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

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

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

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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.

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".

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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:

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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.
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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 .

See Orac's critique here

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 .

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:

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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.

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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.

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.
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