WTF - Richard Dawkins: I can't be sure God does not exist

[stockholmer]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/9102740/Richard-Dawkins-I-cant-be-sure-God-does-not-exist.html

He is regarded as the most famous atheist in the world but last night Professor Richard Dawkins admitted he could not be sure that God does not exist. He told the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, that he preferred to call himself an agnostic rather than an atheist.

The two men were taking part in a public “dialogue” at Oxford University at the end of a week which has seen bitter debate about the role of religion in public life in Britain. Last week Baroness Warsi, the Tory party chairman, warned of a tide of “militant secularism” challenging the religious foundations of British society.

The discussion, in Sir Christopher Wren’s Sheldonian Theatre, attracted attention from around the world. As well as being relayed to two other theatres, it was streamed live on the internet and promoted fierce debate on the Twitter social network. For an hour and 20 minutes the two men politely discussed "The nature of human beings and the question of their ultimate origin" touching on the meaning of consciousness, the evolution of human language – and Dr Williams’s beard.

For much of the discussion the Archbishop sat quietly listening to Prof Dawkins’s explanations of human evolution. At one point he told the professor that he was “inspired” by “elegance” of the professor’s explanation for the origins of life – and agreed with much of it.

snip

[Neoma]

1. Hmmm.

Uh, just a moment but, he could be talking about pantheism?

[pokerfan]

2. I Don’t Think They Understand the Meaning of ‘Atheist’

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2012/02/24/i-dont-think-they-understand-the-meaning-of-atheist/

[laconicsax]

3. As I said in rug's thread on this (in Religion), this comes as no surprise.

Anyone with at least a passing familiarity with the contents of The God Delusion should know that Dawkins considers God to be highly unlikely, not absolutely impossible.

[Johnny Rico]

4. The conversation when I tell someone that I'm an atheist usually goes something like this:

"How do you know God doesn't exist?"

"I don't."

"Then you're an agnostic, not an atheist."

"Incorrect. While I don't affirmatively deny the existence of God, I have no belief in God".

"Um...what?"

[Warpy]

5. I approach it a bit differently

"I can't completely deny there are no gods of any type anywhere. I also can't deny there is a large purple flying hippopotamus over the house right now, preparing to shit down my chimney. I consider the two things to be of equal probability, though."

[OriginalGeek]

10. HA! I don't HAVE a chimney!

FUCK YOU FLYING PURPLE HIPPOPOTAMUS!


Also:

[iris27]

23. The joy of Google ads...operating on nothing but keywords. n/t

[DetlefK]

6. Actually, there is a mathematical proof that life doesn't need a creator.

Life can develop from non-life purely by random processes, but the odds are ASTRONOMICALLY slim.

Just because life can evolve without a creator, that doesn't mean there is none at all. I'm happy, Dawkins thinks like a scientist.

[eomer]

8. So stipulate that the odds are astronomically slim, but how large is the universe again?

Astronomically.

And please don't come back with: "but what are the odds it would happen right here". Please don't make me work through that one; I'm not up to it tonight.

[DetlefK]

12. We could calculate the odds, if we had a realistic model.

We need knowledge about the chemical species, their concentrations and the reaction-paths they took, the chemical environment (acid or dye) and temperature. (If anything is missing: I'm a physicist, not chemicist.)

There is however a crucial point we cannot acount for in our calculations:
Creation of life, order from non-order, means a destruction of entropy.
Destroying entropy is only possible on a nanoscopic level, where you have very few particles. (It doesn't matter, if a few particles behave freaky and destroy their entropy, as long as much more entropy is created in the bigger picture.)
We have no idea, how large the chemical environment was in which life developed. (a pond? an ocean? the surface of an ocean?)
That's why we can't calculate the odds by which entropy would be destroyed by a random process.

[eomer]

14. We could never calculate the odds.

We could only calculate the odds based on some set of assumptions but we would never have a way of proving those assumptions are complete. There would always be the possibility that some process that is unknown to us exists or existed. We would always be constrained by the limits of our knowledge and therefore could never truly calculate the odds.

In any event I agree that none of this is proof that a creator doesn't exist. For me the existence of a creator is a theoretical possibility for which there is no evidence. It is just one thing on an infinitely long list of things that are theoretically possible but for which there is no evidence.

[and-justice-for-all]

7. I see what Dawkins in saying...

Religion says that gawd exist without any empirical evidence, whereas Atheist simply have not seen any empirical evidence that shows that gawd does or does not exist, the evidence is just not there.

Religion claims to have all the answers already, whereas Science is still looking.

[Behind the Aegis]

9. Doesn't change the fact he is still an atheist.

[deadinsider]

11. Interesting considering this...

I watched this video awhile ago and it is quite good; the speaker is a pretty funny dude.

Enjoy.

[AlbertCat]

20. My fave video on Youtube!

I posted it here when DU III 1st came online.

The religious noodleheads are still on the message board over there making stupid claims and misrepresenting science. It's amazing how this lecture upsets them.

Krauss himself was amazed at the reactions on the Youtube board. He wrote a book of the lecture, filling in details and including new info since 2009. The last 3 chapters address the religious trolls complaints and dismissals.

The book is called "A Universe From Nothing."

http://www.amazon.com/Universe-Nothing-There-Something-Rather/dp/145162445X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1330743682&sr=1-1

[deadinsider]

21. Very cool, thanks

I didn't know he wrote a book. I've watched the video three times and still want to watch it again...

[HopeHoops]

15. Asserting existence or non-existence is a Shrodinger's cat matter.

If you die and you go to Heaven or Hell, you know you are dead. If you die and it's lights out, that's that. You'll know in the former case, but not in the latter, but either way there's no way to tell until you die. In the latter case it really doesn't matter, well, unless you believe in reincarnation in which case the "light at the end of the tunnel" is probably the light coming through your new mom's vagina.

[deadinsider]

16. That is f'n funny

...is probably the light coming through your new mom's vagina.


I don't know why but I giggled quite a bit when I read that, even though I knew where you were going when you brought up "light at the end of the tunnel" after reincarnation.

Thanks for the laugh.

[HopeHoops]

17. And everyones first thought after being born is, "Oh, shit. Not this again."

[HereSince1628]

18. The problem, of course, is the difficulty of admitting to certainty.

Most everyone, and especially folks with advanced educations like Dawkins, want to claim open-mindedness to the possibility of additional evidence.

Moreover, leaving open the slim chance that a belief could be wrong is a critical part of thinking like a scientist--and truly being able to set aside past belief and implications of experience are things that in practice are hard to do.

Such limited open-mindedness is but the ONLY crack into which various rhetorical wedges can be set in an attempt to fracture what is otherwise a personal preponderance of disbelief (which is just what Dawkins suggests).

If you are 99.9 percent certain about something, yet you act as if the 0.1 _IS_ truer or more important than the 99.9% of what your experience and education have shaped you to believe, it would certainly show in your behavior. I really don't think Dawkin's has lived a life led by the 0.1% of what he is not confident about.

[AlbertCat]

19. I really don't think Dawkin's has lived a life led by the 0.1% of what he is not confident about.

Mmmmmmm... I liked your explanation.

It's like.... this could all be a computer simulation a la The Matrix. But who the hell cares and what difference does that make if it is so highly improbable? It's just not worth worrying about, and certainly not worth living your life about... or even wasting Sunday mornings over!.

[deadinsider]

22. Tell that to Descartes