fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3065 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3065 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

__________________________________________________

02.

[The Witcher 3]

__________________________________________________

03.

[Shakin Stevens]

__________________________________________________

04.

[The Godfather II]

__________________________________________________

05.

[A Redtail's Dream]

__________________________________________________

06.

[David Lynch & David Cronenberg]

__________________________________________________

07.

[Laurell K. Hamilton]

__________________________________________________

08.

[Big Bang Theory]

__________________________________________________

09.

(Richard Dawkins)

__________________________________________________

10.

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 034 secrets from Secret Submission Post #438.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Weelll... that's kind of true, but your analogy needs tweaking. Being an atheist who hasn't read Dawkins is more like an English Lit major who's never read Shakespeare. Yeah, not every English Lit major does, but if you haven't read a single play or poem of his, that's going to get you some raised eyebrows. Shakespeare is just that big in English literature, just as Dawkins is that big in atheism.

See, I don't get this thought process at all. Why do I need to read philosophy about why there is no god, when logic dictates that of course there is no god? It's a waste of my time to read up on the subject, to be honest.

This. My parents are atheist and they just never told me God was real, so I never believed God was real. That's all I needed. I've read a couple of books about that subject later (none of them written by Dawkins), but just because I love to read about everything.

Yeah, this is me as well. (And I'm not white, male or libertarian.) It doesn't need any more to call yourself an atheist.

the logic which dictates to you that there is no god is, itself, philosophy

Sure, but why do I need to read *more* about it? I can look at my desk right now and see there is no bread on my desk. I don't need a book to tell me in more detail how there is no bread. Though I can see it might be helpful to read a guidebook about why some people coming into my office may still insist there is bread on my desk, all evidence to the contrary be damned.

This.

"Philosophy" in the same way like not believing in fairies or psychics is a philosophy, I guess.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2015-05-27 01:37 (UTC) - Expand

(Anonymous) - 2015-05-27 09:46 (UTC) - Expand

What, no. Do you have any concept of how many atheists there are around the world? "Not reading Dawkins" is ONLY relevant to Western English speaking young political people who make atheist an active identity. Atheism is not a religion. Atheism is not a social group. It is only a way of thinking in regards to belief in divine powers. Acting like Dawkins' work is some sort of bible to some sort of religion called atheism is ridiculous.

I hadn't head of Dawkins until some months ago and just because there were people talking about him in some forum.

I hadn't heard about him till I read this secret just now (but then, I may be in a Western country, but it's not an English speaking one) and I've been an atheist for a long time (haven't read any other books about it either, though.)

That's ridiculous. Dawkins' status in atheism circles is for his outspoken criticism of religion and other forms of magical thinking. That's all well and good, but it doesn't make him Atheist Jesus.

How did read that comment and go from "Dawkins is a major figure in atheism much like Shakespeare is a major figure in English literature" to Dawkins = atheist Jesus? Because that isn't what the comment said at all.

If you read the entire comment I was responding to, you'll find that was the implication, even if it was couched in a more moderate comparison.

(Anonymous) - 2015-05-27 02:13 (UTC) - Expand

dethtoll - 2015-05-27 02:17 (UTC) - Expand

Atheist Jesus...heh.

(Atheist Jesus sitting on a rock looking sad and sighing deeply.)

ME: What's wrong Atheist Jesus?
ATHEIST JESUS: People have been telling me that I've been too hard on myself. That I need to believe in myself. But I can't.
ME: Why not?
ATHEIST JESUS: (points to self) Technically, I shouldn't even exist.
ME: You're a paradox?
ATHEIST JESUS: Yep.
ME: Bummer (sits next to Atheist Jesus and begins to sigh deeply as well.)

Lol at Atheist Jesus not believing in himself.

cue hyena giggling sounds

best comment /thread

You win the thread.

I think you (and possibly secret OP) are confusing atheism-the-belief with atheism-the-social-movement. You can have the former without any interaction or identification with the latter.

He's insanely popular, that doesn't mean he's any good. (And in some areas, he's just plain bad, see memetics.)

I think he was okay on memes 30 years ago, when he started writing about them. Of course what he wrote is horribly out of date and just plain wrong in places now.

No, memtics was a dumb idea when first proposed because it combined a primitive semiotics with an extrapolation from quantitative genetics that was just plain dumb because none of the limitations of the Central Dogma apply to semiotics. It's like trying to apply special relativity to economics on the grounds that capital is analogous to mass.

Of course on the biology side, it didn't help that that we had two revolutions of molecular biology and computational cladistics which puts biology on par with astronomy in the quantitative realm. Just this year, we found a common-ancestor cousin between Archeobacteria and Eukaryota through computational analysis of DNA samples. The social science people got their hands on Big Data and social network analysis, which could be quantified, and meanwhile, the meme people never could get their heads out of metaphor-land far enough to develop even a working definition of what a meme would be.

The final stake in that vampire should be a recent study coming out of comparative linguistics which found minimal overlap between linguistic and genetic diversity among humans. Simply put, Dawkins's adaptaionism and descent with modification is a shitty model for explaining language. Adaptationism not king of the hill in biology either, but adpatationist "just so stories" are easier to explain than molecular biology or cladistics.

I'm an atheist an never read Dawkins, since he's not famous in my country?