Richard Dawkins lied about the Algerian boxer, then lied about Facebook censoring him

[u/ghhewh]

https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/richard-dawkins-lied-about-the-algerian

[u/sodapopenski]

I agree that Dawkins was advocating atheism. My point is that he was advocating on the grounds of scientific evidence and rationality rather than theology. I always saw his God Delusion-era activism as primarily a response against the US/UK evangelical movement that had a hardline young Earth creationism stance that directly contradicts scientific evidence for the Big Bang and evolution.

[u/khmacdowell → u/sodapopenski]

Sure. He did advocate against anti-science views of fundamentalism. But, theology notwithstanding, religious studies is a scholarly field that approaches religion from a rational perspective, and from reading The God Delusion, you wouldn't really get the impression there was a point to that. Nor would you that it were really pretty common for scientists to be Christian, if less so than the populace at large, or that Christian institutions of various stripes have supported natural philosophy and science through the religion's history, albeit with an imperfect record. In any case, the book isn't just saying "be as rational as possible" and just giving some examples of irrationality and including fundamentalism as one. The title, of course, doesn't hide that. There's certainly no subterfuge.

[u/MarsOptimusMaximus → u/khmacdowell]

Theology is decidedly not a field that approaches religion rationally. Rationality requires evidence. There is precisely 0 evidence behind any theology posited since the dawn of man. It is the definition of irrationality to accept something for which you have no proof, especially when your decision to accept that thing is based on feelings.

[u/khmacdowell → u/MarsOptimusMaximus]

There's a reason I didn't say it was, but it's relevant that the Western university tradition has its roots in the study of theology. Obviously, theologians have to do some of the things academica in secular fields have to do, in that they read and parse wide varieties of texts, and use some critical methods common to all disciplines. Theologians are also, though rarely, sometimes not practitioners of the religion of which they are theologians, and are therefore again using common tools of inquiry that don't require a particular belief. I'd also argue a lot of analytical philosophy doesn't rely particularly heavily on empirical observations, but is certainly rational.