I was being facetious.
Can't help it when the "look what Dawkins said" threads come up on this forum.
I always recommend checking out his debates with various religious leaders. You will find them incredibly lacking in ridicule, Dawkins supports reading the Bible along with other religious texts as literature because of the huge impact they have had on culture and recently he has stated that people should challenge beliefs, especially those of politicians, who lay claim to a belief in ridiculous concepts. Preposterous is another word. He used it in the same speech giving an indication of what he means.
One of the biggest faults I find with Dawkins is a tendency to lapse into a generalization in discussing religions. He also calls out moderates a lot and I don't think that is the best strategy.
Okay, I will check out his work. I also have to admit that I was also being somewhat facetious.
I do not support ridiculous beliefs that ingore or deny actual proof. So, please do not interpret the following as a defence of ignoring anything that can actually be shown to be so in reality. Thanks for helping me out here.
If I am off-base, and this doesn't really apply to Dawkins' position, then I apologize in advance -- it just seems to apply to me at this time, based upon some of the other posts I have seen on this forum that are presented as being in agreement with him. I guess I just have to get this off my chest.
I find it interesting to see that often an argument is presented against the basic belief in God as though such a belief is the most ridiculous, ignorant, and sometimes delusional thing, and supporting a useless endeavor -- simply because it is based upon an assumption of the existence of God -- a matter which has not yet been proven either way.
I note, in comparison, that mathematics also employs a faith-based (trusted) assumption of something that has not been proven (as far as I know) to actually exist -- that is "0". It is also my understanding that if we were to remove the use of "0" from mathematics until we could prove it, that it would radically alter the discipline as we know it. Additionally, much of what we consider to be "scientific" relies upon the use of modern mathematical concepts and formulas -- so scientific understanding would predictably be radically altered, as well. (I am not in any way suggesting that we do such a thing.)
Mathematics seems to have clearly demonstrated a possibility for the "reasonableness" of the use of a faith-based based assumption (in this situation, not willy-nilly across the board) that has been shown to actually apply well to reality, even though there is no hard evidence (proof) of its existence.
I would like to see those who are insisting that they are so thoroughly scientific in their approach to reality as to justify mocking "religious" people for their basic belief in something that has not been proven -- to simply extend the same courtesy to a basic "religious" belief that they recognize as already valid in science, unless they don't actually understand it to be already employed within scientific approaches through the application of certain, unproven assumption(s).
In my (limited) experience, mathematicians tend to be the most objective, methodical people that I have met. Yet, they also seem to be ok with working (at times -- at least with regard to "0") within an understanding of something that is reasonable and works, yet is not proven to actually exist. I do not see it as too far of a stretch that there may possibly be something really valid in employing the same methods/similar assumptions (as in assuming the existence of something in order to work with the concepts that it's assumption allows,) since it seems to work well with "0" for those commonly viewed as being thoroughly objective and "scientific."