Dawkins gets the hate because he stands his ground and doesn't apologize for it.
His biggest haters are those with the biggest butthurt.

/boohoo, skydaddy doesn't exist.

Slaxl: Ultimately there is no alternative to Dawkins' approach, because all he does is tell the truth.

No, Dawkins is an attention whoring asshole.

Supporting reason and logic is one thing, actively calling people of faith mentally ill and deluded and insulting and belittling them doesn't win converts over, it is just the atheistic version of preaching to the choir.

His jackassery gives the religious plenty of fodder to depict atheism as a religion unto itself (and an evil one at that), because of the zealotry and fervor that he approaches it with is very much akin to religious.

When Dawkins is insulting people for having religion, and since most people are at least nominally religious, all faith leaders have to do is to play nice and look reasonable and benevolent and suddenly Dawkins looks like the looney calling everybody crazy.

Even if he supports the search for truth, reason and logic, he's such a poor ambassador for it that he isn't exactly winning over converts, just rallying his own "faithful" (or faithless as it were).

The funny thing is in the religion debate Peter Higgs is going to get extra weight added to his views because the 'god' particle was his and discovered, which can easily be manipulated by journalists who misrepresent science to suggest he has proof of god.

Ultimately there is no alternative to Dawkins' approach, because all he does is tell the truth.

Science and religion are not incompatible, if both sides make compromise for each other. That an atheist might play nice and not tell a Muslim that there are no gods does not mean there are gods. There are still no gods. That's as compatible as science and religion get. You leave us alone we'll leave you alone. Truth doesn't change.

The world is filled with assholes who think "I'm right, and that excuses any bad behavior on my part".

AdolfOliverPanties: Dawkins is an asshole. No matter what he professes or teaches, bottom line is that he is a dick about it. He's easily done as much to hurt atheism as he has done to help it.

He's not a dick about it. Go find me examples of him being a dick.

FTFA: "  Dawkins in a way is almost a fundamentalist himself, of another kind. "

Winner, winner, chicken dinner....and a Nobel Prize.

Dawkins is out of control but he was entertaining on Family Feud and Hogan's Heroes.

Silverstaff: Note that it lists four main enemies of the working class:

The nobility and aristocracy: "We rule you"
The religious church: "We fool you"
The military: "We shoot at you"
The bourgeois (middle class): "We eat for you"

Communist propaganda has always placed religion right alongside the bourgeois as enemies of the people. Atheism is an integral that belief system, has been since day one.

Could go either way, I suppose, but there's a huge gap between atheism and having a distaste for organized religion.

SkunkWerks: Uncle Tractor: Agreeing with him doesn't make one an "adherent."
No, idolizing him does. And that's what his Adherents tend to do in my experience...

For instance ...?

Uncle Tractor: That's not a personality cult. That's just some guy voicing his opinions in public.

...up to and including rendering the man unimpeachable for the same crimes he accuses others of.

For instance ...?

To my mind he's no different than a lot of other pundits, Limbaugh, O'Reilly... The man's in love with the sound of his own voice, and quite good at getting others to share that love.

What I'm seeing is a bunch of theists all butthurt because this guy not only had the temerity to write a book about why he thinks religion is a delusion, but has become a celebrity because of said book. Because the butthurt theists can't attack the actual contents of the book, they go for the author (by accusing him of being a militant douchebag etc) and for the people who agree with some of his ideas by calling the whole thing a "personality cult" or "religion" or what have you.

It's sad, really.

Valiente: It's arguable that they weren't atheists at all. They turned the religious impulse they found in their own societies from sky fairies to Party leaders. What was "the cult of personality" (besides a pretty good '90s hit) but an attempt to replace fictional gods with fictional humans?

In other words, if you claim "there is no god, but I'll be playing one for the masses", you're not so much an atheist as a master manipulator of human weakness.

That doesn't make the dictator in question any less of an atheist, but it does make him / her a sociopathic sack of shiat.

Many of those dictators were bona fide atheists, but they were cynical, manipulative, asshole atheists who set themselves up as infallible leaders of religion-like ideologies. Personality cults, as you say. I think many of them were true believers of their ideologies, though.

Best Korea is an extreme example of this. That's definitely a religion. "Juche," or whatever it's called.

I drunk what: 1. God created Man, Life, Free Will
2. Man created Sin
3. Sin altered God's Good-Perfect Creation into what you now see as Evil (aka malaria, mosquitoes, etc..)

Ehhh... Having grown up Catholic, I'm well aware of the dogma surrounding this. Still, by those rules there isn't anything that Man creates that God didn't create by proxy. There's also pretty much no way He can feign ignorance, either. No Plausible Deniability to be found here.

After all, if what we're taught is to be taken for Law, God is:
Omnipresent.
Omnipotent.
Omnipowerful.

Sounds like a great gig until you realize that there's pretty much not a damn thing in all of Creation you aren't responsible for. On the plus side, it's not like there's a person in all of Creation who can hold you to it either. As such, I've concluded that, if there is a God, he sure is a douchebag. Not that this shocks or appalls me. Most managers have a pretty broad douchebag streak. It's what makes them Management material.

God- by way of creating Man, Free Will, and so on- also created Sin.

It wasn't accidental, nor some unforeseen consequence.

Working as intended... by Him.

This of course leads to the whole "works in mysterious ways" malarkey. Douchebags aren't really all that mysterious though. Another popular whipping boy is "God's plan", and this one I actually find even more hilarious. When you not only know everything that can happen, but everything that will happen, what exactly can you do that isn't planned?

The act of planning a thing involves summoning the faculty to predict probable outcomes. God doesn't have to summon that faculty, it's inherent in everything He does. Nor are there any probable outcomes. Everything that can happen is already pre-ordained.

Kinda makes one wonder if Free Will is all it's really cracked up to be.

cegorach: 1. Read up on what the scientific method actually is.

Read up on it? I posted a graphic that explains it further upthread. The basic idea is to follow the evidence wherever it leads.

Then see how 'Atheists' here are erroneously employing it to justify their belief systems.

You'll have to elaborate on that, I'm afraid.

2. "Atheism is a religion?" Please. - I am unsure whether reading comprehension or advanced reasoning is your problem. Either way, 'religion' is not the same thing as 'belief system'. Both Atheism and various religions are belief systems. Neither can be factually proven using scientific methods. They exist solely as assertions of belief.

Not believing in gods is not an assertion of faith. I have never seen a reason to believe in a god. Therefore I do not believe in gods. I am not making claims of any kind. The only people making claims are the ones who go on about the sky wizard who sneezed on his play-dough.

3. Since you seem to enjoy making assertions based on a lack of evidence,

Hmm... where?

you should fit in just fine in this thread. Use the internet. Plenty of examples of Dawkins doucheing around the place, preaching intolerance of the intolerance of religious types.

Oh, you poor oppressed christian you. Reading all those critical comments must be hard on your fragile christian psyche.

Ishkur: Silverstaff: What an ACTUAL militant atheist may look like.

Stalin wasn't an atheist. Neither was Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao, etc.. not once did they rant in any of their speeches that their enemies must be eliminated for the sake of secular humanism and rational inquiry. Rather, what they did was establish systems of moral absolutes with state theocracies, oppressive social obedience and strict political doctrine replacing scripture. Essentially: Political ideology as church, with themselves as God.

The whole "who committed more atrocities" argument is a mutually assured destruction debate tactic anyway. Do you really want to count them all up? Christians wiped out two entire continents and an entire race of people. And not only did they commit genocide to others, they committed genocide to themselves (the greatest enemy to Christians has always been other Christians: Quite possibly up to 50 million in just the wars of the Reformation....20 million in the 30 years war alone). But do these numbers make any argument better? Do you feel better about your side if you can tally it up and show that your beliefs only killed a few million less than their beliefs? Does that make it more right?

Today's Christians should not have to answer for every past atrocity done in the name of Christianity, just as today's atheists should not have to answer for every past atrocity done in the name of atheism (which is technically none...but even if you throw in Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot or anyone else who wasn't Christian or an atheist, that still doesn't justify either argument).

I think the important lesson here is to be wary of fundamentalism, and rigid thinking, regardless of your philisophical position or religious persuasion.

Why is Dawkins such a dick? He probably had an experience something like mine when as an undergrad, astounded daily by what I was learning in biology and specifically in evolution class, was set upon by fundamentalists when I brought some books to work one evening. I was preparing a report on the role of reproductive efficiency as the driving force behind the extinction of marsupials by mammals. Once spotted I was targeted for conversion by some of the dimmest humans I have ever encountered.

Across the street from the hospital where I worked was the North Central Bible College, on whose campus around the same time Jim Baker met Tammy Faye LaValley, for which we can all give thanks.

The alarm was sounded, and a phalanx of bible thumpers was dispatched.

Hoardes of nitwit country kids took it upon themselves to save my soul, and, happily, failed. Ever since I have nurtured a revulsion at the tactics of the mouth breathing class of American christer.

I will forever be a dick to them, they deserve no less.

ciberido: raerae1980: FTA: "Higgs argued that although he was not a believer...."

Soooo then, they are in agreement?
I like this quote from Hawkins, "No, please, do not mistake passion, which can change its mind, for fundamentalism, which never will. Passion for passion, an evangelical Christian and I may be evenly matched. But we are not equally fundamentalist. The true scientist, however passionately he may 'believe', in evolution for example, knows exactly what would change his mind: evidence! The fundamentalist knows that nothing will."

I really doubt that's true, however.  If the kind of Rapture evangelical Christians believe in were to actually happen, the next day people like Hawkins would be trying DESPERATELY to explain it away rather than say, "Oh, guess we were wrong.  Whoops."

Since it's a purely hypothetical event, who knows? I for one would be literally awestruck for a few seconds, and would then bust out every recording device to hand to document the evidence.

As someone who is 100% certain there are no gods, aliens, will o the wisps, ghosts, Nessies, fairies, goblins, trolls, vampires, etc. I would find witnessing a rapture as I understand the term to be compleeing evidence that one of the first two categories does in fact exist.

However, it's moot.

I drunk what: Uncle Tractor: Maybe you were thinking of something else?

Faith is: The evidence of things unseen.

I was thinking that words have meaning. and you were about to tell us how Science never engages in such nonsense? do tell

Words do have meaning, but I'm not sure what you think that particular word means.

As for things unseen; take the electron. We can't see it. We can't even be 100% certain that it exists. However, the electron theory does a really good job in explaining a whole bunch of phenomena. It does such a good job that it made it possible to build the computer you're using to post on fark. Maybe some day, the electron will be disproven, and an entirely new theory will take it's place. For now, the theory is good enough that one can act as if it was true.

That's non-religious faith. Another example would be the faith that you can buy milk and eggs at the local grocery store. You haven't seen the milk and eggs yet, but you have faith that they're there (and sometimes they're not).

Then there's religious faith: The one with the talking snake and the magical boat with two of every animal that somehow neither ate each other nor died of inbreeding later on (plus a boatload of other silly nonsense).
Was that what you had in mind?

douchebag/hater: Richard Dawkins = Westboro Baptist Church.

had98c: Silverstaff: Slaxl: Ultimately there is no alternative to Dawkins' approach, because all he does is tell the truth.

No, Dawkins is an attention whoring asshole.

Supporting reason and logic is one thing, actively calling people of faith mentally ill and deluded and insulting and belittling them doesn't win converts over, it is just the atheistic version of preaching to the choir.

His jackassery gives the religious plenty of fodder to depict atheism as a religion unto itself (and an evil one at that), because of the zealotry and fervor that he approaches it with is very much akin to religious.

When Dawkins is insulting people for having religion, and since most people are at least nominally religious, all faith leaders have to do is to play nice and look reasonable and benevolent and suddenly Dawkins looks like the looney calling everybody crazy.

Even if he supports the search for truth, reason and logic, he's such a poor ambassador for it that he isn't exactly winning over converts, just rallying his own "faithful" (or faithless as it were).

He's not going to win over any converts anyway since almost everyone already has their mind made up barring some grand event that swings evidence in such a way that nobody could really ignore it, like the second coming or something. So he might as well be an ass for all the good it'll do for him to be nice. It's much, much better to be right than to be liked.

I'd hate to get to the pearlly gates after being a dick all my life about the non-existence of the pearlly gates..

lots of people believe things I know to be bs, and lots of people believe things that are true, but I just don't understand, I try not to be a dick about it, cause I don't want them to be dicks about it ..

ie: there's a good reason for just not being a dick, like just not being a dick..

I think there is room for both approaches. We need people like Higgs who can help use science to educate people with open minds. And we need people like Dawkins to fight the fundamentalists because the moderates won't step up and fight them. If groups would take care of their own dirty laundry, there wouldn't be a need for outsiders to fill that role. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, they won't.

Dawkins is an asshole and a fundamentalist.

People Teenagers worship him like a deity.

Adults just wonder where a sad old man gets so much vitriol from.

Sybarite: I guess I don't understand why outrageous claims with no supporting evidence are acceptable targets for ridicule (be it healing crystals, or psychics, or ancient aliens, or whatever), yet somehow the silliness of theism is supposed to be treated with kid gloves.

Wants a word:



It's all silly. I treat organized religion with the same hazardous materials gloves as I do magic crystal woo-woo nonsense. It's fun, and sometimes it's even creative and even inspirational...but it's no way to go through life, haunted by fictive demons and crippling guilt/moral superiority.

Well, we all have opinions.

Slaxl: The funny thing is in the religion debate Peter Higgs is going to get extra weight added to his views because the 'god' particle was his and discovered, which can easily be manipulated by journalists who misrepresent science to suggest he has proof of god.

Ultimately there is no alternative to Dawkins' approach, because all he does is tell the truth.

Science and religion are not incompatible, if both sides make compromise for each other. That an atheist might play nice and not tell a Muslim that there are no gods does not mean there are gods. There are still no gods. That's as compatible as science and religion get. You leave us alone we'll leave you alone. Truth doesn't change.

And we're done...at least before the obligate godbots start raving.

I will admit that I can see where even atheistic scientists find Dawkins an irritating prick. Their contemporaries found Martin Luther and Jesus Christ equally a pain in the ass, I'm sure. But when your mandate is paradigm-shifting, you tend to use a crowbar more than a dental pick when attempting to create leverage.

Not being a 'loud athiest', I am often curious what the ideal citizen is to a Loud Athiest. I think they secretly believe that all humans should really be Vulcans. Loud Athiests do not seem to have a framework to accept or deal with the fact the humans are NOT inherently 'rational' beings and never will be due to our emotional wet-ware.

Religion -- while perhaps being 'wrong' factually -- makes its daily bread by providing coping mechanism for an irrational world.

I don't have an answer, just fascinated by how it all plays out in future.