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tr0tsky wrote:Richard Dawkins is NOT an annoying twat.


Read his books. They're fucking great.


tr0tsky: atheist by day, rastaman by night.

I lost it on the God Delusion. My housemate really dug it and I was all for atheism until I finished it.... now we have arguments about Dawkins being a bit of a twat.

Did you see that TV series he did where he basically just went round the country telling children that they were laughably stupid for believing in God? Lovely man...


Edit: I have arguments with myself about this actually. I *do* believe that the world would be better off if we could move everyone away from organised religion.... as much as anything so that we could be more practical with our reasons for disliking each other, but I differ from my housemate (and Dawkins) in thinking it's worth "going to war" on religion.

tr0tsky wrote: tr0tsky: atheist by day, rastaman by night.

i agree with the OP

the similarities come into play they both try to shove things down your throat

although Richard Dawkins is still the man

I don't want to appear a hippocrite so let me just state this.

I choose to semi-believe (for lack of a better word) in a God / Higher Power / Vibration of the Universe, not because I have proof, but because I like the idea. I think its a nice thought and not as grim as thinking this is all some monumental mistake.

I know that believing this, having made up my mind to at least semi-believe this, makes me a dumb person because I have ZERO information to enforce this. If I die one day, and find out I was wrong, I probably wont be very surprised though.

What I have a problem with, is absolution. Christians do FULLY believe in God because their lives are influenced by it to the extent that they live their lives thinking someone is watching them over their shoulder. They feel guilt for breaking commmandments. They raise their children to believe the same thing.

Richard Dawkins, is Im pretty sure, 100% certain God does not exist. I appreciate his work, but again, all the science in the world cannot proof that God does not exist.

Even Science and Mathematics are fallable. Take for instance the singularity of a black hole: A point of infinate gravitational force that attempting to calculate its gravitational pull completely shatters both science and mathematics as it exponetially increases into the absurd and irrational. Look it up. It cannot be done. Proof that there are things in our universe science and mathematics cannot make sense of. Its crazy shit.

[end rant]

All I am saying is this: We know nothing. Let's all at least admit it.

the point of science is to prove yourself wrong, so science is always fallible. but the rules to prove the findings wrong are at a higher standard than just someones epiphany they had.

Ov3rdos3 wrote:I don't want to appear a hippocrite so let me just state this.

at this point you appear like having a semi-idea about the meaning of the words you're using

Ov3rdos3 wrote:I choose to semi-believe (for lack of a better word)

trying to appear semi-stupid now after you called all believers stupid? do semi-agnostics exist?

Ov3rdos3 wrote: in a God / Higher Power / Vibration of the Universe, not because I have proof, but because I like the idea. I think its a nice thought and not as grim as thinking this is all some monumental mistake.

of course after the avalanche of bullshit here makes sense for it to be based on "i like the idea, it's nice" not on "i understand"

Ov3rdos3 wrote:I know that believing this, having made up my mind to at least semi-believe this, makes me a dumb person because I have ZERO information to enforce this.

THIS

Ov3rdos3 wrote:If I die one day, and find out I was wrong, I probably wont be very surprised though.

if you die then find out anything i'll be hugely surprised though, keep me posted

Ov3rdos3 wrote:What I have a problem with, is absolution. Christians do FULLY believe in God because their lives are influenced by it to the extent that they live their lives thinking someone is watching them over their shoulder. They feel guilt for breaking commmandments. They raise their children to believe the same thing.

Richard Dawkins, is Im pretty sure, 100% certain God does not exist. I appreciate his work, but again, all the science in the world cannot proof that God does not exist.

logic does in 3 moves, science bothers with serious shit

Ov3rdos3 wrote:Even Science and Mathematics are fallable.

this is a contradiction in terms, if they fail they are not science by definition

Ov3rdos3 wrote:Take for instance the singularity of a black hole: A point of infinate gravitational force that attempting to calculate its gravitational pull completely shatters both science and mathematics as it exponetially increases into the absurd and irrational. Look it up. It cannot be done. Proof that there are things in our universe science and mathematics cannot make sense of. Its crazy shit.

science didn't said it knows all and solved all and shit, god says that

Ov3rdos3 wrote:All I am saying is this: We know nothing. Let's all at least admit it.

only if you admit you contradict yourself and say "it's because i liked the idea, it's a nice thought"

alien pimp wrote: at this point you appear like having a semi-idea about the meaning of the words you're using

One of your more irony-laden posts, AP.

Diablo wrote:I'm 100% certain we're all eventually gonna die !

You shouldn't be. What if scientists find a way to stop cell aging and death in your lifetime?

Ov3rdos3 wrote: Richard Dawkins, is Im pretty sure, 100% certain God does not exist. I appreciate his work, but again, all the science in the world cannot proof that God does not exist.

He describes himself as agnostic.

tr0tsky wrote:Richard Dawkins is NOT an annoying twat.


Read his books. They're fucking great.

His writing might be great, his scientific ideas might be brilliant, but he is a twat. I think he might be personally responsible for producing more hardcore creationist/anti-science/anti-rationalists in the world than any single person. The guy has so much FAITH in his own ideas that he is as much a zealot as any fundamentalist Christian/Muslim/Believer-in-religion, and thereby fails completely and utterly to be able to win people over to his side of the debate because he's just so good at putting them off!

I don't classify myself as agnostic or an atheist. I'm a free-thinker.

pk- wrote:Scientific 'proof' requires faith though, doesn't it. The only way you can prove something is by testing it x number of times and observing the same thing each time. You've got to eventually just trust that it's always going to happen.

eg I could drop a tennis ball from a height of 3 feet 1,000 times, and more than likely it would fall out of my hand and bounce off the floor each time. But that doesn't prove that the 1001st time I let go of the ball it won't fly straight up through my roof and then do laps of my house. Eventually I have to just believe that it won't

You're confusing "belief" based on evidence and moreover accepted proof, which we can test and observe, and a fairy tale story with no evidence or proof.

cyberneticghost wrote:

Diablo wrote:I'm 100% certain we're all eventually gonna die !

You shouldn't be. What if scientists find a way to stop cell aging and death in your lifetime?

People are trying!

http://www.methuselahfoundation.org/

Dawkins is great.

I have to lol when people get offended or call him militant.

He's not at all - he's just determined to stop people believing in utter shite, which is a very noble cause. I don't give a crap if he offends those with retarded views, as they deserve it, and 100s of years ago these stnuc would deny atheists jobs, treat them as lesser beings, and even murder us for not believing. So fuck them AND their fake sky gods tbh.

richard dawkins isn't the pope of atheism, atheism isn't an organization with its own dogma. it just means you don't believe in god. if you knew an atheist that was an asshole, it doesn't magically add the word "asshole" to the definition of "atheist". personally i think he's a tool who makes atheists look bad.

announcing that you "can't know anything" may sound cool, but in the real world we're human beings and we naturally observe our surroundings and form beliefs. belief doesn't mean absolute conviction. it's when you look at what you see and hear and form ideas about what's true. if you try to believe that you believe nothing then you're going to run in circles contradicting yourself and saying ridiculous bullshit like "semi-believe".

i look at religion and i see lots of reasons that believing in a god would be comforting, inspiring, fulfilling. and then i see absolutely no evidence that he's there. it makes sense to me why so many people would be attracted toward it, even if there's no real evidence at all. that's why it's pretty easy for me to believe that it's all bullshit. because i've seen plenty of people choose to believe in something just because it makes them feel good.

Professor Dawkins is a G! His rather rampant approach to getting his views across in recent years is just a backlash against the rather forceful way some believers of the Abrahamic religions like to put their views across. Perhaps it's not the best way to go about it but it has indeed got a lot of people talking about it where they might have been afraid to do so previously.
He has never said there is 100% no God, in fact he fronted a London bus ad campaign that said "THERE'S PROBABLY NO GOD. NOW STOP WORRYING AND ENJOY YOUR LIFE" in response to Christian London bus ads that were trying to scare us all into believing.

Another point i'd like to make (maybe unfairly) is that it has been a direct link discovered between low IQ and fundamentalist belief. That isn't to say that all believers are thick, just there are a lot of thick believers.

Perhaps a more poignant reply to the original post is that of all the Nobel prize winners in science only 2 or 3 have been religious.

In my opinion, believe what you want to as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else. If it makes you happy or helps you sleep at night then who is anyone else to tell you you're wrong.

I don't like Dawkins and all them militant intellectual athiests no matter how many hundreds of pages you write you're not going to prove that God doesn't exist because if he is God he could have made it so he's unprovable.

On the nature of belief Sartre claimed that no beliefs are 100%. Beliefs are always personal opinons. He was always sceptical about preachers who gone on and on saying I believe in the Lord, I know the Lord to be true, if they reallly believed in it they wouldn't have to go on and on about it. I don't run about shouting I know I have two feet, I know that this chair is real, he thought that they were really trying to convince themselves, hence they had some doubt and that is why it was a belief and not something they knew.

Phase 2 wrote:100s of years ago these stnuc would deny atheists jobs, treat them as lesser beings, and even murder us for not believing. So fuck them AND their fake sky gods tbh.

Translation wrote:I think that two wrongs make a right!

Magma wrote:

Phase 2 wrote:100s of years ago these stnuc would deny atheists jobs, treat them as lesser beings, and even murder us for not believing. So fuck them AND their fake sky gods tbh.

Translation wrote:I think that two wrongs make a right!

Not at all - I just love the delicious irony of those twats crying over somebody merely dismissing their views, when they've killed people for not believing.

limb wrote:and all them militant intellectual athiests no matter how many hundreds of pages you write you're not going to prove that God doesn't exist because if he is God he could have made it so he's unprovable.

i think he's actually satan and he made believe he's somewhat of a good god.
and we all should admit that. or at least semi-admit

limb wrote:I don't like Dawkins and all them militant intellectual athiests no matter how many hundreds of pages you write you're not going to prove that God doesn't exist because if he is God he could have made it so he's unprovable.

What do you mean by "militant"? He presents documentaries and writes books. He sometimes gives lectures. Even the Swiss wouldn't find that militant.

His job at Oxford is to improve public understanding of science. Clearly religious nonsense gets in the way of that, and an awful lot of people are religious, so he needs to dedicate a fair bit of time to the topic.

But the key group is those who aren't sure. Seeing religion so systematically taken to pieces should sway them. There's even a section on his forum where believers come to say they've converted to atheism.

We all know that you can't DISprove many things, but that doesn't mean there shouldn't be backlash against those who try to pass them off as the truth. Not all theories are equal.