I was thinking more of George Lakoff (https://georgelakoff.com/) than Richard Dawkins. Particularly Dawkins active anti-theism. I am an atheist, I don't believe in deities. On the other hand I see religion as a morally mixed bag. It can do very good or noble things or very depraved things. My experiences with religion were a mixed blessing. I don't necessarily find religious people offensive. What I have heard of Dawkins anti-theism definitely puts me off. However, in the interest of being well informed, I will make an effort to read Dawkins' The God Delusion.

You realize it is possible to be a conservative non-theist (although on Agnostic.com they seem to be rare.) Are there alliances that would work for ALL non-theists, whether they are leftist, rightist, spiritual, anti-theistic, or anti-religious?

The idea that "early religion was bad science" really sets my social scientist instincts on edge. It does an injustice to the scope of religion. Even in primitive religion, only a fraction of the religion is science by inferior means. I would rather suspect that primitive modern humans lacked the categories of "science" and "religion", and were unable to separate what were seen as distinct realms of religion and the scientific precursor, natural philosophy by the axial age. Science, as we know it, didn't start to emerge until the renaissance and reformation in Europe. Humans seem to have reached our current biological cognitive level several tens of thousands of years ago. There has probably been only minor biological evolution of the brain since. On the other hand, there is a technology of thinking, and that has progressed immensely over that time.

@Trent1967b I wouldn't characterize my position that "religion is bad science" and agree that there was no cognitive framing for the concept of "science" until around the time of Newton. However, religion IS a theory of knowledge, however tortured and unsupportable it may be. It has, largely fallen to critical thinking, skepticism, and the scientific method, and for good reason. Religion was always an attempt to explain reality.

Exactly. We are, as Daniel Dennett has similarly observed, equipped with a 'hyper-active agent detection device.'

0. In the middle ages most of Europe was divided into small principalities, that were frequently at war. Everyone was Catholic. The church spent a lot of time trying to bring peace. A lot of suffering was caused in the name of religion. Nevertheless, the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation were real theological and political progress. Humanism got its start as a Christian movement. Newton was VERY religious.

Reason brought us scientific racism, Marxism-Leninism, Stalinism, and Maoism. Reason supported Fascism, invented the nuclear bomb, brought us mutually assured destruction in the cold war, and changed climate. Furthermore, most Marxisms were oppressively atheist. A lot of atheists plead that Marxist atheism isn’t really atheist. A lot of good Muslims claim that jihadi, literalist terrorists aren’t really Muslims. Guess what, Muslim terrorists really are good Muslims too.

Who wins the most evil contest, religion on reason?

1. I haven’t read as much Lakoff [georgelakoff.com] as I should have. Still, Lakoff says that rational thinking rests on largely unconscious linguistic frames and metaphors. Most thought is more directly based on linguistic frames and metaphors. How special is rational thought? Is reason universally applicable to all problems? What sort of things is reason good for? Rational thinking is hard and rare, and at one level down it is based on less-than-reasonable cognitive structures. Most people don’t think rationally much at all. An armchair intellectual’s cognition may devote a Lichtenstein on the surface of the Globe to reason, a supremely rational mathematician or physical scientist, maybe eight or sixteen Lichtensteins.

As for eliminating superstition, my limited knowledge of psychology, and more advanced knowledge of cultural anthropology causes me to assert that Humans are massively superstitious. If you want to eliminate superstition, most of it is subconscious, and of what is obvious, you will still only be able to scratch the surface.

3. (Out of order in the original post.) Given #1, what is a non-theist aspiritualist to do? It is not reasonable to try to eliminate religion, and less spirituality. They are inherent in the Human condition. What alliances are viable?

4. (Out of order in original post.) Some people may have almost no spiritual-religious impulse. They are spiritual-religious “autistics”. More common are “agnostics” who don’t give a damn whether God exists or not, and don’t go to church, except maybe on Easter and Christmas. These “indifferent agnostics” probably used to be rarer, when religion was more integral to social life, people in general were more religious, and blue laws might even require attendance at services. In the Middle East, where I lived for a while, there are relatively fewer indifferent agnostics, but the irreligious are still numerous, and careful. However, I expect most people experience and engage numinous, spiritual, or religious experience, and always will.

My own perspective is that religion FEELS great, but is intellectually dishonest. Also, because I suffer from a serious mood disorder, religious experience is psychologically detrimental for me. My response is repression. My own response is repression of religious sensation, but I would hardly recommend repression of religious sensation for others. Some who have posted on this thread have posted about positive extra-rational experience with meditation and Taoism. I glad that others find their non-theistic spiritualism rewarding, but I rationalist enough to still find them vaguely disturbing. Has anyone had experience with some kind of more middle ground in acknowledging (and controlling) religious impulses, that is not actually repression.

@Trent1967b Perhaps it would be simpler, particularly for my brain, if we were to limit the discussion to one or two main points and utilize one font size … how do you make those tiny fonts? Just remember, small print doesn’t reduce the word count!

Let’s start with reason and the link to the many horrors of the 20th century. The oft-repeated trope that reason gave us the evils that you’ve listed is patently absurd. As so many have observed, the atrocities of Mao, Stalin, Lenin or fascist dictators could hardly be called a triumph of reason. Just as with religion, the power dynamic and resulting cruelties are justified, post hoc, using reason as an expedient alibi. One need only ask, were the examples you’ve cited the result of too much reason? Was Joseph Stalin the most reasonable head of state during this period? The same question may be applied to erratic leaders and oppressive regimes throughout history.

Secondly, you seem to accept that, just because proclivities like superstition present a challenge to eliminate, this must always remain so in our species. This flies in the face of millions of years of evolution, where, over the course of time, dominant behaviors and memes were made recessive. We continue to evolve, and there’s no reason to capitulate to the notion that superstition will forever flourish. Our descendants may one day carry with them vestigial religious concepts, but these will be viewed as the cognitive equivalent of an appendix.

IMO reason should not rule alone, for that would exclude empathy having any affect on decisions, which is disastrous.

@EdEarl I do not see it as a matter of should or should not. We have no choices in this. We have reason and we have irrational faculties. To ignore either is to our peril.