Why won't you simply accept what Dawkins says about his own beliefs?
And who can claim to be a "professional" in the use of the word religion?
> This is due to a unique characteristic of science that Dawkins, Goodenough
> and Sagan deeply depend on: Science has no necessary, implicit theology.
> Some theologies may conflict with science, but that is because of the
> content of those theologies, not because of any essential theological
> freight in science itself.
>
In other words, "science is an uninterpreted reference point; the truth
of everything else is to be judged relative to it". This positivistic
myth is contradicted by numerous historians and philosophers of
science since the collapse of positivism in the 1960's. There are indeed
'metaphysical foundations of modern science' but they
are now taken for granted by most laymen, just as a fish doesn't know
what water is. The philosophers, however, know better. For instance,
here is Stephen Toulmin (The Return to Cosmology, 1982, p. 248):
"So, it is no cause for surprise or shame that the methodology of
Cartesian objectivity eventually became, in Francis Bacon's terminology,
an Idol: that is to say, a way of thinking and arguing whose very power
tempted people to press it beyond its own proper limits, and so to
deceive themselves."
> We reiterate this every time we contradict culturally imperialistic
> creationists who claim that the teaching of Darwin in public schools
> "establishes the religion of secular humanism". Codswallop; it presents a
> theory, a rational summary of direct and vicarious physical experience.
>
So does creationism, unfortunately. And it does so using the very same
arguments you are using: "I am telling the objective truth based on my
experience; the other guys are imperialists."
I wish it were that simple to resolve.
>
> So -- I offer a first draft of an encompassing definition of religion:
>
> A person's religion connects that person, on a deeply emotional and
> intuitive level, with the larger universe of which one is a part, in
> a way that inspires both encompassing inspirations about that universe
> and guidelines for behavior within it, that flow in an unforced manner
> from encounter with that connection.
>
Thank you for at least attempting to define the word. However, it contains
a paradox. I don't understand how one derives "guidelines for behavior" --
what
should be -- from observations of the larger universe. If we are connected
to it, then what is, is right. What could be wrong, that we would need
guidelines about? Is there really anything here that leads to moral
principles
that would ever lead one to protest something that "goes against the flow"?
(I'm reminded of Camus' book The Plague).
Paul Arveson