Friday 16 September 2011

One is false and one is true . . .

Not many things make Jeremy Paxman laugh in the middle of an interview, but that comment from Richard Dawkins did! (Time stamp 5:34.)



Watch a great interview and enjoy Richard Dawkins being 'as strident as ever'.  (In other words, being totally polite and reasonable!)


6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Richard's life must really be devoid of anything warm and cuddly! I can't imagine how awful it must be to believe that you are somehow directly related to some strain of pond scum...

Anonymous said...

Watching the interview you have posted her, and reading the comments has made me ponder on not so much the content of the arguments for and against God, no God etc, but the way in which the arguments are conducted.

1) There is surely never any need for any one person to call any other person 'stupid', in the insulting way both interviewer and interviewee do so very often. It sadly shows a playground mentality and does nothing for their cause of endearing anyone to their point of view except those who like to mock and scorn.

2) Then the tit for tat comment on the anonymous...disappointing P.E. You are hardly in a position to criticise another for being anonymous P.E. Actually I would not actually call his/her comment infantile in the light of the extremely ill mannered and exceptionally far more insulting comments contained within the interview. I would say that the 2nd two lines of 'anonymous's' comment are an opinion expressed, the first line is an assumption which may or may not be incorrect. I do not think that anonymous deserved your even more insulting comment P.E.

3) during the most difficult times of my life, I have been hugely supported by my christian friends, found tremendous comfort from the communty of church, and clearly thousands and thousands and thousands of people throughout history have had radically different experiences and much more positive ones than it seems you have had P.E and you know better to make sweeping generalisations than this.

We have all been guilty of being annoyed, provoked, insulting and insulted in these debates as they have raged in recent years but surely we can all do better than this.

Richard Dawkins is one of the most insulting people in the media, that is simple fact. He insults in sweeping comments and comes across as a very very arrogant man. It is he who is criticising many 'religious' people of the same, though it seems (and I may be wrong with this so please cite examples if I am) that he mainly is insulting to christians, and actually his way of arguing is sadly infantile in itself. There are, yes, sadly also 'religious' people who argue in the same way and Dawkins has clearly had his share of hate mail for which I am deeply saddened as he does not deserve that, nor should anyone calling themselves Christian behave in such ways, but thankfully I have known and known the vast majority in my experience of my fellow christians to be kind, longsuffering and forgiving people.

Most people do not become persuaded by the intellectual arguments of others but by the life they live and the way they conduct themselves in private and public. Sadly, Dawkins behaves badly, insults in the guise of a gentleman, and expresses his opinions in the same way as those whom he most disdains. He is a militant dogmatic agressive evangelical atheist. Take care you do not follow in his footsteps.

Plasma Engineer said...

Well of course I could easily delete your infantile and anonymous comment, but that would mean that the other readers wouldn't see it and wouldn't know what negative and simplistic anonymous people there are in the world.

Can't you see the joy in the interview? Paxman is one of UK's 'fierce' interviewers and in this case you can see that they are both enjoying themselves.

Generally speaking I would say that the place most devoid of 'warm and cuddly' is a place called "church".

(I edited this comment to remove one word that was too offensive. Thanks to Hilary for mentioning it and apologies for the impoliteness. However - analogies to pond scum are unhelpful and frankly somewhat abusive to start with.)

roont said...

"I can't imagine how awful it must be to believe that you are somehow directly related to some strain of pond scum"

Knowing that your ancestors, all trillions and trillions of them, from pond scum to fish, from shrews to apes, had to fight against all odds to survive and continue on the line of life so that I could be here today is anything but awful.

Believing that the creator of the universe created you dirty, filthy, sinful and evil until you bow down and accept him as your master must be awful.

roont said...

"I can't imagine how awful it must be to believe that you are somehow directly related to some strain of pond scum"

Knowing that your ancestors, all trillions and trillions of them, from pond scum to fish, from shrews to apes, had to fight against all odds to survive and continue on the line of life so that I could be here today is anything but awful.

Believing that the creator of the universe created you dirty, filthy, sinful and evil until you bow down and accept him as your master must be awful.

Plasma Engineer said...

@roont Here here.