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LINK The closed mind of Richard Dawkins

“Quite apart from the substance of the idea, there is no reason to suppose that the Genesis myth to which Dawkins refers was meant literally. Coarse and tendentious atheists of the Dawkins variety prefer to overlook the vast traditions of figurative and allegorical interpretations with which believers have read Scripture. Both Augustine and before him the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria explicitly cautioned against literalism in interpreting the biblical creation story. Later, in the twelfth century, Maimonides took a similar view. It was only around the time of the Reformation that the idea that the story was a factual account of events became widely held. When he maintains that Darwin's account of evolution displaced the biblical story, Dawkins is assuming that both are explanatory theories—one primitive and erroneous, the other more advanced and literally true. In treating religion as a set of factual propositions, Dawkins is mimicking Christianity at its most fundamentalist.”

skado 9 Apr 11
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35 comments (26 - 35)

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3

What a waste of intelligence.

This is the same shit thrown at Sam Harris. His response is, "The majority of believers do believe the stories are literal. I am only responding to those believers who say they believe."

4

The author makes Darwin's case, and then attacks his person, ascribing motives that are of no consequence of Dawkin's writings.

3

I always figured Dawkins was critiquing Religion as currently (for the past 500 years or so) practiced, not as Augustine or Philo may have considered it. When he, or anyone else for that matter, denigrates Religion as an institution, it’s irrelevant whether Genesis is considered to be literal or figurative. It’s the basic function and purpose of religion that cause the problems, not the details of the dogma of its adherents. Saying that Dawkins has a closed mind entirely misses the point.

3

Dawkins does not ‘assume,’ ...you lost me there. The Science was not replaced, religious teachings were overridden is how I take that.

1

As to the Genesis creation stories being considered allegorical, let us consider what everybody's favorite Genesis allegoricalist, Augustine, thought about the age of the Universe. From his book City of God, book 18 (http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120118.htm):

Chapter 40.— About the Most Mendacious Vanity of the Egyptians, in Which They Ascribe to Their Science an Antiquity of a Hundred Thousand Years.

In vain, then, do some babble with most empty presumption, saying that Egypt has understood the reckoning of the stars for more than a hundred thousand years. For in what books have they collected that number who learned letters from Isis their mistress, not much more than two thousand years ago? Varro, who has declared this, is no small authority in history, and it does not disagree with the truth of the divine books. For as it is not yet six thousand years since the first man, who is called Adam, are not those to be ridiculed rather than refuted who try to persuade us of anything regarding a space of time so different from, and contrary to, the ascertained truth? For what historian of the past should we credit more than him who has also predicted things to come which we now see fulfilled? And the very disagreement of the historians among themselves furnishes a good reason why we ought rather to believe him who does not contradict the divine history which we hold. But, on the other hand, the citizens of the impious city, scattered everywhere through the earth, when they read the most learned writers, none of whom seems to be of contemptible authority, and find them disagreeing among themselves about affairs most remote from the memory of our age, cannot find out whom they ought to trust. But we, being sustained by divine authority in the history of our religion, have no doubt that whatever is opposed to it is most false, whatever may be the case regarding other things in secular books, which, whether true or false, yield nothing of moment to our living rightly and happily.

(the "chapters" are all very short" )

Yes, Augustine was a young-earther, and most Christian and Jewish theologians were young-earthers until the last few centuries, despite many pagan philosophers believing that the Universe is much older than what one would calculate from the Bible's genealogies. In fact, some philosophers believed that the Universe is infinitely old -- eternal.

0

Chriistianity is too ludicrous to be fundemental

1

Dawkins is trying showing that fairy tales are a bunch of bs. No matter how it's written.

0

Ok somebody here got butthurt thinking that a book of fairy tales is real...

0

Rubbish face the facts and proof that evolution speaks for itself loud and clear

0

I love Richard Dawkins!

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