"The God Delusion" should be required reading in all schools

by Dawkins Fan Thu Oct 05, 2006 17:24

These are quotes from Dawkins other works not from his present book:

An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: "I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one." I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.
-- Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, p. 6

A friend, an intelligent lapsed Jew who observes the Sabbath for reasons of cultural solidarity, describes himself as a Tooth Fairy Agnostic. He will not call himself an atheist because it is in principle impossible to prove a negative. But "agnostic" on its own might suggest that he though God's existence or non-existence equally likely. In fact, though strictly agnostic about god, he considers God's existence no more probable than the Tooth Fairy's.
Bertrand Russell used a hypothetical teapot in orbit about Mars for the same didactic purpose. You have to be agnostic about the teapot, but that doesn't mean you treat the likelihood of its existence as being on all fours with its non-existence.
The list of things about which we strictly have to be agnostic doesn't stop at tooth fairies and celestial teapots. It is infinite. If you want to believe in a particular one of them -- teapots, unicorns, or tooth fairies, Thor or Yahweh -- the onus is on you to say why you believe in it. The onus is not on the rest of us to say why we do not. We who are atheists are also a-fairyists, a-teapotists, and a-unicornists, but we don't' have to bother saying so.
-- Richard Dawkins, following a list of excerpts from hate mail sent to the editor of Freethought Today, after she won a separationist court battle, in "A Challenge To Atheists: Come Out of the Closet" (Free Inquiry, Summer, 2002) paragraph division added ††

Perhaps the best of the available euphemisms for atheist is nontheist. It lacks the connotation of positive conviction that there is definitely no god, and it could therefore easily be embraced by Teapot or Tooth Fairy Agnostics. It is less familiar than atheist and lacks its phobic connotations. Yet, unlike a completely new coining, its meaning is clear. If we want a euphemism at all, nontheist is probably the best.
The alternative which I favor is to renounce all euphemisms and grasp the nettle of the word atheism itself, precisely because it is a taboo word carrying frissons of hysterical phobia. Critical mass may be harder to achieve than with some non-confrontational euphemism, but if we did achieve it with the dread word atheist, the political impact would be all the greater.
-- Richard Dawkins, following a list of excerpts from hate mail sent to the editor of Freethought Today, after she won a separationist court battle, in "A Challenge To Atheists: Come Out of the Closet" (Free Inquiry, Summer, 2002) ††

By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
-- Richard Dawkins, in "Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder," The Richard Dimbleby Lecture, BBC1 Television (12 November 1996)

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.
-- Richard Dawkins (attributed: source unknown)

Religion teaches the dangerous nonsense that death is not the end.
-- Richard Dawkins, "Religion's Misguided Missiles" (September 15, 2001)

Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.
-- Richard Dawkins (attributed: source unknown)

Faith is powerful enough to immunize people against all appeals to pity, to forgiveness, to decent human feelings. It even immunizes them against fear, if they honestly believe that a martyr's death will send them straight to heaven.
-- Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

Yes, testosterone-sodden young men too unattractive to get a woman in this world might be desperate enough to go for 72 private virgins in the next.
-- Richard Dawkins, "Religion's Misguided Missiles" (September 15, 2001)

If death is final, a rational agent can be expected to value his life highly and be reluctant to risk it. This makes the world a safer place, just as a plane is safer if its hijacker wants to survive. At the other extreme, if a significant number of people convince themselves, or are convinced by their priests, that a martyr's death is equivalent to pressing the hyperspace button and zooming through a wormhole to another universe, it can make the world a very dangerous place. Especially if they also believe that that other universe is a paradisical escape from the tribulations of the real world. Top it off with sincerely believed, if ludicrous and degrading to women, sexual promises, and is it any wonder that naïve and frustrated young men are clamouring to be selected for suicide missions?
-- Richard Dawkins, "Religion's Misguided Missiles" (September 15, 2001)

My last vestige of "hands off religion" respect disappeared in the smoke and choking dust of September 11th 2001, followed by the "National Day of Prayer," when prelates and pastors did their tremulous Martin Luther King impersonations and urged people of mutually incompatible faiths to hold hands, united in homage to the very force that caused the problem in the first place.
-- Richard Dawkins, The Devil's Chaplain (2004)

My point is not that religion itself is the motivation for wars, murders and terrorist attacks, but that religion is the principal label, and the most dangerous one, by which a "they" as opposed to a "we" can be identified at all.
-- Richard Dawkins, The Devil's Chaplain (2004)

It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, "mad cow" disease, and many others, but I think a case can be made that faith is one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.
-- Richard Dawkins, The Humanist, Vol. 57, No. 1

To describe religions as mind viruses is sometimes interpreted as contemptuous or even hostile. It is both. I am often asked why I am so hostile to organized religion.
-- Richard Dawkins, The Devil's Chaplain (2004)

I don't think God is an explanation at all. It's simply redescribing the problem.
We are trying to understand how we have got a complicated world, and we have an explanation in terms of a slightly simpler world, and we explain that in terms of a slightly simpler world and it all hangs together down to an ultimately simple world.
Now, God is not an explanation of that kind. God himself cannot be simple if he has power to do all the things he is supposed to do.
-- Richard Dawkins, "Nick Pollard interviews Richard Dawkins" (Damars: 1999) ††

If people think God is interesting, the onus is on them to show that there is anything there to talk about. Otherwise they should just shut up about it.
-- Richard Dawkins (attributed: source unknown)

[Excerpt (of sorts)]
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.
-- Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life (1995), quoted from Victor J Stenger, Has Science Found God? (2001)

[Passage (if you will)]
The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.
-- Richard Dawkins, "God's Utility Function," published in Scientific American (November, 1995), p. 85

People sometimes try to score debating points by saying, "Evolution is only a theory." That is correct, but it's important to understand what that means. It is also only a theory that the world goes round the Sun -- it's just a theory for which there is an immense amount of evidence.
There are many scientific theories that are in doubt. Even within evolution, there is some room for controversy. But that we are cousins of apes and jackals and starfish, let's say, that is a fact in the ordinary sense of the word.
-- Richard Dawkins, "Nick Pollard interviews Richard Dawkins" (Damars: 1999) ††

You cannot be both sane and well educated and disbelieve in evolution. The evidence is so strong that any sane, educated person has got to believe in evolution.
-- Richard Dawkins, in Lanny Swerdlow, "My Sort Interview with Richard Dawkins" (Portland, Oregon, 1996)

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).
-- Richard Dawkins, quoted from Josh Gilder, a creationist, in his critical review, "PBS's 'Evolution' series is propaganda, not science" (September, 2001)

Not a single one of your ancestors died young. They all copulated at least once.
-- Richard Dawkins, The New Yorker, "Richard Dawkins's Evolution" (September 9, 1996), debating "Does God Exist?" with Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, as reported by Ian Parker, quoted from The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations

... Textbooks describe DNA as a blueprint for a body. It's better seen as a recipe for making a body, because it is irreversible. But today I want to present it as something different again, and even more intriguing. The DNA in you is a coded description of ancient worlds in which your ancestors lived. DNA is the wisdom out of the old days, and I mean very old days indeed.
...
What changes is the long programs that natural selection has written using those 64 basic words. The messages that have come down to us are the ones that have survived millions, in some cases hundreds of millions, of generations. For every successful message that has reached the present, countless failures have fallen away like the chippings on a sculptor's floor. That's what Darwinian natural selection means. We are the descendants of a tiny élite of successful ancestors. Our DNA has proved itself successful, because it is here. Geological time has carved and sculpted our DNA to survive down to the present.
-- Richard Dawkins, in "Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder," The Richard Dimbleby Lecture, BBC1 Television (12 November 1996)

It really comes down to parsimony, economy of explanation. It is possible that your car engine is driven by psychokinetic energy, but if it looks like a petrol engine, smells like a petrol engine and performs exactly as well as a petrol engine, the sensible working hypothesis is that it is a petrol engine. Telepathy and possession by the spirits of the dead are not ruled out as a matter of principle. There is certainly nothing impossible about abduction by aliens in UFOs. One day it may be happen. But on grounds of probability it should be kept as an explanation of last resort. It is unparsimonious, demanding more than routinely weak evidence before we should believe it. If you hear hooves clip-clopping down a London street, it could be a zebra or even a unicorn, but, before we assume that it's anything other than a horse, we should demand a certain minimal standard of evidence.
-- Richard Dawkins, in "Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder," The Richard Dimbleby Lecture, BBC1 Television (12 November 1996)

Either it is true that a medicine works or it isn't. It cannot be false in the ordinary sense but true in some "alternative" sense. If a therapy or treatment is anything more than a placebo, properly conducted double-blind trials, statistically analyzed, will eventually bring it through with flying colours. Many candidates for recognition as "orthodox" medicines fail the test and are summarily dropped. The "alternative" label should not (though, alas, it does) provide immunity from the same fate.
-- Richard Dawkins, The Devil's Chaplain (2004)

[Alternative medicine is defined as] that set of practices that cannot be tested, refuse to be tested or consistently fail tests.
-- Richard Dawkins, quoted from Carl E Bartecchi, "Be Wary of Alternative Medicine" (Denver Business Journal: January 10, 2003) ††

Each week The X-Files poses a mystery and offers two rival kinds of explanation, the rational theory and the paranormal theory. And, week after week, the rational explanation loses. But it is only fiction, a bit of fun, why get so hot under the collar?
Imagine a crime series in which, every week, there is a white suspect and a black suspect. And every week, lo and behold, the black one turns out to have done it. Unpardonable, of course. And my point is that you could not defend it by saying: "But it's only fiction, only entertainment".
-- Richard Dawkins, in "Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder," The Richard Dimbleby Lecture, BBC1 Television (12 November 1996)

Are science and religion converging? No. There are modern scientists whose words sound religious but whose beliefs, on close examination, turn out to be identical to those of other scientists who straightforwardly call themselves atheists.
-- Richard Dawkins, The Devil's Chaplain (2004)

To an honest judge, the alleged convergence between religion and science is a shallow, empty, hollow, spin-doctored sham.
-- Richard Dawkins, The Devil's Chaplain (2004)

I believe that an orderly universe, one indifferent to human preoccupations, in which everything has an explanation even if we still have a long way to go before we find it, is a more beautiful, more wonderful place than a universe tricked out with capricious ad hoc magic.
-- Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow (contributed by Ray Franz)

Blindness to suffering is an inherent consequence of natural selection. Nature is neither kind nor cruel but indifferent.
-- Richard Dawkins, on describing how one need only look upon nature where the wasp lays her eggs inside the body of a living caterpillar in order to dispense with the idea that the Universe is supervised by a benevolent deity, in The Devil's Chaplain (2004)

The feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable. It is a deep aesthetic passion to rank with the finest that music and poetry can deliver. It is truly one of the things that make life worth living and it does so, if anything, more effectively if it convinces us that the time we have for living is quite finite.
-- Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder (1998), p. x., quoted from Victor J Stenger, Has Science Found God? (2001)

Science boosts its claim to truth by its spectacular ability to make matter and energy jump through hoops on command, and to predict what will happen and when.
-- Richard Dawkins, from "What is True?" in The Devil's Chaplain (2004)

Our leaders have described the recent atrocity with the customary cliche: mindless cowardice. "Mindless" may be a suitable word for the vandalising of a telephone box. It is not helpful for understanding what hit New York on September 11. Those people were not mindless and they were certainly not cowards. On the contrary, they had sufficiently effective minds braced with an insane courage, and it would pay us mightily to understand where that courage came from.
It came from religion....
-- Richard Dawkins, "Religion's Misguided Missiles" (September 15, 2001)

To fill a world with ... religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are used.
-- Richard Dawkins, "Religion's Misguided Missiles" (September 15, 2001)

The present Luddism over genetic engineering may die a natural death as the computer-illiterate generation is superseded.... I fear that, if the green movement's high-amplitude warnings over GMOs turn out to be empty, people will be dangerously disinclined to listen to other and more serious warnings.
-- Richard Dawkins, from "Science, Genetics and Ethics," in The Devil's Chaplain (2004)

That there is a continuous link from humans to gorillas, with the intermediate species merely long dead, is beyond the understanding of speciesists. Tie the label Homo sapiens even to a tiny piece of insensible embryonic tissue, and its life suddenly leaps to infinite, incomputable value....
Self-styled "pro-lifers," and others that indulge in footling debates about exactly when in its development a foetus "becomes" human, exhibit the same discontinuous mentality. "Human," to the discontinuous mind, is an absolutist concept. There can be no half measures. And from this flows much evil.
-- Richard Dawkins, from "Gaps in the Mind," in The Devil's Chaplain (2004)

Society bends over backward to be accommodating to religious sensibilities but not to other kinds of sensibilities. If I say something offensive to religious people, I'll be universally censured, including by many atheists. But if I say something insulting about Democrats or Republicans or the Green Party, one is allowed to get away with that. Hiding behind the smoke screen of untouchability is something religions have been allowed to get away with for too long.
-- Richard Dawkins, quoted in Natalie Angier, "Confessions of a Lonely Atheist," New York Times Magazine, January 14, 2001

Over the centuries, we've moved on from Scripture to accumulate precepts of ethical, legal and moral philosophy. We've evolved a liberal consensus of what we regard as underpinnings of decent society, such as the idea that we don't approve of slavery or discrimination on the grounds of race or sex, that we respect free speech and the rights of the individual. All of these things that have become second nature to our morals today owe very little to religion, and mostly have been won in opposition to the teeth of religion.
-- Richard Dawkins, quoted in Natalie Angier, "Confessions of a Lonely Atheist," New York Times Magazine, January 14, 2001

I suspect the reason is that most people ... have a residue of feeling that Darwinian evolution isn't quite big enough to explain everything about life. All I can say as a biologist is that the feeling disappears progressively the more you read about and study what is known about life and evolution. I want to add one thing more. The more you understand the significance of evolution, the more you are pushed away from the agnostic position and towards atheism. Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things.
-- Richard Dawkins, from The New Humanist, the Journal of the Rationalist Press Association, Vol 107 No 2

I became a little alarmed at the number of my readers who took the meme more positively as a theory of human culture in its own right -- either to criticize it (unfairly, given my original modest intention) or to carry it far beyond the limits of what I then thought justified. This was why I may have seemed to backtrack.
-- Richard Dawkins, The Devil's Chaplain (2004)

It's been suggested that if the supernaturalists really had the powers they claim, they'd win the lottery every week. I prefer to point out that they could also win a Nobel Prize for discovering fundamental physical forces hitherto unknown to science. Either way, why are they wasting their talents doing party turns on television?
-- Richard Dawkins, in "Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder," The Richard Dimbleby Lecture, BBC1 Television (12 November 1996)

Certainly I see the scientific view of the world as incompatible with religion, but that is not what is interesting about it. It is also incompatible with magic, but that also is not worth stressing. What is interesting about the scientific world view is that it is true, inspiring, remarkable and that it unites a whole lot of phenomena under a single heading.
-- Richard Dawkins (attributed: source unknown)

More generally it is completely unrealistic to claim, as Gould and many others do, that religion keeps itself away from science's turf, restricting itself to morals and values. A universe with a supernatural presence would be a fundamentally and qualitatively different kind of universe from one without. The difference is, inescapably, a scientific difference. Religions make existence claims, and this means scientific claims.
There is something dishonestly self-serving in the tactic of claiming that all religious beliefs are outside the domain of science. On the one hand, miracle stories and the promise of life after death are used to impress simple people, win converts, and swell congregations. It is precisely their scientific power that gives these stories their popular appeal. But at the same time it is considered below the belt to subject the same stories to the ordinary rigors of scientific criticism: these are religious matters and therefore outside the domain of science. But you cannot have it both ways. At least, religious theorists and apologists should not be allowed to get away with having it both ways. Unfortunately all too many of us, including nonreligious people, are unaccountably ready to let them.
-- Richard Dawkins, Richard Dawkins, "When Religion Steps on Science's Turf," Free Inquiry 18 no. 2 (1998): pp. 18-9, quoted from Victor J Stenger, Has Science Found God? (2001)

In childhood our credulity serves us well. It helps us to pack, with extraordinary rapidity, our skulls full of the wisdom of our parents and our ancestors. But if we don't grow out of it in the fullness of time, our ... nature makes us a sitting target for astrologers, mediums, gurus, evangelists, and quacks. We need to replace the automatic credulity of childhood with the constructive skepticism of adult science.
-- Richard Dawkins (attributed: source unknown)

To show how real astronomical wonder can be presented to children, I'll borrow from a book called Earthsearch by John Cassidy, which I brought back from America to show my daughter Juliet. Find a large open space and take a soccer ball to represent the sun. Put the ball down and walk ten paces in a straight line. Stick a pin in the ground. The head of the pin stands for the planet Mercury. Take another 9 paces beyond Mercury and put down a peppercorn to represent Venus. Seven paces on, drop another peppercorn for Earth. One inch away from earth, another pinhead represents the Moon, the furthest place, remember, that we've so far reached. 14 more paces to little Mars, then 95 paces to giant Jupiter, a ping-pong ball. 112 paces further, Saturn is a marble. No time to deal with the outer planets except to say that the distances are much larger. But, how far would you have to walk to reach the nearest star, Proxima Centauri? Pick up another soccer ball to represent it, and set off for a walk of 4200 miles. As for the nearest other galaxy, Andromeda, don't even think about it!
Who'd go back to astrology when they've sampled the real thing -- astronomy...?
-- Richard Dawkins, in "Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder," The Richard Dimbleby Lecture, BBC1 Television (12 November 1996)

I had always been scrupulously careful to avoid the smallest suggestion of infant indoctrination, which I think is ultimately responsible for much of the evil in the world. Others, less close to her, showed no such scruples, which upset me, as I very much wanted her, as I want all children, to make up her own mind freely when she became old enough to do so. I would encourage her to think, without telling her what to think.
-- Richard Dawkins, in a letter to his daughter, The Devil's Chaplain (2004)

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.
-- Richard Dawkins, excerpt from Chapter I, "The Anaesthetic of Familiarity," of Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder (1998)

After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with colour, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn't it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked -- as I am surprisingly often -- why I bother to get up in the mornings. To put it the other way round, isn't it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed, eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be a part of it?
-- Richard Dawkins, excerpt from Chapter I, "The Anaesthetic of Familiarity," of Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder (1998)

by pat c Thu Oct 05, 2006 17:38

Looking forward to readiong this book. Just reading the Extended Phenotype at the moment. Its not as accessible as most of his books as he aimed it at biologists as a defence of his Selfish Gene theory. But its worth persevering with.

This is a review of a previous Dawkins book, A Devils Chaplain which I did for the Fortean Times. It was published in FT July 2003 but its not online anywhere.

A Devils Chaplain:

Selected Essays by

Richard Dawkins

(Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £16.99) ISBN 0-297-82973-4

“A fire breathing Richard Dawkins public lecture.” Such is the image of Dawkins summoned up by Colin Bennett in “Politics of the Imagination”. Dawkins is damned by some Forteans as well as Creationists.

This eclectic collection of penetrating essays converges on a number of themes, each of which is set off by a brief preamble. In true Fortean spirit Dawkins engages “Postmodernism in the opening preamble: “It is my belief that it means nothing at all except in the restricted context of architecture where it originated”.

Charles Darwin (Dawkins great hero) provides the title for the book: “What a book a Devil’s Chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering low and horridly cruel works of nature.” (Darwin to Joseph Hooker, 1856)

The collection opens with Dawkins setting forth his stall as this eras Devil’s Chaplain. While he supports Darwinism as a scientist, he is Anti-Darwinist in his politics as he writes: “We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the replicators.” He illustrates how every use of contraception is victory of the brain over Darwinian designs. Whether Dawkins is writing for the general public or academics, he remains a true and inspirational educator.

Evolution and religion, the twin tropes run through the compilation. They become the thesis and anti-thesis as he battles for his synthesis of reason and logic over authoritarian “Revelation”. He argues that Evolution means we are descended from Simian ancestors back through to single celled life forms.

If this is accepted then how can you countenance Transubstantiation, Mary’s corporeal ascension into Heaven and the rest of the beliefs which make up the basis of Christianity, Judaism and Islam? Dawkins is surely the (rationalist) Devils Chaplain, and an unrepentant apologist for atheism who questions the very underpinnings of religious belief. Melville wrote of: “The colourless all colour of atheism.” Well, Dawkins is anything but pallid as he wields his harpoon of logic against the crystal gazers, astrologers, Crystal Cancer Cures, and the mumbo jumbo of the “Postmodernists”. These Moby Dicks will not escape!

He melds the tropes of Science and Religion in an essay, ‘The great Conversion’, here he shouts no truce with Kings and dismisses the suggestion that in someway scientific findings can successfully be merged with religious belief. To Dawkins religion itself is a disease, or perhaps a potentially fatal virus for which the only cure is a good, clean scientific mentality.

But this isn’t just a collection of anti-clerical abuse; the human Dawkins emerges. There is a poignant letter to his daughter advocating the joys of resolute judgment; a touching accolade to his former evolutionary sparring partner, the late Stephen Jay Gould; a tribute to his friend the novelist Douglas Adams; and an impressive honouring of Africa, native land of the author and motherland of our species. 'We have Africa in our blood and Africa has our bones,' says Dawkins. 'We are all Africans.'

Some Forteans will of course wilt under Dawkins fiery breath but he fair warms the cockles of my heart.

by Ray McInerney - Global Country of World Peacer Thu Oct 05, 2006 19:01

Almost every morsel of our food is genetically modified - admittedly by artificial selection not artificial mutation, but the end result is the same. A wheat grain is a genetically modified grass seed, just as a pekinese is a genetically modified wolf.

by John Thu Oct 05, 2006 20:08

Has anybody ever met a happy atheist? If this site is anything to go by, almost all atheists indulge in constant whining about the state of the world. Some even blame God for it, even those who don't believe He exists. Possessed of the belief that human beings are nothing more than monkeys with a slightly higher IQ and will cease to exist in any form when they die, they almost all suffer from lifelong depression. I'd be depressed too if I believed what atheists believe. I wonder if that's the reason why the atheistic countries of eastern Europe had such astronomical suicide rates? And why the relatively unbelieving countries of Scandanavia have far higher suicide rates than the traditionally religious countries of southern Europe? Let's face it, if you were to bet on which of Dawkins, Paisley or the Pope is the most likely to kill himself, who would you put your money on?

by Spinning Quickly Thu Oct 05, 2006 20:15

Making this book compulsory reading for all students would be a bad idea - textbooks for courses should be compulsory, but not something that touches on something so personal as religion.

If this was compulsory reading in schools, it would only be an excuse for religious advocates to make their own books compulsory reading, so I'd rather err on the side of caution.

Separation of church and state requires *neutrality* on the part of the state regarding religion, not advocating pro-religious views or (in the case of this book) anti-religious views.

by Knowing Thu Oct 05, 2006 20:43

But what if you are in the % of people who cannot read?

The people who don't have access to computers.

The people who can't be fucked trawling through modern philosophy.

The translation industry will be busy.

The accursed amongst us-who would rather dump pure intellectual rationalist
philosophy for a good meal and a laugh with our close friends... aagh.

and there are the people who'd rather put 50 euros up there lily white nostrils
than be provoked into thought.

by hedgehog Fri Oct 06, 2006 01:05

Have a look at our own suicide rate. Highlighted on the news only tonight. Having to wake up to a population of religious nuts every day would depress anybody!

If everybody faced the reality that this world was all there was, there might be more of an incentive to make it a better place to live rather than treating it like some sort of grubby waiting lounge for the afterlife that you don't need to care about and in which you can litter, pick a fight or take a piss whenever you feel like it.

Dawkins tells it like it is. He's great.

by Dawkins Fan Fri Oct 06, 2006 17:14

Fair enough but why don't you actually read Dawkins book first and then you will be able to give an informed opinion. If you read his book and then continue to have religious beliefs and can provide a reasonable justification that would be interesting to explain.

by excath Fri Oct 06, 2006 17:57

About four years ago a catholic priest committed suicide by jumping off the roof of a church in the Thomas Street area. I'm sure there were other cases of religious people killing themselves.
So much for faith.

by Lapsed Heathen Fri Oct 06, 2006 19:31

Dawkins has been sprouting the same old rubbish for too long now. He living proof of something that I've suspected for some time. Atheism is just another denomination of fundamental Protestantism.

by diddly squat Fri Oct 06, 2006 21:03

Benedict is in the process of 'de-hellenising' the dogma of the Holy Roman Catholic
Church. Now he has not quite explained how far apace he is, but it's hinted at by
his materialist alliance with the Bush regime (and Merckel/Polish league of families).

The fundamental right is interested in the new creationist philosophy, which is the
continuity christianity exhibited in such luminaries as Bush and Blair, or indeed
fundamentalist interpretation of the Episcopal slant on intelligent design.

Hellenistic early christianity was closely allied to pre-dogmatic philosophical systems
such as Alexandrine/Egpytian Esoterism-exemplified for instance in the Hermetica.
It pre-suppoused a holistic view of nature and wholeness that seeped into such
disciplines as Essene and Gnosis (the G-Spot) and of course the moral
philosophers could also do intellect (if they chose).

Alliances with the proponents of Rationalist Materialistic western hegemony
does not like the nature aspect of early hellenistic philosophical systems
cos it plays with the ideals of penile dominace and the ideal/illusion of an
elect (in evidence in some calvinist systems- jansenism , for example)

So the whole religious thing is kind of fucked up really- but responding to
2,000 years of control mechanisms in the philosophical control rationalisations
of the western church bites- for one reason- the whole lot of them can't have
a fuck and therefore have not yet found their G-SPOT.

by xina Sat Oct 07, 2006 08:52

But Dawkinsism is another faith & not one necessarily easy for every1 to swallow. I don't find Dawkins' argument scientific enough, ie, he's not neutral on religion but very anti, and fiercely materialist. Never mind the 'afterlife' - one's life is not necessarily limited to the body, as when love or hate, kind deeds or acts of cruelty live after us.
No argument, people have done stupid & destructive things in the name of faith, & they've also done outstandingly worthy things; tending lepers & helping the poorest people, caring for those ignored by the rest of society, reaching way beyond their own selfish genes because they know we've only1 world here for all to share.
Some believers are stinkers; some atheists work in 'faith', hope & charity!
More tolerance, please!

by Dawkins fan Sat Oct 07, 2006 11:08

Atheism is not a religion or a faith.

by xina Sat Oct 07, 2006 21:13

Tis a huge leap of faith to believe that everything in the Universe originates by 'accident'. It don't matter if it's evolved or made in God's teabreak!
The force impelling suicide bombers can't be blamed on religion alone - there are political & economic causes driving them.
We do incredibly wicked, evil & stupid things for money; when can we get rid of it & our enslavement to it?
I've no bone to pick with atheists as such & will defend them against persecution, but I don't want anyone's belief forced on me.

by zoony Sun Oct 08, 2006 15:13

Religion & atheism are both illusions that we use to deal with the mystery of being.
It's almost impossible to separate our reasoning on these matters from our experiences: if you associate Christianity with your evil auntie Dolores or paedophile clergy, it's very likely to send you atheist/pagan/agnostic. If you've known enough good people who get something positive from faith, you're less likely to turn away from it completely.
The Catholic Church has behaved atrociously about paedophile clergy, but it's not necessarily a 'church thing': many children were abused in Social Services 'care' in the UK, in most cases the abusers getting protection from the Social Services/authorities.

by Lefty Type Sun Oct 08, 2006 19:27

"describing atheism as a religion, is like describing bald as a hair colour"

To lapsed Hearhen; "Atheism is just another denomination of fundamental Protestantism.
"????

explain to me please what exactly you mean by this blatant oxymoron

by Pope Gregory XV1 Sun Oct 08, 2006 19:41

Caused the great schism in the Catholic church by refusing to conform
to the dealings of the papacy with regard to the screwing/indulgences/
buying bits of heaven/nepotism etc.

They protested at the corruption in the Medieval church, which is kinda
interesting cos now we have the exact reverse in terms of schism.

Yes-schism. am thinking of nailing it to Benedict's ass.

Now we have celibacy, eunuchism and an oner-weening interest in
female biological functions- the men in white are other-worldly and ruling
over the souls and consciences of one billion people- its unnatural-I tells you.

These men in white who have never had sex, experienced fatherhood
(well there were a few) are telling women that they are racially inferior
and biolgically determined. It's a bleeding cult of pruners- except for
one teensy thing, they seem assured of control through the European
Constitution and the best friend of the cult is a woman who will be leading
or assuming the presidency of the EU in January 2007.

Now Protest-ants, protested at the the inequalities of the established church, culled
the indulgences, the sacraments and the iconography of bleeding masochism
which dominated the holy Roman Empire. Therefore it cannot be compared
to Atheism, because it is based on bishoprics and hierarchial structures.
there is admittedly less fear of women but the basis of the religion is christological
and similar in fundamental ways to Catholicism.

Atheism is a- theism, where there is no god. it a system based on logic and
not founded in christological mythology.

jaysus I am thinking of doing a thesis.
After I pin the polemic to Benedict's ass.

by Righty-o-so-Joe Sun Oct 08, 2006 23:34

Do all the liberal folks here not consider the above to be a form of religious persecution?

So much for "religious freedom"...

by Pope GregoryXV1 Mon Oct 09, 2006 12:31

Someone said that A-theism was a form of fundamental Protest-ant-ism.

Apart from the 'ism', they have nothing in common.

A-theism acts on the premise that there is no God, as opposed to Pantheism, agnosticsm
and all the other 'ism's.

Protest-ant-ism, is a religion based on a pared down diluted form of Christiainty
which does not accept the mariological imperative, nor the gamut of sacraments.
It is therefore a protest form of Christianity, based in the Hellenised philosophical
system which is the root of the early Judaeo-Christian church.

That cannot ,on any level be reffered to as religious persceution. It is a simple
ponting out of the facts.
Now Catholicism is based in faith and dogma- Spiritual and temporal power.

The controlling nexus of dogma is represented in the Vatican and the Pope
as Christ's representative on earth. It is an order of hierarchical structures
based in rationalist philosophies which seem completely divorced from
the simple anarchistic teachings of Christ- who was, it appears very into
the notion of equality.

Thus Dawkins would have trouble with the notion of God and possibly
like many souls with the all-pervasive inequality represented in both
the hierarchical structures of the Catholic church and it's refusal to
face up to it's 'internal' problems- such as abuse/compensation/lack of
inter-faith dialogue.