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Sam Harris and Jerry Coyne interview

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ant

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Re: Sam Harris and Jerry Coyne interview

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By the way, Robert, you cant interpret time literally. It's relative to an observer.
At great speeds it becomes nearly non existent.

The flow of time cannot be interpreted literally either.

Maybe if you'd spend less time on your astrotheology conspiracy theories you would have known that.
Augustine's thoughts on Time were profound.
Tell me what your hero Richard Dawkins has added to the discussion.

What a joke your comment was. I could go on and expose it further as being the dung heep it is.
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ant

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Re: Sam Harris and Jerry Coyne interview

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By the way, Robert, do you use a calendar?

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar

The calendar you use to orient your entire life has nothing to do with an atheisti interpretation of time.

You see how easy it is to expose your historical ignorance, Robert?
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Re: Sam Harris and Jerry Coyne interview

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ant wrote:Arguments that faith is antithetical to reason are spurious. Its an argument that Harris and Dawkins promote.
The facts tell a different story.
Many people of faith have utilized the highest powers of reason to advance humanity.
You're using two different connotations of the word faith here: you're referring to two different things. One is a group of people. The other is the act of unsupported belief.

I wouldn't say faith is antithetical to reason, but they are often at odds depending on usage.
RT wrote:Evidence, observation, logic, coherence, consistency, time, space, matter, energy, motion, life, causality, existence, evolution.
These things are not of the type where literary interpretations apply, unless you're speaking metaphorically, which defeats the point. They're subject to theory ladenness and must be placed within an existing web of belief. This applies even to observation. Ancient egyptians looking at the rising sun see the movement of an object, whereas modern astronomers see the rotation of the Earth. To say that one observation is true and the other is false is to miss the point.
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.” - Douglas Adams
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Re: Sam Harris and Jerry Coyne interview

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ant wrote: It wasnt uncommon for people of antiquity to write metaphorically. Im not aware of anything in the Bible where a cla8m is made that scripture is to be interpreted as mechanistic explanations for natural phenomena.
42% of Americans believe in creationism.

Unfortunately your Deepak Chopra view of religion that it's all just mystical metaphors does not describe actual religion.
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Re: Sam Harris and Jerry Coyne interview

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Interbane wrote:
RT wrote:Evidence, observation, logic, coherence, consistency, time, space, matter, energy, motion, life, causality, existence, evolution.
These things are not of the type where literary interpretations apply, unless you're speaking metaphorically, which defeats the point. They're subject to theory ladenness and must be placed within an existing web of belief. This applies even to observation. Ancient egyptians looking at the rising sun see the movement of an object, whereas modern astronomers see the rotation of the Earth. To say that one observation is true and the other is false is to miss the point.
Your question was ‘What are atheists interpreting literally?’ which has nothing to do with literary interpretations. Are you conflating literal and literary? People sometimes use ‘literally’ as an idiom to mean ‘metaphorically’, or ‘figuratively’ as in the text quoted at the end of this post, so literally is a word that can be confusing.

On the ‘web of belief’ comment, what “point” is missed by the observation that it is true to say the earth orbits the sun and false to say the sun orbits the earth? This seems central to explaining the role of belief in science.

Scientific observation only relies on beliefs which are so certain as to be axioms, such as that the universe exists and that all matter and energy obey consistent physical laws. All knowledge in science is built upon these simple coherent foundations.

To be “laden” by the theory that the universe actually exists is a completely different thing from being “laden” with the theory that the universe was created by an intentional personal existent entity. One coheres with all evidence, the other with none.

Epistemically, we can say that science is true while myth is false, but this observation requires care to recognise the valuable poetic meaning within myth.

This brings me back to faith in God, and how God can be discussed literally or figuratively. Literally, belief in entities that lack evidence is not justified. But figuratively, there are many attributes of the universe, especially its anthropic qualities, which can be conveniently summarised under the label of faith in God, as a way of seeing how evolutionary providence enables human prosperity.

The label of faith has proven an adaptive precedent in evolutionary terms, given that people who have faith are often able to trust each other and cooperate and succeed in ways that people who lack faith find difficult. So as faith evolves, the challenge is to move on from what Dexter rightly deprecates as Deepak fantasy, and have a clear eyed and rigorous faith in reality.
http://grammarist.com/usage/literally-figuratively/
Literally vs. figuratively
In its usual sense, literally means exactly, in a strict sense, or to the letter. For example, when someone says, “I am literally foaming at the mouth,” this literally means real foam is coming out of his or her mouth. Figuratively means in a metaphorical sense—that is, not in a real sense but in a way that is expressed through figures of speech. So when someone says, “I am figuratively foaming at the mouth,” we can infer that he or she is using the idiom foaming at the mouth, which means very angry, and that no mouth foam is actually present.
These are the traditional senses of the words, anyway. But there is no ignoring the fact that literally is often used as an intensifier—essentially synonymous with very or truly. This use of the word is much decried and has not gained traction in English reference sources, in edited texts, or among careful writers, but it is common. With this use, when someone says, “I am literally foaming at the mouth,” this just means he or she is very angry. This sense of literally may soon gain acceptance, but for now it is widely viewed as an error.
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Re: Sam Harris and Jerry Coyne interview

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RT wrote:Your question was ‘What are atheists interpreting literally?’ which has nothing to do with literary interpretations. Are you conflating literal and literary?
I'm not conflating them. The word "literal" means to take a word/text/writing to mean exactly what it says, rather than metaphorically or figuratively. The word "literal" in this sense only applies to literary things. Well, that's not true I guess. Spoken words as well, and morse code and other forms of information. But my point is still more or less the same. You can't interpret observation literally unless you're referring to the word rather than the instance.
RT wrote:Scientific observation only relies on beliefs which are so certain as to be axioms, such as that the universe exists and that all matter and energy obey consistent physical laws. All knowledge in science is built upon these simple coherent foundations.
Just because all science is built upon these foundations does not mean all science shares their level of certainty. There are varying degrees of uncertainty across all fields of science. A foundational axiom does not mean higher order theories do not suffer from theory-ladenness.
RT wrote:On the ‘web of belief’ comment, what “point” is missed by the observation that it is true to say the earth orbits the sun and false to say the sun orbits the earth?
The point is that in both instances, we are beholden to theory-ladenness. It's not as if we reach a certain point and "pop" up out of the mist, no longer subject to the web of belief. There is no way to assimilate new information without a matrix to assimilate into. There's a sort of relativity to our knowledge that precludes any sense of "literal" interpretation of observation. The word just doesn't fit. It's like saying we see the world with absolute objectivity, on par with a god. And that's assuming we're being figurative when talking about being literal.
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.” - Douglas Adams
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Re: Sam Harris and Jerry Coyne interview

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ant wrote:i recommend great thinkers like Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Sarte, and Camus. Their brand of atheism has enforced one truth that Ive lived by for a long time:
ant wrote:You arent likely to get bailed out by an unknown.
hmmm possible problem, Proverb 20:24 states, "Man's goings are of the LORD; how can a man then understand his own way?"
lean not unto thine own understanding: Prov. 3:5 .
He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool: Prov. 28:26 .
With him is an arm of flesh; but with us is the Lord: 2 Chr. 32:8 .
Some trust in chariots … but we will remember the name of the Lord: Ps. 20:7 .
I will not trust in my bow: Ps. 44:6 .
Put not your trust in princes: Ps. 146:3 .
He that trusteth in his riches shall fall: Prov. 11:28 .
they worship the work of their own hands: Isa. 2:8 . ( 2 Ne. 12:8 . )
Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: Isa. 2:22 . ( 2 Ne. 12:22 . )
to trust in the shadow of Egypt: Isa. 30:2 .
they trust in vanity: Isa. 59:4 .
trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm: Jer. 17:5 .
Trust ye not in a friend: Micah 7:5 .
walk not after the flesh: Rom. 8:1 .
ant wrote:Pick yourself up by your bootstraps and get to work with others that will work beside you to make the world a better place.
ant wrote:What a joke your comment was. I could go on and expose it further as being the dung heep it is.
:lol: good to see you practice what you preach ant :lol:

for example
ant wrote:more self proclaimed "brights" will continue to feed off the nonesense in order to create an "us vs them" war which just serves as a way to feel superior.
so you don't want an "us vs them" war, yet we see...
ant wrote:Harris's arguments are juvenille. His followers are even dumber and have nothing of substance to add.
ant, you express contempt for "mythers" in many posts and then say this
ant wrote:It wasnt uncommon for people of antiquity to write metaphorically. Im not aware of anything in the Bible where a claim is made that scripture is to be interpreted as mechanistic explanations for natural phenomena. Theologians as far back as Augustine have been saying quite the opposite actually.
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