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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?
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.
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.