Did any of you godless heathens attend the Reason rally (which has nothing to do with glibertarian wankers and everything to do with atheism) this weekend? Here is the Richard Dawkins speech:
I had no idea Eddie Izzard was an atheist.
This post is in: Religion
Did any of you godless heathens attend the Reason rally (which has nothing to do with glibertarian wankers and everything to do with atheism) this weekend? Here is the Richard Dawkins speech:
I had no idea Eddie Izzard was an atheist.
Comments are closed.
natthedem
Additionally, I’d recommend checking out Sunday’s episode of “Up With Chris Hayes,” which was almost entirely devoted to talking about atheism.
TooManyJens
Didn’t make it the rally, and not a big fan of Dawkins. However, I can second the recommendation for the “Up With Chris Hayes” panel.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
i’m not godless i am god-free, now with a third less calories.
TooManyJens
Didn’t make it to the rally, and not a big fan of Dawkins. However, I can second the recommendation for the “Up With Chris Hayes” panel.
Bruce S
Richard Dawkins was on Chris Hayes yesterday and he comes off as a Jehovah’s Witness of atheism. Pretty much just an arrogant jerk who thinks he’s got all of the answers. We really need more of those.
TooManyJens
Didn’t make it to the rally, and not a big fan of Dawkins. However, I can second the recommendation for the “Up With Chris Hayes” panel.
schrodinger's cat
I am not religious, I am agnostic. I have heard Dawkins speak, he is as smug as any religious fundie. Not the epitome of reason, I would say.
Warren Terra
Nearly all the A-list British comedians and comic writers (offhand, Stephen Fry, John Cleese, and nearly everyone who regularly appears on BBC Radio 4) are outspoken Atheists or Humanists (and many contribute to annual Christmas-season shows called “Lessons and Carols for Godless People”, or to a book that came out of the shows). Milton Jones is the only exception that springs rapidly to mind.
Bruce S
Richard Dawkins was on Chris Hayes yesterday and he comes off as a Jehovah’s Witness of atheism. Pretty much just an arrogant jerk who thinks he’s got all of the answers. We really need more of those. Actually suggested that Catholic politicians should be interrogated about “transubstantiation.” A perfect example of someone who thinks he’s uber-smart, but is outrageously idiotic at a certain basic level.
(oops sorry for the double post – it looked like the comment wasn’t loading and in the interval I decided to pile on Dawkins a bit more.)
quannlace
But fantastic makeup!
Martin
TooManyJens posts ThreeManyTimes.
Handy
You didn’t know Eddie Izzard was an atheist? He looks just like one . . .(jk)
Comrade Mary
Is Max Headroom running the server?
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
about 20k there? good for them but I can’t stand richard dawkins.
geg6
Didn’t go, but I would like to have. Dawkins is arrogant but I did love his book.
And I’d like to be another giving a shoutout to Sunday’s Up with Chris Hayes. All atheist panel, yo! Great discussion. Best discussion show on tv, maybe ever. Consistently. Though I could do without Ezra filling in when Chris is off. I like him even less than I did before I saw him filling in last weekend. Not nearly as smart or interesting as Chris Hayes and a very poor substitute.
wrb
Dawkins has way more fundie faith that I can muster.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
Izzard does a LOT of stuff on religion, questioning it.
o/` Blasphemyyyyyy, Blashphe-youuuuuu…Blasphe-everybody in the rooooooom! o/`
schrodinger's cat
@Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937: Atheists need a new poster boy, some one more like say Ellen.
James Hulsey
Unfortunately, I couldn’t make the 16-hour jaunt to D.C.
As for Dawkins, he is great for preaching to the choir and I like listening to him, but as for convincing theists, he is terrible because he has absolutely zero insight into the believers’ mindset.
I also lost a lot of respect for him after ElevatorGate, and his absolute refusal to believe he could be wrong.
Studly Pantload, the emotionally unavailable unicorn
Big fan of Dawkings, but not when it comes to his position on people’s faiths, and I say that as one who is fairly godless (if there is a “someone up there,” I wouldn’t know who specifically to direct my prayers or virgin sacrifices to, and wouldn’t expect anything for the effort). Religion, like any human invention, can be used for good or evil (the secular kind of evil), and when religion is used for evil, it’s more of a misappropriation, anyway, to justify bad behavior that would probably go on even without the religious figleaf.
Besides, our propensity for religion seems to be fairly hardwired into the brains of most humans — people risk their lives and die for their freedom to worship, for Pete’s sake. Attacking another person’s sense of what is innate isn’t going to win a lot of friends and converts. It would be like me, as a vegetarian, going around and getting in omnivores’ faces about how evil their diet makes them; I’d expect a fair number of people to order a second Double Whopper out of spite.
TooManyJens
WTF. Sorry about the multi-posting. I did refresh to see if it had posted before trying again, but for some reason it didn’t show up.
James Hulsey
@geg6:
Now if we can only get atheists on other talk show panels.
The Other Chuck
I’m very much a “hard atheist”, I say positively there is no god, that religion is a corrosive force, et cetera et cetera. Richard Dawkins is spot on in everything he says. But he’s still a complete asshole.
Comrade Javamanphil
@Bruce S: Jehovah’s Witnesses canvased my neighborhood last Monday. In an odd coincidence, the Middle School was closed for parent teacher conferences so lots of kids between the ages of 12-14 were home alone. The depth of my loathing for those assholes is Cthulhu-ian.
LanceThruster
Have read good and not so good Dawkins views, but I think he exemplifies the frustration with irrationalists in that burden of proof is on them.
They spout so much unsupported nonsense and get a pass. As an atheist, I’m constantly steamed about “IN GOD WE TRUST” on the money because either it is a boldfaced lie (something their invisible sky daddy supposedly frowns on), or it does not include me as a US citizen (who has zero faith in any god or gods).
There’s nothing so personal a choice as a belief in the supernatural, and nothing more clear that the govt should have zero say in.
James Hulsey
@schrodinger’s cat:
How about Todd Stiefel? (http://www.stiefelfreethoughtfoundation.org/about.html)
donnah
I have a good friend with whom I can discuss both religion AND politics, so I consider myself lucky. I’m an atheist and she’s Catholic, but she’s at a point in her life at age 68 where she is questioning exactly why she still follows her religion.
She’s disgusted with the politics of the Catholic church, she feels like a hypocrite when she attends Mass, and she says the main reason she is still active in her church is just for the sense of continuity in her life. She just doesn’t have the conviction that she used to.
I told her that I never felt like I belonged or believed in my family’s religion and eventually came to realize that I had to let that part of my life go. But I told her that I understand how difficult it must be for her to leave it behind. She says that she will probably never walk away from it because of her history, but she doesn’t believe it can ever be the same.
I think a lot of people are questioning their religion. I don’t have a problem with anyone practicing whatever belief system they choose, but they have no right to demand that it be in my government or school system.
It’s refreshing to see a rally for Reason. I had begun to wonder if such a thing still existed.
Violet
@geg6:
I think Ezra is better in print than on TV. I’ve seen him fill in for someone in the afternoon/evening and he seems like he’s a kid wearing a grown man’s suit. Just not quite up to the job.
Templar-ish
Dawkins critique to the origins of Mormonism on “Up”, where spot on.
I actually laughed out load.
TooManyJens
@Violet: I find him adorable, but I can see where “adorable” is not what people are necessarily looking for in a political pundit.
SectarianSofa
I’m a fan of godless heathens. Also, hippies. Where these two intertwingle, there shall I be, playing my lute-dances, basking in the society of small particles, etc., et al..
I guess I don’t care much about Dawkins. Seems a very earnest fellow, though ; well-respected and credentialed. I understand he has written a number of books that sell well-enough to bookshelf-havers. If that’s what the troops need for entertainment, so be it.
Wish there were fewer asshole alpha-libertard types in the atheist action committees. (I am completely broad-brushing this, but I’m going by Internuttery, as seen on Popular Blogs.)
Egg Berry
Ricky Gervais is also an atheist, and i believe he did a whole comedy special about the topic. You can see some of it on the utube.
SectarianSofa
@Violet:
Ezra does come across as awfully young on the TV, but I figured taking him seriously or not was my problem.
Litlebritdifrnt
“If there was a God don’t you think he would have flicked Hitler’s head off” Eddie Izzard
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=E5KvGS_wT_4
Violet
@TooManyJens:
Yeah, he’s got some kind of “cute, lost, kid” appeal so I can see people finding him adorable. I think he’s really smart, but not the best on TV. Maybe better as a panelist than as a host.
James E. Powell
Why do so many people consider Dawkins to be an asshole? He may come off smug, but so do most people who write or appear on TV. I mean, it’s not George Will’s condescension that makes him an asshole, it’s what he says.
gaz
Eddie Izzard is cool by me.
Dawkins is a moron and a douchebag. Always has been. And doesn’t properly understand the concept of FALSIFIABILITY. He’s no scientist.
/$0.02
SectarianSofa
@schrodinger’s cat:
Word. Ellen would be good. Pretty sure Oprah is not in the running.
Coca Leaves & Pearls
I’ts quit amusing to watch people bag on Dawkins. Everyone seems to dislike his “smugness” and “arrogance”. They refuse to actually engage his points, and say that he’s shrill and unserious instead.
But if you actually read what he has written and said, the basic premise is that religious beliefs shouldn’t be given deference or respect that wouldn’t be given to other identities like sports fandom, political affiliation, neighbourhood and so forth.
But yeah, at the “Reason Rally” I think it’s fair game to point out the ridiculousness of magic wafers and magic wine that turns into the body and blood of a 2000-year old magician zombie who is also his own father, and had to suffer torture and execution to save humanity from his own decision to punish humanity because a talking snake was too convincing thousands of years before. But this person and himself/his father didn’t actually have to suffer to redeem humanity because he is also an immortal omnipotent totalitiarian mindreader who loves you and could have just snapped his fingers to reverse the punishment anyway.
If this is coming across as too smug or too arrogant, I suggest you retire to the fainting couch.
You can freely claim to believe all the above ideas are true and be respected as a leader, a scholar, a great thinker, a potential president, but if you don’t believe them then you are smug.
scav
Oh dear, I don’t know if this argues for or against the existence of any gods, just or no, possessed of sense(s) of humo(u)r or not, but I think my OT NewsCorp obsession may very well spawn a few more inquiries named after Tolkein characters.
gaz
@Coca Leaves & Pearls:
” They refuse to actually engage his points”
I’ll bite:
First of all, I have no general problem with atheism.
Second, I have no problem with science.
Dawkins does not clearly understand that his position as an atheist is simply NOT BACKED UP BY SCIENCE. He claims it is. That position is offensive to anyone who actually devoted some time to understanding science properly.
The reason it’s not backed up by science (even if he is “correct”, hypothetically) is that science does not define a way to prove or disprove something that is not subject to the scientific method.
Maybe the odds are on his side. But that’s a statistician’s game, not hard science.
He’s a douche for his attitude. And he’s an idiot for claiming expertise in a field where he clearly has none.
Redshift
I know several people who were there. I’m nonreligious, but as with many other things, I’m not particularly interested in being involved with a movement about it.
SectarianSofa
@gaz:
You claims are non-falsifiable, as far as I can tell.
Anyway, this is relevant to what? His standing as a scientist doesn’t matter as far as his arguments, per se.
ExurbanMom
Totally off topic, but the left-justified text is beautiful to read. Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for the fabulous tech goddesses who program this joint.
the Conster (f/k/a Cat Lady)
Also recommending Up. What a smart show, but all of you that are dogging Dawkins – really? Wouldn’t we all be better off if he and his smug “ilk” were on every fucking bobblehead panel? Can you imagine him one on one with David Gregory? No, you can’t because it would never. happen. Isn’t that what we want to see on our Tee Vee – a confident, know it all atheist pushing back against the sea of teatard theocratic stoopid? He was a total breath of smug fresh air, and I’m so grateful that they didn’t “balance” him with Tony Perkins. Go Richard Dawkins and Chris Hayes!
gaz
@SectarianSofa: Ignoring the first half of your post (because it was ridiculous):
Dawkins claims his position is supported by science. He’s wrong on that point. Offensively so (IMO).
So – yes it matters. When he makes an argument – and it’s WRONG, it does in fact, matter, “per se”
Templar-ish
@SectarianSofa: You cant argue against “Faith”.
gaz
@the Conster (f/k/a Cat Lady): As long as we’re wishing, I’d rather see Eddie Izzard on one of those panels =)
The Other Chuck
@gaz: I believe that would be a “Cake or Death Panel”
WyldPirate
Dawkins is going to be at Ft. Bragg on Mar. 31st. Seems like the Army has some atheists infecting their foxholes that are agitating for recognition by the military.
Phyllis
I was there for about twenty minutes. I don’t know who was speaking, but he led us in the Pledge of Allegience sans the ‘ under God’ part, and characterized it as the Pledge that defeated fascism in WWII. Thought that was pretty cool.
SectarianSofa
@gaz:
Being a scientist or not does not have a bearing on truth-value of claims. Even if they claims that are best adjudged in the realm of science, empirical evidence, etc.. Those claims may be crap, as you have asserted. Or not. Just yelling ‘not a scientist!’ is just an ad hominem.
I was trying to see what you were getting at, but you seem to be more interested in being a smug, arrogant, douche.
WereBear
@donnah: Mr WereBear’s paternal grandmother was part Native American and raised in a Catholic orphanage.
She was already in her 90’s when we came over for our mostly-weekly visits, and she announced, “Those nuns lied to me!”
She went independent from there.
gaz
@Templar-ish: Since some of you seem particularly slow:
As long as Dawkins perpetuates misunderstandings about science to support *his* faith I’ll continue to “bag on him”.
He deserves it. Not because he’s an atheist. Because he’s using faith based reasoning to support his atheism and laying claim to supposed science to support his faith based assumptions.
He’s no better than your average intelligent design moron in my book.
Is there part of this you don’t understand? Should I go ahead and explain the scientific method in this thread, and why you cannot apply it to atheism, christianity, islam, etc… ?
Or are you able to keep up?
SectarianSofa
@Templar-ish:
I’m not following you, re. ‘faith’. But I am on board with making fun of it (as you highlighted in your earlier mention of Scientology-mocking).
Bruce S
I have to say that I get a mite amused when watching discussions like the one between “all atheists” on Chris Hayes yesterday. Mostly these folks are quite reasonably put off by religious fundamentalists who the majority of the religious folks I know also find repulsive, intrusive and in many cases dangerous to the body politic. I could care less whether these folks believe in some variation of the God concept, but I found a number of the assertions to be silly. The young black woman struck me as particularly out of touch on the question of the value of the black church and religious faith within the black community. There was nothing even approaching nuance in her pronouncements. Hers was not a particularly well-informed perspective IMHO.
Most of the panel was quite reasonable, but it wasn’t really challenging from my perspective beyond the obvious problems with fundamentalists dragging their retrograde social views into politics with a vengeance. And a key point is that when polls use “white evangelicals” to prove something about religious belief, it’s obvious that it’s actually proving far more about race, probably intertwined to some extent with class, because theologically conservative blacks or even Hispanics polled on identical questions will often have diametrically opposite views to “white evangelicals.” Less so on “social issues” but dramatically so on economics and “partisan politics.”
There wasn’t much in this discussion that we haven’t heard a thousand times before. I don’t think we can in some absolute sense “keep religion out of politics” because we can’t keep people’s values or foundational beliefs from impacting their political choices. I also believe that fundamentalism of any stripe – although religious fundamentalism is the most prevalent dogmatic mindset – is a measure of some combination of anxiety-levels as well as authoritarian impulses. I don’t see much difference in terms of damage between some Ayn Rand libertarian crank thinking that “Objectivism” absolutely proves we should end Medicaid or some witless Biblical literalist using Leviticus to brand gay people as mired in evil. Crap beliefs are crap beliefs.
And note that, frankly, some of the most effective progressive leaders in our history have been figures rooted in religion. (It was somewhat disingenuous, incidentally, to claim Abraham Lincoln as an implied non-believer. He was a modernist for his time, but clearly profoundly influenced by his reading of the Bible. As example, Steven Pinker’s book title.)
In any country with a high percentage of active people of faith, you’re going to get both the good and the bad argued out in those terms. It’s just a fact. How could it not be? (The most overtly progressive, populist figure who ever ran on a major party presidential ticket was a religious traditionalist who adhered to a “left” version of Christian social ethics. He eventually went off the deep end and is now mostly remembered as a crusader against evolution. But fear of psuedo-scientific eugenics and social darwinist reductions that were very real at the time were the primary drivers behind William Jennings Bryan’s reaction against evolutionary theory in general. It’s easy to lampoon some of these tensions without acknowledging context.)
Personally, I think that liberal Christians are better armed to counter some of this reactionary fundamentlist bullshit than a bloodless character like Richard Dawkins or, god forbid, the posturing of a jackass like Christopher Hitchens – whose superior reasoning powers failed miserably when it came to the most critical foreign policy issue during his tenure in the US.
One of the most telling comments in the Chris Hayes discussion was from the woman who noted that there aren’t really any inspirational figures among public non-believers. Their rhetoric tends to be sterile and the entire project strikes many of us as cramped and bloodless. And, frankly, most of what atheists tend to object to, in terms of religious zealotry and bigotry, liberal people of faith object to just as much if not more.
SectarianSofa
@gaz:
Try whatever you like, gaz. Your reading comprehension leaves something to be desired, so I doubt your explanatory chops will be much better.
Egg Berry
If there was a god, she’d give us back the “Recent Comments” section and next/previous post links at the bottom of the comments. Just sayin’
mem from somerville
I attended. I was delighted to find out that there was a whole group of allies on stem cell research, evolution, women’s health, and gay rights that I didn’t realize before. I came in via the science skeptics more than via the religious ones, and wasn’t fully connected to the atheist community before.
But mostly I went to see Tim Minchin, who really does amazing stuff. And anyone who will sing the Pope song on the Mall is about the wildest human on the planet….
WyldPirate
@gaz:
Dawkins is definitely a scientist and he knows damned good and well his views on the existence of gods falls outside the realm of falsification as science is practiced. He simply finds the idea of gods absurd; much like a comparative vertebrate anatomist would find the proposition of pigs flying absurd.
WereBear
I hope Recent Comments come back; but I have no faith that they will.
I love the new look of the blog; this is not a complaint.
Just wanted to point out that “religion” is a dogma-riddled set of rules which tends to ossify in terrible and anti-humanitarian ways, devolving to a system of control that benefits only those at the top of a hierarchal pyramid.
While “spirituality” is what we are truly hard-wired for; and when science tailors an experience properly; we get some support for its existence.
I know which side I lean towards.
Litlebritdifrnt
As for Dawkins he made a really good point about Romney on the show on Sunday, I am paraphrasing but he basically said “if you are telling me that the candidate for POTUS believes that some guy found some tablets in the desert and translated them by finding a book given to him by an Angel named Moroni…” I don’t remember the whole rant but it was brilliant.
Never mind it is here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPI0ooykcbQ
Calouste
@Warren Terra:
That’s not really surprising, in Western Europe, atheism is the largest “religion”. The percentage of people that go to a church/mosque/temple every week is in single digits.
SectarianSofa
@WyldPirate:
Have I not been paying attention, and ‘gaz’ is a well-known troll?
Gaz seems to be saying that Dawkins’ entire argument boils down to ‘Science is X, therefore, Atheism.’
gaz
@WyldPirate: When he comes up with a test for his hypothesis that there is no god, let me know.
Of course, first he’d have to define the god. Is it a manifestation of some sort of CAS? is it sentient? monolithic?
second, he’d have to devise some sort of way to observably measure it. Either directly by observation (I’d love to see his tools!), or indirectly (like they do by “hacking” HUP in QuantPhys)
Good luck with all that.
Until then, the only real scientific stance one can make about “god” is that we do not have the tools or information to determine any of this, scientifically.
SectarianSofa
@gaz:
You haven’t actually read Dawkins, have you?
gaz
@SectarianSofa: If I hadn’t,I wouldn’t have a problem with him. Care to elaborate?
(I thought not)
Bruce S
gaz is essentially saying that for anyone to claim that scientific knowledge is evidence that concepts of god are meaningless or “wrong” is a category error. It is fine for a scientist to assert that his scientific knowledge leads him in the direction of atheism. But that’s a personal belief. Dawkins understanding of religion – based on his characterizations and straw-man reductions – isn’t impressive. Not even a little bit. (Note – I haven’t read his book, but base on the interviews I’ve seen, it’s clear there’s no reason to if the issue at hand is his perspective on religion. I’m sure he’s a competent scientist in his field and would read a book of his that stuck to that if I were interested in such. He came across on Chris Hayes show as a bit of a moron on the topic at hand, frankly. Even Hayes was laughing at some of his notions.)
SectarianSofa
@gaz:
What would you like me to elaborate on? I was guessing you hadn’t read Dawkins, based on your monomania with regard to a single bad argument you have a quibble with.
gaz
@SectarianSofa: Only fair I should warn: work beckons, I’ll be off of the thread for awhile.
Collin
@Bruce S: Not to credit Richard Dawkins, but transubstantiation actually is a big problem, and not just in Christianity. The other obvious example is homeopathy, but there more that aren’t usually called such: American history, financial data, nutrition charts, etc. It’s not just absurd; it’s Albigensian.
(Yeah, I just called the Catholic Communion Albigensian. So sue me.)
Chuck Butcher
I find it quite impossible to separate atheism from any other religion/faith. It uses the same kinds of arguements in its case that religions do and has the same kind of disdain for other faiths. If you’re going to use the word “Reason” in your approach you would be better served by espousing agnosticism, but I understand that’s too faint hearted an approach. Pointing out the various shortcomings of religions scarcely adresses the non/existence of a god, it does have a lot to do with constructions put together by humans. I don’t have a dog in this fight, I find quarrels over faith to be silly but I do find the injection of science into it offensive since it isn’t subject to that method by any tools at our hands. Further, to blame faiths for the behaviors of greed heads and power seekers and the gullible bigots who follow them paints with an entirely too broad a brush. Other tools – fear – are just as available and used as frequently.
As for the intrusion of “In God We Trust” and other claptrap, I’m entirely sympathetic to doing away with such nonsense.
gaz
@SectarianSofa: That single bad argument underpins HIS WHOLE RATIONALE.
And he uses it like a cudgel to label other people as stupid.
And he’s WRONG about it. How much more of an ass does he have to be?
SectarianSofa
@Bruce S:
When I first encountered Dawkins, it was in the ‘the selfish gene’ days. He didn’t strike me as dumb or unscientific. I accept that people are probably correct when they characterize him as arrogant and unfair. I figure that’s just his shtick.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@gaz: Hey gaz. It’s fine that you don’t like Dawkins. But have you read “The God Delusion”? It seems to me that he addresses your criticisms in great detail there.
..
Google has a link to a PDF of the book (396 pages) if you don’t want to give any money to him… ;-)
..
Either way, could you point to some specific statement that he has made that you disagree with? It’s hard to agree with you or defend Dawkins if you don’t say, specifically, what he has said or done that riles you up so.
..
Thanks.
..
Cheers,
Scott.
(Who added the .. paragraph breaks as they seem to be wonky at the moment.)
WyldPirate
@SectarianSofa:
I don’t know if he’s a troll or not. It doesn’t matter to me as I try to judge folks comments on the content of each argument.
That said, I think gaz is offended by the surety of Dawkins’ argument. In the strictist sense, gaz has a point as the supernatural is outside of the realm of methodological naturalism and falsification. One can’t falsify something that defies the laws of nature as we know them. My point to gaz up the thread was that we can eliminate things with a high degree of certainty based upon the lack of evidence and the preposturous nature of the claims underlying the of the supposed “phenomena”.
It’s an “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” situation.
scav
@Collin: Sue you? I’d have to understand you first. What do the Cathars have to do with homeopathy, American history and financial data?
gaz
@Chuck Butcher: I agree with the thrust of what you said – the part about not separating atheism from other faith based belief systems – intellectually.
I have nothing wrong with faith. Blind faith is offensive and dangerous, though. No matter what side of the corroded coin you argue.
Bruce S
Collin – I don’t believe in transubstantiation. I’m not a Catholic. It’s not an issue for me, although I do observe the ritual of communion for reasons that have nothing to do with “magic” as some would have it. What’s absurd in the Dawkins interview is the idea that one would interrogate politicians on matters of theology or that the fact of being an observant Catholic who may accept in some form the Church’s traditional doctrines is disqualifying from them being an effective leader in the political realm. Frankly, that struck me as about as stupid an approach to both religion and politics as one could find. Rick Santorum levels of stupid.
SectarianSofa
@gaz:
Yes, so I agree that’s obnoxious. It’s also counterproductive, as far as getting his message out. But his role seems to be more of a preach to the choir kind of guy.
The Other Chuck
@Chuck Butcher:
Atheism is as much a religion as not collecting stamps is a hobby.
Bruce S
Sectarian Sofa – it’s quite obvious to me that there are major areas of his expertise where I’m certain that Dawkins is not dumb or ill-informed but probably quite brilliant. Where he goes off the rails is when he discusses religion in the public sphere. Also his understanding of religion, as I get it from his interviews, is about as primitive as the folks who undoubtedly most get on his nerves. They are welcome to debate each other until the cows come home. Or not.
wrb
Emerson & Goethe had this figured out in the 19th century.
__
Various Buddhists and Sufis earlier.
__
Dawkins is illiterate.
__
God beings: highly dubious
__
World containing mysteries worthy of the term “sacred” that are not understood by
science: observable.
__
If science has figured out 50% of reality, wonderful.
__
But that doesn’t we should superstitiously deny the evidence for the remaining 50%
until science has provided a mechanistic explanation.
Jeffro
I would have gone, but I was busy at Shamrockfest just across town…the Dropkick Murphys anytime in March are a good idea!
Bruce S
“preach to the choir kind of guy”
I like that almost as much as Pinker’s book title being about “angels.”
WyldPirate
@gaz:
Dawkins’ whole point is that the concept of gods is a.) Ludicrous and b.) Doesn’t merit being discussed as something that is falsifiable. Moreover, he makes an extremely strong case that religion is a dangerous idea that has infected societies for millenia and that it is comical that rationale beings employ reason and science to solve our problems, yet set aside these useful attributes when it comes to belief in cloud-riding sky daddies.
SectarianSofa
@WyldPirate:
Sure. I was being a wiseass initially when suggesting Dawkins’ membership in or out of the ‘moron’ or ‘douche’ categories was non-falsifiable. I don’t actually know the contents of his beliefs, or the mechanics of his brain, or his intentions (be they fixed, changing moment to moment, etc. — but I assume these things are not really testable. I just thought the whole idea of trashing him offhand based on the non-arguments I had seen was a bit comical.
Martin
@gaz: You’re assuming too much. Not only are you assuming that there is a God and demanding the nonbelievers prove otherwise, which is kind of stupid. We don’t assume that Bigfoot exists and then ask the skeptics to prove otherwise.
But you’re also assuming that God is indistinguishable from our ability to observe, which is equally silly. If your assertion is that God is equivalent to reality in all contexts, then there is no God. All you’ve done is redefine reality. In order for the God question to be in any way interesting, there has to be at least some point that we can see a deviation in reality – a glitch in the matrix, if you would. We would need to observe a miracle, which is why the Church is so enamored and protective of miracles. They understand that such deviations from reality are necessary in the proof of God, and if you can document a deviation from reality, you can measure it. So measure it, and tell us your results.
MikeJ
@The Other Chuck:
Let me know when there are mass rallies to not collect stamps.
Andrey
@wrb: I’d be interested to hear at least one example of your “sacred” mysteries that are not understood by science.
DFH no.6
@gaz:
Bullshit.
Atheism is very much backed up by science.
Proven to be true, as in “science proves there is no god”? Of course not. Likely never happen.
But backed up, as in “science provides an ever-growing host of natural explanations for things previously explicable only by supernatural truth-claims”? Absolutely.
The need to have some supernatural (some god or set of gods or devil or set of devils) explanation for various aspects of reality that mystified and/or terrified our forebears has been continuously abrogated by the advance of science.
Not that many phenomena (like, say, tsunamis) aren’t just as terrifying today. We just have much better, if still imperfect, natural (scientific) explanations for them, compared to “Mighty Cthulhu, in His wrath, did it”.
God has become the “god of the gaps”, and those gaps keep getting smaller (because of science). To the point where it seems most unlikely that some gap is hiding Him somehow.
Giving strong back up to the concept that the supernatural agent(s) claimed by many to exist do not, actually, exist.
There’s a reason the majority of scientists are atheists (hint: it has to do with the science).
gaz
@SectarianSofa: I’m cool with him as far as that goes. Insomuch as he’s pointing out problems with people’s belief systems, I’m fine with that.
If he’d stop there, I’d have no beef.
Apparently I’m stoopid because I can find the value in making room for faith in my own life. Or that I’m willfully ignorant for deciding that faith in itself has intrinsic value to many people.
That’s where I find him to be repugnant from a faith based standpoint. That I can even let go.
When he actually involves science in his claims, I just wow. It’s simultaneously mean and dumb, and he should have a tall frosty of STFU. Bill Maher does this too but at least he doesn’t claim to be scientific about it.
So yeah – I’ve got a beef with the guy. He’s a public figure, and I’ll say so when he comes up.
I hope this finally sorts out where I stand on him. I’m really not saying atheism=bad. I’m saying atheism is not empirical), and certainly doesn’t give anyone any sort of intellectual high ground with which to beat people of faith over the head. And I also think Dawkins tends to do this. Maybe not all the time, but too much. It’s not scientific, so that also makes it hypocritical – in my view.
Martin
@MikeJ:
Every Sunday from Sept to February in stadiums across the US.
Scamp Dog
@WereBear: I thought that “Spirituality” was the marketing upgrade, invented because the term “religion” had acquired a bad rap. :)
Andrey
@gaz: It seems you have a problem with the idea that lack of evidence of God(s) leads to atheistic conclusions. Your opposing point is that it is entirely possible for God(s) to exist without leaving visible evidence in the world. And this is technically true, but it is irrelevant because the vast majority of people who say “I believe in God(s)” are not saying that; their belief is defined specifically in those things that would and should leave evidence. They believe, for example, that prayer can cause a supernal being to have an actual effect on the world. They believe that there are actual relics of saints, prophets, etc. They believe that various supernatural entities exist(ed) and left an imprint on the world. In other words, they are making implicit predictions, and those predictions can be falsified. Your argument for why Dawkins is wrong will be relevant when you can demonstrate that most people claiming a religious belief actually abide by the “God(s) with no evidence” version of that belief, and not the currently-widespread “immediate and detectable impact” version.
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
Science cannot tell us where the gleam in Mona Lisa’s eye comes from, and neither can atheism. And that is where the spiritual begins and it doesn’t need a name unless you want to give it one.
Bruce S
“Atheism is as much a religion as not collecting stamps is a hobby.”
Generically true, but if one starts an “Anti-Philatelic Society” questions do arise.
(oops – I see that Mike beat me to the punch.)
Chuck Butcher
@gaz:
I don’t argue any side of this coin, I find it silly to claim to know something on the basis of proof when none exists and the arguement devolves into faith. My sister claims I’m going to hell because I’m not a Christian, and her proof is… Atheisist state that there is no god, and their proof is… I’m mildly deistic to the extent I can make it work with my best understanding of good, and I give a damn whether anyone else believes that since it is something I put together to work for me. It probably amounts to some synthesis of a whole lot of others’ thoughts on the matter.
I cannot figure out why the non-existence of a god is important, I don’t regard the sun rising in the east of any particular import other than being able to find east. I don’t find the lack of an elephant in my living room to be of any particular importance though I’d admit to being disturbed by ones presence.
Being offended by religious intrustion into governance is another story altogether and has nothing to do with whether a god exists or not.
Many atheists I’ve known when pushed on the issue turn out to be agnostics, they’ve simply misapplied a label. My best thinking had me an agnostic for many years and I’ve moved a very little off that.
Peter
@Andrey: I think a lot more people believe in ‘evidenceless’ (I’d rather say non-evidence-dependent, myself) religion than you think.
wrb
@Andrey:
Science’s understanding of consciousness and love, and how consciousness and love, are shared and communicable between species far apart in the evolutionary structure remains cartoonishly simplistic compared to that of great writers, poets and artists.
It typically relies on superstition, superstition that requires one to dismiss observed connection as that anathema, “anthropomorphism.”
It is also evidenced by the incoherence that collapsed architecture once faith was lost in the belief in the ability to perceive wholes that were beyond mechanistic expression.
And of course, music.
How does the study of wave characteristics result in the solo that breaks your heart?
Does science really understand this, or is it a Santorum bullshitting a case for the faith it wants to believe?
El Cid
@Chuck Butcher: Making a non-theist presumption — that there is no evidence for the existence of magic, whether that be minor magics or spirits or supreme beings — is not “weak” in my view.
I suppose it sounds somehow stronger to say that there is definitely no “god” or single Universal magic intelligence, and that you can prove it, but that’s really not the sort of thing I should face any need to prove.
There’s a conflict, of course — it’s hard to come up with reason- & evidenced-based methods of seeking information upon something which most of the time is presumed to be demonstrable only by arguments outside that of empirical and ordinarily rational discourse.
Of course, even allowing for the potential existence of some sort of magic being or beings ostensibly outside or beyond measurable reality says absolutely nothing about the nature of such a hypothetical being or set of beings.
And that is what’s involved when people discuss whether or not there is “a God”, because then they’ve already created a desired functional definition of what that magic-based organism is like, the parameters of its existence, the nature of its activities and intelligence, and so forth.
It’s interesting to me that people so frequently unify the question of whether or not there could be some sort of life or actions currently in the “magic” or “not demonstrable in ordinary reality” category with the question of whether or not such a being or beings are analogous with common human notions of a ‘supreme’ and unified intelligence capable of creating reality and governing it in some sense, including being cognisant of human thought moment by moment.
These are actually two completely separate questions.
So given that I don’t really have a reason yet to push for that first level question of whether or not to presume the existence of a being or beings outside ordinarily demonstrable or analyzeable reality, I certainly don’t see why it would be “stronger” for me to exert myself to “disprove” that the second level question of the existence not only of a magic-situated and contextualized being or beings but its or their ability to control the nature of reality in methods currently in the category of magic.
And I sure as heck wouldn’t then think it incumbent upon anyone to obligate themselves to then “disprove” the third level which is that that/those presumably existing magic being or beings are “Godlike” in the Creator / Monitoring My Thoughts sense.
Overall it’s a fairly uninteresting set of questions to me, particularly given the vanishingly small amount of evidence for the existence of magic, much less a god or gods, much less a complete creator and controller of reality. It’d be awesomely interesting if something arose which really began indicating in that direction, though.
In any case, I’m pretty sure that if there is one, “he” would need to be mature enough to be beyond giving a shit about my “belief” in its existence, and surely he/she/it/they has/have better things to do.
And if not, then he’s a fucking putz or asshole, and fuck him anyway.
So I don’t think the “atheist” position is necessarily stronger than the “non-theist” position, as long as both are adhering to the same notion of how it is you delineate the knowable and the unknowable, the reasonable and the non-reasonable, the empirical and the non-empirical.
I just don’t see how it’s my responsibility to “disprove” something which is a ludicrously silly presumption in the first place, and surely the position which would need to be overwhelmingly “proven” first before any need to “disprove” would come into play.
WyldPirate
@Martin:
Good points, Martin.
The whole “prove there is no god” argument really sticks in my craw. People who say that sort of shit simply don’t understand how science works.
Science doesn’t actually prove anything; the theories supporting observed phenomena have simply have failed to be falsified by the rigorous collection of data (the facts if you will) and testing of hypotheses.
Any phenomenon that can’t be falsified simply isn’t science.
WyldPirate
@General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero):
It has a name and it’s epistemology.
Bruce S
Seems that – contra an assertion above – more scientists embrace some variation on a god-concept, higher power, or some such than not.
http://www.pewforum.org/Science-and-Bioethics/Scientists-and-Belief.aspx
Proves nothing, other than what some scientists believe in a realm that has little or nothing to do with science.
Incidentally, it’s my observation that the primary outcome of modern science is production of tangible experiences akin to “magic” for the first time ever in human history. Also explanations of our “materiality” that are utterly mysterious.
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
It is always fascinating to see human beings rotating on a big rock, whirling madly through the infinity of space, declaring it is and can only be explained as scientific happenstance deduced from the tiny sponge betwixt their ears.
WereBear
@Scamp Dog: I don’t think so.
Spirituality is acknowledging that we have a soul; bottom line and that’s all. The good ways of exploring that start getting into quantum mechanics and known abilities of the human mind.
Believe me; I fled religion. And still do. There’s all the difference in the world. But see; religion sometimes, inadvertently, trips the “spiritual” switch.
And then people have trouble letting go of it.
bootsy
I was there. It was definitely pretty cool seeing how many people were there… don’t believe any bs saying it was 1000… I would bet that when I first got there ’round 1, it would’ve been more like 8000. (I’m not so great with estimates, but I know what a 1000 people look like, and it was several more).
Was a pretty good time despite the rain, though I really should’ve checked the schedule more closely, as I really wanted to see at least PZ Myers and maybe Dawkins talk. Before I semi-bailed I mostly got Tim Minchin (semi-funny atheist piano guy, I mean he’s funny enough I suppose) and Jamie Kilstein (pretty good comedian I think). Then I came back and saw Professor Greg and Bad Religion.
Edited to add: Love the emphasis on diversity, since the stereotype of the atheist seems to be the white scientist man. The conscious choice to upend that did my heart good. At this point, despite being a white dude, I start to get uncomfortable being in a crowd of 95% whites — I think to myself, can you believe a majority of these dipshits voted for McCain?
Studly Pantload, the emotionally unavailable unicorn
@Martin:
“We would need to observe a miracle, which is why the Church is so enamored and protective of miracles.”
This may be tangential to your point, but I’ll charge ahead, anyhoo.
The way I see it, even if there exists no god, or if such a being exists, if it’s active involvement in physical matters was over after the initial creation, our universe is so vast, “miracles” *must* happen.
I see it that way owing to the sheer size and scope of the knowable universe, estimated as so vast, and featuring so very many permutations of matter and circumstance, that there is a statistical probability – an inevitability, even – that a mirror Earth exists, with mirror “you”s and “me”s and “everyone else”s, and that each of our mirror selves speak the same languages and share the same memories as we do, as impossible sounding as that may be.
A universe so large that circumstances and outcomes that cold be adjudged as having a million-to-one or even a billion-to-one odds of occurring are, in fact, quite commonplace on the grand scale.
And so, I expect that wildly improbable things will happen thither and yon that will seem miraculous because of the unlikelihood of any one of us experiencing them. I expect to have (and actually have had) the occasional dreams that will uncannily predict the future or reflect events occurring that I should have no knowledge of. People will buy two million-dollar-winner lottery tickets in one lifetime. The crippled will rise and walk after turning for the first time in their lives to prayer. The image of The Blessed Virgin will appear on toast. The Mets will win a World Series.
I *expect* these things to randomly happen, not because a supreme being is gaming the system, but because by the nature of vastness of the universe, these things must happen at some time, to some individual.
Hope that makes sense.
Chuck Butcher
@El Cid:
Look, you don’t believe in a magical being which is fine. The problem starts to get down to what we do think is reasonable. The “Big Bang” seems to work out from observable evidence but the problem comes with before that event. Once you get to the “something just was” point of it you’ve landed yourself in the same position that the god folks are in – ie: something just was.
I don’t have an answer for “just was” and it presents a problem for anyone in the dispute. It is a mistake to take theologies for a definition of a god, particularly since there doesn’t seem to be much agreement amongst them. The evidence seems to be pretty sketchy about the thing that preceded the Big Bang which becomes essentially “magical” in its assumption. The perjoritive “magical” starts to fall apart given the limits of what we know.
Peter
@WyldPirate: I can’t think of the last time I’ve seen a religiously minded person say ‘prove God doesn’t exist’ except in response to somebody else dragging Science into the matter of religion where it doesn’t belong.
You’re right that science has nothing to say on non-falsifiable claims such as the existence of God. This is also the exact point people are making when they say ‘prove that god doesn’t exist’.
trex
@Werebear
This is a profound observation. How humanity is able to come to terms with this truth will largely dictate its future.
David Koch
Funny, you would think the Koch Bros would try to wrap their corporate fascism in a religious cloth.
I guess they hate that hippie socialzt Jesus so much they don’t even want to co-opt him.
Nutella
@wrb:
Architecture collapsed?
__
You’re going to have to come up with a more coherent argument if you want to convince anyone of your position. Whatever it is.
KSE
@Andrey: Seconding this comment, was just about to post this myself. This untestable, immaterial/all-encompassing god only seems to show up when atheists start asking pointed and impolite questions. But as soon as they leave the room, it turns out what most religious people believe in is a very physical god indeed – one that can raise the dead, heal the sick, bring forth the rains, one that visits divine retribution upon people and nations alike (all-too-frequently based on what they do with their genitalia). That is a god that is subject to investigation.
Richard Feynman had some observations along the same lines long before Dawkins echoed them in the God Delusion – if these things work, well let’s do some science, and get them to work better! What a boon that would be! If prayer can heal the sick, well, let’s investigate that – does it matter how many people pray, do they have to pray a certain way, does it matter if it’s a man or woman doing the praying, do you get better results if you pray towards the west or north-by-northeast… And if you consistently come up with the result that it doesn’t matter how you pray, or whether you pray at all, well that doesn’t disprove god… but it does leave advocates for faith healing with something they ought to be compelled to explain.
Ultimately it’s about the undue respect granted to faith in this culture. Say that you feel that gay sex is wrong and ought to be outlawed because thinking about it makes you feel icky, and you’ll get laughed out of the room. But say that it’s against your religious beliefs and suddenly you’ve got a seat at the policy table.
El Cid
@Chuck Butcher:
This isn’t a problem for rationality / empiricism. It’s a question we can’t answer. (Or let’s just assume that for the moment we’re unable to do so satisfactorily.)
What you then have is a question you cannot answer. You’re in the same “position” that people desiring to invoke answers outside ‘scientific’ (i.e., reasoned and empirical) approaches are, but you choose to admit that you cannot answer the question rather than granting yourself permission to resort to magical answers.
Further, that second approach is lazy. Just because a question is difficult, or seemingly impossible, you don’t get to suddenly declare that you’re willing to stop looking for some reasonable answer and leap without justification to a magic-based answer.
Why is it someone would imagining positing Godly intervention before the Big Bang / Inflation is somehow an answer?
That they have done some sort of intellectual work, or task?
No such thing has been done — it’s not an argument, it’s an invocation (literally) that since the question seems too hard and cannot yet be solved, a leap to assuming a magical intervention is justified.
People apparently hate the idea that we have fundamental questions of our existence that we cannot answer; that somehow it’s wrong to admit we have no answers and often no known path to a reasonable answer.
That admission is strength. It’s telling yourself that though you desperately want an answer, you’re not giving yourself permission to be lazy, to give up, to leap for an unjustified “thing” which sounds like an answer but just postpones the question.
After all, how is proposing some sort of magical being’s role in the Universe answering the question of the Universe’s creation? You haven’t answered it, you’ve just re-encapsulated the question in the imagined figure of the, well, Deus ex machina.
Now you’ve just moved the “I don’t know and can’t explain” bit one step to the side — because somehow people are more comfortable positing the role of an impossible and unknowable magic Universe-creating God, but not so the beginning of a Universe without such a readily-available, cheap, unproven, lazily grasped pseudo-answer.
“I don’t know” and “We don’t yet know how we can answer that” are not cowardly or weak statements, as long as they really reflect best efforts.
El Cid
@General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero): It’s always fascinating to see those same people using that sponge to say that an invisible magic being must have done it all, because their sponge tells them that any other answer strikes their sponge as ridiculous.
bootsy
More proof that there is no God: Found this while googling for an Obama Hoodie to buy (maybe he never had any? I probably should just go to his official site)…
.
http://lamecherry.blogspot.com/2012/03/obamas-hoodie-terrorists.html
.
.
Note: I’m the one who did the censoring in the above quote. Yep, it’s that bad.
Chuck Butcher
@KSE:
Arguing theology is not the same thing as talking about the existence of a god. The Greek pantheon doesn’t seem to have many defenders here, but it is as useful to posit the non-existence of a god by attacking that as any current theology. This thread doesn’t seem to have much going on with Christians stepping up to the plate on the basis of their theology.
WyldPirate
@Peter:
You obviously haven’t bumped into enough fundamentalist Christians nor ever tried to have a conversation with one who’s explanation for the diversity of life on earth is “Goddidit”. These same folks are similarly deluded in thinking that Genesis-based Creationism is science and should be taught in schools as science.
Try paying attention…
El Cid
@Chuck Butcher:
I think they’re awesome! I like the Greek pantheon because their nature as emotion- and pettiness-driven assholes aren’t obscured or washed over. They’re a group of total fucking pricks with occasionally decent moments who happen to have magic superpowers. In other words, lots of human traits in recognizable archetypes, plus bad-ass magic!
WyldPirate
@KSE:
Their God is a movable goalpost. How very convenient.
Chuck Butcher
@WyldPirate:
So the stupidity of some religionists has something to do with atheism? So I should judge atheism on the basis of the arrogance and vehemence of some atheists?
jake the snake
@WereBear:
What is a soul? If you say it is the collection of experiences, prejudices, memories, emotions, etc. that make is each what we are, then I can agree with you. If you say it is some non-material thing that exists after our body dies, then I can’t agree with you. Consciousness is an amazing thing, but that does not mean it is not a bio-chemical process.
I personally don’t think that there is a deity or at least anything a religious person would recognize as one. If there is a central tenet to my agnosticism, it is that, if there is a creator/deity/whatever, we are all very likely wrong about its nature.
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
@El Cid:
I said no such thing. And don’t have a need to disprove the belief of others that my belief system is somehow requiring investigation by whatever means. And to confuse the political bludgeon of religion, as somehow in any way equal to the existence of the spiritual for the answer of why the universe exists. I am comfortable knowing that I don’t know, and that science is at best a cold description of that universe. And limited to the what, and not the how, or why of the ultimate source. I have no need to confront the anxieties of atheists needing to prove their non belief of the spiritual. I was just noting the smallness of human experience (mine included) and comprehension, in the face of limitless universe. Spoken as a trained scientist, of sorts.
Coca Leaves & Pearls
@gaz: ” science does not define a way to prove or disprove something that is not subject to the scientific method” Why does religion get to define itself as not subject to the scientific method?
Seriously, if you’re making specific claims and demanding respect for them, you can’t just say a wizard did it and science can’t analyze that.
I guess I missed the meeting where we all decided that religious claims were always and forever “not subject to the scientific method”. Also the earth is 6,000 years old, all humans are descended from a single pair of anatomically modern humans (minus navels), a male and female of every land and fresh-water creature on earth (and presumably seeds of most of the plants) were quartered on a boat, and science has no right to question these assertions, because a wizard did it and science doesn’t count.
El Cid
@General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero): If I were given to your normal ego-rage approach, I’d respond in a sing-song schoolyard tone about how your outrage sure shows I’d hit a nerve, and so on and so forth.
Since I’m not, I’ll just note that the opposite position was immediately implicit in the amused ironic you left.
I have no need to confront the anxieties of either atheists nor theists regarding the complete lack of need any of us face regarding ‘proof’ of ‘the spiritual’. This is also spoken as a trained scientist, of sorts.
But yes, it is funny at all levels that some bags of water and a bit of carbon and other trace elements are self-aware and concerned with whether or not there is or isn’t some magic being aware of the water bags’ thoughts on the matter, while other bags of carbon-water are concerning themselves with matters which took place apparently some 13 to 15 billion nears before.
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
@El Cid:
Sir, the only ego rage here, is yours. I simply don’t care what you believe, and have no need to prove what I believe. There is no nerve, save maybe the funny bone kind.
But you are free to pound your head against the wall as much as you desire.
WyldPirate
@Chuck Butcher:
I wasn’t trying to say that, Chuck. I was simply trying to point out that Peter and I have had very dissimilar experiences. I have run into very few Christians who don’t have a problem with science; specifically biological evolution. Most are also scientifically illiterate.
That said, I know that there are Christians—even Christian biologists—who are perfectly fine with theory of biological evolution as the best supported paradigm in in the biological sciences, if not all of the sciences. Those folks are,sadly, in my experience a tiny minority of Christians.
Pete Mack
Dawkins is way too much atheist and not enough agnostic.
He piles on tons of arguments about why (e.g.) belief in the existence of god is evolutionarily adaptive, but in the end it still comes down to Occam’s Razor.
The adaptivity arguments certainly say a lot about organized religion, but they don’t say much about Theism. (That is, Jefferson’s God and The Big Bang.)
ruemara
@Andrey: chocolate covered caramelized bacon. And how I feel when my cat decides he wants to visit my lap for an hour. Other than that, science is science, mystics is mystics and we should really not try to conflate the 2.
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
@ruemara:
Simply, and well stated :-)
Arclite
I couldn’t watch Dawkins on the embed, as the background noise drove me crazy. But the Chris Hayes show was great.
geg6
@Bruce S:
Well, you apparently aren’t very good at reading the nuances of the conversation that was going on when, as you characterize it, Hayes was laughing at Dawkins. He wasn’t laughing at the substance of what Dawkins was saying, but was laughing, uncomfortably, at the idea that anyone in America could get away with confronting religionists with their stupid rituals and beliefs, i.e, transubstaniation or the story of the Book of Mormon. I watched the whole thing, very carefully, since I am an atheist who is quite out about it and who gets all the blowback you might expect for it. And you are mischaracterizing Hayes reaction to Dawkins’ audacity. I’m no huge Dawkins fan as I DO think he comes off as an arrogant asshole in person, but I’ve read his stuff and admire its arguments. But he’s too confronational (understandably so, for me) and doesn’t make any friends for atheists among the rest of the population who prefer and revere their delusions. You don’t win any good will by sneering in the most supercilious tone, even if everything you are saying is correct.
Riilism
I have to say that this is one of the politest and most interesting discussions of religion/atheism I have ever encountered. Most of the comments have already addressed issues I would have raised.
Let me just add that while I know Dawkins can be abrasive and confrontational, I am grateful for his assistance in helping me realize that I could live without faith, (I was already an atheist before I read any of his work, but “The God Delusion” was kinda the final nudge).
I believe it is often very difficult for people who were raised religiously to “let go” of faith (as attested in the comment above about the elderly Catholic woman). While I understand that sometimes atheists can come across as proselytizing, for me atheism is really about leading one’s life “without God” and how fulfilling that can be…
geg6
@The Other Chuck:
Agreed. I hear this stupid argument all the time, especially from religionists. It is to laugh.
Bruce S
geg6 – Hayes explicitly rejected Dawkins proposal to interrogate politicians on transubstantion. It was clear he thought this was wacky. He laughed at the notion. Not much nuance there. It’s a nutty approach to politics, and a ridiculously hysterical reaction to a politician’s religious beliefs. Robert Wright also put this approach in a context that suggested he thought it wasn’t terribly bright.
geg6
@General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero):
And I’m always amazed that anyone believes that atheists do not find wonder and awe in the universe without needing a Big Daddy Sky Wizard to provide it. I can only attibute it to a complete and utter lack of imagination and creativity.
WyldPirate
geg6:
Count me as gobsmacked as we actually have common ground on a subject for once.
MattMinus
I thought the whole point of atheism is that you don’t have to spend part of your weekend listening to some asshole preach.
Chuck Butcher
@WyldPirate:
Most of the active members of Baker County Democrats of DPO are members of churches. They are about as far from your pejorative description as I can think of. I know members of the knuckle dragger variety as well, though they belong to different organizations…
I’m perfectly satisfied with evolution as a matter of fact and the Big Bang seems perfectly reasonable within our knowledge limits. But once we hit something like the Big Bang we run out of options. Now what do you do without the magical assumption that something just was. If time just started with that event we’ve hit something that is as equally magical as a god.
I stuck with agnosticism for a long time because things fall apart on all sides at some point, and it wasn’t important to make a deal out of it. Sobriety seemed to need some sort of higher power so I adjusted and 24yrs later I don’t feel I gave up much in that adjustment.
I admit I find proselytising atheists as annoying as Seventh Day-ers. Atheists are particularly fond of arguing theology which is beside the point of existence of a god. It might be an interesting intellectual diversion to argue the existence of a god but that doesn’t require a whole raft of perjoratives which is where discussions around atheism always seem to go.
geg6
@Bruce S:
Again, you are wrong. They did not disagree, necessarily, with his argument. They were appalled at the idea that any prominent person in America would try such an approach. The idea being that no one would ever listen to the argument or even be able to if they wanted, due to the howls of outrage and calls for his blood. It’s not that Dawkins was wrong in fact, but that America is too stupid and violent about its religion to even be presented with such facts. Every time I hear Dawkins speak, I have the same reaction even though I totally agree with him and wish it were otherwise.
geg6
@WyldPirate:
A miracle! ;-)
Riilism
@El Cid:
This is, I believe, where the difference between an atheist/agnostic (I realize I’m generalizing here) and the “spiritual” (as opposed to the fundamentalist/religionist) comes into play.
When confronted by an unexplained phenomena, the non-believer says, “Fascinating, I have no idea what it all means”. The believer says, “Fascinating, I have no idea what it all means, there must be some sort of mystical connection underlying it all”.
I don’t understand (and I’m not sure that I ever will) why the first statement is considered sterile and why it simply can’t be considered “enough”. And I say that as someone who used to think there was “some sort of mystical connection underlying it all”.
geg6
Fixt.
Personally, I find it lazy. But that’s just me.
Riilism
@Chuck Butcher:
We run out of answers which is not the same as running out of options….
Riilism
@geg6: Fair enough, though to be completely fair, there are believers who believe “perhaps this should be studied in order to understand it”. They just keep adding that pesky “mystical connections” addendum…
SensesFail
@schrodinger’s cat:
There’s a big difference there: Dawkins can back up his claims. As far as I’m concerned, he earned it.
WyldPirate
@Chuck Butcher:
Well, I suppose much of the difference is the in the attitude of adherwnts to different Christian sects. The majority of Christianians in the southeastern US where I live are virulently anti-evolution. In fact, the subject came up in the context of one of my biology classes the other day and I had two students get up and walk out, another argue with me in an irate manner and claim that “evolution is a God less lie”.
On another topic; the “Big Bang” theory is an entirely different science than evolution. But it does have factual evidence supporting it and it is far more coherent than the two versions of the creation of the “universe” in Genesis and the myriad of other cultural “theories” regarding ‘origins’.”
I have no problem with someone believing in a “higher power”; I just don’t think that those beliefs are based on anything more than unsupported faith or the inability of someone to credit themselves (and/or those who assisted them) for overcoming challenges in their life. If it works for you or anyone else,that’s great.
WyldPirate
@geg6:
Ha! Praise the Lord and pass the Funyuns! :-)
A Humble Lurker
I thought that was one of the benefits of being an atheist: no more public gatherings with weirdos espousing your non/beliefs. That you could stay the hell in on the weekend if you wanted to. These dudes have so lost the plot.
Chuck Butcher
There are all kinds of thoughts about the Big Bang which seem to revolve mostly around the rate of expansion of the universe and just how much of what kinds of matter are around. This is all fine stuff, but where it finally gets to is our understanding of time and beginnings and endings. It isn’t any more rational to say, “well we can’t know” than it is to hang it on a god. Our understandings are limited and so then should be our certainties. The problem is that faith jumps into the equation and atheism is a faith. Not collecting stamps would be fine as an example, if you took not collecting stamps seriously. Atheism pushes itself into a faith because it takes itself seriously. There is not a thing about the lack of an elephant in my living room that needs taken seriously, it isn’t there – so what. “Well all these ignorant people make us take it seriously,” is not an answer – it is an insulted reaction. I do not give $0.02 that people are Christians and I’m not, it makes not an iota of difference to me. I really, really do not like theocracies, but that has spit to do with the version and everything to do with an imposition of faith.
Atheists want their assertion that there is no god to be taken seriously, which is fine, but then descend into theosophic arguements about why they are better. Once you descend into “I don’t know” and stick to your guns you’re engaging in faith. Atheists loath the word faith even though it finally means you believe something without an answer. There is no answer about the beginning, if you find one for our current understanding you’ll simply have moved the problem backward – ad infinitum. That criticism applies equally to theism and that finally is the problem. All the theisms run into the same problem and atheism isn’t excluded. Reduced to that final equation of beginning all of it is faith.
Peter
@WyldPirate: You must live in the shithole of the world, then, because I’m surrounded by them.
gaz
@Martin: actually Martin, I wasn’t. I feel I was pretty clear at this point. If you can’t read, consider that your own problem.
gaz
@Coca Leaves & Pearls: It’s not defining itself. It doesn’t “get” to do anything.
It’s science that draws the boundaries.
I’ll make a variation on your statement to highlight the absurdity of it:
Why does art get to define itself outside of science?
( to put it another way, why wouldn’t we go ahead and attempt to apply science to judge the worth of art? )
gaz
@A Humble Lurker: lol
El Cid
@Chuck Butcher:
This is simply not true, unless one were to say “we can’t know” as an absolute prediction of what will never occur versus some sort of statement about your setting up boundaries between “knowable” and “not knowable”.
__
(I.e., the difference between a question about quantum entanglement between two photons and the conditions under which it might be observed and a question of how quantum entanglement might feel to the photons involved.)
__
Saying you don’t know something and that you perhaps can never know is not in any way the same as pretending to answer a question by invoking the actions of a god.
I guess it all hinges on what “stick to your guns” means, but this just sounds silly.
__
If you’re using every tool of learning and knowledge at your disposal, and you are as yet unable to answer a question, and you do not either forcefully declare “but I definitely will at some point” or “fuck it, let’s just say it’s a magic something or other,” how is that “faith” in any meaningful sense of the word “faith”?
__
For that matter, which approach would likely be admired by any actually existing Supreme Being and which would be seen as lazy and begging the ref? I know if I were God and I were listening to a bunch of people thinking about the origins of the Universe say that they couldn’t explain it all and so therefore we’re justified in assuming God did it, I’d think ‘hey, you lazy shits, you don’t get to just make up the answers, go back and show your work like you had to in school.’
__
Why would there be any assumption that an existing Deity would respect rather than not respect human turns to “faith” in something supernatural with regard to the origins of the Universe. Vanity? God didn’t have anything better to do than create the Universe but wanted to play a game by which He hid Himself in there, and was just waiting until we found all His clues and then God could give us our chocolate Inflation Bunny?
__
Finally, why is it so wrong to imagine that there might be some questions which we try and fail to answer? Are we gods ourselves? Is there a magic spell which decrees in advance that any question we pose to ourselves must be answered or else?
__
If we aren’t gods ourselves, it’s not at all insulting or a turn to “faith” to aim to answer some questions while understanding that given the fact that we aren’t gods and aren’t perfect and aren’t all-knowing and aren’t magically destined to succeed, we may never succeed in any particular inquiry.
__
Either that or we’re getting to a use of the term “faith” which has very little in common with most peoples’ notion of the term.
Chuck Butcher
Theologies and a god are not the same thing, every theology I know of is essentially a socio-political construct rather than a real search for the divine. I kind of look at a god similarly to the Platonic chair, there is the concrete thing you sit in and then there is the perfect or divine chair, what all chairs aspire to.
I don’t think of god as a Santa Clause, I think of such an entity as the perfection of consciousness, the Platonic ideal of a conscious entity. If you look and listen carefully you may get a hint of how to go about it rather than something that messes about in “secular” affairs. Of course this puts me at odds with virtually every theology and I give a rat’s ass. It also makes meaningless the question of validity of a “magical being” who isn’t involved in the world. But then, as I’ve noted, beating on various theologies does not address the question of existence.
I make not a single assertion about an atheist’s ability to be a good person – I find that whole idea ludicrous, that a “good book” is required to be good. There is an entire school of thought called philosophy that is dedicated to working that out and while I can’t prove it, I’d bet there are more volumes involved.
El Cid
@Riilism:
Oh yeah? Fuck you, pal!
El Cid
@General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero): Yeah, I know, I don’t care what you believe, either, but an empirical suggestion that your purpose here in these comments is anything other than tiresome self-glorification I would find to be quite doubtful. You’d be better off acknowledging and embracing your demons than denying them.
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
@geg6:
Yea, right that must be it. “Big Daddy Sky Wizard”. Cute stereotype, that has nothing to do with what I believe. Like I said, don’t confuse a beef with organized religion with individual spiritual beliefs. And I think atheists have every bit of ability to admire beauty in any way they want. without the need to ask why. or caring to ask why. That is the difference between me and you.
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
@El Cid:
I do embrace my demons, then organize them into a chorus for self glorification. It’s the only way to blog. Now, how else you gonna show your ass on this thread? the night is still young.
Chuck Butcher
@El Cid:
From an atheistic POV maybe. You have succeeded in building a universe out of “I don’t know” and you don’t get the faith part of it? Maybe that Singularity was god and the entire universe is an expression of that. Or maybe it was something really mundane that had previous mundanes all the way to infinity. One is more reasonable than the other? Hmmm. Yeah, we should do all the work we can to understand and because we don’t understand now doesn’t mean we won’t. That doesn’t negate a “god” or make it neccesary either.
I perfectly understand an atheist’s discontent with theologies. Because you’ve chosen a god to argue with does not cover all the ground. You make assumptions and argue with them. Just because there is common culture idea of santa god doesn’t mean that’s the be all end all.
SectarianSofa
@MattMinus:
Win.
Sly
@General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero):
There’s actually an entire branch of science dedicated to such questions. It’s called optics.
SectarianSofa
@El Cid:
Well said. I’m not following the argument that saying ‘I don’t know’ is tantamount to fundamentalism. Epistemological skepticism is a process, not an end. Maybe I’m being unfair to some flavor of believer whose belief is an ever-evolving thing and yet is still belief, but that’s not my bailiwick.
SectarianSofa
@Sly:
roflol.
El Cid
@Chuck Butcher:
No. I don’t. I literally don’t get what you’re saying. I don’t know what you mean by “building a universe out of ‘I don’t know’.”
__
For starters, you don’t know where the Universe comes from. You don’t. You don’t if you think you’re an atheist, you don’t if you think you’re not. You’re ignorant. You don’t know. You have no answer to this question. People who think that a god created the Universe don’t know where the Universe came from, either. They don’t. They don’t know. They do not possess the answer to that question.
__
Now, given that absolute reality — that you do not know the origins of the Universe, you do not, I do not, and this doesn’t change no matter what your current outlook is on the role of a supernatural entity — is an acknowledgment of that reality “faith”? If so, then the term “faith” is getting near meaningless.
__
It seems that in your use of the term, the sole way to not have to have faith would be to possess absolute (presumably unchallengeable) knowledge of the ultimate origins of the Universe and reality.
__
Is this the standard?
__
If so, then perhaps the only being capable of lacking faith would therefore be God itself. In which case, faith becomes a property universally possessed by those who are not God and exclusively not-possessed by God. And if therefore by definition 100% of us not-God-types have “faith”, then there’s no difference between adding “faith” or subtracting “faith” to a person, because it’s like adding and subtracting zero.
__
I guess I’m worse than an atheist. Most atheists seem to be motivated to prove that no God exists; I guess I’m not convinced it’s an interesting question.
Chuck Butcher
@El Cid:
It’s an intellectual exercise to me and nothing more. Yep on faith, we take an awful lot more on the basis of faith than we acknowledge generally. I know that short of playing at something like this, I ignore it.
But yes, not being Gods ourselves, we take things on faith once they’re reduced far enough to be out of our reach. If we take the idea of a Singularity and Big Bang as scientifically reasonable we’ve assumed a condition of existence that is past our knowledge.
I don’t have a dog in this fight. I made an adjustment from deeply considered agnosticism for reasons I deemed more important. If you want a hallmark of alcoholics/addicts it is self-absorption and getting past that takes a bit more than just determination.
G’nite
Bruce S
geg6 – you watched the show you wanted to watch. They were explicit that Dawkins’ proposal to engage politicians in religious questions such as transubstantiation was frivolous at best and laughable. Chris Hayes laughed. The reality isn’t that “America is too stupid” it’s that Dawkins was proposing a remarkably stupid idea. If you didn’t get that, I can’t help you.
I happen to agree with Dawkins that literal “transubstantiation” is a preposterous notion. Yet I’m not such an arrogant prick that I feel the need to use my relative certainty on that question to try to undermine the credibility of politicians who happen to be Catholic. That’s just nuts. Only a total jerk would come up with such a suggestion.
Evolving Deep Southerner
@Comrade Javamanphil:
Assholes being the Jehovah’s Witnesses or the middle schoolers?
geg6
@Bruce S:
Funny, but that’s exactly what I think about your reaction. I’m guessing, but only guessing, that would be because I’m an atheist and you’re not. As for Dawkins’ assertion, I think it would be counterproductive, much the same as the majority of guests actually said it would be. Which would be why I saw and heard them react the same way I did, not that they thought Dawkins was the idiot you seem to think he is.
See, this is why I tend to find myself in similar confrontational situations as Dr. Dawkins does. Between you aggressively insisting that Dawkins is an idiot and Chuck Butcher frantically trying to make atheism into a fucking religion, I want to scream at the top of my lungs.
Riilism
@El Cid:
I don’t understand either, except it seems rather “damned if you do, damned if you don’t”, so to speak.
I’d also add that it seems to be rather unfair for people (I’m not referring to Chuck here) to suggest that if you simply talk about atheism and your (often times strong) opinions of religious belief, that makes you as bad as fundamentalists. How exactly does that work?
Also, too, gatherings of like-minded individuals is the equivalent of an expression of faith and/or “religious” proselytizing. Has the definition of faith or theology or whatever become so diffuse that any gathering of two or more people is now considered a revival meeting? Perhaps the members of “atheist club” need to adopt “the first rule of atheist club is don’t talk about atheist club” to avoid any appearance of impropriety.
Finally, fuck you you worthless piece of shit….
Riilism
Damn it, where are my paragraphs? Need I remind Mr. Cole that Levudicrous 3.14159265… says:
“If a blogger taketh away the paragraph, he is detestable. Surely he shall receive fifty lashes with a wet noodle.”
LGRooney
I wanted to go with my son but the weather was crappy, Chelsea v. Tottenham was on, my son would be bored, and I generally don’t like hanging around with my own kind. I can have the same conversations with myself and never leave the exciting whirlwind that is my brain.
liberal
@El Cid:
Heh.
samara morgan
@Bruce S: unfortunately Dawkins is showing signs of early onset vascular dementia. he is a barking islamophobe now….remember the skepchick brouhaha?
he is still butthurt that the Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie got a knighthood for sticking a finger in Islam’s eye and he hasn’t got one yet for all his work on evo bio and genetics. Sir Roger Penrose got a knighthood for physics also too.
the indignity!.
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
@liberal:
You’re an idiot, bottom feeding off the scraps of others.
WyldPirate
@General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero):
There’s a reason people point and laugh at you, Stuck. It’s because you say moronic shit like the above.
You know less than jackshit about how science works. The folks with sponges for brains are the one that default to the “goddidit” explanation as geg6 pointed out.
Drool on, moron…
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
@WyldPirate:
Oh my. wildy one of the kool kids now. Too funny.
El Cid
@Chuck Butcher: So by “faith” you might be including meanings something along the lines of ‘willing to accept an assumption’ or some such, not necessarily the “faith” that one has contact with divinely revealed truth which cannot be explained in ordinarily rational terms. I think mostly I assume people use the latter meaning.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@gaz: BTW gaz, when I see your handle I’m always reminded of Gax at Wondermark.
..
http://wondermark.com/817/
..
:-)
..
Cheers,
Scott.
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
Last Call. Anyone needing to call me the spawn of blogging Satan, hurry up and post it, before this shit disappears under the fold. God’l get ya if your late
McJulie
Dawkins is one of those people who seems to say one stupid thing for every five intelligent things. Unfortunately, those stupid things include honking great displays of male privilege.
Dawkins is like other atheists I have known, in that he takes the view that it is axiomatic that religion is stupid, and that only stupid people with weak minds (or excessve amounts of brainwashing) could possibly believe in such nonsense. He takes it as self-evident that religion is a bad thing and argues accordingly. He’s not just an atheist, he’s a proselytizing atheist who thinks that the human race cannot achieve true enlightenment and happiness until everyone agrees with him.
I’m not religious myself, but I still find that attitude obnoxious (and pointless, really, since it’s never going to happen). On the other hand, what he wants to do in light of that is fairly benign. He’s not out there trying to get schools to teach lies and engage in brainwashing just to try to ensure that kids end up as atheists. He seems to have faith that if people are just told the truth, they will all naturally end up as atheists.
Oh, yeah, and atheists aren’t, as a group, actively working to take away my reproductive rights. So there’s that.
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
@McJulie:
Good comment. agree with all of it.
FDRLincoln
I’m not an atheist…I’ve seen and experienced too many weird things in my life that hard-core materialism cannot explain.
I think there is a spiritual reality.
But I don’t believe in any particular religion, and am more interested in how people treat others.
The cruelest person I ever met in my life was a hardcore atheist. She didn’t need religion as an excuse for her awful behavior. But I’ve also known believers who were very cruel, and I’ve known atheists who were extremely kind, gentle souls. In my experience, being an atheist or being a theist has nothing to do with what kind of person you are.
Bruce S
geg6 – I don’t think I saw Chris Hayes and Bob Wright laughing at Dawkins’ suggestions about transubstantiation and wryly noting that this was probably the worst possible way to promote secularism, respectively, because I’m not an atheist. It was because that’s what was on my Teevee. Unlike you, I don’t find it necessary to defend folks on my side of this “divide” between atheists and religious folk to the death, largely because I’m as prone to agreeing with people who identify as atheists on issues of secularism, religion in politics, religious fundamentalism, etc far more often than I agree with religious zealots. But I also recognize a non-religious zealot when I see one, and don’t find them any more attractive.
That said, Dawkins is a harmless crank on this issue, despite his pretensions to greatness.
Incidentally, at 133 you pretty much agreed with the entire point, but seem to want to dismiss it at the same time.
GIMPY
“I’m not an atheist…I’ve seen and experienced too many weird things in my life that hard-core materialism cannot explain.”
What does this mean? At one point “hardcore materialism” couldn’t explain how the sun rose, but as Tim Mitchin put it “throughout history, every mystery, ever solved, has turned out to be – not magic”. What you’re doing is the very bizarre act of pretending that the inability to explain something means that you CAN explain it. “I can’t explain this -> Therefore magic”. No, it only means that you can’t explain it. If “hardcore materialism” didn’t work, than the fruits of scientific and technological progress that we have made would not work, because the physical laws could be suspended at whim.
Now, those of you who are acting as if Dawkins does not know how science works are mistaken. You are missing an understanding of an important element of science, and what his actual position is. Dawkins is, as are many atheists, a “soft” atheist – he disbelieves in god because there is insufficient reason TO believe. It stems from the scientific principle of parsimony, a.k.a. Occam’s Razor, a.k.a. “A plurality is not to be posited without necessity”.
Additionally, Dawkins is not without reason to dismiss religion as being negative on the whole. Even the more benign forms of religion teach people to value their biases, hunches, and magical thinking above or on equal footing with observation and evidence. It’s nice that liberalized religion doesn’t try to strip rights away from people, but their better morals are then only chalked up to a different interpretation of often-contradictory holy books. Faith and revelation are a poor basis for anything, because they are personal and not amenable to reason and advancement. You cannot argue what a person “just feels in their heart”.
What the softer religions and wishy-washy non-believers want to do is to have their cake and eat it too. They want to come to the right and justified conclusions, but don’t want to look “mean” or close-minded. Unfortunately, progress has not historically been made by people just politely asking everyone to respect each other’s differences. We need argument in order to advance, and really — hurt feelings are far from the greatest tragedy in this world.
FDRLincoln
I never said anything about “magic” and my beliefs certainly don’t come from anything I read in any scriptures or books.
I’ll leave it at that.