Love letters from Christians to Richard Dawkins

[Baloo]

I'm guessing none of you are doing anything special on Monday btw

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/...mpression=true

Merry Christmas

[Mrs Steve R]

People are leaving them alone. However, most of these debates spawn from religious people passing comments as fact and denouncing scientific discoveries as untrue. They also spawn from kids receiving blinkered education that deliberately offers one view and neglects to mention things such as evolution, age of the universe, existence of other worlds. You seem to be thinking that the skeptic community are just out there picking fights. We are not. Often comments from skeptics such as Dawkins are borne from someone dismissing, and attacking, science.

My own view is that religion holds people back, and that is a huge shame. It also indoctrinates children from an early age and that is a form of abuse - but it is acceptable because these children will grow up with greater morals than my kids (for example). I try to promote critical thinking with my kids and, if they emerge from that aupporting Judaism, Christianity or Islam then at least they will have made an informed choice. Too many people have had that taken from them.

That isn't me bashing religious people, by the way. That is me being frank about something that I see as a form of abuse. I grew up with grandparents threatening me with hell and rewarding me with heaven - it's pretty ****ed up when you look at it that way.

If someone claims to me that the earth is 6000 years old - then I tend to open up the discussion. If someone comes to me claiming Noah's Ark is a fact, I ask questions about the ridiculousness of it. These things have happened to me - I am not aware of many skeptics going up to religious people and bashing them. It's almost as if you are viewing anti-religious comments (that are based on scientific facts) as unsavoury - what next, Tory voters no longer allowed to laugh at Labour policies?

I am not anti religious people, I am anti religion. And, without going into details of my past, I have very good reasons for that.

Do you see that differently to threatening a child with no Christmas presents from Santa?

[Mrs Steve R]

With all due respect, I fail to understand how you struggle to have faith in science.
A scientific experiment can be be carried out before your very eyes and the result will be there for you to witness for yourself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_(physics)

[Mrs Steve R]

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/...mpression=true

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas (in whatever way it means) to you too.

[Taunton Blue Genie]

For me, the question of whether God exists is a lower level discussion. Wheeling out science to disprove religion is too obvious. The aspects I find interesting are why did God come into being in the first place, why was religion allowed to fail, and what has replaced it? To find the answers you need to go back in history.

It is significant that even many atheists refer to 'God' as if there has only ever been one deity. There have been thousands of deities over the centuries.

[William Treseder]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_(physics)

Do you believe in Scientific results and facts?

[Eric Cartman]

Exactly, so why not leave them alone then? we would not allow any other group of people to be openly and constantly bashed by people on here, I imagine half of the people in this thread would complain if we did, if people are happily getting on with their lives doing no harm to anyone else then mind your own business imo.

I'm guessing none of you are doing anything special on Monday btw

Yeah because 'religion' starts and ends with a bunch of people quietly minding their own business

[jamieccfc]

Only from that point onwards

Ok I could've worded it a bit better. I just believe everything is to perfectly placed for it to have happened just by chance

[Wales-Bales]

Do you see that differently to threatening a child with no Christmas presents from Santa?

It's all part of the same conditioning, you obviously haven't read Sapiens I came out of school thinking history was all about the royal family, and how wonderful they were for conquering Britain and saving us! Come to think of it, school is more dangerous than religion

[Badly Ironed Shirt]

Do you see that differently to threatening a child with no Christmas presents from Santa?

No I don't. Did you think I did?

[Badly Ironed Shirt]

Ok I could've worded it a bit better. I just believe everything is to perfectly placed for it to have happened just by chance

If the universe is infinite then it's purely statistical. There are an infinite number of numbers - there are fewer prime numbers but the number of prime numbers is also infinite.

[Badly Ironed Shirt]

It is significant that even many atheists refer to 'God' as if there has only ever been one deity. There have been thousands of deities over the centuries.

Many "atheists" come from monotheistic societies.

[Badly Ironed Shirt]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_(physics)

What is the point you are making?

[Taunton Blue Genie]

Many "atheists" come from monotheistic societies.

Why the parentheses?

[lardy]

Why the parentheses?

The kids normally follow their parentheses religion.

[Organ Morgan.]

Yeah, consumerism and materialism and celebrityism.

[Mrs Steve R]

Do you believe in Scientific results and facts?

I do but I'm also aware that people can be deceived by facts if they don't know enough about the subject themselves, I can't really remember what my point was about that last night tbh, it was late.

Yeah because 'religion' starts and ends with a bunch of people quietly minding their own business

So I should have told the little old man from down the road to shove his Christmas card and best wishes up his chimney should I?

It's all part of the same conditioning, you obviously haven't read Sapiens I came out of school thinking history was all about the royal family, and how wonderful they were for conquering Britain and saving us! Come to think of it, school is more dangerous than religion

No I don't. Did you think I did?

I don't know, that's why I asked.

[Badly Ironed Shirt]

Why the parentheses?

I assume you mean quotes. I think you are using a different version of atheism than the one I am talking about. The quotes are my way of distinguishing between the two.

[Badly Ironed Shirt]

How can you be deceived by fact?

[Baloo]

An oldie but goodie...


The Physics of Santa and His Reindeer

No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.

There are two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since Santa doesn’t appear to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and
Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total — 378 million according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that’s 91.8 million homes. One presumes there’s at least one good child in each.

Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second.

This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75½ million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc.

This means that Santa’s sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second — a conventional reindeer can
run, tops, 15 miles per hour.

If every one of the 91.8 million homes with good children were to put out a single chocolate chip cookie and an 8 ounce glass of 2% milk, the total calories (needless to say other vitamins and minerals) would be approximately 225 calories (100 for the cookie, give or take, and 125 for the milk, give or take). Multiplying the number of calories per house by the number of homes (225 x 91.8 x 1000000), we get the total number of calories Santa consumes that night, which is 20,655,000,000 calories. To break it down further, 1 pound is equal to 3500 calories. Dividing our total number of calories by the number of calories in a pound (20655000000/3500) and we get the number of pounds Santa gains, 5901428.6, which is 2950.7 tons.

The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that “flying reindeer” (see above) could pull TEN TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload (not even counting the weight of the sleigh) to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison, this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth. 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance — this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecraft
re-entering the earth’s atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each.

In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.

In conclusion: If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he’s dead now.

[jackrabbit]

Religion has many shortcomings but it has inspired great works of art, fantastic architecture and stunningly beautiful music among other things. What has Richard Dawkins ever done to improve the lot of mankind? Contrastingly this is what Georg Friedrich Handel has given us:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXh7JR9oKVE

(Toronto 2010)

HAPPY CHRISTMAS!��