so I finally cracked open Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion"

[gold stinger]

Re: so I finally cracked open Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion"

so does god exist, and if he doesn't, did he exist, I like a good religious argument

[choof]

Re: so I finally cracked open Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion"

implying any religious argument on the internet is a good one

[Charu]

Re: so I finally cracked open Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion"

Yeah

[Arch0wl]

Re: so I finally cracked open Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion"

I agree with nearly everything he says in the book, but I don't agree with how it's presented

his writing style just comes off as high-and-mighty, it's almost as if he was in a perpetual state of offense when writing this book and he makes it a point to iterate over and over just how toxic religion/belief in a higher power is

Telling people that they're wrong about some deeply held belief is a lot like trying to tell a guy he's in the friend zone.

If you are ambiguous in any way, or if you give any leeway for that person to latch on to some ray of hope for whatever end they're pursuing, they will.

Not only is right-wing media very good at doing that, they use this motivation to stretch the Overton Window. If you don't know what that is, it's when you take an extreme position knowing that an audience is going to look for the middle between your position and the position you're opposing. If I want an audience to concede something like "eating animals is bad" and you think "eating animals isn't bad" I can take the position of "eating animals is murder" and then a hopeful mediator will rush in and say "woah woah woah guys, I'm sure we can find some common ground here. I think we can all agree eating animals isn't the best thing, but it isn't murder..." and then I've convinced the audience to stretch their views implicitly and gotten what I wanted.

The God Delusion is written the way it was because Christianity in a 2nd-term Bush presidency was far less willing to reconcile disagreement than it is now. I mean, you were there, you remember. You can read his tone as "if you're going to look for an out every time my tone sounds forgiving, then let's be clear because nothing I'm saying is saving you from being wrong." Applying what Tyson called "a sensitivity to their state of mind" would have just enabled the same Overton shifts that happened before. Sometimes, you do need to completely and utterly reject all merits a person's argument purports to have, even if it comes off as rude or insensitive in doing so.