Religion can be used to fight for enlightenment values (as it has been done int he past) as much as against it.. because the core of the beliefs is bascially inconsecuential to the fight at hand.
That would come as a surprise to the Philosophes - see the quotation at the end of the diary from the history of atheism. But, yes, some Christians have retreated from some of their most barmy ideas and have accepted the validity of evolution - even the Pope - and Dawkins has joined with such Christians in fighting the spread of creationism.
Sigh, yet again, D acknowledges the diversity of Christians and works with some of them - see diary. But he is opposing the powerful influence of the many extremists, particularly in the US - who, for example, push creationism and ID. But he is also critical of moderate Christians as he feels they give respectability to the extremists - they make reliance on faith more acceptable.
But ,well this is another topic and I think Brit speaks foor me better than I would ever do.
Then I'm very sorry for you, since, as I showed at length in the diary, his criticism of Dawkins is based on ignorance and misinterpretation. Despite that he blithely makes the same mistakes in comments here - see my replies. Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.
ugh. that's tough, ain't? I mean, it seems that this is somewhat personal for you. I mean , probably Brit and I do not care about Dawkins in particular, and we think his way to approach the fight agaisnt elnlightenment values is not the correct one. Probably because Brit and myself have a very different idea about what science is about, and about his position in society. Maybe it is because we see religion with a different perspective haavily influence by our readings on symbolic antrhopology and mythology that we have disucussed here in ET thoroughly.
I think that if you look at the other diaries where we have proposed another approach to this fight and argued that the approach of Dawkins and ohter are probably detrimental you could see that Brit problems with dawkins do not arise fron ignorance or lack of understanding in dawkins propositions. The disagreement is more fundamental basically because they do not take into consideration (probably they would call it too postmdoernist for their taste) the inputs of symbolic and religious antrhopology about how people take symbolism and hierarchical symbolism in their hands.
But in any case. Let me tell you, it is not personal at all. It is just an opinion on the approach on this issue. It is in no way an attack against you in any sense. It is a strong disagreement about his approach as a social commentator (which he shares with other people so I find completely unfair to criticize him or single him out because we think it is a mistake.) and, well, a not very high regard about his scientific work. But sometimes it looks as if you take any disagreement about his approach or any attack about his scientfic credential as something personal.
A pleasure I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude
Not too fast on this Pope. John Paul II did send an encouraging sign to a seminar back in 1996. The present Pope Ratzinger is in full regression on evolution and not only.
To set the tone of recent views on Darwin, the Pope has rested the matter in the competent hands of Cardinal Schonborn of Vienna, whose 2005 NYT article caused a major stir.
It is comforting to see that this Pope is very much concerned with the defence of reason against the ideologies of relativism, evolutionism and reductionism. That's True Reason, of course.
