Thanks, so what does Dawkins definition of the gene as a unit of selection mean to you?
Do you like how Dawkins, Hitchens et al. represent atheists?
- Thread starter francois
- Start date
Thanks, so what does Dawkins definition of the gene as a unit of selection mean to you?
A coherent entity that can be found to have been selected - for or against ?SAM said:
Seems not all that ambiguous a phrase.
Perhaps this would be a good time to remind that Dawkins's explication of Darwinian evolution is not the totality of his "representation of atheists" - or even the major part of it. Explaining evolution and representing one's atheism are not necessarily even related activities.
I would agree with that if he did not use his credentials to promote his cause.
And I'm still confused about how a gene is selected for or against; I was under the impression that it was chance that determined the selection of genes.
Okay so chance is involved and genes are selected by chance. What is the role of external pressures? Are they the chance?
Like this?
http://richarddawkinsfoundation.org/
If you mean what I take you to mean by "external pressures", they do some selection by differentially destroying this or that gene. If you mean something else, I don't know.SAM said:
I don't see anything in there about using credentials as a platform. Where is that part?SAM said:
Last edited by a moderator:
Last edited by a moderator:
Since the topic has diverged from its original intent and is now in the realm of parapsychology, I have moved the relevant posts to a new thread in the appropriate forum-Sam
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=70093
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=70093
Last edited:
Averages...
Dawkins was pretty much gently but persuasively taken apart by Rod Liddle ina recent documentary.
Most laughable of all were his abject - and disgusting! - efforts to deny that Nazism and Communism were not based on Atheism. The fact that he should ispute this shows the conniving evengelical zeal and deceit of the man.
Once he made excuses for the Nazis the purges if Stalin and suggested they 'were' rilgious based he was sunk. Why anyone takes the man seriously is beyond me..he was taken to the cleaners by a mere newspaper hack. Pathetique!
His squirming excuses turned the stomach...sceptics like to attack. On the back foot they are very very weak.
Most laughable of all were his abject - and disgusting! - efforts to deny that Nazism and Communism were not based on Atheism. The fact that he should ispute this shows the conniving evengelical zeal and deceit of the man.
Once he made excuses for the Nazis the purges if Stalin and suggested they 'were' rilgious based he was sunk. Why anyone takes the man seriously is beyond me..he was taken to the cleaners by a mere newspaper hack. Pathetique!
His squirming excuses turned the stomach...sceptics like to attack. On the back foot they are very very weak.
Enmos
Valued Senior Member
First of all, there is nothing inherently wrong about real communism.
Secondly, Hitlers motives WERE based on religion.
Perhaps, but when you divide what he said in public speeches and books from his private jottings and conversations, it is difficult to miss his basic anti-religion stand.
e.g. from the book Hitler's Secret Conversations 1941-1944 published by Farrar, Straus and Young, Inc.first edition, 1953, contains definitive proof of Hitler's real views. The book was published in Britain under the title, _Hitler's Table Talk 1941-1944, which title was used for the Oxford University Press paperback edition in the United States.
excerpts
21st October, 1941, midday
"Originally, Christianity was merely an incarnation of Bolshevism, the destroyer....
"The decisive falsification of Jesus' <who he asserts many times was never a Jew> doctrine was the work of St.Paul. He gave himself to this work... for the purposes of personal exploitation....
"Didn't the world see, carried on right into the Middle Ages, the same old system of martyrs, tortures, faggots? Of old, it was in the name of Christianity. Today, it's in the name of Bolshevism. Yesterday the instigator was Saul: the instigator today, Mardochai. Saul was changed into St.Paul, and Mardochai into Karl Marx. By exterminating this pest, we shall do humanity a service of which our soldiers can have no idea." (p 63-65)
13th December, 1941, midnight
"Christianity is an invention of sick brains: one could imagine nothing more senseless, nor any more indecent way of turning the idea of the Godhead into a mockery.... <here insults people who believe transubstantiation>....
"When all is said, we have no reason to wish that the Italians and Spaniards should free themselves from the drug of Christianity. Let's be the only people who are immunised against the disease." (p 118-119)
14th December, 1941, midday
"Kerrl, with noblest of intentions, wanted to attempt a synthesis between National Socialism and Christianity. I don't believe the thing's possible, and I see the obstacle in Christianity itself....
"Pure Christianity-- the Christianity of the catacombs-- is concerned with translating Christian doctrine into facts. It leads quite simply to the annihilation of mankind. It is merely whole-hearted Bolshevism, under a tinsel of metaphysics." (p 119 & 120)
9th April, 1942, dinner
"There is something very unhealthy about Christianity." (p 339)
27th February, 1942, midday
"It would always be disagreeable for me to go down to posterity as a man who made concessions in this field. I realize that man, in his imperfection, can commit innumerable errors-- but to devote myself deliberately to errors, that is something I cannot do. I shall never come personally to terms with the Christian lie."
"Our epoch in the next 200 years will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity.... My regret will have been that I couldn't... behold <its demise>." (p 278)
Also:
"We were convinced that the people need and require this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out".
"For their interests [the Church's] cannot fail to coincide with ours [the National Socialists] alike in our fight against the symptoms of degeneracy in the world of to-day, in our fight against a Bolshevist culture, against atheistic movement, against criminality, and in our struggle for a consciousness of a community in our national life".
That is of course, the same Rod Liddle who thinks atheism is a religion.
Here's a few of his idiot gems:
"Atheists are arrogant because they're so sure they're right.
Atheism treats Darwin's Origin of Species as a "new New Testament" even though there are obvious problems with "Darwinism".
Evolutionary biology, and therefore atheism, is responsible for eugenics.
Atheism lacks morality.
Atheism is as guilty of massacres as any religion."
