Richard Dawkins

[Eulogy]

Originally Posted by Mooney

the fact that it is trendy now for non-religious lefties to become religion apologists because richard dawkins is 'annoying' is kind of sad.

Also this. He can be a pretty big ass though. I'd say it exceeds merely annoying.

[Bread Regal]

firstly no one in this thread has attributed the word "annoying" to dick dawkins. he and his ilk are, more or less, western imperialists. they claim to be anti-religion, but disproportionately emphasize the supposed inherent evils of islam, citing things like islamic extremism and sharia law or whatever. they ignore the fact that a huge amount of the arab world is desperately impoverished, and the perpetrators of this kind of violence very often come from chronically poor communities that are routinely shat upon. (gosh, doesn't that sound familiar).

they're capitalists. they're libertarians. they're western imperialists. they conveniently ignore the fact that the existence of islamists a symptom of endemic poverty, not islam itself. this attitude has a deleterious effect on the world community.

[Bread Regal]

that said, i love hitchens' work exposing the charlatanism of mother teresa. he was a clever and effective wordsmith whose talent could help bring down the people who prey on the meek. but the new atheists spend equal time belittling followers of islam, characterizing them as feeble-minded lemmings. again. not fucking helpful.

[MyOneAndOnly]

Originally Posted by Bread Regal

they're capitalists. they're libertarians. they're western imperialists. they conveniently ignore the fact that the existence of islamists a symptom of endemic poverty, not islam itself. this attitude has a deleterious effect on the world community.

that's an incredibly broad and generalization. It's true that Harris, Dawkins and Hitchens have railed against Islam. But they've each done the same regarding Christianity, and at great length. Dawkins's comments on Islam tend to get repeated more in media.

While Hitchens was a supporter of the Iraq and Afgan wars, to say that everybody who agrees to some extent with their critiques of religion is an Imperialist is simply crazy. I know a LOT of atheists and I cannot think of a single one who supports the type of militant "imperialism" that you're talking about. Within the atheist movement these type of wars are mostly regarded as pointless.

Where you're getting Libertarianism from, I have no idea. The modern Atheist and Skeptics movements have much more to owe to progressivism and traditional Liberalism than anything else. Especially in the United States.

IMO you're taking a couple of individuals who get a lot of media attention because they provide they provide good sound bites, and you're projecting their comments or behavior onto countless others. 90% of the time I agree with Dawkins and Harris. But the 10% of the time that I don't happens to be the fraction that others use to stereotype anybody who calls themself an anti theist

[Bread Regal]

shut up scotty

[Eulogy]

Originally Posted by Bread Regal

firstly no one in this thread has attributed the word "annoying" to dick dawkins. he and his ilk are, more or less, western imperialists. they claim to be anti-religion, but disproportionately emphasize the supposed inherent evils of islam, citing things like islamic extremism and sharia law or whatever. they ignore the fact that a huge amount of the arab world is desperately impoverished, and the perpetrators of this kind of violence very often come from chronically poor communities that are routinely shat upon. (gosh, doesn't that sound familiar).

they're capitalists. they're libertarians. they're western imperialists. they conveniently ignore the fact that the existence of islamists a symptom of endemic poverty, not islam itself. this attitude has a deleterious effect on the world community.

I honestly am not aware of where you're getting any of this.

[Eulogy]

I admittedly don't follow the outrage machine that follows them around though

[Bread Regal]

i used to be really into all those guys when i called myself a libertarian. i really don't feel like finding quotes because i'll be accused of cherry picking, and this would be like the fourth thread this week on the subject.

[MyOneAndOnly]

Originally Posted by Bread Regal

they ignore the fact that a huge amount of the arab world is desperately impoverished, and the perpetrators of this kind of violence very often come from chronically poor communities that are routinely shat upon. (gosh, doesn't that sound familiar).

So religion gets a free pass? Bullshit. Religion is used by people of all faiths to justify violence. And not just by the poor or persecuted. If someone kills 5000 people in the name of their god, then their religious beliefs are as much to blame as anything else that went into motivating them.

There weathy societies all over the world that have and continue to use religion to oppress people. Here in the United States Christianity was used to justify Slavery, Genocide and up to this day a whole host of other dispicable laws and social norms. For centuries Spain subjugated people all over the world, killing millions of indigenous people, in the name of Christianity. And other Europeans for the past 500 years have used their religion to the same ends.

Religion teaches people to avoid critical thinking and evidence based decision making, and for that alone it is dangerous and destructive. It's not the only horrible construct of human civilization, but it's one of the only things that gets a free pass when it comes time to assign blame.

If someone does something explicitly in the name of their religion or belief system I will take them at their word and criticize accordingly.

[Mayfuck]

Originally Posted by scottytheoneand

that's an incredibly broad and generalization. It's true that Harris, Dawkins and Hitchens have railed against Islam. But they've each done the same regarding Christianity, and at great length. Dawkins's comments on Islam tend to get repeated more in media.

While Hitchens was a supporter of the Iraq and Afgan wars, to say that everybody who agrees to some extent with their critiques of religion is an Imperialist is simply crazy. I know a LOT of atheists and I cannot think of a single one who supports the type of militant "imperialism" that you're talking about. Within the atheist movement these type of wars are mostly regarded as pointless.

Where you're getting Libertarianism from, I have no idea. The modern Atheist and Skeptics movements have much more to owe to progressivism and traditional Liberalism than anything else. Especially in the United States.

IMO you're taking a couple of individuals who get a lot of media attention because they provide they provide good sound bites, and you're projecting their comments or behavior onto countless others. 90% of the time I agree with Dawkins and Harris. But the 10% of the time that I don't happens to be the fraction that others use to stereotype anybody who calls themself an anti theist

New Atheists (which must be distinguished from any other type of atheism) may not always support military imperialism but they certainly support a cultural imperialism. The fact that you call atheism a "movement" is telling. What exactly is it's ideology, doctrine and praxis, then? The only thing I could think of is that it means one is an enemy of religion, and any movement that, at it's source, is against institution, hierarchy and collectivism has to be neoliberal--or libertarian or anarchist or however you wanna call it.

[Bread Regal]

Originally Posted by scottytheoneand

So religion gets a free pass? Bullshit. Religion is used by people of all faiths to justify violence. And not just by the poor or persecuted. If someone kills 5000 people in the name of their god, then their religious beliefs are as much to blame as anything else that went into motivating them.

There weathy societies all over the world that have and continue to use religion to oppress people. Here in the United States Christianity was used to justify Slavery, Genocide and up to this day a whole host of other dispicable laws and social norms. For centuries Spain subjugated people all over the world, killing millions of indigenous people, in the name of Christianity. And other Europeans for the past 500 years have used their religion to the same ends.

Religion teaches people to avoid critical thinking and evidence based decision making, and for that alone it is dangerous and destructive. It's not the only horrible construct of human civilization, but it's one of the only things that gets a free pass when it comes time to assign blame.

If someone does something explicitly in the name of their religion or belief system I will take them at their word and criticize accordingly.

i already told you to shut up.

[MyOneAndOnly]

Originally Posted by Bread Regal

i already told you to shut up.

Stop posting such nonsense and I won't have to respond.

[Eulogy]

Is it cultural imperialism to identify bad ideas as bad?

[Bread Regal]

here's a thought exercise: what good would it actually do to eradicate religion?

[Mayfuck]

Originally Posted by scottytheoneand

So religion gets a free pass? Bullshit. Religion is used by people of all faiths to justify violence. And not just by the poor or persecuted. If someone kills 5000 people in the name of their god, then their religious beliefs are as much to blame as anything else that went into motivating them.

There weathy societies all over the world that have and continue to use religion to oppress people. Here in the United States Christianity was used to justify Slavery, Genocide and up to this day a whole host of other dispicable laws and social norms. For centuries Spain subjugated people all over the world, killing millions of indigenous people, in the name of Christianity. And other Europeans for the past 500 years have used their religion to the same ends.

Religion teaches people to avoid critical thinking and evidence based decision making, and for that alone it is dangerous and destructive. It's not the only horrible construct of human civilization, but it's one of the only things that gets a free pass when it comes time to assign blame.

If someone does something explicitly in the name of their religion or belief system I will take them at their word and criticize accordingly.

Here is scotty's libertarianism in action: deconstruct and hide any system responsible for exploitation and atomize every issue to pander to his own lifestyle brand. In this instance, racism, capitalism, neoliberalism and the taking of land and execution of genocide in order to sustain those systems gets thrown out the window because "religion" made these things happen and if you're an atheist it feels much better to blame those things on "religion" rather than investigating one's own participation in exploitation.

Religion gets a free pass because it is an institution that fulfills the emotional and spiritual needs of humans that isn't fulfilled by any other institution of society. It's a fundamental unit of human organization, just like nation, law and government. It has a very necessary place in humanity so you're going to have deal with it in ways that aren't nihilistic if you support any type of progressivism that supports people.

[Dogfighter28]

i agree with the last paragraph mayfuck posted

i mean i'm sure a lot of you have parents that got really religious the closer they got (or are getting) to death. many people would lose grip on their mental health if they had to face their mortality without a magic jesus pill. why take that away from them?

of course its fine to maintain that there is plenty wrong with these religions and you can do that without telling people they are idiots

[Eulogy]

Originally Posted by Bread Regal

here's a thought exercise: what good would it actually do to eradicate religion?

Too much for me to get into.

I won't bother getting into why my personal experience tells me why it would be better because I'll just get dumb and dismissive remarks from Julio and probably trots and it's just not worth it.

Bad and evil things would still exist but the justification for them wouldn't be beyond reproach anymore. Ideas should be viewed critically. Always. Leftists these days seem to think that shouldn't apply to religious ideas specifically. It's bizarre.

[Eulogy]

I think I agree with his first paragraph but I think the second is dumb bullshit.

[Mayfuck]

This article really nails why I dislike Dawkins. It's not necessarily because he's a chauvinist, a bigot--you'll find these people in any movement--but that he's actually pretty stupid and has a glaring lack of self-awareness.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/1...ichard-dawkins

There are many difficulties in talk of memes, including how they are to be identified. Is Romanticism a meme? Is the idea of evolution itself a meme, jumping unbidden from brain to brain? My suspicion is that the entire “theory” amounts to not much more than a misplaced metaphor. The larger problem is that a meme-based Darwinian account of religion is at odds with Dawkins’s assault on religion as a type of intellectual error. If Darwinian evolution applies to religion, then religion must have some evolutionary value. But in that case there is a tension between naturalism (the study of humans and other animals as organisms in the natural world) and the rationalist belief that the human mind can rid itself of error and illusion through a process of critical reasoning. To be sure, Dawkins and those who think like him will object that evolutionary theory tells us how we got where we are, but does not preclude our taking charge of ourselves from here on. But who are “we”? In a passage from The Selfish Gene that Dawkins quotes in this memoir, he writes:

They are in you and me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence. They have come a long way, these replicators. Now they come by the name of genes, and we are their survival machines.

If we “are” survival machines, it is unclear how “we” can decide anything. The idea of free will, after all, comes from religion and not from science. Science may give us the unvarnished truth—or some of it—about our species. Part of that truth may prove to be that humans are not and can never be rational animals. Religion may be an illusion, but that does not mean science can dispel it. On the contrary, science may well show that religion cannot be eradicated from the human mind. Unsurprisingly, this is a possibility that Dawkins never explores.

[Bread Regal]

Originally Posted by Eulogy

Too much for me to get into.

I won't bother getting into why my personal experience tells me why it would be better because I'll just get dumb and dismissive remarks from Julio and probably trots and it's just not worth it.

Bad and evil things would still exist but the justification for them wouldn't be beyond reproach anymore. Ideas should be viewed critically. Always. Leftists these days seem to think that shouldn't apply to religious ideas specifically. It's bizarre.

I want to make it clear that I'm not trying to diminish your bad experiences with the church. They are totally legitimate. Nor am I saying that Catholicism should be exempt from criticism. But the Catholic church is as much of a social and political institution as any other secular organization in the world, many of which have the same problems as the Catholic church. Citing belief in a god as the source of the problems within the catholic church is a red herring.

It's not religion. It's the wealthy, powerful and influential attaining more wealth power and influence by whatever means possible. Just like the bankers, the politicians, the demagogues, the media etc.

[Eulogy]

Originally Posted by Bread Regal

I want to make it clear that I'm not trying to diminish your bad experiences with the church. They are totally legitimate. Nor am I saying that Catholicism should be exempt from criticism. But the Catholic church is as much of a social and political institution as any other secular organization in the world, many of which have the same problems as the Catholic church. Citing belief in a god as the source of the problems within the catholic church is a red herring.

It's not religion. It's the wealthy, powerful and influential attaining more wealth power and influence by whatever means possible. Just like the bankers, the politicians, the demagogues, the media etc.

It is absolutely religion. To say otherwise is just absolutely silly and, in my opinion, a knee jerk reaction to asshole new atheists that should be re-thought.

[Eulogy]

It's religion among many other things. Why you criticize all the other things while giving religion a free pass is beyond me.

[Bread Regal]

Then I guess we disagree on that.

[Eulogy]

Originally Posted by Bread Regal

Then I guess we disagree on that.

So just to stick with Catholicism in America

You don't think the religion has anything to do with anti-gay, anti-trans, anti-birth control policies and the religious justifications that make them appear "reasonable?"

You don't think the misogyny inherent in the practice of Catholicism has anything to do with the religion? This seems incredibly naive.

[Eulogy]

If all religions were like fuckin episcopalian or some shit I wouldn't bother having this discussion. But they aren't.

[Bread Regal]

Just as there are bankers who don't prey on poor black people by approving them for NINA mortgages, just as there are scientists who discovered penicillin instead of building the atom bomb, just as there are politicians who legitimately advocate for the disadvantaged, there are clergymen who do not abuse their influential role and actually use it help people. That's enough for me to see that the problem is with the ethically compromised and not the existence of religion itself.

One of Hitchens' oft-repeated quotes: “In the ordinary moral universe, the good will do the best they can, the worst will do the worst they can, but if you want to make good people do wicked things, you’ll need religion”. That is 100% horseshit.

[Eulogy]

Originally Posted by Bread Regal

Just as there are bankers who don't prey on poor black people by approving them for NINA mortgages, just as there are scientists who discovered penicillin instead of building the atom bomb, just as there are politicians who legitimately advocate for the disadvantaged, there are clergymen who do not abuse their influential role and actually use it help people. That's enough for me to see that the problem is with the ethically compromised and not the existence of religion itself.

One of Hitchens' oft-repeated quotes: “In the ordinary moral universe, the good will do the best they can, the worst will do the worst they can, but if you want to make good people do wicked things, you’ll need religion”. That is 100% horseshit.

What's with this conflation with religion in general and the specific bad things advocated by specific religions

"Not every religious person is terrible" is not a defense of religion.

[Eulogy]

Originally Posted by Eulogy

So just to stick with Catholicism in America

You don't think the religion has anything to do with anti-gay, anti-trans, anti-birth control policies and the religious justifications that make them appear "reasonable?"

You don't think the misogyny inherent in the practice of Catholicism has anything to do with the religion? This seems incredibly naive.

I would also like answers to these questions.

[Mooney]

guns don't kill people, people kill people. give guns to children.

[Bread Regal]

A lot of capitalists i've met cling to their ideology with more religious conviction than most christians theirs.

Pretty sure Omega Concern is irreligious, but that guy's full of poison ideas.