Richard Dawkins site hacked

..see? there is God after all...

hehe..what a mug ol' Dick is. Watched him on docu and he managed to piss of whole school full of science teachers with his rantings. hehe they were celeb dazed at 1st, then saw what a nutter he is.

If they hacked the website of The Bright movement then that's a really bad thing.
I'm a proud Bright but others may have to be more careful exposing themselves.
We 'Brights' unite on only a couple of things , we all share our naturalistic worldview and we are convinced that there are no supernatural and mystical elements.
For Brights in the US their identity becoming public could have consequences, especially in the Bible Belt where thoughts on religion are near as fundamentalist as in some Islamic countries.

What the hell is the bright movement? sounds like some weird cult

Darwin wrote a very scholarly and diplomatic treatise on religion in Descent of Man and nowhere did he mention hackers. He compared belief in supernature to a dog barking at a parasol stirred by the wind. But just because it was written by Darwin doesnt mean we have to believe it! ;)

Proselytising is the mark of an appetite for empire building masquerading as beneficence. Whatever aspect of the ego drives it, you can be sure it is replete with the hidden agendas which in turn create cults, religions, nationalism and scientific zealotry alike.

Dawkins apparently seeks out confrontation, perhaps to sell his books and he appears imho to treat the ideological battle as a theoretical struggle for dominance in a manner every bit as irritating as your archetypal Jesuit. But what makes a scientific tyrant any better than a religious one?

Morality by definition is the key to human mutualism and science in the media has shown a concerning lack in that regard of late as has religion in eras preceding. Hence neither are widely regarded as fit to rule, so Dawkins remains a voice in a democratic wilderness.

Anyone trying to overpower humanity against their will, tends to meet with resistance, that is the nature of the beast. Hacking is cheeky and maybe even understandable but illegal, no matter how autistic you are. Lawmakers have to draw the line somewhere or the world will descend into primordial chaos.

Long live democracy.

"But what makes a scientific tyrant any better than a religious one?"

A body of empirical and objective supporting evidence.

my dear spence, science is merely a method for making measurements and these must be interpreted. Hypotheses are concepts held in the imagination.

Interpretation is the responsibility of people like you and me, all as prone to subjective bias as clerics and likewise as prone to disagreement.

The real danger of science is the myth of absolute truth, science does not give us this and yet people evincing an intermediate intellect pretend it does and provide subjective interpretation as though canon to further their own agendas, no wonder it is so widely dismissed.

.....a bad name.

He has turned into his own version of a zealot and now barks on to others in almost the same way that the religious fanatics do.

Give it a rest Richard, silence and smug satisfaction are all us athiests need.

Let the rest get on with it if they want to go back to living in caves.

"my dear spence, science is merely a method for making measurements and these must be interpreted. Hypotheses are concepts held in the imagination.

Interpretation is the responsibility of people like you and me, all as prone to subjective bias as clerics and likewise as prone to disagreement."

Agreed. So what was wrong with what i said? The difference between the two is a large body of supporting evidence. As opposed to an old book and some guesswork.

How Christian... Remember they do believe in an aggressive and strange book of genocide, homophobia, sexism, rape, murder, jealousy, talking snakes etc.. So anything goes I suppose with those credentials.

Of course this is obvious thing to do because if you have got no legitimate reason or any evidence for for your beliefs the only way you can hold on to them is by force.

These actions re-enforce that Professor Richard Dawkins has got deluded ones worried and confused.

"Another myth

my dear spence, science is merely a method for making measurements and these must be interpreted. Hypotheses are concepts held in the imagination."

my dear silly Richard, you base your faulty logic on the premise that interpretation of evidence is a thing done arbitrarily, while in reality it is also a part of the scientific method. And a big part of it.

The acceptance of the scientific method as being genuinly objective seems somewhat overplayed don't you think?

To all your eloquent rantings about the truthfulness of religion and science I ask this:

Who the f*ck is Richard Dawkins?

They are obviously worried about Dawknis' influence and his ability to shake people out of their deluded state.

How anyone can believe Bronze Age folklore (recorded in a hotch-potch of texts, written by ordinary Bronze Age men!) in this digital age of reason, is frankly beyond me. The quicker the smoke screen of religion is lifted from the world (if it ever happens) the quicker we will be able to see our fellow humans as brothers and sisters (regardless of what faith they happen to have been born in to and coerced in to believing - without questioning).
This is why the Christians are worried - they don't have any substantiating evidence... and the thinkers are well on their way to exposing their ridiculous superstitious beliefs.

Now Thomas (called Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 25So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord!"
But he said to them, "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it."

A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" 27Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe."

Thomas said to him, "My Lord and my God!"

Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."

So all we have to say is "I dont believe and CHrist will show up?"
Well lots of people have been saying that for thousands of years and Christ has not shown up at all. THe one recorded bit of evidence was written 40 years after the event by his followers and he has not done it since.
Nah face it, he is not coming back... look at the followers he has these days.

Did you mean: MONOTHEISTIC

jUST bREAKING hON us sENATOR
tHEO KENNEDY eSQ. Is Leaving for Good. Mass law alows US senator 5 months , A.D. to clear up matter & report vacancy of office, then appointment is made & eventually special election. So In awhile, Yet it is rumoured use of Cell Phone in Older Person might be contributing factor to Brains Cancer that hobbled theKEN down.

EXTRA: BREAKING NEWS, GOD DEMANDS DAWKINS BE SUROGATE FOR KENNEDIES....

vondrashek

I am blessed, for I have never seen a unicorn, yet I believe!

@spence, flat contradiction was not my aim. But I dont consider any kind of tyranny desirable and dont believe one kind pretending to be empirical is necessarily better than another pretending to be divine, if you see what I mean. Perhaps I shouldnt have read 1984?!

@emp I think you missed the point.

the difference with science and religion is that the former actually WORKS and solves problems, makes accurate predictions etc.

Is it me or the articles author actually enjoyed it :P ?

turns people into idiotic morons. Simply put...

If you don't want to know Jesus, he won't show up. If you do want to know Jesus, he WILL show up.

Jackasses see no proof of Jesus because jackassas don't want to see proof of Jesus.

It's bad enough so many religitards and IDiots think it's just fine to constantly Lie For Jesus (tm) ... now they've started Hacking For Jesus.

... and as always, because they think they are doing it for the glory of their imaginary sky fairy, the hypocrisy of their actions is lost on them.

Whether you like or hate Dawkins' abrasive methods, there's no doubt he's right.

For your next lesson in common sense and reason, i ask the believers here to think about this question:

Why it is that of all the miracles and wonders their god supposedly does, called forth from prayer ... Why won't god heal Amputees? Why does god hate amputees so much?

... when you remove any chance of coincidence from the equation, you always find that god and prayer never do anything at all.

is why do so many amputees find solace in the Word of the God you claim either doesn't exist or hates them?

Perhaps instead of focusing on what God hasn't done, let's focus on what you haven't done. How kind or evil have you been to others. How many people on planet Earth AREN'T hypocrites. How many people on Earth have the answer to even a few people's problems?

The answer is zero, zilch, nada, zip. See if God doesn't exist, than Christians are silly, silly people destined to head into eternal darkness living for a God that doesn't exist. But if he DOES exist, than it amounts to a tremendously larger mistake to deny his existence.

Ask yourself, if there was a dangerous man in your house and you pointed at him and said,"Ha, ha, you don't exist?" how easy would it be for him, to steal your belongings and maybe harm you?

Jesus is real, and it doesn't affect him one iota that you don't believe in Him.

I've already posted twice, so someone else will need to take up the gauntlet, lest we start a flamewar.

@Jason Goatcher

The problem with your 'reasoning' is that you are working with a faulty definition of 'proof'.

Screaming 'goddiddit' and 'ma bible says so' in no way provides any manner of proof.

Care to put your life on the line and actually live under your level of reasoning? ... Demand that your doctors and courts treat you with the bible's type of proof instead of the scientific reasoning that no doubt you demand from them now.

You wouldn't dare do so would you?

For the millions of missing links which should exist, connecting the current human beings with the most primitive single cell creatures.

Surely they would have found some by now, if such missing links existed? I mean, it's not like evolution says "Blob, Fish, Leggy Fish, Reptile, Dinosaur, Monkey, Human". Evolutions says that these changes happened gradually over millions of years, so in that case, there should be millions of years worth of fossils showing the transition between blob, to slightly fishier blob, and then from monkey, to slightly more hairless monkey, etc.

I mean, yes, I could believe in macro Evolution on a global scale if such fossils actually existed, but they don't. If they did, they would have been found by now. It's not like they haven't been looking, and there should be plenty there to find.

I've always been open minded about this, and I'm interested in the scientific theory behind it all. But, at the end of the day, there are no fossils and therefore the theory of Evolution fails at the very core of itself.

The next time a huge flood, or cyclone, or tsunami, or terrorist bombing, or plane crash, etc., causes hundreds of people to lose their lives, and a caring member of the Christian Taliban tells you that everything will be fine, since it was all part of god's plan, you should demand that their god be brought up on 1st degree murder charges, since he *did* plan it, after all.

Keep your Bronze Age myths out of schools, the government, and my life, and I promise not to think in your mosques, churches, temples, and synagogues.

Thanks Hockey Bob and Ken for some great comments.

Great article to bring out the fanatic book bashers of olden times!

Richard Dawkins is a wonderful man who talks a whole load of sense (try him out religious freaks?)

"Religion and the brain-washed-morons that follow it all suck the sweat off a dead man's balls"

Lots of wake-up-calls to all you creationists and believers,

Dave xxx

"But what makes a scientific tyrant any better than a religious one?"

Proposed hypotheses as explanations of phenomena, and experimental studies to test these hypotheses.

Don't worry, we'll be long dead from human-induced climate change before we get to dig them all out. Kinda daft of Him to leave a bunch of humans in charge of the planet and all.

Regardless of whether or not any existing religion is actually true or not, the simple fact is, since their 'prophets' walked on this planet, their teaching have been corrupted and used by those in power as a method of control.

The Middle Ages are an example of this, and a key reason as to why religion is structured in the way it is today.

Back then, due to the lack of an organised police force, those in power often used the church and its teachings as a method of social control.

What better way when you have no means of capturing a thief than to use something they have been brainwashed into believing since birth to ensure they don't do it in the first place.

"Don't steal. We might not be able to catch you, but God will."

Sure, it didn't work, but that shows up another failing of religion – its attempt to claim a monopoly on morality.

The simple fact is that whether or not any existing religion did genuinely represent a God, in the time that has passed, it bears no resembelance.

Also, in response to 'Not Again:('; if you understood the process of fossilation, you would know that a very small proportion of carcasses become fossilised. It requires a very strict set of circumstances to be present where and when the animal dies.

All the fossils on this planet probably represent 0.0001x10000 of all the animals that have lived.

AND, let's not forget that under scientific method, the simple presence of dinosaurs, and the incontrovertible proof that radio-carbon dating works, that Genisis is flawed. Massively.

So if it isn't true that God made the world in seven days, did God even made the world or does God even exist?

Questions; not a statement of fact from me.

Why is it that when presented with a superbly reasoned arguement, backed up with loads of evidence against the idea of religion or the existance of the world as deemed by God etc.

Al the religious nuts have to do is shake their heads and say "because God said so!"

And thats all they ever feel they have to say. That apparently is a conclusive answer.

I bet if I was a car salesman and sold a car to one of these christian fundamentalist preachers in the USA that didnt work. I bet if I just shook my head and said "its because God said so!" he'd take me to court rather than say "Praise Jesus, you are right!"

Tedious twits.

Charlie Brooker said that bloggers and forum postees were effectively idiots and by writing this i must be the same. There are two schools here, scientific reasoning and blind faith. Choose one, dont stick it in someone else's life and dont preach it either.
Whatever happens, religion is with us forever because as humans, frankly we're shit and cant face the real emptiness of the universe.
All religious folk should stick to their own kind and not enforce their views or morality on anyone else and athiests can just get on with life.
BTW, i worship the teapot that floats around the sun.

Just read these comments. Hopefully you are convinced by the attitudes of the writers. Some people posting here are hateful and their words show derision towards others. And other people posting here aren't hateful.

Blasphemy! The Spaghetti monster is the one true god! repent! or as my faith puts it, "slurp!"

Er, we've got millions of fossils, many of them representing links between modern creatures and the first life. If you think we don't have good fossil evidence for evolution, you just haven't looked. Go to the natural history museum, fire up youtube and look at AronRa's videos. For goodness sake educate yourself.

I'll give you one really good example though, in the tetrapod lineage. We knew that at some point fish left the water and their fins evolved into legs. We knew roughly where and when it happened. So, palaeontologists went to Canada and looked in rock strata of the appropriate age. They found Tiktaalik, a fossil that was clearly a fish with "fins" intermediate between fins and legs, they had wrists and the capacity to support strong muscles. The fossil was what evolutionary theory predicted, it was where evolutionary theory predicted and it was found in the rock strata evolutionary theory predicted.

Not only do we have lots of fossils, they are of high quality and support the theory of evolution very well.

The author writes; "his vigorous nihilistic faith". In doing so he shows his bias and ignorance. The rest of the article and most of the comments can therefore be ignored.

FAIL!!!

I am often left with a sense of dismay when I read articles and comments by willfully ignorant and simply ignorant individuals.

Some claim that we, atheists, simply do not see the evidence of God (Jesus, Allah, Zeus etc) and when we press them to name such evidence they always say "look around you".

I wonder how well that evidence would hold in a court of law. "I am innocent" pleads the accused. "What evidence do you have against me?" asks the accused. And the prosecution lawyer says "look around you" and this somehow shows the guilt of the accused?

Evidence needs to be empirical. It can be observational (or observational phenomenon such as gravity) but generally you need to be able to see it or it's effects. Then you need to provide facts, gather data and come up with a hypothesis which you then test.

This is called the scientific method. The "truths" of which many of you neanderthals speak of are simply traditionalist views on matters. Just because someone has believed something and passed this belief onto his/her children does not make it "true". People used to believe that when someone was sick you needed to cut them open and bleed them out. Now we know that this was the last thing you wanted to do as it weakened the individual. We also know that it was not demons that made people sick but rather diseases (viruses, bacterial infections etc).

The beauty of science is that it is humble. I am often called an "elitist jerk" because I talk down to Christians (they say). No, I am not talking down to you I am trying to shake you till you wake up. I am not the one who claims to know all the answers. I am humble and feel comfortable in saying "I don't know"; when asked "why we are here and what is our purposes"?

I don't know how the Universe Began, I don't know exactly where life began but I have an idea as to where and how (how DNA came together).

I leave you with Epicurus' famous riddle:

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"

I think it's so ironic, that people like Epicurus who lived thousands of years before us COULD ACTUALLY see the truth about gods, and humans in todays Einsteinium world, with telescopes and theories who explain everything like evolution are still DELUSIONAL ....

what a pity, what a waste : /

Do we even stand a chance as a race, sometimes i just wonder!

... and the domain was pwn3d - good luck Yardies.

We Vikings are having a right good chuckle at both Richard Dawkins and the Christians slagging each other off.

In the Asatru religion we do not recognise anything which Dawkins defines as deity, because it bears no relation to our own conception of the Aesir (Gods).

Pagans have no problem in accepting that the patron God of mankind is not the creator of the Universe, so the idea that Dawkins can say "God could not have created the universe, therefore He does not exist" is a meaningless argument for us.

The only thing about Dawkins that strikes us as clever is the way he has suckered his opponents into debating _on his terms_.

How would God prevent evil - if my child does wrong, what are my options if I want him to still talk to me. I love him in spite of the fact he lets me down..

Its all about free will - God wants a relationship with us, not a bunch of robots...

Just because some people have been committing abuse in the name of Christianity, doesn't make it bad. I challenge people to study the character of Jesus and then post what they don't like about him...

I have read Richard Dawkins and admire him as a brilliant author and speaker. I just feel slightly sad that he needs to accuse people of being 'Child Abusers' who disagree with his views..

If people are secure in their atheism or agnosticism or religion then I wish them all the best. I know that Christianity works for me :-)