[dor]

I have a flight to catch but "mr punch" no, dawkins is not logically consisitent- his own irrational hatred of religion makes him as out of touch with reality as a creationist:
i am pointed those things out here and I will repeat again - atheistic goverments have killed far more people than religious ones _ 120 million an counting, and frankly mr. punch - you live in denmark - if you danes dont get off their apaethic extesitional rear ends you're going to lose you country - and in a protracted war , a religious people will always beat a decadent people (and that's what the west has become) it happend in Spain, it happened in India, it happened to the Entrucans, it happened to late Rome, and Europe will be next. You can go on and on how it 'isn't fair' or it's irratioonal - but unless you change, they are going to win. So who's the irrational ones now - people like you and dawkins who don't understand human nature, or the 'islamo facists' who do?

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Creation / Evolution Debate and Spiritual Development
nara yes it was meant to be a joke. No I don't think you or Dawkins are naizis..

Originally Posted by takkaria

Whoops! I meant that as a reply to the last post on page 5, and hadn't read page 6 yet...

I quote Dawkins, in The Devil's Chaplain, a book I have but have not yet read (I found the quote online):

"My point is not that religion itself is the motivation for wars, murders and terrorist attacks, but that religion is the principal label, and the most dangerous one, by which a "they" as opposed to a "we" can be identified at all."

Here is an example of how he does not claim that Northern Ireland and the problems in Iraq are entirely caused by religion.

is it from this article?

"I named belief in an afterlife as the key weapon that made the New York atrocity possible. Of prior significance is religion’s deep responsibility for the underlying hatreds that motivated people to use that weapon in the first place. To breathe such a suggestion, even with the most gentlemanly restraint, is to invite an onslaught of patronising abuse, as Douglas Adams noted. But the insane cruelty of the suicide attacks, and the equally vicious though numerically less catastrophic ‘revenge’ attacks on hapless Muslims living in America and Britain, push me beyond ordinary caution.

How can I say that religion is to blame? Do I really imagine that, when a terrorist kills, he is motivated by a theological disagreement with his victim? Do I really think the Northern Ireland pub bomber says to himself, “Take that, Tridentine Transubstantiationist bastards!” Of course I don’t think anything of the kind. Theology is the last thing on the minds of such people. They are not killing because of religion itself, but because of political grievances, often justified. They are killing because the other lot killed their fathers. Or because the other lot drove their great- grandfathers off their land. Or because the other lot oppressed our lot economically for centuries.

My point is not that religion itself is the motivation for wars, murders and terrorist attacks, but that religion is the principal label, and the most dangerous one, by which a ‘they’ as opposed to a ‘we’ can be identified at all. I am not even claiming that religion is the only label by which we identify the victims of our prejudice. There’s also skin colour, language, and social class. But often, as in Northern Ireland, these don’t apply and religion is the only divisive label around. Even when it is not alone, religion is nearly always an incendiary ingredient in the mix as well. And please don’t trot out Hitler as a counter-example. Hitler’s sub-Wagnerian ravings constituted a religion of his own foundation, and his anti-Semitism owed a lot to his never-renounced Roman Catholicism (see http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/murphy_19 _2.html).

It is not an exaggeration to say that religion is the most inflammatory enemy-labelling device in history. Who killed your father? Not the individuals you are about to kill in ‘revenge’. The culprits themselves have vanished over the border. The people who stole your great-grandfather’s land have died of old age. You aim your vendetta at those who belong to the same religion as the original perpetrators. It wasn’t Seamus who killed your brother, but it was Catholics, so Seamus deserves to die ‘in return’. Next, it was Protestants who killed Seamus so let’s go out and kill some Protestants ‘in revenge’. It was Muslims who destroyed the World Trade Center so let’s set upon the turbaned driver of a London taxi and leave him paralysed from the neck down."

northern ireland: he fails to mention that the protestants are a different ethnic group who colonized there.
also notice how he completely ignores the fact atheistic communists killled hundreds of millions and when confronted with the hitler example, simply references himself and calls hitlers fascism a religion....He claims hitler's anti semitism came from roman catholicism...how does he explain the fact that the pope hid 7000 jews in the vatician during WWII...can he back this claim up? Highly doubtful


CNN.com - Suicide bombings as military strategy - Jun 30, 2005

Expert: Attacks motivated by logic, not religion
Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (2005; ISBN 1-4000-6317-5) is Robert A. Pape's analysis of suicide terrorism from a strategic, social, and psychological point of view. It is based on a database he has compiled at the University of Chicago, where he directs the Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism. The book's conclusions are based on data from 315 suicide terrorism campaigns around the world from 1980 through 2003 and 462 individual suicide terrorists. Published in May 2005, Pape's volume has been widely noticed by press, public, and policymakers alike, and has earned praise from Peter Bergen and Michael Scheuer.
But Pape, author of the provocative new book "Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism," contends those reports fuel significant misperceptions about the bombers, their motivations and specifically the role religion plays in their actions.

"There is little connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, or any one of the world's religions," he says.


So can we expect a Dawkins crusade against logic now?

But if it had not been for religion, the very concept of a Jewish State would have had no meaning in the first place. Nor would the very concept of Islamic lands, as something to be invaded and desecrated. In a world without religion, there would have been no Crusades; no Inquisition; no anti-Semitic pogroms (the people of the diaspora would long ago have intermarried and become indistinguishable from their host populations); no Northern Ireland Troubles (no label by which to distinguish the two ‘communities’, and no sectarian schools to teach the children historic hatreds — they would simply be one community.)

Dawkins doesn't know much about the foundations of Zionism (Herzol and the early champions of it were secular and see jews as an ethinic group)...or Palestinian nationalism...he fails to mention the crusades were almost exclusively Norman and as anyone familiar with history knows...the Norman's pastime was conquering other peoples - England, Northern France, Siciliy......no anti semtic pogroms? Is he refering to the russian ones, or the expulsion of the jews by the irreligious Romans?
no label to distinquish between prods and catholics - so war like tough border clans from scotland moved there to clear up the english/scottish border would have just blended in? comical.
He also claims jews would have just intermarried...how does he explain other 'wandering peoples' who don't - like gypsies - who don't practice any particular religion?