Jesus Tap-Dancin' Christ

I take it you haven't seen high school biology classes of late. Good lord, those kids do NOT pay attention. Maybe...1 out of 5 does.
It ain't mythology--there is plenty of evidence for it. And it is far more consistency than there is in the bible.
This isn't a lie at all. Evidence mean anything to you?
NOT A HOLY BOOK! And no one knows it by heart! At least, no one that I know of.
Yeah, there is absolutely no dissagreement in evolution in peer reviewed journals, professional opinions, etc. None at all. They all believe the exact same method, and interpret the exact same data the exact same way. Get a fucking clue, dipshit. Sorry for being rude, but you are being stupid, and I put up with far too much stupidity.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Academic dogmatism? You crack me up.
Ummm, no. Not at all. The way we view the world through science changes constantly! The techniques have been honed constantly, but the RESULTS and have changed due to the ever increasingly accurate means of observation and new data.
Ummmmm, no. Not at all. You know how scientist get their PhDs? They have to submit a body of research AND DEFEND IT in front of a bunch of people who have far more experience than they do. They have to have a fairly broad training to be able to adequately defend it.
Darwinism is not a religion. And guess what, buddy boy? You want to know where the most people who fall for creationist BS are from? Good old US of A!
<img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

Doubting Didymus

My comment was more general, not specific to this case. Its just the kind of thing one has to wait for a while before posting about, because it makes it difficult to be collected.

Obviously you are offended when religion itself is attacked, but dawkins' main point is that fanatical religion is dangerous and often tragic. Do you disagree with this point? They were fanatical muslims, after all.

The point is, you can not point to fanatical islam and say 'islam is to blame', as the same fanatical violence comes from all the major religions when taken to a fanatical extreme. Also, it is an opinion held by many atheists and adressed to an atheist audience (this was written for FI magazine). There are many things written expousing religions opinions and that are intended for religious audiences that would drastically offend atheists and agnostics. Generally, we simply avoid them, or point out specific innacuracies like: 'no, you have that a little wrong. Hitler was not an atheist.'

I think what most frustrates about your example is that it implies that darwinian theory is directly responsible for comparable bloodshed and tragedy as religious fanatics. I sincerely hope you did not mean to imply this. There are people who blame darwin for the holocaust. I hope you do not share this opinion. (if you do, then there could be a new topic for discussion up soon).

[ September 11, 2002: Message edited by: Doubting Didymus ]</p>

Camaban

I've heard of students being made to learn the Bible/Talmud/Koran off by heart, but I can't say I've ever been forced to learn Origin of Species off by heart, nor has anyone known.

(on another note, reading Origin of Species is still on my "To Do" list. And many people I know have barely heard of it)

Doubting Didymus

Vander. As a case in point: observe our mutual freind Jesus. his post is similar to what I would have posted, if I were not more used to your style. You will get offended (as anyone would) and any good points he makes will be babies thrown out with bathwater.

Albion

Yes, he has nothing. As in, when you die, that's the end and there's nothing aferwards. It's that "nothing" that is substantiating his argument. There's no evidence, except the purely personal evidence that people get from their religions, of anything other than physical life. So when the physical life is over, that leaves nothing. Which is his point.

Camaban

on another note, I also haven't heard of any threats being made if students didn't believe in what Origin of Species says (Unlike a certain place called hell which is reserved for, among other things, unbelievers)

Peter Soderqvist

TO TGAMBLE

Soderqvist1: No they haven't!
Because they have ignored what is stated in the Koran, and they doesn't know anything about the theory of the selfish gene either! Compare the ignorance here?

Richard Dawkins is characteristically sneering about religion, but in a bleak and unforgiving world populated by nothing but selfish genes there is simply no response to evil. Neither, significantly, is there any explanation that is at all convincing for the spontaneous and heroic displays of altruism and solidarity that we have seen in New York and elsewhere. If we are going to respond with anything other than a visceral lunge towards revenge and retribution, then the resources of forgiveness that will be needed are those that only some sort of religion, and belief in a loving creator, can unlock. Rev Jeremy Caddick Dean, Emmanuel College, Cambridge jlc24@cam.ac.uk

Richard Dawkins: Genes must exert a statistical influence on any behavior pattern that evolves by natural selection. I now close the topic of the new replicators, and end the chapter on a note of qualified hope. One unique feature of man, which may or may not have evolved memically, is his capacity for conscious foresight. Selfish genes (and, if you allow the speculation of this chapter, memes too) have no foresight. They are unconscious, blind, replicators. We have the power to defy the selfish genes of our birth and, if necessary, the selfish memes of our indoctrination. We can even discuss ways of deliberately cultivating and nurturing pure, disinterested altruism -- something that has no place in nature, something that has never existed before in the whole history of the world. We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our own creators. We, that are our brains, are separate and independent enough from our genes to rebel against them. As already noted, we do so in a small way every time we use contraception. There is no reason why we should not rebel in a large way, too. <a href="http://www.rubinghscience.org/memetics/dawkinsmemes.html" target="_blank">http://www.rubinghscience.org/memetics/dawkinsmemes.html</a>

Soderqvist1: Usama Bin Laden has only done what the holy Koran has told him to do! Fair use of quote from the Koran, by the University of Virginia!

STATEMENT BY IBN WARRAQ ON THE WORLD TRADE CENTER ATROCITY
However, to pretend that Islam has nothing to do with Terrorist Tuesday is to willfully ignore the obvious and to forever misinterpret events. Without Islam the long-term strategy and individual acts of violence by Usama bin Laden and his followers make little sense. The West needs to understand them in order to be able to deal with them and avoid past mistakes. We are confronted with Islamic terrorists and must take seriously the Islamic components. Westerners in general, and Americans in particular, do not understand the passionate, religious, and anti-western convictions of Islamic terrorists. These God-intoxicated fanatics blindly throw away their lives in return for the Paradise of Seventy Two Virgins offered Muslim martyrs killed in the Holy War against all infidels. Jihad is “a religious war with those who are unbelievers in the mission of the Prophet Muhammad [the Prophet].
<a href="http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/www/wtc.htm" target="_blank">http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/www/wtc.htm</a>

DESIGN FOR A FAITH BASED MISSILE BY RICHARD DAWKINS
If death is final, a rational agent can be expected to value his life highly and be reluctant to risk it. This makes the world a safer place, just as a plane is safer if its hijacker wants to survive. At the other extreme, if a significant number of people convince themselves, or are convinced by their priests, that a martyr's death is equivalent to pressing the hyperspace button and zooming through a wormhole to another universe, it can make the world a very dangerous place. Especially if they also believe that that other universe is a paradisiacal escape from the tribulations of the real world. Top it off with sincerely believed sexual promises—ludicrous and degrading to women though they are—and is it any wonder that naïve and frustrated young men are clamoring to be selected for suicide missions?

There is no doubt that the afterlife-obsessed suicidal brain really is a weapon of immense power and danger. It is comparable to a smart missile, and its guidance system is in many respects superior to the most sophisticated electronic brain that money can buy. Yet to a cynical government, organization, or priesthood, it is very very cheap. Our leaders have described the recent atrocity with the customary cliché: mindless cowardice. Mindless may be a suitable word for the vandalizing of a telephone booth. It is not helpful for understanding what hit New York on September 11th. Those people were not mindless and they were certainly not cowards. On the contrary, they had sufficiently effective minds braced with an insane courage, and it would pay us mightily to understand where that courage came from. It came from religion. Religion is also, of course, the underlying source of the divisiveness in the Middle East, which motivated the use of this deadly weapon in the first place. But that is another story and not my concern here. My concern here is with the weapon itself. To fill a world with religion, or religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are used.
<a href="http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/dawkins_22_1.html" target="_blank">http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/dawkins_22_1.html</a>

Soderqvist1: Isn't that a sober conclusion, that your quoted persons suffer from wishful thinking, and their ignorance are evident in their absence of reference to the Koran, and the book, The Selfish Gene?

[ September 12, 2002: Message edited by: Peter Soderqvist ]</p>

Steven Carr

Well, If the Reverend Caddick can explain why the suicide bombers sacrificed their lives in the belief that they were helping their group, he can go a long way to explaining 'altruism' and 'solidarity'.