posted
Has anyone watched this? It was a 3 part special made by Richard Dawkins. I think it might have only aired in the UK, but you can watch it online for free now.
And here's a link to Richard Dawkins' website where they have embedded youtube links. They even seem to have links to torrents of it, which I find kind of odd.
Anyway, i'm about to embark on watching it, I've just watched the intro so far. I kind of wish Dawkins would go back to just talking about biology and evolution without having to force the atheism into it so much. I'm sure I'm going to enjoy the show regardless, because it seems really interesting, but I think it'd be just as wonderful if it focused solely on Darwin and evolution and explaining the theory and facts through an entertaining medium(sort of like what he did with Growing up in the Universe). Let people make the God decision on their own. I came to my atheism on my own, through my own experiences and reading, and even partly due to my understanding of life after reading The Selfish Gene(though I was a pretty strong agnostic at that point anyway). Give people the facts and let them work out for themselves how to incorporate them into their world view. I don't see how starting with the attack of, "i'm an atheist and here's why everything you know is wrong and why you should be an atheist too" serves any useful purpose. If you're worried someone won't accept the facts because of their religious beliefs, is this sort of tactic going to convince them any better?
I think maybe Dawkins has the wrong goal in mind these days. Somewhere along the line he went from promoting reason to stamping out religion. I know the situation isn't as simple as all that, and I get just as frustrated sometimes by what seems like willful ignorance on the part of some people, but I don't know that Dawkins is doing anything more than riling up people on both sides of the debate these days. It seems the state of science education and the refusal of many people to accept evolution hasn't really changed all that much due to his actions. I think he has helped a lot of atheists, or people on the fence, accept and feel comfortable with their philosophy and make themselves heard...which is a good thing, and will hopefully change the national dialogue, but it also seems to have swung too far out with the viciousness and proselytizing that some atheists are engaging in now.
Thanks for listening to my rant.
Posts: 8741 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:I think maybe Dawkins has the wrong goal in mind these days.
being a crappy aggravating philosopher as opposed to a decent sociobiologist?
I won't contest the "aggravating" bit as that's clearly a matter of opinion, but I do think he's a pretty decent philosopher. He's no Daniel Dennett, but he's decent.
What do you think makes him a crappy one?
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I do think Dawkins is getting more and more forcefully atheist, but maybe that's a good thing. If he's extreme, it makes normal, run-of-the-mill atheists seem like regular folks, to the highly religious people who might otherwise think poorly of them.
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quote:I won't contest the "aggravating" bit as that's clearly a matter of opinion, but I do think he's a pretty decent philosopher.
I agree. I've very much enjoyed some of his non biology writing, including stuff like A Devil's Chaplain.
That's an interesting point MightyCow. The question is would a run of the mill atheist get lumped in with the extremists(like how many Americans view all Muslims), or would your scenario be more likely?
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quote:Somewhere along the line he went from promoting reason to stamping out religion.
Dawkins is on record as saying that he recently concluded a few years ago that religion is an active enemy of reason.
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his descent into grating militant atheism and his cavalier attitude towards untestability and proving negatives. he wishes he were today's sagan but my god he's just a comical antagonizer at this point. honestly if i had a nickel for every time I have read someone write something like 'I am an atheist but find Richard Dawkins to be crude/polarizing/needlessly antagonistic/annoying generally' then I would have a pretty freaking large bag of nickels. i feel i could really do some damage to someone if i really whacked them with that bag of nickels, it would be that large.
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quote:Somewhere along the line he went from promoting reason to stamping out religion.
Dawkins is on record as saying that he recently concluded a few years ago that religion is an active enemy of reason.
Yeah, it was after 9/11 he made this change and started being more forceful and active in his attempts at combating religion. I guess my more general point has to do with the effectiveness of his methods of accomplishing his goal, and whether a different goal would actually lead to a situation more like the one he is actually trying to bring about.
His problem is with religion, but more fundamentally it's a problem with dogma and irrationality right? So wouldn't combating those specifically and promoting reason and making the facts available to all better serve his purposes? Seems like in the end it would have a better chance of accomplishing the same goal, and all it would take would be a minor mental shift in how he views his goal.
quote: His problem is with religion, but more fundamentally it's a problem with dogma and irrationality right? So wouldn't combating those specifically and promoting reason and making the facts available to all better serve his purposes? Seems like in the end it would have a better chance of accomplish the same goal, and all it would take would be a minor mental shift in how he views his goal.
That's exactly where I am on this.
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posted
I'm much more inline with Sam Harris in dealing with these issues. I absolutely loved that speech of his from last years AAI convention rollainm.
Posts: 8741 | Registered: Apr 2001
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his descent into grating militant atheism and his cavalier attitude towards untestability and proving negatives. he wishes he were today's sagan but my god he's just a comical antagonizer at this point. honestly if i had a nickel for every time I have read someone write something like 'I am an atheist but find Richard Dawkins to be crude/polarizing/needlessly antagonistic/annoying generally' then I would have a pretty freaking large bag of nickels. i feel i could really do some damage to someone if i really whacked them with that bag of nickels, it would be that large.
Shift key broken?
Seriously, though, those are some pretty broad statements ("grating militant atheism?"), ones I typically hear from people who are unaware of or simply fail to understand where he's coming from. Care to be more specific?
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quote:Originally posted by Strider: I'm much more inline with Sam Harris in dealing with these issues. I absolutely loved that speech of his from last years AAI convention rollainm.
Agreed. Harris more than anyone else I'm aware of nearly always manages to articulates what I want to say better than I ever could on my own.
Actually, I think he and Dennett need to do some brainstorming together. The two of them could end world hunger or something.
Posts: 1945 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Seriously, though, those are some pretty broad statements ("grating militant atheism?"), ones I typically hear from people who are unaware of or simply fail to understand where he's coming from. Care to be more specific?
take following sentence.
"______ is one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate."
If the blank is filled with the word "atheism" I would say the statement is typical of jerky religious types. if the blank is filled with the word "faith" I would say the statement is typical of jerky atheists. Like dawkins. He's very into the rah-rah intellectual and moral dismissal of people who submit to the weakness of faith and it's not a great way to go about doing anything but pigeonholing 'anti-religious' people.
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posted
I like that he fervently tries to give a full representation of evidence for evolution.... It just so happens that there is a lot of it, so he is left with little but disbelief when people continue to disagree after being shown every reason to not disagree.
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posted
Thanks for posting. I've learned a lot about evolution that I didn't know before.
Dawkins doesn't seem like such a bad chap. He's quite civil with people who disagree with him. Words like "militant" don't really describe him well based on what I've seen.
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quote:Originally posted by Strider: That's an interesting point MightyCow. The question is would a run of the mill atheist get lumped in with the extremists(like how many Americans view all Muslims), or would your scenario be more likely?
I think my version is likely. If we have an extreme atheist, like Dawkins, who is intelligent and well-spoken, but goes to extremes, it makes a regular atheist seem much more moderate by comparison.
Without Dawkins calling religious faith an enemy of reason, your average atheist who just doesn't see the point is the enemy of the Church. If Dawkins is the focal point, the standard of atheist against the Church, then us regular old atheists aren't all that bad.
Heck, maybe one of us can get elected one day. Posts: 3950 | Registered: Mar 2006
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posted
Although I agree that Dawkins extreme anti-religion stance undermines his otherwise intelligent and reasonable arguments for many people religious and atheist alike, I do think there is room in the world for a prominent and virulent atheist. I know many atheists who have been known to utter a phrase similar to "religion is complete lunacy" and I'm not always entirely sure they shouldn't be myself (I will not discuss my views because it's not really the point of the thread. The point is that Dawkins' view is not all that uncommon, only articulated famously.)
Dawkins is not advocating violence or hate towards religious people, their sites of worship or their homes. He simply vehemently opposes the idea of God and the idea of other people believing in it. In a way, he's more like a vehement talkative religious person than anything else, and there are hundreds of those who would oppose atheism with all their being.
The standards we set for atheists are far higher than religious people. You would not be surprised to see a priest preaching vehemently against atheism on a Sunday morning. I do not think you should be surprised to see the occasional atheist doing the reverse.
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quote:Originally posted by Strider: His problem is with religion, but more fundamentally it's a problem with dogma and irrationality right? So wouldn't combating those specifically and promoting reason and making the facts available to all better serve his purposes? Seems like in the end it would have a better chance of accomplishing the same goal, and all it would take would be a minor mental shift in how he views his goal.
Well, it may sound circular, what I'm about to say, but I think his argument against reasoning *with* religion rather than reason *against* it, is that religion in today's world is perfectly adapted to defeat those who attempt to do this. He shared a viewpoint with Douglas Adams on this problem, which was that society has been conditioned by religion to invite and subtly repress appeals against religious tradition simultaneously, kind of like a flower that carries a poison to kill its victims later... kind of.
His viewpoint includes the idea that you can almost look at the interaction of philosophies the way you look at chemical interactions. If religious folks wouldn't mind being exposed to nitrogen, its because it also won't react with them in any significant way. Introduce something more astringent, like sulfur, and you get a reaction whether the opposition likes it or not. The question is always what combination isn't going to actually galvanize the opposition and make it stronger, make it "evolve," or instead diminish it.
There's always tow problems. He wants the opposition to get smarter, but he also wants them not to use their knowledge to keep preserving religion, as has happened since the dawn of time. He also reasons that in the interim, all of the intelligent and creative works of man go on in spite of the energy and creativity drain that is religion.
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quote:Dawkins doesn't seem like such a bad chap. He's quite civil with people who disagree with him. Words like "militant" don't really describe him well based on what I've seen.
Militant is a great TIC descriptor. Mitch Benn said this about himself:
"I'm what you might call a militant agnostic. Rule 1: I don't know if there's a God; Rule 2: Neither do you."
But I don't have to call dawkins a militant atheist. I could just call him an all-too-frequently-an-overly-obsessive-jerk atheist. I don't like his methods. I am accepting of people of most faiths. I am accepting of faith. I am not going to demean and write off people as enemies of progress and reason just because they happen to believe in a god or gods, abrahamic or otherwise.
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I think you're right that he thinks religion is the enemy of progress and reason, I just don't think he's being a jerk by simply having that opinion.
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Yeah, Dawkins is usually the one blinking in surprise when someone with an opposing view goes off on him. He then politely replies with his side of the discussion. He's about as much of a jerk as any soft-spoken British professor can be: he writes books and talks about it a lot.
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I don't think he's a jerk or a bully. He does not say "I don't like you, so you are wrong" he says "I think you're wrong, here's why." I think that is the only way you can disagree with someone and not be a jerk about expressing your disagreement.
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: When have you heard Dawkins acting like a jerk?
I have seen him act passionately three or fours times, but nowhere near often enough to earn him the title of 'jerk'.
Christopher Hitchens...now there's a jerk. (Which is not to say I don't think he's right a lot of the time.)
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posted
Hitchens is a jerk. Heck, even when he flip-flops on an issue, it's only so he can take the jerkier option.
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I think Dawkins makes a lot of religious people uneasy, because he's a very smart, very polite atheist. He makes a lot of good points, and he backs them with easy to understand and obviously logical examples.
A religious person may not be able to counter Dawkins' logical points, so it's easier to write him off as an obnoxious jerk and just ignore what he has to say.
If you can ignore the logic of his arguments, it's no stretch to ignore the fact that he's actually quite pleasant.
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: Hitchens is a jerk. Heck, even when he flip-flops on an issue, it's only so he can take the jerkier option.
I just imagined someone being asked a question, giving an answer and then actually cocking his head to the side and switch answers so that he can insult the other opinion as well.
"Do you prefer Chocolate or Vanilla?"
"Chocolate"
"Me too"
"Actually Vanilla, Chocolate now reminds me of what an idiot you are for always agreeing with me"
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posted
Oh! I actually know someone like that! (Business acquaintance) He asks someone at the table what they want, and then says what he wants (not what they wanted), and as asks the next person what they want. If it's what he wanted, he changes his mind. Until there's nothing left on the menu that he wants. Then while everyone else is trying to give the waitress their orders, he tells the waitress to give us few more minutes because we haven't decided what we want yet.
[/rant that's been waiting for years to come out]
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posted
I think it's a little silly to act like religion is some kind of enemy of anything. It's like saying that the belief that the earth is flat is an enemy to be stamped out. Ignorance arises naturally, and experience plus good reasoning leads you to find the truth. There's no shortcut I know of, in any great sense. A child doesn't grow up by hating himself for not being tall yet. Similarly, it's a little silly to call religions some kind of enemy. Truth will out, given enough time. What's the rush? Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
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I think the urgency, at least on my part, is based on the notion that we're killing ourselves off as a species. The longer we allow science to be ignored, the closer we'll come to extinction? Posts: 1314 | Registered: Jan 2006
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quote:It's like saying that the belief that the earth is flat is an enemy to be stamped out.
I was going to say that I believe very much that that thought should be considered an enemy. It's just that anyone who thinks that is true can't be exerting a good intellectual influence on people, importantly children, around them, and for that reason I think it is villainous to claim that the Earth is flat with any seriousness.
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Part of the "Dawkins is a jerk bit" comes, I think, from the way so many people who mention his name act. This is particularly true on the internet. For instance, I'm sure that PZ Meyer's blog has some interesting stuff besides his religious people are morons garbage, but I'm not willing to wade through that to find it.
This is generally true with Dawkins and the associated movement. I'd don't care enough to deal with all of the people that surround it who are jerks, even if it's nominal leader is actually a nice guy and has some good points to make.
I'm completely aware that the other side, so to speak, also has this same exact problem. And frankly I think it's an issue there too.
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"I think the urgency, at least on my part, is based on the notion that we're killing ourselves off as a species. The longer we allow science to be ignored, the closer we'll come to extinction?"
So you think name-calling and rudeness accomplish your goal? Besides, I don't think that a slavish adherence to the latest scientific "finding" is always a good thing. Eugenics was misguided, but they didn't know it. There are plenty of drugs that eventually get taken off the market because of side effects. I take a "wait and see" attitude.
I'm not that much more interested in interacting with James Randi, Richard Dawkins, etc., that I am in talking to various conservative religious figures. I admit I have more in common with the skeptics than the fervent YEC crowd, but I'm not at all sure there's no soul aspect to things. I, however, am betting every paycheck I've ever gotten or will get that none of the major religions have it completely right. I'd bet my very life that the most-conservative versions of those religions are farther from the truth than their more-moderate versions, in every case. I'm not trying to hurt any feelings by saying that, but it seems obvious. The thing that mystifies me is how extremely intelligent, mathematically-giften, well-read, and fairly well-educated people can still, in some cases, be Young Earthers, or believe that not putting cheese on your burger makes you more pure. I suppose I'm just more independent-minded than some people. I'm not that logical, necessarily, but I have a pretty good sense of when someone is conning themselves into believing something.
The thing I'd like to ask the most diehard atheists to do is this--look at the rudeness/evil of the most fanatical religious people like Fred Phelps, Osama bin Laden, etc. and how they dehumanize non-believers, and therefore willingly mistreat them. Now look at the reasonable mildness of the more ecumenical types. It's obvious who's closer to the truth. Now I'd like to ask you to look at the most-diehard atheists, versus the not-sure-if-they're-agnostic-or-atheist types. Do you see what I see? If you don't, I think you have a imbalance. Even if the most diehard atheists are right, there's just more to life than abusing people and calling them names, right?
Here's a saying I got from a video game character, Garrett. "Fanatics make unreliable friends."
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posted
I don't know any modern, die-hard atheists who are calling for the cleansing of a whole group of people. Many die-hard religious folks are.
The good thing about extreme atheists is that the more extreme they are, the easier it is to change their minds by introducing new facts to the situation. They WANT to be shown something convincing to learn more about how things really work.
The same is the worst thing about the most extreme religious folks. They believe their own version of the truth so single-mindedly, that it's nearly impossible to get them to change it.
For example, the scientific community thought for some time that being gay was a psychological disorder. They have since realized that it isn't, and now no scientist worth her salt will tell you that it is.
On the other hand, religious people the world over will still insist that being gay is a sin, sometimes one worthy of death. No matter how many wonderful, normal, loving gay people they know, reason and logic simply aren't important - only their unyielding belief is.
That unwillingness to learn anything or change ones mind is what makes religion the enemy of progress.
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quote:Originally posted by steven: Look at the rudeness/evil of the most fanatical religious people like Fred Phelps, Osama bin Laden, etc. and how they dehumanize non-believers, and therefore willingly mistreat them. Now look at the reasonable mildness of the more ecumenical types. It's obvious who's closer to the truth.
Sorry, it's not obvious to me how you conclude the latter from the former.
I see two fallacious ways to get from there to there, but not any sound ones.
What exactly is the logically sound, obvious reasoning by which you draw that conclusion from those givens?
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quote:For example, the scientific community thought for some time that being gay was a psychological disorder. They have since realized that it isn't, and now no scientist worth her salt will tell you that it is.
On the other hand, religious people the world over will still insist that being gay is a sin, sometimes one worthy of death. No matter how many wonderful, normal, loving gay people they know, reason and logic simply aren't important - only their unyielding belief is.
That unwillingness to learn anything or change ones mind is what makes religion the enemy of progress.
Hardly MC. While you've certainly described a subset of the religiously zealous. At the risk of bringing Blayne down on us all what of Mainland China, who is officially atheist, and has instigated many programs designed to eradicate an entire culture and religious philosophy?
I do agree with you that all forms of excessive belief damage, but so then is the belief that strict adherence to scientific thought will safeguard us better. Only science has provided us with the tools capable of erasing mankind from the planet. Chemical, biological, nuclear weaponry have all been given to us along with the marvelous advances achieved in the sciences.
What of the French revolution which attempted to strike religion from the French culture in an effort to advance it? Thinkers like Jefferson applauded the French, thinking that all nations would follow their example, and give religion a courteous but in reality non-role in society.
Maybe a general embrace of atheism will make the world a better place, but there are several examples of it being attempted with disastrous results. My own religion is in a sense no different. They attempted a whole sale theological socialist state as had been attempted in the past, with terrible results, the whole church nearly collapsed. I do believe however that at some point, people will be ready to live that difficult but exalting ideal. The study of communities that had all things in common is actually a fascinating endeavor. You'd be surprised how many multinational attempts have been made, with varying levels of success.
Christianity as a whole may well act as an anchor seemingly holding the ship in harbor. But even Christians can start to agree that this time it needs to be raised. Trying to cut that anchor and pilot the seas is not always beneficial to everyone.
Christians are not the enemies of progress, but many of us have agreed to sacrifice some of the conventional wisdom of men, for what God has decreed. It is absolutely true that at least in my own life, there are conventional truths that I have found to be simply false. I am indebted to God for helping me see some of those pitfalls. Were I to disregard these conclusions in my own life, because of the manner in which they were revealed to me, I would be incapable of believing anything, even if the evidence was right in front of my eyes, and was proven 100 times out of 100.
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"Sorry, it's not obvious to me how you conclude the latter from the former.
I see two fallacious ways to get from there to there, but not any sound ones.
What exactly is the logically sound, obvious reasoning by which you draw that conclusion from those givens?"
I was referring to the obvious factual fallacies in the most-conservative versions of major religions, things like Young Earth Creationism, etc. I was pointing out that extreme beliefs generally go along with the tendency to dehumanize and therefore mistreat others, and that you can often deduce inductively that those who abuse others based on their differences in basic beliefs about the nature of reality are, in a general sense, factually wrong. The correlation is fairly high, is it not, in your observation and/or experience? It certainly is in mine.
"Hardly MC. While you've certainly described a subset of the religiously zealous. At the risk of bringing Blayne down on us all what of Mainland China, who is officially atheist, and has instigated many programs designed to eradicate an entire culture and religious philosophy?"
I pretty much agree, I think. I think I may roll my eyes and laugh if TomD or somebody else brings up some kind of "hidden, secret" Taoist tendencies in Mao, or other members of the CCP. Yes, they still have/had those beliefs in private. So what? Somehow it's those beliefs that actually were the real cause of all the bad things that were done by Mao, etc.? Please. That's like saying somebody who had a major wreck as a result of drinking 20 beers in 1 hour wrecked because he briefly smelled burning marijuana for 3 seconds from 60 yards away while he was getting drunk.
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posted
I'm not claiming that non-religious people are wonderful bunny-hugging humanitarians. There are plenty of cruel, evil non-religious folks out there.
My point is that in order to get wide spread evil, there needs to be a mechanism to control the population to do the will of the leaders of the movement.
An authoritarian government works well, and most Americans realize that, and think that military regimes and dictatorships tend to be a bad thing.
Unfortunately, organized, deistic religion is even better at controlling huge segments of the population, and convincing them to do horrible things, or even just ignorant and sad things, in the name of their Deity.
Consider that most people in America share some level of outrage at the way China prevents its citizens from having access to information by restricting news and internet access. They keep their population under control, by limiting their knowledge to what the leadership feel they can handle.
How is that significantly different from the move by some Church leaders to keep evolution out of schools, or to limit sex-education to abstinence only, or to denounce same-sex couples? It's simply an attempt to control a population by controlling their knowledge.
But for whatever reason, we tend to give religion a free pass, which I think needs to stop.
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quote: How is that significantly different from the move by some Church leaders to keep evolution out of schools, or to limit sex-education to abstinence only, or to denounce same-sex couples? It's simply an attempt to control a population by controlling their knowledge.
You know, every society does that. Each and every one. You're not upset about the powers that be controlling information, you're upset about where they draw the line. And that's a much trickier thing to whip up outrage about.
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To be specific, I didn't say you individually weren't upset about some information being controlled. I said that all societies do that, and I don't hear you complaining about it.
But alright, I'll answer your question. Do you think information on how to build explosives, biological weapons, chemical weapons, should be able to be freely accessed by anyone in the public?
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quote:But alright, I'll answer your question. Do you think information on how to build explosives, biological weapons, chemical weapons, should be able to be freely accessed by anyone in the public?
This information *is* freely accessible in the US and I'm OK with that.
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I don't know about 'freely accessible', Matt. I understood that although of course you can search for damn near anything on the Internet, if you use other media that aren't so anonymous (or even, in fact, the Internet sometimes), you'll trip some flags.
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I can go into any library in America and freely read books with all the necessary information to figure those things out. I can go to college in America specifically to learn how to do those things, and if I'm lucky, I can get the government to not only pay for my education, but then hire me to work for them.
The USE of that information should indeed be controlled. The information itself should not be, and it isn't.
There's very little information which is dangerous on its own. People who want to limit information to the masses do so out of a desire to control their choices. What we don't know about, we cannot choose. What we don't understand we cannot defend.
The only people who fear an educated population are the ones who benefit because of their ignorance.
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: But alright, I'll answer your question. Do you think information on how to build explosives, biological weapons, chemical weapons, should be able to be freely accessed by anyone in the public?
Yes. Security through obscurity is an awful approach to take to combat terrorism.
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I'm not very good at finding specific laws and such, and I'll be pretty busy today, so I'll keep looking, but it would appear at least that there are some controls in the USA on information related to bombmaking.
quote:The only people who fear an educated population are the ones who benefit because of their ignorance.
Generally I would agree with this. As to this particular discussion, I think it's nonsense. Just because someone doesn't want sex education taught in schools-a decision I disagree with-doesn't mean they don't want their children to know about it at all. All you can say for certain is that they don't want it taught in schools.
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