The God Delusion

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zhuk

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The God Delusion

Post21 May 2007

Regarding the Richard Dawkins program, "The root of all evil", shown last night on ABC TV here in Australia.
The Sydney Morning Herald: The root of all evil? May 21, 2007

He has denounced God as an ethnic cleanser. He has described faith as the biggest obstacle to peace in the 21st century. Little wonder Richard Dawkins has been labelled as the religious right's Public Enemy No.1, writes John Huxley.

'For Australian television audiences accustomed to comfortable Sunday evenings spent watching genial English dons strolling through ruined castles speculating about the sex life of 16th-century monarchs, Richard Dawkins will have come as one hell of a shock. So, too, will his message, which strikes at the very things they hold most dear.

Not just God, whom he denounces, in Old Testament guise as "the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it, petty, vindictive, unjust, unforgiving, racist, an ethnic-cleanser urging his people on to acts of genocide". But church schools, miracles, heaven and hell, too. Faith, hope, meaning: things more important, for many people, than life itself.

Dawkins is unapologetic. "The time has come for people of reason to say: enough is enough. Religious faith discourages independent thought. It's divisive and it's dangerous."

More polemic than pop culture, more declaration of war than documentary, his mini-series The Root of All Evil? - which screened last night and will conclude next Sunday on the ABC - opens with Dawkins peering through barbed wire at worshippers at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.

"There are would-be murderers all around the world," he says, as the peaceful scene at the world's most holy, albeit sensitive, site is suddenly slashed through with apocalyptic images. Mangled bodies, smoking buildings, suicide bombers. "They want to kill you and me and themselves. They are motivated by what they think is the highest ideal."

A religious ideal. A religious promise, of everlasting happiness in heaven in return for one devastating act of self-sacrifice on earth.

Religion, says Dawkins, is the big issue that can no longer be ignored or respectfully tolerated. Rather, it is the decaying carcass that must be confronted and cast out if civilisation is to be saved. His attack is trained not solely on Muslim fundamentalism and its Western religious counterpart - a right-wing fundamentalism that is creationist, evangelist, extremist , which he says is rising alarmingly in America, but also in Australia and Europe. He has benign "mainstream" churches in his sights, too.

In a series of interviews, Dawkins - in part quirky British academic, dressed in a bilious green shirt, pedalling in to philosophical battle, part unholy, Borat-style gatecrasher, intent on upsetting spiritual apple carts - takes aim at religion of all types.

Religion, he argues is superstition. It is the enemy of rational thought, the ever-present threat to civilisation, the fuel of war, the bastion of bigotry, the rulebook for systematic human rights abuse, the virus with which parents infect their children. In the home, and in church schools.

Religion, he says, is the root of all evil. For the statement, surely, demands no mealy mouthed question mark in the mind of Dawkins, whose best-selling books The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker and The God Delusion have confirmed his leadership of a swelling band of militant atheists.

FOR many millennia atheism has been the -ism that dared not speak its name. David Nicholls, the president of the Atheist Foundation of Australia, says even today many members will not allow their names to be published, preferring to hide behind pseudonyms.

"I don't want to sound paranoid," Nicholls, who uses his real name, says. "But there are potential personal risks." Especially when members, their minds unfettered by "medieval myths and superstitions", tackle issues such as termination and gay rights. "Abortion clinics get bombed, you know. And though we think we're a pretty cool country, gays still get beaten up."

Nicholls refused to discuss membership numbers, except to confirm that they have increased substantially since the September 11, 2001 bombings.

Elsewhere, though, atheists are emerging - no, rushing - from the shadows. They eschew the "cop-out option" of agnosticism. They proclaim the irrationality of faith, of the search for "meaning", for belief in a God, any God, for which, they argue, no evidence exists. They warn civilisation of the dangers of substituting Dark Ages faith for scientifically verifiable fact.

In recent months, atheists have taken part in several public debates: at the Careforce Church in Mount Evelyn, near Melbourne, in the Methodist Central Hall, London, and perhaps most potently on neutral ground at La Jolla, California. There scientists held a forum compared by The New York Times to the founding convention for a new political party based on reason.

There has been a rush of other books espousing atheism. They include Breaking the Spell by Daniel Dennett, Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris, and most outspoken, irreverent and readable, God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens. As one reviewer put it, Hitchens, the British-born American enfant terrible, "takes the verbal equivalent of an AK47 to shoot down hallowed religious figures". Gandhi is an "obscurantist"; Martin Luther King an orgiast; the Dalai Lama a "medieval princeling"; and Muhammad, Hitchens suspects, was an epileptic.

Of monotheism, Hitchens writes with trademark floridity, it is "a plagiarism of a plagiarism of a hearsay of a hearsay, of an illusion of an illusion, extending all the way back to a fabrication of a few non-events".

By comparison with the excitable, potentially explosive Hitchens, Dawkins - who will take part by satellite in the Sydney Writers' Festival next month - is more subtle in his writing, more restrained in conversation, more polite in public debate.

As a Lourdes priest, a Colorado Springs evangelical pastor and a Jew-turned-Muslim leader discover in Dawkins's uncompromising interviews, his inquisition is just as persistent, his version of "the greatest story ever told" just as offensive. Yet he seems on the surface such a nice man.

Dawkins was born in 1941 into a colonial service family, and received what he recalls as "a normal, Anglican upbringing" in East Africa before moving to England at the age of eight. Even then he was beginning to question the existence of God.

After a brilliant academic career at Oundle, one of England's leading public schools, and Oxford University, he taught zoology at the University of California, Berkeley. Twelve years ago he returned to Oxford to fill the first chair for the public understanding of science, endowed by the Microsoft tycoon Charles Simonyi. As profilers gleefully report, Dawkins is married, for the third time, to artist, actress and fellow "time traveller" Lalla Ward. They met through mutual friend Douglas Adams, the creator of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Adams worked with Ward on the BBC sci-fi series Dr Who.

Dawkins, who has gone an unruly grey, retains the "fine mephistophelian eyebrows and delicate, English matinee-star features" first identified by long-time friend Robyn Williams during Dawkins's most recent visit to Australia in 1996. He has a part-time publicist and a home page, where frequently and "less frequently" asked questions ("what is the point of Spain?", for example) are answered. Apart from writing a string of best-selling books, he has won several major prizes, including that of Humanist of the Year, and is a regular guest on radio and television programs.

An unapologetic populist and provocateur, he is one of few scientists to have become a household name, and be labelled with rude nicknames. They include "Darwin's rottweiler", a reference to his evolutionist, anti-creationist opinions, refreshed this week by a visit to the Galapagos Islands where Charles Darwin did early research.

In the United States, where he recently completed a media tour, he has been identified as "the religious right's Public Enemy No. 1", acquiring sufficient fame to appear on the cover of Time magazine, sufficient infamy to be sent up in the TV show South Park.

He was not impressed, reportedly grumbling he was "portrayed as a cartoon character buggering a bald transvestite". More likely, Dawkins, an admirer of the Australian philosopher Peter Singer, was joking.

Williams, presenter of The Science Show on Radio National, says Dawkins has a keen sense of humour, as well as a talent for selecting the choice metaphor, such as the "blind watchmaker", and telling simile. "He's a really decent guy. Very polite. Very cautious. He always seems genuinely surprised that he can make others cross," says Williams, recalling the reaction when, after publication of The Selfish Gene, his friend addressed the Australian Museum Society on a earlier visit to Sydney.

"The thing about Richard is he takes other people's arguments very seriously. He can get cross, but it's, well, righteous crossness. And I can feel the same when I hear someone has thrown a bomb into a school bus, shouting 'God is great."'

Perhaps it does not matter how softly Dawkins talks, how gently he probes. As his wife once said - and several of his Root of All Evil? interviewees would surely agree - "He seems so nice, but can say such shocking things." As he does in Root of All Evil?

For example, his statement that the God of the Old Testament is jealous, petty, vindictive and unforgiving. Such provocative words should ensure that the mini-series will prompt in Australia a storm of protest similar to that which greeted its showing in the US and Britain.

Some arguments have been well-rehearsed over the past decade or so: that Dawkins confuses the material for the real; that he refuses to recognise the selflessness and other positive qualities that flow from religion; that he fails to explain the "first cause"; that he ignores the durability and universality of religion; that he muddles politics and religion.

More seriously for Dawkins, at least in the short term, have been the objections raised about his television program. Detractors have claimed that it makes exaggerated claims ("the root of all evil"?), is deceitful in its methods (focusing on a rabbi apparently neglecting holy matters to argue on a mobile phone about his work schedule) and selective in its choice of wild-eyed rather than moderate interviewees.

In short, they say, the arch-atheist parades precisely the dogmatism, the fundamentalism, the extremism he so despises in others.

Dawkins has indicated that he will answer criticisms from Australian viewers when he returns from the Galapagos Islands next week. However, he has said - after The Root of All Evil? was shown in Britain and the US - that the series title was pressed upon him by Britain's Channel 4 to stoke controversy. He said that more benign, mainstream religious leaders were asked but declined to appear.

And to suggestions that he gives too much prominence to ranters, such as last night's Pastor Ted Haggard, he says America's religious right is an evil force to be reckoned with, that it is counted in tens of millions, is growing, has power at the highest levels of government and constitutes a clear and present danger.

So, wild, unsubstantiated, indiscriminate scaremongering? Or fair warning for a world fast going to hell in a holy handcart?

Australia - which has a strong church school tradition but, according to the most recent census, also boasts more Jedi warriors than atheists - now has an opportunity to make up its own mind.'

Ahhh ... what are we atheists to do?? :roll: Religions demand that we respect whatever weird beliefs they may have, but oh no we are legitimately fair game for them, of course :P

One thing i read in the paper last weekend by Christopher Hitchens on the subject which i found interesting: "Religious faith is, precisely because we are still-evolving creatures, ineradicable. It will never die out or not at least until we get over our fear of death, and of the dark, and of each other."

On the program, I noticed how the American evangelist got offended at the suggestion that his kids were "animals" ... so are they vegetable or mineral instead :?: LOL

"I am so made that I cannot believe." - Blaise Pascal, French philosopher & mathematician
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paulkershaw

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Post25 May 2007

All fair and well, and points taken. However, what about those people who've had such deep connection with Mother/Father G-d and who haven't been attached to any religious or spiritual organisation?

They can describe G-d in their own way and without any reference to 'taught' teachings.

Maybe some past birth influences still remaining perhaps? ~p~
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zhuk

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Post26 May 2007

Well for me it really doesn't whether you are a part of any 'organised religion' or not ... The human 'need' for belief in the unprovable is still a mystery to me really :biggrin:. Something i read recently ... in the Oxford definition of agnosticism is interesting ...
Agnostic: One who holds that the existence of anything beyond and behind material phenomena is unknown and (so far as can be judged) unknowable, and especially that a First Cause and an unseen world are subjects of which we know nothing.

So what point is there in belief or even pondering something that you can never ever know? :wink:
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paulkershaw

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Post28 May 2007

zhuk wrote:Well for me it really doesn't whether you are a part of any 'organised religion' or not ... The human 'need' for belief in the unprovable is still a mystery to me really :biggrin:. So what point is there in belief or even pondering something that you can never ever know? :wink:

I reckon its all about the search for self actually, or rather seeking a relationship with self. I remember feeling rather lost when I left BK life but great relief and anticipation too, at being able to be myself once again. Whoever that is!

Sometimes, I feel that 'belonging' to a particular organised religion (or particular following) actually takes one away from the responsibility of having to work with the self i.e the sheep in the flock syndrome where one can just be part of the mass consciousness instead of learning that the journey 'within' is really about growing the mass consciousness ...

Look how much trouble we got into if we even dared be different to the mainstream BK teachings. (It started like this, "Brother, Baba says ...") :roll:!

p
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zhuk

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Post29 May 2007

paulkershaw wrote:Sometimes, I feel that 'belonging' to a particular organised religion (or particular following) actually takes one away from the responsibility of having to work with the self, i.e the sheep in the flock syndrome where one can just be part of the mass consciousness instead of learning that the journey 'within' is really about growing the mass consciousness ... Look how much trouble we got into if we even dared be different to the mainstream BK teachings. (It started like this, "Brother, Baba says ...") :roll:

I guess that is one of the 'hooks' that get the (often insecure) searchers into these cults ... the feeling that "I've come home, finally! THIS is where i belong!". I know I felt like that, at first lol. I felt that I suddenly had a real family that cared about me so much ... and where going to give me the secret of how to be happy FOREVER :D and for 'free', no less! Well, monetarily free, anyway :p.

All that carefully orchestrated 'love-bombing' sure does the trick! Suck 'em in ... if they start to doubt or question, well "that's their 'karma', obviously". And you can always kick 'em out if they don't toe the Party line ... then they will reap their deserved 'fortune' of eternal suffering :).

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