Bloody Student

Thursday, November 09, 2006

Secular Religion

Richard Bloody Dawkins, Biologist and Atheist.

Much attention has come recently of his book "The God Delusion" in which he espouses the virtues of Atheism as opposed to the nasty old habit of Religion. One would have to ask: "Why is he right, then?" and I would have to answer "well, he's not actually"

You see, for all the god-bashing with one hand, and the handing out laurels to science with the other; the comparison of Religion to a virus of the mind and the general witch-hunt he himself has created on behalf of the exalted dogmas of biology. For all of this, I say, he's been a bit of a prat and overlooked the cause of it all: his own self-loathing.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines Religion as:
1) The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods > a particular system of faith and worship.
2) a pursuit or interest followed with great devotion.

and good grief, there it is. Right there in two bold statements that would describe Dawkins's habits quite well I think.

The man has hundreds of followers, they have their ironically named bible: The God Delusion; they have their theory as to the origins of the universe, and they hate, hate, hate people of other beliefs. That's not to say that all religions hate other people of course, Buddhism is perfectly peaceful (and doesn't belive in a god even!) and Christianity is one renowned for 'love thy neighbour' and 'turn the other cheek'. in fact, i'd be hard pressed to find any religion that doesn't preach these basic human fundamentals. The desire to do good is fundamental to humanity, it's only when people see other people as things (like crazy religionists, blacks, terrorists or whatever) that fuck ups like 9/11 happen.

an easy comparison to make is such:

Atheist "I don't believe in God"
Evangelist "oh dear, you're going to Hell - there are none so blind as those who will not see"
Atheist "Gosh"
Evangelist "Read The Bible, Heathen"

WITH

Evangelist "I believe in God"
Atheist "your faith is analogous to a carnivorous gene complex"
Evangelist "Gosh"
Atheist "Read The God Delusion, Faith-head"

The point is: it isn't peoples faith that makes them different (and I include Atheism as a faith) it's their attitude - Dawkins clearly has become, or always was the thing he hates. He seems to me to be just as self-righteous as the archetypal religious nuts that he berates.
He flatly refuses to even discuss issues like Creationism (something I don't personally believe in, but each to their own) just as some of the people he interviewed on 'The root of all Evil?" did also effectively close their eyes and go 'la la la I can't hear you'.

On a closing note, Dawkins often refers to the 'Russell's Teapot' argument about God, essentially if one makes an assertion that something exists and it cannot be proved or disproved; then the fact that it cannot be disproved is no good reason to believe it.
A valid point, but the point that it cannot be proved is no reason to disbelieve it, either.
And even less of a reason to write an inflammatory book that objectifies people of different beliefs, all in the name of "Let's now stop being so damned respectful!"

6 Comments:

  • I've been doubting for days; should I buy The God Delusion, or not? Dawkins crusade is becoming slightly tiresome, as I've mentioned briefly on my blog today (http://lackofsound.blogspot.com/). On the other hand...

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 9:41 AM  

  • I highly doubt anyone can take anything you've said here seriously, particularly this:

    "they hate, hate, hate people of other beliefs"

    You are a liar, liar, liar. Did you even read the book? I have seen a lot of presentations by Professor Dawkins and I have read a few of his books and I have never seen him espouse HATE for anyone. How dare you misrepresent his position that way. You should be ashamed. This post is quite rude and inaccurate.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 9:55 PM  

  • And if you've heard Professor Dawkins espouse hate for anyone, please give me some references to specific things he said or did to show that hate you claim he feels.

    You can't just SAY things as though they are fact without backing them up.

    Back it up, or take it back.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 9:58 PM  

  • Hello there momsquared, you started with "I highly doubt anyone can take anything you've said here seriously" but you then contradicted yourself by doing so. Believe me, i make such sweeping statements to elaborate as to how generalisations and bigotry get people nowhere.

    another thing you said was: "You can't just SAY things as though they are fact without backing them up." but isn't that precisely what Richard Dawkins does? If i said to you "god created the earth" and backed it up with "it says so in the bible" would that be enough for you? didn't think so, and i'm not going to.

    as for Dawkins quotes:

    "To be fair, much of the Bible is not systematically evil but just plain weird" CHAPTER 7 (god delusion)
    opinion, not quantifiable scientific fact. therefore not fair and pretty unjustified. The quote implicates that some of, or even most of the bible is 'systematically evil'. Weird doesn't bother me, as he's entitled to an opinion, but evil is a bit of a hateful word to use.

    "Only religious faith is a strong enough force to motivate such utter madness in otherwise sane and decent people." chapter 8 on the London bombers. To use a well known example:
    The holocaust was a hatred and extermination of religious people, marxists, gypsies, homosexuals, different races etc. not fuelled by religion but racism and general bigotry, Atheistic bigotry i might add. Not to tarnish atheists with Hitler's brush - but the presumption that only faith and religion could ever be bad enogouh to cause catastrophes is an easy and misguided one to make.


    "Bush and bin Laden are really on the same side: the side of faith and violence against the side of reason and discussion... This world would be a much better place without either of them." Apparently Dawkins has such faith in his own ideas that he can justify which people the world would be better without. Dawkins and Bush and bin Laden have more in common than they thought.

    "Without religion you have good people doing good things, and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion." (Quoting Steven Weinberg). It follows logically: if there is no religion and science ruled the earth, anyone being contrary would be branded evil.

    "Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence" Albert Einstein,a man who needs no introduction, was driven out of Nazi Germany by Hitler's Atheistic regime. For being too Jewish. Faith is not a great cop-out; generalising is. It is practically a bigotry. whether you generalise a faith, a race, a hair colour or a type of music. Like most of Dawkins stuff, the above statement was a sweeping and churlish one.

    In my opinion The only true non-religion is agnosticism, because they admit that they simply DO NOT KNOW whether there is a god or not. and accordingly, aren't indoctrinated into the atheist or religionist camp. Agnostics don't often wander about telling people that there definitely is possibly a god. Or that everyone else apart from themselves is absolutely positively one hundred percent wrong, or right.

    This is precisely the kind of outspoken, generalised old garbage that alienates people from each other. Why not accept peoples' differences, i say; religious or not.

    By Blogger RubbishStudent, at 9:04 AM  

  • You wrote a lot, but you still didn't back up your assertion that atheists "hate hate hate" people of other beliefs.

    Again, please feel free to back up THAT assertion with quotes.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 7:20 PM  

  • "you still didn't back up your assertion that atheists "hate hate hate" people of other beliefs."

    Allow me to clarify, it was not an assertion that was meant to be taken literally.I threw it in there to emphasise the sort of bigotry that happens within both theist and atheist circles.

    you had it right the first time: you weren't supposed to take it seriously.

    God bless you.

    By Blogger RubbishStudent, at 5:35 AM  

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