quote:Off hand, I'd point to Carl Sagan and Douglas Adams both of whose writings were reasonably popular with many religious people. That's a hard question to answer since atheist treatises aren't usually the preferred reading choice of anyone with religious leanings (or even without religious leanings) and certainly not a favorite genre of mine.
The difference between Dawkins and both Sagan and Adams (and Vonnegut and Asimov and Clarke, etc...) is that Dawkins is making a case for atheism, rather than being an author who just happens to be an atheist.
I've noted many times that there does not appear to be a bridge of tolerance between theism and atheism in the same way that different denominations have established tolerance using interfaith or ecumenical councils. I wish there were one, and continue to look for avenues that might help bring such a thing into existence.
Years ago I used to participate actively in the alt.atheism newsgroup, and I noticed that most of the threads were originated by theists, who entered the group with a variety of motives. In cases where the theist appeared to be genuinely interested in understanding the atheist mind, I noticed a particular mechanism:
The theist would ask: "Why don't you believe in God?" To which the atheist would give their answer.
Then the theist would reply something along the lines of "how dare you attack my religious belief?"
Other atheists in the group generally assumed that the theist had set this up as a trap, but I often continued the conversation with the theist, and came to my own conclusion that the question had been asked in earnest. It occurred to me that the answer to the question: "Why don't you believe in God?" must be given as a series of statements that detail the logical process the atheist followed to reach their particular conclusion. Which is to say, the atheist responded with an argument in the classical sense. The theist of course took the argument in a less that classical sense, and felt that they had been attacked.
I also noticed that the more academic sounding the atheist's answer was, the worse the response from the theist. When couched in emotional language, the theist was generally more sympathetic. Dawkins' arguments are explicitly academic, and in response to the suggestion that he should be more warm and fuzzy, his response is that this simply isn't his strength. So it's no surprise to me that his style offends so many theists.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
The Douglas Adams choice is an interesting one since as you note, his Hitchhiker's or Dirk Gently books aren't actually atheist writings so much as they are books that are written by an atheist and are particularly atheist friendly. The book that does note some of his explicitly atheist writings is "The Salmon of Doubt" which is a grab-bag of essays, stories, and a bit of a Dirk Gently book.
quote:AMERICAN ATHEISTS: How long have you been a nonbeliever, and what brought you to that realization?
DNA: Well, it’s a rather corny story. As a teenager I was a committed Christian. It was in my background. I used to work for the school chapel in fact. Then one day when I was about eighteen I was walking down the street when I heard a street evangelist and, dutifully, stopped to listen. As I listened it began to be borne in on me that he was talking complete nonsense, and that I had better have a bit of a think about it.
I’ve put that a bit glibly. When I say I realized he was talking nonsense, what I mean is this. In the years I’d spent learning History, Physics, Latin, Math, I’d learnt (the hard way) something about standards of argument, standards of proof, standards of logic, etc. In fact we had just been learning how to spot the different types of logical fallacy, and it suddenly became apparent to me that these standards simply didn’t seem to apply in religious matters. In religious education we were asked to listen respectfully to arguments which, if they had been put forward in support of a view of, say, why the Corn Laws came to be abolished when they were, would have been laughed at as silly and childish and - in terms of logic and proof -just plain wrong. Why was this?
Well, in history, even though the understanding of events, of cause and effect, is a matter of interpretation, and even though interpretation is in many ways a matter of opinion, nevertheless those opinions and interpretations are honed to within an inch of their lives in the withering crossfire of argument and counterargument, and those that are still standing are then subjected to a whole new round of challenges of fact and logic from the next generation of historians - and so on. All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others.
So, I was already familiar with and (I’m afraid) accepting of, the view that you couldn’t apply the logic of physics to religion, that they were dealing with different types of ‘truth’. (I now think this is baloney, but to continue...) What astonished me, however, was the realization that the arguments in favor of religious ideas were so feeble and silly next to the robust arguments of something as interpretative and opinionated as history. In fact they were embarrassingly childish. They were never subject to the kind of outright challenge which was the normal stock in trade of any other area of intellectual endeavor whatsoever. Why not? Because they wouldn’t stand up to it. So I became an Agnostic. And I thought and thought and thought. But I just did not have enough to go on, so I didn’t really come to any resolution. I was extremely doubtful about the idea of god, but I just didn’t know enough about anything to have a good working model of any other explanation for, well, life, the universe and everything to put in its place. But I kept at it, and I kept reading and I kept thinking. Sometime around my early thirties I stumbled upon evolutionary biology, particularly in the form of Richard Dawkins’s books The Selfish Gene and then The Blind Watchmaker and suddenly (on, I think the second reading of The Selfish Gene) it all fell into place. It was a concept of such stunning simplicity, but it gave rise, naturally, to all of the infinite and baffling complexity of life. The awe it inspired in me made the awe that people talk about in respect of religious experience seem, frankly, silly beside it. I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.
So Douglas Adams would be one specific example of an agnostic that was significantly aided in his choice to become an atheist by Dawkins.
I guess its in the eye of the beholder as to whether his writings on atheism in specific are more or less acceptable than Dawkins' writings.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: Most of the atheist philosophy I've read has been very academic and while I find most of these authors much less offensive than Dawkins, they aren't exactly light reading and are unlikely to ever hit the back shelves of Barnes and Nobles let alone the best seller lists.
Would you mind giving a small summary of what you find offensive about Dawkins' writing? I've been trying to reevaluate how I approach religious discussions in general because its clear that there is a disconnect between how atheists perceive certain comments and how theists perceive certain comments. In relation to Dawkins, I'm wondering if its his attitude that you find objectionable (perhaps he comes across as aggressive?) or more some of the things he says. He does say some things that are pretty offensive (ex: faith-as-a-virus analogy that pops up now and then) and while they do detract from his argument, its surprising to me that he gets classified as offensive and arrogant when most of arguments are good and written in an easy-to-understand manner (though clearly that's not how everyone perceives them). But impressions are impressions and if he is viewed as offensive and arrogant then I would like to know why so I can improve my discussions.
Posts: 1327 | Registered: Aug 2007
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by natural_mystic: I find that people tend to criticize the messenger when they don't like the message. There are plenty of atheists out there writing books; do the people who find Dawkins arrogant find any of these more palatable?
Off hand, I'd point to Carl Sagan and Douglas Adams both of whose writings were reasonably popular with many religious people. That's a hard question to answer since atheist treatises aren't usually the preferred reading choice of anyone with religious leanings (or even without religious leanings) and certainly not a favorite genre of mine.
Most of the atheist philosophy I've read has been very academic and while I find most of these authors much less offensive than Dawkins, they aren't exactly light reading and are unlikely to ever hit the back shelves of Barnes and Nobles let alone the best seller lists.
Can you give examples of this atheist philosophy? I ask only because I think some academic philosophy that could be classified as atheist is very narrow i.e. they work from a very specific set of assumptions. The end result of this is that even when their purpose is to augment a classical argument against god, it does not read as if they are telling theists "you're wrong." Which is essentially what Dawkins does. And it's pretty presumptuous to pass judgment on someone's deeply held personal beliefs - this presumption can easily be viewed as arrogance.
Incidentally, another atheist writer that I have seen in Borders is Sam Harris; if Dawkins is thought of as arrogant, then Harris must be regarded as orders of magnitude more so.
Posts: 644 | Registered: Sep 2008
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
