Dawkins, atheism & intelligent design

[zooterkin]

Bwinright has never discussed anything the two years or so that I've been lurking and posting here.

He tosses Molotov cocktails through the windows of this forum, then speeds away until the next time.

That is his general MO, but very occasionally he does return, such as here.

 

[zooterkin]

Seriously, almost every atheist on the planet shovels the "you're dumb" ******** at every creationist continuously.

False dichotomy. Scientists of every religion as well as none dismiss creationism.

THEN they refuse to debate science. Tch, tch! Such a bunch of losers.

What does creationism have to do with science?

 

[DC]

Charles Darwin whose Theory of Evolution has now been disproved by numerous scientists

Huh? i missed something?

source evidence etc?

 

[Dave Rogers]

A lot of what Bwinwright says is valid, or at least something to 'critically think' about.

That's actually the problem. Bwinwright says a lot that has no validity whatsoever, that is completely fabricated and entirely untrue. There's very little point thinking critically about blatant lies (such as the lie that the 'Theory of Evolution has now been disproved by numerous scientists'), other than to try to divine the motivations of the liars who originated them. That's why the discussion rapidly turns to the poster, rather than the content; the content is unworthy of discussion.

Dave

 

[dafydd]

I do not see anything wrong with that reply. The bible is what it is, not what you would like it to be.



Again, there is nothing wrong with that attitude. If you come spouting your local, primitive, patched-up, incoherent, idiotic creation tale, you will be called dumb, yes.

I agree,you would have to be as thick as two short planks to believe in the nonsense in the book of Genesis.

 

[MRC_Hans]

Have any of you yahoos noticed the banner under the website at the top? It states "a place to discuss skepticism, critical thinking, the paranormal and science in a friendly and lively way.? Hmm? I think you all missed that hint.

Yahoos? Hmmm, pot, meet kettle.

A lot of what Bwinwright says is valid, or at least something to 'critically think' about.

Maybe so, I haven't read it all, but if a posters main points are not valid, why exactly should we take time to comb out possible valid points?

But what has he received in return? A villification of his viewpoint, almost everywhere here.

Well since he sort of started by vilificating OUR point, I suppose he had that coming.

Note one reply: "...a despicable work that has no divine source at all, the Bible. The less said about that ridiculous and offensive work, the better."

Why do you feel that this opinion is any less legitimate than, say, "The bible is a divine work and tells the incontrovertible truth"?

Both are opinions and both are legitimate.

Seriously, almost every atheist on the planet shovels the "you're dumb" ******** at every creationist continuously. THEN they refuse to debate science. Tch, tch! Such a bunch of losers.

Ehr, no. Creationists refuse to discuss science. Which is probably why we do tend to think they're a little dumb.

Mr Bwinwright, I would suggest you stick to science, as I can agree with a lot you say.

That would be a grat idea, yes.

But quoting scripture here is like waving garlic at vampires.

Its more like: Quoting scripture is about as scientific as quoting, say, Moby Dick.

(Silly ad hominem ignored)

Hans

 

[Delvo]

What's a yahoo?

Yahoos were primitive, violent, uncultured, naked, and I think seemingly non-linguistic people on one of the islands Gulliver landed on in "Gulliver's Travels". Their behavior is characterized by lots of fighting, random sexual assaults, and a habit of digging in mud for shiny rocks and then fighting over them. Gulliver preferred hanging out with the island's horses, who were sophisticated and intelligent and could hold civil conversations with him.

The word is one of the words that Swift made up for the horses' language; it's what they called the humans of the island. The horses' name for themselves was "Houyhnhnm". All words of that language would sound similar to neighing and whinnying and such if pronounced with complete authenticity (which is just about impossible).

 

[Twiler]

Yahoos were primitive, violent, uncultured, naked, and I think seemingly non-linguistic people on one of the islands Gulliver landed on in "Gulliver's Travels". Their behavior is characterized by lots of fighting, random sexual assaults, and a habit of digging in mud for shiny rocks and then fighting over them. Gulliver preferred hanging out with the island's horses, who were sophisticated and intelligent and could hold civil conversations with him.

The word is one of the words that Swift made up for the horses' language; it's what they called the humans of the island. The horses' name for themselves was "Houyhnhnm". All words of that language would sound similar to neighing and whinnying and such if pronounced with complete authenticity (which is just about impossible).

Interesting, I'd have never guessed that!

 

[SonOfLaertes]

WhereisJoe?

I think I know - reading (for the first time, apparently) the Bwinright posts that he so self-righteously used as an example to us heathens.

I can picture him right now, red-faced and mumbling soft curses, stashing away the broad brush he was using to paint this forum. Blaming Bwinright, not himself, for embodying all of the attributes he tried to pin on us. Rationalizing Bwinright's lack of substance, lack of courtesy, lack of availability and engagement. Rationalizing all this in some way that will allow him to continue to believe that his fellow Christians are any better, in the aggregate, than we are.

Where do you buy those rose-colored glasses, hereisjoe, that allow you to ignore all of the vitriol and death-wishing that goes on in those forums that call themselves "Christian"?

Tread ve-r-r-ry lightly here if you think we can't come up with countless examples of Jesus's best hoping that unbelievers burn in screaming agony. But that's OK to you, isn't it Joe? That would only be us getting are just dessert's, whereas us calling Bwinright names is a bad, bad thing.

I'll assume that your lack of insight into the nature of Bwinrights posts was simple laziness on your part, the fact that you simply jumped on an opportunity to hit that "submit" button and feel the almost drug-like euphoria of confirming your cherished bias. You will need to pick a better example to use next time, I think, or risk disproving your own point in one neat and complete package, again.

 

[MattC]

Don't talk about the argument. Just say "he's insane" and that suffices as an answer. Nice critical thinking job! A Rasberry Nobel to you!

The difficulty with critically analyzing bwinwright's initial post in this thread, or indeed analyzing any of his posts at all on this subject, lies not with their lack of relative word count but rather with the sharp lack of substance within them. This makes it both hard to analyze, and to really say very much about.

Consider, if you will, bwinwright's initial post in a more general sense - it makes a lot of claims about Richard Dawkins. More specifically, it makes a lot of claims about Mr. Dawkins' attributes that bwinwright claims to know - for example, what Dawkins thought as a teenager. This may be written down somewhere, with a much better source for the information than the thin air bwinwright provides, but if so bwinwright has not seen fit to inform us of it. This point, then, is impossible to debate not because it is correct but rather that it seems to be bwinwright's own opinion, seemingly unfounded.

The later text in the post moves away from Dawkins, to begin discussing intelligent design in general. His claim of "natural selection is intelligent design" is unsubstantiated by him within this post and, I'm going to guess, the other posts he's made on the subject. He has not provided any real justification for this hypothesis, aside from a few biblical quotations that he seems to strongly agree with.

I'd actually go a step further and allege that bwinwright's inclusion of biblical quotations within his post accurately supports the Kitzmiller rationale - if you really want to allege that your theory is scientific, why would you provide Scripture as support for the hypothesis? One would think that there would or should be a wealth of journal articles and experimental evidence to justify the conclusion.

Seriously, almost every atheist on the planet shovels the "you're dumb" ******** at every creationist continuously. THEN they refuse to debate science. Tch, tch! Such a bunch of losers.

I'm not entirely aware that we've ever failed to debate science (in fact, we've a forum dedicated to doing just that which I suggest you examine sometime), but the problem in this case is that the actual science is entirely one-sided. I will not debate bwinwright's opinions with him - I frankly don't see the point, and it's up to him to prove that what he says is anything other than his personal opinion. When he makes a stronger claim, we'll examine it.

While I agree with you that "you're dumb" is not going to get either side anywhere save infuriated, nor really is any debate about Creationist "science" - at least in bwinwright's case, it's really just opinion. His.

~ Matt

 

[tsig]

What's a yahoo?

Someone who rants about ranting.

 

[Beerina]

Regardless, Job doesn't describe the earth as a sphere. IIRC Babylonian cosmology described the earth as a disk, which could well have been suspended over empty space, and the northern sky (as well as the sky in all directions) could have been described as "stretched over nothingness".

The cosmology in Genesis is basically that the Earth is a flat disc in a pocket created by pushing back the waters of chaos "God floated over the waters" and all that.

The sky is a solid "vault" and the land is, of course solid, and together they keep the water out. You open windows in the sky, that gives rain. You open cracks deep in the land, that lets up fountain and well water from below. The story of Noah even acknowledges this cosmology with the Flood, where God not only opens the windows above, but "breaks up the fonts below" to let water seep up. Note to atheists -- it is thus technically incorrect, even from the Bible's point of view, to claim the Flood couldn't have happened because even a hard rain for 40 days straight wouldn't cover the highest mountains. You'd have to have something like 330 inches of rain per hour* to cover Everest in 40 days. So the vast, vast majority must therefore have seeped up from below.

See how easy Bible logic is?






* About 5 1/2 inches per minute!

 

[dafydd]

Bwinright has never discussed anything the two years or so that I've been lurking and posting here.

He tosses Molotov cocktails through the windows of this forum, then speeds away until the next time.

Molotov cocktails? More like water balloons.

 

[Elizabeth I]

Have any of you yahoos noticed the banner under the website at the top? It states "a place to discuss skepticism, critical thinking, the paranormal and science in a friendly and lively way.? Hmm? I think you all missed that hint.

As, it seems, you did.

A lot of what Bwinwright says is valid, or at least something to 'critically think' about. But what has he received in return? A villification of his viewpoint, almost everywhere here. Note one reply: "...a despicable work that has no divine source at all, the Bible. The less said about that ridiculous and offensive work, the better." Nice come-back, Sherman Bay. That should catapult you into the stratisphere of the Mensa league for sure!
Seriously, almost every atheist on the planet shovels the "you're dumb" ******** at every creationist continuously. THEN they refuse to debate science. Tch, tch! Such a bunch of losers.

Simply not true. Read further into this forum. There are a number of theists who post here who understand the scientific method, accept the theory of evolution, and are quite willing to discuss science, religion, politics, or 9/11 truth courteously and rationally. They are responded to accordingly.

This will be most amusing. Let's see his "science".

Now, see, there's some of that "condescension" he was talking about. You medical types!

 

[Maia]

Well, I disagree with some of Richard Dawkins' views for a variety of reasons (none of which were brought up by bwinright, and none of which have been or are being discussed in this thread, really. The views AND the reasons.) But this paragraph in the OP looked very odd to me, and I read through the entire thread and didn't find it addressed at all:

When Dawkins was a teenager he believed in the concept of Intelligent Design due to the multitude of highly organized and complex examples of order, purpose, and design he observed all around him in nature. However, after observing so many injustices in organized religion, Dawkins decided to separate himself from these evil institutions and become an atheist.

???? What the heck? Is this actually true? Did Richard Dawkins believe in ID at one point, or was he really religious? I mean, understand, this truly has nothing to do with anything, but it's almost as if it's one of those trivia things that I now must KNOW. (It's kind of like the time I found out there was a Starbuck island somewhere in the South Pacific, and I just couldn't rest until I found out if there was an actual Starbuck's located there. No-- it can't even be landed on for most of the year.)

 

[Mashuna]

Off the top of my head, I remember reading that Dawkins went through a phase of not being convinced by Darwinian evolution, after reading a Bertrand Russell essay which disagreed with Darwin. IIRC, this was in his mid-teens, before any serious study of biology.

 

[Marius vanderLubbe]

Have any of you yahoos noticed the banner under the website at the top? It states "a place to discuss skepticism, critical thinking, the paranormal and science in a friendly and lively way.? Hmm? I think you all missed that hint.

A lot of what Bwinwright says is valid, or at least something to 'critically think' about. But what has he received in return? A villification of his viewpoint, almost everywhere here. Note one reply: "...a despicable work that has no divine source at all, the Bible. The less said about that ridiculous and offensive work, the better." Nice come-back, Sherman Bay. That should catapult you into the stratisphere of the Mensa league for sure!
Seriously, almost every atheist on the planet shovels the "you're dumb" ******** at every creationist continuously. THEN they refuse to debate science. Tch, tch! Such a bunch of losers.
Mr Bwinwright, I would suggest you stick to science, as I can agree with a lot you say. But quoting scripture here is like waving garlic at vampires. Not to say that these atheists would ever decently contend that it is possible to have faith in something unseen while being perfectly capable of comprehending good science. They cannot multitask that way. They are self-wired only to rant, tho there are sometimes exceptions.

Hello Joe.
I think you might have found someone to love, at last. Bwinwright and yourself are a match made in heaven. You can compare your huge faith in front of the roaring log fire, as you pray together.
What about Ambulocetus, Joe? Would you like to discuss those lovely transitional fossils?