[MD] Dawkins a Materialist

[ian glendinning]

DMB, you highlighted the word "REASONS" in your response to DM.

Reasons to trust, reasons to have (even temporary) faith. Far from
being a detractor, I've been trying very hard to agree with you.

All I'm saying, and asking for your help / suggestions with, is what
makes a good "reason". It's beginning to sound like you agree that the
essential quality is its "contingency" - being open to question and
revision (ie where direct personal experience typically does not
provide conclusive evidence, whatever that is).

Looking at all kinds of faith and belief, it seems what makes a good
one, is one whose basic doctrine is the freedom of thought, and that
such freedom is the distinguishing aspect of the social and
intellectual levels.

A difficulty I keep alluding to is that if this is the case, then
intellect depends hugely on credibility of communication (rhetoric),
since by definition we are not going to witness first-hand empirical
evidence for everything we believe.

(BTW no drama in science ? Where have you been for 400 years ?)
Reasons to be cheerful, 1, 2 3.
Ian

On 1/7/07, david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:
> David M said:
> I certainly take a lot of science on faith & trust because I just don't get
> down to the lab like I used to.
>
> dmb says:
> Sigh. This is the sort of nonsense I was complaining about when I said my
> detractors seem to be amaking the bogus assumption that faith-based beleifs
> include any view that is held in the absence of absolute certainty. I mean,
> we can trust the sceintific process without resorting to faith. We can
> accept the conclusions of science and believe them with resorting to faith.
> We can see that science works, that it produces useful knowlege, that it is
> valuable and gets things done. We have lots and lots of REASONS to trust
> science. Nobody is saying that scientific knowledge is absolute, perfect,
> above criticism, beyond improvement or anything like that, but there is a
> mountain of evidence that has been building for hundreds of years. Reason,
> experience and evidence is the basis of our trust, not faith. We certainly
> don't have to personally observe every experiment or read every article to
> think that science works, to believe its assertions or to put trust in the
> process.
>
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