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God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything and the God Delusion are books about religion. I mentioned a few authors that I have read whose books cover ei
by gobots 12y ago
God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything and the God Delusion are books about religion. I mentioned a few authors that I have read whose books cover either science, religion or a mixture of the two. I will grant you that I am not making a hard study into comparative religion and certainly did not mean to imply otherwise.
- mreiland 12y agoYou're missing Saraid's point.
- gobots 12y agoIndeed – or more to the point: I wasn't clear in my original statement. I am learning about certain aspects of religion – not learning comparative religion. I am not however "learning atheism" as others have decided to claim in this thread. I stopped believing in god years ago, at that point by definition I was an atheist. I am interested in the origins of religion, the scientific reasons that it exists, and the negative impact it has on people.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- mreiland 12y agoBy definition you can't learn about religion either because the only thing required for religion is to believe in it. You are misunderstanding his point because it infringes upon how you self-identify. Perspective is weird like that sometimes.
- gobots 12y ago"By definition you can't learn about religion either because the only thing required for religion is to believe in it." That is a very weak argument. One cannot learn about religion because all you have to do is believe.. and since I don't believe, I can't learn it? Edit: so there is no proof or evidence needed for religion – you just have to believe. Would you like to buy this rock i have? it keeps tigers away...
- mreiland 12y agoI'm glad you agree that it's a weak argument. It also just happens to be the argument you made in reverse. That was actually the point.
- saraid216 12y agoNo, he's deliberately misreading me in order to feel that his self-identification is infringed upon. According to him, if a Christian believes in God, and then reads about Christianity to learn about Christianity, said Christian is not a Christian because they're "learning about Christianity". The sheer quantity of stupid required to believe this has disinterested me in continuing any conversation.
- mreiland 12y agoI agree with you, the point of my post was to try and get him to see the ridiculousness of it by simply reversing it.
- dllthomas 12y agoIncidentally, despite being somewhat sympathetic to the viewpoint, I felt The God Delusion paled in comparison to Dawkins' other works. He's far more compelling in the mode of "Isn't all this stuff amazing?" than the mode of "Isn't that stuff awful?"
- gobots 12y agoCurrently reading The Greatest Show on Earth and I have to agree, but I do agree with many of the points that were made in The God Delusion. I will say he should have spent less time on his memeology ideas.
- dllthomas 12y agoYeah, I should say that I don't mean to imply that this has any bearing on whether he is correct or incorrect, in either case!