1. Evolution: What is 'Natural'?

Comment #178731 by Artful_Dodger on May 12, 2008 at 1:16 am

Not only are you presupposing a god (which makes your argument circular), but a particular god.

Not any more than your presupposing the non-existence of God makes your argument circular.

2. Evolution: What is 'Natural'?

Comment #178717 by Artful_Dodger on May 12, 2008 at 12:49 am

Given that it is, then the whole story of Jesus is an irrelevance since there was no literal fall only a metaphorical one.

Epeeist, there is nothing metaphorical about the fall, except (possibly) the images, the word pictures, that were used to describe it. The tree and the fruit and the talking serpent may not be literal, but the all too real narratives that they are intended to illustrate: of defiance against God, of human beings setting themselves up as gods, of human self-deification leading to human destruction (with implications for the created order of which humans (men and women equally) had been made the custodians, are absolutely literal. The evidence of them lies all aroound us everywhere we look. This makes the story of Jesus not only relevant but indispensible.

3. Evolution: What is 'Natural'?

Comment #178713 by Artful_Dodger on May 12, 2008 at 12:40 am

Can you present any argument or evidence for the existence of this god of yours? Before I entertain the existence of your god as a probability, you'll have to show that to be the case.

Riandouglas, there are loads of arguments that I can refer you to. The one that is relevant to this thread is the very existence of the faculty of reason, which is not reducible to natural causes. Science since Aristotle has always been driven the observation of rationality at the heart of the universe. Along with many scientists and philosophers I contend that this rationality points to an extra-, non-material origin of the universe. As Paul Davies (not a Christian of course) said: "The impression of design is overwhelming". Scientists (Kepler, Newton et al) looked for and found scientific laws because they believed in a Law-giver.

4. Evolution: What is 'Natural'?

Comment #178702 by Artful_Dodger on May 12, 2008 at 12:14 am

Epeeist, read the rest of my post. Of course there is a range of literary devices in any text. Texts which make historical or propositional claims are, to that extent, meant to be taken literally, and may contain a great deal of historical fact. But while you discount the possibility of God existing let alone speaking there is hardly much point in my arguing that he has spoken through one text rather than another. Let me know when you change your mind about the former and we can start discussing the latter.

5. Evolution: What is 'Natural'?

Comment #178693 by Artful_Dodger on May 11, 2008 at 11:53 pm

Rather than trying to convert the convinced, we should focus our efforts on the younger minds that have not yet been polluted with the sickness of [religion]

Isn't that what the Jesuits used to say? Sounds like a very "rational" project! The premise of course is that atheism is the default "mechanism". Gradgrind would be proud of you. "Let's set up schools where children will be exposed to facts, pure and simple. We will have to careful of the reading material we admit onto the shelves! Encyclopedias and text-books with spadefuls of information. Fiction which depicts kids acceding to glory in sport and setting an example of achievement and supremacy. But at all costs we must keep them from reading the kind of fantasy that might encourage them to feel deep down that there might be more to existence than can be accounted for by the empirical sciences. No Lord of the Rings or anything of that ilk, unless it be heavily anotated by scholars who will be able to explain away any longings that such literature might awaken! We must at all costs protect their little minds (neurological machinery) from being polluted!"

6. Evolution: What is 'Natural'?

Comment #178692 by Artful_Dodger on May 11, 2008 at 11:46 pm

You believe wrongly then.

Show me how

What you didn't provide was the general decision procedure. Nor did you tell us who gives you the authority to determine that something which is supposedly the direct or indirect word of your god is a metaphor

There is no "general decision procedure", only a willingness to take seriously the possibility that God could have used the medium of "the word" to make Himself known to us via the operation of reason in engaging with this "word", and also awareness of the rich panoply of literary devices available to the writers whom he inspired so to make himself known. Without this willingness on your part, nothing I could say about individual instances, no "hermeneutic" would cut any ice with you.

I know that you lay into me with questions like "why this sacred text and not any of the others?". Let's first establish the willingness to take seriously the possibility of God speaking through "words". After that there will be plety to say about the respective merits of one text as opposed to another. But that's another issue. If you have already ruled out the possibility of God existing, let alone "speaking", there's hardly much point in talking about which text He has spoken through, and how!

7. Evolution: What is 'Natural'?

Comment #178684 by Artful_Dodger on May 11, 2008 at 11:19 pm

If you're talking about why we are aware of our instinctive moral urges, and have the ability to override them if we decide to,

"instinctive moral urges" is, I believe, a contradiction in terms. When someone decides NOT to take unfair advantage of another person, or decides to STOP exploiting the weak and vulnerable in the face of the opportunity to do so or to continue doing so to his or her own obvious survival/supremacy advantage, are they succumbing to an "urge" or consciously resisting an urge? Is it a "moral instinct" that takes over when we decide to be cruel rather than to be kind? Does it take over because it is the stonger instinct? In the event of a struggle between the two "instincts" and a choice in favour of "morality", what is invoked to make such a choice? The "referee" can't also be one of the players! Or is the apparent choice not a choice at all? Are we just giving in to the instinct that happens to be the stronger of the two? In which case our behaviour is determined by instinctual prevalence. In this event it is a bit pointless of Dawkins to rant and rave about people (like Bush in Iraq or parents who wantonly subject their children to IDeological abuse) who behave "immorally".

8. Evolution: What is 'Natural'?

Comment #178566 by Artful_Dodger on May 11, 2008 at 3:43 pm

Sorry Cartomancer I meant "moral consciousness" (concience)

The origin of consciousness or conscience HAS NOT been explained in terms of natural selection . This is widely recognised by most philosophers. Most physicalist / naturalist philosophers adopt a "watch this space" approach. "Naruredidit, just wait and see". "Nature of the gaps".

9. Evolution: What is 'Natural'?

Comment #178553 by Artful_Dodger on May 11, 2008 at 3:29 pm

Or are you seriously saying that you fail to see any survival advantage in the possession of a decision-making capacity along with a set of inbuilt moral guidelines?

No I did not say that. There is a survival advantage, a posteriori. You cannot explain the presence of consciousness (conscience) in terms of survival advantage.

10. Evolution: What is 'Natural'?

Comment #178542 by Artful_Dodger on May 11, 2008 at 3:02 pm

These are questions that anyone committed to natural selection and convinced of its explanatory power needs to address. So far answers have been thin on the ground!

11. Evolution: What is 'Natural'?

Comment #178535 by Artful_Dodger on May 11, 2008 at 2:49 pm

Yes I know there are some good articles on the mind/brain interface Cartomancer. I can direct you to a few of them if you wish.

12. Evolution: What is 'Natural'?

Comment #178521 by Artful_Dodger on May 11, 2008 at 2:28 pm

Each new post from you without an answer will count as a strike. Strike three, and we'll have proven who you are beyond a shadow of a doubt

I have answered the literal v metaphor question. Now you are the ones that are side-stepping the questions!

13. Evolution: What is 'Natural'?

Comment #178519 by Artful_Dodger on May 11, 2008 at 2:25 pm

It is a truism Mitchell that people say what we ought to do and what we ought not to do. This is a no brainer. It is also true that individual human beings make choices irrespective of what other people tell them. There is an innate sense of right and wrong within every human being. The question to be addressed is this: on what basis do they choose or fail to choose what is right? It is obviously not a case of always choosing what is conducive to their survival, as their are many cases when the survival choice is not the right choice. There are many cases where people choose (or fail to choose) what is "just" or "fair" irrespective of the consequences for themselves.

As a rule it is true that people do not go around punching each other in the face, and the fact that they don't want to get punched in return might have something to do with it in many cases. Nevertheless, there are those who, despite this observation, criticise and condemn human behaviour in many instances. And rightly so! If our behaviour is on the whole orientated towards our survival, what's the problem? No one condemns lions for devouring antelopes! In fact we don't have any moral problems with the behaviour of any other organism on the planet, however cruel and bloody it might be! We don't praise ants for their organisational capacities.

14. Evolution: What is 'Natural'?

Comment #178501 by Artful_Dodger on May 11, 2008 at 1:57 pm

Who says there is one?

Dawkins does, when he says that a world where "nature red in tooth and claw" rules is the kind of world that he would not wish to live in, and when he encourages his peers to fight for a better one. But maybe he's wrong?

15. Evolution: What is 'Natural'?

Comment #178494 by Artful_Dodger on May 11, 2008 at 1:51 pm

Artful:
Evolution by Natural Selection DESCRIBES how complex life forms came about. It does not PRESCRIBE how best they should run their societies.

Indeed, Paula. So where does the PRESCRIPTION come from then, if everything, as Cartomancer has reminded us, comes from natural selection?

16. Evolution: What is 'Natural'?

Comment #178491 by Artful_Dodger on May 11, 2008 at 1:46 pm

Do we get our concern for "Truth" (Dawkins is notoriously concerned about it!) from survival-oriented natural selection? Is falsehood not often much more conducive to survival than "Truth?" It may be another fatuous question, but it's another one that still hasn't received a satisfactory answer.

17. Evolution: What is 'Natural'?

Comment #178482 by Artful_Dodger on May 11, 2008 at 1:40 pm

Do you really think that Beethoven's Opus 131, Homer's Illiad, Newton's Principia or even religion are a direct product of natural selection?

No, epeeist, I don't. That's my point!

18. Evolution: What is 'Natural'?

Comment #178474 by Artful_Dodger on May 11, 2008 at 1:31 pm

rthille, on a naturalistic premise committed to the "natural slection" paradigm, how can you say that natural selection "created" anything? "Created" is an active verb which requires personal, conscious agency. All you can say is that this "mechanism" by which you define morals "popped into existence" without any rhyme or reason. Emerging as it necessarily does in this way, over whatever period of time might be involved, it cannot be said to be "directed" towards the organisation of human society, or towards anything else, as this is also to attribute intentionality to this mechanism, which requires it to have been set up by some purposeful agent which is external to the mechanism itself.

19. Evolution: What is 'Natural'?

Comment #178464 by Artful_Dodger on May 11, 2008 at 1:08 pm

"I'm a passionate Darwinian in the academic sense (...), yet I am a passionate Anti-Darwinian when it comes to human social and political affairs."

I really can't get over the fact that nobody on this site is willing to challenge Dawkins on the glaring inconsistncy here. The obvious question is this: if we get everything from natural selection, and natural selection "selects" for individual and group survival, where do we get the idea that we must transcend this natural impulse? If all nature is "red in tooth and claw", how on earth can human nature be exempted from that, from where on earth does it derive the inclination to fight against nature? This is a question which, try as he might and mince it as he will, Dawkins has abjectly failed to address.

20. If God Is Dead, Who Gets His House?

Comment #165620 by Artful_Dodger on April 21, 2008 at 11:01 pm

It seems that the "atheist faith" meme is alive and well. Soon quasi-religious rituals, Sunday Schools, hymns, discipleship programmes, baptisms, "commandments" and excommunication for lapsed atheists and atheists found fraternising with religious believers. It'll be interesting to see how many childen, so "churched" will continue in the "faith of their fathers". I suspect this will ultimately only serve to empty the pews of these God-less churches and fill those of God-centred churches. "Reason" is wonderful as a servant, but pretty vacuuous as an object of "worship".

21. Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss

Comment #162144 by Artful_Dodger on April 16, 2008 at 8:21 am

You have it wrong AD - he doesn't literally want to kill religious faith, its only a metaphor

You see, Epeeist, you DO know the difference.

22. Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss

Comment #162132 by Artful_Dodger on April 16, 2008 at 8:07 am

Richard Dawkins is one of a great many whose vigorous responses are entirely in the interests of science, and are firmly grounded in scientific rationality

Except when he states quite bluntly that he wants to KILL religious faith. Here he is overshooting his runway. If he really wanted to stick to science TGD would never have been written. He would have published another tome along the lines of "The Selfish Gene". That is the kind of work that (I presume) the chair that he is about to vacate was created for. It cannot surely have been created to provide him with a platform for his ranting, rabid anti-religious vitriol. But he has acquired an audience, a global fan-club that is bursting at the seams, to a much greater extent on the "strength" of his TGD-style public appearances than on the that of his very creditable scientific work. Note the twinkle of child-like delight in his eyes ever time a moderator gives him a chance to rhyme off his list of epithets for the God of the Bible!

23. Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss

Comment #161263 by Artful_Dodger on April 15, 2008 at 4:41 am

Steve, "external to the universe" does not mean that he does not interact with the universe. Obviously, creation means interaction. But would Hamlet, had he so wished, been able to find "evidence" of Shakespeare's interaction with his story or with himself as a character? Well, no. Because Shakespeare's intervention, though all embracing and all-pervasive, was actually invisible. Nevertheless, there would not have been a play without it.

But actually, Christians believe that God did write himself into human history as one of the characters, the main character in fact. Insofar as there is evidence for the reliability of the 4 gospel accounts of Jesus' life, death and resurrection, there can be said to be evidence of God's interaction with the world. Of course you ca take the tack that so many of you have taken and simply airbrush Jesus Christ out of human history, and press on regardless of it.

24. Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss

Comment #161225 by Artful_Dodger on April 15, 2008 at 3:45 am

Taking religion out of the equation is also a scientific agenda

It depends on what you mean by "equation". When aked by Napoleon where God was in his cosmological scheme, Laplace answered "Je n'ai pas besoin de cette hypothèse". This was a sensible answer, and might have been even if Laplace had been a theist. God, being outside the universe (as the originator of the universe must be) does not need to feature in any scheme depicting the universe. So keeping God out of the picture (equation), in that sense, may make a lot of sense. That is why the agenda to KILL religous faith as a "scientific" project does not make sense, because it is science's role to explore the cosmos, not speculate as to the identity or non identity of its hpothetical originator. That is why Dawkins' stated agenda is unscientific.

25. Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss

Comment #161218 by Artful_Dodger on April 15, 2008 at 3:32 am

Epeeist,

Ther are clearly many theist philosophers and scientist that you have not had the chance to listen to. I actually think that there are a number of theist debaters from whom Dawkins is cutting and running before any engagement starts.

As for the metaphorical / literal issue, I have answered that question, tho seemingly not to your satisfaction, which I would probably not do however long I spent on it.

26. Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss

Comment #161209 by Artful_Dodger on April 15, 2008 at 3:16 am

Interesting discussion. I just hope that Dawkins will be equally willing to engage in a similar way with fellow-scientists who are not atheists.

Dawkins really let the cat out of the bag when he said that his aim was not only to establish the truth of science, but to KILL religion. That immensely unscientific agenda is going to turn out to be counterproductive for Dawkins and his band of new-atheists. Because of this he has already alienated huge numbers of very intelligent people who might be sympathetic with his aim to further scientific knowledge. Most people instinctively know that science and faith are not incompatible with each other, unless they have been hoodwinked into thinking they are either by religious fundamentalists on the one side or by the likes of Dawkins and his cohorts on the other. The effect of Dawkins (mis)using in this way his professorial chair in order to drive through his "faith-eradication" program will drive parents and many educators into their bunkers and make them much more anti-science that they otherwise might have been.

27. For sale: 13-year-old virgin

Comment #160903 by Artful_Dodger on April 14, 2008 at 2:31 pm

If there is not God, Henri Bergson is right. We have no right to inflict our conception of human rights on any other culture. We have no business interfering, laying down the law or accusing. We have no business telling the nazis that what they did to the Jews gypsies and homosexuals was wrong. We have no business ranting about women's rights in Afghanistan, nor for that matter condemning Bush and co for intervening in Afghanistan or in Iraq. In fact we have now grounds for denouncing anyone for anything. If there is no God we are only animals, and there is no more reason for condemning slave traders or mass murderers than there is for locking up lions for killing zebras ... if there is no God!

28. Hitchens vs. Hitchens

Comment #158011 by Artful_Dodger on April 10, 2008 at 1:17 am

I would not be so quick to trumpet the triumphs of Swedish secularism. There are many signs of it creaking.

http://fjordman.blogspot.com/2005/02/islamic-law-used-by-secular-swedish.html

After all, "nature abhors a vacuum".

29. Hitchens vs. Hitchens

Comment #157982 by Artful_Dodger on April 9, 2008 at 11:41 pm

I suggest we fill it with reason, science and free-thinking

That is exactly what the Jacobins set about doing. But as Goya said, "the dream of reason engenders monsters". Reason is a fundamentally good thing. It is what enables us to understand the world around us and to engage in meaningful dialogue with one another. But the kind of reason that regards itself as incompatible with faith, which seeks to drive faith out of the world, is insidious and sinister. When this kind of "reason" (which is actually one of the most fanatical "faiths" imaginable) becomes the foundation for public policy, it is not long before "monsters" begin to materialise. The rationalists among you are at the "I have a dream" stage. If your dream (unlike Martin LK's dream) were ever to translate into policy the result would be tyranny.

30. Hitchens vs. Hitchens

Comment #157759 by Artful_Dodger on April 9, 2008 at 2:01 pm

it provides us to fill that gap with something much, much better.

Let's not hold our breath!

31. Hitchens vs. Hitchens

Comment #157743 by Artful_Dodger on April 9, 2008 at 1:44 pm

Anyone listening to C Hitchens sounding off on Stalin must see how patently absurd his opinions are. Of course Stalin set himself up as a god, and inflicted on the country a regime of hero worship, which was reminiscent of religious worship gone wrong. In that sense the evil that he perpetrated flowed not directly from his absence of a belief in God, but rather from his setting himself up as god. But the question is, where did his setting himself up as god flow from? As Peter Hitchens very incisively pointed out, Stalin's making himself god was a consequence of God having been airbrushed out of the picture. That is where the threat of atheism lies. Not so much in the absence of belief in a transcendent Deity before whom we are accountable as in what that vacuum is filled with.

C Hitchens said at one point that no country that has based its constitution on Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Galileo et al has ever perpetrated the kind of crimes perpetrated by Stalin and company, rooted as they were (supposedly) in Czarist, priest-ridden regimes. A couple of things need to be said about that. In the first place, how could the constitution of a country be based on a cast of names arbitrarily plucked out of the air by Chritopher Hitchens? Secondly, Lenin's Russia was actually based on the writings of Marx and Engles, whose ideas were in turn rooted (as atheists keep telling us) in the Enlightenmnent. And enlightened many of Marx's ideas may have been. The same could be said of Rousseau's and Voltaire's ideas which inspired the Jacobins. The problem comes when someone sets about implementing these "enlightened" ideas. After the French absolutists were got rid of, the revolution became a bloodbath. After the Czars were overthrown it was not long before tyranny set in. Or is Hitchens going to blame the Bourbons for the excesses of the revolution, just as he blames the Czars for the excesses of Stalin. His naivety or wilful ignorance beggars belief!

32. Dawkins warns of human extinction

Comment #155433 by Artful_Dodger on April 4, 2008 at 1:34 pm

http://www.eif.co.uk/event/new-europe-should-prefer-new-atheism.html

just in case you are interested

33. Dawkins warns of human extinction

Comment #155340 by Artful_Dodger on April 4, 2008 at 10:56 am

Must rush Incredulous, but a quick answer for the time being. Palestinian Jews would not have invented a Messiah who seemed to just give up when what they were expecting was a showdown with the Roman authorities. When he rode into Jerusalem it was ultimately in order to take his place on a Roman gibbet, not to bring thunder and lightning down on the heads of the oppressors. Nor would they have invented someone who claimed to have the authority to forgive people's sins. That was precisely what nearly got him lynched quite early on. It's true that there were other Messiah figures, but they fitted the bill as regards Palestinian expectations of their Messiah. And they raised bands of followers and took on the powers-that-be. Not so Jesus, or he took them on in a way in which no one could have anticipated.

As for the resurrection, it is the most plausible explanation for the empty tomb and the post-mortem appearances of the risen Christ. This was Jesus final and decisive challenge to Caesar. Caesar was the self-proclaimed son of god. The resurrection, attested by the empty tomb which was there for all to see, and Jesus disciples who changed overnight from being a bunch or cowering, disillusioned might-have-beens to one of the most powerful, focused group of revolutionaries the world has ever seen, was God's message to the Romans and everyone else that Caesar was not the son of God. Jesus was.

But this ground has been gone over again and again. I'm pretty sure I'm wasting my time and yours by going over it again. So I'm going to get on with the rest of my life.

Cheers

34. Dawkins warns of human extinction

Comment #155301 by Artful_Dodger on April 4, 2008 at 10:07 am

What I am trying to find out is how you made your choice - based on what evidence?

Based on a growing awareness of the reality of God, a call. If I still it is because, apart from the inward awareness of this reality, the gospels ring true, Jesus, as reflected in the gospels, could not have been invented, and the bodily resurrection is the most plausible explanation for the events of the Sunday after his burial.

If the resurrection could be SHOWN not to have taken place, the whole thing would fall apart.

35. Dawkins warns of human extinction

Comment #155290 by Artful_Dodger on April 4, 2008 at 9:56 am

not so fast Al-rawandi

http://www.uhl.ac/NazarethVillage/NVFDec97.html

36. Dawkins warns of human extinction

Comment #155270 by Artful_Dodger on April 4, 2008 at 9:41 am

I know that billions of people say I'm wrong. That either proves that I am nor that I am not. We all have to make choices at the end of the day, and when we make our choice we are excluding all rival options. Going back to Pascal: "nous sommes embarqués". The game has begun and we have no choice but to place our bets.

37. Dawkins warns of human extinction

Comment #155264 by Artful_Dodger on April 4, 2008 at 9:36 am

So how do you resolve the question of which God to believe in?

Jesus of Nazareth

38. Dawkins warns of human extinction

Comment #155260 by Artful_Dodger on April 4, 2008 at 9:31 am

"I'm going to love God because it's in my best interests to do so." What kind of love is that? Goneril and Regan would have got on very well with our friend Pascal.

Paula, there is a lot of truth in that objection to Pascal's wager. What kind of love is that indeed? And yet, incredibly, God will accept us even on such outrageously self-centred terms! That is what is so incredible about grace! Look at the stories of Jesus' encounters with people from all walks of life in the gospels. They came to him out of their need, and, reading their hearts he accepted them ... but then gave them a lot more than they had "bargained" for, and accepted them only for as long as they were prepared to go the whole hog. A CS Lewis said, we invite God into our lives because we want Him to rearrange the furniture. He comes in, but his intention is to build a palace. After all, He intends to live there himself! Your reference to King Lear is an interesting one in that respect. The point about Regan and Goneril was not that they "loved" their father and submitted to him for selfish reasons, but that they did not love him at all, and had no intention of ever changing their minds. In fact their words were calculated to beguile their gulible father. But God is not king Lear. He will not be beguiled by manipulative intentions. Our need may initially be self-centred, but if we think we can, after making that choice, use God to our own advantage, we are knocking on the wrong door.

Pascal's wager is not a sufficient argument in itself, that is true. Of ourse it begs the question "which God will I bet on?" But it might impress on our minds at least the importance of the question. If, assuming that the odds are even, I have a great deal to gain by choosing rightly and a great deal to lose by choosing wrongly, then at least it might be worth my while investigating the truth claims of the different belief-systems on offer. Of course we can't do deals with God in the Goneril and Regan fashion. If we do ever give in, after exploring these issues, and admit that God is God, it will not be on our own terms.

39. Dawkins warns of human extinction

Comment #155211 by Artful_Dodger on April 4, 2008 at 8:34 am

So, astrology, what's your view on it as a subject?

Irate, maybe that' a question you should ask some of your fellow star-gazers on this forum.

I don't think you can attribute Newton's passion for theology only to the fact that Darwin was not around yet to remind him of the fact that it was not actually intellectually respectable any longer to study such a non-subject. The natural world requires the finest possible minds to engage with it. But not all knowledge, like it or not, is in fact contained within the realm that is scientifically observable.

40. Dawkins warns of human extinction

Comment #155194 by Artful_Dodger on April 4, 2008 at 8:20 am

Incredulous, this is classic Dawkins-speak but it will cut no ice with anyone who actually realises to what extent the Bible has shaped our culture to which science grew out of (bit did not outgrow) a Biblical worldview.

It is typical of Dawkins and certain others her to reduce to a non-subject a discipline which he has no mastery of and no intention to acquire any. "If everything is Biology and Chemistry then you only need to know Biology and Chemistry after all. When we have succeeded in reducing everything to Biology and Chemistry then the fact that we don't know anything else countrs for nothing as there isn't anything else." OK, it's an oversimplfication. But that is the direction we are moving in.

41. Dawkins warns of human extinction

Comment #155178 by Artful_Dodger on April 4, 2008 at 8:12 am

Steve you are the exception (or one of the few) that proves the rule.

42. Dawkins warns of human extinction

Comment #155176 by Artful_Dodger on April 4, 2008 at 8:10 am

What's your point scottishgeologist? If the God of the Bible does indeed exist, there might be a very strong case for being prepared to meet him, don't you think? If he does not, not all that much is lost by believing in Him.

43. Dawkins warns of human extinction

Comment #155164 by Artful_Dodger on April 4, 2008 at 8:01 am

faouloki, comments are one thing, sycophantic adulation is another.

44. Dawkins warns of human extinction

Comment #155161 by Artful_Dodger on April 4, 2008 at 7:59 am

Dr Benway, I have done ... at least twice. But if theology is a non-subject, then the Bible is hardly a serious enough subject for discussion here, in which case there is nothing that I could possibly say about it which you would consider worth hearing. So in what sense do you want me to "enlighten" you?

45. Dawkins warns of human extinction

Comment #155138 by Artful_Dodger on April 4, 2008 at 7:42 am

Well how typical of Lennox to once again ride on the back of Dawkins' success. What a bore.

Beth, what do you know about Dr Lennox? I'll have you know that he does not need Dawkins' success or anyone else's. He is a very well-established mathemetician with many peer-reviewed papers in group theory. Long before Dawkins crossed his path he had acquired science doctorates from both Cambridge and Oxford, including a doctorate in the Philosophy of Science.

Please don't show your absolute and total ignorance by making such pathetically ridiculous comments. Why don't you all cut the "Dawkins is God" crap. Try to weigh up his arguments against those of his opponents a bit more objectively. I've never seen such bowing and scraping as before the name of Richard Dawkins on this site. OK, he's a first class evolutionary biologist who as written some ground-breaking scientific books and papers. But when will you face up to the fact that on theology, Biblical criticism and philosophy he is out of his depth. And TGD was just a long rant under a very irregular, patchy scientific veneer.

Will you bother to listen to Lennox's response in October? Will anyone here? Or have you taken Dawkins' statements as unanswerable ex-catedra pronouncements?

46. Pastor attacks scientist's talk

Comment #154959 by Artful_Dodger on April 4, 2008 at 3:08 am

Quetzalcoatl, I have answered the question about metaphorical v literal. A question of genres. You don't read poetry literally, and Biblical history is as verifiable/falsifiable as any other history. The presence of the supernatural in a historical account is only a problem if you proceed from an a priori assumption that the supernatural does not exist, and that there is nothing that transcends the physical universe. Once you admit the possibility that there exists that which is not susceptible to empirical, scientific investigation then in principle you cannot rule out the possibility of this Transcendent Entity, supposing her/him/it to be intelligent, intervening in the natural world when (s)he/it so chooses.

I have argued elsewhere that the cardinal difficulty for materialists is that "the idea", concepts, thoughts, memories etc. can be shown to exist independently of "the matter" (the brain) that supports them, just as an image is independent of the canvas and the oils that are used to convey it, or a word is independent of the ink that is used to give it form.

47. Pastor attacks scientist's talk

Comment #154738 by Artful_Dodger on April 3, 2008 at 4:26 pm

Yeah guys, I can very well understand why you would not like to see RD sharing a public platform with John Lennox on home turf. After the scalding Dawkins got the last time your reactions to Robertson are just par for the course. I wouldn't have expected a different reaction from you.

48. Beware the Believers

Comment #151818 by Artful_Dodger on March 29, 2008 at 1:24 pm

F*** the damn creationists, those bunch of dumb-ass b***s,
every time I think of them my trigger finger itches.
They want to have their bull***, taught in public class,
Stephen J. Gould should put his foot right up their ass.
Noah and his ark, Adam and his Eve,
straight up fairy stories even children don't believe.
I'm not saying there's no god, that's not for me to say,
all I'm saying is the Earth was not made in a day.

This is much more the kind of "humour" I've grown used to from the atheist community. I really don't understand how you can't see that Dawkins, Hitchens and Dennett are being mercilessly lampooned in this video. You only have to listen to how the self-ridiculing refrain is repeated again and again. This completely cuts the bottom out of any pro-evolution "satirising" of the opposing position - the references to the Scopes and Wilberforce myths and so on. It's a classic double-take. The subtelty of it has clearly escaped you. You're more comfortable with the other kind of stuff.

49. Beware the Believers

Comment #151604 by Artful_Dodger on March 29, 2008 at 3:50 am

Fantastic! The funniest piss-take I've seen for ages! Well done, and thanks for posting it.

50. Fleabytes

Comment #148107 by Artful_Dodger on March 22, 2008 at 5:11 am

Re "metaphorical" v "Literal" and the difference between the two, one knows by being familiar with the genre, and by not mistaking one genre for another. The book of Job does not read like history, it reads like epic poetry. Anyone who is familiar with epic poetry will be guarded against the danger (a minor danger mind you) of taking it as a historical biographical account of the life of a man called Job.

The books of Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ruth, Daniel, Esther read like history - and the events can be substantiated in many cases by reference to contemporary Mesopotamian (for example) historiography.