1. Does God Exist? The Nightline Face-Off (more info)

Comment #41247 by Robert O'Brien on May 15, 2007 at 5:15 pm

Comfort and Cameron fared poorly, as I expected. However, the Rational [sic] Responders were also inept. They advanced several false claims, such as conservation of mass-energy being the 3rd law of thermodynamics (it is related to the 1st law) and that it implies matter is eternal; quite to the contrary, it is likely that at the big bang the gravitational field and its fluctuations introduced more energy into the system (,i>ex nihilo).

2. Nothing sacred: Journalist and provocateur Christopher Hitchens picks a fight with God

Comment #41242 by Robert O'Brien on May 15, 2007 at 5:07 pm

The headline should read "Hitchens crawls out of bottle long enough to vainly mock God."

3. How dare you call me a fundamentalist

Comment #41240 by Robert O'Brien on May 15, 2007 at 5:03 pm

Professor Dawkins:

You are a fundamentalist in that you are fundamentally wrong.

4. Richard Dawkins at The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival

Comment #28861 by Robert O'Brien on March 31, 2007 at 10:53 am

"Wanna take a bet that in a hundred years Richard Dawkins' name will have the prominence of Darwin..."

I would take that bet.

5. Richard Dawkins at The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival

Comment #28573 by Robert O'Brien on March 29, 2007 at 10:02 pm

"The fact that this man, with his tired and irrelevant arguments, is given a chance to 'debate' with some of the greatest minds in science, is an absolute insult to human intelligence."

Greatest minds in science? My dear vapid encomiast, I should think even Professor Dawkins, despite his intoxication with his own ideas, would demur to be so lauded.

6. Richard Dawkins at The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival

Comment #28332 by Robert O'Brien on March 28, 2007 at 7:13 pm

Citing the facile dismissal of a trifling, low rent academic (i.e., Myers) is essentially an admission of defeat. Perhaps Sophoclaus (i.e., Dennett) can help you bring your game up a tick, Professor Dawkins.

7. The Dawkins Confusion: Naturalism ad absurdum

Comment #23715 by Robert O'Brien on March 2, 2007 at 7:26 am

"Kant refuted these arguments 200 years ago..."

Sorry, but no.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) criticized the ontological argument by stating that existence is not a predicate. That is, existence is not a property of individuals in the same way that being short or red is. It is certainly true that we have to be careful here. If we can arbitrarily add existence as a defining property for an individual, there seems to be no limit to what we can prove to exist. For example, we might define a unicorn as follows:


Definition: A unicorn is a four-footed beast resembling a horse having a horn on its head and existing.
Thus unicorns exist. By definition.

However, this is a parody of Anselm's argument, and doesn't stand up under close examination. Any good mathematician will allow you (within reason) to define your terms any way that you like. So there is nothing wrong with the definition. Can we really show that unicorns exist using this argument? The answer is no. Our definition of a unicorn would only seem to imply that all unicorns exist, or equivalently, that for all x, if x is a unicorn then x exists. However, this statement is trivially true, because it is vacuously satisfied.

Anyway, the form of the ontological argument that we have used does not explicitly assume that existence is a predicate. It assumes that the modal status of an individual (the Eiffel tower, say, or the number 17) can be regarded as a property. A number between 16 and 18 exists necessarily, whereas the Eiffel tower exists contingently, and the distinction between the two can be regarded as a property of each.

http://www.stats.uwaterloo.ca/~cgsmall/ontology1.html

8. The Dawkins Confusion: Naturalism ad absurdum

Comment #23714 by Robert O'Brien on March 2, 2007 at 7:19 am

Maybe the next book Professor Dawkins writes should be a The Coloring Book Version of The God Delusion For Theists.

I would say Professor Dawkins' anemic arguments against theism are more appropriate for a coloring book.

9. Is America Too Damn Religious?

Comment #22687 by Robert O'Brien on February 20, 2007 at 5:34 pm

Finally! There's hope for my country yet.

I humbly suggest that you restrain your jubilation until you acquaint yourself with the concept of representative sampling.

10. The questions science cannot answer

Comment #22021 by Robert O'Brien on February 12, 2007 at 11:08 am

Two points, firstly, the actual documentary evidence IIRC for the existence of Jesus is a Roman author writing some hundred years later and that consisting of not much more than a footnote.

You do not recall correctly. In addition to the New Testament, there is http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2007/02/mcgrath_on_dawkins.php#comment-336132">Josephus and Tacitus. (The source you had in mind, apparently.)

11. The questions science cannot answer

Comment #22019 by Robert O'Brien on February 12, 2007 at 10:56 am

Well a third point since I saw other posts you had made when my first submission of this thread failed and this relates directly to your claim of the value of religion to society. If you want to argue about the benefits of religion to a society I suggest you have a look at this document.

http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/pdf/2005-11.pdf

Ah, yes, the thrice discredited article by Gregory S. Paul, "freelance paleontologist, author, and illustrator."

http://huperborea.blogspot.com/2006/06/religiosity-leads-to-societal-ills.html

http://magicstatistics.com/category/worldview-issues/religion-society/gregory-s-paul/

Apparently, your credulity knows no bounds, provided the yarn is critical of religion.

12. The questions science cannot answer

Comment #22017 by Robert O'Brien on February 12, 2007 at 10:45 am

Thanks, Robert, for demonstrating that you haven't actually read 'The God Delusion'. Why not give it a try? Not scared, are you?

Quite to the contrary, I read the 3rd and part of the 4th chapters and I would characterize Mr. Dawkins' attempts to refute philosophical theism as sophomoric at best.

13. The God Delusion

Comment #21891 by Robert O'Brien on February 11, 2007 at 1:16 pm

So, in short, sex is as much a part of being human as is breathing and excretion. We have no choice. To claim that we should suppress it, or to use it only once or twice to have children, etc., is just blathering nonsense.

That is codswallop. Humans are the only animals who can make a conscious decision not to copulate. Moreover, if humans looked to other animals to inform their morality, stealing, forced copulation, and murder would also be acceptable.

14. The God Delusion

Comment #21888 by Robert O'Brien on February 11, 2007 at 12:58 pm

I devote a scant six pages of Breaking the Spell to the arguments for and against the existence of God, while Dawkins devotes roughly a hundred, laying out the standard arguments with admirable clarity and fairness, and skewering them efficiently.

This confirms what I previously suspected; Dennett is a sophist.

15. The questions science cannot answer

Comment #21885 by Robert O'Brien on February 11, 2007 at 12:45 pm

And he refuses to attempt to refute Richard Dawkins's arguments against the existence of a god.

Mr. Dawkins would have to make some, first. In Gorgias, Polus laughs at Socrates and Socrates asks him if a laugh makes for a valid refutation; Mr. Dawkins' criticisms of philosophical theism in The God Delusion [sic] are nothing more than an extended horse-laugh and, as such, do not constitute valid arguments.

16. Does Richard Dawkins exist?

Comment #21472 by Robert O'Brien on February 9, 2007 at 10:51 am

Clever?

What's clever about it?

Even the accent sounds more like Peter Atkins than me, although I admit it is at least better than the one they used on South Park

I enjoyed it but, then again, all you English atheists sound the same to me.

17. Blasphemy Challenge on FOX

Comment #19901 by Robert O'Brien on January 30, 2007 at 2:58 pm

Lionel, thanks for pointing that out. It is indeed a curiosity and I wonder whether it is pure coincidence that such a glitch should have occurred with the identity of a poster so obviously opposed to the aims of this website. Maybe Mr. O'Brien would care to enlighten us further. I hope Josh is monitoring this exchange and can tell us anything Mr. O'Brien doesn't. Or should we be clicking on "troll?"

I made the webmaster aware of the problem previously when another poster (Jared) accused me of co-opting his avatar (which he subsequently apologized for); he said he had fixed the problem, but apparently he was mistaken.

You can view my profile via the following link:

http://www.richarddawkins.net/forum/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=3655

18. Blasphemy Challenge on FOX

Comment #19711 by Robert O'Brien on January 29, 2007 at 11:29 am

Send me a PM and an indication of the themes you wish to address.

Done.

19. Blasphemy Challenge on FOX

Comment #19709 by Robert O'Brien on January 29, 2007 at 11:17 am

As for Bob Price, why don't you take him up on his points during his Sunday night show on www.freethoughtmedia.com

I would subject Price to the smackdown of his life. Unlike the rubes he courts with his erroneous arguments, I have studied Attic Greek (the precursor to Koine) and I am well versed in NT scholarship and Antiquity. (Even though mathematics/statistics is my field.)

20. Blasphemy Challenge on FOX

Comment #19707 by Robert O'Brien on January 29, 2007 at 11:09 am

Perhaps I was a little hard on you, Okie, but I find the swagger here repellent, especially since it is usually wed to recalcitrant ignorance.

21. Blasphemy Challenge on FOX

Comment #19696 by Robert O'Brien on January 29, 2007 at 10:31 am

My hope is that at least one person somewhere saw this interview and decides to check out the facts...

My good hayseed, if one checks out the facts he quickly learns that Flemming's "documentary" is an empty lunch pail. For example, the crank Robert Price cites laws concerning the Sanhedrin that postdate Jesus and the NT by several hundred years in a disingenuous attempt to discredit the NT narratives; he also cites anti-Christian polemics in the Talmud (again, postdating Jesus and the NT by several hundred years) when he asserts that there were attempts to "insert" him into history 100 years before the NT chronology.

I think it best if you stick to playing the banjo and courting your cousin, friend Atheist Okie, cuz' you appear to be out of your league here.

22. Blasphemy Challenge on FOX

Comment #19694 by Robert O'Brien on January 29, 2007 at 10:17 am

Flemming is a dishonest ass.

23. Copy of The God Delusion Purchased for $20,000

Comment #17750 by Robert O'Brien on January 15, 2007 at 11:03 pm

That guy paid $20,000 more than the book is worth.

24. Merry Mithras

Comment #15248 by Robert O'Brien on December 29, 2006 at 11:54 pm

NLHB:

I recommend Edwin Yamauchi's Persia and the Bible as a start.

25. The Courtier's Reply

Comment #14881 by Robert O'Brien on December 26, 2006 at 9:36 am

My good quork, in your haste to play the chamcha you neglected some salient information:

1. Ed Brayton is a college drop out (social science [sic]) and a failed comedian.

2. Ed Brayton considers Myers and Dawkins to be a problem for evolution advocacy.

3. Ed Brayton blogged about a possible quotemine of Jefferson in the God Delusion [sic].

26. The Courtier's Reply

Comment #14732 by Robert O'Brien on December 24, 2006 at 7:52 pm

Jared:

I do not want your avatar; it only appeared with my post due to a problem with the website.

27. The Courtier's Reply

Comment #14725 by Robert O'Brien on December 24, 2006 at 7:14 pm

Congratulations to P Z Myers on this brilliant piece of satire. It applies not just to Allen Orr's review in NYRB, but to all those many reviews of TGD that complain of my lack of reading in theology. My own stock reply ("How many learned books of fairyology and hobgoblinology have you read?") is far less witty.

Slanter: A linguistic device used to affect views or attitudes without argumentation.

Horse laugh: A form of pseudo-argumentation in which ridicule or mockery is substituted for evidence in an argument.

Mr. Dawkins:

Will your next book be a manual on how to engage in pseudo-argumentation?

28. Response to Richard Dawkins' Criticisms in The God Delusion

Comment #14643 by Robert O'Brien on December 23, 2006 at 10:26 pm

I admire Richard Swinburne; he should have been voted Britain's leading public intellectual.

29. Merry Mithras

Comment #14642 by Robert O'Brien on December 23, 2006 at 10:20 pm

The Indo-Iranian deity Mitra predates Christianity but Mithraism as practiced in the Roman Empire, while ultimately derived from the Indo-Iranian deity (imported via Phrygia), was distinct and the epigraphical evidence for (Roman) Mithraism postsdates Christianity by some 2-3 centuries. That is a elementary point and ignorance of it marks the posters in this thread as possessing only a pretense of learning.

30. Now we know how to make the IDists dance in their petticoats: blaspheme.

Comment #14641 by Robert O'Brien on December 23, 2006 at 10:11 pm

P Z Myers's Pharyngula blog is famously great...

Scientists who do not engage in research must stick together!

31. The problem with secularism

Comment #14509 by Robert O'Brien on December 22, 2006 at 9:58 pm

Even Papa Joe Stalin was raised in a Catholic family who had intentions of his becoming a priest.

And your point is? He was an atheist when he killed millions.

32. In case you didn't know I'm a fool, here's an article to prove it.

Comment #14508 by Robert O'Brien on December 22, 2006 at 9:53 pm

...it is intolerant, ignorant and defamotary of the great Professor Dawkins

You have something very brown and very fetid on your nose.

33. Christmas Present to Defenders of Darwinism

Comment #14009 by Robert O'Brien on December 20, 2006 at 4:46 pm

So, am I going to send in my own film clip denying the Holy Ghost? No, that is not what Oxford professors do, they write books instead.

Mr. Dawkins:

Do Oxford professors publish pulp science books instead of research? I noted the last time you published was during the Thatcher Administration.

Robert O'Brien

PS I was disappointed that I did not get to ask you questions when you were at hand at the Salk Institute; they would have been good questions.