I enjoyed this paragraph very much:
Also, the picture of humanity’s place in nature that has emerged from scientific inquiry has profound consequences for people’s understanding of the human condition. The discoveries of science have cascading effects, many unforeseeable, on how we view ourselves and the world in which we live: for example, that our planet is an undistinguished speck in an inconceivably vast cosmos; that all the hope and ingenuity in the world can’t create energy or use it without loss; that our species has existed for a tiny fraction of the history of the earth; that humans are primates; that the mind is the activity of an organ that runs by physiological processes; that there are methods for ascertaining the truth that can force us to conclusions which violate common sense, sometimes radically so at scales very large and very small; that precious and widely held beliefs, when subjected to empirical tests, are often cruelly falsified.
But I was annoyed---precisely as he intended, I'm sure--- by the following: "Faith—believing something without good reasons to do so—has no place in anything but a religious institution, and our society has no shortage of these." The "good reasons" was intended to needle believers, of course; he knows very well that the implied valuation of "good" has no basis in science, either.
I'm slightly puzzled by his and Dawkins' great anatagonism toward faith. Clearly some orientation of the human mind toward the supernatural has been selected; do they believe humans would be better off simply suppressing it? Is it only organized religion, not spirituality more generally, to which they object? (They reject both, I know.)
It's funny: I was sort of predisposed to like Pinker until I looked him up on Wikipedia, here. I was completely turned off by that photo---I'm not sure why---and now I think of him as a real tool. I wonder what conclusions people reach about me based on my photo?
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