Dawkins: Unlike Islam, Christianity a fundamentally decent Religion.

[Thumpalumpacus]

The role of the Catholic Church in Yugoslavia's holocaust - Seán Mac Mathúna, 1941-1945

We could also lay out the Catholic involvement in Rwanda. Or the Western US or Canada. Protestant British immigrants in "New England" too. America's "Manifest Destiny" wiping native tribes into reservations in the space of 100 years, and putting their children into schools designed to eliminate their culture.

[Minimalist]

And Pascal was one of those fine catholicks.

[Paleophyte]

A couple of decades ago Dawkins published his controversial
"Spectrum of Theistic Probabilities".  As I've said previously
on this forum, I cannot agree with his self-styled "spectrum".


Only #1 and #7 espouse any truth.  The rest are just nonsense.

   A woman is either pregnant or she's not
   pregnant.  She cannot be nearly pregnant.

I disagree. All of them espouse opinions. "I don't know" is a valid answer when you don't know, and "I know there's not" or "I know there is" are invalid answers in the absence, or profligacy, of evidence.

Thinking is not an on-or-off switch. Is my aunt dead or alive? You'd be a four on that scale, and rightly so, because you don't know.

Comparing it to a pregnant woman is silly, because that is testable. Comparing it to my aunt is testable, but you yourself can't test it, so you're still stuck.

I'm going to beg to disagree with both of you. Thump's points are valid, but Dawkin's scale is still woefully oversimplified. It tries to view the diversity of human belief solely along the one-dimensional spectrum of how much conviction one has in one's beliefs. All of the categories above may well be valid but they're grossly reductive and lump together individuals who have precious little in common except for conviction.

For example, one can easily imagine four people belonging to category 1, all having very strong conviction in their religious beliefs. The first believes solely because of accident of birth, has never given it much thought, and would be appalled by any notion that challenged their rather narrow but intense worldview. The second is a deeply thoughtful theologian who has pondered the finer points of their beliefs for decades. Thirdly we have an individual who has developed intense convictions due to profound personal experience, what some might refer to as mystical or divine. Lastly, I'll throw in a converted atheist, exhibiting deep convictions due to the whiplash that conversion tends to produce in many cases where you see intense rejection of the previous worldview. Clearly we have four very different people here, many of whom would have little in common with some of the others in the same category. You can do a similar exercise with the other categories.

I'm not suggesting that Dawkins is wrong, but rather that his attempt to represent the complexity and variety of human belief with a simple 1-7 numbering scale is entirely inadequate. People are more complicated than that.

[Minimalist]

Most people seem to be far more simple than that.

[Cavebear]

I think that sometimes, intelligent people (like Dawkins) write stuff just to explore the possibilities. Intelligent people are always curious about origins. There is of course the possibility that there is some sort of deity. It isn't a non-zero possibility. Very unlikely to be sure, but not impossible.

I have certainly considered some ways the Universe could exist. Oh, not like some scientists can and not as well as some philosophers have. I am not at that level of knowledge or imagination. I try to stay in a factual, testable, and observable universe. But everything I think I know, and everything new thing I learn, convinces me that the universe doesn't need an Originator, just an origin.

So when theists demand I accept ideas based on millennia-old thoughts I dismiss them. You might think that they could develop new arguments in support of some deity, but the don't. Well, they can't. In fact, they lose some of their "facts" everytime anything new is discovered.

You might think some of them are giving up the battle of superstition vs fact. And they are.

"The trend is gaining momentum across the world, AP reports from several countries:

In Japan, 70% of people in Japan say they have nonreligious feelings.
Nearly 80% of Italians say they're Catholic. But most view it as a tradition, with fewer than 20% attending services weekly.
Israel, a country with about 7 million Jews, is remarkably nonreligious: Just 33% said they practiced "traditional" religious worship. Conflict between secular and ultra-religious Israelis has grown in recent years."

Religion will someday go the way of "flat-earth" and "earth-centric" errors in thought. Not in my lifetime, but I see it coming...

[SYZ]

A couple of decades ago Dawkins published his controversial
"Spectrum of Theistic Probabilities".  As I've said previously
on this forum, I cannot agree with his self-styled "spectrum".

Only #1 and #7 espouse any truth.  The rest are just nonsense.

   A woman is either pregnant or she's not
   pregnant.  She cannot be nearly pregnant.

But you can have different beliefs about being pregnant.  You can be 1 or 7, you know for sure you are pregnant or know for sure you are not.  Or you can be somewhere in the middle and be pretty sure you aren't, or maybe missed a period and think you might be, or whatever.  So he's talking about the state of ones belief, which can be a spectrum, rather than in the truth of the thing being believed.

Nope.  A so-called "belief" is not viable supporting evidence for
any claim.

Dawkins is not talking about beliefs per se;  he's talking about
options for a state of being, an actuality of one's existence.  

Theists don't simply believe they're theists; they are theists.

Atheists don't simply believe they're atheists;  they are atheists.

Hence my opinion that only #1 and #7 are valid.  There's no in-between.

[SYZ]

...Only #1 and #7 espouse any truth.  The rest are just nonsense.

   A woman is either pregnant or she's not
   pregnant.  She cannot be nearly pregnant.

I disagree. All of them espouse opinions. "I don't know" is a valid answer when you don't know, and "I know there's not" or "I know there is" are invalid answers in the absence, or profligacy, of evidence.

So you're saying I should be satisfied accepting your
"don't know" response if I asked you if you're an atheist?
Why wouldn't you simply say yes or no?

I've always said that God or gods don't exist.  Period.  
Across several millennia there has been not one iota of
evidence negating that despite intense research by
thousands of scientists across the planet.

I've asked people on this forum before to prove to me that
unicorns don't exist and/or have never existed in the real
world, despite Egyptian hieroglyphics clearly showing them.
As of yet, nobody's responded.   Can you?

Thinking is not an on-or-off switch. Is my aunt dead or alive? You'd be a four on that scale, and rightly so, because you don't know.

That's a pretty silly analogy to the God existing dilemma!
But yes;  I can answer along the lines of Dawkin's #1 or
#7 by answering she either is dead or isn't.  Whichever
choice I make, you either have to confirm or deny my answer
by supplying viable evidence proving or refuting it.

It's not my job—as an atheist—to "prove" that God doesn't
exist;  that's the job of the theists to prove he/she does.

Comparing it to a pregnant woman is silly, because that is testable. Comparing it to my aunt is testable, but you yourself can't test it, so you're still stuck.

Why then has nobody ever "tested" the attestation that God
exists if it's (apparently) so easy a task?

[Thumpalumpacus]

So you're saying I should be satisfied accepting your
"don't know" response if I asked you if you're an atheist?
Why wouldn't you simply say yes or no?

I wouldn't answer "I don't know." I'd answer "I don't know he doesn't exist, but I don't believe he does."

This is a tired, mildewy argument that you should already be well aware of: the difference between belief and knowledge. i won't go into that aspect of it. You can use Google to get the gist if you're truly unaware of the issue.

What I will do is say that your formulation is overly simple, lacking in nuance, and completely ignores the fact that humans minds, and therefore beliefs, are a lot more complex than you seem to think.

I've always said that God or gods don't exist.  Period.

That's nice. Your (lack of) belief is not nuanced. That's you. The insistence that your perspective is the only correct one strikes me as rather arrogant, certainly more arrogant than I care to be.

I've asked people on this forum before to prove to me that
unicorns don't exist and/or have never existed in the real
world, despite Egyptian hieroglyphics clearly showing them.
As of yet, nobody's responded.   Can you?

Why should I? We don't have unicornists telling us what to think and how to behave. I don't believe in unicorns, there's no evidence for them, and in the scheme of things it's so trivial I won't bother. I have better things to do with my time.

It's not my job—as an atheist—to "prove" that God doesn't
exist;  that's the job of the theists to prove he/she does.

And who has argued that the onus is yours? I sure haven't. Why are you leveling this complaint at me? That renders this "point" a red herring.

Why then has nobody ever "tested" the attestation that God
exists if it's (apparently) so easy a task?

I have. As a believer, I regularly prayed. I noticed that my prayers often went unanswered. I also noticed that the more outlandish the prayer, the less likely was it to be answered. I decided on that basis that this was one indicator that god might not exist. Then I noticed that miracles declined from in Biblical times resurrecting the dead and feeding a crowd with two loaves and five fish to, well, showing up on a tortilla nowadays, and reckoned this was one more datum indicating god's nonexistence.

On what basis do you claim that hundreds of millions of others might not have done something similar?

[Edible crust]

I'd put myself in the 'I don't care category' when it comes to the existence of a god. I'm 100% sure that all of the gods that I've heard about don't exist so I'm not wasting my time on the planet worrying about not eating pigs or lusting after my neighbours wife.

If there is a god I'm fairly sure it's got better things to do than concern itself with me or my opinions, it'll be busy planning the next multi multi multiverse.

[jerry mcmasters]

But you can have different beliefs about being pregnant.  You can be 1 or 7, you know for sure you are pregnant or know for sure you are not.  Or you can be somewhere in the middle and be pretty sure you aren't, or maybe missed a period and think you might be, or whatever.  So he's talking about the state of ones belief, which can be a spectrum, rather than in the truth of the thing being believed.

Nope.  A so-called "belief" is not viable supporting evidence for
any claim.

Dawkins is not talking about beliefs per se;  he's talking about
options for a state of being, an actuality of one's existence.  

Theists don't simply believe they're theists; they are theists.

Atheists don't simply believe they're atheists;  they are atheists.

Hence my opinion that only #1 and #7 are valid.  There's no in-between.

Of course you can have in between!  It’s called “not sure.”  That’s all Dawkins is doing and you don’t have to agree with how he parses it, but he’s just describing different ways someone can be not sure about the truth of theism (for shorthand, we’ll say God or gods exist).  No different than being not sure about the truth of being pregnant or anything else.
 
I think the most you can say is that with the “not sure” position it is verbally clunky to use the term “belief.”  It’s not silky English to say “I have the belief that I’m not sure if God or gods exist.”  But it’s valid as a way of conveying meaning.

[Paleophyte]

But you can have different beliefs about being pregnant.  You can be 1 or 7, you know for sure you are pregnant or know for sure you are not.  Or you can be somewhere in the middle and be pretty sure you aren't, or maybe missed a period and think you might be, or whatever.  So he's talking about the state of ones belief, which can be a spectrum, rather than in the truth of the thing being believed.

Nope.  A so-called "belief" is not viable supporting evidence for
any claim.

Dawkins is not talking about beliefs per se;  he's talking about
options for a state of being, an actuality of one's existence.  

Theists don't simply believe they're theists; they are theists.

Atheists don't simply believe they're atheists;  they are atheists.

Hence my opinion that only #1 and #7 are valid.  There's no in-between.

I think you're confusing what Dawkins' scale does. It isn't about whether you believe that you're a theist or not and it isn't about states of being. It's about what you believe. That's literally in your original post on the matter.

1 - Absolute conviction in their belief in god's existence.
2 - Strong conviction in their belief in god's existence.
3 - Weak? (seriously? We lumped moderate and weak together?) conviction in their belief in god's existence.
4 - Lack of conviction in the belief of god's existence or non-existence. <--- True neutral!
5 - Weak conviction in their belief in god's non-existence.
6 - Strong conviction in their belief in god's non-existence.
7 - Absolute conviction in their belief in god's non-existence.

The whole reliance on the term "god" is another flaw in Dawkins' scale. Which god are we talking about? If we're discussing a generalized deistic god then I'm a 5, if it's any of the Abrahamic deities you can move me up to a 7, the god of most Evangelicals will get me to an 8 (Strong conviction that I'm engaged in conversation with a wanker), and if it's Fred Phelps' god then you can put me down for a 12 (Absolute conviction that the person advocating for this god should be locked away).

[Reltzik]

North Korea? North Korea is an officially Atheist State ... Now, if you want to say, they "are not True Atheists" (cough, scotsmen), then you must give some universally binding definition of "True Atheists".

An atheist (true or otherwise) is someone that does not believe in or worship gods.  There might be some degrees of gradation to be had in the subtle differences of definition for the word out there (eg, strong or weak atheist, explicit or implicit, etc), but that much is pretty straightforward.

North Korea is, as you (and I, and I think others) point out, officially atheistic.  It officially states that there are no gods and it comes down hard on theists in order to punish them for deviating from the state's position.

However, it also forces the worship of the Kim dynasty as if the Kims were gods.

This isn't a no-true-scotsman thing.  No-true-scotsman is when you attempt to restrict membership in a class by introducing an after-the-fact modification to the definition of the class to exclude some inconvenient counterexamples that serve to disprove your position.

The eponymous example is someone advancing a claim that no Scotsman would add sugar to their porridge, getting confronted with a counterexample, and then modify the nature of their claim by saying that the counterexample isn't a true Scotsman.  This is clearly a modification of the original class of Scotsman.  There might be some vagaries about what does or doesn't make a Scotsman -- for example, do you have to have been born in Scotland to Scottish parents, or could a child of English parents who moved to Scotland when he was one year old and doesn't remember ever living elsewhere count? -- but clearly the sugar content of one's breakfast is not part of the definition.  (At least, it wasn't until it became rhetorically convenient for someone to make that modification.)

This is NOT what's going on with saying North Korea isn't truly an atheist state.  Worshiping a series of god-kings is counter to the actual definition of atheism.  It would be like pointing out that someone who claims to be a vegetarian regularly eats bacon.  That person is either lying or gravely confused about what the word vegetarian means, and in either case isn't truly a vegetarian.  That's not introducing some new modification to the definition out of nowhere for rhetorical convenience.  It's just applying the existing definition, without modification.  If instead of trying to attach sugar-free-breakfasts to the definition of what it meant to be a Scotsman the person making the original claim were to point out that the counterexample is a man who first moved to Scotland from England just three weeks ago and thus shouldn't be counted as a true Scotsman, it would cease to be an example of a no-true-Scotsman fallacy.

[Thumpalumpacus]

The whole reliance on the term "god" is another flaw in Dawkins' scale. Which god are we talking about? If we're discussing a generalized deistic god then I'm a 5, if it's any of the Abrahamic deities you can move me up to a 7, the god of most Evangelicals will get me to an 8 (Strong conviction that I'm engaged in conversation with a wanker), and if it's Fred Phelps' god then you can put me down for a 12 (Absolute conviction that the person advocating for this god should be locked away).

And if this god is just a prime mover (1 or lower), even @SYZ is going to have a hard time handling that. This is why nuance is not only useful, but needed.

[Minimalist]

"God" is a substitution variable.

It stands for which ever god you think exists.

Allah.  Jebus.  Quetzlcoatl.  Odin.  Thoth.  Inanna.  Astarte.  etc.

All of them work in Dawkins' example.

[Thumpalumpacus]

"God" is a substitution variable.

It stands for which ever god you think exists.

Allah.  Jebus.  Quetzlcoatl.  Odin.  Thoth.  Inanna.  Astarte.  etc.

All of them work in Dawkins' example.

All but one:



I'm a one when it comes to Jimi -- forever believing.

[SYZ]

Nope.  A so-called "belief" is not viable supporting evidence for
any claim.

Dawkins is not talking about beliefs per se;  he's talking about
options for a state of being, an actuality of one's existence.  

Theists don't simply believe they're theists; they are theists.

Atheists don't simply believe they're atheists;  they are atheists.

Hence my opinion that only #1 and #7 are valid.  There's no in-between.

Of course you can have in between!  It’s called “not sure.”  That’s all Dawkins is doing and you don’t have to agree with how he parses it, but he’s just describing different ways someone can be not sure about the truth of theism (for shorthand, we’ll say God or gods exist).  No different than being not sure about the truth of being pregnant or anything else.
 
I think the most you can say is that with the “not sure” position it is verbally clunky to use the term “belief.”  It’s not silky English to say “I have the belief that I’m not sure if God or gods exist.”  But it’s valid as a way of conveying meaning.

A supposed "not sure" response to a serious,
legitimate question is the moral coward's way out.

As an atheist I have no "belief" that God does
not exist—I know that God does not exist.

Anyway...

Strictly speaking (and according to Thomas Henry Huxley
who coined the word) agnosticism, (from Greek agnōstos,
unknowable), was the doctrine that humans cannot know of
the existence of anything beyond the phenomena of their
experience.

The biologist Huxley was know as "Darwin's bulldog" and his
organisational efforts, public lectures, and writing helped to
elevate the place of science in modern history.

BTW, the word never referenced—specifically—theism in any
manner.  It simply means not knowing anything one way or
another.  Just as I can't know the state of Thumpalumpacus's
aunty my opinion has to be agnostic.

[SYZ]

...An atheist (true or otherwise) is someone that does not believe in or worship gods.  There might be some degrees of gradation to be had in the subtle differences of definition for the word out there (eg, strong or weak atheist, explicit or implicit, etc), but that much is pretty straightforward.

(my bold)

I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with this.  There
are no "degrees" of atheism or of being an atheist.

It's a simple 'yes' or 'no' to the question "are you an atheist?"

One could say I'm agnostic about Kamala Harris's ethnicity;
is she Afro-Jamaican, or Indian?    Or even, maybe, Black?

[SYZ]

I think that sometimes, intelligent people (like Dawkins) write stuff just to explore the possibilities.  Intelligent people are always curious about origins.  
There is of course the possibility that there is some sort of deity.  It isn't a non-zero possibility.  Very unlikely to be sure, but not impossible...

(my bold)

I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with this.

There are no possibilities for the real-world existence of
any/all deities.  A deity is a supernatural entity, relating
to an order of existence beyond the visible, observable
universe, or that transcends the laws of nature.

If—like theists—you choose to believe in the supernatural
that's fine of course, but I definitely do not.  It's one of the
most defining properties of theism after all.

In specific terms, what exactly makes you think that it's
possible for supernatural entities to exist?

[Mathilda]

He stopped being a biologist a long time ago and is now a right wing nut job there to give a veneer of respectability to whatever culture war or moral panic is currently being whipped up.

Dawkins has long since lost any integrity he built up from his days as a scientist.

Oh contrare - he's written many excellent scientifically valid books which have been published, notably The God Delusion and The Selfish Gene, to name but a couple. If you or I EVER reach such heady hights perhaps we might be in a position to talk him down. Until then we should veritably fall to our knees. Then again you're a faith head so.....

I'm guessing that this is sarcasm but I'm not sure considering you called me a "faith head" when I'm actually an atheist.

I feel quite comfortable criticising Richard Dawkins for being both a twat, a bigot and an overrated scientist who needs media appearances to boost his credibility.

[Inkubus]

Oh contrare - he's written many excellent scientifically valid books which have been published, notably The God Delusion and The Selfish Gene, to name but a couple. If you or I EVER reach such heady hights perhaps we might be in a position to talk him down. Until then we should veritably fall to our knees. Then again you're a faith head so.....

I'm guessing that this is sarcasm but I'm not sure considering you called me a "faith head" when I'm actually an atheist.

I feel quite comfortable criticising Richard Dawkins for being both a twat, a bigot and an overrated scientist who needs media appearances to boost his credibility.

Could you backup that assertion, with quotes from people qualified to make such a claim?

[Dexta]

I'm guessing that this is sarcasm but I'm not sure considering you called me a "faith head" when I'm actually an atheist.

Apologies, I must have got you confused with a different admin here.

[Mathilda]

I'm guessing that this is sarcasm but I'm not sure considering you called me a "faith head" when I'm actually an atheist.

I feel quite comfortable criticising Richard Dawkins for being both a twat, a bigot and an overrated scientist who needs media appearances to boost his credibility.

Could you backup that assertion, with quotes from people qualified to make such a claim?

Probably if I could be arsed.

I'm a trained scientist myself who has worked with both artificial evolution and real genomic data and since learning about Dawkins almost 30 years ago have never once seen his ideas actually show themselves to useful in practice. Most media scientists are better at promoting themselves than actually staying in the lab doing real science.

[SYZ]

Could you [Mathilda] backup that assertion, with quotes from people qualified to make such a claim?

British scientists don't like Richard Dawkins, finds study
that didn't even ask questions about Richard Dawkins!

Scientists who mentioned Dawkins during a recent study
seemed mostly to dislike him, with some arguing that he
misrepresents science and is misleading the public.

Criticism of the evolutionary biologist came up repeatedly
in a new study looking at public understanding of science
and how scientists feel that they are portrayed in the media.
The research was published in a recent edition of Public
Understandings of Science as part of a broader study
looking at how scientists feel about religion.

In the UK, the researchers surveyed 1,581 randomly sampled
scientists. They then spoke to 137 of them for in-depth interviews
to see what they thought.

Though Dawkins wasn’t a part of the interview process, and
researchers didn’t ask about him, 48 of the 137 British scientists
they spoke to mentioned Dawkins. Of those 48 that referenced
him, 80 per cent said that Dawkins misrepresents science
and scientists in his books and public speeches. (39 in the UK
alone were critical.)

Apparently it's Twitter that led to many of the controversies that
Dawkins has been embroiled in. A Guardian article last year
reported that some people close to Dawkins were worried that his
online outbursts could be destroying his reputation.

  —Excerpted from the UK Independent, 31 October 2016.

[jerry mcmasters]

Of course you can have in between!  It’s called “not sure.”  That’s all Dawkins is doing and you don’t have to agree with how he parses it, but he’s just describing different ways someone can be not sure about the truth of theism (for shorthand, we’ll say God or gods exist).  No different than being not sure about the truth of being pregnant or anything else.
 
I think the most you can say is that with the “not sure” position it is verbally clunky to use the term “belief.”  It’s not silky English to say “I have the belief that I’m not sure if God or gods exist.”  But it’s valid as a way of conveying meaning.

A supposed "not sure" response to a serious,
legitimate question is the moral coward's way out.

As an atheist I have no "belief" that God does
not exist—I know that God does not exist.

Anyway...

Strictly speaking (and according to Thomas Henry Huxley
who coined the word) agnosticism, (from Greek agnōstos,
unknowable), was the doctrine that humans cannot know of
the existence of anything beyond the phenomena of their
experience.

The biologist Huxley was know as "Darwin's bulldog" and his
organisational efforts, public lectures, and writing helped to
elevate the place of science in modern history.

BTW, the word never referenced—specifically—theism in any
manner.  It simply means not knowing anything one way or
another.  Just as I can't know the state of Thumpalumpacus's
aunty my opinion has to be agnostic.

All well and good, I guess.  Not a word of that invalidates Dawkins's spectrum, which I thought was the point of contention.

[mordant]

Could you [Mathilda] backup that assertion, with quotes from people qualified to make such a claim?

British scientists don't like Richard Dawkins, finds study
that didn't even ask questions about Richard Dawkins!

Scientists who mentioned Dawkins during a recent study
seemed mostly to dislike him, with some arguing that he
misrepresents science and is misleading the public.

Criticism of the evolutionary biologist came up repeatedly
in a new study looking at public understanding of science
and how scientists feel that they are portrayed in the media.
The research was published in a recent edition of Public
Understandings of Science as part of a broader study
looking at how scientists feel about religion.

In the UK, the researchers surveyed 1,581 randomly sampled
scientists. They then spoke to 137 of them for in-depth interviews
to see what they thought.

Though Dawkins wasn’t a part of the interview process, and
researchers didn’t ask about him, 48 of the 137 British scientists
they spoke to mentioned Dawkins. Of those 48 that referenced
him, 80 per cent said that Dawkins misrepresents science
and scientists in his books and public speeches. (39 in the UK
alone were critical.)

Apparently it's Twitter that led to many of the controversies that
Dawkins has been embroiled in. A Guardian article last year
reported that some people close to Dawkins were worried that his
online outbursts could be destroying his reputation.

  —Excerpted from the UK Independent, 31 October 2016.

Yeah the one that sort of was the last straw concerning Dawkins for me was that he made some bone-headed remark about how he was sexually molested as a child but that he overcame it, as it was just "mild abuse" and therefore he thinks others who suffered abuse are making too much of it. The subtext was, "get over it already". It cemented in my mind that he's a blowhard at best and an asshole at worst.

Yeah here it is:

https://www.salon.com/2013/09/11/richard...sex_abuse/

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/...nt-get-it/