Why does Richard Dawkins sing Christmas carols?

Neither you nor I would consider left-handedness or figure skating as abnormal even if it isn't common right here and right now. So it wouldn't really work. To be honest, I don't consider eating shit to be abnormal necessarily. I'm sure more people have done it than people who have done anything resembling figure skating.

Then why, when asked for support, did you simply reply that it was obvious? Well that is clear. I didn't say he did not have some reason or agenda. Yes, you already stated what the agenda is - though this is slightly different version. It was support for this agenda I was looking for. Your response was basically that his agenda was obvious. I took this to mean that you weren't going to give evidence that he has this agenda because it was obvious. Since it is essentially off topic it might be best to say "I do have support" or "I don't have support - it's just obvious" and we can look to discussing it further in a future thread. I will continue to claim it I'm afraid; I continue also to state that I will happily support it.Your request was simply meaningless, not requiring 'bad science'. Science is a good methodology for engaging in rational empiricism. Rational empiricism is a philosophical style of reasoning. Science cannot be used to support any given philosophy. I will however, be happy, to give a philosophical argument for why rational empiricism (well, rational empiricism is not necessarily the correct name, but I trust you'll follow my meaning) results in, to shorten the claim for brevity, less errors.

I hardly see saying that Jesus was a nice character/person is Christian apologetics unless it ends with 'therefore he was God'. Exactly, it was radical for the time and the place. I think Dawkins would concede that he'd be religious had he existed in a different time or place. I'd be surprised if he knew the philosophies of the Greeks. Of course, the Greeks that essentially created his character had heard of those philosophies... It certainly looks somewhat tongue in cheek, but the purpose is explicitly laid out: Memegeneering. Moderates can be nice. You can be nice even with a strange concept of metaphysics, Dawkins doesn't say anything to contradict that. Personally, I'm more with Hitchens on this issue: the New Testament is far more ghastly than the Old. That is not the hallmark of evangelism, silly. Evangelism is spreading the Gospel of Christ/proselytising. Dawkins is showing again that he is all for taking the icons and heroes of the most prevalent religions and co-opting them for a post-religious future. Calling that evangelism is just clouding things up. It's not meant to say 'renounce theism'. It is meant to say 'atheists are all about being nice and moral, we just don't believe gods are involved.'. Quite: some people are capable of putting awkward moral obligations or facts to one side because they contradict the evidence or general morality of the time. Well, Dawkins says these things to people who insist that the Bible is the ONLY source of moral guidance, and that without it they would rape their neighbours and kill their children. Dawkins is not criticising the practice of pulling moral ideas from one source per se. He is criticising the idea that the Bible is meant to be the Divine moral guidance, and yet people ignore bits of God's morality when it suits them which is kind of contradictory to their own point.Moderates take what they want, ignore the rest and try and make it gel with modern morality. This is not faith-based moral reasoning - this is culture-based moral reasoning that often thinks it is faith-based. However - because they think it is faith-based they say that you really must believe this stuff is true otherwise you'll be immoral. The more you believe it, the more moral you are, seemingly. And thus: thousands if not millions of people die in Africa from AIDS because the the most faithful moderates think they must really believe that every sperm is sacred - and that this ignorance of disease transmission must be enforced on those people. I thought I had covered this. In an environment of faithful, all telling each other to really believe and where people are seen as good people because he 'really believes', a certain fraction of those people will want to be part of the 'really believes', and the easiest way to 'prove' that you 'really believe' is by giving lots of obvious signals to the other primates to show you really believe.Signals like really taking the 'soul conjoins with the body at conception' idea literally, and persecuting people that don't believe that loudly and proudly. Nah, I think it would just be better to not label kids with anything and let them decide what they are for themselves. If they want to consider themselves culturally Christian - so be it. About 10 years ago he gave a talk about this that lasted about an hour - I can't find it on the old web now but it was called 'education versus indoctrination' or similar. You can look into it there. Once again, probably off topic to delve into the subject here. No, he doesn't even think that every single religion should be taught. Just some of the more common archetypes, with reference to the fact that there is more out there. If the child wants to go out and find this 'more' then let them. You mean he champions an alternative...like I said. Here's the thing - I don't think it is good use of words to say that for example decrying slavery and championing an alternative of cheap labour or somesuch is evangelism. Sure, in a religious context that might considered evangeilsm, but it is a secular context so why use the word? It's just unnecessary. Sorry. If it's any consolation the tone is much more conciliatory this year. Yep. Dawkins has spent 40 years championing the beauty of science. He's spent only a small amount of that time discussing the comparative ugliness of religion. Yet doing exactly that, as the Christians adequately proved, is the best way to change the way things are done. That Christianity turned out to be a wonderful mutagen for memes, shouldn't mean that those that excoriate Christianity should not try and mutate memes/culture themselves. I agree that now things have reached the point where atheists are able to say 'Hi I'm an atheist', a little easier than they used to be able to - that we can now start talking about positive identifications. Humanism seems a good direction to go in.

Well you can keep saying that you think Dawkins is using apologetics, but I don't think one can meaningfully say that, Nor do I think that 'evangelical' is the right word. There is a difference in using religious imagery in a metaphorical sense and when trying to make an actual point. The way you are trying to use the terms is just obfuscatory. The basic argument is that the worst punishment the Old Testament offered ended in being dead. Eternal hellfire and suffering and torture and gnashing of teeth was devised in the NT. It used to be 'comply or die' and that became 'comply or be tortured for all eternity with no release'.The NT raised the stakes considerably. Cultural moral reasoning is not a real thing incidentally, its just a phrase that seemed to express succinctly the phenomenon I was thinking of.Faith-based moral reasoning is more resistant to changing moral standards. Cultural morality sees abortion as a necessary evil. With the basis of faith that the soul conjoins at conception abortion is murder in faith-based reasoning. It won't be until the faith basis of soul conjunctions changes that the moral reasoning will change.For instance, cultural moral reasoning would happily suggest that lying about sexual health issues is very very bad. Faith based reasoning might consider lying about sexual health issues is for the greater good based on nothing but something they take purely on faith. They can't really explain why, they can't give evidence that it is so - just that it is.'Cultural moral reasoning' can be questioned, and people can then examine the reasonings and evidences for each position and try and come to some kind of moral consensus over time. Certainly not perfect, but better than the alternative at least. That may well be the case. I'm not sure what a world with a core of extreme humanists with a majority of moderate humanists would be like. Still, when it comes to religion the stakes are often much much higher than non-theistic philosophy, and 'for the greater good' can justify a hell of a lot more. After all, what is the lives of a few thousand innocent people when the fate of billions of eternal souls are at stake? If I had to make a blind choice, I'd throw my lot in with the world of humanists. Erm. Obviously. Why not champion evidenced-based reasoning or the power and beauty of science? Atheism isn't really anything, it only has any meaning in a world filled with theists. We might champion materialism for example, which Dawkins does do. If you think the future of atheism is one where we wipe our cultural slate entirely clean and don't have any rituals or metaphors that have religious ties before going any further...then atheism doesn't have a future.Maybe the extreme future of atheism will have a culture completely independent of our religious history - but I'm willing to bet that billions of humans won't get there without going through a period of appreciating formerly religious rituals and icons in a secular context.Consider how many people will enjoy formerly religious rituals this year with no feeling of reverence or worship - or even a vague enmity towards the religions from whence the practice evolved. That's the way it is going to happen, if it happens at all.Maybe it is paradoxical. Hypocritical. Absurd. Wrongheaded. Stupid. Delusional. Backwards. Welcome to humanity, Holmes, the first rule is that you are no exception. I was trying to get across the general idea that the conversational climate has changed. This past 18 months or so I've had more people talk to me about atheism in an unsolicited fashion. Some of them call themselves secular humanists, agnostics or atheists. Pub talk has turned to talk of it, some people talk about it around the water cooler - it gets chatted about on late night discussion shows.These are things which were less common 5 years ago. I was just saying that this comparably comfortable position of having people willing to talk about it more openly is a perfect place to launch 'phase 2' as it were. I felt that way at first. I was a bit disappointed that Dawkins latest book was going to be entirely about religion. It seemed so bloody obvious what else was to say on the matter? What struck me however, was how upset everybody got about it and how much people blatantly lied about what was in the book. He's just repeating what Lucretius said 2,000 years ago:

quote:

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But 'tis that same religion oftener far
Hath bred the foul impieties of men
...
Making his child a sacrificial beast
To give the ships auspicious winds for Troy:
Such are the crimes to which Religion leads.

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So I was amused by the amount of backlash it received, and pleasantly surprised to learn that it had gotten people talking about it all and that a variety of atheists were able to sell millions of copies of books about the topic - that different voices were piping up.You know, it made me think that maybe one of the biggest problems with contemporary atheistic thought was that a lot of people hadn't really been exposed to it. I'm glad that is cleared up now, and I'm gladdened by some of the things I've heard about atheists living in religious communities who have felt it was now possible to 'come out' without getting completely ostracized. May that trend continue, I say.

I've watched it now. I didn't see much of interest about all the things he appreciates that you don't have time for. I saw that under a very specific set of circumstances he has said grace. I saw that he prefers the language and poetry of older translations of the Bible as an aesthetic point of view and that he likes Bach. What else were you thinking of?

There is plenty of objective evidence that suggests a subjective experience that some people associate with a deity. I am perfectly happy to believe that gods and devils and djinn and ghosts exist within people's minds because of this evidence. The evidence we look for though, is the evidence that these entities exist anywhere other than in our minds. I 'met God'. The experience matches the described experience of religious people exactly, and I have had the experience many times while contemplating a variety of gods or higher beings. I realized that the experience is not evidence for higher beings and have had the same experience while spending an evening stargazing. Experiencing the mysterium tremendum et fascinans does not necessitate belief in a deity, though the power of the experience often convinces people that said deities exist (though the nature of these deities varies wildly).

Exactly - apparently us atheists are called militant when we say things like this...so you had best be careful Perhaps you could start a thread on it? I have never heard any difference in the descriptions between my experiences and any religious one, except in the case of epilepsy which I concede may be more powerful.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.