Richard Dawkins

lol spare me having to type them again, if you read my original post in this thread, I outline them there

Yes, but saying "you have zealots too!" isn't a justification for zealotism, it is an attempt to dodge the fact.
I'm not for religion or science specifically, I think the debate is an absurd false-dichtomy, I have no problems reconciling the two. I'm against zealots, of any shade, be they religious, atheist, or one of the many hundreds of shades of grey in the middle.

My point is simply that it is wrong to treat the religious as second-class or inferior, an attitude that is spreading and surrounding Richard Dawkins, however unfortunate or misguided that may be.
It may not be what Dawkins is really about, but then war or terrorism wasn't what most religious founders were about either.

Actually, I believe atheism has been shown to correlate postively with high IQ, religion has not been correlated with low IQ. With the majority of the planet being religious, it would be a very silly false correlation to draw. similar to saying "the majority of people with low-IQ have eyebrows"
But IQ is a far cry from being the only form of intelligence, and a great many very great minds have been religious, so one cannot assume superiority over someone because they hold religious beliefs.
That is prejudice, pure and simple.

lol, Which areas specifically do you think religious people are incapable of performing in?

Again, the "religious community" in the strictest sense of the term is the majority of the planet.
And it is a false identifier, which is one of my big problems with Dawkins. The way he (and the lions share of Dawkins' supporters I talk with) talk of religion as a singular entity.

Personally, I encounter the same proportion of prejudiced and close-minded atheists as I do members of the religious community. The idea that they are exempt from the normal human failings is an unfortunate myth

 

The bit of my response you snipped says that this point of yours does not tell us anything relevant...

This should be self-evident, and again saying that those who have misunderstood and are acting contrary to what someone says has any bearing on the content of what is said or the person doing the saying is again utterly absurd...

This again should be self-evident, and is not a view espoused by me or Dawkins or indeed anyone I have read ... these are essentially straw men you are constructing...

Religious people are not one homogenous clump so that's not a question which can be answered. I would say people who believe things contrary to evidence have issues with critical thinking.

 

I think this is true and this is one thing I noticed when reading the God Delusion. His argument that morality, altruism, art, etc are products of the human mind and happen in the absence of religion also applies to evil, violence etc. He fluctuates here between nature and nurture suggesting on the one hand it is human nature which causes the good and conditioning which cause the bad. In truth it is a bit of both in both cases. In fairness he makes the point that few people commit atrocities in the name of an atheistic worldview, which is true, a fact which perhaps suggests that some religions play into an innate propensity to commit atrocities against "out-groups" in a way that atheism simply does not. I think he misses the opportunity to point out that in the absence of religion it does not take very much for us to create different and quite arbitrary "in-" and "out-" groups. He also writes of his love of religious art and music, so to suggest as some do that he is throwing the baby with the bathwater is an inaccurate simplification.

I'd like you to point out exactly where he does this. He says in the section on "Einsteinian religion" about this kind of thinking not being "religion" in the commonly understood meaning of the term since it does not invoke belief in supernatural causation. Here his point is about supernaturalism, not the totality of religious culture etc. There is if I recall a section of that chapter where he debates the issue of redefining the term 'God' in this way in some detail. I don't believe he makes any similar move on the cultural aspects of religion, he draws distinctions between moderate and fundamental, but as far as I recall does not redefine religion in terms of its properties as you suggest.

In the section on education and schooling he talks about the negative impact of early indoctrination on critical thinking skills, here he is talking about the cultural and social impact of christianity, not necessarily its supernaturalism and not the cultural impact of hinduism, shinto etc. Religion is indeed a massive subject which has many facets, some of them relevant to empirical evidence and physical reality, some to cultural and social concerns, my point is that Dawkins approaches these separate issues from different perspectives, addressing their various nuances. He also outlines the scope of his argument and fact he is talking mostly about Western civilisation, and within that mostly Christianity. To suggest that he simply talks about "religion" as a whole without making these distinctions or delineating and contextualising his argument is to misunderstand and oversimplify. I wonder if people who say this kind of thing have actually read the book.

 

Whilst technically true this does again seem to be a case of semantic acrobats.
Dawkins will often point out when making his "Russel's teapot" points, that Atheism is not a religion, that atheists follow many different creeds and worldviews, that the word simply refers to an absence of belief.
Namely, there is no Atheist worldview, any more than there is an Ateapotist worldview.
Buddhists, Taoists and Confucianists are all very often Atheists, and very often not materialists at the same time.
Whilst few people kill for Atheism, I think there are plenty of Atheists who are dogmatic, cruel, and will kill for some of their beliefs.
This for me only serves to reinforce my viewpoint, that it is a persons disposition, rather than their specific beliefs, that lends them to violence.

Well this is the same point I made to (I think it was Noodle?) the chap earlier, there is a difference between critiquing the supernatural, and religion. Supernatural beliefs are very often fairly perennial to the main body of a religion, in overtly "theist" ones.
I think by classifying the viewpoints of Einstein or Spinoza as Atheism rather than pantheism or deism, he is removing a large section of religion, from religion, in order to open it up more readily to critique.
You can't say "Well the Pantheists/Taoists/Christian Anarchists/Neoplatonists don't do X" because he'll reply that he doesn't really consider those people to be "religious"

He does, but I don't think redefining the word god, stops it from being an essentially religious term.
Whilst I suppose Dawkins is fairly precise when detailing the specific aspect he intends to criticise, the term "religion" is still commonly used in Atheist circles and beyond as a word to mean "the worst of organised religion", but which implicitly refers to all religious practitioners.

For me, as a religious practitioner who has absolutely no qualms about science, freedom of expression, or proper secular education, and for many thousands of others, it can get quite irksome.
In his TV documentaries and interviews Dawkins quite often does use the term "religion" in this manner.
The best you could say of it is that he is producing for a very broad audience, and doesn't want to get bogged down in semantic minutia, but that for me is a problem, because a broad audience will take a word at its face-value.

Dawkins himself had a christian upbringing did he not? and is one of the foremost evolutionary biologists in the world :S
I think literalist religious brainwashing, to the exclusion of alternative worldviews is definitely damaging, and I highly laud the work Dawkins does to combat this sort of encroachment into our education systems, but I don't think it can be said that a religious upbringing always stunts critical thinking skills.
In this day and age it often turns them into atheists. The number of ex-catholics who went to a strict catholic school whom I know are well into double-figures.

Not to mention that in the UK, Church of England schools tend to outperform secular state-schools academically.

I have, but once, grudgingly, well over a year ago and I fully concede I'm about as expert on his work as he is on the Buddhist Sutras, but I do try to keep my comments about his public work to things I'm more familiar with like his TV appearances and his beliefnet interviews, etc.

 

Or rather, he is criticising some aspects of religion, but not others, which is a perfectly reasonable approach...

So your issue essentially is with the word "religion" and the fact that it can contain both the meaning of violent fundamentalism and lentil eating Buddhism, along with everything in between. What words would you prefer we use when criticising different aspects of religion? 'Good religion' and 'bad religion'? Clearly these distinctions are made at length in Dawkins' written work. It's simply a matter of shorthand.

Another straw man, I haven't seen that argument made anywhere...

 

I agree, but not when those singular aspects (often unrelated to religion) are then applied to religion as a whole.
My posts in the thread cover this, the things he criticises can be seen within religion (fundamentalism, supernatural belief, violence etc) but are not an integral element or inherent facet of religion (back to my point about charity and virtue also not being an inherent part of religion, and Dawkins attempting to have it both ways).

If he only wants to criticise the supernatural, or dogmatism he should perhaps consider more clearly doing so.
Dawkins work quite explicitly targets "religion" with provocative documentary titles such as "The Root of All Evil", that begin with the words "there are people all around the world that want to murder you..." and goes on to examine not human hatred in general but very specifically religion.
(I believe he says that whilst politics and social issues are "important" religion is the "elephant in the room" being ignored)

In the same way that I would take issue with someone using the word "socialist" as shorthand for terrorist, or Jew as shorthand for banker, yes. it isn't a small issue, nor my only one.

I would prefer those "aspects" were correctly recognised as being not "aspects of religion" but aspects of humanity, and that they are referred to by their quite clear and appropriate English names: Terrorism, Fundamentalism, Hatred, Close-Mindedness.

It is grossly prejudiced to use "religion" as shorthand for such negative qualities

You didn't write this?

My reply to which was to point out that Dawkins himself experienced early indoctrination, and is highly intelligent, and that religious schools perform more highly than secular schools academically (not because religion makes them smarter, but because in actuality, private funding has a much more dramatic effect on academic ability than religious upbringing does and religious schools tend to be well-funded).

If I had misunderstood your comment, I offer my apologies, I was basing my reply on what I perceived to be your interpretation of Dawkins work, not my own. It wasn't an intentional straw-man.

 

I do think that people use religion as an excuse for committing atrocities, but it doesn't follow that without religion there would be no atrocities. We'd find another excuse. (This ties into what both of you, I think, agree on.)

I say this as an atheist: I think religion is silly, but I don't think that without it we would have avoided, say, the Crusades.

 

To be frank I don't believe it could be any clearer that this is precisely what he is doing...

This analogy is unhelpful because not all terrorists are socialist and not all bankers are Jews, whereas all religious fundamentalists are religious. (Not all dogmatic, violent people are religious, but this, obviously, is not a claim being made). Perhaps you could say that all terrorists are 'activists' and all bankers are 'businessmen', replace the specific moniker with the generalisation and you will see that a comment about businessmen also applies to bankers, and one about activists applies to terrorists. A generalisation needs to include a necessary property of the specific.

The work is about religious terrorism, religious dogmatism, religious hatred, religious indoctrination, etc. The feature these things have in common is religion.

The issue about which he is writing is the dogmatic, fundamentalist and anti-science aspects of religion, not of culture generally. You are essentially saying he should have written a different book, one which does not explore the religion-related aspects of these phenomena, but simply explores the phenomena across the totality of culture. A bizarre criticism. Yes, he could have written a different book, but he wrote that one. The religion-related aspects of these phenomena have specific features which are worth discussing...

A discussion of the "negative impact of early indoctrination on critical thinking skills" does not equate to the trivially inaccurate claim that "a religious upbringing always stunts critical thinking skills". An obvious difference.

 

I'm afraid I have to respectfully disagree. He frequently uses polemics, and a generalised use of the word religion.
And it still seems to me that the correlation he draws between religion and things like terrorism is actually an incredibly superficial one, often defended with fairly backwards claims like "there are no Atheist terrorist campaigns"

The analogy was deliberately unhelpful, to demonstrate why Dawkins use of the word religion as shorthand for negative aspects of so-called religious behaviour is in itself unhelpful, and actively harmful to decent members of religious communities.

You seem to have missed my point here. I was saying that it is inappropriate to use "religion" as a catch-all term for negative behaviour seen as being religious in origin, and to do so is a similar fallacy as using the word socialist as shorthand for stalinist-communists, or, any word as shorthand for something that it is not.

I appreciate that you think I am making a trivial point, but surely you yourself have at least once been a victim of this form of generalisation?
What can seem innocent can often have very damning long-term implications.

It frustrates most because I have so many causes in common with Atheists, because I am an intelligent person with a high than average IQ, and yet (in this very thread) have been called a fool.
Why?
Because I professed a belief in karma, something that (when challenged) the poster who called me a fool could not even accurately describe.

It is something that I feel is important.

It seems as relevant to me as writing a book about religious sporting champions, but no others.
Yes, one could write a book like that, but such a book would be limited in its scope, and would fail to address the subject in fair proportion.
I am saying that for Dawkins to only write about the incidents of immoral human behaviour within religious is redundant and idiosyncratic, because it fails to address the crux of the issue. I.E: the actual causes of such behaviour.
I do not think that in-context, my point is an invalid one.

This could be perhaps the area at which we diverge the most in opinion. I think that this assertion is actually highly debatable, that actually the behaviours isolated by Dawkins are observable (in complete replica) outside of religious contexts, and are as a result not unique.

Very well, what specific negative impacts specifically are you referring to, and are these negative impacts significant, when one considers that people with a religious upbringing are able to equal those who do not have a religious upbringing in academic fields, not just "sometimes" but with a reasonable regularity.

 

He writes about religious terrorism, not terrorism generally. Discussing the religious aspects of religious terrorism is a perfectly valid thing to do...

Religious extremism has features which come from religion. There is absolutely no problem with calling the religious aspects religious extremism "religious"...

As already discussed, I do believe there is a very clear distinction made between the positive aspects of religious traditions and the ones which Dawkins criticises, he is not criticising "religion" as a whole without making these necessary distinctions. I suppose you may get that idea from the three minutes of a TV interview, but that's hardly something that can be helped - you would spend three minutes defining your terms and not say anything. So yes, I think the point is both trivial and rather inaccurate.

If there was a long and vocal tradition of sporting heroes who did what they do in the name of religion, chanting Allahhu Akbar after every race then yes indeed that would be a valid subject for study. To suggest that there is little or no correlation between religion and religious extremism is a totally absurd claim...

Of course! Nobody claims that extremism is uniquely religious... Hello again straw man.

 

Unless you're a religious scholar trying to convince people that their religion doesn't actually condone terrorism, I don't think it is.
The things that cause extremism are independent of religion, and testifiably exist in abundance without religion.
I think in only attacking religious-extremism, Dawkins is actually attacking a symptom rather than a cause.

I think in fact it is anti-religious prejudice, that causes people to consider religious-extremism as being a special case worthy of independent consideration.

You're taking me out of context here. I am not (nor have I) taking issue with someone refering to religious-extremism, as opposed to any other hyphenated extremism. I am voicing concern over the use of the term "religion" as a catch all term for the negative aspects of religion.

But in regards to your point here, the features that come from religion tend to be the rhetoric used and the context in which the extremism is framed. Which are interesting certainly, but scarcely the subject for entire book, at the expence of studying the actual cause.

Why did Dawkins write his book?
Because he wanted the demise of extremism?
If that is the case, why not study the causes of extremism rather than the rhetoric used by one particular type of extremist

Well actually it was a 2-part documentary, not a three minute interview.
I seem to be irritating you by pressing this point, which isn't my intention at all.
I will reread the The God Delusion and try to see where you are coming from here

Well I'm saying there is no direct cause from one to the other. A person of an extremist disposition is able to be fundamentalist about football teams.
Most religious extremists practice their evils, even in the face of direct proscription of their actions by their religious founders, suggesting to me that actually the "link" is actually a superficial link and not significant in the manner you suggest.

I think you may have misunderstood me. My point is not merely that it isn't uniquely religious, but that it is a singular phenomenon, that is essentially the same in both instances.

For example, Ted proposes that people from Wales are sometimes smelly, and I point out that people from England are also smelly.

I'm not implying that that Ted meant the English aren't smelly, I'm implying that smelliness has a cause that is not linked to people's nationality, but rather to the presence of bacteria in the underarm region.

I did not mean to imply that you were suggesting that are no secular-extremists, clearly you weren't, I'm saying that your distinction between the two is leading you to miss the primary issue that unifies them.

 

While religious doctrine is not the only factor feeding into religious extremism it is, prima facie, a factor. To deny this is absurd.

No, I think his stated aim is to see the end of religion. That's the headline. If you look at the actual argument he makes he clearly distinguishes between the bits he wants to keep (art, beauty, awe etc) and the bits which are damaging (indoctrination, extremism, dogmatism etc). It is not a book about extremism in all its forms, indoctrination in all its forms etc. It is a circumscribed piece of work dealing with a discrete set of related phenomena. Once again you're suggesting he should have written a different book...

I'd take issue with you there: religious fundamentalism usually comes from churches, elders, sects, and is not atomistic and unrelated to the wider phenomenon in the way you claim. We can debate whether those who recruit suicide bombers are doing so for purely religious reasons, to what extent they may be aware of the sociopolitical conditions which feed into their behaviour and so forth, but religious suicide bombing is a type of behaviour which has a particular character and a set of unique features not shared by other forms of activism or terrorism. Just one example of the way in which religious fundamentalism has its own distinct features worthy of focused attention on its own terms.

 

I do not think such a denial is absurd, I have presented arguments to back up my viewpoint, and I feel they are rational. I'll resummarise briefly.

1) We know for a fact that fundamentalism is not a condition unique to religion.

2) We know that the sacred texts of many world religions either prohibit violence entirely, or place strict sanctions and guidelines on the uses of violence, which are flouted by religious-extremists.

3) We know that fundamentalism and extremism are not rational behaviours, people can and are extremist and violent about the most absurd things

4) We know that incidents of religious-extremism can be linked to wider social contexts.

Points 2 and 3 are the most important here. If extremism were rational in nature, it would not seek to break the rules of the religion it is claiming to fight for, and the fact that they do so makes their link to the religion a complex one. If they are fighting for the label of the religion, at the expence of the religious teachings, to what extent are their actions motivated by the religion?
We know also that extremist behaviour continues without religion.

I think it isn't absurd at all to hypothesise that actually extremism is a pre-existing condition, that exploits religious ties and rhetoric, and that the religion itself is not a key factor.

For example, my younger brother is allergic to face paints. If you put them on him, his skin goes all red, if you put them on me, it doesn't. So it would not be logical to say that the paints make his skin go red, it is his allergy that makes his skin go red in response to an ingredient in the paint. Others can be exposed to face paints and experience no difference.

And pursuent to that, banning face paints would not abolish allergies.

Well again, his book seems rather redundant to me in this context. What use is it ending religious extremism, dogmatism, if it is just replaced by some new monster?
Is Dawkins arguing that he would prefer to be blown up by secular extremists than religious ones?

I am suggesting that his book is failing to reach it's implicit goals, and that these would have been better served by a more inclusive book with a wider scope.
I do not think this is an unfair criticism. If someone has dedicated an entire volume to wiping out a plague that will be instantly replaced by an analogous plague upon it's destruction, is it not reasonable to say "why not write a book that deals with both plagues and thus contributes to solution, rather than just changing the aesthetic nature of the problem?"

This debate, I suspect, would require an entirely new thread.
The use of suicide as a tactic, whilst not unique to religion, is certainly more common within religion, from Palestinian suicide bombers to the Buddhist monks who burnt themselves to death.
This is because religious people are often unafraid of death.
But this is a tactical distinction in their methodology, but isn't relevant in my eyes to the central issue, namely what causes extremism and how it can be stopped plus whether or not the emergence of extremism within religion can be considered a unique entity, as opposed to extremism in patriotism, football, ideology etc.

 

The argument that religion is somehow particularly responsible for extremism and violence is important, not only to Dawkins' thesis but also to those of his fellow atheists Hitchens and Harris. In fact, Harris carries the argument to extremes reminiscent of the cold warriors of the 50s: no neutrals or moderates are allowed in the struggle between reason and religion. The argument simply doesn't hold up under rational scrutiny, because: (1) most of the "religious" violence and extremism mentioned seems to be related to other factors than just religion; and (2) much violence has been caused by non-religious groups, e.g., Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot.

Atheists, of course have ways of explaining these objections away, but I find them unconvincing. The current examples given of religious violence are drawn mainly from radical Islam, which is certainly a problem. But not all Muslims are radicals. Islamic radicalism is rooted in the disaffection of economically disadvantaged elements who have nothing to lose from suicide and can be easily manipulated by psychopaths like Bin Laden, much as Charles Manson was able to manipulate vulnerable young people into homicidal acts. Add to this the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is ethno-national and territorial, with a thin religious veneer, and you have the ingredients for Middle East terrorism.

Other than that, examples include the religious violence in Northern Ireland and the bombing of abortion clinics in the United States. The Irish violence has deep historical and socio-economic roots, in which religious differences are superimposed on class conflicts and national conflicts. For non-religious counterparts, we might consider the Tamil Tigers, perhaps the most violent terrorist group in South Asia, consisting of atheists who happen to come from an ethnic minority that is predominantly Hindu. The bombings of abortion clinics in the United States are fortunately uncommon events perpetrated by a few rogue elements of Catholic and fundamentalist Protestant sub-groups who are pursuing private agendas different from even the mainstream of the sub-groups they belong to. There haven't been any for awhile, following the capture of Eric Rudolph.

Harris dismisses the atheist examples of Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, who killed more religous people than all the churches and mosques of our era have put together, on the odd theory that although they were atheists, Marxism-Leninism is like a religion. In what way? Because it is a fanatical belief system? Then we might as easily conclude that fanatical belief systems are the problem. Are all religions fanatical belief-systems? No way! I hardly think that label could plausibly be pinned on any mainstream non-fundamentalist Christian congregation in the United States today: Methodists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Quakers, etc. Are any of them responsible for a single act of violence? I don't think so. Are only Communist atheists capable of violence and repression? They're the only ones who have had an opportunity so far, but I think the potential is there for other successful atheist movements. For example, Dawkins, whose ideology is scientism, argues that religious upbringing is a form of child abuse. If he or his follwers came to power, would they be content to let this abuse continue, or would they try to remove the children from their parents? To do that would probably require atheist inspired force. Another prevalent ideology incorporating atheism is "objectivism"--advocting radical rationalism, capitalism and libertarianism. I don't know of any violent objectivists, but some of the adherents, including Ayn Rand, can be pretty dogmatic, and dogmatism can be a precursor to violence.

Since the Communist example proves atheists are quite capable of developing a fanatical belief system, the effort to attribute this solely to religion is unconvincing. In this forum, atheists have argued that the violence committed by Stalin et al was independent of their being atheists, or was strictly a result of being Communist. That distinction is hard to maintain. Atheism was an intrinsic part of Marxist-Leninist ideology, and religious groups were specifically targeted for persecution under these regimes. One could as easily argue that Eric Rudolph's violence was motivated by his anti-abortion ideology rather than his religion, since many Christians don't have anti-abortion beliefs.

 

What does all this prove? Homosapien, Sapien more often than not is a very violent primate, regardless of a ideological or religious fig leaf.

 

That we're all too damn stubbourn for our own good

I'm gonna call this one a day I think before someone winds up hitting me with something large and metallic

 

Finally! I thought this would be the fist post. I am just starting and I'm already a fan.

 

I haven't read his religious writings yet but his scientific works both early and recent demonstrate that Dawkins is a brilliant thinker and an excellent scientist.