RE: Skeptics I have immense respect for.
January 3, 2012 at 4:29 pm
(This post was last modified: January 3, 2012 at 4:35 pm by TheDarkestOfAngels.)
(January 3, 2012 at 2:58 pm)Tiberius Wrote: It doesn't make it worth it when those new atheists are coming to atheism for the wrong reasons. Dawkins' book wasn't so much a rehash of old arguments, it was a rehash of mostly invalid or deeply flawed arguments. Dawkins is a great biologist and scientist, and I respect him for that. I just don't think he knows what he is talking about when it comes to atheism / philosophy.
There are far more eloquent and philosophically minded atheists who can handle these kinds of things.
Could you elaborate on this a bit? I haven't read his book - I've just seen his pubilc discussions via youtube so pehraps there's something I've missed, but I don't really see his lack of philisophical understanding a flaw in his reasoning.
I myself am an atheist for entirely scientific reasons and in terms of becoming an atheist, understanding atheists, and arguing with theists, I see that as entirely superfluous.
At best, it can give someone a better understanding of the side you're arguing against but that doesn't really take a whole lot of reading.
On a seporate note, I have a great deal of respect for Aron Ra, Matt Dilihaunty (and everyone on the Atheist Experience), the Amazing Atheist (brash and blunt, but intelligent - a lot like minimalist actually), and Zomitscrisis (if I've spelled that correctly - she's a lot like the amazing atheist - intelligent and tells it like it is, except she's a girl, is hot, and has a hotter accent.)
Also - Stephan Hawking and.... pretty much every famous scientist there is.
If I remember correctly, I believe Bill Nye the Science guy is also an atheist or at least agnostic.
.... I wonder of Paul Zaloom is an atheist or agnostic. (Beakman from Beakman's world).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GI74P_TY4kg
They don't make science shows like this anymore.
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers...
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
