The God Delusion Ch. 4-6

In chapters four through six of "The God Delusion", Richard Dawkins shows the reader his mission is to support scientific education, critical thinking and evidence-based understanding of the natural world in the quest to overcome religious fundamentalism, superstition, intolerance and human suffering. He achieves this mean through his novel by exposing his readers the the reasonable doubt of a higher power. Logical based arguments and direct, factual quotes are the most common ways Dr. Dawkins supports his reasoning. Dawkins also speaks of the controversy of these religious debates and both sides to these arguments, though with bias towards the side of science. He emphasizes that scientific advancement is not possible with the current oppression of religion today as well as the historical danger against the scientific community.

Genetic Engineering Essential Question

Essential Question: Should genetic testing on consenting humans be opened to medical experimentation?

Claim: Yes, Genetic testing will further our understanding of genetics and create new possibilities for treatments of diseases.

Reason: By testing on Humans, scientists can directly observe the effects of a treatment directly, leading to drug production to be faster and more effective. Other than taking up to up to 15 years to develop a new medication with dangerous processes of human clinical trial or animal testing, scientists could change the faulty genetic code of an organism. Better understanding of the genetic code will lead to a revolution in medicine form thinking with chemicals to changing humans themselves.

The God Delusion

In the first three chapters of "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins, key points are made are made in favor of abolishing organized religion for the betterment of the human race as a whole. Dr. Dawkins asserts the religion is "the root of all evil" and fuels war, foments bigotry, and abuses children. He emphasize blind faith as being dangerous as well as irresponsible; as is the belief in a supreme being. The God Delusion highlights the facts that the belief in god just illogical; but also deadly, with today having having more religious extremist attacks than ever before with suicide bombings, floggings, beheading, and the lost of innocent human lives. All recent major attacks on human life were caused but religious extremists, 9/11, 7/7, Indian partition, Israeli/Palestine wars, Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres.

Discussion 1

Discuss the relationship between science, religion, and political power in the World State.

The world state are controllers of the world, similar to the congress today. The world senate consists of 10 free thinkers, men and woman, who control important actions in the society. The world senate are the only politics in the modern world. No system of checks and balances are in order to keep them from going corrupt or mad with power. The world senate halted all progress of science and focuses only on the pharmaceutical happiness of the common wealth, by whatever means necessary. Christianity is completely abolished, the members of society don't even know what "God" is. Christianity has been replaced by Ford-ism, the worship of Henry Ford, the man who perfected the assembly line. "God in the safe and Ford in the shelves." (Huxley 232). The World Congress are well educated in the cultures of the past, the are influenced by the teachings of yesterday, for example, Mustapha Mond believes that there is a God, but since people change and god doesn't it has little prevalence to spit scripture at the uneducated citizens of the modern age. Brave New World is about the for-longing of true emotions for basic happiness, the world congress are the men and women who succeed in this goal.  

GMO survey results.

From what we have observed in the results of the survey, many students are uneducated about the definition of GMO as well as the "harm" of them. GMOs are not harmful. They do not kill you with cancer. 75% do ALL foods are modified.

GE survey

Click here to take survey

Discussion #3: Brave New World

Evaluate what is more important in life, happiness or free will.

Free will holds more value in life than happiness, each decision you make should be yours to make no matter the outcome. Happiness is YOUR view on life, the view that you alone can only have; No government, no radical group, no religion has the right to strip that view from you.

A motif that presents itself throughout Brave New World  is that all of the characters who have the ideology to be free are all miserable in their life. The characters who are sad are blesses in their society for being able to be sad, not some mindless, emotionless drone without a care in the world"'Don't you wish you were free, Lenina?' 'I don't kinow what you mean. I am free. Free to have the most wonderful time. Everybody is happy nowadays.'...'But wouldn't you like to be free to be happy in some other way, lenina? In your own way, for example, not in everybody else's way?'"(Huxley 91). Bernard cares for Lenina but she lacks the understand to comprehend what happiness is. Lenina's happiness is the same as the government tells her it is, a gramme of soma to dull the pain of the dystopic world they live in. 

Brave New World Discussion.

Evaluate if the mass production of humans , as well as the purposeful segregation of classes, is beneficial to the modern society.

Mass producing humans specifically for their work is beneficial to humanity's growth while the Caste system of Alpha-Epsilon creates an opening for rebellion which would send humanity back to before the Ford-age.
There are five classes in the society, each with different jobs and uses in the society. At the top of the social pyramid are Alphas, the humans oversee the important functions of factories and hold government positions. Betas are the upper-middle class, second in order of social hierarchy, they work as nurses and mechanics and aid the lives of Alphas. Gammas are the lower-middle class; they works as Pilots, drivers or butlers to the Alphas. Deltas are the lower class; they work in factories and shipyards and are cloned in mass quantities using the Bokanovsky Process. Gammas are the slaves of society, they are mentally handicapped and serve the most mundane tasks such as lift-men (button presser in elevator), sewage workers, and porters. The production of humans happens in massive Hatcheries. In the hatcheries the lower class embryos are spun to lower oxygen levels and given alcohol to create mental retardation.

            The production of humans is necessary for keeping the people happy and working. The humans created experience pure joy only when they are doing their job. "We slacken off the circulation when they're right way up, so that they're half starved, and double the flow of surrogate when they're upside down. They learn to associate upside down with well-being; in fact, they're only truly happy when they're standing on their heads."(Huxley 17).

A Flyer into a possible "Brave New World".

Genetic Engineering: A Scientific Frontier

How nothing is the way it seems to be

Malcom Gladwell: Author of Ouliers, Blink, and many other novels

The author Malcom Gladwell makes his living by seeing stories and basic ideals in a different light. TED had him come in for a few presentations involving Pasta Sauce, Norden Bombsight, and most interesting of all, David and Goliath. In each of the previously mentioned presentation, Gladwell tells the story we all know, for example David killing Goliath is unexpected due to their sizes and experience. Gladwell takes these stories and exposes their fundamental roots, Goliath was in fact the "underdog" due to a probable tumor in his pituitary gland, effecting his vision. Since this happened thousands of years ago it cannot be proven that Goliath was suffering from a brain tumor, he could be like Andre the Giant or "The Mountain that Rides" from A Game of Thrones.  Most of the statements Gladwell makes can be considered conjecture but his brings up great points of thinking for yourself and questioning common "knowledge".

One topic that always bothered me personally was the Story of "The Boy who cried wolf". If the boy was truly close enough for the people to hear him cry, shouldn't they also be able to see him. Sheep tend to be herded into large grassy plains so they can roam and graze as needed, therefore the herd should be in view of the village. Herding animals and manning a farm takes more than just one child, and when so much depends on sheep and their wool you would expect farmhand there to sheer, weave, and haul feed, so where are they when the wolf attacks? We tend to think of stories as just that, stories, but when you appeal; to it and give it critical thought, they expose themselves to be much greater, whether allegorically or just how violent and horrible the text is.