Anti-theistic strawmen?

Thank you for your entertaining illustration of my point. Odd that you should have to ask. I mentioned Arjuna, Buddha, John of the Cross, Maimonides, Thomas Merton and TS Eliot, and said there were others. Feel free to address their ideas in a reasonable way at any time.Nothing was said about anyone's ideas being 'intellectually bulletproof.' That is a straw man of your own making. I mentioned Arjuna, Buddha, John of the Cross, Maimonides, Thomas Merton and TS Eliot, and said there were others. Feel free to address their ideas in a reasonable way at any time.Nothing was said about eating chocolate and smoking pot. Those are straw men of your own making. I mentioned Arjuna, Buddha, John of the Cross, Maimonides, Thomas Merton and TS Eliot, and said there were others. Feel free to address their ideas in a reasonable way at any time.No one told atheists to shut up. That's a straw man of your own making. A forfeit is a forfeit, not a victory. If Dawkins intends to prove that all theistic beliefs are 'delusion' he has to do better than score easy points on homecoming cupcakes like Pat Robertson.I mentioned Arjuna, Buddha, John of the Cross, Maimonides, Thomas Merton and TS Eliot, and said there were others. Dawkins is free to to address their ideas in a reasonable way at any time.No one mentioned granola. That's a straw man of your own making. It comes as news indeed that 'nobody believes' Buddha or Arjuna. Please show your math. So you wave your hand. But all you show is that no substance has been addressed.One inhibiting factor appears to be the amnesia that results when the material to be addressed is mentioned.I mentioned Arjuna, Buddha, John of the Cross, Maimonides, Thomas Merton and TS Eliot, and said there were others. Feel free to address their ideas in a reasonable way at any time. Eliot's theism is anything but 'warm and fuzzy.' As you know. You did say that by age 20 you had encountered every idea.The warm fuzzies are a straw man of your own making. You will find that the ideas 'actually practised' in a culture are influenced by the ideas of influential figures. This is true by definition. (See dictionary.)The fact that these ideas are often watered down or misunderstood as they are disseminated only makes it that much more important to address them at their source.I mentioned Arjuna, Buddha, John of the Cross, Maimonides, Thomas Merton and TS Eliot, and said there were others. Feel free to address their ideas in a reasonable way at any time.The 'sophist' is a straw man of your own making.I look forward to your reasoned discussion of these ideas. Until then, thank you for your entertaining illustration of my point.Anti-theistic straw men do exist._______Edited by Archer Opterix, : html, clarity.Edited by Archer Opterix, : html.

You're just dropping names. I asked for a theology.If the reason that it's so irrefutable is because at no point are you willing to state what it is, then I think you're involved in a shell game. I don't think you've identified some theology Dawkins is afraid to address when you adamantly refuse to explain exactly what it is.Or is this actually it? The theology? That is, a "mature", "sophisticated" theology is just name-dropping? That's certainly the impression I get from you. Because there is no substance. If there were you'd be able to present it, and I would be gobsmacked or whatever by its brilliance, and that would be the end of that.Instead you're proving me right. The only "mature" theism is to keep it a secret. The only way it survives rebuttal is in seclusion.It's a shell game. What ideas? Your post contains none, at least in regards to the "mature" theology you've been on about. The only "idea" you've put forward is the idea that dropping names like Buddha and T.S. Eliot is an acceptable substitute for fleshing out an argument.It's not. It's just a confirmation of what a shell game the whole thing is. "Dawkins is wrong because he doesn't rebut my mature theology." Well, what's your theology? "I'm not going to tell you."Is that mature? It sounds childish, to my ears.

I've tried finding these guys' theology. Its difficult, but in several important ways these things are tackled. A characteristic of Maimonides appears to be a form of god in the gaps with clever wording. That is to say: God reveals truth to us, however if something we thought was God's truth is contradicted by experience/science/philosophy then it isn't truth. It's a 'This is the way of the cosmos, and you have to prove me wrong - I don't need to justify it' kind of affair.He argued that a claim of truth can only be made if it is proven by rationalism, empiricism or authority. Dawkins deals with the latter category in many of his writings and why the latter should be rejected as a source of truth. Either that or by authority, he means the kind of authority we have in science: which is an authority which can be trusted to have employed rationalism and empiricism to reach its conclusions. Since nobody has done the rationalism and empiricism to validly reach conclusions about God, Maimonides' theology is either denying God's existence entirely, or based upon an unjustified faith in authority figures. Given one of his principles of faith is in the immutability in the Torah as God's law - I'd say it was unjustified faith in authority figures which Dawkins does address.In a dash of cynicism, Maimonides refers to the idea that God is angry at sinners as not a true reflection of God, but a necessary spin to keep people in line.All this from 'his' wiki page. Here is a great bit from that page:

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While these two positions may be seen as in contradiction (non-corporeal eternal life, versus a bodily resurrection), Maimonides resolves them with a then unique solution: Maimonides believed that the resurrection was not permanent or general. In his view, God never violates the laws of nature. Rather, divine interaction is by way of angels, which Maimonides holds to be metaphors for the laws of nature, the principles by which the physical universe operates, or Platonic eternal forms. Thus, if a unique event actually occurs, even if it is perceived as a miracle, it is not a violation of the world's order.[6]

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which would put Maimonides in the pantheistic category of Dawkins, which he outright states he is not attacking since it is just a way of using metaphors to describe nature.TS Eliot's theology lead him to the conclusion that liberalism and democracy were very bad. That saving people is not a matter of educated them. It led him to believe in the greatness of the monarchy but also to hate tyranny!? That's what I managed to get from a brief search. IT seems that whatever his theology is, it definitely leads to morality->actions in the real world that affect real people. Dawkins tackles this kind thing.

Do you value these figures for their psychological insight or for their theology?Do you think Krishna really spoke to Arjuna? Or does that not matter to you?For myself, I get a great deal from the Bhagavad Gita, from Buddhism and from Eliot, but however sophisticated they may be, that doesn't mean any of their supernatural claims are true.And that's the rub really. That's why critics say Dawkins is being naive in his argument, because he's treating such supernatural claims literally, as though it were simply a matter of true or not true. For a sophisticated theologian, those supernatural claims are symbolic, not literal, so attacking them as not being literally true is naive.If it were as simple as that, though, we wouldn't be having this argument, would we? I don't have any problems with the symbolic truths of religion - they've been very important in my life, despite my atheism. And as long as you don't argue that Krishna is a real supernatural entity, or that we get reincarnated when we die, then there's really no difference between you and Richard Dawkins. Or is there?

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'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

Thanks to JavaMan and Modulous for sharing your thoughts. I agree with you, but would add that if sophistication provides no guarantee of truth, it likewise provides no guarantee of falsehood. The question, being open, deserves recognition as such.Where one places one's own personal bets does not affect this. My own take on the literature is probably similar to yours.I do believe Krishna to be real. I do not believe Krishna to be literal. Krishna is a picture (limited) of a reality (vast).A limited picture of a vast reality will always be false to the extent that it cannot do justice to the whole. It will always be true to the extent that what it does convey is, after all, reality.That's my view, but more relevant to our discussion is who agrees with me. Krishna.Everything I just said about pictures and reality is what Krishna tells Arjuna in the Gita. And a memorable job he does of it, as you know.Which is why I call attention to the literature when people ask me where to go for a 'mature theology.' That's where you find it. The influential theists of the world have much to tell us about how to approach theism in general. There is no need for naive literalism, either theistic or anti-theistic.The question we're left with now seems to be whether Dawkins is using such a straw man himself. I can't say for sure because I lack sufficient first-hand knowledge of his argument. I do know Dawkins attacks fundamentalism as pseudoscience. I also know he attacks theism as 'delusion' because that assertion provides the title of his book.What I have yet to see is any indication that Dawkins recognizes the difference between arguing the first point and arguing the second. It's two different tasks. The difference is huge.

A child can tell you this picture is at odds with science. Human bodies do not fly. There is this thing called gravity. The picture is not science.It does not follow that Chagall was mentally deficient, that his picture is meaningless, that its admirers are deluded, and that the person who sees nothing here but paint is the only sane person in the gallery.One can argue that case, naturally, if one wants. But the task will keep one busy for a while. Saying 'Art is Not Science' is one thing; saying 'Art is Not Valid' is another. To prove that all artists and all art appreciators are deluded will demand much more than simply pointing out a couple of obvious facts about gravity. ___Edited by Archer Opterix, : clarity.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Why model reality via "Krishna" when it can be modeled via the laws of physics?There's a number of suitable ways to represent reality in a "mind-graspable" way that have nothing to do with gods; indeed, finding these models has been the occupation of science for the past 200 years. And we're fairly good at it. Sure. The map is not the territory. I prefer the sentiments of the Buddhas - the Path that can be explained is not the true path. Indeed, any model of the universe is arbitrary, an approximation of what is real in a way suited to the needs of our minds.But if all models are arbitrary, why not go with the one with the proven track record of making predictions about what's most likely to happen? Why go with the useless model called "Krishna"? To be a theology, it has to be about gods. See? It's right there in the word - theos. A theology is a belief about gods.Is yours? You seem to be making a statement about the nature of the universe and our ability to comprehend it. I don't see you making a statement about the existence of any god except to say that there's not literally any such thing as "Krishna", it's just a word you use to describe your understanding of the universe.You know, like I basically predicted you were doing a few messages back. So, you're not presenting theology at all. You're just presenting gussied-up atheism. The "mature theology" you think you've presented is no theology at all.So why on Earth does Dawkins have to refute you? You're already on his side. You're not a theist at all. Somebody who believes that the claims of religion are symbolic and not literal is an atheist, already. They're not under the delusion. They just like church music, basically.Well, nobody's saying that the end of faith means we have to burn down the organs, for God's sake. That's just another theistic strawman. Neither does it follow that Chagall's painting proves that its a good idea to believe something on the basis of no good evidence.Atheists aren't the ones burning literature and paintings, like you seem to suggest. Atheists aren't the ones who dynamited the Bamiyan Buddhas. That's the soldiers of sectarian conflict, the root of which Dawkins is trying to get a handle on.And you think he's the bad guy, here?Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

It can be difficult, yes. One reason is that many theologies are expressed in literary forms other than logical argument. In the case of influential figures we also have the situation that more than one theology has emerged from the person's thought.Metaphorical expression, too, often counts as much as literal forms of expression. Metaphors are necessary, in fact.The strength of symbolic expression is that it carries multiple layers of meaning simultaneously. The message is more likely to reach multiple audiences, transcend the historical moment, and find useful adaptations. The weakness of metaphorical expression is that it invites misunderstanding and frustration on the part of those whose tastes run toward more literal forms of expression. That's often the case with theology--or philosophy of any kind, theistic or non-theistic. If a system of thought is internally consistent and reasonable (logic and reason do still apply), and if the ideas take account of known facts (or at least do not contradict them), the ideas are considered valid.Here we see a difference between philosophy and science. The difference lies not in the use of reason and logic. It lies primarily in (1) mode of expression, (2) standards of evidence and (3) questions asked. The three are necessarily related.Which bring us again to Dawkins. If he's arguing that theology is not science, he is right. He is also arguing a point long established. It is all to the good if he wants to go over this ground again for fundies like Pat Robertson who didn't get the memo the first time around. Dawkins is certainly qualified for the task.But showing theism to be 'not science' is one thing. Showing it to be 'delusion' is another.A belief is not delusional if it accommodates known facts and the arrival of new information. Given that, it remains as reasonable a personal working theory of how life is to be lived and choices are to be made as any other. We have to assess its merit on its own terms. What questions are being addressed by the system of thought? How well do the solutions work for the purposes they are intended?Philosophy exists because human beings have to answer the question 'What is the best way to live my life?' and 'Which priorities matter most?' As we know, science is not in the business of answering these questions. They fall into the realm of Those Things That Science Provisionally Sets Aside. It does this so that its method can go to work on those matters that its method excels at elucidating. Philosophy, both theistic and atheistic, has never been science.Framing a personal philosophy (all philosophies are ultimately personal) is as much art as science. It accommodates facts but looks for overarching and underlying themes to tie them together. Ideally the picture that results displays internal coherence, logic, structure, and meaning. But you can't test the sum on a calculator.But science too has much in common with art and philosophy--more than many scientists seem to know.Professional habit leads many scientists to take Those Things That Science Provisionally Sets Aside and ascribe to them the quality of Absolute Irrelevance. The conclusion is not rational. It is an understandable if careless prejudice that arises from habit. The ideas in question are not scientifically relevant. When science is the realm where one earns one's bread and butter, it is easy to overlook the validity ideas do possess. One is not often obliged to consider them in one's line of work. It becomes easy then to confuse scientific validity with truth itself.But it isn't.Art, philosophy and science are ways human beings apply their minds to the task of understanding reality. As systems of human thought all three have more in common with each other than any of the three has with Reality itself.If human thought vanished tomorrow, reality would still be. But art and philosophy would vanish, and so would science.Science is not Reality itself. Like art and philosophy, it requires the presence of a human consciousness. Take away that natural operating venue--which is not 'reality' or 'truth' itself but human thought--and science ceases to exist as surely as art and philosophy do.All three systems of thought, then, are human. All three work with mental constructs. All three draw provisional conclusions. All three have been found useful. None of the three is synonymous with Reality itself.It's interesting to note that none of this would surprise Buddha. The provisional nature of human thought has long been accounted for by influential thinkers, theist and non-theist alike, in human history. No need exists for a modern writer to be naive on this point. Interesting to see the word just appear when the idea of metaphor is introduced. The word is not required grammatically.Its appearance implies a premise: that a hierarchy of value exists, with literal descriptions taking pride of place and metaphorical descriptions representing something 'less than' literal, something 'mere.'If you don't mind my asking: whence the implied hierarchy that puts literal modes of expression on top?________Edited by Archer Opterix, : html, subheading.Edited by Archer Opterix, : clarity.

Dawkins is not saying theology is not science (well he is, but that's obvious - it isn't his argument). He is arguing that theological constructs should not form the basis of decisions in the real world because they are based on 'faith'. He argues why faith should not be the cornerstone of decision making where those decision affect other people.People have been making the points Dawkins has for a long time, however - there is nothing like someone today making the points for getting people talking as opposed to some long dead philosopher's books. You aren't going to get Bertrand Russell on the Daily Show - which is a dear shame. Right - Dawkins is arguing a rationalist/empiricist philosophy against revelation/faith philosophy. Should we refer to an article of faith like 'souls are infused into a being at conception' and 'every sperm is sacred' to let us decide on our policy of disease control and public health? Dawkins argues that we shouldn't. Right - science is a tried and tested (And also evolving) methodology for arriving at conclusions about reality. Correct. However, the central argument is do we refer to a work of art as having value for deciding economic policy? No, we should use a system of evidence collection and rationalism to decide economic policy.We shouldn't start our economics ideas with articles of faith, though we do need to start with certain assumptions. These assumptions should be justified otherwise the conclusion will be criticised as specious. For some reason, there is some kind of cultural protection against criticising faith-based conclusions as being specious. Modern anti-theist writers are not naive on this point. They in fact refer to this very point in their criticisms of revelation as a way of knowing. That is not the reason 'just' appears here. 'Just' was used to get across the feeling that these theologies are doing no more than describing nature using metaphor. Science is just a methodology, that doesn't mean it is on a lower rung of some epistemological ladder of greatness. Let me quote Dawkins exactly on this matter:

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Deists differ from pantheists in that the deist God is some kind of cosmic intelligence, rather than the pantheist's metaphoric or poetic synonym for the laws of the universe. Pantheism is sexed-up atheism. Deism is watered-down theism.

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Sexed-up, doesn't sound like a bad thing. Dawkins only criticism for this, is when scientists sex up their discussions using metaphor which is confusing since most people associate the terms of the metaphor with real supernatural entities. See Einstein for more details.Dawkins also states:

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Let me sum up Einsteinian religion in one more quotation from Einstein himself: "To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious." In this sense I too am religious, with the reservation that "cannot grasp" does not have to mean "forever ungraspable". But I prefer not to call myself religious because it is misleading. It is destructively misleading because, for the vast majority of people, 'religion' implies 'supernatural'.

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Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Everything. "There can no longer be any good a priori, since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it. It is nowhere written that 'the good' exists, that one must be honest or must not lie, since we are now upon the plane where there are only men. Dostoevsky once wrote 'if God did not exist, everything would be permitted'; and that, for existentialism, is the starting point. Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist." -Jean-Paul Sarte Hitler was raised Lutheran and used the RCC as a way to further his eugenics cause. Being that Germans at that time were predominantly Christian, he used it as a tool of manipulation. Yes, Stalin was preparing for the seminary, lost his faith, severely, and enacted no religious doctrines, but anti-religious doctrines. Which is something I've been saying since I arrived at EvC, but denied up and down by the likes of yourself. Religion doesn't begin or end with the supernatural. Religion exists in the minds of the deeply, so-called, irrelegious."... secularist will say that people like Stalin didn't murder others because of a godless worldview, but because they were fanatics. Of course they are trying to head off any implications that secularism and atheism heavy contributed to genocide and atrocities. Here they tackle a straw man when the ball carrier is running around the end.

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The point is not that every humanist or atheist will engage in a career of axe murdering as a result their unbelief; but that with God out of the equation, they no longer have a foundation from which to legitimately criticize that which they say is wrong...

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The non-believer... cannot be intellectually honest without admitting that the atrocities committed by Stalin's purges, Hitler's concentration camps, Mao's red death, Pol-Pot's killing fields, and others, are consistent with assumptions of naturalism and atheism. For example, when Stalin talks of breaking a few eggs to get an omelet, he is applying a standard of "survival of the fittest" to justify his ruthless purges. We might note that animals out in the forest or jungle appeal to the sharpest teeth and fastest legs in deciding who survives. What did Hitler do but give a militaristic interpretation to the philosophy of Nietzsche?" -Robert Meyer Yes, he should not have made that list in any classic sense, since he was a mystic of sorts. But his beliefs were garnered by Nietzschean philosophy while the Nazi's danced to the music of Wagner (pronounced - Vogner).

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"It is better to shun the bait, than struggle in the snare." -Ravi Zacharias

Nothing. Atheism is not the abandonment of right action. What's your evidence that he stopped being Lutheran? Persecution of Jews is entirely consistent with Christian tradition and history.If you're using the fact that Hitler was a bad guy as "evidence" of his atheism, and then turning around and using Hitler as an example of a bad-guy atheist, that's circular reasoning.Hitler was a Christian. That's 100% certain. I'm sorry that's a fact you have a hard time dealing with, but to palm off the bad guys of your religion to the atheists is bigotry on your part, plain and simple. Everything Stalin enacted was a religious doctrine. Remember the slogans of the Soviet Union? "God is the state; the state is God." How is that not a religious doctrine? Lysenkoism? An attempt to explain biology through supernaturalism. How is that not a religious doctrine? I agree with you that any time a belief is based on wishful thinking, on the basis of no good evidence, we might very well call that a religion.Which is exactly the situation under the figures you've described. Religion, not atheism. Belief on the basis of no good evidence. I know how to pronounce Wagner, thank you. I was pretty sure you weren't talking about the lounge pianist.At any rate, I think it's been abundantly established that Hitler's views stemmed from the writings of Martin Luther. In that sense he was very much Lutheran.I repeat - no millions have been killed by an insistence that belief be supported by good evidence. Rather, as in the case of the Green Revolution, an insistence on evidence-based conclusions has saved 1.5 billion human lives.

Why model yourself with a picture of a frog when you could as easily have used a photograph?Different pictures have their uses. Literal isn't the best choice for everything. Odd that you call the assertion a 'sentiment.' It's hardly sentimental.Could it be that you call it 'sentiment' because you assume fact to be the exclusive property of science? Because you assume 'the Buddhas' to be jolly, warm-fuzzy folk who preach your feel-good straw-man religion of sunsets and blowjobs?Well, whatever. The statement is Taoist.You accused me earlier of playing a 'shell game' by 'dropping names' while keeping the world's great literature a 'secret' from you. So I may as well tell you that the statement you like so much appears in the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tze, page 1. Get a library card. You can probably still find a copy or two that I haven't managed to smuggle out in my ongoing effort to keep you ill-informed.

Who said all models are arbitrary? Why not use a photo, which predicts your real appearance, rather than the useless image called Road-Frog?Because the frog image is not useless. Different pictures serve for different things.This question hinges on the zero-sum fallacy: that any value science possesses is necessarily subtracted from the value of other models, and vice versa. Not so. I'm with you here if you say provisional instead of arbitrary.About my personal views you say: Our personal views, theistic or otherwise, are not the topic.The task was to identify an 'anti-theistic straw man.' I obliged by identifying one. You kindly provided Exhibit A. That on-topic point made, the discussion has moved on.We are now exploring the implications. My identification took it as a given that some forms of theism are more 'rudimentary' and some more 'developed.' We are now discussing what features may be found in 'adult theism.' How does one identify a developed philosophy in the absence of a scientific standard of measurement? It's an interesting question.You have seized on a statement I made about symbols in a reply to JavaMan. In your eagerness to 'smoke out' my personal beliefs you overlooked the crucial point: this view is the same one ascribed to the god Krishna in the Gita.You label that view 'atheistic': If this is true, Krishna is an atheist, and the Gita is one of the founding texts of atheism.But Krishna is a god. The Gita describes the god. And you have also told us this: Krishna is thus a god who espouses atheism. The Gita is a theological text that espouses atheism.It's hard to be sure where that leaves us. Maybe it's best to be slower with the labels and faster with reading the books.My point is this: the phenomena we call 'theism' incorporate a number of ideas. These ideas are widely documented. Many of these ideas retain validity for theists and atheists alike.No good reason exists for a modern writer, regardless of personal belief, to be naive about this._____

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

It's the cabinet art from the early boxes of Frogger. I assume "fact" to be the exclusive product of methods that draw conclusions on the basis of evidence, not wishful thinking. Indeed, it's a justifiable assumption. No fact has ever been established by wishful thinking.Your painting might be pretty, but it doesn't establish a fact. I'm comfortable with its existence as art, which is a form of human communication.You seem to believe that you can extend the painting beyond its purpose; that the painting itself is every bit as probative as evidence-based inquiry. That assertion is meaningless. The existence of a painting doesn't corroborate the existence of Krishna. The fact that you can point to a painting doesn't make your "theology" any more mature; indeed you're just proving it to be the hippie-granola sophistry that I suspected it was. The Buddhas, for one. Your buddy in the Bhagivad Gita. Laozi. Easy, chief. Buddhism draws from the Daode Jing (or I guess what you spell as the Tao Te Ching), too. Try not to pretend like rigid borders can be drawn between the panopoly of Asian religions. Your ignorance is showing, a bit. I'll say "provisional" when it's what I mean to say, thank you. You have enough trouble actually grappling with my points without having to re-write them to serve your purposes, I think.All models are arbitrary - unless we're going to talk about the verifiable models, the models that we privilege because they're supported by evidence and are useful for making predictions about the behavior of things in the universe.Your "Krishna" model isn't one of them. It's just something that you made up, partially; partially something others made up and then you read about. Evidence-based model testing was never a part of it. Except that you haven't. A strawman is a position your opponent isn't arguing. Rather, you're arguing precisely the position that I predicted you would - that you wrap up your feelings about the universe, the moral lessons and philosophy you've come to understand, and stuff it into a box labeled "God", or in your case, "Krishna", the name of a god.Instead of identifying a strawman, you've proven my argument correct. Where, of course, your own theology is "adult" and everyone who disagrees with you is "immature." Funny how you never, ever run into anybody who claims that their own theology is the immature theology, except after they've started to believe something else.It's a shell game, AO. The objection about "naive theology" is nonsense. It's meaningless. All theology is equally immature, to the extent that it's all about the belief in things on the basis of no good evidence. The only mature theology is to recognize that all theology is vapid, content-free, and naive. Indeed. It's no surprise that most atheists are as familiar with Eastern religions as with Christianity. It's no surprise that the truest parts of all religions turn out to be essentially atheistic - because atheism is, most likely, true. According to you, "theism" seems to contain all ideas. Even atheism. It's hard to imagine, therefore, exactly how "theism" could be anything but meaningless. That which explains everything, in truth, explains nothing at all.

They danced to Strauss. To Wagner, they marched.

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place”
-- Joseph Goebbels
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Thanks for taking the time, Modulous. Very interesting. I have a better idea of the content of Dawkins now and for the most part agree on points.Dawkins still strikes me as reductionist, if entertainingly so. It's not really doing justice to Spinoza's deistic thought to call it 'watered-down theism,' funny as the label is. No case has been made for 'delusion' which is--let's face it--an accusation of insanity directed at theists for no reason other than that they are theists. A bit much, obviously. I can write it off as hyperbole on the grounds that this is popular literature, not a serious philosophical discussion. It appears to be a title chosen with an eye on those talk shows you mention. Writers get more TV time playing provocateur than with care about terms. Dawkins knows the game and is not shy about playing it. In general you describe a person who is making a good faith effort to address views I was led to believe he had dismissed out of hand. The points he has to make deserve consideration, which is more than be said of a lot of books out there. And Taoism is damn good-looking agnosticism. Agreed. The fundamentalist mistake is to compel art to do the work of science and science to conform itself to art. I understand. How about this?We decide economic policy based on how we answer this question: What kind of society do we want?The question itself is neither scientific nor theistic. It is an artist's question. It is creative.We start with lump-of-clay butt-ugly reality. We imagine the reality (not yet physically real) that we want. We then use the artistic method to bring those two pictures together.Science is an important tool in the workshop, of course. Research tells us about the medium. In this case the medium is the economy. Like all artistic media, it has enormous potential and maddening limitations. We have to consider both if our project is to succeed. Research helps us do this. Research also tells us which tools are most likely to be effective in working the material. But it doesn't tell us what to create. Science doesn't require that we create anything at all. That imperative comes from another place in us. That is the creative impulse.So no, we do not refer to a work of art. The artistic task is more demanding (if a bit less literal) than that. We have to be the artist.Your discussion here, as I see it, concerns the best way to decide our collective creative goals. How to answer the question: What kind of reality do we want?The founding premise of all democracies is that we decide this on the basis of reason, discussion and consensus. That's the social contract. In supporting this contract you show yourself to be a true democrat. (Small d. The most important kind to be.) I'm a big believer in that as well.Faith, at least of the very religious kind, has always been ill at ease in democratic societies. The rationalism of democracy's social contract doesn't quite fit religion around the shoulders. Yet the freedom of worship is a good thing to have, so religions generally try to play along. The result is that tension that you describe.I saw an article in the BBC a while back that noted an irony. In the UK, where a state religion exists, political figures are under pressure to declare how religious they are not. In the US, where the Constitution mandates separation of church and state, political figures find it necessary to say how religious they are. It's as if the voters sought a kind of balance.But that's an off-topic ramble. A whopper of a typhoon has me housebound today. Thanks for sharing, Modulous. I've enjoyed the conversation.______Edited by Archer Opterix, : clarity, brev.Edited by Archer Opterix, : clarity, paragraph 2.Edited by Archer Opterix, : typo repair.

Spinoza wasn't really a deist, he was a more of a pantheist (he considered God and Nature to be synonyms): Spinoza was a sexed-up atheist. It might not do justice to deism to call it watered down theism, but it is a handy way of quickly and humoursly describing it. He does describe the general concept of deism in more detail:

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A deist, too, believes in a supernatural intelligence, but one whose activities were confined to setting up the laws that govern the universe in the first place. The deist God never intervenes thereafter, and certainly has no specific interest in human affairs.

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Yes, hyperbole is probably intended. However, he does make the case for delusion in the book - just not in the first chapter. He defines delusion as a fixed false belief that is resistant to reason or confrontation with actual fact. And I think he makes the case quite well - however I think it is more appropriate to call it an illusion rather than a delusion. Some people fall for an optical illusion, and refuse to accept that (for example) the two lines are the same size - even if you measure them. I don't think that it is fair to call them delusional, just highly susceptable to illusion.Still, delusion does the trick - and it certainly gets peoples attention.If you have a few minutes watch this from 1:40 onwards:http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=zGmALkvcG2MDawkins answers the criticisms of the God Delusion himself, including the sophisticated theology (it's one of the first points he makes so you don't necessarily have to sit through the whole thing). He starts the straw-man discussion at about 7 minutes in."If only such subtle nuanced religion predominated - the world would surely be a better place and I would have written a different book. The melancholy truth is that this kind of understated, decent religion, is numerically negligible." True enough True enough, but we must also ask the vital question: And how do we get that kind of society. And here we need evidence and rationalism - economics, sociology etc etc. And of course, we get the awkward scenario when faith is the consensus view that this overrides the reason and discussion part of the process. This seems, as you point out, to be ironically the case in the USA where an explicit attempt to keep religion and government at arms length has been made. Krosa? Hope nothing is badly damaged, and that the stimulating conversation we have been having is all the compensation you might need for being housebound during high winds