The root of all evil? - Dawkins Documentary

Posted to AAT forum inappropriately. Better here...

--- In AAT@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Art Basaran" <greenrobe20@...> wrote:

Thanks for replying, Art. I am very encouraged (if a little
surprised) that it was shown in the USA.

how backward DO you think we are in the States? lol. just because our
sitting President pushes god the way he used to push cocaine, doesn'y
mean that our TV channels have refused to show anything religiously
contraversial. besides, we've got more channels in the states than
anywhere else, so odds are someone will show anything no matter how
contraversial

I disagree. Of course, you're right, much of his focus has been on
extremists but in the documentary a large part of it was spent
looking at the 'bread and butter', mundane aspect of teaching
children in religious schools. This is not the reserve of extremists,
but 'normal' (indeed crucial) for most religious people all over the
world. He asks some really big and challenging questions there: Why
should scientists say nothing while children are bundled up into
schools based on the religious convictions of their parents and talk
various degrees of hocus pocus much of which contradicts the
scientific knowledge that has been gained since these religions
started? Why do we accept that kids can be segregated on religious
grounds and indoctrinated accordingly, but not politics?

we don't accept kids being segregated by politics? maybe not in some
countries. besides, historically your religion equated to your
political party, and if you look at religious schools you will find
that it is not merely religion being segregated, but frequently
political parties at well (as a child i was one of two Democrats at a
Christian middle school, and i assure you they tried quite often to
sway my political beliefs). religion and politics should no longer be
mixed, and therein lies the source of our problem. after all, if
govt. is not allowed to interfere with the church, then why should the
church be allowed to interfere with the state by having their own
schools and openly promoting certain political positions? why should
they get to take that extra money from their tax free status and then
use that to take over politics in this country? the problem here is
not 'religion', but the lack of a proper separation between the state
and the different religio-political ideologies that thrive within the
state

If I remember rightly, what Dawkins said was something like... "the
form of non-thinking called faith." That is not saying that all
religious people are universally non-thinking, but specifically
suggesting that the aspect of religion (perhaps the most important
aspect) - faith - is deliberately 'non-thinking' in the sense that by
definition, you are suspending scepticism and a natural tendancy to
disbelieve.

well, maybe that is what faith means to other people. to me, faith is
more like knowing that being a good person and trying not to hurt
others is the right way to live. could i prove that? certainly not!
or faith is believing that all the events of my life are not
meaningless, that it was not meaningless to love my family and
friends, to seek a consort, and to overcome the occassional impulse as
we all get to end it all. without faith in some thing good, what
reason do i have to live? what reason would any of us have to live,
if we did not believe that there was some goodness in living? why go
to the school if we do not have faith that, so doing, we would have a
chance at a better future? everyone has faith in some things, it may
not be gods but nonetheless, humans are a creature of faith and i've
never met anyone who didn't have some kind of faith in something.
look at the Humanist Manifesto, for example, and you will see phrases
like, "All human beings have an inherent worth and dignity." That is
one of the most grandiose statements of faith ever put forth! What
'evidence' suggests that humans have worth and dignity, or even that
worth and dignity exist as more than manmade concepts?

It's the process of sending children to religious schools to be
taught, again, the traditional ways of thinking about the universe,
as well as the foundations of hatred of other, equally dogmatic,
creeds, passed on from generation to generation which, I agree with
Dawkins, is non-thinking. It is clearly divisive and must be the root
cause of much of the evil on the planet today.

root causes lie in the human animal, not in the institutions which he
has made; as an evolutionary biologist you should know that

If in 1948, somehow, the UN had managed to pass a universal law that
every school on the planet would no longer teach religion - and if,
miraculously, every parent of those children was educated enough to
recognise the benefits, I suspect the world would be a far better and
safer place to live than it is today.

no faith, eh? yet without the slightest evidence you suggest that
getting rid of teaching religion to children would make the world a
better place? all i have to say is, maybe, but i have never seen any
evidence that humans can solve their problems by such absurd
simplicities. i think that the human animal, if it does not change
consciously, is not going to be improved by the removal or addition of
any institution(s)

Of course, when one looks at the history of science all of the early
breakthroughs were done with 'God' as a significant backdrop. These
people were clearly big thinkers. But as progress was made we
increasing learned how these 'Gods' were less important to explain
everything.

you're taking 'Gods' in the supernatural sense, which is a relatively
contemporary and entirely unnatural way for people to think about
'gods'. throughout human history most people believed in animism,
whereby the gods were a part of nature, not 'supernatural'.
therefore, scientific discoveries only contradict certain ideas of
gods. if you think i'm nuts for saying so, i suggest reading a bit
about Einstein's religious faith, whereby he took each scientific
discovery as a mystical experience in itself

One of Dawkins' points was that it is particularly astonishing that
despite this advancement, religions today seem to be on the rise
again, actually threatening the teaching of science.

again, you seem under the illusion that science must needs reduce
religiousness of faith; the people who threaten the teaching of
science within religion are those who, unfortunately, agree with you.
if they would evolve their faith along with our understanding of the
universe, no conflict would arise. the need to learn, and the need to
make meaning in our lives, are not contradictory impulses unless you
believe that they are

Or perhaps this unverse that we're in is just a model of a universe
in some great super-computer somewhere?

The point about all of these forms of faith is the main thing he
argues for... where's the evidence?

my point exactly. whether you believe the universe was 'created' or
that it 'developed naturally', either way it is a statement of faith
without evidence. all we know at this point is that, as we understand
the universe to date, everything we have studied operates under
natural laws. but an amoeba in a petri dish could come to the same
conclusion studying the environment around it and never know that it
was in a laboratory in a test sample. we all imagine the meaning of
our existence through whatever metaphor satisfies us the most, but
science cannot even remotely claim to provide evidence for any
particular metaphor, not even the 'existence as a natural phenomenon'
metaphor, however much we as scientists may prefer it

Please, just remind me about some of those positives...

well, there is the sense of community, the opportunity for experiences
which transcend normal everyday consciousness, the power to make
meaning of our lives, the wisdom to accept and try to overcome our
limitations and weaknesses, the insight to look optimistically about
our lives and futures, the impetus not to regard ourselves as 'victims
of fate', and many many others. if you have never seen the positives,
well that is unfortunate, but i can assure you that they do exist. of
course, i too had a hard time finding those positives until I
discovered Unitarian Universalism, which in my opinion should be the
only religion because UUs embrace ALL religions; you can be any
religion or non-religion or combination of religions within UU, the
only rule being that everyone respect everyone else's path as a valid
path for the individual to discover personal truths and improve their
lives. in a single day at a UU Church I have attended an interfaith
service, a buddhist ceremony, a christian study group, a humanist
meeting, a pagan ritual, and a Jewish sabbath, and have enjoyed and
felt welcomed at each of them. the UU Church, in other words, proves
that it is not the religions or the faiths that make the problem, it
is the ideologically-structure institutions, and that when the
ideological structure is removed from the institution then all faiths
and non-faiths can coexist peacefully. in point of fact, the most
dogmatic members of UU Churches tend to be their HUMANISTS, who are
sometimes so anti-religious that they try to dominate Unitarian
Universalism even when the rest of us are just trying to get along.
as it happens, though, humanists are their own worst enemies, driving
away anyone who doesn't feel inclined towards anti-religiosity, which
is just a form of bigotry as bad as the reverse


I'm sadenned that you might think that, Art. When one considers the
unfathomable mass of religious propaganda that is dished out daily to
billions of people, especially children, all over the world, and has
been for millenia, it seems extremely unfair that when one scientist
has the courage to decide that 'enough is enough' and that someone
ought to put up the case for atheism by writing a few articles and
making a couple of TV documentaries urging people to think about
these things more, he is criticised for being "more distasteful" than
priests.

case for atheism? ROFLMAO! by definition there cannot be a case for
atheism, because a negative can never be proven. in principle,
someone might be able to prove reasonably that God DID exist, but it
is a physical impossibility to prove (or even provide evidence) that
God or anything else DOES NOT exist. a true atheist wouldn't care
what you believed, because there is no God to pat you on the back and
tell you you were right and no devil to punish a person for being
wrong. the reason why i find it more distateful coming from a
scientist than a priest is that scientists SHOULD know better, and in
my opinion have no right to complain about the other side if they are
just as a bad. i have never had a problem with criticizing religion,
but Dawkins makes no secrets that he thinks the entire world would be
better off without it. some researchers have said the same thing
about sex; sex is probably the number one cause of violence around the
world and throughout history, be it the desire for sex, the fear of
rape, retaliation for adultery, etc... but no reasonable person would
suggest that we should all try to get rid of our sex drives; we just
need to modify our behaviors with regards to sex and violence

Well that is certainly an encouraging sentiment. If all the
Christians, Jews and Muslims converted to Buddhism, it would
certainly be a step in the right direction.

actually, when men like Dawkins argue against 'religion', it is almost
strictly the Judeo-Christian-Islamic faiths that they are arguing
against. this is like arguing against socialism entirely on the basis
of Chinese/Russian/Cuban communism. Judeo-Christian-Islamic faiths DO
NOT speak on behalf of all religious faith, just because they seem to
want to

I think Dawkins would say that if an idea is not backed up by
evidence we should be sceptical of believing it. That's the point.

certainly 'skeptical' is good, but in my opinion there is not a truly
skeptical atheist on the planet, because they have already accepted a
belief for which there can be absolutely no proof, i.e. God does not
exist. some try to claim that atheism is "doubting but not
necessarily disbelieving", however, that would be agnosticism. it may
be arguable that agnosticism is a properly scientific attitude towards
God, but atheism is at least as unscientific as theism because it
still depends on a belief without evidence; it may be even more
unscientific because it is a belief that cannot even in principle be
used to generate any testable and falsifiable hypotheses


Well, clearly such things cannot be disproven and thus do
not 'contradict' science. But if we take the central tenet of
Dawkins' argument and ask 'what evidence is there for 'life after
death', or for any God or for prayer power'? The answer is,
inevitably, nil.

well, i disagree there. i accept the overwhelming evidence of life
after death from NDE research, and 'prayer power' is one phenomenon
that in principle at least is supported by seventy plus years of
parapsychological experimental research. herein lies one of my
problems with people who argue along the same lines as Dawkins: they
say there is no evidence, yet they ignore the evidence that does exist
and declare that it does not exist despite that. they have already
decided that they KNOW that there is no god, no life after death, no
powers of the mind, etc... and since they KNOW this they will not hear
any evidence to the contrary


It seems to me that when we ask the question: 'Which is more likely,
that God(s) created Man or that Man created God(s)?' The evidence is
overwhelmingly in favour of the later. If we assume that as a
foundation for thinking about the universe, we should all be atheists
if we are basing our thinking on evidence, if not, we're just
deluding ourselves.

again, what evidence? you cannot throw around the term 'evidence'
like that. there is no definite evidence either way on the issue of
whether God(s) exist and whether they made us or we made them, merely
things that, if your faith is to do so, you may choose to interpret in
your suppport. if you have faith in atheism, then you may choose to
interpret things as 'supporting' your belief, and vice versa, but it
is merely self-serving delusion. besides, there are and have been
religions which believe that we did create the gods, but that they
thereby became essentially real (i.e. Telesmic images). so, it is
dubious to argue against a definition of religion that only some
religions promote. at least specify that your arguments are against
Judeo-Christian-Islamic faiths and not at all the other religions,
because if you don't understand other religions then you can never
challenge them properly. and furthermore, as i have said, atheism is
at least as unscientific as theism, perhaps more so because theism at
least does not in principle deny the possibility of finding evidence,
whereas atheism is a belief in one thing based on entirely on
perceived lack of evidence for the opposite, and i cannot see any
logic in "belief by inversion". agnosticism may have a claim to being
based on the evidence, or rather on the lack of conclusive evidence
either way, but atheism does not even remotely meet the yardstick of
scientific evidence, in fact it does not even measure on that scale.
faith is faith, and if religious people are deluding themselves
through faith, then atheists are as well

> Anyways, that is my opinion.

Which is always welcome, of course.

Algis Kuliukas


thank you, as is yours

Art Basaran


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