RD: If you look at the broad sweep of history, then clearly we’re on the winning side.
Seems terribly myopic to me.
Naturally, it depends on what you mean by religion. If it’s believing in a slave master to whom obedience is due, I don’t know that Dawkins is any less religious than the Pope.
I’m with Stirner in saying “Our atheists are pious people.”
Take notice how a “moral man” behaves, who today often thinks he is through with God and throws off Christianity as a bygone thing. If you ask him whether he has ever doubted that the copulation of brother and sister is
incest, that monogamy is the truth of marriage, that filial piety is a sacred duty, then a moral shudder will come
over him at the conception of one’s being allowed to touch his sister as wife also, etc. And whence this shudder?
Because he believes in those moral commandments. This moral faith is deeply rooted in his breast. Much as he
rages against the pious Christians, he himself has nevertheless as thoroughly remained a Christian – to wit, a moral
Christian. In the form of morality Christianity holds him a prisoner, and a prisoner under faith. Monogamy is to
be something sacred, and he who may live in bigamy is punished as a criminal; he who commits incest suffers
as a criminal. Those who are always crying that religion is not to be regarded in the State, and the Jew is to be
a citizen equally with the Christian, show themselves in accord with this. Is not this of incest and monogamy a
dogma of faith? Touch it, and you will learn by experience how this moral man is a hero of faith too, not less than
Krummacher, not less than Philip II. These fight for the faith of the Church, he for the faith of the State, or the moral
laws of the State; for articles of faith, both condemn him who acts otherwise than their faith will allow.
… Those who are zealous for something sacred often look very little like each other. How the strictly orthodox or
old-style believers differ from the fighters for “truth, light, and justice,” from the Philalethes, the Friends of Light,
the Rationalists, and others. And yet, how utterly unessential is this difference! If one buffets single traditional truths
(i.e. miracles, unlimited power of princes), then the Rationalists buffet them too, and only the old-style believers
wail. But, if one buffets truth itself, he immediately has both, as believers, for opponents. So with moralities;
the strict believers are relentless, the clearer heads are more tolerant. But he who attacks morality itself gets both
to deal with. “Truth, morality, justice, light, etc.,” are to be and remain “sacred.”
From what I’ve seen of Dawkins, he has as much or more piety than your average bible thumper.
Seems terribly myopic to me.
Naturally, it depends on what you mean by religion. If it’s believing in a slave master to whom obedience is due, I don’t know that Dawkins is any less religious than the Pope.
I’m with Stirner in saying “Our atheists are pious people.”
From what I’ve seen of Dawkins, he has as much or more piety than your average bible thumper.
I think you are defining “piety” too broadly.