The Satanic quality of the Internet

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by u crank

Probably. I didn't want to be too obvious, but yes Dawkins is certainly one of the most well known of the prophets of Atheism.

Defamation of science and reason this claim is.

A prophet is somebody who claims to deliver the message of a supernatural entity, whose will is revelead to the prophet in visions or intuitions.

Dawkins is biologist. If one has read one or several of his books (i know two), one knows that he argues on the basis of reasonable calculation, loogical argtiument, and scinertiifc fact. He also makes no prediction, but desribes present and past. Finally, he seems to be an extremnely kind and polite character who delivers his arguments with determination, yes, but avoids agressiveness and confrontation, and he even points that out and describes his experiences in talkshows, meetings and podium discussions that in his opinion debate even with a total opponent of his positions delivers more results and has more chances for creating something positive, constructive, than confrontation. His books reflect that very strongly in style, and I see it also in the videos that I have seen by him. Especially his book on religion is determined in argument, but by far the most friendly in expression and style of all the recent critical books on religion that went through the beststeller lists.

In this, he is very different in style than Christopher Hitchens, who fight his debates with vicious intellectuality and wittiness (yet politeness and splendid contenance) but also sometimes with quite some aggressiveness where needed, and he is of course very different to Pat Condell who really drops verbal daisy-cutters like clouds drop raindrops.

The claim that science is just behaving like religion or atheism is behaving like religion, is just an attempt to try to bypass arguments they raise that the religious cannot counter and show wrong. When he cannot deal with the message, he tries to defame the messenger instead. That way the message should get devalued, by bringing it down to the low and inferior intellectual level that religious only-claims are operating on. Once that is accomplished, the debate can get hjijacked by focussing on the messenger and the evilness of science/atheists behaving oh so religiously, and the orginal message is no longer an object of public awareness. Mission accomplished!

There is one problem these religious hypocrites time and again seem to miss. When you try to bring down the reputation of science or atheism by comparing it to the reputation of religion - what does this tell you then about the reputation of religion?

"Rohrkrepierer", we call that in German.