Skeptic Project

@Omni-Science
the word believe and your term "accept them as valid explanations" can be used interchangeably, you believe the evolution is correct and religious people accept creation as a valid explanation. All I was saying is the word atheism is vague, I sure you have a decent moral compass but that has nothing to do with atheism Stalin was also an atheist and I'm sure your nothing like him.

@Omni-Science
"Science/Reason/Logic/Skepticism is corrosive to faith and religious belief."
I think the problem is not religion but the lack of Science/Reason/Logic/Skepticism in religious people. A great example of this would be this Saturday's end of the world bull, if religious people don't practice some sort of Science/Reason/Logic/Skepticism they are only setting them selves up to get manipulated. This bothers me very much, and you see it all the time. I don't think that various religions tell people to be ignorant its the establishment controlling the religions, lets say the catholic church for example, they want you to be part of their church and no other Christian denomination when really it doesn't matter what denomination.

You guys are placing all religious people into one category.

Would you also place Roman Catholic Kenneth Miller into that same category?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_R._Miller

Polichak's critique on page 71 is really concise and doesnt reveal as much as it could. This notion of the "meme" really doesn't sit well with me because it comes off merely as an effort to reduce something as complicated as human social behavior into a category or unit that is then given a kind of metaphorical materiality. Dawkins, after all, was working as a biologist trying to explain something outside of biology through a metaphor. The problem is that human behavior and the transference of systems of symbols and norms do not have a materiality divorced of meaning. Its wonderfully simplistic to try and reduce something like religion into a unit that behaves like contagion, but as the reading you link pointed out, it is just untestable. It remains a metaphor. It further assumes that transference of things like religion (or law, or custom) occur in the same way in every case. Do we inherent our view that the individual, embodied subject is the most fundamental unit in the same way that we inherent belief systems? I would argue not. Dawkins is really adement about his atheism, and he loves to put down religious people- but his lexicon is tilted and hobbled.

Kaiser, while I haven't read The Selfish Gene yet, I have read the God Delusion which also goes into memes. To be fair to Dawkins, memes were never asserted as science, only as a possible explanation or a hypothesis. He basically explained how they might work, and possible ways to test this hypothesis.

Although I do agree with you about his social skills towards religious people.

@Kepp, more than anything it comes down to this:

There are people who talk about science, and seem to know what they are talking about but lack rigor. The same is true about scientists who try and talk about social phenomenon. Dawkins' Selfish Gene has some great take aways for people interested in biology, but shouldn't be taken seriously in the realm of social science. I think people have this idea that scientists are somehow the best experts for discussing things outside of the natural sciences. Its simply not the case. You're right, memes are interesting, but interesting ideas do not make for convincing arguments above a certain level of complexity. Sam Harris and Dawkins are atheists, thats clear. And they have their own reasons for being so. But, as an anthropologist I have to say that they way they try to talk about social phenomenon and address others is really unconvincing and betrays the degree to which they are limited in doing so. This is why Dawkins uses the metaphor of the meme- he's a biologists and not a sociologist or anthropologist. This does not mean whats behind the meme isnt a good idea, but that the idea is articulated by people like Clifford Geertz in much more interesting ways.

Kepp is now a Christian.

I deliberately misunderstand Kaiser to irritate him.

You're not supposed to be banned. You need to send Origin a PM on the forums asking for an exception. Bans were set to keep Switch out and you've been caught in it.

I too have an except, omni.