Richard Dawkins - Anti -Christ or Great Thinker?

like agribusiness is pretty energy intensive

time/energy to get food is the barometer now? this barometer controversy was unforeseen.

imo a society is only as good as the verse it produces

lol scientific rationalism gave us the 20th century, the century of genocide on a previously unimagined scale thx to automated weaponry, the atomic bomb, etc

― metally ill (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, June 2, 2011 11:11 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark

You've convinced me. Let's go back to the caring utopias of the middle ages.

for the most part, the middle ages were kinda nice if you weren't in Europe

or the mongol empire

seem to remember some shitty stuff going down in the Mid-East too.

O RLY

lol, yes it was called the Crusades

that was at the END dude

the middle ages lasted a long time, brah

"like agribusiness is pretty energy intensive"
de-volution!

"imo a society is only as good as the verse it produces"
presumably you'd have more time to compose verse if it weren't spent hunting tapir or stripping tree bark etc...
I mean you could do it on the job, but it would probably be like
oh flighty tapir / oh how i wish / i had an AK47

lol

the middle ages lasted a long time, brah

coincidentally, about as long as the Islamic Golden Age. weird!

to conclude, the middle ages were v interesting

I would recommend this book for anyone wishing to elevate our century above the others.

http://www.amazon.com/Dawn-Decadence-Western-Cultural-Present/dp/0060928832/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1307058987&sr=1-1

coincidentally, about as long as the Islamic Golden Age. weird!

― metally ill (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, June 2, 2011 11:54 PM (57 seconds ago) Bookmark

about 500 years longer actually.

wow had no idea the middle ages went all the way up to 1750! tell me more about this "history" you study

I get the notion that Dawkins et al sort of see religion as pulling backwards to tradition and primitive superstition, and science as pulling forward to progress and enlightenment. Is that fair? And if so is it really crazy to argue that this is reductive on both ends, and even a little reactionary?

and here I was thinking the Middle Ages ended with the Renaissance like a schmuck

xp

I get the idea that Dawkins doesn't read any long books.

Islamic Golden Age (c.750 CE - c.1258 CE)

Middle ages began around 400, ended in the 15th century.

fall of rome 476 > fall of constantinople 1453, traditionally

I see religion as pulling forwards towards crasser and flashier forms of superstition much like the Star Trek reboot.
Admittedly a lot of this is informed by my being on the mailing list of Apologetix, which is a kind of Christian
Weird Al touring band (which really is making me rethink my position on the superiority of religiously informed art.)

That said, which atheists made great art? (They don't have to be capital-A atheists, just atheists in spirit is fine.)

we've got some good directors

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_atheists_in_film,_radio,_television_and_theater

(some awful ones too of course)

think you're confusing scientific rationalism-as-worldview (in your terms) with products of science

Read Clausewitz's On War. In it you will find a highly rationalistic argument in favor of the concept of "total war". Such things as the fire-bombings of Dresden and Tokyo were entirely predicated on such thinking. The particular choice of weapons in each of the wars of the 20th century were incidental to the rationalizations for how they were used.

Shakey's point stands. Neither the wars of colonial conquest in the 19th century, nor the wars in Europe for ascendancy in both the 19th and 20th were instigated upon religious grounds. They were the products of realpolitik, not religious zeal.

both the american civil war and the japanese expansion in the 30s, to come up w/ two ex.s, were highly highly ideological undertakings. whether they were 'religious' seems like a distinction w/o diff to me

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh."

The conflation of "ideology" and "religion" once again? This won't wash with me.

Marxist ideologues prided themselves on their scientific rationalism (not often justifiably, but they did). If Marxist ideology is just another religion, then you may as well pull in free market capitalism, too. And while you are at it, throw in sports fanaticism and vegetarianism. Not to forget racism, sexism and agism. Oh, and liberalism!

I forgot realism, surrealism and impressionism.

if people are engaged in those activities to the point where they have gods, rituals of worship, prophets, ecstatic experiences, etc... then why not qualify those things as religions?

eh you go girl

the japan example is pretty tight by any measure tho

i think for Dawkins, what distinguishes science is that it's a social system that transcends the blind spots that all those other systems are prone to have--at least that's the claim it makes for itself (like marxism, etc)--it's not only in the service of religious superstition that one may point out that science is not justified in this claim.

does Dawkins really ascribe proscriptive qualities to science?
I'm also a little skeptical of Bruce Lee being on that list of atheist artists -- spiritual but not religious?

and to point that lack of justification does not necessarily delegitimize science based knowledge claims, nor would it delegitimize marxist/materialist claims for the primacy of the economic, but it does limit them.

i think for Dawkins to advance a forward attack on religion means that at the very least he implicitly believes that it has something to say about the knowledge claims of religion, mainly to "debunk" them.

What does he spend time debunking exactly? It doesn't seem like you could mount a generalized attack on religions by picking apart individual falsehoods.

it seems like the current trend for that crowd is to scientifically "explain" beliefs in God (thus exposing them as false somehow?), and pointing out how religion excuses or encourages intolerance and bad behavior. his website is kinda interesting: http://richarddawkins.net/

"A Clear-Thinking Oasis"

i think one of the things about Dawkins that i do get and does make sense to me is this idea of fighting fundamentalism on its own literal-minded level--sure pointing out how silly the story of the Ark is does challenge a person who believes that stuff literally, and there is a weird back-handed empiricism to fundamentalists, and if Dawkins wants to points out "hey you're doing it wrong" that strikes me as on the level and fair.

i'm all for dawkins & co. going after creationists because at least on that front they know what they're talking about.

I'm pretty sure his critique of religion goes far beyond zinging creationist pseudo-science.

if people are engaged in those activities to the point where they have gods, rituals of worship, prophets, ecstatic experiences, etc... then why not qualify those things as religions?

― Philip Nunez, Thursday, June 2, 2011 5:45 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark

but people simply do not engage in the sorts of activities aimless was talking about "to the point where they have gods, rituals of worship, prophets, ecstatic experience" as a means of communication/communion/gnosis. marxism, capitalism, sports fanaticim (and so on) might enshrine heroes, involve ritual, and provoke ecstasies in their most ardent devotees, but this does not make them "religions", or even religious. it merely means that people invest very strongly in them. the equation of any strong belief with religion is a metaphor, and it only makes sense when we understand that. if you want to be literal about it, we might as well say that all religion is really just tribalism in disguise, and that the deities and ecstasies involved exist only to illustrate the superiority and centrality of the tribe.

I'm pretty sure his critique of religion goes far beyond zinging creationist pseudo-science.

― the three stigmata of a (Viceroy), Friday, June 3, 2011 1:15 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

not really!

OTM. dawkins' real enemy seems to be fundamentalist insistence on the real and true historical accuracy! or arrant nonsense. he's fighting against creationism, the young earth, The Historical Jesus, against the excesses, bigotry and danger of fundamentalism in general. problem is that he conceives of this crusade in "science and reason vs. idiotic superstition" terms, and seems happy enough to lump all religious belief in with the lunatic idiocy he despises. this strengthens the value of his arguments in the pop marketplace (where simplicity and volume are unquestioned virtues), but makes them hard to take if you prefer compassion and complexity to kicking ass and taking names.

"...of arrant nonsense."

I'm also a little skeptical of Bruce Lee being on that list of atheist artists -- spiritual but not religious?

― Philip Nunez, Friday, June 3, 2011 12:52 AM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark

Well they have a pretty clear quote in there.

One of the big misunderstandings about atheism is that it means a lack of spirituality. At a literal level, it just means a lack of belief in God(s). Agnostic is actually the stronger term, because it means a lack of spiritual/religious belief in general.

The battle on the two terms has been lost so badly that it's hard to know whether to tell someone if you're one or the other.

yeah, it's funny how huxley's word, which originally meant exactly what most now think of as atheism, has come to describe simple doubt, a withholding of judgment when it comes to the divine. meanwhile, atheism, literally the lack of belief in god or gods, is now typically understood as something very similar to huxley's agnosticism: the rationalist rejection of all religious or spiritual superstition.

i'm comfortable with today's oddly inverted, definitions, though, cuz as you say, the battle's long lost.

I understand that bona-fide religions occupy a cultural privilege and space that things like sports do not, but in purely functional terms, I don't see how they are at a metaphorical remove. Maybe give an example of a culturally (or at least for tax-purposes) accepted religion that is more like sports fanaticism than actual religion.

Keanu Reeves on that list threw me, too. Poor atheist dude.