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

[edenfalling]

Three points. First, if you cannot be polite to the people you are directly addressing, I will ban you. This is not negotiable. (Given that I have been insulting Dawkins throughout the initial post and comment threads, you may or may not get away with being rude to people who are not participants in the conversation, depending on my mood and how hard I am trying to be fair. *grin*)

Second, I think part of the problem here is that you are looking at religion as if it is a pseudo-science, which must have specific tenets that must be logical and provable (or disprovable). This is a faulty assumption. Yes, some religions have some aspects that are psuedo-scientific, but that is far from the only element of religion, and disproving those specific claims does not invalidate religion in general.

Third, if everything is sacred, then everything is sacred. This is not a difficult idea. It means that everything matters. Everything is worthy of consideration and respect. That is not at all the same as saying that nothing is important or worthy of respect. Yes, of course it is impossible to give specific attention to every aspect of the universe within the finite boundaries of a human life and human mind. That doesn't mean the effort is not worthwhile, or that we can't give consideration in general.

Let me make an analogy: You cannot possibly personally understand every aspect of every science; does that therefore mean that you shouldn't try to understand any science? I think you would agree that that is a silly argument. To me, the argument sounds equally silly when you apply it to religion.