Fraggle Rocker, your opinion on Dawkins is interesting. Can you give some examples of what he's done/taught that you don't agree with?
It's been a while since I've seen any extensive quotes from his work so I'll have to get back to you when I find one. However, I remember remarking that he seems to be unfamiliar with Jung's work and therefore with
archetypes, instinctive beliefs that are passed down to us, ironically enough, by evolution. I don't see how an atheist (or anyone else) can claim any authority on the subject of religion if he hasn't done enough homework to uncover its roots. The reason that people can have unshakeable faith in gods and other things supernatural is that these are things they have "known" since they were born, longer than any knowledge they have acquired by reasoning and learning, and which therefore
feel more true than reasoned and learned knowledge.
Most higher animals, including humans, are born with the instinct to flee from a larger animal with both eyes set in front of its face, i.e., a predator. (This is why monsters in movies usually have the faces of predators rather than herbivores: the better to scare us.) We use experience to teach our children that this instinct is misleading and should be cautiously overridden: we set them in a room with a large dog who immediately begins treating them with love, trust, protection and playfulness. They are then able to override this instinct by
learning from experience.
But we have no comparable experience to override a child's instinctive belief in the supernatural. All we can tell him is that supernaturalism claims to falsify science, and is therefore an extraordinary assertion, and the Rule of Laplace requires extraordinary assertions to be supported by extraordinary evidence, and in 500 years the scientific method has turned up no evidence of any kind to support supernaturalism, and yatta yatta. The poor kid has to be well into adolescence before he can even understand this argument. And by then his supernaturalistic culture has become part of
who he is.
I admit that I have not read any of Dawkins's books, but if someone who has can show me how he touches on what I consider to be one of the most important issues in the debate between science and supernaturalism, I will be happy to read it and apologize.
People who are not scientists are not going to be swayed by scientific arguments.
. . . . arguing against creationists day in and day out is sure to try your patience.
So why does he have to focus his efforts on creationists and creationism? In most of the world creationism is a fringe movement. It has reached critical mass only in the United States, part of the anti-intellectual Religious Redneck Retard Revival of the late 1970s. Sure, there are a few creationists everywhere and of course they'll surround Dawkins like antibodies on an influenza virus, but the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and AFAIK the leaders of all the other major, reputable Christian sects have acknowledged that the bibilical tale of creation is a metaphor not meant to be taken literally.
At the same time we scientists and scientist-wannabes admit that we have not yet elevated the hypothesis of abiogenesis to a canonical theory, so anyone who doubts our explanation of the transformation of inorganic matter into organic matter is free to do so without being cast out as an anti-scientist.
I fault Dawkins not only for his shrillness, but for his misplaced focus and for the shallowness of his understanding of the issues on which he claims to speak for all of us.
Fraggle, I am also interested in your opinion on Dawkins. I agree with you that he misrepresents the majority of theists, but I’m not so sure why you think he misrepresents atheists.
I'm the most outspoken atheist anyone who knows me has ever met, and I do not argue in Dawkins's way. I certainly have my shrill moments, as anyone who has read my posts on this website knows. But when engaged in a halfway rational argument with a theist, I do NOT argue the way he does. My approach to creationism, in particular, focuses on explaining that evolution and abiogenesis are two separate things, and that accepting the one does not require one to accept the other. Darwin never postulated that God did not create the first lifeform. He only argued that all subsequent lifeforms were derived from it naturally, not supernaturally.
When you find yourself having to describe people like Dawkins as morons, to justify your attitude toward them, a little warning bell should go off in the back of your mind: really?
Yes, I'll accept that criticism. After a moment's thought, let me put it to you more carefully: Dawkins is an
asshole. By inviting the Christian community to accept him as the spokesman for the "atheist community," if such a thing even exists, he allows them to draw the reasonable conclusion that we're all assholes.
