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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."
And Douglas Adams wrote for the old show. Douglas Adams and Dawkins were good friends.
At least Dawkins is rational and uses his brain.
I was just saying that it's kind of a bummer that those qualities are rare enough to draw admiration.
sic transit gloria mundi
I think you would find that most atheists would accept that you can't prove that personal gods do not exist.
But that doesn't mean the odds are the same as a coin toss. If we take Christianity for example, each time we find an inconsistency in the Bible (no walls around Jericho, no reports of anyone outside the middle east reporting a global flood, no town of Nazareth at the time Jesus was supposed to be alive, no reports of graves opening and the dead walking in anything but the gospels) then it lowers the probability of a biblical god.
And people of faith take a much more extreme attitude than most atheists. They insist that the probability of their god existing is 100% exactly, while the probability of anyone else's god existing is 0% exactly.
They need to realise that if you can't disprove that Yahweh exists then you can't disprove that Zeus, Odin or Atum (at least he had fun creating the world) exist either.
Hey if God was proven to be real one day, I think every major religion would be shattered, not just Atheists.
All those religions. Not all of them can be right.
By proving that God exists you destroy hundreds of faiths overnight.
It's been a while since I read any philosophy of science stuff - and I'm not claiming ever to have been an expert - but I think in general that viewpoint is rejected. Basically the thinking goes that it is actually impossible to nail down what you mean by a "scientific" theory, so rejecting ID for example by saying it is "not scientific" doesn't work to well since you can't actually point to anything that disqualifies it. Much better to assess it as a scientific theory and to conclude that it is a very very bad one.
Hmm, my reading of the God Delusion was quite the reverse - I understood Dawkins as claiming that all religions, by their very nature, are scientific theories. They make claims about the structure of the physical world and in some cases are predictive. Therefore they must be assessed as science. Que several hundred pages about why they are very very poor science indeed ;)
Possibly he rejected "supernatural" entities as part of his claim that any God must be assessed as a natural entity - should not get a free pass on the question of "what cause God then?" for example? But that is hardly the same thing.
Dawkins repeated stresses that the difference between an atheist and a theist is that an atheist is always willing to change his mind should convincing evidence of God actually come to light; hence atheism is the only logical scientific position to take in the absense of such evidence - I think there's a semantic debate about the precise meaning of atheism and agnosticism in here somewhere which can effect how some people would view that statement, but if you follow Dawkins' definitions this is the case.
This sig all sigs devours
People talk about Christianity like it's the Nazi party, like it's this horrible machine that people are indoctrinated into.
I don't mean this to me inflammatory -- I really don't -- but a LOT of Christianity really is like the Nazi party. Not to say they're putting atheists into ovens, but the hatred of atheists in mainstream Christianity is unbelievable. I would guess you live in one of the more enlightened parts of the country.
I was reading this story recently, and it was absolutely shocking. These are mainstream citizens, not some wacko cult. And it really isn't all that unusual. Google for "atheist persecution" sometime.
Your response will probably be that these aren't "real" Christians, but I maintain you can't separate the two. Polls show that your tolerance is by far in the minority of Christians. Mainstream Christianity has a burning hatred of atheists. I really believe that if a Hitler arose in the United States and called for the rounding up and extermination of atheists, there would be way more support for the policy than you're willing to admit.
Most atheists are perfectly willing to "live and let live", but the majority of Christians aren't. It's not just annoying proselytizing, it's out and out persecution. I could give you long lists of links of examples, but I have a feeling you're not ready to accept how out of control fundamentalism has gotten in the United States.
On a personal note, I don't admit to being an atheist in Real Life anymore. It's just not worth the hassle. It's easier just to say I believe in God without any details, and just define God as, "that natural process that created the universe." I'm pretty sure my in-laws would probably be horrified, though I doubt they would out-and-out disown the family.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.