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Poland's atheist loonies have had their 5 minutes [239]
Dostoevsky
Not a good example, although an incredibly intelligent writer, it's quite easy to pick him apart.
He was also incredibly closed-minded in his beliefs, as this quite clearly illustrates.
"If anyone could prove to me that Christ is outside the truth, and if the truth really did exclude Christ, I should prefer to stay with Christ and not with the truth."
Even if it was proved to him, he wouldn't have been able to accept it, not someone you should be basing the hinge of your argument on as even if presented with the truth he wouldn't have accepted it.
enough to even contemplate the argument presented by....
Well, it's not hard to find an argument against this famous Russian....
some critics have seen Dostoevsky's plots as chaotic and disorganized (in particular, those of The Idiot and The Possessed), (4) others have found them "Gothic" and aimed at cheap effects; (5) still others have charged Dostoevsky with excessive naturalism ("copying court records"). (6) Many critics have found Dostoevsky's characters unnatural, schematic, and contrived. (7) The observation that they all talk alike - like the author - is heard often. (8)
utoronto.ca/tsq/DS/06/165.shtml
Great moral flaws have also been found in Dostoevsky's works. The charge heard most often is that of pessimism. (10) Almost as often, the outrй, hysterical, and morbid nature of Dostoevsky's works is held up to censure. The label of a "cruel talent" has stuck to him ever since Mikhailovsky's essay of that title appeared in 1882. (11) Dostoevsky's fascination with the extremes of the human condition is condemned by many critics. Less common are charges of insincerity, unctuousness, (12), and "rosy Christianity." (13)
&
he is said to have pursued the exceptional instead of the typical. Tendentious distortion of reality is a common charge, (14) as is that of faulty psychology. In an age of realism, Dostoevsky's penchant for the fantastic, the paradoxic, and the mystical met with much disapproval. A criticism heard somewhat less frequently is that Dostoevsky develops his psychological dramas in the abstract, without a natural background. Also, some critics claim that Dostoevsky's psychological analysis keeps him from presenting credible whole characters. (15)
We can all agree that Dostoevsky was a good writer (although many of his characters were quite wooden), but his views of Christianity are not only outdated (you have written before that religion is 'relevant'?), but most damning of all....
In the 1860s and 1870s, charges of excessive psychologizing were made frequently. (38) Occasionally, a critic, Dobroljubov, for example, (39) would also claim that Dostoevsky's psychology was faulty or schematic, but most of all it would be suggested that Dostoevsky's morbidly self-conscious and self-lacerating characters were unrepresentative of the actual condition of Russian society, but were, rather, projections of Dostoevsky's own diseased mind.
All quotes from hereutoronto.ca/tsq/DS/06/165.shtmlDawkins himself did of course criticise Dostoevsky, when he said:
It seems to me to require quite a low self-regard to think that, should belief in God suddenly vanish from the world, we would all become callous and selfish hedonists, with no kindness, no charity, no generosity, nothing that would deserve the name of goodness. It is widely believed that Dostoevsky was of that opinion, presumably because of some of remarks he put into the mouth of Ivan Karamazov...
voices.yahoo/dostoevsky-nietzche-christian-novelist-influenced-3217680.html
However, Dostoevsky did himself give quite a nice image for what a godless/heavenless/eternal life-less might look like.
The great idea of immortality would disappear and would have to replaced; and all the great abundance of the former love for the one who was himself immortality, would be turned in all of them to nature, to the world. To people, to every blade of grass. They would love the earth and life irrepressibly and in the measure to which they gradually became aware of their transient and finite state...The would wake up and hasten to kiss each other, hurrying to love, conscious that the days were short, and that that was all they had left. They would work for each other, and each would give all he had to everyone, and would be happy in that alone. Every child would know and feel that each person on earth was like a father and mother to him. 'Tomorrow may be my last day,' each of them would think, looking at the setting sun, 'but all the same, though I die, they will all remain, and their children after them' - and this thought that would remain... would replace the thought of a meeting beyond the grave.
notesfromanidiot.wordpress.com/tag/dawkins
