Richard Dawkins - Anti -Christ or Great Thinker?

like, that's the dictionary definition of being incurious about something

"rap music? that's just talking over other people's records! who cares?"

etc

shakey OTM.

that said, since i'm a quasi/soft atheist myself and often terrified by the thug religiosity of my countrymen, i'm glad someone is making a big ugly noise in atheism's defense. something i've learned from american politics and popular media is that an effective arguments isn't always a good or even a rational one. loud, angry and dumb seems to work pretty well, too, and if dawkins & co wind up making more room for secular points of view by (almost) any means, then good on them.

doesn't excuse the islamophobia though. fuck that.

it's funny because even RELIGIOUS people seem to be pretty damn incurious about religion. I can quote Ecclesiastes to a Christian and get a blank stare and told "that's depressing." I'm in favor of more education about religion, not less. As a former roommate who went to Princeton seminary once told me, he thinks most fundamentalism could be cured if people just "read the bible."

that, in short, the problem isn't so much religion (imo) but the fact that people delegate the responsibility for thinking about these kinds of things to authorities.

Speaking for myself, I know that God(s) exist(s) because I can feel it/Him/Her/Them. If I couldn't I might have my doubts. Poor Richard Dawkins, I pity him.

lol @ max upthread

remember "the brights"

i basically like hitch and amis and the rest of this whole sauna (except when they quote each other in epigraphs) but yeah not dawkins, because at least those guys have read history and can say affecting things about the pieta.

(plus his sanctimony infected douglas adams, angryface)

"brights" always made me lol bcz it has such a Coast-to-Coast AM vibe of being touched with magical superiority to it, like "lightworker" or "indigo children." Which I think is the opposite of what they were going for.

I always thought the one advantage of being an atheist is you didn't have to worry about being a joiner anyway?

like, that's the dictionary definition of being incurious about something

"rap music? that's just talking over other people's records! who cares?"

I went through a phase where I thought maybe I should learn more about rap. So I got kind of into it for a couple of years, went through some of the canon, bought a bunch of records, paid attention to new stuff that was coming out, and ultimately realized it doesn't really interest me that much. So I don't really keep up with it anymore, other than occasionally checking out a couple of recent things to see what's up. Which is usually enough to confirm that I'm justified in ignoring it. I don't need to hear every single that comes out every week to know that it's not my thing.

To a hardcore rap theologian I guess that would be incurious. I wouldn't be allowed to give my point of view until I had heard some certain track. And then if I still wasn't convinced it would be because I hadn't heard this or that other artist. Or maybe I hadn't heard them early enough or in the right context. It strikes me that the "Dawkins doesn't know enough theology" complaint is about on that level. Maybe you honestly believe that Dawkins' understanding of religion is no deeper than "that's just talking over other people's records. who cares?" But really he could never learn enough about the topic to appease the religious backpackers.

But the analogy is flawed anyway, because religion makes some extraordinary claims that serve as the basis for everything else. If those fundamental claims are wrong the why bother getting into the details? It's like if I'm Geir and I know I need melody to be happy, the why bother exploring rap?

yeah okay, thanks for dawkins = geir, gonna go w that

It strikes me that the "Dawkins doesn't know enough theology" complaint is about on that level. Maybe you honestly believe that Dawkins' understanding of religion is no deeper than "that's just talking over other people's records. who cares?"

did you miss the part where Dawkins accepted/made allowances for Einstein's definition of "God" and then completely ignored (and/or is completely ignorant of) the fact that Einstein's definition is verbatim the position of various theologian/mystics throughout thousands of years of human history. Things like that are just intellectually dishonest. He makes blanket assertions about religion that simply aren't supported by the facts.

yeah and also lol you just big upped GEIR of all people

Geir hongro, deep thinker and perceptive listener

it's not that dawkins doesn't know about the latest issue of the american journal of being religious it's that he doesn't appear to know about anything except what he can remember of the lyrics to "jerusalem"

dawkins is like if private eye published a series of books about the world religions

religion makes some extraordinary claims that serve as the basis for everything else. If those fundamental claims are wrong the why bother getting into the details?

This is a monolithic view of religion that speaks back directly to your incuriosity. If you had investigated religions in greater depth, you would discover that such a blanket statement only reveals abysmal ignorance, not clear understanding.

Certainly, any religion that makes claims you cannot see as being true is not a religion for you to embrace. Try looking at some others, then, perhaps. But as for your averarching claim about "religion", it is not true, so why should I bother any further with the details?

you'll never believe what richard dawkins unearthed guys, did you guys know that god asked abraham to sacrifice his son

how has no one addressed this

God turned some bitch into a pillar of salt! GANGSTA

even as an atheist, it has come to my attention that religion may have played some minor role in the history of civilization and culture, so if you have any interest in history or civilization or culture you're likely to wind up coming across the odd bit of religion here and there

well, sure, but... its WRONG. so why bother paying attention?

religion makes some extraordinary claims that serve as the basis for everything else

theologians don't even agree on the first letter/word of the bible

Meaning of the first word: Bereishit

The opening word of the verse, b'reishit (or Bereishit), has a known meaning, though the precise meaning is open to interpretation, which is highly significant because it contributes to both biblical thought and subsequent religious doctrines. The word b'reishit lacks the definite article ("the"). Various English translations put it as "in the beginning," "in the beginning when," "at the beginning," "during the beginning," or "when [God] began." The root of the first word Bereishit בראשית is ראש "head"—being the central core word (ראש can be pronounced as rosh which is the Hebrew for "head"). Furthermore, the first letter ב means "in" or "at", and the last letters ית imply "of". The use of the word "head" implies something "at the top", as in "head" of something. In this case it is the "head" or "start" of Creation, which is possibly where the idea to translate it as "in the beginning" originates.

do Bereishit in the woods?

This is a monolithic view of religion that speaks back directly to your incuriosity. If you had investigated religions in greater depth, you would discover that such a blanket statement only reveals abysmal ignorance, not clear understanding.

well, in wk's defense, dawkins' working definition of religion seems to have more in common with what i'd call "fundamentalist religious mythology" than with the broad range of beliefs, cultures and ideas the word might describe. in that context, "religion makes some extraordinary claims" seems reasonable, if misleading.

I don't have a problem with pointing out that religious fundamentalists of all stripes are jackasses. this is obvious, can be taken as a given, and is true across all cultures (nor, incidentally, is this kind of fanaticism restricted to religion but I guess that's beside the point). But to pretend that fundamentalist sects represent the whole of religious activity is just more intellectual dishonesty/stupidity and not really helpful.

like, most non-hassidic Jews (myself included) bristle at the implication that the Hassidim are somehow a more "authentic" representation of Judaism than I am, that they represent the core tenets of Judaism (rather than a regressive, self-rightoues 18th century offshoot)

imagine how the muslims feel

I know right? this crazy jihadist fundie stripe is an even younger movement than the hassidim! like, 20th century! It's hardly the all-encompassing world of Islam

I can quote Ecclesiastes to a Christian and get a blank stare and told "that's depressing."

Ha, wait, had you told them where it was from before they said that or after?

Before! Haha. Tho after wouldnt surprise me. My sister and her husband went to a new church and the pastor apparently wanted to explain Calvinism (and predestination) that day. Of course they'd never heard any of that (and probably couldnt explain the basic history of Protestantism) and were pretty horrified.

Oops had you backwards--I told them after their remark!

And I think that ignorance is what fundamentalism takes advantage of--it hides the fact of its own historical or cultural contingency.

did you miss the part where Dawkins accepted/made allowances for Einstein's definition of "God" and then completely ignored (and/or is completely ignorant of) the fact that Einstein's definition is verbatim the position of various theologian/mystics throughout thousands of years of human history. Things like that are just intellectually dishonest. He makes blanket assertions about religion that simply aren't supported by the facts.

You may have missed the fact that Dawkins regularly addresses this question. It's not the nuanced view of an individual believer or a particular theologian that interests him as much as the basic literal claims of most popular religions. I tend to agree with him that if you don't literally believe that God created everything, judges you when you die, is the father of Christ, etc. you can still call yourself a Christian, but most popular Christian denominations would probably not recognize you as one. The existence of a pro-choice Catholic priest does not override the church's official stance on the issue. Dawkins generally makes it clear that he's not talking about all believers.

This is a monolithic view of religion that speaks back directly to your incuriosity. If you had investigated religions in greater depth, you would discover that such a blanket statement only reveals abysmal ignorance, not clear understanding.

Certainly, any religion that makes claims you cannot see as being true is not a religion for you to embrace. Try looking at some others, then, perhaps. But as for your averarching claim about "religion", it is not true, so why should I bother any further with the details?

Why do you assume that I haven't investigated religion in great depth? Because if I had I would surely be a believer? There are no religions that I can embrace. So then what?

did you miss the part where Dawkins accepted/made allowances for Einstein's definition of "God" and then completely ignored (and/or is completely ignorant of) the fact that Einstein's definition is verbatim the position of various theologian/mystics throughout thousands of years of human history. Things like that are just intellectually dishonest. He makes blanket assertions about religion that simply aren't supported by the facts.

You may have missed the fact that Dawkins regularly addresses this question. It's not the nuanced view of an individual believer or a particular theologian that interests him as much as the basic literal claims of most popular religions. I tend to agree with him that if you don't literally believe that God created everything, judges you when you die, is the father of Christ, etc. you can still call yourself a Christian, but most popular Christian denominations would probably not recognize you as one. The existence of a pro-choice Catholic priest does not override the church's official stance on the issue. Dawkins generally makes it clear that he's not talking about all believers.

even as an atheist, it has come to my attention that religion may have played some minor role in the history of civilization and culture, so if you have any interest in history or civilization or culture you're likely to wind up coming across the odd bit of religion here and there

You don't think that Dawkins has a basic cultural and historical understanding of world religions? That's a huge gap between a basic literate knowledge of world religion and the type of in-depth theological expertise that people are demanding of Dawkins. I don't have to actually be able to execute a crab scratch to understand the fact that rapping is just talking over other people's records.

I don't have a problem with pointing out that religious fundamentalists of all stripes are jackasses. this is obvious, can be taken as a given, and is true across all cultures (nor, incidentally, is this kind of fanaticism restricted to religion but I guess that's beside the point). But to pretend that fundamentalist sects represent the whole of religious activity is just more intellectual dishonesty/stupidity and not really helpful.

Good thing that Dawkins doesn't do that then.

Back to the rap analogy, it's like if you were raised believing that rapping was the only style of singing and that DJs actually wrote and created the sounds you hear coming out of the turntables. Then Geirkins comes along and says, well actually, there's this whole other world of singing out there and rapping is just a tiny portion of it, if you can even consider it singing. And by the way, the DJ is just using two records to loop a bar music that somebody else wrote and recorded. Then you backpedal and say that you didn't literally mean the DJ was "creating" those sounds but he's still in a sense creating the music, and anyway you have no place to even discuss it since you've never listened to this certain mixtape from '94, have you?

wow, that was long

Dawkins real problem is that he doesn't seem to have thought very deeply about science.

dying at Geirkins tbh

basic literal claims of most popular religions.

this is problematic, to say the least. particularly the "literal" part.

literally believe that God created everything

like literally you don't think a mysterious force that we don't have any real knowledge of created the universe? cuz um that is more or less the current scientific view of things.

one of Dawkins real problems is that he literally thinks the average religious person's conception of God is as a great big white-bearded guy in the sky which, if he bothered to actually investigate the ways people deal with and integrate religion into their daily lives, is just wrong.

LITERALLY

he existence of a pro-choice Catholic priest does not override the church's official stance on the issue.

it's funny that you bring this up, since the Catholic Church is one of the few religions with an actually centralized, bureaucratic theological structure. Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hindusim, other branches of Christianity - they don't have these things. Interpreting what constitutes a "real" Jew/Muslim/Christian/Hindu/Buddhist/etc is a completely subjective process that has changed continually over time, it is very fluid.

The existence of a pro-choice Catholic priest does not override the church's official stance on the issue.

I'm sure there are guys in the Vatican who'd like to think they run a doctrinaire heirarchy with the Pope pulling the strings but the Catholic church doesn't and hasn't ever really worked like that. The same goes for any religion bigger than a cult. Dawks gleefully offends religious people of all stripes in the name of going after some power structures that he sees as negative. I don't recall ever reading a nuanced argument from him about religion as a whole, just the same old "hey guys the ontological argument doesn't stand up to a whole lot of scrutiny". Thank fuck somebody finally realised that eh?

hey guys have you ever noticed that the Bible is just a bunch of silly stories? MAKES YA THINK

lol I guess Noodle has a more nuanced view of Catholicism than I do (I happily cede the floor to people with more experience on the subject)

xp

not experience so much as reading but you can look thru the history of the Church and it's a more or less constant struggle between the centralizers and the communities around the margins, or even power blocs within the centralizers - hi Jesuits!

stupid Nicene Creed messed up everything

one of Dawkins real problems is that he literally thinks the average religious person's conception of God is as a great big white-bearded guy in the sky which, if he bothered to actually investigate the ways people deal with and integrate religion into their daily lives, is just wrong.

― american thinker (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, May 11, 2011 2:03 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark

i'm as anti-dawkins as any atheist (agnostic) can be, but i think this misses the point. though he talks in a broad way about "religion", i think dawkings is really just tilting against christian fundamentalism. therefore, a lot of the people he's trying to shoot down really do literally believe in the infallible sky father, in a war between good and evil, in the seven-day creation, a young earth and noah's ark. they believe in the inarguable existence of a jesus christ who walked on water and healed the sick and rose from the grave. and they believe that anyone who thinks differently is a dupe, an agent of satan destined only to burn in hell.

he often conflates these sorts of extremist beliefs with religion in general, and that's a problem. i half-suspect that, deep down, he believes that less radical forms of religious faith are nothing more than namby-pamby versions of the same thing. but to the extent that his real targets are inflexible and often violent fundamentalists, he's not 100% off the mark.