The God Virus..

[onewheeldave 22]

This is an example that sprung to mind:

 

Now, there is a certain class of sophisticated modern theologian who will say something like this: "Good heavens, of course we are not so naive or simplistic as to care whether God exists. Existence is such a 19th-century preoccupation! It doesn't matter whether God exists in a scientific sense. What matters is whether he exists for you or for me. If God is real for you, who cares whether science has made him redundant? Such arrogance! Such elitism."

 

Well, if that's what floats your canoe, you'll be paddling it up a very lonely creek. The mainstream belief of the world's peoples is very clear. They believe in God, and that means they believe he exists in objective reality, just as surely as the Rock of Gibraltar exists. If sophisticated theologians or postmodern relativists think they are rescuing God from the redundancy scrap-heap by downplaying the importance of existence, they should think again. Tell the congregation of a church or mosque that existence is too vulgar an attribute to fasten onto their God, and they will brand you an atheist. They'll be right.

 

Taken from a column Dawkin's wrote alongside Karen Armstrong who is the epitome of the "personal relationship with their God as they see Him/Her/It" theists who you like to pretend predominate. In reality they are so far from predominating that the major organisation in the moderate wing of the creationism (which of course represents the majority of the population in the USA) published an article slating Armstrong.

 

"Yesterday, Libby Purves wrote about Professor Richard Dawkins' television series about Charles Darwin. Richard Dawkins writes in reply:

 

Sir, In her article about episode 1 of my television documentary, The Genius of Charles Darwin, Libby Purves says that I offered the children a choice “as stark as any bonkers tin-hut preacher from the Quivering Brethren shouting: ‘Repent or burn!’ Evolution or God — take your choice, kid! The moment one of them found an ammonite on the beach, Professor Dawkins demanded instant atheism” (Opinion, August 7).

 

That is unjust, to the point of outright mendacity, and an insult to any professional educator. It was the creation-indoctrinated children themselves who made the leap: “Evolution = atheism”. I was scrupulously careful not to make that connection in the presence of the children, although I have made it elsewhere, spelling out the nuanced argument in The God Delusion.

 

She goes on to say, “OK, he is provoked, as we all are, by nutters. But most believers are not creationists.” I expect it’s true that the few believers Libby Purves meets over canapés are not creationists. But “most believers”? Most believers in Bradford? The Scottish Highlands? Pakistan? Indonesia? The Arab world? South America? Indeed, North America? Polls suggest that more than 40 per cent of the British population are creationists. For the subset who call themselves believers, the figure must be considerably more than 50 per cent. Please don’t say “most people”, when what you really mean is Islington and Hampstead Garden Suburb.Source

 

 

I included some such stats in my previous post but you chose to excise them from the text you quoted. Even in the remarkably secular UK the anti-Liberal Catholic Church is the biggest Church. Creationist predominate even in a developed nation like the US.

 

Looking outside the 1st world the stats from piecemeal surveys are all around though a single source is rather hard to come by try this for starters:

 

"Large majorities in Pakistan (79%), Morocco (70%) and Jordan (63%) say they self-identify first as Muslims, rather than as Pakistanis, Moroccans or Jordanians. Even in Turkey, with its more secular traditions, a 43% plurality among Muslims identify primarily with their religion rather than their nationality. Indonesians are closely split with 39% self-identifying as Muslims first, 35% as Indonesians and 26% saying both equally. In Lebanon, however, just 30% of Muslims (this question was not asked of Christians) say they view themselves primarily in terms of their faith, rather than as Lebanese.

 

Islam's Political Influence

Substantial majorities in all but one of the predominantly Muslim countries surveyed – including as many as 85% in Indonesia and 75% in Morocco – say that Islam plays a very large or fairly large role in the political life of their countries.

 

The major exception is Jordan; just 30% of Jordanians now see Islam playing a large political role in that country, a sharp decline from the 50% who said so in the summer of 2002.*

 

In Lebanon as well, those seeing substantial Islamic influence in political life have also declined in number – from 71% in 2002 – but remain in the majority (54%).*

 

Only in Turkey has the proportion of those seeing a large Islamic political influence increased substantially, from 46% in 2002 to 62% currently.*

 

*Edited to reflect corrected figures as of 3-3-07.

 

Further, large majorities in most of these countries welcome the idea of Islam playing a greater role in political life. Here, the exceptions are Turkey, where half of those who see Islam playing a greater role say this as a bad thing; and Lebanon (32% bad thing).

 

Lebanese Muslims and Christians divide on this issue; Muslims who believe Islam's political role is increasing are unanimous in thinking this is a good thing, while Christians mostly view this as a negative development (71%)."

 

 

Just briefly- yes, that is a link to religious believers of the trendy 'personal relationship with God'. Not however necessarily anything to do with contemplatives which are people who spend years and years on an inward quest to find and know God and live by God's will.

 

Believers who put as much energy and meaning into that quest as do the hardcore meditators of, say, Zen Buddhism.

 

A quest that changes them fundamentally and, invariably, leaves them as more peaceful individuals- by which I mean at peace with themselves, the world and their position in it.

 

i.e. the powerful transformative side effects of sustained contemplative spiritual (could be religious, could not be religious) practice.

 

Is there a Dawkins link to that?

 

 

 

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[milquetoast1 10]

Take those same individuals who burned witches or led the inquisitions, take them out of the context of a religious church and, put them in the context of an atheist 'church' or political institution and, I really do think they would perform exactly the same acts.

Nonsense.

 

Exodus 22:18 "Thou shalt not suffer a sorceress to live."

[Karis 11]

I really do wish we'd all just see that religion has good and bad parts and that people can believe if they wish.

 

Then we could stop all this endless arguing about it on the forums!

 

Sometimes, the people arguing against religion are worse than the theists in their overbearing opinions.

 

We are never truly going to know whether God exists and as belief is a personal thing... we might as well just build a big computer, call it Deep Thought, and ask it the answers to life's eternal verities!

[redwhine 10]

Who's to say that Atheism isn't a damaging meme?

Me, my wife's husband and my father's son to name but three.

[redwhine 10]

People need god. If he didn't exist, they would have to invent him.

...which is exactly what they have done.

[redwhine 10]

If everybody followed the basic rules of god e.g Don't kill, don't steal, don't commit adultery ect, then the world would be better.

 

If they don't, then..well. That's where we are now.

 

Don't kill? How many did the (imaginary) great flood kill. And wiping out the cities of the plains (Sodom & Gomorah) took out a few more. Not to mention his own son (or was that suicide, cos they're supposed to be one and the same?).

 

Don't steal? Define steal.

 

Adultery? Didn't he impregnate Joseph's wife? (The whole premise of christianity is based on that!)

[redwhine 10]

Given the lessons learned from history and the fact that the excesses perpetuated by some religious organisations have now been brought under control, can't we just stop the persecution and let each person believe what they want- the last thing we need is a movement of fundamentalist atheists imposing their views on those they consider to be deluded?

 

Well said.

 

So let's get the Lords Spiritual out of the House of Lords and stop all the tax breaks that religions get.

[redwhine 10]

It could be argued that in bygone days that any form of belief could be seen as an atheist view, if that view didn't coincide with your own viewpoint. So in effect there were many "Atheist" societies, they just preached differently to a different God. Believing in God or not wasn't the problem..it was which God you preached to...or not as the case may be.

 

Look up atheism in ANY dictionary.

 

Massive, MASSIVE!, fail.

[onewheeldave 22]

I really do wish we'd all just see that religion has good and bad parts and that people can believe if they wish.

 

 

 

Spot on!

 

 

Sometimes, the people arguing against religion are worse than the theists in their overbearing opinions.

 

 

well... in the interests of diplomacy, I'll certainly agree that they are often 'as bad as..'

[Bloomdido 10]

...which is exactly what they have done.

 

I know and they still cling on to their belief with both hands because the concept of life without meaning or purpose would be too much for them to cope with. Better to believe in some kind of imaginary magic friend, however ridiculous, rather than accept that there is nothing out there (other than about 50 billion galaxies in the known universe) and nowhere to go to once we shuffle this mortal coil.

[donkey 10]

Who's to say that Atheism isn't a damaging meme?

 

How is a refusal to believe something which is illogical and for which there is no evidence a meme? If it is, then millions must be infected with a non belief in the tooth fairy.

[six45ive 10]

I really do wish we'd all just see that religion has good and bad parts and that people can believe if they wish.

 

Of course people can believe what they wish but isn't it better that your beliefs are true or at least have some evidence to back them up.

 

Then we could stop all this endless arguing about it on the forums!

 

You call it arguing, I call it debating.

 

Sometimes, the people arguing against religion are worse than the theists in their overbearing opinions.

 

That's a very subjective statement. How can simply telling the truth as clearly and concisely as possible be the same as having an overbearing opinion?

 

We are never truly going to know whether God exists and as belief is a personal thing... we might as well just build a big computer, call it Deep Thought, and ask it the answers to life's eternal verities!

 

Once again you're making sweeping subjective assertions about things that you simply cannot know.

What evidence do you have that we will never know god exists? Have you got a crystal ball that tells you what advancements science will make in 500 or 5000 or 50000 years time?

My own view is that our understanding of the way the world works through science and the way that human nature has evolved over millenia from studying social sciences such as psychology, history and politics means that there is already overwhelming evidence that a theistic god is nothing more than a Father Xmas for adults.

Edited February 23, 2010 by six45ive