Posted on 01/07/2006 10:26:53 PM PST by LibWhacker
Scientist compares Moses to Hitler, calls New Testament 'sado-masochistic doctrine'
Controversial scientist and evolutionist Richard Dawkins, dubbed "Darwin's Rottweiler," calls religion a "virus" and faith-based education "child abuse" in a two-part series he wrote and appears in that begins airing on the UK's Channel 4, beginning tomorrow evening.
Entitled "Root of All Evil?," the series features the atheist Dawkins visiting Lourdes, France, Colorado Springs, Colo., the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem and a British religious school, using each of the venues to argue religion subverts reason.
In "The God Delusion," the first film in the series, Dawkins targets Catholicism at the pilgrimage site in Lourdes. "If you want to experience the medieval rituals of faith, the candle light, the incense, music, important-sounding dead languages, nobody does it better than the Catholics," he says.
Dawkins, using his visit to Colorado Springs' New Life Church, criticizes conservative U.S. evangelicals and warns his audience of the influence of "Christian fascism" and "an American Taliban."
The backdrop of the al-Aqsa mosque and an American-born Jew turned fundamentalist Muslim who tells Dawkins to prepare for the Islamic world empire – and who clashes with him after saying he hates atheists – rounds out the first program's case for the delusions of the faithful.
In part two, "The Virus of Faith," Dawkins attacks the teaching of religion to children, calling it child abuse.
"Innocent children are being saddled with demonstrable falsehoods," he says. "It's time to question the abuse of childhood innocence with superstitious ideas of hellfire and damnation. Isn't it weird the way we automatically label a tiny child with its parents' religion?"
"Sectarian religious schools," Dawkins asserts, have been "deeply damaging" to generations of children.
Dawkins, who makes no effort to disguise his atheism and contempt for religion, focuses on the Bible, too.
"The God of the Old Testament has got to be the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous, and proud of it, petty, vindictive, unjust, unforgiving, racist," he says. Dawkins then criticizes Abraham, compares Moses to Hitler and Saddam Hussein, and calls the New Testament "St Paul's nasty, sado-masochistic doctrine of atonement for original sin."
John Deighan, a spokesman for the Catholic Church, took issue with Dawkin's denunciation of religion, telling the Glasgow Sunday Herald, "Dawkins is well known for his vitriolic attacks on faith, and I think faith has withstood his attacks. He really is going beyond his abilities as a scientist when he starts to venture into the field of philosophy and theology. He is the guy with demonstrable problems."
Madeline Bunting, a columnist for the Guardian, who reviewed the series, wrote: "There's an aggrieved frustration that [atheist humanists] have been short-changed by history – we were supposed to be all atheist rationalists by now. Secularization was supposed to be an inextricable part of progress. Even more grating, what secularization there has been is accompanied by the growth of weird irrationalities from crystals to ley lines. As G.K. Chesterton pointed out, the problem when people don't believe in God is not that they believe nothing, it is that they believe anything."
Dawkins, perhaps best know for his much-cited comment that evolution "made it possible to be an intellectually satisfied atheist," appeals to John Lennon in a commentary he authored for the Belfast Telegraph on the eve of his program's premiere: "Religion may not be the root of all evil, but it is a serious contender. Even so it could be justified, if only its claims were true. But they are undermined by science and reason. Imagine a world where nobody is intimidated against following reason, wherever it leads. "You may say I'm a dreamer. But I'm not the only one."
I am not a solipsist. Whose actual reality would that be; yours or mine? You are able to assert actual reality because you (rightly) assume that truth is objective. But objective truth and morality cannot be validly derived from the premises of your materialist worldview, if all you've got is the motion of irrational physical forces. If the random collection of atoms called Dawkins says that religious instruction is child abuse and some other random collection of atoms called Diamond says it is not, so what? On the premise of atheism, what difference does it make? Are there good and bad atoms? Objective and universal standards of truth and morality cannot exist in your purely material world. That is the problem, which as far as I know, has never been successfully answered by atheists.
Cordially,
Indeed!!!
That last sentence sounds like a dogmatic statement of the silly religion of Darwin. La Rand would be offended to know that you have a very, very strange god like Darwin before La Rand who was a jealous god herself but, having assumed room temperature, now knows far better than she did in earthly life. You might want to send her shade some burn medication and soothing ointments (enough for eternity).
And? The point is that you really cannot derive "objective" morality from any worldview. Some claim otherwise, but those claims never seem to stand up to serious scrutiny.
If the random collection of atoms called Dawkins says that religious instruction is child abuse and some other random collection of atoms called Diamond says it is not, so what?
It matters because we have to live with the consequences either way, obviously. I'm sure that if it turned out that morality wasn't handed to us by some external third party, some might waste away from despair, but I suspect that most might turn out to be a bit hardier.
You and your Rand obsession again. It got old a long time ago. You're not even an interesting troll.
God bless you and yours!
We need a new version of the All in the Family theme song built around the truthful and useful lyric: "We could use a man like Torquemada again!"
He can't "stick with science" - he is much too obsessed with his hatred of God and can't get him out of his mind.
"I gave you a evidence in my last last thread."
None that Hitler was an atheist.
Hitler was worse than an atheist...he thought he could exploit the Lord. I'm sure you already know but let me post this again (Quoted from Hitler's "Table Talks" with Bormann,
in "Hitler: A Study in Tyranny" by Allan Bullock.)
"The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity ... The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity.
I'll make these damned parsons feel the power of the state in a way they would have never believed possible. For the moment, I am just keeping my eye upon them: if I ever have the slightest suspicion that they are getting dangerous, I will shoot the lot of them. This filthy reptile raises its head whenever there is a sign of weakness in the State, and therefore it must be stamped on. We have no sort of use for a fairy story invented by the Jews."
Forgive me for interjecting at the end of the thread without reading through it.
Hitler was no atheist. But, he detested Christianity in all it's forms. He viewed Catholicism as corrupt and intractable, and he viewed Protestantism as weak and formless.
There is ZERO evidence he believed in the God of Christianity. He did, however, give homage to Norse paganism and revered the works of Madame Blavatsky and the theosophists. Indeed, Blavatsky's "The Secret Doctrine" helped to shape much of Nazi theology, such as it was.
In short, Hitler, while no atheist, was extremely hostile to Christianity.
My initial response to the assertion that "objective" morality cannot be derived from any worldview is, how do you know that for certain? Have you looked everywhere? How can a finite human being possibly have enough knowledge to assert with any certainty a universal negative?
Before you answer that, my second response is, if morality is not objective it is subjective. I have merely been pointing out the impossibility of the atheist alternative to give an account for any morality at all worthy of the name. r9etb said it very well:
If we accept this as true, and if we deny the existence of any supernatural or irrational basis for moral principles, it follows either that there is no such thing as morality, or that morality must have a scientific basis.Your reply to the logical implications was instructive to me in that while denying the logical implication, you tacitly acknowledge the existence of the objective rules:
No, it really doesn't follow at all. If morality isn't handed to us on a silver platter, all that really follows is that we're responsible for rolling our own.Responsibility denotes some sort of moral obligation or incumbency, but this is what I mean when I say that atheism cannot give a coherent account of morality; you cannot account for the existence of morality simply by positing a prior moral rule because to do so is to simply assume the very thing in question.
r9etb is also correct to point out that if you deny the existence of objective morality then then you have no legitimate complaints about anything at all, which is a very difficult philosophy to actually put into practice, as Dawkins so incoherently demonstrates. Whenever there is an objection to something, there is an assumption of some standard that the thing violates. So when some non-Christian like Dawkins objects to the Christian faith he assumes some standard that Christianity violates. In order to do so, though, since he cannot justify the standard from an atheistic worldview, and (I would argue) since he actually lives in God's world, and is made in God's image, he cannot help but use unacknowledged Christian presuppositions such as the existence of objective morality in his attacks on Christianity. Anytime Dawkins or anyone else makes a moral judgment they are tacitly assuming the existence of objective standards and thereby of God's existence as the authoritative source of those standards.
What those standards are, how they are known and what difficulties arise therefrom are related, important and vexing questions, but I think the fact that this unacknowledged presupposition has been pervasive throughout this discussion is the evidence, or the proof, if you will, that is already evident to you.
Cordially,
How many times did you have to put your hand on a hot stove before you inferred that it was never going to be a pleasant experience? Do you still light it up and mash down firmly from time to time, on the theory that you, as a finite human being, cannot possibly have enough knowledge to assert with any certainty the universal negative proposition that it will never be a pleasurable sensation for you?
Tell you what - if you have a candidate for an objectively "correct" or "true" moral system, bring it forth. I'll fire up the stove, and we'll see if this time it'll finally be fun for you.
Responsibility denotes some sort of moral obligation or incumbency...
Not at all. "Anything goes" is a moral system of sorts, and it requires nothing of us at all, except that we do as we please anyway. You will have a moral/ethical system in place, no matter what you do or don't do - there's no obligation upon you to do anything.
...this is what I mean when I say that atheism cannot give a coherent account of morality
Allow me to reiterate, in that case - "because someone else said so" does not strike me as an especially "coherent" basis for an "objective" moral system.
r9etb is also correct to point out that if you deny the existence of objective morality then then you have no legitimate complaints about anything at all...
Absurd. The rules of baseball are entirely human constructs - we invented them, and we can change them any time we see fit. Does that mean that the players "have no legitimate complaints" when someone violates the rules as they're currently understood? Are their complaints only "legitimate" if Abner Doubleday was, in fact, God?
Whenever there is an objection to something, there is an assumption of some standard that the thing violates. So when some non-Christian like Dawkins objects to the Christian faith he assumes some standard that Christianity violates. In order to do so, though, since he cannot justify the standard from an atheistic worldview...
Of course he can. Just like the centerfielder doesn't have to invoke God to point out that the second baseman is taking steroids.
...I think the fact that this unacknowledged presupposition has been pervasive throughout this discussion is the evidence, or the proof, if you will, that is already evident to you.
You mistake your own limitations for universal limitations upon everyone.
Cheers!
From my own readings of Hitler, I believe he was setting himself up as some sort of Uber-Mensch Neicthian god--
So you can point out to the Guitarman who claims to be from Carolina (I'm not supposed to speak to him, on threat of making a nuisance of himself to the mods) that athiests have a nice murder record--all in a single century. Even without Hitler--around 60 million souls.
And we mustn't forget their prototypes back in the French Revolution. Mere pikers in terms of raw body count, but still of the same mindset.
Forgot to say "Great Water" is a movie, and I believe a movie every conservative should watch. It's a foreign film (Macedonia?) about some orphans in a Stalinist camp.
You can stop replying whenever you get too bored.
Running Wolf: Sorry, I meant to ping you to #259.
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