Slashdot Mirror
Oklahoma, Vatican Take Opposite Tacks On Evolution
nizcolas writes "Notable evolutionary biologist, author, and speaker Richard Dawkins was recently invited to speak on the campus of the University of Oklahoma as part of the school's celebration of Charles Darwin. However, Oklahoma lawmakers are working to silence Dawkins with the passage of House Bill 1015 (RTF), which reads in part: '... the University of Oklahoma ... has invited as a public speaker on campus, Richard Dawkins of Oxford University, whose published opinions, as represented in his 2006 book "The God Delusion," and public statements on the theory of evolution demonstrate an intolerance for cultural diversity and diversity of thinking and are views that are not shared and are not representative of the thinking of a majority of the citizens of Oklahoma ...'" Pending legal action, Dawkins is set to speak tonight at 7 pm. (Luckily, we no longer live in the era of Bertrand Russell's court-ordered dismissal on moral grounds from the College of the City of New York.) And reader thms sends word of the Vatican's Darwin conference (program): "The conference, marking the 150th anniversary of the publication of "The Origin of Species," has been criticized by advocates of Creationism or Intelligent Design for not inviting them. The Muslim creationist Harun Yahya, most famous for his Atlas of Creation, also complained about not being invited."
Celebrating cultural diversity? You've got to be fucking kidding me.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Summary is stupid. The reading of this resolution just looks like it "condemns" Dawkins, it's not going to "silence" him or boot him out of the state or any other such nonsense.
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
OMFG! This is after we had to put up with giant anti-abortion posters on campus during the presidential election week that just happened to have horrid pictures of late-term abortions that are already illegal everywhere as far as I know anyway. WTF. It's been a given for a long time that I'm leaving after graduating, but OK continues to find ways to make me worry less about what I leave behind.
"There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell them." ~ Louis Armstrong
The University is a bit more liberal than most of the state. But the legislature is simply the largest collection of morons outside of the District of Columbia.
Has anyone in the Oklahoma heard of the First Amendment? Cultural diversity? WTF does cultural diversity have to to do with science, anyway? Free speech was intended to protect offensive speech. This should apply especially when said offensive speech is based on solid scientific evidence.
My blog
Evolution or no evolution, I think Dawkins is unlikely to speak at the Vatican any time soon. His being an atheist and an advocate for atheism is the main reason. They'd sooner invite Lucifer; at least he believes in God.
And why is Rush Limbaugh (or any other controversial figure) allowed to have a radio show? Because of a little thing called 'The First Amendment', which protects his right to speak his own views, no matter whether you agree with them or not.
My blog
To answer your question, yes, there probably are a few folks in the Bible Belt states who embrace intellectual thought, diversity, etc. The noisy, white, fundamentalist faction, however, does not want to even think about those things. Alas, they have the ear of enough elected officials to make a mess of things, miring government with stupid, dogma-driven debate and laws.
I read it without the comma, as in "Oklahoma Vatican..."
The Vatican: now with a convenient location near you!
I don't recall Dawkins ever being out-and-out insulting to theists in general.
Maybe he was and he did it with such class that I missed it.
Technoli
Agreed, being a militant atheist (one who aggressively attacks people's beliefs as well as the people themselves) is no better than being a militant creationist (one who aggressively attacks people's beliefs as well as the people themselves).
Indeed. Such intolerance for "diversity in thinking" could quickly lead us down the slippery slope to fact-based reasoning. This would be devastating to many a philosophy, religion, stereotype, and political stance. Must. Stop. Use. of. Scientific. Method. Yesterday.
The theory of evolution is the natural product of the application of the scientific method. That doesn't make it true. It just makes it the product of the scientific method. When you want to talk about products of the scientific method, evolution is on the menu.
The theory of creation is the natural product of theological studies of specific scriptures. That doesn't make it true. It just makes it the product of theological studies of specific scriptures. When you want to talk about products of theological studies of specific scriptures, the theory of creation is on the menu.
So what's the big deal? Someone holds that the products of the scientific method are facts whereas the products of theological studies of specific scriptures are myths? Well that opinion precedes any discussion of the products of these methods. We can intelligently discuss both of them while reserving any statements about our more foundational metaphysical assumptions.
But, sadly, most people just aren't broad-minded enough to recognize the relationship between metaphysical assumptions, belief systems, and truth. So they get all intimidated whenever they talk to anyone who has a different metaphysical assumption, and to stupid stuff like this.
Maybe someday the majority will grow out of this habit. But I doubt it will be any day soon.
The small exposure I've had to him (a documentary he did supposedly on Darwinism) portrayed him as a fundamentalist nutbar intent on dismissing and arguing with people who are trying to have a reasonable conversation.
Were I an impartial viewer, I'd have come away seeing the Church as the more reasonable and rational movement, and this fervent 'darwinism' as quite worrying and deluded.
So I've not seen him being particularly insulting to theists, I suppose, but he's hardly doing anything for atheism.
Everyone knows we came here after we destroyed Mars.
"I guess I'm gonna fade into Bolivian."
Not surprised by the latter one. Catholic teaching has leaned hard towards "Science is 'what' and 'how.' God is 'why.'" for a long time now.
I admire his works and his point of view, but I find a lot of the time he can be callously disrespectful and religiously athiest. I'm an athiest myself but I find his pushy nature to be a bit much soemtimes.
I feel the way he handles some questions and situations doesn't help his cause.
Can of worms? With the Vatican, we get a Diet of Worms!
...the Oklahoma House of Representatives encourages the University of Oklahoma to engage in an open, dignified, and fair discussion of the Darwinian theory of evolution and all other scientific theories...
This, and the bit about cultural diversity is BS pure and simple. If they didn't have a problem with scientific theories then Dawkins wouldn't be a problem to them.
Um... no.
Toward the end of his interview with me, Stein asked whether I could think of any circumstances whatsoever under which intelligent design might have occurred. It's the kind of challenge I relish, and I set myself the task of imagining the most plausible scenario I could. I wanted to give ID its best shot, however poor that best shot might be. I must have been feeling magnanimous that day, because I was aware that the leading advocates of Intelligent Design are very fond of protesting that they are not talking about God as the designer, but about some unnamed and unspecified intelligence, which might even be an alien from another planet. Indeed, this is the only way they differentiate themselves from fundamentalist creationists, and they do it only when they need to, in order to weasel their way around church/state separation laws. So, bending over backwards to accommodate the IDiots ("oh NOOOOO, of course we aren't talking about God, this is SCIENCE") and bending over backwards to make the best case I could for intelligent design, I constructed a science fiction scenario. Like Michael Ruse (as I surmise) I still hadn't rumbled Stein, and I was charitable enough to think he was an honestly stupid man, sincerely seeking enlightenment from a scientist. I patiently explained to him that life could conceivably have been seeded on Earth by an alien intelligence from another planet (Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel suggested something similar -- semi tongue-in-cheek). The conclusion I was heading towards was that, even in the highly unlikely event that some such 'Directed Panspermia' was responsible for designing life on this planet, the alien beings would THEMSELVES have to have evolved, if not by Darwinian selection, by some equivalent 'crane' (to quote Dan Dennett). My point here was that design can never be an ULTIMATE explanation for organized complexity. Even if life on Earth was seeded by intelligent designers on another planet, and even if the alien life form was itself seeded four billion years earlier, the regress must ultimately be terminated (and we have only some 13 billion years to play with because of the finite age of the universe). Organized complexity cannot just spontaneously happen. That, for goodness sake, is the creationists' whole point, when they bang on about eyes and bacterial flagella! Evolution by natural selection is the only known process whereby organized complexity can ultimately come into being. Organized complexity -- and that includes everything capable of designing anything intelligently -- comes LATE into the universe. It cannot exist at the beginning, as I have explained again and again in my writings.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
I totally agree with you. I just finished watching Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed last night. As an atheist, I was embarrassed after watching the final interview with him. He came off as pompous and ignorant.
Please don't forget that it is a subset of "religious people" who are fighting to discredit science and impose their beliefs via government and laws. There are plenty of religious people who don't support those more extreme views. Belief in God and a respect and enthusiasm for science are not mutually exclusive. Maybe you should try to be more careful about making that distinction when using your vehement means.
I guess the question is, are you fighting against anyone who believes in God, or are you fighting against people who use their beliefs to justify controlling other people? If it's the latter, then myself and many other people who believe in God will support you. If it's the former, then you're turning us into enemies.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
enlightened atheists shall have no remorse in discriminating against the religious, and making it known
That word, I don't think it means what you think it means. And if you were so truly enlightened you recognize how two wrongs do not make a right, or the irony of your dogmatic discrimination against those who disagree with you.
I laughed at the weak who considered themselves good because they lacked claws.
On the plus side, the resolution isn't forbidding that Dawkins speak. Unfortunately, it is a thinly veiled threat to the president of the university that funding or job could be on the line if he lets Dawkins speak.
"Whereas the University of Oklahoma is a publicly funded university..."
I read that the US has lost 650,000 jobs in the last month. Maybe enough bad debt, cold and hunger will finally get people to realize that real science can be a vehicle to productive jobs and accept that their 6000 year old Earth hypothesis doesn't hold water.
~Ben
Has anyone in the Oklahoma heard of the First Amendment? Cultural diversity? WTF does cultural diversity have to to do with science, anyway?.
That's a nice buzzword to make people who oppose their actions appear intolerant and narrow minded. Ignorance is now part of that vast cultural diversity that we must all respect.
Of course, the legislature ignores that Catholic teachings allow for the coexistence of evolution and creation; after all we can not fathom how God accomplishes his goals. One is faith, the other science and neither need be exclusive.
Of course, many of those same legislators might not consider Catholics Christian (and no, that's not sarcasm but experience).
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Apart from his pro-atheist writings, speeches and such, Dr. Dawkins actually does do real scientific research. He has published numerous papers, as well as a number of rather good easy-to-understand books on evolution.
Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer. He isn't even a real politician.
So how is it exactly you can equate Limbaugh and Dawkins?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It doesn't even have to be Bible-Belt states that are this backwards. Just look at what Colorado is doing -- http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/05/215209.
I wish i had mod points today so I could rate your post up, and the one you were responding to down...
"His science has become his religion, ..."
That makes no damn sense.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Actually, I think the Democrats in Congress voted with the Republicans 89-11 to prevent the FCC from re-instating the Fairness Doctrine. However, they're planning on forcing radio stations toward local minority ownership (read 'Democrat supporters'). Once they've forced the radios to sell to Democrat friendly owners, the decision to cut Limbaugh and Hannity became a 'business decision' instead of government censorship.
The Catholic Church currently has a pretty open minded view of science. It's interesting to see them hosting a conference like this because on the surface it flies in the face of religious belief. Too often it's cast as an either/or scenario when there's no real reason for science and faith to conflict - if you look at it the right way. I've heard of scientists taking the view that science is merely a way to explore God's creation. The method still works regardless of how you ground it.
All too often people cite science to trump religion which seems just as intolerant as hard-core creationism. How long after they found out that Santa Claus wasn't really just a guy in a red suit did they realize that God wasn't just a bearded dude in a robe?
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
Ok, assuming that his Flying Spaghettiness Herself didn't just create the Universe 30 seconds ago with our memories of anything beyond that being created as well... Either that or we are "memories" in the FSM and She has been too lazy to create the Universe yet. Yeah, or something like that. But anyway!, Consider Evolution: all it says is things that change over time tend to change like "this" whether you're talking about a particular species or a mountain-range. Think of the moment our Universe first condensed from pure energy. This was "Eden", a purity of representation - just hydrogen which went on to fuel the first stars and the fusion reactions within them later on created the "crusty" stuff in the Universe: all the other elements. Everything you can see except hydrogen was once in a star. Evolution is a selection process, according to the laws of our Universe's constants some things will be more reproductive than others and the same constants allow for lower energy-states to create higher-ones with there always being a little net energy that slipped through the molecules radiating off everything. The Evolution of our Universe has taken thirteen billion years to produce us. Big number. Um, no, think of how many billions of years are ahead for our Universe (not necessarily including us). There is a lot more Evolution left to go. Consider the far future: say another twenty billion years. If you or I were to be transplanted through time to that distance we would probably be eaten by the first grasshopper to come along. Things will get more efficient. It has to to make up for the overall increase in Entropy. Now consider that if our Universe will have an end wouldn't that final state define a "calculation" it was performing? And if you want to get metaphysical then you could say that maybe God was there waiting for our Universe to tell Him what it was. The End of time is "Judgment Day" and its predators-against-prey to decide the final representation of our Universe.
Shh.
I'm actually for the Fairness Doctrine. 'We' own the airwaves these wingnuts use. Opinions should be given equal access. And yes, that means on TV too.
And I see every popular religionist as demonstrating an intolerance for cultural diversity and diversity of thinking when they attempt to get their fairy tales taught as science, discriminate against people who do not believe in their fairy tales, murder doctors, and harass rational non-believers, sometimes driving them to suicide.
Every time I see a group of religious people protesting against abortion or for led prayer in schools or the teaching of creationism (and so-called intelligent design is nothing more than creationism in a new set of clothes), I see them as ignorant, vicious fools who would resort to burning people at the stake to get their way, just as they did less than 300 years ago.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
You need more exposure.
You can't have a resonable debate with the church, becasue the church as no reasonable points.
How do you debate something with someone who refuses to accept real physical evidences and facts, and backs their argument with nonsense?
That aside, with the exposure I have had, he only gets that way when:
A) People are lying about atheists
B) People refuse to understand that atheism is not a religion
C) People lie and make stuff up about evolution
Yes, he is passionate about seeing those facts get out into the light.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Damn, no mod points. +1 Hilarious.
No sig? Sigh...
So is Senator Bluto sending this to Dean Wormer?
Hey, we umm... don't like those things he ummm... says... yeah... and ummm now you know ummm... that we don't... you know ummm like it... umm what he says...
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
Dawkins regularly holds public debates with theologians so I would hardly call him intolerant of 'diversity of thinking'. Unless of course you belive that religion is a special case that is above criticism or ridicule.
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
I'm not posting to argue for or against your point but to simply ask why you felt it was necessary to make your entire paragraph a hyperlink. Is it 1994 again?
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
Do you even know what that is? the "Fairness Doctrine" strengthens the peoples ability to express there own speech. It would in NO WAY limit anyone elses speech.
It was one of the many travesties of the Reagan administration.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
A quick search of the Oklahoma state legislature status page (http://www.okhouse.gov/Legislation/Leg_Status.aspx) shows that HR1015 was introduced March 3 and nothing has happened since. In truth it has not been passed.
Creationism is just a cover for the real debate amongst Christian sects: Biblical Literalism (Fundamentalists) vs. a more figurative interpretation of the Bible (non-Fundaementalists). (Full disclosure: I'm not Christian)
My blog
..as opposed to the free and otherwise bankrolled publicity that a certain JC has had for the last couple of thousand years?
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
Many reading these comments will end up being members of a loosely defined group that sees this kind of thing as, among other things, a huge waste of legislative time.
The problem with most of this Right-Thinking Fellows Club is that it is a similar kind of thinking/acting as the freaks that wasted their time on the legislation and (no doubt) political pressure being applied in the University.
Did you see what I did there by name-calling?
I don't know how, but somehow their crazy world view needs to be redirected so they stop wasting everyone's time. A giant screen TV in every home and *severe* economic stress doesn't seem to be refocusing them at all.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
It's always irritating to hear people say things like "his science has become his religion". That's absurd on the face of it. Dawkins is a scientist. Period. If one could find a scientific (measurable and reproducible) experiment that would conclusively demonstrate the existence of god, I'm sure he would be happy to study the results of it. Because of the overwhelming (total) lack of scientific lack of evidence for the existence of god and because of utter stupidity of the claimed evidence (talking snakes, virgin births, raising from the dead, divine intervention) Dawkins (and other clear thinking people) refuse to accept the basic tenets of monotheistic religions. THAT is a far cry from him turning his science into a religion. The fundamental tenets of science are diametrically opposed to the inherent belief systems of the religions in question and no reputable scientist (which Dawkins clearly is) makes science into a religion, if by that you mean his beliefs are based on faith and a total lack of evidence or scientific inquiry and are seen to be infallible as is the case with religious belief. Dawkins certainly does NOT do that so lets lay to rest the tired old criticism that scientists turn their understanding of scientific discoveries into religious beliefs. Whatever I may believe today as a scientist, based on the most recent experimental data, may be overturned tomorrow by new and better data and I (as well as Dawkins) will be happy to throw my old beliefs out the window when science finds new information that better conforms with newly documented data. The second part, "people who's religion has become their science" doesn't even make any sense. That's like saying "for people who's backward, ignorant belief in fairly tales becomes a highly disciplined belief system based on published, reproducible data and conclusions". Huh? Scientists can't explore faith. Faith is faith. By definition it's belief without evidence. Scientists can choose to not act scientifically and adopt and irrational belief system of they wish to (and some do), but the should indeed be afraid of doing it because it can lead to confusion as to what is real and whether one's perception and belief system concerning reality should be based on fact or fantasy. Some scientists can keep the two concepts separated reasonably well but many others fail to do so and lose all credibility as scientists as do all (and I mean ALL) young-earth believers who continue to pretend they are scientists instead of admitting they are people of religious faith with scientific training who choose to ignore the science and instead base their belief system on religious underpinnings. At least you got it right when you said "theologians shouldn't be afraid of science.". I think that is true because they should not be afraid the people of the world coming to grips with the understanding that most of today's religions are based on false superstitions. They should not fear the truth.
Imagine being a state legislator in Oklahoma. A large proportion of your constituents will be bible thumpers who will expect you to vote yes on a bill like this. Since it doesn't actually censor Dawkins, the only rational thing to do is figure that it does no harm and vote in favor of it.
The theory would argue that this shows a historical track of evolution. But all these bones belong to the same species and are contemporaneous.
No, it wouldn't because the science, through radioactive and other dating methods, would show them to be contemporaneous.
As your entire argument is based on that false premise, the rest of your argument and post is likewise false.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
It is conceptually simple to understand, particularly for people who are not of an analytical bent. It does not require deep thought or incisive intelligence, it is by and large unambiguous, it results in absolute truths that can be used as rules and maxims, and concentrates all authority on the literal meaning of the scripture. This allows true believers to dismiss anything else out of hand, because the literal interpretation is held to be the literal word of God. That is the great appeal. Simple people need not worry about analysis, interpretation, consistency or anything else. Unfortunately, it is an illusion.
In practice there is as much ambiguity as before, absolute truths are difficult to pin down, consensus is difficult, and physical reality contradicts practically all attempts to assert literal truth of biblical claims. On top of this is the curious trait of religious fundamentalists in general to cling to their arbitrary beliefs even more strongly in the face of contradiction, as if, rather counterintuitively, that in itself confirmed their beliefs.
Any sufficiently advanced alien is indistinguishable from God.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Names and citations, please.
Evidently, the key to understanding recursion is to begin by understanding recursion. The rest is easy.
..as opposed to the free and otherwise bankrolled publicity that a certain JC has had for the last couple of thousand years?
Fine censor him then....there's no pleasing you people.
Interest in "diversity" is semi-frequently used by left-leaning college types as a reason to oppose conservative speakers whose views they find offensive.
(I'm left-leaning myself, FWIW, but I find this particular strain of lefties to be as much opposed to my views as right-wingers are, since indeed "free speech was intended to protect offensive speech".)
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
He is directly insulting/dismissive to broad classes of theists, but he doesn't make unqualified categorical anti-theist claims that he can't back up. For instance, for those who believe in an active God as opposed to a one-time non-interventionist Creator, he calls this an infantile belief in an imaginary friend. For the Creationists who don't have anything to do with an active God, he'll use more reserved terms directed at accurately describing their systems of beliefs and reasoning. "Infantile" in that case would not apply, but "unsophisticated" might.
The point is, he doesn't attack people for anything they don't have an obligation to defend.
Evidently, the key to understanding recursion is to begin by understanding recursion. The rest is easy.
Um, Dawkins "fortunes", such as they are, are likely more due to tenure and because of several books he's published on evolution. His pro-atheism publishing has likely made him good money, but really is a small proportion of his total output.
You are aware, I trust, that Richard Dawkins is actually a working scientist, right? I mean, you don't think he's just some guy that makes his living on talk shows.
I think you may actually be silly enough to think that Dawkins is simply some sort of anti-religious version of Limbaugh.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Eh? I've heard an interview and a lecture by Dawkins (neither one live), and I don't think I ever heard him attack individuals, except for the actions their beliefs may lead them to.
Evidently, the key to understanding recursion is to begin by understanding recursion. The rest is easy.
Uhhh.. what?
Evidently, the key to understanding recursion is to begin by understanding recursion. The rest is easy.
Unfortunately or fortunately depending on the circumstances, the 1st amendment doesn't say there can't be consequences for speaking freely. Just that laws can't be passed preventing free speech. Relative merit, such as it being solid scientific evidence has no bearing on whether the speech is permitted (no "especially" clause). But it does have a bearing on consequences.
In this instance, the legislature is stating that they are going to be pissed. The implication is that the university may not get the support is wants next time it comes calling. They aren't putting anyone in prison. Not taking any property. Just hinting they may not give money.
You might say not giving money money to the university is the same as taking it, but it's not. Any organization that takes in money has to keep their benefactor happy. Golden handcuffs are part of the bargain. Even when the benefactor is a douchebag. Solid scientific evidence means the consequences are that everyone now knows the OK legislature is filled with douchebags. That's the consequence of their free speech.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Oh no! Silence those that think different and may possibly offend someone! We must make sure that we have diversity and make sure that everyone is heard...except that guy. Most of us just don't agree with him.
we can not fathom how God accomplishes his goals. One is faith, the other science and neither need be exclusive.
Good fathoming. Is it your conclusion that God's goal is war leading to extinction of humans? That seems the only way to interpret your assertion that God's means are "science" and "faith".
No, war is the result of our being given free will.
I can see where my ending could be misconstrued - I did not mean that faith and science are means; rather that a belief in a God that created man is faith and evolution is science and those two items do not need to be mutually exclusive.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Please don't forget that it is a subset of "religious people" who are fighting to discredit science and impose their beliefs via government and laws.
While I agree it is important to stress that it is just a subset, when the elected representatives of a state work towards the interests of that subset, then we have a problem. http://xkcd.com/154/
The real issue here is that, for the first time since possibly statehood, the Republicans have just taken over the Oklahoma state legislature. Since this is pretty much their first time ever to be relevant, they are really anxious to make their mark, and do it now. The fat kids who always had their faces pressed up against the glass at the legislative candy store suddenly have the keys, and they are going hog-wild. To give you further examples, in the last couple of weeks we Okies have also seen bills to: o Outlaw the wearing of Muslim head coverings on driver's licences o Weaken worker's comp o Prevent teacher's unions from engaging in political activity o Make it harder to persue "pain and suffering" claims in court. My personal favorite was the School Prayer bill we barely managed to get killed in committee. It would have allowed for student-led school prayer at mandatory attendence events, but stipulated that the prayer leaders had to be "school leaders". Their definition of school leaders included, I shit you not, head Cheerleaders and the captain of the football team. We were wondering aloud what would happen if a school just happened to have a Wiccan captain of the football team...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Colorado may not be in what is commonly thought of as the bible belt, but take a close look at Colorado Springs. Ever hear of Focus on the Family? Ted Haggard? Tony Perkins?
Name them. You're saying a Democratic Congressman is trying to bring back the Fairness Doctrine, so surely you can actually name this congressman, right? Right?
*sigh* Yet another state I have to scratch off my list of "Potential States I Could Possibly Move To". Even if these legislators don't represent the majority (which I think is the real case), they have now represented their lovely state to the world as a bunch of backward, in-bred, witch-burning first-amendment haters.
And you think that they would edit him to look non pompous and intelligent? That would have defeated the entire purpose of the movie.
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Please don't confuse Evangelicals with Catholics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_and_the_Roman_Catholic_Church
The Church isn't against evolution.
Yes there are a few "Catholic organization" that are against evolution, but I believe that the Church needs start using the Inquisition a bit more and wave the ban hammer
http://www.incunabulum.co.uk/inquisitor.jpg
Thanks for proving Darwin long because people like that are obviously not evolving our species and our ability for rational thought.
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" Franklin
<blink>Yes, as a matter of fact, it is!!!!!!!</blink>
Well, since science is obviously irrelevant in the abortion debate when up against the rantings of religious fanatics, if we're going to ban abortion we should ban it in the christian way.
And in all the writtings of early christians and the early catholic church, it's not the brain that develops over time but the soul. The soul starts out as the equivalent of a plant-soul (okay to kill) then over time develops into an animal-soul (okay to kill), then into a human soul (OH NO!). This last stage was supposed to be reached about 60-90 days after conception.
This is why christian groups, including the Catholic Church have always been pro-abortion (during the first 60 days of pregnancy) until modern times. Now that it can be turned into a wedge issue and one of the few remaining tools left the church has to screw with women, all the religious doctrine goes out the window and suddenly every sperm is sacred!
Thus I claim that all christians that oppose abortion in the first 60 days of pregnancy are either bad christians or must allow religious dogma to change over time ( and thus have no excuse for hating gays).
P.S: I know in the bible, it specifically says not to have abortions, but for most of the church's history, people who violated this were treated no worse than those who violated the ban on masturbation or working on Sunday. You paid a small fine to the church and everything was okay. Early abortions weren't considered "murder" until modern times.
you && science == FAIL
I want to go watch SouthPark now.
if by "probably sucks" you mean "is in the middle of tornado alley" then yes, it does, a lot.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
The 1st never mentions any thing about giving you a platform to speak, it just gives you the right to say what you think.
Name them. You're saying a Democratic Congressman is trying to bring back the Fairness Doctrine, so surely you can actually name this congressman, right? Right?
My own Congressman is one of them.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
So will the Libertarian Party get equal access? How about David Duke? Will the KKK get equal access? Or does some Government bureaucrat get to decide which views are popular enough to deserve "equal" access?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Um, "biblical evidence"? Ptolemy and Aristotle?
Not to say that the authors of the bible were heliocentrists, but the church in the time of Copernicus and Galileo rejected heliocentrism for scientific reasons: it contradicted Aristotelian mechanics, and was not predictively superior to geocentrism. This is one of the reasons Newton was successful where Galileo wasn't--Newton provided a alternative to Aristotelian mechanics that had a number of very clear advantages; Galileo was trying to do so, but didn't get nearly as far.
Are you adequate?
Replace evolution with holocaust denial and you'll see the basis the government entities have to condemn if not banish expressions that are protected under the First Amendment.
Evidently, the key to understanding recursion is to begin by understanding recursion. The rest is easy.
Fine censor him then....there's no pleasing you people.
That's insufficient. I demand nothing less than a public crucifixion.
Wait...
Evolution is not easily understood, but as you point out, failing to understand how evolution works does not mean evolution doesn't happen. There's a lot of fuzzy thinking around, especially among evolutionists forced to defend their ideas in fundamental, high-relief arenas of metaphor and unreason they themselves abandoned in childhood, and are not even comfortable thinking about.
Perhaps evolutionists, considered as a species of human not well adapted to argument by crucifixion and fire, should collectively adapt by discarding our own comfortable cliches. For example, science and art diverge when the "Great Chain of Being," usually drawn as Fish -> Amphibian -> Reptile -> Mammal -> Monkey -> Ape -> Neanderthal -> You, takes an ironic place as explicator of natural selection.
However we can derive an adaptive strategy from our own Weltanschauung by adopting a Darwinian style of metaphor. To wit, the thing that drives evolution OF SPECIES (not, of course, individuals) is natural selection. In other words, the thing that drives the warm wax of DNA variability into specific niches is EVERYTHING ELSE, not teleology. Even the word "niche" is wrong, since it suggests womblike comfort. The edges of niches are razor sharp, and niches are defined by entire ecologies, not happy thoughts in the service of creature comforts.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
Its not offensive to be both a scientific and religious person, its offensive to use beliefs to drive facts. Facts are discovered, not preached.
Maybe I'm not using a compatible browser... was it blinking too?
Others can qualify for the ballot here in OK. These rules were put together to stop 100's of parties being on the ballot. It DOES cost money. OK, The rules may need to be adjusted.
If he was speaking at a public forum, instead of a tax-payer sponsored event, I might agree with you. Past abuse, by the liberals, against conservative speakers, may make the Politicians a little thin skinned.
BTW, you are playing the same game, by condemning all Republicans. As I tell my liberal friends, say that again, only substitute xxx (black, gay, Muslim, ...) for Republican and then decide if it now becomes hate speech? If so, you are a hypocrite.
The weather sucks everywhere, one way or another. (Floods, Earthquakes, Tornadoes, Hurricanes, Snow, Ice).
Never trust a man wearing a coat and tie!
> the Sun revolved around the Earth
The only thing we've learned which "contradicts" this is that it is simpler to consider the motions of the planets from the Sun's frame of reference. It is possible to use the Earth as a frame of reference, it's just not intuitive (isn't part of the basis of the theory of relativity that all frames of reference are created equal?). And no, I don't think we should be teaching Earth-centric scientific theories in our schools, or rather, only in history classes.
> And hopefully someday people will realize they are Just Plain Wrong about the existence
> of God, but unfortunately that's not as easily proven beyond a reasonable doubt as
> evolution.
How on Earth do you think it could be possible to prove the non-existence of an omnipotent entity? And why do you think there is some connection between "proof" and "belief"? I.e., even if you could prove such a thing, why do you think it would cause people to stop believing?
Religion is the adherence to a set of rules made by a particular culture hundreds or thousands of years ago, with small, rare changes in views. Science is the sum total of testable human knowledge from all cultures from the beginning of modern human history to the present. If Dawkins decided that all of science in 2009 was correct, and any new theories incompatible with 2009 science were wrong simply because they were new, he'd be religious.
Belief in a higher power has helped people cope with psychological stress and diseases of habit, but in my opinion, modern medicine has saved many hundreds million more lives than any spiritual affiliation. I'd wager that every single senator who supported that bill would laugh out loud if you suggested they visit a Shaman to cure cancer, but would accost you if you insisted that praying for someone had the same effect.
Some people just don't get it.
I'm sorry but as an atheist and wholehearted supporter of evolution, I still have to admit that Dawkins is an asshole.
As much as I used to be a fan of his writings, he seems to have blind faith that religion is the cause of every single problem in the entire universe, however unrelated, and is not afraid to admit it in the most asinine way possible. I don't like religion, but he takes it to quite a ridiculous extreme.
That being said, it shouldn't prevent him from speaking or anything. Universities invite assholes to speak all the time.
Quote: Please don't forget that it is a subset of "religious people" who are fighting to discredit science and impose their beliefs via government and laws. There are plenty of religious people who don't support those more extreme views. Belief in God and a respect and enthusiasm for science are not mutually exclusive. Maybe you should try to be more careful about making that distinction when using your vehement means.
See, if those nice people which are not the dark religious one would speak a tad bit more loudly, and fight way more that small subset, it would not be a problem. But it ain't happening. Only when the FULL spectrum of religion is attacked, the bigger subset raise the flag , protest , and say the smaller subset is responsible. Well. Yeah. You would be believable if you (the greater subset) did something against that plague. Surprisingly that is not what is apparent to the non-religious.
So.... When will be the nmext spontaneous big manifestation in the street, organized by you the bigger subset , on the street of oklahoma, to ask for tolerance of open idea, and when will you confront the smaller subset ? Don't let me hold my breath.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Is the bill not itself guilty of demonstrating an intolerance of diversity by attempting to prevent someone with opposing views from speaking about those views?
chrisbenge@okhouse.gov
subject: you are making national news
Dear Chris,
It might be good for you to note that your debate on House Bill 1015 is resulting in a mockery of your entire house.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/06/1726211
Are you aware that the Vatican sponsoring a five day conference to mark the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species. The subject is the compatibility of evolution and creation.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7920205.stm
You understand the bill itself is a contradiction?
The resolution begins:
"WHEREAS, the University of Oklahoma is a publicly funded institution which should be open to all ideas and should train students in all disciplines of study and research and to use independent thinking and free inquiry..."
By paragraph THREE it is condemning Dawkins for:
"views that are not shared and are not representative of the thinking of a majority of the citizens of Oklahoma"
I do not know if you support or do not support this bill but asspeaker you might want consider stopping this nonsense before more of the American people give up on the government's ability for rational thought.
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" Franklin
We are the Oklahoma Legislature! Nobody can out-stupider us!
If Dawkins would just say something bad about UT Austin football, they would give him a torchlight parade.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
Fine censor him then....there's no pleasing you people.
That's insufficient. I demand nothing less than a public crucifixion.
Wait...
We don't have the authority to do that.
You'll need to petiton your local Roman Magistrate.
So the guy I was responding to couldn't miss the fact that it was a hyperlink. He's apparently missed obvious things before.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
There are only 24 hours in a day. There is some finite number of radio stations in the country. If you pass a regulation stating that radio stations must allow some percentage of their time for "opposing viewpoints" that they would not normally air, then you are necessarily limiting someone else's speech by taking that time to speak away from one person and giving it to someone else.
For the people who think fairness doctrine is a net-good for "the marketplace of ideas," does that also mean you'd be okay with the FCC declaring that for every hour MSNBC airs Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, or Chris Matthews, they must also schedule an hour for Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Bill O'Reilly?
I didn't think so.
"Fairness Doctrine" is a polite way of saying "I'm going to use government regulations to force the people who don't agree with me to shut the fuck up."
If you don't agree with them, don't listen to them. Turn on Air America instead, and support a commercial enterprise that aligns with your beliefs.
Actually, eleven voted to block a amendment to prevent reinstatement, but 57 voted for an alternative method to 'encourage' 'minority ownership', which means they will try to force local ownership by Democrat friendly minorities, who will then boot conservative shows off the air.
Just out of curiosity, how is Richard Dawkins an idiot?
Some of us carry it one god further.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
I think we can all agree that religion does not belong in science, but I think that the religious would also say that science does not belong in religion. The two are unrelated to each other. One studies natural law while the other studies supernatural law. The problem is that people like Dawkins tells the religious that there can't be a God (which is beyond the domain of science) and the religious tell scientist that there MUST be a God (which is beyond the jurisdiction of faith). So although I respect Dawkins as a scientist, I do not respect his atheist dogma. (I am an agnostic).
The original theory of evolution -that all those bones in the ground implied the existence of evolution is easily shown to be false. Put the skeleton of a chihuahua next to that of a beagle next to that of a great dane. The theory would argue that this shows a historical track of evolution. But all these bones belong to the same species and are contemporaneous.
No, the theory of evolution would argue that they descended from a common ancestor. It would also argue that the two populations must have undergone significant selective pressure in order to diverge so much. Both predictions would be true.
Ergo - the morphology of bones is a very poor indicator of genetic change, and does in no way "prove" evolution occurred
Just because they're the same species doesn't mean they don't have different genes. And evolution has occurred between different breeds of dogs. Any change in the frequency of alleles in a population is evolution. In this example it's happened because of selection by man, instead of selection by nature. But the principle is the same.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Anytime the legislation tries to use it's legislative powers to silence an individual, ESPECIALLY on religious grounds, you should start taking immediate action to remove them from office. If I have to explain all the founding principles of this country they are violating, you really need to take a civics class.
Let's see, Dawkins, as an atheist, is saying that your religion (those not atheist) is wrong. Gee, let's see... Hmmm.... Yep, a quick review of all major religions reveals that they all say the same thing... Except they like to use the terms of heretic or pagan and the like. Most of them say things far worse than those people are misguided and wrong, several say they are evil and dangerous.
At a conference dedicated to the founding publication of what is probably the most important basis of biology, they didn't invite naysayers? Mind you, not critics, those would have to use science, and no, so called I.D. isn't science any more than Astrology is. Gee, I wouldn't invite them either. If they can get tickets and partake as audience members that don't cause disruption, that wouldn't be a problem either, but there is no way I'd be giving those anti-science demigogues a science spotlight.
Senator Jeff Bingaman, Democrat, New Mexico
"Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) told radio station 770 AM KKOB in Albuquerque, N.M., that he didn't know if Democrats in Congress will try to re-impose the Fairness Doctrine next year - but he would certainly like them to. Bingaman told the station he would support reimposition of the regulation - which was rescinded in 1987 - on the station."
Senator Debbie Stabenow, Democrat, Micigan
"Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., told radio host and WND columnist Bill Press yesterday when asked about whether it was time to bring back the so-called Fairness Doctrine: 'I think it's absolutely time to pass a standard. Now, whether it's called the Fairness Standard, whether it's called something else - I absolutely think it's time to be bringing accountability to the airwaves. I mean, our new president has talked rightly about accountability and transparency. You know, that we all have to step up and be responsible. And, I think in this case, there needs to be some accountability and standards put in place.' Stabenow's husband, Tom Athans, was executive vice president of the left-leaning talk radio network Air America. He left the network in 2006, when it filed for bankruptcy, and co-founded the TalkUSA Radio Network."
Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat, Iowa
"Well, anytime - just let me know Bill. I love being with you, and thanks again for all you do to get the truth and the facts out there. By the way, I read your Op-Ed in the Washington Post the other day. I ripped it out, I took it into my office and said 'there you go, we gotta get the Fairness Doctrine back in law again.'"
Former President Bill Clinton, Democrat:
"Well, you either ought to have the fairness doctrine or you ought to have more balance on the other side," Clinton said, "because essentially there has always been a lot of big money to support the right wing talk shows." Clinton cited the "blatant drumbeat" against the stimulus program from conservative talk radio, saying it doesn't reflect economic reality. "I think we need to have either more balance in the programs or some opportunity for people to offer counter-veiling opinions." He said he had not been in favor of getting rid of the fairness doctrine, which the FCC did back in 1987."
Let's not pretend like it's not something they'd like to see to silence at least some of conservative talk radio.
That's a long rant, that I won't dissect completely. The English language has these funny things called metaphors, similes, as well as Irony, sarcasm and poetry. Every/any combination of words can make sense. Ever read Finnegan's wake?
But basically when I say "science has become someone's religion". It means that they are going beyond the limits of science to try and argue for science. Some have said that Religion is an unprovable hypothesis. Which, I would agree to. That also means that it can not be disproved. Those that try to disprove an unprovable hypothesis are just as silly as those that do.
Above all, regardless of profession we are humans. Our career should not be the only thing to define us. So when I mean "Scientists should explore faith" I did not mean to imply that they should or needed to bring their scientific arsenal to bear on the problem of religion, but that they as humans should be open to all of the experiences humans can experience. Just as they are open to falling in love, despite a lack of concrete exacting scientific understanding of emotion.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
This is true, however Richard Dawkins bases his ideas on facts and observations and, like any good scientist, adjusts them to account even for inconvenient facts. Rush just ignores or tries to shout down inconvenient facts that don't match his ideology.
Wall of text is magnificent. I want one for my very own.
I once heard an interview with Dawkins (I think it was on NPR's Fresh Air) in which he claimed that virtually no "Theologians" believe in the miraculous anymore. Speaking as someone with a Master's in Theology, I can say this is utter nonsense, and I lost all respect for Dawkins at that point. Dawkins is no longer a scientist, if he ever was, but a theologian and evangelist of atheism. And, from what I can tell from the couple of books of his I've read and miscellaneous interviews and articles, he's far more judgmental and intolerant than most Christians.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
he is not a creationist. he is a total clown. he is the turkish counterpart of the kooks they put on fox news in america.
Read radical news here
One can carry on an interveiw and not look like an ass, even when it's been edited.
Any sufficiently advanced alien is indistinguishable from God.
Except that God, taken to mean an actual supernatural divine being such as the Christian God I believe in, does not require an explanation for its origin. "I AM" is His answer to the question of what he is and where he came from.
Any alien race, no matter how advanced it was at the time at which it decided to Design us, would nevertheless be natural and must have come from somewhere, and is thus subject to the same arguments of ID against such complexity arising naturally. Ergo, this god-like alien race must too have been Intelligently Designed by some other god-like race of alien beings, who also must have been designed... You see where this induction is going.
So the options basically are:
1) The universe is infinitely old and there are infinitely many alien races designing other races back through time with no beginning,
2) The "original" Intelligent Designers arose naturally, essentially disproving the central thesis of ID and eliminating the need for such Designers in the first place.
3) The "original" Intelligent Designers are supernatural beings, not in the sense of aliens who eventually developed technology so advanced they would appear to us like gods, but literally beings not subject to the rules of nature.
So there is a way to distinguish God and god-like aliens. Specifically, one is consistent with ID and the other isn't. The notion that Intelligent Design could be talking about aliens as the designers is nothing but a horseshit dodge put forward to avoid the obvious: ID is a thin veneer of sciency-ness plastered over Creationism. It's disingenuous, and as a Christian it offends me that they would try to get God through the door through such underhanded tricks.
The enemies of Democracy are
nutritional information on water bottles. Or labels on honey saying it is fat free, which is a good thing, but only in America is it a surprise.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
The point about dogs is actually a minimally good one. Some biologists like to bring it up when they think that paleontologists are getting too smug. But it doesn't quite work since we would see that the dating of all the species was about the same time period and would see that they have all all diverged rapidly from a very similar earlier species and would likely say "huh. Something weird is going on here." We would correctly get that the species were closely related but would likely have trouble telling much else.
But there's a more serious problem with your comment: You seem to be under the mistaken impression that the primary evidence for evolution is fossil evidence. That's simply not the case. There are many different pieces of evidence from many different disciplines. For example, we have the nested hierarchy from morphology and the genetic nested hierarchy which agree with each other. Indeed, even if we had no access to fossils at all, the evidence for evolution would still be very strong simply based on genetics.
The rest of your post has similar problems; whether or not we can identify the exact cause of any specific mutation does not mean we don't have a working theory of evolution. We in fact have a very good understanding of mutations and selection pressures and can identify certain types of mutations as due to specific effects. Moreover, you may want to look up the word "philosophy" since it doesn't seem to mean what you think it means.
Your understanding of religion and Christianity is similarly flawed. Most major Christian denominations have little or no problem with an allegorical reading of the beginning of Genesis (indeed the summary of TFA says just that).
Moreover, you misunderstand why many atheists care about evolution. Many atheists like many religious people care deeply about how we got here. Many atheists, like many religious people see the overwhelming evidence for evolution and get annoyed when people try to spread ignorance and lies about. Finally, the atheists who care about evolution for two additional reasons: 1) evolution leaves one fewer unaccounted things for someone to shout God did it and 2) many atheists think that the Biblical text was meant to be read literally. Thus, in that regard, those atheists are like many liberal Christians and Jews who are willing to concede that the text is highly imperfect. However, many atheists see this as an argument for rejecting the Biblical text as a whole. Thus, in that regard some atheists are actually in agreement with the Biblical literalists about how the text should be read.
Doesn't the legislature have more important stuff to do?
Two wrongs do not make a right
True, but sometimes three lefts do.
Squirrel!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_attainder
Name them. You're saying a Democratic Congressman is trying to bring back the Fairness Doctrine, so surely you can actually name this congressman, right? Right?
How about Nancy Pelosi?
On June 24, 2008, U.S. Representative Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, California (who had been elected Speaker of the House in January 2007) told reporters that her fellow Democratic Representatives did not want to forbid reintroduction of the Fairness Doctrine, adding "the interest in my caucus is the reverse." When asked by John Gizzi of Human Events, "Do you personally support revival of the 'Fairness Doctrine?'", the Speaker replied "Yes." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Yes, and then we get the ultimate and most-abused source of power and force in our society to also tell us what "equal access" means as they give us the opinions that we all should have.
Thanks for all that hot sticky fairness.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
Tell that to the Democratic Congressman who are trying to bring back the so-called "Fairness Doctrine"
It'll never happen. The current policy is "allow large corporations to underwrite conservative talk radio and convince people that voting against their economic interests is 'macho' and 'rugged'" (while whining about the 'liberal media').
It sucks, but it's better than "there are only two sides to every story, and we're going to treat them as if they're both equally valid." How would the "Fairness Doctrine" apply to slavery? Equal time for slaveholders?
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Actually, nope.
From "Lord of Light" by Roger Zelazny:
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
I think you're equivocating on the use of "religion". Religion requires "faith". Trust in evidence and theories built on them is not faith.
It's more appropriate to say that "Science is his passion."
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
Um... no.
Quick answer: we're farm animals. An alien race created us for their dinner tables. Their book "how to serve man" is a cookbook.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Oh how I wish to have something similar here (Poland); our law "against religious discrimination" in theory means that you can't make anyone FEEL (I kid you not) offended, but in practise it's even worse - you can't make catholic christians feel offended, while they can freely threaten you with perspective of eternal torture (that includes traumatising schoolchildren with this perspective of course)
Luckily there's some movement to abolish that, we just have to make a little more stir... (and thankfully, beeing in EU is some sort of protection at this point - not only procedural; the rest of Europe would be laughing at this country even more...)
One that hath name thou can not otter
Blaise Pascal: "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
Steven Weinberg: "I think that on the balance the moral influence of religion has been awful. With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil. But for good people to do evil -- that takes religion."
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Thanks for the substantiation. I'd heard of Limbaugh shoveling crap about the Democrats' position on it, but nothing nearly as reliable as a series of quotes a guy pasted in a comment thread on the Internet. ;)
Seriously, I didn't realize that anyone was still actually considering reinstituting the Fairness Doctrine. I'll be a bit more alert when I hear Democratic talking points.
For the record, I generally recognize the authority of the FCC to impose the doctrine at its discretion, but wish that it didn't have that power and instead focused on increasing diversity of ownership.
Evidently, the key to understanding recursion is to begin by understanding recursion. The rest is easy.
Hint: He was misled when he was approached about the film, and it was a "guerilla" style interview that will put anyone on the defensive.
What speaks more to me is how they treated the people they asked to be in the movie. Bunch of fucking hypocrites if you ask me.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Indeed. Dawkins, like Chomsky, uses language very precisely.
When Dawkins uses words like 'deluded' and 'unsophisticated' a great many people take them as insults rather than interpreting them based on their dictionary definitions.
threw and through are two different words. Learn the meaning jackass.
He can just take it down the road to Oral Roberts University.. I am sure they are more open to this kind of thing.
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
Well, of those to criticize my usage of that phrase, you come the closest to discussing it in a rational manner. I would say that there are some people, Dawkins included, whose defense of scientific theories goes beyond what science actually says. And when you do that, go beyond the tested and verified theories, you are in the same grey area as religions.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
You can't have a reasonable debate with some churches. Watch Religulous, with Bill Maher. Catholics may think you're wrong, but they tend to be pretty nice about it. And science is generally accepted... it has been that way with Catholics pretty much since that whole Galileo debacle :P
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
He probably forgot to close the tag... I've done it before
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
It makes perfect sense. Science has become Dawkins' "Higher Power," and he has become a religious fundamentalist in the worship of his own deity. Just because it's not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob doesn't make it any less a religion.
-JS
Vanity of vanities, all is vanity...
I'm both a scientist and a Christian (I was basically an atheist from the ages of ~16-35), and I have to say I'm appalled at anti-evolutionists and the like. There is nothing important to Christianity that contradicts evolution or anything else in modern science.
Religion (at least as I understand the term after quite a few years) is not a license to propagate ardent nonsense, and I do believe the anti-evolutionists are engaging in ardent nonsense. The Bible is a guide to help us lead our lives as God intends (albeit a very confusing and misleading guide without sufficiently careful study). It is not a history text, and is most certainly not a science text.
I believe in the scientific method, and believe that the findings of science are generally correct. If science seems to contradict something about religion, then it means my understanding of *religion* is not sufficiently advanced. This has not happened for me in many years.
I also believe in being politely respectful of others' views, whether they are believers or non-believers. This sort of civility seems to be lacking on both sides of this argument.
Just out of curiosity, in what way is Richard Dawkins an idiot?
There is quite a bit of "what" and "how" in the Bible.
Indeed, the Bible contains explicit data from which we can deduce that heaven is hotter than hell!
* Lower bound on temperature of Heaven: 525C.
* Upper bound on temperature of Hell: 445C.
The thermodynamic analysis leading to this result can be found in Applied Optics, 11, A14 (1972).
Religions don't seem to know when they are making assertions which have scientifically testable implications.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
For what it's worth, Pres. Obama has stated (via press release, at least), and recently reiterated that this is the approach he prefers as well.
From the press release referenced in the first link above: "That is why Sen. Obama supports media-ownership caps, network neutrality, public broadcasting, as well as increasing minority ownership of broadcasting and print outlets."
For the record, I oppose reinstating the Fairness Doctrine, and I think "media-ownership caps" and "increasing minority ownership of broadcasting and print outlets," will probably translate in practice into "pretty much like the fairness doctrine, but with a different name." With that in mind, however, I would have no objection to government oversight intended to ensure that *anybody* wanting to own/operate a media outlet has the chance to do so, and is allowed to succeed or fail in the market on the merits of the content they produce & distribute.
If there aren't enough people in your market who want to listen to the programming you choose to broadcast, then find a better business model.
I totally agree with you. I just finished watching Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed last night. As an atheist, I was embarrassed after watching the final interview with him. He came off as pompous and ignorant.
Don't be, it was just the editors working a little of their movie magic.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Richard Dawkins does "demonstrate an intolerance for cultural diversity and diversity of thinking". I see him as the atheist's Rush Limbaugh.
In tolerance of ignorance is not the same as "demonstrate an intolerance for cultural diversity and diversity of thinking"
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
As a student of the University of Oklahoma, I apologize for the government of OK. The students here (for the most part) are interested to see what he has to say. Try not to generalize the state based off of our idiotic leadership.
> Hundreds of years ago, the religious also honestly believed based on biblical evidence that the Sun revolved around the Earth.
Yeah, except not. Didn't you ever take a history of science class?
At the time, the evidence they had made the theory that the Sun revolved around the Earth the weaker one. The theory you're repeating is widely claimed on the web, but it's so bad I'd say it's not even wrong.
For one, no one could measure stellar parallax (it's too small). I mean, how could you expect to claim that the Earth was moving if the stars didn't move enough to measure? How can you expect them to believe that, just because it simplifies some calculations, the Earth is actually moving even though you CAN'T see the stellar parallax (and they DID know that they should be able to see it).
The Bible had very little to do with it. Aristotle had a lot more. Please don't make up reasons why people believed things. We know the actual reasons people believed things. Although they were right (and eventually vindicated), they did not have enough evidence to prove their theories.
Thanks to thinking like this, we can expect that someday, we'll be ridiculed for thinking that [crackpot scientific theory that happens to be right] was ridiculous just because there was only a little bit of proof for it and a bunch of gaping holes in the theory no one had yet filled in.
his 2006 book "The God Delusion," and public statements on the theory of evolution demonstrate an intolerance for cultural diversity and diversity of thinking
No, you fucktards, your attitude is the intolerant one. Mr. Dawkins makes claims, cites the supporting evidence, and draws conclusions, and then arrives at an opinion that he can solidly argue. And - from what I've seen of him - he does not mind listening to those who have a different opinion, and doesn't deny them forum.
Oh yes, he also doesn't belong to a group of people with a thousand year history of silencing and killing its opponent. Like you.
If the penalty for stupidity were death, Oklahoma would have to hold new elections.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Science and religion overlap by virtue of both attempting to explain nature's wonders.
Science is application of logic to discovery of nature's wonders. It never concludes anything, instead constantly refining based on evidence.
A religion is a set of metaphors purporting to explain nature's wonders. Its conclusions can be amended only by strife.
... Richard Dawkins of Oxford University, whose published statements on the theory of evolution and opinion about those who do not believe in the theory are contrary and offensive to the views and opinions of most citizens of Oklahoma.
How does views and opinions of any majority matter in the context of science???
(Science is NOT democrazy).
That the Oklahoma House of Representatives encourages the University of Oklahoma to engage in an open, dignified, and fair discussion of the Darwinian theory of evolution
If Dawkins really is a troll who is only going to talk about how stupid people who does believe in creationism is, then I don't see what's wrong with stating that you do not agree. :)
Nevertheless if he was troll, then he'd probably not be of Oxford University...
As someone living (trapped?) in Oklahoma, I can say it doesn't come as much a surprise. The state government pulling publicity stunts like this to give conservatives something to chew on isn't exactly an uncommon occurrence. Still, legislating opinion -- and that's exactly what it is -- is a fallacy. The majority of Oklahoma citizens, contrary to whats stated in the bill, don't care let alone even know who Richard Dawkins is.
Whoever modded this interesting is a fucking moron.
This "God" to whom you refer, is he the one who is claimed to have created that Adam fellow from mud? Of what was this "mud" composed? Was it the standard mud that supplies nutrients to growing plants? Or is it a metaphor for some sort of advanced technology, the grey goo of scifi? Or is it a metaphor for aggregate composition of order from chaos over time? Or is it simply Divine Will, a metaphor for something one refuses to further investigate?
Or is religion (a) originally an attempt at explaining nature's wonders; and (b) now simply a means of forming and maintaining social groups?
I would agree that your religion and evolution were not mutually exclusive if your religion's statements about Man's origins provided testable theories that bore the weight of the evidence.
This "God" to whom you refer, is he the one who is claimed to have created that Adam fellow from mud? Of what was this "mud" composed? Was it the standard mud that supplies nutrients to growing plants? Or is it a metaphor for some sort of advanced technology, the grey goo of scifi? Or is it a metaphor for aggregate composition of order from chaos over time? Or is it simply Divine Will, a metaphor for something one refuses to further investigate?
That, of course, depends on one's beliefs and which God (if any) is the basis of those beliefs.
Or is religion (a) originally an attempt at explaining nature's wonders; and (b) now simply a means of forming and maintaining social groups?
Probably bot at the same time.
I would agree that your religion and evolution were not mutually exclusive if your religion's statements about Man's origins provided testable theories that bore the weight of the evidence.
They need not be testable if you no do not believe they are literal explanations of how we came into being. After all, we scientists and engineers often explain phenomena in a manner that is understandable but necessarily 100% accurate in order to get ideas across to lay people.
So, from that perspective there is no contradiction for someone to believe in God and accept evolution as a rational scientific explanation for how we came to be.
What I find interesting about your post is I did not at any time profess to believe in any particular religion or God, yet you immediately reacted in a negative and condescending manner. That, IMHO, is what prevents dialogue between opposing viewpoints.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
That's a long rant, that I won't dissect completely. The English language has these funny things called metaphors, similes, as well as Irony, sarcasm and poetry. Every/any combination of words can make sense. Ever read Finnegan's wake?
Finnegan's Wake is a modern-day sword in the stone. Many have tried to read it, but none have succeeded.
For Christ's sake, we have *cooking directions* on POPTARTS. We have chain saws with explicit warning labels to keep you from touching the flying blades with your fingers. My tractor's digging bit has a giant warning label depicting someone getting wrapped around the screw, and people STILL get killed by the damn things. At hospitals, motorcycle riders are referred to only as organ donors. How many people have fallen into a wood chipper, or tried to clean an obstruction while the thing was on and gotten eaten? I can't remember the last time I've gone a month without hearing of somebody dying due to their own stupidity. Americans steal high-voltage power lines for the copper, cut through tree limbs above themselves, and screw anything that moves, without protection.
I think you're making two big mistakes here:
First, you seem to assume that those labels are really meant for people who are stupid enough to deliberately take the depicted action which causes injury. No court would really accept liability for a company that made a chainsaw when someone deliberately stuck their fingers up to it -- most likely this is there to prevent people who acted recklessly from claiming that they didn't know how big of a risk their was in whatever action they took that led to flesh touching whirling chain. (And if you're implying that half of America would be killing themselves at any moment now but for a few good labels, I think you're exaggerating a bit.)
Second, what the heck is wrong with proper cooking directions for Pop-Tarts? Cooking something without directions without ruining the food (or in the case of Pop-Tarts, creating a hazardous risk to the soft, burnable tissues in your mouth) is a skill for experienced cooks only, and Pop-Tarts are a food product marketed to people who don't cook for themselves mostly.
I'd like to see you cook something you've never cooked before without any directions. Go ahead -- roast a duck or do something tasty with jicama or even just warm up some random frozen food item in the toaster oven without knowing what temperature and how long you're supposed to heat it. Pop-Tart instructions are practical.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Its sad that such problems exist, that we live in a country where the flags of ideals is so easily torn by the very ones who claim to defend it on both sides. Oh, yes, when confronted by the outside world, as we so tend to easily within our own, both sides included, we furiously defend our ideals, theological or not, against the forces that seek to merely speak out. And so now, I find myself so inclined to throw my own opinion into this swirling mass of ideological thunderclouds. You can argue the existence of god or not, throw around the ideas of proving "its" existence "beyond reasonable doubt." You can do all these things and yet, you will be left with one small undeniable fact that no matter what you do, it cannot be escaped nor eluded, no matter how barrier of faith and reason you put to it. None of you know. And none of you will ever know until one small event occurs. Until you die, you will not know. Until your final breath is drawn and the last beat of your heart is exerted and you pass into the unknown, you will not know. Place whatever barriers you choose to put it, but know this. In faith and scientific reason, there is nothing that any of you have that concretely says YOU ARE RIGHT. Those of faith do not, and neither do those of science. And yet, you are all so drawn, like moths to a flame to find yourselves in the firestorm of logic and faith, so blind to that one simple reality. You really don't know.
Im From Oklahoma.. And Im sad to say we have people in out Political area that dont seem to think that people should be able to think for themselves. :( By doing this makes Oklahoma Look very bad.
That term has been used widely for things like affirmative action, political correctness etc. I've seen it used a lot by people with agendas.
I think the largely right leaning creationists used the wording "cultural diversity" as a jab at liberals and they see it as fighting fire with fire.
How does he not allow for that, exactly? Just because he is able to argue logically, factually and rationally for his position doesn't mean that he doesn't allow for the open exchange of ideas. And what do you mean by "one sided view"? Are you saying that he shouldn't express his own opinions?
Clever signature text goes here.
Wow, another idiot creationist without a clue. Go figure.
Clever signature text goes here.
You just described every single IDist/Creationist in the world.
Clever signature text goes here.
But he does not.
Again, he does not.
You are nothing but a pathetic liar who is attacking Dawkins because you cannot argue factually and rationally against his arguments.
Clever signature text goes here.
Actually, I think its a just a really good CAPTCHA. Its like the Waking life of its time. A book version of Pulp fiction that wasn't glitzed up with violence.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Except that "militant atheists" write books and hold speeches, while militant creationists start wars and blow up abortion clinics.
Since the word militant itself conjures up an image of someone who uses violence to further his goal, I'd say that Richard Dawkins is certainly not militant.
Bingo! That's what they are arguments. Not theories or even hypotheses : arguments. Arguments occasionally presented as hypotheses. And that's why I don't have much respect for him. There is no scientific theory called "the God Delusion", its an argument. He might be right, he might be wrong. Hes wrong for the same freaking reason why intelligent design is wrong. Which is just about the most ironic thing imaginable.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
God job avoiding the question, but no fair changing the rules. Please remain devil's advocate, the context in which you assigned yourself the role of Believer. I did catch from your original post that you're not in fact the True Believer, and incidentally agree with your main point about misappropriation of cultural diversity. (Perhaps I should've led with that...)
Probably bot at the same time.
Of course not, thus the "originally" and the "now".
Metaphor is certainly a useful tool in building a basis for understanding in students or layfolk. Continuing with the metaphor as fact after that however is rather a problem. It leads to all sorts of nastiness like insistence that the metaphor is The Truth rather than simply a metaphor.
Clinging to a metaphor such that it warms the heart is entirely understandable. One must nevertheless endeavor to separate fantasy from reality, and not excuse those who fail to do so, because those are the people who will make your children's lives miserable with their foolishness.
He didn't mean "stupid" as an insult. He meant it as a description of Stein's ignorance. And Stein clearly IS ignorant. Well, ignorant or extremely dishonest, in which case insulting him shouldn't be a problem. But Dawkin thought that he was honestly ignorant.
Clever signature text goes here.
It's a resolution, not a bill. For those of you who don't know the difference, repeat high school civics.
Of course, the people voting for it are as dumb as frogs, but that's another story.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Because IDiots lie. They have nothing what so ever of value to contribute with, as they have proven time and time again. Remember rule #1: Creationists lie.
Who does? Everyone on Slashdot? Far from it.
It is a big deal because IDiots are actively trying to undermine the scientific method and scientific progress.
No one wants to silence anyone, you fucking moron. Just because IDiots are unable to get their unscientific, religious crap forced into science doesn't mean that they are being silenced.
It isn't. Well known Evolution supporters like Ken Miller are religious. The problem is when religious people start lying and deceiving in order to undermine science, which is what IDiots always do.
Clever signature text goes here.
Yeah, especially when the interview is edited specifically to make you look like an ass. Idiot.
Clever signature text goes here.
Dawkins argues against irrational beliefs. He does not attack people. Nice try, though.
Clever signature text goes here.
Pope John Paul II understood this, which is why he reproached Stephen Hawking for getting close to an absolute proof of the lack of need of a god from the moment of the Big Bang.
Refer to Hawking's best seller "A brief history of time" where he relates the incident.
What you fail miserably to understand is that scientists are arriving to the conclusion that a god does not exist tangentially: Darwin did not study natural selection as a means to negate religion, simply natural selection does not require a god at all to function, but that is a secondary discovery, not the main aim of Darwin studies.
Ditto with Hawking and many other scientists.
What Dawkin does is to collate all those tangential and secondary conclusions against the existence of a god and presents them as a coordinated understanding of how our universe works, which is that all scientific evidence point to a universe that needs no god to at all to exist and function.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
No, you idiot. Science is a method, not an authority. Scientific knowledge is ever-changing, and is not infallible.
Clever signature text goes here.
If you investigate how, and that how sayas that no who is necessary then what?
Your simplification is useful but I don;t think it is leading where you would have liked it to...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Genetics disproves creationism.
The genetic pool of species that descend from a small number of ancestors is very small and can be measured.
The cheetah for example is suffering terribly because this, it is believed that all modern cheetahs descend from a very small group of animals.
If humanity descended from a single couple (with identical genes mind you, if you believe literally the Bible) then our genetic variety would be much smaller than it is (as a matter of fact different populations of people have different levels of genetic variation, people in Iceland for example are pretty much a big family.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The reason is that you are spreading lies. Remember rule 1: Creationists lie.
Complete and utter nonsense. All creationists arguments I've heard so far are blatant lies. You confirm this by linking to the blatant liar Kent Hovind.
Clever signature text goes here.
False. He convinced me, among others. I was undecided, and actually held a weak belief in God.
You are an idiot.
Clever signature text goes here.
Would be Darwin's views on God as opposed to Dawkin's views on the lack of one.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
How? More precisely: when faced with the various choices presented to you in life, how can you know which of the alternatives are good and which are evil? The way I see it, this is a question atheists have no good answer for, period. You can't any more or less appeal to your upbringing as providing the answers than the theist can appeal to his upbringing to justify his belief.
Not that the theist is doing great with regard to this problem either: he's basically traded the problem of knowing what's good for the problem of knowing what God wants.
Are you adequate?
Hmm, well isn't the whole notion of a cohesive "God" entity INDUCED into the whole equation in the first place? Where, when, and how did this hypothesis ever get beyond fable status?
Why aren't we debating the existence of orange basketball-shaped beings who sing the universe into existence? Could it be because we would prefer the source of the universe to be something like ourselves?
I guarantee the Slashdot crowd, there is no singular entity behind everything that is... no composite being with parts, history, preferences, or anything conditioned or non-transcendent. It seems clear to my inductive reasoning and intuition that the universe is a unified phenomenon - no separation of the physical universe from its source in the eternal present.
The sort of God most modern people seem to believe in is a folly, but people find it useful to pretend he exists so they can justify their preferences, opinions, and bigotries. Sure, there is the rare mystic who uses this concept as an object of contemplation and actually gains insight as a result, but by and large most people have a retarded notion of reality.
The Atheists who deny any sort of spiritual aspect are likewise deluded. Both Theists and Atheists alike for the most part are ideologues trying to one-up each other, both feeling smugly superior.
Fact is, meditative practices and prescriptions like the noble eightfold path and the esoteric teachings of Jesus are meant to help people drop their pointless views on these subjects and get them into direct contact with the non-dualistic reality of which they are an intrinsic part.
Of course, these reasonable practices are not widely promulgated in our media or our capitalist culture. Instead everything revolves around the pointless argument as to whether or not there are fairies and unicorns. Of course, we can't have people getting liberated from their ignorance and growing into fully-realized humans. So-called civil society might collapse!
-- thinkyhead software and media
"Religion for all."
"Boo!"
"Very well, no religion for anyone."
"BOO!"
"Hmm... religion for some, secular government for others!"
"YAY!"
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Mod parent informative. Inhofe did indeed invite an anti-science fiction writer to present "scientific" evidence. IMHO Chriton is an excellent author of fiction, meme's that he popularised in his book "State of fear" such as "AGW is a religion" and "scientists are are in it for the grant money", are still common on slashdot.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I'm not sure saying they have "different bone structure" is accurate. While the 3 canines you mentioned vary considerably in size and therefore the bones differ in length, thickness and proportion they all probably have the same bones in the same locations and a future paleontologist may be easily able to tell they were the same species or at least be able to surmise they were very closely related.
Except that God, taken to mean an actual supernatural divine being such as the Christian God I believe in, does not require an explanation for its origin. "I AM" is His answer to the question of what he is and where he came from.
That, I think, is where scientists and believers differ. Scientists would like to know why, exactly, this particular Christian (or Islamic, or Jewish, or Hindu, etc.) God exists, and not one or more of any number of other possible gods (Zeus, Baal, Ra). Does causality have meaning for gods? Do gods always know they are gods, or do some think they are merely an evolved being in a random universe? In theory, any god would work for intelligent design, the outcome would just be different based on their personality. What is the ordinal number of God in relation to other sets, for instance the universal set of positive set theory or new foundations? Do things exist because god causes them to, or is existence an independent property of things? Are there other possible realities where things exist that even an omnipotent god in our universe has no control (or possible even knowledge) of?
Once those simple questions were answered, it would make sense to discover what sort of being god is, e.g. does perfect omniscience preclude free will or merely break causality (which, in a sense, sort of breaks free will to an extent)? Does omnipotence extend to self-altering actions, including perhaps the ability to give up omnipotence? Basically, the ultimate question is whether the domain of god's omniscience includes god himself, or if god is entirely separate from his range of possible actions (e.g. is god unchangeable?) and furthermore whether or not god plans out all the possible quantum futures of the universe when using omniscience, or only looks down the lines he knows (chooses) the world will go?
Beyond that, it would be nice to know if mathematics is an inherent property of the universe, or perhaps of god himself, that would turn out the same given the same axioms in some other universe, and what the question answered by 42 is.
However The Scientific Method is Infallible!!!
Also, Genesis 1 and 2 generally follow the idea that living things started simple and got more complex. The fact that all life has essentially just GATTACA would argue for one source of all life... Big bang is another. Where does matter come from? Energy. Where does energy come from? Matter. *Must invent New rules*
I am very interested in science. I believe in (or am convinced of) the existence of God, mainly because it explains why so much bad happens. And it predicts What this whole discussion is discussing...
Well I am glad I don't live in Oklahoma anymore. Attitudes like this are why I left that place. And its not just OK. There are a lot of ignorant morons in this country. They have a right to their opinion but don't try to legislate out someone else's lectures because you disagree? Did you not learn about science or for that matter freedom of speech? I am tired of right wing religious nuts. They need to &*&% themselves and go to &*&?.
The Bible never actually says anything about how long it took to create the world (unless, of course, you take a literal look at the Bible, and then it's 6 days).
You know, sometimes I marvel at how, despite the overwhelming odds of complete failure, evolution can create as complex a web of interdependent systems as a human.
I think that the vast majority of people would have to be seriously defective, somehow, for natural selection to have a strong effect. And yet I look around, and most people are quite healthy, and functional, and capable of working and reading and writing and reproducing. And the majority of children, even without the small amount of postnatal care that Western medicine provides, would survive into adulthood to be (by most criteria) perfectly functional people. And of the millions of children born annually, most of them do not have third arms or twelve toes or weird horns or hair on their eyeballs. And the vast majority can not only easily breathe air and digest foods but even heal wounds and withstand bacterial infection. It's really amazing when you think about it.
But then I see something like this; a post, in the middle of a rather serious public intellectual discussion about logic and religion and matters of deep consideration; a post, so utterly devoid of meaning or even review as to call into question not only the judgment of it's author, but the purely horrifying Lovecraftian processes that must have spawned it. Every once in a while I see something like this and it reminds me of how the rest of you drooling retards are mostly just thinly-veiled automatons masquerading as thinking people, barely managing to do a slightly better job of interpreting and regurgitating what you have heard than a twelve-line Perl script; that it's a miracle you manage to continue breathing and using indoor plumbing despite what should be crippling mental defects. And it temporarily restores my faith in evolution.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Bwahahahahaha!*ROFLCOPTER*
You have to be joking!
Surely you jest?!?!?!?
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
After reading this story earlier in the day, I decided to attend. I honestly hadn't been aware that Dawkins was lecturing tonight at OU.
It was a fun speaking engagement, but a bit boring. Dawkins tends to try to do two things at all times: make everything easy to understand AND carefully avoid oversimplification or poor analogy. The result is a very vague and shallow discussion of evolutionary biology.
I expected a bunch of crazy people, but there honestly wasn't anything too bad.
One guy asked a question about atheism and morality, but no fireworks or drama.
That was my big FU to those against this OU lecture
Which just this week recently declared Pluto a planet, I'm somewhat relieved that Oklahoma has decided to one-up us in the "Most Asinine Law" contest. At least now I won't have to hear about how stupid and corrupt our politicians are... for a week or so.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
You've obviously not visited/lived in Oklahoma.
We do not put up with those 'Pinko, commie, terrorist fags here![apply sarcasm heavily]
OU only worded the announcement to CYA[display displeasure without actually censoring the speaker]. The will of the people here in OK would back that up.
Oklahoma is a very conservative/neocon state by majority. We are in the Bible Belt, proud of it, and seem to take it to absurd extremes. {no, I am not part of the majority here-it drives me insane mostly}
Think back to the Sen. McCarthy/J. Edgar Hoover Era...it is that way today in OK.(check election results!) For the first time in decades we have a Republican House and Senate both in state. (we[as a state, not individuals] jumped on the neocon/Family Values/Moral Majority bandwagon the past several Pres. elections- the State seems upset that McCain/Palin did not win) Outside of OSU[Oklahoma State University], the whole state went 'nuts' this past election, from my perspective....I look forward with trepidation to this new administration of Obama's, and hope for the best.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
I love how the summary is supposed to make me agree with it. Richard Dawkins does in fact "demonstrate an intolerance for cultural diversity and diversity of thinking." His comments are very hostile to certain ways of thinking or belief systems, and that hostility has no place in a tolerant society.
If for some reason you believe science is incapable of error and the future as predicted by most sci-fi you've ever read or watched is never going to happen and that we will never regret our lack of tolerance or realize we've made mistakes, then go ahead and slam them for saying it.
If on the other hand you have a basic knowledge of history or some common-sense or better yet, a little wisdom, you'd realize his acidic tone toward Christians and their beliefs is both unnecessary and dangerous, no matter how much you may agree with his beliefs or perspective.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
It hasn't failed yet.
himi
My very own DeCSS mirror.
``Hello, Mrs Dawkins, we've been watching some Tom Baker-era DVDs and we wonder if you'd like to come to Oklahoma. No, no, leave him at home. What, he's booked to come here anyway? Look, why don't you come instead: we'll get your ticket swapped over. No? We can legislate, you know...''
ian
Yes, exactly! Dawkins treats Science as an Authority! That is part of what I meant any ways.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
When Jesus said man doesn't live by bread alone... I was thinking maybe Satan had turned all the bread to stones and he was just offering Christ the opportunity to change them back, sort of a professional courtesy, one magician to another. I know that sounds unlikely, but bear with me. Science at best considers all mythologies to be allegories, if they have any meaning at all. The allegory-makers would have included some device in the allegories to dissuade people from taking them literally. Thus, Satan would be the cautionary figure who's inclusion is meant to warn you away from that mistake. Satan then, is the character who changes words into icons, bread into stones. And Jesus, of course rejects this, and so should you. Nothing personal, just that science is not subject to belief.
So how is it exactly you can equate Limbaugh and Dawkins?
Ah... finally a question I can answer. This is simple, they're both homo-sapiens and therefore likely decendants of apes.
Well at least Dawkins is...
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
Most Christians accept modern biology, just as they accept modern cosmology or medicine.
Mass-belief in Creationism is as peculiar to the US (or should I say, parts of the US) as alien abductions, fake moon-landings, or hand-gun rights.
It's not difficult. That which does the least harm is the good choice. No need to believe in anything to see that. Is that answer good enough for you?
Respectful is a word being thrown around a lot by believers of some god or another, but it always means the same thing. Do not question, do not criticize. I am sorry, but I am not buying. People can believe whatever they want - I sincerely do not care. But when they ask me, to "respect" their particular brand of nonsense, I am all too happy to utter the words "Fuck off".
To be fair, ignoring Catholic teachings is not something I would criticise a legislature for.
An admirable sentiment Mr. cens0r, but Jack Valenti is dead.
"It doesn't cost enough, and it makes too much sense."
To be fair, ignoring Catholic teachings is not something I would criticise a legislature for.
Nor I; I was just pointing out that not all Christians think evolution and faith can't coexist. In fact, some actually support the idea that evolution is a valid scientific theory for explaining how we came to be and that that does not imply the lack of a God.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
God job avoiding the question, but no fair changing the rules. Please remain devil's advocate,
Would being an advocate for teh devil not require me toi believe in his existance?
Metaphor is certainly a useful tool in building a basis for understanding in students or layfolk. Continuing with the metaphor as fact after that however is rather a problem.
That is the difference, IMHO, between religion and faith. Faith is a personal belief in a creator who has a plan (which we cannot fathom) and a willingness to accept that plan. It is, to me, a deeply personal thing that does not require either the validation or understanding of others; nor my attempting to force it on others.
Religion, on the other hand is a set of dogma that attempts to impose rules on its adherence and often, IMHO, interferes with faith. Religion, not faith, is the cause of many problems; especially when it is blindly followed by people who cannot accept divergent viewpoints and seek to force their correct beliefs on others.
It leads to all sorts of nastiness like insistence that the metaphor is The Truth rather than simply a metaphor.
Clinging to a metaphor such that it warms the heart is entirely understandable. One must nevertheless endeavor to separate fantasy from reality, and not excuse those who fail to do so, because those are the people who will make your children's lives miserable with their foolishness.
That's because religion can result in narrow minded fools who must have the right answer; and are to weak to think for themselves.
Religious stories,if viewed as that - stories that provide insight and attempt to explain the why, not the how, of God's plan are fine. Taking them as gospel and literal depictions of the how is where religion starts to go wrong.
I understand and share your concern about the impact of such literal interpretations on others. I had a friend who the local Fellowship of Christian Athletes did not went to let join because he was Catholic, and hence not Christian (according to their religious views). Once again religion rears it's ugly head. To his credit, he said FU and joined anyway.
That's not say religion is bad - if it gives you comfort to have a structure and defined beliefs, fine. Just don't attempt to force others to follow your dogma. Explain it, live it, take comfort in it just leave me out of it.
So, to sum up; I think you need to separate faith from religion. Once you do that; there is no conflict between science and God. In fact, you could say God was a pretty darn good engineer for developing the evolutionary process; or you can say there is no God and continue to work in the realm of science.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Succinctly, If it hasn't failed yet, then it hasn't succeeded either, yet.
Scientists are as genetically defective as the rest of the human family, studies strongly suggest that scientists can be as hardheaded about their pet projects as the rest of us, and more creative and articulate about defending them and attacking others.
For example, there are two main theories of the origin of life, basically replication first or Metabolism first. Two scientists were quoted in a science mag (I forget which) and they both called the other's theory "Out of the realm of science."
Atheism may not be a religion but it IS an unfounded religious stand just like that held by any other form of 'believer'. If belief rather than evidence is the foundation of the stand it doesn't belong in a school.
If Dawkins is being brought in to speak about evolution from an agnostic and scientific standpoint that is one thing but he has no more right to preach his religious stance than any of the other nuts.
It really gets me how both sides tend to approach the other as mutually exclusive. Darwinism does noy mean that God does not exist. Nor does belief in God mean that you can not accept the theory of Darwinism. The only exception here is if you take the Bible literally, which is foolish, because that also means you believe in slavery, killing people for simple offenses, and a host of other nonesense that these people don't actually believe in. They take portions of the Bible that are convenient to them and believe it literally, and conveniently forget those that do not agree with their faith. I hope the Vatican council gets it right, and decrees that there is no conflict between Darwinism and faith. This is what the creationists fear, and by not being invited, they can not exercise their heavy handed practices at the council.
Open Source: Eroding the Digital Divide
I'd say the 'foundation' for atheism is evolution! At least part of the foundation anyway! And you don't so much believe evolution either, rather you examine the evidence and conclude it is the most likely mechanism by which we, and all the other species on the planet, got here.
That seems to be the difference between the religious and the scientists. The religious seem to only have a "religion" shaped hole and try to shoehorn the scientist's arguments into it and end up saying things like ".. he has no more right to preach his religious stance ...". The scientists, on the other hand, have a "science" shaped hole and equally wrongly try to massage religious belief into it, ending up being frustrated by the apparent religion-blinkers put up to their 'reasonable' scientific arguments ("how can you not see the Earth is not flat!").
Of course, the other difference is that the religious tend to say "this is THE answer" and dogmatically refuse to budge, whereas scientists should be saying "with the current level of knowledge, this is the MOST LIKELY answer", and are willing to change that opinion over time as the sum of human knowledge grows.
Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
handmadehands.co.uk
It was probably a religious person, who is SOOOO concerned that atheists look bad and cannot help giving us advice for our own good.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
They are not. It is you who don't understand their arguments.
Religion cannot be falsified, but that doesn't mean that one can't deal with specific claims within the religion.
They are extremely open. And, in fact, they are so open that they have explained many or most of the "supernatural" experiences by natural means.
That comparison sucks. We know that love is chemicals and electical impulses. We also know where love came from.
Clever signature text goes here.
Oh yeah? Which documentary was that exactly? And how did he "dismiss" them? Did he dismiss them because their arguments were invalid? If so, he is perfectly justified in doing so.
Nonsense. You are not impartial. It is in your interest to lie about Dawkins because you cannot argue factually and rationally against him.
Clever signature text goes here.
How? Please be specific.
Nonsense. This just proves that you haven't even bothered to listen to what he says. Instead, you are relying on lies about him or making up lies yourself about what he is saying.
How? Please be specific.
Clever signature text goes here.
Pure and utter nonsense. You don't even know what Dawkin's arguments are, so why are you making these retarded claims about him?
Clever signature text goes here.
I was lucky enough to attend the lecture at the OU campus on the 6th. It was very well done and what you would expect of Dawkins. Very intelligent as always with a tongue-in-cheek humor about him. However he was also a little more direct. He immediately proceeded to shred Todd Thomsen when he began to speak. It was lovely! :)
Also on the agenda was a new documentary by Ben Stein called Sexspelled... about Sex theory. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ThQQuHtzHM
I forgot to mention that during the Q&A a gentleman stood up and said "Shut the f* up! I'll show you my theology!" or something to that effect. It made the whole trip worth it!
I've responded to everyone who made a similar claim so you can look at those as well. And I mean them all. But also, I find it interesting that everyone has paid attention to that part of the statement rather than the other.
... not science. I don't know why everyone is freaking out about that simple statement. Such virulent responses must mean that I've hit a nerve of some kind that I didn't know was there. Care to explain in a calm, rational manner? Or at least explain the scientific value of "the God Delusion"?
Religion becoming science makes just as much sense or nonsense as science becoming religion. Obviously no one can run experiments on the Bible, use it as a manual to build an engine. It can't actually replace science. The opposite is also true in a strict understanding of the word religion. You can't take a logical system and turn it into one that does not run on pure logic ( which is what all of you geniuses have said). The phrase is talking about an overeaching of each, not a complete overtaking.
PS: I do know what Dawkins arguments are, and that's the whole point: they are arguments
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
>>Belief in God and a respect and enthusiasm for science are not mutually exclusive.
But they are: if you really respect the scientific method, explain me how you applied it to choose the God you're believing in?
You cannot disprove the existence of God, anymore than the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. That, is what I'm referring to. While we might have some vagaries of a physical understanding of the symptoms of Love, its really a subset of free will. You have no idea what will happen in Love between two people. That uncertainty about it, shouldn't prevent it from being experienced.
.... on Slashdot ... maybe use cars or section
Aside to self: Wow, trying to explain an analogy using Love
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
What the fuck are you talking about? The scientific method is a process - it's /never/ finished, unless no one is practising it any more, at which point the failings of any particular theories aren't a reflection on the scientific method, they're a reflection on the theories themselves.
The scientific method has not failed yet at refining our understanding of the universe. You need to introduce completely artificial constraints ("stopping the clock") to postulate its failure.
himi
My very own DeCSS mirror.
'And you don't so much believe evolution either'
You don't so much believe evolution but you DO choose to believe atheism. Atheism is NOT the logical conclusion of evolution, in fact it is no more or less likely because of evolution.
Evolution merely makes some interpretations of creation myths unlikely or obsolete. It certainly has nothing to do with whether or not there is a deity or creator.
Atheism is a CONCLUSION. Religion (in the modern sense of the word) is also a CONCLUSION. Conclusions without conclusive evidence are NOT scientific at all. Atheism might qualify as a hypothesis but someone who holds to the atheism hypothesis would be an agnostic. The term atheist is for those who have reached and BELIEVE said conclusion, not those who simply believe in its likelihood.
'Of course, the other difference is that the religious tend to say "this is THE answer" and dogmatically refuse to budge, whereas scientists should be saying "with the current level of knowledge, this is the MOST LIKELY answer", and are willing to change that opinion over time as the sum of human knowledge grows.'
Exactly and an atheist like a religious believer claims to know the answer. Agnostic is the term for someone who does not claim to know the answer. The religious claim there is a creator and that is final, atheists claim there is not a creator and that is final, agnostics claim none of the above pending actual observations to support a claim.
1. Define the question
2. Gather information and resources (observe)
3. Form hypothesis
4. Perform experiment and collect data
5. Analyze data
6. Interpret data and draw conclusions that serve as a starting point for new hypothesis
7. Publish results
8. Retest (frequently done by other scientists)
#3 coupled with #6 is entirely subject to what doctors call the placebo effect. Should it happen? No. Will it happen? Yes. Will it all work out in the end? Probably. My point is that when you introduce humans with egos into prediction, you never can completely weed out *subjective* POV. And when you introduce #8, making it a process, usually what you get is a bunch of scientists fighting.
Or how about this, Religious people claim God is infallible, you claim they are false and point to people claiming to be believers in God while generally being hypocrites. I postulate you can find the same in followers of "infallible" scientific method. If you are allowed to divorce Hwang Woo-suk from science, Can I not divorce all "Christian" Hypocrites from Christianity?
I do not defend any "Christian" dabbling in politics. (John 18:36) I do not try to coerce anyone. I will engage in respectful conversation of opposing POVs. If I offend, I will stop. Let me know.
WWTFSMD? What would the Flying Spaghetti Monster do?
'The longing to be primitive is a disease of culture' George Santayana
how can you know which of the alternatives are good and which are evil? The way I see it, this is a question atheists have no good answer for, period.
It's funny how virtually every atheist successfully does so with no difficulty, yet so many theists are apparently so morally or intellectually handicapped that constantly experess their own lack of understanding and their own lack of capability to accomplish it, and quite often expressing how that apparently *they* would be evil rapists/murderers/thieves/whatnot if they didn't have a pre-cooked morality system imposed on them.
How?
I'm not going to build an entire system for you here, but I will give you give you an incredibly simple and incredibly powerful foundation for doing so. A single point capable of constructing almost an entire system all by itself:
In a single word: Symmetry.
You don't get to assign yourself unique status under the system. A coherent universal system applies to you on the same terms it applies to everyone else. I do not want you to kill me, I consider it "evil" for you to kill me, therefore it is immediately obvious that I shouldn't go around killing people. I don't exactly want people stealing from me or breaking my leg either. It's closely similar to the Golden Rule.
Right there, a single-word principal, and I've already built a fairly comprehensive morality system. Symmetry.
I'd like to make an additional point. If I were to ask you to come up with some strictly objective standard for measuring morality, can you think of any approach to attempt it?
I have a proposed standard for measuring morality. I acknowledge that this is an extremely imperfect approximation for measuring morality, but I propose that crime is a completely objective standard and that it is a very reasonable approximation for measuring morality. People who are violent, who kill, rape, steal, commit fraud, or violate the standard assortment of other crimes, that is an imperfect but extremely solid indicator of violations of morality - measure of "evil".
The fact is that atheists are quite significantly UNDER-represented in the prison population. It seems to me that there are only two ways to explain those statistics. Either (1) atheists are *more* moral than theists, at least to the extent that crime accurately approximates morality levels, or (2) atheists are equally or more criminal/immoral as theists, but that atheists are incredible supra-geniuses in crime and aren't getting caught.
Personally I don't particularly buy into the second alternative there. Chuckle.
I have some possible thoughts towards explaining first alternative. For one thing, an atheist has to put much more and much deeper thought into building his morality system. A theist is simply handed a set of rules, they don't need to figure them out, they don't need to think them over, they don't need to analyze them, they don't much even need to understand them. The theist is just supposed to do what he's told. So the atheist much more deeply internalizes the system. The atheist is also equipped to evaluate novel situations on his own when he runs into them. If a theist runs into a novel situation and he has trouble fitting it into the morality framework he was given, then he's just plain stuck over what is right or wrong in that situation. I also think people have less respect for rules that are imposed upon them - people can be very creative in rationalizing their way around rules they dislike at the time. For an atheist, he isn't circumventing the rules of some distant external entity, he knows damn well that any excuses or circumvention are breaking the rules, when he breaks a rule he's violating himself, he's failing himself. He's not fearing that maybe God will look down on him for it, he knows and he feels that he's looking down on himself for it. He's not breaking some outside rule, he's violating his own integrity.
Several times I've seen theists essentially indicate that they would become some selfish evil monster
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I'd say "nope" back, but you're such an idiot I can't even tell what you're trying to say.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I never said that we were designed by aliens.
You talked about philosophical differences, but that doesn't mean you can tell the difference.
How would you, as an observer with an iron age level of technology, be able to distinguish a miraculous burning bush from one that had been zapped with a heat ray?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
See, you're not making the correct distinction. Science as it is practised in reality is, of course, fallible and flawed. But the scientific method is (in a sense) the platonic ideal that the practical reality of science is based on. The scientific method /works/, despite all the failings of the people practising it.
How does that compare with religion?
himi
My very own DeCSS mirror.
I only ask that you allow me to also say:
Christianity as it is practised in reality is, of course, fallible and flawed. But Christianity is (in a sense) the Christian ideal that Jesus set as a life pattern. The Christian method /works/, despite all the failings of the people claiming to 'practise' it.
In other words, If all or most "Christians" acted like Christ, I think people would enjoy them. He never *forced* his ideas on others and the only ones he upbraided were religious hypocrites. He set up some pretty good principles too. "More Happiness in Giving than Receiving" "Do unto others..." And they work. I don't want to sound preachy, but I'm sure you've heard of this: Why Money Doesnt Buy Happiness and Key to Happiness, Give Away Money.
As to why Christendom doesn't act Christian, well that is not for /. ...
Just so you know.
That line of argument is /not/ analogous to the scientific method, though - christianity doesn't have any particular goal, and thus you can't judge its success or failure.
As a set of ethical guidelines, a selected subset of what christianity preaches may be reasonably workable, but you need to pick the subset based on something outside the bible (be it some kind of in-built ethical preference, outside cultural influences, or whatever). That means that even by /that/ measure, it's hard to make an objective judgement as to christianity's 'success'.
I may not be understanding your argument, of course, but I just don't see how you can draw useful analogies between the success of the scientific method and any rational measure of the success of christianity or any other religion. Nor do I see how that would have any bearing on my initial argument.
himi
My very own DeCSS mirror.
That line of argument is /not/ analogous to the scientific method, though - christianity doesn't have any particular goal, and thus you can't judge its success or failure.
I could argue that, but this forum is /. and not theology.org, so I will not.
Nor do I see how that would have any bearing on my initial argument.
Ok, You originally said, "It hasn't failed yet." Thus time was brought into the equation. To explore the "clock stopping" statement more, We live in the present and therefore if today we searched all peer-reviewed science we could find opposing theories and bad science. Or explanations that do not best fit the facts.
Applying this to real life, big pharma engages in scientific method. FDA checks and others retest according to scientific method. (as best I understand it)
So my point originally is that the Scientific Method will not always produce correct outcome. This is b/c humans are involved and limits of equipment/methodology. But not all bad drugs that have been pulled from the shelves are because of big Pharma cover-up. Sometimes time and wider use was needed to uncover the dangers.
To put it simply, would you say that every scientific study following the Scientific Method will produce true/correct facts? I was saying with sarcasm, NO, even faithful use of Scientific Method will sometimes produce bad science.
Or put another way, Are you convinced of /all/ published, peer-reviewed science?
I am not. I am convinced of /most/ of it. That is my point. I don't think my view is dogmatic.
It has worked very nicely so far, wouldn't you agree? And considering its excellent track record, does it not make sense to keep relying on it in the future as well?
Clever signature text goes here.
Which is why it's a good thing that scientists have to show other scientists that they are correct.
Sigh. You are really grasping for straws now.
No, because science is not claimed to be an all-powerful being which tells us how to live our lives.
Woo-suk was *shock* exposed by OTHER SCIENTISTS.
Clever signature text goes here.
In what way?
Clever signature text goes here.
Your computer works, does it not? Your computer is a product of the scientific method.
So what? That's why there's peer review, and why others have to be able to repeat your findings.
Sounds like quote mining to me. Creationists do this a lot.
Clever signature text goes here.
Here's wikipedia def for Infallible:
When a statement, teaching, or book is called 'infallible', this can mean any of the following: 1. It is something that cannot be proved false 2. It is something that can be safely relied on 3. It is something completely trustworthy and sure
Like I said earlier, are you convinced that the Scientific Method is completely trustworthy and sure? If so, then all output (that faithfully follows The method) would fit 1 and 2.
I love science and tech. I do not base all decisions in life on them. I doubt you do either. It just seemed funny that one can say, "my way is infallible, and you're stupid to claim such about your way."
About Christianity, and exposing hypocrisy, I try to expose truth every day I am alive. But I never shove it down other's throats. Or disrespect them to their face. You don't want to hear it, I shut up.
> Someday (hopefully) people will accept that the Abrahamic God was every bit as real
> as Ra and Zeus -- not real at all.
You're probably right, but as I said, why do you think that'll prevent people of that era from believing in something else which seems equally ridiculous to you?
Possibly in the far future mankind will understand that this "love" thing is only a manifestation of various neurotransmitters in various concentrations at various sites in the brain. What a relief that'll be, eh? We won't have to believe in such an unclear, subjective, non-quantifiable concept, then.
Somehow I don't envy them (at least, in that --- they'll probably have real flying cars, too).
Both Richard and Lucifer cancel their 5 oclock meeting on Friday.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
One can carry on an interveiw and not look like an ass, even when it's been edited.
I think you underestimate the depth of Expelled's dishonesty.
Their "editing" did not merely trim things down in a deceptive manner - they literally fabricated question-response combinations. They literally went from one question and cut to the answer from a different question.
Interview:
Q: Would you like some tea? Coffee maybe?
A: No, but thanks (smile).
Q: Are you a homosexual?
A: No.
Q: How would you define 'homosexual'?
A: Having sex with other men.
Q: What s your favorite hobby?
A: Bowling.
Q: Your wife looks like she got hit in the face with a bowling ball.
A: Fuck you, you motherfucking asshole.
Editing, Expelled style:
Q: What is your favorite hobby?
A: Having sex with other men.
Q: Would you like some tea? Coffee maybe?
A: Fuck you, you motherfucking asshole.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
How do you judge the success or failure of the scientific method? Given it's an iterative optimisation method, it seems to me that the only valid measure of success or failure is the long term trend - the scientific method is successful if, over time, the trend is towards increasingly successful explanations for observed reality. I don't think it even has to be a monotonic improvement to justify being called a success - the biggest gains often come when particular theories 'fail', suggesting that both the immediate successes /and/ the immediate failures contribute to the success of the scientific method.
That measure of success suggests two things: firstly, that the success of individual theories is /not/ ultimately relevant to the success of the scientific method, and secondly, that 'stopping the clock' is /not/ a valid way to argue about the its success.
The scientific method is /not/ about 'outcomes', it's a process of continual improvement, and one that is astonishingly successful. The closest thing I can think of to a failure of the scientific method is the screwed up biological sciences that pertained in the early USSR, driven by political forces. Even there it did eventually correct itself when given the chance, and that localised failure did not affect the rest of the world. There are probably other examples of localised failure, but as with individual theories, that sort of failure doesn't indicate a failure of the scientific method.
It probably seems like I'm wiggling the goalposts around to make my argument easier, but I'm not really - the issue at hand is the success or failure of the /scientific method/, not 'science', or some particular set of theories or ideas. The state of the process at any instant in time does not reflect on the success of failure of the process - only the long term behaviour does. The process is as close to infallible as I can imagine, given enough time and diversity of practitioners.
himi
My very own DeCSS mirror.
Good luck quantifying "harm," dude.
Actually, I take it back. In fear that you may actually go ahead and get a harm quantification proposal of your own implemented, I wish you the worst of luck doing that.
Are you adequate?
Atheism is a rejection of belief in a deity. The rejection is the conclusion. There are no "beliefs" required of atheists. The word just means "without a deity".
I am scientifically inaccurate.
How do you know it's the right thing to be? Aren't you just repeating the beliefs that were inculcated into you as part of your upbringing?
That's a strawman.
We have laws against them because of the general belief that they are wrong. But, again, how do you know that they are wrong?
No, my question is a way of pointing out that your grounds for believing that murder is wrong are no better than the theist's grounds for believing in a deity. You believe that murder is wrong because of your upbringing, just as the theist does. Therefore, you shouldn't act high and mighty like you're so much smarter and rational than the believer. You've got plenty of beliefs very important to you that you can no more justify than the theist can justify their belief in God.
Are you adequate?
So you say that if I consider X "evil" when you do it to me, then I should consider X to be evil when I do it to others. And because of that, I should not do X to others. Problems:
More modest examples are easy to construct, because this is in fact a common, everyday type of moral argument. Joe complains when Tom does X to him, and says that he shouldn't do that because he wouldn't like it if somebody did it to him. Tom answers that he wouldn't object if somebody did it to him. Joe then answers that Tom should object to somebody doing X to him.
So yeah, while this principle sounds like a useful rule of thumb that's valid in many situations, I remain very skeptical that this principle is as central as you make it to be. Not to mention that you've not answered the big question, which is: how do you know if alternatives in a situation are good or evil?
Are you adequate?
Atheism is not merely the rejection of belief in a deity, it is the rejection of the possibility of a deity.
The faithful believe in a deity, agnostics do not believe in a deity but believe in the possibility, atheists believe that there is no deity.
Believers and atheists both BELIEVE they know the answer to the question. There isn't actually any evidence to base that belief on either way, therefore ANYONE who chooses to believe they know the answer to the question is doing so based on faith and not reason or logic derived from evidence.
3 - 2 - 1 = 0, 0 is an answer, it is not the lack of a number (in this context), or the rejection of a number, it is a conclusion (poor example since mathematics are self proving but that the point is its a conclusion, not whether it is a correct conclusion). "Black", Zero, Cold, they are all negatives but that does not mean they are 'nothing', they can all mean something. Simply because you believe in a negative does not negate the fact that you are believing; you have chosen a position or stance, you have drawn a conclusion. There is no escaping that. Atheism is not merely not believing in a particular deity or any proposed deity, atheism is believing there is NO (not even an unlikely) possibility that there could be a deity.
I fail to see why people cling so desperately to the atheist label. Is it simply because of the repression caused by judeo-christian culture? Or is it because scientists who actually believe in crazy concepts, like anything not yet observed is possible and the only difference between these things is statistical probability, have mislabeled themselves as atheists for so many years?
Look, you're redefining atheism to fit your paradigm. The rejection of a belief based on lack of evidence is no more a belief than "bald" is a hair color or "not collecting stamps" is a hobby.
There are certain bits of evidence that should exist if there were a God (answered prayer being one such thing). These things *don't* exist. Therefore, while it's not certain (since nothing in science is about certainty, just the best explanation for phenomena based on the evidence), the evidence *against* a deity is stronger than the evidence for.
"Atheism is not merely not believing in a particular deity or any proposed deity, atheism is believing there is NO (not even an unlikely) possibility that there could be a deity."
If you need to define it that way to argue against it, fine. But you won't find many atheists who say that. There's *always* a possibility that we're wrong. We just don't think we are, based on what we do and don't observe.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
You could check the hyperlink. It spells it out pretty well. I just didn't make the whole reply a hyperlink, because I assumed I was communicating with adult humans who could notice things like that. It tends to annoy people when you make a whole paragraph a hyperlink. :->
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
My only point is that a statement like "SM /will/ (100.000% chance) never fail" sounds like a type of prediction that religion calls prophecy. But you didn't say that.
I think we have beaten this thing to death, but I have enjoyed discussion. It has refined my thoughts on some things. Thank you for keeping it civil.
What we really need are some extremely awesome mirrors about 2.3 billion light-years away, pointed our way, and some equally awesome telescopes to point at them... /pipe dream
DAS
First first, I want to give you a nod for "[theists] traded the problem of knowing what's good for the problem of knowing what God wants". I appreciate that level of insight and objectivity and reason. Most people who raise the atheism-morality question tend to be.... well lets just say they tend to be rather-less-than-humble about knowing what God wants :)
Let me start by summarizing the basic issue, as I see it.
Some people believe that good and evil, morality, that they are inextricably bound to God. There are various ways to try to define/describe the connection between God and Goodness/morality, but the key point being that without God it is either impossible to know what is good/moral, or that good/moral would cease to exist without God.
Some people believe that we cannot have or know a system of right and wrong if it is not given to us by God. That atheists cannot have such a system and cannot be moral, without getting that system from God. Some people even have the extreme position - and I'm specifically not accusing you here - some people even have the extreme position that atheists *cannot* be good and moral, even if the atheist's behavior happened to exactly match up with the morality-from-God.
I believe that all religions were created by humans. For example I believe Jesus almost certainly existed, and that he was a great philosopher and great teacher. That he taught much great wisdom and morality - of human origin. That while religions are fiction, they are woven with human truths and human wisdom and human teaching and human morality.
In the improbable case that some sort God God does exist, I believe that none of the warring religions on earth are holding His Magic Instruction Book. If a God did hand down that sort of divine scripture, I'm sure it would be self-evidently far above and beyond all of the false scriptures crafted by humans. The truly Divine scripture would quickly persuade people, and we wouldn't have all these religions squabbling endlessly. No religion on earth, no scripture on earth, has more than 33% of global population behind it. Any truly Divine scripture wouldn't be failing so badly as to be stuck at less than one-third when competing against the "mere fiction" of the false religions.
At this point I would like to point out that the various religions across the earth - from Christians to Native Americans to Buddhists to Wiccans to Hindus and on and on and on - they all come to largely the same agreement on morality. There are differences in detail, but they draw the same picture. They all come to basically the same set of criminal laws, and largely the same set of social values of honesty and kindness and generosity (vs lies cruelty geed), and on and on. And they are pretty well the same set atheists come to.
So even if one religion does have a Magic Instruction Book from God, it seems that humans inventing all of the other False religions managed to create basically the same definition of morality as well. It's not just atheists. Between reason and human nature, virtually all humans tend to generate the same basic morality framework.
I plan to come back and answer the questions you asked last post, but I neeeed sleeeeeep :)
But first let me leave you with a sort of puzzle to mull over. The puzzle actually holds some deep insights to answering your questions.
Two suspects are arrested by the police. The police have insufficient evidence for a conviction, and, having separated both prisoners, visit each of them to offer the same deal. If one testifies (defects) for the prosecution against the other and the other remains silent, the betrayer goes free and the silent accomplice receives the full 10-year sentence. If both remain silent, both prisoners are sentenced to only six months in jail for a minor charge. If each betrays the other, each receives a five-year sentence. Each prisoner must choose to betray the other or to remain silent. How should the prisoners act?
Not
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I never said that we were designed by aliens.
Okay, fine then, just consider my post a reinforcement of the claim in the post you replied to that the "It's not necessarily God, maybe it was aliens" dodge of the IDers is really nothing more than a dodge because aliens doing it is logically inconsistent with ID, and not a rebuttal of whatever your point was.
You talked about philosophical differences, but that doesn't mean you can tell the difference.
How would you, as an observer with an iron age level of technology, be able to distinguish a miraculous burning bush from one that had been zapped with a heat ray?
Yes of course, because the part of the quote on technology you modified that everyone forgets to include is "... if you don't know how it works". If you don't understand how the technology works, then it's magic, and the people who control it are gods.
That's irrelevant to the question of whether the D in ID could be aliens. At the end of the day, whether we can detect the difference or not, it's either magic or technology, they're either supernatural gods or advanced aliens subject to the same natural laws as everyone else. If it's the latter case, then no matter how advanced the technology of an alien race is, that technology is based on natural laws, the aliens themselves are based on natural laws, and the alien species themselves arose naturally (or the aliens who designed them arose naturally, etc). However, the entire premise of ID that leads to the ID-supporter claiming the IDer could be an alien and not a god is that something as complex as intelligence cannot arise naturally. Ergo, we have a contradiction, and the ultimate IDer in ID cannot be a naturally-occurring race of aliens. It must be supernatural.
ID implies a supernatural entity, a supreme being, a God. And in particular for the vast, vast, majority of ID proponents, it's the Christian God, and they know it, but pretend like it's not the case. Because ID is nothing but pseudo-science spread thinly over Creationism to get past the Separation clause.
This has nothing to do with the question of if some being landed on our planet and claimed to be a God would we be able to prove that they are really divine or not. It's an interesting hypothetical, but really not related to ID at all.
The enemies of Democracy are
That, I think, is where scientists and believers differ. Scientists would like to know why, exactly, this particular Christian (or Islamic, or Jewish, or Hindu, etc.) God exists, and not one or more of any number of other possible gods (Zeus, Baal, Ra). Does causality have meaning for gods? Do gods always know they are gods, or do some think they are merely an evolved being in a random universe?
I'm clipping your post, but understand that I am including the entire thing when I say that these are all things believers wonder about. Millennia of religious philosophers have pondered the question of free will, the nature of omnipotence, and all these other things. The question "can God create an object so heavy that He cannot lift it?" predates the modern scientific method by centuries. Wondering about the nature of God is a fundamental part of an active faith.
As a scientist, I get to the very first question -- does God exist? -- and realize I can never craft a falsifiable experiment that tests for the existence of an omniscient and omnipotent creator being, much less to test for the properties of omniscience or omnipotence. We can't test for the existence of 'free will', even assuming we could define it. Thus the scientist correctly decides that these questions belong in the realm of religion and philosophy, not science.
It's perfectly possible to do both -- ponder questions empirical and falsifiable, and questions philosophical and unanswerable -- as long as you know that they are distinct.
Which is kinda the point of what I was saying -- Intelligent Design logically precludes the idea of a naturally-arisen Designer, it only allows for the super-natural. Thus the only answer that satisfies ID is a religious one that must be taken on faith, and this is not science. ID is not science. People who say that it is science, and justify this by saying the Designer could be an alien race, are lying to cover up ID's religious foundation.
The enemies of Democracy are
It's not really that difficult. Look at the choices, figure how who is effected, of those effected, which choice causes the least harm either physically or mentally. I suspect you're trying to articulate something else and not doing it clearly. If you'd like to try again, I'll respond.
>>atheists are quite significantly UNDER-represented in the prison population
(3) Atheists are, as a group, more highly educated, have better jobs, etc... Do you have any data that controls for these factors?
My "explanation" (2) that atheists might be criminal masterminds not-getting-caught was purely my sense of humor :) Your (3) alternative is basically that atheists might correlate with more socially successful socially well adjusted non-criminal traits is interesting, but I think in any case it still paints atheists with an at-least-neutral light.
I don't cite the prison statistics to claim any sort of superiority, nor do I claim any certain knowledge or explanation for it. Like many things about people, it is a very messy question and any attempt to explain it is going to be at least partially creative speculation. One thing that is clear though, is that any attempt to interpret it to cast a negative light upon atheists would be pretty obviously a biased manipulative dreamed-up rationalization.
Any reasonable interpretation of it casts atheists in at least a neutral and equal light.
I have seen people assert that any atheist is inherently going to be some sort of rampaging monster of evil (you didn't go there, chuckle). That statistic is an extremely powerful point in establishing that, by an extremely reasonable and extremely objective measure, atheists can and do manage to behave at least as well as theists. Atheists don't go around raping robbing or harming people any more than theists do, if anything there's pretty strong indication they do it less. It can still leave the question - as you ask - of how and why atheists behave as well as theists, but I think it strongly shows that they do. I think it establishes that even if you don't understand it, that some valid explanation must exist, and that somehow it does work.
I find that if people actively believe something to be false, if they believe there is no valid explanation for something, they can be reluctant to believe that explanation when they see it. You said "The way I see it, this is a question atheists have no good answer for, period." That sounds to me like at least a partial active dis-belief that an answer exists. I was just hoping that the prison factoid would lead to increased openness to explanations, that some explanation must exist, so therefore possible explanations should not be viewed with an overcritical expectation of failure.
(1)Why should I consider anything "evil" when done to me, to start with?
Whether you call it "evil" or "bad" or "not good" or "undesirable" or whatever, it is sufficient to get things started that you simply don't like it when the other children hit you or take your stuff away. You personally find it physically and emotionally painful when other children do criminal/immoral things to you. Your physical or emotional pain is "bad".
And once you start categorizing things into "good" and "bad", you quickly learn that it just plain Doesn't Work in society if you attempt to ignore the principle of symmetry. You consider getting kicked to be "bad", and if you ignore symmetry and think kicking others is ok, you go and kick another kid and discover that you often get kicked in response. There are many ways that social interactions teach and reinforce the symmetry principle and even actively punish disregard for symmetry.
(2) What about genuine disagreements between people as to what things they should judge to be "evil" when done to them?
There are disagreements.
Twin bothers of the same religion and faithfully attending the same church will have genuine disagreements.
Atheists don't have divine perfection of logic, they don't have identical experiences, they don't have identical temperaments and emotional reactions, they don't have identical priorities. Despite all that, atheists come up with nearly identical systems on the big picture points, and they come up with substantially equivalent s
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.