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Saturday, October 25, 2008

Appearances and Events

There's a new Dawkins DVD out! It's called 'Appearances and Events'

Check it out, you can order it through the Richard Dawkins Foundation online shop

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4 comments:

  1. AnonymousOctober 25, 2008 at 11:42 PM

    The latest quotable quote from Dawkins:

    "A serious case could be made for a deistic God"

    From here:

    http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/2543431/is-richard-dawkins-still-evolving.thtml

    Here's a quote from the article:

    "Even more jaw-droppingly, Dawkins told me that, rather than believing in God, he was more receptive to the theory that life on earth had indeed been created by a governing intelligence – but one which had resided on another planet. Leave aside the question of where that extra-terrestrial intelligence had itself come from, is it not remarkable that the arch-apostle of reason finds the concept of God more unlikely as an explanation of the universe than the existence and plenipotentiary power of extra-terrestrial little green men?"

    The conclusion of the article:

    "Truth is indeed the crux of the matter – but Dawkins seems to understand the word rather differently from the rest of us.The great question, however, is whether his own theory is now in the process of further evolution -- and whether it might even jump the species barrier into what is vulgarly known by lesser mortals as faith."


    I wonder if Dawkins's about to follow in the footsteps of Antony Flew?

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  2. Dave The Happy SingerOctober 26, 2008 at 2:09 AM

    Trav!!!

    Welcome back!

    I wondered where you'd got to!

    :-)

    Dawkins is unlikely to go the way of Anthony Flew. If he were gonna cave in to nonsense, he'd take the Templeton money now. He's written about it.

    All he's saying is that you could make a reasonable argument for deism. I'd love to hear such an argument. Nevertheless, deism is light-years from the barmy bronze-age fairy tales of the Abrahamic religions.

    Anyway, take care buddy!

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  3. AnonymousOctober 26, 2008 at 11:48 AM

    Yeah that's true to some extent, but I just looked into deism a bit further and I must say that it's actually far more of a "supernatural" belief than I'd realised.

    The opening section of the definition from wiki: "Deism is the belief that a supreme God exists and created the physical universe".

    A supreme God is exactly what the monotheistic religions believe in. So Dawkins in his wisdom, has admitted you could make a strong case for a supreme God!?

    I also notice that another element of deism is that "human beings have souls that survive after death; that is, there is an afterlife".

    Fascinating.

    Some questions I'd have to ask a serious deist, if I knew one, where things like this: If there IS a "supreme God" and an afterlife, why wouldn't you believe that he'd do occasional miracles or want to have some sort of interaction with the creatures he created?

    And other similar questions.

    Although it's a long way from belief in any recognised religion, I still think that's an absolutely remarkable admission. Especially coming from such a famous atheist, and one who's been known to weaken his case for atheism by making inane comments like his belief that the historical Jesus didn't exist.

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  4. alter ansOctober 30, 2008 at 11:56 AM

    A deistic god is some unknown entity that set the universe into motion and then went for a long holiday. By its nature we do know nothing about it; sure it could be a supreme god like you understand it, but it could as well be a pubescent alien in the 5th dimension with some pretty unhealthy habits, who created our universe for a school project, and forgot about it. Nothing you'd like to worship.

    We do not even know if it would be reasonable to attribute personal trait to this unknown entity at all, like that it cares about his school project. The deist position is that we have to assume to know nothing about this entity other than that it set things in motion. Mr Y calls him the "why-bother" god. Because he does nothing that people expect a deity to do. An fair number of atheist are agnostic about a deistic god, but why bother?

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