I think that at some point in that t.o. conversation, somebody tried to redefine division by zero as a valid operation during slope calculation. I don’t remember the details, but there was much bewildered head shaking. Par for the course.

I’m inclined to concede Flabberghasted’s point on this one. If one’s honest intent is to self-educate in the scientific basis of something such as biological evolution and it is being approached from the perspective of an ideologically opposed student perhaps Dawkins is not the best starting point. Dawkins is a fine educational writer but in my opinion he writes with a bias intended to keep it entertaining for the layman reader who is already inclined to accept him as an authority on evolution and that entertainment comes at the expense of creationist beliefs. I can see how that would be distracting and counter-productive.

The Berkeley site Troublesome Frog linked to above strikes me as a better resource for learning the lay of the land. There appears to have been a lot of effort expended to make it educational without denigration.

I am at a loss for words. Thank you fez for better articulating the point which I seem incapable of doing at times. :*)

Flabberghasted:

I don’t think it would be good to start with something that instantly feels as though my current beliefs are being attacked.

I’m not sure what to say. If you fervently believed that the sky was yellow, and came across a book that said that if you look up on a clear day, you’ll see that the sky is blue, then wouldn’t you take that as an attack on your beliefs?

I’m inclined to concede Flabberghasted’s point on this one. If one’s honest intent is to self-educate in the scientific basis of something such as biological evolution and it is being approached from the perspective of an ideologically opposed student perhaps Dawkins is not the best starting point. Dawkins is a fine educational writer but in my opinion he writes with a bias intended to keep it entertaining for the layman reader who is already inclined to accept him as an authority on evolution and that entertainment comes at the expense of creationist beliefs. I can see how that would be distracting and counter-productive.

The Berkeley site Troublesome Frog linked to above strikes me as a better resource for learning the lay of the land. There appears to have been a lot of effort expended to make it educational without denigration.

I don’t think it would be good to start with something that instantly feels as though my current beliefs are being attacked.

I’m not sure what to say. If you fervently believed that the sky was yellow, and came across a book that said that if you look up on a clear day, you’ll see that the sky is blue, then wouldn’t you take that as an attack on your beliefs?

Like Dawkins. He has a degree in zoology and philosophy. How does make him qualified to be an expert on evolution and an expert in theology? If he speaks of anything outside of his field of expertise his claims cannot be believed any more than “Dr.” Hovind’s.

Let me approach this from another angle: why should you believe a physicist when he’s talking about physics? For that matter, why should you believe anyone when they’re talking about physics? (Or economics, or foreign policy, or plumbing, or whatever.)

I don’t know about you, but I want to believe as many true things as possible, and as few false things as possible. On top of which, I think it’s important to believe things for the right reasons.

The best way to find out whether something is true is to go out and check it for yourself. If you want to know how many legs dogs have, find some dogs and count their legs.

Now, in a lot of cases it just isn’t practical or worthwhile to check everything out oneself. I’m not going to fly off to Australia to find out what the capital is. Nor am I going to fly out there again a year later just to make sure the capital hasn’t changed since the last time.

The next best thing to checking for oneself is to listen to someone who has, and who (apparently) knows enough not to make simple mistakes. If I can’t find any dogs to count their legs, I can ask a dog breeder or veterinarian, someone who has seen a lot of dogs and has counted their legs (and knows how to recognize a dog; if you run across someone who can’t tell a dog from a chicken, they might tell you that some dogs have two legs, while others have four).

So when someone tells you something, it’s important to ask yourself how they know that. If someone says “I know Barack Obama is president because I saw him being sworn in”, that seems like a good reason to believe them. But if someone says “I know Barack Obama is president because it came to me in a dream”, then that particular statement may be true, but the person believes it for bad reasons (dreams aren’t reliable indicators of truth), and so the next thing that that person says is suspect.

So why do I usually believe physicists when they talk about physics? Because when I ask them how they know what they know, they usually have satisfactory answers (e.g., “How do we know that gravity affects time? Because we flew a clock in an airplane, and the time was different from an identical clock that stayed on the ground”). Ideally, I’d prefer not to have to trust them, but it’s a concession I make for the sake of being able to get on with my life instead of pursuing umpteen degrees. Basically, I trust that the fact that they have a degree means that they know what they’ve studied the subject, and that the chance that they might be wrong is low enough that I’m willing to take that risk.

So to (finally) cycle back to your question, of why you should listen to Richard Dawkins on matters of theology: you shouldn’t trust him any more than any other layman.

It depends on the question, really: if it’s “what did Aquinas have to say about the divinity of Jesus?”, then Plantinga is probably a more reliable source than Dawkins. But when it comes to basic questions like “what is the evidence for the existence of one or more gods?”, I have yet to run across a theologian who gives a satisfactory answer. Because of things like this, their entire field of study is suspect.

That doesn’t mean theologians are automatically wrong; it just means I don’t give them the same benefit of the doubt as I do physicists. And, of course, Dawkins doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt on theological matters. So again, it comes down to “whose arguments are sound? Who has the best reasons for believing what they do?”

I haven’t read the others, but I just finished Greatest Show and it’s definitely in the trying-to-convince category. I mean, I think that was the point of it. Of course, that hardly invalidates the arguments contained therein, which stand or fall on their merits, so I’m not sure what Flabber’s complaint is.

My complaint is that if I am going to even begin learning anything about the proper Modern Evolutionary synthesis I don’t think it would be good to start with something that instantly feels as though my current beliefs are being attacked. Especially since my main motivation is to more accurately portray the facts when discussing them with others. If there is one thing I have learned through Kent Hovind’s problems is that if you’re going to attack a theory…you better know it, inside and out. One problem I am having is, “Where do you start?” I mean seriously, the theories that comprise Evolution are so diverse in so many fields that if you became an expert in one or many, you will still be lacking serious information in many, many other fields. Like Dawkins. He has a degree in zoology and philosophy. How does make him qualified to be an expert on evolution and an expert in theology? If he speaks of anything outside of his field of expertise his claims cannot be believed any more than “Dr.” Hovind’s. I am not trying to start anything. I am just asking some questions that confuse the heck outt’a me.

I haven’t read the others, but I just finished Greatest Show and it’s definitely in the trying-to-convince category. I mean, I think that was the point of it. Of course, that hardly invalidates the arguments contained therein, which stand or fall on their merits, so I’m not sure what Flabber’s complaint is.