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Richard Dawkins says "What if you're wrong?"
June 4, 2010 at 9:48 pm
(This post was last modified: June 4, 2010 at 10:07 pm by The_Flying_Skeptic.)
I would try to find the exact speech where Dawkins responds do a little girl's question "What if you're wrong?" but I'm lazy now and just want to get this posted already. A little girl comes up to the microphone and innocently asks 'What if you're wrong?' in the after speech questions and he responds with her same question 'Well what if you're wrong?' in an angry 'i eat little girls for breakfast' manner.
Richard Dawkins is big stuff, but I think the question could have been handled better. I might have responded just as Dawkins in the moment but I think he missed an opportunity to highlight an absurd, immoral belief held by Christians: if you don't believe, you go to hell (you are tortured) for eternity.
"What if you're wrong?" says the girl
"Well... I guess a lot of good people are going to go to hell for eternity simply for not seeing enough evidence in support of a belief..."
You could go far in emphasizing how a mass murderer would go to heaven over an atheist simply for believing in Jesus Christ. Does that make sense?
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RE: Richard Dawkins says "What if you're wrong?"
June 5, 2010 at 4:16 am
He responded just fine. He responded with "Well what if you're wrong?", "Anybody could be wrong" because that's true, the same applies to everyone... this is an issue of probability, anybody could be wrong, we could be wrong about the Flying Spaghetti Monster, so what.
There was no need for him to get into morality really.
EvF
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RE: Richard Dawkins says "What if you're wrong?"
June 5, 2010 at 8:29 am
it's a valid question.
We, you and he and I, could be wrong. We should accept that we could be wrong, because it is not that you beleive in god that makes you an idiot (although Dawkins may tell you so), it is in fact the belief that you are right and everyone else is wrong. I accept that I may be wrong. I beleive very much, but I may be wrong. Atheism 2.0, the mean and full of itself atheism, is apparently in possession of some level of truth that everyone else on the planet is without...
The world would be a better place without that man making a generation of self aggrandizing and socially illiterate monkeys.
It;s a valid question, one he should have answered in a wholly different manner.
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RE: Richard Dawkins says "What if you're wrong?"
June 5, 2010 at 3:28 pm
yeah, watching the video again after so long, he did a better job than i thought he did and emphasized a more general and more important problem.
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RE: Richard Dawkins says "What if you're wrong?"
June 8, 2010 at 2:24 pm
Atheism as the lack of believe in god(s) (weak atheism) cannot be wrong on the existence of gods in the real world since it only reports about personal belief. A schizofrenic weak atheist might be wrong about what (s)he reports on personal belief, but that's an odd exception. You don't believe me? Try being wrong in formulating for yourself what you truly belief.
A strong atheist can be wrong on the existence of gods in the real world. That doesn't mean that all theisms are true. Probably most of them will not be true.
A theological non-cognitivist can be wrong in stating that the evaluated god concepts lack coherence of statement which doesn't mean that necessarily gods exist but only that some coherent formulation of specific god concepts is possible.
In short the negation of atheism does not equeal theism.
Reckon that.
"I'm like a rabbit suddenly trapped, in the blinding headlights of vacuous crap" - Tim Minchin in "Storm"
Christianity is perfect bullshit, christians are not - Purple Rabbit, honouring CS Lewis
Faith is illogical - fr0d0
odcast:: 
