For this comment, let's assume there is no God and Dawkins is correct. A few people can be persuaded by his slap in the face tactics and insults. For the rest he really should be asking why people hold on to a belief, because whatever benefit they get from it he is not offering an alternative - which is worse. So yeah, I think he an inconsiderate jerk.
>> This presumes people hold on to a belief because it is valuable to them. I'm not so sure of that.
Some people hold a belief simply because they were raised with it. If it does nothing for them, they are IMHO more likely to be convinced by a mild face-slap argument and some evidence of a contrary belief. The people who have a belief tied to their identity, or the the people who say "this changed my life" are not going to convert with Dawkins approach because he's trying to take something from them, or even attack their identity (quite rudely).
It's true in some cases, not in others. I have family members who are religious and it (as far as I can tell) does provide value for them, in a positive way. My MIL, for example, is religious and it seems really positive for her.
She approaches her belief in a very loving, positive way and sees her job in the world to be loving and kind and to do service for others, etc. While I don't share her beliefs her values are pretty awesome.
It seems to me that she derives value from them and I certainly find her to be inspiring and positive. She spends pretty much zero of her time talking about sin or Hell, but espouses joy and love and gives thanks for her family and so forth. I don't need any particular set of beliefs for that to be inspiring for me and to want to emulate it.
Others may cling to belief out of fear, inertia, tribalism, or who knows what else. If it works for people and doesn't lead to harm for others (or themselves) then I'm all for it. I sometimes envy people who do have religious beliefs because maybe life makes more sense to them.
Let's assume there's no God, and Dawkins is merely pointing out that fact without offering an alternative. Then he's speaking the truth, and to me that's more important than any religion. Let's not even get into the fact that most religions are covered in blood throughout history. I'll take an inconsiderate jerk any day over genocidal liars.
> Let's assume there's no God, and Dawkins is merely pointing out that fact without offering an alternative. Then he's speaking the truth, and to me that's more important than any religion.
If his views are true – then he's doing the truth a disservice by arguing for it in such a sloppy manner.
A lot of well-educated theists read Dawkins, and come away more convinced of theism – they see how incompetent Dawkins' arguments are, and they (wrongly) conclude Dawkins is the best atheism has to offer.
Atheism would be better off without his book–and the truth would be too.
> Let's not even get into the fact that most religions are covered in blood throughout history.
It's interesting how commonly non-theist's facts are expressed in conveniently ambiguous figures of speech when it is convenient, but when something similar is done in religious scripture it is considered a big no no.
Regarding "most religions are covered in blood".....what does this mean?
Does it mean that all religious scriptures have blood on their pages?
Does it mean that every single "member" (according to some unstated categorization algorithm) of every single religion across time was "covered in blood" (a phrase for which we we lack a definition)? Or, maybe only some members (which would then require a universally agreed upon cutoff point)?
Or, something else entirely?
And then if we were being thorough, we may find it interesting to compare the frequency of this phenomenon in other, non-religious forms of human collectives, lest our comments are misinformative (a big no non these days, at least sometimes)....but then, would that be in violation of the "Whataboutism" rule, the origin and validity of which seems rather unclear?
