Chimp

[Elentarri]

I agree with you. Dawkins somewhere along the line gave up proper science and now preaches his version of "science" religion. He is also arrogant and assumes he knows all and keeps referring to all sorts of religions/politic veiwpoints without having even the foggiest clue about those religions/politic viewpoints in a derogatory manner.

He is also a boring, long-winded and repetitive writer. Most of his books (that I've read anyway) all end up repeating the same stuff over and over again. Read one book and you've basically read them all.

[HerodotusMao]

So Abe, cherry-picking and misrepresenting a small number of partial Dawkins quotes from one out of the dozen or more books he's published counts as "elaborate and detailed?" Seriously?

Let me try to lay this out as simply as I can... trying to claim that someone who has won the Faraday Prize not once but twice (which is awarded for for excellence in science communication to UK audiences) actual believes that "humans descend from monkeys" is a complete joke. So much for "elaborate and detailed"...

Not to mention that Dawkins seems to have a better grasp on Modern Islam than Abe does, since belief in evolution is roughly as patchy as it currently is in the Catholic church (where many theologians have stated that belief in evolution does not contradict core faith, yet the lay believer doesn't seem nearly as convinced, just as a simple example see http://www.huffingtonpost.com/usaama-...).

I get it, though, I really do. The OP seems likely to be a moderate Muslim who is upset at someone who paints his faith with a brush that he is uncomfortable with. If one looks at just the golden age of Islam, and not pay as much attention to modern Islam, I can understand the feeling. The Islamic world was at one point the center of scientific research. The only problem with that is that this period ended, at the latest, 400 years ago. And historians like Shoja-e-din Shafa question how much religion had to do with even that tragically brief period.

Now, I can agree that Dawkins sometimes, like all of us, has made some stupid or indefensible comments about any number of issues and can be prickly, personality-wise. But to claim that he isn't a scientist is as absurd as claiming that Stephen King isn't an author because you don't like his books.

Argue about his conclusions all you want. Although to actually do so in any meaningful manner you will need to have done some significant work in the fields of Evolutionary Biology, Animal Behavior and Gene replication. That is, if you want to question his scientific credibility. If you just want to do some content-free name calling and venting like Abe, well obviously no one is stopping you. But that doesn't mean anyone that actually knows anything about the topic will take you seriously.

[Jon.]

I fail to see how any of the OP's points lead to the conclusion that Prof. Dawkins is "not a scientist." I would agree that he is a preacher, of sorts, in that he takes his science message to the public. In a similar way, Bill Nye and Neil DeGrasse-Tyson could be called preachers. The difference, though, between scientific and religious preachers is that scientists, and science popularizers, are prepared to change their beliefs when confronted with evidence that contradicts them. People who rule their lives with religion will deny the evidence rather than change their beliefs. I'll take the scientists any day, thanks.

[Daniel]

Nice try. Troll some place else.

The only people who don't think Dawkins is a scientist are people who really don't like what he says. Sour grapes is not an argument.

[HerodotusMao]

Abe wrote: "---------------
@HerodotusMao:
---------------

(1)
I said: has elaborate and detailed discussion [[[ of his book. ]]]
I didn't say "of Dawkins quotes in life!"

(2)
you said: "Dawkins seems to h..."

Well, since you seem to have rewritten your entire OP, and I'm not the kind of masochist to dig through all of that word salad a second time to see how you have tried to change your stance, I'll just tackle your misconception in #2 and then be done with this, as your option is obviously set in stone and like many religious beliefs, has no basis in fact or reason.

You want Dawkins to be no better than a preacher, so you can more easily discount the uncomfortable points he makes. Nothing anyone has to say will change that, and if it requires you to completely backtrack on your previous statements, you have already shown that you have no problems with that... so this is a waste of time really.

But just for fun, lets address your #2 point, since it's glaring that you have completely missed my point with that.

The entire comment with that link was to show that while you tried before (I don't know if you have retroactively tried to correct yourself on this with your rewrite, so this is just to your original comments) to make it seem like the entire 2+ billion Muslims in the world all have no problems with Evolution, the reality is that on the ground this is not so simple or clear cut.

Just like in Catholicism, while the heads of the more progressive branches of these monolithic faiths made have made noises that sound like a admission of the scientific fact of evolution, they not only backtrack on that the moment it gets uncomfortable (something you seem *very* familiar with), but even the very weak admission itself absolutely does NOT filter down to all the lay believers.

Read that article again (assuming you actually read it the first time, which I have great doubts about...). Now think about what it means that an article like that even needed to be written, let alone that an entire dog and pony show conference (which the article was all about) had to be put on in order for moderate Muslim branches to plead with their fellow Muslims to not follow creationist ideas. This is not the actions of people who are in agreement on something.

The article not only recounts how the panelists couldn't agree on if Islam allows belief in evolution or not, but also that the panelists couldn't even agree on how large the divide between Science and Islamic theology is. There was a whole bit about how an Egyptian scholar (Yusuf al-Qaradawi) had been attacked for daring to say that "*even* if evolution was true, there is no reason for it to conflict with Islamic theology." I guess you must have missed all of that and just noted that the article had the words "Islam" and "evolution" in the same article, and took that to mean that it supported your stance instead of actually reading and comprehending the meaning of it.

The writer of the article itself also had to go out of his way to stress as much as is possible that there is a difference between actual truth (empirical evidence) and fantasy ("revealed" "truth"). Again, how does so much spilled ink support that evolution and Islam are best buddies? Me thinks you doth protest far, far too much.

Feel free to rewrite you original post as often as you like, I won't be reading it again.

[Daniel]

Abe wrote: "If you have anything to say in regard to THE BOOK AND ITS CONTENTS, the stage is yours, otherwise --> GO open your own thread."

I know you're just trolling here, but if you actually want the thread to be about the book, then perhaps it shouldn't be titled as though it's about the author since right now, even your thread title isn't about the book.

[Sagar]

Abe wrote: "READ THIS followers of 'Prophet' Dawkins:

"Richard Dawkins has gone so far, he’s lost even his atheist friends"

http://www.thenational.ae/opinion/com...-..."

What fun. You have found another person who thinks like you.

Your nitpicking is in very poor taste. Considering the audience he writes for, it is quite natural for him to compare and contrast evolutionary biology evidence with faith based preaching. We all borrow poetic references from other forms of literature, I don't see how him using the word ark in a couple of places leads to him endorsing the mythical ark.