Richard Dawkins - Anti -Christ or Great Thinker?

your mileage may vary.

*And of course Newton was a kabbalist/alchemist/rosicrucian.

We should! If you don't you are twee.

I've not read his books but I've heard him speak a couple of times and he very good at finding the level of his audience and pitching a very clear concise argument at them.

can someone spell out to me what this means? i know they defend against this with SCIENCE but there is something bizarre about the whole 'socialism is impossible because we are all inately selfish' line propped up by pinker, john gray, dawkins.

Of course, I'm not explaining that right because Dawkins is a genius and I'm not. But it's all about the Evolutionarily Stable Strategem.

Dawkins stresses that TSG is not as negative as it sounds, and points out 1) many ways in which altruism is an ESS, and 2) that we have the self knowledge and therefore the ability to *not* be fatalistic about selfishness.

I mean, misunderstanding number one is that "the selfish gene" means that somehow there is a "gene for selfishness" which we all have. When the title of the book refers to the fact that it is the actual chromosomes which are selfish, yet are able to express themselves in ways that are not selfish to the *individual*.

One thing I think we could probably all agree on is that Dawkins is better than Matt Ridley.

Whenever i see his stupid pointed smug head on tv i want to tear it apart.

Richard Dawkins is a nasty man because he says its all a result of mechanical process'.

*explodes with rage*

DAWKINS HAS NEVER SAID THIS. In fact he has repeatedly and vigorously pointed out that this is not the case.

It really bugs me how someone whose most famous book was an attempt to explain altruistic behaviour in animals is regularly accused of promoting selfish behaviour in humans on the basis of the books bloody TITLE. READ THE FUCKING BOOK ALREADY!

Dawkins is left-wing and there's even some OTT sentence about how 'we alone in the animal kingdom have developed the power to overthrow the tyranny of our genes'. He also points out that we do this everytime we use a condom. Or was it have a wank? I can't remember.

wha? everyone advocates skepticism. it's a friggin skeptical world.

Dawkins did not invent memes, though he did popularise the term.

disturbing people is a good thing -- always?

Dawkins OTM!

oh right. well, i don't agree that you should bulldoze my house, but hey, i'm a rational being so i'll just have to sit on it.

why are political motivations -- such 'real world' things as nationalism, imperialism -- more rational than so-called delusional stuff (if you think you can separate our politics from the incroyable religious meme-web that is western culture)?

erm, just bloody loads of them, dude.

no, just with the chest-beating idiocy contained in statements such as the one quoted by momus.

the beatles
charles dickens

I burned The Pickwick Papers!

It's his total denial of the mysteries of life and human consciousness

Do you mean that life is intrinsically mysterious, and the study of it should not be attempted? Or have I completely misread you?

You can ignore religion all you want in your studies but the minute you go public, relgious people will start telling you that you are wrong.

why? as i said before, i think dawkins advances a really insulting attitude that as an atheist he is really, really happy (happier than repressed christians for sure!). while its possible to think of the universe as some wondrous chance acccident--it makes more sense to me to think of existence as a horrible mistake.

i am an atheist myself, but i dont pretend i am happy about it. and i have to say that anyone who does is possibly being slightly less than honest with themselves. (that is, i think happiness for an atheist is found DESPITE being an atheist, not because of it)

Apart from Darwin?

- But just the fact that this behaviour apparently calls for an 'explanation' is suss - eg, is he trying to say, it can be explained in terms of selfishness? Why does he feel the necessity to do this? Why not explain genocide as a weird deviation of the altruistic impulse? Which, in some senses, it obviously often is - loyalty gone awry. etc etc - questions of perspective. But perhaps I am misunderstanding what you mean by his 'explanation'.

I think the problem with this theory, as with much of evolutionary theory, is excessive confidence. I mean no species is 'perfect' in evolutionary terms. EG birds, the monogamous mating patterns, this is not the perfect evolutionary solution. Not everything can be explained in terms of evolution because there is no perfect species.

I am unsure what you mean by perfection in species, so can't really get to grips with your second paragraph.

Evolution is an accident due to "mistakes" in the genetic copying that occurs during reproduction and that some of these mistakes manifest themselves in the phenotype allowing the organism to take advantage of the environment to the benefit of its reproductive process over other members of the same species.

The evolutionary process is always limited by environmental conditions and a change in these conditions that is too rapid for the species to adapt will result in extinction.

wobbliness is built in down at a much deeper (foamy quantum) level: precision is impossible except as a cultural convention (ie the point you decide it counts-as-perfect)

I think I see what you mean here and I think this is a really good and interesting point. But doesn't the scientists attempt to explain animal behaviour in evolutionary terms mean that they think that the failure of evolutionary theory to explain all manifestations of natural life, and especially the behaviour of animals, just reflects a failure by scientists to adequately apply evolutionary theory? I mean, they think that if they just keep struggling, evolutionary theory will eventually explain every behaviour. But the problem with that is that the species haven't evolved perfectly. So do you see what I mean? Even if evolutionary theory could be perfectly applied, there would still be some instances where animal behaviour wasn't explained by it because in these instances, the animal itself just isn't genetically capable of perfect evolutionary behaviour. And since evolutionary theory will never be perfectly applied because that would be a process that approaches conclusion at infinity or whatever, I don't know how to explain that better, we will always be in the situation where, when an animal's behaviour isn't explained by evolutionary theory, we don't know whether it's because we haven't applied the theory correctly or whether it's because that animal has failed to behave in an evolutionarily perfect way.

Basically I think this is probably a really stupid point but maybe someone could just explain to me why.

The selfish gene idea is a very clever gimmick. Like a photographic negative, it doesn't actually add any new details to the picture, but it still gives the impression of being starkly and startlingly different from the original.

That can be a useful trick, in that by swapping the foreground and background, and making light what was dark, it emphasizes their unity and interchangeability. But once you've seen the trick, you have all of it. It doesn't tend to lead anywhere or suggest anything new. But it does teach you to shift emphasis more fluidly from genes to organisms and back again.

The concept of memes is a somewhat better trick, but the jury is out on it. Memes are not useful as science, but as a new metaphor. New metaphors can be very powerful catalysts for new thoughts. When Newton published his physical laws he indirectly gave birth to the metaphor of a clockwork universe. That new metaphor excited people and led to a lot of intellectual ferment and invention. In many ways Newton's laws catalyzed the Enlightenment. Darwin's theory altered our view of the universe almost as much, by placing us squarely in the animal kingdom.

Memes are Dawkins's bid to change our metaphorical view of human culture. Rather than have us be the wise creators and manipulators of ideas, he would locate the genesis of ideas in random variation and turn humans into their unwitting vessels. So far, he has not succeeded, but it is still early on in the game.

If I had to guess, I'd say that in 25 years the concept of memes will be a quaint relict of the past that only a few speicalists and crackpots have ever heard of. The problem has been that, as a metaphor, meme theory has not opened any paths of thought we want to follow and develop. We can't seem to wring any value out of it. Maybe that will come later.

As for the anti-christ thing, that's long odds.

Originality may not be the point though - writing a clear and persuasive summary of the status quo that is accessible to the general reader, particularly given the unfashionable nature of some of the "social science" implications, is an achievement that deserves a fair bit of kudos in its own right. Dawkins is frequently credited with ideas that are not his, but he has never claimed they were, and it is unfair that he is sometimes rubbished on the grounds that some of the ideas his over-enthusiastic fans credit him with are not his own.

I do think that Dawkins is on VERY shaky ground with his current notion that as conscious beings we can transcend our genes though. Where can the motives for such transcendence originate?

Are you talking about something other than what he said in The Selfish Gene? That our genetic code just predisposes us to certain behaviours, but that the human brain is such a powerful and flexible organ that we use it for things it didn't adapt to do? Like wear condoms. I don't think that's such a controversial, mystical notion.

I don't know what circles you move in, but I'd say this meme metaphor has been manna from heaven to people in the following categories:

PRs, style scouts, cool hunters, trend analysts, colour consultants, fashion designers, record labels, advertising people, journalists, cultural studies academics, consultants, marketers, market researchers, architects, designers, authors who write about 'the tipping point', 'power laws', or the 'winner takes all society', spinmeisters, political advisors...

In fact, the concept of the meme is a godsend -- sorry, genesend -- to anyone who wants to find (seemingly) rational ways to explain irrational human buying behaviour. As our postmodern capitalist economies skew more and more to the flow of information and services instead of raw materials and heavy industry, with faster and faster product cycles, these people -- the oracles and astrologers of consumerism, the hieratic keepers of its mysteries -- become more and more central to our economy.

This weekend I will show a Levi's 'cool scout' from LA around Berlin. I will take her to the launch of a new fashion store which will only survive its first year if its meme predictions are relatively accurate. I will show her a few of the places I think are 'meme labs', spicing or engineering new cultural ideas. (I won't call them that, of course. I'll just say 'Something interesting is going on here.')

The other thing I have to do this weekend is sit down and write an article commissioned by a NY style mag about the commodification of style. Now, whether or not I refer explicitly to Dawkins and 'memes' in the article, or with the scout, it seems clear that we're earning our living in a field which has the idea of the meme -- whatever you want to call it -- right at its centre. I don't see this going away any time soon, and while I don't see it becoming a more exact science, I do see it wanting to try. That's why, for people in our line of work, the meme is itself... a powerful meme. Because divining with tea leaves and crows' gizzards just doesn't seem to impress the client any more.

It depends what kind of hole you're using that argument to dig yourself out of. He is using it to say that gene theory isn't as determinist/mechanistic as it may appear. I don't think that works. A genetic predisposition can manifest itself in behaviour that, at least on the surface, doesn't appear to maximise the survival prospects of a particular individual's genes (self-sacrifice for the community, homosexuality, birth control yadda yadda). None of this indicates that behaviour isn't determined by genetic predisposition as modified by a particular environment. If you are going to suggest that the humans can defeat genetic predisposition by, say, consciously becoming more altruistic you run into a host of logistical problems, viz:

- where does the motivation to do that come from if not genetic predisposition interacting with a particular environment?
- if it is not an efficient strategy in terms of maximising genetic survival possibilities, won't it be selected out?

His arguments don't strike me as mystical but do they have the intellectual rigour you'd expect from a noted scientist. Of course it may be that a altruism's time has come, in that the human environment has tilted so that, relatively speaking, altruism has become a more efficient strategy than it once was. But you don't need to explain that in terms of humanity transcending its genetic inheritance.

'Interacting' being the key word. You can't unbake a cake (sorry if that's a cliché). The interaction produces behaviours that wouldn't have led the genes to propagate in the first place.

the imperative to fuck remains, and i dont think we can transcend that, for instance.

Tell that to a monk.

I'm not saying that humans can ever reach the end of evolution, just that evolution happens over long, long periods, and that in the short term the environment is the more vibrant end of the environmental-genetic interaction, and as such is of greater use in accounting for the diversity and changes in human behaviours.

So no, we couldn't do anything without our genes, but that doesn't mean all my behaviour is most usefully explained by reference to them. As an analogy, I wouldn't be able to show these words to you if I didn't own a computer, but Steve Jobs wouldn't have been much use in predicting what these words were going to be. And Charles Babbage would have had no conception of how his work could even have anything to do with discussing genetic theory with strangers hundreds of miles away.

I think all Dawkins is trying to do is distance himself from crude genetic determinism.

If I can just continue the sideline in which I defend the meme, and point to its metaphorical centrality in late capitalist societies, here's a chunk of Hardt and Negri's book 'Empire':

'Communication not only expresses but also organizes the movement of globalization. It organizes the movement by multiplying and structuring interconnections through networks... The political synthesis of social space is fixed in the space of communication. This is why the communication industries have assumed a central position. They not only organize production and impose a new structure adequate to global space, but also make its justification immanent. Power, as it produces, organizes; as it organizes, it speaks and expresses itself as authority. Language, as it communicates, produces commodities but moreover creates subjectivities, puts them in relation, and orders them. The communications industries integrate the imaginary and the symbolic within the biopolitical fabric, not merely putting them at service of power but actually integrating them into its very functioning.'

Note that interesting word biopolitical. Hardt and Negri (inverting the classic Marxist conception of superstructure and base) say that language produces commodities as it communicates. They also say that ideas and meanings are an essential part of power. Then they call society a 'biopolitical fabric'. It's easy to see that the concept of the meme fits this model perfectly, both for its emphasis on communication, and its template in biology.

Momus, I hope you realize that your quote, from which I have extracted the above specimen, is 99.44% pure gobbledegook. One would be hard pressed to paraphrase a single sentence of it. (No doubt that is why you chose to quote it verbatim.)

It is a singular quality of pure verbal nonsense that its meaning cannot be recast in another set of words, any more than a void can take on a different color. Of course, such nonsense can function as a sort of Rorschach Test, so it may be that you haven't sussed this, yet.

"The interaction produces behaviours that wouldn't have led the genes to propagate in the first place."

I'm not sure what point you are making here. Genetic mutation result in random changes that will reduce or increase the probability of genetic survival. How dogs will respond to a colonisation by Martians may be unpredictable and new but it is still genetically determined.

Concepts like time frames and "usefulness" are non-sequiturs in this context. In most contexts a genetic approach may not be the most useful way of understanding or predicting human behaviour, but the question we are asking here is can we transcend or "defeat" our genes.

I agree that Dawkins is trying to escape "crude" genetic determinism but the value judgement implicit in "crude" is telling. The kind of simplicity that would be thought of as "elegant" in describing the material universe becomes "crude", not because the thinking is rough and ready but because the "reductive" implications are an affront to human vanity. This is narcissism and wishful thinking (as well as an attempt to frustrate virulent criticism by other wishful thinkers) but it isn't science and I suspect deep down Dawkins knows this full well.

Separately what N is getting at does change the logic. we can behave, and alter our environment, in ways that do reduce the survivability of genes.

Memes organise production. Memes are what feed us. This is something you could only say of a postmodern, post-industrial economy where information and services have become the dominant 'products'. It's especially true of Berlusconi's Italy, where Negri was imprisoned for many years. I'm quoting this to point out that your prediction in 25 years the concept of memes will be a quaint relict of the past that only a few speicalists and crackpots have ever heard of is NOT ON THE MONEY!

What is it specified by?

Crudely, what Dawkins seems to be saying in recent interviews is:

You can observe a concept of genetic tendency (self propogation at any cost, say) (let's call that behaviour type A); and argue that can be defeated by a "conscious impulse" (or a decision to consign that kind of savagery to the past, for example) (which we can call behaviour type B).

This is just myth making. We can't decide to behave in a particular way unless our genetic predisposition leads us to behave in that way in that particular circumstance (or environment). Choosing behaviour type B in preference to behaviour type A is no less a decision determined our genetic make-up than the reverse would be. I can't believe Dawkins doesn't know this, and I think it is intellectually dishonest of him to imply otherwise.

I agree your point about the softer sciences. But it's tangential to the point I was making about Dawkins.

"Choosing behaviour type B in preference to behaviour type A is no less a decision determined our genetic make-up than the reverse would be"
similarly this doesn't follow either. if we are free to make any number of choices, in what way is this determined by anything?

Here the key word is 'leads'. This sentence is fine as long as 'leads' is neutral, but not fine if it's trying to imply that our genes are specifically prepared for each particular circumstance and can thus bring about a behaviour that to deal with it that is best for the propagation of the gene (which in all likelihood is likely to mean the individual too).

I haven't read the interviews, but from what you say you still seem to be missing the point. There is no gene or set of genes that equal the code for 'self-propagate at any cost'. Yes, successful genes are by definition those that self-propagate successfully (and of course they can have no notion of 'cost'), but that's just the mechanics of replication. The type B behaviour you cite relates to the behaviour of the individual, not the gene. Our brains are part of our phenotype. The genotype behind them has evolved because it allowed the genes to be passed through generations successfully, but in the relatively short-term, in unadapted-for environments, those same genes can see us ending up exhibiting behaviours that if exhibited consistently in the past would have led those genes to die out.

Like I said before, the human brain is a very powerful organ - on balance it must have been a good thing that it evolved that way - we survive and produce children with it well because it allows us to direct our behaviour in v.complex ways. But the 'bad' flipside of this for our genes is that it gives us very free rein to do crazy things that decrease our chances of our genes being passed on.

Nick,

" not fine if it's trying to imply that our genes are specifically prepared for each particular circumstance and can thus bring about a behaviour that to deal with it that is best for the propagation of the gene (which in all likelihood is likely to mean the individual too)."

I don't intend to suggest anything as nonsensical as that.

"I haven't read the interviews, but from what you say you still seem to be missing the point. There is no gene or set of genes that equal the code for 'self-propagate at any cost'. Yes, successful genes are by definition those that self-propagate successfully (and of course they can have no notion of 'cost'), but that's just the mechanics of replication. The type B behaviour you cite relates to the behaviour of the individual, not the gene. Our brains are part of our phenotype. The genotype behind them has evolved because it allowed the genes to be passed through generations successfully, but in the relatively short-term, in unadapted-for environments, those same genes can see us ending up exhibiting behaviours that if exhibited consistently in the past would have led those genes to die out."

Well, apart from predictably not agreeing that I am "missing the point" I don't find anything to disagree with here. I flagged up in advance that the illustration was crude. Where Dawkins gets into trouble is that he suggests that there is behaviour that is gene-driven the more "instinctual" behaviour I illustrated by type A behaviour) and behaviour that defeats that instinct by conscious choice. My point is that there are no grounds for saying the second type of behaviour is any less genetically predermined than the first, and that it is a false dichotomy. I am not suggesting that there is any set of genes that say "self-propogate at any cost". The whole concept of "purpose" is problematic here. Looked at in close up, we try to survive but the bigger picture is that our genes have survived because in a contingent universe they happen to have turned out to be the things that survived. Intentionality is neither here nor there.

"Like I said before, the human brain is a very powerful organ - on balance it must have been a good thing that it evolved that way - we survive and produce children with it well because it allows us to direct our behaviour in v.complex ways. But the 'bad' flipside of this for our genes is that it gives us very free rein to do crazy things that decrease our chances of our genes being passed on."

Well it is pure chance that a powerful brain has turned out to be a "good thing" so far. Part of the way that genetic mutation works involves "wrong paths" that decrease survival chances. If an animal species adapts its behaviour in a way that mean it is less well adapted to its environment we don't take this as evidence that genetic tendencies can be transcended. Our sophisticated brains may yet turn out to be a "wrong path" from a large enough historical perspective."

I don't think is really going anyway. I think you're setting up some myth-making Dawkins straw man that I find it hard to believe he has begun to resemble. I'd need you to show me the interviews you're talking about if this is to go any further. Evolutionary theory is fraught with semantic difficulties, whenever expedient words like 'purpose', 'lead', 'design' or 'transcend' are employed. I really doubt you'd have any argument with Dawkins if you were to speak to him.

"We alone on earth can rebel against the tyranny of our genes, the selfish replicators"

"Our destiny, our better fate, is to be passionately Anti-Darwinian when it comes to politics and human affairs".

Much of which Dawkins says is unexceptionable, but the basic concept I object to - similar to the one you outline above - is that our conscious mind can evolve a "purpose" which is different from genetic "purpose". (There is some confusion here because he did argue that the notion of a genetic purpose was man-made/illusory but nevertheless goes on to differentiate between that purpose and a conscious purpose which rebels against it. I'm happy to acknowledge that this isn't Dawkins fault, he can hardly do justice to the subtleties in a short radio interview.) Nevertheless my objection to his basic premise stands - I DON'T believe we can develop some kind of conscious purpose that rebels against our genes. If we decide to blow ourselves up because we are an evil race and the world will be better off without us, that will be an act as much determined by our genetic make-up as any other.

This (without the 'our genes' bit) is from the 2nd (late 80s) edition of The Seflish Gene. It's not a new quote.

Rebels against the tyranny in the sense that we end up doing things that are very much at odds with the primary goal of genes, to replicate. The general result of genetic makeup is to act in selfish ways to those that don't share a significant number of those genes that differentiate a individual from others (ie. those who aren't close family). And to act even more heartlessly to creatures from other species, who share even fewer genes. He's just saying, in the face of people misunderstanding the title of his most famous book, that we don't have to act selfishly. That our genetic inheritance is not a licence for acting selfishly or denying the existence of true altruism in humans (he doesn't think any other species can manage this).

Your last sentence almost got me arguing again, but yeah, let's leave it.

I think it's time those who are intelligently without conviction became, er, stupidly brash and convinced of their own, er, intelligence.

(Actually I quite like the geneticist's explanation of religion, basically that there might be an evolutionary advantage in short circuiting your intelligence in this specific area. I've certainly met plenty of very conventional Christians who, with the whole "meaning of life" problem conveniently taken care of in a couple of hours on Sunday morning, are able to be much more single minded about getting on with career, family etc. But if these people are brain surgeons or nuclear physicists you're not going to impress a lot of people describing them as the unbrights).

x-post

I hate the "brights" thing because it smacks of the same bullshit that I would happily criticism in dumb religious people. Speaking as an atheist myself, I'd rather be around an humble believer than a smug atheist any day.

Moreover, I've never seen the benefit of trying to proselytize atheism or "spread the meme." Seems to me that dumbass atheists are just as capable of causing havoc as are dumbass believers. While I'd like American culture to be more hospitable to atheism, I don't think that acting superior is a way to achieve that result.

That's not an insult to an animist. The penis is venerated in our religion.

Um, no I'm not. As noted above, I am an atheist--I just hate smug people in general. I suppose you're an exception, Nick!

a) be smug
b) put the humble on a pedestal, which risks being seen as
c) smug and
d) patronising

Whereas being unabashedly smug is merely:

a) smug.

Nick, are you familiar with Madeline Murray O'Hare?

Nick, what you've outlined above makes no sense, and certainly doesn't apply to anything I've posted. I DO mind the smugness of those devout Christians who RUB IT IN MY FACE. I WOULDN'T mind it if Dawkins was being smug ABOUT BEING A WORLD-CLASS BIOLOGIST, since he seems to me to be perfectly entitled to be smug about that! What I mind is that Dawkins ADVOCATES smugness about SOMETHING UNRELATED TO HIS WORLD-CLASS BIOLOGISTNESS for what seems to me to be NO GOOD REASON!

Hur hur considering some of Dawkins' comments I'm not worried there

N.B. I still wouldn't want to hang out with him, tho!

I don't think it's unrelated at all. Dawkins is a follower of Darwin, who lost his religious faith when his daughters died. Darwinism is the main intellectual enemy of Christianity, and sees itself as the only rational, post-Enlightenment way to treat the fallacy of Creationism. It is necessarily at odds with the religious worldview. 'Brights' is a word which makes direct reference to 'the Enlightenment'.

WRONG

WRONG

Nick, you're accepting the devout Christian's version of Darwinism! I don't believe any smart Darwinist would define the doctrine in such silly terms!

Relativism is what prevails in those American schools which teach Evolution only as 'one of several different ways of explaining how we got here'. And I think science has a right to feel threatened by this outlook, and to say, look, some explanations are better than others, and even 'brighter'.

Hmm, I think that depends on a number of other factors. The smugness of your boss, the smugness of the vulgar rich etc etc can all get very grating, notwithstanding a secret conviction of superiority.

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On that you have a small point. However, it begs the question of whether, in this context, it is necessary/sufficient/justifiable/helpful to merely be "provacative." And that just gets us back to the question of whether smugness is "good" or "bad" in this context, doesn't it?

That's a good point. But humanism has its roots in the renaissance. It is a movement which replaces worship of gods with worship of Man. It has its differences with science. For instance, the Krokers say we are in a period they call the 'post human'. It may be that we are already being superceded by genetech and computers. It may be perfectly consistent with the science of evolution that humans should now be displaced from the centre of the picture, having forged more effective lifeforms.

(Note to self: next time, remember to remember that Momus doesn't care about arguments, he just like to play. duh.)

Howbout "affirmists"? Or "persistants"

I prefer 'Momus doesn't care about arguments, but he likes to think.'

Why would Dawkins wish atheism to echo the somewhat propagandist conduct of a religion, particularly Christianity (though Christianity, or at least its true essence or meme – altruism – has all but been lost)? What’s wrong with having the courage of your convictions? Convictions imply ideas packed with emotion; hazardous and worthless! Septembereleventh came for courageous convictions. You catch more flies with jam than vinegar.

Watch out, Charles, there's a lot of baby in that bathwater!

Nick in pointing out the speck in my eye while ignoring the plank in his own shockah

You're paraphrasing Matthew 7 there in support of your claim to have 'logical reasoning' on your side. Somewhat... illogical, captain? I also can't really accept that because my argument went to a place you didn't expect -- the idea that intelligent machines may one day rationally fail to believe in their creators too -- it isn't rational any more. (If you had blamed me for talking like a bad sci-fi film, though, you might have had a point.)

These two interviews made me an admirer of Dawkins:

http://www.salon.com/books/int/2006/10/13/dawkins/index.html

http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2005/04/30/dawkins/index1.html

How would we be better off without religion?

We'd all be freed to concentrate on the only life we are ever going to have. We'd be free to exult in the privilege -- the remarkable good fortune -- that each one of us enjoys through having been being born. An astronomically overwhelming majority of the people who could be born never will be. You are one of the tiny minority whose number came up. Be thankful that you have a life, and forsake your vain and presumptuous desire for a second one. The world would be a better place if we all had this positive attitude to life. It would also be a better place if morality was all about doing good to others and refraining from hurting them, rather than religion's morbid obsession with private sin and the evils of sexual enjoyment.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

What is so bad about religion?

Well, it encourages you to believe falsehoods, to be satisfied with inadequate explanations which really aren't explanations at all. And this is particularly bad because the real explanations, the scientific explanations, are so beautiful and so elegant. Plenty of people never get exposed to the beauties of the scientific explanation for the world and for life. And that's very sad. But it's even sadder if they are actively discouraged from understanding by a systematic attempt in the opposite direction, which is what many religions actually are. But that's only the first of my many reasons for being hostile to religion.

My sense is that you don't just think religion is dishonest. There's something evil about it as well.

Well, yes. I think there's something very evil about faith, where faith means believing in something in the absence of evidence, and actually taking pride in believing in something in the absence of evidence. And the reason that's dangerous is that it justifies essentially anything. If you're taught in your holy book or by your priest that blasphemers should die or apostates should die -- anybody who once believed in the religion and no longer does needs to be killed -- that clearly is evil. And people don't have to justify it because it's their faith. They don't have to say, "Well, here's a very good reason for this." All they need to say is, "That's what my faith says." And we're all expected to back off and respect that. Whether or not we're actually faithful ourselves, we've been brought up to respect faith and to regard it as something that should not be challenged. And that can have extremely evil consequences. The consequences it's had historically -- the Crusades, the Inquisition, right up to the present time where you have suicide bombers and people flying planes into skyscrapers in New York -- all in the name of faith.

But don't you need to distinguish between religious extremists who kill people and moderate, peaceful religious believers?

You certainly need to distinguish them. They are very different. However, the moderate, sensible religious people you've cited make the world safe for the extremists by bringing up children -- sometimes even indoctrinating children -- to believe that faith trumps everything and by influencing society to respect faith. Now, the faith of these moderate people is in itself harmless. But the idea that faith needs to be respected is instilled into children sitting in rows in their madrasahs in the Muslim world. And they are told these things not by extremists but by decent, moderate teachers and mullahs. But when they grow up, a small minority of them remember what they were told. They remember reading their holy book, and they take it literally. They really do believe it. Now, the moderate ones don't really believe it, but they have taught children that faith is a virtue. And it only takes a minority to believe what it says in the holy book -- the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Quran, whatever it is. If you believe it's literally true, then there's scarcely any limit to the evil things you might do.

And yet most moderate religious people are appalled by the apocalyptic thinking of religious extremists.

Of course they're appalled. They're very decent, nice people. But they have no right to be appalled because, in a sense, they brought it on the world by teaching people, especially children, the virtues of unquestioned faith.

Are you saying if parents belong to a particular church, they should not teach their children about that religion?

I would say that parents should teach their children anything that's known to be factually true -- like "that's a bluebird" or "that's a bald eagle." Or they could teach children that there are such things as religious beliefs. But to teach children that it is a fact that there is one god or that God created the world in six days, that is child abuse.

But isn't much of parenting about teaching values to children? Just as a family of vegetarians will teach their children about the evils of killing animals and eating meat, can't parents who believe in God teach their children the values of a religious upbringing?

Children ask questions. And when a child says, "Why is it wrong to do so and so?" you can perfectly well answer that by saying, "Well, how would you like it if somebody else did that to you?" That's a way of imparting to a child the Golden Rule: "Do as you would be done by." The world would fall apart if everybody stole things from everybody else, so it's a bad thing to steal. If a child says, "Why can't I eat meat?" then you can say, "Your mother and I believe that it's wrong to eat meat for this, that and the other reason. We are vegetarians. You can decide when you're older whether you want to be a vegetarian or not. But for the moment, you're living in this house, so the food we give you is not meat." That I could see. I think it's child abuse not to let the child have the free choice of knowing there are other people who believe something quite different and the child could make its own choice.

Now, there are an awful lot of people who call themselves religious -- or some people prefer to use the word "spiritual" -- even though they don't go to church. They aren't part of any organized religion. They don't believe in a personal God. Some don't even like the word "God" because there's so much baggage attached to that word. But they still have some powerful feeling that there is a transcendent reality. And they often engage in some spiritual practice in their own lives. Would you call these people "religious"?

That's a difficult question. I probably would call them religious. It depends on exactly what they do believe. The first chapter of "The God Delusion" talks about Einstein, who often used the word "God." Einstein clearly was an atheist in the sense that he didn't believe in any sort of personal God. He used the word "God" as a metaphoric name for that which we don't yet understand, for the deep mysteries at the foundation of the universe.

Is this rhetoric or does it actually mean something? Something troubles me about the logic of the first two sentences.

The third sentence is rather too dictatorial for my liking.

still a dick:

...We who doubt that "theology" is a subject at all, or who compare it with the study of leprechauns, are eagerly hoping to be proved wrong. Of course, university departments of theology house many excellent scholars of history, linguistics, literature, ecclesiastical art and music, archaeology, psychology, anthropology, sociology, iconology, and other worthwhile and important subjects. These academics would be welcomed into appropriate departments elsewhere in the university. But as for theology itself, defined as "the organised body of knowledge dealing with the nature, attributes, and governance of God", a positive case now needs to be made that it has any real content at all, and that it has any place in today's universities.

what is the far left's beef with dawkins? they think he's too western or empirical or something?

my beef with him is that he's an anti-intellectual jerk

well, why?

is this a white guilt thing? like other races/cultures are still religious, so we're underhandely slagging them for believing?

He used the word "God" as a metaphoric name for that which we don't yet understand, for the deep mysteries at the foundation of the universe.

I mean seriously if he'd bother to READ any actual theology he would find this position of Einstein's is word for word - to the very letter - the position of various theologians from a variety of faiths, many of whom predated Einstein by hundreds and in some cases thousands of years.

he doesn't follow his own argument of the necessity of examining evidence. He readily admits he's never read Saint Augustine or Faruddin Attar or Gershom Scholem or whoever. The guy is a jackass.

Yes, because clearly theology from Babylon or indigenous populations is at issue, rather than Christian, Jewish or Islamic theology.

xxpost-Yeah, but Einstien didn't waste away his life chewing over the idea.

As with the other Dawkins thread, I'm still utterly unclear why anyone needs to be an expert on individual theologians to write off the belief in God. Theologians don't deal with proofs that would satisfy anyone looking for scientific evidence - which is, rather clearly, Dawkin's point of attack.

lots of stupid people on this thread

also, milo otm.

for instance, that book where he tries to argue that we should find the impersonal, mechanistic operations of the universe sublime and beautiful. it's soul crushing, why cant he admit that?
-- ryan (ryan), Monday, November 17, 2003 1:23 AM (3 years ago) Bookmark Link

like was this guy kidding? lol sad sack

He also doesn't give any credit to organized religion's remarkable role in preserving and fostering scientific thought - without the Catholic Church we would in all likelihood have no records of large swathes of western knowledge, from Plato and Aristotle on down. Religion gave us literature and printing. It's played a unique role in developing the idea of basic human rights, etc. For him its all just "who are these silly savages believing in the all-powerful sky god, what a bunch of morons" - its a deeply arrogant reductionism at work.

x-post

shakey: giving credit to an organization for doing worldy, non-religious things doesn't mean you can't also think their belief system is a sham

their = its

I'm still utterly unclear why anyone needs to be an expert on individual theologians to write off the belief in God.

because its fucking lazy - you don't think, over the thousands of years of human thought, that Dawkins' line of attack has ever been considered/discussed/refuted by the very people who are obsessed with this particular idea?

x-post

He also doesn't give any credit to organized religion's remarkable role in preserving and fostering scientific thought - without the Catholic Church we would in all likelihood have no records of large swathes of western knowledge, from Plato and Aristotle on down.

As to the initial quote -

He's half right about where you could stick theologians, he just phrases it badly. I doubt that he'd argue that people wishing to study the nature of religion/religious traditions/mythology wouldn't have a place in the liberal arts.

He's saying that when you approach the subject as true believers, when 'teaching' has elements of 'witnessing,' you aren't participating in any kind of dialogue that would belong in another academic discipline.

shakey: giving credit to an organization for doing worldy, non-religious things doesn't mean you can't also think their belief system is a sham

that's totally true - but Dawkins doesn't stop at calling the belief system a sham, he actively accuses it of being the source of human misery. The very first page of the intro to his book introduces the oft- and very easily discredited canard that religion has been responsible for the vast majority of violence and oppression.

x-post

So Augustine found physical evidence of the existence of God?

It's not lazy to not read up on a bunch of theologians if you're coming to the table with the assumption that NOTHING they can say will persuade you (<--- that's the lazy part): it's an efficient use of your time.

xp ah, I haven't read the God Delusion. I stick mostly to his science-y stuff.

I like the idea that we'd somehow have missed the idea of printing without religion.

But Dawkins would merely reply that it was organized Christianity that played a role in losing that information to start with

This is not historically accurate. It wasn't Christians that regularly sacked Rome and essentially destroyed the Empire.

It takes some difficulty to say (with a straight face) that without the Catholic Church we'd never have, say, learned of evolution, doesn't it?

Depends how far you want to draw the line - if you want to draw the line between Aristotle and Darwin, the Church is right in the middle.

He's saying that when you approach the subject as true believers, when 'teaching' has elements of 'witnessing,' you aren't participating in any kind of dialogue that would belong in another academic discipline.

I don't disagree with this at all, dogmatists are no use in any kind of rational debate. But again, Darwin doesn't stop with a specific brand of belief - he writes off ALL belief.

x-post

I like the idea that we'd somehow have missed the idea of printing without religion.

religious impulse is essentially at the root of the written (and, much later, the printed word). before it, based on all the available archaeological evidence, people didn't have anything they felt compelled to write about.

As with the other Dawkins thread, I'm still utterly unclear why anyone needs to be an expert on individual theologians to write off the belief in God. Theologians don't deal with proofs that would satisfy anyone looking for scientific evidence - which is, rather clearly, Dawkin's point of attack.

you dont have to be an expert on individual theologians to write off a belief in god, but you DO have to be an expert to write off "theology" as a discipline

and honestly why is he trying to separate out "organized religion" from any number of belief systems that have contributed to shitty things in history?

So Augustine found physical evidence of the existence of God?

hey read him and find out. it'll be like a whodunit mystery!

eligious impulse is essentially at the root of the written (and, much later, the printed word). before it, based on all the available archaeological evidence, people didn't have anything they felt compelled to write about.

-- Shakey Mo Collier, Tuesday, October 2, 2007 9:24 PM (40 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

^^^ stupid. like, seriously dude?

xp to max

because he has an axe to grind, duh.

i just hate the idea that we can separate out "organized religion" from a whole multitude of institutions and belief systems that make peoples' lives suck

and honestly why is he trying to separate out "organized religion" from any number of belief systems that have contributed to shitty things in history?

I think the answer is clearly that he has an agenda - an agenda borne of years of fending off really ludicrous attacks from ignorant people professing to be religious (creationists, etc.)

river wolf show me evidence of writing that predates religion

also, as an evolutionary biologist, i imagine he's constantly pitted against the very religious and the very stupid. mainstream christianity would maintain that everything that he's doing is a sham, so it's not entirely shocking that that's where he's going to focus his ire.

xp

i mean for what its worth without christianity the enlightenment that dawkins is so fond of would likely not exist, both in the sense that it was a reaction to christianity and in the sense that it appropriated a lot of christian concepts and ideas

xp but ugh thats like me writing off the entirety of ev. bio because i think that dawkins is a fucking prick

Shakey, we didn't lose knowledge entirely because of the fall of the Roman Empire. The Christians set out from the start to eliminate (or co-opt) competing mythologies and belief systems - which included those nasty Greek and Roman pagans.

"Depends how far you want to draw the line - if you want to draw the line between Aristotle and Darwin, the Church is right in the middle." - and where do all the other Christian sects (the vast majority of which cannot exist without the Medieval church) fit into this line?

"But again, Darwin doesn't stop with a specific brand of belief - he writes off ALL belief." - in this specific instance, he writes off supernatural belief as an academic discpline deserving of a (in Dawkin's eyes secular) university's time.

oldest alphabet in the world = Egypt.

gee I wonder what they were writing about.

x-post

i think we all learned pretty early on that the crusades/fred phelps/the inquisition do not represent all of christianity--that there are in fact a multitude of ways to BE a christian or BE religious, not all of which require you to hate evolution or women or gays

correlation does not equal causation, shakey. that writing was invented at the same time as religion (or even as a direct result of religion) doesn't mean that "writing" as an activity owes it's "existence" or whatever the fuck to religion.

and honestly why is he trying to separate out "organized religion" from any number of belief systems that have contributed to shitty things in history?

Why didn't lawyers suing Big Tobacco also fuck with McDonald's? It wasn't on their plate.
Why do liberals primarily point their ire at Dubya rather than Congressional Democrats? Because he's the target in front of them.

(btw I am not a fan of the Catholic Church AT ALL and Milo is completely correct - I just think its important in the context of this argument to be cognizant of its central role in Western thought)

x-post

or, rather, that no one would have ever written about anything ever if we didn't also believe in God.

that alphabets were invented part and parcel with organized religion has waaaaaay more to do with the "organized" part than it does with the "religion" part.

re: religion and writing--lets not forget that "religion" means something very different to ancient egyptians than it does to us

dawkins is a fucking prick

THAT's my main problem with the guy, also with Hitchens when he gets on the subject. I don't have as much contention with the guy's particular opinions so much as the way he expresses them. I did get a kick out the jokes South Park made about him.

i.e. religion was NOT separate from art/philosophy/literature or whatever

xpost to myself

Because (organized) religion, supernatural belief, etc. are his targets.

yeah but i think what im trying to say isnt that he should attack all bad things but that you cant really separate out religion from capitalism or philosophy or science, so games like "WOW WHAT WOULD IT BE LIKE WITHOUT CHRISTIANITY PROBABLY A LOT BETTER HUH" are just totally useless

Yeah, the church was just the dominant institution of the times. Fuck all to do with the fact it was a religious organization. On the flip side, the same goes for wars. I disagree with Hawkins on that.

re: religion and writing--lets not forget that "religion" means something very different to ancient egyptians than it does to us

ironically, Dawkins would probably not entertain the value of such a distinction, since its all just bullshit to him.

for instance, that book where he tries to argue that we should find the impersonal, mechanistic operations of the universe sublime and beautiful. it's soul crushing, why cant he admit that?
-- ryan (ryan), Monday, 17 November 2003 01:23 (3 years ago) Bookmark Link

it's fine with me that life is essentially meaningless, it would do my head in if there was some sort of grand scheme or "purpose". as it stands, life is just a bit of a lol, innit.

whether it's separate or not is missing the point, you guys!

shakey is trying to tell me that w/o religion we never would have gotten around to writing shit down?? that's preposterous! writing as a social innovation has more to do with how people organized themselves. religion had a great deal to do with that, but privileging it as the sole source of cultural innovation is retarded.

xp

xpost-Amen

Yeah, the church was just the dominant institution of the times. Fuck all to do with the fact it was a religious organization.

yes the fact that it was dominant has nothing to do with the fact that it was religious and that its power was based upon the strength of its spiritual arguments. Constantine just converted for the hell of it etc.

wtf

x-post

it's fine with me that life is essentially meaningless, it would do my head in if there was some sort of grand scheme or "purpose". as it stands, life is just a bit of a lol, innit.

-- max r, Tuesday, October 2, 2007 2:36 PM (37 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

fwiw this is a "religious" position (more or less) held by a fair number of ppl, incl. spinoza

shakey is trying to tell me that w/o religion we never would have gotten around to writing shit down?

I didn't say anything of the kind - I simply pointed out the facts and drew a connection. Writing developed hand in hand with religion. To say it would've developed WITHOUT religion is purely hypothetical and also unprovable.

I can't believe the first 10-odd posts on this thread.

R U EVEN SRIUS

multi-xpost - I'm not entirely sure that Dawkins does look at religion in a vacuum. But if you trace back western culture far enough and find that the root for much economic/political belief is grounded in particular religious codes/beliefs - wouldn't it make sense to make those your target?

Once you break down the reliance on the 'man behind the curtain' you can then start to work on the damage wrought.

well youre all sort of right but guys dont you see that the point is that "religion" and "organized" religion arent static categories?? they mean v. different things to different people at different times and painting them all as loonies is fucking preposterous!!

Well if it was mainly the fact that they were religious which made them the dominant institutions, why aren't they the dominant institutions still?

yeah but i think what im trying to say isnt that he should attack all bad things but that you cant really separate out religion from capitalism or philosophy or science, so games like "WOW WHAT WOULD IT BE LIKE WITHOUT CHRISTIANITY PROBABLY A LOT BETTER HUH" are just totally useless

i can't speak to Dawkins' criticisms of religions past; i haven't read the book. w/r/t present-day organized religion: would you say that Dawkins might be willing to expand his argument to include dogmatic schools of thought, in general? i seem to vaguely recall that he wasn't thrilled with nationalism, either.

xposts like what

saying "all theology is useless" is just about the DUMBEST FUCKING THING IVE EVER HEARD

Taking Dawkins to task for not being nice to indigenous Africans who retain animist beliefs is missing the point. As RW says, he's an evolutionary biologist whose everyday conflicts are with modern Islam and Christianity.

It's unfair to saddle him with having to make exceptions for every minor and historical belief.

dogmatic schools of thought

like, i dunno--sweeping generalizations like "all theology is free of content"??

modern Islam and Christianity

ya but dude these are STILL multiple, non-static concepts--my grandmother goes to church every sunday but she believes in a VERY different god than fred phelps

painting them all as loonies is fucking preposterous!!

-- max, Tuesday, October 2, 2007 5:40 PM (17 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

I'd say there's a lot of evidence of abundant religious lunacy and it's high time that religion be put under the same kind of scrutiny as other items out there in the marketplace of ideas. For most of human history, this was not allowed. And in a lot of places, it still isn't.

why aren't they the dominant institutions still?

see: Gibbon

theres a lot of evidence of abundant scientific lunacy, too! i dont have a problem with placing religion or religious ppl under scrutiny but doing with a brush as large as dawkins and no flair or desire for complexity or subtlety helps no one

dawkins is a fucking prick

THAT's my main problem with the guy, also with Hitchens when he gets on the subject. I don't have as much contention with the guy's particular opinions so much as the way he expresses them. I did get a kick out the jokes South Park made about him.

-- kingfish, Tuesday, October 2, 2007 5:32 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Extremely lame objections. You mean you just wish they'd say what they say in a nicer way?

max, you're totally right. however, milo is, too, in that dawkins sees fundamentalist islam/christianity as major threats to human development and well-being. and i would tend to agree.

no i mean i think thats fair! im not defending al-qaeda or suicide bobmers or james dobson... it just seems to me that the hardline atheism he espouses is just the flip side of the fucking coin--a total closed-mindedness, and an incredibly ignorant one to boot

riverwolf the trick is that the key word is FUNDAMENTALIST, not Christian or Islamic.

x-post

i mean in the case of al-qaeda it helps exactly 0 people to blame it on islam

no flair or desire for complexity or subtlety helps no one

-- max, Tuesday, October 2, 2007 5:45 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

Have you read Dawkins? It sounds as if you've heard a few soundbites.

Check this out; I'd never heard of Dawkins before reading this, but I think that throughout he makes some great points:

http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2005/04/30/dawkins/index.html

Personally, I see a belief in God as being a hair removed from a belief in ghosts and haunted houses. Clearly I'm not writing books about it - but I don't know why I have to give Christians/etc. a fair shake just because theirs is a socially-sanctioned belief.

Dawkins would agree, I think, that your grandma and mine aren't out to shackle the world with their beliefs, but that doesn't make the fundamental belief any more legitimate.

closed-minded doesn't seem like the right word, for some reason.

like, close-minded to the existence of God?

xp to max

are those the Salon interviews posted upthread (one of which I took to task for a particularly stupid line)?

stubborn and self-righteous seem more applicable than closed-minded.

But Milo, "belief in God" is, like religion, ALSO a complex and multiple idea. You might not believe in your grandmother's God, or my grandmother's God, but if you believe in "good" or "truth" I'd argue you believe in God in some (well, specifically in Plato's) sense.

closed-minded to the idea that religion or theology might be valuable or interesting or useful in some sense

right, that makes more sense.

reading the interview dally sent is sort of illuminating--dawkins is more subtle than a lot of his soundbites make clear, and hes careful to distinguish btw "good" and "bad" religion (which is sort of weird but ill let him do it)--i think the place where i really object is the idea that "belief in god" is "retarded" which to me takes a really limited and specific view of what the belief entails or might mean

like i was saying, to Plato "god" just means that you believe in an objective, external truth, or to Spinoza that you believe in some sense of "pantheism" or the necessary unfolding of the universe

i sort of assume that he means god = personal god that takes an active interest and hand in human affairs.

the necessary unfolding of the universe

^^^ sounds a lot like............science??

or, rather, a belief in "the necessary unfolding of the universe" does not have to in any way be inconsistent with a belief in science.

Max, that is not what Dawkins is talking about at all when he talks about religion. He specifically says that he's talking about belief in a supreme, supernatural being who created the universe, hears prayers, takes an active interest in human events, decides where your soul goes after you die, and has specific beliefs about what you should eat and who you should have sex with. He is not talking about god in the Platonian sense. It should be noted that Spinoza is a huge influence on modern Atheist thought.

At the point where God can be anything, you've moved the discussion out of the realm of western thought and culture, and made it an impossible issue to argue.

rw right and thats sort of my point i think! that spinoza would never have called himself an atheist, and its weird to me that dawkins cant just say "o well i believe in spinoza's god" like einstein did! instead he has to go off on "teacups around mars" or whatever

Bertrand Russell's point about teacups around Mars is an important one, because it can't really be proven or disproven that there aren't, in fact, tea cups in orbit around Mars. Not unlike the existence of god.

i dunno. plato and aristotle both seemed pretty sure that they had proven the existence of god.

and dally i can see that dawkins is usually careful abt his concept of god, but comments about theology like that irritate the shit out of me!

we all know NASA's probes have found the teacups all over Mars but they're COVERING IT UP

At the point where God can be anything, you've moved the discussion out of the realm of western thought and culture, and made it an impossible issue to argue.

this may or may not be the case, but what i mean to say is just that saying shit like "im an atheist" or "people who believe in god are stupid" doesnt make much sense unless you specify "im an atheist about THIS god," or "people who believe in THIS idea about god are stupid"

Well good for them.

Anyway, I think the current god or no-god debate is one of the better ones of new millenium. It hasn't happened before on this level, at least not in America. I'm very encouraged by Hitchens and Dawkins having stateside bestsellers on the subject. Maybe the one good thing to come out of GWB's wretched presidency is that people will be even more turned off religious fundamentalism of all stripes than they were before.

i mean, really, i don't really mind anyone's belief in God, as long as they're not in charge of anything

plus remember that augustine and thomas aquinas, probably the two most influential christian theologians, were scholars of plato (well, of plotinus) and aristotle, respectively--it strikes me that if dawkins cant be bothered to read augustine or aquinas he probably shouldnt read the greeks either!

rw do you mean that you dont want anyone to be in charge of anything, or that only ppl who reject every concept of god (this would be nietzsche, i think) should be in charge?

He spends a good amount of God Delusion systematically demolishing Aquinas's "proofs." Read the book before freaking out.

haha now i want to read it, ppl have spent a long time trying to outwite aristotle and aquinas and its VERY difficult

Max, we (you, me, Dawkins, Shakey, RW, etc.) were all raised in a Judeo-Christian culture that now has to include Islam (from the same tradition). There's no need to be absolutely specific all the time, because if someone was referring to an outsider belief system, it would be noted.

and dally otm: this is why, at the end of the day, i don't really mind that dawkins/hitchens are churlish meanies. xposts

xp ha, no, i just mean that people who take seriously the personal, supernatural God shouldn't be allowed to be in charge of, say, me.

yeah but milo w/in the abrahamic religions there's still a whole multitude of concepts of god ie augustine vs. aquinas vs. spinoza vs. avicenna vs. meister eckhardt vs. levinas vs. derrida--i still think that specificity is important

And the fact that they are meanies makes them all the more entertaining. Why would anyone want a mild and kind Christopher Hitchens?

He specifically says that he's talking about belief in a supreme, supernatural being who created the universe, hears prayers, takes an active interest in human events, decides where your soul goes after you die, and has specific beliefs about what you should eat and who you should have sex with

^^^ this is the main concept, max. the finer points maybe interesting and worth debating, but if a "belief in God" boils down to this, then that's Dawkins' major beef.

I would hope that the contention that monomaniacal assholes shouldn't be in charge goes without saying

x-post

you'd think so, right!

Just for the record: The original Sumerian writing system was derived from a system of clay tokens used to represent commodities. (That's from Wikipedia, so take it as you wish, but it accords with most early writing, which was used to store data. The entire idea of using writing to convey abstract thought was not an obvious jump, nor is it directly evidenced in the records for several centuries.

He specifically says that he's talking about belief in a supreme, supernatural being who created the universe, hears prayers, takes an active interest in human events, decides where your soul goes after you die, and has specific beliefs about what you should eat and who you should have sex with

this is a very very narrow conception of God and I think its highly debatable the percentage of people in the world who really literally subscribe to it

I mean basically I think its willfully naive and excessively reductionist to say that that's what a belief in God boils down to, cuz it really doesn't.

Max, wouldn't it be fair to say that 2/3 of those aren't mainstream religious or theological figures - is Spinoza a readily-named influence on western Christianity's theology?
And Augustine and Aquinas do meet the "supreme, supernatural beings' standard, don't they?

Spinoza is huge, come on

Just a quick point to something mentioned upthread: writing was not initially about religion, all the oldest texts are bureaucratic stuff like keeping track of stock, payments etc.

"im an atheist about THIS god."
That doesn't make much sense.
And yes, Dawkins is very clear that he's only railing against the clearly supernatural theistic gods that are actively involved with people etc, not the pantheistic god ala how he describes Einstein's etc.

xpost: and now I see Savonarela has said exactly what I really posted for. Ooph.

Spinoza is not huge at the Southern Baptist Conference or in my uncle's Pentecostal church.

that's probably because he's JEWISH

spinoza & derrida probably arent "mainstream" (tho they are v. influential and widely read at many divinity schools to the best of my knoweldge) but id argue that all of the rest are to their specific traditions (and oftentimes outside of them--jpII is a well-known fan of levinas)--and augustine and aquinas meet the "supreme, supernatural beings" standard in a sort of vague sense that id argue falls much more on the side of "god as the form of the good" for augustine and "god as the telos of the universe" (or something) for aquinas

"im an atheist about THIS god."
That doesn't make much sense.

why not? if there are multiple conceptions of god or belief in god, why cant i say "well, i dont believe in fred phelps's god, but i sort of believe in spinoza's god?"

i mean to say "im an atheist" and MEAN it (from my perspective) youd have to claim disbelief in truth, goodness, teleology, etc--youd have to be nietzsche.

actually arguably youd have to be spinoza and he says he DID believe in god, so who the fuck knows.

Just a quick point to something mentioned upthread: writing was not initially about religion, all the oldest texts are bureaucratic stuff like keeping track of stock, payments etc.

I think its debatable to consider these "texts" in any formal sense, as they don't express ideas - its more like binary code (101101110111)

x-post

I remember refs to Spinoza in Hebrew school as a child, and he came up again in college (philosophy, jewish lit, etc.)

i mean this isnt EASY to say and im tying myself up in knots but my main point is that belief in god is incredibly complex and diverse (as is the practice of religion) and I KNOW that dawkins is careful about this but honestly almost 100% of philosophical writing before the enlightenment (when we started to make the distinction btw. "religion" and "philosophy") could be classified as "theology" so when he calls that contentless it makes me wonder if hes even paying attention!

Because that's not the common usage of the word "atheist"? It would make more sense to just say "I do not believe in THIS god". It doesn't make sense to me to modify the word atheist with an "about," since you're saying "I'm godless about THIS god." If you're not atheist about a different god, you're not an atheist. I will agree that this is just nitpicking though.

Oh well, it's late and I do believe in the importance of sleep.

I think its debatable to consider these "texts" in any formal sense, as they don't express ideas - its more like binary code (101101110111), yes but that's precisely my point. They were very functional pieces of "technology", if you will. But religion did not create writing, as was alleged upthread.

that's probably because he's JEWISH

Influential in a specific tradition or in God Grad School is one thing - but that's like assuming that a PhD candidate's literary interests bear a resemblance to or influence the rest of the world, when Stephen King and Harry Potter are the depth of many home libraries.

Just a quick point to something mentioned upthread: writing was not initially about religion, all the oldest texts are bureaucratic stuff like keeping track of stock, payments etc.

OTM...I wish Dawkins only wrote about the controversies and damage done by early water rights' bills or cattle ownership regulations.

actually you could make a great argument that it WAS precisely such private property accounting which has irrevocably fucked humanity in the ass (see Rousseau etc). It would make more sense than Dawkins' weird misconceptions about religion, anyway.

wait, has he ever writtena bout that, abbott?

I CONCUR, and would much rather read early laws based not on Christianity or MOses' laws.

He hasn't written about that AFAIK, but it is a wish.

Not someone who's played a role in defining God or religion for the masses.

spinoza is read by divinity students >>>>>> divinity students then give sermons influenced by spinoza

Influential in a specific tradition or in God Grad School is one thing - but that's like assuming that a PhD candidate's literary interests bear a resemblance to or influence the rest of the world, when Stephen King and Harry Potter are the depth of many home libraries.

wait - so because he's a massively influential thinker on the actual organizers of religion (priests, rabbis, etc.) and not a populist like the Left Behind guys means he's inconsequential? Does not compute. I guess Plato doesn't count for shit either. Or Marx or Adam Smith.

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i think i would wish for that, too.

Yes, Shakey, fundies like the Left Behind guys are a far greater influence - and more important from the perspective of someone arguing against religion - than Spinoza and Derrida and Islamic spiritualists.

btw, has anyone actually read the Left Behind books? I might have to give it a shot.

But religion did not create writing, as was alleged upthread.

I didn't "allege" anything of the kind but thanks for repeating the misconception - I said religion "was at the root of the written word". WORDS, not accounting. ("in the beginning was the word" haha) And I think this is borne out in the historical record, specifically in Egypt, where the earliest writings are expressing what Dawkins would consider religious ideas, about death, about the origins of the world, about power and authority, etc. This is not to say that Religion Created Language or anything like that, but just to point out that religious thought went hand-in-hand with the foundations of humanity's intellectual traditions, which begin with writing down ideas and communicating them to future generations.

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Yes, Shakey, fundies like the Left Behind guys are a far greater influence - and more important from the perspective of someone arguing against religion - than Spinoza and Derrida and Islamic spiritualists.

eh maybe in the immediate short-term. those books will be forgotten and/or ridiculed in 10-20 years. Spinoza and Derrida and Rumi will still be on the "required reading" list for anyone who wants to really understand the traditions involved.

Allege does not get you out of legal complications when claiming or stating something. Shakey: go to court on yr kangaroo!

xp

If it wasn't for religion, how the hell would I have known How the Raccoon Got Its Stripes? Or Why Mosquitos Buzz In Your Ear?

If only most people wanted to 'really understand the traditions involved' in their religion. But they don't.

oh wait

for what its worth, just because more people believe in tim lahaye's conception of god than spinoza's (and frankly i think this is totally arguable w/out hard data--just b/c lahaye sells more than spinoza doesnt mean that religious people in this country couldnt or wouldnt articulate a pantheistic, natural idea of god that would be in line w/ spinozas w/out explicitly being spinoza's) doesn't mean that there aren't multiple concepts of god

Right, no one disputes that. Not even Dawkins. But what you're asking is that he annotate every statement to indicate that he's really criticizing X, but not Y and the Zs are okay too. When everyone involved realizes he's responding to the dominant religious paradigm.

Your demands of him are simply unnecessary.

I think god has AWESOME SNEAKERS. Seriously I was trying to imagine what a non-Mormon god guy figure might like and he was just SWEETASS SNEAKS and then clouds above that (didn't get very far before I fell asleep).

This is true.

This is why I'm not sure I could start my own religion.

When everyone involved realizes he's responding to the dominant religious paradigm

im not trying to play the asshole here, but i didn't realize that, and im still unconvinced that he is given dally's comments above that he "dismantles" aquinas (if hes attacking the "dominant religious paradigm," which isnt particularly aquinian or aristotelian, why is he also attacking aquinas?). ugh and honestly i dont think that my demands are "unnecessary"--what if i stood up and said "rock music is bad" or "black people are criminals" and then backtracked, saying, "i thought everyone understood i was only talking about certain conceptions of rock music or certain specific black people"

max OTM - also rhetorically even if that is what Dawkins is doing I think that's rather dangerous and short-sighted, as it reinforces and legitimizes the very conceptions of God he's seeking to undermine. By acting like those are the only ones - which they definitely are not, as I would hope is clear by now - he's ceding them a certain authority, which they don't have any real legitimate claim to.

I like Hitchens's oft-repeated point that religion is a product of humankind's infancy and is such our first and worst explanation as to whey we're here; and that more nuanced and complex moral instruction can be found in the literature Dostoevsky and George Eliot (for example), than the Torah, the Bible, the Koran.

UH.JPG

sheesh, missing articles above, but you get the gist

dostoevsky and eliot arent MORAL INSTRUCTION, bro

Dawkins vs. Aquinas

lolz that this is in the "life and style" section and not the "science" section hahahahah

anyone reading "crime and punishment" for a list of rules of how to live their lives is going to end up really fucked up

I agree with Hitchens too, and he's sharp enough to realize that one of Eliot's heroines, like, say, Dorothea Brooke, managed to eke out a tolerable existence THANKS to religion.

no one's saying that, max.

(xpost)

I mean basically I think its willfully naive and excessively reductionist to say that that's what a belief in God boils down to, cuz it really doesn't.

-- Shakey Mo Collier, Tuesday, October 2, 2007 6:19 PM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

He's merely defining his terms. He's being accurate. I don't see him saying that's what "belief in god boils down to," he's stating the paramaters of his argument.

wtf does "moral instruction" mean then?

McGuffey Readers

I don't see him saying that's what "belief in god boils down to," he's stating the paramaters of his argument.

if those are his parameters, I personally don't disagree with him (altho I'm sure there are numerous rabid fundamentalists who do). The problem is he ALWAYS takes a reference to God to mean those specific characteristics (see his rather pathetic "attack" on Aquinas linked above) even when those characteristics are specifically NOT being referenced or ascribed to God. Its the "baby out with the bathwater", its myopic, its misinformed.

All three of these arguments rely upon the idea of an infinite regress and invoke God to terminate it. They make the entirely unwarranted assumption that God himself is immune to the regress. Even if we allow the dubious luxury of arbitrarily conjuring up a terminator to an infinite regress and giving it a name, simply because we need one, there is absolutely no reason to endow that terminator with any of the properties normally ascribed to God; omnipotence, omniscience, goodness, creativity of design, to say nothing of such human attributes as listening to prayers, forgiving sins and reading innermost thoughts.

notice how he moves, from one sentence to the next, from an essentially undefinable concept of God (the terminator of infinite regress) back to his own boogeyman conception of God. TOTAL BULLSHIT. very lazy.

wtf does "moral instruction" mean then?

I always think of Oscar Wilde: "The good end happily, the bad unhappily."

I mean that is some seriously deliberate misreading of Aquinas, its unbelievable.

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"We (Atheists) have music and art and literature, and find that the serious ethical dilemmas are better handled by Shakespeare and Tolstoy and Schiller and Dostoyevsky and George Eliot than in the mythical morality tales of the holy books. Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and—since there is no other metaphor—also the soul. We do not believe in heaven or hell, yet no statistic will ever find that without these blandishments and threats we commit more crimes of greed or violence than the faithful. (In fact, if a proper statistical inquiry could ever be made, I am sure the evidence would be the other way.) We are reconciled to living only once, except through our children, for whom we are perfectly happy to notice that we must make way, and room. We speculate that it is at least possible that, once people accepted the fact of their short and struggling lives, they might behave better toward each other and not worse. We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion. And we know for a fact that the corollary holds true—that religion has caused innumerable people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow.--Christopher Hitchens in "God is Not Great

Part II and then I'll stop kut & pasting...

"Most important of all, perhaps, we infidels do not need any machinery of reinforcement. We are those who Blaise Pascal took into account when he wrote to the one who says, "I am so made that I cannot believe."

There is no need for us to gather every day, or every seven days, or on any high and auspicious day, to proclaim our rectitude or to grovel and wallow in our unworthiness. We atheists do not require any priests, or any hierarchy above them, to police our doctrine. Sacrifices and ceremonies are abhorrent to us, as are relics and the worship of any images or objects (even including objects in the form of one of man's most useful innovations: the bound book). To us no spot on earth is or could be "holier" than another: to the ostentatious absurdity of the pilgrimage, or the plain horror of killing civilians in the name of some sacred wall or cave or shrine or rock, we can counterpose a leisurely or urgent walk from one side of the library or the gallery to another, or to lunch with an agreeable friend, in pursuit of truth or beauty. Some of these excursions to the bookshelf or the lunch or the gallery will obviously, if they are serious, bring us into contact with belief and believers, from the great devotional painters and composers to the works of Augustine, Aquinas, Maimonides, and Newman. These mighty scholars may have written many evil things or many foolish things, and been laughably ignorant of the germ theory of disease or the place of the terrestrial globe in the solar system, let alone the universe, and this is the plain reason why there are no more of them today, and why there will be no more of them tomorrow. Religion spoke its last intelligible or noble or inspiring words a long time ago: either that or it mutated into an admirable but nebulous humanism, as did, say, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a brave Lutheran pastor hanged by the Nazis for his refusal to collude with them. We shall have no more prophets or sages from the ancient quarter, which is why the devotions of today are only the echoing repetitions of yesterday, sometimes ratcheted up to screaming point so as to ward off the terrible emptiness."--Christopher Hithcens, God is Not Great

oh that rascally drunk

I always think of Oscar Wilde: "The good end happily, the bad unhappily."

how much more complex & nuanced than the bible

so now that hitch has decided that "scripture" is different from "literature," why are we comparing the two categories? surely they have different aims?

fwiw claiming music and art and literature for atheists is beyond silly; if you ever get a bunch of creative people in a room and listen to them talk - about how it feels to create, where their ideas come frome, etc.- they all sound like a bunch of devotional mystics

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Shakey: All he's saying is that god is never an explanation, just an approximate explanation, because if you're going to believe in a creator, then it must have been created by something even larger and more complex, and on and on...that's why evolution is a much more satisfactory explanation than a supreme being, because evolutino allows for very complex ends from very simple beginnings, and requires no creator to get the process started.

Shakey I'm responding to this, above:

notice how he moves, from one sentence to the next, from an essentially undefinable concept of God (the terminator of infinite regress) back to his own boogeyman conception of God. TOTAL BULLSHIT. very lazy.

-- Shakey Mo Collier, Tuesday, October 2, 2007 7:03 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Shakey: he's not claiming art and literature for Atheists, he's saying where one can find meaning in life without god.

hitchens: dick; dawkins: dick

"We (Atheists) have music and art and literature, and find that the serious ethical dilemmas are better handled by Shakespeare and Tolstoy and Schiller and Dostoyevsky and George Eliot than in the mythical morality tales of the holy books.

good think he didn't mention dante or milton, that would have fucked his shit up. as for better art and music: are you fucking kidding you drunken warmongering cunt?

ive said it before, but anyone looking to crime and punishment for meaning in their lives is going to end up reading the bible anyway

no no no read what Aquinas is saying - unless things regress infinitely there has to be a termination point. that termination point is called God. for the purposes of this argument, there is no need to ascribe any other characteristics to God beyond that. If there is a terminus, call it God.

The other option is to accept that things regress infinitely, which is kind of beyond human comprehension (not coincidentally, another concept that is often associated with God - "the limit of human understanding")

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how much more complex & nuanced than the bible

Except Wilde meant it as an ironic joke. You don't get too many of those in the Bible.

the one guy:

I made a very bad mistake and inadvertandly left off the beginning of the sentence:

We are not immune to the lure of wonder and mystery and awe: We (Atheists) have music and art and literature..."

the problem with that is, when Dawkins reads the word "God" his mind immediately conjurs the image of the white-bearded-father-in-the-sky listening to prayers and whatnot. One would hope he could avoid that particular trap, but apparently he can't.

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http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_244.html

Philip found Nathanael and said unto him, "We have found him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph." Nathanael said to him, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" [Joke!] Philip said to him, "Come and see!" [Boom!] Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, and said of him, "Behold, an Israelite indeed in whom there is no guile" ["Hey, here's an honest Jew"--joke]. Nathanael [not getting it] said to him, "How do you know me?" Jesus answered him, "Before Philip called you, I saw you yesterday, standing under a fig tree." Nathanael said [losing his cool], "Rabbi, you are the son of God! You are the king of Israel!" Jesus answered him, "Because I said I saw you standing under a fig tree, believest thou?" [Big joke! Gets laughs!] "You shall see greater things than these." [Release.] And he said to him, "Truly, truly I say unto you, you shall see the heavens opened and the angels of the Lord ascending and descending upon the Son of Man." [Boom!]

I don't know what the fuck you people are trying to refute here. I don't read for Moral Instruction, but there's a succor that I get from literature, in part because you don't get answers. It's frustrating too, naturally, but that's the rub.

succor = "Look at these people as stupid, troubled, and fucked up as me. Let's see what happens next."

No, in the Bible you get deep advice on how it's wrong to covet your neighbors's woman and/or slave.

Shakey: You're missing the whole point, Dawkins is purposefully talking a very specific kind of religious belief that continues to seriously fuck up the world. He's not talking about belief in "mystery," or "something more," or even people who consider themselves "spiritual."

Haha max I was just about to post that! :D

then why is he trying to refute Aquinas???!??

I said this on some other thread but I think Dawkins basic problem is with language and semantics - he has problems accepting or understanding conceptions of God that don't fit the fundie loony tunes model (see ref to Einstein and his conception of God way upthread. Dawkins has no problems with it, but apparently also doesn't think its valid or properly religious, even though it is SPECIFICALLY rooted in religious language and tradition)

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There's a succor born every minute.

*rimshot*

He tries to refute Aquinas because a lot of people believe Aquinias's proofs prove the existence of god, and they don't.

The Bible's full of great stories though. Part of my problem during the Stephen Dedalus uber-Catholic phase of my adolescence was reconciling my fascination with Greek mythology and the equally ridiculous stuff in the Old Testament. Except I had to believe in the latter.

He tries to refute Aquinas because a lot of people believe Aquinias's proofs prove the existence of god, and they don't.

But Aquinas' proofs about God have NOTHING to do with the silly fundie God you're saying Dawkins has a problem with wtf.

al i think we're in agreement, except for when you said that no one was claiming we should read dostoevsky for moral instruction when dally's paraphrasing of hitchens seemed to imply that

the one guy:

I made a very bad mistake and inadvertandly left off the beginning of the sentence:

We are not immune to the lure of wonder and mystery and awe: We (Atheists) have music and art and literature..."

-- dally, Wednesday, October 3, 2007 12:14 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

yes that totally refutes my point about the history of western art and music being intimately bound up with the history of the church.

and literature if we're being honest. like it or don't but the english *language* -- and literature too -- owes a shitload more to donne and bunyan and the king james bible than to, say, schiller. this is historical fact more than a matter of taste.

Is there an emotional side to the intellectual enterprise of exploring the story of life on Earth?

Yes, I strongly feel that. When you meet a scientist who calls himself or herself religious, you'll often find that that's what they mean. You often find that by "religious" they do not mean anything supernatural. They mean precisely the kind of emotional response to the natural world that you've described. Einstein had it very strongly. Unfortunately, he used the word "God" to describe it, which has led to a great deal of misunderstanding. But Einstein had that feeling, I have that feeling, you'll find it in the writings of many scientists. It's a kind of quasi-religious feeling. And there are those who wish to call it religious and who therefore are annoyed when a scientist calls himself an atheist. They think, "No, you believe in this transcendental feeling, you can't be an atheist." That's a confusion of language.

we went over this upthread where milo was talking about how no one reads Aquinas and the popular conception of God is the Left Behind-type and that that's what Dawkins is really aiming at I mean come ON

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That's a confusion of language.

Yeah, YOUR confusion.

Dawkins telling people what is and is not actually religion = teh lolz

gotta love a guy who refuses to read/investigate theology dictating to other people what traditions their beliefs stem from

Reading that interview only made me like Dawkins more, actually.

yeah see that's dawkins trying to limit "god" to a single concept right there--really annoying especially because, like, why does he have such a problem with scientists calling themselves religious? if i was one of these religious scientists id be mighty pissed at dawkins for trying to limit my ability to express myself.

like it or don't but the english *language* -- and literature too -- owes a shitload more to donne and bunyan and the king james bible than to, say, schiller. this is historical fact more than a matter of taste.

-- That one guy that hit it and quit it, Tuesday, October 2, 2007 7:25 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Which goes nowhere towards proving the existence of god. In other words, so what?

"Instruction" was probably the wrong word; what Hitchens means is that ethical and moral dilemmas are dealt with better in literature than they are in the dogmatic ancient superstitious scriptures from the Bronze age.

yeah see that's dawkins trying to limit "god" to a single concept right there--really annoying especially because, like, why does he have such a problem with scientists calling themselves religious? if i was one of these religious scientists id be mighty pissed at dawkins for trying to limit my ability to express myself.

-- max, Tuesday, October 2, 2007 7:33 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

No, he's not limiting god to a single concept, he's establishing the paramaters of his argument. Again, he's talking about a very specific manifestation of religion.

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/sam_harris/2007/10/the_problem_with_atheism.html

Let's not thank Bunyan. He's terribl!

yes that totally refutes my point about the history of western art and music being intimately bound up with the history of the church.

Pointing to the great religious art of history is kind of meaningless when religious/aristocratic patrons were the primary work available if you were a painter, sculptor or musician.

"there was some books....one was pilgrim's progress, about a man that left his family, it didn't say why." - huckleberry finn

^----a better diss of religion than anything hitchens or dawkins will ever dream up

Harris>>>>>>>>>>>>>Dawkins

So, apart from just commending these phenomena to your attention, I’d like to point out that, as atheists, our neglect of this area of human experience puts us at a rhetorical disadvantage. Because millions of people have had these experiences, and many millions more have had glimmers of them, and we, as atheists, ignore such phenomena, almost in principle, because of their religious associations—and yet these experiences often constitute the most important and transformative moments in a person’s life. Not recognizing that such experiences are possible or important can make us appear less wise even than our craziest religious opponents.

^^ totally OTM

(he's referring to meditation/contemplative spiritual experiences btw)

Ok, hands up if you know someone who's had an 'experience'.

http://i1.sell.com/1/197/112907/37/214/2437504-m.jpg

Just about everyone I've known who has had an 'experience' was on the brink of a nervous breakdown.

Ok, hands up if you know someone who's had an 'experience'.

-- aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, Wednesday, October 3, 2007 6:11 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Link

hey let's all be sneery cunts.

Just about everyone I've known who has had an 'experience' was on the brink of a nervous breakdown.

-- dally, Wednesday, October 3, 2007 7:58 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

hey let's all be sneery cunts pt 2.

Don't mock my post-nervous-breakdown epiphanies!

exactly.

I thought that was a joke... I mean, I can't count the number of people I've met/known who have had some kind of meaningful experience/epiphany with meditation, from all kinds of different backgrounds.

Seriously, mine JUST come from nervous breakdowns or before I was on my meds, from delusional states (NB these epiphanies were generally worthless: "OH. MY. GOD...I hate chatbots.")

and I'm talking perfectly functional well-adjusted people who have, like, jobs and families and whatnot.

I think Harris' "imagine if everyone who wanted to study astronomy had to build their own telescope" analogy is very apt. If you never even entertain the notion of putting yourself in this particular kind of mental space, basically you have no fucking clue what you're talking about.

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"OH. MY. GOD...I hate chatbots."

hahaha

and the clouds parted

I've had many transcendent moments, I just don't ascribe a supernatural cause to them.

Harris isn't talking about ascribing a supernatural cause, read the link

Of course he isn't.

I'm curious: does it bother you so much if people don't believe in god? I mean you really seem to take it personally.

I don't give a shit what anyone else believes, really. I have more of an issue with Dawkins and Hitchens' unbelievable arrogance and willful ignorance than anything else.

How can you hate this guy?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkAPaEMwyKU

married to the chick from vampire circus

Carol Blue?

Arrogance is a good way to respond to people who condescend to you when informed that you're an atheist, Shakey.

eh arrogance is never a virtue imho. if yr saying I'm being arrogant on this thread (I can't quite tell), I apologize and will try to be more considerate.

no, not you, dude! I was referring to your remarks about Hitchens and Dawkins (tho' I suppose Hitch deserves the charge more than Dawkins).

If you can't be righteous, you can be self-righteous.

I think one of the things I find so irritating about Dawkins and other strident atheists is the implication of certainty, which goes hand-in-hand with a denial that there is anything in the universe beyond human comprehension. (They know FOR A FACT that there is no greater consciousness than humanity's at work in the universe? O RLY)

But let me be clear, I don't believe in the kind of God that Dawkins is so obsessed with (nor do I believe that that is the most commonly accepted conception of God, as Dawkins seems to repeatedly assume). I don't believe there's some supra-human intelligence that worries about what we wear/eat or literally listens to prayers etc. The problems with these kinds of conceptions of God does not stem from some inherent fault with the idea that there is some larger force than human intelligence at work in the universe - the problems stem from the overly literal/fundamentalist interpretation of ancient texts, interpretations which have been aggressively fomented for (more often than not) very predictable and human reasons (concentration of power, repression of dissent, etc.) Dawkins should properly identify his issue as being with fundamentalist fairytales, and not with the idea of God in a broader sense.

I don't trust anyone who says they KNOW metaphysics does or does not work/exist/etc.

Dawkins has stated explicitly and repeatedly that he can't prove there is not god.

xpost, obv.

Dued he is no Zeno.

Dawkins has stated explicitly and repeatedly that he can't prove there is not god.

well then he probably shouldn't call himself an atheist.

oh for Christ's sake Shakey, that's just stupid.

nor do I believe that that is the most commonly accepted conception of God

Catholics, Anglicans, Baptists, Lutherans and Methodists are ~72% of the American population (and for much of Europe and the UK there are similar numbers of traditional Muslims, Jews and Christians): which of those are heavily influenced by "God is, like, this eternal energy source that lives inside us all, man"?

I'm not kidding at all. I've met comparatively few fundies/literalists in my life - the vast majority of folks seem to have much more fluid and malleable religious beliefs.

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oh for Christ's sake Shakey, that's just stupid.

hahahaha that's priceless

have you ever lived in the midwest, shakey? even people i didn't consider fundies or literalists definitely believed that jesus DID exist and that he was the ACTUAL son of God, and that prayer might actually work.

Catholics, Anglicans, Baptists, Lutherans and Methodists are ~72% of the American population (and for much of Europe and the UK there are similar numbers of traditional Muslims, Jews and Christians): which of those are heavily influenced by "God is, like, this eternal energy source that lives inside us all, man"?

I dunno, do some research - I'm certainly not willing to accept the validity of vast generalizations about the deeply personal beliefs of widely diverse populations.

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also, fwiw, i think a lot of those people operated on the (lazy) premise that it's better to believe and be wrong than it is to not believe and be wrong. c.f. my mom, who takes a sort of "what's the harm in believing in jesus" sort of tack. at least you won't go to hell.

i bet this attitude is endemic in many, many populations, regardless of creed.

I haven't lived in the midwest, no (travelled through it but that's not the same thing). We have our fair share of right-wing Christians on the west coast too, mind you (much of Oregon springs to mind, I have family there) and then there's large swathes of SoCal... I dunno, sometimes I think really rabid atheists just haven't ever met reasonable, decent Christians (or Muslims, or Jews). I met some surprisingly open-minded and engaging Jesuits in India that really made me rethink my rather deep antipathy to Christianity, for example.

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oh i like jesuits, for the most part. very intellectual, by and large, and seem to take the big questions serious enough to actually ask them. vs. christians by default who are either (a) too lazy or (b) too afraid to scrutinize their faith.

So I think the problem on everyone's part is sample size, then.

Dawkins has stated explicitly and repeatedly that he can't prove there is not god.

-- aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, Wednesday, October 3, 2007 11:11 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

well done someone read their popper.

hahahaha that's priceless

One can believe there is no God without believing that one can prove this - 'can't prove a negative' is pretty basic, isn't it?

I've met comparatively few fundies/literalists in my life - the vast majority of folks seem to have much more fluid and malleable religious beliefs.

Fluid and malleable has fuck all to do with the definition supplied. Fluid and malleable means that "hey, maybe this evolution stuff has merit" - not "God is, like, totally this concept of man's inner spirit of goodness and healing, man, not a deity, man."

I was laughing at the use of "for christ's sake" in that particular context

One can believe there is no God without believing that one can prove this

this doesn't sound very scientific. sounds dangerously close to "faith" as far as I can tell.

i tend to get the feeling people who make a big thing about their atheism to the point of pissing on people who aren't for being simple-minded (example given: long-term establishment lickspittle and turncoat christopher hitchens) are either only recently atheist or are aggressively defensive about their own way of getting through. with hitchens it's booze. don't know what fuels dawkins; perhaps sheer zeal -- never very attractive.

idea you could "prove" god does or doesn't exist isn't worth arguing over.

If anything, your argument appears to be more of a closed system than Dawkin's - that a (for example) Christian who believes in a humanistic deity, power of prayer, place in Heaven, etc. is necessarily a 'fundamentalist/literalist' without 'fluid and malleable' beliefs. Which is just absurd.
God, prayer, Heaven, Ten Commandments, etc. are the religious beliefs of the vast majority of Westerners.
Those are not hard-line James Dobson beliefs - they're mainstream. The fundies and literalists go much, much further.

this doesn't sound very scientific. sounds dangerously close to "faith" as far as I can tell.

An atheist sees and is offered no empirical proof of the existence of God. Ergo, there is no reason for him to believe that a God exists.

But this atheist cannot prove that God does not exist. This is impossible. If your demand is that all atheists must be willing to argue they can prove a negative, then no atheists exist.

You're walking a strange line between the most tired New Age Burning Man hippie spiritual nonsense and the most tired evangelical Atheists Drive Like This nonsense.

I respectfully disagree. Like I said, generalizations here are dangerous. Take the example of my dad - converted to Judaism as an adult and has been a rather devout Jew, served as President of the Temple, received the Crown of the Good Name, etc. I was surprised to recently learn that he's never considered prayer to really be "effective", that he doesn't think God is "listening" or anything like that, that it was just something done as part of a kind of character-building ritual. He goes to a mainstream Temple in southern california - but by your assertion he is somehow an anomaly. I think this type of variance in belief and faith and whatnot is quite common, actually.

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If your demand is that all atheists must be willing to argue they can prove a negative, then no atheists exist.

which is exactly why the very term is pretty stupid and probably shouldn't be used.

also pls to point out what Burning Man Hippie Shit I've espoused on this thread

maybe the "burning man hippie shit" is from when we talked about spinozistic pantheism? i didnt mean to imply that i think most americans hold that view, just that its a fairly common way for educated americans to believe in or deal with the concept of god that doesn't involve them believe in george burns smoking cigars in the sky. shakey's dad is just as good an example, as is pretty much every "religious" person ive ever met; frankly, youd have to be pretty isolated from most of mainstream society to never think about, question or engage with your faith or your belief in god, even if its not using the kinds of explicitly philsophical terms used by priests & rabbis & mullahs & whatever clerics.

this isnt to say, either, that i dont think a lot of ppls conceptions of god--anthropomorphic & human-concerned or no--are totally dumb, its just that i think that those conceptions of god are dumb on their own merits and not because they involve the concept of god.

also the idea of a "human" deity is made v. v. complicated in christianity by jesus & his own possible humanity/divinity so it may not be the absolute best example of a characteristic of god that dawkins finds dumb

altho on the other hand it sort of goes with what im saying--not even specific characteristics of the "bad" god enumerated by dawkins are easy to pin down and define!

which is exactly why the very term is pretty stupid and probably shouldn't be used.

also pls to point out what Burning Man Hippie Shit I've espoused on this thread

And yes, your father is not the standard believer. (For one thing, less than 2% of Americans are Jewish.)
A super-majority of Americans pray daily. 35-40% pray multiple times daily. 90%+ profess to adhere to religions in which divinity takes on some human form and prayer is not 'meditation.' Where's the evidence that they're just claiming adherence, but really aren't too sure about all that Heaven stuff?

I think the issue of someone questioning their faith or moving away from their professed faith on certain points is a red herring - that has nothing to do with the central beliefs that they are binding themselves to.

Every poll I've ever seen indicates that not only do westerners overwhelmingly consider themselves Christians, they maintain the core beliefs about the Father and the Son. I think you'd be hard-pressed to argue that most Muslims don't believe in the supernatural aspects of their religion.

max swiftly breaks Shakey's pending record of three self-posts in a row.

i am drunk, and will contribute nothing but this: i met an "old testament christian" tonight, who believes that god is just and vengeful and will nail you if you do shit wrong.

he has a tattoo in hebrew that reads "SOMETHING SOMETHING SOMETHING."

(i don't read hebrew)

Ok, I'll ask the obvious question--what's the difference between and being an "old testament christian" and being Jewish?

rabid atheists

I am an atheist (not sure if I'm rabid) and have met many reasonable, decent Christians (or Muslims, or Jews) but I'm still an atheist.

Just saying.

I am an atheist (not sure if I'm rabid) and have met many reasonable, decent Christians (or Muslims, or Jews) but I'm still an atheist.

reasonable decent Christians, Muslims and Jews - good they exist but *still a problem* in that they provide cover for the fundamentalists by not actively speaking out against them and thus protecting them in the interests of "unity". better world would obv be one where Rowan Williams says to the fundamentalists who object to gay clergy "Go on then leave, you homophobic assholes! Go and form yr own church, see if I care, good riddance to bad rubbish!" but it's obv not gonna happen.

Dawkins on that same subject:

Q: But don't you need to distinguish between religious extremists who kill people and moderate, peaceful religious believers?

A: You certainly need to distinguish them. They are very different. However, the moderate, sensible religious people you've cited make the world safe for the extremists by bringing up children -- sometimes even indoctrinating children -- to believe that faith trumps everything and by influencing society to respect faith. Now, the faith of these moderate people is in itself harmless. But the idea that faith needs to be respected is instilled into children sitting in rows in their madrasahs in the Muslim world. And they are told these things not by extremists but by decent, moderate teachers and mullahs. But when they grow up, a small minority of them remember what they were told. They remember reading their holy book, and they take it literally. They really do believe it. Now, the moderate ones don't really believe it, but they have taught children that faith is a virtue. And it only takes a minority to believe what it says in the holy book -- the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Quran, whatever it is. If you believe it's literally true, then there's scarcely any limit to the evil things you might do.

Q: And yet most moderate religious people are appalled by the apocalyptic thinking of religious extremists.

A: Of course they're appalled. They're very decent, nice people. But they have no right to be appalled because, in a sense, they brought it on the world by teaching people, especially children, the virtues of unquestioned faith.

He is a bit of an idiot sometimes, c.f. they brought it on themselves. He needs to understand that if he's going to persuade people of his point of view, he needs to tone down the rhetoric sometimes.

its funny/ridiculous/sad that Dawkins is prepared to argue that moderate or mainstream religious parents' indoctrination of their children in the importance of faith somehow supersedes or trumps their similar indoctrination on the basic moral tents of every religion (namely that its wrong to kill, steal, lie, rape, etc.) Like, its their fault that extremist children pick up on one tenet but not the others. That's facile and overly simplistic.

The part where you argued that belief in a Creator is not actually a mainstream religious belief

what, where did I say this?

better world would obv be one where Rowan Williams says to the fundamentalists who object to gay clergy "Go on then leave, you homophobic assholes! Go and form yr own church, see if I care, good riddance to bad rubbish!" but it's obv not gonna happen.

Obv. not because they're the only people who are actually joining the Church

dawkins-classic, but blinkered lately.

good they exist but *still a problem* in that they provide cover for the fundamentalists by not actively speaking out against them and thus protecting them in the interests of "unity"

there are plenty of "good" ppl of all faiths speaking out against ppl of the same faith whos views they find morally repugnant

Ok, I'll ask the obvious question--what's the difference between and being an "old testament christian" and being Jewish?

-- aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, Thursday, October 4, 2007 7:07 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Link

yeah i was trying to figure that you myself. he talked a bit about the inter-testament period (?) and how the kind and loving New Testament God is a load of old horseshit, and the fucker's still wrathful. I asked him if he was a Young Earth believer, and he was evasive.

I'm not sure what inter-testament means either - maybe the old Testament stuff that isn't in the Torah, like Prophets and Micah and all that stuff...?

Presumably the period between the end of Writings and the beginning of the New Testament? That's gotta be a couple hundred years, IIRC...

Richard Dawkins - Anti -Christ or Great Thinker?

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/517VxqY4ogL._SS500_.jpg

who needs to read a book confirming their non-belief in something?

hugely relevant question.

Because there are reasons for believing or not-believing.

I think we need someone like Richard Dawkins, he never seems to get bored of pointing out over and over again the flaws and stupidities of religion, when anyone else would have just got bored and given up.

That doesn't make him a likeable character though.

yes, i really need someone pointing out the obvious flaws in something i've not believed in for my whole life over and over again.

mttp his hectoring steez is hardly going to win anyone over. he lacks basic social skills of that kind. he is a bit like a union society debater.

no he isn't. he's a fine upstanding spokesman for the atheistic cause, and i would put it to you that in fact your assumptions are based on the sort of ad hominem preset that doesn't help anyone. it is entirely necessary that people like dawkins are allowed to put their views across, for them to be silenced would be a slight towards democracy itself. at it says in act 5 section 12 of our college constitution, no man or woman should be prevented from airing their grievances within JCR-owned premises. why don't you take it up with the bursar?

it is entirely necessary that people like dawkins are allowed to put their views across, for them to be silenced would be a slight towards democracy itself.

which other people should have this right?

well, in my capacity as the equal opportunities officer for this college, i'd like to think that anyone regardless of race, creed, gender or religion should be able to stand up and say what they want to say. for you to deny this equality would be unconscionable. dawkins is an intelligent man. this is obvious because he has been published. he should clearly be allowed to air his opinions on a wide scale. on a side-note, you still haven't given me 200 quid for the 'equal opportunities' party i'm trying to arrange for our freshers. without this party, who knows what equal opportunities could pass without being taken.

dawkins is an intelligent man. this is obvious because he has been published.

http://g-ec2.images-amazon.com/images/I/51X72CE8R0L.jpg

people like jeremy clarkson and richard littlejohn provide a necessary counterpoint in this modern world. they may not cry for equality themselves, but equality is the condition under which they can and will flourish. have you read 'to hell in a handcart'? it's a romp! anyway, i must go now, because union pres has called a meeting and i've gotta argue against a negligible change to the exam marking system for an hour or three.

littlejohn 4 prime minister

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2368085271

He speaks his mind! Is it too much much to ask to have a decent NHS (not run by politicans), decent education, more prisions, tougher punishments for criminals, proper border control, no more MRSA, fairer tax system, proper pensions (yep, as LJ would say "the man who stole your old age" has a lovely gold-plated pension funded by.....the taxpayer), abolishment of the "yuman rights" act, fairer council tax, decent transport system!!

i think louis is doing a C+P exercise?

ad lib, dude, but all founded on a week of quite breathtaking pettiness.

dammit 'LJ' ;_;

I keep thinking this thread is about Brian Dawkins and getting all infuriated that anyone would suggest he's the antichrist.

It would be hilarious if Dawkins was the anit-christ.
Imagine how pissed off he'd be!

On the subject of evolution and biology, Richard Dawkins is an intelligent, original and interesting writer - his books make potentially dull subjects fascinating, and his passion for his subject is obvious.

On religion, although I agree with most things he says, Dawkins is entirely unoriginal and uninteresting. However, I tend to agree with Mei upthread - I do think it is good that someone is promoting atheism, in a world where religion does seem to be one of the exacerbating forces behind a lot of problems. On the other hand, I feel that Dawkins may be 'preaching to the converted' - I'm not sure how many religious folks he will appeal to with his confrontational approach.

Interesting article on religious experience and the brain:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleId=434D7C62-E7F2-99DF-37CC9814533B90D7&chanId=sa013&modsrc=most_popular

that research has been around for awhile, very interesting stuff.

altho this:
"Because of the positive effect of such experiences on those who have them, some researchers speculate that the ability to induce them artificially could transform people’s lives by making them happier, healthier and better able to concentrate."

....sounds like a disaster of collosal proportions in the making.

b-b-but i thought that was what ILX was for :(

"Are you sometimes doubtful of God's existence? Wishing you had more revelations? Sick of Ayuhuasca? Try Believeitol!"

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2180660,00.html

In an interview with the Guardian, he said: "When you think about how fantastically successful the Jewish lobby has been, though, in fact, they are less numerous I am told - religious Jews anyway - than atheists and [yet they] more or less monopolise American foreign policy as far as many people can see. So if atheists could achieve a small fraction of that influence, the world would be a better place."

Uh oh.

not working hard enough? employer sends terrifying vision of God to inspire you.

x-post

i've been waiting for someone to notice that (xpost)

lol @ atheist homeland

Thing is, Neuroscience is such a primitive branch of biology, that trying to use what we actually KNOW about the brain to explore religious experience is truly a fool's errand, at this point. Sort of like, um, electroshock therapy.

Yup Id agree the point is we simply dont know. He may well be right but I dont think one needs to be some anti ascience sketpic to see he goes beyond what science can tell us.

Like many natural scientists I dont think hes so sharp on examining his own methodology. I think his certainty here is one of his weaknesses, he has so few self doubts about his own method.

Shakey touched on his understanding of language but any number of philosophical routes could or at least should derail his followers certainty - epistemological debates dont make for great paperbacks.
His lack of intellectual modesty turns me off as much as it clealry turns others on.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/3255972/Harry-Potter-fails-to-cast-spell-over-Professor-Richard-Dawkins.html

He really is a useless cunt.

^^^ Scientific fact.

Wow. Just WOW

The prominent atheist is stepping down from his post at Oxford University to write a book aimed at youngsters in which he will warn them against believing in "anti-scientific" fairytales.
Prof Hawkins said: "The book I write next year will be a children's book on how to think about the world, science thinking contrasted with mythical thinking.

---

Speaking recently at a conference of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain, a group of Britons who have renounced Islam, Prof Dawkins said: "Do not ever call a child a Muslim child or a Christian child – that is a form of child abuse because a young child is too young to know what its views are about the cosmos or morality.
"It is evil to describe a child as a Muslim child or a Christian child. I think labelling children is child abuse and I think there is a very heavy issue, for example, about teaching about hell and torturing their minds with hell.
"It's a form of child abuse, even worse than physical child abuse. I wouldn't want to teach a young child, a terrifyingly young child, about hell when he dies, as it's as bad as many forms of physical abuse."

This is also choice:

"I think looking back to my own childhood, the fact that so many of the stories I read allowed the possibility of frogs turning into princes, whether that has a sort of insidious affect on rationality, I'm not sure. Perhaps it's something for research."

I hear he's writing a hard-hitting exposé of Father Christmas at the moment.

"When you think about how fantastically successful the Jewish lobby has been, though, in fact, they are less numerous I am told - religious Jews anyway - than atheists and [yet they] more or less monopolise American foreign policy as far as many people can see."

^^^classic material

I can't wait for his channel 4 documentary on Thomas the Tank Engine.

For someone who supposedly loves science so much he doesn't talk about it half as bloody often as religion/homeopathy/superstition.

Well at least he has some common ground with the fundies now.

Up to this point Dawkins has been reasonable and correct generally speaking, if kinda dull. This, however, is like tilting at fiction because it's not true. Go nuts, buddy, but can't you really discern any targets of higher priority?

I mean, a better tact if you want to take down the Potter would be to skewer all the adult Potter-lovers who won't read anything above a 6th-grade comprehension level.

yes, if you want to "take down" a children's fantasy series the first thing you should do is attack a strawman

http://ruletheweb.co.uk/b3ta/bus/

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y148/Juror8/bus.jpg

hahahahahahahahaha

o shi

A+

who is this richard dawking

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b379/Vietgrove/bus2.jpg

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b379/Vietgrove/bus.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3501/3253331001_941a0b0269.jpg

lol!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v165/noodle_vague/bus.jpg

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b379/Vietgrove/bus4.jpg

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y148/Juror8/botb.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v165/noodle_vague/bus2.jpg

http://ruletheweb.co.uk/b3ta/bus/TVVNDKBP/KILLING%20JOKE/MORE%20LIKE/GAY%20HOMOS/bus.jpg

I can die happy now.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3109/3254205218_41b78a4c02_o.jpg

good essay by james wood about dawkins and eagleton in last weeks nyer

http://www.sportclassicbooks.com/images/covers/chocolate-thunder.jpg

Snippet of the article max mentioned here: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/08/31/090831crbo_books_wood

That Telegraph interview above is absolutely PRICELESS.

lol wood v dawkins v eagleton is the real mt douchemore.

wood is a god-botherer iirc. eagleton is a str8 choad. dawkins just learned santa doesn't exist.

Wood is not a god-botherer. God-worrier maybe. Raised evangelical and then lapsed in his teens, but has never quite got over it. "Ruined choirboy" as one of my old editors once described him.

ah, that explains this: "What is needed is neither the overweening rationalism of a Dawkins nor the rarefied religious belief of an Eagleton but a theologically engaged atheism that resembles disappointed belief." ie, what is needed is me, james woods.

or wood, even.

"dawkins just learned santa doesn't exist"

best dawkins description ever

eagleton otoh thinks dawkins is naive for presuming santa is a fat man in a red suit.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2431/3886954459_c72b0c2284.jpg

I can see why it happens, but I'm always disappointed by how the topic of God's existence/nonexistence always turns into a discussion about religion & politics for folks like this.
Keep it simple, guys.

And wow I missed that whole bit about "de-bunking" Harry Potter above.
Parents don't let your kids watch Star Wars. They'll start to believe in the Force and sound in a vacuum.
Dawkins is just pretty annoying, isn't he?

THIS IS THE ILM BUS

oops sorry :)

Fascist?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECE77Imki9M

not even close

O'Reilly is fucking loon, who's own argument doesn't match the 'logic' he's presenting.

IF YOU THINK THAT YOU ARE A FASCIST TOO (*picture of jesus*)

I Will Arrest Pope Benedict

He looks shy in that photo, like he's afraid to step out of a hallway.

nervous of thunderbolts no doubt

I'm all for arresting the pope but c'mon, Dickie D ain't gonna be able to do this

That's what his buddies call him, Dickie D.

Ok, not really that's just what I call him.

i call him dick dawk

ha! i like that one

dick dawk da blind watchmaka

someone got paid for this?

I think he and Christopher Hitchens and a couple others have done America a great service by helping mainstream Atheism in a country where for years it was (and still often is) considered rude to even admit to being one.

" He has become the mirror image of the theological dogmatists he despises."

Every time I see this sentence or a variation of it I want to stab its writer in the face.

oh. i thought you meant richard dawson.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_TYtL3iq-5_8/R7RE48fKIpI/AAAAAAAAA1s/Yo85yXrrBGw/s320/richard+dawson.jpg

anti-crist, btw.

richard dawson might not be a great thinker but i've heard he's a great drinker

actually i have no idea, just wanted to make a stupid rhyme

OH HE'S A GREAT THINKER

• Name a country that begins with the letter “A.”
• Name the loudest animal in the zoo.
• Name something you buy in a deli.
• Name something a woman might leave a lipstick mark on.
• Name something a cowboy wouldn’t want to happen during a gun fight.
• Name something an employee might ask a boss for.

" He has become the mirror image of the theological dogmatists he despises."

Every time I see this sentence or a variation of it I want to stab its writer in the face.

― Shock and Awe High School (Phil D.), Tuesday, September 7, 2010 6:59 PM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark

Agreed. Feel the same way when pople say Atheism is a religion too.

Is "pople" the Catholic version of "sheeple"?

http://www.timelesstrinkets.com/PoppleWuzzle/Images/PoppleCollectionPic4.jpg

http://www.pitchcoach.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/ron-popeil.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DC6Gr84tB9c/TcVFGeWmx0I/AAAAAAAADCA/i2bUdZfMga0/s1600/Unmitigated%2Bevil.jpg

THOUGHT PROVOKING

given that islam is such an unmitigated evil...

given that Dawkins is such an unmitigated evil

atheism hasn't any chance in Africa for the foreseeable future, also they've all got natural rhythm innit?

given that Dawkins is such an unmitigated nobshank

Love this guy: he's like an intellectually miniaturized version of Francis Galton.

i think it's his nobshank that's miniaturized

As long as "1 atheist = a dick sometimes" doesn't turn into "hence, all religions are right" then yeah, this isn't a very smart thing to say.
Especially for someone who has had decades of experience with how everyone is going to leap at misinterpreting and focusing on any part of any statement he says.

he has no experience with it cos he's a nobshank

not gonna big up this tit on a "my enemy's enemy" basis

Nob-Shank : A derogatory term for an individual not worthy of being called a Nob-end.

Now I just need to know what means "nob-end".

<3

awes trolling

i guess

its more like blissful ignorance of English slang! :)

lol, i was referring to dawkins

no duhkins

I just hate, hate, HATE this 19th century neo-colonialist "clash of civilizations" type bullshit

Though to be fair fellow "new atheist" (bleurgh) Sam Harris is even worse

Just depresses me to read this shit

The worst thing with guys like Dawkins, Harris or Dennett is the asinine poverty of their philosophical thinking, not to mention the dreary authoritarianism implicit in their positions.

^^^ speaking truth to bollocks

I admit I haven't thought this through but don't get it - the only thing they should be repeating over and over again is "no, YOU prove that your god exists" no?

They should think/explain/imagine what happens when gods die, for example - dismissing religions is only a minor fraction of the job to do.
Personally I guess I'm a sort of believer, but atheism is really THE issue of the last 200 years and it definitely deserves better interpreters.

I'm just depressed that the supposed popularizers of science and critical thinking are stuck in the 19th century imagining and rationalizing a glorious secular war against barbarian Islamic hordes.

the only thing they should be repeating over and over again is "no, YOU prove that your god exists" no?

and dealing with current supposed proofs. which they do, pretty well. anyone who suggests they're not deep thinkers or researchers, only deal with easy straw-man proofs, don't engage with the stuff real hard professional theologians are churning out, is pretty much talking shit. proofs for god are without fail elementary, and elementarily dismissed, you don't need to be a deep thinker or immersed in hundreds of years of bullshit theodicy.

otoh when they get off that pet topic then yeah, sure, they can be horrendous.

kinda think arguing about proof might be a huge missing of the point, espesh since there's only so many ways you can "politely" say to people "hey you're a idiot"

you can't reason people out of beliefs they didn't reason their way into, sure. still, i think there's value in popularising this aspect of basic philosophy.

but they're so proud about how clever they are, just like a small boy who wants to tell the whole world that he wiped his own bum.

i still think Dawkins et al need to think about religion as a social construct and consider its - ha! - evolutionary value and historical development rather than trying to make this some unwinnable "we're right you're thick" argument. when rationalists started sticking it to the christians in the 18th century the savvy theologians just backed up behind their wall of mysticism, where logic and reason couldn't really land and blow. religion, in the 21st century, in the pagan pleasurocracies we inhabit over here, doesn't even seem like the most heinous or pressing example of irrationality that one might want to confront. Big Dawk just comes across like one of those daft twats who feels good about trolling christian messageboards when the reality is that no conversation is taking place, just two sets of finger-in-ear numpties yelling at each other

I'm just depressed that the supposed popularizers of science and critical thinking are stuck in the 19th century imagining and rationalizing a glorious secular war against barbarian Islamic hordes.

― zingstreet (latebloomer), Wednesday, May 11, 2011 6:56 AM (32 minutes ago) Bookmark

otm

This - also it is kind of tricky talking of religion as a merely biological phenomenon without actually defining what "religion" is. Memetic theory at the moment is just a metaphor based on an assonance and it is not necessary to be Gadamer to see that Dawkins & co.'s ideas are nothing more than seriously flawed objectivism.

Do atheists have different factions? The talibatheists, the dawkinuits?

the Maherites

when rationalists started sticking it to the christians in the 18th century the savvy theologians just backed up behind their wall of mysticism, where logic and reason couldn't really land and blow

^^^otm. that Dawkins thinks he's some kind of genius for trying to re-fight this battle (when the territory has already shifted considerably) is just evidence of his myopia.

Do atheists have different factions? The talibatheists, the dawkinuits?

accomodationists vs 'new'/'gnu' atheists. spats all over the blogosphere. kinda lol, mostly tragic.

that Dawkins thinks he's some kind of genius for trying to re-fight this battle (when the territory has already shifted considerably) is just evidence of his myopia.

yeah, I know a lot of people working in theology and they always get a shock on the rare occasions it comes to their attention that there are actually still some people holed away somewhere in the darkest recesses of super-regressive theology departments working out proofs of the existence of god.

you know there are plenty of people who think the argument from design is pretty shit-hot, or that a godless world is necessarily immoral. i'm not sure exactly where you think the territory has shifted to, or what is wrong about popularizing the opposite arguments. 'oh hai we did all this 200 years ago, go read some baron d'holbach' doesn't really fly, imo. i don't care what dawkins' opinion of his own intellect is, i'm glad these books are out there.

xp to shakey.