Dawkins' book
I have just finished reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. It is fun to read, and there is little that I find to disagree with. Nevertheless, in the last chapter, he mentions almost as an afterthought, what to me is the essence of religion. I have no quarrel with his assertion that "God" does not exist in the physical world. Neither do many mathematical objects, such as infinite-dimensional vector spaces or Stone Cech compactifications of Euclidean spaces, etc. The proper sphere of existence for gods and goddesses is the human subjective experience. If anyone wants to say that, OK, that means that they are fantasies, fine, although just as with mathematical constructions, they are not experienced as fantasies.
Labels: Brief book review
posted by Pagan Topologist | 9:54 AM
2 Comments:
I did not believe God exists either before this summer. But as I thought over the question "where Universe came from," I realized there has to be a God and only one would be enough.
Why He has to exist? Because there had to have a state where something born out of nothing at the very very beginning, which is the start of Universe. Nothing can come out of nothing. So the first cause-uncaused cause thus is God. Just to investigate this claim, I took philosophy course this semester, read phil and even physicastronomy books. The most famous physicist Steve Hawking in UK once said in a lecture that things can come out of "nothing", but this "nothing" is in physics term, which is different from our daily meaning of absolute nothing. So got to be careful about their assumptions.
Next, why only one God? Well, I think suppose many gods, then if we can rank them, the the max, the mightiest is the God; if gods are equally mighty, then we could aggregate them to be a representative one God.
Last, for Dawkins' book, I have not read yet, but as I read along others, I was stunned by how differently atheists and theists define God in their arguments. Many disagreements between are just misunderstanding in terminology. Such as believing in God really does not contradict with believing science, they two should be compatible. And believing in God does not necessarily to get comfort in life, at least myself has approached this from philosophical perspective.
Sorry for such a long comments, welcome feedback, there are a lot for me to learn. =)
Best for Christmas!
A fool says in his heart there is no God.
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