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Richard Dawkins to Appear on Doctor Who
Ravalox writes "In an interview with The Independent, current curator of the Doctor Who legacy Russell T. Davis announced that distinguished evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins would be making an appearance in the new season of Doctor Who. To quote Davies: 'People were falling at his feet ... We've had Kylie Minogue on that set, but it was Dawkins people were worshipping.' Dawkins is the author of many best-selling non-fiction books, from The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker to The God Delusion, and a renowned advocate of both Darwin's evolutionary theory and the merits of atheism."
I just thought I'd mention that Richard Dawkins is married to Lalla Ward, who played the Time Lady Romana (second version) in the original series. She was also married to Tom Baker for a short time.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
Even Dawkins admits that, strictly speaking, he's an agnostic. He doesn't know that God doesn't exist. But there's any number of things that could just as easily apply to. No one says they're an agnostic with respect to unicorns. They just say "Unicorns aren't real." Only when it comes to this "God" concept, does everyone become such a pedant. If we applied the same standards to God that we did to unicorns, no one would take Dawkins to task for saying he's an atheist. He explains this all in "God Delusion." I suggest you read it.
View his call to arms: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/113
Have we ever done a poll on religious beliefs on Slashdot?
Lordy. If I could only have been there I would have been able to bag me a Kylie Minogue while everyone else was prostrating at the feet of the almighty Dawkins. Another missed opportunity, dammit.
http://freethoughtpedia.com/wiki/Atheism
http://freethoughtpedia.com/wiki/Atheism_is_a_belief
The only thing interesting about the parent is how people still don't bother to look up the meaning of words they don't understand, and prefer to just make them up.
Atheism is a _lack of belief_ in deities. They aren't taking anything just on faith.
By your reasoning, we should believe every religious claim that has ever been made. IMO agnosticism is the only tenable position for the non-theist. Everyone is an agnostic, including you.
As for "non-theist", that's exactly what a-theism means. (The Greek alpha privative is in fact cognate with our "non".)
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
"Learned" implies evidence, and if there were any evidence they would simply change their stance to the appropriate form of theism. That's the rational way to go about things. To date there has not been any single piece of credible evidence for the existence of God(s).
Like the other poster said: Please just read The God Delusion, it explains all of this.
HAND.
1) His name is "Russell T. DaviEs"
2) "Curator of the Doctor Who legacy"? Bollocks. RTD is offically "writer and executive producer". Similar to a US "showrunner".
Usually "agnosticism" means someone who actively believes you cannot know whether God exists or not. Atheism comes in two flavors: strong and weak.
"Strong" and "weak" refer to the comprehensiveness of the propositions encompassed, not to the degree of conviction or its vigor. A weak atheist position is that of a person who is without a belief in God. They don't "actively disbelieve" in God any more than you "actively disbelieve" in the brown chicken in my attic. There is no reason to think such a chicken (or God) exists--you simply lack belief in it, without "denying" the chicken. Or God.
A strong atheist position is the position that no God exists, supported by proof, evidence or belief. Whether this is the sort of thing that can be proved is perhaps open to debate--reasonable people disagree on whether it is a religious belief or not.
In my view, it's pretty slam dunk to see that any time a religious belief has resulted in something testable that could be offered as proof or disproof of God's existence, we have found that that sort of God doesn't exist. I don't know how many times you need to be told by someone that there is a chicken behind this door, no really, only to find when you open it that there is no chicken, before you suspect that there probably aren't any chickens here at all.
demi
Societies worse off 'when they have God on their side'
It turns out that wallowing in ignorance is actually harmful to society. Who would have guessed, huh? Oh well. C'est la vie!
"coo-ie! Lookie here, I'm being pious!"?
;)
:'G-d', is mainly an affectation as the prohibition relates specifically to the Tetragrammaton.
Sorta... I'm Jewish and there's a stigma about putting the name-of-the-lord anywhere but in hallowed places. Slashdot doesn't cut it
Note that this Anglicization
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Please don't post things as facts if they aren't.
I can find little that confirms your statement about no walls around Jericho. In fact, there is some evidence that even agrees with the biblical timeline for the walls destruction - and some that disagrees with this timeline.
Virtually every culture has a story of a great flood (Australian aborigines, Mayans, etc.)
It is very doubtful that Nazareth didn't exist (there is only evidence to suggest it wasn't a prominent town).
I mean, if I was making up a story that I wanted people to believe was true, I sure as hell would not use a town that didn't exist during the story's timeline. That would serve no purpose. Do what your always telling 'religious' folks to do - use your mind.
p.s. I am actually not a Christian - I just believe the Bible is a very reliable historical source.
Listen.
There is no evidence at all for the existance of any god never mind a specific type of one
There isn't now and never has been any evidence for any type of god like entity
There is nothing at all which requires anything like any sort of god like entity for us to understand it
At least unicorns would be a sort of an animal and we do know that animals exist whereas we have never seen any evidence for, never seen any examples of, never seen any hints of any sort of god like being at all and until we do the argument as to whether "he" exists or not is totally pointless because "he" obviously doesn't in the real world, only in the demented minds of the terminally deluded.
You, on the other hand, are using "miraculous" to mean an event that violates the laws of physics.
It's all very well to say "I define God to be an entity with no origin," but that doesn't explain it does it? This is all too similar to Descartes "proof" of God's existence. Just because you can formulate a description of something doesn't mean it exists.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The writer of Father's Day (also the Human Nature/Family of Blood story in season three and numerous books and audio plays) is a Christian and married to a Church of England vicar.
I've heard him talk on the subject and the symbolism involved (it's set in a church and ultimately a father's love leads to a sacrifice which saves everyone) was very much intentional.
Dawkins is the atheist analogy of a religous nut. His argumentation when it comes to religion is just as fanatically against religion as an american TV-preacher is for...donations.
Seriously, after 9/11 he went out in british media and used the terror acts as a springboard for his anti-religous campaigning, how extremist isn't that? I have no problem with people questioning faith or being agnostics, atheists or whatever, but claiming to be a rationalist and then going all atheist-jihadic like Dawkings has does not add up.
When is someone going to see through this man, he obviously has some profound issues to take care of.
Not quite. Dawkins' coming across as being fanatically against religion isn't because he's so pro-atheist or anti-religion per se. If you actually read some of ihs books, most notably The God Delusion, he provides the following thought process:
1. It is impossible to prove or disprove the existance of god/a god.
2. With the inability to prove the existance of god/a god, what is it that causes people believe in god? By default we come with no belief system, and yet somehow many people end up believing in god/gods even despite the lack of evidence of existance. He then goes into a long discussion of the psychological and evolutionary roots of belief in mysticism and gods, along with disproving most of the claims of "proof" of god.
3. What's wrong with Pascal's wager? In other words, if god can't be proven or disproven, then why not hedge your bet by believing? If it turns out that there is a god, then you're good to go, if not, no harm done. The problem with that line of thinking is you can't really believe in all gods, you have to choose one set of beliefs (monotheistic or multitheistic, etc) to the exclusion of the rest, so if it turns out that there is a god you still might have backed the wrong candidate.
4. Then he goes on to point out the tremoundous amount of hatred, division, strife, and death that religious belief is responsible for, both historically and in our present world. His position is that if people didn't believe in god/gods and have these religious dogmas then the world would be a better place.
It is point number 4 above that I think is the biggest drive in his efforts to educate the world about atheism. It's not because he hates religion, or is a nutter. It's because he honestly believes that people have deluded themselves into believing in god/gods, and that their delusions are far from being harmless to the rest of the world. Whether or not you believe that theists are deluded, it's impossible to argue with the second half of that point, namely that religious belief has a negative impact on civilisation. The events of 9/11 just put a giant exclamation point to that claim, and Dawkins was using it to say "this is what I'm talking about, there are now 5000 dead people who wouldn't have been killed had it not been for religion." When you add up the number of people who have been killed in combat in the US response to 9/11 you're looking at tens of thousands of people.
Maybe the next time you want to claim that someone has issues or doesn't add up, you ought to at least find out what it is that they're saying so that you can make a coherent argument.
He's using the same logic and intelligence he would bring to bear on any other subject, the difference being that religious people basically freak out and act like it's a hate crime if you treat their pet beliefs with the same rationality and common-sense that you bring to other subjects. They expect a special pass, which up till now they've generally gotten. If someone believes in an invisible unicorn that talks to them and protects them, we damned well know that that's delusional. If they talk to Jesus everyday, how exactly is that different? It's not, and rationalists are tired of pretending otherwise.
If Dawkins used exactly the same logic and tone to skewer belief in invisible unicorns, you wouldn't consider it divisive, spiteful, inflammatory, or even controversial. Changing the noun to "God" doesn't suddenly change commonplace, logical observations into howling invective.
I agree. You might want to try God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens instead, it's a much better anti-religion book.
no town of Nazareth at the time Jesus was supposed to be alive
You might want to read this article and this article. There seems to be considerable archaelogical evidence of a settlement at Nazareth before and just after (50 AD) the time of Jesus - although not an important one. In addition there is considerable evidence for the Walls of Jericho.
I'm not going to claim that there are no inconsistencies in the Bible - clearly you cannot have a global flood, although a big regional one is certainly possible. Plus we can date the Earth to be a lot older that 4,000 BC (or whatever the Bible - with calculations - says). However the examples you give are actually supported by archaelogy.