/lit/ - Literature

>>13076578
not an argument

It's not even a meme anymore, just a bad joke. I bet Dawkins secretly regrets ever writing it.

>>13076592
Is it that bad?

>>13076581
Underrated

>>13076594

It's very cringe inducing and rather falls short on just about every single one of its arguments. For all the ample criticism that Dawkins has of philosophy, he actually knows very, very little of it, to the point that he cannot pinpoint the epistemology of his own field and resorts to cheap utilitarian arguments. I guess utilitarianism is indeed a meme because it's where all the kids inadvertently go to when they decide that they think philosophy has been outdone by empirical sciences.

If you must read anything by Dawkins, read the Selfish Gene and or the Blind Watchmaker. Keep in mind that both are relatively outdated as far as peer reviewing goes, but at least they allow Dawkins to remain a bit more inside of his own field where he doesn't have to resort to bullshit every two paragraphs in order to keep going.

>>13076578
Why would you need to read a bookabout a topic any 9th grader can figure out on their own.

Reading something like this is turbo fedora.

>>13076578
>>13076594
I read it 7 years ago, I think.

It's good for children who just want assurance against their indoctrination.

Bump

>>13076578
It's meh, feels very bland and surface level. Granted I only read the first half, it doesn't go deep enough. It just says abrahamism is shit but it never tries to try to understand Christian or other abrahamic metaphysics or even try to understand what the concept of God is. I stopped reading when he said that Spinoza's pantheism is just romantic atheism, I prefer Peterson's ramblings about Christianity because atleast he's playful with idioms and shit.
It's good if you're a brainlet or autismo bot unable to see beauty in metaphors.

>>13076578
A meme. But an awesome one.

>>13076578
Basically
>I'm smart because I know the earth is round

Sampled this in audiobook form and got a good laugh. Once you've read enough the reasoning is childish.

>>13076806
>It's good for children who just want assurance against their indoctrination.

>>13076578
>asking about The God Delusion
>on /pol2/ electric boogaloo

>>13076630
also, The Extended Phenotype holds up

>>13077693
/lit/ is one of the most left oriented board here. wtf dude?

Lowest form of atheism/posting

Hasn't even read subject matter

Doesn't even venture points of discussion

Obviously doesn't believe in anything

Just fucking kill your nihilist

>>13077894
and that's why you have almost every thread destroyed by /pol/acks, like this one, right?

>>13077894
are we visiting the same board?

It gets shat on by /lit/ because people here are better read (or at least pretend to be) than normie theists, having actually examined and understood Aquinas, Kant, and Kierkegaard. Hell, most mainstream "Christians" haven't read the Bible. As others have already pointed out, Dawkins has a very shallow understanding of philosophy so his arguments fall apart when examined by people with even a passable understanding.

However, the reason he has gained so much traction is because the people he is arguing against don't have any understanding of philosophy either. When his opposition is largely Ken Ham tier, with arguments mostly being backed up by nothing except "but muh Bible says" or "muh ancestors did it" he looks like a fucking intellectual juggernaut by comparison. You then have a generation of kids being told what to do by almost illiterate religious adults whose rhetoric boils down to "because I/God said so", so naturally a guy coming along who argues "well because I said so is a shit argument, here's a (poorly thought out but decently explained) alternative" is a genius in their eyes.

The more people fall for this atheism meme, the weaker Christianity gets, and that vacuum will eventually get filled by Islam. As a Muslim I am okay either way, as I find Christians a lot more tolerable than all the other pagan faiths out there, and they certainly more honest and truthful than that other Abrahamic faith (((them))).

Win-win situation, either way.

>>13076630
>I guess utilitarianism is indeed a meme because it's where all the kids inadvertently go to when they decide that they think philosophy has been outdone by empirical sciences.
Every time there's an argument about the value of philosophy the pro-philosophy people start by saying "It's very useful!" and ten minutes later say "It's not *supposed* to be useful!", every single time, without fail

>>13078620
epic bacon win

>>13078562
Not a single person on this board has read Kant, fuck off

>>13078562
>millions are suffering because of a meme religion
>epic philosophers study religion for centuries and publish countless essays and works nobody reads
>someone who doesn't study philosophy of religion comes along and solves the problem
Seems like the philosophy of religion scholars didn't do their job, huh? Didn't they completely fail at what they were supposed to do? Shouldn't they have published this book? What stopped them over the last few centuries? What is wrong with philosophers that they couldn't affect the real world in any way?

>>13078686
It's because they were unnecessary to the powers that be for controlling the masses and so didn't receive as much spotlight.

Why bother giving religion a deep and genuine examination and pull it outside of small intellectual circles when you can just bludgeon people into submission with the Bible (aided by violence), convince them that this is normal, and then in turn teach them to bludgeon others so that you have a self enforcing worship of unquestionable authority? Hell, you don't even want to bring these people out, because they might in fact disrupt things because they are capable separating God from the people who claim to speak on his behalf.

I read it and it made me a Muslim.

>>13077894
maybe 5 years ago

>>13076578
Bump

>>13077629
Posted by someone who was never indoctrinated. You don't know how thorough it can be.

Bump again

Post quotes

>>13080583
>Do you really mean to tell me the only reason you try to be good is to gain God's approval and reward, or to avoid his disapproval and punishment? That's not morality, that's just sucking up, apple-polishing, looking over your shoulder at the great surveillance camera in the sky, or the still small wiretap inside your head, monitoring your every move, even your every base though.
As if people can be moral without expecting anything good in return, as if everything we do isn’t based on self-benefit. Why wouldn’t we want to do what’s best for us?

Bump

>>13077894
>is
was*

>>13081951
If the fucking thread was worth a shit you wouldn't have to bump it at all. Let it die.

>>13077693
>being so tribal you can't acknowledge when someone on your "side" is wrong

>>13080622
This is as dumb as Dawkins.

if you want to read something by him that is actually worthwhile and not "being atheist is right because god is DUMB", read the blind watchmaker. actually goes into some depth in backing up each of his points

>>13076578
Well first of all in order for this post to make any sense lets get the following things in order:
>I am a really smart man.
>I have killed people. I let the burgers out picnic style and they came running onto my property, enemy territory.
>I worked in the Navy once.
>CHARLES BUKOWSKI IS MY FAVORITE WRITER

So me and the pals were talking about the Bukowski book 'Ham On Rye', a literary masterpiece, masterpieces if you really consider how the book reflects stages of bukowski in his early life. Then Tad fucking said that he had held HOR (just force wind out of your mouth while sounding the acronym if you want to impress the fans) in equal height to Richard Dawkin's God Delusion book. I never heard of it so I ask him, what the fuck, Tad, what book is that? He said that it was this book written by a scientist that disrupted the entire religious community, the man's like the Elon Musk of the atheists. First of all, I kicked Tad right in the fucking nuts. Then I asked him where I could find a copy? He said that you can read it online. So I did.

I arrived on a webpage decorated with gold coins for St. Patrick's day. There's a 1 click button you can press to buy a copy of it for the computer. I did and I couldn't figure out how to read it on a computer. I'm not downloading two files, the book I want to read, and then this thing called "Calibre", every time I want to download a book file. I paid ten bucks for a piece of shit that doesn't work when you pay for it, too late for me to care to read it now.

You know how in Disneyland "Gay" rhymes with "Day"? Well I think "Richard Dawkins" rhymes with "bad".

>>13076578
Pretty retarded, his main idea is that religion is a hostile meme which takes over its host's brain and has no added benefits.

Meanwhile Dawkins ignores the tendency of religious people to have lost of children, a.k.a. spreading their genes (the main purpose of life according to his earlier work The Selfish Gene). Christopher Hitchens' atheist manifesto is even more shallow.

>>13076578
Pssh, nothing p e r s o n n e l, kid.

>>13077894
/lit/ is not anything ya pseuds
the same way /pol/ isn't anything
Lurk more faggots

>>13083667
>ideas aren't real, man