Dawkins and the perception of his current---

[Sibling Chatty]

well, to be honest, obsession.

http://www.alternet.org/movies/45388/?cID=395606#c395606

An Athiest Bullies the Faithful

Oxford University biologist Richard Dawkins reveals his fundamentalist approach to atheisim in his new documentary, The Root of All Evil.

HUGE number of responses to this article, too. It's provoked some interesting discussions.

[Vita Curator]

I wrote about Dawkins in another forum that I participate in, his fundamentalism has done nothing but furthered the cause of Creationism.  By his insistence that one must be an atheist to accept evolution, he is doing nothing to promote the teaching of evolutionary biology in the classroom, he is just pouring gasoline on a fire.  His words do nothing to tone down the war between those that accept the theory and facts of evolution and those that do not.  If someone whom believes in God is told, in order to accept evolution, you must deny the existence of God, which road do you think they will take?

It is not just my viewpoint; this is what other scientists say about Dawkins:

First, Dr. Owen Gingerich, professor of astronomy at Harvard: "In simultaneously defending evolution and insisting upon atheism, Dr. Dawkins probably single-handedly makes more converts to intelligent design than any of the leading intelligent design theorists."

Many scientists live a life where their faith and scientific method are compatible, this is what Lewis Wolpert, a biologist at University College London states: "We have to both respect, if we can, the beliefs of others, and accept the responsibility to try and change them if the evidence for them is weak or scientifically improbable."

"This is where the scientific method comes in. If scientists are prepared to state their hypotheses, describe how they tested them, lay out their data, explain how they analyze their data and the conclusions they draw from their analyses — then it should not matter if they pray to Zeus, Jehovah, the Tooth Fairy, or nobody."

"Their work will speak for itself."

And this is one of the reviews of "The God Delusion" from "Publishers Weekly", it appears as if even the reviewer is a little surprised at his intolerance:
From Publishers Weekly: "The anti-religion wars started by Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris will heat up even more with this salvo from celebrated Oxford biologist Dawkins. For a scientist who criticizes religion for its intolerance, Dawkins has written a surprisingly intolerant book, full of scorn for religion and those who believe. While Dawkins can be witty, even confirmed atheists who agree with his advocacy of science and vigorous rationalism may have trouble stomaching some of the rhetoric: the biblical Yahweh is "psychotic," Aquinas's proofs of God's existence are "fatuous" and religion generally is "nonsense." The most effective chapters are those in which Dawkins calms down, for instance, drawing on evolution to disprove the ideas behind intelligent design. In other chapters, he attempts to construct scientific scaffolding for atheism, such as using evolution again to rebut the notion that without God there can be no morality. He insists that religion is a divisive and oppressive force, but he is less convincing in arguing that the world would be better and more peaceful without it."

[goat starer]

I fundamentally agree with Dawkins on these issues but I do not quite understand his missionary zeal. To my mind faith is part of human societal evolution and I believe we will find less and less need for it as the gaps god lives in contract but I see little need to go around arguing against peoples faith because for evry bad thing religion may cause I can point to many good things it achieves. many of the people I respect most were driven to do the things they do by belief in 'supernatural' powers.

dawkins puts me in mind of Marx in that he appears to see an inevitability that reason will trump faith yet feels a need to campaign to bring about that shift. His scientific rationalism does not sit well with his atheist proslytisng to my mind and It can look petulent and undermines what are, I believe, the fundamental truths of his argument.

[beagle]

I think you and I largely agree on this one Goat (had to happen one day). Probably it's one of those USA/UK difference things.  The centre of gravity is so much nearer to atheism here that nothing he says seems particularly remarkable. On the other hand if he were to agree a collective vow of silence with the Archbishop of Canterbury, The Pope, and one or two mullahs, rabbis and evangelists then I wouldn't try and talk him out of it.

There's a Channel 4 documentary coming up called the "The Trouble with Atheism" which is sort of intended as a counter-blast to the "Trouble with Religion" type programs from Dawkins/Jonathon Miller etc.
Actually though the Telegraph reviewer of the preview tape seems to reckon the atheists came across as eminently reasonable.

Interestingly Both Jimmy Carter's book and Dawkin's are in the Newsnight Book Club. They can fight it out amongst themselves. (Incidentally there's a brief FSM mention in the interview with him). Jeremy Paxman is on good form "Why are you so wound up about the position of faith in our Society?".
The more religious might prefer the Jimmy Carter interview...

[Bluenose]

I have yet to read The God Delusion, but I must state that I fundamentally agree with Dawkins, based on other things he has written and said that I have come across.

It seems to me that many get very excited about Richard's position, perhaps because he does not talk around the main issue but attacks it head on.

Some criticise his approach as being particularly antagonistic towards religion, but I wonder whether that is entirely fair.  Take a look at what the rhetoric of some of those promoting the theist line is like (and I am not just talking about bible-bashing fundamentalists Christians here).

I wonder whether the main criticism is because it is recognised that the arguments Dawkins makes are logical and are rooted on first principles that make sense.  His arguments are a counter foil to much of the irrationality of the world and are seen as such.

Humans do not like having their fundamental assumptions about the world being challenged, especially if the challenger has the impertinence to use logic and reason and things that we realise, even if against our will, make sense.  This is why Richard Dawkins stirs up so much controversy IMHO.  Rightly or wrongly, he has decided that the way to fight fire is with a bit of fire of his own.

Finally I do not think it should be a surprise to anyone who thinks about it long enough that there should be a tension between science and religion.  At the end of the day they are both trying to do the same thing and that is to provide an explanation for those most basic questions - who are we, where did we come from, what does it all mean?

Science accepts that we do not have all the answers, but actively seeks to find them out and is prepared to change as more information comes to light.  Furthermore it is a self correcting system that faces the ultimate test - whether or not it matches with reality.  As time goes by there remains less and less to explain (although we keep finding more things we don't don't know).  Evolution provides a perfectly reasonable explanation for how we came to be here and one that fits all the known facts.  Cosmologist are grappling with questions about how the universe started.  Physicists are dealing with how everything works.  Mathematicians are learning basic principles that really deserve the title of ultimate truths.  No, we do not have all the answers, but then science never claims to be more than a work in progress.  There is a grandeur there, and one that I am afraid we have done precious little to bring to the common man.

Richard Dawkins has accepted the challenge of tackling the hold that religion has on the collective human consciousness.  He will not do that by being polite and talking quietly in the corner.  His opponents have the advantage of thousands of years of experience in manipulating people's minds and thought processes.  To have a hope in hell  of making any sort of inroad into that collective psyche, Dawkins has decided that he needs to confront the issue straight on.  If this is uncomfortable for many people, then perhaps that is a sign that Dawkins is, at least partially, achieving his goal.

Sibling Bluenose

[beagle]

He seems to be in a long tradition of atheist intellectuals to me. Bertrand Russell's "Why I am not a Christian" and (more tangentially) Jacob Bronowski's "Ascent of Man" spring to mind.

Perhaps his crime is to have grasped the tenets of marketing but given that the church had a captive audience for its views and doctrines for centuries, it seems pushing it a bit to resent a few books and TV appearances from the opposition.

[Griffin NoName]

Science accepts that we do not have all the answers, but actively seeks to find them out and is prepared to change as more information comes to light.  ..........
  No, we do not have all the answers, but then science never claims to be more than a work in progress.  There is a grandeur there, and one that I am afraid we have done precious little to bring to the common man.

Interesting. Is religion a work in progress or not? My first thought was it's not. But along the lines of faith can move mountains, maybe some would say it is.

I admire Dawkins. I do not myself attack anyone's religion, but it is nonetheless often a relief to read and hear Dawkins. Personally I find the feeding into the hands of the ID brigade spurious. To me, it's like saying don't denounce Hitler because it will just inflame the Holocaust deniers.

To the "man in the street" I don't think it makes a jot of difference what Scientists say and the average person I meet doesn't have views on ID or even know what it is and they switch off completely when anything scientific is mentioned. To me that is more of a problem. (Maybe this is one of those "UK" perspectives. It also reflects my impoverished current social situation. But I do think the issue of population stats matters. It is daunting when one realises that for most purposes oneself and offspring fall into 5% of the population). I suppose getting to the point, I am pleased when scientists make enough noise to be noticed. If there needs to be an adjustment to any religious belief through rationalisation, I dont believe it's going to be accomplished by being meek and mild. (Does humble have to be meek and mild?).

I would also point out that most of the people "quoted" are either jewish or jewish defaulted. Now that's interesting !


Edit Oh and Beagle thanks for the C4 tip - might have missed that as 8pm only indicates Holby City or The Bill in my limited vision....

Edit.edit I am always puzzled by my ability to muddle Richard Dawkins with Andrea Dworkin, whom Lord Morgan of Glossop, the 84-year-old peer, famously told to shut up and shave. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Dworkin

[Sibling Chatty]

Hmmm, Vita and I, both persons of faith, are not seeing that tension.

Bluenose:Finally I do not think it should be a surprise to anyone who thinks about it long enough that there should be a tension between science and religion.  At the end of the day they are both trying to do the same thing and that is to provide an explanation for those most basic questions - who are we, where did we come from, what does it all mean?

And while it's true that there have been athiests/nonbelievers saying similar things all along, it somehow makes it a little more difficult to try to bring the fundamentalist religionists to a less confrontational state when they're hearing themselves being attacked by Dawkins, Sam Harris and the Brights (sorry Bob, but the Brights may say they're all about nicely being independent of dogma, but they're also the ones calling faith superstition and so on).

Mr. Dawkins and Mr. Harris and a number of other people that follow them have just called me names. No matter how much I DO believe implicitly that scientific progress is vital, that religion should NOT impede science (morality should--cloning comes to mind immediately) and that the insinuation of religion into schools, the workplace, etc. is wrong...i'm still irrational.

Faith, in his universe, is interchangeable with superstition, eccentricity, madness, and, at its most benign, infantilism. Religious conviction is a marker of human backwardness, both in a historical and psychological sense. According to Dawkins, human beings invented religion as a "crutch" for ignorance. Without science to help us understand the world around us, we turned to gods/faith/superstition to cope with our sense of helplessness. Today, religion remains a source of succor to those unable to outgrow their childish desire to see the world in terms of "black and white, as a battle between good and evil" -- unlike atheists who are "responsible adults and accept that life is complex."

So, i'm mad, infantile and ignorant.

Thanks for the vote of confidence, y'all.

[Griffin NoName]

So, i'm mad, infantile and ignorant.

Thanks for the vote of confidence, y'all.

Um. Free speech. It's Dawkins views. Why should there be an expectation that all scientists should not be as vocal as the fundamental religious? Ok, you don't like/agree with them; it's fine not to like/agree with Dawkins.

I manage to be an atheist jew. I'm sure many find that mad, infantile and ignorant. Also impossible, silly, and odd.

[goat starer]

I am certainly mad, infantile and ignorant. It has nothing to do with my atheism. I simply am all of those things and many more besides.

I understand Chattys feeling that Dawkins is calling her names. Even if he is right that faith is analagous with superstition and derives from ignorance that should not lead to the opinion that people with faith are ignorant and foolish by virtue of holding those opinions. It is certainly true that science will throw up some big suprises in the future. I am personally pretty sure that God is not going to be one of them but it is a legitimate point of view to believe that it will be. People come to faith by many routes and labelling vast parts of the human race as ignoreant does not seem to me to be a step towards a brighter future.

The argument against the existence of God for me has very little to do with physics and everything to do with anthropology. I believe qyuite firmly that I can see in human social history and the evolution of the human brain everything that is needed for the invention of a god. I also believe that I can see why this would be a necessary part of human evolution. Therefore my first  assumption is that this is how a concept of God arose. I also believe that this hypothesis is bourne out by all the available evidence in terms of religious mutability and inconsistency and the progress of scientific explanation. For me (and presumably for Dawkins) it sometimes feels like I have seen something blindingly obvious that the rest of the world seems oblivious to and at that point I can see his evangelisng in context.......

.....BUT......

every time I start thinking like this I realise that the many religious people I know also feel that they have seen something blindingly obvious that I seem oblivious to and at that point I have to concede that even my fairly militant atheism cant exclude that possibility altogether.

[beagle]

There's an interview with him in the Telegraph today which explains his different views on "types" of religious people. Along with (I think it's chapter 8 ) of his book it also sort of explains why he is so "evangelical" about atheism. His view is that events like the crusades, 9/11, London Transport 7/7 bombs and so forth are directly attributable to religion, and that to say otherwise is just intellectual dishonesty and political correctness. Now you may not necessarily totally agree with that, but it explains his forthrightness. I've seen other investigations saying suicide bombings etc are due to material causes like instinctive territorial behaviour and resentment to invasion and so forth. His rejoinder to that appears to be that it takes the added element of religion to push people into that extra step of suicide that has made terrorism so much more formidable.

Incidentally his book points out you can't prove a  negative about the non-existence of God, and he admits to having had some superstitions himself in the Telegraph interview.

[goat starer]

Dawkins interview or no Dawkins interview I am not falling for your transparent attempt to get me to read the Telegraph!

[beagle]

If Marx could use the British Museum Reading Room then you can read the Telegraph. Undermine the system from within; much more fun. Boris Johnson has been doing it for years.

[goat starer]

The British museum is fairly marxist. They get all their books for free and let anyone use it for free. But I take your point (and the sport section is better than any of the other broadsheets but dont tell anyone I said so!)

[Vita Curator]

Hmmm, Vita and I, both persons of faith, are not seeing that tension.

So, i'm mad, infantile and ignorant.

Chatty.........


I have read interviews with Dawkins where he states that even though he used to always insert the very tiny article "a" before "bright" to insure that the word was used as a noun, he had hoped for the inevitable transition from noun to adjective.  This is quoted from an interview:

"Of course, even though we brights will scrupulously insist that our word is a noun, if it catches on it is likely to follow gay and eventually re-emerge as a new adjective. And when that happens, who knows, we may finally get a bright president."


You are a very well read person Chatty so you probably have read this book, but on the slim chance that you have not, I highly recommend to you a book by Dr. Francis Collins (the director of The Human Genome Project), The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence For Belief.


Dr Collins is an absolutely brilliant scientist and his book is well worth reading.  He also takes Dawkins to task over the word "bright" and states that it was coined (even though Dawkins denies it) to imply that people of faith are "dim".  Let me know if you have not read it, I'll send you a copy for Christmas (a bit belated though).