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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
He is going to be holding a toilet plunger and be shouting "Exterminate!! Exterminate the believer!!"
Dr Who: Richard, what are you doing with that fish, duct tape and four lizard legs?
Dawkins: What, you think evolution *just happened*?
Task Mangler
There is no god, and Dawkins is his prophet.
This is NOT a signature.
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.
We've had Kylie Minogue on that set, but it was Dawkins people were worshipping.
Kylie Minogue was on the set and people were chasing Richard Dawkins??? Wow, that show really IS for geeks.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Agree with the message above, priest/xaman/rabi is the only job where your boss doesn't exist.
That someone can be famous in the 21st century for being an "advocate of Darwin's evolutionary theory".
sic transit gloria mundi
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?
That's because it's only an important distinction when talking about God. Because some people really do believe that it's impossible for a god to exist and they operate under that assumption. 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.
By the way I'm not promoting agnosticism; I think that you have to make a leap of faith somewhere, and on this issue the options seem to me theism and strong atheism.
http://freethoughtpedia.com/wiki/Atheism
http://freethoughtpedia.com/wiki/Atheism_is_a_belief
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"
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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.
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.
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
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.
Which is why you should stop reading crappy reviews and just read the damn book. And read the selfish gene while you are at it - in my humble opinion its one of the best books ever written.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
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.
Dr. Who: Where's Dr Watt? And I also need Dr. Hu right here real soon!
Dr. Watt: I'm here, and I can see Dr. Hu coming over there.
Dr. Hu: Whew, I really had to run fast! Hi, Dr. Watt, glad to see you. What's up, Dr. Who?
Dr. Who: I'll tell you in a minute, but first let me say how glad I am that this did not disintintegrate into some sophomoric cavalcade of misuderstood names.
Dr. Hu and Dr Watt: Say no more, we've all been there...
sig? Oh, that sig...
siener's youtube channel
Doctor: I will defeat you Credulons!
Credulon leader: I have faith we will prevail!
Doctor: (smugly) Meet my secret weapon - the Professor.
Dawkins: Hello.
Credulons: No! The skepticism! I'm melting!
Dawkins: That was simple. Now, how does this TARDIS thing work, exactly?
Doctor: No! The skepticism! I'm melting!
Dawkins: Oops. Time for a new title.
Close Credits, including "Next Week on Professor Who..."
Sean Ellis
Follow OfQuack's antics on Twitter.
Poseidon is great! - he totally whooped Odysseus's ass. None of this eternal torment after death rubbish, the wrath is here and now!
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
... and Who is this God Person Anyway?
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!
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".
"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.
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
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.
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!
No, the greatest cunning of the devil was to destroy the word of God by forming a church around it that would "interpret" it for the people, just as some formed a supreme court around the constitution to "interpret" it.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
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.
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 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?
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.
Thats a reasonable supposition.
A hypothetical question, and keep in mind, I'd like to know what you think. Its not that I actually believe this is the way it is, its just, a what if.
What if 500 years from now we are a space fareing species that travels to other planets in space ships, and so on and so fourth. We start exploring the unknowns of the galaxy. Well, eventually, we find... something.... it wanders the universe exploring just like we do, only its been around a lot longer than we have.
More accurately, when we find it, and figure out how to talk to it, it explains to us that when it reached its level of sentience, nothing else that was living could think for itself. This creature was the first thing to ask "Why am I me and not someone else." "Why is there something and not nothing."
The question then becomes, what have we found?
On the other hand there is a universe that we live in, and so far no solid (i.e. testable) scientific theory for its origin. The root cause of existence is certainly questionable. It's unlikely to have been an Abrahamic God, Greek Titans, Vishnu, Raven, Aslan, Eru or any other creator and creation process described in human creation myths. But it's certainly possible that something existing outside of our concept of space and time created the universe. While it may seem that only shifts the question to how did that something originate, the whole idea of origin is based on a directional time dimension that may not apply to such a creator. So the idea that a creator may exist can't be completely logically dismissed even if it's well beyond current scientific understanding.
However, an understanding of the scale of humans with respect to the structures of the universe makes the idea that such an creating entity would be interested in meddling in the evolution of life on planet Earth, let alone the affairs of the human race or even individual humans, to be of such an incalculably low probability that you may as well be talking about unicorns.
Now there's a completely different question of whether competitive evolutionary pressure could have made us evolve to need to hold belief systems with creation myths and concepts of afterlife. The ability to hold and share such beliefs could have encouraged the development of societal systems beyond the small tribal groups prevalent in primates so that we could develop civilization. Those beliefs sometimes also appear to help relieve the mental stress of existential angst and knowledge of one's mortality. However the latter might also be a side effect of evolutionary selection if those least emotionally invested and most capable of challenging the belief system would be the most likely to leave the protection of the greater group against the dangers of a primitive world. It really sucks to be an agnostic and realize that we may have evolved to live longer and happier if we hold religious beliefs in an afterlife even if there is no such thing. But that's another story.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
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.
> the universe was created by a tea pot orbiting Venus
don't they call that Scientology?
Also, that statement can be logically ruled out rather easily, by what some people call "causality" (yes, damn experimental verification). The argument roughly follows as below:
1) The sun is at the very least a second-generation star, because it has too many heavy elements around it to be a first generation star (which would be formed entirely from hydrogen).
2) Venus, because it orbits the sun with relatively circular orbit (i.e. low energy for its angular momentum), it should have formed around the sun (i.e. it's not an extra-solar object caught by Sun's gravity, as we suspect some of the comets to be).
3) Universe began (... there are still some on-going debates on this, but let's suspend our sense of scientific doubt and disbelief and say that Big Bang marks a definite beginning of our universe) before the formation of our sun (if only to provide the space-time in which to exist, not to mention the raw material
4) Therefore, the tea pot orbiting Venus, if it exists, existed after the creation of universe, and what did not exist before universe began could not have created the universe.
I'll leave disproving God as an exercise for the reader.
Suppose an old guy with a beard approached you on the street and claimed to be Zeus. Would you believe him? What if he said he could call down a lightning strike, and then did it to demonstrate it. Would you then believe it was Zeus?
No, there are too many other considerations. Your first assumption would be that you are dreaming. Failing that, then hallucinating. Or maybe some con artist who figured out that giving the appearance of calling down lightning is as easy as giving the appearance of bending a spoon with your mind. Last resort, an alien with "sufficiently advanced technology". Would *anyone* capable of rational thought ever consider the possibility that he actually was Zeus?
Unfortunately (or not), this whole God thing is such a slippery concept that it will never be proven, any more than it will ever be disproven.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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.
"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
[% slash_sig_val.text %]
Everybody has already been on South park
"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.
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
You are making an implicit assumption that all religions have an equal amount of (or lack of) supporting evidence.
What about people who believe that there is more supporting evidence (usually strong supporting evidence) for particular beliefs? That is the usual case for people who do believe a religion to be true.
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.
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.
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.
...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.
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.
Dawkins is the author of ... The God Delusion
And apparently also a victim of delusions of godhood.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
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.
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.
- Free will: Dawkins refuses to even talk about it, saying "it's not a big issue". Erm, it's one of the biggest issues in Philosophy.
- Attributing horrible events of humanity to religion, and then compiling lists of religious vs. secular (he really does always do this
- Completely not understanding the scope of science
- Countless strawmen, like the idea that all Christians are evolutionists. I think in Catholicism the Pope says it's the best theory of explanation
The point I want to stress here is not, at all, that I'm going to defend the arguments of Quinn. The point is that Dawkins doesn't give an even remotely reasonable answer to the points the guy has put forward; it doesn't take a debate genius to know how badly Dawkins is evading, etc. If people want to commend Dawkins for being great at selling books then I'm not going to argue with them, what I do disagree with is that the guy has any Philosophical merit. He's an emotive preacher. Great for popular literature (apparently), useless in Philosophy.And no, I'm a final year student finishing in two months. I also specialise in Philosophy of Religion.
Unless he has a banana in each ear, of course.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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.
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.
However, you sir, appear to be displaying the behavior we've come to expect from Christians! Congratulations on showing up your brother!
Tweet, tweet.
Now, if some kind of, I dunno, lemur came along and sexed up my girlfriend? That sounds like Zeus.
You can't take the sky from me...
You can't take the sky from me...
Actually, "god did it" is not a simpler explanation. In fact it's not an explanation at all unless you include what god is, how he got there and how he did it.
You may as well say "it just happened", that's even simpler as there no extra entities involved and yet it increases the sum total of human knowledge by exactly the same amount.
I agree. You might want to try God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens instead, it's a much better anti-religion book.
"God" is easier to spell.
Menus: Linux=function, Windows=vendor, OS X=as little as possible. Makes a statement, don't you think?
I will rephrase it for you. The ancient Greeks believed that everything that happened was caused by one or more Gods. If the winter was particularly cold, it was because some God did it. If you stubbed your toe, it was punishment from a God. As time passed and we learned more about how things work, we formulated laws of physics which predict very accurately how physical things behave and the physical state of a system changes over time. The laws of physics have no need for a hidden God to make things happen in the universe - stars shine due to the nuclear reactions of their constituent atoms under gravitational pressure, not because a God made them do it, and so on.
Current theories of the origin of the universe posit that when you trace the current state of the universe back in time you reach a singularity about 13.7 billion years ago, in which the laws of physics break down, and particularly beyond which the concept of Time does not exist. Creationists seize upon that singularity and assert that "because we don't understand what happened at or before the singularity, that must mean that God created the universe!". This is a weak argument no better than the ancient Greeks could muster - because we don't understand something, God must be the reason.
But my point on irrelevance was that current physical laws do not require the existence of a God. We don't know how the singularity worked, but whether it was caused by a God or not does not affect the universe today.
And it should be obvious that Hawking and other cosmologists are not studying the beginning of the universe to look for the existence of any God.
If you want to find a God, look inside yourself, because you won't find one in the universe.
No, they are not the same problem at all. Provability in mathematics is axiomatic, provability in physical reality is subject to empirical satisfaction. That is why I was pointing out the distinction. Religion does not satisfy any conditions of provability, of any chosen "genre", in any SINGLE true statement, let alone all of them(which as Godel showed, is impossible given the current notion of logic).