RE: Critique of "God is Not Great" by Christoper Hitchens
January 24, 2016 at 7:15 am
(This post was last modified: January 24, 2016 at 8:20 am by phil-lndn.)
(January 24, 2016 at 2:49 am)Rhythm Wrote: Rationality is no cure for religiosity, it would not be even if we were fully rational beings...which we aren't. Take an otherwise unremarkable man. His religious beliefs can be and often are remarkable. I don't think that you would be alone in considering religion and religious thought a symptom, in fact...I think Hitchens would agree. What's the line, "a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as for comfort, reassurance and other infantile needs)"..?
What book was that, ah, I remember. God is Not Great.
Can you please give me an argument for your truth claim that "Rationality is no cure for religiosity".
And (if not rationality) what is the cure for religiosity, how have people managed to step beyond it?
And you seem to be arguing that Christopher thinks that Religion is a symptom of low levels of development ('low levels of development poison everything'), whereas I thought his argument was that religion was actually at cause here? ('religion poisons everything')
Which one causes which?
(January 24, 2016 at 2:57 am)robvalue Wrote: Even though I think religion is bullshit and it doesn't directly poison me, it still affects me by the way it has poisoned the environment.
I'm lucky enough to live in England where God has left the building, so the effects are minimal locally, but in many other countries religion is everywhere fucking up your shit even when you want no part of it.
"Poisons everything" is clearly a euphemism anyway, I don't think it's reasonable to assume this was literal. He doesn't mean it poisons every single atom in the universe, or even just here on Earth. It's just a shorthand way of describing the multitude of ways religion can cause harm.
Perhaps, although if that were completely true I doubt Christopher would have chosen to defend the sub-title in the speech of his I posted.
(The link i posted was removed by the moderator, not allowed until i have posted 30 posts for some reason, go to youtube and search for 'Christopher Hitchens Explains Why Religion Poisons Everything' if you want to hear his talk)
(January 24, 2016 at 7:09 am)robvalue Wrote: I'm not really understanding your objections.
Sure, he may have phrased some things badly. And no sensible atheist just agrees with everything he said, or claims he was infallible. He made mistakes like everyone else, and could hold strange or unsupported views.
I haven't read the book so I can't comment too much further.
Holy books are mainly nonsense stories, I trust you're not debating that, but we can learn things from them of course. It depends what you're trying to learn as to how detailed your analysis should be and how you should approach it. If you're trying to determine whether a load of magic garbage happened, then the analysis is rather quick.
I think you'd be surprised what happens if you undertake a detailed study of the structure and nature of human perspectives (especially with respect to how different developmental perspectives are structured and dimensionalised)
I take a perspective-centric view of reality, which arrives at the conclusion that all stories about reality are true, but only true from a perspective. So all stories are simultaneously true (descriptive of reality) and untrue (they are all simply stories).
In my opinion, this is equally true for scientific and religious creation stories.
