Questions That Plague Physics. Lawrence M. Krauss and Claudia Driefus in Scientific American, Vol. 291, No. 2, pages 82–85; August 2004. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=1&articleID=0009973A-D518-10FA-89FB83414B7F0000
The God Delusion. Richard Dawkins. Houghton Mifflin, 2006. http://richarddawkins.net/godDelusion
Hiding in the Mirror: The Quest for Alternate Realities, from Plato to String Theory. Lawrence M. Krauss. Penguin, 2006. http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=281
Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival conference videos and background: http://beyondbelief2006.org/
The official Richard Dawkins Web site: http://richarddawkins.net/
Lawrence M. Krauss’s home page: www.phys.cwru.edu/~krauss/
THE AUTHORS:
Lawrence M. Krauss is Ambrose Swasey Professor and director of the Center for Education and Research in Cosmology and Astrophysics at Case Western Reserve University. Author of seven popular books and dozens of commentaries for national publications, radio and television, he also lectures widely on science and public policy. Among his many scientific honors, he has the unique distinction of having received the highest awards from all three U.S. physics societies. In his spare time, he has performed The Planets with the Cleveland Orchestra, served as a Sundance Film Festival judge and written four articles for Scientific American.
Richard Dawkins is Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford. His nine books have earned him honorary doctorates in literature and science, and he is a Fellow of both the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Literature. His many prizes include the Cosmos International Prize, the Nakayama Prize for Human Science and the Shakespeare Prize for Distinguished Contributions to British Culture. In 2006 he created the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. New British school guidelines encourage students to play the roles of such figures as Galileo, Darwin and Dawkins while debating science and creationism.
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3 Comments
Add CommentDawkins & all atheist scientists conveniently take what they like and rejected what they don't like to present science as strictly materialistic and by default deny any non-physical reality. Human perception (& animal for that matter) is being supposedly researched and studied using what Dawkins describes as a "scientific standard", namely the double blind. This is utter rot and he knows it. Double blinding is used in drug trials precisely for the reason that it relationally distances the two parties and by such distance destroys insightful perception (not intuitive but insightful, which relies on relationship). To be scientific a control is run along side the experiment THAT IS ALL! Great Prayer experiment produced a nil or negative result. They did not even get a placebo effect. The negative result is interesting. It can only be done by administering a nocebo! See my website http://www.annavictoria.net and find that human perception points to a non-physical reality its science.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA nice discussion, and balanced at least on the part of Krauss, whereas Dawkins is his usual self, pontificating and patronizing to those who dare to believe. Although I agree with their views on religious fundamentalism, scientific fundamentalism also has brought misery to the world, namely the belief in racial superiority - which stems from (incorrectly) evolutionary theory. Furthermore, it's preposterous to suggest that people of faith are somehow less intelligent. I try not to ridicule atheists, perhaps Dawkins shouldn't ridicule people or faith, or it makes him as narrow-minded as those who ridicule the non-believers.
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Edited by Milan320 at 04/15/2008 7:29 AM
Krauss is too symphatetic to religion (as an appendix), while Dawkins really pursuits the questioning of the beliefs. Overall it is an interesting discussion.
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