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Dr. Richard Dawkins On Why Disagreeing With Religion Isn't Insulting
In part 2 of this video interview (with transcript), Dr. Richard Dawkins explains the function of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, headlined by his website. They're holding it up as a blueprint for similar groups: "We're trying to encourage, with some success, other organizations to make use of our facility, so that they will use our website, or have their own websites which are based upon ours, and have the same look and feel and use the same infrastructure." One of the Foundation's other purposes is to oppose organizations like the Good News Club. "What it is, is a group of Fundamentalist Christian organizations, who go into public schools after the school bell has rung for the day. So that it's no longer violating the Constitutional separation of church and state. ... And it's actually the Good News Club people masquerading as teachers, and they're being extremely effective." Dr. Dawkins also talks about his own comments, and explains why they're perceived as offensive: "Ignorance is no crime. There are all sorts of things I'm ignorant of, such as baseball, but I don't regard it as insulting if somebody says I'm ignorant of baseball, it's a simple fact. I am ignorant of baseball. People who claim to be Creationists are almost always ignorant of evolution. That's just a statement of fact, not an insult. It's just a statement. But it sounds like an insult. And I think that accounts for part of what you've picked up about my apparent image of being aggressive and offensive. I'm just telling it clearly." Hit the link below to see the rest of the interview.
He made a pretty good point there. There's only solution I've found to the problem of people taking your disagreement as an insult, and that is to pose every concern as a question for more detail. I've found it's a lot easier to do such conversations one on one as well, which I think is an often overlooked component of why debates on the internet seem so pointless and shouty.
The difference being, if you're ignorant of baseball you don't deny its existence and insist that divine intervention causes the game to play itself.
to some groups, disagreeing with their religion is, by definition, insulting it. There's no process of debate involved. It's right there, written in their Book of Facts.
And it's a complete waste of your time to argue with them over their "Facts".
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
From an interview:
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Do you really want to get that tattooed on you? People might think you have a Bachelor of the Arts in English and that would be embarrassing.
I mostly agree with Dawkins on this and I think he walks a fine line. Many pro-knowledge/anti-religious people are quite aggressive and offensive. So much so that, despite the fact I'm not at all religious, I find myself quite put off by them. Their idea may be right, but their presentation lacks and just drives away people.
Dawkins is usually respectful when he is speaking. He may be blunt, but he isn't often insulting. I feel this puts him in much better standing than other people trying to educate. He is generally quite good at explaining his points of view and giving reasons for his ideas without bashing other people.
I think Dawkins has spent too much time in modern England, where, yeah, Christian fundamentalists are very, very, rare, and alas, the Muslim fundamentalist group is surprisingly large (largely because of a substantial refugee population from Pakistan.)
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Telling somebody that they're ignorant about a particular topic may potentially (and more often than not) have the underlying connotation that that person should have known better in the first place. Nobody is going to tell Dr. Dawkins that he's ignorant of baseball because that's a useless statement. When somebody tells you that you're ignorant of "traffic laws", "etiquette", or "geography" you get the point.
Applied to the religious, telling them that they're ignorant of evolution, and being defensive about them getting mad about the statement because you think it's just a fact IS ignorant. The religious already believe that they've considered everything they need to know about evolution, and have discredited it in their own minds. The real strategy here is to not start with a public conclusion of them being ignorant, but to simply ask questions and answer their rebuttals. Eventually you'll hit a contradiction or hole in their misunderstanding, and the real question there is what they'll do next. Do they open their minds to truth, no matter how repugnant it is to their faith, or do they stay aggressively closed minded about the subject?
I am currently reading Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Sagan does an incredible job at promoting skepticism, fighting ignorance and all while being extremely respectful of religion. While I love Sagan, I just can't stand Dawkins.
I spent about a decade debating Creationists on talk.origins, and while there were a few Creationists, mainly of the ID variety, who did understand the fundamentals, by and large most Creationists were simply going off of ICR pamphlets, AiG talking points and Jack Chick comics, and actually didn't have even the most rudimentary understanding of evolution or biology in general, and more often than not mixed biology, geology and cosmology into one great big bag called "Science That Lies".
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
As a Buddhist, I find the entire tree of Abrahamic religions insulting: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Mormonism. Since they put the afterlife ahead of this life, and the Magic Man in the Sky ahead of Humanity.
Apparently you haven't adapted. We're talking about a highly confirmed theory accepted by virtually every single researcher in fields that touch on it (you could probably count the number of active publishing biologists who outright reject evolution on one hand, not even Michael Behe actually rejects it).
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Creationists have been told, in effect, that scientists believe that living things arose from non-living matter by a process of random aggregation. Placed in context with the idea that the Earth is 6000 years old, this is clearly unbelievable. It is necessary to know a great deal - about the actual age of the Universe, what is known about the early Earth, some basic biochemistry - before you can start to hold any meaningful opinion about evolution by natural selection. During the 19th century it took scientists the best part of a hundred years to understand just how old the Earth was. The body of knowledge collected was enormous - rates of erosion of rock, the meaning of the fossil record and stratification, what the Coal Measures actually were. Even so, it wasn't until the 20th century that a mechanism - radioactivity - was discovered that explained how the Universe could be that old and still have active stars in it.
Creationists do not know that stuff. They, in my experience, may have a technician level understanding of a science - even physicians are basically technicians, which is how you can have medical doctors who are Creationists - but not the kind of broad appreciation of the scientific hinterland that is needed to grasp just why evolution, the Big Bang and so are are generally accepted by scientists.
The rest of the educated population mostly takes the conclusions of scientists in trust - in, say, Europe - but elsewhere they will listen to whoever seems to have the most authority.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
The Christian fundies do exist here (and I've run into quite a few militant anti-abortionists and young earth creationists). It's just that they're overshadowed by a bunch of very, very ugly Muslim extremists, who for various reasons, can get away with showing a persistent level of hatred and intolerance that would get the Christians shouted down at best, and thrown in the slammer en masse at worst.
Just last week, there was a bunch of bearded brown Muslim extremists in skirts screaming their heads off in the street at Oxford Circus, with big banners ("JESUS = SATAN") written on them. The only reason why they didn't get a hiding off anybody, because they where there in such force of numbers, that nobody dared challenge them. In the middle of Oxford Street. This is in 2012, after September 11 and the 7th of July attacks.
Britain DOES have a problem with religious extremism, and while there ARE Christian extremists, the Muslim extremists are multiplying at a rapid rate, are out there, in your face, and are virtually unassailable, because everyone is too scared of being stigmatized as an Islamophobe for not tolerating vile Islamic extremism.
Disagreeing with religion is not insulting. Calling its followers unthinking, ignorant, brainwashed, delusional: this is insulting.
Well, then they just demonstrated a quite stunning level of ignorance of their proclaimed religion, didn't they? Maybe the local Iman should have pointed out that the Koran quite clearly labels Jesus as a prophet and a Messenger of Allah, agrees with the New Testament of the Bible about the Virgin Birth and many other points of Jesus' supposed life and teachings therein. So, walking around with a sign saying "Allah's Messenger = Satan"... maybe they ought to go and try that in somewhere like Afghanistan or the Pakistani FATA and see how long can they keep their head or avoid getting stoned.
As a poster above pointed out, quite often Christian Fundamentalists have not actually read the Bible, and the same is also true about Muslim Fundamentalists, it seems.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
to some groups, disagreeing with their religion is, by definition, insulting it.
As a friend of mine (and Richard Dawkins) says "'Take offence at the drop of a hat' is the unwritten eleventh commandment".
Hey guys! I'm still an atheist! Let there be no doubt about this! Atheism, atheism, atheism! Imagine Dawkins saying this, jumping up and down like Ballmer at Micro$oft! Checkmate, closed-source programs!
Your attack on atheism is funny. It's certainly easier than defense.
You're all assholes because you don't believe the crap I believe, I find that insulting, and calling you names is the only avenue left to me to defend my fairy tale god.
Good work dude.
Richard Dawkins is a scientist.
This is the science section of Slashdot.
He's giving an interview on the issues surrounding science education and awareness.
Which bits are you struggling with?
The truth doesn't matter. It's what they believe. That's Dawkins' whole point. These folks in the street are ignorant not just of other religions, but of their own was well. But if you call them on it, they'll claim that you are insulting their religion and are therefore evil.
It's not a problem with a pleasant solution.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
At one point, I decided to watch some videos of Dawkins and found him to be obscene and utterly rude. While I am personally an atheist, I truly disagree with people suggesting that this man is representative of me. It's reached a point where religious people use him as an example of the raving lunatics atheists are. So far as I can tell, while he's also an atheist, he takes atheism to a degree of being a religion. Between him and organized non-religion groups, I'm thoroughly disappointed.
The point is atheists shouldn't ever be organizing as being atheists. It should not be a defining characteristic. A person who is an atheist should be something else. Maybe an artist, a musician, a scientist, an engineer, a good will worker. In short, an atheist should have a great deal of time to spend on things that are just more important and more meaningful than religion. Instead, these groups (including the Dawkins lackies) spend all their time being atheists and they even get into the "I'm better than the people who define themselves as believing in nonsense since I'm a person who defines myself as opposing believing in nonsense." It's like the morons who stand outside of meat plants protesting slaughtering cows while wearing a leather jacket to stay warm.
People... please just be more.
I prefer Atheism# - much easier for the beginner.
"Who is this God person anyway?"
If Dawkins truly believes that religion will quietly tolerate being told it is wrong, he is an idiot.
Well, he's not an idiot. He's trying to point out the absurdity of holding a point of view that takes offense at any question, challenge, or outright dispute. And that this type "offense" is fabricated to manipulate polite society and should be ignored.
There are such things as boundaries in human society, and while they're never absolute, there comes a point when one group extends the boundaries of its own propriety so far that there is no room for anyone else to exist--let alone coexist with a similarly absurdly broad set of boundaries. We can't all be pope.
Affected outrage is worn like a mask and used like a weapon to cow the rest of society to the will of an aggressive and dangerous few.
It's not the responsibility of the rest of the world to tiptoe around a group of people who have subverted the natural human desire for social harmony. Nobody offended you; you chose to "take offense". Well, now you've taken it; you have it; enjoy it. This is your offense, not ours.
To cite examples from the religion into which I have been indoctrinated:
Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.
Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea
You don't get to "opt out" and believe something else on your own time. You're either with or you're against. The domain of God and His representatives on earth is absolute. "Heresy" is ANY teaching inconsistent with dogma. It doesn't matter who teaches it or to whom. Church member or not, challenging dogma is not only an insult, it's a crime.
In modern times, the power of the Church to prosecute heresy has decreased significantly. They grudgingly acknowledge the existence of other views, but VCII, Ecumenism, etc. are still controversial with a lot of people. "OK, sure, we don't have to convert all the ignorant savages. We tend get a lot of really dirty looks from folks when we do that, and besides, we can't enforce it anyway. So, in the spirit of God's love for all His children, we accept that all..." But make no mistake if the Church had the power to enforce canon law everywhere, they would. Manipulation of the secular law where canon law has lost dominion is an effective and efficient tool.
One can only imagine that another's religion, especially offshoots of the one into which one has been indoctrinated has similarly totalitarian views of dissention--by members of the church or by people in general. I invite their own apostates to speak for their religion's tolerance to heresy.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
There's no getting away from religion's track record; so yes, religion needs to be neutered most thoroughly anywhere it even begins to impinge on governance. Look around you: Can't buy alcohol on Sunday (Why? What the fuck is Sunday to me?), six state constitutions officially include religious tests that would effectively prevent atheists from holding public office, and in some cases being a juror/witness, then there's that whole "swear on a bible" bucket of shit, there's the would-be laughable "creationism" thing (laughable except it snares a whole bunch of the bewildered and leads them down a most unscientific aisle full of crapola), there's toxic avengers like the Westboro pond scum, there's the whole "we can re-educate gays" idiocy...
Then historically speaking, we've got the inquisitions, the crusades, witch burnings, jihads, vilification of sexuality (we're still trying to dig out of that one: religion's biggest accomplishment ever was to convince people that sex was a bad thing except under aegis of the church, which really just means under the dictates of religious structures... you evil scumbags REALLY fucked up sexuality), murder of "heretics", suppression of science, burnings at the stake (eg. Giordano Bruno), blue laws, climic bombings...
I mean, really. Religion fucks up just about everything in touches. We don't need to speculate about this, we know it. So the best answer is, don't let it touch anything. You can think about your imaginary friend all you want. You can talk about him. But you can't make laws from your collection of imaginary crapola or force people to listen (eg, school prayer, etc.) That is best.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I think he's referring to the "My Belief" is as good as "Your Belief" conversation. Now you would have to explain to him the reason he's buggered is that he has "A Belief System based on something somebody invented from some source other that verifiable physical reality", and you have a rational framework of ideas based on validation tested against the physical universe and that if at any point in time the universe disagrees with any of the ideas in your rational framework, you excise the offending idea as proven false. Beliefs exist in the absence of facts. There are many unanswerable questions about being human and alive in this place. For these eternal questions, beliefs are a potentially valid way to look at these aspects of life and the universe. There are a growing number of places for which we have good theories and experimental data, and in these places you can dispense with belief, because there are facts, and facts trump opinions every time.
Just because I don't believe in gravity don't mean I can pull a Bugs Bunny and float on my belief... physical reality trumps every single time.