Richard Dawkins

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Exactly, it was a fact and nothing more. Yes, he may have been making some derogatory statement about a belief in Islam being linked to a low scientific intelligence but we have no way of knowing and thus cannot assume that should be the case. All we have to go on is what he said and what is said is factual and proven.

Why is that funny?

Yes, I have read about his studies. I recently read a book called Supernatural by a man named Graham Hancock. Fantastic book, explores the notion of alien abductions and the scope of experiences with them. I am not suggesting that they were distorting what they experienced since what they experienced was probably most real to them and felt like there was no seperation between reality and fantasy when they say they saw these things but the mind is exceptionally powerful and can generate hallucinations that are exceptionally vivid. The phenomenon of lucid dreaming and sleep-paralysis can show how people can experience VERY life like hallucinations. My friend has suffered from sleep-paralysis herself and said she saw a man in a black robe above her bed. So, there is a possibility it could be that. Of course that begs the question, why does our brain create hallucinations that seem to be very real when there doesn't seem to be any kind of evolutionary advantage to doing so? I don't know and would say that science doesn't know either, however I wouldn't like to say they were real. If someone else wishes to make such a claim then fair enough. You say it is very similar across cultures however this is not always the case and certain scholars would say that is a form of cultural reductionist universalism. Yes, as Graham Hancock mentions, their are cases of beings coming down in shamanic cultures looking insect like in the San Tribe from what they call 'the House of Smoke' and are aboard some sort of hovering orb in which surgical-like experiments go on. This is in a tribe miles away and thus it is a strange coincidence. Saying that however, this is not always the case. In California in the nineteen fifties when ufo movies were released, there were more sightings and alien abduction stories relating to nuts-and-bolts alien spaceships as it were. iN Ireland however, in the nineteen fifties, the Irish did not gravitate towards the cinematic phenomenon of ufos and thus, compared to California, there were nowhere near as many. Although, Ireland had a very strong mythology surrounding faeries and thus there were as many fairy sighting in Ireland as there were abductions. This makes it seem as if, although some of these hallucinations are very similar culturally, how people perceive extra-terrestrial beings tends to weave itself into the current cultural narrative. If these things were ture, surely they would be true for every individual witnessing them. One could say that they are able to shape-shift between different creatures but then we have no evidence for such a thing and are left with no-explanation. Carl Jung, the psychologist, had the notion of the collective consciousness, which I'm sure you are aware of, which states that since our DNA is so similar to one another as well as other organisms, we tend to create the same symbol-systems and archetypical images regardless of what culture you are looking at. Thus when looking at religious symbolism you will see that the idea of the messiah permeates all cultures such as Jerusalem, Israel, Arabia. The religious symbol of the snake also permeates all cultures such as Adam and Eve in the garden of eve, the Nagas in Hindu religion, Kundalini in Hinduism and so forth. Thus in his view, because of our shared psychology we naturally latch onto the same set of symbol systems, hence why extra-terrestrial abductions tend to manifest in similar ways. I don't know, just a thought. It is a scientific area that needs more research, I would say so.

The bias seen in his use of words to make it sound like it's all legit what he's saying. Testimonies are rarely reliable, if reliable at all, no matter how numerous and who are the witnesses.

And he ignores the fact that unknown means unknown, not known.

And the exaggerations.

I agree to an extent about The God Delusion, though I probably wouldn't go that far.

His science books are excellent though, I highly recommend them.

There is considerable evidence that the universe was once an incredibly dense speck of matter.

We can tell the universe is expanding because of redshift. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshift

The cosmic microwave background also provides evidence for the Big Bang: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_mic ... background

Well done. You have successfully rebutted that guy's argument by showing him the evidence supporting the Big Bang theory. However, we don't actually know that the universe started as as an infinitely dense point of matter. What we do know is that the universe is expanding and we can extrapolate that backwards to argue that the universe started as a point but the Big Bang theory does not itself explain the origin of the universe, just that it's expanding and that it seems to have had a beginning.

The reliability of the witnesses is infact based on the criteria defined by BMI themselves. I invite you to debate the information rather than simply dismiss it.

According to BMI insufficient information mean't there was data lacking to make any conclusive observations. Unknown means the event can't be classified based on our current knowledge.

I get the impression that Richard Dawkins is kinda senile. But he's become senile in a really weird way, where his brain is stuck in "contrarian" mode.

It doesn't work like that. Choosing to state a fact in a certain context is an act which requires defending, even if the fact is true.

I mean, suppose I started a thread on Wrong Planet with a post which just says "Seventeen is a number!"

People would be like, "Why did you say that?" And a mod might tell me off for starting a pointless thread. Suppose I defended myself by saying "It's true! Seventeen really is a number!" Would that be helpful at all?

Yes I think Prof John Mack did consider sleep paralysis as one of many possible explanations. Another possible explanation is memes (I think this is one of Dawkin's concepts?) where the concept of aliens abducting humans in Hollywood becomes a meme that is adopted across national boundaries in popular modern culture. It' not hard therefore to claim that if a child comes across a book on aliens in a book shop, library or on the History channel then it's possible they incorporate this into a kind of a false memory in their subconscious. For instance a child who experiences trauma early in their lives uses the meme of alien abduction in the memories to transpose over a traumatic event they are are trying to supress or repress from the conscious memory.

One of Mack's arguments is that he had also found these abduction experiences among children living in Africa and Asia who (he claims) have not been exposed to these cultural memes and are too young to confabulate in detail events that are also allegedly experienced by adults back in the USA.

There is certainly a confluence of ideas between Hancock and Mack with the idea that interdimensional beings are able to communicate with humans. In Mack's case the beings intersect with the human dimension whereas Hancock's shamans interact with interdimensional beings through the supernatural i.e. by using perception enhancing drugs. This is what Aldous Huxley was describing in his seminal work titled "Doors of Perception". We open doors to other realms by enhancing our perception.



I see you are familiar with the naga. Strangely the term naga is used to describe a serpent diety in Japan, the pacific islands and India among peoples who have not been in contact with each other in recent memory. There are temples in southern India which venerate the naga which resonates with serpent worship in Sumerian, Egypt and other cultures long gone. In addition to hippocrates symbolism of the serpent and the staff as healing, the serpent was also a symbol of wisdom in Egypt and in the bible the serpent dwelled n the tree of knowledge.

So no signs of aliens identified. If you want to take their word for it, that's the conclusion.

Humans don't know anything.
We have too many filters between reality and our brain's interpretation of it's perceptions. So let's not go there because that's just a form of moving the goal posts.
Most things I read don't say we know, it's framed more like Best Guess, Currently Think.
We have more indicators that certain things probably did happen than other things. It is not faith.

Atheism is not a religion.
It sometimes looks like a religion because the hair-pulling frustration of dealing with Antiatheists looks similar to the frothing of religious zelots.
Every time I've heard atheism called a religion it has seemed an obvious attempt to be insulting.

I don't even think we should "Agree to Disagree" (which is just a false surrender), I think at best, we should just Agree to Ignore discussion with those who choose a "Belief Validation System" that functions so very different from our own.
One side chooses to use observation, which places responsibility for world-improvement and self-improvement upon themselves.
The other side chooses to use loyalty to motivate a higher power to enact the desired improvements.

Dawkins may be relaxing to listen to, but he certainly is not relaxing to talk about. =)

BTW the Cyclic Model (Oscillatory Universe/Big Rebound) does a pretty good job of explaining possible circumstances immediately prior to the Big Bang.
And that is all that Scientific Theories are: an attempt to do a pretty good job of explaining something.

Dawkins is easy to read but I don't have much time for his arguments, he is a pretty bad philosopher. If you are interested in rigorous atheistic philosophy stay away from most of the new atheists. Massimo Pigliucci and Thomas Nagel are both much more interesting and are in every way better philosophers.

I thought he was polite even when appearing on FOX News with a guy like O'reilly saying you can't explain the Moon and the Tides.

holy s**t.

No all the report states is the witnesses observed an object or more than one object that they could not identify other than they were orb, cigar or saucer shaped.

So it could've been anything. And, therefore, most likely just a relatively simple/naturalistic explanation that will forever be a mystery because past historical events cannot be replicated.