The God Delusion: A Critique

[Wicked Pilot]

I don't think he's happy with the label since it's clearly inaccurate, rather he chooses to roll with it and use it for his own purposes to prove his points. If being 'militant' means coming out and raising the people's consciousness, then damnit we need to be militant. The more militant the better.

[Patrick Degan]

I don't think he's happy with the label since it's clearly inaccurate, rather he chooses to roll with it and use it for his own purposes to prove his points. If being 'militant' means coming out and raising the people's consciousness, then damnit we need to be militant. The more militant the better.

It seems that in their view to be a "millitant" atheist is to dare to express an opinion in public at all.

[Darth Wong]

I don't think he's happy with the label since it's clearly inaccurate, rather he chooses to roll with it and use it for his own purposes to prove his points. If being 'militant' means coming out and raising the people's consciousness, then damnit we need to be militant. The more militant the better.

It seems that in their view to be a "millitant" atheist is to dare to express an opinion in public at all.

Liberal Christian: "God is a wonderful idea."
Militant Atheist: "God is a lousy idea."

Moderate Christian: "Everyone would be better off if they were Christian."
Fanatical Atheist: "Everyone would be better off if they were atheist."

Militant Christian: "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert their people to Christianity".
???

Fanatical Christian: "Die, abortion doctor scum! BLAMM! You too, Matthew Sheppard! Kill you all!!!!"
???

[Admiral Valdemar]

Okay, this argument is something new.

Dawkins promotes theistic relgious ideas in order to justify his contempt for religion & faith, that alone discredits his assertions about atheism & religon on the whole 100%

When asked to elaborate.

God = Yahweh or Allah spoken of in the Bible & Koran.

Going along with that hogwash about the word god is enough to discredit any assertion of atheism.

Seriously. WTF?! I could only surmise that you have to discredit each individual deity and religion on a case-by-case basis, otherwise you're talking crap. Or something.

[Darth Wong]

Okay, this argument is something new.

Dawkins promotes theistic relgious ideas in order to justify his contempt for religion & faith, that alone discredits his assertions about atheism & religon on the whole 100%

When asked to elaborate.

God = Yahweh or Allah spoken of in the Bible & Koran.

Going along with that hogwash about the word god is enough to discredit any assertion of atheism.

Seriously. WTF?! I could only surmise that you have to discredit each individual deity and religion on a case-by-case basis, otherwise you're talking crap. Or something.

So anyone who says that God is Yahweh or Allah is automatically promoting theism? This is what happens when retarded people are allowed to use computers.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I'd link to the thread, but as I say, it won't allow non-registered to view. The irony here is that it's a board for fans of His Dark Materials, y'know, that book trilogy that fellates religion. Oh, wait, it doesn't. And its author openly promoted The God Delusion to boot.

Some arguments, like the one above, I just can't understand. They're either obscure beyond all measure, or so stupid I can't actually respond because any response seems inadequate in dispelling the stupid.

[Rye]

That's just crazy. Being able to conceive of an idea doesn't promote that idea as truth. Someone really needs to think about how they come to know and believe in things.

[Wicked Pilot]

Militant Christian: "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert their people to Christianity".

I'll help you finish:

Militant atheist: "Yeah, can we please not use my tax dollars to put a 10 Commandments monument on/in every every government building throughout the nation."

Fanatical Christian: "Die, abortion doctor scum! BLAMM! You too, Matthew Sheppard! Kill you all!!!!"
???

Fanatical atheist: "In my spare time I say bad but accurate things about Christians and their faith on internet message boards. And it usually involves naughty words. Oh yeah, Anime sucks too!"

[Patrick Degan]

Faith answers to the basic, irrepressible, irresistible human wish for spiritual betterment, to do good, to think and act beyond the limitations of selfish human desires. More than that , it is rooted in a belief that the impulse to do good or try to, is not utilitarian or self-interested but is about putting aside self, in being aware of something bigger, more central, more essential to our human condition than self. In this, the ‘other’ is not to be rejected still less excluded, but embraced as more important than you or me. And people of faith believe we are driven or guided to this end. For those who feel in this way, God is not some wise Old Man up in the sky, but the true source of life. God is selfless love, merciful and an infinite dispenser of Grace.

Sorry, but we already have the reason for the "awareness of something bigger" than self in the observation that cooperative behaviour in pack animals is a group survival strategy. What people of faith believe about the source is extraneous.

[Wicked Pilot]

Sorry, but we already have the reason for the "awareness of something bigger" than self in the observation that cooperative behaviour in pack animals is a group survival strategy. What people of faith believe about the source is extraneous.

No no you heathen fool, it's the Flying Spaghetti Monster that brings truth, morality, beauty, love, eternal justice, etc to the world. You're obviously another militant aspaghetti monsterist.

[Patrick Degan]

Sorry, but we already have the reason for the "awareness of something bigger" than self in the observation that cooperative behaviour in pack animals is a group survival strategy. What people of faith believe about the source is extraneous.

No no you heathen fool, it's the Flying Spaghetti Monster that brings truth, morality, beauty, love, eternal justice, etc to the world. You're obviously another militant aspaghetti monsterist.

Actually, as a devout member of the Church of Baseball, I find it explicable in the context of the Divine Sacrifice Bunt.

[TithonusSyndrome]

Okay, this argument is something new.

Dawkins promotes theistic relgious ideas in order to justify his contempt for religion & faith, that alone discredits his assertions about atheism & religon on the whole 100%

When asked to elaborate.

God = Yahweh or Allah spoken of in the Bible & Koran.

Going along with that hogwash about the word god is enough to discredit any assertion of atheism.

Seriously. WTF?! I could only surmise that you have to discredit each individual deity and religion on a case-by-case basis, otherwise you're talking crap. Or something.

Oh for fuck sake, I recognize this old canard. He's suggesting that Dawkins thinks God can only mean Allah or Yahweh, when maybe instead it can mean some kind of woo-woo meta-force that people "experience" when they take drugs that has no name. Dawkins himself addresses this stupid old chestnut in the introduction to TGD when he says that "I know you're thinking that by 'God' I simply mean an old man with a long beard sitting on a cloud, so stop it, because that's a dead end and not what I'm referring to."

[Admiral Valdemar]

That's how I took it. I couldn't really believe the guy was seriously proposing that, but he was. I rebutted with something along the lines of how pointing out the intricacies between God/Jehovah/Allah/Zeus etc. is really academic and only the concept need be debunked.

Not that debating God's existence is even the whole book's content. It's only a fraction of it, with the rest going into theistic morality, social ordering and political meddling.

[Darth Wong]

Faith answers to the basic, irrepressible, irresistible human wish for spiritual betterment, to do good, to think and act beyond the limitations of selfish human desires.

I think the word he's searching for is "empathy" and "social instinct", not "faith". Faith is the ability to believe something without a shred of evidence, not the desire to do good.

More than that , it is rooted in a belief that the impulse to do good or try to, is not utilitarian or self-interested but is about putting aside self, in being aware of something bigger, more central, more essential to our human condition than self. In this, the ‘other’ is not to be rejected still less excluded, but embraced as more important than you or me. And people of faith believe we are driven or guided to this end. For those who feel in this way, God is not some wise Old Man up in the sky, but the true source of life. God is selfless love, merciful and an infinite dispenser of Grace.

And for those who don't feel this way, God is a silly superstition people paint on top of empathy and social conscience.

[Admiral Valdemar]

That's the whole point though, isn't it? God, or whoever you choose to believe in who doesn't actually exist, is the rallying call for all these hard to quantify abstract emotions and feelings. It's not altruistic tendencies from biochemical evolution and sexual selection that makes you want to look out for your siblings, it's God telling you to... with his LOVE! Outrage isn't because you have innate fears and prejudices against certain actions part of our social evolution, it's the wrath of God using you as an instrument of justice.

With that in mind, it's easy to see that these same people believe that only those who know and embrace God and the associated teachings can have the capacity for goodness and love and justice and so on, so forth. People brought up this way have never seen someone grow up in a vacuum to all of this and actually live their lives by the same, if not, better morals and ethics. They go by the assumption that, like a feral child not knowing of language, anyone who hasn't known the Almighty is unwashed and incapable of understanding such concepts.

Dude, take a chill pill will ya?

I said I'm ok with the ideas he has, and yet, I sh*t you not, I'm a religious person myself, would you look at that. Hell, I'm in love with Douglas Adams, and personaly I have no problem with anyone believing anything (exept for inuits, they tick me off). And yes, whatever you say, whatever anyone says, we just can't be sure, deal with it.

As you can see I have no problem with his ideology, I have a problem with him.

See, when I was a little kid I was taught a little something call respect, wich I try to use as oftern as possible even with people who I think don't deserve it (had a couple of nice arguments with some neonazi fellows).

Yet, it seems when you dear dearest was a kid he must have been outside blaming religion when they where giving lessons in respect.

But hey, that's just my opinion on the fellow.

Thanks for the genious part though, I always knew I was special.

***

Oh, and a little funfact, you are a product of a religious upbringing because guess what ALL the morals of the old world are based on?

Bingo! Christianity combined with an imperialistic view of the world drawn from roman times!

Cute innit?

So yes, we can't be sure off unless we moved to a parallel world where there is no religion, we check it out and then come back and write a book about it. Everything in the world is intertwined, man. The whole sociocultural progress of human kind is a complex matrix of wich religion is a great part of. As latency says, it's not as simple as black and white. Heh, I WISH the world was that simple, but alas, it aint.

But oh well, I'm also gonna go with Latency on this one, when you're prepared to stop putting words in my mouth and you relax a little, perhaps by not insulting people, for example, I don't mind discussing the sex of the angels with you, but until you learn some manners or at least to be a little polite I'm out of here.

Carefull, by the way, you're starting to sound a lot like your lover, and that aint a compliment.

***

Dude, grow up. This ain't a me and dawnkins against the world soap opera.

And yes, if YOU where born in england then you are a biproduct of roman laws and christian morals.

Oh, and about my lofty claim? Yes, TGD view on it? Preposterous, over simplified bullshait, I believe would be the correct term.

If you think you can tell the direct result of all influnces as they cross one another in the path of forming this ideology or that. Man, don't waste your time, write a book like "men are from mars, women are from venus" style and you'll be swimming in gold, I sh*t you not.

But see? that wasn't so hard, not putting words in my mouth and whatnot. Good job!

[Darth Wong]

I hate the way these snide hatfuckers say that someone like Dawkins has no "respect" for Christianity, when it is an article of faith in Christianity that it is a sin to reject God. Imagine if Dawkins said that it was evil to believe in God; people would say he's gone off the deep end, he's gone too far this time, he needs to be stopped, etc. But it's part of Christian doctrine to say the same sort of thing about atheists.

Why should I "respect" a belief system that does not respect me?

[Admiral Valdemar]

That's when I pulled out some heavy artillery:

Now, the invention of the scientific method and science is, I'm sure we'll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and that it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked and if it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn't withstand the attack then down it goes. Religion doesn't seem to work like that; it has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. That's an idea we're so familiar with, whether we subscribe to it or not, that it's kind of odd to think what it actually means, because really what it means is 'Here is an idea or a notion that you're not allowed to say anything bad about; you're just not. Why not? — because you're not!' If somebody votes for a party that you don't agree with, you're free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down you are free to have an argument about it, but on the other hand if somebody says 'I mustn't move a light switch on a Saturday', you say, 'Fine, I respect that'.

The odd thing is, even as I am saying that I am thinking 'Is there an Orthodox Jew here who is going to be offended by the fact that I just said that?' but I wouldn't have thought 'Maybe there's somebody from the left wing or somebody from the right wing or somebody who subscribes to this view or the other in economics' when I was making the other points. I just think 'Fine, we have different opinions'. But, the moment I say something that has something to do with somebody's (I'm going to stick my neck out here and say irrational) beliefs, then we all become terribly protective and terribly defensive and say 'No, we don't attack that; that's an irrational belief but no, we respect it'.

It's rather like, if you think back in terms of animal evolution, an animal that's grown an incredible carapace around it, such as a tortoise—that's a great survival strategy because nothing can get through it; or maybe like a poisonous fish that nothing will come close to, which therefore thrives by keeping away any challenges to what it is. In the case of an idea, if we think 'Here is an idea that is protected by holiness or sanctity', what does it mean? Why should it be that it's perfectly legitimate to support the Labour party or the Conservative party, Republicans or Democrats, this model of economics versus that, Macintosh instead of Windows, but to have an opinion about how the Universe began, about who created the Universe, no, that's holy? What does that mean? Why do we ring-fence that for any other reason other than that we've just got used to doing so? There's no other reason at all, it's just one of those things that crept into being and once that loop gets going it's very, very powerful. So, we are used to not challenging religious ideas but it's very interesting how much of a furore Richard creates when he does it! Everybody gets absolutely frantic about it because you're not allowed to say these things. Yet when you look at it rationally there is no reason why those ideas shouldn't be as open to debate as any other, except that we have agreed somehow between us that they shouldn't be.

After people read that and enquired which rather belligerent person said it, I mentioned it was Doug Adams. It's funny; I didn't see as many openly hostile comments directed at him then, likely because he didn't make it his sole mission to discredit religion, but was more than happy to back Dawkins up when he felt it necessary. It's hard to call such a beloved and comical man a "militant atheist" worthy of your ire.

But, dontcha know that pointing out flaws in religions is a big social no-no? We can't have those sacred cows touched, after all, they are sacred, are they not? And it is not proper to question their status.

[Darth Wong]

What is their answer to the simple question: "why should I respect Christianity?"

Would they answer that you should always respect another person's beliefs? Would that include Scientology? The Hale-Bopp comet death cult? Hare Krishna? Those crazy polygamists in Utah? Fundamentalist Islam? Jedi? Do they think there is no such thing as a belief which does not deserve respect?

Or would they answer that you should respect Christianity because it hurts Christians' feelings when you fail to do so, as if Christians ever think about atheists' feelings before linking all the world's social ills to disbelief in God?

[PainRack]

After people read that and enquired which rather belligerent person said it, I mentioned it was Doug Adams. It's funny; I didn't see as many openly hostile comments directed at him then, likely because he didn't make it his sole mission to discredit religion, but was more than happy to back Dawkins up when he felt it necessary. It's hard to call such a beloved and comical man a "militant atheist" worthy of your ire.

But, dontcha know that pointing out flaws in religions is a big social no-no? We can't have those sacred cows touched, after all, they are sacred, are they not? And it is not proper to question their status.

lol. That's belligerent? Perhaps its time to bring out the more "hostile" statements Douglas made then.

[Admiral Valdemar]

What is their answer to the simple question: "why should I respect Christianity?"

Would they answer that you should always respect another person's beliefs? Would that include Scientology? The Hale-Bopp comet death cult? Hare Krishna? Those crazy polygamists in Utah? Fundamentalist Islam? Jedi? Do they think there is no such thing as a belief which does not deserve respect?

Or would they answer that you should respect Christianity because it hurts Christians' feelings when you fail to do so, as if Christians ever think about atheists' feelings before linking all the world's social ills to disbelief in God?

It's been a while since I asked that simplistic and rather direct question. I think the thread went on a few pages with myself and other atheists pointing out the hypocrisy to numerous Christians, a couple of Muslims and a handful of agnostics even.

Though I do remember the Anonymous Vs. Scientology thread mirroring the one over here. That led to a rigmarole over how Scientology should earn as much respect or allow criticism of Christianity because of its number of followers (and the basic reasoning that it's okay to mock because most people know it's silly, since they never got exposed to it from an early age by adults as would happen with Xtians etc.). This then devolved into a lot of banter over how Scientology asking for money is in no way analogous to televangelists or the Church's tithe or how Scientology has used muscle to quell dissent, as did the Church at a time.

From all that, the impression I got was that there's a subconscious switch that kicks in when you question mainstream Abrahamic religious "cults" (boy, do they hate that term) with the same level of scrutiny. It's a huge double-standard they seem incapable of grasping, pulling out the tired old one trick pony of respect, which is conveniently one way.

[Feil]

Eh. I bought God Delusion when it hit the shelves - I love Dawkins on television and thought I'd learn a little from it and be able to give it away to someone who could benefit from it. As it turns out, everything Dawkins says in the book is spot-on, and almost all of it badly needs to be said. Yet somehow he manages to make a document that is entirely correct read like poorly-written propaganda, ragging on individuals or their word choice or, if they happen to agree with him, attaching adjectives/adverbs like "splendidly" or "witty" to quotations - yes, in addition to commenting on their arguments. The substance is great, but the style sucks; I didn't enjoy God Delusion, and I haven't recommended it to anyone else.

[Darth Wong]

I actually don't own a copy of The God Delusion and have no particular plans to buy one. If there's one thing I don't like about Dawkins, it's the fact that he's been built up into a superstar of atheism. Atheism is distinguished by not following a leader around like a flock of sheep.

The minute I say I'm an atheist, people assume I'm a big fan of Richard Dawkins, and I'm not. It's not that I necessarily dislike him or disagree with him; I just don't know any of his work, apart from what other people say about it.

[Zablorg]

What is their answer to the simple question: "why should I respect Christianity?"

God will be pissed if you don't.

I pretty much asked this question once an that's essentially the answer I got.

You're going to fucking burn, man.

[Fire Fly]

I actually don't own a copy of The God Delusion and have no particular plans to buy one. If there's one thing I don't like about Dawkins, it's the fact that he's been built up into a superstar of atheism. Atheism is distinguished by not following a leader around like a flock of sheep.

The minute I say I'm an atheist, people assume I'm a big fan of Richard Dawkins, and I'm not. It's not that I necessarily dislike him or disagree with him; I just don't know any of his work, apart from what other people say about it.

I wouldn't go out of the way to get God Delusion. While its a decent book, its a bit watered down and verbose at times. Sam Harris' The End of Faith, however, I find to be a great read. There were lots of pointed arguments that I hadn't really considered prior to read it.

A lot of the religion debates nowadays quickly descend into "What is consciousness?" and "Where did matter come from?" and "How do you measure love?" because the average religious person knows that the evolution debate has been debated ad nauseum, a debate that the atheist will probably win. One new aspect of the evolution debate, however, is "God might have had a hand in evolution." but this can be quickly disarmed by pointing out that while it is true that God might have had a hand in evolution, but so could have any arbitrary god.

There's a common strategy in chess where the stronger player attempts to win through simple gameplay with no fancy maneuverings while the weaker player attempts to complicate the game as much as possible and hope for the stronger to make a mistake or to force a draw. As with chess, the religious side has shifted the debate from "Does God exist?" to "How did the universe begin?".

[Singular Intellect]

I actually don't own a copy of The God Delusion and have no particular plans to buy one.

Due to a mixup with the mailing service and book provider, I actually got two copies of the God Delusion, yet only paid for one.

Obviously I only need one, but I'd be happy to send you the other copy if you have some interest in reading it but no particular interest in buying it...