Parental advisory - don't click on any links in this post unless you are a grown up who is not easily offended by "intelligent" "rational" people proving they're right by using swear words.
When you read the witty and reasoned comments of the contributors to this I guess you can see why Prof Dawkins has shut down his forum. (Parental advisory - explicit and often gormless language).
They do use some rude words, do atheists. At least in inter-religious debates believers only anathematize each other and inform people they don't agree with that they're going to hell.
Apparently the good Professor himself wrote this (Parental advisory once more - although being from the Professor it's at least not gormless). Although I can't help feeling it's a glove puppet. For once in my life I can feel sympathy for him. I shall be lighting a tea light myself for him - fancy being the Messiah to that lot. You'd be better off being Brian Cohen.
Lighting a tea light for him. Oh yes.
ReplyDeleteLike to think we're moving forward, Fr Sam. 500 years ago it would've been a nice bonfire.
ReplyDeleteThe really funny thing about Dawkins is that, like PTdC, he believes that humans are progressing towards perfection. He’s got an Omega Point and everything.
ReplyDeleteThat's not my understanding of Dawkins himself. He's consistent in his Darwinianism. In the Greatest Show on Earth he refers to the evolution of evolvability, and the ever-increasing speed of the evolutionary arms race, which doesn't allow of a maximum complexity - just of endless competition.
ReplyDeleteHis argument against God on the grounds that complex things come from simple things adopts a simple evolutionary attitude.
"That's not my understanding of Dawkins himself. He's consistent in his Darwinianism."
ReplyDeleteHe’s consistent in his Darwinism where he applies it. On the one hand he will say that we all dance to the tune of our genes and that we’re nothing more than robots but on the other he will say that humans alone among animals have the power to defy genes. He’s very selective.
“which doesn't allow of a maximum complexity - just of endless competition.”
He has posited the existence of super-intelligent beings, in all seriousness, which would be ersatz gods.
“His argument against God on the grounds that complex things come from simple things adopts a simple evolutionary attitude.”
Dawkins is quite happy to believe in God - providing He evolved.
Dawkins' "God" in this instance isn't a "god" - it's a spaceman come travelling. The Good Professor hypothesises an alien seeding the plant - but that alien itself would have arisen by Darwinian means on another planet, so it actually means nothing.
ReplyDeleteAnd until super-intelligent beings could create the universe from nothing, keep it in existence by their own will and live forever, defying the 2nd law of Thermodynamics - they'd just be super-intelligent pan-dimensional beings. They're not "God" in a Judaeo-Christian sense - or even in a Hindu or Pantheistic sense, from what I know of these senses. They'd just be clever bug-eyed monsters.
“Dawkins' "God" in this instance isn't a "god" - it's a spaceman come travelling.”
ReplyDeleteNo filking here, please, but how could you tell? Check his union card? See if there were a DNA match? Most gods are spoken of having origins, so what if any god who claimed not to have an origin was still able to create a universe - even only a planet - and life, could toss off the odd thunderbolt and do ventriloquist acts with prophets yet was actually telling porkies about being uncreated? Hardly seems worth raising an objection. People in positions of power have always fibbed about their origins, from emperors on down.
I suppose it is possible for beings to exist before the creation of the universe, who poke in a glove puppet every now and then. Some kind of Plato-Bostrom jam. We don’t really know what the universe is, after all. Thermodynamics are likely just local patterns.