Richard Dawkins: "The God Delusion" II

I know precisely who Dawkin's book is meant for. And if it is thoughtful, intelligent people who believe in a religion or two, how are they to respond to an argument that essentially consists of: "Pfft. There's no God, because the that's a stupid idea! Ha! What idiots! Thank god we atheists are so bright!"

As an atheist myself, I think Dawkins is an idiot.

Yeah, and you know that Cairo is in Egypt because I just told you. As a matter of fact, I am content to label Dawkins based on the radio and television appearances I've seen and the articles and reviews I've read. But, I am also willing to base it on [i]the actual parts of the book I've read.[/i] Weird. I've read Dawkins, and I still think he's off base. So I guess that puts me in a better position to critique him than Dawkins' position to critique say, The Bible.

Now I'm foaming at the mouth? Interesting. I'm sorry you don't read well, but there have been many points scored against Dawkins, with ground zero coming from the Eagleton review a couple of threads ago. You also ignored Krauss--an ally of Dawkins--and just keep posting blind praise from Academic heavyweights like Penn Jilette's silent partner.

I don't hate Dawkins, he's just plain wrong here. He's insulting, and he revels in his presumed logic while completely missing the point.

quote:

---

Originally posted by M. Spector:
[b]I just find it bizarre that a person who claims to be an atheist would display such venom towards one of the most prominent atheists in the world....[/b]

---

Can't speak for Catchfire, of course, but speaking for myself, I hold my allies to just as high a standard as I hold my opponents to, and sometimes to a higher standard.

I want their arguments to make sense, to be comprehensible, and not to fall back on spurious tactics that people will see right through.

But that's just me.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Catchfire:
[b]
I've never felt threatened about being an atheist. [/b]

---

Define "threatened".

As a young teenager (around 12), I never felt more alone and uncertain than the day it occurred to me that all the God stuff was bullshit. I had never really believed the supernatural stuff, despite my very religious upbringing and extensive religious education. But one day I thought: "If I were born next door, I'd believe in a different God." That was it for me, and I have never looked back.

But I couldn't talk about my feelings. I tried once, to a classmate. Result: I was called into the vice-principal's office and very gently and kindly interrogated about what I was saying to the other kids. Never threatened.

Then, at around the age of 14, I chanced upon and read Bertrand Russell's [i]Why I am Not a Christian[/i]. I felt thrilled, alive. I felt like some of the wonderful testimonials M. Spector cited. Russell was one of my heroes, and he made it ok to be an atheist.

Re-reading that text, with decades of hindsight, I realize:

1. I wasn't even a Christian to start with.

2. Russell's account is not very profound.

But it made no difference. The title fascinated me. And it was the courage, the openness, and the in-your-face iconoclasm of the whole exercise that overpowered me.

No one can read a book and stop believing in God. That can only come from your own life-experience and introspection. But thank God for Russell and Dawkins. One day I hope science is able to count how many lost souls they have liberated.

ETA: For what it's worth, [url=http://users.drew.edu/~jlenz/whynot.html]here it is:[/url]

quote:

---

[i]Introductory note:[/i] Russell delivered this lecture on March 6, 1927 to the National Secular Society, South London Branch, at Battersea Town Hall. Published in pamphlet form in that same year, the essay subsequently achieved new fame with Paul Edwards' edition of Russell's book, Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays ... (1957).

---

[ 20 December 2006: Message edited by: unionist ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by M. Spector:
[b]I just find it bizarre that a person who claims to be an atheist would display such venom towards one of the most prominent atheists in the world - for his attempts to gain social acceptance and respectability for the idea that there is no God!

Is there some bitter factional dispute among the atheist community that has escaped my notice?[/b]

---

Perhaps its because arguing the case that there is no god is merely another religious position asserted in the paradigm of religious belief. Notice how it is that Dawkins book relies upon arguing logically against theology. Even in the counter position it still amounts to a theological critique.

A truly anti-religious position is agnostic, as that eschews the centrality of god to the discourse -- [i]it doesn't matter if god exists or not.[/i]

[ 20 December 2006: Message edited by: Cueball ]

I'll be polite and say I've never read Russell's verses. He was a philosopher who saw the materialism of science in his day as proof of something. I'm not sure of what, and I don't think he did either. I'm sure he was just another confused old man in the end.

quote:

---

Originally posted by unionist:
[b]

Beg to differ. This is the 21st century. In this age, you are either for God, or you're against him. There's no room for middle ground.[/b]

---

What if Greek, Roman or Norse mythos was more true than anything. Wouldn't it be a shock for humanity to discover that was true on April 1st, 2525. Just sayin.

Well I admit that I for one would be shocked over a bunch of giants swooping down on us riding sleds, giant isicles or whatever it is they get around on. Of course in the 1920's when Russell wrote about why he didn't believe in god, things were much simpler then. There was no such thing as DNA - people died from influenza and polio - there was no such thing as an atomic bomb - and some people said the moon was made of cheese. People could say things to the effect that the human mind consisted of so many chemical reactions, and who could say it was any different at that point in time ?.

quote:

---

Perhaps its because arguing the case that there is no god is merely another religious position asserted in the paradigm of religious belief. Notice how it is that Dawkins book relies upon arguing logically against theology. Even in the counter position it still amounts to a theological critique.

---

Right on.

quote:

---

A truly anti-religious position is agnostic, as that eschews the centrality of god to the discourse -- it doesn't matter if god exists or not.

---

I disagree. To be honestly agnostic, you must be open to persuasion, equally, from both sides. The best position is to say God doesn't exist, but then not make a whole religion out of that. We don't argue apples fall from a tree because we don't have to. We don't need to argue that God doesn't exist, either.

BTW, I am reading [url=http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061125/COMMU... book now and so far I am enjoying it. There is an NPR radio interview with the author, biologist, E.O. Wilson [url=http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5788810]here[/url]. He describes himself not as an atheist but as a secular humanist (which to some is exactly the same thing).

sometimes, serious discussions at this board are good for just 20 posts before drifting;
no, maybe 21 or 22 ...

then [img]rolleyes.gif" border="0[/img]

....

anyways, back to the subject above:
Merry Christmas, Mr Dawkins ! [img]biggrin.gif" border="0[/img] :
[url=http://tinyurl.com/yxreag]http://tinyurl.com/yxreag[/url]

[i]On the contrary, in free countries, every faith must be allowed -- and every faith must be allowed to be questioned, fundamentally, outspokenly, even intemperately and offensively, without fear of reprisal. Richard Dawkins, the Oxford scientist, must be free to say God is a delusion, and Alistair McGrath, the Oxford theologian, must be free to retort that Mr. Dawkins is deluded; a conservative journalist must be free to write that the Prophet Mohammed was a pedophile (a reference to the alleged age of his wife Aisha), and a Muslim scholar must be free to brand that journalist an ignorant Islamophobe. That's the deal in a free country: freedom of religion and freedom of expression as two sides of the same coin. We must live and let live -- a demand that is not as minimal as it sounds, when one thinks of the death threats against Salman Rushdie and the Danish cartoonists. The fence that secures this space is the law of the land.

The interesting question is whether there is a kind of respect that goes beyond this minimal law-fenced live and let live, yet stops short of either a hypocritical pretense of intellectual respect for the other's beliefs or unbounded relativism. I think there is. In fact, I would claim I know there is -- and most of us practise it without even thinking about it. We live and work every day with people who hold, in the temples of their hearts, beliefs we consider certifiably bonkers. If they seem to us good partners, friends, colleagues, we respect them as such -- irrespective of their private and perhaps deepest convictions. If they are close to us, we may not merely respect but love them. We love them, while all the time remaining firmly convinced that, in some corner of their minds, they cling to a load of nonsense.

[...]
My quarrel with the Richard Dawkins school of atheists is not anything they say about the non-existence of God, but what they say about Christians and the history of Christianity -- much of which is true but leaves out the other, positive half of the story. And, as the old Yiddish saying goes, a half-truth is a whole lie. In my judgment as a historian of modern Europe, the positive side is larger than the negative. It seems to me self-evident that we would not have the European civilization we have today without the heritage of Christianity, Judaism and (in a smaller measure, mainly in the Middle Ages) Islam, which legacy also paved the way, albeit unwittingly and unwillingly, for the Enlightenment. Moreover, some of the most impressive human beings I have met in my own lifetime have been Christians.

"By their fruits ye shall know them." There is a respect that flows from the present conduct of the believers, irrespective of the scientific plausibility of the original belief. A multicultural society can, at best, be an open, friendly competition between Christians, Sikhs, Muslims, Jews, atheists and, indeed, two-plus-two-equals-fivers, to impress us with their character and good works.

British political writer Timothy Garton Ash is a professor of European studies at Oxford.[/i]

[ 22 December 2006: Message edited by: Geneva ]

Interesting addendum, I just found out that Stephen J Gould himself thinks the opposition between 'Nature versus Nurture' is a false dichotomy too, which means the main thrust of Stephen Pinker's attacks against him and "his" school of thought are nothing more than another rectionary straw men. Anyone really believe anymore that either is entirely right or the Opposite entirely wrong? No, I didn't think so.

Youre such a dick Spector, you obviously don't understand the subject.

quote:

---

Originally posted by EriKtheHalfaRed:
[b]All progressive minded people should be very wary of all Darwinian explanations for human pyschology and behaviour, even ones which make minimal allowances for altruism having some evolutionary advantages too (limited towards kin and culture) or appear to offer a few reality checks to New Age romanticism.[/b]

---

Even if it did argue that, (it doesn't), we would still have to evaluate it on the merits, not on whether it contradicts our worldview. (But again, it doesn't)

For the record, I don't think anyone here is dumb or stupid or even willfully ignorant. We just need to learn to discuss on a higher level without name-calling and spitting. It's a great compliment to one another when we can contemplate others thoughts and offer intelligent appraisal and forward commentary on the matter. If that's not in the cards, then politeness would be appreciated by the person whose post is replied to. And it would be highly civil of us to do so. Now behave yourselves damnit.

I haven't read the selfish gene either, but I did read The God Delusion. Dawkins is very careful to point out that when he speaks of the selfish gene, he is speaking of gene, not human, behaviour. And he writes that resents those who use his selfish gene theory, such as Jeffery Skilling, I believe, to advance their own perverted attitudes toward acceptable human behavior.

Right. Dawkins makes no prescriptions on how we should behave, he makes a description that genes have many more degrees of freedom to evolve than previously thought. That they can compete, or cooperate or even parasitise each other or form tangled, symbiotic relationships has beared out convincingly in reality since his the book was written.

To hold it up as reactionary is unfounded. Many of the comments made here would apply to Herrnstein and Murray's [i]The Bell Curve[/i] but not The Selfish Gene. If people can't hold on to their leftism in face of fresh insights on the cavorting of genetic molecules, then it probably was pretty tenuous to start.

That's true. Dawkins makes no pretense that it is a scientific tome. Rather, it is a very good and comprehensive argument against religion and he makes some effort to explain "why religion?" I very much enjoyed his argument that people embrace religion as a by-product of believing, as a matter of survival, what their parents tell them. I think supporting that argument is that the mainstream religions mostly all refer to followers as "children".

Haha.

I think the main problem with The God Delusion is that Dawkins himself compartmentalizes notions of God into defensible and indefensible categories, and accuses organized religion of clinging to the indefensible one.
He claims that a pandeistic god embedded in natural laws a la Einstein is a superior and distinct belief from the "religious" conception of God which he presumes to be a bearded, anthropomorphized interlocutor. But since we've all met religious people who have nuanced and complex ideas of what God is, his dichotomy doesn't really wash.
In doing so he paints religious people in a very condescending light, as if they all pray to his contrived straw man.
Not really a good peace offering for science/theology relations. If he were interested in actually fighting anti-science, he would take a less bull-headed tack. But I'm convinced that he doesn't care.

The Selfish Gene was really something though.

[ 18 February 2007: Message edited by: quart o' homomilk ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by quart o' homomilk:
[b]
In doing so he paints religious people in a very condescending light, as if they all pray to his contrived straw man.[/b]

---

I'm offended. I believe in a PAD (Personal Anthropormorphic Deity, photo below), and I resent your calling Him "contrived". My religious beliefs are extremely nuanced and sophisticated.

[img]http://www.illuminati-news.com/graphics/06-07/071306/a/jack-straw2.gif[/...

quote:

---

He claims that a pandeistic god embedded in natural laws a la Einstein is a superior and distinct belief from the "religious" conception of God which he presumes to be a bearded, anthropomorphized interlocutor. But since we've all met religious people who have nuanced and complex ideas of what God is, his dichotomy doesn't really wash.

---

I don't think he made that claim at all. I believe he expressed disappointment that non-believers such as Einstein and others invoked the word "God" when they meant a force of nature beyond comprehension or something else. I think you completely misunderstood Dawkins.

Dawkins was very clear that his book was an assault on religious beliefs and was intended to persuade those questioning their faith to embrace atheism. He is a terrific writer, he offers a lot to think about, and he encourages readers to challenge his and their own ideas. Not something found in most religions or in most political ideologies.