"The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins
 

... Have you read it?

Don't...

Not because I don't want you becoming atheists who follow a man that lowers himself to insults when people don't agree with his belief in the universe, or simply his 'disbelief in God(s)', but because of his historical backround.

Not because he refers to Atheism as a group like those of prosecuted Women, Black and/or Foreign Folk that were once sold, or 'Gays', but because this man once OWNED SLAVES IN AFRICA. He is not from the U.S., or Great Britain (Uk Area, Which Most In America Would Just Assume Because Of His Accent). He grew up pretty wealthy considering his place in the world and what his parents had. Apparently somewhere along the way he did a lot of reading, studying, and clarifying, to become what he is now. He's a pretentious-bound man who, if can't get things right and impress, changes the subject and goes on the offense. He can't explain his way out of everything, but his philosophy is somewhere along the lines of "Science Explains All".

Please tell me how he is not just using tricks to get to society on this scale?

Great job, he made friends, and they happen to be scientists. It's great he's bringing science into our world, but we DO NOT have to stop Religion from being a part of our culture.

No more Christmas celebrated in schools, or the word "Easter Bunny" being used on Easter in public gatherings that are official.

I think he's one of the side-causes that America doesn't use it's Holidays as celebratory as they once were used. Since their are too many opposing Religions, he decides it's best to just not make up your mind or shut all of them out. Yes Society can survive by itself without needing Religion to keep it safe, but WHO THE FUCK THINKS THAT THEY ARE SMARTER JUST BECAUSE THEY ARE AN ATHEIST? lmfao. It's become a cheering thing or a sort of rally cry to this faggot.

Please tell me what everyone else is seeing in him and I'm not?

All welcome to debate as long as you have heard a little about his newest book,
"The God Delusion".

By the way, I myself am Agnostic.

I have a belief and see a current use in Religion, but I also see and understand the views of science.

However I don't agree with the view that science is logic. Because if science was simply Logic, wouldn't we know everything by now? lmao...

alright. peace.

You obviously are lost.
You haven't realized the most important fact.
This man is defending tooth and nail his viewpoint on life and creation.
He is writing and fighting stubbornly without really having a real conversation about the subject.
But, there is one important thing you need to realize.
That this man is indeed an Atheist concerning the existence of a god.
But he is also part of a religion itself.
He is a part of the Scientific religion.
These scientists will destroy any other opposing ideas.
And if any ideas that are unexplainable to them comes up, then they will ignore it or change the subject...
It is almost the same as Christianity or any other religion except those groups have adopted the idea of faith to explain what they can't.
Being the way science is constructed(solely on facts and nothing else) they can't adopt a term such as "faith", so the only way they can react is through violence and being stubborn (Which is how societies that are based on science react to things as well.)

I agree that science can go along with faith.
But I myself am agnostic as well though I also believe in the Christian moral system.

So you sat there and agreed 100% with me, but called me "lost"?

roflmfao

The definition of a religon =/= destroying other view points



What are they supposed to say, 'Almighty Science did it'? And I don't know what two retarded children in scientist uniforms you're talking about, but you're pulling supposed facts out of your ass, like, say, stating things like they try and ignore the unexplainable. Excuse me? If something unexplainable that comes up, they try to address it, and if they're big enough they may get a Noble Prize for it. I'm sure they're going to pass that up because scientists are all minions of a grand conspiracy that follow their great Book of Scientific Viewpoint that says if you don't agree with everything in it you'll burn forever in a chamber of malfunctioning computers and live wires.

To be honest, religion and science are the same shit.

Fundamentally, both haven't explained anything.

You too, are a man who just 'lowered' yourself to petty insults you fucken hippocrit... I should pretty much leave it at that seeing as youve killed your credibility even before the quarter mark of your post..

And for your information, the book isnt written because 'people didnt agree with his views'... Actually a large section of the book is devoted to showing how the majority of well educated people actually DO agree with his views these days.. Even giving light to studies that show generally the more intelligence and education found in a group of people the less religion is likly to be found... Which is so blindingly fucking true if you care to think about it..

The book really is an extremily well written rebuttal and systematic dismissal of the bullshit perpectuated by people that are hopelessly stuck in the excessivly antiquated dogmatic realm of mainstream religion.

Aside from christmas being a commercialised festival where we tend to forget that it originated as a pagan sun worshipping date and instead flounder around humoring christians and more-so realising the personal value of giving and recieving gifts and spending time with family, nothing youve mentioned is fitting for a persuasive argument to keep religion in our culture..

Science may not yet explain all, however science is logic....... whereas religion is simply an illogical proposal that humanity clings to because it was there from our humble beginnings as primative fucking morons eager to halt progression in the name of dogmatic faith from the dark ages.

I dont particuly give a sideways fuck on your perspective of richard dawkins as a human being.. Personally I prefer to read his book unbiased and see the logic behind his words rather than foolishly dismiss what he says as a result of prejudgement due to my own belief's..

And I seriously recommend people DO read this book.. Dont let some fucking half whit on the internet prescribe your feelings towards it for you.. Make up your own damn mind.

Science isn't always right, period. There are things science can't explain or haven't explained yet, period.

Now tell me I'm wrong, please.

Saying "Science will be able to prove everything at some point." is the equivalent of faith in my book. It EASILY sounds like "Religion doesn't define a true meaning of life, but once we die we will find out."

At LEAST religion gives it's followers a chance of living a life of wonder trying to communicate and grow and come into touch with themselves and everything around them. All I've seen science do is ask why we'd want to do such a thing.

Science isn't always right, period. There are things science can't explain or haven't explained yet, period.

Religion isn't always right, period. There are things religion can't explain or are shit at explaining, period.

There. Same shit. Of course there is the unknown, that is the basis of life. That is what all of religion points to, is the big hole in our knowledge. We can study particles, and molecules, and atoms, and neutrons, protons and electrons, saying that that is what everything is made of. We will probably go even deeper in the future and discover what the smallest shit is made of. But to be honest, that doesn't explain a thing. They can explain how the particles move, and that they are made of whatever... But underlying that is a big WTF. Why are they moving, why are they there, why does everything happen... No matter how deep you go you can't answer that.

In my opinion the realest religions are Buddhism (zen and chan) and Taoism. I believe in them wholeheartedly. What they tell me isn't hard to believe. Basically, condensed into a single statement, it's:

"You want to know things? You'll never know. Give up and you'll save yourself a lot of grief. btw, here is how to attain contentment and true happiness, if you want it. *sits down comfortably in a scenic location and has a smoke* I love the vibe of cats and flowers, among other things lol."

That is seriously what it essentially is.

edit: Oh, I forgot to say that in my experience, studying these kinds of philosophical schools made it easier for me to understand the true message of most other religions ESPECIALLY christianity.

I understand and agree completely.

What seems to keep getting lost here is that I'm posting not because I disagree with what's being said, but more often how it's being said and presented. Like, I'm not trying to represent the opposing side, but offer it. That's how I've been posting in most of these threads lately. I don't mind if people disagree with something, as long as they're doing it for the right reasons.

I know what you mean... I often get stuck defending Christianity, against Christians of all people -_-.

I work with a homophobe who ends up making it seem like I'm defending gay people all the time. You can imagine how that goes over.

good thread man.....good thread

read it all.....

and i myself don't believe in god or science....

i'd lean towards science, but am defo not a Scientolagist or wtf ever

usta consider myself a taoist actualy...

good philosophy

Nos broke this down well...and Tur brought a lil enlightenment

hah

1ne

Calling Richard Dawkins a faggot doesn't make me a "hippo-crit" (By the way, it's Hypocrite) and isn't 'lowering myself' in any way for me to be able to call his book such. Your opening attempt at calling me a failure basically made your whole post just that. You didn't have your right ideas from the beginning. You are welcome to try again in a less petty way though..

That was stupid as FUCK. Do you know what scientology is?

I assumed from "Wtf ever" that he didn't know what Scientology is. But I don't know why you would bring that up, since a Scientologist (If it were a real word) would be the advanced study of Science, but since Science has many branch offs, a Scientist is anyone who is well-understanding of more than one science.

lol... So you're pretty much both stupid as fuck.

yeah.









was an abstract sarcastic response.

Scientology is a false religion written by a fucking science fiction writer. It's about alien souls escaping from an evil lord and possessing humans.

I don't know where the fuck you get your information from buddy. But you're wayyyyy off.

lmaooo

http://www.scientology.org/

South Park, son.

its more or less true though, L.Ron hubbard was a sci-fi writer. A person is an immortal spiritual being or a thetan who possesses a mind and a bod that has lived many lives. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology

read it, i haven't actually been to the scientoloy website but after reading the wikipedia it seems soooo ridiculous

And your welcome to try again with your response in a less rhetorical mannor where you actually tell me why you dissagree instead of acting like a child with a fucking "i didnt do it" excuse leading onto a "no your wrong and im right so ner" high horse low achiever reply to what I said..

Why make a thread if you dont have the balls to back up your opinions...

What opinions? Bitch you came at me with insults and didn't even QUESTION/GIVE INPUT. I've backed up my opinions, you just insulted my view.

Dude... What did you expect?

Your innitial post simplified was like "GUYS, GUYS.. dont read this book! richard dawkins is a bitter fuckwhit athiest whose just read a lot and made some friends in the science community... Hes just some rich kid guys dont pay him any attention, hes just trying to trick you"

You havnt backed up your opinions cause the only opinions your comming out with are that this guy is a moron and we should keep mainstream religion as a big part of human culture.. All while his book is largly about the suffering and bullshit it perpectuates in our society and the obvious holes religion has when logic is applied. You gave absolutly nothing in the way of rejecting or rebutting against any points he actually made in his book (Hence showing the dead accuracy of my simplification of your post).


I did give imput........I told you your being an idiot and your arguments are massivly immature.. And all you came back with was rhetoric..

The reason I'm being insulting is because I really cant sugar coat my objective in this kind of argument. Imagine if you tried to push this bullshit in a more public forum?.. Imagine if you had the chance to talk this kind of shit to richard dawkins himself?

How embarrasing for you....

I dont mind arguing the validity of religion or the credibility of a book.. But you really need to up your game... Tell me something that an intelligent 13 year old couldnt tell me.. please

I love your anus, Nostra. :) Gimme.

I can't do that last bit... Because an intelligent 13 year old would tell you that you're wrong.

Embarrassing*, Massively*, Input*, Initial*, Fuck.. whit? Lmfao. Learn how to spell G.

anyway..

I didn't go against the points he made in his book, I went against how he went about presenting it. I went against how he opened his book, I went about how he's a hypocrite to using black people as an example, and gays "Coming Out Of The Closet", when the mother fucker's family grew up in Africa owning slaves. You have everything wrong about me and you're really making yourself look stupid with continuation of the subject you think exists.

And by the way, I've done more than just read his books, I've looked up his speeches, his backround, his history, his intentions. This mother fucker is not in any fucking place to preach to us about certain shit, and I used his family slave ownership, as my example, to BACK THAT UP. Pull the cock out of your brain before you get a sexual thinking disease.

Ok, to get away from the bickering match and onto an actual discussion let's try something.

See, I want to say I agree with 2v but he made his argument all wrong. He did sound like a 4 year old arguing about why their parent is a "stupid poopy monster" for not letting them play in the mud.

Well, I'd like to take this down a different route but with the same viewpoint.
After seeing this book mentioned on a lot of message boards I decided to pick it up and tear through it. I get to the end and I have a pile of tissues used to wipe the tears of laughter from my eyes. Good for Dawkins, standing up for his opinion and saying that God doesn't exist and he is "improbable" in a sense. But I don't think the argument he tried to make really said much at all, except to the creationism believers (and everyone knows how lost a person is if they believed dinosaurs were on the Arc ).

Well what about those that believe in a god, but do not believe in creationism, or as I like to call them, the "not-so-crazies". Dawkins argument falls apart at that point.

You can't flip a theist's argumentative strategy against them to support a argument if they don't believe in the strategy to begin with (using a creationism believers strategy to prove god exists against a plain old believer in god.)

He says that if believers think that since the world is so complex then it needed a creator, and since existence is complex then god himself must be intelligent. Because of the intelligence then we must also assume (key word) that God is complex. If God is complex then he/she/it/whatever must also need a creator of some sort of intelligence, etc etc.

Now, this works very well against those who believe in the creationism, hardcore, "by the book" beliefs. But there are many theists out there that do not hold the same beliefs as this, and see creationism as improbable and just some cooked bologna with a nice fried egg named "faith" on top of it.

I believe this is a good argument if you are facing one type of believer. But this is not a good argument to take on all believers. The battlefield is too vast....

And lastly... For Dawkins to pick on the men/women/children who believe in the insanity that is creationism is a weak move. I don't know what he is trying to prove.
I'm expecting his next book to be "The Mole Men Delusion".

So, if you guys could really continue this debate with some sort of structure I'm just gonna mosey on out.

Spelling......dawkins background....

I think weve all heard enough from you... thanks... bye...


I was a bit dissapointed in the way dawkins deals almost exclusivly with christians and jewish religions... But on the subject of christians, I kind of dissagree with people who will label themselves that after simply picking and choosing what they want and dont want to believe..

A car isnt really a car without an engine..

Just like a christian isnt really a christian if their missing fundemental sections of the christian belief system..

Religion is crazy dude... Simplyfied its more or less a denomination of people who allow themselves to be lead into belief's without any form of proof.. I see where your getting at when you say that dawkins is mainly dealing with extreme cases, but given the opportunity what belief's exactly would you remove from the christian religion in order to make it all seem any more logical and scientific than what it currantly is?

What parts of the bible do you dissagree with that make what you believe any more feasable than the weird and wonderful belief's of creationists?

Do you dissagree that jesus was an avatar and the sole son of god, aspect of the deity that created the entire universe and existance itself? Do you dissagree that the bible was inspired and recited to those who wrote it by god himself? Do you dissagree with the genesis creation story? Would you be such a heretic to admit there is substantial plausability behind the theory of evolution?

And if you actually can bring yourself to take elements away from the bible and discredit them, can you actually safly call yourself a christian? Or is your philosophy on life more personal and not really adapt to that of mainstream christianity?

I mean, granted dawkins does generalise quite a bit on the belief's of those hes arguing against, hes taking it all straight from the fundemental belief's of the religion you guys are still claiming to be a part of and also what weve all heard religious people and theologons say time and time again.. To be a christian, you should believe that existance was designed by an exterior being.. And this is literally what the book is arguing against..

So my overall question to you is, what is it youve changed about christianity in your own mind thats a whole lot more probable than the creationist philosophy?

Ok. First thing is first.

I should've stated the fact that the point of view I was arguing from was that of a group I was debating with at the catholic church down the road from me. We weren't talking about Dawkins in particular, but I was bringing up "the insanity of religion" topic. They went on to tell me, which I believe is a weak but commonly used Theological debate strategy, that there are different sects of christianity and therefore my argument does not apply. I started to mention the whole "basis of christianity" thing with the divine and perfect creator, and they just started crackin' off about nothing. My eyes began to glaze over and I started to drool a little bit.

Now I am not a christian in any form. I don't recognize the fable of Jesus, the divine son of god himself, walking the earth (I don't think I even need to get into why). I decided to try out religion at one point because, why the hell not? But as I got into it and as I read about other religions it made me realize something. Each religion, given the certain aspects and guidelines each has, can be believed over each. You can't have a muslim and a christian argue and one convert the other, unless of course one is really weak minded. Christianity and the Islamic faith, if perceived by the books and through the guidelines they lay out, can both be argued to no end (well, until the crash of civilization). That is why we are faced with the religious genocide (caused by christianity mainly) that no one recognizes (Crusades, Missionaries, Wiping out of the Indians, Wiping out of almost every indigenous culture and religion on the planet).

Religion has this tendency to run itself in circles and into walls occasionally. I believe that the people that I was defending don't like to be grouped with the creationist idea of "no evolution, 10,000 year old earth, dinos on the arc" crap. Then when they are faced with a good argument, they take the religion cop out by saying something like "you gotta have faith" or they make some quote out of the bible. Yes, because when I am looking for a debate that may really teach me something, I want to hear quotes out of a book of hearsay chinese telephone bull shit. Yes, please tell me about the man (men*) named Jesus and about his "miracles" and his parables (which I do believe are good to use to teach lessons).

So to sum that post up, I am on your side Nostra.... I just wanted to post up the defense I was given when taking the Atheist (or even Gnostic) side of the argument. So, if we could get someone who actually BELIEVED in this stuff to argue, maybe this would get interesting. Because there ain't nothing like trying to make a blind man read text.

Dawkins did bring up a few points and expanding on them in a manner I hadn't thought before, though it's obvious now. Like people saying that things are so complex in nature God had to make them, (usually incorrectly quoting Darwin out of context, and a lot of quoting out of context happens on the side of creationists and opposers, but they really do love quoting christian literature disproven twenty years ago with their little salt and sun and moon dust 'facts'), like this really complex tree. Of course if it's that complex, the person who made it had to be more complex, so you really can't use complexity as an argument. Of course I always knew this, and that the probability of life generating on its own isn't that wild compared to a perfect being generating onits own, but he put it into a good perspective.

And of course the book has flaws.

If you want someone to take the side of Christianity, or better yet the bible, I actually believe in a lot of that book. Mostly the new testament though. If you are trying to find truth in the bible you have to take everything in it with a grain of salt and weed out the bullshit. There is stuff in there that is completely stupid, and there is stuff in there that is 100% on the mark. For example, a lot of the stories in the old testament can be found in other religions only with different characters and shit, but basically the same. And by other religions I mean ancient religions, ancient Egyptian mythology and stuff like that. The stories in the bible are just the middle eastern version of that, and God is portrayed in a completely different way than he is in other parts of the bible.

And there is also the endless pages of crap with no meaning that people desperately try to find meaning in. "And you shall have a son, and you will call him Isaac. And his son shall be named Nathaniel. When his son is born, it shall be named Ezekiel, who will have a son and call him Micah. And his son will be given the name Joseph, and Joseph will found a country and call it Aramathea, because of its wide and vast space. In that country Joseph will have six sons born of two different women, and blah blah blah etc." It's a bunch of useless tripe that was for some reason retained.

Anyway Jesus was the main guy who knew what he was on about in the bible. I do believe he was the son of God, although I do not 100% believe in the circumstances surrounding his birth and death. If I was a religious leader in charge of that kind of shit hundreds or thousands of years ago, that would be the first thing I would fabricate. It was most likely an attempt to entice people into listening to what Jesus has to say. His miracles may also not be true, in the literal sense, but a lot can be taken from them. An idiot would consider his miracles literal, and just sort of be awed by them and go "Oh wow, Jesus was really amazing," instead of learning something. "Turning water into wine," "raising the dead," "curing the blind." From my point of view the meaning of those stories is not that Jesus was a magician, it is the deeper meaning that can be applied to our existence.

And this is one of the major problems with religion...

It would be very easy to write a philosophical manual with all the bibles teachings and exclude the bullshit... But before any of it gains acceptance.. we really need to, as a species, abolish these dogmatic religions and step out of the dark ages into an age of freedom for secular science...

The problem is the nature of people. They like to group together, so even if every religious denomination disbanded somehow, people with similar beliefs would still band together and form a community. Following that, different people within the community would have different beliefs, and would still be arguing. They would break off into different sects, different new religions, whatever it is... Even modern philosophy and science is full of that kind of thing. It just can't be helped..

Really? That's interesting logic. But incorrect. Just because two things are similar doesn't mean they are the same, wouldn't you agree?

I do agree with most of this post. Except the part about the miracles; the miracles are meant to be taken literally. I don't know whether to believe them or not, but if you believe that Jesus was the son of God, I don't see how it is hard to believe he could perform miracles. They aren't completely symbloic though, like some other stories in the bible.

Yeah. I was just using that phrase "same shit", but I probably should have said they were similar instead of the same.



I believe that Jesus was the son of God, but that isn't really anything special. Everyone is apparently a "child" of God, Jesus was just a really wise one that knew his stuff. It is hard for me to believe in the miracles because I don't see people performing miracles very often in modern times, and miracles are often made up and stories exaggerated to make the person in question seem more amazing (i.e. Greek mythology). I don't actually know any of this though, and I'm quite open to the possibility of the miracles being literal. Their metaphorical meanings seem more in accordance with the rest of Jesus' teachings than if they were just taken literally.

I think this way particularly because people love to worship things, and they like the thing they worship to be higher than themselves. Jesus didn't really fit the bill, preaching equality, loving everyone, hanging out with lepers, prostitutes and outcasts etc. The bible and Christianity portray Jesus as this amazing God who gracefully bestowed his teachings onto us lowly mortals, when in fact his social status was the complete opposite to that. It would not surprise me if some of the details surrounding his life, and especially his miracles, were not completely true.