Richard Dawkins: Anti-spiritual or Anti-superstitious?

[Megan]

Not that those are the only two choices, of course--feel free to give your take on Dawkins!

We've been having a lively side discussion on another thread about the popular scientist and writer, Richard Dawkins, and I was thinking since there is so much interest in Dawkins, the man, that he deserves his own thread.

He is a complex figure, drawing both admiration and ire from his readers and fellow scientists.

'Darwin's Rottweiler' probably needs no introduction, but....

Clinton Richard Dawkins (born March 26, 1941) is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and popular science writer who holds the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University.

Dawkins first came to prominence with his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, which popularised the gene-centric view of evolution and introduced the term meme into the lexicon, thereby helping to found the field of memetics.

In 1982, he made a major contribution to the science of evolution with the theory, presented in his widely cited book The Extended Phenotype, that phenotypic effects are not limited to an organism's body but can stretch far into the environment, including into the bodies of other organisms.

He has since written several best-selling popular books on, and appeared in a number of television and radio programmes about, evolutionary biology, creationism, and religion.

Dawkins is an outspoken atheist, humanist, and sceptic, and is a prominent member of the Brights movement. In a play on Thomas Huxley's epithet "Darwin's bulldog", Dawkins' impassioned defence of evolution has earned him the appellation "Darwin's rottweiler".

Richard Dawkins - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Here are some linked articles:

Richard Dawkins

And here is Dawkins' web site:

RichardDawkins.net - The Official Richard Dawkins Website

Enjoy!

[Megan]

Or, has Dawkins simply gone over the top in reacting to what he perceives to be valueless superstitious religion?

Are his positions measured, or are they calculated to bait religious people and gain notoriety, or...?

Is there a need for religion, or is Dawkins right that a world without religion would be a better world?

Can the world get along without religion? Should it? Who decides?

Has science "unwoven the rainbow," or can science be a door to spirituality, wonder and awe?

[dor]

I think he is anti religious to the point of irrationality.
Certainly one's values color one's views of the world...but its been clearly demonstrated his ideology over-rides reality. Anyone who would label the indo-pakisthan wars are religiously based and claiming they would vanish if there was no religioun is clearly not operating in reality. I won't go into the complexities of it here - but as a short cut...its as foolish as saying that british colonization of india were 'christian-hindu' wars and if both sides had no religion there would be no problem.

Many scientists have complained that he brings nothing but anomosity to the table. I agree.

Others have complained that evolution is the hammer which every scientific problem is a nail - he is an evolutionary fundementalist:

Dawkins's version of evolution also attracts critics, for it is dazzlingly digital. It features "robots" and "vehicles" and DNA, not flesh and fur; some evolutionary biologists regard him as a kind of reductionist fanatic -- an "ultra-Darwinist" who overplays the smooth mathematical progress of natural selection and its relevance to an animal's every characteristic, every nook and cranny.,
RICHARD DAWKINS'S EVOLUTION


I think he has gone 'over the top' as you say and resorted to cheap "Cops" style confrontations.

[Megan]

Irrationality. A strong term. I could go 'questionable judgment' perhaps, irrational...well...I dunno.

Questionable judgment, as in, "Why, Mr. Atheist, venture on an extremely religious person's turf if you're not looking for a pie fight?"

YouTube - Ted Haggard in "Root of All Evil?"

OTOH, we have pie fights around here all the time, and wouldn't we just love it if we were famous and people bought our books because of it? Hey--maybe we're all irrational too!

From the Wiki on him I linked above, it sounds like 911 scared the p-waddin' outta him...like a lot of the rest of us, and he's reacting to that...like a lot of the rest of us.

Yeah, I guess fear makes us do and say irrational things. After I heard the cougar in the back yard, I wouldn't even burn the trash for weeks. I guess that was irrational. I dunno, was it?

I couldn't tell you about the history part, but I'll take your word for it.

Yeah, I think he's going to have to eat his reductionist words one of these days, for true.

And I totally agree, there are lots tastier things to bring to the table than animosity.

[dor]

Originally Posted by Megan

)
From the Wiki on him I linked above, it sounds like 911 scared the p-waddin' outta him...like a lot of the rest of us, and he's reacting to that...like a lot of the rest of us.

Yeah, I guess fear makes us do and say irrational things. After I heard the cougar in the back yard, .

I think the cougar sounds kind of neat..then again i have never had one in my backyard
I hate regurgitating 9/11 stuff but....
I saw the second plane hit.
I lost friends in tower 1
I still cry when i walk by the 10th street firehouse - and I won't walk by it.

even with all that.... when bush got on the air and said 'they hate our freedoms' i knew something was very very very wrong. But that lie now means people 1000 miles away from ground zero are seeing their friends, their sons, their neigbors come home in body bags.

In short, if Dawkins is freaked out he should take hard, honest looks at the whys...and perhaps he's finding comfort in his religion of reason and evolution (reason will save us from 9-11s) but I can't respect someone who is parading around as some champion of truth and avoiding some unpleasant ones.

As I mentioned about these mega churches like haggards, or where haggard used to work ..... it seems like the people are looking for a lot more than stories about creation - family and community structure - and just about everything else the secular humanists tried to destroy in the sixties. (as if to emphasize this just see how popular john lennon's 'imagine' song is with dawkins and secular humanists - despite the fact its well, a crappy song)
I think it is sad that in america christianity seems to have been polarized between fundemenalists and 'anything goes' ....maybe Polkinghorne can start a denomination

[Megan]

I think the cougar sounds kind of neat..then again i have never had one in my backyard.

Yeah, read this book and tell me how neat it is to have cougars in your back yard:

Amazon.com: The Beast in the Garden: The True Story of a Predator's Deadly Return to Suburban America: Books: David Baron

I bumped my cougar thread for you--it's in the 'spirituality' section also.

I am so sorry about your 911 experience. It sounds just terrible. I'm sorry for the whole mess. I have a son in the Army (not deployed yet), so it's pretty personal for me also.

Yeah, I think people are coming to the megachurches a lot because the social fabric came unraveled in the 1960's. I felt it happening. It was palpable, and very disorienting. The social markers for kids are just dismaying now.

And it is sad that American religion is so polarized. I appreciate Polkinghorne, but he can't give people the sense of stability that Fundamentalism can. It's kind of an exoskeleton, in a way.

I speak from personal experience, and so I definitely don't mean that in a derogatory or condescending way. I was a Fundamentalist because I needed to be one. People do what they have to do to get by. It just simply works for a lot of people, and some of them I know, love and respect very much.

I think those of us who see faith from a more liberal perspective can do much to moderate the tone of the dialogue, if we make that our aim.

But we all champion our own version of truth and turn a blind eye to our shadows. It's the human condition. Dawkins just has the spotlight on him.

Secular humanists--well, it's late, so that's a topic for another day.

As Pogo said, "We have seen the enemy, and he is us."

[David1]

Originally Posted by Megan

YouTube - Ted Haggard in "Root of All Evil?"

How could you promote such a distasteful video...

Just the first minute of this video alone makes me sick... He starts the video with Christian rap music and portrays churches like gangs...

This guy cares more about his self-image then humanity.

[Megan]

Hi David1. What I'm trying to foster is fruitful discussion.

Since the science-relgion debate is heating up to such a fever pitch in the world it seems to me that the only solution is "to carry the religious discussion forward," in the words of Dr. Mary Evelyn Tucker.

I'm not making Dawkins wrong, or you wrong. I'm not making these kids wrong:

BlasphemyChallenge.com : "The Blasphemy Challenge" Rewards Participants for Demonstrating Non- Belief on YouTube.

Philadelphia -- December 14, 2006. The Rational Response Squad has launched a $25,000 campaign to entice young people to publicly renounce any belief in the sky God of Christianity.

Called "The Blasphemy Challenge," this campaign encourages participants to commit what Christian doctrine calls the only unforgivable sin -- blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. (The "Holy Spirit" is an invisible ghost who Christians believe dwells on Earth as God's representative.)

Participants who videotape their blasphemy and upload it to YouTube will receive a free DVD of the hit documentary THE GOD WHO WASN'T THERE, which normally sells for $24.98. Beyond Belief Media, the distributor of THE GOD WHO WASN'T THERE, has donated 1001 DVDs to the Rational Response Squad for The Blasphemy Challenge.

More than 160 participants have already blasphemed the Holy Spirit and earned free DVDs during the pre-launch phase of the Blasphemy Challenge. Their videos can be viewed at: YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

While anyone can participate in The Blasphemy Challenge, the Rational Response Squad is focused on reaching a young demographic. To publicize The Blasphemy Challenge to young people, today the Rational Response Squad begins an online advertising campaign focused on 25 sites popular with teens such as Xanga, Friendster, Boy Scout Trail, Tiger Beat, Teen Magazine, YM, CosmoGirl! and Seventeen.

RichardDawkins.net - The Official Richard Dawkins Website

I just think it's time to get centered and talk about these things from the most resourceful state we can manage.

WDYT?

[ElizaJ]

I feel quite sorry for Mr. Dawkins, because I am intimately familiar with people who are able to: 1) travel the Astral plane; 2) communicate with others around the globe via the Astral plane; 3) able to communicate with others via telepathy. And this is all done with the use of Spirit. But, the Supreme Being allows everyone to believe whatever they wish to believe thus allowing them to create their own reality, until such point in time when the Supreme Being will no longer tolerate any nonsense from anyone.

BTW, the Universe is a mish-mash of creation and evolution.

[sourceofmiracles]

I think Dawkins and other atheist have a point about religion. But they tend to be a little over zealous to the point of almost acting like the very thing they condemn (irrational nonsensical nonscientific ideas and the unchecked promotion of the same).

Dawkins (and other neo-atheists) are also very one sided and just as close minded as the faithful that they abhor. Its almost like they are making science into another religion, "scientism". Just dogma from modernism, IMO.

[elai]

I haven't read the thread, but whenever i encounter richard dawkins writings & speeches they always piss me off because of his fundamentalist baptist preachy preacher tones, speaking in absolutes and and other varieties of fanatical thought processes.

[dor]

I was looking for this several weeks ago but had forgotten the author- an example of an atheist who disagrees with what i might call 'total Evolution." - he agrees evolution explains some things, but not everything.

Amazon.com: Darwinian Fairytales: Selfish Genes, Errors of Heredity and Other Fables of Evolution: Books: David Stove,Roger Kimball

From Publishers Weekly
Like a clever agnostic in Sunday school, Stove (Scientific Irrationalism) relentlessly frustrates Darwinism in this posthumous collection of 11 linked essays. To the chagrin of creationists, however, he also takes pains to note he is of no religion and believes it's "overwhelmingly probable that humans evolved from some other animal." His more modest objective is to show that Darwinism, while largely valid, fails to explain known humanity.

.....
Stove then shows how the theory of kin selection lead naturally the ideas of individuals such as Richard Dawkins that it is the genes which are in a constant struggle to survive. Stove totally demolishes Dawkins' theories (making him look like a lunatic quite frankly). Stove asks the simple question "How can genes be selfish doesn't that imply purpose?". As Stove shows, Dawkins has waffled on this point since the beginning. Stove calls Dawkins' theory a "puppet theory of human behavior" and he shows how such theories are not only irrational but result from an unbalanced and positively "demonological" cast of mind. Such he attributes to Mr. Dawkins. Stove also annihilates Dawkins so-called discovery of memes. Compared to the discovery of genes, which involved actual science and experimentation, memes turn out to be nothing more than a simple rhetorical trick and in fact a "pseudo-discovery".

[Angela]

Anyone who has read "The Selfish Gene" by Dawkins knows that the "purpose" question was explained by the author at length. Additionally, Dawkins didn't "discover" memes; he coined the term to describe a phenomenon that he saw at work.

"Lunatic" all depends on your point of view, I reckon.