Richard Dawkins has a bright idea: Atheists are the new gays. Is he joking? Not at all. The bestselling author of The God Delusion has been suggesting for two years now that atheists can follow the example of gays. You see, gays have found a good name. Gays used to be called homosexual, but then they decided to pick a positive-sounding name like "gay." Suddenly the meaning of the term "gay" was entirely appropriated by homosexuals. Dawkins cited this example in advocating that atheists call themselves "brights." After all, atheist is a somewhat negative term because it defines itself by what it is opposed to. "Bright" sounds so much happier and, more important, smarter. "Bright" kind of reflects the high opinion that atheists have of their own intellectual abilities. Even the stupidest village atheist gets to pat himself on the back and place himself in the tradition of science and philosophy by calling himself a "bright."
Dawkins has also suggested that atheists, like gays, should come out of the closet. Well, what if they don't want to? I don't know if Dawkins would support "outing" atheists. Can an atheist "rights" group be far behind? Hate crimes laws to protect atheists? Affirmative action for unbelievers? An Atheist Annual Parade, complete with dancers and floats? Atheist History Month?
Honestly, I think the whole atheist-gay analogy is quite absurd. How bright is it for Dawkins to urge atheists to come out of the closet in the style of the all-American boy standing up on the dining table of his public high school and confessing that he is a homosexual? Dawkins, being British, doesn't seem to recognize that this would not win many popularity contests in America. And if Dawkins' public relations skills seem lacking in this area, they are positively abysmal when they come to building support for science. Remember that Dawkins is professor of the public understanding of science. He has a chair funded by a Microsoft multimillionaire. If I were that guy, I'd withdraw the support, not because I disagree with Dawkins, but because I think he is setting back the cause of science. Basically Dawkins is saying if you are religious, then science is your enemy. Either you choose God or you choose science. No wonder that so many Americans say they are opposed to evolution. They believe that evolution is atheism masquerading as science, and Dawkins confirms their suspicions. Indeed Dawkins takes the same position as the most ignorant fundamentalist: you can have Darwin or you can have the Bible but you can't have both.
Dawkins is in some ways a terrible representative for atheism, which I'm glad about because a bad cause deserves a bad leader. He is also a terrible advocate for science, which I'm sad about because science deserves all the support it can get.
Reader Comments ( Page 7 of 30)
91. MJZimmer88......It would seem that with your "northern" educational credentials you would be able to construct a cohesive, coherent, rational sentence and then be able to spell the words correctly. You should consider expanding your language skills and "come on down" south and repeat the 8th grade. duggdone
Doug Dunn at 2:02AM on Nov 12th 2007
92. Allow me an olive branch.
I don't want christians to stop believing in god, christ, heaven, and all that. I believe that belief is an important, even critical aspect of human individuality. It is a part of our self identity and self integrity. I know that some people must have christianity in their lives. I don't pity these people. I don't envy them either. I am not them. They are not me. In the private life, a person's faith is as much my business as their sex lives: ie none.
So please. Have fun going to church and the after church social. I know I used to always love watermelon and cold fried chicken after church. Have fun. And I hope you do have your happiness after death. I don't think you will, but I hope for your sake that you are right and will have the eternal existance you desire.
But. That terrible word...
But please keep your faith and religion to yourself. First. Not every one believes as you do. Some believe in Yaweh. Some in Allah. Some in enlightenment. Others in Nirvana, Elysium, or Valhalla. Not one of you can prove your beliefs are true, so please stop trying to convince us. I understand they are true for you. They will never be true for me. In matters of faith, truth is the most subjective thing imaginable. So please respect as you wish to be respected, and keep it to yourselves.
And especially don't... do not... try to make christian values into law. Just don't. The law affects everyone. Everyone and anyone. It affects the christian, jew, and muslim all the same. Would you think a law requiring you to wear a burka on penalty of being disfigured fair? The Taliban thought so, per their interpretations of faith. Are yours to be more acceptable because you think christianity is right and muslims are wrong?
This is why atheists get bent out of shape over legislation and law based on religious values. There are many kinds of values, many of them completely unassociated with theism. That can be debated on a purely humanistic level. Where demographics and statisitics can be employed, verified, or rejected.
For instance I understand all about your moral objection to the man-boy love movement of NAMBLA. Yes, deuteronomy and leviticus both say gay sex is wrong. But there are other arguments against NAMBLA such as the ability of a minor to give fair and equal consent to have sex. There are psychological studies of the affects of molestation and pederasty. There are first hand human accounts. And all of these support banning an action that is immoral to your faith, and that transcends religiousity of one group.
We can work together. But only if we stop bashing our heads to pieces trying to be more correct than the other.
Somber at 1:30PM on Nov 9th 2007
93. Give it up already, Dinesh. This is like O'Reilly's War on Christmas--a non-issue. Athiests aren't a threat to you unless you want to base government policy on Christian beliefs, eg. homosexuality should be outlawed, abstinence should be enforced, or other nonsense like that. You're starting to sound like the paranoid guy on the corner who says the end of the world is coming. Except that guy is not so full of hate. You're more like Fred Phelps, the "God Hates Fags" guy. Or maybe you don't believe what you write at all and are a performance artist like Ann Coulter. Either way, enough already. Stop picking fights.
P.S. AOL? Are you sure you want to fan these flames of hate? I mean, this is not a once in awhile thing, this is a constant, daily attack.
JJ at 5:05PM on Nov 9th 2007
94. Sometimes, I think that people never read anything. They just have opinions It's just what they are thinking at the time. One has to stop,look, and listen before crossing a railroad track. Why can't it be done in all things. There is evidence for Christianity. Does anyone take the time to find out about it? There is evidence for Science. I am one Christian that believes in science. But that does not take away form my faith. My belief is in God, and Jesus the Christ. faith that is not blind but in historical evidence. Science is good, we need it for all kinds of things. But it has never proved there is no, God. It never will. Please do some thinking before you post. There is Ignorance on both sides. Good people in all,no, matter what you believe. Oh by the way I am in the south, I am also a Democrate. Running a country takes a President who is for all the people. Again that never interfears with my faith. Not religion but faith.
(The Christian faith is faith in Christ. It's value or worth is not in the one believing but in the One believed, not in the one trusting but in the One trusted.) Please excuse my spelling my typing is old because I have old fingers.
Lucy at 1:41PM on Nov 9th 2007
95. You're preaching, Rita, no matter how much you want to couch it. You are preaching. It's rude. Stop preaching.
Knight_of_BAAWA at 1:53PM on Nov 9th 2007
96. DINESH D'SOUZA - - - YOU ARE A CRACKPOT !
THERE IS NO GOD !
Daniel Mullane at 9:28PM on Nov 9th 2007
97. tony, what does communism have to do with anything? Don't tell me you're one of those idiots who believes the myth that atheism has something to do with communism, are you?
Knight_of_BAAWA at 1:56PM on Nov 9th 2007
98. Ken Berg,
Too bad that catholic regimes rarely had such tolerance.
Knight_of_BAAWA at 1:58PM on Nov 9th 2007
99. I’ve posted the idea before that we should stop posting to this blog because it serves to promote ideas that are extreme and should be marginal. I know that there are ‘believers’ and others who will disagree with my assessments of DD’s blog. And, since I haven’t stopped posting I couldn’t be too serious about my proposal. Actually, I find many of the posts entertaining and many informative. I do wish, though, that it would be in the context of a more intelligent blog. I’m not saying, of course, that DD is not intelligent—he is. And, I’m not saying that his blogs are not at all clever—they are perversely clever in that they seem to be designed to appear persuasive and that they appeal to ‘the lowest common denominator’
Re # 22 from William Hays—the multiple universes / inflationary big-bang cosmology is interesting. You may have read Lee Smolin’s work—he says something similar. It’s interesting that the different universes are weakly or not at all connected. I’ve done some work from a quite different angle that shows that an entire lack of connection, i.e. over all time and space, is impossible even though at any particular time there may be no interaction. I just read—October13-19 issue of NewScientist—of the idea of a second time dimension. We can conceive of additional dimensions of space but what could a second dimension of time be? How could fundamental processes have two fundamental rates at the same ‘time?’ There are various traditionally recognized problems with an additional time dimension, e.g. negative probability, but Itzhak Bars claims to have resolved them. He says that a second time dimension would resolve problems such as asymmetries, not observed in experiments, of standard QCD (Quantum Chromodynamics.) Of course, Bars ideas are still rather hypothetical but suggest that there’s more reality under than the rug than has been imagined and hence one of my favorite Shakespeare quotes from Hamlet which goes roughly ‘There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’
Given the idea of multiverses with different—laws of—physics it seems reasonable that some of the different universes might have extremely different physics (compared to our physics.) Just a speculation but perhaps there are universes in which there are beings rather like us in their capabilities but there are also super-beings…
Almost the entire discussion of ‘God’ in the western world is predicated on the monotheistic Judaic / Christian / Islamic notion of One God—a supreme being that is rather external to ‘this world.’ His (her) dynamics, to use the terminology of physics, are not the dynamics of our world; the one dynamics created the other. The notion seems—or tends to seem—absurd to us (except ‘believers’) but the idea of multiverses puts a dent in that absurdity
There are notions of God that are other than the monotheistic remote-like God of the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Buddhism doesn’t say much of God and Buddha himself shunned such concerns. Hinduism is complex and admits many varieties; in the Vedanta version there is Brahman that is one being—the entire universe and that would be all the universes in the multiverse language—that is identical to Atman the self of you and I and everyone else; to be ‘realized’ is to know this. In the Western notion anyone who believes he or she is God is delusional; in Hinduism that belief is not quite as delusional. Of course, Vedanta would not have you think you are God but, rather, that you partake in God. ‘I am not God but I cannot be other than God.’ In modern terms, you and I partake of the power of the (entire) universe; this is rather obvious since our atoms are no different than the atoms of the far flung corners of the galaxy. And when, if ever, we encounter the ‘other’ multiverses we may find certain laws and elements that lie below and ground our local laws and elements (elementary particles) and it will still be true that we partake of the power of all being
Before I leave these speculative ideas I want to comment on the Abrahamic religions. Despite their similarities they are and have often been in conflict despite their similarities. Without reference to content this suggests that there is something savage to these religions. However, I am not one of those who say that ‘religion is bad.’ Rather, I think that there are parts of religion that do not make sense anymore. If religion would respond to changing knowledge (science…) it might be more relevant (religion does speak to a part of human nature that science including psychology may speak of but does not address) and, as suggested by the speculations on multiverses above, these parts may not be as absurd as is often thought to be the case on the scientific view
Is there any foundation to the speculations? (When I use the word speculation I’m thinking more of my use of the idea of multiverses above than to the scientific work on multiverses)
I referred to some work that I have done in the second paragraph of this post. This work is accessible in my website http://www.horizons-2000.org. The view there is rather different from that of modern science including the work on multiverses. I’m not going to reproduce what I say there for that would make this post far too long. I should say, however, that the ‘theory’ I’ve developed, while it appears strange at first, does not contradict ‘common sense’ or science (in there valid parts.) One approach to my theory is to ask what inferences can be made from the empirical data of our senses and of science. Given a set of data, laws are often derived in science by finding the simplest or in some sense most reasonable ‘equation’ that fits the data. Although this sounds ad hoc it is not—it is ad hoc in the beginning but after this is done in more and more contexts and as the laws are adapted so that they mesh while still matching the data (this of course is part of why genius is significant) a coherent and persuasive picture emerges. The picture begins to appear necessary. But science (e.g. big-bang cosmology) shows its own limits: there are limits of time, space and variety of being; at the lower limits are scales so small that modern science gives no guarantee that space-time has meaning at that level; at the long range limits, big-bang cosmology yields to the possibility of multiverses that are infinitely varied and that are at least explanatory in that they eliminate the question ‘why is our cosmos so fine tuned and special.’ To go back to the question of what inference we can make from the data we’ve seen that what is done in science is to make the most reasonable inference; i.e., science may become more and more reasonable and persuasive in building up a coherent picture but the element of hypothesis is (has not been) entirely eliminated. Suppose, however, we did not want to make any hypothesis—assumption—at all. What law could we come up with that made no assumption or hypothesis? The—an—answer is Logic. This is an intuitive starting point for my ‘theory.’ In my essays (website) I do the following. I provide a rigorous foundation for the ‘theory.’ I show how other thinkers such as Leibniz, Hume and Wittgenstein have glimpsed the theory; they did not however develop a positive or systematic theory out of their insights. The theory has momentous conclusions. Some of these conclusions appear to be absurd and have made me question my ideas over and over. The theory however does not at all disagree with science and in some cases, I have been able to suggest a foundation for the ideas of quantum theory and Einstein’s theory of gravitation; the ‘theory’ is consistent with the idea of multiple times and provides an interpretation for it; the ‘theory’ independently leads to the necessity of multiverses and shows that there cannot be ‘no-interaction.’ My ideas suggest new directions for ‘religion’ but I haven’t developed the thought (very far.) These thoughts have taken a chunk out of my morning but I will return
Anil Mitra at 2:03PM on Nov 9th 2007
100. I, for one, do not accept the oft-told 'statistic'
that only about 10% of the population are atheists.
To quote an old phrase "I keep running into those
ten percenters".
When polls purport to signify that believers in God
are in the vast majority, I find myself asking, "Are
they voting that way because they are afraid to admit to being an atheist?" One has only to look at
church and temple attendance figures to come to the
conclusion that those who stay away have become, in
essence, atheists. Ex-churchgoers, especially, are
afraid to admit their now-accepted non-belief in God because they still have a smidgeon of the old
religious fear which their parents had instilled in
them - "Those who don't accept God are doomed to an
eternity in hell!!"
Humans grow up with a God-belief drummed into them
by the believers. Atheists are those who have evolved from belief in God; i.e. they put reason
ahead of faith.
I do believe that Mr. D'Souza is a "closet atheist"
who has come to the conclusion that there are still
many God-believers who will buy his books.
Nostradamus
Ed Early at 2:02PM on Nov 9th 2007
101. I think we should really be thanking DD for giving atheists a forum. Very few people in todays society have unified atheists as much as he has been lately. As Linda said, its nice to know how many others are out there. When i meet someone new, it never even occurs to me to think about what religion they are. I have read every comment in the last few days and i support those who are supporting 'freedom of religion'. Believe what you want but stop trying to "save" everyone. Church is for worship and schools are for learning. It seems like a reasonable arraingment and I for one would like to keep it that way.
a born atheist at 2:08PM on Nov 9th 2007
102. Sorry, Lucy, but it's a concrete block for me to swallow theism. And I would like to know what your "evidence" of god is.
I was raised with the freedom to pick whatever religion I want to follow: so I chose none. I feel fortunate to not have had to overcome the indoctrination that little children get in religion.
Linda at 2:27PM on Nov 9th 2007
103. People aren't to believe what they WANT to believe, they are to believe in what they DO believe. Mind my nuances.
Should people believe what they WANT? Is it truly right to believe in something because you CHOOSE or PREFER to believe? It gives you no truth or insight, only comfort and an artificial grip on sanity, or shaking off the weight of uncertainty by filling in the answers. I'd like to believe I'll be reincarnated, but have nothing to suggest that death is anything more than death.
Mokele Mbembe at 2:37PM on Nov 9th 2007
104. D'Idiot is trying to sell more books and get rich, so he can go on the website Wealthy MacacaMingle.com
dan k at 2:40PM on Nov 9th 2007
105. I've just about had enough of Christians that think their religion is the only path to salvation and therefore make it their life's humanitarian mission to SAVE all the other people that differ in beliefs. If Jesus really meant that, then he was just wrong, or the rest of His message, the part about REALLY loving others, makes no sense. And that's the only good part.
If you are as good as the Christian that gets into heaven, but you don't, ONLY because you didn't believe in Christ, then the religion is more about membership than real goodness in any form, END OF SUBJECT. I have zero respect for the hypocrites. Go save yourselves, oh misinterpreters of whatever real value was in Christ's message. You throw out the baby and drink the bathwater. I have to try not to get upset or angry at you, since I'm a father and I know when errant children need correction, but you infants are inexcusable. Too bad you never learned to see the world without the blinders of your faith.
You believers out there that think I'm wrong are victims of mass psychosis; therefore your judgments are of no consequence. I waste my time trying to save YOU, silly ones. You cannot think. Your reality is delusional, based on your wishes that derive from ego. You want to be holy, and membership in the club assures you that you're holier and closer to God than those of other faiths or of none at all. Then you start to feel SO DARN GOOD about yourselves, you lose all perspective. You want to be good, and it is this very desire that causes you to be the opposite.
Don't you know about doing good unto others? It assumes that you KNOW absolutely just exactly what is indeed best for the others concerned. If wrong, congratulations, you've just done an equal amount of EVIL. And if you think that there is no chance that you are wrong, you’re a fool. Anyone can be wrong sometime. If you think that you can be absolutely sure that YOUR RELIGION and no other one of the over 600 active religions on Earth today, or indeed any other belief system, including many FAR OLDER than Christianity, is without any doubt the one and only true religion, then you're egotistical children sadly in need of an education in the real world. I mean the world as described through the only sane lens through which we can look at this physical world, Science. Another name of logical thought and careful observation and testing. This is what you are lacking in order to make a correct judgment. More knowledge of just how magnificent the real world is, and not your religion, a relic of the unenlightened past. The ability to ask the right questions. The ability to make sense out of reality without a crutch. Learning to have thoughts, which can be updated, rather than beliefs, which are set in stone. Seeing real beauty unencumbered by a belief system that has taboos, boundaries, and limits, and one that discourages the most important thing that a person can do to grow. The asking of questions. Real questions. Oh, they answer them, but the answers don't even satisfy a child. Eventually, the child involved most often just gives up on seeing real sense in the world and conditions themselves or are conditioned to not ask questions any more at all, and just have "Faith." Then, alas, another mind is lost. Slam!
Christ's message of peace is all that there is of value in the whole damn book.
You too can find the peace that passeth all understanding, as long as you lack understanding
Brian at 2:57PM on Nov 9th 2007