Tuesday 14 August 2007

The Enemies of Reason- Richard Dawkins

I have a particular interest in Dawkins at the moment as I've been reading 'The God Delusion' as Derren Brown recommended it in the book of his I'm (still) reading. I find Dawkins writing style very dogmatic but I quite like that. And what he is saying is true, of course.
I've seen him interviewed since and found him completely humourless, something he is suffering from again during this documentary. Still, he means well. Astrology is a complete load of wank, and the astrologist who said Dawkins was 'creating mischief' by wanting to test them, is clearly a scared charlatan. Things should be tested. Still, I don't agree with Dawkins that astrology is harmful in any way, I think its just a bit of fluff really. I'd have liked the astrologist to explain exactly how the planets tell us if we'll be getting a shag this week, but hey ho.
Now mediums are on slightly more dodgy ground (although I'm not toally adverse- Patricia Arquette for example is great and I used to find Derek Acorah mildly amusing) but people like John Edwards and Colin 'floating teapot' Fry truly are scum-suckers of the highest order. I used to actually believe people could communicate with the dead because I thought 'how else could they know stuff?' But since I saw Derren Brown's Messiah (which they showed a clip of in his show) he blew all that away. I was absolutely stunned that people could be cold-read so easily. I'm not saying that no one has ever seen a ghost or talked to the dead: they might have, I enjoy the Fortean Times, I've dated geeks, but these professional corpse-digger-uppers are worse than used car salesmen.
The dowsing thing was less than interesting and I thought it kind of trailed off towards the end, but still interesting stuff. Now Dawkins, crack a couple of jokes and smile next week please.
I just noticed I called him Dawkins all the way through this blog. I don't normally call people by their surname. See, this is what the man does to you, he's like a headmaster!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well I had to look up Richard Dawkins on Wiki.
He doesn’t look the type somehow. He looks like the type to be running a fudge stall somewhere in Somerset. I'm more of an Ickey man myself, but he too is completely humourless. I wonder if there’s some sort of genetic predisposition that divorces conspiracy theorists from humour..

lightupvirginmary said...

I LOVE David Icke! He's such an angry little thing. I want to go to one of his nine hour lectures where he just says the same thing over and over until you submit.

Anonymous said...

Oh yes. And that hair: fabulous! lol