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Reading this summer
Jackie Blue:
Anyone who can so much as spell "sociology" knows that people can be moral without religion. "Addressing" topics like that only further the point that Dawkins is a pop-culture hack, not someone who writes serious, informed arguments.
The "emperor has no clothes" rebuttal is not brilliant, it's flip and completely beside the point, of interest only to the choir he preaches to.
I dare anyone who likes Dawkins to actually outline anything in his books that they didn't already know or believe before reading them.
Lines:
If you're talking about morals in religion or anything to do with religion, you have to understand different aspects of the religions you want to talk about before people take you seriously. It's like having a person who's never studied psychology arguing with a psychologist about whether or not Multiple Personality Disorder exists. (Which actually is, or at least was, a real debate about whether or not doctors/patients were making it up.) Besides, apologetics of all kinds can be useful if you're interested in those sorts of topics.
Surgoshan:
--- Quote from: zerodrone on 08 Jun 2008, 13:27 ---Anyone who can so much as spell "sociology" knows that people can be moral without religion. "Addressing" topics like that only further the point that Dawkins is a pop-culture hack, not someone who writes serious, informed arguments.
--- End quote ---
I've had conversations with otherwise quite intelligent and well-read people who earnestly believed that morality could not be separated from religion and that atheists were necessarily immoral. It's a topic that needs to be brought to general attention. It's why more than half the American populace will still not vote for an atheist for public office.
--- Quote ---The "emperor has no clothes" rebuttal is not brilliant, it's flip and completely beside the point, of interest only to the choir he preaches to.
--- End quote ---
It's not flip, though it may be dismissive. The very first paragraph of the linked article accuses Dawkins of gross ignorance. I will, once again, quote from the article that the "emperor has no clothes" rebuttal in fact rebuts.
--- Quote ---What, one wonders, are Dawkins’s views on the epistemological differences between Aquinas and Duns Scotus? Has he read Eriugena on subjectivity, Rahner on grace or Moltmann on hope? Has he even heard of them?
--- End quote ---
Now I'll go ahead and explain for you what the rebuttal meant. If you're talking about the existence of God, who gives a good god damn about the epistemological differences between Aquinas and Duns Scotus? The subjectivity of Eriugena, the grace of Rahner, or the hope of Moltmann are all also equally not the point. It's like insisting that someone learn all about different types of shoes, about the materials from which one could make shoes, and the different uses of shoes before he's allowed to point out that there isn't a pair of shoes in the middle of the floor.
The author of the linked review also, apparently, either didn't read Dawkins's book fully or else he didn't understand it. One of the points Dawkins made was that if you have a god who makes an appreciable and continuing difference in the universe (say, through miracles) then you must have an observable god. Effect and cause are linked. He then goes on to describe the rebuttals of contemporary theologians, with whom Dawkins has many discussions on these subjects, and they are almost uniformally a retreat into defined nonexistence. In short, they necessarily define god in such a way that there is no difference between a god who exists and one who does not. He lets the point stand for itself.
--- Quote ---I dare anyone who likes Dawkins to actually outline anything in his books that they didn't already know or believe before reading them.
--- End quote ---
He convinced me not to be an apatheist, not to be an apologist who believes in belief. He convinced me that religion is more harmful than not. He also made me aware of a number of arguments and issues I'd not been previously aware of, such as labeling children as being of a religion.
Ikrik:
Wow, I never expected that me saying I was reading The God Delusion during the summer would be such a big deal. I'm already an athiest so the guy isn't converting me but I have read a hundred pages or so and he does make some amazing arguments. My mom, however, turned me into an athiest way before Dawkins could ever find me. Dawkins is a smart guy, no matter what anyone says, and it takes a guy with a lot of guts to stand up to religion and to take all the heat that this guy has taken, and he does defend himself quite well.
october1983:
--- Quote from: Ikrik on 08 Jun 2008, 16:04 ---Dawkins is a smart guy, no matter what anyone says, and it takes a guy with a lot of guts to stand up to religion and to take all the heat that this guy has taken, and he does defend himself quite well.
--- End quote ---
Yeah, and I'm sure the piles of cash he's made in the process are a massive burden, too.
edit: What I mean to say here is that, regardless of how valid his arguments are, I don't think it's really fair to portray him as a particularly brave man - he's an astute businessman, and the controversial point he has made has been fairly calculated in terms of drawing attention to himself, which serves both to get his argument noticed, and to sell a lot of books.
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