101. Dawkins Delusion (3rd article, Same Stupid Title)

Comment #10858 by Paul Creber on November 29, 2006 at 12:58 pm

Saneatheist
Thanks

These are worth a visit, too
http://skeptically.org/newtestament/id29.html
http://www.atheists.org/christianity/didjesusexist.html
And anything by Robert M Price, if you haven't read him.

102. Dawkins Delusion (3rd article, Same Stupid Title)

Comment #10798 by Paul Creber on November 29, 2006 at 8:40 am

Saneatheist
Thanks. I was aware of the "young woman" mistranslation, but you have fleshed out (pun intended) the story most graphically.
Who knows what other tangled webs of cock-up, intrigue and megolomania lie buried beneath "scripture"?

103. Dawkins Delusion (3rd article, Same Stupid Title)

Comment #10780 by Paul Creber on November 29, 2006 at 6:45 am

Here's a real question from an open mind: "What is your evidence for the virgin birth?"
David Robertson replied: "The testimony of the Bible."

Okay, let's take it as read, for the sake of argument, that the testimony of the Bible is sufficient evidence for the virgin birth.
Regrettably, this leaves me with another almighty headache. This is because that same Biblical testimony, on which we have just placed such store, also tells me that the entire universe was created in six days, and that the first two men and women on this planet were created as fully grown adults.
My almighty problem is this: Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, for which there is overwhelming evidence, leads me to suppose that humankind came into existence in an entirely different manner - as a descendant of other species, in fact.
Do you follow the testimony of the Bible in this regard also?

104. Dawkins Delusion (3rd article, Same Stupid Title)

Comment #10142 by Paul Creber on November 27, 2006 at 7:04 am

David Robertson wrote: "Real questions, and open minds are always welcome."

Here's a real question from an open mind: "What is your evidence for the virgin birth?"

105. Dawkins Delusion (3rd article, Same Stupid Title)

Comment #9704 by Paul Creber on November 25, 2006 at 3:44 pm

David Robertson wrote: "I am not sure they [other faiths] would claim to be trust based upon evidence. If they do I would suggest that, like Christianity, their claims are open to scrutiny and question..."

Firstly, your definition of faith appears to be confined only to Christian faith, or maybe - perish the thought - only David Robertson's faith.
Secondly, scrutiny and questioning is precisely what I have been exercising apropos claims of a virgin birth. Thus far, I have discerned precious litle "openness" on your part.
Would I be right in thinking that, in this regard at least, Christianity regards scrutiny as an unwelcome embarrassment?

106. Dawkins Delusion (3rd article, Same Stupid Title)

Comment #9283 by Paul Creber on November 24, 2006 at 10:39 am

Very drole. Might I soon expect an over-arm delivery?

107. Dawkins Delusion (3rd article, Same Stupid Title)

Comment #9208 by Paul Creber on November 24, 2006 at 6:04 am

Sorry, typo on my own name!

108. Dawkins Delusion (3rd article, Same Stupid Title)

Comment #7116 by Paul Creber on November 17, 2006 at 8:17 am

Dear David Robertson
You write: "Faith does not entitle me to argue that black is white or that caterpillars ride bicycles."
Maybe you do not CHOOSE to believe that black is white or caterpillars ride bicycles, but faith ENITLES you to do just that.
It also entitles you to believe that virgins can give birth or the sun can halt in the sky. As a bible-believing Christian, you CHOOSE to believe both notions, which, to the rational mind, are at least as preposterous as caterpillars in the Tour de France.

109. Dawkins Delusion (3rd article, Same Stupid Title)

Comment #7070 by Paul Creber on November 17, 2006 at 2:08 am

Dear David Robertson,
You misinterpret my central point. In post 392, I went on to say: "I am not saying that the theist is de facto wrong in espousing such beliefs. It was open-mindedness more than anything else that led me to atheism, and my intellectual door remains ajar."
You may for all I know have other ways of reaching out to the supernatural, but, as my example of the Church of the Blessed Wednesday demonstrates, logic and reason are not among them. Invocation of the supernatural frees you by definition to argue with impunity that black is white and caterpillars ride bicycles. Faced with a challenging intellectual dilemma, all you need do is declare: "God did it" and move along to the next question.
You do this very thing in your second post. Whereas the scientist stares in awe at the wonders of nature and starts to address and investigate difficult questions about their origins, you listen to the waves crashing against the walls of the chapel (not for 40 days and nights, one hopes) and arrive at the instant conclusion that the existence of God is intellectually obvious. Do you reach the same intellectual conclusion when those waves become a tsunami, claiming the lives of hundreds of thousands? Or is the pat answer to that: "Satan is obvious"?

110. Dawkins Delusion (3rd article, Same Stupid Title)

Comment #7004 by Paul Creber on November 16, 2006 at 2:50 pm

Response to ADR
I suppose 99 per cent of the population living in Newton's time believed in the supernatural, understandable perhaps when there was no other apparent explanation for the existence of life.
And don't let's forget Dawkins's insightful observations about the power of parental decrees over children. Irrational or not, they stick with you like glue.

111. Dawkins Delusion (3rd article, Same Stupid Title)

Comment #6960 by Paul Creber on November 16, 2006 at 11:02 am

Actually, I'm 90 per cent sure that Dawkins didn't say: "It will look better on your CV than mine."
As I recall, he was quoting a colleague, an Australian, I seem to remember.

112. Dawkins Delusion (3rd article, Same Stupid Title)

Comment #6817 by Paul Creber on November 15, 2006 at 4:55 pm

A fellow theist by the name of David Robertson claimed in one of his posts on this site that the supernatural is "verifiable and can be the subject of debate".
Please allow me to spell out why this cannot be so.
It just so happens that I am a recent convert to the Church of the Blessed Wednesday. I realise that few of you will have yet heard of this faith so I shall briefly bring you up to speed on its core beliefs.
Our church is part of the radical new UYEC (Ultra Young Earth Creationist) movement. With the divine help of Almighty God and His Blessed Midweek Messenger, we believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. We also believe that the universe was created in its entirety at 3.30pm last Wednesday (GMT).
You may well mock, you Godless bunch, but listen up. We have evidence, yes hard evidence, of the veracity of our beliefs. It comes in the shape of three sacred postcards vouchsafed to the prophet Cyril (my brother-in-law) by the Angel Gabriel while Cyril was supping Guinness at The Traveller's Rest in Barrow-in-Furness.
I have seen these sacred documents, now safely locked away in a shoebox, and can confirm that a translation from the original text, written in Inebriate, clearly states that after creation the Lord God implanted in the human mind the delusion that the Earth, the sun, the moon and stars were of far greater antiquity than is in fact the case. In His divine wisdom, the Lord also provided us with personal memories and written records of events from long ago, which of course never happened. How could they have when the whole thing only started last Wednesday?
We at the Church of the Blessed Wednesday stand by our beliefs and pledge to defend them against all infidel heresy, including anything masquerading on this abominable website as "reason and science".
In our graciousness, we are, however, prepared to enter into dialogue with your members, provided they accept and respect the central truths of our great faith. Please also respect the fact that the faithful will be unable to correspond with you on our Sabbath, which until divine revelation to the contrary, will take place every Wednesday.

Okay, enough of the nonsense. There is in fact a serious lesson to be learned from the above, and it is this: Once you allow the supernatural, you necessarily throw all reason, science and logic out the window. It is nonsense to suggest that reasoned, scientific debate can share a bed with the supernatural. This is simply because at any moment the advocate of the supernatural can merely pull the plug on you and disappear in a puff of smoke.
You may say, of course, that the silly example above is too extreme to have any relevance to anything. But when it comes to the supernatural, the word "extreme" loses all meaning. Just open the Bible or the Koran, and "extreme" supernatural events come tumbling out like conjuror's handkerchiefs. Virgins give birth, men and women come back from the dead, people walk on water, the blind can miraculously see, a one-dollar takeaway meal is transformed into a banquet for thousands (twice), water changes into wine, the sun stops in the sky… need I go on? David Blaine, eat your heart out.
Now I am not saying that the theist is de facto wrong in espousing such beliefs. It was open-mindedness more than anything else that led me to atheism, and my intellectual door remains ajar. What I am saying is that the theist can't have her cake and eat it. She cannot maintain on the one hand that we are all living on a celestial banana – or whatever belief it is that she follows – and on the other insist that reasonable and rational discourse between us is a realistic proposition.
She cannot insist that the laws of physics, chemistry or biology are liable to suspension at any moment if their suspension happens to support her beliefs, and then ask me to fix her car or boil her kettle.
If dialogue means anything, it suggests an openness and willingness to modify or change our beliefs about reality through discourse. As far as I can see, invocation of the supernatural makes such dialogue about as likely as a pedal cycle attempt on the north face of the Eiger.
Such thinking is pernicious for two reasons: Firstly it replaces honest inquiry with dogma, and secondly it rejects rational thought on the grounds of pure bigotry.
Freethinking atheists and agnostics, though they would never claim to have solved - or even addressed – a tiny fraction of the countless puzzles posed by this awesome universe, have at least the honesty to leave their eyes open and take in what is clearly visible.

113. Dawkins Delusion (3rd article, Same Stupid Title)

Comment #6100 by Paul Creber on November 12, 2006 at 3:42 pm

Yorker:
I agree with almost everything you say. However, it is still important that we engage even the most dogmatic theist on a site such as this, if only for the reason that many others of a less entrenched position will be listening.

114. Dawkins Delusion (3rd article, Same Stupid Title)

Comment #5950 by Paul Creber on November 12, 2006 at 2:53 am

In a post above, No More Hornets invites us to visit his or her blog. Having just done so, I can commend it to everyone as a rare repository of brilliance, wit and insight.

115. Dawkins Delusion (3rd article, Same Stupid Title)

Comment #5947 by Paul Creber on November 12, 2006 at 2:38 am

In a post above, No More Hornets invites us to visit his or her blog. Having just done so, I can commend it to everyoine as a rare repository of brilliance, wit and insight.

116. Dawkins Delusion (3rd article, Same Stupid Title)

Comment #5854 by Paul Creber on November 11, 2006 at 12:00 pm

Dear David Robertson,
Thank you for taking the trouble to reply to the posts on this site. I do indeed appreciate that in a mere 2,400 words not everything can be dealt with. But when the central purpose of that 2,400 words is an attempt at rebuttal by a Christian of the atheist position, am I not entitled to expect at least some attempt to defend core Christian beliefs?

117. Dawkins Delusion (3rd article, Same Stupid Title)

Comment #5723 by Paul Creber on November 10, 2006 at 4:10 pm

No More Hornets:
I like it.
How about: the Deaf Shoemaker, the Ancestor's Tail, the Shellfish Gene or - in the Scandinavian edition – River out of Sweden?

118. Dawkins Delusion (3rd article, Same Stupid Title)

Comment #5720 by Paul Creber on November 10, 2006 at 3:58 pm

Apologies, my mistake. Didn't realise Robertson had coined the title himself. Stupid of me.

119. Dawkins Delusion (3rd article, Same Stupid Title)

Comment #5718 by Paul Creber on November 10, 2006 at 3:46 pm

One quick request: Let's refrain from ad hominem attacks and pejorative descriptions of other postings and articles. I notice, for instance, that the title of Robertson's article is described on this site as "stupid". Use of adjectives like this does the sceptic cause no good. We have the rational arguments. Please let's use them, and nothing else. Thanks.

120. Dawkins Delusion (3rd article, Same Stupid Title)

Comment #5711 by Paul Creber on November 10, 2006 at 3:12 pm

More than 2,400 words, and not one of them offering the remotest justification for belief in a man/god born of a virgin who came back from the dead and along the way employed the laws of nature as his plaything. Is it really Richard Dawkins who "offers no empirical evidence" for his philosophy? Or might it just be David Robertson?

121. Atheists' delusions about God

Comment #2836 by Paul Creber on October 24, 2006 at 1:52 am

Tell you what, Giles - you just let us know which bits of the Bible you believe. If you believe the lot, you belong to the very ranks of the conservatives that you appear to castigate. If you don't, you are a slippery cherry picker, grafting your modern morality on to the holy book. This is a point that Dawkins makes time and again, and, like others, I wonder if you actually read The God Delusion.

122. Ryan Tubridy interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #1560 by Paul Creber on October 13, 2006 at 2:18 pm

David Quinn, as others have pointed out, was bombastic and discourteous - effective tactics when you are attempting to mask your ignorance and keep your opponent quiet. Regrettably, he was allowed to get away with this by an apparently spineless Ryan Tubridy, whose journalistic career may just go somewhere when he learns how to say: "Shut up".