[extropy-chat] Edge: Thank Goodness! By Daniel C. Dennett

[Russell Wallace]

On 11/3/06, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky <sentience at pobox.com> wrote:
>
> As for Dennett suggesting that people are doing something wrong by
> praying instead of helping - that they are thereby committing a moral
> sin, in need of forgiveness - why, yes, you're right, that is somewhat
> like a theologian who *peacefully argues with you*, for what he
> conceives to be your own benefit, that you are committing a mortal sin
> by denying the existence of God.


Yes, that's what I was referring to. The equivalent of the religious
fundamentalists who kill infidels for not believing in God would be those
who did the same thing in the name of the atheist ideology of communism.

As for who's being more irrational, whatever your opinion of religion, it
worked. Look at the results once religion is gone: the prime examples of
evolution in action are precisely those who believe in evolution. If I
believed in God I'd say He had a wicked sense of humor.

As for who's doing harm by ill-considered words, consider _why_ so many
people are rejecting evolutionary biology (in a way that they don't reject,
say, physics or chemistry). It's because they've been taught they _have_ to
reject it or give up everything they hold dear and find themselves in an
empty universe with empty lives.

What fanatical religious preachers taught them this, you may wonder? Why,
some of the names are quite familiar. Gould, Dawkins, Dennett.

Now if people want to preach atheism, that's their right; and if they want
to preach nihilism, well I suppose even that's their right. It's when they
do so _with their scientist hats on_, when they abuse their reputation as
scientists to advance those personal philosophies, that the rest of us in
the scientific community should speak up and disown them. Because if we fail
to do so, then their words reflect on us and blacken our names. They tarnish
our enterprise of science, technology, rationality itself. A world where
science and reason are dirty words has a bleak future indeed.
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