Richard Dawkins - The Enemies of Reason - Part 1: Slaves to Superstition

[Johnny Dangerous]

Dawkins religion is just modernity and liberal democracy. In that sense he may be sort of ally.... but he also thinks people with religion might have a brain disease. So, not that much of an ally.

We think those people “suffer from wrong view”, are “ignorant”, have “obscurations” - is our view of them that different?

Yes, there is a big difference between believing someone is wrong and believing that they are biologically deficient -especially- when someone’s philosophy essentializes the importance of biology - as his does.

[reiun]

Most rank-and-file theists are born into it, unlike most of us who, I believe, have chosen Buddhism on our own. They do not exhibit clinical cognitive deficits. Family upbringing, catechism, Sunday school, prayer, etc., reinforce their faith, or not. In comparison, some theists might or could regard those who seek release from Samsara (Parinirvana) as death cultists.

[Malcolm]

Most rank-and-file theists are born into it, unlike most of us who, I believe, have chosen Buddhism on our own. They do not exhibit clinical cognitive deficits. Family upbringing, catechism, Sunday school, prayer, etc., reinforce their faith, or not. In comparison, some theists might or could regard those who seek release from Samsara (Parinirvana) as death cultists.

There are many people with cognitive disorders who are not necessarily suffering from cognitive deficits.

[Queen Elizabeth II]

One of his former students Dr Susan Blackmore joined a Zen Sangha and Dawkins made a public denouncement of her.

Do you have a source for this? I tried Google but couldn't find any evidence that she was ever his student (Blackmore's fields are psychology and parapsychology, not biology) or that they're anything but the best of pals.

[PeterC]

Most rank-and-file theists are born into it, unlike most of us who, I believe, have chosen Buddhism on our own. They do not exhibit clinical cognitive deficits. Family upbringing, catechism, Sunday school, prayer, etc., reinforce their faith, or not. In comparison, some theists might or could regard those who seek release from Samsara (Parinirvana) as death cultists.

I would certainly agree that there's a lot of Buddhists with cognitive disorders of one kind or another. I'm in no way excluding us from that consideration. And I completely agree that most people who believe in an omnipotent sky father didn't get there by conscious choice, but by being brainwashed at a young age and then having that socially reinforced over time.

But to take a step back. The basic essence of Dawkins' position is very, very hard to dispute. Religion as a whole has caused a lot of damage/evil over the centuries, particularly when people who hold them try to impose them on people who don't. Religious beliefs are, for the most part, rather silly, and almost without exception they cannot be proven or disproven. Science offers a far better approach to understand the world and to make decisions about how to inhabit the world, one that does not rely on unprovable beliefs. Rejecting that approach in favor of factually unfounded, unprovable and rather silly beliefs is a very bad idea.

That's Dawkins in a nutshell. I don't think anyone can seriously criticize this proposition. So instead they criticize Dawkins for somewhat irrelevant things, like having beliefs of his own while criticizing those of others, for being unkind, etc.

[Johnny Dangerous]

Yeah no, Dawkins ain’t Bill Nye, he and the other ‘New Atheists’ have some issues. Simply acting like privileged white first world asshats (and advancing arguments primarily benefitting that group, when they venture into politics)among them, sure.

Now, I’d much rather have him on my kids school board than the local docent of the Creation Museum or something, but the way you are representing him here is too forgiving IMO. Dude is kinda gross in places, in a manner similar to Hitchens.

I can look the particulars up for you if you really want, but you can find them yourself, he’s said some ugly stuff over the years towards women, Muslims and others.

Like the other New Athiests, he seems to react to any desire to reform or criticize life in a liberal democracy as a chance to tell people how easy they have it.


https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_3086909

http://mccaine.org/2013/03/14/richard-d ... ghtenment/

I don’t remember whether he supported the Iraq War like Hitchens, but his philosophy is not just ‘scientific’ (I have no objection to ‘science’ in this context whatsoever’ btw), it is often imperialist and his ‘atheism’ is often mysteriously wedded to the status quo. Sort of an updated White Mans Burden, only with ‘civilization’ being liberal democracy and science, and no religion.

It doesn’t make him a monster or anything, just a narrow minded dingus in some regards. Pretending he is being criticized for ‘being scientific’ is absurd though, that is actually the only thing to like about him.

Unlike his science writing, his atheist-branded social commentary usually is like something out of the mouth of an eighteen year old (same goes for a few of his associates), so there is no need to address any of the more intelligent stuff you are talking about, I don’t think it’s what most rational people who criticize him object to.

[PeterC]

Yeah no, Dawkins ain’t Bill Nye, he and the other ‘New Atheists’ have some issues. Simply acting like privileged white first world asshats (and advancing arguments primarily benefitting that group, when they venture into politics)among them, sure.

JD - your post sounds very much like an ad hominem. Sure, you don't like his tone. But limit yourself to the arguments in, let's say, the video at the start of the thread. What specifically do you disagree with? What's your issue with his arguments, rather than how he says it?

The New Atheists - let's call them that - aren't stopping you from doing anything. Did you hear about the New Atheists on the school board in Alabama that tried to ban yoga because it involved kids saying "om"? Did you hear about the New Atheists chopping heads off in Syria, or forcing teenagers into sexual slavery? Did you hear about the New Atheists bombing Palestinians or Israelis in the West Bank? The New Atheists restricting abortion access because a two-thousand-year-old book might have said something about it? The New Atheists forcing gay kids to go to conversion boot camp because it's 'against nature'? No, it's the theists doing all of that. The atheists might think we're dumb for chanting mantras and reading sutras, but the worst thing they're going to do is hurt your feelings, not chop off parts of your anatomy. The theists are your enemy, not the atheists. So if we have to pick sides, I'm with the atheists, new or old, polite or rude, and that includes Dawkins. And though I might have some minor disagreements with Dawkins, that’s probably the right place to be, because as a Buddhist I am also an atheist.

[Johnny Dangerous]

I didn’t say they were ‘my enemies’, and I mentioned specifically that I would prefer them to theists in some circumstances, plenty of circumstances really.

Their social commentary tends to be dumb as hell though. If you wanna consider that an ad hom no problem. I’m sure their careers will survive.

Far as specifics, almost any of the stuff Dawkins and others have said about Islam fits pretty well really. It doesn’t make him a nazi or something, personally it’s enough to rub me the wrong way and he certainly has participated in the ‘war of civilization’ narrative in that area.

It’s also ridiculous to call ‘the theists’ ‘our enemy’ as if they are some monolithic group. FFS man, and you’re worried about me pigeonholing people?

Most of ‘the theists’ I know don’t support any of that stuff, and in fact in this country it is of course almost exclusively fundamentalist Christians who do.

Obviously, that is a relatively small group of ‘the theists’ (big enough to be scary yes) yet the implication seems to be that anyone with theistic beliefs would naturally support all this awful stuff, are some existential threat to Buddhism, or whatever. That’s just not the case.

[Aemilius]

Like Dawkins, the Buddha also discouraged ‘taking refuge’ in superstitious beliefs, practices such as animal sacrifice. He admonished his followers to test out what he said just as someone tests hold before buying it: burn it, pound it, cut it it. Really put it to the test to determine -for you at least- whether the dharma teachings are valid and true or not. And in most of his teachings he referred to the material world, and to things that were directly perceivable to anyone, to demonstrate the points he was making.
There are topics such as rebirth which at first seem unprovable. You can ask a dead person what it’s like, but they won’t say.

However, I think these things are mostly ‘unprovable’ because of the presumptions we make which define the criteria we use. For example, people regard rebirth as nonsense because, ultimately, they are discussing what happens to an intrinsically existing ‘self’ person.

So, they argue that there’s no evidence that cousin Larry might die and come back as a cat. But this assumption is based on the idea that there is a truly self-existing (and thus unchanging) entity of ‘cousin Larry’.

Yet, if we drop that presumption, and determine by way of analytical meditation (vipassana) that no essential thing can be found anyway within or outside of Larry that’s actually ‘Larry’ (except the name on his drivers license), and we see that what constitutes Larry is an appearance based on a continuously changing collection of even more constant changing parts, and that the experience of being Larry isn’t actually a constant thing at all, but is more of a matter of rapid reproduction of the previous moment, then this sheds a whole new light on ‘rebirth’. It redefines what rebirth means, and redefines it in such a way that it really isn’t such a preposterous concept at all. We die and are reborn every moment. We live in entirely new bodies every seven years, according to the science. Nothing the brain is composed of (water, fat, amino acids, etc) can spontaneously burst into some kind of experiential awareness. When we really deconstruct what’s going on (which vajrayana Buddhism does extensively) it changes the whole discussion.

You make decisions everyday, you decide to get up in the morning and not lie in bed, you decide to eat this and not eat that, you decide to drink this and not drink that. You decide to say this and not say that. You decide to go there and not go to some other place. And so on...
Who makes these decisions? What makes these decisions? How do decisions occur? Where do they occur?

[Giovanni]

One of his former students Dr Susan Blackmore joined a Zen Sangha and Dawkins made a public denouncement of her.

Do you have a source for this? I tried Google but couldn't find any evidence that she was ever his student (Blackmore's fields are psychology and parapsychology, not biology) or that they're anything but the best of pals.

Perhaps I should have said mentoree rather than student. In an interview she said that he had been a great influence of her thinking, but that he made it clear that he disapproved of her joining a Zen group. He told her that “Buddhism and all Asian religion is regressive”. She quoted this in an interview quoted in the Kushi Ling website.

[PeterC]

I didn’t say they were ‘my enemies’, and I mentioned specifically that I would prefer them to theists in some circumstances, plenty of circumstances really.

Their social commentary tends to be dumb as hell though. If you wanna consider that an ad hom no problem. I’m sure their careers will survive.

Far as specifics, almost any of the stuff Dawkins and others have said about Islam fits pretty well really. It doesn’t make him a nazi or something, personally it’s enough to rub me the wrong way and he certainly has participated in the ‘war of civilization’ narrative in that area.

It’s also ridiculous to call ‘the theists’ ‘our enemy’ as if they are some monolithic group. FFS man, and you’re worried about me pigeonholing people?

Most of ‘the theists’ I know don’t support any of that stuff, and in fact in this country it is of course almost exclusively fundamentalist Christians who do.

Obviously, that is a relatively small group of ‘the theists’ (big enough to be scary yes) yet the implication seems to be that anyone with theistic beliefs would naturally support all this awful stuff, are some existential threat to Buddhism, or whatever. That’s just not the case.

You criticized the style/tone of his comments rather than their substance - maybe that's not ad hom, but it's certainly not engaging with his arguments.

A large number of theists think and act in a way that really should be considered - inimical. They think their morality trumps ours, and that it should be imposed on society. I'm open to a better word than 'enemy' but I'm struggling to find one more appropriate. And, frankly, they're winning more than they're losing right now, particularly in the US.

But what always surprises me is how worked up people get about the likes of Dawkins. Someone posts a youtube video and suddenly a long thread appears denouncing him. He didn't do anything to anyone here, why do they feel so upset about him? Just because he said he thought they were stupid?

[PadmaVonSamba]

You make decisions everyday, you decide to get up in the morning and not lie in bed, you decide to eat this and not eat that, you decide to drink this and not drink that. You decide to say this and not say that. You decide to go there and not go to some other place. And so on...
Who makes these decisions? What makes these decisions? How do decisions occur? Where do they occur?

To answer that, you need to break down the meaning of the term “decide” or “decision” (literally, to separate from) in that context, and look at what events in the mind that actually refers to. Decision is an activity of the mind.

“Who” or “what” is an imputed identifier. It’s like asking “whose three-dimensional space am I occupying?”

Conventionally, or relatively speaking, “I” am occupying “my” three dimensional space, of course. But the “my” doesn’t actually belong to that space. It’s not an inherent quality of that space. If I die and turn to ashes, that space is still there. So “me” is just something invented, used to give that space some kind of territorial value, which I guess means ego.

[KristenM]

Dawkins religion is just modernity and liberal democracy. In that sense he may be sort of ally.... but he also thinks people with religion might have a brain disease. So, not that much of an ally.

We think those people “suffer from wrong view”, are “ignorant”, have “obscurations” - is our view of them that different?

Yes, there is a big difference between believing someone is wrong and believing that they are biologically deficient -especially- when someone’s philosophy essentializes the importance of biology - as his does.

Buddhists say an eternalist view albeit wrong is superior to nihilist because at least it is positive and leads to a spiritual outlook. So, our view is quite different. Real wrong view to a Buddhist would be Atheism/Nihilism. I’m referencing Thinley Dorbu Rinpoche.

[Malcolm]

We think those people “suffer from wrong view”, are “ignorant”, have “obscurations” - is our view of them that different?

Yes, there is a big difference between believing someone is wrong and believing that they are biologically deficient -especially- when someone’s philosophy essentializes the importance of biology - as his does.

Buddhists say an eternalist view albeit wrong is superior to nihilist because at least it is positive and leads to a spiritual outlook. So, our view is quite different. Real wrong view to a Buddhist would be Atheism/Nihilism. I’m referencing Thinley Dorbu Rinpoche.

Candrakīrti states that the principle difference between materialists and Buddhists is that we accept karma and rebirth. Other than that, there isn't much difference.

The person who wrote the establishment clause in the first amendment, James Madison, was an atheist (politely termed "deist" in those days, meaning someone who followed Lucretius's De rerum natura, a summary of Epicurus's materialist philosophy, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_rerum_natura).

I would trust atheists over theists any day of the week.

NIhilism is that silly philosophy adhered to by teenagers, burgeoning fascists, and groovy french intellectuals who read too much Nietzsche.

Why would I would trust atheists over theists any day of the week? Because they basically don't give a shit about what I believe. They are more focused on theists, whose beliefs are demonstrably toxic and dangerous to all life on the planet.

[Shotenzenjin]

It's not like atheists ever had dictators or killed millions of people or anything'.
Oh wait a minute .... ..

[KristenM]

Yes, there is a big difference between believing someone is wrong and believing that they are biologically deficient -especially- when someone’s philosophy essentializes the importance of biology - as his does.

Buddhists say an eternalist view albeit wrong is superior to nihilist because at least it is positive and leads to a spiritual outlook. So, our view is quite different. Real wrong view to a Buddhist would be Atheism/Nihilism. I’m referencing Thinley Dorbu Rinpoche.

Candrakīrti states that the principle difference between materialists and Buddhists is that we accept karma and rebirth. Other than that, there isn't much difference.

The person who wrote the establishment clause in the first amendment, James Madison, was an atheist (politely termed "deist" in those days, meaning someone who followed Lucretius's De rerum natura, a summary of Epicurus's materialist philosophy, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_rerum_natura).

I would trust atheists over theists any day of the week.

NIhilism is that silly philosophy adhered to by teenagers, burgeoning fascists, and groovy french intellectuals who read too much Nietzsche.

Why would I would trust atheists over theists any day of the week? Because they basically don't give a shit about what I believe. They are more focused on theists, whose beliefs are demonstrably toxic and dangerous to all life on the planet.

I don’t disagree, mostly. I’m actually reading “Swerve” right now, its specifially about Lucretius’ poem and it’s influence on civilization, pretty interesting so far.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/ ... att-review

[Malcolm]

It's not like atheists ever had dictators or killed millions of people or anything'.
Oh wait a minute .... ..

Easily explained by the fact that they inherited a Christian eschatology and culture, that served as an underlying narrative.

[Malcolm]

I don’t disagree, mostly. I’m actually reading “Swerve” right now, its specifially about Lucretius’ poem and it’s influence on civilization, pretty interesting so far.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/ ... att-review

You ought to read "Nature's God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic."

It's really good.

[Johnny Dangerous]

I didn’t say they were ‘my enemies’, and I mentioned specifically that I would prefer them to theists in some circumstances, plenty of circumstances really.

Their social commentary tends to be dumb as hell though. If you wanna consider that an ad hom no problem. I’m sure their careers will survive.

Far as specifics, almost any of the stuff Dawkins and others have said about Islam fits pretty well really. It doesn’t make him a nazi or something, personally it’s enough to rub me the wrong way and he certainly has participated in the ‘war of civilization’ narrative in that area.

It’s also ridiculous to call ‘the theists’ ‘our enemy’ as if they are some monolithic group. FFS man, and you’re worried about me pigeonholing people?

Most of ‘the theists’ I know don’t support any of that stuff, and in fact in this country it is of course almost exclusively fundamentalist Christians who do.

Obviously, that is a relatively small group of ‘the theists’ (big enough to be scary yes) yet the implication seems to be that anyone with theistic beliefs would naturally support all this awful stuff, are some existential threat to Buddhism, or whatever. That’s just not the case.

You criticized the style/tone of his comments rather than their substance - maybe that's not ad hom, but it's certainly not engaging with his arguments.

A large number of theists think and act in a way that really should be considered - inimical. They think their morality trumps ours, and that it should be imposed on society. I'm open to a better word than 'enemy' but I'm struggling to find one more appropriate. And, frankly, they're winning more than they're losing right now, particularly in the US.

But what always surprises me is how worked up people get about the likes of Dawkins. Someone posts a youtube video and suddenly a long thread appears denouncing him. He didn't do anything to anyone here, why do they feel so upset about him? Just because he said he thought they were stupid?

Because I think his cultural imperialism is actually part of a larger, and somewhat uglier narrative. Also because this thread is about him. Stop with the armchair psychoanalysis. Yes, I think Christo-fascists are worse, but that doesn’t make him great, in social terms.

Far as the other stuff, I was pretty clear, and gave a couple links. I’m writing on my phone, so for the record it’s mainly his commentary on Islam and women in places that I find objectionable. It’s not horrific, just dumb and indicative of the fact that while he’s a genius in some areas, it doesn’t improve his ability around social issues.

That said, Dawkins worldview is not my own. Again, I’d rather him be on a school board than somevChristian fundie, but I don’t share his worldview.

And once again let me point out that ‘theists’ is actually a much broader category than you keep insisting on here.

For me, there is a substantial gap between a philosophy which stresses the cultivation of altruistic attitudes across multiple lifetimes in order to reach some sort of gnosis and s as philosophy which says that consciousness begins and ends in one body. The ‘orthodox’ scientific worldview that Dawkins and others subscribe to is something akin to nihilism in Buddhist terms - emptiness without luminosity you might say.

I’d way rather share a beer with him than the extremist theists, but there is definitely a gulf there.

Half my family are what I would call ‘militant atheists’ in the same vein, so I have some experience in casual conversation around this stuff.

If you want an example of the difference: I find with that part of my family one of the things they don’t get is cultivation of compassionate or simply positive patterns of thought.it’s like to them for there to be a value to that you must connect it to some empirical social good. Even then, because our minds are just junk that ends at death, there is no reason to not sit in ones negative thoughts as long as they are found to be vaguely empirically ‘true’ in some way.

The Buddhist philosophy of mind creates real, functional differences with most people I’ve known who call themselves atheists. Hell, it changed -me- in that way as I moved away from atheism and an unspoken naive realism.. It’s not the gulf that exists between me and a Westboro baptist church member, but it’s not nothing.

[Aemilius]

You make decisions everyday, you decide to get up in the morning and not lie in bed, you decide to eat this and not eat that, you decide to drink this and not drink that. You decide to say this and not say that. You decide to go there and not go to some other place. And so on...
Who makes these decisions? What makes these decisions? How do decisions occur? Where do they occur?

To answer that, you need to break down the meaning of the term “decide” or “decision” (literally, to separate from) in that context, and look at what events in the mind that actually refers to. Decision is an activity of the mind.

“Who” or “what” is an imputed identifier. It’s like asking “whose three-dimensional space am I occupying?”

Conventionally, or relatively speaking, “I” am occupying “my” three dimensional space, of course. But the “my” doesn’t actually belong to that space. It’s not an inherent quality of that space. If I die and turn to ashes, that space is still there. So “me” is just something invented, used to give that space some kind of territorial value, which I guess means ego.

You can't avoid the language of "I", it seems; you too say "whose three-dimensional space am I occupying?”. Language refers to things in the outer and inner world. In the Apohavada it is said that if the things that language refers to have results, then they exist and are real, i.e. they act as real causes.
Decision is or it can be a complicated process, e.g.: 1. certain possibilities appear to you in your mind or imagination, 2. you weigh these possibilities, 3. you try to visualize and predict their outcomes, 4. maybe you remember your previous commitments and promises to certain courses of action, 5. you decide to follow your commitments, or 6. you interpret these commitments in some ingenious way, or 7. you discard the commitments and you decide to do something contrary to them, and 8. you give reasons to yourself for doing so, and 9. time is running out now and you finally you have to make a decision, 10. you arrive at a decision and execute it as speech, bodily action or activity of mind.