Thursday, April 14, 2011

Polar bear cubs: I'm sympathetic with the thesis of Dawkin's "The God Delusion," Atheist Friends, Memes, and Evolutionary Biology

Nontheist Friends,

I'm sympathetic with the thesis of Dawkin's "The God Delusion" -

"In The God Delusion, Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that belief in a personal god qualifies as a delusion, which he defines as a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence. He is sympathetic to Robert Pirsig's statement in Lila that "when one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_Delusion).

I also appreciate, particularly, the clarity of this title, based on both reason and evolutionary biology. It's amazing to me that 150 or so years after Darwin's writings, that some people find such a title and thesis so problematic.

Is the 'God' or the 'divine' meme ('replicating, cultural unit') to blame, or the cause? (Dawkin's coined the word 'meme' in his 1976 book "The Selfish Gene").

Long live evolutionary biology (all 3-100 million species), and nontheistic friends, and conversations about life and nontheism :)

With friendly greetings,
Scott













(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2011/04/polar-bear-cubs-im-sympathetic-with.html - April 14, 2011)

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