Richard Dawkins' Brand of Atheism

Great Debates
241

[QUOTE=I Love Me, Vol. I]
The deeper it runs the more serious and intractable the problem.

The religious moderates are a more serious problem then the fundies. The moderates give cover and legitimacy to the wacko fundies. Most people don’t care what fundies say and do because most of them are utter nutjobs. The moderates, OTOH, are accepted by society because they display intelligence and critical thinking. As long as there are so many religious moderates, organized religion will be the status quo. Once the moderates get it out of their systems (IMO that’s happening at a consistent rate, albeit very slowly) the fundies will be so marginalized that the whole game will be up.

The fundamentalists will never work this whole thing out for themselves because they don’t have the tools to do so. So be it. The moderates do have the tools, yet they choose to continue believing in sky pixies and the like. That’s quite vexing, and it prolongs the pain and misery that the entire civilization must endure.
[/QUOTE]

Honestly, is this something you’ve really thought through yourself and have good reason to believe {as in evidence} or are you just parroting what you read or heard someone else say?

I’ve heard this concept before. The moderate and more liberal believers lend credibility and tacit support to the fundies. Is there one shred of evidence to support this concept or is it just ironic that atheists embrace this without evidence?

242

[QUOTE=ianzin]
Nor am I sure there is really much of a debate. George Bernard Shaw, I believe, once said ‘You can’t rationally argue out what wasn’t rationally argued in’. Those who have faith-based beliefs believe they have a relationship with a god or gods that does not proceed from empirical evidence or logical argument of a kind that will ever convince a non-believer. Those who do not, do not. Evidently, the two sides do not share common ground in terms of ‘how shall I arrive at my model of the world I live in?’, and so dialogue is at best severely limited, and at worst degenerates into poor arguments and abuse.
[/quote]

That’s all good and well but I didn’t intend this to be a debate. I posted the thread originally in IMHO asking if anyone else feels that Dawkins and his groupies are being obnoxious and then people came in and started arguing.

Um… No we’re not. Or I’m not at least. There are others that are discussing that, but that wasn’t my intention. I made it clear numerous times I didn’t start the thread to discuss atheism vs. theism. Why would you reply to the original post and declare what is being discussed in a thread you didn’t start…?

243

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
Honestly, is this something you’ve really thought through yourself and have good reason to believe {as in evidence} or are you just parroting what you read or heard someone else say?

I’ve heard this concept before. The moderate and more liberal believers lend credibility and tacit support to the fundies. Is there one shred of evidence to support this concept or is it just ironic that atheists embrace this without evidence?
[/QUOTE]
I don’t take that kindly to the parroting remark.

The assertion is one I am making all by my little old self. What sort of evidence would you like me to show for my opinion? Feel free to disagree, I’m just debating like everyone else. That doesn’t mean that everything I assert will have factual evidence.

It seems just common sense to me that if there are two groups that hold the same fundamental (not fundamentalist) beliefs (divinity of Christ, for example) but the first group is taken far more seriously by the status quo than the second group, then the first group is intentionally or unintentionally adding credibility to the second group.

244

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
None of which has anything to do with atheism; atheism is just the belief that there are no gods; that’s ALL that it is. You can believe that morality was handed to us by the fairys and still be an atheist.
[/QUOTE]

Yes. And if that is the package you put forth, you shouldn’t be surprised if you are unconvincing.

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
“God did it” isn’t an explanation at all, much less a valid one, since it begs the question “what made God ?”. “I don’t know” is not only equally valid, but superior; an “equally valid” explanation would be to claim that I made the universe, and that I’m pretending to be a mortal atheist to screw with your head.
[/QUOTE]

If you stopped at “I don’t know” you’d be in a much safer place: agnosticism. But atheism says “I don’t know, except that it wasn’t God.”

God being the Creator makes logical sense because everything we know about is caused. It is a basic tenet of science. Now there might be one thing without a cause, but we are not aware of it yet. So, with the information we have, it is a logical assumption. There are things we don’t understand ike parts of Quantum Mechanics. That does not mean those things do not have a cause. And I asked you for specific information regarding uncaused events in Quantum Mechanics. You show either your ingnorance or laziness or dishonesty—I know not which—by linking to principles in QE without iffering the link to uncaused events. So, you clearly do not know what you are talking about in the arena. I’m certainly no expert myself, but the claim you made falls to you to sunstantiate.

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
And there’s no reason to believe that anything that operates outside the laws of the universe is a god; it could be another universe, or some non-god . . . thing that has nothing to do with us.
[/QUOTE]

I’ll grant you the first part. But somehting had to create that other universe, and the one before that, and so on. At some point there had to be a beginning something that was started without anything else around to start it. This is operating outside the laws of the universe and necessitates something that is able to operate outside the universe. That is god (small “g” intentional).

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
That’s still a major denial of physical law, since most religious people believe God can and does intervene all the time.
[/QUOTE]

Huh? If God can operate outside the laws of the universe he can do so whenever and as often or seldom as he desires.

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Virtual particles and quantum uncertainty come to mind. And I don’t know that much about QM; it’s just that you appear to be a few decades out of date.
[/QUOTE]

Not quite. I simply don’t think QE has anything to do with uncaused events. It has to do with uncertainty. But you brought this up as a way around a Prime Mover and I asked you to explain how it applies. Instead you post a couple links to Wiki and shout out “Quantum Mechanics”. If you don’t know how it applies to uncaused events, perhaps you shouldn’t offer it as an argument.

245

TWEEEEET!!

Everyone take a deep breath.

Exhale–s-l-o-w-l-y!

Now, there will be no more pointing out what others believe, no more telling anyone that they “must” believe “X” because in your system all the straw people whom you have created with a similar label have to believe “X.”

Yeesh, folks, just answer the actual posts that are being made, not the ones that you need your opponents to have made so that you can make your point.

And EVERYONE stop getting their feelings hurt because you find the other side’s language to be condescending, insulting, or whatever.
This topic, (actually, these multiple topics), lend themselves to bad feelings because they are deeply hled personal beliefs. However, aside from the fact that there is only a 1000:1 chance that anyone will be persuaded to change belief as a result of this discussion, as long as so many posters are talikjng past each other and letting their emotions get between them and the discussion, rather few of you are even going to come to understand the actual position of the other posters if you don’t set aside your own preconceptions and sensitivities and actually read what has been posted with a view to trying to comprehend the other arguments.

[ /Moderating ]

246

[QUOTE=Mangetout]
I must therefore retract most of what I’ve said in this thread and offer my sincere apologies. Sorry. :o
[/QUOTE]

Insofar as what you’ve said comprised the opinion that the whole “brights” thing was a notably dumbass idea, please do not retract it. Yeesh. James Randi took that up for a while too, though he seems to have dropped it, thank Og.

[QUOTE=FordPrefect]
…(read the book, he doesn’t have one leading question without a parenthesis in it to stop the liars from misusing his words!)…
[/quote]

I’m intrigued. Can you expand on this?

247

[QUOTE=Apos]
I’m sorry, but my personal impression and opinion of you isn’t up for debate or citation. You were pushing the idea of resolving a confusion where none existed, and then turned around and did exactly what I was suspecting you were up to, confirming, not contradicting my impression, as you claim you have. Your further snotty posts to people like Voyager haven’t improved matters either. You are full of bizarre straw man accusations hurled at atheists, most of them misaimed.

[/QUOTE]

If he was being snotty, I must have missed it. He does misunderstand strong atheism, but that’s hardly original. Maybe being told I’m a tool of Satan has desensitized me. (Good food and sexy women down in Hell, by the way.) :stuck_out_tongue:

248

[QUOTE=Sunrazor]
And yet you dismiss it so readily, as if the lack of emperical (sic) evidence were all that is required to know truth from fiction.
[/QUOTE]

The latter part of your sentence is exactly right. Truth – mind you, not absolute Truth, with a capital “T” for science is NOT dogma and keeps adapting to the evidence put forth. In exact opposition to religion, where the less you think the better off you are. Says as much in the Bible as I’m sure you know what with all the “false gods” and all–meanwhile, science is solely based on empirical evidence and it can adapt and adjust to the ever improved/ing/changing evidence that comes its way.

Now, compare that to religious Dogma/indoctrination.

If it wasn’t for science we’d still be stuck in the Dark Age. Not that it would matter much to me back then, for a mere century or two ago, a man my age was considered a relic thus I’ve had my fill of “modern” in my days. But hey, now that I think about it they night have had a point – I am becoming a relic by the year…as we all are by comparison to prior so-called health care based primarily on Mythology and ignorance. Meanwhile it is science and not prayer that has led to much-spaded lifetimes. But let’s not allow my very hip ADD to stray from the point I’m making.

It is, indeed, empirical evidence that distinguishes fact from fiction. Mind you, not like I’m discovering gunpowder by saying as much.

Just a tad of common sense and many years on earth is all it takes, if you really think about it, to get rid of so many down-right silly superstitions.

I mean, for Og’s sake, I was supposedly drinking Jesus’ blood every Sunday at least till I was about ten. Stopped believing right about then, found the pleasure of “drinking blood” years later when everything around the act didn’t feel so imposing that a a wine-produced* giggle might’ve doomed you to become an everlasting pig on a spit. In light of so many injustices worldwide I can only conclude there are no sky-pixies watching over us.

And if there are, I can loudly proclaim they are a bunch of sick MFs and/or pretty fuckin’ powerless to control our lives for the better. Which rather obviously is nothing more – or less - than than re-stating the insurmountable Problem of Evil that smacks Christianity right in the kisser per their own sky=pixie definition. Omni-god my ass if he can’t deal with such a simple problem.

That’s all.

249

[QUOTE=r4nd0mNumb3rs]
That’s all good and well but I didn’t intend this to be a debate. I posted the thread originally in IMHO asking if anyone else feels that Dawkins and his groupies are being obnoxious and then people came in and started arguing.
[/quote]

With all due respect, that sounds like a Pitting, not an IMHO. Why are you surprised that people might argue with your claims about Dawkins and calling people that like what he has to say “groupies”? Especially since you still haven’t really sad whether or not you’ve even read the book in question.

250

[QUOTE=Voyager]
In my response to magellan01 I gave a kind of inductive argument as to why it made sense to believe there are no gods. I put “disprove” in quotes because few if any atheists claim to know a way to disprove all gods - or any god, for that matter, unless that god is defined in such a way to be logically inconsistent.
[/QUOTE]

I’ll have to reread the thread. I agree with you that few atheists do claim to disprove all gods. The only ones I can think of tend to use the non cognitive argument and I’m not entirely sure that can be applied to all gods anyway.

[QUOTE=Voyager]
I’m not sure I’d try to use the incoherency argument - are the properties of a god required to be coherent, which I assume is weaker than logically consistent?
[/QUOTE]

I might be conflating the two, actually. As I see it, if the omnimax attributes aren’t consistent (say you show that an all powerful entity cannot also be all knowing, for instance), then they necessarily aren’t coherent.

It’s similar to a square circle; while we understand what a ‘square’ is and what a ‘circle’ is, when putting them together they are logically inconsistent and utterly unintelligeable. If something is unintelligeable/incoherent, then how can you say it exists? Further, what are you saying exists?

[QUOTE=Voyager]
Practically speaking, though, attacking one god at a time works fine, since your average theist already rejects all gods but one. Assuming he does this for some good reason (a stretch, I grant you) knocking out his god should turn him into an atheist.
[/QUOTE]

Right, I agree with this.

251

[QUOTE=wayward]
I’d go further and say that not being afraid to say “I don’t know” is one of the defining features of rational thought. There’s plenty of things in the universe that we might never know, and I’m okay with that. I’m certainly curious, and I’m glad that there’s lots of people who are much cleverer than me trying to find out answers to some of of those Big Questions. Simply saying “God did it” doesn’t satisy my curiosity in the slightest.
[/QUOTE]

I agree. To me it’s just substituting a mystery with another mystery.

252

[QUOTE=magellan01]
If you stopped at “I don’t know” you’d be in a much safer place: agnosticism. But atheism says “I don’t know, except that it wasn’t God.”

[/QUOTE]

There’s another way to look at atheism. Rather than “I don’t know, except that it wasn’t god”, I say, “I don’t know, but I have absolutely no reason to think it was god.”

253

[QUOTE=magellan01]
God being the Creator makes logical sense because everything we know about is caused.
[/QUOTE]

No it doesn’t - you seem to be equivocating in regards to ‘cause’. What is understood by causation is matter or energy acting within time and space on other matter and energy. To say god caused matter/energy/time/space is incoherent since you are applying ‘cause’ in a manner that is utterly different then how it’s used in every other circumstance.

How did god ‘cause’ the universe? As I said, to cause something is to act upon something. You are saying that god acted upon nothing and produced something - in a time when there was no time and no space.

However this presents multiple problems, two of which are: 1. what did god act upon? 2. How did god create time when he had no time in which to create time?

[QUOTE=magellan01]
It is a basic tenet of science. Now there might be one thing without a cause, but we are not aware of it yet.
[/QUOTE]

As has been pointed out there are quantum fluctuations without causes - but regardless, if something comes from nothing then it would only be able to do so without a cause. Think about it: As I’ve said, to cause something presupposes matter/energy (ie, something to act upon). If there was nothing to act upon then how could there be a cause?

[QUOTE=magellan01]
That does not mean those things do not have a cause. And I asked you for specific information regarding uncaused events in Quantum Mechanics. You show either your ingnorance or laziness or dishonesty—I know not which—by linking to principles in QE without iffering the link to uncaused events
[/QUOTE]

The question turns back on you - in what way can you reasonably say that god ‘caused’ the universe? How can you say god ‘caused’ anything, since to cause something presupposes: Time, space, energy or matter - none of which your god had.

[QUOTE=magellan01]
But somehting had to create that other universe, and the one before that, and so on.
[/QUOTE]

Demonstrate how this is even logically possible.

[QUOTE=magellan01]
Huh? If God can operate outside the laws of the universe he can do so whenever and as often or seldom as he desires.

[/QUOTE]

How can an entity be outside the laws of the universe? What does that mean, btw?

This is one of my big problems with theism, the more you investigate it, the more it tends to look like replacing a mystery with ‘magic’.

254

[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold]
I tend to agree with you. Morality has to come from somewhere. However, I believe that one’s morality may come from within; from a philosophical look at one’s situation in the world and interactions with others, someone can come to their own decision as to what is moral - without needing an outside agent to give them one.

Some of us don’t need an outside agent to watch us; we are perfectly happy to watch ourselves, judge ourselves. Note that I am not saying religious people need an outside agent (or belief in an outside agent); I think they’re just as capable of providing their own morality as anyone else. Certainly there are some people who, absent of any structure or moral imperatives, will run amok, free of care or worry. I think they’re the minority.

Just as an aside, your argument tends to suggest that atheists, who have no structure or concept of God or objective morality, would be more likely to not act moral, or at least fail in their attempts to be moral. Is this your view?
[/QUOTE]

I agree with you that our moral code comes from within but I suspect that many believers do not see God as an outside source. Much of what Jesus talked about was the inner journey and seeking our communion with God within.

That might mean that while atheists reject certain concepts of God outwardly the inner person accepts communion with God on some unconscious level without recognizing it.

The term God has become problematic for me. I reject the angry sky God image. I find the idea of God as a being separate being and out there somewhere to be a problem among believers. They strive to be one with God yet support and perpetuate that separate image. I prefer the image of God as the ocean and mankind as drops in the ocean. We are of the same stuff and a part of the whole even if we can’t see it. The spiritual process is losing the illusion of being separate.

255

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Name them. And when have I tried to get my beliefs codified into law, or have those who disagree with me imprisoned or killed or forcibly converted ? This is yet another example of the double standard, where I get lumped in with people like Fred Phelps because I post my opinion on a message board.
[/QUOTE]
Just reading your posts in this thread makes it pretty obvious. We’ve had this discussion before and I know how pointless it is. I’m not interested going around in circles with you. You’ve used the same false argument you use here before and it was pointed pout as false then, yet here you are using it again.
My pointing out that you share some of the traits of fundamentalists is clearly *not * the same as comparing you to the worst of the bunch. To suggest that I’ve made that comparison is ludicrous.

256

[QUOTE=Apos]

Except that it seems clear that things work just fine without it too. No one seems to be able to explain exactly how religion works anyway. If your religion told you to do something you considered morally abhorrent, would you really do it? Or would you let your moral judgment trump it? That’s not an idle question. The very fact that you might find your religion morally laudable virtually presupposes the idea that you have some overarching moral judgment outside and above religion itself.
[/QUOTE]

How is it clear? Where’s the example of things working just fine without it?

If you see religion only as an outside source that tells the believer to do things then you misunderstand much of it. Religion, or the spiritual journey, organized or otherwise, is just a tool for the inner journey and it’s unique for every individual. So if your group vears off on a tangent you can’t accept you might leave, but that doesn’t you’ve rejected religion. You’ve just chosen a different path for yourself.

257

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
How is it clear? Where’s the example of things working just fine without it?

If you see religion only as an outside source that tells the believer to do things then you misunderstand much of it. Religion, or the spiritual journey, organized or otherwise, is just a tool for the inner journey and it’s unique for every individual. So if your group vears off on a tangent you can’t accept you might leave, but that doesn’t you’ve rejected religion. You’ve just chosen a different path for yourself.
[/QUOTE]

How do you figure that? Religion may be the path, but the existence of an outside source is the purpose of the path (for those who believe). By saying it is internal, doesn’t that automatically exclude god? Atheists most certainly have an inner journey. It’s just not connected to an outside all-powerful entity.

258

[QUOTE=MaxTheVool]
(That’s why, much as I enjoy mocking the overly religious, I think the “flying spaghetti monster” argument is somewhat flawed. If someone says “there’s a human-looking man up in the clouds who created this particular book”, then they’re making strong and groundless claims, just as strong and groundless as the proverbial FSM. But if someone says “I believe that God is a unifying presence around the entire universe” or some equally vague statement, that’s not really in any way analogous to the existence of a creature with measurable characteristics like “flying” and “monsterhood” and “spaghetti-ness”.)
[/QUOTE]

Except that the FSM was created to reveal the true nature of the Intelligent Designer as believed by the ID pushers. It was intentionally a counter to the “guy in the clouds” because ID is just Scientific Creationism at a Masquerade Ball. That is what the FSM was intended to show.

259

[QUOTE=Princhester]
I’m intrigued. Can you expand on this?
[/QUOTE]

Panda’s Thumb

Because of the gleeful, and willful, disregard for rhetorical devices, in the pursuit of quotes that liars can use to show that even God-Hating-Atheists don’t really accept evolution except by sheer rebellion against the Almighty, Dawkins was “forced” into putting phrases like, “this is not what I really believe” in parentheses within the few rhetorical statements in the book.

I forget the exact words, but I recall him putting the parentheses in the middle of the phrase, seemingly to make it even more difficult for the quote mining to occur. (Nothing speaks to the love of Jesus quite like a Creationist who is willing to whore out his integrity so that one more child will hear that God created the world 6000 years ago.)

260

[QUOTE=Kalhoun]
There’s another way to look at atheism. Rather than “I don’t know, except that it wasn’t god”, I say, “I don’t know, but I have absolutely no reason to think it was god.”
[/QUOTE]

That sounds good. But it sounds more like agnosticism than what I’ve come to see as Aetheism here on SDMB. Or a new Weaker Aetheism.