Richard Dawkins

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Posted: 06.02.10, 10:37 PM

So many people do not even understand the definition of atheism it is rather annoying. Atheism is not an assertion that there is no way that a god exists, it is simply disbelief in any or all gods so technically everybody is an atheist, we just like to define ourselves in black and white. You could be an atheist and an agnostic at the same time, for instance i don't believe in any supernatural entity because there is no proof for one but i recognize that there is an infinitesimally improbable chance that one could exist, but doing so gets me nowhere. What is boils down to is that agnosticism is an excuse for not making a judgment and atheism is saying i do not believe.

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Marky

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Posted: 03.09.10, 02:42 AM

I have to disagree with remarks on hard atheism and fundamental atheism. It would appear that the posters of such remarks simply haven't read the book. Dawkins argues very well indeed about the non existence of a god, and he also explains the fundamental atheist argument, in a nutshell, an atheist would change his opinion instantly if evidence was provided of proof of god, you could never say that about fundamental religious people who could never change their faith whatever proof of non existence was found, plus atheists would never fly aircraft into a building or blow themselves up because of a nonbelief. Read the book, please

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Mark E

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Posted: 03.08.10, 03:57 PM

What men as gifted as Dawkins think...

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Originally Posted by sactownjudge

Hard atheism is one of the most critically unsustainable position on the market. Agnosticism is easy to understand. But to embrace hard atheism you need believe it's possible to prove the negative that God doesn't exist. It's amazing (and somewhat amusing) that men as gifted as Dawkins don't see this. It makes it easy to dismiss him/them as mere provocateurs since there is no solidly founded argument for such a relentless rejection of God.

Read the chapter of The God Delusion titled, "Why There ALMOST CERTAINLY Is No God". He goes on to say exactly that- proving the non-existence of something like god is in fact impossible, and as an explanation of how things work, a waste of time, in no small part since the goalpost for "proof" is constantly being moved. He also argues that leaving half of a half of a percent of your mind open to "unknowns" is in fact required for any rational mind. The importance lies in whether one draws the conclusion that, because a small fraction of a possibility may exist for another explanation, it is right to throw out the baby with the bath water and believe that a possibility of alternatives disproves cold, hard evidence.

On the contrary, he argues: attributing 'creation' to a god would only require different, but equally compelling, evidence. For which none exists apart from personal anecdotes and ancient writings.

He also argues that the overwhelming mountains of solid evidence that points to unguided, non-intelligent processes is sufficient enough as to make god completely irrelevant in any rational discussion about how things work. Just because something is just barely theoretically possible doesn't give it equal footing with scientific evidence.

Not only does Dawkins see this- he elaborates in great detail.

The "747 in a junkyard" is an example of trying to disprove evolution by saying that it can't have done something that it doesn't purport to do; create complex organisms instantaneously by accident. It's easy to say a theory is wrong when unburdened with facts or references.

Most of the arguments I've ever seen made against Dawkins smack of having not read his work. They draw conclusions from soundbites, snippets and quotes taken out of context. Which I think can be said of most arguments against evolution as well. If there's one thing you can't accuse Dawkins of, it's thinking this through.

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Diosibundo

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Posted: 12.31.09, 07:04 PM

Ben stein

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Originally Posted by rpetty

Although the movie Expelled by Ben Stein will not be popular with the disciples of Dawkins, it was amazing to watch Dawkins try to explain how life began on Earth. When pressed by Stein, he offers a theory that some alien intelligence might have planted life on earth--just don't call that alien intelligence God. Of course he can provide no scientific evidence for his theory--how interesting. I think Dawkins is delusional.

I think you are misunderstanding dawkins point in that answer. He was asked if "Intelligent Design" provided a reasonable alternative to straight up biblical creationism... and his story was a way of getting to the point that even if the "aliens" (or God)designed us, you'd have to explain where the aliens (or God) came from, THAT was the point. Of course Dawkins has no "Theory" of aliens, so there's no need to provide evidence for a theory he doesn't hold.

Why exactly do you think Dawkins is delusional? Not picking a fight here, Im genuinely curious.

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Diosibundo

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Posted: 12.31.09, 03:20 PM

rpetty:

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Contented-Ignoramus

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Posted: 12.09.09, 11:17 PM

Question time at these events need some sort of moderator as there seems to be a lot of long winded sermonizing and the inability to prune superfluous words from the statement.

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Selfish Charity

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Posted: 11.29.09, 11:24 AM

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Originally Posted by naturalpreservation

This line of argument follows from Richard's rather hollow point about we are atheists about Thor, Zeus, etc. Are you saying that over time and place, through the thousands and thousands of cultures across behaviourally modern homo sapiens sapiens it is possible that different people could express God in the same way? Is that what you are saying?

That really is a stretch. Taking that on board to look back on history and find that people expressed God through the knowledge, imagery and belief located in time and place is exactly what you would expect from cultural relativism, which is a process not best understood with a fixation on replication.

I believe in God, I don't believe in Zeus or Thor. Richard used to say that cultural evolution and genetic evolution were the same. Daniel Dennett wrote they matched "quite exactly" and now Richard (you tube, 2009 'The Purpose of Purpose') says they are now "only superficially similar". Universal Darwinism is not happy that Darwin's theory only applies to 99.9999% of life on earth despite not being able to work out culture over the last 150 years. For UD (which can be thought of as similar to ID, intelligent design) Darwin's theory (generator of diversity) really is a God. Beware this delusion.

If you hoover up Richard's poor thought out pillars of argument and then look hollow in return that is to be expected. You're going to have to do much, much better than this.

NP

I am interested in how you come to terms with the fact of evolution? I would be also interested to know why you think your geographically inherited, omnipotent, celestial dictator wont cure children from cancer?

I am really serious about this. I have yet to hear a satisfactory answer from any faith head. Maybe yours will be the first.

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naturalpreservation

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Posted: 11.28.09, 04:26 AM

The Generator of Diversity Delusion

This line of argument follows from Richard's rather hollow point about we are atheists about Thor, Zeus, etc. Are you saying that over time and place, through the thousands and thousands of cultures across behaviourally modern homo sapiens sapiens it is possible that different people could express God in the same way? Is that what you are saying?

That really is a stretch. Taking that on board to look back on history and find that people expressed God through the knowledge, imagery and belief located in time and place is exactly what you would expect from cultural relativism, which is a process not best understood with a fixation on replication.

I believe in God, I don't believe in Zeus or Thor. Richard used to say that cultural evolution and genetic evolution were the same. Daniel Dennett wrote they matched "quite exactly" and now Richard (you tube, 2009 'The Purpose of Purpose') says they are now "only superficially similar". Universal Darwinism is not happy that Darwin's theory only applies to 99.9999% of life on earth despite not being able to work out culture over the last 150 years. For UD (which can be thought of as similar to ID, intelligent design) Darwin's theory (generator of diversity) really is a God. Beware this delusion.

If you hoover up Richard's poor thought out pillars of argument and then look hollow in return that is to be expected. You're going to have to do much, much better than this.

NP

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Selfish Charity

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Posted: 11.19.09, 02:46 PM

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Originally Posted by drzarkov

I find the argument "science can't tell us how the universe came into being" self righteous and ignorant.

We are but primates, why does everyone expect that we should know the answer to every question ever conceived? This is so arrogant.

It is a mystery, just as why humans cry tears when we're sad is a mystery.

2000 years ago we didn't know how "the sun revolved around us", as such we attributed it to god. We didn't know where heat, and droughts and floods came from, so we attributed it to god. We didn't know why volcanoes erupted, so we attributed it to god.

Now we don't know where the big bang came from, so some people attribute it to god.

Moreover, they try and use science's admitted ignorance as a argument. What priggishness is this?

How about for once we admit that humans don't have all the answers. Why is this at all hard to believe? We're just apes, still evolving, and still with a long time to find out.

Bravo Sir/Mam.

I think it's important to notice that the Abrahamic religious leaders KNOW that we didn't evolve from ape like creatures. They know this because God created Humans.

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drzarkov

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Posted: 11.19.09, 01:11 AM

I find the argument "science can't tell us how the universe came into being" self righteous and ignorant.

We are but primates, why does everyone expect that we should know the answer to every question ever conceived? This is so arrogant.

It is a mystery, just as why humans cry tears when we're sad is a mystery.

2000 years ago we didn't know how "the sun revolved around us", as such we attributed it to god. We didn't know where heat, and droughts and floods came from, so we attributed it to god. We didn't know why volcanoes erupted, so we attributed it to god.

Now we don't know where the big bang came from, so some people attribute it to god.

Moreover, they try and use science's admitted ignorance as a argument. What priggishness is this?

How about for once we admit that humans don't have all the answers. Why is this at all hard to believe? We're just apes, still evolving, and still with a long time to find out.

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