Maybe the pivotal moment came when Steven Weinberg, a Nobel laureate in physics, warned that “the world needs to wake up from its long nightmare of religious belief,” or when a Nobelist in chemistry, Sir Harold Kroto, called for the John Templeton Foundation to give its next $1.5 million prize for “progress in spiritual discoveries” to an atheist — Richard Dawkins, the Oxford evolutionary biologist whose book “The God Delusion” is a national best-seller.
‘GOD DELUSION’ The author Richard Dawkins, with a book, says people are brainwashed to respect religion.
Or perhaps the turning point occurred at a more solemn moment, when Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City and an adviser to the Bush administration on space exploration, hushed the audience with heartbreaking photographs of newborns misshapen by birth defects — testimony, he suggested, that blind nature, not an intelligent overseer, is in control.
Somewhere along the way, a forum this month at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., which might have been one more polite dialogue between science and religion, began to resemble the founding convention for a political party built on a single plank: in a world dangerously charged with ideology, science needs to take on an evangelical role, vying with religion as teller of the greatest story ever told.
Looks like those who would have been stoned to death only a few 100 years ago are now on the offensive, trying to crush the believers. Obviously that can end in tears, as most people have deeply rooted belief and faith in something can't be proven nor disproven.
Also, it seems that within the last month or so I've seen TONS of news and pop media talking about Dawkins, even with a 2 parter southpark. Anyone else find this odd?
science damnit! the world is changing... nothing wrong with either side of the fence in my opinion.. i feel they are seperate... and if there is a god... then science and mathematics are the keys given to understanding the universe around us... if there isn't a god... thank goodness we have science and mathematics to understand the world.. either way... neither group should throw stones at one another and try to force ideals onto people... time will prove who is right and who is wrong.. if people take solace from beliefs that may or may not be superstition, that is fine... if people know so much that they are above it and that makes them happy.. thats also fine.. for a bunch of nobel laureates... they sure sound like catholics in the middle ages
Sortep wrote:science damnit! the world is changing... nothing wrong with either side of the fence in my opinion.. i feel they are seperate... and if there is a god... then science and mathematics are the keys given to understanding the universe around us... if there isn't a god... thank goodness we have science and mathematics to understand the world.. either way... neither group should throw stones at one another and try to force ideals onto people... time will prove who is right and who is wrong.. if people take solace from beliefs that may or may not be superstition, that is fine... if people know so much that they are above it and that makes them happy.. thats also fine.. for a bunch of nobel laureates... they sure sound like catholics in the middle ages
Everyone has a right to his own religion. The problem is created when one try's to impose his beliefs on others.. for example the so called theory of intelligent design. I am not sure, but i think several states in the USA are now teaching their children ID instead of evolution.. i think this is crazy..
Also personally i think religion is one of the biggest reasons for warfare on the planet.. i mean ok i know the reason for war is money but but people who really fight the wars are believers or fanatics.. religion was the reason for war in my own country so i am not guessing.. it's all about ignorance.. people need to be educated and informed, only then they should choose what to believe..
After enduring two days of talks in which the Templeton Foundation came under the gun as smudging the line between science and faith, Charles L. Harper Jr., its senior vice president, lashed back, denouncing what he called “pop conflict books” like Dr. Dawkins’s “God Delusion,” as “commercialized ideological scientism” — promoting for profit the philosophy that science has a monopoly on truth.
Last I recalled, it was holy books that claimed their god was the one true creator, thus making their dogma infallible.
Also, it seems that within the last month or so I've seen TONS of news and pop media talking about Dawkins, even with a 2 parter southpark. Anyone else find this odd?
Not practically. Richard Dawkins along with Sam Harris are some of the few leading atheist so it's not all that uncommon to see them in several news medias, especially when we live in a time where it's considered 'taboo' to criticize one's beliefs.
Personally, I don't see it just as Religion vs Science. Religious groups themselves are massacring fellow believers senselessly. Cases like the Sunni-Shi’a conflict or North/South Ireland accomplish nothing. On the other hand, we also see Christian and Islamic tension thanks to the pope (and Bible) and doctrines of martyrdom and jihad in the Qur’an.
Would you murder for your belief? Apparently the American colonists thought it was worthy enough to kill for the sake of taxes and eventual sovereignty.
People kill for all sorts of reasons, faith just happens to be a sticky point due to some hypocritical lines such as "Thou salt not kill". Seriously, what is so hard about that? If you believe in a Christian god and you kill, then you are a hypocrite. It is as _simple_ as that.
With all that being said, people are touchy about what is said of their 'heart felt' beliefs and will obviously get upset. So we typically don't talk about their beliefs in front of them, nor call people on them and the killings continue.
Now we have two atheists that don't have any problem with getting to the point of the matter and dispensing with the touchy feeling approach to handling faith.
