Dawkins' Stupid People

http://blog.jgc.org/2011/09/dawkins-stupid-people.html

by jgrahamc • 15 years ago

39 106 15 years ago

blog.jgc.org

tikums• 15 years ago

Even being really good at [insert profession], doesn't make you non-stupid in areas outside of your expertise. It's not mutually exclusive. E.g., one can be a brilliant orthopedist, but can still be considered really stupid when it comes to forming a coherent general world-view.

0x127• 15 years ago

I think Dawkins was hoping for a different world during his lifetime and is losing patience with those that oppose the change.

He's an extremely smart man, compared to him most of us really are stupid but that's not a reason to be judgmental about it, if anything that will just make things worse, for everybody.

For people to lose their religion is a very difficult mental process it ties in with the ego at a very basic level (it has to, that's exactly how it has been set up).

I know some pretty smart people that are deeply religious too and I've always found enough common ground in the 'smart' bits to to overlook the bits in the religion department.

I'm pretty sure they think the same way of me (well, maybe except for the smarts ;) )...

robhu5• 15 years ago

Yes, Professor Alister McGrath (Oxford) has come to similar conclusions. Dawkins et al had an expectation that religion would be swept away within their lifetime, and as this has not been achieved he has moved on to be much more direct and blunt as if to try to force it to happen.

McGrath writes about this in his book 'Why God Won't Go Away: Is the New Atheism Running on Empty?' http://www.amazon.com/Why-God-Wont-Go-Away/dp/084994645X

Here is a review of the book to give you a flavour of what conclusions he reaches http://mcdanell99reviews.blogspot.com/2011/08/why-god-wont-g...

0x127• 15 years ago

That review completely weirds me out. Atheism does not have it's roots in the 9/11 attacks, nor is it 'new' by any definition. Sure, Dawkins wrote 'The God Delusion' chronologically after 9/11. But that doesn't mean his views were much different before then, he's been an outspoken atheist pretty much all his life.

As for the blatant attempt to tie all atheists to Nazism that's a first-order Godwinning right there.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11332515

Ahteists are no more violent than religious people, I think they're people just like all the others, you can expect something of everything.

I hope the book is better than that that review lets on.

princeverma2• 15 years ago

what else would you call them? them : "who doesn't see presented/available evidence and just think that no matter what, their beliefs are true."

edit: Forgot to mention that, sometime these are the people who govern us, make law, treat us and in process of doing these things they try to enforce their belief OR have strong opposition towards anything which contradicts their belief.

Tichy14• 15 years ago

spiritually challenged?

0x127• 15 years ago

The ability to see presented/available evidence depends to some extent on your frame of reference and how much time you've spent believing something and how deeply that belief is ingrained in your psyche.

Lots of scientists go to their graves defending pet theories in spite of lots of available evidence to the contrary.

This behavior has more to do with how much of the ego is invested in something than the ability to see or evaluate evidence as such.

princeverma2• 15 years ago

In reply, i will just leave this quote from Carl Sagan:

"In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time someting like that happened in politics or religion."

brlewis7• 15 years ago

How about unscientific?

You're still going to run into problems applying and adjective to people, since they can think scientifically in one area and unscientifically in another.

For example, Dawkins, presumably thinks scientifically in genetics. However, when it comes to religion being a cause of wars and other violence versus a pretense for wars and violence, Dawkins hangs onto the "cause" hypothesis despite data pointing to the "pretense" hypothesis.

The difference is important. If you get rid of a cause, you solve the problem. If you get rid of a pretense, people find another pretense. Robert Pape's data is consistent with the pretense hypothesis. Nonetheless, Dawkins devotes himself wholeheartedly to propagating the cause hypothesis. If he took a scientific approach, he would devote himself wholeheartedly to testing his hypothesis instead.

It's Dawkins "who doesn't see presented/available evidence and just think that no matter what, their beliefs are true."

Tichy14• 15 years ago

So you think religion does no harm at all?

jules• 15 years ago

One could say that they are rational reasoners who have prior probability distributions that are not nonzero everywhere, if we rule out those with self-contradictory beliefs.

hbrouwer• 15 years ago

I still find it intriguing that Francis Collins, who in 1993 replaced James D. Watson as head of the National Center for Human Genome Research at the National Institutes of Health, is a religious person [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Collins_(geneticist)#Re...]

I'm not judging anyone here, I'm just saying I find it striking, and slightly unimaginable.

billybob2• 15 years ago

Collins has written a book called "The Language of God" (referring to DNA) in which he explains how he reconciles his beliefs with his scientific understanding.

In it, he tells his own story and explains why he thinks Christians should accept evolution and why scientists should not be hostile to faith.

cycojesus• 15 years ago

Weither the people in question truly are stupid or misguided wasn't the point of the question. I like how he answers about why he cares instead of mincing words.

scotty792• 15 years ago

In this quote I don't see anything about religion. He was just asked if he's bothered by stupid people and he stated that he's bothered by how stupid people influence children.

And even if the religion was implied by the original context then sure, Michael Faraday maybe was not stupid but his father might have been to some point and due this stupidity wasting his sons time.

0x127• 15 years ago

I've got a problem with that viewpoint. I'm not sure if I'm able to articulate it properly but consider that without Michael Faraday's fathers religion his son might not have been born at all, and if he was he might have followed a different path in life, becoming a carpenter or some other mundane profession.

You don't get to play the same universe twice over with different pieces with a claim to knowing how that universe would unfold. All this stuff is inter-related and if you change one thing you may change more than you think you do.

Science and religion are to some extent in competition, both strive to explain things, the one through the supernatural, the other through reasoning and rigorous experiments.

I know which side my bread is buttered on but I'd never stake a claim on editing the past and saying that 'x or y not being religious' would have been good for science or the opposite. That's something that would be very hard to prove.

scotty792• 15 years ago

I have not stated that if Faradays father was not religious it would improve science, only that it could.

His father could be killed or ostracized for being atheist and that would definitely harm science.

demallien3• 15 years ago

You're setting up a strawman there jgrahamc. Dawkins does not equate religious to stupid. Anyone that has listened to him much at all is fully aware that what he was getting at here is those people that continue to indoctrinate children with rubbish like Intelligent Design/Creationism when they have been presented, repeatedly, with hard evidence for the reality of evolution and the fact that it does not require a guiding force.

That willful ignorance is what he is appalled at, and quite frankly I don't know what else you can call someone that is willfully ignorant, if not stupid.

jgrahamc5• 15 years ago

Right before that question from the interviewer Dawkins quoted a statistic that 40% of Americans think that Genesis is a true story and went on to say that 'they probably believe' that Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt.

You may be right that he's only talking about creationists directly but I still think name calling isn't the way to go. It's a bit like calling someone with a mental impairment 'retarded'. Doesn't help.

demallien3• 15 years ago

"Right before that question from the interviewer Dawkins quoted a statistic that 40% of Americans think that Genesis is a true story"

And did he then go on to say that he considers those 40% to be stupid? Or is it more likely that he considers those 40% to be the unfortunate childhood victims of the 'stupid' people? I think you're reading your own prejudices into his statement.

dgunn3• 15 years ago

Should we call them rationally impaired?

For Dawkins to continue with the conversation, there had to be a way to refer to the collective and the interviewer already used the word, "stupid". Why stop the discussion just to reassign the group to a new word? In the context of the interview, those people are considered to be stupid and for clarity, they should be called stupid. They may be smart in other areas, but their willingness to not see evidence makes them stupid in this particular arena.

earnubs• 15 years ago

It may be that I haven't kept up, but doesn't evolution require a guiding force of some kind? Speaking purely scientifically, of course.

loumf4• 15 years ago

Not according to the theory, no.

cousin_it• 15 years ago

Evolution is guided by the environment. For example, if customers always choose the best-looking pumpkins to take home and eat, and the ugliest ones end up being used for seed, the genes of ugly pumpkins will have more successors in each generation, and pretty soon your crops will consist of ugly pumpkins only. That's the complete mechanism of evolution right there. Would you say the customers unwittingly acted as a guiding force in evolving your population of pumpkins toward ugliness?

demallien3• 15 years ago

The easiest way to think about it is this: if evolution has a guiding force, in which direction is it guiding? And before answering that question, think about where most of the biomass of the Earth is found (hint, it's not in us humans).

_urga8• 15 years ago

Another strawman is the idea that the theory and model of evolution should be retrofitted all the way back to the beginning of time, a moment for which we do not have many data points, that the discussion should take place there, and that it should necessarily preclude any model of creationism derived from Genesis, and thereby preclude any investigation into the historicity of the Resurrection, an event of 30 lifetimes ago, for which we have many data points, neutral, opposed and biased.

bluekeybox• 15 years ago

... continue to indoctrinate children with rubbish like Intelligent Design/Creationism when they have been presented, repeatedly, with hard evidence for the reality of evolution and the fact that it does not require a guiding force.

Thinking about this used to make me angry, but I am glad it doesn't anymore since anger is a negative emotion and is not productive. What I realized is that people who "willfully indoctrinate" their children into a religion often do so not out of hubris ("I am smarter than those godless atheists") and not out of ignorance ("I don't care what others have to say"), but out of the following: "I have no idea how to raise children properly, therefore I will raise them to be religious because from among the people I know, most 'good, proper' people are religious, and because if you follow the ten commandments/whatever you cannot really be bad".

So ultimately the indoctrination of children into a religion is no so much something particularly malicious (hubris/ignorance), but more an admission of defeat (i.e. "I have no idea how to teach children morals if I don't tell them the story of Jesus"). People are scared that their children will turn into anti-social monsters if they are not indoctrinated. They see sensational stories on TV of parents being murdered by their own children and they think that if they raise the children to be religious, something similar will never happen. Fear is a powerful force.

Perhaps someone should come up with a popular atheist's guide to how to raise children, and a part of that religious indoctrination will go away. Unfortunately, if you look around, most of the people publishing such books are religious zealots and most of the outspoken atheists are busy attacking the zealots instead of being occupied with something more productive.

tspiteri4• 15 years ago

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

It might seem, especially to a scientist, that a religion is based on its core beliefs. But it is easy, especially for trained theologians, to get to whatever conclusion they want from some dogmatic starting point. Religion is not mathematics, where starting from an axiom will inevitably lead to a particular conclusion. So arguing about the untruth of the religious axioms is missing the point.

tspiteri4• 15 years ago

Further to this, I've found this excerpt from Richard Feynman's "Is Electricity Fire?" in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!:

And then one day—I guess it was a Saturday—I want to go up in the elevator, and there's a guy standing near the elevator. The elevator comes, I go in, and he goes in with me. I say, "Which floor?" and my hand's ready to push one of the buttons.

"No, no!" he says, "I'm supposed to push the buttons for you."

"What?"

"Yes! The boys here can't push the buttons on Saturday, so I have to do it for them. You see, I'm not Jewish, so it's all right for me to push the buttons. I stand near the elevator, and they tell me what floor, and I push the button for them."

Well, this really bothered me, so I decided to trap the students in a logical discussion. I had been brought up in a Jewish home, so I knew the kind of nitpicking logic to use, and I thought, "Here's fun!"

My plan went like this: I'd start off by asking, "Is the Jewish viewpoint a viewpoint that any man can have? Because if it is not, then it's certainly not something that is truly valuable for humanity... yak, yak, yak." And then they would have to say, "Yes, the Jewish viewpoint is good for any man."

Then I would steer them around a little more by asking, "Is it ethical for a man to hire another man to do something which is unethical for him to do? Would you hire a man to rob for you, for instance?" And I keep working them into the channel, very slowly, and very carefully until I've got them—trapped!

And do you know what happened? They're rabbinical students, right? They were ten times better than I was! As soon as they saw I could put them in a hole, they went twist, turn, twist—I can't remember how—and they were free! I thought I had come up with an original idea—phooey! It had been discussed in the Talmud for ages! So they cleaned me up just as easy as pie—they got right out.

edanm• 15 years ago

"Is the Jewish viewpoint a viewpoint that any man can have? Because if it is not, then it's certainly not something that is truly valuable for humanity... yak, yak, yak."

This isn't really true for Judaism. There is no "Jewish viewpoint". Jews believe that they are the chosen people, and they have to live by a different set of rules to other peoples.

It's not immoral for non-Jews to perform works on Saturday, simply because they don't have to live by that rule.

hobbes5• 15 years ago

His treatment is indeed shallow, and he knows it. This is demonstrated by his unreasonable reasons for not debating William Lane Craig on this very issue:

William Lane Craig, Richard Dawkins and the Empty Chair: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1ldYmg0lpE

Edit: Digestible summary of the issue: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/8511931/Richard-Daw...

Tichy14• 15 years ago

At least link to some digestible summary of the issue, not to some propaganda video.

hobbes5• 15 years ago

I'm being downvoted but Dawkin's fellow atheists have also criticised him on this matter:

QUOTE "Some of Prof Dawkins’s contemporaries are not impressed. Dr Daniel Came, a philosophy lecturer and fellow atheist, from Worcester College, Oxford, wrote to him urging him to reconsider his refusal to debate the existence of God with Prof Craig.

In a letter to Prof Dawkins, Dr Came said: 'The absence of a debate with the foremost apologist for Christian theism is a glaring omission on your CV and is of course apt to be interpreted as cowardice on your part.

I notice that, by contrast, you are happy to discuss theological matters with television and radio presenters and other intellectual heavyweights like Pastor Ted Haggard of the National Association of Evangelicals and Pastor Keenan Roberts of the Colorado Hell House'" /QUOTE

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/8511931/Richard-Daw...

olavk• 15 years ago

Good point. It is quite typical for atheists to argue logically about whether its rational to believe in the existence of God given current evidence and so on. But for most religions people, the attraction of religion is the social context, traditions and rituals and the feeling that things happen for a reason and there is a fundamental purpose for everything.

Some atheists seem to believe that people follow religions because of their belief in some of the religions dogmas - so if you can argue that the dogma is wrong or irrational, people will realize their folly and stop following the religions. But it is the other way around. People believe the dogmas because it is part of their religion.

loup-vaillant2• 15 years ago

Wait a minute, are you saying that Science and Religion are two different magesteria? Or that religious dogmas are neither true nor false? What do you mean by "religious axioms"? Are they any different from other religious beliefs? From any other belief? And most importantly, what point does arguing about the (un)truth of religious axioms miss?

The way I see it, "religious axioms" are beliefs about our world. Like any other, they each more or less match our world. And I do see the point of arguing about their truth. I mean, it would be a pity to forsake our souls by rejecting an existent God, or forsake our lives to an non-existent one.

tspiteri4• 15 years ago

What I was trying to say is that Dawkins believes that religious dogma is false, and he tries to convince people that religion is wrong by debunking religious dogma. But that does not work, see olavk's comment for the reason why I think it doesn't.

In other words, in this context, the truth behind religious dogma is irrelevant (which, if twisted enough, may qualify as neither true nor false).

And when I said religious axioms, I was trying to compare religious dogma to mathematical axioms, if such a thing makes sense, so I used the mathematical term.

ugh2• 15 years ago

“But it is easy, especially for trained theologians, to get to whatever conclusion they want from some dogmatic starting point.”

Wow, never was the uselessness of theologians more succinctly described.

mckoss• 15 years ago

What do you call someone who continues to believe a falsehood in the face of all evidence, reason and logic? "Stupid" seems pretty spot on to me.

halostatue• 15 years ago

Willfully ignorant.

I understand both points here: JGC is correct that stupid is the wrong word for what Dawkins is talking about. Dawkins believes that there are a class of people who have shown themselves to be incorrigibly ignorant.

Someone who is stupid would be incapable of learning the facts involved. They should not be treated with disdain; it's not their fault.

Someone who is ignorant, doesn't know the facts involved. They should also not be treated with disdain; they don't know any better.

Someone who, despite repeated exposure to factual, repeatable knowledge chooses to remain ignorant… that's who Dawkins is disdainful of, and I don't blame him. And while I happen to agree with his view on the willful ignorance of Creationists, it is important to note that those selfsame folks would consider him willfully ignorant of the glorious truth of their god.

Ideally, Dawkins would leave out the name-calling altogether, but it's an awfully convenient shorthand to say that someone who is willfully and incorrigibly ignorant is, in fact, stupid. It just happens to be unnecessarily inflammatory and too much of a shortcut.

etherael• 15 years ago

The part this article is criticising him for is a little out of context;

I care that people are being misled by those stupid people, because I think children deserve to know what is true and wonderful about the world into which they have been born, and it really is a shame that they are denied that; by ignorant and stupid adults, as you've described them.

The last part does hedge a little on if he would originally have actually chosen that definition. And still, it is certainly not an indefensible position to say that religious beliefs are quite stupid.

getonit• 15 years ago

Having never questioned an indoctrination, religious or otherwise, is naive at best - stupid is a perfectly reasonable description, IMHO.

shpoonj2• 15 years ago

This is just further proof that any know it all can set up a blog, throw out logic, state a poorly formed opinion, and someone will jump on their band wagon.

michael_dorfman• 15 years ago

I'd add Knuth to the list of "very smart, and yet religious" people.

hobbes5• 15 years ago

Add also Larry Wall.

"Perl [is] a biblical reference to the "pearl of great price" (Matthew 13:46)."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Wall#Accomplishments

_urga8• 15 years ago

And also Thomas Bayes.

"an English mathematician and Presbyterian minister, known for having formulated a specific case of the theorem that bears his name: Bayes' theorem."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bayes

sigzero• 15 years ago

There is a huge preponderance of "religious" people that have made great scientific discoveries. Dawkins' argument is the same as everyone else who doesn't believe in "God". So what? Dawkins is free to believe in what he wants as is everyone else.

billybob2• 15 years ago

This may be a bit of a tangent, but personally, I can't understand Dawkins' crusading attitude about religion.

If I believed, as he does, that there is no God, that all wonder and amazement and desire and love are merely chemical reactions, and that all consciousness will die with the universe, I wouldn't bother trying to convince others of it.

"You should believe this because it eliminates all meaning and purpose in life." Hey, great sell! I think I'd just eat, drink, and be merry before I died. Who cares what others believe?

If you're a Christian (as I am), you believe you've got good news to tell others. If you're an atheist, what's good about your news, and what difference does it make to tell anyone?

loumf4• 15 years ago

Your good news is that atheists are going to burn in hell for eternity.

My beliefs don't eliminate all meaning and purpose in my life -- that's just silly to think about atheists. I am trying to make a difference with my life, not because I expect some reward in the afterlife, but because of personal drive to make the world better.

When I see a person suffering, I don't think, "It's ok, because when they die, God will take care of them" -- I think: "Holy shit, we need to do something about this right now!"

3pt14159• 15 years ago

Because Atheism is not a lack of ethics. My dad is an atheist and I'm a Christian but we're both concerned with the truth. Many atheists grew up in homes where the parents enforced a very strick household so they are trying to end what they see as a form of oppression.

Either way, I wish these types of discussions would stay off HN.

MrScruff2• 15 years ago

If you're a Christian (as I am), you believe you've got good news to tell others. If you're an atheist, what's good about your news, and what difference does it make to tell anyone?

The reason you think that is because you're only capable of seeing the world from your own perspective (as with anyone).

I'm not religious, and I've always found the universe a thing of great wonder. Nothing would interest me more than a better understanding of the nature of reality and conciousness. However, I find the answers given by religion unsatisfying and arbitrary - hardly good news.

Also, it's very well established that the driving force behind wonder, amazement, desire, love and pain are merely chemical reactions. It's only the subjective experience of those sensations (conciousness itself) that is not well understood.

mattgreenrocks2• 15 years ago

Atheism doesn't necessarily remove all meaning and purpose in life. It just removes any divine purpose(s) in the process of removing God.

That said, I've never been impressed by reductionism. It seems presumptuous to assume you can use one form of intelligence (logic) to understand absolutely everything else about the world. You can describe the aesthetic sense via chemical reactions that take place in the brain, but that doesn't take you any closer in understanding it. In other words, we don't expect experts in processor microcode to tell us anything novel about functional programming, do we? Of course not: FP's concepts are implemented via the microcode, enabling FP to concern itself with much higher-level abstractions. And the things that FP 'thinks' about are quite different than that of a processor.

The other thing that bugs me is often the new atheists are so angry on the Internet. Angry about how everyone won't change. Angry about how much religion has done. And it is justified anger, sometimes. But if we use their line of thinking, there's only one life to live -- why waste it in anger? Why try to convince everyone? You've already admitted they're all stupid, right? It seems like there's this reluctance to just let go of that which cannot be changed.

I've been angry for a good deal of my life, and I'm just writing this as a cautionary note. Be very careful. Humans don't seem to tolerate anger for very long without side effects.

Tichy14• 15 years ago

It would be a lot easier to tolerate the religious people if they kept their thoughts to themselves and would not try to exert their morals over other people...

_urga8• 15 years ago

Re: "It just removes any divine purpose(s) in the process of removing God."

And it removes any right on the part of the divine to reveal itself.

Tichy14• 15 years ago

For me it is the other way round: belief in god would eliminate all meaning, wonder and purpose in life. After all with a god, everything would be arbitrary (whatever god wants). So what would be the point in doing anything, trying to understand anything? God could just change the thing I just understood in the next millisecond, and all my effort would have been wasted. Also, what would there be to wonder about, if the answer is always "god made it so"? And, presumably god would already understand the thing he created, so what would be the point in me trying to understand it - the puzzle would already be solved. It would merely be cruel of god to withhold the information from me.

It's a bit like modern Hollywood movies: computer graphics have enabled arbitrary visual effects, so they have become boring to me (the effects, I mean). I almost never wonder "how did they do that".

Also Dawkins wrote a lot about the issue you present, and he makes good points about the universe without a god being fascinating.

Udo• 15 years ago

Being an atheist is not about "good news", it's about reality - or more precisely, the perception thereof. I'd personally rather be right than tell others fictional good news. There is a stereotypical misunderstanding hiding in your assumptions about atheism and religion:

> If I believed, as he does, that there is no God, that all wonder and amazement and desire and love are merely chemical reactions, and that all consciousness will die with the universe, I wouldn't bother trying to convince others of it.

For many people who don't believe in deities, the contention that our existence is based on "mere" chemistry is not necessarily denigrating. On the contrary, the chemistry of life is awesome and beautiful. A mundane and scientifically valid model of how the world works is not automatically a nihilistic act of sacrilege against the universe. You see, for those people who don't believe, the attribution of everything meaningful to an external (fictional) entity with an oppressive agenda is just as bleak and meaningless as your perception of a life without god.

> You should believe this because it eliminates all meaning and purpose in life.

Now we have crossed into pure flamebaiting. Atheism makes no statement about the meaning and purpose of life. If you don't believe in god, you're an atheist. Atheism is not a philosophy, it's the absence of religion. As such, it can't and won't make statements to the effect you're describing. Also, the phrasing here is extraordinarily inflammatory in its nonsensical twistedness. I can't imagine anybody, whether theist nor atheist, saying this phrase. It's a total non-sequitur.

Looking past the straw man into the underlying assumption here, I feel prompted to point out that atheism does not eliminate meaning. Atheists don't necessarily have any traits in common. Some may indeed struggle with depression and existential worries, but my perception is that most of them do not. You fail to understand that for (most?) Atheists the absence of a belief in gods is extremely liberating and it enhances the sense of wonder they feel towards the universe and their own existence.

That doesn't mean most people drop the belief in gods just because it feels better, instead they become atheists because it wouldn't make sense for them any other way. Where they go from there is entirely up to them individually.

Personally, I say this to you: whatever floats your boat is totally okay. Nobody should be telling you what to believe or what to not believe - and neither should you. I believe you inadvertently come across as hostile towards non-believers and that is also not good. How would you feel if I made the same untrue statements you made about atheism about your life choices? It doesn't solve anything.

Tyrannosaurs3• 15 years ago

I share most of Dawkin's beliefs on religion but abhor the way he chooses to communicate them.

I'm not sure if it's hit the US but in the UK we have a thing called the Alpha Course. It's a Christian run 10 week course that discussed the "meaning of life" with a slightly (but only very slightly) covert agenda of converting the attendees to Christianity.

My experience (anecdotal) of Alpha is that it does a good job of bringing lapsed Christian's back into the fold - that is people who basically accepted it but weren't practising. For anyone else - those of other faiths, atheists and so on, it doesn't seem to do much. There will be exceptions but that seems to be the general pattern.

I see Dawkins as generally the same for atheists. I doubt very much he has any sort of major influence on Christians (other than to annoy them), he just gives atheists and agnostics a cheer leader and helps them confirm what they're thinking.

Nothing wrong with that of course but he's not engaging in any way that's going to bring about the death of religion which is what he'd seem to like.

loumf4• 15 years ago

This is absolutely right. For any movement, there are those that take an uncompromising extreme view. This is not to appeal to the other side, but to move the goal posts as far in their direction as possible. Think Stallman, Nader, Ron Paul.

They serve a purpose to the movement -- providing arguments that can be crafted by those that seek to convert and making others seem less extreme by comparison. One attribute that they must have to perform this effectively is to never compromise, and instead to keep pushing the envelope.

ugh2• 15 years ago

Meh. Dawkins is harmless and says very docile stuff all the time. I honestly don’t understand people who are offended by him. Really?!

Tichy14• 15 years ago

I'd argue that religious people chose to not think things through but simply rely on other authorities, and that is stupid behavior.

Also, does stupid mean "genetically hardwired to low intelligence", or can stupid people be made more intelligent somehow?

_urga8• 15 years ago

There's something rational about looking at historical events and asking if it's unlikely, likely, or strongly likely that they happened at all.

For example, I have heard of a handful of Germans today who for one reason or another say the Holocaust never happened. In light of the thousands of eye witness accounts, is it sensible to say that?

Another example, there are atheists today who for one reason or another say the Resurrection never happened, and not necessarily because they have ever looked into the historical primary and secondary sources.

In light of the hundreds of people who died at Roman hands in the 1st century, refusing to recant that they had seen the risen Lord, is it sensible to label their testimony a delusion, or inherited from their parents, without any thorough investigation at all?

As for those who had seen Christ themselves:

"I passed on to you what was most important and what had also been passed on to me. Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said. He was buried, and he was raised from the dead on the third day, just as the Scriptures said. He was seen by Peter and then by the Twelve. After that, he was seen by more than 500 of his followers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he was seen by James and later by all the apostles. Last of all, as though I had been born at the wrong time, I also saw him. For I am the least of all the apostles. In fact, I'm not even worthy to be called an apostle after the way I persecuted God's church."

"And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead."

"But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep."

Are the New Testament sources primary, accurate, unbiased, trustworthy? When were they written? Have they been corrupted or do we read them as they wrote them? How many sources are there inside and outside of the New Testament? Are they independent? Are they coherent?

Here are some people who have tried to address these questions:

Paul Barnett, "Is the New Testament history?" (http://www.amazon.com/New-Testament-History-Paul-Barnett/dp/...)

FF Bruce, "New Testament Documents" (http://www.amazon.com/New-Testament-Documents-They-Reliable/...)

coward_anon• 15 years ago

"In light of the thousands of eye witness accounts, is it sensible to say that?"

Well, this is funny, because here's the issue on which Dawkins fails completely to apply the principles he advocates we all should.

Incidentally, so do you. You claim thousands of eye witness accounts. Well, how many of those have been independently verified? Furthermore, even the highly know and regarded ones are ridden with inconsistencies and outright lies (I'm thinking Elie Wiesel here).

And even if they were there remains the point that no hard proof whatsoever has been produced to support the claim that the Holocaust as is told today ever happened. No documents exist that don't require a double interpretation to support such claim. No gas chambers that differ any bit from standard delousing chambers used at the time, even in the US, have ever been uncovered. This could go on.

I'm not trying to advocate for one version or the other. That's not the point. The point is, that this issue is NEVER applied the same principles that are applied to a rational inquiry or scientific endeavour or even a case being judged in a court of law. If you don't believe me, well, go and check by yourself. But don't just limit yourself to the Yad Vashem because that's the same as reading the Bible and saying it proves itself (although there are plenty of inconsistencies in the Yad Vashem data curiously).

I admire Dawkins and his work, but the truth is, in the issue of the Holocaust he's as stupid as the people he accuses of being stupid. Even worse, I bet he would viciously defend his stupidity against anyone who would challenge him otherwise.

_urga8• 15 years ago

I'm sure you are more painfully familiar with the matter than I am.

I have an adopted Jewish aunt. Her mother and father put her on one of the last trains to leave Germany for England. At the last second her mother pushed her baby sister through the window to her. She never saw her parents again.

I have a Jewish friend who's grandfather was one of the last survivors of a concentration camp, and who walked to Israel and started repairing shoes on the streets of Tel Aviv.

I live across the road from the South African Jewish Museum, and I have seen the photographs. I am not a historian and I do not claim to be one, but I think it's sensible to say that something happened, and that hundreds of thousands of people died and were affected. Furthermore, anyone who would suggest these things never happened would have some "explaining away" to do.

gyardley• 15 years ago

There are mountains of evidence - in fact, mountains of bodies - that 'support the claim that the Holocaust as is told today ever happened'. That the Holocaust occurred is completely and utterly beyond question.

Next time you choose to post this sort of thing from an anonymous account, just write 'I'm an antisemite' instead. It'll save us all time.

brlewis7• 15 years ago

I share your opinion on the rationality of looking at the likelihood of historical events.

Do Barnett and Bruce detail the evidence for the stories of hundreds of early martyrs? I wonder if those stories could have been created later in order to strengthen the apparent case.

_urga8• 15 years ago

I have read Barnett and am reading Bruce. They focus on the New Testament documents as sources and they touch on the martyrdom of most of the authors, especially Paul of Tarsus who had himself previously persecuted Christian men, women and children.

There is a temptation to explain these events away, each on their own, one event at a time, tackling one and moving on to the next, without ever tackling the combination of them together.

MrScruff2• 15 years ago

Ignoring Dawkins for a moment, I think those here naming Christian scientists as examples of how science and religion are compatible are missing the point. Science isn't about the people who practice it and it's not about beliefs. It's about the scientific method - theory tested by and derived from repeatable experimentation. And there are no Christian scientists who apply the scientific method to their own religious beliefs, for obvious reasons.

robhu5• 15 years ago

True, but surely the reason is not that there are no religious believers who have applied rational processes to the question of whether there is a God (or gods) and have concluded that there is - but rather that the scientific method is a method that is only suitable in certain domains.

It's easy to equate 'the scientific method' with any sort of 'rational' evidence based approach, but the term has a specific meaning.

We don't apply the scientific method to solve murder investigations for instance, or to solve math equations. Similarly historians don't use the scientific method to determine what happened in history.

It's not that the choices are the scientific method or ignorance -- it's that the scientific method is not applicable in many of the domains that intellectual religious people have mined to conclude that theism is more likely than atheism. Many Christians point to the historical evidence for Jesus for instance, see (former Prof) Richard Bauchman's 'Jesus and the eyewitnesses' http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Eyewitnesses-Gospels-Eyewitness-... or Prof Licona's http://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-Jesus-New-Historiographic... 'The resurrection of Jesus - a new historiographical approach' or they have considered philosophical arguments (see what Alvin Plantinga has written for example).

This is not to argue that science and religion are Non-Overlapping MagesteriA (NOMA) as Gould argued, clearly there are overlaps (whether the first humans came in to existence along with the universe 6,000 years ago is a pretty clear example of overlap), but many of the arguments intellectual theists give for thinking theism is more likely are rational, just not scientific.

brlewis7• 15 years ago

Meta comment: This post must be getting flagged a lot.

  114. Dawkins' Stupid People (jgc.org)
       34 points by jgrahamc 3 hours ago | flag | 76 comments

I also note that the comments are full of civil and intelligent discussion. I wonder to what extent the flagging helped it stay that way by keeping it off the front page.

Dawkins' Stupid People

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