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!
I want to contradict the people above and say: feel nothing towards the greatness of the Universe. You must be as cold and emotionless as a machine if you want to get to the Truth. Why do I say this? Because Science is a process of letting go; of abandoning your most cherished theory and your life's work, of previously held convictions, in favor of something closer to reality - no matter how hurtful and plain evil that reality might be.
If you grow too attached and feel its wonder, you become incapable of detaching yourself from it emotionally.
I am almost as much against scientism and atheistic spiritualism as I am against Islam.
Keep the emotions of love for your family and people close to you, NOT for Science. You cannot even feel too attached to the feelings of other humans, because in this your mind can and will shut down if you ever find information that is highly hurtful, politically incorrect about people around you, like that in genetics about the heritability of intelligence, and differences between humans and whole human populations as a mere product of genetic and evolutionary luck.
The most productive feeling you can feel about the Universe and nature is HATE, not wonder. Because hate will drive to find out hateful things about it. And it will also drive you to show the Universe the middle finger, by using your scientific knowledge to fix its flaws.
The Bible, of all books, has this little nugget of wisdom which is in line with what I wrote above:
Permalink Sun, 25 Dec 2011 08:03:56 UTC | #902591