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The mission of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science is to support scientific education, critical thinking and evidence-based understanding of the natural world in the quest to overcome religious fundamentalism, superstition, intolerance and suffering.
The Magic of Reality
for the iPad
Sean Faircloth:
Attack of the Theocrats!
Source? (Let me guess: the Telegraph.)
Whoever wrote that has terrible criteria on which to base a judgement regarding who is indisputably one of the world’s best known commentators on modern culture. I’ve never even heard of this guy who, as this article of his shows, is an idiot.
I think you’ll find the main reasons electricity demand has exploded is that the world has an exponentially expanding population and its poorer nations are now catching up. A few per cent more hunger per person to run smartphones is comparatively irrelevant. Besides, this guy writes for the Telegraph, which doesn’t admit our electricity production causes climate change, so what does he mean by “destructively”?
He had a PhD in a science, he was employed by the University of Oxford as a professor for decades, he has contributed numerous new ideas to his field since his PhD ended, he is a member of the Royal Society … Therefore, he’s a scientist. He’s also a non-fanatic, as shown by his formal discussions of probabilities in so many of his works.
A phenomenon can only prove a god if without a god that phenomenon wouldn’t occur. An atheist’s arguments are to be expected in the absence of a god. In any case, you can’t call his arguments noisy because they involve no shouting, and are only seen or heard after making a conscious choice to do so.
You know the rules: everyone has to take a drink.
Quests aren’t what define dogma or religiosity; for those he would have to believe without evidence some specific claims about reality.
Fallibility isn’t bad enough to deserve a complaint here. Religion is not merely fallible; it has no error-correcting mechanism whatsoever. By contrast, science is defined by its error-correcting mechanism.
There is no evidence that, had they grown up in a non-theocracy, they would have been less artistically productive. Indeed, the continued productivity of artists after theocracies waned in the West suggests otherwise.
Organised anything, if by organised you mean using the law to get people to think a certain metaphysical way, has produced horrible stuff. I don’t care whether it’s religion as in Nazi Germany or Marxism as in Stalinist Russia. Incidentally, it is Communism that makes North Korea the way it is; its people can hardly be called atheists, considering the way they revere the three Kim what-are-their-names.
How about giving evidence for your assertions?
Permalink Fri, 17 Feb 2012 12:37:38 UTC | #918756