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U-Know! Forum » Dawkins seems a bit *confused* here |
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nigelswift 8112 posts |
Jun 29, 2009, 15:21
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"but I do get annoyed when someone claiming the mantle of 'scientist' decides to smugly make absolute claims regarding this" Sure, but proactive atheism is pretty insignificant compared with proactive theism. Since both are concerned with pushing a truth that can't be shown to be valid I'd be inclined to see the former as in need of expansion until it has parity with the latter. Of course, far preferable would be for both sides to drop their insistence that they are definitely right.
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handofdave 3515 posts |
Jun 29, 2009, 15:24
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nigelswift wrote: Of course, far preferable would be for both sides to drop their insistence that they are definitely right. Right! Of course, for either side, that's tantamount to surrender, so it's a pretty unlikely outcome.
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nigelswift 8112 posts |
Jun 29, 2009, 15:40
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"Of course, for either side, that's tantamount to surrender, so it's a pretty unlikely outcome." I get the feeling though that most atheists aren't too far away from agnosticism whereas believers in various religions wouldn't concede there was any doubt about their beliefs. We'd need to burn a few from each side at the stake to be sure about that but I'm prepared to lay money on it. They say in a few decades we'll have chimpanzees' rights. It would be nice to think that by that time children would be banned not just from adult cinemas and gambling dens but from churches....
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fauny fergus 310 posts |
Jun 29, 2009, 20:26
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I think the problem with Dawkins is that he's totally out of his depth when he steps beyond evolutionary biology and comes across as a bit clueless. Mary Midgley always used to provide a useful and informed counterbalance (as opposed to swivel-eyed evangelicals): http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/apr/20/religion-philosophy-hobbes-dawkins-selfishness http://www.gaiaweb.uk.net/P200025T.htm http://www.templeton.org/belief/essays/midgley.pdf (she has written extensively elsewhere but these links were handy; one our most under-rated philosophers of recent times) Whilst Terry Eagleton's review of the The God Delusion is pretty incisive http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/eagl01_.html
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Merrick 2148 posts |
Jun 30, 2009, 12:40
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fauny fergus wrote: Terry Eagleton's review of the The God Delusion is pretty incisive You really think so? Eagleton appears to be attacking Dawkins for not knowing about the detail of theology, yet that misses the point. It's like attacking a vegan for not knowing enough about being a seafood chef. Eagleton goes into great detail about the 'real' message of God as opposed to the 'unscriptural' decrees of the religions that worship God, which misses much of the thrust of Dawkins' point. If you find the idea of there being a revealed omnipotent creator as ludicrous as there being a Santa Claus, then what they actually said via a burning bush or whatever is as irrelevant as the wording on the note Santa leaves for your kids to say thanks for the mince pie. Then we get a fabulous merry dance telling us that "It was the imperial Roman state, not God, that murdered Jesus". So all those times the clergy tell us of God sacrificing his only son for us are wrong then. God had no idea it might happen and it was down to Pilate. Thanks for clearing that up, Terry. If you are taking the meta-view, seeing religion as a social construct, the theology doesn't matter so much. The questions then become; why did people make this particular nonsense up, and how and why do they believe it.
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Merrick 2148 posts |
Jun 30, 2009, 12:45
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handofdave wrote: Well, he's used atheism as a way to become a celebrity and cash in on it. Which makes him little better than the holy rollers who exploit faith for a quick buck. Are you really saying that the only reason he's done his work is to be famous and make money? That he doesn't believe any of what he says, he just saw a gap in the marketplace and moved in? The only more charitable reading I can take from your comment is that anyone who makes a living from what they do is a whore like phoney evangelists. Would you level the same criticism at, say, Bill Hicks, Kurt Vonnegut, Nelson Mandela?
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nigelswift 8112 posts |
Jun 30, 2009, 13:11
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"If you find the idea of there being a revealed omnipotent creator as ludicrous as there being a Santa Claus, then what they actually said via a burning bush or whatever is as irrelevant as...." Thanks for putting your finger on what I couldn't. An omnipotent creator is a fifty-fifty shot, whatever Dawkins says. A revealed omnipotent creator as revealed by a multiplicity of human interpretations called religions is just irritating to those who think it's still only a fifty fifty shot he exists at all. And certainty due to interpretation, well that's just infuriating.
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handofdave 3515 posts |
Edited Jun 30, 2009, 13:55
Jun 30, 2009, 13:46
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Merrick wrote: handofdave wrote: Well, he's used atheism as a way to become a celebrity and cash in on it. Which makes him little better than the holy rollers who exploit faith for a quick buck. Are you really saying that the only reason he's done his work is to be famous and make money? That he doesn't believe any of what he says, he just saw a gap in the marketplace and moved in? The only more charitable reading I can take from your comment is that anyone who makes a living from what they do is a whore like phoney evangelists. Would you level the same criticism at, say, Bill Hicks, Kurt Vonnegut, Nelson Mandela? I'm sure he believes there is no God, but he's crossed over a line as a scientist to becoming a sort of celebrity agitator. I think it's damaging to science. I don't like preachy dogmatic types who use emotional exploitation in the service of self gain, is all. I've talked at length about my distaste for the whole deism/anti-deism pissing match before. It's created camps of thought that elevate loyalty to one's side over free intellectual query. Some people think that atheism as a movement is required to counter the long history of religious domination... maybe so. But if you are going to paint it as 'science', then you are distorting what pure science is supposed to be about. Nelson Mandela didn't fight apartheid to become a wealthy celeb.. he did it because it was the right thing to do. That was a moral certainty in action, not a way to get rich. You might say, well, Dawkins has the same motivation. But in acting under the banner of science, he's betraying a sacred trust, if you will, in utterly rejecting the possibility of God-something that billions of people believe in, and many of them who can testify to experiences that are not quantifiable by any tools that science possesses. Good science is aware of it's own limitations- Old scientific certainties have been overturned, and so no responsible scientist should be jumping to conclusions about things that cannot be measured by scientific means. This is a subject that I've taken a lot of heat for, as there's a strong trend towards support for atheism in our little online community. And I've also been miscast as an advocate FOR deism, which is untrue. It may just be that this whole business is too emotionally volatile to discuss without it getting heated. I object to some of the characterizations of believers in general that I've heard. As I've said, dogmatic evangelists piss me off as much as anyone, but they are the minority. Nobody is 'stupid' for being a deist*... Vonnegut was an Xtian, for example. So was Darwin. I hope that serves to illustrate my stance better. *Although there certainly are many stupid deists. And stupid atheists, for that matter.
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anthonyqkiernan 7087 posts |
Jun 30, 2009, 13:54
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"It is not about changing what they think, but the way that they think. There is very little that attacks religion; we are not a rival to religious camps." ...is supported...by a one-off donation from the Richard Dawkins Foundation, but he is not personally involved. That'll be a 'No', then
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anthonyqkiernan 7087 posts |
Jun 30, 2009, 13:59
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nigelswift wrote: a fifty-fifty shot Statistics isn't really your strongest suit, is it? Much as I love the cavalier attitude of 50/50 across the board - "Hey, it either is or it isn't!" - there's a little more to it than that :-)
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