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! Dawkins isn't a fundamentalist but you can get fundamentalist atheists. Finished. |
Richard Dawkins - The God Delusion • Page 4
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generica 4,279 posts
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Shrimp wrote:
In a way, but it's also about being close-minded to other people's choices.
I'm with Amajiro here.
Isn't fundamentalism about literal interpretation of religious texts, or more generally about returning to the belief system of the early days of the religion?
Zealotry, intolerance maybe, but fundamentalism seems a wrong choice of word.
And to pretend that there aren't seroius writings about the (belief of) non-existance of God that help shape and guide people's beliefs does Atheism a great dis-service. It's not like most of the Christian fundamentalists (or Islamic, Hindu or whatever) only read their holy texts and that alone creates a religious fundamentalist.
Edited by disussedgenius at 12:09:40 19-10-2006 -
Genji 19,682 posts
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Registered 17 years agoYou can have your religion, or lack of religion, as long as you're not an arrogant asshole about it. -
Shinji 5,902 posts
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Registered 20 years agoThat Ship of Fools article is excellent - really nice response to the book.
That said, I enjoyed The God Delusion a lot. Sure, it's preaching to the choir - but it's bloody enjoyable to get a really intelligent, well-reasoned and forthright anti-theist viewpoint. Religious types can roll their eyes all they like, but as more and more of the world's events are dictated by religious fundamentalism - be it Christian or Islamic - the phenomenon of the angry athiest is going to become more and more common. Watching people bombing one another, cultivating hatred, tearing down civil liberties and shitting all over centuries of scientific progress and learning in arguments over who has the better imaginary friend is making blood boil among non-believers, and it's naive to expect that athiest or humanist people are going to remain quiet in religious debates forever.
I do object, however, to the "fundamentalist" label. It has all the wrong connotations. A religious fundamentalist will call for laws dictating how you can live your life, for punishment for disobeying their "God", or even for your death. An athiest "fundamentalist" just thinks you're a fucking idiot. The word "fundamentalist", which is associated for the most part with terrorists in modern media reporting, is pure religious spin when it is applied to people like Dawkins. -
jellyhead 24,355 posts
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p3rks 1,097 posts
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Registered 17 years agoIf he's a fundamentalist in anything, its in the belief in the priciple of science, and in the 'truth'.
and by that i dont mean he is devoted to the writings of a particular textbook or theory, but that, like all good scientists, he believes in the system of creating and testing theories about the way the universe works, and that this is the most likely way to the 'truth'.
Other people choose to believe in a god or religion. I for one can see why this gets his back up so much. I'm not saying i necessarily agree with the way he does things, but i do see his point and I know who'd i'd side with in a throw-down.
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pjmaybe 70,666 posts
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Registered 20 years agoHarry wrote:
Amajiro wrote:
Then I dispute your term. He may be bullish, opinionated, outspoken, dogmatic, poorly argued or whatever else you want to call him, but to call him a "fundie", thereby in some way placing him on the same level as religious fundamentalists is plain incorrect. Arguing strongly is not the same as blind adherence to codified fundamentals.
I completely disagree. Dawkins writings on religion are exactly fundie. You just have to put "lack of" before "faith" in his works to turn it into something you could expect from Fred Phelps.
But then I don't believe in Dawkins. I have never met him or seen him, apparently some writings claim to prove he exists - some fundie book that his followers try to bash people with. But as he's never made himself appear when I've called him I really don't think he exists..gif)
Urf...I saw him last week walking around the park outside my office with his missus...
Peej -
Genji 19,682 posts
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Registered 17 years agoAtheism, for that matter, worked fantastically well in the example of Soviet Russia and China's Cultural Revolution. Religion is poison? Well, then let's just burn down all the temples and kill anyone who tries to stop us! How enlightened are we?
People will always kill each other, religion or no religion. -
p3rks wrote:
He seems to have been tainted somewhat by having to argue his good scientific work against full-blown idiots. Understandable, but highly annoying when somebody so intelligent resorts to the sort of material I've read in the extracts, which are, quite frankly, margially better than your average EG post.
Other people choose to believe in a god or religion. I for one can see why this gets his back up so much. I'm not saying i necessarily agree with the way he does things, but i do see his point and I know who'd i'd side with in a throw-down. -
FairgroundTown 2,522 posts
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Registered 16 years agopjmaybe wrote:
Ahhh - but how do we know YOU exist. I reckon that Peej is just an alegory, created to satisfy our yearning to explain our existance in the face of a hostile environment.
Harry wrote:
Amajiro wrote:
Then I dispute your term. He may be bullish, opinionated, outspoken, dogmatic, poorly argued or whatever else you want to call him, but to call him a "fundie", thereby in some way placing him on the same level as religious fundamentalists is plain incorrect. Arguing strongly is not the same as blind adherence to codified fundamentals.
I completely disagree. Dawkins writings on religion are exactly fundie. You just have to put "lack of" before "faith" in his works to turn it into something you could expect from Fred Phelps.
But then I don't believe in Dawkins. I have never met him or seen him, apparently some writings claim to prove he exists - some fundie book that his followers try to bash people with. But as he's never made himself appear when I've called him I really don't think he exists.
Urf...I saw him last week walking around the park outside my office with his missus...
Peej
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pjmaybe wrote:
/burns peej
Urf...I saw him last week walking around the park outside my office with his missus...
Peej
Edited by disussedgenius at 12:19:51 19-10-2006 -
Genji 19,682 posts
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Registered 17 years agoNobody exists except me.
I love solipsism. -
pjmaybe 70,666 posts
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Registered 20 years agoFairgroundTown wrote:
pjmaybe wrote:
Ahhh - but how do we know YOU exist. I reckon that Peej is just an alegory, created to satisfy our yearning to explain our existance in the face of a hostile environment.
Harry wrote:
Amajiro wrote:
Then I dispute your term. He may be bullish, opinionated, outspoken, dogmatic, poorly argued or whatever else you want to call him, but to call him a "fundie", thereby in some way placing him on the same level as religious fundamentalists is plain incorrect. Arguing strongly is not the same as blind adherence to codified fundamentals.
I completely disagree. Dawkins writings on religion are exactly fundie. You just have to put "lack of" before "faith" in his works to turn it into something you could expect from Fred Phelps.
But then I don't believe in Dawkins. I have never met him or seen him, apparently some writings claim to prove he exists - some fundie book that his followers try to bash people with. But as he's never made himself appear when I've called him I really don't think he exists.
Urf...I saw him last week walking around the park outside my office with his missus...
Peej
I don't exist. I'm a collective of marketing execs who just hang out here to gauge opinions on games and gaming.
Peej -
p3rks 1,097 posts
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Registered 17 years agoGenji wrote:
Atheism, for that matter, worked fantastically well in the example of Soviet Russia and China's Cultural Revolution. Religion is poison? Well, then let's just burn down all the temples and kill anyone who tries to stop us! How enlightened are we?
People will always kill each other, religion or no religion.
Thats not about religion per se, thats about forcing people to believe in something, or nothing. That will always lead to unrest.
The issue isn't about people killing each other, money and land are the cause of all wars, they just dress them in religious garb to help the rhetoric. -
Shrimp 1,081 posts
Seen 13 years ago
Registered 17 years agoGenji wrote:
Nobody exists except me.
I love solipsism.
Oh snap! Don't make me pimp The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch again! There's a very good logical disprove of solipsism, and a follow up on how creationism and few other things are really just variations on that theme.
(I realise you probably weren't being serious, don't worry. If non-existent entities can worry.) -
FairgroundTown 2,522 posts
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Registered 16 years agoShinji wrote:
I disagree - it sets up a straw man all of its own - namely that "people do bad things in the name of religion, therefore God does not exist" - which is quite explicitly NOT what Dawkins is saying.
That Ship of Fools article is excellent - really nice response to the book.
And then it seems to say that because other people do good things in the name of religion, then God DOES exist???
Dawkins would (I'd guess) argue that Wilberforce acted because of his morality, not his religion, and that if he had been an athiest he would have done exactly the same thing, but justified it differently. After all, there are plenty of passages in the Bible supporting slavery - so why did Wilberforce pick the ones that were anti, rather than those that were pro - answer (says Dawkins) because his morality was coming from somewhere else, and his morality told him which bits to cherry-pick to justify his actions, to himself and to others. -
FairgroundTown wrote:
Isn't that the point? That Dawkins only alows religious examples to be made when they're negative.
He could just as easily say that the shitty people are only acting as such because their morality comes from somewhere else, the same as what made Wilberforce act good.
Edited by disussedgenius at 12:31:37 19-10-2006 -
Genji 19,682 posts
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Registered 17 years agop3rks wrote:
Like I said, I'm fine with anyone's religion, or no religion, as long as they don't act like complete idiots.
Genji wrote:
Atheism, for that matter, worked fantastically well in the example of Soviet Russia and China's Cultural Revolution. Religion is poison? Well, then let's just burn down all the temples and kill anyone who tries to stop us! How enlightened are we?
People will always kill each other, religion or no religion.
Thats not about religion per se, thats about forcing people to believe in something, or nothing. That will always lead to unrest.
The issue isn't about people killing each other, money and land are the cause of all wars, they just dress them in religious garb to help the rhetoric. -
warlockuk 19,519 posts
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Registered 17 years agoIt seems that the more people give reasoned responses as to why there isn't a god (or even if they're only specific about the Christian / Hebrew god) then the more the believers choose to stick their heads in the sand and shout lalalala.
Why don't Christians, as is often asked, believe in Flying Spaghetti Monster or Thor or Zeus or Ra?
If you take the Bible at a fundamental value you have to stick your head in the sand and go "lalalala" a lot of the time, otherwise the main source of your religion crumbles. Or so, as I say, it seems to me.
If you take Christianity on Faith, however - "I believe the Bible is a human document that is an article of faith and it's basic story is that God loves us" etc then you can't really refute the existence of other Gods and (being fair to the sexes here) Godesses.
Can the Christians here really give a good reason why they follow the Hebrew God and not the others? 'cos once you go down the path of Faith then you have to conceed that your arguments for your god apply to all other gods, and in order to believe in one god you'd have to accept most if not all gods as at least having an existence. Not that "existence" is the right word for an ineffable entity.
...if you can rationally have a reason not to believe in Zeus or Maat or whoever then you've already got a reason not to believe in God. -
I raise you one Babel Fish arguement!
Oh, and for the record, although I'm agnostic, from people I've talked to there is some kind of 'feeling' they encountered when praying to God/studying the Bible. In many ways rationality and logic doesn't come into it. I haven't experience this as of yet, which is why I'm agnostic. -
Lmao1!1 Harry is TeH RETardD¬!1
relax Harry, you're amongst friends.
I'd like to hear some stories...as all I really hear from the religion side is..."I got faith" and.."I feel him all around me, guiding me"
which is weak weak stuff....
Edited by Art_Vandelay at 13:18:29 19-10-2006 -
Ginger 7,256 posts
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Registered 19 years agoBill Door wrote:
Precisely why even Dawkins doesn't say "it is irrefutable, there is no God". He just says that it's bloody unlikely and there's no empirical evidence whatsover - in fact that there's plenty of evidence against it.
souljah wrote:
Bill Door wrote:
You have a belief there is no God. Easy
But I know there is no god. Just as I know that I if I close my eyes and open them again, Ghandi wont be standing in the room with an apple tart in his hand.
Not quite. The empirical evidence suggests Ghandi wont be there with an apple tart. In fact if you did it 1,000,000 times and Ghandi wasn't there, all you would prove is that in your experience Ghandi hasn't appeared. All it would take is one Ghandi appearance in a billion to make your assertion false
It's the basic problem with Scientific theory - you can never prove something absolutely, just beyond reasonable doubt.
edit: prooooooooooooove is not a real word...
Edited by Ginger at 13:25:34 19-10-2006 -
FairgroundTown 2,522 posts
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Registered 16 years agodisussedgenius wrote:
Well, IANRD (I Am Not Richard Dawkins) but... I think that is exactly the point - that religion can lead people to do bad things, but can't lead people to do good things. It wasn't religion which made Wilberforce good - it was morality. (And if religion DID lead people to do good things, then what does that say about humanity? that we are fundamentally evil, and only do good stuff because we are scared of being sent to hell!)
FairgroundTown wrote:
Isn't that the point? That Dawkins only alows religious examples to be made when they're negative.
He could just as easily say that the shitty people are only acting as such because their morality comes from somewhere else, the same as what made Wilberforce act good.
Edited by disussedgenius at 12:31:37 19-10-2006 -
Genji 19,682 posts
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Registered 17 years agoShrimp wrote:
No. You are the non-existent entity, here, as is Mr. Deutsch.
Genji wrote:
Nobody exists except me.
I love solipsism.
Oh snap! Don't make me pimp The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch again! There's a very good logical disprove of solipsism, and a follow up on how creationism and few other things are really just variations on that theme.
(I realise you probably weren't being serious, don't worry. If non-existent entities can worry.)
His logical disprove is yet another facet of my all-encompassing mind. You can't really have a logical argument against solipsism because, in the mind of the solipsist, the argument is just as non-existent as the person who makes it.
Like I said. Solipsism is great. -
I'm not getting into this argument.
I don't like solipsism seconds.
edit: insomniac spelling
Edited by Retroid at 13:33:59 19-10-2006 -
souljah 4,705 posts
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Registered 17 years agoBill Door wrote:
souljah wrote:
Bill Door wrote:
You have a belief there is no God. Easy
But I know there is no god. Just as I know that I if I close my eyes and open them again, Ghandi wont be standing in the room with an apple tart in his hand.
Not quite. The empirical evidence suggests Ghandi wont be there with an apple tart. In fact if you did it 1,000,000 times and Ghandi wasn't there, all you would prove is that in your experience Ghandi hasn't appeared. All it would take is one Ghandi appearance in a billion to make your assertion false
Sneaky bastard would probably appear when I'm taking a piss anyway.
Not wishing to sound like a Kant, but my knowledge about the non-appearence of Ghandi and the non-existance of a god is a priori - intuitive knowledge gained, ironically, much like a Buddha claims to gain the truth of reality.
In a very internal sense, this is knowledge, and it allows me to assert explicitly in the non-existance of a god. It is not a belief, more of a justified true belief, which for all extents and purposes is knowledge. -
warlockuk 19,519 posts
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Registered 17 years agoRetroid wrote:
I'm not getting into this arguement.
I don't like solipsism seconds.
And with that, the thread was won. -
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ProfessorLesser 19,693 posts
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Registered 17 years agoAre there any Cantabridgians here who actually went to see him speak on this last Tuesday?
I wanted to, but it was last-minute, and at £50 to join the Union he can frankly cram it :-/ -
souljah wrote:
ironically, much like a Buddha claims to gain the truth of reality.
/nitpick
Buddha is a single person, and enlightenment isn't a truth to reality in the same sense as you're using.
.gif)
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