Dawkins coming to Melbourne

[Trojan82]

Well, yes it was. So far as I know Dawkins hasn't consigned a large percentage of the world's population to misery and poverty with misguided, faith-based initiatives like restricting the supply of contraceptives and demanding abstinence. The Church has done, and continues to do, a very great deal to be protested against.

Dawkins doesn't demand you believe or worship him lest you be consigned to eternal damnation. He doesn't demand his followers ostracise family members on the basis of their beliefs. And so on.

Quoted For Truth.

The catholic church is disgusting and should be stopped from sprouting its ignorant and dangerous ideals. The atheist movement on the other hand does nothing to harm anyone.

 

[linga_is_no1]

Well, yes it was. So far as I know Dawkins hasn't consigned a large percentage of the world's population to misery and poverty with misguided, faith-based initiatives like restricting the supply of contraceptives and demanding abstinence. The Church has done, and continues to do, a very great deal to be protested against.

Dawkins doesn't demand you believe or worship him lest you be consigned to eternal damnation. He doesn't demand his followers ostracise family members on the basis of their beliefs. And so on.

Well isn't this interesting, you apparently have a problem with the pope- a foreign head of state, the religious leader of 1.1 Billion people as well as the religious leader of 28% of the Australian people, visiting this country. You also support the Atheist Alliance's decision to campaign side by side against the Pope's visit with the Raliens (that french sect that claimed to have cloned the first baby).

But somehow in the same breath you are against the protests of Christian groups against a man who has spent his entire life trying to viciously destroy everything they believe in. Can you see this contradiction? You don't mind when someone you like protests or visits, but yet you have a problem when your opponent does the same thing.

I expected better from you Chief, you seem to have lost your touch.


And BTW the Pope is right about condoms, practicing Catholics in Africa have a lower percentage of AIDS than non-Catholics. Think before you type, and do some research, lift your game.

 

[linga_is_no1]

Quoted For Truth.

The catholic church is disgusting and should be stopped from sprouting its ignorant and dangerous ideals. The atheist movement on the other hand does nothing to harm anyone.

This is nothing more than an uneducated statement by an ignorant bigot.

I guess the Church's disgusting ideals run the hospitals, the schools, the hospices, the universities, the soup kitchens, the drug homes, the rehab clinics, the camps for disadvantaged people, the aged care homes and the charities. Not to mention the unnecessarily large contribution the Church has made to Western Civilization as a whole ( the invention of the modern university, the art, the music, the legal code) all this and more the Church has given. To say the Church which has been such an instrumental part of Western and the World's History for over 2000 years (twice as long as the monarchy of England) should simply vanish because you 'don't like it', is not only laughable, but one dripping of a dangerous and bigoted unintelligence.
The ideas of atheism and the lack of a moral code behind it have lead to a lot of damage, names like Marx, Mao, Stalin and Hitler ring a bell, but the real problem with atheism is not what it does, but what it fails to do.

 

[Chief]

Yes, and Roman Polanski made good movies.

 

[Vaders_1st]

This is nothing more than an uneducated statement by an ignorant bigot.

I guess the Church's disgusting ideals run the hospitals, the schools, the hospices, the universities, the soup kitchens, the drug homes, the rehab clinics, the camps for disadvantaged people, the aged care homes and the charities. Not to mention the unnecessarily large contribution the Church has made to Western Civilization as a whole ( the invention of the modern university, the art, the music, the legal code) all this and more the Church has given. To say the Church which has been such an instrumental part of Western and the World's History for over 2000 years (twice as long as the monarchy of England) should simply vanish because you 'don't like it', is not only laughable, but one dripping of a dangerous and bigoted unintelligence.
The ideas of atheism and the lack of a moral code behind it have lead to a lot of damage, names like Marx, Mao, Stalin and Hitler ring a bell, but the real problem with atheism is not what it does, but what it fails to do.

Agree 100%

Atheism = FOR promiscuity, FOR abortions, FOR ripping Religion out of schools and yet preach about freedom of speech.

Great Morals they got going there

 

[HolyWars]

Surprisingly not far from the truth! Anyone who watches The Atheist Experience knows they go out for dinner after each show.. I suspect it's all about the beer.

Atheist #1: You know, I don't reckon there's a God.
Atheist #2: Me either!
Atheist #1: Hooray!
Atheist #2: ...
Atheist #1: ...
Atheist #2: Let's get some beer.

lol, whilst we are generalizing....

Christian #1: Oh yeah, my sister was cleared of cancer
Christian #2: Oh thank god!
Christian #1: Yeah I know....also did you hear about all those poor people who where buried alive in the earthquakes?
Christian #2: Well, god works in mysterious ways....

Btw, while I'm not religious, I do think people should be able to believe whatever the hell they want.

 

[placebo]

This is nothing more than an uneducated statement by an ignorant bigot.

I guess the Church's disgusting ideals run the hospitals, the schools, the hospices, the universities, the soup kitchens, the drug homes, the rehab clinics, the camps for disadvantaged people, the aged care homes and the charities. Not to mention the unnecessarily large contribution the Church has made to Western Civilization as a whole ( the invention of the modern university, the art, the music, the legal code) all this and more the Church has given. To say the Church which has been such an instrumental part of Western and the World's History for over 2000 years (twice as long as the monarchy of England) should simply vanish because you 'don't like it', is not only laughable, but one dripping of a dangerous and bigoted unintelligence.
The ideas of atheism and the lack of a moral code behind it have lead to a lot of damage, names like Marx, Mao, Stalin and Hitler ring a bell, but the real problem with atheism is not what it does, but what it fails to do.

There is no proof Hitler was an atheist, he never explicitly said what he truly believed. Either way, this point needs to die. Those people didn't kill in the name of Atheism, and don't blame it on a lack of moral code as many Christians have killed many many times. It's a typical weak argument that fundies need to let die.

And what about your moral code? No stealing and no murdering for example are not explicitly religious ideas. What else about your moral code? That I have some sort of duty to others? Sorry, that makes me a slave to others. All you moral code preaches is large scale collectivism. And that moral code is the same one that Stalin, Hitler and Mao preached.

 

[placebo]

Agree 100%

Atheism = FOR promiscuity, FOR abortions, FOR ripping Religion out of schools and yet preach about freedom of speech.

Great Morals they got going there

If you want religion in schools, then I take it you must also agree that Scientology be taught? And all religion? The tribal ones? Etc.

 

[bit_pattern]

“I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so.”[FONT=Bookman Old Style, Arial] ( Adolf Hitler, from John Toland [Pulitzer Prize winner], Adolf Hitler, New York: Anchor Publishing, 1992, p. 507. )[/FONT]

“The folkish-minded man, in particular, has the sacred duty, each in his own denomination, of making people stop just talking superficially of God's will, and actually fulfill God's will, and not let God's word be desecrated. For God's will gave men their form, their essence and their abilities. Anyone who destroys His work is declaring war on the Lord's creation, the divine will.”
[FONT=Bookman Old Style, Arial]( Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Ralph Mannheim, ed., New York: Mariner Books, 1999, p. 562. )[/FONT]


“Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.”
[FONT=Bookman Old Style, Arial]( Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Ralph Mannheim, ed., New York: Mariner Books, 1999, p. 65. )[/FONT]

“My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice. And as a man I have the duty to see to it that human society does not suffer the same catastrophic collapse as did the civilization of the ancient world some two thousand years ago — a civilization which was driven to its ruin through this same Jewish people.

“Then indeed when Rome collapsed there were endless streams of new German bands flowing into the Empire from the North; but, if Germany collapses today, who is there to come after us? German blood upon this earth is on the way to gradual exhaustion unless we pull ourselves together and make ourselves free!

“And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly, it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people. And when I look on my people I see them work and work and toil and labor, and at the end of the week they have only for their wages wretchedness and misery. When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are plundered and exploited.”
[FONT=Bookman Old Style, Arial]( Adolf Hitler, in a speech delivered at Munich, April 12, 1922; from Norman H. Baynes, ed., The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939, Vol. 1, New York: Oxford University Press, 1942, pp. 19-20. )[/FONT]

There are a shite load more quotes here

http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/quotes_hitler.html

Hitler was NOT an atheist.

 

[Sloth]

Agree 100%

Atheism = FOR promiscuity, FOR abortions, FOR ripping Religion out of schools and yet preach about freedom of speech.

Great Morals they got going there

Don't preach in my school and I won't think in your church.

 

[Trojan82]

This is nothing more than an uneducated statement by an ignorant bigot.

I guess the Church's disgusting ideals run the hospitals, the schools, the hospices, the universities, the soup kitchens, the drug homes, the rehab clinics, the camps for disadvantaged people, the aged care homes and the charities. Not to mention the unnecessarily large contribution the Church has made to Western Civilization as a whole ( the invention of the modern university, the art, the music, the legal code) all this and more the Church has given. To say the Church which has been such an instrumental part of Western and the World's History for over 2000 years (twice as long as the monarchy of England) should simply vanish because you 'don't like it', is not only laughable, but one dripping of a dangerous and bigoted unintelligence.
The ideas of atheism and the lack of a moral code behind it have lead to a lot of damage, names like Marx, Mao, Stalin and Hitler ring a bell, but the real problem with atheism is not what it does, but what it fails to do.

What an Amazing array of things you have listed here. To say that without religion these things would not have happened/occurred is also ignorance. Who knows where we might be today without religion. Here are some of the reasons I want religion abolished, if wanting these things makes me an ignorant bigot then fine, I am prepared to take that label.

1) The spread of HIV/AIDS across Africa would be much less (To the poster who stated the bit about the spread of AIDS amongst practising catholics is less, that is hardly the point. The access to condoms and sexual education would be higher)

2) Research into areas like stem cell research would be greatly enhanced.

3) The laws surrounding gay marriage/civil unions would finally come out of the dark ages.

4) Abortions would not be questioned. (Late term abortions may well be)

5) Voluntary Euthanasia would be legalised.

6) Fundamentalist christians would be no more. (No more picketing of funerals, no more TV Evangelists wanting money, no more raising children to believe that some of there friends are going to live for eternity in an impossibly horrible way....)

7) Male AND Female circumcisions would become illegal worldwide

This list could go on and on.

To say that religion has brought us things like amazing art and music is also ignorant. Art may have been driven by religion but if there was no religion I am certain there would still be art. Look at the Aboriginal art from before the Bible was even conceived....

Hospitals.... come on. If you think hospitals are only around because of religion then you are kidding yourself.

Universities.... It is human nature to learn. The church is the only thing standing in the way of many many scientific breakthroughs. Would there have been universities if there were no religions? Of course there would have.

Drug homes, soup kitchens, rehab centres, charities etc.... I am not religious and yet I know that to help out a fellow human being who is worse off than me is a good thing to do. This idea that religion is what makes us moral is ridiculous. I don't murder people because the bible says "Thou shalt not kill". Nor do I donate money to chairty because of something the bible suggested.

If I live by a complete lack of moral code then you better organise someone to come and lock me up right now. This is a stupid argument at best.

The Church HAS been an instrumental part of our history, you are absolutely right. And hopefully its power over the way I want to live and die is diminishing. Hopefully its becoming only a part of our history and less a part of our future. The pain and torment that comes with religion far outweigh any good deed that may come of it.

 

[Docker Clint]

Well, yes it was. So far as I know Dawkins hasn't consigned a large percentage of the world's population to misery and poverty with misguided, faith-based initiatives like restricting the supply of contraceptives and demanding abstinence. The Church has done, and continues to do, a very great deal to be protested against.

Dawkins doesn't demand you believe or worship him lest you be consigned to eternal damnation. He doesn't demand his followers ostracise family members on the basis of their beliefs. And so on.

What?!! BURN HIM!!!

 

[Chief]

To say that religion has brought us things like amazing art and music is also ignorant. Art may have been driven by religion but if there was no religion I am certain there would still be art. Look at the Aboriginal art from before the Bible was even conceived....

Dawkins had a piece about that in his book.

He mused on the idea that without the church things like the Sistine Chapel would never have been created. His wife said "Imagine what Shakespeare would have been like if he had been limited to religious plays."

We need only look at Galileo and Michelangelo to see the limiting effects of religion on medicine, science and art.

 

[bit_pattern]

4) Abortions would not be questioned. (Late term abortions may well be)

This I disagree with. It might still be questioned but as a matter of ethics rather than morals. And we'd probably have a much more rational and reasonable debate on the issue than the insanely emotive hyperbole that the Chritian right have reduced it to.

 

[Trojan82]

This I disagree with. It might still be questioned but as a matter of ethics rather than morals. And we'd probably have a much more rational and reasonable debate on the issue than the insanely emotive hyperbole that the Chritian right have reduced it to.

Yes that's probably true.

BP: I am somewhat confused as to which side of the fence you sit on! On the one hand you bang on about how you couldn't imagine a less interesting thing than an Atheist convention and on the other hand you agree with all of my post bar the little bit about abortions? (NB. I am relatively new to the SRP board and if this has been made clear previously I'm sorry for bringing it up again!)

 

[bit_pattern]

Atheists make a lot of good arguments, no doubt, but lately (since Dawkin's published The God Delusion, as far as I can tell - or at least that's the first time I noticed it) atheism has taken on a militant zeal that I find distasteful. When it shifted from mounting a solid defence against ID and creationism to a blanket attack against all religion it just crossed a line that I'm not prepared to follow. People like Hitchens have no redeeming features in my mind, he's the intellectual version of a shock jock, and doesn't do the atheist cause any favours, it just entrenches people into a for or against position and is incredibly pointless. Dawkins I am more conflicted about, because I have so much respect for the work he has done, without doubt the most brilliant evolutionary biologist ever to live when it comes to explaining the mind bending complexity of evolution, but this sort of zealotry cheapens him, in my humble opinion.

For the record, I'm not a theist nor an atheist, I believe in spirtiuality, and I think science and spirituality can be complimentary - two different tools for understanding reality, one material the other etheral. That's why I can't buy into the extremes that some atheists have taken their arguments.

 

[WCEforeverman]

If you want religion in schools, then I take it you must also agree that Scientology be taught? And all religion? The tribal ones? Etc.

Well if that's the case they better teach about the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

 

[bit_pattern]

But this is exactly Dawkins's point.

Religious belief in general is no more coherent or intellectually sustainable than its nefarious offshoots like 'intelligent design'.

Why is OK to be contemptuous of ID but not Christianity?

Because ID was a push to try and legitimise what is essentially a pseudoscience. I have no problem with religion as a concept, but just don't try and sell it to me as science.

And, personally, I don't think matters of spirituality are an intellectual pursuit in any sense of the word, you'll never understand our spiritual nature through intellectualism, the two are diametrically opposed. Spiritual pursuits are at their heart experiential, and if you have the experience there is no need to legitimise it through intellectualism or rationality.

 

[evo]

Why is OK to be contemptuous of ID but not Christianity?

Because then it is often straying a bit closer to their own delusions and people don't like that.

Interestingly you rarely hear other intellectuals or outspoken single issue people being accussed of " dogmatism, evangelicism and pomposity"; instead their arguments are critiqued on their own merits

I don't think I ever heard, say, Noam Chomsky accussed of being evangelical, yet I'm sure he holds his intellectual positions just as firmly as Dawkins does and is not afraid to express them in public.

 

[bit_pattern]

Because then it is often straying a bit closer to their own delusions and people don't like that.

If people want to mount a philosophical case for ID then fine, I actually find the arguments interesting and of some merit, just don't try and pretend its science and I'll be happy. I think it was important or people like Dawkins resist the push to legitimise ID as science, especially considering the man's considerable grasp of evolutionary principles.

Interestingly you rarely hear other intellectuals or outspoken single issue people being accussed of " dogmatism, evangelicism and pomposity"; instead their arguments are critiqued on their own merits

I don't think I ever heard, say, Noam Chomsky accussed of being evangelical, yet I'm sure he holds his intellectual positions just as firmly as Dawkins does and is not afraid to express them in public.

Nonsense, I've heard plenty of attacks on Chomsky that go well beyond arguing the merits of his arguments. Ever seen a Chomsky/Dershowitz debate?

 

[evo]

.

Nonsense, I've heard plenty of attacks on Chomsky that go well beyond arguing the merits of his arguments. Ever seen a Chomsky/Dershowitz debate?

Chomsky probably isn't the best example I could've gone with but nevetheless I'll stick with it.

So, tell me, when you listen to Deshowitz speak is your first inclination to be concerned about whether he is being 'evangelical' or do you listen to his arguments and think to yourself: 'that's bullshit because he hasn't considered such and such etc.'

I willing to bet it is the latter.

 

[Clay Davis]

I don't think I ever heard, say, Noam Chomsky accussed of being evangelical

You haven't?

 

[Chief]

Because ID was a push to try and legitimise what is essentially a pseudoscience. I have no problem with religion as a concept, but just don't try and sell it to me as science.

And, personally, I don't think matters of spirituality are an intellectual pursuit in any sense of the word, you'll never understand our spiritual nature through intellectualism, the two are diametrically opposed. Spiritual pursuits are at their heart experiential, and if you have the experience there is no need to legitimise it through intellectualism or rationality.

If you try to foist it on others then expect to be attacked based on the irrational and unreasonable nature of spirituality.

It is well known that personal experience is overrated. We're fallible, irrational and foolish humans capable of being fooled by even the most transparent of cons. Eschewing all outside interpretation and claiming preeminence for our own transitory feelings is taking that irrationality a step too far.

Sitting in an audience of hundreds and being amazed that a theatrical psychic works out that you're in your mid-thirties and that you have had trouble with someone who's name starts with P (or maybe T or maybe B, or maybe C? Or D? A letter with and eee sound anyway... and maybe not trouble, but they have impacted you in some way...) is just plain stupid, as is thinking the universe has some special plan for you, as is thinking drugs can help you understand this plan. Why? Because all available evidence NOT based on your feelings shows this to be unsupported.

 

[BomberGal]

lol, whilst we are generalizing....

Christian #1: Oh yeah, my sister was cleared of cancer
Christian #2: Oh thank god!
Christian #1: Yeah I know....also did you hear about all those poor people who where buried alive in the earthquakes?
Christian #2: Well, god works in mysterious ways....

Btw, while I'm not religious, I do think people should be able to believe whatever the hell they want.

This made me think of a news story I read this week, of the parents who got a slap on the wrist recently for praying instead of getting healthcare for their child, who then died. I tried to find it again, but unfortunately, googling religious parents who've let their children die by only praying for them gave way too many results to find the specific story.

Yay, religion!

 

[BomberGal]

Agree 100%

Atheism = FOR promiscuity, FOR abortions, FOR ripping Religion out of schools and yet preach about freedom of speech.

Great Morals they got going there

Hmm. You're trolling, right?

I wasn't aware of any atheist who actually is pro-abortion. It's called pro-choice.

In fact all three you listed are about freedom of CHOICE. Honestly, what argument do you have for keeping religion in schools?