Bill O'Reilly Comments on Atheists and Dawkins

[grayman]

In his weekly column (http://www.billoreilly.com/newslettercolumn?pid=21508), Bill O'Reilly writes about atheists and his "interview with Richard Dawkins.

He makes a statement that I respect and agree: After all, we have freedom from religion in America; the Constitution makes it clear that no power in this country has the right to impose religion on anyone.

So the atheists have clear sailing, and I say: Thank God.

That's because people of faith should be challenged and think about their beliefs. Critical thinking in all areas makes the mind sharper, your philosophy stronger.


But he is still Bill O'Reilly: I was looking forward to debating the most successful of the atheist authors, Richard Dawkins, who wrote the bestseller The God Delusion. Dawkins basically says that science can explain everything on earth and no one has any direct evidence there is a God.

But I stopped him in the fourth round with this right hook: "[The earth] had to come from somewhere, and that is the leap of faith you guys (atheists) make—that it just somehow happened."


Hope you enjoy reading it.

[Foster Zygote]

Unlike some of the other pundits (Novak, Carlson, Coulter, etc.) I occasionally find my self thinking "This O'Reilly guy might actually have a chance to get smart if he'd get his head out of his own arse and stop trying to convince us he's smarter than he actually is. If he'd just recognize what he is ignorant of he could learn something". But then he sticks his head so far up there that his nose starts coming out of his own mouth. He only thinks he "stopped him in the fourth round" because he didn't let Dawkins get a word in edgewise and he's never read The God Delusion or learned anything about the position he opposes because straw men are easy to beat up. The result is that he smugly pats himself on the back and tells his viewers how brilliant he is without ever understanding just how truly insipid his argument is.

[TheAntiLuddite]

I watched the interview when it originally aired and Dawkins was never allowed to elaborate on any point; he was barely given the chance to even speak. BOR on the other hand filibustered unchallenged for the majority of the segment with enough Christian fundamentalist rhetoric to choke a horse. The man is not entirely stupid and he obviously doesn't believe all the tripe he was spouting, but a large portion of his audience does. One of his statments in particular made me laugh:

[paraphrased]

"As long as you scientist guys can't explain how we got here, I'm throwing in with Jesus."

This was his so-called knockout punch to Dawkins. The strongest argument he could construct was primarily a god-of-the-gaps appeal. This is also the reason why he couldn't allow Dawkins to respond if BOR wanted to maintain the respect of his own "followers" and to convince himself later that he had won the scuffle with the "Angry Atheist".

[Beerina]

Dawkins should have immediately responded that a belief in a God creator just pushes the issue off one more level. Who created God is an equally valid question.

Did he? (Didn't see this interview.)

[Foster Zygote]

I watched the interview when it originally aired and Dawkins was never allowed to elaborate on any point; he was barely given the chance to even speak. BOR on the other hand filibustered unchallenged for the majority of the segment with enough Christian fundamentalist rhetoric to choke a horse. The man is not entirely stupid and he obviously doesn't believe all the tripe he was spouting, but a large portion of his audience does. One of his statments in particular made me laugh:

[paraphrased]

"As long as you scientist guys can't explain how we got here, I'm throwing in with Jesus."

This was his so-called knockout punch to Dawkins. The strongest argument he could construct was primarily a god-of-the-gaps appeal. This is also the reason why he couldn't allow Dawkins to respond if BOR wanted to maintain the respect of his own "followers" and to convince himself later that he had won the scuffle with the "Angry Atheist".

It's too bad it wasn't a moderated debate. A genuine intellectual vs. someone who only thinks he's an intellectual. However that would hardly be fair. But the shaddenfreude factor of seeing O'Reilly handed his ass by Dawkins would be very high.

[Foster Zygote]

Dawkins should have immediately responded that a belief in a God creator just pushes the issue off one more level. Who created God is an equally valid question.

Did he? (Didn't see this interview.)

He certainly did in his book (in the first chapter if a recall), which proves that O'Reilly didn't bother to read it. But I've already seen evidence that Bill tends to ignore arguments that he's rejected a priori.

[daenku32]

"[The earth] had to come from somewhere, and that is the leap of faith you guys (atheists) make—that it just somehow happened."
Is O'Reilly saying that the earth didn't come from somewhere, somehow? That he believes earth has always existed in its current form?

[Civilized Worm]

But I stopped him in the fourth round with this right hook: "[The earth] had to come from somewhere, and that is the leap of faith you guys (atheists) make—that it just somehow happened."


I take it he's refering to a different interview than the one I saw.

[UnrepentantSinner]

[The earth] had to come from somewhere, and that is the leap of faith you guys (atheists) make—that it just somehow happened.

Has he seriously never heard of Astrophysics or Geology?

[ReligionStudent]

He certainly did in his book (in the first chapter if a recall), which proves that O'Reilly didn't bother to read it. But I've already seen evidence that Bill tends to ignore arguments that he's rejected a priori.

Every point and question O'Reilly raised was addressed (usually early on) in the book. The entire time I was sitting there thinking he must not have read it. At some point I thought, maybe he was just asking what he thought viewers would want to ask or want to know etc, but I just couldn't believe he would ask these questions right after having read the answers in the book. It was quite amazing how poorly O'Reilly actually did, and the interview was a complete dissapointment.

[largeprimenumber]

I'm surprised anyone who disagrees with O'Reilly ever agrees to appear on his show. O'Reilly's favorite tactic (out of a repertoire of approx. three) is "It's my program and I don't have to play fair".

It is telling that O'Reilly never distinguishes himself when he is making the guest appearance. Take, for example, his "Fresh Air" interview, or his appearance on the Colbert Report.

[Puppycow]

O'Reilly did admit this:
I'm not positive that Jesus is God
So basically he admitted the central point.
He's not really a Christain.

[UnrepentantSinner]

It is telling that O'Reilly never distinguishes himself when he is making the guest appearance. Take, for example, his "Fresh Air" interview, or his appearance on the Colbert Report.

Did you see his 60 Minutes interview?

[Foster Zygote]

Did you see his 60 Minutes interview?

Mike Wallace really doesn't like O'Reilly.

[Puppycow]

Wikipedia says (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity): Christians believe Jesus to be the Son of God and the Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament, and they see the New Testament as the record of the Gospel that was revealed by Jesus.

The article on the Roman Catholic Church (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_church#Beliefs) says: Catholicism is also Trinitarian: it believes that, while God is one in nature, essence, and being, this one God exists in three divine persons, each identical with the one essence, whose only distinctions are in their relations to one another: the Father's relationship to the Son, the Son's relationship to the Father, and the relations of both to the Holy Spirit, constitute the one God as a Trinity.

The article on O'reilly (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_O%27Reilly_%28commentator%29) says: O'Reilly was born in New York City to Irish Catholic parents William and Angela O'Reilly, from Brooklyn, New York and Bergen County, New Jersey. His father was an accountant for the oil company Caltex. In 1951, his family moved to Levittown on Long Island.[6] After graduating from Chaminade High School, a private Catholic boys high school in Mineola, New York in 1967, O'Reilly attended Marist College, a small, co-educational private (and at the time, Catholic) institution in Poughkeepsie, New York.

So O'Reilly's admission that "I'm not positive that Jesus is God" would appear to be heretical. He wants to have it both ways. To attack atheism, while refusing to defend a central tenet of his own faith.

[ChristineR]

Not all Christian sects believe Jesus is God. Some are essentially polytheistic, some argue that God is a family (huh?), making Jesus part of God, and others argue that Jesus was not God at all, but a human with God's power in him.

[ReligionStudent]

Not all Christian sects believe Jesus is God. Some are essentially polytheistic, some argue that God is a family (huh?), making Jesus part of God, and others argue that Jesus was not God at all, but a human with God's power in him.

What modern Christian sects believe Jesus was not god?

[Puppycow]

Not all Christian sects believe Jesus is God. Some are essentially polytheistic, some argue that God is a family (huh?), making Jesus part of God, and others argue that Jesus was not God at all, but a human with God's power in him.

Yeah, but I don't think he belongs to one of those sects that says he's not God (I think he's Catholic) and those sects would only represent a very small minority of Christians, and such beliefs would be considered heretical by most Christians.

[strathmeyer]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_views_of_Jesus#Non-Trinitarians
Present day views that Jesus is a created being include those of Jehovah's Witnesses. Unitarians, descendants of Reformation era Socinians, view Jesus as never more than human. Latter-day Saints accept the divinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but deny that they have a common substance, believing them rather to be one in all attributes, will, and purpose. Modalists, such as Oneness Pentecostals, regard God as a single person, with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit considered modes or roles by which the unipersonal God expresses himself.

[ChristineR]

Thanks strathmeyer. I could never have found such a good list by myself. :)

Puppycow, I have no idea what O'Reilly was trying to say. I would have thought he was saying that theism itself is a prioi assumed but that Christianity is yet to be proven, but then he made the "I'm throwing in with Jesus" comment.

Obviously O'Reilly has never asked himself "did God evolve/emerge from nothing/was created" questions. Someday I'm going to learn how to phrase the question so that I can get a theist to say something like "Intelligent, complex, human-like, beings can exist spontaneously, but everything else needs to be created!" That's the essence of their arguments, yet I can't get them to admit it!

[ReligionStudent]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christi...n-Trinitarians
Quote:
Present day views that Jesus is a created being include those of Jehovah's Witnesses. Unitarians, descendants of Reformation era Socinians, view Jesus as never more than human. Latter-day Saints accept the divinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but deny that they have a common substance, believing them rather to be one in all attributes, will, and purpose. Modalists, such as Oneness Pentecostals, regard God as a single person, with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit considered modes or roles by which the unipersonal God expresses himself. The lack of common substance is actually behind all western Christian sects, dating back to the earliest church fathers, it was never a denial of divinity thought. Only the Uniterians seem to deny divinity in that quote.

[JESTERKING45]

I watched the interview twice. (If I'd watched it a third time I might have keeled over.) The whole thing was nauseating, to me it seemed Bill O's entire argument amounted to "You can't prove there is not a god." and "You can't prove Jesus isn't his son." The bit about hitler being an atheist is just nonsense, (I think this is proof that he doesn't have his head up his arse as much as Ann Coulter's) I want it also to be known that at no point did Dawkins conced this point although the very next night Bill O' read an e-mail that basically said as much, and didn't correct the writer. I have seen a lot of the interviews with Dawkins, and especially Hitchens (whom I will watch on C-span2 on September 2nd.) and the one thing I've noticed is that none of the conservative writers and apologists seem to have thought it through very much. When Hitchens was on Hannity's America he even insinuated as much that hannity seemed as someone who hadn't spent much time reading the opinions of atheists. He shot back that he had but I doubt it. I feel like the both of them hear, they just do not listen. There is a difference.

[T'ai Chi]

OR for the win!

[Hourglassmemory]

It's not a leap of faith when you have scientific information that is put to the test and stands.

Scientists dont' say "It just somehow happened". Science doesn't work with leaps of faith. They don't jump to conclusions and hope they're right or have faith they'll be correct.
If a scientist says that it jsut somehow happnened, well he either hasn't read about those matters so he coudln't base his answer on anything or he is a creationist explaining his opponent's views.

He is bill o'reily, thus ignorant of the scientific method. If he wasn't he wouldn't jump to the second statement thet original poster quoted.

[Foster Zygote]

Sentence fragments are interesting.

[Jekyll]

OR for the win!
http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/5515/oreillyowl6dx.jpg

[strathmeyer]

OR for the win!

T'ai Chi for the loss!

[Big Les]

I believe the term is "fail". As in "T'ai Chi is made of fail". Or "Bill O'Reilly fails at life".

[Ryokan]

What modern Christian sects believe Jesus was not god?

Jehova's Witnesses?

[Dumbledore]

Obviously O'Reilly has never asked himself "did God evolve/emerge from nothing/was created" questions. Someday I'm going to learn how to phrase the question so that I can get a theist to say something like "Intelligent, complex, human-like, beings can exist spontaneously, but everything else needs to be created!" That's the essence of their arguments, yet I can't get them to admit it!

That might be true of some theists, but not all, God does not have to spontaneous pop out of nowhere to exist. I really depends in what you believe about God. For myself I cannot say that I know the origins of God, but I don't believe that God directly contradicts what we have already found to be true in physics. :cool: Waiting an avalanche of atheist arguments about why God is false. Go ahead I know you want to!!;)

[Roboramma]

Isn't it remarkable that atheists in general aren't more pissed off? Almost everywhere he goes Dawkins is compared to the greatest mass murderers of the twentieth century, and yet he's the one who is accused of being rude?
(I don't know that anyone has done so in this thread, I just watched the video and it struck me. Particularly when O'Reilly says, "I don't think they had any moral foundation, any of those guys" suggesting that this is because of their atheism, and then doesn't give dawkins a chance to respond.)
This sort of thing drives me crazy.

[Robin]

That might be true of some theists, but not all, God does not have to spontaneous pop out of nowhere to exist. I really depends in what you believe about God. For myself I cannot say that I know the origins of God, but I don't believe that God directly contradicts what we have already found to be true in physics. :cool: Waiting an avalanche of atheist arguments about why God is false. Go ahead I know you want to!!;)
Waiting for the avalanche of theist arguments about why God is true.

[Jekyll]

Waiting an avalanche of atheist arguments about why God is false. Go ahead I know you want to!!;)

Can you tell us something about this god you want us to falsify?

What's it meant to do? Is it detectable? Does it answer prayers?

[hgc]

That might be true of some theists, but not all, God does not have to spontaneous pop out of nowhere to exist. I really depends in what you believe about God. For myself I cannot say that I know the origins of God, but I don't believe that God directly contradicts what we have already found to be true in physics. :cool: Waiting an avalanche of atheist arguments about why God is false. Go ahead I know you want to!!;)


Can't say you know God's origin? OK, sounds fair. But you can say you know of God's existence, I presume. Care to say how you know this?

[Dumbledore]

Can you tell us something about this god you want us to falsify?

What's it meant to do? Is it detectable? Does it answer prayers?

Uhh, meant to do? Being God I have a hard time really stating what God is meant to do, being a puny human after all, but to the second third questions, no, and no. I don't expect you to falsify God or the God I believe in, I just thought you might, it was more than a joke than anything.

[Dumbledore]

Waiting for the avalanche of theist arguments about why God is true.

But I am not going to provide those, I don't think you can prove God is neither true or untrue. I just thought that you guys would point out why God doesn't exist, hence the large vocal atheist voice in the forum, but it was a joke to begin with, just kidding!:blush:

[Dumbledore]

Can't say you know God's origin? OK, sounds fair. But you can say you know of God's existence, I presume. Care to say how you know this?

Well mostly my belief in God's existence comes from the existence of conscientious and life in general. The unanswered questions in science, where did the big bang come from, why is there order in the universe, this is answered in many respects by thermodynamics, why are we able to understand the universe. I don't personally know God, I don't go hey God at some floating being that passes me, but these questions make me feel that God does exist. And that is it, it is primarily a feeling, I do not believe that you can prove or disprove God. Hence I don't push a theistic argument.;)

[joobz]

Well mostly my belief in God's existence comes from the existence of conscientious and life in general. It seems you believe in the god-of-the-gaps. You are completely free to do so.


The unanswered questions in science, where did the big bang come from, why is there order in the universe, this is answered in many respects by thermodynamics, why are we able to understand the universe.
Actually thermo doesn't answer any of that. Thermo is simply a deduced set of laws based upon empirical observation. It cannot answer the "why" as you phrased it. Thermo only demonstrates that ordered systems are possible, provided they obey the observed laws.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

"As long as you scientist guys can't explain how we got here, I'm throwing in with Jesus."
Cool! And what is Jesus's explanation?

~~ Paul

[joobz]

Cool! And what is Jesus's explanation?

~~ Paul
"Hey, Pascal, are you going to doubledown?"-Jesus

[Robin]

But I am not going to provide those, I don't think you can prove God is neither true or untrue. I just thought that you guys would point out why God doesn't exist, hence the large vocal atheist voice in the forum, but it was a joke to begin with, just kidding!:blush:
You have a common misunderstanding of atheism. I do not believe God exists simply because I do not have evidence that he does and no reason to believe it is true. (why do theists always change that "evidence" to "proof"?).

I don't believe George Bush is a mutant evil shapeshifting alien from Proxima Centaura simply because I have no evidence that he is and no reason to believe it is true. I cannot prove it either true or false.

If somebody were making this claim I would expect them to advance evidence for the positive, rather than expecting me to prove it is not true.

I cannot understand why theists just never get the point that "you can't prove it is not true" is just not an argument.

[T'ai Chi]

Oh that's right Paul, nothing decided to spontaneously generate into something and create itself. Where did that nothing come from? You don't know, but know it must have a natural explanation... somehow. ;)

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Oh that's right Paul, nothing decided to spontaneously generate into something and create itself. Where did that nothing come from? You don't know, but know it must have a natural explanation... somehow. ;)

Oh good. Argument from First Cause. Did you think of that all by yourself?

[newlyfound]

Grayman,

...Billy :D , ...at least gave Dawkins a little a minute and 15 seconds segment in his show. Which is something many of those "landmarks" are just so terrorized of doing. While he was annoying to say the least, he at least congratulated Dawkins for his success and told him the book was good in closing. I don't care what anybody says but I still think the guy is brave for doing that, and he needs to ge the proper credit for it.

[Roboramma]

Oh that's right Paul, nothing decided to spontaneously generate into something and create itself. Where did that nothing come from? You don't know, but know it must have a natural explanation... somehow. ;)
Are those the only possibilities?

It's likely true that there must be some explanation. I don't know what that explanation is. Neither do you.

That's about all that I think any of us will say. Saying "God did it" is no different from saying "The universe is a property of Jimeons and Climons colliding is the vast supernatural transiverse".
It doesn't mean anything until you explain how god did it, or at least how you know.

But I'm pretty sure this has been said to you a few hundred times.

[Jeff Corey]

Oh that's right Paul, nothing decided to spontaneously generate into something and create itself. Where did that nothing come from? You don't know, but know it must have a natural explanation... somehow. ;)
Inertesting.

[Jeff Corey]

Oh good. Argument from First Cause. Did you think of that all by yourself?

No Tommy Aquinas did first, right? or maybe that Sockrates guy.

[Jeff Corey]

Speaking of this, at the dinner table tonight, I started by saying I would like to say grace. I did it in the manner of Rev. VanZandt, our Anglican sheepherd, years ago.
Page 226, The god Delusion.
If there is no god, why be good?
Posed like this, the question sounds positively ignoble.When a religious person puts it to me this way(and many of them do) my immediate temptation is to issue them the following challenge;"Do you really mean to tell me that the only reasons you try to be good is to gain God's approval and reward, or to avoid his disapproval and punishment? That's not morality, that's just sucking up, apple polishing,looking over your shoulder at the great surveillance camera in the sky, or the still small wiretap in your head monitoring your every move, even your every base thought."
As Einstein said, "If people are good only because they fear punishment and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed,"
So endeth the lesson.

Wow. I hear a hoot owl out back. I'm going to turn all the lights out and see if I can find out where s/he is.

[Robin]

No Tommy Aquinas did first, right? or maybe that Sockrates guy.Aristotle - I think?

[Zep]

http://www.jesusandmo.net/2006/10/11/park/