[MD] Dawkins a Materialist

[Case]

Case said:
It is not as though "irrelevant defenses" have not already been stirred. As 
I have pointed out to dmb several times the grounds for attacking the 
religious right are purely religious in nature and have nothing to do with 
science and philosophy. They are matters of internal consistency.

dmb says:
Huh? Religion is attacked on "puely religious" grounds and philosophy has 
nothing do with it? And you've pointied this out (to me) several times? I 
don't recall that point being made at all and it strikes me as completely 
bogus to boot. How do you figure? Show me how that logic works, will you?

[Case]
Yes in our discussion about faith a few months ago I tried to suggest to you
several times that to effectively attack modern Christian fundamentalism you
would need to move beyond name calling. I would have to check the archives
to see exactly when but I recall mentioning that one charge that can be
leveled against the religious right is blasphemy. One of the foundations of
the religious right is the view of inerrancy of scripture. This is the
reformer's view of sola scriptura in hyperdrive. It is the basis of the
religious objection to evolution and under girds all fundamentalist biblical
exegesis. This basically places the written Bible on a par with God himself.
It transforms the book into an idol and inspires idol worship.

Furthermore the belief in inerrancy persists due to a host of misconceptions
in the pews about what the texts are, how they were written and how they
were compiled. Most fundamentalists believe for example that the gospels
represent the testimony of independent eye witnesses. This can easily be
shown to be false on both counts. They are not independent and they were not
eyewitnesses. Similar misconceptions abound with regards to Old Testament
authorship.

One of the offshoots of the DaVinci Code phenomena was to highlight some of
the myths of Christian origins. While many of Brown's speculations were
either purely for effect or purely speculation, it was the fact of an
alternate reading of the historical events that had an impact. His spin on
the Christian cannon that resulted from the Council of Nicaea for example is
dead on in its main points if not the particulars. 

In fact I suspect that Brown's impact on fundamentalism will have at least
as much lasting impact as anything Dawkin's says. They made a movie about it
after all. 

At another point I mentioned that I was a supporting member of the Jesus
Seminar for many years because of their stated mission of promoting
religious literacy. Both you and Dan were at least initially critical of
this. And still I maintain that by speaking the language of faith to the
faithful the Jesus Seminar is a more effective voice against fundamentalism
the cracking jokes about lion poop and calling people stupid.