Do you like how Dawkins, Hitchens et al. represent atheists?

[Xev]

You share his traits, Xev.

I like black coffee and I chain smoke cloves, so you've got me there.
But I don't have a penis or give credence to Freud, so I guess you're wrong.

<< atheism makes you incapable of being irrational >>

Obviously not..its the height of egotism to suggest that anyone knows the unknowable.

Right, because anyone ever claimed - oh what is wrong with me? You're just a little troll.

"Troll #77 R - CE Pts: 27 Lvl 6 Spd 6 AC 16 hp 60
Large Giant Melee: +9/+9 (10) -
SA: Difficult 5. Reach 2. Regeneration 5 (this creature heals 5 hp at the start of its turn); Rend 15 (if this creature hits one creature with two melee attacks on the same turn, damage +15 to second attack); Vulnerable Fire."

Cave trolls are chaotic evil, which seems to fit you damned well.

 

[GeoffP]

I like black coffee and I chain smoke cloves, so you've got me there.
But I don't have a penis

Look, you can hardly blame him for that. Envier.

Right, because anyone ever claimed - oh what is wrong with me? You're just a little troll.

"Troll #77 R - CE Pts: 27 Lvl 6 Spd 6 AC 16 hp 60
Large Giant Melee: +9/+9 (10) -
SA: Difficult 5. Reach 2. Regeneration 5 (this creature heals 5 hp at the start of its turn); Rend 15 (if this creature hits one creature with two melee attacks on the same turn, damage +15 to second attack); Vulnerable Fire."

Cave trolls are chaotic evil, which seems to fit you damned well.

Ahem! *holds up hand*

A D&D player? Oh my.

 

[Atom]

Sartre pretentious you?
That makes no sense.
Do you have even the slightest fucking clue of what you're on about, or is it some form of Tourettes?

You're obviously not familiar with the classic comedy series 'Fawlty Towers', Xev. Usually sited as the funniest series ever made. John Cleese anyone? Could someone please help this poor ignoramus out of his misery of should I?

:shrug:

 

[Oli]

You're obviously not familiar with the classic comedy series 'Fawlty Towers', Xev. Usually sited as the funniest series ever made. John Cleese anyone? Could someone please help this poor ignoramus out of his misery of should I?

:shrug:

Which particular ignoramus?
The one that can't spell "cited" and has been told before that Xev is a "she" not a "he"?
Or someone from a different country and probably too young to remember Fawlty Towers?
"Funniest series ever made"? Cited by whom?
It was acceptable.

 

[Xev]

You're obviously not familiar with the classic comedy series 'Fawlty Towers', Xev. Usually sited as the funniest series ever made. John Cleese anyone? Could someone please help this poor ignoramus out of his misery of should I?

:shrug:

No, I'd rather live in the real world than waste my life sitting in front of an idiot box watching pretend people do pretend things.
Then again, you probably don't really value life or the real world, being a theist and all.

 

[Xev]

Look, you can hardly blame him for that. Envier.

Just pointing out an obvious difference.
Although we both wrote "No Exit"

Ahem! *holds up hand*

A D&D player? Oh my.

Aye. And ex-World of Warcraft, so I'm torn between fireball and incinerate.

 

[iceaura]

You mean, your idea of God? A white man in a flowing beard/robe?

There are several ideas about God, not just yours.

And you invented an idea of "god" for me to have assumed - according to what criteria, exactly? I meant your apparent idea of god - a "higher power" who is a supernatural being, with authority, in which one believes.

The Buddhists do not, in general, have one of those. The Taoists don't either. Navajo traditionalists deny having one. Many animists content themselves with natural spirits of one kind and another - an aspect of reality possessed by rocks and trees and springs. And so forth.

Dawkins more or less confines his accusations regarding deity to the Abrahamic god and its relatives. If the complaint against him is that he overlooks other conceptions of deity that do not share the malign properties of the Abrahamic theistic tradition, then I have missed the point badly - that would be much more interesting to me, as an approach for discussion, than a personal dislike of perceived arrogance backed with apparent misreadings and false assumptions. For example:

I disagree with the way Dawkins ignores evidence of violence in atheists, with how he presents his conclusions on violence in theists

But Dawkins does not ignore violence in atheists - he says it is different, not (for example) justified by atheism. And objecting to Dawkins's style of presentation hardly deals with his arguments.

Why? Are you claiming that the areligious are exempt from superstition?

Hardly. I am pointing out that a "superstition" on that scale cannot be automatically assumed to not be a religion. We do not have, with Stalin, rationality and reason triumphant in the management of human affairs.

all his polemic on such includes at least one sentence where he says "I am a scientist" as if that were sufficient reason to take his word for it.

Is that really why he says that? He seems to be saying that, if his subsequent statements are any clue, as an introduction to the idea that one shouldn't take people's word for things - even authoritative and numerous and mutually supportive people. How did you come by your assumption of motive?

Saudi lifestyle is not representative of Islam, no more than American lifestyle is representative of Western values.

I could swear I've seen posts from you that use aspects of American life to shed critical light on Western values. The Saudis are not, after all, just any old Islamic country.

 

[GeoffP]

Just pointing out an obvious difference.
Although we both wrote "No Exit"

Heh.

Aye. And ex-World of Warcraft, so I'm torn between fireball and incinerate.

LOL - say, you didn't happen to know a couple on there named Balcor and Sat who quit Lineage to join by any chance? I realize it's a big world, but I always wondered how those two got on.

 

[Xev]

LOL - say, you didn't happen to know a couple on there named Balcor and Sat who quit Lineage to join by any chance? I realize it's a big world, but I always wondered how those two got on.

No, sorry to say. I played on Dalaran before I got bored.

Iceaura:

But Dawkins does not ignore violence in atheists - he says it is different, not (for example) justified by atheism. And objecting to Dawkins's style of presentation hardly deals with his arguments

What I find amusing is that Dawkins makes many statements and arguments that I consider rather faulty, and you could do a decent job attacking those. (For example, God as a scientific hypothesis?!)
But our theist friends have made the man look rather brilliant and unfairly maligned.

So far we've heard that Dawkins is wrong because he is arrogant, that Dawkins is wrong because athiests run around killing Chinese people and that Dawkins is wrong because he claims to be a scientist.
We haven't heard a single solitary objection to the idea of treating a explicitly superstitious idea as we would a scientific hypothesis, we haven't heard any real objection to the idea of religion as an unparalleled bad - all we hear is that God exists, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is a mean parody, for that matter all athiests are mean and religion is an unparalleled good.

Shape up, theists! If you weren't resorting to intellectually dishonest arguments and ad hominems, you might have a better shot!

 

[S.A.M.]

We haven't heard a single solitary objection to the idea of treating a explicitly superstitious idea as we would a scientific hypothesis, we haven't heard any real objection to the idea of religion as an unparalleled bad - all we hear is that God exists, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is a mean parody, for that matter all athiests are mean and religion is an unparalleled good.

Thats already been done before.
Apparently treating religion or theism as an empirical hypothesis is perfectly alright.:shrug:

also apparently superstition is now a religion.

I wonder if the Dawkinists realise how small their universe gets every day. That they and not others are the outliers.

 

[GeoffP]

Thats already been done before.
Apparently treating religion or theism as an empirical hypothesis is perfectly alright.:shrug:

also apparently superstition is now a religion.

Some people call African religions superstitions. Are they now not to be granted this consideration?

I wonder if the Dawkinists realise how small their universe gets every day. That they and not others are the outliers.

Argument from population density?

 

[S.A.M.]

Some people call African religions superstitions. Are they now not to be granted this consideration?

Do they call the religions as superstitions or the religious practices?

Argument from population density?

Argument from "since you are too rational to be included in the theistic, religious or superstitious, perhaps you need a label other than atheist"

 

[GeoffP]

Argument from "since you are too rational to be included in the theistic, religious or superstitious, perhaps you need a label other than atheist"

Exactly how does that work?

 

[S.A.M.]

Exactly how does that work?

Since religion includes atheism but excludes superstition, but superstition includes religion and vice versa.

 

[Atom]

<< all athiests are mean and religion is an unparalleled good >>

Most people are agnostic and are very often humbly getting on with their lives and not shouting at one another.

Its only when someone takes an extremist view that the hackles rise and people are divisive. Much the same occurs in politics..its a pendulum that swings from one side to another. The reason Dawkins is in the headlines is more due to Islamophobia on the one side and Bible thumping Western leaders on the other...cometh the hour, cometh the man,..he is the right man at the right time..or rather the wrong man at the wrong time.

Lets not forget that there a vast majority out there who couldn't care less about Dawkins and equally couldn't care less about fundamentalism.

We're not all rabid loons...it just seems that way because most of them find themselves on the internet via forums/msg brds. Most of us are pretty normal....hello there!

 

[Enmos]

<< all athiests are mean and religion is an unparalleled good >>

Most people are agnostic and are very often humbly getting on with their lives and not shouting at one another.

Its only when someone takes an extremist view that the hackles rise and people are divisive. Much the same occurs in politics..its a pendulum that swings from one side to another. The reason Dawkins is in the headlines is more due to Islamophobia on the one side and Bible thumping Western leaders on the other...cometh the hour, cometh the man,..he is the right man at the right time..or rather the wrong man at the wrong time.

Lets not forget that there a vast majority out there who couldn't care less about Dawkins and equally couldn't care less about fundamentalism.

We're not all rabid loons...it just seems that way because most of them find themselves on the internet via forums/msg brds. Most of us are pretty normal....hello there!

Come now Billy, no one called you rabid..

 

[GeoffP]

Since religion includes atheism

Ah - I see the problem. Atheism is not a religion. It is the absence thereof.

 

[S.A.M.]

Perhaps you could discuss this with ice aura.

 

[iceaura]

Since religion includes atheism but excludes superstition, but superstition includes religion and vice versa.

Lack of green is not a color, or even a shade. Atheism is not a religion, or even a religious belief. See how simple ?

There are greenish colors, there are theistic religions. Neither exhaust their set.

The other side of the invalid comparison there involves the assertion that a religion is always, in practice, indistinguishable from a superstition writ large. This assertion is a reasoned extrapolation from limited observation. And so, it may not be true - it may only be that, say, theistic belief (and therefore only theistic religion) is always, in practice, indistinguishable from superstition writ large. Taoism, for example, seems to involve no necessary beliefs indistinguishable from superstition by unbelievers.

If so, that might be a criticism of Dawkins - that he ascribes as necessary to religion qualities only necessary to theistic religions.

We are a little short of actual criticisms of Dawkins's ideas, logic, etc, on this thread, so I thought I'd throw that in.

I wonder if the Dawkinists realise how small their universe gets every day. That they and not others are the outliers.

Dawkins seems to be imore than simply aware of that - he seems alarmed.

 

[Xev]

Thats already been done before.
Apparently treating religion or theism as an empirical hypothesis is perfectly alright.:shrug:

Ok, I'll take your word on it. Let's hear it for Wacky Epistemology Hour!

also apparently superstition is now a religion.

Generally, "superstition" is simply a way of manipulating words to make a minority religion sound less legitimate.

I wonder if the Dawkinists realise how small their universe gets every day. That they and not others are the outliers.

"Dawkinists?"

Bwahah. Oh shit. What, pray tell, are those?

Since religion includes atheism but excludes superstition, but superstition includes religion and vice versa.

Many, many people have explained to you that athiesm is not a religion, it is simply the absence of belief in, or disavowel of, a diety.