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The thing that turned me off against Dawkins' book, which I thought I would love, was that it just read as <em>mean</em> to me. It's been ages since I read it s

• d23 4y ago
  > Dawkins isn't going to convince anybody (or at least not very many...) that don't already agree. Dawkins was absolutely an important stepping stone for me breaking away from my extremely religious upbringing.
  • stametseater 4y ago
    I also found Dawkins while I was losing my faith, but all I can attribute to him is an edgy phase of that process where I thought it was cool to pick fights with religious people to poke holes in their arguments. I regret that now, but thankfully it was only a phase that I grew out of a year or two later (before I managed to burn too many bridges with very nice and reasonable people who happen to be religious.) Had Dawkins not existed, the ultimate outcome would have been the same. I think once you go down the path of doubting, the obvious contradictions in religion stack up fast and drive you further along in that process, regardless the influence of Dawkins. Reading the bible had a lot more to do with my atheism than Dawkins. It was impossible to reconcile the contents of that book with the christian god as had been taught to me as a child, so the whole thing unraveled.
    • d23 4y ago
      Yeah, I get that. I think I'm more bothered by the gross sweeping generalization that not a single individual would be convinced by him. I'm guessing you probably found a bit of an aversion to those kind of simplifications in your faith-shedding process too.
      • stametseater 4y ago
        Tbqh I probably get a bit prickly when the subject of Dawkins comes up for a few reasons. In part because of what I already mentioned, about Dawkins being an edgy influence on me for a time, but also because religious people I meet now seem to often assume I'm presently a Dawkins fanboy, as though atheism and Dawkins are a package deal like christianity and Jesus. So, while I agree that some people may find Dawkin's arguments persuasive, I bristle at the suggestion that he's an important driving force behind modern atheism in the west. I view him mostly as a grifter who's found a way to monetize a social trend, not as an important leader of that trend.
        • JackFr 4y ago
          To be fair, Christianity and Jesus are a package deal...
          • fknorangesite 4y ago
            Yes, but atheism and Dawkins are not. That's the point.
    • technothrasher 4y ago
      > Had Dawkins not existed, the ultimate outcome would have been the same. Even without Dawkin's book, you could very likely have still gone through the "edgy" phase. The overly enthusiastic "baby atheist" phase is very human, and very common, as is the eventual rise out of it. "The God Delusion" for me, who was already long converted before I read it, was mostly a quick read and forget. His earlier books on evolutionary biology, though, are brilliant. I honestly can't specifically remember any of his God Delusion arguments any longer, but the things I learned from him on evolution stick with me to this day.
      • zdragnar 4y ago
        Isn't that all the more reason to dislike his reading on the topic? Exacerbating an unconstructive attitude that people will naturally grow out of on their own only postpones that maturation.
      • alwaysbeconsing 4y ago
        > The overly enthusiastic "baby atheist" phase is very human, and very common Indeed, it's true for any new belief really: people who go the opposite direction and become religious show similarly ardent and sometimes abrasive behavior. Or people who convert between major religions. The same for political ideologies. I think it's just part of the process of switching your thought patterns, at least for the majority of people. A new paradigm, your mind spends a lot of energy on processing it. So it becomes a large part of your external aspect as well.
      • stametseater 4y ago
        > Even without Dawkin's book, you could very likely have still gone through the "edgy" phase. You're probably right, since r/atheism also exists; Dawkins is by no means the only fount of edge. But I don't agree that such a phase is inevitable, independent of social influences which encourage it. Edgy atheism is a 'scene', a self-perpetuating subculture. It has no leaders or formal structure, yet it actively seeks out and recruits people who are in a compatible headspace. It's like being goth. People who are goth didn't all independently discover and adopt the fashion of black lipstick, black dyed hair and pseudo-Edwardian dress. They adopt these fashion choices because other people did so before them, and crowds naturally draw more people in. When you're adrift looking for a personality, it's easier to fall in with a scene that already exists than it is to find your own truly unique way. Scenes generally speaking are inevitable, an artifact of basic human psychology I'm sure, but I don't think any specific scene has ever been an inevitability. Goths specifically were not destined to exist as an inevitable consequence of human psychology, nor do I think the edgy reddit/Dawkins style of not believing in gods was inevitable. I can perhaps see an argument that edgy atheism is an inevitability given the social context of an oppressive christian society that gives people an axe to grind, but I'm far from convinced. Such a context might instead give rise to violent subculture that encourages terrorism against the oppressors. (We're fortunate that it didn't, but in other times and places such violence scenes have emerged in response to oppressive circumstances.) And as it is true that a more violent reaction to the circumstance was possible, I think it is conceivable that a less antagonistic response was also a conceivable possibility. It is conceivable to me that a subculture for "baby atheists" might instead have formed around the premise of demonstrating superior compassion, rather than antagonistic debate. Or to put this another way.. For any violent revolution in history, there may instead have been a relatively peaceful bloodless revolution. And for any relatively peaceful bloodless revolution, there may instead have been a violent one. The Romanian Revolution in 1989 had maybe about twelve hundred people die. Was that specific degree of bloodshed inevitable, given the oppressive circumstance? I think it might instead have been fifty thousand killed, or even fifty. In reality it played out the way it did, but I see no reason to believe it had to be this way specifically.
  • antibasilisk 4y ago
    To give a counter-example, watching Dawkins growing up is the reason why I have radical religious views now.
    • d23 4y ago
      Because you found him to be off-putting? Or you found his arguments to be weak? What about your religious views would you say are "radical"?
      • AlexandrB 4y ago
        One way to read excessive snakiness and meanness is as insecurity in the validity of your ideas. I can definitely see someone having this reading of Dawkins and some of the other voices in "New Atheism". One other problem I've seen with some of the most outspoken atheists is that they fundamentally seem to misunderstand the role that religion plays in many people's lives. Biblical literalists like Answers in Genesis are really a side show - they're easy to mock, but don't represent what religion is to most adherents. Most people don't look to religion for scientific answers but for community, a scaffolding to build their lives around, and for relief from existential dread. "New Atheism" often had no alternative answer to these functions.
        • antibasilisk 4y ago
          >One other problem I've seen with some of the most outspoken atheists is that they fundamentally seem to misunderstand the role that religion plays in many people's lives. One interpretation of this apparent misunderstanding, is that it is simply easier and more profitable to create humorous or rage-baiting content around obviously absurd claims that cater to a pre-existing views, than it is to watch an extensive lecture going over particular arguments.
        • epups 4y ago
          > Most people don't look to religion for scientific answers but for community, a scaffolding to build their lives around, and for relief from existential dread. I don't think this is true at all, particularly when you consider the world at large and not just the West. Also, you can find these functions elsewhere. You don't need to believe in God or in miracles to have any of that. Also, biblical literalists are the reason many rights are eroding in the West. Confronting them is a necessity, even if you're a religious person.
• dooglius 4y ago
  Which book? The God Delusion was certainly full of that, but e.g. The Selfish Gene was much more interesting.
  • photochemsyn 4y ago
    In retrospect, the Selfish Gene turned out to be simply wrong about its main thesis, that non-fuctional useless junk DNA was a major portion of the human genome (and of other multicellular organisms). Even worse, Dawkings tried to use that claim as some kind of 'there is no intelligent designer because an intelligent designer wouldn't have put all that junk DNA in the genome', and then when it turned out that non-gene-coding DNA had all these structural-functional roles, it turned into a creationist-vs-atheist debate. Psychologically, I think Dawkins and his cohort are refugees from strict religious fundamentalist backgrounds who have retained many aspects of fundamentalist thinking while rejecting the religious part. They seem to think they've got it all figured out, but in many respects, their views are 100 years out of date, more in line with 19th century highly deterministic thinking about science and nature.
    • mjw1007 4y ago
      The central thesis of the Selfish Gene has nothing to do with "junk DNA", and when the book does talk about the subject it doesn't assume that it has no purpose. (What it does say is "Biologists are racking their brains trying to think what useful task this apparently surplus DNA is doing" and "The simplest way to explain the surplus DNA is to suppose that it is a parasite, or at best a harmless but useless passenger".)
    • dooglius 4y ago
      That wasn't it's main thesis at all. I don't remember his discussion on "junk DNA" specifically (perhaps I should reread as it has been many years), but the main thesis (to put it in my own words) is that a mental model of evolution as acting upon genes leads to more accurate predictions and better understanding than a mental model where evolution acts upon whole organisms. (There's also the discussion of memes and their roles in comparison/contrast to genes). When he talks about science and not rah-rah atheism I never found Dawkins to be fundamentalist in thinking, and I recall he would generally qualify when his thoughts were more speculative. (The author of TFA on the other hand, does give me that impression particularly with sentences like "Psychiatric drugs help some people in the short term, but over time, in the aggregate, they make people sicker")
• HEmanZ 4y ago
  Dawkins gives off “edgy teenager” vibes and doesn’t really go deep into helping understand the real arguments under beliefs in some kinds of God. If you’d like something much more thorough and professional, Mackie’s “The Miracle of Theism” is very good.
  • muyuu 4y ago
    In a recent interview he [edit to clarify: "he" here means Richard Dawkins] completely dismissed the fact that a lot of new atheists had religious fervour for their humanistic non-theist beliefs and that he had been on the wrong end of their fanaticism ("cancelled" many times by Universities on the grounds that his speech was contrary to diversity, inclusion and equity, and thus it was hate speech). He was completely dismissive to the fact that religious people had perfectly predicted that in the absence of religion, people would have the same sort of fervour for superficially rationalistic, but otherwise deranged, views. He just said that it might be true but it didn't seem interesting or relevant to him. That's exactly what a fanatic would say. I didn't see it coming back in the early 2000s but his critics were a lot more correct that I could ever have predicted.
    • HEmanZ 4y ago
      Just to be clear to other readers here, you are decrying Dawkins, not John Mackie (who died in 1981). Mackie was an exemplary, thoughtful philosopher who treated the topic of theism very seriously and empathetically.
      • muyuu 4y ago
        yes, I meant Dawkins sorry for not mentioning him by name in the post above
    • ecshafer 4y ago
      > He was completely dismissive to the fact that religious people had perfectly predicted that in the absence of religion, people would have the same sort of fervour for superficially rationalistic, but otherwise deranged, views. Jung and Nietzsche both had this idea ~100 years ago. When Nietzsche claimed God was dead, it was a lamentation, not an enthusiastic assertion, it was the modern world that had killed God. Jung claimed that people that left religions still tied their ideas to something, New Age Religions, Spiritualism, politics, something. In the French Revolution the Cult of Rationality set up by Robespierre had just as many trapping of religion and blood thirsty fanatics as any religion. The cultural revolution in China has many "atheists" gladly pointing people out for "heresy" to the "inquisition". These is a lot of evidence that religion is not the only source of fanatics out there.
• phkahler 4y ago
  For this comment, let's assume there is no God and Dawkins is correct. A few people can be persuaded by his slap in the face tactics and insults. For the rest he really should be asking why people hold on to a belief, because whatever benefit they get from it he is not offering an alternative - which is worse. So yeah, I think he an inconsiderate jerk.
  • beebmam 4y ago
    This presumes people hold on to a belief because it is valuable to them. I'm not so sure of that.
    • phkahler 4y ago
      >> This presumes people hold on to a belief because it is valuable to them. I'm not so sure of that. Some people hold a belief simply because they were raised with it. If it does nothing for them, they are IMHO more likely to be convinced by a mild face-slap argument and some evidence of a contrary belief. The people who have a belief tied to their identity, or the the people who say "this changed my life" are not going to convert with Dawkins approach because he's trying to take something from them, or even attack their identity (quite rudely).
    • jzb 4y ago
      It's true in some cases, not in others. I have family members who are religious and it (as far as I can tell) does provide value for them, in a positive way. My MIL, for example, is religious and it seems really positive for her. She approaches her belief in a very loving, positive way and sees her job in the world to be loving and kind and to do service for others, etc. While I don't share her beliefs her values are pretty awesome. It seems to me that she derives value from them and I certainly find her to be inspiring and positive. She spends pretty much zero of her time talking about sin or Hell, but espouses joy and love and gives thanks for her family and so forth. I don't need any particular set of beliefs for that to be inspiring for me and to want to emulate it. Others may cling to belief out of fear, inertia, tribalism, or who knows what else. If it works for people and doesn't lead to harm for others (or themselves) then I'm all for it. I sometimes envy people who do have religious beliefs because maybe life makes more sense to them.
• mock-possum 4y ago
  Yep same story for me. Dawkins’ voice is a huge turnoff. After trying and failing to make it through “surely you must be joking mister Dawkins” I imagine he must be insufferable to be around in person.
  • d23 4y ago
    Are you confusing him with Richard Feynman? I'm really surprised you find Richard Feynman to be a huge turnoff, if so. He seems like a genuinely awesome, non-abrasive guy all around, unless I've missed something.
• dkarl 4y ago
  I think Dawkins, like atheism itself, makes sense in a certain context. I haven't called myself an atheist in many, many years. It's unnecessary now. I live in a place and a social context where it doesn't matter. But I grew up in a place where everybody took a shared belief in God for granted. God, if you believe in God the way most Christians do, is a concept that touches everything. Everything you do, all the choices you make, derive ultimately from your conception of yourself as a child of a benevolent God, living in a universe that He created for us, for purposes that we can't fully understand, but in which we are provided with a certain amount of guidance about his wishes for how we should behave towards each other and towards Him. Naturally this comes up in conversation sometimes. It's just too big and too all-encompassing not to. Any conversation about how people should and shouldn't behave -- which is a huge percentage of human conversation, since it include politics, gossip, and personal dilemmas -- God is right there under the surface, and can come up explicitly at any time. When God comes up, you have a couple of choices: 1. Use the same language as everybody else, internally translating what other people say into concepts that you find meaningful and compelling, and translating what you want to say into Christian language, even when such translations are inaccurate. Or, 2. Channel your inner Christian, and play a Christian role in the conversation. (Definitely an option for folks like me who were Christian when they were younger.) Or, 3. Speak the way you think, and be prepared to be misunderstood, met with horror, judged, and/or forced to explain yourself. Choosing option 3 becomes exhausting over time, and calling yourself an "atheist" is one way to make it a little bit less exhausting. People wonder why "atheists" are constantly refuting all of the naive, amateur-hour proofs of the existence of God and not grappling with more philosophically sophisticated ways of conceiving of God. Why so much straw-manning, why so much punching down? In my opinion, it boils down to this: if you are talking to someone who believes in a philosophically sophisticated concept of God, then you probably aren't being forced to play the role of "atheist" because you aren't being faced with active astonishment, perplexity, and/or hostility about your lack of belief. I have virtually never needed to be an "atheist" in the last fifteen years, because I live in a nice blue urban bubble where everybody understands that their concept of God is not a universal that they can assume as common ground with everyone they meet. When someone wants to talk to you about what they believe, they aren't filled with disbelief, disgust, or fear, and they aren't looking to come to a successful resolution of your spiritual sickness by the end of the conversation. Because my need (and, I suspect, many other people's need) for atheism was driven by the context of being surrounded by people who shared a religious belief and found it baffling, horrifying, and/or disgusting that I didn't share it as well, I never needed atheism to be sophisticated or subtle. I never needed it to be convincing for educated people. I only needed it to give me a voice and a label for myself in those situations. I found it useful then, and even though I've been able to put myself in a better situation where I can leave it behind me, I understand why other people still need it.
• kybernetyk 4y ago
  >Dawkins isn't going to convince anybody (or at least not very many...) that don't already agree. But those people wouldn't buy his book. So why not write for the people who would give him money? :)
  • jzb 4y ago
    Heh. Fair point. It would, indeed, be an uphill climb. I sometimes wonder, though, if a masterful person could author a book that the intended audience would read and sow seeds of doubt that would lead to questioning belief. (Or perhaps such a book exists and I don't know about it.) But, yeah, if you want to sell books then I suppose that's the better approach.
• peterashford 4y ago
  Agreed. I'm an atheist and a science enthusiast. Also, technically, a Philosopher since I have a degree in Philosophy. I find Dawkins' writing sloppy, lazy, arrogant and ignorant. He's a poor advertisement for the world of science.