Richard Dawkins on Religion: Town Hall Discussion

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Richard Dawkins' The Root of All Evil aired on CBC Newsworld last week; sometimes I wish we had cable. The Town Hall discussion here is interesting, though - nice range of views coming into full collision. I like watching the stubborn and humourless ones get all worked up.

[Kanada Kev]

The docs running on CBC and CBC Newsworld these days are fantastic. I highly encourage people to see them. Newsworld repeats them numerous times.

Watched a good one I had recorded last night "Global Warming: Bush's Climate of Fear". Great/scary stuff. The shit that goes down (or doesn't) because it's an election year is mindboggling. I hate Dubya and his cronies more and more each day.

http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/index.html

Now if CBC would just do what they SHOULD do, and make all their programming available for streaming online, life would be better (but i can't get the monkeys at this place to listen).

[Kanada Kev]

on Stewart and Stephen Colbert are godless sodomites!

Did you know that??? Listen to this whack-job spew forth. Guess you can't make jokes about religion ... unbelievable:

http://www.glumbert.com/media/sodomites

Good to see this man is so full of love and understanding ... PUKE

Want to see more scary stuff??? Go to their affiliated website:

http://www.thesignsofthetimes.net/

[zero]

You've got to figure that Jon and Stephen howled at that - it's so self-referential and winking with them up in the box instead of the other way around. It's funny- sodomites 'sow seeds in barren fields'. Well that part's not funny. Anyways in Dante's Inferno there is a specific bowge (level) for sodomites and their punishment for eternity is having their head planted in the ground and their ass pointing up (presumably to get poked?). That seems like a kind of fitting punishment for the two of them.

[adambrot]

hmmm, sometimes (like these) I wish I had tv... but I usually don't.

I'm currently going through this very discussion with my 300+ students in first year 'Introduction to Evolution' at uOttawa. Talked about Intelligent Design and Richard Dawkins last course. Not easy stuff to teach at all! There are a lot of seriously f*cked up preconceived notions out there that try desperately to pit evolution and creation against each other.

I mean c'mon folks, even Pope JPII said there was no conflict between the 2 theories!

cheers

Prof. Adambrot

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Don't you just love those big lecture halls .

There's a funny moment in the above Town Hall debate between Dawkins and Charles McVety, the head of a major evangelical college; Dawkins refuses to budge from the fact-ness of evolution, which you can see McVety fit to burst over. Mind you, McVety seems like he's going to blow up every time somebody challenges him on anything; you get the sense that he's not used to it happening all that often (cf. "cultural enclave").

I have yet to watch the last third of that video, and I forget if he'd already made the point, but there is an interesting interview with Dawkins over on the BBC site where he says that as a good scientist he's not prepared to deny the possible existence of a god out of hand - it's not what the evidence marshalls much support for, but he's methodologically open to the possibility (it's what makes good science possible - the openness). That's what impresses me most about the difference between the two attitudes here: that refusal in the one to reconsider or reevaluate preconceived notions.

That said, there is certainly more openness to evolution among even conservative Catholics than among evangelicals, possibly for reasons that may be more historical than anything.

[adambrot]

Richard Dawkins is what is known as an Ontological Naturalist, in that he believes that the natural world that we can see and measure is all there is. This is not conflictual, however, with the idea of a divine creator, just that religion is a different domain from science and uses different methods (faith and belief vs. logic, reason and empiricism). One cannot use scientific methods to refute religion any more than one can use faith to refute evolution.

Dawkins is a brilliant evolutionist but is controversial as well in his argumentation against creationism. In theory, I have no problems with creationist beliefs except for the corruption they can cause a gullible society through religious preachings. Especially the threat that organized creationist feel from the theory of evolution and their perceived need to try to debunk it through a combination of junk science and hysteria.

cheers

adambrot

Edited September 26, 2006 by Guest

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

I think you're spot on. He has to walk a pretty thin line, sticking to his point without lapsing into the kinds of hyperbole his opponents would jump all over. Sticking to a procedural form of reason, as he seems to do, is a good course to hold to, imo.

One of the big problems I have with creationism is related directly to the problem I have with scientism: the idea that nature is something to be fundamentally controlled - either by an abstract divine being (which I think is a projection), or by humans. That reduction of the universe to the terms of a logic of control, that instrumental rationality, I think of as one of the worst pathologies we as a species have come up with.

[djmelbatoast]

Does McVerty dress like a pirate?

If he did I might be inclined to agree with him.

[Calamity Jane]

I certainly hope Our Noodly Master was referenced in your class on Intelligent Design.

For those that seek hard cold facts, nothing is sewn up tighter than the irrefutable link between the rise of global temperatures and the world-wide population decline of pirates! Yaaaarrr!!!

Pastafariiii my brothers and sisters!! May you all be touched by His Noodly Appendage. Spread the good word. Ramen!

Edited September 27, 2006 by Guest

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Yaaaaarrrrr!!

[Kanada Kev]

yaaarrr sisters and brothers

[Kanada Kev]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWL1ZMH3-54

Richard Dawkins, author of the mind-blowing classic The Selfish Gene, has a new book just coming out titled The God Delusion. In it, according to his Web site, he "eviscerates the major arguments for religion and demonstrates the supreme improbability of a supreme being (and) shows how religion fuels war, forments bigotry, and abuses children, buttressing his points with historical and contemporary evidence." I can't wait to read it! For a taste of Dawkins' evangelical atheism and disbelief in belief, check out this interview with him on the BBC's Newsnight Book Club.

Link to YouTube video , Link to buy The God Delusion

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

The only really disappointing thing I heard Dawkins say was ruling out the proferred definition of God being love (the United Church minister put that one out there as the way the theologians she knows and respects talk). I mean, I think it's a theological trap to put any predicates on the divine, but as far as Dawkins was concerned, the only god worth talking about is a creator god - in other words, one that's all about power and control, the very sort his opponents base their theology on. It made me think of another line from Nietzsche that I ran across recently - "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster."

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Here we go - Youtube to the rescue.

Root of All Evil (pt. 1)

I won't go through the links for the remainder, as they pop up to the right (the order isn't immediately obvious, either). I started, though, with what I think is the second bit (below), and the encounter between Dawkins and Ted Haggard blew me away. Sure, Dawkins comes in with a chip on his shoulder, but Haggard manages to show his true colours - anti-intellectual, bullyish, and drunk with power. I can't wait to watch the rest of it.

Root of All Evil (pt. 1b?)

[Kanada Kev]

What about Scientology? I'm still trying to figure out why it's called a "religion" as opposed to a "club". I guess it's much like many churches in that it worships the allmighty dollar.

Wanna see some fun scientologists?

http://www.glumbert.com/media/scientology

[Kanada Kev]

What Would Jesus Brew???

http://www.glumbert.com/media/bible

Edited September 27, 2006 by Guest

[adambrot]

wow, that's extremely weird. Those in your face scientologists are really annoying!

[adambrot]

Thanks DEM, I'm currently downloading those videos and will watch them tonight on my ipod.

cheers

adambrot

[d_rawk]

evangelical atheism

Exactly.

disbelief in belief

More accurately -- belief in disbelief. Which, of course, is a leap of faith.

I mean, I think it's a theological trap to put any predicates on the divine, but as far as Dawkins was concerned, the only god worth talking about is a creator god - in other words, one that's all about power and control, the very sort his opponents base their theology on.

Which seems odd and self-serving. It isn't difficult to make the case that while earthly affairs may be of a creator God's interest, they are none of its business. That is that it is on the outside of the physical going-ons by calculation and/or agreement [i'll accept "covenant" as substitute for "agreement", but only with some discomfort]. There is a lot of precedent (theologically, I mean, not concretely) for that. Defining something in some arbitrary way and then attacking that arbitrary definition seems silly. In fact, it seems like the same silliness that the religious folks are up to.

I've got no real heat with Dawkins. But c'mon.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Yup. I finally got through most of the doc, and he seems to get increasingly reductionistic as he winds up; he appears not to like the idea that religion can be many things.

Not to say that I'm not still laughing at the bit with Ted Haggard . It's just unfortunate that he gives Haggard (et al.) the means to write him off in his own turn, without exercising the human power of reason he otherwise seems so fond of to find any common ground.