Richard Dawkins.

[RagTagBand]

Great scientist, great writer, not a great public speaker but I've certainly seen worse.

People who think he's too aggressive, however, clearly have never written anything he's written or watched him be interviewed. Sentiments surrounding how "Strident" he is remind me of the old Victorian cliche of people getting all hot and bothered by the sight of a womans ankles. It's not that ankles are lewd, its that their standards of lewdness are so pathetically weak they're easily broken. Likewise, Dawkins isn't particularly confrontational nor "strident", but that most people's standards of intellectual Aggression are made of wet paper, they've spent their entire lives being coddled, told they're "special", having the notion of "Everyone's opinion is equal" softly massaged into their bubble wrapped brain so that even the slightest hint of confrontation turns people into quivering, defensive, offended wrecks.

Dawkins is incredibly placid; His views are unapologetic but they're certainly not aggressive; he doesn't scream, he doesn't swear, he doesnt foam at the mouth. I can't even remember the last time he's demanded that people die or burned a church to the ground.

If anything I think he needs to be more aggressive, like Good old Christopher Hitchens.

 

[Cpu46]

A bit blunt about the topic of religion but I can understand why he feels that kind of delivery is necessary. I enjoy listening to him debate, I like reading his books, I find attempts at discrediting him hilarious and ineffective. Definitely on the list of people I would like to meet face to face.

 

[Custard_Angel]

I've seen Dawkins listed as a great scientist alongside Newton, Galileo, Volta, Pasteur etc.

Ditto under philosophers including Descartes, Neitzsche, Locke, Aquinas etc.

I find this to be... tremendously wrong.

He's not a great scientist or philosopher, he's a man who doesn't like God and can't deal with people believing in things.

 

[hiks89]

i am a huge fan of his so...

 

[hiks89]

I've seen Dawkins listed as a great scientist alongside Newton, Galileo, Volta, Pasteur etc.

Ditto under philosophers including Descartes, Neitzsche, Locke, Aquinas etc.

I find this to be... tremendously wrong.

He's not a great scientist or philosopher, he's a man who doesn't like God and can't deal with people believing in things.

exept he is a evolutionary biologist. does that count as a scientist?

 

[Agayek]

Simple question: what do you think of him, and why?

I think he's a brilliant scientist, and an excellent writer. Besides all that, he says things that need to be said, but that people have hitherto been too afraid to say.

Shoot.

He is highly intelligent and has a number of salient, relevant points about any number of topics, and he's mostly correct on them.

That said, he's an idiot.

He's a militant atheist to the same degree the Pope is a theist. He has an absolutist view on religion, and it's frankly ridiculous. He's just as deluded as the theists he argues against, which makes it incredibly hard to take him seriously. If he spent less time banging on about how anyone who disagrees with him is wrong and instead presented his arguments for his cause and left it at that, he'd be far more effective and much less of a twat.

For the record, I actually fully agree with his views on religion and the supernatural. I find the whole thing to be an incredibly silly thing to believe in, but there's no proof either way, and there never will be. Outright dismissing every claim is just as ignorant and idiotic as blindly believing in the words of a 5,000 year old book.

 

[Custard_Angel]

I've seen Dawkins listed as a great scientist alongside Newton, Galileo, Volta, Pasteur etc.

Ditto under philosophers including Descartes, Neitzsche, Locke, Aquinas etc.

I find this to be... tremendously wrong.

He's not a great scientist or philosopher, he's a man who doesn't like God and can't deal with people believing in things.

exept he is a evolutionary biologist. does that count as a scientist?

Has he done something truly exceptional in the field? God no.

Newton devised one of the first theories on gravity. Galileo basically invented the scientific method. Dawkins has... written some papers and a few books about how much superior he is as a logical thinker.

So, scientist? yes. Great scientist. God. No.

 

[Torrasque]

I think he is a really smart man, and knows what he is talking about.
I would like to meet him, discuss philosophy and existence, and see if he has any solutions to the Anthropocene we are currently in.
I live in Canada, so the whole atheism war going on in Europe doesn't really affect me that much, but I still enjoy the debates.
As an atheist myself, I respect him as the guy who stands in the spotlight and says to the world "this is who we are, this is what we think, this is why you should listen"

Some of his books have been a chore to read through, but are interesting none the less.

 

[hiks89]

Because thinking it is has nothing to do with whether it actually is or not.

You could apply that to anything.

Oh so if I write a book that involves, say, Attila the Hun as our Lord and Savior that suddenly gives me extra credibility just because Attila is in it?

Well it would prove that the gospels aren't completely made up and there'd then be no proof to say the rest of it was.

There's only as much reason to not believe it as there is to not believe that we're all alien puppets.

Maybe we are. The point I'm trying to get across here is not that god must exist because we haven't proved he doesn't, but that we shouldn't say he doesn't just because there's no, or little, proof to say he does.

The lack of links is a good reason not to trust anything you say. People can say whatever they like on TV. I saw a show on the History channel about how there were special crystal skulls. And when it was pointed out that they had signs of modern technology to make them the response was along the lines of "It proves that there was extremely advanced technology that made them thousands of years ago!" So yeah, you playing telephone for the fricking TV is a terrible kind of evidence.

And people can't do that on the internet? There was one, specifically, which was a news item in France about Lourdes and how they decided if healings from terminal illnesses there were miracles or not. Healings there that were recorded as miracles were extremely rare because the guidelines for one being categorised as a miracle were pretty strict. I.e. the person who was healed couldn't have been taking any kind of medication, even if it wasn't for the disease in question. This doesn't reek of being unreliable evidence.

One, we don't know for certain that Jesus existed.

But evidence suggests he did.

Two, even if he did, he wasn't performing magic.

Ok I'll take your word for it.

Three, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1YmEkCJ87s&feature=player_detailpage#t=138s
Near Death Experiences explained.

NDEs aren't the only way this happens and there have been some supposed pretty incredible ones that are only massive coincidences otherwise.

Four,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance

"The point I'm trying to get across here is not that god must exist because we haven't proved he doesn't, but that we shouldn't say he doesn't just because there's no, or little, proof to say he does."

And don't try to tell me what an atheist is. . I'm tired of some Christians doing that. I think that I know what I am better than you do.

hahahahahaha holy shit. Ok, firstly I'm not a Christian. Secondly, I wasn't the one who started telling other people what their beliefs were.

Look, I can post links:
http://religion.rutgers.edu/iho/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=612
http://cherylthewriter.hubpages.com/hub/Do-we-have-any-scientific-proof-that-Jesus-existed-or-is-it-just-our-faith
http://www.bede.org.uk/jesusmyth.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jesus
Whether he existed or not is irrelevant if there are arguments that he did.

It really doesn't matter whether there is a god or not, because that isn't what this is about. The original point is that why should someone try to pressurise their opinion onto others just because they don't look at things the same way as those people? Yeah, maybe there isn't enough evidence to prove there's a god, but if we don't know 100% for sure, why try to force onto people that there isn't?

Actually there's a book which argues the existence of god call Is There A God? by Richard Swinburne(?)

Dawkins just looks at evidence, and he gets angry when religion deludes people at offers nothing usefull to society.

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

And don't try to tell me what an atheist is. I'm tired of some Christians doing that. I think that I know what I am better than you do.

Oh man. It's like an ocean of black pots and kettles in here.

Seriously though, Richard Dawkins makes no sense to me. He seems like a man desperately trying to prove that his work has no meaning.

From my point of view, it doesn't really matter weather God exists or not. I look at the big picture and see that either:

A) There is some sort of deity that created the universe for a reason.
or
B) All reality is a cosmic accident without meaning or purpose, and one day in the far future there will be no evidence that our lives, culture, country, or planet EVER existed at all.

There are a ton of good points Dawkins makes for B, but why would I want to believe that?

In fact, it was SCIENCE that helped make me think this way! Scientists are pretty agreed that the sun will run out of fuel, and entropy will lead to the heat death of universe.

Maybe I'm just less evolved than you guys, but I need option A to feel any good about life.

I made no claims about Christians, nor did I try to tell them what they believed. So it isn't the pot calling the kettle black.
Also, you need option A? So you can't find your own purpose in life?

 

[dickywebster]

Id say hes the atheist version of those religious guys who dismiss you cause your not religious, you know, the crazy ones. (and probably the only vaguely aggressive atheist in mainstream media)
But then he is very intelligent as his books show, so maybe hes the king troll?

 

[Hawgh]

I am entirely unfamiliar with his work. And since I don't expect it to have much to do with computer science, I am also not interested in learning more about it.

I hear his books are good, though.

 

[Agayek]

Great scientist, great writer, not a great public speaker but I've certainly seen worse.

People who think he's too aggressive, however, clearly have never written anything he's written or watched him be interviewed. Sentiments surrounding how "Strident" he is remind me of the old Victorian cliche of people getting all hot and bothered by the sight of a womans ankles. It's not that ankles are lewd, its that their standards of lewdness are so pathetically weak they're easily broken. Likewise, Dawkins isn't particularly confrontational nor "strident", but that most people's standards of intellectual Aggression are made of wet paper, they've spent their entire lives being coddled, told they're "special", having the notion of "Everyone's opinion is equal" softly massaged into their bubble wrapped brain so that even the slightest hint of confrontation turns people into quivering, defensive, offended wrecks.

Dawkins is incredibly placid; His views are unapologetic but they're certainly not aggressive; he doesn't scream, he doesn't swear, he doesnt foam at the mouth. I can't even remember the last time he's demanded that people die or burned a church to the ground.

If anything I think he needs to be more aggressive, like Good old Christopher Hitchens.

I've read through the God Delusion and seen a few of his interviews, and he comes across as rather aggressively anti-theistic. He clearly dislikes the root concept of religion and wants to be rid of it. I'm not really sure I'd classify what he does as a bad thing, but he's certainly aggressive with it.

I like that he challenges people to think critically and apply logic to what they believe, but he has a tendency to come across as attacking those who draw an equally valid, but different, conclusion on the matter.

For the sake of full disclosure, I am a hard atheist. I firmly believe that the supernatural flat out does not exist. As a rational human being though, I am forced to admit that there's no proof either way. It all comes down to the "absence of evidence vs evidence of absence" thing. By definition, there's no way to disprove the existence of a higher being. If someone has examined the available evidence and concluded that they believe in such a being, that's their prerogative and no one has the right to criticize them for it, regardless of how much they disagree.

So yea, I like what he does, but I'm not sure I like the way he does it.

 

[Agayek]

Oh, this is gonna be good!

Wait, where's the part where you back up your nonsense with actual quotes? I think you forgot to include that part in your post, or maybe the forum ate it.

But I suppose it's incredibly easy to talk shit about someone if nobody calls you out on it.

I'm at work right now and my copy of the God Delusion is at home, so I can't get you solid quotes immediately. Most of my take on him arises from that book though. If I remember, which is unlikely, I'll see if I can find the quotes I'm thinking of and post them.

 

[Agayek]

Outright dismissing claims that have no evidence to support them isn't ignorant. It would presumably be the reason most people dismiss the idea that our government is being infiltrated by shape shifting reptiles from another galaxy amongst other things.

The difference is that you can physically disprove that. There is real, hard, physical things you can interface with.

Religion, by its very nature, cannot be proven one way or the other. It's entirely metaphysical, with no quantifiable substance in reality. The claim that there is no god has just as much real evidence supporting it as any religion you care to name. The only logical conclusion is that god does not exist, and I will argue the point with anyone who disagrees, but there's no evidence either way so I can make no definitive statement on the matter.

As they say, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.