Richard Dawkins funds atheist summer camp (aimed at changing the way children think)

The First Post ^ | 7/1/2009 | Rachel Helyer Donaldson

[SeekAndFind]

Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist and author of The God Delusion, has helped launch an atheist summer camp for children. Alongside the more traditional activities of tug-of-war, swimming and canoeing, children at the five-day camp in Somerset will learn about rational scepticism, moral philosophy, ethics and evolution.

Camp-goers aged eight to 17 will also be taught how to disprove phenomena such as crop circles and telepathy. In the Invisible Unicorn Challenge, any child who can prove that unicorns do not exist will win a £10 note - which features an image of Charles Darwin, the father of evolutionary theory - signed by Dawkins, Britain's most prominent atheist.

Dawkins is not personally involved in Camp Quest, which originated in the United States, but helped subsidise the cost of the camp through his Richard Dawkins Foundation. The former Oxford professor said Camp Quest provided children with a summer camp that was "free of religious dogma", unlike many adventure breaks which are run by the Scouts and faith-based groups. All 24 places at the camp, which runs from July 27 to 31, have already been filled and more camps are planned for next year, including Easter.

Camp Quest was founded in America in 1996 by Edwin Kagin, an atheist lawyer from Kentucky and the son of a church minister. The woman bringing the concept to Britain is a 23-year-old postgraduate psychology student from London, Samantha Stein, who was inspired to work at an atheist summer camp in America after reading The God Delusion.

Stein said the atheist adventure breaks were "not about changing what they think, but the way that they think. There is very little that attacks religion; we are not a rival to religious camps."

[SeekAndFind]

If I can get an atheist to support the second amendment without first convincing him that God exists, what is wrong with that?

Nothing for a believer. But for an atheist, I still wonder on what ultimate grounds he bases his moral values on. He can say --- I believe in the 2nd amendment because I personally believe it will protect me. But then that is a personal preference, not a statement of the rightness and wrongness of his stance.

[SeekAndFind]

We can convince some people through purely scientific reasoning that abortion is the killing of an innocent human life.

Let's say you could, on what moral basis do you say to an atheist that taking an innocent human life is wrong ?

A believer can say taking a human life is wrong because the maker of human life ( yours and mine ) says so.

What can he say ? Taking the life of a human being is evil because the laws of physics tell us so ? Where ?

[alarm rider]

You might like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73eB-aAo8Eg

Best to you.

Regards,
AR

[Soothesayer]

“That’s a silly question. Most people prefer to not live in a society where barbarians roam the hills and the only law is who has the most weapons.”

Key word “prefer”. We already know that certain other groups (such as radical muslims) are quite in love with barbarism.

[Soothesayer]

I’m not sure you’re getting the point of morality. Morality is about “right and wrong”, not whatever is practical for social survival.

Otherwise, there is no point in discussing morality at all. Just try to survive and live out your animal life.

[Soothesayer]

You might as well just say that morality is irrelevant. In order for morality to be morality, it must always be above the laws of the land. It doesn’t matter what humans are capable of doing or not capable of doing. Only legality then applies.

[Soothesayer]

Lots of people use their minds. The people who came up with genocidal propaganda or designed the killing chambers were not exactly dumb.

[Soothesayer]

I know that your just trying to do the best with what you believe/don’t believe but one has to admit that this is a serious problem. We will not be able to use moral arguments against a non-sustainable and murderous secular regime. We will only be able to respond with brute physical force.

[OldNavyVet]

You might notice that I wrote: “Peope of reason are those that capably use their mind.”

It might surprise you to ask any youngster over the age of reason (about 7 or 8 years old) if they know right from wrong.

Even at that age kids have developed a sense of justice and silently use their minds to judge people and things.

And thus it is that kids generally use their minds capably.

There are many adults, however, that have permanently rationalized their way out of ethical behavior and go along to get along — while doing wrong.

[Soothesayer]

If that’s what you meant then yes, that is correct.

[who_would_fardels_bear]

"What can he say ? Taking the life of a human being is evil because the laws of physics tell us so ? Where ?"

One answer is what is often called "enlightened self-interest". The Golden Rule is basically a statement about enlighted self-interest.

If I can convince someone that abortion is the killing of a human, then I can go on to say that if we allow the killing of some humans, then what is to say that we won't someday allow the killing of humans like him.

This is one of the basic arguments against euthanasia. You can't get a grown person to worry about being the victim of abortion. But you can get that person to worry about being the victim of forced euthanasia: at some point he may worry that it is "too" expensive for his family and/or society in general to keep him alive as long as he wishes to. Here is a person, religious or not, that you could convince to simultaneously oppose both abortion and euthanasia just out of self-interest.

He may be willing to fight against both while he is young as insurance against the practices becoming normalized when he is older and unable to fight.

Democracy and free markets are all about enlightened self-interest. The best form of government would probably be a monarchy led by a great and wise leader. Unfortunately there is no such thing as a leader that is great enough and wise enough to lead a country as large as the US. So instead we settle for the half-baked compromises we get under Democracy.

Similarly the most efficient economy would be one where the best brains to tackle a particular problem were assembled with the proper capital to solve the problem as quickly and cheaply as possible. Instead we let anyone who wants to try and solve any problem they can. This leads to massive amounts of money being spent by people who never solve the problem. Still this ends up being cheaper because we haven't found a way to identify the people who are the best at solving particular problems.

Similarly with moral issues we let people come to different conclusions and we see what works and what doesn't. All the statistics suggest that those communities that have strict gun laws tend to have more crime. If we could only get the media and the public in general to respond to this data then we could get gun laws relaxed throughout the entire country. And this without ever needing to invoke a higher power.

There are more and more people that are not only blase about God, but are downright hateful. And this hate doesn't come from something they feel God did to them, but because of all the bad examples they have from all the scum that have done evil in His name.

Mortimer Adler was a neo-Aristotlean virtue ethicist all of his life. He did great work bringing the commonsense of Aristotle to the masses and the elites. In the end he became a Christian, but he did a lot of good even before finally coming into the Church.

[SeekAndFind]

One answer is what is often called "enlightened self-interest". The Golden Rule is basically a statement about enlighted self-interest.

You are assuming that enlightened self-interest is a virtue unto itself as if the laws of physics gave us this "virtue".

The fact is there are people out there who want to die and take you with them ( for instance, the 911 terrorists). That is in their self-interest.

What moral law given by the laws of physics tell us that such people ( e.g., Mohammad Atta ) are evil ? They believe they are doing good by practicing THEIR VERSION of "enlightened self-interest" ( the self-interest of killing as many infidels as possible ).

Of course in the end, it would not matter, you die on Sept 11 2001, or you die 50 years later, so what ? You die and nothing in the universe is ultimately going to matter for either you or them.

So, why are they evil ? What intrinsic law of material physics tell us that ?

[who_would_fardels_bear]

"What moral law given by the laws of physics tell us that such people ( e.g., Mohammad Atta ) are evil ? They believe they are doing good by practicing THEIR VERSION of "enlightened self-interest" ( the self-interest of killing as many infidels as possible )."

This argument that you make against enlightened self-interest is the same argument that is made against those who believe in a specific God.

Allah, according to some radical Muslims, commands them to kill infidels. And BTW, they can quote chapter and verse as to why they are correct.

If Muslims claim that X is good, Buddhists claim that X is bad, and Christians claim that X is neither, then maybe all religion is just personal preferences and biased "enlightened self-interest".

As a Christian we can never fairly say that there are just two kinds of people: people who believe in the Christian God and everybody else. There are some Christians who claim that Muslims are atheists because they don't believe in a Christian God. This is just plain silliness I hope you'll agree.

So again I repeat, it is a good God that has created a world that largely reflects his wisdom and kindness. It is a wonderful thing that a huge percentage of humanity agrees on a large number of basic moral principles. There is much that can be made of this consensus.

As soon as you start arguing that atheists can believe whatever they will, atheists can argue back that you just happened to choose the religion that validated all your prejudices so how are you any different. They can further annoy you by claiming that the reason you happened to choose a religion identical (or similar) to that of your parents is that your family is genetically predisposed to be Methodists, Lutherans, Catholics, Buddhists, etc.

If that one guanine-cytosine pair on chromosome 14 had just been replaced with an adenine-thymine pair then you might just now be walking into a pizza joint in Haifa with a non-descript backpack.

[SeekAndFind]

As soon as you start arguing that atheists can believe whatever they will, atheists can argue back that you just happened to choose the religion that validated all your prejudices so how are you any different.

But then look at it another way ON WHAT BASIS DO ATHEISTS *GROUND* THEIR MORALITY ? Other than to refer to their own personal preference, I can't see anything else.

With a Theist, there is at least a basis for grounding one's morality. Now one can argue after that regarding which "god" is the basis for morality, but with theism, there is at least THAT GROUNDING.

Let's say a Christian believes in Jesus Christ as Lord of all and the source of morality and a Muslim disbelieves that, that disagreement does not in and of itself eliminate the GROUNDING of morality. Either one of them is right or both are wrong about their view of God but at least with this belief in God, there is a BASIS for morality.

With the atheist, who believes we are all but matter and will return to matter, it all becomes a matter of preference. You can label what you like "good" or "evil" depending on what you personally believe is "good" or "evil". The basis for morality then becomes personal preference.

I for one am still trying to make sense of which "religion" is the truth, but at least I have to start on one absolute premise --- GOD EXISTS. Without that premise, the main moral ground you can stand on is self-preference.

[MarianoApologeticus]

This is all part of Dawkins’ tactic of having “society stepping in” to stop religious parents from doing so and his hopes that this “might lead children to choose no religion at all.”

There are good dissections of Camp Quest, its PR side and its true underbelly here:

http://atheismisdead.blogspot.com/2009/05/atheist-re-education-camp-for-children.html

http://atheismisdead.blogspot.com/2009/06/atheism-camp-camp-quest-freethought.html