Dawkins' "Atheists for Jesus" Essay

DolceVita
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Dawkins' "Atheists for Jesus" Essay

I generally agree with what he is saying. My reason for posting is to see if anyone else was bothered by how he seemed to talk about actual Darwinism and Social Darwinism as though they were the same thing. I'd hate to think that other Atheists (or at least any significant number of them) associate Darwin's scientific theory with the monster (Social Darwinism) that was created when people decided to take that theory out of it's physical context and apply it socially.
I'm not trying to say that Dawkins was promoting Social Darwinism intentionally - he obviously was not. I was just bothered by the lack of distinction, which could promote an all too common, and detrimental, misunderstanding.


MrRage
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For the lazy, you can find

For the lazy, you can find the article here: http://richarddawkins.net/article,20,Atheists-for-Jesus,Richard-Dawkins

I don't think Dawkins confuses Darwinism and Social Darwinism. In the article he talks about "super niceness" and how it shouldn't benefit us "from a Darwinian point of view." He doesn't claim that some level of altruism doesn't benefit us, i.e. that we should be completely selfish.

For example, if everyone EXACTLY lived like Mother Teresa lived, it probably wouldn't help our species much, despite of all the good that she did. That doesn't mean we shouldn't care for the poor, though.