Given the number of Dawkins-related posts on my Friends list, and the rumours that he is supposedly less rabid this time around, I thought I'd give his new mini-series a go
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I caught the end of a show-promoting interview with him on Radio 2 yesterday - and set the video. I'll watch it when I'm alone and can think clearly.
It was interesting: listening to Steve Wright futilely trying to point out to him that there's more to life than science - that mediums can be comforting, religion can bring hope etc.. Dawkins said that he doesn't have any problem with people who believe ... if they don't try to force others to their beliefs. That's interesting, coming from him, when my experience is that he's made a career out of mocking other beliefs from (what he believes is) a superior perspective.
Dawkins is amazingly amusingly sanctimonious and hypocritical like that:
"Religious people are bad. They antagonise everyone else by telling them their beliefs are wrong and everyone must convert to their, true religion. We must make those religious people understand that their false beliefs are wrong and convert them to the truth of atheism - All praise reason! Hallelujah!"
It was fabulous listening to Steve Wright arguing with him without actually seeming to. You know, in the way that radio presenters have of being neutral whilst asking one-sided questions. Dawkins was blind to it.
I have long since held the belief that Dawkins is so far up his own arse that if he took a torch he could see his tonsils. In fact I've held it since I tried reading The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker back in 6th form. One of my old Uni lecturers had some revolutionary evolutionary ideas which were soundly condemned by Dawkins without him ever actually justifying his condemnation. I thought they were quite reasonable based on his evidence and they colour my ideas on evolution.
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It was interesting: listening to Steve Wright futilely trying to point out to him that there's more to life than science - that mediums can be comforting, religion can bring hope etc.. Dawkins said that he doesn't have any problem with people who believe ... if they don't try to force others to their beliefs. That's interesting, coming from him, when my experience is that he's made a career out of mocking other beliefs from (what he believes is) a superior perspective.
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"Religious people are bad. They antagonise everyone else by telling them their beliefs are wrong and everyone must convert to their, true religion. We must make those religious people understand that their false beliefs are wrong and convert them to the truth of atheism - All praise reason! Hallelujah!"
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Oh, and it was skinner's pigeons, not pavlov.
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One of my old Uni lecturers had some revolutionary evolutionary ideas which were soundly condemned by Dawkins without him ever actually justifying his condemnation. I thought they were quite reasonable based on his evidence and they colour my ideas on evolution.
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