A Citizen — I’ve deleted some of your anti-religion rants off this site before, so I know you to be a fundamentalist atheist yourself. I appreciate it that you disagree with me on religion. Let me explain to you that if you don’t like the religion posts — don’t read them. Then they won’t bother you. These matters may not interest you, but they do interest other people.

Re “Don’t insult and denigrate views which differ from yours.” — you first, son. The fact, I don’t denigrate Dawkins personal views on religion or the existence of God. He can believe or not believe whatever he likes. I am slamming him because he denigrates other peoples’ beliefs, and he does so in a way that demonstrates he has no idea what those beliefs actually are. The very idea that the existence of God can or ought to be proved or disproved demonstrates that he has no clue how most believers understand God. It’s just as clueless as saying that evolution hasn’t been proved because no one has found the missing link.

At this point, Quentin, I have to assume you are being deliberately stubborn about not getting it and are asking stupid questions just to annoy me. Comments are now closed.

I contend that oppressions and genocides and atrocities are not caused by religion or ideology, but by dark and fearful impulses arising from subconscious depths. These impulses then latch on to a belief or a cause for justification, and the carnage begins.

Of course, I agree with you totally.

“Unfortunately, like every other fundamentalist atheist I’ve ever encountered, he [Dawkins] is profoundly ignorant about religion as a whole. The small part of religion he knows and writes about is not representative of the whole.”
AND
“And, because he doesn’t respect religion enough to study it, he remains willfully ignorant of it.”
AND
“Dawkins has his own “missing link” bugaboo, which is the existence (or not) of a material God.”
AND
“Let me say (if you are new here) that I do not “believe in God” as people normally understand those words, and in particular I don’t believe in a personal God, yet I am religious.”

It would probably help me to understand if you could give some citations of Dawkins (and/or Harris) that you feel show his/their FA-ness. Examples of Dawkins showing how he “is profoundly ignorant about religion as a whole” and “doesn’t respect religion enough to study it” and “remains willfully ignorant of it” would help me understand your position. And (to repeat a bit of my comment #44) I still feel that your “religion” is not the “religion” Dawkins and Harris intend to target — and if your religion is not a “normal” religion (quoting you: “… I do not “believe in God” as people normally understand those words …”) I am not sure why they ought to address it?

Respectfully and really trying to get it, Quentin

Thus folks who believe god are deluded.

If he’s wrong then demonstrate the existence of God. Don’t insult and denigrate views which differ from yours.

That’s the action of someone who takes themselves entirely too seriously.

Which whenever this topic comes up you certainly seem to do.

What makes someone an FA are stupid assumptions about what other people believe about God.

Let me give you an example. Once upon a time there was a lovely spirituality web forum in which a number of intelligent and well-educated people from several religious traditions had some high-level, intellectual discussions of advanced theology. No one in this group had a literal belief in scripture. No one as I remember insisted that God was a distinct being, although some believed in “God” as a metaphor for something else. It was from some Christians in this forum that I first learned about Paul Tillich and his writings on God as the ground of being, which have some interesting parallels in Buddhism. And I’d post blather about the Garden of Eden story being a metaphor for the development of consciousness, and while they didn’t all agree with me they were at least cool with it.

Anyway, the fly in the ointment in this forum was a group of atheists who would interrupt the discussions with taunts about how we must believe the world is only 3,000 years old, or that we must believe God is some kind of supernatural person, and when we said we didn’t actually believe that, they’d tell us we were hypocrites. And those people were fundamentalists atheists. We even called them fundamentalist atheists; that’s the first time I heard the phrase. This was nearly ten years ago.

The spirituality forum broke up after the host began to charge, and because of some other people who were causing problems. It was a shame. I cherish the memory.

But the point is that a fundamentalist atheist is someone who has some really narrow-minded ideas about religion, is on a crusade to fight those ideas, and who is willfully clueless about religious beliefs and practices that don’t conform to his narrow ideas about religion.

Respectfully, Quentin

(First, I would like to mention that my second comment @ 9:51pm was actually composed at 5pm Pacific and then I had to go off and make dinner and finished it up at 7pm — without reading any intervening replies of yours.)

In comment #38 [ http://www.mahablog.com/2007/01/04/richard-dawkins-and-fundamentalist-atheism/#comment-66388 ] you said: “The crux of Dawkins’s (I’m not sure Harris is in the same boat) complaints about religion is that ALL religion, no exceptions, is wrong and bad for mankind and should be eliminated.” Here is what Dawkins says about religious education in The God Delusion (pp. 340-4) titled “Religion Education as a Part of Literary Culture”: The King James Bible of 1611 – the Authorized Version – includes passages of outstanding literary merit in its own right … But the main reason the English Bible needs to be part of our education is that it is a major source book for literary culture. … Here is a quick list of biblical, or Bible-inspired, phrases and sentences … [1.5page list follows] … P. G. Wodehouse is, for my money, the greatest writer of light comedy in English, and I bet fully half my list of biblical phrases will be found as allusions within his pages. … Let me not labour the point. I have probably said enough to convince at least my older readers that an atheistic world-view provides no justification for cutting the Bible, and other sacred books, out of our education.”

I do not believe Dawkins wants religion stamped out and down the memory hole. I think he mostly wants faith replaced with reason.

Respectfully, Quentin