News:

It is our goal to harrass and harangue you ever further toward our own incoherent brand of horse-laugh radicalism.

Main Menu

Seriously, Mr. Dawkins?

Started by Mesozoic Mister Nigel, November 03, 2013, 09:53:36 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Nephew Twiddleton

Yeah but he phrased it like. Heffalumps and woozzles stole my honey! Thanks a lot brown people religion!
Its not about security at that point. Its about his enmity towards religion in general and muslims in particular.
Also who the hell takes honey on a plane?
Strange and Terrible Organ Laminator of Yesterday's Heavy Scene
Sentence or sentence fragment pending

Soy El Vaquero Peludo de Oro

TIM AM I, PRIMARY OF THE EXTRA-ATMOSPHERIC SIMIANS

Nephew Twiddleton

Also vex- try telling a bunch of religious scholars that religion suppresses critical thinking. You may think that theyre debating is pointless but they are applying critical thinking to whatever body of religious texts and commentary are available to them
Strange and Terrible Organ Laminator of Yesterday's Heavy Scene
Sentence or sentence fragment pending

Soy El Vaquero Peludo de Oro

TIM AM I, PRIMARY OF THE EXTRA-ATMOSPHERIC SIMIANS

Reginald Ret

I can hate airport security and Dawkins at the same time. I'm skilled that way.
Lord Byron: "Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves."

Nigel saying the wisest words ever uttered: "It's just a suffix."

"The worst forum ever" "The most mediocre forum on the internet" "The dumbest forum on the internet" "The most retarded forum on the internet" "The lamest forum on the internet" "The coolest forum on the internet"

Kai

Quote from: holist on November 04, 2013, 06:02:05 AM
He is an unmitigated arsehole. Actually, I think he always has been - a smart one back in the day, but he's gradually lost that. The Selfish Gene is terribly overrated. The anthropomorphizing title itself does untold damage to the understanding of evolution.

The Selfish Gene is /excellent/. I had the same opinion as you, after the first time I read it. A few years ago I reread it with a more critical eye. It was the first time I understood how cheaters could exist in equilibrium in a population, and how Mult-Level Selection was unnecessary to the retention of any trait, even apparent altruism. There's no "good of the group", and the title, as anthropomorphic as it seems, is a good summary of the book: Evolution is going on at the genetic level, and since their only impetous is continuation (as much as any bit of replicating hydrocarbons can said to be "teleological"), they are fundamentally selfish. In the genetic sense, the only thing that matters in evolution is what alleles/genes are carried forward in time, and what are not.

Maybe this isn't a big revelation for anyone else, but during my masters degree I had several mentors who were very much in the Steven Jay Gould Multi-Level Selection camp, and I was mired in that ideology until I realized it was unnecessary.
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

Q. G. Pennyworth

Quote from: Doktor Blight on November 04, 2013, 12:21:48 PM
Yeah but he phrased it like. Heffalumps and woozzles stole my honey! Thanks a lot brown people religion!
Its not about security at that point. Its about his enmity towards religion in general and muslims in particular.
Also who the hell takes honey on a plane?

Actually, the comments about "brown people religion" were not part of this, unless you think Bin Laden is synonymous with Islam. He's right. It's a stupid rule, enforced by stupid people, based on misguided fear of a bunch of violent nutbags. He is also a colossal douche, but this seems like the wrong tweet to get mad about. I'd rather have a million douchebags complaining about the right things than one ideologically pure person complaining.

The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: :regret: on November 04, 2013, 12:30:54 PM
I can hate airport security and Dawkins at the same time. I'm skilled that way.

THIS.

" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Quote from: holist on November 04, 2013, 07:35:40 AM
Quote from: Mrs. Nigelson on November 04, 2013, 06:06:13 AM
Quote from: holist on November 04, 2013, 06:02:05 AM
He is an unmitigated arsehole. Actually, I think he always has been - a smart one back in the day, but he's gradually lost that. The Selfish Gene is terribly overrated. The anthropomorphizing title itself does untold damage to the understanding of evolution.

I liked several of his books, but that wasn't one of them actually. I've skimmed it.

Which ones did you like?

IIRC, "River Out Of Eden", "The Blind Watchmaker", and "Climbing Mount Improbable". I also think I skimmed but probably didn't read "The Extended Phenotype". I was in charge of the science section of a large bookstore at the time so I skimmed a lot of books.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Quote from: Q. G. Pennyworth on November 04, 2013, 01:48:08 PM
Quote from: Doktor Blight on November 04, 2013, 12:21:48 PM
Yeah but he phrased it like. Heffalumps and woozzles stole my honey! Thanks a lot brown people religion!
Its not about security at that point. Its about his enmity towards religion in general and muslims in particular.
Also who the hell takes honey on a plane?

Actually, the comments about "brown people religion" were not part of this, unless you think Bin Laden is synonymous with Islam. He's right. It's a stupid rule, enforced by stupid people, based on misguided fear of a bunch of violent nutbags. He is also a colossal douche, but this seems like the wrong tweet to get mad about. I'd rather have a million douchebags complaining about the right things than one ideologically pure person complaining.

Actually, to me it's both a measure of his incredible hypocrisy after the way he treated Rebecca Watson, specifically his acerbic rebuke that she was overreacting because she doesn't have it as bad as Muslim women, combined with his apparent sense of exceptionalism "WAAAAAAHHHHH BUT I WANT TO BEING MY HONEY ON THE PLANE, NEVER MIND THAT FOR THE LAST 13 YEARS NOBODY HAS BEEN ALLOWED TO BRING JARS OF LIQUID ON THE PLANE" plus the fact that if you read back through his tweets, a disproportionate percentage of them mention Islam or Muslims, often rather irrelevantly, making it fairly obvious that the man has a particular bias against Islam. Which he has flat-out said; he thinks religion is evil and that Islam is the worst of the religions.

So essentially, the enemy of my enemy is not my friend, he's just another moronic, entitled turd in the bucket.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: Mrs. Nigelson on November 04, 2013, 05:11:24 PM
So essentially, the enemy of my enemy is not my friend, he's just another moronic, entitled turd in the bucket.

BRB, Newsfeed.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Pope Pixie Pickle

Quote from: Mrs. Nigelson on November 04, 2013, 05:11:24 PM
Quote from: Q. G. Pennyworth on November 04, 2013, 01:48:08 PM
Quote from: Doktor Blight on November 04, 2013, 12:21:48 PM
Yeah but he phrased it like. Heffalumps and woozzles stole my honey! Thanks a lot brown people religion!
Its not about security at that point. Its about his enmity towards religion in general and muslims in particular.
Also who the hell takes honey on a plane?

Actually, the comments about "brown people religion" were not part of this, unless you think Bin Laden is synonymous with Islam. He's right. It's a stupid rule, enforced by stupid people, based on misguided fear of a bunch of violent nutbags. He is also a colossal douche, but this seems like the wrong tweet to get mad about. I'd rather have a million douchebags complaining about the right things than one ideologically pure person complaining.

Actually, to me it's both a measure of his incredible hypocrisy after the way he treated Rebecca Watson, specifically his acerbic rebuke that she was overreacting because she doesn't have it as bad as Muslim women, combined with his apparent sense of exceptionalism "WAAAAAAHHHHH BUT I WANT TO BEING MY HONEY ON THE PLANE, NEVER MIND THAT FOR THE LAST 13 YEARS NOBODY HAS BEEN ALLOWED TO BRING JARS OF LIQUID ON THE PLANE" plus the fact that if you read back through his tweets, a disproportionate percentage of them mention Islam or Muslims, often rather irrelevantly, making it fairly obvious that the man has a particular bias against Islam. Which he has flat-out said; he thinks religion is evil and that Islam is the worst of the religions.

So essentially, the enemy of my enemy is not my friend, he's just another moronic, entitled turd in the bucket.


NIGEL GET OUT OF MY HEAD...

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Dildo Argentino

Quote from: Kai on November 04, 2013, 12:45:18 PM
Quote from: holist on November 04, 2013, 06:02:05 AM
He is an unmitigated arsehole. Actually, I think he always has been - a smart one back in the day, but he's gradually lost that. The Selfish Gene is terribly overrated. The anthropomorphizing title itself does untold damage to the understanding of evolution.

The Selfish Gene is /excellent/. I had the same opinion as you, after the first time I read it. A few years ago I reread it with a more critical eye. It was the first time I understood how cheaters could exist in equilibrium in a population, and how Mult-Level Selection was unnecessary to the retention of any trait, even apparent altruism. There's no "good of the group", and the title, as anthropomorphic as it seems, is a good summary of the book: Evolution is going on at the genetic level, and since their only impetous is continuation (as much as any bit of replicating hydrocarbons can said to be "teleological"), they are fundamentally selfish. In the genetic sense, the only thing that matters in evolution is what alleles/genes are carried forward in time, and what are not.

Maybe this isn't a big revelation for anyone else, but during my masters degree I had several mentors who were very much in the Steven Jay Gould Multi-Level Selection camp, and I was mired in that ideology until I realized it was unnecessary.

Okay. In the cognitive science department where I was at the time I read it, it was no big deal, everyone seemed to take it as read and undergraduates had the book shoved at them by postgrads or faculty who were lazy to explain this. To be fair, I understood that when I read this book, too. It seemed a bit long, though, to make this point. I don't think I read it all the way through, perhaps it could do with a closer reading.
Not too keen on rigor, myself - reminds me of mortis

Nephew Twiddleton

Quote from: Mrs. Nigelson on November 04, 2013, 05:11:24 PM
Quote from: Q. G. Pennyworth on November 04, 2013, 01:48:08 PM
Quote from: Doktor Blight on November 04, 2013, 12:21:48 PM
Yeah but he phrased it like. Heffalumps and woozzles stole my honey! Thanks a lot brown people religion!
Its not about security at that point. Its about his enmity towards religion in general and muslims in particular.
Also who the hell takes honey on a plane?

Actually, the comments about "brown people religion" were not part of this, unless you think Bin Laden is synonymous with Islam. He's right. It's a stupid rule, enforced by stupid people, based on misguided fear of a bunch of violent nutbags. He is also a colossal douche, but this seems like the wrong tweet to get mad about. I'd rather have a million douchebags complaining about the right things than one ideologically pure person complaining.

Actually, to me it's both a measure of his incredible hypocrisy after the way he treated Rebecca Watson, specifically his acerbic rebuke that she was overreacting because she doesn't have it as bad as Muslim women, combined with his apparent sense of exceptionalism "WAAAAAAHHHHH BUT I WANT TO BEING MY HONEY ON THE PLANE, NEVER MIND THAT FOR THE LAST 13 YEARS NOBODY HAS BEEN ALLOWED TO BRING JARS OF LIQUID ON THE PLANE" plus the fact that if you read back through his tweets, a disproportionate percentage of them mention Islam or Muslims, often rather irrelevantly, making it fairly obvious that the man has a particular bias against Islam. Which he has flat-out said; he thinks religion is evil and that Islam is the worst of the religions.

So essentially, the enemy of my enemy is not my friend, he's just another moronic, entitled turd in the bucket.

Exactly. He might have mentioned Bin Laden specifically, but taken in the overall context of things he's said in the past...
Strange and Terrible Organ Laminator of Yesterday's Heavy Scene
Sentence or sentence fragment pending

Soy El Vaquero Peludo de Oro

TIM AM I, PRIMARY OF THE EXTRA-ATMOSPHERIC SIMIANS

Kai

If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

Faust

Quote from: Kai on November 04, 2013, 10:27:23 PM
And then this happened. http://toys.usvsth3m.com/richard-dawkins-honey-defender/

:lulz: :lulz: :lulz: :lulz: :lulz:

I like how when you fuck up it randomly pulls one of his twitter posts. and makes you wait (presumably to read it).
Sleepless nights at the chateau