Richard Dawkins Says Harry Potter is Evil

[Maxxthepenguin]

Well first of all, the retarded christians haven't read the harry potter books

And anyways, Dawkins isn't interested in studying religions. He's interested in eradicating them.

[Zosi]

I also do recognize the article is from a retarded source, but making the case that Dawkins has the same villain as retarded Christians is an opportunity I just couldn't pass up.

Perhaps if you were slightly more intelligent or knowledgeable, you could've passed it up, since it's a completely ridiculous claim.

Dawkins criticizes Harry Potter for being anti-scientific, not anti-atheistic or even anything to do with religion at all. He knows that the books are fiction, and thinks that children learning fiction that contradicts the natural world as truth may be bad for their development. You might agree or disagree with that, but I don't think it's a completely unreasonable scientific hypothesis.

Fundamentalist Christians criticize Harry Potter for being non-Christian, specifically for advocating witchcraft, which is something that the Bible actually claims exists. They're not faulting it for teaching nonsense or fiction, they're faulting it because they really believe that their children might either learn or be infected with a desire to learn witchcraft, something specifically prohibited by their faith.

As a side note, I can't speak for anyone else in this thread, but I certainly don't worship Dawkins. I'm an atheist myself and found some of his books to be quite interesting reads, but as intelligent as the guy is, he is a bit of a nutcase, and he's done plenty of stupid things in his promotion of atheism. The attempt to get atheists re-branded as "brights" similarly to the renaming of homosexuals as "gays" was particularly idiotic. However, the quotes in that article aren't him being stupid, they're him being pretty rational. To be honest, I'm actually rather surprised that those quotes were the most controversial thing they could get out of him.

Edited for stupid spelling/grammar mistakes. Twice.

[Beckwin]

He's interested in eradicating them.

You make that sound like a bad thing.

[Churchill]

fail topic is

fail

[Kuya]

to the renaming of homosexuals as "gays" was particularly idiotic.

What?

[Zosi]

What?

The current meaning of the word "gay" is quite new, dating back to the early 20th century at the latest. Prior to that, it just meant "happy" or "carefree", perhaps with a bit of hint of impropriety, but only a hint. It was adopted by the homosexual community back then as a way of saying homosexual without saying "homosexual" or "queer", to avoid the negative connotations of those and other words. That meaning didn't become well-known in popular culture until the 1950s.

Dawkins is a leader of a movement to rebrand "atheist" as "bright" for similar reasons. He's also drawn comparisons between homosexuality and atheism in a few of his books, usually with the intention of showing that "coming out of the closet" in either case can have serious social consequences.

[Kuya]

I knew that, but are you saying that rebranding homosexuals as gays is idiotic?

He's also drawn comparisons between homosexuality and atheism in a few of his books, usually with the intention of showing that "coming out of the closet" in either case can have serious social consequences.

Hopefully he was only speaking of the effects and nothing structural.

[Zosi]

I knew that, but are you saying that rebranding homosexuals as gays is idiotic?
Hopefully he was only speaking of the effects and nothing structural.

No, that's not what I meant to say at all. I said that his effort to do the same to the word "bright" as the homosexual community did to the word "gay" was idiotic. I was commenting on his actions and the movement he was a part of, not what happened to the word "gay" itself. The comparison to "homosexual"/"gay" was more of a parenthetical note, I probably should've written it as that to make it clearer.

Edit: Didn't notice the second part at first. I believe he refers mainly to the effects, particularly to people in public office or other positions of authority.

[Rocl]

Modern day science is old-timey christianity was

Right down to the witch hunts, rampant corruption and closeted homosexuality

PROVE ME WRONG

[Kuya]

No, that's not what I meant to say at all. I said that his effort to do the same to the word "bright" as the homosexual community did to the word "gay" was idiotic. I was commenting on his actions and the movement he was a part of, not what happened to the word "gay" itself. The comparison to "homosexual"/"gay" was more of a parenthetical note, I probably should've written it as that to make it clearer.

Edit: Didn't notice the second part at first. I believe he refers mainly to the effects, particularly to people in public office or other positions of authority.

Alright; i agree. Kind of.

[quannum]

Modern day science is old-timey christianity was

Right down to the witch hunts, rampant corruption and closeted homosexuality

PROVE ME WRONG

modern day science works. QED.

[Rocl]

1.999... + 1.999... = 4; therefore, God exists.

[Nystul]

Aside from writing The Selfish Gene- which is widely considered the modern evolutionary genetics handbook- Dawkins is pretty much a sack of shit.

He's just the flip side- the yin to the yang of religious zealotry. If you're against the super religious people for being close minded and condescending and all that stuff then you can't support Dawkins because he's the same.

[Beckwin]

stop catering to fairy tales.

[Mizango]

The God Delusion is also a good read.

The Selfish gene is just awesome. I remember watching Dawkins at a summit a few years ago with 2 of my favorite astrophysicists and authors, Neil DeGrasse Tyson (Death by black hole, Origins etc..) and Michio Kaku (Physics of the impossible) and they were discussing religion and the idea of "Stupid design". It pretty much talks about flaws in our anatomy that a seemingly "perfect" omnipotent, omnipresent being would not make. The video does more justice than my words, I will see if I cant find it.

Youtube just has snippets of the conference, the entire program aired on the Science channel and was quite epic if any other nerds out there remember it. It was the "Beyond belief" summit if I remember right. Astrophysicists unite!

[Denchi]

I don't understand how science fails to address any sort of qualitative aspects of life, and yet people swear by it. You can't just sit back and ridicule all of the religions and expect anyone to listen to you, because they understand you're position is not one of any worth, and if you claim "Science" as your version of the answers to life's problems, then you're really not making any sort of serious claim, you're just being difficult.

If you believe in Nihilism, then take that position and claim that there is no objective right and wrong, and everything is a construct of humanity, but be prepared to defend yourself, because there are plenty of arguments against what you believe too. Don't just sit back and ridicule religion, anyone can do that.

[Churchill]

You can't just sit back and ridicule all of the religions and expect anyone to listen to you, because they understand you're position is not one of any worth, and if you claim "Science" as your version of the answers to life's problems, then you're really not making any sort of serious claim, you're just being difficult.

This was you typing an opinion that was meant to take logic, and then portray the opposite right.

[Denchi]

I was trying to say there's quality to life, and science only measures quantity. It takes a person to give a quality to aspects of humanity, and if you deny that fact, then you should stick by your position, and be a nihilist, or a relativist, neither of which have firmer ground than any religion.

[Blarg]

Denchi has a raging hard on for hating science since it tries to butt in on philosophy I think.

[Churchill]

I give myself and my life quality.