Battle of the New Atheism

[kumquatq3]

http://www.wired.com/news/wiredmag/0,71985...ml?tw=rss.index

^read before posting "

 

 

First page, if you're lazy:

My friends, I must ask you an important question today: Where do you stand on God?

 

It's a question you may prefer not to be asked. But I'm afraid I have no choice. We find ourselves, this very autumn, three-and-a-half centuries after the intellectual martyrdom of Galileo, caught up in a struggle of ultimate importance, when each one of us must make a commitment. It is time to declare our position.

 

This is the challenge posed by the New Atheists. We are called upon, we lax agnostics, we noncommittal nonbelievers, we vague deists who would be embarrassed to defend antique absurdities like the Virgin Birth or the notion that Mary rose into heaven without dying, or any other blatant myth; we are called out, we fence-sitters, and told to help exorcise this debilitating curse: the curse of faith.

Faces of the New Atheism

 

The New Atheists will not let us off the hook simply because we are not doctrinaire believers. They condemn not just belief in God but respect for belief in God. Religion is not only wrong; it's evil. Now that the battle has been joined, there's no excuse for shirking.

 

Three writers have sounded this call to arms. They are Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett. A few months ago, I set out to talk with them. I wanted to find out what it would mean to enlist in the war against faith.

 

Oxford University is the capital of reason, its Jerusalem. The walls glint gold in the late afternoon, as waves or particles of light scatter off the ancient bricks. Logic Lane, a tiny road under a low, right-angled bridge, cuts sharply across to the place where Robert Boyle formulated his law on gases and Robert Hooke first used a microscope to see a living cell. A few steps away is the memorial to Percy Bysshe Shelley. Here he lies, sculpted naked in stone, behind the walls of the university that expelled him almost 200 years ago -- for atheism.

 

Richard Dawkins, the leading light of the New Atheism movement, lives and works in a large brick house just 20 minutes away from the Shelley memorial. Dawkins, formerly a fellow at New College, is the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science. He is 65 years old, and the book that made him famous, The Selfish Gene, dates from well back in the last century. The opposition it earned from rival theorizers and popularizers of Charles Darwin, such as Stephen Jay Gould, is fading into history. Gould died in 2002, and Dawkins, while acknowledging their battles, praised his influence on scientific culture. They were allies in the battle against creationism. Dawkins, however, has been far more belligerent in counterattack. His most recent book is called The God Delusion.

 

Dawkins' style of debate is as maddening as it is reasonable. A few months earlier, in front of an audience of graduate students from around the world, Dawkins took on a famous geneticist and a renowned neurosurgeon on the question of whether God was real. The geneticist and the neurosurgeon advanced their best theistic arguments: Human consciousness is too remarkable to have evolved; our moral sense defies the selfish imperatives of nature; the laws of science themselves display an order divine; the existence of God can never be disproved by purely empirical means.

 

Dawkins rejected all these claims, but the last one -- that science could never disprove God -- provoked him to sarcasm. "There's an infinite number of things that we can't disprove," he said. "You might say that because science can explain just about everything but not quite, it's wrong to say therefore we don't need God. It is also, I suppose, wrong to say we don't need the Flying Spaghetti Monster, unicorns, Thor, Wotan, Jupiter, or fairies at the bottom of the garden. There's an infinite number of things that some people at one time or another have believed in, and an infinite number of things that nobody has believed in. If there's not the slightest reason to believe in any of those things, why bother? The onus is on somebody who says, I want to believe in God, Flying Spaghetti Monster, fairies, or whatever it is. It is not up to us to disprove it."

 

Science, after all, is an empirical endeavor that traffics in probabilities. The probability of God, Dawkins says, while not zero, is vanishingly small. He is confident that no Flying Spaghetti Monster exists. Why should the notion of some deity that we inherited from the Bronze Age get more respectful treatment?

[Xard]

Okay... how does that differ from warmongering from christians/muslims/etc. part against atheism?

 

Religion is not only wrong; it's evil!!!111!!

Atheism is not only wrong; it's evil!!111!!

 

 

"The number of nonreligious people in the U.S. is something nearer to 30 million than 20 million," he says. "That's more than all the Jews in the world put together. I think we're in the same position the gay movement was in a few decades ago. There was a need for people to come out. The more people who came out, the more people had the courage to come out. I think that's the case with atheists. They are more numerous than anybody realizes."

 

Dawkins looks forward to the day when the first U.S. politician is honest about being an atheist. "Highly intelligent people are mostly atheists," he says. "Not a single member of either house of Congress admits to being an atheist. It just doesn't add up. Either they're stupid, or they're lying. And have they got a motive for lying? Of course they've got a motive! Everybody knows that an atheist can't get elected."

 

USA... In Europe its not exactly brave deed to admit that you're atheist. Oh, I'm sure that there is more than one Atheist in our goverment.

Edited October 27, 2006 by Xard

[Pidesco]

Dawkins is right, of course. That doesn't stop me from believing, that a God exists, however.

[kumquatq3]

Okay... how does that differ from warmongering from christians/muslims/etc. part against atheism?

 

Religion is not only wrong; it's evil!!!111!!

Atheism is not only wrong; it's evil!!111!!

 

 

Dawkins isn't asking you to believe in anything, he's asking you to to use reason. He's not asking you to stone believers either. Just not to coddle them.

 

 

I Dawkins

Edited October 27, 2006 by kumquatq3

[Xard]

Still, it is warmongering against religions.

 

"he's asking you to use reason..." That kind of reason he beliefs is right.

 

"Hi. Umm... I used my reasoning and I still believe God exists."

 

"Your reasoning suck. Try again."

 

edit:

"There would be a religion of reason," Harris says.

 

Why that sounds like France few hundred years ago?

Edited October 27, 2006 by Xard

[Dark Moth]

"Highly intelligent people are mostly atheists,"

 

LOL. What an idiot.

 

Atheism: the new inquisition.

Edited October 27, 2006 by Dark Moth

[kumquatq3]

Still, it is warmongering against religions.

 

"he's asking you to use reason..." That kind of reason he beliefs[/] is right.

 

"Hi. Umm... I used my reasoning and I still believe God exists."

 

"Your reasoning suck. Try again."

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

The "Kind" of reason? :D

 

 

What part of his arguement is not the normal kind of reason?

[Dark Moth]

Pretty much the whole "religion is evil" and the "If you don't agree with me, you're stupid," part.

 

This should draw Hades/Sand like a fly to dog crap.

Edited October 27, 2006 by Dark Moth

[Xard]

Still, it is warmongering against religions.

 

"he's asking you to use reason..." That kind of reason he beliefs[/] is right.

 

"Hi. Umm... I used my reasoning and I still believe God exists."

 

"Your reasoning suck. Try again."

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

The "Kind" of reason? :D

 

 

What part of his arguement is not the normal kind of reason?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Well, if you are believer talking bs how religions are evil etc. its not normal reasoning to them

Edited October 27, 2006 by Xard

[Sand]

"Highly intelligent people are mostly atheists,"

 

LOL. What an idiot.

 

Atheism: the new inquisition.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I wouldn't go that far, but it is far more intelligent to question and seek your own answers, which often leads to atheism, than take what is given to you whole cloth. I don't particularly care if the person I vote for is religious or not, just as long as he promotes a secular government. Only through a secular government can there be fair treatment for all citizens. What personal beliefs, or lack there of, is irrelevant to me beyond that.

Edited October 27, 2006 by Sand

[kumquatq3]

"Highly intelligent people are mostly atheists,"

 

LOL. What an idiot.

 

Atheism: the new inquisition.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

In the US it has widely been studied:

 

STUDIES OF STUDENTS

 

1. Thomas Howells, 1927

Study of 461 students showed religiously conservative students "are, in general, relatively inferior in intellectual ability."

 

2. Hilding Carlsojn, 1933

Study of 215 students showed that "there is a tendency for the more intelligent undergraduate to be sympathetic toward

[Xard]

"Highly intelligent people are mostly atheists,"

 

LOL. What an idiot.

 

Atheism: the new inquisition.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I wouldn't go that far, but it is far more intelligent to question and seek your own answers, which often leads to atheism,

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I agree with first part, with second I don't. It leads to atheism just as often as to some religion. Or being agnostic

[Sand]

It isn't religion and spirituality that stunts intellect but conservative closed-mindedness. If one is open to new ideas and thought that in of itself brings enlightenment more so than any scripture or academic text.

[kumquatq3]

Pretty much the whole "religion is evil" and the "If you don't agree with me, you're stupid," part.   

 

This should draw Hades/Sand like a fly to dog crap.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Never says that, but if you don't want to read the article, sweet. Just don't post.

 

He isn't saying people are idiots for believing, he admits that there is a TINY chance god may exist, but he admits that there is a TINY chance Thor may exist.

 

He makes fun of the argument that you can't "disprove" God

[Dark Moth]

Of course he'll have a backing. But it's stupid even still to say that most intelligent people are atheists. Studies and statistics can easily be warped or biased. You could probably get backing for it the other way around, too. (Note that the vast majority of those tests are done in the up to only the 1960s.) Hell, my class valedictorian was religious. Many intelligent people I have met personally are religious as well. Is Dawkins going to call them stupid or evil? It's both foolish and wrong. By saying what he's saying, he's calling me and pretty much the entire world unintelligent. Thanks, but I don't need some hardcore atheist trying to call me on my intelligence simply because of my choice of belief.

Edited October 27, 2006 by Dark Moth

[Pidesco]

Basically, he says God is as real as any mythological (or rather, fictional) being. And he's right.

[Xard]

*yawn* Maybe I should stop this for tonight and come up tomorrow... If this is not turned into smamfest and locked that is.

 

It isn't religion and spirituality that stunts intellect but conservative closed-mindedness.  If one is open to new ideas and thought that in of itself brings enlightenment more so than any scripture or academic text.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

True. But you don't have to believer to be conservative close-minded moron.

[Pidesco]

Where the hell does Dawkins say all these things Moth is accusing him of?

[Sand]

Turning the other cheek, Dark Moth?

 

I would say that his studies, while interesting, is indeed flawed. You can have a closed minded conservative atheist that shows all the same behavior and intellect as a closed minded conservative Christian. While I don't have such a vehement "disdain" nor the need for such colorful metaphors as Dark Moth, but you can manipulate statistics to fit your own ends easily enough.

[kumquatq3]

Where the hell does Dawkins say all these things Moth is accusing him of?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

He doesn't, Moth didn't read it

[Dark Moth]

Pretty much the whole "religion is evil" and the "If you don't agree with me, you're stupid," part.   

 

This should draw Hades/Sand like a fly to dog crap.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Never says that, but if you don't want to read the article, sweet. Just don't post.

 

He isn't saying people are idiots for believing, he admits that there is a TINY chance god may exist, but he admits that there is a TINY chance Thor may exist.

 

He makes fun of the argument that you can't "disprove" God

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Well, it seems I misread the article. The article is what says "religion is evil", not Dawkins. But still, by saying what he's saying, he's implying that atheists are more intelligent than religious people, and I disagree.

[kumquatq3]

Well, it seems I misread the article.  The article is what says "religion is evil", not Dawkins.  But still, by saying what he's saying, he's implying that atheists are more intelligent than religious people, and I disagree.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

The articles author concludes the article by disagreeing with Dawkins and the other people in it.

 

 

Dawkins is simply stating that if you want to believe in God you are going on pure faith, nothing else. In that regard, he says, it's just as easy to believe if Thor or faeries.

 

As for the intelligence argument, well, you disagreeing doesn't mean you're right. For what it's worth, the author disagrees with Dawkins and doesn't dispute his statement of intelligence here. So one can assume the opinion isn't unjustifiable. It could be wrong, but it's not outright crazy.

Edited October 27, 2006 by kumquatq3

[Pidesco]

He's saying that non-religious people are, statistically more likely to be highly intelligent, than religious people. This is not a personal attack on anyone, and is true. It stems from the fact that a lot of religions stimulate closemindedness. That is, dogmatic, unassailable beliefs in something.

[Sand]

I think it is more accurate to say that he is implying that atheists are more open minded and more accepting of new ideas than those who follow religion. Such as an atheist would be more open to the idea that Homosexuality is a natural aspect, for not only is it in the presence of Homo Sapiens but also in other primates and lower animal forms, while the religious individual will see Homosexuality as wrong and evil merely on the basis of scripture written more than a thousand years ago where they lacked the understanding.

[Pidesco]

Would all the more religious people here please point out what's the difference between believing that God exists and believing that Zeus, or Thor, or whoever exists.

Edited October 27, 2006 by Pidesco