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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
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.
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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.
Really, what do you expect from the Oklahoma legislature anyway -- they're all descended from a bunch of apes anyway.
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.
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!
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.
"His science has become his religion, ..."
That makes no damn sense.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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.
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
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
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
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.
That makes it the product of the study of fairy tales with no basis in reality. Attempting to put science and fairy tales on the same level is ridiculous and is the same as passing laws banning kryptonite because it is harmful to Superman or allowing people to shoot at one another because in the cartoons it just makes one's face dirty.
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.
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.
The computer you're typing on, the principles behind the electricity and the circuit boards and the plastics and the manufacturing... are all products of the scientific method. Every single human advance that allows you to spend your days doing something other than sitting in the jungle naked waiting to be eaten by a big cat are the result of the scientific method.
The scientific method produces theories that make correct predictions about the world around us. Theology does not. Simplistic philosophical talking points like "Truth" have nothing to do with it, and maintaining that robust scientific theories that make such correct predictions are just "opinions" is hand-waving at best and intellectually dishonest at worst.
The fact that you and I are even able to converse about this subject over an electronic network is a direct result of the discoveries of science. Theology may give emotional comfort, but it is not, and never will be, in the same realm as science. Don't drag rational thinking people into the navel-gazing fairly tale world of theology.
For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
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.
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.
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...
Correct.
It is true, in as far as it can explain what has happened and provides a framework for extremely accurate predictions of what will happen given certain inputs.
And then read them literally, as if they actually happened.
There is zero evidence for most of what is written in scripture, especially the parts that creationists/ID believers subscribe to.
There would be no problem with this except that morons like the ones highlighted in the article put their unsubstantiated beliefs and faith into direct conflict with science. Evidenceless fantasy being put up as somehow equal with scientific reality and evidence.
No, most people are capable of recognizing the boundary between reality and fantasy. I mean faith. The people who run the government of Oklahoma are apparently not. And I'm guessing that neither are you.
Your wishy washy attitude towards their belief in, I assume, an attempt to not offend gives them an opening in which they can try and shove their religious fantasies into science classes, and weaken scientific discovery and critical thinking. Their fantaies have NO PLACE in science classes, and their ill-informed suggestion that evolutionary theory is somehow unfouned and unpopular is proof enough that they are deluded and isolated in their almost purely religiously motivated attempts to get Dawkins' invitation revoked.
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.
<blink>Yes, as a matter of fact, it is!!!!!!!</blink>
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?
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.
How on Earth do you think it could be possible to prove the non-existence of an omnipotent entity?
I didn't say "prove", I said, "prove beyond a reasonable doubt." You can't prove it beyond all doubt. You can only continue to remove all the superstitious nonsense and hope that when people see that absolutely nothing is left that they decide for themselves that it's most rational to conclude that nothing was ever there.
We don't have "proof" that the Egyptian god Ra never existed, or that Zeus was never real, but most people accept those. Someday (hopefully) people will accept that the Abrahamic God was every bit as real as Ra and Zeus -- not real at all.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
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!
"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."
Dude, asspeaker? LOL.
"but asspeaker"
Please tell me you actually sent it in that way.
Sent from your iPad.
I think you have suffered the results of the Evangelical atheist. You have Abiogenesis and the bubble theories of evolution which are scientific theories. You have scientific works done by Young earth scientists which is now actually the accepted idea for the creation of some canyons and low lands in western the United states that were created in weeks and days instead of millions of years.
The problems isn't really the lack of other theories to compete with Evolutions, it's alternatives within evolution that could lead to a better understanding of the process. The evangelist evolutionist or evangelist atheist seem to want to lock understanding into what we know of today and only refine those processes instead of allowing other theories to play out to their validity if it might upset what he believes. It's like saying Science is the pursuit of the truth because it is always evaluating the weight of the facts and review them across the community, then saying shut up, this is the way things are, the way they always are, and I don't care what you or your evidence says. It sort of makes a religion out of science, especially concerning evolution which is apparent with Dawkins.
I didn't say "prove", I said, "prove beyond a reasonable doubt." You can't prove it beyond all doubt. You can only continue to remove all the superstitious nonsense and hope that when people see that absolutely nothing is left that they decide for themselves that it's most rational to conclude that nothing was ever there.
I never actually understood the fight between creationism and evolution. It's not like they have to be polar opposites. 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). However, it's quite feasible that evolution was used in the creation of the world. Why not use some excellent tools that would allow growth and expansion of so many billions of creatures? I can't see God just saying, "Let me do things the hard way, when there's this really awesome way of doing things..."
Maybe that's just me.
As to your "prove beyond a reasonable doubt" and "no real" remarks - whether God is or is not real (and I believe that he is), is it really such a big deal that people want something to believe in, even if you don't particularly want or need that?
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.
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.
How is he a jerk? He never attacks or even criticizes believers simply for believing. You anti-atheist bigots see anyone who dares publicly discuss their atheism and reason for lacking belief as jerks, no matter how nice they are. Dawkins is very nice to people who simply believe. He only insults those who do bad things, lie, etc. in the name of such belief, which is completely valid. You are the only one here being a jerk.
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
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
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).
The problem isn't the six days, it's the Adam and Eve mythology. The Bible clearly states that God created man, and all people were descended from Adam and Eve. That directly contradicts evolution, which states that man descended directly from animals.
Now, I realize that you can mangle the bible into fitting evolution if you accept that the bible is allegory, but unfortunately, too many Christians can't accept that. And truthfully, they *shouldn't* accept that the bible is allegory. It says what it says, right down to killing anyone who works on the Sabbath. Christians should accept ALL of the bible, from advocacy of slavery on down -- or none of it (as would be my preference). Most Christians are total hypocrites when it comes to accepting the word of God.
is it really such a big deal that people want something to believe in, even if you don't particularly want or need that?
It wouldn't be a big deal if people would keep their beliefs to themselves. Astrology is relatively harmless, because people don't generally want it taught to students as an "alternative theory" to astronomy. But when you have wackos who want prayer in schools, or who will never vote for an atheist into public office, then religion has very real consequences.
Of course, I shouldn't have to mention religiously-motivated terrorism.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
> 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
As opposed to Christianity which states that anyone who doesn't believe in it will burn forever in a hell?
As opposed to Christianity which continually tries to codify bigotry and hatred into the laws?
As opposed to Christianity which has and still does kill people who will not conform to it's rules?
As opposed to Islam which says it is OK to lie, cheat, steal from, and kill non-believers?
etc.etc.etc.
Exactly how is his "acidic tone towards Christians" dangeous? Will the Christians kill him, as they done to others in the past?
Or, will they merely find a way to put him under house arrest for the rest of his life, as they have done in the past?
Religion has no place in a tolerant society because religion is never tolerant to those who will not conform to the tenets of religion.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
I never actually understood the fight between creationism and evolution. It's not like they have to be polar opposites.
The reason you find that confusing is a matter of definitions. The definition you are applying for "creationism" is "God created the universe". While that is a reasonable definition, it is not the commonly used definition. The common understanding of "creationism" is the position that God created Man and all the "kinds" of life in essentially their present form. So yes, by the common meaning of creationism, it is in direct conflict with evolution.
it's quite feasible that evolution was used in the creation of the world.
Only a small few percent of the population are atheists, and the majority of Christian accept evolution. Nearly all evolutionists are Christian.
So except for a couple of percent of people, that essentially defines the evolution position.
whether God is or is not real (and I believe that he is), is it really such a big deal that people want something to believe in, even if you don't particularly want or need that?
Most atheists don't much care about other people's personal religious beliefs.
However atheists, and many Christians, do have very serious objections when some overzealous fundamentalists attempt to hijack the force of government in an effort to impose some of their peculiar ideology on others. Atheists, and many Christians, seriously object when fundamentalists start damaging public school science education, attempting to discredit actual science and instead substitute their theology under a fraudulent mask of science. Harming our children's science education and hijacking the government public school system to forcibly impose their fundamentalist theology on our children.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
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
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