Dawkins - FISH!!!

[vhawk01]

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It is amazing to me that you STILL do not understand why Phil (and others) are accusing you of intellectual cowardice. It has nothing to do with your posting of this review, or your subsequeny discussion of such. It has to do with slandering the works and arguments of someone you've never even read. Its ludicrous.


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OK, I'm confused. Where did I slander his works in this thread that wasn't the posting of the review or the discussion of his works?

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Dawkins is intellectually dishonest and lazy. He makes no apparent effort to understand the religions he attacks. He lumps all religions and all religious people together, finds something objectionable about one of them, then paints all with the same brush. That's intellectual dishonesty of the first order.

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This took me literally two seconds to find. How did you get this from the linked article? This seems like a pretty sweeping characterization of a man whose works you haven't even glossed over.

[NotReady]

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his took me literally two seconds to find. How did you get this from the linked article?


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I didn't. I got it mostly from quotes of his on the net like the ones in my other post about that here. He doesn't qualify his attacks on religion in any way.

I should point out my statement you quote comes after most claims of my intellectual cowardice and so obviously can't be the basis for those claims.

[dknightx]

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It is amazing to me that you STILL do not understand why Phil (and others) are accusing you of intellectual cowardice. It has nothing to do with your posting of this review, or your subsequeny discussion of such. It has to do with slandering the works and arguments of someone you've never even read. Its ludicrous.


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OK, I'm confused. Where did I slander his works in this thread that wasn't the posting of the review or the discussion of his works?

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Dawkins is intellectually dishonest and lazy. He makes no apparent effort to understand the religions he attacks. He lumps all religions and all religious people together, finds something objectionable about one of them, then paints all with the same brush. That's intellectual dishonesty of the first order.

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This took me literally two seconds to find. How did you get this from the linked article? This seems like a pretty sweeping characterization of a man whose works you haven't even glossed over.

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you make the assumption that notready has never read or glossed over any of dawkins "works". I think it was pretty clear he didn't read GD, but that doesn't mean he has never read/listened to dawkins. shame on you and your faulty logic!!!!!!11111!!!

[vhawk01]

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It is amazing to me that you STILL do not understand why Phil (and others) are accusing you of intellectual cowardice. It has nothing to do with your posting of this review, or your subsequeny discussion of such. It has to do with slandering the works and arguments of someone you've never even read. Its ludicrous.


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OK, I'm confused. Where did I slander his works in this thread that wasn't the posting of the review or the discussion of his works?

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Dawkins is intellectually dishonest and lazy. He makes no apparent effort to understand the religions he attacks. He lumps all religions and all religious people together, finds something objectionable about one of them, then paints all with the same brush. That's intellectual dishonesty of the first order.

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This took me literally two seconds to find. How did you get this from the linked article? This seems like a pretty sweeping characterization of a man whose works you haven't even glossed over.

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you make the assumption that notready has never read or glossed over any of dawkins "works". I think it was pretty clear he didn't read GD, but that doesn't mean he has never read/listened to dawkins. shame on you and your faulty logic!!!!!!11111!!!

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He has said as much several times. Apparently, he has some experience with quote-mining pithy Dawkins comments, so I apologize.

[kurto]

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I didn't. I got it mostly from quotes of his on the net like the ones in my other post about that here. He doesn't qualify his attacks on religion in any way.


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You read a quote and say he hasn't qualified his attacks on religion? You may be surprised to find that the books he's written that you haven't read qualify the remarks you're quoting.

Its ironic that you're calling him intellectually lazy.

[HSB]

this is one of the stupidest threads in the history of stupid.

If you're not willing to read someone's arguments and understand them then your counterarguments are irrelevant because you're arguing against something that doesn't exist.

[context]

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Such as? (including context of the quotes you're going to provide)


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Just a few of his blatherings:

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

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)

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)

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)

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)

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Furry-muff.

One or two points though.

Many of the quotes you give seem to be factual rather than opinion, but some do show his dislike of religion.

Strange that you can so quickly find quotes to show a negative side of the guy you're critizing and yet you side-step every other request.

[Magic_Man]

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If you need me to pick, I'll give you a couple:

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.

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.

But please feel free to pick whichever ones you like.


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No that's fine. These will serve to answer others who've asked the same.

The first one. Very simple. What we would expect if there was no design is absolute chaos, complete disorder, total irrationality.

The second one is an example of his monumental ignorance on the history of religion. How many schools and universities owe their founding and existence to religion? How many hospitals? How many charitable organiztions? How many ancient texts were preserved by the church? How many scientists before the 19th century were educated because of the church and supported by the church?

There's a lot more - the positive influence of religion throughout history is enormous. There would be no Oxford dons to attack Christianity if it wasn't for Christianity.

Yes, there can be debate because much harm has been done in the name of religion. But to claim religion teaches us to not understand the world is to not understand religion - at least, Bible based Christian theism.

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And yet that is not what Dawkins' quote says. He says religion teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world, which in some instances it does. The most recent example is intelligent design, of course - "this is so complex, I don't understand it....hmm ok God did it!". Ditto with creation of the universe, the apparent age of the earth, and many other examples. In fact, astronomers of yore were so convinced of the geocentric model (the effect of religious influence, in part) that they invented ridiculous retrograde motion in order to explain the strange motion of the planets. It's true that religion has done a lot of good, but when you can appeal to a supernatural power in those moments of extreme confusion, you fail science and humanity.

Regarding the first quote, that the universe is as we expect to be given no design - your claim that we would expect chaos and disorder is highly debatable. There are plenty of random systems that we can simulate in labs which seek the most nonchaotic state possible. When you swing a pendulum in a random direction, for example, it doesn't just go wild and reach a state of "absolute chaos, complete disorder, total irrationality." The oscillations simply die out and it eventually reaches a neutral position.

What we WOULD expect, given NO DESIGN, is the following:

Similar forms with different functions:
For example, the bone structure of the human hand is similar to that in a bat wing, but they serve entirely different purposes.

Similar FUNCTION, with different forms:
This is an even more compelling argument. If life were designed, we would expect to see similar forms used for similar functions. All ears would be similar, for example, but in fact the insect world alone has almost a dozen different types of ears, all serving the same purpose. Many animals that spin webs have completely different mechanisms for generating the silk.

Useless body parts, such as vestigial organs. These make NO SENSE at all if the universe is designed.


That is what we expect to see, and in fact we do see it. Vestigial organs in particular are in stark contrast with the concept of a designed universe. Of course, it's easy to say "well I don't know what they're for or why they're there, but God works in mysterious ways," and this is EXACTLY what Dawkins' second quote is about.

[NotReady]

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so I apologize.


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Accepted, and thanks. It may not always seem so but I really do prefer civil discussion.

[NotReady]

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this is one of the stupidest threads in the history of stupid.

If you're not willing to read someone's arguments and understand them then your counterarguments are irrelevant because you're arguing against something that doesn't exist.


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Let me try this again. I posted a book review, said it was a book review, linked to the book review, stated numerous times I haven't read the book. This is a discussion board. Heck with it, my computer is running out of cyber ink.