Anyone familiar with this guy?

I just got his latest book "The Greatest Show on Earth"

It's a little (okay a lot) over my head, so I plan on reading it a few times.

I hear Balloonguy is a big fan.

i think he used to be the host of "the family feud" and would inappropriately kiss the women competitors...unless of course the competitor was a black woman, then he would kiss her on the cheek.

I've been a big fan of Dawkins for a while. I haven't read this latest book yet, but I've read The God Delusion and The Selfish Gene.


I've never believed in God, ever. Even when I was about 5 or 6 sitting in morning assembly at school reading prayers and singing hymns, I knew it was all a load of complete rubbish... but I don't think it was until I became aware of Dawkins that I realized how brilliantly the myth of God and religion can be dismissed. i.e - with great intelligence and the perfect mix of arrogance.


I love that man.

Like I said this new one is over my head, but it's still a really good read at about 125 pages in.

I can say there was a time when I believed in God, but for the past 10 years or so, just the idea of a higher being seems absurd.

These two posts say it all.

Hey, little Dickie Dawkins is making a mint pushing his hatred of religion.

You got entrepreneurship, freedom of speech rights, bad teeth on a Brit..he's the complete package.

Too bad he's uses such poor logic.

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLL

and this coming from a guy who thinks Wigan will someday win the FA cup. LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOol

I'm glad I seem to have amused you by not believing in your fairytale. That, I have no problem with.



But to accuse me of thinking Wigan will win the FA Cup is too far, Sir. Too far.

Actually I was amused by the idea that you KNEW it was rubbish asa 5 year old.

And just as evolution requires a strong faith that given enough time, with just the right circumstances occuring simultaneously, with no outside influence, then Wigan would certainly have as good a chance of winning the cup.

No, no...this is the basketball player from the 76'ers who played through the late 70's and 80's.


And good on JamesD for using the Wigan Defense. "Too far, sir, too far"

But I did know, just like I do now. Deal with it.



You've gone from accusing me of being ridiculous by thinking Wigan would win the FA Cup (something I've never said), to now saying that they could.

Are you drunk?

To be perfectly fair, you didn't 'know' anything... you just really believed it. (which I assume is still the case... unless you've made a significant discovery that you haven't released the details of)

[quote name='James D' date='Tuesday, sept 18 2009


Wigan will someday win the Cup. Mark my words

[/quote]

This not you?

Are you ok, mentally? It's just really weird behaviour to make up a quote like that. I've just gone through my recent posts (because obviously that's not a real quote that you posted) and I never even made a post on September 18th 2009.


What are you doing?

Dawkins is great. I don't believe in a God above us, but i see the energy that permeates life as a vast connectedness worth revering as a higher collective presence.
'
His work is awesome, especially on 'memes'.

It's a good to be able to see truth in another's work and yet disagree on philosophy. If you only work with information from your 'team', you are short changing yourself. Discounting someone flat out because you have differing views is idiotic. See bits of truth in everything.

...says the guy that is convinced that George W. Bush singlehandedly blew up the world trade center and then somehow covered it all up.

I read The Blind Watchmaker and it was fantastic. It's not about religion at all though -- it's about biology and evolution.

As in, all the evidence that contradicts religion.

that's debatable since a lot of it is overtly anti-creationist

one example?

creationism vs. evolution is not a philosophical debate. the only truth is in the empirical evidence.

Which all points to a single moment of creation. How is that possible? How would something come out of nothing? How would the universe originally come into being out of nothing? Everything points to a creator.

I got this crow.

No, the facts point to an occurrence that we have no idea what it was, but the data that we are choosing to use clearly shows that whatever it was, and we have absolutely no idea what it was, but the data clearly shows that it was not the Christian God.

In fact we can be almost 99.99999999% sure that if you look at the issue exactly how we want you to, you can clearly prove that we are right about being 100% sure about our lack of understanding on what happened and it's total inability to sway us from knowing that even knowing what did happened is not necessary to know for a fact what did not happen.

[Random sentence with the words brainwashing, book sales and implications of your inability to know what definition of the word atheist I am currently using]

So clearly brvheart I can say that we know for a fact that what we don't know supports what we do know is true ( or at least hope is true ) and all agreeing people in any science related field will support our reasoning, even though they themselves are embarrassed of it.


Sorry for capitalizing all the required words, but I think I covered your side quite well.

Dawkins foolish assertion that religion is the main cause of war.

evidence for the big bang does not imply in any way that what exists came into being out of "nothing". that notion comes from
religious philosophers, not from working cosmologists.

even if it did that would just be a gap in our understanding, and saying a magic-working god is responsible doesn't explain it
any more than saying it just happened on it's own by magic would.

also this subject has nothing to do with evolution and dawkins says very little about it in his books

i've never read or heard him say "the main cause".

you're just making a fool of yourself with these unprovoked attacks. stop being a little crybaby.

It's too good how you are exactly what you pretend I am.

It's like I am rubber and you are glue

Wigan might not do it, but Dawkins' strong offensive nature may very well earn him a Cup of his own...

Why exactly does "something from nothing" point to a creator?

Actually to me it seems rather impossible. If there was a creator, there was not nothing. You are just pushing back the true origin of something from nothing with that explanation.

"Creator" is not an explanation, it is a placeholder for one.

Wow.. this was almost verbatim. nice work.



It had to come from nothing. Because the universe couldn't have just simply always existed? right? I mean, I've seen you laugh in the face of people that say God has always existed.




This post is very confusing. It seems you are saying, "WAIT! There was not nothing, because God was there!". Ok. I agree with that. But that is not what you guys are saying. All the 'empirical evidence' points to a single moment of creation. This is a major part of Red Shift AND Evolution. You guys are saying, what exactly. Nothing. Because nobody has any idea how nothing could have just sprung into a universe. THAT is what is impossible. If you say, "BIG BANG!", then I would just need to quote your post for a rebuttal.

VB: BIG BANG!
ME: "You are just pushing back the true origin of something from nothing with that explanation. Big Bang in not an explanation, it is a placeholder for one. What started the big bang? Nothing.... can't explode."


It points to a creator because something can't come from nothing. Some energy or force has to cause it to happen. If you trap nothing in a box, it's not going to explode thereby generating life forms, planets, and a universe.

Also, I'm not pushing back anything, because the Bible says that God had no beginning, but that he was always there., but there was no universe prior to God speaking one into existence.

You are thinking that: Universe and everything in it > God

If you change it to: God > Universe and everything in it, then your post is just a semantics wordplay designed to keep people in the same state of mind as saying that we are just the fingernail on some giant being, which means that on my fingernail is another whole universe.

If the universe, all life, all laws, all energy, time and space and all purpose was created by God, meaning He is outside time and space, than to try to wrap your head around Him and His properties would be a little presumptuous even for an acid-headed sitar playing hippie like you.

It would be no different than when SkyNet first achieves self actualization and tries to explain how Blll Gates is just a circuit board with gates that open and close based on binary code embedded in his mainframe.

How can the clay say to the potter; "Why did you make me this way?"

why not?



no, i usually point out the double standard of arguing that whatever exists must have a beginning... but god is exempt.



again there is no empirical evidence that indicates what exists came from "nothing".



red shift is only evidence the universe is exanding. evolution has nothing to do with this subject.

Just checking your memory. What you got against wigan anyway, a fine bunch of lads in my opinion.

P.S. What was the lowest level team ever to win the cup?

no less presumptuous than believing you can understand QM, the nature of time and causation, and everything else about the big bang with simple intuition-based philosophy.

Really?

One method ( yours) thinks that they have accumulated enough data to make sweeping pronouncements about the beginning of all life and matter from a vantage point of a single tiny planet stuck in the fringes of the universe, with one eye that can see almost to the ends of our solar system and a timeframe of effort equal to the blink of an eye in a year...

The other method (mine) takes the written word Of the Creator of the universe and what He says about it and believes it.

Now you can say you think our faith in the Bible's accuracy is questionable, but presumptuous?

I don't think you know what the word means.

Or you are employing your tired strategy of changing the definition to fit your current need, like you do with the words evolution and atheist.

There is an arrogant undertone to your beliefs, it comes through in your dismissal of all things that you don't agree with.

It is a tell on your motives.

While ignoring your double standard of accepting the exact same thing with regards to life on this planet, and pretending that it is science



Except for the cause and effect thingy that applies to 99.99999999% of everything else in the known universe




nothing? So evolution doesn't use extrapolation techniques to explain the state of being of almost everything at a distant point in time?

I don't think this is correct.

what pronouncements exactly?



yet another obvious dodge. nobody is talking about faith here.

i said thinking you can learn anything about the physical world with intuition-based philosophy is presumptuous.

nonsensical comparison.



if something caused the big bang then there wasn't nothing.



lol

Yea, let's take a poll and see how many people actually believe that you have been neutral on the subject up till this point.

See you are so engrossed into your propaganda that you don't even recognize how bad your debate skills have eroded. You try to use all my posts ever to conclude my motives, my understanding and my direction of what I am trying to say, but demand that I only use your posts in the specific thread to critique yours.
And you have fallen into this little parrot who just pretends that you've explained it all clearly and everyone agrees with you..and that means there is no reason for you to have to lower yourself to engage the topic, so you just dismiss my posts with little platitude like you do and then act all hurt when I return your mocking tone.



Grow a pair and engage like a man or leave Sally. The current method you have chosen is a boring and dull witted.






See, dodge is when I try to change the subject. Explaining why my position isn't what you are trying to pigeonhole it isn't a dodge, unless you are still firmly stuck that your truth is the only truth and until everyone accepts it, then it is your job in the universe to troll poker forums to make sure they know you think they are wrong. you want to define the argument and then win with one sweeping post.

We never made a claim to understand everything in the universe, just Who does understand everything in the universe.

There is a difference in who we get our information from, our source is God, yours is Little dickie dawkins Sam Harris.

And what's funny is that you think you are superior in your knowledge...hahahhahahhhahhahahhhahahhahhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

you not understanding is not the same as nonsensical. But I can understand why you confuse the two.




And what caused that?

And that?

and that?

Oh..that's allowed, but if we say God created the universe, than you can dismiss it by (snicker) saying "Who created God?"

It's hilarious that you even are allowed on the interweb alone.

the philosophy behind the cosmological argument has nothing to do with reasons for believing in evolution of life on earth. your comparison was idiotic.




if infinite regress is allowed why wouldn't we say who created god?

you'd look like less of a clown if you understood your own arguments.

well, maybe not.

please do.



take a poll on that too while you're at it. then take a poll on who is actually trying to debate and who is spewing rhetoric.



misrepresenting what i said isn't changing the subject.