# Theists, agnostics, beleivers: Have you attempted to read a book by Richard Dawkins? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 18, 2009, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theists-agnostics-beleivers-have-you-attempted-to-read-a-book-by-richard-dawkins/510623 "2009-09-18T18:06:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![SecondJudith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5ac83/32.png) [@SecondJudith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SecondJudith)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2009, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theists-agnostics-beleivers-have-you-attempted-to-read-a-book-by-richard-dawkins/510623/81 "2009-09-21T16:53:21Z")
“Unquestioning”, definitely, but also “belief”. Rabbinic Judaism is based on critical text study. The whole point is to tug literature around to see what we can do with it, and we do pretty much the same thing with the idea of god (literally called “god-idea” in Reform Judaism’s 1885 Pittsburgh Platform). There is no central tenet or belief. Nearly every argument in our canon has at least three contradicting arguments. The entire Talmud is a whole bunch of rabbis debating with each other, and none of them are ultimately right (or wrong). The entire endeavor of rabbinic Judaism is questioning. I don’t really understand how you could have an unquestioning belief in Judaism, because how would you choose which of the thousands of conflicting opinions to believe in? What is “Judaism”? For belief, I know my rabbi doesn’t believe in an active Biblical god; she’s told me so. I would be shocked if more than five people at my (3000-strong) shul believed the events involving the character of Yahweh in the Bible were literally true. It’s just not the way our system works. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2009, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theists-agnostics-beleivers-have-you-attempted-to-read-a-book-by-richard-dawkins/510623/82 "2009-09-21T18:05:35Z")
> [@Captain\_Awesome](#): > > Your fact checking could use a little [fact checking](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/901723.stm), to say nothing of your logic. My fact checking looks just fine, thank you. A woman found her door daubed with yellow paint. Okay, I wouldn’t want my door daubed with yellow paint. But as the BBC article mentions, there’s nothing connecting the incident to misdirected vigilante justice. There’s just one police officer who “feels” that it might be something more than some dumb child playing a a prank. As for “attacks” or “mobs”, that’s purely the creation of the media. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2009, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theists-agnostics-beleivers-have-you-attempted-to-read-a-book-by-richard-dawkins/510623/83 "2009-09-21T18:09:27Z")
> [@Fantome](#): > > Show some evidence or shut up already. I did get back to you. I started a new thread just for you. But if your ego depends on pretending that I didn’t, go right ahead. It makes no difference to me. ---
**Author:** ![Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cc9497/32.png) [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2009, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theists-agnostics-beleivers-have-you-attempted-to-read-a-book-by-richard-dawkins/510623/84 "2009-09-21T18:09:44Z")
Again, no. There _were_ mob attacks as a result of the News of the World campaign. See my earlier post where a riot ensued in Portsmouth as a result. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2009, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theists-agnostics-beleivers-have-you-attempted-to-read-a-book-by-richard-dawkins/510623/85 "2009-09-21T18:19:20Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > > [@SecondJudith](#): > > > > …but Dawkins’ arguments assume that all religions involve unquestioning belief in divine existence, which is just not true. > > Which religion(s) are you thinking of? Mainstream Christianity does not involve unquestioning belief in God–there’s even a whole book in the Bible, Job, devoted to questioning. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I have read many of Dawkins books, but only the ones involving science. I’ll probably get around to reading the _God Delusion_, but from I’ve heard secondhand, it seems like he’s attacking only a particular form of fundamentalist Christianity and sounds like he’s unaware of liberal Christian beliefs. Which is unfortunate, both because fundamentalists already get too much attention and are used as a proxy for all Christians when they are actually unrepresentative. And because general statements about “Christians” when “fundamentalist Christian” is what is correct raises defensive hackles on those theists who are pro-science and pro-evolution. It’s unnecessarily polarizing and irrational–you’re less convincing when you lump together people who disagree with you by 1% with those you disagree with by 99%. A scientist needs to be sensitive to fine distinctions. ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2009, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theists-agnostics-beleivers-have-you-attempted-to-read-a-book-by-richard-dawkins/510623/86 "2009-09-21T18:26:49Z")
> [@SecondJudith](#): > > Well, Dawkins is talking about me, because he says he is talking about all religions and religious adherents. If he doesn’t mean to address all religions, then he should clear up his language. Yeah, Dawkins should _really watch it_ or the 0.00001% of religious people who don’t believe in god are going to be _pissed!_ :rolleyes: > [@SecondJudith](#): > > The discussion of religion as a social institution is much more interesting to me than supernatural belief. Many of Dawkins’ criticisms are of the effects of religion as a social institution, as those listed in the introduction of _The God Delusion_: > > > [@](#): > > > > Imagine, with John Lennon, a world with no religion. Imagine no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7, no Crusades, no witch-hunts, no Gunpowder Plot, no Indian partition, no Israeli/Palestinian wars, no Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no persecution of the Jews as ‘Christ-killers’, no Northern Ireland ‘troubles’, no ‘honour killings’, no shiny-suited bouffant-haired televangelists fleecing gullible people of their money (‘God wants you to give until it hurts’). Imagine no Taliban to blow up ancient statues, no public beheadings of blasphemers, no flogging of female skin for the crime of showing an inch of it. > > If, as you say, he is only addressing supernatural belief, then here he seems to be arguing that there would be no economic, social, cultural, gendered, geographical or national conflicts if no one believed in an active supernatural deity. Dawkins is attacking religion as a cultural institution but relying on arguments against the supernatural to do it. It’s sloppy. You are straw-manning the shit out of that quote. He is not saying what you claim he’s saying. First of all, he clearly believes there’d still be Jews. Your argument falls apart right there. Secondly, he’s saying the conflicts he mentions wouldn’t have happened, not that no conflicts would happen. ---
**Author:** ![SecondJudith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5ac83/32.png) [@SecondJudith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SecondJudith)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2009, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theists-agnostics-beleivers-have-you-attempted-to-read-a-book-by-richard-dawkins/510623/87 "2009-09-21T18:42:58Z")
> [@Cisco](#): > > Yeah, Dawkins should _really watch it_ or the 0.00001% of religious people who don’t believe in god are going to be _pissed!_ :rolleyes: Reform Judaism is the biggest Jewish sect in the US. With Conservative and Reconstructionist Judaism, which have effectively the same approach to the god-idea (Reconstructionist is a bit more out-there and overtly atheist), liberal Jews are 79% of all American Jewry. Believing in god just isn’t an important part of most Jews’ Judaism. I’m pretty sure unquestioning Jewish belief in god is impossible. And yes, I am pissed when people who clearly haven’t done their research thing that they can define and identify the practice and beliefs of millions of people. > [@Cisco](#): > > Secondly, he’s saying the conflicts he mentions wouldn’t have happened, not that no conflicts would happen. I’m not sure that he does clearly believe there would still be Jews. Anyway, it is extremely unreasonable to argue that, for example, land disputes such as the Israel-Palestine conflict, or the Northern Irish troubles stemming from plantation, would not have occured if no one believed in a literal active god. Do you honestly think that none of the conflicts Dawkins lists would be a problem if no one believed in the supernatural? And do you think Dawkins honestly believes that the medieval British economy had nothing to do with the Crusades, or that opium money has nothing to do with the Taliban? ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2009, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theists-agnostics-beleivers-have-you-attempted-to-read-a-book-by-richard-dawkins/510623/88 "2009-09-21T18:50:43Z")
> [@Cisco](#): > > You are straw-manning the shit out of that quote. He is not saying what you claim he’s saying. First of all, he clearly believes there’d still be Jews. Your argument falls apart right there. Secondly, he’s saying the conflicts he mentions wouldn’t have happened, not that no conflicts would happen. He’s simply incorrect, in that some of the conflicts he mentions are first and foremost _ethnic_ conflicts. The fact that religion is a component of ethnic identity is irrelevant - it could just as easily be something else, and in many cases is. If every Jew and every Arab in the ME suddenly became atheists (and many Israeli Jews _are_ atheists, I should add), the conflict would not, contrary to the thrust of this quote, disappear. The whole "imagine … " quote smacks of a truly off-putting level of naiveté. ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2009, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theists-agnostics-beleivers-have-you-attempted-to-read-a-book-by-richard-dawkins/510623/89 "2009-09-21T18:55:18Z")
> [@SecondJudith](#): > > Reform Judaism is the biggest Jewish sect in the US. With Conservative and Reconstructionist Judaism, which have effectively the same approach to the god-idea (Reconstructionist is a bit more out-there and overtly atheist), liberal Jews are 79% of all American Jewry. Believing in god just isn’t an important part of most Jews’ Judaism. I’m pretty sure unquestioning Jewish belief in god is impossible. And yes, I am pissed when people who clearly haven’t done their research thing that they can define and identify the practice and beliefs of millions of people. Sorry, I guess it’s more like 0.0002%. I was off by a couple thousandths. Going out of his way to account for and appease such an ultra-minority would do far more to confuse his audience than doing what he did- which was accepting that every reasonable person knows that there are exceptions to everything. > [@SecondJudith](#): > > I’m not sure that he does clearly believe there would still be Jews. Anyway, it is extremely unreasonable to argue that, for example, land disputes such as the Israel-Palestine conflict, or the Northern Irish troubles stemming from plantation, would not have occured if no one believed in a literal active god. Do you honestly think that none of the conflicts Dawkins lists would be a problem if no one believed in the supernatural? And do you think Dawkins honestly believes that the medieval British economy had nothing to do with the Crusades, or that opium money has nothing to do with the Taliban? Yeah, I honestly believe that if people weren’t hoodwinked into thinking there was something better waiting for them in the afterlife, they wouldn’t be so eager to die in “this temporal life that doesn’t really matter.” That’s not rocket science. It’s common sense. ---
**Author:** ![SecondJudith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5ac83/32.png) [@SecondJudith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SecondJudith)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2009, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theists-agnostics-beleivers-have-you-attempted-to-read-a-book-by-richard-dawkins/510623/90 "2009-09-21T19:10:05Z")
> [@Cisco](#): > > Sorry, I guess it’s more like 0.0002%. I was off by a couple thousandths. Going out of his way to account for and appease such an ultra-minority would do far more to confuse his audience than doing what he did- which was accepting that every reasonable person knows that there are exceptions to everything. I think your math may be a bit off. I don’t think “most Jews” is an ultra-minority, and as **Pleonast** says, there are a hefty amount of thoughtful, questioning Christians as well. I don’t know enough about other religions to say. But questioning, debating and agnosticism are a _design feature_ of at least one of the world’s major religions. You can’t be a Jew without questioning god-idea. Not only does Dawkins not address this at all, he states the complete opposite, that unquestioning belief is the foundation of all religions. That’s clearly demonstrably false, in a culturally and statistically significant way. It’s not good reasoning. > [@Cisco](#): > > Yeah, I honestly believe that if people weren’t hoodwinked into thinking there was something better waiting for them in the afterlife, they wouldn’t be so eager to die in “this temporal life that doesn’t really matter.” That’s not rocket science. It’s common sense. Now I’m really confused. Surely if more people believed in an afterlife, they _wouldn’t_ be fighting so hard to hold on to land, trade routes, ethnic/national identity and money, which is what most of those conflits are about. Like **Malthus** points out, loads of Jews (and I imagine many Muslims) are atheists. I imagine there are quite a few IRA and UDL members who are atheists too. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Awesome](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a698b9/32.png) [@Captain\_Awesome](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Awesome)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2009, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theists-agnostics-beleivers-have-you-attempted-to-read-a-book-by-richard-dawkins/510623/91 "2009-09-21T19:13:26Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > My fact checking looks just fine, thank you. A woman found her door daubed with yellow paint. Okay, I wouldn’t want my door daubed with yellow paint. But as the BBC article mentions, there’s nothing connecting the incident to misdirected vigilante justice. There’s just one police officer who “feels” that it might be something more than some dumb child playing a a prank. As for “attacks” or “mobs”, that’s purely the creation of the media. Hark… is that the sound of a paddle being applied backwards? > [@](#): > > Ms Butler said that the attack on Dr Cloete’s home appeared to be carried out through “sheer hysteria, bravado and ignorance.” > > She condemned the campaign by the News of the World to name and shame paedophiles in the community. > > “We have a code of law and I cannot condone people taking the law into their own hands,” said Ms Butler. A paediatrician being confused for a paedophile, and people taking the law into their own hands? Sounds like… vigilantism to me. As for ‘attacks’ or ‘mobs’, due to the hysteria against paedophilia, they’re not [unknown](http://news.google.co.uk/archivesearch?q=paedophile+vigilante+mob&hl=en&ned=uk&sa=N&lnav=m&scoring=a). ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2009, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theists-agnostics-beleivers-have-you-attempted-to-read-a-book-by-richard-dawkins/510623/92 "2009-09-21T19:16:48Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > He’s simply incorrect, in that some of the conflicts he mentions are first and foremost _ethnic_ conflicts. The fact that religion is a component of ethnic identity is irrelevant - it could just as easily be something else, and in many cases is. If every Jew and every Arab in the ME suddenly became atheists (and many Israeli Jews _are_ atheists, I should add), the conflict would not, contrary to the thrust of this quote, disappear. > > The whole "imagine … " quote smacks of a truly off-putting level of naiveté. You’re going to see exactly what you want to see, but religion is a major part of ethnicity, especially in that part of the world. > [@SecondJudith](#): > > I think your math may be a bit off. I don’t think “most Jews” is an ultra-minority, and as **Pleonast** says, there are a hefty amount of thoughtful, questioning Christians as well. I don’t know enough about other religions to say. But questioning, debating and agnosticism are a _design feature_ of at least one of the world’s major religions. You can’t be a Jew without questioning god-idea. Not only does Dawkins not address this at all, he states the complete opposite, that unquestioning belief is the foundation of all religions. That’s clearly demonstrably false, in a culturally and statistically significant way. It’s not good reasoning. I went off of about 1 million reform Jews and about 5 billion religious people. If you want to count every single Jew in the world, that’s still less than 15 million people. So move the decimal point once to the right. It’s still an ultra-minority. > [@SecondJudith](#): > > Now I’m really confused. Surely if more people believed in an afterlife, they _wouldn’t_ be fighting so hard to hold on to land, trade routes, ethnic/national identity and money, which is what most of those conflits are about. Like **Malthus** points out, loads of Jews (and I imagine many Muslims) are atheists. I imagine there are quite a few IRA and UDL members who are atheists too. You’re trying to simplify an extremely complicated subject, and you’re assuming religious people act rationally and logically. ---
**Author:** ![SecondJudith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5ac83/32.png) [@SecondJudith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SecondJudith)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2009, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theists-agnostics-beleivers-have-you-attempted-to-read-a-book-by-richard-dawkins/510623/93 "2009-09-21T19:29:38Z")
I don’t think Judaism is the only religion of which agnostic debate is a design feature, just one of them. Anyway, Dawkins has a significant section on Judaism in _The God Delusion_ where he pretends that all Jews take the bible as literal truth and sacred writ, and that the character of Yahweh is how all Jews imagine god-idea to be. He’s not ignoring Judaism, as he might do if (as you are arguing) it were a culturally and statistically insignificant religion. He is arguing against it with false pretenses. I would love it if Dawkins were to address the problems of organized religion as an ethnic signifier and cultural institution. I have a lot of issues with that aspect of it myself. However, that’s not what he does in _The God Delusion_ (I haven’t read his other books). He uses untruths and sloppy arguments. It’s boring, and it doesn’t mean anything. I do assume that religious people act rationally and logically, because most people I know are religious of some stripe, and they generally don’t run around starting conflicts for no reason (including _purely_ religious ones). I have a question for you: do you think that every one of the conflicts Dawkins lists in that paragraph would be a non-issue if no one believed in an active supernatural god? ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2009, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theists-agnostics-beleivers-have-you-attempted-to-read-a-book-by-richard-dawkins/510623/94 "2009-09-21T19:55:16Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > King himself said he got it from Gandhi. Here’s the quote again: > > Did you not read this quote before you responded to it? It pretty much decisively buries you. No, it doesn’t bury me. Why don’t you try reading my posts before you accuse me of not reading your posts? Now, presuming you’re trying to defend Dawkins statement that for King “religion was incidental”, please answer these questions: 1. Why did King say, “I am grateful to God that, through the influence of the Negro church, the way of nonviolence became an integral part of our struggle.”? How does this coincide with Dawkins claim that for King, Christianity was entirely incidental? 2. Why did King say, “How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.”? How does fit with the claim that King’s political philosophy was unrelated to religion? 3. Given that Gandhi based _his_ philosophy in large part on the teachings of Jesus Christ and other Christian writers and thinkers, wouldn’t it be true that even if King had merely copied Gandhi’s philosophy, it would still have had a Christian source? 4. If we believe what Dawkins believes, than it seems that both Gandhi and King lead their respective movements only because they had “infantile”, “deluded”, beliefs in ancient fairy tales. Further, Dawkins believes that both of them followed and promoted belief systems that lead “naturally” to violence. Further, Dawkins believes that both have them should have been ripped away from their parents in order to be saved from being raised in religious households. If this had happened, would it have been a good thing? ---
**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:** [September 21, 2009, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theists-agnostics-beleivers-have-you-attempted-to-read-a-book-by-richard-dawkins/510623/95 "2009-09-21T20:23:26Z")
[QUOTE=ITR champion] Further, Dawkins believes that both have them should have been ripped away from their parents in order to be saved from being raised in religious households. If this had happened, would it have been a good thing? [/QUOTE] Really? Now, admittedly it’s been a while since I’ve read The God Delusion, but it seems like the kind of thing that might stand out. Where did he advocate this? I recall him criticizing Christians for having done this very thing to Jews in the past, so I think you’ve really caught him in a significant bit of hypocrisy. If you can show it, of course. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2009, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theists-agnostics-beleivers-have-you-attempted-to-read-a-book-by-richard-dawkins/510623/96 "2009-09-21T20:31:04Z")
> [@SecondJudith](#): > > I don’t think Judaism is the only religion of which agnostic debate is a design feature, just one of them. Anyway, Dawkins has a significant section on Judaism in _The God Delusion_ where he pretends that all Jews take the bible as literal truth and sacred writ, and that the character of Yahweh is how all Jews imagine god-idea to be. He’s not ignoring Judaism, as he might do if (as you are arguing) it were a culturally and statistically insignificant religion. He is arguing against it with false pretenses. > > I would love it if Dawkins were to address the problems of organized religion as an ethnic signifier and cultural institution. I have a lot of issues with that aspect of it myself. However, that’s not what he does in _The God Delusion_ (I haven’t read his other books). He uses untruths and sloppy arguments. It’s boring, and it doesn’t mean anything. > > I do assume that religious people act rationally and logically, because most people I know are religious of some stripe, and they generally don’t run around starting conflicts for no reason (including _purely_ religious ones). I have a question for you: do you think that every one of the conflicts Dawkins lists in that paragraph would be a non-issue if no one believed in an active supernatural god? The problem with Dawkins, it seems to me, is that while no-one questions his contributions to the field of evolutionary biology, he’s horribly out of his depth in discussing matters of culture, history and anthropology; his use of the concepts from the one to analyse the other (discarding inconvenient facts in order to make the theory fit) is more an exercise in polemics than science (i.e., religion as a wholly malignant “mind virus”). ---
**Author:** ![Lobsang](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobsang/32/4067_2.png) [@Lobsang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobsang)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2009, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theists-agnostics-beleivers-have-you-attempted-to-read-a-book-by-richard-dawkins/510623/97 "2009-09-21T20:31:16Z")
> [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](#): > > Really? Now, admittedly it’s been a while since I’ve read The God Delusion, but it seems like the kind of thing that might stand out. Where did he advocate this? I asked a similar question last time **ITR champion** claimed RD said religious parents should not be allowed to raise their own children. ITR, care to quote the relevant passage here? Or are you going to continue to remain in your own little world where the rules, and reality itself, are different? ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2009, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theists-agnostics-beleivers-have-you-attempted-to-read-a-book-by-richard-dawkins/510623/98 "2009-09-21T20:42:20Z")
> [@Lobsang](#): > > I asked a similar question last time **ITR champion** claimed RD said religious parents should not be allowed to raise their own children. > > ITR, care to quote the relevant passage here? > > Or are you going to continue to remain in your own little world where the rules, and reality itself, are different? I’m not ITR, and so have no dog in this fight, but my guess is that the quote he’s referencing is this. [http://richarddawkins.net/article,118,Religions-Real-Child-Abuse,Richard-Dawkins](http://richarddawkins.net/article,118,Religions-Real-Child-Abuse,Richard-Dawkins) > [@](#): > > ‘What shall we tell the children?’ is a superb polemic on how religions abuse the minds of children, by the distinguished psychologist Nicholas Humphrey. It was originally delivered as a lecture in aid of Amnesty International, and has now been reissued as a chapter of his book, The Mind Made Flesh, just published by Oxford University Press. It is also available on the worldwide web and I strongly recommend it. Humphrey argues that, in the same way as Amnesty works tirelessly to free political prisoners the world over, we should work to free the children of the world from the religions which, with parental approval, damage minds too young to understand what is happening to them. He is right, and the same lesson should inform our discussions of the current pedophile brouhaha. Priestly groping of child bodies is disgusting. But it may be less harmful in the long run than priestly subversion of child minds. Werein Dawkins cites with approval the following: > **[Edge: THE NEW HUMANISTS](https://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/humphrey/amnesty.html)** > [@](#): > > Children, I’ll argue, have a human right not to have their minds crippled by exposure to other people’s bad ideas—no matter who these other people are. Parents, correspondingly, have no god-given licence to enculturate their children in whatever ways they personally choose: no right to limit the horizons of their children’s knowledge, to bring them up in an atmosphere of dogma and superstition, or to insist they follow the straight and narrow paths of their own faith. > > In short, children have a right not to have their minds addled by nonsense. And we as a society have a duty to protect them from it. In short, Dawkins believes that Humphrey’s thesis is correct: religious parents should be prevented by law from raising their children. ---
**Author:** ![Blut\_Aus\_Nord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Blut\_Aus\_Nord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blut_Aus_Nord)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2009, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theists-agnostics-beleivers-have-you-attempted-to-read-a-book-by-richard-dawkins/510623/99 "2009-09-21T20:44:09Z")
I don’t like the fact that many, not all, but many of Dawkin’s arguments can be easily refuted by anyone with any sense, atheist or otherwise. For example, the Flying Spaghetti Monster has become a favorite of his. He equates it with the belief in the Judeo-Christian God, Zeus, etc. The problem with thinking of God as being equally absurd is the deeply rooted logic and reasoning behind God, whether convincing to you or not, as opposed to the stupid for the sake of stupid FSM. Silly Dawkins. ---
**Author:** ![Fantome](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e9c0ed/32.png) [@Fantome](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fantome)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2009, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theists-agnostics-beleivers-have-you-attempted-to-read-a-book-by-richard-dawkins/510623/100 "2009-09-21T20:44:49Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > I did get back to you. I started a new thread just for you. But if your ego depends on pretending that I didn’t, go right ahead. It makes no difference to me. Ahh, you mean [this](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=508549) thread where you accuse Harris of being a liar, yet your reasons get destroyed and you never come back to defend yourself. I see nowhere in that thread any evidence that Harris is guilty of being a hatemonger. How about an example or two? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theists-agnostics-beleivers-have-you-attempted-to-read-a-book-by-richard-dawkins/510623.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theists-agnostics-beleivers-have-you-attempted-to-read-a-book-by-richard-dawkins/510623.md?page=6)