Dawkins 'in trouble'

bus77

Rev Hellfire wrote:

Excellent response, I totally we agree we should stick our heads in the sand and not debate anything complicated.

Yes, we should debate these matters for fun.

Matamoros

To move forward in thinking and to use reason to perhaps ease the burdens of everyday life not only for the big questions but to help us with the little ones too. Personally, I find thinking to be sometimes difficult to prolong and sometimes I feel that I am a bit sub-normal in this area but I have a passion to know and this carries me through especially when the headache comes.
When I try to reason and use the resources at hand ( I use the 'net to listen to so many Audiobooks on a range of subjects ), I get the feeling of being much more equipped to face the world and somehow free.
What I have learned is.
Try to understand human psychology and especially the human ego.
Always look for the REASON in things.
We are not Atheists, there is no God, so we are not outside of anything.
Be humble, I don't know much and I cannot know everything.
Our potential to learn, do and create is huge.
When things happen, I have response-ability.
Thank you.

pH

bus77 wrote:

Yes, we should debate these matters for fun.

We need a [SARCASM][/SARCASM] tag badly!

And you are you accusing of enjoying themselves anyway?

bus77

pH wrote:

We need a [SARCASM][/SARCASM] tag badly!

Cheers:) I was thinkin that might have been hard to follow.

pH wrote:

And you are you accusing of enjoying themselves anyway?

No one really. Thats my point, it may as well be for a laugh because I can't for the life of me see what good can be achieved from it apart from a few saps like me getting caught up in the mess.

pH

Quite a nice Dennett ariticle in the New Stateman

Daniel Dennett is the "good cop" among religion’s critics (Richard Dawkins is the bad cop), but he still makes people angry. Sholto Byrnes met him

But Dennett has allies. In recent times he and other non- believers - what one might call a movement of "the New God-less" - have been girding their loins to do battle with the forces of increasingly intolerant and aggressive religions.

As an occasional reader of the long running creationism thread in the Christianity forum, this rings true ...

he [Dennett] warns that religion is "the nuclear weapon of rational discussion if, whenever it gets tough, you draw the blinds and play the faith card. It turns it into a sham."

http://www.newstatesman.com/200604100019

Son Goku

Dawkins is, first and foremost, a genius at computational evolutionary theory. Every single one of his simulations show an intuitive grasp of biological mechanisms.

It is therefore, a shame that Dawkins has become the token "nutjob/militant atheist". He did it to himself and there should be people like him, if only to provoke debate, but I wish it had been somebody else. Computational Evolution has been dealt a serious blow due to his envolvement in things like this.

pH

Richard Harries (Bishop of Oxford) in today's Observer :

Science does not challenge my faith - it strengthens it

Atheists accuse the church of lack of reason. It is time that they examined the poor logic of their own arguments

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1754798,00.html

I read it twice and have no idea what he's saying, maybe someone with better comprehension could summarise

Zombrex

Son Goku wrote:

Dawkins is, first and foremost, a genius at computational evolutionary theory. Every single one of his simulations show an intuitive grasp of biological mechanisms.

It is therefore, a shame that Dawkins has become the token "nutjob/militant atheist". He did it to himself and there should be people like him, if only to provoke debate, but I wish it had been somebody else. Computational Evolution has been dealt a serious blow due to his envolvement in things like this.

Only in PR terms ... and you kinda have to wonder is that really important in the grand scheme of things.

It always reminds me of Linus Torvalds the creator of Linux. He can be very bullish at times, quite controversal, and often the more business aspects wish he was more "corportate" to help the uptake of Linux. But I'm not sure Linus really cares about the business uptake of linux that much, he cares about good programming and working on the os itself. In other words he doesn't play the corporate game.

You wonder about Dawkins too. I mean, who's game should he play? The Christian right? If they want to make him out as a nut job so be it I say. He shouldn't play there game to start with

Son Goku

Wicknight wrote:

Only in PR terms ... and you kinda have to wonder is that really important in the grand scheme of things.

His output has been no where near as prolific recently, he used to be fantastic.
He hasn't really put foward anything amazing in the field in the past year.

Zombrex

Son Goku wrote:

His output has been no where near as prolific recently, he used to be fantastic.
He hasn't really put foward anything amazing in the field in the past year.

Yeah thats what i mean, does he actually want to be putting out somethign amazing or is that just what the rest of the world thinks he shoudl be doing.

Maybe to him, what he is doing now is more important than that

Son Goku

Wicknight wrote:

Yeah thats what i mean, does he actually want to be putting out somethign amazing or is that just what the rest of the world thinks he shoudl be doing.

Maybe to him, what he is doing now is more important than that

I think what he's doing now is important to him, but I'm saying it's unfortunate in the same sense that Robinson's involvement in Poltics was unfortunate to Mathematics.

I wish this hadn't come along and distracted him because he used to make such leaps and bounds.
It's like if Dirac had gone into accounting in the 1930s.

JustAnother

pH wrote:

Dawkins also does not claim that Darwinism leads to atheism.

Yeah, but you're trying to be rational about it - creationists often resort to rhetorical tactics - they'll probably use Dawkins as an example of what happens to someone who accepts evolution happens.

JustAnother

Wicknight wrote:

What about them? The argument there would be non-democracy dictatorships are dangerous. I'm sure Dawkins would agree with that also.

Atheism doesn't replace moral system of religion. What ever moral system the atheist believes in replaces religion.

That could be partial replacement - someone could retain views from their former moral system, though they might replace the rationale for it.

The point is that if you remove religion this moral system comes from humanity, and as such it is possible to debate, discuss, argue and hopefully improve the moral system, something that isn't as easy to do when the moral system comes from the word of God, and is as such quite ridgid. Or to put it another way, its easy to argue a person is wrong, its a lot harder to argue God is wrong.

Hmmm.... debatable.

robindch

robindch wrote: »

the trial in Dover must have hurt them pretty bad.

Saturday this week, it'll be ten years since the Dover trial began.

The trial verdict had the desired effect - creationism, a few cranks aside, withered and while it didn't quite die, it's not the noisy, pervasive nonsense it once used to be.

http://projects.ydr.com/dover/
http://www.ydr.com/local/ci_28783627/?dover_splash
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District

For this, we can all be thankful.

Michael OBrien

robindch wrote: »

Saturday this week, it'll be ten years since the Dover trial began.

The trial verdict had the desired effect - creationism, a few cranks aside, withered and while it didn't quite die, it's not the noisy, pervasive nonsense it once used to be.

http://projects.ydr.com/dover/
http://www.ydr.com/local/ci_28783627/?dover_splash
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District

For this, we can all be thankful.

Creationism is hardly dying out. The issue is that it is NOT a rational stance, but a faith based one. They could lose every time in court, in debate, etc and there will be those so wedded to the idea that their beliefs are accurate that they will see it as more 'christian' persecution.
Their spokespeople get discredited, yet they are easily replaced as it takes little training to be an apologist. Just preach lies, spread hate, call it love, and say a prayer about jesus and christians wet themselves in anticipation.
Look at Kent Hovind, a convicted unrepentant criminal and conman, with followers fanatically believing pretty much anything he says. He is saying the same things, sometimes line by line, for twenty years. He is incredibly wrong on every topic, yet he trundles on.
If you have ever read R.G. Ingersoll criticism of christianity, a 19th Century orator, you will find many common arguments very familiar.
The massive amounts of money being spent on spreading creationism is shocking, the amount of people that believe it is horrifying, and I.D. is a trojan horse that many of them use. Not all IDrs are creationists, but most are.
The dover trial showed they have zero morals, no ethics and are prepared to lie and deceive to ANY extent to achieve their goals.
That mentality has not changed or withered.
Even moderate christians have many creationist beliefs, so while they might not identify with YEC creationists, if you asked them about other aspects, you will find very 'creationist' viewpoints popping up.
Nor is it limited to the USA, I have met and know YEC creationists here in Ireland (nice but utterly deluded). They spend massive amounts of time and energy spreading their lies, hosting bible studies that seem perfectly reasonable, until you dig beneath the surface.
Never believe they will go quietly into the night. They regroup, lie about what happened and start again.

nozzferrahhtoo

Sounds like hyperbole to me. As has been pointed out on another thread Atheism does not have leaders or figureheads, just spokes people. And we are quite good internally in the atheist community of policing their errors and stupidity as and when they arise. The community it seems pulls no punches in showing up these errors when they arise, unlike much of the theist community who will simply assume everything their infallible leaders say is perfect from the outset and if it appears wrong, the fault must lie in our interpretation of the words.

I see nothing "dangerous" about having spokes people, nor do I see Dawkins or Dennett as being particularly dangerous ones. Unlike many religious sects and groups we neither expect nor require that our spokespeople be perfect. We know they are as human and fallible as the rest of us and we step up to correct them as readily and openly as we hope they step up to correct us.

Much of the errors of people parsing people like Dawkins and Dennett however comes from the speaker leading a life under a religion narrative and they know no better than to parse atheism through those structures too. So they _need_ to think of atheism as a religion, and people like Dawkins as some kind of "Atheist Leaders" in word, action and dogma. And so they come into such discussions not just wrong, but on a platform of wrongness that by definition makes most of what they say from there also quite wrong.

Michael OBrien

While this is an old thread, I will summerize the flaw in the argument.
The people making this argument are either dishonest or poor researchers. Dawkins responds to theists, theists make the claims, including that evolution leads to atheism because their interpretation of the bible (or quran) is rigid and literal. They flatly deny the bulk of theists accept a form of evolution are still REAL theists. Heck many modern creationists actually accept evolution but will not mentally accept that, they accept micro evolution which IS evolution. The macro part is just taking a longer perspective of how micro evolution works. They are so blind they cannot even see how ridiculous they are, its like acknowledging millimetres and centimetres and eventually meters as measurements of distance but not kilometers because they cannot see it from the ground and think air-planes and helicopters are agents of satan.
Dawkins has stated that IF they wish to play a false dichotomy they are digging their own graves (in terms of keeping their faith) as there are mountains of evidence for evolution. He has repeatedly stated that accepting evolution does not mean you cannot believe in a god, even a form of abrahamic god.

Frankly I think, personally, that accepting the theory of evolution does cause serious problems for Christianity.
However even if evolution did lead to atheism, atheism is not a religion, and even if it WAS a religion, evolution is a science, which is evidence based and cannot be ruled out of education on that basis. It would be like a flat earther demanding geology be removed from the class room because it stops people being flat earthers, thus, in their mind, becoming atheists.