After God: What can atheists learn from believers? From the art series "A Place Beyond Belief, 2012" by Nathan Coley. Photograph courtesy of the artist. Jonathan Derbyshire writes: Jeremy Bentham, his disciple John Stuart Mill once wrote, would always ask of a proposition or belief, “Is it true?” By contrast, Bentham’s contemporary Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Mill observed, thought “What is the meaning of it?” Was a much more interesting question. Today’s New Atheists –Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and the late Christopher Hitchens principal among them – are the heirs of Bentham, rather than Coleridge. The New Atheists remind one of Edward Gibbon, who said of a visit to the cathedral at Chartres: “I paused only to dart a look at the stately pile of superstition and passed on.” Lately, however, we have begun to hear from atheists or non-believers who strike a rather different, less belligerent tone.
We have too often secularised badly Alain de Botton 1. Where have our soul-related needs gone? 2. 3. Francis Spufford Jim Al-Khalili. World Thinkers 2013. The results of Prospect’s world thinkers poll Left to right: Ashraf Ghani, Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker © US Embassy, Kabul © Rex Features After more than 10,000 votes from over 100 countries, the results of Prospect’s world thinkers 2013 poll are in. Online polls often throw up curious results, but this top 10 offers a snapshot of the intellectual trends that dominate our age. 1.
Richard Dawkins When Richard Dawkins, the Oxford evolutionary biologist, coined the term “meme” in The Selfish Gene 37 years ago, he can’t have anticipated its current popularity as a word to describe internet fads. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Biographies by Daniel Cohen, Jay Elwes and David Wolf. 11. Only three thinkers from our 2005 top 10, Richard Dawkins, Paul Krugman and Amartya Sen, appear in this year’s top spots. One new development was the influence of social media, with just over half of voters coming to the world thinkers homepage via Twitter or Facebook. Many thanks to all those who voted. After God: What can atheists learn from believers? Why, God? Religion has nothing to do with science – and vice versa. Are religion and science incompatible?
Some scientists assert that valid knowledge can only come from science. They hold that religious beliefs are the remains of pre-scientific explanations of the world and amount to nothing more than superstition. On the other side, some people of faith believe that science conveys a materialistic view of the world that denies the existence of any reality outside the material world. Science, they think, is incompatible with their religious faith.
I contend that both – scientists denying religion and believers rejecting science – are wrong. The scope of science is the world of nature: the reality that is observed, directly or indirectly, by our senses. Outside the world of nature, however, science has no authority, no statements to make, no business whatsoever taking one position or another. People of faith need not be troubled that science is materialistic. In River out of Eden, he writes: There is a monumental contradiction in these assertions. He adds: Deepak Chopra: Richard Dawkins Plays God: The Video. Update: Open Letter to: Richard Dawkins, Michael Shermer, Sam Harris, and Chris Anderson We are being contacted by media regarding the selective editing of footage from the 2007 television series, Enemies of Reason.
I feel that the complete unedited interview clearly makes me a friend of reason, not its enemy. The free speech issue with TED continues. We're receiving inquiries about why the current TED post of my rebuttal to Richard Dawkins is disparaged by the website while all additional comments are being blocked. I reposted the video on my YouTube channel and have received over 12,000 views (with several positive comments). As a defender of atheism, Richard Dawkins has publicly declared that religion is the "root of all evil," which became the title of his first big television hit in the UK, broadcast in 2006.
The resulting video footage has just emerged -- leaked by an unknown source -- and can be viewed on YouTube. Why air a 6-year-old grievance?