851. Richard Dawkins Explains 'The God Delusion'

Comment #28547 by Rtambree on March 29, 2007 at 5:06 pm

Comment #28538 by sane1 on March 29

>How about a question and answer session designed for those of us who are well familiar with his interviews?


Ok, here are ten questions I think Richard Dawkins has never been asked in public interviews...

1. If religion is ingrained in human nature (directly or via a spandrel), then what accounts for the enormous difference in religiousity between countries? e.g. Norway & England versus Iran & United States?

2. Would you change your confrontational "bad cop" (e.g. Hitchens) approach if it was demonstrated that the "good cop" (e.g. Carl Sagan or Lawrence Krauss) approach was more effective in persuading people?

3. You've indicated you're sympathetic to the political left. In England, the left has been accused of condoning the excess of Islamic fundamentalism by criticising American intervention in the Middle East. Is this fair? How would you disentangle the legitimate political grievances of Palestinians and Iraqis from the atrocities carried out in the name of Islam?

4. If there is a bell curve of religious belief with atheists on one end, moderates in the middle and fundamentalists on the other end, do you think there's an underlying biological or social explanation explaining the distribution?

5. Are some people just hard-wired for conservatism or belief regardless of how much evidence or argument they are confronted with?

6. How can some scientists and other educated intellectuals such as Francis Collins and Robert Winston compartmentalise their scientific literacy and belief?

7. In a democracy, if the majority of people want funding of faith schools, how do you argue against that?

8. Your next TV program is about other irrational superstitions - what aspects are you dealing with? New Age? Tarot? Astrology? Acupuncture?

9. Would you agree that atheists and fundamentalists have one thing in common - you both recognise that evolution is a threat to religious belief. Are moderates more intellectually lazy in not reconciling the two?

10. Why do you still call evolution "Darwinism"? Doesn't this allow critics to highlight problems in the 1859 view of evolution? Why not simply call the modern synthesis "evolution"?

Any more?

852. John Paul Sainthood Nun 'Gentle, Simple'

Comment #28536 by Rtambree on March 29, 2007 at 4:31 pm

9. Comment #28523 by lpetrich

>Where have all the "big" miracles gone?

Obviously God couldn't be arsed anymore. He's gone outside for a smoke, and an intern is handling the miracle-requests whilst learning the instruction manual.

853. Richard Dawkins Explains 'The God Delusion'

Comment #28531 by Rtambree on March 29, 2007 at 4:02 pm

2. Comment #28525 by Fishpeddler
"I must admit that even I am getting tired of RD being asked the same old questions"

Couldn't agree more. In this age where people can get podcasts from any interview anywhere in the world, journalists need to do their research and ask something different.

Perhaps if RD can hand prospective interviewers the top ten questions he's already been asked >100 times...

1. Aren't you just being a fundamentalist atheist?

2. Didn't Hitler, Stalin, Mao kill in the name of atheism?

3. Doesn't religion do a lot of good?

4. You can't disprove God can you?

5. Most religious people are moderate, not fundamentalist, what's wrong with this?

6. Religion seems to be built into our genes - how can you hope to get rid of it?

7. If religion is false, how come almost everyone believes in God?

8. Without God, how can people be good?

9. Can't people believe both in evolution and in God?

10. Science can't explain everything, can it?

854. Debate between Alister McGrath and Peter Atkins

Comment #28518 by Rtambree on March 29, 2007 at 2:29 pm

Question to Alister McGrath: Would you like a glass of water?

Alister McGrath: Before I undertake to enter into a dialogue about the probabilities and significance of the issues surrounding the underlying tension inherent to the parameters of the question, I think we need to engage in a different investigation altogether, one of epistemological and ontological necessity, or as Quine wrote, the matrices that derive from resolving the contingencies arising from a theological and ecumenical reconciliation between whether the water or the glass are framed in the same meta-space as my thirst, without the holistic prism that the scriptures illuminate through their transcendence, and this is, in my mind, something that we can address further.

855. Stephen Hawking Says Universe Created from Nothing

Comment #28514 by Rtambree on March 29, 2007 at 2:12 pm

Thanks for clearing up that little mystery about the universe - we can all move onto more important matters such as do ice cubes or crushed ice go better with Jack Daniels and Coke? Next time you're caught philandering, you can say "No wait, I can explain everything".

No doubt, Alister McGrath will now write a clear and concise rebuttal called 'The Shane Delusion'.

856. John Paul Sainthood Nun 'Gentle, Simple'

Comment #28511 by Rtambree on March 29, 2007 at 1:56 pm

5. Comment #28509 by scottishgeologist

'4 Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.'

This definition would capture all Christians who, by definition, worship Jesus Christ, son of Mary.

857. John Paul Sainthood Nun 'Gentle, Simple'

Comment #28507 by Rtambree on March 29, 2007 at 1:19 pm

If you get cured, it's the Lord's grace.

If you don't get cured, the Lord works in mysterious ways.

If you get worse, the Lord is testing your faith.

If medical science makes you better, the Lord gave us reason and should be praised.

If you don't survive the illness, the Lord called you to Him.

If Charles Manson butchered your family, the Lord gave us free will.

858. Dawkins says religion is 'like sucking a dummy'

Comment #28496 by Rtambree on March 29, 2007 at 11:55 am

Consolation

I've never understood the consoling effects of religion, because the threat of Hell is everpresent.

What if I didn't praise God enough? What if I had an impure thought that I didn't account for when going to Confession? What if the priest's Holy Water wasn't blessed the right way during my Baptism? What if I was going to the wrong Church? What if some hair was showing from under my Burqa?

There are an infinite number of ways that God, like a tax auditor, can show you the fine print and send you to eternal damnation and torture.

It would freak me out - it's hardly consoling.

859. Stephen Hawking Says Universe Created from Nothing

Comment #28472 by Rtambree on March 29, 2007 at 10:14 am

64. Comment #28458 by Shane McKee

I will nominate you for a Nobel, but first where does the computer come from that's doing the simulating? Is the computer a simulation in another universe? Can a computer simulate itself into existence and then form a time warp to fix things up chronologically so no laws are violated? (my head hurts).

Is this an application of Occam's Razor in a multiverse, Neo? What's more likely? That we're in an easy-to-run simulation, or in an actual difficult-to-create rare reality?

I'll take the red pill.

860. Dawkins says religion is 'like sucking a dummy'

Comment #28433 by Rtambree on March 29, 2007 at 7:16 am

Genes & Religion

I'm not sure how compelling a genetic explanation is.

Iran, USA, Ireland and Poland all have HIGH religiousity.

Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, England have LOW religiousity.

We all share 99.9% of our DNA. Americans and Scandinavians had a common ancestor just a few centuries ago.

250 years ago, just about everyone was religious.
In the National Academy of Sciences, almost no one is religious (and that's in the USA).

So it seems reasonable to conclude that culture and education play an enormous part in religiousity.

We're all born atheists. If you could raise children in a hypothetical religion-free & scientifically literate environment, would they spontaneously invent deities, afterlives, scriptures, visitations by angels, etc?

861. Dawkins says religion is 'like sucking a dummy'

Comment #28420 by Rtambree on March 29, 2007 at 6:23 am

Compare Hitchen's closing remarks in his first speech (about atheism not being responsible for Hitler, Mao, Stalin, etc, etc) with Scruton's closing remarks at the end... he completely ignored what Hitchens said and trotted out the same old lines. It's like they weren't even in the same room.

In any case, even if Scruton's comments were true, this is like saying we shouldn't get rid of HIV, because people would suffer from TB, Malaria, Typhoid, Dysentery, etc.

862. Dawkins says religion is 'like sucking a dummy'

Comment #28405 by Rtambree on March 29, 2007 at 4:53 am

17. BaronOchs - someone should have pointed to all the great secular art, architecture, music, etc.

In any case, you can appreciate Wagner operas or Lord of the Rings without actually believing any of the mythology as being true. No one is saying all art has to be based on objective reality and literal truth.

863. Dawkins says religion is 'like sucking a dummy'

Comment #28403 by Rtambree on March 29, 2007 at 4:42 am

I was at this debate and the three opponents of the motion (the defenders of religion) redefined religion as "transcendence". The Supreme Being was expendable. The Church was Expendable. And the Afterlife was expendable.

All that was defended was a vague notion to do good, a warm fuzzy feeling when two eyes look back at you, and a sense of something more.

That's not really Religion. So it's a victory of sorts, as Steven Weinberg suggested in the TLS's review of The God Delusion...

http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25349-2552017,00.html

864. Dawkins says religion is 'like sucking a dummy'

Comment #28398 by Rtambree on March 29, 2007 at 4:35 am

What would be really be interesting is a breakdown of religious conviction per:

Age group.
Political affiliation.
Income.
Education.
IQ.
Levels of oxytocin, cortisol, and other neurotransmitters and hormones.
Parents' religion.
Scientific literacy.

The correlations (if any, but I would assume there are many) would be fascinating.

865. Richard Dawkins at The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival

Comment #28262 by Rtambree on March 28, 2007 at 2:47 pm

25. bwana ndege

Good one! If you listen to the Denys Turner interview in The Atheism Tapes with Jonathan Miller (a spin off from the History of Disbelief), then you get precisely the same obfuscation. Both McGrath and Turner are highly educated and highly articulate, but talk absolute bollocks.

"It's an issue to be addressed, within a framework of parameters between religious modes of engaging with nature, the way is open to commence a dialogue to be undertaken in respect to the concerns, but it's particularly the significance of the facts, rather than the validity of the facts themselves, that enables religion to achieve the transcendence of the sublime and the sacred..." and so on.

I wonder if they're thinking... "If I can just keep this up another few years, no one will notice, and I can retire on a nice pension".

866. Stephen Hawking Says Universe Created from Nothing

Comment #28218 by Rtambree on March 28, 2007 at 12:04 pm

BaronOchs says "it's interesting to note he said God created the world in 6 days because six is a perfect number. i.e. 1+2+3=6 and 1*2*3=6. The number was perfect first and god acted accordingly, not the other way round."

Good point. God is subservient to a higher order of beauty, perfection, symmetry, etc. Of course, postmodernists like Michael Frayn insist that even these abstractions and mathematical logic are also human constructs, and they wouldn't exist if there was no life. To him, the question is - if a circle forms in the forest, does anybody see?

I don't subscribe to that - for sorts of reasons, but one of them would be the principle of mediocrity that permeates human intellectual endeavour. Stephen Jay Gould called it pedestal smashing. The angles in a Euclidean triange add to 180 degrees, whether homo sapiens exist or not.

867. Stephen Hawking Says Universe Created from Nothing

Comment #28193 by Rtambree on March 28, 2007 at 9:36 am

33. The platonic / reality divide was the original dichotomy in intellectual history.

e.g. There are perfect circles in my mind, but there aren't any perfect circles in reality.

Naturally, this evolves into theology (we are Fallen - our morality doesn't conform to the ideal). It was St Augustine that Platonised early Christianity, with his distaste for the real world.

Killing in the name of any ideology is a manifestation of the same ideal/real divide: Communism, Fascism, Monotheism, etc where an abstract ideal is elevated above the individual.

But back to physics & cosmology - how do you get from the self-evident logic of mathematical Truths that necessarily exist a priori to a material world of energy, matter, time, & space? That is THE question.

868. Stephen Hawking Says Universe Created from Nothing

Comment #28179 by Rtambree on March 28, 2007 at 8:50 am

26. Yorker.

Yeah, but where did the laws of quantum mechanics come from? Surely you can see it's not a satisfying answer.

Martin Ree's Multiverse, of which we occupy a "Hubble bubble", which is infinite in time, is more aesthetically pleasing. But I admit, it's thinking with my gut.

Is it possible to have "nothing"? What about abstract concepts such as the number 2 or pi? Surely they always exist in some Platonic realm and can't be imagined away.

869. Stephen Hawking Says Universe Created from Nothing

Comment #28171 by Rtambree on March 28, 2007 at 7:43 am

The highest IQ ever measured is Francis Galton's, about 200. He was a cousin of Charles Darwin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton

870. Stephen Hawking Says Universe Created from Nothing

Comment #28159 by Rtambree on March 28, 2007 at 7:04 am

In the beginning was nothing, which exploded...

- Terry Pratchett

871. Richard Dawkins at The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival

Comment #28141 by Rtambree on March 28, 2007 at 6:13 am

McGrath should go in politics.

He's got a wonderful gift of speech that evades answering any question. By the time you've dissected his statements, worked out that they meaning nothing at all, he's already moved onto something else.

McGrath appears to be a nihilist - he can't commit to any position. It's ironic, as this is the sort of thing he accuses atheists of.

872. Richard Dawkins at The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival

Comment #28121 by Rtambree on March 28, 2007 at 4:48 am

Debates...

The moderators need to be more proactive in all these debates and actually try to pin down the participants to a position. Otherwise, they're just talking past each other. They might as well be in separate rooms at different times regurgitating their set stock of rehearsed phrases.

873. Richard Dawkins at The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival

Comment #28113 by Rtambree on March 28, 2007 at 4:11 am

Debate tactics...

I saw the Intelligence Squared debate last night (March 27)at Westminster with Dawkins, Hitchens, Grayling, arguing "We'd be better off without religion", and those opposing: comprising of Spivey, Scruton, and Neuberger.

Here the pro-religious camp were ready to jettison the Supernatural Creator, almost all the Scriptures and the Afterlife, and any certainty about any of it, and re-define religion as some transcendent feeling of oneness, the urge to do good, etc.

In future, these debates need to be clear on the definition of religion. Scientific American gave two requirements: religion must have (1) a supernatural being that intervenes personally in the world, and (2) an afterlife.

Buddhism wouldn't qualify, using this definition.

Alister McGrath, likewise, is wishy-washy with his claims. Since science has all the explanatory power, theists make religion a smaller and smaller target, at least in public debates. What they think in private or say to their congregations may be another matter.

In a sense, Dawkins and Harris, et al, have already won the argument if theists reduce religion to little more than "good deeds".

874. Debate between Alister McGrath and Peter Atkins

Comment #27123 by Rtambree on March 23, 2007 at 8:07 am

Another debating point could be scored by showing the audience a picture of Hubble Ultra Deep Field - it's the furtherest we've seen in the Universe.
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2004/07/image/a/

Once you explain to your audience what it is they're looking at (galaxies not stars), then ask your theist opponent how he can still hold seriously the notion of a personal God.

I've used it a few times with believes and because it's an ACTUAL PHOTO (not just logical arguments), it works well in instilling doubt.

875. Debate between Alister McGrath and Peter Atkins

Comment #27061 by Rtambree on March 23, 2007 at 4:10 am

>he does seem to be a skillful orator.

Yes, I've noticed in many of the ID v Evolution and God v Atheism debates, the theists are the better, slicker, more articulate speakers.

Obviously if you have facts and logic on your side, you feel you don't need charm and if you're in a logically weak position, you have to compensate with charisma and wit.

In an ideal world, debates aren't decided by rhetorical skills, but by evidence.

876. Debate between Alister McGrath and Peter Atkins

Comment #27056 by Rtambree on March 23, 2007 at 3:50 am

A useful debating trick would be to ask the audience to just insert "Zeus" for whenever your theist opponent argues for God. The absurdity should immediately become self evident for the fence-sitters.

877. Why there are almost no genuine atheists

Comment #24471 by Rtambree on March 6, 2007 at 7:49 pm

Neander wrote:

>This can't possibly have been written by an intelligent person. The arguemnet is poor, almost non-sensical, and tries to equate atheism with lack of morals.

I agree. Another variation on the "religion as free pass" criticism - Professors can concoct all sorts of Medieval rubbish and still not be laughed off campus, despite it being the 21st century.

878. Darwin's God

Comment #24101 by Rtambree on March 4, 2007 at 7:47 pm

Anyone who advances the notion that religion is universal (by adaptation or byproduct, etc) must also take on board the incontrovertible variation of religiousity between groups...

1. Elite scientists are almost all atheists. Therefore atheism correlates with science literacy.
2. Western Europe and Scandinavia have tens of millions, if not more, of atheists.
3. 300 years ago, almost everyone in the western subscribed to an Abrahamic faith. Since then, the percentages have dwindled. There was no genetic mutation.
4. Millions of Buddhists manage perfectly well without a Supreme Creator and sexual prescriptions that determine your passage into the next life.

Clearly, there's a HUGE cultural component to religiousity. Any journalist or scientist that assumes it's HARDWIRED and inevitable is ignoring a lot of counter-evidence.

879. The questions science cannot answer

Comment #21607 by Rtambree on February 10, 2007 at 5:27 am

There is one critical form of misunderstanding in these debates between science and religion that causes all participants to be talking past each other.

1. Critics of science highlight Science-as-Practised" and will list eugenics, A-bomb, Lysenko, Newton's alchemy, etc. Defenders of science will highlight Science-as-Ideal - the method, science as verb, the gradual striving towards truth.

2. Critics of religion highlight Religion-as-Practised listing all the usual atrocities, while defenders of religion will highlight Religion-as-Ideal - citing spiritual oneness, leading a good life, etc.

Unless these Platonic realms of science and religion are distinguished from their on-the-ground practice, participants in these debates will unfortunately be misunderstanding each other, to the frustration of all concerned.

880. 'God Is Not a Moderate'

Comment #21534 by Rtambree on February 9, 2007 at 9:06 pm

NormanDoering wrote:
"That feeling will still be there no matter what is proved by logic. Andrew is Catholic because he has an emotional reaction to Catholic imagery in an area of the brain where us non-religious people just react to sex.

What does that mean?"

Neurological explanations raise fascinating issues relating to the intersection of genes and belief. The field of Neuropolitics will be an interesting one - i.e. why do people that hold the a certain views on gay marriage, also have predictable positions on abortion, gun control, etc.

Perhaps it's not that religion causes violence, but that both violence and religion have a common explantion - some particular configuration of the O.C.E.A.N. where anxiety/fear is emphasis (cortisol levels?)

This would be easy to test.

But it can't be the whole picture - there's nothing genetically different about Red States or Iran from Sweden or England, and yet religious levels are vastly different between countries, between time periods and contingent upon scientific literacy.

So the dominant explanation must be cultural, although there may be interesting neurological reasons why a few highly educated, intelligent individuals such as Francis Collins, Polkinghorne, McGrath, etc still accept superstitous explanations in the 21st century western world.

Meiosis scrambles your parent's genes during sexual recombination and some personality traits distributed along a bell curve may be more conducive to accept religious explanations i.e. an emotional resonance or hypersensititivity.

Disentangling cultural explanations from genetic/neurological ones in explaining religious distribution and resistance to evidence/logic is a promising field of research.

Atheists debate the best tactics to appeal to the public - the Carl Sagan Good Cop or the Dawkins/Harris Bad Cop? But it may be that different demographics and personality types respond to different arguments. There's some empircal research to be done here - I'm sure Dawkins would change his tactics if it could be demonstrated that another approach was more effective.

881. Do stop behaving as if you are God, Professor Dawkins

Comment #21136 by Rtambree on February 7, 2007 at 5:33 pm

What does an Oxford Theologian actually do all day? I have trouble picturing what a typical day is like. One bundies on, places the briefcase on the desk, and then....?

How does one know whatever theological ideas one comes up with are right or wrong?