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Thanks, but (-1: Annoying) for putting a URL in the subject instead of the body :-P

http://richarddawkins.net/growingupintheuniverse

http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-flood.html

http://www.trueorigin.org/arkdefen.asp

You know what made me decide? The lack of imperial evidence for a bunch of parts that the pro-flood people use. They think that all animals were herbivores back then. That's why the animals peacefully reproduced. No evidence needed. They simply make these "fit" statements and it's looked at as fact to some people. craziness. That's just one out of the many reasons why it's not believed as much, thanks to science. I don't even understand why christians get in an argument over this stuff, because with a supernatural god, empirical scientific evidence is no longer needed. Am I right with that one?

And out of the blue, here's a link to an organized debate on the richarddawkins.net forum; the creationist using everything that arminw just stated, and shown that it is all old theories, quick assumptions, and unlinkable evidence.
http://www.richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=10675
An interesting read to say the least. :)

Animal husbandry, which has been around for centuries (or more) was the basics of eugenics. That is, artificial selection. What Darwin proposed was natural selection. For a more in depth explanation, please read this: Open letter from Richard Dawkins.

Richard Dawkin's " Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda" is relevant.

The creationism / evolution debate has been done many times here on Slashdot. There'll be comments making one or more of the hundreds of old and refuted creationist arguments(1). It's possible that a couple of comments will use arguments even the Answers in Genesis creationist group says not to use(2). Someone will say there's no evidence for Macroevolution and someone else will point out 29 plus evidences for Macroevolution(3).

The point of Expelled is to make people think they've learned about the creation / ID / evolution debate, but to feel that Darwin= Holocaust. Note how they interview scientists of all sorts, but they don't interview academics who cover antisemitism in pre-20th century Europe. Even one hint or reminder that, say, Martin Luther wrote On the Jews and Their Lies in 1543 would ruin the Darwin -->Holocaust propoganda.

----------
(1) "evolution requires faith," "Piltdown," "Midocean magnetic anomalies are not reversals"...
(2) "there are no beneficial mutations," "no new species have ever been produced"...
(3) Even if there were no fossils, how to explain how biochemistry matches phylogeny? It's one thing to claim the designer re-uses code to explain similarity, but why would a designer reuse broken code?

Could Mathis have been sincere when he originally told PZ and me the film was an honest attempt to examine evolution and intelligent design? The evidence that they had already purchased the Expelled domain name argues against this. Certainly Mathis' friendly demeanour disarmed me into cooperating with him -- indeed, I went out of my way to HELP him on his visit to Britain -- in a way that I never would have if I had had the slightest suspicion that his outfit was in fact a creationist front. I may have misremembered the details of our exchanges, by eMail and by telephone, but I vividly remember his reassuring me, over the telephone, that he was on the side of science, and he made no attempt to distance himself from my sarcastic jokes about 'Intelligent Design'.

wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong..

Yes, Dawkins DID say that, but it doesn't mean what Stein wanted you to believe it means... I suggest you read up on this instead of following the dogma of stein.

I suggest you read up on how Stein has EXPELLED a scientist (PZ Myers) from a viewing of his movie.
> I went to attend a screening of the creationist propaganda movie, Expelled, a few minutes ago. Well, I tried ... but I was Expelled! It was kind of weird -- I was standing in line,
> hadn't even gotten to the point where I had to sign in and show ID, and a policeman pulled me out of line and told me I could not go in. I asked why, of course, and he said that a
> producer of the film had specifically instructed him that I was not to be allowed to attend.

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/03/expelled.php

But back to how, as you say "What does that say when one of the leading Darwinist admits that there is the "possibility" that there was some intelligence that started the entire process? At least he was open for the debate. I think that we should also."
Well, what he says about the movie.

>Please, don't pay to go see it. Let it die a quiet theatrical death. If you really want to see it, wait for a free opportunity that won't line Mathis' pockets.
http://richarddawkins.net/article,2400,Expelled-Overview,Josh-Timonen-RichardDawkinsnet

Of course he was open for debate, but, nothing came of it, ID/Creationism is a waste of time, he knows it, and says so.

Oh, btw, do you know how much Stein mislead all the scientists in the movie?

> I shall not discuss the main message of the film -- that American creationist scientists are being victimized for their views -- except to say that it was very much NOT its main
> message when the film was called Crossroads, and when I, together with PZ Myers, Eugenie Scott and others, were conned into taking part.

> And Kristine asked Mathis to explain what had become of a film called Crossroads which had mysteriously morphed itself into Expelled. The import of her question was the widely known
> fact, which I have already mentioned, that PZ and I had been tricked into participating in Crossroads without ever being told that the true purpose of the film was the one conveyed
> by the later title Expelled -- the alleged expulsion of creationists from universities.

http://richarddawkins.net/article,2394,Lying-for-Jesus,Richard-Dawkins

This clip is a video of Dawkins and Myers talking about Myers being EXPELLED, and about the segment that mislead you
http://youtube.com/watch?v=c39jYgsvUOY

But yes, lets put the trust in the development of our children into a scamming, lying pile of junk like Stein who deceits to get his point across.

And by the way, comparing Evolution to Nazism was probably not the best thing the man could have done. Especially not considering that Hitler considered himself very christian - Note, this is NOT a Godwin... Stein made a Godwin, i didn't..

wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong..

Yes, Dawkins DID say that, but it doesn't mean what Stein wanted you to believe it means... I suggest you read up on this instead of following the dogma of stein.

I suggest you read up on how Stein has EXPELLED a scientist (PZ Myers) from a viewing of his movie.
> I went to attend a screening of the creationist propaganda movie, Expelled, a few minutes ago. Well, I tried ... but I was Expelled! It was kind of weird -- I was standing in line,
> hadn't even gotten to the point where I had to sign in and show ID, and a policeman pulled me out of line and told me I could not go in. I asked why, of course, and he said that a
> producer of the film had specifically instructed him that I was not to be allowed to attend.

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/03/expelled.php

But back to how, as you say "What does that say when one of the leading Darwinist admits that there is the "possibility" that there was some intelligence that started the entire process? At least he was open for the debate. I think that we should also."
Well, what he says about the movie.

>Please, don't pay to go see it. Let it die a quiet theatrical death. If you really want to see it, wait for a free opportunity that won't line Mathis' pockets.
http://richarddawkins.net/article,2400,Expelled-Overview,Josh-Timonen-RichardDawkinsnet

Of course he was open for debate, but, nothing came of it, ID/Creationism is a waste of time, he knows it, and says so.

Oh, btw, do you know how much Stein mislead all the scientists in the movie?

> I shall not discuss the main message of the film -- that American creationist scientists are being victimized for their views -- except to say that it was very much NOT its main
> message when the film was called Crossroads, and when I, together with PZ Myers, Eugenie Scott and others, were conned into taking part.

> And Kristine asked Mathis to explain what had become of a film called Crossroads which had mysteriously morphed itself into Expelled. The import of her question was the widely known
> fact, which I have already mentioned, that PZ and I had been tricked into participating in Crossroads without ever being told that the true purpose of the film was the one conveyed
> by the later title Expelled -- the alleged expulsion of creationists from universities.

http://richarddawkins.net/article,2394,Lying-for-Jesus,Richard-Dawkins

This clip is a video of Dawkins and Myers talking about Myers being EXPELLED, and about the segment that mislead you
http://youtube.com/watch?v=c39jYgsvUOY

But yes, lets put the trust in the development of our children into a scamming, lying pile of junk like Stein who deceits to get his point across.

And by the way, comparing Evolution to Nazism was probably not the best thing the man could have done. Especially not considering that Hitler considered himself very christian - Note, this is NOT a Godwin... Stein made a Godwin, i didn't..

The comments here are basically taking the movie at it's word -- that Intelligent Designers are being "expelled" from academia.

This is a lie. The whole movie is a lie. The irony of both invoking Nazis, yet so successfully implementing the "Big Lie" strategy has to set some kind of reprehensible high water mark.

The three "expelled" people presented in the movie -- these are the worst stories the filmmakers could find -- involved a professor who failed to get tenure because he wasn't good enough, a woman who had her contract run out and didn't have it renewed, and them someone who said he was "fired" from the Smithsonian, despite actually being an unpaid research assistant whose term ran out.

Compare and contrast.

This movie makes utterly baseless claims that the academic freedom of ID proponents is under attack.

This is a lie.

Yet, they tell the lie, and then you look at comments about the movie, and you have people assuming that the truth is "somewhere in the middle", or that "both sides need to be considered", or some other trite cliche.

Why do they get a free pass here? Seriously, the production of this movie has been filled with lies by the makers -- these allegedly religious people -- and yet, people still take the movie at face value.

They lied to the interviewees, they attempted to pirate animations used in the movie, after being humiliated during the pre-release screenings they lied to cover it up, they lied to the people who wanted to see screenings -- they're liars.

And then you look at comments here, and people talk like the movie makes valid arguments -- it does not. Aside from lies about academic suppression, it's just one long Godwin -- "there's a very tenuous link between social Darwinism and the philosophy of the Nazis, therefore believing in Evolution leads to the Holocaust".

If, in an argument, someone tells baseless, reprehensible lies about a subject, the truth isn't "somewhere in the middle". The liars are really just lying.

Richard Dawkins offers his views: Lying for Jesus?

One well known evolutionary scientist P.Z. Myers was queueing up to see a preview screening of this movie, when he was singled out of line and asked to leave the cinema. So he was expelled from Expelled, presumably because he would write it up for the trash it was. A double irony was he was standing next to Richard Dawkins who was apparently not recognized and allowed in.

In it, it is noticed that what atheists really have a problem with is dogmatic belief in propositions without evidence, and both Stalin and Hitler's regimes were steeped in dogma.

Long story short, you're being stupid.

See this reprint of an 2006 article published in Science, in particular this graph.

Basically, only Turkey does worse than the U.S. in terms of what fraction of the public accepts that humans evolved from earlier species of animals.

See this reprint of an 2006 article published in Science, in particular this graph.

Basically, only Turkey does worse than the U.S. in terms of what fraction of the public accepts that humans evolved from earlier species of animals.

"In short, [Atheism] has none of the hallmarks of a religion."

I disagree. Ever go here? Let's see...

charismatic leader? check.
book? sure, lots of em! Try "The God Delusion".
ceremonies? check.
hierarchy? Sure. There a several preeminent atheists that are followed by the rest. Atheists, being human, tend to follow people they admire. Who knew?

This flavor of atheism even has its own ministry. Care to go door-to-door and hand out these "religious" tracts? Actually, the message there is similar to that of some religious groups.

I sometimes see people make statements like "atheism is a religion like *not* collecting stamps is a hobby" and so on. It's just word games. If you define a religion as a body of people who adhere to a set of beliefs which are based on faith (and atheism is just that because you cannot *know* there is no God), then by that standard modern Atheism is a religion. One could reasonably argue that not believing in a god is not a religion, but we all know that the movement called Atheism is more than that.

"In short, [Atheism] has none of the hallmarks of a religion."

I disagree. Ever go here? Let's see...

charismatic leader? check.
book? sure, lots of em! Try "The God Delusion".
ceremonies? check.
hierarchy? Sure. There a several preeminent atheists that are followed by the rest. Atheists, being human, tend to follow people they admire. Who knew?

This flavor of atheism even has its own ministry. Care to go door-to-door and hand out these "religious" tracts? Actually, the message there is similar to that of some religious groups.

I sometimes see people make statements like "atheism is a religion like *not* collecting stamps is a hobby" and so on. It's just word games. If you define a religion as a body of people who adhere to a set of beliefs which are based on faith (and atheism is just that because you cannot *know* there is no God), then by that standard modern Atheism is a religion. One could reasonably argue that not believing in a god is not a religion, but we all know that the movement called Atheism is more than that.

"In short, [Atheism] has none of the hallmarks of a religion."

I disagree. Ever go here? Let's see...

charismatic leader? check.
book? sure, lots of em! Try "The God Delusion".
ceremonies? check.
hierarchy? Sure. There a several preeminent atheists that are followed by the rest. Atheists, being human, tend to follow people they admire. Who knew?

This flavor of atheism even has its own ministry. Care to go door-to-door and hand out these "religious" tracts? Actually, the message there is similar to that of some religious groups.

I sometimes see people make statements like "atheism is a religion like *not* collecting stamps is a hobby" and so on. It's just word games. If you define a religion as a body of people who adhere to a set of beliefs which are based on faith (and atheism is just that because you cannot *know* there is no God), then by that standard modern Atheism is a religion. One could reasonably argue that not believing in a god is not a religion, but we all know that the movement called Atheism is more than that.

"In short, [Atheism] has none of the hallmarks of a religion."

I disagree. Ever go here? Let's see...

charismatic leader? check.
book? sure, lots of em! Try "The God Delusion".
ceremonies? check.
hierarchy? Sure. There a several preeminent atheists that are followed by the rest. Atheists, being human, tend to follow people they admire. Who knew?

This flavor of atheism even has its own ministry. Care to go door-to-door and hand out these "religious" tracts? Actually, the message there is similar to that of some religious groups.

I sometimes see people make statements like "atheism is a religion like *not* collecting stamps is a hobby" and so on. It's just word games. If you define a religion as a body of people who adhere to a set of beliefs which are based on faith (and atheism is just that because you cannot *know* there is no God), then by that standard modern Atheism is a religion. One could reasonably argue that not believing in a god is not a religion, but we all know that the movement called Atheism is more than that.

And scientists can induce this feeling of connection to higher being with some magnetic fields. So are scientists the gods? If there is proven method of making feeling of being connected with nature ddo we still need god?

It's irritating to have links on words if the href has nothing to do with the anchor text .

Interpretations aside, "Thou shalt not kill" is unambiguous. It is only made ambiguous by people who need to justify killing. As a commandment, in the Judeo-Christian-Muslim tradition, it is present in all 3 religions.

I can't believe this tripe is moderated insightful.

Of course it's ambiguous. It has to be ambiguous for the religion to work.

I'm most familiar with Christian and Jewish traditions so I'll focus on those.

Who or what don't you kill? If you say it's not open to interpretation you're just being intentionally obtuse. Does it apply to animals? Plants? Am I allowed to eat if I can't kill anything? Thou shalt not kill anything taken literally means thou shalt starve to death. Does this apply to human beings only then? Was it intended as "Thou shalt not murder" (as many claim)? No? What about self defence? Defending your family? If that's okay what about defending your country? Accidental killing? What about acts of omission? If I don't try to save someone I could easily save? What happens when it's a choice of lives? Should I risk my life and my family's income source to save a stranger?

Also it's one of 10 golden rules laid down. The other include adultery (arguably very serious) dishonouring your parents (committed by just about every human being as they learn to be independent of their parents - it's called being a rebelious teenager. Religion is bunk. Some of the rules make sense and are required for a harmonious society but they're mixed in with noise in the form of rules that may or may not have worked for nomadic tribes and do more harm than good. For a good easy to read discussion see "The Demon Haunted World" by Carl Sagan. I love his argument that "turn the other cheek" is actually a harmful rule.

The fact that the "modern" religions require that you only believe in one diety and that everyone else is wrong leaves plenty of room for people to do things like blow themselves up like the morons they are even without actually considering real (vs imagined) problems. What's worse we indoctrinate our kids into these little sects that we ourselves have been brainwashed into believing and wonder why we have a world full of violent nonsense. Listen to what Richard Dawkins has to say:

http://richarddawkins.net/

I don't have a silver bullet for this problem.

But I've done a few Internet researches. "religion child abuse" for example, yields about 2.5 million Google hits, many on the first few pages are links to scientific papers researching the link between those two. "religion mental illness" yields about 2 mio. pages, again several from the first few pages pointing to scientific journals or papers. If the link is no obvious to you: You certainly would agree that "training" a child in, say, shizophrenia, would be abusive, wouldn't you?

Your "Google Proof" method of affirming your claims is invalid. The majority of pages on the "religion child abuse" search are quoting Dawkins and discussing his claims. Let's look at the first 10 results, shall we?

1. http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=48252 - WorldNetDaily
Discusses Dawkins' series "The Root of All Evil?". Presents comments from a Catholic Church spokesperson in responce. Takes no position on the issue, as good news journalism shold.

2. http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,100175,00.html - Time Magazine
A news article about a paricular sect who refuse medical treatment for their children in favour of prayer. This is not common religious teaching, and the article doens't present it as such, but discusses the rights of the parent and changes to the view of "freedom of religion." More about politics then religion.

3. http://www.nospank.net/bottoms.pdf - NoSpank PDF
Bias aleart. NoSpank has a pre-published agenda and have cherrypicked articles to support. That aside, the article doesn't conclude that religion is child abuse, but that when religion is used to abuse it can have worse after affects. I would dispute this article based on the fact that it is published by a non-objective source, but regardless, it doesn't support your initial idea.

4. http://richarddawkins.net/article,118,Religions-Real-Child-Abuse,Richard-Dawkins
I won't even bother. Yep - surprise. Richard Dawkins thinks religion is child abuse. But wait a second - it reveals where some of Richard's spite towards the church comes from:

Being fondled by the Latin master in the Squash Court was a disagreeable sensation for a nine-year-old, a mixture of embarrassment and skin-crawling revulsion...

This is something I've been searching to find for a while. Reading Dawkins' work, and listening to him talk, I've always thought to myself "someone in the church has hurt him, and he's blaming God for it". And I was right. He speaks like someone who is motivated by bitterness rather then a series of objective findings that lead him to atheism. So he was abused, and blames religion/church/god for it. Maybe laying blame on the abuser who was using their position of responsobility for wrongdoing would be more sensible then a crusade against religion.

5. http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2006/11/religion-as-child-abuse-and-about-hell.html - Blog post
Not anything approaching authorititive, the author links his own critiques of James Dobson that take read meaning into statements where there are none, and then write a diatribe on that one point. Example? He links an article which looks at the following paragraph:

Some kids can be crushed with nothing more than a stern look; others seem to require strong and even painful disciplinary measures to make a vivid impression. This difference usually results from the degree to which a child needs adult approval and acceptance. The primary parental task is to see things as the child perceives them, thereby

Much of what you say is true, but most of it applies equally to all religions. To paraphrase Richard Dawkins, religion requires faith without proof. That is fundamentally opposed to the scientific method.

This issue is important to consumers! This is a draconian attack on the very foundation of the First Amendment Speech. An entity or a person with 'deep' pockets believes he can suppress Free Speech through financial intimidation is no different than a foreign junta or a dictatorial regime arresting their opponents for their expression of free speech through military or police action.

Can you imagine where this would lead? Let's warp this ahead in time and say that Video Professor is successful in his suit against the defendants in this case. According to an article in the Denver Post, he promises to take this all the way up to the Supreme Court. Would this not have a chilling effect on every negative review of a product, movie, politician, corporate business practice, restaurant, movie etc.? Could not this open the legal floodgates for anyone who has received a negative review claiming the same cause for libel and defamation? I would lead you to another similar celebrated case being fought against a book review at various places on the web.

http://richarddawkins.net/article,1546,PZ-Myers-sued-for-a-negative-review-in-a-blog-post,Boing-Boing or

Here:

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/20/writer-sued-for-a-ne.html.

Here:

http://www.angiegotsued.com/

Would this not suppress every critic out there or limit their comments in a fog of possible litigation?

The bottom line is this. Can a person or a corporate entity who has unlimited financial and legal resources be able to use the judicial system to suppress the Free Speech of outspoken critics who he KNOWS does not have access to those same resources? Litigation in the court system is expensive.

A lawyer can bury the other side in paperwork with legal tactics and strategies using depositions, interrogatories, subpoenas, delays, appeals etc. There is no way that the average consumer has the economic resources to legally fight such a strategy and they knows this. So in effect, they are able silence their critics by De Facto litigation. However, the chilling aftermath of all this is a suppression of the basic First Amendment Rights and Consumer Advocacy.

In the W. R.Grace & Co in the Woburn case and in Libby, Montana, http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/grace03.shtml. Didn't Jan Schlichtmann's Law Firm end up in bankruptcy?

These cases do not merit the free speech dicussion above but only shows how corporations and individuals can use the legal system to advance or protect their business practices from consumers.

And Richard Dawkins wrote a brilliant counter to that piece in The God Delusion. Others with similar veins include Sam Harris' The End of Faith and Christopher Hitchens god is not Great.

See the Komodo Dragon tale The tale explains the concept of parthenogenesis, which is simply put, "virginal birth". There are two interesting types in this : 1. Cloning, where the offspring is genetically identical to the parent 2. Selfing. where a female may produce two sets of chromosomes that mate. One set would behave like a sperm.

Bungie wins big in this fight, because they're lucky for Miyamoto to even acknowledge their existence.

In the same way, The World's Greatest Creationist Scientists win big whenever a real respected scientist agrees to debate them, not because the Creationists can possibly win the debate, but because they score points and gain undeserved legitimacy by having a real scientist take them seriously enough to waste the time debating with them.

It's as unfair a fight as Richard Dawkins debating A. E. Wilder-Smith, where the creationists totally lose the argument, but score propaganda points by being taken much more seriously than they deserve.

-Don

A friend just pointed this out to me on gaim:

http://richarddawkins.net/theUgly#9

Freakin' scary.

--
BMO

My, how you do go on.

Sorry to pop your bubble there sport, but the existence of your imaginary friend in the sky is an unsupportable conjecture, and piling on academic affectations is nothing more than a courtier's reply.

-jcr

Richard Dawkins is a troll and needs to be down-modded.

Actually, Dawkins talks about the millions of Christians who don't oppose science all the time.

You obviously don't read many of his books (such as the latest one, The God Delusion), nor listen to many of his speeches (most of which can be found on YouTube or at RichardDawkins.net), because Dawkins has made that seemingly benign group of people the target of many of his criticisms.

In The God Delusion, Dawkins examines how he thinks these people are able to compartmentalize their lives in such a way that makes belief in God possible while also having a natural and healthy skepticism about other, non-religious claims. For instance, most people scoff at the idea that idea that there should be evidence of God's existance before they believe in him, yet would demand just such evidence if I were to claim I had a dragon in my garage.

While Dawkins certainly loves picking the low hanging fruit (the right-wing religious wackos), he is more than happy to address what he views as the hypocritical moderates. In fact, he has said numerous times that he almost has more respect for people who are steadfast in their religious beliefs than those who are willing to blend modern life with religious dogma.