I just finished watching both sections of Richard Dawkins’ reading from his new book at Randolph-Macon Women’s College in Lynchburg, VA. Now, I’m quite prepared to dislike Dawkins for his disavowal of moderate believers – a mistake, if he happened to care about my opinion – but other than that he is a wonderful lecturer and author. I have read several of his books on evolution but have not read The God Delusion yet.
Someone told him that Liberty University had dinosaur bones that they had labled as being “5,000 years old”. Dawkins joked that he was bad at maths, but he figured out that would be like saying New York and San Francisco were 70 yards apart. Then one of his readers crunched it and said no, it would be 22 feet.
Having driven across the country a few times – endless hours in a car, stopping at roadside diners, seeing the changing landscape, days gone by; a wonderful experience, really – to mistake that for a distance of 22 feet puts creationism into perspective. And since non-experiential quantities (quantum mechanics, the distance to stars, geological time) are so difficult for the human brain to grasp, such comparisons are a handy tool.
There’s a second half to this post, but I can’t think of it just now. Will come back and update later when it comes to me.
I’ve not read “The God Delusion” yet but I’m excited because it, along with “The Varieties of Scientific Experience by Sagan”, just arrived this morning! I finished “Letter to a Christian Nation” Tuesday and just loved it; I hope these two are just as enjoyable.
I just got started on “The God Delusion” so far its quite good. I was planning to buy one of his older books because I am already perfectly convinced there is no God, but my understanding of evolution is far from complete.
I took me a while to agree but I can full understand Dawkins reasons for saying that moderate rational faith is also a major problem. Its not that they are directly at fault, its that they create a buffer so that we can attack the extremists but we cannot attack what they are extreme about.
Its obvious why many people disagree, and the only time I bring up that point (with theists) is when Im just trying to piss them off, which isn’t everyones style.
I think most will agree that without the moderates it would be easier to talk on the extremists, its that jump to say that therefore we need to get rid of the moderates and the entire idea of religion that is tough for most people.
BTW I like the site, thanks, just thanks for being there.
Kilgore, DoF, I agree on the moderate issue as well, particularly after reading ‘The End of Faith’ by Sam Harris. It’s too easy to say the moderates aren’t hurting anyone.
I too enjoyed “The God Delusion”. I also recommend “Breaking the Spell” by Daniel Dennett, which has some fascinating speculations on the evolution of religion.
Kilgore- all of Dawkins’ books about evolution are good. The one I like the most, for its tracing the web of our relationship to the rest of life, is “The Ancestor’s Tale”.
Do moderate believers implicitly condone or support terrorism? Hard to say. Would the world be a better place if there were no religion? These questions are difficult if not impossible to answer, because religion is integrated so completely and complexly into our culture that it’s impossible to fully imagine what a world without religion would be like, and how it would solve problems differently. Sure, religions are the source of much misery. But Saddam Hussein was the source of much misery too, and look what happened when he was removed from power. Did anyone predict the results? Nope.
Wait – no one predicted what happened when Saddam was removed from power? I think practically everyone saw that one coming. Even George HW Bush said one of the reasons he didn’t invade earlier was the probability of “sectarian violence”.
A world without religion? John Lennon imagined it, I have more difficulty. I’d be happy if people would just internalize the bumper sticker:
When God tells you to kill
JUST SAY NO
Ah – I knew the second half to this post would come to me eventually. Well actually it’s more like the second 8/1 of this post.