SALON Article: Atheism deserves better than Richard Dawkins: “Secular fundamentalism” is actively hurting the movement - the article opposes his view that religion necessarily helps violence and it surreptitiously sows the seeds of violence and often is openly violent

Thursday, October 15, 2015 10:50 am

Dawkins is an apostle of science not atheism. His atheism is collateral. The fact of the matter is that Christianity opposes the sciences of biology, physics and history - especially the latter. No historian thinks the Bible is truthful.  Why not pick on the Christian leaders instead?  Nobody can prove Dawkins is an anti-truth person for he is meticulous with evidence.

Dawkins is accused of being agnostic not atheist.  This is because he said that God though very unlikely is not technically disprovable or disproven.  What he meant by technically disprovable or disproven is that science cannot test the absence or non-existence of God.  That does not mean God is not effectively disproven.  99% certainty that x stole the cakes is as good as proof.  It is so close to proof you can call it that.  It is effectively proof.  Dawkins leaving room for a little doubt does not make him an agnostic any more than it makes a believer in God an agnostic for also leaving room.  To deny Dawkins who is the determined apostle of atheism is a real atheist is to call him a bigoted fake.

I am outraged at the suggestion that violence done by religious people “arises primarily out of a preoccupation with power. Not power in the sense of brute physical dominance over others…. but power as the basic psychological drive of the human animal. The thwarting of that drive is the root cause of both terrorism and violence generally". It tries to blame man as man and not man as religious man. But that makes no sense. It implies that man is always good when he is religious. If man has violent tendencies and invents religions those religions are going to manifest those tendencies too. Period. And it is not helpful to ignore people like Jesus, Joseph Smith, Muhammad and Moses who testified their violence was in the name of God and religious faith.
 
To declare that few people in a religion engage in violence on the basis that there is violence commanded by their God in a holy book is unhelpful. The problem is that anybody does it. The problem is that if a religion leads some to violence it is only through luck and chance that all don't engage in the violence. It may show that the rest could do the same if the right buttons were pressed and may lack the faith to kill for God. If they are good it is because they are not religious enough. It still reflects badly on the religion. That a person would be content that only a few kill for their religion shows the murky poison that religion exudes even to people outside its own membership.

If you think God has all power, you will feel that you are involved in his power by aligning yourself with him. Faith in God is really about "power as the basic psychological drive of the human animal." The religious person makes his or her beliefs untestable and promotes them which enhances the sense of power.
 
"Attacking religion, thus, addresses the symptom, not the cause." A symptom is a sign of illness. What if the illness is the religion?
 
Re Telegraphs report that Richard Dawkins called himself a secular Christian and a follower of the teachings of Christ

Dawkins says he follows the teachings of Christ? One of Christ's core teachings was that marriage is unbreakable and that a new marriage is adulterous. No sane person agrees with that vicious doctrine. I am not accusing Dawkins of adultery, but of failing to see that Jesus' good teachings were not his but taken from other people and that Jesus' unique teachings were malevolent and fundamentalist. For example we are to love others for God's sake for God is the ultimate good - Jesus said nobody is good but God alone and God is to be loved totally. Loving somebody for somebody else's sake or something else's sake (their money perhaps?) is not really loving them at all though it can look like love. Jesus inflicted damage on the psyches of many of his followers and we wonder why they have been so bloodthirsty and cruel and intolerant? Religions that do not follow Jesus have not sanctioned and enabled as much spilling of blood as those that do.
 
Re a comment saying "Atheism is a state of being - it is not a belief, an opinion or religion. The term atheist (meaning not-theist), is simply used to describe that person's state."

That is an excellent post.
 
In response to the Telegraph's Tim Stanley who said that Dawkins is wrong to say there are no such beings as Muslim babies

The Prophet Muhammad said, "No babe is born but upon Fitra (as a Muslim). It is his parents who make him a Jew or a Christian or a Polytheist." (Sahih Muslim ...

I decided to get that from a Muslim website. Every baby in the world is Muslim according to Islam but Stanley doesn't mention that for he is too busy showing Christian love with a nasty diatribe against Richard Dawkins.