I thought some of you might be interested. I’m not a fan of Dawkins, but I think he ought to be able to talk about his book.
In case you haven’t heard the latest from the authoritarian and illiberal left. As I’ve said before, there are two kinds of liberals. The ones who are truly liberal in the best sense of the word. Those people still believe in freedom, and we need them. And then there’s this kind.
Couple this with an article I posted in another forum…
…and it’s clear we live in frightening times.
"KPFA cancelled a book event with Richard Dawkins when members of our community brought our attention to Dawkins’ abusive speech against Muslims. The speech we reviewed included assertions during his current book tour that Islam is the “most evil” of world religions, Twitter posts denigrating Muslim scholars as non-scholars and other tweets.
We serve a broad and diverse community, including many Muslims living under threat of persecution and violence in the current political context. Islamophobic rhetoric stokes that threat. While Mr. Dawkins has every right to express his views, KPFA has every right not to sponsor and profit from an event spreading them. That is what we’ve done.
KPFA’s events organizers notified Mr. Dawkins’ publicist at Random House when we first started considering cancellation of his event, and again once we made the final decision to do so, which was before notice was sent out to ticket holders.
We have since extended an offer to Mr. Dawkins to discuss this matter on KPFA’s airwaves, a forum where his assertions can be engaged and challenged, but KPFA will have no financial stake in promoting them. He has not yet responded." [emphasis mine]
As an aside: ‘De-platformed’?
Thanks, Bolt. I hadn’t seen that. Authoritarians on both sides.
Well, KPFA seems to be getting soundly raked over by people on both the left and the right, which makes me very happy. If they’ve changed their stance on Dawkins, that’s fantastic.
BTW, I hadn’t heard the term de-platformed before. I’m not sure why they didn’t say something like “rescinded the invitation” or “uninvited” to speak.
The Michael Nugent response gets to some of the hypocrisy of the people making the decision. IMO, they haven’t left themselves much of a moral high ground, or any kind of consistency in terms of their care and concern for a “broad and diverse community.”
The 20th century was by far the most secular in human history. The murders and atrocities committed during this century far exceed the entirety of history combined. How should we judge the rule of the Godless objectively in history? Is this reletivism and scientistic philosophy better in any way? Sounds shitty to me.
It has nothing to do with the overall population explosion and military capabilities, right? Not to even mention that the world is still by-and-large quite religious indeed, and the countries involved with most of the killing are the most religious.
How exactly were we in the “rule of the Godless” in the 20th century?
And if there were a God why did he let all that happen?
In the 20th Century we’re talking Mao’s China, Stalin’s Russia, and Hitler’s Germany. None of that was motivated by religion. If you’re thinking of Jewish genocide, Hitler wasn’t motivated by his own religion.
I thought this was interesting. The search for meaning and answers to the existential questions. The religious mind lives on.
Those people would be damned themselves according to the actual teachings of their faith. Unfortunately people justify anything based on religion so in reality there are probably thousands of different differences of opinion in all religions, Catholicism/protestant/lutheran in Christianity, Shia/Sunni in Islam and so on and so forth.
God is all good but if you don’t worship him you will be tortured in a lake of fire for all eternity.
Now does that sound like someone who wouldn’t enjoy a few good World Wars? He (or she) gets to kick back while we drop a massive bomb incinerating women and children knowing he could do something but nah. Feet up during the final solution probably thinking you know I could stop this but nah.
He does need money though according to George Carlin. Put your bills in that plate for him
Replying to an almost 2 month old post? eh, whatever…
You’re implying that all murders and atrocities are committed only by atheists. Which is false. Just look at ISIS and the atrocities they commit in the name of religion.
No one has ever committed murder in the name of atheism. Regardless, I’m not saying people should be atheist. Religion can be a good thing, it can also be a negative one. This is the problem with talking on forums, you probably haven’t read my other posts in this thread.
For me to type any further, would only be repeating myself already several times on this topic.
Evolv, Just letting you know that I enjoyed the short Sam Harris clip. Thanks for putting that up. I’ve seen his name, but have never watched any of his lectures or debates. That was a thoughtful clip. Thanks.
I’ve said this before, maybe in other religion threads, but many religious people have a much more universal or encompassing vision of what faith is, than the idea he’s calling “devout” that all non-believers are going to burn in hell or something like that. Some of us would describe ourselves as “devout” but do not view people not of our faith, or people who are not religious, in that way, so it becomes a bit of a strawman for me.
You’re welcome, thanks for the message 
I didn’t say that. I said that the most secular century in World history was by far the bloodiest and most cruel.
And I am well aware of what Sam Harris thinks, I am a member of his site, to the point of being allowed access to his AMA page, which most people are not privy to.
I disagree with Sam, he’s a very conflicted guy. He espouses mostly Christian values yet despises it’s source. He believes in objective morality, but has no grounding for it. His arguments are circular. He believes in objective morality, yet disagrees with the notion of free will.
Problem with Sam is that while being an information junky, he has never bothered to research the topic he considers the greatest scourge of mankind, Theology; and he knows nothing about it. He doesn’t have to like it, but being a public figure who talks about it as much as he does, he should do more than give it a cursory look. Granted his main nemesis is Islam, still a deeper understanding of that which he criticizes and yet borrows from, he should know better.
The debate between Sam Harris and William Lane Craig exposed Sam’s weakness in his knowledge. That basically what Sam thinks we think is bullshit. And it is. We aren’t afraid of God in the sense of using religion as some sort of “fire insurance”. But rather there is a deep theological history and evidence not even looked at or acknowledge by many nonbelievers, who are actually interested in religion. I am not talking about cherry picked history or scripture that’s on every atheist website as a criticism, but a fair and honest look.
I respect his intelligence, but he has never said anything that hardly has ever swayed me. He’s never hit a nerve because he doesn’t know the topic. It may look ‘silly’ to him, but he is a strong adherent to Christian values and espouses Christian values and yet denies it’s source.
Nevertheless, I know Sam’s POV quite well. I especially take issue with his belief in determinism and contrarily his commitment to morality is an oxymoron of the highest order. It violates the Law of Non-contradiction like little else.
But he also talks about other topics that are very interesting and has good guests on his podcasts.
Watch his debate with William Lane Craig. It’s a civil debate for the most part, but it goes to the core of this discussion and WLC had intellectual weaponry to tear down all of Dr. Harris’s arguments. It’s about 2 hours long, but it’s worth it.
In it, I must say Sam Harris pays WLC the highest compliment I have ever heard. Esstially, “…he’s the only person that put’s the fear of God into my fellow atheists…” It was a cute joke but a high compliment as well.
I have met WLC many times and he is as smart as he sounds and knows more about Christian Apologetic’s and philosophy than currently anybody else I know save for Ravi Zacharias.
This should be the full debate. Having just looked on YouTube it looks like a bunch of clowns hacked it up.
This is a skewed view of history.
Stalin, Mao, Pot, Castro, etc. were the most religious? Ironic since they were mostly responsible for most of the deaths. Numbers which compared to the rest of history exceed the rest of history in number.
I suspect you don’t like being told what to do, but you want God to not let people do bad things to each other? You cannot have it both ways.
hoy, thought id join this thread, but twas too many posts here to read them all. now, this question i have might thusly already been answered. the question is:
given the same genetic disposition and age, i.e. two twins, one atheist and one believer in something. wich one will build the most muscle in this life?
Again, its more so the modern age that has to do with the numbers. When there are thousands of people on the Earth its hard to kill Millions of them. Add in guns and modern weapons and its no contest.
And given that atheism is really nothing (in the same way that a lack of beliefs in the tooth fairy is), there is no way to kill someone in the name of atheism. The bible and religious texts are littered with God commanding killing on the other hand.
And regardless if the leaders themselves are atheist, the people generally are and always have been, and they are generally those ones doing the killing.
In any event, I don’t find these types of arguments compelling. This is very much a “my dad can beat up your dad” type of situation, with no meaningful conclusion even if it could be known definitively whether atheists or religious people have killed more.
It’s not that I want God to “not let” people do bad things to each other, its a matter of his abilities and inclinations. I didnt say “God should do something”, I asked why he doesnt. We are talking about a God who is generally believed to be all powerful, all knowing, and all loving.
And this God is willing to punish people with eternal damnation if they don’t follow his rules, right? So obviously he doesn’t like people doing certain things and is willing to punish them for it. They are laid out explicity in his book apparently… Why wait until we are dead to render the punishment? Or better yet, why not just take the remove the idea from your creations heads in the first place?
If I walked in on a pedophile raping a child I would stop the act, not wait for the person to die to render punishment (Oh wait, he wont be punished because he can just accept Jesus and all is forgiven)
Of course none of this proves God doesnt exist, which is an unnecessary and impossible thing to do in the first place, but it should give one pause as to why they choose to willingly subject themselves to a life of servitude in His name.