"Happenings are sometimes organised at which thousands of people hold hands and form a human chain, say from coast to coast of the United States, in aid of some cause or charity. Let us imagine setting one up along the equator, across the width of our home continent of Africa. It is a special kind of chain, involving parents and children, and we will have to play tricks with time in order to imagine it. You stand on the shore of the Indian Ocean in southern Somalia, facing north, and in your left hand you hold the right hand of your mother. In turn she holds the hand of her mother, your grandmother. Your grandmother holds her mother's hand, and so on. The chain wends its way up the beach, into the arid scrubland and westwards on towards the Kenya border.
How far do we have to go until we reach our common ancestor with the chimpanzees? It is a surprisingly short way. Allowing one yard per person, we arrive at the ancestor we share with chimpanzees in under 300 miles. We have hardly started to cross the continent; we are still not half way to the Great Rift Valley. The ancestor is standing well to the east of Mount Kenya, and holding in her hand an entire chain of her lineal descendants, culminating in you standing on the Somali beach." http://tabish.freeshell.org/animals/human-chain.html
Someone has decided to downvote you. I really don't much like Dawkins (I'm a Christian), but this is very interesting. I hit the update button - your comment is a very worthy contribution to this discussion!
I suppose I understand, but his science books (which all of them are, save for "God Delusion") are top notch. If you want to understand Evolution, there's no better writer on the topic.
Even when I was a Christian I was a fan of Dawkins. If you read his books/watch his talks/debates he always comes across as very reasonable and polite. Way more so than you might have been lead to understand. The worse he has ever gotten was with the name of that documentary, "Root of all Evil", though he didn't pick the name and in fact disliked it, noting that it was a bad title because it wasn't true (religion is not the root of all evil).
At the risk of downvotes, religion used as anything other than philosophy is bad science. Even if there was/is a creator, it can't be "magic". Science doesn't allow for magic.
No downvote here, but science "allows for" [sic] whatever IS. It's a bit above our pay grade to say what can't be; for all we know, magic might be a black swan [1].
Actually, science does not allow for magic. Either something has an explicable mechanism by which it works, and that mechanism can be exposed through the scientific method, or it's supernatural. The supernatural is, by definition, inexplicable through science.
A black swan event is merely the occurrence of a highly improbable event. That says nothing of the event's explicability.
Edit: more accurate to say science cannot explain true magic, if there were such a thing.
Science does in fact allow for magic. If it were true that saying several syllables in succession accompanied by appropriate gestures caused lightning to shoot from your fingertips in a repeatable manner, science could measure and classify it.
We do not know, as of yet, what, nor how many things are fundamental to the universe.
If magic with an explicit lack of even the potential to be explained existed, science would still allow for it. At no point does science require that reality must explain itself.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. - Clark
What's the difference between many religious concepts of gods and an extraterrestrial civilization that (at least on our scale) appears immortal, omniscient and all powerful?
Asimov's The Last Question illustrates the point pretty well:
What's the difference between many religious concepts of gods and an extraterrestrial civilization that (at least on our scale) appears immortal, omniscient and all powerful?
Two major differences:
1. Evidence. Extraterrestrial life is definable and testable. "God" by most definitions is unknowable, and most religious definitions of "god" and his/her/their/its work are contradictory to scientific evidence.
2. Purpose. Nobody has committed genocide in the name of extraterrestrial aliens, but religion has been used to justify all manner of atrocities.
Goodness, that's some fairly shoddy logic for point two! I could equally phrase this as "No religious group have committed genocide in the name of extraterrestrial aliens, but atheists have been known to justify genocide".
In other words, the first assertion includes everyone, including ALL religious people, and the second premise doesn't follow from the first anyway. Furthermore, the argument doesn't even answer the question between the differences between aliens and deity, because you are focussing on the religious movements and not the omniscient god!
I have the same gut reaction when I learn someone is religious/atheist. However, I after talking with most people what they say openly about religion vs what they say in private is often vary different. One of the most fascinating questions I think is 'how likely to do you think there is a universal creator?' Not based on what people say, but because it cuts though so much BS that people project.
Do you mean atheist as in, not agnostic? Because the two are not the same; Dawkins, for example, is an agnostic atheist, since he doesn't claim to know for sure.
Yup, IIRC, in the God Delusion, Dawkins talks about a belief spectrum. The spectrum ranges from 1 thru 7 where 1 is a strong theist who believes and knows there is a God and 7 is a strong Atheist who knows there is no God. Dawkins mentions he is a 6 (low probability of a God, doesn't know for sure but chooses to live on the assumption that there is no God) and leaning toward 7.
It's interesting that the discussion is in terms of God exists/doesn't exist. I think that already includes a pretty significant context. It's worth also considering the relevancy of the belief; the degree to which one's beliefs operate within that context. For example, that there is (or maybe there isn't) a guy on some planet somewhere named Booglifoog -- it makes no difference to me -- the question is irrelevant.
It's like skiing in the trees; if you want to succeed at this, focus on the spaces between the trees, not on the trees. Dawkins, for whatever reason, is distinctly focused on the trees.
I had a similar thought when I read about Dawkin's axis (which I didn't know about). It implies either an active embrace or rejection of god - particularly of the abrahamic god - that doesn't make sense to me, as someone who was born in a very non-religious setting.
The Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins is a great book. Interestingly, he makes a point that because genes are shuffled, it is possible for the descendants from a common ancestor not to have a single gene from him.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ancestor%27s_Tale
It looks at a list of different species and then considers the most recent common ancestor we have with that species - fascinating stuff.