Philo

The gulf of difference between a football fanatic and a religious fundy, is that the footy fan doesn't except everyone to play football.

Yes, we know there is some good in religions - that doesn't excuse trying to impose a religious dogma on everybody, for example banning contraception or denying entry of female clergy, setting strict dress codes, telling lies about the natural world in order to match ancient text to reality, preventing critical thinking, questioning status quo. Ooooh I'd better stop, I hope you are getting the picture.

Foxy,
Dawkins is a fool. People act in faith every day because they believe unquestionably in certain taught principles. For instance you always believe 12+12=24, you do not have to question it each time you use it. Someone taught it to you.

I have a friend in West Papua whose family only had identifier words for numbers up to 3, he while studying here in Australia developed a whole mathmatical cirricullum for his tribe in their language so they when taught could carry on commerce with outside communities. They had no knowledge of algerbra but they could learn it and apply it once taught, without question.

We all apply faith each day to the things we do; or don't do. People who achieve have faith in what they do some fail others achieve through belief alone. Achievers apply faith, loosers do not apply.

Grateful asks:

Can we say that a fundamentalist someone who is prepared to uphold a view or belief despite reason or evidence to the contrary.

No..we cannot.. you are referring there to a 'bigot'.

A fundamentalist is simply a person who adheres to the fundamentals of their faith.

Think 5 pillars.
Nicene Creed.

There is no such thing as 'evidence' to the contrary really, but if there was.. it would just change the nature of that which the fundamentalIST is committed to.

For example..

Eastern Orthodoxy is divided from Roman Catholicism by one phrase.

The Spirit.. proceeding from the Father AND the Son. (catholic)
The Spirit.. proceeding from the Father.... (Orthodox)

Both are fundamentals.. just slightly different.

"Another explanation that I've come across is again given by Richard Dawkins, in his book, "The God Delusion,":"

Some might call it his rationalisation.

"They perceive their acts to be good, not because os some warped personal idiosyncrasy, and not because they have been possessed by Satan, but because they have been brought up, from the cradle, to have total and unquestioning 'faith.'"

In my experience with the Christian religion religious converts tend to be more enthusiastic than those brought up from the cradle - like reformed smokers. Other religions might be different.

"Voltaire got it right long ago: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.""

He certainly did. That is exactly what happened in communist countries.

In response to the proposition that:

"It might be said that there is nothing special about religious faith here. Patriotic love of country or ethnic group can also make the world safe for its own version of extremism... As with the kamikazes in Japan and the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka."

He differentiates it from religious faith because:

"But religious faith is an especially potent silencer of rational
calculation, which usually seems to trump all others."

Isn't this just an attempt to slip in a dodgy premise?

"This is mostly because of the easy and beguiling promise that death is not the end, and that a martyr's heaven is especially glorious. But it is also partly because it discourages questioning by its very nature."

Foxy. You purport to hold a religious faith. Does it stop you from questioning?

"Christianity, just as much as Islam, teaches children that
unquestioned faith is a virtue. You don't have to make the
case for what you believe."

The Christian belief is more nuanced than he admits to know:

"Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have."

Unless you make the case for what you believe it is hard to see how you could be prepared to give that answer.

CONT.

"...until the day it manifests itself in a horrible massacre... "

Actually as a Christian I'm trying to cut down on those apparently inevitable massacres. They are so darn strenuous.

"Dawkins asks the interesting question that if we try to
explain this extremism as a perversion of the 'true'
faith... how can there be a perversion of faith, if faith,
lacking objective justification, doesn't have any
demonstrable standard to pervert?"

How ironic. People of faith claim that Dawkins is wrong because he refuses to accept objective justification for beliefs.

"The questions that Dawkins raises are interesting. What he tries to say is that (and this applies to Christianity no less than to Islam), what is really pernicious is the practice of teaching children that
faith itself is a virtue."

I can't help suspect a certain disingenuousness in such an argument. If there is a God (which there is) then trusting God is a virtue not something pernicious. Dawkins just doesn't want kids to get the other side at home so that they have no choice but to accept the anti-religious barrage from the mass media and most educators.

"Dawkins feels that faith is an evil precisely because it requires no justification and brooks no argument."

Obviously faith in a religion guarantees the need to justify and is often the catalyst for debate.

"He states that teaching children that unquestioned faith is a virtue primes them - given certain other ingredients that are not hard to come by - to grow up into potentially lethal weapons for future
crusades or jihads..."

He leaves out the inconvenient words "in God" after unquestioned faith. There is a difference in having a faith in God and having so much faith you can be an atheist. Indeed one of Christ's apostles called Pauls advised Christians to "test everything". (1 Thessalonians 5:21) Dawkins places his faith in the laws of nature and it seems to be a very unquestioned faith. Have you known him to vacillate and consider God?

Dear Philo,

Wilberforce not Wentworth was antislavery. The “Arrogance of Faith” by F. G. Wood tells how slaveholders defended the practice by claiming they were bringing Christianity to the slaves.

Slaveholders justified slavery by the Golden Rule. They claimed that if they were not Christian they would want someone to bring Christianity to them. Thus they were doing to others what they would have others do to them. I doubt that they ever consulted the slaves.

They also justified slavery on the grounds that it was an accepted practice in the Bible, Jesus said nothing about the practice and many sayings of Paul (eg Romans 13:2, Titus 2-9:10, Ephesians 6:5-8) supported it.

Ephesians 6:5-8 especially served the slaveholders' purposes.

Ephesians 6:5 Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ; 6:6 Not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart; 6:7 With good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men: 6:8 Knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free.

The most costly war the USA ever fought in terms of American casualties was the Civil War. The South was more thoroughly Christian than the North, but they fought very hard to keep slavery.

John Hope Franklin, a black historian wrote “From Slavery to Freedom” which includes:

"In West Africa, where the population was especially dense and from which the great bulk of slaves was secured, Christianity was practically unknown until the Portuguese began to plant missions in the area in the sixteenth century. It was a strange religion, this Christianity, which taught equality and brotherhood and at the same time introduced on a large scale the practice of tearing people from their homes and transporting them to a distant land to become slaves."

Unfortunately Christians often cite Wilberforce’s efforts to end slavery and ignore the role of Christianity in promoting and sustaining it. Dishonest?