Dawkins is completely mistaken. He is just misinterpreting what the Quran states to throw people off. I have a saltwater aquarium so naturally you can mix fresh and salt water. I do it daily and my 5 year old son can too. His suggestion of mixing salt and fresh water in the lab is absurd, and when you speak to the public who are all non-Muslims, you can make anything appear true, especially if the audience has no education of the topic.

Do you think the Quran is that naive to not know people can mix water? Muhammad (pbuh) lived in the desert, and non-Muslims feel he wrote the Quran, and if this were true, it would have been better to not even mention the sea in fear of being proven wrong in the future- yet the Quran does talk about the sea, about space, about everything!

The verse in the Quran is speaking about the sea. It is not speaking on a small scale where you do something in a lab. The science in the Quran is on a grand scale. The verse is not referring to an estuary, but more about a halocline and stratification.

Stratification: "Water stratification occurs when water masses with different properties - salinity (halocline), oxygenation (chemocline), density (pycnocline), temperature (thermocline) - form layers that act as barriers to water mixing. These layers are normally arranged according to density, with the least dense water masses sitting above the more dense layers."

Look at this video for a better understanding: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kt6UI3TVZTw

If the Quran was written by a man, whom I may add could not read and write (Muhammad pbuh), it would have been better for him to leave these out of the Quran. Well answer these few questions:

Keep in mind the Quran came over 1400 years ago:

1) Islam is the final Abrahamic religion and the restoration of the religions before it. Due to distortion of the Bible, God promised to protect the Quran till the final hour. Over 1400 years later, the Quran is in tact word for word how it was revealed. The Bible has totally been manipulated over time. How is the Quran still protected today after Gods promise?

2) Without a microscope, how did the Quran know honey is made from FEMALE bees?

3) Without a telescope, how did the Quran know that planets are round and flow in an orbit?

4) Without technology, how did the Quran know every living thing is made of water?

5) Without a microscope, how did the Quran mention an atom?

6) Without a microscope, how did the Quran give the exact description of the human embryo?

I'm not sure if I agree with everything in this video, but I did like the part about wishing the religious person well while disliking the religion. It's a good answer to "hate the sin, love the sinner".

christianity is used to subvert governments around the world. for example, the independence movements in taiwan, and hong kong were created via the christian church. the church acts as a front for western regimes to destabilise 3rd world countries like China. specifically with China, the west regards China as a serious competitor that must be stopped at all costs, and western rulers will use every last trick to destroy China. remember the west came about as a power not through hard work or innovation, but through the destruction, and repression of other previous great powers like China, India, Persia, etc. tibetan budism tells people to light themselves on fire, again, to destabilise China. the faluen g0ng is directly backed by the c!a. why do you think christians spend so much money going around the world to try to convert people? they have to get something in return. if you know anything about westerners, they will spend $1, expecting to get $5 back. of course dawkins and hitchens will never talk about stuff like this.

I disagree with you only in 1 thing, war on Iraq. It was based on lies. Tens of thousands dead, millions refugees. No one takes responsibility.

As a humanists we should not support lies. As a humanists we should do no harm.

I still love watching Hitchens, I always will. But he was wrong on Iraq. So are you too.

Wish you all the best anyway :)

I know I'm only 15 and I may not have spent my whole life conjuring up ideas on why the "Devil is Good, and God is Bad." like you people clearly have. (Which by the way is something the Devil would definitely say.) But, growing up being molested by my father and living in a place where people shoot and kill eachother every other night, I don't see how Satan could be a good being. Reading this article and the comments really brought tears to my eyes. I know you guys will probably tear me apart for this comment but frankly, I don't care at all. I just want to say that you might not believe that Our Father God isn't what everyone thinks he is. But, I know he is the God that gives life, creates miracles, and gave his only son so that we can all be here today. Oh and btw, the whole purpose of Jesus sacrificing himself was so that God can see that Jesus had faith in us. That we could succeed in proving to God that we are able to make the right decisions and follow the path that leads to paradise, not so that we can just do whatever the heck we want to and get away with it. All I'm saying is that Our God is the King of Kings, Lord of Lords, and Savior of Saviors and that there is NONE greater.

I know I'm only 15 and I may not have spent my whole life conjuring up ideas on why the "Devil is Good, and God is Bad." like you people clearly have. (Which by the way is something the Devil would definitely say.) But, growing up being molested by my father and living in a place where people shoot and kill eachother every other night, I don't see how Satan could be a good being. Reading this article and the comments really brought tears to my eyes. I know you guys will probably tear me apart for this comment but frankly, I don't care at all. I just want to say that you might not believe that Our Father God isn't what everyone thinks he is. But, I know he is the God that gives life, creates miracles, and gave his only son so that we can all be here today. Oh and btw, the whole purpose of Jesus sacrificing himself was so that God can see that Jesus had faith in us. That we could succeed in proving to God that we are able to make the right decisions and follow the path that leads to paradise, not so that we can just do whatever the heck we want to and get away with it. All I'm saying is that Our God is the King of Kings, Lord of Lords, and Savior of Saviors and that there is NONE greater.

I don't mean to be rude or anything, but this may be one of the most ignorant articles I have ever read. You're grouping entire religions that include millions of people together and assuming they hold the same thought patterns. I would assume that you're atheist from reading the article and I strongly encourage you to consider this: Atheists, over the last ten or so years (considering it's only recently caught popularity), have committed as many if not more acts against society as terrorists have. A few examples would be the Columbine shooting, Sandy Hook School shooting and the shooting in the viewing of the Dark Knight Rises. And yet you have the gall to say that religion causes problems such as that? No. The majority of these religions you mention have emphasis on morals such as loving others and self betterment. Yes people involved in religion have been corrupt, manipulating, and perhaps even "evil" though that's such an arbitrary and ridiculous word, but overall religion has helped the world more than hurt it. Many great people have been theists and had their roots in religion. People such as Aristotle, the majority of the Framers of America, Plato, Socrates, Copernicus, Descartes, Einstein, and the list goes on and on and on. Those are just a few of my favorites. Can you honestly say you have the wisdom to simply discard them all as "wrong" and "evil" without a second thought? I encourage you to reply to this as well because I am honestly interested in your opinion.

Dawkins and other materialists are illegitimately over-extended. They take human interaction and religious fervor as grounds that religion is generally bad. This is true, religion does seem to cause quite a bit of turmoil and grief around the world, but to move from the viewpoint that humans aren't adequately adept to handle a concept like religion to "religion is bad" is farcical. Science holds no bearing on moral truths. Science holds no bearing on the concept of God to begin with, because as a system of axiomatic proof, it is inherently bound by the physical reality we occupy. I'm tired of Dawkins making the leap from "It cannot be observed by science" to "It doesn't exist." As a critical thinker, he's a lightweight, which is why instead of offering sound and reasonable arguments against his dissenters, he slanders them with ad hominems. Anyone who seriously wishes to think about reality, religion, and science can read "Mind and Cosmos" and watch Thomas Nagel reduce Dawkins' entire intellectual premise to that of a screaming baby.

I work as an attorney but have an MA in history--whatever that's worth on the internet--I'd like to chime in with a few thoughts.

I'd put forth that to Hitler atheism or theism were useful as tools depending on the audience. Quotes cherry-picking pro-Christian comments from Hitler are somewhat naive, manipulation of target audiences & their beliefs was a tried and true tactic of his. He made comments that were as anti-Christian as other statements he made were in support of it.

He was raised Catholic but that didn't stop him from murdering thousands of priests & nuns whether German, Polish, Czech or French.

Stalin was trained in a Russian Orthodox seminary but he most certainly became an atheist. Ironically he became an atheist & Marxist while there.

Perhaps the strongest valid criticism against atheism being used as an anti-religious tool was the Soviet "League of Militant Atheists". Tellingly it was not used often against Russian Orthodoxy but focused on the western reaches of the Soviet state--Ukraine, areas with large Polish populations, Lithuania, etc--where Catholicism was bound up in nationalism, anti-communist & anti-Russian feeling. It was most certainly used as a tool to diminish religion in favor of the political ideology of the Soviet Communists.

But in the end a few comments below hit the point I think; attributing atheism or theism to their motives misses the point they were both psychopaths.

Funny, they kept out bible pushers but didn't keep out the leering perverted female clerks who

would stand in and leer at young men getting a nude medical exam. How pathetic is that!

          Louisville meps ft Knox kentucky

Just a late note to add small reactors to this discussion:-

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/big-idea/08/mini-nukes-pg2

View of Something out of nothing has always been there in the eastern philosophy for many years...

What teacherteacherteacher says about the kooraaan is mostly rubbish, but at least the tales of islam have a flying horse that can double as a space ship in there. That's fun, and also useful for would be Dungeons and Dragons dungeon masters.

I found bits of the old testament inspirational for some Dungeons & Dragons scenarios.

"WARREN: ... If death is the end, shoot, I'm not going to waste another minute being altruistic."

WHAT 1st degree HYPOCRACY for anyone to say, let alone someone claiming to be a minister of God! If one claims to serve his Lord and others he is paid to render serve to, for no other reason than a promise of an after life, he is not only in the wrong business but must renounce his faith as being Christian, because he is NOT! Even if Warren felt this way it would be better for him to remain silent than speak and remove all doubt. If Warren was to find that there was no hell do you think he might also start treating people differently?

Sigh, If I wasn't such a lazy bastard I would have wrote this exact article a while ago. I think about this stuff all the time. (As I lay on a couch with grapes beside me). I came to understand this long ago. Oh if I wasn't a lazy bastard. Soon I will escape this phase and exercise my thoughts standing upright.

I just read the God Delusion (got it for $3 at the local fair - sorry about that)

Loved it

Agreed with every word - actually, I had thought it myself but Richard puts it better of course.

I came through somewhat of the same trip - Anglican - high up in that church - but various things happened and now I am a total atheist.

But you cannot be absolutely sure of atheism - of course not - but I am as sure that God does not exist as I am sure you are standing in front of me!

Three complaints about the book.

1 The argument from design fails because it does not discuss how god was designed. But it does not say that in Christian circles, you are not even 'allowed' to ask that question!!!!

2 It does not address the argument from a 'beauty' point of view. OK, it is a variation of the argument from design - but not quite. The answer of course is that all beauty is comparative. 'You are beautiful' is not an absolute statement - it just means that 'you are more beautiful than others'. So it is merely a relative point of view.

3 The book mentions New Zealand more than once. But New Zealand is not in the index - shocking stuff.

I came to the view that religion is not a 'truth', it is merely a way of looking at things. The religious, and the different religions look at things from a different point of view - but the facts do not change!!!

And I think that the final chapter on how awful Christians are is a bit unfortunate. It is true, The point needs to be made of course. BUT and it is a big BUT, the 'man in the pew' is actually a nice chap doing what he thinks is right. He is merely wrong - the book should make this point.

Comment 46 by sl

Your comment contains numerous flaws and inaccuracies.

Let's start with your unwarranted assumption that there must be a "why." There is absolutely no reason to make such an assumption other than that you want it to be so. Scarcely a reason.

In case I read your post incorrectly, we did not come from apes. (Actually we are apes, but that's a different subject.) We did not come from any animal that survives today. Ernst Myer called the common ancestor a "proconsul."

At any rate, your second completely unwarranted assumption is that there is a "soul" which exists separate from the body. No modern neuroscientist would make such a false claim. The "soul" you intuit, is merely the feeling of consciousness which is now being unraveled by scientists. But no consciousness can exist without the living brain. When your brain dies, your consciousness or soul dies with it.

So to answer: we come from the first living organisms on the planer which appeared appoximately 3.8 billion years ago. We are the products of those billions of years of evolution. No one knows where we are going. I'd tell you if I knew.

OK. Let's presume there was this break. A day (or time to make it more vague) of the decision. And the future human race made the decision to climb down the tree and start to walk on two legs. (Because, lets presume, of natural/environmental aspects - climate change which means degradation of forest and food and the necessity to cover greater distances to get food. On the ground we started to eat more food which means our brains developed faster and grew larger - that's what I read. ) While the now apes kept moving from tree to tree and stayed in forest areas with a lot of food.

What I dont undertand is why? Why would we do that? That would presume we were intelligent enough to make such a decision before we parted from our brothers down the tree. Which means we had a higher level of intelligence then our the brothers and sister apes.

And if that is the case, and we had this incredible ability to take such mind blowing decisions even before the tree time, where did it come from? Is brain size enough of an answer to satisfy this? Does brain size really matter?

Another question I have is about how intelligence happened. Did intelligence happened as a first event or a slow progression? And, again, what initiated this progression?

I don't think just natural or environmental events can be the answer. The might be the trigger but a natural disaster or whatever does not make anyone/thing more or less intelligent. And what about the soul? Is there a correlation between soul and intelligence? Does a soul exist? If not, why did we think about it's existence in the first case?

Interesting enough all of these questioning resembles a lot the 3 main questions in catechism:

You can try to think about those in a philosophical or scientific way not exclusively religious.

Richard Dawkins was simply wrong and he needs to apologise. The posts here attacking feminism are disappointing and alienating. For shame. The growing right wing tendencies to be found on this web site are deeply disturbing.

Good to see a constructive rather than destructive discussion here for a change. We need more good news stories evan though bad news and controversy unfortunately sells better.

I really don't understand how anyone could believe that Einstein would approve of Dawkins' fanatical atheism. He would be humiliated to be lumped with a person as arrogant as Richard Dawkins.

The point of the article was not to convince Dawkins and friends that they should be religious, but that they should stop being idiots. It's not a competition between religion and atheism. It's a competition between saying dumb things about religion and not saying dumb things. The onus, therefore, is on Dawkins: defend the ignorant things you say.

I would say yes. I personally find it disgusting in the belief system that has come out of it, but anything that has created an influence like that should be read. I would strongly recommend you either get the New Oxford College Study Bible or Harper Collins College Study bible. They both us NRSV which uses more modern english language and won't have to worry about the more traditional english that you see in the KJV. The other cool thing about these versions is it has Apocraphya which are books or passages not included in the original cannon. I would also recommend checking out http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/ which also has a lot of the books that didn't make it into the christian cannon. There are many different gospels that were not included. An interesting one is the Infancy Gospel of Thomas where Jesus actually kills a couple of people (never saw that coming). This is a bit long but I am a religious studies minor. Religion is bullshit, but the book is an interesting read and sometimes scary.

Embrace your freethinking, don't believe what your are told if there isn't sufficient evidence. The concept of hell is somewhat childish and therefore it should be discarded. Don't fear the fantasies, accept rationality and logic.

As for the affect on children, it appears to be a safeguard in making sure they comply with the faith, never questioning it, which is akin to ignorance.

Comment 39 by dmahuika :

What a dishonest, ignorant, and biased attack on the LDS religion.

Care to explain why exactly ?

It is so sad. Our hospitals are closing, our doctors are leaving the country to find work, people are dying in hospitals because of the lack of medicine, our schools are old and no new ones are built, we have aprox. 500 km of highways and we are building this.

There are very few rational people in Romania and the vast majority of Romanians either want this thing to be built or do not care.

Our children are also forced to learn the Orthodox Religion in schools.

The ones that are against it have no power.

It is sad.

Comment 79 by reasonable101

ehm... ... as is Dawkins in talking about geology ... but don't tell anyone...

Richard Dawkins is talking about geology with citations naming reputable university geological peer-reviewed studies. (Real scientists read each other's reputable works, and LEARN from them!)

Sarfati is making it up according to his biased Young Earth biblical literalism.

It is a necessary qualification for a believer in Young Earth Biblical Literalism to be scientifically ILLITERATE in geology, astronomy, radiometric physics, and evolutionary biology. - A feature well illustrated in their writings.

Too real scientists these YEC claims about evolution, are a show of comical incompetence in basic science - regardless of if some followers have managed to tick a few exam-boxes in limited areas of study.

What a dishonest, ignorant, and biased attack on the LDS religion.

Comment 68 by reasonable101

There is a lot that science hasn't uncovered about macro and microevolution,

Macro-evolution is micro-evolution looked at over geological time.

Only scientifically illiterate creationists think there is this false division in the continuity of evolution over time-scales.

so rather than slurring the critics, why not present the science?

Why not go to a library and learn some biology? The science has been presented in thousands of books there, for over a hundred and fifty years!