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Atheist Richard Dawkins Feels the Rise in Nones Could be “Even Worse”

Richard Dawkins 2015

Richard Dawkins cautioned against immediately accepting the rise in religiously unaffiliated and called Deepak Chopra’s beliefs “even worse” than religion.

Richard Dawkins could be found at the Skeptics Society Conference at Caltech in Pasadena, CA. He was one of the speakers present, and there’s no surprise there. He’s not only an Atheistic author, The God Delusion, but an evolutionary biologist and deep skeptic. While at the conference, the discussion of the recent Pew study arose, just as it did in Christian circles. The study had tracked the decline and growth of religion in the United States, and results demonstrated an 8.4% decline in Christianity between 2007 and 2014. In contrast, those who identified as ‘none’ rose to 22.8% in the same time frame. A similar discussion was brought up at the Southern Baptist Convention that claimed the “strangeness” of Christianity is “bad news for America, but good news for the church.”

Dawkins versus Chopra

While Dawkins feels that the rise in “nones” is a good thing, he has had a growing concern that they exchange religion with beliefs that are “even worse”, adding “I mean, they take up Deepak Chopra or something like that.” The discussion ran deeper, considering Dawkins long-term criticism towards Christianity and religion as a whole. Chopra and Dawkins have had a huge on-going battle about beliefs, what’s real and what’s not. Chopra, however, has rarely managed to keep his cool throughout their ongoing debate. He even went so far as to offer a million dollar reward to Dawkins and other atheists for “offer[ing] a scientific understanding for the biological basis of an idea.” He has resorted to name-calling, and claimed that Dawkins thinks “his logic is the only logic”.

Richard Dawkins feels that Chopra’s beliefs are highly flawed for several reasons. Dawkins primarily believes in science and logic. However, Dawkins can barely take the other man seriously when it comes down to their debates, particularly in 2013, when Chopra was misusing various scientific phrases, which Dawkins called a “word salad.”

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