richard dawkins - beyond reason channel 4

[Sheherazadethegoat]

i am loving it - i hate those parasitic mediums.

Politics and money can act as a conduit for making people do dreadful things in the same way that they can motivate them to do good.

yes thats true.

Although with politics and money, the rewards are tangible and proveable. You won't necessarily get them, but the carrot being dangled is a real one and not one of, at best, debatable existence.

this morning i was listening to The choice on R4 about a man who committed a sectarian murder in NI.
it was sticking to listen how he grew up with a sense of superiority over other of another religion, which took him to the point where taking a life was justified.

i understand this has little to do with religion as practiced/ experienced by many, likewise many who grew up under the same circumstances did not go on the same path, however it really was a conduit for a lot of hatred.

UQD, if people derive a sense of peace from their faith, then that is a tangible reward for them and it does not behove them to prove it to anyone.

Kathy, OK, maybe I'm doing RD a disservice, I lost patience with the God Delusion so I probably didn't read it thoroughly enough. But also like you I do think he doesn't see how religion motivates people to do good things.

or striking even

I tend to think that the people who do good things are just good people anyway, and would do their good works regardless of the religious element.

If they're not, then it asks serious questions about why exactly they are being "good".

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UD, I see your point, but religious people who do good works are not necessarily all doing it for the hope of the reward of eternal life or paradise or whatever. For some - many, I would hope - their religion offers them a guideline to follow, a code of behaviour that lays down what is good and what isn't. Non believers may say that it is common sense what is good and what isn't, but you only need to read some of the threads here on how to deal with criminals to see that people's definitions of morals vary greatly. For some people, following a religion offers a single coherent moral system. Jesus actually made a point of castigating the type of believer who only did good so as to be rewarded.

They'd follow that code even if they were not religious, surely? Otherwise you are implying that it is harder for an atheist to have a coherent moral code, which is dangerous territory.

Pruners: the human is an irrational animal. Irrationality is part of what makes us human. Again I may be misrepresenting RD here, but if he is hoping to make people become completely rational beings, he is on a non-starter and IMO wrong. For example, is it rational behaviour to risk your life to save someone else's? Some might say yes, some might say no.

UD, I'm not saying that atheists can't have a coherent moral code. I'm saying that some people choose religion as a moral code to follow, and probably like the fact that there are millions of people who agree that that particular moral code is a good one to follow. Atheists may have their own individual moral code - I have mine, and I'd like to think it is quite coherent - but I bet there are differences with your moral code.

Whether or not there should be one uniform moral code is a different matter. What I'm saying is I think some people choose religion because I think they like the fact that a large section of the population agrees that it is a good way to live.

I wonder if Mother Teresa would have done what she did if she had not been a Christian. Maybe, maybe not. I'd wager that Christianity gave her the motivation and the direction that she may not have had without it, although I'm sure she would still have been a good person, but perhaps not without such wide-reaching effects.

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Hitler, Stalin etc probably thought they were rational in what they were doing.

i seem to remember Hitler had i thing for the occult, amongst many other serious psychological issues, and Stalin well where to start?

I have always associated moral codes with political rather than religious affiliations. I considered all socialists (not new Labour btw) to have a shared moral framework, and I mistrusted the motives of Tories. This imo is no more naive than trusting that someone with a particular religion will be of a certain moral stature.

At least political affiliations require some thought - I was brought up atheist and socialist - but discussing politics always requires people to come up with justifications for the policies they support, I have not had the same experience of religious debate.

Mother Theresa was a appalling old fraud, but that's by and by.
Of course Dawkins agrees that love, envy, passion etc exist. he has always done so.
There is, however, a huge difference between saying 'I love my wife', as he does, for example in the introduction to The God Delusion, and saying, 'this crystal will cure cancer'. Or 'By talking to spirits I can communicate with the dead' or 'using these cards I can fortell the future'. These things should be entirely proveable by simple testing, yet put any of these claims to the test and they fail, completely. Every single time. Astrology does not predict character or the future, dowsing doesn't work (though Dawkins said he felt sorry for the dowsers because, unlike the pyschics, they were absolutely sincere and most distressed to discover they couldn't actually do it) and psychic mediums just aren't.
These people fail every single objective test, and now refuse to take part in trials because they know they will fail.
Claiming a feeling is very different to claiming that you can physically affect the world by your psychic/spiritual powers.

RD could be a little less abrasive with psychics. If only so we could have a happy medium.

Hitler and Stalin did not hypnotise themselves into power you know - Most of Europe supported hitler until 1939 remember? Stalins vicous industrialisation of peasant USSR helped us defeat Hitler! (Along with the russian climate of course). We all have to accept responsibility when despotic leaders assume control, history, Economics all play a part to create the circumstances.

I will get off my hobby horse now....

One of my favourite jokes:

"it's quite interesting, actually, but my wife is a medium. That's about a size 12."

puntastic UQD

lol unquietdad - have you been working on that one all day?

well said aloha.

Hitler and Stalin did not hypnotise themselves into power you know - Most of Europe supported hitler until 1939 remember?

Yeah, I know. They supported him because they agreed with his rationale. So when did they realise that is rationale was in fact irrational?

They didn't - he attacked and annexed poland and started agressing against allied countries - the issue about exterminating millions of innocent people was not the reason we went to war iirc - but there remained plenty of powerful britons privately thinking Hitler was not such a bad chap - not saying they were rational of course.