1. The smallest signs of retreat

Comment #68525 by TheRationalist on September 7, 2007 at 12:28 pm

Good Evening Everyone

I posted in The Guardian on this topic last night. Bunting (along with Theo Hobson) is a frequent antagonist of reasoned debate when it comes to religion. They both believe that theological issues have a special place in the canon of current affairs: ie, they cannot be discussed openly.

Bunting and Hobson differ from the intellectual postmodernist defenders of mysticism in that they at least make themselves clear most of the time. One of the posters at The Guardian (called Longsword) is an outstanding example of the latter, more wriggly, type. He uses language to obscure reason and creates such utter confusion that his arguments cannot be focused upon and thus refuted.

Here is my post on The Guardian's website and Longsword's response. I think you'll see what I mean. I reprint this all in the spirit of a harmless diversion.

"Dawkins has a sharp tongue, but it is generally not used against individuals. If he debates with religious people he is polite and civil to a fault, just like Sam Harris. What Ms Bunting has identified this morning is Dawkins' normal tone: she has then matched this with his robust writing style and recognised an indiscrepancy. Thus her conclusion that Dawkins is moderating his approach.

"This is plainly not the case. Dawkins has no gripe with religious people unless they are using their religion for personal gain. He characterises most of them quite plausibly as genuine in their beliefs or as scared to reform. These people are not to be bullied, however risible their fantasies. Bunting acknowledges that we generally no longer believe in a bearded man in the sky. What she fails to understand is that this consensus has been won at the cost of the lives of countless heretics who spoke up against authoritarian stupidity. This is merely what Dawkins is doing now.

"Every single supernatural belief is as stupid and lacking in substance as the belief that there is a god and that men and women were made in his or her image. This does not mean that religious people are stupid per se. Dawkins has always understood this. It is hardly a complex concept.

"He is a polite man who is frustrated by collective stupidity. Who is to say that he shouldn't treat opponents with respect but point out in the most robust terms the idiocy of their arguments?

"And one more thing. Debating with religious people (I mean intellectual religious people) is generally impossible, and it must drive Dawkins mad. They object to their beliefs being discussed at all; they say that they don't believe what you've been led to think they believe and then they won't make their beliefs clear; they call you aggressive for speaking plainly; and worst of all, they argue that it's all too complex (cf Theo Hobson and Longsword) for those of no faith to understand.

"This last objection is most problematic. Somebody (I think it was Longsword) once explained that 'evidence', since it is based historically on the concept of sight, is a naive way for us to go about establishing the truth. Well, Longsword (and Bunting and Hobson), evidence has got us nearer to the truth of things than any of your fantasies. Your pipe dreams might by some bizarre fluke be proved right but if they are you'll be the first to use evidence to prove them so. In the meantime, you're welcome to your contempt for it; and I, and Dawkins et al, have a right to feel contempt for those who benefit so much from the fruits of scientific observation and then subserviently bow down to the superior power of religion and faith and mystery.

"Writers like Bunting object to plain speaking in this debate and yet welcome it in every other form of human discourse. We do not arrive at true understanding by pandering to each others' sensibilities. Can you imagine a world in which we had to worry about upsetting George Bush when we discussed US foreign policy? Would this be a world in which we could be happy and free? Why should religion be treated any differently?

"The emperor is not wearing any clothes. Dawkins says this repeatedly, compellingly and with great charm and clarity. That, of course, is his true crime."

And here is Longsword's response to all that.

"Odd that I should just pop in and find this near slander posted about my esteemed pseudonym.

"Well, theRationalist, more the fool you. Though you discount the truth of things unseen (and therefore must deny that myth has anything to do with truth at all) you seem to think that you were born like Athena, fully armoured, adult, and wise from out of the head of Zeus. You, like Dawkins, are amnesiacs and blindmen, wretchedly ignorant of your own roots in history and the authorities that you claim as your own. You are free today to call yourself a "man of reason" (of which I'm skeptical) because 400 years ago, "God" was reconceived under the name "Universal Reason" and as the Great Clockmaker and Architect in the sky, and thereafter "modern" society applied itself industriously to making men in the image of this God, after the fashion of "Universal Reason", and inevitably, also in the image of a predictable clockwork mechanism.

"You only know a quarter of reality (the "objective" part) because you discount the inner, but also the past and the future too as elements of our full reality. You use your eyes alone, but your other senses are just as much involved in the determination of the "real" as the eyes are, even if you choose to ignore these.

"That means, you must remain only "a quarter of a man" as the song goes. It is your contempt, not mine, that makes you willfully opaque. You live in a universe, but that universe is not yet a true cosmos."

Can you imagine reading this sort of thing at book length?

2. Dawkins says religion is 'like sucking a dummy'

Comment #28389 by TheRationalist on March 29, 2007 at 4:02 am

The votes don't add up (I would guess) because of late arrivals.

The figures are most encouraging, nevertheless, because they demonstrate that an open minded audience is more likely to respond to clear sighted arguments against superstition than the deliberate confusions manufactured by superstition in its defence.

Those atheists prepared to speak out against religious doctrine take note. You are being accused of shrillness, repetition, rudeness, blandness and a propensity to suicidal nihilism. This is merely an indication of your success. People are beginning to listen and you are winning the argument. The superstitious are rattled.

Keep up the good work. There is still much to be done, however, as the following comment made by an indignant mother in my son's school playground this morning will demonstrate.

"I'm not having a four year old saying "fuck": it's blasphemous!"

3. Hell is real and eternal: Pope

Comment #27979 by TheRationalist on March 27, 2007 at 1:35 pm

This story has been the subject of a fairly lengthy blog over at

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/open_thread/2007/03/therell_be_hell_to_pay.html

It's interesting that the theists who normally populate the Guardian's forums are unavailable for comment and seem unprepared to defend hell. They are embarrassed, I suspect, by this element of orthodoxy. This lends support to the currently popular atheist position of openly questioning scripture and (I'm afraid) of ridiculing it where necessary. If literalism is viewed generally as absurd then religion cannot sustain itself in any neaningful form. This is why authoritarian moralists like the pope are so desperate to assert the kind of madness we see in his vision of a non-metaphorical hell.