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Originally Posted by willravel
Jeez, calm down. Because we live in a world with more than one person, society was developed naturally in order to deal with intrapersonal and intratribal relations. When I stop to help someone who's car needs a jump, I don't do so because god teaches us to be good samaritans, I do so because it helps the tribe. Ethics existed long before consciousness.
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I am calm.
How do you know it would help the tribe? What if the person's car broke down while they were on their way to kill somebody? There are many situations where doing the obvious thing to help someone out could turn out to be the wrong thing to do as far as the tribe is concerned.
How you can make that claim about the existence of ethics without using any sort of faith?
And as far as consciousness goes, intuition is all we have; scientists can't even define what consciousness is.
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Science is about how the world becomes more rational the more we understand. It becomes less rational, as Dawkins would say, when we allow irrationality to win over progress. I don't have anything against theists, but I do recognize that belief in the supernatural and the unwillingness to queestion the existence of a figure that is supported by no proof represents why humankind isn't evolving as fast as we should be. It's like we have the car in second fear, but the emergency brake is in. We might be going forward, but it's slow and it smells funny.
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The enemy of progress isn't theism, it's intellectual laziness. Science and theism can co-exist; all it requires is an open mind. Like i said, i know of theists who allow their faith to change in light of scientific discovery. The idea that theists are holding us back completely ignores the facts that descartes(father of modern mathematics), leibniz(co-inventor of calculus) and newton(father of modern mechanics) were all super religious.
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Originally Posted by KnifeMissile
I'm not sure if you realize this but your sentence here, literally, implies that atheists have a reason to live. I suspect that's not what you wanted to say...
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You suspect wrong.
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I doubt that Dawkins idealizes Vulcans. As a side point, Vulcans aren't particularly logical, mostly because their actions are written by writers who are not, themselves, very logical or are forced into literary corners by modern plot standards.
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Pretend that i meant the idealized notion of the vulcan.
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I don't think Dawkins' point is simply that religion is irrational. That view is rather myopic of you! For instance, Halloween isn't very rational yet he doesn't speak out against that! There are many things in life that we do that aren't particularly "rational" and I'm certain he doesn't condemn them. Therefore, this can't be his point.
I think Dawkins' point is that religion is irrational and so we shouldn't use it to prescribe a way of life...
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By all means, show me a perfectly rational way to prescribe a way of life.
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I used to think of religion as a "harmless white lie." I understand that life is hard so if some fairy tale makes you feel better about it then more power to you! However, when you take that fairy tale and use it to enact policy to dictate how I may live then, suddenly and reasonably, I'm going to object to your policies and the fairy tales from which they were born! That's the part that angers me and I suspect that's what angers Dawkins. That's what makes your "harmless white lie" into a detrimental delusion.
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Well, i think the not so harmless white lie that you and dawkins seem to want to peddle is the idea that all theists want control how you live.
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You are not alone in this regard. If I had to guess from casual observation, I'd say that most people need religion. Personally, I think it's a sad statement on life if a fairy tale is the only thing that can make you happy or give you "meaning."
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I'm not religious in much of any sense. I just find a blind commitment to rationality to be a bit irrational.