Category Archives: evolution

Wired to believe

Posted on by
3

It seems that we are programmed to believe in God:

Humans are programmed to believe in God because it gives them a better chance of survival, researchers claim.

A study into the way children’s brains develop suggests that during the process of evolution those with religious tendencies began to benefit from their beliefs – possibly by working in groups to ensure the future of their community.

The findings of Bruce Hood, professor of developmental psychology at Bristol University, suggest that magical and supernatural beliefs are hardwired into our brains from birth, and that religions are therefore tapping into a powerful psychological force.

There are two possibilities:

God does actually exist and he designed us; it should come as no surprise that we are inclined to believe in him.

God does not exist and the proclivity to believe he does is a product of evolution: evolution has programmed us to believe a lie. If evolution predisposes us to believe something to be true that isn’t, we cannot trust our ability to deduce from evidence; therefore, no amount of evidence can prove evolution to be true.

Richard Dawkins’ website hacked

Posted on by
Reply

Why was Dawkins’ site chosen? Natural Selection.

No Intelligent Design for Dawkins forum…

Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist and popular science author, famed for his no-holds-barred approach to what he sees as the unsubstantiated claims made by religion, certainly has all the proof he needs to believe in the cybercriminal underground.

Members of the discussion forum over at RichardDawkins.net all received a message, purporting to be from the forum admin which incongruously invited them to join a warez site.

Add an Image

Richard Dawkins: the 4 commandments

Posted on by
12

In his book, “River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life” Richard Dawkins maintains:

“The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”

This is an honest, bleak assessment of a universe without God. Dawkins does not manage to live down to his own belief system, however: in “The God Delusion“, in spite of the absence of good or evil, Dawkins maintains that atheists can be “moral”.

What does it mean to be “moral” in Richard Dawkins’ view? Here, we find the 4 commandments, written in naturally selected primeval  soup, fossilised  and handed personally to Richard by Darwin himself:

Richard Dawkins’s Commandments

1. Enjoy your own sex life (so long as it damages nobody else) and leave others to enjoy theirs in private whatever their inclinations, which are none of your business.

2. Do not discriminate or oppress on the basis of sex, race or (as far as possible) species.

3. Do not indoctrinate your children. Teach them how to think for themselves, how to evaluate science, and how to disagree with you.

4. Value the future of things on a timescale longer than your own.

It would be hard for any belief system to come up with a more bumper-sticker-worthy set of banalities.

The New Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

Posted on by
Reply

The 21st Century’s Inquisition at work:

Science minister won’t confirm belief in evolution.

Researchers aghast that key figure in funding controversy invokes religion in science discussion.

Canada’s science minister, the man at the centre of the controversy over federal funding cuts to researchers, won’t say if he believes in evolution.

“I’m not going to answer that question. I am a Christian, and I don’t think anybody asking a question about my religion is appropriate,” Gary Goodyear, the federal Minister of State for Science and Technology, said in an interview with The Globe and Mail.

A funding crunch, exacerbated by cuts in the January budget, has left many senior researchers across the county scrambling to find the money to continue their experiments.

Some have expressed concern that Mr. Goodyear, a chiropractor from Cambridge, Ont., is suspicious of science, perhaps because he is a creationist.

The interesting part of all this is that the headline in the Globe shrieks its outrage that Goodyear won’t confirm his belief in evolution. Obviously if evolution is a simple empirically verifiable fact, it wouldn’t be necessary to pull out Mr. Goodyear’s fingernails to extract a statement of belief: it would be impossible for him to deny it. For example, it is highly unlikely that Mr. Goodyear would cling to the potentially suicidal notion that he is immune to gravity and is capable of stepping off a high story building without hurtling to his death.

The truth is, evolution is a theory that describes the mechanism behind how species change; it does not explain life’s origin or its purpose. It has no way of determining whether the emergence of mankind was supernaturally guided or accidental; clearly a Christian would not believe it to be accidental. The rhetoric of scientism would deny the possibility of supernatural intervention, but that denial is an act of faith not of science, since the supernatural is outside the realm of science’s competence.

Now, back to pouring molten lead into Mr. Goodyear’s nostrils:

Jim Turk, executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, said he was flabbergasted that the minister would invoke his religion when asked about evolution.

Jim Turk needs to do a little self-examination. For many scientists, evolution is a religion.

Valentine's Day: testing the saliva

Posted on by
Reply

There are a number of different ways to look at Valentine’s Day. This one, for example:

Add an Image

Look out and see the pretty birds
How each doth chuse his mate,
To kiss and coo, and Jove pursue,
Their kind to propagate

And for the Dawkins dogmatists, this one:

She said men like “sloppier kisses” because they are testing the saliva to see how fertile a woman is.

“The hypothesis is they’re trying to get small traces of oestrogen to see where the woman is in her menstrual cycle to indicate the state of her fertility,” she said.

She said women used smell as they are kissing to deduce some things about the man’s immune system.

This gives us a perfect illustration of the contrast between meaning and mechanism.

The latter is undoubtedly an accurate description of how Dawkins and his wife met – a combination of sniffing and saliva analysis – but for normal people, believing that love is little more than an attraction to a superior immune system would be the recipe for a one way trip to the funny farm.

Personally, I avoid Valentine’s day altogether.

How to substitute offence for sense

Posted on by
2

Read it all here

Add an Image

Comedian Ben Stein Cancels Speech Over Evolution Controversy

Comedian Ben Stein has withdrawn as the University of Vermont’s commencement speaker because of complaints about his critical views on evolution in favor of intelligent design.

UVM President Daniel Fogel said he chose Stein based on the warm response to a lecture he gave on campus last spring. Fogel said, however, he was deluged with e-mail messages from people offended by Stein’s views of science.

It seems that Richard Dawkins, in the spirit of free scientific inquiry, emailed Fogel to pressure him into turning down Stein for this engagement. What’s the matter, Richard? Afraid that an opposing view might expose the truth?

How can anyone be offended by a view of science? It sounds as if this comes from  people who don’t have the mental wherewithal to muster a rational argument for their position, so they have to fall back on the “I am offended” plea.

You are offended? Good.

How to get up Richard Dawkins' nose

Posted on by
20

Disagree with him:

Poll reveals public doubts over Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Belief in creationism is widespread in Britain, Add an Imageaccording to a new survey.

Prof Dawkins expressed dismay at the findings of the ComRes survey, of 2,060 adults, which he claimed were confirmation that much of the population is “pig-ignorant” about science.

“Obviously life, which was Darwin’s own subject, is not the result of chance,” he said.

“Any fool can see that. Natural selection is the very antithesis of chance.

“The error is to think that God is the only alternative to chance, and Darwin surely didn’t think that because he himself discovered the most important non-theistic alternative to chance, namely natural selection.”

It seems that Richard Dawkins thinks that the great unwashed  in the UK are pig-ignorant about science in much the same way as Dawkins is pig-ignorant about theology. Except that Dawkins displays his ignorance with more fanfare and gets paid for it.

As for “Natural selection is the very antithesis of chance”, the antithesis of chance is a plan; which means  Dawkins is claiming that natural selection is somehow planned. He goes to great lengths to ridicule the idea that life was designed and yet can’t bring himself to admit that it occurred through chance; which means it must have been planned and, therefore, designed. And he calls Christians illogical.

He has anthropomorphised natural selection, imbued it with purpose and intent and turned it into a god. A god that he worships.

Very scientific.