RDFRS US:
The mission of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science is to support scientific education, critical thinking and evidence-based understanding of the natural world in the quest to overcome religious fundamentalism, superstition, intolerance and suffering.
The Magic of Reality
for the iPad
Sean Faircloth:
Attack of the Theocrats!
As I said before, it is you lot who are side-stepping my questions. No one has come up with anything like a credible account of how reason and morality can be shown to have a natualistic origin. Dawkins himself tacitly admits as much when he urges us to "transcend" the nature that gave rise to us - to step outside the supposedly all-encompassing natural selection paradigm in order that "nature red in tooth and claw" does not have the last world. But if nature is all there is what "on earth" do we escape into? I have read a number of physicalist accounts of mind and morality and none of them addresses this cardinal difficulty in anything like a satisfactory manner. If you have an answer, don't just throw the names of naturalist philosophers at me. Show me where and explain to me how they have resolved this issue.
Permalink Mon, 12 May 2008 03:53:00 UTC | #169664