There will be a proper book-review later
Dec. 3rd, 2008 03:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beelikejQuotes from
Richard Dawkins - A Devil's Chaplain (selected essays)
3.3 The Great Convergence
"[Baal, Thor, Poseidon, Ra] We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further."
7.1 Good and bad reasons for believing
"People sometimes say that you must believe in feelings deep inside, otherwise you'd never be confident of things like 'My wife loves me'. But this is a bad argument. There can be plenty of evidence that somebody loves you. All through the day when you are with somebody who loves you, you see and hear lots of little titbits of evidence and they all add up. It isn't a purely inside feeling, like the feeling that priests call revelation. There are outside things to back up the inside feeling: looks in the eye, tender notes in the voice, little favours and kindnesses; this is all real evidence.
Sometimes people have a strong inside feeling that somebody loves them when it is not based upon any evidence, and then they are likely to be completely wrong. There are people with a strong inside feeling that a famous film star loves them, when really the film star hasn't even met them. People like that are ill in their minds. Inside feelings must be backed up by evidence, otherwise you just can't trust them."
(I giggled out lout when I read that last bit:)
Richard Dawkins - A Devil's Chaplain (selected essays)
3.3 The Great Convergence
"[Baal, Thor, Poseidon, Ra] We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further."
7.1 Good and bad reasons for believing
"People sometimes say that you must believe in feelings deep inside, otherwise you'd never be confident of things like 'My wife loves me'. But this is a bad argument. There can be plenty of evidence that somebody loves you. All through the day when you are with somebody who loves you, you see and hear lots of little titbits of evidence and they all add up. It isn't a purely inside feeling, like the feeling that priests call revelation. There are outside things to back up the inside feeling: looks in the eye, tender notes in the voice, little favours and kindnesses; this is all real evidence.
Sometimes people have a strong inside feeling that somebody loves them when it is not based upon any evidence, and then they are likely to be completely wrong. There are people with a strong inside feeling that a famous film star loves them, when really the film star hasn't even met them. People like that are ill in their minds. Inside feelings must be backed up by evidence, otherwise you just can't trust them."
(I giggled out lout when I read that last bit:)