Richard Dawkins: If I met god when I die.

[pilgrim]

I hope Dawkins forgives god..

[tiltbillings]

“Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee, and I'll forgive Thy great big joke on me.” -- Robert Frost

“I turned to speak to God About the world's despair; But to make bad matters worse, I found God wasn't there” -- Robert Frost

[Sam Vara]

On a slightly different note, it is interesting that Dawkins thinks that it was impossible, pre-Darwin, to be an "intellectually fulfilled atheist". I wonder what type of fulfilment he thinks the intellect affords us.

I don't think anyone since Hume has outdone the Father of Post-Modernism, who seems to have had a rip-roaring good time as an atheist (minus those few years he was on the run).

Hi,

I'm not sure who would count as the Father of Post-Modernism (the mother was apparently quite shamelessly promiscuous in her affections). But whoever, and whatever the "rip-roaring good time", would this count as fulfilment? To say that someone had a rip-roaring good time usually means that they were vividly and publicly distracted.

Dawkins' quote makes me think that he believes that there are some positions and views that atheists ought to subscribe to, in order to be fulfilled. I wonder what they are.

[Kim O'Hara]

Dawkins' quote makes me think that he believes that there are some positions and views that atheists ought to subscribe to, in order to be fulfilled. I wonder what they are.

From what I know of him, it wouldn't be a matter of particular positions or views but of finding or achieving a (reasonably) consistent and rigorous world-view capable of describing most of what we see around us in the world.
That makes sense of his Darwin comment, too, in so far as before Darwin there was no convincing answer to, "Where do all these wonderfully designed creatures come from?" except, "God made them." (Full disclosure: what I propose as Dawkins' thinking is pretty close to my own )

Of course, if one's response to every answer is, "But why?", then scientists and theists alike eventually run into a blank wall - "Why does something exist rather than nothing," or, "Why does God exist," respectively. But those questions can be postponed indefinitely.


Kim

[Sam Vara]

Dawkins' quote makes me think that he believes that there are some positions and views that atheists ought to subscribe to, in order to be fulfilled. I wonder what they are.

From what I know of him, it wouldn't be a matter of particular positions or views but of finding or achieving a (reasonably) consistent and rigorous world-view capable of describing most of what we see around us in the world.
That makes sense of his Darwin comment, too, in so far as before Darwin there was no convincing answer to, "Where do all these wonderfully designed creatures come from?" except, "God made them." (Full disclosure: what I propose as Dawkins' thinking is pretty close to my own )

Of course, if one's response to every answer is, "But why?", then scientists and theists alike eventually run into a blank wall - "Why does something exist rather than nothing," or, "Why does God exist," respectively. But those questions can be postponed indefinitely.


Kim

Well, any world-view necessarily involves views and positions. Many such views are (or certainly were) as consistent with "fulfilment" as Darwinism. I take Dawkins to be saying that Darwin was right, and attempting to justify this by means of the device of "fulfilment".

(My disclosure: fulfilment is not achieved by means of subscribing to such positions, and Dawkins - for all that people attribute to him in terms of intellectual capacity etc. - does not strike me as particularly fulfilled.)