But I still think, Robert, that johnson's question (kudos for the 'multiple decoder rings,' johnson) goes unanswered by your post. You have an enormously well developed and intricate system that mediates between us and the universe as a kind of spiritual birthplace. But johnson's question gets to the heart of the matter, by suggesting that your system is personal and idiosyncratic; it could not be considered binding or compelling for humans in general. You've always presented the system as though it should be, however. You've proselytized to a degree as well. You're in good company, though--I think of the systems of William Blake and W.B. Yeats, which were also forbiddingly complex but so idiosyncratic as to never be considered more than monuments to their creators' peculiar genius (or perhaps as "monuments of their own magnificence," to reword Yeats slightly).

Hitchens likes to say that the proper place of religion, today, is to be private and optional. Religion that attempts to force definitions of reality on others is the religion that has too often been destructive in the past. I see your beliefs as fitting very well Hitchens' criteria, but your approach often implies that 'private and optional' is not the way you see it.

I think this is the problem. There will always be people who don’t get it. They didn’t have the background to understand, or they heard the wrong thing from somebody mis-informed, whatever. So there will be misunderstandings in grasping our true place in the cosmos.


But as you point out, and is illustrated by the hundreds of Christian denominations, that story is just as easily confused, but without the bedrock of an empirical reference point to re-align misconceptions to the truth.


If it all ends up being a case of soup-can telephone game, then why overlay the strait forward analysis of reality with an allegory that by nature further obfuscates the truth?


There will always be people who don’t get it. But in that case they won’t even be not-getting the right thing.




An important distinction when studying this religion in archeology, no argument. But why fight so hard to reclaim that myth for the original intent of some giant mnemonic device when we now have very direct evidentiary analysis which leads to a much greater understanding of the cosmos?

Faith… meh. Hope and love can get by just fine without this particular narrative. You know what I mean? There is no NEED to save it when it is a far less successful way of describing reality than an actual literal description of reality, without the confusing mis-leads.

It’s like getting a letter from somebody in English. Then translating it to French. Then translating it to a binary representation of the letters, then back down to English again.

You already have an English translation. Run with it.

Faith will always be with us, as a main part of human psychology, simply because most people lack the time, interest and ability to find out things for themselves so must trust their leaders. The question then becomes whether the faith that people have is true or false. Faith in science is true while faith in supernatural miracles is false.

Hitchens' idea that faith can be private is ridiculous. Religion is public by nature, as an expression of shared belief and a basis of social organization. He seems to be suggesting some atomized vision of society in which people form an individual vision of reality and then do not share it. This is a censorious form of suppression of freedom of thought, rather like the old Christian and Stalinist attitude that people could commit thought-crime but would be persecuted if they express it.

Hitchens himself expresses faith in Western Civilization. His public atheism is no different in principle from religious myth, as a claim to express the truth that we should live by. His idea of the modern west is a better myth, with a far better evidentiary basis than most religion, which is riddled with simple errors. Nonetheless, Hitchens' Tory Atheism is still just as much a public expression of religious sentiment as any other religious claim. He expresses it in the effort to convert people to his way of thinking and influence public debate.

I do not in the least see myself as trying to "force definitions of reality on others". Instead, I am looking for contestable and verifiable explanations of religious practice. The idea that there is a cosmic back story for the Bible is a scientific hypothesis. However, I find that it is a hypothesis that people generally find emotionally repugnant, so it gets completely ignored. It may just have to wait for the Age of Aquarius. Hopefully humanity will survive the cusp.

My view is that the actual orbital motion of the earth is a long term subconscious driver of religious ideation. It is like how people in a ship get acclimatized to the swell without even noticing it. We live on a planet with a wobbling axis, and this wobble drives long term climate and mythological change. The correspondence between this physical astronomical observation and Christianity is massive, although decoding it requires effort, as does any scientific enquiry.

I just made an empirical diagram of the stellar history of the Great Year (here). This diagram contains no belief, it is purely descriptive, providing a real terrestrial cosmology. My interest is to understand religious evolution within this empirical framework.

The Templeton Prize does represent a major exhibit against your feeling that scientists (vague term--just who is to be considered a scientist?) are out to deny any dimension to life other than the empirical. I agree, though, that Dawkins' fulminating against this prize is overdone. Where is the evidence that the potential winners willfully bend their research or thinking hoping to cash in, any more than Nobel winners do?

It still should be the main point that he is one person and hasn't been appointed spokesman for science, any more than Hitchens has been appointed spokesman for journalism or Dennett for philosophy. I'll grant you that what Dawkins says about religion comes more directly from his occupation than is the case for Hitchens and Dennett. Dawkins was for a long while Oxford's Professor for the Understanding of Science, and in this public role it was a logical step for him to sooner or later focus on some of the barriers to the understanding of science, a prime one being theistic religion. But the pugnacious stance that he is famous for is his own; no polling data supports a conclusion that his fellow scientists (whoever they are) are seconding his style of debate. Neil deGrasse Tyson probably shares almost all his views on the issues but favors a less frontal approach. The big point in my mind is still that theism is different from religion or divinity, and that when Dawkins or any other respected intellectual goes off on religion, he and they are referencing monotheism. It just works better with readers to use the generic word 'religion.' So I think you can rest assured that Dawkins has no strictures against whatever you propose to do with reforming religion. Just don't expect him to climb aboard.

I'm not following you with your objection to Dawkins saying that he, too, has religious feelings. This is perfectly legitimate, as the feeling is the same regardless of the things that make you have it. He gets it from nature; the devout get it from their awe of God.

Just to be clear, I don't disagree that he has contempt for religion if you mean a God who decides everything and supernatural explanations for natural phenomena. But you begin to confuse me when you insist that all of the supernatural is false and that religion must be consistent with science, while jumping Dawkins and rationalists for crushing 'religious thinking.' This religious thinking, you say, can be fully compatible with science, but it isn't itself scientific, I assume, because you're saying that something besides science is needed. I'm a bit confused, as well as wanting to know when Dawkins has condemned such science-compatible discourse.

Well, again you overestimate the power of his disapproval, but also you seem to flirt with supernaturalism again. Dawkins surely indicates his puzzlement over what people get out of all this ritual and liturgy, but is there anything wrong with him doing that? In his debates, the other side gets to have its say, too. It's a good exchange of perspectives.

Okay, but I've not seen an example of Dawkins condemning anyone for liking metaphors. If that's all people took religion for, as a storehouse of metaphor, Dawkins would not have written a word against religion, or at least not gotten words published.

Dawkins for his whole career as a science writer has tried to make us more impressed with the natural marvels that are right before us, instead of us floating off to la-la lands such as religions typically present. Don't you credit Dawkins at all for inducing in readers 'an objective reverence for natural reality'? It seems to me that he has often been singularly successful in this. Maybe it comes down to a matter of venues or methods of delivery. You believe that the forms and physical places of religion can and should be kept, but that the content needs a transfusion. I think that once you get to scientific understanding, you become unchurched, you take up different means to encourage reverence and you do this in other places, not ones specially set aside as in religion. This may from one perspective be a loss, but it seems inevitable.

But you generally do have a woo factor with religion and I think without it you have simply much less reason for organized religion. Buddhism in more popular forms is rife with miracles and superstitions, while interestingly the Buddha wanted to demythologize the religion he had received from the Hindus. There are some Christians and Jews who want to remain connected to the traditions while soft-pedaling the woo and thinking metaphorically, but they don't have the robustness to be a separate religion if they hadn't the support of the main church.

The point that he and many others, such as your E. O. Wilson, make is that with even a basic understanding of the brain, philosophy and theology become less relevant. Harris doesn't base his conclusions on neuroscience; rather he says that neuroscience is now becoming more able to confirm scientifically the common ethical understandings of humanity. He also says that values can be scientifically derived, but by this he means that it can be done by simple use of the scientific method. Experimental or even formal science isn't required.

The comment I have about a condescending attitude, which exists to a considerable degree, is that it comes from secularists in a wide flow, not from scientists as from a fire hose.