There is another howler up on the ABC’s Religion & Ethics website today. Neil Ormerod’s qualifications to pompously pontificate over whether Richard Dawkins is a bully come from his job as a Professor of Theology at Australian Catholic University.
Ormerod seems mainly peeved that Dawkins doesn’t think that we have free will, and that he sees religious belief as a delusion. The rest is really just philosophical garblewarble over is vs ought and strawmanning Dawkins’ positions, together with indignant cries of “bully” and “you’re angry”. In other words, the usual.
I think Ormerod misrepresents what atheists are saying when he argues:
This goes some way to explaining why Dawkins and his multitude of followers feel entitled to express such contempt and anger toward religious believers. Nothing religious believers say can be tolerated because they are at heart irrational human beings; they are free to be otherwise, and in not choosing to be rational they are failing in some sense to be what human beings should be. They are like a watch that does not properly tell the time. They need fixing. And the proper fix is to be more rational, a better human being, and drop their religious beliefs.
Sure, it would be great if everyone could be more rational. Including atheists. But that’s not the point, and it is simply not true that nonbelievers regard religious people as machines with broken brains who need fixing, in the same way that some religious people regard homosexuals as broken and fixable. If Ormerod would actually read The God Delusion for comprehension, he would realise that large parts of the book are spent indicting the religious for brainwashing their children, arguing that passing on religious beliefs from parent to child is abuse, and pointing out how religious belief correlates with lack of social security and education. Ormerod is lighting a strawman that he erected in the first place. But he has a way out for us atheist mechanists:
If these are not Dawkins’ and his followers’ beliefs about what it means to be human, then all their contempt and anger is nothing more than an attempt at bullying believers, like alpha male primates beating their chests to warn off rivals.
There is that word again, bullying. It is simply amazing how many people do not know what it means, and take it as synonym for “disagreement” or “criticism”. Whether someone says “Your god does not exist” or “Guys don’t do that”, it’s not contempt, nor anger, and certainly not bullying. Calling Dawkins or any other atheist who dares to suggest that the lack of evidence for gods points to no gods existing a bully, is in itself a form of bullying, in employing over the top rhetorical means and inflammatory language to silence opposing views and poison the well.
Even the notion of free will itself is merely an illusion with which we live, and which science will eventually deconstruct into other more basic forces. The whole universe is a purposeless, meaningless set of forces and particles banging into one another according to the laws of physics. How then might Dawkins construe the apparently purposeful appeal to live according to the dictates of reason that is implicit in the aims of his book?
Of course free will is an illusion, our conscious brain is not a decider but merely a spokesperson, and just like being free from religious belief can lead to living a more truthful, productive and altruistic life, so can the realisation of the absence of conscious will. Ormerod’s quote above sounds just like any garden variety strawmanning of the theory of evolution as “random”. The fact that the universe has no purpose doesn’t mean that we can not strive to give our lifes meaning. It just means that we need not appeal to heaven for divine assistance in achieving our goals.
Ormerod’s pseudo-argument boils down to “Dawkins says we can reason people into not believing in gods. But he also says we don’t have free will. So how’s that meant to work?”
I find it a rather pathetic attempt to color Dawkins as a bully, and to repeat once again the old canard of the angry atheist who has nothing but contempt for religion. In other words, it’s business as usual on the Religion & Ethics website.
It would be nice if Ormerod were to talk to an atheist instead of arguing with the atheist who exists solely in his mind. Perhaps then Ormerod would learn why atheists don’t believe in his god and how most of us actually feel about goddism and goddists.
Ormerod is a fucking tool. That’s pretty much all there is to say.
Martin; greetings here at your Dawkins entry. The Origins question is all over, game, set,match. Pity, really – it won’t make the world a better place, and it won’t get me to a better place. Technically, however, Dawkins has missed the big one, although he did contribute in a small way. For your own enlightenment, and that of readers, you could research the topic. I do provide something along that line.
Here are some questions I infrequently ask our furry friends, Ken Hamster, Richard (Dawkins) Rabbit, and, occasionally Whiskery John (Mackay). I went to the extent of writing a poem, partly in their honour. [link]. They gnaw about things. I have personally spoken with the two of Australian origin, and would have been more profitably employed, gnawing an adamant. “1.) Why don’t you defer to the authority of Scripture?”
“2.) Why don’t you take advice re. Scripture from great men of God?” “ 3.) Here is an all-day sucker, which you would possibly be able to tackle if only you would engage in common procedure as per 1) & 2). According to Genesis, all plants were made on the third day and were in some real sense alive at that time. According to the same authority, flowering and fruiting vegetation were made to grow during the day of Adam’s creation (six), and from the context, were full grown from scratch on that day. According to Genesis, all complex life (above plant grade)without exception was created on the fifth day. The same authority demands that aspects of complex life were made or formed of earth on the sixth day. Explain, without contradicting the Bible. “ “ 4.) Why is it so quiet around here?”
Here is one I frequently sent to Richard (Dawkins) Rabbit, and likeminded bunnies.
“Ahem, Prof. Dawk.. In the beginning, nothing got together with nothing, they made some gaseous extrusions or exuberances or emanations or whatever, these turned into rock, and in time your publications arose. Nothing you publish originated from intelligence? Your research shows there is zip, zero, zilch intelligence behind any of what you say or write?”
These people rely on each other.
Let’s go on to F for FUNDING.
Since when did God’s Word need help from people? And since when did science need funding to protect itself from something science got over, five hundred odd years ago?
Billions of blistering blue barnacles in a blithering bunny burrow.
Richard Rabbit is canvassing funds to stave off that which Galileo & co. handled centuries ago.
Heywood, I suggest you get help. Just talk things over with your GP, ok.
I am fluent in two languages and can get by in a couple more but gibberish is not one of them. Does anyone have a Heywood to English dictionary?
I am delayed as a result of having to wait all morning at the G.P.’s. He is snowed under. Says he keeps getting people who were referred to him by someone at FURIOUS PURPOSE.
He’s not himself and he doesn’t think ’tis Himself which could mean it is someone else? Extraterrestrial? Martian, perhaps?
The somewhat raw nature of my first entry was a result of my failing to edit a direct liftout from Prof. Dawkins’s blog.
The good Prof.’s contribution to the solving of the Origins Question was his computerized DNA concept. He went as far as producing a neat little video on the topic. Being hobbled by an irrational, anti-physics world view, he sadly missed the big deduction. It’s all about information technology. Species are information acting upon chemicals, which have been initially vivified by the Divine touch. GENESIS is now solved. That’s both the book in the Bible, and genesis 0f life etc.. Give Prof. D. his due, he practises free speech and decent conduct, which are christian values. I would have preferred someone like him to have seen the obvious, rather than myself.
I take the liberty of quoting Sir Francis Bacon, one of the fathers of modern Science.
A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.
Francis Bacon
Heywood,
I admit you’re glib. However you’re nowhere near as clever as you think you are. Instead of talking down to us, you’d do better to put the thesaurus away and write more plainly and clearly.
If you have a problem with evolution, then give us your objections to it. And please, don’t think for a second that we’re more likely to take the word of a godsoaked knownothing over that of a biologist when discussing evolution.
Uh- huh; I don’t intend to hang about and be a bugbear. I couldn’t resist commenting on reality. It does not go away when one ceases believing in it.
The physical universe is essentially a hologram. There was some talk about that recently with Higgs’s boson and with the ‘Black Hole Wars’. The universe is in effect an illusion done with light and information. When the universe goes away, what will not go away? You have just, yet again, proved the existence of God. You can do nothing else, if you will dabble with logic.
Science is a manifestation of that provable, tangible logic that some people seem to have such a hankering after. But, here is the surprise. Although almost no respected scientists were determined atheists, and the overwhelming majority were biblically-aligned in some significant way, not one claimed to have found God or personal faith or personal meaning through science or logic. Perhaps there is something more to human existence than cold logic and mathematics?
“When the universe goes away” is a silly, meaningless noise. If the universe goes away then we go away with it because we’re part of the universe. And the only thing that “proves” gods (note the plural, humans have invented thousands of gods besides the sadistic bully you worship) is evidence. Do you have any evidence for any gods, let alone your pet deity? I didn’t think so.
This is a lie. But then you Jesusites like to lie. Here’s a list of prominent atheist scientists. And I make a suggestion, don’t lie to people who actually know something about the subject you’re trying to lie about. It won’t do your arguments any good.
Delusion and fantasy are major parts of the human existence. That’s why fictitious characters like your god are still believed in by gullible people like you.
You are getting me laughing again. Who were the original ‘atheists’, and were persecuted and killed for being so? Jews and Christians. They didn’t subscribe to all these ‘gods’ you keep talking up.
I didn’t bother reading the atheist honour role courtesy of actively atheistic (but largely reliable) WIKIPEDIA. Possibly he will have people such as N. Bohr listed, but he may or may not have Einstein. Einstein has been ‘officially’ classified as everything from an atheist to a creationist. Most probably, he was polytheist. The point about people such as Bohr and Einstein (and Crick, who is probably listed, although he took one look at DNA and jumped out of the Darwinistic boat) is that they weren’t going about trying to publicly define or justify their religious feelings. Who asked WIKIPEDIA or anyone else to do it for them? And since when did honest, easy-going Australians ask for a bunch of anarchists halfway between Karl Marx and Germaine Greer, to set their religious agenda? “God, I hate …..”, to quote your favourite openings. “You are lying … “, your favourite endings The Nazi-Bolshevik hate and deception creed, preached here in Australia.
Off the top of my head, here is a totally abbreviated list of respected scientists whom we can be confident would not be offended to be classed christian, most of whom openly owned the Bible as the Word of God, many of whom acknowledged that any achievement they made was handed to them from outside themselves. And they believed in the betterment of mankind, not in science a prostituted tool for pushing private idealogic agendas. Bacon, Bruno, Da Vinci, Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, Halley, Dalton, Pasteur, Linnaeus, Cuvier, Morse, Faraday, Kelvin, Mendel, Planck, Fabre, Franklin ……… . Add you own, if you can GOOGLE.
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Translation: Don’t confuse me with facts.
The lies just keep coming and coming. From wikipedia:
No, doesn’t seem like Crick abandoned evolution.
As I said before, if you lie about something I know, I’m not going to respect you or your arguments. This is the second lie I’ve caught you on and I’m not even trying.
You’ve gone back to writing gibberish. Let me know if you have anything intelligible to say…that isn’t a lie. Incidentally, I’m not an Australian.
” Crick was, however, a firm critic of Young Earth creationism. ”
So am I. As you would discover should you undertake the simple expedient of pressing the link that FURIOUS PURPOSE to their credit allow commenters to run above their comments. Being unable to trace yourself via such a method, I was unaware of your nationality. Welcome to the sunburned country.
Kindly read my publications well ere obliging me to re-print that which is already published. Here is a little story, not on my site. There is currently this idea that Science has a lot to say about religion. Yes and No. Going back to that list of ‘atheists’. Bohr, whatever he may have said personally, certainly was half Jewish. He (as I recall) escaped Denmark during the war. The only way one can identify oneself as Jewish is to acknowledge some veracity exists in the Old Testament. Question: is someone who acknowledges the existence of the Jews as described by that Book, technically an atheist? I mentioned, above somewhere, the semi-recent ‘Black Hole Wars’. Strangely enough, this little academic aside was carried on largely courtesy of a Jewish physicist or two, and one Professor S. Hawking. The principle Jewish physicist (I have forgotten his name) by his own description is not a particularly religious man, bordering upon atheist. He holds great respect for Einstein. Hawking, as WIKIPEDIA wishes to inform us, is supposed to be a total atheist. This largely atheist Jewish physicist has a great respect for the fundamentals of Physics. He has simultaneously not abandoned the underlaying principle of one God, the Creator and upholder of heaven and earth. If you read about the said ‘Black Hole War’, it seems that Hawking had made some deduction relating to proposed black holes (presumably invoking ‘Hawking Radiation’) that definitively stated that information was irretrievably lost when matter was ‘consumed’ by a Black Hole. That conclusion says two things: 1) The fundamentals of Physics are changed or overthrown at a black hole; and, 2) A black hole has creative or destructive powers attributable only to the one God who made heaven and earth.
The Jewish physicist who more-or-less wished to be regarded as not overly religious, if not atheist, was alarmed by the deductions of the actively atheistic physicist, Hawking. In collusion with others, he immediately began to work to re-establish the basics of Physics. Although not a religious man, he did make a passing comment, upon adducing the facts necessary to correct Hawking’s error: “The Lord works in mysterious ways”. Information cannot be shown to be destroyed by a black hole. (If black holes exist.)
Those physicists could well be listed side by side as atheists. So? Science cannot be prostituted for idealogic purposes — other than the purpose of hard fact and logic. We can stand upon Science (within limits) only because we can stand upon the veracity of the Creator.
I acknowledge the existence of a group of people whose ancestors were described in the Old Testament (note that a Jew would not call it the Old Testament but rather the Tanakh, Masoretic Text or Hebrew Bible). So would pretty well every other educated Westerner, including most atheists. “Jewish” is not only a religious description but also a cultural and ethnic description. So a cultural Jew could easily accept the existence of people in the Tanakh regardless of religious views. Your argument is meaningless.
I’ve looked at your publications. You could use an editor because you’re extremely prolix. Sorry but I’m not impressed by your feeble attempts to cram the musings of bronze age priests into modern science. I can respect creationists like Rick Warren who admit there’s a conflict between reality and the Bible and discard reality for the Bible. At least Warren is being honest. You’re not. Plus your stuff on creationism is just the bog-standard bullshit all creationists use. If you think your arguments are original I can assure you that semi-literate creationists from the wilds of Alabama and Uganda are saying exactly the same things, only more tersely.
I’m also not impressed by your global warming denialism based on supposed solar temperature regulated by the Earth’s magnetosphere. Why can’t you denalists admit you object to the socio-economic changes that climate change will force on all of us? Pretending your god will wave his paw and all will be good is like your mummy telling you she’ll take care of the monster under the bed. It makes you feel good but is really meaningless.
So an anonymous “Jewish” physicist has philosophical problems with black holes. So what? For your story to be meaningful, you need to define some terms, like “information” and “constructive and destructive powers.” Neither of us are physicists and given your attempt to deny the existence of black holes (yes, that’s what you’re trying to do), I think I’ll go with what the most prominent physicist living today says rather than the incoherent ramblings of an amateur.
What part of the world ARE you in? Somewhere where they learn stuff from the little people of the forests? You have lost me.
I don’t generally torment myself with people who can’t read but since it is possible someone who can read actually torments themselves reading this: 1) My publications (other than some minor blog comments) to my knowledge do not mention the word, ‘black hole’; and if they did, it would not be with any intention of disproving the concept: 2) As is obvious to anyone with powers of literacy, I am not a biblical literalist in the sense of AIG & such anti- geologic science practitioners (I am a geologist). 3). It would be impossible for Einstein himself to evaluate my publications within 24 hrs, leave alone someone who by his own admission does not comprehend yr.1 physics. : 4) I am not a climate change denier; I publish the world’s first theory of climate moderation based upon the geologic record and the latest geophysics; 5) I accept that the Bible is true and relevant as did almost every successful and respected name in science.
If you are as accurate about Professors Dawkins & Hawking as you are about me, I doubt they will be enlisting yourself as secretarial material. Good luck, whatever mysterious message is being imparted here.
Heywood, a word of warning. Please make your comments here readable and make them make sense. Like, as of now.
You talked about black holes in your post 21/08/2012 at 13:04. You had a paragraph and a half on Stephen Hawking, some Jewish physicist whose name and very existence isn’t even conjecture, and black holes.
Silly me, thinking that your statements
meant that you were a climate change denialist.
Fixed it for you. And almost no successful and respected scientists living since the 1800s have been creationists.
“I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.” (Albert Einstein, 1954)
I don’t enjoy doing other’s work for them. Is it clear why Einstein is technically classified as creationist in some circles? Does it make any difference whether you or I can ferret out evidence of ‘creationism’ , or ‘calathumpianism’, or so-called ‘atheism’, in other people? Is it our business? What does personal understanding of God (Einstein employed the word) have to do with f=m times a? And what sort of personal deception is it that claims to enroll f=ma as proof there is no God? Einstein couldn’t find God, even though he got as far as energy equals mass times speed of light squared. He showed that light is the universal constant. The Scriptures advize us that Jesus Christ is the light of the world and he “changes not” — i.e., he is the universal Constant. Does that lead you or me into personally satisfying relationships with others? Does it heal the sicknesses in society?
I
Pardon me, Sir, but you seem to have mistaken me for someone who gives a damn about your likes and dislikes.
In a word, no. That certain creationists try to turn Einstein into a creationist isn’t surprising. Liars for Jesus are fairly common.
It might. Since you’re a proven liar, if you claim someone else is something, then why should I believe you?
Anyone can use the word “God.” I just did in the previous sentence. That means absolutely nothing. However while f=ma has nothing to do with fictitious supernatural critters, you creationists (and I think you’re one, regardless of your whines and bleats) are perfectly willing to try to bend science to fit your mythology. How are you on the Big Bang and abiogenesis?
You’re back in not-making-sense mode. Who claims f=ma means there is no God? Certainly neither Einstein nor me. In fact, I’m perfectly willing to believe there are gods. If you or anyone else produces reasonable evidence for the existence of gods, then I’ll believe in them. So far nobody has given such evidence. Thousands of years ago, people didn’t know what caused lightning, so they made up stories about gods who tossed lightning bolts around. Nowadays we have a good idea about the causes of lightning and gods don’t enter into the explanations. Every time an explanation for something is determined, gods never enter into the equations. When asked why God wasn’t mentioned in his book on celestial mechanics, Pierre Simon Laplace replied: Je n’avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là. (“I had no need of that hypothesis.”) No other scientist has either.
Actually the speed of light is a constant.
Do you honestly think an atheist is impressed by a Biblical reference? As my Uncle Ralph used to say: “Damn, boy, you sure are stupid!”
No. In fact, Jesusism causes sicknesses in society. Ever hear about the Inquisition? How about The Troubles in Northern Ireland? Or the attempts by creationists to have science education replaced by mythology? How about all the Christians trying to keep homosexuals from marrying because “Jesus thinks what they do in bed is icky“? How about the Catholic Church supporting and protecting child rapists? No, Jesusism promotes societal sickness.
“If you or anyone else produces reasonable evidence for the existence of gods, then I’ll believe in them.”
You said it, brother.
Well, where’s your evidence?
BTW, I am not your brother, your mate, your buddy, your pal, your friend or anything else other than someone on the internet having a discussion with you.