In a debate with Alister McGrath, Dennet proposes that, far from being beneficial to humans, religion is a virus to which we adapt. It occurs to me that Dennet, like Dawkins recognizes that religion is part of the human condition but doesn't want to grant that it is beneficial. But if one can argue that religion is a virus, can't someone else argue that democracy is one as well? At which point, we need to drop meme talk and rely on an insightful discussion of the evidence for/against belief in God.
Here is a summary and comments on the essay Freedom and Resentment by PF Strawson. He makes some great points, and when he is wrong, it is in such a way as to clarify things a great deal. My non-deterministic position is much better thanks to having read this. I’ll summarize it in this post and respond in a later one. In a nutshell: PFS first argues that personal resentment that we may feel toward another for having failed to show goodwill toward us would have no problem coexisting with the conviction that determinism is true. Moral disapprobation, as an analog to resentment, is likewise capable of coexisting with deterministic convictions. In fact, it would seem nearly impossible for a normally-constituted person (i.e., a non-sociopath) to leave behind the web of moral convictions, even if that person is a determinist. In this way, by arguing that moral and determinist convictions can coexist in the same person, PFS undermines the libertarian argument ...
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