[MD] Dawkins a Materialist (is watching?)

[pholden at davtv.com]

Quoting Case <Case at iSpots.com>:

> [Platt]
> The question is, why do those who survive see it that way? If as science
> believes we are just meaningless compounds of chemicals in a meaningless
> universe, what's the point? 
> 
> [Case]
> The survivors see it that way because they are the ones still surviving.

Circular?

> Those who see no value in surviving are no longer here or soon to depart.
> Why does a fire burn? A fire that could supply its own fuel would burn
> indefinitely. Wow, that kinda what we do!
 
> Survivors spark little fires like themselves and just keep on burning. Near
> as we can tell this fire has been burning for four billion years.
> 
> "We didn't start the fire
> But when we are gone
> Will it still burn on, and on, and on, and on..."
> -Billy Joel

Does a fire have a choice like humans do? That's the difference.

> If you consider the things you truly value I suspect that you will find that
> at their root they are things that mainly serve to keep the fire burning.
> Maslow's hierarchy certainly identifies such things as fundamental. Things
> that support the fire, we experiences as pleasure. Things that would dampen
> it, we find painful.
> 
> This is not design. This is just what keeps the process going. And that is
> the point: to keep the process going.

Sounds like the point is to just run around in circles, going nowhere for no
reason. What did Pirsig say about such a worldview? "From the perspective of a
subject-object science, the world is a completely purposeless, valueless place.
There is no point in anything. Nothing is right and nothing is wrong. Everything
just functions, like machinery. There is nothing morally wrong with being lazy,
nothing morally wrong with lying, with theft, with suicide, with murder, with
genocide. There is nothing morally wrong because there are no morals, just
functions." (Lila, 22) 

"To keep the process going" means keep functioning. Seems there's little doubt
that your perspective is that of subject-object science, not that you've ever 
denied it. But I agree with Pirsig that such a perspective has had a debilitating
effect on the human psyche. 







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