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Agree
The Darwinian world-view [...] is the only known theory that could, in principle, solve the mystery of our existence. This makes it a doubly satisfying theory. A good case can be made that Darwinism is true, not just on this planet but all over the universe, wherever life may be found.
Disagree
The distribution of fossils in space and in time are exactly what you would expect if evolution were a fact. There are millions of facts all pointing in the same direction and no facts pointing in the wrong direction. British scientist J.B.S. Haldane, when asked what would constitute evidence against evolution, famously said, "Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian." They've never been found. Nothing like that has ever been found. Evolution could be disproved by such facts.
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Disagree
The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. ... In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, [others] are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.
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Disagree
If the methods of Astrologers were really shown to be valid it would be a fact of signal importance for science. Under such circumstances astrology should be taken seriously indeed. But if - as all indications agree - there is not a smidgen of validity in any of the things that astrologers so profitably do, this, too, should be taken seriously and not indulgently trivialised. We should learn to see the debauching of science for profit as a crime.
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Disagree
...whenever I lecture publicly, there always seems to be someone who comes forward and says, "Of course, your science is just a religion like ours. Fundamentally, science just comes down to faith, doesn't it?" Well, science is not religion and it doesn't just come down to faith. ... Science is based upon verifiable evidence. Religious faith not only lacks evidence, its independence from evidence is its pride and joy, shouted from the rooftops.
Disagree
There is something dishonestly self-serving in the tactic of claiming that all religious beliefs are outside the domain of science. On the one hand, miracle stories and the promise of life after death are used to impress simple people, win converts, and swell congregations. It is precisely their scientific power that gives these stories their popular appeal. But at the same time it is considered below the belt to subject the same stories to the ordinary rigors of scientific criticism...
Disagree
...The theory that there is something non-material about life, some non-physical vital principle [...] according to which a body has to be animated by some anima [or] vitalized by a vital force. Energized by some mysterious energy. Spiritualized by some mysterious spirit. Made conscious by some mysterious thing or substance called consciousness. In [this] sense of [a soul] science has either killed the soul or is in the process of doing so [but] science [is absolutely not] killing soulfulness...
Agree
The whole scientific enterprise is aimed at explaining the world in terms of simple principles. We live in a world which is breathtakingly complicated, and we have a scientific theory - we have several - which enables us to see how that world could have come into being from very simple beginnings. That's what I call understanding. ... Reductionist explanations are true explanations. ... I don't think God is an explanation at all.
Disagree
You mean true for you is different from true for anybody else? Something either has to be true or not.
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Mostly Agree
When one uses rhetoric like 'Frankenstein's plants', you could call a maize cob a Frankenstein plant, but every one is quite happy to eat maize cobs. ... The reaction has been as if people believe genetically modified plants are poisonous... Well anything can [be]. Genetic engineering can introduce genes from one species of plant or animal into the genetic make-up of another species of crop plant, but [this fact] does not inherently make it bad or good.
Neutral
...it's not necessary to assume religion aids human survival, though it might. ...do religious people survive better than non-religious people because they are freed up from stress, and so they don't get stress-related diseases and that kind of thing? I find that less interesting and less persuasive than the idea that religious ideas are just simply good [i.e. successfully replicating memes] for the religious ideas themselves.
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Agree
Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that. Revealed faith is not harmless nonsense, it can be lethally dangerous nonsense. Dangerous because it gives people unshakeable confidence in their own righteousness. Dangerous because it gives them false courage to kill themselves, which automatically removes normal barriers to killing others.
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Neutral
I mistrust the uses of words like 'evil' which suggest a kind of personification of them. I'm happy to use a word like 'evil' of a particular individual. I'm happy to say that Adolf Hitler was evil, Adolf Hitler did evil things, but too many people once again, leap to the conclusion 'Oh there must be some kind of spirit of evil which entered into Hitler,' or 'There's a spirit of evil abroad'. That I think is unhelpful, putting it mildly.
Agree
I was one of those who had unthinkingly bought into the hectoring myth that science can say nothing about morals. To my surprise, The Moral Landscape has changed all that for me. It should change it for philosophers too. Philosophers of mind have already discovered that they can’t duck the study of neuroscience, and the best of them have raised their game as a result. Sam Harris shows that the same should be true of moral philosophers, and it will turn their world exhilaratingly upside down.
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Disagree
...no serious theologian takes the Old Testament literally anymore... We choose the good verses in the Bible and we reject the bad. Whatever criterion we use to choose the good verses and throw out the bad, that criterion is available to us anyway whether we are religious or not. Why bother to pick verses? Why not just go straight for the morality?
Disagree
God is a delusion. ... Human thoughts and emotions emerge from exceedingly complex interconnections of physical entities within the brain. An atheist in this sense of philosophical naturalist is somebody who believes there is nothing beyond the natural, physical world, no supernatural creative intelligence lurking behind the observable universe, no soul that outlasts the body and no miracles - except in the sense of natural phenomena that we don't yet understand.
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Disagree
Any belief in miracles is flat contradictory not just to the facts of science but to the spirit of science.
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Agree
"What are you going to put in its place? How are you going to fill the need, or comfort the bereaved?" What patronising condescension! "You and I are too intelligent and well educated to need religion. But ordinary people, hoi polloi, Orwellian proles, Huxleian Deltas and Epsilons need religion." In any case, the universe doesn't owe us comfort, and the fact that a belief is comforting doesn't make it true.
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