edenfalling: golden flaming chalice in a double circle (gold chalice)
[personal profile] edenfalling
We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.
---Richard Dawkins



I resent some man who doesn't know me from Adam coming down from on high and telling me what my religious beliefs are, as if he knows them better than I do!

I am not atheistic about any god. I am agnostic about all of them. In fact, I have been known to swear thusly: "By all the gods that anyone ever held holy..." which tells you something about my attitude toward all views of the divine.

This is not to say that I believe in such gods in the way Dawkins means (and may I say he has a horrifically reductive view of religion? he's as bad as fundamentalists, just in the other direction!), but I am open to the possibility that they might exist -- it is, after all, impossible to prove a negative -- and I do believe that they were real to their adherents, in the same way that I believe all currently worshipped deities are real to their adherents.

(We can debate subjective vs. objective reality some other day.)

Anyway, I do try to respect everyone's religion or lack thereof, but holy fuck, sometimes people get my back up!

*spits in Dawkins's general direction*

(no subject)

Date: 2009-10-30 05:12 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vehrec.livejournal.com
What wrong with reduction? Biology is just applied chemistry and chemistry is just applied physics after all.

(no subject)

Date: 2009-10-30 09:45 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] uminohikari.livejournal.com
I don't understand? I'm referring to gene selection, memetics and sociobiology.

(no subject)

Date: 2009-10-30 10:21 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vehrec.livejournal.com
Sorry, what I meant was a sort of inquiry as to why you think that reductionist viewpoints are in this case the wrong ones. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with reductionism in my opinion.

(no subject)

Date: 2009-10-30 10:32 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] uminohikari.livejournal.com
Ah. I just think that his viewpoints are overly simplistic? There's nothing wrong with reductionism, but the fact that he simplifies /everything/ kind of bothers me.

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edenfalling: stylized black-and-white line art of a sunset over water (Default)
Elizabeth Culmer

May 2025

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