The God Delusion by Dawkins

[Starlight]

This, I can definitely agree with-- and, in fact, would have agreed even when I was a devout Christian. I wouldn't go so far as to call people 'mad,' necessarily, but I do definitely let people know that accounts of their own personal eperience is not very convincing to me.

In the neopagan community, these sorts of individual religious experiences or revelations are referred to as UPG, or Unverified Personal Gnosis. We fully understand how such things can be extremely convincing to the experiencer, while remaining unconvincing to others.

I was just thinking myself, that three times in my life I've had experiences that I wrote-off as 'lucid dreams' - I was in my bed at the time and was groggily half-asleep half-awake and could see my room but also see things in it that I judged not to be real upon waking up further (a swarm of giant spiders swarming toward me, The Mummy off the movies of that name, etc). But imagine if those experiences had happened to have religious content of a religion I was familiar with. If I had been a devout Catholic would I perhaps have lucid-dreamed of seeing Mary, or of seeing Jesus talking to me? Would I then believe that the experience might have been 'real' and a 'religious experience' instead of a lucid-dream? Scientists who have tried stimulating bits of the brain via magnetic fields or electric current generally seem to find that when this triggers a 'religious experience' the person sees whatever it is their own religion has primed them to see.

[Adrift]

Sure, I bet you've carefully investigated 10,000 different religions and their supernatural claims... oh, wait, no I don't. I think you're full of it.

I never claimed to have carefully investigated 10,000 different religions. A quick google tells me that a rough estimate puts the number closer to 4200, and I imagine that number is highly exaggerated as it divides major religions into denominations. There seems to be 22 major religions in the world, and that's a number I find far more likely. Of those, 7 represent the most adherents in the world.

I think you've decided the religion you happened to be born into was the One True One and haven't seriously investigated many other religions at all, and you make fake claims about how open-minded you are when really you're one of the most closed-minded people I've ever met.

Well, you'd be wrong. I do not belong to the religion I was born into, and I have spent considerable time investigating a wide assortment of supernatural claims from a number of religions (not even close to 10,000 religions, or 4200, probably closer to the main 7). Your rant sort of misses the point though. I didn't say that I investigated every claim by every religion to decide which religion to belong to (though I did spend much time doing just that many years ago). I stated that I don't currently, as an individual who has accepted Christianity, dismiss any supernatural claim out of hand. As a Christian, I am absolutely certain that Zoroastrians, Muslims, Hindus, and the like have, and do experience supernatural phenomena (both positive and negative) all the time.

Out of context of course. Just because the universe itself doesn't have inherent justice or inherent purpose or inherent good doesn't mean those things can't exist or be real... their source is not the universe though. Their source is humanity.

It really couldn't be in a better context. Complaining about religion messing up morality, and then basing that morality, not on some objective source, but on human whim, is completely laughable. It just demonstrates how little Dawkins (and you) have thought these things through. In a Christian society, Christians doing good is good, but it may be evil in an Islamic society, or evil in an atheistic one. If the only source we have for morality is humanity, and the only source for religion is humanity, then there's absolutely no way Dawkins can claim that religion messes up morality. Without an objective source, every religion (or nonreligion) is in perfect harmony with humanity depending on the particular culture. What may be good in a predominantly Christian nation may be evil in an Islamic nation, and may be evil in a secular nation, and all three are perfectly right.

[Boxing Pythagoras]

I was just thinking myself, that three times in my life I've had experiences that I wrote-off as 'lucid dreams' - I was in my bed at the time and was groggily half-asleep half-awake and could see my room but also see things in it that I judged not to be real upon waking up further (a swarm of giant spiders swarming toward me, The Mummy off the movies of that name, etc). But imagine if those experiences had happened to have religious content of a religion I was familiar with.

I don't have to imagine it. I know exactly what that is like. I have occipital epilepsy. Occipital epilepsy often presents in the form of visual hallucination and illusion. When I was growing up, and well before I was diagnosed, I often saw things which I interpreted religiously. Having grown up in a Charismatic community of Christian believers, things which seem miraculous and abnormal to others seemed like regular events, to me, including prophetic visions. Naturally, I believed the things which I had seen fell under this sort of category, as well.

As I grew older, I began to notice that the things which I saw on occasion were not exclusively religious. Sometimes I found myself seeing people I know who weren't actually there. Sometimes I saw deer or dogs. Sometimes I saw robots or monsters. Sometimes I saw huge chasms in the road ahead of me as I was driving. These sorts of things I recognized as being visual hallucinations-- especially after my diagnosis-- but I maintained that my religious visions were supernatural revelations from God. Still, I recognized that I did not really have any good way of discerning which of my visions were supernatural revelations and which were simply hallucinations, other than the fact that some were religious in nature.

Now that I no longer believe in the supernatural, I tend to ascribe all of my visions, religious or otherwise, to my epilepsy. Incidentally, that hasn't stopped me from having hallucinations with a religious context. On several occasions, I have seen ravens where there are no ravens. As the avatars of Thought and Memory in the mythology of my current religion, these visions are definitely striking and powerful. I simply no longer believe them to be supernatural revelations from the divine.

[Starlight]

I don't have to imagine it. I know exactly what that is like. I have occipital epilepsy. Occipital epilepsy often presents in the form of visual hallucination and illusion. When I was growing up, and well before I was diagnosed, I often saw things which I interpreted religiously. Having grown up in a Charismatic community of Christian believers, things which seem miraculous and abnormal to others seemed like regular events, to me, including prophetic visions. Naturally, I believed the things which I had seen fell under this sort of category, as well.

As I grew older, I began to notice that the things which I saw on occasion were not exclusively religious. Sometimes I found myself seeing people I know who weren't actually there. Sometimes I saw deer or dogs. Sometimes I saw robots or monsters. Sometimes I saw huge chasms in the road ahead of me as I was driving. These sorts of things I recognized as being visual hallucinations-- especially after my diagnosis-- but I maintained that my religious visions were supernatural revelations from God. Still, I recognized that I did not really have any good way of discerning which of my visions were supernatural revelations and which were simply hallucinations, other than the fact that some were religious in nature.

And it seems pretty self-explanatory that in pre-science societies, individuals like yourself who regularly had such 'spiritual visions' would be quickly appointed by the tribe to a position of shaman / prophet / religious leader / oracle, who could guide them through your interpretation of your visions and communicate with the spirit world / gods on their behalf.

[Adrift]

I don't have to imagine it. I know exactly what that is like. I have occipital epilepsy. Occipital epilepsy often presents in the form of visual hallucination and illusion. When I was growing up, and well before I was diagnosed, I often saw things which I interpreted religiously. Having grown up in a Charismatic community of Christian believers, things which seem miraculous and abnormal to others seemed like regular events, to me, including prophetic visions. Naturally, I believed the things which I had seen fell under this sort of category, as well.

As I grew older, I began to notice that the things which I saw on occasion were not exclusively religious. Sometimes I found myself seeing people I know who weren't actually there. Sometimes I saw deer or dogs. Sometimes I saw robots or monsters. Sometimes I saw huge chasms in the road ahead of me as I was driving. These sorts of things I recognized as being visual hallucinations-- especially after my diagnosis-- but I maintained that my religious visions were supernatural revelations from God. Still, I recognized that I did not really have any good way of discerning which of my visions were supernatural revelations and which were simply hallucinations, other than the fact that some were religious in nature.

Now that I no longer believe in the supernatural, I tend to ascribe all of my visions, religious or otherwise, to my epilepsy. Incidentally, that hasn't stopped me from having hallucinations with a religious context. On several occasions, I have seen ravens where there are no ravens. As the avatars of Thought and Memory in the mythology of my current religion, these visions are definitely striking and powerful. I simply no longer believe them to be supernatural revelations from the divine.

It was my understanding that those who suffer from TLE usually only see very rudimentary hallucinations. Colors, balls, streaks of light, that sort of thing, and that children are the ones who usually experience it. Is there some sort of late stage version of the disorder where you experience more intense concrete type hallucinations?

[robrecht]

Hansgeorg and Adrift are loose in the thread so there's no saving it now. But I just skip over their posts when reading, so ~shrug~.

If you want to talk about Dawkins' views and/or my views, please be my guest. I'll respond.

I think you may have missed my earlier follow-up question in the ensuing drift and madness.

Since Dawkins' "who designed the designer?" question appears to have gotten lost in the madness of arguments about temporal and material causality, let's have a look at some of Dawkins' other points that I flagged in my notes.

Some points Dawkins makes include (my paraphases):

(1) Any religious person is also an atheist with respect to Zeus, Odin, Raw, etc, atheists just go one god further. ...

This is another point that I want to get to eventually, but I'd rather build upon a basis of mutual understanding of some points that I consider central. So, if I may return to my earlier question, quoting just a little bit of context:

... Or perhaps even the first cause is a simple awareness - a single consciousness that is conscious only of its own existence... a being that lacks all the advanced mental functions that we have but has consciousness as the essence of its existence, and thus we would get a Buddhist-esque view where the sea of consciousness is the fundamental entity and we are drops of water that have split out of it and will merge back into it on death. But I fully agree with Dawkins, that the Christian God as depicted in the bible is vastly too complex a being to be the 'first cause' of everything, because he has too many attributes and too many of those attributes are complex in nature. The Christian God has a level of complexity that requires an origin story for him... did he evolve in some other universe, was he designed by another designer?

So, if Dawkins is not limiting himself to a temporal first cause (ie, something existing before more developed evolutionary complexity), why does he (or you) think that a non-temporal 'first cause', in a more philosophical sense of a prime mover, cannot itself be a complex entity of any kind?

[Kbertsche]

(3) Dawkins has some statistics on percentages of scientists who are atheists, including some yet-to-be-published findings at his time of writing. 7% of the members of the US National Academy of Sciences believe in a personal God. The Royal Society in the UK and commonwealth has 3.3% of members who "strongly agreed" with the statement that a personal God exists, while 78% "strongly disagreed" with the statement. Nearly all studies in the US since 1927 have found that intelligence is negatively correlated with religiosity and with being liberal.

Can you please give a reference to the US NAS study, so we can see the details? I've seen study results which claim nearly the opposite--that the majority of US scientists believe in God.

These sorts of studies are notoriously difficult to do well. Results can vary greatly, depending on what questions were asked and how they were asked. Further, results can easily be misinterpreted by researchers who do not understand the nuances of religious belief.

I think the best recent studies in this area are those done by Elaine Howard Ecklund and her colleagues. I highly recommend her book Science vs. Religion. Based on a study of science faculty at elite American research universities, she found that 27 percent have some sort of belief in God (9 percent have no doubt of His existence, 14 percent believe in God with some doubts, 5 percent believe in Him sometimes). She also found that a full 50 percent identify with a religious label; of these, 14 percent are Mainliine Protestant and 16 percent are Jewish.

[Starlight]

Can you please give a reference to the US NAS study, so we can see the details?

Edward J. Larson and Larry Witham: "Leading Scientists Still Reject God." Nature, 1998; 394, 313. Summarized here.

Another study that may interest you is this discussion of a 2009 Pew study.

[Starlight]

So, if Dawkins is not limiting himself to a temporal first cause (ie, something existing before more developed evolutionary complexity), why does he (or you) think that a non-temporal 'first cause', in a more philosophical sense of a prime mover, cannot itself be a complex entity of any kind?

Generally people take the view that if something were to exist "necessarily" in the philosophical sense, then it must be both incredibly simple (non-complex) and also have something about its nature that makes its existence a given. Presumably the philosophical 'first cause' exists necessarily, because otherwise it would seem to need a cause. What we'd want in a satisfactory 'first cause' is thus something of incredible and irreducibly simplicity whose existence seems a given. Some sort of mathematical formula seems a good candidate for it, in my view. I also think a consciousness could be a potentially good candidate (assuming that consciousness turns out to be simple and not a complex multi-part phenomenon) - i.e. the thing that necessarily exists is awareness of existence... but you obviously can't start wantonly ascribing other arbitrary properties to this consciousness to make it into a theistic god without breaking the simplicity of it and hence ruling it out as a possibility for being the first cause.

If complex and arbitrary entities are allowed to be the 'first cause', then we could simply assert that the big bang was the first cause and be done with it.

[rogue06]

Can you please give a reference to the US NAS study, so we can see the details? I've seen study results which claim nearly the opposite--that the majority of US scientists believe in God.

These sorts of studies are notoriously difficult to do well. Results can vary greatly, depending on what questions were asked and how they were asked. Further, results can easily be misinterpreted by researchers who do not understand the nuances of religious belief.

I think the best recent studies in this area are those done by Elaine Howard Ecklund and her colleagues. I highly recommend her book Science vs. Religion. Based on a study of science faculty at elite American research universities, she found that 27 percent have some sort of belief in God (9 percent have no doubt of His existence, 14 percent believe in God with some doubts, 5 percent believe in Him sometimes). She also found that a full 50 percent identify with a religious label; of these, 14 percent are Mainliine Protestant and 16 percent are Jewish.

In the first ever worldwide survey of the religious beliefs of scientists, conducted by Elaine Howard Ecklund of Rice University in, IIRC, 2015, found that in some places there is a higher percentage of scientists who believe in God than there is in the general population. Probably the most extreme example can be found in Hong Kong where 39% of scientists there identify as religious compared with only 20% of the general population.

[Kbertsche]

Edward J. Larson and Larry Witham: "Leading Scientists Still Reject God." Nature, 1998; 394, 313. Summarized here.

Another study that may interest you is this discussion of a 2009 Pew study.

How do you reconcile these reports with Ecklund's conclusions?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Larson and Witham study seems to be based only on a short survey which used wording from 1913. If so, there is s significant danger of miscommunication and misunderstanding with this approach.

[Starlight]

How do you reconcile these reports with Ecklund's conclusions?

Ecklund's conclusions are largely the same: "The researchers did find that scientists are generally less religious than a given general population." Exceptions to this were in areas that were historically influenced by the compulsory atheism of China's Cultural Revolution, which says something sociohistorically complex is happening in those specific areas, but isn't particularly interesting for the general question.

In general the findings are similar across all the studies: Scientists are less religious than the general population, and the more competent at science the the person is (e.g. voted members of national academy / royal society by their peers for the quality of their scientific work) the less religious they are on average.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Larson and Witham study seems to be based only on a short survey which used wording from 1913. If so, there is s significant danger of miscommunication and misunderstanding with this approach.

It seems to me you vastly overplay the alleged "danger of miscommunication". A simple question about God and asking you to select belief, disbelief, or agnosticism isn't overly ambiguous. A 4-year-old might struggle with such a question, but these are scientists.

[robrecht]

Generally people take the view that if something were to exist "necessarily" in the philosophical sense, then it must be both incredibly simple (non-complex) and also have something about its nature that makes its existence a given. Presumably the philosophical 'first cause' exists necessarily, because otherwise it would seem to need a cause. What we'd want in a satisfactory 'first cause' is thus something of incredible and irreducibly simplicity whose existence seems a given. Some sort of mathematical formula seems a good candidate for it, in my view. I also think a consciousness could be a potentially good candidate (assuming that consciousness turns out to be simple and not a complex multi-part phenomenon) - i.e. the thing that necessarily exists is awareness of existence... but you obviously can't start wantonly ascribing other arbitrary properties to this consciousness to make it into a theistic god without breaking the simplicity of it and hence ruling it out as a possibility for being the first cause.

If complex and arbitrary entities are allowed to be the 'first cause', then we could simply assert that the big bang was the first cause and be done with it.

But why? Generally people think so, I suppose, but is there any philosophical justification for thinking so?

By invoking the Big Bang, it seems like there might still be some evolutionary presumption of temporal development, but we're not necessarily speaking of a first cause in a temporal sense. I think of a singularity as something at the limit of our understanding, beyond our current ability to reliably model with our theoretical approach. Why wouldn't that which is currently beyond our ability to understand be, well, just that, beyond our ability to understand?

[Starlight]

But why? Generally people think so, I suppose, but is there any philosophical justification for thinking so?

Not sure which one of those statements you're asking the question about. But in general, if something has multiple components, then it could have been different, because there are always different ways or arranging and combining multiple components and different possible choices of components. If something could have been different then it is not "necessary" in a philosophical sense, and needs an explanation / cause as to why it is the way it is and why it wasn't different.

By invoking the Big Bang, it seems like there might still be some evolutionary presumption of temporal development, but we're not necessarily speaking of a first cause in a temporal sense. I think of a singularity as something at the limit of our understanding, beyond our current ability to reliably model with our theoretical approach. Why wouldn't that which is currently beyond our ability to understand be, well, just that, beyond our ability to understand?

I have no problem with saying there might be limits to our understanding. It is possible that humanity will never in a million years understand anything before the Big Bang due to it being fundamentally beyond human limits to understand.

However as a scientist I discard the such an observation as pragmatically irrelevant: We should always assume that there's more to be discovered and try to discover it - otherwise we'd never discover anything. There's no point sitting on philosophical laurels and saying "I think we've probably discovered all we ever can know, why even bother to try to learn more?" Because if there is more to be learned, then the way to learn it is to try to discover it. If there isn't more to be learned, nothing great is lost by trying to discover it. And in the past people have been nothing but wrong when they've thought that we were reaching the limits of knowledge or that we would never be able to prove things. I'm always partial to the bible verse:

Who has measured out the waters in the hollow of his hand, or carefully measured the sky, or carefully weighed the soil of the earth, or weighed the mountains in a balance, or the hills on scales? Isa 40:12

Answer: Scientists.

[robrecht]

Not sure which one of those statements you're asking the question about. But in general, if something has multiple components, then it could have been different, because there are always different ways or arranging and combining multiple components and different possible choices of components. If something could have been different then it is not "necessary" in a philosophical sense, and needs an explanation / cause as to why it is the way it is and why it wasn't different.

That seems to be true of things we are able to understand, especially with respect to objects that are subject to various forces, but what about someone who is the way they are because they simply want to be this way?

I have no problem with saying there might be limits to our understanding. It is possible that humanity will never in a million years understand anything before the Big Bang due to it being fundamentally beyond human limits to understand.

However as a scientist I discard the such an observation as pragmatically irrelevant: We should always assume that there's more to be discovered and try to discover it - otherwise we'd never discover anything. There's no point sitting on philosophical laurels and saying "I think we've probably discovered all we ever can know, why even bother to try to learn more?" Because if there is more to be learned, then the way to learn it is to try to discover it. If there isn't more to be learned, nothing great is lost by trying to discover it. And in the past people have been nothing but wrong when they've thought that we were reaching the limits of knowledge or that we would never be able to prove things. I'm always partial to the bible verse:

Who has measured out the waters in the hollow of his hand, or carefully measured the sky, or carefully weighed the soil of the earth, or weighed the mountains in a balance, or the hills on scales? Isa 40:12

Answer: Scientists.

Please do not presume that I am advocating any kind of anti-intellectual 'we will never be able to understand' approach. Rather, I think our approach to singularities is excitement about how we can try to expand our minds and hearts to better understand them. I think such an attitude is eminently relevant for science, even if it is not always practical.

By the way, how much does the earth weigh?