Frank Burns Blog
Friday, September 29, 2006
Must be the bloke with the beard right enough
I was going to throw something up about the Labour Party conference in Manchester as my first entry into the category of ‘Blogging’ on the new site. However, debating the relative merits of same-as-it-ever-was Brown versus fascist-in-drag Reid just fills me with a deep and abiding weariness that I would not wish to visit on anyone else.
I was taken however by Stephen Unwin’s reply piece to Richard Dawkin’s book The God Delusion published in today’s Guardian (see here). Unwin argues that Dawkins should show a little uncertainty (for this actually read humility, god botherers always expect us to be humble) in the face of the unknown. God (in whatever denomination you care to kowtow to) exists in the unknown. God is an anthromorphisation used to deal with the psychological dissonance some people experience when faced with the simple fact that there doesn’t have to be a reason for everything. Any time that there is an attempt to ‘prove’ the existence of god it is couched in terms of ‘Well we don’t know everything, therefore god must exist’ (this is basically the root argument of so-called Intelligent Design).
It is also a fallacy to require the unknown to be faced with uncertainty, which is the basic premise of Mr Unwin’s refutation here. You can face the unknown with a deep certainty of your starting position and the method for which you plan to explore it (or indeed ignore it). You can also face the unknown with uncertainty but be certain it does not include things you are certain it doesn’t include (ie some all-knowing, all-powerful bloke with a beard). Humans do not know everything, that is clear. That does not however mean we have to fill the unknown with ridiculous myth structures that suit the popular prejudice of your culture.
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