ANTITHEISM: Richard Dawkins / Christopher Hitchens Tribute
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Category Archives: Richard Dawkins
“We Are Star Dust” – Symphony of Science
Conversion on Mount Improbable: How Evolution Challenges Christian Dogma
During most of my years as a liberal Protestant minister, I never saw a contradiction between my Christian faith and the fact of evolution. Like many progressive Christians, I did not understand evolution as a challenge to the doctrine of divine creation ex nihilo; evolution was merely the mechanism that God used for creating life on our planet.
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My indifference towards evolution changed dramatically when I ran across Richard Dawkins’ analogy of natural selection as “climbing Mount Improbable.” In that memorable and vivid metaphor, Dawkins illustrates the truly incremental and gradual nature of the evolutionary process. Opponents of evolution have contended that, while change within species can occur, the leap from one species to a new species is just too improbably great to have happened by purely natural processes. Outside assistance must have been involved. Dawkins addresses that claim by acknowledging that, yes, the leap from one species to the next seems improbably difficult—like scaling the cliff of a mountain to reach the peak. However, if one approaches the peak not from the formidable cliff but instead moves slowly along the slope on the other side of the mountain, reaching the peak of “Mount Improbable” becomes quite possible, although it might take a very long time.
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Which core doctrines of Christianity does evolution challenge? Well, basically all of them. The doctrine of original sin is a prime example. If my rudimentary grasp of the science is accurate, then Darwin’s theory tells us that because new species only emerge extremely gradually, there really is no “first” prototype or model of any species at all—no “first” dog or “first” giraffe and certainly no “first” homo sapiens created instantaneously. The transition from predecessor hominid species was almost imperceptible. So, if there was no “first” human, there was clearly no original couple through whom the contagion of “sin” could be transmitted to the entire human race. The history of our species does not contain a “fall” into sin from a mythical, pristine sinless paradise that never existed.
Beautiful Minds: Professor Richard Dawkins
Happy Birthday, Mr. Dawkins! 71 Today
Chris Hayes: Richard Dawkins / Great Discussion of Religious Beliefs in the Public Square
Richard Dawkins / MSNBC’s “Up with Chris Hayes” / Atheism in America / Sunday at 8am EDT
As the line between religious beliefs and political views becomes more and more blurred in the Republican presidential campaign season, MSNBC’s groundbreaking weekend program “Up w/Chris Hayes” will take an in-depth look into atheism in America on Sunday, March 25. The two-hour program (8-10am ET) will talk to several prominent figures in the field, examining how religious views intersect with our political views on both the left and the right, and will discuss the marginalization of those who do not believe in God. The special program comes one day after Saturday’s Reason Rally for atheism on the National Mall in Washington, DC.
Guests of the program will include: Richard Dawkins, author of “The God Delusion”; Steven Pinker, author of “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined”; Susan Jacoby, author of “Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism”; Robert Wright, author of “The Evolution of God”; and Journalist Jamila Bey.
As part of the discussion about atheism in America, “Up” will speak with a working Christian member of the clergy who will reveal publicly, for the first time, that he is an atheist.
Religion: Brainwashing the kids since the Bronze Age
Disbelief in Evolution
Christopher Hitchens: In Defense of Richard Dawkins
If you haven’t read it, you will almost certainly have seen it: the critique of Professor Richard Dawkins that arraigns him for being too “strident” in his confrontations with his critics. According to this line of attack, Dawkins has no business stepping outside the academy to become a “public intellectual” and even less right to raise his voice when he chooses to do so. Implied in this rather hypocritical attack is the no less hypocritical hint that Dawkins might be better received if he were more polite and attract a better class of audience if he used more of the blessed restraint and reserve that is every Englishman’s birthright and which he obviously possesses in such heaping measure.
