Richard Dawkins defends pedophila

Prezbo369
reply to post by boymonkey74

 

You seem to think that atheists claim to know absolutely that there's no god.

While it may be correct for certain unstable individual atheists (nostic atheists), an atheist merely rejects the claims made by theists, nothing more nothing less.

Personally, I disbelieve the notion of a god. I don't consider it an uncertainty, any more than I would consider my inability to know for sure about any pink unicorns in the valleys of Mars an uncertainty requiring consideration.

To say "I don't know if there are pink unicorns in the valleys of Mars, therefore I must accept that there may be pink unicorns in the valleys of Mars." is silly to me.

I see no valid evidence of a supreme, all powerful, god. I see evidence of everything around us having been formed over a very long time.

So it's not a conundrum to me.

It's as simple as this, in my opinion.



(yay internet pictures!)

reply to post by LadyMachiatto



It's not about minimising sexual abuse... Again where do u get this from? It's like I'm in the twilight zone... As stated a few times already, the whole point is sexual abuse gets a lot of attention and religious abuse goes highly unrecognised in a lot of situations. Again it can have long term effects as people live their lives by religious teachings and ultimately make choices based on these potential fairy tales..

winofiend

Prezbo369
reply to post by boymonkey74

 

You seem to think that atheists claim to know absolutely that there's no god.

While it may be correct for certain unstable individual atheists (nostic atheists), an atheist merely rejects the claims made by theists, nothing more nothing less.

Personally, I disbelieve the notion of a god. I don't consider it an uncertainty, any more than I would consider my inability to know for sure about any pink unicorns in the valleys of Mars an uncertainty requiring consideration.

To say "I don't know if there are pink unicorns in the valleys of Mars, therefore I must accept that there may be pink unicorns in the valleys of Mars." is silly to me.

I see no valid evidence of a supreme, all powerful, god. I see evidence of everything around us having been formed over a very long time.

So it's not a conundrum to me.

It's as simple as this, in my opinion.



(yay internet pictures!)

edit on 14-9-2013 by winofiend because: (no reason given)

Great statement.. I tend to lean towards this way of thinking also.

I was thinking... Lets say I am in the company of a fellow human being and I tell that human that if they do not do as I say then I will inflict severe violence upon them.. This would been seen as a form of abuse...

Is it not the the same to install the exact same fear (if not worse) by spouting if you dot do as god says u will be in hell for eternity... Eternal violence and pain, suffering etc this is a rather large threat.. Another form of abuse?? Is it not?

winofiend

Personally, I disbelieve the notion of a god. I don't consider it an uncertainty, any more than I would consider my inability to know for sure about any pink unicorns in the valleys of Mars an uncertainty requiring consideration.

To say "I don't know if there are pink unicorns in the valleys of Mars, therefore I must accept that there may be pink unicorns in the valleys of Mars." is silly to me.

I see no valid evidence of a supreme, all powerful, god. I see evidence of everything around us having been formed over a very long time.

So it's not a conundrum to me.

It's as simple as this, in my opinion.

I hear you, if it's ok to say I know theres no Easter bunny or Santa, then it's ok to say theres no God(s) in the general sense of the word.

But there are those that claim to know absolutely that there is/is not a God. Not to a high degree of certainty like perhaps you and I, but absolutely.

Perhaps Dawkins is a Scientologist- What you believe is true. I understand that he has arrived at his beliefs by way of study, rationalizing, and logic. But he seems to believe that his own beliefs resonate perfectly with reality.
Several people have a belief in Hell that is mainly backed up by a near death experience. If you believe that people see aliens, then it isn't a big leap to believe them when they tell you what they have seen after death. So if more than a handful of people have experienced HELL, then there might just be something going on, a connection somewhere that links the way you live to your experiences at death. I am not sure how people get around ignoring this information, unless it has something to do with not being able to observe it under a microscope, or through a telescope.

The Catechism states:

We cannot be united with God unless we freely choose to love him. But we cannot love God if we sin gravely against him, against our neighbor or against ourselves: "He who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him." Our Lord warns us that we shall be separated from him if we fail to meet the serious needs of the poor and the little ones who are his brethren. To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God's merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self- exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called "hell".


Religion is the description in human terms of the unseen spiritual nature of the universe that involves mankind. I am not sure, but is it possible to know all of the information available in the universe from our vantage point here on Earth using only tools and science? Granted human ingenuity is pretty awesome, but where did it come from, and what is it's purpose?

reply to post by apydomis


Why is it so hard for you to allow Richard Dawkins to be an atheist, as he claims to be?

Several people have a belief in Hell that is mainly backed up by a near death experience. If you believe that people see aliens, then it isn't a big leap to believe them when they tell you what they have seen after death. So if more than a handful of people have experienced HELL, then there might just be something going on, a connection somewhere that links the way you live to your experiences at death. I am not sure how people get around ignoring this information, unless it has something to do with not being able to observe it under a microscope, or through a telescope.

So hell is real because some people have nightmarish near death experiences? Are dreams real too?

It really is amazing the number of people trivialising what Dawkins said, or attempting to twist him out of it. I have to say, I think he's a bit insane. His hatred of religion made it so that he can't see clearly on anything, even unrelated to religion. All abuses to him (he's had problems on his statement trivialising sexual harassment as well) are answerable by "BUT RELIGION IS WORSE!", which is honestly quite stupid.

And for those who think his words are being twisted, and he's not defending paedophilia:

He says he’s pleased how things have changed on the harassment front in the past 40 years. But on other occasions when that shifting moral zeitgeist rears its head – as boys, including him, are molested or beaten at his various boarding schools, for instance – he fails to be outraged.

He even defends the problems in the church!

The Roman Catholic Church has borne a heavy share of such retrospective opprobrium. For all sorts of reasons I dislike the Roman Catholic Church. But I dislike unfairness even more, and I can’t help wondering whether this one institution has been unfairly demonised over the issue, especially in Ireland and America

Although I’m no friend of the Church, I think they have become victims of our shifting standards and we do need to apply the conventions of the good historian in dealing with cases which are many decades old.

Notice how the CHURCH are the victims here.

Dawkin's perfect world?

I was walking along Telegraph Avenue, axis of Berkeley’s beads-incense-and-marijuana culture. A young man was walking ahead of me, dressed in the insignia of the flower-power generation. Every time a young woman passed him, walking in the opposite direction, he would reach out and tweak one of her breasts. Far from slapping him, or crying, ‘Harassment!’, she would simply walk on by as if nothing had happened… Today I find this almost impossible to believe.

If you're going to apply chronologically-dependant morality, then indeed, as someone else said earlier "Genocides happened back then, it was expected back then", and we all know that is stupid.

In the book, Dawkins mentions one occasion when a teacher put a hand down his trousers at a prep school in Salisbury, and four others at Oundle, when he “had to fend off nocturnal visits to my bed from senior boys much larger and stronger than I was”. The Oundle incidents don’t seem to have bothered him. The prep school one did, but he still can’t bring himself to condemn it, partly because the kind of comparison his adult mind deploys is with the mass murders carried out by Genghis Khan in the 12th century.

There is definitely something fundamentally mentally broken about a man who justifies molestation and attempted rape by saying "The mongols murdered millions 800 years ago (13th century, but whatever), so it's okay".

Although I am loath to link to it, you can read the interview in its entirety here on his site (or maybe it's a fan-site):
The world according to Richard Dawkins | The Times

This thread is a whole bunch of people telling other people how they should think.

reply to post by DeadSeraph


Do you know who is labeling Richard Dawkins as the face of "new atheism"? A term most atheists have never heard of.

Its not me, its not atheists, Its religious people... They make up the word Atheist to label people who don't believe in their superstition and now they create "new atheist" as some sort of further insult.

If you wanted to be a dishonest creationist who tells blatant lies and quote mines people....

We already have a thread for that.

reply to post by DeadSeraph


Now lets compare your blatant dishonesty to something the champion of "New Christians" has to say

“I would say that God has the right to give and take life as he sees fit. Children die all the time! If you believe in the salvation, as I do, of children, who die, what that meant is that the death of these children meant their salvation. People look at this [genocide] and think life ends at the grave but in fact this was the salvation of these children, who were far better dead…than being raised in this Canaanite culture."
-William Lane Craig

"It was the seventh deadly sin. My children weren't righteous. They stumbled because I was evil. The way I was raising them, they could never be saved. They were doomed to perish in the fires of hell." Andrea Yates

Notice that when this woman murdered her 5 children in a bath tub she was using Williams logic. She killed them to send them straight to heaven just like Dr. Craig says. Lets all hope that when you decide to open your mouth and respond that something intelligent comes out.

reply to post by Wertdagf



First of all, you are taking what William Craig said waaaay out of context. Nowhere does he defend the murder of children.

Second of all, Andrea Yates was a seriously, seriously ill woman who sought help and didn't receive it!

Third of all, what kind of a sick and disturbed human being uses the tragic murder of children to make....some sort of point?

Educate yourself and work on your reading comprehension before you go opening your mouth about things you don't understand, only to sound like a deranged lunatic.

Wertdagf
reply to post by DeadSeraph

 

Do you know who is labeling Richard Dawkins as the face of "new atheism"? A term most atheists have never heard of.

Its not me, its not atheists, Its religious people... They make up the word Atheist to label people who don't believe in their superstition and now they create "new atheist" as some sort of further insult.

If you wanted to be a dishonest creationist who tells blatant lies and quote mines people....

We already have a thread for that.

The term is not only used by religious people. You'd probably know that if you'd bothered to read the thread before hitting the reply button so you could quickly spew more of your anti-religious vitriol. Why your hate filled tripe is valued by this community will forever remain a mystery to me.

Wertdagf
reply to post by DeadSeraph

 

Now lets compare your blatant dishonesty to something the champion of "New Christians" has to say

“I would say that God has the right to give and take life as he sees fit. Children die all the time! If you believe in the salvation, as I do, of children, who die, what that meant is that the death of these children meant their salvation. People look at this [genocide] and think life ends at the grave but in fact this was the salvation of these children, who were far better dead…than being raised in this Canaanite culture."
-William Lane Craig

"It was the seventh deadly sin. My children weren't righteous. They stumbled because I was evil. The way I was raising them, they could never be saved. They were doomed to perish in the fires of hell." Andrea Yates

Notice that when this woman murdered her 5 children in a bath tub she was using Williams logic. She killed them to send them straight to heaven just like Dr. Craig says. Lets all hope that when you decide to open your mouth and respond that something intelligent comes out.

edit on 18-9-2013 by Wertdagf because: (no reason given)

My blatant dishonesty? Nice Ad hominem attack. No real response for the OP so you resort to attacking my character and diversion of the thread? Lets hope that the next time you post a reply in any thread in this particular forum anything intelligent comes out. I've been here long enough to know not to hold my breath.

reply to post by LadyMachiatto

First of all, you are taking what William Craig said waaaay out of context. Nowhere does he defend the murder of children.

He most certainly does defend the infanticide condoned by the God of the Old Testament.

"But why take the lives of innocent children? The terrible totality of the destruction was undoubtedly related to the prohibition of assimilation to pagan nations on Israel's part. In commanding complete destruction of the Canaanites, the Lord says, 'You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons, or taking their daughters for your sons, for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods' (Deut 7.3-4). […] God knew that if these Canaanite children were allowed to live, they would spell the undoing of Israel. […] Moreover, if we believe, as I do, that God's grace is extended to those who die in infancy or as small children, the death of these children was actually their salvation. We are so wedded to an earthly, naturalistic perspective that we forget that those who die are happy to quit this earth for heaven's incomparable joy. Therefore, God does these children no wrong in taking their lives."

"Do not plead that I have taken these revolting words out of context. What context could possibly justify them?"

"So whom does God wrong in commanding the destruction of the Canaanites? Not the Canaanite adults, for they were corrupt and deserving of judgment. Not the children, for they inherit eternal life. So who is wronged? Ironically, I think the most difficult part of this whole debate is the apparent wrong done to the Israeli [sic] soldiers themselves. Can you imagine what it would be like to have to break into some house and kill a terrified woman and her children? The brutalising effect on these Israeli [sic] soldiers is disturbing."

Not only does Craig justify and apologize for the infanticide perpetrated by the followers of this biblical God, he wants us to feel sorry for those poor traumatized Israeli soldiers who killed them!

reply to post by windword


So because you find Craig's assertions revolting that excuses what Dawkins had to say? I like how this thread is now about William Lane Craig instead of what Dawkins had to say. Diversionary tactics are used most often when a person has no logical defense for his or her arguments, which so far is the case for those of you who are defending what Dawkins had to say.

The conclusion we can draw from this? That despite the assertions of Dawkins defenders that Craig is not fit to debate him, they are themselves no better and can claim no intellectual high ground when they fail to call out their own poster boy for equally absurd commentary.

reply to post by DeadSeraph


I''m revolted that Craig defends blatant infanticide in order to protect his belief system. Honestly, I don't understand why Christians don't deny that Old Testament representation of a God, that Jesus clearly didn't represent. If Jesus was a Nazarene Essene, which I believe,if he existed, he was. The Essenes rejected that representation of God, and didn't sacrifice animals to him either.

So why do Christians defend it? It makes me sick!

I thinkseeing that Dawkins was referring to his own experience, he has every right to classify his own experience as mild. I don't agree with his assessment on the victimization of the Catholic Church, though, but Dawkins was raised Catholic. Go figure! Even he can't break his own programming!

reply to post by windword

Richard Dawkins was an Anglican. He still sometimes calls himself a "cultural anglican". He neither is, nor was, at any point, catholic.

reply to post by babloyi


Sorry. What's the difference? I thought "Angelican" was like "Jesuit", same religion different order.

reply to post by windword

Anglican Christianity is as much connected to Catholicism as Protestant Christianity, i.e. not at all, except in that they're all "Christian". It is certainly not a denomination of Catholicism, and there is no reason Richard Dawkins would feel some special love or "connection" for Catholicism due to his upbringing. If anything at all, he would feel the exact opposite.