Dhr.dr.S.Harris neuroloog
Hieronder een stukje uit The Moral Landscape
door dr.Sam Harris blz 111 aanbevolen door dr.R.Dawkins
die dit stukje voorleest in een videolezing van Harris en Dawkins
in het Sheldonian Theatre van de universiteit van Oxford
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeJrcVhtzYo
Harris citeert uit 2006, Collins published a bestselling book, The Language of God.
En Sam Harris noemt dit intellectuele zelfmoord van dr.Collins
Francis Collins is currently the director of the National Institutes of Health,
having been appointed to the post by President Obama.
Dr.F.Collins is chemicus en geneticus en was hoofd van het genome project
Hij beveelt aan in The Language of God dat we het volgende geloven:
Jesus Christ, a carpenter by trade, was born of a virgin, ritually murdered as a scapegoat for the
collective sins of his species, and then resurrected from death after an interval of three days.
He promptly ascended, bodily, to “heaven”—where, for two millennia, he has eavesdropped upon
(and, on occasion, even answered) the simultaneous prayers of billions of beleaguered human beings.
Not content to maintain this numinous arrangement indefinitely, this invisible carpenter will one day return to earth
to judge humanity for its sexual indiscretions and skeptical doubts, at which time he will grant immortality to anyone
who has had the good fortune to be convinced, on Mother’s knee, that this baffling litany of miracles is
the most important series of truths ever revealed about the cosmos.
Every other member of our species, past and present, from Cleopatra to Einstein, no matter what his or
her terrestrial accomplishments, will be consigned to a far less desirable fate, best left unspecified.
In the meantime, God/Jesus may or may not intervene in our world, as He pleases,
curing the occasional end-stage cancer (or not), answering an especially earnest prayer for guidance (or not),
consoling the bereaved (or not), through His perfectly wise and loving agency.
De rest is uit een lezing die dr.F.Collins gaf in University of California,
Berkeley, in 2008
Slide 1 Almighty God, who is not limited in space or time, created a universe 13.7 billion
years ago with its parameters precisely tuned to allow the development of complexity
over long periods of time.
Slide 2 God’s plan included the mechanism of evolution to create the marvelous diversity
of living things on our planet. Most especially, that creative plan included human beings.
Slide 3 After evolution had prepared a sufficiently advanced “house” (the human brain),
God gifted humanity with the knowledge of good and evil (the Moral Law), with free
will, and with an immortal soul.
Slide 4 We humans use our free will to break the moral law, leading to our estrangement
from God. For Christians, Jesus is the solution to that estrangement.
Slide 5 If the Moral Law is just a side effect of evolution, then there is no such thing as
good or evil. It’s all an illusion. We’ve been hoodwinked. Are any of us, especially the
strong atheists, really prepared to live our lives within that worldview?
meer boeken van dr. Sam Harris