somebody explain whats actually wrong with nu media savvy militant atheism espoused by dawkins et al

I don't believe Dawkins is ignoring that history, he's simply concluding that the three centuries of discourse hasn't improved anything and enough is enough - it's itme to be militaristic. If you're deal-brokering with religion then it's a slippery slope to eventual contamination. It's a Steve Ditko Mr. A story starring Dawkins as one of the talking heads.

Of course Dawkins picks easy targets... Ted Haggard, creationists, etc. I don't see him going to an inner city AME, a Sanctuary Movement congregation, or anyplace where the local church is the only support network in town.

what did?

i meant that this makes it sound like science and religion were always distinct entities which were...ahhhh fugedduhboutit

the funny thing about all this is that most people posting to this proibably agree on most of the basic issues we're addressing. it's just a matter of whether you like dawkins' way of approaching this.

ha, maybe that's another reason he's annoying, he's more polarizing than enlightening.

of course not. they've been intertwined forever. but they represent different strands of the same instinct -- to understand the world and why and how it is -- and it's a fallacy to say science somehow arises from religion. they arise from similar questions but have gone in somewhat different and periodically conflicting directions. a lot of people don't have any great problem reconciling them. but as with any division, there are people and institutions that see gain in exploiting the differences.

what bothers some people about dawkins, i guess, is that he doesn't seem interested in reconciliation -- in coming back to the comfortable live-and-let-live position that a lot of people, religious and nonreligious, are happy to occupy, where we're all willing to let science happen (as long as it doesn't hurt anybody) and let religion happen (ditto). but he's defending the Secular Science wing, which has been under sort of sustained assault lately and is likely feeling kind of lonely and unloved, and it's expecting too much of the atheists maybe to also make some grand live-and-let-live gesture, because they're not convinced that the people they're up against are willing to do the same.

Not necessarily true. Some theological movements of the Middle Ages and Renaissance were about negotiating the "barriers" between religion and reason.

I'm not talking about their theoretical or philosophical similarities, I'm talking about the actual physical people and institutions that developed science and the scientific method as we know it today, and I cited specific examples. The roots of western science go back to Greco-Roman (and by extension Egyptians and others) folks - Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, etc. - and not only were all of these guys profoundly superstitious and inextricably bound up with the religious institutions of their day, it was religious institutions (namely the Catholic Church and Muslim theologians/scholars) that preserved that work and prepared it for its European revival centuries later. While Europe was busy being all filthy and ignorant in the Middle Ages, the Muslim theocracy was busy advancing and preserving the disciplines of medicine, astronomy, chemistry, math, etc. There were no non-religious-oriented scientific institutions pursuing these schools of thought in the West (or Islam, for that matter) - for the first few thousand years that science was developing, it was hand-in-hand and explicitly under the guidance of religion and religious institutions - priests with libraries, basically. This doesn't have anything to do with whether the two are of similar intent or different strands of the same instinct, the fact is they were pretty much inextricably intermarried until a bunch of European scientists got fed up with kowtowing to religious politics.

I mean essentially I agree with the more holistic worldview you describe - where all of these elements exist and develop together - but Dawkins' argument attempts to separate religion out of this matrix and blame it for society's ills, which is what I have a problem with. Its like when atheists get all excited about blaming religion as the source of all wars throughout history or some such bullshit, its just myopic and simplistic and innacurate.

Formerly known as "religion".

10 myths -- and 10 truths -- about atheism

for me, it's pretty simple: atheists getting "militant" on everybody's ass is spectacularly unhelpful. what dawkins and others are doing - and they really don't seem to realise the irony - is repositioning "atheism" as not just a lack of belief but as a belief system in itself: ie "i identify myself as a devout non-believer, and will angrily spout the following atheist dogma".

jesus christ bloody hell for god's sake ... er, look, fellow atheists. it's not difficult. we're meant to be the tolerant ones, remember?

"god": a theoretical concept invented by humans in a (pretty flawed) attempt to etc etc.

"the internet": an etc etc etc.

maybe you'd like it better in RUSSIA where THEY DON'T HAVE GOD

happy new year you theocrazies

i thought agnostics were the tolerant ones. the perceived dogmatism of atheists is what keeps some of us agnostic.

http://salon.com/books/int/2007/01/02/numbers/print.html

"Q: Now, one thing I find curious is your own position in this debate. Your book "The Creationists" is generally acknowledged to be the history of creationism. You've also been very upfront about your own lack of religious belief. Yet, as far as I can tell, you seem to be held in high regard both by creationists and by scientists, which -- I have to say -- is a neat trick. How have you managed this?

A: Unlike many people, I haven't gone out of my way to attack or ridicule critics of evolution. I know some of the people I've written about. They're good people. I know it's not because they're stupid that they are creationists. I'm talking about all my family, too, who are still creationists. So that easy explanation that so many anti-creationists use -- that they're just illiterate hillbillies -- doesn't have any appeal to me, although I'm quite happy to admit that there are some really stupid creationists. "

The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (Hardcover)
by Carl Sagan

http://www.amazon.com/Varieties-Scientific-Experience-Personal-Search/dp/1594201072/sr=8-1/qid=1167767176/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-9541001-0413728?ie=UTF8&s=books