God v Science, and Dawkins’s “atheism”
 

A recent issue of Time has excerpts from a “God v. Science” debate (at: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...555132,00.html ) between zoologist & uber-atheist Richard Dawkins, and famous geneticist (and non-atheist) Francis Collins, known for his discoveries of disease genes, his leadership of the Human Genome Project, and director of the National Human Genome Research Institute. At the end of the debate Dawkins acknowledged:
Wow, sounds like Dawkins, the high-priest of atheism, is maybe starting to doubt his atheism, maybe hedging his bet. I can’t wait until he’s finally able acknowledge that he’s really just an agnostic. Oh happy day.

Re: God v Science, and Dawkins’s “atheism”
 

Groan.

Dawkins seems determined to give atheism a bad name with all his hostility and rhetoric... It is a shame :-(

I found Dennett to be a little more clear and a little less hostile too...

I wish Dawkins could tone it down and just focus on his arguments (sigh)

So...

What do people think about the notion that religion is harmful to the host?

I'm not sure about that...

Sure some of it harms
But then some of it helps

I'm not sure the parasite analogy works...

Maybe it is more reciprocal (costs and benefits)

Re: God v Science, and Dawkins’s “atheism”
 

Actually Alex, I thought Dawkins was uncharacteristically thoughtful in the particular quote I noted—when Dawkins declares that, “If there is a God, it's going to be a whole lot bigger and a whole lot more incomprehensible than anything that any theologian of any religion has ever proposed,” I’m thinking, well, yeah, OK; and that maybe the fellow is beginning to see the light.

Although, alas, elsewhere in the debate he reaffirmed his view that our noblest acts, our “morality,” is little more than a misfiring of Darwinian behavior; that good and evil (i.e. right and wrong—outside of the human mind tuned by evolutionary processes) have no meaning to him.

As far as giving atheism a bad name, I’d say that the hostility and rhetoric, not to mention the mass murders, of various atheistic regimes in recent history already have, although folk like Dawkins seem unable to acknowledge that reality.

Maybe Dawkins’s sentiment, that God would have to be “a whole lot bigger and a whole lot more incomprehensible than anything that any theologian of any religion has ever proposed,” is what many “atheists,” that are really just agnostic, actually feel, for the admittedly limited perspective of various theologians? If so, well, Happy Thanksgiving my agnostic brothers and sisters.