The Improbability of God

I've just found a fantastic and very interesting article on the internet called "The Improbability of God"... I wanted to post a link to it here to see what you all thought of it... both believers and non-belivers:

http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/dawkins_18_3.html

 

Richard Dawkins is a very smart man, I've read a few of his books and they are very well written. I haven't read this yet, cuz I'm too tired to think that hard right now, but I will tomorrow.

 

i read through about half of it and I like it a lot... pretty much has the same beliefs as me... ill read the rest later, thanks for the article.

 

I have to admit that so far I've only skimmed the first few paragraphics, but seeing as it's from the secular humanism, and it's obvious theme, I wanted to get some reaction hot off the press for when I HAVE read it.

I've copied it to my PDA and will read it all tonight before I go to bed... so hopefully tomorrow I'll have some nice opinions to debate about

 

i havent read it yet either, i skimmed it. but to me, this whole thread is sort of ridiculous. christians and scientists are looking at the same thing. in a general sense, a system (or two that work together) in order to make something that is beautiful out of something that was apparently somber and bleak.

thats all i care about.
ill have more later though, once this thing gets off the ground.
peace.
-wondercolor

 

Though I disagree with his theory, Dawkins is always fun to read. A truely passionate and well written tract.

 

ask me some questions.


after you read this.

www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/genesis/

 

I read the first to two sentences and came the to conclusion that Dawkins is an idiot. In those first two sentences he destroys his WHOLE FUCKING ARGUMENT. He clearly does not make a distinction between religion; which is evil, wrond an bad, and spirituality or the beliefe in at least a god, therefore I can't take anything he says seriously. And even though I haven't read it and never will I can tell you I've heard all those arguments before as proof that there is no god or some 'thing'. I'm not a religious person AT ALL, I like to thing of myself as a very rational, logical, thaughtfull, thinking human being. I believe in the idea of evolution, I love science, but all that science doesn't mean there isn't some 'thing' out there; spirituality can be a good thing.

 

Much of what people do is done in the name of God. Irishmen blow each other up in his name.
dawkins 1st 2 lines....

I read the first to two sentences and came the to conclusion that Dawkins is an idiot. In those first two sentences he destroys his WHOLE FUCKING ARGUMENT.
patman

Pretty astute and convincing stuff, patman, yet I still find Dawkins views a tad more enlightened.

 

I hope you're kidding, that site is a total joke. It says how Neandertal died out suddenly, but that's misinformation, it took a good 10-20 thousand years. I stopped reading when I read this:

That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. DNA research has shown there is no Neandertal DNA in our genomes. The rest of the site was pretty lame, but that was the kicker for me. I mean, no one even knows how hairy they were, that's just an elitist statement, assuming the more primitive are more hairy than us smooth upper class Homo sapiens. It's likely our ancestors lost most of their hair before any of them left africa, that is to say, Homo erectus was probably about as hairless as modern humans.

Not that I disagree entirely with the spirituality of it, but it helps no one to give false, twisted facts to support your hypothesis. The symbolism makes more sense that way, but that's all it is, symbolism. Trying to make symbols real is where you get crazy "science" like neandertal dying out suddenly then saying things don't go extinct quickly (even though humans drive species extinct every day).

(and by the way, I'm pretty sure "Adam" is derived from the Hebrew words for mud-man, given his supposed origin.)

 

But the first two lines ARE TRUE!!! People are, and have been, killing each other for thousands of years over god and religion..

I can't believe you could give up on something, as well as slag it off, based on two lines...

 

and food, and money, and nationalism, and cake, and drugs, and sex, and friendship, and intelligence, and internet access, and disease, and health, and contracts, and law, and weapons, and peace, and war, and without a mentioned reason.

People kill. Whatever excuse they offer for their actions is just that, an excuse. Sorry, I had more of this written down on a piece of paper, but my dog ate it. I killed the person who was supposed to walk my dog because they were not a christian, and if they had been, they would have walked my dog and it wouldn't have eaten the rest of my comment.

 

"Amen" to that!

Whether or not religion has done more harm than good is irrelavent. It's all part of the learning process. If it wasn't god people were blaming for their murderous rampages, it would have been something else.

And I'm still not convinced by Dawkin's arguments--his only thesis is evolution, but the problem with science is that it answers HOW, not WHY. Even if evolution were proven as fact, it doesn't answer WHY things evolved the way they did. "Why" is an open-ended question which is answered (for some people) by religion or by spirituality.

 

Sometimes - there is no why... it just happens.. it's the random chaos of the universe.

 

"Why" is a relative question with a relative answer. You cannot say that "there is no why" because that doesn't answer anything and some people believe that "why" is an applicable question for this situation. If I believe there is an answer to the question "why" (which many people do, and you can't say they are wrong because that's all a matter of opinion, not fact) then I, as a human, will search until I have what I believe to be the answer of why.

Maybe you don't care as to why, but some of us do. After all, "why" is a much more complex and difficult question to answer than "how." My point about violence remains--it would have existed with or without organized religion. It's all part of the learning process.

 

Random is the name people give to things they do not comprehend.

 

I retract my statement... It is what I wanted to say, but within the wrong context...

 

BTW,
I think Adam came from 'Adamae', which is supposedly the ancient Babylonian word for the first 'earthling', or God/human hybrid.

If I ever meet God, I'll be sure to ask "Why?" Why this whole elaborate spectacle?
I doubt i would ever meet God though.

Why is the toughest question for me. Why? I don't know.

 

I agree with one of the above posters that religion and war aren't cause-consequence, since the human race will use anything else as an excuse if there wasn't religion. Also, the main fact that there IS religion everywhere (I see atheism or what fancy name you want to give it) as a religion as well, says a lot about humans.. we 'need' something that explains to us why and how. We need a theory (evolution theory, chaos theory, intelligent design theory.. whatever) to give us some answers untill we figure out what the real answer is.

Why do I call nearly everyone religious? Because -we don't know for sure-. We can only believe in a theory that is most plausible to us. For me, that is the evolution theory, but I know that there are a lot of problems with that theory as well.. however, to me, there are even more problems with the other theories what makes the evolution theory the most likely one.. to me. However, if you believe in God, you use other arguments, other point of view.. whereby the ID theory is more likely.

Do you know the organisation 'skepsis'.. to me, they are fundy atheist 'scientists'.

The 'least' fundamental religious people to me are those that acknowledge that what they believe is just that: a believe and not a fact.

And why keep focussing on if there is a God or not and all the big questions about life, the universe and all that.. why not stop thinking about stuff you can never know for sure untill you die and DO something about what IS known: suffering, poverty, loneliness.

 

And why keep focussing on if there is a God or not and all the big questions about life, the universe and all that.. why not stop thinking about stuff you can never know for sure untill you die and DO something about what IS known: suffering, poverty, loneliness. velvet



sigh