I've been wanting to write a piece about my views on religion, Dawkins, and his book The God Delusion. The problem is, I haven't read the book. I just took an instant dislike to him when I saw him on the telly ranting against religion. Ranting like a religious fanatic.
I'm not really planning to refute his arguments logically, because I haven't read them, and anyway, I don't disagree with his conclusion about the non-existence of God. I just want to indulge in some ad hominem attacks on him. (On Dawkins, that is, not on God. Can one make an ad hominem attack on God?).
It did seem as if he'd entirely missed the point, somehow. His anti-religion views seemed so ... juvenile. As if his balls haven't dropped. I'm embarrassed to be in the same camp. In fact, I'm not in the same camp. I want a different term for people of his viewpoint. People like me, who don't have any belief in God, but aren't worked up about it, are Atheists. People like Dawkins, who see the whole God thing as a wicked conspiracy or a bunch of irrationality, and see themselves as heroic debunkers saving the rest of us, I shall refer to those people as Dawks.
Anyway, it was forcefully put to me at the weekend that I can't say all this without having read the book, so I've bought a copy. Watch this space. I shall be reading it to see whether he offers any definition of "religion", "god", or "believe". I had already read what he describes as the main chapter, the one where he says he puts his argument that shows that God almost certainly doesn't exist -- and found no such argument in that chapter. Now I'd better read the rest.
Interestingly (well, interesting to me anyway) I see a strong connection between this and another "philosopher" that I work myself up into a state about, John Searle, and his arguments against AI, that no machine could ever think, even in principle. Both debates revolve, for me, around the question of what it is for something to have, or to create, meaning. Where does meaning come from? More on this later. You have been warned.
