my socks don't fit

Richard Dawkins (BBC NEWS | UK | ‘Respect atheists’, says cardinal, via sarahchristine).

I don’t mean to be so predictably reactive, but I thought someone should note that there are many reasons to take such a person seriously, several of which are spelled out in the cardinal’s very reasonable address.

Among them, chief for me is this: I take seriously the efforts of human beings to find meaning and strength in a world of loss and heartbreak. Part of this is taking seriously the construction of poetic, metaphysical, and moral (but not scientific) systems of meaning. As I beat to death previously,* if your only criterion for something’s value is its adherence to scientific accuracy (or falsifiability), you’re omitting a great deal of deep significance and value to human life.

(As a note, sds linked to an interesting exploration of the mind/will problem in a religious text in reblogging something I expressed with less concision. I thought it was an excellent example of how various religions codify human wisdom, attach it to supernatural ‘ultimate consequences,’ and give form and purpose to many people’s lives. I myself am not religious, but where Dawkins and I part is that I think it is petulant and indefensibly silly to go about saying we ought not take seriously people for whom faith is a meaningful form of epistemological justification).

*Interestingly, several atheists and believers found that article unsatisfying in its evasion of the question of God’s actual existence, which remains to me the least interesting and important part of the entire issue.