Since Mr. Rilstone has disabled the comment feature on the particular part of his website, I decided to respond to Mr. McCaughan here.
(You can find the complete conversation at http://andrewrilstone.blogspot.com/index.html )
Gareth McCaughan said...
“I think you may be conflating two things.
1. Dawkins doesn't assume that his readers are atheists, or skeptics, or biologists, or members of any other similarly narrow group.
2. Dawkins does assume that his readers share some of his values.
There's no incompatibility between these, and (at least for me) #1 would need to be false for "preaching to the choir" to be a good description of what he's up to.”
Well of course as my old logic professor use to say, “to assume makes an ass out of you and me.” But that aside, why would Dawkins think that his readers share some of his values? More to the point, what are his values, and what are they based upon? And while we are at it we could even ask what he means by “values”?
Now any thing that I hold that I would call a “value” is based on acceptance of the God proposition. But since Dawkins clearly rejects this then I am understandably curious as to as to what he uses instead. If it is not some concise or “narrow” worldview or system of thought, then what is it? Are his “values” simply an arbitrary collection of things he happens to like or dislike? If this is the case then I do not see that any of his “values” amount to anything more then preferring blue to red for esthetic purposes.
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2 comments:
btw
since i was responding to Gareth's posts in my main postings, I switched off the "comment" in all but the most recent posts -- otherwise we'd have ended up with a dozen threads on the same subjects. no intention to close down the debate. sorry if that wasn't clear.
Why Mr. Rilstone, this is an unexpected pleasure we are honored by your presents…I assure you I meant no criticism of yourself or your web log. It merely seemed to me that if the discussion betwixt Mr. McCaughan and myself were to continue, this was probably the most appropriate venue.
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