Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Richard Dawkins is an atheist. Hardcore atheist.

roachboy · 02-11-2007, 01:14 PM

huh...interesting thread. lots of category blurring tho. so much that it is hard to (a) figure out where and how to start playing here and more (b) how to balance this against my desire to go for a bikeride.

1. i am not sure about the category atheist sometimes. there seems to be several types of atheists, and dawkins is a good example of one of them: the type that seems to operate via an inverted version of the rationality that he is trying to oppose.

while i imagine that dawkins sees in this a way to have a political fight that he thinks worth having, for myself i dont find it terribly interesting.

for example, i dont see where dawkins is in a position to claim that IN GENERAL religion is less rational than "science" IN GENERAL--first because neither category designates a single entity (like filtherton said above--to spin it a different way---within christianity, say, a cathlic theologian and a fundamentalist protestant do not share the same kind of approach to questions of religious belief, just as someone working within biological science out of a complex dynamic systems model is not operating with the same data, conceptual or argumentative frame as someone who works in mechanics--or even within biology on the basis of more traditional ways of modelling biological systems)--second: if you grant that the nouns dawkins is using refer to something, both are at one level or another built around deductive relations to the world....so at the level of logical procedures, someone working from either position could generate proofs that are equally correct. so a debate between the two positions is not really about which is more rational than the other, since rational can simply mean the ability to generate results within a given framework that do not violate the rules that make that frame operate. "true" results are those which follow from the data and rules for derivation without violation of those rules. a conflict between the two would really be about premises or axioms--which cannot be proven from within proofs that they shape in any event.

so the problem dawkins is getting at is not about one view being rational and the other not being rational--it is a conflict over axioms.

if that is accurate, then it seems stupid to cast it as if there was a conflict over who gets to call themselves more rational.

it looks to me like the debate between will and filtherton above is repeats this question of conflict over axioms: both can assimilate the same kind of information into their respective positions without internal contradiction. so both are generating arguments that are true from within their respective frames. the problem with it is--again, like with dawkins--that the real argument is not about the applications of their respective frames, but about the axioms that shape them.

2. what i have never understood from within christianity at least is how it is that folk who believe manage on the one hand to maintain that god would be infinite while human understanding is finite while at the same time maintaining that they can know anything about this god--which they dont and, according to their own theology, cant--what they know about is what they imagine the word "god" refers to.

these relations are fundamentally different from each other.

in this, contemporary protestant--particularly of the fundy variety--is about the least sophisticated, least interesting imaginable variant of christianity. the logic of even this finite understanding/infinite god thing would seem to me to lead you to a state of unknowing--to negative theology or nominalism. according to the axiom that structures this religious game, you cannot KNOW.

the problem with this is that it wont function if you create a church and want that church to perform social regulation functions.
so the problem, really, seems to be that there are churches which perform social regulation functions, because it is in the creation of churches as institutions which exercize social control that the trade-off between conceptions of this god character happen.

so, christian types, let's be internally consistent and disband all churches.

another way: nietzsche is right about this issue....you know, in the "god is dead--and you have killed him" thing.

time for a bike ride.

02-11-2007, 01:14 PM	#70 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	huh...interesting thread. lots of category blurring tho. so much that it is hard to (a) figure out where and how to start playing here and more (b) how to balance this against my desire to go for a bikeride. 1. i am not sure about the category atheist sometimes. there seems to be several types of atheists, and dawkins is a good example of one of them: the type that seems to operate via an inverted version of the rationality that he is trying to oppose. while i imagine that dawkins sees in this a way to have a political fight that he thinks worth having, for myself i dont find it terribly interesting. for example, i dont see where dawkins is in a position to claim that IN GENERAL religion is less rational than "science" IN GENERAL--first because neither category designates a single entity (like filtherton said above--to spin it a different way---within christianity, say, a cathlic theologian and a fundamentalist protestant do not share the same kind of approach to questions of religious belief, just as someone working within biological science out of a complex dynamic systems model is not operating with the same data, conceptual or argumentative frame as someone who works in mechanics--or even within biology on the basis of more traditional ways of modelling biological systems)--second: if you grant that the nouns dawkins is using refer to something, both are at one level or another built around deductive relations to the world....so at the level of logical procedures, someone working from either position could generate proofs that are equally correct. so a debate between the two positions is not really about which is more rational than the other, since rational can simply mean the ability to generate results within a given framework that do not violate the rules that make that frame operate. "true" results are those which follow from the data and rules for derivation without violation of those rules. a conflict between the two would really be about premises or axioms--which cannot be proven from within proofs that they shape in any event. so the problem dawkins is getting at is not about one view being rational and the other not being rational--it is a conflict over axioms. if that is accurate, then it seems stupid to cast it as if there was a conflict over who gets to call themselves more rational. it looks to me like the debate between will and filtherton above is repeats this question of conflict over axioms: both can assimilate the same kind of information into their respective positions without internal contradiction. so both are generating arguments that are true from within their respective frames. the problem with it is--again, like with dawkins--that the real argument is not about the applications of their respective frames, but about the axioms that shape them. 2. what i have never understood from within christianity at least is how it is that folk who believe manage on the one hand to maintain that god would be infinite while human understanding is finite while at the same time maintaining that they can know anything about this god--which they dont and, according to their own theology, cant--what they know about is what they imagine the word "god" refers to. these relations are fundamentally different from each other. in this, contemporary protestant--particularly of the fundy variety--is about the least sophisticated, least interesting imaginable variant of christianity. the logic of even this finite understanding/infinite god thing would seem to me to lead you to a state of unknowing--to negative theology or nominalism. according to the axiom that structures this religious game, you cannot KNOW. the problem with this is that it wont function if you create a church and want that church to perform social regulation functions. so the problem, really, seems to be that there are churches which perform social regulation functions, because it is in the creation of churches as institutions which exercize social control that the trade-off between conceptions of this god character happen. so, christian types, let's be internally consistent and disband all churches. another way: nietzsche is right about this issue....you know, in the "god is dead--and you have killed him" thing. time for a bike ride. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 02-11-2007 at 01:18 PM..