Richard Dawkins

[ConfusedTim]

I know Patrick has tried to get Richard (my speciality is butterflies) Dawkins on his show but i dont think that would be acting as a Christian. You see dear old Dickie is just not very good when he is debating some of the grown ups. He has just had another stuff up (see extract below) to add to his colection of other blunders.

Taken from Daily Telegraph

Rev Giles Fraser was debating with Richard Dawkins. The two men were debating some new figures produced by Prof Dawkins’s think tank, the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. (A typical Dawkins touch: not just any old Foundation for Reason and Science but the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science.) The statistics purport to show that most people who identify themselves as Christian turn out, when questioned on what they actually think, to be “overwhelmingly secular in their attitudes on issues ranging from gay rights to religion in public life”. Dawkins’s conclusion is that these self-identified Christians are “not really Christian at all”.

If you were trying to come up with a definition of misplaced intellectual arrogance, you could not do better than having the planet’s most famous atheist issuing diktats on who does and doesn’t count as a proper Christian. Prof Dawkins then announced, triumphantly, that an “astonishing number [of Christians] couldn’t identify the first book in the New Testament”.

The transcript of the next minute or so only hints at how cringingly, embarrassingly bad it was for Dawkins.

Fraser: Richard, if I said to you what is the full title of The Origin Of Species, I’m sure you could tell me that.

Dawkins: Yes I could.

Fraser: Go on then.

Dawkins: On the Origin of Species…Uh…With, oh, God, On the Origin of Species. There is a sub-title with respect to the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life.
It was a golden minute of radio.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTV-py1W8Rk

[figs]

indeed, it was! LOL

Thanks for sharing

[damian clarke]

I try to be charitable about Richard Dorkins but generally fail miserably. There is just so little to like or respect. To those who have not encountered and English publc school debating chamber bully and toady he sounds clever but he really does not have a lot to offer the world. If he was such a great scientist he would have had a real chair I suppose. He is quite narrow in his own field and his use of logic or debate makes one wonder about how much of the scientific method he really understands. What is important about his own little piece of superficial research which he presents here is that most people felt that they believed in God. They may not have had Doctorates in Divinty but they still felt they believed. Veyr few felt they did not believe. Dorkins is a media creation and he has about as much of value to tell us about philosophy or science as Paris Hilton does.

[Darran]

Good to see em' squirm.


Have you noticed the recent bangwagon of atheists wanting to distance themselves from these bigots? Looking down on them as "new atheists" despite being exactly the same themselves. Amazing really, that so many people can be in such denial that they need to damage control and go as far as to deny their own masters once it becomes apparant how futile atheism stands in debate.

[Khalid]

On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: On the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. You would have thought he'd remember "natural selection"!

The horribly low rates of Biblical literacy and high rates of secularism don't surprise me. By the way, the term "new atheist" is misleading at best, as it's a new term for a very old concept - anti-theism, generally coupled with either/or both/and misotheism/hatred of religion. In the past it was often coupled with anti-clericalism as well (and still is). One of the original "new atheists" would be Edward Gibbon himself.

[damian clarke]

Talking about stuggles to preserve favored races is probably a bit embarrasing now so it is quietly dropped. We have to account for every Cananite killed two millenia ago but the secularists leave out their anachronisms.

[ConfusedTim]

@ Darran

I noticed that you are in Ireland - one of the best Dickie (i am a specialist in butterflies but I make out I know more than that) Dawkins interviews was with David Quinn the Irish Independent columnist. Check it out if you havent heard it before:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7SfEXAQTkA

By the way if anyone is reading this from Catholic Answers radio programme I suggets getting David Quinn on the show to talk about the lessons to be learned when dealing with secularists in a post Christian culture. He is an awseome speaker.

[catholicgamer]

...this...this brought a tear to my eye.

Beautiful

[afungusamongus]

I think the new part refers to their embarrassing ignorance. It defies believe that these people who are suppose to be the ones who finally drive the last nail in religions coffin cannot even be bothered to read their bibles.

Rather disappointing for those who are interested in meaningful debate.

[damian clarke]

Never get into an debate with an Irish man or woman. Dawkins found that out to his cost there. Any one who was ever priviledged to have been taught by Irish missionaries as a young person would know just how compelling and clever debaters they are. I must say I really enjoyed that. Interesting how the atheist posters on you tube always end up saying things like the religious person is an idiot and halfwit and is wrong. As John Cleese said that is abuse not an argument.

[Contra Mundum]

Originally Posted by catholicgamer

...this...this brought a tear to my eye.

Beautiful

LOL

[Darran]

Originally Posted by ConfusedTim

@ Darran

I noticed that you are in Ireland - one of the best Dickie (i am a specialist in butterflies but I make out I know more than that) Dawkins interviews was with David Quinn the Irish Independent columnist. Check it out if you havent heard it before:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7SfEXAQTkA

By the way if anyone is reading this from Catholic Answers radio programme I suggets getting David Quinn on the show to talk about the lessons to be learned when dealing with secularists in a post Christian culture. He is an awseome speaker.

Brilliant! Thanks for the link, I hadn't ever heard of him before. He is good indeed.

[Inkwell]

Dawkins is very much like a young child- he has his beliefs and takes great pleasure in forcing them on everyone else but he doesn't truly have any basis for them- he just enjoys feeling superior to other people. This humbling moment of his rather made my day- he's often come across to me as quite obnoxious.

[hazmat]

dawkins probably moved on from charles darwins texts when he was a teenager; there have been many better books on evolution than one published in the 1800s... you guys think he refers to the same really old book throughout his life to make sense of things today? LO--oh, right... i forgot the name of the forum. my bad.

[triumphguy]

Dawkins got hammered!

I'm only surprised that Quinn wasn't able to sell him a dog at the same time!