I love religion!

[Purple Rabbit]

My point is that many atheists just dismiss religion, and I think it's an interesting subject. You said it made you laugh, well why? I'm arguing that atheists shouldn't just dismiss religious people's ideas as silly superstitions.

You were the one who brought up fundamentalists, not me. Maybe we should just avoid discussing fundamentalist ideas here, as we seem to be both agreeing that there is no beardy man in he sky. I am saying there is more to religion than that, and that's why I find it fascinating.

You are mixing up religious stances with the cultural phenomenon. The latter indeed is very interesting and this whole site testifies of that. What makes you think that atheists just dismiss religion?

Thanks for such a detailed response. I’m replying bit by bit to not miss anything!

I don’t think I am mixing these two things, but I will admit I have a not particularly orthodox view on religion, which seems confusing at first as it takes a while for me to get the ideas across. As a cultural phenomenon, we agree religion is interesting, but I also think religious stances are fascinating, even if I don't agree with the viewpoint. Half the interest is trying to see ideas from others’ perspectives.

Well, I think they're fascinating too, on prima facie, but on closer inspection a lot less fascinating than the stances about reality being produced by science. What's most fascinating about religious stances is why they are adhered to. The psychology of religion if you will. From that POV these religious stances are interesting. But with respect to content they do not come close to scientific findings. How to compare naive cosmogony with modern cosmology? How to judge the shallowness of a master slave relation with profound insight how nature is build from symmetry principles? How to compare bible inconsistency with math, it simply is no match. Yet they are portrayed by theists as competing methods for finding truth. Since you're so eager to look beyond your own perspective , have you tried the naturalistic perspective? Then please do elaborate on your delicate and balanced POV on the holographic principle versus the "god did it"?

Some atheist writing I have read simply dismisses religion as silly ideas, and that’s where I get that view of other atheists from. I can quote examples from this very forum if you want, where comments are made that religious ideas are simply bull shit, or some such.

Be my guest to organize a contest of silly quotes and prove that there are plenty around! But please don't suppose you're building an argument against atheism with it, in the best possible case you could only build an argument against atheists with it.

There is a patronising tone in some atheists’ language towards believers’ ideas, like people with faith are childish and they should grow out of their ideas. That is what I object to. I’m not saying it’s necessarily people here, but it’s something I have seen.

Come of it, there's no monopoly on patronizing. A comparison of patronizing tones does not build into an argument against atheism, only into an argument against certain atheists and theists.

The former constitutes no one coherent idea but a plethora of ever shifting ideas ranging from the extreme naive to the multi-layered multi-colored oecumenal variant of religious humanism. Since I value free thought I value the right to belief. I will never attack that right. What I do attack is religious claims being made here out in the open.

When you say it like that, how can you not find it interesting?!?

Because I simply did not say that.

By ‘here’ do you mean this forum?

With 'here' I mean every public place that serves as a place for debate.

I find the atheists who are most confrontational towards religion tend to be the ones who were raised religiously. That speaks volumes I would say.

Well maybe if you supply some statistics on this we could decide if your hunge has some meat to the bone. Personally I haven't come across groups of atheists going door to door to confront our theistic fellow human being with the good message of ablolishment of slavery to gods.

I highly value Richard Dawkins' opinion about the epistemolological aspects of religion and I think the accusation that his critique is shallow and without indepth knowledge of theological grounds is a shallow attempt to dismiss his critique by avoiding the content of the matter. It is a reference to some still deeper grounds, it's the mystical card being played. If there are any straight answers they should be given, if there are non they shouldn't been feigned.

From what I’ve seen Dawkins is a very good biologist, and I won’t argue with him there. However, he attacks literalist religion, nothing more, and is very rude in basically saying religious people are superstitious and should grow up.

The majority of the world population of abrahamic theists abides to literalist interpretation in some form. It is indeed very rude to simply deny these theists their belief by implying that surely no sane believer has any literalism left. Dawkins' head on attack of literalism is more sincere than your attempt to cloak literalism with non-literalism.

I will go into more detail if you wish (indeed I’d enjoy it, as I’ve been trying to run these ides past people for a while.) Some of Dawkins’ ideas on the formulation of religion as a social construct I think are not too far off, but there’s a lot he misses. His dismissal of polytheism in The God Delusion just got to me, as he didn’t even deal with it in the way psychology does. He just assumes if there’s no God in the Abrahamic sense then the polytheistic religions are wrong. Hinduism is vastly more complex than that, seeing as it looks like a polytheistic faith, but is actually monotheistic. That’s where I’m coming from saying he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Brahman is not the same theological concept that Yahweh or Allah is.

Complexity is no replacement for substance. And the alleged complexity of Hinduism cannot make up for christian literalism. I do acknowledge however that Dawkins primarily attacks the god concept of abrahamic belief.