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What's amusing about Dawkin's (and to some extent, Hitchen's) atheism is the oblivious way he trots it out. His writings on this topic pale in comparison to formal philosophical criticism of religion made by Bertrand Russell, Sartre, Nitszche or even for that matter, by the entertaining Mark Twain.
But its really amusing that Dawkins seems annoyed by Britain's willingness to embrace the pseudoscientific ignorance of creationism. By now he should be familiar with Britain, a once previously sovereign country that has been supporting ignorance and anti-intellectualism for generations.

More News on the Islamist-coddling moomnbat front, Christiane Amanpour: Palestinians = Tibetans.

Well, except for the fact that Tibetans haven't suicide-bombed people, haven't pledged to destroy Western Civilization, didn't dance in the streets on 9-11, and don't want to butcher Chinese children... she still doesn't have a point.

I hate the idea of rooting for Islam, but there will be a certain dark satisfaction in seeing the liberal, athiest, progressive left get their collective asses bit by their own agenda. "Everyone is the same, we've got to be tolerant, equality for all." Right. Islam, like others, are using the freedom available in countries like the U.S. and Briton to destroy it from within.

Dawkin, Hitchen and the rest will (I hope) be the first to taste the justice and freedom that their new Islamic masters will provide.

Right on VK.

Oh, and Fiberal, it isn't Judeo-Christian thinking or actions that killed 20 million Russians in all those purges. It wasn't Christian thought that drove Pol Pot. Mao wasn't an orthodox Jew as far as I know. So let's stow the intellectual pomposity, shall we? It wears very thin, very fast. Secularism and Socialism have had more to do with death and suffering than any religion...even Islam (so far). But remember, Islam is a Death Cult, not a religion.

You know as much as I hate to say it I kinda look forward to Eurabia in twenty years when sharia is the law of the land and every single one of PC leftards pet causes are no more and we see mass executions going on in Eurabia maybe then they will realize the ends do not justify the means and usually winds up killing alot of people, when will they from history? Maybe when another 300 million or so are dead, leftards when are you going to get a clue Islam is fascism only alot more vicious and violent than nazi socialism and communism ever was.

Pandering to Islam is happening here as well... in Tennessee!

Tyson Foods Surrenders to Islam

Ah yes, childless Dakins sees fit to brainwash other people's children. He would fit right in at the NEA.

Oh, Dawkins, I missed that part on first read. Dawkins is the atheist who refuse to debate religious scholar Dinesh D'Souza. Much like Al Gore refuses to debate Bjorn Londberg.

If they are so confident in what they believe, why are they afraid to debate it?

You tell 'em, Dawkins! Now march right down to the local mosque and call out the imam. Let him know that he's full of superstitious nonsense, preferably during Friday prayers when he's got a few thousand followers worked up into a frenzy.
Well, Richie, I'm waiting...
Thought not. Oh, you're too busy launching your half-baked tirades against Christianity to be bothered, I see.

Re: "pseudoscientific ignorance" [Fiberal]

Huh?

Is that the pseudo-literate, pseudo-intelligent rambling of a pseudo-scientific believer in Lady Luck?

Ah yes, Dawkins...the man who ridicules the notion of believing in God, then in the same breath touts belief in extraterrestrials arriving here from space eons ago and birthing life as we know it.

A truly unbiased, objective scientist...

OT – Oops, Lesbian gets caught in ‘lickity split’…………..... Could not help myself on that one.

Gay's just have not figured out that once they 'marry', they can't just change partners like they used to. Be careful what you ask for.

I hope the jilted Dyke gets the house.

How about putting ‘Butch’ into jail, like they would a hetero Man, and enforcing the laws? While you are at it, get rid of domestic partner benefits also.

Lesbian bigamy battle unfolds

man, that lezbo divorce story is delicious. It's a lezbo suing because the state is not discriminatory enough against gays. And a state that won't pursue bigamy charges because a civil union isn't included in bigamy. And thus the moonbattery mobius strip goes around and around.

and speaking of the UK, while Islam takes over, as Dawkins notes, and while shoplifters and thieves are no longer prosecuted, the police are busy giving out $200 fines for overstuffing your garbage pail, putting it out on the wrong day, and/or putting a trash bag next to it on the curb.

Many Muslims have a deep hatred for liberals and their veiwpoints, but liberals are too damn dumb to notice this until it's too late. It would be absolutely hilarious, except for the fact that both are dragging the rest of us into their pit of lunacy as well.

Murdering terrorist sues over exposure to porn.

David,

Yeah, maybe "pseudoscientific ignorance" was a bit redundant, but I think the sense of it is that belief in a pseudoscientific concept requires a certain level of ignorance.

It's not the "conservative West" the Muslims hate. It's the smut-exporting "liberal West" that started everything.

Conservatives are simply stepping up and protecting the rights of liberals to be dipshits - now we're all in deepshit.

Thanks liberals. Thanks a lot.

You are passing on lies again!

Evolution is not about random accident. It is specifically explaining why the randomness and accident doesn't apply to long-term changes in inheritted properties.

Evolution is real, it is backed by a vast body of evidence. You would know that if you bothered to learn about it from people like Dawkins who knows about it, rather than religious bigots who lie to you. The idea of an all-powerful entity we have no evidence for, let alone an all-powerful entity that cares one way or the other about what we believe, is what strains credulity.

You are the hypocrite here - on the one hand claiming to worship God and presumably believing that the devil is the prince of lies, then following people who lie about evolution. Surely that makes you a devil worshipper, not a worshipper of God, by the definition of your own religion.

You are also a hypocrite by your own judgement. You are complaining about potential government brainwashing when asked to ensure teaching of good science, then complain when a scientist tries to stop religious brainwashing, specifically anti-scientific* teaching in science lessons.

matt

You are trotting out old canards that were shown to be crap years ago. Those people did not kill in the name of atheism. Yes some did in the name of socialism, and I will vilify socialism along with the rest of you, but people kill and say it is right and necessary in the name of religious or political ideology. No-one ever killed thousands in the name of atheism and said that justified the killing.

Toa

No. That was Fred Hoyle. He's dead. His view was not widely followed in the scientific community**. Get your facts straight.

Sorry, you're a creationist so facts are the one thing you can't get right or you'd have to admit you've been sold a lie.

* Creationism/ID is not just unscientific, it is anti-scientific. It requires one to suspend the requirements of science, that ideas must explain the observed evidence and make testable predictions about future evidence. Evolution has been doing so for 150 years. Creationism/ID demands that we stop trying to explain the evidence and by definition does not make testable predictions.

** Partly for the same reason religion is considered a poor answer. It just shifts the problem. If the origin of life is alien, we still need to consider the origin of the alien life. If the origin of the universe is supernatural, we still need to consider the origin of the supernatural entity that produced it.

Anon, wouldn't it make more sense for schools to teach "all points of view"??? Allow young minds to think outside the box without a teacher imposing his viewpoint and our government making all faith based viewpoints illegal to discuss or to be present in the classroom? It isn't really an issue of whether or not one has faith in God or does not believe, it is an issue of how many of the basic freedoms we started out with, have gone down the tubes when Big Brother government takes the reins and political correctness rules the day, IMHO.

Anonymous at August 4, 2008 5:19 AM

Nowhere in your post do you mention islam or muslims because:

>>It's almost impossible to say anything against Islam in this country because if you do you are accused of being racist or Islamaphobic.>> Richard Dawkins

Now get your cowardly butt to a MUSLIM website and tell them off!

Anon, you are spouting the same old stuff. "Atheism" never killed anyone. That's because no one does anything in the name of nothing, which atheism is. The LACK of a moral, ethical and (sorry to hurt your ears) religious foundation does lead to things like socialism, where the state takes the place of God.

In THAT context, (and you know this already) atheism DOES lead to death. If there are no consequences, if there is no higher authority than ourselves or "the state", then killing in the name of that state for political reasons can be much easier.

The bottom line is most liberals are grown ups who hated authority as kids, and reject anything that says "these rules are good to live by". The irony is they build their own religion (global warming, environmentalism, socialism) which eventually has even MORE demanding rules...rules made by men, with all their inherent flaws.

Anon, I saw and heard Richard Dawkins say his piece on aliens myself...stupid!

Sorry for inadvertantly posting anonymously, that was me.

Hoosier

Yes, all points of view. I would encourage them to teach all scientific points of view in science classes, and all religions in religious studies classes (mandatory here until age 14).

As I have pointed out creationism/ID is not scientific, so should not be mentioned in science class. It should be taught in religious studies classes. Evolution is very good science backed by strong evidence and testable against new evidence, so should be taught in science classes.

This is not political correctness, but scientific correctness.

How about I insist that in Sunday school classes the fact that the scientific evidence shows that the neither of the two (mutually exclusive) creation myths in Genesis is true? That Noah's flood could not possibly have happened, and that the geoloogical record proves it didn't? Both of these have the benefit of being true, unlike creationism/ID.

By the way you have more faith in man than in any god. In order to believe what you do, you have faith in man that you have been told the truth. Only then can you believe in a god, and until you believe in god how can you have faith in god. Why do you place so much faith in man? I certainly wouldn't.

KHarn

I would criticise Islam more than I would Christianity. I am happy and unafraid to do so openly. However this is only because Christianity had a reformation, allowing scientific enquiry and, eventually, religious dissent. The author and many commentators on this blog (which I read for politics, not religion. That is why I prefer LGF, both are open to reasonable discssion there) appear to disapprove of that.

Islam still teaches that science is meaningless, claiming god recreates the world every moment the way god desires. That is nihilistic, fatalistic, and anti-scientific. It is also against all evidence and makes any behaviour, including that of a "martyr", meaningless.

Toa

Exactly what did Dawkins say? You don't quote him, and to sneer as you do shows you don't know enough about the issue to paraphrase accurately, because even if he did beleive what you calim there is far more evidence for that than for existence of a god.

I know you have misinterpreted, as I have studied Dawkins's work (I have a degree in Geology with paleobiology as one of my major topics. In other words I am the one person here who actually knows anything about evolution). He is not a follower of Hoyle's ideas.

I suspect Dawkins either pointed out that arrival of material from an extraterrestrial source was one of many possible origins of the early self-replicating molecules that lead to life on Earth, or said that for evolution it doesn't matter, the first self-replicating molecules could have been dropped from space.

The first is backed by the known, proven existence of complex organic molecules away from Earth. The second is true, as evolution has nothing to say on the origin of self-replication, just on why the subsequent changes do not depend on pure chance, and so lead to increased complexity and suitability to environment.

matt

That is just not backed up by history. No-one has ever killed thousands simply out of lack of religious conviction. As I said people kill in large numbers for an ideology, including religion. No-one ever did so out of lack of ideology. Atheism doesn't tell anyone to kill. It allows people to follow the moral code and laws of the secular state, which universally ban small-scale killing, and to decide for one's self whether an enemy is sufficiently detrimental to fight to teh death.

The great advantage, morally, of atheism is that it does not abdicate our responsibility for our own moral choices to some people who wrote rules for various unknown reasons four thousand years ago.

Socialism still has a moral code. In fact the difficiencies of that moral code is the source of most of the posts on this site. Like religion it was divised by the "wise" of the community, this time intellectual leaders rather than the spiritual leaders to pass on their ideas to people they thought could not understand them or as a way of keeping power (both included people with motives to help and others with selfish motives). Religion is outdated (since we have fridges the prohibition on pork and chicken is no longer relevant even in hot climates, for example). Socialism was simply misguided from the start.

Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Global warming, socialism and environmentalism are not caused by atheism. In fact socialism and environmentalism (in which global warming panic orginiates) all have strong roots in christian society, even being the nationalisation of 19th-century christian philanthropy, and over most of the world gain much support from Christian churches. They are also all spread by blind belief and acceptance that people will never understand, just as is religion.

I suggest you learn what atheism is before criticising it. You are simply lumping together a bunch of ideologies you dislike under that heading.