tree_and_leaf | Amusing, in a headdesky way, or headdesky in an amusing way?

Dawkins and Sherine back bus ads reading "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

.... yeah. Atheist says: stop thinking and take my word for it!

(Actually, that's a little unfair, because the ads are intended as a response to a series of evangelical ones threatening non-Christians with hell-fire. All the same, the fear of hell is not exactly integral to the faith of most of the religious people I know†, and I cannot say that a sudden loss of my faith would improve my enjoyment of life; quite the reverse.)

On a side note, buried in the article is the information that Dawkins supports a Tory humanist group. I didn't know he was a Tory, but for some reason I'm not entirely surprised. (ETA: see comment from

lizw below; this appears to be a misunderstanding.

† The only sense I can make of Hell is total alienation from God, and therefore all that is good, of becoming lost in myself and in hatred, which does indeed scare me quite a lot, but I suspect that's not the sort of thing Dawkins et al think I'm scared of.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

There is a strand of Dawkins apologist who say things like "Of course, Richard acknowledges the contribution that Christianity and other religions have made to the development of intellectual life and a scientific understanding of the universe, he just can't say so because it's more important to attack religion as the root of so many people's ignorance," which strikes me as profoundly dishonest (though representative of a particular current in modern advocacy).

If Dawkins is now an agnostic, as the Ekklesia report suggested, then I have to say his agnosticism is not mine.

I think they meant that the advert was agnostic, rather than that Dawkins has become one: but I do think that Dawkins makes a great straw man for anti-atheist polemic - he's not really helpful in having a sensible discussion, whatever your beliefs.

I have at least one friend who regards Dawkins as part of a series of great scientific prophets. I think that this is how Dawkins sees himself.

Which is a little scary, frankly.

This seems to me a rather inaccurate (and unfair) representation of what I've heard/read him saying. In fact, a very large portion of the God Delusion is devoted to explaining what/who he is not attacking, and separating the people from the ideas. Unfortunately most people do seem to receive what he has to say as a personal attack directed at every person who identifies as believing in a god. (Possibly because they have only read his ideas in soundbites, and then accuse him of being simplistic, I don't know.)

I was looking at The God Delusion earlier today, and did see that Dawkins's arguments in print are (understandably) more complex than those more widely disseminated through the media. This would be fine, if he didn't seem to court soundbites so much, or be as evangelical about atheism as he can be - this is as offensive to me as fundamentalist religion.

Well I can't comment on how much control he has over what proportion of what he says gets recorded by media, but would argue that anyone who bothers to write so many books is at least a little protected from the charge of soundbitism.

Re Dawkins and 'evangelism', I think he makes a very cogent argument for atheists 'speaking up' in campaigns like this. Which is that atheism is still truly taboo in many societies, the US being one of them. Maybe it comes across as over the top in the UK, where attitudes are a bit more relaxed (and, as Sir Humphrey says, theology was invented to keep agnostics in the Anglican Church ;), but atheists face serious prejudice in the US - where a black person has ten times the chance of being voted into public office than an atheist! I'm not sure how fighting against such discrimination is offensive.

Dawkins has always been an agnostic in the strist sense of the word, and says so in print in several of his books. Having said, that, I agree with tree_and_leaf I agree that he makes more heat than light, whatever side you're on.

I should really read The God Delusion before I say anything else about him. Considering the number of books written as replies to The God Delusion from a Christian or other deistic perspective, Richard Dawkins has done wonders for religious publishing.

Alastair McGrath's certainly got a lot of mileage out of it...

I really ought to read "The God Delusion" some time; the trouble is there's generally something else I'd rather read in my spare time... All I know about his agnosticism vs atheism is the thing about the seven point scale (is it?), where seven is a total atheist and he's six. Though I may be misremembering.

Sounds vaguely familiar. I only read it once. It's a very persuasive polemic, if you agree with Dawkins anyway, but it's not going to win any converts. But then, I don't think that was the point of it; it's a rallying call, not a conversion call.

I know have this really odd image of Dawkins doing a sort of anti-altar-call, like Billy Graham, only not.

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