mindstalk | (Reply)

(after a bit of thought)

Right, so, avoiding concepts like intellectual treason, or pickiness-for-attack, let me pick on ambiguity. If a supernaturalist talks about a union of wandering souls I imagine they have a picture of actual souls, dualist substance, wandering around. If they talked about blessed they mean blessed *by* god, or a gift from god. When someone like you with science training and a habit of sometimes calling herself atheist but also a habit of hanging around neo-pagans says such things, I don't know what you mean. Should I take it as pure but heavily influenced metaphor, on one end, or godless but not soulless vitalism on the other end? (This goes way back to UU discussions in SF. :) )

Similarly, when Dennett talked in Darwin's Dangerous Idea about the Tree of Life, and every organism being related to each other in a direct physical way -- not just sharing DNA but every cell having split off from another cell, and a redwood really being our N^Nth cousin, that was cool. When someone else just talks about believing that all life is connected then they *might* mean just that, but there's a good chance they mean something I'd regard as foofier. Or that they don't know what they mean, but like the feeling of thinking everything's connected, somehow. (Which also seems kind of foofy.)

Then there's also (shades of UU again, and whether everyone really did have "inherent worth and dignity") what it'd mean for humans to be basically good creatures, and whether that's something which actually need inexplicable faith, but that's another question.

Sorry! Don't mean to be picking harshly on you -- I'm feeling a bit like the People's Front of Judea, warring on the Judean People's Front. On a big scale the potential differences here shouldn't matter... except Dawkins would argue they do, or can. Like Einstein being drafted, or how Deists were originally attacked as virtual atheists, but are now credited to the other side.