Quote of the Day (plus an argument against said quote, because Richard Dawkins is an ASS)

[edenfalling]

We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.
---Richard Dawkins



I resent some man who doesn't know me from Adam coming down from on high and telling me what my religious beliefs are, as if he knows them better than I do!

I am not atheistic about any god. I am agnostic about all of them. In fact, I have been known to swear thusly: "By all the gods that anyone ever held holy..." which tells you something about my attitude toward all views of the divine.

This is not to say that I believe in such gods in the way Dawkins means (and may I say he has a horrifically reductive view of religion? he's as bad as fundamentalists, just in the other direction!), but I am open to the possibility that they might exist -- it is, after all, impossible to prove a negative -- and I do believe that they were real to their adherents, in the same way that I believe all currently worshipped deities are real to their adherents.

(We can debate subjective vs. objective reality some other day.)

Anyway, I do try to respect everyone's religion or lack thereof, but holy fuck, sometimes people get my back up!

*spits in Dawkins's general direction*

Comments

[rurounitriv.livejournal.com]

Dawkins is a fundamentalist - he's just a science-fundamentalist instead of a religion-fundamentalist. (Although the people who are that strident about Science Uber Alles There Is No Spirit Only Science really are religious - it's just that their deity is the scientific method.)

[willowgreen.livejournal.com]

ITA. Dawkins is an ass.

[dameruth.livejournal.com]

Dawkins has done some really good work in science (at least in the sense of really getting great ideas out there -- he was one of the first people to popularize the concept of a "meme" among other things), but he really is a fundie.

FWIW, I personally really do think that everything in the Universe can be explained by science (not that I think we'll ever figure it all out; there's just to damn much of it), but that the realm of the spirit (if it exists -- agnostic, here, yo) is something *entirely separate* which, by definition, cannot be described by science. The physical Universe may or may not be connected to some form of the divine; I don't think we'll know for sure as long as we exist in the flesh and are part of the machinery. *shrugs* And, FWIW, I don't find that a "miserable way to experience the world," either, thanks. ;) There's plenty of room there for joy and wonder and all that jazz.

But Dawkins goes out of his way to be a gadfly for atheism, and that's as effing irritating to me as the folks who get out there and thump their fave holy text. He also tends to uphold the popular notion that all scientists are atheists, which they aren't.

Eh, I just try to ignore him, anymore.

[grikmeer.livejournal.com]

Technically, he is open to the possibility; He says he's 99.9% atheist. It's just that the evidence available is so infinitesimally small in his interpretation that he doesn't believe it necessary.

He's fundamentally a scientist. If new evidence (specifically falsifiable, repeatable and testable evidence) was discovered proving that a god, some gods or even all gods existed, he would accept it, as would I. Until then, I remain unconvinced.

[vehrec.livejournal.com]

A couple of things to point out about Dawkins. He's got a thing about agnostics in his writings, going so far as to basically call them fence sitters who are hindering the cause of Atheist recognition and letting religious people walk all over them. So when he says Atheist, there's a tiny little parenthetical (and agnostics) that he's leaving out there, because his definition of Atheist includes them. And he's an evolutionary biologist. Religion-any religion-has a cost associated with it in regards to the material world, even if it's just inside your own head. By definition, its an evolutionarily maladaptive trait, even before you get into tithes and time spent. He really does see it as a negative force. What you say is a religious response, he ascribes to the responses of brain chemistry and our basic early childhood learning behavior.

A word of warning: He comes off hard against the bringing up of children in religion in God Delusion and I know you teach Sunday School. I can't recall offhand what he says exactly and my copy is elsewhere, but he has fairly good reasons for it, based on the argument that kids are too young to know what they're getting into.

[uminohikari.livejournal.com]

Dawkins has a ridiculously reductive view of everything :| :| Not just religion--most of the stuff he advocates is reductionist