I agree that this post was over-generalized and downright wrong in some places, including your follow-up comment that "I don’t mean to lambaste their body of work, just the work that tries to proselytize atheism. I’m an anti-missionary, no matter the faith."
First, I completely disagree that "We all believe what we believe, and no 300-page diatribe will change that, be it religious or atheistic or agnostic." Dawkins pushed me from indifferent deism to atheism, so he has had some effect on those already on the fence.
Second, the facet of Dawkins that pushed me over to atheism was NOT his arguments against God. He fully admits that the beginning of his book that you cannot disprove God - he just goes on to point out that an interactive God is very unlikely. But after dealing with that point, he goes on to describe the harm that theism can cause. That is the part of the book that really did it for me. As many of the atheists writers have pointed out at length, their biggest problem with religion is the form of thinking it requires. As you yourself put it, "people are religious because they require no proof to back their beliefs." This type of thinking has consequences - many of them pernicious. (Many of them good, but the writers argue that we could have the good without the bad.)
Don't take my word for it, look at the chapters in the books.
For the God Delusion, I count 2 of the 10 chapters that deal with argument for/against God's existence. (And the beginning of the book takes special care to define God as an interventionist God.)
Lets turn to Hitchens' God Is Not Great. By my count, only 1 of his 19 chapters focuses on arguments for/against God. The rest focus on the negative way that religion affects our lives here on earth.
You said, "What matters is how humans interact." I agree, and I expect the "atheist writers" do too.
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I agree that this post was over-generalized and downright wrong in some places, including your follow-up comment that "I don’t mean to lambaste their body of work, just the work that tries to proselytize atheism. I’m an anti-missionary, no matter the faith."
First, I completely disagree that "We all believe what we believe, and no 300-page diatribe will change that, be it religious or atheistic or agnostic." Dawkins pushed me from indifferent deism to atheism, so he has had some effect on those already on the fence.
Second, the facet of Dawkins that pushed me over to atheism was NOT his arguments against God. He fully admits that the beginning of his book that you cannot disprove God - he just goes on to point out that an interactive God is very unlikely. But after dealing with that point, he goes on to describe the harm that theism can cause. That is the part of the book that really did it for me. As many of the atheists writers have pointed out at length, their biggest problem with religion is the form of thinking it requires. As you yourself put it, "people are religious because they require no proof to back their beliefs." This type of thinking has consequences - many of them pernicious. (Many of them good, but the writers argue that we could have the good without the bad.)
Don't take my word for it, look at the chapters in the books.
For the God Delusion, I count 2 of the 10 chapters that deal with argument for/against God's existence. (And the beginning of the book takes special care to define God as an interventionist God.)
Lets turn to Hitchens' God Is Not Great. By my count, only 1 of his 19 chapters focuses on arguments for/against God. The rest focus on the negative way that religion affects our lives here on earth.
You said, "What matters is how humans interact." I agree, and I expect the "atheist writers" do too.