- Dawkins has become outspoken in his atheism, coining the word "bright" (as an alternate to atheist), and encouraging fellow non-believers to stand up and be identified.
- intelligent design is creationism redressed
- creationists are right that evolution is hostile to evolution
- statistical improbability of the complexity of design - intelligent design
- but the intelligent designer wouldn't have made such a hash - why would the designer be bothered with disapproving of our sex lives, favor our side in the war
- Dawkins suggest rocking the boat - attack religion as a whole
- taboo of speaking ill about religion - Douglas Adams said, sacred ideas at the heart of religion, holy cows, you can support any operating system you want, but the challenge of religious ideas is off limits
- science and religion are corrosive to each other - religious explanations are trivial and improbably, teaches people to accept authoritarianism
- takes the example of famous scientists and imagines them saying, Hawkins has been brought up to believe that an asteroid killed the dinosaurs
- Bush said that atheists should not be considered patriots nor citizens in a country that stands as one nation under God... and refuses to take it back, he knew he could get away with it, posed no threat to his election, the Americans parade their religion to get elected
- we are all atheists about most of the gods mankind has believed in, some of us just go one god further
- announcing you are an atheist is the same as announcing that you are Hitler
- how many American atheists - 160 m Christians, 2.8 Jews, 30 m nonreligious and secular - makes sense that politicians bow to the Christians
- do the atheists have political muscle?
- 43 studies over 40 years found that the higher your IQ, the less likely you are to be religious
- if you want to be in politics, you have to be religious - therefor America cannot be ruled by the clever people, unless they are prepared to lie
- coming out campaign necessary for atheists, much like homos - but no public outing please
- those that are willing to out themselves will prove that atheists are out there and are safe to have around your children
- sugar the word... make it 'agnostic', Huxley does not deny the existence of God
- you cannot disprove god, so atheism is as irrational as theism
- the onus falls on you to say why you believe, not for us to say why not - we are atheists, ateapottists, aunicornists
- 'non-theist' has no phobic hysterical responses
- Dawkins says embrace atheism
- Sagan - why does religion not embrace science to say it is a tool to expound about religion
- we publicly well-mannerdly don't despise religion, but Dawkins suggests you should stop that nonsense
- we need money to run that campaign, wishes his books would sell more so he could finance it himself
- let's stop being so damned respectful
Of Death and Conscience: Brief thoughts on gender role and the values of the dominant culture in medicine : "“Under the influence of the Church and the newly formed male-dominated medical establishment, the word “witch,” which originally meant “wise one,” became a term of scorn. It took a reign of terror lasting several hundred years to radically alter a way of life thousands of years old. Millions of women who carried the healing lineage were systematically killed (see The Church and the Second Sex by Mary Daly).”"
Comments
Does God "favor our side in the war"?
"[W]hen Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, 'Are you for us or for our enemies?'
'Neither,' he replied, 'I'm commander of God's army'.
Jesus demonstrated who God was sympathetic to - and it was people across the spectrum. He explained the principle in parables like the one of the king who was holding a banquet:
This king sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come. Then he said to his servants, 'The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. Go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.' So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, both good and bad, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.
The point of exclusion is that it's a real God and an actual invitation, not just a philosophical with a stereotypical God. The problem is that religious people still feel safer with the old paradigm and its philosophical exclusions, which stereotypes people.
Strangely, I still feel the same way. The word for this position may or may not be non-theist, but it's optimistically something other than Christian.