emotional

I still like Dawkins' stuff, but he has some things I strongly disagree with:

1. His stance against the Argument from Personal Incredulity. He says that the fact that you can't believe or imagine how it happened doesn't mean it can't have happened. Indeed so, Dawkins? Then perhaps Muhammad did fly on a horse to Al-Aqsa mosque? Can't be? How so? You don't believe, eh? That's no argument! In short, Dawkins has opened a dangerous doorway to Tertullian's credo quia impossibile ("I believe because it is impossible"). It's a self-destructive argument.

2. Reliance on evidence. Much as I agree with him that the evidential case for atheism is conclusive, one need only visit an outreach seminar organized by Orthodox Jews, Fundamentalist Christians or Radical Muslims, and be convinced of the truth of Judaism or Christianity or Islam. Of course Dawkins may say it's all a show of smoke and mirrors, but that's the same thing theists say about his stuff. Evidence is there, but it can be made to support any conclusion in a skillful hand. For my part, my reasons for being an atheist are emotional first, evidential second - if God exists than I hate him and therefore refuse to submit to him, and if he doesn't then there's no-one to submit to. I'm a practical atheist no matter the evidence.

HelenM

I agree with you, devnet. I haven't read any Dawkins for a little while but when I was reading his books, I wished he would be more respectful of theists. As you say, some of his arguments can be equally turned around against him, anyway.

If someone has a strong case to make, they can let their logic and the evidence stand on its own merits.

I don't really understand why a smart person like Dawkins doubtless is, is not smart enough to realize that mocking those who disagree, while possibly good for a few laughs, does not strengthen but rather weakens his case. It will limit his readership to people who already agree or enjoy reading things that make fun of those who disagree, rather than attracting people with other viewpoints. Who wants to read things that insult them?

So, his tone bothers me in what I've read. Although who knows if that is how he still writes today.

I believe that those who have realized they don't need to use invective against those who disagree, are more mature in character than those who have not. Regardless of what their specific belief system is.

love
Helen

sullster

I, too, have always liked Dawkins. I also was attracted to him because of his obvious edginess with theists. Yes, strictly speaking, his argument of personal incredulity is reversible, but he used it specifically against pompous clergy who dispute evolution because they, who are so smart, don't believe evolution and thus it has to be wrong. Is that not what science is fighting when it confronts the religious? The clergy are "so smart" that evolution has to wrong. Good for Dawkins for blowing up a firecracker under their clerical asses.

What is wrong with pushing evidence? It seems that the scientist and the religious have two definitions. Dawkins is claiming a scientific definition of evidence and planting his flag there. Religions have no scientific evidence and thus are wrong. Good for Dawkins again.

As for Helen's complaint that Dawkins is mean spirited. I have read tracts written by creationists which drip with nastiness and anger. The religious are very secure using accusations and threats when arguing their points. I admire Dawkins for actually fighting back. He reminds me of Thomas Huxley, who defended Darwin. Darwin was a nice guy, and we all know where nice guys finish. Yes, the science of evolution will stand and fall on its own evidence, but in the public arena, it can't hurt to fight fire with fire.
Good for Dawkins.

DMB

I don't think Dawkins is exactly rude about theists. He simply doesn't want to offer them the figleaf of being taken seriously. He sees theism as weak-minded and isn't afraid to say so.

emotional

In the summary of the Great Debate between theism and non-theism, the ultimate fight is one of salesmanship and merchandizing. I admire Dawkins for his forceful presentation of the case against theism, but he sometimes blunders with his pushiness. Also, he seems to have the same attitude as the late Carl Sagan in that he's virtually (not literally) organizing an inquisition against everything that seems nonsense to him. I know why he does that, it's a counter-reaction, but it could be dangerous.

Case in point: I hated every atheist ipso facto of being an atheist when I was a theist, and until fairly recently I hated every theist ipso facto of being a theist. A dichotomy which Dawkins try to present between "good atheism" and "evil theism" is as dangerous as the dichotomy in Christianity between "saved" and "unsaved" or in Islam between "Party of God" (Hizbullah) and "Party of Satan" (Hizbu sh-Shaytaan).

When you think binary, you think like a computer. Computers follow programs. They're programmed to do things without thinking. It isn't true, what people say about the evil of humans, that they act like beasts; beasts never commit the horrors we humans do. The greatest killings and tragedies of humanity happened when humans behaved like machines, programmed to execute blindly a plan of destruction, without mercy or remorse.

Francois Tremblay

You are taking the fallacy as if that was all there was to reason, but that's absurd. The point is that something is true because of the evidence, not because of someone's incredulity - i.e. incredulity is NOT one of the possible valid arguments. Since there is no evidence that "Muhammad did fly on a horse to Al-Aqsa mosque", there is little reason to take it on faith, or whatever it is they do about it.


I'd say that's a false dichotomy (^_^) We are really nothing more than organic computers programmed by our genes.

If something is black and white, then there is no shame in upholding it. Likewise, if something is in shades of gray, it is good to acknowledge it. The tendancy of associating all blackwhite thinking with evilness is stupid because it does not acknowledge the complexity of reality and human understanding.

I disagree with some things Dawkins say (for example, I am fiercely opposed to his political stance), but the things you enumerate are definitively not part of this.

[ February 03, 2002: Message edited by: Franc28 ]</p>

three4jump

What is Dawkins' political stance? I wasn't aware he had one.

bluefugue

I'm pretty sure Dawkins is politically liberal. i.e., an anti-Thatcherite.

As to the argument from personal incredulity, I agree with Franc that it has to be considered in context. Dawkins would never suggest that we believe something seemingly absurd, unless there is also evidence to compel us to that conclusion. He is simply echoing Darwin's famous passage on the evolution of the eye, that he "freely confesses" it seems "absurd in the highest degree," but that upon further reflection this absurdity "cannot be considered real." Dawkins would probably say that evolution by natural selection is an extraordinary claim, and it requires extraordinary evidence to overcome our personal incredulity... and then he would spend the next 3 hours laying out the extraordinary evidence that he thinks makes evolution compelling.

Ditto for relativity, quantum mechanics, etc. -- all the non-intuitive sciences. They seem absurd to our way of thinking, but the evidence is there and so we suppress our incredulity. (I mean, do you really believe, intuitively, when you pick up a baseball bat, that it's made of mostly empty space? I doubt it. But that's what science tells us, via scads of evidence, and so we accept it on some intellectual level.) By contrast, the evidence for Mohammed flying on a horse, or for Jesus rising from the grave (i.e., it was written down somewhere by some people) isn't sufficient to compel belief in spite of our incredulity. If (in his eyes) the evidence for evolution were no better than the evidence for the Resurrection, I think Dawkins would be the first to reject it.

I see where you're coming from, and I am beginning to think it is difficult (if not impossible) to maintain a 100% rational, 100% consistent view of the universe. Therefore I must concede that my atheism is, at least in part, due to my personality, rather than the airtight nature of my skeptical arguments. Dawkins, of course, has no patience for emotional arguments, and would never admit that he is susceptible to them himself (though, being human, he may well be). In any case, Dawkins' focus on evidence requires certain epistemological assumptions (empiricism, logic, etc.), and these can be challenged on philosophical grounds, as our Presuppositionist friends love to do. Personally, I consider an evidentiary/empirical outlook to be sensible on "meat and potatoes" grounds -- i.e., it gets me across the street without being run over, darn it, so I'll apply it to other matters as well.

Well, if a God as horrific as Yahweh existed, I would find myself in a pickle. Hatred or no, I would probably submit myself to him on account of the threat of hell. It's perfectly easy, sitting at a computer monitor, to say "I would rebel against God even though he should put me in hell for eternity." But then go and hold your hand over a hot stove-top, and you might see things differently. When contemplated at length, Pascal's Wager actually has terrifying force (except for the problem of figuring out which God to submit to).

Of course, if Yahweh is such a cruel bastard as the Bible makes him out to be, we have no real reason to assume he is telling us the truth anyway: he might just get a laugh out of our begging for forgiveness, and then toss us in hell anyway. Nonetheless, if I truly believed Yahweh existed, I would probably hedge my bets and suck up to the guy... Not really much else you can do when confronted with a bad-tempered lord and master of the universe!

Liquidrage

I've never like the weak minded approach.
As a non-theist I don't believe in a soul.
I am a collection of what I was born into. Both in body and in enviornment.
Therefore, if Dawkins was born as Oral Robers, he would be Oral Roberts.
Furthermore, give me Dawkins at 1 week of age and I could turn him into a Southern Baptist. With allmost no strength of mind able to break that belief.

We atheists should consider ourselves lucky that we were able to come to a conclusion of life that doesn't involve diety worship.
Though as an atheist I know it really doesn't matter if someone believes or not. And I am often envious of those with faith since faith makes life so much easier.

-Liquid

[ February 03, 2002: Message edited by: Liquidrage ]</p>

Francois Tremblay

Theism *is* weak-minded. People are unenlightened because they lack the willpower to confront reality. This is not necessarily an insult - some people are just born that way and there's not much we can do about it. it is a simple fact.

I also admire Richard Dawkins because he has the balls to state out front that there can be no consilience between reason and faith. As long as faith is meaningful, it interferes with our rational faculties : as long as it is not meaningful, it is useless. It's time we stop pandering to old irrational ideas and start heightening our confront.