The Scrapings of the Brain
This is what else is on offer from Tackorama, not brain food, but the dreggy bits somewhere between the hemispheres.
Warning: Excessive swearing and fierce thoughts pepper these pages. Fuck off now if you are in doubt.
Richard Dawkins
The Christian Right are out for heathen blood. How dare any man argue, reason and rationalise that the majority of the Western world are suffering from a virulent, almost pandemic mass delusion, more commonly known as religion! Who would imagine that a scientist would wish to go beyond mere defence of the theory of evolution and actually point the finger at religion and cry "justify yourself"? And to put these thoughts and arguments into a book and call it The God Delusion, well, it's just asking for lynching so Dawkins can be sent to hell and suffer an eternity of pain (insert joke here).
Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, 1976 continues to cause unease for some christians who feel unseated at the implications of not only this book, but the theory of evolution in general. Since it's publication Dawkins' has written many more books and articles often using the theory of evolution as a large base but wandering into conjecture, postulation and polemic.
His latest, The God Delusion, goes further than before by directly standing up to religion. His central ideas are: firstly, it is up to religion to prove the existence of god (they haven't) not up to science to disprove it (they have); secondly, belief in god automatically denotes a predisposition to lose one's facilities of judgement, logic and open-mindedness (holy wars, witch hunts, the list goes on); thirdly, religion uses enforced ignorance and obediance for it's continuation (Marx and others came to this conclusion decades ago); fourthly, any man can openly and freely attack any answer given by science and scientists will willingly debate and argue, but religion closes down discussion and refuses the validation of free examination; fifthly, religion seeks to justify it's place in the world and in doing so now seeks to interfere most horribly in public life (political lobbys), the next generation (faith schools), and education (creationism, faith based syllabus).
The God Delusion should be read because of the questions it asks in a direct way that has frankly left religious persons stumbling for a reply. The Dawkins Delusion, the rebuttal, claims on the cover to answer Dawkins but fudges most of the points Dawkins raises and merely demonstrates many of the attitudes he describes when religious persons attempt argement. For example, religious persons seem to think the reply "it's god" is a satisfactory answer for the origin of life on this planet. Is it not the truth that they prefer the lazy comfort of faith than the hard work of investigation and the rigour of a detailed explaination?
"How can you not believe in god?" they ask. How can they choose not to exercise free thought and not to use their intellectual faculties?
Creationism, in what ever form (the moronic Intellgent Design is the latest), is the more disturbing threat. Implicit in the religious method of teaching science (isn't that very concept wrong, faith intruding in the practical sciences?) is the idea that science itself should be distrusted. The earth is still flat and there are only four elements (earth, air, fire, water) and that all the modern science is just made up stuff from men in white coats who wish to control the world? Yeah right.
Never before has science come under such a direct, intense and relentless attack and it's not being properly defended by non-scientists. By that I mean the politicans are following the wind, as usual, the layman is staying out of it, the educated elite don't care and the liberals are annoyingly not choosing a damn side! It seems as though the religious have a monopoly on talking nonsense and even creationism goes unchallenged as people expect that crap from them! Worse, some are actually defending it, wheeling out a mixture of the politically-correct, socially-sensitive rubbish that goes hand in hand with that good old excuse of "I'm a religion, special treatment please".
This is precisely what Dawkins advocates, an end to the "special-ness" surrounding religion and it's time to take a very long, detailed and open examination of religions: their conduct; their purpose; their actions; their accountability; and their future. He argues for removing religion from politics and education and child-rearing as a base for an improved humanity and a more stable world. I came to this conclusion many years ago: "religion fucks you up".