Slashdot Mirror
Dr. Richard Dawkins On Why Disagreeing With Religion Isn't Insulting
In part 2 of this video interview (with transcript), Dr. Richard Dawkins explains the function of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, headlined by his website. They're holding it up as a blueprint for similar groups: "We're trying to encourage, with some success, other organizations to make use of our facility, so that they will use our website, or have their own websites which are based upon ours, and have the same look and feel and use the same infrastructure." One of the Foundation's other purposes is to oppose organizations like the Good News Club. "What it is, is a group of Fundamentalist Christian organizations, who go into public schools after the school bell has rung for the day. So that it's no longer violating the Constitutional separation of church and state. ... And it's actually the Good News Club people masquerading as teachers, and they're being extremely effective." Dr. Dawkins also talks about his own comments, and explains why they're perceived as offensive: "Ignorance is no crime. There are all sorts of things I'm ignorant of, such as baseball, but I don't regard it as insulting if somebody says I'm ignorant of baseball, it's a simple fact. I am ignorant of baseball. People who claim to be Creationists are almost always ignorant of evolution. That's just a statement of fact, not an insult. It's just a statement. But it sounds like an insult. And I think that accounts for part of what you've picked up about my apparent image of being aggressive and offensive. I'm just telling it clearly." Hit the link below to see the rest of the interview.
He made a pretty good point there. There's only solution I've found to the problem of people taking your disagreement as an insult, and that is to pose every concern as a question for more detail. I've found it's a lot easier to do such conversations one on one as well, which I think is an often overlooked component of why debates on the internet seem so pointless and shouty.
The difference being, if you're ignorant of baseball you don't deny its existence and insist that divine intervention causes the game to play itself.
to some groups, disagreeing with their religion is, by definition, insulting it. There's no process of debate involved. It's right there, written in their Book of Facts.
And it's a complete waste of your time to argue with them over their "Facts".
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
From an interview:
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Do you really want to get that tattooed on you? People might think you have a Bachelor of the Arts in English and that would be embarrassing.
I mostly agree with Dawkins on this and I think he walks a fine line. Many pro-knowledge/anti-religious people are quite aggressive and offensive. So much so that, despite the fact I'm not at all religious, I find myself quite put off by them. Their idea may be right, but their presentation lacks and just drives away people.
Dawkins is usually respectful when he is speaking. He may be blunt, but he isn't often insulting. I feel this puts him in much better standing than other people trying to educate. He is generally quite good at explaining his points of view and giving reasons for his ideas without bashing other people.
>> People who claim to be Creationists are almost always ignorant of evolution.
I'm not sure the good doctor has this one right. In my experience, creationists have been exposed to the general theory of evolution, but have found one or more reasons in the telling (often an intentionally injected reason) to reject it. Look up "straw dog" to see how this is often done on a number of topics.
I think Dawkins has spent too much time in modern England, where, yeah, Christian fundamentalists are very, very, rare, and alas, the Muslim fundamentalist group is surprisingly large (largely because of a substantial refugee population from Pakistan.)
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Yes, Richard has shown that you don't have to be disagreeing to be insulting.
Don't stop where the ink does.
I don't see much about it that fits in with this site. I make exceptions for Presidential election coverage because the stakes are so far-reaching, but this?
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I disagree with the theory of evolution, and I am a creationist. But, I think you'd either have to be blind or completely ignorant to agree with everything that goes on within churches and has gone on throughout history. Of course some things do adapt, the thing about it is if you knew some of the things I survived, you would definitely question it.
Telling somebody that they're ignorant about a particular topic may potentially (and more often than not) have the underlying connotation that that person should have known better in the first place. Nobody is going to tell Dr. Dawkins that he's ignorant of baseball because that's a useless statement. When somebody tells you that you're ignorant of "traffic laws", "etiquette", or "geography" you get the point.
Applied to the religious, telling them that they're ignorant of evolution, and being defensive about them getting mad about the statement because you think it's just a fact IS ignorant. The religious already believe that they've considered everything they need to know about evolution, and have discredited it in their own minds. The real strategy here is to not start with a public conclusion of them being ignorant, but to simply ask questions and answer their rebuttals. Eventually you'll hit a contradiction or hole in their misunderstanding, and the real question there is what they'll do next. Do they open their minds to truth, no matter how repugnant it is to their faith, or do they stay aggressively closed minded about the subject?
I am currently reading Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Sagan does an incredible job at promoting skepticism, fighting ignorance and all while being extremely respectful of religion. While I love Sagan, I just can't stand Dawkins.
No, no. That's "BA". This is BA+! It's differenter! That guy from the A-TEAM is sure gonna be ticked off, though.
As a Buddhist, I find the entire tree of Abrahamic religions insulting: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Mormonism. Since they put the afterlife ahead of this life, and the Magic Man in the Sky ahead of Humanity.
Dawkins is completely ignorant when it comes to understanding of culture, tradition, and the human mind. This is demonstrated by the fact that he believes rational arguments should work on people who are inherently faith-based thinkers.
No need to be insulted by this. It's simply a statement of fact.
And nobody felt insulted by your opinion. Unfortunately, you are also very wrong. Faith is the opposite of thinking, there is no such thing as faith-based thinker. Only faith-based moron (There is many type of morons, but the faith-based one are the worst).
Thank you have have a great day.
He's a douche about the whole thing. People think he's insulting because he's a total dick when he talks about religion. There are lots of folks who can critizise religion without being jerks about it. At least for me, it's not Dawkin's ideas that people are offended by, but how he expresses them. More proof Dawkins is a jerk:
http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/10/sexism_in_the_skeptic_community_i_spoke_out_then_came_the_rape_threats.single.html
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/files/2011/07/dawkins_watson1.gif
Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
The point on "ignorant" being insulting is an interesting one. As a English person who hears a lot of American spoken, I have observed a few words that are not insulting in English are taken to be so in American. I had "dumb" (now we have to say "mute" in order not to offend) and "retarded" (being a medical term). Now apparently "ignorant" is taken pejoratively too in the US. Any more examples?
Yep, because all people think exactly one way ever. Get over your discrimination. You seem to think that people who are religious have absolutely no choice in the matter, ignoring the fact many people have simply never been exposed to any sort of alternative underlying philosophies. It's simply unreasonable to assert that everyone who disagrees with your perspective is a moron incapable of rational thought.
In fact, I'd go as far as saying it's dogmatic and absurd.
The Christian fundies do exist here (and I've run into quite a few militant anti-abortionists and young earth creationists). It's just that they're overshadowed by a bunch of very, very ugly Muslim extremists, who for various reasons, can get away with showing a persistent level of hatred and intolerance that would get the Christians shouted down at best, and thrown in the slammer en masse at worst.
Just last week, there was a bunch of bearded brown Muslim extremists in skirts screaming their heads off in the street at Oxford Circus, with big banners ("JESUS = SATAN") written on them. The only reason why they didn't get a hiding off anybody, because they where there in such force of numbers, that nobody dared challenge them. In the middle of Oxford Street. This is in 2012, after September 11 and the 7th of July attacks.
Britain DOES have a problem with religious extremism, and while there ARE Christian extremists, the Muslim extremists are multiplying at a rapid rate, are out there, in your face, and are virtually unassailable, because everyone is too scared of being stigmatized as an Islamophobe for not tolerating vile Islamic extremism.
So if I don't think something is insulting, I guess then it doesn't matter if the person being insulted thinks it's insulting or not? I see the logic here. It's great, anyone can do whatever they want and ignore the tolerance that the world has worked so hard to achieve! The KKK could probably apply this logic when launching their next website...
Dr. Dawkins has made a critical error in judgement here. I guess maybe the title "Dr" really doesn't mean what it used to.
Disagreeing with religion is not insulting. Calling its followers unthinking, ignorant, brainwashed, delusional: this is insulting.
I agree that Islam is a serious problem. There are serious problems with some hindu and buddhist beliefs, thinking it's okay for people to suffer the way they do and not even try to help. I am a Christian, and I don't believe the world is as old as scientists say. One reason behind this is instrumentation does lie. I've seen someone resurrect, amongst numerous other things we won't even go into. I'm not even saying this to argue with you. There is no need to try to state a debate with me because I would likely ignore any further comments that try to discredit things I believe, which is not ignorance because I know nearly every side to that argument. What I've seen is not your everyday phenomenon, explainable by swamp gases or delusions.
Is that you, David Mabus?
IIRC Atheism plus is an actual thing that distinguishes itself from . . . uh . . . regular atheism. (Little known fact: the next iteration is Atheism++, which is the predecessor to Dennis Ritchie's C). There's a bunch of drama involved in the atheist/skeptic community involving them, but what good is a community if there isn't a bunch of petty drama? :P
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
Last year I saw an article based on an interview with him. (No idea when it was done.) He doesn't think rational arguments work on faith-based thinkers, but then again, reason is his tool of choice and he has no intentions of lying to people, so it's not like he has anything else to use.
It's simply unreasonable to assert that everyone who disagrees with your perspective
It's not a question of perspecives any more than believing that the earth is flat, or that time is best described as a cube is a "perspective".
It is simply, objectively wrong.
You can sugar coat it all you want, but since we're arguing on the internet, why bother?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The title reads like it's from the Onion News
It's great that science has a lot of answers and that we are no longer killing people over what planet revolves around which, and if it's flat, but we haven't evolved as a species, out of the witch hunt stage. People seem to have way to much fun eradicating those who do not share the same world view (Religious and Atheist alike).
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
"There is a belief that every word of the Koran is literally true, and there's a kind of closemindedness which is, I think, less present in the former Christendom, perhaps because we've had long - I don't know quite why - but there's more of a historical tradition of questioning."
So Dawkins is ignorant of even Western historical roots of tolerance and the decline of Church influence. He apparently never heard of Voltaire, the French Revolution, the Enlightenment, or the religious oppression that the American colonists fleed and their subsequent concern to found the US on a basis of religious tolerance.
He also paints Islam with a such a broad brush as to further cement the impression people have of him as an ignorant blowhard. He gives no indication he knows anything about the history of Islam or the diversity of Islam.
"There are people in the Islamic world who simply say, 'Islam is right, and we are going to impose our will.'"
So what? There are plenty of people in the Christian world who say the same thing. What's more, these Dominionist Christians have far more power and influence than the Islamists could ever dream of having.
...therefore, it can be treated like a fart: Whomever created it loves it, but if you don't like people who constantly create and revel in their own farts, walk away.
... a belief that every word of the Koran is literally true, and there's a kind of closemindedness ...
I have an enourmous respect for professor Dawkins, but he is human, like everybody else; and he sometimes seems to closed-minded himself. He sees Islam as 'one of the great evils in the world' - yet, the Islamic world was at one time the most open-minded; this was, in fact, at a time when the Christian culture was at its darkest.
I don't think any religion is inherently good or bad - it is as good or bad as its followers.
So without being particularly deliberately offensive or insulting, just tell it like it is.
I happen to agree with him completely WRT to beliefs and logic, however, WRT to offense/insult I would theorize that most of the disagreement is caused by a confusion of one side believing they're operating under the politeness/hospitality rule where it all boils down to a gentleman does whatever makes his guests feel comfortable, including letting them blabber foolishly if they really want, but the other side thinks they're at the debate table brainstorming solutions where anything goes. Sometimes there's more than a little passive aggressiveness taking advantage of that confusion.
WRT his public school indoctrination story, teachers spend years yelling at kids to behave around adult classroom visitors giving a presentation... sneaking a cult in creates a confusion where a cult should be laughed at, yet they're in a gentlemanly polite hospitality suite of visiting a classroom. Not so much confusing the visitor with a substitute teacher but confusion the visitor with someone you need to be polite to.
I've defused innumerable in-person "disagreements" with something along the lines of "there's about 10000 distinct and completely incompatible current and dead religions, our religious views are almost identical in that you DISbelieve in 9999 of them, I merely DISbelieve in one more than you". The reaction from believers to this line of reasoning is completely unpredictable other than I haven't been accused of offensiveness or insult... so far.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
He's 100% correct in saying that they should. He's 100% wrong if he thinks that they do.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Well, then they just demonstrated a quite stunning level of ignorance of their proclaimed religion, didn't they? Maybe the local Iman should have pointed out that the Koran quite clearly labels Jesus as a prophet and a Messenger of Allah, agrees with the New Testament of the Bible about the Virgin Birth and many other points of Jesus' supposed life and teachings therein. So, walking around with a sign saying "Allah's Messenger = Satan"... maybe they ought to go and try that in somewhere like Afghanistan or the Pakistani FATA and see how long can they keep their head or avoid getting stoned.
As a poster above pointed out, quite often Christian Fundamentalists have not actually read the Bible, and the same is also true about Muslim Fundamentalists, it seems.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
to some groups, disagreeing with their religion is, by definition, insulting it.
As a friend of mine (and Richard Dawkins) says "'Take offence at the drop of a hat' is the unwritten eleventh commandment".
Is your quote supposed to be something he said that was wrong (is that even a quote)? I think he got it right. The god written about in the old testament is a horrible person, and all those things are definitely aspects of the character as written; not that I think that's who modern Christians are worshiping -- they like a cloudier version made of Love or something.
Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times. --skunkpussy
Read some old testament "stone naughty children" verses then when they pull out the line about how Jesus makes the old testament obsolete show them Matthew 5:17-20
Don't forget the holy attack bears
2 Kings 2:23-24
... Bright Atheist Plus! BA+ for short! I'll get it tattooed around my anus....
When you bend over people are going to wonder why you love Bank of America so much.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Hey guys! I'm still an atheist! Let there be no doubt about this! Atheism, atheism, atheism! Imagine Dawkins saying this, jumping up and down like Ballmer at Micro$oft! Checkmate, closed-source programs!
Your attack on atheism is funny. It's certainly easier than defense.
You're all assholes because you don't believe the crap I believe, I find that insulting, and calling you names is the only avenue left to me to defend my fairy tale god.
Good work dude.
I love (sarcastically) the part abou investigative journalism about Good News Club. You can learn everything you'd want to know about GNC and Child Evangelism Fellowship from their own promotional materials. Basically, they work in neighborhoods and schools around the US (and internationally) for after and before school programs tageting pre-teenagers. They do often use teachers who have a Christian faith to lead these clubs. What the atheists view as blurring the lines between school (state) and religion, CEF would say that teachers are muzzled during the school day but are free to express their opinions after they are "off the clock".
Regardless of your views on the subject, noting CEF does through its GNCs is secret. Go visit one of their offices and they'll gladly explain everything they do. Heck, if you want you can show up at one of their clubs and I doubt you will be turned away. So the investigative journalism part seems to be the equivilent of a researcher who only reads Wikipedia.
Some atheists argue GNC should be baneed fom publically funded schools. CEF argues that if other activities are allowed after school hours that GNC should be allowed as well. So far the courts have mostly agreed with CEF and I tend to agree. If there can be a Republican and Democrat actvist group meeting with students then I don't see how GNC somehow becomes unconstitutional.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
It blows my mind too. And I'm sure that plenty of ordinary people of Muslim background despair of these clowns whipping up hatred, hiding behind political correctness, and letting ordinary people be tarred with the same brush as the haters.
To be fair: I've spent a lot of time around devout Christians too, and it's stunning how often a lot of people act superior and intolerant, and fail to live up to their own ideals. There's nothing more loathsome and disgusting than hypocrites standing around on street corners letting it all hang out for the world to see.
Most right thinking normal people think that religion, if practised, is a matter of personal conscience and is completely integral to living in a modern country. Governments are doing society a huge disservice by letting hate-mongering extremists roam free to spread their poison; whether they are anti-abortionists hassling women in the streets (I've seen this too), or the EDL, or Andrem Choudhury's mob whipping up hate and trying to start race wars.
I don't think there is a difference between the freedom to practice one's religion freely, and the freedom to not practice religion freely. It's a precious freedom that needs to be actively, vigorously defended.
I've seen someone resurrect, amongst numerous other things we won't even go into..
Have you ever seen someones amputated limb restored? Isn't it odd how such claimed miracles always happen within that gray area where unequivocal documentation just isn't avaliable.
I would likely ignore any further comments that try to discredit things I believe, which is not ignorance because I know nearly every side to that argument.
Sounds like a preemptive statement of wilful ignorance with an armour plating of dunning kruger.
Personally I would make a statement almost 180 degree opposite of yours. I will listen to and consider all evidence and welcome critiques of what I believe. I known full well my limitations as a finite creature and do not know every side of any argument and have positioned myself to accept possible changes in my beliefs or worldviews in accordance with the availble data.
The truth doesn't matter. It's what they believe. That's Dawkins' whole point. These folks in the street are ignorant not just of other religions, but of their own was well. But if you call them on it, they'll claim that you are insulting their religion and are therefore evil.
It's not a problem with a pleasant solution.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
Edwina Currie (former British politician) just revealed that when she married out from Judaism her father refused ever to speak to her again. Yet her father was a nonobservant Jew, an atheist. Now there is a high level example of failure, not only to re-evaluate your views, but even to do so in the interests of consistency. So - even having a real problem resulting from those views may not be enough.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
is that we evolved after god created us. At least in America (for now) you have the right to believe what you want, but in some areas of the world, they will cut your head off if you disagree with them.
Muslim folks' views on left-handedness demonstrates this very clearly: http://islamqa.info/en/ref/82120
It is part of Allaah’s complete blessing upon us and the perfection of this great religion, that Islam organizes all aspects of our lives. There is nothing good but it has shown it to us, and there is nothing bad but it has warned us against it. As well as beliefs, acts of worship, interactions with others and morals and manners, that also includes our private affairs in which Islam shows us the way that is befitting to man’s noble status and the way in which Allaah has honoured him. That includes the way the Muslim eats and drinks, and so on.
And Muslim (2020) narrated from Ibn ‘Umar (may Allaah be pleased with him) that the Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “No one among you should eat with his left hand or drink with it, for the shaytaan eats with his left hand and drinks with it.”
Allaah has warned us against disobeying the commands of the Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him), as He says (interpretation of the meaning):
“And let those who oppose the Messenger’s (Muhammad’s) commandment (i.e. his Sunnah __ legal ways, orders, acts of worship, statements) (among the sects) beware, lest some Fitnah (disbelief, trials, afflictions, earthquakes, killing, overpowered by a tyrant) should befall them or a painful torment be inflicted on them”
Sure, I guess way back when, folks wiped their assess with their bare left hands. However, left-handedness has been proven by science to be a genetic trait, not a matter of faith. But since it has been written in the Koran, that Allah doesn't like people to be left-handed, you've got a bit of a problem there.
So any Muslims can, and do, claim that using your left hand is insulting to Islam . . . as I experienced when signing in to a hotel in Egypt.
So how does Islam handle other cases, where sound science contradicts the Will of Allah . . . ?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
At one point, I decided to watch some videos of Dawkins and found him to be obscene and utterly rude. While I am personally an atheist, I truly disagree with people suggesting that this man is representative of me. It's reached a point where religious people use him as an example of the raving lunatics atheists are. So far as I can tell, while he's also an atheist, he takes atheism to a degree of being a religion. Between him and organized non-religion groups, I'm thoroughly disappointed.
The point is atheists shouldn't ever be organizing as being atheists. It should not be a defining characteristic. A person who is an atheist should be something else. Maybe an artist, a musician, a scientist, an engineer, a good will worker. In short, an atheist should have a great deal of time to spend on things that are just more important and more meaningful than religion. Instead, these groups (including the Dawkins lackies) spend all their time being atheists and they even get into the "I'm better than the people who define themselves as believing in nonsense since I'm a person who defines myself as opposing believing in nonsense." It's like the morons who stand outside of meat plants protesting slaughtering cows while wearing a leather jacket to stay warm.
People... please just be more.
The fact that rational explanation is not effective against people who adhere to a belief system put forth by their church indicates that what is needed is to get the people who run the church to change what they say. This would have to be done in imperceptibly small increments, perhaps by sneaky and subtle atheist copy editors at the printing house.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
Just to put way too fine a point on it, but what structure is time? Time is a remarkably poorly defined concept in the deeper levels of physics, even less understood than gravity.
I think the big difference between you and me is that you seem to find it completely unacceptable that anyone be wrong. I think wrongness should be corrected wherever possible, but also consider wrong beliefs a useful lens through which critical examination of correct assertions can be re-examined and improved(sometimes).
Additionally, subjective observations are treated like objective facts without question all too often. I'm looking at you, Austrian Economics. I'd like the power to disagree with something that people say is objectively true, because people can be wrong about objectiveness.
I think few atheists who know anything about it would argue that, in their time and context, Jesus's teachings were bad. But that isn't enough for sectarian Christians. Their identity tends to be bound up with a positively tribal interpretation of Christianity; in fact, Protestants may hate Protestants of a slightly different sect more than they hate Muslims or Catholics, because it is easier to hate someone where you can point to an exact area of disagreement. In the same way, the present "Pope" is more opposed to the Catholic theologian Hans Kung than to married priests joining the Catholic Church from the Church of England. (I put "Pope" in quotes because I personally regard him as an anti-Pope. But that's just me: I'm an agnostic).
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
What I've seen is not your everyday phenomenon, explainable by swamp gases or delusions.
Do tell, I for one really want to know what phenomenon you are talking about. Just let me know what your senses picked up and I'll draw my own conclusions.
I wholeheartedly agree that religion should not interfere with science, but I do not think that religion should be abolished.
When it comes to religion, there is such a diverse spectrum of people and beliefs even in a single denomination, and I have to say that not all of them are incompatible with science. Unfortunately, the more rational people are not the ones that are seen in the news, or trying to infiltrate science classes. In short, there are Christians who do not disagree with the big bang theory, evolution, the age of the planet etc, but simply view the magnificence of it all as divine. For them, science and religion are compatible. You are also correct in that short of a second-coming you will never have data to support faith, it is the antithesis of science.
I am not entirely sure Santa Clause and the like are such a bad thing. My parents never raised me to believe in Santa Clause, but the older I get the more I realize that it seems to be a human trait to want to believe in something bigger than oneself. Humans repeatedly demonstrate that we are not wholly rational beings. I am simply not sure, good or bad, of what a perfectly rational human society would look like. Part of me is afraid that they would be less human in a way.
Summary: I don't have any answers, but I would be very careful about trying to remove all irrational traits of humanity.
In my my experience, most theists on the internet are insulting towards atheists. They link Hitler with atheism (Hitler sure wasn't a traditional Christian, but he was no atheist), they expressly claim that people become atheist just so they can justify their evil ways, etc. If you want to find argumentative people in any area, you won't be searching long.
So you can point to the existence of argumentative atheists. Bully for you. Now, do you have "grounding in fact" to indicate that "hardcore internet atheists" are, say, a majority of atheists or a major problem or something?
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
I know exactly what I saw, and these guys were bonkers.
Pat Condell: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Condell has got pretty funny views: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uTypnaP5X4 on the matter. (Caution: it can offend some people depending on beliefs and sense of humor.)
And it is possible to disagree with religion without being insulting. In fact, Dawkins should try it more often ;-)
Seriously he is often extremely condescending and insulting--as a long-time atheist I often cringe at his attacks on religion precisely because they will alienate so much more than persuade.
Dawkins is my least favorite of the four horsemen (Hitch later amended the number to five, citing another crusader I had not yet heard of). Dawkins just can't seem to downplay his innate astringency. He's the Jynnan Tonnyx at the end of creation, where Hitch is the Caife Gaelach. I prefer one drink more than the other, but in a pinch, I'd drink from either well.
Part of the problem is that he treats religious belief as a Gordian Knot to be severed with a brilliant sword stroke. The reality is that loosening the bonds by degrees often works better. He seems not to connect with people whose self-esteem is based on some other principle than subtracting falsehood. Persuasion often works better when you help people to move towards.
I personally despise the doctrine of original sin. It's a blatant attack on self-esteem. Dawkins seems mild as milk compared to the God these people defend.
Dawkins admits to ignorance of both religion and baseball. But he doesn't go around attacking the designated hitter rule, and does go around attacking Christian religious tenets. He is offensive because his outrage is selectively targeted at something he admits to not knowing about, and which by definition is not reached by science, which is his expertise. (And I'm Pagan, so you can only imagine how offensive he is to the 70% of Americans who are Christian.) If Dawkins contained himself to arguing for science, he'd be on solid ground. Instead, he argues vociferously against Christianity, and thereby frequently looks the fool.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
I have never felt insulted by disagreement, even strong disagreement. However, what people like Richard Dawkins do often goes beyond disagreement into the realm of being intentionally insulting. And regardless of what he says in this video, which strikes me as duplicitous, he has at other times specifically advocated ridiculing religious people.
If you are neither stupid nor ignorant, then it would seem you're insane.
Dawkins believes - and I happen to agree - that the evidence supporting evolution is just overwhelming. Denying it takes the kind of mental gymnastics or sheer ignorance of flat-Earthers. If he's correct, then his characterization is accurate. You can accuse him of being wrong about the evidence for evolution, but you can't accuse him of being mean-spirited.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Duh. Because Dawkins' definition of "insulting" can't be forced on people any better than a religion can be forced on people. They're insulted. The argument that matters is whether or not we are obliged to change society because some groups are insulted, and the obvious answer to anybody but an insultee seeking political gain is "no, No, NO! A thousand times, No. You have no right to live in a world where your precious little thin-skin doesn't itch".
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
People who claim to be Creationists are almost always ignorant of evolution. That's just a statement of fact
As much as I hate to quote Dwight Schrute: False. Sort of. Well, technically true but presenting a false non-equivilancy.
Creationists who are well versed in creationism are usually also well versed in evolutionary theory (they are the most studious of believers, after all). There are a great many people who believe in creationism or evolutionary theory as origins of man who are not well educated in either and who are just following along with whatever someone in a robe or lab coat says. But these people aren't usually well educated in anything, so Dawkins' statement is true, but his unspoken implication ("most believers in evolutionary theory are well educated in creationism and/or evolutionary theory") is not. And I've seen more of the opposite of his statement: people who belief that the current diversity of life is wholly a product of the evolutionary process generally hold religion in such disdain that they don't investigate creation stories beyond the first sentences (or consider the possibility of a creation event which has been as yet unvoiced).
There are all sorts of things I'm ignorant of, such as baseball, but I don't regard it as insulting if somebody says I'm ignorant of baseball, it's a simple fact. I am ignorant of baseball. People who claim to be Creationists are almost always ignorant of evolution. That's just a statement of fact, not an insult.
The problem isn't that the religiously zealous are taking a benign interpretation of the label "ignorant" the wrong way. The problem is that many religions try to assert their dogma in spite facts that this generous fellow would claim they are simply "ignorant" to.
The proper analogy would be (ooh this one's fitting) someone understanding the NFL enough to comprehend the game they are watching, but then go on to claim that American football is just a well-designed brainwashing advert-tainment channel, and then claiming that soccer is the one true futbol and only one worth watching. Sound familiar?
Everybody knows God exists, most of us are either confused about what He wants from us or are naive about life and death. Law and absolute exist because He is perfect, but we exist because He is love and needs someone to love. Romance tells us that God is a romantic. Science like chaos tells us that God is creative and structured. He is beautiful and we should take no shame in worshiping Him while exploring and enjoying His creation.
I prefer Atheism# - much easier for the beginner.
"Who is this God person anyway?"
I will listen to and consider all evidence and welcome critiques of what I believe. I known full well my limitations as a finite creature and do not know every side of any argument and have positioned myself to accept possible changes in my beliefs or worldviews in accordance with the availble data.
Too bad that's a little long to slap on a button or T-shirt. It's a worthy motto.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
I already have. Scientists like to say that their theories are backed by "mathematical reasoning", but this is a false statement. As any mathematician will tell you, mathematics is a closed system of logical reasoning with no implied relation to the physical world. Science is backed by statistical reasoning, not mathematics.
When one gets into the philosophical questions of what a p-value really means, whether frequentism or Bayesianism is a better model of the universe, then scientific reasoning will become very dubious indeed. About 99% of science is based on linear regression, yet linear regression contains incredibly bold assumptions (e.g. homogeneity of variance, zero measurement errors in covariates, normality of residuals). What is the null hypothesis and the alternative? What if the null hypothesis is unrealistic, and a better model would test between two possible parameter values? When the latter is imposed, most scientific experiments lack adequate sample sizes. If scientific journals required tests for normality of residuals, then 80% or more of existing papers would disappear. Other than sample averages, true normal distributions are rarely encountered in nature.
I saw things like that too. When I took LSD. And in flashbacks, without benefit of LSD.
So I know you can definitely "see" things that are amazing and inexplicable in terms of the mundane world and physics. However, where we differ is that I also know that just because I can imagine and visualize something in glorious visual, aural and other sense detail... that still doesn't make it real. It's only real if it is real. Which means other people will see it as well, and that repeatability and testability will be there.
I know that facts trump conviction every time; that physics always wins while prayer grabs its wins from random coincidence; and I know that there has never been a recorded case of superstitious presumption having made its way into known reality.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
If you read many of the stories, like Moses, King Nebuchadnezzar, Jesus, etc. They all express feelings of hatred to those who oppose God. Religious people are just surrogates of these stories, that’s why they like to quote passages in the Bible all the time.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
I have no problem with people who don't believe in God, and I have no religious beliefs of my own, but (some) atheists creep me out in the same way that many born again Christians do. Especially atheists coming from strong religious backgrounds. They act like they have to prove the absense of God, in order to justify their lack of faith. If faith helps certain people, then that's good for them, and I have no desire to attack that.
But personally, I've never understood how people on either side could be so certain about the unknowable. If you can't know, who cares? I'll find out when I die and I have infinity on my hands to ponder it (or not).
If Dawkins truly believes that religion will quietly tolerate being told it is wrong, he is an idiot.
Well, he's not an idiot. He's trying to point out the absurdity of holding a point of view that takes offense at any question, challenge, or outright dispute. And that this type "offense" is fabricated to manipulate polite society and should be ignored.
There are such things as boundaries in human society, and while they're never absolute, there comes a point when one group extends the boundaries of its own propriety so far that there is no room for anyone else to exist--let alone coexist with a similarly absurdly broad set of boundaries. We can't all be pope.
Affected outrage is worn like a mask and used like a weapon to cow the rest of society to the will of an aggressive and dangerous few.
It's not the responsibility of the rest of the world to tiptoe around a group of people who have subverted the natural human desire for social harmony. Nobody offended you; you chose to "take offense". Well, now you've taken it; you have it; enjoy it. This is your offense, not ours.
To cite examples from the religion into which I have been indoctrinated:
Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.
Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea
You don't get to "opt out" and believe something else on your own time. You're either with or you're against. The domain of God and His representatives on earth is absolute. "Heresy" is ANY teaching inconsistent with dogma. It doesn't matter who teaches it or to whom. Church member or not, challenging dogma is not only an insult, it's a crime.
In modern times, the power of the Church to prosecute heresy has decreased significantly. They grudgingly acknowledge the existence of other views, but VCII, Ecumenism, etc. are still controversial with a lot of people. "OK, sure, we don't have to convert all the ignorant savages. We tend get a lot of really dirty looks from folks when we do that, and besides, we can't enforce it anyway. So, in the spirit of God's love for all His children, we accept that all..." But make no mistake if the Church had the power to enforce canon law everywhere, they would. Manipulation of the secular law where canon law has lost dominion is an effective and efficient tool.
One can only imagine that another's religion, especially offshoots of the one into which one has been indoctrinated has similarly totalitarian views of dissention--by members of the church or by people in general. I invite their own apostates to speak for their religion's tolerance to heresy.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
None of this seems to have anything to do with science. You have created a strawman of how science works and are beating it with all your might. I have pretty deep suspicions that you have no idea how science actually works, but having some experience in statistics, like a Creationist engineer, you attack from the only angle you can.
But let's look at this. Science often has to deal in things that cannot be directly observed. One cannot directly observe an electron. One can only detect it by the effects that it has on observable phenomena. Some phenomena have even deeper levels of inference. No one living saw your great great great great great grandparents copulate. In fact no one living saw your great great great great grandparents copulate either. There are multiple levels of inference required to suggest that A. your great great great great great grandparents copulated, B. that they were mammals, and that C. you are a descendant of those two individuals and their act of copulation.
As to your final claim, it's funny when some guy who claims to understand statistics goes and simply invents a statistic. It rather undermines everything you have said. You're just a pseudo-skeptic who has come up with a word salad argument that you likely endlessly repeat.
Go post your crap on talk.origins and see how long it stands up.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
And in this time and age, it's fairly trivial to do a full-text search in the bible for verses that mention both "stone" and "death" in close proximity, and then you can go ahead and read the full context. But if it makes Joce640k feel better that he knows the bible better than a full-text search engine, then so be it.
I once had a signature.
When someone is actually stupid, and the motivation for their actions is under examination as it is in these cases, it's simply diagnostic to call them stupid -- and it's 100% true. Avoiding saying so at that point is just politically correct nonsense.
Or, we could just say they are unique and happy snowflakes, eh?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
He's not talking about "God created everything" general creationism that doesn't exclude evolution. He's talking about Creationism that is in contradiction with evolution - the idea that there is no evolution at all, that the "kinds" were created by God and that there is no evolution that results in new species, that mankind did not evolve from any other form of life, etc). This should be obvious because he is presenting them as being in opposition.
And if you believe that type of Creationism, then yes you are ignorant of evolution.
True, this word has acquired a stigma in the language, one that denotes lack of intelligence where, as Dawkins notes, there really is none in the word. But you can't simply ask questions and answer rebuttals. They already have rebuttals fed to them, and holes in their understanding simply do not exist. The important part is this: Evolution would mess up their worldview, and therefore it simply cannot be true.
However, don't be too quick to judge everybody to be like this. I get classified with them when it comes to globalwarmingcoolingclimatechange, but I have no problem with the concept of man-made global warming. We've screwed so much up, so why not that too? I'd be surprised if we didn't. But I have questions, mainly related to AGW as a political and socioeconomic movement with non-scientific motives corrupting the scientific community. There's a LOT of money and power at stake with government and corporate rulers (yes, corporations and the rich who run them have aligned themselves to reap the benefits of government AGW policies, hello Solyndra). It has also attained a quasi-religious status, with any who question treated as blasphemers and heretics, the automatic claim that you must be a corporate stooge (I guess as opposed to a stooge of corporations benefitting from AGW policies) reminiscient of chants of "Devil Worshipper!" Government and corporate power and money with religion thrown in, the ultimate combination for bringing out my distrust.
Meanwhile, natural selection fought its way up from underdog status, despite persecution from religious governments, for over 100 years. It definitely succeeded on the merits, not on government and corporate dictates.
Time is a remarkably poorly defined concept in the deeper levels of physics, even less understood than gravity.
Yes, but I was referring to http://www.timecube.com/
I think the big difference between you and me is that you seem to find it completely unacceptable that anyone be wrong.
Depends what you mean by wrong and depends what you mean by unacceptable.
People are allowed to be wrong, and I would advocate no law against that. In that way, I accept them. There are also degrees of wrong: I'm vastly more accepting of people believe that the earth is an ellipsoid than people who believe the earth is flat (http://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html).
Perspectives can only come in to play when something is up for debate. For example, I love arguing with roman_mir about the benefits of the free market. I think he's wrong, and he thinks I'm wrong, but those are both perspectives, because neither of our opinions could be considered to be objective fact. It doesn't stop me feeling he's very wrong and arguing loudly though.
'd like the power to disagree with something that people say is objectively true, because people can be wrong about objectiveness.
Well, that's OK. Whether something can be regarded as objectively true _may_ be up for debate.
However there are plenty of emperical, objective facts. For example whether the earth is flat or not. Refusing to acknowledge them isn't IMO a perspective, it's ignorance or stupidity.
That's "acceptable" inasmuch as I feel they should be allowed to live their ignorance/stupidity filled lives in peace if they wish to and if they wish to remain ignorant. But they shouldn't expect any respect or worse reverence for it.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
>None of this seems to have anything to do with science.
Really? Do you think scientific reasoning is not based on statistics?
>You have created a strawman of how science works and are beating it with all your might.
To the contrary, the standard operating procedure of science is to create the straw man of the null hypothesis, then beat it with data which will contradict the straw man no matter what happens.
>Science often has to deal in things that cannot be directly observed....
Indeed, such experiments often rely on logistic regression based on "yes" and "no" answers for observable data. Here's a basic flaw of logistic regression that most scientists do not realize: if some covariate is a perfect predictor of outcome, the p-value will not be close to zero. It will be 1 or very close to 1, failing to reject the null hypothesis, because the Fisher information matrix blows up to infinity. So if there are "absolute truths" hidden in the data, a scientific experiment will fail to detect it. I pointed this out to a room full of genetics researchers, and most of them were stumped. Their research depended entirely upon p-values being close to zero. But if a gene was in fact a perfect predictor of outcome, the experiments (as they ran it) would be guaranteed never to find them.
As much as I spend looking at money that says "In the Easter bunny we trust", or reciting as a child "One nation, under the Easter bunny", or seeing signs that say "The Easter bunny hates (whoever)", or getting security screened because a small number of people who worship a different Easter bunny who is actually the same Easter bunny with a different color Easter basket wish me harm, or explaining to my kids that the neighbor kids who tell them they'll go to the Land of Eternal No Candy because they go to the Church of the Pink Easter Bunny and we don't, or we go to the Church of the Blue Easter Bunny.
But yeah, so long as your beliefs don't affect me, I don't care what you believe. Truly, I hope your beliefs bring you joy and comfort.
No, no. That's "BA". This is BA+! It's differenter!
Perhaps BA+ is so some sort of anus size designation, like 34C for breasts.
Ezekiel 23:20
I have no mod points, but agree.
Dawkins' baseball analogy misses the point. I too am ignorant of baseball. But there are no elements of society that take umbrage with my ignorance or try to convert me. They simply don't invite me to watch games. Otherwise, we get along just fine.
Creationists aren't just ignorant of evolution. In fact, some of them are very familiar with its theoretical basis. But its a knowledge borne out of the need to fight against a competing ideology that they cannot tolerate. I don't understand religions. I haven't studied them much, because, to the extent that I have, they aren't of any use to me.
Likewise, I don't know every plot twist of every Star Trek series. Some people do, but that doesn't make it reality regardless of their depth of knowledge. And I don't think that any of them believe so either (a few nut jobs excepted). Understanding religion has its uses in understanding human society. In much the same way that understanding the mythology shared by any group does. Those that do understand it, but keep it in the context of a set of tales; more power to them.
Have gnu, will travel.
"Unless they have no clue at all about their religion"
that is true of a lot of christians too, proved by a survey done a year or so ago, Atheists knew more about the bible than the christians
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
whooosh me thinks
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Apple fans would probably prefer objective atheism
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
yep, but have a look whats currently happening in Myanmar with the Buddhists beating on the muslims
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
"I don't think any religion is inherently good or bad - it is as good or bad as its followers."
If you read the bible or the koran they both promote horrible things like stoning kids to deaf, genocide, homophobia so read one of them and see if you still agree with your statement.
Dawkins is saying what he says because the fundamental muslims carry out the message to the letter because they die doing it, they will get martyrdom and 72 virgins when they reach their heaven. The fundamental christians generally don't go that far because i guess they are not 100% sure there is a heaven and they haven't got the luxury of 72 virgins to play with up there.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
* "outlaw any questioning of scientific theories" ??
* Are You asking for a 5-billion-year-long experiment ??
* Evolution isn't statistics. Geology isn't statistics. Cosmology isn't statistics. You have a PhD in statistics. It looks like You have a hammer and thinks everthing is a nail.
* It seems that You think that every Scienticific progress since 1500 is an illusion based on wrong assumptions. I think the problem is that You have learned too little and therefore assumes that You know all.
Mundus Vult Decipi
> Western nations say they have the "freedom of speech" to insult any religion as they please.
I am pretty sure that the right to insult goes well beyond religions and to everything, including insulting western nations themselves. For example, you will not find as many books as written in the west criticizing the injustice of the west to other... anywhere else (for me that is a sign of maturity... and I am not a westerner).
> When I got my PhD in statistics, one of the first things I was taught in grad school was to never extrapolate inferences beyond the range of observed data.
I am pretty sure you misunderstood the point. That’s a nice principle to keep in mind for statistical model building. But science (cold models + human theories) is all about such extrapolation and theory-building as long as we have reason to believe that the extrapolation will hold (but don’t yet know for sure) until we come up with arguments or evidence that it won’t hold. If there are errors made along the way that’s just normal science. For example, until we have reason to suspect that physics at the speed of light is different from classical physics, it is very rational *and scientific* to believe that the same will hold true. I challenge you to cite *any* science that does not do this.
> From what we know from the world of biology, patterns that appear to hold in the short term will often deviate greatly in the long term. But somehow, we are required to believe that such deviations could never happen elsewhere.
Your PhD is not in Biology. So perhaps you should not extrapolate from your lack of experience (observed data) in this area, that there are any such requirements. Again, I challenge you to cite your sources that biologists actually believe this.
Quite the contrary, I know biologists to understand evolution as a series of punctuated events (Eg: Cambrian explosion) and hardly as homogenous progression. And the current views are not derived simplistically from weak extrapolation, as you claim. There is quite a bit of interdisciplinary triangulation involved here.
I feel you are setting up science as something it never was and necessarily will never be. Statistics may be clean and elegant, but science in-the-wild will always be messy.
> I was an atheist before going to graduate school
I hope you meant you became an agnostic after (I personally don’t distinguish between the two for any significance) because religious models don’t even come close to your unrealistically idealistic epistemological criteria, much less compete with science.
> but I learned the huge number of assumptions upon which science is built. Upon close examination, many or all of the assumptions are wrong
Science was never about not being wrong. It was about being self-critical, principled and rational, with the limited knowledge we have, at the time. And claiming to have found potentially "all" assumptions to be wrong (and implicitly that others don't see) is quite presumptuous, no?
> but scientists merely ostracize those who question the assumptions, saying it is "irrelevant" or to avoid "paralysis by analysis".
Here you argue that science isn’t self-critical at all. Some of that is true. Science is self-critical, but only within limits. Thomas Kuhn pretty much covered the territory here. Scientists question the “assumptions” only when the field is in crisis and it is time for a paradigmatic revolution. Calling for a revolution every other day however is a pointless waste of time. The reason isn’t to avoid analysis paralysis. It is to make sure we move from one state of order (reasonable sound theoretical model) to another state of order, avoiding long periods of chaos in the interim. Its like saying true democracy does not exist and may never... and therefore we should not bother trying.
Look. I too have a PhD and more. I too tried to challenge the core assumptions in my own field (not challenging other fields as it seems to be the case with you) and nobody cared to engage and I moved on. Science does not revolve around me. I get where you are coming from. But you are arguing like Deepak Chopra when you should be arguing like John Ioannidis.
" but I do not think that religion should be abolished."
Nobody is saying that at all. All they are saying is keep it to yourself and out of government, law, schools etc
" My parents never raised me to believe in Santa Clause, but the older I get the more I realize that it seems to be a human trait to want to believe in something bigger than oneself."
i don't want to believe in something bigger than oneself (i.e. in the supernatural way). The older i get, the more pissed off I get at myself when i look back on the vast amount of time wasted on thinking this shit (and alternatives) may exist and trying to believe it.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
So, I think your point is that you can freely disagree with anything you'd like without it being taken as a crime? I think we've both just argued against each other that free speech is a good idea.
So, I think your point is that you can freely disagree with anything you'd like without it being taken as a crime? I think we've both just argued against each other that free speech is a good idea.
I've heard it being described as being in violent agreement :)
SJW n. One who posts facts.
> For example, you will not find as many books as written in the west criticizing the injustice of the west to other... anywhere else (for me that is a sign of maturity... and I am not a westerner).
Really? Are you sure that students in the West do not learn about slavery, Cortez and the Incas, smallpox blankets, the atrocities of the crusades, the opium war?
(Non-Western nations did comparable things too, but the standard response there is often denial.)
> I challenge you to cite *any* science that does not do this.
Exactly my point. It is a faith.
He and other Atheists, including myself, are not just telling someone who knows nothing about Baseball that they are ignorant of Baseball.
We are tell self professed experts on Baseball that they are completely ignorant and their entire way of reasoning and belief system is wrong and idiotic. We might say it nicely sometimes, and other times we say it harshly and with contempt, but every time that is what we are saying.
Richard Dawkins is saying that they cannot be offended because they are wrong, but until you convince them of that that argument is a waste of time.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Can't find that in my copies of the Constitution. Just that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Black was very much anti-Catholic and disrespectfully invoked Jefferson for his ruling.
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2006/06/the-mythical-wall-of-separation-how-a-misused-metaphor-changed-church-state-law-policy-and-discourse
It's no more false more than if you think the Sun orbits the Earth you are ignorant. Or if you think atoms are indivisible you are ignorant.
There's overwhelming evidence for evolution, you have to be ignorant of it in order to claim that evolution isn't the cause of the variety of life on Earth.
Sure there are details for which our understanding is wrong and incomplete, just a there is with our understandings of gravity and electromagnetism and quantum mechanics. But they are the best and most accurate understandings we have, and dismissing them as "not true at all" means you must be ignorant of them; or have some amazing new theory that fits reality even better in which case you'd have a nobel prize or at least some amazing evidence.
This really sounds like a straw man argument by RD here.
He builds up this one example where it should not be taken as a insult, ignoring 99% of its real world use and meaning.
Someone does not just go up to some geek and say, you are ignorant of Baseball.
In the real word someone expresses an opinion and you might call them ignorant as a way of blowing them off. Of saying that they are not even worth arguing against. It is an insult, and is just like f*** y**, except that it attempts to give a general reason for the disrespectful blowoff.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Yeah, that must be it. No way he'd inform himself on the subject. Especially any better than you, of course.
Religion is a very powerful force. When you convince people that they will be rewarded for following your rules, and punished for violating them; and that they cannot escape the sight and judgement of an omniscient, never dying being, you have them under your complete control.
Power can be used for good or evil. Given that power often corrupts those wielding it, this tends over time to skew to evil.
As the saying goes, "Faith can move mountains." Unfortunately, sometimes those mountains are just really tall buildings.
Calling someone who disagrees with you ignorant is an example of both begging the question and ad hominem, both of which are offensive. It is begging the question because you really just restated the assertion "you are wrong" and pretended that that was an argument. It is ad hominem because you are concerning yourself with discrediting the person instead of his arguments. Of course people are going to think that that is offensive.
You said: " People who claim to be Creationists are almost always ignorant of evolution. " In all actuality, there is no evolution, not an ignorance of it. Evolutionists will always be against creation because they want to explain things from a scientific method and make themselves look smarter when all truth comes out is those evolutionists are ignorant of creation. And you have no excuse. (Romans 1:18,20)18For God’s wrath is being revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who are suppressing the truth in an unrighteous way, 19because what may be known about God is manifest among them, for God made it manifest to them. 20For his invisible [qualities] are clearly seen from the world’s creation onward, because they are perceived by the things made, even his eternal power and Godship, so that they are inexcusable;
I think Dawkins has a sweet gig attacking religion for fun and profit. His arguments are very strong and the arguments opposing him are very weak.
Were Dawkins to destroy religion, what would he accomplish? He'd dissolve a social glue that helps keep everything together, and he'd replace that glue with . . . nothing.
What would Dawkins replace religion with? Fascistic moral codes that must be adhered to? Anarchy? Isn't it good when a bunch of people adhere to a moral code that basically says "treat your neighbor decently?
What is really important in this crowded world is everybody's own individual moral code. That code isn't what you think, or believe--it's what you DO. Who cares whether or not that personal code is founded upon monkey worship, your personal salvation in Jesus, or alien intervention?
Life is not a quest for the realization of a universal ideal. That's a stupid religious idea. Life is a contest of social forces. When the religious dominate the political world, then everything becomes awful. But when the religious are suppressed, then everything becomes even more awful.
You are never going to have fascism or authoritarian government in a country that has a wide diversity of religious thought. That's because religious people will never be able to agree on anything. That's why you want to protect all varieties of religious thought.
On the other hand, religion can turn into a rapacious and violent animal if it is not limited. That's the other side of the balance.
But, meanwhile, most religious people really believe in treating their neighbor decently on a much more than superficial level. That belief derives, at least in part, from their religion. That is wonderful and valuable and worthy of respect. That's what Dawkins misses.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
While I am a fairly convinced atheist, I have to admit that while Dawkins himself walks the fine line between insulting and disagreeing, the same cannot be said for many of his devotees. I am not saying he is guilty by association, but I am saying that someone who stirs emotions the way he does is at the very least responsible for them. In other words, he is not guilty, but he is responsible. The same, by the way, is true of the religions which purport to espouse peace while creating civil unrest. The main theme of this is, of course, explored in Dune. Paul's main angst was not losing but creating a cult in the name of which millions would go on to be slaughtered. The same concern must be shared by anyone attempting to challenge social norms. Not paying regard to such concern is exactly how secular revolutions against dictatorships turn into the rule of Shah.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Two quotes that I try to remember, and wished that everyone else would remember as well...
Believe those who are seeking the truth ; doubt those who find it.
The second is in my signature...
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I gather that "Base-ballists" believe that there are nine players to what they call a "team" and they play with an oblong object they call "ball" which they alternately attempt to throw, catch or hit with a wooden club. That seems irreducibly complex to me. And yet Wikipedia claims that Baseball "evolved" from other games - that they themselves admit are difficult to trace. They refer to a 14th-century French manuscript (French!) that appears to suggest even clerics were not above playing a game resembling this "base-ball".
Now I ask of you: Is it plausible that a game as absurd as this would develop naturally by random chance out of other games? Ball games just changing into one another? And look at who is at the forefront of promoting and perpetuating this supposed game: The hopelessly secular public highschools and elitist ivory-tower universities again.
You may claim I'm ignorant of "Base-ball" or sports in general, but I'm just seeing this with the common sense God gave me. "Base-ball" is a scam!
There are serious problems with some hindu and buddhist beliefs, thinking it's okay for people to suffer the way they do and not even try to help
I don't know about Hindus, but I spent a year in Thailand, a country almost 100% Bhuddist, and they were nothing like you make them out to be. Whoever told you this was lying.
I am a Christian, and I don't believe the world is as old as scientists say.
I'm a Christian, and it's fools like you who embarrass thinking Christians. You might want to look a little closer at methods used tof determining dates. They'r not going to be accurate to minutes, but they're certainly accurate in terms of decades or centuries.
There is no need to try to state a debate with me because I would likely ignore any further comments that try to discredit things I believe
In other words, LA LA LA I CAN"T HEAR YOU. You, sir, are a fool. Try READING your bible, particularly Proverbs. "A fool despises his father's instruction, But he who receives correction is prudent."
"A scoffer does not love one who corrects him,
Nor will he go to the wise."
"The heart of him who has understanding seeks knowledge, But the mouth of fools feeds on foolishness."
Sorry, son, but Solomon was talking directly to you.
Free Martian Whores!
LOL :). I'm picking up on your sarcasm here.
I think this is a great conversation to have, not just with religious people but people into any kind of ism.
Publicly, loudly, clearly disagreeing with them raises charges of intolerance. No, intolerance is bulldozing the churches and killing people who believe x, y or z.
Endorsement and tolerance are two differnt things.
Intolerance is what you get from religious people and people into various isms if you publickly, clearly disagree with beliefs they know they don't have hard evidence for. They are intoleratnt of hearing it or letting other people hear it. They know they need silence or endorsement to preserve the illusion of a reality.
> Really? Are you sure that students in the West do not learn about slavery, Cortez and the Incas, smallpox blankets, the atrocities of the crusades, the opium war?
Like I said, I am not a Westerner. I did not go to school in US. I don't believe high-school students anywhere study nuanced history. I am reasonably certain that these are not covered in high-school curriculum since all the books I read about every single one of these in detail, had a certain elite vibe to them.
Conservatives in US seemed to believe that the point of history education is less about such nuances rather than creating well-behaved citizenry, with nationalistic pride, based on shared and elegant myths (facts, like science, are messy). My country similarly has its own shared myths in the curriculum. In my decade or so in US, it looked like the creationism lobby was trying for a similar platform, this time in science. Harder sell since this has only been done in theocracies so far, not in OECD countries.
But, like I said, there are more books self-critical written in the West than anywhere else... I was not talking about what school kids read.
> (Non-Western nations did comparable things too, but the standard response there is often denial.)
Exactly my point. I am confident they/we will get there in time.
>> I challenge you to cite *any* science that does not do this.
> Exactly my point. It is a faith.
It may be your point. But it is utter nonsense. So in your view, science is all faith. So I assume that the recent Mars Rover got there entirely by a faith. There is always *some* faith of course, since we rarely have all the data. We were not sure we could land it until we did. But in your bizarre worldview, if there is a trace of faith, then it is all faith. Most people use a *continuous scale* for this. Your fundamental fallacy is that you use a *discrete scale*. How exactly do you make this leap? After all, the p-scale you seem to love is itself a continuous scale and its whole point is of communicating uncertainty... so that we can work with it or around it.
Your other points elsewhere.
======================
>>None of this seems to have anything to do with science.
>Really? Do you think scientific reasoning is not based on statistics?
Matter-of-factually... no. Science uses statistics as a key tool. But often, it is not the main foundation for discovery.
>>You have created a strawman of how science works and are beating it with all your might.
> To the contrary, the standard operating procedure of science is to create the straw man of the null hypothesis, then beat it with data which will contradict the straw man no matter what happens.
I actually don't disagree here. My own field greatly abuses this framework and it was one of my own critiques of my field. But do note that no one takes such results as definitive conclusions. Everyone understands that it is just a framework for talking about observations. Its a soft, rather than concrete use of statistical methods. Like using language linguistically, rather than in an ontologically rigorous manner.
> Where are the scientists who welcome the teaching of alternatives to the theory of evolution?
What alternatives? The only theory where there is any scientific activity is around the theory of evolution. Creationists haven't exactly come up with a scientific program.
> No, they lobby hard to pass laws making it illegal to teach any ideas that question the theory.
No. They recommend that the science curriculum for “high-school” students should include only theories that have scientific activity around them.
Deepak Chopra, for example has a quantum theory of consciousness. But he proposes absolutely no scientific work, around his theory. So it won’t be in a science curriculum (Fortunately, new age types don’t think of this as an affront), given its limited scope. No one is stopping you from pursuing it elsewhere though. Librar
Finally. Churches are using evolution to their advantage. And evolving the method of delivery...
Do they not realize that's all that evolution is? Established rules of order get put into question, then a way around the rules evolves...
People evolve. Science evolves. Religion evolves. Storms evolve. Countries evolve. People evolve, rules evolve, systems evolve..
And so does time, space, and physical bodies. As does genetic experimentation resulting in different forms of life...
I'm sure that'll work even better...
There's no getting away from religion's track record; so yes, religion needs to be neutered most thoroughly anywhere it even begins to impinge on governance. Look around you: Can't buy alcohol on Sunday (Why? What the fuck is Sunday to me?), six state constitutions officially include religious tests that would effectively prevent atheists from holding public office, and in some cases being a juror/witness, then there's that whole "swear on a bible" bucket of shit, there's the would-be laughable "creationism" thing (laughable except it snares a whole bunch of the bewildered and leads them down a most unscientific aisle full of crapola), there's toxic avengers like the Westboro pond scum, there's the whole "we can re-educate gays" idiocy...
Then historically speaking, we've got the inquisitions, the crusades, witch burnings, jihads, vilification of sexuality (we're still trying to dig out of that one: religion's biggest accomplishment ever was to convince people that sex was a bad thing except under aegis of the church, which really just means under the dictates of religious structures... you evil scumbags REALLY fucked up sexuality), murder of "heretics", suppression of science, burnings at the stake (eg. Giordano Bruno), blue laws, climic bombings...
I mean, really. Religion fucks up just about everything in touches. We don't need to speculate about this, we know it. So the best answer is, don't let it touch anything. You can think about your imaginary friend all you want. You can talk about him. But you can't make laws from your collection of imaginary crapola or force people to listen (eg, school prayer, etc.) That is best.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
It's not there "for context." Jesus himself explicitly says they remain in force.
Got that? Not one jot or tittle. Hint for interpretation: The earth has not passed.
Further hint: When Jesus says he comes to fulful, he doesn't mean fulfil all, or he wouldn't have drawn the distinction that the OT was in force until the world ended -- the two make zero lexical sense if you try to read them as if his fulfilling of prophecy is also the actual ending of the world.
Consequence: The OT is still 100% in force, and should you ignore it, you're toast. And that, my friend, is actual Christianity. Enjoy. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Speaking as an atheist, I prefer the KJV because (a) it is considerably more lyrical (and yes, that's an artifact of Ye Olde Englishe), and (b) reading it, you're reading the actual formative context that landed the US in such religious fuckery rather than some jollied-up modern version, and (c) having dug through this a bit and compared a number of the modern interpretations with textual criticism references close at hand, I find they have taken fairly obvious liberties. Textual criticism, the study of "getting the bible right", basically, also shows the KJV to be an *extremely* accurate translation; they worked really hard on it, they were 700 years closer to the original Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic, and it's withstood the scrutiny of scholars comparing about 5000 known scriptural fragments for this entire time... and it is only recently that people have had the urge to rewrite the thing. So it's the KJV that I use, though I usually look also at several others to see how they've mishmoshed some of the more critical details.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Your attack on atheism is funny. It's certainly easier than defense.
You're all assholes because you don't believe the crap I believe, I find that insulting, and calling you names is the only avenue left to me to defend my fairy tale god.
Do you have any idea just how hypocritical that is?
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Here's the flaw in your argument: When you attempt to retrieve validity for claims outside of the ability of science to address them, you don't get to pick and choose. Whatever validity you assign to the existence of your unprovable diety is the exact same as the validity assigned to little invisible and undetectable pink ultra-intelligent unicorns that run around upside down along and through the earth's crust, eating magical beanstalk pies and who are *actually* the cause of earthquakes. Science can't disprove them, either, see. Or the magic 1 cm teapot that is zipping around Pluto, actually running the show by fractal progression of its ceramic patterns and application of the changes via Magical Ceramic HooHa. Or anything else unprovable that anyone makes up about anything. Is that really the amazingly shitty company you want to be in? Holy crap, really?
You see, saying "science can't address this" isn't actually something that adds credibility of any kind. What it does is slots the subject matter squarely in the "bullshit" hole.
That whole "non-overlapping magisteria" thing? On the one side, we have magisteria indeed: Science and technology and how we integrate those developing understandings of reality with our lives; on the other, we have a load of crap. And the only thing that's "right" about the non-overlapping magisteria nonsense is the whole "doesn't overlap" thing. Because you don't actually get to say "it's supernatural so you can't think about it." We do think about it. And we've concluded it's unmitigated bullshit.
All this is quite aside from the fact that some atheists are perfectly willing to stand up and mention the fact that claims for god are not only not present within themselves, but they *also* recognize them as absurd. They might also like pizza. Doesn't make them any more, or any less, of an atheist, and if Joe Atheist thinks Chicago Pizza is as good as NY pizza, he's still an atheist, even though he's obviously and completely wrong about the pizza.
None of that defines atheism any differently. It's just a one-point thing; without belief in a god or gods.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I don't believe high-school students anywhere study nuanced history.
I learned most of this stuff from my 5th grade world history textbook, actually.
I am reasonably certain that these are not covered in high-school curriculum since all the books I read about every single one of these in detail, had a certain elite vibe to them.
You're right, a lot of high school textbooks promote liberal lies such as that Christians burned down the library at Alexandria, or that the Church refused to accept Galileo's theories. The church did not have much of a problem with Galileo's theories; many priests of the day accepted them. The Church tried him for scientific misconduct, where he presented no evidence for his theories, took credit for the ideas of others, and when asked to present evidence, either made up data or just ridiculed others. Today, such a scientist would be sent to prison for fraud. The church placed him under house arrest instead.
So I assume that the recent Mars Rover got there entirely by a faith.
At least, we have faith it is not a made-up story by NASA. These days, it's rather easy to create video images that look convincing.
What alternatives? The only theory where there is any scientific activity is around the theory of evolution.
Do they teach disclaimers that scientists aren't quite sure anymore if we came out of Africa or Asia? How much modern human DNA comes from interbreeding between the myriad species of hominids? Or that gene transfer between species is impossible.... unless bacteria and viruses do transfer genes between different species of hosts all the time. Or that evolution does not always go "forward" in the direction of bigger or more complex organisms. Who knows how many bacteria or viruses today used to be plants or animals? Archaea were supposed to be "extremely rare bacteria" found only in hot springs, but now they are all around us, and our intestines contain billions of them, and we haven't begun to understand them. The "kingdoms" of life keep changing by the year, since there are lots of organisms that don't quite fit any. We assume DNA similarities must always reflect common ancestry, as opposed to convergence by independent processes in different species, or host transfers. So yes, it is a shaky house of cards invented by Darwin, who had never heard of Mendel's genetics. Today, evolution proponents consider Darwin's "survival of the fittest" to be an embarrassing simplification that reflects the bigotry of Victorian class values; early supporters of evolution theory included eugenecists who proposed mass sterilization of children with low IQs. Until the 1950s, the scientific establishment continued to support this view; today, the same mentality is described in terms of birth control for reducing the population of undesirable races from poorer countries.
Creationists haven't exactly come up with a scientific program.
For the most part, they don't try to. What we lack is a counterpoint to the blind faith and sordid history of evolutionism.
Yes it is. It's #000000.
If it's not a sound, how can it be music?
I'm inclined to agree, except in database terms it's cleaner (or at least simpler) to treat it as if it is. Or maybe not, if you're dealing with some Asians (a thing I only learned recently), but then you'd need a join and those are not webscale.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
>"outlaw any questioning of scientific theories" ??
Where are the scientists who welcome the teaching of alternatives to the theory of evolution? No, they lobby hard to pass laws making it illegal to teach any ideas that question the theory. Every year, a fragment of a jaw bone found in the "wrong" place causes scientists to go into a frenzy to rewrite the tree of evolution, but that's besides the point.
I'm sure people would be tripping over themselves to examine an alternate theory, I have yet to hear of one.
If they want to be treated as science, then they have to do the work, no magic sky fairies or other untestable rubbish.
> Are You asking for a 5-billion-year-long experiment ??
Yes. Otherwise the assumptions are non-falsifiable, and we might as well believe the writing on stone tablets found on a mountain somewhere.
That's just so completely wrong, plenty of stuff in the ToE is falsifiable; most of the deniers just whine that "none of those thing happen" and think the theory is at fault for being consistent with reality.
>Evolution isn't statistics. Geology isn't statistics. Cosmology isn't statistics.
They absolutely are. Journals for all three topics mention p-values all the time.
Stats can be used to assist in analyzing data, but they are just a tool, they are not the science.
Nothing to say here... move along
Upon close examination, many or all of the assumptions are wrong;
You make two fundamental mistakes (piled high and deep, indeed): you assume that all things are equally wrong, and you assume that science is the search for truth.
Since you can't get the goal of science or the scientific method right, I would suggest you start from scratch with your analysis.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Ah, you don't get statistics either (although you sling the lingo around). That explains much. (That being said, a lot of scientists don't understand statistics as well as they should, or you wouldn't have stumped that many geneticists.)
(Hint: an absolute truth will be approximated by rejecting hypotheses that differ from it, or by more direct computation. The first is approximately how you write it up, the second how you do it. There is no lack of actual correlation among published papers, whereas your theory of science would predict there are none.)
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I'd use a different word because calling someone ignorant is taken as an insult by the average person.
I thought I said this already, but I don't see it. Anyway, I'd love to have you explain to my why that is hypocritical. And no, I don't see it. I have had these discussions a few times tho, FYI, so answer carefully.
I think he's referring to the "My Belief" is as good as "Your Belief" conversation. Now you would have to explain to him the reason he's buggered is that he has "A Belief System based on something somebody invented from some source other that verifiable physical reality", and you have a rational framework of ideas based on validation tested against the physical universe and that if at any point in time the universe disagrees with any of the ideas in your rational framework, you excise the offending idea as proven false. Beliefs exist in the absence of facts. There are many unanswerable questions about being human and alive in this place. For these eternal questions, beliefs are a potentially valid way to look at these aspects of life and the universe. There are a growing number of places for which we have good theories and experimental data, and in these places you can dispense with belief, because there are facts, and facts trump opinions every time.
Just because I don't believe in gravity don't mean I can pull a Bugs Bunny and float on my belief... physical reality trumps every single time.
LOL! :)
I think you have it covered, thanks.
Point of factual order, sirrah!.
Nature is perfectly capable of bringing this sort of storm down on you without Science's assistance. It is possible that Science, through it's handmaid "technology" and with the able assistance of "human greed", has had a non-trivial influence in increasing the probability of events like this, but that's a probability about which there is genuine uncertainty (it may be a 10% contribution ; it may be a 50% contribution ; but since there have been pretty serious storms along this coast recorded for centuries, it's unlikely to be a 90% contribution).
But otherwise ... a fairly normal rant. Don't give up the day job, and hurry up with my fries!
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
"In the middle of the summer Moses the raven suddenly reappeared on the farm, after an absence of several years. He was quite unchanged, still did no work, and talked in the same strain as ever about Sugarcandy Mountain. He would perch on a stump, flap his black wings, and talk by the hour to anyone who would listen."
.. there it lies, Sugarcandy Mountain, that happy country where we poor animals shall rest for ever from our labours!'."
"'Up there, comrades,' he would say solemnly, pointing to the sky with his large beak -- 'up there, just on the other side of that dark cloud that you can see
"He even claimed to have been there on one of his higher flights, and to have seen the everlasting fields of clover and the linseed cake and lump sugar growing on the hedges. Many of the animals believed him. Their lives now, they reasoned, were hungry and laborious; was it not right and just that a better world should exist somewhere else?."
"A thing that was difficult to determine was the attitude of the pigs towards Moses. They all declared contemptuously that his stories about Sugarcandy Mountain were lies, and yet they allowed him to remain on the farm, not working, with an allowance of a gill of beer a day. link
AccountKiller
We're trying to encourage, with some success, other organizations to make use of our facility, so that they will use our website, or have their own websites which are based upon ours, and have the same look and feel and use the same infrastructure."
Another promoter in an ocean of "please give time to my precious website".
This shows that you've gotten your information about Dawkins from sources other than Dawkins. Try reading one of his books rather than reading about his books. If you can't bring yourself to do that, try reading David Sloan Wilson or Jerry Coyne and find out why 'microevolution' is itself a problematic distinction.
Um, you need to read another of his books. He never argued that. What he argues is that evolution directly counters a specific argument for God, the 'argument from design in biology', and indirectly undermines other design arguments because it forms an 'existence proof' that other sources for design exist than directed intelligence.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
> You're right, a lot of high school textbooks promote liberal lies
The peculiar problem with textbooks in US is that there are too many of them... delicately catering to various political constituencies. Textbooks should reflect the intellectual consensus of the day. Whether the consensus will be proven to be untrue in the future is not a concern for *high-school* text books.
> The Church tried him for scientific misconduct, where he presented no evidence for his theories, took credit for the ideas of others, and when asked to present evidence, either made up data or just ridiculed others.
My reading of it was that he put the Pope in a difficult spot by choosing a combative tone in his book despite clear instructions to the contrary, at a time when the pope was in a politically vulnerable spot when the side he backed in a war, lost. So although Galileo was a personal friend of the pope from before he became a pope and even though he got the approval of the Vatican before publishing (with agreement on a dialectic method, which Galileo followed on letter, but not in spirit), it was decided that he needed to be silenced from further publication, as a political liability. Yes, the school books do have a much simpler narrative than this.
> Today, such a scientist would be sent to prison for fraud. The church placed him under house arrest instead.
Surely you jest. What you list is scientific misconduct at most... and scientists don't go to prison for this. They just get fired and are not welcomed by their peers anymore.
> Do they teach disclaimers that scientists aren't quite sure anymore
Again, the purpose of *high-school* text books is to give a basic framework of current understanding for mildly interested kids of moderate intelligence... by necessity. You are expecting disclaimers in the wrong place and are seeing conspiracy/propaganda where there is none. Most of those questions are discussed quite openly in graduate school, in open forums.
Whenever you see such conspiracy, I suggest this: Look for a developed country of reasonable scientific output where there is no such liberal/conservative dispute around education and check what they teach. Of course, if your world view is that liberal propaganda has intellectually subjugated the whole world and the last bastion of resistance are the contemporary conservatives in US, most of which are not exactly inspiring for their academic accomplishments and yet have somehow developed special understanding of sciences... this isn't going to help.
> For the most part, they don't try to. What we lack is a counterpoint to the blind faith and sordid history of evolutionism.
You lack quite a bit more than that, I assure you.
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." --George Bernard Shaw
Casteism
You can pray that a 100 ohm, 10% tolerance resistor is right at 100 ohms, and yeah, probably that's about what it'll be. Me, I'll measure the thing and I'll *know* what it is.
Obviously you've never done this. The good ones are sorted out and sold as higher tolerances. Thus, if you did find one that was actually 100 ohms, suspecting holy intervention may be appropriate.
I'm a Fundamentalist Supra-athiest and fuck-heads like Dawkins are ignorant of the true meaning of what they don't believe in.
Answer me this all you ignorant Atheists... how do you know that is God that does not exist? What if there is something else that does not exist? Something that you have not even considered not believing in?
Never mind --dont bore me with your ignorance. Most people don't have the intelligence to understand like I do. Many years of watching Nova and Mythbusters and other distilled sources of human knowledge give me a unique perspective.
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
As far as many Salafist / Wahhabi / fundamentalist Muslim beliefs go, they do not consider the Jesus of the Bible to be a prophet. They believe that the Jews corrupted Christian scripture and only their Jesus character is the true one. Similarly, only those who believe in their Jesus (who was not a god according to them) are considered to actually be "Christian" for the purposes of special benefits outlined in the Qur'an. Who we would consider to be Christians, they would consider to be polytheists (believing in the Trinity). You can read Sura 9 for yourself if you want to know what happens to polytheists.
They absolutely know about their religion. Jesus of the bible is not considered to be the same as Jesus in the Qur'an. Fundamentalist Muslims consider the Bible to be corrupted scripture (by Jews, of course), and Christians who worship the trinity to be polytheists, not protected "people of the book". It's western useful idiots who know one or two peaceful (abrogated) verses of the Qur'an and parade them around as if they know what they're talking about that's the problem.
.
This completely explains some relatives of mine that felt the need to state that "they were going for a walk" on the night before Christmas, disappeared for 3 hours (a mom+dad+three kids), and reappeared later that evening with no talking about what they'd done. My parents already knew what religion they practices, already knew that they and the kids went to church, already had no problem with them doing that, so it was completely incomprehensible to me and to my parents which this pack of relatives would behave in this bizarre and sneaky way. It was only the next day when going to the park in their minivan that it became apparent that the brochures for evening services in their vehicle showed that they'd felt the need for sneaking off.
But your concept of "teaching him to [be] sneak[y] when it comes to relgion" has enlightened me. That must be the explanation. Wouldn't good people just be honest and up-front about their beliefs? It just seems to be people who want to indoctrinate others into becoming unquestioning followers of something who go around being sneaky about their beliefs. Thank you, thank you, thank you! (truly, not sarcastically). I now feel like I understand (a subset) of other human beings better (or at least a little bit more about their motivation).
"constitutional separation of church and state" Just Google "Letter to Danbury Baptists" that Thomas Jefferson wrote. This founding father quoted and made specific mention of the Establishment clause in his letter and added that it is intended as "a wall of separation" between church and state. Also, if you take into account the context of Jefferson's letter, the meaning is plain.
and the Easter Bunny was not on US coins until the 1860's. It was not on paper money until 1954, through an act of congress. "Under Easter Bunny" was not in the original Pledge of Allegiance and was not added until 1954. The US Constitution has no mention of the Easter Bunny, except in the date, which was how everyone wrote the date back then. Its funny how conservative Christians say America is a Christian nation when most evidence points to the contrary.
Be definition, belief in religion is the denial of rational thought.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
That's a very different claim though. The original claim was about the character of the entity being presented not about its instructions to others (though some, but not all, of them are derived from those instructions).
Your second part is also a pure addition, the original statement isn't making any claims at all about the believers or the ideals they preach.
CREATE TABLE `people` ( `name` VARCHAR(255), `religion` ENUM('Christian', 'Muslim', 'Hindu', 'Other', '') DEFAULT '' );
Because for a start, I don't think it was an attack on Atheism. I think it was an attack on Dawkins, who is an arrogant, obnoxious prick, regardless of whether you agree with him or not.
And then, instead of debating the issue, you just attack the poster, with a "words-in-your-mouth" strawman that adds nothing to the discussion, other than an attack of the exact type you are decrying.
*That's* why it's hypocritical.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
If you read the bible or the koran ...
I have actually read the Bible several times, which is why I say this. The Bible and any other holy book are only books - they are made by humans, and already for that reason flawed. However, a person's religion is not what is written in any book, but what that person implements in their life. As far as I'm concerned, you can be a devoted Satanist, and a very good person at the same time; it's what you make of it that counts.
Personally, I don't give a toss - to me God is, for all practical purposes, irrelevant. I will take him seriously the day he shows up with reliable, testable evidence.
So how would you propose pointing out that the attack on Dawkins or Atheism was ad hominem? One can use presumptuous latin terms ;) or one can be direct and informal but much more clear. The critique of someone's method is not an ad hominem attack and I think you are making this mistake.
Saying "you're stupid and you're wrong" is an attack on the person. ;)
Saying "your analysis method does not actually broach the subject" is not an attack on the person but an attack on the analysis method... although it may still imply the person is stupid.
That is why it was not hypocritical.
I find this argument as delusional and dangerous, but not insulting. I think Mr Dawkins obfuscates the issues by creating a false belief that those with different views are insulted by his beliefs. I think that is far from the truth.
From my perspective, the main issue lies with the dilution of the education system and not anyone's individual feelings. Teaching creationism is a subject separate from science. Science has a clear method of repetitive observation, hypothesis, evidence, and theory. It is meant to be objective and discourages personal bias. That doesn't mean it discourages opposing views, but those views must also following the scientific method.
Creationism is part of a belief system. It should be taught in the context of that belief system. This is very similar to other "cultural" education (e.g. my wife is from Russia and my daughter attends Russian school.) If fundamentalist Christians are threatened by Science, then it is their problem, not those of the general population.
In the context of an increasingly technical world where jobs are requiring a higher level of skill, replacing technical skills with a cultural belief system is somewhat irresponsible. To put things in Dr Dawkin's words, his ignorance of Baseball will not ill prepare his for the world. It is a cultural knowledge. His ignorance of scientific method will likely stunt his abilities to compete in an increasingly science oriented world.
Dawkins is simply an idol worshipper. In a universe where scientist are the one who should really know how improbable we are, and how crazy is the whole idea of human life is.... that they make us into an idol, and worship our scientific achievements is BEYOND laughable. I mean, seriously, our current scientific knowledge of what we estimate knowable is what? under 10e-10 part of it????? I mean we are really kidding ourselves to be so full of science and try to make any deterministic statement. And again, look the choice of enemy. And look the way of the weapon. It's the religious: because our righteousness is justified by his wrongness. And the weapon is science, because he has the opposite, belief. WOW!!!!! That's so profoundly stupid it screams, but then again, as a life strategy it works. You know, I am Professor Dawkins, and I really matter, because i am so ridiculously clever, and I will save society from a system that kept it alive for thousands of years. Oh yeah, and I wear my hair in a stylistic professor way, you know. The dude needs to wake up, look in the mirror, and then get off the high horse and really analyze what we KNOW (not what we assume) about evolution. But really. Who are you kidding, Mr. Dawkins?
Some people revel in their ignorance, they proclaim loudly that the ONLY book they've ever read is the Bible and so as to prove it, quote from it endlessly!
If presented with a completely thought out, rational argument, backed up with well documented facts all "they" do is dig in "their" heels and angrily storm out.
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
Can't find that in my copies of the Constitution. Just that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Black was very much anti-Catholic and disrespectfully invoked Jefferson for his ruling.
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2006/06/the-mythical-wall-of-separation-how-a-misused-metaphor-changed-church-state-law-policy-and-discourse
Which is why America has been allowed to be quite badly infected with religion. America is a Christian Nation in all but name.
Its in their courtrooms, right on the wall behind the judge, an unmissable proclamation of belief in that particular God.
Its even in their money. Just look at most American coins and notes, you will see the same thing.
Its in their politics, no American President will get elected if he is not Christian. Its a "serious" question asked and hotly debated in the media.
Its in their public schools, even in the Science classroom, ignorantly shoved down your throat as "Intelligent Design" aka !Science
Bah!
Freedom(tm) my ass.
Its too disturbing to be funny, and too pathetic to be sad.
In my many years I have found most people become combative at least in their language or stance when you disagree with them and particularly about their religion. . I've only met one man that I could discuss opposing views with and he happened to be a Mormon. We spent many a lunch hour taking opposing views, knowing that neither of us was going to change the others beliefs, yet they were comfortable and even enjoyable conversations. Others? I just wanted to know about their beliefs compared to mine and they were about ready to fight after the first question.
"...shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" is basically the separation doctrine in its most succinct form: don't put one religion above the others, and don't stop people's right to practice their religion. What I think is often misunderstood about the idea is that it was about keeping the influence of politics out of the church and the influence of the church out of politics, insofar as you shouldn't have the same people running both, but should have two separate spheres of influence, both able to have a healthy input into society. The same would go for (for example) the free press (outside of government influence), or separating the judiciary and the legislature (e.g. so you can still arrest the president for breaking the law).
Saying that it means that the church should not be able to comment on politics is somewhat insane, in the same way that one could say a newspaper shouldn't run a story about a financial scandal involving the local governor. I would be interested to see a society where each sphere of influence (e.g. government, judiciary, media, business, church, education) was in a healthy balance to all the others, rather than the mess we have now...
Cases like taking prayer out of the schools are kind of tricky, because in fact: (a) the government and schools and judiciary shouldn't have any right to stop it there, (b) the same shouldn't be establishing it, either. Rightfully, it should be that anyone can observe - or choose not to observe - their religion without interference.
"...shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" is basically the separation doctrine in its most succinct form: don't put one religion above the others (or force it on people), and don't stop people's right to practice their religion. What I think is often misunderstood about the idea is that it was about keeping the influence of politics out of the church and the influence of the church out of politics, insofar as you shouldn't have the same people running both, but should have two separate spheres of influence, both able to have a healthy input into society. The same would go for (for example) the free press (outside of government influence), or separating the judiciary and the legislature (e.g. so you can still arrest the president for breaking the law).
Saying that it means that the church should not be able to comment on politics is somewhat insane, in the same way that one could say a newspaper shouldn't run a story about a financial scandal involving the local governor. I would be interested to see a society where each sphere of influence (e.g. government, judiciary, media, business, church, education) was in a healthy balance to all the others, rather than the mess we have now...
Cases like taking prayer out of the schools are kind of tricky, because in fact: (a) the government and schools and judiciary shouldn't have any right to stop it there, (b) the same shouldn't be establishing it, either. Rightfully, it should be that anyone can observe - or choose not to observe - their religion without interference.
A troll said mean things about me, of course I'm going to feel terrible! Or, y'know, not.
Actually, they were very ignorant. But you, too seem to have only read about Dawkins rather than, y'know, reading his actual words. The actual statement Dawkins made was: "It is absolutely safe to say that, if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid, or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that)."
The Nazi's rejected evolution because they thought the human 'races' had been created separately by God. They were ignorant... and wicked. And frequently insane, too.
There, there. Don't cry. :-)
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
A critique of someone's methods does not involve comments like:
You're all assholes because you don't believe the crap I believe, I find that insulting, and calling you names is the only avenue left to me to defend my fairy tale god.
That's putting idiotic words in the mouth of your opponent, which is exactly what your opponent was doing to atheists.
That's why it's hypocritical.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Thanks, but that is rather high praise for such little insight. This is pretty basic projection: she strongly believes in converting people, so she assumes the same thing of you, even if you say otherwise.
One possibility is that if you're going undermine his church instruction afterward, her best bet is to keep you from knowing about it, which includes teaching her grandson to keep his religion from his parents.
On the other hand, it could be that she's afraid that you'll eventually think 'enough is enough, no more of this nonsense', and the two of you (or you and your son) will have a conflict, and she wants to avoid that.
Unfortunately, she sees this as a war with no neutral position. As long as it seems harmless your best bet might be to just laugh it off.
Dawkins, who is an arrogant, obnoxious prick, regardless of whether you agree with him or not.
That's quite funny, because whenever I see him in a debate, it's usually his opponents who are the arrogant, obnoxious pricks while Dawkins patiently and repeatedly tries to explain to them what seems like rather basic logic to me.
Ezekiel 23:20