Leolaia, Thomas said it pretty well. I would bring it closer though and say: I look out your eyes as the wood is split. I feel the the effort and ache as the stone is lifted. I am, and there is no other.
j
Further incite on Dawkin's The God Delusion
by Abandoned 104 Replies latest jw friends
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some-xjw-guy
Closer to the person? What about being the wood that is split, and the stone that is lifted?
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Leolaia
some-xjw-guy.... The proto-gnosticism of early Christianity was influenced in varying degrees by the emanationism of Plato (cf. the Logos of Philo of Alexandria), but I would not describe it as emanationist in the same sense that later mid-second century AD Sethian/Valentinian/etc. gnosticism and Platonizing apologists were, as these drew more on the specific language and conceptual framework of Platonic emanationism.... Although Thomas anticipates many of the views of more mature gnosticism (and Manicheanism), it stands closer to the proto-gnostic views of some parts of the NT....
More on enanationist philosophy of creation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emanationism
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JamesThomas
Closer to the person? What about being the wood that is split, and the stone that is lifted?
I am, and there is no other.
Your answer is here, you just are not seeing it. j
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Abandoned
I really, really hope that doesn't offend you becaue I want the best for you.
No offense perceived or taken.
I think you may have missed a small link in there that would temper your feelings towards what Dawkins is saying. When he speaks of probabilities, you are infering that he is speaking in absolutes. He doesn't claim to be absolute even in his own atheism. If you will remember back, he mentions that he is one step removed from being comletely atheist on his seven point scale, but is leaning towards that last step. In otherwords, he finds the probability of a god existing to be insignificant - but, there still is the possibiliy. It is just a very small one that pales into insignificance. He does the same with evolution in this book. He treats it as the most likely probability , not a done deal as you mentioned (I feel you are not reading this part of the book without bias).
You may very well be right here. Let me show an example from his book for why I say this. It's from Chapter four, page 120 and ironically refers to the wt creation book.
Turn another Watchtower page for an eloquent account of the giant redwood (Sequoiadendron giganteum), a tree for which I have a special affection because I have one in my garden -- a mere baby, scarecely more than a century old, but still the tallest tree in my neighborhood. 'A puny man, standing at a sequoia's base, can only gaze upward in silent awe at its massive grandeur. Does it make sense to believe that the shaping of the this majestic giant and of the tiny seed that packages it was not by design?' Yet again, if you think the only alternative to design is chance then, no, it does not make sense. But again the authors omit all mention of the real alternative, natural selection, either because they genuinely don't understand it or because they don't want to.
This is just one reference and it's possible that I'm reading it wrong, but it appears to me, as it appeared to me as I read this whole chapter, that he has already concluded that natural selection is a fact. I don't see where that's any different then a religionist starting with the premise that god definitely exists. I'm not fighting against natural selection and evolution, but I can't believe something just because someone else says it's true. To me, by calling it the REAL alternative as opposed to the MOST LIKELY one, he is jumping to conclusions equal to those he is debunking. Now I feel a greater affinity towards Dawkins then toward religionists but I can't overlook this in a book that debunks other people's opinions because the treat their opinions as proven facts. It's hypocritical or at least irresponsible.
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tetrapod.sapien
ya, i see what you mean. but he is really saying it is the real alternative because that is what probability would have it as. the theory of evolution is one of the most well supported theories in the history of science.
and of course, the cool thing about science, is that you can go and actually read the peer reviewed papers yourself. with the god explanation, we would never be able to do that. but with science, you could say, okay, today i want to learn about this, and you need only look up the peer reviewed papers. you could even go to museums and see the artifacts themselves.
peer review is a saftey mechanism. instead of taking one guys word for it, you take a group of peoples word while reviewing what they reviewed. the saftey mechanism is that they all get points for being wrong, or for finding something wrong with a paper they are reviewing.
tetra
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Leolaia
leo, yes, the gospel of thomas has cured many fears in me. and i see a very liberal/modern gnosticism in essentially the same light that i see pantheism. perhaps not the 2nd century gnosticism, with literalized archons and aeons and demiurges. but metaphorized understandings of what they naturally represent. although, that said, i am still unsure to what extent those early "gnostics" literalized those things. perhaps i am off base in assuming that because they came from an earlier time, that they saw it all literally.
I agree that many modern afficianados of the gnostic worldview can be quite dismayed by the elaborate jargon and mythologies and processions and families and genealogies of archons, aeons, demiurges, etc. This is part of the baggage inherited from Judaism and other ANE religions (where Ialdabaoth, Barbelo, Oroiael, Samael, Iao, etc. are vestiges of Jewish angelology, demonology, and traditions pertaining to YHWH), but it also is motivated by Platonic philosophy wherein every virtue, attribute, idea, and form has a divine archetype (compare the slightly different conception in the Shepherd of Hermas, in which each negative emotion or vice is personified as an evil spirit)...and this worldview, when carried out to its logical conclusion, leads to a seemingly absurd plethora of enamations and personified notions that are related to each other in a pseudo-theogony. Thus we have a potpourri of Judaism meets Greek philosophy meets Greek mythology (cf. Ialdabaoth being relegated to Tartarus in the Reality of the Archons 95:5-10). On whether specific gnostic movements saw their mythologies as "literally" true rather than allegorically true, I would guess that there was a range of belief that encompassed both....certainly Plato regarded his archetypes as more "real" than their material analogues, but what this actually means can be debated...
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frankiespeakin
Abandoned,
Yet again, if you think the only alternative to design is chance then, no, it does not make sense. But again the authors omit all mention of the real alternative, natural selection, either because they genuinely don't understand it or because they don't want to.
The reason why he says "the real alternative, natural selection," is not to be dogmatic as in saying it is the only real alternative, but to show that the WT uses the word "chance" which is inccorect, as well as misleading, so as he argues instead of the word "chance" they they should have used the the words "natural selection", which would have been the real or right alternative. Chance is therefore a strawman.
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Abandoned
The reason why he says "the real alternative, natural selection," is not to be dogmatic as in saying it is the only real alternative, but to show that the WT uses the word "chance" which is inccorect, as well as misleading, so as he argues instead of the word "chance" they they should have used the the words "natural selection", which would have been the real or right alternative. Chance is therefore a strawman.
I see what you're saying here. To me, however, it felt like he was doing the same thing only in the other direction. After being in the jw, I refuse to just ignore things that don't ring true to me. I'm sure I'll still get a lot out of that book, but this was had a huge affect on why I don't feel right calling myself an atheist either. At least not in the sense of whether or not their was a creator at the beginning of everything. I sure don't believe in chance as the solution. The cool part is that I don't have to take everything Dawkins says to read and enjoy his work. I may not be all the way there yet, but I am making progress at escaping the wt's black and white method of thinking.
and of course, the cool thing about science, is that you can go and actually read the peer reviewed papers yourself. with the god explanation, we would never be able to do that. but with science, you could say, okay, today i want to learn about this, and you need only look up the peer reviewed papers. you could even go to museums and see the artifacts themselves.
Yeah, I do like this. I must admit that I haven't studied that much about evolution and natural selection and I'll even admit that the main reason was because of being associated with the jw for so long. I don't think I'm totally ready for that kind of immersion yet, but I do want to get there. I have had nothing but positive results from being willing to look at things from all aspects.
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Madame Quixote
At first, as I started reading the thread, Abandonded, I thought you might be reading a different version of The God Delusion than I am reading; Einstein was definitely an atheist who spoke poetically and metaphorically of "God" in the way that most atheists - myself included - do. It seemed to me that Dawkins has belaboured that point and made it quite clear in The God Delusion. Unfortunately, such poetry as Einstein and other scientist use merely confuses those of us not well-schooled in logic or science, especially in physics and evolution. When leading scientists speakof God, they usually and often mistankenly assume that one understands"God" to be whatever scientific force underlies the physics of the universe, not God as a person or intelligence, but as an underlying "theory of everything" that we are on the verge of explaining and understanding. The point that Dawkins makes in his first two chapters is that scientists have overestimated the ability of lay people to make this distinction. I think he justifiably chides scientists and the educational community for making these mistakes.
For quite some time, I've considered myself an atheist - mostly as an intuitive response to the emotionalism of illogical religiosity, like so-called "intelligent design." I have now begun to immerse myself in scientific writing and research, gaining a better understanding of evolutionary theory, which is accepted as fact among real scientists, in the same way that germ theory is accepted as fact amongst most of the rest of the slightly-educated people on the planet. This is another point that Dawkins makes clear in his writing. I have found that reading a bit of evolutionary theory (from Dawkins' peers) has helped me follow along with the points Dawkins is making in The God Delusion.
Last year, I started out my trek into the known universe, reading Douglas Adams, who was very gifted in his approach. The Salmon Of Doubt was a great intro (to atheistic thought) from a logical, critical, philosophically amusing perspective; so are all the rest of his fiction books. I have yet to obtain a copy of Last Chance To See, the work he was most proud of and which did not obtain the popular success of his other entertainment works.
I started reading these books last night and find them very informative and accessible:
Intelligent Thought: Science Versus The Intelligent Design Movement, ed., John Brockman. Contributors include: Psychologist Steven Pinker, Evolutionary Biologist Richard Dawkins, Philosopher Daniel C. Dennet, Physicist Lisa Randall, Evolutionary Psychologist Marc D. Hauser, and Paleontologist Tim D. White, among others. ( I have read a little of John Brockman and he makes some cogent arguments).
River Out Of Eden: A Darwinian View Of Life (good writing, very informative) by Richard Dawkins.
The Universe In A Nutshell and A Brief History Of Time by Steven Hawking (nice pictures and fabulous writing).
25 Big Ideas: The Science That's Changing Our World by Robert Matthews. (It's a little text-booky, but seems to be a nice overview).
Good luck in your explorations!