I love religion!

[Zagreus]

Hey, accept my apologies for being away for a while; been caught up with other stuff. This will be a brief initial response to get myself back in the discussion, though I’m enjoying reading the one that’s ensued. I have to catch up from where I left off, so to an earlier PR comment.

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"?

There is nothing here I can disagree with, Purple. I haven’t said I regard religion as better than science, nor have I said I find the former more interesting; I simply said I find religion fascinating. This thread was not intended as an attack on the validity of science. You said it exactly when you said it is interesting why these religious ideas are adhered to. That’s partly why I enjoy the subject, but there’s also the fact that it’s a branch of philosophy. The last bit seems a bit gauntlet thrown down, and I’d have to look into the topics you say to comment. However, I’m not saying that by simply looking at something from another point of view means I think it’s valid. I enjoy reading creationists try to argue their view, but that does not mean I will humour them in a discussion; I enjoy trying to get my head around their way of thinking, regardless of how much I’ll disagree. Is that clearer now?

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.

I simply meant I’ve seen people make ignorant dismissive comments. Saying something like “Oh, not this shit again” when presented with a theological idea is hardly a worthy reply. I am not trying to build an argument against atheism, seeing as I’m an atheist; I just think people dismiss the subject too easily, without necessarily understanding the ideas. I see adults on forums say things that children I used to teach say on the subject, which does not suggest t me a deep level of understanding.

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.

Agreed. My gripe is with certain atheists, and theists. It wasn’t an argument against atheism, it was a comment about atheists who don’t know what they’re talking about.

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.

What? I quoted you, so you said it?!? I meant you said it so eloquently how could one not like the sound of the subject you described. This is a minor point, but I meant it a compliment, which I think you missed.

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.

Ok, hand up here. I don’t have stats, but it’s through experience of many atheists I’ve spoken to, either on forums, friends, acquaintances, parents of kids I taught, the kids themselves, and so on, that I make that assumption. Atheists may not go door to door, but many I’ve spoken to can be quite evangelical in their beliefs.

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’d have to disagree with you here about your interpretation of my views, and I hope the above makes this clearer. I am not cloaking anything, and as I have repeatedly said, my interest is not in the views of the literalists. Many religious people may well believe a literalist view. Many people also follow football and get really upset when their country loses at a sporting game. I don’t care about their views either.

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.

Still missing what I’m saying. The complexity could be to do with intellectual ideas, and in that case they have as much worth as most of western philosophy, which largely comes down to semantics anyway.