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Dear Ovarit, developers & members.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for your wit, your intelligence, your kindness (which is not the same as being a doormat).
I rarely post, but I read a lot on here regularly.
I got my invite on a notorious website after declaring my gendercritical stance. I am glad this place exists. A place where we can talk and discuss freely.
I haven't donated before, but I shall try and see if I can make it work.
Keep it up!
Look, we get it; OP is Christian. I am sick of OP harping on atheism. OP: each to their own. Why does the existence of atheism bother OP so much that multiple criticisms of it are posted here--all the time. We atheists are never going to accept Christ as our lord and savior, and as a Jewish atheist, I find this rather offensive, if relatively harmless. Some of us believe all the killing and enslavement and forced conversion over 20(!) centuries now doesn't do Christianity any favors (see Todorov). He says he is a cultural Christian, bc western culture IS christian! I am culturally Jewish but I don't believe in god (he got this from us, btw).
It is utterly offensive to accuse atheists of essentially being the source of or synonymous with trans ideology.
Just accept difference, ffs. We are allowed to hold different beliefs than OP. Enjoy your Christianity and leave the rest of us in peace.
He’s calling himself a ‘cultural Christian’ because it’s true. I’m an atheist but I still recognise that my character has been shaped by growing up in a Christian culture - even the phrases that I use, ways of thinking about charity, etc., all shaped by culture. Support for the welfare state? Majorly influenced by Christians.
Don't forget that many people's support for helping the most disadvantaged and oppressed (or those whom they PERCEIVE as such) is very Christian as well. TRAs want to accommodate TIPs since they see them as victims of oppression. However, Mr Dawkins didn't use to notice these things and now he does, which makes me wonder: why?
No, it’s probably more like… it’s a nuanced debate and Dawkins would probably have felt that it would sound hypocritical or contradictory to say that he was ‘culturally Christian’ while they were his main opponents in a debate.
A debate that typically gets condensed into soundbites isn’t good for nuance. And said as someone who used to argue with Christians all of the time, they would like have manipulated the acknowledgment of growing up and understanding the influence of Christian culture as some sort of support for Christianity itself, rather than saying… something nice or neutral can come out of a belief system that you may think is BS
This thread is a good example of that - even the OP is referring to a ‘road to Damascus’ moment… even that phrase is probably exactly the sort of ‘culturally Christian’ thing that Dawkins means … if you grow up outside of a Christian culture, the phrase ‘road to Damascus’ might be meaningless to you. Yet him acknowledging this has been taken as some sort of religious conversion when I don’t think that that is what he means at all
Many who are non-believers celebrate Christmas, enjoy certain hymns, use figures of speech derived from the bible etc. and believe all of these things can co-exist with a secular society. Dawkins has called himself a "Cultural Christian" for many years long before the trans stuff. It just gained publicity recently.
What do I think about TRAs' impact on Dawkins' road to Damascus?
I think you're jumping to conclusions about a lot of his thinking and the reasons why he called himself a "cultural Christian."
To me it seemed like he is not embracing Christianity, it's that he fears/dislikes the presence of Islam and prefers the culture of religion that he is familiar with, if he's forced to be in a culture of one or the other.
I also don't think there's any direct link between trans rights activism and his comments and it's strange to not only misrepresent Dawkins, but to shoehorn it into this circle under the guise that his comments are somehow relevant to gender criticism.
I don't even particularly like Dawkins, but you're gonna throw your shoulder out with that reach.
You can be deeply critical about the factual validity and effects of religion while still acknowledging religion, as an emergent property of human society, has its benefits.
It's a fact that, until relatively recently, some form of religion was ubiquitous in every human society we've ever created. We probably evolved to do religion, as a mechanism for promoting social cohesion. Social cohesion is a good thing, it leads to a higher-trust society and happier humans within that society, because we're a social species who deeply crave a sense of belonging. Religion also tends to provide meaning and ameliorate fear of death. Religion is cognitively useful.
There was some hope that 'humanist' societies, or as you say, communal science-love could replace religion, but I think there has been a shift amongst New Atheists in the last few years where they've realised that's not going to happen. Instead, post-religion forms of communal-identity-building look a lot more like political tribalism and gender ideology. The thing that most anti-religion optimists don't get is that communal identities need teeth , they need in-groups and out-groups, they need metaphysical beliefs, they need barriers to entry and byzantine internal discourses. A communal identity built around 'no god thanks' and rationality is too thin.
As an firm atheist myself who still considers herself a fan of Dawkins. This is something I've struggled with. To me, its increasingly looking like all religion is factually BS, but that perhaps humans and their societies are happier and healthier believing in something anyway. Which isn't that surprising, given we're Apes not Computers - we evolved rationality as a means, not an end.
Which personally, I find awful. I can't be religious even if I wanted to. I think about Tiktaalik, Australopithecus, the evolution of the cosmos, the statistical realities behind human suffering every day. I'd have to persistently ignore all of that and other untold multitudes of empirical observations of reality to actually believe in deities (at least ones who actually did or do anything...), and I just can't do that. Maybe if I was raised in it, but I wasn't. The best I (or Dawkins) can do is identify as culturally religious, and try to get the benefit of religion without the cognitive dissonance.
That said, I'm happy in life. For now at least, I personally don't need religion, even the cultural variety. But I can understand that some people might actually be happier religious and society as a whole might be better off generally following some sort of non-tyrannical religion.
That TRA is both successful and has cult adjacent characteristics doesn't necessarily mean humans are programmed/evolved to be religious.
Personally, I'd say it is more likely TRA has simply developped a kit complete enough to respond to many contemporary anxieties -- just the way all religions started off doing.
TRA messaging:
The fact that it's a lie doesn't negate one reality -- even if capitalistic societies have extended the average human lifespan to nearly a hundred, the vast majority of people are fucking miserable.
While I agree that TRAs don't mean that in themselves, the fact that, in the religious vacuum of secularised societies such a metaphysical belief system was able to take root to me is indicative that humans gravitate towards certain beliefs.
My reason for thinking humans evolved to be religious is mostly that I think a bevy of other human psychological characters add up to a strong predisposition towards something like like religion. If you look at this wikipedia article documenting known psychological biases, a lot of them are supportive of religious belief, to highlight a few:
I could go on, I'm very aware that cognitive biases can be used to argue in favour of a lot of things, so perhaps I myself am being biased in citing them, but to me , religious belief systems seem to basically be oriented around coddling our in-built psychological biases. Cults (not talking about TRAs, more like Heaven's Gate or Scientology) target human psychological weakness with laser-like precision, and most prophetic religions grew out of them.
Gender woo doesn't hit all of the boxes (Tribalism and Sunk Cost Fallacy, certainly), but established religions have had millennia to tailor themselves to our psyche, it or encompassing belief systems will get there eventually.
I agree entirely on cults/religions excelling at exploiting cognitive bias. And you opened my mind about the evolution of TRA: it's quite possible it will develop into a full blown religion, especially in strata of society/cultures where critical thinking is not as taught/valued.
But then, I still see a distinction to be made between why "soothing lies" are so desirable to people VS humans as a species being programmed to believe in soothing lies.
For example, to me, tribalism would be a consequence of our species being social animals. Not what define humans as social animals. Don't you agree?
Though, peraphs I'm optimistic in thinking that a degree of agency to human behaviour is possible despite of our predispositions. :)
This is perhaps a bit off topic (sorry! I'm prone to tangents...), but the way I think about the human condition is through a thought-experiment. Take one million children. Erase their memories and disperse them across 20,000 isolated planets (assume for the sake of argument they don't all die), such that you have 20 children per planet, then leave them to organise themselves for the next thousand years (about 33 generations), what kind of societies would we come back to?
To me, anything we can be reasonably confident would show up in 95%+ of those societies I'd put to part of our human programming, and anything that shows up in 60-95% are strong predispositions and anything that showed up more than 20% as a common tendency. In the 95+% bucket, I'd put things like incest taboos, majority-heterosexuality, recognition of human sex differences and kinship systems. I'd also put Tribalism there - I strongly suspect every planet would show in-group/out-group dynamics, most of which would have occasionally nasty implications.
In the 60-95% bucket (probably closer to 90%), I'd put religiosity. Not as something we have to do, but as something we are heavily predisposed to doing.
And in the 20% bucket something like slavery and cannibalism (which seems to have been surprisingly common cross-culturally...).
IDK, I think people often don't put human social tendencies in those terms, because IRL that's obviously not an experiment we could or should ever do (would make for an interesting sci-fi premise though) and because we tend to think of humans as free agents. But I do think it's useful. We're a bit like ants - you can't tell from looking at a single leaf-cutter ant that its a species adapted to fungal agriculture. But if you observe 20,000 leaf cutter ant colonies, you'd see fungal gardens everywhere. Some human characteristics are only apparent in the aggregate. Also, I think that framing cuts through a lot of the wishful BS you get from anthropology these days.
That's a very interesting thought experiment. However, from the high percentage you have attributed to "religiosity", I would think you are from a country where religion still hold strong.
I think your perception is skewed in that regard.
For example, I can give you real world data:
Contrast to:
So yes, I think predispositions are heavily socially/culturally influenced: "programmation" toward religiousity can as easily be deprogrammed. :)
Btw, Sweden is one of the most secular country in the world, with 8 out of 10 swedes self-describing as non-religious.
Sources:
https://www.thelocal.se/20150413/swedes-least-religious-in-western-world
I'm actually from a country where church attendance is very, very low and probably a majority of the population would identify as atheist (or at least 'non-religious'), my family hasn't practiced organised religion in a few generations either.
That said, I'd dispute about what actually counts as 'religious'. This is actually an extremally thorny question. You can't define who is irreligious without defining what religion is. There's a religious studies scholar on Youtube called I really like who dives into this. The gist is, even those who study religion for a living struggle to put bounds on it, but self-identification as atheist is possibly misleading.
The core of the problem is that a lot of people will say they aren't religious, whilst still doing a lot of religious things. For example, all sorts of superstition (astrology, karma, ghosts) is rife across secular societies, less tangibly, a lot of people who aren't religious still hold spiritual beliefs that necessitate a some guiding hand of the universe existing (like anything New-Age). Asian religions are even more slippery - there are strands of Buddhism that are atheistic. But I would presume you'd agree that a Buddhist monk living in seclusion deep in the mountains somewhere and avoiding so much as stepping on an ant is doing something religious. Surveys that try to measure religious behaviour rather than self-identification tend to find much, much higher rates in East Asia. Because in lots of countries people do religion rather than are religious, so they are less likely to answer in terms of identity when asked on a survey.
The numbers of people who are actually, firmly a materialist atheist, in the sense that they do not think the supernatural exists in any way, shape or form (i.e. what science can't explain, it just hasn't gotten around to yet), are much, much smaller. In the <5% range.
More fundamentally, my suspicion is that the Enlightenment and science have undermined the foundations of most traditional organised religions, and we're now in a transition phase where humans, with the same tangle of in-born psychological fallacies, are flailing around trying to attach used-to-be religious meaning and group-identity to other concepts, and in the meantime facing a fair amount of social anomie. Examples of 'non-religions' people seem to be taking increasingly pseudo-religious approaches to range from Gender woo to extreme Fandom culture to MLMs.
Give it a few hundred years and I think it'll all come back in some form or another (aside from anything else, religiosity is also a reliable predictor of birth rates in developed countries - given enough time, we're on track to breed ourselves back into religiosity). We may be living through a flash in the pan of human history - an outlier.
But IDK, I hope I'm wrong!
I think it is true that non affiliation to larger religions isn't indicative of personal beliefs which can be as rooted in the supernatural. The Buddhism example is also interesting, Zen for example is theist only in the remotest sense.
However, the argument can also be made the other way around: a buddhist can also be a firm believer in the scientific method and live their lives accordingly.
Which would make the opposition between science and asecularism moot, as it should be.
No human is entirely rational (the percentage is 0% rather 5%), simply because we aren't computers.
But the concept of in-born psychological fallacies is as fallacious -- until such a time we can identify genes that "produce" said fallacies in people, the claim is simply unfounded.
So no, I don't think there is some great void created by secularism, that can only be filled by more religion.
I do think however that a secular world which does not provide people with their basic psychological needs (community, meaning, dignity, on top of education) is breeding ground for the most heinous religions and cults.
I thought he described himself as a "cultural Christian" before but I wasn't sure if that was just my memory playing a trick on me.
So I did a search and found this from 2007: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7136682.stm
I assume the reason this wasn't a big deal in the atheist community back then as compared to now is that he recently began to criticize transgenderism. For example, Rationalwiki is very pro-trans and that section is the biggest one in Dawkins entry: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins#Transphobia_and_.22anti-gender.22_politics His April 2024 mention of being a cultural Christian immediately made it into the opening section: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Richard_Dawkins&diff=2673366&oldid=2640872
Sometimes I wish Ovarit had gifs … like now for instance so I could reply with the annoyed Nene painting one right now.
I, too, think he has been disappointed by atheism.
While I never was an atheist (I'm firmly a fence sitter on this as on other things, lol) recent events have proven to me that the human brain is wired to have a religion, and that modern Christianity is actually one of the least harmful ones, compared to e.g. genderreligion and Islam. (I count gender ideology as religion, because it contains irrational beliefs and assigns moral superiority to true believers.)
recent events have proven to me that the human brain is wired to have a religion,
Can you elaborate? I have had similar thoughts but more along the line that we are wired for belief, which I would argue is different from religion but the basis for it.
and that modern Christianity is actually one of the least harmful ones
I see your point and agree that it may seem more palatable and less abusive on the surface. I assure you, however, it’s not.
"I see your point and agree that it may seem more palatable and less abusive on the surface. I assure you, however, it’s not."
That strikes me as a little glib. I have a pretty vast knowledge of European history and I can tell you I've never come across any European society in any Christian era that treated women as badly as they're treated under Islamic theocracies in Afghanistan and Iran. Not even close. And none of them ever required women to cover their FACES, for fuck's sake.
Religion A: the founding prophet married a SIX-YEAR-OLD GIRL and waited until she was NINE before raping her. He also married ten other women, some of whom were young teenagers. Accordingly, men of this religion are allowed to marry up to 4 women and in many countries, can marry little girls.
Religion B: the founding prophet never married. Some believers (Eastern Orthodox) think he had a highly esteemed adult woman among his disciples (Mary Magdalen); a few believers of the more esoteric version of this religion think that he and his esteemed female disciple, who were about the same age, married and she bore his child after he died. Accordingly, men of this religion are supposed to either be celibate or marry one woman, who has to at least have hit puberty before marriage, though large age discrepancies are tolerated.
That is a big difference.
It's also worth stressing that Islam is much, much more structurally resistant to reform.
Within Islam, the Quran is the literal word-for-word instructions of God, preserved perfectly by Muhammad. There is room to quibble about the authenticity and meaning of the Hadith, but there is relatively little room to re-interpret the Quran itself. Sure, not all Muslim-majority states follow Sharia law to the letter, but there will always be calls from religious fundamentalists to do so.
By contrast, there are a bazillion bible translations, and bible scholars are constantly speculating about who even wrote different gospels of the New Testament. This leaves more room to drop beliefs that are outdated or just weird (e.g. Gnostics), and just generally have very different social norms under the banner of 'Christianity'
Yeah. There may be some horrible extremists in the US (can you even count Mormons as Christian sect?), but the core ideology isn't nearly as bad as that of Islam.
And it is a fact that modern Christian countries separate religion and state.
Exactly this. It's still as insidious as Islam at its core and modern day Christians are still out and about promoting misogyny and homophobia with no shame.
Eh, idk, on one hand, it might only be belief, but transwacktivism does pretty much have all the trappings of organized religion, complete with dragqueen priests who are above criticism. So perhaps people like that stuff, too.
When debating Christianity, keep in mind that I'm from Western Europe. We don't get the crazies you get in the US, nor the crazies you get in Eastern Europe.
I mean, what was done to Hispanola alone, in the name of the Catholic Church should be enough get all christianity banned as hate mongering.
Thank you! I am so sick of OP harping on atheism. get over it already. hell, we can just focus on CSA in the church or its hoarding of $$ in the face of vast poverty of its followers. Colonization, imperialism, or: "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition"! (except my people, the Jews, who lived in fear of it).
Reading Howard Zinn in my early 20s definitely changed my life
Have you watched John Leguizamo's Latin History for Morons? He talks about how important Howard Zinn was to his research. I actually had to block OP; I cannot take the atheist bashing/proselytizing anymore. This is supposed to be a radical feminist site; Mary Daly's based radfem lifelong interrogation and deconstruction of patriarchal Christianity is foundational to any radfem education. I was shaped by Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation (1973), Gyn/ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (1978), esp the latter. I urge real radfems to read some of either or both of these to understand the radical feminist rejection of Christianity.
I, too, think he has been disappointed by atheism.
I think this is a huge part of it. He's watched people perfectly understand rationality, scepticism, and critical thinking when applied to Christianity and creationism go on to throw it all out and adopt the exact same patterns of ideological blindness as the creationists did.
Turns out a huge number of rational critical thinkers weren't at all, and just adopted the mask because it was a convenient way to dunk on their opponents... we just didn't notice because at the time we shared the opponent.
Exactly! My favourite example of that is Rebecca Watson - a self-proclaimed YT skeptic - who once literally said that she believes TWAW because IT'S IN THE NAME 'TW'! The word 'woman' is right there in 'TW'! It's indistinguishable from religious people saying 'God exists because the Bible says so'.
because he realised how much of our life, views and laws is based on Christianity, he noticed that because we are getting tonnes of immigration from islamic countries who's life and values are completely at odds to ours and would never support such scientific progress, he realised that british culture and scientific advances didn't occur in a vacuum parallel to Christianity it flourished because we are a christian nation and we need remember that and keep it that way.
I don't deny the impact of Muslim immigration on Dr Dawkins' transitioning from hyper anti-Christian to 'culturally Christian'. But I see there is more to that. TRA may be another factor.
are you British? I see I've been voted down, you all need to look at the institutions all those that were founded, the medical, academic scientific where all founded by Christians, it was a great time for philanthropy when it meant rich businessmen put their money into setting up charities to help the poor, hospitals to treat the sick and further our technology, rather then sit on their massive wealth, they wanted to further humanity to avoid hellfire to be good christians, something unfortunately people like Bezos do not fear today.
British Christianity is very different to the USA fundamentalists, we cracked down on them and they jumped in boats to flourish over there.
Slave trade, colonialism. What they did to Africa, INDIA? ffs. Racist white supremacy lives and breathes here. jhc (lol--not my savior, but a great swear word). And, btw, this history is WRONG! Just look at the treatment of hysteria in women in the UK. The Victorian era alone was a shitshow of medical experimentation on women and children.
Slave trade, colonialism. What they did to Africa, INDIA? ffs. Racist white supremacy lives and breathes here. jhc (lol--not my savior, but a great swear word). And, btw, this history is WRONG! Just look at the treatment of hysteria in women in the UK. The Victorian era alone was a shitshow of medical experimentation on women and children.
oh please everyones had a slave trade the term comes from latin and has the same origin as slavic because the slavic people where used by the Romans as slaves, everyone has taken slaves and still do today the slave trade is massive, the British stopped the transatlantic slave trade and prevented others from continuing it but that has not ended slavery, theres plenty in asia and people trafficking for sex is higher then ever, the Ottomen slave trade was as large as the transatlantic one and Arabic speakers they still call black people abeed when they think people don't understand what it means.
whatever anti British xenophobic rubbish you believe you can't deny the facts, there was 1 billion people on this earth in 1800, now theres 70 billion, mainly down to medical advances we British spread around the world most notably vaccinations, most people died before age 5 from preventable illness.
we also stopped brutal practices like Sati, you see Afghanistan? the world was far worse then that before western culture spread.
Slavery had been well established in non-European cultures long before British people even acknowledged the existence of continents different from Europe, Asia and the north part of Africa.
In the video you linked, he says he's happy that the number of people who believe in Christianity is going down, calls Christianity "nonsense," and only really praises Christianity in the sense that he finds it preferable to Islam. So, he still seems pretty anti-Christian to me.
It's possible that TRAs may have led Dawkins to be more skeptical of the idea that atheism will naturally lead to critical thinking, but I feel like his ideal society is still one where both religion and gender woo are rejected.