Re: [asa] Dawkins is at it again

Hi Schwarzwald,

Just to develop your thoughts in the below - one thing that shouldn't be missed in some of the studies into psychological well-being of religious believers is that these studies are comparative. Thus, they indicate that religious believers display HIGHER levels of psychological well-being than those who are not religious believers.

So the science actually could be used to support an INVERSION of Dawkin's argument - i.e. one could, on credible scientific grounds, argue that it is atheism and not Christianity that causes psychological harm to its adherents.

And perhaps - in line with your remarks in the below - we need to gain greater familiarity with the psychological literature and appropriate it in a critique of atheism as a psychologically healthy world-view.

Certainly worth thinking about in my view.

Blessings,
Murray

Schwarzwald wrote:
> What I disagree with is what's being presented as Dawkins' argument
> here. It seems like you and I are close to being on the same page here,
> so I won't rehash that. I will say that there are just-as-dire problems
> that are evident in an atheistic worldview, and I think it's important
> to stress that in response to claims like this. I sometimes fear that
> some Christians are so concerned with amiable goals like civility,
> benefit-of-the-doubt, and congeniality that they sometimes forget that
> there are very serious, very disturbing problems that pop up in opposing
> worldviews, and it isn't right to just ignore them. Just as some
> Christians spend so much time fighting others that they forget their own
> community (specific or at large) is far from perfect, and it isn't right
> to just ignore that either.

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Received on Fri Nov 7 20:41:36 2008