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Richard Dawkins Is the Best Argument for Religion
Atheist Pope Richard Dawkins has bared his barren soul yet again, this time on Twitter.
Earlier today, someone mused how they would handle a pregnancy if the fetus was found to have Down syndrome, calling it a serious ethical dilemma. Pish posh! Matters of life and death are dead simple to Professor Dawkins.
@InYourFaceNYer Abort it and try again. It would be immoral to bring it into the world if you have the choice.
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) August 20, 2014
Outrage erupted on the social media service, which provoked even more vitriol from Dawkins who ridiculed human emotion and, out of dumb reflex, the Catholic Church.
The Oxford professor claimed that he is no fan of eugenics, but those with Down syndrome simply have nothing positive to contribute. This is “elementary moral philosophy,” he sniffed, and if you’re too dim to get that, you really should buy his books.
Dawkins burst into pop consciousness with his 2006 harangue The God Delusion, where he channeled the New Atheists’ id. Non-belief wasn’t enough for this breed, which instead required invective against anyone who dared disagree with their fundamentalist godlessness.
But where Dawkins was once praised, he’s now criticized for a string of controversial statements thought to have damaged the atheist brand.
Last month he claimed that “mild” pedophilia isn’t as bad as violent pedophilia and “stranger rape” is worse than date rape. His recent dismissiveness toward sexual harassment and Islam in general has incensed long-time allies on the left such as the editors of The Guardian.
While many religious believers were initially concerned about New Atheists’ emergence as the face of non-belief, in retrospect it was a movement doomed to fail. While the majority of atheists are content to live among agnostics and Buddhists and seekers and Christians, Dawkins’ Jesuitical core of anti-theists are defined by intolerance, hatred and the worst anti-social behavior.
Anyone who has survived the intellectual insecurity and joyless evangelizing of a Dawkins devotee walks away with a decidedly negative view of the movement. As a result, atheists are now more likely to apologize for Dawkins than defend him.
At its best, religion offers what Spock-like rationality cannot. Compassion. Forgiveness. Beauty. Grace.
When most people read of a medical missionary who gives his life for strangers dying of Ebola, witnesses a raucous Holi festival, or visits the Notre Dame de Paris, they’re filled with awe and wonder. Dawkins’ denomination spits upon all three while ridiculing any observers who admired the sight.
Even if your head tells you there is nothing beyond our brief life on this spinning rock, with whom would you rather spend those 70-some years? A dour moral scold like Dawkins, or a friendly, fulfilled believer?
Published in General
Dawkins is one of a growing group which can be characterized as not atheists, but as God haters. In reality they are believers. But they hate the God that they have come to believe in. They are activists in the war against God. They have chosen sides.
Why?
Because the Creator God, the God that they hate, requires acknowledgement, and He also requires obedience to His Word. He will then extend His grace to all who believe on His Son for salvation.
This is hard for the God haters. His grace is an offense to their ego.
Thanks the interesting read. I believe that atheists are the same mix of good and bad as everybody else, but would not want to live in a society where atheist rationalism is considered the foundation for morality because I think Dawkins’s repulsive beliefs is where that would ultimately lead.
I’ll say this for Dawkins: the man says what he thinks and doesn’t apologize (at least from what bits from what little I’ve heard about him). Even when what’s being said is awful to me, I appreciate the honesty. I also appreciate that when he says he hates religion he really means it- not just safe-to-hate Christianity but also Islam.
Curse you Jon. This won’t stop me from posting about this same topic tomorrow.
Ah you all got beat to the punch by Paddy Siochain.
Jean Vanier, founder of L’Arche, disagrees with Dawkins. Intelligent Life did a profile on him which is worth the read. Contrast Dawkins’ disdain for humanity with Vanier’s compassion for society’s weakest. Vanier has lived among the mentally disabled for decades and believes they have something to teach us, calling them “teachers of tenderness”. Because of his experiences, he believes that “in a healthy society, the strong need the weak as much as the weak need the strong.”
Yeah but mine has more words. More words means it’s better. It does. I swear.
Ha. What you may think of as inoffensive religiosity is deeply deeply dangerous to people who might have to listen to mindless zealots shout things like, “God bless you,” if you sneeze. That’s really dangerous behavior.
Dawkins is right to hold the line firm. If we start seeing value in imperfection, we might come face to face with the reality that we are all imperfect and in need of love and mercy, or realize the poverty of a utilitarian worldview.. Definitely not his shtick.
John Gabriel, it isn’t clear to me whether you are condemning these ideas, or simply citing them as examples of opinions that have irked the Guardian lefties. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water. Those statements seem uncontroversial to me–pedophilia with violence IS worse than pedophilia without violence, and stranger rape IS worse than date rape.
Agree.
Hitler wrote Mein Kamph in 1922. Honest man, he.
No fan of Dawkins in the slightest; his idea that a little pedophilia here and there is no big deal is repulsive.
That being said, there is a conversation about pedophilia that someday should be undertaken. It would, in my view of it, save children from it.
But it involves a new set of assumptions (though I find them to be proofs, I’m not sure we yet have the scientific backing for it, so for now I must call them assumptions).
These new assumptions would never get past the wall of political correctness that insists some things may never be discussed, and I would be grossly misinterpreted, no matter how clear I am about it.
It would have to be perfectly worded, and I fear I’m not a clear enough scrive to get it done.
Nonsense! Violent pedophilia pulls back the curtain and may make is easier for some victims to realize evil is being done to them and that it’s okay to fight back. It makes it clearer that they are being hurt and they’re not the one to blame. It also might make hiding the signs of abuse more difficult for the offender as well. “Non-violent” pedophilia (an oxymoron if there ever was one) is the kind rampant in most (all?) societies and that can go on for years in secret.
As far as rape goes, it’s clear the victim gets to define which is worse. If a stranger rapes you, you still presumably have family, prospective fiancé, or fiancé to seek comfort from. When raped by someone you know (aka date rape), then the victim loses that prospective fiancé or fiancé as well.
Dawkins has a further explanation, probably more weasel-ish than the original tweet. He knocks down a couple of strawmen, but then relies on …”To conclude, what I was saying simply follows logically from the ordinary pro-choice stance that most us, I presume, espouse.”
Sure. The ordinary pro-choice stance. Most reasonable people think like me … right?
Most of his “argument” is that personhood depends on intelligence. He asserts it as an axiom (as he’s done frequently in previous comments on the subject). His defenses for that axiom aren’t actual arguments; they’re generalizations that depend more on shaming/goading people not to disagree with him because if they do, they’d be branded as idiots or religious nuts. He’s a self-reinforcing assumption.
I haven’t read his books, only about his books, but does he ever answer why he cares so much about the so called delusions of believers? If you don’t believe in God, fine, but why do you care so much if others do? It seems like atheists are triumphantly obsessed with the errors of non-atheists. The reverse isn’t really true, at least not in the post-inquisition, modern world. Evangelism exists of course, but it generally doesn’t deride its potential converts the way Dawkins does.
What he fails to understand is that by his world view, no one has a right to exist any more than a pile rocks does.
My main point was to show why the Left is increasingly angry with Dawkins. However, I don’t understand his distinctions at all. Any pedophilia is pure evil and I can find no degrees in the hideous crime. A toddler can’t fight back, but that doesn’t make this “non-violent” crime better than one which involves a struggle. Similarly, rape is rape and it doesn’t matter if said rapist buys a margarita for the victim first.
Your utilitarian moral calculator is clearly inferior to his and inadequate to the task.
Just ask him.
Are you certain? I haven’t experienced either, thank Providence, but in my imagination, the violation of trust inherent in “date rape” would be even worse to bear than the “impersonal” violation of starnger-rape.
The thing about Dawkins is, not only does he not believe in a personal God, he doesn’t believe in personal people. He’s said that we can’t fault people for their actions because it’s all just the result of deterministic natural forces. So, mind and personality are just an illusion created by the dumb cloud of molecules that you really are. How a dumb cloud of atoms could possibly be deceived into thinking it is anything other than a dumb cloud of atoms, or thinking anything at all, is not explained.