Sometimes the way someone expresses him- or herself gives me much pleasure. This is one of those times. Someone named Terry Eagleton on the limitations of Richard Dawkins’ atheism is worth a read for this very reason – it’s beautiful stuff to read, and certainly on the money with regards to the limits of Dawkins’ comprehension of his pet subject.
Samples:
For Judeo-Christianity, God is not a person in the sense that Al Gore arguably is. Nor is he a principle, an entity, or ‘existent’: in one sense of that word it would be perfectly coherent for religious types to claim that God does not in fact exist… He is the answer to why there is something rather than nothing. God and the universe do not add up to two, any more than my envy and my left foot constitute a pair of objects.
To say that [God] brought [the universe] into being ex nihilo is not a measure of how very clever he is, but to suggest that he did it out of love rather than need.
Jesus… was a joke of a Messiah. He was a carnivalesque parody of a leader who understood, so it would appear, that any regime not founded on solidarity with frailty and failure is bound to collapse under its own hubris.
It’s wonderful, and it made me read it when I really should be working on stuff. You should go read it too. Here’s the link again. All this via Making Light which you should all be reading by now but I know you aren’t.
Y’know it’s funny, I went to Catholic schools until I was 12 and we were always taught that God is basically a person. For that matter most of the people I talk to about religion who call themselves Christian seem to be taking the “God tha Father” thing pretty damned literally.
So it seems to me that there must be a pretty big faith gap in Judeo-Christianity between people who think God is a person-like entity and people who think God is a metaphor or a concept or whatever you want to label it.
I was a atheist in my teens, but atheism now seems to me as dogmatic as any other fundamentalism.
Wow, infinity is a concept, rather than a number. Yipee! Lets start a religion!
This just goes to prove that even well written horseshit is still, well, horseshit.
Atheism can spawn just as much bigotry as any religion.
Funny, Kirsten was talking to me about the same book earlier this week.
And I had a tutor once who seemed to regard ‘The Selfish Gene’ as an alternative bible of sorts.
(bearing in mind the recent post I made on my own blog and that this is in no way a retraction of that)
It’s funny that you can look at an atheism like classical Marxism, and its faith in History is far more “religious” than anything in, say, Zen (and I mean that in a deeper sense than just some conviction that “History will Provide”…)
Still haven’t read the Dawkins book, but the most recent post on my own blog might make clear why it hasn’t been the most propitious time for it….
Pearce: yeah, the God-as-dude thing is around a lot. A personalised God isn’t exactly doctrine, but a God with personality definitely is. It’s kinda weird, though; I always figured that if you think up to God-as-dude you haven’t gone far enough; you need to go further to God-as-unknowable-concept, and then assume God-as-dude is where we meet in the middle. If that makes sense. It did to young me.
M@: Infinity is a concept way more than a number, way I see it!
Samm: Dawkins is damn good on his genetics, but he needs to be reined in on religion. In the heightened atmosphere of the UK his ideas are actually quite combustible.
Andrew: i loved that post of yours. Meant to highlight it here but didn’t. So, belatedly, if you’re interested enough in this post to read the comments, you should also read Andrew’s post sparked up by Dawkins, here:
http://just-another-f–kin-wellingtonian.blogspot.com/2007/01/there-must-be-less-to-life.html