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Phil Tanny's avatar

Dawkins writes, "I am not attacking any particular version of God or gods. I am attacking God, all gods, anything and everything supernatural, wherever and whenever they have been or will be invented.

Here, yet again, we see Dawkins the fundamentalist proclaiming his sweeping, adamant, universally inclusive "one true way". This proclamation, like all others which address themselves to the sweeping question of the nature of everything everywhere, is built upon the muddy ground of immeasurable human ignorance on matters of such enormous scale.

But this is not my complaint. Surely Dawkins, his mirror enemy the Jehovah's Witness, and all the rest of us too are entitled to express our theories on such matters. Such discussion is very unlikely to ever be conclusive, but it can be interesting and entertaining, so seen through that lens Dr. Dawkins makes his contribution to the circus, and helps keep the conversation going. And here I am following his lead in attempting to do the same.

No, my complaint is not with Dr. Dawkin's expression of his views, but with the fact that he is selling them as being a product of reason. If we are to take Dr. Dawkin's advice and abandon the enterprise of religion and replace it with reason, it's essential that we understand what reason is, and most carefully protect it as a methodology.

Reason doesn't care who wins.

Ideology cares about little else.

Reason is not a collection of clever rhetorical arguments one uses to triumph over one's ideological opponents. Reason is an attempt to reach for the truth by the most objective and detached means humanly possible.

Dr. Dawkins and so many of his followers seem to have sincerely confused reason with ideology. And by doing so, year by year they seem to become ever more like the religious ideologues whom they so passionately reject. They are, in essence, arguing with themselves, heretics to their own position.

But then, all of us are heretics in some way or another, to some degree or another.

My position is that all such debates are essentially ego exercises of little substantial value, due to the vast scale of the issues being addressed. And yet, here I am.

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Brian Pond's avatar

Such an incisive and impactful book. It was the first and probably most significant domino leading to a firm conviction in my atheism.

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