Dawkins stumped by seemingly simple question

Haven't you got another thread somewhere for your irrational nonsense ?

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Heliotrope wrote:

Haven't you got another thread somewhere for your irrational nonsense ?

Really? I missed another Gunga thread somewhere? Darn.

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Anybody who blinks at that speed is under nervous tension.

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not necessarily. he could simply be "an example of a genetic mutation"

anyhow, how is this thread irrational? it posts a video of an interview with Richard Dawkins, as opposed to putting some insane creationist on a pedestal and letting him ramble

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he blinks therefore he's stumped and nervous?

gee, i'd like to see the lot on this thread in front of the camera answering that or actually any question, myself included. i think he wouldn't look the worst.

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Oh, it's that video. The one by Australian Creationists that lied to him when they approached him. The one where the eleven second pause was him thinking about whether he should throw them out for lying to him? The footage that was clearly edited in the actual video to suggest he didn't answer at all?

He was stumped right, by a question he answered previously in The Blind Watchmaker, River out of Eden, Climbing Mount Improbable and A Devil' Chaplain?

Where he gave the example of haemoglobin, which was a gain of information mutation?

http://www.tccsa.tc/video/creationist_deception_exposed.pdf

Oh that's right. I should follow the lead of the others who clearly know a hoax when they see one.

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It is probably hopeless to try and convince creationists. But for what it's worth, here is Richard Dawkins' account of the story, as well as his answer to the question. It confirms what Wolf said about the incident.

Richard Dawkins wrote:

In September 1997, I allowed an Australian film crew into my house in Oxford without realising that their purpose was creationist propaganda. In the course of a suspiciously amateurish interview, they issued a truculent challenge to me to "give an example of a genetic mutation or an evolutionary process which can be seen to increase the information in the genome." It is the kind of question only a creationist would ask in that way, and it was at this point I tumbled to the fact that I had been duped into granting an interview to creationists - a thing I normally don't do, for good reasons. In my anger I refused to discuss the question further, and told them to stop the camera. However, I eventually withdrew my peremptory termination of the interview as a whole. This was solely because they pleaded with me that they had come all the way from Australia specifically in order to interview me. Even if this was a considerable exaggeration, it seemed, on reflection, ungenerous to tear up the legal release form and throw them out. I therefore relented.

My generosity was rewarded in a fashion that anyone familiar with fundamentalist tactics might have predicted. When I eventually saw the film a year later 1, I found that it had been edited to give the false impression that I was incapable of answering the question about information content 2. In fairness, this may not have been quite as intentionally deceitful as it sounds. You have to understand that these people really believe that their question cannot be answered! Pathetic as it sounds, their entire journey from Australia seems to have been a quest to film an evolutionist failing to answer it.

Full Article at Skeptics.com.au

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dagmaraka wrote:

he blinks therefore he's stumped and nervous?

gee, i'd like to see the lot on this thread in front of the camera answering that or actually any question, myself included. i think he wouldn't look the worst.

Not to mention that Dawkins, as any academic worth his salt, could easily deflect questions he can't answer with content free filler-phrases: "Ma'am, that's a very good question. I'm very grateful you asked it, as it goes right to the heart of what my talk is all about. As I said in my talk, ... blah blah blah." We've all done some of this in oral exams in college; it's ridiculous to suppose that Dawkins can be silenced by an uncomfortable question.

This silence wasn't about the question, it was about something else.

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Heliotrope wrote:

Haven't you got another thread somewhere for your irrational nonsense ?

Actually, he's got about a dozen. And I will yet again ask one of these theist losers to actually post some concrete evidence to backup their assertions. As usual, he will just stick his head back up his own arse until he pulls it out again to blow smoke up everyone else's.

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Why is Mr Dawkins not being supported by the scientific establishment.?

From Wilso's general tone I hardly think he is a representitive of that august community.

I think I could silence him. And using a scientific argument.

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Seek and ye shall find....

Response

I tend to take my time answering a question verbally too, when it's asked by sneaky bastids.

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Chai wrote:

Seek and ye shall find....

Response

I tend to take my time answering a question verbally too, when it's asked by sneaky bastids.

It will just bounce off. These delusional freaks keep posting this crap. And people keep coming up with answers, and every time they're beaten, they disappear for a few pages, or just move to another thread, and start the drivel all over again.

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Why single out these "delusional freaks" Wilso for starting drivel? Have you a prejudice.

It's all drivel. Everything. An atheist can't think of anything in any other way.

Our Chancellor has been on TV in a dramatic photo-op reassuring investors in our 5th or 8th largest bank, in effect nationalising the banks, and that's dramatic, that their money is safe and guaranteed by his government. (I use small-case "g" there in order to register my batsqueak of protest about all the drivel our governments of recent years have foisted upon our already bowed-down shoulders.)

Most of the queues have vanished as a result of his statement last night but one remains. At the Golders Green Branch in London. There were about 80 in the queue. A 6 hour wait they said. All those people were saying the chancellor's statement was "drivel" and doing it with a bit more effort that it took you to blurt it out again like a shutter banging in the wind.

No intelligent design and it's all meaningless. Everything. The name on that shack you must live in at a decent distance from your next door neighbour. I've tracked your rants and they coincide with the tic-biting season so I make allowances.

Meaningless is the same as drivel isn't it? So an atheist has no choice. Everything is drivel.

So why do you keep picking on A2K's delusional freaks when, to an atheist, everybody is a deluded freak and like we all have different curtains and teacup styles we are all deluded in different ways. The suspicion arises that A2K is useful to you for venting your rage at knowing that your atheism logically means that you are deluded without the risk of losing cachet, such as it is, in your immediate vicinity. We are a "rage sink". Like a "heat-sink". Except that there's no such thing as heat to an atheist. It's an anthropomorphic concept.

When a moth flies into a flame it doesn't know it's hot. "Hot" is a word coming out of a language refined under spiritual imperitives. So is "drivel". How would atheists arrive at language. They would still be grunting. Gorilla's are atheists.

I could undertake a refutation of your assertion which will explicitly put the very legitimacy of the act of speech itself at stake. But I see no chance of explaining post-structuralism to you. To an atheist it is self-evidently drivel. Like everything else. An atheist is a epidermal bag responding in predictable ways to stimuli with a view to maximising pleasure and reducing pain sometimes having to suffer pain in order to reach pleasures deemed worth the suffering. The fat clubs represent a failure to put up with any suffering.

But so what? Fat clubs are drivel too.

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Everybody who believes in god is certainly a brain damaged moron.

Quote:

The name on that shack you must live in at a decent distance from your next door neighbour

Wow, you're an even more pathetic f@cking loser than the worthless little puke I already know you are.

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I'll have you know Wilso that I once made a 56 break at snooker and have done a 10 dart finish and I was well pissed on both occasions.

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Wilso wrote:

Everybody who believes in god is certainly a brain damaged moron.

I truly don't understand how you feel you can say such things Wilso.

Even if I was an atheist, I would still be puzzled by statements such as this.

I understand you have a lot of anger regarding religion, and atrocities commited in their name. I don't know your history, so I don't know where that comes from, and I know it's none of my business.

However, saying that every single person who has any sort of belief in god, God, or however you want to say it, is a "brain damaged moron" is quite a thoughtless and if I may say, ignorant thing to say.

Honestly, I couldn't make heads or tails of what spenius was saying, but that's ok, I can seldom make sense of him. I don't know anything about your history with him.

However, a rational human being, which you profess to be, can obviously see that every single human that has any sort of belief can be catagorized as a moron, or brain damaged. I don't care if someone believes or doesn't believe, but when I read posts like this, regardless of who says it, my first thought is "Stupid is as stupid does."

With respect Wilso, you're not stupid, but those words certainly were.

There are times I truly try to read your posts, because they seem interesting, but then, your anger gets in the way.

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spendius wrote:

I'll have you know Wilso that I once made a 56 break at snooker and have done a 10 dart finish and I was well pissed on both occasions.

Chai wrote:

Honestly, I couldn't make heads or tails of what spenius was saying, but that's ok, I can seldom make sense of him.

The unbelievers will never understand.

So much of what Spendius says strains the imagination.

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Wilso wrote:

Everybody who believes in god is certainly a brain damaged moron.

They couldn't just be honestly mistaken, could they?

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spendius wrote:

I could undertake a refutation of your assertion which will explicitly put the very legitimacy of the act of speech itself at stake. But I see no chance of explaining post-structuralism to you.

Notwithstanding, you have been doing so for a long time and not only with Wilso.

I admire the constancy that you put in such refutation, but I do not consider myself compelled by the very act of speech which is, ipso-facto, not at stake.

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Dawkins stumped by seemingly simple question

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