Is Richard Dawkins a Fantantical Atheist?

[The Silver Thong]

I don't care for religion myself but even I think some of the things he says are a bit extreme.

Such as....

[The Silver Thong]

When he ruins someone's life, when he's done something horrible, I'll call him a fanatic. So what if he has a hatred of religion, the majority of religions are based around forcing their views on others (or guilt tripping you into their views), he's just taking the fight to them, on their own terms. Through bigotry and intolerance.

It`s the bully calling foul play when the same tactics are used on them. Poor little religion did he hurt your feelings lol

[Hasina]

It`s the bully calling foul play when the same tactics are used on them. Poor little religion did he hurt your feelings lol

No, but it has abused, raped, and killed people.

[+joc]

I've never even heard of Richard Hawkins...now that I have, I haven't listened to anything he has said...so why am I even commenting on this? Because...if he isn't hurting anyone...and he isn't hurting himself...how is anything he says going to adversely affect my life...or anyone elses...one way or the other? If he hates it is his problem not mine. If he is hated it is those who hate him that have the problem. Some people make a cottage industry out of selling religion...others make a cottage industry out of selling hatred of the religion...what really is the difference?

[psyche101]

Well, yes, I would agree, he is a fanatic, but not a fundie:

fa·nat·ic

/fəˈnatik/

Noun

A person filled with excessive and single-minded zeal, esp. for an extreme religious or political cause.

Adjective

Filled with or expressing excessive zeal.

Nothing wrong with expressing enthusiasm. It's quite normal. People do it all the time, he is a person, so I see nothing wrong with it. Is he sensationalist? Indeed! He said he was going to take the Pope to court!

LINK - Richard Dawkins calls for Pope to be put on trial

He is all of those things, but so are most of us, the big thing is that I would say is that he is right in much of what he says. Anyone who says the man is not very smart is only deluding themselves. Many people get very jaded by religion, and today it still manges to blight parts of the world, but so do all cultures, and he despises superstition as a whole. I think he is a little ahead of his time perhaps, and that is taken badly by many who are not ready or willing for change. But I think eventually, everyone will have to face the facts of a biological process. Once that is realised, religion is no longer required.

Edited February 13, 2013 by psyche101

[Serpentine]

Professor Dawkins is a teacher at heart.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/its-all-in-the-eye/454.html

Why have you been so poorly taught?

[David Henson]

_{I think the point that he is making is that raising a child to believe in a Supernatural Omnipotent Being, thereby ignoring and / or denigrating the real advances that Science has made in improving the lives of mankind (with no Religious input), is utterly devoid of logic and reason. It is a "Stunting" of real scientific endeavour}

Then, for him it is a personal and emotional fixation. He used to be Christian?

[David Henson]

He is an individual who simply wants the truth, and is intolerable of nonsense. What is wrong with that? I am a huge fan of his work -- I have an immense amount of respect for him both as a person, and as a scientist. Take into consideration the amount of atrocities carried out, and still being carried out, in the name of religion. It is banal, and irrelevant to modern society.

The atrocities carried out, and still being carried out, in the name of religion? You mean Hiroshima, Nagasaki, biological, chemical, thermonuclear war? Wait. That isn't religion. As much as I despise all organized religion, and I do despise it all, no religious atrocity you can think of would have been perpetrated without the political.

[David Henson]

I don't care for religion myself but even I think some of the things he says are a bit extreme.

I don't care for religion either, but to me the thing about Dawkins is that he's just the other side of the coin. A televangelist for the metaphysical experimentation called evolutionary theory.

[JesseCuster]

The atrocities carried out, and still being carried out, in the name of religion? You mean Hiroshima, Nagasaki, biological, chemical, thermonuclear war? Wait. That isn't religion.

Did the person you responded mention any of those things? No, so this is what they call a strawman.

Perhaps he means things like the worldwide coverup of countless cases of child rape by the Catholic Church, the enabling of child rapists to continue their crimes by simply moving them to new parishes, the bullying of raped children into preventing them from reporting the crimes, etc. That was done very much in the name of Catholicism - it was a concerted effort to maintain the reputation and image of that religion.

Or the fact that the Catholic Church helps perpetuate the AIDS epidemic because of their absolutist stance on contraception they teach to their members in Africa.

Or the various terrorist atrocities carried in the name of religion. I know it's trendy to absolve religion of any responsibility in Islamist terrorism, but in lots of these cases it is an ugly mixture of extremist religion and extremist politics, neither one nor the other.

As much as I despise all organized religion, and I do despise it all, no religious atrocity you can think of would have been perpetrated without the political.

Just because politics is involved in an atrocity does not absolve the religious element from blame. I don't avoid the blame for carrying out an armed robbery because the illegal arms dealer sold me the weapons and I couldn't have perpetrated the crime without him.

[ambelamba]

Fanatical? Maybe. But he sounds more like angry and frustrated.

[David Henson]

Did the person you responded mention any of those things? No, so this is what they call a strawman.

It was a remark upon science. Skeptics often cite the atrocities of religion, which are many, but overlook the atrocities of science.

[Rlyeh]

It was a remark upon science. Skeptics often cite the atrocities of religion, which are many, but overlook the atrocities of science.

Only problem is it wasn't science that dropped bombs on people.

[David Henson]

Only problem is it wasn't science that dropped bombs on people.

Religion didn't commit atrocities either. Religious people and people of science committed the atrocities. The problem is people, not religion or science.

[Zaphod222]

I am not religious myself and to be frank it doesn't interest me. But I have never understood Richard Dawkins fanatical hatred and ( Let's be frank here )

Ignorance of religion. And it isn't just Christianity he hates. He hates Islam, Judaism and even Buddhism.

He has very little knowledge of religion and is very arrogant with his views.

He does have all the bench marks of a fanatic.

I wonder why he has such hatred of religion.

I do not agree with your premise. I do not see "hatred" in what Dawkins says, and I think to accuse an atheist of being "fanatical" is sort of a contradiction in terms. You can be a fanatical believer; but a "fanatical" disbeliever?? Does not make sense.

And to understand the motivation to be against religion, just open your daily newspaper and see the slew of daily suicide bombings, beheadings, murders etc. by fanatical believers (albeit mostly of one particular religion), all in a stupid effort to please their god.

[eight bits]

all in a stupid effort to please their god.

That would be an inference on your part. The atrocities you mention are political activities. Those who carry them out are rightly seen as politicians.

High among the rules of politics is to abandon candor about your actual motives for doing things. Pretext is the name for the rationale you give instead of a candid explanation. Religion, then, offers pretexts for political action. Nothing new there, by the way.

There is a danger in mislabeling political activity as worship. For one thing, you start thinking that you can reason with people who protest educational policy by throwing acid in a schoolgirl's face. How satisfying to fantasize that a sharper counterapologetics will prevent further excesses. It is much easier to prattle on about sky-faeries than to do something effective.

Funny isn't it? The atheist gloss on prayer is that it's a way to feel you're doing something about a problem when you aren't doing anything at all about it.

The girl got burned because she threatened somebody's earthly interests. This is no less than the case than schoolgirls of another generation in the American South (or for that matter, Boston Massachusetts) who enrolled at a racially desgregated public school, and thereby threatened somebody's interests.

The differences are that American racial segregation relied on non-religious pretexts, and that we were rich enough to deploy federal marshalls to walk the little girls to school, and had the political will to do just that. And the politicans who did use religion to justify their political activity? Many of them were allied with the schoolgirls and devoted to non-violent political means, even in the face of violent opposition. A lot of them were ministers and the "liberal" clergy of many faiths.

All in a stupid effort to please their God? No, nothing that sweet and simple.

Edited February 15, 2013 by eight bits