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RE: The God Delusion: Your opinions on it?
January 22, 2015 at 3:59 am
I liked the God delusion. Its obviously written for a mainstream audience. A good starting point.
I read it once as a Christian, when it failed to sway me, and again as an atheist, when it seemed a completely different book.
"Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken."
Sith code
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RE: The God Delusion: Your opinions on it?
January 22, 2015 at 4:02 am
(This post was last modified: January 22, 2015 at 4:02 am by Pizza.)
I didn't read The God Delusion but I did see a video of a TED talk Dawkins did that made me realized there was a dark side to religion.
It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley, but to believe or not believe in God is not important at all. - Denis Diderot
We are the United States of Amnesia, we learn nothing because we remember nothing. - Gore Vidal
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RE: The God Delusion: Your opinions on it?
January 22, 2015 at 4:06 am
Not a bad book. I've seen the arguments made more artfully, and he's only a passable writer, in my view.
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RE: The God Delusion: Your opinions on it?
January 22, 2015 at 12:13 pm
(January 22, 2015 at 4:06 am)Parkers Tan Wrote: Not a bad book. I've seen the arguments made more artfully, and he's only a passable writer, in my view.
He's quite a good writer on science.
Skepticism is not a position; it is an approach to claims.
Science is not a subject, but a method.
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RE: The God Delusion: Your opinions on it?
January 22, 2015 at 12:31 pm
I purchased TGD on CD-ROM. Narrated by Richard and his wife.
Did a lot of long distance biking and walking and listened to the book 2 to 3 times.
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RE: The God Delusion: Your opinions on it?
January 22, 2015 at 12:50 pm
(January 21, 2015 at 10:43 pm)IanHulett Wrote: Hey guys. I have bought the God Delusion by Richard Dawkins from Ebay, and it's due to show by next friday the 30th. I can't wait. Have you read it? Is it a good book? What are your views on it? Thanks a bunch. I thought that it was useful for the person who has just left god and religion behind and is trying to understand some of the basic issues that atheists have with religion/god.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
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RE: The God Delusion: Your opinions on it?
January 22, 2015 at 1:08 pm
True Dawkins is at his best when discussing scientific issues but really, how great a writer do you have to be to blast the ever-loving shit out of all religious hogwash. Someone needs to apply the "What Is More Likely" test to that drivel.
Well, worth your time. Certainly better than reading the fucking bible or koran or whatever.
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RE: The God Delusion: Your opinions on it?
January 22, 2015 at 1:26 pm
(This post was last modified: January 22, 2015 at 1:27 pm by Thumpalumpacus.)
(January 22, 2015 at 12:13 pm)Chas Wrote: (January 22, 2015 at 4:06 am)Parkers Tan Wrote: Not a bad book. I've seen the arguments made more artfully, and he's only a passable writer, in my view.
He's quite a good writer on science.
True enough, he makes the complex understandable. But that urge to simplification, when applied to something so simple to deconstruct as religious faith, takes on the appearance of hunting flies with sledgehammers, after a time.
How many writers does it take to change a lightbulb? Ten: one to change the bulb, and nine to say how they would have done it differently.
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RE: The God Delusion: Your opinions on it?
January 22, 2015 at 1:38 pm
I thought the book was OK. I read it when I was turning into my more active atheist phase. I'd been an atheist for quite a long time, but after 9/11, became more aware and angry with the harm religion causes.
I still do like one of the opening passages for its bracing, no pulling punches language --
Quote:The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.
That sums up Yahweh quite nicely.
As others have said, his science writing is quite good. I particularly liked The Ancestors Tale.
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RE: The God Delusion: Your opinions on it?
January 22, 2015 at 1:55 pm
I thik he I is gaytheist bitch whoo licks his mommas fukity balls he burnn in hell 4eVR cos he scarred of GOD
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