Atheism

Darwin found them high up in the Andes.

The Devil put them there!

With God's permission. See the Book of Job.

Dawkins will be at Duke Sunday @ 2pm. I'm gonna try to go.

From article in paper that included a short phone interview:



Read more: http://www.newsobserver.com./2010/09/30/710073/grow-up-atheist-author-urges-believers.html#ixzz112dqfT2l

This is where I disagree with Dawkins.



Many people of faith do make the most of this life (for themselves and for others). I have the same problem with an atheist telling someone else how they should live their life as I do a person of faith telling me how I should live mine.

Yeah-- and what's the big deal about growing up? Growing up hasn't a single thing going for it and a great deal to the contrary.

He's on his third wife I gather so he's no room to talk about growing up.

I understood his response to be in the vein of responding, as an atheist to theists that rely on an answered prayer, waiting for a voice to direct them, or saying it's in gods hands rather than taking responsibility and doing something about a problem, whether personal or societal.

I go to things like this with an open mind. Never hurts to hear a point of view, whether it gels with current view or not.

I don't argue Dawkins, because I have never read a book or article by him and have never watched him get interviewed.

Which theists, or theist, do you have in mind squinney. Can one declare oneself an atheist and then be thought of as somebody who takes responsibility and who does something about a problem? Do only theists not do that?

Some people spend their time complaining about the Catholic Church taking responsibility and doing things. Jesuit priests were all over the Americas in the 17th and 18th century spying out the land. Many suffering painful deaths.

I think you are using words to buff up your self image. And flattering other atheists to try to ensure they stick to their position.

That was my interpretation as well.

In god is not Great, during his closing thoughts on the final chapter titled "The Need for a New Enlightenment" he addresses the idea of what next. Here if anywhere you'd expect such a didactic man as himself to offer his thoughts on the question of whether we should all become atheists.



I think Dawkins expresses that he is more concerned with the future developing on it's own, but from a honest understanding of the past. Earlier, he makes the very frank acknowledgement that he doesn't believe that religion is going away.

Dawkins never takes a moment to ever once even put the brush to the canvas to paint an all atheist world. He doesn't encourage the reader to paint that picture either. That's why when I read his response to the question, I feel that he is only explaining, as squinney put it, that such a reply would be in vein.

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Am I the only one who finds that ridiculous. Why "in a straight line"? That's a qualifier fit to get anybody off the hook.

Who is Christopher Dawkins?

Thank you spendi, it seems when I was typing that my mind shifted from Hitchens to Dawkins. Perhaps it is because I was thinking about using a different quote from the opening of the book in which he states his disagreement with Dawkins on his suggestion that atheists should refer to themselves as "brights." I'm inclined to agree with Hitchens, that this is an unnecessary appetizer for those who fantasize about an atheist utopia.

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I've fantasised about an atheist utopia myself. Women without the slightest spark of decency as Henry Miller called for in what I assume was a desperate moment.

What Theo calls for from the top of the tree in Amarcord. That climatic desperate howl is gut wrenching. What Bernini depicted in his masterpiece.

Huxley was hopeless. He imagined male domination would continue into the distant future. Can you believe that? With our technology!!?? What a forlorn hope. As if women are going to put up with being ordered off a menu. Brain horticulture notwithstanding. He ran out of gas with co-operative women. There was nothing interesting to write about.

What makes me laugh is the chap who promotes an atheist future who is sleepwalking his way, and leading us if we are daft enough to take any notice, into a future which I think would surprise him and dismays me. He will, of course, put questions about this future's characteristics on Ignore. Well--he is sleepwalking.

da Vinci showed us all the equivocal smile. Get the eyes. Jesus said to forget it. You do know I hope that Mary Tyler Moore insisted on wearing trousers in the Dick van Dyke show and the happy couple slept in separate beds. And women wearing trousers in those days were very uncommon in family shows. We laughed our heads off at the sheer merciless henpeckery. So much so that we never noticed how much our womenfolk were swooning over it. It was only later that I came to realise how much art there was in it.

Our rolling-pin swinging matriarch battleaxe waiting for her pissed-up husband to roll home from the pub is just a joke. When Laurel and Hardy were equipt with wives we used to cringe.

And, am I the only one who sees an arrogance in his position?

Is it the use of "grow up" that you are objecting to? Could he put it more nice? Sure. I can object to his choice of words, but his position on societal maturity, I'm inclined to agree with.

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I don't see his position at all - ever.

If you are referring to the quote in italics arrogance is too mild a term. There's a madness in it in my estimation. A grotesque overestimation of his importance in this world.

We have first to transcend our prehistory, and escape the gnarled hands which reach out to drag us back to the catacombs and the reeking alters and the guilty pleasures of subjection and abjection.

I would burst out laughing if anybody said that in the pub. I would think he was taking the piss in David Garrick style. Or send for the White-coats.

My problem with both Hitchens and Dawkens is their presentation that their position is somehow superior to any other and that others should change to be more like them. I don't find that arrogance any more tolerable than I find those who think others should take on a particular brand of faith.

This is your most chopped and tossed word salad you've ever served.

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I think Hitchens is quite clear that he wants people to be better than him. The statements that make the man famous are not necessarily the ones that best represent him. He's an unapologetic didactic who won't split the difference, but his message is more of human cooperation. Hitchens would rather have the whole world be religious if it meant everyone could get along. I think the bottom line is human tolerance, not religious tolerance. Certainly the man does not isolate himself on an atheist island. He has spent much of his career touring publicly (and outnumbered) with theists of many faiths. He has made many close relationships with these men and women and has acknowledged their intelligence and equal value as human beings. What more is left? We can respect people of conviction without respecting their convictions. I think the latter is how ole Hitch has been painted without acknowledging his efforts in the former.

Dawkins, you've got pretty much right. He does want everyone to be an atheist, as if it guarantees a better world and happiness unto itself.

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