Marsha said to mel:I just recently got myself in big-time, hot water with a family member with the most innocent, yet challenging, little question, When it comes to their religious beliefs people are really weird.
dmb says:Religion means many things and depending on what one is discussing, exactly, you both seem quite right to me. As mel's excellent post points out, there is obviously a whole lot that Dawkins doesn't understand about religion. He does a fine job of bashing the literalists of religion, of which there are many millions, but he's not much use to anybody who's gone beyond sunday services. As far as getting into hot water with believers, that is a sure sign that you're dealing with someone who is clinging to an unhealthy form of belief. If a person can't debate or discuss their religion without getting upset, that person is probably a fanatic. If mere questions cause an emotional outburst, then their religion is very likely an emotional crutch rather than a genuinely spiritual path. Funny thing is that Dawkins is one of those fanatics. I heard him interviewed on a radio show recently where this was completely obvious. Unlike Sam Harris, he gets rather agitated at mere questions about his own scientific dogmatism. The questions put to him were actually quite appropriate and they were asked with kindness but Dawkins turned into a big harry crank anyway. His response was almost frightening and it was exactly the sort of thing that leads people to claim that atheism is a religion too. Did you catch that line at Steve's new blog? Atheism is a religion in the same way that NOT collecting stamps is a hobby. I like that. It seems pretty clear to me that religious experiences are a fact of life. There are gazillions of reports from every time a culture and so it seems totally foolish to dismiss religion in that sense. But when people go around insisting that virgins literally give birth or that "saviours" literally come back from the dead I think its perfectly appropriate to roll your eyes and walk away. As my psychology of religion professor suggested, when somebody asks you if you're saved you can ask them a very reasonable question. "Saved from what?" _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail® goes where you go. On a PC, on the Web, on your phone. http://www.windowslive-hotmail.com/learnmore/versatility.aspx#mobile?ocid=TXT_TAGHM_WL_HM_versatility_121208 Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
