Dawkins

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Dawkins is an arrogant deluded person he believes that anyone with spirituality is insane its his sneering vitriolic approach that gets me whats he so angry about?

I like Dawkins. His approach is a result of the Sneering, arrogant, deluded, vitriol of the opposition who believe that if you do not have a Love of God then you are going to burn for an eternity in the fires of hell and this is your just punishment.

He also like many of us does not suffer fools lightly. And I suggest that anyone who ignores all the science to believe in the superstitions of a bunch of uneducated desert nomads is a fool.

I do not agree with all that he says. He does tend to have the atitude that if somethings appears to work in a manner that science cannot verify then it must be false. A prime example of this is his attitude towards Homaeopathy and Acupuncture. From observation I have no doubt in my mind that both of these work, Dawkins on the other hand dismisses both as quackery.

I've never seen him say anyone with spirituality is insane or appear angry.

Anyway, here's a great essay on why Atheists may be angry (by the same guy that wrote the one on moderate religion.)



"Why are all atheists so angry?" I hear this question all the time. In fact, my Rambo-Kitty avatar is partially inspired by the question. Anyway, today I was reading an article about the debate between Sam Harris and Rick Warren, and was struck by Warren's statement, "I've never met an atheist who wasn't angry." My first reaction was denial. Many atheists, myself included, are happy most of the time. My atheist friends are great fun to hang out with. We laugh and joke and drink beer, and hardly ever mention religion. My second reaction, I confess, was anger. How dishonest of him to try to discount atheism by labeling us all as angry malcontents! This is exactly why people like him make me angry! That's when it hit me, square in the forehead. He's not being dishonest. I don't doubt that every atheist he's met has been angry. If I met him, he'd almost certainly make me angry, too. That's just it! HE makes atheists angry, so they're all angry around him. So, I forgive him for thinking that all atheists are angry. I understand how he made the mistake.

Anyway, I'd like to reflect on "Atheist Anger" for a few minutes, and ask a couple of questions. First, why is it a bad thing to be angry? The suffragists were quite angry, and for good reason. New Zealand had granted women equal voting rights in 1893, and America, supposedly the land of equality, was violently opposed to the idea twenty years later. There are still plenty of women who are angry because women make less money doing the same jobs as men in many industries, and women are often not even considered for promotions when they're equally (or better) qualified for the position. Are they wrong for being angry? Should they just sit quietly and wait for men to realize the error of their ways? Some people think so. I've noticed that the majority of them are men. Am I making a valid comparison? Is it reasonable to compare life as an atheist in America in 2007 to life as a woman in the early 20th century? Clearly there are significant differences. Atheists can vote. They can, in theory, hold public office. They can get married, sign contracts, work wherever they're qualified.

So, do we atheists have a right to be angry in the same way suffragists had? To answer that question, I'll recall some more history. In Mosaic law, as we all know, women were slightly better than slaves. They had no property rights. In Roman law, women were completely dependent on male relations for all legal matters, and when they were married, it was a matter of purchase between two families. Here, we can ask a pointed question. Do women have the right to be angry that they're not making as much as men in the workplace? After all, they can vote, own property, divorce their husband, sue him for child support and alimony, and live quite happily on their own. This country is one of the best places in the world to be a woman! What right do women have to be angry?

If your skin prickled a little bit when you read the previous paragraph, good for you. You're halfway to understanding why atheists have a right to be mad. The reason women still have a right to be mad is that things are still not equal. They have no obligation to remain silent simply because they have it better than someone who lived a hundred, or a thousand years ago. The reason women have it better now is that people were angry all through history, and made small gains here and there over many generations. Without the fuel of anger, women would still be property, and wouldn't even have the opportunity to be mad about making less money in the workplace.

So, what about us atheists? Do we have a right to be mad? Actually, yes. Did you know we've had atheist presidents? We have. I'll let you do your own homework on this, but it might surprise you to learn that many of the leaders of the U.S. throughout history have been openly atheist. Is this possible today? One congressman in California recently admitted to being atheist, and it caused a nationwide stir! It remains to be seen whether he'll be reelected. To be sure, he'll be attacked for being godless and amoral when election time comes around. Until the McCarthy Era, the pledge of allegiance didn't have the word "God." Paper money didn't have "In God We Trust." Until the 70s, Christians were not actively involved in politics for the purpose of legislating religious values. Clearly, America is more theist than it used to be, at least politically.

So, are things getting better for atheists? I dare say they're not. Unlike women, our situation is not improving. We are not being afforded more respect. Rather, we are being legislatively pushed farther into the margins where we have been quietly lurking for sixty years since the Red Scare. To bring things back around, recall my comment about my atheist friends and I sitting around having beers and laughs. This is a good picture for you to hold in your mind's eye when you think of me, or any other atheist. This is what we want. We don't like being angry any more than women who'd like to be paid more. I'm sure all the angry feminists would rather things were better for women so they wouldn't have to be angry anymore. It's the same with atheists. If we were a bit less hated, vilified, and marginalized, it would be a lot easier for us to be in the presence of theists and not get angry.

Why are atheists so angry? Because things could be better, and we don't like being marginalized.


Credulity is much easier to sustain when we've been taught that facts are things to be memorized and repeated, rather than sought out and discovered.
-- Me

Well, I think that the "angry atheist" thing probably has some basis for it. Here are the reasons I would cite though:
1) Usually those who scream out the most are the most noticed. The atheists that scream out most are usually aggressive and arrogant seeming, which causes them to be labeled as angry.
2) Atheism is in defiance of conventional culture, so those who adopt the label will be those who are more willing to defy conventional culture, this means that less desirable traits of those who typically defy culture would likely be found in the average atheist.

As for atheists losing ground? I would actually doubt this.

1) The only president who was an atheist that I can think of was Thomas Jefferson, who really had a weird connection to Christianity in that he was very unorthodox but also concerned with it as he attended church services and tried to figure out the true teachings in the Bible and so I would not call him an atheist in the modern sense. In any case, he was very much opposed by American churches when he first sought the presidency.
2) In the 1940s, before the Cold War, we had scandal where an atheist was discriminated against by a college and the court system. This person was the great philosopher Bertrand Russell, and this was before the Cold War. I have not heard of anything close to this happening in a more recent time though, with a large number of college professors professing no faith in God.
3) Atheists are likely even more distrusted than Catholics, which are still a Christian religious group. Also more distrusted than Mormons which are a Christian sect. There were concerns with the electability of John F Kennedy, and with Mitt Romney in the modern age, even though neither should have lost much ground due to an association of communism with atheism. If they suffer, then shouldn't atheists be worse?
4) There are many public figures that are openly atheist. Often in academia and entertainment and this significant prominence speaks positively for the future inclusion of atheists, as from these places, cultural control can be easily exerted both on elite and mass culture.
5) There used to be blasphemy laws, now there aren't. Not even close to having ones come up into existence again either.

Perhaps I am looking at the wrong metrics, though. However, I think why they are now labeled "angry atheists" and so on, is really because they are becoming more noticed, which speaks good things for them in the long run. If there is an anger, then this anger is likely resulting from more recently acquiring enough power to speak out(rather than staying in the closet), and still having a conflict between self and society, but not due to recent harms I wouldn't think.

Homeopathy and acupuncture can and have been scientifically tested and didn't work.

I think there is a difference between spirituality and religion you don't have to believe in a god who judges human behaviour.Dawkins and his ilk don't seem to differentiate between the two.Just because the catholic church in particular have behaved badly don't discredit all spirituality.In the UK atheism is the predominant culture and many do appear to be angry perhaps a life with no meaning can be unbearable.

I've actually not read the God Delusion, but he is a very intellectual man for sure. I'd admire him if he is anything like Christopher Hitchens.

He is definitely not an 'arrogant, deluded person'.

Having read Der Herr ist kein Hirte (God is not great) and Der Gotteswahn (the god delusion), I can say that Hitchens seems to have been everywhere already and can talk about things from a firsthand perspective while Dawkins is somewhat more abstract and very grounded in biology.

Actually, some studies have indicated that atheists are more distrusted than Catholics, Mormons, Gays, and even Muslims. I think there might be some info squirreled away in some of the graphs and tables >>>here<<<.

Going a bit further, on a tangent, I have mentioned before an article published in either Nature or Science last fall (can't remember which) which explored the evolution of moralistic religion as a means of regulating behavior in large scale societies by forcing costly signaling ; one of the pieces of evidence it brought up was that while (not surprisingly) people tend to view religious people as more trustworthy than atheists, it also found that even atheists viewed religious people as more trustworthy than atheists.

There was a survey a couple years back showing atheists were the most negatively viewed minority in the US - behind any ethnic minority, gays, moslems, etc.

Dawkins does seem like he's trying to rally a line of thought police to squash everything spiritual. What he offers is not any better than religion. He is preaching intolerance. He's just forming a new cult of materialist thinkers.

Agreed. If anyone doesn't want to believe in God, fine. But don't tell me what to believe.

Is the view of the athiest that there is nothing else than chemical and electical reactions in the brain and all on offer is the aquisition of wealth and children leading to much happiness.Consumerism has led to a increadibly unjust world there is no golden age to invoke but why cant we return closer to the land the current economic crisis has proved greed and self interest dont benefit anyone so its in all our interests to become more equitable and sustainable.Religion is not the cause of our troubles it is a convienient flag for many motivations as long as the guy with the most things wins we are doomed.Higher angels should be appealed to.

Thirded. Additionally, I don't like his stance on Agnostics. He's pretty much claiming to be infallible, which makes any person an arrogant dick in my books.

He's not trying to force you to believe anything, he just wants people to use their heads a little.

And as someone here said, people who speak quietly aren't noticed. He may be loud but it doesn't make him angry. Which for the record, I don't even understand how people find him angry. Look at some videos on YouTube of him or read some of his writing, he doesn't sound like an angry person, and much of what he has to say is very interesting. Hell, look at videos where he's meeting with religious people, does he look grumpy or annoyed to be there?

I've heard about surveys saying that. One: technically they don't disprove my statement, only show how likely it is, as these studies are not likely done by census but rather by statistics.


Actually, I can believe that. I would imagine though, that an atheistic grouping of sufficient size and developed codes of behavior could hypothetically take the place of a religion though.

In any case, this reminds me of findings that altruists are bigger on punishing other people.
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/200 ... and_s.html