For Dennett, see his youtube "debate" with Dinesh d'Souza where he says "There is no such thing as consciousness". For Harris, he has just written about free will in the eponymous book stating "free will is an illusion". Neither of these seem to leave room for much equivocation?

And I say again, any mechanistic view of action, such as Harris, Dawkins both have, is necessarily dualistic. How can an atheist be a dualist if he wants to be taken seriously? See Edward Feser's The Last Superstition for unpacking that. Kenny is already on to this in the youtube debate with Williams and Dawkins. It would seem to me to seriously undermine any reductionist explanation of mind. But it is only philosophy, maybe not contradicting oneself is no longer de rigueur in atheist thinking?

Exactly.

Please don't feed the troll.

The thing is that when Harris talks about free will, it is a purely neurological issue, using experimentation, etc. What that has to do with religion is anyone's guess, but he has been questioned on it before in debates, (the one with Shermer, Houston and the uber crackpot Chopra).

Read what I wrote you retard.

Here, hear the man himself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCofmZlC72g

One thing that's always puzzled me about religionists is how they seem to settle permanently on what madness to believe and to maintain that in the face of reality screaming otherwise.

Once you've suppressed your rational mind enough to believe in one nonsense, how do you zone out another? Whether it's gold tablets buried in New York state and body Thetans or walking on water and virgin births, it's all equally bonkers, equally feeble-minded.

Similarly, I've always wondered how they account for the fact that by far and away the most significant factor in having faith or not is being born into it and brainwashed from an early age. The vast majority of Xians or Muslims, for instance, were born into it. In the broad scheme of things, very few people convert as adults and almost nobody who is well educated does so as an adult. The few who do are usually intellectually compromised and / or in a situation of extreme stress. Classic example here would be overwhelmingly ill-educated inhabitants of death row in the good ol' US of A. Harsh but true, it's an act of desperation on behalf of the feeble minded.

I know that indoctrination from an early age has a catastrophic impact on young minds. But it still seems very odd that religionists can prevent the mask from slipping when they see groups of people of a different faith who appear as devout as themselves, but just happen to be born elsewhere.

The whole "different interpretations of a single Abrahamic god" is obviously an attempt to offset this mind fart. But then you have faiths like Hinduism or Buddhism that can't really be shoe horned into that category.

So how does it work, religionists? When you look at, say, Hindus in India, what do you think? Can you even see that they have their faith as a consequence of their birth culture? If you can, what does that make you think about you own faith and the fact that it follows precisely the same pattern - ie that nearly everyone is born into it, just like the religions you reject? Or does your brain just hit a buffer overload and you're oblivious to all this?

Ooooh you are rude.

Have you watched the video? See from 25mins on, he's talking philosophy openly, he not suggesting he's talking about neuro science, he's a scinetist lending a scientific method and the tools he has to a philisophical debate - this is not a medical conversation or a contribution to science, Harris's work of late is clearly addressing philisophical debate (and this stuff shift units because like religion it has the hooks to grab the common man)

This conversation between that Deepak tt is exactly what a conversation between you and Harris would sound like.... and indeed what everything you write sounds like to me, and I bet others too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLwnqDvlXqI

Was just I came across this clip earlier and thought holy crap, you are mattnunn and as the saying goes, I claim my five pounds or something.

How bhy and whiny do you make the church sound. Galileo is no hero because in your view because he broke a deal. The church in your explanation whines about it for hundreds and hundreds of years. How heroic that must be for you. Certainly isn't the guide to happiness you'd expect.

Still at least you admit the bible is no guide to astronomy and is completely wrong and irrelevant on such things as the origin of the universe. God just keeps getting smaller.

I know the forst point is tongue in cheek, but if you hadn't won, would that have been God forsaking you?



Just to clarify, there is no atheistic view other than 'lack of belief in a deity'. Anything else is entirely dependent on the individual. I have known atheists who believe the weirdest of things, it just doesn't include a God in those ideas.

Personally, I think we are the result of millions, and billions of years of natural laws acting on themselves, just as rocks, planets, leaves, air, etc all are. Science says nothing about a 'spiritual' dimension, or about gods for that matter. We are here due to natural, physical laws, and we shall die according to those physical laws. Whether we have a soul is another matter entirely, but once we have expired, all we contain will disperse, and go elsewhere, be it vie heat dissipation, decomposition, and so on. Those elements will be recycled.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGK84Poeynk