Posts by funkyderek

365

Richard Dawkins Gets "Expelled" by Ben Stein!

by Perry in

i just got back from seeing the new movie release "expelled" which is a documentary exposing the militant culture of supression regarding intelligent design in the scientific community.

in a "million years", i never would have imagined that ben stein could get the author of "the god delusion", richard dawkins to speak favorably about i.d.

(intellignet design).

funkyderek

BurnTheShips:

I can't believe you are so stupid that after all my explaining you still think I am accusing Darwin of anything to do with Nazis.

Well, you keep repeating that the Nazi eugenics programme was based on Darwin's theories. This is of course not true in any significant sense, but my most recent post was intended to emphasise not the falsehood of the claim but its utter irrelevance. The Nazis no more got their ideology from Darwin than the United States did from Einstein, even if they used some of those men's scientific discoveries to further their own goals.

365

Richard Dawkins Gets "Expelled" by Ben Stein!

by Perry in

i just got back from seeing the new movie release "expelled" which is a documentary exposing the militant culture of supression regarding intelligent design in the scientific community.

in a "million years", i never would have imagined that ben stein could get the author of "the god delusion", richard dawkins to speak favorably about i.d.

(intellignet design).

funkyderek

BurnTheShips:

I can't believe you'd sink so low as to use for support a man whose theories were directly responsible for the incineration of over 200,000 people and a Cold War that lasted nearly half a century.

34

Remember the term: Heavy petting.

by odie67 in

i guess that would include tongue kissing, touching etc....the things two people do when they dig each other.

heavy petting was a huge no no!.

i remember sitting in front of three elders as a teenager spilling my guts about how i kissed this boy.

funkyderek

As I understand it, it's pretty much the same as dry humping.

7

agendas of paradise

by winnower in

what has been taught as armageddon is actually the great tribulation.

the agenda for a "man-made" paradise will come about during this time.

of course, the jws will, as always, be told that it is being "divinely directed" and believe that without question.

funkyderek

Why are the crazies always so verbose?

9

Drug Dealer Gets Caught and Sues The People That Caught Him...

by owenfieldreams in

unbelievable.

but what do you bet we see more and more of this?.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/bizarre/5710567.html.

funkyderek

It looks like the principal in question stole the phone, intercepted a private message, pretended to be the phone's owner and then illegally purchased some marijuana from the student. It looks to me like he has a pretty good case.

365

Richard Dawkins Gets "Expelled" by Ben Stein!

by Perry in

i just got back from seeing the new movie release "expelled" which is a documentary exposing the militant culture of supression regarding intelligent design in the scientific community.

in a "million years", i never would have imagined that ben stein could get the author of "the god delusion", richard dawkins to speak favorably about i.d.

(intellignet design).

funkyderek

A response from Professor Dawkins on this very subject:

http://richarddawkins.net/article,2488,Open-Letter-to-a-victim-of-Ben-Steins-lying-propaganda,Richard-Dawkins

365

Richard Dawkins Gets "Expelled" by Ben Stein!

by Perry in

i just got back from seeing the new movie release "expelled" which is a documentary exposing the militant culture of supression regarding intelligent design in the scientific community.

in a "million years", i never would have imagined that ben stein could get the author of "the god delusion", richard dawkins to speak favorably about i.d.

(intellignet design).

funkyderek

BurnTheShips:

I'm only human after all. I can't help to chuckle when I see the Dawkins ridiculed a bit.

I'm still not sure why. It's clear you have such a passionate hatred of Richard Dawkins that you are willing to side with the lunatic fringe just so you can have a chuckle at his expense but you've given no reason for this irrational behaviour. Did he sleep with your wife or something?

Sure, and Nazi eugenics and racial ideology was based on radio communications and the printing press! Idiocy.

You've missed the point again. Those inventions made Nazi propaganda possible, and a far more convincing argument could be made for blaming the inventors of those means of communication than can be made for blaming the discoverer of natural selection for the Nazis' attempts at eugenics. But you're right; to do so would still be idiocy.

Yes, and these practicioners of animal husbandry did not typically think of humans as just another animal to be manipulated. Darwininan thought, --as either espoused by him or his successors-- reduced humans to just that, highly evolved animals. The Nazi emphasis on breeding, racial purity, and eliminating "defective" human beings came from taking Darwin’s theory seriously and applying it at the level of a society. Absolutely, Darwin himself did not take these measures, but the Nazi eugenecists and their ideological predecessors saw where all this was going and did bring it to bear in a practical manner and with hideous results.

Ah, it's starting to become a little clearer. You don't like the implications of the theory of natural selection, namely that humans are animals, apes with large brains. By seeking to associate it with Nazism, you want to "poison the well". It's a pointless exercise. Even if the Nazis had used Darwin's theories to support their actions, Darwin would be no more responsible for them than would Fritz Haber (the Jewish chemist who developed Zyklon B). And had Darwin never existed, natural selection would still be a reality. (Just as had Fritz Haber never existed, hydrogen cyanide would still be poisonous.)The likes of Perry and real one should be expected to revel in the sort of fallacious claptrap you're spouting, but don't you think it's beneath you?

Well done on finding a book on Amazon to support what you'd already decided to believe.

Perry:

As you've apparently taken up Burn's eccentricity of referring to Dawkins as "the Dawkins" perhaps you could shed some light on why you do so. Burn doesn't seem to want to share his reasons.

365

Richard Dawkins Gets "Expelled" by Ben Stein!

by Perry in

i just got back from seeing the new movie release "expelled" which is a documentary exposing the militant culture of supression regarding intelligent design in the scientific community.

in a "million years", i never would have imagined that ben stein could get the author of "the god delusion", richard dawkins to speak favorably about i.d.

(intellignet design).

funkyderek

BurnTheShips:

FD, I did make the mistake of accepting the article whole-cloth and not checking attribution. And I admitted as much on that thread with a great deal of disgust after a second view and a full text search of Origin of the Species.

And yet you still seem so eager to side with purveyors of such nonsense. It seems to be confirmation bias rather than outright dishonesty but you should still know better.

However, to say that there was no causal connection between Darwinism and Nazi eugenics and racial theory is what is absurd.

There's no significant connection. You could blame Gutenberg or Marconi for inventing ways for the Nazis to distribute their propaganda and you'd probably have more of a case. Eugenics is about artificially selecting the traits one desires in a population and eradicating the traits one does not desire, by selective breeding of those who exhibit desirable traits, and sterilisation and/or extermination of those who exhibit undesirable traits. This has been done for centuries by farmers and dog breeders and is so self-evident that to blame the existence of such knowledge in any way on Darwin is the very pinnacle of absurdity.

What Darwin discovered was that such selection can happen naturally, without any input from farmers or Nazis. The world we live in, its geography and weather, and parasites and predators have shaped our species without any conscious intent. What Darwin discovered was that nature could act like a eugenicist, not the reverse. Had he stuck to cataloguing barnacles and never discovered the sublime fact of natural selection, the Nazis would not have done a single thing differently.

Believers often get told to own up to the mistakes of religion over the centuries.

Own up to your own!

Whose mistakes am I supposed to own up to? Even if we accept the nonsense that Darwin was somehow responsible for the vile acts of the Nazis, or even if we were to believe (as you were all too eager to) that Darwin would have supported them, none of that alters the facts about the universe that Darwin discovered. He didn't create an ideology, he discovered a truth. Should we blame Galileo or Newton for the ballistic missiles the Nazis used, or the Wright brothers for their bombers? Knowledge about the universe can be put to all sorts of uses, it's perverse to blame those who discover the knowledge for the deeds of those who misuse it.

I despise the Dawkins for very good reasons, so why should I hide it?

Again with that strange turn of phrase, "the Dawkins". Will you ever reveal why you use it? And what are your "very good reasons" for despising the man? I can see that you find it an affront that he doesn't give your beliefs the respect you think they deserve, but why not challenge his reasoning if you find it faulty, rather than just sniping at him? By all means feel free to share your hatred, but do try to back it up with some facts.

365

Richard Dawkins Gets "Expelled" by Ben Stein!

by Perry in

i just got back from seeing the new movie release "expelled" which is a documentary exposing the militant culture of supression regarding intelligent design in the scientific community.

in a "million years", i never would have imagined that ben stein could get the author of "the god delusion", richard dawkins to speak favorably about i.d.

(intellignet design).

funkyderek

Ah, Creationism's last stand. Unable to compete on a truly scientific level (having no scientific theories to speak of) they are reduced to taking pot-shots at the scientific community for not letting them play. Never mind that they refuse to play by the rules, they seem to think that their ignorance should be treated with the same respect as the accumulated knowledge of real scientists, that their ancient scribblings should trump the mountains of evidence in favour of evolution, and that where there are any areas of doubt, their position should win by default. A film that goes out of its way to quote leading scientists out of context, and where the only useful scientific material is shamelessly plagiarised is probably the best they can do. It's disappointing that they have an audience but such is the state of decay of the American education system.

Perry's ridiculous and repeated assertions that Dawkins really meant what Stein edited and interpreted him to mean, rather than what Dawkins himself claims he meant are, like most of what Perry writes, too pointless to be worthy of consideration. That's not Perry's fault; he's just not smart enough to understand any of the issues here. Those who doubt this need only browse his posting history.

I'm disappointed with the odious glee that BurnTheShips seems to take at what he wrongly perceives to be an embarrassment for evolutionists. That he has some sort of agenda is obvious from his continued use of the bizarre phrase "the Dawkins" which he has not yet satisfactorily explained. His behaviour in this thread is very similar to one where he leapt to embrace a claim that Darwin was responsible for Nazism, not stopping for a moment to check the source, or even, one must assume, to mull over the absurdity of the claims in his mind. Perhaps he learnt something from that episode, though, as his claims in this thread are little more than name-calling rather than the outright lies he propagated in that thread. Still, it's quite revealing behaviour.

11

Kicked off a plane for praying! Or was it for that...?

by AlmostAtheist in

jw
friends

the headline reads: "praying passenger is removed from plane" i figured it was some poor shmuck whose religion requires him to babble or mumble or something and someone smelled "terrorist".

but no, he was a just praying, maybe even quietly.

the problem was, he was standing at the back of the plane prior to take off, he had begun a prayer, and apparently was unable to stop once he starts.

funkyderek

His refusal to obey the instructions of flight attendants could have resulted in delays costing millions. If the plane missed its take-off window it may have to wait for hours and could have a knock-on effect on other flights. Passengers could miss connecting flights, and so on. If he wants to talk to his imaginary friend, he should be free to do so - but only on his own time.