Sam Harris: Is Atheism Dogmatic?

Sam Harris: Is Atheism Dogmatic?

Taken from his talk at aspen

part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baAg6k4c1Jg

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Sam
• Harris
• Atheist
• Religion
• God
• Dogmatic

[TheOmegajuice]

dogmatic atheism makes about as much sense as militant pacifism

[TheReasonWhyGuy]

Arrogance is a side effect of ignorance

[greenbrad182]

Carl Sagan was indeed the most wisest of people

a true inspiration for so many and a good reason

[baldurus1]

Is non belief in santa-claus dogmatic?

[wkrepelin]

@lajungesombre I like peace, lets' go with that. Be well.

[lajungesombre]

@wkrepelin Ok so then the appropriate attitude is one in which science, art, politics, religion, philosophy are taken up in their specific, natural ways. Rather than be like Harris, a dogmatic fool, or like the Pope, an equally dogmatic fool, we ought to be those who attempt to genuinely understand existence. So we are agreed. In that case, we have made peace with one another. :-)

[wkrepelin]

@lajungesombre By the way, I am an artist and musician as well as poet. My life does not revolve around science only. I still understand that for sending man to the moon or predicting the orbit of mercury art is totally useless. To contrast, science has a great deal of difficulty with things like philosophy or epistemology as we must make certain assumptions about reality to do science that totally circumnavigate very important existential questions in favor of pragmatism.

[wkrepelin]

@lajungesombre I do enjoy those things and do not hold them as base but they are not ways to accurately understand the natural world. They have no predictive value in any quantitative way and are often internally inconsistent. These are qualities that make them inferior to scientific investigation in regards to scientific questions. There are many other questions that are not scientific that art or religion may answer in a way science cannot if science has anything to say on the matter at all.

[lajungesombre]

@wkrepelin yet already you bias experience, compounding it with hallucinations and mistakes. as if human experience were so frail. to wipe away experience and non-scientific ways of accessing the truth as useless or relatively useless is to exaggerate the strength of science and the weakness of non-science. why such an extreme position? why not take things in stride? why not appreciate art, science, religion, politics, &c rather than hold one as supreme and all others as base?

[wkrepelin]

@lajungesombre It's not glib it merely recognizes the subjective nature of truth. Also, while experience is necessarily subjective agreement between experience is markedly less so especially when repeatedly compounded by multiple sources. That is where science gains its power to get past personal bias, idiosyncrasies, mistakes, hallucination, frauds and more. It's not a perfect system but it is by far and using any conceivable metric the best pragmatic approach ever conceived by humanity.

[lajungesombre]

@wkrepelin it's a bit glib to hide behind the "who knows what people mean by (insert word here)". the whole language argument is trite at this point. but, more interestingly, since repeatable observations are the only access to facts regarding the cosmos, and since experience is by nature idiosyncratic and unrepeatable, so it every experience is not a means of accessing facts regarding the cosmos. yet repeated observation happens within the context of individual experience....

[wkrepelin]

@lajungesombre Eh, who knows what people mean my truth? Facts are much better than truths anyway because they maintain their character over time indefinitely. Repeatable observation is the only access we have to facts regarding the cosmos. You can keep truth for yourself as I see it to be of little utility though I do enjoy them for their philosophical aspects.