@ueg: "Dawkins Preaches To The Deluded Against The Divine
March 16 2010
QUOTE: Just why is he so angry and why does he hate religion so much? After 
all, as many religious scientists can attest, science and religion are - 
contrary to his claim - not alvaradocourtney@example.com.
LIKE revivalists from an alternative universe, 2500 hardcore believers in 
the absence of religion packed into the Global Atheists Convention in 
Melbourne last weekend to give a hero's welcome to the high priest of belief 
in unbelief, Richard Dawkins.
The bestselling author of The God Delusion was similarly fawned over by the 
Australian media, which uncritically lapped up everything he said.
This was even after (or perhaps because) he referred to the Pope as a Nazi, 
which managed to combine defamation of the pontiff with implicit Holocaust 
denial.
By comparison, Family First senator Steve Fielding may feel he got off 
lightly when Dawkins described him merely as more stupid than an earthworm.
For someone who has made a career out of telling everyone how much more 
tolerant the world would be if only religion were obliterated from the human 
psyche, Dawkins manages to appear remarkably intolerant towards anyone who 
disagrees with him.
The fact is, however, the shine has come off Dawkins.
For sure, he remains a superstar for the legions who loathe religion. But, 
nevertheless, a strong feeling has developed in less credulous quarters that 
he has gone too far.
While he was writing about the "selfish gene" and the "blind watchmaker", he 
received a respectful reception even from those who might have disagreed 
with him but were nevertheless impressed by the imaginative brio and 
dazzling fluency of his argument.
But then he left biology behind and became the self-appointed universal 
crusader against God. Flying the flag of Darwinism, he went to war against 
religion on the grounds that any belief that did not follow the rules of 
scientific inquiry was prima facie evidence of imbecility or insanity.
He became the apostle of scientism, the ideology that says everything in the 
universe has a materialist explanation and must answer to the rules of 
empirical scientific evidence; to believe anything else is irrational.
A second's thought tells one this is absurd.
Love, law and philosophy are not scientific yet they are not irrational.
So it is scientism that seems to be irrational.
As for Dawkins's claim that religion is responsible for the ills of the 
world, this is demonstrably a wild distortion.
Some of the worst horrors in human history - the French revolutionary 
terror, Nazism, communism - have been atheist creeds.
And although terrible things indeed have been done in the name of religion, 
the fact remains that Christianity and the Hebrew Bible form the foundation 
stone of Western civilisation and its great cause of human equality and 
freedom.
Through such hubristic overreach, Dawkins has opened himself up to attack 
from quarters that, unlike the theologians he routinely knocks around the 
park, he cannot so easily disdain.
Books taking his arguments apart on his own purported ground of scientific 
reason have been published by a growing number of eminent scientists and 
philosophers, including mathematicians David Berlinski and John Lennox, 
biochemist Alister McGrath, geneticist Francis Collins, and philosopher and 
recanting atheist Anthony Flew.
These have itemised his many howlers, sloppy assertions, internal 
contradictions, unscientific reasoning and illogicality.
His responses to these stellar intellects are fascinating.
He claims they cannot possibly have meant what they wrote, or they are 
senile, or their scientific credentials are somehow obviated by the fact 
they are practising Christians.
Indeed, he seems almost to believe that, since everyone who believes in God 
is stupid or evil and Christians are stupid and evil because they believe in 
God, those who oppose him must be Christian and can be treated with 
contempt.
I had first-hand experience of this when, addressing an audience of US 
atheists, he accused me of "lying for Jesus" by misquoting him. This came as 
something of a surprise since I am a Jew. Moreover, far from me misquoting 
him, which was not the case, he had in fact ascribed to me words that had 
been written by someone else.
This anecdote raises in turn the most intriguing question of all about 
Dawkins.
Just why is he so angry and why does he hate religion so much? After all, as 
many religious scientists can attest, science and religion are - contrary to 
his claim - not alvaradocourtney@example.com.
A clue lies in his insistence that a principal reason for believing that 
there could be no intelligence behind the origin of life is that the 
alternative - God - is unthinkable.
This terror of such an alternative was summed up by a similarly minded 
geneticist as the fear that pursuing such thinking to its logical ends might 
allow "the divine foot in the door".
Such concern is telling because it suggests a lack of confidence by the 
Dawkins camp in its own position and a corresponding fear of rigorous 
thinking.
To stamp out the terrifying possibility of even a divine toe peeping over 
the threshold, all opposition has to be shut down.
And so the great paradox is that the arch-hater of religious intolerance 
himself behaves with the zeal of a religious fundamentalist and, despite 
excoriating religion for stifling debate, does this in spades.
An illuminating example was provided by an atheists summer camp for children 
last year in Britain that Dawkins backed. The children who took part were to 
be taught to be critical thinkers, yet all discussion of religion was 
ruthlessly excluded.
Far from opening young minds, this was shutting them in the ostensible cause 
of reason.
Such indoctrination is a hallmark of the fundamentalist who knows he is not 
just right but righteous. So all who oppose him are by definition not just 
wrong but evil. Which is why alternative views must be howled down or 
suppressed.
This is, of course, the characteristic of all totalitarian regimes, 
including religious inquisitions.
Which is why Dawkins can lay claim to being not the most enlightened thinker 
on the planet, as his acolytes regard him, but instead the Savonarola of 
scientism and an intolerant closer of minds.
<url>
Warmest Regards
B0zn0
"It is a remarkable fact that despite the worldwide expenditure of perhaps 
US$50 billion since 1990, and the efforts of tens of thousands of scientists 
worldwide, no human climate signal has yet been detected that is distinct 
from natural variation."
Bob Carter, Research Professor of Geology, James Cook University, Townsville
"It does not matter who you are, or how smart you are, or what title you 
have, or how many of you there are, and certainly not how many papers your 
side has published, if your prediction is wrong then your hypothesis is 
wrong. Period."
Professor Richard Feynman, Nobel Laureate in Physics
"A core problem is that science has given way to ideology. The scientific 
method has been dispensed with, or abused, to serve the myth of man-made 
global warming."
"The World Turned Upside Down", Melanie Phillips
"Computer models are built in an almost backwards fashion: The goal is to 
show evidence of AGW, and the "scientists" go to work to produce such a 
result. When even these models fail to show what advocates want, the data 
and interpretations are "fudged" to bring about the desired result"
"The World Turned Upside Down", Melanie Phillips
"Ocean acidification looks suspiciously like a back-up plan by the 
environmental pressure groups in case the climate fails to warm: another try 
at condemning fossil fuels!"
<url>
Before attacking hypothetical problems, let us first solve the real problems 
that threaten humanity. One single water pump at an equivalent cost of a 
couple of solar panels can indeed spare hundreds of Sahel women the daily 
journey to the spring and spare many infections and lives.
Martin De Vlieghere, philosopher"
    @ueg: "<email_address> wrote in message 
news:<email_address>
<quote>
How many people have been killed in the name of atheism?
How many have been killed because they wouldn't convert to atheism?
======================================
Just look at the many hundreds of millions killed by early 20th the century 
atheist regime in Soviet Russia, not to mention communist China!
And despite the communist agenda to instill atheism, religion is making a 
strong comeback in present day Russia.
Try as they might, militant atheists like Dawkins will never destroy basic 
human spirituality, because it is intrinsic.
This explains why our urban atheists are so strongly drawn to a new quasi 
religion in the global warming scam.
It feeds their intrinsic spirituality because it has all the aspects 
necessary for worship in a religion, like apocalypse, sin, a Messiah etc
Dawkins appears to be a denialist of his own spirituality.
This most probably explains his frequent foaming at the mouth about 
religion.
Warmest Regards
B0zn0
"It is a remarkable fact that despite the worldwide expenditure of perhaps 
US$50 billion since 1990, and the efforts of tens of thousands of scientists 
worldwide, no human climate signal has yet been detected that is distinct 
from natural variation."
Bob Carter, Research Professor of Geology, James Cook University, Townsville
"It does not matter who you are, or how smart you are, or what title you 
have, or how many of you there are, and certainly not how many papers your 
side has published, if your prediction is wrong then your hypothesis is 
wrong. Period."
Professor Richard Feynman, Nobel Laureate in Physics
"A core problem is that science has given way to ideology. The scientific 
method has been dispensed with, or abused, to serve the myth of man-made 
global warming."
"The World Turned Upside Down", Melanie Phillips
"Computer models are built in an almost backwards fashion: The goal is to 
show evidence of AGW, and the "scientists" go to work to produce such a 
result. When even these models fail to show what advocates want, the data 
and interpretations are "fudged" to bring about the desired result"
"The World Turned Upside Down", Melanie Phillips
"Ocean acidification looks suspiciously like a back-up plan by the 
environmental pressure groups in case the climate fails to warm: another try 
at condemning fossil fuels!"
<url>
Before attacking hypothetical problems, let us first solve the real problems 
that threaten humanity. One single water pump at an equivalent cost of a 
couple of solar panels can indeed spare hundreds of Sahel women the daily 
journey to the spring and spare many infections and lives.
Martin De Vlieghere, philosopher"
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