Richard Dawkins

You like him or not?
why?

 

I enjoy reading Dawkins, but as a Christian, I think he's offbase. To me, he's the modern-day heir to the British rationalist-empiricist tradition of Hume and Bertrand Russell. To Russell's orbiting teacup, he's added the Flying Spaghetti Monster, which should earn him a place of honor in the non-believers' hall of fame. I see him as an indispensable corrective to the religious zealotry that plagues the world today, and if I had to choose, I'd take Dawkins over that. But the corrective could use a corrective. Like every True Believer I've known, Dawkins thinks he has it all figured out. His breezy, zealous confidence in science and left-brained reductionist thinking rests on precarious assumptions, and he shows little awareness of that.

 

yet you believe in ancient Jewish zombies? Can you provide examples of "breezy, zealous confidence in science and left brained reductionist thinking that rests on precarious assumptions that he's alledgedly not aware of?

 

How is that relevant? Does believing in Jesus preclude people from being able to have a valid opinion about anything?



I think "shows" was the key word: I believe Dawkins is a smart guy with a lot to contribute, but he's also a populist, and either allows his ideas to be over-simplified for the sake of saleability, or does it himself.

He has written stuff about how beliefs and memes (religious or otherwise) are not necessarily bad just because they are not objective fact. But he rarely mentions this, particularly in his TV/interview appearances, because he's found a rabid market in the anti-religious crowd who would probably worship him less if he didn't present himself as agreeing with their brand of atheism.

 

I like listening to him talk

 

Well in one fo his books, he refers to "St Paul's Letter to the Hebrews" which no scholars of religion belielve is even pseudo Paul. It doresn't even claim to be by Paul. Dawkins also has a way of reducing almost every facet of human existence to Darwinian natural selection. Why are we good? Natural selection. Why do we have empathy? Natural selection. Why do we believe in a God, or at least why are we suseptible to belief in a God? Natural selection. Nevermind that then doesn't answer the question in where the belief in an other transcendant world or anything of that sort comes from...

I agree that Dawkins is a wonderful scientist, especially in the area of evolutionary biology, but he is by no means a religious scholar, nor does he even come close to the people who have made wonderful contributions to the field of study like Malinowsky, Otto, Turner, Durkhiem, Eliade, Girard, and hell, even Derrida. Yeah, they may not all believe in a god of any sorts, but at least they understand religious theory. I don't even see any mention of these guys in what Dawkins I've read...Maybe as a religious scholar I am biased against bad scholarship in general.

 

BTW- This statement completely disregards all of the theology behind the ressurection. For example, if there are any zombies in the NT, they are those raised by Jesus such as Lazarus of Bethany. But even then they are not Romero zombies because they will die again. Jesus is entirely transformed in the ressurection. But I am not going to labour this point. I guess it is an example of reductionist thinking. If you really want to argue the "zombieness" of Jesus though, PM me or start a thread in the Xianity forum.



Something else I though of about Dawkins: his opionions on child abuse. He espouses the beliuef that if you raise a child to be religious, or bring them up in a religion in other words, then that is a form of child abuse. Would he also then suggest that bringing up a child as a capitalist is child abuse, or a communist. If you shower a child with gifts, and therefore feels guilty about having so much when UNICEF askes for money, is that child abuse? I know he mentions that there is no such thing as a "capitalist child" or a "communist child", but I think my point is still faily valid because religious views are just as personal as socio-political views and therefore could be seen as child abuse to "force" onto a child.

 

The charge that I believe in ancient Jewish zombies intrigues me. My understanding of a zombie is an animated corpse without a mind or will of its own. I've never heard of an ancient or modern Jewish one, let alone believe in one.

As for Dawkins "breezy, zealous confidence in science and left-brained reductionist thinking", examples can be found on practically every page of The God Delusion. Those assumptions pervade his thinking and writing, and it seems never to occur to him that they might not provide a reliable guide to religious issues. Let's take, for example, his discussion of the anthropic principle or "finely tuned universe" theory that seems to be taken seriously by various other scientists like Francis Collins, Kenneth Miller, Fred Hoyle, and Paul Davies. Dawkins resorts to multiple or alternative universes. If there is compelling empirical evidence of such universes, Dawkins doesn't provide it. I think it could be persuasively argued that it's preferable to prefer naturalistic explanations to supernaturalistic ones as a matter of policy, but Dawkins seems (to me) to be saying something stronger in rejecting the supernaturalistic alternative.

Natural selection is Dawkins' specialty, and he provides a plausible defense of the "Blind Watchmaker" against ID's alternative. Yet Hugh Ross, a leading Christian writer with a science Ph.D., argues that every "intermediate" species of the fossil record was specially created by God. I think there's reason to question that, as another Christian, evolutionary biologist Kenneth Miller, does by asking why God would go to such elaborate lenghts to simulate the natural selection process. Miller convinces me, but Ross's alternative theory could be right, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster could exist! I doubt it, but think it's important to acknowledge the limitations of the human intellect. Dawkins certainly isn't alone in not doing that. Miller is persuaded by the "fine tuning" notion that the laws and parameters of the universe appear uncannily to favor the evolution of some intelligent life form capable of developing a concept of God. I'd say that Miller may underestimate the extent to which his own childhood Catholicism has "fine tuned" that conclusion, but I don't see Dawkins adequately addressing the issue. Why assume that, just because something can be given a naturalistic explanation, a naturalistic explanation is the correct one? But I admire Dawkins, and on balance, I think he's furthering the dialogue by which we gain a better understanding of reality (including God). In that sense, one might say he's doing the Lord's work.

 

Dawkins is an inspiration, God delusion ftw

 

I will second that.

Yes the Lords work indeed.

Maybe the parable of the elephant that O.F. so often refers to can be brought in at this point and comparison then drawn between the rival empiricist/sceptical positions of Hume, Russell and Dawkins versus the age old biblical claims of Christians. Many would certainly contend that the former along with many in the scientific community do have a far superior grasp of parts of the beast or reality (as I see it any way) than the Chroniclers of the bible. Most of the foundational knowledge of the sciences have been long verified through experiment and observation. This foundation has been built upon to such an extent that a glimpse of the whole beast may be just possible thanks to of course to an adherence to rational empirical methods. Maybe they are just doing the Lords work, may be not.

Christians for the most part have long rejected such an approach until now so it seems and have usually proceed by making unwarranted assumptions for the existence of some pre existing intelligence, God, or some other related unverifiable category. In the parable one would hope that God would have been kind enough to come down and give the poor blind men clear idea of the whole animal that they were examining in order to end the confusion. However they, we are still waiting on that one. In the mean time we may take the biblical serpent on faith alone if one so wishes.

 

Well, it'd be a golem. I'm happy enough to believe that Christ as made out of mud and clay before he slithered out of Mary's cooch though. I mean, technically, would you still be a virgin if you made whoopy with a hillside?

 

Dawkin's is great and very intelligent but he's a bit to worried about hurting someones feelings when he gets his point across,

I prefer Christopher Hitchens, it's just a shame that he isn't on the t.v as often as he should be. He made a fool of Hannity and Combs on their show and I believe has been black balled.

 

Haha, interesting: so you'd say he's not anti-religious enough?

 

Indeed

 

I'd agree that he's a bit "vanilla" - that he covers very easy territory that few people could disagree with. I'd say he's no more of a threat to any major religion than, say, Dave Allen. But at the same time, I think he's slightly too inflammatory to actually make any changes to these religions either. It's like, he says just enough to piss off the church, but not enough to actually mobilise anyone against it.

 

I prefer the debate and writing of Hitchens because I feel some people must be PROVEN wrong in there beliefs if it is doing them or others harm.

Dawkins is brilliant but a little to nice for some debates with fascist crack pots.

You need someone who is literally anti - Christ among other things.

A slap in the face is just a rude wake up call.

 

Well yeah. It's pointless to take a middleground position.

Personally, I think Dawkins plays up to the anti-religious (although clearly not enough for your liking!), but fails to make any intelligent comment on the myths that sculpt everyone's lives that don't have anything to do with ghosts or gods or spirit energies but which are every bit as baseless and metaphysical. To me, that's his biggest failure. It makes him come across as yet another high-and-mighty atheist, rather than someone with anything intelligent to say.

 

It seems when people of certain faith's are questioned in a reasonable manner as to whether or not they believe in the more "far fetched" idea's and concepts of whatever religion they show faith towards they have a hard time saying things like, "I believe the world is 5000 years old" and the such.


They will usually try to take a literal translation of there more foolish concepts and beliefs and sugar coat it with "soft science".


That's fine but there comes a point when you have diluted the original so called fact, like the great flood for example to such an extent that it comes off as if there trying to side step or hide the more "embarrassing" parts of there religion.

If it is to be taken as the word of a infallible god wouldn't it be a bit pretentious for someone to think they can explain what god REALLY meant when he told Job to murder his son?

It just seems that the fallibility of so called "divine" texts and beliefs is so apparent it would be all but impossible for someone of average intellect to even consider them to be true, let alone waste an entire life studying there "teaching's".

 

I've never thought of him as being 'vanilla' or a softie... makes sense now.
Can someone give me examples of other atheists that do the same as dawkins [in the sense of promoting atheism, etc.]

He is a scientist, not someone who focuses on humanity [as much as other people would] He can definatley show the world the idea of truth, and to not believe in imaginary friends, and can definatley back up Darwin's ideas of evolution. If you want ot know more about religion, go talk to someone else.

man I need to stop saying such obvious things. I suck. XD

 

It was actually Abraham God told to sacrifice his son. God was just messin' with him. I've often wondered how people of average or above average intellect can consider the Bible to be literal and "inerrant" truth. I think it proves that the need for certainty and the propensity to believe what one was taught as a kid can overcome intellect.