I like Richard Dawkins
 

There - I've said it.

It's become very fashionable to declare one's own atheism/agnosticism and caveat that with a declaration that Richard Dawkins is a dick/arrogant blow hard/militant atheist giving other atheists a bad name/humourless conversationalist etc. etc. etc.

But, I am an atheist and I really like Richard Dawkins. Not just because I think he is right about a lot of stuff, but because he seems a lovely, thoughtful, sincere advocate for science and rationalism and a very, very clever man.

Just lately there's been another slew of anti-Dawkins stories in the media. And, as usual most of them are tearing into him for things he hasn't said. This seems to be a bit of a pattern and it really irritates me when I see it. Hence this little thread.

Now, I'm not saying that there are no genuine grounds for someone else to dislike him, or take issue with his ideas and work. Someone sitting in the audience (or watching on Youtube) as he argues with another panelist in a debate may well find themselves thinking he's an arrogant prick - fair enough. I don't see it myself, but that's fair enough. And there are no doubt lots of evolutionary biologists or other scientists who take issue with his work and again, that's fair enough - that's what science is all about.

But - I really think many of the people who claim Dawkins is arrogant/strident/humourless/unfeeling towards those of faith/ an attacker of the religious rather than religion etc. are basing that opinion not on what he has said or done, but misrepresentations and misunderstandings of what he has said or done.


A few quick examples -

*It has been widely reported and, judging by the comments sections of newspapers and blogs widely accepted, that Dawkins said raising a child to believe in a religion is child abuse. Except he did not say that - what he actually suggested was that teaching a child to believe in Hell and that they might go there if they don't behave was a form of child abuse.

*Dawkins has faced much criticism in the past and continues to do so for suggesting that we are fundamentally selfish - based on the notion that organisms are selfish - except that's not what he said. The selfish gene is about gene continuation, not selfishness of the organism.

More recently, and the ones that inspired this rant:

Headline of a comment piece in the Guardian

What he actually said was '"When you say X is the fastest growing religion, all you mean is that X people have babies at the fastest rate. But babies have no religion."


And this from the Telegraph:


Did he say that? No. No he did not. In fact, he said the opposite. The article takes a series of quotes out of context and has Dawkins reaching the opposite conclusion to the one he actually drew.

What actually happened? During a discussion at a festival, he wondered if fairytales and fantasy inculcated a belief in the supernatural and were therefore potentially damaging - and concluded that on balance he thinks they are a useful tool for developing children's imaginations and critical faculties.

His comment after the article was interesting:

He is also criticised by people who consider his position that there is no God, to be as much an article of faith as any who believe in God - except, he doesn't say that there is definitely no God. What he actually suggests is that there is almost certainly no God - that all the evidence he has seen points to there not being a God, none of the evidence he has seen points to there being a God, and on balance he considers that there is almost certainly no God.

There are too many examples to go on. And I've ranted enough already. But just to wrap up: if what people know of Dawkins is how he is reported, then it really is no wonder that people think he is arrogant, humourless and strident. A man who arrogantly asserts that he can know the truth of no God, who thinks all babies are atheists, and that anybody who teaches their children about Jesus is abusing them, and fairystories should be banned.

So - here's a really nice interview with Dawkins, from last year. The interviewer is Robin Ince, who is one of my favourite rationalist comedians :)

At least now I know who Richard Dawkins is :)

It is interesting that the most offended people would be completely comfortable standing on your porch telling you what to believe.

Oh poor Dana, always out of step with the cool kids, the in crowd.






Good for you. :notworthy

Just realised I wrote 'humourless conversationalist' when i meant humourless controversialist :p

I came to Professor Richard Dawkins via Derren Brown.
Together they gave my latent atheism a framework around which to coalesce.
It's good to have outspoken atheists because it's an under-represented POV, whatever the Hate Mail likes to pretend.

Richard Bacon interviewed Richard Dawkins about the fairytale quote recently.
It might even have been his interview which was picked up and mis-quoted.

This is not it, but it is an interesting listen.
Still shots only - radio interview.

I disagreed with a customer at work today (bad customer service, naughty naughty) who said he switched the radio off when Richard Bacon came on. He's not my favourite presenter, but he does often have people on his show that interest and intrigue me.

Well God bless him for making you happy.

:)

I could swear that I posted in this thread. Did anyone see me say, "he was great on the family feud" in some other thread and think I was drunk posting?

?

Game show host and Hogan's Heros alumnus who shares a name.

Quote:

Richard Dawkins' implication that babies have a default theological position of atheism is as silly as assuming a default language or nationality

What an amazingly dumb quote. A baby's default language is "none". "No religion" is atheism.

And (most) babies do have default nationality (depending on the laws of particular nations), since that is an external legal status conferred by the nation, not something they learn. Perhaps they meant "culture" or "national identity", or something like that?

Well, the thing is, he didn't even say that babies are atheist. Presumably because, as someone who is quite careful with language he knows that for a lot of people the meaning of atheism is less an absence of belief and more an active disbelief. What he actually said was that babies have no religion. The author of that column took his tweet that babies have no religion, suggested that this was implying that babies have a default theological position of atheism and then argued against that 'implied' meaning, rather than the actual thing that Dawkins said.

Explains my confusion.

He did twist the words to imply that Dawkins was claiming that babies pondered theology, but the fact is that a complete lack of theological position is still atheistic, so his argument would still fall flat if Dawkins had said what he claimed. If Dawkins had used the words "theological position", it would have been a silly construction to use, because of the implication of theologist babies, but he still would have been technically correct. If you're going to make fun of someone by twisting their words, you should make sure that the twisted words aren't also true.

And ridiculing the idea of "default language" explicitly supports Dawkins' actual point and wording. If you wouldn't count a baby as an "English speaker", why count them as "Catholic"?

And the "nationality" part is just completely incorrect.

Amazingly dumb quote.

Totally agree. And most of the 3000+comments it generated were basically arguing about the definition of atheism :P

Wouldn't babies be agnostic (don't know, don't care) rather than atheist (don't believe), or am I confused on the definitions?

Babies believe in a god. Mom, of course.

Gods = slaves. :eek:

Depends on your definition of atheism really. It has two meanings - Disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods.

Disbelief is a conscious position, lack of belief may simply be an unconscious absence of belief. Literally it means 'without god' ( from Greek atheos, from a- 'without' + theos 'god'.)

So, the passive meaning of without belief would work for a baby.

Agnostic means: A person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God

So, no, agnostic would be too much of a considered position to be appropriate in this context.

OK, sounds logical. :)

[bold mine]

The etiology behind the distinction is well established in science throughout leading research institutions. It's like people who are born without sight whom we call blind. For them, the world as we literally see it doesn't exist. They can appreciate some of it through their other senses, intellectually understand what sighted people tell them about the world beyond their available senses, even synthesize the world in their imaginations; but, that may not be anything like the reality of it and they might not believe it if they actually saw it.

Now we can look into the human organism and say there's a heart, there's some lungs, and there's a brain. We can even say look, there's a mutation in the RPE65 gene causing abnormal development of photoreceptor cells resulting in a blindness from birth we call Leber's congenital amaurosis. But we can't say look, there's a happiness or, there's a love or, there's a soul.

There are sights that some people can't see simply because of an unconscious lack of exposure and there are sights some people can't see because they were born without sight. Likewise, some people's lack of belief in God is simply an unconscious absence of belief while others who actually disbelieve were born without a soul. Human genetic mapping simply hasn't yet pinpointed the mutated gene responsible for the autosomal recessive disorder. The important thing to remember is that like blind people, @heists can be good people too.


Hope y'all enjoyed that little piece of fiction I just made up.

You're always good bedtime reading, sexobon.

well all I know is some of y'all are going to Hell if you keep these heathen ways

Button poetry? :eyebrow: