Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Questions for an Athiest


Have you ever read a book on ethics, language, logic or epistemology (apart from the pop-fiction stuff)? Why are you seriously obsessed with "God", and what do you exactly mean by "science". Are you aware that all the wars fought for the past 200 years were fought because of secular beliefs, Nazism, Communism, Cold War and now the spread of liberal democracy (iraq/afghanistan) are all utopian secular ideas which has killed people at a much larger scale than ever before. Are you inspired by Comte, and yearn for a scientific revolution. I showed to you that iatrogenesis was the 3rd leading cause for death in the US and yet you came up with articles on quackery, which isn't really a leading a cause for death, stupid yes, but not a leading cause for death.

Science becomes extremely dangerous for complex systems, type-2 errors and system properties change with scale which leads to error propagation. (hint: keep evidence-based science and complexity separate). Evidence based science really is no better than faith belief religious systems when it comes to defining the behavior of complex systems. Pyrho, Hume and Karl Popper were all obsessed with the problem of induction. Sextus Empiricus who collected philosophical works in 2nd century BC wrote:


"Those who claim for themselves to judge the truth are bound to possess a criterion of truth. This criterion, then, either is without a judge's approval or has been approved. But if it is without approval, whence comes it that it is truthworthy? For no matter of dispute is to be trusted without judging. And, if it has been approved, that which approves it, in turn, either has been approved or has not been approved, and so on ad infinitum."

How can knowledge be defined. Are there any basic truths as Spinoza mentioned which could be used to build and justify the existence of knowledge. Or like Ghazali in Tahafut Al Falsifa who simply disagreed with any form of knowledge that introduced doubt, but he did agree with the scientific method where there was no doubt involved:

"Whosoever thinks that to engage in a disputation for refuting such a theory is a religious duty harms religion and weakens it. For these matters rest on demonstrations, geometrical and arithmetical, that leave no room for doubt."

Most athiests, rationalists etc have never ever read a philosophy book on ethics, logic, language or epistemology and yet they continue to believe in myths about rationalism propagated by modern pop fiction. Reminds me of Comte and Nietzche and the disaster that lead to Nazism and Communism. Nothing could be uglier than secular fundamentalism. (liberal democracy is the new secular myth)

Mill's writing on liberty, stress a belief system not a rational system. The belief that liberal democracy will bring a better world is a utopian belief. For the last 200 years, people have been killed at a larger scale than ever before because of secular fundamentalism. The cold war was a secular undertaking between two secular beliefs. The neo-cons believed that democracy in iraq would usher in a utopia, based on a secular belief system. The greatest danger to the world is from secular ideas that not only promise a utopia but also entertain the idea that other forms of thinking, belief systems, cultures and traditions are lesser.

The type of god that is so fondly dissed is not even found in 90% of the religious traditions around the planet. God as an objective reality is rarely presented in any religious tradition (mostly, modern christianity).

Athiesm is typical of highly autistic people, who are future blind are prone to tunneling and can't handle ambiguity. Being in love is part of the human condition, same as being scared of the dark. You can try opening up human farms like hitler did to improve germans genetically but it would simply be ugly. In a similar manner believing in superstition is part of the human condition. You can't get rid of love, anger, and you can't get rid of superstition. You can only replace one with an uglier version or something different. You can subtract god and replace him with dialectical materialism like communism did, or replace it with mill's theories on liberty but one belief system would be replaced by another.

I suspect that what you are asking is to change the human condition. A person who cannot love is a lesser human. A person who replaces his religious tradition with something called dialectical materialism is an uglier person.

How do you differentiate yourself from religious and secular extremists?

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