One of the things that really frustrates me about talking to the "new atheist" breed of online Dawkins-quoters is this.
Err... What? Let's ignore all the ad hominems and straw men. I am almost sixty and I have been an atheist pretty much since Sunday school. Difficult as it is for you to understand, many people can actually think for themselves and form their own rational worldview without the need for prophets. My world view has been formed by reading a wide range of books (that's what we read before the Internet) and other sources. It had changed over the years and changes by the day because I have that freedom as a rationalist and as an atheist. I am not a follower or quoter of Dawkins thanks very much. My personal philosophy comes from reading Thomas Paine, Pilger, Hermann Hesse, Shakespeare, Asimov, Phillip K Dick, Borges, Gibbons Decline and Fall, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Heinlein (Stranger in a Strange Land is a great book),Vonnegut, Daniel Dennett, great investigative journalism and amazing photojournalism. Film, theatre and music have all contributed. Of particular interest to me was the nature of spirituality and where it came from. For my college thesis on the nature of common sense I read widely on the balance between innate behaviour and learned behaviour. When I designed an exhibition about Reliquaries at the British Museum it was fascinating to talk to experts about the nature of worship and how pre-Christian practices were adopted by the early church and how saints and relics were used by the church to control. It also how they brought great comfort. For another show about the Mayans I read widely and spoke to experts about the nature of Pre-Colombian religion and tried to understand their mindset. At the moment I'm designing the British library's Magna Carta exhibition. So I'm knee deep in the development of human freedoms and human rights over the last 800 years. I was at the Houses of Parliament Archives looking at the Petition of Rights and the English Bill of Rights. I've been reading and listening to Gandhi, Mandela and other less well known figures, reading the US Bill of Rights and Jefferson's first draft of the Declaration of Independence... And so on. My sources are these and thousands of others.
That's the nature of being an atheist and a rationalist. If you embrace it, then everyday is an opportunity to have your world view challenged.
Or maybe we all just quote Dawkins off the Internet. I suppose if your world view is that everything literally comes from one source and can only be interpreted by your particular God's appointed interpreters then the natural model is to think of atheism and rationalism as a religion and Dawkins as it's prophet.
Which all makes your following paragraphs interesting. You may want to equate religions as just another 'world view' but there is a fundamental difference between where I stand and how I think and how someone who believes that their religion is the word of God.
My world view can change based on new evidence. A religious world view is dictated by God.
It's true that to accommodate the real world as well as the inherent contradictions, many religions try to reinterpret that word of God but that tends to result in schisms and factionalisation.
Religions are only 'just another world view' if you take god out of the equation. A Hindu and a Jew have different Gods, different beliefs and different practices. I can respect them (and I do I'm most cases) for what I see them to be, which is a range of cultural practices developed over time that reflects that society's history and environment. But it is surely self-evident that the Hindu gods, Jahweh, God, Thor, Zeus etc cannot all exist. My respect for my fellow man and woman is based on their humanity and their human rights.
I don't believe I have to respect every world view as equal. That way lies madness. I don't respect any person who uses religion to justify violence. I certainly do not think that "All other worldviews are backwards idiocy compared to my enlightened worldview and they should be eliminated" and I'm not sure why you put that in quotation marks.
Oh and if your asking for people to show humility. Don't. Be. So. Fucking. Patronising?
This idea that by using the word "religion" you get to say "well, we're the only ones without one so we can obviously see what's wrong with all of the others and pass judgment on them. I hate the word "religion" for this very reason.
You see, you have a worldview (a much more useful word, invented by a very clever German linguist). A Muslim from Pakistan has a worldview. The evangelical from Kansas has a worldview. The reformed Jew from Poland has a worldview. A worldview is a lens through which you interpret everything and it absolutely biases you to certain conclusions about the world and every single person has one.
Imagine a world where there are competing mathematical systems. In your system, 2+2=4 and this is very obvious to you. But then you meet an immigrant from a place where the symbol "2" means something else on a fundamental level. You hear this man say that 2+2=6, or maybe 2+2=a fryup without beans, and you go ballistic. How stupid he is, you'll rage, for not seeing what is blindingly obvious to you.
But you've ignored one thing: He. Does. Not. Accept. Your. Worldview. The constants upon which you base your philosophy, life goals, and morality are not the same constants upon which he bases his. You can blather on about your worldview being right and his being wrong (and you obviously like to do this) but it does not matter because until you are dead there is zero chance of proving one or the other.
Now, I would argue that we can and should have discussions about which worldview is correct - which set of fundamental precepts shall we use to make these important decisions? But let's do this with a bit of respect and take the time to understand the other person. "All other worldviews are backwards idiocy compared to my enlightened worldview and they should be eliminated" is the worst sort of fundamentalism there is, and is in fact the very thing you're criticising these fundamentalist Muslims for believing.
Instead, I suggest a bit of humility, willingness to learn and patience. But that's just me, because I'm not a fundamentalist about my worldview.
