From those twisted folks at The Lutheran Satire. Dawkins, and others of his mindset, attempt to erect Science as a substitute religion, even as they absolutely refuse to seriously entertain the truth of Hamlet’s observation: There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Attempting to turn the intellectual instrument of Science into a religion underlines this statement from CS Lewis that looks increasingly prophetic as the years roll by:
“Men became scientific because they expected Law in Nature, and they expected Law in Nature because they believed in a Legislator. In most modern scientists this belief has died: it will be interesting to see how long their confidence in uniformity survives it. Two significant developments have already appeared—the hypothesis of a lawless sub-nature, and the surrender of the claim that science is true. We may be living nearer than we suppose to the end of the Scientific Age.”
Dawkins is an idiot. And Dawkins is an atheist. That’s redundant.
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The fool saith in his heart there is no God.
Lewis is certainly right. “If you start by treating the uniformity of nature as an hypothesis and no more,” says Mgr Ronald Knox, “you will find your hypothesis upset by every recorded case of witches flying, tables turning, Saints being levitated, oracles coming true, horoscopes being verified, broken limbs being cured by faith-healing, and the like. It is no good to say that there may be some higher law under which such phenomena would come, for that is a petitio principii; it assumes that things do work by law, and you haven’t found the law. It is no good to say that they are bogus statements of fact, for apart from your conviction of the uniformity of nature you have no ground whatever for supposing the evidence for them to be otherwise than fully adequate.”
Besides, it is blindingly obvious that there can be no “scientific” proof that nature is uniform, by which I mean an empirical proof based on observed regularities. To say that all past experience confirms our belief in the uniformity of nature gets us nowhere, unless we assume that all future experience will do so, too. But that the future will resemble the past is simply a special instance of the uniformity of nature, so that argument is perfectly circular.
We cannot even claim that experience makes uniformity even probable. Hume, in one of his better moments, points out that “probability is founded on the presumption of a resemblance betwixt those objects, of which we have had experience, and those, of which we have had none; and therefore it is impossible this presumption can arise from probability.” That presumption is simply our old friend, the uniformity of nature.
The best that can be said for it is that it is what Kant would call an “heuristic principle,” a useful working principle in the investigation of phenomena.
It’s the height of irony.
All people MUST have a sort-order. (example: if you have a dollar to spare, and both the kitten shelter and puppy shelter need a donation, which one do you donate to? sort-order) With the abolition of a common culture then the Left has been reduced to relying upon “science” and “reality” as their sort-order. Yet these things can lead down roads you don’t want to go.
Example: Atheists tend to not have children (at the very least, not at population replacement levels). Religious people (with VERY few exceptions) tend to have lots of children. Therefore by the rules of natural selection (“the most kids win”), atheism is maladaptive and religion is to be preferred, REGARDLESS OF WHETHER THE RELIGION IS TRUE.
So then, if “science” is your sort-order, you have 1 of 2 conclusions: 1) Religion is the preferred way, atheism is to be avoided like you would avoid any other lethal disease or 2) Extinction is (somehow) ok, there’s nothing wrong with it. Guess which conclusion you’ll most often see people trying to argue for on the internet.
Yet if there’s one thing that would have to be agreed upon: Science cannot thrive if sapience goes extinct. Animals, rocks, plants, and celestial bodies don’t perform science. Therefore in just this one example, we see how people abandoning a common frame of reference leads to the end of Science.
(and this gets even funnier when you run across those who swear by “pure rationality” and try to think statistically and etc etc – check next time how many offspring they’ve produced, or if they’ll even acknowledge they’re a dead end)
Nate Winchester wrote, “Religious people (with VERY few exceptions) tend to have lots of children…”
It would be more accurate to say “with numerous exceptions.” One thinks of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has seen the collapse of its total fertility rate in a generation, from 6.8 in 1986 to 1.85 in 2014. One finds a similar, if less spectacular decline in Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco.
In Europe, Greece and Italy, which have amongst the highest levels of church membership, have among the lowest TFRs, 1.34 and 1.40 respectively. In secular France, it is 2.08, the highest in Europe, against an EU average of 1.59.
Catholic Poland has a TFR of 1.32, whereas the largely secular Scandinavian countries have rates above the EU average, Denmark 1.73, Norway 1.77 and Sweden 1.67.
Really, MPS? Yeah, funny how these two maps:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Gallup_Religiosity_Index_2009.png
http://www.geoba.se/population.php?pc=world&type=10
Are almost mirror images of each other.
Aaaaaaannnd what’s their historical trends in religious belief. (funny how you take a trend there and then compare it to a single point to reach a conclusion, sloppy sloppy) You have the record of religious belief trends over time for Iran, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco? Though I find it funny you bring up them compared to themselves when their rates (1.83, 1.72, 1.99 and 2.13) are still exceeding the european average (as well as many other countries on the high end of religion scale)
Then I found that the French government doesn’t collect statistics by religion, so it is impossible to say what the precise fertility rates among different religious groups in France are. Though given that Algeria and Morocco, the two nations which send the largest numbers of Muslim immigrants to France, has fertility rates of 2.38 (according to the UN’s 2008 figures) one has to wonder how much of France’s babies are propped up by imported religious folk.
Of course it’s funny to see you argue over the minutiae of difference in the different European countries when the point stands: THEY’RE ALL BELOW REPLACEMENT LEVEL! 1.32 vs 1.77? Doesn’t matter, you’re both extinct.