Thursday, July 22, 2010

Quote of the Day: A Subconscious Assumption of the Soul

"Atheism is abnormality. It is not merely the denial of a dogma. It is the reversal of a subconscious assumption in the soul; the sense that there is a meaning and a direction in the world it sees." - G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

12 comments:

Unknown said...

"Atheism is clarity. It is not meerly the resolve of your insignificance. It is the reversal of age old belief; the understanding that the only meaning and direction come from your will power and nothing other."

-J. Raney, The Finite Man

BallBounces said...

This will be my quote of the day for tomorrow. I'm still wracking my brain over the RNA quote.

Unknown said...

Which RNA quote might that be?

BallBounces said...

The one that indicated there are problems with the
RNA precursor to life hypothesis -- I said yesterday I would try to dig it up.

BallBounces said...

PS -- thanks for the contribution.

P@J said...

“It is the reversal of a subconscious assumption in the soul”

Agreed, and that is one of its strengths. Look at all the subconscious assumptions that science and rationalism have reversed: The assumption that the sun was something that crossed the sky as opposed to something we circle around; the assumption that the world is flat; the assumption that malaria is caused by “bad air”, the assumption that fever is a result of too much blood; the assumption that the world is only as old as our written records; the assumption that time is absolute; the assumption that light has no mass; etc. etc…

The argument you made earlier about atheists not admitting the imperfection of our brains comes to mind. Note response from atheists? It is because our brains are imperfect that we have these assumptions, and it is through science and rationalism that we challenge the assumptions we hold. This is why evidence will always trump faith.

BallBounces said...

Ideas about the sun are not subconscious assumptions. Go deeper.

P@J said...

weak response.

tell the ancient Egyptians that the sun crossing the sky isn't a "deep" subconscoius assumption - that was their God.

BallBounces said...

The sun was empirical. The god-assumption was subconscious.

Anonymous said...

There's also a "subconscious assumption in the soul" that you can see faces in clouds and that seeing the face of Jesus in various random colour or light variations is in some way significant.

This "subconscious assumption in the soul" is merely the hypertrophy of the human pattern recognition cognitive pathways, developed as an adaptive evolutionary response to the presence of large predators during humanity's hunter-gatherer prehistory.

BallBounces said...

Nope.

P@J said...

Yep.

"... nothing intellectually compelling or challenging.. bald assertions coupled to superstition... woefully pathetic"