Christianity
1. Abandon the mythology of Genesis. God did not make the world in 6, 8 or 1000 days or 1000 days of years. Stop squabbling over Hebrew syntax and what you think the Biblical writers meant. They meant what they wrote and they were wrong. We know far too much about how things really came about to believe any of the nonsense written by a Hebrew-speaking priest of the sixth century BCE who thought things came about by a direct act of his hereditary deity.
[..]
Muslims
1. Give up the idea that the Quran is the most beautiful poetry ever written, the most perfect Arabic ever set to ink, the closest we can approach God in the scheme of time. Are you inhaling this stuff or just smoking? You have two hundred poets whose Arabic is better, any one of which could have won in a slam-down with Gabriel.
[..]
Judaism
1. There are no chosen people. There are just people. It is depressing, isn’t it? We all want to be special.
(via friendlyatheist.com)
Like Hemant says on Friendly Atheist, #4 under Judaism might require a bit of an exception, but otherwise this is a pretty dead-on accurate list.
(via schbank)
True. Just google crocoduck.
Crocoducks 4 life. Even Dawkins has crocoduck tie…
I’m going to try to cut this response a bit shorter than the last, and I’ll also note that I haven’t gotten to The Greatest Show on Earth yet. It’s sitting about three feet from me, but it’s also probably three weeks away in my book queue. Oh well, if we’re arguing evolution, I’ve got a pretty good footing, so let’s give it a shot.
I suppose I’ll apologize now if I get a bit snarky or offensive. I’m not exactly here to play nice and make friends with people whose beliefs lead them towards damaging humanity.
It’s important to note that Brian’s article isn’t even really a book review, but rather a creationist rant to which he attached Dawkins’s name to in order to garnish some attention. Thanks to Mr. Thomas, I won’t be looking for theist book reviews again anytime soon.
“Just as Dawkins’ reasoning in his WSJ essay was missing key information regarding how physical laws could spontaneously generate life, his new book also fails to address the robust body of evidence that defies the Darwinism he preaches. For example, the book completely ignores the growing problem of “stasis,” or the mismatch of evolution’s supposedly constant change over time with the observed stability of many life forms that remain totally unchanged for assumed eons of evolutionary time.”
Why don’t we have an enumeration of “robust” examples here? If I were an opponent of evolution, I would have listed several items which Dawkins didn’t address, but we only get “stasis”.
I fail to see how stasis is a problem for evolution and I don’t believe this failure is due to naivety. Here’s what I think: if stasis is assumed to be absolutely true, it must occur in cases where species are well suited enough to their fairly static environments that little to no significant change occurs in the species.
If there’s no pressure from the environment to change, that species has no reason to evolve. These are basic evolutionary teachings we’re talking here. How do you sweep over this like it’s nothing?
“The study of physics describes material interactions. Like spoken languages, biological language is irreducibly complex and yet without physical substance. It comes complete with symbols, meanings for those symbols, and a grammatical structure for their interpretation. Remove any one of these three fundamental features, and the informational system is lost. Physics has nothing to do with symbols or grammar, and therefore nothing to do with the origin of life, which cannot exist without its coded information.”
Straw man, straw man straw man. I’m assuming Dawkins makes some sort of comment about physics, probably relating to laboratory tests and experiments which led to a basic approximation of RNA through a physical experiment alone. He probably also explained RNA as a “language” or “code”. Maybe he didn’t delve that far deep into the topic and left it at merely DNA, which is suitable for argument’s sake. It’s a good enough analogy, but for you to take it as a complete picture is dishonestly representing an entire topic on a mere misinterpretation of an analogy. It’s obvious you have something to lose here, but don’t resort to straw men, they’re among the easiest fallacies to spot.
Let’s address the straw man anyway. You say physics has nothing to do with coded information? I’m sorry, Mr. Thomas, how do you think computers run? It’s all physics driving transistors, resistors, capacitors, and so on. The universe operates on extremely complex - and surprisingly predictable, given enough time and effort - mathematical models. In this manner, anything physical, including the “spontaneous” generation of RNA when exactly the right environment is produced, could be explained as if it were a code, or language.
For you to claim that “physics has nothing to do with symbols or grammar, and therefore nothing to do with the origin of life,” is to be ignorant. Physics boils down to mathematical models, which are exactly symbols and grammar. Excuse me for being blunt, but open your eyes. None of this is irreducibly complex; saying that is like saying anything involving kinetics is irreducibly complex, which, of course, is absurd.
“Dawkins is right about one thing: evolution does leave God with nothing to do. But an evolutionary origin or progression of simple-to-complex life is unobserved, and it ignores contrary paleontological evidence as well as basic information science. It is a farce. On the other hand, biological information, which is observed, points to God having done quite a bit “in the beginning.””
God would indeed have had to do quite a bit “in the beginning”, wouldn’t he? Perhaps, like, several billion years worth of biological evolution.
Science has absolutely no investment in false pretenses, or pushing some anti-religion agenda. In that regard, I seriously doubt that the scientific community at large is ignoring “contrary paleontological evidence”. In fact, I would bet good money that anything you’re claiming as “contrary evidence” falls apart at the slightest nudge by a real scientist without a religious agenda, leaving the real reason that your material is being ignored as because it is not scientifically sound evidence.
Members of the scientific community, and most atheists, don’t mind if something pops up that revolutionizes how we understand the world. In most cases, we welcome it. Through seeking the truth, we’ve come to believe that which we have substantial, and scientifically undisputed, proof for. Unfortunately for you, and theists like you, where we’ve been led is as contrary to your delusional beliefs as you could possibly imagine.
Prove evolution wrong with real undisputed evidence and we’ll follow you wherever your proof may lead, but continue to spout your drivel with an agenda, and we’ll meet you with nothing but contempt.
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