posted
Icarus: I think I'm cool with that, as long as you're aware that you really are describing a "generic" extremist. I'm just pointing out that those attributes that you are ascribing to generic extremists hardly apply to Richard Dawkins.
Thus while you may be aware of the distinction I just pointed out, I would argue that Lynch, the author of the words that Tom was quoting (and which you subsequently responded to) is also blissfully unaware of the distinction.
kat: Our local museum, art gallery, nearby (over-the-border) PBS station, and local university also "hawk" books, CDs, television programs, t-shirts, and indeed solicit charitable donations.
I am a bit confused by Lynch's implication (and perhaps yours, although I would appreciate elaboration) that they should refrain from modern mass media simply out of spite to avoid what evangelical Christians are using. Or is your argument that books, CDs, and so forth are inherently ineffective or unwise?
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quote:How far would Walt Disney have gotten if Mickey Mouse had espoused atheism?
Just to nitpick: Pullman's fiction doesn't actually espouse atheism; God very definitely exists in his work.
I'm going to have to re-read the books now, it seems. I was too busy conceptualizing the scenery while listening to mystical a cappella music. Posts: 1236 | Registered: Mar 2002
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Mucus: Where is it implied that Dawkins/athiests should refrain from media or [their] books are ineffective? I pointed out that a million+ copies of The god Delusion have sold. It seems like a popular book like that is a great money maker and an effective message spreader.
There is more evidence of the evangelical zeal of the athiest movement. Although this is not Dawkin's brain child, it has been promoted on his site since December. It is sort of opposite of a "public" testiment of faith done in front of congregations in Christian churches. Now you can denounce Christ on YouTube in front of millions as you rip pages from the Bible.
quote:The Rational Response Squad has launched a $25,000 campaign to entice young people to publicly renounce any belief in the sky God of Christianity. "The Blasphemy Challenge,"this campaign encourages participants to commit what Christian doctrine calls the only unforgivable sin -- blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. (The "Holy Spirit" is an invisible ghost who Christians believe dwells on Earth as God's representative.)
quote:This is what concerns me about the current trend of evangelism in atheism.
I don't think the current trend is toward evangalism any more than people evangelize anything: Mac/PC, Coke/Pepsi, favorite beer, best brand of car, best sports team. Within any group of people you've always got a variety of personalities, and some of them tend to evengelize their beliefs.
What has changed with atheism is simply that we've reached a point where we don't have to stay in the closet. It's very liberating to be able to wear our belief on our sleeves, if for no other reason than that it allows us to identify and talk to other atheists, and to not feel alone in a culture that's steeped in religious assumptions. If you don't want to feel like an outcast, you need to find people who have similar beliefs to your own. To do that you have to be able to identify yourself.
One of the things that I've noticed that has changed is that since atheists used to have to "pass" in a theist culture, we used to be better at seeing things from the theist perspective. Today we don't need to make an effort to disguise our beliefs, but you used to have to subconsciously check your behavior to make sure you didn't do something that would give you away. That was good practice, because in order to do it effectively, you had to take on the theist mindset. But part of what makes the newest generation of atheists seem "uppity" is simply that they haven't had that practice, and consequently, they state things very matter of factly in such a way that can be quite offensive, even if they don't mean it to be. And that can be taken for evangelism as well.
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"I am a bit confused by Lynch's implication (and perhaps yours, although I would appreciate elaboration) that they should refrain from modern mass media simply out of spite to avoid what evangelical Christians are using. Or is your argument that books, CDs, and so forth are inherently ineffective or unwise?"
That's an excellent question that I'd love to hear the answer to.
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I really like KoM's categorization. I'd just like to add to that something I mentioned in another thread awhile back. I think there is an important distinction separating these two labeling terms “atheist” and “agnostic” that many seem to be unaware of (granted there are also those that just don't care, as is evidenced in this thread). Atheism concerns belief about the existence of a god while agnosticism deals with knowledge that a god does or does not exist. Knowledge and belief are obviously related in many ways (you cannot, for instance, have knowledge without belief), but they are neither synonymous nor polar opposites. It is very possible, as has been mentioned by others, for someone to believe there is no god without claiming to have knowledge that this belief is true. In this way, I am one of those that consider themselves both atheist and agnostic in respect to the existence of any god, ultimate creater, first mover, etc. Given some thought on the matter, I think nearly all of us at least on this forum could consider themselves agnostic when the term is defined simply as "without knowledge". In fact, I think the only people who claim to have knowledge that a certain god does or does not exist is defining "knowledge" a bit differently than the rest of us.
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quote: I wonder of this will ever be the rage among young people in the Islamic nations of the world?
Probably not, at least not as long as there are folks who I imagine would kill them for it.
Not that I don't think that is a greater blasphemy- the killing in God's name, that is. P.S.(and let's just pretend you rebut me about a bunch of Christian killing in God's name and go forward).
So is there any reservation about the death toll under atheistic communist regimes?
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It's obvious to me that the crucial question is, is atheism an alternative religion or an alternative TO religion? The former implies an organized belief system to that of the popular religions. In Dawkin's case, it's a religion that's anti-christian, imo.
The latter implies you just don't believe anything and just want to be left alone.
Imo, I've always thought of atheists as people who don't believe and just want to be left alone. Lately, it has become more of a religion that stands opposed to christianity for the sake of opposing christianity.
Frankly, if it were me chosing, I'd want to be left alone and allowed to think what I want. Isn't that the point? You don't want to be organized or forced to believe like everyone else?
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"Frankly, if it were me chosing, I'd want to be left alone and allowed to think what I want. Isn't that the point? You don't want to be organized or forced to believe like everyone else?"
You can make your own decisions sans the solitude. Besides, most of us as individuals don't have all the answers. We need the experience and insight of others sometimes.
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quote:Originally posted by Primal Curve: If I were into men, and, more specifically, older men, I would totally find Richard Dawkins to be incredibly sexy.
Why hello, mrs. garrison
Krankykat, I don't believe that the fact that somebody's book is popular and that they also sell other things is any proof at all that that person is only in it for the money. Furthermore, even if he or she did recognize the profit potential of a certain position and exploit it, that does not discredit the position. I can realize that a ton of people out there want to read a book that claims 2 + 2 = 4, and even if I make a killing on it, it doesn't change the content of the book. And we have a few authors and aspiring authors on this messageboard. Ask any of them if they think Dawkins knew his book was going to sell millions of copies before he wrote it, knew well enough to bank on it. Sure, now we know his marketing was effective, and he continues to market aggressively, but I don't think that has anything to do with a primary profit motive. We just had a thread here the other day about how authors have to market their books strongly to be successful. Dawkins has written a book that is controversial because of a slightly taboo subject (so it has a high "pundit factor"), that makes strong claims, and is about a topic that is of high import, and he has marketed it well. So?
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"But Dawkins has become a millionare off of his athiestic rantings."
I feel compelled to quote Nato: So?
The only reason I can imagine mentioning this is to allude to the possibility that his intentions are somehow morally unacceptable. What exactly do you think makes them so?
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kat: Lynch makes this implication very clearly. He pretty much declares by fiat that Dawkins is evangelical by virtue of using mass media and then somehow (this step is unclear to me) declares that this form of atheism is militant and hates "imagined" religious others and could threaten societies "fragile cohension".
Thus, it seems that the only way Dawkins could avoid being labelled as militant is to avoid modern mass media since Lynch carefully avoids exploring any specific ideas of Dawkins.
Your position is more unclear, which is why I specifically asked for elaboration.
If you share his position, perhaps you could answer my question. If you do not, thats cool too, and I would pose my question to the thread in general.
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pooka: It would depend on whether the death toll was due to the victims opposition to communism or their opposition to atheism (or perhaps, neither).
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stihl1: Neither. Both since atheist religions exist and since atheism on its own is no more a "system of beliefs" than a carburetor is a car.
I'd also note that not everything is about Christianity. As I noted on the first page, Dawkin's target is at much bigger than Christianity. It is bigger in the sense that he specifically targets a Creator god which would cover Islam, Judaism, Christianity, and so forth. I could certainly make the case that he is much harsher on Islam than Christianity.
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quote:Originally posted by Krankykat: Nato: Who ever said "only in it for the money?" But Dawkins has become a millionare off of his athiestic rantings.
Krank
This is the second time you've backed off in this thread saying you didn't ever say what you implied.
Here, you also respond to my statement (paraphrased), "making lots of money from writing something doesn't mean you're wrong" with "but he made a lot of money". What are you trying to say? Are you indeed trying to undermine Dawkins' credibility on this matter by introducing the possible profit motivation? If you're not trying to undermine Dawkins' credibility, why did you post this thread and include this information?
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kat: I'd also add that I'd like to see where you found the information that Dawkins became a millionaire from his latest book.
While he probably is a millionaire, I strongly suspect that he became a millionaire from his salaried position as a professor at Oxford combined with his first five books on evolution (the first of which also sold a million copies) long before the publication of his latest book and its "atheistic rantings".
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Nato: I really don't know what you want me to say, but I will give it a try.
Dawkins surely is passionate and sincere with his message that god does not exist. He is also making a bunch of money, too. So much he has set up a foundation and is trying to get tax exempt status. This is something rich people do to avoid paying taxes.
Do I agree with Dawkins? No I don't. Do I think he has a right to say it? Yes I do. Do I believe in God of the Bible? Yes I do. Am I trying to undermine Dawkins credibility? I doubt me posting on Hatrack will even make a blip on Dawkins' credibility scale. Why did I post this thread? Because I thought Lynch had an interesting pov with his comparison between Dawkins & TV evangelists which might lead to interesting discourse.
Nato, did I clear things up for you?
Krank
EDIT- Mucus: I did the math in my head. A million books sold will make the author a millionare. I guess I should have said his latest book has made him a multi-milloinare. Like you said Dawkins already had 5 books published...
quote:Originally posted by Krankykat: Nato: I really don't know what you want me to say, but I will give it a try.
Dawkins surely is passionate and sincere with his message that god does not exist. He is also making a bunch of money, too. So much he has set up a foundation and is trying to get tax exempt status. This is something rich people do to avoid paying taxes.
Do I agree with Dawkins? No I don't. Do I think he has a right to say it? Yes I do. Do I believe in God of the Bible? Yes I do. Am I trying to undermine Dawkins credibility? I doubt me posting on Hatrack will even make a blip on Dawkins' credibility scale. Why did I post this thread? Because I thought Lynch had an interesting pov with his comparison between Dawkins & TV evangelists which might lead to interesting discourse.
Nato, did I clear things up for you?
Krank
I was basically asking if you believed Dawkins was insincere in his statements because of a possible profit motive, so this post did clear up one thing for me.
Many nonprofit organizations seek tax exempt status. [url= http://"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/501%28c%29"]Here's the Wikipedia page on 501(c) organizations[/url], referring to a section of the US tax code that allows certain types of nonprofit to be exempt from some income taxes. (I don't know much about the UK system, so if it varies so substantially that rich people seeking tax shelters are the primary people to seek tax-exempt status, I might be wrong). I think nonprofits that seek to improve public wellbeing in their own way(aimed at specific needs, employing specific methods) are the primary seekers of tax-exempt status, and I don't see why an organization like Dawkins' is any different.
quote:Among its planned activities, RDFRS will finance research into the psychology of belief and religion, finance scientific education programs and materials, and publicize and support secular charitable organizations.
If you take them at their word (and if you are going to apply any other standard, please explain why), why do you think this is an attempt at a tax shelter?
As far as your reason for posting this thread, to highlight the comparison between Dawkins' techniques and those of evangelical religious organizations, I don't think it is very surprising, and I don't think it says anything significant about Dawkins. Multimedia marketing of your memes is what is necessary in this culture to propagate ideas, so it does not surprise me at all that both evangelical religious groups and antireligious groups use these techniques.
I am not on Dawkins' crusade. I don't think it is very effective on the individual level, although perhaps it will help create a more forgiving environment for somebody to "come out" as a nontheist, and that would be nice. Both these points have been mentioned a couple times in this thread.
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quote:Originally posted by stihl1: It's obvious to me that the crucial question is, is atheism an alternative religion or an alternative TO religion? The former implies an organized belief system to that of the popular religions. In Dawkin's case, it's a religion that's anti-christian, imo.
The latter implies you just don't believe anything and just want to be left alone.
Imo, I've always thought of atheists as people who don't believe and just want to be left alone. Lately, it has become more of a religion that stands opposed to christianity for the sake of opposing christianity.
Frankly, if it were me chosing, I'd want to be left alone and allowed to think what I want. Isn't that the point? You don't want to be organized or forced to believe like everyone else?
I guess I see somewhat differently. Atheism isn't my religion. It's my philosophy on religion. My position, if you will, in regards to religion.
But it's not really enough to be "left alone to think what I want." I would like my philosophy to be respected as a valid choice-- even if it's not a philosophy that you share--, something that I don't have to hide. Something that's not an automatic impediment to public office. I would like to not have to life my life in a closet.
I guess from my perspective, what I really want is to be able to talk as freely about my beliefs as it seems that Christians are. No one is obligated to agree with me, but I would like to be able to, say, join in on conversations about current events, by offering my opinion, without people acting as though I'm out to destroy the world or that I'm only pretending to believe what I believe for some nefarious purpose. I would like for people to feel as obligated to be respectful towards my beliefs as they are about other beliefs that they don't hold.
I would like my atheism to be treated, perhaps, the same way that I or someone else might treat a vegetarian. If I were to meet a vegetarian, I might ask them how they became a vegetarian or what they eat. I might say, "I don't think I could ever do that." I would feel free to eat meat in front of them, but I wouldn't sneak meat onto their plates.
Too often as an atheist in the US, I get the feeling that most of my acquaintances respond to the knowledge that I'm an atheist by trying to do the analogous thing to sneaking meat onto a vegetarian's plate, perhaps from the idea that if I only tried it, I would like it.
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quote:It's obvious to me that the crucial question is, is atheism an alternative religion or an alternative TO religion? The former implies an organized belief system to that of the popular religions. In Dawkin's case, it's a religion that's anti-christian, imo.
The latter implies you just don't believe anything and just want to be left alone.
man...so much disagree with here! where to begin? atheism is neither an alternate religion OR an alternative to religion(in the sense you mean i think). atheism is simply a statement about a person's non-belief in a deity. that's all.
Dawkins isn't anti christian either. he's anti religion. he believes all religious beliefs hurt our society, not just christian ones.
why should not believing in a deity necessitate someone "just wanting to be left alone"? It just means that i don't believe in god. But I still crave social interaction and a sense of community. I still want to live a good moral life based on whatever values are important to me. I might seek out other atheists in an attempt to come together and discuss the best ways of doing this, though this isn't necessary.
I'd also like to take a crack at maybe explaining a bit about why Dawkins might be doing what he's doing now. Having read a decent amount of his books that have now spanned over 30 years of writing, I have a pretty good idea of his views and how he's expressed them over time and how they've changed. Dawkins was always obviously an atheist. It comes out in The Selfish Gene, and The Blind Watchmaker was a book who's purpose was to squash the idea of intelligent design by showing how the process of evolution most definitely did not "intelligently" design anything. Dawkins took a lot of heat from religious folk about these books. In his republication of these books he responds to a lot of this criticism, and you can tell he was extremely frustrated with constantly being attacked.
Some of the books he published after this seem like they are in response, or at least prompted in part, by all this. Climbing Mount Improbable dealt with "probability and how it applies to the theory of evolution, and specifically is designed to debunk claims by creationists about the probability of naturalistic mechanisms like natural selection producing complex organisms."(from wikipedia) Unweaving the Rainbow was a book that attempted to show that science doesn't explain away the mystery and magic of the world thus making it mundane and boring, but that scientific understanding of the world can be beautiful and awe inspiring. The Devil's Chaplain was a book of collected essays dealing with religion, evolution, society, science and more. I think all these books grew out of experiences Dawkins had from writing his earlier works.
But so far he had never gone out of his way to attack religion I don't think. That all changed on September 11th.
"Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that. Revealed faith is not harmless nonsense, it can be lethally dangerous nonsense. Dangerous because it gives people unshakeable confidence in their own righteousness. Dangerous because it gives them false courage to kill themselves, which automatically removes normal barriers to killing others. Dangerous because it teaches enmity to others labelled only by a difference of inherited tradition. And dangerous because we have all bought into a weird respect, which uniquely protects religion from normal criticism. Let's now stop being so damned respectful!"
I think The God Delusion grew out of a response to that, as well as a long building up of resentment over constantly being attacked for his attempts to bring a clearer understanding of science and evolution to the public. Particularly by religious folk who wanted to invoke god or religious text to counter his writings. Atheism and atheist writing has been more popular in general recently and I think since the publication of the book everything has served to fuel the fire more. Dawkins has become the leader of the atheist movement, whether he wanted to or not, and I think he's just trying to do the best job he can with his new role.
That said, I would personally rather see Dawkins spend more time working to bring general scientific understanding to the public, rather than trying to convert people to atheism. I think someone already said it on this thread, but my journey to atheism took a long time and felt very organic. it came about through years of reading physics, and biology(evolution), learning about different religions, philosophizing, etc...and i appreciate my position much more now and truly believe it through and through. bombarding someone with a bunch of atheist talking points, might get the job done, but i don't know if it's as effective.
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quote:why should not believing in a deity necessitate someone "just wanting to be left alone"? It just means that i don't believe in god. But I still crave social interaction and a sense of community. I still want to live a good moral life based on whatever values are important to me. I might seek out other atheists in an attempt to come together and discuss the best ways of doing this, though this isn't necessary.
I agree completely. (On a side note, if you ever need a place to stay in Oregon, I'd love to visit with you, hang out and have some fun)
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posted
I hate to get dragged into anything... and I probably won't since I have only the slightest interest in this - but Dawkin's is probably best described as a fundamental evangelical atheist.
I don't want to labour the point, (though I could spend my time dragging up endless examples) but R.D. does seem to despise most religious people, either tarring them with the same brush as extremists, or criticising them as 'betraying faith as much as they betray reason' - i.e. being a moderate. He's 100% convinced of his position, and feels that his 'arguments' are overwhelmingly convincing, which is a pity since he has the philosophical talent and understanding of a Bible Belt homeschooled (and I mean in the bad way) numpty like Jack Chick (with a little less of the frothing at the mouth crazy).
He's a good - nay - very good scientist, and has done some impressive work, but he feels qualified to talk about things he clearly knows little about, and that's a real, real pity. He misses every target - takes down only the most stupid and useless of the opposition - but then tars the rest with the same brush and declares victory.
Even my most die hard, militant atheist biologist friend doesn't bother to defend him from these types of accusations, as there is no defence except to admit that he's a right twat, with little philosophical merit behind his bitter, hate-or-sneer filled forays out of the field of biology.
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p.s. - I've never been entirely sure why people insist on complicating the definitions of words like atheist, agnostic etc when it seems so simple to do it like this:-
Since no-one actually knows anything (beyond perhaps the fact that they themselves exist in some way or another) - there seems little reason to bother with 'knowledge' as that is clearly a grandiose way of terming 'belief', therefore there can only really be three categories:
Atheist - believes there is no God Agnostic - does not know if there is a God or not Theist/Religious - believes there is/believes in a religion
easy as pie - when asked the God question you either reply positively, negatively or you don't know - there is no other option.
quote: Atheist - believes there is no God Agnostic - does not know if there is a God or not Theist/Religious - believes there is/believes in a religion
Most of the self-described agnostics I know are atheists by that definition. I'm okay with that, but I'd revise it as follows:
quote: Atheist - believes there is no God Agnostic - believes that the issue of whether a god exists or not cannot be resolved Theist - believes there is a God
It is more complicated than that. You can choose to believe even while acknowledging that there can be no objective proof.
Which leaves room for acknowledging that other people can make valid choices that may be different from yours.
This is where I see evangelical atheism making the same mistakes as evangelical anything else. They seem to be going past wanting the freedom to believe what they do to wanting other people to believe as they do. Worse, to thinking that other people should believe as they do. And are starting to use tactics such as derision and contempt (see "sky god" reference).
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Andrew W: See, thats just silly. As was pointed out on the first page, he could hardly be considered fundamentalist when he has clearly shown what evidence would be required to change his mind. Similarly, separating out what you declare by fiat is the strength of his argument or his extremism, you have never mentioned any actual advocated policy of his that could considered extreme.
There is a very good reason for this. When it comes to his actual ideas, he is actually fairly mainstream. Douglas Adams has pretty much exactly the same views as he does and I've never heard him as being accused as being extremist. Isaac Asimov gave a glowing review of The Blind Watchmaker with the same lack of criticism. I could list a great number of scientists and writers that share his ideas.
The only difference is in how he expresses those ideas and how vocal he is. Most atheists and agnostics who criticize him never have a problem with what he is saying, but simply how he is saying it.
In addition, thats why those who call him "extremist" can never point to a specific policy of his that is actually extreme. There are none! However, they believe that if they say that he is extremist often enough, then people will believe it regardless.
Here is a very good example of what I'm getting at link There is a mild language warning at the end of the anecdote.
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quote:Most of the self-described agnostics I know are atheists by that definition. I'm okay with that, but I'd revise it as follows:
quote: Atheist - believes there is no God Agnostic - believes that the issue of whether a god exists or not cannot be resolved Theist - believes there is a God
My problem with this is that, to me, "believes there is no God" and "does not believe there is a God" have different meanings. I would self-identify with the latter, but not necessarily the former.
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I sort of agree with Tyson there. And if you've seen the whole Beyond Belief conference, I also think Tyson's lecture was one of the most interesting and thought provoking.
I really thoroughly enjoyed all those lectures and what that conference was trying to do. They put a bunch of atheists and agnostics, all scientists, in a room together and had them talk about the best ways of getting their message across to the public. Obviously there was some disagreement about how to go about that, and it made for some fascinating debates. I think both sides have some extremely valid points.
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quote:Originally posted by Andrew W: Even my most die hard, militant atheist biologist friend doesn't bother to defend him from these types of accusations, as there is no defence except to admit that he's a right twat, with little philosophical merit behind his bitter, hate-or-sneer filled forays out of the field of biology.
Wow. Talk about the kettle and the pot. Dude, didn't your mother teach you to go for the ball and not the man? How about you try to find some example of these 'hate-or-sneer-filled forays'?
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quote: why should not believing in a deity necessitate someone "just wanting to be left alone"? It just means that i don't believe in god. But I still crave social interaction and a sense of community. I still want to live a good moral life based on whatever values are important to me. I might seek out other atheists in an attempt to come together and discuss the best ways of doing this, though this isn't necessary.
I know that for me this is not only unnecessary, it's irrelevant. I attach little importance to that part of my identity - it's pretty far down on the list (which is another thing that tends to separate me from evangelical types of the believing and nonbelieving varieties).
At one point in my life, someone suggested that I check out a Unitarian Church as a way of being part of a community. It just never made any sense - I know that the Unitarians have a lot of agnostics in their ranks, but why would I want to devote time and relationships around that part of me?
There are things much more important to me than worrying about a supreme being or an afterlife. My life is built around those things.
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posted
As an aside, I have been a religious person and have hung around other religious people of various denominations for the better part of forty years. To the best of my recollection, the only place I personally have heard evolution seriously disputed is here.
I believe all these scary people are out there. Some of them are running for national office. I just don't run across them in real life.
It is a somewhat surreal disconnect.
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quote:I know that for me this is not only unnecessary, it's irrelevant. I attach little importance to that part of my identity - it's pretty far down on the list (which is another thing that tends to separate me from evangelical types of the believing and nonbelieving varieties).
At one point in my life, someone suggested that I check out a Unitarian Church as a way of being part of a community. It just never made any sense - I know that the Unitarians have a lot of agnostics in their ranks, but why would I want to devote time and relationships around that part of me?
There are things much more important to me than worrying about a supreme being or an afterlife. My life is built around those things.
sndrake, i'm not sure how anything you said refutes anything i said. my point was simply that atheism is a statement of a lack of belief in a deity. Any questions about the importance of worrying about a supreme being or an afterlife are irrelevant to that. I personally find thinking about those topics and discussing them interesting and thought provoking, if that's not your cup of tea, so be it.
though i don't see how not believing in a deity is "irrelevant" to your life or identity. where do you get your morals and ethics from. do you get them from religion? if not, then the fact that you don't believe in a deity is pretty relevant to your identity in that it in some way shapes the way you live your life and treat other people. I'm not trying to focus on the "atheist" part of this. I don't specifically seek out atheists to be a part of a "non-believing" group. the important part isn't that we all don't believe in god. the important part for me is developing a moral framework that isn't based on religious dogma but that comes from empathy and interaction with other people. An ethics that is based on an understanding of how the universe works, how and why we came to be here, how and why we function the way we do as human beings. My atheism is relevant to me in the sense that I never stop searching for answers, that I don't have any holy writ that steers my judgment one way or another. Take what you will from that.
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quote:As an aside, I have been a religious person and have hung around other religious people of various denominations for the better part of forty years. To the best of my recollection, the only place I personally have heard evolution seriously disputed is here.
I believe all these scary people are out there. Some of them are running for national office. I just don't run across them in real life.
It is a somewhat surreal disconnect.
kmbboots, your post just made me think of something that happened last week. Did you read any articles about the archeological find that homo habilis and homo erectus probably co-existed at the same time? Link . Well some people I work with were talking about it and one of them then turned to me and said, "so i guess this blows that whole we evolved from monkey's theory out of the water right?" This is the state of evolutionary knowledge among our general populace. I spent like 30 minutes explaining what that article was saying and giving a general rundown of evolution, and I don't think it made much of a dent. The majority of americans are just plain hostile to the idea.
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Earendil18, TomDavidson, I just finished reading the "His Dark Materials" trilogy by Phillip Pullman within the past month, so it is pretty fresh in my mind. I do not recall anywhere in any of the three novels where a positive statement is made that God exists. I remember some statements that are qualified with "if He exists." There are several statements that someone who claimed to be the Creator was not really the Creator. There was once even a qualification to that, "if a Creator is really necessary."
But one thing Pullman does in spite of himself, is present good behavior and bad behavior, faithful and loving relationships, etc., that are essentially Christian in premise. To write a novel in which everything, every character, every behavior, were truly atheistic (meaning all morality must be relativistic), would produce a really strange story, that probably no one in today's world would be able to relate to.
As for atheism becoming evangelical, I have to maintain that everyone has a right to promote what they believe. Then let the best ideas win in the free marketplace of ideas.
This is why I have little regard for Islam, when every nation it dominates has laws forbidding evangelism, and imposing a death penalty on any Moslem who converts to Christianity. This is a virtual admission of inferiority by Moslems, a recognition that given a free choice, most people will prefer Christianity.
Parents do have a right to educate their children in the belief system they prefer, and shield them from belief systems they abominate; but this ends when the child reaches the age of moral accountability, and is able to choose for himself what he will believe.
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According to National Geographic, around a third of the people in the US say that it is false and around 21% aren't sure. The only western-type country that has worse numbers than that is Turkey.
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Of course! Say...you wouldn't happen to like doing dishes and dusting, would you...?
edit: I remember when, in fourth or fifth grade, we studied evolution. I was a religious kid - mostly on my own as my parents wanted us to find our own religious path. Anyway, I puzzled over the difference between Genesis and my textbook for less than an hour before coming to the conclusion that Genesis was not meant literally.
I still find it bizarre that adults don't reach what seemed to me to be crystal clear even to a 10 year old.
That was as close as religion and science have ever come to being in conflict for me.
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quote:I'm not trying to focus on the "atheist" part of this. I don't specifically seek out atheists to be a part of a "non-believing" group. the important part isn't that we all don't believe in god. the important part for me is developing a moral framework that isn't based on religious dogma but that comes from empathy and interaction with other people.
There are plenty of people that do not put much effort into these matters and just go with the flow. Thankfully, a reasonable morality develops in most people that grow up in modern culture, or at least one that is reasonable to that culture.
I can understand that someone might consider philosophical introspection a low priority if they don't perceive an aspect of their lives which such pondering might improve.
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It's rare that I come across an essay that I'm basically willing to let speak for me, but Terry Eagleton's "Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching" pretty much sums up what I think about Dawkins and the other "new atheists."
The first two paragraphs are fist-pumping-in-the-air strong truth.
quote:Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology. Card-carrying rationalists like Dawkins, who is the nearest thing to a professional atheist we have had since Bertrand Russell, are in one sense the least well-equipped to understand what they castigate, since they don’t believe there is anything there to be understood, or at least anything worth understanding. This is why they invariably come up with vulgar caricatures of religious faith that would make a first-year theology student wince. The more they detest religion, the more ill-informed their criticisms of it tend to be. If they were asked to pass judgment on phenomenology or the geopolitics of South Asia, they would no doubt bone up on the question as assiduously as they could. When it comes to theology, however, any shoddy old travesty will pass muster. These days, theology is the queen of the sciences in a rather less august sense of the word than in its medieval heyday.
Dawkins on God is rather like those right-wing Cambridge dons who filed eagerly into the Senate House some years ago to non-placet Jacques Derrida for an honorary degree. Very few of them, one suspects, had read more than a few pages of his work, and even that judgment might be excessively charitable. Yet they would doubtless have been horrified to receive an essay on Hume from a student who had not read his Treatise of Human Nature. There are always topics on which otherwise scrupulous minds will cave in with scarcely a struggle to the grossest prejudice. For a lot of academic psychologists, it is Jacques Lacan; for Oxbridge philosophers it is Heidegger; for former citizens of the Soviet bloc it is the writings of Marx; for militant rationalists it is religion.
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Dawkins gets that response a lot. Here is his reply:
quote:There's a common refrain in the criticisms of Dawkins' The God Delusion that I've taken to categorizing with my own private title—it's so common, to the point of near-unanimous universality, that I've decided to share it with you all.
I call it the Courtier's Reply. It refers to the aftermath of a fable.
I have considered the impudent accusations of Mr Dawkins with exasperation at his lack of serious scholarship. He has apparently not read the detailed discourses of Count Roderigo of Seville on the exquisite and exotic leathers of the Emperor's boots, nor does he give a moment's consideration to Bellini's masterwork, On the Luminescence of the Emperor's Feathered Hat. We have entire schools dedicated to writing learned treatises on the beauty of the Emperor's raiment, and every major newspaper runs a section dedicated to imperial fashion; Dawkins cavalierly dismisses them all. He even laughs at the highly popular and most persuasive arguments of his fellow countryman, Lord D. T. Mawkscribbler, who famously pointed out that the Emperor would not wear common cotton, nor uncomfortable polyester, but must, I say must, wear undergarments of the finest silk.
Dawkins arrogantly ignores all these deep philosophical ponderings to crudely accuse the Emperor of nudity.
Personally, I suspect that perhaps the Emperor might not be fully clothed — how else to explain the apparent sloth of the staff at the palace laundry — but, well, everyone else does seem to go on about his clothes, and this Dawkins fellow is such a rude upstart who lacks the wit of my elegant circumlocutions, that, while unable to deal with the substance of his accusations, I should at least chide him for his very bad form.
Until Dawkins has trained in the shops of Paris and Milan, until he has learned to tell the difference between a ruffled flounce and a puffy pantaloon, we should all pretend he has not spoken out against the Emperor's taste. His training in biology may give him the ability to recognize dangling genitalia when he sees it, but it has not taught him the proper appreciation of Imaginary Fabrics.
The gist is that, regardless of the nuances of any specific sect and his familiarity, or lack thereof, with these nuances, there is a set of basic core assertions common to the most popular revealed religious traditions which are unsupported by evidence.
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There is no possible nuance of theology that can get around the central fact of theist belief:
"We believe that there exists a god."
Dawkins disagrees with this. No theologist, however learned, can dance around this point. It doesn't matter what you believe about the nature of this god, its commandments to humanity, its fine moral sensibility and habit of bathing three times daily; Dawkins' quarrel with you is that he does not believe it exists, and that has nothing to do with theology.
The example of Asian geopolitics misses the point: Dawkins would presumably agree that South Asia actually exists, and hence he would want to know something when discussing it. If you were to ask him about the geopolitics of Atlantis, however, I think you might find him dismissing your question without having studied it very much; and so would you, if you are honest. He would not be ashamed of his lack of learning about Atlantean customs and economics, because there is nothing to learn. The subject matter of the study does not exist. And so also with theology.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: How charming.
What he seems to miss is that, for many people, "evidence" is not the point.
Which he might have learned if he weren't finding it so much more fun to pull apart the worst aspects of religion.
And, heck, anybody can do that.
What you seem to miss is that "Evidence not being the point" is the worst aspect of religion. To not demand evidence of extraordinary assertions reduces you to the level of a child, who will blithely swallow the candy that the nice man gave them, and get in the car.
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Just for the record, that is not Dawkin's reply. Thats actually PZ Myers' reply, although Dawkins has quoted it before. link
I would expand on that summary to add that another big point that the replay is making is that no one seriously expects this standard to be applied to anything but Christianity.
Orson Scott Card often rails against elitists in English writing classes who simply dismiss contributions to literature from people "not in the field." You can simply read one of those rants to see the parallel.
It is not that Dawkins ideas are actually wrong. Instead, the claim is that he's a biologist and not a theologian, and thus his ideas are *automatically* wrong.
This is just silly. No one expects Christians to know every Greek myth before their atheism in respect to Zeus and Venus can be justified.
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Yeah, I saw a video of Dawkins reading that bit to a debate audience. The story plays with a stacked deck, though. The emperor's naked body is verifiable by Dawkins' standards, while the non-existence of God isn't.
Dawkins also has a habit of making statements about what Christians believe and of the content of the Bible. What he focuses on, however, is the most base, vulgar, common form possible. Much of Dawkins' logic and many of his arguments depend upon a certain understanding of religion and therefore a certain understanding of systematic theology -- but no such explicit understanding is on display.
For that parable to be more accurate, Dawkins would have to come from a land that had never before seen clothes. No experience with clothes at all. He'd then be very careful and selective in his education about clothes, perhaps coming to the conclusion that a coffee cup is meant to be worn like a glove or that bras are actually slingshots. His opinion on whether or not the emperor is clothed would then be worth considerably less.
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Yes. I understood his whimsical little analogy.
The definitions of "God" and even "believe" and possibly "exists" are open to interpretation and matter to the discussion.
He, from what I can tell, is arguing proof where no proof is relevant or applicable. He is arguing science on a topic that is outside of the realm of science.
He is, in other words, missing the point.
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I wrote a response to Eagleton/Dawkins on another forum. Specifically, to Eagleton's statement just two paragraphs further:
quote:But this is a mistake: to claim that science and religion pose different questions to the world is not to suggest that if the bones of Jesus were discovered in Palestine, the pope should get himself down to the dole queue as fast as possible. It is rather to claim that while faith, rather like love, must involve factual knowledge, it is not reducible to it. For my claim to love you to be coherent, I must be able to explain what it is about you that justifies it; but my bank manager might agree with my dewy-eyed description of you without being in love with you himself.
I see this assertion as essentially the same as the philosopher Chalmers argument that materialism cannot explain consciousness.
My essay, if it is of interest:
A great thread with great links and great comments. I really love you guys!
Unfortunately, that love IS reducible.
The most persistent justification that materialism is insufficient is that it seems insufficient. Given materialism’s unrivaled success, one might expect the focus to fall on ‘seems’ rather than ‘insufficient’ but we are an ungrateful lot.
Love is not reducible to material facts. Seemingly.
I could provide you every nuanced fact and detail related to my beloved but that would not necessarily cause you to love her. And if you did, that love would not be the same as mine. Even if love is dependent on those material facts, it is not reducible to them. The same argument is offered for faith.
Yet love and faith are central to being human. They are profoundly causal. So materialism is insufficient to explain causation, to explain faith, to explain love.
God is love. God is causation. He is both transcendent and immanent: Beyond observation but plainly obvious.
Or so it seems.
Essentially the same argument has also been made by some philosophers of consciousness such as Chalmers. Why stop at love, faith and causation? All of human experience is not reducible to the material facts. There is something about the redness of red, the experience of redness, which cannot be reduced to the material stimulus of the real world and the neurological components of visualization. Qualia, as it were. Life is beautiful.
Chalmers calls for an “extra ingredient” as do the better theologians. For Chalmers consciousness and experience are extra, not reducible to material and therefore fundamental. For theologians god, love and faith are extra, not reducible to material and therefore fundamental. You can add your own fundamental extra ingredient to the universe! Materialism, after all, can explain red but not the redness of red.
The first thing that needs to be parsed is the difference between ‘not reducible to’ and ‘irreducible’.
Irreducible is an adjective. It requires that there be something remaining that can no longer be simplified. In this way, we discover the fundamental.
‘Not reducible to’ is a much more slippery construction but it does not equal ‘irreducible’ nor does it identify the fundamental.
Love, consciousness and experience are reducible. Leaving aside what they can or cannot be reduced to, it is plain that each can be reduced. They are complex phenomena, each with easily identified components. That which is fundamental, in an empirical sense, does not have components, by definition.
The supposedly fundamental nature of these things springs from the idea that each is more than the sum of its components. So in a grand feat of supposition it is concluded that if we could strip away the material substance there would be something left fundamental to the phenomena that was non-material.
The materialists and non-materialists make the same mistake here in thinking that substance alone is a tenable analytical concept. Substance is not sensible when divorced from process. Even if we can imagine something standing outside of time, we cannot sensibly imagine how that might be accomplished. And that is certainly not how we discover the universe to be.
We regard a universe in process. We are embedded in time, in process, and there is no sensible way to imagine ourselves, or the universe, otherwise. We once thought of space and time as separable concepts but have come to understand there is only spacetime. Still, the old division is lively in our analytical concepts. Much like we still think of the sun rising and setting even though we know that it does no such thing.
In viewing love, consciousness and experience as process (or substance in process if you prefer) rather than substance (alone), we can see that whatever is ‘extra’ is higher-level phenomena not fundamental. What is lacking is not a non-material ingredient but a better explanation of how these higher-level phenomenon emerge from lower level processes. That love is made, consciousness arises and experience is had, is not debated, even by Chalmers.
If the non-problematic material universe cannot be sensibly thought of as merely substance, then an “extra ingredient” that is somehow non-material is doubly nonsensical. Instead of correcting materialism’s conceptual error, it is compounded.
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quote:For that parable to be more accurate, Dawkins would have to come from a land that had never before seen clothes. No experience with clothes at all. He'd then be very careful and selective in his education about clothes, perhaps coming to the conclusion that a coffee cup is meant to be worn like a glove or that bras are actually slingshots. His opinion on whether or not the emperor is clothed would then be worth considerably less.
so the fact that i was raised jewish, went to an orthodox jewish school for 8 years, and understand the jewish community gives me the right fully criticize religion from my new atheist mentality, but Dawkins can't because he was never a member of any particular religion?
quote:He, from what I can tell, is arguing proof where no proof is relevant or applicable. He is arguing science on a topic that is outside of the realm of science.
I understand why many religious folk believe this, but i see no inherent reason for the topic of god to be outside the realm of science. the only thing that makes it outside the realm of science are the claims that are made in holy books and what many of it's members believe based on the claims of those holy books. Science is just a way of asking questions about the world working under the philosophy that all events are ultimately explainable. That the universe functions under certain constraints and rules and that all events that happen within said universe are subject to those laws. I see no reason why religion and god should get a free pass to be outside the realm of critical analysis, nothing else does.
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