1. Round Table Discussion with Richard Dawkins

Comment #44472 by kementari on May 24, 2007 at 10:30 pm

Sapient,

<< Religion created that us vs them mentality many hundreds of years ago, to pretend it doesn't exist (except for maybe in the future) is to deny reality. >>

*applause*

Very well said. I'll add to that by saying that ignoring the violent extremists (even if it is "just words") and downplaying the significance of their beliefs does not serve that future terribly well. Our children's children's children, who will almost certainly live under the shadow of volatile theocracies armed with long-range nuclear weapons, will not thank us if we do not give the ideological battle the full attention it deserves.

With strong leadership, that future might not come to pass. Thanks for everything you do, and great show.

2. Round Table Discussion with Richard Dawkins

Comment #44468 by kementari on May 24, 2007 at 10:05 pm

Riley,

You make some good points... they're ones that I myself made a while ago, before I read "End of Faith" and got into some very long debates about the nature of the dialogue with believers. The long and short of what I want to say here is that no two opportunities to engage that debate are the same, and different approaches may be needed with the same person on different days.

It's a subtle art, this whole teaching business.

<< Do you seriously believe that the "bad cop" strategy (which for example, Sean Hannity and Ann coulter have employed with true mastery) has *ever* helped to improve dialogue? If not dialogue, then what? >>

Point One: What Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter do has nothing to do with what Richard and the RSS are doing. The "bad cop" approach is one that can be used to crash through really firmly entrenched rationalizations and actually make an impact. It has nothing to do with spreading fear and manipulating the masses for the sake of a buck, and everything to do with consciousness raising in the face of vague apologetics.

Point Two: Yes, the "bad cop" approach works. I can tell you plainly that I glided right by all of those kindly and politely worded explanations of atheism. They were mostly ineffective when it came to the dirty work of helping me to explore what I really believed and what I was just pretending to believe for the sake of comfort in a vast and indifferent Universe.

<< If I'm stuck in an "us" vs "them" situation and you reject me, then I guess I have no place else to go but with "them" >>

It's pretty safe to say that if I showed up in my step-mother's church to celebrate a baptism, someone in the congregation would throw holy water on me and expect me to melt. That would be embarrassing for everyone involved... although it might be a good opportunity to try speaking in tongues.

Kidding. Sort of.

Seriously, though. As a firmly convinced atheist, my presence in church would be a bit of an insult to that side of the family for a baptism. It would take away from their enjoyment of the event to know that there was someone in their midst who was not genuinely there to celebrate. So no, I wouldn't go to a baptism on that side of the family.

For my moderate Catholic-in-name-only family? I'd find a convenient excuse to miss the church ceremony (they would understand, and appreciate my tact) but show up at the house afterwards and get together with family. They don't mind that I'm an atheist, because they don't really believe in God.

Weddings and funerals are a little different, as those ceremonies are only provisionally about God, and mainly about a celebration or a reflection on life. I feel only mildly uncomfortable there, and (more importantly) have never felt that my presence made others uncomfortable.

<< Even if you see a net benefit (which I can't), wouldn't more be accomplished through dialogue? >>

There's a time and a place for everything. Another person's church is not the place to challenge their faith. It's a respect thing... I respect their right to worship in peace at church, without worrying about whether or not God is going to smite them for not killing the unbeliever in their midst in a Deutoronomy-style smackdown.

<< Here's the *real* kicker: We don't limit our presumptions simply to you, the person we have observed, we generalize our demeaning characterizations about you to all people we believe to be of your type. >>

There are so many layers of irony to this statement that I almost don't know where to start. You're making a generalization about how wrong it is to generalize. Perhaps it would be helpful to begin by saying that there is indeed a subset of Christian Americans that could be readily described with the words "Likely to Bomb Abortion Clinics." It may also help to point out that Sapient and Dr. Dawkins no doubt hear from them on a regular basis. It would be simply freakish if they didn't discuss this phenomenon, but instead pretended that this group didn't exist. The part of the show that made you cringe was inspired specifically by mailbags that you probably wouldn't enjoy reading, with letters from this very intellectually challenged subset of our culture, filled with threats and swear words in the name of God.

Are you seriously saying that we shouldn't say anything about this type of behavior and what causes it? Or that we should treat these individuals with respect that they do not deserve?

<< You seem to be confirming my worst fear, which is that you see rational discussion as simply one of many *methods* in a strategic power struggle, rather than seeing it as the goal itself. >>

Life itself is a strategic power struggle, and every choice we make has elements of the same. Different responses are appropriate at different times, but in the end the goal is to feel good about the decisions we make and know that they were the best ones that we could have made at the time.

Bottom line: If playing the "bad cop" doesn't feel right to you, don't do it. But don't automatically assume that there is no place for it in the dialogue. I owe a debt of gratitude to the people who sat me down in front of the mirror, took off my rose colored glasses, and crushed them mercilessly with a debate that made me very uncomfortable. It took me months to recover, but I'm a much happier person for it.