Atheist Authors/broadcasters Talk Rubbish….

[naomi24]

….. a cry often seen on these pages – and this from a week or so back.

//I find that the propaganda spouted by such as Fry and Dawkins is just as gibberish rubbish as you think the bible expounds//

If someone asks me why I think the bible contains nonsense I am happy to tell them and to go into detail if necessary, but I asked the author of that gem to explain to me what precisely these people say that makes their opinions “gibberish rubbish”, and was met with silence.

In the hope of obtaining an answer from him or from anyone else who thinks the same I’ll throw the question open to all.

[vetuste_ennemi]

Am reading Symbiotic Universe by George Greenstein on anthropic principle. Watching news. Drinking responsibly!
Will defer discussion of theodicy till tomorrow.

[jomifl]

Isaac Newton was as mad as a sack of ferrets too :-)

[jomifl]

I can't understand why people like Greenstein fail to see that the life forms that develop in an environment are those best suited to it. If the environment was different then different and more suited life forms would evolve. No need for a creator to design a universe suitable for life.

[Khandro]

^ //If the environment was different then different and more suited life forms would evolve.//

Okay, and the next question you should ask (or perhaps you should have asked it first) is, why should any life appear at all?

[nailit]

//Okay, and the next question you should ask (or perhaps you should have asked it first) is, why should any life appear at all? //

Why should God appear/exist at all?

[Khandro]

nailit; "God" made very brief appearance on this thread 35 posts ago, and wasn't the subject of the OP, so why, particularly as an atheist, do you wish to keep dragging God in to everything, there must be some reason for that, wouldn'tcha say?

[nailit]

Where on this thread do I 'keep dragging God in to everything'?

[nailit]

And Im sure Naomi wouldn't mind me asking God on her thread which happens to be in the religious section.

[nailit]

*about God*

[Khandro]

//Where on this thread do I 'keep dragging God in to everything'?//

You just did!

[nailit]

And why do you avoid questions?
Why should God appear/exist at all?

[jomifl]

/Okay, and the next question you should ask (or perhaps you should have asked it first) is, why should any life appear at all? /
could be that it was inevitable..you might just as well ask 'why are there stars'

[Khandro]

jomifl; //..you might just as well ask 'why are there stars'//

Indeed yes, but you surely will concede there is a profound difference between inorganic matter (stars) and sentient life? (or life of any sort).

[jomifl]

How do you know that there is not sentient life in stars? no matter how minutely life forms and their internal processes are examined so far they all seem to be chemistry based. There has been no suggestion that any other processes are necessary or have been detected, despite some dodgy pseuedo scientists looking for the 'hand of god' and sometimes finding what isn't visible to anyone else.

[Khandro]

Ah ! so are we are back to your bucket of primordial soup again?

[vetuste_ennemi]

"This is a sentimental view of nature, used as a pathetic 'proof' that there is no higher being, but actually proves nothing."

Yes, I too am interested in this remark. There are two references in your post to (what appears to be) an objective fact, Khandro, namely animal suffering. Why is it only the baby reference that is "a sentimental view of nature", and not the pig one?

I agree with you that animal suffering does not disprove a "higher" being. In fact I temporarily concede the existence of a Grand Designer. But "proves nothing"? I suggest that at the very least animal suffering makes two assertions of Christian theology about the Designer highly implausible.

One is His omnipotence/science. Let's take an apology for physical evil from a Khandro-approved source (stress added by me):

"At the heart of the free-process defence lies the conviction that the disease and disaster present in nature is NOT GRATUITOUS, something that a Creator who was a bit more competent or a bit less callous could easily have remedied, but it is THE INESCAPABLE CONSEQUENCE of the nature of a freely fertile world". (The author names a tsunami as one such "inescapable consequence").

This less than compelling argument elicits from this irreverent reader the Hume-like response: was God so exhausted after all that fine-tuning for life, creating all those constants (which had they varied by so much as a billionth of a billionth, and so on and so forth) that he couldn't find a better way to finish the job off?

The other assertion is the "made in the image of God" argument, that our moral impulses can be explained only by the existence of a supreme Moral Being (I know this is a very crude paraphrase). Why does God remain seemingly indifferent to things which many human beings (you for one) would intervene to prevent were it in their power? Didn't your friend Nietzsche end up in an asylum after attacking a man who was flogging a horse?

So, what of the Grand Designer, whose existence I've temporarily conceded? Well, in the absence of any convincing information proving otherwise I conclude he doesn't give a damn.

[Hypognosis]

@naomi

A slightly unfair question, in your opening post. You happen to have taken the trouble to read theological literature, enabling you to set about deconstructing it.

While it is relatively easy to take in a few minutes of Stephen Fry, in video form, criticism of Dawkins would entail the inward digestion of at least one of his many books. This, I fear is more than any theists can stomach. Also, rather amusingly, it entails them parting with cash which works its way into his bank account.

I haven't read any of Dawkins' books myself because I *think* I stand to gain little or no knowledge that I do not already possess. Evolution is a standard part of a secondary-school biology course. Selfish gene hypothesis is a specialist area within evolution - an effort to explain altruism at the genetic level. A one hour Horizon episode, or equivalent was sufficient for me to get the gist of it.

Dawkins serves the useful purpose of being the lightning rod for all the flak from theists, enabling thousands of other scientists to add to the catalogue of evidence demonstrating evolution, uninterrupted.

For refutations of Dawkins are you expecting mathematical proof or would words do?

[Hypognosis]

@Khandro

// why should any life appear at all? //

Why ever not?

Why do chemicals react with one another? Why don't they just remain stationary and not bump into other molecules at all?

If a star pumps out energy 24/7 and this energy reaches a planet coated in chemicals, do you expect those chemicals to sit there, unresponsively?

4 billion years worth of energy input to the land and oceans of this planet and you expect *nothing* to occur?

[jomifl]

The idea that there must be a creator to have created the right conditions for his creation (life) to exist doesn't really bear examination, since it seems that most of our solar system seems to be inhospitable to life. At a rough guess more than 99.9% is inhospitable to life as we know it, so not a very good effort then...