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Before Dawkins, I've never heard of any atheist attacking religion and, after watching some of his videos, I'm beginning to think that he isn't even all that militant.
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People go on and on about Dawkins (and other unashamed atheists) being such
"extremists" and being so
"intolerant" and
"disrespectful" and
"hurtful". When you actually read and listen to what they have to say you will find that they are nothing of the sort. They are certainly passionate and powerful in their discussions on religion. Two simple thought experiments;
1: Have a look at the relative levels of intolerance on the other end of the theist-atheist spectrum. Even among relatively reasonable and tolerant Christians, you will find them every Sunday attending discussions where it is routinely asserted that those who do not believe as they do
deserve to be mercilessly tortured for eternity. (Not all Christians believe this of course, but a lot do, even some of the apparently more tolerant ones). And I don't even have to mention the level of hatred found amongst the less tolerant theists - openly condoning genocide against others. Now go back to the rather measured and careful criticism of Dawkins and co. Dawkins has never encouraged any kind of violence against theists and has never even suggested that religious people are immoral people. At worst he has said that religion has been used to justify many horribly immoral acts - a statement which seems to be utterly beyond dispute by any reasonable person.
2: Take a piece of Dawkins discussing religion. Now in your head change the top of conversation from religion to....well anything else: politics, competing economic theories, whatever. Does it still sound like an extremist's rant? Or does it just come across as a strongly argued piece of political writing (or whatever)? In my mind it is most certainly the latter. Unlike politics, people are not
used to hearing religion being criticized, which is why it always appears to be in such bad taste to do so.
So what can we draw from all this? Why does Dawkins
seem to be so "hardcore" (to use the expression used by the OP of a different Dawkins thread). In truth it says more about religion and its position in society than it does about the writings and opinions of one out-spoken scientist. Religion has managed to place itself into a rather unique place in society. One which lays claim to a massive influence on people's lives (being the ultimate arbitier on all moral issues, being the only valid source of meaning in people's lives, etc), but yet at the same time insists that it
must never be challenged, because to do so is to be deemed "intolerant" or "insensitive to the feelings of others". It has little to do with what Dawkins has to say or how he says it and everything to do with how people regard religion as such a precious, fragile things that must be protected from all criticism. This idea is not even limited to theists. It affects atheists in droves, who having come to the conclusion that religion is bunkum, still insist on defending it to the last (presumably because it is acceptable for an intellectual such as themselves to be without supernatural beliefs, but the illusions must be defended for the benefit of the ignorant unwashed masses
). Of course this kind of "betrayal" is doubly painful for the
unashamed atheists amongst us.
Douglas Adams (a close friend of Dawkins) made this point very well:
Quote:
[Religion] has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. What it means is, “Here is an idea or a notion that you’re not allowed to say anything bad about; you’re just not. Why not? — because you’re not!” If somebody votes for a party that you don’t agree with, you’re free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down you are free to have an argument about it. But on the other hand if somebody says “I mustn’t move a light switch on a Saturday,” you say, “I respect that.”
The odd thing is, even as I am saying that I am thinking “Is there an Orthodox Jew here who is going to be offended by the fact that I just said that?” But I wouldn’t have thought, “Maybe there’s somebody from the left wing or somebody from the right wing or somebody who subscribes to this view or the other in economics,” when I was making the other points. I just think, “Fine, we have different opinions.” But, the moment I say something that has something to do with somebody’s (I’m going to stick my neck out here and say irrational) beliefs, then we all become terribly protective and terribly defensive and say “No, we don’t attack that; that’s an irrational belief but no, we respect it.”
Why should it be that it’s perfectly legitimate to support the Labour party or the Conservative party, Republicans or Democrats, this model of economics versus that, Macintosh instead of Windows — but to have an opinion about how the Universe began, about who created the Universe... no, that’s holy? What does that mean? Why do we ring-fence that for any other reason other than that we’ve just got used to doing so? There’s no other reason at all, it’s just one of those things that crept into being, and once that loop gets going it’s very, very powerful. So, we are used to not challenging religious ideas but it’s very interesting how much of a furore Richard [Dawkins] creates when he does it! Everybody gets absolutely frantic about it because you’re not allowed to say these things. Yet when you look at it rationally there is no reason why those ideas shouldn’t be as open to debate as any other, except that we have agreed somehow between us that they shouldn’t be
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I would also thoroughly recommend the book "Breaking The Spell" by Daniel Dennett which discusses these ideas at length.