Oklahoma, Vatican Take Opposite Tacks On Evolution 1161
nizcolas writes "Notable evolutionary biologist, author, and speaker Richard Dawkins was recently invited to speak on the campus of the University of Oklahoma as part of the school's celebration of Charles Darwin. However, Oklahoma lawmakers are working to silence Dawkins with the passage of House Bill 1015 (RTF), which reads in part: '... the University of Oklahoma ... has invited as a public speaker on campus, Richard Dawkins of Oxford University, whose published opinions, as represented in his 2006 book "The God Delusion," and public statements on the theory of evolution demonstrate an intolerance for cultural diversity and diversity of thinking and are views that are not shared and are not representative of the thinking of a majority of the citizens of Oklahoma ...'" Pending legal action, Dawkins is set to speak tonight at 7 pm. (Luckily, we no longer live in the era of Bertrand Russell's court-ordered dismissal on moral grounds from the College of the City of New York.) And reader thms sends word of the Vatican's Darwin conference (program): "The conference, marking the 150th anniversary of the publication of "The Origin of Species," has been criticized by advocates of Creationism or Intelligent Design for not inviting them. The Muslim creationist Harun Yahya, most famous for his Atlas of Creation, also complained about not being invited."
Oklahoma? (Score:5, Funny)
Celebrating cultural diversity? You've got to be fucking kidding me.
Re:Oklahoma? (Score:5, Insightful)
No kidding. The resolution begins:
By paragraph THREE it is condemning Dawkins for, and I am not making this up:
Re:Oklahoma? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oklahoma? (Score:5, Informative)
You know, if you actually read the bill under discussion, you'd notice that it doesn't squash anything, much less anyone's "free speech rights". All it says is that the legislature opposes his appearance. They didn't ban him, and they don't order anything to be done about it. Oh, yes, they will "order" that their opposition message be sent to the University leaders.
Re:Oklahoma? (Score:5, Insightful)
A government taking a stance against free speech does effect someones right to free speech, and in this case it also violates freedom of Religion in the constitution.
Re:Oklahoma? (Score:5, Insightful)
I did. Whether they are simply advocating the squashing of Dawkins' freedom of speech or are actually squashing, if the University tells Dawkins' to pack it in, the end result is the same.
Let's also not forget that First Amendment also includes the freedom to practice a religion of one's choosing. This also includes the right to practice no religion at all. IOW, Dawkins' has a Constitutional right to be an atheist and to speak about his own beliefs (or non-beliefs) as an atheist.
I'm not an atheist myself, but I will defend the rights of atheists to believe (or not believe) what they choose.
Re:Oklahoma? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think it has to do with Dawkin's bashing of religion and religious people in his TV programs and books by using fallacies [guardian.co.uk] which some people call it as "Hate Speech".
If it was some other Atheist who doesn't have a track record of bashing religion and religious people, I think they would not object to him or her speaking about Evolution.
I feel that people should be able to have free speech and choose their own religion or choose not to choose a religion if they want.
Not all Christians are opposed to Evolution proof of that is here. [thankgodforevolution.com] What I think the majority in Oklahoma are objecting to is Dawking's bashing of religion and religious people which has made him a bigot over the years.
Re:Oklahoma? (Score:5, Insightful)
Name one of Dawkin's "fallacies". Go ahead.
Re:Oklahoma? (Score:5, Insightful)
That science, which is the systematic and empirical study of the natural world, can prove the non-existence of a supernatural entity. ("Supernatural" being, by definition, outside of the purview of science.)
Dawkins is an impressive scientist, but when he ventures into theology, he reminds me of a Feynman quote: "I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy."
Re:Oklahoma? (Score:5, Interesting)
That's not a fallacy at all. Science can most certainly investigate questions about the existence of supernatural entities.
Just as soon as you claim that this supernatural entity does stuff for you, affects the universe, changes reality, prevents a dude from dying in a plane crash, or any number of other things that religious people attribute to gods, then those things can be investigated and experimented with.
If you want to claim that your god doesn't touch any part of the world that science can investigate, then that makes you a Deist. And that's a useless sort of god to invent.
So, go ahead and try again to find a Dawkins fallacy.
Re:Oklahoma? (Score:4, Informative)
It is a fallacy because it is inductive logic, which is not always true.
Dawkins also uses "Strawmen" to describe religous people and religion, and does personal attacks on them as well. Not worthy of a great scientist.
Immanuel Kant proved that you cannot prove God exists or does not exist by Science long ago. Anything else is pure logical fallacies like inductive logic, which Dawkins uses as well as circular references and wishful thinking.
Re:Oklahoma? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is a fallacy because it is inductive logic, which is not always true.
...
Immanuel Kant proved that you cannot prove God exists or does not exist by Science long ago. Anything else is pure logical fallacies like inductive logic, which Dawkins uses as well as circular references and wishful thinking.
Well, go ahead and explain how Kant's proof is still valid today (and will still be valid tomorrow). I bet you'll say something like "well, clearly logic isn't changing" but I dare you to use anything other than induction to prove such a statement. Humans inherently use induction when they assume that the universe, logic, or anything maintains its form over time. Specifically, you believe that because the proof has always been valid in the past (P(i), i<N, for the current time N), and a valid proof now is a valid proof in the near future (P(N) -> P(N+epsilon)), inductively the same proof will always be valid (P(t) for all times t).
Re:Oklahoma? (Score:4, Informative)
Which is why he says "Why There Almost Certainly Is No God". But like all other fundies, you didn't even bother to read his books before spewing out nonsense.
Re:Oklahoma? (Score:5, Insightful)
Quotes please.
Dawkins freely admits you can't disprove the existance of a God or any other supnernatural being, no more than you can disprove the existance of pink unicorns, FSM or Santa Claus.
Re:Oklahoma? (Score:5, Informative)
He's a scientist using science to claim a "delusion" in God. It's reasonable to assume he's using the scientific term. If he's claiming you can't disprove God, then where is the evidence to the contrary he is implying by the very title of his book?
Definition of "God" error, basically. The definition that Dawkins presents evidence against is a God that actively changes things in the world today and directly created the world 7000 years ago via special creation. Dawkins cannot present evidence against a deistic god that wound up the universe and let it go, and he does not attempt to argue against such a god (which is not much of a god, really).
If anything, Dawkins' book can be read as "The (personal, loving, etc.) God Delusion", because he is challenging the concept many people have of a friendly omnipotent guy (or trio of guys) in the sky who loves us but damns some of us to hell after testing everyone with pain and suffering in our earthly life, gave us rational minds that should be able to decide what is actually true and false and what makes sense and what doesn't make sense, yet requires blind faith (yes, a belief that pain and suffering in life can be justified by the afterlife requires, literally, blind faith; faith whose ultimate results cannot be seen during earthly life) in order to obtain infinite bliss.
Re:Oklahoma? (Score:5, Insightful)
"God" is nebulous, and inherently impossible to disprove. So is anything else anyone could make up that is untestable! That was kind of the whole point of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
It's perfectly fair for Dawkins to use the term "delusion", because theists have made an outlandish claim with no evidence to back it up. You can't assert something, provide no evidence for it, then claim you're right until someone proves you wrong. That's literally the logic of an insane person. The sane person observes a phenomenon, comes up with a testable hypothesis, and tests it, and doesn't claim their hypothesis is true unless it holds up to repeated and rigorous testing, and even then, there's no 100% "proven."
Re:Oklahoma? (Score:5, Informative)
Wow, you seem like a person who has never even read or heard Dawkins or his colleagues, ever. Dawkins of course says you cannot *prove* the non-existence of God. He then points out the same is true for sasquatch, FSM, Xenu, Apollo, Zeus, Thor, unicorns, fairies, elves, leprechauns...
The funny thing is that we have about the same level of evidence for sasquatch as God.
Re:Oklahoma? (Score:5, Insightful)
You kidding me? I've never seen a blurry photograph of God running through the woods.
Re:Oklahoma? (Score:5, Insightful)
Clearly you've never watched anything that Dawkins has done, or read anything that he's written.
Dawkins explicitly admits that he can't disprove the existence of God. He's said so many, many times.
He also admits that he can't disprove the existence of a teapot in orbit around the sun. [wikipedia.org]
You have the same problem that many theists have - you seem believe that your theology is above criticism. Dawkins may not be able to prove the non-existence of your God(s), but he can certainly criticize your religion in the context of the actions it promotes.
I'm sure you're one of the reasonable theists who would never try to repress science, harm public health, or oppress the rights of a minority. But the fact is that there are people who want to do those things in the name of their religion. And many of those people are in the highest levels of the US and other governments.
That's what Dawkins is criticizing. If you want to argue that Dawkins is wrong, that's valid. But Dawkins' arguments don't hinge on the belief that science can disprove religion.
Re:Oklahoma? (Score:5, Insightful)
Full disclosure: I'm an athiest
What the hell do you think religious people have been doing? They've gone a hell of a lot further than 'bashing atheism and nonreligious people'.
I'm not a huge fan of Dawkins, but to be fair, there's a lot less of 'evangelical' atheists (and I'd bet a smaller percentage) than evangelical Christians/Muslims/etc.
Re:Oklahoma? (Score:5, Insightful)
Here in the USA, I think that the attitude you are describing is a result of atheists feeling like they have been backed into a corner lately.
Think about the likes of:
Jack Thompson, Tipper Gore, the whole teaching ID/Creationism in science classes in Kansas(that was fortuneatly derailed), the 'think of the children' war on well, everything, the 'Moral Majority' sponsored legislation, 'Family Values' legislation, etc. being constantly hurled at us in a country that is supposedly run by a 'seperation of church and state', secular philosophy that has broken down and headed the opposite direction.(attempted theism by the Moral Majority/Family Values camp)
It's a defensive backlash, and IMO, justifiable.
The 'other side' seems to not realize that 'freedom of religion' also implies the right of 'freedom from religion...'My way, or the highway' gets old after a while!
Re:Oklahoma? (Score:5, Insightful)
Suppose you believed that Snow White and the Seven Dwarves are real. Is me calling you an idiot fair or bigotry?
Re:Oklahoma? (Score:5, Informative)
I think it has to do with Dawkin's bashing of religion and religious people in his TV programs and books by using fallacies which some people call it as "Hate Speech".
I read that article, and I have to say the irony is pretty thick when a theist accuses an atheist of being intellectually lazy. However, I missed the part where Dawkins bashed anyone. In fact, the entire article was someone bashing Dawkins. If you have examples of Dawkins bashing people (not ideas) I'd be interested to read them.
Re:Oklahoma? (Score:4, Insightful)
I believe my reading of the remark was more reasonable than yours. The remark says that it is ironic if a theist accuses an atheist of being intellectually lazy. It doesn't in any way single out the article author, nor provide any particular reason for us to conclude that the remark must have been meant to single out the article author.
Well, the problem here is that the participants in this discussion are being quite unspecific about what they mean by "bashing someone." I certainly know for sure that Dawkins regularly labels theists as being, as a general rule, superstitious, ignorant, unintelligent, unsubtle, simpletons, archaic, unprogressive, etc. And what's more, he seems to be in a crusade to go all over the world giving talks where he does so.
My problem with that is very simple: while I very much agreed with him when I was around 18, over the past 12 years or so I've gradually come to see that Dawkins, while quite intelligent, isn't really very knowledgeable outside a very narrow field, but goes around acting as if he is, and won't listen to reason when people try to enlighten him about his errors and misunderstandings. He doesn't know enough about, for example, philosophy or the social sciences to understand that the scientistic, atheistic worldview he's crusading for is not nearly as solid as he thinks it is. It's like he lives in a time-warp where none of the philosophy of the second half of the 20th century happened. No Wittengstein; no Quine-Duhem hypothesis; no anti-foundationalism [wikipedia.org]; no Kuhn, Lakatos nor Feyerabend.
Once you realize how many problems Dawkins' whole worldview has, you start to think that perhaps he is a bit intellectually lazy. Basically, he picks on the theistic crowd very loudly while pretending that there are no serious secular objections to what he wants us to believe.
Re:Oklahoma? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's precisely how the First Amendment *does not work*. If it is funded by the government, then it must remain neutral (a-theistic if you will), regardless of the religious affiliations of any or all taxpayers. That is the point of the First Amendment.
Re:Oklahoma? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Oklahoma? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think what a lot of religious people forget is that religion can be a very oppressive force for those that don't accept the majority view. I have personally found religion to be a very hostile force against me in my life.
The Catholic church still runs 90% of the schools in Ireland, and I, like virtually everyone else in the country, had no choice but to attend a Catholic primary and secondary school. It is not a happy experience to be marched down to mass when you don't believe in any of it, and don't practice any religion at home. The situation was in no way restricted to schools. Up to the 1980's it was common for non-Catholics in the workplace to stand up and make motions of prayer during the Angelus at noon so as not to stand out.
It is a very difficult thing to be a non-believer amid believers. I can tell you that dissension in these matters will evoke severe hostility. The situation that I and many others else in Ireland found ourselves in is the exact situation that the American first amendment was designed to avoid.
When religious people argue for prayers in schools, or courts, or legislature, they rarely consider the effect on non-believers. Religion does create a hostile work environment for just about anyone except the devout, and that's not something that any Government office should promote or enforce. If you want to go and pray or need time to do so, absolutely. But don't force a hostile environment on the people that don't want it.
Your first amendment is as much about freedom from religion as it is about freedom of religion.
Re:Oklahoma? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oklahoma? (Score:5, Funny)
This is hilarious. The far-right nutjobs are trying to appropriate the rhetoric of the far-left nutjobs and failing miserably. Lame. But funny. It should go right into the Onion.
Re:Oklahoma? (Score:5, Insightful)
The truth hurts, news at 11.
Re:Oklahoma? (Score:4, Funny)
Not only that. Fox News recently reported that 51% of the american population are now in majority.
Re:Oklahoma? (Score:5, Informative)
Dawkins is not making a case of mere ideas, opinions, or the evidence of hypothesis and testing.
Perhaps you have not actually read his books, or else you have not understood them. Dawkins' arguments on the demonstrable falsehood and general malevolence of religions are based on observable evidence and the testing of hypotheses. He is by no means the first or only such advocate, but at the present time he is the most visible and the most excoriated by his opponents.
Re:Oklahoma? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
actually, if you consider the people that belive in evolution as existing, but influenced by God (but not no-God evolution), then it jumps to more than that.
I heard the statistic a couple weeks ago, I just remember that evolution was lower than creationalism in percentage, unless you counted the people who believed in evolution influenced to some extent by God.
The statistics I remember correctly, were
1) Evolution*: 35 %
2) Evolution influenced by God: 15%
3) Creationalism: 45%
4) Uncertain/undecided: 5%
* I usu
Re:Oklahoma? (Score:5, Insightful)
to put it simply:
A "god" answer is an answer to /who/ and maybe /why/. Science is about asking /how/.
Re:Oklahoma? (Score:4, Informative)
Religious people, at least in the US, have been ceding power to the secularists since the Salem Witch Trials.
The rest of your post is clearly anti-secularist, and I find it hysterical that somehow didn't notice that the above comment is incredibly pro-secularist. Unless of course you are of the view that returning to the Salem Witch Trials would be a GOOD thing.
suing to have christmas and easter displays removed from public grounds
Part of defending our Constitutional right of religious freedom.
The Constitution protects our individual freedoms against the force and powers of government. The government cannot oppress any disfavored religion. Nor can the government establish favoritism for any particular religion.
The First Amendment required that the FORCE and POWER of government remain neutral on religion. The force and powers of government cannot be used to infringe our individual religious freedoms, cannot be used to establish any religion as governmentally favored above any other.
The Government shouldn't be meddling in religious displays at all, and to the extent it is permissible at all it is only permissible if the government does not establish any religion above any other, like in Washington state had a display equally and non-nondiscriminatorily open to submissions representing any and all religions and religious viewpoints. You might remember some news stories about it - everything was peaceful and quiet until someone submitted an atheist sign for the display. And then of course there was a shitfit over it - a shitfit by Christians.
public for everyone but christians
The Constitution requires EQUAL treatment.
It only takes about 25 IQ points to see why Christianity is almost exclusively the religion involved in such cases - Christianity is the overwhelming majority religion. As such, in our Democratic system, it is generally the only religion in a position to attempt to hijack and abuse the force and powers of government to establish favoritism for itself. Christianity is the only religion in a position to commit constitutional violations, so obviously it is going to be the only religion involved in lawsuits for committing constitutional violations.
suing to remove moments of silence (cause someone might use the time to pray, ooohh)
The ACLU wins virtually every School Prayer case because they are defending the "reasonable middle ground" position, defending our Constitutional protection of freedom of religion against the force government.
The ACLU position is virtually identical to the Supreme Court position. The ACLU explicitly supports the right of students to pray in school. The ACLU position is that government officials cannot abuse their governmental powers to infringe upon students' protected freedom of religion. The government cannot favor nor oppress any religion, cannot promote nor suppress any particular religious beliefs or practice. Each and every case the ACLU has brought strictly targeted government officials attempting to use the force of government for the purpose of meddling in students' religion.
Students have the right to (non-disruptively) pray in school.
The force of government cannot be used for the purpose of promoting student prayer,
nor can force of government cannot be used for the purpose of suppressing student prayer.
Again again again, there is no problem no problem no problem with students praying in school. The problem is the use of government powers attempting to promote or suppress student prayer.
Being an atheist is not even scientific. A true scientist would be agnostic
Only if you apply a ludicrously extreme definition.
Are you "agnostic" about the existence of unicorns?
Are you "agnostic" about the existence of faeries?
You can't prove unicorns and faeries don't exist. If you were being truly rational you have to admit you are "agnostic" about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.
Most self-defined atheists in the US are
Re:Oklahoma? (Score:5, Insightful)
Who's to say that there isn't a god, and he/she/it didn't design evolution?
Nietzsche, and very brilliantly.
The argument goes roughly like this (though he puts it a lot better than I can):
Existence is defined by the effects something has on the rest of the world. If we take a hypothetical something, call it "thing an sich" or "god" or whatever else you like, which has no effect on anything else, then due to it not affecting anything, we can not verify its existence. Also, its existence makes no difference whatsoever. Therefore, it does not exist in any meaningful sense of the word.
Now you might have noticed that "god" is on the retreat. Vast areas that were clearly "gods domain" a thousand years ago are now the domain of science. Science does not only prove "how", it also proves "who" in the sense that there is no "who". Evolution works perfectly well without any guiding hand. It rains due to atmospherics, not because god is angry. Kids are made by biological events, not given by a supreme being. Whenever science is sufficiently "done" with any of its research areas, there is no "effect" of a hypothetical god left. In the end, we will end up with a "god" that has no effect whatsoever, and therefore does not exist.
QED.
Re:Oklahoma? (Score:5, Insightful)
Dawkins holds that to be an intelligent scientific thinker you must hold to both strict naturalism and evolution apriori, which is not so subtly implying that all of the other 53-ish percent of humans living in the United states are basically drooling morons.
No. You don't have to be a drooling moron to be Just Plain Wrong. Sometimes intelligent, honest people are Just Plain Wrong. Hundreds of years ago, the religious also honestly believed based on biblical evidence that the Sun revolved around the Earth. They deluded themselves, just as people today delude themselves about evolution, which is as absolutely factual as the Earth going around the Sun.
And hopefully someday people will realize they are Just Plain Wrong about the existence of God, but unfortunately that's not as easily proven beyond a reasonable doubt as evolution.
Re:Prove non-existence of God? (Score:5, Insightful)
How on Earth do you think it could be possible to prove the non-existence of an omnipotent entity?
I didn't say "prove", I said, "prove beyond a reasonable doubt." You can't prove it beyond all doubt. You can only continue to remove all the superstitious nonsense and hope that when people see that absolutely nothing is left that they decide for themselves that it's most rational to conclude that nothing was ever there.
We don't have "proof" that the Egyptian god Ra never existed, or that Zeus was never real, but most people accept those. Someday (hopefully) people will accept that the Abrahamic God was every bit as real as Ra and Zeus -- not real at all.
Re:Prove non-existence of God? (Score:5, Insightful)
I didn't say "prove", I said, "prove beyond a reasonable doubt." You can't prove it beyond all doubt. You can only continue to remove all the superstitious nonsense and hope that when people see that absolutely nothing is left that they decide for themselves that it's most rational to conclude that nothing was ever there.
I never actually understood the fight between creationism and evolution. It's not like they have to be polar opposites. The Bible never actually says anything about how long it took to create the world (unless, of course, you take a literal look at the Bible, and then it's 6 days). However, it's quite feasible that evolution was used in the creation of the world. Why not use some excellent tools that would allow growth and expansion of so many billions of creatures? I can't see God just saying, "Let me do things the hard way, when there's this really awesome way of doing things..."
Maybe that's just me.
As to your "prove beyond a reasonable doubt" and "no real" remarks - whether God is or is not real (and I believe that he is), is it really such a big deal that people want something to believe in, even if you don't particularly want or need that?
Re:Prove non-existence of God? (Score:5, Informative)
The Bible never actually says anything about how long it took to create the world (unless, of course, you take a literal look at the Bible, and then it's 6 days).
The problem isn't the six days, it's the Adam and Eve mythology. The Bible clearly states that God created man, and all people were descended from Adam and Eve. That directly contradicts evolution, which states that man descended directly from animals.
Now, I realize that you can mangle the bible into fitting evolution if you accept that the bible is allegory, but unfortunately, too many Christians can't accept that. And truthfully, they *shouldn't* accept that the bible is allegory. It says what it says, right down to killing anyone who works on the Sabbath. Christians should accept ALL of the bible, from advocacy of slavery on down -- or none of it (as would be my preference). Most Christians are total hypocrites when it comes to accepting the word of God.
is it really such a big deal that people want something to believe in, even if you don't particularly want or need that?
It wouldn't be a big deal if people would keep their beliefs to themselves. Astrology is relatively harmless, because people don't generally want it taught to students as an "alternative theory" to astronomy. But when you have wackos who want prayer in schools, or who will never vote for an atheist into public office, then religion has very real consequences.
Of course, I shouldn't have to mention religiously-motivated terrorism.
Re:Oklahoma? (Score:5, Insightful)
I was Catholic for 17 years, then became an EMT and decided a God wouldn't create a world like this - and if he did, we shouldn't worship him for it. I sure don't claim to know everybody's beliefs, but I know the official positions and most of the sub-positions.
And I'm sorry if I came off as personally insulting. That 'you' was meant as 'one', as in people in general.
Having said that, I think what Dawkins is saying is that some people are religious and nonscientific. He's calling those people stupid (really, it's ignorance).
Then he's saying there are people who believe in a God whose existence is unprovable and undetectable, and a scientific method that says he is irrelevant (if he does exist) because his existence is unprovable and undetectable.
No matter how you say it, those two ideas conflict with each other. Christianity holds that God exists, and we can't know his ways. Science holds that we shouldn't give a shit if we can't observe anything about it.
Re:Oklahoma? (Score:5, Insightful)
Dawkins holds that to be an intelligent scientific thinker you must hold to both strict naturalism and evolution apriori, which is not so subtly implying that all of the other 53-ish percent of humans living in the United states are basically drooling morons.
Perhaps Dawkins is not implying that these people are unintelligent, but that they are unscientific.
Re:Oklahoma? (Score:5, Funny)
If you've interacted with a statistically relevant slice of American society, you should easily accept that at least 1 in 2 Americans are drooling morons. For Christ's sake, we have *cooking directions* on POPTARTS. We have chain saws with explicit warning labels to keep you from touching the flying blades with your fingers. My tractor's digging bit has a giant warning label depicting someone getting wrapped around the screw, and people STILL get killed by the damn things. At hospitals, motorcycle riders are referred to only as organ donors. How many people have fallen into a wood chipper, or tried to clean an obstruction while the thing was on and gotten eaten? I can't remember the last time I've gone a month without hearing of somebody dying due to their own stupidity. Americans steal high-voltage power lines for the copper, cut through tree limbs above themselves, and screw anything that moves, without protection.
53% is incredibly generous.
Re:Oklahoma? (Score:5, Insightful)
The religious don't have a logical leg to stand on, so attack the messenger. That's their idea of debate.
There's nothing hateful about arguing against mere ideas. Especially bizarre and plain wrong ones.
Re:Oklahoma? (Score:5, Insightful)
The intersection of people who find The God Delusion hateful and the people who have actually read The God Delusion is probably less than 1% of the total population.
Dawkins holds that he is correct, as does everyone else with a position on any given issue. It's hardly his fault that the logical consequence is that people who disagree with him are incorrect.
If this were, say, a political discussion, Dawkins' message and tone would positively mild compared to partisans like Rush Limbaugh. Political partisans don't bother with implication. They directly insult the other side's intelligence all the time and no one really bats an eye. I don't seem to Dawkins ever telling someone from the opposition to go fuck himself, [washingtonpost.com] for example.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
and i don't care one bit what you take seriously or not.
Dumb Summary (Score:4, Informative)
Summary is stupid. The reading of this resolution just looks like it "condemns" Dawkins, it's not going to "silence" him or boot him out of the state or any other such nonsense.
Re:Dumb Summary (Score:5, Informative)
"NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE 1ST SESSION OF THE 52ND OKLAHOMA LEGISLATURE:
THAT the Oklahoma House of Representative strongly opposes the invitation to speak on the campus of the University of Oklahoma to Richard Dawkins of Oxford University, whose published statements on the theory of evolution and opinion about those who do not believe in the theory are contrary and offensive to the views and opinions of most citizens of Oklahoma.
THAT the Oklahoma House of Representatives encourages the University of Oklahoma to engage in an open, dignified, and fair discussion of the Darwinian theory of evolution and all other scientific theories which is the approach that a public institution should be engaged in and which represents the desire and interest of the citizens of Oklahoma."
The OK House is clearly encouraging the University not to allow him to speak. Quite strongly.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Dumb Summary (Score:4, Informative)
We had something vaguely similar happen over in Virginia last year. The college president refused to censor a controversial event, and also refused to allow religious icons to be displayed in public rooms that weren't being used for religious services.
The budget didn't get cut*, though a few administrators lost their jobs shortly afterward for "undisclosed reasons."
(*Actually, the budget did get cut, and by a substantial amount. However, this was because the state's currently broke)
Hasn't sopped them from floating ass-backward legislation again. There's a bill currently before the senate to cap out-of-state enrollment at 20%, which would either drive most of the state's universities into insolvency, or raise tuition to absurd ($60k+) levels.
Fun times all around! I can't wait to graduate, and move the hell away from here.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If they can intimidate and/or legislate pro-evolution and/or anti-religion out of the state then you can expect OK to plunge into the dark ages and other states will try and follow suit.
Re:Dumb Summary (Score:4, Insightful)
Include the next 2 paragraphs though and you can see what this actually has them doing.
(bolding is mine)
They're sending a strongly worded letter. That's it. This is a complete non-story and the sort of symbolic political crap that pols do so they can send out fund raising letters to the fundies saying how they fought the darwinists without actually having to do anything. If they're preventing him from speaking that's an issue but there's nothing here that at all suggests that.
Re:Disingenuous BS (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you have suffered the results of the Evangelical atheist. You have Abiogenesis and the bubble theories of evolution which are scientific theories. You have scientific works done by Young earth scientists which is now actually the accepted idea for the creation of some canyons and low lands in western the United states that were created in weeks and days instead of millions of years.
The problems isn't really the lack of other theories to compete with Evolutions, it's alternatives within evolution that could lead to a better understanding of the process. The evangelist evolutionist or evangelist atheist seem to want to lock understanding into what we know of today and only refine those processes instead of allowing other theories to play out to their validity if it might upset what he believes. It's like saying Science is the pursuit of the truth because it is always evaluating the weight of the facts and review them across the community, then saying shut up, this is the way things are, the way they always are, and I don't care what you or your evidence says. It sort of makes a religion out of science, especially concerning evolution which is apparent with Dawkins.
Re:Dumb Summary (Score:5, Insightful)
Still stupid. Not like they don't have real problems they could be trying to solve, rather than trying to condemn a guy for saying mean things about their imaginary friend.
When you're more conservative than the Vatican, there is a problem.
Re:Dumb Summary (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, the bill is simply to send a nasty letter to the university president, nothing more. There is no "legal action".
Re:Dumb Summary (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Conceptual domains (Score:5, Insightful)
That makes it the product of the study of fairy tales with no basis in reality. Attempting to put science and fairy tales on the same level is ridiculous and is the same as passing laws banning kryptonite because it is harmful to Superman or allowing people to shoot at one another because in the cartoons it just makes one's face dirty.
Re:Conceptual domains (Score:5, Insightful)
The computer you're typing on, the principles behind the electricity and the circuit boards and the plastics and the manufacturing... are all products of the scientific method. Every single human advance that allows you to spend your days doing something other than sitting in the jungle naked waiting to be eaten by a big cat are the result of the scientific method.
The scientific method produces theories that make correct predictions about the world around us. Theology does not. Simplistic philosophical talking points like "Truth" have nothing to do with it, and maintaining that robust scientific theories that make such correct predictions are just "opinions" is hand-waving at best and intellectually dishonest at worst.
The fact that you and I are even able to converse about this subject over an electronic network is a direct result of the discoveries of science. Theology may give emotional comfort, but it is not, and never will be, in the same realm as science. Don't drag rational thinking people into the navel-gazing fairly tale world of theology.
OU Student Here (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:OU Student Here (Score:4, Insightful)
anti-abortion posters on campus
The word is "anti-choice." No one is really "pro abortion," except maybe a few inconsequential lunatics. What anti-abortionists are fighting against is the right to choose, not the right to have recreational abortions - I don't think those exist. So those of us who believe in a woman's right to have control of the insides of her body call it an anti-choice stance. Anyway, Oklahoma sounds like a terrible place for the progressive and diverse. I hope Dawkins gets to speak there. The QA session would be great to see.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
knapper_tech writes:
"This is after we had to put up with giant anti-abortion posters on campus during the presidential election week that just happened to have horrid pictures of late-term abortions that are already illegal everywhere as far as I know anyway. WTF."
A fetus is a child, not a choice, or so the anti-abortion folks tell me.
If so, the people who put up the fliers were plastering your university with pre-term necrophilia pornography.
Nice.
Re:OU Student Here (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:OU Student Here (Score:5, Interesting)
Doesn't it sound arbitrary to wait until a brain is formed to call it human?
Given we use the same metric to determine when to pull the plug on someone (I'm sure you've heard the term "brain dead" thrown about), I'd say, no, it's not arbitrary at all. It's exceedingly logical, in fact, not to mention morally consistent.
Wow. Just wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Has anyone in the Oklahoma heard of the First Amendment? Cultural diversity? WTF does cultural diversity have to to do with science, anyway?.
That's a nice buzzword to make people who oppose their actions appear intolerant and narrow minded. Ignorance is now part of that vast cultural diversity that we must all respect.
Of course, the legislature ignores that Catholic teachings allow for the coexistence of evolution and creation; after all we can not fathom how God accomplishes his goals. One is faith, the other science and neither need be exclusive.
Of course, many of those same legislators might not consider Catholics Christian (and no, that's
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
we can not fathom how God accomplishes his goals. One is faith, the other science and neither need be exclusive.
Good fathoming. Is it your conclusion that God's goal is war leading to extinction of humans? That seems the only way to interpret your assertion that God's means are "science" and "faith".
No, war is the result of our being given free will.
I can see where my ending could be misconstrued - I did not mean that faith and science are means; rather that a belief in a God that created man is faith and evolution is science and those two items do not need to be mutually exclusive.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately or fortunately depending on the circumstances, the 1st amendment doesn't say there can't be consequences for speaking freely. Just that laws can't be passed preventing free speech. Relative merit, such as it being solid scientific evidence has no bearing on whether the speech is permitted (no "especially" clause). But it does have a bearing on consequences.
In this instance, the legislature is stating that they are going to be pissed. The implication is that the university may not get the s
Evolution isn't the issue with Dawkins (Score:5, Funny)
Evolution or no evolution, I think Dawkins is unlikely to speak at the Vatican any time soon. His being an atheist and an advocate for atheism is the main reason. They'd sooner invite Lucifer; at least he believes in God.
Re:Evolution isn't the issue with Dawkins (Score:5, Funny)
Vatican. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not surprised by the latter one. Catholic teaching has leaned hard towards "Science is 'what' and 'how.' God is 'why.'" for a long time now.
Re:Vatican. (Score:5, Insightful)
There are many religious people who value the bible yet don't consider it to be a literal encyclopedia of how the universe works. We are willing and able to reason enough to understand that it was written in a time and primarily for an audience with a significantly different understanding of the world from what science has provided for us today.
I've had many discussions with atheists where I am consistently asked to defend literal interpretations of the bible, when in fact I don't consider literal interpretations correct or useful.
There are many people out there who have decided to take much of the bible word for word as absolute truth, and I find that foolish. Please take care to not condemn all religious people just because some of them can't be bothered to think for themselves.
Temperatures of Heaven and Hell (Score:4, Interesting)
There is quite a bit of "what" and "how" in the Bible.
Indeed, the Bible contains explicit data from which we can deduce that heaven is hotter than hell!
* Lower bound on temperature of Heaven: 525C.
* Upper bound on temperature of Hell: 445C.
The thermodynamic analysis leading to this result can be found in Applied Optics, 11, A14 (1972).
Religions don't seem to know when they are making assertions which have scientifically testable implications.
My only problem with Dawkins is.. (Score:4, Insightful)
I admire his works and his point of view, but I find a lot of the time he can be callously disrespectful and religiously athiest. I'm an athiest myself but I find his pushy nature to be a bit much soemtimes.
I feel the way he handles some questions and situations doesn't help his cause.
Re:My only problem with Dawkins is.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I find a lot of the time he can be callously disrespectful and religiously atheist.
Having seen him many times, the only offense he may have committed is *not* entertaining the rediculous notion that a god exists without any proof.
It is very hard for people to accept atheists simply because we DON'T believe. That is not being religious at all.
I don't have to be tolerant of the belief in Zeus. I can see flat out, it is bunk. There is no god Zeus, and no one will be offended.
If I say, there is no god and I will not entertain any such nonsense, people are irrational. They will say I am intolerant. I submet it is they who are intolerant as they don't have any credible evidence to even support their nonsense. I'm just calling it as I see it, and they are expecting special treatment for their own neurosis.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Even though I find the existence of any god completely bunk, I can understand why people believe in . Perhaps I'm too diplomatic, I just feel when debating something, one should strive to win the argument by facts and logic in a calm, rational manner than with force.
And yes, I know what I just said opens up a lot of retorts about religious people not having/using logic/real proof to prove anything. :)
I think a good summary of my feelings is the old forum-ettiquette of "don't attack the poster, attack his p
Re:My only problem with Dawkins is.. (Score:4, Informative)
He does not merely not believe in a God. He BELIEVES there is no God.
Direct citation required.
he point is that Dawkins certainly advances a religious belief - one which cannot in any way be proven one way or another.
He certainly does not. Also, one need no disprove religion as it lacks any credible proof in the first place.
Merely not holding an opinion on the subject of God is not a belief - that is an attitude and not an intellectual position.
Wrong. I (and most atheists) hold the same position about god that most people hold for other gods and myths.
Re:My only problem with Dawkins is.. (Score:5, Insightful)
He's said that people who teach their kids religion are child abusers.
From a logical perspective, that is not unreasonable or unheard of. We remove children from "christian scientists" when they refuse critical care.
He ends one of his lectures by saying how religious fundamentalists crashed into the twin towers, and therefore it's time to stop being so respectful of religion.
Religious fundamentalists *DID* crash into the twin towers.
Those are pretty offensive comments to me...
Truth is often offensive to those who refuse to accept it.
Meh. (Score:5, Insightful)
On the plus side, the resolution isn't forbidding that Dawkins speak. Unfortunately, it is a thinly veiled threat to the president of the university that funding or job could be on the line if he lets Dawkins speak.
"Whereas the University of Oklahoma is a publicly funded university..."
I read that the US has lost 650,000 jobs in the last month. Maybe enough bad debt, cold and hunger will finally get people to realize that real science can be a vehicle to productive jobs and accept that their 6000 year old Earth hypothesis doesn't hold water.
~Ben
Obligatory FSM (Score:3, Funny)
Dean Wormer (Score:3, Funny)
So is Senator Bluto sending this to Dean Wormer?
Hey, we umm... don't like those things he ummm... says... yeah... and ummm now you know ummm... that we don't... you know ummm like it... umm what he says...
Actually only introduced, not passed. (Score:5, Informative)
This is the core issue (Score:5, Interesting)
It is conceptually simple to understand, particularly for people who are not of an analytical bent. It does not require deep thought or incisive intelligence, it is by and large unambiguous, it results in absolute truths that can be used as rules and maxims, and concentrates all authority on the literal meaning of the scripture. This allows true believers to dismiss anything else out of hand, because the literal interpretation is held to be the literal word of God. That is the great appeal. Simple people need not worry about analysis, interpretation, consistency or anything else. Unfortunately, it is an illusion.
In practice there is as much ambiguity as before, absolute truths are difficult to pin down, consensus is difficult, and physical reality contradicts practically all attempts to assert literal truth of biblical claims. On top of this is the curious trait of religious fundamentalists in general to cling to their arbitrary beliefs even more strongly in the face of contradiction, as if, rather counterintuitively, that in itself confirmed their beliefs.
What this is about (Score:5, Informative)
No Problem (Score:5, Funny)
please make stupidity illegal (Score:5, Funny)
his 2006 book "The God Delusion," and public statements on the theory of evolution demonstrate an intolerance for cultural diversity and diversity of thinking
No, you fucktards, your attitude is the intolerant one. Mr. Dawkins makes claims, cites the supporting evidence, and draws conclusions, and then arrives at an opinion that he can solidly argue. And - from what I've seen of him - he does not mind listening to those who have a different opinion, and doesn't deny them forum.
Oh yes, he also doesn't belong to a group of people with a thousand year history of silencing and killing its opponent. Like you.
If the penalty for stupidity were death, Oklahoma would have to hold new elections.
Re:The University versus the legislature (Score:5, Funny)
Really, what do you expect from the Oklahoma legislature anyway -- they're all descended from a bunch of apes anyway.
Re:They Have A Point (Score:5, Funny)
Indeed. Such intolerance for "diversity in thinking" could quickly lead us down the slippery slope to fact-based reasoning. This would be devastating to many a philosophy, religion, stereotype, and political stance. Must. Stop. Use. of. Scientific. Method. Yesterday.
Re:They Have A Point (Score:4, Insightful)
Apart from his pro-atheist writings, speeches and such, Dr. Dawkins actually does do real scientific research. He has published numerous papers, as well as a number of rather good easy-to-understand books on evolution.
Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer. He isn't even a real politician.
So how is it exactly you can equate Limbaugh and Dawkins?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You need more exposure.
You can't have a resonable debate with the church, becasue the church as no reasonable points.
How do you debate something with someone who refuses to accept real physical evidences and facts, and backs their argument with nonsense?
That aside, with the exposure I have had, he only gets that way when:
A) People are lying about atheists
B) People refuse to understand that atheism is not a religion
C) People lie and make stuff up about evolution
Yes, he is passionate about seeing those facts
Re:They Have A Point (Score:4, Interesting)
Eh? I've heard an interview and a lecture by Dawkins (neither one live), and I don't think I ever heard him attack individuals, except for the actions their beliefs may lead them to.
Re:They Have A Point (Score:4, Interesting)
Steven Weinberg: "I think that on the balance the moral influence of religion has been awful. With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil. But for good people to do evil -- that takes religion."
Re:They Have A Point (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Can of worms... (Score:5, Funny)
Can of worms? With the Vatican, we get a Diet of Worms!
Re:Creationism was created as a childish response (Score:5, Informative)
Um... no.
Toward the end of his interview with me, Stein asked whether I could think of any circumstances whatsoever under which intelligent design might have occurred. It's the kind of challenge I relish, and I set myself the task of imagining the most plausible scenario I could. I wanted to give ID its best shot, however poor that best shot might be. I must have been feeling magnanimous that day, because I was aware that the leading advocates of Intelligent Design are very fond of protesting that they are not talking about God as the designer, but about some unnamed and unspecified intelligence, which might even be an alien from another planet. Indeed, this is the only way they differentiate themselves from fundamentalist creationists, and they do it only when they need to, in order to weasel their way around church/state separation laws. So, bending over backwards to accommodate the IDiots ("oh NOOOOO, of course we aren't talking about God, this is SCIENCE") and bending over backwards to make the best case I could for intelligent design, I constructed a science fiction scenario. Like Michael Ruse (as I surmise) I still hadn't rumbled Stein, and I was charitable enough to think he was an honestly stupid man, sincerely seeking enlightenment from a scientist. I patiently explained to him that life could conceivably have been seeded on Earth by an alien intelligence from another planet (Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel suggested something similar -- semi tongue-in-cheek). The conclusion I was heading towards was that, even in the highly unlikely event that some such 'Directed Panspermia' was responsible for designing life on this planet, the alien beings would THEMSELVES have to have evolved, if not by Darwinian selection, by some equivalent 'crane' (to quote Dan Dennett). My point here was that design can never be an ULTIMATE explanation for organized complexity. Even if life on Earth was seeded by intelligent designers on another planet, and even if the alien life form was itself seeded four billion years earlier, the regress must ultimately be terminated (and we have only some 13 billion years to play with because of the finite age of the universe). Organized complexity cannot just spontaneously happen. That, for goodness sake, is the creationists' whole point, when they bang on about eyes and bacterial flagella! Evolution by natural selection is the only known process whereby organized complexity can ultimately come into being. Organized complexity -- and that includes everything capable of designing anything intelligently -- comes LATE into the universe. It cannot exist at the beginning, as I have explained again and again in my writings. [richarddawkins.net]
Re:Creationism was created as a childish response (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Creationism was created as a childish response (Score:4, Funny)
<blink>Yes, as a matter of fact, it is!!!!!!!</blink>
Re:The forces of darkness (Score:5, Insightful)
Please don't forget that it is a subset of "religious people" who are fighting to discredit science and impose their beliefs via government and laws. There are plenty of religious people who don't support those more extreme views. Belief in God and a respect and enthusiasm for science are not mutually exclusive. Maybe you should try to be more careful about making that distinction when using your vehement means.
I guess the question is, are you fighting against anyone who believes in God, or are you fighting against people who use their beliefs to justify controlling other people? If it's the latter, then myself and many other people who believe in God will support you. If it's the former, then you're turning us into enemies.
Re:The forces of darkness (Score:4, Insightful)
That word, I don't think it means what you think it means. And if you were so truly enlightened you recognize how two wrongs do not make a right, or the irony of your dogmatic discrimination against those who disagree with you.
Re:Awesome (Score:5, Informative)
"His science has become his religion, ..."
That makes no damn sense.