And how does that make him an extremist? You are simply providing an example of the double standard where atheists are judged to be far more extreme for far milder positions than believers are. Just like I have often on this board been compared to Fred Phelps, a man who pickets funerals, for the terrible transgression of arguing with people on a discussion board.
Wanting the Government to take away the parental rights to raise their kids in their own cultural beliefs? That’s not extremist to you? It is to most people.
Nonsense, if a religious person said they thought the state should force kids to go and learn about Jesus, I’d think they were extremists too.
Ok, you are passive in your very broad-based hatred. Fred Phelps isn’t passive. So in that, you are not like Fred Phelps, but you’re definitely on par with some passive dude on Stormfront. Just as hateful. Sorry dude, I’ve seen too many of your screeds about how much you hate so many different groups and your petty justifications. ‘It’s ok to hate the hateful.’
Sorry, but to me, that’s the same. People who hate broad groups of people, and think the Government should force people to think like them via compulsory education are extremists IMV, regardless of what their ideology is.
Considering that teaching kids to act in a civilized fashion is part of the job of the school system, it isn’t.
Besides; the primary arguments against religion aren’t “cultural”; they are factual and logical and practical.
You’d think it extreme to teach a history of religion course?
Unless you are a liberal or an atheist. Then you are supposed to grovel before those who hate you, as they deluge you with hatred. Like you want me to.
So people who hate the Nazis and want racial tolerance taught in schools are extremists?
Just for my own curiosity, what passages or articles by Dawkins are you referring to?
I think he said something like that in The God Delusion; I don’t actually own a copy to check it though.
Education, if done correctly, is a de facto inoculation against religion.
I’m vaguely aware of it, yes. I’ve heard a little bit about it. I’ve heard that it really caught on when integrated into Christianity.
More seriously, I’m not sure that the existence of Greek classical philosophy refutes the proposition that Christianity was really the first religion (in the West) to espouse a universal morality and the brotherhood of man. I’m not sure the Hellenes were any less tribal than anyone else back then. Certainly Christians have failed, all too often, on what their own faith teaches them, and will do so again and again in the future, but that doesn’t mean that Christianity didn’t introduce some radical new ideas into our consciousness.
And what would some of these radical new ideas be?
New and exciting tribal lines 
Maybe it was this one?
That’s almost exactly what you’d expect a fundamentalist to say.
ETA. If you squint a little, you can see how Dawkins would want to round up all the children of christians and send them to re-education camps.
And Dawkins is saying that he should be one of the people who gets to decide what is ‘civilized’. I’m sure he and Pat Robertson have something in common there.
This is a meaningless non-statement.
I’d think it extreme to take away school choice from parents and force an anti-religious curriculum on them yes.
No, I really don’t expect you to understand my point of view anymore than I would expect your Christian fundie mirror-image to.
:rolleyes:
Nonsense. Religion is an useful and important part of people’s lives. It’s just under attack by people who take the lowest common denominator and extrapolate, that this is all that religion has to offer.
No - I’m Der Trihs.
No it is not.
In this video he talks about how the Government should abolish faith schools and that it’s the proper role of Government schooling to deprogram kids who have been taught that they are religious by their parents.
Of course he goes into the disingenuous notion that he’s not anti-religion, but pro-science. The same canard that people on this forum hide behind all the time.
Yes, it is. Atheists like to believe that they are not dogmatic, but they are no less dogmatic, and there is a common theme amongst atheism even though atheists like to pretend that there isn’t groupthink going on.
Which, even assuming the absolute truth of the assertion (and that’s a job and a half)… still doesn’t make religion important, nevermind useful.
Good point. Religion is true, because atheism is really a religion?
Excuse me-I’ve got to go find my Tylenol 3 bottle.
Well I’ve found that for the most part atheists do not even understand what the role of religion is. Or how it plays a role in their own lives, or recognizing their own religious behavior. In short it is IMPOSSIBLE to live a life without religion. You can lie to yourself and say that you do, but there are always things you are religious about. Patriotism is a form of religion. Rabid adherence to an anti-religious stance is religious. Religion is about the forms and rituals that govern our cultural life. You can double-speak it to death if you want and claim that you’re not religious, but ultimately there will be some sort groupthink that will develop its own forms and rituals. By saying that religion is unecessary, or worse claiming that its the proper role of government to stop religious faith, you are merely replacing one set of forms and rituals for another. In America many atheists (Who don’t have the power to do so…yet) believe that religion should be diminished. THey side-step the freedom of religion clause by claiming that what they are advancing is not a religion. But it’s still a set of forms and rituals that define a culture. They disingenuously claim they are ‘pro-science’ but science is indifferent to your religious belief or (dishonestly claimed) lack thereof. Religion is what binds society together, whether it’s a belief in the state or a belief in God. At some point you exercise through common forms and rituals a belief and adherence to the importance of a higher power. If you do not, then there is no longer a society to speak of and it will break apart as there will no longer be any commonality between the people.
You do realize that faith schools in Britain are mostly state-sponsored, right? By the way, he explicitely does not say that “it’s the proper role of Government schooling to deprogram kids who have been taught that they are religious by their parents”. What he’s saying is that it’s an awful idea to have schools reinforce that religion in their pupils - which is what faith schools do.