Richard Dawkins - Anti -Christ or Great Thinker?

There's a succor born every minute.

*rimshot*

He tries to refute Aquinas because a lot of people believe Aquinias's proofs prove the existence of god, and they don't.

The Bible's full of great stories though. Part of my problem during the Stephen Dedalus uber-Catholic phase of my adolescence was reconciling my fascination with Greek mythology and the equally ridiculous stuff in the Old Testament. Except I had to believe in the latter.

He tries to refute Aquinas because a lot of people believe Aquinias's proofs prove the existence of god, and they don't.

But Aquinas' proofs about God have NOTHING to do with the silly fundie God you're saying Dawkins has a problem with wtf.

al i think we're in agreement, except for when you said that no one was claiming we should read dostoevsky for moral instruction when dally's paraphrasing of hitchens seemed to imply that

the one guy:

I made a very bad mistake and inadvertandly left off the beginning of the sentence:

We are not immune to the lure of wonder and mystery and awe: We (Atheists) have music and art and literature..."

-- dally, Wednesday, October 3, 2007 12:14 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

yes that totally refutes my point about the history of western art and music being intimately bound up with the history of the church.

and literature if we're being honest. like it or don't but the english *language* -- and literature too -- owes a shitload more to donne and bunyan and the king james bible than to, say, schiller. this is historical fact more than a matter of taste.

Is there an emotional side to the intellectual enterprise of exploring the story of life on Earth?

Yes, I strongly feel that. When you meet a scientist who calls himself or herself religious, you'll often find that that's what they mean. You often find that by "religious" they do not mean anything supernatural. They mean precisely the kind of emotional response to the natural world that you've described. Einstein had it very strongly. Unfortunately, he used the word "God" to describe it, which has led to a great deal of misunderstanding. But Einstein had that feeling, I have that feeling, you'll find it in the writings of many scientists. It's a kind of quasi-religious feeling. And there are those who wish to call it religious and who therefore are annoyed when a scientist calls himself an atheist. They think, "No, you believe in this transcendental feeling, you can't be an atheist." That's a confusion of language.

we went over this upthread where milo was talking about how no one reads Aquinas and the popular conception of God is the Left Behind-type and that that's what Dawkins is really aiming at I mean come ON

x-post

That's a confusion of language.

Yeah, YOUR confusion.

Dawkins telling people what is and is not actually religion = teh lolz

gotta love a guy who refuses to read/investigate theology dictating to other people what traditions their beliefs stem from

Reading that interview only made me like Dawkins more, actually.

yeah see that's dawkins trying to limit "god" to a single concept right there--really annoying especially because, like, why does he have such a problem with scientists calling themselves religious? if i was one of these religious scientists id be mighty pissed at dawkins for trying to limit my ability to express myself.

like it or don't but the english *language* -- and literature too -- owes a shitload more to donne and bunyan and the king james bible than to, say, schiller. this is historical fact more than a matter of taste.

-- That one guy that hit it and quit it, Tuesday, October 2, 2007 7:25 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Which goes nowhere towards proving the existence of god. In other words, so what?

"Instruction" was probably the wrong word; what Hitchens means is that ethical and moral dilemmas are dealt with better in literature than they are in the dogmatic ancient superstitious scriptures from the Bronze age.

yeah see that's dawkins trying to limit "god" to a single concept right there--really annoying especially because, like, why does he have such a problem with scientists calling themselves religious? if i was one of these religious scientists id be mighty pissed at dawkins for trying to limit my ability to express myself.

-- max, Tuesday, October 2, 2007 7:33 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

No, he's not limiting god to a single concept, he's establishing the paramaters of his argument. Again, he's talking about a very specific manifestation of religion.

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/sam_harris/2007/10/the_problem_with_atheism.html

Let's not thank Bunyan. He's terribl!

yes that totally refutes my point about the history of western art and music being intimately bound up with the history of the church.

Pointing to the great religious art of history is kind of meaningless when religious/aristocratic patrons were the primary work available if you were a painter, sculptor or musician.

"there was some books....one was pilgrim's progress, about a man that left his family, it didn't say why." - huckleberry finn

^----a better diss of religion than anything hitchens or dawkins will ever dream up

Harris>>>>>>>>>>>>>Dawkins

So, apart from just commending these phenomena to your attention, I’d like to point out that, as atheists, our neglect of this area of human experience puts us at a rhetorical disadvantage. Because millions of people have had these experiences, and many millions more have had glimmers of them, and we, as atheists, ignore such phenomena, almost in principle, because of their religious associations—and yet these experiences often constitute the most important and transformative moments in a person’s life. Not recognizing that such experiences are possible or important can make us appear less wise even than our craziest religious opponents.

^^ totally OTM

(he's referring to meditation/contemplative spiritual experiences btw)

Ok, hands up if you know someone who's had an 'experience'.

http://i1.sell.com/1/197/112907/37/214/2437504-m.jpg

Just about everyone I've known who has had an 'experience' was on the brink of a nervous breakdown.

Ok, hands up if you know someone who's had an 'experience'.

-- aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, Wednesday, October 3, 2007 6:11 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Link

hey let's all be sneery cunts.

Just about everyone I've known who has had an 'experience' was on the brink of a nervous breakdown.

-- dally, Wednesday, October 3, 2007 7:58 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

hey let's all be sneery cunts pt 2.

Don't mock my post-nervous-breakdown epiphanies!

exactly.

I thought that was a joke... I mean, I can't count the number of people I've met/known who have had some kind of meaningful experience/epiphany with meditation, from all kinds of different backgrounds.

Seriously, mine JUST come from nervous breakdowns or before I was on my meds, from delusional states (NB these epiphanies were generally worthless: "OH. MY. GOD...I hate chatbots.")

and I'm talking perfectly functional well-adjusted people who have, like, jobs and families and whatnot.

I think Harris' "imagine if everyone who wanted to study astronomy had to build their own telescope" analogy is very apt. If you never even entertain the notion of putting yourself in this particular kind of mental space, basically you have no fucking clue what you're talking about.

x-post

"OH. MY. GOD...I hate chatbots."

hahaha

and the clouds parted

I've had many transcendent moments, I just don't ascribe a supernatural cause to them.

Harris isn't talking about ascribing a supernatural cause, read the link

Of course he isn't.

I'm curious: does it bother you so much if people don't believe in god? I mean you really seem to take it personally.

I don't give a shit what anyone else believes, really. I have more of an issue with Dawkins and Hitchens' unbelievable arrogance and willful ignorance than anything else.

How can you hate this guy?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkAPaEMwyKU

married to the chick from vampire circus

Carol Blue?

Arrogance is a good way to respond to people who condescend to you when informed that you're an atheist, Shakey.

eh arrogance is never a virtue imho. if yr saying I'm being arrogant on this thread (I can't quite tell), I apologize and will try to be more considerate.

no, not you, dude! I was referring to your remarks about Hitchens and Dawkins (tho' I suppose Hitch deserves the charge more than Dawkins).

If you can't be righteous, you can be self-righteous.

I think one of the things I find so irritating about Dawkins and other strident atheists is the implication of certainty, which goes hand-in-hand with a denial that there is anything in the universe beyond human comprehension. (They know FOR A FACT that there is no greater consciousness than humanity's at work in the universe? O RLY)

But let me be clear, I don't believe in the kind of God that Dawkins is so obsessed with (nor do I believe that that is the most commonly accepted conception of God, as Dawkins seems to repeatedly assume). I don't believe there's some supra-human intelligence that worries about what we wear/eat or literally listens to prayers etc. The problems with these kinds of conceptions of God does not stem from some inherent fault with the idea that there is some larger force than human intelligence at work in the universe - the problems stem from the overly literal/fundamentalist interpretation of ancient texts, interpretations which have been aggressively fomented for (more often than not) very predictable and human reasons (concentration of power, repression of dissent, etc.) Dawkins should properly identify his issue as being with fundamentalist fairytales, and not with the idea of God in a broader sense.

I don't trust anyone who says they KNOW metaphysics does or does not work/exist/etc.

Dawkins has stated explicitly and repeatedly that he can't prove there is not god.

xpost, obv.

Dued he is no Zeno.

Dawkins has stated explicitly and repeatedly that he can't prove there is not god.

well then he probably shouldn't call himself an atheist.

oh for Christ's sake Shakey, that's just stupid.