Richard Dawkins - Anti -Christ or Great Thinker?

To me they seem to chronicle quasi-historical-mythical events more than anything else. Ok, some ideas, but they are mostly very basic lessons on how to not be an asshole. Crime and Punishment grapples with moral issues in a far more interesting and revealing way than The Bible.

― thirdalternative, Thursday, May 12, 2011 8:22 AM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark

if you can't see how myths and social guidelines transmit ideas, i don't know what to say. the bible is massively dense with ideas, is a compendium of wildly different social and religious philosophies. it would take ages to fully understand and absorb.

like seriously though the old testament is a bunch of eyebleedingly epic high-stakes stories about family and lust and power and calls to duty and doubts and betrayals

maybe you meant the new testament except that's a book about a guy leading a rebellion in one of the strange outer provinces of a doomed empire who is betrayed by one of his closest friends

the odyssey has to artificially get the boats lost again twice just to string things out

And you gotta admit The Odyssey blows the Bible away on that level. Odyssey actually has a narrative!

― thirdalternative, Thursday, May 12, 2011 8:25 AM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark

the bible has many narratives, all shorter than the odyssey, but that makes no difference. literary , philosophical, historical and theological value aren't determined by page count. this isn't a contest.

i was about to say there's more pussy in the odyssey but that's not even true is it.

That is as much a cop out as "Well, the Lord works in mysterious ways." (And it's an insult to Whitman.)

whatever dude. read the Cusa reference/link I posted above, explains it more succinctly (and in science/math terms with PROOFS and everything!) way better than I can

xp

i was about to say there's more pussy in the odyssey but that's not even true is it.

bible is loaded with pussy

Ok, some ideas, but they are mostly very basic lessons on how to not be an asshole.

You do realize that the Bible is a collection of texts much more varied and complex than just the Ten Commandments section, right? Like, I don't want to sound condescending but get ye to a little Ecclesiastes, Job, Ruth, Exodus, Song of Songs, Lamentations, Hosea...

Not that I don't think that believers aren't close-minded. I think human beings in general are pretty close-minded whether of faith or not.

^^^OTM (also thx for the elucidation of the history of the Hassidim, I knew I could count on you to pop up with the scholarly wisdom)

also I would just like to say that the Book of Job is very strange, definitely interesting reading

from that link I posted above:

The paradox of the One and the Many is not only found in ancient traditions. It is the foundation of modern mathematics. All of modern mathematics is based on set theory, which was initially created by Georg Cantor in the late 19th century. At the very basis of his set theory is the intuition of set, which Cantor defined as follows: a set is a many which allows itself to be thought of as a one. Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) soon discovered in this coincidence of the One and the Many an inherent paradox, now called the Russell paradox. (Consider the set of all sets that are not members of themselves. Is this set a member of itself? If it is, then it isn’t. If it isn’t, then it is.) Although Russell tried to eliminate these paradoxes in set theory, Cantor viewed these paradoxes as Cusa might have seen them: Whereas some collections of many things can be consistently thought of as a one, others are so infinitely large that they cannot be consistently thought of as a one. Cantor called these collections inconsistent collections, and regarded them as absolutely infinite. Here we are reminded of Cusa’s teaching that the infinite involves coincident contradictories. It is at this point that the consistent mathematics of the infinite ends and the contradictory metaphysics of the absolute infinite begins. As Cantor said,

The Absolute can only be acknowledged and admitted, never known, not even approximately (quoted in Hallett, 1984).

The Infinite remains at the border comprehensibility, inviting us with its paradoxes to transcend the apparent division between finite and Infinite. As Nicholas of Cusa closes his treatise on learned ignorance,

These profound matters should be the subject of all the effort of our human intelligence, so that it may raise itself to that simplicity where contradictories coincide (Cusa, 1997).

In the 20th century, Hilbert, Russell and other mathematicians attempted to eliminate the paradoxes of set theory, so that mathematics would have a consistent and completely rational foundation. This program, however, was shown to be impossible by Kurt Gödel. Mathematics can never be completely reduced to an explicit set of axioms and logical rules. Any such attempt to fix mathematics in this way will always leave an inexplicable remainder. The mathematical system will leave out certain truths, it will be incomplete. Like Cusa’s polygons, it must either fall short of the completeness of the circle, or embrace the paradoxes of the infinite.

It is remarkable that Gödel’s proof of the incompleteness of any axiomatic system is based on a modern application of the ancient identity between numbers and letters. In Gödel’s proof, each letter or symbol used in a mathematical statement (e.g., a, b, c, =, +, -) corresponds to a unique number (e.g., 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). These numbers can then be used to assign a unique number to each mathematical statement. For example, the symbols in “a+b=c” correspond to the sequence {1, 5, 2, 4, 3}. The first five prime numbers are then raised to these exponents and multiplied together to yield the unique number: 21 35 52 74 113=38,828,131,650. This number is unique because every number has a unique prime factorization. Moreover, this correspondence between statements about numbers and numbers themselves also relates logical relationships between mathematical statements to arithmetical relationships between numbers. A true mathematical proposition in the system thus corresponds to a true arithmetical relationship of numbers. This correspondence between levels of language allowed Gödel to construct a self-referential statement G=“this statement is not provable within the system”. Now consider whether or not G is true. Suppose that G is false. Then, since false statements are not provable by a logically consistent system, G is not provable by the system. So, if G is false, then G is not provable by the system. But G says that G is not provable by the system; so if G is false, then G is in fact true. This contradiction means that G cannot be false, as supposed. So G must be true, i.e., it is true that the statement G is not provable by the system, just as G says. Thus, G is true, but the system cannot prove it. In other words, if the system is consistent, then it is incomplete. Conversely, if the system is complete, then it must be inconsistent. The conclusion is that the mathematical system is either inconsistent or incomplete. In other words, axiomatic mathematical systems must either surrender the absolute distinction between true and false, or must surrender their claims to being totalizing accounts of truth.

the Odysseus Bible comparison is a bad one anyway for another bigger reason -- they're totally different kinds of texts. Odysseus emerged from a particular author in a particular place and time. Both the OT + NT had numerous writers, redactors, etc over a long period of time.

the bibliography of that article is a treasure trove, by the way. I'm a big fan of Spencer-Brown.

that bit I posted is maybe too long, I mostly just wanted to point out that set theory stuff and the associated inherent contradictions involved when discussing something that is "infinite"

lets all assign numerical scores to the bible and the odyssey and see which one comes out on top

the bible (king james trans.) - 8.8
the odyssey (fagles trans.) - 8.4

a game of thrones - 9.1

the koran - 5.5 (review by richard dawkins)

Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health - 9.2 (best new religion)

jps translation >> king james translation

have the jps translated the new testament

no

4.5

whole thing is here: http://www.mechon-mamre.org/e/et/et0.htm

Stephen Hawking is also an asshole:

Stephen Hawking: ‘There is no heaven’

http://wapo.st/jH1KLO

At least he's stating the facts without attacking anyone specifically.

Calls it a "fairy tale," quite insulting, so closed-minded

Hawking is kind of an asshole but not because of that particular interview, which seems pretty harmless to me

(also not the greatest physicist and his writing is terrible imho)

his .... handwriting?

cos that's a harsh criticism imo

lol

(also lol at "not the greatest physicist")

when you look at the leaps and bounds made by physicists in the first half of the 20th century, the "fiddling about the margins" schtick of those from the latter half of the century looks fairly pathetic. (loads of physicists are aware of this too, of course, cf Lee Smolin etc)

but yes lol

um

ok

Brian Cox is better looking.

caek up and atom

tempted to go to the mat here, but this has been such a great thread i am loathe to ruin it with pedantry and chit chat

caek up and atom

lol

"Science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing. It is a matter of chance which we are in,"

Certainly nothing Godlike about the universe being spontaneously created out of nothing.

eh he just means that agency isn't required

what's so insulting about heaven = fairy tale? thinly disguised morality tales told with vivid imagery = great. if you don't believe in the literal reality of a story and wanted to insult it, I'd go for "god's fan fiction"

bit of a stretch calling Hawking closed minded on such small evidence (that article). consider his career of imagining the previously unimaginable and try it again. greatest physicist -- i don't know he's probably slipped down the top 50 these days - not like his record breaking sting at #1 in the 80s any more is it.

the problem with that statement is the "Science predicts" part...the idea of a depersonalized voice from nowhere that can make authoritative statements about the nature of capital R Reality. Science may very well "predict" something else in the future, all the evidence isnt in yet.

i will grant that hawking is a bad writer, but "not the greatest physicist"? well, maybe compared to newton, but hawking is one of the greatest living, which seems like it should count for something. also he's worked in an unusually technical and difficult theoretical period, which is not necessarily his fault. most theorists working in the 19th century left very little legacy for similar reasons, but we don't say faraday or kelvin or whoever were "not the greatest".

there, i said it.

his non-science pronouncements have always been horseshit, of course.

hawking is a thief!!

how many kids does the guy have? surely this must count in our final analysis

he stole or plagiarized some kind of theories from the dad of a high school friend of mine, i think? anyway, hes a thief, burn him

i will grant that hawking is a bad writer, but "not the greatest physicist"? well, maybe compared to newton, but hawking is one of the greatest living, which seems like it should count for something. also he's worked in an unusually technical and difficult theoretical period, which is not necessarily his fault. most theorists working in the 19th century left very little legacy for similar reasons, but we don't say faraday or kelvin or whoever were "not the greatest".

yeah I can get with all that, particularly the "unusually technical and difficult theoretical period" caveat.

I do think he tends to get overestimated in the public eye because of his backstory, which doesn't really have much bearing on his work (most of which is totally beyond the comprehension of the general public anyway). Brief History of Time is a terrible book tho fyi.

yi is correct.

the problem with that statement is the "Science predicts" part

First let me know when Science can predict if it's going to rain this afternoon.