Atheist brother won't stop bullying me

First I'll say why is all of this relevant: The OP's brother appears to have changed his views after reading Dawkins, while Dawkins misleadingly uses Darwin and the name of science to beat religion, among other errors...

pookie82 wrote: »

I'm not sure that attacking Dawkins is the way to go here. If it's Dawkins v. any of the religious idiots he interviewed in that programme - especially the American preacher who asked him for "hard evidence" of evolution, or the science teacher who taught in a British grammar school that the earth was about 7000 years old - he tends to come out on top without difficulty.

For most of the three parts we were given nuts really. Dawkins appeared to have a harder time dealing with the more reasoned Church of England. The only thing he could do with them was dismiss them as simply adapting to science (ie the same thing all reasonably people and groups do and have done over the ages -- in different ways it is like with both him and Dawin when they adapted their views to what they had learnt).

pookie82 wrote: »

I never heard him actually call Darwin an atheist.

The programme purported to be about Darwin.

In 'the Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex', Darwin wrote: "The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic." I've watched the three parts of the programme twice and couldn't find one mention of the word 'agnostic'. But Dawkins' viewpoint of atheist was mentioned time and time again. Furthermore Dawkins heavily linked his viewpoint of with the views of Darwin. There is however a big gap between atheist and agnostic.

I agree with a lot of what Dawkins says but he goes too far to the point of where isn't a defender of science but an attacker of religion. But, as has been mentioned above, the ironic thing is Dawkins is just as much of a fundamentalist as the religious fundamentalists he attacks. And he uses arguments of same nature his opponents do. Remember being strongly atheist is not the same as having no view point on matters. And his stance is no more reasonably than most other fundamentalists, and such a stance could easily be seen as less reasonably than moderate religions or religious views.

The review of the God Delusion in the New York Review Of Books (via metacritic.com) had a great line about the Dawkins: The review (4,500 words plus) can be read here. And even better is a line from the review writer's defence of his review to a letter writer, here: For me, Dawkins' arguments are far too simplistic, often misleading, a good bit of the time contradictory, and, at the core, always fundamentalists.

Oh, for the record, I'm agnostic, just like Darwin was :pac: