I've been thinking about this for a while and I realise that I am not an atheist because of Richard Dawkins/Christopher Hitchens or whoever. I became an atheist through my own judgement that the idea of a supreme being was irrational. This was after spending 13 years of my life as a Muslim and 1 year of my life as a Christian.

I find that my position as an atheist is no more reaffirmed when I watch any of the atheist debaters. However, watching a religious debater like William Lane Craig or anyone else greatly reaffirms my position as an atheist.

1) Is there anyone else who feels this way?

2) Is there anyone who has been 'converted' either way by a debater? If so, which debate was it?

lol, yes me. WLC in particular drives me up the wall with his certainty and smugness. Having said that, Dawkins is just as bad. I wasn't converted to Atheism, I don't even remember when I stopped believing in the christian god (I grew up in a christian country and that was the religion urged on me as a child), or if I ever actually did believe, I don't think I realised I was Atheist until my late teens.

I'm fascinated by your switch from Islam to Christianity, how did that come about and how were you a Muslim in the first place?

Watching Christopher Hitchens in debates was, at the time, pretty pivotal for me, if only for how attractive I found his personality. I was already very suspicious that what I believed in was a bunch of rubbish, but, since my IRL world was largely dominated by friendships/associations with Christians, it was helpful to see that an articulate and intelligent human being could actually eschew all of it.

That being said, I never thought then, and am more affirmed in that stance now, that Hitchens' case against religion, at least the one he gets out in debates and down on paper, was a philosophically strong case, so, in that sense, he never "converted" me. What he did do though was open my eyes to a world of thinkers I'd never encountered and gave me a model, for better or worse, of how a human being and a mind could think/fee/act/speak without believing in a God. At the point I started watching Hitch I was a high school dropout who only really read the Bible. As a result of him I fell in love with literature, thought, philosophy, and fell in love with the idea of being an educated human being.

This turned into a Hitch is my hero/savior post.

Dawkins almost made me a Christian.
Long life the idiot Dawkins !

Watching satanist propaganda affects the ego. I will strongly suggest 1 year of zazen meditation before opening your mind for the mind control specialists such as Hitchens. GG Hitchens - karma is a bitch.

I was born in Singapore which is a very multi-cultural country. My Dad was a Sikh and my Mum was a Muslim. Somehow my 3 brothers and I were all asked to become Muslim. My Mum wasn't a staunch believer (praying 5 times a day type) and neither was my Dad. They did try to instill in us that god exists no matter what religion you were from.

Anyway I didn't see any reason to believe in being a Muslim. I had never been to a mosque and I have never read the koran. A bunch of Christian groups were approaching school kids like myself right outside of school when I was around 15 or 16 and I ended up joining their church to see what it was like. Everyone there just looked crazily radical, I started rationalizing a bit and I became an Atheist.

My current girlfriend of 8 years is a Catholic. GG.

Not sure if this is a trolling answer or the truth ?

Care to explain ?

He might be referring to the ******ed, occasionally islamophobic, **** Dawkins is known to spew from time to time. See a discussion of these tweets here and here.

Oh ok. Why is Dawkins always pissed off ? Lol I don't see him as a intellectual giant . Hitchens wasn't passive but he use to keep his cool.

Edit : what I mean is Dawkins seems to get easily angered. I follow him on twitter and he is always engaging many "common" folk on twitter. Who gets angry over twitter trolls ?

Twitter trolls, perhaps?

I wouldn't say I was converted by a debate, but that doesn't imply there was never an argument. Personally, I think formal debate is about 99% dick waving, and 1% bull****. They don't accomplish anything because of the rigid structure.

Discussion and argument, otoh, have had a significant influence on me being an atheist.

If we consider this forum to be a continuous debate between theists and atheists, then I have to say that the theists of this forum did more to push me towards atheism than anything else. Notready, Sharky, Pletho, Splendour, Stu Pidasso, Jibninjas, and their ilk did more to convince me of the non-existence of god than any atheist writer ever did.

Can't see what is Islamophobic about the tweets you linked to directly. Actually, they seem rather factual.

Maybe there is history I don't know.

In the "intellectual" debate-form that seems so popular in the US and some continental academic circles is rather airy. It seems much more focused on form than content, so it is more a rhetoric/dialectic exercise than anything worth taking to heart.

I have changed my mind more based on posters in RGT than any professional debater. I think the internet-debating form of research/write/read/research is superior (in principle, not necessarily always in practice) to panel-debate.

From the first link:

Regarding the factualness of the claims:

I can't say that I follow D on twitter or w/e, so I'm mostly only going on what I read on salon.com, guardian etc., but it's not the first time that New Atheism and Islamophobia have popped up together. A few months back there was http://www.salon.com/2013/03/30/dawk..._islamophobia/, for example.

That seems like a rather silly protest. Holding the view that Islam is causally linked to less Nobel prizes doesn't imply a claim that Muslims are less intelligent. If one held that Muslims were less intelligent, why "blame" Islam for less Nobel prizes at all?

If that is the quality of the "analysis" of such tweets, I think people need to grow thicker skin.

I must admit that Ernesto Sabato's hypothesis that Satan defeated God and created this ****ing hellhole of a world is tempting to say the least.

Basically, science aside, religion, God and theology is a way for the human brain to evade existential crisis and avoid extinction by mass suicide, via giving people hope that a divine being can steer life in their favor or else grant them blessed relief from it. Any theistic theory with any objective validity has to start by facing head-on the idea that life bloody SUCKS BALLS, and if there is a God that is all-powerful and is actually invested in the fate of humanity (which seems doubtful considering how small we are compared to the vastness of creation), He is a sadistic prick and we are His playthings.

fwiw, unless I misunderstood, that criticism came from two atheists who didn't want Dawkins' ramblings - seeing that he's a leading/vocal advocate of New Atheism - to be associated with Atheism itself. The first one's caption reads: "Please be quiet, Richard Dawkins, I'm begging, as a fan".

I don't think that's a fair representation of their objections.

"Islamophobia is prejudice against, hatred towards, irrational fear of, or racism towards Muslims."

• Prejudice against: Holding that Islam is the greatest force for evil in the world today is obviously prejudicial, in particular since he doens't back that up with evidence (as per the breadth of the claim, not really surprising)
• Hatred towards: I guess this is to some extend a judgement call, but the apparent agressiveness in his tweets (against which you recomment growing of thicker hide) indicates at least a fair degree of blanket animosity towards "the" muslims.
• Irrational fear: Goes hand in hand with assuming Islam being the greatest force of evil yet not being able/willing to back that up.
• Racism towards: As AGabriel puts that quite succinctly: "Asserting that because Islam is a religion and not a race, one can never discuss it (or treat its followers) in racist ways makes about as much sense as saying that because ballet is an art form not a sexual identity, it’s impossible to say anything homophobic about male ballet dancers. Hip-hop musicians and immigrants aren’t races either, but commentary on both is very often racist – or at least, informed and inflected to a serious degree by racial biases." And given that racism is commonly conceived of as "views, practices and actions reflecting the belief that humanity is divided into distinct biological groups called races and that members of a certain race share certain attributes which make that group as a whole less desirable, more desirable, inferior, or superior.", it seems rather obvious that this is what he's doing in these tweets.

So overall, ya, islamophobic.

I think it was an extremely fair representation of their objections; they basically said right out that Dawkins had accused Muslims of being less intelligent.

As for the phobia... A phobia means an irrational fear of an object/phenomena. I don't see any such things in Dawkins tweets. They're direct and perhaps not everybody's cup of tea, but they are intended for a 140-letter format. I think it is also reasonable to hold that the limitation of tweets mean they are not the place for such statements... however, one must also consider that it is important to be heard.

Islam is today as a trend fairly anti-intellectual, regimes that ban higher or censors higher education in many predominantly Muslim countries does so with the blessing of ruling religious clergy and scholars. Universities in many muslim countries are struggling, and their students consistently trampled upon.

It's patently bad that trying to point this out is seen as proof of phobia. It's equally as bad to to say this claim implies that Muslims are "stupid".

Look,

if you feel defending his tweets is serving some purpose besides making you and him look - at the very least - fairly tone deaf and judgemental, go for it.

If you feel like the WP-definition of islamophobia is wrong - take it up with Wikipedia. Post a link if you do, so that we can railbird.

Apparently, some of your peer atheists in the news/blogosphere disagree on both counts. I couldn't care less either way - to me Dawkins is/was an idiot on religious matters way before he posted those tweets. They just fit very well in the overall picture.

And this:

fwiw, is precisely what's wrong about his approach. If you can't see how making sweeping statements about a religion of some 1.6bio adherents in - dunno, 100? - countries is not helping, then I guess, there's no sense in continuing to discuss this stuff.

I was about to post something similar. It seems pretty obvious, at least to me , that it's a criticism of the anti-intellectual side of Islam that seems to flourish in many parts of the world.

Well, look, saying that would've left him with 38 characters for some hashtag or other.



But in any case, I merely mentioned those tweets here because of thedavid2013, so w/e, I guess.

Since Prejudice is defined as an opinion 'not based on reason or experience' I think you'd have to ask Dawkins for his reasoning and experience before accusing him of prejudice. Or perhaps you should ask him exactly what he means by 'Islam' rather than making your own assumption that he's referring to individual Muslims.

It appears that your jury is already out on this subject.

He said 'I think' and it's hard to back up such a complex argument in 140 characters, but, I don't know that he's failed to back it up anywhere else in more depth, do you? Also, you don't know that he's 'assuming' that, nor (given all the acts of terrorism carried out in the name of Islam) is it irrational to feel a degree of fear regarding the manner in which Islamic faith can 'express' itself.

I don't fear every Muslim, but I feel a degree of fear about 'Islam'.


I don't think that's 'obvious' at all. Does Dawkins actually say that "[I]because Islam is a religion and not a race, one can never discuss it (or treat its followers) in racist ways[/I]"? Or does he say that when he discusses 'Islam' and 'Muslims' he's not being racist?

Of course anyone could be racist about someone who also happens to be Muslim, that's so obvious that bringing it up seems like a bit of a gratuitous smear attempt.


So overall, you're painting him as islamophobic.

That's how I interpreted it too but I can also see how someone could use it to make a broad brush criticism of Dawkins.

Someone needs to inform Dawkins of his general lack of specificity and fondness for hyperbole.

I don't really see any difference between that and what he posted. Sure he didn't spell it out in simple terms but I don't see any issue with posting the statement he did and having people engage their brains.