Richard Dawkins

Comment

Comment by annet on September 27, 2011 at 2:47pm

Has this group really escaped elevatorgate?

 

Comment by Hania Uscka-Wehlou on September 27, 2011 at 3:37am

Great, simple and clear answer. Thank you, Mike!

Comment by Hania Uscka-Wehlou on September 27, 2011 at 1:44am

Thank you, James, for the explanation.

Comment by James M. Martin on September 26, 2011 at 5:21pm

Hania, Dawkins does it himself in The God Delusion, as does Harris, as does Hitchens.  It is just that you cannot use the isolated rise of people like Hitler and Stalin to make the claim that all tyrants are atheists.  Hitler began as a good Catholic but threw it under the bus for a cult of personality, in effect bringing about his own apotheosis while living; Stalin did much the same thing, but with regard to the Orthodox Church, again instituting a cult of personality.  They seemed to both think that before long their subjects would literally believe in the commandment, "I am the Lord thy God; you shall have other gods but me."  Only it wasn't Jehovah-Jesus, it was Hitler and Stalin.

Comment by Hania Uscka-Wehlou on September 26, 2011 at 3:21pm

James, It is exactly the reaction I sometimes get in Poland when I tell somebody that I am an atheist: "Well, the communists forbade us to have any religion..." (read: you are as bad as they are). Could you, please, give some more explanation about this "logical fallacy"? How to explain to a religiously brain-washed person that this association is wrong?

Comment by James M. Martin on September 26, 2011 at 12:19pm

Unfortunately, the fundamentalist types always conflate communism with atheism (ironically doing the same thing with fascism, vis-a-vis Hitler).  Guilt by association is the name of their game.  Again, a logical fallacy.

Comment by Diana Bett on September 26, 2011 at 7:49am

It occurred to me that the communist regime might well have altered that particular backswing-- because social movements do tend to act like a pendulum, when things get too far in one direction, people get reactionary and go the opposite way. Not knowing personally what effect Communism had on that broad social trend, it's hard for me to see how it happened there... but it did occur to me that that might have made quite a difference.

Comment by Hania Uscka-Wehlou on September 26, 2011 at 7:44am

Diana, it is possible. In Poland the church was so busy fighting the communists that they had no time to fight science ;-)

Well, if it is so, it would be the first ever positive effect of the communistic time I could think of ;-) .

Comment by Hania Uscka-Wehlou on September 26, 2011 at 7:37am

James,

Thank you for your comment.

Personally, I don't see how you can believe in both evolution and "God."  They are mutually inconsistent.

Well, it is possible to let it sound kind of consistent if you say:

- evolution is a fact

- everything started with a Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago

- god triggered the Big Bang

- you have to understand the text of the Bible symbolically.

YES, I know, it is weak, but they formulate it like this. The question is of course what in the Bible you should take literally and what not and what is over when you filter all the symbols. And why you simply do not say "I do not know what triggered the Big Bang" if you call yourself a scientist ;-) .

Comment by Diana Bett on September 26, 2011 at 7:36am

In a broader sense, I have to wonder if Fundamentalism has gained strength as a social movement here as part of the usual pendulum swing-- as Romanticism rose out of the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century.

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