Dawkins is promoting "fascism" says O'Reilly

[GrahamB]

Threats of physical attack now?

I think by the standards set by posters in this thread Dawkins is the least smug and rude of the people on it!

[Chris McKinley]

Dawkins, to me, is a bit of a personal embarrassment. For many years, he was one of my personal idols and inspirations (right up there with Spock and Count Chocula), but in the last ten or so, he's become an embarrassment to the scientific community. A brilliant scientist who stops practicing science and enters the field of religion and political P.R. instead is no less obnoxious than the burnout pop/rock musician who, upon achieving a Top 40 radio hit, miraculously gains expertise on world diplomacy and environmental science.

Richard, take a bit of advice from Dick Feinman.....go back and dance with the one that brung ya.

[nianfong]

Bill O'reilly is one of the biggest idiotic assholes on the planet. let's not give him anymore attention pls. kthxbai

[Darth Rock&Roll]

Stop the atheist practice of humping deep sea octopi!!!!

[ShortFormMike]

bill o'reillyy is a good example of what is wrong w/ america in general and the america's coporate media in particular.

here's a stock tip. if buffalo bill o'reilly says to boycott a company. buy stock in it.

[Andy_S]

Prediction.

Dawkins to be offed within five years by either:
Fundamentalist Christian nutters, Islamic jihadists or a rabid talk show host.

[GaryR]

I like O'Reilly because he is so transparently bias and self-righteous its entertaining to watch it unfold (and on occasion he is actually right!) . Plus, he gives us a peep into the right wing/evangelicals upside-down world. "Intellectualizing" for Bill in some cases is just working backwards from his own axiom/conclusion and stepping on those who prefer to think forwards.

I don't think Chris's musician analogy (although funny) is appropriate here, Who better qualified and has more of a right than the author of a work like " The Ancestors Tale" to advocate people don't throw mythology/folklore into science class? Let the evangelicals press their "god of the gaps" assumptions on their children in their own personal religious venues.

If you want students to ponder life's meanings and mysteries, let them do it in a philosophy class, or even a "world religion class". Where a teacher could pull out a map of the world and explains in detail the time-line of our earths religions (http://www.mapsofwar.com/ind/history-of-religion.html), the roles good and bad they have played in humanity, how many of them claim to have the only "truth" at the exclusion of the rest. Moreover explaining how geography determines more than 95% of the time what religion a person will be, not science, evidence, or reason. Basically as the saying goes- "Don't pray in my school, and I won't think in your church!"

We need people like Dawkins to go on television, write books, and attempt to guard the laboratory door to keep zealous believers from throwing their varied bibles and religious texts inside demanding equal credit. If Scientists don't step up and make the dialog two sided we are only left the preaching of agendized evangelicals. ( of whatever local type). "Religious unreason should acquire an even greater stigma in our discourse, given that it remains among the principal causes of armed conflict in our world. Before you can get to the end of this paragraph , another person will probably die because of what someone else believes in god. Perhaps its time we demanded that our fellow human beings had better reasons for maintaining their religious differences, if such reasons even exist." (Harris, the end of faith)

O'reilly's "Jesus furthered morality" type argument is a farce, and a false dilemma fallacy for more reasons than I care to type. "On the whole, Jesus said little that was worthwhile. He introduced nothing new to ethics (except hell)." (http://www.ffrf.org/nontracts/jesus.php) Show me a religious text, a "prophet" or a "God" that advocates tolerance and kindness, and I'll show you a page from a history book along with another quote that demonstrates just the opposite. "We must begin speaking freely about what is really in these holy books of ours, beyond the timid heterodoxies of modernity-the gay and lesbian ministers, the Muslim clerics who have lost their taste for public amputations, or the Sunday churchgoers who have never read their bibles quite through. A close study of these books, and of history, demonstrates that there is not act of cruelty so appalling that it cannot be justified, or even mandated, by recourse to their pages. It is only by the most acrobatic avoidance of passages whose canonicity has ever been in doubt that we can escape murdering one another outright for the glory of god." (Harris, The
End of Faith).

Attacking Dawkins as a fascist is such an obvious cope-out for not having an intelligent talking point/argument. I think Bill's playbook is "ok, when cornered, with facts, logic or reason, I can just cutaway to multiple jesus pictures, call them a name, and then shout/bully until I sound so absurd they laugh or loose it..." then I give them the "last word' as the shock of the no-spin zone irony is ripe!"

And so endeth the rant

G

[Ian]

[Chris Fleming]

"We need people like Dawkins to go on television"

Well there are all kinds of people on television, none of whom is actually "needed". What we actually need is people to speak truthfully when they do speak, be that on TV or elsewhere. Guys like Dawkins are on TV to promote their agenda, in his case, atheism. That would be one thing to speak about it but it is quite another to cherry pick what they want to say about any religion and make it out to be what they want to project to their audience. For instance:

"On the whole, Jesus said little that was worthwhile. He introduced nothing new to ethics"

This clearly is a statement made by someone who neither knows the Bible or really any history on the matter. The Lord Jesus elevated the already high level of ethical standards set forth in the Jewish Law. You go from "Thou shall not kill" to being guilty of the whole law if you remain angry. You go from "Thou shall not commit adultery" to being guilty of it if you lust after another woman. You go "eye for an eye" to "turn the other cheek". There is no instruction for going to war in the New Testament (unlike other some other religious traditions) and rather has the commandment "love your enemies". Therefore, the forthcoming person ought to see that ethics were elevated to a supremely high standard, which then, if the person is to remain forthcoming, ought to make one think exactly how one could possibly fulfill this standard, the standard which also says "you shall be perfect as My heavenly Father is perfect", without God.

As for religious wars and other nonsense, none of that has any ground, teaching or commandment in the Bible and none of it was sanctioned or practiced by early Christians. It wasn't until power hungry people like Constantine added in pagan elements in his conquests that you see the beginnings of the dark ages and the corruption of the popes.

[Darth Rock&Roll]

Dawkins and Hitchens have both failed to present a compelling argument that has any more merit than any other argument regarding the existence of god.

Evangelizing atheism is weird in and of itself. lol

I don't care for O'Reilly much because he is in my opinion just a sock puppet mouthing the agenda getting higher ratings based on sensationalism and alarmist propaganda.

But, I don't think Dawkins should wade in regarding personal beliefs vs Science.

Why should science care if people believe in god or not?
Science is a discipline and should be practiced in order to understand the surroundings we are in and all things within it to the best of our knowledge.

period.

It doesn't include proselytizing atheism.

As a side point, I am no fan of organized religion either, but I do believe that each person relationship with their own trans-personal experience, god, or deity of choice is up to them. If these guys were more explanatory as to the why and wherefores regarding organized religion, I would let them bend my ear a bit, but when they start dissing Jesus or Buddha or Mohamed or Moses, well, they can go eat a big one because in reality they are demonstratively showing that they don't have a fucking clue. lol

[Chris Fleming]

Wow "darth" that was a good post!

[Chris McKinley]

Yeah, gotta give the +1 dittos to Darth's post. Gary, you present some very valid points, but most of what you presented is a conditional argument, the conditions of which we are not currently facing and, in fact, are moving inexorably away from. The nightmares of a theocracy have always been well-understood from the founding of this country, and its dangers remain a valid concern. However, what we have now and have had since the 1960's is the culture-wide ascendency of atheistic secular progressivism, set against the backdrop of the decline of federalism and the growth of larger, more intrusive federal government that had been taking place since the era of Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.

Like many things, there have been both positive and negative fallout elements as a result. The negatives include loss of personal freedom and the creation of the welfare state, for example, while the positives include the championing of real science in school curricula. However unfortunately, another negative element is the fairly recent trend (last 25 to 30 years or so) within the scientific community of adopting political activism. While it may not seem immediately apparent to the layperson why this is both hypocritical and potentially dangerous, it is absolutely vital that our scientists retain their objectivity and, further, that they keep their work meticulously and uncompromisingly free of even the appearance of the taint of bias or agenda.

Science traffics in the observable and the objectively measurable. As it is, science itself provides the evidence as to why the concept of pure science is itself a Platonic ideal via Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle. It is, therefore, even the more essential that scientists work feverishly to avoid even the appearance of bias. Being accused of agendized research is perhaps one of the worst insults in the scientific community, the suspicion of which can often be the death knell for a scientific career.

Science itself also makes no claim whatsoever to hold any dominion over the subjective. In fact, intellectual honesty requires that science remain disinterestedly silent on all subjective matters. Theology and philosophy are inherently and inseparably subjective pursuits. Science, therefore, has absolutely no jurisdiction over them in any way. While that fact may be used as the basis for an argument regarding the separation of church and state, it just as strongly, if not moreso, provides the basis for the concept of the separation of church and science.

Where Dawkins has erred is in his choice not merely to act as a positional advocate for the separation of church and state, but instead to become just as much a subjective zealot for atheism as the fundamentalist religious zealots he decries. Put simply, Dawkins is no longer practicing science, but is practicing political and personal zealotry for atheism even while proclaiming to be an apologist for science. As a result, he no longer holds quite the same positive regard among his scientific peers as he once enjoyed, even if the science-friendly laiety find his fervent opposition to religious fundamentalism somewhat refreshing.

[Steve James]

Imo, attacks on O'Reilly or Dawkins's personally are still just ad hominems when it comes to any of the issues They might both be assholes, but so what. I don't think it's reasonable to force any religious belief into a science classroom. If someone of a particular belief wants to explain "why" the universe came into existence, that's fine. It's not a science question. Otoh, I think there are plenty of opportunities to teach the Bible, from secular, literary, philosophical, historical, anthropological and theological points of view. Just so, there is ample space for teaching other world views, ancient and modern, religious and not. It's an important part of our culture, and world culture, that is important to learn about. Belief is another thing altogether.

[Michael]

I think at least some of the push for creation being taught in science classes is a reaction to science classes being more and more politicized and following an atheistic agenda. Research has shown this is actually the fact of the matter as revealed by Charlotte Iserbyt, former policy advisor in the Dept of Education under Reagan, in her book The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America, which uncovered in the late 1980's the specific US Dept of Education policies to do so, which were all based on agreements with the USSR to make our educations systems equitable. Since the Soviets were atheists, we had to be also. Why is that? The 1954 Reece Committee on Foundations (Congressional hearings) revealed the answer. Our social planners wanted to be able to govern the world through a singular management system that could administer both the USSR and the USA, so it was necessary to make both societies similar enough to one another to be governed under one system.

See "The Hidden Agenda" an interview with Reece Commission investigator, Norman Dodd. 50 min. video

For a three-page primer on the topic, you can download an article by Charlotte Iserbyt.
Also see Charlotte Iserbyt's web site and download her ebook for free.

[Steve James]

Still, even if the teacher is a commie-atheist, that's not justification for including religion in a classroom. I don't think that a teacher should say that a student's beliefs are wrong, either. Politics shouldn't be part of the science curriculum either. Besides, there are plenty of scientists who go to churches, temples, and have religious beliefs.

Anyway, "science" has a lot of parts, and they all reinforce each other. So, Biblical creation theory --if claimed to be science-- should be reinforced by chemistry, physics, genetics, biology, and mathematics, etc. However, that theory really only addresses the origin of the universe. If you want to build a crystal radio, or a telephone, or perform a calculation, or take a chemistry exam, knowing the Bible story of creation doesn't really help. Otoh, there's nothing in the sciences that says that one should "love thy neighbor." That is something that should be taught, as well as where the idea comes from.