51. Richard Dawkins' Report Card

Comment #17014 by Kimpatsu on January 10, 2007 at 4:58 am

Inky-dinky-parley-doo
Oh, what is young Dawkins to do?
He's so messy with ink
His grades, they do sink
And his writing's a bad witches' brew!
:D

52. Intelligent design is a science, not a faith

Comment #16922 by Kimpatsu on January 9, 2007 at 3:54 pm

Jack Rawlinson, as you'll see, I'm one of those heaping scorn upon Buggs.
Cheers,

53. God-less

Comment #16484 by Kimpatsu on January 6, 2007 at 8:05 pm

gimlibengloin wrote, "I don't dispute that humans can act morally without faith in God. What I dispute is whether they can provide a justification for it. How does an atheist label one action as right and another as wrong? What criteria does he/she use?
Why is it wrong to kill the innocent? Or to rape? Or to steal?
Is it 'more' wrong to kill a man than a horse? If so, why?"
Sam Harris has answered this question fully in The End of Faith. Questions of morality are really about the cause and alleviation of suffering. As killing the innocent, rape, and theft cause suffering, they are immoral. Actions taken to prevent these immoralities are moral.
And the question of killing horses was explained by Rousseau and Bentham, among others, and more recently, the rights of higher-order animals has been championed by Peter Singer.
If morality really comes from a book of Bronze Age myths, then we are required to kill unbelievers, apostates, witches, cheeky children, and Sunday labourers. As all such cases cause unjustified suffering, however, they are in fact the most immoral of acts. Consequently, we can see that our own moral intuitions are far better a guide to morality than any authority.

54. Secular fundamentalists are the new totalitarians

Comment #16302 by Kimpatsu on January 6, 2007 at 2:34 am

If you read this article on the Guardian website, do pause to check out my reply below.

55. Without God, Gall Is Permitted

Comment #16275 by Kimpatsu on January 5, 2007 at 7:38 pm

Yet another religious idiot who thinks we want to ban religion. No atheist IIRC has ever called for churches to be closed forcibly; we just want superstition kept out of the public sphere.
He's right aboyut one thing, though; being superstitious should very much be cause for personal embarrassment.

56. Beliefwatch: Blasphemy (Challenge)

Comment #15790 by Kimpatsu on January 3, 2007 at 2:04 am

Adler also makes the mistake, when mentioning Pascal's wager, that if the Muslims are right all the Xians are going to Hell as well. And if the Jews are right, then all the Muslims AND all the Xians are going to Hell. And if the followers of Baal are right...
Looks like us atheists are going to have plenty of company around the eternal campfire...

57. A Christmas thunderbolt for the arch-enemy of religion

Comment #14798 by Kimpatsu on December 25, 2006 at 6:38 am

I am sick of this imposter, Cornwall, claiming to write in my name.
Everyone knows that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is the One True God.

58. Orr on Dawkins

Comment #14735 by Kimpatsu on December 24, 2006 at 8:11 pm

"The church funded scientific investigation as a way of further understanding God's glory."
Exactly so! This was a Medieval worldview; namely, that the world was really one big codebook, and the purpose of humanity was to find the keys and decipher the code. An example would be the rose, which Medievalists saw in terms of Xian allegory (thorns for the crown of thorns, red for the blood of Christ, etc.) Once science moved away from such gnosticism into methodological naturalism, and determined that the rose's colour, for example, is naturally selected to attract pollinating insects and had nothing to do with Xian allegory, the Church dropped science funding like a hot potato. The real clash between science and religion began with the Renaissance. To maintain the proposition that science and religion are not mutually antithetical is to adopt a Medieval viewpoint. It is 500 years out of date. What a pity so few people understand that what characterised the Renaissance was a paradigm shift in the way people thought. It was NOT (contrary to popular belief) merely an extension of existing ideas; it was the wholesale rejection of the existing worldview and the replacing of that worldview with the seeds of Enlightenment values. Orr clearly doesn't get it, but Dawkins does.
I know whose books I'd rather give as gifts this Xmas.

59. An imaginary deity is denounced and debunked

Comment #14623 by Kimpatsu on December 23, 2006 at 6:57 pm

Bear in mind that, in the time of the Founding Fathers, special creation was the best explanation anyone had for biodiversity. It wasn't until Darwin came along that a better explanation prevailed. Even Hume, a staunch atheist and contemporary of the FF, had trouble with the origins of species. Dawkins's contention is that had the FF known what Darwin knew, the last reason they had for thinking there might be a shadowy supreme being would have been swept away, and their atheism naked for all to see.

60. Atheist Chic

Comment #14279 by Kimpatsu on December 21, 2006 at 9:55 pm

"The Cadre of the Damned".
I'm going to have that written on a T-shirt!

61. Let's Be Rational

Comment #12860 by Kimpatsu on December 14, 2006 at 5:19 am

Theodore Dalrymple (Anthony Daniels) is a traditionalist right-wing authoritarian. As he admits himself, he views religion as useful as a means of controlling the masses--who are evidently too stupid to think for themselves, and therefore must be told what to think. To him the truth or falsity of religion does not matter, whereas for those of us who hold truth at a premium, it is the very essence of examining religious claims. Further, Dalrymple's very assertion that religion creates moral behaviour is wrong; perhaps he would like to explain, for example, why the crime rate in secular Sweden is much lower than in godly America, for example...?

62. Atheists' bleak alternative

Comment #12858 by Kimpatsu on December 14, 2006 at 5:13 am

If religion is necessary for morality as Jacoby mistakenly believes, why is the crime rate in the Bible Belt higher than in atheist Sweden?

63. The end of one law for all?

Comment #11486 by Kimpatsu on December 5, 2006 at 1:18 am

Roy, you wrote "When in Rome..."
Quite right. When on OUR planet, do as WE do.

64. The faithful have departed

Comment #11485 by Kimpatsu on December 5, 2006 at 1:14 am

George, people who say that are merely bad at maths.

65. Ryan Tubridy interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #1178 by Kimpatsu on October 10, 2006 at 10:19 am

I can't find the file. The link provided takes me to a bunch of radio shows, none of which list Richard as bing on them. Can anyone help?

66. The Need to Believe

Comment #1174 by Kimpatsu on October 10, 2006 at 9:57 am

IOW, RL read the entire book, and spectacularly failed to understand the core point that one can dismiss the likelihood of gods by assigning probability values. What a jerk!

67. Fundamentalist Religion and Science

Comment #817 by Kimpatsu on October 7, 2006 at 4:36 am

Hylo, if you want to see Richard open up with both barrels, watch "The Root of All Evil?".

68. Homsap: Elixir of Holiness

Comment #465 by Kimpatsu on September 30, 2006 at 11:20 pm

Yet another brilliant article from the maestro, and an excellent point made by Daniel Greenwood. I would add only (and again, much to my chagrin, these are not MY original thoughts) what David Mills wrote in "Atheist Universe": that when people make claims about "saving foetuses" or the "dignity of life", what they're REALLY saying is that they are saving souls, only they lack the moral courage to admit to what they are really thinking. This is because, rewritten in truthful terms, their arguments are self-evidently ridiculous. Consequently, they seek to hide the truth by couching their arguments in more "respectable" terms. It seems that the Martin Luther exhortation to "lie for god" is as valid today as it was 500 years ago...