An “active biblical god” might not be a modern interpretation. But does that mean that your rabbi doesn’t believe there ever was a divine being, perhaps at creation, or ancient times?
It seems to me that if you remove a belief in a supreme being from Judiasm, past, present and future, there’s not a heck of a lot left. A bunch of rabbis debating what? Aren’t they debating what god is and wants?
I look at the Job story as more of an example of UNquestioning belief. Didn’t Job hold to his god thru thick and thin?
Might I also refer you to John 3:16 and the story of Abraham being told to kill his son? In my bible school, that was considered to be an example of the ultimate of unquestioning belief and a shining example to strive for. So I’d say mainstream Christianity certainly does involve it and holds it in the highest regard. Which I believe is one of Dawkins’ main points.
I’m not quite sure how you manage to come to this conclusion on the basis of these statements. Dawkins is indeed opposed to the indoctrination of children, and in my opinion rightly so; however he has never to the best of my knowledge advocated the state separating children from their parents for this purpose.
The most relevant result I managed to return from google was someone reporting a speech Dawkins gave at Cal Tech;
Judaism is a religion concerned with actions, not beliefs. In general, those raised in a culture of Christianity do not really understand what this means: they are viewing Judaism through the lens of their own cultural expectations even (especially) where they have rejected Christianity as a belief-system.
There was a lot of questioning in the middle. The point of the story is that Job ended up keeping his faith, despite the questioning.
John 3:16 (“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”) doesn’t talk about doubt or lack of it–it’s about the reward for belief in God’s love. The Abraham and Isaac story is about obedience to God, not unquestioning belief in God.
He is citing with approval from another person who is saying just that: that religious parents should not be allowed by society to raise their children.
How can this not be reasonably taken as Dawkins approving of the idea, when he says in black and white that he approves?
The fact that on another occasion he rejected a petition arguing for gov’t control in this area (after having signed it) because it is “too Orwellian” isn’t determinative. The question was, I thought, whether he had ever written approvingly of the idea. The answer is clear: he has.
I don’t harbor any delusions that we would live in a shiny happy utopia, but yes, I believe the specific conflicts he lists there would be drastically tempered if not non-existent.
You can say 9/11, for instance, was ultimately a land-dispute, but why are they so rabidly defensive of a chunk of dirt? They think God gave it to them.
You can say any of them are ethnic or cultural disputes, but you can’t remove religion and assume the ethnicity and culture stays the same. It’s too large a part.
It’s already been suggested that you explain what this “deeply rooted logic and reasoning” behind God is, and you decided to refuse.
I haven’t read The Mind Made Flesh personally, however from reading a few available reviews, the solution proposed by Nicholas Humphrey appears to be “universal education in science”. Your premise that Humphrey is suggesting state separation of children from religious parents, appears to be undermined by what Humphrey actually says, and similarly what Dawkins has communicated in a speech on the matter.
The petition that you talk of, initially supported by Dawkins, who later recanted on the idea, was concerning faith schools and the prohibition of the teaching of creationism. I would certainly be in support of such an action in the public sphere. Such schools should not get the financial backing of government, which is unfortunately currently provided in the UK. This is in no way malleable into the idea of removing children from religious parents. To suggest as such is terminological inexactitude.
It is this essay, specifically, that Dawkins cites with unqualified approval (and indeed he notes it is available on the 'net and encorages people to read it).
You appear to be missing my point in respect of the petition. I’m saying that his reasoning in respect of the petition - in which he rejects his signing of it - in no way negates what he’s written elsewhere. I am not suggesting that his approach to the petition “is malleable into the idea of removing children from religious parents”.
The original issue (or challenge as it were) was whether Dawkins had ever written in support of the idea that religious parents should be prevented from raising their kids themselves (or whether a poster had simply invented the notion, presumably to discredit Dawkins).
It appears to me at least that Dawkins has written approvingly of the idea - in that he specifically cites with approval an essay in which the idea is stated: that religious parents have “no right” to raise their children, and society has a duty to 'protect" children from being “addled by nonsense” by their religious parents.
He’s only talking about public education. neither of them have ever promoted the state actually separating children from religious parents. That accusation is flatly false.
[emphasis added]
How is this “… only talking about public education”?
It is true Humphrey does not discuss the state actually seperating children from parents. I never said he did. Merely that they not be allowed to raise their children.
He never says any such thing. He advocates not allowing parents to prevent their kids from being educated, but says nothing about not being allowed to raise them. All accusations to the contrary are false. Full stop.
That’s not so, as far as I parse it. It seems to me more like he’s saying that those parents don’t have the right to raise their children in a specific way, and with the exclusion of alternate sources of learning.
I’d say that’s backed up by his “in short”; it’s not “Religious parents shouldn’t be allowed to raise children”, but “children have a right not to have their minds addled by nonsense”. His problems seem to be with the idea that children are raised in a religious atmosphere to the deliberate exclusion of all other ideas, that the particular viewpoints of those parents will form the entirety of the culture and path of their own life in turn.
DtC’s point of only talking about public education, as I understand it, is not that that’s the only problems Humphrey has, but rather, that is the only solution that is offered to what problems he sees, as opposed to a reading that his solution is to physically remove the kids. That is to say, that he’s only talking about public education as a means to remit the problem, not forced seperation.
You are wrong when you say he’s only talking about public education - he’s not.
You are wrong when you say he’s only talking about parents preventing their kids from being educated. He’s talking about preventing parents from exposing kids to bad ideas.
You are wrong when you say he says nothing about preventing parents from raising kids as they see fit. That’s the whole thrust of the quote above.
I’ve provided quotes proving all three points. I will stop now, as a debate in which one side simply refuses to acknowledge error when it has been pointed out is pointless.
Can you provide a quote clearly stating as such, rather than one which you simply construe in such a fashion? Protecting a child from deceptive and scientifically unsupportable nonsense doesn’t mean that the child should not be raised by the parents, simply that a scientific education should be provided.