marți, 22 octombrie 2019

Richard Dawkins and soviet atheism

I watched a Joe Rogan podcast with Richard Dawkins, in which Richard said that he hopes that one day the world will be religion free.
This remind me about he effort of french revolutionaries and of the soviets to free people from religion.
They had more means than Richard Dawkins and they didn't succeed. Why he should succeed ?
I am disappointed by Mr. Dawkins because he is a scientist and he should be less dogmatic and more curious about the persistence of religion.
Despite scientific breakthrough there are smart people who believe in religion, and new religions appear even today. (In US there is scientology for and in Papua New Guinea  the cargo cults).
Why he is not curious about it ?
In same discussion he notices that in US despite of decrease in number of religious people, the extremist religion lobby is powerful.
Of course they have more influence,an united group in disunited society has more influence than its size.
It is Darwinism,a term which the biologist Dawkins uses often, but fails to comprehend when it is under his nose: a man in a group has more chances of succeeding.
The danger that I see in promoting atheism is not that it will destroy the moral fabric of society. The pious inquisitors who burned people at the stake were not moral.
The danger I see is that atomising society in individual atheist, fringe religious groups will have a stronger influence.
A cult within a society of atheists will be like a pack of wolves within a flock of sheep.
I don't agree with one big religion either.
All the religious states with one big religion have stagnated.
Portugal and Spain were overtaken by more liberal Holland.
Turkey by the Europeans.
Vatican was dismembered by Italy.
Iran and Saudi Arabia are resisting only because of oil.
I think that religion should be limited only to personal space and kept away from your job,politics and law.
Richard Dawkins also tried to promote his atheistic ideas to younger children, to deprogram them from religious influence of the parents. This is a risky business:
I have 2 friends who are at least non religious if not atheist, and one day their child asked them:
"I am going to die ?"
"Yes, his mother said"
Then the boy was scared and agitated all the time, whispering "I am going to die"
I think in this case is better to pretend that you believe in some religion, in some afterlife, in angels and heaven, to avoid to make your children life miserable.
Science can heal many illnesses but it cannot cure death. Death we have to face it one day, and we must prepare for it. A child doesn't have the mental strength to face it.
In 1961 when soviet cosmonaut Gagarin entered cosmos he said that he didn't see god.
In 1991 after the fall of Soviet Union, Russians collected money and rebuild the monastery "Jesus the Savior" demolished by Stalin in 1939.
70 years of hard line atheism didn't change anything in mind of people. Maybe Orthodox church has a lesser influence.
It good that Richard Dawkins combats religion, from opposition of ideas we can get better ones, but is bad that he tries to do what the soviets tried: to make a totalitarian state in which only 'rational' ideas exists.
Rationality of ideas depends of the current knowledge, Thomas Jefferson a smart man rejected the ideas of stones falling from the sky (meteorites) saying that most likely the scientists who proposed this are mad.

Niciun comentariu: