Messiah Richard Dawkins launches children's summer camp for atheists

[Groenewolf]

Regardless of the fact that I'm not an atheist, I still oppose the Abrahamic religions (particularly in their most Abrahamic forms). Yet, this brainwashing of children is precisely what I was always opposed to in religion. I daresay it is what most Dawkins-fans are opposed to in religion, so it becomes a case of "do as we say, not as we do", much like the political phenomenon of leftists side-stepping democratic process in dealing with an opponent they deem to be undemocratic.

If it was an Abramistic or Pagan summercamp doing the same thing Dawkins would have called child abuse. I know atheitists who are not happy with the way Dawkins is promoting atheism or the way he talk about theism.

[Cato]

It sounds as banal as Jesus Camp.

[Freomæg]

If it was an Abramistic or Pagan summercamp Dawkins doing the same thing Dawkins would have called child abuse. I know an atheitists who are not happy with the way Dawkins is promoting atheism or the way he talk about theism.

Indeed. I feel that there's something sinister about him - the way he seems to have been fast-tracked onto our TV screens and public consciousness.

[Beorn]

Indeed. I feel that there's something sinister about him - the way he seems to have been fast-tracked onto our TV screens and public consciousness.

He was on telly last night actually. It was the programme where they dissected an elephant. Even then he couldn't help but clomp his venom all over innocent stories that inspire and amuse children.

The man has absolutely no shame.

[Cato]

Indeed. I feel that there's something sinister about him - the way he seems to have been fast-tracked onto our TV screens and public consciousness.

He still hasn't gotten it through his head that his fifteen minutes of fame, not because of him but because of his pinheaded book, ended some time ago.

I've no trouble with atheists, some of my best friends are of that persuasion and I've been intellectually engaged and tested by atheist literature. Sceptics against popular beliefs have been around at least since the days of Euhemerus and the arguments of religious doubters are a necessary component in the equation of religious honesty.

I've got a problem with attention-grabbers, be they atheist or Christian or whatever. I've always found the late Corliss Lamont to be a much more respectable, and sadly underappreciated, atheist thinker. I won't say anything about Lamont's attachment to Marxism, but his The Philosophy of Humanism was an enjoyable read.

Dawkins is a nitwit, and not because he disbelieves in God(s). From what I understand, he refuses to engage in debates with creationists and similar others and he doesn't make much of an appeal to anyone except his own groupies, which is the usual trick of fanatical theologists who write only for their own equally fanatical followers. Sensible atheists, like Lamont or Bertrand Russell or Bruno Bauer aren't heard of at all (they're all dead that's why, and only fashionable atheists of the here and now seem to matter) and, rather, the media dredges up guys like Dawkins. Dawkins isn't putting anything new into the debate; he just rehashes what better minds have been saying for some time. In this way, he's as bad as the present-day religionists who parrot each other and their long-dead forebearers.

[Loki]

The camp is a great idea, I can't see anything wrong with it. The sooner children are exposed to rational thought, the sooner their minds will mature. They will be able to think critically for themselves from a tender age - that's a massive advantage in life! I wish I had that opportunity when I was a kid. Instead, I got indoctrinated with religious claptrap that ended up wasting at least a decade and a half of my life. 2

Education is always preferable to re-education.

[Cato]

The camp is a great idea, I can't see anything wrong with it. The sooner children are exposed to rational thought, the sooner their minds will mature. They will be able to think critically for themselves from a tender age - that's a massive advantage in life! I wish I had that opportunity when I was a kid. Instead, I got indoctrinated with religious claptrap that ended up wasting at least a decade and a half of my life. 2

Education is always preferable to re-education.

ANYTHING involving kids in such a fixed, dogmatic and controlled situation is a bad idea, be it Jesus Camp, Dawkins Camp or, what I was thinking about, the Hitlerjugend. Little ones are highly impressionable, are they not?

[Loki]

ANYTHING involving kids in such a fixed, dogmatic and controlled situation is a bad idea, be it Jesus Camp, Dawkins Camp or, what I was thinking about, the Hitlerjugend. Little ones are highly impressionable, are they not?

You won't send your kids to school? This is what it is -- sound education, based on tested and verified knowledge and science.

[Cato]

You won't send your kids to school? This is what it is -- sound education, based on tested and verified knowledge and science.

Is there such thing as an atheist school? I wouldn't send my children to such a place! Secular knowledge is fine, but I'm not an impious fellow.

[Loki]

Is there such thing as an atheist school? I wouldn't send my children to such a place! Secular knowledge is fine, but I'm not an impious fellow.

Well why not? Schools have been following religious curricula for centuries, and hardly anyone batted an eyelid. Now that is what I call indoctrination. Atheism is not a religion, but the absence of one. The polar opposite. Reality. Empiricism. Knowledge. Understanding. NOT wishful thinking and fairytale fantasies based on ancient Middle Eastern manuscripts.