Vlad,
This would be fine if it were invariably the case.
Whether it’s invariably the case or not is neither here nor there. The fact that on the whole clerics think that “faith” should be taken seriously is sufficient to establish the difference between them and those who think that arguments should stand or fall on their merits.
However when clerics speak in the public forum in secular environments on secular issues they tend to speak, well, secularly.
Since when? Can you find me a cleric who thinks that his “faith” isn’t epistemologically important?
Any viewing of Dawkins televisual atrocity teaches us that he gets clerics to talk about faith then acts shocked and horrified when they do.
Not so far as I’m aware he doesn’t. What he
does react against though is clerics who think their personal faith should be taken seriously as a guide to truth, morality, public policy etc.
Unfortunately the easily led antitheist sap extrapolates this as the way clerics are.
No – if that
is how they are, then that is the proper way to treat them.
I'm sure the mere sight of a dog collar elicits the response of "I just want to rip it off" in some people.
Perhaps it does in some people - many of them religious incidentally - as do other types of religious paraphernalia for other people. So what?
Dawkins is a convicted antitheist with an agenda based on an overarching philosophy about the way the world is.
RD hasn’t been “convicted” of anything, and his ”antitheism” concerns the overreaching theists do and
not their right to believe anything they wish to believe.
I hear his next televisual effort is called "A year without God" In an obvious sense Dawkins can no more manage that than you or I have this past year.
Why not?
Let's not forget also that Dawkins shuns scholarship of what his opposition actually believes and then decries an equal lack of scholarship in creationists and that makes him a humbug.
Let’s not forget that people who begin sentences with “let’s not forget” often follow them with complete untruths. RD does not “shun scholarship” at all – indeed he often knows more of the doctrines of those he critiques than they do themselves. The point though is that, while the content of the beliefs of creationists may be different from that of the local vicar, they
share beliefs that are equally mistaken – by thinking that personal faith is a reliable guide to objective facts for example.
I notice too by the way that you’ve posted a (mistaken) tirade against Richard Dawkins rather than respond to the argument that undid you. Love him or loathe him, he uses
arguments for his position that stand or fall on their merits. Clerics on the other hand rely on something they call
faith, and arrogate rights to their opinions accordingly.
That’s why you were wrong to conflate the role of religion in the public square with that of those use reason and rationality to promulgate their views.
