It looks like you have set yourself up a straw man.
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
