Richard Dawkins - Anti -Christ or Great Thinker?

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.

yeah there's loads of shit you can dismiss without reading it. The God Delusion wd be another one. the really stupid thing is equating Islam with the text of the Koran.

noodle vague how r u always otm?

infallible when speaking ex cathedra iirc

fuck this guy 24/7 he is so terrible

― the girl from spirea x (f. hazel), Sunday, March 31, 2013 5:09 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sorry but I don't think you'll ever join the group of 'brights'

dawkins may be a good example of my idea that clearly intelligent people with great intellectual accomplishment are often liable to get bored with their narrow field of expertise as they age--and at that point they venture out into having "opinions" of broad relevance, except either through hubris or laziness they think they can skip the part where you spend a great deal of time acquiring intellectual competence about a subject in order to have intelligent things to say about it (not to mention the humility about your knowledge that process often brings). so what you get is someone like richard dawkins, world renowned scientist and "intellectual," who is purported to have important things to say about contemporary religion despite really not knowing much about it. and so, sadly, this brilliant person is really no different than some crank on reddit.

I just flipped through a few of his twitters and they strike me as more marissa marchant than reddit

This Koran thing also implies that it's a good idea to take Islamist paramilitary groups or governments at their word, i.e. these guys say they're proper Muslims doing Muslim stuff, so I'll take that as a given, don't need to read the Koran to make sure they're actually proper Muslims

Say I decide to go and burn down a church with a bunch of people inside it and say 'I was inspired to do this by reading The God Delusion', you'd want to read The God Delusion before saying it was 100% of the reason why I did that thing.

not really, this is why i said equating the religion with the book is foolish - just as foolish from the point of view of defending the faith. there will be people identifying as Muslims with very different takes on what the Koran says and means, appealing to it as the authority on what Muslims should believe or do is quixotic

basically the book does not unequivocally say "HEY GUYZ KILLING PEOPLE IS ALWAYS WRONG AND IN ALL CIRCUMSTANCES" and even if there were there'd probably be half a dozen sects arguing about what God really meant when he said that

If his position is pro-critical thinking and whether religion is "true" than I don't think he needs intimate knowledge of the religious texts, but if it is anti-religion because "this is what Muslims do" and hasn't sourced that position in those religious books that is a problem.

Though he may feel it is more important to judge particular theists on the part they've played in history rather than their specific teachings because the former may be more relevant to how actually behave over what they simply preach.

xposts

Yesterday I was running around town with my son, trying frantically to find a birthday present for his cousin, who we were visiting. The search got a little frantic, as it was Easter yesterday and apparently all stores close down? I feel like I run into this problem anew every year. Anyway, we get to the mall and the doors are open and it's exciting so we rush inside only to be stopped by the guy at the movie theater ticket booth, who tells us that it's just the theater that's open and all the stores are actually closed. As we're walking away, my kid whispers to me "I can't stand it - I want to BURN down a CHURCH!"

Had a serious talk with him about that once we got to the car.

did you specify which churches it was okay to burn down or

or.

they think they can skip the part where you spend a great deal of time acquiring intellectual competence about a subject

ryan otm

This Koran thing also implies that it's a good idea to take Islamist paramilitary groups or governments at their word, i.e. these guys say they're proper Muslims doing Muslim stuff, so I'll take that as a given, don't need to read the Koran to make sure they're actually proper Muslims

Ehhhhh this runs the risk of getting into No True Scotsman territory, and really isn't relevant, any more than I can tell whether someone is "a proper Christian" by reading the New Testament. People resolve the contradictions however they need to while still claiming the title (don't see rich Republicans giving away all their money like Jesus said to, right?); and if people like Eric Rudolph or the Phelps family have made one thing abundantly clear, it's that they aren't interested in other people's thoughts on how the Bible tells them to behave.

I picked an ayn rand novella for a school report because it was the shortest one available, and reading it I got absolutely zero sense that it was connected to a culture of assholism, especially with the sweet, kindly librarian remarking "oh my favorite author" when she checked it out for me. so, i'm sympathetic to the idea that immersing yourself in source material isn't particularly helpful (and might also be counter-productive).
plus, it turned out it wasn't on the approved list, and i got an incomplete.

xp - Phil D. you don't think it matters that quite a lot of other people who are Muslims might disagree pretty strongly with said armed groups and governments (whilst still being pretty devout personally)? These people get shouted down by ambitious political and military figures who think of themselves as truly and properly Islamic. Hence I'm wary of saying 'Islam is whatever Islam does most vocally and obviously on the global political stage', which is what Dawkins seems to be saying.

I mean, I'm assuming he means something like, 'whatever the Koran says, there's what the Iranian government does to its female citizens, and that's far more important - that's what Islam is today in the world'. But Islam is also ... a guy who works in an office in Indonesia. Someone from Turkey who likes cooking and hanging out with friends. Etc.

Eh, don't know if this makes much sense.

Although one of the main things I find tiresome about nu-atheist rhetoric, from RD and others, is its obsessive focus on what I'm going to clumsily call Big-Boy Stuff.

'Aha, I have bitchslapped you with my reason!' 'Islam is a cancer!' 'This is a malicious threat to our core values!' 'Mein Kampf!' 'This is my very important speech on youtube locked in deadly combat with this preacher's very important speech on youtube.'

None of which seems to have much to do with real people's real lives. As far as I can see, from my limited perspective, etc, etc.

I think it is a huge fuckup for atheists to take sides one religion vs. another religion, it hints at some underlying religious (or racial) prejudice that you are supposedly RISING ABOVE by not succumbing to tribal BS and instead using logic and humanism to guide your intellectual experience of the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War

If one is going to base which religion is more evil, perhaps using casualties as a standard measuring stick, then the objective and scientific view would probably be the other way around. Unless you are counting civil rights abuses as more damaging than deaths.

dawkin's (and presumably many nu-atheists) real target is what he perceives to be the anti-modern sentiment of religion. so i suppose in that sense he feels islam is the "worst" because he thinks it is the least compatible with modernity and the culture of scientific reason. the violence and civil rights angles are, i would argue, secondary effects of this for him.

in fact, it's really hard to distinguish between the "nu-atheists" and the old because the movement dawkins represents is really hard to separate in its philosophy from, i dunno, TH Huxley or someone like that. in its way it's basically the counterstroke of late 19th century style science cheerleading to contemporary religious fundamentalism.

Thankfully in this new modern era there will be no room for people to persecute based on religion. Those dark times should remain in the past. Oh wait!

Anti-theists are what we are talking about when we say "nu-atheist" here right?

Possibly the weirdest thing to me about ilx is how anti-atheist it seems sometimes.

Just yer basic contrarianism.

seems more anti-jerks than anti-atheist

Ok I admit Dawkins is a jerk.

He shouldnt be, really, which makes it so much worse that he is

Atheism's fine, the problem is how prickish and condescending the most vocal atheists are.

Nunez otm

Diff btwn most vocal atheists and most vocal religious (all p much dicks) is that at least the atheists are right, but tbh that should encourage them to nod, smile, whatever in arguments, which tbrr seems more a strength of the buddhism cru so i think i'll go buddhist

Smug masquerading as chill

i'm much more down with hitchens' focus on attacking actual religious figures and the specific harm they've done than i am with dawkins' "ok, here are some logical reasons why god CANNOT POSSIBLY exist" approach.

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*.

has no one explained to Hawkins that the Bible -- particularly the Old Testament and even the New until Acts -- is great fun to read? I read it in junior high at the same time as Greek mythology -- an invaluable decision -- and was floored by how batshit-awesome it is.

Tbf most ppl that use their religion in objectionable ways seem not to have studied the texts v closely neither

I mean, is there a more extreme 'death of the author' case than christ

"hmmm, i dont remember the chapter about gay marriage, but shit, who knows, we were on tour the whole summer of 1bc and i gotta be honest i got paul to ghost write a lot of that stuff cos we were makin all our money from live gigs in those days anyway"

Loaves and Fishes Tour '00

i found myself sort of agreeing with the general thrust of this... john gray interview... in vice media the other day (linked here by... cardamom):

But human beings need meaning in life.
I'm not denying that we as human beings can create meaning ourselves, but there's no ultimate meaning inscribed in the universe or in history. My advice to people who need a meaning that's beyond what they can create is to join a religion. On the whole, they are older and wiser myths than secular myths like progress.

Would you say the myth of progress is sort of a religion in itself?
Oh yes, it is. Our secular myths are just religious myths rebottled, but with most of the good things taken out.

So, in that sense, is contemporary atheism also a religion?
Atheists always turn red when I call atheism a religion. If atheism means what it should mean: to not have any use for the concept of God, then, in that sense, I am an atheist. But I'm not an evangelist. The fact that there were buses going around London saying, "There is probably no God" is completely ridiculous. You can definitely call atheists religious when they're being evangelists and trying to convert the world to their belief.

Are they ever successful?
No. The biggest conversions taking place at the moment are Africans to Islam and many Chinese to Christianity. So atheism is a side-joke of history compared with that. What we see today is rather a huge expansion of traditional religion. Atheism is a media phenomenon.