And yet you clicked on a video entitled "Richard Dawkins & Ricky Gervais on Religion"

I don't really think you can claim you were tricked into watching it!

>> ^Locque:

blocked


Maybe this version works for you.

As Richard Dawkins once put it:
“Show me a cultural relativist at 30,000 feet and I'll show you a hypocrite ... If you are flying to an international congress of anthropologists or literary critics, the reason you will probably get there - the reason you don't plummet into a ploughed field - is that a lot of Western scientifically trained engineers have got their sum right.”

As prof. Cox touched on, we don't just need people at college/university, but we need a public that understands the scientific method and thinking. I mean forget higher education for a bit, what we need, is middle school and hell, kindergardens, that teach kids HOW to think, not what to think. You dont need everyone to know the mass of the Higgs or what the Golgi apparatus does, what you need is for everyone to understand what kind of thinking that led to discover such facts, we need humans trained in the art of critical thinking, people with stimulates the brain. If kids have learned nothing else in school by the age of 15, at least they should have learned critical thinking.

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Well I agree with that. "Holy" books are literature, and religions are cults built up around certain interpretations of those books. Literature has always had the power to inform us of the cultural attitudes of past times, which is something that science can often struggle to capture.
>> ^criticalthud:

I disagree
Religion has plenty to teach us. It appropriately mirrors the evolution of the consciousness...the development of species-wide psychological tendencies throughout the history of humanity.
In order to understand where we are now, we need to understand where we've been, and why.
What religion teaches us is exactly where we are in the development of the consciousness -- and in short, we're idiots, a mere 10,000 years into cognition.

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>> ^ChaosEngine:

>> ^Yogi:
Cause at least someone is trying to write a story. I've got no beef with religion and I would say I'm an atheist. However Richard Dawkins is a dick, even Neil deGrasse Tyson thinks so.

Eh? I've seen several instances of Dawkins and NdGT sharing a stage and there seems to be a lot of mutual respect there. Do you have a source for NdGTs opinion?
As for the accusation that Dawkins is a dick, I assume that's because he has a pretty low tolerance for bullshit and doesn't tip toe around people feelings while debating them.
Not unlike you.
However, Dawkins has had a concerted and well funded campaign to discredit his lifes work from a bunch of lunatics who haven't a clue what he's talking about. What's your excuse?


http://videosift.com/video/Why-hasnt-Richard-Dawkins-converted-more-Atheists

This is the video where Tyson Rebukes Dawkins. Some people say it's just a criticism. I am the son of two teachers, and what I hear is one educator telling another that they're not educating, they're haranguing and generally being a dick about it.

I understand the arguments of leaving people who don't want to learn behind but I honestly don't feel that the majority of creationists are people who have left education or learning behind. And when you approach them by calling them an idiot at the off, you're not an educator and you're not helping anything. Dawkins has a higher bar than us idiots on the internet set for him. He isn't reaching it and Tyson rightly calls him out on it, Dawkins responds with a joke which while funny, is also telling.

My Excuse? I think he's doing more harm than good. He's drawing battle lines. Also I'll point out that I commented on that video over 2 years 9 months ago, and I said he could be a dick then. I think I've been consistent and so has Dawkins.

>> ^Yogi:

Cause at least someone is trying to write a story. I've got no beef with religion and I would say I'm an atheist. However Richard Dawkins is a dick, even Neil deGrasse Tyson thinks so.


Eh? I've seen several instances of Dawkins and NdGT sharing a stage and there seems to be a lot of mutual respect there. Do you have a source for NdGTs opinion?

As for the accusation that Dawkins is a dick, I assume that's because he has a pretty low tolerance for bullshit and doesn't tip toe around people feelings while debating them.

Not unlike you.

However, Dawkins has had a concerted and well funded campaign to discredit his lifes work from a bunch of lunatics who haven't a clue what he's talking about. What's your excuse?

Yeah, the last couple of times I've seen Dawkins in debates (here in Australia on our Q&A show in particular) he came across as a bullish dick. I really felt that he was doing more harm than good towards his own cause by the harsh way he was treating members of the audience who were asking questions and the way he responded to things.

I used to love him, now I wish he'd step aside and let someone with better people skills take over for public appearances as he's not doing the atheist cause any good. I'd be more happy with Sam Harris.

>> ^xxovercastxx:

>> ^swedishfriend:
Life could exist in every solar system in every galaxy. We don't know that it doesn't.
>> ^xxovercastxx:
>> ^swedishfriend:
And you think that what you call life is somehow separate from the whole? Isn't life an expression of the same laws of physics that occur everywhere in the universe?>> ^xxovercastxx:
>> ^deathcow:
Why does the universe exist and why did it develop in a fashion which encouraged life?

Encourage life? Have you seen the universe? It is, under no circumstances, encouraging to life.
At best, life has found ways to cling to existence in nooks and crannies which are slightly less unpleasant than the norm.


No, that's a good point. From that perspective life is no more special than gravity and nobody ever asks why the universe is so conducive to gravity.
But still, life is not in any way flourishing on a universe-wide scale, so either way you look at it the question is bunk.


You're right, it could. And it would probably be clinging to existence in nooks and crannies just like on Earth, like I said in the first place.
As NDT is fond of saying, 99% of all known species are extinct. That is an observation that is simply not compatible with the idea of a universe that "encourages" life.


you seem to be quantifying "life" in terms of your own perceptions of space and time.
just saying.

>> ^swedishfriend:

Life could exist in every solar system in every galaxy. We don't know that it doesn't.
>> ^xxovercastxx:
>> ^swedishfriend:
And you think that what you call life is somehow separate from the whole? Isn't life an expression of the same laws of physics that occur everywhere in the universe?>> ^xxovercastxx:
>> ^deathcow:
Why does the universe exist and why did it develop in a fashion which encouraged life?

Encourage life? Have you seen the universe? It is, under no circumstances, encouraging to life.
At best, life has found ways to cling to existence in nooks and crannies which are slightly less unpleasant than the norm.


No, that's a good point. From that perspective life is no more special than gravity and nobody ever asks why the universe is so conducive to gravity.
But still, life is not in any way flourishing on a universe-wide scale, so either way you look at it the question is bunk.



You're right, it could. And it would probably be clinging to existence in nooks and crannies just like on Earth, like I said in the first place.

As NDT is fond of saying, 99% of all known species are extinct. That is an observation that is simply not compatible with the idea of a universe that "encourages" life.

>> ^Yogi:

>> ^G-bar:
If it werent for dawkings and dicks like him, degrasse would still be hiding beneath his science table. We shouldnt tip toe around forced ignorance

Really? You think deGrasse would be scared? The big black college wrestler needs to be protected by fucking Richard Dawkins really?!


I wasn't expecting Degrasse to punch Creationism out of existence
But you know what I meant. It was the Harsh words of people such as Hitchens and Dawkings that led the way to let Atheism out of its closet.

Life could exist in every solar system in every galaxy. We don't know that it doesn't.
>> ^xxovercastxx:

>> ^swedishfriend:
And you think that what you call life is somehow separate from the whole? Isn't life an expression of the same laws of physics that occur everywhere in the universe?>> ^xxovercastxx:
>> ^deathcow:
Why does the universe exist and why did it develop in a fashion which encouraged life?

Encourage life? Have you seen the universe? It is, under no circumstances, encouraging to life.
At best, life has found ways to cling to existence in nooks and crannies which are slightly less unpleasant than the norm.


No, that's a good point. From that perspective life is no more special than gravity and nobody ever asks why the universe is so conducive to gravity.
But still, life is not in any way flourishing on a universe-wide scale, so either way you look at it the question is bunk.

People who so easily eschew others sacred belief systems are often labeled as a dick by those who are offended.

I say be a giant dick over and over again, because it's not someone's dickishness that has brought so much suffering to this planet and the myriad of species inhabiting it.

And I'm not sure what Tyson's views of Dawkins matter.>> ^Yogi:

>> ^Stormsinger:
>> ^deathcow:
Why does the universe exist and why did it develop in a fashion which encouraged life?

We don't know yet, and may never.
Why does that answer mean we need to say "Magic did it."?

Cause at least someone is trying to write a story. I've got no beef with religion and I would say I'm an atheist. However Richard Dawkins is a dick, even Neil deGrasse Tyson thinks so.