Cultural Christian

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hedlite H
hedlite Dec 15, 2007 16:43:04
Replying to anthonyqkiernan

i think dawkins did an excellent job in deliniating the mindless bigotry that just starting out on soft religion can lead to. personally though, i find it ironic that someone of his intelectual capability would use this information to try and lend weight to what is ultimately another 'belief'. surely the purely scientific approach would be to remain open minded to all possibilities?

H handofdave
handofdave Dec 15, 2007 17:52:19
Replying to hedlite

hedlite wrote:
surely the purely scientific approach would be to remain open minded to all possibilities?
Pure science, in a perfect world, would be ready and willing to change its beliefs as new information usurped the old ones.

But science is rarely funded outside of government or for-profit labs. So sometimes you get bad science on a big institutional level that, even with the new information, is so entrenched in its contracts and r&d costs it goes ahead with the old paradigm.

Semiprofessional and amateur scientists are, in some ways, at an advantage, as they're less constrained by science-community orthodoxy, and although they cannot afford the same powerful research tools, are less tainted by outer-disciplinary biases.

F Father Sky
Father Sky Dec 17, 2007 12:18:36
Replying to hedlite

hedlite wrote:
surely the purely scientific approach would be to remain open minded to all possibilities?
In my view atheism is a belief based on rational science. Christianity and other religions are beliefs not based on rational science.

Dawkins, being a scientist, would have to change his position if he was presented with good new evidence - in this sense he does remain open-minded. But at present there is no known compelling scientific evidence for the existence of 'god,' and it seems *extremely* unlikely that such evidence will be found any time soon (it would literally take a miracle for this to happen). So the rational way forward is to believe in the non-existence of god. Atheists are not blind to the possibility of future evidence, they simply believe that it is irrational to expect such evidence to ever turn up.