Thursday, 26 August 2010

What If You're Wrong?



Richard Dawkins is an arrogant bastard, but I love watching him bully religious people. I wish I could see the girl's face as he was saying this.
I need to start The God Delusion again, I only got about 1/3 of the way through and then started on something else.
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4 comments:

Chris said...

It's interesting that so many people describe him in quite negative ways, even those who agree with him. Religion seems to have this status as 'should be respected' and never challenged.

Last week a friend of mine and ex-Union President posted on his facebook about his experience at the New Day festival where more than six hundred people had been 'healed' some from "terminal conditions and one woman's spine was instantly straightened. A deaf and blind man was instant healed." Cue several hours of fierce debate and almost a hundred responses that largely centred on being prayed for (in quite a patronising way), being told "Don't question Him Chris, just love and praise Him" and that it wasn't appropriate to claim Randi's $1 million for showing evidence of faith based healing despite that their churches could probably use the money or even donate it to charity. Yet the odd thing was that I was being rational and polite, just asking them questions, and people were being incredibly rude and not at all respectful of my view.

Apparantly I was going to Hell anyway for questioning 'Him' so it's a good job I didn't mention that I was gay.

That was a bit of a ramble but I guess religious people can be bastards even when they're really lovely people. The difference is that they turn their 'reason and logic' switch off.

Chris

Oh and More4 televised The God Delusion on Wednesday so there's always that if you tail off reading it again.

27 August 2010 at 10:43
Lust For Life said...

Chris
That documentary was what resparked my interest :)
I particularly loved one quotation by Steven Weinberg:
"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."

I also couldn't quite believe how many people believed in creationism. No doubt many you were have a discussion with on FB are among them, and like Dawkins says there's just no point trying to have a rational arguement with a creationist. They're delusional and unrational.

The sad thing is though, I know that any religious person who watched that documentary (assuming they didn't just ignore its existence) would just get angry at his attack on their belief, and not actually listen to what he has to say.

27 August 2010 at 11:41
Anonymous said...

But people also delude themselves about smoking, drink, drugs and ageing - not to mention love.

It isn't just religion that people are irrational about.

Pete (my Lover/Partner/Other Half) read this book from cover to cover at one go (he's an engineer, don't know if that made a difference) and simply ended up confirmed in his view.

Does that mean that the book i a self-justification and that's why people who agree with him don't like his style?

28 August 2010 at 09:23
Lust For Life said...

Micky-Smoking, drink, drugs and ageing are different. Because people know and understand the facts about those things, yet religious people choose to simply believe the facts about religion (evolution) are just wrong. But they're facts, they're scientific truths. It's true delusion.

What was your partner's view?

Personally I don't like him because he's just as bad as religious preachers. Instead of trying to explain or debate his opinion, he simply belabors them with his views and attacks them if they disagree. That gets no one anywhere. I thought his interviews in the 'God Delusion' documentary were poorly done.

28 August 2010 at 22:00

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