Apparently, when Richard Dawkins said he was an atheist, some people didn’t realize that he rejected Islam along with Christianity:
She had “read his Wikipedia page”, the third paragraph of which begins with the phrase “Dawkins is known as an outspoken atheist.” But she was surprised, apparently, to learn that he’s not a huge fan of Islam, as well as not being a huge fan of Christianity.
Dawkins, is, of course, equally scathing about just about every religion. That’s fine in the case of Christianity, of course, where his views are perfectly aligned with those of the average dunce in Trinity. But criticising Islam is, of course, a big no-no.
And what has he said about sexual assault, you might ask? Well apparently it refers to two tweets he sent in 2014, in which he suggested that being drunk and unable to remember being assaulted might make it more difficult to secure a prosecution.
John McGuirk, “Now Cancelled by Trinity Students: Richard Dawkins” at GRIPT
One commentator chortles:
Richard Dawkins is discovering that the postchristian society he helped bring about isn’t necessarily to his liking…
No Christianity, no inquiry, no science. Dawkins’s central thesis was not only wrong, it was backward. Christianity and science are not only NOT at war, Christianity is a necessary condition for science, logically, historically, and observably.
Vox Popoli, “How’s that postchristianity working out for you?” at Vox
Some would argue that theism rather than Christianity exclusively is necessary for science. But leave that aside for a moment. The stark reality is that the post-Christian student does not want to win a debate but rather to cancel it.
Dawkins probably had no idea what would replace Christianity and, one guesses, he won’t like it.
Ken Francis, who sent the information about Dawkins’s speaker woes, also directs us to this clip, featuring Richard Dawkins hoping that Lawrence Krauss can make sense of a universe coming from nothing with Nobody in charge:
No, really.
Hat tip: Ken Francis, co-author with Theodore Dalrymple of The Terror of Existence: From Ecclesiastes to Theatre of the Absurd
Theism tends to go along with support for real science, but I think both are products of the same general respect and need for real people with real skills.
When a society needs to have productive people making real things, it will favor the kinds of research needed to aid production and everyday life.
A productive society also favors religion, because religious people are more ‘settled’ and ready to work. They aren’t constantly anxious and Karening over every little imagined threat or disagreement.
Modern western society doesn’t need or want people or skills. Share value rises when employees and factories die. So we only favor the kind of research that raises share value: Insane delusional theories, Economics, Innovative Disruption, and Total Genocide.
The Khmer Rouge took people from the city to work the farms, while the farmers were sent to live in the city. Rather than wonder if there was any skill required to farm, they expected the people from the city to grow the same amount as experienced farmers. Rather than accept the failure when they failed to produce as much food, they murdered them for failure to be farmers.
2 BobRyan
And they killed people for the mortal sign of wearing glasses.
Wearing a watch was a death sentence. When a third of the Cambodian people were slaughtered, any reason was justifiable.
BobRyan and Truthfreedom,
There was nothing wrong with what those Cambodian rulers did, at least according to their opinion.
The fact that you and I may not like what they did doesn’t mean anything. It’s our opinion against theirs. That’s what Dawkins and his band promoted. No absolute laws, no absolute moral standards, nothing. That’s it. Life goes on. Right?
News states:
Well some could argue that Theism was sufficient within itself to bring about modern science, but they would be faced with the embarrassing fact that there were Theistic cultures other than Christianity, (specifically Judaism and Islam), which never made the critical breakthrough into modern science.
Christianity, and Christianity alone, out of all the the world’s cultures, including all the other monotheistic cultures of the world, can alone claim credit for the birth of modern science.
But what was it about Christianity alone that set it apart from the other monotheistic cultures and enabled it alone to make the critical breakthrough into modern science whereas the other Theistic cultures failed to do make the breakthrough?
StanleyJaki states the reason for that distinction like this, “the Jews lacked the Christian notion that Jesus was the monogenes or unigenitus, the only-begotten of God. Pantheists like the Greeks tended to identify the monogenes or unigenitus with the universe itself, or with the heavens. Jaki writes: Herein lies the tremendous difference between Christian monotheism on the one hand and Jewish and Muslim monotheism on the other. This explains also the fact that it is almost natural for a Jewish or Muslim intellectual to become a pa(n)theist. About the former Spinoza and Einstein are well-known examples. As to the Muslims, it should be enough to think of the Averroists. With this in mind one can also hope to understand why the Muslims, who for five hundred years had studied Aristotle’s works and produced many commentaries on them failed to make a breakthrough. The latter came in medieval Christian context and just about within a hundred years from the availability of Aristotle’s works in Latin,,”
Robert Sheldon commented on the distinction Stanley Jaki was making for Christianity, fairly clearly, in the following quote:
As you can see, it is a fairly subtle distinction that separates Christianity from the other monotheistic cultures, but it is, and was, a subtle distinction that proved to be critical in the birth of modern science in the medieval Christian cultures of Europe.
I would like to point out another, more obvious, reason why Christianity was able to make the critical breakthrough into modern science, while the other monotheistic faiths, Islam and Judaism, were unable to do so.
First, in Judaism God is seen as being terrifyingly unapproachable, whereas in Christianity, through Jesus’s atonement, God beckons us to approach Him.
It seems clear to me that if you viewed God as being terrifyingly unapproachable, as Judaism does, then that would present a rather formidable roadblock for any culture studying God’s handiwork, i.e. nature, and subsequently giving birth to modern science.
Whereas in Islam, besides being unapproachable, God is also seen as being capricious,
In fact, one of the names of God in Islam is “Capricious”
It seems fairly obvious to me that if one of your main views of God is that he is ‘capricious’, then that would present an even more formidable barrier for any culture making the critical breakthrough into modern science than presupposing God to ‘merely’ be terrifyingly unapproachable (as Judaism does).
After all, if God truly is capricious, why should we ever trust that God should not, on a whim, change the laws of nature whenever he wanted to?
Islam undermines science in the most fundamental way possible in that we have no reason to presuppose that universe should be, or stay, rational for us to comprehend.
Only in Christianity is God both approachable, (thus making the study of His handiwork, i.e. nature, far more inviting than it is in Judaism alone), and is God also trustworthy, (in that He is not capricious in his actions as he is in Islam). And therefore, only in Christianity, is a ‘friendly’ environment for the eventual rise of modern science maintained where we mere humans, being made in the image of God, can dare presuppose that we may be able to approach and comprehend the rational nature in which God has made the universe.