Archive for the 'Richard Dawkins' Category

« Previous Entries
Next Page »

Richard Dawkins Throws Harris, Krauss, Hitchens et. al. Under The Bus

Posted in Richard Dawkins on October 20th, 2011 by Guts

Would you shake hands with a man who could write stuff like that? Would you share a platform with him? I wouldn't, and I won't. Even if I were not engaged to be in London on the day in question, I would be proud to leave that chair in Oxford eloquently empty.

here

42 Comments »

Religion and Female Genital Mutilation

Posted in Religion, Richard Dawkins, The New Atheists on September 14th, 2011 by Guts

This paper appears to report that Muslim women have an increased chance of favoring the continuation of female genital mutilation. However, it seems to be a bit more complex than that, since there are other links such as educational status, access to media, etc.

RESULTS:
Women who believed that FGM should continue were more likely to be aged 15-24years (adjusted odds ratio [OR] 1.21; 95% confidence interval [CI],1.05-1.41); rural residents (OR, 2.73; CI, 2.38-3.12); Muslim (OR, 1.98; CI,1.80-2.17); married (OR, 1.26; CI, 1.09-1.46); uneducated (OR, 2.85; CI, 2.51-3.23); circumcised (OR, 3.46 CI, 2.94-4.06); and to have had no exposure to mass media (OR,1.57; CI,1.41-1.75).

CONCLUSION:
To change the opinions of women regarding FGM, specific education and prevention programs should be designed to target these demographic groups of women.

here

Leave A Comment »

Richard Dawkins on Conway Morris

Posted in Religion, Richard Dawkins on August 16th, 2011 by Guts

The question of the likelihood or ‘inevitability’ of something human-like evolving seems to me a rather minor question of quantitative guesswork. I do have a fellow-feeling with Conway Morris over the general power of convergent evolution. I feel closer here to Conway Morris than I do to Gould’s ‘contingency’. But I am leagues away from anyone who draws theological conclusions from convergent evolution. Indeed, I am positively infuriated by the suggestion, as I am sure you are.
here

Read the rest of this entry »

48 Comments »

Origin of Life researcher on science vs religion

Posted in Religion, Richard Dawkins, Science on August 8th, 2011 by Guts

A few outspoken scientists argue that it is wrong to believe in a supreme intelligence, but I don't think this is wrong in the usual sense of the word. In fact, a recent poll has shown that 36% of scientists believe in God, and about half are spiritual in some sense. How does a religious scientist accommodate both the questioning that is characteristic of scientific practice and a belief that there is a supreme intelligence behind it all?

I think there is a way for the questioning method of science to meet religious belief without generating the distressing anti-science clash that is newsworthy, yet ultimately destructive. It is clear that matter and energy interact according to a set of physical laws, and strong evidence indicates that the universe had a beginning we call the Big Bang. A religious scientist can comfortably believe that the universe and its laws were put in place by a creator. Science has nothing to say about this statement of faith because it cannot be submitted to experimental tests or observation.

Leave A Comment »

Open Thread: Elevator

Posted in Richard Dawkins on July 30th, 2011 by Guts

23 Comments »

Richard Dawkins: Darwin's Natural Selection Teleologist

Posted in Natural Selection, Richard Dawkins, Teleology on June 6th, 2011 by Techne

Dawkins writes (from his article Let's all stop beating Basil's car):

But doesn't a truly scientific, mechanistic view of the nervous system make nonsense of the very idea of responsibility, whether diminished or not? Any crime, however heinous, is in principle to be blamed on antecedent conditions acting through the accused's physiology, heredity and environment. Don't judicial hearings to decide questions of blame or diminished responsibility make as little sense for a faulty man as for a Fawlty car?

It is clear that he supports a mechanistic view of nature as a scientific view. This Mechanistic philosophy of matter and change was prevalent during Darwin's era. Darwin, however, was a teleologist and this (as noted here) was based on his particular conception of natural selection as some sort of “teleological force".

Read the rest of this entry »

136 Comments »

A Conceptual Ritual

Posted in Books, Irreducible Complexity, Richard Dawkins on November 19th, 2010 by Bradford

Richard Dawkins' Inferior Design is published in the New York Times Sunday Book Review. I'll take a page from the Dawkins playbook and respond to selected points. Dawkins:

For a while, Behe built a nice little career on being a maverick. His colleagues might have disowned him, but they didn’t receive flattering invitations to speak all over the country and to write for The New York Times. Behe’s name, and not theirs, crackled triumphantly around the memosphere. But things went wrong, especially at the famous 2005 trial where Judge John E. Jones III immortally summed up as “breathtaking inanity” the effort to introduce intelligent design into the school curriculum in Dover, Pa.

With hindsight we know that the judge copied from what plaintif attorneys had submitted to him. Citing this as "immortally summed up" has unintended irony.

Behe simply asserted without justification that particular biological structures (like the bacterial flagellum, the tiny propeller by which bacteria swim) needed all their parts to be in place before they would work, and therefore could not have evolved incrementally.

Deceitful. What Behe actually said:

Read the rest of this entry »

144 Comments »

Darwinian Inspiration

Posted in Religion, Richard Dawkins on September 2nd, 2010 by Bradford

9/11 prompted Richard Dawkins and others to bemoan the harmful effects of religion. One of those was alleged to be the tendency for "religious wars." Of course the Crusades have been mentioned as quintessential examples. Over time this blogger and many commenters at Telic Thoughts posted historic examples of nations being led into war by atheists or non-religious leaders and questioned the reliability of the Dawkins inspired linkages of violence to religion. However, to be honest, sometimes religion can be linked to the motives of a violent person.
Read the rest of this entry »

30 Comments »

Richard Dawkins calls for arrest of Pope Benedict XVI

Posted in Culture Wars, Richard Dawkins on April 15th, 2010 by Guts

I wish we had a lulz category

RICHARD DAWKINS, the atheist campaigner, is planning a legal ambush to have the Pope arrested during his state visit to Britain “for crimes against humanity”.

here

This reminds me of his other blunder, when he supported , but later regretted, his support for a bizarre legal petition .

160 Comments »

Bill Maher Strikes Again

Posted in Animal Rights Extremism, Bioethics, Biology, Richard Dawkins, The New Atheists on September 26th, 2009 by Guts

See Orac's critique here

13 Comments »

Crackpot Gets Richard Dawkins Award

Posted in Bioethics, Biology, Media, Richard Dawkins, Shoddy Science, The Critics, The New Atheists, Threatiness on September 11th, 2009 by Guts

Bill Maher, primarily known for his anti-religious views, also harbors deep seated anti-science views. From medicine to HIV, and yet he is apparently being given a Richard Dawkins Award.

Note one of the major criteria for the award: “Advocates increased scientific knowledge.” Certainly Maher earns an EPIC FAIL on that aspect, at least. Given that Richard Dawkins made an excellent two-part documentary about pseudoscience for the BBC, entitled The Enemies of Reason, the second part of which was primarily about quackery and medical pseudoscience, you’d think that he’d be unhappy about having an award bearing his name be given to a person who would not have been out of place as one of the quacks that Dawkins skewered in the second half of his documentary, The Irrational Health Service.

From here He is also apparently part of the Reason Project

This echoes a common theme that is written about much here in this blog, with regard to Animal Rights activists .

31 Comments »

Child Abuse Alert

Posted in Richard Dawkins, The New Atheists on June 28th, 2009 by Bradford

For those of us concerned about child abuse there is this: There’ll be no tent for God at Camp Dawkins. Oh how utterly ironic that the architect of the religious label = child abuse meme is starting a camp of his own. Of course the true believers who send their little ones to this camp are hopeful on the indoctrination issue:

Crispian Jago, an IT consultant, is hoping the experience will enrich his two children.

“I’m very keen on not indoctrinating them with religion or creeds,” he said this weekend. “I would rather equip them with the tools to learn how to think, not what to think.”

But there is also this:

Read the rest of this entry »

87 Comments »

Leaning on Your Own Understanding

Posted in Origin of Life, Richard Dawkins on May 30th, 2009 by Bradford

I was reading a paper authored by Dembski and Marks when I came across a quote taken from Richard Dawkins' book The Blind Watchmaker. The quote:

To explain the origin of the DNA/protein machine by invoking a supernatural Designer is to explain precisely nothing, for it leaves unexplained the origin of the Designer. You have to say something like "God was always there," and if you allow yourself that kind of lazy way out, you might as well just say "DNA has always been there," or "Life was always there, and be done with it.

Dawkins' is expressing a sentiment echoed in the thread PD instead of ID by at least one commenter. But Dawkins is drawing a conclusion supported by an artificial demarcation made in a time/causal pathway depicting the origin of the universe. Specifically, he is drawing our attention to a point in time at which prebiotic earth exists and then posing questions about life's origin. In doing so Dawkins begs some very pertinent questions showing that he, like his theistic counterparts, is unable to present a comprehensive and coherent account running from A to Z. Perhaps this is because human minds are limited both in terms of their capabilities and their knowledge of what preceded them.

Read the rest of this entry »

47 Comments »

A Pat on the Back for Matzke

Posted in Religion, Richard Dawkins on March 20th, 2009 by Bradford

Bradley Monton authored Matzke’s insights at Bradley Monton’s Blog. The first paragraph:

Nick Matzke, formerly of the anti-intelligent design National Center for Science Education, has sometimes given me a hard time via email for my views on intelligent design. So that is reason enough for me to highlight an important area of agreement between him and me, which shows up in this interesting post by Matzke. But also, I want to highlight this because I think Matzke makes some key points regarding what’s wrong with the Dawkins-style approach toward religion:

You'll find the full blog entry at the link. So Nick is giving Bradley a hard time in some private exchanges. Why is ID such a big concern to you Nick? Does science need you to save it?

Thanks to Clare.

57 Comments »

NEW ATHEIST TOP TEN QUOTES of 2008

Posted in Richard Dawkins, The Critics, The New Atheists, Threatiness on December 28th, 2008 by chunkdz

It’s been a busy year for the New Atheists – best selling books, lectures, debates, ad campaigns – and it’s time to honor all their hard work. The bar was set pretty high in 2007, and last year’s winner Kathy Griffin (“Suck it, Jesus!”) is definitely a tough act to follow. But this years crop is just as juicy. Here are the winners for 2008 – the quotes that best exemplify the message of the New Atheism.
Read the rest of this entry »

16 Comments »

« Previous Entries
Next Page »
  • You are currently browsing the archives for the Richard Dawkins category.

  • Featured Books

    Origination of Organismal Form by Muller & Newman

  • The Design Matrix: A Consilience of Clues by Mike Gene


  • Pages

    • About Us
    • bipod
    • Bradford
    • Chunkdz
    • Deuce
    • Nullasalus
    • Techne
    • The Banned List
  • Categories

    • Animal Rights Extremism (40)
    • Approaches (20)
    • Astrobiology (6)
    • Bioethics (35)
    • Biology (209)
    • Books (25)
    • Brain (53)
    • Bunny Fright Week (7)
    • Cancer (1)
    • Causality (7)
    • Cell (32)
    • Climate Change (4)
    • Computer Science (9)
    • Convergent Evolution (7)
    • Cosmology (14)
    • Creationism (60)
    • Critical Thinking (5)
    • Culture Wars (23)
    • Design Inferences (43)
    • DNA Repair (4)
    • Engineering (19)
    • Eugenics (26)
    • Evidence (44)
    • Evo-Devo (12)
    • Evolution (315)
    • Evolutionary Psychology (14)
    • Fine-tuning (16)
    • Friday Quote (33)
    • Front-loading (171)
    • Gene's Gems (12)
    • Genetic Code (8)
    • Genome (12)
    • Guest Post (17)
    • Hating Mike (1)
    • Henry Rollins Award (3)
    • History (34)
    • Hoax (2)
    • Humor (181)
    • Information (12)
    • Intelligent Design (542)
    • Irreducible Complexity (28)
    • Junk DNA (4)
    • Just For Fun (30)
    • Law (2)
    • Media (95)
    • Meeting of Minds (9)
    • Memory Hole (1)
    • Metatalk (50)
    • MikeGenes World (22)
    • Modern Myths (9)
    • Morality (10)
    • Mutations (8)
    • Nanotechnology (2)
    • Natural Selection (32)
    • Nature (24)
    • Nature of Science (95)
    • Origin of Life (68)
    • Paul Mirecki (16)
    • Peer Review (12)
    • Peter Singer (3)
    • Philosophy (92)
    • Philosophy of Mind (40)
    • Physics (12)
    • Politics (18)
    • Post-Wedge World (21)
    • Proteins (14)
    • Quantum (6)
    • Quote Mining (9)
    • Random Stuff (271)
    • Religion (200)
    • Repost (34)
    • Richard Dawkins (106)
    • RNA (17)
    • Scandals (4)
    • Scholasticism (5)
    • School (62)
    • Science (204)
    • Scientific Boundaries (11)
    • Self-organization (2)
    • Shoddy Science (32)
    • Simulation Argument (2)
    • Stereotypes (7)
    • Systems Biology (2)
    • Teleology (8)
    • The Critics (261)
    • The Debate (325)
    • The Design Matrix (75)
    • The Duck (8)
    • The New Atheists (90)
    • The Rabbit (239)
    • Threatiness (84)
  • Evolution

    • Anthropology Weblog
    • Charles Darwin on the web
    • Darwin@home
    • Genetic Code Evolution
    • Kenneth Miller
    • NCSE
    • Stephen Jay Gould Archive
    • Talk Reason
    • Talk.Origins Archive
    • The Loom
    • The Panda's Thumb
    • Tree of Life
    • Was Darwin Wrong?
  • blogroll

    • Intelligently Sequenced
    • The Design Matrix
  • Teleology

    • Akilli Tasarim
    • An Evangelical Dialogue on Evolution
    • BioLogos
    • Edward Feser
    • Evolution Engineered
    • Evolution Oriented
    • Evolution und Schöpfung
    • Exiled from Groggs
    • ISCID EoSaP
    • Real Physics
    • Reality Cheque
    • Robin Collins
    • Teleomechanist
    • Telic Meme
    • The American Scientific Affiliation
    • The Creation of an Evolutionist
    • Thinking Christian
    • Thought Provoker
    • Wonders For Oyarsa
  • People With Interesting Ideas

    • Albert de Roos
    • Bradley Monton
    • Cell Intelligence
    • Darwin or Design
    • James Shapiro
    • Michael Syvanen
    • Panspermia
    • Paul Davies
  • Anti-Teleology

    • Center for Naturalism
    • Pharyngula
    • Richard Dawkins
  • Archives

    • May 2012
    • April 2012
    • March 2012
    • February 2012
    • January 2012
    • December 2011
    • November 2011
    • October 2011
    • September 2011
    • August 2011
    • July 2011
    • June 2011
    • May 2011
    • April 2011
    • March 2011
    • February 2011
    • January 2011
    • December 2010
    • November 2010
    • October 2010
    • September 2010
    • August 2010
    • July 2010
    • June 2010
    • May 2010
    • April 2010
    • March 2010
    • February 2010
    • January 2010
    • December 2009
    • November 2009
    • October 2009
    • September 2009
    • August 2009
    • July 2009
    • June 2009
    • May 2009
    • April 2009
    • March 2009
    • February 2009
    • January 2009
    • December 2008
    • November 2008
    • October 2008
    • September 2008
    • August 2008
    • July 2008
    • June 2008
    • May 2008
    • April 2008
    • March 2008
    • February 2008
    • January 2008
    • December 2007
    • November 2007
    • October 2007
    • September 2007
    • August 2007
    • July 2007
    • June 2007
    • May 2007
    • April 2007
    • March 2007
    • February 2007
    • January 2007
    • December 2006
    • November 2006
    • October 2006
    • September 2006
    • August 2006
    • July 2006
    • June 2006
    • May 2006
    • April 2006
    • March 2006
    • February 2006
    • January 2006
    • December 2005
    • November 2005
    • October 2005
    • September 2005
    • August 2005
    • July 2005
    • June 2005
    • May 2005
    • Meta

      • Register
      • Log in

Telic Thoughts is proudly powered by WordPress
Hosting provided by TopSoftware4Download.com .

Entries (RSS) and Comments (RSS).