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Comments 15

mothwentbad September 3 2010, 03:50:39 UTC
Dawkins is sort of a broken record, but... I don't know, what else is there to say? I guess more interesting and illuminating discussions can be had about more specific things like biology or physics, and such discussions gain nothing by invoking a God hypothesis, but it's sort of difficult not to be a broken record when the only thing that really needs to be said is, "Ockham's razor! The null hypothesis, for fuck's sake!"

It doesn't really help that there's an entire ocean of crazy people forming a nigh-infinite wall of molasses-like theistic credulity for him to swim through. "Broken record" Richard Dawkins wouldn't exist if there were no such wall of molasses.

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fatpie42 September 3 2010, 10:24:15 UTC
Dawkins is sort of a broken record, but... I don't know, what else is there to say?

Well I do put quite a lot of the blame on him being asked to debate with an idiot.

But still, this wasn't really shedding light on the news from Stephen Hawking like The Times were presumably hoping it to.

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jexacinna September 3 2010, 14:41:24 UTC
I wondered over here from Charlycrash's blog and found it really interesting: cheers ( ... )

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jexacinna September 3 2010, 14:42:02 UTC
The word 'Hawking's' is missing up there - can you spot where? :)

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chron_job September 3 2010, 14:36:38 UTC
>> The Islamic penalty for converting to Christianity is what ( ... )

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fatpie42 September 3 2010, 14:46:02 UTC
The Islamic death penalty for apostasy is in direct opposition to the ideas of interfaith pluralism that Ruth references

So is "I am the way, the truth and life, no one gets to the father except through me".

The fact is that not all Christians interpret that statement as meaning that you have to believe in Jesus to go to heaven and similarly there are quite a few Muslims who don't advocate a death penalty for apostasy.

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chron_job September 3 2010, 15:31:40 UTC
> So is "I am the way, the truth and life, no one gets to the ( ... )

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fatpie42 September 3 2010, 15:41:26 UTC
Yes, there are interfaith pluralists within all religious traditions. But those interfaith pluralists are often considered heretics by their own mainstream faith.

Go ahead and ask as many Muslims as you want how many fellow Muslims they know who'd be willing to kill converts to Christianity (or regret legal barriers to killing converts to Christianity). I'm not sure you'd find even the more liberal members saying "oh most Muslims would be strongly in favour of that".

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Totally off topic. aztec_mummy September 4 2010, 01:46:27 UTC

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