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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.
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.
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!
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
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
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.
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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...
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>
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.
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?
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.
He can just take it down the road to Oral Roberts University.. I am sure they are more open to this kind of thing.
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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.
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.
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