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Dawkins' treatment of religion seems to me to a bit shallow. He seems to argue far too much about how true religious dogma is or isn't, but that can only give a

Dawkins' treatment of religion seems to me to a bit shallow. He seems to argue far too much about how true religious dogma is or isn't, but that can only give a superficial treatment of religion. It might seem, especially to a scientist, that a religion is based on its core beliefs. But it is easy, especially for trained theologians, to get to whatever conclusion they want from some dogmatic starting point. Religion is not mathematics, where starting from an axiom will inevitably lead to a particular conclusion. So arguing about the untruth of the religious axioms is missing the point.

tspiteri 15y ago
Further to this, I've found this excerpt from Richard Feynman's "Is Electricity Fire?" in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: And then one day—I guess it was a Saturday—I want to go up in the elevator, and there's a guy standing near the elevator. The elevator comes, I go in, and he goes in with me. I say, "Which floor?" and my hand's ready to push one of the buttons. "No, no!" he says, "I'm supposed to push the buttons for you." "What?" "Yes! The boys here can't push the buttons on Saturday, so I have to do it for them. You see, I'm not Jewish, so it's all right for me to push the buttons. I stand near the elevator, and they tell me what floor, and I push the button for them." Well, this really bothered me, so I decided to trap the students in a logical discussion. I had been brought up in a Jewish home, so I knew the kind of nitpicking logic to use, and I thought, "Here's fun!" My plan went like this: I'd start off by asking, "Is the Jewish viewpoint a viewpoint that any man can have? Because if it is not, then it's certainly not something that is truly valuable for humanity... yak, yak, yak." And then they would have to say, "Yes, the Jewish viewpoint is good for any man." Then I would steer them around a little more by asking, "Is it ethical for a man to hire another man to do something which is unethical for him to do? Would you hire a man to rob for you, for instance?" And I keep working them into the channel, very slowly, and very carefully until I've got them—trapped! And do you know what happened? They're rabbinical students, right? They were ten times better than I was! As soon as they saw I could put them in a hole, they went twist, turn, twist—I can't remember how—and they were free! I thought I had come up with an original idea—phooey! It had been discussed in the Talmud for ages! So they cleaned me up just as easy as pie—they got right out.
- edanm 15y ago
  "Is the Jewish viewpoint a viewpoint that any man can have? Because if it is not, then it's certainly not something that is truly valuable for humanity... yak, yak, yak." This isn't really true for Judaism. There is no "Jewish viewpoint". Jews believe that they are the chosen people, and they have to live by a different set of rules to other peoples. It's not immoral for non-Jews to perform works on Saturday, simply because they don't have to live by that rule.
  - Andrew_Quentin 15y ago
    I think you are proving exactly the moral of that little story.
hobbes 15y ago
His treatment is indeed shallow, and he knows it. This is demonstrated by his unreasonable reasons for not debating William Lane Craig on this very issue: William Lane Craig, Richard Dawkins and the Empty Chair: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1ldYmg0lpE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1ldYmg0lpE Edit: Digestible summary of the issue: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/8511931/Richard-Dawkins-accused-of-cowardice-for-refusing-to-debate-existence-of-God.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/8511931/Richard-Daw...
- Tichy 15y ago
  At least link to some digestible summary of the issue, not to some propaganda video.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- hobbes 15y ago
  I'm being downvoted but Dawkin's fellow atheists have also criticised him on this matter: QUOTE "Some of Prof Dawkins’s contemporaries are not impressed. Dr Daniel Came, a philosophy lecturer and fellow atheist, from Worcester College, Oxford, wrote to him urging him to reconsider his refusal to debate the existence of God with Prof Craig. In a letter to Prof Dawkins, Dr Came said: 'The absence of a debate with the foremost apologist for Christian theism is a glaring omission on your CV and is of course apt to be interpreted as cowardice on your part. I notice that, by contrast, you are happy to discuss theological matters with television and radio presenters and other intellectual heavyweights like Pastor Ted Haggard of the National Association of Evangelicals and Pastor Keenan Roberts of the Colorado Hell House'" /QUOTE http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/8511931/Richard-Dawkins-accused-of-cowardice-for-refusing-to-debate-existence-of-God.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/8511931/Richard-Daw...
  - Tichy 15y ago
    Why not believe his statement that he has no desire to support Mr Craigs self promotion? It just goes to show that the issue won't be resolved by logic (arguing logically about religion, which is the epitome of irrationality, seems doomed from the start anyway). My main gripe with Dawkins has actually always been that he spends too much time arguing with senseless counterarguments. I wish the evolutionary biologists would rather invest more energy into developing more insights, rather than arguing the same old tired arguments of their enemies again and again. Edit: for what it's worth, I would actually be interested in what arguments Mr Craig would like to present. I checked his web site, but an article about "The God Delusion" that I found was behind a paywall (or at least "become a member wall").
olavk 15y ago
Good point. It is quite typical for atheists to argue logically about whether its rational to believe in the existence of God given current evidence and so on. But for most religions people, the attraction of religion is the social context, traditions and rituals and the feeling that things happen for a reason and there is a fundamental purpose for everything. Some atheists seem to believe that people follow religions because of their belief in some of the religions dogmas - so if you can argue that the dogma is wrong or irrational, people will realize their folly and stop following the religions. But it is the other way around. People believe the dogmas because it is part of their religion.
loup-vaillant 15y ago
Wait a minute, are you saying that Science and Religion are two different magesteria? Or that religious dogmas are neither true nor false? What do you mean by "religious axioms"? Are they any different from other religious beliefs? From any other belief? And most importantly, what point does arguing about the (un)truth of religious axioms miss? The way I see it, "religious axioms" are beliefs about our world. Like any other, they each more or less match our world. And I do see the point of arguing about their truth. I mean, it would be a pity to forsake our souls by rejecting an existent God, or forsake our lives to an non-existent one.
- tspiteri 15y ago
  What I was trying to say is that Dawkins believes that religious dogma is false, and he tries to convince people that religion is wrong by debunking religious dogma. But that does not work, see olavk's comment for the reason why I think it doesn't. In other words, in this context, the truth behind religious dogma is irrelevant (which, if twisted enough, may qualify as neither true nor false). And when I said religious axioms, I was trying to compare religious dogma to mathematical axioms, if such a thing makes sense, so I used the mathematical term.
  - loup-vaillant 15y ago
    Ah. I got it: belief in belief (thinking that faith by itself is a good thing, regardless of its truth), wishful thinking, rationalization, and social pressure. In other words, people believe things for reasons unrelated to their truths. That, we may want to address. Then, I suppose religious beliefs would just go away (you might want to keep the weekly meetings, though). > [Religious dogma], if twisted enough, may qualify as neither true nor false. That one I have a hard time with. Sure, we could imagine a situation where, say, Christianity is partially true (Jesus did resurrect), and partially false (virgin birth didn't happen); I assume however that you're not talking about that. Another possibility would be for religious beliefs to be incoherent enough to be "not even wrong"; that would be blocked by my bullshit filter all the same. Or we could muddy the very meaning of "truth"; that's plain cheating (and may corrupt your whole mind if you manage to convince yourself). Or, we could say that what is true for someone may be false for someone else; and that's plain false. I can't think of any other twist, but my guess is, none would stand up to scrutiny.
ugh 15y ago
“But it is easy, especially for trained theologians, to get to whatever conclusion they want from some dogmatic starting point.” Wow, never was the uselessness of theologians more succinctly described.

tspiteri 15y ago

Further to this, I've found this excerpt from Richard Feynman's "Is Electricity Fire?" in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: And then one day—I guess it was a Saturday—I want to go up in the elevator, and there's a guy standing near the elevator. The elevator comes, I go in, and he goes in with me. I say, "Which floor?" and my hand's ready to push one of the buttons. "No, no!" he says, "I'm supposed to push the buttons for you." "What?" "Yes! The boys here can't push the buttons on Saturday, so I have to do it for them. You see, I'm not Jewish, so it's all right for me to push the buttons. I stand near the elevator, and they tell me what floor, and I push the button for them." Well, this really bothered me, so I decided to trap the students in a logical discussion. I had been brought up in a Jewish home, so I knew the kind of nitpicking logic to use, and I thought, "Here's fun!" My plan went like this: I'd start off by asking, "Is the Jewish viewpoint a viewpoint that any man can have? Because if it is not, then it's certainly not something that is truly valuable for humanity... yak, yak, yak." And then they would have to say, "Yes, the Jewish viewpoint is good for any man." Then I would steer them around a little more by asking, "Is it ethical for a man to hire another man to do something which is unethical for him to do? Would you hire a man to rob for you, for instance?" And I keep working them into the channel, very slowly, and very carefully until I've got them—trapped! And do you know what happened? They're rabbinical students, right? They were ten times better than I was! As soon as they saw I could put them in a hole, they went twist, turn, twist—I can't remember how—and they were free! I thought I had come up with an original idea—phooey! It had been discussed in the Talmud for ages! So they cleaned me up just as easy as pie—they got right out.

edanm 15y ago
"Is the Jewish viewpoint a viewpoint that any man can have? Because if it is not, then it's certainly not something that is truly valuable for humanity... yak, yak, yak." This isn't really true for Judaism. There is no "Jewish viewpoint". Jews believe that they are the chosen people, and they have to live by a different set of rules to other peoples. It's not immoral for non-Jews to perform works on Saturday, simply because they don't have to live by that rule.
- Andrew_Quentin 15y ago
  I think you are proving exactly the moral of that little story.

hobbes 15y ago

His treatment is indeed shallow, and he knows it. This is demonstrated by his unreasonable reasons for not debating William Lane Craig on this very issue: William Lane Craig, Richard Dawkins and the Empty Chair: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1ldYmg0lpE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1ldYmg0lpE Edit: Digestible summary of the issue: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/8511931/Richard-Dawkins-accused-of-cowardice-for-refusing-to-debate-existence-of-God.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/8511931/Richard-Daw...

Tichy 15y ago
At least link to some digestible summary of the issue, not to some propaganda video.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
hobbes 15y ago
I'm being downvoted but Dawkin's fellow atheists have also criticised him on this matter: QUOTE "Some of Prof Dawkins’s contemporaries are not impressed. Dr Daniel Came, a philosophy lecturer and fellow atheist, from Worcester College, Oxford, wrote to him urging him to reconsider his refusal to debate the existence of God with Prof Craig. In a letter to Prof Dawkins, Dr Came said: 'The absence of a debate with the foremost apologist for Christian theism is a glaring omission on your CV and is of course apt to be interpreted as cowardice on your part. I notice that, by contrast, you are happy to discuss theological matters with television and radio presenters and other intellectual heavyweights like Pastor Ted Haggard of the National Association of Evangelicals and Pastor Keenan Roberts of the Colorado Hell House'" /QUOTE http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/8511931/Richard-Dawkins-accused-of-cowardice-for-refusing-to-debate-existence-of-God.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/8511931/Richard-Daw...
- Tichy 15y ago
  Why not believe his statement that he has no desire to support Mr Craigs self promotion? It just goes to show that the issue won't be resolved by logic (arguing logically about religion, which is the epitome of irrationality, seems doomed from the start anyway). My main gripe with Dawkins has actually always been that he spends too much time arguing with senseless counterarguments. I wish the evolutionary biologists would rather invest more energy into developing more insights, rather than arguing the same old tired arguments of their enemies again and again. Edit: for what it's worth, I would actually be interested in what arguments Mr Craig would like to present. I checked his web site, but an article about "The God Delusion" that I found was behind a paywall (or at least "become a member wall").

olavk 15y ago

Good point. It is quite typical for atheists to argue logically about whether its rational to believe in the existence of God given current evidence and so on. But for most religions people, the attraction of religion is the social context, traditions and rituals and the feeling that things happen for a reason and there is a fundamental purpose for everything. Some atheists seem to believe that people follow religions because of their belief in some of the religions dogmas - so if you can argue that the dogma is wrong or irrational, people will realize their folly and stop following the religions. But it is the other way around. People believe the dogmas because it is part of their religion.

loup-vaillant 15y ago

Wait a minute, are you saying that Science and Religion are two different magesteria? Or that religious dogmas are neither true nor false? What do you mean by "religious axioms"? Are they any different from other religious beliefs? From any other belief? And most importantly, what point does arguing about the (un)truth of religious axioms miss? The way I see it, "religious axioms" are beliefs about our world. Like any other, they each more or less match our world. And I do see the point of arguing about their truth. I mean, it would be a pity to forsake our souls by rejecting an existent God, or forsake our lives to an non-existent one.

tspiteri 15y ago
What I was trying to say is that Dawkins believes that religious dogma is false, and he tries to convince people that religion is wrong by debunking religious dogma. But that does not work, see olavk's comment for the reason why I think it doesn't. In other words, in this context, the truth behind religious dogma is irrelevant (which, if twisted enough, may qualify as neither true nor false). And when I said religious axioms, I was trying to compare religious dogma to mathematical axioms, if such a thing makes sense, so I used the mathematical term.
- loup-vaillant 15y ago
  Ah. I got it: belief in belief (thinking that faith by itself is a good thing, regardless of its truth), wishful thinking, rationalization, and social pressure. In other words, people believe things for reasons unrelated to their truths. That, we may want to address. Then, I suppose religious beliefs would just go away (you might want to keep the weekly meetings, though). > [Religious dogma], if twisted enough, may qualify as neither true nor false. That one I have a hard time with. Sure, we could imagine a situation where, say, Christianity is partially true (Jesus did resurrect), and partially false (virgin birth didn't happen); I assume however that you're not talking about that. Another possibility would be for religious beliefs to be incoherent enough to be "not even wrong"; that would be blocked by my bullshit filter all the same. Or we could muddy the very meaning of "truth"; that's plain cheating (and may corrupt your whole mind if you manage to convince yourself). Or, we could say that what is true for someone may be false for someone else; and that's plain false. I can't think of any other twist, but my guess is, none would stand up to scrutiny.

ugh 15y ago

“But it is easy, especially for trained theologians, to get to whatever conclusion they want from some dogmatic starting point.” Wow, never was the uselessness of theologians more succinctly described.