Questions for creationists:
1. Given anoxic conditions, water, variety of chemicals, electrical discharges, complex organic molecules arriving from space, how did/does “god” STOP life emerging on planets all over the universe?
2. Since all species are variable, how does “god” STOP evolution happening?
3. Since populations of species constantly become isolated geographically, how does “god” STOP speciation occurring?
4. Given two extreme genetic bottlenecks for humans – Adam and Eve (the latter being cloned from the former!), then “Noah’s family” – how do you imagine the human race became so diverse, and abundant, in just a few hundred years?
5. If “all the animals” were each represented by a single pair on the Ark, how did they all become so abundant and diverse in a few hundred years
6. How did “Noah” collect animals from the then unknown continents of Australia, Americas, Asia, southern Africa, northern Europe?
7. Why did Noah have an inordinate fondness for beetles?
8. If the whole earth was covered with water of sufficient depth to cover mountains, how did any plant species survive?
9. If any plant species did somehow survive, how did they reform complex ecosystems all over the world in a few hundred years?
10. Given that all the other people of the world had different ideas how they came to exist, and that none of them “remember” the Flood, what makes you think … oh, forget it, I know your answer to that one.
And here’s a bonus question, if you finish the others early:
11. Name any two of the hundreds of thousands of biological scientists who have worked on aspects of evolution since Charles Darwin. To make it easier you can include geologists and physicists. Struggling? OK, I’ll give you a start, Alfred Russell Wallace. Over to you.
oh David… the Lord works in mysterious ways his wonders to perform! We don’t need to know the details, in fact even trying to know the details means you don’t have blind FAITH which every religious person must have. In heaven all answers will be revealed to interested parties, meanwhile it is our duty to sing His praises on Earth and make sure that gay people can’t get married, because then the whole house of cards will collapse.
An excellent parody Caroline, you almost had me there for a moment!
Not blind faith Caroline but, rather, “reasoned” faith. We all exercise faith in something. The “object” of our faith is the key issue.
David, STOP IT!
Are you not going blind to the damage you do to the faithful?
You put in peril their tolerance, patience, endurance, as they wait-out their “three score years and ten” until the rapture of departure.
You imperil them to mortification subsequent to mortification again – by confusion: After departure, they may become prone to getting pecking orders out of kilter, and perhaps address high ranking Seraphim as lower ranking Cherubim.
Alarmed Colin
I will try to be a better person in future Colin. Really I will.
I would assume the creationist answer is that God can do what he likes since some Bible verse says he’s all powerful. Creationists operate under a different set of assumptions.
Correct. Evolutionists operate under different assumptions from creationists. So, which assumptions are best confirmed or denied by the observable evidence? Does the evidence suggest abrupt changes or changes over billions of years and generations?
Q. 1 Silly question! Those conditions alone would not have created life. Life required an essence, a spark, and a designer we call God. Without his love, we would still have an anoxic soup of lifeless chemicals; complex perhaps, but not living. The spirit of God
animates all living things.
2. Species are variable, but not infinitely so. It is one thing to see black spots all over a sheep, but it isn’t a Dalmatian, no matter what the Dalmatian mother dog thinks. A dog is not a sheep, but that does not prevent animal breeders from producing many apparently very different looking sheep and dogs. But sheep may not be transformed into dogs by breeding, because they are different ‘kinds’ of animal made by God.
3. Constant isolation is just that. Any permanent variation at the ends of a range are just that; permanent. It is an unjustified leap to go from an observation of a cline in a distributed population to the assumption that this is a dynamic shift in gene frequency leading to automatic speciation. But even then such isolation mechanisms do not lead to the formation of new ‘kinds’ of animals. At the end of the cline, you might find a very different looking parrot, but it’s not a duck or a giraffe!
4. As many have indicated, the story of Adam and Eve is apocryphal, and allegorical, and never intended to be taken literally. At the very most, Adam may well be the progenitor of the Hebrew clan. After all, the bible itself describes the creation of mankind, both male and female first in Genesis Ch1 verse 27. Further, after the death of Abel, Cain went out to the land of Nod, where he knew his ‘wife’. Whence cometh this wife, if Adam, Eve and Cain were the only surviving humans on the planet?
5. As indicated in 2, above, the bible states that Noah took two of each ‘kind’ of animal: sheep, goats, horses, and possums, etc, and housed them in the ark. There is no direct evidence that Noah trapped every species of animal in the wild himself. He merely acted as God’s agent, to bring them into the Ark. Somehow evolutionists always assume that the preservation of the whole of the catalogue of life on Earth would have been accomplished by a single man without divine intervention. Why would God put the whole of his creation at risk? The ark clearly had some super-natural qualities, courtesy of the intervention of God. After the flood, wrought by the hand of God, not man-made climate change, the species were rapidly dispersed to all the lands where new varieties arose. As they arrived in the Holy Land, so they returned to their place of origin with God’s speed.
6 – 9 Addressed in 5 above.
10. There is every chance that people, other than those of The Book forgot their common history after they had passed through the tower of Babel.
11.Not sure of the point of this question. The number of Godless heathens, like the number of demons in Hell, is legion, what possible advantage could there be in naming them all?
Creationism often gets a bad wrap because it is mostly presented by non-biologists. Non-physicists often make a mess of quantum mechanics too.
Oh dear!
‘Oh dear’? Is that all you can manage, after I have subverted a lifetime of scientific rigour in order to present an amalgam of all the sanctimonious pontification and dogma that I have met in a life-time of debates with creationists of every stripe? I thought I’d laid on the grandiosity mixed with just enough seasoning of biblical and clumsy pseudo-scientific references to make it apparent that I wrote in jest.
Oh dear!
Well, never mind, I enjoyed myself.
Ah, John, well played sir. a perfect demonstration of Poe’s law that “a perfectly constructed parody of a [creationist] comment cannot be distinguished from the real thing without an indicator being provided”. No, I wonder if Eric could be trying for the same prize?
Will write a longer comment soon, picking up on a couple of interesting points.
Aha! I suspected as much, hence my comment about 1-3. I didn’t want to get into “parsing” verses but it is clear John hasn’t taken the time to fully investigate the biblical account of origins by his comments 4-11.
Pretty good responses on 1-3 John, certainly deserving of more than an “Oh dear.”
Wow, its difficult to even respond to such. No amount of evidence will change a religious person view on the origins of life. I do find it sad that even intelligent people can be duped the way you have. I’ve read th”good book” and a few other bibles. They are merely cook book like recipes for life. Some of the stuff written is good most of it is bs. If you go a little deeper into your studies you will discover that all of todays religions come from some old fringe nutter religion before the bible. Everyone of them! Good luck with your ignorance go with god.
If dog created everything who created dog?
Clearly this blog is not for dyslexics!
Well, if you will read on in the blog, you will see that this was a satirical (sarcastic?) comment by a fellow atheist.
Agree with EquationforLife.. in a universe constructed by someone who knows what they’re doing, it may be possible to arrange things so that life occurs on one world only (not that all committed creationists would require this stipulation).
We’re so far from having universe-building tech our speculations on how initial conditions might be established to provide for a single life-bearing world are wild guesses. Given infinite possible initial starting conditions there will be universes with no life, universes where it is prolific, and potentially universes inbetween.
What does seem probable is that if we do ever develop universe-building tech, we’ll probably use it, even just to experiment and advance our knowledge.
Yes, Equation pretty much hit the nail on the head, assumptions. Evolutionists have had to develop the “infinite universes” assumption to help erase any idea of a Creator. Of course the simple fact you can never observe another universe pretty much eliminates that assumption as anything that will ever bear the burden of being “scientific” or even reasonable. Yes, different assumptions.
..oh, and for the bonus question Stephen Jay Gould counts as at least two.. single-handedly demonstrated there’s no need for intelligent design without mentioning it specifically.
David, I did warn you—!
The Seraphim have called the Cherubim to earth, whereby your tower of Babel.will be outvoiced.
Spose one person’s Babel is another’s babble. But no decent, self-respecting omnipotent deity would consider this speculation unreasonable. Any god that doesn’t approve deserves challenge and even contempt, not worship.
If by Babel you mean “confusion” Colin, you have certainly described it well.
Guess I’ll pony up as the blog’s token “creationist.” 1, I don’t think God HAS stopped life from emerging on other planets. In light of your list, why hasn’t Apollo or Curiosity found some “evolved life?” 2. God HASN’T stopped life from evolving, clearly change within species has/does occured. 3. Neither has God stopped “speciation.” 4. Human diversity probably is a result of “speciation.” Not sure why you’re of the opinion ths all happened in just a few hundred years? 5. The abundance of animals seems pretty clear to me to simply be a result of prolific reproduction. 6. How about Pangea? 7. Not sure it was an “inordinate” fondness, could have simply been a fondness! Water does have enough surface tension to allow beetles to stay on top. 8. Many plants survive under water just fine. I’ve viewed trees floating in lakes with branches full of green leaves. 9. Not sure why you stay focused on the “few hundred years” concept? But, reforestation happens very quickly throughout the world; Israel, Indonesia, Lebanon, Mongolia, NE US for just a few examples. 10. Many cultures and societies around the world have very similar “creation” stories, choosing to turn from their creator in disobedience, flood (or similar cataclysmic event), and a period of waiting for the “way” to be restored in their relationship to their Creator. But of course you know this. And, finally, the “Bonus Question”, #12. Henry Osborn and the Nebraska Man and Michael Ruse and “life came on the back of crystals”; right.
Please allow me one question after answering yours. How can life come from non-life?
Multiverse theory hasn’t been developed to justify evolution: it began in cosmology as a way of accounting for loss of energy from universe via black holes.
Speculation centred on ruling out one or the other possibility (1. creation or 2. spontaneous emergence and evolution) doomed to failure if certainty is the desired outcome, in part for reasons Eric points out.. lack of data.
Again as Eric suggests, constructed or spontaneously evolving universe are two hypotheses, neither of which seems provable in an absolute way, at least not without tech millennia (or millions of years) ahead of what we have now.
Of course observation and traditional scientific method aren’t the only tools at our disposal: much science is speculation and thought experiment until capacity to make observations is developed (partly directed by speculation).
The shortcoming of such speculation is a lack of certainty – we can only surmise what is plausible.
There’s no need to rule out either creation or evolution, but people tend to plump for one or the other, rather than consider neither is impossible. Why? I suppose it’s because, on both sides, people have already decided what outcome they prefer, and subsequent argument is a justification of that case.
Evolution doesn’t disprove existence of gods – gods likely evolved too, if there’s anything that exists that fits the description.
A constructed universe isn’t a proof of an existence of any particular ‘deity’, since any civilisation or beings capable of making universes might plausibly do so.
Multiverse theory wasn’t developed to justify evolution, only to eliminate Intelligent Design.
A “constructed” universe pretty much does demand a “Constructor.” You walk down a beach and see a sand castle. What is a “reasonable” person’s first thought?
Multiverse theory has nothing to do with intelligent design – may have been co-opted in that debate, but not developed for it. Possible worlds theory, which is really the genesis in philosophy of the modern notion of the multiverse, is not exclusively atheist.. see Leibniz, Bruno, Plantinga.
Naturally if the universe is built then a civilisation or beings built it. Oxymoronic to argue for a constructed universe without anyone to construct it.
But considering – as one of the plausible alternatives – that the universe may be constructed, doesn’t say anything about the nature of the civilisation or entities who built it.
Doesn’t it say that the “constructor” must be larger (or greater in some capacity) than the “constructed?”
And re question how can life come from non-life, I don’t see why it can’t, but can’t say definitively that it can.
However, this shouldn’t be a point the debate hinges on, since it may be proven that life can come from non-life, but that doesn’t prove the universe wasn’t built by some very tech-capable entities.
Especially since plausible gods evolved just as its plausible we have.
It is a KEY question because if life can come from non-life, then a scientific LAW will have been violated for the first time in the history of science.
And, I disagree. This is the VERY point on which the debate must hinge. If life CAN come from non-life then the law is not a law and the debate is over.
Not sure what “plausible gods” you are referring to, the Creator of the universe and everything that is in it did not evolve. He is the same for all eternity past and future; outside the dimensions of time and space.
To me it’s not in keeping with an open mind to make presumptions about exactly what kind of sentient or sentients might have constructed the universe, although of course we can speculate. Could be all manner of ‘creators’, as to their nature it’s clearly beyond us to say. Presumably ANY sentient creatures that build universes are outside the temporal and spatial dimensions of that universe. So square one really regarding the nature of those beings and whether they evolved or not, or who created them and their universe.
Of course, if time isn’t linear and ubiquitous further options are opened up regarding capacity of sentients to construct their own universe later (this also leads in direction of Wheelerian ideas about subsequent effects of minds on initial conditions for a universe).
Not sure what law you imagine is violated by the gradual organisation of matter into more complex forms once elements have been generated in stars of varying temperature. But laws of physics come and go as our understanding develops.
In terms of things springing into existence without proper cause, ‘life from non-life’ followed by evolution makes more sense than the idea of a single unattached creator springing from nowhere, with no genesis whatsoever.
on further consideration.. there’s a problem somewhere down the line of life from non-life, whether it’s us or sentient/sentients that made our universe.
I agree, let’s not make presumptions. If we’re going to try and learn something about the Creator, why not go to the book that claims to be written by the Creator himself? Otherwise, isn’t it all just a matter of your opinion vs mine vs anyone else’s?
Creation indicates a Creator. Why go through all the mental gymnastics in order to try and erase any and all evidence of a Creator? Doesn’t make sense to me.
No credible claim has been made by any ‘creator’ as to having authored any text.
A long bow to draw to suddenly invoke a random ancient religious text, altered and translated variously over millennia, in part in the service of political power. Why should it have any bearing on the nature of beings that constructed the universe?
Why one text and not others? At least Indian religious texts demonstrate awareness of relativity, infinite viewpoints, epistemological limits.
Stepped across a line in subjecting one kind of text and knowledge to one kind of scrutiny, and then expecting a completely different set of criteria to be employed in evaluating a much less verifiable, less credible text.
There are far more credible treatises exploring ideas surrounding the single Christian deity, including works by Anselm, Augustine. The Cartesian proof of God is at least a respectable logical argument, as are those of Leibniz. Modern theology goes far further than the bible, in a much more rigorous way. Plantinga, for example, considers interesting questions about whether a solitary deity would be a deity of one universe of of all possible universes.
From my point of view you might as well have suggested that instead of speculating in a considered way based on a range of sources, we should read Alice in Wonderland as containing all of the answers, and look no further than that.
Seems passing strange, too, that it’s you insisting that there’s a ‘Law’ about life from non-life, not anyone else. And again, whether this universe was constructed or not is not the same question as whether life can come from non-life, since the universe may have been constructed regardless.
I disagree, Scripture DOES declare to be “inspired by God”; literally God breathed. Since it does come from the Creator of the universe, and the life within it, it has great bearing on the nature of the Creator.
Why one text & not others? Good question! Why would you prefer Stephen Hawking’s thoughts about physics if they contradicted my own? You have enough intelligence to recognize he knows more “truth” about physics than I do. So, the same with “Why one text?” Even though there have been a few translations (about 5 from the 3rd century to the KJV), the Bible has stood the test of archaeology and history as well as a phenomenal number of supporting documents. Far more than any other ancient text. It is, in fact more credible and more verifiable.
Neither Anselm nor Augustine have anywhere near the same number of supporting texts. But, even if they did, all the people you mentioned are just that, people. Again, the Bible claims to be the Word of God.
Of course you’re being facetious about Alice in Wonderland but why don’t we accept it as “truth?” First, it was meant as satire, unlike Scripture. Second, there are no guidelines for life, unlike Scripture. And, probably most importantly, no prescription for having a relationship with the Creator.
I imagine the main reason there is no other comment about the Law of Biogenesis is because it pretty much decimates any ideas of life coming from non-life. If life did come from “rocks”, then that Law would be the first scientific law to be proven invalid. Just a thought.
Back to the bonus question, #11, we can’t forget Richard Dawkins. How about his comment about attributing the “appearance of design” to actual design? Dawkins himself could see the appearance of design. What if it was actually more than an “appearance” of design and there is actually design? When surmising, one can surmise one way equally as well as the other. At least it “appears” that way.
Richard Dawkins isn’t really a credible source on these matters is he?
IMO, no. But, he does meet David’s qualifications given in the “bonus question” segment.
David specifically mentioned ‘scientists’, hard to make a ruling there re Dawkins. More a Missionary.
I agree, but the man is an extremely qualified scientist; at least from a degree standpoint.
Dawkins isn’t qualified to speak to theological or metaphysical or philosophical questions: he clearly hasn’t done the reading. He attacks a ‘straw religion’, doing himself a disservice and offering insult to billions in the process.
Yes, but we’re not discussing religion or metaphysics here (at least not intentionally). We’re discussing a law that says life does not come from non-life and the violation of that law to support evolution as an explanation for the beginning of life.
Oh, we musn’t forget Francis Crick, ‘Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed but rather evolved’, either. Whatever you might discover, “design” is never to be considered. Please constantly keep this in mind!
Talk about BLIND faith!
Distressing to find that sort of misplaced certainty or dogma wherever it appears. Obviously conclusions one way or the other should not direct research and observation. Stephen Jay Gould more credible because not determined to disprove something, just gave good account of eg evolution of the eye.
Yes, at least Gould kept an open mind and was tolerant of ideas that went contrary to the “party line.”
Oh, dear.
You and David huh?
I’ve been reading religious blogs all day and I’ve had about an assful of it.
“Religion” aside, don’t you find truth to be important in your life?
I find it to be very important.
Then you should seriously consider some of the responses to David’s comments as originally posted because he does not want to consider truth when it comes to origins.
I haven’t read all the comments.
Gregor Mendel, oh fair Friar, how cruel it is that we, six generations since, have been deprived your genes; yet still be burdened with proliferation of dissent
Nice satire from Colin – giving him the benefit of the doubt that that’s what it is.
Yes, good ol’ Gregor. That Christian monk who would have been posting in opposition to David’s points because he was a believer in creation and a Creator.
Just a few notes on some matters raised.
1. My “few hundred years” dating was to deliberately make clear the time scales we are talking about here. If the world is only “6000 years old” (an estimate, leaving all else aside, of course based on nonsense acceptance of individual ages, and interpreted historical sequences in the bible), then presumably “Noah’s Flood” occurred, what, 5000, 4000 years ago? By 5000 years ago civilisations were getting well established in the Middle East (a fact that in itself of course makes the Flood story nonsense) and writing had been invented. From then on we are well into “history” as distinct from prehistory. And in that history (as well as archaeology, and paintings on caves and rocks), we see the modern world. So clearly it took only a few hundred years after the whole world was flooded to greater than the depth of Mt Ararat (5000 metres – in biblical times this would have been the highest mountain known, but of course it is dwarfed by the Himalayan mountains and many others around the world unknown to whoever wrote Genesis. The logic of the story of the dove finding dry land is that all mountains, up to and including Mt Everest, must have been covered as well to a depth of over 9000 metres) for animals and plants to re-establish themselves in modern ecosystems all over the world.
2. Plants can survive water emersion? Sure, probably. But most are killed by a flood of a few days duration and a metre or two in depth. In fact most are readily killed merely by waterlogged ground (because oxygen not available to the roots). I’m not sure what act of logic suggests to anyone that being covered in 9km of water for a year doesn’t kill every plant on the planet.
3. I don’t know why Eric is so hung up on this life/non-life distinction. Well, I do really I suppose. But it is based on a curiously narrow view of what “life” is. I guess Eric sees vertebrate animals, and possibly the more obvious invertebrates, and says to himself – they couldn’t come from inanimate matter. But whoever (apart from the bible making humans out of the clay) suggested they could? Even if you just look at present day plants and animals, the product of billions of years of evolution we have a spectrum from more complex organisms such as flowering plants, snakes, hummingbirds, snails, bees, tree frogs, sheep, cheetahs, whales and great apes, right down to simple single celled organisms like amoebae and algae and yeast and bacteria and stromatolites, and even further to organisms like viruses and phages which are in that grey area between living and non-living. Several billion years ago all the original organisms would have been in that grey area. Life is just a bunch of chemicals which can maintain its condition and reproduce. It can also disappear in a heartbeat. There is certainly no “law” about life of the kind Eric seems to imagine. And I wonder what he will say if the Curiosity finds life on Mars, either ancient or current?
4. “Name another scientist studying evolution” was of course one of those rhetorical whatsies. Read any creationist nonsense and you’ll discover a belief that ‘evolution” was just an invention of one man, Darwin, shaking his fist at “god” and they’d rather believe the bible than ‘Darwinism” (always a giveaway term for this belief). The concept that, starting with Alfred Russell Wallace, who dead-heated with Darwin to make the same discovery about natural selection and geographic isolation, there have been literally, tens, hundreds of thousands of other biological scientists, not to mention geologists, palaeontologists, physicists, biogeographers, physiologists, geneticists and so on, who have all confirmed the reality of evolution and made contributions to its refinement. Not one has ever discovered anything that contradicts the combination of variation, natural selection, and geographic isolation, which explains the diversity of life on Earth.
Seeing Richard Dawkins mentioned leads me to the second point I was making here. Professor Dawkins does have extensive credentials in researching and teaching and popularising evolutionary studies (he can in fact be described in exactly the same way as the late great Stephen Jay Gould). So he is eminently qualified to discuss evolution. He is also a well-known atheist, and of course writes about and talks about that. I have no idea why the latter should disqualify him from doing the former, but there you go. However he is always used as a kind of whipping boy in the same way as Al Gore in climate science. As if again, here is just one man thumbing his nose at god, or big oil, and can be ignored or vilified, Both Dawkins and Gore are merely people trying to explain science to the public, and they do so by digesting the work of hundreds of thousands of scientists across both fields of study. You are not shaking your fist at Dawkins or Gore you are shaking your fist at Science as a whole.
Note 1 – Eric was being tongue in cheek, and cheeky, with his reference to “Nebraska Man” (a misidentification of a single pig tooth as “human” ninety years ago, quickly corrected) and Michael Ruse (a man, with qualifications in philosophy of science, not evolution, whose major interest is “reconciling” christianity and science, and jealously attacking the “new atheists” like Dawkins, Dennett, Myers).
Note 2 – The Origin of the title of this post can be revealed now, of relevance to this thread. It is of course Charles Robert Darwin “we can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay whole systems of universes, to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act”.
1. Of course, there are some Christians who do subscribe to a young earth dating system (10K yrs) but certainly not all. And, there is room for disagreement. Many serious Christian scientists believe the earth is much older. If it is much older, we don’t know for sure what the surface of the earth looked like during the flood and it’s difficult to determine the depth of water.
2. The plants that live underwater certainly would not have been destroyed by a flood and neither would the floating seeds or branches of other plant life (coconuts float for extended periods of time). The waters did begin retreating about 3-4 months into the flood. Swampland that has been immersed with water for decades/centuries will produce living growing plants when drained.
3. My hang up with life coming from non-life is that there is a law that states that life does not come from non-life. No, I don’t hold to a “narrow view” of life. Amoebae don’t come from inorganic chemicals and lightning; they come from amoebae. Paramecium don’t come from stromatolites, bacteria or viruses, they come from paramecium. Life is not “just a bunch of chemicals.” If it were, we certainly would not have had the difficulty we’ve had duplicating/replicating that most basic form of chemical reaction. Life comes from life and the law that states that fact is attributed to Pasteur and it has not been violated or disproven.
4. Of course other scientists believe in evolution. It would be foolish to state otherwise or that Darwin was the sole progenitor of that theory. But, there are many qualified scientists in the same fields of disciplines you’ve mentioned that believe in an eternal, living, and creating God. But, as in any other sampling of population, most people do not.
Dawkins probably gets singled out because he is certainly one of the more rabid “anti-God” voices in science. I personally would never compare Dawkins with Gore in any capacity! Dawkins is a VERY intelligent man. Gore…, well let’s just say Gore is the consummate politician and leave it at that.
IMO, the reason Darwin made the “…smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act” comment was because he realized (unlike many evolutionary apologists of today) that “life” required life (a creator) to exist.
Dawkins is one voice, not a gestalt of scientific opinion, and it’s reasonable to critique that voice, especially relative to more measured voices such as that of Gould (who brilliantly refutes creationism deeply in his essay on Deep Time and the works of Hutton). Interesting comparison with Gore, who really is just a figurehead for the climate change case with no specialist knowledge at all.
. In terms of qualifications, Dawkins is very well versed in one side or aspect of arguments regarding existence of deities, and much less well versed in other aspects. He seems to be careful not to debate theologians of substance who might expose gaps in his knowledge, or take the debate onto ground he is not so comfortable with. In essence, his arguments are very good for refuting false certainty and dogma associated with religious perspectives. But he is limited in his ability to discuss what is possible, for which speculation beyond scientific observation is required.
Dawkins is also no expert in rhetoric, communication, semiotics, or semantics, which is evident in the way he shapes his missives about religion and atheism. He often argues against a narrow definition of ‘god’ in a fairly dogmatic way, which is ironic given the case he is making.
Love your work, David. Thank you. As my dear old Dad used to say, “If there were more like you, there’d be less of the other sort.” Now, I would consider that a blessing of the best kind. Keep up the good work.
All religion is about control of the masses. Need proof look no further than politics on the far right. A Bush quote: god told me to invade Iraq. The entire halfwitted bible belt believed him. I dispose religion and all of its sexism and fearmongering. By the way Virgin mary was a whore who needed to lie about having sex cause the town she lived in was run by men who would have beheaded her for sex outside of wedlock
I’m assuming you have some documentation to support your claim that Mary was a whore? Or is this simply a mysoginistic rant about your feelings about women?
You’re all fuckin nits
Glad you finally posted something intelligent.