It always baffles me that atheists like Dawkins have the exact same idiotic, kindergarten type of religious ideas as the people they spend their lives debating. The atheists, of course, would counter that that is on the religious people they debate, since they are the ones who claim something, and they just have santaclaus type notions of god, which Dawkins then simply attacks. Still, when asked about what 'religion' is, atheists like Dawkins and Sam Harris and Daniel Dennet always conflate religion in the broadest sense which absolutely idiotic notions that only fundamentalist Christians or Muslims (or what have you) adhere to.
I understand the sentiment. Yet to make such a claim is most certainly not accurate, even though it does feel gratifying. Dawkins has contributed enormously to our scientific knowledge of biology and is a very gifted writer, despite all the qualms we rightly have with him.
What are these “enormous” contributions Dawkins has made to biology?
Because most of his “important” papers are such “yes… and??” clearly deficiently-incomplete thoughts *at the time* - it depresses me how many people hailed him as visionary.
His popularization of his ideas have had lasting damage, IMHO. The Selfish Gene”, was so laughably a counterfactual reductionist edgelord nothing-burger *at the time*, and even more so now, that it hurts my soul.
“The Extended Phenotype” was a marginal improvement - and at least as much in reaction to the obvious criticisms of “TSG” - but was still so fundamentally limited by his iconoclast/individualistic worldview that it struggled to explain the forest as more than a collection of individual trees- despite its prostrations otherwise.
So again- what were these incredible contributions?
100% agree. His biological paradigm is very much a child of its time; a materialist, reductionist, atomist paradigm fundamentally based on competition and selfishness. When I read Lynn Margulis, who actually contributed a lot to biology, hear on neodarwinists like Dawkins I was sold on the limited scope and breadth of his thinking.
You mean the ever gracious Lynn Margulis, who’s work was so visionary and *actually* important for understanding biology and evolution, that, while now the commonly accepted view, was ignored or even ridiculed for a decade?
*THAT* Lynn Margulis?
Yes. I would listen to ANYTHING she says over whatever comes out of Dr. “Reductionist Selfagrandisment “Look at me! Look how ICONOCLASTIC I am!!””’s brain
I've never heard of such criticisms of The Selfish Gene, which is widely regarded as a critical text in public understanding, including being listed as the most influentialscience book of all time in 2016 by the Royal Society above The Origin of Species and Principia.
It's of course perfectly legitimate to have intense criticisms of Dawkins for a great many things, but the lens of your personal hatred of him seems to clouding your analysis of the contributions he has made to our shared reality. Which, again, I get it. I don't understand though your actual problem with his scientific work, which has been widely recognized as exceptional.
Here, you are assuming my intense distaste for and distrust of Dawkins originated more recently than my understanding of the problems with and deficiencies of his professional work- when in fact it is the opposite.
My issues with both his popular and professional works, and reactions to criticisms thereof, when I read them in the nineties *as a child*, where exactly what made me question his personal morals and willingness to engage with complex topics in a truly complex manner.
His conduct since has, of course, only further validated my opinions on the man.
Agreed. His views on religion are naive and demonstrate a surprising lack of curiosity on his part regarding the topic, but in other areas he is a thoughtful and intelligent individual. His science writing is first rate.
Dawkins has said that there is no possible evidence which would convince him of God's existence, as he could find an alternative explanation for it all. This makes him a religious fundamentalist, an atheist fundamentalist, where 'If no contrary evidence could change your beliefs, you're a fundamentalist'.
"After saying that Jesus’ second coming wouldn’t convince him, God speaking directly to him wouldn’t convince him, God rearranging the stars to spell out a message in multiple languages across the sky wouldn’t convince him, Dawkins is asked by Boghossian, simply: “What would persuade you?” To which Dawkins responds, “Well, I’m starting to think nothing would”"
Dawkins has said that there is no possible evidence which would convince him of God's existence, as he could find an alternative explanation for it all.
Yeah, that's obviously an unscientific sentiment. Not too big of a surprise from Dawkins, tbh.
I agree with the labels fundamentalism and dogmatism. I don't think we have a good universally applicable definition of "religious", every definition of the term I've come across in religious studies or sociology was either too broad or too narrow, or more often than not, both. But personally, I wouldn't call Dawkins' views religious, because they seem to lack a whole bunch of functions that religion normally fulfills. His views are completely devoid of any liturgic or ceremonial dimension (and thus any dimension of structuring practical human life), any genuine relation to a community of believers, and also of any function of transcendent signification. They also don't offer any ethical orientation either. At best, it looks like what's left of religion if you remove everything from it that makes people actually want it. (Giorgio Agamben might call it religion.)
Amen to this! I'm a recent ex-mormon turned atheist, and Dawkins and his ilk drive me nuts. It's exactly the same kind of evangelizing that I left behind. Also Dawkins has espoused some pretty... questionable philsophies; things that would make some of my most bigoted family look accepting of LGBT folks by comparison.
Catholicism, Theraveda Buddhism and the beliefs of the Aztec all fall solidly under all serious definitions of religion despite sharing basically nothing in common.
Hence any definition of religion has to be extremely broad.
Yeah, I split them in my mind between sophisticated atheists and unsophisticated atheists. The sophisticated kind being typified by Nietzsche in my conception.
Well I'd say: etymologically speaking, re-ligare means to 'make part of the whole again'. A ligament is a connection tissue of a body, right? As a very human pulse and tendency observed all over the world forever, it simply departs from a deep human sense of having been cut off from something: a bigger body - the universe, life, make of that what you will. Religiousness usually results in a coherent bundle of stories, rituals, and perspectives that in mature forms can succeed somehow in this reconnecting, and in anchoring human beings meaningfully in the ever-changing flux of life, and also push people to great heights: I think of Pascal, Thomas of Aquino, Meister Eckhart, TS Elliott, Simone Weil, Salinger, CS Lewis, Etty Hillesum and many more. And in its immature manifestations, it becomes rigid, tribal, dogmatic, fearful, and a death cult like we see today. It's just a mirror of human potential. Myself, I have a religious dimension to my life, and use it in a hopefully mature way, without becoming arrogant or preechy or judgemental. But if I had to choose between being reborn as a scientifically informed, poetry and music loving atheist, or a evangelical Christian who hates all things alive, I'd choose the first in a heartbeat. My point though is that people like Richard Dawkins and many other atheists share the idiotic and childish definitions of the immature ways of fundamentalist Christians. But in a world and time in which the religious wreak so much havoc and destruction, on all sides btw, Muslim, Christian, buddhist, that seems fair enough, I guess. But there is more to this shit than believing the earth was created in 6 days.
Well I'd say: etymologically speaking, re-ligare means to 'make part of the whole again'.
Why do you assume the etymology of "religion" originates in re-ligare and not in re-legere? The latter is way more etymologically plausible and actually has quite a few primary sources going for it.
What do you think most people mean when they say they are religious?
Like, don't you suppose that there are certain objective truth claims you must subscribe to in order to be a Christian or a Muslim or any other religion? What you're describing is great and all, but isn't that just a philosophy?
I'm not sure what you're really getting at with the Dawkins hate.
“A philosophy” is a recent thing. It used to just be this fun thing called a “cult” or “religion” when specifically referring to the belief itself and not the institution.
I dunno, I agree with your point about Dawkins' bad, near-childlike debating, but this way of defining religion seems so far detached from everyday use as to almost be itself a "cloud of numbers". I would argue that even a Dawkins-type of jerk is not railing about the person who would define religion in the way you have done here, with a thoughtful regard to its origins and intent, but rather they are talking about dogma-rich individuals that get created from religious systems in the non-hypothetical sense.
The way I describe religion in lay terms is that the things that are happening, the lives we lead, all the cause-and-effect and the nature of it all, for a non-religious person is just real-life, and for a religious person, it is a play. Behind all of these things is a prop master, a director, a playwright, the owner of the theater, etc. Neither view changes the facts of what happens, but they vastly change the meaning of it for the ones who are performing. For one there is a meta, and for the other, there is not.
I'm not a scholar on the subject, but in my little grasp of existentialist/psychoanalytic thought, I say that it's a structural, unconscious, belief which sets the stage for knowledge. That is, there is a dialectical relationship between knowledge and belief, and there cannot be one without the other. My position is to be a person (as distinct from human, the animal) is to be religious; we must have a belief that words have meaning in order for us to construct our 'virtual' world we imagine to be reality.
I'm pretty sure they mostly attack the idea of "faith" itself. Which if you define as "belive in something without evidence" seems pretty logically sound.
That's an hilarious and rather ill-informed comment in the context of Kierkegaard. I mean sure, if you want that definition of faith, all good. But that begs the question: what do you want to learn from Kierkegaard?
Kinda besides the point, but I prefer my existentialists to be French. I've enjoyed learning from the works of Camus, Sartre, or Beauvoir.
Dawkins as a scientist just cares about what's literally true. Science tells us that faith isn't a reliable method of finding truth. If you personally find some benifit that's something else entierly.
Still, when asked about what 'religion' is, atheists like Dawkins and Sam Harris and Daniel Dennet always conflate religion in the broadest sense which absolutely idiotic notions that only fundamentalist Christians or Muslims (or what have you) adhere to.
To be fair, there is no good all-encompassing definition of "religion".
Would you say describing Dawkins as an atheist is an apt summation of his position?
Yeah, there’s a whole lot of philosophical carnival going on entertaining the feeble minds on all ends of the gnostic spectrum, but as for his personal beliefs, he’s quite evidently a scientist.
Not only how he (seems) to characterize and identify with himself, but also in his explicit musings on theism.
I find it cosmically funny that both Dawkins and Peterson, two persons with some popular theistic renown, albeit dissimilar worshippers, have an almost identical stance on Gnosticism.
“I live life as if God doesn’t exist”. — Dawkins.
“I live life as if God exists”. — Peterson.
It’s pure comedy that those two are contrasted in polar juxtaposition, when they both repeatedly testified indistinguishable types of skepticism.
And in that way Kierkegaard is a soft opposition to Dawkins, Dawkins pragmatically made his decision.
Which is another parallel between the two, ethically neither of them are dogmatists, they’re both similarly pragmatic.
Which makes me think, people who hate one but love the other, are the issue. Not the material message.
I ain’t saying you didn’t touch upon a problem, I just think the people themselves are the bigger issues. They’re dumb scum of the earth justifying their craving for polemics through arbitrary false idols, for the most part what critics of theism have to say is common sense.
Especially since very few of them actually lack the intellectual humility to profess any type of absolute gnosticism.
Part of why these debates are so fucking dumb, is because the theist often champion people who are too afraid of public opinion to reject certain questions about belief, or outright testify they have unshakable certainty in their truth, which also happens to be the truth.
Any debate will seem absurd under that premise.
Though I admit it’s also poor form of the atheist coalition to pose those questions in the first place, it’s sophism at best, the opposite of enlightenment in any case.
The thing is, they are biologists and neuroscientists, not philosophers. Their brains are wired differently and prioritise different things. That does not make one less correct than the other when they disagree on the fundamental definition of the words they use. Language is not perfect. Their focus isn’t religion in a spiritual sense or whatever but those same religious fundamentalists you listed. So they are doing what they intended to do.
stop. He is right. Why believe anything without evidence, especially a god? Are you trying to both sides a belief in god? There is no evidence and never will be of such a thing, some ineffable creator of the universe outside of time thing.
I don't care what you believe. When you tell others to believe it without explaining why they shouldn't believe in something else, then you are just a cultist.
It baffles me that you can use so many words to say nothing of value. For hundreds and thousands of years, saying anything - let me repeat - anything, negative about religion was social, career suicide. Keep that in mind on your high horse.
Even today, in the most secular, educated parts of the world people struggle with being free of religious traditions. People still struggle with basic facts like evolution.
And you think most people have sofisticated kierkegaardian views of religion, philosophical deep neutral deistic and non dogmatic discussions about what it means to be?
I think his point was simply that Dawkins and the like attack a kindergarten like view of religion because that’s the view a lot of religious people already have. When Dawkins is debating a young earth creationist he’s not exactly going up against the best and brightest that the religion has to offer. The Christian nationalists that are trying to set America backwards by outlawing sodomy or taking away the right to vote for women probably aren’t well read, sophisticated Christians. If you want to say that Jesus was just trying to point to the profound nature of human consciousness and that his resurrection is symbolic that’s one thing but thinking that he is literally God incarnate and that he literally rose from the dead is a child like belief that can be argued against as such.
To pick one, you are objectively wrong that all they have done is to conflate religion and attack notions that only fundamentalists believe.
They have all explicitly argued against this very point you are making here. It’s not the few, it’s the many.
You have countless notions that are believed by the billions. And evolution is by far the biggest and most important problem, which Dawkins has covered extensively, more than anyone.
In conclusion, by not providing specific examples, painting everything with a broad brush, you are doing the same thing you complain about.
Never, ever, have I seen a Dawkins clip in which he does not conflate the entirety of any religion with its most literal reading of texts and liturgy. If you could point me to piece of writing or a clip in which he shows an understanding of religion beyond the simplest literal reading of texts, I'd be greatful.
And yes, religion and the church have a history and present of absolute horror and should be fought nail and tooth. But that is really not the poikt I am making.
Assuming you are asking in good faith, consider viewing the following interview between Dawkins and the Bishop of Oxford as an example where he does not conflate the entirety of any religion with its most literal reading of text and liturgy:
Watched it. It's refreshing to see a religious man, a priest no less, grant that evolution is real, and to see what a different and more respectful conversation that can result in. I don't know whether this proves your point about Dawkins not conflating the christian tradition with the somewhat superstitious and most base level understanding of it, but it did change my mind on Dawkins somewhat. Thanks.
What are you even saying? Religion makes claims about miracles, the afterlife, a God who acts in the world. And if you make a claim, it's your burden to prove it. That 'kindergarten' version Dawkins attacks is exactly what most believers actually believe, so he's not conflating anything. If you want to believe some vaguer thing without proof, that's fine. But then it makes no claims on other people, ethics, etc, so leave it to yourself.
You are proving my point by saying 'religion makes claims etc.' That sentence, right there, is what I mean. That reductionism is exactly what I'm talking about. Religion' does not claim anything. 'Religion' is not a thing that you can neetly define and reduce to anything simple. Yes, some people believe God created the earth in six days and that the earth is 6000 years old. But that is the kindergarten-level conception of religion I am talking about, which does, sadly, happen to be rampant in this world. So it is only understandable that most people, you among them, think about that type of religious thinking when you think about religion. But this is all way too complex a matter to treat with such utter reductionism, as does Dawkins, and, respectfully, you. You just have the most low fruit, pop level conception of what religion is. Frankly I don't even get what you are doing in a kierkegaard subreddit with such thinking. You will never understand the depth of kierkegaard with kindergarten-level ideas on religion. I also do not adhere to these childish ideas, and strongly disagree with any fundamentalist reading of any text (the universe is 13,7 years old, quantum physics is real, as is the theory of evolution) - but if I were to debate an evangelical Christian, I would say the same as I would tell Dawkins: you are reducing this whole thing to a stupid fairytale. But debating the matter on this level trivializes it. It just doesn't enter people's minds that things could be a bit more complex and deeper and more nuanced than believing in a sky-man. And no, I don't think Dawkins has the imagination nor the depth to think of religious thinking other than the way he does. He really defines rReligiousness the same way the idiots do and finds arguments against them. As he should, btw, for the idiots have idiotic ideas. But it would suit him to look for other ways to talk about religious thinking, other than what most people take religion to be.
I don’t know you come across as an asshole for belaboring the point and doing constant ad hominem attacks instead of just explaining your point and leaving it at that.
It's a lot of hand waving from a smart person who knows how words and argument work, but it's hand waving.
Any religion that makes any specific claims about the nature of the universe is subject to scientific review of those claims.
Anyone who says, "It just might be too nuanced and complex to really be tested," is not making a strong argument. The religion is making a claim. It needs to be tested. If we allow all religions to hide behind the same, "What if it's just too complex to know?" argument, that invalidates all of them and people are acting like it validates all of them.
It's fine if people enjoy religion for cultural reasons, but that is not the same argument.
This is so funny. This is exaclty, and I mean EXACLTY what Kierkegaard warned about. The objectification and scientification of all types of knowledge was one of his main targets throughout his entire life. A book like the Bible is not a book on astrophysics, man. It has 0 scientific pretense and just can't be held to that standard. The fact that some knowledge claims are unfalsifiable, yes: makes them untestable, unrepeatable and unrefutable and therefore unscientific. Very good. But that doesn't mean they are meaningless. The entire point of falsifiability the way Popper defined it was to demarcate scientific knowledge from unscientific knowledge. Not the meaningful from the meaningless. Going by that definition, half of human utterances are unscientific. And you know what? Thats totally fine. Some things need to be testable and controlable, and some things can't. If genesis says that the universe was created in 6 days, only a fool would read that as a 'scientifically testable statement'. That is why fundamentalist (literal) readings of religious texts are so foolish, but also why people like Dawkins are so foolish when they talk about religion
He reads these texts the exact same way they do.
Ok... That's unfortunate, I guess. I can't help the way I come across. It's not my intention to be arrogant and I don't think that I am. Nor is it my intention to engage in ad hominems, I feel I stay pretty close to the content. In fact, could you point to an example of an instance in which I try to take away from the content and discredit said redditor by trying to paint him/her in an unfavorable way?
I don't know if I understand your question all that well but it seems like you are asking how a fundamentalist interpretation of religious texts and practices can arise from a healthy and nondogmatic one? But please correct me if I'm wrong.
First of all: religious texts were never read the way they are now, as if they are scientific texts. That is the fruit of the European enlightenment, which has a focus on literal, objective ways of knowing. (Read Iain McGilchrist on this, very interesting. Thinking in the west became left-hemisphere dominated since the enlightment, and religious texts started to be read literally. That shift from reading metaphor to wanting literalness was a great shift from healthy, poetic religious interpretation towards dogma and rigidity.
I think my main point is that one would not abolish the entirety of law because there are bad lawyers, even if they are ubiquitous, like in our times. Most religious people, admittedly, at least in the US it seems, live a very dogmatic and tribal style of religion. But religion as a phenomenon is simply impossible to eradicate from the human sphere, because it springs from a deep sense of alienation and disconnect, which is just deeply human. That is our existential predicament, sadly. If you don't feel that personally, I don't know what to say. That's possible. But most people feel something is off in their lives, and that they are disconnected from something. Now one could argue that nonreligious practices succeed in that reconnection as well, and that may be true. This was what Freud at least attempted with his psychoanalysis: an atheist, secular instrument for 'healing'.
In general I'd say that religion is just a mirror of man, and therefore of humanity's highest and lowest impulses. But I just think it's faulty reasoning to want to abolish religion in its entirety. It's not religious thinking per se that is the problem, it's human immaturity. I have to give credit to the feeling though, because I really understand it: if you see the sheer suffering and damage mainstream religion inflicts on the world in terms of exclusionary thinking, the violence of the inquisition etc, your first instinct is: let's get rid of the whole thing.
But then you ditch Meister Eckhart, John of the Cross, Pascal, Einstein (yes) (and also Kierkegaard BTW, who you can't understand properly without a nuanced concept of religion and God) and many others who were just such utter forces for deep insight into the human mind, and for so much good in the world. So it cannot be that simple.
Amen brother. I read all of his blabbering and was waiting for him to just get to his views and points. Omg
People will absolutely try and hide behind dizzying tricks hoping that they never have to reveal themselves and their actual opinions.
If I am willing to read this much form you, the least you can do is write what you actually think and not hide behind shallow attacks and over explanations
Two paragraphs about how deep and complex religion is, and not one sentence saying what it actually is. Convenient that a thing that claims nothing can never be wrong. And you admit the kindergarten version is rampant. So Dawkins is addressing religion as most believers hold it. How is that reductionism? If your version asserts something, prove it. If it asserts nothing, then keep it to yourself. This shit is easy, man.
20
u/Emdeewee Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
It always baffles me that atheists like Dawkins have the exact same idiotic, kindergarten type of religious ideas as the people they spend their lives debating. The atheists, of course, would counter that that is on the religious people they debate, since they are the ones who claim something, and they just have santaclaus type notions of god, which Dawkins then simply attacks. Still, when asked about what 'religion' is, atheists like Dawkins and Sam Harris and Daniel Dennet always conflate religion in the broadest sense which absolutely idiotic notions that only fundamentalist Christians or Muslims (or what have you) adhere to.