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Heaven-sent for the non-believers
The Age.com ^ | 19/05/07

Posted on 05/18/2007 9:06:58 AM PDT by Jakarta ex-pat

ROOT OF ALL EVIL?

THE God Delusion - based on Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion - is the best documentary I've ever seen. And, I imagine, will ever see. No jokes. No smart-arse cracks. No witty asides.

Dawkins is a scientist and passionate atheist who has produced a stunning, thoroughly researched and expertly executed work that flatly denies the existence of God and illustrates what a destructive force religion is. Even in its mildest form. This provocative and entertaining ride will have some believers coming out the other end as atheists. And every Bible basher, Torah toter and Koran carrier calling the ABC to complain.

As I watched this masterpiece unfold, I couldn't remember the last time I had seen something so brilliant on the idiot box. Dawkins unapologetically refuses to treat religion differently to any other subject. There is no tiptoeing in fear of "offending" anyone (how you can offend people with truth is beyond me). Dawkins has harnessed his skill as a scientist, his hunger for truth and his rage to prove that God is a delusion that's infecting the world. He refers to "the process of non-thinking called faith" and bemoans "that the idea of a divine creator belittles the elegant reality of the universe". He liberates the viewer with the conclusion that "atheism is life-affirming in a way religion can never be".

Atheists will watch this show and feel as if they have died and gone to heaven as they see a bloke far more smarterer than themselves poke that animal in the cage. The fundamentalists, the evangelicals, the dabblers and the moderates all cop it. Dawkins dismembers the lot with a scalpel. It's intoxicating for born-again atheists like myself. I have taken the Flying Spaghetti Monster as my Lord and personal saviour. That's right. I am a Pastafarian.

Atheism is, it seems, the new black. Dawkins' offering will not simply be preaching to the converted but actually convert fence-sitters with truth and reason.

Dawkins describes the God of the Old Testament as "the most unpleasant character in all fiction. Jealous and proud of it. Petty, vindictive, unforgiving and racist. An ethnic cleanser urging his people on to acts of genocide."

Then Moses cops it. Dawkins quotes a Bible story and asks: "How is this story morally distinguishable from Hitler's rape of Poland or Saddam Hussein's massacre of the Kurds or the Marsh Arabs?"

Dawkins' masterful command of the language and his glorious Britishness is a delight throughout: "So Jesus had himself tortured and executed for a symbolic sin by a non-existent individual. Nobody not bought up in the faith could reach to any verdict other than barking mad." He tells us that "killing for God is not just hideous murder but utterly ridiculous".

On Sunday night, if you listen carefully, you'll hear atheists all over Australia leaning back in their chairs, putting their feet on the coffee table and saying, "I'm with him." And I'll be one of them.


TOPICS: Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: atheism; christophobia; dawkins; dawkinsthepreacher; godhaters; misotheism; moralabsolutes; richarddawkins
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To: Borges

Who is the god of communism?


21 posted on 05/18/2007 9:22:43 AM PDT by GourmetDan
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To: Jakarta ex-pat

Let me hazard a guess regarding the main points:

1. God doesn’t play by my rules, therefore he does not exist.

2. Any belief system subscribed to by people who do bad things, in the name of it or not, must be false (bye bye U.s. Constitution).

3. Evolution is a fact, but man is the end-all, be-all of intellectual existence in the universe. Any rational entity deemed to be infinite (like those impersonal time and space thingees) is an affront to our self-esteem and must be false.

4. The fact that diverse cultures cannot agree on the nature and preferences of said entity is proof that one does not exist. In furtherance of this argument, it should be proposed that no student ever be marked down on any test question to which the teacher receives anything but a unanimous answer from his/her test subjects, as the lack of such a concensus clearly demonstrates that no single correct answer exists.

5. People who believe in such a being are simple-minded dupes in need of such a belief to sustain themselves. Examples of such simpletons include Dostoyevsky, C.S. Lewis, Solzhenitsyn, and multiple doctorate holder in physical sciences A.E. Wilder-Smith. Also included would be those mentally deficient folks who set out to disprove things such as Christ’s resurrection (Frank Morison) or Christianity in general (Josh McDowell), but strayed into belief somewhere in the midst of the evidences they were compiling.


22 posted on 05/18/2007 9:23:49 AM PDT by william clark (DH4WH08 - Ecclesiastes 10:2)
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To: Gay State Conservative
Simple logic tells one that the elegance of the universe argues very strongly in *favor* of an all powerful,divine Creator!

Everything in the universe is based on the prime number three. It's all based on a prime number code. That's not an accident.

This mans logic also eliminates the concept of quantum physics. Apparently, he thinks he's wiser than most of the worlds greatest physicists.

Yep. He's a liberal alright - Too stupid to realize how stupid he really is.

23 posted on 05/18/2007 9:23:56 AM PDT by concerned about politics ("Get thee behind me, Liberal")
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To: Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus
What’s ironic is that atheism has killed more people in a century than Islam has in fourteen.

Give Islam time. Muslims are still having trouble with indoor plumbing.

24 posted on 05/18/2007 9:25:01 AM PDT by agere_contra
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To: GourmetDan
Who is the god of communism?

Communism (and Nazism) have no theology. They are both positivist belief systems that enforce said beliefs. No one has ever been executed for not being enough of a dis-believer.
25 posted on 05/18/2007 9:25:22 AM PDT by Borges
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To: Jakarta ex-pat

Either you believe that chance created everything or you believe that the Creator did.

Either was it is an unprovable belief. I’d rather put my faith in a creator than chance and a huge cosmic mistake.

Dawkins is free to believe whatever he wants to believe. More power to him. But I don’t have to elect him President of the United States either.


26 posted on 05/18/2007 9:25:58 AM PDT by colorcountry ("You step in crap once and spend the rest of your life scraping it off.")
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To: Southside_Chicago_Republican

Isaiah 57:20

But the wicked are like the tossing sea, which cannot rest, whose waves cast up mire and mud.


27 posted on 05/18/2007 9:26:38 AM PDT by GourmetDan
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To: Jakarta ex-pat

Richard Dawkins, you`re so f*****g stupid it`s not

even funny.

So all of the Apostles,except John, suffered extremely

violent deaths for a lie !? Bartholomew was flayed alive,

Mark torn to pieces, Paul beheaded torn to pieces in the

the arena, etc.

So if Jesus lied and was not resurrected why die a

horrific death for it? All the apostles had to do was

say, “Hey wait ! I recant, it`s all a lie.”

Any man who was trying to perpetuate a con would

confess to avoid death.

But they didn`t because it is true.

So f**k you Dawkins :-)


28 posted on 05/18/2007 9:26:40 AM PDT by Para-Ord.45
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To: ClearCase_guy; Jakarta ex-pat
thoroughly researched and expertly executed work that flatly denies the existence of God

This statement means nothing. It is an expression of belief, not a proof, or even statement, of fact. So Dawkins' work *denies* the existence of God. So what? There are also works that deny the existence of the Holocaust, or the moon landing, or Elvis' death. Each would claim to be "thoroughly researched and expertly executed", and each would be essentially nothing more than nonsense supporting a nonsense proposition which is itself based on nothing but assertion.

29 posted on 05/18/2007 9:27:15 AM PDT by Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus (Run Fred RUN!)
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To: colorcountry
Either was it is an unprovable belief.

There fixed it.

30 posted on 05/18/2007 9:27:25 AM PDT by colorcountry ("You step in crap once and spend the rest of your life scraping it off.")
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To: Borges
"No one has ever been executed for not being enough of a dis-believer."

The Horrors of Tuol Sleng

http://www.edwebproject.org/sideshow/khmeryears/s21.html

31 posted on 05/18/2007 9:28:17 AM PDT by GourmetDan
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To: agere_contra
Give Islam time. Muslims are still having trouble with indoor plumbing.

Well, yeah, it's not as if the Muslims haven't been trying to play catchup...

32 posted on 05/18/2007 9:29:17 AM PDT by Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus (Run Fred RUN!)
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To: Jakarta ex-pat
"atheism is life-affirming in a way religion can never be"

Just not eternal-life affirming.

I'm not saying Dawkins is wrong; he just left out this aspect that
does seem to be very crucial to practitioners of the Christian faith.
33 posted on 05/18/2007 9:29:59 AM PDT by VOA
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To: 99Volts
and here I thought money was the root of all evil

It's LOVE of money, not money itself.

"For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows." 1 Timothy 6:10 KJV

34 posted on 05/18/2007 9:30:51 AM PDT by Disambiguator (If it wasn't for bad puns, we wouldn't have no puns at all.)
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To: be4everfree

God that’s funny! Did you,by chance,catch the fact that the “interviewer” is doing an almost flawless imitation of William Hague,the former Leader of the Opposition in Britain?


35 posted on 05/18/2007 9:30:59 AM PDT by Gay State Conservative ("The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism."-Karl Marx)
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To: darkangel82

“Projection.”

No, its not projection. He says as much in his article. He also says we are dangerous and a risk to all things living.


36 posted on 05/18/2007 9:31:14 AM PDT by driftdiver
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To: Jakarta ex-pat
Atheists will watch this show and feel as if they have died and gone to heaven

Gone where?? Shouldn't this read "... feel as if they have died and gone to a place which doesn't exist and whose existence only deranged, stupid people could accept" ... ? And why would an atheist want to go to heaven, exactly?

as they see a bloke far more smarterer than themselves poke that animal in the cage.

"bloke far smarterer" ... ah, that vaunted atheist intellect again.

37 posted on 05/18/2007 9:31:27 AM PDT by Campion ("I am so tired of you, liberal church in America" -- Mother Angelica, 1993)
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To: Borges
No one has ever been executed for not being enough of a dis-believer.

Apparently you've never read the history of the gulags then, have you?

38 posted on 05/18/2007 9:31:40 AM PDT by Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus (Run Fred RUN!)
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To: GourmetDan

The Khmer Rouge killed people for not beleving unreservedly in their system. I was reffering to theoretical paradigm in which belief in any given system is not enforced. This would exclude Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot. The United States is as close in human history as we’ve been to such a system.


39 posted on 05/18/2007 9:32:32 AM PDT by Borges
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To: Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus

Shhhhh, please don’t point out the paradox of Dawkin’s ascribing to a religion of disbelief instead of a religion of belief. You know how hardheaded those religious fanatics can be. :o)


40 posted on 05/18/2007 9:32:50 AM PDT by delphirogatio
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