To be honest, that article is a bit of a fluff piece, his essay in the New Statesman on the subject puts his point across better. - https://www.newstatesman.com/node/148940
He has a lot of valid points ("we outsourced the slavery and pollution") but he somehow likes religions more than atheism, which is definitely inconsistent: he recognizes the "false beliefs" in the everyday Western world (keeping the eyes closed about the mentioned "outsourcing"), but then avoids to treat the same the religions which obviously can't all be true. Only atheism is consistent with the existence of all other religions (simply claiming that it's the humans who invented various mutually conflicting stories about one or more "deities"). He also claims that the atheism "is a religion" which is by definition false: "disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods."
Moreover, the changes brought by enlightenment were actually revolutionary and immense. But what is his correct observation is that no rights are fixed and that the most of the humans who have them now can as well lose them fast.
Religion, in my opinion, is not really about believing in a dude in sandals up in the clouds somewhere. And some large part of it is in fact junk and even sometimes dangerous. But it has value in exploring questions and aspects of humanity that we are not able to understand with reason. Human beings are really bad at reason. Just in my opinion.
Atheism is an affirmative answer to a question about your faith in the unknown. So I agree with him, again just personally.
> But it has value in exploring questions and aspects of humanity that we are not able to understand with reason.
I don't think this claim stands up to much scrutiny.
Sure - religion is interesting from a historical perspective. "Why do we think the way we do" for example. Or "how did we grapple with problem X before we discovered Y..."
But religion doesn't offer some unique perspective or insight we don't otherwise have access to.
In fact, it stops us exploring questions we don't yet understand. Because (organised) religion claims to have the answers. That's what makes it so dangerous.
And, as Christopher Hitchens used to say, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence to support them"...
I think a good example is human rights. Remember, these started out as natural, or god-given rights. We all know what the world looks like without them. All the ultra-rational, anti-religious political economies of the first half of 20th century were hells on earth. You cant come to reasonable arguments for human rights without faith in some belief in natural good, dignity or humanity.
> You cant come to reasonable arguments for human rights without faith in some belief in natural good, dignity or humanity.
We can, and we did.
The US constitution for example, is explicitly secular.
In fact I'd say there's a convincing case to be made that - as soon as faith (in some form) enters the equation - you can no longer have a reasonable argument about human rights, because by definition, a person who believes something 'on faith' cannot be persuaded by logical argument, reason, or evidence. They simply 'know it to be true'.
> I think a good example is human rights. Remember, these started out as natural, or god-given rights.
The teachings of the most common major religions included some human rights. But also a lot of incitement to commit atrocious acts completely counter to our human rights (for example the death penalty for adultery and homosexuality, the command to commit genocide in several cases, genital mutilation and so on).
Sure, you can cherry pick just the 'good' parts of your chosen religion, but if you're doing that, why bother with religion in the first place?
If you (or anyone else reading this) genuinely agree with the comment I'm replying to, please, please, please watch this debate with an open mind --> (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJCZKZomtXQ).
>> You cant come to reasonable arguments for human rights without faith in some belief in natural good, dignity or humanity.
> We can, and we did.
> The US constitution for example, is explicitly secular.
The US Constitution is a plan of government amended with a listing of human rights. In its original form it left those rights entirely unenumerated. It's an odd argument to claim that it forms any kind of basis for those rights when that basis is clearly elsewhere.
Look at the animal kingdom and you’ll see a natural world full of death, rape, and violence with no basis in religion. If we’re animals that’s the baseline. By using the word atrocity you’re buying in to some definition of evil that has to come from a philosophical belief system, ie a faith, which could be directed toward God, the future of humanity, logic, a flat earth, or literally anything else.
> Look at the animal kingdom and you’ll see a natural world full of death, rape, and violence with no basis in religion.
True (although amongst some species no higher than our own, so not sure what point that proves).
> By using the word atrocity you’re buying in to some definition of evil that has to come from a philosophical belief system, ie a faith, which could be directed toward God, the future of humanity, logic, a flat earth, or literally anything else.
I don't know that you can believe in logic or the future of humanity.
Definitely not in the same way people believe in God.
As for where morality/our basis for human rights comes from if not from religion, Richard Dawkins explains best (in ~5min) how the source most probably isn't belief/faith/religion in this video --> (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XtvWkRRxKQ).
So, no to those that claim that, humans aren't special, and no, the good sides of morality don't come from religion, especially not from the modern ones with a "jealous" god (killing homosexuals, or punishing women when not wearsing something, however, if that is considered "morality", indeed provably does come from religion).
In that video Dawkins says he thinks religious morality is contemptible because it is based out of fear.
That is true, however look at the world we live in. A lot of people are not moral.
He admits the question asked of him is a "genuinely hard question:" using concepts of good and evil is an inherent admission in some faith in such concepts.
> Religion, in my opinion, is not really about believing in a dude in sandals up in the clouds somewhere.
If you take a honest look in what religions are "really about" you'd come to: hell. Deities providing a place to torture human souls. Even Buddhism (as a developed religion, not as an idea on which it was established) has its hell.
The proof that all of these stories are actually produced by humans and even have one origin is that the concept of hell effectively didn't exist around 3000 years ago but then appeared in all the cultures which mutually exchanged goods through the trade routes around 2500 years ago. The timing also doesn't fit with any of the religions claiming they have "the truth": the concept of hell was surely unknown to early Judaism but was provably spread across the cultures centuries before the Christianity appeared.
> But it has value in exploring questions and aspects of humanity that we are not able to understand with reason.
Like, we can imagine hell really good, and obviously successfully spread the invented stories about it. Heaven on another side is either non-existence, or profoundly uninteresting or obviously produced for a mind of sex-obsessed hormone pushed teenagers who will therefore be motivated to die for their "religion" (virgins always ready for sex).
> Human beings are really bad at reason.
Should we then prevent them from trying to reason about their religions? Or shouldn't we support them exactly to do so? The problem is, raising people to "not do something" because they will be "punished" in the afterlife provably doesn't work, otherwise we wouldn't be where we are now -- the human civilization constantly being near to complete annihilation.
By pure nature of how probability works, there will be sooner or later some false alarm that will indeed trigger the actual detonation of the nuclear weapons. The only sane action by humanity would be to reduce their amount to the scale which makes humanity's annihilation impossible. We are very far from that at the moment. Because it's so profitable making these weapons.
"military and intelligence leaders responded by unveiling their proposal for a pre-emptive thermonuclear attack on the Soviet Union, to be launched sometime in late 1963. JFK stormed away from the meeting in disgust, remarking scathingly to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, “And we call ourselves the human race.”"
