Richard Dawkins

[robert]

I've been listening to a lot of Richard Dawkins videos on youtube.

 

This is a very short one:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tC2MxO3Mdo4&feature=related

 

There are many that are over an hour long. He is just a joy to listen to.

[DV]

You need to read The God Delusion. The man is so brilliant it's unbelievable.

[robert]

Yeah, it's too bad I don't read......that is why I watch hours of youtube videos as background noise when I'm working on the computer.

 

I've enjoyed listening to hours of Christopher Hitchens and recently quite a bit of Richard Dawkins too.

[Richard]

Yeah, I read God Delusion. As an atheist / agnostic I'm on board with what he's saying, although I wonder how much success he's had with converting people away from their spirituality / religions?

[Fallen_Horse]

I found the book too militant and condescending for my taste. Hitchens is must less over the top with his arguments and statements.

 

On the flip side, I can't find a single logical flaw in Dawkins arguments...

[GregX999]

I like Dawkin's other books too. Like "The Selfish Gene". His books really make you think!

 

Greg

[chrisjs]

I read The God Delusion. His argument boiled down to the "if there's no proof of something existing then it does not exist" which I think is a bunch of BS. But he's completely right that people go nuts over their various gods when there's no proof they exist.

 

I would consider myself an atheist, but I've been told by some others that I'm apparently not atheist enough... I have no reason to believe there's a god, and I don't think there is one. But I also cannot assert its non-existence. Guess I'm a true agnostic in that regard. Anyway the point is that Dawkins did a good job pointing out the absurdity of modern religious behavior, but did absolutely nothing to convince me that there was positively no god, so I strongly doubt he's been successful at changing the minds of "believers."

[DV]

Since even Dawkins considers himself agnostic, I don't think his intent was to prove that god absolutely does not exist but rather to show how there is no proof that it/he/she does.

[chrisjs]

Fair enough. I didn't realize that.

[Mik]

Even though he is rather dogmatic and simplistic, Richard Dawkins seems to be a decent fellow.

[liftandcode]

I actually listened to the audio version of The God Delusion as read by Dawkins and his wife on the way to and from work. It was a quite remarkable book that got me interested in genetics and genomics to some extent. However I don't believe Dawkins ever said just because you can't prove their is a God doesn't mean there is one. What I got out of it is that the probability of God existing is so low that we shouldn't spend our lives devoted to the word of God. We should also be especially skeptical of people who discriminate and otherwise do horrible things in his name considering he probably doesn't exist. It is more an overview of religious nut jobs and history of religion/science than it is just mindless bashing. He is especially dead on when he talks about religion vs. science and how religion asks for "faith" while science asks for "proof".

 

Robert, I have the CDs and you can have them when you come to Boston for the Veg Food festival. That way you can listen to them on your travels, since you don't read . You don't have to give them back as I doubt I will ever listen to them again. Just please pass them on to someone else when you are done or donate them to a library. That's what I was planning to do with them.

[robert]

Awesome! I would love to have them! Thanks!

[endcruelty]

Dawkins is aiight, i prefer listening to Sam Harris. Letter to a Christian Nation is gold!

[Fallen_Horse]

Since even Dawkins considers himself agnostic, I don't think his intent was to prove that god absolutely does not exist but rather to show how there is no proof that it/he/she does.

Actually Dawkins is VERY atheist, and nearly a militant one at that...

[DV]

If you have read his most recent book, you realize that he considers himself an agnostic - he clearly points this out in "The God Delusion."

[Fallen_Horse]

No, sorry but that is simply wrong.

 

 

"Dawkins says that there is nothing wrong with being agnostic in cases where we lack enough evidence one way or the other. Without any evidence, the reasonable thing to do is to not take a position. Unless, according to Dawkins, you are talking about God.

He then splits agnostics into two groups, those who won't commit yet for lack of evidence, and those who believe it is impossible to know. The difference between the two is whether the question of God's existence can ever be answered using science. Dawkins claims that it can be.

According to Dawkins, agnosticism is flawed because it assumes that the probability that God exists is equal to the probability that God does not exist. This is an important claim, because it is his only solid argument against agnosticism, and he promises that he will prove that the probabilities are unequal later in the book."

 

" In his section on "The Poverty of Agnosticism" (pp. 46-54), Dawkins describes agnostics as fence-sitters, and this was not meant as a compliment. Dawkins knows full well that there is a deep metaphysical sense in which we can never know anything for certain.

If we're all being perfectly philosophical, then we have to admit to being agnostics about the tooth fairy and Santa Claus. But what good is that? Do we really go around telling everyone that we just don't know whether Santa Claus will visit on Christmas Eve? Of course not. We don't believe in Santa Claus, even though we can all write an essay in Philosophy 101 about not being able to prove a negative.

This is what Dawkins means when he says, "I am agnostic only to the extent that I am agnostic about fairies at the bottom of the garden" (p. 51). He makes the same point a few pages later when he says,

That you cannot prove God's non-existence is accepted and trivial, if only in the sense that we can never absolutely prove the non-existence of anything. What matters is not whether God is disprovable (he isn't) but whether his existence is probable. That is another matter. Some undisprovable things are sensibly judged far less probable than other undisprovable things."

 

"Dawkins begins his discussion of agnosticism by expressing the opinion of his school chapel preacher, calling agnostics "namby-pamby, mushy pap, weak-tea, weedy, pallid fence-sitters." It is not a quote, so one wonders if Dawkins' real opinion about agnostics falls into that realm. Dawkins defines two types of agnosticism 1), TAP (Temporary Agnosticism in Practice) and PAP (Permanent Agnosticism in Principle). Most questions in science that have not been conclusively answered fall into the TAP category. Dawkins cites only one example of PAP - what colors look like through other people's sensory machinery. He disputes that the existence of God falls under PAP. Dawkins rightly indicates that agnosticism is warranted in TAP when the data is not clear. I agree with his assessment of the question of God's existence, but would probably assign a different probability to the question:

"...agnosticism about the existence of God belongs firmly in the temporary or TAP category. Either he exists or he doesn't. It is a scientific question; one day we may know the answer, and meanwhile we can say something pretty strong about the probability.""

[DV]

You've just proven that he does consider himself agnostic, even if he has nothing good to say about it. I see no evidence of him being a militant atheist in those reviews. Believe me, I would rather that he was a militant atheist, but he's not. His claim that he's agnostic is one of the points I remember most clearly, having read the book myself, despite the examples (some taken out of context perhaps by the reviewer) given.

[beforewisdom]

He has several youtube videos. He has one where he flat out states that he is a "militant atheist" ( exact words ) and does not have much use for agnosticism.

 

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=dawkins+militant+atheist&search_type=&aq=f

[Richard]

As far as I know, he refers to himself as a "de facto atheist", meaning that in practicality he is an atheist, although by definition he is "agnostic" since he is open to new information, his opinion is fluid and based on what he feels is most rational at any time. I think that although he acknowledges that he is an "agnostic", he doesn't like the word as it maybe appears like half way between atheism and theism. I think he feels that he is so close to being an atheist that he may as well call himself atheist, which is basically how I feel, but I still call myself agnostic.

 

To be absolutely 100% atheist (he refers to this as "strong atheism"), you would have to believe, without any doubt whatsoever, that atheism is true, and you would discount any evidence which is shown to you. It would be the mirror image to theism, a strong atheist would be saying "no matter what evidence you show me, I will not believe it". Dawkins does not have this opinion, he is open to evidence, so he is an agnostic, but he lives his life as though God / supernatural beings do not exist, therefore he is a "de facto atheist".

[DV]

Thanks for the explanation Richard. It's been awhile since I read his book but that sounds like his description.

[liftandcode]

As far as I know, he refers to himself as a "de facto atheist", meaning that in practicality he is an atheist, although by definition he is "agnostic" since he is open to new information, his opinion is fluid and based on what he feels is most rational at any time. I think that although he acknowledges that he is an "agnostic", he doesn't like the word as it maybe appears like half way between atheism and theism. I think he feels that he is so close to being an atheist that he may as well call himself atheist, which is basically how I feel, but I still call myself agnostic.

 

To be absolutely 100% atheist (he refers to this as "strong atheism"), you would have to believe, without any doubt whatsoever, that atheism is true, and you would discount any evidence which is shown to you. It would be the mirror image to theism, a strong atheist would be saying "no matter what evidence you show me, I will not believe it". Dawkins does not have this opinion, he is open to evidence, so he is an agnostic, but he lives his life as though God / supernatural beings do not exist, therefore he is a "de facto atheist".

 

Wow. Good explanation.

[xjohanx]

I don't know much about him but I love that double episode of South Park where he is feautred.

http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/155360

[veginator]

As far as I know, he refers to himself as a "de facto atheist", meaning that in practicality he is an atheist, although by definition he is "agnostic" since he is open to new information, his opinion is fluid and based on what he feels is most rational at any time. I think that although he acknowledges that he is an "agnostic", he doesn't like the word as it maybe appears like half way between atheism and theism. I think he feels that he is so close to being an atheist that he may as well call himself atheist, which is basically how I feel, but I still call myself agnostic.

 

To be absolutely 100% atheist (he refers to this as "strong atheism"), you would have to believe, without any doubt whatsoever, that atheism is true, and you would discount any evidence which is shown to you. It would be the mirror image to theism, a strong atheist would be saying "no matter what evidence you show me, I will not believe it". Dawkins does not have this opinion, he is open to evidence, so he is an agnostic, but he lives his life as though God / supernatural beings do not exist, therefore he is a "de facto atheist".

 

Believing something doesn't entail being 100% certain that you're right and being closed-minded to the possibility that you're wrong. Lots of people believe in a god of some sort but aren't absolutely certain they're right; that doesn't make them not theists. Likewise, Dawkins and lots of other people believe that there is no god, with the same level of conviction that they believe that there's no tooth fairy or Santa Claus and based on a similar kind of evidentiary basis--all sorts of things that are part of the Santa Claus myth don't seem to be consistent with everyday experience or reality, and likewise things thought to be true by, for example, Christians about their god don't seem to square with the way the world really is, either. By saying that he's technically also an agnostic even though he doesn't like the wishy-washy connotations of the term, Dawkins is merely acknowledging what any good scientist should, that in inductive logic (drawing conclusions based on evidence, as opposed to drawing them through deduction from other things you know or assume to be true) absolute certainty is technically impossible.

[Richard]

I agree with that veginator. I guess when I was saying "theist", I was talking more specifically about a "strong theist", as Dawkins phrases it, which is someone on the opposite end of the belief spectrum, who fully believes in religion, as opposed to the "strong atheist" who fully believes in atheism.

 

The form of "full belief" that a "strong theist" has, is 100%, and they will refuse all evidence you show them. However, that's not to say that all theists are "strong theists", and you're quite right that it's possible that a theist would respond to new evidence.

 

I'm with Richard Dawkins on the subject, and I'd quite happily refer to myself as an atheist, just for clarity. I sometimes say I am "99% atheist, 1% agnostic, 0% religious"

[robert]

I am loving Prof. Dawkins more and more everyday

 

I listen to him while I work and as I go to sleep at night