Comments by OhioAtheist
1. 'All Terrorists are Darwinists': An Interview with Harun Yahya
Comment #252631 by OhioAtheist on September 23, 2008 at 12:50 pm
A nice reminder that Muslim leaders who condemn terrorism are still eminently capable of proving themselves dogmatic, primitive, and generally empty-headed.
Comment #233933 by OhioAtheist on August 20, 2008 at 3:34 pm
bamafreethinker:
Wasn't McCain the only republican that raised his hand when asked if he believes in evolution, or was that someone else?
At the first Republican primary debate, the candidates were asked to raise their hands if they did not accept evolution. The only three to do so were Sam Brownback, Mike Huckabee, and Tom Tancredo. The other seven (there were ten candidates at this time) left their hands down and implied that they did believe in evolution. Not a terrible state of affairs, really; if only we could get 70% of the public to come around!
3. Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Thinking about Morality
Comment #221857 by OhioAtheist on July 30, 2008 at 8:14 am
Paul42:
Was It Sam Harris who gave the example of jewish children approving of genocide if the story was given in their favour but not if the word Israelites was replaced by something else?
I believe that experiment was referenced in The God Delusion.
Comment #117806 by OhioAtheist on January 29, 2008 at 5:24 pm
England's most pious unbeliever concludes with this wan distinction: "Stalin was an atheist and Hitler probably wasn't, but even if he was, the bottom line of the Stalin/Hitler debating point is very simple. Individual atheists may do evil things but they don't do evil things in the name of atheism." So it's not atheism that's the problem, only atheists! At this point you can probably already hear someone offstage lip-synching G. K. Chesterton: it's not that atheism has been tried and found wanting, you see, it's just never been tried at all in its pure form, a point that would not likely have consoled the Carmelite nuns as they were being killed by Republican forces during Spain's civil war in the 1930s.
Is it just me, or is this extract entirely devoid of engagement with Dawkins' actual point?
It's remarkable how popular Nietzsche is with the theological crowd. They don't seem to get that "Nietzsche, an atheist, wrote that atheism leads to nihilism; therefore atheism leads to nihilism" does not an argument make.
Such obtuseness is shared by most liberals today, who merrily fuse opposition to capital punishment, support for abortion and doctor-assisted suicide, condemnation of racism, and a vaguely appreciative acquaintance with evolutionary theory—without the least sense of the impossible dilemmas entailed in these contradictory positions.
What a ludicrous obfuscation. The appeal to nature in moral reasoning is a logical fallacy; Oakes ought to know better. The truth or falsity of a particular scientific theory has no bearing on our moral principles whatsoever.
5. Richard Dawkins - Science and the New Atheism
Comment #95367 by OhioAtheist on December 8, 2007 at 7:04 am
Dawkins' and Singer's arguments require one to believe that there is, ontologically and morally, no difference between taking the life of a fellow sentient creature and taking the life of another human being.
If you had any familiarity with Singer you would know that this is bullshit. He makes quite clear that he considers the taking of a human life more wrong than the taking of, say, a cow's, on the preference-utilitarian grounds that, as a person (a being with a conception of a "self" persisting over time), the human is more able to value his own life than the cow, a non-person, is. In other words, you wrong the human you kill more than the cow you kill. He does believe that it wrong to place human interests, by default, above animal interests of comparable value (say, their interest in avoiding the torment inflicted upon them in the billions by the modern meat industry); but this is quite a different matter from what you allege. Animals unable to consciously value their own lives simply have no interest in staying alive, Singer implies, which is why he has, as Joey Kurtzman of Jewcy says, "left many of us with the understanding that death has no value whatsoever in Singer's utilitarian calculations, and is undesirable only to the extent that it comes with associated suffering. If Charles Eisenstein were to detonate a neutron bomb on a small island full of chocolate labrador puppies, I don't know that Singer would find this of any great concern."
In the future please deign to stay away from straw men.
Comment #93240 by OhioAtheist on December 2, 2007 at 1:33 pm
Yet the fact remains that the atheism of Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens is a brutally intolerant, proselytizing faith, out to rack up conversions.
Proselytizing only in the sense of promoting reason and intellectual maturity, and intolerant only in the sense of disdaining fallacy and delusion.
Comment #88277 by OhioAtheist on November 15, 2007 at 5:24 pm
This is the first piece of real first-rate argument I've seen from the RRS. And I mean that not as a disparagement of the squad's prior activities, but as praise for this article.
8. Debate between Michael Shermer and Dinesh D'Souza
Comment #80407 by OhioAtheist on October 21, 2007 at 5:00 pm
And don't forget how his poison fangs came out after the Vermont Tech shootings.
(I was lurking the site when that went down)
I can only assume you mean Virginia Tech.
Also, I can't comment on this post without adding: D'Souza is an odious, stupid, and utterly absurd pseudo-intellectual. There. Glad that's out of my system. :)
9. Religion advances despite science (and thanks to Dawkins)
Comment #73002 by OhioAtheist on September 23, 2007 at 6:26 pm
BAEOZ:
I've seen it on religious blogs. An article will be posted that misrepresents The God Delusion and Richard Dawkins. Religious types, who don't want to think about their faith accept the blog article as being representative of Richard and TGD and presto! Problem solved, Dawkins is evil and divisive, doesn't get faith and faith is still good.
I saw one of the most bizarre examples of this phenomenon the other day. A religious writer was criticizing Sam Harris for being a "moral relativist." The same Sam Harris who has in his first book a sub-chapter entitled "The Demon of Relativism." Weirdest of all, the writer attempted to support this wildly inaccurate interpretation by quoting Harris's statement that "questions of morality are questions of happiness and suffering." Now, whatever this is, it's certainly not a relativist creed.
Honestly, when I read some of the nonsense championed by the religious, I wonder whether most people have the ability to comprehend what words mean.
10. The Nonbelievers
Comment #71058 by OhioAtheist on September 17, 2007 at 5:38 pm
I really like Epstein's basic idea of constructing a humanist community; I just don't get why he sees this goal as contrary to the antitheists' somewhat more pointed efforts. Criticism of religion is not opposed to humanism; it is its very premise. This quote seems to me to encapsulate what's wrong with Epstein's approach:
"If it's an oxymoron to believe that people who have ceased to believe in God still need caring and community, then I'm proud to be a walking oxymoron."
What a bizarre remark for a humanist! Why would one even give the slightest credence to the idea that for a nontheist to care about and be a part of a caring community is an "oxymoron"?
I'm also a bit disappointed with the tone of Mr. Abel's article: it seems to repeat the tired meme that Epstein and co. are the "nice humanists" while the Harris/Dawkins/Hitchens faction are the "intolerant atheists." The inclusion of the fringe philosopher Ayn Rand as a sort of "atheist symbol" irked me, as did the selection of Carl Sagan and Kurt Vonnegut as examples of "recent proponents of ridding society of God." Recent? Sagan's been dead for a decade and Vonnegut's reputation has little to do with atheism. Nevertheless, it's true that to some extent all press is good press. Visibility is a major boon to any social trend, and a feature article in one of America's most prominent newspapers is certainly a promising sign.
11. In God we doubt
Comment #67376 by OhioAtheist on September 3, 2007 at 6:40 am
What expertise in neuroscience is Mr. Humphrys drawing on when he says it would be "deeply mistaken" to conclude that love is a function of brain chemistry? "Deeply mistaken" is the last thing such an assessment would be. It is indeed the only reasonable position given how time and again we've found that mental states correlate perfectly with physical brain states.
Comment #65879 by OhioAtheist on August 27, 2007 at 8:36 am
Chomsky is no longer pictured on www.buildupthatwall.com. It looks like the face next to Sam Harris is now Salman Rushdie. (In my humble opinion, a major improvement.) Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Carl Sagan also seem to have been recently added; at least, I don't remember seeing their faces there.
13. Open letter to Michael Shermer in response to his letter...
Comment #65452 by OhioAtheist on August 24, 2007 at 8:57 am
Troodon:
There are a number of young adults and teenagers on this forum, so I have a question directed at them. How can we best reach out to their friends who are theists? Would they respond best to the warm, fuzzy approach like Michael Shermer? Honest, rational arguments? Ridicule of religion with humour like George Carlin and Bill Maher? Inspiring them through the wonders of science like Carl Sagan? Emphasizing the importance of human rights and protecting the environment?
With my own kids I had reasonable results with a combination of honesty, science and ridicule. Once they realize how silly religion is they don't want to be associated with anything so "retarded". George Carlin's "On Religion" was a great reinforcer.
But so much seems to depend on their friends and fitting with the group. Here in Canada the young people seem pretty secular but I can see it would be more difficult in the bible belt of the U.S.
I really want feedback from the young men and women here.
As a teenager, I think the single most important thing that can be done to reduce the influence of religion would be to instill, from a young age, vital critical thinking skills. Kindergarteners should be learning how to construct a logical argument and how to recognize common fallacies. This would, of course, help solve many other of our problems besides religion.
But it seems your question is: how do we break the hold of religion over minds that are already infected with the virus? I am not an optimist on this front. I was never raised religious, so I can't draw on my own experiences here, but I agree with Jonathan Miller when he says in A Brief History of Disbelief that it's largely a matter of temperament whether one believes or disbelieves. You can't push someone (at least, an adolescent or older someone) to atheism. They have to first start questioning for themselves. (An example: A good friend of mine became an atheist after her family took her to an evangelical megachurch, where she was told that all her non-Christian friends were on track for an eternity of anguish and torture. She found this an unsatisfactory doctrine and, after a little research, declared herself an atheist.)
Needless to say, the churches do everything they can to rein in critical questioning. In Darwinian terms, the religious memeplexes have evolved defense mechanisms to ward off their predator: Reason. Where I live, there are two main religious constituencies: the evangelicals and the Catholics. The children of evangelical parents (not "evangelical children"!) are taught at their megachurch that faith is everything, and that it is good and noble to fall back on one's faith when this or that doctrine seems outlandish or repugnant. Similarly, children of Catholic children are taught that whenever they feel beset by doubt, they should pray for God, or Mary, or one of their bewildering number of saints to take the doubts away.
Having battled in vain with each of these memeplexes, I have come to the conclusion that there's little atheists by ourselves can do to shake others' faith. Again, it is vital that they themselves develop doubts about their religion.
This does not mean we should just sit on our hands and do nothing, however. Atheist visibility is crucial both before and after the "crisis of faith"; before, so as to plant the idea in the religious devotee's mind that there are people who think no gods exist and thereby encourage such crises; after, so as to bring the full force of atheistic arguments and rhetoric to bear when the memeplex's defense mechanisms are down. I have no doubt that the focus on atheism won by Harris, Dawkins, Dennett, Stenger, and Hitchens has led to more deconversions simply through visibility.
Once an individual theist is receptive to the idea of atheism, there is no such thing as "the perfect tactic." Situations vary greatly from person to person. I think that some tactics, however, are likely to be more effective at certain stages of the process. Ridicule (of which I hope Maher's documentary will deliver heaping doses) can help someone develop doubts, as well as diminishing the attractiveness of religion and especially fundamentalism for agnostic, apatheistic, and liberal theistic teens (this cannot be stressed enough--megachurches actively recruit teens, and need to be opposed). Science can open a theist's mind to the notion that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in their religion, and then it can provide real answers to questions such as "where did life come from?" or "how could evolution give us a moral sense?" As for "honest, rational arguments," as you put it troodan, I think these are most effective after the self-doubts have begun--when such reason-inhibiting memes as "have faith" or "pray harder" are at their weakest.
Finally, I don't see Shermer's "warm, fuzzy approach" as a different tactic in itself so much as a way of tempering the other tactics. Effective rhetoric is civil while honest and forceful. (Of course I mean civil by normal standards, not the double standard by which any criticism of religion at all is shockingly rude.) When debating theists, we need not forfeit our passion to be friendly and warm.
Keep in mind that when I say we should be friendly, I am talking only of personal communication, not public debate. If I were on a stage with Pat Robertson, you can bet I wouldn't be friendly. The change of tactics is warranted due to the change of audience. Debating a theist one on one, an atheist must be friendly to his or her audience, the individual theist. But in a public debate, the goal is not to persuade one's opponent. The goal, which allows a little more latitude for anger toward one's immediate opponent, is to persuade the non-participants watching the debate. Hitchens, with his righteous rhetoric and fiery intelligence, is a master of this fine art.
14. Open letter to Michael Shermer in response to his letter...
Comment #65056 by OhioAtheist on August 22, 2007 at 7:02 pm
I'm glad Shermer wrote his letter, and I'm glad Sapient wrote this response. (Though the grammar-policeman in me cringes at his form.) In my opinion, this is a much more constructive form of internal debate than Greg Epstein's attempt to cut the legs out from under Harris and Dawkins.
Anyway, as others have pointed out, there's plenty of room for various tactics in any successful movement. I suspect both Shermer and Sapient would agree.
P.S. I see that the Rational Responders themselves have commented. Brian and Kelly, you're doing great work with the Squad. Keep it up!
Comment #64742 by OhioAtheist on August 21, 2007 at 3:06 pm
Re: Comments 18 & 19
I noticed Chomsky on that site (www.buildupthatwall.com) as well, and frankly I don't think he should be on there (especially right next to Harris!). He may be personally secular, but he has written very little on religion. As a public intellectual, his influence is entirely within the realms of linguistics and politics. His recent political work, moreover, portrays Islamist terrorists as victims of the genocidal American Empire; he does not acknowledge that religion is a primary source of world conflict. For these reasons it seems very strange indeed to count him as an ally of the present antireligious movement.
I admit to being biased against Chomsky for political reasons, but then again why shouldn't I want "our side" to avoid association with an apologist for the Khmer Rouge? I wouldn't tolerate a neo-Nazi on our side of the wall.
Comment #64719 by OhioAtheist on August 21, 2007 at 12:45 pm
What a bunch of fluffy crap journalism. I'm sick sick sick of the same fallacies vomitted up all over the tv and radio ~
- atheism is a "faith"
- the Stalinist & Nazi regimes were atheistic
- Christians defeated slavery in America
All of us here know that that's all bullshit because it's been repeated ad nauseum by our most vocal champions but somehow, our very valid explanations go unheard by the jerks who need to hear them the most.
How many times must we set it all straight?
WHAT GIVES???
Don't get too upset. This is mainstream media: we can't expect a blatantly pro-atheism piece. The segment gave respectable time to Sweeney and Hitchens (who seemed more sober than usual, which was both refreshing and disappointing). It would be unfair of us to demand that the religious point of view get no air time at all. Most of the words coming out of Prothero's mouth were false, of course, but that's to be expected. In fact, I admit to being somewhat pleased that he repeated these tired, thoroughly discredited arguments--interested and intelligent viewers will be easily able to refute them. Better than having a Hedges-style mysterian who uses many words to say nothing at all and thereby ends up looking far more insightful than he is.
Just two more things to note: One, I'm disappointed that the modern atheist movement was associated with the slightly nutty Ms. O'Hair. (Although her successor, Ms. Johnson, is very personable and intelligent.) Second, Julia Sweeney's mother said that she was taught in second grade in Catholic school that there was no proof of the existence of God. Now someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this contradict the official stance of the Catholic Church? I thought the Church held that the existence of God could be proven a priori by the ontological argument, and a posteriori by the arguments from teleology, cosmology, and moral law.
Comment #64706 by OhioAtheist on August 21, 2007 at 12:04 pm
Apart from the somewhat asinine opening statements (the very first sentence is an echo of the myth that there can be no evidence or arguments for or against the existence of God), this is great media exposure. Let the Nisbets and Epsteins of the world say what they will about the tactics of Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens, but it is because of those same tactics that atheism is enjoying the spotlight.
18. Church and State: Divided we stand
Comment #63562 by OhioAtheist on August 14, 2007 at 8:42 pm
Hm. I usually like Dershowitz, but I'm put off for obvious reasons by his suggestion that separation of church and state is good because it is good for the church. Mightn't this be the best argument for antidisestablishmentarianism ever devised?
19. Believe it or not: the sceptics beat God in bestseller battle
Comment #62838 by OhioAtheist on August 11, 2007 at 7:43 pm
I think it's odd that the article presents increased Bible sales as a victory for the faithful. Many former Christians were spurred on their journey to freethought because they actually read the Bible and saw how unimpressive it was as a holy text. I believe it was Asimov who said that the Bible was the greatest force for atheism ever conceived.
20. Why Richard Dawkins is right on alternative medicine - but not when it comes to religion
Comment #62598 by OhioAtheist on August 10, 2007 at 8:58 am
There are at least two major errors in this piece:
1) Logical positivism is a dead philosophy, and emotivism is far from established as a sound meta-ethical theory. There is nothing stopping an atheist from being a cognitivist and a realist; indeed, Peter Singer, the most famous moral philosopher alive today, is both of these and a staunch atheist.
2) Religions do not, as a matter of fact, relegate themselves to matters of ethics. By their nature, they make factual, descriptive claims. Or are we to understand that "There exists this omnipotent and omniscient chap, who is three-persons-in-one, and created the heavens and the earth and came down on earth, whereupon he was brutally executed, and has in his grace and wisdom left us this book by which we might know him" is just a really long-winded way of saying "Don't have sex before marriage"? Conversely, if ethical systems are religions, why is there no Church of Kantianism, or the First Benthamite Assembly of Utilitarianism? This is, incidentally, the basic problem with Gould's NOMA as well; it comes down to asserting that "religion" is a synonym for "moral philosophy," which is plainly absurd.
21. Interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Comment #56820 by OhioAtheist on July 17, 2007 at 12:12 pm
Not a bad interview, but Ayaan is seriously wrong when she says *no one* in the West wants to replace the Constitution with the Bible. She should read Michelle Goldberg's Kingdom Coming; there are real Christian theocrats, and they are far more powerful than we would like them to be. But apart from that hyperbole, I think Ayaan made some important points.
22. The fundamentalist delusion
Comment #56294 by OhioAtheist on July 14, 2007 at 7:46 pm
I had a lengthy post ready to go on this, but I hit back on my browser and it was lost! It was very disheartening.
In any case, the one point I really want to take issue with is McGrath's ridiculous insinuation (repeated time and time again) that atheism is a "world view." It assuredly is not. An atheist can be a liberal, a conservative, a neoconservative, a centrist, a fascist, a Stalinist, a Trotskyite, a utilitarian, a Kantian, a Rawlsian, an emotivist, a moral nihilist, and adhere to any number of other positions, without holding any position that contradicts atheism per se. Atheism is a position on one single issue, and it is no more a "world view" than being a fan of the Harry Potter series. I am astonished at how difficult this concept seems to be for theists to grasp; just because their religion is an all-encompassing system of the world (in theory, at least) doesn't mean our rejection of that religion is similarly systematic.
23. Believing the Unbelievable: The Clash Between Faith and Reason in the Modern World
Comment #56111 by OhioAtheist on July 13, 2007 at 8:11 pm
I like how Sam has integrated Sathya Sai Baba into his critique, as an example of how we should be skeptical of miracle stories. It seems likely he picked this up from Hitchens--and it's a very useful meme, what with folks like William Lane Craig always harping on how the miracles of Jesus allegedly prove Christianity.
Comment #55219 by OhioAtheist on July 10, 2007 at 9:20 am
I am sick to death of hearing about the alleged "irrational"-"non-rational" distinction. No, Paul, religion is not "non-rational." Religion makes real, substantive claims about the way the world is, and there are no good grounds whatsoever for believing these claims. The Mona Lisa and Beethoven's 9th don't have any propositional content, so one could call them "non-rational." But religion is not remotely like art in this respect. It is indeed positively irrational.
Comment #55212 by OhioAtheist on July 10, 2007 at 9:01 am
I actually like Grayling's writing style. Oh well, to each his own.
Comment #55044 by OhioAtheist on July 9, 2007 at 9:17 pm
Does anyone else notice the striking similarity to Hedges' opening statement for the Hedges-Harris debate? Beyond being the same liberal-religious nonsense, certain phrases and ideas appear to be directly lifted.
So it turns out that belief in God is simply a belief in self-transcendence, ethics, and, um, existence ("the power of Being"? really). In that case, it certainly seems like Sam Harris (for instance) would qualify as a theist. Someone should tell him so that he can realize his misguided ways and recant his whole body of work.
Comment #55042 by OhioAtheist on July 9, 2007 at 8:59 pm
A. C. Grayling impresses me more and more every time he puts pen to paper. I can't wait for "Against All Gods" to make it to the States.
28. Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature
Comment #54976 by OhioAtheist on July 9, 2007 at 2:21 pm
Opponents of evolutionary psychology and the like often throw around accusations of "biological determinism." In the case of this article, the charge actually seems to stick. The authors appear certain that Darwinian incentives are the only motivators for human behavior; hence the astoundingly sweeping generalizations. This is particularly evident in the section about Muslim suicide bombing. Having found a Darwinian reason why young Muslim men might be inclined to suicide bombing (assuming, of course, that there actually is a vast shortage of females for Middle Eastern Muslim men), they jump to the absurd conclusion that the phenomenon "has nothing to do with" the barbarous teachings of Islam. This is nonsense. Beliefs absolutely have behavioral consequences, and suicide bombing is one consequence of Islam's conquering mentality and cult of martyrdom.
29. Science of the Soul? 'I Think, Therefore I Am' Is Losing Force
Comment #52635 by OhioAtheist on June 27, 2007 at 3:08 pm
There is no credible scientific challenge to the theory of evolution as an explanation for the diversity and complexity of life on earth.
It's very refreshing to see this so unambiguously stated in a major newspaper.
30. An Inquisition in science's name
Comment #51063 by OhioAtheist on June 21, 2007 at 10:30 am
What ignorant nonsense. As though Dawkins' and Harris's criticisms of religion were prefacing a Final Solution to the Religious Problem. Articles like these make me wonder why exactly the religious are so insecure. As AC Grayling has pointed out, it is truly remarkable that six books have the religious feeling like they're under genocidal assault.
Cardinal Bellarmine, in any case, needs to crawl back to his primitive, pre-scientific, irrational, benighted, religiously dominated Dark Age.
31. Penn & Teller's Bullshit - Holier Than Thou With Christopher Hitchens
Comment #45181 by OhioAtheist on May 26, 2007 at 5:37 pm
avatarComment #44964 by MelM:
I'm confused. If we label faith as 'a vice' doesn't that re-introduce the concept of sin? And wouldn't that then be playing into the theist's worldview?
Why on earth should it? Theists have no monopoly on morality, and in fact we play into the religious reactionaries' hands much more by buying into the myth, even for a second, that they do.
32. God help us all - The No. 2 book on Amazon right now is a
Comment #44844 by OhioAtheist on May 25, 2007 at 11:52 am
Is anyone else sick of the term "Islamofacism" (which my spill chocker underlines). A portmanteau word designed to create fear and hatred.
If it keeps being used then I shall have no compunction but to talk of "Christofacism" when referring to the likes of the Dominionists.
I have no problem with either portmanteau.
33. I Don't Believe in Atheists
Comment #44427 by OhioAtheist on May 24, 2007 at 4:52 pm
In all fairness, rufustfirefly, those Kurds weren't Muslims, they were Yazidi. But were that tribe Muslim, and the young man's family Yazidi, I doubt the outcome would have differed.
As for this article: This really is some of the most intellectually dishonest tripe I have ever read. Religious "liberals" like Hedges are in many ways more exasperating than the fundamentalists. At least the fundamentalists' beliefs have actual content. Liberals like Hedges will throw out some feel-good mumbo-jumbo about God being "the essence of love," or the totality of all being, or the grand meaning of everything, and (how convenient!) this isn't "irrational," but "nonrational" and therefore obviously true.
Of course, they then proceed to equivocate mightily and equate their vapid definition of God with the person-deity of the Abrahamic tradition, while refusing to admit that the vast majority of the Bible is a collection of ramblings by hopelessly backward primitives, with a few nuggets of wisdom, buried deep with a handful of select passages, suffocating under the sheer weight of the garbage.
34. Pope says science too narrow to explain creation
Comment #31259 by OhioAtheist on April 11, 2007 at 7:20 pm
"Both popular and scientific texts about evolution often say that 'nature' or 'evolution' has done this or that," Benedict said in the book which included lectures from theologian Schoenborn, two philosophers and a chemistry professor.
"Just who is this 'nature' or 'evolution' as (an active) subject? It doesn't exist at all!" the Pope said.
This reads like a parody of creationist propaganda. I've heard the Argument from Design, the Argument from Irreducible Complexity, and the Argument from Fine-Tuning... but never the Argument from Grammar.
I'm reminded of the recent article suggesting that Coulter is attempting to undermine intelligent design, and I wonder if the pope perhaps has a similar goal.
"The process itself is rational despite the mistakes and confusion as it goes through a narrow corridor choosing a few positive mutations and using low probability," he said.
"This ... inevitably leads to a question that goes beyond science ... where did this rationality come from?" he asked. Answering his own question, he said it came from the "creative reason" of God.
Perhaps the pope should learn something about evolutionary theory before drawing theological conclusions from it.
Over 1.5 million copies sold
Books by Richard Dawkins
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The Selfish Gene
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The Blind Watchmaker
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The Ancestor's Tale
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Unweaving the Rainbow
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