Seeing how Richard Dawkins and company were rageing at the the Church for the recent sex abuse scandals, I wonder a few things.
Most such cases are of grown men, from ages of 16 to 18, who were fondled by priests. Obviously, even 16 year olds can be unaware and uncomfortable with such things. Yet, it would still only be homosexuality and not child abuse. So what does Dawkins have against homosexuals?
As it is, it's not like Dawkins sees fondling children to be a big deal either:
All three of the boarding schools I attended employed teachers whose affection for small boys overstepped the bounds of propriety. That was indeed reprehensible. Nevertheless, if fifty years on, they had been hounded by vigilantes or lawyers as no better than child murderers, I should have felt obliged to come to their defense, even as the victim of one of them (an embarrassing but otherwise harmless experience)
Nor does another man criticising the Church's sexual abuse, Peter Tatchell.
Several of my friends – gay and straight, male and female – had sex with adults from the ages of nine to 13. None feel they were abused. All say it was their conscious choice and gave them great joy. While it may be impossible to condone paedophilia, it is time society acknowledged the truth that not all sex involving children is unwanted, abusive and harmful.
God dammit, you angry atheists, make up your MIND already. Note that I am an atheist myself, but I just wonder about the petty obsessions of the anti-religious establishment. They could at least be consistent, their abhorent views aside.
(On another note, the recent Belgian government crackdown on the Church is interesting, considering that the politics of sexual revolution in Belgium was also trying to make pedophilia more acceptable and punished more leniently, if they couldn't legalise it.)
Uh oh, I smell another "Do children have Rights?" thread a brewin'...
Richard Dawkins is just another person, easily susceptible to inconsistency. Besides atheist evangelists like Dawkins have an obvious anti-religious bias. It's just like the bias many religious people may have. So of course they are going to slip up that way. Frankly, if I was an atheist, I'd see religion as irrelevant, as many atheists I know do.
^Oh no....
Freedom has always been the only route to progress.
If you ask me, I never understood "separation of state and religion".
You oppose organized public action...through organized public action?
Of course, while the Church once had power, because it built and ran schools and hospitals and fed the homeless, the state had to fight this opposition to its own power through violence and use of force. Which is why Spanish Republicans had nuns and priests killed or beaten up, while Third Republic France shuttered Christian establishments. It's also why Indonesia alienated its Muslims, by moving against and shutting Muslim establishments, (until Muslims retaliated violently in Bali bombings).
If religion is defined as a doctrine passed through instruction, then aren't public schools a national religion or a national church? Shouldn't the state stay out of education then, to "separate state and religion"?
Prateek Sanjay:Shouldn't the state stay out of education then, to "separate state and religion"?
Yay, I'm not alone! All ideologies are accept as truth as a matter of faith. The morality shelled out by the church is no better/worse than one shelled out by the humanist state! As you stated, they are just cometing for the hearts and minds of the populace (if they are at odds at the time, much collusion also occurs).
Just let people be. In America it seems like anything public must be SECULAR or CHRISTIAN.
This is why I do not like to identify myself as an atheist anymore. These fashionable fools have made the label intolerable. "Egoist" is a good enough term for me, hopefully it is a powerful enough term to seperate me from humanism, scientism, and the other fashinonistas who can be as contradictory as they want, because they are the mouthpiece for the State religion.
Something is definitely wrong with my posting, everytime I click post it just disappears.
In States a fresh law is looked upon as a remedy for evil. Instead of themselves altering what is bad, people begin by demanding a law to alter it. ... In short, a law everywhere and for everything!
~Peter Kropotkin
I oppose institutionalized public action through organized public action. I cant speak for others tho.
while the Church once had power, because it built and ran schools and hospitals and fed the homeless
lol, and crowned kings and emporers, collected taxes, not only built schools but decided who attended them, sold salvation for money, used their various states to conduct warfare across Europe and Asia, burned scientists/witches, and killed jews cuz they were Jewish, but ya... they were only in power cuz they build schools and hospitals
If religion is defined as a doctrine passed through instruction
Who defines religion like that? You forget about dogma, faith even if the evidence is contradictory, mythological histories, ritual and ritual sacrifice. You can make another argument about just where to draw the lines on these things, but I'm gona stick with the established definition.
then aren't public schools a national religion or a national church?
No. Nor are private schools, or even religious schools. We had a muslim in our class in catholic school, the school is a non-defining part of the religion.
Shouldn't the state stay out of education
Yes.
to "separate state and religion"
No
Happens to me sometimes too, I just copy before I post to avoid loss of text.
Ya, I was planning on doing that if the I couldn't find the problem. Thanks tho
I hate the "scientism" label.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU7fmb7_pHM
I'm not really too big on some of the political positions of the New Atheists, but it's the same thing with the Mises Institute, isn't it? I don't see threads saying, "If only the Mises Institute just weren't so damn Catholic!" It annoys me, but I listen to their anti-State positions and avoid reading their attempts to harmonize Christianity and libertarianism because Christianity is so antithetical to the freedom that I espouse and wish others would appreciate.
At any rate, I can watch a string of Harris/Hitchens/Dawkins anti-religious Youtube videos all day if I'm in the mood . The larger point is that the abuse scandal is, first off, hypocritical to an institution like the Catholic church that denounces sex. It's like the criticism of Haggard: Somebody who announces discrimination against homosexuals goes on to engage in homosexuality. Most atheists are not anti-gay, but they despise hypocrites such as Haggard. Secondly, the relationship between the priest and the child is one of authority and even one abuse of a kid in that scenario is one too many.
Make no mistake about it, if someone chooses an evolutionary stance over a creationist stance based off of the data or even based off of the credibility of the source, I would say someone is using their better judgment, and it is not even a contest.
What is the case though, is that the minute someone wishes to take the language of science and use it as a "philosophical", ethical, political, social, aesthetical, or whatever normative narrative, the language ought to get eviscerated (they don't, because it is fashionable in this day and age to use such narratives). It is comically naive, and just another aspect of that Enlightenment zeitgeist that people can't help but being willingly be possessed by. Of all the silly little things to "throw themselves upon" people the Enlightenment seems to have the strongest adhesive. Everything in language, every practiced art, every science, and so forth; so long as we have the ability to define things, has it's proper place and context that is inescapable. Natural science is no exception, it can only speak for, of, and about....natural science.
Eric,
Compelling video. I especially like the part at the end where Dennett claims that if you really think about it, people aren't entitled to their own opinions!
Scientism is really just Humanism. That is faith in Man's capability to divine truth from observation. Scientism just specifies the Scientific Method as the only valid form of filtering observation to discern the "true" from the "false".
@ Will, I guess I can agree with that. Many humanists, Dawkins included, look to evolution to solve moral problems. Sam Harris is even coming out with a book on the topic (which I may as well take a look at). I think the idea of morality is just incoherent and that if evolution granted us certain attributes, we don't have to deal with justifying them via normativity, they just "are", so to speak.
Science has a lot to say about information, though. Basically natural science only answers natural scientific questions, but it's the broader scope that really gets at the fundamental root of knowledge. There is a lot to be gained via empiricism and falsificationism. Of course there are analytic truths to be had as well, just that experience is fundamental in acquiring potential knowledge. So I highly value what is at the root of science: skepticism, empiricism, and falsificationism.
I think the idea of morality is just incoherent and that if evolution granted us certain attributes, we don't have to deal with justifying them via normativity, they just "are", so to speak.
In so much as morality, religion, or whatever wishes to throw itself into the ring of science or logic it ought to get eviscerated (and usually does). If these are things that can even be spoken or thought of, they are not within the realm of said subjects and hence can not be spoken of with any coherent utterance; and assuming you do not have an if X than Y deterministic set up, you can not really put a normative value statement or narrative using me kissing a picture of a deceased loved one into any worthwhile terms if you really think about it. It would be incoherent nonsense unless my actions could be spoken of before hand; as in logic and science everything is inherently deterministic by definition, and that which they can not determine, they can not speak of, regardless of how deterministic one sees the world (and I think my view is as deterministic as one can get).
Moreover the charge of "atomisim" or"reductionism" against a scientist is a nonsensensical charge. There is only a catagorization/re-catagorization of predetermined logical facts within space.
The question "what manner of man is he" can only be explained to the extent that I will it to be explained. So much as it is indefinable, it is indefinable.
So I highly value what is at the root of science: skepticism, empiricism, and falsificationism.
I personally can not think of a good reason not to. Moreover, I can not but help but think of them as a large part of forming my narratives and making sense of things. That said skepticism can only go as far as the system allows it. If it undermines the system that skepticism willingly throws itself into, it becomes nonsense (that is why it is important to establish if people are "speaking the same language"). The skepticism of science is good, in so much as it doesn't go outside the realm of science. To be sure, the skeptic can doubt away, but it becomes futile as far as science is concerned.
Moreover, there is nothing to say skepticism is good or more valuable in and of itself (this becomes even more true when you evaluate it in a "value free" logical system). To paraphrase Kierkegaard what is wrong with "resolution to a conclusion", or flat out dogmatism? Nothing inherently, it all depends upon the system and "game" one wishes to play.
Come one Prateek, Dawkins has written enough bad asseries to be forgiven a few inconsistencies now and then. Not everyone can be a Rothbard after all.
"Science is cool. If you disagree, fuck off." - Richard Dawkins
His best moment.
"Science is cool. If you disagree, fuck off." - Richard Dawkins His best moment.
I had no idea! This guy is a genius!
The Catholic Church is against sex? Really? As someone that's Catholic and has taught at a Catholic school for years wit Dominican Sisters that's news to me. I hate to see such ignorant statements made. If they are repeated enough they are taken as factual.
Dawkins is a tool. There are threads lamenting the fact that the Mises Institute has a Catholic bent to it.