The Totalitarianism of Atheists
Atheism lacks intellectual credibility. So if an atheist can’t win an intellectual debate, why not just bypass debate and legislate atheism? Sounds like a plan. And indeed, it is one that Dawkins and other fundamentalist atheists have endorsed.
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Abolish all faith schools and prohibit the teaching of creationism and other religious mythology in all UK schools.
In this petition, signed by Richard Dawkins, the atheists want faith schools - private religious schools - abolished, outlawed, and destroyed. The next petition, also signed by Richard Dawkins, wants the government in your home:
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Make it illegal to indoctrinate or define children by religion before the age of 16.
As we have seen with fundamentalist atheists, their agenda is not one a reasonable person could support. Simply mentioning “god” could possibly be construed as indoctrinating your children with religion, and the atheists want armed officers of the law to treat that as child abuse.
(Credit where credit is due, although Richard Dawkins continued to support both petitions on his website, he did publicly recant support for one of the petitions. The petitions can be found on the website of the prime minister here, and here. It should also be noted that Dawkins recanted support only because he did favor the teaching of religious texts in critical light. He stands by his support for legislation which would take children away from religious parents.)
They call this “the new atheism”. I call it “old totalitarianism” adopted by new atheists.
December 19th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
I call it “Richard Dawkins’ opinion”.
You base your nonsensical post on the idea that Dawkins speaks for ALL atheists.
He dosen’t.
With that fact in mind, your post is simply…stupid.
December 20th, 2007 at 12:25 am
Hi Robert,
If it was just Dawkins opinion, it wouldn’t be an issue worth mentioning.
But if you look at the support he has in this opinion, it becomes scary. One of those petitions has close to 20,000 signatures attached. It is indicative of a new wave of intolerance by atheists.
December 20th, 2007 at 7:40 am
What a cheek these atheists have! Intolerance indeed - not something you could ever accuse organised religion of exhibiting!
December 20th, 2007 at 8:17 am
I’m guessing that the argument you want to make here is the old classic “they do it too”.
As I am sure you are aware, that is not an intellectually sound argument. No matter how many Christians atheists have killed, it doesn’t give the Christians a right to kill Christians. Nor does the murder of atheists by religious people give atheists the right to kill religious people.
But I’m sure you know that.
December 20th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
he stands in support of not labeling children something that should be the child’s choice, until that child has a chance to get informed and make that choice. making a choice without information is non-beneficial, and if your god was all knowing, (s)he would know that children of parents of one religion general don’t have the option provided to them to examine and decide between the thousands of religious and ethic views there are to choose from.
December 20th, 2007 at 3:11 pm
If Richard Dawkins’ - and all atheists’ - central belief is true, then there is no God, and therefore is no ultimate meaning. We are just animals that are here for a moment then die forever.
It’s all just meaningless, random silliness, complete with excruiating suffering, death, child abuse, animal cruelty, injustice, and ultimate nothingness, for all of us. Do chimpanzees waste their time signing ridiculous petitions? No. Biological evidence and observed scientific phenomena prove to us that they spend their time eating, screwing, and then dying. Aren’t we related, Richard?
So ….why all the hard-ons and heavy breathing from 20,000 atheists on such a relatively small issue of what a person beleives in the privacy of their own home and their own private schools with their own children?
Any self-respecting atheist - if he really believes what he says he believes -would simply say, “Who cares? It’s all over in 900 months at the most anyway, for all of us.”
Aren’t there better things to do with your time, if you have been so lucky as to evolve into Richard Dawkins after billions of years? He only has about 280 months - throughout the rest of eternity - to enjoy himself. And we’re all headed to a collpasing universe eventually anyway.
Get over yourselves, Dawkins and Co. Let “deluded” people be “deluded” and go have a glass of wine or something. It’s all over soon, and none of it matters anyway.
December 20th, 2007 at 3:45 pm
That’s like saying Pol Pot stood for freedom of religion.
December 21st, 2007 at 6:11 am
“It is indicative of a new wave of intolerance by atheists.”
Let’s not forget the intolerance of religion, my boy is an atheist and he is hounded everyday here in the south by Christian students and teachers. His grade school science teacher even called him stupid for believing in evolution. This has put me on the offensive, religion is a lie, and we have to learn to deal with that. I’m not an atheist because I choose to be, it’s the default position once you start to think. Atheist will win, because there is no invisible naked magical mad man hiding in the clouds that sat around in darkness for eternity before he decided to create man to torture, trust me on that one.
December 21st, 2007 at 6:44 am
Of course nobody should forget the intolerance of any group. And neither should they use the intolerance of one group as an excuse to be intolerant themselves.
Considering the fact that evolution has been witnessed and is indisputable, I do find it impossible to believe that a teacher of science would call somebody stupid for believing exactly what is the truth.
That’s never good. To respond to intolerance with intolerance just adds injustice to injustice.
Of course you chose to be an atheist.
Actually, atheism is a faith position, and as such is not entirely compatible with thought. You take on faith that gods do not exist, whereas logic would dictate that you accept that we do not know whether gods exist or not.
Agnosticism is the default position, if there be one.
When you go making prophetic statements, I have to wonder if deep down inside you aren’t religious.
And as for rooting for a side, I’ll root for tolerance and hope the intolerant atheists and intolerant religious both go the way of the Dodo.
December 22nd, 2007 at 4:33 am
Agnosticism is not the default position. I can’t believe we have to go over this but I will try.
Think about SETI. They defend themselves on the ground that lack of evidence is not evidence of absence. All well and good. But our search into the universe has shown that there is no massive expansionist alien empire with FTL and there is no group out their that is molding the stars themselves. Absence of evidence for these is proof of their absence because if they existed then there would be evidence.
The same applies to theism.
So the “militant” atheists want people to recognize evidence and reason and stop indoctrination. And the faithful are against it. Who really is the totalitarian here?
Tolerance isn’t a virtue; it’s a flaw in the contect you are using. We tolerate people for wearing different clothes, having different skin colours, sexual identities, etc. things that are inherent or do not affect us. But it is ideas we should watch. We do not force others to think like us because we might fall into domatic thinking, but that doesn’t mean ideas can’t be wrong. Psychopaths should be watched, madmen should be stopped and the insane should be halted.
There can be not tolerance for someone who believes that I should be killed. Tolerance in this case is the unwillingness to confront evil; to stand up for what is right. Like agnostics claim the moral high ground and say they are “tolerant”; I have nothing but contempt. Shall we tolerate brownshirts, commies and jihadists in are midst? To tolerate those who would call for the destruction of our society are our enemy. Those who would aid and abet them are traitors. Those who resort to intelectual dishonesty to cover the tracks of theists deserve the madness they have sown.
Sound bigoted or angry? Definately. Do you know why? We live in a world where supernaturalistic nihlists are attempting to destroy ten millenia of human progress because they value dogmatism more then thinking. And you ask me to give up the fruits of all that mankind has accomplished for a two thousand year old book because you are too weak and pathetic to think for yourself! Understand what you actually have agreed to believe and all the implications. All of them. Then you may even begin to use your mind.
December 22nd, 2007 at 5:26 am
I’m sorry. I followed you up until the point where you said “the same applied to theism”.
I am unaware of any search for god or gods conducted scientifically in the supposed spiritual universe. Are you suggesting that theists believe their gods to reside on some planet in the physical universe that is subject to physical examiniation? If so, yes, a search of the planets would effectively disprove god to the extent that the search was conducted.
However, insofar as most theists hypothesize a god existing in a non-physical realm, the god is by definition unable to examined physically. The hypothesis is by definition beyond the scope of physical science, so there is no parallel with SETI or alien space invaders.
And it should be noted that, epistemologically speaking, we cannot know that little green space invaders do not exist. We can only state that there is no evidence to believe that they do exist.
What evidence? I think most theists would readily agree with you that the evidence supports your claim that god doesn’t live on Mars.
But then you were referring to some imaginary evidence that gods do not exist. You believe in some imaginary evidence that gods don’t exist. Why not allow theists to believe in some imaginary god of their choosing? Is freedom such a repugnant concept to you?
Obviously the people who attempt to legislate their beliefs on others. In this case, atheists.
Are you writing The Thought Police Manifesto?
Not a fan of civil liberty, are you? Psychopaths and madmen and the insane should be free to do as they please as long as they do not impinge upon the freedom of others.
Of course there should be freedom for that person. In fact, I’ll defend his freedom, and yours as well.
Cat Stevens, when asked whether or not he believed Salman Rushdie deserved to die, responded simply with “Yes, yes.”
Should we lock up Cat Stevens? Should we trample his civil rights? Should we become barbaric savages and go on some atheistic version of a witch hunt?
No.
If he tried to legislate his intolerance, like Dawkins, then he should be repelled. But his freedom to believe what he wants to should no be impaired.
No, tolerance is the respect for the right of others to believe what they want. Stalin, by your logic, was a hero. He heralded science and killed hundreds of thousands of religious. He razed thousands of churches. Hero? No. Simply an intolerant bigot.
Knowing what is right is one thing; compelling others to do what you believe to be right is intolerance.
You do know that you are starting to sound like Joseph McCarthy?
Yes, we should tolerate those people as long as they are respecting the rights of others.
Ironic that you would condemn intellectual dishonesty while at the same time resting your argument on an intellectually dishonest claim of evidence for atheism.
Just as I respect your right to believe in some imaginary evidence of god’s non-existence, so I ask you to respect the rights of theists who believe in their possibly imaginary gods.
December 22nd, 2007 at 11:15 pm
Sorry if I sound like a bastard, but I am really tired of people saying things without thinking them through. I will talk again, but slower.
The aliens were an example involving observable evidence. We know there isn’t an alien empire with FTL in our neighborhood because if there was we would have been conquered by now. Likewise we know there isn’t a massive alien group altering the physical universe and creating structures like Dyson spheres, moving Suns or other kinds of superscale construction. If they existed we would be able to see them, but since we can’t see them, they don’t exist.
If God or any sort of Gods existed then we would be able to see their effects unless they covered their tracks. Given that all the gods ever hypotheisized are not the kind that would cover their tracks, those gods don’t exist. The only kind of god that could exist is the kind of god that would be indistinguishable from no god at all. Got it?
Examples include: If the explanation for any natural phenomena required divine intervention or if prayer had an effect or if religious people all agreed or… you get the idea. Evidence. So it isn’t imaginary evidence because something all powerful that desires worship can make its presence known.
So I’m a member of the thought police eh? I never thought I would be compared to Stalin and McCarthy. Why would I be a fan of Stalin? He was a dogmatic communist (faith based) and evil (goal of personal power). I am sane and my goal is personal happiness. Not really a fan of certain freedoms though, there is a reason we don’t let criminals have guns you know.
What happens when someone is killed by a person advocating killing? Are you going to say well even though someone is dead we can’t stop people from believing what they want? This isn’t a hypothetical question; see Islam for a graphic example. You are basically saying that people who advocate murder and genocide should be free to do so even if it leads to murder and genocide. Since I value human life I happen to disagree with you.
P.S.
The first error you have is the disconnect between thoughts and actions. I happen to realize that people’s thought happen to control their actions. Apppearently it is considered thought control to try and get people to not think that killing me is a good thing.
The second error you have is believing communism is rational. Seriously try to use reason and evidence to support communism. You can, but only by making certain assumptions that happen to be invalid in the real world. As a sane person I try to avoid such assumptions.
December 23rd, 2007 at 3:35 am
Wow, such sloppy logic. Do you passionately hate logic, or just disregard it as a nuisance?
You presuppose that gods would be having an effect.
You presuppose that gods would be having an effect that is readily recognizable to gods and not attributable to other causes.
You presuppose that humans are able to correctly identify the causes of all phenomena.
You have a very narrow scope of knowledge of hypothesized gods, no? The Christian God is secretive. Deuteronomy 29:29
The Shinto God is omnipresent. The Shinto God dwells in that flower, that mountain, the rivers and the oceans. The Shinto God is expected to do much of anything miraculous, and simply provide strength and good fortune to the pure.
In other words, those gods aren’t falsifiable.
It is that very unfalsifiability that precludes you from proving that gods do not exist.
It isn’t imaginary evidence, it’s faulty logic as demonstrated above.
When you want to criminalize certain beliefs, then how else could you characterize your position?
Like Stalin, you believe that beliefs should be subject to criminal punishment.
That’s ignorant and unfair, in my opinion. Most people are not “evil”. Dawkins, for example. Many people would say that he is evil for wanting the government to invade peoples’ homes, abolish faith schools, and treat the sharing of religion with children as child abuse.
But Dawkins most likely is good intentioned. He thinks it is for the better of mankind. Mccarthy no doubt thought the same. You no doubt think that legislating your atheism and imposing it upon mankind is for the better. Stalin’s thought processes were probably identical to yours. You two have reached some of the same conclusions.
Advocating killing happens all the time. People advocate the killing of George Bush.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3952091.stm
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/10/14/feds-question-teenage-gir_n_31689.html
http://www.thepeoplescube.com/red/viewtopic.php?t=1189
Do you want to dispatch thousands of Thought Police to arrest those people? Or just the ones you don’t agree with?
The fact is, advocating killing is protected by freedom of speech, and it should be.
The line is crossed when advocating turns into conspiring to kill. And that is rightly illegal. Words don’t kill. Actions do.
So you just answered my previous question: you would indeed imprison all those people who ever uttered the words “kill Bush”.
It’s a scary thought that you can vote.
Thought is one thing, actions are another. Thoughts do not control actions. Reality is much more complex than that. Thoughts, emotions, fears, reasoning, conflicting stimuli, and much more go into decision making. Ask yourself why Cat Stevens thoughts have not killed Salman Rushdie and you might find yourself closer to the truth.
LOL! Just like my five year old son with his false dichotomies. No, Samuel, that is not thought control. It’s thought control when you try to legislate your beliefs and criminalize religious beliefs.
Communism is based on some serious misunderstandings of human nature. But the people who perpetuate communism are just as rational as the people who perpetuate totalitarian atheism, and probably more rational than the people who perpetuate the various theocratic states in the Middle East.
December 26th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
“We know there isn’t an alien empire with FTL in our neighborhood because if there was we would have been conquered by now.”
You’ll admit this, but you won’t admit the logical comparison,
“We know there isn’t a missing link demonstrating that “Species A eventually begat species B and species C, where species B and C could not reproduce” because if there was we would have discovered it by now.”
Why not admit the logical comparison?
And I’m curious - have you ever read the Bible? Or studied world history? I’m impressed that you know that the book is 2,000 years old (in parts, yes; in other parts it’s over 3,000 years old.) But I’m surprised you are unaware of the number of predictions it’s made that have come true, including today. Or how it spoke of dozens of scientific facts hundreds of years before self-proclaimed scientists proved them to actually be correct.
I ask this because you suggest that “any god would have left his mark.” If you compare the “marks” he left in books in hotel room drawers and libraries around the world with the “marks” he left in the universe, the oceans, zoology, biology, archaeology, psychology, and world history, you would not suggest that he hadn’t.
December 26th, 2007 at 8:48 pm
As an Atheist, I must say, John Scott has the high ground. I agree with Dawkins on some things, namely, his evidence that a god does not exist. Indeed, there is evidence that a god pr gods do exist also, yet I simply find the evidence against this idea more compelling than that that is for it.
And I understand, to some degree, what Dawkins and those who agree with him are trying to accomplish. They wish to prevent parents from “forcing” their beliefs onto their children until their children have the ability to decide for themselves. I don’t necessarily disagree with this, on some level, but really, aren’t children being indoctrinated with the rest of their culture anyway, religion or no? And I also wonder, what would Dawkins and co. think of parents who teach atheism to their children… would he still have the government come in a take the children away?
If the goal is to prevent indoctrination, shouldn’t children be deprived of all cultural stimuli until they are capable of “making their own decisions”? (I’m not a proponent of this, merely stating this as a rhetorical question.)
In my opinion, freedom trumps devotion to any belief system, or doing “what is right” as my opinion of what is “right”, as an atheist, may differ from the “right” of a theist, but what binds us together is our commitment to freedom. That’s how a diverse society can function. Otherwise, eventually one group would have to destroy the others, (which is what I think Dawkins would like to see happen) and become the sole group, which, when contrasted to living with differences in peace, strikes me as by far, the greater of two evils.
Now, I’d like to see a world where people are primarily atheist, personally, however I cannot honestly tell myself that that somehow makes me different from theists who’d like to see their respective religion dominate the world. Really, I cannot, without some form of faith, assert that there is no god. I believe that more evidence points to this conclusion than away from it, but it is by no means certain. Perhaps that makes me an atheistic agnostic?
Anyway, essentially what I’m trying to say, is that my evidence is interpreted by me to mean one thing, and someone else may have an entirely different interpretation of it. This makes it impossible to define what the “right” course of action is, which is why I value freedom, (in this case - of religion) over imposing any specific belief system on people.
Sorry about the disorganized post.
December 27th, 2007 at 4:13 am
Emperor! The idiots I have to deal with!
First I get someone who accuses me of crappy logic, then I get someone who says I am missing evidence. Lets take a look.
First the evidence. If species B and C can’t reproduce they wouldn’t exist. If you can’t reproduce you get culled from the gene pool and since it would happen in one generation there would be no fossils. The New Testament is between 1950 and 1700 years old depending on the books. The Old Testament age is accurate. Unfortunatly you don’t leave any predictions so I can’t see if you are right or wrong. Finally the last thing you say is rather stupid. Science explains your evidence much better than God and just because a large number of people believe something doesn’t make it true.
Now for the logic part. Apparently miracles, creating the universe and the like don’t count as an effect. Apparently you think your God is unfalsible. Well, for the Shinto god we can test to see if it is present in anything. If there is no test that would show it doesn’t exist then we can safely assume that it doesn’t.
As for my other thoughts. I am not doing this out of any noble purpose. Those people scare me. I just want to insure that I don’t get conscripted and fight some war because of those theistic bastards. I’m sorry if you find my living not a good enough reason. As for the thought police part, there is a reason the secret service exists. Also all the non-thoughts are things you think (hence the name thought) so yes, what you are think does determine your actions. By the way you’re right at the end. The word I should have used was insane, not irrational. In this contect insanity is holding certain prepositions without evidence (aka faith).
Finally the last person wonders about culture and brain washing atheism. Two parts 1 it isn’t possible to live in human society without some form of culture. Rather then training them in a culture we shold simply make them aware of it and 2 religion isn’t inherent. Although some people want easy answers and a dichromatic world for the rest of humanity simply not indoctrinating in religion will result in them being atheists. You don’t need to indoctrinate people to make them atheists; hell, that is why I am an atheist.
December 27th, 2007 at 4:26 am
I have to run to the store, but I’ll make one comment first, and address the other issues when I get back.
How does one “test to see” if a nonphysical god is present in, say, rice? You have non-physical property analyzers that the rest of the scientific community is unaware of?
December 27th, 2007 at 7:43 am
“1 it isn’t possible to live in human society without some form of culture. Rather then training them in a culture we shold simply make them aware of it”
Yes, but in growing up within a certain culture, aren’t you, to some degree, biased toward that culture, without making a conscious choice? I’m just saying that one can be born into a culture that influences one’s manner of thinking. It need not involve religion or atheism at all, but simply a way of thought. I think everyone should be aware of the differing opinions of other cultures, but the culture one is raised in is the one that is likely to provide one with moral/ethical/religious values. And since there is no conscious choice to be born into a certain culture and taught it’s ways, by Dawkins’ logic, shouldn’t the teaching of a certain mentality to children be illegal also?
And I am also atheist, as I already stated, and I didn’t come to be one through indoctrination, and I don’t think many did. However, I’m simply wondering what people like Dawkins would think if people were being indoctrinated as atheists.
December 27th, 2007 at 2:13 pm
Jacob -
Your thoughts are not disorganized. You are quite lucid and articulate. You appear to me to be a better spokesman for the concept of atheism than Dawkins himself.
When teaching math to my second grader, the teacher does not, when my child asserts that “2+2=3″, scream “Imbecile! Idiot! F*%$ off!” as Dawkins and others do. Instead, the teacher calmly lays 2 oranges and 2 apples next to each other and says, “Go ahead. Count them yourself. Let’s see what we come up with.” In fact, if the teacher became emotional at all, a parent would be horrified at the lack of self-control and mystified as to why the teacher doesn’t simply display facts and evidence.
I am continuously horrified and mystified at grown adults shouting at each other over God existing or not existing. The volume of one’s voice or acidity of one’s rebuttals never highlights a truth or fact. Even on the impersonal internet, sarcasm, mockery, drama and hyperbole cloud the real issues, and make me think that their rhetoric is only smoke and mirrors attempting to cover baseless claims. When calm, rational persons such as yourself present information, however, those truly interested or trying to learn can more readily accept information.
Keep doing what you’re doing. Perhaps there is a God, who wishes you to get others to think. Perhaps there is not, and your selfish gene is only acting to evolve itself into a species of living things that more effectively rationalize their observations than they do now. Either way, your manner is more conducive to progress for our current species.
December 27th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
Great post, Pete. Very clearly stated.
December 27th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
If I wrote down that, at some point in the distant future, a trifecta of events would occur in the same generation - say, multiple tsunamis on earth in many places; the endangerment to the moon’s very survival; and the teaching of the tribal pagan religion of Karazi to every human on the earth AND on the moon - that would seem silly to scientists.
However, if, say, in 3760 through 3850 AD, someone found my memo, and there were now, in fact, dozens and dozens of tsunami’s; the moon was now disintegrating rapidly from earth’s rampant radio waves; and the tribal religion Karazi, as taught to pagans way back in the year 2007 AD, was now commonly spoken of on the earth and on the moon; scientists would find the chances of my ancient prediction coming true statistically improbable and worthy of great study.
And yet, due to (???????), many choose today to ignore these facts:
Fact 1: The last passages of Bible were written no more recently than 300 AD. This is 1700 years ago. This is commonly accepted by scholars, historians, and literary critics.
Fact 2: Humans now, for the first time in history, have the capacity to wipe every last one of themselves off the face of the earth. While global warming is one debatable method, nuclear war is a certain method. Not only do the vast majority of “people far less intelligent than scientists”
believe this, even scientists themselves believe this. This is proven, able to be tested for falseness, not false, and commonly observed today throughout the world.
Fact 3: At the same time, earthquakes occur regularly in this generation, as they’ve always had the capacity to. But the fact remains that earthquakes, do, indeed, occur regularly. This is proven, able to be tested for falseness, not false, and commonly observed today throughout the world.
Fcat 4: The teachings of one man from circa 30 AD, who started a very small group of only dozens to promote those teachings, are now promoted and spoken to every nation on earth. In fact, followers of those teachings number close to 25% of the entire world population. Many of these nations today were not even known to exist by the man who originally promoted these teachings. This is proven, able to be tested for falseness, not false, and commonly observed today throughout the world.
And here’s my bottom line:
Fact 5: The same man, in the same Bible, said 1700 years ago, that Facts 2, 3 and 4 would all occur at the same time, just as they are today.
December 27th, 2007 at 10:06 pm
By the way, John, thanks. I’m enjoying reading all the posts. I’m a Mensa member who studied both evolutionary biology and the history of Christianity at the University of Michigan.
Not surprisingly, I come across ‘uninformed emotion’ 95% of the time in these type of discussions, but am always pleased to discover controlled reason that weighs all sides of the evidence. THAT’S where any eventual truth will be found.
It’s always interesting to ask a fist-pounding Biblical fundamentalist if he believes Noah and his sons spawned all the various skin colors and nationalities on earth today - Chinese, Brazilian, Middle-Eastern, Irish, African, European, etc. (Of course they do.) And then to ask them to consider that THAT - the various traits of each race/nationality - is microevolution.
It is equally interesting to ask a macroevolutionary atheist if he believes that, over billions of years, an intelligent species could evolve, from a simple life form to a life form that creates and controls machines on distant moons and planets with radio waves. (Of course he does.) And then to ask them to consider that THAT - the creation and control of machines on other planets by highly evolved beings - is very similar to the Judeo/Christian/Muslim definition of “God” or “Angel.”
December 28th, 2007 at 1:15 am
Regarding your introductory reference to the petition banning the teaching of creationism in schools: This must seem a valid position to anyone gifted with even a tenth the IQ of the previous blogger. Creationism is pseudo science and it’s proponents distort, misrepresent and selectively ignore scientific knowledge
of geology, cosmology and archaeology to make it appear to support their
deluded, bible based fantasy version of Earth history. This is why Creationism should on no account be taught in schools alongside genuine science. It is LIES
for want of a better word. No, on reflection lies was the ideal word for this teaching, and do we want to teach children lies? If Creationism is mentioned at all in school it should be in a subject like Religious Education with the proviso that
teacher makes it clear that unlike the ignorant superstitionheads of two thousand years ago, these guys have NO EXCUSE!
December 28th, 2007 at 3:25 am
Of course I have a device that can detect nonphysical objects that don’t interact with reality. It is called the BS detector. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of it, perhaps you need one.
December 28th, 2007 at 4:49 am
Hi John,
I’m curious to see how you support this statement
Atheism lacks intellectual credibility.
I would in fact argue the opposite. Atheism is based on the accumulated evidence of science and our senses which has never shown the existence of a deity of any description. Yes we can not definitively say god does not exist, as we also cant say that on the opposite side of the sun there is not a very nice cafe that serves good coffee. But the odds of this are so small as to be near 0, therefore an intellectual weighing up of the information surely would lead one to decide there is no god.
Now if you as you state god exists in a spirtual universe, but you can’t present any evidence for it, then why not also one full of pixies, unicorns. the ancient greek gods etc? These are just as likely as one with your god sitting out there. If a god existed that we could not see, sense or interact with on any level and has no discernible impact on our reality then what is the point of such a being?
I agree with Richard Dawkins in that the teaching of Creationism and other religious based interpretations is indeed harmful to a childs understanding of the world. These are not science, they are philosophy and should be taught as such. To teach these as having any sort of scientific validity is wrong and misleading. Keep the faith based schools, but it needs to be ensured that science is taught as such not as what a brand of faith would like it to be.
Personally I have no problem with people believing privately whatever they like but its when they decide to interfere in the affairs of others that I object. Keep science and religion seperate and we will all be happier.
Oh, I do agree that there is a dividing line between thought and action. People can’t be punished for their thoughts its by their actions that the law can judge them.
December 28th, 2007 at 10:17 am
Employ your BS detector to examine some Young Earth Creationist websites and
prepare to see it go off the scale.
December 28th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
Hi Greg,
Atheism, the assertion that gods do not exist, lacks credibility to the extent that science is unable to confirm it. Insofar as science deals only with the physical universe, and the hypothetical gods are not of the physical universe, the atheist lack of credibility should be considered 100%.
Your conclusion (i.e., atheism) is not supported by the premises. The premises science provide support agnosticism. As I am sure you know, Dawkins attacks agnosticism with his usually dose of name-calling, but not with any logically sound arguments.
Then why not drop the intellectual unsound atheism and join me on the green grass of agnosticism?
Due to the physical nature of that proposition, I am sure we could come up with some solid probabilities in regard to the existence of a cafe. (I’m sure there will be a Starbucks there soon if indeed it were possible.)
The odds of a supernatural being, on the other hand, are by definition impossible to calculate using knowledge of the physical realm. It’s entirely reasonable, given the absence of knowledge of a non-physical realm, to disregard the very concept of it. But here is where intellectual honesty comes in: Disregarding a concept is not identical to affirming its non-existence. One is agnosticism, one is atheism, and atheism lacks the proof of nonexistence to support its assertion that gods do not exist.
In order to arrive at any specific probability of the existence of god, we would need to be able to be in possession of knowledge of the non-physical. We do not have knowledge of the non-physical, so I think it’s safe to dismiss the stated odds.
Intellectual honesty requires us to differentiate knowledge supported by fact from belief. People can believe that gods exist as religious people do; they can believe that gods do not exist, like Dawkins. But when you attempt to classify that belief as knowledge, you do so in order to invest it with authority. That’s when we should get scared.
We do not know that pixies exist, nor do we know that they do not. Same goes for any other supernatural proposition. This is not so much about gods as it is about epistemology.
A good question, perhaps, but one I’m not particularly interested in. When we can neither prove or disprove the existence of a phenomenon, I don’t see particular merit in discussing the meaningfulness of the proposed existence.
I think you underestimate the human intellect. The human intellect, on its average day, seeks truth. A lot of people who were taught the young earth theories have abandoned those theories without much fanfare at all when presented with the evidence for evolution. Indeed, people teach their children to believe in Santa Claus, and I see no harm in that. Of course, some irrational extremists are likely to claim as Dawkins does that it is “child abuse”, but we can dismiss those absurd suggestions without a second thought on the matter.
I would call them religion, and think that they should be taught as such.
I agree with that 100%.
Tell Dawkins that. He is responding to totalitarianism of a few religious people by proposing a totalitarianism of his own.
Agreed.
Agreed.
And people say I’m not an agreeable guy?!