Monday, September 17, 2007

Delusion XX - If only *Everyone* was atheist like me

(Talking about Northern Ireland conflict) From page 259 "The two sets of people have the same skin colour, they speak the same language, they enjoy the same things, but they might as well belong to different species, so deep is the historic divide. And *without religion*, and religiously segregated education, the divide simply would not be there.

I would like to rephrase this thus : "If everyone in Northern Ireland (etc.) was atheist like me, there would be no conflict in Northern Ireland."

The trouble is, you could replace the word "atheist" with any ideology/religion you like, and it would be just as true as his original statement. However, religions are actively trying to make that happen (eg. through having more children, converting people, killing their enemies :)) while most atheists just like to give this concept lip service and just try to convert people ad hoc. Dawkins is doing what spokespeople for practically every religion does - Defining their own ideology as the only true one, and that all the others are false and evil. Most of the rest of chapter 6 extols his version of the moral zeitgeist. To me he is just digging himself deeper, enveloping moral rules into atheist ideology.

2 comments:

Dr Clam said...

Hmm, I think if everyone thought the same as me, we probably wouldn't get on. It would doubtless be more or less like Northern Ireland. :)

Apropos of nothing, I am saddened by Androo's decision to only allow comments from people known to him. This is like Bob Carr going to the cricket and sitting there reading a book.

And I have learned the point of the NSW desalination plant! All inexpensively recycled water is substantially more saline than typical water sources. If we are going to keep it going, we will need a facility to desalinate water much less saline than seawater. Thus the 'white elephant' plant will 'fortuitously' be valuable once recycling gets rolling in a major way.

Jenny said...

thus allowing the smug recycling people to say; "see we've managed to use your wasteful desalination plant" rather than "oh dear, recycling isn't perfect, we'll need to desalinate as well..for an extra cost"

kdwtkwdq - because short, easy to type word verifications aren't any fun