Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Logic vs Emotion
(2)
Back, therefore, to The God Delusion. It is now my new potty book, replacing my perennial favorite, The Story of Philosophy (by Will Durant). As you might have guessed I left off Durant's book recently on page 276 which is in the chapter, 'Kant and German Idealism.' So much for that at the moment. I may return.
I love Dawkins' book so far! The preface is particularly pleasurable because it very much confirms my ideas about belief in God. But I would take issue with Dawkins concerning the 'ease' with which a 'believer' might abandon his childhood religion after reading this book. Dawkins seems to think that belief in religion is mostly a function of the logical brain. Not so, in my opinion. 'Belief' is primarily a function of the emotional brain. The twain rarely meet. My experience has been that the emotional brain resists the logical brain, at least in matters of 'importance.'
I also know that it is the emotional brain which allows the logical brain to question one's inherited religion right at the beginning: you need to have been disappointed by religion in some sense before you can begin the process of logical criticism. Logic necessarily follows emotion, not vice versa. This is because emotion is an ancient, reliable (Darwinian) tool, whereas logic is a new idea related to modernity, and modernity is a recent cultural development related to technology, which is most prominent at first in ancient Greek Culture.
Did you get that?
No?
Back, therefore, to The God Delusion. It is now my new potty book, replacing my perennial favorite, The Story of Philosophy (by Will Durant). As you might have guessed I left off Durant's book recently on page 276 which is in the chapter, 'Kant and German Idealism.' So much for that at the moment. I may return.
I love Dawkins' book so far! The preface is particularly pleasurable because it very much confirms my ideas about belief in God. But I would take issue with Dawkins concerning the 'ease' with which a 'believer' might abandon his childhood religion after reading this book. Dawkins seems to think that belief in religion is mostly a function of the logical brain. Not so, in my opinion. 'Belief' is primarily a function of the emotional brain. The twain rarely meet. My experience has been that the emotional brain resists the logical brain, at least in matters of 'importance.'
I also know that it is the emotional brain which allows the logical brain to question one's inherited religion right at the beginning: you need to have been disappointed by religion in some sense before you can begin the process of logical criticism. Logic necessarily follows emotion, not vice versa. This is because emotion is an ancient, reliable (Darwinian) tool, whereas logic is a new idea related to modernity, and modernity is a recent cultural development related to technology, which is most prominent at first in ancient Greek Culture.
Did you get that?
No?
