Pat Condell is a brave man and I say that with upmost respect to him, although I disagree with the manner that is used, he is not scared and God bless free speech that allows him to continue. His videos, link is at the bottom, deals with how religion more or less affects his world. He has every right to comment about what he sees wrong in the world and he should keep going. I don’t agree with his manner because I don’t really view this particular approach as providing anything useful, if he is serious and I am pretty sure that he is, then there are much better ways of getting his point across. He is a source of great entertainment and I enjoy watching what only can be described as a rant on various religious topics. I do find it very funny that he has posted on his website some of the feedback, not the fact he did it rather the comments people are making about his videos. I have removed the letters of the swear words but I can assure you no one wrote it with * in place. Bare in mind Armstrong’s perspective that all the Abrahamic religions are based on the golden rule of compassion and lets see if these comments adhere to it:
“you know i would blow your f**king head with pistol without thinking about it,,,”
Oh, I love how religion is such a golden thing, it speaks on so many levels!
“this guy in the video is a kufar yeah inshah allah i hope he and his family die from cancer some should shot on his for head this white trash no offance to good white people i wish even a new born baby in this man family has cancer wish your daughter grandaughter get raped”
COMPASSION - its nice to hear that punishing women in Condell’s family made it to the feedback, anyone would think that Islam treated women as cattle.
“u racist f**k, where u live…. people like you should be shot at birth…….. better still sooner u die the better racist motherf**ker”
Ok now I know I am not that clever and all but isn’t being racist when you discriminate against people that are not like you? I think a lot of racist people have made the comment; you should be shot at birth.
Look the simple fact is that people have different opinions about different things, if you cannot accept that then you should only interact with people that think like you. I don’t really understand why people go out there way to make threats and I mean threats at people because they don’t think like them. Has this done any good other than showing the world what religion really is? By the way, I am saying that it’s violent, just for those that are not following me! Threatening people does not work in a free society, Pat Condell still is making his videos and even if he was not there is no chance that he would change his mind about the whole religion thing. If you want to express an opinion then do so but put some effort into it. Why is he wrong? Examples, points of reference, evidence and in effect present your argument against. Don’t mindlessly threaten people that just makes you an idiot on every level.
First of all let me initially describe the position that I have found myself in many times, people describe me as an atheist! Actually, let me also be honest I have described myself as that as well, still I have never really subscribed to the church of atheists so I don’t really know why I got there. When people say it though I get the impression that somehow my perception of the world is altered slightly since I then have the agenda of the atheists which gets in the way of me understanding the world. When I was younger I was not really a strong Christian nevertheless I kind of understood that there was a God and a bloke called Jesus who was a good guy that suffered in his own way. At this level lets be frank they are not the same sorts of things, I never learned how to be a good atheist or had to go to a special place in order to increase my general understanding of the thing that I don’t believe in. This is the key word; believe, since I rejected the notion of Christianity I simply stopped believing in that kind of God, non-belief is very different to that of belief in many ways. Rejecting the notion of Jesus simply means that I no longer believe that the stories of his life are anything other than stories. So when I come to make my decisions in life whatever Jesus said or did is never really all that important. I often hear about girls asking ‘what would Jesus do?’ and that leading them to rejecting sex before marriage. I did some research and found out girls (young women) that make that pledge more often than not only delay sex for 18 months and then since they are never taught about contraception, I assume because people think that they won’t have sex, end up pregnant and with more sexual transmitted diseases than the average population. Whereas atheism would never lead to such a universal pledge by young girls, Christianity would, that is the fundamental difference between the two.
Let me go back to what people mean when they say atheism from a religious perspective as if they are suggesting that this is a mental refusal at any level of the person to accept what they are saying is true. It’s like they say ‘of course god exists’ and then all of a sudden expecting everyone else to agree with them. This mental refusal is not really the case since if there is only the refusal to listen to the argument that there is a god because you say so again and again, it gets a little boring. I will listen to any argument as long as it first appears to be true, I can make an assessment from thing things I can experience in the world and second, it can withstand arguments from a different perspective. I might not be able to make an assessment based on my experience of the world on whether God exists; it is however, possible to make an assessment of the affects your God has on the world. Perhaps a second meaning of atheism is that it rejects the whole notion of God, this is not the case as it would be impossible to argue for most atheists, rather the rejection comes towards certain ideas or concepts of God. There might be a God, as an atheist, this acceptance does not include the versions of God determined by Islam, Christianity, Hindu, Jewish or other religions. An atheist rejects religious accounts of God; this does not mean that there is not a God just not the one that has been created. Albert Einstein who although was brought up in the Jewish religion never accepted a religious God, although he still claimed that God was behind the universe with the definition that God was simply nature and its governing laws. The last account of atheism that I have come across is the idea that atheists are somehow more intelligent since the religious followers are just a bunch of stupid people that will believe anything. I am speaking to the atheists here, I have met some really stupid atheists and I can assure you that this does not mean atheisms is too equal intelligence. If any atheists assume that only stupid people follow religion then you are undermining your own intelligence on the matter. To say that you are an atheist never means the same thing, you could reject most sorts or Gods or not, it’s not about denying believe based on the atheist’s religion and by all means atheists are not the ones who have worked something out that religious people have yet to do.
To paraphrase Sam Harris everyone is pretty much an atheist about something, if you don’t believe in the fairies at the bottom of my garden you are an atheist. If you are a Muslim and you don’t think the Christians are right, then you’re an atheist. If you call yourself a Pagan and you don’t believe that the Muslims are right, then guess what you are also an atheist. Sam Harris argues that the word atheist is not necessary and in fact it can turn out to be something bad. To start off with Harris suggests that there is not a non-racist organisation out there which is in fact a correct stand point, its wrong for atheists who seem to identify each other by the name, since atheism is not a philosophical perspective and by keeping there atheist name it means that we are migrated to the margins rather than the mainstream. There is also the burden that comes from such label, after all if someone is calling themselves Christians then they have to justify their position, if we go around calling ourselves atheists we then also have to justify our position and that is dangerous for two reasons, it means that we are talking more about atheism than why religion is getting things wrong and it sets up a position to which we can be attacked. In essence Sam Harris is arguing that ‘atheism’ is not the correct or useful term to label non-believers with, it creates more problems than it is worth. I do have a suggestion though, when you get into discussions about religion and someone asks you if you believe in god, simply state - what do you mean by God? This pushes the burden back to the religious believers and allows us to avoid the atheism label.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ok2oJgsGR6c - Sam Harris in this 2007 AAI address on the subject, although I sometimes don’t follow what Harris is saying he is always insightful.
A little more on this matter…
I read a little more about atheists in someone else’s blog and I really did find it interesting, at first glance it looks like a valid point even though it does go against the idea that non-belief is not actually a belief. I wanted to add it because after thinking about it a little more, you can actually see their point. There are these soft atheists and then there are hardcore atheists who rather than simply having no believe they have adopted a set of beliefs that are against the very idea of God. These hardcore atheists have a belief system, I think they need to be called something else perhaps members of the church of atheism. Even though I think this is only a small number of people. Have a read of their blog….
This kind of also answers the question about why I write this blog. I think that it is a sensible question to ask and the reason is that I first started this blog was when I came across the work of Richard Dawkins, I agreed with what he said. That is not why I still continue, the reason is that for a lot of the time I think that science is misunderstood and for that matter perhaps logic too! Here was me thinking that some sort of Religion could be in place without it bothering the rest of us, Dawkins introduced the idea that ‘truth’ with religion being very much outside in the dark. Science has had to deal with truth and being a postgraduate currently studying science, I have had to deal with truth as well. Science is not a stable thing, it’s messy and a lot of the time it is acknowledged that science can only explain certain things under certain conditions. Science and Religion both create their own concept of what is true in the world.
The temptation might be here for you to think that both science and religion offer different versions or accounts of the same things, you’d be right in part of course. Still there is a big difference, science has or never could directly challenge religion, at least not in its true form, as the whole point of science is not to create a version of reality rather to simply show it as it is. Religion does create a reality, whether it is a kind God who is listening to your wishes or informing you what would be the “Christian” thing. Science exists to help you decide what you could do; Religion exists to tell you what you should. The most fundamental difference I have found is that as an individual you can pile into Science, you can easily go out to test its reasoning as well as add to body of knowledge it creates, it builds up over time and with validation the truth moves. In Religion people tend to pile out of it, they go to a place to hear and see things and then they take that knowledge away which is said to be true. Science offers the tools of investigation whereas religion simply offers a version of the knowledge, you might argue here that science also offers a version of knowledge and you would be correct. The point is that it never stops there and the body of knowledge is moving and responsive, the real difference is the process of reason rather than the presentation of information. If you stand in science, you’d see a useful set of tools and knowledge to which is more often than not will benefits people’s lives. It has never ending questions to which you might never get the answers too or you might get one question answered to only have the process produce a whole new set of questions. If you stand in religion and ask the question ‘Why?’ it’s because of God and that ends the conversation.
Please see my earlier post titled “Why does science still grow when it can be so wrong? Why did science happen and take hold in Europe?” it explains in more detail some of the issues that I have discussed here. Both Comte and Durkheim authored in their own ways three types of understandings or worlds, the first was that of Custom & habit. The second being that of the God ultimate and the last being that of logic & reason. Rather than being able for an individual to exist in two or more of these worlds, they instead moved from one to the other and this was the result of human progress. In this poor example, people used to bury their loved ones in a certain manner and this built up in each generation to include certain rituals. Even me starting at burying is one jump too soon, it could be once when people died they were left on the ground but insects and animals used to eat the bodies so someone thought that putting them in the ground would stop those insects and animals. So this was adopted and happened in the next generation, this is a building up process and this is what happened in the first world. In the second world, the first was removed because now whole societies would bury their dead in the same way and this include, almost at a national level, a set of rituals prescribed for each event plus a new understanding of why we do it this way, God. You could not accept the irrational & illogical version of the second world, say believing in God, and then also buy into the rational and logical third world. They are incompatible to each other at a fundamental level; the third world demands the removal of the second.
I could say that types of religious scientists lived in an earlier time where science had not really developed but that is not really true. Science is there, according to Comte and others, to get at the natural laws which govern the world which we live in. Steven Nadler describes God as nature, everything that happens in nature also happens because of God if you believe in God that is. I hope that confused you a little because its then a true reflection of what actually happens. I would like to bring up David Sloan Wilson here now, as his idea of the practical and factual realism helped me understand why scientists can be religious. In factual realism we deal with truths as far as we can understand them, this is a true reflection of what actually is going on and with any hope these understandings are removed from agenda. Science attempts to deal with factual realism and how do we know this? Well, if you ask yourself and others what happens after someone dies you would get a range of different answers some from faith and others from personal feelings. From this we can see there is no fact or truth from these statements since some could be right others of them could be wrong, you have no way of knowing which one is actually the right answer. When was the last time an X-ray suffered from this problem? Well never unless the machine was broken to which it could be fixed in accordance with the knowledge of how it works. So factual realism is very important and so far most of what I have talked about is based on this notion of science.
Practical realism is a lot more interesting, it states that knowledge that we have, even if not based on fact, works because it allows us to get on with our everyday lives. If we think that doing something which in turns makes us lucky and benefits us by having a successful day then all I can say is that it exists & is worthy of our attention, it’s not based on fact still it allows us to take control of seemingly random events. It does provide benefits including filling in some of the gaps in how we understand the world. In this way scientist can defer to practical realism in order to make sense or fulfil a need. This has been seen to be true in terms of science, in all its forms, when science interlaces with those still using in part their practical realism. So even though religion is outside what is required for belief in science, it still can be present at times. It is particularly easy for scientists not involved in areas that would question Religion, such as a chemist it seems more likely they would have a religious perspective rather than a biologist with connections with evolution. Although this is not always true! One thing I have noticed is that scientists that argue from a religious stand point offer bad science in re-turn. If we go back to how societies bury their dead if all you believed in was science, science does not really offer any help or comfort and religion seems to score one in this department. The structure of religious ritual is universal in a lot of sets or groups of people and this structure appears to be useful. It is in these great unknowns where science is not the light; religion can be the candle even though we never really know if it was the right thing to do.
A little more on this matter…
Intelligent design has been reject as a pseudoscience, still the debate between Collins and Dawkins is very interesting presented in this TIME article, both come as scientists but only Collins has belief in God. There are many from the scientific corner who are outraged to the insult upon rationality when arguments are presented by intelligent design (ID). Dawkins suggests that the most powerful building block of ID is in fact within the name, design, once we can understand the life on earth was not designed then we remove the whole concept of God from the table. Collins on the other hand offers the idea that Genesis cannot be subjected to the tools of science and furthermore, we simply cannot understand Genesis at all.
Don’t get me wrong I really like these books and the world is a much better place with people like Dawkins and Hitchens in it. The attack on religion is an important one; it challenges yet again the position of religion and the role that it should take in our societies. It enables non-believers a position to argue against and reject those that force religion upon them. They also offer a method of causing a debate with your friends. Still they only attack religion and never God, if we assume that God is different to that presented by religion. There are two problems with these books, the first is that the books are only written for those that are against or are not sure about religion in the first place. While watching many religious people attack the likes of Dawkins (et al) it’s clear that the debate will never be won. Yes they produce awareness and they are interesting but I don’t see the removal of the Pope in the near future or the end of religious violence through the acceptance of the atheists’ model. It just does not work like that, people will not abandon religion through the attack of faith it’s more likely they will become disillusioned with religious false promises. It is then the atheist’s gang that will get a new member! I will write more about the abandonment of religion in the near future so I will not go into depth here. It is difficult to see the progress that Dawkins and Hitchens make in their attack although this might be different across countries. They should attack religion but not religious people there is no point, there is a point however in making sure that religion is different from government as much as we can, this should be our right which we all need to fight for. By religious people I mean your friends or people you meet, this does not include those that make public comments or talk about their religion as they are in public view and demand to be answered.
*http://richarddawkins.net
There was a video clip I watched, I have forgotten the name of the author, it made the impression that it was pointless entering into a discussion. In other words there is as much point in arguing about the rights & wrongs of religion with a religious person as there is trying to teach string theory to a really f**king stupid monkey. You will never get anywhere, this does not mean I think religious people are stupid (well everyone can be stupid at times), it just means at some point you are just wasting your energy. Where does that leave us non-believers? There still needs to be challenges to religion, however this is not a new thing and it’s been happening for longer than you think. If it was not challenged then it would destroy everything and I mean that, it would crash into our lives and everyone should be angry about that. It is also right that Hitchens should name and shame religious practices that are wrong, if it keeps happening maybe they will change or maybe everyone else will start to look down on religion and that would be a good thing. Other than fun the new atheists’ books might help atheists plus the general group of semi-believers, this is a useful and good step. I don’t really think it should ever be addressed at religious people though. I would also suggest that you must keep the good name of atheists, although I disagree with that term, answer religious people with thought and consideration.
The second error: Melvin Konner illustrates an impressive analogy, although he suggests it is a poor one but I think it explains a lot. To paraphrase it; the books of the new atheists are very much like writing a book about water. You could have chapters on floods, tornados, hurricanes and you could also state that most of the water on the earth has salt in it thus making it poisonous to humans. From this you would conclude that water does more harm than good, since all you have read is about the harm water does rather than the good things it can do. Much like the new atheists books, there is a focus of harm and that would of course make you angry about the ideas that have been presented. There is no balance, Konner suggests, to the approach that has been taken and this is the case when reading some of Dawkin’s work on evolution and how it is being attacked by Christian America. It would worry me more if that this was the standard Christian approach to evolution, although the Pope, who in my book is not a man of pure good, finds that evolution is not in conflict with Christianity. This is perhaps the error of new atheists, to simply assume that religion is just a force for evil and even though it can be that never should mean we should focus only on that aspect. There has been a very strong reaction towards these books, strong is good but sometimes its also important to remember that balance is important. I am also guilty on no balance, but being an atheist & hopefully a rational person I will also listen to the other side of the argument when it is shown. So should you! An argument is different from the ‘I am right, you are wrong’ approach.
It is a bit of No - Since I have never believed in the idea that religion should receive special treatment I don’t understand the argument to why reading the religious books is necessary in order to understand religions. Let’s take this from a different perspective most people use technology everyday whether it’s a computer or a mobile phone, how many of those people really understand what makes it work? Most will have a rough understanding of the components that fix together to make it work as a whole, this is about were the knowledge stops. When expressing an opinion about a mobile phone it is done on the usefulness, the attractiveness, what is new and how it makes things easier, so in other words the opinion is not the result of a technical view of the mobile rather the end result, whether its benefits or services that it provides are good quality. This I suggest is also possible with Religion, to understand Christian’s and their beliefs we can look at the end result, there actions or inaction, from this we understand what religious people are all about and how they are different from us. I recently blogged about how Islamic law in Pakistan prevented a rape victim speaking out and bringing the police officer that raped her to justice. Many Muslims that I know in the UK have found this shocking, so can we blame this on religion? Yes even though many Muslims would find this distasteful, the Koran has to answer for its end results. If the Koran is allowed to exist then it has to answer for what people do within the elevated position the Koran provides them. A lot of my earlier understanding of religion has come from the end result of how people act in accordance with their belief.
The answer is also a bit of Yes - I will use another analogy, if you go to a psychologist you can sit there and have the process pushed upon you, the only understanding is that you’re having something done to you. If it’s a good psychologist they will include you in the process and from that you’d learn the methods which you could then later use yourself. You never learn the whole body of knowledge of psychology rather you learn some of its rationale & methods and this is in part what religious teachers do. In particular those teachers are a good source of information, they present an argument based on the idea of A for the reason of B and this allows you to see the process which was involved and in turn start to understand their logic & internal world. Unlike in the No part of this answer, if I wanted to criticise religion you can present evidence or an alternative of A for reason C. I do accept that here I am making a jump because as a non-religious person I would want to criticise religion, still the same is true if you wanted to learn about another religion or more about yours. I am personally fed up of religious text or quotes that are basically unclear and wishy washy in the first place being used to promote religion as a good thing. Especially, when it seems there are as many negative evil religion text or quotes that really does present religion in a bad light.
The point of this post is to confirm to everyone that at a certain level the you can judge religion by its followers; after all I am not a Christian, Muslim or Jew so why should I have to read their religious books. They should and then I will be able to judge what those books are say by watching religious people and their behaviour. It is about what is happening in the real world which is more important than the words, if the words are wrong we will be able to tell.
I was listening to a recently filmed debate and the idea came across that the earth was designed; this was presented by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach. These are the things he mentions, which I have heard before, I would like to summarize them; if the earth were a little closer or further away, then the earth would freeze or boil. If the earth was not tilted then massive ice mountains would build up, drawing the water away from large parts of the world creating deserts. If the earth did not rotate at the 1000mph, rather at a slower 100mph then the days would burn everything alive and the night would freeze the same life. If the moon was a little closer then the tides would flood all the land. If the oceans where deeper it would absorb all the carbon dioxide making plant life impossible. If the atmosphere was a little thinner then meteors would fall to earth and cause vast devastation and if water did not expand when it freezes the fish in the seas would die. I agree with all of this, however, I disagree that this should be used in the case to support the idea of the Earth being designed for the life. This is not a religious debate, rather a reasoned one. The designed Earth statement means that it would be the result of a designer that knew what life required and then created the Earth for the purpose, even if the designer was nature.
What is to say that if one of these things changed that there would be no life on earth? Of course, there would be differences between the life that we know and the life that would have existed, that is a given in these new set of circumstances. The earth as we know is a perfect place for life and that life can be found almost anywhere on the planet. If we take the statement the earth is designed for life, let’s put that into a deductive model so we can see what we have:
The Earth was designed for Life.
Only Earth (or Earth like planets) has the ability to support life.
Life can only exist on the Earth or Earth like planets.
All we need is to find life that does not exist on earth, to show that environments unlike Earth’s can support living things and from that we can take the earth was not designed for life, since other places that are not like the earth has life on them. As soon as life not from earth exists then we either have to reject the idea of a designed earth or we have to consider that other planets or places in the universe are also designed. It just happens that the ‘unique’ set of circumstances makes the earth a successful place for life , being successful is different from the notion of a designed earth. Carolyn Porco discusses the idea that one of Saturn’s moons Enceladus has the three building blocks of creation; liquid water, organic materials and heat. This was discovered via the last probe that went passed the moon and in theory it is possible that life on Enceladus is completely achievable. This moon has the right environment for the life as we know it to exist. If it is later discovered that there is life on Enceladus, which would most likely be in the form of micro organisms, then that would prove false the statement the Earth is designed for life and we would have to rethink the statement to produce something like the earth and other places are designed for life. Or it would be equally likely that the statement some places in the universe have a greater likelihood of life depending on certain factors, would be an acceptable replacement. This is not design but rather chance and a certain possibility considering the size of the galaxy.
It is interesting that if life on Enceladus is found, where would this leave the idea of evolution as a scientific theory? I think that it would support the idea strongly, once we have removed the idea of the Earth being designed for life we are left with the notion that life is designed for the earth, even if we assume that the Earth is such a great place for life, then nothing better than evolution explains both this life in two places in our solar system.
I cannot wait until the next mission to Enceladus!
One thing that amazes me is that science tends to work quite often; I don’t need to tell you that you already know. The point here is that it tends to work, still there are places where the misunderstanding of science comes in, these are my thoughts on how science sometimes is not based upon real knowledge rather agenda based needs. The aim of the positivists who had its home in part in Vienna, one of the most liberal places in the world at the turn of the last century, was to create an independent body of knowledge that in affect was a real reflection of the world as it exists. In truth as the result of the Vienna circle and those the preceded & came after the circle created three types of worlds, the members are most likely known to you such as Comte, Ayer and Carnap. Ok you have only heard of Comte, that’s ok the names are not that important here. The first world they created was that of Faith and habit, this world was seen as those unimportant things each generation picked up and their children adopted this meant very little because they could not be seen as true and were different from person to person. The second world was that of the metaphysical, in other words religion and its use of explaining the events that where happening. Since this again can’t be observed and tends to differ, this world was also dismissed. The third world was created by the rational and logical person, with the assumption of the scientific method; there are many assumptions in this method. The idea was not that these three worlds could survive side-by-side rather, the second world had replaced the first and the third would replace the second.
Science as the key to Understanding the world - Science can get it very wrong - In the 19th Century there was a strong organic model that was adopted from the field of biology and was used on one group of people, the poor. This I could describe as the first type of eugenics formed by science, it saw those suffering from poverty not as the result of the society being unfair as it was at the time rather a different and dangerous race of people. At the time of the research there was a great worry about the conditions people were living in and the diseases that were being created by the support of the industrial revolution that were forming tightly packed cities. The poor were seen has having a choice about how they lived when clearly the choice was never given to them, there was no welfare state and if you did not work then you did not eat. Science got this approach wrong and was later dismissed as working and living conditions improved. Still this idea of the race of the poor came about because the scientists involved used their personal experience to understand a social problem and they were not objective.
Science as the progress of society - Newton published in “The Opticks” 1704 the results of how light when it goes through a prism separates into the colour spectrum, removing the idea that white light itself cannot be broken down and is only made up of one element. Why did this even matter to Newton? He could have not understood the benefits that would later be developed from this idea; in part we can thank him for the ability to understand radiation and infrared light which are also based on the same spectrum. Perhaps the drive to understanding the world was his greatest force. Newton did provide something much more useful, the idea of induction. I won’t go into induction that deeply here but it is the idea that first you can close the world off and take out the things you want to test putting them in an artificial environment in the process. In other words putting the objects of study into an experiment to see their nature & relationship and this is where science can also go wrong. Taking the objects of study outside of the real world so we can test them, means something more - it means that we are unable to test them in the world, so effectively science never deals with the reflection of the world. Just a controlled version of it! Most science is pushed into explanations of real world things, it is important to remember that science is simply a theoretical model and theories sometimes go wrong.
So why does Science appear to be a contradiction and wrong at times, it’s first that scientist belong to a society and being part of the society with values & social identities, those can get in the way of a rational and logical person. Although the aim is to remove the first and second worlds, they do exist and what we take from them affects who & what is studied and with what aims. This is still happening and if you don’t believe me maybe you would like to visit the Creationist museum in Kentucky. Even if the creationist museum is right, not that I believe it is, then there are still others to provide the contradiction. The second is the misunderstanding of science, it is in essence a working model of the world which does not mean that it will predict or be able to control events in real life from those working models. This is not to say there should be an abandonment of science, it is very useful. Things have come from science that are valuable and people rely on it every single day, so although it can be powerful that does not mean that science is 100% a true reflection of the world, rather it is closer to the true reflection than any other body of knowledge. Evidence that refutes current belief changes that belief and this is why the model of science keeps on growing. The ability to explain and provide is not enough, the ability to change and stand up against evidence is its greatest strength even if it can only be 95% effective at best.
We come to why science happened and took hold in Europe, this is not a simple question to answer because during the dark ages Europe dismissed science and others in the world had a much greater use of it. There came about a new set of social and historical conditions, this was a move away from the divine and the rejection of God as the one in control of the world. Human knowledge took control and this came about through four sets of general changes. With the development of the nation states across Europe it developed the idea of liberalization and social reform. The idea of making your country better and dealing with social problems was at least on the table and the solutions to the problems could be allowed to grow. There was also a change in attitude; people started to think that reason could hold the key to the ability of changing the world. If there was ever going to be a method of making life better science was seen as the most effective one to meet that aim. The old methods of the divine had its chance and it fail to make the necessary improvements. Religion itself caused the place where science could slowly form; it was because of differing religions that caused so many wars and conflicts that resulted in the social development of an understanding for the tolerance of new concepts and ideas. Once people got fed up with conflict they allowed others to think what they would like to and this opened the door for the scientific method. Last of all there was a change in the model of business; once the industrial revolution happened there was a value change in people and by this I mean how much they were worth to a society. With the development of the capitalist market just because someone was a lord it did not matter, money really did make the world go around. This rejection of the old ways allowed the successful and intelligent a place to do their work, rather than a presubscribed position being allocated.
The power of the new idea of humans and their role to play started the shift away from the traditional towards the new methods. The needs of humans became the force of the aims of science. They were able to work together to produce a new set of knowledge and the more success supplied, the higher the role and importance of science. This is of course is a very short history but it is the general direction that happened. I would like to put the reference links in here but that seems too lengthy a process however, if you are interested in the reference books please let me know and I will give them to you. I would recommend Smith’s Social Science in question, ISBN 0-7619-6041-4 if you are interested in learning more.
I have already done the Christians so it is only fair that I comment about this Muslim man as well. Mr Zakir Naik makes me very angry in so many ways; I don’t recognise his Dr as he does not deserve it. He might be a doctor but someone only deserves that honour when they are not so faulty in their understanding of the world. This man is not in the real world and once again the agenda that he is trying to present is more than clear. I will once again put the general statements in blue with my reaction afterwards. Watch the video before you read the comments, even if it’s only for the first couple of minutes or you will not understand my reaction to it.
Rape should first be dealt with by men averting their gaze, and then covering women up and finally Capital punishment. America should adopt Islamic law to stop rape. - Let me say that this is messed up in all respects, to start off with a logic problem; Naik argues that America suffers from more rape victims than countries with Islamic law like Pakistan. The population of Pakistan is 164 million; the population of America is 301 million so of course there are going to be twice as much of everything because there are almost twice as many people. Pakistan is a country where women can be sentenced to gang rape for a brother’s crime (cited in Hitchens - god is not great and here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4322021.stm). Rape Victims are the ones who are punished for being rape against their will, they did nothing wrong (cited here: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0DE6D81E39F934A25756C0A9649C8B63). They don’t listen to rape victims because it is against Islamic law (cited here: http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/006808.php) Why would women report being raped when they could suffer not only under the protection of the state but also punished for it by their society? They would not and this means that the level of reported rape in Pakistan is not a true reflection of rape that occurs.
Women should not be forced to cover up; if men are the ones that rape women then it is men who need to be forced to do things not women. Since we have already discussed why women covering up, as is required in Pakistan, does not stop rape it should never be used as a method of prevention. If you want to make the case for women covering up then don’t base it on these grounds. As for capital punishment he is wrong, America also performs this act against its people. The problem with it, is that it is clear that capital punishment does not work, so if the reason for capital punishment is to get your own back on people that have wronged you then it should be accepted, if you think that it stops crime then there is a body of evidence that goes against this. I don’t want to over cite the evidence, still it is the case from a large body of research. I think that it is wrong but that is my personal opinion. So would I rather live in America where rape is a crime and the state/society punishes the person committing the crime? Or would I prefer to live in Pakistan where the issue of rape is hidden, not discussed and ultimately not dealt with? The answer is America.
Islam is the best way of life; Islamic law achieves good things - See above! I am not saying that Muslim people cannot do good things but at its core, Islamic law does not protect good people. Zakir Naik is not doing a good thing here on the grounds that the more time & energy there is in moving away from the truths of an issue the less time & energy we spend dealing with the issues that we as societies need to address. I will simply say here that if the statement “Islamic law achieves good things” is true, then we only need to find one event where it does not achieve good things for the statement to be proven false. I have given the evidence that proves this statement false. I can accept that Islamic law can achieve good things sometimes, but that is a completely different statement and has a completely different meaning to what Naik illustrates for us.
Atheists have become atheist because they believe in science and technology - Umm… No! After Naik’s statements about atheists he goes on to talk about how science is represented in Koran, that is a different debate although I will acknowledge those fact as being true, I don’t have evidence to say it is wrong at this time. I don’t agree with his idea of science and the use of his metaphor of creation. Still speaking as an atheist, even though I don’t speak for the group, I never became an atheist because of science and technology. I rejected religion because I believe it is not true, it does little to explain things in the world. I rejected religion because it does harm, so many things have been done in the name of religion to which religion never has to answer for. I reject religion not because it has been replaced with science and technology but personal experience and reason. To be an atheist is not to accept science, atheism does not equal science. To be an atheist does not mean you believe in evolution. Atheism is non-belief and it should never be confused with belief of anything non-religious. Atheism is the rejection of theology, Evolution is a scientific theory.
These are the reasons why Zakir Naik is wrong and why he does not understand the world.
Ok first listen to this guy about how the Koran is wrong and that the bible is a more dependable source for historical accuracy. There are a few interesting things that I will highlight from what he is saying and then we can discuss why he is wrong, I will put his statements in blue they are not quotes just me summarising what was said. Before I go on I don’t know who this man is because the person that posted the video to youtube did not post his name and comments were not allowed. At the end he says however, that even if he was not a Christian he would still say these things - No, he has an agenda of his own faith that means that everything he think about in this area goes through the coloured glass of Christianity. Second, the audience, which seems to support him on these matters, also means that he is more likely to gain from insulting Islam and reinforcing Christian beliefs & values. So these things are based not on any kind of truth, rather on his own religious belief producing his own truth.
The Koran is not an accurate document - Really? Neither is the bible, it has been rewritten so many times which has resulted in it being more of a political document than an historical one. It also does not follow any evidence, according to the bible dinosaurs were created only 6,000 to 10,000 years ago despite at least 12 independent tests of dinosaur remains putting them living at least 65 years ago going up to 230 million years ago. Oh and now a museum in Kentucky USA based on the creationist perspective cites that dinosaurs were taken on Noah’s Ark. What is it called when someone makes statements about something things even though there is no mention in any historical artefact? Oh right, it’s called a guess.
Jesus was born talking Islamic scripture - This has to be the best statement ever! Oh of course the point here was that Muslims were making it up so that the “truth” would meet their own ends. This is so less believable then Jesus being immaculacy conceived which was just something the Roman Catholic Church made up in order to portray Jesus being born without sin. In fact those Christians that don’t believe Jesus being immaculacy conceived describe it as Jesus being the result miraculously Conception. And I know that Catholics will argue that the virgin birth and Immaculate Conception are different things, they mean the same thing in most people’s head but just to make sure Mary the mother of Jesus had a one way vagina which is a lovely expression Christopher Hitchens used. Any real proof that this happened Christians? *cough*
His second misgiving of Islam is that it is an historical inaccurate conception of Jesus - I don’t want to sound like a broken record but how they hell does he know that? Ok he also said that either the New Testament or the Koran is wrong and it’s more likely that the New Testament is right because it was basically written closer to the time the events are supposed to have happened. Bart Ehrman points out the mistakes in the New Testament resulting just from monks making mistakes in copying out new bibles. There is evidence for this and that these mistakes once made where recopied and the original meaning changing over time due to errors being recopying again and again. You want to talk about historical accurate documents, let’s start there.
My point is that twats like this man that comment on other religions when they don’t even care about looking at their own religious belief are not only inexperienced at thinking, they are also stupid. I admit I make comments about religion but I am not promoting one particular faith neither am I suggesting that somehow the floors in my belief systems are unimportant. The general point of this post - Don’t throw stones in glass houses. How is his statements anymore than a promotion of his own beliefs.
*These are my personal opinions and these opinions do not represent any authors, writers, lectures or others I have made comments about.
This is the start of the new blog that goes with the website http://www.rational-understandings.co.uk/. I hope it will be exciting for you as it will be for me, or at least somehow interesting. Hope to post more…
First of all let me initially describe the position that I have found myself in many times, people describe me as an atheist! Actually, let me also be honest I have described myself as that as well, still I have never really subscribed to the church of atheists so I don’t really know why I got there. When people say it though I get the impression that somehow my perception of the world is altered slightly since I then have the agenda of the atheists which gets in the way of me understanding the world. When I was younger I was not really a strong Christian nevertheless I kind of understood that there was a God and a bloke called Jesus who was a good guy that suffered in his own way. At this level lets be frank they are not the same sorts of things, I never learned how to be a good atheist or had to go to a special place in order to increase my general understanding of the thing that I don’t believe in. This is the key word; believe, since I rejected the notion of Christianity I simply stopped believing in that kind of God, non-belief is very different to that of belief in many ways. Rejecting the notion of Jesus simply means that I no longer believe that the stories of his life are anything other than stories. So when I come to make my decisions in life whatever Jesus said or did is never really all that important. I often hear about girls asking ‘what would Jesus do?’ and that leading them to rejecting sex before marriage. I did some research and found out girls (young women) that make that pledge more often than not only delay sex for 18 months and then since they are never taught about contraception, I assume because people think that they won’t have sex, end up pregnant and with more sexual transmitted diseases than the average population. Whereas atheism would never lead to such a universal pledge by young girls, Christianity would, that is the fundamental difference between the two.
One thing that amazes me is that science tends to work quite often; I don’t need to tell you that you already know. The point here is that it tends to work, still there are places where the misunderstanding of science comes in, these are my thoughts on how science sometimes is not based upon real knowledge rather agenda based needs. The aim of the positivists who had its home in part in Vienna, one of the most liberal places in the world at the turn of the last century, was to create an independent body of knowledge that in affect was a real reflection of the world as it exists. In truth as the result of the Vienna circle and those the preceded & came after the circle created three types of worlds, the members are most likely known to you such as Comte, Ayer and Carnap. Ok you have only heard of Comte, that’s ok the names are not that important here. The first world they created was that of Faith and habit, this world was seen as those unimportant things each generation picked up and their children adopted this meant very little because they could not be seen as true and were different from person to person. The second world was that of the metaphysical, in other words religion and its use of explaining the events that where happening. Since this again can’t be observed and tends to differ, this world was also dismissed. The third world was created by the rational and logical person, with the assumption of the scientific method; there are many assumptions in this method. The idea was not that these three worlds could survive side-by-side rather, the second world had replaced the first and the third would replace the second.
separates into the colour spectrum, removing the idea that white light itself cannot be broken down and is only made up of one element. Why did this even matter to Newton? He could have not understood the benefits that would later be developed from this idea; in part we can thank him for the ability to understand radiation and infrared light which are also based on the same spectrum. Perhaps the drive to understanding the world was his greatest force. Newton did provide something much more useful, the idea of induction. I won’t go into induction that deeply here but it is the idea that first you can close the world off and take out the things you want to test putting them in an artificial environment in the process. In other words putting the objects of study into an experiment to see their nature & relationship and this is where science can also go wrong. Taking the objects of study outside of the real world so we can test them, means something more - it means that we are unable to test them in the world, so effectively science never deals with the reflection of the world. Just a controlled version of it! Most science is pushed into explanations of real world things, it is important to remember that science is simply a theoretical model and theories sometimes go wrong.
