Dawkins's comments re: tsunami disaster

[BillyJoe]

Pixel,

Lucky: Today's Guardian contains a piece by the Rev Dr Giles Fraser which is the best response I've yet seen by a believer to the tsunami. You'll find it here if you're interested.

I particularly liked this bit...

This is not the sort of suffering that can be traded as an intellectual commodity in some wider game of atheist versus believer.

And this bit...

Christians cannot go on speaking about prayer as if it were an alternative way of getting things done in the world, or about divine power as if God were the puppet master of the universe.

And for believers, this bit...

Christians are called to recognise that the essence of the divine being is not power but compassion and love. And it's this love, and this love only, that whispers to me in defiance of the darkness: all will be well, all manner of things will be well.

BillyJoe.

 

[CFLarsen]

Claus, there's no way to debate this person as long as he persists in making up his own definitions for words and then using them.

He just "makes it all up".

True. It's the trademark of a true woo.

 

[Pixel42]

I guess you're refering to the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment?. I think you're missing the point by making up a false analogy. Religion has institutionalized dogma, censorship, hate, etc. It has perscuted and brought suffering to people, just for their ideas. On the other hand, science has been mis-used, indeed!; scientists have made mistakes, sure!, but the scope is totally different.

As I was the person who stated that good people have done bad things in the name of religion, but not in the name of science, I feel I should respond to this.

I had never heard of this incident (I'm British) and I read the link given with horror. It is one of the most dreadful examples of following the philosophy that the end justifies the means that I have ever come across.

At first sight it does seem to be a case of good people doing bad things in the name of science, but the underlying cause of it seems to me to be racism - the casual assumption that the lives of poor black men are worth less that those of the white majority, whose lives might be saved by the knowledge gained. This is not a view that is supported by science - quite the reverse in fact.

In any case there seems to me to be a qualitative difference between sacrificing a few lives in order to gain knowledge that will save many more and, say, burning women alive because your religion has led you to believe they are witches. A moral case can at least be made for the former (though it's not one I would agree with myself).

 

[BillyJoe]

Pixel,

In any case there seems to me to be a qualitative difference between sacrificing a few lives

According to the article....

By the end of the experiment, 28 of the men had died directly of syphilis, 100 were dead of related complications, 40 of their wives had been infected, and 19 of their children had been born with congenital syphilis.

....in order to gain knowledge that will save many more.....

Again, according to the article....

How this knowledge would have changed clinical treatment of syphilis is uncertain. Although the PHS touted the study as one of great scientific merit, from the outset its actual benefits were hazy. It took almost forty years before someone involved in the study took a hard and honest look at the end results, reporting that “nothing learned will prevent, find, or cure a single case of infectious syphilis or bring us closer to our basic mission of controlling venereal disease in the United States.”

BJ

 

[T'ai Chi]

jzs,

Perhaps you could clarify under what rules we are allowed to pose questions to you?

Perhaps you could admit that your dictionary definitions don't mention "claim" at all?

Nope, no chance of that...

 

[T'ai Chi]

Claus, there's no way to debate this person as long as he persists in making up his own definitions for words and then using them.

He just "makes it all up".

j², the dictionary definitions don't mention "claim" at all. How is that me "making up" my own definitions?

Do tell...

 

[CFLarsen]

Perhaps you could admit that your dictionary definitions don't mention "claim" at all?

Nope, no chance of that...

So, you will not clarify under what rules we are allowed to pose questions to you. You just want to bitch and whine.

 

[CFLarsen]

j², the dictionary definitions don't mention "claim" at all. How is that me "making up" my own definitions?

Do tell...

Already explained several times. You want to rewrite the English dictionary, so you don't have to engage in debate, provide evidence or do anything.

Except bitch and whine.

 

[T'ai Chi]

So, you will not clarify under what rules we are allowed to pose questions to you. You just want to bitch and whine.

You can obviously ask questions any way you'd like. If you ask them in a bullying manner, as you are prone to do, don't be so suprised when you get called on it.

 

[CFLarsen]

You can obviously ask questions any way you'd like. If you ask them in a bullying manner, as you are prone to do, don't be so suprised when you get called on it.

Define "bullying". In your own words, of course. And please provide a translation into English, too.

 

[T'ai Chi]

Define "bullying". In your own words, of course. And please provide a translation into English, too.

Your definitions don't mention "claim", PseudoSkeptic. Keep running from this. fact.

Define bullying? You looked in a dictionary before, try it again and quit wasting my time.

 

[CFLarsen]

Your definitions don't mention "claim", PseudoSkeptic. Keep running from this. fact.

Define bullying? You looked in a dictionary before, try it again and quit wasting my time.

A dictionary?



.....whattamaroon...

 

[jj]

j², the dictionary definitions don't mention "claim" at all. How is that me "making up" my own definitions?

Do tell...

Perhaps you've heard of the term "synonym"?

I see you can still muster nothing more than your own private language coupled with making fun of other people's names.

I guess that's how you want to be remembered.

By the way, have you considered retracting your "malice" accusation yet?

 

[T'ai Chi]

A dictionary?



.....whattamaroon...

Yeah, a dictionary, you know, for definitions and stuff. I'm sure you can find one with pictures.

Dictionaries give meaning. Your definitions of prediction didn't mention "claim" at all. And now you are trying to persuade me that prediction means claim? You don't have a very strong case.

 

[CFLarsen]

Yeah, a dictionary, you know, for definitions and stuff. I'm sure you can find one with pictures.

Dictionaries give meaning. Your definitions of prediction didn't mention "claim" at all. And now you are trying to persuade me that prediction means claim? You don't have a very strong case.

When you make a prediction, you claim to know the future.

You have no case at all.

 

[T'ai Chi]

When you make a prediction, you claim to know the future.

PseudoSkeptic, you continue to have no case. You're steadily becoming a parody of yourself.

You're trying to deperately persuade me that a prediction is the same thing as a claim? When the definitions of prediction you presented don't say "claim" at all? Your argument is a joke. The dictionaries give meaning, not you. And none of your definitions said that a prediciton was a claim to know the future.

Moreover, since I outright said my prediction is a subjective guess, and I could be wrong, etc., and specifically said I'm not making a claim to know the future like a self-proclaimed psychic would, for example, you are really out in left field.

Try again...

 

[jj]

Yeah, a dictionary, you know, for definitions and stuff. I'm sure you can find one with pictures.



Incivil, ad-hominem attack.


Dictionaries give meaning. Your definitions of prediction didn't mention "claim" at all. And now you are trying to persuade me that prediction means claim? You don't have a very strong case.

Disputatious, denying the existance of synonyms, and, to my reading, openly, gleefully malicious as well as conciously offensive.

 

[T'ai Chi]

Please address this:

As an example of a prediction, say I have some data on daily temperature, something like the daily temperature at 12noon for each day of January 2005. Using the past data (data from Jan 1 to Jan 9th inclusive), I predict that T[10] (the temperature for Jan. 10th at 12noon) will be 64 degrees.

Does that mean I am claiming to know that it is 64 degrees?

 

[T'ai Chi]

Incivil, ad-hominem attack.

j², feel free to report me to the moderators. Saying a dictionary exists that has pictures in it is an "attack"? You are really a sensitive guy, ain't cha?

You don't think him calling me a "maroon" is incivil? Hmm?

Disputatious, denying the existance of synonyms, and, to my reading, openly, gleefully malicious as well as conciously offensive.

The defintions he provided didn't mention claim at all, and that is what he is desperately wishing to show. If he wanted to present synoyms, he could. The fact is, he didn't.

 

[T'ai Chi]

Perhaps you've heard of the term "synonym"?

So now we move from the actual definition (that didn't mention claim at all...) to synonyms? Heh, ok. If Claus wanted to talk about synonyms, you'd think he would have brought them up originally?

I see you can still muster nothing more than your own private language coupled with making fun of other people's names.

Private language, nope, English, and going directly from the dictionary definitions.

Report me to the mods, j² if you are so offended by "making fun". Better yet, write me a condescending haiku about it.