Guacamole's off the cuff reactions to the God Delusion

[guacamole]

So I started reading the God Delusion. I want to use this thread to kind of journal my thoughts and responses to it. Feel free to comment:

Imagine, with John Lennon, a world with no religion. Imagine no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7, no Crusades, no witch-hunts, no Gunpowder Plot, no Indian partition, no Israeli/Palestinian wars, no Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no persecution of Jews as ‘Christ-killers’, no Northern Ireland ‘troubles’, no ‘honour killings’, no shiny-suited bouffant-haired televangelists fleecing gullible people of their money (‘God wants you to give till it hurts’). Imagine no Taliban to blow up ancient statues, no public beheadings of blasphemers, no flogging of female skin for the crime of showing an inch of it.

I'm imagining a world where people still have gratuitous reason to be horrible to each other. Do the new Atheists really believe that we'd live in some kind of Utopia without religion? Haven't we tried this in the former Communist states? Sure, you might not have those specific issues and atrocities, but we humans are good at massive conflict.

Imagine, with Guacamole, a world with no Atheism. Imagine no Gulag Archipelago. A world without Stalin's mechanistic democide: 40 million + dead because the Supreme Soviet was accountable to no one, especially not God. Imagine 16 to 40 million lives saved from the "Great Leap Forward." Imagine no re-set to the year Zero in Cambodia. etc. etc. etc.

Anyone who wants to dispute that the murderous Communist regimes of the Twentieth Century were not atheistic should try some google fu.

fwiw,
guacamole

[Andius]

I am actually surprised that even to this day, the idea of abolishing or suppressing religious worldviews with the intent of propagating peace still persists, as if secularity has it's hands clean or were some sort of "Wonder solution" to the World's problems...

[Adrift]

Without religion, the Taliban wouldn't be blowing up religious statues because of religion...?

[guacamole]

If this book works as I intend, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down. What presumptuous optimism! Of course, dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads are immune to argument, their resistance built up over years of childhood indoctrination using methods that took centuries to mature (whether by evolution or design). Among the more effective immunological devices is a dire warning to avoid even opening a book like this, which is surely a work of Satan.

A lovely example of an ad hominem--of course it wouldn't be that anything here is any less than persuasive--it's that the religious readers are blockheads--immune to logic, brainwashed, etc.

[Boxing Pythagoras]

Imagine, with Guacamole, a world with no Atheism. Imagine no Gulag Archipelago. A world without Stalin's mechanistic democide: 40 million + dead because the Supreme Soviet was accountable to no one, especially not God. Imagine 16 to 40 million lives saved from the "Great Leap Forward." Imagine no re-set to the year Zero in Cambodia. etc. etc. etc.

Anyone who wants to dispute that the murderous Communist regimes of the Twentieth Century were not atheistic should try some google fu.

While I certainly agree that Dawkins' argument, here, is fairly poor, I'm not sure if your reply is much better. Dawkins listed atrocities which were primarily (or, at the very least, ostensibly) motivated by religion. The Soviet body count, however, does not seem to have been primarily or even ostensibly motivated by atheism. While there certainly were cases in which people were persecuted for their religion by the Soviet government, the overwhelmingly vast majority of the 40 million deaths attributed to the Soviet regimes were not directly motivated by atheism. Do you really think that the Soviet government would have acted much differently if it identified with Christianity rather than atheism?

[Boxing Pythagoras]

Without religion, the Taliban wouldn't be blowing up religious statues because of religion...?

I thought the exact same thing. "Hey, Professor Dawkins, why do you think those statues were carved in the first place?"

[Andius]

While I certainly agree that Dawkins' argument, here, is fairly poor, I'm not sure if your reply is much better. Dawkins listed atrocities which were primarily (or, at the very least, ostensibly) motivated by religion. The Soviet body count, however, does not seem to have been primarily or even ostensibly motivated by atheism. While there certainly were cases in which people were persecuted for their religion by the Soviet government, the overwhelmingly vast majority of the 40 million deaths attributed to the Soviet regimes were not directly motivated by atheism. Do you really think that the Soviet government would have acted much differently if it identified with Christianity rather than atheism?

I think the argument given in there lies in the premise of the views and values espoused by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union were inherently anti-theistic (which is an offshoot of anti-burgouiseness in their eyes). And considering how the Orthodox Church of Russia had a cozy status with the Imperial regime of the old czars, it was no doubt the Bolsheviks were intent on nixing every trace of that institution to insure party and State hegemony amongst the populace.

But question: What would you say was the primary motivation in the case of the Soviet State? All ears here (or eyes in this case... hehehe)

[Adrift]

While I certainly agree that Dawkins' argument, here, is fairly poor, I'm not sure if your reply is much better. Dawkins listed atrocities which were primarily (or, at the very least, ostensibly) motivated by religion. The Soviet body count, however, does not seem to have been primarily or even ostensibly motivated by atheism. While there certainly were cases in which people were persecuted for their religion by the Soviet government, the overwhelmingly vast majority of the 40 million deaths attributed to the Soviet regimes were not directly motivated by atheism. Do you really think that the Soviet government would have acted much differently if it identified with Christianity rather than atheism?

I think a case could be made that the events that Dawkins mentions were largely political as well. He mentions the Troubles ... there's that old joke about the guy who goes into a bar. An Irishman eyeballs him and asks, "are you a Catholic or a Protestant". The man replies, "I'm an atheist". The Irishman replies, "Okay, but are you a Catholic atheist, or a Protestant atheist". Perhaps that's what you were getting at though.

Dinesh D'Souza in his debate with Daniel Dennett actually gets into this portion of Dawkins book, and discusses the objection that atheist regimes didn't commit their crimes in the name of atheism:

Ah, looks like you can't display the player at the exact time. Anyways, it's at 36:33 for anyone interested.

[guacamole]

While I certainly agree that Dawkins' argument, here, is fairly poor, I'm not sure if your reply is much better. Dawkins listed atrocities which were primarily (or, at the very least, ostensibly) motivated by religion. The Soviet body count, however, does not seem to have been primarily or even ostensibly motivated by atheism.

Atheism was the official state ideology of the Soviet Union and the position on the State as the highest authority sans God justified atrocities. No one was waving a "This is for the glory of atheism" banner, but historical documents prove that the atheism at the core of the communist state was the ideological abettor to the slaughter.

At any rate, there's a larger ad hominem fallacy at work here in Dawkins, one that I was trying to parody. I do not argue that atheism's truth claims are wrong because it's been responsible for gratuitous human suffering--but this is the fallacy implied by the new atheists--that the wickedness of theists is evidence against God. Let's be direct, theistic wickedness is not relevant evidence for the existence or non-existence of God. Atheistic wickedness is not relevant evidence for the existence or non-existence of God. Theistic wickedness is evidence of theistic wickedness--it might imply that the believers are bad at following their own religion, it might imply that they do not actually believe their religion, but it is not logical evidence that the religion is false.

An atheistic logician needs to point out the fallacy to the likes of Harris and Dawkins. The problem, imo, is that some atheists who have accepted the foolish new Atheist notion that religion is the only thing that makes a good person be wicked and therefore have committed themselves to defending the fallacy in general, and specifically, a delusional denial of history in refusing that acknowledge that, at least in the case of the communist atrocities, atheism is also capable of making good people do bad things.

While there certainly were cases in which people were persecuted for their religion by the Soviet government, the overwhelmingly vast majority of the 40 million deaths attributed to the Soviet regimes were not directly motivated by atheism. Do you really think that the Soviet government would have acted much differently if it identified with Christianity rather than atheism?

That's exactly the point I'm making about Dawkins. If someone wasn't justifying despicable violence by X, then someone would be justifying despicable violence by y. In other words, humans don't need ideology to do evil. Humans often do evil.

fwiw,
guacamole

[seer]

While the overwhelmingly vast majority of the 40 million deaths attributed to the Soviet regimes were not directly motivated by atheism.

How about the ideal, atheistic ideal in this instance, that the individual has no inherent rights, that the State is paramount and we humans are here to serve the State collective. This makes murder for the greater good not only acceptable but an ethical positive.

[TheWall]

Dr mr Lennon. A world without God would be meaningless and arbitrary as well as nonexistant.

[Starlight]

Do the new Atheists really believe that we'd live in some kind of Utopia without religion?

I think the world would be a much better place.

Haven't we tried this in the former Communist states?

Dawkins discusses this later in the book. He argues that atheism wasn't the motivation for the bad things they did. They did bad things and also happened to be atheists, and it's no more relevant to the explanation of why they were doing bad things than their hair color is relevant.

My own thoughts on the Communist states run along a different track: They were authoritarian, and tried to enforce a religious viewpoint on the populace via that authoritarianism. It was their authoritarianism that was bad, it was their authoritarianism that led to the deaths of millions. It simply isn't relevant what that enforced religious viewpoint happens to have been - it could have been Buddhism, Islam or Christianity for all that it didn't matter.

What primarily seems to matter in politics is authoritarianism vs freedom. But, secondarily, there does seem to be a smaller effect where once freedom is in place and firmly established in a country, if the citizens of that country freely choose to be atheists rather than religious, that country tends to do better and be happier and more successful. If you pull up the UN's study of the happiness of people in different countries, you'll find the top 10 are countries where a huge proportion of people have freely chosen to be atheists, and the bottom 10 are countries where the rates of atheism are basically zero. Similarly with any measures of successful countries.

So atheism does seem to be much better than religion for a country, but it is not a strong enough effect to counteract the primary effect of authoritarianism which is a stronger and very bad effect.

[guacamole]

I think the world would be a much better place.

Dawkins discusses this later in the book. He argues that atheism wasn't the motivation for the bad things they did. They did bad things and also happened to be atheists, and it's no more relevant to the explanation of why they were doing bad things than their hair color is relevant.

Yeah, and that's true also for some of the conflicts that he mentions, i.e., Northern Ireland.

My own thoughts on the Communist states run along a different track: They were authoritarian, and tried to enforce a religious viewpoint on the populace via that authoritarianism. It was their authoritarianism that was bad, it was their authoritarianism that led to the deaths of millions. It simply isn't relevant what that enforced religious viewpoint happens to have been - it could have been Buddhism, Islam or Christianity for all that it didn't matter.

I find your use of the word "religious" here, in light of the wider context of this discussion, to be dishonest.

What primarily seems to matter in politics is authoritarianism vs freedom. But, secondarily, there does seem to be a smaller effect where once freedom is in place and firmly established in a country, if the citizens of that country freely choose to be atheists rather than religious, that country tends to do better and be happier and more successful. If you pull up the UN's study of the happiness of people in different countries, you'll find the top 10 are countries where a huge proportion of people have freely chosen to be atheists, and the bottom 10 are countries where the rates of atheism are basically zero. Similarly with any measures of successful countries.

So atheism does seem to be much better than religion for a country, but it is not a strong enough effect to counteract the primary effect of authoritarianism which is a stronger and very bad effect.

I'll get to that when we consider how atheists seem unable to understand the difference between correlation and causation.

fwiw,
guacamole

[Starlight]

I find your use of the word "religious" here, in light of the wider context of this discussion, to be dishonest.

I'm not sure I even understand what you're referring to. Are you upset that the phrase "enforced religious viewpoint" isn't clear enough that atheism can be a viewpoint on religion?

I'll get to that when we consider how atheists seem unable to understand the difference between correlation and causation.

Okay now you're just utterly trolling.

[shunyadragon]

I think the argument given in there lies in the premise of the views and values espoused by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union were inherently anti-theistic (which is an offshoot of anti-burgouiseness in their eyes). And considering how the Orthodox Church of Russia had a cozy status with the Imperial regime of the old czars, it was no doubt the Bolsheviks were intent on nixing every trace of that institution to insure party and State hegemony amongst the populace.

But question: What would you say was the primary motivation in the case of the Soviet State? All ears here (or eyes in this case... hehehe)

Radical Nationalism like other revolutions in Europe. The undercurrent of anti-Semitism/anti-Jewish beliefs led to Jews being primary targets of ethnic cleansing and persecution. In Russia things do not change much when people took off the Orthodox cross and put on the sickle and hammer, then again when the winds changed they took off the sicle and hammer and put back on the Orthodox cross.