Reading Dawkins' "The God Delusion"

Its an excellent book so far, really has me questioning my belief systems, whether I shouldn't self-identify with "atheist" more than "agnostic" (which I generally tell others when asked, since "atheist" evokes so much emotion and negative reaction in so many people). One issue I've always been most agnostic about is that of the origins of life. I mean, I believe whole-heartedly in evolution and natural selection, and believe thats how life developed, but I've always wondered what caused that initial "spark" in the first place, how life suddenly appeared out of seemingly nothingness and gave rise to such fascinating creatures. Dawkins makes the point in Chapter 4 (Why There Almost Certainly is no God) that someday chemists may be able to re-create the conditions necessary to form organic compounds out of lifeless chemicals, to essentially re-create the conditions that gave way to the first instances of life on this planet. Wouldn't that be something? Imagine the earth-shattering ramifications should such a discovery be made, that life itself could be understood as a result of chemical reactions, nothing mystical about it. How would the religious cope with such a discovery? As if evolution wasn't enough, it really goes to the heart of the debate -- what caused us to be here? Its just terribly exciting and makes me want to change my course of study and become a biologist and chemist just to try to help figure it all out: The mystery of life.

Fascinating stuff.

...is that as unlikely as it was, it only had to happen once. What I mean is that the basic chemicals to form a self-replicating molecule existed all over the world. For thousands of years these chemicals were driven to interact with each other by the still hot planet. With enough repetition, the unlikely becomes inevitable. Once a self replicating molecule happened, it was only a matter of time before it would evolve into increasingly complex forms.

One should note that there is no clear dilineation between life and nonlife. Basically, we call chemical compositions that do what we do (burn fuel and reproduce) "alive" because we see ourselves as alive. It is a completely artificial distinction. So there was no one point in time where self-replicating molecules became life.

I'll start popping the popcorn!

But heads exploding. :D

Atheism only pertains to whether or not you believe in god(s). Agnosticism relates to knowledge (whether you don't know or know something). So most most atheists are in fact agnostic atheists because they readily admit (even Dawkins) that they don't know for sure that there's no god, but they find no reason to believe in one.

The other thing that is attractive about defining atheism in this way is precisely because it is broad. There are so many people who don't believe in god(s) but there's no single belief that all atheists share. So if someone tells you they're an atheist they haven't really told you anything about themselves at all except that they don't believe in god(s). This allows us in conversations with both theists and nontheists to get beyond the belief/disbelief thing quickly and start talking about what it is we really do believe; to talk about the beliefs we share, what unites us, rather than what divides us.

It also allows us atheists to acknowledge two things that we don't readily like to admit.

1) There are a lot of atheists who are complete jerks.
2) Atheism is not synonymous with rationality (or skepticism).

I think the first is important because there are many atheists who belittle and disparage believers. We don't have to be one of them and we don't have to tolerate that kind of intolerance. I don't mean to say that someone is a jerk merely for criticizing religious claims. Far from it. I think vigorous criticism of all ideas is both necessary and good. But by acknowledging that there are jerks and we don't approve of them, we chip away at one more atheist stereotype.

The second is closely tied to the first. There's no shame in admitting that there are also many atheists that believe in incredibly stupid, even dangerous, stuff. There are atheists who believe in astrology, psychics, ghosts, extraterrestrial visitors, quackery, Libertarianism... you name it, and there is an atheist out there who believes it. Just because someone doesn't believe in god doesn't make them intellectually superior or immune to extraordinary beliefs. Of course, the flip side to this is that we also have to admit that there are many religious believers who are smart, rational and fighting the good fight. Just because they believe in something we find incredulous, doesn't mean they're not on our side.

With all that being said, while I wish more agnostics would openly accept the label of atheist, I'm not going to force it on them -- or you. If you want to call yourself agnostic, that's fine with me.

As an experiment, they set up what "primordial soup" might have been on an ancient earth, a mineral broth in a C02 and sulfur laden atmosphere with plenty of both heat and lightning. At the end of the experiment, they had not only managed to create protein chains, they'd also created small bits of both DNA and RNA. The surprise is that it had happened in days instead of months.

It doesn't take a great leap of imagination to think that these random proteins and DNA/RNA fragments eventually sorted themselves out into organisms over a million years or so, an eye blink in the age of the earth. We do know that fossil life was abundant and varied, if not complex, 4.5 billion years ago. The earth itself is 5 billion years old.

One school of thought has it that life is an artifact of planets, that it will exist whenever conditions are favorable for it to arise, conditions that almost certainly exist on each planet at some point in its evolution.

Consciousness and self awareness are other matters. We still haven't figured those out.

I also would suggest "godless" by Dan Barker.