# I pit Richard Dawkins, Victor Davis Hanson and people like them **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [March 4, 2012, 6:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-richard-dawkins-victor-davis-hanson-and-people-like-them/614708 "2012-03-04T06:24:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 12
**Author:** ![Cheshire\_Human](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Cheshire\_Human](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheshire_Human)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2012, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-richard-dawkins-victor-davis-hanson-and-people-like-them/614708/221 "2012-03-07T03:34:41Z")
> [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](#): > > I’m still missing the relevant point. In terms of evaluating the God hypothesis, ppresumably at the core, people choose to follow “man-made” religious rules only to the degree that they ultimately relate to God, right? > > \ Actually, now you are getting into distinctions where I have to say: Ask an actual believer. I can’t speak for them, because I’m not one. These sorts of distinctions will get down to what the individual believer actually thinks about it all, and it will vary from individual to individual. ---
**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2012, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-richard-dawkins-victor-davis-hanson-and-people-like-them/614708/222 "2012-03-07T05:10:41Z")
Dawkins’ joining in the attempt of atheists to re-label themselves “brights” was one of the most utterly clueless and downright stupid things I’ve ever seen. He also said we should’ve kept Saddam alive so we could study his brain and find out why SH was so evil. BTW, Hanson’s a registered Democrat. But he did vote for GWB. ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2012, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-richard-dawkins-victor-davis-hanson-and-people-like-them/614708/223 "2012-03-07T05:27:41Z")
Yea, I gotta say the “brights” thing was exceptionally clueless. Dawkins is an extremely [del]bright[/del] intelligent guy but he really missed the boat on this one. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2012, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-richard-dawkins-victor-davis-hanson-and-people-like-them/614708/224 "2012-03-07T05:38:38Z")
> [@rowrrbazzle](#): > > Dawkins’ joining in the attempt of atheists to re-label themselves “brights” was one of the most utterly clueless and downright stupid things I’ve ever seen. I think it was more skeptics than atheists, in particular, wasn’t it? Otherwise I agree wholeheartedly. ---
**Author:** ![FixMyIgnorance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7feea3/32.png) [@FixMyIgnorance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FixMyIgnorance)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2012, 8:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-richard-dawkins-victor-davis-hanson-and-people-like-them/614708/225 "2012-03-07T08:37:09Z")
I see no real use in re-labeling atheists. Even if you call yourself a “bright,” you’re still saying “Well I don’t believe in God and instead value things like reasoned logic and physical evidence,” in which case people would see through it anyway. It might be easier to just say you’re a skeptic. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2012, 9:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-richard-dawkins-victor-davis-hanson-and-people-like-them/614708/226 "2012-03-07T09:18:43Z")
> [@rowrrbazzle](#): > > Dawkins’ joining in the attempt of atheists to re-label themselves “brights” was one of the most utterly clueless and downright stupid things I’ve ever seen. I always thought the “bright” thing was silly. It’s pretentious and gives religion far too much credit; you don’t need to be “bright” to see though religion, or even of average intelligence. It’s no harder to see the falsehood of religion than it is to see the falsehood of Santa Claus; any adult who isn’t outright mentally disabled can do so _if they want to_. People remain religious because of irrationality, not because they are stupid. ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2012, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-richard-dawkins-victor-davis-hanson-and-people-like-them/614708/227 "2012-03-07T13:06:38Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > 500 years ago religious beliefs for things we didn’t know were as reasonable as any. The non-religious explanations were equally shots in the dark, and equally as wrong. But don’t y think the fact that none of the explanations we did discover involved gods is a clue that it is unlikely that any of the explanations we will discover in the future will either? There appears to be a real trend, doesn’t there? A fan of the ether might say we can’t really rule it out (dark energy?) but that’s not the way to bet. So we can make some predictions about how things we don’t know will turn out. Yeah, but that’s if you believe there is a connection between explaining natural phenomena on the margins of our understanding and things like the question of evil, what happens when we die, and why we are here to begin with. Religions whose primary schtick is explaining nature have, for the most part, retreated and died out. People just don’t believe that Zeus causes storms anymore. The universe still is full of weird stuff. I don’t know how well past results can be good guides to future predictions. I personally don’t think we are going to find God as we get better at quantum physics, but I kind of wouldn’t be surprised if we did. > [@Mapache](#): > > That’s kind of the point, isn’t it? People don’t “turn up dead and completely exsanguinated.” No one, except maybe a few drunks or schizophrenics, has seen anyone turn into a bat and fly away, or dry up and turn into a pile of ashes in sunlight, just as no one sees anyone rising from the dead, or turning into a swan to seduce a virgin, or fighting off an army of frost giants. And until they do, regularly and with repeatability, the basis for belief in gods or vampires is, I believe, rather shaky. Obviously. In this case, we have the equivalent of dead bodies drained of blood. We are surrounded by constant, enormous questions to which we have no answers. Some people want these questions to have answers. We do have _evidence_: personal religious experience, scripture, observation of miracles, etc. Whether this evidence confirms or disconfirms belief in God _depends on your prior beliefs_. Likewise, the presence of war, disease, and evil drives some people to abandon religion and others to take it up with abandon. Ontological arguments convince believers and invite scorn from unbelievers. The evidence is never neutral. How you feel about it depends on how you felt before you observed it. A prior belief that God exists is not logically inconsistent with anything we know about the universe. It even has some advantages because it can allow you to answer questions that lack of belief can’t. My personal answers to the big questions are much poorer than believers’. But if you have a strong prior that no god exists, then it is going to take a hell of a lot more to convince you than someone with a weaker prior. But all priors are pretty much equal. The more interesting conversation between theists and atheists is how they formed their prior in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2012, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-richard-dawkins-victor-davis-hanson-and-people-like-them/614708/228 "2012-03-07T13:09:56Z")
I think the name “Brights” was a poor choice for a lot of reasons, most notably needlessly insinuating intelligence into the issue. What I like about it is the politics of it. I think Dawkins gets maligned primarily because he is committing the sin of publicly speaking ill of religion. There’s such a great sense that we need to be quiet about religious practices and beliefs. “Respecting” them appears to mean never even politely questioning them or their role in our lives. So you end up with Dawkins being characterized as malicious, even by atheists who haven’t even read him. They seem to have the attitude that if you don’t believe, you should sit quietly alone in the corner. They’re uncomfortable even suggesting that something might not be right about religion. Look at Kimstu here. Her objection to Dawkins, in my opinion, is that she feels he did not start out with a big enough IMHO at the start of the book. As I recall, he spent a great deal of time establisbing that there may exist a God that cannot be tested empirically, and making clear that considering such a god would be fruitless (the intangible silent dragon in the garage bit). He makes clear that the God hypothesis pertains to a person interactive god exactly like that which nearly every believer concerns themselves with. I think that efforts to bring organization to atheists are doomed to fail. Atheists are not joiners. It’s probably got something to do with why they are not religious; many religious people are not believers, but are comforted by joining. ---
**Author:** ![gamerunknown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6bbea6/32.png) [@gamerunknown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gamerunknown)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2012, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-richard-dawkins-victor-davis-hanson-and-people-like-them/614708/229 "2012-03-08T18:12:05Z")
> [@](#): > > observation of miracles, etc. Whether this evidence confirms or disconfirms belief in God depends on your prior beliefs Yeah, once you understand that the Earth has a roughly elliptical orbit while the sun remains essentially stationary, one no longer needs to believe in Helios. Sorry, I realise that was scientism. Once one adopts an unquestioning and unwavering principle of naturalistic objectivity and empirical hegemony, one opens oneself to fallacious and demagogic arguments, propounding orthodox heliocentric dogma. Equivocal enough? Or should I throw in some conciliatory nods to non-overlapping magisteria, post-modernism and solipsism? > [@](#): > > Equally obviously, they were requiring that ceremonial procedure not as a way to “fool God” but to remind themselves of the continuing importance of the laws, even if for whatever reason they allowed some modifications to them. What was apparent to me is that Dawkins was critiquing the fact that the monks in question (if they really existed at all - the [capybara](http://www.nysun.com/foreign/in-days-before-easter-venezuelans-tuck-into/11063/) thing is true at least) were circumventing the spirit of the law in order to adhere to the arbitrary letter of the law. The dipping wasn’t an act of sacrifice, it was ceremonial and compliant. The humour revolves around the fact that they weren’t explicitly trying to fool God, they just made up an arbitrary method to appease him. > [@](#): > > A simple example of the complete ineptitude of Dawkins in not just theology, but also the philosophy of science is when he argues (in chapter 4 I think) that God cannot be an explanation\* for anything, because that then\* raises the question of who created God. This is unrelated to the philosophy of science, it’s a cogent critique of the cosmological argument that was also summarised by Russell and has never been satisfactorily answered. If a creator can be posited without physical evidence, infinite regress can be posited without physical evidence. Arguing otherwise amounts to special pleading. I’m fairly sure this is explicitly written in the book itself. > [@](#): > > Sure you can’t scientifically disprove god in general, but you can’t really disprove anything in science - only show it is unlikely to be true Actually under Popper’s conception, the opposite method is used. If a theory does not have a criterion for disproof then it is held to be “not even wrong”, which I believe is the origin of the phrase. This way we do not need to assert the non-existence of entities, merely say that we see no reason to believe in them and offer the person making a claim the opportunity to provide their evidence. > [@](#): > > No philosopher, atheist or otherwise, seems to be willing to defend the “central argument” of Dawkins book, namely his Ultimate-747 gambit. Dennett did as far as I’m aware. I wouldn’t say that it was his central argument. Perhaps the most novel argument contained within, the book covers a lot of ground, including introducing the concept of the “Evolutionary Stable Strategy”, which I first read within and then picked up “The Selfish Gene” to understand a little better. There are still theists who posit that empathy is unaccountable given the fact of evolution. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2012, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-richard-dawkins-victor-davis-hanson-and-people-like-them/614708/230 "2012-03-08T19:51:52Z")
> [@Maeglin](#): > > Yeah, but that’s if you believe there is a connection between explaining natural phenomena on the margins of our understanding and things like the question of evil, what happens when we die, and why we are here to begin with. Religions whose primary schtick is explaining nature have, for the most part, retreated and died out. People just don’t believe that Zeus causes storms anymore. > > The universe still is full of weird stuff. I don’t know how well past results can be good guides to future predictions. I personally don’t think we are going to find God as we get better at quantum physics, but I kind of wouldn’t be surprised if we did. Philosophy is a noble and interesting subject. I’m busy reading Aristotle now. (Sexist pig 🙂 ) But philosophy is about questions and religion is about answers. Philosophy can ask about what happens when we die and why there is evil. Religion tells us. Religion claims to be able to tell us about these hard to verify subjects thanks to some connection to the Answerer of all questions, that is God. Oddly if there was a god, different religions, each claiming some sort of connection, give different answers. How can we tell which to believe? By checking out how they do on their verifiable claims. And here they all fail miserably. Since it is not required that there must be one correct religion, we can be forgiven for thinking that none of them are correct. Sure the more reasonable religions have given up their claims to scientific knowledge instead of saying, as the fundamentalists of all stripe do, who ya going to believe, me or that fossil or that telescope? But that also means they should be giving up claims to special knowledge. Religion departments should be split and moved to History and Philosophy. If all religious people accepted this, we’d be in much better shape. I don’t think there is a block of followers of Kant in Congress trying to limit reproductive rights. Past results are excellent guides to the future. Where I work the people who got the last semiconductor process right get to predict how the next one will work. Not a perfect one, though, we still run our test chips and tune like crazy. But it mostly works. People have been expecting to find God in the next scientific advance for over 200 years. That was why so many ministers were amateur scientists in the early 19th century (and good ones also.) The attempt to find God failed miserably. In any case, what would God discovered by quantum physics even look like? ---
**Author:** ![RaftPeople](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2012, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-richard-dawkins-victor-davis-hanson-and-people-like-them/614708/231 "2012-03-08T20:17:09Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Wait a minute… How is step 7 justified? I’d say that the kind of God being discussed definitely “necessarily doesn’t exist!” > > It’s like saying, “There is a perfect sphere somewhere on earth. It’s true because it has to be true, because it’s perfect.” Well, to me, that, in itself, precludes its existence! > > It’s like saying that I can lift myself to the moon by my bootstraps. In the real world, that specific kind of bootstraps doesn’t exist… It fails a little bit earlier than that. Like at step 1. Necessary existence concerns existence under all possible scenarios and conditions - just because God hypothetically exists under the condition that the proof assumes it, doesn’t mean God necessarily exists because it doesn’t say anything about whether God would have existed if God didn’t exist. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2012, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-richard-dawkins-victor-davis-hanson-and-people-like-them/614708/232 "2012-03-08T20:26:08Z")
But the funnest part is the “existence is greater than nonexistence”. Actually one possible universe is that in which incredible evil is allowed to occur and God does nothing about it, I’d say a God that didn’t exist under that situation is greater than a God that did. But the humor is when you assume that a God that created the universe and all the majesty within is the greatest of all. Actually, a God that created the universe and all its majesty while simultaneously _not existing_ is even greater! ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2012, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-richard-dawkins-victor-davis-hanson-and-people-like-them/614708/233 "2012-03-08T22:52:59Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > . . . Actually, a God that created the universe and all its majesty while simultaneously _not existing_ is even greater! Wow! Just plain wow! That’s a keeper! I always fell down on the “greatest entity imaginable.” Okay, I’m imagining the “greatest entity imaginable.” And now I’m imagining this entity growing two inches… But I never took it to the degree you just did! I wish I were wearing a hat, so I could take it off to you! ---
**Author:** ![RaftPeople](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2012, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-richard-dawkins-victor-davis-hanson-and-people-like-them/614708/234 "2012-03-09T22:05:49Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Wow! Just plain wow! That’s a keeper! > > I always fell down on the “greatest entity imaginable.” Okay, I’m imagining the “greatest entity imaginable.” And now I’m imagining this entity growing two inches… > > But I never took it to the degree you just did! I wish I were wearing a hat, so I could take it off to you! His God goes to 11 ---
**Author:** ![pikey\_pete](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@pikey\_pete](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pikey_pete)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2012, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-richard-dawkins-victor-davis-hanson-and-people-like-them/614708/235 "2012-03-09T23:23:01Z")
In defense of Dawkins, atheism, by definition has no theologians. He has never really claimed to be a theologian. what he has done is point out the logical fallacy that god exists, which just about anyone with a degree in science can do in their sleep. hell, I have a degree in fine art, and I can get a theist talking in tautologies in a matter of minutes. When you talk in tautologies, you might as well shut up because you are using a whole lot of words to say exactly nothing. Dawkins just wants to see the separation of myth and science. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2012, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-richard-dawkins-victor-davis-hanson-and-people-like-them/614708/236 "2012-03-09T23:43:11Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Wow! Just plain wow! That’s a keeper! Unfortunately, I didn’t come up with that line. Although a line that’s that great while also being written by me would be even greater 🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-richard-dawkins-victor-davis-hanson-and-people-like-them/614708.md?page=11)