Timeline for Questions on the strange philosophical positions of Richard Dawkins
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
11 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jan 13, 2020 at 19:55 | history | edited | Ted Wrigley | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
typos
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| Jan 10, 2020 at 16:16 | comment | added | Ted Wrigley | @PeterJ — Oh, yeah, people like Dawkins irritate me as well. But I find it helps to remember that their intention is to invoke emotional reactions. There's nothing about the practice of science in his work. He wants to provoke his targets and titillate his base through broad stereotypes of 'science good' and 'religion bad'. It's populism/tribalism; you can think of it as 'Science Nationalism.' it's laughable, really, except that it causes so much aggravation. | |
| Jan 10, 2020 at 12:03 | comment | added | user20253 | @TedWrigley - Your summary seems correct. It's odd that he has no interest in philosophy or theology and just attacks 'folk-religion'. His approach places him in the same category as those he criticises. But I must learn not to explode whenever I hear his name and adopt the calmer approach of you and Philip. I don't know how he maintains his professional credibility in the face of his unscholarly writings. . | |
| Jan 9, 2020 at 18:56 | comment | added | Philip Klöcking♦ | @TedWringley Exactly, which is why philosophically, he is hardly worth the effort. Although Islam especially and most Christian traditions I am aware of are not that anthropomorphic at all. I am all but a specialist here, but I guess theologically, his premises are equally bonkers. | |
| Jan 9, 2020 at 17:21 | comment | added | Ted Wrigley | @PeterJ — Dawkins is thinking about the anthropomorphic God used by conservative religious groups: a being that exists somewhere who has thoughts and capacities that are complex enough to construct the universe out of whole-cloth. You're right that it's a bit of a straw-man, but it's not a straw-man that he invented by any means. It's only a misapplication of something a lot of conservative Christians, Muslims, and Jews cling to. As I noted to PK, above, D's goal is to score a political victory, not start a philosophical investigation. | |
| Jan 9, 2020 at 17:06 | comment | added | Ted Wrigley | @PhilipKlöcking — But you have to contextualize Dawkins properly. He isn't really thinking about 'God' in that philosophical way. He's reacting to the anthropomorphic, personalized, authoritative conception of 'God' presented in conservative branches of the Abrahamic faiths, particularly in the aggressive fundamentalisms of Islamism and Rightist Evangelicalism. His work is part of a political conflict over whether civic moral authority should be religious or secular; philosophy is at best irrelevant to him, and at worst mere collateral damage. | |
| Jan 9, 2020 at 16:55 | comment | added | Ted Wrigley | @another_name — Well, Dawkins isn't really a philosopher: more of an intelligent pundit with an axe to grind. And I don't think he's saying that God evolved in the biological sense. He's abstracting the principle of evolution to a universal tendency (in the way we might say that heavy elements 'evolve' from light elements in the furnaces of stars). | |
| Jan 9, 2020 at 13:04 | comment | added | user20253 | +1 A much better answer than mine. But where does P2 come from, and why is it necessary? P2 creates a straw.man that is easy to knock-down, and the qualification 'would seem to be' is mealy-mouthed. Okay, so God cannot be complex. This is the start of an investigation, not the end of one. | |
| Jan 9, 2020 at 12:34 | comment | added | Philip Klöcking♦ | The major issue seems to be Dawkins' assumption that God was of the same 'kind' as our physical universe, following the same laws. This assumption hardly works as an argument against theists, especially considering traditions like Spinozism (God is substance, the universe only antecedent) and Tsimtsum of the Kabbalah (God created the universe out of Himself as something that is different from Him) being based on the opposite. It's like saying "God cannot be like you say He is and if He's not, He probably does not exist" without defending the first, central premise at all. | |
| Jan 9, 2020 at 11:44 | comment | added | user38026 | he could be applying the principle of evolution to God, but it would be a very ugly argument to apply genetic trends -- rather than universal features of 'explanation' -- to the existence of a creator God. dawkins isn't a very clear writer, it seems | |
| Jan 8, 2020 at 18:01 | history | answered | Ted Wrigley | CC BY-SA 4.0 |