Richard Dawkins' Faith In Free Will Is As Blind As A Christians To God

[Scented Nectar]

pretty much, scented nector. he says he doesn't believe in free will but this contradicts with his belief that humans can make the decision to educate religion out of themselves, as the idea that we could decide to do that requires a belief/faith in free-will (i.e. humans taking control of their destiny, a power which would seperate us from all other animals -very undarwin - and is my definition of free-will here).

Without his exact words, I can only go by your paraphrase 'decision to educate religion out of themselves'. Based on other things I've heard him say, my best guess is that he probably meant something like a decision to be open minded and not closed minded so that they will look at information outside of what they've been presented in their holy books. Then of course since they are not closed to what they find, the result will be that their belief goes away, since the belief no longer adds up logically with what we know is true and factual about our world and ourselves. The 'decision' part was probably something about deciding to look into things objectively from all sides.

Holy fuck. In defense of not putting words in Richard Dawkins's mouth, I just pretty much put a bunch of words in his mouth. There has got to be something wrong with that.

Where did you hear this thing RD said? Can you go back and get the exact words? It would make it easier to help you (and us) figure out what exactly he meant.

Faith is not an element of my guess about what he meant. By faith, I mean the definition of believing a thing without any evidence, believing because you've decided to believe, or want to, or think you should. Non-faith belief only happens with evidence. For instance, a crumpled car and streetlight is visual evidence that has the result of me instantly believing that a crash has happened. If I saw no crashed car, and a stranger told me the crash was right there but that it was invisible and can't be felt when touched, I would only believe them if I took their word on faith and told myself it was true.

As for taking control of our destiny in a different sense than other animals, I doubt that too, since taking in information and using it for decisions and conclusions, is common to all animals. Are you saying that RD thinks there is some predetermined fate and that only we humans can change it? If so, where are you getting something like that from a statement about people educating themselves about religion?

Also, if he actually said the phrase free will, he probably meant the dictionary definition. He could not possibly know that you would someday be reading his words, so how could he have been using your personal unofficial (made up) definition?

when times are good, for example, if you are a comfortable living middle-class guy from the UK, then god really isn't needed, but times of comfort are periodical, and when it goes so will athiesm, because when it comes down to it humans are highly illogical, irrational creatures. religion is written into our dna, maybe not yours or mine so much, but it's pretty prevalent. the only way to deny this is to suggest that religion has come about seperate from evolution, which is dawkins 'memetics' theory.

If god had a good track record of helping people in times of need, you'd have a point maybe about 'when times are good'. But no god actually does anything. Your chances of getting out of the bad situation are just as good or bad when you don't believe as when you do. I wonder if maybe people might even do BETTER when they don't pray, since they are not wasting time trying to have telepathy with their imaginary friend. Instead they can start thinking of a way out of their troubles, which gives them better odds, I suspect.

could you educate homosexuality out of someone? no, it's prefectly natural. so why religion? what makes it different?

The body's response to different types of sexual stimulation has nothing to do with the mind's ability to conclude whether something is true or false. Gays can't stop feeling that way deep down even when they believe they are bad people to be gay and try to change themselves. They CAN stop actually doing it by not letting themselves have gay sex, but there is no stopping the fact that their body enjoys the same gender for sex. Beliefs won't change the body's sexual orientation. They have nothing to do with each other. However, the information we think about does affect what we believe, and us atheists keep seeing time and time again many former believers who stopped believing once they researched the bigger picture and saw much more information. They educated themselves by looking into their religion's claim to see whether they might indeed be true. Sometimes they start out looking for info that strengthens and proves their beliefs, and they find the opposite, to their shock.