NYT - "A Knack for Bashing Orthodoxy" (Dawkins interview)

[onager]

A Knack for Bashing Orthodoxy By Michael Powell

Published: September 19, 2011

Professor Dawkins often declines to talk in San Francisco and New York; these cities are too gloriously godless, as far as he is concerned. “As an atheistic lecturer, you are rather wasting your time,” he says. He prefers the Bible Belt, where controversy is raw.

And one Courtier replies! This next para. quotes Terry Eagleton. Known to some of us as "Terry 'Communist Who Owns 3 Houses' Eagleton:"

Critics grow impatient with Professor Dawkins’s atheism. They accuse him of avoiding the great theological debates that enrich religion and philosophy, and so simplifying the complex. He concocts “vulgar caricatures of religious faith that would make a first-year theology student wince,” wrote Terry Eagleton, regarded as one of Britain’s foremost literary critics. “What, one wonders, are Dawkins’s views on the epistemological differences between Aquinas and Duns Scotus?”

Put that charge to Professor Dawkins and he more or less pleads guilty. To suggest he study theology seems akin to suggesting he study fairies.

:rofl:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/20/science/20dawkins.html?_r=2&hp=&pagewanted=all

[Odin2005]

1. All theology is nothing but trying to rationalize bullshit.

[laconicsax]

3. It's a little more complex than that.

Some theology is nothing but trying to rationalize bullshit, while some is about making new bullshit.

Some theology is even about trying to say that bullshit is a crude expression for the ineffable. Some theologians even go so far as to say that their bullshit is so ineffable that nothing can be said about it and they spend several books saying so.

[Thats my opinion]

10. how refreshing to know that you just don't attack religion.

but just point out its weaknesses. If I were looking for a rational statement I somehow missed it here.

The next time I say all non-belief is all bullshit, call me on it as an irrational hate monger.

[bluestateguy]

2. Dawkins is an evangelical atheist

He is more like them than he will admit, although he does not have anywhere near their political clout.

He is rude, obnoxious, sarcastic, condescending, self-righteous and intolerant.

[Odin2005]

4. Geez, not this shit again.

[onager]

5. Didn't bother to read the article, I see...

Be careful with all that knee-jerking, you might hurt yourself:

But Professor Dawkins’s closest intellectual ally on progressive evolution and convergence is Simon Conway Morris, the renowned Cambridge evolutionary paleontologist.

And Professor Morris, as it happens, is an Anglican and a fervent believer in a personal God.

[laconicsax]

6. If only you understood why that expression is ridiculous.

Evangelizing consists of going up to strangers and trying to convert them to Christianity.

Dawkins writes a book on why he sees religion as delusional and, aside from being a professional biologist, only "preaches" to atheists. He doesn't go door to door, hand out leaflets or copies of his book on college campuses, and doesn't stand on streetcorners shrieking about the end of the world. He merely voices his opinion when asked.

[sudopod]

7. At least he isn't threatening you with hell

and demanding 10% of your paycheck.

[drm604]

8. Maybe he should try that.

It seems to work for others.:hide:

[ChadwickHenryWard]

9. Can anyoone explain the difference between Aquinas's and Duns Scotus's epistomologies?

It's been put forward by Eagleton that one cannot coherently weigh in on the issue of God's existence without proper understanding of the two competing epistemologies of Aquinas and Duns Scotus. I must, like Dawkins, confess ignorance on this matter. Since this is a prerequisite for theological discussion, can anybody explain to me the conflict between these two views?

[Thats my opinion]

12. I'll give it a try

Since I gather that is a serious theological question, let me give it a try. A real response would take a book. Why the question?
Epistemology is the discipline which asks “what are our ways of knowing.” One conclusion is that we know by observation of the natural world, of ideas, of activities. The other conclusion is that we know by revelation from outside our natural senses as well as by observation and rationality.
Neither Aquinas nor John Dun Scotus are systematic apologists for either camp. Only their emphasis is different.
Aquinas (1225-1274) believed "that for the knowledge of any truth whatsoever man needs divine help, that the intellect may be moved by God to its act." However, he believed that human beings have the natural capacity to know many things without special divine revelation, even though such revelation occurs from time to time, "especially in regard to such (truths) as pertain to faith." But revelation has no meaning unless it can be apprehended in the natural world by the human mind and human senses. Aquinas was a theological heir and best apologist for the Aristotelian philosophic methodology. Yet all knowledge must be personal knowledge, not simply a linguistic abstraction. A perspective which is advanced in the modern world by Michael Polani.
Although he accepted some aspects of Aristotelian abstractionism or divine revelation, John Duns Scotus (c. 1266–1308) did not base his account of human knowledge on this alone. According to him, there are classes of things that can be known with certainty. First, there are things that are knowable simpliciter, including true identity statements such as “Cicero is a man” and propositions, later called analytic, such as “Man is rational.” While he accepted revelation, he held that God can be known by the rational mind totally apart from revelation. Scotus is very hard going, much harder than the Aristotelian Aquinas.
So in short, Aquinas held that we know basically through revelation as it intercepts the human mind, while Scotus held that we perceive all truth through the human mind, possibly backed up by revelation.
I doubt that either perspective occupies the scholarly interest of most academic Christians. But they both are of historic interest.

[ChadwickHenryWard]

16. That makes things slightly clearer.

Thanks for the lesson. It seems to me that both of those presuppose that divine revelation is real and has occurred in the past. Dawkins rejects revelation as a valid way of knowing something, so I can't imagine why Eagleton would bring it up. Further, it seems that he's putting the cart before the horse: if he wants to prove to Dawkins that there is a god, he can't very well insist that working knowledge of these two competing epistemologies is necessary, since they presuppose the point of contention as being true.

Thanks a lot.

[Thats my opinion]

17. Of course!

The underlying question is the nature of revelation. Is it some voice from the sky? Some esoteric supernatural vision?. Some book that comes down from heaven? Or is it someone's perception in nature or in another person, or an event, that others may not notice, but offers special meaning to the spiritually alert. Perhaps it is seeing the ordinary with the eyes of faith.

Eliz B. Browning

Earth's crammed with heaven, and every common bush aflame with God.
But only he who sees takes off his shoes.
The rest sit around it and pluck blackberries. (I think that's close)
I don't think revelation is supernatural. I think it has to do with perception of the ordinary. Perhaps it is the gift of seeing things with the eyes of faith.

[darkstar3]

18. You find what you look for.

[trotsky]

21. No, the two real questions about revelation are:

1) How can a person be certain that a god has just revealed new information to them, and they didn't just have a seizure or imagine it?

2) How can everyone else be certain that a god has just revealed new information to that person, and they aren't just making it up?

I would LOVE to hear answers to either of those.

[ChadwickHenryWard]

23. Sagan answered the first question.

He answered it along the same lines as his "aliens and Fermat's Last Theorem" thing. If some religious text or doctrine contained information that the society that produced it could never have produced, we must look for some explanation for how they obtained that information. If, for example, Genesis contained an unequivocal and unambiguous description of the four fundamental forces that hold atoms together, or Exodus contained the commandment "thou shalt not travel faster than light," we would know that something must be going on there. Nomadic pastoralists, living in the Bronze Age desert, had no means to procure that information without some outside intervention. Once we rule out vague coincidence (such as the Hindu tradition getting the age of the universe right within an order of magnitude,) later tampering or interpolation, or something slightly less crazy like extraterrestrial visitation, we have a pretty good basis to suppose that something supernatural occurred. Depending on the other claims piggy-backing on the accuracy of these revelations, we might reasonably consider claims to divinity. Of course, most of the extant religious texts are resoundingly the product of the time and place in which they originated.

Thomas Paine had this to say about revelation: when Gabriel whispered in Muhammad's ear, it was undeniably Absolute Truth revealed by the All-Knowing Master of the Universe and Creator of All Things; when he told his first audience, it was hearsay from a source only so reliable as an illiterate desert merchant. This problem is compounded by the inaccuracy of generations of oral retelling, or in the case of the Koran, which was dictated by Muhammad himself to scribes (at least one of whom stopping being Muslim upon hearing all the claims laid out in one place,) the deep uncertainty inherent in transcribing early Arabic. I don't know how the problem is of hearsay is escaped by things that aren't strictly empirical.

[trotsky]

24. True, but that's not the angle I was approaching it from.

Claims about reality that are, or can later be, verified are one thing. But you and I both know (as did Sagan) that this is not typical of claimed revealed knowledge. Instead it is more along the lines of moral commandments or dogma to believe or follow. Considering that over the millennia, different people have claimed to hear god tell them completely contradictory things, it would seem revelation is a highly problematic method to acquire knowledge, to say the least!

[ChadwickHenryWard]

25. I would add to that problem the assumption that God is telling the truth.

Even if we had irrefutable evidence of divine revelation, we still have the problem of god's trustworthiness. In order for revelation to be an inerrant source of knowledge, we must make a few assumptions:

1. God exists
2. He is omniscient, and therefore incapable of being mistaken
3. He can communicate with mortal men and wishes to do so
4. He would never have motivation to lie under any circumstances

While these, of course, are all traits traditionally ascribed to god, there is no reason why they should necessarily be true.

[ChadwickHenryWard]

22. It seems you're talking about revelation as something other than the way with which I am familiar.

If Moses goes up to Mount Sinai and a booming voice from the sky tells him some material facts about the world and espouses some doctrine, particularly something that he and his society could never come up with on their own, that bespeaks supernatural intervention, and we call that "revelation." But what about when Dr. Francis Collins, the leader of the human genome project and head of the National Institutes of Health, was walking in the mountains, and he saw a frozen waterfall? In that moment, he went from being an atheist to being a theist, a Christian, and a Trinitarian, all in one blow. That waterfall does not require or lend itself to a supernatural explanation. Nor does the waterfall have any readily apparent logical connection to god, but as far as he was concerned, it told him something about god. Is this revelation? The reaction of Dr. Collins is unique and personal; we would never expect that reaction from anybody else, independent of Dr. Collins, upon seeing that same waterfall.

I suppose the question is "what constitutes revelation?" Can the example of Dr. Collins rightly be called revelation, even though it was ambiguous in nature and conveyed no information? I think of revelation as unambiguously originating from god and consisting of communication in the traditional sense. But it seems that you are talking about revelation as something entirely more subtle. Is that correct?

And if it is, how can that relate to the rest of us? Dr. Collins can't very well say in an argument, "God exists, he has the traits conventionally ascribed to him by the Christian tradition, and he has three constituent parts - I know because I saw a waterfall." To say nothing of the logic, this cannot convince anyone else because of how deeply personal the experience was. Under this definition, revelation cannot be used as a source of knowledge, because it's completely unverifiable.

[socialshockwave]

11. Dawkins, just go away.

We get it. You don't like religion.

You(and I'm sure quite a few others here on DU) believe that anyone religious is mentally ill and should be committed.

Just go away.

[darkstar3]

13. neigh.

We get it. You like straw. Just go away.

[trotsky]

14. He has not said that.

Nor has anyone on DU, to my knowledge. Perhaps you could back up this claim.

Why do you have to make up ridiculous straw man to attack? Ever hear anything about bearing false witness?

[onager]

15. I bet you have a pair of steel balls!

Paranoia about atheists. Persecution complex about threats to your entitlement/privileges as a white Xian male. (Judging by all your whining in the Girl Scout thread.)

Yep, a pair of steel balls, just like this guy...

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_dUyeMjRsWFI/TCyyChliovI/AAAAAAAACDs/Q7-u5q6itlE/s1600/bogart_caine+Mutiny.jpg

[struggle4progress]

19. I am pleased to hear that Mr Dawkins still does not think there are fairies in the garden:

it is a view that remains today just as daring and edgy, as it was when he first declared it, and I for one would be deeply disappointed if he changed his mind on the subject

[trotsky]

20. If only there were something besides argumentum ad populum...

that could one could use to distinguish belief in garden fairies from belief in gods.