Dawkins for forakt og mobbing

Det kan bare regnes som overtro å mene at Dawkins ikke kan ta den lenger ut i vekkelseskampanjene mot gudstroende og andre gærninger. Og at han i dette skulle ha noe ønske om å satse på å bli mer rasjonell og empirisk.

I stedet opptrår han stadig oftere som en karikatur av en jesuitt, muligens slik nye ateister oppfatter disse. Når Dawkins nå gjør seg til talsmann for å bekjempe religion ved forakt og mobbing, er det liten tvil om at hensikten helliger middelet.

Ihvertfall blant venner i eget debattforum, i en kommentar til en ikke uventet kompromissløs artikkel av Jerry Coyne om det kriminelle i å koble tro og vitenskap.

I think we should probably abandon the irremediably religious precisely because that is what they are – irremediable. I am more interested in the fence-sitters who haven't really considered the question very long or very carefully. And I think that they are likely to be swayed by a display of naked contempt. Nobody likes to be laughed at. Nobody wants to be the butt of contempt.

You might say that two can play at that game. Suppose the religious start treating us with naked contempt, how would we like it? I think the answer is that there is a real asymmetry here. We have so much more to be contemptuous about! And we are so much better at it. We have scathingly witty spokesmen of the calibre of Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris. Who have the faith-heads got, by comparison? Ann Coulter is about as good as it gets. We can't lose!

If you can bear to listen to him, take, as an example of a typical faith-head trying to be contemptuous, David Bentley Hart, whose radio interview happened to be posted here at the same time as Jerry's article.

Listen to the stumbling, droning inarticulacy, the abysmal lack of anything approaching wit or intelligence. Imagine this yammering fumblewit coming up against Christopher Hitchens, or Dan Dennett, or PZ Myers – doesn't it make your mouth water?

I emphatically don’t mean we should use foul-mouthed rants. Nor should we raise our voices and shout at them: let’s have no D’Souzereignty here. Instead, what we need is sarcastic, cutting wit. A good model might be Peter Medawar, who would never dream of shouting, but instead quietly wielded the rapier. Look, for instance, at almost any sentence in his magnificent review of Teilhard de Chardin’s pretentious Phenomenon of Man. It is reprinted in Pluto’s Republic or you can find it here:-
http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Medawar/phenomenon-of-man.html

Maybe I'm wrong. I'm only thinking aloud, among friends. Is it gloves off time? Or should we continue to go along with the appeasers and be all nice and cuddly, like Eugenie and the National Academy?

Selv om han i kledelig ydmykhet har noen fraser om at han kan ta feil, er holdningen ikke til å misforstå.

Gjerdesitterne skal vinnes ved forakt overfor all religion og gudstro. De skal mobbes ned på rette siden. Hanskene skal av, dette er kamp på tørre nevene.

Og dette er fryktelig lett, siden "troshodene" mangler det meste av munn og mæle, for ikke å si humør og humor. Slike egenskaper er utelukkende noe så avansert og artikulerende som ateister satt opp med. Antagelig er det grunnen til at Hitchens lekende lett kneblet Craig i en debatt nylig.

Kort sagt synliggjør nettopp Dawkins hvor ille det er når noen blir et troshode.

Dermed er spørsmålet hvilket parti som er først ute i valgkampen med å gjeninnføre jesuittparagrafen.