Really Dodgy Guardian article comparing Atheists to nutty religious fundamentalists

[nick1181]

though whether or not ppl follow a religion is rarely down to some hard headed decision as to god's existence. Religion comes out of people's heritage, comforts, reaffirms identity etc. All stuff that Dawkins shows little understanding of.

Well actually, his book does actually devote several chapters to this very thing.


Just an observation : People who disagree with Dawkins almost always need to misrepresent him to make their point.

This subject of this very thread is an example - In the God Delusion he specificaly details why his position is NOT one of faith... and yet there's this continual conversation going on that atheists are fundamentalists - and he's the worst of the bunch.

 

[nick1181]

science is based on the theory or assumption of the existence of facts, which science can't establish but on argument of provisional and refutable research.

Yea well. Science works. Religion doesn't work.

You see that screen in front of you? You see that incredible convergeance of technologies that means that I sitting in New Zealand can type these words... each key converted to codes, transported through the air, then into wires, across the Pacific, across America, across the Atlantic... all those billions of transistors, a dozen different networks a handful of differing operating systems, different languages etc etc... finally converting to the photons that leap out of your screen so you can read them - seconds later?

You see that? Science did that. That wasn't priests waving sticks and chanting. Take a look around - everything you see from the glass in your windows to the paint on your walls... your life expectancy, your freedom from parasites etc etc... all the products of scientific process.


If you pray to your God for a certain outcome... well, I know, and I suspect that you do as well - you get pretty much the same results by politely asking your cat.


Yea the research is refuteable... that's kindof the point, but at least it's there... and to be honest, it would be an understatement to say that there is mountains and mountains of it. Religion on the other hand consists of card-castles of bad logic and highly dubious and unprovable assumptions.

And the tragedy is, people are so desperate to believe in things that aren't there, that they're willing to kill other people who disagree with them.

 

[nightbreed]

A rather bizarr example of how we take certain truths for granted is this:
Even though I know that I am self aware, I know that I exist, how do I know for certain that everyone else is also a self-aware, conscious, sentient being?

Ask them.

 

[TAE]

I could write a computer program which says 'yes' if asked whether it knows it exists. That's hardly scientific proof of actual self-awareness.

 

[TAE]

Science works. Religion doesn't work.

That's the kind of absolutist non-sense I am talking about.

 

[TAE]

You see that? Science did that.

Yes. The same science that allowed people to invent the bow and the wheel and discovered that fire is warm. Our brain is very good at pattern recognition. We can use it to invent things. I do not have a problem with that.
The problem is that you can use the same techiques in a sufficiently sophisticated computer program. You can see what works, what does not work, and invent techniques for achieving certain outcomes in the world modelled by the software. Hence science cannot tell us a lot about the world which we cannot deduce via pattern recognition. That is why I think using scientific methods to determine the existance of God is a non-starter.

 

[nightbreed]

Yes. The same science that allowed people to invent the bow and the wheel and discovered that fire is warm. Our brain is very good at pattern recognition. We can use it to invent things. I do not have a problem with that.
The problem is that you can use the same techiques in a sufficiently sophisticated computer program. You can see what works, what does not work, and invent techniques for achieving certain outcomes in the world modelled by the software. Hence science cannot tell us a lot about the world which we cannot deduce via pattern recognition. That is why I think using scientific methods to determine the existance of God is a non-starter.

Tell me, how many angels can you fit on a pinhead?

 

[TAE]

How many circles fit into a sphere?

 

[phildwyer]

I believe Dawkins is making a statement of fact. It is his opinion made on the basis of his research. Quite a reasonable approach when you look at all the christan/muslim/jewish groups in the world who cannot base their beliefs on fact.

The onus is on these groups to prove a supreme being is fact and can provide indisputable scientific evidence. It isnt for Dawkins or atheists to provide evidence.They have science.

Idiot. The evidence for belief in God is rational, not empirical. Empirical evidence on its own is a very weak foundation for knowledge--hence the disasters that have resulted from empirical science rather than reason being the main basis for truth-claims in our own society. I don't know how many times I have to say this before it begins to stick in some people's minds.

 

[phildwyer]

Yea well. Science works. Religion doesn't work.

Twat. The nuclear bomb 'works' does it not?

 

[In Bloom]

The nuclear bomb 'works' does it not?

Well, yes. Which is yet further reason to think that uranium and plutonium don't posess any moral agency of their own

 

[phildwyer]

Yea well. Science works. Religion doesn't work.

Base pragmatism of the most degraded kind. Next you'll be telling us (as so many do) that 'capitalism works, socialism doesn't work.' Anyone who tells us that something is right or good because it 'works' is a fool. An evil fool, if fools were clever enough to be evil. A twat in any case.

 

[phildwyer]

Well, yes. Which is yet further reason to think that uranium and plutonium don't posess any moral agency of their own

And also good reason to believe that empirical science undertaken in the absence of rational moral constraints such as religion provides is a cosmically evil enterprise. But all this is pretty much irrelevant these days: scientists have already ensured the destruction of the world anyway, so its basically a moot point innit. But at least we have the consolation of mocking those who still defend empirical science against theology and exposing their picayune arguments for the cretinism they are.

 

[nick1181]

Base pragmatism of the most degraded kind. Next you'll be telling us (as so many do) that 'capitalism works, socialism doesn't work.' Anyone who tells us that something is right or good because it 'works' is a fool. An evil fool, if fools were clever enough to be evil. A twat in any case.

Oh hello there Phil? How's it going? Given up the day job yet?


If you were a musical instrument Phil... I'm not saying you are, but if you were... I'd say you'd be a sort of self-playing bagpipe.

In fact the more I think about it, the harder I find it to picture you as being anything other than a self-playing bagpipe. What do you think?

 

[sam/phallocrat]

I was thinking an out of tune (self playing) harmonium, decaying quietly at the back of a derelict church, probably belonging to one of those obscure vistorian sects that no longer exist, like the ebenezer baptists.

An irrelevance, basically.