an Angel flying opposite his or her house is not an unsubstantiated assertion. On the contrary its so if one says he or she has seen or felt it. That’s exactly what Dawkins had been saying so far and I guess this documentary should just be an extension of that.
The point of Richard Dawkins had always been that if the basic premise of all the religions and beliefs are such, which it undoubtedly is and varying only in the degree of fantasy, the system built over it and that which engulfs whole populations down to the level of the most personal activities, would definitely turn out to be an inadvertently harming entity. History has shown this to be true.
Yet, as Daniel Dennet says, I am not sure if the bad effects of religion out weigh the good effects! I am still unable to come to a conclusion.
Hence I am unable to state forthwith that this alone can be root of all evil but it might be that its one of the plausible causes and hence a prime candidate.
D.Rajesh
Post a Comment
<< Home