Richard Dawkins - Anti -Christ or Great Thinker?

Not saying he definitely isn't a bigot (I don't follow him enough to know), like I said above, his ideas about the Muslim clothing issues seemed really bad to me and there's probably more where that came from. That quote Jim provided is really bad but it doesn't sound like him in his recent interviews/podcasts, especially when he has Muslim guests.

I'm just sceptical of some claims about him because he spends a lot of time clearing up times he's been (sometimes wilfully) misrepresented. This stuff spreads easily and I think he's changed stances on some of this stuff, so that 2010 video might not be as useful anymore. But I still think I'd disagree with him.

I trust that you guys are mostly better at this stuff than me so I'd rather ask sometimes than do the wading myself.

"The truth about Islam is as politically incorrect as it is terrifying: Islam is all fringe and no center. In Islam, we confront a civilization with an arrested history. It is as though a portal in time has opened, and the Christians of the 14th century are pouring into our world."

Do people who think this way know any Muslims at all?

This is the right wing version of larry appleton's ravings about white people in pick up trucks. Just fantastical, straining credulity.

In particular: I am British, went to school with/went to uni with/shared houses with/worked with/have neighbours who are Muslims, that sort of thing there, where people start talking about the 14th century or the gates of Vienna or whatever is just chilling

It's the erasure of real people (real in all the mixture of goodness and badness and reality) and replacing them with images, and the person doing it possibly doesn't even know they're doing it

Haven't you heard, Europe is already lost, the USA is the last hope for the white man.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXPFfgdxp9o

cardamon making some excellent posts here

Even a stopped clock etc

harris' denial of free will is tremendously troubling for me, less New Atheism than New Calvinism

Its a commonplace among neurologists and others who have given the Libet experiment etc serious thought. Whether decisions occur through clockwork determinism or quantum randomness, they're still beyond conscious control. Consciousness is a post-hoc narrator of experience, not a little homonculi inside one's head.

It creates tremendous issues for the conventional basis for laws and "justice", but on the other hand, accepting that free will is a self-delusion also creates tremendous compassion for the underprivileged, the sufferers of addiction, etc. Its not all loss.

I don't really see how absence of free will creates any issues for systems of belief devised in the absence of free will

I was under the impression Harris restricted his anti Islam arguments to issues with the actual theology in the texts. So he is more overtly bigoted these days? I haven't been following along lately.

xp: Criminal justice is premised on the accused having free will. Hence the commonplace and probably congenital desire for punishment. However, if we're all poor sods trapped hundreds (or more) microseconds behind decisions made by our subconscious, then punishment, per se, doesn't have a moral basis. Deterrence, sequestration, and rehabilitation (if possible) may, but punishment doesn't.

Mind, I'm not completely in the no free will=helpless camp. The brain has plenty of feedback loops, and hence its probable our conscious narrator has an influence over an adaptive subconscience. We, riding in the caboose, can call the engine on occasion. This may have minimal effect on moment to moment decisions, but can shape the machinery over time.

For "no free will=helpless" above, read "no conscious control = our neural narrator function is a helpless passenger". Lots of room for misinterpretations in discussions of consciousness and free will.

Its a commonplace among neurologists and others who have given the Libet experiment etc serious thought.

A little misleading? There's plenty of debate in such circles about the implications of Libet et al.

Free will debate always just comes back to twasnt me guv

Twas, yacuncha

Its a commonplace among neurologists and others who have given the Libet experiment etc serious thought. Whether decisions occur through clockwork determinism or quantum randomness, they're still beyond conscious control. Consciousness is a post-hoc narrator of experience, not a little homonculi inside one's head.

It creates tremendous issues for the conventional basis for laws and "justice", but on the other hand, accepting that free will is a self-delusion also creates tremendous compassion for the underprivileged, the sufferers of addiction, etc. Its not all loss.

― Sanpaku

i don't have problems with criticisms of ideologies based around "free will", arguments in favor of which are often completely overblown and occasionally outright delusional (the whole "just world" fallacy can be in some ways seen as an extension of overemphasis on "free will"). obviously humans do not control their environment. it's harris' absolutism, his apparent denial of the human capacity to _shape_ their environment, that seems to me, well, fundamentally unscientific. you know, god is a delusion, free will is a delusion... ultimately it leads one to the conclusion that meaning is a delusion, to a clockwork fatalism that, however cunningly argued or philosophically buttressed, is inimical to lived human experience. i would argue that the best possible means of addressing the free will conundrum is to plead ignorance.

fuck it, let's just listen to some robert wyatt.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9T8H7vAXTA

there was a "free will" poll awhile ago and I was shocked by the number of people who subscribe to it around here. baffling.

Well the concept of a poll "option" was a cruel joke in the circs tbf

I was under the impression Harris restricted his anti Islam arguments to issues with the actual theology in the texts.

"The truth about Islam is as politically incorrect as it is terrifying: Islam is all fringe and no center. In Islam, we confront a civilization with an arrested history. It is as though a portal in time has opened, and the Christians of the 14th century are pouring into our world."

^ in other wrds no, he likes to get into social, cultural, political matters too

it's harris' absolutism, his apparent denial of the human capacity to _shape_ their environment, that seems to me, well, fundamentally unscientific. you know, god is a delusion, free will is a delusion... ultimately it leads one to the conclusion that meaning is a delusion, to a clockwork fatalism that, however cunningly argued or philosophically buttressed, is inimical to lived human experience.

Yeah, and fatalism, of whatever stripe, always has an acute psychic/affective pull which I think he's employing deliberately. As well as getting to be the Revealer of Dark Truths. It's cultish stuff

to a clockwork fatalism that, however cunningly argued or philosophically buttressed, is inimical to lived human experience

You'd be surprised. Abraham Lincoln subscribed to this view, and seems to have nonetheless lived a good life, in the Stoic sense.

Guelzo, 1997. [Abraham Lincoln and the doctrine of necessity](http://cupola.gettysburg.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1031&context=cwfac). Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, 18(1), pp.57-81.

again, with bbcode

Guelzo, 1997. Abraham Lincoln and the doctrine of necessity.

"[Man] is simply a simple tool, a mere cog in the wheel, a part, a small part, of this vast iron machine, that strikes and cuts, grinds and mashes, all things, including man, that resist it."

dang

That Harris quote is from 2006. I don't think he'd say anything as extreme as that these days. But that after over a decade of constant debate on this stuff, several months ago he seemed to suggest (if I'm not mistaken) you shouldn't be able to wear a burqa or cover your face in some way in mcdonalds is really bad.

Determinism is terrifying.

accepting that free will is a self-delusion also creates tremendous compassion for the underprivileged, the sufferers of addiction, etc.

Without free will such acceptance could only occur either randomly or else purely mechanistically. I wouldn't be involved in it, other than by pure happenstance, so that even pointing this out is futile, because it is without value.

lincoln read a lot more ecclesiastes than most people. personally i think ecclesiastes is better comprehended through the richard brautigan approach.

xp Isn't compassion valuable whether or not we deserve credit for it?

accepting that free will is a self-delusion also creates tremendous compassion for the underprivileged, the sufferers of addiction, etc.

In theory

But then if I decide not to be compassionate to these people hey that just has to be accepted to because it's not really a decision on my part, and I'm not accountable

And there's no guarantee that having got 'there is no free will' into their head, that anyone would follow the logic and decide that addicts are not to blame for their situation

xps The question of the value of compassion (or of anything at all) would not be confined to whether we deserved credit for it, but would extend to whether value could have any utility at all. If not, then the very idea of value becomes as much of a delusion as free will.

Also, if there is no free will, it renders meaningless a whole series of questions, such as "why are you hitting yourself? why don't you stop hitting yourself?"

I don't think its psychologically tenable to believe you have no control over anything

define "you"

I don't find determinism terrifying, I just accept it. it has no bearing on the decisions I make or how I behave tbh, I just consider it a fact. Considering my conscious identity as somehow separate or outside of the processes that govern the universe seems bizarre to me.

When I heard about the Libet thing I was pretty stoked because it basically was reinforcement of my long-held stoner theory that i have literally never made a conscious decision in my life

I've never shaken the impression that free will is something Xtians invented to specifically prop up their theological power structure (ie only via free will can you "choose" redemption through Christ and wgaf about that)

xp

It does seem to me that we're constrained to experience our actions in the world in a certain way, as though we're picking among possible futures. But we can also know reflectively that that's false. There are multiple levels of belief here.

I don't find determinism terrifying, I just accept it. it has no bearing on the decisions I make or how I behave tbh, I just consider it a fact. Considering my conscious identity as somehow separate or outside of the processes that govern the universe seems bizarre to me.

― Οὖτις

so you believe there is a universal order, scientific principles that dictate human thought and action as there are scientific principles that dictate the movements of the planets?

it has no bearing on the decisions I make or how I behave tbh, I just consider it a fact.

You say it has no bearing, but that cannot be true. There cannot be facts that have no implications. You're just not examining or acknowledging them. As facts go, this one seems more like a garden variety opinion.

I've never shaken the impression that free will is something Xtians invented to specifically prop up their theological power structure (ie only via free will can you "choose" redemption through Christ and wgaf about that)

xp

― Οὖτις

does the notion of free will as a philosophy predate aquinas? i'm not too familiar with the history of the concept.

I don't really understand how it can be otherwise, rushomancy. The mental construct that constitutes "me" is as much the product of physical laws and processes as anything else in the universe, and as such at any given moment it is the product of all the processes and events that preceded the current moment. Ego is an illusion etc.

xp

i'm not really sure that there's an all-encompassing scientific consensus on the nature of indeterminacy in the cosmos, of chance. (if there is i certainly don't understand it!) it could be that human choice, such as it is, is simply one form of indeterminacy. this allows for a certain amount of genuine freedom of action (or freedom of inaction, if you prefer) on an individual level while still establishing humanity as a natural creature, fully subservient to natural law.

just to be clear here, if what constitutes "me" is as much a product of physical laws as anything else in the universe and is simultaneously "an illusion", doesn't that imply that the universe is equally an illusion? and if the definition of "the universe" is everything known and unknown, then wouldn't physical laws be a subset of "the universe" and therefore equally an illusion?

mmmm, i don't think so? the illusion in question is that of selfhood, of the possibility of fully autonomous action. there is not, that any of us are aware of, any such cosmic overmind that believes itself to be free to do as it wishes, so no, there aren't really any additional "illusions" to deal with here.