Saturday, 17 May 2014
Tuesday, 6 May 2014
Let's Think.... 6 May 2014
The Virus of Faith
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Dawkins defines the "symptoms" of being infected by the "virus of religion", providing examples for most of them, and tries to define a connection between the elements of religion and its survival value (invoking Zahavi's handicap principle of sexual selection, applied to believers of a religion). Dawkins also describes religious beliefs as "mind-parasites", and as "gangs [that] will come to constitute a package, which may be sufficiently stable to deserve a collective name such as Roman Catholicism ... or ... component parts to a single virus".
Dawkins suggests that religious belief in the "faith-sufferer" typically shows the following elements:
It is impelled by some deep, inner conviction that something is true, or right, or virtuous: a conviction that doesn't seem to owe anything to evidence or reason, but which, nevertheless, the believer feels as totally compelling and convincing.
The believer typically makes a positive virtue of faith's being strong and unshakable, despite it not being based upon evidence.
There is a conviction that "mystery", per se, is a good thing; the belief that it is not a virtue to solve mysteries but to enjoy them and revel in their insolubility.
There may be intolerant behaviour towards perceived rival faiths, in extreme cases even the killing of opponents or advocating of their deaths. Believers may be similarly violent in disposition towards apostates or heretics, even if those espouse only a slightly different version of the faith.
The particular convictions that the believer holds, while having nothing to do with evidence, are likely to resemble those of the believer's parents.
If the believer is one of the rare exceptions who follows a different religion from his parents, the explanation may be cultural transmission from a charismatic individual.
The internal sensations of the 'faith-sufferer' may be reminiscent of those more ordinarily associated with sexual love.
Dawkins stresses his claim that religious beliefs do not spread as a result of evidence in their support, but typically by cultural transmission, in most cases from parents or from charismatic individuals. He refers to this as involving "epidemiology, not evidence". Further Dawkins distinguishes this process from the spread of scientific ideas, which, he suggests, is constrained by the requirement to conform with certain virtues of standard methodology: "testability, evidential support, precision, quantifiability, consistency, intersubjectivity, repeatability, universality, progressiveness, independence of cultural milieu, and so on". He points out that faith "spreads despite a total lack of every single one of these virtues".
(Wikipedia.org)
Wednesday, 30 April 2014
Let's Think....30 April 2014
Islam the religion of "peace" and story of Umm Qirfa
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Umm Qirfa was an old Arab woman contemporaneous to Muhammad, the prophet of Islam. She belonged to a pagan tribe named Banu Fazara at Wadi Al-Qurra. This old woman who was also a chief of her clan was brutally killed when Muhammad and his followers raided her tribe and overpowered them. The incident took place almost six years after Muhammad’s Hijra (هِجْرَة Migration) to Medina in 622 AD.
Ibn Ishaq, the first authentic biographer of Muhammad gives us the details in his Sirat Rasul Allah:
“And he killed her cruelly”. The cruel method used by the holy warriors of Muhammad to kill Umm Qirfa is described in Al-Tabari:
“By putting a rope into her two legs and to two camels and driving them until they rent her in two........”
Saturday, 19 April 2014
Friday, 18 April 2014
Let's Think....Saturday 19 April 2014
"How could the human mind progress, while tormented with frightful phantoms, and guided by men, interested in perpetuating its ignorance and fears? Man has been forced to vegetate in his primitive stupidity: he has been taught stories about invisible powers upon whom his happiness was supposed to depend. Occupied solely by his fears, and by unintelligible reveries, he has always been at the mercy of priests, who have reserved to themselves the right of thinking for him, and of directing his actions."
- Baron d'Holbach, encyclopedist and passionate Enlightenment atheist in Good Sense, 1772
Monday, 14 April 2014
Let's Think....14 April 2014
"The world, we are told, was created by a God who is both good and omnipotent. Before He created the world He foresaw all the pain and misery that it would contain; He is therefore responsible for all of it.
It is useless to argue that the pain in the world is due to sin. In the first place, this is not true; it is not sin that causes rivers to overflow their banks or volcanoes to erupt. But even if it were true, it would make no difference. If I were going to beget a child knowing that the child was going to be a homicidal maniac, I should be responsible for his crimes. If God knew in advance the sins of which man would be guilty, He was clearly responsible for all the consequences of those sins when He decided to create man.
The usual Christian argument is that the suffering in the world is a purification for sin and is therefore a good thing. This argument is, of course, only a rationalization of sadism; but in any case it is a very poor argument.
I would invite any Christian to accompany me to the children's ward of a hospital, to watch the suffering that is there being endured, and then to persist in the assertion that those children are so morally abandoned as to deserve what they are suffering. In order to bring himself to say this, a man must destroy in himself all feelings of mercy and compassion. He must, in short, make himself as cruel as the God in whom he believes. No man who believes that all is for the best in this suffering world can keep his ethical values unimpaired, since he is always having to find excuses for pain and misery."
Bertrand Russell "Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilisation?" (1930)
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