So the world's about to end...

[Mikey]

PPS - If you like, I can provide a number of quotes which illustrates Dawkins' antipathy for religion being based on disdain and misunderstanding, rather than the facts of religious belief. Now, before you get all up-in-arms about that last statement, I meant the observable facts about the nature of faith, not whether there are any facts inherent to the beliefs in question.

[Graham Kennedy]

You didn't answer my question.

I've read a great deal of Dawkins work, and I've watched just about every Youtube video of him. I find that the actuality of what he says is extremely different from the reporting of him. I hear about this "bulldog" and then I actually listen and find a polite, well mannered guy who is saying things that, just aren't what people claims he says.

Now if you want a bulldog, go listen to Christopher Hitchens - well, when he could still talk at least.

[Mikey]

OK: yes. I've read some of his work, though I admit to not knowing the extent of his catalog well enough to tell you what percentage I've read. And I never said that he was rude, impolite, poorly-spoken, or somehow evil. If I implied that inadvertently, then I apologize. My issue with him is not with him particularly, but a more general one that I have with many, many people regarding atheism, religious dogma, and any other sort of personally-held belief system: that is, keep it to yourself.

You, for example, are an atheist. You have every right to be an atheist. You have every right to tell the word that you are an atheist. The line is telling anyone else that they should be an atheist or that they are wrong for not being one (which two statements are essentially two sides of the same coin.)

Nor do I believe that this only applies to atheists. I have more than once come to loggerheads with my fellow Jews who somehow seem to think that their particular misinterpretation of the term "chosen people" somehow allows for a misplaced pride of place, or that Judaism should be brought to Gentiles (though in general, Judaism doesn't incorporate much proselytization.)

I feel the same way about political ideologies, etc. Having an opinion, no matter how radically different from my own, is everyone's right. Telling me that I need to adopt someone else's, however, is not a right that anyone else has - no matter how polite, learned, and well-spoken is the person making such a demand.

[Mikey]

BTW, my reading of Dawkins includes at this point only two of his books - The Selfish Gene and The G-d Delusion. I never got around to reading The Extended Phenotype, though I've always meant to... I certainly have no issue with Dawkins' ability as a biologist, and without reading that I just can't wrap my head around the idea of genetic expression extending past the organism.

[Graham Kennedy]

Personally I think that discussion and debate of our beliefs is a very healthy thing. Seriously, what kind of world would it be if everybody kept their beliefs entirely to themselves all the time? It would kill politics, stifle philosophy, science, just about everything actually.

Of course there is absolutely a time and a place for discussions and a time and a place where they are not appropriate. People should have their privacy, people shouldn't have to have their beliefs challenged if they don't want them challenged. I would never walk up to somebody in the street and start having a go at their beliefs on religion, just as I'd never do it in a supermarket, or in their place of worship, or bang on their door one morning, or any one of a hundred other places and times.

But internet forums, chatrooms, TV interviews, book publishing, blogs, etc... these are voluntary activities that people choose to observe or take part in, and advocating our beliefs and discussing their merits is the very reason for them to exist. Dawkins never forced anybody to read The God Delusion, just as Ted Haggard never forced anybody to go to his church. I see no problem with either one advocating for his beliefs (or lack of).

[Captain Picard's Hair]

Personally I think that discussion and debate of our beliefs is a very healthy thing. Seriously, what kind of world would it be if everybody kept their beliefs entirely to themselves all the time? It would kill politics, stifle philosophy, science, just about everything actually.

I'm a funny one to speak about this since I'm asocial, find conflict quite distasteful and don't find myself to be very opinionated. However, intellectually (if not emotionally) I know that variety isn't just the spice of life but the seed of it. There's strength in diversity of opinions which gets wasted when views, even extremist views, are muffled by either the society or the person. We wouldn't know that the earth really is round and really isn't the center of everything if there weren't people - and outspoken ones - whose ideas were so radical for their times that they were thought to be, in very precise terms, completely batshit insane.

Now I also relate to Mikey's position (I'm quite sure he understands the above too). I'm not meaning to put words in his mouth but I'd agree that attempting to censor diverging opinions is wrong - and counterproductive. This does of course defeat the very diversity of opinion which gives a society strength. It seems a bit paradoxical to me (as one who seems to obverse the world without actively engaging it all too much) that despite the well known stubbornness inherent in people's opinions and the fact that few arguments really seem to change one's mind but can easily make the participants even more polarized, that most people around me seem to revel in butting their thick heads together time after time. If people weren't so stubborn, unique (or "divergent") ideas would have a harder time living on and variety of opinion would suffer. On the other hand, it's not hard to become overly zealous in promoting an idea. People seem to have quite a hard time discerning the difference between an attack on one's ideas and an attack on one's self (which may have been something Mikey was trying to get to).

Certainly I'm the last one to have the solution on how to balance these things, but I find it somehow ironic that the proper way to argue is itself subject to argument!

Sorry for the interruption now folks, I just had the urge to think aloud. Back to your regularly scheduled head-butting now.

[Graham Kennedy]

Now I also relate to Mikey's position (I'm quite sure he understands the above too). I'm not meaning to put words in his mouth but I'd agree that attempting to censor diverging opinions is wrong - and counterproductive.

I absolutely think that it's wrong to censor differing opinions. But, whilst I've no doubt that there may be fault on both sides in that respect, and whilst I'm not talking about anybody specific around here, I honestly can't say that I've noticed the atheists doing that to anything remotely like the extent that theists do. Which group more often protests movies they don't like? Which ground more often protests legal activities they don't like? Which group more often pushes to legislate their own idea of moral behaviour onto the rest of us?

Dawkins has never said, to my knowledge, that people should not be allowed to be theists, or that they shouldn't be allowed to argue their case. He has never said that theists should be barred from public office. Nor has Sam Harris, nor has Hitchens. These three guys are held up as being some of the the most extreme atheists in the whole world, and what is the most extreme thing any of them has done? Write books. Go on TV. Have an argument with people who agreed to discuss the issue with them. It's hardly the stuff of nightmares, now is it?

Now ask yourself what the most extreme theists in the world are doing these days.

[Captain Seafort]

Now ask yourself what the most extreme theists in the world are doing these days.

Feeding Arabian Sea fish.

[Graham Kennedy]

[Tsukiyumi]

[Mikey]

Now ask yourself what the most extreme theists in the world are doing these days.

Feeding Arabian Sea fish.

Umm... yeah, that's it. Buried at sea, right.

Now ask yourself what the most extreme theists in the world are doing these days.

Why would I ask myself that? What has the rightness or wrongness of the actions of one side to do with the rightness or wrongness of the other? Mr. Dawkins tells me that I'm wrong for not being an atheist. I find that distasteful. I still find it distasteful, no matter how much more distasteful I find the likes of the WBC and their ilk.

[Graham Kennedy]

Well it's certainly your right to find things distasteful. Me, I target my distaste to those who actually want to force their opinion on others, rather than simply offering it to them. But that's just me.

[Mikey]

I guess it's a matter of perspective, then. To me, writing a book about how stupid people are who believe differently from the author, and other forms of foisting one's opinions on others, is different in semantics only.

[Graham Kennedy]

To my mind there is a world of difference between publishing a book saying "This is a dumb way to think" that people have to choose to buy and read and are perfectly free to agree with or disagree with... and, say, thinking that gay marriage is against god's will and therefore there should be a law forbidding it for everybody.

[Mikey]

To my mind (such as it is,) there's little difference in the root of anyone saying any variation of "Your belief is wrong, so stop it." Of course, there's worlds of difference in the application - Dawkins has certainly never done anything like the WBC (for example) has, for which I respect him - but that's another discussion.

You will notice from other threads, also, that I certainly don't give a pass to the people who act is in the latter part of your example above, either.