The Brief Guide (General)

by dhw, Thursday, March 22, 2012, 14:59 (4630 days ago)

This is just to let anyone who is interested know that I've made a few more revisions to An Agnostic's Brief Guide to the Universe. The sections most affected are: 2 (The Atheist Delusion), 3 (Evolution ... especially the last few paragraphs), and 8 (Endings), the point in all cases being to refine the arguments and to iron out earlier causes of misunderstandings. -The range of our discussions has broadened massively, and in the revised "guide" I've deliberately steered clear of additional subjects like free will, the reality of time, something from nothing. If people are interested, they can log onto those threads and follow the arguments for themselves. The object of revising the guide is simply to ensure that it accurately represents my current thinking on the subjects that I used as my own starting-point. -This is a good moment to say a couple of thank-yous. Firstly to David Turell, not only for his huge contribution to our discussions right from the start, but also for regularly keeping us informed of new developments, discoveries and ideas. For me, and I hope for others too, these posts represent an ongoing education. Secondly, I'm immensely grateful to all those who have provided us with a variety and depth of thought, learning and experience that has vastly exceeded my hopes and expectations when the forum opened in January 2008. For the most part, the discussions have been moderate in tone, with exchanges of views that have been mercifully free from the irrational and often insulting stuff bandied about by fundamentalists of all persuasions. Inevitably, though, arguments in opposition to people's cherished beliefs can seem hurtful, and I'd like to take this opportunity to apologize to anyone that I've offended. I can only say that it was never intentional.-We continue, of course, to go round in circles ... that is the nature of our subject ... but the circles gradually widen, and while I myself remain as much in the agnostic dark as I was at the beginning, I now know a great deal more about the causes and nature of the darkness! This I regard as a genuine if paradoxical form of enlightenment, for which I thank you all.