There's no doubt that Dawkins enjoys baiting his opponents
And he seems to get a kick out of arguing his case. Why on earth would he keep going if he didn't? - it must be pretty horrible to get mail like that every day! Is that 'smug'? Maybe. 'Stirrer', no doubt. Good. There are enough stirrers on the god-bothering side that I think the world needed Dawkins and the others (Hitchens, now, *there's* a genuine smug wanker).
Seriously, read him again, objectively. Is he really that offensive? Or does he just break our taboo against questioning religious faith?
And I'm going to push you again about your statement that there is lots of evidence for a deity. Seriously - I want to hear about it.
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flatfrog Staring vacantly into space, Mon 22 Nov 2010, 16:17,
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I answered it above.
The thing is that I don't mind him baiting the religious nuts, I have a massive problem with him saying that they are wrong (which I personally believe) for trying to convert others without evidence, before immediately doing the same.
It is not his opinion, but his hypocrisy which ires.
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LordManley twitter.com/LordManley, Mon 22 Nov 2010, 16:20,
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Dawkins is not a hypocrite
nor is he making assertions in defiance of any logical code.
In order to know your position, you must first have an absolute baseline relative to it. To a scientist, knowing your position is crucial to following the scientific method. It's called the Null Hypothesis.
The theist's baseline is a rich history of religion that reinforces belief through faith. This neatly avoids the need for evidence/scrutiny of any kind and is, by definition, impossible to measure or disprove. A scientist's baseline is an absence of effect that can be easily disproved by (repeatedly) observing and measuring the effect. If the effects of a deity ever occur repeatedly under laboratory conditions, scientists will modify their Null Hypotheses accordingly.
Scientific theories require a Null Hypothesis to be falsifiable and therefore credible. I think you are asking Dawkins to describe a scientific theory without invoking it (in this case, the Null Hypothesis states that a creator god does not exist), which is impossible. It's a bit like asking a theist to state his beliefs without invoking dogma, scripture or any religious references.
Long story short: Dawkins is a scientist, make sure you consider that when you analyse what he says. He ultimately just wants to understand life in a testable way.
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chart cat has an itch, Sun 28 Nov 2010, 16:03,
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