Throw Lawrence Krauss on the pile

Considering atheists are all about evidence (or the lack thereof) I would say they would believe any evidence against this guy.

And then they'd burn in hell for denying the Lord, of course.

"He Became A Celebrity For Putting Science Before God..."

What kind of schlocky, hackneyed headline is that? Anyway, there does seem to be plenty of smoke, as there are universities in the article which have denied him returning to their campuses based on what they've heard from their students. Whether or not that is fire, only a court can suss that out. As it stands, I think Lawrence Krauss is an interesting speaker when it comes to science, but he's always seemed kind of cold to me in other respects, much like Richard Dawkins. He's the kind of atheist/skeptic that delights in telling people who don't believe as he does just how wrong they are, not to educate, but to humiliate.

So I fall back on my general position when it comes to these things: trust what these women are saying, but verify, and let the court of law work it out rather than lynching someone in the court of public opinion.

Sonuva.....

Is there any other court besides that of public opinion these days?

Goddammit.

So I'm atheist in that I have not been presented with any evidence of gods or goddesses so I don't believe in gods or goddesses. Have been out about ten or more years now.

However my brother stayed longer in the Deep South so has been moved more towards Anti-religion.

Sounders match tonight and we met up DT, so I asked him if he knew the name of the fuck-o in the thread title. He immediately knew what I was talking about. Said yeah, he was a figure, probably fifth in 'New Atheism' behind Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, someone else I've never heard of and then this Kat I've never heard of.

So yeah, not some strawman, this dude is apparently big in 'New Atheist' circles and for them this is not good.

But then I have the same question I have for my brother, what the fuck is atheism? Why do we need prophets? What are you people looking for?

Side note, we lost, I'm drunk, WORDFORGE RULES, YEAH!

That'd be Dan Dennett.
He's a philosopher.
Looks like Santa Claus.
He's all right.
Dawkins is a fanboy, I find his style a bit dry.

So being an atheist makes Krauss a liberal? He continuously supported military actions all over the world, deliberate American imperialism, and talks about Muslims like a Wordforger without a spellchecker.

As for the original claim, I tend to believe that many independent claims, yes. Obviously, as with any of these cases, legal consequences require proof in court.

That sounds about right. Did he and another one of the dudes I mentioned release a documentary a couple years ago which my brother said was throwing pearls before gold diggers and should have been renamed 'God Is Still Dead' b/c it was on the same level?

Never heard of this guy but why would this be bad for atheists?

I'm an atheist and something of a fan of Krauss, having read several of his books and watched numerous videos of his, and this doesn't bother me a bit. Atheism may have its evangelists, but it doesn't have saints or prophets. The worthiness of the atheist position is in no way undermined by the fallibility or imperfections of its most prominent proponents.

This isn't exactly news. It'd been talked about fairly openly by a number of people. I think that this is just getting traction now because of the MeToo movement.

First I've heard, and it's a pity if true since I do like the guy and his work. If we're ranking atheists, he's probably in the top three by now. Dennett has gone quiet and Hitchens is dead.

I do remain concerned that there's something of a witch-hunt about the MeToo movement.

I'm an atheist and the first I'd ever heard of Krauss was his book about the science of Star Trek. He has written some rather profound things on the nature of the universe that I appreciate, but man... I'm just amazed that this geeky motherf***er had anything like this in him.

I've met him. He's a short fucker, maybe 5' 2", I'm surprised no woman beat his ass for it.

If the intrinsic worthiness of any philosophical position is undermined by et cetera, maybe it needs a little work before it can be presented as a universal truth.

Or was the worthiness of "All men are created equal" undermined by Jefferson owning slaves?

Wow! He spoke out about an ideology which wanted to murder him? How unfair and unreasonable.

You dumb ass.

No, he didn't. He misspoke about a religion as if it were a political identity, and of people who want him no harm as if they want to murder him.

Islam, as taught by the Koran, which is supposedly the direct word of god and so cannot be argued agsinst without earning the death penalty, is extremely political. It spells out how society should be ordered/organized, what the laws must be, what the punishments should be for breaking those religious laws.

In short, you are full of shit and have no idea what you are talking about.

What sort of thing are you referring to?

The problem is religion, not one specific belief.

You are preaching to the choir, religion in general is indeed a clear and present danger. That said, no, your moral equivalency is not correct, Islam really is worse than virtually every other religion on Earth because it really does have "god" ordering its followers to kill numerous groups of people for really bad reasons.

Both Jews and Christians found theological excuses to get out of observing the worst parts of the old testiment where as those evil parts of the Koran remain absolutely cebtral to Islam and are unreformable because they are supposedly direct orders from god which every muslim is ordered to carry out.

How many Americans have died from Islamic terrorism in the past 10 years? How many Americans have died in that same period of time because they opted for prayer instead of real medicine? How many Jehovah's Witnesses are dead because they refused a blood transfusion because they think the Bible prohibits such things? How many Americans are suffering because fundies are blocking stem-cell research? How many Americans have been harassed, humiliated, or killed by Christians in the past 10 years because they were gay/trans/or whatever?

You want to know what the biggest tragedy 99% of Americans have to suffer due to Islam? They have to take their fucking shoes off at the airport and get felt up by a Rent-A-Cop when they go through security. That's it. Muslims aren't in Congress and the Courts trying to take away the rights of women and other minorities, Christians are. You get your panties in a bunch over Islam because it's mostly brown people who practice the religion, and a handful of people die in big explosions. Meanwhile, millions of Americans are suffering, not because of Islam, but because of Christianity. When Christians start playing "nice" and leaving everybody else alone in this country, I'll worry about Islam, until then, I'm going to worry about the thing which is the most direct threat to me, while also recognizing that the larger threat is the concept of religion in general, and not one specific branch of it.

Move goal posts much? The original claim was that it was unreasonable for this atheist to speak out against Islam, and ideology which commands all atheists be put to death, that is why I called out Packard for being a dumb ads on this issue. The rest of your attempt to change the topic does bot concern me, Packard said something stupid and untrue, I corrected his false and dumb post, and that is as it should be.

I have been an atgeist my whole life and if you want someone to defend religion then you are barking up the wrong tree.

Hm, he used to have a blog-cum-podcast, and either I'm doing it wrong or it has been taken offline -- I can't find it anymore.

I'm basically thinking of two things. One, he defended many US military actions by claiming that because they were directed against an implacable enemy, their death counts should be considered that enemy's rather than their own fault. The proof for that implacability was the enemy's belief in Islam -- note that this was Hussein, not ISIS. Two, he repeatedly described Islam as culturally homogeneous, taking up Dawkins' argument about the lack of Muslim as opposed to Christian and Jewish Nobel Prize winners as proof of the asymmetry between these religions, and the like.

No-one in this thread has made that argument. I too am an atheist and speak out against all religion, including Islam.

Islam isn't an ideology, but a religion.

Neither religions nor ideologies can issue commands, only human beings can do that. Many Muslim authorities completely disagree with your view of Islam. They exist and are a real part of Islam; you don't get to exclude them because your personal interpretation of the Koran disagrees with theirs.

Funny thing is, his statement reminds me an awful lot of the left these days.

Ok, we will chalk this up to you being deliberately obtuse because, yes, if you follow Islam then, yes, you believe god has commanded atgeists to be killed just like you believe god has commanded apostates to be killed (after being given one chance to convert back). Tgus the 80%-90% support for such murders in the Islamic world. Play what ever games you want those facts aren't changing and, yes, they are barbaric and any person holding them should be completely unacceptable to any liberal. Also, no, you are wrong. Islam mixes both politics and religion in a way no other religion does so it is part religion and part political ideology and thus quite legitimately can be characterized as an ideology.

You are the weak, vacillating, and morally bankrupt person trying to make excuses for such clear evil. That is an inexcusable moral failure on your part every bit as bad as your Nazi supporting grandfather made. Such moral weakness in tge face of clear evil is a major part of why the traditional left has seen its support dropping by double digit amounts across the west in recent years.

Only, you know, not. Some Muslims believe that; others don't. The Koran does not explicitly say so; but neither does it matter even if it did. The Bible explicitly says that any man who has had sex with another man has to be killed. Yet actively gay Christian men exist. This is one of several reasons why religions are not ideologies. There is no X for "This person is a Muslim, therefore they believe X."

Point of order: My grandfather didn't support the Nazis. My GREAT grandfather WAS a Nazi. It's the latter who hated Muslims, of course.