Don't atheists, in general, already have a bad name? I hardly think we need Dawkins' help for that.
Perhaps he's using hyperbole to show how embracing Islam would threaten the world's intellectual economy...
Is Richard Dawkins giving atheists a bad name?
by slimboyfat 59 Replies latest social current
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*lost*
phizzy - good post
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jwstudy
"All the world's Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge."
If Malala, 15 years old muslim girl said the same words, it is not so offensive.
I have heard that Japanese said "Japanese have fewer Nobel Prizes than Americans because our education system is ....."
But if same words came out from Americans, they might be offended.
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Laika
I am not sure how Dawkins has managed to gain such a large following. When someone makes arguments such as that the 'good' things religious people do are due to human nature and not religious beliefs, but the 'bad' things they do are of course because of religion and faith, how they are not seen as intellectually vapid is beyond me.
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slimboyfat
He waxes vapid postmodern theory too.
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Phizzy
I'm not sure that Richard Dawkins has a huge "following", and I don't see any great problem with his "offending" someone.
You're offended, so what ? go home and get over it.
"What is freedom of expression without the freedom to offend ? without that freedom, freedom of expression ceases to exist". Salman Rushdie.
I think too many people pussy-foot around things like the problems with Islam and other religions, bring on Pat Condell, he will tell it like it is, and no doubt offend a few bleeding heart Liberals in the process.
Specious arguments, like some Dawkins uses, can be attacked for what they are, but he does a grand job in pricking the pomposity of believers.
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GoodGuyGreg
@Laika: How would you argue that people do good because of their religious beliefs? Are you saying that non-believers have no inclination to do good deeds? Or that if we took away religion, everybody would be evil? Of course people do good primarily because that's part of the human nature.
But the other side of the coin is that when people are part of a system where the system is considered more important than the individuals it consists of, horrible things will be done in the name of this system. If the system in addition has rules and regulations that add ingredients like enforced ignorance and xenophobia, then the system becomes truly dangerous. We here on this board were once part of such a system. Threads about the org's fear of higher education are regularly recurring, as are threads about people being told to not think critically (that is: analyze what they're being told) but instead have faith (a trust in their leaders which may but doesn't have to be founded in actual facts).
And this is what Dawkins doesn't like about Islam either: it's pretty telling that a religion that once was the driving force behind science while Europe was stuck in the dark ages, a religion consisting of about one quarter of our planet's human population, has produced two scientific Nobel laureates in the past 111 years. What happened to the need to understand the world? And how come such a system has turned from being a driving force behind science to becoming a force against science and the spreading of knowledge among the population in the countries where it's dominant? Something there is rotten, and it's not the human nature.
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VM44
Richard Dawkins has written an autobiography.
Book Description
Release date: September 24, 2013
With the 2006 publication of The God Delusion, the name Richard Dawkins became a byword for ruthless skepticism and "brilliant, impassioned, articulate, impolite" debate (San Francisco Chronicle). his first memoir offers a more personal view.
His first book, The Selfish Gene, caused a seismic shift in the study of biology by proffering the gene-centered view of evolution. It was also in this book that Dawkins coined the term meme, a unit of cultural evolution, which has itself become a mainstay in contemporary culture.
In An Appetite for Wonder, Richard Dawkins shares a rare view into his early life, his intellectual awakening at Oxford, and his path to writing The Selfish Gene. He paints a vivid picture of his idyllic childhood in colonial Africa, peppered with sketches of his colorful ancestors, charming parents, and the peculiarities of colonial life right after World War II. At boarding school, despite a near-religious encounter with an Elvis record, he began his career as a skeptic by refusing to kneel for prayer in chapel. Despite some inspired teaching throughout primary and secondary school, it was only when he got to Oxford that his intellectual curiosity took full flight.
Arriving at Oxford in 1959, when undergraduates "left Elvis behind" for Bach or the Modern Jazz Quartet, Dawkins began to study zoology and was introduced to some of the university's legendary mentors as well as its tutorial system. It's to this unique educational system that Dawkins credits his awakening, as it invited young people to become scholars by encouraging them to pose rigorous questions and scour the library for the latest research rather than textbook "teaching to" any kind of test. His career as a fellow and lecturer at Oxford took an unexpected turn when, in 1973, a serious strike in Britain caused prolonged electricity cuts, and he was forced to pause his computer-based research. Provoked by the then widespread misunderstanding of natural selection known as "group selection" and inspired by the work of William Hamilton, Robert Trivers, and John Maynard Smith, he began to write a book he called, jokingly, "my bestseller." It was, of course, The Selfish Gene.
Here, for the first time, is an intimate memoir of the childhood and intellectual development of the evolutionary biologist and world-famous atheist, and the story of how he came to write what is widely held to be one of the most important books of the twentieth century.
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VM44
More about the book:
Review
"Enjoyable from start to finish, this exceptionally accessible book will appeal to science lovers, lovers of autobiographies-and, of course, all of Dawkins's fans, atheists and theists alike." Library Journal starred review "Well-written, captivating, and filled with fascinating anecdotes" Publishers Weekly "Richard Dawkins is a hero of mine, so being able to read about how he became the man and the thinker he is, was a particular delight for me. How his life formed from an inchoate, primordial soup and then never wavered from sound, scientific principles made for a huge page turning experience; he's also a great writer, so that helps. Some people get their kicks from Superman's origin story, or Batman's origin story. or Jesus'. But for me, it was Richard Dawkins." Bill Maher "It has been my good fortune to meet many of the greatest minds of our time, but standing above them all in the power of both his ideas and his rhetoric is Richard Dawkins, whose books are major publishing events because they change the conversation and the culture. In An Appetite for Wonder Dawkins turns his critical analysis inward to reveal how his mind works and what personal events and cultural forces most shaped his thinking. Destined to become a classic in the annals of science autobiography." Michael Shermer, Publisher of Skeptic magazine, monthly columnist for Scientific American, and author of The Believing Brain and Why Darwin Matters "Skepticism and atheism do not arrive from revelation or authority. In our culture it's a slow thoughtful process. But, in the beginning there was Dawkins, moving that process along for many of us, with information and inspiration. For the modern skeptical/atheist movement, in the beginning -- there was Dawkins and he was wicked good. Appetite for Wonder shows us this beginning." Penn Jillette, author of God No! and Every Day is an Atheist Holiday --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.
About the Author
Richard Dawkins, voted Prospect magazine's #1 World Thinker, is the author of the blockbuster bestseller The God Delusion. He was first catapulted to fame with The Selfish Gene, which he followed with The Extended Phenotype, The Blind Watchmaker, River Out of Eden, Climbing Mount Improbable, Unweaving the Rainbow, The Ancestor's Tale, A Devil's Chaplain, The Greatest Show on Earth, and The Magic of Reality (with Dave McKean). Dawkins is a fellow of the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Literature. He was the inaugural holder of the Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University and is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including the Royal Society of Literature Award, the Michael Faraday Award of the Royal Society, the Kistler Prize, the Shakespeare Prize, the Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing About Science, the Galaxy British Book Awards Author of the Year Award, and the International Cosmos Prize of Japan.
Biography
Richard Dawkins taught zoology at the University of California at Berkeley and at Oxford University and is now the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, a position he has held since 1995. Among his previous books are The Ancestor's Tale, The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, Climbing Mount Improbable, Unweaving the Rainbow, and A Devil's Chaplain. Dawkins lives in Oxford with his wife, the actress and artist Lalla Ward.
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Laika
Goodguygreg:
No, obviously I'm not claiming non believers can't do good and moral acts, how did you get that from what I wrote?
There are many reasons why people perform moral tasks, one of these is religious faith.
There are many reasons why people perform immoral tasks, one of these is religious faith.
Many of the 'new' atheists try to argue that when faith inspires someone to do something charitable it is in spite of and not because of faith, but when faith inspires someone to do something cruel it is because, not in spite of, faith. Then you even get the cop out that when the non religious do terrible things (I.e Stalin) it's because of 'religious' politics or some such nonsense.
I don't understand why intelligent people find this compelling.
