[merged thread] Richard Dawkins on BBC Radio 4/ The Archbishop of Westminster

[SusanB-M1]

It is now 07:25 and I have just listened to a three-minute interview with Richard Dawkins on the 'Today' programme. It won't be immediately available for 'Listen Again' but I'll come back later with the link. It was spot on! The RC Archbishop will be interviewed a bit later. I'll be all ears!

[Big Les]

I caught the bish, but not Dawkins. The former was playing the tiniest violin in history. This (http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/celebrity/atheists-are-nice-people-who-will-roast-in-hell%2c-says-cardinal-20080509937/) sums up what I take to be the thrust of his argument quite nicely;

"We must not allow Britain to become devoid of religious faith, otherwise how would I afford new hats?"

[Edmund Standing]

Spot the contradiction (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7390941.stm):

The Archbishop of Westminster has urged Christians to treat atheists and agnostics with "deep esteem".

[...]

But the leader of Roman Catholics in England and Wales said that Britain must not become "a God-free zone" ... He expressed concern about the increasing unpopularity of the Christian voice in public life, saying: "Our life together in Britain cannot be a God-free zone and we must not allow Britain to become a world devoid of religious faith and its powerful contribution to the common good."

Societies ruled only by reason were like those created by Hitler and Stalin, ripe for "terror and oppression", he said.

[Darat]

Hitler and Stalin regimes were "ruled by reason"!? Never mind that he thinks his god has given him special powers the guy is simply an ignoramus.

Anyho' he's convinced me that reason is bad. Naughty reason get back into the cupboard and don't come out until you've learnt from your betters!

[rats]

And here (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7390941.stm)'s the resulting BBC article.

Apparently God has been active in my life. I wonder which one...

[Big Les]

See also this thread;

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=113262

"Bloody cheek!" was all I could think in my bleary-eyed state whilst listening to the end of the R4 piece.

[Darat]

And here (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7390941.stm)'s the resulting BBC article.

Apparently God has been active in my life. I wonder which one...

For me it must be Loki!

[westprog]

Hitler and Stalin regimes were "ruled by reason"!? Never mind that he thinks his god has given him special powers the guy is simply an ignoramus.

Anyho' he's convinced me that reason is bad. Naughty reason get back into the cupboard and don't come out until you've learnt from your betters!

It's not only undesirable to found a society on reason, it's actually impossible. A society can only be founded on reason and values. Values must be chosen. Sometimes it's necessary to derive the values from the desired outcome, but values are always needed. It isn't possible to choose values using reason. Values are chosen by wants and needs.

[Darat]

It's not only undesirable to found a society on reason, it's actually impossible.

...snip...

Perhaps send a note of your opinion to the Archbishop since he claims its been done at least twice?

[Big Les]

westprog is right, but the Bish is going much further than that in what he says. He's saying that we need more than reason to derive our values, yes, but moreover, that religion (specifically Christianity) is the best (or only) way to do that.

As an aside;
"Under the guidance of the material-blinkered scientist, whose greatest goal was a workanimal adjustment of man to a physical environment, whose end for the individual was six feet of ground and a coffin sometimes proof against worms, and whose goal for the group was an ant society wherein the smallest unit of life worthy of notice was ten thousand individuals, we have been led down dark and evil byways of destruction not only of the dreams, hopes, and ethics of men but of the MEST planet as well. Materialistic science, operating on the premise that man came from mud only, that the mind is a queerly erroneous stimulus-response mechanism, that the human soul is a delusion, that God was a myth of some aberrated Mesopotamian, has presented us at last with the immediate and real threat of man’s extinction as a species. In view of the fact that this materialistic science led only, then, in the direction of death, even the unthinking should see the fact that something must be desperately wrong with the teachings of the Lysenkos, the Darwins, and my learned schoolmates, the atomic scientists who have given man at last for his gravespade the atomic bomb."
Science of Survival, L. Ron Hubbard, pg 227

Sometimes I think Scientology really is a religion.

[westprog]

Perhaps send a note of your opinion to the Archbishop since he claims its been done at least twice?

I think that the Soviets considered that they were founding a society upon reason, but they clearly weren't.

[Darat]

I think that the Soviets considered that they were founding a society upon reason, but they clearly weren't.

And?

[rats]

Thanks Big Les, I actually found that Hubbard extract more difficult to read than Martin Timothy's prediction posts!

[westprog]

And?

And I am not an archbishop, and don't feel the need to establish that my thoughts are the same as his.

[zooterkin]

Hitler and Stalin regimes were "ruled by reason"!?



I think we now know who Plumjam is in real life... ;)

The quote that got me, as a demonstration of how you can tie yourself in knots with belief, was this one:
Believers may be partly responsible for the decline in faith by losing sense of the mystery and treating God as a "fact in the world", he said in a lecture.

Huh? Treating God as a fact is not a expression of faith?

[DoubtingStephen]

My favorite bit was He suggested, however, that Christians were partly to blame for the prevalence of modern atheism, which was a product of a "distorted kind of Christianity". (blessed be The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/08/catholicism.religion?gusrc=rss&feed=uknews))

This inspired my first blog post (http://atheistfag.com/archives/401) of the day.

So far as I know modern atheism can be defined as the absence of belief in any deity. I would surmise that in ancient times atheism was the absence of belief in any deity. So far I'm not seeing how ancient atheism and modern atheism differ in any meaningful way.

I do wish to extend my heartfelt congratulations and admiration for the good people of the UK for becoming a Godless nation, you have no idea how jealous I am.

[Mashuna]

I particularly enjoyed this paragraph from the article you linked to:

"The interesting question about atheism is what is the theism being denied? Have you ever met anyone who believes what Richard Dawkins does not believe in? The God that is being rejected by such people is a God I don't believe in either."

I liked the accusation that Dawkins was creating a strawman argument, which the Cardinal did by creating a strawman of Dawkins arguments.

After a while, it's just strawmen all the way down.

[Darat]

Don't be silly!

It's straw turtles all the way down!

[Mashuna]

Don't be silly!

It's straw turtles all the way down!

So you're saying that all turtles are made of straw. That's ridiculous, thus I refute your argument.

[SusanB-M1]

I took my little radio with me walking to swimming so that I didn't miss the Cardinal. He made no sense at all to me and trying to set a tone of 'well, of course, everyone believes in God', he most certainly failed.

I think people like the Cardinal and various Bishops and speakers on 'Thought for the day' are finding it harder and harder to 'explain' God as being real.

[Moochie]

At the age of 6 my family migrated to Australia from Germany. As a non-English-speaking six-year-old I was placed in a Catholic school in a small country town where I was taught by nuns, none of whom knew any German.

My memory of nearly all of them, along with the priests who lived in the presbytery adjacent to the school is that they were a miserable, sorry bunch of people who seldom if ever displayed any kindness toward the children placed in their care. In fact, the first thing that occurred to them in regard to me was to change my first name, because my given name was not "Christian" -- something I meekly accepted because I had not the wherewithal to object. Trying to explain all of this to my parents was hopelessly complicated, so to them I remained the name they had given me, while to people outside our social milieu I was someone else.

It wasn't until I was in my late 20s, and after some considerable time in therapy that I went back to using my given name.

I have often wondered if, had these people shown some compassion, and their god's much talked-about-but-rarely-expressed love in any practical way, I would have become a lifelong believer.

The truth is that my general attitude toward their god was one of fear mixed with loathing, based mainly on their expression of their beliefs as exemplified in their behavior. It wasn't until I went back to school as a mature student in my late 20s that I learned what I now know to be basic exercises in critical thinking, thanks to a lovely, vivacious young woman who delighted in teaching. It was during my first year of an Arts (Humanities) course that I became acquainted with the scientific method. The person who taught my introductory psychology class had summarized its essence into three "R's," which I wrote down but have misplaced, so I've had to re-educate myself about that, with lots of help from many of the posters here.

Sorry for the rumination. It's just that after all this time -- I'm now in my late 50s -- I get awfully annoyed when I see the likes of this Archbishop blather on in what to me appears to be a thinly veiled appeal on behalf of his own job security, and the job security of the entire ship of fools the comprises the church.

M.

[ponderingturtle]

So you're saying that all turtles are made of straw. That's ridiculous, thus I refute your argument.

As positive evidence I am not made out of straw.

[Nancarrow]

Me neither.

[pchams]

Damn turltles...always in the majority.

[UnrepentantSinner]

The Archbishop is incorrect. The Soviet Union was founded based on an economic model of history and Nazi Germany was founded on Germanic mythology and "scapegoatism". The society he's thinking of us Revolutionary France.

Thanks Big Les, I actually found that Hubbard extract more difficult to read than Martin Timothy's prediction posts!
:D Good one.

[Undesired Walrus]

The Archbishop proved that God in the British Christian church as become such a superfluous entity he may as well be regarded as a very important nothingness. Listening to the Archbishop's hopelessly ambigious claims of what God is was cringeworthy. The clergy seem commited to keeping God on the agenda, but they seem positively puzzled as to what the point of that is.

I'd like to note something interesting: For the first time, the words of Dawkins -a prominent Atheist- were featured alongside the words of a prominent theist in the hourly news cycle.

In Britain, the tide is slowly shifting.