Location: Sheldonian Theatre
Friday, February 15th, 7:30
Professor Dawkins and philosopher Stephen Law discuss the major issues of import to humanists and atheists at a time when opposition to rationalist thought appears to be on the rise.
Other Oxford THINK week events here. Tickets on sale though the above sold out. I am also chairing the Wednesday 13th event "Do you fear death, or dying?" 7pm.
3 comments:
Can you provide details on how, where to get tickets for this event? I am really interested and don't want to miss it.
Thank you
Maria Zubizarreta
One of the problems is that those who oppose rationalist thought think absolutely nothing about lying about those they hate:
Their tools of choice *appear* to be logic and reason. But they consistently violate 'conventional' logic with irrational statements that are so, because they say they are so.
Their actual tools of choice are emotional in nature - ridicule, personal attacks, and flat out denial. They cycle between these techniques,. leaving folks frustrated over, essentially, Nothing. The Nothing of the VOID.
And yes, the blog poster is not any better.
I was going with a friend to see Dawkins and Crick at the Sheldonian a few years back, when Crick stepped in it over his view of Africans, and the show got canceled. Hope your luck runs better.
I am wondering, though, about this phrase, "opposition to rationalist thought." I "oppose" rationalism in that I disagree with it, but I don't oppose people thinking those thoughts if they like, wrong though they may be. Is the claim that people are arguing with atheists more than they used to? If so, might that not just be because there are more outspoken, prominent atheists to argue with than there have been since, say, the Marxist-Leninist enterprise was in full fury? Or is the title designed to encourage people to conflate rationalism with rational?
I guess one proof of "opposition to rationalist thought" would be Dawkins' own hall of "fleas," with my rebuttal of Dawkins & Co included:
http://old.richarddawkins.net/articles/1617-the-fleas-are-multiplying
This reminds me of the wonderful drawings by Robert Hooke (late of Wadham College) of fleas, cork, and other objects he observed with his microscope. Unlike Hooke, I doubt Dawkins even bothered to even glance at most of the "fleas" he featured. This is one of the most paradoxical characteristics of the man: that he evinces such lively curiosity about the natural world, but no genuine curiosity at all about religion, even as an artifact of human culture, and even when he is writing about it.
But tell him hi from one of the "fleas."
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