The New Atheists: Researchers Crusade against American Fundamentalists (EuroPress Alert)

Der Spiegel Online ^ | October 26, 2006 | Jörg Blech

[Jacob Kell]

In the United States, atheists are becoming an ostracized minority. But now evolutionary biologists are trying to turn the tables: According to their argument, religion is the source of evil. Morals and selflessness are not God-given - they are the result of evolution.

When Richard Dawkins, a zoologist at Oxford University, steps up to the altar he seems visibly pleased to see the pews in the church fully occupied. In the best Queen's English, he reads from his book: "The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."

[Jacob Kell]

Is it me, or does the article have a anti-religious/pro-evolution bias?

[Dreagon]

When scientists take political stances such as this, they only do their field more harm than good. Nobody trusts a science led by partisans with agendas.

[Slings and Arrows]

With no G-d, what moral axioms do they use to call religion evil?

[justa-hairyape]

Morals and selflessness are not God-given - they are the result of evolution.

And the carnivorous evolved animals who currently eat their prey alive while administering great pain, just what kind of morals and selflessness has evolution given them ?

[RightOnline]

Yawn.....................next...................

[Jaysun]

In the United States, atheists are becoming an ostracized minority.

As they should be. Shame is a very powerful tool. The liberals understand this. And they've been at work to remove every ounce of shame possible - no matter the subject. We need to stop allowing the few to dictate our society's beliefs and standards to us. Everywhere on earth, and for as long as man has been, men have shaped their own societies. The muslims are muslims, the communist are communist, the Buddhist are Buddhist, and the Christians are Christians - and each of those societies contain people from the next. But it's important to distinguish between the clamor of a faction and the voice of the people. The voice of the American people is Christian.

[RichInOC]

In the United States, atheists are becoming an ostracized minority.

Heh. That must be why I've seen stacks of "The God Delusion" and like-minded works on front-table displays in every bloody Borders and Barnes and Noble in the Inland Empire, instead of being burnt in bulk in the parking lot. Minority? Yeah, I guess. Ostracized? Well, it's not exactly Germany in the Thirties, is it?

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Is it just me, or do Crevos have an anti-science, pro-superstition bias?

Flame-proof suit on! : )

[gidget7]

ahhhhhh so true. and this part: "According to their argument, religion is the source of evil. Morals and selflessness are not God-given - they are the result of evolution. "


Morals and selfishness are not God given, in fact morals ARE of God, selfishness is not. Where you find Christians, true Christians, they do not display selfishness as we are, by definition, selfless. It is those against religion who are selfish. As for being the source of evil, Christianity is, if anything, the tool to guard against evil.

This article is drivel!

[Monterrosa-24]

Yep, those Khmer Rouge who are champs at murder were so religious weren't they? And Stalin and Hitler were regulars in the church pews too. Chairman Mao was always found in prayer wasn't he?

[Boiler Plate]

It's juat you. You might need the suit for your deathbed though.

[Boiler Plate]

Is it just me, or do Crevos have an anti-science, pro-superstition bias?

It's juat you. You might need the suit for your deathbed though.

[Boiler Plate]

Is it just me, or do Crevos have an anti-science, pro-superstition bias?

It's juat you. You might need the suit for your deathbed though.

[Boiler Plate]

Is it just me, or do Crevos have an anti-science, pro-superstition bias?

It's just you. You might need the suit for your deathbed though.

[little jeremiah]

More on the topic, it seems.

[metmom]

It just keeps coming.

[metmom]

"You can be an atheist," he tells his audience, "who is happy, balanced, moral and intellectually fulfilled."

And doomed.

[metmom]

Morals and selflessness are not God-given - they are the result of evolution.

The ultimate irony; evolution gave rise to the very morals it denies.

[LiteKeeper]

INTREP

[dr_lew]

They show a form of "morality" in their rivalries with one another, and most of all in the solicitude they have for their offspring. The pack instincts of dogs make them a model of the virtue of loyalty. Their hunting behavior was of course their original attraction to men who ardently pursued the same practice. Anyway, I'm pretty sure most carnivores strive to kill their prey before they eat them, as they are a lot more cooperative as a meal when dead.

Note the Pythagoreans were vegetarians on moral grounds. Cf. Ovid Metamorphoses, Book XV, for an imagined discourse of Pythagoras abhoring and warning against the practice of slaughter for food. This is an argument and an appeal, not a divine commandment. He acknowledges carnivores as animals whose nature is "savage and untamed", and hence not models for human behavior.