Richard Dawkins on why science is better than myth

[friedrice]

Smart people are usually the biggest offenders when it comes to the blind spot of religion, and it's because so much of our young life is taken up by the theatrical shenanigans of religion, and so we kiss the rosary and believe in a talking snake.

Either you believe in the actuality of a talking snake, or you call it storytelling. You can't call it "reality".

Intelligent design is just ego. Must be some guy setting it all up, and he's probably got a robe and a cape and has a beatific face just like all of us. Please.

Science and evolution are absolutely spiritual if you take your blinders off. Don't let religion hijack any of it and start making shit up. Anyone who can't see that religion is a poison that abstracts reality and controls people is exercising suspension of disbelief, plain and simple.

Myth has a place in the our awareness, if we call it myth and not fact. Metaphors help us understand life. We don't expect them to be actual. That would be childlike, juvenile, which apparently half the population of the US is happy to be.

Religion is a cancer.

 

[basketcase]

... Anyone who can't see that religion is a poison that abstracts reality and controls people is exercising suspension of disbelief, plain and simple. ...

As a non-religious, pro-science person, I'll still call bullshit. Religion can provide people with a wonderful experience (if that's what they're in to). It is the people running the religions that cause the poison. Without religion, people would just come up with other ways to spread that poison.

 

[friedrice]

As a non-religious, pro-science person, I'll still call bullshit. Religion can provide people with a wonderful experience (if that's what they're in to). It is the people running the religions that cause the poison. Without religion, people would just come up with other ways to spread that poison.

No it's the abstraction of reality that's the problem. There's followers and leaders, and they're both delusional. And to you I would say again either you believe in the talking snake or you don't. If I came to you and said the sky was purple would you say "people get a wonderful experience believing the sky is purple"? Religion is based on storytelling masquerading as fact, which people then take literally and kill people or create separation based on.

It's not to say that science can account (yet) for the depth of our experience, it's just that most certainly religion is pure nonsense that's used to divide people. If you have a spiritual experience, what does it have to do with the storytelling bullshit of religion?

 

[basketcase]

If someone believes in their own personal talking snake and it makes their life happier then great. It is only when people force others to do what they want by telling them the talking snake will punish them otherwise. Just as much poison has been spread because of nationalism/tribalism as with religion. How is the Head Snake Charmer giving orders to kill any different than a king doing the exact same thing? Both the Roman and Mongol empires are perfect examples where there was not a unified religion yet havoc was spread around their world because those in power wanted more power and knew how to get it.

Simply put, people are driven by the need to differentiate themselves from others. Just look at any elementary school and you will find kids segregating others for any reason: religion, skin colour, hair colour, too fat, too skinny, glasses, no glasses, too tall, too short, too smart, too dumb, too average, living on another street, the clothes they wear, parents jobs, parents lack of jobs, lack of parents, two mothers, sit in the front of class, sit at the back of class, friends with the 'wrong' person..... Religion is just one of a multitude of excuses for some people to feel superior to others and for some people to exert power over others.

Religion has been badly abused but so has every other belief system developed.

 

[friedrice]

If someone believes in their own personal talking snake and it makes their life happier then great. It is only when people force others to do what they want by telling them the talking snake will punish them otherwise. Just as much poison has been spread because of nationalism/tribalism as with religion. How is the Head Snake Charmer giving orders to kill any different than a king doing the exact same thing? Both the Roman and Mongol empires are perfect examples where there was not a unified religion yet havoc was spread around their world because those in power wanted more power and knew how to get it.

Religion has been badly abused but so has every other belief system developed.

No religion tops them all. The difference is in your analogy is that people can recognize nationalism as a blind spot, whereas with religion there's a hushed sacredness where people let things slide because it's faith and funny costumes that silence again and again.

No one argues that nationalism taken to extremes is toxic, but people argue all day long that religion is harmless. It's anything but.

 

[basketcase]

No religion tops them all. The difference is in your analogy is that people can recognize nationalism as a blind spot, ...

Just like religion, the nationalists don't see a blind spot.

Personal belief in religion is harmless. Using that belief for negative reasons is where the harm is.

 

[David007]

I'm reading a great book on evolution called "Why Evolution Is True" by Jerry Coyne. I recommend it to anyone interested in the subject (it's even more persuasive than Dawkins).