http://www.alternet.org/story/46566/

Noted British bio-philosophe and atheist, Richard Dawkins, in an interview on Alternet, brings up a very disturbing point about modern life, "we've all been brainwashed to respect religious faith and not to criticize it with the same vigor we criticize political and other sorts of opinions that we disagree with." Where does this opinion come from? Where do we find the source of this kind of debilitating and weakening tolerance ?

Answer, Emmanuel Kant! Dawkins does not mention the role that Kant and his philosophy have played in enabling The God Delusion, but the idea that religious beliefs are beyond criticism can be read out of his books. Another philosopher who can be seen to contribute to this sort of thought is Locke. All those who insist on the limitations of the intellect, its inability to establish knowledge in certain domains, and draw from that principle the conclusion that we should be silent about that which we cannot know are suspect. The idea of establishing the limits of reason is a sound one, but the resultant prohibition on leaving the domain of the cognitive is atrocious, vicious ridiculous folly! This is a type of blackmail, we are allowed to use our critical faculties, but only at a price, we are permitted to acknowledge the pretense of religion but only in such a way as to subtly re-ground it beyond reason.

This tradition of blackmail includes those positivists, following Wittgenstein, who claim that, "Of that which one cannot speak, one must be quiet." For what are they doing who obey this injunction? they are not refuting the discourses of fancy and imagination, but enabling those who practice them to do so in a way exempt from reasoned criticism. Dewey blasted the positivists for exactly this error. Philosophy may become a bit messier if one ventures onto this risky ground, but if one does not then philosophy is sterile and totally without interest. It is reduced to the study of the so-called cognitive proposition, in other words, to the study of calculative processes and computation using pre-given symbols.