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Dawkins at UT Austin 2

Dawkins at the University of Texas, March 2008.

Richard Dawkins is someone Christians, especially fundamentalist Christians, hate. When they can't refute his arguments they regularly resort to Ad hominem attacks on him.

The man[]

Dawkins is a retired professor of biology at Oxford University and one of the most prominent Atheist around. Dawkins interests us because he makes no concessions to Creationists and holds forthright views on the evolution, science and religion. He believes evolution, even Theistic Evolution is incompatible with Christianity. [1]

His ideas[]

Dawkins wrote an influential book, The God Delusion, which became a best-seller. The God Delusion brought atheist ideas to vast numbers of people who had known relatively little about it before.

He is perhaps best known in scientific circles for his book The Selfish Gene in which made popular the idea of a gene-level view of evolution, by use of the notion of the selfish gene, and introduced the concept of Memes.

Theology[]

Richard Dawkins claims that theology is not science and has not provided any useful knowledge. Science has explained a great deal about the origin of the universe, the origin of life and of humanity. Science provided cures and vaccines against many infectious diseases while theology got no further than explaining pestilence as punishment for sin. Science enabled modern medicine, modern transport, modern computers, modern agriculture etc. If all theological achievements were wiped out Dawkins maintains nothing noticeable would change. [2]

Importance[]

Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and other traditional white male atheists are still important but less so than they were. Greta Christina and others care about Social justice and minority issues. Atheists like Greta are increasing in importance. [3] How big is the change? That's disputed. Those who want the atheist movement to stay primarily white, male and privileged are fighting back hard. The Traditional leaders look confident. [4]

Err well:

  1. Perhaps they are confident.
  2. Perhaps they understand politics well enough not to let lack of confidence show.

In five or ten years we'll know better how much has changed.

Quotes[]

The scientific world view is so much more exiting,more poetic,more filled with sheer wonder than anything in the poverty-stricken arsenals of the religious imagination.
A designer God cannot be used to explain organized complexity because any God capable of designing anything would have to be complex enough to demand the same kind of explaination in his own right.

See also[]

References[]

External links[]

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