Richard Dawkins

I just got finished watching the The Root of All Evil?, a television documentary, written and presented by Richard Dawkins, in which he argues that the world would be better off without religion.

My two cents. I think Dawkins is clever and readable/watchable to an extent. I got into reading him and Dennett for awhile years ago, and I still think Dennett’s “Consciousness Explained” is a great Western introduction to Buddhism (though I doubt he would ever agree with that). The whole Dawkins-Dennett camp appear to be in what I would call “vertical kindergarten”. But I appreciate that they are addressing some of the more obvious nonsense being passed off as holy/spiritual/religious and that most philosophers just leave alone out of some outworn respect or political correctness. I think it’s safe to say that most all of us bums have “been there done that” and have moved on to deeper inquiry, but the sad fact is that the majority of world religion, shit - even world mysticism, is still at what Ken Wilber would call the mythic membership level - authoritarian, paternalistic, hierarchical, conformist, emotional without critical thinking, ethnocentric, nationalistic, militaristic, etc. ad nauseum.