Tony99 writes “According to Amazon, the most popular ‘religious’ book, is The God Delusion, an anti-faith polemic by Richard Dawkins, the academic who has been dubbed ‘Darwin’s rottweiler’. Second is God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, another broadside at holy citadels, by the journalist Christopher Hitchens.
A suprising statistic which may not make uplifting reading for believers.
Read more at Guardian Unlimited“
Dawkin’s Popularity
It will be interesting to see if the anti-religion books are still so popular a year, five years, or 2,000 years from now. Remember that popular sales does not indicate social significance- Eclipse, a chick lit book about vampires, is rapidly catching up to Dawkins. Both are indicative of current and popular culture, but I suspect neither one has any real staying power.
I know it is frustrating. Athiests live for today, and God is forever. Will Dawkins’ ideas live past his own lifetime, or will his good be interred with his bones, as societies move on to other new and brighter ideas? Has Dawkins made a significant impact on society, as Darwin and Lenin did, with a new idea challenging old beliefs and changing society in a measurable way? Or is he only a flash in the pan, here today, but forgotten tomorrow?
I think he is only a flash in the pan. After all, when Dawkins dies, his athiesm dies with him. All his efforts, all his anger, all his wealth and all his ideas will be left behind, while Dawkins rots in a grave or is preserved in some laboratory somewhere only as a science specimen, eventually to be thrown out someday as trash. And that’s very sad.
Re:Dawkin’s Popularity
Yes, a flash in the pan.
Those crazy kids with their rock-n-roll, and their atheism. Dawkins and his whole “atheist” movement thing is so silly – it’ll never last. I just wish he hadn’t invented the thing in the first place.
The man’s a jerk
I don’t see the rise of atheism slowing down anytime soon, but I hope that it doesn’t prove to be of the Dawkins variety.
Frankly, I suspect that many of the people who subscribe to this sort of angry neo-atheism were scarred by some bible thumping uncle in their youth, and now take it out on religion as a whole.
The willingness to pigeonhole religion as a whole, and label it fundamentally bad for society sounds an awful lot like a dangerous step in the wrong direction.
Unfortunately, the irony of the fact that some atheists are now criticizing their opponents with the same sort callous zeal that has been the hallmark of , shall we say, the “less generous” religious movements has been lost on most.