Richard Dawkins - Anti -Christ or Great Thinker?

If people like that want me to take them seriously they can start by pressing for Christian values like "Thou shalt not kill". Let's see a religiously backed widespread anti-war movement. I mean, it's only something your deity carved in stone on a mountaintop.

Let's see a religiously backed widespread anti-war movement.

these exist and have existed in the past fyi

well, widespread is maybe debatable

feel like warsi is trolling she is talking so much shite. and she's not even a christian.

i think the point Adam makes is actually a distinction that would serve the "new atheists" quite well if they took the time to make it more often. attacking religious or spiritual beliefs per se is never gonna get anywhere (to my mind), but pushing back against aggressive or ignorant religious beliefs which are really cover for good old fashioned provincialism/racism/nationalism/etc. is worth doing. a good friend of mine was fond of saying that most of the problems with christianity/christians would be solved if they actually read the bible. people are basically as religiously ignorant as they are science ignorant.

I'd like it to be as widespread as, say, the anti-gay marriage movement. Or the anti-birth control movement.

Would suggest that actually reading the bible would make things worse rather than better. Most people seem to think it's full of lovely stuff, rather than genocide and the like.

yeah that's actually part of his point. it becomes a text to interpret and engage with and think about.

but it IS full of some lovely stuff. there are few more powerful (and difficult) ethical precepts than "love thine enemy"--that's STILL a radical idea (not to sound like a corny pastor).

i should clarify: "read the bible" in his sense meant less "self-identify as a Christian" than "think hard about what being Christian entails as a practice."

i think many christians (that I know, anyway) read "love thine enemy" as "passive aggressively pray for thine enemy"

It's always better to be more informed, in any and every case.

You are kidding, right, about the lack of an anti-war religious organisation, right? You have heard of something called the CND? That was founded by Christians? You might have heard about the Quakers (Society of Friends)? This is where I get to the point where I no longer know what's faux-naïf or genuine ignorance.

if i can speak for him i think he means it's not "mainstream" (which is really, in the US, basically southern fundamentalist Christianity).

Ok, in Britain, the largest and most well known anti-war group (who invented the peace symbol as you know it) was founded in the 50s by a coalition of Quakers and Anglicans. This is a Thing, in Christianity, at least in this country. Even when I lived in the States, the anti-war activists I was in contact with during the first Gulf War were lead by a Catholic priest and full of Christians.

keep movin those goalposts

xp

WCC otm really the problem is more that anti-war movements in general are not mainstream. but where there are anti-war movements, you can bet yr ass there are a lot of religious people involved.

You can argue till you're blue in the face about the Culture Wars, but if you want to claim the Peace Movement, such as it is, is not riddled with Christians, you haven't spent much time in the Peace Movement.

tbf cant see many of the stop the war goon squad queueing up for communion

rmde

i dont think you know who im on about

Catholics?

like, say, these Catholics?

even if religious people are disproportionately represented in anti-war movements, that doesn't change the way religion seems coded into the US political process. you rally the religious base by being anti-gay marriage, not being anti-war.

ya i was right, you dont know who im on about xp

if i can speak for him i think he means it's not "mainstream" (which is really, in the US, basically southern fundamentalist Christianity).

Yeah, definitely, OTM. I guess that has to do more with media, which really won't ever give peace an equal say.

I just wish it got as much attention (or any for that matter in the US) as the issues that devout public figures tend to focus on.

you rally the religious base by being anti-gay marriage, not being anti-war.

there are different sets of religious bases. you're alluding specifically to a southern fundie/Baptist/pentecostal strain, which is typically not anti-war for all sorts of historical, economic, and political reasons. but they are just a subset.

you're right. and i suppose, for whatever reason (maybe Lee Atwater, haha) they have disproportionate political clout.

which obviously as you say has as much to do with history, economics, and even geography than something essential to Christianity.

lol at the corner on warsi

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/291001/uk-prominent-muslim-defends-christianity-michael-potemra

Strange how Trevor Phillips doesn't get called an aggressive secularist for making pretty much the same point as Dawkins; http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17074114

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dxff0k_TEzI&feature=related

this is actually quite endearing

https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/307369895031603200

https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/316101862199791616

if he's basing his judgement on dominant political representations of islam (particularly states that self-identify as muslim states), does it matter what the Quran says? old religious documents say all kinds of things that have little to do w/ their reception + practice today.

he's a racist, sexist dickhead.

I haven't read any books by Richard Dawkins, but I know he's full of shit.

The devil can quote scripture to has own ends, but that says more about scripture than the devil imo. Any belief system utterly beholden to a single text, especially one over 1000 years old, is utterly fucked, no matter how generous or liberal the interpretation.

*his

dawkins is basically the world's most successful troll, can't believe anyone takes him seriously.

enough interpretative generosity can smooth over a lot of the contradictions to modernity ime

Why not junk the original text instead of trying to squeeze it to fit a completely different situation?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRdfX7ut8gw

Many late nineteenth and early twentieth century theologians did a lot of heavy lifting to formulate biblical interpretations conformable to modern ideas and science. Their work was only weakly embraced in the USA, and it has been always been swamped under the tide of biblical literalism that swept the country at roughly the same time.

Don't know why he can't just despise all religions equally.

Some awesome traditions on display there.

Ideas are important, their pedigree is irrelevant.

Just read the sentence "Destroy Islam: help the UN declare equal rights for women everywhere" and thought of Dawkins-style wind-ups.

haha some breitbart commenter was comparing the Koran to mein kampf the other day

fuck this guy 24/7 he is so terrible

I find it just really difficult to see how someone could get as far as this - in terms of a fruitful academic, media and publishing career - and still, still, think you don't need to be fully knowledgeable about the holy text of a religion before being able to criticise it any meaningful way, to the point where you think ... you can draw analogy between the Koran and Mein Kampf *without having read either book*.

This thing I don't know very much about is like this other thing I don't know much about. I mean ...

I can hate "The Hangover" series wo ever having seen any of it.