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U-Know! Forum » Dawkins seems a bit *confused* here |
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handofdave 3515 posts |
Edited Jul 01, 2009, 12:54
Jul 01, 2009, 12:48
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Hah ha! One gets the feeling that Dawkins might be a bit irritable around poetry. Does he have kids? Does he stubbornly refuse to read them anything fanciful? What a buzzkill. Everything has it's use... obviously, science is useless without it's very structured thinking, but human beings need whimsy and irrationality, even. They can coexist very nicely as long as there's a conscious recognition where one starts and the other ends.
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Moon Cat 9577 posts |
Edited Jul 01, 2009, 13:19
Jul 01, 2009, 12:56
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Well I heard a radio interview around Christmas where he stated that he had no objection to all the glitter and tinsel side of things, he even enjoyed it, so perhaps he isn't quite the arch-rationalist killjoy that he is percieved as. I think he has perhaps painted himself into a corner with the area of imagination and spirituality and feels he has a duty to be 'Richard Dawkins Against Silliness' 24/7, which is fine if he's happy to do it and be seen that way, but it must be hard work and not a little problematic. Thing is, I find his writing is a lot funnier and jollier in places than the severity of the message might have you 'believe'.
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PMM 3155 posts |
Jul 01, 2009, 12:59
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That's incorrect too. Dawkins talks about the pleasure he and other people get from listening to religious classical music. It's not too great a remove to say he could find awe within the words and works of Shakespeare or Lewis Carroll. As Douglas Adams said, It's enough to know that the garden is beautiful. You don't have to believe there are fairies at the bottom of it.
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Moon Cat 9577 posts |
Jul 01, 2009, 13:01
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PMM wrote: As Douglas Adams said, It's enough to know that the garden is beautiful. You don't have to believe there are fairies at the bottom of it. But it's good when they are there.
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handofdave 3515 posts |
Jul 01, 2009, 13:08
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Well, OK, I confess I've not delved very deeply into Dawkins's writing, to my discredit. But using the fairy analogy, or in Dawkins' case the Leprechaun one, is to me a bit insulting to the intelligence.. it's really not that applicable to the much, much larger question. The power of music is in itself a great mystery (I'm having a deja vu... I know we've had this conversation before). ANYWAY... I have a deadline to meet and I really must tear myself away... I know if I don't I'll be here all day on this.
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stray 2057 posts |
Edited Jul 01, 2009, 13:15
Jul 01, 2009, 13:14
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I completely agree with every point in that there post HOD. Seriously, if Dawkins stuck to arguing against the 'Intelligent Design' ideas, as in he stuck to debating in a field he is actually qualified in, I'd have no problem. As you say, he's pontificating, evangelising even, about people and movements, that he is to be frank, mostly ignorant of.
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stray 2057 posts |
Edited Jul 01, 2009, 13:23
Jul 01, 2009, 13:22
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handofdave wrote: Moon Cat wrote: You might even argue that a tendency to the irrational even in science might be beneficial in a visionary "haha they all said I was mad..!" kinda way. Some scientific revelations cross over into very unscientific territory... scientists arriving at understanding of thorny problems facing them in dreams, for example. Didn't Watson or Crick flash onto the structure of DNA in a dream? Yep, and Richard Feynmann said odd things about his breakthroughs in the past, about them not coming from a traditional, rational method.
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sanshee 1080 posts |
Edited Jul 01, 2009, 13:33
Jul 01, 2009, 13:29
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Yes, as a child, pissing about going weeee is much the prefered activity. Anyway, he will claim that this is counter to the religious elements within The Brownies and all that. I did that as a child, for a spell, and there was a prayer to God and (wince) The Queen, but as soon as it was said we all forgot about it. They were just words. Off we then went making Xmas cards for the old folks. If *every single* person who had been exposed to religion as a kid wound up as brain-fucked (Or even instilled with any life held belief) as Dawkins seems to assume is the case, the world would be a far, far stranger place than it is. We've always had and always will have religious 'nuts', so an easy-reach target there then. I really think he's a decent guy, but extremely wrong footed alot of the time, and sometimes, I fear, quite cynically. x
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fauny fergus 310 posts |
Edited Jul 02, 2009, 11:52
Jul 02, 2009, 11:50
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Merrick wrote: 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. Um, no it's not like that at all. It'd be like attacking a vegan for not knowing enough about being a seafood chef when they repeatedly kept saying, "Sea food is stupid, I'm right lalalalalala." Merrick wrote: 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. Again, no, that's not the point either; I think saying it has 'thrust' is being a bit generous to the force behind it. What Eagleton is saying - straightforwardly - is that Dawkins uses the Bible as the basis of many of his arguments (when he's not setting up spurious straw men via clearly invented anecdotes; for a scientist he's a bit shit on 'proof') but that most people's faith or spirituality does not begin nor end with the Bible. To use the Bible as the basis of his arguments is to demonstrate ignorance of the how, the what and the why of most people's religious/spiritual beliefs. This is what Eagleton is getting at: Dawkins is a poor poster boy for atheists because he doesn't know anything about the opposition. In fact, he's startlingly similar to evangelicals; won't hear anything but his own set of truths. It reminds me of what Nietzsche wrote in the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche wrote: Modern science, which, as a true philosophy of reality, evidently believes only in itself, possesses courage and will in itself, and has got along up to this point well enough without God, a world beyond, and virtues which deny. However, I'm not impressed with such a fuss and agitprop: these trumpeters of reality are bad musicians. One can hear well enough that their notes do not sound out of the depths. The abyss of scientific conscience does not speak through them—for today scientific knowledge is an abyss. The phrase "scientific knowledge" in such trumpeting mouths is mere fornication, an abuse, an indecency. I think this is Dawkins' problem: he believes fervently in his philosophy of reality and only in it. He is apparently driven by a desire to eradicate other philosophies of reality that he believes to be (a) in competition with his and (b) erroneous. By seeking to assume the mantle of his enemy he is, truly, in the process of taking on their worst aspects: a sneering and cynical contempt for those that disagree with him. In this respect I think it's entirely understandable that he produces such a one dimensional version of religion in his writings - it rings 'true' to him because it is the inverse of his own faith. Dawkins is the bad musician that Nietzsche writes about - metaphorically and, i suspect, literally; I'd never want to hear him speak about love or poetry or things that can't be measured. Nor would I like to hear him make music. I honestly don't think he has the capacity for it and think of him as an impoverished mind because of it. Don't get me wrong, he has done an excellent service to promoting a popular understanding of evolution but beyond that his writing is all a bit shit.
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Lawrence 9547 posts |
Jul 02, 2009, 14:25
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Frankly both Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens annoy me. Extremely cynical and obnoxious, incongruous supporters of Bush...
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