Comments by un_ko

Comment #150502 by un_ko on March 27, 2008 at 3:01 am

This is a 67-year life well lived and spent. It positively influenced and enlightened many of us in the world now and beyond.

Happy birthday, Richard.

2. Floods are judgment on society, say bishops

Comment #53581 by un_ko on July 2, 2007 at 5:37 am

As Sam Harris has said many times, the Christian authorities waste so much time and energy on gay and same-sex marriage as if it is one of the biggest moral issues in the 21st century.

Why is it always gays? Check the entry of homosexuality on conservapedia.

These lunatic comments made by these men in church are truly insulting and degrading to us all.

3. I Believe In Evolution, Except For The Whole Triassic Period

Comment #46291 by un_ko on May 30, 2007 at 8:00 pm

This article examplifies the muddled thinking (if you call it "thinking" at all...) of creationists and the likes. I especially like that term "secular Triassicists". :)

4. The Greatest Act of Human Hubris

Comment #40868 by un_ko on May 15, 2007 at 6:05 am

Nice article with a some good statistics.

Having grown up in a Far East Asian country (where neither Christianity nor Islam dominate), I had the opportunity to realise that it is so obviously clear that religion is far from universal across the geographical landscape. This is perhaps the starting point of me being a-theistic.

The article does raise one interesting point that religion is even more different across time, not just geographically, as well.

5. Richard Dawkins in the Time 100

Comment #37242 by un_ko on May 3, 2007 at 8:38 pm

Actually, TIME has edited out some chunk out of the original text - according to the pro-intelligent-design blog site, Uncommon Descent. Here is what Behe wrote originally, copied from the post:

Of his nine books, none caused as much controversy — or sold as well — as last year's The God Delusion. Yet the leading light of the recent atheist publishing surge, Oxford University's Richard Dawkins, has always been a man driven by the big questions. Born in Kenya in 1941 of British parents, he received a mild Anglican upbringing. But at the age of sixteen Dawkins discovered Charles Darwin's theory, and thought he'd found a pearl of great price.

His academic career as an evolutionary biologist got off to a fast start in the 1970's with his first book, The Selfish Gene, which argued a then-unfashionable notion: like many politicians in Congress, individual genes of a genome are looking out just for their own good. So if somehow an unconscious gene mutated to be copied more effectively, it would outcompete its fellow DNA fragments. The fundamental idea of this "gene-centered" view of evolution had been proposed by other researchers. But, using his remarkable gift of scientific exposition, Dawkins painted the abstruse concept so clearly, and drew out the logic of its problematic premises so brightly, that it quickly became evolutionary orthodoxy.

Dawkins pushed the old idea in new directions. He argued that genes shape not only the body of an animal, but also its external environment: the imagined genes that move a beaver to build a dam are working for their own survival no less than the genes that shape the beaver's tail. Even human thoughts were fitted to the Procrustean mold. He coined the word "meme" to denote fragments of ideas, such as cultural fads or music lyrics, that might replicate within brains like genes in a cell. And into the disreputable category of meme he firmly placed religion, calling it a virus of the mind.

With the big questions of life and mind supposedly solved in principle, Dawkins has in the past several decades abandoned research, and turned instead to persuading society of the correctness of his views. It was for Dawkins that computer software billionaire Charles Simonyi endowed the Oxford Chair of the Public Understanding of Science, freeing Dawkins to write newspaper articles, produce films, and travel the world to spread the meme that, "The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at bottom no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but pointless indifference." A stark message, certainly. But true, thinks Dawkins, and he will not shrink from saying so.

The God Delusion, which deals more with philosophy than science, has been panned as amateurish by academic reviewers. Yet even a Roman Catholic intelligent design proponent like myself, who thinks Dawkins' conclusions follow much less from his data than from his premises, has to admire the man's energy and determination. Concerning those big questions, Someone once advised us to be either hot or cold, but not lukewarm. Whatever the merit of his ideas, Richard Dawkins is not lukewarm.

Now, note that at the time of writing, the title to the Richard Dawkins image on that post is "Obsolete imperialist myth-maker". You can verify this by dragging the mouse and select the whole Behe text on the post - including the Dawkins image - then paste it on to Notepad (or something similar).

6. Brian Lehrer interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #34661 by un_ko on April 24, 2007 at 8:26 pm

Dear fellow readers, here is a FULL TRANSCRIPT of the interview:

http://evolutionspace.wordpress.com/2007/04/25/transcript-of-brian-lehrer-interviewing-richard-dawkins/

Since this is quite a good and educational radio interview (so much better than the highly anticipated O'Reilly interview!), and I could not find any transcript of it, I have taken some time and written down the whole interview transcript.

Please note that as it currently stands, there are certain words that I could not understand, which I marked with "[???]". Any help and correction on the transcript is much appreciated.

Cheers.

7. Pope says science too narrow to explain creation

Comment #31477 by un_ko on April 12, 2007 at 10:01 pm

After a brief research it is quite obvious that Pope Benedict is no fan of evolution. Although he has not openly endorsed his anti-evolution view officially, cardinal Schoenborn seems to be his mouthpiece on this issue.

See my blog:

http://evolutionspace.wordpress.com/2007/04/12/pope-speaks-on-evolution/

Pope Benedict, please stop using vague language and make your views clear - don't hide behind Schoenborn.