Tuesday 27 March 2007

Godless

3Quarks Daily link to an article about an atheist revival or something, anyway the excerpt a bit that says:
"Dawkins doesn't know a thing about religion," said Brian Malley, a lecturer in the University psychology department's culture and cognition program. The lights in his office were off, and it was dark enough that one couldn't tell if he was being entirely serious. "There's reams of research about what religion is actually like."

I've seen this attack on Dawkins before. They ask: How can Dawkins attack religion when his theology's a bit muddled? Then they go on a mention Aquinas and some other theologians and stick their bottom lip out in the name of Christianity:
I would like to see Dawkins take Christianity as seriously as he undoubtedly expects Christianity to take Darwinism. I would also like to see him spell out fully the arguments as to the incompatibility of science (Darwinism especially) and religion (Christianity especially).

I imagine Dawkins takes Christianity as seriously as he does all other religions. I'm not fully versed in his arguments, but I take it he's starting from the position that there is no god and working forward. From that perspective his being well-read in any theology has as much relevance as his fluency in Klingon. He's declaring God does not exist, I doubt he has any position, nuanced or otherwise, on how many angels you can fit on the head of a pin.

There is no need for science to be incompatible with religion (Christianity especially), but it seems to me that in the developed world the biggest attacks on science come from Christians. Science, though, is a process that is built to be compatible with the facts as we know them (and, yes, this does give it huge scope to be wrong), promoting religion as incompatible with science would therefore suggest that some religious people are incompatible with facts.

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