Religion
Related: About this forumThe New Atheists have failed. Religion is a myth, but it’s here to stay.
By Adam Seldon
Thursday 27 June 2013
The 2011 census revealed a fascinating disparity in the nation’s relationship with the spiritual. 59% of respondents called themselves Christian, which makes Christianity largest religion in the UK, yet only 34% of respondents said that they believed in a higher God. This mismatch reveals the fruitlessness of the task of the New Atheists-Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, AC Grayling and the late Christopher Hitchens-who have the naïve view that reason and science have the ability to destroy religion and perhaps, it increasingly appears they desire, replace it.
I am one of those, as an impressionable teenager, who sped through Richard Dawkins’s now infamous work The God Delusion and was deeply affected and convinced by it. Whatever the book’s numerous flaws, its resounding merit is that it has the capacity to make one think, to make one query. I was raised as a child to be Jewish, and The God Delusion was the first thing that nudged me into questioning the validity of what I had been indoctrinated into believing. The bible story of Abraham being willing to sacrifice his son Isaac was in my youth vaunted as the most sacred demonstrations of faith, whereas Dawkins rightly ( in my mind), flags this parable as utterly reckless, that it is indicative of religion’s willingness to prioritise faith over human life.
Though still convinced by the irrationality of theism and the soundness of atheism, I’ve begun to appreciate the limits of science and reason; that the reverence that Dawkins et al. have for science and reason poses as an ironic veneration for one creed. They abhor fundamentalism, rightly, yet fail to notice their own fundamentalist belief in the utopian power of science and reason. Lawrence Krauss, the American scientist and Dawkins have recently released a film, The Unbelievers, which documents their horribly nihilistic campaign to promote science and reason. Their campaign is like the evangelism of Christian missionaries in the New World. The great US war journalist Chris Hedges, after reviewing the work of the new atheists succinctly proffers that “They’re secular fundamentalists….it’s, like the Christian Right, a fear-based movement.” The census exposed the deficiencies of the work of the New Atheists over the last decade and ‘campaigns’ like the one that Dawkins and Krauss are currently undertaking. It also reinforced the call for a more nuanced understanding of what it constitutes to be ‘religious’.
You don’t need to believe in the core tenants of a religion, or even in a God, to feel some sort of affiliation with a religion. Many people in this country have been brought up Christian; attending church on occasion, singing carols at Christmas time. To deny your religion is no easy thing, for it is to deny part of who you are, in many ways equivalent to discarding your nationality or family name.
http://www.nouse.co.uk/2013/06/27/the-new-atheists-have-failed-religion-is-a-myth-but-its-here-to-stay/
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jollyreaper2112
(1,941 posts)More false equivalency bullshit. Perhaps Dawkins could be a force for evil just like the religious but he will never have that kind of power.
I am aware of how it is easy to criticize from outside and far more difficult to actually do right once in the seat of power. It's easy to point out failings without ever having to prove your ideas are better.
That being said, going after them smells too much like religious apologetics.
Kolesar
(31,182 posts)Those are such obscure elections, but he and his academic community organized and got real candidates to run who won. 
It's just as likely that the shortfall in Christians who actually believe in god is the result of the popularity of Hitchens, Dawkins, et al and not evidence of their failure.
As in, people whose relatives are Christian and one is expected to both be one and attend services . . . until the dulcet tones of Sam Harris one day wafted into their ears . . . with the rest being history.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,336 posts)He says "what atheists should be galvanised about is the cause of secularism and the disproportionate influence that religion has on the country." But Dawkins, who seems to be his main target, is campaigning on that. For instance:
Britain became engulfed in a culture war last week as secularists and believers clashed over the role of religion in public life. Even the Queen intervened to defend the Church of England's role. Richard Dawkins, whose survey about Christianity in the UK ignited the row, defends his position on secularism, faith and tolerance in conversation with Will Hutton of the Observer
...
Ministers justify such impositions by appeals to the 72% of the population who, according to the 2001 census, are Christian. But was this impressive figure inflated by people who, though they self-identify as Christian in the census, aren't really religious at all? No decent liberal could object to non-religious people choosing to call themselves Christian on the census form. It's their choice and, as a cultural Anglican, I can even sympathise. But we can object if the consequently inflated number of "Christians" is used to justify illiberal imposition of religiously inspired policies.
...
That doesn't mean religious people shouldn't advocate their religion. So long as they are not granted privileged power to do so (which at present they are) of course they should. And the rest of us should be free to argue against them. But of all arguments out there, arguments against religion are almost uniquely branded "intolerant". When you put a cogent and trenchant argument against the government's economic policy, nobody would call you "intolerant" of the Tories. But when an atheist does the same against a religion, that's intolerance. Why the double standard? Do you really want to privilege religious ideas by granting them unique immunity against reasoned argument?
...
This has been a pleasure, but I fear we must close. Yes, the majority of self-described Christians accept religion's public limits. More of them oppose than support bishops in the Lords, for example. My worry is that the recorded numerical strength of nominal Christians like you (albeit reduced now from 72% to 54%) is exploited by the minority of less enlightened Christians who want to overstep those limits: who complain of being "persecuted" when they can't discriminate against gays, for instance. Discrimination is not liberal. Arguing against discrimination is not intolerance.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/19/religion-secularism-atheism-hutton-dawkins
Goblinmonger
(22,340 posts)like facts stop a good Dawkins bashing.
demwing
(16,916 posts)The square root of two is irrational. So is e. So is Pi.
That is: the square root of two could not be represented as the ratio of two whole numbers, no matter how big they were."Irrational" originally meant only that. That you can't express a number as a ratio. Irrational numbers are real numbers, and are not rare. In fact, most real numbers are irrational.
Tell me theism is irrational, and I just smile and nod.
cbayer
(146,218 posts)Best lines in the piece, imo, are these:
Goblinmonger
(22,340 posts)1. Your dad should read that.
2. You do know, as pointed out above, that Dawkins is doing just that.
The 2011 census revealed a fascinating disparity in the nation’s relationship with the spiritual. 59% of respondents called themselves Christian, which makes Christianity largest religion in the UK,
...down from closer to 70% in the 80s and steadily falling for decades.
yet only 34% of respondents said that they believed in a higher God.
...more than cut in half since the 80s and steadily falling for decades.
The disparity also indicating the number reporting as Christian is going to go right on falling as massive swaths of the current population identifying themselves as "Christian" aren't really, they're using the label as a social convention or just because that's what they were raised to say but they don't actually believe what it teaches.
Therefore, since the number of people abandoning the label of Christianity is lagging the number of people admitting they no longer buy into this whole "God" nonsense (thus indicating they don't really buy into Christianity) the New Atheists have failed!
Wait, what?
Jim__
(14,082 posts)From Larkin's poem quoted by Seldon:
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence.
...
A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.
rug
(82,333 posts)Here's another:
Ignorance
Strange to know nothing, never to be sure
Of what is true or right or real,
But forced to qualify or so I feel,
Or Well, it does seem so:
Someone must know.
Strange to be ignorant of the way things work:
Their skill at finding what they need,
Their sense of shape, and punctual spread of seed,
And willingness to change;
Yes, it is strange,
Even to wear such knowledge - for our flesh
Surrounds us with its own decisions -
And yet spend all our life on imprecisions,
That when we start to die
Have no idea why.
He has a thoughtful point of view.
dimbear
(6,271 posts)of mankind free, not every person.
Then we have succeeded.
