Is this any good?

he's one of those

>popular science is pseudoscience

retards

He doesn't know much about philosophy in general, something he admits himself which makes his engagement with the subject all the more bizarre. And again Im not catholic, Im not even Christian, my religious feelings are radically unthreatened by the Dawkins version of atheism, it's completely compatible with what I think.

>He doesn't know much about philosophy in general

bingo again lol

Cope, Athiest.

you forgot a pic with a fat guy wearing a fedora

Well he doesn't. are you even reading my posts, or just kind of imagining Im a specific sort of person that you've already decided?

>He thinks that all philosophers are Catholics
lmao u retarded bruh

>litteral ad hominem from beginning to end
Every time Dawkins has debated a bishop he had to insult him and leave.
Seeethe more little pseudoatheists.

>most of the prominent scientists in his field praised the Selfish Gene.
this is flat-out untrue. I'm not one of the people arguing that it's complete pseudoscience, but there is presently a widespread and energetic debate in the evolutionary sciences over the validity of many claims made in The Selfish Gene. There's a wide gulf between something being pseudoscience, and being generally accepted fact, and this book very much still lives in that gulf.

a rationalist cannot "debate" someone who buys into fundamentally irrational premises.

What are you talking about specifically? I thought the notion that the gene, as being the thing that actually replicates, is the unit of evolution was basically orthodoxy at this point.

Lots of philosophers did lol, Dawkins just doesn't have any argument (mainly because he hasn't even thought through his own positions).

like who? and how has dawkins not "thought through his own positions"?

It's not "orthodoxy" at all. Sure, you might encounter more evolutionary scientists that believe it than not nowadays, but there are still plenty who would argue otherwise (e.g. that the basic unit of evolution is the individual, or at least the individual genome). I've recently graduated with a degree in evolutionary science myself, and I've probably encountered as many opinions on this question as I've had instructors.

Im curious what their arguments are, the individual doesn't replicate, and the genome is split in sexual reproduction. Replication is one of the fundamental aspects of evolutionary theory so how do they account for this?

you know you can just access a journal or database and read actual scientific papers on this if it interests you, yes?

>like who?
Spinoza, Kant and Nietzsche all gave coherent and rational arguments against the belief in a personal God, and they all formulated scathing critiques of organized religion at large. They didn't need to resort to ad hominems. To think that there haven't been rational atheist philosophers means that you really know nothing about the history of philosophy.
>and how has dawkins not "thought through his own positions"?
Dawkins has developed no account and no justification for the scientific method and its relevance. As such he has to resort to conventionalist answers ("it just works!"), nor he really has a clue on how to interact scientifically with seemingly unscientific domains: in those cases he'll resort to intuitionism based on common sense ("people just know what's wrong").
Pretty much all of his conclusions end up being sophomoric. Too bad that there are actual arguments for these positions out there, he just never heard of them. Btw I'm not bashing him for being an atheist obsessed with scientism: what I'm saying is that he's bad at being that too.

Well you posted in the thread so I assumed you had some idea of what they thought. If you don't want to explain it then links would be nice.

meh, your criticisms of dawkins are pretty valid tbqh.

I do but I'm getting a migraine so I'd rather not get into an explanation right now, sorry.
As for links, that's what google scholar is for.
You could even start on the rationalwiki page for dawkins, honestly. I think it refers to the debate over Selfish Gene.

well im sorry you're getting a migraine that sucks. and yeah ill just fuck about on google scholar for a bit, i honestly though that his theories were just basically accepted.

The selfish gene was great, just finished it yesterday. I'm going to keep going with the extended phenotype. I have never taken religion seriously so I don't think there will be much in it for me to read those books, is there anything else he has written that is worth reading?

You're Jewish aren't you

That's Of course Why he decided to go to a debate with them, Why he was bullied by actually prepared persons and Why he looked like the brainlet he is for all the world to see. It's because he was right and the priest wrong.
Cope harder. Christians are the True rationalists and you can't be rationalist without being Christian at least culturally.

>The selfish gene was great,
The selfish gene is litteraly a collection of logical fallacies one on top of the other.

explain yourself

that's an utterly retarded statement and there is no valid argument you can make to support it.

That's almost certainly bullshit, "gene deserts" are known to be poorly understood and extremely important. HOWEVER

You will hear Dawkins referenced a lot in a lot of areas of bio. Life-dinner principle comes up A LOT for example.

how do gene deserts relate to genes not being the unit of replication?

That's a couple of two hour lectures at least user.

what are the relevant papers talking about this?

The two Lewin's textbooks and Molecular Biology of the Cell are better starting points than papers imo.