He mixes hard scientific language with poetic ways of looking around at the universe whilst saying, basically, that those people over there are nice but perhaps a little deluded and all that is needed is to reach out to them and correct their muddle headedness… and then everyone can share the universal truthes which are, after all, the only valid ones.

The arbiter of truth is, of course, your friendly presenter…

Anyway, thanks for the comments – It’s been interesting in places and I had to sharpen up a couple of points…

Most folk aren’t prepared to rattle the cage until the very end. You are most welcome to come back at anything but, and for the sake of from and that others on more recent/current posts may comment – keep the insults down and try to tackle the argument as presented…

Other than that – thanks for stopping by.

No, we don’t need to just agree with them in their use of terminology.

It is heartening to know that a playground bully is not oppressing their ‘victim’ because they aren’t part of the government.

And on to The Main Points, and hopefully you’ll see slightly more of where I’m coming from…

Not only do you not answer ANY of my reasons to my ’silly’ ’stupid’ or ‘vacuous’ for resisting the ‘Deep Time Machine’ of Dawkins but you also seem to have little to NO grasp of my argument AT ALL.

Looking out over a valley or to the end of my street I am staring into the past – the difference is SCALE not WHAT is happening. However we do indeed travel through time. We have found that those travelling at speed travel through time more slowly than those going at a gentler pace. We have also made progress in travelling into the future in a strange one way ticket fashion – cryogenic freezing. Once frozen Time stops impacting upon the ‘traveller’ until thawed out and there you are – in The Future.

Rabbits have been frozen stiff and then thawed out successfully so the question for us is a. Scale and b. stability over time – ie no errors in the freezer over a long period of time…

The trick that is left is travelling through Time backwards…

And taking a stroll into another discipline may help here. Archaeologists dig into the past – try to recreate what the past was. The archaeologist’s spade travels through strata of earth and into the past and sometimes they would whistfully admit that they do dig into the past but as soon as you [and I've done this] scartch them with an objection they virtually laugh – or at the least smirk and deny that they do in fact travel through time… or even physically ’see’ into the past. How is what they do in the sense of gazing into the past different from the cosmologists?

My personal stance regarding the ‘time machine’ idea is Not my argument. My argument is against Dawkins hypocrisy [or feelings that we should all agree on everything]…

If this is truly your last reply then I wish you well and hope that you get past your objection to someone who is not sensitive enough to just fold my hand and say I agree with you, without genuinely changing my views, re the view of the sky and try to work on what my actual argument is.

“I am only saying that for me to call the sky a time machine would be like calling any [and then possibly every] natural phenomena a machine of some sort – rivers could become water machines or fresh water habitat providers…”
Sorry to say, but this is why I think you’re stupid. The “machine” part of “time machine” has nothing to do with it. Dawkins obviously does not believe light is a machine. He is saying light allows us to see into the past. It’s a “cosmic time machine.” Think of “time machine” as a single term. The “machine” part has nothing to do with it.

“Why feel so strongly that I must ’see the light’ of true cosmologists everywhere?”
Again, you’ve said something that’s very vacuous.

“I have no problem with you enjoying the ‘Great Time Machine’ when outside you look up…”
I don’t think of a great “time machine” when I look up. I just know that light from millions of years ago allows us to see what parts of the Universe were like millions of years ago. Since, like a time machine, this light let’s us see the past, it’s not a big deal to call the phenomena a “cosmic time machine.”

“Do you not think that continually upbraiding and insulting someone’s reasoned views is a sort of oppression?”
If the government was doing it, maybe.

I am only saying that for me to call the sky a time machine would be like calling any [and then possibly every] natural phenomena a machine of some sort – rivers could become water machines or fresh water habitat providers…

My objection may be unique but that does not make it stupid or silly – my reasons for having that objection would decide it’s silliness… Poetic way of seeing things are nice but don’t matter – then why argue over this? Why feel so strongly that I must ’see the light’ of true cosmologists everywhere?

On the other hand I in no way wish to stop folk from using that if they get something from it… This is a post about a subtle and important point of Dawkins’ views regarding beliefs he disagrees with. There is a valid argument to be made from Dawkins’ objections to accessing feelings by means he cannot grasp.

My argument would still be valid if somebody else did not believe in the ‘Time Machine’ thing and I did. Dawkin’s argument, explicitly stated in the beginning of this episode, was that a way of enjoying the universe or ‘feeling good’ is only valid IF universal. All you need for his way of appreciating the ‘Time Machine’ according to HIS OWN LOGIC (or should I say rhetoric?) to be invalidated is for someone to come along and say [for whatever reason - intelligent or just plain dumb] I don’t get it…

Personally I hope you reason your future out and do great things but understand that I have no problem with you enjoying the ‘Great Time Machine’ when outside you look up – one of the things we have to come to terms with is how do we get along with each other despite differences – colour, creed, country – whatever.

SO here’s this – [as much as a stubborn mule like me enjoys this sort of debate] – Do you not think that continually upbraiding and insulting someone’s reasoned views is a sort of oppression? And that’s my problem with Richard ‘You Are All Wrong!’ Dawkins…

“a. Why is it so important that I do eventually drop my objection to the ‘Time Machine Thang’ and become enlightened?”
It’s not. It’s just a stupid objections that makes you look silly.

“Why do you think that only a redactive way of looking at the universe is the only way to the truth and all that when you also accept some poetic ways scientists choose to describe some things?”
Huh? I don’t think the “poetic ways” scientists choose to describe things matter. It’s nice and all, but it’s just poetic.

I’ve got school now, so I can’t do long replies.

If ‘Root of all evil’ was the one about religions I just plain did not want top watch that much plain propaganda which brings me to this idea – if trying to agitate the 20% of the UK who are atheists into browbeating the rest of us out of our beliefs is not a form of oppression [or merely the beginnings of the secular putsch?] then we have a very narrow definition of oppression to be teased out.

Historians show that before a regime change the leaders went about instilling the ‘true faith’ amongst the population before deciding on how they implememt their plans… on a note about the friends you keep – Skinner’s aim of his research was to find out how to make society one where folk were happy/content – which is as noble as the theory of communism but here’s the rub – where’s the freedom for those who wish to go their own way despite it not hurting anybody else? Perhaps Fidel Castro would have been a better example of how idealists sometimes change things for the greater good – he had a very good health care system and a secret police…

You see I don’t think ‘good feelings’ are good for the sake of them – the childish pleasure as I pulled legs off spiders – there was no good. Nevermind the idea about Truth – we know we have different opinions on that and that’s the truth of that…

Perhaps you swallowed the beginning of the episode because it seemed just to make so much sense – which I believe was Dawkin’s aim for his watchers…

I think it’s important to be able to see what machines are because as we progress into an ever more intergrated society with technology it would help us to remember who we are – biological entities with a certain amount of consciousness and other debatable things [souls - for example] rather than to blur the boundary so much that we loose sight of what we are and what our familiar tech is or even, to take a leap into the future, our implants [and yes some have been developed already… So when it comes to ‘machine’ the least I’m willing to accept is a lever with a pivot and a handle… Otherwise I’ll start calling my legs my ’shopping machine’… and this is the rub of it – when you can say something has achieved something by dint of its nature where do you end calling things a machine?

If you had paid more attention at the beginning of the programme you’d know what I’m talking about – dawkin’s is trying to reduce our way, as an entire species, to viewing ‘reality’ through his spectacles and he’s using spurious logic to defend it – which is where I’m chipping in – if his way of getting a ‘good’ feeling about the sky – which is what he expressed – is something I find I can’t access then if I were making the programme I’d rubbish everybody else who did.

If you enjoy thinking about the sky in that way – as I’ve said before – then I don’t have a problem, good luck hope you become a cosmologist or whatever…

Here are two questions – a. Why is it so important that I do eventually drop my objection to the ‘Time Machine Thang’ and become enlightened? b. Why do you think that only a redactive way of looking at the universe is the only way to the truth and all that when you also accept some poetic ways scientists choose to describe some things?

“Dawkin’s claims at the beginning of the episode that folk tell him that they can get ‘good feelings’ or whatever”
I honestly don’t remember/care about that part. Good feelings are good, but denying truth for the sake of feeling good is bad. Besides, the truth just happens to be pretty cool and awe-inspiring so you don’t need lies to feel good anyway. I’m pretty sure that’s how Dawkins feels.

“Dawkin’s politics are more like Stalin’s however…”
Yeah, too bad Dawkins doesn’t believe in the bad things Stalin did. Like, you know, murdering people and oppression to achieve an end.

“Are you saying that because I understand that light coming into view at night may have travelled for various amounts of time I MUST accept the ‘Time Machine’ way of understanding it?”
Yeah, kind of, since that’s exactly what he means when he calls light a time machine.

“Despite my obvious grasp of what a machine is, even the most basic working models I’m willing to accept… although they are quite alien to what we think of as machines now…”
No one is saying it is literally a machine, or literally a time machine for that matter. You can’t seem to grasp this, and I have no idea why.