[Tormod]

I really love this video from the late late show. Richard Dawkins is a really cool guy. The entire concept of religious people being "deluded" is just brilliant when it comes to selling "science" to people.

[Tormod]

Part 2:

[Tormod]

Part 3

[Qfwfq]

Tormod, on 05 September 2010 - 09:34 PM, said:

The entire concept of religious people being "deluded" is just brilliant when it comes to selling "science" to people.

Still I don't see the point of being such a salesman.

I was gald to find his attitude less caustic and more reasonable in this video but I still disagree with many of his points and i wish he'd make less arguments based on misinformed grounds. He should also be clearer about what he is and isn't against and his attitude currently seems more for being agnostic than actually atheist and I get the idea that his participation in debates has been refining his perspectives.

[Vox]

Tormod, on 05 September 2010 - 09:34 PM, said:

I really love this video from the late late show. Richard Dawkins is a really cool guy. The entire concept of religious people being "deluded" is just brilliant when it comes to selling "science" to people.

Personally I did not find signs that I would admire concerning any of these people who presented "they ideas". There seems to be enforced gap created intentionally or unintentionally between these two different views and it is rather ridiculous to even include this kind of discussion to this timeframe which would inevitably lead to the emotional brawl. Does someone really think that you can really solve any of the "issues" between the religion and science in given timeframe and this media /form? For me this was just a show/entertainment, nothing more. If there would be real interest to try to generate more holistic views of the “exist” there would be sincere effort to find ”things/events” from “both realms”. Both "groups" seems to have set a position where it will be a loss if something is agreed or "given" to another group. My personal view was that this show was just a fighting of the egos, both sides defending the position they hold dear.

Quote

It is probably true quite generally that in the history of human
thinking the most fruitful developments frequently take place
at those points where two different lines of thought meet.
These lines may have their roots in quite different parts of
human culture, in different times or different cultural environments
or different religious traditions: hence if they actually
meet, that is, if they are at least so much related to each other
that a real interaction can take place, then one may hope that
new and interesting developments may follow.
Werner Heisenberg

[Tormod]

Qfwfq, on 06 September 2010 - 12:17 AM, said:

Still I don't see the point of being such a salesman.

I agree completely with you. That's why I call it "science". This show only illustrates how difficult it is to put science in a populistic perspective and get a meaningful debate out of it. Dawkins doesn't really help with his attitude.

[HydrogenBond]

Dawkins is too much into his career as a science evangelist. He is not addressing a group of rational scientists but semi-rational laymen. To create the illusion of rising above, he uses the time tested tactic of trying to lower the floor on your competition. If you put the other guy into a hole, you can fool the fools into believing you just got taller. That will sell more books and help with more bookings on the lecture tour. Atheists are not all rational, making it an easy sell.

[phision]

The trouble with this is, when you subject beliefs to scientific or statistical analysis, your results are going to marginalise individuals who are unwilling or unable to interpret the information gleaned from that process!

On a lighter note I was very entertained at the prospect of this:
http://www.theskinny...we_can_prove_it

LOL

[chilehed]

Dawkins is an ignoramus.

[Moontanman]

Religion is quite real, it's trivially demonstrated to be true... hell there are two dozen churches with in 10 miles of me... gods on the other hand are nothing but horse feathers, no evidence what so ever for their existence anyplace except in your imagination.... But people behave in lock step to their imagination all the time, the disconnect was when they wrote down god and froze it in time...

[Qfwfq]

chilehed, on 03 January 2012 - 05:29 PM, said:

Dawkins is an ignoramus.

This is not a correct description of Dawkins and, most of all, it is not a great contribution to discussion of the topic.

Are you able to offer a more constructive criticism than that?

[chilehed]

Qfwfq, on 04 January 2012 - 07:18 AM, said:

This is not a correct description of Dawkins and, most of all, it is not a great contribution to discussion of the topic.

Are you able to offer a more constructive criticism than that?

Dawkins is a brilliant expositor of biology and evolutionary theory, but the fact is that he’s woefully ignorant about philosophy and theology in general and Christianity in particular.

For example, (this one’s in an interview he did with Richard Fidler) he says things like “Catholics don’t know anything about the bible at all, do they, the bible’s taboo in the Catholic Church, it always has been, it has to be interpreted by the priests, they don’t trust the people to read the bible”, which is not merely absolute nonsense but nonsense which is very easy to disprove. There’s quite simply no good excuse for someone to believe something like that. The Church was involved in making translations into the vernacular (well before the 13th Century) precisely so that laymen could read them, and there has long been a plenary indulgence granted for the reading of scripture. If only priests could interpret the bible there could be no female Doctors of the Church, and yet there are three: St. Catherine of Siena, St. Teresa of Avila and St. Therese of Lisieux. There’s so much evidence that Dawkins hasn’t the slightest clue that it’s difficult to know where to start, it would be like rebutting a claim that the United States was founded by people who fled a representative republic and wanted to institute a monarchy.

The bit about the belief in the virgin birth being due to a mistranslation of the prophet Isaiah is another one. The translation he speaks of was the Septuagent, which was done by Jewish scribes and rabbis who were fluent in both Greek and Hebrew. The Hebrew word alma indeed indicates a young woman of marriageable age, and in that culture it was the norm for such a woman to be a virgin. That passage in Isaiah speaks of a miracle that is to be given as a sign to the king, the miracle involving an alma giving birth. Not much of a miracle if she’s not a virgin. Sure, the word almah taken entirely by itself doesn’t demand that the woman is a virgin, but virgin is within the standard meaning of the word and the cultural and literary context of the passage in question indicates that it’s a good translation in this case. That’s what the Hebrew and Greek experts at the time thought, and it’s pompous for Dawkins to just blithely assert that they were wrong. Furthermore, there’s no indication whatsoever that the people in Jesus’ day believed that Mary was a virgin for any reason other than they thought it was true.

Another thing is the absurd notion that faith is “believing something without having any evidence”. That’s not what the word means, it’s never been what the word meant, it’s absolutely inconsistent with the historical development of the word and is not the way any of the cognates are used in everyday language. “Believing something without having any evidence” is actually called credulity. If Dawkins were correct, then then phrases such as "being faithful to your spouse" would be meaningless unless one had no evidence that one's spouse existed... which would strain credulity.

There’s a lot more, but I find it tedious to listen to him and I can't spare the time it would take to rebut him on everything he's got wrong.

I’ve always understood ignoramus to indicate someone who is not merely ignorant of a topic (which Dawkins manifestly is) but one who is intentionally ignorant. And while I can think of no good excuse for someone to spout the kind of inane nonsense he’s prone to, I admit that I’m not privy to his subjective intentions. So I shouldn’t call him an ignoramus.

He does, however, bear a very strong resemblance to one.

[sigurdV]

Chilehed bears a strong resemblance to a Christian, probably a Catholic:
He finds Dawkins "tedious to listen to" and concentrates on finding trivial errors...
Thereby sidestepping the real issues:
He does not and is probably not able to present them in here since that would question his own apprehension of reality.
Who then is an Ignoramus?

[Qfwfq]

chilehed, on 12 January 2012 - 07:38 AM, said:

Dawkins is a brilliant expositor of biology and evolutionary theory, but the fact is that he’s woefully ignorant about philosophy and theology in general and Christianity in particular.

I quite agree with this, why did you not say so in the first place?

chilehed, on 12 January 2012 - 07:38 AM, said:

The Hebrew word alma indeed indicates a young woman of marriageable age, and in that culture it was the norm for such a woman to be a virgin.

Much like the Latin virgo.

chilehed, on 12 January 2012 - 07:38 AM, said:

Another thing is the absurd notion that faith is “believing something without having any evidence”. That’s not what the word means, it’s never been what the word meant, it’s absolutely inconsistent with the historical development of the word and is not the way any of the cognates are used in everyday language. “Believing something without having any evidence” is actually called credulity. If Dawkins were correct, then then phrases such as "being faithful to your spouse" would be meaningless unless one had no evidence that one's spouse existed... which would strain credulity.

I'm not with you on this one, the word faith is from the latin for trust and hence belief without proof. It's by extension that it means allegiance and we use faithful to also describe someone loyal, i. e. who can be trusted.

chilehed, on 12 January 2012 - 07:38 AM, said:

There’s a lot more, but I find it tedious to listen to him and I can't spare the time it would take to rebut him on everything he's got wrong.

Same with me, it would be useless to argue with him over each and every fallacy he commits, but a lesson or two would serve him.

chilehed, on 12 January 2012 - 07:38 AM, said:

I’ve always understood ignoramus to indicate someone who is not merely ignorant of a topic (which Dawkins manifestly is) but one who is intentionally ignorant.

Not according to Merriam Webster

This post has been edited by Qfwfq: 12 January 2012 - 11:28 AM
Reason for edit: bum link fixed

[chilehed]

sigurdV, on 12 January 2012 - 09:18 AM, said:

Chilehed bears a strong resemblance to a Christian, probably a Catholic:
He finds Dawkins "tedious to listen to" and concentrates on finding trivial errors...

So it wasn’t trivial for Dawkins to give them as reasons why theists are delusional, but it was trivial for me to point out that his reasoning is pitiably flawed?