Comments on: Integrals, anyone?

By: Welcome UU World readers! at Making Chutney

Welcome UU World readers! at Making Chutney — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 14:01:04 +0000

[…] “Integrals, anyone?” (On Dawkin’s coinage of the term “brights.”) 6/26/2003 […]

By: Rev. Keith Wright

Rev. Keith Wright — Fri, 20 Feb 2004 21:52:20 +0000

There is one more group to add to your list of those between Brights and New Age…Deists. Our core belief is based on a belief in God as revealed through nature and reason. You would find our ideas in line with those of Paul Davies and Thomas Paine. We hve chosen to come together and create a new reason based religion.

By: PJI

PJI — Fri, 15 Aug 2003 18:43:44 +0000

Satan was bright and gay too – as Lucifer,the angel of music, he was covered in multi-colored jewels. After he fell from heaven, “bright and gay” was just a coverup for his ugliness, just as it is for these political groups today.

By: makingchutney.com

makingchutney.com — Tue, 29 Jul 2003 17:14:25 +0000

ET pray home
I just read an intriguing article in the September issue of The Atlantic by Aussie philosopher Paul Davies. (Don’t ask me why the September issue just arrived now in late July.) It’s called “E.T. and God: Could earthly religions survive the discovery o…

By: chutney

chutney — Wed, 02 Jul 2003 15:16:33 +0000

You’re right about the distinction between faith as cognitive-propositional assent and faith as cultural-linguistic lifestyle. For the life of me I’ll never understand why brilliant techies think their expertise automatically extends beyond the laboratory walls.

By: daniel

daniel — Fri, 27 Jun 2003 17:50:11 +0000

I think adolescent is a perfect description of Dawkins’ position. Particularly in claiming to be both open-minded and a dogmatic naturalist.

You are right to point out just how inappropriate his whining about atheist oppression is. Indeed, Dawkins seems to be disappointed that his dogma (naturalistic atheism) hasn’t managed (he would suppose) to be quite as oppressive as some others.

I’m amazed at how naive these brilliant scientists when it comes to culture. Case in point, his claim that there is something despicable about referring to a particular child as a “Catholic child” or a “Muslim child” since clearly they are not mature or objective enough make decisions about their beliefs (and when does that happen anyway? after your first advanced degree?). Now, Dawkins would be right if one’s religious disposition/vocation were only, or even primarily, about “belief” — which, in Dawkins’ sense, would mean something like “assent to a proposition(s) concerning matter(s) of fact.” But since one’s religious disposition is (as with one’s scientific disposition) more a matter of a way of life than the assent to any set of propositional statements, wouldn’t it be just as appropriate (and useful) to refer to a “Catholic child” as it is to refer to a “Canadian child”?