Which part of the God Delusion did you find most offensive?

[misanthropic_clown]

My objection to the first sentence is answered in the second two. To say that the problem of religious extremism is rooted in religion is to say that there is some inherent problem in religion that, in small doses is benign but in large doses is malignant. Thus, religion becomes something that we merely tolerate when it's in small doses and must aggressively treat when it it's in large doses. Sorry, but I do not agree.

I'd say that Mother Theresa had a very large dose of religion in her. Do did Dr. King. So does Desmond Tutu. Religion has been used to both divide and to unify. Like all other human constructs, it can lead to both good things and bad things. It's a very powerful construct so it can lead to powerful good and powerful bad, but there is nothing inherently wrong with religion.

I think that it is a little misleading to speak in terms of doses. Long term exposure to balanced religion produces balanced people. Long term exposure to extremist religion produces extremists. Both are religious, but of different types.

 

[lilithu]

I think that it is a little misleading to speak in terms of doses. Long term exposure to balanced religion produces balanced people. Long term exposure to extremist religion produces extremists. Both are religious, but of different types.

If you say the problem is "rooted in religion" then you cannot make a distinction between "balanced" and "unbalanced." If you say the problem is "rooted in religion" then long term exposure to any religion will lead to problems.

By your own argument, it's not religion that's the problem, it's "imbalance." It could be imbalance in a number of different things.

 

[Hexaqua_David(II)]

My objection to the first sentence is answered in the second two. To say that the problem of religious extremism is rooted in religion is to say that there is some inherent problem in religion that, in small doses is benign but in large doses is malignant. Thus, religion becomes something that we merely tolerate when it's in small doses and must aggressively treat when it it's in large doses. Sorry, but I do not agree.

I'd say that Mother Theresa had a very large dose of religion in her. Do did Dr. King. So does Desmond Tutu. Religion has been used to both divide and to unify. Like all other human constructs, it can lead to both good things and bad things. It's a very powerful construct so it can lead to powerful good and powerful bad, but there is nothing inherently wrong with religion.

While bathing just now I realised I spoke wrongly here. I did not mean to say "rooted in religion". I totally contradicted myself in the rest of the post. What I meant to say was that religious extremism cannot be totally nonreligious. I meant that in this case, religion in the thing that is being taken to extremes to suit another purpose.

There is nothing inherently wrong with religion. However, some religious texts contain certain things that can be taken to extremes. Even if they are taken to extremes for reasons other than the obvious ones (deep and honest belief), the texts are still dangerous. Or at least can be when taken to extremes. Gosh I'm such an eloquent communicator... =)

edit: Ohhh and just before I get beaten to a pulp! Although I said the texts can be dangerous when taken to extremes, I do understand that 99.9999999% of believers do not take them to extremes, and therefore the problem cannot be said to be rooted in religion. The problem is USUALLY economical or sociological, even political. I suspect the root of the problem is our mind itself.

 

[Magic Man]

Here's an analogy for you:

Think of it as medicine. All in all, medicine is good and helps people, and definitely is not inherently bad. But medicne affects people in different ways. The same medicine that cures me or at least helps me might not have any effect on you, or it might have a very negative effect on you. No one would advocate getting rid of medicine completely, but when it comes to medicine, it can be observed objectively and the faults can be found. People who take medicine generally know the risks it brings, and the possible side effects. Religion has side effects with some people that cause things like 9/11, but it's hard to address that issue because of the personal nature of religion in general. People are too easily offended by comments on religion, for the most part. It's the same reason you don't just talk about it with a perfect stranger you meet on the street.

I just constantly hear how much good religion does, and how many good things are accomplished because of religion, but as soon as the possibility of it causing something bad is brought up, there's a huge objection. If you don't think religion causes anything good in the world, then I have no problem with you claiming that it doesn't cause bad things like 9/11. If it can be a cause for good things, though, then it can be a cause for bad things too.

 

[lilithu]

Here's an analogy for you:

Think of it as medicine. All in all, medicine is good and helps people, and definitely is not inherently bad. But medicne affects people in different ways. The same medicine that cures me or at least helps me might not have any effect on you, or it might have a very negative effect on you. No one would advocate getting rid of medicine completely, but when it comes to medicine, it can be observed objectively and the faults can be found. People who take medicine generally know the risks it brings, and the possible side effects. Religion has side effects with some people that cause things like 9/11, but it's hard to address that issue because of the personal nature of religion in general. People are too easily offended by comments on religion, for the most part. It's the same reason you don't just talk about it with a perfect stranger you meet on the street.

I'm not sure I buy your analogy, but I am sure that's not what Dawkins is saying. You can't point to people being offended by Dawkins and say that means people aren't willing to listen to any kind of criticism.

I just constantly hear how much good religion does, and how many good things are accomplished because of religion, but as soon as the possibility of it causing something bad is brought up, there's a huge objection. If you don't think religion causes anything good in the world, then I have no problem with you claiming that it doesn't cause bad things like 9/11. If it can be a cause for good things, though, then it can be a cause for bad things too.

We must live in very different worlds. I rarely hear anyone talk about how much good religion does, ever, except in reaction to people talking about the harm it's done. The only time I point to Mother Theresa or Gandhi or King as examples of "religious good" is when people point to the 9/11 hijackers as examples of "religious bad." Otherwise, to me these are people, doing what they do based on a number of different influences of which religion is just one. What I constantly hear is people claiming that religion caused 9/11, the crusades, the witch trials... but when I point to good things like the abolitionist movement and suffrage and the Civil Rights movement, people say "That would have happened anyway" even if those people weren't religious. Gah!! From my perspective, I'm not the one applying the double standard.

 

[lilithu]

edit: Ohhh and just before I get beaten to a pulp! Although I said the texts can be dangerous when taken to extremes, I do understand that 99.9999999% of believers do not take them to extremes, and therefore the problem cannot be said to be rooted in religion. The problem is USUALLY economical or sociological, even political. I suspect the root of the problem is our mind itself.

lol! I personally had no problem with your post as originally written.

 

[Dirty Penguin]

I haven't read it yet, but I want to. I am just hesitant on spending money on a book that half the people claim is a piece of crap and the other half act as if it is divinely inspired even though they do not believe in deity.

See if it's at a local library....(maybe)....

 

[Magic Man]

I'm not sure I buy your analogy, but I am sure that's not what Dawkins is saying. You can't point to people being offended by Dawkins and say that means people aren't willing to listen to any kind of criticism.

What don' you buy about the analogy? It may not be what Dawkins is saying. As I said before, I'm not necessarily agreeing totally with him. I can understand people being offended by Dawkins sometimes. I don't think that means they aren't willing to listen to criticism. I do think that a lot of religious people aren't willing to listen to criticism, though.

We must live in very different worlds. I rarely hear anyone talk about how much good religion does, ever, except in reaction to people talking about the harm it's done. The only time I point to Mother Theresa or Gandhi or King as examples of "religious good" is when people point to the 9/11 hijackers as examples of "religious bad." Otherwise, to me these are people, doing what they do based on a number of different influences of which religion is just one. What I constantly hear is people claiming that religion caused 9/11, the crusades, the witch trials... but when I point to good things like the abolitionist movement and suffrage and the Civil Rights movement, people say "That would have happened anyway" even if those people weren't religious. Gah!! From my perspective, I'm not the one applying the double standard.

Well, I'm sure the situation you run into happens a lot too. I wouldn't doubt it at all. In fact, I'm sure Dawkins is somewhat guilty of the double standard you point to.

It all boils down to this point, though: I'm right, and you're wrong.

 

[lilithu]

What don' you buy about the analogy?

I didn't say I reject it. I said I'm not sure about it. In your analogy, the medicine is objectively the same, but people react differently to it. But in my experience, different expressions of religion are not the same. You walk into one Christian church and they're preachin' that the end is near, and that soon the sheep will be lifted up into heaven and the goats will be cast into hell. And you walk into another Christian church and they're preachin that Jesus told us to love thy neighbor and that means welcoming people who are different from you. Can you really say that people in both congregations got the same religion but reacted differently? They're being told different things. And then, to make things even more complicated, some who are sitting in the sheep and goats sermon are going to reject that. Their conscience is going to tell them better than that. And some who are sitting in the love thy neighbor congregation are going to reject that. They're going to decide that it's foolish to extend love to strangers.

So where does the final responsibility lie? In the message being taught from the pulpit? Or in the person who hears either a message of hate or love and decides either to accept or to reject? Or in this broad umbrella term, "religion" that is so general that we can't even agree on what it means?

It all boils down to this point, though: I'm right, and you're wrong.

Yeah, I'm pretty sick of this argument too. :hug:

 

[3.14]

I was watching an interview with Richard Dawkins the other day and heard him make the claim that if a theist read his book, they would not find it offensive. However, my experience has been the complete opposite because I have met many, many theists who have read his book and found it offensive.

Are there any theists here who found The God Delusion inoffensive?

If you did find The God Delusion offensive, which bit in particular (quotation or specific reference) did you find most offensive?

why do people who are smart enough to read still don't get that they can stop reading if they find it offensive,

And he said a theist not every theist

 

[Hexaqua_David(II)]

Yeah, I'm pretty sick of this argument too. :hug:

You're both wrong and I'm right, actually! =)

 

[Runt]

I didn't say I reject it. I said I'm not sure about it. In your analogy, the medicine is objectively the same, but people react differently to it. But in my experience, different expressions of religion are not the same. You walk into one Christian church and they're preachin' that the end is near, and that soon the sheep will be lifted up into heaven and the goats will be cast into hell. And you walk into another Christian church and they're preachin that Jesus told us to love thy neighbor and that means welcoming people who are different from you. Can you really say that people in both congregations got the same religion but reacted differently? They're being told different things. And then, to make things even more complicated, some who are sitting in the sheep and goats sermon are going to reject that. Their conscience is going to tell them better than that. And some who are sitting in the love thy neighbor congregation are going to reject that. They're going to decide that it's foolish to extend love to strangers.

I found his analogy to be pretty apt, provided we don't compare the totality of expressions of human religiosity to one drug used to cure one disease. Instead, I would compare each religious expression to a different drug.

Each drug (each religion) has specific characteristics which differentiate it from other drugs (other religions). Each drug has a variety of indications: the same drug may simultaneously be useful as an antispasmotic, sedative, and tonic. Another drug may be a good analgesic, anti-inflammatory, and nervine. Yet each drug also has negative side effects and abnormal drug reactions, which may affect some people sometimes, and very occasionally in very extreme, dangerous ways.

Similarly, each religion may have a variety of qualities which, generally speaking, produce certain outcomes in the individual human person. Yet each human person may choose to adhere to a religion for a different reason, just as each human person may choose to use a particular medication for a different purpose (headache vs. muscle pain, for example). A particular individual may generally adhere to a religion for one or two specific reasons out of a large range of reasons. Another individual may adhere to the same religion for entirely different reasons. And due to the qualities an individual person possesses, the same aspects of a religion may affect each of those two people in completely and totally different ways, so that one reacts in a decidedly positive way to something, whereas the other acts in a very negative way.

If some drugs occasionally affect people negatively, but usually affect people positively, should all medical drug use therefore be avoided? I think this is the kind of argument Dawkins is making in his book when he argues that religion should be abandoned because it causes violence. However, I don't think, due to the complexity of human religious expressions and peoples' individual and very different responses to their religions, that such a conclusion is accurate or fair. And I think mball's analogy illustrates the problem with such a conclusion fairly well.

 

[Smoke]

Funny that you should bring this up because I almost did twice. This to me proves his blatant anti-theist bent.

And it's worse, imo. I could actually understand his anger with the Abrahmic faiths if it were in response to the attacks. But it wasn't.

In the interview with him that I saw, it wasn't the 9/11 attacks that did it for him. It was the fact that after the attacks Christian and Jewish and Muslim clergy united to denounce the attacks and pray for peace. According to Dawkins, he was so incensed that they would respond in that way that he decided that religion couldn't be tolerated he used to, that the world would be better off without it and he was going to do his part to make it so.

“My respect for the Abrahamic religions went up in the smoke and choking dust of September 11th. The last vestige of respect for the taboo disappeared as I watched the ‘Day of Prayer’ in Washington Cathedral, where people of mutually incompatible faiths united in homage to the very force that caused the problem in the first place: religion. It is time for people of intellect, as opposed to people of faith, to stand up and say ‘Enough!’ Let our tribute to the dead be a new resolve: to respect people for what they individually think, rather than respect groups for what they were collectively brought up to believe.”

When I heard that clergy had untied to denounce the attacks and pray for peace, I thought "good." When Dawkins saw it, he thought, we need to get rid of religion. :areyoucra

When people commit unspeakable violence in the name of their superstitions, I find it unfathomable that anyone should believe that mass participation in those same superstitions is a responsible way of addressing the problem.

You are equating people praying for peace with the oppression of women and African Americans. He wasn't reacting to people trying to limit BGLT rights. He wasn't reacting to people trying to require prayer in schools. He wasn't even reacting to the terrorists. He was reacting to people of different faiths uniting together in love and for peace, firmly rejecting the hatred that drove other people to kill in the name of their God.

He was reacting to people firmly embracing the very superstitions that caused the problem in the first place.

The liberal tradition is not anti-religion. The liberal tradition is anti-oppression. Where religion has supported oppression, the liberal tradition has opposed it. There is nothing liberal about opposing people who are looking past their differences and praying for peace.

I'm not so impressed with liberal religion. Show me a Christian denomination, with more than 300 congregations, where women have full equality with men and homosexuals have full equality with heterosexuals. Even the Unitarian Universalist Association considers its involvement with the Boy Scouts of America more important that its supposed principles. When it comes right down to it, liberal religion is more religious than liberal, and manages to look good mainly by comparing itself to the religious majority.

That's petty bigotry, nothing more.

I don't think so, but even if it were, I'd find such petty bigotry preferable to the deadly bigotry of religions that divide the world into the Chosen People and the Nations, the Elect and the Damned, the Saved and the Unsaved, or the House of Islam and the House of War.

Again, 9/11 happened because of fear and hatred of "the Other." For non-religionists to say that "religion is the cause" is simply creating another "Other." Perpetuating the cycle of distrust.

I'm not sure what you're saying here. Are you denying the guilt of the Abrahamic religions in fostering fear and hatred of "the Other," or suggesting that in order to overcome the cycle of distrust perpetuated by those religions it's necessary above all to refrain from criticizing those religions?

Sorry fluffy, your thread about the book has become a thread about the man... again.

Threads about Dawkins' books always turn into threads about the man.

I agree, but Mother Teresa spent her life tending to the poor for religious reasons.

I think one of the most telling facts about Christianity is that Christians and non-Christians alike seem to agree that Christianity at its best is seen most clearly in the life of a dotty old nun who hobnobbed with dictators, jetted around the world to oppose the extension of civil rights, and socked millions away in the bank while warehousing the dying in squalid conditions, glorifying their suffering, and relentlessly proselytizing them on their deathbeds.

 

[lilithu]

I found his analogy to be pretty apt, provided we don't compare the totality of expressions of human religiosity to one drug used to cure one disease. Instead, I would compare each religious expression to a different drug.

I suppose you're right, as long as we make your provision. At first I was wondering under what circumstances the "sheep go to heaven; goats go to hell" sermon could be beneficial. But then I realized that I can quite easily think of contexts in which that is actually "medicinal." Liberation theology. When that sermon is told to someone who is oppressed and doesn't have the power to fight back, it gives them hope. Thus, sheep = the oppressed, and goats = the oppressors. Whereas when the same sermon is told to people who aren't oppressed, then the interpretation becomes sheep = "us" where "us" is my congregation, my religion, my country, etc. and goats = "them" where "them" is anyone I don't like. And that justifies their harming others.

I also remembered feminist theologians arguing that the traditional Christian virtues of humility, meekness, etc are goo things for men to learn because it counters societal pressures to be bold and confident, which could go too far. Otoh, these feminist theologians argued that teaching Christian women to be humble and meek is NOT good medicine if it means they can't stand up for themselves against an abusive husband, for example. So yes, the same message can have different effects on different people.

I'm sold.

 

[lilithu]

You know what MB, if you had posted this yesterday, I might have tried to respond to you, but today I am sick of this argument. Not to mention that your post is so blatantly hostile towards religion. So yeah, you think that Dawkins is being "objective" when he attacks religion because you share the same biases that he has.

The thing is, my feelings may be momentarily hurt when you attack something I'm so deeply involved in, but not for long. Tomorrow, I'll go to work and once again feel gratitude for the people there, and this will be forgotten. Ultimately the only one your antipathy hurts is you. Religion is not going away now matter how many insults you unleash.

 

[Smoke]

The thing is, my feelings may be momentarily hurt when you attack something I'm so deeply involved in, but not for long. Tomorrow, I'll go to work and once again feel gratitude for the people there, and this will be forgotten. Ultimately the only one your antipathy hurts is you. Religion is not going away now matter how many insults you unleash.

I'm truly sorry if I hurt your feelings. My respect and affection for you are deep and broad, and the last thing I intended was to hurt your feelings, though I disagree with you about this, and quite strongly.

 

[Heneni]

Deeply apologetic and broadly sincere.

Thats nice.

Heneni

 

[misanthropic_clown]

Midnight Blue: for your argument to work, there has to be equivalence between the type of religion that causes stuff like 9/11, and the kind that rarely organises anything more complex than a bake sale.

The latter is a much purer indication of religion than the former, which I view to be religion twisted around to support social/historical/political views - the kind of views that are by and of themselves likely to create conflict.

 

[Magic Man]

Midnight Blue: for your argument to work, there has to be equivalence between the type of religion that causes stuff like 9/11, and the kind that rarely organises anything more complex than a bake sale.

The latter is a much purer indication of religion than the former, which I view to be religion twisted around to support social/historical/political views - the kind of views that are by and of themselves likely to create conflict.

I would have to say taht the latter is not purer, just different. Each can take the same book and find different interpretations. That doesn't mean that one is more pure than the other, just different. You view the one to be twisted, but the people who adhere to that one would view your interpretation of religion as twisted.

 

[lilithu]

I'm truly sorry if I hurt your feelings. My respect and affection for you are deep and broad, and the last thing I intended was to hurt your feelings, though I disagree with you about this, and quite strongly.

I know that you respect and like me, as I do you. If I didn't feel that way about you, your post would not have hurt. But I truly cannot understand how you reconcile your respect and affection for me with your unmitigated contempt for something to which I have given my life. Maybe it makes sense to you. Not to me.

You do know that had I been there, I would have participated in the interfaith prayer, right?
You do know that I have organized interfaith prayer vigils myself, right?
You do know that I pray on a regular basis, right?
You do know that I go to church on Sundays and often other days of week, right?
You do know that I work for a religious organization and with other religious organizations, right?
You do know that whether I'm advocating for climate change legislation in the real world or arguing in support of marriage equality online that I view that as in the service of God, right?
You do know that I haven't ruled out seminary, right?

I view my life as in the service of God, MB. I can't force you to change how you feel about religion, but I can make you confront the fact that I am a religious person. Whatever effect that has on what you think of me, you need to recognize that and deal with it. Because I am not going to miraculously "see the light." And I imagine that any number of religious folks whom you like and respect are not going to change either. We're not going to make it easy for you to keep your nice neat "religion = bad."