Why do we care?  Penn Jillette is right.  Just look someone in the eye and disagree with them.  As he notes, he has a better relationship with Evangelical Christians than with liberals.  Because there is mutual respect.

I have been seeing Penn and Teller shows since the 80s.  They are very funny.  They are very talented.  

I never went to a Richard Dawkins lecture.  I have seen some of his clips to know I would rather watch paint dry.  I made the mistake of going to a Noam Chomsky lecture once and learned by lesson.    

In other news a Pennsylvania judge ruled that if you mock Mohammed then an angry muslim can legally beat the hell out of you.  Iraq war vet, converted to Islam, sits on the bench and needs to be sitting on a park bench instead.

 If he entertains doubt then he is not certain, hence he cannot be an a theist. 

But there is method to Dawkins recent shift.

There have been numerous recent news reports about cosmologists claiming that is is possible to explain first cause without resorting to deity.  Interspersed with the names of actual theoretical physicists (Hawkings, etc.) have been names like Dawkins and Hitchens.  Both of whom have authored
popular books on the subject.

The only problem being that those persons are not scientists, they are polemicists, and critics have called them, and the ‘news reports’ to account for this apparent incongruity.  You can write such books, but comfucing them for science, much less theoretical science is a fundamental categorical error.

Hence the ‘newfound’ skepticism of Dawkins, who has previously made his bones absolutely arguing against the existence of God.

Color me skeptical.

You are absolutely right ThomasD, but I think what Dawkins would fear more than anything is being ignored.  

Don’t let your imagination run wild.

You are simply ignorant about Dawkins’ atheism. There are no changes in his views:

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/02/24/a-telegraph-poll-of-remarkable-inanity/

Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennet Discuss the Meaning of Life and Death

As for all the mundane expressions of religion or spirituality (and when saying “expression”, “mundane” becomes redundant) they are a failure to keep the radiance to its plain works; turn into words what words can’t convey.

As for the radiance inside, she is very well content with herself and does not need to talk about love, god, awakening, meditation, peace or joy, but finds them all in action or idleness.

Which explains the apparent gloom of:

“Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.”

But it is a joyful acknowledgment.

Ecclesiastes also says in the same vein:

“There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour.”

You call this some sort of answer?

This might make you understand better. Excellent stuff:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mT4EWCRfdUg
The Purpose of Purpose –  A lectrure by Richard Dawkins

….behave as though Life is something meaningful…

That’s because, as Dawkins explains:

“We humans are obsessed with purpose. The question, “What is it for?” comes naturally to a species surrounded by tools, utensils and machines. For such artifacts it is appropriate, but then we go too far. We apply the “What is it for?” question to rocks, mountains, stars or the universe, where it has no place.

How about living things? Unlike rocks and mountains, animals and plants, wings and eyes, webbed feet and leaves, all present a powerful illusion of design. Since Darwin, we have understood that this, too, is an illusion. Nevertheless, it is such a powerful illusion that the language of purpose is almost irresistible. Huge numbers of people are seriously misled by it, and biologists in practice use it as a shorthand.I shall develop two meanings of “purpose”. Archi-purpose is the ancient illusion of purpose, a pseudo-purpose fashioned by natural selection over billions of years. Neo-purpose is true, deliberate, intentional purpose, which is a product of brains. My thesis is that neo-purpose, or the capacity to set up deliberate purposes or goals, is itself a Darwinian adaptation with an archi-purpose.

Neo-purpose really comes into its own in the human brain, but brains capable of neo-purposes have been evolving for a long time. Rudiments of neo-purpose can even be seen in insects. In humans, the capacity to set up neo-purposes has evolved to such an extent that the original archi-purpose can be eclipsed and even reversed. The subversion of purpose can be a curse, but there is some reason to hope that it might become a blessing.”

From The Purpose of Purpose, A Lecture by Richard Dawkins

Can’t give it an hour right now, sorry.

What will be interesting is when Dawkins, or anyone, has a repeatable experiment that goes from the periodic table of elements to self-reproducing life.

Short of that, he really has nothing more than Spurgeon.

Since Darwin, we have understood that this, too, is an illusion. 

Have we, truly?

Or is he just selling books?

How is it that one systematically denies any absolute, and then makes absolute assertions with a straight face?

Aside: much of Dawkins’ criticism is spot-on; quite a few use faith as an escape from Reason.  But that says more of the escapees than of faith.

After all these years, have you found what you are searching for, or are you still seeker?

Yes and no. Christ is the answer, but not in the sense of a destination. He must still be sought daily, hourly, or you may not be properly grasped by the question.

 Smitty-

It’s like you’re saying its impossible to find meaning in life without God, and anybody who thinks otherwise is full of shit, worthy of nothing but derision. That’s the way I read it anyway.

If it’s so simple, then Really Smart Guys like Dawkins should just trot it out.

And I am fully in favor of supporting such research; the effort alone is worthwhile for all the answer may be elusive.

Kinda like these ‘meaning of life’ threads.

 Smitty-

You’re overthinking things and overcomplicating them. It’s not just you, everybody that ponders these issues does the same thing. Everybody goes on these tangents contemplating things with the attitude that “we mortals with our finite reasoning can’t possibly comprehend this”, and then we’re surprised that the answer is so evasive.

A good rule of thumb might be, when you’re looking at a situation that by its nature started out with a simple formula, the ultimate answer itself might be far more simple than you might imagine.

Taking the metaphysical path might be spiritually stimulating but it might leave you intellectually famished.

Remember, keep it simple.

Not a whole lot of respect for atheists here.

And while faith is not provable in the mathematical sense, I’d say the majority of evidence rather firmly points to Jesus is the Creator God.

Darwin is not only dead, but he is also a second rate experimentalist, and a not that good philosopher.

Penn Jillette came out and said they do not take on Islam in their show because “they have families” and are afraid of being attacked.  Frankly I think he should leave religion out of the show.  But while I disagree with Jillette on that, I do not find him anywhere near as tiresome as some tool like Dawkins.  

What is the point of family, friends, community, love, etc. , if they are nothing but the product of random chemical interactions and freaks of statistics, no more or less significant than any other?  Your own personal chemical fluctuation in the slow march to entropy will inevitably fade and all of the above will have mean nothing.

The Greeks who stared at the shadows on the cave walls and faced down the arrows of Xerxes at Thermopylae? Irrelevant.  

The Romans who took the riotous rude democracy of the Greek city states and codified it into, however briefly, a Republic?  Idiots.

The Christians who faced lions and emperors to profess their belief in a higher law binding all men?  Fools.

The anonymous Irish monks who archived the wisdom of a fallen world in their isolated monasteries as Rome and Europe collapsed?  Wasting their time.

The men with the rusty metal shirts and shining swords who breasted the tide of Islam again and again, in Spain, in France, at Rhodes and Lepanto and Vienna? Deluded.

The printers and brewers and lawyers and farmers who stood up un Philadelphia and told the greatest power in the world that all men had rights that derived from a nobler and higher source than the indulgence of the powerful, and forged that defiance, however briefly, into a Republic?  Madmen.

The 300,00 men who died to renew that claim, and the 300,000 more who died to assert that it applied to all men, regardless of race or color?  Lunatics.

All the millions who have stood and died since then to deny that men are things, property, at the disposal of the king or the state or the party or the revolution or “the people?”  All the men, women and children who have lived and died building homes, factories, farms, universities, museums, a word? Gullible buffoons, one and all.  Deluded moths imagining they could manage the flame — unless there is a flame, and there is some way we can aspire to embrace it and become, in our own small ways, transcendant.

Is Dawkins experiencing a Dark Night of the Soul? Or, being an atheist and therefore without a soul, just a Dark Night of the Wallet and needing to market himself and his books?

 So what you are saying then is that all of these great things would be meaningless without the promise of heaven or the threat of hell. Sorry, I just don’t agree with that.

Spellcheck, on the other hand, could stand some more evolution.

Define natural, or nature, as per your usage.

And explain how you know this definition to be true…

Perhaps it is you who are ignorant and well out of your depth?

Richard: That was Goddamn brilliant and eloquent.  If you don’t turn it into a post over at TBL, then I will over at TCOTS.

Somebody had to link it:
http://youtu.be/7DA2MKuI6fs