Richard Dawkins - The Greatest Show On Earth

Richard Dawkins new book The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution is available to pre-order from amazon now and is due to be released Sept 29th.

The book was initially going to be titled "just a theory?", which is a good title. But i think "the greatest show on earth" is better and really does sum up how fascinating evolution is.

So go and pre-order your copy of The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution now!

Evolutionary Origin Of Religion

Professor Richard Dawkins takes a question from the audience regarding the evolutionary origin of religion and how religion could have been beneficial, Evolutionary speaking.

His answer is an interesting one and uses the moth as an example of another way detrimental actions could result as a byproduct of otherwise beneficial behavior . He says that like how the moth flies into candle flames as a byproduct of it's evolution produced guidance system, religion in humans could also be a byproduct of an otherwise beneficial trait, Like trusting and believing what we are told as children by grownups. There is no evolutionary benefit to moths flying into flames and killing themselves, Just like there is no evolutionary benefit to believing in invisible dictators, But there is an evolutionary benefit to the programing that produces those particular behaviours.

Richard Dawkins Reads Hate Mail From Loving Christians

Professor Dawkins reads us some of the hate mail he receives from loving christians, Christians who not only express vile vitriol, But also the inability to grasp the concept of punctuation.

It begs the question, How would jesus want Dawkins to die? This is just another example of what religion has become today. To the religious now it's more about defending their beliefs with hatred, violence and vitriol than it is about actually following the teachings of their religion. Christians don't give a shit about jesus, They only care about their own precious feelings and their supposed right to go through life without having their beliefs questioned.

Richard Dawkins Funeral On Friday

I got an email earlier notifying me that Richard Dawkins funeral will be held this friday. The trouble is, Richard Dawkins isn't dead and it seems to be nothing more than a vindictive swing at Atheism and a traditional attempt to convert through fear.

Richard Dawkins memorial service will be held on Friday Febuary 1, 2008. Pilgrim Baptist Church will be officating the funeral service.

Richard Dawkins has proven to be one of the most wicked human beings to ever walk the earth.

Preachingyourfuneral.com plans to have a mock funeral service for Mr. Dawkins On Friday.

Any requests for an interview should be sent to comment@preachingyourfuneral.com

Wow, One of the most wicked human beings to ever walk the earth? I take it that is based entirely on the fact that he doesn't believe your lies.

It's Time To Drop The Rational Response Squad

For some time now the rational response squad have been fairly big players in the Atheist Movement and have received a lot of attention. They have "debated" (for want of a better word) Ray Comfort and kirk Cameron ^[1], The crocoduck and gods banana guys. And were the instigators of the now famous "blasphemy challenge".

But does the Atheist movement need people like them? In this Atheists opinion, No, It doesn't. Not only do we not need them but i feel they are damaging to the Atheist movement.

Their goals don't seem to be the eradication of religion, Or even the separation of church and state. Their goal seems to be nothing more than getting kicks out of abusing the religious and being attention whores.

Their target audience doesn't seem to be intelligent people capable of making or understanding lucid logical arguments, Instead they cater for teenage boys who like looking at Kelly's large breasts ^[2].

Now, In their latest attempt to fan the flames of their own ego and create even more attention and drama for themselves they have reportedly made the claim that Richard Dawkins is having extra-marital-activities while in a drunken conference call with Reed over at unorthodox Atheism (great blog, check it out). The claim that Professor Dawkins is having an affair is patently untrue and not supported by any evidence, But even if it were true, What has it got to do with the RRS?

It's time to drop these clowns. The atheist movement isn't a Yahoo chat room, It doesn't need drama fabricated by attention hungry children at the expense of the very person responsible for their fame in the first place.

Way to show your gratitude and respect, Assholes.

Put Your Questions To Richard Dawkins

If you have any questions you would like to put to professor Richard Dawkins now is your chance.

Richard Dawkins is appearing on BBC's "have your say" where he will be answering a selection of questions submitted to the BBC website.

If you have any questions submit them here

You Know Atheists Are Winning When....

You know Atheists are winning when writers like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens have parasitic fleas cashing in on their success.

After the success of Atheist books the religious have been quick to bring out their own books. But unlike Atheists books the religious are left, Like usual, Presenting no evidence for their own position (other than regurgitated fallacies that have been repeatedly kicked to death) and only seek to refute the opposing position, Much like they do with evolution.

This can mean one of two things.
Either Atheist books are seen as a significant threat and worthy of rebuttal or the anti-atheist authors are simply trying to make some money on the back of someone elses work.

Richard Dawkins May Start Video Production Company

The Richard Dawkins Foundation is looking in to the idea of starting a video production company to videotape lectures, speeches, presentations, interviews and maybe documentary's on the subject of Atheism.

This project is still in the initial stages and to keep costs to a minimum they are looking for volunteers from around the world who have the necessary equipment and skills to video events in high quality.

So if you have (Or know someone with) the necessary equipment and skills, If you know of useful contacts, if you have stock footage they could use in edits or if you are able to create logos or designs head over to the Richard Dawkins forum and announce your willingness to lend a hand. they are looking for people from all over the world.

Richard Dawkins May Write Book For Children

Professor Richard Dawkins, In response to a question at AAI 07, Said that he is contemplating the idea of writing a book for children.

Richard Dawkins was at AAI 07 this year and after his very interesting talk he gave some time to answering some questions from the audience.

During the question and answer session someone from the audience asked; ".. For your next books are you going to go back to science and evolution or are you going to stay with the topic of religion and god?"

Richard Dawkins answered; "I have just finished editing a book of good science writing for oxford university press, I didn't write that i edited it, So that is a partial answer to your question. I was thinking i could try my hand at a children's book, I don't know whether that would work, I haven't started it yet, But i thought i might try to do a children's book about how to think for yourself and how to ask questions about interesting topics and how you might go about answering them, Which might be subversive to religion but i don't think would be explicit about that".

This would be a great step by Richard and something I'm sure he would do very well. He has always impressed me with his ability to explain fairly complicated things in a way that is easy to understand.

It's also good that it won't be a book denouncing religion and god, Because like Richard said at AAI, Teaching a child to be Atheist is as bad as teaching them to be religions. But teaching them to be inquisitive, logical and encouraging them to ask questions is something that even the most fundamental christian would have a hard time arguing against, Though no doubt they would try.

Questions By RichardDawkins.Net

There were a series of interesting questions posed on the Richard Dawkins blog over the last couple of days. These are some of the more philosophical questions asked by the religious in an attempt to prove their god, Or at least prove that not all things are provable.

While i think these kinds of questions are facile in nature it's a good idea to have an answer ready, Because they will be asked and as you know, Any question that doesn't have an answer is seen as "evidence" of god by religious folks.

Anyway, I'll post some of the questions here along with my answers and i would be interested in hearing what answers you guys would give to these questions.

Q: You can't prove you love someone, So don't expect proof of god!
A: No i can't prove that i love someone because love is a feeling, A feeling is a neurological impulse that exists only in my brain. Is god unprovable because it's nothing more than a neurological impulse that exists only in your brain? If so, I would agree with you completely.

Q: Atheism is self-refuting because it asserts that everything in the universe, Including the atheist's own reasoning, came about as a result of non-rational forces. If that is indeed the case, Every argument employed by the atheist is, According to his own assertions, Incoherent and meaningless.
A: The universe came about by an inanimate force. Neither rational nor non-rational. Evolution however dictated that rationality, Logic and reason be beneficial to a species and as such is something we now, Through natural selection, Posses (well, some of us).

Q: Religionists like caricature non-believers as being unhappy, Depressed, Loveless, Indifferent, etc. If you don't believe in God, Then you must hate music, Art, Poetry, etc.
A: This has to be the biggest non sequitur argument I have ever heard, Though this very assertion was made to me only a few days ago. I pointed out an enormous list of composers who were atheists and moved on.

Q: Science can't tell us why we're here or what is the meaning of our lives.
A: This question assumes that we have a purpose or that we are here for a reason, Until this assertion can be proven true it's unreasonable to ask for a scientific answer regarding that purpose. But i would say were are here for the same "reason" as any other animal, Try to stay alive and have some babies.

Q: Why is there something rather than nothing? What about the fine-tuning of the fundamental constants of the universe?
A: Someone on the Richard Dawkins blog gave a good answer: Have you ever noticed that most cities are built near a river or permanent water supply? it's almost as if the river was put there for the city. Of course, We know that the river wasn't put there for the city, The city is there because there is a river. The universe is the same, If it wasn't a place where we could exist, We wouldn't exist. There may be other universes where physics doesn't allow life, Even matter to exist, But nobody will know that because it's impossible to exist there. We happen to be in this one.

Q: Atheism is a religion and you're as bad as the fundamentalists.
A: Saying Atheism is a religion is like saying bald is a hair colour and health is a sickness.

These are my responses to some of the more common questions. If you would like to give your own responses to these questions or any of the other questions please feel free to post them in a reply. It's a good idea to arm yourself with answers no matter how facile the question be. I would advise against giving a too detailed answer or defining yourself into a corner, The more you say the more opportunities they have to refute it.

The Parasitic, Thieving, Unoriginal Religious

Like fleas clinging to the back of a dog and drinking it's blood the religious have certainly been fast to cash in on the original work of more successful writers by bringing out their "answers" to Atheist books by writers such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris.

Not only have the religious tried to make money from the popularity of atheist books in true christian style, they have even used the names and covers of more popular books in a way which can only be described and plagiarism, Or dare i say, "theft".

This is before we even delve in to the book and start reading the monotonous text, Text which has been almost lifted wholesale from every other parasites book and regurgitated even though it has been proven fallacious and incorrect time after time - It makes me wonder if these fleas even read each others books, Or are they too busy trying to cash in to do research?

I don't have time to quote some of the more fallacious, regurgitate tripe that these books inflict on the reader, So i am going to focus on the obvious plagiarism of the names and front covers.

It begs the question, Are the religious even capable of constructing an original thought any more?

RichardDawkins.net Banned From DIGG

It seems the christian right have used their sheer numbers yet again to bulldoze through freedom of speech and in to a realm where people have to do what they say. This time they are using digg to demonstrate their utter arrogance, Pettiness and contempt for anyone who dares question them.

After reading this interesting article on richarddawkins.net about an area of space 1 billion light years across which contains no stars I thought "digg would like this" so i clicked the "digg this" link on the site and was greeted with the message;

This URL has been widely reported by users as being regularly used to spam Digg's submission process and cannot be submitted at this time.

Spam! I clicked the back button to see which site i had been reading and it turned out to be the website belonging to everyone favorite neighbourhood atheist, Richard Dawkins. You can see the error page by clicking this link

Now, I think it should be obvious what is going on here. Richard Dawkins is not a spammer. His site has been banned as a result of a collective sabotage effort by those who disagree with him, Namely fundamental christian nut cases.

I guess they only like free speech when it's protecting their right to tell us that we are going to hell, Protects their right to protest at funerals and protects their right to spread hatred and homophobia.

I suggest everyone email digg (feedback@digg.com) and let them know about this abuse and strongly urge them to reverse the ban. It would be also handy if you could digg this story.

Dawkins Urges Atheists To "Come Out Of The Closet"

Atheist god Richard Dawkins has put his name behind a campaign which urges all Atheists and non-believers to "come out" of the closet and speak freely about their non-belief.



The campaign goes further than just asking Atheists to be honest about what they believe, It also asks them to wear a scarlet "A" as a way for us to make our non-belief known to people. It's not really a way of converting people, It's more of an in your face "fuck you" to the religious people we have had to suffer for too long and a way for us to make it clear that we don't want other peoples beliefs to effect what we are allowed to do in the way of laws and public policy, Particularly in our schools where our children are regularly brainwashed with this filth.

Some people have complained that this adoption of a "symbol" is another step towards the much unwanted transition from non-belief to religion, But i see it more as a way to say to people "I'm a rational intelligent human being and i don't need to believe in invisible men in the sky to explain things which currently have no explanation in science". Think of it as a medal that you earned for not being tricked in to believing in supernatural monsters.