The Unbelievers

Reece

Member
If someone has already posted this, then sorry:

http://www.unbelieversmovie.com/info.htm

I haven't seen it yet, though I'll likely try to suffer through it . . . it's on iTunes and got 44% on rotten tomatoes:

Postive reviewer:

"'Unbelievers' is a high-minded love fest between two deeply committed atheistic intellectuals and their rock star-like fan base." Gary Goldstein, Los Angeles Times.

Negative review along similar lines:
"Plays like a publicity stunt for its secular stars." Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times.
 
Last edited:
If someone has already posted this, then sorry:

http://www.unbelieversmovie.com/info.htm

I haven't seen it yet, though I'll likely try to suffer through it . . . it's on iTunes and got 44% on rotton tomatoes:

Postiver reviewer:

"'Unbelievers' is a high-minded love fest between two deeply committed atheistic intellectuals and their rock star-like fan base." Gary Goldstein, Los Angeles Times.

Negative review along similar lines:
"Plays like a publicity stunt for its secular stars." Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times.

Audience rating 87% on Rotten Tomatoes.
 
I did like this: "A study in the frustrating insufferableness of people you probably agree with ..."
Well, I don't understand which way that's supposed to go . . . seeing how they gave it a rotten tomato . . .
 
Last edited:
If someone has already posted this, then sorry:

http://www.unbelieversmovie.com/info.htm

Pragmatism as a Dead End for New Atheism

Indeed, science becomes counterproductive, because it exposes modernists to the existential conundrum. As Nietzsche put it, the question is how we should live after the death of God. Reason frees us from theistic dogma, but it also deprives us of any conviction in some worthwhile purpose to motivate us to freely direct our talents toward one end rather than another. The more we apply reason to model some phenomenon, the more we break it down into impersonal mechanisms, and thus the more illusory becomes our naïve self-image, according to which life is full of meaning, purpose, and moral value. What is the utility of Enlightenment and Liberty if the objectifying rationality that enlightens and liberates us forces on us a vision of universal undeadness, entailing not just the absurdity of theistic faith but the superficiality of the very concepts of morality, happiness, and personhood?

The pragmatic slogan in question betrays the new atheist’s narrow-minded scientism. In the wider view, science doesn’t work at all. Arguably, the costs of science’s efficacy outweigh the benefits. Granted, if all you care about is the cognitive domain in which science has prevailed, you won’t be concerned with the social implications of naturalism. But scientism doesn’t end there, since the naturalist must then reduce the concept of caring to some neurological mechanism. Moreover, she must interpret all concepts and thus all alleged symbols in scientific theories as being perfectly meaningless, since there’s no room for such a personal quality as intentionality in this exclusive version of the naturalist’s ontology, which consists only of more and more complex arrangements of causal relations between particles. Scientistic naturalism is thus the proverbial serpent that eats its tail.
 
Amir Aczel: 'Why Science Does Not Disprove God'

In his new book Why Science Does Not Disprove God, science writer Amir Aczel chronicles the New Atheist movement, taking aim at scientists like Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss who attempt to use biology and physics to disprove the existence of God. Aczel argues that their scientific arguments are flawed, and those who say God and science cannot possibly coexist "distort both the process of science and its value."
 
I think the problem is that god is portrayed in ludicrous fashion as this separate being from the universe. When in fact, if there is a god, it is the universe. And every atom, every molecule, is suffused with it. In much the same way that we are not separate from the universe, we are the universe, a part of it, not separate from it.
What exactly is your definition of god?

~~ Paul
 
I think the problem is that god is portrayed in ludicrous fashion as this separate being from the universe. When in fact, if there is a god, it is the universe. And every atom, every molecule, is suffused with it. In much the same way that we are not separate from the universe, we are the universe, a part of it, not separate from it.

But if it's not separate, how is the god distinguishable from the universe itself?
 
I posted this in Spirituality, but I figure it's applicable here:

Dismissing God

Debates between theists and atheists often hinge, naturally enough, on advances in cognitive neuroscience and evolutionary biology. Here I contend that such advances, though relevant to the debate, cannot license deductively valid arguments for or against theism. I contend further that the central role of probability in evolutionary theory grants no inductive strength to arguments for or against theism. The Kolmogorov axioms of probability and the mathematical definition of a stochastic process suitably model mutation and selection; using this fact to conclude for or against theism requires, in either case, a leap of faith.

More on Hoffman's ideas regarding our limited ability to ever understand reality, as well as his Idealist position, can be found here.
 
not some celestial dictator, who watches everything you do as Hitchens would call it. I would suppose pantheism would best describe my views.

That's the point. The universe and everything in it is identical with 'god'
Then your god is unfalsifiable, as are many of the various postmodern notions of god. That allows you to laugh at any philosopher who discusses a falsifiable notion of god, yet leaves you with nothing interesting.

~~ Paul
 
Then your god is unfalsifiable, as are many of the various postmodern notions of god. That allows you to laugh at any philosopher who discusses a falsifiable notion of god, yet leaves you with nothing interesting.

~~ Paul[/quote
I disagree that an unfalsifiable notion leaves you with nothing interesting. Can you give me an example of a falsifiable notion of god?
 
I disagree that an unfalsifiable notion leaves you with nothing interesting. Can you give me an example of a falsifiable notion of god?
A god who exists as something separate. A god who intervenes. A god who grants miracles. It may be very difficult to investigate such a god, but at least it is falsifiable in principle.

~~ Paul
 

The Broken Thread of Culture

Thus Tyson is on one side of the schism Toynbee traced out, and the homeless children of Dade County and their peers and soon-to-be-peers elsewhere in America and the world are on the other. He may denounce superstition and praise reason and science until the cows come home, but again, what possible relevance does that have for those children? His promises are for the privileged, not for them; whatever benefits further advances in technology might still have to offer will go to the dwindling circle of those who can still afford such things, not to the poor and desperate. Of course that simply points out another way of talking about Toynbee’s schism: Tyson thinks he lives in a progressing society, while the homeless children of Dade County know that they live in a collapsing one.
 
Back
Top