← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Conservative
Thread ID: 8504 | Posts: 24 | Started: 2003-07-27
2003-07-27 06:22 | User Profile
I have not read the following as yet, but it looks interesting:
The following is from [url=http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/Dawkins/Work/Articles/1998-sumimprobabilityofgod.htm]http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/Dawkins/Wo...bilityofgod.htm[/url]
The Improbability of God
by Richard Dawkins
The following article is from Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 18, Number 3.
Much of what people do is done in the name of God. Irishmen blow each other up in his name. Arabs blow themselves up in his name. Imams and ayatollahs oppress women in his name. Celibate popes and priests mess up people's sex lives in his name. Jewish shohets cut live animals' throats in his name. The achievements of religion in past history - bloody crusades, torturing inquisitions, mass-murdering conquistadors, culture-destroying missionaries, legally enforced resistance to each new piece of scientific truth until the last possible moment - are even more impressive. And what has it all been in aid of? I believe it is becoming increasingly clear that the answer is absolutely nothing at all. There is no reason for believing that any sort of gods exist and quite good reason for believing that they do not exist and never have. It has all been a gigantic waste of time and a waste of life. It would be a joke of cosmic proportions if it weren't so tragic.
Why do people believe in God? For most people the answer is still some version of the ancient Argument from Design. We look about us at the beauty and intricacy of the world - at the aerodynamic sweep of a swallow's wing, at the delicacy of flowers and of the butterflies that fertilize them, through a microscope at the teeming life in every drop of pond water, through a telescope at the crown of a giant redwood tree. We reflect on the electronic complexity and optical perfection of our own eyes that do the looking. If we have any imagination, these things drive us to a sense of awe and reverence. Moreover, we cannot fail to be struck by the obvious resemblance of living organs to the carefully planned designs of human engineers. The argument was most famously expressed in the watchmaker analogy of the eighteenth-century priest William Paley. Even if you didn't know what a watch was, the obviously designed character of its cogs and springs and of how they mesh together for a purpose would force you to conclude "that the watch must have had a maker: that there must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use." If this is true of a comparatively simple watch, how much the more so is it true of the eye, ear, kidney, elbow joint, brain? These beautiful, complex, intricate, and obviously purpose-built structures must have had their own designer, their own watchmaker - God.
Complete article is at [url=http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/Dawkins/Work/Articles/1998-sumimprobabilityofgod.htm]http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/Dawkins/Wo...bilityofgod.htm[/url]
2003-07-27 07:01 | User Profile
I also haven't yet read the following but I mean to. It's a complete online book called God exists: An engineer explains why.
[url=http://www.mts.net/~pekored/]http://www.mts.net/~pekored/[/url]
2003-07-27 08:15 | User Profile
*Originally posted by Nash@Jul 27 2003, 01:01 * ** I also haven't yet read the following but I mean to. It's a complete online book called God exists: An engineer explains why.
[url=http://www.mts.net/~pekored/]http://www.mts.net/~pekored/[/url] **
Thanks. The truth is that I was much happier as a Christian. I knew the world was very undesirable, but the prospects of a wonderful afterlife in Heaven really comforted me. But I then became an atheist in college, and I have never been happy since. The fact that I will become non-existent after death is quite depressing, and sometimes terrifying.
Regards,
Ares
2003-07-27 19:02 | User Profile
The fact that I will become non-existent after death is quite depressing, and sometimes terrifying.
Was non-existance that bad before you were born?
2003-07-28 03:03 | User Profile
The fact that I will become non-existent after death is quite depressing, and sometimes terrifying.
Well, I'm going to heaven so I'm not bothered. If it helps, take my advice: every time I think about death and fear it (we all do), I think about Mike Tyson or the death-row boys: I'm glad they're going to die.
If there weren't death, think about the people who'd still be here terrorizing us: FDR, Malcolm X, etc....
-Jay
2003-07-28 03:07 | User Profile
Well...
.....I have yet to read any of this, but figured, "What the hey?! Everyone else has a comment!" hehehe...
.....You're rather entertaining, Ares... :lol:
2003-07-28 20:32 | User Profile
I must say that this article didn't impress me or convince me to revert back to atheism. I've heard these arguments before and I myself used to argue them. So I will critique some of this article.
**Much of what people do is done in the name of God. Irishmen blow each other up in his name. Arabs blow themselves up in his name. Imams and ayatollahs oppress women in his name. Celibate popes and priests mess up people's sex lives in his name. Jewish shohets cut live animals' throats in his name. **
And what has been done in the name of atheistic inspired secularism? The French Revolution, Russian Revolution, Chinese Revolution, Mao's Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot, and a host of other atrocities all in the name of "scientific theories". Atheistic secularism has killed more people in the 20th century alone than Christianity ever did in 300 years. Science can be as easily misused as religion, often with greater and more tragic consequences
** The achievements of religion in past history - bloody crusades **
The Crusades were at most a local regional war. Communism(scientific socialism) spread death and terror throughout the entire world. Same was true for the French Revolutionary armies back in the 18th century.
** , torturing inquisitions, **
What is interesting is that the atheist historian Henry Kamen did alot of research about the Spainish inquisition and found out that in a period of 340 years(1480-1820) only 2000 people were executed throughout the whole Spainish empire from Sicily to Peru. Thats about 3 per year. Only 2% of those convicted by the Inquisition were ever executed. Most of the remaining 98% usually served sentences of only a few months, at most 3 to 10 years. Most of these sentences weren't even served in jail, but under house arrest, in monastaries, and in hospitals. The Inquisition had one of the lowest execution rates of any provincial courts in all of Europe.
Kamen's research is backed up by many other scholars' research through the recently released Vatican archives on the Inquistion. Many of the scholars agree that much of what was believed about the institution was highly overblown, especcially the number of executions that occured.
** mass-murdering conquistadors,**
Well the conquistadors were really freebooters that used christianity as an excuse to kill the natives. Their main motivation for killing was to gain riches. Often priests condmned many of their actions. Even with that, the number killed by the conquistadors pale compared to the number killed by Stalin's commisars.
** legally enforced resistance to each new piece of scientific truth until the last possible moment - are even more impressive. **
This is bullshit. As I've argued in many threads here, the Church in many ways supported scientific research especially during the Middle Ages. It was Pope Gregory XIII who helped give support to the study of astronomy that eventually led to the creation of the Gregorian calander, which is still in use.
If the church despised scientific research, then please explain why it was a Polish priest by the name of Copernicus that theorized the earth moved around the sun? If it despised research was it that Pope Leo X (1513-1521) showed such a great interest in Copernicus's theories? The Church raised no objections to Copernicus's revolutionary hypothesis, as long as it was represented as theory, not undisputed fact. This was largely because at that time, there was no real way to provide empirical evidence to support this theory.
Galileo's problem was that he taught that his theories were true, despite lack of empirical evidence. Most the theologians that judged Galileo on the basis of the theories of Ptolemy, who held the earth was the center of the universe. So the judgement was based as much on accepted scientific theories as it was on theology. Galileo's scientific peers were as opposed to the his theories as any theologian was. It should be noted that Galileo never had any beef with the Church, and remained a devout Catholic throughout his life. One of Galileo's daughters even became a nun later in life.
** And what has it all been in aid of? I believe it is becoming increasingly clear that the answer is absolutely nothing at all. **
And what has many of science's terrible experiments all been in aid of? How many scientific academics supported the horrific communist regimes? What was their experiments in aid of? Nothing at all except the destruction of humanity.
** There is no reason for believing that any sort of gods exist and quite good reason for believing that they do not exist and never have. **
Can you please give me some real proof, cause the "evidence" you've given so far is highly inaccurate and therefore unconvincing.
** It has all been a gigantic waste of time and a waste of life. It would be a joke of cosmic proportions if it weren't so tragic. **
That can be said about any belief system, including yours.
Hoo hum! :y
2003-07-29 03:14 | User Profile
Dawkins devotes a great deal of intelligence to being stupid.
As Perun notes, atheism is bloody. In fact, atheistic governments have a much worse batting average in this area. Besides, it's no skin off my God when someone starts an unjust war.
It's hypocritical for Dawkins to complain about "legally enforced resistance to each new piece of scientific truth" when he insists on the government legally determining what is the scientific truth and then he demands that it oppress decent, even from scientists. BTW, the doctrine of geocentrism that Dawkins is thinking of came from Aristotelian naturalism, not the Bible. The sin of the Church wasn't in believing the Bible, but in making dogma out of the naturalism of the day (i.e. what amounted to Evolution). Incidently, the "Church" also banned the Bible in the classroom and forbid the people from reading it.
If we find a watch on the beach, even if we had no idea of what a watch was, we would know it was created by an intelligent being because the unaided laws of physics are not capable of achieving such a result. But, we know a moderately smooth pebble is easily something that could result from the unaided laws of physics. So far, life falls into the watch department because there is no known way that unaided physics could or did create life. The compelling value of the Watchmaker argument was born the moment Louis Pasteur refuted spontanious generation.
Dawkins says "If you assume a sufficiently large number of sufficiently small differences between each evolutionary stage and its predecessor, you are bound to be able to derive a full, complex, working eye from bare skin." If he assumes? There's no reason for us to believe that there is a continuous sequence of meaningful differences between bare skin and an eye. Pick any two sentences at random from any book and see if you can even get even a couple of steps of the way in mutating one to match the other, without producing garbage. It's impossible. Genes are similar to language in that there is a very limited number of viable sequences of genetic letters (this is why mutations are invariably destructive, even if the rare one does have some ironic benefit in a narrow environment).
What have we seen in the lab? Dawkins can't point to a single example of an eye (or bare skin) observed to have improved vision over time/generations. He can't even cajole such a thing under the most contrived conditions.
What about the fossil record? Animals all through the fossil record have eyes. Animals in the Cambrian (the oldest fossiliferous rock, before which there is zero trace of any kind of eye) have eyes arguably as complex as a human eye. Some even had compound eyes with multiple lenses and retinas working together for a superior image.
This is knowledge Dawkins doesn't want school children to hear else they might find fault with Dawkins' arguments.
2003-07-29 03:29 | User Profile
:th: Good job Happy Hacker! :th:
2003-07-29 09:46 | User Profile
The truth is that I was much happier as a Christian. I knew the world was very undesirable, but the prospects of a wonderful afterlife in Heaven really comforted me. But I then became an atheist in college, and I have never been happy since.
Glad atheism is working out so well for you. :P
Fun fact: it has been estimated by war historians that the number of people killed in all of humanity's wars, from the beginning of civilization several thousand years ago until 1900, totalled around 50 million. Only some of these were wars run by religious folk, and even fewer for religious reasons. In the 20th century, the war bodycount increased fivefold, mostly due to judeo-atheistic communism, its associated revolutions, and the wars that it spawned.
2003-07-29 13:33 | User Profile
Originally posted by Happy Hacker@Jul 28 2003, 21:14 * (this is why mutations are invariably destructive, even if the rare one does have some ironic benefit in a narrow environment).*
If "beneficial" mutations occur in rare instances, how can mutations be invariably [i.e., always] destructive?
2003-07-29 13:37 | User Profile
Originally posted by Happy Hacker@Jul 28 2003, 21:14 * Pick any two sentences at random from any book and see if you can even get even a couple of steps of the way in mutating one to match the other, without producing garbage. It's impossible.*
This is incorrect.
Given limited attempts, it is merely improbable.
Given unlimited attempts (the cosmological context), it is inevitable.
2003-07-29 13:57 | User Profile
Originally posted by Happy Hacker@Jul 28 2003, 21:14 * If we find a watch on the beach, even if we had no idea of what a watch was, we would know it was created by an intelligent being because the unaided laws of physics are not capable of achieving such a result.*
This is incorrect.
To the extent of our experience, "intelligent beings" are themselves the products of, and subject to, the "unaided laws of physics".
Thus, the creation of a watch, recognizably the product of intelligent beings, is ultimately the product of the unaided laws of physics.
2003-07-29 20:50 | User Profile
*Originally posted by NeoNietzsche@Jul 29 2003, 13:57 * ** To the extent of our experience, "intelligent beings" are themselves the products of, and subject to, the "unaided laws of physics".
Thus, the creation of a watch, recognizably the product of intelligent beings, is ultimately the product of the unaided laws of physics. **
You have experience with unaided laws of physics producing life?
2003-07-30 00:50 | User Profile
Originally posted by Happy Hacker@Jul 29 2003, 14:50 * You have experience with unaided laws of physics producing life?*
Yes - I have it on good authority that I was born of my mother's body rather than having been manufactured. She tells the same story regarding her own origins...
2003-07-30 02:03 | User Profile
*Originally posted by wintermute@Jul 30 2003, 01:12 * ** Do you presume to challenge the findings of Creation Science with old wives tales? **
You presume too much of his mother.
(couldn't help it)
2003-07-30 02:54 | User Profile
Originally posted by wintermute@Jul 29 2003, 19:12 * > *Yes - I have it on good authority that I was born of my mother's body rather than having been manufactured. She tells the same story regarding her own origins... **
Neo -
Do you presume to challenge the findings of Creation Science with old wives tales?
Wintermute**
Watch it there, Wintermute.
Who says my mother was a wife?
I'm prepared to believe, in fact, that my mother was intact before I was born!
2003-07-30 02:59 | User Profile
Originally posted by Happy Hacker+Jul 29 2003, 20:03 -->
QUOTE* (Happy Hacker @ Jul 29 2003, 20:03 ) <!--QuoteBegin-wintermute@Jul 30 2003, 01:12 * ** Do you presume to challenge the findings of Creation Science with old wives tales? ** You presume too much of his mother.
(couldn't help it)**
He presumes too little.
NeoNietzsche
2003-07-30 03:22 | User Profile
Originally posted by wintermute@Jul 29 2003, 21:01 * > I'm prepared to believe, in fact, that my mother was intact before I* was born! **
Just like Lyndon Johnson, then.
**Once, when he was Senate majority leader, the German chancellor, trying to make small talk, asked, "Let's see, you were born in a log cabin weren't you?" "No!," replied Johnson, grinning ear-to-ear for everyone in the room to see. "You are thinking of Abe Lincoln. I was born in a manger." ** **
I, on the other hand, had a human for a mother.
Drakmal
2003-07-30 04:25 | User Profile
Originally posted by godlesscapitalist@Jul 29 2003, 03:55 * ** > Fun fact: it has been estimated by war historians that the number of people killed in all of humanity's wars, from the beginning of civilization several thousand years ago until 1900, totalled around 50 million. Only some of these were wars run by religious folk, and even fewer for religious reasons. In the 20th century, the war bodycount increased fivefold, mostly due to judeo-atheistic communism, its associated revolutions, and the wars that it spawned.*
But that study's meaningless if it doesn't account for the exponential growth of the world population and the improved deadliness of weapons. **
I wouldn't say 'meaningless'; I seriously doubt that the population of the world in one century has been greater than the cumulative populations of the world in the past 7 millennia. I don't see your point about improved weaponry; army to army, swords and arrows could kill more people than rifles and mortars. Air-dropped bombs destroy infrastructure more than they kill people--most of Britain's 62,000 civilian deaths during WW2 were from fire and loss of infrastructure; only some of it was a direct result of bombing.
The big change in war, coincident with state atheism, has been less about technology and more about focus; Catholic Europe's focus in war was generally the enemy army and their supply lines. Massacres happened, but were limited in number and scope. Nowadays the focus of our weaponry is the enemy entity as a whole, combatants and civilians alike--thus our dropping bombs on un-militarized population centers as well as military facilities, and our spreading of nuclear waste all over enemy countries, waste that will poison and kill non-combatants for billions of years after the war has ended.
Drakmal
2003-07-30 04:26 | User Profile
PS: NeoNietzsche, where's the quote in your sig from?
Avalanche
2003-07-30 04:28 | User Profile
The problem with the watch/watchmaker theory is that people say thereby, that "god" is implicit in the "watchmaker." "He" isn't. The watchmaker theory implies a watchmaker... about whose identity the theory says naught. Would all those who accept the watchmaker consider that perhaps the watchmaker was an ET?!
That there IS a watch, means only SOMEONE made it -- not who that someone was!
The 'leap of faith' to turn the watchmaker into god is unsupported by the theory.
NeoNietzsche
2003-07-30 04:36 | User Profile
Originally posted by Drakmal@Jul 29 2003, 22:26 * PS: NeoNietzsche, where's the quote in your sig from?*
It's Evola. I copied it off of something posted by Triskelion a few weeks ago. Check with him for the specifics.
Hilaire Belloc
2003-07-30 06:24 | User Profile
Wintermute - Yes, exactly. What I'd be interested in would be carnage relative to population numbers. I doubt that atheists are particularly more brutal than the religious...certainly Islamic fundamentalists or the Spanish Inquisition could hang with the NKVD if we're talking about intensity...
Yeah and only 2% of those convicted by the Inquisition were ever executed. It had the lowest execution rate of anyother provincial court in Europe! So I doubt the Inquisition can be equal to the NKVD even in terms of intensity.