Here's an audio track of Richard Dawkins discussing his new book, The God Delusion, on the Alan Colmes show on FOX. I thought that Colmes did a good job allowing Dawkins to bring out his points. Some of the call-in comments are amusing, especially toward the end of this 24 minute…
The Bible version of God doesn’t ring true to me. I don’t believe in any traditional sort of God. I am not that sort of person who finds any purpose in worshipping or asking favors from invisible Beings. I don’t ascribe any emotions or sentience (certainly, no vindictiveness) to any Person or Thing that might have created our universe. How the universe came into being is beyond what I can know.
I do cherish my universe, though, and I realize that I am an incredibly tiny and incredibly ignorant part of it. Many fervent believers (though not all) would characterize my beliefs as “atheism” although that word, as commonly construed, would characterize me in a misleadingly cartoonish way.
Given my beliefs, most people would be surprised to hear that I sometimes go to church to be inspired and energized. What’s my secret? I go to church when no one else is there—I like to go to empty churches. When nothing else is going on other than one’s own breathing, meditating, thinking and writing, going to church can even be exhilarating.
With a pad of paper and a pen in my hands, in search of solitude, I walked to church twice this week. I had previously noticed a huge church a few blocks from a courthouse where I sometimes work. Only after walking to this church on Monday did I learn that it was called “Saint Peter’s Roman Catholic Cathedral” in Belleville, Illinois. Here’s a photo I took on Wednesday …
A few months ago I stumbled on a preacher on television. The reason I stopped to listen was that on the screen he was scrolling through a litany of famous scientists, their fields and contributions, and noting that each was a Great Christian. Then the preacher–I don’t know who he was, sorry–ended his litany by making the claim that science and religion are inextricably linked, that they must have each other to work, that there is no dispute between them–
–and that evolution is wrong.
This was a week after I listened to an NPR interview with Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania in which he made the claim that it is vital to settle this question of where “we” (meaning humans) came from because if evolution is true, then we would have no basis for morality.
This is one of the most perverse false syllogisms I have ever heard, and it baffles me no end. Underlying it is the assumption that morality only ever comes from a supernatural source, that without a deity we are too dumb, puerile, self-serving, and just plain hopeless to ever do anything right–for ourselves on anyone else. (The Erik Von Danniken theory of moral provenance.) That atheists are a priori immoral and that evolutionists, who reject special creation, are necessarily atheists, and therefore, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, likewise immoral. They can’t help it. They have no god giving them direction.
A minute of clear thought shows how this is substantively untrue. …
It is a much mentioned, but little understood concept. Any individual in the world is likely to have strong conceptions of “evil,” but very few could define it, or ascribe a cause to it. Dictionary.com defines “evil” as “morally bad or wrong,” and also “causing ruin, injury or pain.” While the word “immoral” is more commonly used to connote the first definition (“morally bad or wrong”), colloquially, the word “evil” is most often used to convey the sense of the second definition (“causing ruin, injury or pain”). Realizing that the phrase “evil” is subjective and has many implications, in this essay I will use the word “evil” to convey the sense of the second definition.
From time immemorial, some humans have been perceived to have the tendency to cause harm to others for no apparent or rational reason. These humans, we assume, like to take pleasure in the pain of others. Thus, what appears to be an alien sensibility to us, one which is characterized by an inexplicable perniciousness, is termed as evil. Why “evil” humans are different from the rest of us is not understood by most people. Evil, they assume, is just an inborn quality. And because it is inherent to the individuals who possess it, people believe that the only way to stop them is to their exterminate them, or at the very least incarcerate them, so that they remain away from a society that they could destroy if given free rein.
But is evil indeed an …
To the majority of people, every issue has 2 sides. One is right, and the other is wrong. The impression is that, if something is wrong about an argument, a position, a theory, then the entire thing is wrong. This is Aristotelian or Boolean reasoning. Famous smart people use this binary right/wrong or true/false principle to do great things. But…
Once upon a time, the world was flat. We now know (as of at least 2000 years ago) that this is wrong.
Once upon a time, people thought the world was a sphere. In the 19th century, it was measured that this was wrong.
Are these ideas both equally wrong, or is one more wrong than the other? In science, one recognizes degrees of error, magnitudes of mismeasurement. The flat Earth is off by a dimension, whereas the spherical Earth is off by a few percent. (It is fatter around the equator from spin, stretched further by lunar tide, and oddly flattened near the South Pole (possibly related to the events that caused the moon to splash off, and/or the continents to rise)).
Some ideas can be wronger than others.
When Creationists gleefully point out that (popular evolutionist) was in error about (detail of the theory at the time), they use this to claim that the entire structure of the theory is wrong. Never mind that this detail was usually found to be wrong by discovering its replacement in supporting the original theory.