Comments on: Echoing Dawkins – Don’t Call Us Fundamentalists

By: John Bay

John Bay — Sat, 10 May 2008 06:30:52 +0000

This article rejects the statement “you can’t criticize religion unless you are a religious scholar” and I agree. But in debating evolution, scientists frequently make this same argument. They claim that you can’t point out the flaws in evolutionary theory unless you are an expert. But I disagree. I believe science allows me to critique evolutionary theory the same as Dawkins or others would point out the flaws in religious fundamentalism. Do you agree?

By: Skeptical Dragon

Skeptical Dragon — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 20:35:05 +0000

It certainly *helps* to be very familiar with the religion(s) you are criticizing. Some of the most adamant fundamentalists have apparently little or no knowledge of the history of their religion, what it actually says in their holy books (outside of selected passages) or the fact that the holy books have serious discrepancies within themselves and over the various translation over the centuries.
Sometimes, its as simple as “why are you quoting from the Old Testament so that you can ignore what that famous guy in the New Testament says to do?”
Nonetheless, there’s a level of secular civility that *no* religion should be exempt from (glancing over at Europe’s gutless slip into ’sharia’ mysogyny) and I hope the “sensitivity PC” idiots get over their weird form of ‘relativism’ quickly

By: Anders Gardebring

Anders Gardebring — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 18:42:25 +0000

I have never understood the argument that you need to study theology before critizising religion. Do I need to study tooth-fairyism before arguing there is no such thing as the tooth fairy?

By: Peter G

Peter G — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 15:41:43 +0000

Dawkins isn’t wrong, but one can still question whether he’s making an entirely positive contribution to the cause of humanism, which might be better served at the moment by an alliance between atheists and religious moderates against fundamentalism of all kinds. I think at this point it’s more important to be promoting tolerance than anyone’s idea of right thinking. But I could be wrong.

I’m also not sure if Dawkins understands that for many religious moderates the actual tenets of belief are to a large extent relegated to the background; they’re concerned with the social, moral and psychological dimensions of their faith — living a Christian (or whatever) life. A few, like Bible scholar Robert Price, expressly state that the Gospels are no more than an illuminating collection of myths; most simply don’t consider the matter deeply, but they’re not going to let the contents of the Bible stand in the way of their acceptance of modern science or an enlightened attitude to matters like homosexuality. If prodded, some of these people would probably admit their doubts about the actual existence of God, but I fear the aggressive atheism of Dawkins et al may push them in the wrong direction.

By: h3nry

h3nry — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 03:20:12 +0000

Thanks for the comments… blueollie’s analogy to astrology is clever indeed!