Wednesday, August 06, 2008

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1. Yes, Oswald. I must try to better myself. Hopefully one day, like you, I’ll be able to make up to 30 spelling and grammatical errors in one paragraph.

   Posted by  on Aug 06, 2008 @ 12:29 PM

2. Sorry Dec but he is not a professor. He holds the chair (indefinitely) until a real professor is appointed. He uses English well to hide this. His qualifications or lack thereof are very relevant. His books sell in the millions and get the vacuous to swallow his blarney. But that does not make his right.
   My request is quite simple: Please show me his refereed artciles, the articles he has published in academic journals. Has he published his PhD?

   If his musings are not based on original research, they are questionable. He may write well and he may, on occasion, speak well. But that does not make him right and nor does it give him authority. Although I am not calling him an eloquent fool, you would help his cause by pointing me and others to where he gets his academic crediblity from.
   If he is just a pop professor, paid for on a whim by a space tourist, then his comments have to be viewed in that light.
   Weinberg, by contrast, is an intellectual heavyweight, even though he is as fervently anti religion as Dawkins or more localized rent a mobs.

   Posted by Oswald Murphy on Aug 06, 2008 @ 12:33 PM

3. The Darwin programme on Monday night was superb, but unlikely to shift the beliefs of ignorant people like Storey who are immune to rational thought and evidence, having been spoonfed nonsense since birth.

   Posted by  on Aug 06, 2008 @ 12:37 PM

4. Oswald - I couldn’t give a monkeys about Dawkins’ academic qualifications or status. I don’t base my beliefs on what he says and, frankly, haven’t gotten round to reading any of his books. I DO know however, that Mervyn Storey is an arse:-

   As Orwell famously said - “we have now sunk to a depth where the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men”.

   Sammy/Dec - of course there’s no constitutional difference between both parties. The only point I’m making is that there are presumably a lot of non-homophobic, non-creationist/young-earth unionists living in the north - presumably they now have more reason than ever to vote UUP rather than DUP i.e. the historical antics re the GFA/Stormont etc. are now over - it’s the only show in town and both parties have thrown in their lot with it.

   Posted by  on Aug 06, 2008 @ 12:37 PM

5. Mr Morrow’s assertions convince me that the best place my children could grow up is in this modern rational and secular United Kingdom. Not.

   Seriously I hestitate to say this but many of us hell bound folk simply do not believe that the Young Earthers do not actually believe this stuff, that it is just some sot of quasi-political one-up manship. Dont know.

   Would Christians also welcome a page on the Aborginal Dream-time theory?

   Posted by  on Aug 06, 2008 @ 12:40 PM

6. Dec: As I am multi tasking here, I make small spelling mistakes. You have also made some btw. More importantly, you do not answer my questions concerning very legitimate Richard Dawkins.

   Pauljames: I trust you are not referring to me as a creationist. I am trying to talk science and to get past the diversions of Dec et al to get some very simple questions about Richard Dawkins answered.

   In case you are interested, I feel anyone trying to argue most anything from biblical sources alone is pi**ing against the wind. But the fact that they make an easy target should not let their detractors off the hook either.
   Note: typos corrected using Word to try to get Dec to answer my questions concerning his Kenyan-born messiah. Now, I am off to do some science for the next few hours.

   Posted by Oswald Murphy on Aug 06, 2008 @ 12:41 PM

7. Oswald Murphy

   Rather than performing ad hominem attacks you might want to try google. The following page shows a (slightly dated) list of Dawkins publications:

   http://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins/WorldOfDawkins-archive/Dawkins/Work/biblio.shtml

   You’ll no doubt notice that this list contains numerous articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals along with his books etc.. Might I suggest printing this list and going to a local university where you should be able to find many of the journals.

   I assume you will now share your academic credentials and perhaps review some of Dawkins work?

   Posted by  on Aug 06, 2008 @ 12:42 PM

8. Bemused,

   I was agreeing with you but only stating that the most important policy issue to the Unionist electorate relates to the constitutional question and would be more or less the same for both main parties. You would therfore expect some movement back to the UU given that the ‘Smash SF’ sort of stuff (which must have helped the DUP) wont be as much as factor this time round and creationism ect must do them some harm amongst ordinary, descent, secular Unioinsts.

   Posted by  on Aug 06, 2008 @ 12:48 PM

9. Then by what right can Paisley be called a DR? Where is his PhD? This ‘honorary’ title cannot even be used within the EU as it was bestowed on him a Dixie State University.
   As for those who believe that Creationism should be taught as fact then what point is faith? This man should be made to resign immediately as he has just prejudiced his own chairmanship.

   Posted by  on Aug 06, 2008 @ 12:48 PM

10. I still can’t beleive that an explosion created the earth… i mean come on…

    seriously..

    an explosion?

    Posted by a wile melee on Aug 06, 2008 @ 12:50 PM

11. i before e except after c bel’ie’ve

    sorry..

    Posted by a wile melee on Aug 06, 2008 @ 12:52 PM

12. Oswald

    Sorry for making any assumptions about you, but I fail to see how a discussion on the credentials of Richard Dawkins is “trying to talk science” or that it is of particular relevance to this thread.

    Posted by  on Aug 06, 2008 @ 12:56 PM

13. Oswald

    I did answer your question. That you chose to ignore it is ultimately neither here nor there…

    However, that you found it necessary to refer to Dawkins as my ‘Kenyan-born messiah’ does demonstrate that:
    
    a) you fundamentally misunderstand his atheism

    and

    b) you appear to infer a link between credibility and place of birth

    Couple that with your incoherent, error-strewn arguments and we have yet more powerful evidence against the concept of Intelligent Design.

    Posted by  on Aug 06, 2008 @ 12:56 PM

14. StevenR: Thank you very much for that. Please review that list and divide it into scientific sections and general blah blah sections: “Bees are easily distracted” does seem rather general and generic. Indeed the BBC had an article a few days ago saying studying the bumble bee may help us in understanding serial killers as they display similar traits. . You will notice most of these are very general. They show, in my opinion:
    • his earlier works were done with his PhD supervisor, which is par for a lowly post doc.
    • He was getting nowhere with science so he switched to god bashing and hasn’t looked back since.
    • He writes for a general audience and makes a good living out of it.
    • He has a very weak peer reviewed CV.
    • He is not a heavyweight scientist. That may be ok as he is paid to popularize science. I guess paisley was also paid to popularize religion. At least that is how he made his money and Paisley was good at what he did. Dawkins is also good at what he does. Whether Paisley does religion or Dawkins does science, maybe the market should decide. Whatever about religion, science has metrics and Dawkins, imho, does not meet them.

    I may not either but I don’t pretend to be and I am not paid by a space tourist to meet them either. Thanks again Pauljames. You made a valuable post, one with information, which moves the process forward. God indeed works in mysterious ways. (assuming of course…….).

    Anyway thanks for proving my point and apologies if my comments appeared unnecessarily robust. Enjoy the Dawkins panto.

    Note: Spell checker again used for the same reasons

    Posted by Oswald Murphy on Aug 06, 2008 @ 12:59 PM

15. I think StevenR’s post has somewhat put Oswald back in his closet.
    I think the points about secular unionism are valid. The DUP are now unable to appeal to anyone who doesn’t believe in their fundamentalist tripe. This was covered before by their anti SF rhetoric. Now they don’t have this figleaf.

    Posted by  on Aug 06, 2008 @ 01:02 PM

16. It’s not my position to act as your researcher. I am merely pointing out that Dawkins academic credentials are very strong and you don’t seem to have researched his credentials.

    Saying that a particular title is generic means nothing unless you’re going to read and address the content of the article.

    Posted by  on Aug 06, 2008 @ 01:08 PM

17. The sniping at Dawkins is beside the point. Whatever his academic credentials or lack of (I don’t know either way) the man is an arsehole and takes pride in it. However, the essential point of what he says is correct. Anyone reading this thread should follow the link at the top on the difference between a scientific theory and an idea - creationism/ID falls a long way short. In fact many scientists would take the view that while the original origin of life is still unclear, the process of evolution from that point on should be regarded as fact rather than theory. Dawkins’ reference to creationists as ‘flat earthers’ is spot on and it is frightening that one so wilfully ignorant is in a position to influence education policy.

    Posted by  on Aug 06, 2008 @ 01:15 PM

18. To all those questioning Dawkins credentials...these are a re-hashing from arguments first presented on Conservapedia, which the site has since withdrawn. A brief search will come up with the following list of Dawkins academic career.

    1954-1959 Oundle School
    1959-1962 Balliol College, Oxford University
    1962-1966 Research Student, Oxford University (D.Phil., 1966)
    1965-1967 Research Assistant to Professor N.Tinbergen FRS
    1967-1969 Assistant Professor of Zoology, University of California, Berkeley
    1969-1970 Senior Research Officer, Department of Zoology, Oxford
    1970-1990 University Lecturer (US: Adjunct Professor) in Zoology, and Fellow of New College, Oxford
    1989 D.Sc. (Oxford)
    1990-1995 Reader in Zoology (US: Associate Professor” or “Full Professor"), Oxford University
    1995- Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science,University of Oxford, and Professorial Fellow of New College

    Plus - ground-breaking...have you actually read any of Dawkins books/articles?

    Posted by Belfast Metal on Aug 06, 2008 @ 01:15 PM

19. Driftwood,
    How big is the secular unionist constituency? I doubt that the DUPs fundamentalism will do it any real harm - it won’t win it any converts but it won’t see an exodus. I’m remind of Ian Paisley’s belliegerent displays on TV in the past, when rational, polite people scratched their heads and asked ‘how could anybody vote for such an awful man’? The truth was that while Paisley’s behaviour riled the reasonable his own constituency loved it. There is a section of unionism, and I think it is a large sections, that revels in its pariah status; in fact it wears it like a badge of principled defiance in the face of the modern, secular world.

    Maybe I’m being overly pessimistic but even if there is not a majority prepared to full-heartedly endorse the fundamentalist idiocy of the DUP, there is enough whole will acquiesce to it.

    Posted by  on Aug 06, 2008 @ 01:16 PM

20. Just for people’s information, Oswald has a link to Stormfront if you run your mouse over his name. That’s a fascist organisation based in the south, despite his attempt to throw us off the scent with the dismissive reference to Nazis. I wouldn’t bother trying to engage such people in a debate. But in case anyone is being fooled, Dawkins’ CV demonstrates not only that he has been a professional academic throughout his working life, at two of the world’s top universities (Oxford and Berkeley) but that he also has the respect of his peers through his invited lectures, activities within the Royal Society, and honorary degrees, as well as his sitting on the editorial board of a number of journals. It’s also quite common for academics when they reach a certain level of prominence within academia and public life to no longer publish mainly in journals, but to do so mainly through books. Which in the case of academic publishers are peer-reviewed before they go into print.

    Posted by  on Aug 06, 2008 @ 01:17 PM

21. Anyone with a serious interest in analysing publication records and citations of those publications could start their quest with Google Scholar:
    http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?as_q=&num=100&btnG=Search+Scholar&as;_epq=&as;_oq=&as;_eq=&as_occt=any&as_sauthors=RL+Dawkins&as;_publication=&as;_ylo=&as;_yhi=&as_allsubj=all&hl=en&lr;=
    There are 530 results for RL Dawkins and 1530 for R Dawkins:
    “Results 1 - 100 of about 1,530 for author:r-dawkins”

    Posted by  on Aug 06, 2008 @ 01:25 PM

22. How much more entertaining and informative if the debate were between Dawkins and Cardinal Brady.

    Posted by  on Aug 06, 2008 @ 01:27 PM

23. Several of the Google Scholar list are for Roger Dawkins so an exercise in driving the interface will be to remove those from the count.

    Posted by  on Aug 06, 2008 @ 01:33 PM

24. Guys

    Can we get back to the actual ball?

    Posted by  on Aug 06, 2008 @ 01:35 PM

25. Wikepedia= liberal bullshit

    But you already knew that.

    Posted by  on Aug 06, 2008 @ 01:55 PM
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