Richard Dawkins on the Late Late

Tim Robbins

Antbert wrote: »

I believe what he said was it was a very expensive waste of time. Tubridy said Toy Town.

That's right. He gave Dawkins the bait and Mr. Dawkins took it.

There's a very good book called: "How the Duck won the Lottery" which talks about bad arguments. One style of bad argument the author calls: "loading the dice".

This is when you use unnecessary rhetoric to make your point.
For example, from a logic perspective something is usually either correct or incorrect. But terms such as "nonsense" and "toy town" don't just carry an assertion about something being incorrect. They infer that there's a element of gross stupidity in thinking something.

But, from a logical perspective it really doesn't matter if someone thinks such and such is stupid, what matters is what's correct.

I don't think you'd ever hear stronger proponents of logic such as Peter Singer, Noam Chomsky, Colin McGinn, Julian Baginni, Stephen Pinker use such rhetoric.

However, Dawkins uses it all the time. The effect of it in my view is twofold:

1.
It stirs up the emotions in those who like Dawkins, really hate religion and religious people.

2.
It turns middle of the road people off Dawkins, atheism etc because they think he is just as extreme as the people he is giving out about.

Antbert

Tim Robbins wrote: »

That's right. He gave Dawkins the bait and Mr. Dawkins took it.

There's a very good book called: "How the Duck won the Lottery" which talks about bad arguments. One style of bad argument the author calls: "loading the dice".

This is when you use unnecessary rhetoric to make your point.
For example, from a logic perspective something is usually either correct or incorrect. But terms such as "nonsense" and "toy town" don't just carry an assertion about something being incorrect. They infer that there's a element of gross stupidity in thinking something.

But, from a logical perspective it really doesn't matter if someone thinks such and such is stupid, what matters is what's correct.

I don't think you'd ever hear stronger proponents of logic such as Peter Singer, Noam Chomsky, Colin McGinn, Julian Baginni, Stephen Pinker use such rhetoric.

However, Dawkins uses it all the time. The effect of it in my view is twofold:

1.
It stirs up the emotions in those who like Dawkins, really hate religion and religious people.

2.
It turns middle of the road people off Dawkins, atheism etc because they think he is just as extreme as the people he is giving out about.

So what should he have said? I fully agree that the Vatican is a very expensive waste of time. So does he, obviously. Why deny something just to pacify the religious nutters in the audience? He'd lose all credibility.

20goto10

Tim Robbins wrote: »

That's right. He gave Dawkins the bait and Mr. Dawkins took it.

There's a very good book called: "How the Duck won the Lottery" which talks about bad arguments. One style of bad argument the author calls: "loading the dice".

This is when you use unnecessary rhetoric to make your point.
For example, from a logic perspective something is usually either correct or incorrect. But terms such as "nonsense" and "toy town" don't just carry an assertion about something being incorrect. They infer that there's a element of gross stupidity in thinking something.

But, from a logical perspective it really doesn't matter if someone thinks such and such is stupid, what matters is what's correct.

I don't think you'd ever hear stronger proponents of logic such as Peter Singer, Noam Chomsky, Colin McGinn, Julian Baginni, Stephen Pinker use such rhetoric.

However, Dawkins uses it all the time. The effect of it in my view is twofold:

1.
It stirs up the emotions in those who like Dawkins, really hate religion and religious people.

2.
It turns middle of the road people off Dawkins, atheism etc because they think he is just as extreme as the people he is giving out about.

The purpose of his new book is to take a look at the evidence and explian it in a more factual manner. Rather than taking it for granted than evolution is fact and taking his argument from there, which is what he has done so far. The purpose is to explain the evidence to those who do not understand. Unfortunately none of this was discussed and instead we had the usual play ground arguing "your an idiot, no you are the idiot".

Antbert

20goto10 wrote: »

The purpose of his new book is to take a look at the evidence and explian it in a more factual manner. Rather than taking it for granted than evolution is fact and taking his argument from there, which is what he has done so far. The purpose is to explain the evidence to those who do not understand. Unfortunately none of this was discussed and instead we had the usual play ground arguing "your an idiot, no you are the idiot".

How on earth was he supposed to achieve that when Tubridy ignored his new book and just attacked him in a blatant attempt to turn the whole audience against him? He started off explaining things about his new book, in the way you said, then was told it was uninteresting and that loads of people believe in god (irrelevant) so THERE.

Zamboni

5uspect wrote: »

Tubridy interviewed Dawkins a couple of years ago on his Radio One show with David Quinn.
Audio here:
http://richarddawkins.net/article,193,Ryan-Tubridy-interviews-Richard-Dawkins,RTE-Radio-1-Richard-Dawkins

Thanks for that.
Quinn comes across like a complete lunatic.
Matter exists, therefore God exists. wtf?

columok

Tubridy was an ignorant uninformed jerk to Dawkins but was clearly scared to take on Jimmy Carr on the same topics. Happy to go after a quiet academic but the capable comedian is too much of a challenge...

Tim Robbins

Antbert wrote: »

So what should he have said? I fully agree that the Vatican is a very expensive waste of time. So does he, obviously. Why deny something just to pacify the religious nutters in the audience? He'd lose all credibility.

Well if you are going to refer to them all as "nutters" we just won't have a meeting of minds.

I see mud slinging as counter productive you obviously don't.

But ponder this, when was the last time someone convinced you to change your mind about something (you felt strongly about) who also called you a nutter?

5uspect

Zamboni wrote: »

Thanks for that.
Quinn comes across like a complete lunatic.
Matter exists, therefore God exists. wtf?

Yeah, Quinn is a right twat.
Hitchins was on Today FM's sunday supplement with him once.
Hilarity ensued.

/goes to dig out the podcast.

robindch

Antbert wrote: »

[...] just to pacify the religious nutters [...]

The next person who resorts to insults will be banned.

5uspect

CerebralCortex wrote: »

Oh yes please. I fùckin hate David Quinn with a passion.

The online link is dead, I should have the mp3 on my old PC at home somewhere.

Sorry for the off topic.

robindch

Right folks, it seems that too many people's politeness glands are dividing by zero at the moment -- I'm putting this down to today being the autumnal equinox.

Thread closed.