With your essay I see no definition of region. If you are going to condem all religion, you had better define it.
It looks like you have set yourself up a straw man.
Any definition of religion has to be reasonable. Expect an argument with just about any definition you manage to come up with. Who knows maybe you'll surprise me.
I think you have done Dawkins and yourself a major disservice here. You have combined two different topics into one essay.
Topic 1. Are we unfairly smearing Dawkins? Topic 2. Lets argue over Dawkins arguments.
These are very different topics. It is for example, possible to think that Dawkins is being unfairly smeared while disagreeing with his arguments.
I would propose trying again with first item #1 then later with item #2.
aspiring to genteel poverty
Yep.
My point is that religion and science are both social and tribal phenomena which are defined by social and tribal relationships.
Dawkins is inside that world, not outside of it. He's not going to make the fundies stop being fundies just because he's written a few books about evolution and religion and the Royal Society thinks he's a cool dude.
There's a rather glib line from communications theory which suggests that if you want to make yourself understood, you have to use a language that your audience can understand.
If we look at that guideline - is writing a book like The Good Delusion really going to convince anyone on the fundie side to stop being a fundie?
I'd suggest not, because it's clearly not speaking a language the fundies understand. So who is Dawkins writing for? If he wants to communicate, he's not trying very hard. And while The God Delusion may have sold more than a million copies, I doubt that it significantly dented sales of the Bible or had any influence at all among fundie communities, beyond irritating them and confirming their prejudices. I'm certainly not aware of mass deconversions among fundies. (Perhaps there's been a news blackout?)
In any case, the whole premise of the argument is wrong. The fundies are primarily a political phenomenon, groomed and promoted for their political influence - just as the Taleban were created for political reasons, and just as Northern Ireland, Beirut and the rest have been primarily political battlegrounds, not religious ones.
This is hardly exceptional - much of the history of religion is a history of political wars being fought under religious camouflage.
Taking Dawkins at face value is like believing that his books could have brought peace to Northern Ireland on the basis that if everyone became an atheist they'd stop being violent to each other.
This is clearly nonsense. As Northern Ireland showed clearly, political problems have political solutions, not religious ones. Which is why ScienceTM is no more a cure for the influence of the fundies in US politics than free chocolate would be.
And he's very much involved in the evolution vs religion debate, so I'm guessing he has some interest in persuading people to believe something they don't already believe.
Isn't a title like 'The God Delusion' a bit of a hint of an agenda, perhaps?
He doesn't expect to change the minds of very committed Christians so he doesn't need the "faith (sic)" attributed to him by TBG, rather he has the quite reasonable aims of helping some people to clarify their ideas, and others to be more ready to speak up for the atheist views they actually hold.
I guess Ted should have chosen a language his audience could understand.
My talk at McGill was greeted, like several others, with a reassuringly wholehearted, and almost universal, standing ovation. I am under no illusions that I deserve these enthusiastic receptions personally, or that they reflect the quality of my own performance as a speaker. On the contrary, I am convinced that they represent an overflowing of bottled-up frustration, from masses of decent people pushed to breaking point and heartily sick of the sycophantic `respect' that our society, even secular society, routinely and thoughtlessly accords religious faith.
Ted:
But many are much more extreme, especially in the US. Being nice to them and not questioning their faith is no more likely to succeed than Obama's hope to work with the Right, as Edwards has scornfully pointed out. The most dangerous ones are not just a powerless, eccentric fringe in the US, but people who've organised to get power.
So you're suggesting everyone has been having a polite after dinner conversation about changing people's minds here?
Right. Gotcha.
Hence futility, because their beliefs are not the cause of their influence.
You or I or any of the other six billion (armchair) historians on the planet can sit down and analyse - in great detail - the conflicting interests that give birth to and fuel various conflicts and religious cults. We can then come to the conclusion that it was the underlying social, economic and political movements that caused and fueled the conflict completely independently of religion.
But this is an exceedingly simplistic reasoning that ignores the ability of religion to mobilise people and give them marching orders. There may well need to be an underlying economic, social or political conflict for such a mobilisation to be possible, but to say that those reasons are the be-all-end-all of why Joe Schmoe decides join the revolution or go to war against Eastasia is like saying that nationalistic jingoism had no responsibility for the first world war, because it was ultimately caused by the underlying economic and strategic tensions in early 20th-century Europe, or that Marx and Engels had no hand in the Russian revolution, because it was caused by the inherent instability of the Czarist regime.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
You can't make sense of this by assuming that it's worth debating whether or not the god in question actually exists. And you can't stop a war by arguing that he, she or it doesn't.
In the 20th century arrived Marxism, Nazism and Capitalism borrowed the social dynamics, removed the 'god' part and replaced it with different abstractions. But functionally these are secular religions with very similar social dynamics - mythologised narrative, rituals of hierarchy, an explicit morality reinforced by punishment/reward and narrative repetition, teleology and personality cults.
So - show me an example from history of a religious movement with significant political influence which was dismantled purely by a debate about its its beliefs, with no other political activity.
It doesn't happen. Narratives change because of wars, civil unrest, popular pressure on elites, and occasionally because the elites decide they need a different story to control people's interests and activities.
Narratives don't change because someone writes a book telling people that what they believe is silly.
The point of my original diary is that if you want to change people's minds you have to offer them a more positive and inclusive experience of a different narrative - which is clearly not happening with the atheist-led anti-fundie movement.
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/%7Ealtemey/
strongly suggests that there are more fundamental processes at work, processes that transcend "belief", and that the breakdown in the ability to rationally evaluate evidence and construct a personal world based on it seems typical of the authoritarian personality and plays a big role. Brains that are ---well, broken in this way-- are drawn to fundamentalisms of many sorts. It seems they cannot be dissuaded by reason from these loyalties.
Finally, Lots of us godless atheist devils enjoy a well reasoned and well written bit of work that says what we might---if we had the time and talent.
Thanks, Ted.
Capitalism searches out the darkest corners of human potential, and mainlines them.
The real cause is abusive psychology and stressful depersonalising relationships, and the way they bond with them and come to see them as normal and necessary, while outsiders are seen as evil.
Arguing that they should stop believing in god and start believing in science and evolution instead doesn't connect with their experience in any way.
My point is that religion and science are both social and tribal phenomena which are defined by social and tribal relationships. Dawkins is inside that world, not outside of it. He's not going to make the fundies stop being fundies just because he's written a few books about evolution and religion and the Royal Society thinks he's a cool dude.
The feminist movement of the early to middle 20th century didn't take male feelings into account. It was a declaration of war as far as traditional society was concerned. Sitting down for a reasonable discussion over a cup of tea, as some people here seem to believe is the proper course of action, would have accomplished nothing.
As Northern Ireland showed clearly, political problems have political solutions, not religious ones.
How many year of violence preceded the bargaining table?
you are the media you consume.
Forgot to add this: would the bargaining table have even happened if the years of violence hadn't led to a kind of stalemate?
That's a different issue. Terrorist violence is by definition political. That the political peace process was preceeded by political violence is hardly surprising.
More relevant to this discussion, Is the fundamental argument between the Northern Irish peoples over the theology of the sacraments, or are those theological disputes identity labels for a political dispute? I would argue the latter.
But it smells of special pleading to say that among all these contributing factors, only religion should be discounted as a predominantly negative influence. Would there have been a conflict in Northern Ireland without any religious divide? Very likely yes. Would there have been a first world war without jingoistic nationalism? Very likely yes. Why, then do you want to give religious bigotry a free pass in the former case, when nationalist bigotry does not get a free pass in the latter?
I might as well put them out there anyway, though.
First off, one could argue that religion in this sense is being used in the place that language, flags, geography, and a million other things could also fill in a tribal nationalist construct. None of these things, in and of themselves, say much of anything about politics, but can quite easily become the symbols behind which the same old violent tribalistic nationalism hides, and has always hid. Thus, the problem both here and in WWI is really nationalism. This seems to just be re-defining the situation, with a dose of special pleading thrown in.
One could argue that religion can often have a variety of neutral to positive products, while nationalism seems never to have any. This is a boring argument.
One could argue that some form of religious belief has been part of every human society in all times and places, and thus is just not something that is going to dissappear, whereas nationalism does seem to be much more recent phenomenon. Then again, that would depend on how you define nationalism, and it would require that one deal with the very common religious belief that members of one's own group are real humans, and everybody else isn't.
One could also argue that by the standards you are proposing (any cultural construct that is not scientifically verifiable and that has led to something negative in past history should be discarded) would leave us with just about nothing, as all systems of values, ethics, beliefs, philosophy, and aesthetics are both scientifically unverifiable and can lead people to do stupid and damaging things.
One can argue all kinds of things, but all of the counter-arguments that are coming to mind seem shallow and inadequate, as if I have not grasped the real thrust of your argument. Maybe that's just the sleep-deprivation and exhaustion talking.
I think that the problem with this hypothesis is that you misidentify nationalism as being the sole or primary underlying phenomenon. In reality opposing camps are likely generated for a combination of different reasons, and putting it all down to single-factor explanations like nationalism or class struggle seems entirely too simplistic. In fact, nationalism seems to be employed just as frequently as religion these days as a proxy for other interests - be they oil, basing rights or military dominance.
More importantly, it's also false: In Denmark, for example, the first democratic constitution piggybacked on a chiefly nationalist zeitgeist. Without the aid of the nationalists, it likely wouldn't have passed (the story, as always, is a bit more complicated than that, of course).
More importantly, simple longevity should not make a concept above reasoned criticism. Until not very long ago as the universe measures such things, slavery had been a universal human institution and was unlikely to just disappear. The same can be said for gender discrimination today. And yet we consider both amoral and abhorrent, so simple age is no stamp of approval on an idea.
That's a very powerful argument, but it has the problem that it attacks a position that is a shade more extreme than the one I hold (although it's entirely possible that Dawkins holds it - I'm not sufficiently familiar with his writings to tell). I merely argue that we should acknowledge those cases in which religion has played a predominantly negative role and take prudent steps to see that as few such situations arise as possible, not that we should therefore abolish religion.
I happen to think, however, that religion will almost always play a predominantly negative role when it becomes part of the political equation. Religion is similar to alcohol and sex, in that when enjoyed in the privacy of one's own home or pub/nightclub/temple it does no harm, provided that one does not go overboard and that only consenting adults are involved. Unfortunately, it is also similar to alcohol and sex in that if you get it mixed up in politics, Bad Things can (and regularly do) happen. Think Yeltsin, Clinton and Bush the Lesser, if you want examples.
as if I have not grasped the real thrust of your argument. Maybe that's just the sleep-deprivation and exhaustion talking.
The fact that I'm also getting tired probably doesn't help either... Let's call it a night and get back to it some other time.
TBG: Dawkins is inside that world, not outside of it. He's not going to make the fundies stop being fundies just because he's written a few books about evolution and religion and the Royal Society thinks he's a cool dude. There's a rather glib line from communications theory which suggests that if you want to make yourself understood, you have to use a language that your audience can understand.
TBG: Dawkins is inside that world, not outside of it. He's not going to make the fundies stop being fundies just because he's written a few books about evolution and religion and the Royal Society thinks he's a cool dude.
Yes, and your use of it is glib too - it's quite evident that even religious extremists understand his book - that's why they attack it, some of them in detail. What sort of language should he use - the language of revelation ?
Thanks for providing more evidence that you're too lazy to read the things you attempt to criticize; as Colman points out in reply to you, I made it clear - even in the introduction ! - that he is NOT very interested in stopping fundies being fundies - though, as with the existence of god - he doesn't entirely rule it out (even extremists sometimes change their views - you might even change yours). He's more concerned with the kind of people who are nominally religious because brought up in that tradition but "who haven't given it much thought", and with believers who have doubts. Of course you also entirely ignore the emails to his site showing that his aims are entirely realistic - as well as the feedback he got at book signings.
I emphasised, and as he makes clear in the long passage from his book tour journal which I quoted, that he's VERY concerned to give support to the many atheists who feel somewhat intimidated in the US and don't tend to speak out. This alone is sufficient justification for publishing the book.
Cf. from Hitchens' book tour:
At the end of the event I discover something that I am going to keep on discovering: half the people attending had thought that they were the only atheists in town. Hitchens
At the end of the event I discover something that I am going to keep on discovering: half the people attending had thought that they were the only atheists in town.
Hitchens
First, I'm not just condemning religion, as I am condemning all that is called God. I agree with most of Dawkin's points about the probability of 'existence' (whatever that means) of a/multiple 'god(s)' as being rather low. This is not the most important point, however, so let's leave it aside for now, and consider the possibility that there are/is in fact (a) god(s).
Be there (a) god(s), I would not worship it/them. As I see it this/these being(s) would have a rather lot to answer for. They would be accountably to whom, exactly? I claim, to humanity. And I would take a lot of convincing that it/many/most of them should not be put of some kind of trial for crimes against humanity. Certainly, I would not worship. I have some little bit of dignity and pride, and will not fall on my knees like a pitiful fool because of the demand of some Supreme Sky Being. Rather on my feet in hell, than on my knees in heaven. Who does this grand dude in the sky think it is, really, to deserve such mindless devotion on faith alone? And really, nothing can be omnipotent that is sentient. This must just be some kind of PR trick to inspire fear and unquestionable subservience, and at least should not be taken on face value for being proclaimed in some book or other. Let's take on this powerful force, and see it tremble in fear!
This is my main reaction to theistic religion. Deity sounds unlikely, but even if, no thanks! Let's believe in people, not god(s). So, please, stop worshiping and join the forces for people powered cosmic governance, god(s) or no god(s)!
If you are for real..we have one of the best experts in the world here in the UB. Manuel Delgado.. if you want to come..you may attend his classes. Believe me, they are absolutely great :)
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
Ted.. I am sorry i do not get it. Why do you attack me.? i ahve never attacked you. I do not have but respect about your position about religiona nd science (though I obviously disagree).
yes I happen to think Dawkins is a very bad scientists, but I think we can happily have a coffeee and discuss it.
Frankly I guess you tried to mock at me.. i am sorry.. it was not my intention to hurt you so that you will be back at me.
Actually I really feel very bad when this happens.
But jsut to claify to Colman.. in case he might have interpreted in other ways.
I was saying that Colman is completely right actually. Understanding why people pray is something tough. At first sight it makes absolutely no sense whassoever why people pray.. and preciesely I was saying that trying to udnerstand why this happens using scientific means has been the job of religious antrhopologists in the last centrureis. During these years they have gaines some insights that can be very useful... adn knowing COlman I was sure he would love to come here and attend those classes becaue they are really great and funny.
Colman, I do nto know if you take it like I am saying here, but after Ted comment , i do nto know, maybe it could have been interpreted as something similar to an attack.. I really have no idea how it could be.. really, you know I am for real.. and i would never attack anyone personal in ET. So, let me insist.. I was absolutely with you.
It seem my previous comment could ahve been interpreted as some kinof attack or sanrk at you.. I frankly do not know in which sense or how, but certainly Ted thought it was.. so there is a chance that you actually could read it the same way.
SO in case you might have interpreted in other ways.
I was saying that you are completely right actually. Understanding why people pray is something tough. At first sight it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever why people pray.. and preciesely I was saying that trying to understand why this happens using scientific means has been the job of religious antrhopologists in the last century. During these years they have gained some insights that can be very useful... and knowing you I was sure he would love to come here and attend those classes becaue they are really great and funny.
So the first sentence was about telling you that there is a whole field of science trying to answer precisely the same question. .. so I was saying you'd be interested in ne of thsoe topics or youw ere just putting a question in the air as a general statement (I guess it was the second, but now I do not know anymore).
The second part of my answer was to try to tell you that those classes can indeed be funny although they deala bout a topic which can be.. let's say tense, like religion... but M. Delgado is really an excellent teacher on reiligious antrhopology and you would really love him... well actually classes are in spanish now that I think. So maybe you can just come here because of the weather :)
Colman, I do nto know if you took it like I am saying here, but after Ted comment , i do nto know, maybe it could have been interpreted as something similar to an attack.. I really have no idea how it could be.. really, you know I am for real.. and i would never attack anyone personal in ET not even in disagreement. So, let me insist.. I was absolutely with you.
And in any case, sorry if necessary.
Though that was a rhetorical device rather than a literal question, it's nice to know that there are people studying the roots of the illness. Maybe we can find a treatment.
well.. you know here we disagree.. the danger is the attack on enlgihtenment values which does not come precisely directly from religion. So I do not see religion as some kind of illness... well at least no more than science :)
The treatment should be about defending enlightenment values in front of a tribe of nationalistic groups and oligarchies that use different narratives to attack it. The fact that they also use the religion hierarchical structure to force a literal imnterpretation of the sacred books so as to generate a defending/attackign attitude against science is what should worry us.
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.
But ,well this is another topic and I think Brit speaks foor me better than I would ever do.
But I am really glad you took my comment as it was.
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.
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.
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.
First we have
First, I'm not just condemning religion,
then we have
This is my main reaction to theistic religion
Ok we are beginning to actually make some sense now. It is still too simplistic.
I have some little bit of dignity and pride, and will not fall on my knees like a pitiful fool because of the demand of some Supreme Sky Being.
Do you really want to be this offensive?
Perhaps it is a bit risky to tell people what they do when they practice religion. Far better to ask. Also I would hate to get into this type of cultural superiority with both our past as a species, let alone condemn all people on the planet who do this whether in 1st, 2nd or 3rd world countries.
Perhaps it is a bit risky to tell people what they do when they practice religion. Far better to ask.
It is extremely common for Christian religions to have an open door policy. If they aren't going to talk about it - enter the door and see for yourself. If there are still problems, find an ex-member of that religion and ask them. the Internet is great for that. The more secretive they are the more likely there are going to be some real pissed off ex members of the group.
In the last year we have had two different people who as part of their university education entered our door to study us. We set special times aside to talk with them. We attempted to answer any questions they had. We made almost everything we do open to them. The one thing that remand closed was where we deal with issues that may sometimes fit under the topic of counseling. If they had wanted to know about that we would probably have arranged something there too. Certainly there is no prohibition about talking about it as long as confidentiality is not broken. What we do is not secret.
Some questions are extremely hard. For example what do you believe in? While the question appears straight forward - for a group that rejects creedal statements it is extremely complex. If you ask that question you may get something less than satisfactory. That's not because of secrecy though. If people come to ridicule us, and disrupt us, then I would expect we would be less helpful.
What I hear over and over is a strong concern over a fairly rigid set of beliefs that may fit under the broad definition of "traditional" - recognizing that traditional is much larger than this. This concern seems to be centered on religions that define themselves at least to some extent as explaining that which science does not explain. To try to nail it a bit further - a group that wishes in some way to live in the past or without the bother of the rest of the world. I do recognize that there may be exceptions to this.
What appears to be done is to take this group - admittedly extremely large in some countries - and make the claim that this group is religion. Just as multiculturalism as made inroads into society, it has made inroads into religion. People are people. Our religion has had its effect on society and society has had its effect on us and we like it that way.
Well, if fundies who are stuck in the past would just leave the rest of us the hell alone, I suspect that most people would be more than happy to let them get on with being stuck in the past. Whatever floats their boat and all that. (Now, whether this is an entirely ethical position to take is a somewhat more sticky issue.)
What appears to be done is to take this group - admittedly extremely large in some countries - and make the claim that this group is religion.
That is clearly not what Dawkins does in the interviews posted in the diary (as I said above, I can't comment on the totality of his work). Leaving aside the fact that going after fundamentalism with full force and not worrying about stepping on some religious moderates' (sometimes overly sensitive) toes can certainly be viewed as an entirely ethical thing to do...
That is clearly not what Dawkins does in the interviews posted in the diary
I guess we will have to disagree then.
Also I would hate to get into this type of cultural superiority with both our past as a species, let alone condemn all people on the planet who do this whether in 1st, 2nd or 3rd world countries.
Topic 1. Are we unfairly smearing Dawkins?
Topic 2. Lets argue over Dawkins arguments.
His position about religion about science and religion are not new, there are other people around iand in history and in the showbiz with simialr or identical narrative...
So we bascilly can discuss about what is the better way to deal with the attack agaisnt ilustration adn how to push back.. I have done it here at length .. adn maybe Ted Welch would like to see what we had to say about hose arguments.
As you may know I think his approach is not the good one to pushback... maybe is becausae I live in secualr Spain where everuybody is catholic adnd ther eis no attack int he church hierarchy (well until now) against basci scientific "how" theories...
My point of view here is bascially thatbrit one..so I hardly have naything new to say.
But it is worth stressing that one think is not respecting Dawkins as a cscientists (which I do not) and another is respecting his pundit view.. though There is a bunch of people who disagree with the approach....
Edwin: With your essay I see no definition of region. If you are going to condem all religion, you had better define it. Any definition of religion has to be reasonable. Expect an argument with just about any definition you manage to come up with.
Edwin: With your essay I see no definition of region. If you are going to condem all religion, you had better define it.
Any definition of religion has to be reasonable. Expect an argument with just about any definition you manage to come up with.
Yes, exactly, we could waste hours debating definitions of religion - I've spent enough hours on this diary already. More importantly it's not necessary:
Any definition [of "game" ] which focuses on competition will fail to explain the game of catch, or the game of solitaire. And a definition of the word "game" which focuses on rules will fall on similar difficulties. The essential point of this exercise is often missed. Wittgenstein's point is not that it is impossible to define "game", but that we don't have a definition, and we don't need one, because even without the definition, we use the word successfully.Everybody understands what we mean when we talk about playing a game, and we can even clearly identify and correct inaccurate uses of the word, all without reference to any definition that consists of necessary and sufficient conditions for the application of the concept of a game. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_Investigations#Meaning_and_definition
Any definition [of "game" ] which focuses on competition will fail to explain the game of catch, or the game of solitaire. And a definition of the word "game" which focuses on rules will fall on similar difficulties.
The essential point of this exercise is often missed. Wittgenstein's point is not that it is impossible to define "game", but that we don't have a definition, and we don't need one, because even without the definition, we use the word successfully.Everybody understands what we mean when we talk about playing a game, and we can even clearly identify and correct inaccurate uses of the word, all without reference to any definition that consists of necessary and sufficient conditions for the application of the concept of a game.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_Investigations#Meaning_and_definition
You and I have no problem at all in recognising religions - they usually identify themselves as such, but are so varied that any definition will be very general and probably fail to cover some aspect of one or more of them. Dawkins spends some time in chapter one making a relevant distinction between the kind of Einsteinian religion he and other scientists share, a sort of sense of awe, and the kind of religious belief, based on faith, involving some kind of supernatural being, of which he is critical.
I'm not really concerned in the diary with the validity of his arguments (generally I happen to agree with him). As is rather obvious, I'm more concerned with clarifying what he has actually written and said - as opposed to what some have suggested he's said, and his motives in writing the book and the need for such books.
But if you want to disagree with any of his actual arguments - go ahead. Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.
