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Ask Richard Dawkins

  
  

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Regrettable Juvenilia
21:42 / 13.08.07


My friends,

It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, "mad cow" disease, and many others, but I think a case can be made that FAITH is one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.

Allow me to give you an example, which you should not consider as an anecdote, as mere PERSONAL EXPERIENCE, since such subjective stories are as shifting and untrustworthy as the desert sands. Instead you should view it as a single EMPIRICAL DATUM, which when added to other DATA gathered in controlled conditions, can be subject to PEER REVIEW and then will pass into the hallowed annals of FACT.

The EXPERIMENT which gathered said datum progressed thus. The other day I was out walking with my young daughter, because empirical EVIDENCE suggests that a weekly constitutional can have many health benefits.

"Look Daddy", she said, "There's a polar bear in the clouds!"

"Nonsense you delusional throwback!" I shrieked. "It is simply a visible mass of condensed droplets, frozen crystals suspended in the atmosphere. The ice crystals, typically 0.01 mm in diameter, become visible only when surrounded by billions of other droplets or crystals they become visible as clouds. Dense deep clouds exhibit a high reflectance (70% to 95%) throughout the visible range of wavelengths: they thus appear white, at least from the top. It is only your weak-minded desire to see patterns where there are NONE that makes you claim to see a member of a species of charismatic megafauna! Why must you tar and feather my poor oppressed beloved SCIENCE? It is people like you who killed GALILEO."

I am here, Barbelith, to offer similar rational counsel to you all, in these quite literally Dark times. Your questions, please.
 
 
Mysterious Transfer Student
21:57 / 13.08.07
Dear Professor Dawkins,

Why is it that despite provoking the mortal envy of, ooh, a good 10% of the older demographic of this internet forum and others like it by being married to a Time Lady, you are so flippin' moody?

Also: Paul Karl Feyerabend, hot or not?
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
22:29 / 13.08.07


It is interesting - by which I mean, it is an insignificant statistical coincidence - that you should mention my wife, Trancougar, since we are currently having something of an exchange of views. The other morning, while serving me breakfast, the good woman remarked:

"I love you, Richard."

"Poppycock!" I exclaimed. "This so-called emotion 'love' is nothing more than an unusually high level of the chemical oxytocin in your brain, as studies have shown. I fear too many young people do not know this, forebearing to study SCIENCE at A-level, rather choosing to follow your example and playing dress-up and let's-pretend in make-believe flights of fancy!"

The result of this statement, logged by me, was that she depostied my scrambled eggs upon my lap.

ADDENDUM: I do not know why you are asking me about the body temperature levels of Paul Feyerabend. I am unable to VERIFY this information and it would be unwise to speculate. However, I can only imagine he becomes very hot while he is out indulging the Natives' belief that their so-called 'rain dance' will bring rain! No doubt like many people today he believes their opinions are "just as valid as everyone else's"! It is very TRENDY to think thus, but this POST-MODERN RELATIVISM brought down the Twin Towers on September 11th, 2001.
 
 
iamus
22:41 / 13.08.07
I would also posit, (if I may be so bold, sir) that the heated arguments around the Dawkins abode as to what constitutes SCIENCE FACT and SCIENCE FICTION would often leave you with a sour taste in the mouth (merely a figure of speech you understand, and not to be read as a literal excitation of the gustatory sense brought on by the external application of stimulii to the taste buds of the tounge's papille).

Mrs. Dawkin's previous life has been spent peddling frivolous narrative flights-of-fancy which bear no relation to physical laws of space and time and which have done nothing but harry and obfuscate the efforts of the noble exponents of a rigorous scientific attitude to the world. I would imagine that might cause many large and prolonged contractions of the corrugator supercilii muscles in the old Frons Dawkinus.

I take this to be the case, Prof. Dawkins?
 
 
iamus
22:47 / 13.08.07
Sorry old chap, I see that at least a good fraction of my theorem has already been addressed by your good self.

I am, indeed, a poor scientist.
 
 
Ex
07:24 / 14.08.07
Dear Mr Dawkins,

I'm not religious per se, but I do feel there's probably something, you know, a spirit or something. I think, if I was religious, I'd be a Buddhist (I got the gist of it from the Barefoot Doctor).

I agree with you that while religious institutions might be bad, people being nice to each other is good, so why are you so down on it?

Any thoughts?
 
 
Tryphena Absent
07:42 / 14.08.07
Dear Mr Dawkins,

Do you think that you're going to stick around long enough to see this thread through because last time one of you jumped up intellectuals offered advice they fucked off and DIED on us. The circumstantial evidence suggests that you're going to do the same.

Lots of love,

Ayn
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
09:04 / 14.08.07


Dear Anna/Ayn,

It is not just "circumstantial evidence" that suggests that I am going to die! It is a certain fact that I will die, as will you, as will we all – death is an empirically verified inevitability. To imagine otherwise is to subscribe to a most pernicious delusion which has been responsible for more human suffering than the invention of the gun. And when we die, there will no be afterlife, no reunion with our biological family and social circle – all activity in our brains will cease and therefore we will be no more. To doubt this is equivalent to believing that the Earth is flat.

I hope this knowledge is of some comfort to you. Hysterical minds allege that it is somehow a bleak worldview, yet what can be more reassuring than the unimpeachable and unerringly correct conclusions reached by that great institution, SCIENCE, whose advancements ever progress, so long as they are not checked by irrational folly?
 
 
Pingle!Pop
09:06 / 14.08.07
hiya richie!! (i can call u richie cant i?)

my names o0O_PretYsTaRkAt_O0o and i couldnt help think ur writing is liek this other guy who ussed to be hear and who his name wass lupvik or lumwik or sumthibg! neways im a wicca and i practis magyckk an i thought may be ur posesssed by his SPIRITS an hes taljing thru u?! that wud be awesom!!

pls let me now what u think of this!

~~~ blesed be! ~~~

[Apologies to Mordant/LTiY. Von Mises would not approve of the SOCIALIST THEFT of your rightful INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY.]
 
 
All Acting Regiment
13:46 / 14.08.07
What do you think, Dawkins, of the effect of various economic pressures, such as poverty, disease, lack of education, presence of violent Americans and Israelis, on Islamic politics and fundamentalism? Do they have a large effect, in fact are they the causus belli, as the filthy unscientific left-wing types would have us beleive, of much of the violence going on today, or, as proud upstanding reasonable chaps would say, is it just because they are barbarians who never had an enlightenment?
 
 
Jack Vincennes
14:27 / 14.08.07
Which do you consider to be the superior iced coffee product - AMT's Froffee or Starbucks' Frappucino? I would like the opinion of a man of science on what must be one of the thornier problems of the modern age.
 
 
grant
16:28 / 14.08.07
Dear Professor Dawkins,

If our beautiful and miraculous bodies were not designed by a loving and Almighty Creator, then could you please tell me how the blind, random mechanisms of evolution could create something as complex and lovely as the human eye?

Yours in precious faith,
Doctor James Dobson, Focus on the Family
 
 
Mysterious Transfer Student
16:41 / 14.08.07
An excellent and timely question!

Perhaps Doctor Dobson might like to team up, Blockbusters style, with our surprise guest panellist, the Right Reverend Graham Dow, Bishop of Carlisle, for a lively tag-team debate?

I particularly look forward to their no doubt stridently contrasting views on the beautifully harmonious and never-to-be-supplanted relationship between the penis and the vagina, as I have researched this area, using some very interesting control subjects, in a thoroughgoingly scientific manner.
 
 
Feverfew
17:22 / 14.08.07


I'm Johnathan Pryce. I could be your evil twin, but I'm not. So, I ask of thee, Dawkins; What's The Point Of It All, in your estimation?
 
 
The Strobe
18:31 / 14.08.07
Dr Dawkins -

a very wise man once told me that "Freedom is the right of all sentient beings."

Do you have evidence to prove this to be true - or is science telling us that freedom is not a right?
 
 
Quantum
21:27 / 14.08.07
Today, a colleague of mine was espousing the virtue of Dawkins and his clear-headed debunking of religion to me. Thank goodness mine eyes were opened in time.
 
 
EvskiG
21:35 / 14.08.07
Dear Dr Dawkins:

Since you're an evolutionary biologist, there were a few things I'm wondering:

Do you think classical Mendelian genetics are reducible to molecular genetics?

Do you believe species are logical individuals rather than classes?

Do you consider the higher taxonomic classifications somewhat artificial, especially in the choice of rank for taxa?

Thanking you in advance,

Ev G
 
 
iamus
21:42 / 14.08.07
Dear Prof Dawkins,

Do you think you may have bitten off more than you can chew here?
 
 
Mysterious Transfer Student
21:55 / 14.08.07
Yes, one at a time please, especially as I would like to retract my earlier questions and ask instead: Who would win in a fight between you and John Gray?
 
 
Alex's Grandma
23:44 / 14.08.07
Dr Dawkins;

Seeing as there is no God, and no heaven except the one we live in, here and now, what's to stop me hitting the streets of the charming Cotswolds village I've made my home in, and aggressively imposing the laws of physics on the random biological functions of anybody I felt was looking at me funny? The litterbugs, the Tarot readers, the people who 'get married' in 'a church'?

Assuming that, as a man of science, I'd always be one step ahead of the religion-blinded, so-called authorities?
 
 
Evil Scientist
05:22 / 15.08.07
Rich, you owe me a fiver, and don't give me that toss about money being a meme. I egged the Pope, you pay me. That's how it works.
 
 
Shiny: Well Over Thirty
07:00 / 15.08.07
Dear Richard

I was wondering what you might think of the work of that other crusader against faith Christopher Hitchens and his work 'God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything'. Is he a fine crusader and a comrade in arms in your battle against the awfulness that is faith, or would you characterize him as a johny-come-lately who is just trying to cash in on your act?
 
 
Janean Patience
10:20 / 15.08.07
Dear Richard,

Is the Watchmen movie going to be shit or what?
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
11:23 / 15.08.07


Hello again, all!

Ex, while you may not consider yourself religious, be assured that by placing more value in your own personal FEELINGS than in what science has taught us, you may as well be strumming a guitar with a fish symbol on it and a rainbow strap and singing in tongues at the front of a ‘community centre’ filled with babbling happy clappers.

Buddhism may be very ‘trendy’ nowawadays, but what the Beastie Boys don’t tell you (because it would be politically incorrect) is that the Dalai Llama is a tyrannical despot who prevented his own people from ever applying the technology of the wheel to anything other than PRAYER WHEELS, on the basis that if Tibet was ever to see carts, tanks and armoured cars would surely follow. What His so-called Holiness failed to realise is that it is religions such as Buddhism that have been responsible for all wars, and that the technology used to carry out those wars was merely the innocent child of science snatched from its maternal bosom and unwillingly yoked to the deist cause.

Pingling, I hardly see it as worthwhile to engage in discussion with one identifies as a "wiccan". I may as well try to hold a conversation with someone who believes they are a wolf even though they are clearly homo sapiens, or someone who despite being born a woman believes they are some non-existent "third" sex (yes, sex, I say! - for to say gender is laughable, as I have said before). Biology has taught us there are only two (2) sexes.

I will hurry on with providing answers to as many of these questions as my limited free time allows!

Your fellow seeker of truth,

Dawkins.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
12:14 / 15.08.07


My dear Allecto,

My views, which is to say the facts regarding this issue, are complicated - too complicated to outline here, but coming to a good bookshop near you if the selling of books about SCIENCE is not banned first!

Religion is, of course, the underlying source of the divisiveness in the Middle East. People may quibble about a few differences like the number of helicopters each side has, but the fact of the matter is that the Israelis and Palestinians are simply two squabbling children of equally prejudiced Abrahamic parents. It may not be politically correct to say that, but the truth is no respecter of political preferences.

As for the so-called "clash of cultures" and "war on terror", again it is religion that is to blame on both sides. On the American side there is George Bush, that swaggering fire and brimstone laypreacher from the Deep South. Ah always write in a good ol' boy accent when I tawk about him, y'all, 'cos he be not knowin' haww to tawk prope-er-leeeee! Meanwhile, like BF Skinner's pidgeons, repressed and frustrated young Islamists have been programmed by the meme-virus of the mind that is religion to believe that they will be able to take part in delicious reproductive intercourse of the kind in which I regularly engage, but in a fictional Martyrs' Paradise rather than a soundproofed room done up like the inside of the TARDIS.

To call either side in this so-called "clash of civilisations" a civilisation is therefore most inaccurate! I wish rather we would focus on the real clash of cultures, that is to the say the assult from all sides, from mad Mullah to raging Rabbi and from bombastic Baptist to dreary Dowser, upon SCIENCE.

I hope my insights help you with your studies. Remember to spend more time in the library than you do in the PUB!

Prof Dawkins.
 
 
Glenn Close But No Cigar
13:41 / 15.08.07
Dear Professor Dawkins,

What do you make of Barbelith's Temple?

Yours etc.
 
 
Mug Chum
14:15 / 15.08.07
Professor Dawkins,

First of all, I'd like to say to you that I'm one of your biggest fans and I tell everyone I know that they shouldn't be my friends if they're to keep on being simplistic barbaric neanderthals by not buying and reading your books (I'm still to hear from them, but I assumed that in fifteen months time they're still on their first book, so...). There's too much ignorance in this world and we must fight it by bringing to the sheep the light we scooped from above the thick darkening clouds of religious blindness and persecution (you sir bringing 90% of that light, of course).

I've recently read Christpher Hitchens' book "God is Not Great" (not only a unbelievably awesome and VERY bold title for times like these, it also says "How Religion Poisons Everything". He's great, you'd love the book. He talks about how religions causes wars and is about hate of the vagina etc), it gives me greater hope that we might be winning this thing! Now to the questions:

1- My great-grandfather (98) has been in World War II. He doesn't agree with me that his present erectile dysfunction (mentioned during an awkward lunch one day) is related to his post-traumatic syndrome due to the war (therefore, due to religion). Could you confirm that to him? It'd be great if it came with someone with authority on the subject.

2- Once you said about the outed reverend Ted Haggard: "people of his sexual persuasion should be free to do what they like without shame and without fear of exposure", -- unlike what those fanatics seem to believe, right? -- "I share neither his religious nor his sexual persuasion (that’s an understatement)". Were you trying to say with "understatement" that if gay is 10, then you're like minus a million? I feel that way sometimes.

3- Did you like the episode of South Park that featured you? I read you saying: "I'm buggered if I like being portrayed as a cartoon character buggering a bald transvestite." I didn't understand your comment. I didn't see it, but from what I heard it was great, you making that teacher see that she didn't need to hold those silly superstitions and making the entire world see the truth. But I wish to hear more from you on the subject since I love that show -- it's like what you do but in cartoon form (like, my religious grandma is always shocked and appalled by the truth they say, it's really subversive, corageous and bold) but really funny.

4- Should I kill my neighbour if he gives out solid signs that he might want to kill me "under the command of God"?

Love,

Thomas "Godkiller42" Fischer
(godkiller424269@gmail.com)
 
 
sleazenation
15:44 / 15.08.07
Professor Dawkins, what can you tell me about the economic theories of Ludwig von Mises? Have you ever corresponded with him? Do you know of his opinions toward notions of RELIGION and SCIENCE?
 
 
Sibelian 2.0
15:58 / 15.08.07
Dear Richard,

I admire your razor-like intellect, but, given your understandable distaste for the overwhelming silliness of Creationism, I wonder, have you noticed the irony of using your own sense of the aesthetic as a selection criterion in your "insect" generating software, featured rather heavily in "The Blind Watchmaker"?

yours etc.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
15:59 / 15.08.07
Dick,

Is that a wig?

Cheers.
 
 
Jack Fear
17:05 / 15.08.07
Richard, my son,

Why do you persecute Me?

What have I done to offend thee, besides love thee even unto death upon a Cross? Just wondering.

Yours in sorrow,
Jesus
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
18:05 / 15.08.07


So many questions! My friends, I am most gladdened by the enthusiasm for inquiry which my humble presence on this forum has prompted. Be assured that I will try and provide answers to all your questions in due time; however, I will do so in an order that follows my own precise methodology rather than the random chaotic order in which they, like everything else in the universe, have occurred.

Ev G, I will deal with your questions next, as they do of course relate to the subject for which I have the greatest passion!

1. In general, no.

2. On balance, yes, unless they have been rendered ILLOGICAL.

3. This question is too complicated to go into now, however see chapter 5 of my forthcoming book, The Heretic's Restitution (Dawkins), pp129-134 & 137.

Yours in science,

Richard.
 
 
Dead Megatron
20:44 / 15.08.07
Dead Mr Dawkins

Based on your extensive knowledge and understanding of the all-rational Science, specifically Darwinian Natural Selection, maybe you can answer one question that have been plaguing Mankind, and to which no supersticious Religion can ever provide a definitive answer:

Who would win in a fight, Pirates or Ninjas?
 
 
Alex's Grandma
21:12 / 15.08.07
Prof Dworkin;

He is the creation of Science, and not Religion - he's one of your lads. But are you going to let a (scientifically possible) man-machine like Dead Megatron make a blething fewl of ye, in public, in that sort of a way?
 
 
Saint Keggers
21:20 / 15.08.07
Dear Mr. D,

How will what you say affect my bank account?
 
  

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