Richard Dawkins & Religious Rights

I just found this article:

Richard Dawkins: The State Needs To "Protect" Children From Religion & Their Parents

I had done a search for "Richard Dawkins religious rights" and this is what I found.

I posted this to my Facebook page and included the following statements:

I find this quite disturbing - and if pagans and heathens think he's not talking about them too, think again. HE ABSOLUTELY IS TALKING ABOUT YOU, pagans. If you follow a religion that involves absolutely any kind of belief in anything supernatural at all - gods, spirits, land wights, the fay, ancestral spirits, etc - then Dawkins and Krauss believe you shouldn't have any right to raise your kids in your chosen faith.

This is why I really prefer Neil DeGrasse Tyson over Krauss and Dawkins because at least Tyson has no interest in violating the First Amendment rights of American religious believers of any stripe whatsoever. Given some comments that Christopher Hitchens once made about a conversation he'd had with Dawkins, I don't think the same applies to Dawkins (who is, of course British; he was born in Kenya and did not grow up with the US Constitution as part of his cultural matrix). Hitch said that he was talking with Dawkins one day, and Hitch said that if all men and women had given up on religion SAVE ONE PERSON, Hitch would not go that extra step to convince that person to ditch religion. Dawkins was quite shocked at this, and he asked Hitch why he thought that way. Hitch indicated that first of all, although most superficially, if he did that then there would be nothing left to argue against. But that wasn't the main point. Hitch found it difficult to articulate further why he wouldn't force the issue and convince that one last believer to convert, but I think it's because Hitch understood that the individual's sovereign right to decide for him/herself must not be infringed in any way, and Hitch seemed to have an understanding that if he walked down that path, then he risked being subject to the same exact restriction upon his own right to choose to not believe.

It seems that Dawkins, if faced with the one final believer on earth, would go that extra step and do whatever he had to do in order to convince that person to give up religion. This is why I am often quite nervous that these people will lead their own disciples into repealing the First Amendment rights of American religious believers.

Pagans and Christians need to get past their differences and unite in solidarity against the disciples of Dawkins and Krauss. I don't regard Tyson as quite as much of an enemy, but I have to admit I'm unsure about Kaku and the late Carl Sagan. These people also have followers who may believe that because religion should not be respected, the legal rights of believers also should not be respected either, and thus all religions (including pagan ones; Dawkins would define all forms of paganism as a religion exactly the same as Christianity or Islam or Judaism) should be outlawed and the believers arrested and tossed into concentration camps for the good of society.

This does sound somewhat alarmist, but our world has seen this happen before. It could happen again.

Find a way to read or listen to his book The God Delusion. In the first 2 chapters, it will become clear that he is talking about ALL religious belief. ALL of it. I recommend the audio book, actually, because then one will be a little less likely to throw it across the room when one gets pissed off at what he says in the book.

There is something I've noticed about Richard Dawkins - he's an absolute control freak. He wants absolute, 100% control over the minds and thoughts of other people. He complains about how religions will define their terms (like "salvation" or "religion" or "God" or whatever) a certain way so as to support their views, yet he does exactly the same thing - he defines terms in such a way that the definitions support HIS views. Yet he refuses to admit he does this, and he refuses to admit that he is being very hypocritical in bitching about a religion doing the same thing he does yet coming to a very different conclusion. 

He must be resisted, and fiercely. And yes, I must emphasize that he would regard pagans of any stripe at all - Wiccan, heathen, Asatru, Kemetic, Celtic, whatever - as being no different from Christians or Jews or Muslims. In fact, he'd find plenty to mock in pagan beliefs - he just hasn't gotten to it yet.

Please note that an American is also calling for restricting parents' rights to raise their children in the faith of their choice - that American being Lawrence Krauss. I am shocked by this. But he is using the excuse of "mental health" to deny this right in parents. I find this quite disturbing. 

The problem here is that Krauss and Dawkins both define religion ONLY according to the worst possible examples of religion. For example, they define all of Islam according to the example of ISIS. They define all of Christianity according to the example of Westboro Baptist Church. I am sure they would define all of Asatru according to the example of the Aryan Brotherhood or something like that. 

This is absolutely inaccurate, and the rights of religious Americans hang in the balance.

 I will go so far to say that there are some pagans I know (mostly in the UU pagan world) who also decry "religion" but the problem here is, they seem to think they'd be the exception to Dawkins' definition of what religion is. They would be completely wrong about that. I have Dawkins' book The God Delusion on my Kindle (app) and on audio book, and in the first 2 or 3 chapters he makes it very clear how HE defines religion. According to HIS definition of the word - and of course, his definition is the only correct one - pagans are religious, so therefore he would believe that any pagan bringing up their kids in pagan ways are guilty of child abuse. He would therefore regard pagans as being every bit a danger to a child's mental health as any Christian or Muslim or Jew. I cannot, cannot emphasize this enough.