The fact is that the questioner could say that, did say that, and Dawkins' was simply polite.
Dawkins passed on debating beliefs.
I imagine he had to, Old Navy Vet. It's the only way he could avoid having to acknowledge that he has beliefs himself — if by "belief" we mean something held to be true for which there is no evidence directly available to sense perception, something that Dawkins deplores as "irrational." Yet it seems to me that orthodox Darwinist evolution theory falls into precisely the category of the irrational.
As the philosopher Richard Spilsbury wrote, in Providence Lost: A Critique of Darwinism (London: Oxford University Press, 1974), the basic objection to Darwinism
...is that it confers miraculous powers on inappropriate agents. In essence, it is an attempt to supernaturalize nature, to endow unthinking processes with more-than-human powers — including the power of creating thinkers.... I find it impossible to share this faith that supra-human achievements can be encompassed by sub-human means and sub-rational elements.Yet evidently Dawkins does not find it "impossible." More, one cannot "get rid of" God unless one imbues nature with such miraculous powers.
Of course, Dawkins very well knows that God "exists." (If he did not, his position would be utterly ridiculous: If God does not exist, then why does Dawkins spend so much time and energy inveighing against Him?) For some reason, he's very bitter about Him; yet he knows he can't "kill God." What Dawkins can do, however, is to try to destroy belief in God and even — possibly, given his reluctance to say whether what Hitler did was in any sense evil — to destroy believers who do not share his belief if he ever got the chance. (Especially Christians.)
In denying the objective existence of any axiological claim, of any objective moral law independent of human imaginings, he prefers the Zeitgeist, the fickle, ever-changing Spirit of the Age. In consequence, he's up to his eyeballs in moral relativism, and evidently likes it that way.
At this point, perhaps a word of explanation is necessary. Zeitgeist is a German word meaning “spirit of the age.” Dawkins here refers to the prevailing moral climate or mood of a given place or time. We may observe that what constitutes moral or ethical behavior differs from one culture to another; indeed, it may even differ within a given culture. This is not in dispute. The question, rather, is this: should moral standards be based on the societal zeitgeist or should they look beyond it to something else? (Larry Taunton, "Richard Dawkins: The Atheist Evangelist")I think what Dawkins is trying to do is (as Taunton also notes in the above-quoted article) is to preach to the choir of his own doctrinal group. Quoting the anthropologist Roger Sandall, psychologist/philosopher Robert Godwin has pointed out,
"Knowledge in such groups is not rationally justified but culturally justified, so that everyone is anxiously coerced into believing the same thing, no matter how faulty or implausible.Anyhoot, Dawkins' enterprise essentially boils down to the creation of an alternative religion or belief system more congenial to the Spirit of the Age. It withdraws its eye from God and sees nature itself as miraculously self-creating, and thoroughly amoral.
"All that is needed is for enough people to believe that X is true, and X is true.... What is called tribal "knowledge" usually reflects the needs of group solidarity more than anything else: as such it often represents culturally justified false belief...."This leads to the universal principle applicable to all groups, that Logical coherence and social solidarity are inversely related. So the more solidarity you have, the less logic you get, and vice versa."
And he says Christians are the irrational ones! Personally, I think Dawkins needs to see a shrink — he and all his like-minded buddies living in scientistic fantasyland. FWIW
BTW, Obama also believes that if enough people believe X, then X becomes true — even if X has never been true in all of human experience and history. It has to be this way if a "new and better world" is to be brought into existence.... It stands to reason that the "old" one has to be cancelled first.
But then, how we to tell whether something is "new and better" without a standard of value by which to judge it? It is precisely such a standard that is not permitted with the type of reasoning in which both Dawkins and Obama routinely engage.
But then, what can one expect: They're both Left Progressives....
Happy Thanksgiving to you, Old Navy Vet, and to all my dear FReeper friends!