The Student Room Group

If there's no God, all people are doing is organising (or not) their doomed selves...

.. and the doomed lives of others, including those they give birth to.

Richard Dawkins (I mention his name because he is famous and has a demeanour I like) says that we are 'chunks of complex matter'.

Bearing in mind all of Dawkin's other views, including that God is a delusion, I take this as that humans are not, objectively speaking, special.
That we were not designed with a special purpose over that of other animals or even over that of any other objects such as a table.

Richard Dawkins:
β€œThere is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point… The truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it.”

I take profound issue with Dawkin's view that if we tell ourselves that something is meaningful, then it is. By that token, no-one's life is any more meaningful than the 'will to power' that resides in their own head.

Which not only means that people in asylums with so -called 'delusions of grandeur' are being unforgivably treated (since, as Dawkins says, if they have a particular opinion of their own meaning then that is all that should be necessary for that meaning to exist). By this token, it would be more kind for asylums to be opened up to the public to enjoy- and truly respect such people- as not just entertaining but supreme examples of 'meaning'.

Inevitably, those who find that people respond well to them and give them sufficient comfort, praise, gain in the way of material gain or experiences are the ones who will continue to be regarded as most meaningful to themselves and to others- regardless, to some extent, of what they actually do. So people flatterers, regardless of the sincerity or long term morality of flattering fools gold as being gold, are the ones who may do best out of life. And so the 'hermit, depressive genius' continues as a staple of society whilst the people flatterers, which includes Dawkins, achieve comfortable lives, regardless of how uncomfortable they might imagine disgareements with their views actually makes the cicumstances of their life.

Dawkins:
β€œWe are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born."

That's preposterous. How can he prove that it is better to have lived and to (sometimes) feel the pain of dying than it is to have never lived at all? Particularly if, by living, you are in some way to the detriment of other people? There's no moral worth to what he's saying there. It's like saying 'It's better to have been a voyeur than to have never been alive to be a voyeur'. The very experience of life is in some way voyeuristic. We enjoy the fruits of what we had no input in to creating. That might seem 'lucky' to many but it's not the term that I would use. I'd rather live in a world where people awlays truly get their just desserts in the short term, not just in the long term. Since that is not the world that we live in, and since there's supposedly no God - nor any other objective force- to determine what is 'lucky' and what is not, he is making a patronising claim that we are 'lucky' to be born.

Even though he likes arguing against logical inconsistencies, he still kind of thinks everyone's own subjectivity is king - in terms of their own meaning. But since there are up to 7 billion different subjectivities, how can a world truly function with 7 billion kings? It'd be a world ripe for continuous revolutions, including against the idea that academa, as he has benefitted from gaining a steady wage from, should be a privileged thing rather than the musings of any reasonably intelligent 'man on the street'.

Dawkins:
β€œDo you really mean to tell me the only reason you try to be good is to gain God's approval and reward, or to avoid his disapproval and punishment? That's not morality, that's just sucking up, apple-polishing, looking over your shoulder at the great surveillance camera in the sky, or the still small wiretap inside your head, monitoring your every move, even your every base though.”

And yet , if I apply such thinking to the 'real world' rather than 'God', if I was to apply to Oxford University where Dawkins is based, I'd have to suck up to the requirements of that university. So in a similar way, that's not intelligence, that's just sucking up. Self study may easily be more meaningful in terms of raw intelligence than gaining a BA Philosophy from Oxford. So why not tell the truth to such prospective students - and indeed employers- that they might only be there because they are suck ups hoping to bank on the Oxford name? Oh- because that would be self defeating. So we get to the crux that Dawkin's views all lead to a promotion of the individual ego.

β€œThe total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”
― Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life


See your earlier viewpoint about how 'lucky' we are to be alive. Lucky to be alive in this graveyard, both metaphorically (hopes and ambitions) and actually (physical death of those we dearly love and respect)? Are you sure Richard?


Dawkins:
β€œThere's real poetry in the real world. Science is the poetry of reality”

Richard Dawkins has said more things about, basically, the beauty of science giving some meaning to HIS life. But his implication is that it should give meaning to OUR life as well. And of course isn't it more pleasant hanging on the very word of an eloquent, beautifully spoken Oxford man than just any old person? I don't know whether he means to do it but he promotes a slightly patrician love of the scientist.
Something that has no more meaning than loving anything else that makes sense.

I could go on but it seems to me that Richard Dawkins, from his comfortable perspective of being an Oxford professor, has decided that the best 'meaning' for life to have is to either a) be an Oxford professor or b) be in thrall to an Oxford professor (or its equivalent in other places).

And that shows the absurdity of the hero worship of science for science's sake. He has spent his life in this well constructed bubble, going around and around it, to the fascination of students.

And still there is no good answer to what is the point of trying to get 7 billion people to gain some voyeuristic pleasure from basking in 'logical superiority'? Why not just admit there's no point to most of those 7 billion people at all?

Science has no point in itself. There's be nothing logically inconsistent in science to say 'blow everything and everyone up'. There'll be no-one left to weep at the devastation and no-one left to try to seek that fruitless meaning that Dawkins utterly narrowly and subjectively says can only really be found in appreciating the beauty of science.

He offers no answers. The logical conclusion of what he says is that, if you're not some science groupie who's going to get lifelong 'pleasure' like some epicurean from nothing more than science itself, nihilism would not necessarily be a bad thing in itself.

He's useless as anything other than a 'nice grandfatherly figure' for middle class students basically. On his own terms, he has as much meaning to the universe as Mick Jagger does.
(edited 9 years ago)
I disagree with a lot of what you've said here, but I don't have the 3 hours I'd need to respond to it all.
Original post by tomfailinghelp
I disagree with a lot of what you've said here, but I don't have the 3 hours I'd need to respond to it all.


Then your reply is rude. If you actually read it maybe you'd realise that, whatever you're going to spend those 3 hours on, they are almost certainly selfish (as far as they affect me anyway).
Original post by Nogoodsorgods
Then your reply is rude. If you actually read it maybe you'd realise that, whatever you're going to spend those 3 hours on, they are almost certainly selfish (as far as they affect me anyway).


No it isn't, it's useful - it tells you that people are less likely to reply to a post which will take up a significant amount of their time

And so? What is wrong with being selfish?
Tom, if you can't be bothered to write about parts that you claim to disagree with then your reply is rude.

It's like saying 'I think I'm so important than I can say you're wrong without even having to say why'.

What's wrong with being selfish? Well, I can't believe how such British society has changed to not feeling any small bit of 'hang on' in having that viewpoint. Unless you are enormously talented in some thing, I find it vulgar to have that view.
So OP are you religious?
Original post by Nogoodsorgods
Tom, if you can't be bothered to write about parts that you claim to disagree with then your reply is rude.

It's like saying 'I think I'm so important than I can say you're wrong without even having to say why'.

What's wrong with being selfish? Well, I can't believe how such British society has changed to not feeling any small bit of 'hang on' in having that viewpoint. Unless you are enormously talented in some thing, I find it vulgar to have that view.


If I had said 'I think I'm so important that I can say you're wrong without saying why' then yes, that would be rude, but I haven't said that. I wasn't suggesting that you should just assume I'm right without justification - I wasn't making an argument against your position. My whole post was merely intended to emphasise that such a long post is difficult to respond to.

I'm sorry if you were upset by what I said, but I didn't mean it to be offensive.

Also, just saying 'I'm offended by your position' doesn't make you right. Whether a person is talented or not, it makes no sense to care about others as much as you care about yourself.
Original post by Nogoodsorgods
x


I'm not particularly sure what you're getting at here. It just seems like a rant at Dawkins.
Original post by SchrΓΆdingers Cat
So OP are you religious?


I'd love to be truly religious. I think that the UK, with its country churchyards and huge cathedrals, is a beautiful example of the aesthetics of Christianity.

As a result, they attract people.

But it's a common thing to see a church that says along the lines of 'If you don't think that you a sinner, don't come in here'.

This New Testament idea formed that, partly because of the Original Sin of Adam an Eve, but also because of man's very nature (the nature that God seems to have allowed to occur, as a consequence of 'free will' in his 'design') all people were inherently sinful, regardless. And that churches are like hospitals where you go to seek forgiveness and therefore be cleansed.

Just like a hospital doesn't necessarily like to see someone in great health, no matter what their age, coming through its doors taking its time up when there are 'emergencies', it could be regarded that churches now exist more for the 'trying to be good' people than for the good people.
For the 'good' people church is seen mainly as a way to meet other 'good' people. This can be nice to see as an example but what impact it has on cynical, short memory, modern Britain at large is another question.

We are a country where there are a lot of people who would snigger at someone like Cliff Richard for instance, from trying to be eternally good and eternally youthful.

Academia has little time for such a person, or for any sincere, wholesome, entertainment at all really.

If there is a God, it's as if God is allowing truly good people who believe in God to turn in to a countecultural, underground movement like punk.

But there's no evidence that a God is either observing or steering anything. It saddens me because most people, sometimes least of all some 'educated' people, seem to be barely Godly in the slightest. A Godly person would realise that you have to create a world where children are comfortable and given reasons to be both humble and ambitious at the same time.

Somewhere in the out of hand 'socialism' of the mid 20th century mixing too comfortably with the easy ways out of Thatcherism, 'God' as a true feeling in people has died. And all that is left is ego.

People have said it long before then as well, ever since Nietzsche at the very least and the deaths of the 'best of their generation' in the first world war in particular of course.

In this world that looks with cynical eyes on even the most innocent of things maybe Peter Pan was right : 'To die would be an awfully big adventure'. One where the person who dies can no longer feel ignored, disrespected, tainted or that they are propping up the undeserving.
Original post by Nogoodsorgods
:rant:


A simple yes would have done
are u writing a book
Reply 11
LOLed and stopped reading when I read the wors Dawkins...

Posted from TSR Mobile
Reply 12
And what if all we are doing is "organizing our doomed selves"? Does that have anything to do with whether or not god exists?
Well of course it does. If there's a God then we're not 'doomed' because God is supposed to offer eternal life - to repentant believers anyway in Christianity.

If there is a God then we are doomed because, however we die, that's it. We are doomed never to exist any more.

For many people 'who never really lived' (or alternatively who lived an extremely full life) that might come as a blessed relief. But there's nothing written in stone to say that should be the ideal or default position for people to have. In which case, without God, doom it is unless you are happy to be regarded as 'living on' in what you've created and the memories and opinions you've created in other people- but all of those can disappear. For instance, if you're an architect your buildings can end up demolished if a particular generation finds your work unfashionable.
(edited 9 years ago)
Ever since science and proven scientific facts gained prominence in societies, e.g. durin and after Renaissance Europe, religiousness began to fall and no new religions were created. Many religions were created at a time when people had no real concept of their existence, the universe etc.. I was watching a debate w/ Christopher Hitchens and he said religion was "our first attempt to understand the world around us" before we gained sufficient knowledge, though I suppose the religious answer to this would be that God was trying to teach us about the truth before we were capable of gaining it ourselves.

People who live their lives in the endless fear of the afterlife are likely to be more doomed than those who don't - imagine finding out your religion was wrong and another was right; suddenly you're put in the same position as those who didn't follow any religion or believe in the afterlife. If you play the game of stats, there is exactly the same chance of your religion being right as is the chance of non-religiousness being right. Though with the latter, you can have a much better life, that you are 100% certain exists, on Earth.

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