Sunday, January 08, 2006

Norm supports Dawkins and secularism against a reasonably good attack.
normblog: "Madeleine Bunting is having a go at Richard Dawkins today and for once I've got to hand it to her, she makes some valid points against him. So let me begin with those, as summarized by me: first, any serious approach to religion has to start from its centrality throughout history and try to make some sociological sense of that; second, if religion and religious identity have often been the source of horrible violence, it has had no monopoly there - ethnic and other identities, other types of belief system, have played a very full part; third, parents do shape children, 'for both good and ill', but they do so in many ways and not only through religious education.

This is all 'fair dos' in my book. But, referring to an 'increasingly shrill chorus of atheist humanists', to their 'unsubstantiated assertions', 'sweeping generalisations' and even 'straw men', Bunting rather errs in this regard herself - only, with her, it's in the characterization of atheist humanism rather than of religion."

Norm has more, but I think Norm is being intellectually lazy in not trying to define measures for each position.

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