Richard Dawkins to Appear on Doctor Who 692
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Zonk
from the do-the-evolution-baby dept.
from the do-the-evolution-baby dept.
Ravalox writes "In an interview with The Independent, current curator of the Doctor Who legacy Russell T. Davis announced that distinguished evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins would be making an appearance in the new season of Doctor Who. To quote Davies: 'People were falling at his feet ... We've had Kylie Minogue on that set, but it was Dawkins people were worshipping.' Dawkins is the author of many best-selling non-fiction books, from The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker to The God Delusion, and a renowned advocate of both Darwin's evolutionary theory and the merits of atheism."
Re:Dawkins may may a renowned evolutionary biologi (Score:1, Interesting)
I agree that it may apply in certain fields (politics springs to mind) - but speaking for myself, religion (or lack thereof) has not influenced any of the things in my life that I feel make me 'successful in society'. I also know a lot of other people for whom this applies.
I work in IT in Australia, your theory might apply more in different industries or countries.
Here's another thought - if things were reversed, and more people in the world were athiests (even a slim majority), would you say the best thing would be for everyone to be an athiest?
Re:Not the first member in his family... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Dawkins may may a renowned evolutionary biologi (Score:4, Interesting)
By the way I'm not promoting agnosticism; I think that you have to make a leap of faith [wikipedia.org] somewhere, and on this issue the options seem to me theism and strong atheism.
Re:How profoundly sad (Score:5, Interesting)
I was just saying that it's kind of a bummer that those qualities are rare enough to draw admiration.
Re:Dawkins may may a renowned evolutionary biologi (Score:3, Interesting)
No proof does not mean 50:50 probability. (Score:5, Interesting)
But that doesn't mean the odds are the same as a coin toss. If we take Christianity for example, each time we find an inconsistency in the Bible (no walls around Jericho, no reports of anyone outside the middle east reporting a global flood, no town of Nazareth at the time Jesus was supposed to be alive, no reports of graves opening and the dead walking in anything but the gospels) then it lowers the probability of a biblical god.
And people of faith take a much more extreme attitude than most atheists. They insist that the probability of their god existing is 100% exactly, while the probability of anyone else's god existing is 0% exactly.
They need to realise that if you can't disprove that Yahweh exists then you can't disprove that Zeus, Odin or Atum (at least he had fun creating the world) exist either.
Re:ATHEISM IS OF THE DEVIL! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Dawkins may may a renowned evolutionary biologi (Score:5, Interesting)
All those religions. Not all of them can be right.
By proving that God exists you destroy hundreds of faiths overnight.
Dawkins as an Aignostic. (Score:3, Interesting)
A hypothetical question, and keep in mind, I'd like to know what you think. Its not that I actually believe this is the way it is, its just, a what if.
What if 500 years from now we are a space fareing species that travels to other planets in space ships, and so on and so fourth. We start exploring the unknowns of the galaxy. Well, eventually, we find... something.... it wanders the universe exploring just like we do, only its been around a lot longer than we have.
More accurately, when we find it, and figure out how to talk to it, it explains to us that when it reached its level of sentience, nothing else that was living could think for itself. This creature was the first thing to ask "Why am I me and not someone else." "Why is there something and not nothing."
The question then becomes, what have we found?
Re:Dawkins may may a renowned evolutionary biologi (Score:3, Interesting)
On the other hand there is a universe that we live in, and so far no solid (i.e. testable) scientific theory for its origin. The root cause of existence is certainly questionable. It's unlikely to have been an Abrahamic God, Greek Titans, Vishnu, Raven, Aslan, Eru or any other creator and creation process described in human creation myths. But it's certainly possible that something existing outside of our concept of space and time created the universe. While it may seem that only shifts the question to how did that something originate, the whole idea of origin is based on a directional time dimension that may not apply to such a creator. So the idea that a creator may exist can't be completely logically dismissed even if it's well beyond current scientific understanding.
However, an understanding of the scale of humans with respect to the structures of the universe makes the idea that such an creating entity would be interested in meddling in the evolution of life on planet Earth, let alone the affairs of the human race or even individual humans, to be of such an incalculably low probability that you may as well be talking about unicorns.
Now there's a completely different question of whether competitive evolutionary pressure could have made us evolve to need to hold belief systems with creation myths and concepts of afterlife. The ability to hold and share such beliefs could have encouraged the development of societal systems beyond the small tribal groups prevalent in primates so that we could develop civilization. Those beliefs sometimes also appear to help relieve the mental stress of existential angst and knowledge of one's mortality. However the latter might also be a side effect of evolutionary selection if those least emotionally invested and most capable of challenging the belief system would be the most likely to leave the protection of the greater group against the dangers of a primitive world. It really sucks to be an agnostic and realize that we may have evolved to live longer and happier if we hold religious beliefs in an afterlife even if there is no such thing. But that's another story.
Re:Dawkins may may a renowned evolutionary biologi (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, that statement can be logically ruled out rather easily, by what some people call "causality" (yes, damn experimental verification). The argument roughly follows as below:
1) The sun is at the very least a second-generation star, because it has too many heavy elements around it to be a first generation star (which would be formed entirely from hydrogen).
2) Venus, because it orbits the sun with relatively circular orbit (i.e. low energy for its angular momentum), it should have formed around the sun (i.e. it's not an extra-solar object caught by Sun's gravity, as we suspect some of the comets to be).
3) Universe began (... there are still some on-going debates on this, but let's suspend our sense of scientific doubt and disbelief and say that Big Bang marks a definite beginning of our universe) before the formation of our sun (if only to provide the space-time in which to exist, not to mention the raw material
4) Therefore, the tea pot orbiting Venus, if it exists, existed after the creation of universe, and what did not exist before universe began could not have created the universe.
I'll leave disproving God as an exercise for the reader.
Re:Not the first member in his family... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Dawkins may may a renowned evolutionary biologi (Score:3, Interesting)
Suppose an old guy with a beard approached you on the street and claimed to be Zeus. Would you believe him? What if he said he could call down a lightning strike, and then did it to demonstrate it. Would you then believe it was Zeus?
No, there are too many other considerations. Your first assumption would be that you are dreaming. Failing that, then hallucinating. Or maybe some con artist who figured out that giving the appearance of calling down lightning is as easy as giving the appearance of bending a spoon with your mind. Last resort, an alien with "sufficiently advanced technology". Would *anyone* capable of rational thought ever consider the possibility that he actually was Zeus?
Unfortunately (or not), this whole God thing is such a slippery concept that it will never be proven, any more than it will ever be disproven.
Re:Not the first member in his family... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Nonsense. (Score:2, Interesting)
More to the point isn't it ironic that Dawkins is appearing on a show that has been portraying the Doctor as a Messiah figure for the past three series?
Re:Dawkins may may a renowned evolutionary biologi (Score:2, Interesting)
Dawkins writes,
It seems the only objection Dawkins has with the explanation that God created life is
So coming to your point - Religion may be simplistic, but even a prominent scientist like Dawkins still has to rely on a miracle as the explanation for the origin of life. What he grapples with and refuses to acknowledge is the source of the miracle.
http://www.anointed-one.net/begin.html/ [anointed-one.net]
Re:Atheists, Come Out! (Score:3, Interesting)
You should respect the religious because we are all human and have weaknesses to be ashamed of.
Hate the religion, not the religious -- those unfortunate which either have mental problems or was indoctrinated at an early age. Be happy it wasn't you.
Irony alert! (Score:3, Interesting)
Dawkins is the author of ... The God Delusion
And apparently also a victim of delusions of godhood.
Re:I don't like Richard Dawkins (Score:4, Interesting)
2. A theory - no.
A scientific theory is a theory which conforms to very strict rules. A theory in general does not.
My objection to Dawkins principles is that he suggests that all theories of god should be rejected without any critical assessment. So if a theory of god appears tomorrow which conforms to scientific principles (I'm not saying it will - I am merely hypothesizing) then we must reject it because it refers to supernatural beings. I'm sorry but that lacks the plain objectivity of the scientific mind.
Should we fund 'ridiculous' theories about god, should churches have a say in the running of the country or should religion be taught in schools science? Unless they are proven, then I agree with Richard Dawkins, absolutely not.
However, they should always be entitled to the first hearing in the court of science. Which means I cannot rule absolutely against them as a scientist and therefore can claim omniscience as to their future validity. And we can't tell theists that they are wrong merely because their current theories are nonsensical.
That doesn't mean I don't firmly believe they will always be wrong - but that's my opinion not a scientific fact.
Re:Atheists, Come Out! (Score:2, Interesting)
There's a difference between respecting someone's *right* to have a belief, and respecting the beliefs someone has. People are free to be Neo-Nazis, but I don't respect their beliefs, and I would certainly judge them for having those beliefs. I similarly judge the religiously faithful. That doesn't make me a bigot, it makes me someone able to make reasoned judgements based on the evidence at hand. If your "beliefs" or opinons are irrational or ignorant, I can say so. If mine are, you can say so to me.
You may not be evil, but your religious faith is. Not your religion, your faith. Here's why... religious faith is not merely irrational, it's anti-rational. It doesn't merely ask you to believe in some god in the absence of all evidence, it asks you to maintain your belief in god despite all evidence to the contrary. In the judeo-christian tradition, this is made explicit throughout the bible itself: the story of Abraham, the story of Job, the story of Jesus's temptation, etc.. In each, as in many other places throughout old and new testaments, the clear moral is that any evidence which suggests that -- (a) there is no god, or "yahweh" is not the one and only; (b) said "yahweh" doesn't care about humans; or (c) "yahweh" is a petty, vindictive, cruel tyrant -- should be wholly and forcefully disregarded.
And so, for example, despite all the clear evidence that "abstinence-only sex education" leads to the same or higher rates of premarital sex, higher incidences of sexually-transmitted disease, and the same or higher rates of unwanted teen pregnancies, because its proponents *believe* they're right, even though they are also (supposedly) concerned about all of those problems, they also believe that it's virtuous to ignore all that evidence and keep forcing such nonsense down the throats of school boards wherever they can.
And *you* may not share those people's beliefs, but by promulgating, or even tacitly supporting, the idea that there is a virtue to ignoring evidence in favor of belief, you're engendering the mechanism by which those people justify their complete disregard for the actual well-being of our society as a whole. You can't make the argument that your "personal beliefs" don't effect me. We share one society in this world. The irrational disregard of its real conditions impacts all of us.
Re:Atheists, Come Out! (Score:4, Interesting)
The vast majority of "The religious" are that way by choice, not anything else.
I do not respect the religious. I do respect fellow humans.
Re:I don't like Richard Dawkins (Score:1, Interesting)
My objection to Dawkins principles is that he suggests that all theories of god should be rejected without any critical assessment.
We routinely reject all theories of Santa Claus' existence and his ability to visit all (christian?) children during one night of the year without any critical assessment.
Why do you feel we owe 'god' an exception here?
A fairy tale is a fairy tale -- the only difference here is that some people are foolish enough to take some fairie tales seriously.
Re:I don't like Richard Dawkins (Score:5, Interesting)
It's been a while since I read any philosophy of science stuff - and I'm not claiming ever to have been an expert - but I think in general that viewpoint is rejected. Basically the thinking goes that it is actually impossible to nail down what you mean by a "scientific" theory, so rejecting ID for example by saying it is "not scientific" doesn't work to well since you can't actually point to anything that disqualifies it. Much better to assess it as a scientific theory and to conclude that it is a very very bad one.
Hmm, my reading of the God Delusion was quite the reverse - I understood Dawkins as claiming that all religions, by their very nature, are scientific theories. They make claims about the structure of the physical world and in some cases are predictive. Therefore they must be assessed as science. Que several hundred pages about why they are very very poor science indeed ;)
Possibly he rejected "supernatural" entities as part of his claim that any God must be assessed as a natural entity - should not get a free pass on the question of "what cause God then?" for example? But that is hardly the same thing.
Dawkins repeated stresses that the difference between an atheist and a theist is that an atheist is always willing to change his mind should convincing evidence of God actually come to light; hence atheism is the only logical scientific position to take in the absense of such evidence - I think there's a semantic debate about the precise meaning of atheism and agnosticism in here somewhere which can effect how some people would view that statement, but if you follow Dawkins' definitions this is the case.
Re:Atheists, Come Out! (Score:5, Interesting)
People talk about Christianity like it's the Nazi party, like it's this horrible machine that people are indoctrinated into.
I don't mean this to me inflammatory -- I really don't -- but a LOT of Christianity really is like the Nazi party. Not to say they're putting atheists into ovens, but the hatred of atheists in mainstream Christianity is unbelievable. I would guess you live in one of the more enlightened parts of the country.
I was reading this story [go.com] recently, and it was absolutely shocking. These are mainstream citizens, not some wacko cult. And it really isn't all that unusual. Google for "atheist persecution" sometime.
Your response will probably be that these aren't "real" Christians, but I maintain you can't separate the two. Polls show that your tolerance is by far in the minority of Christians. Mainstream Christianity has a burning hatred of atheists. I really believe that if a Hitler arose in the United States and called for the rounding up and extermination of atheists, there would be way more support for the policy than you're willing to admit.
Most atheists are perfectly willing to "live and let live", but the majority of Christians aren't. It's not just annoying proselytizing, it's out and out persecution. I could give you long lists of links of examples, but I have a feeling you're not ready to accept how out of control fundamentalism has gotten in the United States.
On a personal note, I don't admit to being an atheist in Real Life anymore. It's just not worth the hassle. It's easier just to say I believe in God without any details, and just define God as, "that natural process that created the universe." I'm pretty sure my in-laws would probably be horrified, though I doubt they would out-and-out disown the family.
Re:Dawkins and Bad Philosophy (Score:3, Interesting)
- Free will: Dawkins refuses to even talk about it, saying "it's not a big issue". Erm, it's one of the biggest issues in Philosophy.
- Attributing horrible events of humanity to religion, and then compiling lists of religious vs. secular (he really does always do this
- Completely not understanding the scope of science
- Countless strawmen, like the idea that all Christians are evolutionists. I think in Catholicism the Pope says it's the best theory of explanation
The point I want to stress here is not, at all, that I'm going to defend the arguments of Quinn. The point is that Dawkins doesn't give an even remotely reasonable answer to the points the guy has put forward; it doesn't take a debate genius to know how badly Dawkins is evading, etc. If people want to commend Dawkins for being great at selling books then I'm not going to argue with them, what I do disagree with is that the guy has any Philosophical merit. He's an emotive preacher. Great for popular literature (apparently), useless in Philosophy.And no, I'm a final year student finishing in two months. I also specialise in Philosophy of Religion.
Re:I don't like Richard Dawkins (Score:3, Interesting)
But God as the supervisor over all your thoughts and activities, and the ultimate judge of your actions, and the one thing that you should worship, sacrifice your children, give your money to, build your laws around, beat other people up according to their different-sounding God-idea - that's the God that Dawkins and Einstein rejected.
Re:Atheists, Come Out! (Score:1, Interesting)
Sorry, if you ignore the fundamental rules that define the Christian faith, you're not a Christian.
I can accept (to a degree) people who argue that they're free to ignore parts of the Old Testament under the theory that Jesus brought a new covenant between God and humanity. (This explains why Christians need not be kosher.) It's actually much more limited than that, as large parts of the Old Testament stand.
But ignoring the New Testament? That would be like a mathematician ignoring the rules of addition because they cause his proof to be wrong.
By definition, you cannot be a Christian if you don't believe in the words of the New Testament. You can be something else (for example, Unitarians, who at least don't call themselves Christian) but you can't be called Christian.
I'm not Christian myself, but I have no respect for people who try to pick and choose the lessons the Bible teaches based on current popular opinion. You can bet that 50 years ago, the so-called Christians who now claim that homosexuality is allowed by the Bible were singing a different tune. Either you believe in the Bible in its entirety, or you're not really Christian.
(I also know for a fact that with some "Christian" denominations, the whole "accepting church" thing is an attempt to drive up membership and increase revenue. I think everyone can agree that such a thing is simply evil, and certainly not Christian.)
Re:Dawkins may may a renowned evolutionary biologi (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually, "god did it" is not a simpler explanation. In fact it's not an explanation at all unless you include what god is, how he got there and how he did it.
You may as well say "it just happened", that's even simpler as there no extra entities involved and yet it increases the sum total of human knowledge by exactly the same amount.
Re:Dawkins may may a renowned evolutionary biologi (Score:3, Interesting)
I will rephrase it for you. The ancient Greeks believed that everything that happened was caused by one or more Gods. If the winter was particularly cold, it was because some God did it. If you stubbed your toe, it was punishment from a God. As time passed and we learned more about how things work, we formulated laws of physics which predict very accurately how physical things behave and the physical state of a system changes over time. The laws of physics have no need for a hidden God to make things happen in the universe - stars shine due to the nuclear reactions of their constituent atoms under gravitational pressure, not because a God made them do it, and so on.
Current theories of the origin of the universe posit that when you trace the current state of the universe back in time you reach a singularity about 13.7 billion years ago, in which the laws of physics break down, and particularly beyond which the concept of Time does not exist. Creationists seize upon that singularity and assert that "because we don't understand what happened at or before the singularity, that must mean that God created the universe!". This is a weak argument no better than the ancient Greeks could muster - because we don't understand something, God must be the reason.
But my point on irrelevance was that current physical laws do not require the existence of a God. We don't know how the singularity worked, but whether it was caused by a God or not does not affect the universe today.
And it should be obvious that Hawking and other cosmologists are not studying the beginning of the universe to look for the existence of any God.
If you want to find a God, look inside yourself, because you won't find one in the universe.