More piss-poor criticism of atheism
Basically, Dawkins says he believes in determinism from an intellectual perspective, but from a personal one, can’t act upon it.
This does seem inconsistent, but Dawkins makes a point of saying:
What I do know is that what it feels like to me, and I think to all of us, we don’t feel determined.
We don’t FEEL determined and so we don’t act that way. This is pretty common, really. We are spinning on a big chunk of rock in space. We don’t act like we are. If we did, we’d be running around terrified. Time is flexible, and not a constant. We don’t feel like it changes based on frame of reference, and so we don’t behave as if it does. We all will die. We know this intellectually, but we don’t feel like we will (most of the time), so we don’t do many things because we think we have all the time in the world.
How we KNOW things are and how we FEEL things are don’t necessarily match.
Theism has to answer every question with ‘because’. That’s a bit of a clue to whether or not it’s true.
More Than Words: Atheism doesn’t work
There we have Professor Dawkins’ candid admission that whilst atheistic determinism is a nice idea which in his own head he believes to be true as the explanation for reality …Sphere: Related Content… on the other hand, it’s impossible to put into practice in the real world. It’s an idea, and he believes it and writes and speaks plenty in its favour, but by his own confession it’s not an idea that works once you leave your typewriter and actually try to do something.
Consistent atheism doesn’t work. That’s a bit of a clue to whether or not it’s true.
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4 Comments:
You could say he does live his life consistant with determinism- the only true alternative is randomness. Free will is literally impossible to put in any wording and in such a way that it isn’t incomprehensible.
Samuel Skinner
2:20 am
If determinism IS true, then he has no choice but to live his life consistent with determinism. By definition. Regardless as to how he thinks he lives his life (those thoughts also being predetermined).
That said, you raise an interesting point. Freewill seems to be the kind of thing that can’t be proven or disproven because it can’t be defined in any meaningful way.
I find that the same issue occurs when you try and get people to define ‘god’. You either get the breaded guy on the throne, or some string of words that don’t really seem to mean anything, and can’t actually be discussed. Which is fine, in a sense, because if god actually exists, he would be an entity outside of time and space and anything you and I would call reality. He would be undefinable from our perspective. But that also means no real argument can be made for his existence that isn’t based on “We don’t understand X therefor god must exist”.
moleboy
7:40 am
No, if God existed he would be inside reality. Reality is… well, everything
Samuel Skinner
1:40 am
Yeah, but God would be outside ‘everything’. Or, at least, could be. No rules, dontchaknow.
(yes, I know that makes no sense…yet it seems to make sense to some…)
moleboy
6:10 pm