1. I don't believe in atheists

Comment #174629 by Smith on May 3, 2008 at 3:08 am

For your information, this week on Point of Inquiry, D. J. Grothe interviews Chris Hedges. Here is the link.

Copied from PoI: In this discussion with D.J. Grothe, acclaimed foreign correspondent Christ Hedges shares his criticism of the New Atheists, calling them "fundamentalists" in their own right. He responds to their account of the origins of Islamic religious extremism, and he accuses the New Atheists of racism. He explains his view that the New Atheists are proponents of the Neo-conservative agenda and how the American Left does advance secular values in the Muslim world. He also criticizes what he calls the "utopianism" of the New Atheists, detailing his skepticism about moral progress for humanity.

2. Richard Dawkins' US Tour begins this week

Comment #141866 by Smith on March 11, 2008 at 10:00 am

To admin: When will the audio/video recordings of these events be available online?

3. Should Galileo's tomb be opened for DNA tests?

Comment #141610 by Smith on March 10, 2008 at 9:29 pm

It's way too risky. What if the tomb is empty?

4. The Passion of 'Anonymous'

Comment #124993 by Smith on February 10, 2008 at 3:37 pm

For your information, this week on Point of Inquiry, D. J. Grothe interviews Tory Christman about Scientology. Here is the link.

Copied from PoI: Tory Christman is a former member of the Church of Scientology. She left the organization in 2000, after being a member for about 30 years and is now one of its most visible and high-profile critics, having appeared on CNN, NPR and in the LA Times, and many other media outlets.
In this discussion with D.J. Grothe, Christman recounts her experiences in Scientology, as well as her views about the church's practices with current and former members. She describes her participation in the church's anti-free-speech activities on the internet in the 1990's, and her views on the group Anonymous, a new web-based organization that seeks to respond to Scientology's activities. She explores some of the doctrines and beliefs of Scientology, including the church's views on medical science and psychiatry, auditing, Xenu, becoming a "clear," and e-meters. She also stresses the important role of science and critical thinking in confronting the challenges Scientology may bring to its detractors and adherents alike.

5. Loneliness Breeds Belief in Supernatural

Comment #124347 by Smith on February 9, 2008 at 6:14 am

keith,

Let me remind you it was you who quoted me in the very beginning of C#63:

Smith: Did you notice that you changed the activities in the gallery as you changed the time spent there? Care to clarify?

6. Inventor Doesn't Dare Say 'Perpetual Motion Machine'

Comment #124064 by Smith on February 8, 2008 at 9:11 am

For those who wonder if the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics can ever be violated and for those who claim it can never be violated, maybe the thought experiment by Maxwell (yeah, that Maxwell), called Maxwell's demon, will interest you.

7. Inventor Doesn't Dare Say 'Perpetual Motion Machine'

Comment #124046 by Smith on February 8, 2008 at 8:13 am

If you ever wonder what would happen if this technology gets in the hands of the japanese, here is a hint.

8. Loneliness Breeds Belief in Supernatural

Comment #124026 by Smith on February 8, 2008 at 7:21 am

keith,

keith (C#63): Anyway, my reason for changing the activities and times was that I thought an analogy would make things plain.
keith (C#66): Therefore I can't understand why you think this is a change of activity.

keith: Show me the 'tone' that you feel made MaxD's post desrespectful towards Sam Harris and I'll agree with you. How's that?

keith: I have re-read MaxD's post and I really can't see any disrespect or sarcasm there. So, we'll just have to disagree on that point.

9. Functional Neuroimaging of Belief, Disbelief, and Uncertainty

Comment #122184 by Smith on February 4, 2008 at 9:34 pm

For your information, Sam Harris had an interview recently on Fair Game to talk about this paper. Google "sam harris fair game" to get the link. Somehow the posting has problem.

10. Loneliness Breeds Belief in Supernatural

Comment #120732 by Smith on February 2, 2008 at 12:04 pm

keith,

I'm impressed with your effortless demonstrations of basic arithmetics and your endless affinity with the number 52. And I also understand you were trying to use an analogy to help me grasp MaxD's point that prolonging meditation is questionable. What got me somewhat confused is whether your gallery "analogy" served its purpose. To help you understand my confusion, I would modify your analogy a little bit without changing its spirit. Let's consider the following:

I enjoy spending a couple of hours in a gallery but four consecutive days torturing Osama bin Laden there would be too much.

keith: There is no disrespect in asking this question, unless, of course, you think that questioning is disrespectful.

11. Hitchens V. Boteach

Comment #120229 by Smith on February 1, 2008 at 10:49 am

An article by Rabbi Boteach: G-d Is Greater Than Christopher Hitchens

12. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #117935 by Smith on January 30, 2008 at 2:53 am

rk3001: Several people are upset at Day's claim that Dawkins said raising a child religiously is worse than child sexual abuse. Several have said that Dawkins never said that.
From page 317 of The God Delusion (which I have in front of me) second paragraph, second sentence beginning in the middle of the third line of text for said paragraph "I replied that, horrible as sexual abuse no doubt was, the damage was arguably less than the long term psychological damage inflicted by bringing the child up Catholic in the first place."

13. Richard Dawkins on The Big Questions

Comment #117873 by Smith on January 29, 2008 at 10:20 pm

God of free speech!

14. Atheism and Violence

Comment #117838 by Smith on January 29, 2008 at 7:05 pm

Below is another article by Oakes found in First Things. Highlights:
1. If God exists, why are there atheists? Or rather, and to put more strongly: Since God exists, what makes atheism conceptually possible?
2. In other words, what all proofs are really reaching for is this common fund of inchoate awareness of the necessity of God already present whenever reason exercises its rational faculties.
3. Just think what would happen, de Lubac asks, if rational proofs really did lead to certainty: Then we would mistake the proof for God; and, in the manner of the French "enlightened" philosophes, we would in effect end up building a temple, not to God, but to reason.

Reason and Pop Atheism
By Edward T. Oakes, S.J.
Monday, January 22, 2007, 10:56 AM
The publishing world, it seems, is just as prone to the fickleness of trends and fashions as is, well, the fashion industry. A few years ago, a whole spate of books came out on Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust, most of them flogging (surely not by coincidence) the same dead horse of papal perfidy. More recently, several books arguing for atheism have cropped up on the bestseller lists. I've looked at a few, and none of them struck me as even trying to get beyond that old dorm-room chestnut: "If God made the universe, who made God?" Gosh, thanks for bringing that up, Professor Bright. I had never really thought of that before—and now, horribile dictu, I've lost my faith!

Needless to say, our recent atheists, without exception, have to drag Darwin into the business. But—also without exception—they end up taking the implications of Darwinian biology so far that their arguments become self-consuming. I am thinking especially of the notion that cultural ideas are only "memes," that is, self-replicating trends that catch on and take over a culture the way viruses do in the human body. One favorite example would be teenagers who wear baseball caps backwards: An impish adolescent somewhere gets the idea to wear his cap backwards, and soon every boy in the land is following suit.

The next step then is to claim that religion, too, is a meme, and a mighty destructive one at that, the Ebola virus of human civilization. The trouble is, if all ideas are but memes, then so is natural selection, whose cultural influence has its own bloody history to account for. On that, I recommend the reader get a hold of Richard Weikart's From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany, which carefully traces Darwin's influence on a host of prominent intellectuals in Germany from 1860 to 1939, a genealogy of "memetic contagion" that made Nazi ideology so plausible to so many. (For a fuller review of this truly brilliant book, see my article "Darwin's Graveyards" in the December 2006 issue of Books & Culture.")

Tedious and self-consuming as these arguments are, their popularity—if one is to judge by the bestseller lists—did get me to thinking about atheism as a cultural phenomenon. As I always ask my class when I teach contemporary theology: If God exists, why are there atheists? Or rather, and to put more strongly: Since God exists, what makes atheism conceptually possible?

I let my students crack their noggins on that question for a while to prepare them to take up one of the texts in the course, The Discovery of God by the renowned French Jesuit Henri de Lubac, which deals directly with this issue of atheism as made possible by God.

Part of the problem is psychological: even the most knock-down arguments in mathematics fade in the brain after a while, like sand castles on the beach. For example, I would never presume to raise objections against Euclid's plane geometry, but I'd be hard pressed to reproduce what I learned in sophomore high-school geometry after all these years.

But the problem goes much deeper than the vagaries of human memory. St. Anselm thought he had his own knock-down argument for the existence of God, which later went by the name of the Ontological Argument (which Thomas Aquinas held to be invalid). But however much Anselm was convinced of the argument, he never went so far as to place moral blame on those who rejected it, because for him there was a deeper reality behind the phenomenon of atheism. As he said in the Proslogion (the best translation is here:

Why this, O Lord, why this? Is the eye darkened by its own weakness, or blinded by your light?—Without doubt it is darkened in itself and blinded by you, obscured by its own littleness and overwhelmed by your immensity, contracted by its own narrowness and overcome by your greatness.

As I presume most people reading this site know, the First Vatican Council declared de fide that the existence of God can be proved by reason. At first glance, this seems paradoxical. For if God can be proved through rational demonstration, one would expect the council to adduce this marvelous proof and let it be judged on its own merits. And because of de Lubac's critique of the "manual Thomism" of the Roman universities in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries (which placed heavy emphasis on rational proofs for God's existence), one might also think that de Lubac would dismiss the sterile rationalism that some theologians claim lurks behind Vatican I.

But that is not his position at all. De Lubac quite openly asserts that "behind the apparent variations, the skeleton of the proof always remains the same. The proof is solid and eternal, as hard as steel. It is something more than one of reason's inventions: it is reason itself."

What happens then is that, once this proof is formulated in words, the learned make adaptations and modifications as they encounter objections. But these modifications are for de Lubac in no way part of the incontrovertible proof that he holds to be the common patrimony of mankind: the use of reason itself. Hence de Lubac's confident conclusion:

All the objections brought against the various proofs for the existence of God are in vain; criticism can never invalidate them, for it can never get its teeth into the principle common to them all. On the contrary, that principle emerges more clearly as the elements with which the proofs are constructed are rearranged. . . . It forms part of the substance of the mind. It is not a path which the mind can be discouraged from pursuing to the end, or one from which it can turn away, afraid of having taken the wrong road. Path and mind are merged together. The mind itself is a moving path (de Lubac's emphasis).

At first glance, de Lubac might seem to be elevating the place of reason here to such a height that he ends up conceding reason's right to judge the things of God—the very procedure he found so objectionable in Descartes and Kant. That, however, is not his intent, which is why he so stresses the dynamism of reason. Augustine defined sin as "the heart turned in on itself," the corollary of which for de Lubac would be: The Enlightenment (at least in its French and German versions) is reason turned in on itself.

What has always struck readers of the Continental Rationalists from Descartes to Kant is how all these Rationalists divide reason from desire (usually called by them, tellingly, the passions, meaning feelings that overwhelm us rather than longings that express our inmost nature). De Lubac, on the contrary, sees reason and desire as parts of the same whole, subsumed under the wider image of "heart," encompassing them both. And because desire is inherently outward in its aim, thereby testifying to a deficiency in the self, the same holds true of reason. Precisely because we never start off in possession of the truth, we must go out in search of it, always desiring it on the way. And that dynamism aims, however unawares, at God. This is why Thomas Aquinas can say in De veritate: "All knowing beings implicitly know God in everything they know."

In other words, what all proofs are really reaching for is this common fund of inchoate awareness of the necessity of God already present whenever reason exercises its rational faculties. In one of his many footnotes, de Lubac quotes Maurice Blondel, who makes just this point: Proofs for the existence of God, Blondel says, "are not so much an invention as an inventory, not so much a revelation as an elucidation, a purification and a justification of the fundamental beliefs of humanity."

That said, de Lubac refuses to countenance faulty reasoning just because an invalid argument is aiming for the same conclusion as do valid proofs. Believers' faith might well be strong enough to slough off bad arguments for God's existence, but that should be no excuse for sloth in reasoning: "Where belief in God is concerned, I cannot rest content with a doubtful argument, and an inconclusive proof is as repugnant to my moral sense as it is offensive to my intelligence." And further: "Even in the most essential matters a sinner may reason better than a saint." Rigor in reasoning is no sin; rightly realized, it testifies to faith's underlying rationality.

But even in cases where, say, a Thomas Aquinas trumps a David Hume in the field of argument, the believer feels vaguely dissatisfied:

Why is it that the mind which has found God still retains, or constantly reverts to, the feeling of not having found him? … The temptation is to succumb to this scandal and to despair in proportion as one has formerly thought to have found him: a temptation to deny the light because the veil becomes opaque once again…. The temptation in this case is to underestimate the obstacles, to imagine that serenity is easily acquired, and to confuse the faint clarity of being with the divine light.

Just think what would happen, de Lubac asks, if rational proofs really did lead to certainty: Then we would mistake the proof for God; and, in the manner of the French "enlightened" philosophes, we would in effect end up building a temple, not to God, but to reason. But that is the very definition of reason's sin, turning inward. We would then make reason the object of our worship, rather than God. (In the midst of the maelstrom of the French Revolution, some Jacobins actually built a "Temple to Reason.")

But when we turn to God via our rational faculties, we simultaneously recognize both the underlying rationality of our faith in God and yet also reason's insufficiency to grant us what we really long for: light itself in a dark world. That light, however, only comes from God, not reason. We are pilgrims, and reason is our viaticum —but it is only viaticum. The nourishment this food for the journey provides is salubrious (when the reasoning is correct), but it is not life itself, only the provisions for life, which only God can provide.

15. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #117768 by Smith on January 29, 2008 at 2:56 pm

Steve,
If we take "atheism" as the negative of "theism", then, yes, there is no such thing as atheist argument. In this case, one doesn't have to do anything.
If we take "atheism" as "anti-theism," then there may be atheist arguments. In this case, one can protentially refute an atheist argument with logical or factual flaws.
If we take "atheist argument(s)" as "arguments used by atheists," then these atheists may make logical or factual errors.
In all cases, there is no need to "come up with real hard evidence for a God or Gods."
Vox Day's book could very well be written by a non-theist.

16. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #117732 by Smith on January 29, 2008 at 1:33 pm

Steve: You still have to come up with real hard evidence for a God or Gods.
Steve: And, at least from that review, I see no hint of anything that achieves this.

17. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #117701 by Smith on January 29, 2008 at 12:06 pm

For what it's worth, Steve, Vox Day is attacking, not defending:

Day: ... My book doesn't rely on the Bible or theological gymnastics or emotional appeals; it simply makes use of detailed historical and scientific evidence in order to expose the logical and factual flaws in every atheist argument you're likely to encounter. "The Irrational Atheist" isn't a defense of God or Christianity; I assume the Creator Lord of the Universe can defend Himself. He doesn't need my help.
Farah: Are you considering an apologetic sequel making a case for Christianity?
Day: Not at the moment. ...

18. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #117633 by Smith on January 29, 2008 at 9:17 am

Abyss!

19. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #117629 by Smith on January 29, 2008 at 9:06 am

Below are two sample articles copied and pasted from www.voxday.net. Have fun!

The case against science
March 5, 2007
Science, we are repeatedly informed by scientists, possesses a unique claim on truth due to its self-correcting nature. And this is certainly true in theory, although it is not difficult to demonstrate that scientific history is littered with a long list of honest mistakes, not-so-honest mistakes and outright lies.

And this merely refers to the cases of which we know, scientific frauds that have been caught and exposed. But even if we politely avert our eyes from this well-chronicled inability of scientists to live up to their scientific ideals - a nicety seldom granted to religious idealists - there is real cause to doubt the continued benefit of science to modern society, or even its right to a respectable place within it.

For the common belief in the beneficial nature of science rests on an underlying assumption that knowledge of all truth is desirable in all circumstances. But this is far from settled, as intellectuals from Plato to Daniel C. Dennett have frankly expressed their doubts on this score. Even lesser thinkers who have witnessed a child losing its innocent illusions or a family torn apart by the exposure of a long-hidden secret might well share this skepticism.

For if all knowledge is inherently good, then it is a moral imperative to scientifically determine the relative intelligence of Asians and Zulus once and for all. But is everyone really comfortable with the possibility of determining that men are, in scientific fact, intellectually superior to women? Or vice-versa? The cowardice of scientists regarding such controversial subjects, their nominal dedication to absolute scientific truth nothwithstanding, is powerful evidence of their lack of faith in the inherent beneficence of science.

Moreover, for a group of individuals claiming a right to act as a secular priesthood on Man's behalf, scientists demonstrate an aversion for personal responsibility that would shame a child. Consider how the same militant atheists who claim that religious individuals are somehow responsible for the past actions of other religious individuals who do not even happen to share their beliefs simultaneously assert that scientists are not responsible for their personal actions even when those actions provide the means of mass murder or the motivation for embarking upon mass slaughter.

If "religion" is to be held culpable for the Inquisitions and the jihads, "science" is certainly no less culpable for the historical ravages of scientific socialism, the gassings of World War I, the National Socialist Holocaust, the fire-bombings of Tokyo and Dresden and the American abortion atrocity, to say nothing of the possibility of nuclear devastation as well as the inconvenient perils of global warming.

I have previously demonstrated that religion does not cause war. But even if it did, the number of Americans killed by medical science in the last ten years far exceeds the total number of Americans killed by war in U.S. history. If medical science can justly claim to have saved many lives, it must also take responsibility for the estimated 783,000 annual iatrogenic deaths it now causes every year.

Furthermore, the benefits of science are hugely exaggerated. Most of the advances in human technology are a function of the wealth produced by capitalism and human liberty, as may be seen in the retarded technological development in countries with no shortage of education and scientists, but handicapped by anti-capitalist, anti-libertarian ideology. Most inventors are not scientists and most scientists are not inventors; whereas Oppenheimer and Einstein gave us the nuclear bomb, Steve Wozniak gave us the personal computer and Al Gore gave us the Internet. It's worth noting that the inventors of what is considered to be the most significant invention of the century, the silicon chip, were not scientists but electrical engineers.

Science advocates may argue that while scientists may not do much inventing, inventions are merely a practical application of the principles discovered by scientists. And while this is true in many cases, it is false in even more. From vulcanized rubber to the microwave oven, accidents combined with fortuitous observations by non-scientists have accounted for a surprising number of advances in human knowledge, advances to which the scientific method of hypothesis and experimentation may claim no credit.

Sciencists (those who believe in science as a basis for dictating human behavior, as opposed to scientists, who merely engage in the method), like to posit that Man has evolved to a point where he is ready to move beyond religion. A more interesting and arguably more urgent question is whether science, having produced some genuinely positive results as well as some truly nightmarish evils, has outlived its usefulness to Mankind.

Man has survived millennia of religious faith, but if the prophets of over-population and global warming are correct, he may not survive a mere two centuries of science.

The new Galileo
November 5, 2007
A few months ago, I wrote a column entitled "The case against science," which sparked many angry responses from scientists and science fetishists who were offended at the idea that science could possibly be held responsible for anything negative. Interestingly enough, none of these defenders of science bothered to present any empirical evidence, instead they resorted to the very logic and faith-based thinking which some optimistic individuals believe science will one day replace.

But there can no longer be any doubt that scientism has become a dogmatic article of faith, and ironically, one that is even more narrow-minded and authoritarian than the medieval Catholic church. For centuries, the primary basis for the secularist belief that science and religion are inherently opposed has been Pope Urban VIII's "persecution" of Galileo for the crime of arguing that the Earth revolved around the sun; as Dinesh D'Souza noted in last week's interview, this myth has persisted primarily because it serves the interests of the anti-religious narrative that remains popular despite its fictional nature.

Ironically, Pope Urban VIII was correct in the end, as there is not an astronomer or physicist in the world today who would disagree with the material basis for the church's condemnation of Galileo's heretical notion: "The proposition that the sun is in the center of the world and immovable from its place is absurd. "

The infamous pope was far more open-minded than the scientists currently attacking James Watson for his belief in human inequality. Not only did he grant Galileo the right to write a book on heliocentrism, but actually asked the father of modern physics to provide arguments for and against the matter, demonstrating a devotion to reason that was wholly lacking in the rush to lynch the father of the double-helix's sin against modern secular orthodoxy.

It is absurd to imagine that there is absolutely no link between race and intelligence. DNA is already being used to predict race with a 99 percent level of accuracy by forensic crime labs, and there is not a single shred of evidence, empirical, historical, anecdotal or documentary, that suggests intelligence is the sole human attribute which is distributed equally throughout humanity. While the relationship between race and intelligence has not yet been fully understood, there is far more reliable evidence for the existence of such a relationship than there is for many widely-accepted scientific theories, including the theory of evolution, string theory, multiple universes and so forth.

There are many reasons to be gloomy about the future of Africa, and Watson was right to question the wisdom of the West's social policies towards that continent, even if it later turns out that he is incorrect and science finds a way of demonstrating that every human being of every race possesses precisely the same amount of intelligence. But it is not racist to investigate the obvious differences between human groups; the hysterical overreaction of the dogmatic equalitarians demonstrates what must be a common and intrinsic belief in the inferiority of the less intelligent, otherwise Watson's comment would have engendered no more controversy than one noting that the Dutch are taller than the Chinese.

We don't believe that being taller makes one an inherently superior human being, so why should we believe that being less intelligent makes one inherently inferior? Richard Dawkins, a man for whom I have little intellectual regard, showed courage and uncharacteristic insight when he spoke up for Watson last month:

What is ethically wrong is the hounding, by what can only be described as an illiberal and intolerant "thought police," of one of the most distinguished scientists of our time, out of the Science Museum, and maybe out of the laboratory that he has devoted much of his life to, building up a world-class reputation.

This shameful Watson episode, which has seen one of the modern scientific greats brought low in the name of secular orthodoxy, should serve as a serious warning to scientists everywhere. Science, the profession, is increasingly at war with the evidence presented by science, the method. It is not religion that poses a dire threat to science, but rather the dogmatic pseudo-science of academia and the media, which is more authoritarian, more close-minded, more sensitive and more dangerous than any religious leader, past or present.

Like his great forebear, James Watson publicly recanted, and yet I have little doubt that time will eventually justify Watson and other heretics who continue to stand for science and empirical evidence in the face of the intolerant secular pseudo-scientific consensus.

20. A Letter From Hell

Comment #117283 by Smith on January 28, 2008 at 1:42 pm

al-rawandi: You self abusive masochist. You don't have enough bull shit in your current occupation?

21. A Letter From Hell

Comment #117268 by Smith on January 28, 2008 at 1:19 pm

omega369, may you suggest some websites, forums or blogs where christians of your kind would frequent?

22. Loneliness Breeds Belief in Supernatural

Comment #116781 by Smith on January 27, 2008 at 11:41 am

keith: If you can understand someone who says "I enjoy spending a couple of hours in a gallery but four consecutive days eating and sleeping there would be too much", then you should be able to grasp MaxD's point.

keith: I think all of us can understand why someone with a stressful way of life would want to take up a testful hobby. However, this isn't what meditation as a career move is all about.

keith: I fail to see the parallels with the Theory of Gravity. Surely one of the features of meditation is that it is as open to bookish and unbookish people alike. So, unlike the Theory of Gravity, it isn't necessary to "stand on the shoulders of giants" before deciding if meditation is worth the while or not.

I'm not knocking meditation I'm sure its okay, and we all do some form of it anyway. I know I do to get into a zone prior to a competition.

keith: Why the sarcasm?

I am always confused by Dawkins' privilaging of extreme craving for knowledge. I'm not knocking studying I'm sure its okay, and we all do some form of it anyway. I know I do to get into a zone prior to a test. But a week? In a library?

23. The Science behind the Large Hadron Collider

Comment #116597 by Smith on January 26, 2008 at 7:32 pm

According to Steven Weinberg's Dreams of a Final Theory," the USA was building an even more powerful collider in the early 90's. But eventually the project got canned by the short-sighted Congress. Let's hope that CERN produces some remarkable results to teach them a lesson.

24. Letters: Theology has no place in a university

Comment #116590 by Smith on January 26, 2008 at 7:10 pm

Sorry, mascot. You forgot to factor the lesbians into your wishful thinking.

25. Interview with Richard Dawkins

Comment #116589 by Smith on January 26, 2008 at 7:03 pm

windfall: Smith, I'm afraid Elcristoph is quite correct about Ken Miller's devout Catholicism. He's such a reasonable and well-spoken guy, knows evolutionary biology cold, and did such a fantastic job on the Dover trial, but...he's a Catholic. He goes into great detail about it on the excellent PBS special on Evolution a few years back. One word: compartmentalization.

26. Letters: Theology has no place in a university

Comment #116555 by Smith on January 26, 2008 at 6:06 pm

What does the "M" stand for? Menace, judging from the cunning smile? Or just mascot?

27. Letters: Theology has no place in a university

Comment #116552 by Smith on January 26, 2008 at 6:02 pm

Oh... the all-knowing, all-inspiring, all-everything FSM, save me from the wager!

28. Letters: Theology has no place in a university

Comment #116547 by Smith on January 26, 2008 at 5:58 pm

Well, al-rawandi my friend, evolving into a frog-like mascot is certainly a big leap forward!

29. Letters: Theology has no place in a university

Comment #116543 by Smith on January 26, 2008 at 5:55 pm

How can they, He2@usa included, be so sure those so-called footprints really left by dinosaurs and humans?

He2@usa: I have authored two books of my own, one being on the topic of prayer, i.e. I believe in God

30. Letters: Theology has no place in a university

Comment #116533 by Smith on January 26, 2008 at 5:44 pm

Dear al-rawandi, the very first thing you should do is to get a more imposing avatar. Yours looks confused and speechless.

31. Interview with Richard Dawkins

Comment #116514 by Smith on January 26, 2008 at 5:20 pm

Elcristoph: ... Ken Miller one of the most respected sciencetists in the world and a devender of evolution is a devout catholic...

32. Loneliness Breeds Belief in Supernatural

Comment #116347 by Smith on January 26, 2008 at 9:29 am

MaxD: Sam Harris and the Cave.
I'm not sure why this seems like a good idea. He does like to go on a bit about the benefits of this. But I think he has yet to make his case.

MaxD: I think the range of cognitive experience he is refering to is already had by most folk. They either fix their eye of wonder at some fake mystery like the trinity, or Jesus, or Mohammed, or the Buddha and find awe in that.

MaxD: I am always confused by Harris's privilaging of extreme introspection. I'm not knocking meditation I'm sure its okay, and we all do some form of it anyway. I know I do to get into a zone prior to a competition. But a year?
In a cave?

33. The real danger in Darwin is not evolution, but racism

Comment #115450 by Smith on January 24, 2008 at 7:58 am

Good luck to those who ever have the patience to exchange ideas with Scooternyc and Henri Bergson.

34. The real danger in Darwin is not evolution, but racism

Comment #115353 by Smith on January 24, 2008 at 4:39 am

Some links to audiobooks of OTOOS:

1. Read by Richard Dawkins.
2. Read by Librivox volunteers; free.
3. Torrent of 2.

Hi Peacebeuponme, please end the italics.

35. Banned From Church

Comment #115293 by Smith on January 24, 2008 at 12:37 am

Logicel, your comment reminds me of an exhibitionist BDSM lesbian couple I kept fantasizing awhile ago. Oh... those endless lonely nights.

36. The real danger in Darwin is not evolution, but racism

Comment #115287 by Smith on January 23, 2008 at 11:41 pm

Some thoughts:

1. It is normal for people from the 19th century to say things that we would consider racist. See "The Moral Zeitgeist" from TGD.

2. Even if Darwin is a racist, one should tell the difference between his contributions to biology (and science in general) and his opinions (if any) on races, his wife, his pets, women, food, etc. What Campolo did here is conflating the two.

3. Historically speaking, Darwin's OTOOS is probably one of the most important books. If one wants to know how evolution works as we know it today, however, I think it's better to consult a decent college textbook. That's the difference between "what biology is" and "what the bible says."

37. Why people believe weird things about money

Comment #112904 by Smith on January 18, 2008 at 9:10 am

Hi scooternyc, did you try reductio ad absurdum on your argument?

Also, those cases brought up by Paula Kirby in Comment #112860 can be viewed as a form of childhood indoctrination, certainly not even a religious one. I suppose you understand what indoctrination can do to a person.

38. Sam Harris debate with Rabbi David Wolpe

Comment #109924 by Smith on January 10, 2008 at 4:15 am

You're welcome, bluehillside.

I downloaded the flash video myself and just uploaded it to MegaUpload. Here is the link

You may need VLC to play it. I tried to convert the flv file into an avi one but it took forever and I gave up. Maybe someone savvy in computer can do it or put it up to YouTube for us?

By the way, you may try to view the debate on Jewish TV Network instead.

39. Sam Harris debate with Rabbi David Wolpe

Comment #109661 by Smith on January 9, 2008 at 12:33 pm

bluehillside, you can find a torrent file for this debate in www.mininova.org or www.btjunkie.org.

40. Pope's exorcist squads will wage war on Satan

Comment #104674 by Smith on December 29, 2007 at 5:28 am

"Catholic Church's Canon Law 1172"? 1172? What else (1-1171) are more important than fighting the Devil head-on?

41. THE FOUR HORSEMEN - Available Now on DVD!

Comment #99939 by Smith on December 17, 2007 at 10:47 pm

I just talked to Christopher. He's actually smoking herbal! Can't you tell from the smoke, by the way?

42. THE FOUR HORSEMEN - Available Now on DVD!

Comment #99935 by Smith on December 17, 2007 at 10:39 pm

How about a webcam version of "The Four Horsemen" show featuring the finest commentators in this site?
Episode 1: Dr Benway, keith, Northern Bright, Russell Blackford*

(*: Is he gone like many others? If so, Logicel can fill in. Oh... Is she gone, too?)

43. THE FOUR HORSEMEN - Available Now on DVD!

Comment #99182 by Smith on December 15, 2007 at 8:37 pm

Hey guys, go to Edge! A bunch of scientists are ganging up on Paul Davies for his recent article on New York Times, "TAKING SCIENCE ON FAITH."

Oh... Thank you for the Harris-Wolpe debate link, agg.

44. Nurses Told to Turn Muslims' Beds to Mecca

Comment #94705 by Smith on December 6, 2007 at 9:53 am

Moderate muslum schoolars, scientists and engineers should have the blessed good hearts to point out to their not-so-sophisticated fellows that they are living on a big sphere.

I suppose a big business is looming here: a modified GPS that helps you to locate that holy city, wherever you are. Well, things are getting tricky though if you live in California, for example; where the hell do you face to? the ground?

45. Small, Yes, but Mighty: The Molecule Called Water

Comment #76672 by Smith on October 6, 2007 at 4:12 pm

She gave an interesting talk recently. Check it out on google video.

46. Richler defends atheism

Comment #58854 by Smith on July 26, 2007 at 12:17 pm

I'm curious what she says in her first (long) email, Greybishop. Care to share?

47. The hitch in Hitchens' thinking

Comment #58704 by Smith on July 25, 2007 at 11:00 pm

Are modern (dodgy) theology and postmodernism related?

48. In defense of dangerous ideas

Comment #58120 by Smith on July 23, 2007 at 2:54 pm

Can we ask: Is heterosexuality the symptom of an infectious meme?

The answer is probably yes, just looking at all those high-profile closet-gay pastors and republicans being haunted by that sodomy meme.

49. In defense of dangerous ideas

Comment #58113 by Smith on July 23, 2007 at 2:35 pm

steve99 wrote:

He would have to postulate an infectious disease that had precisely the same symptoms in all great ape species, in most mammals, even in birds.

50. Small, Yes, but Mighty: The Molecule Called Water

Comment #55233 by Smith on July 10, 2007 at 9:58 am

For your information, Angier had an interview with Point of Inquiry two weeks ago, promoting her new book "The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science".


Also, here is an article she wrote in 2004 titled "My God Problem," criticizing those scientists standing on the sidewalks. If you like Sam Harris' writing, I think you will like it, too.