Dawkins Demolished

[John Skelton]

Since you've brought up 'style' french frank, I found this article's style very clotted and it took me ages to get to the kernel. The point I'm making is that it expressed distate (is that better than revulsion?) for the sex:power crimes but it did not express disgust for the attempts locally and internationally and at the highest level to hide the perpetrators from the flinty majesty of the law.

Perhaps you were looking for a kernel other than the one that is there? Seymour isn't writing about child abuse: if he was he'd have written a different piece. I'm afraid what you are doing looks rather similar to the tactic of supporters of war and occupation in Afghanistan who accuse their opponents of a lack of concern for women's rights.

[amateur51]

Perhaps you were looking for a kernel other than the one that is there? Seymour isn't writing about child abuse: if he was he'd have written a different piece. I'm afraid what you are doing looks rather similar to the tactic of supporters of war and occupation in Afghanistan who accuse their opponents of a lack of concern for women's rights.

I'm certainly concerned about the abuse of women and 'homosexuals' in Taliban Afghanisatan, John but I don't necessarily see that as cause for 100+ years of war and occupation.

What I'm looking for is some analysis that recognises that the staff at all levels of the Catholic Church not only committed serious crimes, they also sought to avoid the due process of the law. They sought to make the Catholic Church a law unto itself, literally.

[John Skelton]

What I'm looking for is some analysis that recognises that the staff at all levels of the Catholic Church not only committed serious crimes, they also sought to avoid the due process of the law. They sought to make the Catholic Church a law unto itself, literally.

But again - it isn't what Seymour is writing about. If he was writing about child abuse in the Catholic Church then that's what he'd do ("analysis that recognises that staff at all levels ... not only committed serious crimes, they also sought to avoid the due process of the law.") But he isn't. He's doing an analysis of the ideological basis for Dawkins / Hitchens atheist campaigns.

I'm certainly concerned about the abuse of women and 'homosexuals' in Taliban Afghanisatan, John but I don't necessarily see that as cause for 100+ years of war and occupation.

Quite. So if you were writing about war and occupation you wouldn't write an analysis of the situation of women and 'homosexuals' in Taliban Afghanistan - you would acknowledge the injustice - as Seymour does in this context - and move on to the point of your article "100+ years of war and occupation."

[amateur51]

Quite. So if you were writing about war and occupation you wouldn't write an analysis of the situation of women and 'homosexuals' in Taliban Afghanistan - you would acknowledge the injustice - as Seymour does in this context - and move on to the point of your article "100+ years of war and occupation."

That's my point, he doesn't.

[jean]

OK, but it's more helpful if you give the citation/website url - with people using coloured text it's not always clear that it contains a link.

I'm surprised it's not clear, Flosshilde. Text in red which appears underlined when you pass your mouse over it always contains a link. Mine's not the only post on this thread to include a link in this way (see #151 & #158 on this page, for example).

So where does that leave the Parable of the Good Samaritan, one wonders?

I can do no better than quote

How is that a rebuttal?

"Christians seldom realise," Professor Dawkins declares, that "much of the moral consideration for others which is apparently promoted by both the Old and New Testament was originally intended to apply only to a narrowly defined in-group. 'Love they neighbour' didn't mean what we now think it means. It meant only 'Love another Jew'."...

...The merest child, though, is aware of the parable that Jesus is reported as recounting, in response to a question on that very text from Leviticus (19:18), "Love your neighbour as yourself." Jesus is asked, "Who is my neighbour?"

As almost everyone apart from Professor Dawkins knows, the man who proves himself a good neighbour to a man robbed and left for dead is not the Jewish priest or Levite, but the Samaritan, a member of a despised people, regarded as heretical and unclean by Jesus's contemporaries.

Or, to be more helpful,

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3642542/What-Richard-Dawkins-makes-of-Jewish-morals.html

[aeolium]

Richard Seymour, of Lenin's Tomb http://leninology.blogspot.com/2010/...pitalists.html

I think this is a pretty muddled article. There is first of all the irony of seeing 'lenin' writing under 'Lenin's Tomb' against the reductionism and materialism of 'Ditchkins'. Here is Lenin's own comment on religion: "Atheism is a natural and inseparable part of Marxism, of the theory and practice of scientific socialism....All modern religions and churches, all and of every kind of religious organizations are always considered by Marxism as the organs of bourgeois reaction, used for the protection of the exploitation and the stupefaction of the working class."

The writer complains that the protestors against the Pope's visit did not have a broader agenda, which might include attacking the patriarchy of the Anglican church. But why on earth should they have had? It was a protest against the Pope's visit. Far from being simply composed of 'smug, bourgeois liberals' (interesting how the word 'liberal' is the ultimate hate word for some leftists as it is for the Right in America), the march included a number of those Catholic families who had been directly affected by the child-rape scandals in Ireland. So it was quite wrong of the writer to say that 'it confirmed that those who had turned out were part of an embattled minority defending science, enlightenment and liberal values.'

Again, to attack Dawkins for his patriarchy and imperialism is hardly supported by the evidence (and here the conflation of Dawkins' and Hitchens' views, as if they were identical, is completely misleading). Dawkins was opposed to the Vietnam war and the Iraq war in 2003 (unlike Hitchens, who supported the latter). His hostility to Islam is probably motivated as much by a hostility to the patriarchal practices within Islamic societies - like genital mutilation, unequal treatment of women under the law, disenfranchisement for women in some countries, restriction of education - as anything else.

The author attacks Dawkins for a 'reactionary, reductionist biologism that naturalises an extremely savage neoliberal order, featuring the gene as a utility maximiser', yet then criticises him later in the same paragraph for departing from orthodox Darwinism and even requiring the prop of idealism. Has Dawkins in fact ever supported in print a society based around an 'extremely savage neoliberal order'?

I am surprised that in any discussion about Dawkins, there seems to be an 'all or nothing' reaction. This is almost certainly to do with the militant proselytism of his approach. But it should be possible to put that to one side and consider his work and his arguments on their own terms. I think he and other scientists have done very laudable work in popularising the theory of evolution. For his arguments against religion, they are strongly articulated and useful contributions to the debate - in this, he has continued the work of other atheists such as Bertrand Russell. It ought to be possible to debate the arguments without returning to the personality of their proponent.

[french frank]

That's my point, he doesn't.

He says: "I suspect that on this issue the 'new atheists' are correct, and that Ratzinger is indeed every bit as indictable as they say he is - just as in general they are correct to charge religion, and not merely its institutions, with promoting patriarchy, oppression and ignorance."

It's a scholarly piece, not a polemic. Read Dawkins if you want polemic rather than scholarship

Add: I'll leave aeolium's post for others as I have to go out!

[Lateralthinking1]

militant proselytism of his approach......It ought to be possible to debate the arguments without returning to the personality of their proponent.

His presentation style is very pulpit though isn't it. Genuinely the closest to Rowan Williams I have heard.

There is absolutely no way that I would separate out a person and that person's argument. That would be as rational as forming an opinion about someone just on the basis of his face.

[aeolium]

There is absolutely no way that I would separate out a person and that person's argument.

Why not? There are plenty of writers in the past of whom we know hardly anything, yet that does not stop us examining what they had to say.

[Lateralthinking1]

I take the point to some extent. You do have an argument. The merits of objectivity.

But I think you go by what you know. The internet has shattered a few of my illusions. It all looks different when you find out more about them. Frequently, I have wished I hadn't asked.

Part of it is human nature. A few of the more identifiable voices on this site might get greater endorsement for a tiny number of points if they weren't made under their names.

Then you have the MPs who preach family values and are serial adulterers. Such things probably do need to be known. This extends to professional writers who don't simply write but publish worldviews.

[amateur51]

It's a scholarly piece, ...

[Flosshilde]

I'm surprised it's not clear, Flosshilde. Text in red which appears underlined when you pass your mouse over it always contains a link. Mine's not the only post on this thread to include a link in this way (see #151 & #158 on this page, for example).

I don't use a mouse with my laptop, & I usually keep the cursor on the scroll button rather than have it wandering about the screen in case someon'es hidden a link.

...The merest child, though, is aware of the parable that Jesus is reported as recounting, in response to a question on that very text from Leviticus (19:18), "Love your neighbour as yourself." Jesus is asked, "Who is my neighbour?"

As almost everyone apart from Professor Dawkins knows, the man who proves himself a good neighbour to a man robbed and left for dead is not the Jewish priest or Levite, but the Samaritan, a member of a despised people, regarded as heretical and unclean by Jesus's contemporaries.[/url]

Or, to be more helpful,

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/p...sh-morals.html

I don't think this story invalidates the fact that the moral codes underpinning Judaism & Christianity are designed for a specific group of people in a specific place & during a specific period. Some of it might be generally applicable, but even that isn't generally adhered to by Jews or Christians (the commandment against killing, for example?).

[heliocentric]

(the commandment against killing, for example?)

Not to mention: "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth." (My emphasis.) This is before the bit about bowing down to the image. As far as I know, Islam is the only religion which has kept that commandment while Judaism and Christianity have quietly shelved it.

[scottycelt]

Richard Dawkins' "The Ancestor's Tale" is a much more enjoyable read than "The God Delusion". (Full title, for Dr Fraser: "A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life"). This pilgrimage is some 4 billion years long. The planet has survived around 5 mass extinctions. Man has been around for the blink of an eye, in evolutionary terms about 100,000 years).

Without wishing to be facetious or disrespectful in any way to the views of others, but in a spirit of wishing to challenge (and as I've asked before):

What was God doing in the 14 billion years the universe has been in existence?
Does he have a purpose, and is Man central to it?
What was he doing (for example) during the 300 million years that trilobites ruled the earth?
Has he other projects on the go in the billions of other galaxies in our expanding universe?

That's just for starters. Unfortunately theologians never engage with this sort of honest puzzlement.

Off to work now, so shan't hear of my excommunication and anathemisation until later

Without wishing to be facetious or disrepectful in turn, is God governed by and subject to the same laws of the universe as humans?

How can anyone including theologians answer such questions? If they tried to they would be claiming to know the 'mind' of God which is obviously absurd.

Christians may well express similar puzzlement regarding those who claim that the universe and natural order emerged and evolved from nothing at all. Evolution itself has never been a particular sticking point for the Catholic Church at least. Historically, it generally has had an open mind on the question and tended to leave that issue and others to ongoing scientific study.

It's the original conjurer-like, magic 'look, it came from absolutely nowhere' trick that really baffles some of we thick-headed, non-scientific types, and rather than try and engage in proper debate some atheists obviously prefer to deflect such questions by conveniently banging on about shameful child-abuse in the Catholic Church, as if such irrelevant (to this issue) and repugnant practices were totally unheard of elsewhere.

[MrGongGong]

Show me the teapot !
rather than get me to show you that there is no teapot !