Quote from: luckyterry on December 10, 2012, 12:18 pmI've only read one of Dawkin's books and that was the best seller "The God Delusion", which is an excellent dissection of classic and modern day dogmatic belief systems. I also make sure I keep an eye out for any talks he makes at TED conferences as he always impresses. me. He is a credit to the UK Academic class. My only criticism of RD is that he seems to be quite fundamental in his Atheism. His intellect dwarfs mine like a Bishop casting a shadow over a scared choir boy so I tread lightly when questioning him but I still think that a small door must be left open to entertain the possibility that there is a higher intelligence out there and that even the greatest minds on the planet just haven't evolved enough to be able to comprehend it. We may be the star children of the Cosmos but we may also be primordial soup compared to other life forms or "God races" I've been told (by several people in my life, actually) that I'm "the most unspiritual person they'd ever met." I believe in absolutely nothing that I cannot logically justify or somehow detect the influence of. Or things that I'm told by someone who's devoted half their life to mastering a field and feels confident believing in themselves. Ironic appeal to authority, in a sense, but it's not really optional: nobody can know everything in every field anymore. One life just isn't long enough.Anyway, just thought I'd mention that I strongly agree with you. Not about a higher intelligence, I think that's poppycock :P About the willingness to be open to it though. Blind dogma really is one of the greatest enemies of knowledge, and we all end up with dogmatic beliefs without realizing it. If you aren't willing to swallow your pride and just be plain old fucking wrong, then truth will pass you by just as easily as it does any religious fundamentalist.It really is awfully hard sometimes though, isn't it. Socrates must have been a really interesting guy -- I mean the way he's portrayed in literature as always being open to public derision for false statements, since the only way to separate what you should believe from what you've mistakenly concluded is to let someone challenge your ideas.Or maybe he just had half the testosterone of your average teenager. Either way, I like his principles :)