[MD] Dawkins a Materialist

[david buchanan]

ian said:
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.

dmb says:
Apparently you're not trying hard enough. As I keep saying, if we have 
reasons to believe it, then it is not faith (not even temporary). If there 
are reasons to believe it, then that simply does not fit the definition of 
the term so that the phrase "reasons to have faith" is nonsensical.

ian continued:
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).

dmb says:
Whew! Finally a thought that makes sense to me. Yes, the criteria for what 
constitutes an acceptable reason or set of reasons is going to change over 
time. Pirsig tries to expand what counts as valid empirical evidence, for 
example, by insisting that sensory experience is not the only kind that 
should count. Other kinds of experience, he says, has been excluded for 
metaphysical reasons (SOM), not scientific or logical reasons per se. The 
positivists are the classic example of this sort of limited sensory 
empiricism. And this definately ties in with the distinction between beliefs 
held dearly and with great conviction (faith) and provisional beliefs held 
on the basis of evidence. The exact nature and validity of the reasons for 
our scientific beliefs is as open to criticism and revison as the belief 
itself. As Pirsig says, intellectual truth is not more true in any absolute 
sense, whatever that means, its just that it is more dynamic than social 
level truths. The clash between scientific truth and faith is like that only 
more so. Faith as it exists today is a reaction against intellect. It is a 
kind of desperate clinging to social level values in the face of 
contradictory evidence. I think this is a wildly immoral drag on evolution 
and in conventional reality people are literally dying because of it.

Again, anybody with a dictionary and access to the news should understand 
this. The fact that there are so many MOQers having trouble with it makes me 
very, very blue. I mean, for Christ's sake, just look around at what's 
happening in this world right now. Its a bloody mess. And I don't just mean 
that in terms of English slang. I mean its literally bloody. You know, wet, 
red, and smelling of death and gunpowder.

ian said:
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.

dmb says:
What?! Two sensible sentences in a row? I'm thrilled to be wrong. I mean, I 
would have bet against two in a row. This notion of freedom is the flipside 
of control and can even be applied to the principle of oppostion. The social 
level seeks freedom from the laws of the jungle and the intellectual level 
seeks freedom from the social level's laws. The history of evolution is the 
history of increasing freedom, of overcoming the limits of the parent level.

ian said:
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.

dmb says:
The credibility of communication is essential, yes. That one of the reason I 
get so bent out of shape when people make no apparent effort to make 
themselves clear and why I get so irritated when people refuse to accept 
basic things like definitions and distinctions. Without these things there 
is no way to communicate effectively or express ourselves in a way that can 
make sense to each other. Wiithout these things we can't even properly agree 
as to the topic.

Fianlly, ian said:
(BTW no drama in science ? Where have you been for 400 years ?)

dmb replies:
You're saying that to me? No way man. When it comes to science and 
especially the conflict with other belief systems I'm a total drama queen. 
I'm always going on about blasphemy, about the church burning scientists and 
mystics at the stake, the hurricane of the 20th century and the current 
battles between science and fundamentalism in American politics, calling 
Bush an anti-intellectual reactionary and a fascist and such. No drama in 
science. Nope, not me. I think the best show going. Presently I'm reading a 
book called Descartes Secret Notebook. Its like The DeVinci Code for 
philosophers except its not fiction. Turns out he was a member the the 
Rosicrucians, a secret society of alchemical type mystics. They were secret 
because they had to be. Dabbling in such things at the time could get a guy 
killed. I love the drama. Its fun to see these conflicts in terms of bad 
guys and heros and its a truly great story, one that still unfolds. Guess 
whose side I'm on.

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