Posts by Chris Waugh
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Hard News: Future shock for the media, in reply to Russell Brown,
Ah, excellent news Russell. Thanks. Now I'm really looking forward to Saturday.
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Hard News: Future shock for the media, in reply to Russell Brown,
Oh, it's not 'hard to find' if you use their little search box in the top right. It just seems to be missing from the listings, which I find odd. Maybe they plan to fix that by Saturday.
But while you're at it, remind them not to geoblock it. There's at least one expat who would like to watch it.
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Just searched the TV3 website for Media 3. The search function works ok, but it doesn't seem to be listed either under all shows or under news shows. So I'm looking forward to Saturday and hoping that:
a) Those listings change; and
b) It's not geoblocked. -
Up Front: The Up-Front Guides: The…, in reply to Islander,
When I look around at what we, as a species, get up to, the word hubris springs to mind with such alarming regularity it's in danger of doing real, physical damage.
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Up Front: The Up-Front Guides: The…, in reply to Kracklite,
I did call myself a pedant, so it’s not obviously unnecessary nit-picking to ask whether by “darker” you mean “obscure”?
No, at least, not entirely. Obscurity is part of it, but lacking light is, too.
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Up Front: The Up-Front Guides: The…, in reply to Kracklite,
Terry Pratchett said that we should be called Pan narans
Good idea. It certainly fits better than anything including sapiens, considering how intent we are on destruction.
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Up Front: The Up-Front Guides: The…, in reply to Lilith __,
Most of us have put a lot of thought into what we believe and what we don’t.
Therein, I think, lies the source of the accusation that atheism is a kind of faith. Atheism, if I may offer my own definition, is the belief that there is no God/god/gods. My impression is that Western* atheists tend to have examined the evidence available, analysed it rationally (or as rationally as mere humans are capable of - we really are a strange species) and concluded that there is no evidence for the existence of God and therefore no such thing exists. Which is fine, because evidence for the existence of divinities is so circumstantial it wouldn't last 15 seconds in court, consisting, as it does, of highly personal anecdotes of a highly irrational, emotional nature.
I guess the problem I have with atheism is in a certain, developing trend to talk with absolute certainty that there is no god out there as if science has proved it. I think half the beauty of science lies in the lack of certainty. We're constantly updating, even sometimes completely discarding then replacing our theories as we discover more evidence. So much of what was once considered scientifically proven truth we now know to be bollocks, and I think the only safe assumption is that 100 years hence our descendants (assuming we haven't totally buggered up the earth and killed off our own species) will look back and laugh at the absurdities we believed. This is beauty for two reasons - first, the endless possibilities opened up, second the constant humbling reminders of just how little we know and how much we have to learn.
So where is the diffference between belief and faith? Atheism is a belief, but it is a rational, evidence-based belief. Faith seems to root itself in a darper, darker, irrational, emotional part of the psyche, some part of us that is not fully conscious. Faith would also seem to require ritual and gatherings of the faithful to maintain itself, and much of that ritual seems to be aesthetic - as Kracklite mused about "spirituality" - and highly emotional - walk into any evangelical or fundamentalist church service if you want to know just how emotional it can get. Atheism seems to require nothing more than the cold, hard facts of life as it is lived interpreted rationally.
So I wonder: Do religious believers accuse atheism of being a faith because their own beliefs come from such a completely different source within the psyche? Do they simply not understand, or not want to understand, the different approach atheists have chosen to take? I don't know. I do know that I find religious believers rejection reason and science when it gets inconvenient really quite frustrating - and completely unnecessary as I don't see why there needs to be a contradiction or some kind of zero-sum game between faith and reason and science.
*My impression of Chinese atheists is that they are raised atheist in pretty much the way others are raised Christian, Buddhist, or Muslim - it just is what people believe, and so that's what they identify as. And they're just as bad at atheism as your average Westerner raised Christian is at Christianity.
Apologies for any incoherencies and especially any offense caused if I've either misinterpreted or poorly phrased anything. I've spent three extremely hot, humid, windless days stuck in an office with no functioning aircon marking exams that I would really like to rant about, but professional etiquette dictates I keep that ranting among colleagues.
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Up Front: The Up-Front Guides: The…, in reply to Kracklite,
science as the best available contingent means of describing how the universe works.
Science is great at describing the physical workings off the universe - the processes by which we came to be here and still (despite our best efforts to bugger it all up) exist, by which all that we can see spins around us apparently quite indifferent to whether we continue to exist or not.
Extending the courtesy to the social sciences: Sociology, anthropology, history, linguistics, etc, all do a great job of describing how societies, cultures and languages function and what happened before we popped up for our little spin on the stage.
The above two statements both need an 'at least, so far as we can tell through our really quite limited ability to perceive the world' added.
But none of these things tell us how to live, let alone why. We still face these pesky little questions of belonging, morality, ethics, and meaning. That is why art, philosophy, law and religion persist. They speak to a different aspect of the human experience, an aspect that raises questions that can't be answered by experiment or observation and quantification of the results. Your more liberal Christians, existentialists and Kierkegaard, as well as the myriad other philosophers and theologians, aren't trying to figure out the mechanics of the universe, cultures, societies or languages or what has happened throughout history, they're trying to find answers to all those other questions.
But I suspect you know that already. I just sensed a mixing of the two kinds of knowledge. I think we need and should equally value both. If I get sick, I'll go to a doctor who'll use science to diagnose and fix (well, hopefully) the problem. If I have a question of ethics or purpose, a philosopher or theologian is going to be more useful.
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Capture: Cinema Scoped, in reply to thegirlstefan,
Thanks.
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Ummm.... Wow.... Talk about unexpected bed-fellows.