More Dawkins idiocy...

[prometheus11]

Olinda, I didn't claim either of those things, and I never would. Who are you talking too?

 

[prometheus11]

Olivia, I don't understand this seemingly constant tendency for members to feel so haughty on this forum and compare their philosophical enemies to animals and bugs.

Why don't you pity the people who are extreme Dawkians as you would any religious extremists? Don't you feel compassion for those that don't understand how to properly behave when discussing personal beliefs?

 

[outhouse]

I'm at a loss to see how ridicule will help.

Sometimes the truth hurts, but is needed IMHO.

And of course ridicule can be a positive part of society done right.


In this case when dealing with severe fanaticism that leads to violence, the fundamentalism needs to be addressed with academia and knowledge.

These people need to be addressed for what they are publically, and their errors made public. This helps those on the fence not make the same mistakes.


I'm just not liberal I guess. In schoolyards the right amount helped raise stronger children. Go to far and its negative.

 

[Olinda]

Olivia, I don't understand this seemingly constant tendency for members to feel so haughty on this forum and compare their philosophical enemies to animals and bugs.

Why don't you pity the people who are extreme Dawkians as you would any religious extremists? Don't you feel compassion for those that don't understand how to properly behave when discussing personal beliefs?

eh, Prometheus11, sorry if I've misunderstood your post. Truly, I don't regard anyone here or elsewhere as my enemy, philosophical or otherwise. It was the behaviour I compared to a blowie, not the person!

If I come across as haughty when I'm still struggling with my own beliefs, I'll have to be more careful.

Good point though, to feel compassion for 'extreme Dawkians'. one thing that made it difficult was seeing a believer in the original fundie religion who was beginning to open her mind, retreat to full denial after a blast of Dawkinism.

 

[Olinda]

Sometimes the truth hurts, but is needed IMHO.

And of course ridicule can be a positive part of society done right.


In this case when dealing with severe fanaticism that leads to violence, the fundamentalism needs to be addressed with academia and knowledge.

These people need to be addressed for what they are publically, and their errors made public. This helps those on the fence not make the same mistakes.


I'm just not liberal I guess. In schoolyards the right amount helped raise stronger children. Go to far and its negative.

I think perhaps we're not that far apart. If disagreement is expressed appropriately to the occaision, that's fine, all part of a healthy society.

 

[outhouse]

I think perhaps we're not that far apart. If disagreement is expressed appropriately to the occaision, that's fine, all part of a healthy society.

Its all in the context.

Right now humanity has a terrible problem fighting fanaticism, some 40% of the population in the USA think the earth is under 10,000 years old.

I have not met a muslim yet, that accepts history or science or academia when it does not sink in with their religious theology and mythology. That and they have a terrible illiteracy problem and severe lack of academia holding many cultures back, leaving gaping holes for these violent ideologies to take hold.

People on the front lines of this fight, have a tough go. They are the vast minority. Most of the world is highly uneducated.

 

[Sapiens]

Hi Prometheus11. the 'practice' comment related to some stuff that was very rightly deleted from this thread.

"While I don't agree with Dawkins all the time, I can't find much to disagree with, here. The pejoratives used concerning him indicate a personal grudge rather than a legitimate issue with his rhetoric. Maybe people who are lashing out against Dawkins are just angry because at some time in the past he struck a nerve? That'd be my guess."

Personally, I do have an issue with Richard Dawkins. I've seen people raised in fundamental, authoritarian beliefs who have rejected these as adults, preach 'Dawkinism' as passionately as they ever held their former beliefs. And this is not entirely harmless, as it causes stress to family and friends who prefer a gentle, liberal form of their own religion to atheism. Exactly the same "now I have the truth; if you don't agree you are wrong" attitude as they held in their birth religion.

I've never seen that, I suspect that you are projecting a bit, but in any case, if it were true, it is not Dawkins' fault that an idiot such as you describe has chosen to follow him blindly ... something that he would never agree with.

Specific to the OP, I think Augustus has validly made the point that Richard Dawkins is quick to ridicule people whose beliefs cannot be backed up with evidence and/or logic, yet the same can be said for his own belief system.

That is just an attempt to create a false equality since many times have I heard him recount the evidence that supports his positions.

Belief, by it's nature, is not necessarily supported by either logic or evidence. Nothing wrong with that, unless it contradicts logic or evidence. In any case, I'm at a loss to see how ridicule will help.

Ridicule sometimes keeps potential followers away from fools.

I'd be interested in your evidence that
1 genuine love excludes accepting different beliefs
2 a liberal religious belief system is equivalent to 'pretending to be religious'

See, I'm on a journey myself to define my own belief system; being here is part of that. Someone shouting me down, flourishing Dawkins' works and ridiculing any beliefs that I may express is no more help to me than any other religious bigot Or a blowfly.

If you ask any true believer of any religion you will get an answer that disagrees with 1 and 2.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Belief, by it's nature, is not necessarily supported by either logic or evidence. Nothing wrong with that, unless it contradicts logic or evidence. In any case, I'm at a loss to see how ridicule will help.

I think it helps to point out the absurdity of believing something that is not supported by logic or evidence.

 

[Augustus]

To the OP:

While I don't agree with Dawkins all the time, I can't find much to disagree with, here. The pejoratives used concerning him indicate a personal grudge rather than a legitimate issue with his rhetoric. Maybe people who are lashing out against Dawkins are just angry because at some time in the past he struck a nerve? That'd be my guess.

Why would it reflect a personal grudge? It's not like he stole my lunch money, and I've never been religious so he hasn't hurt my feelings in that regard.

My issue is when he ridicules people for holding views that are not substantially different from his own in terms of evidence to support them, and his largely polemical views on religion that seem to rest on assumptions rather than evidence.

I'm not talking about evolution or the likelihood of scripture being objectively true, but the utopian humanism that he believes in (which is basically a secularised Christianity anyway). Also, ideas like technological progress leads to moral progress; religion is a uniquely harmful thing; science and reason necessarily lead to a more humanistic society, etc.

I think it helps to point out the absurdity of believing something that is not supported by logic or evidence.

What evidence do you think supports his ideology?

 

[SkepticThinker]

Why would it reflect a personal grudge? It's not like he stole my lunch money, and I've never been religious so he hasn't hurt my feelings in that regard.

My issue is when he ridicules people for holding views that are not substantially different from his own in terms of evidence to support them, and his largely polemical views on religion that seem to rest on assumptions rather than evidence.

I'm not talking about evolution or the likelihood of scripture being objectively true, but the utopian humanism that he believes in (which is basically a secularised Christianity anyway). Also, ideas like technological progress leads to moral progress, etc.; religion is a uniquely harmful thing; science and reason necessarily lead to a more humanistic society, etc.

What evidence do you think supports his ideology?

What ideology?
I was responding directly to something Olinda said.

 

[Augustus]

What ideology?
I was responding directly to something Olinda said.

Richard Dawkins' ideology.

There is a logic behind it, but there is a logic behind all ideologies if you start from certain assumptions that cannot be objectively proved.

Back in my OP i criticised his use of the phrase "evidence free ideologies", as ultimately his own fall by that wayside too.

 

[prometheus11]

Augustus, your diction is that of a person with a personal grudge. I'm discussing authors tone, not possible motivations for it.

 

[Demonslayer]

Ridicule sometimes keeps potential followers away from fools.

Well said. Ridicule can be an important tool to break the chain of ideas that carry on through generations. I think the important caveat here is that ridiculing ideas, not people, is the way to go. After all, if we have a damaging idea that we want to reduce or eliminate, the goal is to free the people who hold that idea from the idea itself.

An example is, I was raised in a very traditional Catholic family who taught me all the bigoted anti-gay things we still see in many fundamentalist Christians. Back then, though, no one would ridicule my father if he said bad things about the f*gs or the que*rs. This prevented me, as a young child, from understanding that there was something very wrong with what he was teaching me.

These days we are open to ridiculing this kind of behavior, and anti-gay sentiment has rapidly decreased because of it.

There is no reason to respect an idea simply because someone labels it a religious idea. Ideas should be judged on merit, and respected or ridiculed accordingly.

 

[Augustus]

Augustus, your diction is that of a person with a personal grudge. I'm discussing authors tone, not possible motivations for it.

Tone is a subjective assumption; you get to think what you like about others' tone, just like whether or not you think a joke is funny. No point fussing over it. I've clarified my position anyway which you can take or leave as best you see fit.

Have you any thoughts on the substance of the discussion rather than the diction?

 

[Augustus]

There is no reason to respect an idea simply because someone labels it a religious idea. Ideas should be judged on merit, and respected or ridiculed accordingly.

So I can ridicule Dawkins' belief that his ideology is "evidence based".

 

[prometheus11]

Yes, I've entered into discussion with members who has a less spiteful tone.

Word choice proves tone. If I write about you and describe you as a dirty species of animal and in continual negative terms, the tone it's not a matter of opinion.

 

[prometheus11]

You can ridicule Dawkns for any reason at all. Ridicule need not be based in fact or logic.

 

[prometheus11]

Also, tone is not subjective as proved by the thousands of test questions given to literature students asking them to correctly identify the authors tone in a given passage.

 

[outhouse]

So I can ridicule Dawkins'

many people ridicule with no credibility at all

 

[Augustus]

Yes, I've entered into discussion with members who has a less spiteful tone.

Buffoon is hardly spiteful, and idiocy reflected his hypocritical views. You haven't discussed these views though, just contented yourself with ad hom attacks and discussions of tone.

Also, tone is not subjective as proved by the thousands of test questions given to literature students asking them to correctly identify the authors tone in a given passage.

Interpretation of someone's tone is subjective.

I'm sure you have been misinterpreted in you time for sounding terse, annoyed or sarcastic when you never intended your comments to be taken in that way.

Interpretation of tone depends on, amongst other things, the context, the 'sender', the intended 'receiver' and the actual 'receiver' of the message.

As writing doesn't have NVC then it is even more complex, that is why people created emoticons. Tone in non-personal written communication is even more complex.

The only person who knows the 'objective' tone is the author, and they might have failed to communicate their intended tone in an effective manner anyway.

many people ridicule with no credibility at all

Then perhaps you should present the evidence that shows how obviously wrong I am. 20 pages deep and it still hasn't appeared.

Surely it must be really easy to present some evidence that Dawkins' ideology is evidence based as he is so thorough and rational in everything he does. Copy/paste will do for me.