"Atheism has a Richard Dawkins problem"

Discussion in 'Religion' started by Musika, Aug 15, 2018.

  1. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    His popularity as a renowned atheist, and such, has been declining in recent years, I think because of his pedophilia remarks. There was a strange episode, recently, when he went weirdly supremacist on behalf of Christian church bells, but it's true he is not nearly so popular. Go back several years; try our Religion Archives. You're not wrong that he's a bogeyman in a lot of religious retort to atheism, but there is a distancing and forgetting—an erasure—taking place. It need not be calculated; indeed, there are reasons why the tweet I posted in #5↑ even exists, despite its apparent intention to swing at Peterson.
     
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  3. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Fundamentalist.
    Nope.
    It's a projection.
    And we have another post of the "overt Abrahamic theist on a science forum" variety.
     
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  5. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    His influence on Western (Abrahamic deity dismissing, essentially) "atheism", even as a Western sociological presence, seems less significant than that of - say - Bertrand Russell, or Alan Watts, or even Karl Marx tangentially

    Atheism in its Asian, African, Australian, American, Indonesian, etc, manifestations has not registered his presence as atheistic, afaik.

    His influence has been other - on the Overton window for discussing Abrahamic religion, maybe?
     
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  7. Musika Last in Space Valued Senior Member

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    So out of curiousity, how do you propose to objectively determine the "fundie" position, otside of a superficial disagreement ("anyone who disagrees with me is a fundie") or a specific politic or ethic or view (since one can potentially be a fundie about anything)?
     
  8. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    How do you have a "fundamentalist" position on a lack of a belief? I don't play golf. Can I be a fundamentalist about my lack of desire to play golf?
     
  9. Musika Last in Space Valued Senior Member

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    If you went out of your way to give people who do desire to play golf a critique, gave free and easy opinions on the popularity and history of golf, read books and websites and frequently googled anti-golf memes for the express purpose of posting them on websites dedicated to such topics, frequently ruminated in and between the absolute uselessness of golf to a more broader view of "perhaps it was necessary at a certain point in history (but of course it has outlived any practical provision in the modern climate and is simply a cultural antiquity that the weak and uncultured cling to)", and called upon such ruminations in the association of like minded others to discuss things like "golf is an absolutely useless investment of time, but if I had to play golf, I would play it in Hawaii because the weather is nice, but even if I was in Hawaii, I wouldn't play golf because it is an absolute useless investment of time", periodically speculate about the precise nature of the desire to play golf with the view of contextualizing to an inferior position or category (something like, "its not a real sport") and, with the view of strengthening those views, also called upon the opinions of various celebrities and professionals (whose actual connection to the sport ranged from world class participants to the totally ignorant and non-participatory), indulged in numerous reservations about the apparent or real hypocrisy of the institutions that are responsible for administrating golf on various levels of the social fabric, bitterly complained how time, money and energy diverted to golf was impeding the development of growing eggplants in space (or whatever pet issue one feels is humanity's pressing need that requires its undivided attention) and so on, then yes, it would appear there would be a bit of material to work with.

    But actually this was not the point, or at least not the point I wanted to approach directly. I was actually asking about what criteria one applies to objectively determine a "fundie", outside of any specific topic of religion or golf or even the non-participation of such things. What are the objective qualities of a fundie?
     
  10. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    I don't. There isn't one, in this case.
    There aren't any. It would be an analogy, or possibly metaphorical use, based on fundamentalist Abrahamic theistic religion.
     
  11. Musika Last in Space Valued Senior Member

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    Well, until you are prepared extract "fundie" to an objective format beyond your "pet issues", it will prove difficult to see your usage of the term bearing any real relevance.
    IOW everytime you use the word "fundie", you are just saying "Hey world! I have these pet issues!"
     
  12. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    What's your problem - you don't know what the word means?
    That's plausible. You just typed "prepared to extract - - to an objective format", and your posts are littered with similar oddball strings of mismatched words - netting, in the end, a sort of fog.
    The closer and more careful the reading of that, the less sense it makes - none of the words there can carry their normal meanings. The question becomes: how and why do Abrahamic theists end up posting like that?

    And the weird thing is: overt Abrahamic theists on these science forums often post like that. It's almost a characteristic style of posting. So we will never know how Dawkins is a problem for atheism.
     
  13. Musika Last in Space Valued Senior Member

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    I give you the mic to let you explain yourself, and you've got nothing to say.
     
  14. Capracus Valued Senior Member

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    Where does this 100 million figure come from? Dawkins best selling book, The God Delusion has only sold around 3 million copies since it was published 12 years ago. Only three out of nine of his books released over the past 15 years have highlighted atheism. His net worth is about $10 million, and if an author receives 10 percent of sales, that means Dawkins may have sold 10 million books over this period, and maybe half of that comes from his atheist themed books.
     
  15. Musika Last in Space Valued Senior Member

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    I believe that is 3 million in english, plus whatever in 30 other languages (plus apparently an extra 3 million in a bootlegged arabic edition alone) ... thats for the God Delusion. I count maybe a further 7 or 8 books he has authored that have some substantial part aimed at religion (sales, I don'tknow). Then you have his documentary productions. Then you have websites, journals, reviews, newspapers etc that take his contributions as a central point, offering a synopsis for discussion (either for or against .. and say, a wordcount around or above 4000) ... put it all together and I would be surprised if it comes under 100 million.
     
    Last edited: Aug 17, 2018
  16. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

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    why is it legal for church groups to target children to brain wash them ?
    it seems a bit odd
     
  17. Musika Last in Space Valued Senior Member

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    Even in Steiner Schools (which have a pedagogy, at their core, that adult behaviour contaminates children ...) concede at a certain stage they have to start teaching the kids stuff.
     
  18. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    When should it have become illegal?

    Should that apply just to brainwashing children with religion? Like, what about racism and rape culture? Should we say, "At least it's not theistic!"
     
  19. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    Wouldn't a more pertinent title for this thread have been " Theism has a Richard Dawkins problem"?
     
  20. sideshowbob Sorry, wrong number. Valued Senior Member

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    Most of those words appear to be English but strung together they don't convey anything at all.
     
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  21. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    Word salad seems to be the official language of sciforums.

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  22. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    It's a certain point about the nature of influence, mixed in with an obvious joke. In either case, you need to know the history involved; I didn't really think it was so obscure.

    (The trick is trying to understand how it wasn't "Under Pressure". It was either a direct cop or cryptomnesia, and if we pretend to not understand the latter, then we can also argue those queers never influenced him. Talk to artists about who influenced their work; you might find it a surprisingly deep conversation compared to not being influenced by common elements in the culture around you. More directly, it would seem we need to invent a new valence of non-influence, just for atheists. Or maybe just for you? It's always a challenge to figure out side questions in the face of paradox; like the bit where any number of atheists want to behave similarly, but nobody should draw any conclusions from that fact. It's an unfunny aping of Christianists. Meanwhile, most of the atheists here have been influenced by Athanasius. Pretty much anyone discussing in a Christian, pseudo-Christian, or post-Christian context was. Somewhere between faint echoes of sixteen hundred plus years ago, and Rob Van Winkle telling people to not believe what they were hearing over and over again, we can find the approximate distinction by which years of common rhetoric and behavior displayed by diverse people who happen to be atheists have nothing to do with each other or any other common element between these individuals, but that rule only applies to atheists and can't be applied to anybody else. There is a part of me that says, yeah, I get what these people want me to believe, and how it works; then there is the part of me that recalls living experience, and it reminds this idea of non-influence appears pretty unique compared to human social behavior.)
     
  23. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    The convention to create a paragraph, every now and then, is pretty common and yet it, apparently doesn't unduly influence you. Why should Dawkins have such influence on the rest of us?
     

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