You can now read chapter 1 of The God Delusion online at the NYTimes site. Requires free registration.
There is also a full audio book copy from iTunes UK and Audible USA. I bought the audio version and I’m listening to it rather than reading the book again at present. I’ll read the book again in the future, but the reading pile is huge at present 🙂
There is a thread over on Pharyngula about a suitable logo for the godless to use on websites etc. I like the astronomical symbol for the Sun myself. It is:
I think this is appropriate as we all came from stardust 🙂
Wow. It seems that Richard Dawkins’ new book has been reprinted 6 times since it was release in September. it’s selling like hotcakes. A quote from the publisher:
Publishing Director Sally Gaminara, who commissioned the book for Bantam Press, said she had always thought the book would be a success. She said: “We have had the book reprinted six times and it was only published at the end of September. That’s an awful lot for a hardback book. I always have high hopes for my books and always tipped this book to sell well since the day I read the manuscript and thought it was absolutely wonderful. The book is very much of its time, with an increasing amount of conflict over religion. I do see this book on top of the bestseller list at Christmas. It is an ideal present — how many people celebrate Christmas for religious reasons?
Happy days.
So the Government are going to bring forward legislation that will require faith schools [1] to take 25% of their pupils from other faiths and none. This is a good first step as long as those who are not from the faith ethos of the school are not forced to take part in religious and semi-religious activities. There should not be prayers etc. at the end of assemblies without giving everyone (including those whose parents are of the faith of the school) an opportunity to leave the room. It looks like only new schools will have to follow the rules if they are implemented. Why can it not apply to existing faith schools? Surely if the concept is valid for new schools then existing schools could implement it as they take in new pupils each year. Then over a few years the existing schools would be operating under the same rules as new ones.
And why 25%? Why not 50%? If the school is taking state funding then it should be open to all pupils irrespective of their faith. I’d like to see schools that took pupils based on there academic ability and/or proximity to the school. However in the real world this is unlikely to happen for some time given the penetration of faith schools. But 50% of other or no faith seems like a good compromise to me.
[1] Aren’t faith schools a daft concept in the first place. They should be schools, not places where parents belief systems can be forced on children. Teach tham about all religions and none and then let them make up their own minds.
Why is there so much religious nonsense about at the minute? The first two items on the news on BBC Radio 2 at 13:00 today were a story about an employee of British Airways who is suing them for religious discrimination because they told her to cover up a piece of jewellery depicting a cross. The second story was about the Muslim teacher who was suspended for refusing to remove her veil. The BA worker is complaining because she says other religions don’t have to cover religious clothing such as a Sikhs head covering. When you look into the story it turns out that BA don’t ban religious jewellery but just request that it is worn under the BA uniform. The worker in this case however wants to flaunt her religion and is using the fact that other items, like headscarves, are allowed to claim discrimination against Christians. The fact that turbans and headscarves are impossible to hide under the BA uniform seems to have escaped her. Sigh.
As for the teacher who has been suspended. She is claiming that she just wants to wear the veil in the presence of men. I’ve just seen her interviewed on BBC News 24. She was asked if there had been any men on the panel that interviewed her and if she had worn the veil during the interview. She was very reluctant to answer the question and it had to be put several times. It turns out there was a man on the panel and that she was not wearing the veil during the interview. Why was it okay not to wear the veil then? I sense someone trying to make a political statement rather than a religious one.
I finished Richard Dawkins new book The God Delusion last week. I’m not sure many people will be surprised to learn that I agree with the points and argument presented in the book almost completely. There are a few minor points that I don’t agree totally with. One being the invocation of the The Anthropic Principle, in the guise of a planetary version, in relation to the discussion of the origins of life on Earth. I don’t think it’s required. Obviously as the Earth contains life then, from a weak anthropic standpoint, the conditions we find on Earth must be favourable. But I don’t think we need to invoke a planetary version of the Anthropic Principle for this. Dawkins argues that the formation of the original life was probably a very improbable event but given the number of stars and planets in our galaxy, indeed the Universe, then if on even a very, very small number of these planets such an improbable event occurred then there would be many planets where life had started. We just happen to be living on one of them.
I’m comfortable with the Anthropic Principle (the weak form) when used in relation to the Universe. If the Universe didn’t have laws that allowed creation of stars, planets etc. then we simply wouldn’t be here to ponder and discuss it. But I don’t think we need to use it to explain the origins of life. The laws of chemistry show that molecules self assemble. So in any environment that has the correct chemicals then I think molecules will form and some of those molecules will be able to catalyse the formation of copies of themselves. Some will be better at this than others and therefore will be subject to Darwinian natural selection. Thus in any system where molecules can form and compete for resources we have the first step up the far side of Dawkins’ Mount Improbable.
The God Delusion is a wonderful book. Everyone should read it. Seems many are as it’s top of many best seller lists and has had several reprints to take the number in print, in just 2 weeks, to 100,000+. I promised several people a review of the book here. I plan to read it again and record references in Endnote for future use in discussions with creationists and ID proponents. I’ll post more comprehensive thoughts after that. But the bottom line is get a copy and read it.
The Tibetan Yak Fur guy, or Story Guy as he is properly known it seems, has another mission.