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Betty, I remember my very first post to you, several years ago. Dawkins was the subject then too!

LOLOL! deja vu all over again!

Actually, he seems to get more and more strident with the passage of time. I wonder if he can imagine that some people think he's just plain silly when he takes up this subject. He kinda reminds me of a honking donkey, once he gets off on the subject of God....

Second realities are simply illusions. I haven't got a clue why anyone would choose to live in an illusion, and then demand that everybody else come join him there.

As Montgomery said, "his is an intellectual malady conspicuous among our intelligentsia: the modernist mind presuming intellectual autonomy beyond limit." Actually, I think this is a malady of the spirit more so than of the mind. But a disordered spirit will manifest as a disordered mind....

FWIW

Thanks for writing beckett, and for the trip down memory lane!

[ Actually, I think this is a malady of the spirit more so than of the mind. But a disordered spirit will manifest as a disordered mind... ]

Wise words.. because Dawkins and Evolution(Evos) generally assault the Holy Spirit more than they assault Jesus and humanity and Judeo-Christian logic and Salvation Physics..

The result is, if man is a primate then whats all this talk of Angels and Holy Spirits; but fable..

And if no Holy Spirit or Angel then man has no spirit either..
Thats the message preached.. on pulpits of flesh..
When your body dies you are road kill, get used to it..
Eat drink and be merry for.... some tomorrow you WILL DIE...

”Betty, I remember my very first post to you, several years ago. Dawkins was the subject then too! ”

Thanks for the quote you cite, beckett It is a perfect summation of my meaning when I say that Dawkins (among others) cannot claim what he advocates as a matter of positive knowledge, he can only claim that he is helpless to believe anything other than what he does, in fact, believe.

And my dear Mz boop, I believe you’re correct when you say Dawkins is becoming more strident as time goes by (he’s not the only one). He’s coming to realize, I think, that he has backed himself into an intellectual corner from which he cannot gracefully exit.

Actually, he seems to get more and more strident with the passage of time.

Definitely BB. He's always been absolutely cocksure about the positions he's taken, and his personality seems to be naturally disposed to invective and bullying, but I think that an element of frustration has crept into his polemic. He and others (Daniel Dennett comes to mind) intended to lead a widespread movement to stamp out religion. They adopted an absurd and childish term, "brights" (coined by atheists Paul Geisert and Mynga Futrell), to describe themselves and their disciples. And they wrote books intended to comprehensively attack believers and sway the masses.

And what's happened? Well, let's see. Anyone who calls himself a "bright" elicits nothing but snickers from his listeners. And rather than finding that the intelligentsia welcomed their books with praise and hosannas, the works by both Dawkins and Dennett have been almost universally panned (most skillfully of all by H. Allen Orr above) as careless efforts written by lightweights. And the movement is not catching on at the pace Mssrs Dawkins and Dennett expected. Hence the increasing level of stridency you note.