I wanted to use try out the Kindle Lending Library.  It is great!  They’ve made a library for e-readers.  I love it!  Too bad many titles are not available to borrow, but there are plenty of books available.  I read the book in sans serif, which was a bit perplexing!

I chose to read The God Delusion for a couple of reasons.  One, I felt curious about the hullabaloo Richard Dawkins caused several years ago.  Two, I wasn’t sure that I necessarily wanted to pay for the book, without reading it and knowing the book’s contents.

The writing is very conversational.  There are many questions posed to the readers, which he eventually answers.  A few tangents that he also recognizes and comes back to the main point.  Occasionally, he’ll say that another person made his point more harshly/satirically/etc., and then quote the other person.  At times I felt there was too much repetition of an argument.

I agree with a lot of what Dawkins said.  I also think that while he challenges arguments for the existence of God, he does not prove that God does not exist.  To his credit, though, he does do a thorough job of breaking down the traditional arguments for God’s existence.  Partially, I anticipate that a lot of the book’s value is in the shocking title that generated interest in reading and debating the topic.  He very clearly separates religion-as-spiritual-beliefs and religion-as-belief-in-supernatural-god.  It would be difficult to have a reasonable argument without such definitions.  He brings up interesting considerations of what it means for a religion to be complicit in actions that are [mis]attributed and done “in the name of religion” (e.g., “extremists” killing people in the name of their religion, and what responsibility a religion has to respond to those actions).  Richard Dawkins successfully reaches people who already hold similar beliefs, or who are almost there.  Little for other individuals.

On a goal of science:

If there is something that appears to lie beyond the natural world as it is now imperfectly understood, we hope eventually to understand and embrace it within the natural.  (p. 35)

On the role religious leaders have in practical matters:

Whenever a controversy arises over sexual or reproductive morals, you can bet that religious leaders from several different faith groups will be prominently represented on influential committees, or on panel discussions on radio or television.  I’m not suggesting that we should go out of our way to censor the views of these people.  But why does our society beat a path to their door, as though they had some expertise comparable to that of, say, a moral philosopher, a family lawyer or a doctor? (p. 44)

On the assumption that where science falls, religion steps up:

The fact that a question can be phrased in a grammatically correct English sentence doesn’t make it meaningful, or entitle it to our serious attention.  Nor, even if the question is a real one, does the fact that science cannot answer it imply that religion can. (p.80) [emphasis mine]

On limitations of current scientific tools:

It is an essential part of the scientific enterprise to admit ignorance, even to exult in ignorance as a challenge to future conquests (p. 151)

On God needing belief:

But why, in any case, do we so readily accept the idea that the one thing you must do if you want to please God is believe in him?  What’s so special about believing?  Isn’t it just as likely that God would reward kindness, or generosity, or humility?  Or sincerity?  What if God is a scientist who regards honest seeking after truth as the supreme virtue? (p. 131)

On whether religious text are necessary as sources of moral guidance:

…we pick and choose among the scriptures for the nice bits and reject the nasty.  But then we must have some independent criterion for deciding which are the moral bits: a criterion which, wherever it comes from, cannot come from the scripture itself and is presumably available to all of us whether we are religious or not. (p.275)

By what criterion do you decide which passages are symbolic, which literal? (p. 280)

My main purpose here has not been to show that we shouldn’t get our morals from scripture (although that is my opinion).  My purpose has been to demonstrate that we (and that includes most religious people) as a matter of fact don’t get our morals from scripture. (p. 283)

Jesus was not content to derive his ethics from the scriptures of his upbringing.  He explicitly departed from them (p. 284)

On whether belief in evolution is a form of religious fundamentalism:

But my belief in evolution is not fundamentalism, and it is not faith, because I know what it would take to change my mind, and I would gladly do so if the necessary evidence were forthcoming. (p. 320)

On teaching the Bible as a part of cultural understanding:

But the main reason the English Bible needs to be part of our education is that it is a major source book for literary culture.  The same applies to the legends of the Greek and Roman gods, and we learn about them without being asked to believe in them. (p. 383)

Is Stanford Too Close to Silicon Valley?

Parties filled with recent grads from Stanford are filled with “You know how it’d be great if _________, to address this problem I made _________, and now I’m working full-time on my start-up.”  The energy is great, though I wonder how they are able to finance their endeavors.

At Stanford more than elsewhere, the university and business forge a borderless community in which making money is considered virtuous and where participants profess a sometimes inflated belief that their work is changing the world for the better.

Unfortunately, mental health issues are routinely swept under the rug at Stanford.

The students’ calm, however, belies the stress that they are under. “Looking around, most everyone looks incredibly productive, seems surrounded by friends, and ultimately appears to be fundamentally happy. This aura of good cheer is contagious,” the editorial board of the Stanford Daily wrote in early April, in an essay that described the Stanford duck syndrome in detail. “Yet this contagious happiness has its dark side: Feeling dejected or unhappy in a place like Stanford causes one to feel abnormal and out-of-place, so we may tend to internalize and brood over this lack of happiness instead of productively addressing the situation.”

The sad truth is that campus community is affected by suicide, among other mental health issues, but the university has yet to develop a way of confronting the topic, reducing taboos, and teaching students how to be more compassionate and attentive to others’ feelings and needs.