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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."
Mod me down if you think this is too far off topic, but does anyone else wonder how much Dawkins' popularity (as related by Davies) applies specifically to the Who audience and others like it?
I can't imagine the average person would get excited over the guy if he appeared on an episode of Friends or Deal or No Deal.
Luckily Mr. Dawkins seems to know his audience, and the Who fans' natural tendency towards the geekier, more analytical side of the human personality spectrum makes his appearance on the show a stroke of publicity genius.
Strange then that your god uses the same strategy, isn't it ?
This is NOT a signature.
That someone can be famous in the 21st century for being an "advocate of Darwin's evolutionary theory".
sic transit gloria mundi
Most atheists are aware that you can't prove the absence of God, anymore than you can prove his presence.
So most atheists could be called agnostics, but we are as agnostic about the Christian Yahweh, as we are about Thor or Shiva.
So yes we are technically agnostics, but that may confuse us with those who actually give some credibility to these superstitions.
Almost all atheists, are saying "There is no (credible reason to believe there is a) God"
Remember, Atheism is "Free of Theism", not "God does not exist"
This is NOT a signature.
They mock theists for their faith, but there's certainly no way to prove that there's not a god, so aren't they also believing in something independent of scientific proof?
What a novel and exciting argument, no one's thought of that before!
Theism and agnosticism are orthogonal (as the kids say) concepts. Most atheists are agnostic, most theists are gnostic (not to be confused with Gnostic). There are some gnostic atheists out there, but not many - like you say, it's a hard position to end up in.
sic transit gloria mundi
It's because of Occam's razor. Theism posits that a God or Gods exist(s). However, observable evidence doesn't necessitate that one exist; that is, a God is an 'extra', if you will, there's no phenomena that cannot be explained without the existence of a God. As such, the principle of Occam's razor - do not make theories more complicated than necessary - eliminates the existence of a God, because the world is simpler without one. This leaves atheism as the remaining scientific theory. Another way of thinking about this is that all parts of scientific thought have doubt inherently as a part of them, not just ones surrounding God. So, atheism and agnosticism are essentially equivalent - few atheists would argue that they can prove that there is no God.
There is also no way to disprove that the universe was created by a tea pot orbiting Venus. There is no readily available tool to scientifically disprove that.
We atheists simply think that it is plain silly to believe in the tea pot because some ancient scrolls written by some guru says so. Now, if someone were to find the tea pot, or any trace of it, it would be interesting.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Part of the idea is such that, most of the mono-theists think God is really all about them. God is so they can justify what they want. It justifies the suppression of the rights of minorities, It justifies the abuse of women, and children.
Its a little bit selfish to think that you matter so much to the creator of the universe, if there is such a thing, that he cares about small pointless things, that Humanity and its Earth somehow hold some special place in the cosmos. If there is a "First one." does it not stand to reason that we really wouldn't matter?
For example. Christians argue against abortion. but that has nothing to do with God really. It has everything to do with Muslims not outnumbering Christians because of population control.
Its even more self centered to think that a creator of the Universe would want to entertain or torment us until the end of time. Thats completely and utterly pointless.
You see where I'm going with this? its a Huge huge universe. Human beings are small, insignificant. The creator of the universe if he exists wouldn't blink twice at what Humans care about.
Theists are not more socially adapted to survival. Quite the opposite. The rational survive in an emergency. The religious panic and pray, and as a result die. As a result of religion, we have county school boards embroiled over "intelligent design." We have propoganda that claims that Evolution is completely random. We have politicians telling students that condoms don't work (They can break/tear but thats different.)and as a result STDs are rampant. Religion is a mad house that delights in psychotic behavior of all kinds. Its a cauldron and opiate.
I think the way agnostic people think would vary just as much as the way religious peoples thinking does.
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
That's disingenuous: He was rejected because he stated that he would be compelled to force his religiously based views on others -- it had nothing to do with him being Catholic.
This is a fallacy. You positively do not have to be understand very much about Norse mythology to realize that's it's a silly belief system. The same applies to other gods.
HAND.
Don't confuse Social Darwinism with Biological Darwinism.
Unfortunately, it was the Darwinists themselves who started this confusion (See the Desmond and Moore biography). Part of the appeal of evolutionary theory in the nineteenth century was that it appeared to challenge conservative social orthodoxy, showing that everything was in a state of flux. Evolution was a substantial plank in Liberal ideology.
Of course, it still isn't a valid inference. The fact that organisms might be competitive overall does not mean that humans are, any more than individual ants compete with each other.
All the same, it's not accurate to say that Social Darwinism is an abuse of the theory.
You know what they say about opinions. They're all fabulous!
"But he's only famous/infamous for his atheism"
Yeah right, and Hawkings is only famous for his wheelchair.
"Theists do better in society"
Which society? - India for instance has at least twice as many polytheists as the entire population of the US.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Of course you realise that atheists (such as myself) don't actually believe in the devil, so we're not worried...
There is no distinction at all between any fictional beings, except perhaps that deities happen to be less likely to exist than unicorns. With the unicorn, the FSM, or the yet unseen sub-atomic particle you only need to admit (as a skeptic) that you cannot prove or say much about it, since no evidence for the positivity of it's existence has been shown.*
.22 that religion cannot win.
With gods and such, particularly the monotheist version,you just have to sit back and ponder on the entire scheme of the religion at hand to see how bizarre the underlying philosophy is. People think it's the tenets of faith/the law that makes religion un-likable, but that's not really it. I would be willing to accept any of that, but it is the "god" bit itself that is disgusting. Thousands of religions, each thinking they are "right", the others are wrong, their god is the Truth, all of them required of "believe" that. All of them expected to live and die by those respective "beliefs", those "leaps of faith" that become a microcosm of existence for each, sending them to the limits of insane behavior. And all of them not recognizing that it is their respective god that is responsible for this sick scenario, assuming we forget everything we know about physics and the dynamics of the world. Islam, the most philosophically advanced theology of the monotheist faiths(abstract god, non-deification of humans including prophets..etc), had its second Caliph arrest and kill anyone who talked about destiny/determinism debate. He had good reason to do so. The only gods that are not six-year-old in mentality happen to be the ones that do not "want" you to do things.... they sidestep the philosophical debate entirely. And by doing so, they warrant no attention from us as well - i.e the only sensible gods do not matter. It's a catch
Religion is a simplistic, silly idea that has no place in the free world of today. We have strong instincts for it, sadly, but I hope one day we no longer need them to emotionally survive. The world is beautiful without deities. Let's grow up and forget about them.
* This is in contrast to mathematical logic, where you can indeed make statements about provability, both negative (there does not exist...) and positive(there exists...).
I never really understood atheism anyway. They mock theists for their faith, but there's certainly no way to prove that there's not a god
July, 1998
A juror in Judge Esmond Faulks' court in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, eagerly asked the judge for the defendant's date of birth so he could draw up a star chart to help him decide the case. He was removed.
There ya go. Presuming that you agree it was *appropriate* to forcibly eject that juror, presuming you consider that juror mockable and perhaps even a dangerous loony-toon, now you completely understand atheism.
To elaborate, probably half the other people on the jury read their horoscopes during lunch. Silly, irrational, but Mostly Harmless entertainment value so long as they don't take it seriously and start fucking over other people based upon their faith in magical messages from the sky.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
It's not an important distinction because the set of all possible Gods is infinite, but Theists rarely believe that any kind of a God exists, they believe in their specific flavour. Jehovah, Allah, Zeus, Osiris, Freya, Thor, Ahulane ... there's no specific evidence to support the existence of any of them.
Likewise when you look in detail at the behaviour of the universe and physics, there's no need for a God of any kind to keep it all running. Whether there was a need for a God to start it all 13.7 billion years ago is irrelevant today.
For all his putative omnipresence, God is as elusive as the Unicorn. There's no more reason to believe in any God than there is to believe in Unicorns.
" To quote Davies: 'People were falling at his feet ... We've had Kylie Minogue on that set, but it was Dawkins people were worshipping.' "
Did anyone else notice the irony?
It's a matter of simple probability analysis.
I as an atheist don't deny the chance of there being a god, just as I don't deny that there could actually be fairies in our well.
It's just so unlikely (in my opinion).
IMO, that's the *only* viable option. On one extreme, no one can prove that no gods exist. On the other, if you lower your standards of evidence to accept one religious claim, you have to accept them all (or else be hypocritical about it). So the only options are ordinary atheism (as in "I don't believe anyones religious myths") and self-delusion.
FWIW, 'agnostic' seems to have come into use due to a shift in the popular meaning of 'atheist'. Acording to Wictionary, the term didn't even exist before 1870. If people would try to quit reading more into a-theism than the word actually suggests, we wouldn't need a term for the neutral category.
But in excessively religious societies like ours, people tend to interpret atheism as yet another competing claim, rather than merely a rejection of other people's claims. For me, atheism isn't a religious belief; it's a *lack* of religious beliefs. I suppose you could call it "a belief", but only in the same sense that my lack of any particular reason to believe in Bigfoot is "a belief" about Bigfoot.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Some people (like Dawkins) don't accept that and call themselves agnostic, but it's just intellectual and they're really atheists.. their world would be shattered completely if they learned that they were wrong. Agnosticism isn't just some technicality, it's a completely different way of thinking.
;-)
How's that? I'm pretty much in the same field myself, thinking the whole thing is a lot of hogwash.
However, if one of the gods decided to actually show up and do some, you know, godly stuff, and I'm not talking the ambiguous kind but serious, honest-to-whatever god stuff, heck, I'd be cool with that. Assuming he/she/it doesn't mind being poked by scientists for a bit anyway
Obviously that would take out the whole "belief" part though...
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Atheists come out? Hardly! Reading all the replies to this article, I think the ratio was about 100:1 atheist to theist. On Slash, atheists rule the roost. So, actually, I'm going to come out as a theist.
Hi! I'm not scary, I swear! I don't think you're going to hell, as long as you're nice (i.e. I believe in the idea of the anonymous christian). I believe very strongly in evolution, and I think gays are perfect just the way God made them. However, I am very much a Christian. I have a calling in life, God has given me a task, and I need to follow it. Jesus died for my sins, and- I believe- yours too. He loves us, and when we sin it pisses him off. I don't feel smug, and I think of atheists as my brothers and sisters; we're all in this together. So please, please, please, you guys, don't talk about my religion like it's evil. Sure, when religion gets mixed up with politics it's a terrible mess (viz. Bush/Khameni) and it's caused a lot of problems in the past. Sure, there are a tonne of idiots in my church, and in others, who believe that you're all evil, and so are all the gays, and the Jews, and the Muslim. Sorry some of my people have tried to convert you. Sorry they don't look at science and realize the immense beauty of the way in which God has chosen to bring us into being. Sorry they've killed some of you for your beliefs.
What more can I apologize for? What can I possibly say to make you accept that I know we've done wrong? All I can say is this: when you deride religion, when you say it's "the opiate of the masses" or "the cyanide" as someone else put it, when you mock me for my beliefs, and when you brand me as some fundamentalist nutjob, it really, really hurts. It's not fair to me. It stereotypes, and it shows the same kind of logic that fundamentalists use. If you said "all blacks are criminals, they should go back to Africa", or "homosexuals are girly, they should all just be straight like me" you'd have everyone on your back, berating you for your insensitivity. It's the same thing with theists. Respect us, please, we have the right to practice our faith in peace. And if the fundy brigade comes with their wacko wagon and starts telling you that you're going to hell, and trying to shove a bible down your throat, I'll be right next to you, fighting those assholes off.
The King said to the Priest: "You keep 'em stupid! I'll keep 'em poor!"
We (you Americans, rather) don't have Kings anymore, but "Business" will do just as well.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I've actually read "The God Delusion"....or tried to. A great big bulk of the book seems dedicated to saying how smart and wonderful you, the reader, are for buying the book and being an atheist. I couldn't stomach it, and put it down.
For the record, I am an atheist. I was just interested in a bit of philosophy, not self-congratulatory nonsense.
I'm not a big fan of Richard Dawkins. He is a terrible, terrible spokesman for the atheist philosophy.
Atheism as you present it is a straw man. No one is saying that there definitely is no incredibly abstract god whose only properties are that it exists and that in some way this god causes the universe to exist.
However most theistic individuals don't believe in that kind of god. They believe in a god who impregnates virgins, who brings people back from the dead, who has a chosen people die by the millions in camps, who has something against people who eat pigs, who hates women, whose retirement plan for suicidal mass murderers is a bed full of maidens.
Weak atheists are people who say there probably is not a god. Strong atheists say there is no god. Most atheists lie somewhere on this spectrum. You are picking the most extreme version of atheism, the kind not even Dawkins subsribes to, and are using that as a straw man.
However, I can say with a considerable degree of certainty the Christian God does not exist. Nor does the Jewish God. Nor do any of the Hindu Gods. I can say this in the same way I can say with a considerable degree of certainty that werewolves and unicorns do not exist.
Only insane atheists who I would denounce as logically flawed claim with absolute certainty there is no god. However the Gods of the Christians, the Jews, the Muslims, the Hindus and the Zoroastrians are just as absurd as Zeus ever was, and I have considerable confidence in saying they do not exist.
What is more, most theists agree with the last assertion, assuming you drop their specific god from the list. We are all atheists, it is just that some of us are atheists about more gods than others.
"If one of the gods decided to actually show up and do some, you know, godly stuff". I refer you to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Granted, you may not wish to believe the event or the accounts, but it is a central claim of Christianity that God has involved himself directly and personally in the world.
I don't really care who he invites as guest stars, as long as he keeps his hands off the Dr Who legacy. When Torchwood was first announced, I had high hopes. An adult version of Dr Who? Bring it on! As it turned out, Torchwood was Dr Who without the humor, and plus an agenda. The end result was, IMO, rubbish.
So, is Dawkins a decent actor? References to evolution had better be along these lines. Dr Who is not the place for a lecture.
Which is ironic since the only argument anyone can put forward for a specific sort of god consists entirely of quoting other people and no, it's not very convicing at all.
On the other hand there are many people who claim to have experienced God, in many different times and cultures, some have written about their experiences, some are happy to talk about what they experienced. etc. Many of these people are reliable witnesses (e.g. you would probably quite happily accept their evidence in court), who are sceptical about evidence in many areas, and who have put a great deal of thought into whether their experiences were genuine of delusional.
I used to but I don't any more.
His early books were great, they were all about science and how you didn't really need god or fairies or any of that nonsense - and you would say 'Oh yeah' I see where you are going with that, that's really cool.
His latest book (the god delusion) seems to be just an invective against people who believe in god and I didn't like it.
I find he is becoming more a self-appointed spokesman for atheists (a priest, if you will) - and is presenting just the one point of view (dogma), in exactly the same way the various churches do.
In fact, as scientist, I find atheism in general to be more and more repulsive to scientific thinking - in that it rejects without proof any possibility of gods, fairies etc rather than just rejecting the theories as unproven - I suppose that makes me an agnostic now. Oh well.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
We are all atheists, unless you hapeen to believe in all the 1000s of gods out there. You may just be a theist in one god, and atheist about the rest.
If this seems like a reasonable way to be, then you are delusional.
...On the other hand there are many people who claim to have experienced God, in many different times and cultures, some have written about their experiences, some are happy to talk about what they experienced. etc. Many of these people are reliable witnesses (e.g. you would probably quite happily accept their evidence in court), who are sceptical about evidence in many areas, and who have put a great deal of thought into whether their experiences were genuine of delusional. For the word God in the above paragraph you can so easily substitute the words 'Alien Abduction' or 'Ghosts' or 'The Devil' or many other subjects that are liable to appear in the pages of the Fortean Times....oh, and yo momma's so fat, her Schwarzchild radius is visible to the naked eye.
I agree with you for the most part, and I think it is important for religious and non-religious folks to demonstrate more respect and understanding for one another than they often do. But don't confuse that with the notion of respecting your beliefs.
I respect you as a person, but I don't respect your beliefs. I don't disrespect them, either: in open and rational discourse, beliefs are neither disrespected nor respected, but are dispassionately debated solely on their merits. What would be your response if someone admonished you to "respect" his beliefs about the laws of gravity, or of recent historical fact?
When we conflate respect of fellow human beings with "respect" for their beliefs, it usually becomes shorthand for "please do not hold this particular idea up to scrutiny." That is something to be avoided.
Whether there was a need for a God to start it all 13.7 billion years ago is irrelevant today.
Now there's a rational, scientific perspective for you. Guys, stop thinking about evolution and the beginning of existence, it's all irrelevant today. Sorry Hawking, you've been wasting your time.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
All the same, it's not accurate to say that Social Darwinism is an abuse of the theory.
It absolutely definitely is.
It is well known that many species of evolved to form communities of co-operatively behaving individuals. That made their whole communities, or entire species more likely to survive while they competed with other communities and species (remember, in evolution it doesn't matter which individuals, or all of them, survive and produce offspring -- what matters is which genes do they mostly pass to the next generation), and both humans and insects are examples of this very mechanism.
With insects' colonies it's obvious because colonies are composed mostly of clones -- worker bee can never produce an offspring by herself, but a queen (who has the same genes as workers) can if worker bees are successful in supporting the hive, so successful worker bee promotes passing her genes by supporting the survival of queen and offspring, competing with other hives or other species of insects.
With humans the collective nature of all activities involved in survival (hunting, agriculture, building of shelters, development of technology, medicine), and combination of long lifetime and a tradition of having stable families, places a hostile, aggressive individual that is ready to rip throats from everyone he meets including other humans, at a huge disadvantage compared to the rest of society, so humans ended up much less naturally aggressive than most of animals -- even less than animals that perform some activities collectively (hunting, migration) but remain highly competitive against each other within the same species.
Therefore a society that emphasizes co-operation between humans is actually a result of evolution, and "Social Darwinism" goes against the mechanism that humans developed over their evolution -- it promotes development of society that is hurting its own survival by wasting resources and shutting out individuals depriving others from use of their abilities in collective activities.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Then you are not a Christian. See Matthew 25:41.
I think gays are perfect just the way God made themThen you are not a Christian. See 1 Corinthians 6:9
You may think you are a Christian, but you are clearly a heretic who preaches that some of your Bible's most clearly laid out laws can be ignored.
**TODO** Steal someone elses sig.
On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because when I say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there are not the Homeric gods."
However it is fiction, the writers know that, admit that, and everyone watching who is within a decade of voting age also knows that.
If, sir, you are not by some chance an imbecile then it is surely and purely through lack off effort, and not for want of natural talent. Now be off with you!
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
"Douglas Adams wrote a couple of serials and did script editing."
And script editing in the classic Doctor Who sense meant writing a script based on the title of the original script and then tossing out the rest of the original script. Those "script editors" put more lines on screen than the actual writers of the show in most cases.
Dude, if an old guy with a beard approached me on the street and claimed to be Zeus, and then called down a lightning strike, you're right, first assumption is dreaming, then hallucinating, then con artist.
But you know what? Science is about eliminating the possibilities until you're left with certainty.
Dreaming? Pinch me.
Hallucinating? Do you see that too?
Con Artist? Do you mind doing that again under controlled conditions?
Alien with sufficiently advanced technology: Which is more likely: That aliens with technology indistinguishable from magic are claiming to be ancient manifestations of human myth or that the guy claiming to be Zeus - and can back up his claim - is claiming to be Zeus because he is Zeus.
Science is about evidence and models - not proof.
Case in point, let's say Zeus IS an alien, but the best guess for integrating him into our model of the universe is that he is, in fact, Zeus. A few years later when the the lighting technology is no longer "sufficiently advanced" and you find new evidence, you change your theory.
Ultimately, at the very least, a guy on the street claiming to be Zeus and calling down lightning on command is a new avenue of investigation, and the claims do not have to be taken at face value immediately. However, if the evidence holds up to scrutiny, then go ahead and call the guy Zeus.
This works for any god: Show me evidence, then we'll start investigating.
I used to work for NetQoS. I no longer do, but want to keep the excellent karma attached to this account.
Actually, everything I read in the Bible was more along the lines of "my god can whip your god", not "your god doesn't exist." Examples:
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
There are an infinite number of concepts that cannot be disproved - that is not a good reason to believe in any of them. I have literally no more reason to believe in a god than to believe in the tooth fairy and in my mind they rate about equal on the believability scale.
It is important that you theists out there understand this. I find the idea of a bunch of grown adults WORSHIPPING a god as utterly bizarre as you would find a bunch of grown adults putting lost teeth under their pillow and sincerely, honestly expecting money to appear there in the morning as a result - more than that - building their entire lives around the idea that there is a tooth fairy. Committing large fractions of their lives to supporting missionaries to head out into deepest Africa to make sure that the little children there have pillows and hide their teeth in the prescribed manner. I don't mean that in a comedic sense...suppose that actually happened and millions of people had that deep seated belief. You'd find that pretty bizarre...and that's EXACTLY how I think of you guys. You are deeply weird people with very little grip on reality who believe in the tooth fairy.
There are big things that we cannot disprove (the parallel worlds hypothesis) - there are small things that we cannot disprove (that there really is a Tooth Fairy). Not only can we not disprove the existance of any particular god - but even the believers in that god cannot disprove the idea that (say) this god will damn to hell anyone who eats raspberries. This is a serious problem with religion. It's all very well to believe in something unprovable - but why that particular, very narrowly defined, unprovable thing? Sure you may have had some bizarre 'revelation' about the existance of a god - but how do you actually know that raspberries either are or are not OK? After all - a good fraction of the world believes that their god has this thing about drinking alcohol - and another good fraction thinks that it's actually shellfish and pork products that are out of the question. How do you know it's not raspberries too?
When there are an infinite number of unknowable things (note: "unknowable"...not "unknown") how do you pick and choose which of those unknowable things to believe in? I'd really like to know that.
It seems to me that when faced with a literal infinity of unknowable things - the only rational course of action is to believe only in the known (and to seek to test the unknown in order to make it known). But the totally unknowable...well, I guess it's worth some small amount of thought to speculate about it - but to launch your entire life on the basis of belief in some small, arbitary subset of the unknowable is just bizarre.
Regarding an argument for the existence of a God-like being, here ya go. Certainly it may not be possible to know any characteristics of God without some kind of personal experience (direct or indirect), but the same is true of natural science... as was noted by Descartes.
And yes, many people have had some personal experience of God, including myself.
I'm not religious. Religion annoys me, actually. But I don't NOT believe in God. Why? Because Atheism requires stronger faith than I can muster. Some people will tell you that there is no positive evidence of God. Having science explain just about everything we used to attribute to gods, I tend to agree with this. Others will tell you that there is no negative proof against God. Given an appropriate definition of God, I would tend to also support this position.
Let's consider some attributes of God, should s/he exist:
- God is not a meddler. Random stuff happens. People die or not. Catastrophic events happen or not. The universe is a relatively unordered, chaotic place, and as Newton's laws tell us, it's getting more unordered as time progresses. Life is the product of a pocket of relative order due to a surplus of local energy. That is all. God does not reach in and change things.
- God does not define moral code. Human morality is a product of human history, and everyone's got a different one. There are no universal moral laws that we can identify. Killing is wrong or not. Rape is wrong or not. Stealing is wrong or not. No one's moral code can truly claim any superiority to any other; viewed objectively, they all suck in some way or other.
- God does not dictate the structure of things in the universe. Let's say, just for the sake of argument, that the physical laws of the universe were defined by God. Fine. But as far as we can tell, the universe has obeyed these laws without deviation from the beginning of the big bang. In one sense, the fact that humans evolved from mammals (as opposed to reptiles) is quite random. On the other hand, reptile physiology (as we know it) wouldn't have supported the energy requirements of the human brain. Either way, there's no special reason why life should have evolved here in the first place, except that the right chemicals and supply of energy just happened to be suitable for it.
The idea to draw from this is that if there IS a God, this God is absolutely nothing like the gods made up by the many human religions. Man made God in his own image. But this "God" of the humans doesn't exist; anything we come up with is by definition going to be too limited to encompass a being that could have created the universe. I mean, imaging knowing what the physical laws of the universe are, rather than having to figure them out by inference from inside.
Does God care about us? Non sequitor. Caring is a human concept. Does God influence people's lives? Non sequitor. Influencing lives is a human concept. Hell, LIFE is a human concept. Did God even expect life to evolve in the universe he created? Oh wait, that invokes the concept of time, which God probably transcends.
As a species, we should be mature enough to realize that the universe does not run according to our preconceived notions. Many ideas that seem self-evident to me here in America simply don't apply in Japan. But Japanese and Americans are the same species. Now try applying your preconceived notions to an alien with absolutely no genetic history in common with yourself (or even genes for that matter). That alone is hard to imagine. You watch TV and see human actors playing aliens and get the idea that the human form is 'natural'. Far from it. If we ever meet aliens, sci fi writers will look at them and say "holy crap, I would never have thought of that in a million years." But an alien would be subject to the same physical laws as us. At least we have SOMETHING in common. Even that flies out the window when you try to imagine what God might be like.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that God is undefinable. But I would suggest that whatever you think God might be like is probably very limited and almost completely wrong. The same goes for me. I'm talking out my ass, using what limited brain power I have, and I know I'm not getting very far. But on the other hand, I think, for humans, this kind of speculation is healthy because it expands our
I don't think you're going to hell, as long as you're nice
Then you are not a Christian. See Matthew 25:41.
Repeat after me: there is no word "hell" in the Bible, there is no word "hell" in the Bible... In the passage above, a parable mentions some kind of "everlasting fire". There is no indication that a human being will last in the fire. Fallen angels might, and they are the ones for whom the fire is prepared.
I think gays are perfect just the way God made them
Then you are not a Christian. See 1 Corinthians 6:9
Buzz, miss again! Just a few verses down we read: "All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any." I think, what the holy writer is trying to say is, being overcome by your passions is bad. Being gay is bad if you are being a dick to your partner. Or if you pay cash to shag young boys, with their smooth skin and that innocent look in their eyes..., anyway, like they used to do in good old Corinth! I'll give you a simple analogy to what you are trying to say: if you think that stealing food for your hungry baby is OK, you are not a Christian. Why? See 1 Cor 6:10.
Well, according to the dictionary, "plausible" means "Seemingly or apparently valid, likely, or acceptable; credible: a plausible excuse."
It's obvious that people lend more credence to beliefs that are desirable than beliefs that are undesirable. For example, when you fix something and find at the end that you have a few parts left over, what's the first thing you tell yourself? "These probably didn't matter."
It follows that a sufficiently desirable belief is, ipso facto, plausible. At least until somebody comes along and spoils the fun by disproving it. Sometimes even more so if that person is sufficiently smug about it.
Wait a minute, we were talking about Richard Dawkins here, right?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
"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). I suppose it depends on what you accept as evidence. Theists see evidence for God everywhere, but the standard of evidence for a trained scientist is understandably quite different than what is usually accepted for religious belief.
An objectivist comprehends only empirical senses: Sight, smell, touch, taste, and hearing. For a thing to exist, it must first be brought into our realm of experience. X-rays, gamma-rays, all other non-visible forms of radiation; we now have tools to detect them and bring them into our perspective. Who knows what other things we are missing (and may yet discover) because we don't have the tools to see them?
Humans have other, more subjective senses too. A sense of quantity, of reason, of intuition, of balance; a moral sense and a spiritual sense. We have ways of knowing and understanding abstract forms. Do you believe in Rights? In benevolence, magnificence, or beauty? There is no litmus test, no standard experiment for any of these things, yet they exist. We have sensed and experimented with them in the ways that we know how.
The empirical scientific method is useful for many things, albeit a limited and finite number of things. To deal with abstract quantities, you need mathematics. Ethics requires philosophy and reason. Spirituality will frequently demand a form of religious devotion. There are interesting combinations of these things that lead down different paths of discovery.
When an evolutionary biologist asserts that there is no evidence for God, he is correct in a very specific way. In truth, though, he is speaking of something that he knows nothing about. He is like the blind man who denies the possibility of color because he has no evidence for it. To everyone who has sensed the reality of color, such an assertion is silly. Likewise are the assertions of atheists to those who have experienced spiritual things.
You can't take the sky from me...
Fair point, but to me that proves that, if anything, I went too hard on the gay, jew, muslim, and athiest hating Christians.
The irony of it all is that you then go on to quote from the UDHR.