August 8, 2007

Scott Adams, Again

Posted at 8:50 am by Richard and tagged , , , , . Popularity: 12% [?]

I’m really struggling with the fact that Scott Adams continues to display a dogmaticly ignorant view of atheism. I realise he’s generally writing just to stir people up (or, as the about atheism blog describes it: trolling), but that doesn’t make it acceptable.

DilbertI like Dilbert. I often enjoy Scott Adams’ blog posts, because they do make you think. Sometimes he actually comes up with some really good thought experiments. As another commenter on my blog wrote:

I always liked thought experiments that went beyond “I saw the flaws in this argument when I was three years old.”

If he stayed away from things he clearly has no idea about, or actually took on board someone else’s opinion every now and then, it would be fine. But I’m finding it harder and harder to stay away from the “unsubscribe” button…

Popularity: 12% [?]

July 30, 2007

Scott Adams on Atheism

Posted at 2:41 pm by Richard and tagged , , , , , , . Popularity: 23% [?]

DilbertI think Scott Adams (Creator of Dilbert) needs a bit of an atheist education. In his post “The Atheist Who Thought He Was God“, he makes two common misunderstandings/fallacies relating to Atheism. Can you spot them?

Perhaps there are more, but I think they boil down to the following:

  1. Few, if any, atheists claim to be 100% sure that God does not exist. (99.99999% IS good enough)
  2. Pascal’s Wager (which Adams’ post is based on – although perhaps not knowingly) doesn’t account for the multitude of beings which claim punishment for non-belief. Of course the other fallacies of Pascal’s wager are equally present in Adams’ post.

Popularity: 23% [?]