Richard Dawkins

So you're saying that differences of opinion should be eradicated just so we can have some peace and quiet?

I mean, that's never going to be possible, but even if it WAS possible, I'm mildly appalled if you'd actually consider it a viable solution. It seems no better than healing the sick by shooting them in the head, or solving your hometown's traffic problem by sealing people into their houses.

 

As I've said elsewhere, I think a good case can be made that the present resurgence in religious extremism is a reaction to secularization. Muslims have been around for a long while, but in the 1950s and 1960s, they seemed to be on the road to modernization. Economic change left many behind, and secularization shook cherished traditions without offering anything positive in its place. Same in the U.S., where until the late 1970s the Religious Right was a minor force in politics. Secular culture, associated with consumerism, impersonal bureaucracy/technocracy, and telvision shows that pushed the envolope of mindlessness and bad taste, had little to offer for people looking for meaning in their lives. Dawkins, Dennet, Harris, and Hitchens acknowledge the importance of the "numinous" without providing a clue about pursuing it outside the context of religion. Dennett's Breaking the Spell is all about showing how religion evolved as a multi-funtional phenomenon produced by a variety of psychological and sociological needs, if not hard wired into our psyches by natural selection. Then, having demonstrated that, he seems astonished that people continue to cling to it, instead of dumping it overboard to take their chances in the Brave New World of secularism. It seems to me that instead of trying to convince us that religion is the cause of violence, atheists should be working on substitutes for the various needs that people have turned to religion to satisfy.

 

"Fools are for religion"

I like that, and when I say "fool" I don't mean intellectually slow I mean someone who FOOLS themselves or let's someone else fool them.

I don't think many televangelists are "fools" for example because they are NOT being fooled in my opinion, they don't believe what there so called bibles and holy text's say but they know they can FOOL many people into believing the nice sounding lies in them easily.

And in turn make a handsome profit.

So to me fool does not necessarily mean someone of low intellect.

Religion is for fools.

 

No differences in opinion should be eliminated through education.

And I think that "peace and quite" for the world is a noble enterprise.

 

What a sad, sad world we would have if there were no differences in opinion.

BTW, I'm not sure how you are going to 'eliminate opinions through education'. Are you sure you meant education? Or brainwashing?

 

I think that's one of the most vile and ill-considered comments a human being, least of all an atheist, could ever make.

 

I guess if he means differences in opinion over factual, proven things, it's slightly less reprehensible. But not much less, since the one thing we are absolutely sure of, and have been for 60-70 years, is that not everything can be proved.

 

So you are against education?

 

On that same train of thought,

It's never been PROVEN that you need water to live.

Nothing is true, everything is permitted?

What a completely honest but impossible way to live ones life by.

 

No. If you think that differences of opinion can only emerge amongst the ill-educated, you have serious ego problems.

How can you even say something like that?

Which somehow excuses your mindless arrogance in believing that nothing which is not Rudenoodle-approved truth ought to be permitted?

And please, in light of what you've said, do not bullshit yourself into thinking that this "education" you think will unite us all under one opinion does not amount to forcing people to believe a certain way. Hegemony is every bit as powerful in imposing a belief on others as an auto-da-fé, and unlike the auto-da-fé, it's self-perpetuating.

 

So you believe religion should be encouraged or left alone?

 

Left alone, obviously. Why would I want it to be encouraged?

It is my belief that getting rid of the religions we have now would not get rid of religion forever. We invented religion once, and we'd do it again. I've mentioned elsewhere that, given the choice, I'd take the old religions that have been forced to adapt to centuries of social reform in order to survive over a lot of the New Age philosophies, which seem far more commercially-driven and devoid of any morality. Better the Devil you know, right?

I do not believe that religion should ever be taught in school (or perhaps more accurately, no religion should be taught as fact; some study of religions is essential to understanding history, literature, etc., as well as being useful to help people understand and appreciate the world they live in), or that religious belief should ever inform, say, a science curriculum. I do not believe that religious belief is harmed by education, and I find your comments to the contrary rather strange. You obviously find it hard to believe that an educated person could ever be religious and vice versa, but you have been presented with evidence refuting this by another user.

Essentially, I believe that yes, we should just leave religion alone.

 

And when it interferes in innocent peoples lives, like the attacks of 9/11 we should just throw our hands in the air and say what?

Wrong religion?

 

As I have said I don't know how many times now, people who commit crimes should be punished accordingly. What would you suggest as an alternative? You've already said you don't want to forcibly get rid of religion (even if your "education" borders on fascism) so what do you think you'd do that is so different from what I'd do?

As far as I can make out, you'd want to punish the whole religion for the actions of a group of individuals. How can you even attempt to justify that?

 

Some religions encourage acts of violence (as I have said dozens of times) what of them?

Let them raise generation after generation of fanatics and say "so what" to the fact that every ten years or so we are attacked by religious fundamentalists?

To hell with any innocent victims, do you just see them as "sacrifices" to the freedom to believe the idiotic?

 

Some works of art incite rioting. People are not stupid mindless Pavlov's dogs. Why do you think that a Muslim is less able to resist a call to violence than you are? It's the old "if x said jump off a cliff would you do it?" thing, we expect people to use their own judgment.

How would I stop them? How would YOU stop them? You say you'll just educate us until we think the same, but that is absurd and impractical, so what is the difference between me accepting religion as inevitable and you opposing it but being unable to prevent it?

How would you prevent another 9/11? I genuinely want to know.

I think your beliefs are idiotic. Why should I allow you to believe them?

Why?

Because I am capable of empathy.

But that's neither here nor there. As I said above, unless you have the balls to admit that you would stop people practicing religion, I don't see how your "approach" will make any difference. You can't get rid of religion through "education", you're too spineless to get rid of it through force, and as far as I can make out, you're as incapable of accepting another person's viewpoint as any religious person, to the extent where you'll suggest fascistic methods to purge the human race of any diversity of opinion.

So yeah, 3000 dead in 9/11... I'd probably take that over what you're suggesting. You can call me a monster all you like but it's not like you have a better idea. Anyone can make retarded ideological statements but it takes intelligence to understand that humans are what you've got to work with and you can't just change them.

 

Dawkins has done little research on religion from what I can tell. He misquiotes the Bible, and when he does begin to talk about interesting things such as the origins of religious belief, he doesn't even postulate some theories of why people began to believe in spirits and things. He says thet it can get passed down because of a meme that makes children believe their superiors, but where did their superiors get it from?

It is reductionist because he evaluates the entire Ireland situation on the basis of religion. Are you telling me that the entire reason that there is violence in Ireland is over religion. That there isn't any other issues going on. Can a Protestant be a Republican in Ireland? If so, the Dawkins is full of BS because he seems to equate Republican with Catholic and only Catholic.

I also love this idea of getting rid of differences. Well lets say that a lot of people didn't like a certain race. This caused violence because the oppressed race got attacked because of what they were allegedly involved in. Now to get rid of the violecen, as you said, you had to get rid of the differences. How do you change something you can't change, well then you just get rid of the people. Genocide maybe...It happened in Rawanda, and they were all Catholic.

I understand what your intent was, but it comes off as pretty crazy.

 

What qualifies you to call someone a fool? Because they believe differently than you?

So people in power are the foolers and the masses are the foolees? How about a priest? What motivation does a priest have to go on a mission, not to convert people, but to minister to those in slums. What motivation does he have to go and risk his life to try and help people? Keep in mind a preist's salary is roughly 25,000$ per annum. Or is this priest a foolee? It is certainly not monetarily driven. What sinister reason will you cook up now?

Have I been fooled even though I came to my beliefs on my own with no outside pressure?

Let me ask you this (and this is response to a later): There is no evidence that you have given that says that religion causes such behavior as murder, rape, genocide, et cetera. Why then do you put your faith in believeing in that statement. You seem to be in favour of some sort of Orwellian brainwashing program that will wradicate any "undesireable" element from society. Few governments have tried such things and the ones that do are usually considered some of the more barbaric in recent years. I will admit that even Alberta had a eugenics program until recent times (I think like the 50's or 40's or something).

 

"It's turtles all the way down"?

If you're interested in this stuff, Levi-Strauss has addressed it in The Raw And The Cooked among other works. He observes that many stories are remarkably similar from religion to religion, culture to culture, even developing in total isolation from one another, and postulates that there might be a common source for this inspiration. Other critics such as Kristeva and Lacan shed some light on what these common sources might be; essentially, the main thing all people have in common is mammalian biology, and it seems a pretty safe bet that a lot of our common stories stem from this. In the context of the human body, a great flood that cleanses the Earth and from which life springs anew is far more interesting than if we just think of it as a lot of mumbo jumbo.

 

The flood myth is particularly interesting in this regard. It's found in cultures as diverse as the Sumerian-Babylonian, Indian, Chinese and Meso-American. Floods are a common phenomenon, particuarly in the "hydraulic societies" that formed the world's first civilizations along rivers. Also, ancient peoples were puzzled by the discovery of fossil fish and seashells far removed from the coast, and put forward the explanation of a flood to explain them. Jungian psychologists attribute these myths to archeotypes from a collective unconscious that may be hard wired into our psyches by evolution. Water is a symbol for the unconscious, as well as cleansing, and a flood would represent the descent of the conscious into the unconscious, resulting in a rebirth for the human race.