You seem to be a bit inclined towards attempting to align your beliefs with those of the most intelligent person you can find
Heh. I don't think that I've entirely aligned my views to those of Dawkins. The God Delusion contains flaws, some of which I mentioned in my review, others of which have been pointed out by other reviewers (while I don't think Terry Eagleton's "not my God" defence can be valid, he's probably right to say that Dawkins is sometimes politically naive). The book is undoubtedly polemical pontification, but I think his main points hold.
Lipton is an excellent writer, but at the end of it all I'm not sure what he has achieved other than a gutting of his religion (although he says that if you're someone who cannot see the point of theism without God, his solution is not for you).
I also don't think his example about different ways of looking at liquids can apply to science and religion as differing theories, since in such cases you can show that one view is equivalent to another in the case you're considering, and to choose one over the other is then a matter of convenience of expression and calculation (at least, one comes across this sort of thing all the time in physics, I don't know about other sciences). I don't think anyone is claiming that of science and religion (it may be that Lipton does not intend to use this as a strict analogy, either, but rather as an example of what immersion means in constructive empiricism).
I think the Brights thing is silly, mainly because it lacks depth. Like their opponents who go on about how Stalin was an atheist, the Brights have the problem of trying to hold together a group of people whose only thing in common is something they don't believe. I suppose Humanism is where its at if you want a community as an atheist (or possibly Buddhism, of course :-)
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2006-11-01 09:21 pm (UTC)Heh. I don't think that I've entirely aligned my views to those of Dawkins. The God Delusion contains flaws, some of which I mentioned in my review, others of which have been pointed out by other reviewers (while I don't think Terry Eagleton's "not my God" defence can be valid, he's probably right to say that Dawkins is sometimes politically naive). The book is undoubtedly polemical pontification, but I think his main points hold.
Lipton is an excellent writer, but at the end of it all I'm not sure what he has achieved other than a gutting of his religion (although he says that if you're someone who cannot see the point of theism without God, his solution is not for you).
I also don't think his example about different ways of looking at liquids can apply to science and religion as differing theories, since in such cases you can show that one view is equivalent to another in the case you're considering, and to choose one over the other is then a matter of convenience of expression and calculation (at least, one comes across this sort of thing all the time in physics, I don't know about other sciences). I don't think anyone is claiming that of science and religion (it may be that Lipton does not intend to use this as a strict analogy, either, but rather as an example of what immersion means in constructive empiricism).
I think the Brights thing is silly, mainly because it lacks depth. Like their opponents who go on about how Stalin was an atheist, the Brights have the problem of trying to hold together a group of people whose only thing in common is something they don't believe. I suppose Humanism is where its at if you want a community as an atheist (or possibly Buddhism, of course :-)