Which part of the God Delusion did you find most offensive? (beliefs, experience)

[Hexaqua_David(II)]

Originally Posted by lilithu

Yeah, I'm pretty sick of this argument too.

You're both wrong and I'm right, actually! =)

[Runt]

Originally Posted by lilithu

I didn't say I reject it. I said I'm not sure about it. In your analogy, the medicine is objectively the same, but people react differently to it. But in my experience, different expressions of religion are not the same. You walk into one Christian church and they're preachin' that the end is near, and that soon the sheep will be lifted up into heaven and the goats will be cast into hell. And you walk into another Christian church and they're preachin that Jesus told us to love thy neighbor and that means welcoming people who are different from you. Can you really say that people in both congregations got the same religion but reacted differently? They're being told different things. And then, to make things even more complicated, some who are sitting in the sheep and goats sermon are going to reject that. Their conscience is going to tell them better than that. And some who are sitting in the love thy neighbor congregation are going to reject that. They're going to decide that it's foolish to extend love to strangers.

I found his analogy to be pretty apt, provided we don't compare the totality of expressions of human religiosity to one drug used to cure one disease. Instead, I would compare each religious expression to a different drug.

Each drug (each religion) has specific characteristics which differentiate it from other drugs (other religions). Each drug has a variety of indications: the same drug may simultaneously be useful as an antispasmotic, sedative, and tonic. Another drug may be a good analgesic, anti-inflammatory, and nervine. Yet each drug also has negative side effects and abnormal drug reactions, which may affect some people sometimes, and very occasionally in very extreme, dangerous ways.

Similarly, each religion may have a variety of qualities which, generally speaking, produce certain outcomes in the individual human person. Yet each human person may choose to adhere to a religion for a different reason, just as each human person may choose to use a particular medication for a different purpose (headache vs. muscle pain, for example). A particular individual may generally adhere to a religion for one or two specific reasons out of a large range of reasons. Another individual may adhere to the same religion for entirely different reasons. And due to the qualities an individual person possesses, the same aspects of a religion may affect each of those two people in completely and totally different ways, so that one reacts in a decidedly positive way to something, whereas the other acts in a very negative way.

If some drugs occasionally affect people negatively, but usually affect people positively, should all medical drug use therefore be avoided? I think this is the kind of argument Dawkins is making in his book when he argues that religion should be abandoned because it causes violence. However, I don't think, due to the complexity of human religious expressions and peoples' individual and very different responses to their religions, that such a conclusion is accurate or fair. And I think mball's analogy illustrates the problem with such a conclusion fairly well.

[MidnightBlue]

Originally Posted by lilithu

Funny that you should bring this up because I almost did twice. This to me proves his blatant anti-theist bent.

And it's worse, imo. I could actually understand his anger with the Abrahmic faiths if it were in response to the attacks. But it wasn't.

In the interview with him that I saw, it wasn't the 9/11 attacks that did it for him. It was the fact that after the attacks Christian and Jewish and Muslim clergy united to denounce the attacks and pray for peace. According to Dawkins, he was so incensed that they would respond in that way that he decided that religion couldn't be tolerated he used to, that the world would be better off without it and he was going to do his part to make it so.

“My respect for the Abrahamic religions went up in the smoke and choking dust of September 11th. The last vestige of respect for the taboo disappeared as I watched the ‘Day of Prayer’ in Washington Cathedral, where people of mutually incompatible faiths united in homage to the very force that caused the problem in the first place: religion. It is time for people of intellect, as opposed to people of faith, to stand up and say ‘Enough!’ Let our tribute to the dead be a new resolve: to respect people for what they individually think, rather than respect groups for what they were collectively brought up to believe.”

When I heard that clergy had untied to denounce the attacks and pray for peace, I thought "good." When Dawkins saw it, he thought, we need to get rid of religion.

When people commit unspeakable violence in the name of their superstitions, I find it unfathomable that anyone should believe that mass participation in those same superstitions is a responsible way of addressing the problem.

Originally Posted by lilithu

You are equating people praying for peace with the oppression of women and African Americans. He wasn't reacting to people trying to limit BGLT rights. He wasn't reacting to people trying to require prayer in schools. He wasn't even reacting to the terrorists. He was reacting to people of different faiths uniting together in love and for peace, firmly rejecting the hatred that drove other people to kill in the name of their God.

He was reacting to people firmly embracing the very superstitions that caused the problem in the first place.

Originally Posted by lilithu

The liberal tradition is not anti-religion. The liberal tradition is anti-oppression. Where religion has supported oppression, the liberal tradition has opposed it. There is nothing liberal about opposing people who are looking past their differences and praying for peace.

I'm not so impressed with liberal religion. Show me a Christian denomination, with more than 300 congregations, where women have full equality with men and homosexuals have full equality with heterosexuals. Even the Unitarian Universalist Association considers its involvement with the Boy Scouts of America more important that its supposed principles. When it comes right down to it, liberal religion is more religious than liberal, and manages to look good mainly by comparing itself to the religious majority.

Originally Posted by Jay

That's petty bigotry, nothing more.

I don't think so, but even if it were, I'd find such petty bigotry preferable to the deadly bigotry of religions that divide the world into the Chosen People and the Nations, the Elect and the Damned, the Saved and the Unsaved, or the House of Islam and the House of War.

Originally Posted by lilithu

Again, 9/11 happened because of fear and hatred of "the Other." For non-religionists to say that "religion is the cause" is simply creating another "Other." Perpetuating the cycle of distrust.

I'm not sure what you're saying here. Are you denying the guilt of the Abrahamic religions in fostering fear and hatred of "the Other," or suggesting that in order to overcome the cycle of distrust perpetuated by those religions it's necessary above all to refrain from criticizing those religions?

Originally Posted by lilithu

Sorry fluffy, your thread about the book has become a thread about the man... again.

Threads about Dawkins' books always turn into threads about the man.

Originally Posted by lilithu

I agree, but Mother Teresa spent her life tending to the poor for religious reasons.

I think one of the most telling facts about Christianity is that Christians and non-Christians alike seem to agree that Christianity at its best is seen most clearly in the life of a dotty old nun who hobnobbed with dictators, jetted around the world to oppose the extension of civil rights, and socked millions away in the bank while warehousing the dying in squalid conditions, glorifying their suffering, and relentlessly proselytizing them on their deathbeds.

[lilithu]

Originally Posted by Runt

I found his analogy to be pretty apt, provided we don't compare the totality of expressions of human religiosity to one drug used to cure one disease. Instead, I would compare each religious expression to a different drug.

I suppose you're right, as long as we make your provision. At first I was wondering under what circumstances the "sheep go to heaven; goats go to hell" sermon could be beneficial. But then I realized that I can quite easily think of contexts in which that is actually "medicinal." Liberation theology. When that sermon is told to someone who is oppressed and doesn't have the power to fight back, it gives them hope. Thus, sheep = the oppressed, and goats = the oppressors. Whereas when the same sermon is told to people who aren't oppressed, then the interpretation becomes sheep = "us" where "us" is my congregation, my religion, my country, etc. and goats = "them" where "them" is anyone I don't like. And that justifies their harming others.

I also remembered feminist theologians arguing that the traditional Christian virtues of humility, meekness, etc are goo things for men to learn because it counters societal pressures to be bold and confident, which could go too far. Otoh, these feminist theologians argued that teaching Christian women to be humble and meek is NOT good medicine if it means they can't stand up for themselves against an abusive husband, for example. So yes, the same message can have different effects on different people.

I'm sold.

[lilithu]

You know what MB, if you had posted this yesterday, I might have tried to respond to you, but today I am sick of this argument. Not to mention that your post is so blatantly hostile towards religion. So yeah, you think that Dawkins is being "objective" when he attacks religion because you share the same biases that he has.

The thing is, my feelings may be momentarily hurt when you attack something I'm so deeply involved in, but not for long. Tomorrow, I'll go to work and once again feel gratitude for the people there, and this will be forgotten. Ultimately the only one your antipathy hurts is you. Religion is not going away now matter how many insults you unleash.

[MidnightBlue]

Originally Posted by lilithu

The thing is, my feelings may be momentarily hurt when you attack something I'm so deeply involved in, but not for long. Tomorrow, I'll go to work and once again feel gratitude for the people there, and this will be forgotten. Ultimately the only one your antipathy hurts is you. Religion is not going away now matter how many insults you unleash.

I'm truly sorry if I hurt your feelings. My respect and affection for you are deep and broad, and the last thing I intended was to hurt your feelings, though I disagree with you about this, and quite strongly.

[Heneni]

Deeply apologetic and broadly sincere.

Thats nice.

Heneni

[misanthropic_clown]

Midnight Blue: for your argument to work, there has to be equivalence between the type of religion that causes stuff like 9/11, and the kind that rarely organises anything more complex than a bake sale.

The latter is a much purer indication of religion than the former, which I view to be religion twisted around to support social/historical/political views - the kind of views that are by and of themselves likely to create conflict.