ricm's review
4.0
An excellent book. The title misled me a bit -- I picked the book up thinking it would be more of a crack at theistic ideas, a smart version of something like The God Delusion, but it's more than that. It's a case for Metaphysical Naturalism, which is a convoluted title for something but basically just accepts that the natural world is all there is, and it's more of an explanation of an alternative worldview than an apologetics work. It's a great worldview-in-a-box (as Luke Muehlhauser puts it) if you're not sure what to believe philosophically any more (after figuring out that Christianity doesn't match up very well with reality).
Some of my favorite quotes:
- "Philosophy is therefore no idle pastime, but a serious business, fundamental to our lives. It should be our first if not our only religion: a religion wherein worship is replaced with curiosity, devotion with diligence, holiness with sincerity, ritual with study, and scripture with the whole world and the whole of human learning."
- "So the more predictions entailed by a proposition that are fulfilled, the more reasonable it is for us to believe it. And vice versa: the more predictions a claim entails that actually fail to transpire when investigated, the less reasonable it is for us to believe it."
- "[A]ll metaphysical naturalists believe that if anything exists in our universe, it is a part of nature, and has a natural cause or origin, and there is no need of any other explanation."
- "Truth most commonly means “correspondence with fact” such that a statement is true if the experiences it predicts will actually be experienced under the implied conditions."
- "What is rational is reasonable certainty, not absolute certainty."
- "Unless we still assert belief on pure faith alone. However, though belief on faith alone may be comforting, it is wholly arbitrary and thus does nothing to ensure that you are more correct than anyone else. So it cannot properly be described as knowledge, but rather as a mere wish, a desire that something be true or false, or else it is a naive trust in guesswork or hearsay."
- "And for us, the sages have said it for millennia: it really is love that is key—love of learning, love of doing, love of others, love of ideals, love of country or cause, anything, everything, is the foundation of meaning. If we lacked that, we would certainly be miserable and our lives pointless, even if we lived forever."
- "It is absolutely crucial to have a sound and successful philosophy of life, and yet almost no one studies philosophy. It is rarely taught in public schools—in fact, it is barely even taught in universities unless a student specializes in the field. The books available in stores or libraries are often dry, and almost as often polluted by unsound thinking, or obscured behind high-brow jargon and symbols, or divorced from any relevance to everyday life. Rarely are complete and understandable philosophies of life available by the book, clearly written, to be studied, compared, selected. Of course, so few people even bother to look. Religion does not benefit by teaching its pupils to investigate other philosophies, nor does religion prosper by giving people the tools to think, but only by giving them the tools to believe. And that requires suppressing freethought. After all, if everyone found and embraced reasons to be good and enjoy life without the religious superstitions claimed to be necessary, religion would become obsolete—a fate, I imagine, that believers and their churches cannot emotionally or economically afford."
"Metaphysical Naturalism is the only worldview that is supported by all the evidence of all the sciences, the only one consistent with all human experience, the established truths of history, and reason itself. No other worldview, including theism generally or Evangelical Christianity in particular, is supported by any evidence of any of the sciences."
Some of my favorite quotes:
- "Philosophy is therefore no idle pastime, but a serious business, fundamental to our lives. It should be our first if not our only religion: a religion wherein worship is replaced with curiosity, devotion with diligence, holiness with sincerity, ritual with study, and scripture with the whole world and the whole of human learning."
- "So the more predictions entailed by a proposition that are fulfilled, the more reasonable it is for us to believe it. And vice versa: the more predictions a claim entails that actually fail to transpire when investigated, the less reasonable it is for us to believe it."
- "[A]ll metaphysical naturalists believe that if anything exists in our universe, it is a part of nature, and has a natural cause or origin, and there is no need of any other explanation."
- "Truth most commonly means “correspondence with fact” such that a statement is true if the experiences it predicts will actually be experienced under the implied conditions."
- "What is rational is reasonable certainty, not absolute certainty."
- "Unless we still assert belief on pure faith alone. However, though belief on faith alone may be comforting, it is wholly arbitrary and thus does nothing to ensure that you are more correct than anyone else. So it cannot properly be described as knowledge, but rather as a mere wish, a desire that something be true or false, or else it is a naive trust in guesswork or hearsay."
- "And for us, the sages have said it for millennia: it really is love that is key—love of learning, love of doing, love of others, love of ideals, love of country or cause, anything, everything, is the foundation of meaning. If we lacked that, we would certainly be miserable and our lives pointless, even if we lived forever."
- "It is absolutely crucial to have a sound and successful philosophy of life, and yet almost no one studies philosophy. It is rarely taught in public schools—in fact, it is barely even taught in universities unless a student specializes in the field. The books available in stores or libraries are often dry, and almost as often polluted by unsound thinking, or obscured behind high-brow jargon and symbols, or divorced from any relevance to everyday life. Rarely are complete and understandable philosophies of life available by the book, clearly written, to be studied, compared, selected. Of course, so few people even bother to look. Religion does not benefit by teaching its pupils to investigate other philosophies, nor does religion prosper by giving people the tools to think, but only by giving them the tools to believe. And that requires suppressing freethought. After all, if everyone found and embraced reasons to be good and enjoy life without the religious superstitions claimed to be necessary, religion would become obsolete—a fate, I imagine, that believers and their churches cannot emotionally or economically afford."
"Metaphysical Naturalism is the only worldview that is supported by all the evidence of all the sciences, the only one consistent with all human experience, the established truths of history, and reason itself. No other worldview, including theism generally or Evangelical Christianity in particular, is supported by any evidence of any of the sciences."
christhedoll's review
5.0
when you're tired of all the supernatural shenanigans piled on to everything... check this out. and I met him at Skepticon5, nice guy.
More...