richard dawkins (1 Viewer)

[Moods For Mallards]

I is John is Thumped's No. 1 aesthete, and I feel he is focusing rather too closely on the Dawk's zany introduction of silly internet references and sloppy structuring to his recent blockbuster polemics.
Do you object to the content, I is John?

 

[Lili Marlene]

actually I feel a bit bad, he's not a shit writer but his stuff always tries so hard to be entertaining when I think it'd be a lot better simply sticking to the dry facts.

And I have no problem with his introduction of meme's

I is John is Thumped's No. 1 aesthete

shut up you

 

[flashback]

thing is

Dawkins is a shit writer.

is he a good orator?

i seen him speak a few times. I mean, I thought he is reasonable at lecturing. Better than most lecturers.
He is not good on TV though.

And I think he's at least a half decent writer. Or he has a shit hot editor.

 

[Cryptid]

I guess it's hard not to appear condescending when you're dealing with adults that believe in fairytales.

Just sayin', there's quite a few famous scientific minds who either believed in some version of a deity(s) or did not discount the possibility of a deity. I don't think it's that easy to dismiss notions of spirituality or belief in the supernatural.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/We-May-Be-Hard-Wired-to-Believe-in-God-105802.shtml

We May Be Hardwired to Believe in God

New research conducted by scientists seems to demonstrate that our brains are hardwired since birth to believe in the existence of a higher power, as evidenced by the fact that even small children believe that objects in nature have been placed there for a reason, and not by chance. Psychologists say that if people are more inclined to accept a purpose-seeking explanation to an event or a situation, then they are very likely to believe in a god as well. With time, once they start taking science classes, their level of belief diminishes.

From that point on, there's only two things that can happen: either that person becomes someone who doesn't believe in a higher power, or they turn into someone who sees the work of a supreme being in everything around us.

For the latter category, creationists have coined the “intelligent design” construct, which is meant to explain that the Universe and everything in it were created by God. This explanation is widely accepted by many individuals, because science cannot yet explain how the Universe came to be, and, most importantly, why.

It's been known for centuries that, as soon as seemingly-supernatural phenomena get their explanation, they move out of the “myth area” and enter the real world. Undoubtedly, once science has cracked the mystery of space and causality, many people will see that the fact that the Universe was formed in a single blow is not necessarily proof that God exists.

To test this belief system, Boston University psychologist Deborah Kelemen conducted a scientific study on both adults and children, in which she asked them to rate with “true” or “false” statements such as “Earthworms tunnel underground to aerate the soil,” or “The Sun makes light so that plants can photosynthesize.” Although at first glance these may seem true, they are actually not, in that, for example, the Sun doesn't make light because plants need to grow, but because it's a star.

This kind of constructions got children confused in most cases. Even adults, when pressed with a 3.2-second time limit, were highly susceptible to make such mistakes. However, in the absence of a given time, the rate of incorrect answers decreased exponentially, as people had time to ponder the sentences and analyze their implications. Kelemen says that this is certainly proof that at least the idea of God exists in the human brain, but that it's suppressed in some by the high amount of scientific data they learn.

“What her work suggests is that the creationist side has a huge leg up early on because it fits our natural tendencies. It has implications for why most people on earth are creationists, I think,” Yale University psychologist Paul Bloom points out. “It might turn out that if you put Richard Dawkins or Einstein or whomever [to the test], no matter how expert or educated they are, they might still make these mistakes,” he concludes.
​

Re. Einstein (from wikipedia..)

Einstein had previously explored this belief that man could not understand the nature of God when he gave an interview to Time Magazine explaining:
​

I'm not an atheist. I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws.
​

 

[Kermit McDermott]

i cant take this guy. he is so patronising and snide i would love to batter him. he makes me wish there was a god so i could argue with him.

Just think of him as Dick Dawkins.

 

[1000smurfs]

one thing that everyone should know about The Selfish Gene is it is not Dawkin's idea. It is Bill Hamilton's. Hamilton was a truly great scientist, and a shit orator / writer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._D._Hamilton

Dawkins took a piece of Hamilton's (I think PhD thesis...) and popularised it.

Here's an obituary written about him by some dude:

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/hamilton/hamilton_index.html

Scientifically Dawkins does not matter.

I know what you mean but it's a bit like saying "Musically Frank Sinatra does not Matter". He may not be up there with Einstein in terms of original work but I don't think you could argue he wasn't a big influence in his field and as a scientist in general.

Freeman Dyson was a famous physicist who synthesised
the nobel prize work of Feynman, schwinger and tomanga, Feynman reckoned he should have got one too.
Isn't Dawkin's more technical book "The Extended Phenotype" an analogous synthesis that earned him a lot of scientific kudos ?


i'm getting deja vu I've typed all this shit before

 

[robitusson]

I love the way people are saying - "ok, just so you know, I'm an ATHEIST, right?" before dissing Dawkins just in case anyone thinks they're a namby-pamby christian. Don't worry guys, it's cool, we know you're tough guys, okay!

 

[Cryptid]

i'm getting deja vu I've typed all this sh*t before

Deja vu is a form of superstition. Just sayin' like.

 

[pissypants]

I don't think it's that easy to dismiss notions of spirituality or belief in the supernatural.

 

[pissypants]

I love the way people are saying - "ok, just so you know, I'm an ATHEIST, right?" before dissing Dawkins just in case anyone thinks they're a namby-pamby christian. Don't worry guys, it's cool, we know you're tough guys, okay!

No you see, that was my actual point, not a preamble to a point: It's possible to strongly agree with what someone says and still think they're an asshole.

 

[Cryptid]

Yeah, I see the light/dark.

 

[Super Dexta]

stephen pinker seems sound though. maybe it's the hair.

It's probably because he's Canadian. Everybody likes those guys.

I like Dawkins and his big grumpy head. The God Delusion wouldn't convince you if you weren't that way inclined already. I'm that way inclined and it didn't convince me either. I wish I'd been exposed to stuff like The Blind Watchmaker when I was in school though. I think the phrase is "I preferred their earlier stuff".

 

[ann post]

thing confuses me about atheism, its very good at deconstructing religious mythologies and so forth, but what is it proposing as an alternative??? people have been doing ritualistic ceremonies on birth/death/marriage for as long as they have been people, it could even be said to be part of the evolution of people to celebrate such things, like it is surely a sign of an intelligent society to have a ritual that celebrates birth and mourns death. the alternative would be quite bleakly unemotive. i dont know if tuesday in a registry office is enough for most people to mark such things. what say you dawkinites??

 

[Moods For Mallards]

thing confuses me about atheism, its very good at deconstructing religious mythologies and so forth, but what is it proposing as an alternative??? people have been doing ritualistic ceremonies on birth/death/marriage for as long as they have been people, it could even be said to be part of the evolution of people to celebrate such things, like it is surely a sign of an intelligent society to have a ritual that celebrates birth and mourns death. the alternative would be quite bleakly unemotive. i dont know if tuesday in a registry office is enough for most people to mark such things. what say you dawkinites??

I don't think a leading atheist would dismiss the idea that such ritualistic ceremonies play an important role in human civilisation, in helping people to come to terms with death, etc. That's not the point. The question is "what is the truth?", not "what have humans constructed to support themselves?"

 

[maims bond]

thing confuses me about atheism, its very good at deconstructing religious mythologies and so forth, but what is it proposing as an alternative??? people have been doing ritualistic ceremonies on birth/death/marriage for as long as they have been people, it could even be said to be part of the evolution of people to celebrate such things, like it is surely a sign of an intelligent society to have a ritual that celebrates birth and mourns death. the alternative would be quite bleakly unemotive. i dont know if tuesday in a registry office is enough for most people to mark such things. what say you dawkinites??

Big, dirty, krusty-free raves.

 

[ann post]

and what about the group role play and fantasy element of rituals?? thats important too.

 

[Moods For Mallards]

and what about the group role play and fantasy element of rituals?? thats important too.

That's my "etc.".
The answer is "football".

 

[ann post]

i think i said that on page 4. oh the tangled web we weave.

 

[ann post]

actually nintendo wii covers that area quite well.

wii christening

wii domestic


etc.

 

[pissypants]

thing confuses me about atheism, its very good at deconstructing religious mythologies and so forth, but what is it proposing as an alternative???

Reason

people have been doing ritualistic ceremonies on birth/death/marriage for as long as they have been people, it could even be said to be part of the evolution of people to celebrate such things, like it is surely a sign of an intelligent society to have a ritual that celebrates birth and mourns death. the alternative would be quite bleakly unemotive. i dont know if tuesday in a registry office is enough for most people to mark such things. what say you dawkinites??

Have the ceremonies, but without all the stuff about the all powerful space daddy.