I'm thinking of religion vs. atheism these days (long story), and I found this an interesting dialogue between the patron saint of New Atheism and the founder of TED (who apparently was raised evangelical).https://samharris.org/podcasts/the-ted-interview/ …
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@TEDchris conversely, understands the multifaceted role that religion plays in human life, and how it can positively influence human behavior in a way that cerebral arguments cannot. Plus, it can provide stories around which to build a life that materialist capitalism cannot.Show this thread -
The same atheists who smugly decry 'sky fairies', once they've left the realm of empirical claims (i.e. science), calmly go about their lives believing in collective delusions like 'money' or 'democracy' with faith-like assurance.
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You might like this talk. Gray is a bit dry in his presentation and it's bad recording, but still interesting. He, an atheist, thinks Harris and his crew are all idiots.http://www.econtalk.org/john-gray-on-the-seven-kinds-of-atheism/ …
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Funny you mention that book. Was reading a review of it this morning (and ordered it). I tend to agree with Gray. At some point, the Harris, Dawkins, et al crew come off as over-educated acolytes of their own newly-coined religion who didn't get the human condition memo.
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I think the interesting point he makes is that these guys haver cargo-culted a lot judeo-christianity and simply repackaged it. I could not tell you what he 7 kinds of atheism are, so either I didn't listen or he wasn't very clear on that part.
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Right. The biggest argument against all this New Atheism stuff is that they've just repackaged religion in more palatable form. No actual human just sits there and stares into the nihilist abyss for very long, and actually lives to form an ideological lifestyle around it.
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Just got my copy, and only maybe 20 pages in, but already think it's brilliant. He really puts the New Atheists in their place, which is a far narrower one than they themselves seem to think.
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I mostly agree w/ Harris on this stuff—that, for example, fundamentalism is inevitable in any belief system making absolute claims—but I do think he downplays that the vast majority of religious adherents aren’t absolutists. And that getting rid of gods is a utopian goal.
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