{"id":51,"date":"2007-09-25T14:43:13","date_gmt":"2007-09-25T18:43:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/andrew\/2007\/09\/25\/speaking-in-contradictions\/"},"modified":"2007-09-25T14:43:13","modified_gmt":"2007-09-25T18:43:13","slug":"speaking-in-contradictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/andrew\/2007\/09\/25\/speaking-in-contradictions\/","title":{"rendered":"Speaking in Contradictions"},"content":{"rendered":"

A coworker is a huge fan of Richard Dawkins<\/a>, a vocal atheist. He’s pointed me towards a few books<\/a> and even a video<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, I was recommended to watch (and did) a talk<\/a> that Dawkins gave at TED<\/a>. Previously I’d only watched a few snippets of Dawkins that can be found on YouTube. I felt compelled to make a few comments.<\/p>\n

First, I saw nothing more than the snickering and behind-the-back finger pointing (as someone makes a wisecrack about what “they” — the obviously mentally-anemic opposition, or they’d be with “us” — believe) that occurs in too many Christian circles. And so, even after a full 30 uninterrupted minutes in which to convince me that he might actually bring up an intelligent point, my impression remains unchanged: Richard Dawkins is nothing more than an atheism evangelist slash bigot<\/b>. Why can’t the focus be logical arguments rather than insults?<\/p>\n

Second, it seems that not only are Dawkins arguments often logically unsound, they are also often contradictory<\/b>. As a specific example, in what I’ve watched Dawkins has repeatedly criticized Christians for only believing in Christianity\/Creationism because that’s what they’ve been taught. However, while talking at TED, he triumphantly referenced studies in support of two points:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Evolution\/atheism is heavily subscribed to among the “intelligentsia” and,\n
  2. An inverse relationship exists between the amount of education one has and their belief in religion.\n<\/ol>\n

    In other words, studies show that the more time one spends among the intelligentsia, the more likely it becomes that they’ll adopt the intelligentsia’s beliefs.<\/b> Precisely what he criticized so vehemently.<\/p>\n

    I plan to watch The Blind Watchmaker in hopes of something worthwhile, but so far, I’ve been completely underwhelmed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    A coworker is a huge fan of Richard Dawkins, a vocal atheist. He’s pointed me towards a few books and even a video. Yesterday, I was recommended to watch (and did) a talk that Dawkins gave at TED. Previously I’d only watched a few snippets of Dawkins that can be found on YouTube. I felt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/andrew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/andrew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/andrew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/andrew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/andrew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/andrew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/andrew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/andrew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/andrew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}