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blondgecko
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Nov 9, 2006, 6:38 AM
Post #176 of 179
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Registered: Jul 2, 2004
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Such as Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome project and recent author of "The Language of God" (scathingly reviewed by Sam Harris here. I know exactly how you feel.
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annak
Nov 9, 2006, 7:48 AM
Post #177 of 179
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Registered: Oct 11, 2004
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Awesome text -- Harris rules!
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robbovius
Nov 9, 2006, 12:47 PM
Post #178 of 179
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Registered: Nov 20, 2002
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In reply to: Such as Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome project and recent author of "The Language of God" (scathingly reviewed by Sam Harris here. I know exactly how you feel.
"This is an American book, attesting to American ignorance, written for Americans who believe that ignorance is stronger than death. Reading it should provoke feelings of collective guilt in any sensitive secularist. We should be ashamed that this book was written in our own time. "
for the last decade or so, witnessing the rise of politically powerful evnagelical christianity in the USA, I have come to conclude that we are witnessing the death of the current age of reason (which began with the Enlightenment), and are headed into a new anti0-intellectual "dark age" of sorts. I don't know that there's any cure for it, and over the course of millenia, humanity may find that these periods of ascendancy of reason followed by periods of collective superstition and fear might well be the natural cycle of sentient intellect.
it is important to remember that as a collective intellegent and self-aware entity, humanity is in it's cosmological infancy, still very close to it's instinctually-ruled animistic emotionalism.
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vivalargo
Nov 9, 2006, 4:43 PM
Post #179 of 179
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Registered: Nov 26, 2002
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"It is important to remember that as a collective intellegent and self-aware entity, humanity is in it's cosmological infancy, still very close to it's instinctually-ruled animistic emotionalism."
I'd add that the claim that we're collectively intellegent and self-aware, though a real possibility for most everyone, is largely overstated. What most people consider "intelligence" is in fact nothing more than our use of the quantifying part of our neo-cortex, and this has little to do with the global kind of intelligence known as wisdom.
And so far as self-awareness, what most are aware of, if they are aware at all, is the grinding of their conditioned thoughts. "Instinctually-ruled animistic emotionalism" is a rather cluttered idea, since instinct and emotion are different though related phenomenon. The odd thing is that most people's ideas and beliefs--especially those that are rigid and absolutist, are totally emotionally driven, while posturing as objective truth.
Another interesting thing is that Einstein refuted the notion of God as described by the Old Testiment fairy tales. Strange that he never conwsidered anotheer model.
JL
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