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Richard Dawkins

  
  

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ONLY NICE THINGS
14:00 / 18.12.06
The discussion is actually about whether to permit the use of condoms in the specific case of married couples, one of whom and the other of whom is not HIV positive. It's a laughable concession, but the kind of thing that leads to collapses in ideology. Despite the purging of Liberation Theology, there are still voices in the Catholic Church calling for the Church to work with agencies promoting condom use as a lesser evil than death itself.

Oddly, however, the Catholic Church _is_ relativistic in its approach here. Well-off western Catholics ignore the teachings, and because they can very easily get hold of birth control and the church can do nothing to stop them the church does nothing to stop them. In the poor south, the issue is not so much that the Catholic church is actively stopping people from using condoms - there are a mess of cultural and logistical issues at play, varying from place to place - but that they do nothing to help, and they obstruct the efforts of people who seek to provide education and supplies for safer sex. The issue would not be an issue if the Church was as powerless and as unminded to fight everywhere as it is in Italy or the US; it is only a problem when combined with inequality of opportunity and genocidal racism.

However, we are talking about the orthodoxy of a decent-sized but still minority religion. Evade said above that preachers of all colours banned condoms. Assuming that he meant this metaphorically rather than that the preachers were literally of all colours, I'd like to know more about Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist and Protestant approaches, for starters.
 
 
sdv (non-human)
15:01 / 18.12.06
Another example of the new "militant atheism"...

Agent provocateur: Michel Onfray

From the toronto star..." Michel Onfray has already gone a step further: in Atheist Manifesto he dismantles and condemns as dangerous and archaic not only Islam, but Christianity and Judaism as well. And after more than 30 books, he is finally seeing his ideas spread far beyond his native Normandy. His 2005 book, Traité d'athéologie, became a best-seller not only in France, where it has sold 230,000 copies, but also in Italy and Spain, and has sold well in other Latin countries, and even in Germany and Asia...."
 
 
nighthawk
15:46 / 18.12.06
The issue would not be an issue if the Church was as powerless and as unminded to fight everywhere as it is in Italy or the US; it is only a problem when combined with inequality of opportunity and genocidal racism.

Precisely. Just as the religious right's championing of creationism would not be an issue if they weren't such a significant political force in the US; or how New Labour's plans for more faith based schools are as much about bringing private interests into education as they are about religious faith and parental choice.

Individual religious beliefs just seem so peripheral to all this - religion (particularly organised religion) only becomes a significant factor when combined with particular social conditions, and even then it only plays such a prominent role because it serves non-religious interests.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I think the Catholic Church (to take one example) is a fundamentally conservative institution, as I've argued elsewhere on the board. But my own experience of Catholicism hasn't shown all catholics to be backwards reactionaries. I disagree with them about the role the Church can play as a progressive force, but I don't think their religious faith itself makes them stupid or even conservative.

Dawkins tries to set up a distinction between religion on the one hand, and rational progressive politics on ther other, which I just don't buy. Its not the religious impulse per se that's the problem - as though this were tied up with a fundamental irrationality, which all intelligent people ought to reject. Reading interviews with him, I get the impression that he thinks that the main problem with the political situation in the US is that politicians and people at dinner-parties are reluctant to admit that they're atheists; when, as intelligent, rational, middle-class people, they must be.

And the idea that we need more prominent militant atheists is just bizarre. I mean, why? It assumes that religious belief is the core problem, thus implicitly passing over the particular social conditions which make religious institutions and lobbies so powerful and dangerous. I think its Dawkins obsession with religion (among other things) which distinguishes him out from useful political commentators (Chomsky and Harvey have been mentioned in this thread), who may well be atheists, and who certainly aren't worried about alienating the right, but don't waste time railing against faith itself. The prospect of more Dawkins-style atheists depresses me really - people don't need to be told that they're dumb; and progressive change in society isn't going to come from the voices of ideologically-pure Reason, Eagleton's 'inhabitants of North Oxford'.
 
 
Char Aina
16:39 / 18.12.06
Were yo given a choice as to whether you were baptised or not?

yes.
i was given the choice, and i chose not to be.
be careful what you assume.
 
 
nighthawk
16:45 / 18.12.06
Were yo given a choice as to whether you were baptised or not? Or whether you should go to a religious school? Thought not

No and no. And I'm still an atheist.
 
 
sdv (non-human)
18:11 / 18.12.06
Nighthawk,

Perhaps I can clarify why I think that you are mistakern about some aspects of Dawkins work. Forgive me if i ignore the religious/god question for a moment. But I think you recent emails are missing the importance of 'Truth'.

What Dawkins is doing is insisting that the 'Truth' of a statement is important. This is similar in intent to Alain Badiou's philosophical work whose ontological starting point is equally 'Truth'. I would suggest that both are important in that they are defining Truth through the use of scientific methods, different ones obviously. This may appear to be a minor issue but it marks the return of the scientific and philosophical claim that 'Truth' is central. The primary difference is that Dawkins begins from the requirement for empirical proof whilst Badiou begins with mathematics.

The critical justifications for Dawkins rejection of all Gods and Religions is that the existance of God cannot be proved by those who believe in it, closely followed by the demand that religion must lose its special status as an unquestionable field of knowledge. This Dawkins rather sensibly argues cannot be sustained, when no other area of human and inhuman knowledge is granted this unquestionable status.

The reason I'm going over this old ground is because I think that it contains the core reason why you are mistaken in the assumption that Truth is not important in politics, because each and every instance where truth is denied is critical. All 'Truths' are equivelant in value (from May68, the second wave of feminism, complexity theory...and so on). It is a small step from 'faith in the divine' to 'faith in the market', which is a paraphrase Harvey's discussion of working class america and it's relations to neoliberalism.

Oh - someone mentioned 'equality' earlier - this is a precise instance where scientific work does support the Truth that all singularities are equivelant. What science can never support at a theoretical level is any assumption (which can never be proved) that singularity A is superior to B... The unspoken other of Dawkins problem is that religions all contain the assumption... (way back into the indo-european). Remember that Dawkins work on evolution is precisely written against the tree-like structures which presumed animal x was superior to animal y. Which faith and religions presume... (Read evil scientists posts...)
 
 
illmatic
18:18 / 18.12.06
Great post, Nighthawk.

politicians and people at dinner-parties are reluctant to admit that they're atheists; when, as intelligent, rational, middle-class people, they must be

This is a bit offtopic - not out of character for the thread, then - but I think a component of Dawkins atheism may be a hostility towards any thinking that's not rigidly rational. In the other thread on him I quoted him on the X Files:

This view on Dawkins is influenced by reading Unweaving the Rainbow - an otherwise great book is spolit by his huge hostility towrds the anything that smacks of the irrational. He compares the X-Files with a hypothetical racist TV programme. He says:

I am not saying that supernaturalist propoganda is as dangerous or as unpleasant as racist propoganda. But the X-Files systematically purveys an anti-rational view of the world which by virtue of it's recurrent persistence, is insidious.

What a weird man.
 
 
Jack Fear
18:23 / 18.12.06
eib: Were you given a choice as to what primary school you were sent to? Indeed, were you ever asked if you wished to attend school at all? Were you given a choice as to what you ate for dinner each night? What your bedtime was? When to take a bath?

There's an intrinsic power of compulsion in the parent-child relationship, generally recognized until the child attains the age of majority. That's how childhood works.

Your comparison to apartheid is utterly fatuous. Apartheid had the power of the state behind it, whereas religious observance is, overwhelmingly, a personal choice that heads-of-household make for the members of that household.

Do you see the difference, there?
 
 
el d.
08:19 / 19.12.06
Other religions on HIV/AIDS and condom use
( quoted from this study from Trinidad)

Hindu
The Hindu representative felt that HIV/AIDS occurred primarily among homosexuals and did not pose a significant problem for the Hindu organization. Furthermore, it was assumed that Hindus were less likely to acquire HIV due to high social and spiritual obligations to obey religious doctrine. According to the interviewee, HIV/AIDS was a medical problem. Although prayers and mantras are effective treatments and cures for disease, the organization was less concerned about bodily ailments than it is about eternal life. The interviewee felt that individuals living with HIV/AIDS in the Hindu community may feel discriminated against and ostracized because disease is an "unhygienic situation;" individuals living with HIV/AIDS are unclean and would be expected to stay away from organized worship.


Nation of Islam (NOI)
NOI supported a theory that HIV was man-made in a United States laboratory in a plan to control population growth. The NOI representative was skeptical of scientific literature and research on the efficacy of condoms and boldly supported abstinence as the only effective prevention of HIV and other STDs.

Jamaat al Muslimeen
This representative was highly active in HIV/AIDS education for the neediest urban communities. Jamaat al Muslimeen traveled on foot to reach individuals and families who demonstrated serious health risks, and provided education and condoms. However, the representative's activism, particularly in condom distribution, was not supported by the Jamaat al Muslimeen organization. According to the interviewee, the organization believed HIV/AIDS was a "sin from God."

I´ll correct my statement. Most religions ban condom use. Sorry for that generalisation there. I´m sorry if I lower the quality of this discussion.
As to the democratic nature of the US government I´d go with Chomsky in stating that a democratic election in an environment of manufactured consent is not really all that democratic.

As to wether I think atheism frees from personal inconsistencies: nope. But it does straighten out the world a little. Assuming events to be largely chaotic is much more like my perceived reality than assuming a plan which cannot be understood. As an agnostic atheist, I concede the point that god cannot be proven or disproven, but I simply think other theories are more plausible.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
09:48 / 19.12.06
I think you might have meant some of that to go in the thread about democracy, eib.
 
 
Phex: Dorset Doom
11:33 / 19.12.06
Two things:

1) Can we change the thread summary to something a little more representative of what's actually being argued in the thread? And reality, since the UK is neither supposedly nor actually socialist.
2) For those that haven't read The God Delusion there's a documentary version here amongst links to several good science documentaries.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
13:33 / 19.12.06
I think my main problem with some of the lines of debate being forwarded in this thread is the conspicuous lack of distinction between the party lines of various orthodox denominations and what you might call the "popular religiosity" of the people who subscribe to various religious faiths.

It sets my teeth on edge when I see statements made that begin "religion is like this" or "religious people are like that" because I don't think that - even within something as orthodox as Catholicism - you are dealing with one homogenous set of ideas and experiences. There are millions of individuals that constitute "the religious" and they are all going to believe radically different things about the universe, consciousness, the idea of God and what all of that means to them as human beings on the surface of the planet.

I don't think an interview with 11 religious representatives from 10 Christian, Muslim and Hindu denominations conducted over 6 months in Trinidad and Tobago does actually support a statement like "most religions ban condom use". I don't think it even touches on the idea of what religion actually is, for instance. You might define the word "religion" to mean "an organised corporate entity such as the Catholic Church and its subscribers", and then go on to criticise certain backwards points of dogma that are held by that organisation as overwhelming evidence for the redundancy of individual religious faith. Which is a bit like me writing off atheism as a viable perspective based exclusively on Richard Dawkins' bizarre rants about the X-Files.

There is a reticence to take into account what religion actually means for the human beings who interact with it, which is perhaps supported by the total lack of engagement in this thread with the various people who have presented their own personal and experiential perspectives on religiosity, what it means to them and what they get out of it.

It's an awful lot easier to aim your shots at obvious straw men like the contraception issue, intelligent design, and creationism - none of which are particularly likely to be supported or defended by anyone posting on barbelith - and then present that as your foundation for the argument that religion has no value. Than it is to try and understand what need is being fulfilled and administered to by the religious experience, why we create these things in the first place, and how this core experience that people seem to yearn for in their lives can be made to operate in a way that does not position itself in fierce opposition to science, pragmatism and even agnosticism.

I don't think the whole 'Science' versus 'Religion' battleground that Dawkins and other militant atheists are keen on drawing up is at all helpful in trying to resolve the issues of religion in 21st century. Yes, there are some people who subscribe to a particular religion simply because their parents did, in the same way that there are some people who vote Conservative or Republican simply because their parents did. But the core purpose of religion - even if its missed by some people - is to provide a framework for spiritual needs. Whatever the source of "spiritual needs", people do seem to have them. There is some phenomenon here that you can point to. I tried to do so in my previous post to this thread.

I was trying to get across that there is a very real open-ended and ongoing process that I am engaging in through the religious narrative that I subscribe to, the effects of which can be observed both internally and externally. Internally, as my direct experience of confrontation with what I choose to refer to as "The Divine" prompts personal growth, development and understanding. Externally, as this constant spiritual learning curve shapes the decisions I make on a day-to-day basis, in turn shaping the life I have made for myself, and therefore impacting to some degree on the lives of all those within my orbit. That is a phenomenon right there. I think this is perhaps ultimately the sort of process that religion is supposed to provide a framework for. It doesn't matter a damn whether science can "prove" the existence of the deity or deities to whom I address my prayers. That is not the point. The point is the process and where it leads.

I am not engaging with these things simply because I am stupid or uneducated enough to have kept up to speed with science and rationalism. The various people in the world who experience and have experienced a religious or spiritual dimension to their lives are not going to pick up a book called "The God Delusion", realise the error of their ways because the clever man has explained it all to them, and throw in their respective Turin Shrouds. They are engaging with their religion because there is some experiential benefit that they are deriving from it. Not because they are all "intellectually challenged" but because there is a meaningful phenomenon here that I don't think is particularly well modeled by the various scientific paradigms that we have available to describe it. Something slips through the cracks. Something that is not going to be understood in any sophisticated way if the debate is reduced to a big old punch up between two caricatures of 'Religion' and 'Science'.
 
 
nighthawk
14:05 / 19.12.06
The critical justifications for Dawkins rejection of all Gods and Religions is that the existance of God cannot be proved by those who believe in it, closely followed by the demand that religion must lose its special status as an unquestionable field of knowledge.

Yes, except that in reality Dawkins quickly moves past these justifications, and claims a direct and fundamental link between religious faith and various social phenomena. The documentary Phex linked to is a case in point. Early on, Dawkins makes precisely this claim, with obvious reference to the I.D. debate. But its fairly obvious that he's only talking about a very specific subset of the class of people who profess faith. The rest of the programme involves Dawkins travelling round a whole bunch of politically tense locations and talking to people caught up in them, framing every interview with with 'Yes [vague political reference] is important, BUT...', then acting as though the mixture of bile and idiocy spouted by the chump he's interviewing is purely a result of the person's religious irrationality, and nothing at all to do with personal psychology or social conditions.

Challenging the anti-scientific claims made by certain sections of the religious community does not necessarily entail a rejection of faith across the board. Accepting that faith plays a fundamental role in many people's lives does not necessarily entail tip-toeing around every claim made on the basis of faith. Noone I take seriously has suggested otherwise.

The reason I'm going over this old ground is because I think that it contains the core reason why you are mistaken in the assumption that Truth is not important in politics, because each and every instance where truth is denied is critical. All 'Truths' are equivelant in value (from May68, the second wave of feminism, complexity theory...and so on). It is a small step from 'faith in the divine' to 'faith in the market', which is a paraphrase Harvey's discussion of working class america and it's relations to neoliberalism.

I'd be interested to hear where you think I've made the assumption that truth is irrelevant to politics. So far as I can see, all I've done is question Dawkins' claims about the results of faith.

As to the rest: you seem to be using Badiou's conception of Truth(s), which I don't understand so I can't critique; and I very much doubt that being in favour of neoliberalism and professing faith are in any way coextensive or causally related. As I said up-thread, Harvey argues that neoliberalism was promoted because it offered a succesful class-strategy for increased accumulation and recuperation of losses made in the face of social-democratic reforms. He points out that the religious right were courted because the alliance served class interests, i.e. for reasons that have nothing to do with 'faith' alone, be it market-based or divine. So far as I can see you're just playing on the similarity of the two phrases, which does a complete disservice to Harvey's careful, empirical (!) analysis.


Phex: Thanks for posting that link - the Brian Greene documentaries look fantastic...
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
14:16 / 19.12.06
I think the thread summary is a useful demonstration of where the thread originated, Phex - and also a handy demonstration of how, once you are convinced that religious=ignorant, it's easy subsequently to assume that !religious=knowledgeable, and to behave as such. The title might be misleading, admittedly, because a people keep moving away from Dawkins, but I think it's a useful central thread to the discussion. Hmm. PM me, maybe?
 
 
nighthawk
14:20 / 19.12.06
Also, even though the thread has gone off in a lot of different directions, Dawkins has been discussed throughout... Perhaps just a change to the summary?
 
 
sdv (non-human)
15:41 / 19.12.06
Nighthawk

It is those claims that make Dawkins position valuable, most of the other material you mention is pure noise, which may be entertaining but isn't much use once you've accepted that religion and theology cannot be treated as a special case.

It's the note that starts with...

religion (particularly organised religion) only becomes a significant factor when combined with particular social conditions... ... combined with the acceptance of 'faith' as harmless that that made me cosider that within such a worldview 'Truth' is ultimately secondary to faith. (Whether in relation to religion, the market, culture or faith in science...)

The point about 'faith' is that whilst for Dawkins 'religious faith' may be a special case, it is arguable that it isn't. Neoliberalism my be a case in point - everything about the discourse is founded on faith, from it's heavily disguised class base to its relationship to military democracy. ...being in favour of neoliberalism and professing faith are in any way coextensive or causally related.... Ah... but you see I think that Harvey is understating the case, and that there is a cause and effect relationship between the underlying conservatism of religions, the religious and the growth in neoliberalism. I suspect that Harvey is being 'nice' to the religious and the spiritually inclined in the vague hope that one day their class interest will... Dawkins underlying point which you disagree with is that it is unlikely that this will happen whilst religion and spirtuality are regarded with such respect.
 
 
sdv (non-human)
15:53 / 19.12.06
Two-Headed...

"most religions ban condom use"

Your use of this example is a classic avoidance of the issue, it really doesn't matter how many religions apart from sects of christianity and islam, ban condoms and encourage 'abstinance' - the problem is that some do.

The personal experiences, broadly synthesized here under the heading 'experiences of the divine', are fine -- but could you please address the horribleness of religion and the spiritual experiences as well... it might be useful for an insider to critique the everyday horrors as well. I would certainly take your comments more seriously if you began to address this... Rather than endlessly raise the myth of particularism that only the 'religiously experienced' can truly understand 'relgion or spirtuality'... (some of us do know how dangerous that particular error is).
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
16:32 / 19.12.06
I don't understand what you are asking me to address here. Yes, obviously the ramifications of the Catholic Church's position on contraception is a destructive thing. My point is that this does not automatically mean that all things to do with religion should be consigned to the scrapheap of the irrational and the backwards - as certain lines of debate in this thread appear to be claiming. I think that there is a purpose to the religious narrative beyond the various problems within organised religion that are being raised as incontrovertible "proof" of the total redundancy and irrationality of religion per se.

I find it difficult to critique the "everyday horrors of religion" from my perspective - not because I am avoiding the issue - but because I am not a member of any orthodox religion in any sense. I personally find all orthodox religion to be problematic and impossible for me to subscribe to, which is why I am keen to separate out the "horribleness" of such structures from the religious experience itself. Two different things in my opinion. Which is something that doesn't seem to be recognised at all in this sort of argument, when really it should be central to such debates.

It's not a "myth of particularism". It's the reason you have religions in the first place. To administer to certain needs that human beings appear to have. I'm not saying that only the "religiously experienced" can understand "religion". I am saying that there is a human phenomenon here that appears to be getting totally filtered out of the debate about these organised religious structures and their ills. Which is a bit weird.

I think that organised religion is deeply problematic and causes a lot of problems in the world. I'm not about to leap to its defence as I am not and have never been a part of it. However, it worries me when I see people completely writing off all religious and spiritual narratives - that I personally can see real value in - based exclusively on criticisms of organised bodies that I have no part in and do not support.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
16:39 / 19.12.06
it really doesn't matter how many religions apart from sects of christianity and islam, ban condoms and encourage 'abstinance' - the problem is that some do.

It really doesn't matter how many accountants fiddle the books - the problem is that some do. Therefore the notion of accountancy has no value in the world and should be stamped out?
 
 
nighthawk
17:00 / 19.12.06
Neoliberalism my be a case in point - everything about the discourse is founded on faith, from it's heavily disguised class base to its relationship to military democracy.

That's not what Harvey argues though is it? He doesn't suggest that neoliberals all base their ideology on an irrational faith in market-forces. He says that neoliberalism was promoted by sections of the ruling-class because of the concrete gains it promised them. 'Faith' had nothing to do with it. I mean, if Harvey was taking neoliberals to task for believing that market-forces would rectify all the world's wrongs, I could see your point, but he's not. He's not really interested in the content of the ideology itself; he's interested in its class-basis. And, as a result, he doesn't tie it to 'faith', he ties it to class-interests.

Of course there are reasons why Jerry Falwell and the Christian right proved to be good allies - noone is denying that. But the question is whether faith is the primary cause of neoliberalism's ascendancy and success, such that opposition to neoliberalism requires, what, more atheists in congress? Your last sentence just confused me:

Dawkins underlying point which you disagree with is that it is unlikely that this will happen whilst religion and spirtuality are regarded with such respect.

Are you suggesting that Dawkins is actually a critic of liberal capitalism, looking out for the interests of his poor deluded fellow workers? I'm guessing not, which is why I'm perplexed -- if anything, Dawkins is just sick of those nasty infantile irrationalists staining our wonderful, rational 21st century society.
 
 
sdv (non-human)
18:57 / 19.12.06
Nighthawk,

Dawkins is just sick of those nasty infantile irrationalists... So really then it comes down to your dislike of Dawkins belief that 'science' being founded he believes on 'rationality', or at least on something provable, is preferable to ideologies founded on faith... humm...

And of course Dawkins is as you put it 'looking after the interests of the poor...' It strikes me as deeply bizarre that the long history of atheism and the secular is being casually ignored because it might suggest that 'faith' in it's very nature oppresses...
 
 
sdv (non-human)
19:27 / 19.12.06
Two-Head

Let me repeat Dawkins well made point, that religion should not be considered as a special case of knowledge, with a priviliged status, in which he does include the spirtual. (I do not see why there should be any difficulty in constructing detailed critiques of science, rationality, accountancy, or indeed much loved philosophers...)

Let me try a different tactic. That you cannot respond to the invitation to critique the religious, the spiritual does appear to confirm the problem that Dawkins is trying to raise. So then perhaps you might produce some examples of the problems that the 'religious experience' might generate...
 
 
nighthawk
20:38 / 19.12.06
So really then it comes down to your dislike of Dawkins belief that 'science' being founded he believes on 'rationality', or at least on something provable, is preferable to ideologies founded on faith... humm...

No. Unsuprisingly, this doesn't come down to something I've neither said nor implied. It certainly does not come down to a choice between 'Science' (non-ideological, ideologically neutral, Rational, whatever) vs. Faith (...), as I've repeatedly stated. Dawkins is offering a spurious division, and insisting that we have to chose one side or the other -- rejecting that dichotomy is clearly not the same as prefering one side of it.

I'm not sure if my posts have been unclear, or if you're deliberately misrepresenting my arguments - your suggesting that the relevant factor is a personal 'dislike', and ignoring the (rational) arguments I've offered, is rather frustrating. Perhaps if I could outline what I understand your/Dawkins' arguments to be we might get somewhere?

- [T]he existence of God cannot be proved. I agree. That's one of the reasons I'm an atheist. However its not the only reason: its nonsense to believe that because a statement is not grounded in the scientific method it cannot be true. Examples of this in this thread: here, and here. Now, I'm quite happy to say that religion has no authority when it comes to scientific truths; but Dawkins has failed to show that professing faith necessarily entails a rejection of or challenge to scientific truth -- he's pulled out some examples of religious people who are guilty of this, but that's hardly the same thing.

Indeed, other scientists don't feel so threatened. This, from the late Stephen Gould:

The lack of conflict between science and religion arises from a lack of overlap between their respective domains of professional expertise—science in the empirical constitution of the universe, and religion in the search for proper ethical values and the spiritual meaning of our lives.

I happen to think religion isn't much use when it comes to the search for proper ethical values and spiritual meaning, but that doesn't prevent me from recognising that there's nothing inherently anti-scientific in religous faith

-[R]eligion must lose its special status as an unquestionable field of knowledge. Does it have this status now? If by 'unquestionable' you mean 'unjustifiable by science', then yes, but its hardly unique in that respect. Perhaps you're trying to conflate 'religion' with claims made by particular sections of the religious community that their 'faith' in creationism automatically undermines the truth of evolutionary theory? The only way that will work is if you manage to show that 'faith' itself leads one to make anti-scientific claims like this, which you have not done.

-You have, however, said this - It is a small step from 'faith in the divine' to 'faith in the market' -- and this - 'faith' in it's very nature oppresses - which I take to be analagous to Dawkins' claim that religious faith is directly responsible for various social phenomena, from the character of George Bush's presidency through tensions in the Middle East to sectarianism in Northern Ireland. I've already stated why I don't think faith is particularly important when it comes to the genesis and success of neoliberalism, and other posters have pointed out that the tension and violence Dawkins points to has non-religious roots. Ignoring or brushing over these material causes is as much an ideological move as the various explanatory strategies Dawkins employs in his sociobiology, which is precisely why I don't buy the superiority or ideological neutrality of Dawkins' 'Reason', and why I don't see any desperate need for prominent militant atheists. I'm put in a slightly odd position here really, in that I agree with Dawkins' insofar as I'm an atheist, but I totally reject his suggestions about the political significance of faith vs. science, which is what leads him to suggest that atheism is so vital.

As for this:

It strikes me as deeply bizarre that the long history of atheism and the secular is being casually ignored because it might suggest that 'faith' in it's very nature oppresses...

Well, I'll quote my favourite atheist, something I've been itching to do throughout this thread:

The abolition of religion as people's illusory happiness is the demand for their real happiness. The demand to abandon their illusions about their condition is a demand to abandon a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, then, in embryo, a criticism of the vale of tears whose halo is religion

Clumsy mixed-metaphor coming up here, but...Dawkins' criticises the halo while embracing the social conditions that lead to it...hence the criticisms of his supposedly ideologically-neutral science (I'm not sure what you meant when you said they were only 'scientific' criticisms), and hence the irrelevance of his confusion of atheism and politics.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
08:38 / 20.12.06
So then perhaps you might produce some examples of the problems that the 'religious experience' might generate...

I refer you to my last eight years of posts in the temple forum.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
10:48 / 20.12.06
SDV: I think I'm either missing something here or you haven't been reading my posts to this thread with very much attention. I honestly don't understand what point it is you are trying to make with your responses to me. To reiterate, for the third time now, I am attempting to make clear a distinction between the various destructive dogmas of organised religion that are being critiqued in this thread (such as contraception and creationism) and the values of the religious experience itself, as I understand it and have experienced it. I have provided numerous examples, from my actual life, of why I have personally found value from a religious narrative to support this. I am specifically critiquing the line of debate that posits the ills of the former as a reason to totally exclude any attempt at comprehension of the latter from the debate. If you are going to continue to respond to me with a patronising air, can you at least try to focus your comments on what I am actually saying, as opposed to accusing me of a range of things that you seem to believe go hand-in-hand with religion - but are nowhere to be found in my posts.

Why do you think that I afford a "privileged status" to the religious experience and am unable to critique the role of the spiritual in my life? What have I written that has given you that impression? I actually generate thousands of words a month critiquing and unpacking this stuff. This is what I do. For me, religion is something that I actively practice, not something that I passively believe in. I participate in the activity of religion and then attempt to understand the phenomenon that this generates. I write about it. I examine it really closely. I have multiple perspectives on what might actually be taking place. I can understand my experiences from a psychological perspective, but I can also see the limits of this model to truly contain what seems to take place within religious narratives.

I don't really think that the Gods I worship exist as supernatural beings that you would be able to prove or disprove through science, but neither do I think these things are exclusively constructs of the mind. I think that the Jungian notion of archetypes in the collective unconscious possibly comes close to modeling the phenomena that I have experienced, but I also think that it falls short and in some ways is simply restating in awkward psychological terms the processes that various magico-religious traditions have modeled far more sophisticatedly using the language of metaphor. I am interested in looking into these areas and attempting to understand this dimension of human experience on its own terms, but with a rational mind and a healthy skepticism about what may or may not be happening as a result of my religious practice.

I think that the only way to really understand the phenomena that accompanies a religious narrative is to try and do so from "within the door", as it were. You can't strap Richard Dawkins into a helmet and expect to generate the same internal process that comes from a lifetime of devotional practice. There is a certain investment of yourself that has to be made, if you are to really access this sort of experience and attempt to understand what people take from it. You have to at least meet these things halfway or else you simply won't be experiencing the phenomena. It is participatory. Like sex or fighting, observation and participation are not equivalent. In order to understand this stuff in any sense at all, you have to really step into it and make it real in your life in some sense, but that does not mean you have to abandon your rationalism, skepticism and critical distance. Rather, I think that these faculties are absolutely crucial for anyone looking into these areas, lest you have no hope of successfully navigating these oceans at all.

Granted, not every religious person in the world engages with their religion in this manner, but some people do. Not every religious person believes in the literal truth of their religious texts or has views that are diametrically opposed to science and rationalism. A lot of people have quite a sophisticated approach to understanding and engaging with "spiritual" matters. Hence my resistance to people like Dawkins apparently painting ALL religion as some backwards, irrational, medieval throwback that has no place in the modern world. There is ample evidence to support this position, for sure. There is obviously no shortage of blind fundamentalism in the world. But that extremist element of religious discourse, no matter how prevalent, is not representative of ALL forms of religious expression or spiritual investigation. To suggest that it is, and to construct an argument for the redundancy of religion based on this supposition, does not strike me as a particularly scientific approach to the issue, given all of the alternative or progressive perspectives on spiritual matters that are being willfully excluded or brushed under the carpet as if they were not there.

A person's religious life is not necessarily what you or Richard Dawkins think it is. There might be more interesting processes going on within the context of a person's religious narrative than you are allowing for in your critique of it as some kind of universal monolithic structure. For instance, you seem to have already made your mind up about what I must believe, how I must relate to my beliefs, and the level of criticism that I probably bring to them. I find this a bit weird, because here I am, telling you otherwise, talking at length about what religion means to me and why I think its worthy of my continued exploration, yet your response is to repeatedly shoehorn me into a variety of positions that you assume I must obviously hold as a religious person. I'm not sure where you might have got the idea that I attribute "privileged status" to religion or that I am unwilling to critique my experiences or beliefs. It certainly isn't in any of my posts to this thread or anywhere else. It's as if you already have your fixed idea of what a religious person thinks about their religion, and any evidence to the contrary is filtered out because it does not fit what you believe. And you wonder why atheism is sometimes painted as fundamentalism?
 
 
multitude.tv
22:07 / 20.12.06
A person's religious life is not necessarily what you or Richard Dawkins think it is. There might be more interesting processes going on within the context of a person's religious narrative than you are allowing for in your critique of it as some kind of universal monolithic structure.

and

To reiterate, for the third time now, I am attempting to make clear a distinction between the various destructive dogmas of organised religion that are being critiqued in this thread (such as contraception and creationism) and the values of the religious experience itself, as I understand it and have experienced it.

ok, got that. But I have a few questions for you, but let me make clear where I am coming from as well.

I think you are right, that Dawkins, etc. are principally critical of the way in which Religion functions within a society. Dawkins is quite specific with the examples he chooses (Radical Islamists, Zionists, and Conservative Evangelicals). Though, I will grant you that he does dismiss “supernaturalisms” as dangerous as well (though they aren’t the target of the “God Delusion” as I have read bits of it).

But I think that is what I see as un-critical in your presentation of your practice. That is, why describe the “religious experience” as a “religious experience” if you are not situating that practice within the general social-historical tradition of “Soul”, “God”, “Spiritual discipline.” It seems to me to be more of a poetic anachronistic description of psychic life than anything that is tied to the authoritative notion of institutional religion.

My question is why? Why do you think that there is a “soul”? What is it about the language of religion that applies to these experiences that is preferable to that of science?

For example, scientists often use the term “elegance”, an evaluative aesthetic description, to describe the Universe, but Sagan, etc. can demonstrate what they mean by this “elegance.”

And you write:
A person's religious life is not necessarily what you or Richard Dawkins think it is.

Again, when philosophers, historians, sociologists, talk about religion they are generally discussing social phenomena. That’s why the academic study of religion focuses on observation, be it textual criticism (religious texts) archeology (ceremonial relics), anthropological (observable rituals), social relationships, etc.

Though I do think the psychology and neurology of belief is a valid arena of criticism and inquiry. That is, when someone who is having a “religious experience” and describes it so (“out of body experience” for example), has particular areas of the brain particularly active; and someone who is put under the knife, or wears a helmet, that stimulates the same parts of the brain and describes the experience in mystical or religious language, there are grounds to say, with some evidence, that it may all be in the head. Furthermore, it’s not surprising that some personal disciplinary (as well as socially reinforced) practices may result in such experiences.

I am reminded of Rudoph Otto, who in the introduction to The Idea of the Holy, 1917 dis-invites readers who have not “experienced” the holy. Otto introduced the term the Numinous (“wholly other”) to describe this experience. The numinous is a combination of three experiences; the Mysterious, the Tremendous, and the Fascinating. Otto wanted to formulate a foundation for the phenomenological study of religion. If you like Jung, you may like Otto quite a bit.

I think Otto is read well with Feuerbach (one of the Young Hegelians), who’s basically calls god (in the Essence of Christianity, 1841), as the ultimate Other (in Hegel’s dialectical sense), a projection of all that is particular to humanity made universal. Feuerbach is one of the first students of Hegel to reverse the dialectic (making it “humanist” rather than “spiritual”), an acknowledged stage (though not without criticism) in Marx’s thought.

What I do find a bit interesting is that many of those who have expressed a dislike for Dawkins on this board do so out of an assessment of his personality as “arrogant” (etc.) and not his critique. I think in going through Dawkins' arguments (if anyone has them), and addressing the particular points of his thought, we may have a more fruitful discussion beyond “I think he’s a wanker or not”.

Furthermore, what I find more confusing is the offense taken by people who self describe themselves as religious with the caveat of “not like them” apart from orthodox faiths. That is, it is precisely those folks who describe themselves as religious, though in most of the world’s orthodoxies these positions are heretical. For example, it is highly unlikely that Crowley would be considered an approved theologian to most of the world’s major institutional faiths. It seems, at least in part, a strategy for casting one’s self as a twice victim. Not only do the major religious communities denounce these positions, so does Dawkins.

In closing I think the referent that Dawkins is describing as “religion” is what the vast majority of people accept as “religion”, including the majority of people who self describe themselves as “religious”. It’s also what people who study religion (critically or theologically) call religion. I find the position of the heretical but still religious somewhat analogous to that of being a Gay Conservative, at least to the degree that such folks tend to defend conservative ideals though in practice conservative institutions (as a whole) disavows them. (Conservatives dislike these folks because they are gay, Progressives because they are Conservative). Just trying to articulate a bit of my own confusion.
 
 
el d.
07:48 / 21.12.06
multitude.tv, best post i´ve read so far. This is exactly what I was clumsily trying to get across.
 
 
nighthawk
08:23 / 21.12.06
What is it about the language of religion that applies to these experiences that is preferable to that of science?

Come on... If you're talking about describing experiences, there's absolutely no reason to prioritise scientific language. Would you describe the experience of enjoying a novel in scientific language before any other? Eating an ice cream? Having sex? Wouldn't you be misssing what most people thought was important about these experiences?

One can easily admit that experiences have a biological basis and still make non-scientific claims for them... I can say that an art-work is sublime, for example. If someone said 'ah, but look, these parts of your brain are showing increased activity, so its all in your head', I'd suggest they were somewhat missing the point. Of course our neurobiology engenders our psychic lives, but that doesn't make my appalled reaction to, say, recent events in Ipswich 'all in my head', does it? One could certainly describe it in those terms, but noone would suggest that that was the most important, or only legitimate way of understanding the experience.

What I do find a bit interesting is that many of those who have expressed a dislike for Dawkins on this board do so out of an assessment of his personality as “arrogant” (etc.) and not his critique. I think in going through Dawkins' arguments (if anyone has them), and addressing the particular points of his thought, we may have a more fruitful discussion beyond “I think he’s a wanker or not”.

People have engaged with Dawkins' arguments in this thread, both as offered by him and by posters on the board. I'm really not sure where you're coming from here.

More later...
 
 
illmatic
08:44 / 21.12.06
What is it about the language of religion that applies to these experiences that is preferable to that of science?

To follow Nighthawk’s post, the language of religion(s)/spirituality also gives you a language to talk about experiences which you may have had, or sought out and cultivated, which through a skeptical scientific filter are simply delusional or valueless.

On that note, I was paging through that horrible thread in Temple and I found this:

Atheism is not necessarily the positive assertion that there is no god, but rather a demand for evidence for such a being.

Well, to a degree, these experiences offer up this evidence, only they’re accepted and judged on a personal and experiential basis, rather than a scientific one.

Here we’re talking about the murky waters of occult practice rather than “organized religion” and I think it’s right and interesting to make that distinction. I’ll try and come back to this later, with some more thoughts on Dawkins as well.
 
 
StarWhisper
10:05 / 21.12.06
Courtesy of Wittgenstein:

Veiwing the world as a limited whole is the experience of mysticism.
 
 
nighthawk
10:11 / 21.12.06
Could you expand on that eirdandfracar? Only its a fairly opaque contribution by itself... What do you understand Wittgenstein's claim to be, and why's it important to this discussion?
 
 
StarWhisper
10:42 / 21.12.06


Oh right ...yeah, sorry.
It means basically that in observing the gap between the objective reality and how we perceive it, a sense of otherness, of magic arises. It fills the unknowable space.

And offers an explanation for the conception of god. But also knowing that the person who wrote that was a mystic adds an extra dimension to the meaning of that - that it takes on a different meaning when veiwed without skepticism.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
10:57 / 21.12.06
why describe the “religious experience” as a “religious experience” if you are not situating that practice within the general social-historical tradition of “Soul”, “God”, “Spiritual discipline.” It seems to me to be more of a poetic anachronistic description of psychic life than anything that is tied to the authoritative notion of institutional religion.

And

"In closing I think the referent that Dawkins is describing as “religion” is what the vast majority of people accept as “religion”, including the majority of people who self describe themselves as “religious”. It’s also what people who study religion (critically or theologically) call religion. I find the position of the heretical but still religious somewhat analogous to that of being a Gay Conservative"


This will have to be really quick as I'm on a deadline today. I see your point and I think it raises an interesting question that gets us off topic a bit, but I'll go with it for a moment. Weirdly, it's a lot more socially acceptable to describe what I do as "magic" simply because it is not an institutional religion like Catholicism, Judaism, Islam and so on. I'm certainly no apologist for institutional religion and my own criticisms of such orthodox structures are as fierce as any in this thread.

However, I do reserve the right to describe what I do as religion, simply because that's what it is. I practice non-orthodox Vodou. I pray to my deities every single day. I look after their altars with love and care. I throw big ceremonies for the Spirits that I open to my community, the last one with around 40 people in attendance. I've even performed marriage ceremonies and requiems for the dead. I'm not using the word "religious" as a poetic anachronism for my psychic life. I'm not talking about Aleister Crowley or doing sigils in my bedroom - all the boxes of what constitutes a full religious life are ticked. Yet I am not allowed to call it religion, simply because it is not recognised as such by western culture. If this means I am cast as "twice a victim" then so be it. I stand by my right to have my own religious freedom and expression, thank you very much, regardless of what you, the Pope, Richard Dawkins or Jimmy Tarbuck might think of it.

It disturbs me immensely that the fact it is an African/African Diaspora religion - that operates on its own terms, is not organised or institutional, does not look like Christianity or Islam, but is nonetheless a major world religion (with millions of adherents if you include all the sub-branches such as Haitian Vodou, Cuban Santeria, Brazilian Candomble and so on) - it is somehow considered "not real" or "not a 'proper' religion". It disturbs me that, in describing my religious life as such, I am likened to a "Gay Conservative".

My question is why? Why do you think that there is a “soul”?

My question is: why do you think that I think there is a "soul"? Here we go again. More imagining of what I must obviously believe as a religious person based on what you know about other religions. My problem with this thread is the seeming inability to understand that the religious experience is not synonymous with the structures of institutional religion - they do exist as separate things in the world - therefore an effective critique of one does not undermine the value of the other.
 
 
Spaniel
12:27 / 21.12.06
Er, Eird, I think Wittgenstein's status as a mystic is far from "known". As I understand it his attitude towards all things mystical is a matter of debate and by no means straightforward, and may well have changed radically throughout his life. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I imagine that's a quote from Wittgenstein circa the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. You are aware that Wittgenstein went on to reject the lines of thinking developed therein?

Basically I think you're rather jumping the gun with your interpretation.
 
 
Phex: Dorset Doom
16:01 / 21.12.06
If you thought Dawkins was bad... Brian Flemming (the documentary filmmaker behind The God who Wasn't There) is issuing 'the Atheist challenge': perform the one unforgivable act- denying the Holy Spirit (Mark 3:29) and post the results on Youtube!
 
  

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