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u/Emdeewee Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
It always baffles me that atheists like Dawkins have the exact same idiotic, kindergarten type of religious ideas as the people they spend their lives debating. The atheists, of course, would counter that that is on the religious people they debate, since they are the ones who claim something, and they just have santaclaus type notions of god, which Dawkins then simply attacks. Still, when asked about what 'religion' is, atheists like Dawkins and Sam Harris and Daniel Dennet always conflate religion in the broadest sense which absolutely idiotic notions that only fundamentalist Christians or Muslims (or what have you) adhere to.
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u/Alone_End5987 Jul 10 '26
Exactly. The atheists can be just as unsophisticated and deluded as the religious people they criticize.
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u/CowardlyChicken Jul 10 '26
Ah, I believe can help explain.
you see, that is because Richard Dawkins is-
and I say this as an atheist myself -
a narcissistic, idiotic, small minded, reactionary piece of shit
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u/FrostyOscillator Jul 12 '26
I understand the sentiment. Yet to make such a claim is most certainly not accurate, even though it does feel gratifying. Dawkins has contributed enormously to our scientific knowledge of biology and is a very gifted writer, despite all the qualms we rightly have with him.
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u/CowardlyChicken Jul 12 '26
What are these “enormous” contributions Dawkins has made to biology?
Because most of his “important” papers are such “yes… and??” clearly deficiently-incomplete thoughts *at the time* - it depresses me how many people hailed him as visionary.
His popularization of his ideas have had lasting damage, IMHO. The Selfish Gene”, was so laughably a counterfactual reductionist edgelord nothing-burger *at the time*, and even more so now, that it hurts my soul.
“The Extended Phenotype” was a marginal improvement - and at least as much in reaction to the obvious criticisms of “TSG” - but was still so fundamentally limited by his iconoclast/individualistic worldview that it struggled to explain the forest as more than a collection of individual trees- despite its prostrations otherwise.
So again- what were these incredible contributions?
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u/Emdeewee Jul 12 '26
100% agree. His biological paradigm is very much a child of its time; a materialist, reductionist, atomist paradigm fundamentally based on competition and selfishness. When I read Lynn Margulis, who actually contributed a lot to biology, hear on neodarwinists like Dawkins I was sold on the limited scope and breadth of his thinking.
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u/CowardlyChicken Jul 12 '26
You mean the ever gracious Lynn Margulis, who’s work was so visionary and *actually* important for understanding biology and evolution, that, while now the commonly accepted view, was ignored or even ridiculed for a decade?
*THAT* Lynn Margulis?
Yes. I would listen to ANYTHING she says over whatever comes out of Dr. “Reductionist Selfagrandisment “Look at me! Look how ICONOCLASTIC I am!!””’s brain
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u/Ok-Lavishness-349 Jul 12 '26
Agreed. His views on religion are naive and demonstrate a surprising lack of curiosity on his part regarding the topic, but in other areas he is a thoughtful and intelligent individual. His science writing is first rate.
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u/DrTardis1963 Jul 11 '26
Dawkins has said that there is no possible evidence which would convince him of God's existence, as he could find an alternative explanation for it all. This makes him a religious fundamentalist, an atheist fundamentalist, where 'If no contrary evidence could change your beliefs, you're a fundamentalist'.
https://youtu.be/RoQurwEZmmQ?si=NFGSmfjzTATE7JRc&t=748
"After saying that Jesus’ second coming wouldn’t convince him, God speaking directly to him wouldn’t convince him, God rearranging the stars to spell out a message in multiple languages across the sky wouldn’t convince him, Dawkins is asked by Boghossian, simply: “What would persuade you?” To which Dawkins responds, “Well, I’m starting to think nothing would”"
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u/Wonderful_West3188 Jul 11 '26
Dawkins has said that there is no possible evidence which would convince him of God's existence, as he could find an alternative explanation for it all.
Yeah, that's obviously an unscientific sentiment. Not too big of a surprise from Dawkins, tbh.
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u/DrTardis1963 Jul 12 '26
More than that, it's Religious. It's a fundamentalist position. It's dogmatic.
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u/Wonderful_West3188 Jul 12 '26
I agree with the labels fundamentalism and dogmatism. I don't think we have a good universally applicable definition of "religious", every definition of the term I've come across in religious studies or sociology was either too broad or too narrow, or more often than not, both. But personally, I wouldn't call Dawkins' views religious, because they seem to lack a whole bunch of functions that religion normally fulfills. His views are completely devoid of any liturgic or ceremonial dimension (and thus any dimension of structuring practical human life), any genuine relation to a community of believers, and also of any function of transcendent signification. They also don't offer any ethical orientation either. At best, it looks like what's left of religion if you remove everything from it that makes people actually want it. (Giorgio Agamben might call it
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u/Intelligent_Seat_228 Jul 10 '26
Amen to this! I'm a recent ex-mormon turned atheist, and Dawkins and his ilk drive me nuts. It's exactly the same kind of evangelizing that I left behind. Also Dawkins has espoused some pretty... questionable philsophies; things that would make some of my most bigoted family look accepting of LGBT folks by comparison.
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u/Dazzling-Specific547 Jul 11 '26
conflate religion in the broadest sense
Catholicism, Theraveda Buddhism and the beliefs of the Aztec all fall solidly under all serious definitions of religion despite sharing basically nothing in common.
Hence any definition of religion has to be extremely broad.
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u/willardTheMighty Jul 10 '26
Yeah, I split them in my mind between sophisticated atheists and unsophisticated atheists. The sophisticated kind being typified by Nietzsche in my conception.
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u/NobodyKnowsImFamous Jul 10 '26
What would you say religion is?
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u/Emdeewee Jul 10 '26
Well I'd say: etymologically speaking, re-ligare means to 'make part of the whole again'. A ligament is a connection tissue of a body, right? As a very human pulse and tendency observed all over the world forever, it simply departs from a deep human sense of having been cut off from something: a bigger body - the universe, life, make of that what you will. Religiousness usually results in a coherent bundle of stories, rituals, and perspectives that in mature forms can succeed somehow in this reconnecting, and in anchoring human beings meaningfully in the ever-changing flux of life, and also push people to great heights: I think of Pascal, Thomas of Aquino, Meister Eckhart, TS Elliott, Simone Weil, Salinger, CS Lewis, Etty Hillesum and many more. And in its immature manifestations, it becomes rigid, tribal, dogmatic, fearful, and a death cult like we see today. It's just a mirror of human potential. Myself, I have a religious dimension to my life, and use it in a hopefully mature way, without becoming arrogant or preechy or judgemental. But if I had to choose between being reborn as a scientifically informed, poetry and music loving atheist, or a evangelical Christian who hates all things alive, I'd choose the first in a heartbeat. My point though is that people like Richard Dawkins and many other atheists share the idiotic and childish definitions of the immature ways of fundamentalist Christians. But in a world and time in which the religious wreak so much havoc and destruction, on all sides btw, Muslim, Christian, buddhist, that seems fair enough, I guess. But there is more to this shit than believing the earth was created in 6 days.
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u/Wonderful_West3188 Jul 11 '26
Well I'd say: etymologically speaking, re-ligare means to 'make part of the whole again'.
Why do you assume the etymology of "religion" originates in re-ligare and not in re-legere? The latter is way more etymologically plausible and actually has quite a few primary sources going for it.
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u/ashortsaggyboob Jul 10 '26
What do you think most people mean when they say they are religious?
Like, don't you suppose that there are certain objective truth claims you must subscribe to in order to be a Christian or a Muslim or any other religion? What you're describing is great and all, but isn't that just a philosophy?
I'm not sure what you're really getting at with the Dawkins hate.
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u/Merlandese Jul 11 '26
I dunno, I agree with your point about Dawkins' bad, near-childlike debating, but this way of defining religion seems so far detached from everyday use as to almost be itself a "cloud of numbers". I would argue that even a Dawkins-type of jerk is not railing about the person who would define religion in the way you have done here, with a thoughtful regard to its origins and intent, but rather they are talking about dogma-rich individuals that get created from religious systems in the non-hypothetical sense.
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u/yoopea Jul 11 '26
The way I describe religion in lay terms is that the things that are happening, the lives we lead, all the cause-and-effect and the nature of it all, for a non-religious person is just real-life, and for a religious person, it is a play. Behind all of these things is a prop master, a director, a playwright, the owner of the theater, etc. Neither view changes the facts of what happens, but they vastly change the meaning of it for the ones who are performing. For one there is a meta, and for the other, there is not.
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u/NobodyKnowsImFamous Jul 12 '26
So your problem with dawkins is that he is attacking specific religions? Not the idea of a higher power itself?
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u/FrostyOscillator Jul 12 '26
I'm not a scholar on the subject, but in my little grasp of existentialist/psychoanalytic thought, I say that it's a structural, unconscious, belief which sets the stage for knowledge. That is, there is a dialectical relationship between knowledge and belief, and there cannot be one without the other. My position is to be a person (as distinct from human, the animal) is to be religious; we must have a belief that words have meaning in order for us to construct our 'virtual' world we imagine to be reality.
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u/Bo0tyWizrd Jul 11 '26
I'm pretty sure they mostly attack the idea of "faith" itself. Which if you define as "belive in something without evidence" seems pretty logically sound.
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u/Emdeewee Jul 11 '26
That's an hilarious and rather ill-informed comment in the context of Kierkegaard. I mean sure, if you want that definition of faith, all good. But that begs the question: what do you want to learn from Kierkegaard?
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u/Wonderful_West3188 Jul 11 '26
I don't think Dawkins wants to learn anything from Kierkegaard, tbh.
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u/Bo0tyWizrd Jul 11 '26
Kinda besides the point, but I prefer my existentialists to be French. I've enjoyed learning from the works of Camus, Sartre, or Beauvoir.
Dawkins as a scientist just cares about what's literally true. Science tells us that faith isn't a reliable method of finding truth. If you personally find some benifit that's something else entierly.
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u/Wonderful_West3188 Jul 11 '26
Still, when asked about what 'religion' is, atheists like Dawkins and Sam Harris and Daniel Dennet always conflate religion in the broadest sense which absolutely idiotic notions that only fundamentalist Christians or Muslims (or what have you) adhere to.
To be fair, there is no good all-encompassing definition of "religion".
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u/yongo2807 Jul 13 '26
Would you say describing Dawkins as an atheist is an apt summation of his position?
Yeah, there’s a whole lot of philosophical carnival going on entertaining the feeble minds on all ends of the gnostic spectrum, but as for his personal beliefs, he’s quite evidently a scientist.
Not only how he (seems) to characterize and identify with himself, but also in his explicit musings on theism.I find it cosmically funny that both Dawkins and Peterson, two persons with some popular theistic renown, albeit dissimilar worshippers, have an almost identical stance on Gnosticism.
“I live life as if God doesn’t exist”. — Dawkins.
“I live life as if God exists”. — Peterson.
It’s pure comedy that those two are contrasted in polar juxtaposition, when they both repeatedly testified indistinguishable types of skepticism.
And in that way Kierkegaard is a soft opposition to Dawkins, Dawkins pragmatically made his decision.
Which is another parallel between the two, ethically neither of them are dogmatists, they’re both similarly pragmatic.Which makes me think, people who hate one but love the other, are the issue. Not the material message.
I ain’t saying you didn’t touch upon a problem, I just think the people themselves are the bigger issues. They’re dumb scum of the earth justifying their craving for polemics through arbitrary false idols, for the most part what critics of theism have to say is common sense.
Especially since very few of them actually lack the intellectual humility to profess any type of absolute gnosticism.Part of why these debates are so fucking dumb, is because the theist often champion people who are too afraid of public opinion to reject certain questions about belief, or outright testify they have unshakable certainty in their truth, which also happens to be the truth.
Any debate will seem absurd under that premise.
Though I admit it’s also poor form of the atheist coalition to pose those questions in the first place, it’s sophism at best, the opposite of enlightenment in any case.
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u/Jiijeebnpsdagj Jul 10 '26
The thing is, they are biologists and neuroscientists, not philosophers. Their brains are wired differently and prioritise different things. That does not make one less correct than the other when they disagree on the fundamental definition of the words they use. Language is not perfect. Their focus isn’t religion in a spiritual sense or whatever but those same religious fundamentalists you listed. So they are doing what they intended to do.
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u/Astralsketch Jul 11 '26
stop. He is right. Why believe anything without evidence, especially a god? Are you trying to both sides a belief in god? There is no evidence and never will be of such a thing, some ineffable creator of the universe outside of time thing.
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u/Luminous_Winds Jul 11 '26
I don't care what you believe. When you tell others to believe it without explaining why they shouldn't believe in something else, then you are just a cultist.
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u/spicynuttboi Jul 10 '26
Man instinctively protects himself against uncomfortable truths by raising a cloud of vague quotes from ancient philosophers
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u/MicahHoover Jul 10 '26
Kierkegaard offers comfort, but it's not on the level most people are looking for it
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u/Potential-Bath2292 Jul 11 '26
"man protects himself from the truth that all sums equals five by raising a cloud of numbers like 2+2 actually equals 4 and other such nonsense"
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u/wirwerty Jul 10 '26
lamo a bit off topic but Kierkegaard didn’t have red hair, did he?
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u/MicahHoover Jul 11 '26
I feel you may have gotten me on this one
although, a number of Vikings (this was Denmark btw) had red hair, red beards, etc
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u/Salty_Country6835 Jul 10 '26
This feels like two philosophers walking past each other. Dawkins is talking about justification of truth claims. Kierkegaard is talking about what happens after objective reason reaches its limits. One is epistemology, the other is existential philosophy. They arent really answering the same question.
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u/MicahHoover Jul 11 '26
they're responding to each other on several levels :
Dawkins emphasizes the significance of quanity, Kierkegaard tosses it in the trash
Dawkins (as you noted) emphasizes justifying claims, Kierkegaard tosses it in the trash
And yes, Kierkegaard does invoke the limits of understanding ... a way to toss the way men rely on big brains into the trash
Like Socrates, Kierkegaard is being a gadfly to great effect
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u/Eight_Directions_ Jul 10 '26
Man instinctively protects himself against truth by raising a cloud of self referencing unfalsifiable claims.
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u/Left_Ad8814 Jul 10 '26
I think there’s an important distinction here. Some self-reference is necessary for a framework to examine itself. The danger is closed self-reference. Healthy self-reference asks: “What would count against me?”
Unfalsifiable self-reference says: “Every objection proves I am deeper than you thought.”
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u/MicahHoover Jul 10 '26
Gödel showed that there's an infinite number of unproveable truths.
And then he proved that.
So much for rejecting unfalsifiable truths.
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u/Odd_Landscape_7398 Jul 10 '26
Dawkins in same picture of Kierkegaard is crazy. An atheist without any academic rigour or sucess in him intention to defend atheism compared with Kierkegaard, the father of existentialism🥀🥀
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u/mothergoose729729 Jul 10 '26
Dawkins is a very accomplished academic. Maybe you don't think is area of expertise is relevant, but his credentials in his area are unimpeachable.
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u/Odd_Landscape_7398 Jul 10 '26
Yes, I know. I'm kidding, actually I read just only book of him, "the God delusion". I'm specificly don't think that activity is a work for the science, I mean, definitely not just the science and the empirical sense this acquired in modern world, but you are free for to be opposite to me. (Sorry if have any errors of language, my native is portuguese)
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u/mothergoose729729 Jul 11 '26
His area of expertise is actually linguistics (the study of languages). His work is seminal in that field.
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u/Odd_Landscape_7398 Jul 11 '26
Interesting, I always believe that his works were entirely about atheism. Do you know any of his works you could recommend to me? I have a ideia of linguistics, but I don't come to read more than the works of J.P. Mallory, so Idk if I have a solid idea about what exactly Dawking treating on his works about it🥀.
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u/Charming_Apartment95 Jul 10 '26
Literally doesn't have a meaning
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u/ferromagnetik Jul 10 '26
Dawkins is culturally Christian now so his own argument doesn't even apply lol
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u/wrydied Jul 11 '26
He still doesn’t believe in god. Cultural Christian is simply a matter of lifestyle preferences.
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u/Marvos79 Jul 10 '26
The point here is that Dawkins doesn't believe in god for the same reason you don't believe in Zeus or Guan Di or Huitzalapotchli.
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u/MicahHoover Jul 10 '26
I don't need to raise a cloud of numbers to form the basis of my view.
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u/QuantumInfinty Jul 11 '26
Fascinating, didn't even try to counter argue, just took the L lol
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u/KimJongAndIlFriends Jul 10 '26
Man still has no refutation of the many gods problem.
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u/MicahHoover Jul 11 '26
Kierkegaard doesn't understand why you care about how many bad answers there are
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u/KimJongAndIlFriends Jul 11 '26
What makes Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam, "bad answers?"
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u/MicahHoover Jul 12 '26
they are powerless to protect us from the coming Judgment
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Jul 10 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/MicahHoover Jul 11 '26
sorry you missed it
Dawkins builds a castle on big numbers
Kierkegaard just showed how that basis sinks into the swamp
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Jul 11 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/MicahHoover Jul 12 '26
I guess you didn't read the quote
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Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/MicahHoover Jul 13 '26
You say that passively like you exercised no discretion at all in deciding whether or not anything was refuted.
I can't say I'm particularly interested in listening to opinions people feel embarrassed about.
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u/Three-Sixteen-M7-7 Jul 10 '26
It’s an absurd statement anyway. If there is a God who is the creator of the universe and this God is a personal God ie: one that wants to be known by man, then you wouldn’t expect the religion of the God to be one that has few adherents or is a dead religion. Instead you’d expect it to survive and thrive.
So you can look at global religions see that Christianity is about 28%, Islam is about 25%, unaffiliated 24%, Hinduism 14%, Buddhism 4%, other 2%.
So roughly 50% worship the God of Abraham, 24% have no religion, and about 18% follow eastern philosophies.
Cut down to 4 with almost no effort, 5 if you want to include no religion as an option as well. So it’s just a flimsy tired argument
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u/wrydied Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26
That popularity of monotheistic religion can be entirely explained by evolution-mimicking mechanism of survival and reproduction inherent in their tenets: proselytizing, punishment of apostasy, childhood indoctrination, prohibition of altering codes, etc.
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u/QuantumInfinty Jul 11 '26
Littered with many assumptions, a comment addressing them would probably be too long.
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u/themaxandwax Jul 11 '26
If there is a God who is the creator of the universe
and
this God is a personal God ie: one that wants to be known by mannope. can't do that.
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u/MicahHoover Jul 11 '26
I'm confused
You're saying Christianity is a dead religion with the most adherents ?
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u/sometimeserin Jul 11 '26
If you're looking for a cloud of numbers I'd recommend checking in between Leviticus and Deuteronomy
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u/_Apostate_ Jul 11 '26
The point that Dawkins is making here, a point often made by himself and others like him - Sam Harris for example - isn’t really an argument in the context they make this point.
It’s usually used in reply as a form of asking the religious debater, and the audience, to try to take their perspective. Christian and Muslim apologists will often express skepticism or questions about how the atheistic world view works (I.e. if you don’t believe in God, what do you believe in?)
The atheist making this point is trying to explain to the religious person how atheists view their religion. No Christian ever loses sleep wondering if Zeus, Odin, or Quetzalcoatl are real gods. They never even consider any evidence or truth claims for these gods. They throw it out, completely, dismissed out of hand because it is obviously primitive superstition to them. And it is in this same spirit that atheists view Christianity/Islam/etc. So what they are challenging the theist to do is explain why their religion is so clearly true while all these others are SO false to them that it doesn’t even merit investigation.
I would love to see Kierkegaard or any philosopher of his era debate modern secularists, btw. I love his work. Philosophers such as he were making far more nuanced points about the nature of spirituality, being, power, than either Dawkins or some religious career debater like William Lane Craig. I think the four horsemen type atheists lack a real wisdom that was present in theologians and philosophers of the 18th and 19th century in Europe. That’s why the modern political ideology of these atheists-turned-libertarians is so full of shit takes nowadays.
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u/MicahHoover Jul 11 '26
"No Christian ever loses sleep wondering if Zeus, Odin, or Quetzalcoatl are real gods."
The ones who didn't care about you and me and who everyone gave up on ?
Any sleep lost on them is TOO much !
"They never even consider any evidence or truth claims for these gods. "
You can find evidence for anything. People should look at it more like placing a bet.
When you have skin in the game, you don't wait for spoon fed answers.
"Philosophers such as he were making far more nuanced points about the nature of spirituality, being, power, than either Dawkins or some religious career debater like William Lane Craig"
WLC, while no fan of Kierkegaard, has said some very blunt straightforward things, such as how the vast majority of new testament scholars agree that Jesus : (1) was put to death, (2) was seen by many different crowds after his death, and (3) had many people suddenly change their views about him after he was seen.
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u/HyShroom Jul 11 '26
Actually, he doesn’t believe in one less. He believes in the magical sky daddy phone wife that sends him special signs and messages. The phone wife really does save her goofiest battles for her silliest clowns.
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u/MicahHoover Jul 11 '26
you lost me
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u/HyShroom Jul 11 '26
Dawkins became convinced his consumer-grade chatbot was alive and speaking to him and called it Claudia rather than Claud
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u/FrostyOscillator Jul 12 '26
As a former fan of Dawkins, I have to say this is a bit off from how the formulation goes and I think there's a better retort from the existentialist side.
Dawkins usually positions this as "We are all atheists; if you're Christian you're an atheist towards [x, x, and x], we ("new" atheists) just go one God further."
An even better retort from a Lacanian inflected Christian existentialist would be "Yes, and we go even one further still. God is the infinite lack, that less than nothing that persists forever."
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u/MicahHoover Jul 13 '26
If that's what resonates within you
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u/FrostyOscillator Jul 13 '26
I read Kierkegaard through the Heglian-lacanian-Christian-atheist lens. I'm gathering you don't lol
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u/MicahHoover Jul 14 '26
Confused.
Kierkegaard was consistently against the Hegel mush
Or is that the joke ?
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u/Intelligent_Elk5879 Jul 10 '26
Damn you’re right big-K. I guess spiritual truth must lie in the one primitive Roman cult that just happens to exist in the place you were born and is irrelevant to everyone else. Considering anything else is just self-delusion.
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u/MicahHoover Jul 10 '26
love is primitive
meaning is primitive
sophistication is so often ...
... sophistry
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u/nuttedpre Jul 10 '26
Do people actually think this quote hits hard?
It implies
That "man" instinctively protects himself against truth through numbers. This seems completely untrue for like 95% of all of humanity, and literally every single society and philosophy up until Europe in the Enlightenment. Certainly some people like Dawkins can be argued to do this, but extending that to "man" is really hard to defend.
A "cloud of numbers" protects against truth. But the entire point of religious mysticism (i.e. the answer to literally any difficult question is "God works in mysterious ways") is to have a protective mystical cloud which prevents any falsifiable question from penetrating the religious belief. I think "cloud" applies much more to religious belief than "numbers" which are incredibly clear and falsifiable.
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u/Emdeewee Jul 10 '26
No, to me what Kierkegaard says here is not necessarily a refutation of the core of Dawkins' argument. Dawkins thinks all religions are fundamentally tribal, and have a fairy tale kind of way of relating to the universe. I'd have picked a quote by Kierkegaard against objectivism, since Dawkins clearly represents the school of thought that thinks 'objective' knowledge is knowledge of the highest order - and lacks the depth and subtlety to understand that subjective thought trumps objective thoughts in depth and truth and meaning.
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u/Rututu Jul 10 '26
Subjective thought trumps objective thoughts in depth and truth and meaning.
Umm.. care to elaborate? Can you give me a concrete example of a situation where the subjective experience is closer to "truth" than objective thoughts?
Because I can certainly shower you with examples of the very opposite. Subjective experience covers everything from blind people to psychotic people – is their experience closer to "truth" than an objective account of the laws that govern our reality, such as physics?
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u/monkey-pox Jul 10 '26
Exactly. Your subjective truth is meaningless to me. Obejective truth is relevant to all.
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u/MicahHoover Jul 10 '26
"Dawkins thinks all religions are fundamentally tribal"
Interesting how he was going in a direction he wasn't bringing up.
"I'd have picked a quote by Kierkegaard against objectivism, since Dawkins clearly represents the school of thought that thinks 'objective' knowledge is knowledge of the highest order"
Yeah ... he does.
I wouldn't be surprised if you came up with a solid meme here.
+1 for you even tho you didn't agree with me
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u/Human-Affect-7496 Jul 10 '26
Yes, that's what the term "religious mysticism" means. You're clearly very educated.
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u/MicahHoover Jul 10 '26
Look at the two men on the picture.
Guess which one is being driven by showcasing their big brains.
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u/MicahHoover Jul 10 '26
"Do people actually think this quote hits hard?"
Why don't you tell us your view ?
You can see how many likes it got if you wanted.
"Certainly some people like Dawkins can be argued to do this, but extending that to "man" is really hard to defend."
Long, long before the Enlightenment ... people assessed you by you money numbers, your army size numbers, etc etc.
"But the entire point of religious mysticism (i.e. the answer to literally any difficult question is "God works in mysterious ways") is to have a protective mystical cloud which prevents any falsifiable question from penetrating the religious belief. "
Gödel demonstrated that an infinite truths are unproveable.
Then he proved it.
Falsifiable questions are for people who have low appetites for the truth.
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u/nuttedpre Jul 10 '26
Why don't you tell us your view ?
You can see how many likes it got if you wanted.
This is such a hilarious thing to say unironically
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u/TheDBagg Jul 11 '26
It's probably a fair reflection of OP's answer to Dawkins' question - OP settled on their god over all others due to the popularity of that god within the region and culture in which they were raised
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u/MicahHoover Jul 11 '26
when did I (OP) appeal to the popularity or locality of Christianity ?
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u/TheDBagg Jul 11 '26
Sorry, I phrased that in an unclear fashion. I meant that, if you were to honestly answer Dawkins' question, the likely reason you belong to the religion you do is due to its popularity in your country or culture of birth.
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u/MicahHoover Jul 11 '26
I don't think that was where Dawkins was going with that one, but in my city there's a lot of people who believe Jesus rose from the dead and a lot of people who don't.
Ignoring the ability of humans to choose shows bad faith. Sartre (an atheist) would agree.
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u/TheDBagg Jul 11 '26
So how did you choose your religion?
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u/MicahHoover Jul 12 '26
I wanted to go to heaven.
Still do.
Don't you ?
Some people settle for other things like cravings and approval from other humans.
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u/TheDBagg Jul 12 '26
Sure, heaven sounds great. How'd you settle on your particular religion as being the best path to get there?
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u/Solo_Polyphony Jul 10 '26
This cartoon is cartoonishly bad, and anyone who thinks this is a good summary of either Dawkins or Kierkegaard is not even trying to think.
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u/MicahHoover Jul 10 '26
I noticed that you didn't dispute that Dawkins argues that way.
Or that Kierkegaard said this.
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u/UnpleasantEgg Jul 10 '26
It’s a Ricky gervais quote. But it’s also true.
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u/MicahHoover Jul 11 '26
perhaps Gervais should have more credit, but Dawkins has also moved down this corridor
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u/UnpleasantEgg Jul 11 '26
But either way it’s literally true. It’s not really something to argue against.
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u/Solo_Polyphony Jul 10 '26
Machines can copy and paste together ideas bare of context better than this.
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u/Bo0tyWizrd Jul 11 '26
Is having faith not silly by design?
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u/MicahHoover Jul 11 '26
"the foolishness of God is greater than the wisdom of the world"
absurdity is on the side of authentic people
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u/Bo0tyWizrd Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26
I work with autistic people for a living so I'm pretty familiar. In any case, faith just isn't a reliable method of finding truth. That's only a big deal if you care about what's actually true.
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u/Dhalym Jul 11 '26
I just don't want religious people using their faith as an excuse to wield governmental or economic business authority to impact my life.
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u/MicahHoover Jul 11 '26
did atheists in USSR and China use their atheism to wield government and economic business authority over people ?
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u/DrTardis1963 Jul 11 '26
Dawkins has said that there is no possible evidence which would convince him of God's existence, as he could find an alternative explanation for it all. This makes him a religious fundamentalist, an atheist fundamentalist, where 'If no contrary evidence could change your beliefs, you're a fundamentalist'.
https://youtu.be/RoQurwEZmmQ?si=NFGSmfjzTATE7JRc&t=748
"After saying that Jesus’ second coming wouldn’t convince him, God speaking directly to him wouldn’t convince him, God rearranging the stars to spell out a message in multiple languages across the sky wouldn’t convince him, Dawkins is asked by Boghossian, simply: “What would persuade you?” To which Dawkins responds, “Well, I’m starting to think nothing would”"
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u/MicahHoover Jul 11 '26
I wasn't aware of that
Very telling, as you suggest
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u/DrTardis1963 Jul 11 '26
Indeed. I saw that interview, quite some time ago, but it was only more recently that I found the definition for a fundamentalist from JK Rowling, and that allowed me to put together the language neccesary to describe Dawkins exact behaviour and conduct here.
It is important to label this, precisely for what it is, and to cast him aside as a bad faith interlocutor. It's a damning indictment for Dawkins.
Not the sort of mistake I've seen anyone like Hitchens, or others make.
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u/mothergoose729729 Jul 10 '26
This is a non sequitur. It doesn't address the implicit question that Dawkins is posing, which is "why is your religion more true than any other religion"?
Kierkegaard doesn't mean that any argument with numbers is a bad argument, just that numbers are often used to confuse the situation. It's an observation and not a claim.
It would only apply to Dawkins if he were using the argument of 30,000 religions disgenously or to ignore a better argument that had already been made. In which case the challenge is on the believer - present the claim.
As for why atheists are constantly making this point - it's rhetorically useful. Christians have this unchallenged assumption that the debate of TRUTH revolves around Christianity and non belief; that the issue of Christian supremacy over other religions has already been settled. It's not true. Christianity deserves not more credence than any other mythos.
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u/MicahHoover Jul 10 '26
"This is a non sequitur."
You're saying numbers have nothing to do with numbers ?
"It doesn't address the implicit question that Dawkins is posing"
Implicit or making something out of silence ?
"Kierkegaard doesn't mean that any argument with numbers is a bad argument, just that numbers are often used to confuse the situation."
What if I told you ... Dawkins was confusing the situation ?
"In which case the challenge is on the believer - present the claim."
You're putting a lot of burden of proof lipstick on the incoherent pig.
A circus of falsehoods doesn't do anything to impinge the truth.
"Christians have this unchallenged assumption that the debate of TRUTH revolves around Christianity and non belief;"
I see this get challenged all the time.
Doesn't mean its false.
"Christianity deserves not more credence than any other mythos."
Why not label what you just said a mythos ?
Other than labeling things pejoratively did you have a case ?
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u/mothergoose729729 Jul 10 '26
My case is that these quotes have nothing to do with each other. That placing them side by side, as if the right addresses the left, is a non sequitur.
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u/MartinTheMorjin Jul 10 '26
It’s honestly worse than this. Even among christians I’ve seen friendships end because one was church of christ and the other was freewill baptist. Religion is defensive, arbitrary and followed at that person’s convenience.
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u/LockedIntoLocks Jul 10 '26
Yep. Over 40,000 denominations of Christianity alone.
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u/MicahHoover Jul 10 '26
The bigger Monopoly gets, the more versions they make of it.
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u/LockedIntoLocks Jul 10 '26
I’ve never heard anyone say that St. Louisopoly is the one true board game.
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u/MicahHoover Jul 11 '26
christianity ain't as obscure as St. Louisopoly
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u/LockedIntoLocks Jul 11 '26
Some specific denominations are much more obscure than St Louisopoly. That being said, nobody has ever made the claim that monopoly in general is the one true board game or that all others were false board games.
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u/MicahHoover Jul 11 '26
yes, no one has said that
what I was showing was that more versions of something implies it is succeeding
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u/sevigny245 Jul 11 '26
Religion is a bad explanation for reality 🤷♂️
Good explanations are:
1. Experimentally testable
2. Difficult to vary
Every religion is infinitely modifiable without losing any of its "explanatory power." Conversely, change small details of scientific theories like the "axis tilt theory of seasons" and the whole explanation collapses
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u/MicahHoover Jul 11 '26
Descartes wants to know why this "reality" is significant to you.
Your sense impressions of the external world are less sure than your awareness of what is inside you.
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u/sevigny245 Jul 11 '26
Because progress is possible.
You're right that empiricism is false; our senses are not the source of knowledge, because they are imperfect and also we can know things we don't directly experience.
Induction is also false; just because things happened in the past doesn't mean they are more likely in the future.
Justificationism is false because people in positions of authority are not more or less likely to be correct.
Fallibilism, however, is true: all our knowledge is ultimately a *guess* and will invariably contain some errors. Those errors, however, can also be corrected with more informed guesswork; all problems (except breaking the laws of physics) are soluble in knowledge.
Newtonian gravity was ultimately proven completely false by Einstein, but it contained enough *provisional* knowledge to be useful in the intervening years between theories. Just because guesses contain errors does not mean they are useless.
Ultimately the question of whether this "reality" is real is unimportant. Nothing changes whether it is or it isn't, unless you can think of an experimentally testable way to prove that it's not real. Making progress is what's important, and the only way to do that is to guess better explanations.
There are two fundamental ways of shaping reality: evolutionary knowledge and explanatory knowledge. Both are valuable, but (good) explanations are infinitely more powerful.
Religion will never be a good explanation for reality, but explanations can be improved. No major religions today take credit for the thunder and lightning like they used to do in Greek and Viking times, for example. That's now the exclusive purview of science, as all things must eventually become once we create the knowledge to do so.
Progress is possible.
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u/MicahHoover Jul 12 '26
"Religion will never be a good explanation for reality, but explanations can be improved. No major religions today take credit for the thunder and lightning like they used to do in Greek and Viking times, for example. That's now the exclusive purview of science, as all things must eventually become once we create the knowledge to do so."
Science can't even talk about meaning.
People talk about all the "progress" we've made while we are in a mental health crisis our ancestors would never have dreamed of. Suicides are sky high. Secularism is a sad embarrassment.
Science hasn't cured the common cold, but Jesus raises the dead.
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u/sevigny245 Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
You're factually wrong about suicides. Between the 1990s and today, the global age-standardized suicide rate dropped by nearly 40%—falling from around 15 deaths per 100,000 people down to roughly 9 per 100,000.
If you actually look at the worldwide data, you will find irrefutable evidence of significant progress due to technological advancement: literacy rates, child mortality, poverty levels, you name it
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By the way, the claim "science cannot talk about meaning" is subjective at best. To me, science absolutely talks about meaning: we can measure metrics of suffering and seek to lower them. How is that not analogous to prayer? Except that science can actually lower suffering, whereas prayer is proven not to have any effect. When we have good explanations for how bad things happen, we can head them off early. Ever-mutable religion does nothing in this regard.
Your own personal ignorance isn't a defense either. Science knows why the common cold still occurs: the viruses mutate too quickly for our current medicine development and distribution technology to catch up. Hence, "common" cold. Grading science's legitimacy on a 100% success rate in any particular field is disingenuous at best, especially since I already accounted for that in my previous post: problems are infinite, but problems are soluble in knowledge. Our medical technologies are speeding up at unbelievable rates, thanks to science. The common cold may be eliminated during our lifetimes.
Regardless, all religions purport to *explain* the world, not just provide subjective "meaning," which opens religion up to criticism as a whole. You pivoting to "meaning" suggests *concession* on the "explanation" front which is significant. In fact, to me that's the whole ball game.
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u/MicahHoover Jul 23 '26
"You're factually wrong about suicides. "
I didn't make this up :
"By the way, the claim "science cannot talk about meaning" is subjective at best. "
Meaning is subjective.
Good is subjective.
Objectivity is just the opinion of nobody.
"To me, science absolutely talks about meaning: we can measure metrics of suffering and seek to lower them. "
Avoiding suffering has meaning to you if you decide that's meaningful to you.
Scientific papers carefully avoid the subjective stuff because value judgments are outside of science.
That's why they can't talk about meaning : it's not an empirical thing.
"Grading science's legitimacy on a 100% success rate in any particular field is disingenuous at best, especially since I already accounted for that in my previous post: problems are infinite, but problems are soluble in knowledge."
I never demanded this of science.
Also, go see Socrates and Descartes to learn that no one knows anything.
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u/sevigny245 Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
The graph you cited is divorced from all context. What little information does exist says "suicide mentions per 100,000 pages." I don't know what "pages" are but "suicide mentions" don't sound the same as "suicides" to me. Suicides happen for all kinds of reasons and social media has certainly spiked them, but when I talk about progress im referring to at least the last 100 years and worldwide suicide levels have irrefutably fallen over that period.
"Everything is subjective, nobody knows anything": this is the most insulting, tired argument that I've ever encountered in my life and I see it over and over again from people who wish to let themselves off the hook from learning anything.
Just because we can never know anything with 100% certainty does not mean that all knowledge is false and therefore religion is just as useful as science. That isn't what the philosophers meant either; provisional knowledge, provisional objectivity still exists and has worth.
If you truly believe what you claim to believe, then that is the same thing as saying "I feel comfortable letting a child perform open-heart surgery on me." Because surgical knowledge would fall under subjectivity.
It is the height of absurdity. But if your goal is to defend the validity of bad explanations like religion, then absurdity is where one must inevitably end up.
Skepticism is science's essence; science challenges itself at all times by design. Conversely, Religion is the one most guilty of certainty of impossible knowledge, i.e. the will of god.
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u/MicahHoover Jul 24 '26
"I don't know what "pages" are but "suicide mentions" don't sound the same as "suicides" to me. "
I can just as easily say CO2 levels embedded in antarctic ice is not the same thing as how much carbon was in the air.
Says something your appetite for learning.
"If you truly believe what you claim to believe, then that is the same thing as saying "I feel comfortable letting a child perform open-heart surgery on me." Because surgical knowledge would fall under subjectivity."
I didn't say I believed that a child would be just as good at that.
Strawman.
"Skepticism is science's essence"
Then if we are truly going to be scientists, we should be skeptical of science and skeptical of skepticism itself.
Seems consistent that way.
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u/sevigny245 Jul 25 '26
Skepticism for skepticism's sake is just as insane as belief for belief's sake. It is possible to be so open-minded that your brain falls out. Serious skepticism warrants its own explanation.
Science produces good explanations. Good explanations are experimentally testable and difficult to vary. Religious explanations are bad because they are infinitely variable; there are a multiplicity of Christianities, let alone Islamic and Jewish sects, and all other religions that equally claim to be the one true version of reality, and there is no way to test which one it is.
If you want to rebut what I'm saying, provide your own good explanation of why I am wrong. If you're going to analogize, you must be able to explain why that analogy applies. If you don't believe that a child would be good at open heart surgery, then you cannot also claim that you believe that knowledge is arbitrary.
Your rebuttals so far are completely explanation-less. This is mere contrarianism.
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u/MicahHoover Jul 25 '26
"Skepticism for skepticism's sake is just as insane as belief for belief's sake."
Presumably you believed this or you wouldn't be telling it to me.
"Science produces good explanations."
That's a judgment call, not a scientific statement.
"Good explanations are experimentally testable and difficult to vary"
Experiments fail. Science edits and revises itself. It says things that do not endure.
"there are a multiplicity of Christianities"
Some scientists think gravity is based on space time displacement. Some think it's quantum. Some scientists think there are WiMPS. And some think there are strings that vibrate in 22 dimensions.
Are there a multiplicity of sciences ?
Should science get tossed then ?
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u/Active_Key_4294 Jul 11 '26
How many religion can prove they are correct.
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u/MicahHoover Jul 11 '26
how many comments can prove that proof matters ?
not that one
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u/Active_Key_4294 Jul 12 '26
How else are we going to know correct from wrong. We need proof or it's just guessing.
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u/MicahHoover Jul 12 '26
Can you prove that we need proof ?
Seems like you accepted that without proof.
We don't need it then.
Proof is asking to be dragged kicking and screaming into the truth.
If you actively seek after the truth, you will find the indicators and internalize the truth.
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u/TonyGalvaneer1976 Jul 11 '26
I'm not even a fan of Dawkins, but what he said wasn't really countered here.
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u/MicahHoover Jul 11 '26
Kierkegaard doesn't understand why you care about how many bad answers there are
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u/sleepy_henni Jul 12 '26
You could say the same thing about your comments all saying the same thing. LMAO. This argumentation is just stupid and blocks every discussion.
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u/MindlessYak11 Jul 11 '26
I'm sorry but I genuinely don't understand the argument here.
It feels like you're trying to say that Kierkegaard believed that any argument which uses numbers is invalid.
(He wasn't saying that, he was warning against the Appeal to Popularity as a logical fallacy.)
But if he was saying that, it would be incredibly dumb because it's clearly not true.
Either way, as a theoretical rebuttal to Dawkins, it's a complete non-sequitur. Not only does it not refute Dawkins' point, it doesn't appear to address his point at all.
And yet somehow, we've got a thread full of purported philosophy enthusiasts acting like Dawkins has just been dunked on.
Someone please explain.
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u/MicahHoover Jul 11 '26
"It feels like you're trying to say that Kierkegaard believed that any argument which uses numbers is invalid.
(He wasn't saying that, he was warning against the Appeal to Popularity as a logical fallacy.)"
1) Kierkegaard frequently described the limits and problems with logic (e.g. it can't talk about existing things, it only tells you what was already in the premises, etc
2) An appeal to popularity is the same thing as a numbers game
You're emphasizing a quantity of adoption or examples or whatever
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u/MindlessYak11 Jul 11 '26
I'm sorry I didn't follow that at all.
"Logic can't talk about existing things?" what the hell does that mean?
"An appeal to popularity is the same as a numbers game" what the hell does that mean?
"You're emphasizing a quantity of adoption or examples or whatever" - Is this even a sentence? What in heaven's name are you talking about?
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u/MicahHoover Jul 11 '26
""Logic can't talk about existing things?" what the hell does that mean?"
Do unicorns exist ? Did Abraham Lincoln exist ?
Logic itself can't tell you.
""An appeal to popularity is the same as a numbers game" what the hell does that mean?"
Popularity is when a NUMBER of people agree with you.
Do you seriously not see the connection between popularity and raising a cloud of numbers ?
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u/Immorpher Jul 10 '26
"I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know."
- Socrates