Richard's Dawkins' "The God Delusion"

[Phteven]

There is a quote in the book that is appropriate here:"If somebody announces that it is part of his faith, the rest of society, whether of the same faith, or another, or of none, is obliged, by ingrained custom, to "respect" it without question".

I have no problem with that at all. In fact I think it is wonderful because the flip side of that is no respect/religious intolerance which leads to very nasty places.

[Bathsheba]

The topics covered in this discussion are really interesting I hope you don't mind Rory that I have started another thread which makes some of these topics more accessible to the broader BB community, eg the notion of "faith"... but not just as it applies to religion. HERE it is.

I hope you know that I'm not out to prove/disprove anything... I'm just up for having lots of ideas thrown into the mix.

[Visitor6]

I wish I had the tolerance to read Dawkins. Not at the moment.

I saw him on the ABC. Interesting man.

His apparent intolerance of those with faith is no less dangerous, than his own beliefs. when it comes to matters of faith spirituality and the notion of deity, there is someone who always has to complicate it. The apparent notion that the most learned and published are the most apt at dissecting it and deciding for the rest of us what our dogma should be.

Everyone like to be heard. He just happens to get the opportunity.

The mere title "The God Delusion" speaks volumes.......

http://www.einsteinandreligion.com/index.html (A very interesting site from someone a little more special than Dawkins)

[Bathsheba]

I agree that using the word "Delusion" in the title seems quite contemptuous/condescending... I don't think anyone responds to being called "deluded" very well. In that way he does himself (I probably should say ideas) a disservice. I am always skeptical of people who hope to change anothers ideas by putting down the opposing ideas using contempt. Negative emotion should be kept out of a good debate as far as possible... well, I think so. Maybe he should have focused on putting a more positive slant on his ideas... something that reflects the feelings Rory has experienced perhaps: maybe "The Freedom of Secularity" or something like that (LOL is secularity a word??? My word checker doesn't seem to recognise it.)

[bon]

If faith required objective evidence it would not be faith. IMO simply living our lives requires a leap of faith. I think science itself is a faith that involves a belief system - forming hypthoseses about things that you believe to be true, but cannot prove.

[Bathsheba]

Great link SB... especially this: (quote by Albert Einstein, from a letter)

"The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive. However, I am also not a "Freethinker" in the usual sense of the word because I find that this is in the main an attitude nourished exclusively by an opposition against naive superstition. My feeling is insofar religious as I am imbued with the consciousness of the insufficiency of the human mind to understand deeply the harmony of the Universe which we try to formulate as "laws of nature." It is this consciousness and humility I miss in the Freethinker mentality." Sincerely yours, Albert Einstein.

And also supports Bon's comments about science requring faith too. I just don't see how "faith" is such a dirty word to Dawkins . But it's all very interesting. I guess if the book is a best-seller then a significant amount of people must think this way so it's always helpful to understand another majority perspective.... I just don't think the intuition/faith of billions should be discounted as a "delusion".... especially when Dawkins can't honesty claim to disprove the delusion... it just makes him out to sound arrogant by making such a blatant false claim. If I was an atheist I'd probably be quite annoyed by this book LOL kinda like how extreme religious fundamentalists annoy me... for giving religion a bad name.

[Roryrory]

Like I said, I wasn't really interested in debating god vs no god(s) so I didn't post in the religion forum. But in the spirit of my new atheism and humanism I will never shut down debate and questioning of my ideas and conclusions. I would, though, like to return to the topic of seeing if there are others in BB who have felt enlightened by Dawkins' book.

AliB are you a member of the RDF forum? I am Roryrory there too

Bath and Flowerchild its interesting what you said about the lack of "meaning" being a stumbling block - I am very near the end of the book now and Dawkins is very much a scientist in that he doesn't very well address the "feeling" side of life. But he does make the point that the fact that faith is good and makes people feel their life has meaning and direction doesn't make a god any more or less real. (Bath I think this is why faith is held in such scorn by him) In the same way, believing and wanting your wife to be alive doesn't make her so if she has just died of cancer, for example. I would be really interested in reading some atheistic writing by someone with more flair for the emotional side of writing. That said, it is probably why I am going to read more on humanism generally.

I think science itself is a faith that involves a belief system - forming hypthoseses about things that you believe to be true, but cannot prove.

Bon one of the fundamentals of science is testing hypotheses. If they are disproven then they are discarded. The question of how much proof is needed to prove a hypothesis is a matter of degree, and atheists would say that there is more evidence that there is no god or gods than there is not.

I don't really see how saying Einstein believed in a god makes it any more true (aside from that there is eqaully a lot of evidence that Einstein did not believe in god - you can read much of his stuff either way). One of the most liberating things I found about the book was that it encourages critical thought regardless of who is saying the thing. So just because your parents have raised you to believe a thing, doesn't make it so. Children in Ancient Greece were raised to worship Apollo, Demeter, etc while Incan kids were sacrificed on the altar of the Sun God (ie: a ball of hydrogen). Just because person X says it is so doesn't make it so. Evidence makes it so.

Bath I suspect Dawkins has been radicalised and pushed into his fury with religion by circumstance. In his previous books he has tried to be neutral and not point out his atheism and his own words have been seized by religious people as "proof" (in the same way Einsteins words have been??) So I think every word in his book was deliberately written to protect against this happening. Not saying it makes it right, just that I think that is where it is coming from.