Do you believe in God

Twoback, it's fine to have your opinion, but we have kept this thread going mainly by not being insulting or overly aggressive thus far. If you don't like Dawkins, that's fine, but I'm sure there are people equally dubious of your beliefs. They just have the decency not to call you on it.

 

A pretty typical religious experience (in America anyway) is:

Parents take you to church as a child, may or may not be all the into it.

As you become a teen and you adult stop going to church -- you are too busy having fun, maybe you moved and don't know anyone, not that big in your life.

As you get older and have kids you bring them to church and start the cycle all over.

So folks who say they used to go to church and don't go anymore may end up there after all.

 

When it comes to someone as malevolent as Dawkins, I'm not going to hold back, just as if someone came on here and claimed to believe the Taliban had it all right.

I love this dismissal of Dawkins' claptrap, plucked from Wikipedia:

Marxist literary critic Terry Eagleton in the London Review of Books argues that Dawkins has insufficient understanding of the religious concepts he is attacking to engage with them effectively. He comments, "Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology."

 

Lord, save me from your followers.


But Twoback, I do love me some Terry Eagleton. His history of literary theory is one of the best textbooks I ever read.

 

TB, that is fine and all to say, but when you start arguing that Dawkins is just a know-it-all, etc, etc, can't you really just say the same about the book your base your entire faith on?

Seriously, great floods where someone loads up a boat with every species on Earth? Some guy decides on coitus interruptus and bam he's sentanced to death? The "virgin" birth written about by nobody that was there at the actual birth or during the life of that individual?

But, yeah, you are right. Richard Dawkins is a piece of shit.

(NOTE: I have not read any of Dawkins books. I just don't like the idea that he's going to get shot down using the very arguments that people dismiss when defending their faith.)

 

Why, I don't think you're a Pastor at all. Probably not even a Reverend!

 

You don't know why my faith is, Pastor.
You don't know whether I believe in a book or books.

 

Beside the point, though, isn't it, Twoback? Pastor's saying you're rejecting out of hand someone's beliefs which run contrary to yours and those of others who think like you. But we could easily find others to do the same in discrediting whatever it is you believe.

That's his point.

 

I reject Dawkins' stridency with the same passion as I reject any fundamentalist.
My point was that Dawkins is as much a fundamentalist as the tub-thumping preacher from Mississippi or the scarf-clad Taliban fighter. They all are immune to opposing thoughts and viewpoints, resolutely certain that not only do they have the correct answer, they have the ONLY answer, and that those who do not believe as they do are worthy only of condemnation.
I'm very open-minded on this subject. I would not begin to suppose I have the answer to a question as complex and unknowable as this. But Dawkins is peddling the hatred of religion, and he's doing it dressed up like an academic supposedly presenting theories about the existence of God.
I've got no problems with those who quarrel with the baser aspects of organized religion, but it's not like those religions have never done any good.

 

Still curious as to why three-fifths of your original post on Dawkins was swipes at HC. I think that may be what's causing the actual friction here.

 

'can't find my way home' is indeed the word.

but is eric claption, steve winwood or ginger baker the messiah?

 

Through my direct link with God, I have been informed that you should cease looking at that other web page. Oh and don't question my holiness!

That is all fine and true, BUT it doesn't make him wrong. And just because he argues so stridently for his line thought doesn't mean he deserves condemnation.

I wouldn't condemn a fundamentalist strictly for being one. I would condemn him for the hypocrisy that is bound to be spewed forth.

Doing good isn't a qualifier for value. Plenty of evil people have done some good in their life. It doesn't make their faults any less existent.