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

* 09 December 2006
* From New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.

Many ironies are well highlighted in your coverage of the atheists' jamboree in La Jolla (18 November, p 8). I would like to add two more.

The first is that the scientific enterprise in the form we know it today, with journals, scientific societies, empiricism and specialised techniques, was started largely by people of deep religious faith in the 16th and 17th centuries. In the writings of Newton and Descartes, the very notion of scientific law was derived from the Christian idea of God's laws. Atheists might wish to reflect a bit more on the fact that their scientific disciplines wouldn't even exist without the impact of such ideas.

The second is that "a-theism" is defined by what it denies, rather than by what it explains. What is denied is very varied and in a constant state of flux, so atheism always allows others to set the agenda. For example, I am an atheist with reference to the god of thunder Thor, and equally with reference to the straw man that Richard Dawkins portrays as God.

From Benjamin Beccari

Creation science is nothing more than Christian belief dressed up as science. It is ironic, then, that a symposium entitled "Beyond belief" is atheistic belief dressed up as science.

What we as scientists need to guard against, and what many of these scientists have fallen prey to, is dogma. The dogmatic views put forward at this forum play into the hands of religious activists who preach that science is trying to destroy religion.

Throughout history it has been neither science nor religion that has caused the ills of the world, but those who spread their dogmatic view of either.

So what is the alternative to dogma? Here science does have a role, not in teaching people what to think, but how to think. Our morals, values and world view can be derived from religious belief, atheist or otherwise, so long as it is informed by scientific reason.

From Maya King

For scientists to declare unequivocally that God does not exist is to deny the possibility that, one day, technological advance may bring the capabilities to detect the presence of a spiritual being after all. If any kind of god were to exist, its presence would have to influence the Earth in a way that leaves some signature.

If that god - as religion suggests - regularly interacted with humans through answering prayers and giving guidance, then those effects should be both measurable and repeatable. How can scientists declare God does not exist without rigorous hypothesis testing?

From David Odell

Science forgets that it too is based on faith: in particular that the universe is an orderly place with rules; and that information received by our senses is true.

Do these scientists really believe the cosmos is a replacement for God? Atheists will look at the cosmos and realise, as my science teacher says, that our lives are so insignificant; a religious person will look to the cosmos and be awed by (God's) creation. This is not a way to defeat religion.

Many scientific discoveries only make people more awed by their God. Why do scientists want to get rid of religion, when religion has driven scientists for hundreds of years?

From issue 2581 of New Scientist magazine, 09 December 2006, page 24

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prayer#Experimental_evaluation_of_prayer

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=11761499

dude doesn't know his philosophy, just hard sciences, and i feel like an educated theologist (not some strawman ted haggard idiot) could argue circles around him.

My main problem with all of this is that it's a waste of time. The problem is that we aren't teaching anybody the fundamentals of empirical reasoning until they've already decided to go into a scientific field, and sometimes not even then. You can go to church if you like and whatever, our greater societal issue is that we can't convince people how to not be complete fucking idiots on a day to day basis

the exception being the creation vs evolution debate, but i like to live in my fantasy world where biblical literalism is a tiny subset christianity.

with this statement, a new presidential candidate threw his hat into the ring today

Come on, this is ludicrous on its face - prayer actually changes the past?

"One study found" is a completely worthless phrase.

huh? who cares? the point is it's not secular or scientific to state a disbelief, atheism belongs in its own church as much as theism does, it's not a set of falsifiable theories and it pollutes the water to present it as such. running around making ted haggard get agitated is not actually helping people learn empirical reasoning.

this is very otm

you could also just listen to some fuckin Stooges amirite

the scientific method is better served by practice, not preaching

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/eagl01_.html

(i haven't read it all yet, and i don't give TE a whole lot of respect altogether.)

it seems like lrb/tls/nybooks/harpers types are jumping over htemselves to distance themselves from this & i still havent figured out why

damn dude pay attention

Yeah, that's part of the thing. Militancy does nothing but further ossify both sides, so guys like Dawkins coming out like assholes only reinforces the corresponding assholes on the opposite side re: the bullshit dichotomy between God vs Science.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19775

what's the difference between that and the kind of atheism dawkins puts forward?

Maybe I'm just confused as to what's trying to be accomplished here. Maybe Dawkins and his flock are actually pursuing an escalation, maybe he's hoping he catches a bullet from a psycho one day and sets off another great religious war-down to posthumously vindicate himself

but they don't need to be engaged with. they're harmless in every conceivable way. they're not going to force yr kid to salute the bible or bow toward mecca. those people i have no problem with -- and it's arguably in alienating them that the hardcore dawkins types make their biggest mistake.

but anyway, i don't have any problem with the militant atheists. they're a predictable and healthy response to the militant theists. "moderate" "sensible" liberals like to deride the militant atheists because it makes them feel more comfortable with their place in culture-war politics. it reassures them that they're not "extremists" just because they don't like jerry falwell, because look, they think richard dawkins is intolerant too!

i don't feel any great compulsion to read any of these books, but i enjoy watching them slug it out on the best-seller lists with bill o'reilly and rick warren.

And hell, you even have one side that completely rejects debate and engagement out of hand as signs of mealy-mouthed weakness(whereas the other side can at least claim their stance coming from that tradition).

Part of it is that the louder figureheads of both sides command enough media attention to attack anyone coming out with actual sensible, normal positions(e.g. God & science tend to address completely different things) as facile capitulators and appeasers of the other side.

FUCKS sake ethan, let go

i articulated my response to that article badly. our views are actually far more alike than you seem to be able to accept. for a start, i loathe libertarianism, for seconds, i agree that dawkins is essentially correct about most of what he addresses, and thirdly i read that article when in a fragile state; my initial response was an unthinking knee-jerk. i retracted it even before you had a chance to call me a 'muslim-hater', which for someone who doesn't know me in the slightest is a fucking disgrace.

hurting's 'might as well be atheistic' version of christianity is nonetheless that of a far more interesting, tolerable faith than the hardcore dinosaur idiocy we see far too much of in these not-so enlightened times. and don't take me up on 'hardcore dinosaur idiocy'; it's not meant to be an argument, it's meant to be an outburst.

neither religious types nor scientists agree with this, that's the whole problem.

"The only part of theology that could possibly demand my attention is the part that purports to demonstrate that God does exist. This part of theology I have, indeed, studied with considerable attention. And found it utterly wanting.

As for McGrath's book, I read it with genuine curiosity to discover whether he had any argument to offer in favor of his theistic belief. The nearest I could find was his statement that you cannot disprove it. Well, that may be true, but it isn't very impressive, is it?"

the last paragraph pretty much nails Dawkins as a senile demagogue. this is why scientists have a problem with him. and I think "nu-media savvy" seems to be a term that applies mostly to shit that sucks compared to the non-new-media savvy versions - but I'm a meme rockist

maybe some of them are religious? or find dawkins to be anti-intellectual?

this would be true if he were any good at it

I think that the bit about the dangers of fundie policy makers(dudes like Senator Inhofe or at least half of the current U.S. Admin) is obscured by the noise of Dawkins coming out and going all Plan 9 on folks who would otherwise be allies, if you will.

I just think that the warnings/alarums raised against the theocratic authoritarian types would be better served without the antigonizing of those who'd already work against such types.

but they serve a sort of basic "give me a fucking break" function.

that seems true. I hate Dawkins because he's one of those people who reveals his miniscule personality in his prose style, but the other dudes lumped in with New Atheism seem all right. although "New Atheism" as a moniker/movement seems smurfy to me. maybe just because I'm in grad school and there's so much of that "New ______" in self-identifying as a hot school of thought.

the Wired article I read about it really didn't have much of an argument against New Atheism, Dawkins included, just instinctive discomfort with its boorishness. which I'm sympathetic to.

It's been 23 years and it's basically a given now. But really the problem with the Selfish Gene is the same problem with the God Delusion, Dawkins is just naturally a prick and regardless of the merit of his ideas it bears repeating that nobody likes fucking pricks

I don't know how productive Dawkins' antics are, in terms of "converting" anyone, but it is somewhat comforting for me, as an agnostic who's pretty darn sure there's no god, to have someone out there who isn't afraid to offend others with his reasonable beliefs.

xpost.

One major problem for Dawkins is that religion moved on a long time ago from the middle ages theistic proofs of God's that he's obsessed with battling.

Even from about William James onwards at the beginning of the 20th Century, the interest has been in (states of) consciousness and the sense of self. Even back in the late 50s, people like Aldous Huxley were able to say "It's possible to be a mystic and at the same time an agnostic" - which Dawkins would probably find completely nonsensical.

His other problem is that he's not a professional or sophisticated philospher and in areas such as ethics he's really out of his depth.

that's pretty much the reason gypsy mothra gave for defending Dawkins,et. al., right? that's a good reason, I think.

Of course, so would many religious people.

god?

Yes it is, it's just that it doesn't take a lot of "faith" to believe in it.

Secular humanists have their own set of faiths (that humanity will somehow find their way out of this mess, that it's worth having children, etc.), but they don't involve gods and magic.

X-post - and "Not For Use as Infant Nog" OTM

xpost, Do secular humanists really believe it's worth having children? I mean, as part of being a secular humanist?

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22spaghetti+monster%22+site%3Aboingboing.net

I'm not as familiar w/ Isaiah, but there is art and poetry to the Bible, as the KJV most easily points out. Guys like Joseph Campbell would talk about this and about folks who want to read the thing "literally", as "if it were a newspaper." Point being that doing so ignores the metaphoric beauty of the writing and the metaphors being written about.

You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger.' By 1968 you can't say 'nigger' - that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now that you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is that blacks get hurt worse than whites.

i think whether they know it or not all the supposedly useful liberal christians are enablers of intolerance & theocracy & all that, even if not actually supporting it - its the black republican/racism game

isaiah is also home to the call to 'let justice roll down as waters and righteousness like a mighty stream', made famous by MLK

it's also chock full of prophecies that are later seen to be fulfilled by christ

& yes before anyone says it i realize lee atwater & pals actually were real life racists and therefore dont map onto the benign liberal christians of the analogy

back to the future 1 is chock full of prophecies later fulfilled by back to the future 2

and what: exactly!! it's not like jesus had never read that stuff.

xpost:
i think whether they know it or not all the supposedly useful liberal christians are enablers of intolerance & theocracy & all that, even if not actually supporting it - its the black republican/racism game

i've had that argument with liberal catholic friends in particular. like, "you can't just have your own version of catholicism, by calling yourself a catholic you're implicitly supporting the institution." they make the old better-to-reform-from-within argument, which i can understand, except of course for the general ineffectiveness of liberal catholic reformers post-vatican ii. it would be a hell of a lot more politically effective for every catholic who uses birth control or supports legal abortion to just leave the church altogether. but then, people don't belong to the church for political reasons, they belong for personal reasons -- but then, those personal reasons have political effects. and on and on.

the point is there is nothing wrong with Dawkin's thought that isn't wrong with all metaphysical thought. (why metaphysical? basically because in order for Dawkins to claim to be an atheist and have some weight behind that belief as a truth would require him to be able to steop outside the universe and see the entirety of it, including himself. stuck inside it, his point of view always includes a blind spot.)

it's political or pragmatic use, obviously, comes into play in times like these i guess.

Yes. Warriors are needed for The Big Showdown. Liz Chen3y has five children and we only have two -- it's simple mathematics!

dont you work for the military?

i think being on the bestseller lists is somewhat useful, in the same way that having al gore on there serves as counterpropaganda to sean hannity or whoever. when you have these explicit, ongoing efforts to rewrite american history to recast the country as an explicitly christian enterprise, i think it's healthy for there to be some explicit nonchristians (or even anti-christians) showing a little muscle in the marketplace. it doesn't mean i want to read them or go out for beers with them (although like i say, i'd definitely go for beers with dennett), but politically and culturally i think it has some value.

liberal catholics elect democrats just like you! they do not elect the fucking Pizope.

but they still provide cultural cover for the institution of the church. it's impossible to imagine another institution that could have survived the sex-abuse scandals, for example -- imagine if it came out that i.b.m. or the u.s. post office was protecting and [i]promoting[/] known child molesters? -- and the reason it survived was because of its perceived power, which derives mostly from having so many members. (small religious cults accused of sexual abuse don't fare nearly so well.) so by belonging to the church, whatever their reservations, liberal catholics lend strength to its worst tendencies.

A-Ron said:

Criticizing Dawkins from a post-theist sort of standpoint is fine and perhaps warranted, but it does nothing to address the real ways in which religion is becoming a threat to secular, liberal society.

but that's exactly what Dawkins doesn't do. He doesn't do any investigation of what, say, Ted Haggard's theology is, or what he does, politically, and what the connection might be. He just sits down in his office and says, "hey pastor, all this god stuff is child-abusing fascism, amirite? good coffee by the way, thxbye! ha ha sucka"

if you want to talk about fundamentalism, talk about fucking fundamentalism! and the (almost totally ignored by opponents AND adherents) geneology of fund. is absoulutely MODERN if not MODERNIST.

Augustine rejected biblical literalism. get that? it's a recent thing, a response to the overwhelming idea that came out of science: things are true or they are not, verifiably. there's no mysticism, no living contradictions, not even any mystery (christianity is Mystery! or was, to every single christian before the 20th century). "Fundamentalism" is comic book manicheism speaking with the certainty of a Newtonian. nothing classical, or Hebrew, or even really theistic about it.

otfm. it is a response to modernity. really, modern fundamentalism is kind of a weird hybrid of classical american Jesus-ism and Wal-Mart capitalism.

See, we often criticize religious arguments for failing to take into account the fact that faith and science are fundamentally incompatible. That spritual and scientific truths really have nothing to do with one another. We reject Intelligent Design because it is an essentially non-scientific philosophy that poses as scientific theory, using the language and codes of scientific speech, in order to appear more credible. The problem with Intelligent Design is that it conceals a small kernel of valid spirituality in a vast and totally worthless Trojan Horse armature of fake science.

For the same reason, we should be wary of any argument that attempts to diminish the validity of spiritual awareness/truth by the application of scientific reasoning. Science can no more discredit spirituality than spirituality can discredit science. The one has nothing to do with the other.

i'm saying dawkins hasn't done his homework, even on what he himself believes (i say not having read his book...)

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

Of course, as Intelligent Design, these beliefs are concretized in literal assertions of what I'm inclined to call "bullshit," but that doesn't incline me to doubt the core of spiritual gnosis they spring from.

P.S. Tipsy Mothra OTM

if there really was no confluence between them, we wouldn't be having this conflict, the difference between them would be self evident, and we'd go back to hen fap wikivandalism and be done for the day. saying "they're totally different and non-contiguous" is just a lukewarm way of wriggling out of the problem, or appearing to be above it.

& im pretty sure i know what the fuck science is well enough to beef with whatever realpolitik hard-ass ayn rand frontin youre all about

hands up ANYBODY on this thread who has actually bought the god delusion or knows somebody who has. because I'm personally pretty sure the main target audience for it is college kids who don't drink and/or Pastor Ted's flock.

This is like the most shoulder-chipped highbrow assumption ever!

Criticizing Dawkins from a post-theist sort of standpoint is fine and perhaps warranted, but it does nothing to address the real ways in which religion is becoming a threat to secular, liberal society.

Please tell me this is an attempt to bait... cuz otherwise it's this discussion's equivalent of Mrs. Lovejoy leapin' up in town hall and screaming 'Won't somebody think of the children?'

isn a quote, not mine.

I understand that religion and science attempt to answer similar sets of questions. The spheres overlap. And I have very strong opinions about which "way" is more valid in approaching certain questions.

But my point is that, when you strip away everything else, the basic mechanics of religion and science are totally different.

Science says, "I know because I understand and can demonstrate."
Religion says, "I know because I just KNOW."

Now, those inclined toward scientific understandings will, of course, find the apparently baseless beliefs and assertions of religious folk ridiculous. Atavistic. Misguided. Whatever. And those inclined toward religious faith will find the mechanistic quibblings of science empty and perverse.

But that doesn't matter. Neither dismissal changes anything about the nature or power of the other. After all, a great deal of what we (humans) deal with and respond to on a daily basis is simply and profoundly unscientific. Most of us do not handle our feelings in a scientific manner, and many of us base a great deal of the important decision-making in our lives on our incohate, half-formed, illogical personal feelings. Biases. Sentiments. Affections and moralities that are, at root, very similar to religious faith.

I have no problem with that. I'm in favor of that.

As long as we can keep "what we can reasonably determine about the mechanical nature of the world" separate from "what I know in my secret-sacred heart of hearts", I think we're doing about as well as can be expected.

Pushing the matter farther than that is arrogant, one-sided and destructive. No matter which side of the fence you stand on with regard to any particular question.

Science says, "I know because I understand and can demonstrate."
Religion says, "I know because I just KNOW."

This is ridiculously simplistic! This is science approving of itself because it is more scientific; empiricism weighing in favor of the empirical. It is a zero-risk bias, a pseudo-rationalist's déformation professionnelle, finding against those things which on the most unstudied surface appear to be more rational.

I'm talking about the origin point of knowledge. If you believe that God exists, and if you believe this because you perceive God and have methodically tested this perception against the best objective evidence at your disposal, then you do not have a spiritual belief at all. You simply have a scientific belief in the existence of something that most people see in spiritual terms.

Science is that which observes, tests, measures, hypothesizes, argues and (perhaps) concludes. It's a rationalist system of thought about and interaction with the physical.

Spirituality has nothing to do with any of that. It's a non-rationalist system of thought about and interaction with the non-physical. The metaphysical. To the extent that anything can be objectively measured or tested, it has at least a pseudo-physical (i.e. non-spiritual) component. To the extent that anything can be objectively measured or tested, it lies outside the realm of spiritual faith.

Faith simply is. To be valid, it must withstand the total lack of merely material (objective/scientific) support.

While there might be some religion that says that ("Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so"), much of the better writing that I've read says something closer to "I don't [can't] know but I believe."

Please tell me this is an attempt to bait... cuz otherwise it's this discussion's equivalent of Mrs. Lovejoy leapin' up in town hall and screaming 'Won't somebody think of the children?'

-- remy bean (rem...)

From Ronald Reagan on, Republicans have appealed for support from Christian right organizations, but now the Christian right has become not only an integral part of the Republican Party but also the party's main constituency. In an interview, the astute Republican lobbyist and activist Vin Weber said of the Christian conservatives, "They really are to the Republican party what labor or African-Americans are to the Democrats—similar in numbers and impact." Weber told me, "The evangelical vote is simply larger than that of other Republican constituencies."

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19795

xpost - linked already

no, that would be this:

Talk in Class Turns to God, Setting Off Public Debate on Rights
By TINA KELLEY
The New York Times
December 18

KEARNY, N.J.
Before David Paszkiewicz got to teach his accelerated 11th-grade history class about the United States Constitution this fall, he was accused of violating it.

Shortly after school began in September, the teacher told his sixth-period students at Kearny High School that evolution and the Big Bang were not scientific, that dinosaurs were aboard Noah's ark, and that only Christians had a place in heaven, according to audio recordings made by a student whose family is now considering a lawsuit claiming Mr. Paszkiewicz broke the church-state boundary.

''If you reject his gift of salvation, then you know where you belong,'' Mr. Paszkiewicz was recorded saying of Jesus. ''He did everything in his power to make sure that you could go to heaven, so much so that he took your sins on his own body, suffered your pains for you, and he's saying, 'Please, accept me, believe.' If you reject that, you belong in hell.''

The student, Matthew LaClair, said that he felt uncomfortable with Mr. Paszkiewicz's statements in the first week, and taped eight classes starting Sept. 13 out of fear that officials would not believe the teacher had made the comments.

Since Matthew's complaint, administrators have said they have taken ''corrective action'' against Mr. Paszkiewicz, 38, who has taught in the district for 14 years and is also a youth pastor at Kearny Baptist Church. However, they declined to say what the action was, saying it was a personnel matter.

''I think he's an excellent teacher,'' said the school principal, Al Somma. ''As far as I know, there have never been any problems in the past.''

Staci Snider, the president of the local teacher's union, said Mr. Paszkiewicz (pronounced pass-KEV-ich) had been assigned a lawyer from the union, the New Jersey Education Association. Two calls to Mr. Paszkiewicz at school and one to his home were not returned.

In this tale of the teacher who preached in class and the pupil he offended, students and the larger community have mostly lined up with Mr. Paszkiewicz, not with Matthew, who has received a death threat handled by the police, as well as critical comments from classmates.

Greice Coelho, who took Mr. Paszkiewicz's class and is a member of his youth group, said in a letter to The Observer, the local weekly newspaper, that Matthew was ''ignoring the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which gives every citizen the freedom of religion.'' Some anonymous posters on the town's electronic bulletin board, Kearnyontheweb.com, called for Matthew's suspension.

On the sidewalks outside the high school, which has 1,750 students, many agreed with 15-year-old Kyle Durkin, who said, ''I'm on the teacher's side all the way.''

While science teachers, particularly in the Bible Belt, have been known to refuse to teach evolution, the controversy here, 10 miles west of Manhattan, hinges on assertions Mr. Paszkiewicz made in class, including how a specific Muslim girl would go to hell.

''This is extremely rare for a teacher to get this blatantly evangelical,'' said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a nonprofit educational association. ''He's really out there proselytizing, trying to convert students to his faith, and I think that that's more than just saying I have some academic freedom right to talk about the Bible's view of creation as well as evolution.''

Even some legal organizations that often champion the expression of religious beliefs are hesitant to support Mr. Paszkiewicz.

''It's proselytizing, and the courts have been pretty clear you can't do that,'' said John W. Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, a group that provides legal services in religious freedom cases. ''You can't step across the line and proselytize, and that's what he's done here.''

The class started on Sept. 11, and Matthew quickly grew concerned. ''The first couple of days I had him, he had already begun discussing his religious point of view,'' Matthew, a thin, articulate 16-year-old with braces and a passion for politics and the theater, recalled in an interview. ''It wasn't even just his point of view, it went beyond that to say this is the right way, this is the only way. The way he said it, I wasn't sure how far he was going to go.''

On the second day of taping, after the discussion veered from Moses's education to free will, Matthew asked why a loving God would consign humans to hell, according to the recording.

Some of Matthew's detractors say he set up his teacher by baiting him with religious questions. But Matthew, who was raised in the Ethical Culture Society, a humanist religious and educational group, said all of his comments were in response to something the teacher said.

''I didn't start any of the topics that were discussed,'' he said.

In a Sept. 25 letter to the principal, Matthew wrote: ''I care about the future generation and I do not want Mr. Paszkiewicz to continue preaching to and poisoning students.'' He met with school officials and handed over the recordings.

Matthew's family wrote four letters to the district asking for an apology and for the teacher to correct any false statements he had made in class, particularly those related to science. Matthew's father, Paul LaClair, a lawyer, said he was now considering legal action against the district, claiming that Mr. Paszkiewicz's teachings violated their son's First Amendment and civil rights, and that his words misled the class and went against the curriculum.

Kenneth J. Lindenfelser, the lawyer for the Kearny school board, said he could not discuss Mr. Paszkiewicz specifically, but that when a complaint comes in about a teacher, it is investigated, and then the department leader works with the teacher to correct any inappropriate behavior.

The teacher is monitored, and his or her evaluation could be noted, Mr. Lindenfelser said, adding that if these steps did not work, the teacher could be reprimanded, suspended or, eventually, fired.

As for the request that Mr. Paszkiewicz correct his statements that conflict with the district's science curriculum, ''Sometimes, the more you dwell on the issue, the more you continue the issue,'' Mr. Lindenfelser said. ''Sometimes, it's better to stop any inappropriate behavior and move on.''

The district's actions have succeeded, he said, as the family has not reported any continued violations.

Bloggers around the world have called Matthew courageous. In contrast, the LaClairs said they had been surprised by the vehemence of the opposition that local residents had expressed against Matthew.

Frank Viscuso, a Kearny resident, wrote in a letter to The Observer that ''when a student is advised by his 'attorney' father to bait a teacher with questions about religion, and then records his answers and takes the story to 300 newspapers, that family isn't 'offended' by what was said in the classroom -- they're simply looking for a payout and to make a name for themselves.'' He called the teacher one of the town's best.

However, Andrew Lewczuk, a former student of Mr. Paszkiewicz, praised his abilities as a history teacher but said he regretted that he had not protested the religious discussions. ''In the end, the manner in which Mr. Paszkiewicz spoke with his students was careless, inconsiderate and inappropriate,'' he wrote to The Observer. ''It was an abuse of power and influence, and it's my own fault that I didn't do anything about this.''

One teacher, who did not give his name, said he thought both Matthew and his teacher had done the right thing. ''The student had the right to do what he did,'' the man said. As for Mr. Paszkiewicz, ''He had the right to say what he said, he was not preaching, and that's something I'm very much against.''

Matthew said he missed the friends he had lost over his role in the debate, and said he could ''feel the glares'' when he walked into school.

Instead of mulling Supreme Court precedents, he said with half a smile, ''I should be worrying about who I'm going to take to the prom.''

Just so. I accept yr. correction, though I think we're splitting hairs. End result is the same. Spiritual beliefs tend to express themselves in certainties ("God DOES exist!") because steadfast loyalty to beliefs chosen in the absence of definitive knowledge is often seen as the crucible of faith.

Oh, let's get all haughty about theology, shall we? Or philosophy, even. Hey, here's a short post-it to the writer of this article: Shut it.

Richard Dawkins is right about what the universe looks like. It's cold, empty, and entirely pitiless. If you believe otherwise, you may as well go read a horoscope.

Where he's wrong is that he doesn't take into account any human relationship with the universe. The eternal, religion, whatever you want to call it.

That doesn't mean he hasn't read enough books, though. It's a failure of imagination.

Where's my Jeane Dixon column?

Yes.

"Dawkins, as one the best of liberals as well as one of the worst, has done a magnificent job over the years of speaking out against that particular strain of psychopathology known as fundamentalism, whether Texan or Taliban. He is right to repudiate the brand of mealy-mouthed liberalism which believes that one has to respect other people’s silly or obnoxious ideas just because they are other people’s. In its admirably angry way, The God Delusion argues that the status of atheists in the US is nowadays about the same as that of gays fifty years ago. The book is full of vivid vignettes of the sheer horrors of religion, fundamentalist or otherwise. Nearly 50 per cent of Americans believe that a glorious Second Coming is imminent, and some of them are doing their damnedest to bring it about. But Dawkins could have told us all this without being so appallingly bitchy about those of his scientific colleagues who disagree with him, and without being so theologically illiterate."

I think this is it (the answer to the thread title), in a nutshell. The thing is, much as "reasonable, moderate" republicans enabled the fringe of their party (this is what Kos, Bowers, and others rail on about all the time), moderate religious people have not done much to blunt the edges of their sects. Asking moderates to get militantly moderate is, by definition, a lost cause; so Dawkins and his ilk are left to the task of steering society toward the center by tugging on the other edge.

Media savvy would be slowly backing atheism into the cultural discourse (as has been happening for the last 100 years).

But I'd still like to think that I'm open to the concept of the unknowable and unexplainable.

But I'd still like to think that I'm open to the concept of the unknowable and unexplainable.

this is basically where I'm at.

Don't know that Dawkins and co. are really "steering society towards the center." I think that books like Dawkins' have almost no impact on those who haven't already made up their minds, and while they encourage debate, it's a polarizing, destabilizing kind of debate. I suspect that Dawkins does more to fuel fundamentalists' persecution fantasies than to make atheism palatable to the masses.

On the other hand, I'm not sure how you "slowly [back] atheism into the popular discourse." That kind of thing only happens in a long-term sense, in response to the more dramatic but short-lived gnashing of teeth that we see in (and in response to) Dawkins.

P.S. I'm w/ Milo & Ryan, re: the ex "agnostic" thing.

me three

No scientist worth his salt would say any different.

Cuz aren't "the unknowable" and "the inexplicable" (as absolutes) basically the antitheses of science? Can't imagine any purely and relentlessly scientific thinker simply accepting as given that some things flat-out CANNOT be known/explained. Not ever, not by anybody, no matter what.

Even as an abstract concept presented for debate, absolute unknowability sounds like a direct repudiation of science as philosophy (as distinct from science as practice, mind).

I mean, as a scientist, you'd have to keep trying...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/d/df/AmericanPsychoNovel.jpg/200px-AmericanPsychoNovel.jpg

LOL IT'S MF DOOM

I know that Princess Di's last words are unknowable, and that doesn't seem to make it any less unknowable.

Candle:
The virtue in resigning yourself to not knowing resides in every egg. Or so sez my mom.

Yeah, Adam, I don't know if I buy the whole two-extremes-make-a-moderate thing either. It sometimes works in politics, but it sure doesn't add up to any kind of nuanced ideology.

Dawkins is pretty much preaching to the choir, but I guess, being a member of the choir, I'm ok with that.

What do you mean by "existence," "God" and "the soul"?

I don't see that those things necessarily have anything to do with religion.

At college I was involved with a militantly atheist group called the Atheist Agenda. We had a bulletin board where we attacked alternating religions on a weekly basis. We had a website with a discussion board. We held a well-publicized and well-attended screening of "The God Who Wasn't There" that almost degenerated into a brawl (I was literally beaten with huge Study Bibles before somebody pushed the four fundies off me).

As our final blaze of glory before winter finals we promoted and organized a "Porn for Bibles" exchange on campus where we would hand over porn in exchange for the Holy Book of the heathen's choice. We got about 30 Bibles which we were going to use for an in-depth Bible study ("know your enemy" was the mindset).

The head dude loved Dawkins et al, and his ideas drove many of our campaigns. I left the group when I realized what douches we were being.

I think a lot of "intellectuals" (the NYRB/Harper's crowd) (myself included to some extent) are sort of irritated with the way Dawkins's nu-atheism could have existed just as easily in the 18th century--not just because he doesn't seem to have taken the last 300 years of theology into account but also in the RAH-RAH-RATIONALISM that ignores every continental philosopher since Nietzsche. I mean, this is why I find it hard to take him seriously, because 1) like really who gives a shit about the existence of God and 2) if you're going to talk about belief and rationality you should probably mention just a lil' bit about thinkers who spent a lot of the last century uh dismantling the rationalist project of the Enlightenment.

(n.b. that doesn't really surprise me seeing as Dawkins is a) a scientist and b) British and therefore probably considers those cats "intellectual charlatans" or some such, but if you want to be taken seriously by the d00dz at the TLS, it would help to at least acknowledge [even if tangentially] Althusser or Derrida on "secularized theology" [or fuck really even Spinoza on the reading of Scripture], and Dawkins seems to be operating under the assumption that everyone in the known universe is or should be subscribing to the same rationalist/humanist/Enlightenment principles [w/r/t the knowability of things/teleology of human knowledge/universalism] as John Locke or Kant or whoever).

In most parts of the U.S., would you say atheists feel free to express their opinions without fear of reprisal?

Do these things have anything to do with religion in a general sense? Perhaps not.

But they have everything to do with the role of spiritual faith in certain religions.

And many religions demand that adherents profess unwavering, absolute belief in a metaphysical higher order, a super-reality that transcends, explains and contains the merely physical world we perceive with our senses (the objective world known to science). The nature of this metaphysical higher order is often said to be beyond the ken of mortal man.

P.S. Why put "atheist" in quotes, Nuneb?

x-post

Oh that's just crap.

xpost

x-post

http://ec2.images-amazon.com/images/P/0393058980.01._AA240_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

I'm trying to get to the NYTRB bit on it, but I can't get the thing to load.

Why don't us liberal atheist people like Dawkins-think? Hmmmm....

1) Because it's douchy, cranky and gross. Like hearing grandpa rant about "all these negros on the teevee now."
2) Because he's a bullying, smarty-pants anti-intellectual who gets off on his own imaginary think-cred.
3) Because he's trying to turn us mealy-mouthed wafflers into his own personal warrior attack squad (e.g., herding cats).
4) Because he's so smug and angry - sucks the fun right outta the room.
5) Because our whole fucken philosophy is based on the right of dumb people to be wrong about whatever the fuck they want.
6) Because he isn't saying anything interesting or new - he's just being really loud and reductive about the same old shit.
7) Because, go! Don Quixote nerd, go! Whatever...
8) Because of dude's total, catastrophic failure to see the forest for the trees.
9) Because yelling about how right you think you are is ALWAYS SUPER-BORING.
10) Because life is a lot more rad and amazing than that.

I'm sorry. You'll forgive me, I hope. But did you just say that life is "rad"?

Yeah. I thought it kinda went with everything else.

Sorry, but in how can the issue of belief in God be "the trees," and if it is, WTF is the forest?

[insert picture of something rad here]

xpost

I think a lot of "intellectuals" (the NYRB/Harper's crowd) (myself included to some extent) are sort of irritated with the way Dawkins's nu-atheism could have existed just as easily in the 18th century--not just because he doesn't seem to have taken the last 300 years of theology into account but also in the RAH-RAH-RATIONALISM that ignores every continental philosopher since Nietzsche. I mean, this is why I find it hard to take him seriously, because 1) like really who gives a shit about the existence of God and 2) if you're going to talk about belief and rationality you should probably mention just a lil' bit about thinkers who spent a lot of the last century uh dismantling the rationalist project of the Enlightenment.

(n.b. that doesn't really surprise me seeing as Dawkins is a) a scientist and b) British and therefore probably considers those cats "intellectual charlatans" or some such, but if you want to be taken seriously by the d00dz at the TLS, it would help to at least acknowledge [even if tangentially] Althusser or Derrida on "secularized theology" [or fuck really even Spinoza on the reading of Scripture], and Dawkins seems to be operating under the assumption that everyone in the known universe is or should be subscribing to the same rationalist/humanist/Enlightenment principles [w/r/t the knowability of things/teleology of human knowledge/universalism] as John Locke or Kant or whoever).

-- max (mreadn...), December 28th, 2006.

Also like seriously the guy is a total asshole.

-- max (mreadn...), December 28th, 2006.

otfm

-- adam beales (adamrsbeale...), December 29th, 2006.

I see what you're getting at, and admittedly, I AM one of those wafflers. I don't really like Dawkins and I do think he's kind of a douche. And I generally don't like evolutionary/genetic determinism, or pure materialism of any kind, for that matter. In college I would often make the same sort of argument to my hardcore atheist friends that's being made now against Dawkins. But I think there's a danger of getting too lost in our own soft ideas about religion has comfort to frail humanity and forgetting its frequent role in extremely bad decision-making, martialing of troops, and quashing of dissent.

isn't this the same thing as saying Islam explains suicide bombers? i think it's reductive at the very least. how often is "religion" just a name for or glaze upon social phenomena that would exist in similar form even in its absence?

non-religious assholes can still be convinced everything they do is perfect & justified, but its socially unacceptable unless you claim your perfect god is driving you

I don't

most of them?

16:26 And Samson said unto the lad that held him by the hand, Suffer me that I may feel the pillars whereupon the house standeth, that I may lean upon them.

16:27 Now the house was full of men and women; and all the lords of the Philistines were there; and there were upon the roof about three thousand men and women, that beheld while Samson made sport.

16:28 And Samson called unto the LORD, and said, O Lord GOD, remember me, I pray thee, and strengthen me, I pray thee, only this once, O God, that I may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes.

16:29 And Samson took hold of the two middle pillars upon which the house stood, and on which it was borne up, of the one with his right hand, and of the other with his left.

16:30 And Samson said, Let me die with the Philistines. And he bowed himself with all his might; and the house fell upon the lords, and upon all the people that were therein. So the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life.

1. The idea that you should be able to laugh at other people's beliefs if they're "silly and obnoxious," someone wrote upthread, when what you are actually doing is constructing a straw man of the most irrational extreme of those beliefs and then laughing at anybody who holds them.

2. The assumption that religion has done clearly more harm than good in the world, so it must be fought wherever it can be found. Okay, you can measure deaths in Crusades and suicide bombings, and you can measure the work of saints or religious charities, but you can't measure the really important things that happen on a daily level, like religious people disowning their gay kids on the one hand or religious people becoming more forgiving and looking for more ways to do community service or fight poverty on the other. And how do you measure people's feelings of peace? It's not the kind of issue where you can line up pluses and minuses and come to a clear positive or negative answer, and it frustrates me when people say it is.

Also, this is connected to the point upthread about liberal Christians supporting fundamentalists by being part of the same overall institution - I totally disagree with this. For example, the work the UCC does in society is so utterly different from that of a fundamentalist denomination that I really don't think their being a "Christian church" perpetuates oppression. I mean, they marry gay people! And vote Democratic, for the most part! And no, they don't go marching over to the conservatives next door and tell them to shape up, but that's because they can't, the conservatives just don't consider them "real Christians."

And religion is not the biggest problem there is in the world. Church and state should be separated, gays should have rights, poverty and hunger should be fixed, science should be taught in schools, and human rights should be respected. I'm frustrated that a loud segment of Christians do not work for, and often work against, all of those things, but that doesn't mean liberal activist Christians have to give up their entire religion to be better activists, especially given that religion can be the motivating factor.

3. The insistence that faith is stupid unless there is proof. What about the definition of faith as "hope in things unseen"? I love that because of the total uncertainty it expresses. A lot of religious people are well aware that they don't know, and maybe they could even be wrong, but they decide to keep hoping and acting on that hope anyway. That's risky, but not necessarily stupid.

4. As has been mentioned several times...bad theology. A lot of his objections were being addressed in early Christian theology, in the Muslim world, all over the place long before scholasticism.

5. I find it personally insulting, frankly. And I think I'm meant to. I'm not a stupid blind follower, I read a lot of theology and have a lot of doubts and have to choose to recommit myself pretty frequently. I think Genesis is metaphorical.

or maybe you're just pissed off and have a platform from which to spleen-vent (by virtue of being an established writer). and maybe the timing and content of your venting is such that there are enough other people feeling similarly pissed off to buy your book.

i was thinking earlier and i realized that, in response to tombot's question, i do actually know someone who has bought and read and liked [i]the god delusion[/i]. he's an educated, mild-mannered guy who works for a newspaper and plays oddball rock'n'roll on weekends, and has lived his whole life in tennessee. he grew up in a fiercely religious family, whose beliefs he became alienated from, and he has lived since immersed in a culture in which most of the people he's likely to meet every day believe that he deserves eternal damnation and torment for his failure to see things their way. we were talking about dawkins, and i said he was too polemical for me; my friend said he understood tat, but from his point of view, polemics were well justified.

which also brings up the canard about someone like dawkins being "just as" intolerant as the religious zealots. no. dawkins just thinks the people he disagrees with are idiots. he doesn't think they deserve to have their flesh flayed by demons. that's an actual difference.

Yeah, because to "engage" with them (the way Dawkins does) is to sink to that level of inane extremist dogmatic ranting.

my political sense tells me that you empower people by paying attention to them. it also tells me that fundies have very little power all by their lonesome.

i think you need to go live in some other parts of the country. whatever fuels fundamentalism, it's not (or not solely) lack of political or economic power. go to a sunday service in a southern suburban megachurch (or a northern or midwestern megachurch, for that matter, with a parking lot full of suvs, plastered with "my kid is an honor student" bumper stickers. the congregants are not poor, not uneducated, and certainly not unpowerful. they're fueled by faith. you're looking for sociological reasons to not take their ideas seriously, because you find the ideas unworthy of intellectual contemplation. the "new atheists" are at least taking the ideas seriously.

http://justice4all.us/images/3atheists.jpg

i don't think i need to do so to understand this phenomenon

the congregants are not poor, not uneducated, and certainly not unpowerful.

i'm well aware that this describes many suburban megachurchgoers, a set that i don't regard as the same as the set of fundies, even if they might overlap.

they're fueled by faith.

at least in part, sure. also, a desire for community, something to do with the kids, childcare, entertainment, among other things.

you're looking for sociological reasons to not take their ideas seriously, because you find the ideas unworthy of intellectual contemplation.

neither part of this is true.

http://img.meetup.com/photos/event/3/9/1/d/event_134621.jpeg

???

suburban churchgoers make up a HUGE contingent of american fundamentalism. you think they're not "fundies" unless they're missing teeth or something?

That's a slightly tricky use of the word "all." I would venture a guess that over 95% of white megachurchers are fundamentalists (though some of the Pentecostals who clearly are fundamentalists might reject the label for fear of being confused with Baptists).

That said, the rise of megachurches in America has paralleled the rise of religious fundamentalism. And many of the largest and most influential megachurches are explicitly fundamentalist. While it may be unfair to stick specious percentages to it, I think it's very reasonable - responsible even - to point out that there is a clear connection between American megachurches and fundamentalist/evangelical Christianity.

whooaaaa man

we're arguing at cross-purposes, yes/no is what is IN the book any good (on some grounds or other) /// yes/no is the book being out there in the political world DOING good?

or:

"this book is dorm room ranty bullshit. dawkins should know better"
"gee, how does ralph reed's cock taste?"

http://www.the-brights.net/

Another definition of 'fundamentalist' could be someone who seeks control of the other's physical self by asserting their spiritual beliefs, which the other person may not share, which matters not one jot to the fundamentalist believer. You can believe I'm going to Hell all you like if it makes you feel better, or that there is an afterlife, if that makes you feel better about the injustices you are recipient or witness to in life. I am very comfortable with the idea that as an organism/sentient being/whatever, THIS IS IT, I am responsible for my actions in life, and causing pain to others is no way to live.

Ordinary religious people simply believe in the existence of a higher power which by common agreement they've named God, and agree to share in common a certain amount of ceremony or ritualised behaviour to underscore this belief. I would be as foolish to call for this to be banned as a believer would be to resist some thoughtful interrogation on why they choose to believe in God, because from where I am standing, there is a choice.

Ultimately I have to say that humans invented divinity and not the reverse. We are differentiated from other animals because we tell stories and ask questions, among the first of which is 'where do I come from?' To a Christian I would say that Jesus is one of many people who committed themselves to the all-too-human trait, because we are social beings who need to express community, of 'taking one for the team'. That seems to hold up to continued intellectual exploration.

Oh and BTW so what if Dawkins is an arsehole? 'Does not work well with others' only has bearing on sociability, not rightness or wrongness.

Minty.

true. i don't have any opinion on the first question because i don't have any real interest in reading dawkins or harris. (although i'm curious about dennett. no one's read the dennett book?) my only point is that the second question is not dependent on the first. you can appreciate these things being out there w/out appreciating what's actually in them.

you can also argue, on the second question, that they do more harm than good because they're so polemical/divisive/etc. i just don't happen to buy that, i think there's political/cultural capital in having some firebombing atheists on the best-seller lists.

I dislike what I've heard of Dawkins' position (on the radio and in articles and so on) because I dislike it when people say "i am right and you who do not believe the same as me are morons", even if they believe the same thing as me. I don't think you convince anyone that way; I think you make them resentful, and angry, and more likely to become hardline in their own position. It goes against the way I approach science, too - I think science is about hypotheses and making the best evaluation possible based on the evidence, and hard facts are an aim you strive towards, with ever-refined experimentation, but may never achieve. I think of definite, hard statements as irrational, based in blind belief; and fuzzier, qualified statements (mentioning the margin of error and so on) as closer to the truth. So to say "science has proven that god does not exist and anything else is unscientific" sounds to me like unreasoning faith, it doesn't sound like science at all. If this is supposed to be some pitched battle between those accept science/who believe in this model of the universe/who are thinking rational people, and those who choose religion/have a literalist view of the bible/follow gut-instinct belief, then the moment 'we' decide to use 'their' tools, their methods of argument - their literalisms, their irrationalities - we've already lost.

(For the record, I call myself an agnostic; I don't (can't) believe in God. Sometimes, though, I wish I could, I think I'm missing something by not being capable of that kind of faith.)

Setting aside the idea that religious belief could have a positive social effect - and I'm not really down with your "might as well be goebbels" elevation-to-worst-possible thing - what about a world in which religious belief had no social effect, positive or negative? in which it really was 'not hurting anyone'. Would it still be bad because it Wasn't True?

i think there's a great confusion between being effective at "convincing" people of something and being effective at nudging the political/cultural debate. polemics are usually aimed at the latter, not the former. rush limbaugh is not effective at "convincing" people who disagree with him, but if you think he and his ilk haven't been effective in shaping the political/cultural dialogue in america, you've not been paying attention. making a lot of noise can actually have some effect on the discourse. i understand not liking that fact, and maybe wrinkling yr nose at the noisemakers, but don't dismiss them on the grounds that they don't have any effect. they do. preaching to the choir is politically important -- the choir needs to be preached to. especially when they're constantly being bombarded with preaching from the other side (or sides). these books are selling because there are some people who want someone to stand up to the theistic bullies. and standing up to bullies can make some difference.

(also, in terms of effectiveness in "convincing" people, i'd like to know what kind of arguments or approaches anybody thinks would be effective in changing the beliefs of yr average evangelical christian. i don't think there are any.)

from what?

I've read a few things about this, from Lakoff to the folks at Don Neiwert's blog, that the way to go about it is not from a reasoned argument attacking them head on, but by talking to them about they care about, and going over the beliefs you share. Activate the empathic pathways, rather than the defensive ones, as it were. It will probably take a while, but eventually they can begin to shift, if ever so slowly.

People think atheism is scientifically sound and argue Occam's Razor and burden of proof...

But, the fail to realize that, scientifically, the conclusion one is forced to make BY LOGIC is that every term is a thing-in-itself, unknown, though to some extent apprehensible by INTUITION. Logic is only the limits of intelligence. One can get no further than A = A.

What Dawkins primarily has a problem with is what little religion he has been exposed to and the idea of unfounded claims. Can't blame him for that.

-- cis boom bah (cispontin...)

do you understand the difference between expecting things that have happened before to happen to you and expecting things that have never happened and violate every understanding we have of the natural world

It doesn't violate the most ancient understandings found in Vedanta, Buddhism, etc. which equate pristine awareness (or nothing) with God or "the Supreme Source" as it's called in "atheist" Buddhism. It is also no different from Christianity which states that God is the light by which we see, yet we can never see His face. This is why Descartes found himself chasing his tail as the subject and object and so finally decided "I think therefore I am," but if he had thought a little longer, he would have come to the same conclusion of the Buddha, "I think therefore I am not." The problem is a basic misunderstanding of theology.

and our understanding of it is as all fule kno, valid only after a certain point, before which all matter in the universe was contained in an area the size of a grapefruit.

(some physicists now say that's wrong, and it was actually the size of a baseball)

yr kidding, right?

or you really need to get out of nyc more, one or the other.

xpost realpolitik like 'alternatives could be worse' is what im saying needs to be opposed here

that percentage is a little high (90%? 80%? 75%?), but basically, otm. and i think in their bull-headed way, dawkins et al are addressing religion as actually, currently, politically practiced in the public arena.

cf every single person on this thread arguing either side of the issue.
There is a misunderstanding of which idea of god is the bad one. Or if it's all of them, in which case that hypothesis is no more falsifiable than the theist alternatives, and just as crap.
DO. YOU. SEE.

kent hovind (the creationist guy who founded that dinosaur creationist theme park) told me that dinosaurs were too big for the ark. hence their extinction. i didn't ask him about raptors, though. raptors weren't very big. you'd think if there was room for elephants they could've taken some raptors. (also, apparently nessie and the dragon that st. george slew were descended from stray groups who did survive the flood. which seems kind of careless on god's part, leaving dinosars lying around.)

to go back several hundred posts, when I referred to religion as science's "angrier, snottier, younger brother" I was alluding to the fact that the scientific method, Western rationalism, etc. owe their entire existence and system of thought to religion and religious institutions. In every scientific culture in the world, science grew out of religion. Dawkins' viewpoint is essentially ahistorical, it denies the fundamental continuity of humans attempting to formulate a way to accurately describe the world. And it denies historical evidence in the service of a preconceived agenda - the antithesis of the scientific method.

When Dawkins argues that religion is the most harmful element in human society, in a way he is invalidating the very foundations of his entire system of thinking. No Catholic church = no preservation of Greek/Roman culture and science. No European religious institutions = no place where men sit around doing nothing else but thinking about stuff, writing, conducting experiments. No alchemy = no chemistry. Ad infinitum. He makes no allowance for pre-scientific method achievements that were inextricably bound up in religious institutions and practices: astronomy, brain surgery, metallurgy, breeding mutations, etc. He blames religion for society's ills, seemingly unaware that the greatest threats to human existence as a whole have been developed in the last century or so, and owe their existence almost entirely to scientific rationalism (see the nuclear bomb and global warming).

In addition to this, as has again been alluded to upthread by other posters, Dawkins is apparently entirely unaware of the last few hundred years' deconstruction of scientific rationalism - from Spinoza to Derrida to Althusser to whoever. This model he has of an objective reality that can be described in language universal to everyone is a construct as equally ludicrous as a literal white-bearded God-father in the sky. Dawkins does not take into account any of the problematic definitions he relies on to make his arguments - he doesn't bother to consider that things like "consciousness", "existence", "intelligence", "life", or "death" have no clear-cut definitions that can be reproduced or sufficiently described via the scientific method. To say nothing of more problematic and abstract concepts like "God", the "soul", or an "afterlife".

I think this is where the basic problem comes in - Dawkins really doesn't understand language. The stance he assumes is essentially one where there is no room for metaphor, nuance, allegory, allusion, etc. where every word should and must be interpreted literally - eg, if someone says "God", they are referring to an all-powerful sentient being resembling a human in various ways - even though this runs counter to pretty much what the majority of religions literally DO say about God (God as infinite, unknowable, beyond human comprehension, etc. - stuff like this is what comprises the majority of theological writing in almost every religion). Dawkins constructs a strawman of people who take religious writings literally (fundamentalists), and then proceeds to "disprove" their thinking by showing how the literal interpretation is demonstrably false. This essentially achieves nothing besides "proving" that being overly literal does not accurately describe the world - something ancient mystics or Derrida or any number of average people could tell you.

Lastly, there are so many braindead assumptions made on this thread its hard to maintain any enthusiasm to participate - among many: an existence of an "afterlife" has not been disproven in any way shape or form, considering science currently has no working definition of what is "alive" or "dead" or what consciousness is. Similarly, the assumption that a mechanistic/hostile view of the universe is inherently atheistic and anathema to religion is also wrong - this is basically the worldview of Buddhists and gnostics, among others. Its appalling how dismissive atheists can be of religion without doing any of the research or investigation that a genuinely curious scientific mind would be obligated to engage in.

who do you mean by "these people"? am i the only one on this thread who knows college-educated, professionally successful fundamentalists? the ones i know think about all other aspects of the world (economics, politics, sports, whatever) in the same reasonable terms as any other college-educated professional. there's nothing obviously wrong with their critical thinking faculties. they scored very well on their SATs and whatever. they just, you know, believe the bible is the word of god.

like i said before, i think there's more condescension toward believers on the part of moderate liberals attacking dawkins than on his part. at least he takes them seriously enough to argue with them.

I think that equating religion to "objective mis-truths" is too reductive. How is the statement "God is love" an "objective mis-truth"? I would guess there's probably no objective way to prove or disprove it, but does that mean that it has no value as a moral ideal, inspirational philosophy, etc? Anyone who thinks that they only have beliefs that can be objectively proven or disproven is probably deluding themselves.

http://www.jerkcity.com/jerkcity522.gif

Beth / Bayt - first letter (which is fully spelled out B I T, which is spelled out B I T, I O D, T I T, which is spelled out... etc...) Each letter has a specific general meaning (Bayt = "house") attributed to it and various permutations become full of meaning.

Bayt, spelled "B I T" (Beth Yod Tav) would mean:
B - "house or container
I - held as in a grasping hand
T - world (cross, differentiation of matter, seal of completion on the "seventh day")"

Briefly, I'm sure how you can see the first letter of BRAShiTh is vaguely synonymous with the English translation of the first sentence, "In the beginning "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."

FUCKS SAKE.

Seriously, they incorporated this too into it all?

Happy New Year all you crazy bastards, sorry I flipped out.

of course! if you already believe there was an ark big enough for all the animals except the dinosaurs, then going on to believe that there was a real dragon fought by a real st. george is not really much of a stretch. in for a penny, in for a pound.

i think my amazement is more due to the specific inclusion of that beast. Out of all the possible iconic/mythological animals, they had to go for that one, especially notable as modern american fundie-ism tends to have xenophobia dominate so much to preclude even Anglophilia.

It's like one of their staff members had a medieval/Anglo history class, or maybe got a copy of Bulfinch's Mythology for Christmas one year, and felt an urgent need to fit that particular one somewhere into it all.

i like how gustave moreau cast orlando bloom as st. george.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Stgeorge-dragon.jpg

well, it's here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Stgeorge-dragon.jpg

you realize how much of the country lives in the core or suburbs of nyc or roughly similar cities?

name me a single major media outlet, news or otherwise, that is dominated by a christian fundamentalist perspective. is attention to christian fundamentalism in the media motivated more by christian fundamentalists or "secular humanists"?

small-town monoculturism is going to exist as long as there are small towns, religion or not, though the internet among other technologies is changing what a small town is (and explains a lot of why christian fundamentalism is both more vocal and more apparent to non-christian fundamentalists).

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/Stgeorge-dragon.jpg

Also, a correction: modern americna fundie-ism is just xenophobic, but also decidedly ahistoric. Thus my surprise that that one bit made it in there.

you're being wilfully obtuse. either that or you genuinely don't understand the country you live in.

it means that people that aren't as smart or as well-read as you jerks can have a bit of help articulating why it is they don't believe the same stuff as their neighbors. so what if dawkins is a pompous asshole -- so was derrida.

major media outlet: wal-mart

xp tipsy is owning you guys. gabbneb: you need to get the fuck out of new york or wherever. you and everyone else going to bat for theological deconstructionists are the reason that everyone in the west/midwest thinks you're a bunch of 'real-person' hating fags (even though you're just being thoughtful or something)

Country radio.

Look, Dawkins might be a useful counterpoint to Haggard or someone, but he doesn't present himself as such--he acts like he's entirely above those assholes when he's just as much an asshole as they are. It'd be nice if he admitted it. You can actually be nice about telling people that Adam and Eve never existed.

So, here's my 2 cents:

"when I referred to religion as science's "angrier, snottier, younger brother" I was alluding to the fact that the scientific method, Western rationalism, etc. owe their entire existence and system of thought to religion and religious institutions. In every scientific culture in the world, science grew out of religion. [...] When Dawkins argues that religion is the most harmful element in human society, in a way he is invalidating the very foundations of his entire system of thinking."

This implies that to deny something one has believed in the past automatically invalidates present thought (present thought is built on and dependent on past belief; therefore, the repudiation of past belief annihilates the architecture of present thought). Absurd! We can always repudiate the ostensibly "obsolete" thinking that allowed us to arrive at our present thought-state, and this doesn not necessarily compromise present thought in any way.

"In addition to this, as has again been alluded to upthread by other posters, Dawkins is apparently entirely unaware of the last few hundred years' deconstruction of scientific rationalism - from Spinoza to Derrida to Althusser to whoever. This model he has of an objective reality that can be described in language universal to everyone is a construct as equally ludicrous as a literal white-bearded God-father in the sky."

This has come up again and again, and I think it's misleading. It reflects the inflated opinion that 20th century philosophy has of itself. Math problems are solved in precisely the same way in every culture in the world today. Water level and air temperature are measured exactly the same way in California as in Ethiopia. The scientific significance of a particle test will be interpreted in the same manner by Muslim, Catholic and even Buddhist physicists. The models that science constructs of objective reality really ARE universal and omni-lingual. While different cultures may perceive, interpret and use those models in different ways, the models themselves have no cultural component whatsoever.

Individuals and groups who are unfamiliar with or hostile to the scientific method, on the other hand, exist in EVERY culture. And while it's true that every culture expresses its home-grown version of science-fear differently and with varying levels of popular/official support, the scientific method (as a universal system) is no more intrinsically alien to any one culture than another. No more so than tool-use or implied social contracts.

***

"I think this is where the basic problem comes in - Dawkins really doesn't understand language. The stance he assumes is essentially one where there is no room for metaphor, nuance, allegory, allusion, etc..."

Agree wholeheartedly with this. Dawkins is a proud, unapologetic (BIGOTED) scientific literalist. His super-reductive argument goes like this: "What's real is what we can physically demonstrate is real. Only idiots believe in stuff that isn't real. If you can't demonstrate proof of your beliefs on some tangible level, you are, therefore, an idiot."

The problem isn't that he relies on the universality of scientific models or even that he discounts the contributions of religion in the past, but that he stubbornly insists that pure scientific rationality simply MUST now be the ultimate arbiter of all meaning in human life. Which is just ludicrous on the surface, and almost entirely unsupported besides. As you and others point out, religion-like thought systems have probably benefitted humanity in fair proportion to their harm, and science (like all hermetic systems) cannot discount that which lies outside its purview.

what discussion of religion is there on country radio? or are you referring to the music? are you saying that contemporary country music is dominated by a christian fundamentalist perspective? do you listen to any of it? why did you mention country and not gospel?

no, i think i understand it very well.

you and everyone else going to bat for theological deconstructionists are the reason that everyone in the west/midwest thinks you're a bunch of 'real-person' hating fags (even though you're just being thoughtful or something)

i'm not 'going to bat' for anyone. i'm saying that if you think that a) most suburbanites who go to church every week in a big rec hall with a good av system instead of a small new england church with a big white steeple are 'fundamentalists', or that b) pat robertson has more influence on american culture than britney spears, you're a moron.

From a Socratic, argument-for-argument's-sake standpoint, I think yr picking good targets. But if you have a point (other than that people tend to express their class prejudices when talking about religion), I'd be curious to hear it.

yes. you can also be nice about telling them that jesus christ is the way and the truth and the life. but if you spend a lot of time surrounded by people who aren't nice about that at all -- like my friend in tennessee, e.g. -- then maybe you have an appetite for someone fighting fire with brimstone.

if you think that a) most suburbanites who go to church every week in a big rec hall with a good av system instead of a small new england church with a big white steeple are 'fundamentalists', or that b) pat robertson has more influence on american culture than britney spears, you're a moron.

i don't know about "most" suburban megachurches; there are megachurches of all persuasions, even unitarian. but a lot of them are evangelical, and they are the social and political core of american fundamentalism. and the point isn't whether britney spears is bigger than god. what i said is that fundamentalists have dominated american religious discourse for a generation. now there is some pushback, but the fact that people like dawkins -- or the few high-profile liberal christians like jim wallis -- seem novel just points up how one-sided the rhetoric has been.

if that's true, i think it's a sign of the secularization of the country

or i could just say,

oh come on.

I said you can not establish that religion has an overall positive OR negative effect, there are effects in both directions, so I wish that entire stupid argument would just go away. Also, there's a big difference between saying religion is inspiring for some people, as individuals, and encouraging it as a "useful myth for societal control". It's useful for me, but the vast majority of my friends, even the ones I know through community service and activism, are atheists, and I would never try to "improve" them through religion..

Also, if you have a concept of God that's not just him existing to fill in the holes science hasn't gotten to yet, and one that isn't scientifically provable or falsifiable, the "God clearly doesn't exist, stop believing lies" argument is not nearly a good enough argument for why any belief in God is bad and destructive. I really don't see what harm liberal Christians are doing by merely existing.

(xxxxpost)

...

So long, friends!

and

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

...

Lock thread.

Goodnight kids, and God bless. Best in the new year. Not sure I can honestly say I love you one and all, but if I did, I'm almost sure I would.

Right right, no disagreement from me about that - sorry I wasn't being too clear here, but the reason I brought up the historical religious roots of western science was more to invalidate Dawkins' claims about religion being the most harmful thing ever in human society (paraphrasing roughly here), not that science should cling to outmoded or invalidated beliefs. He can't have it both ways - the very thing he's decrying as holding humanity back basically established the theoretical and rhetorical framework he's using to make that accusation. Its like a child saying their parents are the worst thing ever and that they've never produced anything worthwhile in their lives. Its, y'know, snotty and arrogant and displays a lack of self-awareness.

so don't give "we owe science to religion," unless what you mean by it is "we should be thankful the priests didn't kill all the scientists."

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