Sibboleth
Labour
'Sit on my finger, sing in my ear, O littleblood.'
Posts: 15,805
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Post by Sibboleth on Jun 20, 2015 22:57:12 GMT
Lord give me strength.
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Post by Devil Wincarnate on Jun 21, 2015 9:18:13 GMT
Dawkins is a remarkably poor spokesman for atheism, particularly with regard to the mismatch between the arguments against religion he advances, and the arguments he's competent to advance. His ranting about religion often obscures quite legitimate concerns about the role of religion in education and other spheres. People believing in a deity doesn't bother me, using that to get public money does.
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Post by Davıd Boothroyd on Jun 21, 2015 9:20:29 GMT
Dawkins is a remarkably poor spokesman for atheism It is not possible to be a spokesperson for atheism. Atheism isn't a belief.
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Jun 21, 2015 10:07:00 GMT
Dawkins is a remarkably poor spokesman for atheism It is not possible to be a spokesperson for atheism. Atheism isn't a belief. It's a lack of belief. It's not formally organised, but inevitably the discussion will be presented as a binary, and if one side has spokespeople the assumption will be that the other side should have. It's a logical fallacy, but that doesn't mean it won't get made repeatedly. And certainly Dawkins is a frequent pick in the media when somebody is needed to talk about atheism versus religion.
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Post by Davıd Boothroyd on Jun 21, 2015 10:12:18 GMT
That's a comment about the media, not about atheism.
It's not a level playing field. Someone who adheres to a religious belief can fairly be challenged on what others with that belief have done. Those of us without religious belief are not part of a movement and have no responsibility for what others who are without religious belief have done.
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Jun 21, 2015 10:35:17 GMT
Perhaps, but this is precisely why Dawkins is such a bad spokesman - he's polarising, painfully unsubtle, has unappealing views on a range of other issues and likes to spout off about topics he knows little about, rather than concentrating on his areas of expertise. And I continue to believe that spokesman is the correct term, because that's what he's usually presented as and because the English language doesn't have a word for 'person generally conceived of the head of a group that doesn't actually have a leader'.
In any case, I don' think that disparity does exist. You can challenge the religious about the actions of their co-religionists carried out in the course of their duties or with their faith as their justification. And you can challenge atheists about the actions of other atheists which were taken as a consequence of their atheism. Neither is a good argument, but both have some legitimacy. The same doesn't apply to finding a reprehensible believer or atheist and treating them as representative of all those who do or don't believe in a given deity.
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Post by Davıd Boothroyd on Jun 21, 2015 10:50:33 GMT
No, the point is that atheists are not a group at all.
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Khunanup
Lib Dem
Portsmouth Liberal Democrats
Posts: 11,897
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Post by Khunanup on Jun 21, 2015 14:45:18 GMT
David is once again not seeing the wood for the trees when it comes to atheists again. It's ironic that he says that atheists are not a group at all and then treats all atheists as if they are the same by somehow speaking on their behalf ('those of us without a religious belief')...
It would appear to me that there are two kind of atheists, those without a belief who quite frankly don't give a monkeys or second thought about religion or what other people do or do not believe and the militant anti religious crowd who expound their view against religion (with Dawkins very much are the forefront) who very much have a firm belief that there is no God or gods and that anyone who does believe in Him/Her or them is stupid, crazy or delusional. I suppose the two groups could be boiled down to the former having the attitude 'I don't believe in God' and the latter 'I believe there is no God' and then go from there, subtly different in language but a completely different mindset.
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Post by Davıd Boothroyd on Jun 21, 2015 14:59:37 GMT
David is once again not seeing the wood for the trees when it comes to atheists again. It's ironic that he says that atheists are not a group at all and then treats all atheists as if they are the same by somehow speaking on their behalf ('those of us without a religious belief')... That's really quite deceptive, mendacious and cheap of you to take that quote out of context. Let's put it back in: "Those of us without religious belief are not part of a movement and have no responsibility for what others who are without religious belief have done." 'Us' refers to humans. The statement in context simply states again that those human beings who don't have a religious belief do not constitute a group of human beings.
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Post by greenchristian on Jun 21, 2015 15:39:09 GMT
You think that all arguments against religion are strong? What a bizarre point of view. There are so many strong ones that you dont tend to hear weaker ones very often. And yet this whole tangent started with Arthur Figgis citing a ridiculously weak argument against religion that seems to get frequently repeated. The whole "religion/faith means belief with no evidence" thing that Arthur's post is an example of atheist arguments at their worst. When you start discussing that argument in any depth, atheists always end up having to redefine the word evidence from its normal meaning in order to make the argument work. The difference between theists and atheists is not - as many atheists would say - that there is no evidence for the existence of God, and atheists are simply acknowledging the fact. It's that atheists discount the evidence that has convinced theists. Of course, you and me will obviously have different views on how strong the various arguments against religion are. In my experience, strong arguments for atheism are few and far between. I can't help wondering if that is partly due to the prominence Dawkins has as the public face of atheism, and the fact that he's particularly good at using bad/weak arguments against religion. But I have a certain difficulty anyway with the idea of "arguments against religion". What exactly does that phrase mean? Exactly what it says. Arguments that religion (either in general or in a specific instance) is untrue, or bad for those believing/practising it, or bad for society. Atheism is a word with two different meanings. Strong atheism is the belief that God(s) do(es) not exist, and it is a belief. Weak atheism is the lack of belief in the existence of God(s). Atheists who bother to argue their case are clearly demonstrating strong atheism. Meanwhile, weak atheists are more likely to describe themselves as agnostics than as atheists - since the lack of belief in the existence of god(s) would simply mean that you have no idea whether there is a god or not. The statement in context simply states again that those human beings who don't have a religious belief do not constitute a group of human beings. That sentence is a contradiction in terms. "Human beings who don't have a religious belief" is a clearly identifiable groups of human beings, even though they have nothing else in common with each other. Incidentally, there will be plenty of people in that group who are not atheists in either sense (they believe there's some kind of god or higher power out there - but no further thoughts on the matter), and plenty of people outside that group who are (Buddhism, for example, is an atheistic religion).
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Jun 21, 2015 15:49:32 GMT
I'm not sure that there is a clean divide between strong and weak atheism. I am of the belief that there is almost certainly no god and even if there were a god that it would be almost certainly not that described in the bible or other existing religious text. I cannot be sure but I am relatively happy to declare myself an atheist on the grounds of "beyond reasonable doubt". Strong or weak?
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Khunanup
Lib Dem
Portsmouth Liberal Democrats
Posts: 11,897
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Post by Khunanup on Jun 21, 2015 16:05:45 GMT
David is once again not seeing the wood for the trees when it comes to atheists again. It's ironic that he says that atheists are not a group at all and then treats all atheists as if they are the same by somehow speaking on their behalf ('those of us without a religious belief')... That's really quite deceptive, mendacious and cheap of you to take that quote out of context. Let's put it back in: "Those of us without religious belief are not part of a movement and have no responsibility for what others who are without religious belief have done." 'Us' refers to humans. The statement in context simply states again that those human beings who don't have a religious belief do not constitute a group of human beings. That is the context that I took your quote in David, I'm not really sure what other kind of context it could be taken in and my take on it is perfectly logical. On the other hand your last sentence here is completely illogical. People without a religious belief are clearly a group of people in the same way as people who don't adhere to Labour Party policies are a group of people, endlessly diverse but an identifiable binary group.
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Khunanup
Lib Dem
Portsmouth Liberal Democrats
Posts: 11,897
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Post by Khunanup on Jun 21, 2015 16:07:28 GMT
I'm not sure that there is a clean divide between strong and weak atheism. I am of the belief that there is almost certainly no god and even if there were a god that it would be almost certainly not that described in the bible or other existing religious text. I cannot be sure but I am relatively happy to declare myself an atheist on the grounds of "beyond reasonable doubt". Strong or weak? By what you've said you're clearly agnostic as you state a lack of certainty.
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Post by Davıd Boothroyd on Jun 21, 2015 16:23:18 GMT
That's the problem with religious people: put under pressure, they have to come out with stupid statements. A group of people only has any meaning when there is something linking the members of that group. People are never linked by the absence of a characteristic possessed by others.
Viz: 'People whose hobby isn't collecting stamps' is not a group.
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Sibboleth
Labour
'Sit on my finger, sing in my ear, O littleblood.'
Posts: 15,805
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Post by Sibboleth on Jun 21, 2015 16:26:22 GMT
Well you're in luck Joe as God is not actually described in the Bible. This is part of the point, of course.
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Post by greenchristian on Jun 21, 2015 16:29:04 GMT
That's the problem with religious people: put under pressure, they have to come out with stupid statements. A group of people only has any meaning when there is something linking the members of that group. People are never linked by the absence of a characteristic possessed by others. Viz: 'People whose hobby isn't collecting stamps' is not a group. [mathematician]Technically, those people are a set, rather than a group, because we haven't defined any operators. But assuming, for the sake of argument, a layman's understanding of the words, you're speaking complete nonsense.[/mathematician]
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Sibboleth
Labour
'Sit on my finger, sing in my ear, O littleblood.'
Posts: 15,805
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Post by Sibboleth on Jun 21, 2015 16:41:17 GMT
That's the problem with religious people: put under pressure, they have to come out with stupid statements. A group of people only has any meaning when there is something linking the members of that group. People are never linked by the absence of a characteristic possessed by others. Viz: 'People whose hobby isn't collecting stamps' is not a group. If we're defining atheism as a simple lack of religious belief then your arguments are actually quite correct. But if we're using the word as a shorthand for (say) anti-clericalism, secularism and so on (as is often done in English, like it or not), then that would be a different matter. It's fairly clear that (for instance) the Dechristianisation of France (which can be argued to be one of the world's first truly modern atrocities) was motivated by deeply held beliefs and that it would be very silly to claim that it was not carried out by a group.
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Post by greenchristian on Jun 21, 2015 16:43:05 GMT
I'm not sure that there is a clean divide between strong and weak atheism. I am of the belief that there is almost certainly no god and even if there were a god that it would be almost certainly not that described in the bible or other existing religious text. I cannot be sure but I am relatively happy to declare myself an atheist on the grounds of "beyond reasonable doubt". Strong or weak? I'd agree that the divide is a little bit fuzzy. Mostly because people in both camps could plausibly describe their position in similar terms to you. I guess it depends on whether your approach is "I believe god doesn't exist, but I admit that I might be wrong", which is clearly strong theism. Or whether it's "I've not seen any evidence that convinces me yet, so I'll assume there isn't a god for the time being", which would clearly be weak atheism. There are people in both camps who could describe their stance in similar terms to you. Dawkins, for example, is clearly a strong atheist, but admits that there is room for uncertainty. You seem to lean more towards weak atheism.
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Post by gwynthegriff on Jun 21, 2015 17:34:57 GMT
That's the problem with religious people: put under pressure, they have to come out with stupid statements. A group of people only has any meaning when there is something linking the members of that group. People are never linked by the absence of a characteristic possessed by others. Viz: 'People whose hobby isn't collecting stamps' is not a group. If we're defining atheism as a simple lack of religious belief then your arguments are actually quite correct. But if we're using the word as a shorthand for (say) anti-clericalism, secularism and so on (as is often done in English, like it or not), then that would be a different matter. It's fairly clear that (for instance) the Dechristianisation of France (which can be argued to be one of the world's first truly modern atrocities) was motivated by deeply held beliefs and that it would be very silly to claim that it was not carried out by a group. But surely you can be religious and anti-clerical?
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Post by afleitch on Jun 21, 2015 18:10:16 GMT
Christianity (to pick just one) generally stands by itself as resolutely inane (and I do consider it quite inane; more so than Judaism and certainly more so than eastern philosophies or the Stoicism it heavily borrowed from) The idea that the god of one semitic tribe, is the only god and who sent himself via a virgin, died and rose on a cross will either be the most beautiful thing for you, or a genuinely amusing 'just so story'.
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