Ah. I misunderstood you somewhat. We agree there. But that video certainly didn't seem to have to intention of countering Dawkins as you said. They said it was to discuss discrimination against atheists, and yet it just featured two women blasting atheists (while, in a marvelous feat of double-think, denying that discrimination is of any importance) and a sportscaster who tries to make the point that they are allowed to speak their minds.
It did have the intention of countering Dawkins, insofar as the topic would likely not have come up without the work of him and others. Because it is precisely his sort of tracts that are encouraging discrimination against atheism, and the opinions of the people on the show.
Not only that, of course, but the amount of Dawkins and others has received lately is positively astonishing in comparison to the amount of coverage equivalently extreme Christians have had. News networks tend toward overall balance in the long run.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Sing lustily and with good courage.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
Not only that, of course, but the amount of Dawkins and others has received lately is positively astonishing in comparison to the amount of coverage equivalently extreme Christians have had. News networks tend toward overall balance in the long run.
I'll take your word for it. We don't even get CNN up here anymore- Rogers replaced it with BBC World. One of the smartest moves they've ever made, if you ask me.
Just watch the videos. I hope one doesn't have to be an atheist to think that the "discussion group" aspect of this segment (the second video) is utterly ludicrous. A round table on discrimination against atheists that features 0 atheists and 3 theists. 2 of which immediately start attacking atheists and telling them to "just shut up". No one actually discusses the topic introduced at the start.
I mean, I thought CNN at least had some vestiges of professionalism left.
So a couple points of debate- What do you think about atheists being discriminated against, and what is your general reaction to that second clip?
Everyone's going off on people like Dawkins and other countries and whatnot and I'm sitting here, kind of in a fetal position with so much anger going back and forth, wondering what the hell's going on. Who is this Dawkins person we keep going on about and why is he relevant?
Responding to the videos in question:
Time and time again we must return back to the "My right to swing my fist ends where the other person's face begins" rule of free speech. No one should ever be harassed for their religious beliefs if they are not actively promoting harm by them. For someone to say they are atheist and then have an entire town turn violent on them is not something that should ever be condoned.
Then again, to omit the feelings of the opposite side is not something anyone can do. It's beyond me why people are angry at CNN. If people are offended that CNN put people on the news that were intolerant of atheists and let them speak their mind, too bad. Free speech means you have to hear things that you won't like every so often. If anything, take it up with the people who said it, because they are within the full view of their rights.
I'm not sure exactly how I can take this "atheists are the most discriminated minority" study seriously. I'll need to actually see the study and how it was conducted, but until I do, I'm not going to use that as evidence for or against anything. In fact, I think the lumping together of any group of people who choose not to believe in anything and claim they're a part of a group that you can make any sort of statement about is absurd no matter what angle you're coming from.
Sing lustily and with good courage.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
Perhaps if you stopped lying awake at night you might get some sleep and thereby experience what non-consciousness is like.
That's pretty funny. I can't deny it. Even if most of your arguments are long-winded and irrelevant in a loose sense of the word. You are wrong. Accept it. You are simply trying to troll people here. Militant religion for the loss.
That's pretty funny. I can't deny it. Even if most of your arguments are long-winded and irrelevant in a loose sense of the word. You are wrong. Accept it. You are simply trying to troll people here. Militant religion for the loss.
Why, so it seems you are on this thread! You are what I would call most would call "out of your rational mind"
Look out, Furor. Against such rational argument there can be no sufficient rebuttal.
I do not find Dawkin's tone rude, arrogant, or mean spirited. I actually think he is quite polite and well spoken. He certainly doesn't compliment religion, but I don't think what he is said hately or angrily. I see it like this: If a person is 200 pounds overweight, saying they are obese is correct. Not a compliment at all, but it's true. Dawkins just gives his straight opinion on religion and doesn't give it a "free pass" with being reverent. He just speaks about it the same way he would anything else. Religion doesn't get special rules saying 'be extra nice!' or exemption from being critized to Dawkins. I have the same opinion. Dawkins seems pretty nice to me, but opinion may be biased.
No, calling them obese would not be hateful, though it would be rather rude.
Calling them "a fat ****" would, in fact, be rather hateful and rude. Calling them "an overeating bastard cowering behind their food" would be hateful and mean-spirited. And that's the sort of thing Dawkins does.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Sing lustily and with good courage.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
Why is it "great," though? Why is it great to be wholly ignorant of the deepest beliefs of those closest to you?
Because it's not necessary for me to know and the situation demonstrates it as being not necessary for me to know. It's not as though I couldn't find out if I really wanted to, it's that I don't feel I need to know. And in my opinion, it's much better than the alternative. I talk to people from the States going on about how religion is taking over their country, and I honestly can't connect. The world through their eyes is so completely different from the world through mine, and I attribute it from growing up in this secular environment.
Update on the CNN story: due to a harsh response to the segment (they must have gotten my email ) Dawkins will be appearing on the Paul Zahn show tonight at 8 pm on CNN. Hopefully some good stuff is said.
Oooh, that is bound to be really interesting. I suggest everyone watch it and then come back to comment. I am also glad that CNN actually got a harsh response for their one-sided arguments. Maybe Dawkins will enlighten them.
This surprises me slightly. With agnostics, you certainly have a case. However, in my experience true atheists are usually only too keen to trumpet their lack of belief. As their name suggests, they are very much the mirror image of theists.
I've recently had a chance to research Dawkins and the sorts of things he's written, and he seems terrible. "Prove that God DOESN'T exist!" is something only novices challenge. It may not be a strawman (because a lot of religious people do say it), but it's at least a crippled man.
He attacks bad religious rhetoric and antiquated theistic arguments, and then implies that natural selection accounts for the whole of the ID argument (it most certainly does not, even if a completely sound sufficient theory that has appropriate historical manifestation). He's like a bad MTGSalvation atheist owning a worse MTGSalvation Christian.
He's like a bad MTGSalvation atheist owning a worse MTGSalvation Christian.
There are no bad MTGSalvation atheists!
What are the 'good' theistic arguements? They all seem to be pretty much the same. They either say 'religion does good things so we need it' or 'science just doesn't work for this, duh!'. His arguements against theistic arguements make sense to me and he seems to do all of them. If there are some really good theistic arguements I would like to know about them. Also kudos to everyone in this thread. Obviously this is a topic we all very care much about, and I gotta praise the overall good thread behaviour that doesn't use insults and that brings up intelligent, well written posts.
What are the 'good' theistic arguements? They all seem to be pretty much the same. They either say 'religion does good things so we need it' or 'science just doesn't work for this, duh!'.
I've experienced strong correlation between devotion and blessing, sin and temporal punishment, and what is apparently divine response to prayer, all three to the degree that seem to go beyond naturalistic explanations of placebo, hallucination, or Littleman's Law. I've experienced what I call "private empirical evidence," and others have undergone similar experiences in their own lives and have shared them with me; all of this as if pointing to a God masterfully able to benevolently provide wills unrestrained by unwanted divine coercion, even at the possible expense of an intimate spiritual relationship that he so benevolently desires with each of us.
Its the whole us vs them game again. if anything it reflects badly with religous folks when other get up and rant and rave about things in an illogical emotional manner.
Is atheism discriminated against on that i am not sure. the religous attitude of america is very volitial to say the least. there is a lot of pressure anymore.
Anything that is religous that pops up in the public eye is automatically shot down or there is a lawsuit filed.
as for theistic arguements there are quite a few. one thing that people tend to overlook is that darwin, einstein, and even hawking himself have said that they are theories not fact. that something else was involved in the process. That parts of the universe and the way that it operates and the forces behind it are to ordered for it to be just some random event.
it is getting worse. as was stated earlier the extereme christian groups get put down quickly by the moderates most of the time. i do not see this on the other side of the fence. just for illustration some guy tried to get the pledge of alliagence counted as unconstitution the same with "In God we Trust" on our money.
The heart of the issue is that we are all bestowed a core value of some kind. whether it be athiest or christian. there is a way to argue your point and do good for your cause and another way to argue that does harm. mostly in america it does more harm than good.
athiest groups push christian groups push back harder and it is a constant power struggle. athiest use the court system to try and make law on religous matters or views. we have kids that can't sing christian carols at schools because people might be offended. that is just sad really.
I happen to believe there is a God. I have seen to much in my life time and in others for there not to be. however it is up to us to disagree civilly and with logic.
still an athiest who goes over a cliff still screams "ol God" (sorry its a joke had to.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Thanks to Epic Graphics the best around. Thanks to Nex3 for the avatar visit ye old sig and avatar forum
In about half of all cases, religious people are okay. Just okay. Most don't even follow all of the ten commandments. The rest are fanatics. That is where all of the rumors are perpetuated. Some of those people can get really, well, 'freaky,' to say the least. The same is true for atheists. Some radical atheists who want to bring down the system with force give us a bad name. The rest just want a gentle phasing out of religion from politics. Then, optimally, from society. But maybe it's just wishful thinking. Who knows?
The presence on national television of the people here criticized is a response to the presence on national television of people like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins.
The way you say it, you make it sound like such rhetoric was not spouted on national (cable) TV before Dawkins and Harris became prominent. Which is simply not true.
Of course, CNN specifically may have mostly ignored atheism, but I find it doubtful that anyone could make arguments such as Harris and Dawkins make (even in a manner more acceptable to you) and get as much attention as those two without provoking such a response. It is not how (or at least, not just how) they're promoting atheism - it's that they're promoting atheism.
Until then, maybe atheists can experience, in some small way, the aggravation and disgust that religious people have felt as the media have drooled over those two gentlemen for the last few months.
Oh yeah, how horrible that for a few months they've actually shown atheists on TV except for the token occurrance of an American Atheists representative when something like Newdow's case comes up. I tolerate Christians constantly preaching at me on TV and radio saying things just as offensive, if not more (then again, I'm gay, so more of it would be offensive to me anyway). You speak as if the reaction is teaching me a lesson as opposed to being more of the same. Dawkins coming to prominence has nothing to do with them being on TV, except for him providing them an occasion to whip out the rhetoric (but not providing the reason they believe it). Of course, it's easy to ignore such things when you're in the majority. The lesson ought to be going the other way, although Dawkins and Harris generally give better arguments and are less insulting than the people I'm describing.
Oh, I most certainly can. Whatever his points may be, they are drowned in the sort of spiteful nonsense that I'd expect to see from a disenchanted high school student, perhaps, not from a professor at motherloving Oxford. Don't just read about him, Mat. Read him. He's not a considerate man.
Care to provide some examples of this from his books or speeches that show how he is as bad as you portray him?
Because I've read things by him and seen speeches by him, and while I can see that he's blunt when discussing religion (since he doesn't consider it a special category of belief that demands us to tread lightly), I disagree with your assessment.
For that matter, from what I've read of and by Harris, he doesn't seem all that disrespectful either.
Do people come down on fundamentalists because there's something hateful in non-fundamentalism? Or do they do it rather because of, say, people like Fred Phelps and Ralph Ovadal?
Anti-atheist views were around long before Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. Most of the American public don't even know who they are. The anti-atheist rhetoric comes from people's religious upbringing - specifically the belief that is instilled in them that morality can only come from religion. Oh, and perhaps the fact that "godless" and "atheistic" are often used as synonyms for "immoral" or "depraved". One might add Communists as another source. You're naive (and greatly overestimate Dawkins's importance) if you think that Dawkins is the source of it.
Anyway, I am not going to "leave out" the insults, the rhetoric, and the name-calling. It's a type of special pleading, and no one should stand for it. You'd never let a Christian get away with it, so don't expect similar treatment.
Which insults and name-calling? I don't recall Dawkins ever saying anything like "Christian idiots" or something like that.
*I* wouldn't let a Christian get away with such things, of course not. The general public does, however. That's how a presidential candidate (George Bush, Sr.) was able to say that he doesn't think atheists should be considered citizens and have there be no outcry outside of the atheist groups who heard about it.
The conclusions, "[atheists] need to stop crying wolf; much of this hatred is exaggerated; militant atheists sometimes bring it on themselves" are all substantially correct
Well, it's no wonder that you hate Dawkins and Harris so much. Either that, or you saw the episode of South Park with Dawkins and foolishly assumed that Trey Parker and Matt Stone had any intention of portraying him honestly.
still an athiest who goes over a cliff still screams "ol God" (sorry its a joke had to.
Yes, and a Christian who supposedly believes that one shouldn't take the lord's name in vain, might still scream "Oh God!" or "Jesus!" while having kinky monkey-sex out of wedlock
The way you say it, you make it sound like such rhetoric was not spouted on national (cable) TV before Dawkins and Harris became prominent. Which is simply not true.
Certainly not!
But it was not spouted in any comparable amount.
Of course, CNN specifically may have mostly ignored atheism, but I find it doubtful that anyone could make arguments such as Harris and Dawkins make (even in a manner more acceptable to you) and get as much attention as those two without provoking such a response. It is not how (or at least, not just how) they're promoting atheism - it's that they're promoting atheism.
Yes; inflammatory and hateful remarks are always going to get more coverage than relatively reasoned and cool remarks, which is why the public faces of atheism have been Richard Dawkins and not, say, Antony Flew. But I fail to see entirely how this is a good thing.
Oh yeah, how horrible that for a few months they've actually shown atheists on TV except for the token occurrance of an American Atheists representative when something like Newdow's case comes up.
It's not "any atheist on TV" it's "Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris et al. on TV." The difference, even as much as Dawkins would like you to ignore it, exists.
That said, your condescending attitude isn't exactly happy.
I tolerate Christians constantly preaching at me on TV and radio saying things just as offensive, if not more (then again, I'm gay, so more of it would be offensive to me anyway).
Only some of what a Christian might say would be directly offensive to you as a gay man; quite nearly everything of what Richard Dawkins might say would be to a Christian man.
You speak as if the reaction is teaching me a lesson as opposed to being more of the same. Dawkins coming to prominence has nothing to do with them being on TV, except for him providing them an occasion to whip out the rhetoric (but not providing the reason they believe it). Of course, it's easy to ignore such things when you're in the majority. The lesson ought to be going the other way, although Dawkins and Harris generally give better arguments and are less insulting than the people I'm describing.
Of course you believe they do; you agree with them.
Furor's point was never that these people exist because Dawkins and Harris exist, but that these people are treated seriously because Dawkins and Harris are treated seriously. So long as we allow any hate-filled rhetoric to be broadcasted on air, we make acceptable any hate-filled rhetoric that is not so blatantly offensive as to cause public revulsion. And that is decidedly a bad thing.
Care to provide some examples of this from his books or speeches that show how he is as bad as you portray him?
"Much as I would like to see the Roman Catholic Church ruined, I hate opportunistically retrospective litigation even more. Lawyers who grow fat by digging dirt on long-forgotten wrongs, and hounding their aged perpetrators, are no friends of mine. All I am doing is calling attention to an anomaly. By all means, let's kick a nasty institution when it is down, but there are better ways than litigation."
"Oh, but of course the story of Adam and Eve was only ever symbolic, wasn't it? Symbolic?! So Jesus had himself tortured and executed for a symbolic sin by a non-existent individual? Nobody not brought up in the faith could reach any other conclusion than "barking mad"."
ad infinitum.
Because I've read things by him and seen speeches by him, and while I can see that he's blunt when discussing religion (since he doesn't consider it a special category of belief that demands us to tread lightly), I disagree with your assessment.
For that matter, from what I've read of and by Harris, he doesn't seem all that disrespectful either.
Oh, come on. Even if you think he's right, he's very deliberately trying to offend;
"Religious faith represents so uncompromising a misuse of the power of our minds that it forms a kind of perverse, cultural singularity—a vanishing point beyond which rational discourse proves impossible."
"Religion is nothing more than bad concepts held in place of good ones for all time. It is the denial—at once full of hope and full of fear—of the vastitude of human ignorance."
"Most religions have merely canonized a few products of ancient ignorance and derangement and passed them down to us as though they were primordial truths."
"The very ideal of religious tolerance—born of the notion that every human being should be free to believe whatever he wants about God—is one of the principal forces driving us toward the abyss."
"The Bible, it seems certain, was the work of sand-strewn men and women who thought the earth was flat and for whom a wheelbarrow would have been a breathtaking example of emerging technology."
And so on.
Anti-atheist views were around long before Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris.
Certainly; so were anti-Christian views. But they exacerbate them, and convince new people of their truth.
Most of the American public don't even know who they are. The anti-atheist rhetoric comes from people's religious upbringing - specifically the belief that is instilled in them that morality can only come from religion. Oh, and perhaps the fact that "godless" and "atheistic" are often used as synonyms for "immoral" or "depraved". One might add Communists as another source.
Certainly, there is bias against atheism in society. The question, though, is whether it would receive public approval were it not for the people against it.
You're naive (and greatly overestimate Dawkins's importance) if you think that Dawkins is the source of it.
Yes. But you're hitting a man of straw, here.
Which insults and name-calling? I don't recall Dawkins ever saying anything like "Christian idiots" or something like that.
Off-hand, I'm reminded of his many essays on how anyone who teaches religion to a child is a child-abuser worse than a pedophile.
*I* wouldn't let a Christian get away with such things, of course not. The general public does, however. That's how a presidential candidate (George Bush, Sr.) was able to say that he doesn't think atheists should be considered citizens and have there be no outcry outside of the atheist groups who heard about it.
The generic public does not so much as the media does not. Similarly, they have not aired the many religious arguments against Dawkins' and Harris' work. Such is the media.
Well, it's no wonder that you hate Dawkins and Harris so much. Either that, or you saw the episode of South Park with Dawkins and foolishly assumed that Trey Parker and Matt Stone had any intention of portraying him honestly.
Great condescension!
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Sing lustily and with good courage.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
Well, it is actually usefull doing so, because many theists still see them and use them as if they were actual proof.
What he actually said, if I recall correctly, was that the arguments posed by ID'ers are usually: "you can't explain X, so Y is correct, where Y is ID." They don't consider the option Z and sometimes are even wrong when they say that X is currently unexplainable.
With regard to both of these, it's true that defeating these highly visible "outer, weak walls of religious defense" is justified and even, one could say, admirable. The problem is, after destroying these highly visible "outer, weak walls of religious defense," he proclaims victory over religion, ignoring the fact that he has yet to conquer the less visible "inner, hardened walls of religious defense."
I just threw up in my mouth!! That was the single most intolerant thing I've seen in a long time. The notion that atheists are wrong for wanting the country to take steps towards non-sectarianism is a slap in the face towards the founding fathers of the US. Many of them were Christians but they recognized the value of a system of government free of sectarian loyalties and restrictions. It wasn't so long ago that a small Jewish sect call the Christians were being persecuted for voicing their beliefs by the overwhelmingly pagan majority. Have Christians forgotten their humble, bloodstained beginnings? Jesus himself walked with people of all walks of life and all faiths. Perhaps he recognized that the world is filled with people different from himself and that it was better to try to change their mind with friendship and understanding rather than hatefulness and ignorance.
Which are? I would really like to know what other arguments, besides faith, can be made for religion and/or ID.
I don't believe there exists a purely logical argument that can make a case for supernaturalism. Likewise, there's no purely logical argument that can make a case for metaphysical naturalism. These ideologies depend on "reason," which Kant calls a combination of sensory experience and neural pattern recognition with formal logic to keep it in check.
Early in this thread I gave an example of a reason-based argument for God. We can address that, or I can put more effort into providing more such arguments, or both.
Um extremestan, glurman was making a joke I think. I doubt he was being serious, so try not to flip at him.
I personally would like to see more reason-based arguments for the existence of a God. I do not agree that such an argument exists, and am very curious to see one.
It did have the intention of countering Dawkins, insofar as the topic would likely not have come up without the work of him and others. Because it is precisely his sort of tracts that are encouraging discrimination against atheism, and the opinions of the people on the show.
Not only that, of course, but the amount of Dawkins and others has received lately is positively astonishing in comparison to the amount of coverage equivalently extreme Christians have had. News networks tend toward overall balance in the long run.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
I'll take your word for it. We don't even get CNN up here anymore- Rogers replaced it with BBC World. One of the smartest moves they've ever made, if you ask me.
Everyone's going off on people like Dawkins and other countries and whatnot and I'm sitting here, kind of in a fetal position with so much anger going back and forth, wondering what the hell's going on. Who is this Dawkins person we keep going on about and why is he relevant?
Responding to the videos in question:
Time and time again we must return back to the "My right to swing my fist ends where the other person's face begins" rule of free speech. No one should ever be harassed for their religious beliefs if they are not actively promoting harm by them. For someone to say they are atheist and then have an entire town turn violent on them is not something that should ever be condoned.
Then again, to omit the feelings of the opposite side is not something anyone can do. It's beyond me why people are angry at CNN. If people are offended that CNN put people on the news that were intolerant of atheists and let them speak their mind, too bad. Free speech means you have to hear things that you won't like every so often. If anything, take it up with the people who said it, because they are within the full view of their rights.
I'm not sure exactly how I can take this "atheists are the most discriminated minority" study seriously. I'll need to actually see the study and how it was conducted, but until I do, I'm not going to use that as evidence for or against anything. In fact, I think the lumping together of any group of people who choose not to believe in anything and claim they're a part of a group that you can make any sort of statement about is absurd no matter what angle you're coming from.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_Delusion
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
That's pretty funny. I can't deny it. Even if most of your arguments are long-winded and irrelevant in a loose sense of the word. You are wrong. Accept it. You are simply trying to troll people here. Militant religion for the loss.
Why, so it seems you are on this thread! You are what I would call most would call "out of your rational mind"
Look out, Furor. Against such rational argument there can be no sufficient rebuttal.
Calling them "a fat ****" would, in fact, be rather hateful and rude. Calling them "an overeating bastard cowering behind their food" would be hateful and mean-spirited. And that's the sort of thing Dawkins does.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
Because it's not necessary for me to know and the situation demonstrates it as being not necessary for me to know. It's not as though I couldn't find out if I really wanted to, it's that I don't feel I need to know. And in my opinion, it's much better than the alternative. I talk to people from the States going on about how religion is taking over their country, and I honestly can't connect. The world through their eyes is so completely different from the world through mine, and I attribute it from growing up in this secular environment.
http://richarddawkins.net/event,123,CNN
Is this IRL or on the intrawebs?
Props to whoever made this.
He attacks bad religious rhetoric and antiquated theistic arguments, and then implies that natural selection accounts for the whole of the ID argument (it most certainly does not, even if a completely sound sufficient theory that has appropriate historical manifestation). He's like a bad MTGSalvation atheist owning a worse MTGSalvation Christian.
There are no bad MTGSalvation atheists!
What are the 'good' theistic arguements? They all seem to be pretty much the same. They either say 'religion does good things so we need it' or 'science just doesn't work for this, duh!'. His arguements against theistic arguements make sense to me and he seems to do all of them. If there are some really good theistic arguements I would like to know about them. Also kudos to everyone in this thread. Obviously this is a topic we all very care much about, and I gotta praise the overall good thread behaviour that doesn't use insults and that brings up intelligent, well written posts.
I've experienced strong correlation between devotion and blessing, sin and temporal punishment, and what is apparently divine response to prayer, all three to the degree that seem to go beyond naturalistic explanations of placebo, hallucination, or Littleman's Law. I've experienced what I call "private empirical evidence," and others have undergone similar experiences in their own lives and have shared them with me; all of this as if pointing to a God masterfully able to benevolently provide wills unrestrained by unwanted divine coercion, even at the possible expense of an intimate spiritual relationship that he so benevolently desires with each of us.
Is atheism discriminated against on that i am not sure. the religous attitude of america is very volitial to say the least. there is a lot of pressure anymore.
Anything that is religous that pops up in the public eye is automatically shot down or there is a lawsuit filed.
as for theistic arguements there are quite a few. one thing that people tend to overlook is that darwin, einstein, and even hawking himself have said that they are theories not fact. that something else was involved in the process. That parts of the universe and the way that it operates and the forces behind it are to ordered for it to be just some random event.
it is getting worse. as was stated earlier the extereme christian groups get put down quickly by the moderates most of the time. i do not see this on the other side of the fence. just for illustration some guy tried to get the pledge of alliagence counted as unconstitution the same with "In God we Trust" on our money.
The heart of the issue is that we are all bestowed a core value of some kind. whether it be athiest or christian. there is a way to argue your point and do good for your cause and another way to argue that does harm. mostly in america it does more harm than good.
athiest groups push christian groups push back harder and it is a constant power struggle. athiest use the court system to try and make law on religous matters or views. we have kids that can't sing christian carols at schools because people might be offended. that is just sad really.
I happen to believe there is a God. I have seen to much in my life time and in others for there not to be. however it is up to us to disagree civilly and with logic.
still an athiest who goes over a cliff still screams "ol God" (sorry its a joke had to.
Thanks to Epic Graphics the best around.
Thanks to Nex3 for the avatar visit ye old sig and avatar forum
In about half of all cases, religious people are okay. Just okay. Most don't even follow all of the ten commandments. The rest are fanatics. That is where all of the rumors are perpetuated. Some of those people can get really, well, 'freaky,' to say the least. The same is true for atheists. Some radical atheists who want to bring down the system with force give us a bad name. The rest just want a gentle phasing out of religion from politics. Then, optimally, from society. But maybe it's just wishful thinking. Who knows?
Of course, CNN specifically may have mostly ignored atheism, but I find it doubtful that anyone could make arguments such as Harris and Dawkins make (even in a manner more acceptable to you) and get as much attention as those two without provoking such a response. It is not how (or at least, not just how) they're promoting atheism - it's that they're promoting atheism.
Oh yeah, how horrible that for a few months they've actually shown atheists on TV except for the token occurrance of an American Atheists representative when something like Newdow's case comes up. I tolerate Christians constantly preaching at me on TV and radio saying things just as offensive, if not more (then again, I'm gay, so more of it would be offensive to me anyway). You speak as if the reaction is teaching me a lesson as opposed to being more of the same. Dawkins coming to prominence has nothing to do with them being on TV, except for him providing them an occasion to whip out the rhetoric (but not providing the reason they believe it). Of course, it's easy to ignore such things when you're in the majority. The lesson ought to be going the other way, although Dawkins and Harris generally give better arguments and are less insulting than the people I'm describing.
Care to provide some examples of this from his books or speeches that show how he is as bad as you portray him?
Because I've read things by him and seen speeches by him, and while I can see that he's blunt when discussing religion (since he doesn't consider it a special category of belief that demands us to tread lightly), I disagree with your assessment.
For that matter, from what I've read of and by Harris, he doesn't seem all that disrespectful either.
Anti-atheist views were around long before Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. Most of the American public don't even know who they are. The anti-atheist rhetoric comes from people's religious upbringing - specifically the belief that is instilled in them that morality can only come from religion. Oh, and perhaps the fact that "godless" and "atheistic" are often used as synonyms for "immoral" or "depraved". One might add Communists as another source. You're naive (and greatly overestimate Dawkins's importance) if you think that Dawkins is the source of it.
Which insults and name-calling? I don't recall Dawkins ever saying anything like "Christian idiots" or something like that.
*I* wouldn't let a Christian get away with such things, of course not. The general public does, however. That's how a presidential candidate (George Bush, Sr.) was able to say that he doesn't think atheists should be considered citizens and have there be no outcry outside of the atheist groups who heard about it.
Well, it's no wonder that you hate Dawkins and Harris so much. Either that, or you saw the episode of South Park with Dawkins and foolishly assumed that Trey Parker and Matt Stone had any intention of portraying him honestly.
Yes, and a Christian who supposedly believes that one shouldn't take the lord's name in vain, might still scream "Oh God!" or "Jesus!" while having kinky monkey-sex out of wedlock
From out that wine-dark fog,
And spake he unto all our crew:
"Go forth, and read my blog."
Certainly not!
But it was not spouted in any comparable amount.
Yes; inflammatory and hateful remarks are always going to get more coverage than relatively reasoned and cool remarks, which is why the public faces of atheism have been Richard Dawkins and not, say, Antony Flew. But I fail to see entirely how this is a good thing.
It's not "any atheist on TV" it's "Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris et al. on TV." The difference, even as much as Dawkins would like you to ignore it, exists.
That said, your condescending attitude isn't exactly happy.
Only some of what a Christian might say would be directly offensive to you as a gay man; quite nearly everything of what Richard Dawkins might say would be to a Christian man.
Of course you believe they do; you agree with them.
Furor's point was never that these people exist because Dawkins and Harris exist, but that these people are treated seriously because Dawkins and Harris are treated seriously. So long as we allow any hate-filled rhetoric to be broadcasted on air, we make acceptable any hate-filled rhetoric that is not so blatantly offensive as to cause public revulsion. And that is decidedly a bad thing.
"Much as I would like to see the Roman Catholic Church ruined, I hate opportunistically retrospective litigation even more. Lawyers who grow fat by digging dirt on long-forgotten wrongs, and hounding their aged perpetrators, are no friends of mine. All I am doing is calling attention to an anomaly. By all means, let's kick a nasty institution when it is down, but there are better ways than litigation."
"Oh, but of course the story of Adam and Eve was only ever symbolic, wasn't it? Symbolic?! So Jesus had himself tortured and executed for a symbolic sin by a non-existent individual? Nobody not brought up in the faith could reach any other conclusion than "barking mad"."
ad infinitum.
Oh, come on. Even if you think he's right, he's very deliberately trying to offend;
"Religious faith represents so uncompromising a misuse of the power of our minds that it forms a kind of perverse, cultural singularity—a vanishing point beyond which rational discourse proves impossible."
"Religion is nothing more than bad concepts held in place of good ones for all time. It is the denial—at once full of hope and full of fear—of the vastitude of human ignorance."
"Most religions have merely canonized a few products of ancient ignorance and derangement and passed them down to us as though they were primordial truths."
"The very ideal of religious tolerance—born of the notion that every human being should be free to believe whatever he wants about God—is one of the principal forces driving us toward the abyss."
"The Bible, it seems certain, was the work of sand-strewn men and women who thought the earth was flat and for whom a wheelbarrow would have been a breathtaking example of emerging technology."
And so on.
Certainly; so were anti-Christian views. But they exacerbate them, and convince new people of their truth.
Certainly, there is bias against atheism in society. The question, though, is whether it would receive public approval were it not for the people against it.
Yes. But you're hitting a man of straw, here.
Off-hand, I'm reminded of his many essays on how anyone who teaches religion to a child is a child-abuser worse than a pedophile.
The generic public does not so much as the media does not. Similarly, they have not aired the many religious arguments against Dawkins' and Harris' work. Such is the media.
Great condescension!
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
With regard to both of these, it's true that defeating these highly visible "outer, weak walls of religious defense" is justified and even, one could say, admirable. The problem is, after destroying these highly visible "outer, weak walls of religious defense," he proclaims victory over religion, ignoring the fact that he has yet to conquer the less visible "inner, hardened walls of religious defense."
Nope.
Are you very experienced in theist/atheist debate versus anyone other than extreme novices? You don't seem to be at all.
I don't believe there exists a purely logical argument that can make a case for supernaturalism. Likewise, there's no purely logical argument that can make a case for metaphysical naturalism. These ideologies depend on "reason," which Kant calls a combination of sensory experience and neural pattern recognition with formal logic to keep it in check.
Early in this thread I gave an example of a reason-based argument for God. We can address that, or I can put more effort into providing more such arguments, or both.
I personally would like to see more reason-based arguments for the existence of a God. I do not agree that such an argument exists, and am very curious to see one.
Radha, Heir to Keld, Vorel of the Hull Clade, Kemba, Kha Regent, Vela the Night-Clad, Kozilek, Butcher of Truth, Barrin, Master Wizard, Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer, Patron of the Orochi, Oloro, Ageless Ascetic, Thraximundar, Roon of the Hidden Realm, Prossh, Skyraider of Kher, Marath, Will of the Wild, Teneb, the Harvester
If you did this, tell me and I'll credit you!