Posted on 08/02/2007 9:15:56 PM PDT by Mr. Silverback
Atheism has nearly always been with us in one form or another, but the atheists we’ve been hearing the most from lately—chiefly Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris—are a new breed. Unlike the old-school humanists, the new atheists—or anti-theists, as some of them prefer to be called—don’t want to just deny the existence of God, they want to wipe religion off the map.
Christopher Hitchens follows this pattern with his new book, belligerently titled God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. In his first chapter, called “Putting It Mildly,” Hitchens writes, “I will continue to [respect my friends’ religious traditions] without insisting on the polite reciprocal condition—which is that they in turn leave me alone.”
But this is something that religion is ultimately incapable of doing. “People of faith,” Hitchens continues, “are in their different ways planning your and my destruction, and the destruction of all . . . hard-won human attainments. . . . Religion poisons everything.”
The way Hitchens lumps all religions and all believers into one category here is typical of his tone throughout the book, and typical of anti-theists in general. They don’t argue; they yell. They’ve decided that, simply because they dislike religion, there is no reason to respect it. In their minds, it’s stupid, dangerous, and that’s all that needs to be said.
That’s why I believe the anti-theist movement, as hot as it is right now with books like Hitchens’s topping the bestseller lists, is doomed to fail. The moment you take it seriously and start to study it, it falls apart. There’s no substance, just anger and a lot of hot air. Because anti-theists simply ignore evidence and arguments they don’t like, they’re ill-equipped to deal with them rationally.
The old-guard secular humanists are questioning this new trend, and rightly so. Most traditional atheists simply had their own belief system, and if we wanted our belief system that was okay. The new breed reflects the death of truth. They’re like the communists who feared religion more than anything else because it was a competing truth claim. The Star of David and the cross have been scandalous to every totalitarian leader.
Many traditional atheists and humanists seem to recognize the parallel and feel uncomfortable about it. As Gary Wolf writes in Wired, “The New Atheists have castigated fundamentalism and branded even the mildest religious liberals as enablers of a vengeful mob. Everybody who doesn’t join them is an ally of the Taliban.”
“Even those of us who sympathize intellectually,” he writes, “don’t want the New Atheists to succeed.”
When you think about it this way, you have to wonder if the anti-theists, in their heart of hearts, are a little uncomfortable with their own beliefs. After all, if you really believe that truth will win out—and to Hitchens and company, their idea of truth is so obvious that it cannot fail to win—you can let other people make their own claims and live by their own beliefs without feeling the need to destroy everything they stand for.
Because Hitchens and the others cannot do this, their polemics are destined to lead not to the end of religion, but to the collapse of their own movement. Not before, of course, they have gotten very rich. It’s not irrelevant to the debate that Dawkins, Hitchens, and Sam Harris sold one million copies of their angry diatribes last year. At two dollars a book for royalties, that’s not bad.
“Contact” is a novel; “Demon Haunted World” is nonfiction. Did the guy that wrote “King Kong” think there really were giant apes? I don’t think so.
“They found soft tissue including some which looks pretty much like raw meat inside the one trex bone and other dinosaur bones of several types have yielded up soft tissue since then.”
Really. I am sure the renowned female scientist who took the very dry, very hard t-rex bone and spent countless hours REHYDRATING it, to get down to a very minute amount of tissue that while also very dry , had been protected from fossilization by the outer layers, would be interested to know that she really found soft tissue, just sitting there instead.
Maybe a further investigation into the facts of the case would help give you a better view of things.
The argument over creation vs. evolution is silly.
Evolution we mistakingly assume means improvement and increased complexity. As if we are the supreme evolvement of all creatures that have ever lived.
This is not true. A better term for what we now call evolution is adaptation.
God created all things with adaptation, based on a DESIRE TO SURVIVE. A WILL TO LIVE.
All things possess this characteristic, from the simplest single-cell creature to the most complex (which may not include man).
All creatures are intelligent. A virus is just, if not more intelligent that any human.
If a creature needs to change sex, or grow wings, or learn to swim, to survive, it will do so.
If it needs to be less complex to survive, it will do so.
Creatures on Earth die off as a species when they are unable to adapt quickly enough to or are wiped out by environmental effects.
Life does not actually cease, per se. The FORM of life may cease, but the cells, molecules, atoms, simply recombine in a form that is better suited to the new environment.
Some creatures can recombine into a new form, without passing through death. There are several examples I can think of in the ocean. One changes from a plant stuck in the ocean bottom, into a swimming snake.
Even humans can change their form slightly. What you think in your mind, you actually do become.
God is creator, and we were created in God’s image(imagination) and we are also creators.
Get onto wikipedia or something and look up the word ‘petrified’. That’s what that bone would have been, all the way through, if it were even one million years old much less 68M.
Huh?
1. Louis Farrakhan probably does the same thing. And the KKK often holds demonstrations with a very nasty tone, but don't read anything into it, they're probably just looking to sell books.
2. Dude, if I walk into a crowded airport and yell, "Everyone look over here, I have a bomb" you wouldn't need to read anything into my tone either. Hitchens recently said he wants a war against all believers. I don't care why this dipwad hater says what he says, I care about the fact that this dipwad hater is demonizing most of the human race and attacking a main component of Western civilization while claiming to defend it.
Ann Coulter says outrageous things. So does Rush Limbaugh. Do you want to censor them, too?
1. I did not once mention censoring the anti-theists. Did you read something I didn't write, or is calling a spade a spade now the same as banning books?
2. Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh are not hateful dipwads trying to eliminate my faith or anyone else's. If Rush and Ann were trying to eliminate atheism you might have a point, but they aren't and the idea would be anathema to them as conservatives. That said, liberals can and do speak out against Coulter and Limbaugh. If a liberal says "Ann Coulter is a bad person" is that lib trying to censor her or is he simply exercising his own right to free speech?
Not entirely true, as their were Christians, Pagans, and atheists (Martin Heidegger being the prime example of the latter) who supported the Third Reich. Hitler himself occassionally attended Mass, but was more interested in the occult and Germanic mysticism more than anything else.
The multiverse is unfalsifiable.
Nothing doesn't include a vacuum.
In nothing, there is nothing to fluctuate.
And virtual particles require energy as a prerequisite for their virtuality.
You, of course, are free to believe in the multiverse, immaculate singularities and should be enthralled with the slit experiment but none of those in any way support what you are trying to sell here.
For instance, how would an observer in this Universe observe another universe?
How do virtual particles move from one energy level to another absent energy?
And just who the hell was it exactly that has done this: "matter/energy has been proven to come into existence spontaneously from the vacuum,"
While we're at it what universe did the vacuum occupy before the universe existed?
I suppose Adolph could have been probing the enemy while "attending mass" but that's about it.
“There is no evidence of a multiverse. “
Quantum computers work.
“The multiverse is unfalsifiable.”
At present - that doesn’t mean research on it should be abandoned
“Nothing doesn’t include a vacuum.”
You don’t understand QM
“In nothing, there is nothing to fluctuate.”
You don’t understand QM
“And virtual particles require energy as a prerequisite for their virtuality.”
Energy borrowed from alternate quantum realities.
“You, of course, are free to believe in the multiverse, immaculate singularities and should be enthralled with the slit experiment but none of those in any way support what you are trying to sell here.”
I’m not trying to “sell” anything, merely point out that there is no need to posit a creator for something that it has been proven can appear spontaneously. Please give your evidence as to why my evidence does not support my claim. Simple denial doesn’t do it.
“For instance, how would an observer in this Universe observe another universe?”
Through a Planck-scale rift. Also, by the matter distribution in this Universe - gravity leaks thorugh from the others, affecting what is here - ever hear of “Dark Matter”? “Dark Energy”?.
“How do virtual particles move from one energy level to another absent energy?”
By “borrowing” the energy from an adjacent universe.
“And just who the hell was it exactly that has done this: “matter/energy has been proven to come into existence spontaneously from the vacuum,””
The entire Universe; spontaneously, every carbon atom in your body every picosecond; look up Lamb Shift.
“While we’re at it what universe did the vacuum occupy before the universe existed?”
It was an “unpopulated” Higgs field.
LOL, you’re into science fiction, not science. I suggest you reread your post and think about just how presumptive and faith based it is. And you my friend, are the one who has no understanding of science. You simply assert things as if that makes them true. Quantum computers as evidence of a multiverse is an assertion devoid of science, logic and common sense. In short, ridiculous.
I’m very sorry to hear that your science knowledge is out-of-date. A little web research on quantum computers and the frantic pace the NSA is setting in developing them in order to help solve cryptographic problems clearly delineate what I have stated about them as science fact, not fiction. Which interpretation of QM do you, personally, ascribe to? Ever hear of the Many Worlds Interpretation? Stephen Hawking believes it. What do you think the Many Worlds are? Rather than knee-jerk scornful derision, you should educate yourself on what is really happening in QM - it might just broaden your horizons. Just FYI, quantum computers, of which simple examples have been successfully demonstrated, REQUIRE the existence of parallel universes in order to work. Look it up. Here’s an article on quantum computers from caltech to get you started:
http://www.cs.caltech.edu/~westside/quantum-intro.html
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