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Richard Dawkins: Enemies of Reason

post #1 of 86
4/30/08 at 8:11pm
Thread Starter 
Richard Dawkins - Enemies of Reason - Part 1 - Slaves to Superstition

Another must see tv documentary from Richard Dawkins. This Program was done for the bbc as a sequel to "Root of all Evil?" which attacked religion for being irrational. In Slaves to Superstiton he broadens his attack extending it to other forms of superstitious belief. This is part 1 of 2.


Richard Dawkins - Enemies of Reason - Part 2 - The Irrational Health Service

In The Irrational Health Service he looks at how health has become a battleground between reason and superstition. This is part 2 of 2. Dawkins is my hero!
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post #2 of 86
5/1/08 at 7:31am
Every person with a modicum of wit and intelligence should watch these documentaries. They are phenomenal. His evisceration of Homeopathy in particular is priceless. He can come across as arrogant and aloof, and I think his message would reach more people if he tempered that, but his invective is incredibly powerful. The Root Of All Evil should be compulsory viewing. In my imaginary world where Invisible Sky Wizards don't hold sway over billions.

Ta for sharing the link, Werewolf Girl.
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post #3 of 86
5/1/08 at 9:35am
Thanks for the Link! Have to watch that as soon as I have time since Root of all evil is pretty much mandatory as Phil said.
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post #4 of 86
5/1/08 at 3:02pm
Watching the dowsers embarrass themselves was painful and sad. As for the spiritualists, nothing drives me up the wall more than the cults and charlatans who try to explain their nonsense using ideas from quantum mechanics they think I won't understand. Worse than astrologers, I tells ya. Friends and loved ones have dumped hundreds of dollars on homeopaths and 'cleansing kits' as well. A pox on all that garbage.
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post #5 of 86
5/1/08 at 4:28pm
This guy is a breath of fresh air. I wish I had more bullshit hippie, earth mother friends so I can show them stuff like this. Caught a few minutes here and there, can't wait to sit down and watch em all.
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post #6 of 86
5/3/08 at 5:40pm
I'd probably watch this is I could stand to watch Richard Dawkins for more than five minutes without wanting to run him over with a car. Whatever points he makes are always lost in the fact that he's a miserable, pompous douche.
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post #7 of 86
5/3/08 at 5:54pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Drew S. View Post
I'd probably watch this is I could stand to watch Richard Dawkins for more than five minutes without wanting to run him over with a car. Whatever points he makes are always lost in the fact that he's a miserable, pompous douche.
I like Dawkins but I empathize with Drew. I have the same problem with Michael Moore - the message is a good one, but the messenger often comes across as a schmuck.
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post #8 of 86
5/3/08 at 6:14pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Drew S. View Post
I'd probably watch this is I could stand to watch Richard Dawkins for more than five minutes without wanting to run him over with a car. Whatever points he makes are always lost in the fact that he's a miserable, pompous douche.
I haven't watched these yet but usually Dawkins is much nicer on video than he is on paper.
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post #9 of 86
5/3/08 at 6:37pm
It's like a calmer, more reasoned version of Penn & Teller's Bullshit. It's a shame that the vast majority of people are too dim to listen. There's something inherent in human beings that needs to believe in hogwash, especially if that hogwash indicates that they are special.
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post #10 of 86
5/3/08 at 7:41pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Greg David View Post
It's like a calmer, more reasoned version of Penn & Teller's Bullshit. It's a shame that the vast majority of people are too dim to listen. There's something inherent in human beings that needs to believe in hogwash, especially if that hogwash indicates that they are special.
I'd say it's more the latter, and it just so happens that most stories which involve ethnic or personal exceptionalism are hogwash.

In the end, we're all just old children.
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post #11 of 86
5/4/08 at 3:07pm
Great stuff WG! I love Dawkins, asshole-ishness and all... though I don't think he's being an asshole at all. The patience he shows with some of these people is herculean.
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post #12 of 86
5/4/08 at 4:52pm
Yeah, I really don't understand you guys who are saying that he's pompous or superior. Do British accents really set you off that badly? Because I'm not seeing it.
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post #13 of 86
5/4/08 at 5:42pm
Maybe it's because he kinda sounds like C-3PO. In any case, I'm glad we have people like him around.
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post #14 of 86
5/4/08 at 7:10pm
While Dawkins certainly doesn't mince his words, I also don't see the superiority/asshole thing. He's pretty much universally civil to people in conversation and only really goes after right-wing fundamentalists in his writing. He, like Nietzsche, also has nice things to say about the religious figures themselves (he seems to be a fan of Jesus, actually). The atheists who get a lot of attention and come across as condescending assholes, in my opinion, are Steven Pinker and Daniel Dennet.
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post #15 of 86
5/5/08 at 12:33am
Religious people tend to pity atheists, thinking they're all depressed nihilists who live for nothing. I love Dawkins for his patience in explaining that atheists embrace the real world because it's the only one we have.
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post #16 of 86
5/5/08 at 3:19am
His stuff only acts as validation for people who already share his view. Which I do, for the most part, by the way. But from what I've seen, his videos boil down to haha look at the spiritual idiot. He's not as bad as Christopher Hitchens, though.
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post #17 of 86
5/5/08 at 4:02am
True, but I think part of his point is that his view is based on science, which is ever changing as new information becomes known to us, whereas religion is based on superstition and denial, making no progress.
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post #18 of 86
5/5/08 at 7:20pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Big Jim Slade View Post
True, but I think part of his point is that his view is based on science, which is ever changing as new information becomes known to us, whereas religion is based on superstition and denial, making no progress.
And even if something is brought up as being different in religion, like that stuff about Judas being in cahoots with Jesus not actually "betraying" him. No one of any "religious authority" was willing to consider that.
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post #19 of 86
5/5/08 at 9:03pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ali Mohamed View Post
His stuff only acts as validation for people who already share his view. Which I do, for the most part, by the way. But from what I've seen, his videos boil down to haha look at the spiritual idiot.
No, those are Pat Condell's videos. The guy's worked up a good hate-on over the subject. Dawkins is always respectful and down to earth about this, at least in what I've seen. He might ask people forthright questions about what they believe, but he's never contemptuous about it. You and I might laugh at dowsers, but he doesn't. Not to their faces, anyway.

Quote:
He's not as bad as Christopher Hitchens, though.
Another angry dude who's not as funny as Pat Condell.
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post #20 of 86
5/5/08 at 11:07pm
Intrigued, I picked up a copy of The God Delusion at the library today. Not only does it sport back cover blurbs from Desmond Morris and Penn & Teller, but the opening dedication is a memoriam to Douglas Adams. So I've got to love the guy now. I have no choice.

"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"
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post #21 of 86
5/5/08 at 11:41pm
I think democracy has a hand in superstition trumping science for some people...note the woman speaking of black holes saying that, while she understands Dawkins' point of view, many people are coming around to the delusional world view she shares with them. She states this as an affirmation of her beliefs and those in agreement with her; as if these ideas are "equal" to any other, just because some people have them - despicably, science is considered by herself and others a belief system lumped in with religions..

I guess this is why science is considered by some as cold or imposing - it accepts no so-called "fair-minded" approach to other beliefs, instead only permitting the re-evaluation of itself.

The religious need to realize that what they feel doesn't matter.
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post #22 of 86
5/6/08 at 6:49am
Count me in with the party of folks who don't get where this Arrogant Condescending stuff is coming from. He was quite gentlemanly and considerate in the Root of All Evil documentary particularly when chatting to people who are quite clearly fucked in the head. I guess a lot of people just have a knee jerk thing against people smarter than them or some such.
Thanks for the link Werewolf, been waiting for this one keenly.
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post #23 of 86
5/6/08 at 9:03am
You guys dont actually think your secular ethics fell out of the sky during the enlightenment do you? Poor schmuks if you do. Western civilization owes so much to religion, Christianity & Judaism in particular.

You can keep your Milieu Viaducts; ill stick with Kings College Chapel, thanks.
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post #24 of 86
5/6/08 at 1:53pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by EchoBase View Post
You guys dont actually think your secular ethics fell out of the sky during the enlightenment do you? Poor schmuks if you do. Western civilization owes so much to religion, Christianity & Judaism in particular.
And I suppose you think Christianity and Judaism appeared out of nowhere, in a vacuum, as a very special boon to humanity? Poor schmuck if you do.
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post #25 of 86
5/6/08 at 2:11pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by EchoBase View Post
You guys dont actually think your secular ethics fell out of the sky during the enlightenment do you? Poor schmuks if you do. Western civilization owes so much to religion, Christianity & Judaism in particular.

You can keep your Milieu Viaducts; ill stick with Kings College Chapel, thanks.
No our secular ethics were developed alongside humanistic philosophy for the last few millennia. Stuff falling from the sky is for you.
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post #26 of 86
5/6/08 at 3:49pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by EchoBase View Post
You guys dont actually think your secular ethics fell out of the sky during the enlightenment do you?
Um, no. We don't. I don't, anyway. They come from a combination of genetics and social mores. They are a human thing. They can't be divinely inspired because God is just a story people made up.

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Poor schmuks if you do.
Your sympathy is appreciated, but unnecessary.

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Western civilization owes so much to religion, Christianity & Judaism in particular.
I'm sure that had an entity other than a church wielded the church's political power for as long as the church did we'd owe so much to that entity too. As it happens, the Catholic Church wielded that power. Therefore . . . what? We should pretend nonsensical claims make sense? We should listen to religious figures because they're religious figures rather than paying attention to what they say? We should believe in forces that are neither evident nor necessary for the world to work? We should cease to think for ourselves and choose to just go with what's in the Bible whether bronze-age morality makes sense or not? So what if religion was historically prominent? What should I do because of this?
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post #27 of 86
5/6/08 at 3:56pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Seabass Inna Bun View Post
So what if religion was historically prominent? What should I do because of this?
Get your ass to church, I s'pose.
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post #28 of 86
5/6/08 at 6:11pm
The priest always looks at me funny.
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post #29 of 86
5/6/08 at 6:28pm
To bring this back to the topic of the documentaries...

I'm a little annoyed by Dawkins' documentaries' approach to filming interviews where the camera keeps moving back and forth between the two talking heads. It's kinda interesting at first, but it's getting to be as annoying as the way Michael Bay shoots his close-ups for car chases.

Though I think I've felt this way ever since I saw some outtakes of such interviews. Dawkins and a guest were debating on whatever as the camera flipped back and forth, but someone would stumble on what they were saying and they'd start over. Every time, the cameraman would have to get back in the groove of swinging his camera left to right.

Nitpicky, isn't it!?
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post #30 of 86
5/6/08 at 6:41pm
A double post! 13 minutes later!!! WHOOO!
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post #31 of 86
5/6/08 at 6:45pm
Wow, 13 minutes for a double post. Are you posting from a Gameboy? I smell a record!

But you bring up an interesting point. I have never noticed that in his documentaries. So I am not aware of that. But these outtakes and repeating takes must annoy the hell out of the interview partner. Only because he will be humiliated by someone who just has the higher ground in terms of arguments. I will pay attention for that next time.
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post #32 of 86
5/6/08 at 6:47pm
I do have a bad connection... but I never pressed submit more than once. Weird.
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post #33 of 86
5/6/08 at 7:37pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Matt OCallaghan View Post
Count me in with the party of folks who don't get where this Arrogant Condescending stuff is coming from. He was quite gentlemanly and considerate in the Root of All Evil documentary particularly when chatting to people who are quite clearly fucked in the head. I guess a lot of people just have a knee jerk thing against people smarter than them or some such.
Not to pick on anyone in particular, but I think it takes a certain amount of willful blindness to not see how people are offended by Dawkins. Regardless of whether or not he is right, saying things politely doesn't make them less inflammatory. Just look at the name of his documentaries and books. Phrases like 'enemy', 'irrational', 'delusion', and 'root of all evil' are going to make everything he says sound like an ad hominem attack.

Add to that the general assumption that anyone who disagrees with him is suffering from a deficiency of intellect and it's not difficult to imagine why he ends up being a divisive figure.

Just cause you preface it with "All due respect..." doesn't mean you get to say anything you want.
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post #34 of 86
5/6/08 at 8:35pm
Why doesn't Dr. Dawkins get to say anything he wants?
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post #35 of 86
5/6/08 at 8:46pm
When you're going up against people who have national weekly platforms to expouse their "homosexuality brought on Katrina and 9/11" agendas, I think the guys on our side are allowed to tweak a few goddam noses.

I mean seriously, why is it only the eeeeeevil atheists who are supposed to be polite and non-threatening?
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post #36 of 86
5/6/08 at 9:07pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by agentX View Post
Just look at the name of his documentaries and books. Phrases like 'enemy', 'irrational', 'delusion', and 'root of all evil' are going to make everything he says sound like an ad hominem attack.
With regard to Root Of All Evil, I was listening to an NPR interview with Dawkins one day and he emphasized he didn't believe religion was such a thing. The title of the show was chosen by the producers, apparently to create controversy.
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post #37 of 86
5/6/08 at 9:18pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jacob Singer View Post
When you're going up against people who have national weekly platforms to expouse their "homosexuality brought on Katrina and 9/11" agendas, I think the guys on our side are allowed to tweak a few goddam noses.

Religion, I'm told, is a very personal thing. This doesn't always jibe with what I see and have read about, but that's what I'm told.
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post #38 of 86
5/6/08 at 10:16pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Seabass Inna Bun View Post
Why doesn't Dr. Dawkins get to say anything he wants?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jacob Singer View Post
I think the guys on our side are allowed to tweak a few goddam noses.
I mean seriously, why is it only the eeeeeevil atheists who are supposed to be polite and non-threatening?
Sorry, that last bit was a lame attempt at a Talladega Nights reference.

My point wasn't that Dawkins has to be nice and non-threatening. He has my permission(he really did ask...) to tweak as many noses as he wants. But, if he is out doing that, then he is more than likely offending some people and condescending to others. I just find it weird to think that Dawkins, even if he is doing the right thing, is somehow above all this. He isn't some superbly enlightened being. He is perfectly capable of being offensive, condescending, and right all at the same time.
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post #39 of 86
5/6/08 at 11:01pm
No one said he was a superbly enlightened being, and no one said he's incapable of being offensive. He just isn't being offensive. It's not his fault if you take offense at what he does, because he's not out to get you.
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post #40 of 86
5/7/08 at 4:08am
The offensiveness of his statements is all in the perception of them. If you literally believe that an invisible man lives in the sky and punishes rules infractions with eternal suffering, and yet is all-forgiving and all-loving, then yes, you're going to be offended by what Dawkins has to say. If you have a brain, then not so much.

See, that's how you present the idea offensively. Dawkins doesn't do that.
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post #41 of 86
5/7/08 at 4:23am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Seabass Inna Bun View Post
So what if religion was historically prominent? What should I do because of this?
Well I'm gonna go really old school and sacrifice a goat then bathe and masturbate in its blood.

Take THAT science!
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post #42 of 86
5/7/08 at 11:05am
yawn.
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post #43 of 86
5/7/08 at 2:03pm
This documentary was especially interesting because a friend of mine is a devout Christian entering the medical field...her reason for doing so is to do good, which likewise is why she attends church. I try to explain to her how morality is not tied to religion, and such is why I'm not a mass-murderer (though my marijuana and alcohol use is considered immoral by her standards).

Last year she invited me to a pastor's lecture on the tired atheist argument that God can't exist because there's suffering in the world - the thesis was that we can never understand God's plan, and so no human can comprehend why a child has to drown, among other tragedies. I realize that sentiment won't surprise anyone, but it should be shocking how church goers need to enforce order into their lives. I don't think you can be an atheist without some anarchic streak in you. Unfortunately, it's difficult to say that word without negative connotations.
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post #44 of 86
5/7/08 at 2:17pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by DaveB View Post
yawn.
Guys, shape up! The drummer's falling asleep again!
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post #45 of 86
5/7/08 at 2:21pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jacob Singer View Post
Guys, shape up! The drummer's falling asleep again!
Hit him with a sackful of groupies.
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post #46 of 86
5/7/08 at 2:24pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by dreary louse View Post
I don't think you can be an atheist without some anarchic streak in you.
Sure you can. You just put some other cultural, philosophical, or political meta-narrative in religion's place.

Contrary to popular belief in some atheist circles, being an atheist does not automatically make you more rebellious, intelligent, or good-looking than your religious peers.
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post #47 of 86
5/7/08 at 2:24pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by DaveB View Post
yawn.
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post #48 of 86
5/7/08 at 2:27pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by DaveB View Post
Sure you can. You just put some other cultural, philosophical, or political meta-narrative in its place.

Contrary to popular belief in some atheist circles, being an atheist does not automatically make you more rebellious, intelligent, or good-looking than your religious peers.
I'm a pretty good example of that! Of not being rebellious, intelligent, and good-looking, I mean...

(sobs in corner)
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post #49 of 86
5/7/08 at 3:08pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by DaveB View Post
Contrary to popular belief in some atheist circles, being an atheist does not automatically make you more rebellious, intelligent, or good-looking than your religious peers.
I wouldn't say that being against religion makes you more intelligent or better looking - however, it is rebellious and allows you to ask more questions about the world we live in.

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Sure you can. You just put some other cultural, philosophical, or political meta-narrative in its place.
You're confusing anarchy with nihilism. It's obvious in how you consider philosophy and "political meta-narratives" (?) interchangeable.
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post #50 of 86
5/7/08 at 3:14pm
I don't know about anyone else, but if I jumped up and told everyone at my job that I was atheist (which I'm not, I'm not sure what I am at this point) I wouldn't hear the end of it. It may not be nearly as traumatic as someone outing themselves to their family, but it's still very socially marginalizing, especially here in the South. So I would say there's a streak of rebellion in there somewhere.
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