More Dawkins

Those clips of Dawkins taking the piss out of healers in Glastonbury and elsewhere keep replaying in my mind.

Anyone who is not satisfied with bog-standard Christianity and wants to experiment with alternatives, anyone interested in alternative healing and spirituality, in astrology, in Cabala or Sufism is thought to be a 'bit nutty' by the scientific materialists who regulate our world-view.

I've written my book to show that there is an august intellectual tradition behind all these explorations, to show how they all hang together and that they present a unified and coherent view of the world to set against the scientific-materialist one.

I also show that many of the great minds of history have held this world view, most of them artists and writers, but also some scientists, some of them even greater scientists than Richard Dawkins.

Comments

[Andrew]

I've a couple of pieces which you may, or indeed, may not enjoy, or even not read at all and have no opinion on one way or the other. The first is something of a homage to Dawkins and the second a look at materialism:
http://wwwinabstentia-andrewk.blogspot.com/2007/08/beethoven-delusion.html
http://wwwinabstentia-andrewk.blogspot.com/2007/09/materialism.html

[jonathanblack]

The Beethoven delusion - I love the sly humour in that and it's a cool way, too, of restating - contra Dawkins - the argument from design for the existence of God.

This argument as its traditionally presented would be dismissed by the Dawkins tendency and its intellectual credit rating is generally low.

What I've tried to do in Secret History is present a new version of it which - like yours - is dynamic and concerned with our finer feelings and subltlest perceptions.It's the argument that lies right at the heart of the beliefs of the secret societies and powers their work in the world.

The traditional argument is of course sometimes called the teleological argument. It argues that the cosmos shows evidence of desgin like a clock, so the there must have been a watchmaker to set it all in motion.

What i try to show with evidence from history, as well as asking people to check the theory against their own life stories, is that the universe is constantly responding to human concerns, that the universal experience is that the cosmos rearranges itself, moves objects around in space to meet our deepest fears and highest aspirations.

A lot of the intellectual endeavour of the secret societies is concenred with trying to distinguish and codify the different ways the universe does this - what I call the Deepr Laws

[jonathanblack]

The Beethoven delusion - I love the sly humour in that and it's a cool way, too, of restating - contra Dawkins - the argument from design for the existence of God.

This argument as its traditionally presented would be dismissed by the Dawkins tendency and its intellectual credit rating is generally low.

What I've tried to do in Secret History is present a new version of it which - like yours - is dynamic and concerned with our finer feelings and subltlest perceptions.It's the argument that lies right at the heart of the beliefs of the secret societies and powers their work in the world.

The traditional argument is of course sometimes called the teleological argument. It argues that the cosmos shows evidence of desgin like a clock, so the there must have been a watchmaker to set it all in motion.

What i try to show with evidence from history, as well as asking people to check the theory against their own life stories, is that the universe is constantly responding to human concerns, that the universal experience is that the cosmos rearranges itself, moves objects around in space to meet our deepest fears and highest aspirations.

A lot of the intellectual endeavour of the secret societies is concenred with trying to distinguish and codify the different ways the universe does this - what I call the Deepr Laws

[Andrew]

That sounds very interesting, Jonathon, and certainly piqued my interest in the book.

[Charlotte Cowell]

I have scant respect for Dawkins, I find him hypocritical and willfully myopic - he goes around pouring scorn on every religion and name of God he can think of while setting up Charles Darwin (himself a believer) as his personal idol...