1. Bishop accuses gays of 'conspiracy' against the Catholic Church

Comment #143241 by Gustaf Sjoblom on March 13, 2008 at 5:50 pm

Did someone sneak in on a church meeting and drop something in their tea? Everything the bishops have said recently is completely crazy....tons more than usual, and that says something.

Or are they simply responding to the atheist movement, "You thought we were crazy before, just watch us now". Richard certainly picked a bad week not to be in the UK.

2. Ban anti-Catholic books in schools, says bishop

Comment #143168 by Gustaf Sjoblom on March 13, 2008 at 2:55 pm

It certainly seems like while it takes some delusion to be religious, you need to be seriously whacked to be a bishop.

3. Beauty ad banned after Christian outcry

Comment #143157 by Gustaf Sjoblom on March 13, 2008 at 2:38 pm

Comment #142999 by Tyler Durden

Gustaf, did you read my entire post? I was actually refering to the Irish advertising laws with regard to religious billboards telling me I'm going to hell if I don't repent.

4. Beauty ad banned after Christian outcry

Comment #142979 by Gustaf Sjoblom on March 13, 2008 at 9:45 am

Comment #142772 by Tyler Durden

1.5 The Code does NOT apply to:

marketing communications whose principal purpose is to express the advertiser's position on a political, religious....

WTF??

5. Beauty ad banned after Christian outcry

Comment #142425 by Gustaf Sjoblom on March 12, 2008 at 1:15 pm

Comment #142391 by epeeist

So what you are saying is that the use of the cross is crass.

6. Beauty ad banned after Christian outcry

Comment #142386 by Gustaf Sjoblom on March 12, 2008 at 12:32 pm

I'm going to stick out quite a bit here and say that the ASA probably did the right thing. :O

The sole reason for this would be the t turned into a cross. It directly references a specific religion. If they simply changed it to a normal t I see no trouble with the ad.

The reasoning here is that a company should not use a specific religion (or another company, or a person) in any way in its ads. Not draw from its goodwill or gain points for bashing it or anything.

Use of the cross is a bit like using the logo of another company. The cross isn't copyrighted, so it isn't illegal, but it is the kind of thing that a self regulating body such as the ASA should move against.

All other pretexts given by the ASA is obviously complete nonsense. And it makes them look silly while doing the right thing and is therefor completely counterproductive.

7. Oklahoma: One Step from Doom

Comment #141131 by Gustaf Sjoblom on March 10, 2008 at 5:10 am

Q: What where the causes of the Great Depression?

A: It was God's punishment for gays, lesbians and feminists.


I guess answers like that will now result in a passing grade. This isn't isolated to nature sciences.

8. Bulldozers tear down giant religious teapot

Comment #138483 by Gustaf Sjoblom on March 4, 2008 at 12:33 pm

So the teapot mentioned in TGD is no more. It makes me sad, the whole enterprise felt a bit like spaghetti to me, but perhaps it was more cultish.

Anyway. I think the most interesting part here is that it shows very clearly that islam is islam, regardless if you call it liberal or not. Isn't that always going to be the case with a religion that per definition is fundamentalist?

9. Ayaan Hirsi Ali to get EU protection

Comment #135997 by Gustaf Sjoblom on February 29, 2008 at 12:07 pm

This is good news indeed.

I do not think that many people will get this kind of protection, the threat will have to be very big, span over a long time at the same time as the person is a public figure with so much need to travel around that the nation where he/she lives cannot handle the few trips aswell.

10. Are they running for President or Pastor-in-Chief?

Comment #134577 by Gustaf Sjoblom on February 28, 2008 at 2:35 am

I don't think a tighter binding within the EU is very likely, at least no in the foreseeable future. We are a bit to different on many accounts.

But the good news is, it doesn't really matter that much, and in a way it is better for you this way. Find the country that best suits your personal taste and move there. (If you are a republican or libertarian stay waaaay clear of Scandinavia)

P.S Staying on-topic is for squares. :P

11. Are they running for President or Pastor-in-Chief?

Comment #134470 by Gustaf Sjoblom on February 27, 2008 at 8:49 pm

On the verse question I believe the best response would have been:

Job 13:5 - "O that ye would altogether hold your peace! and it should be your wisdom."

12. Debate between Richard Dawkins and Madeline Bunting

Comment #126976 by Gustaf Sjoblom on February 14, 2008 at 3:25 pm

I'm far from convinced about her hypothesis of where fundamentalism comes from. I think it is very likely that it CAN be a defense mechanism, but I think that there are many other possibilities. One of them is obviously complete unquestioned belief, and as long as people subscribe to the idea that faith in itself is sacred that will not be stopped.

If you actually believe that Allah wants you to kill the infidels. And if everyone tells you that if you belive it then that is your spiritual truth. Then what are you going to do?

What would pragmatic Bunting say about that?

I think that there is room for both tactics. Some go for the politics, others try to change the intellectual zeitgeist. We just haven't seen any bestseller that uses the political tactic yet (Or is there one that I've missed? If so I'd love to know).

13. My Saudi Valentine

Comment #126648 by Gustaf Sjoblom on February 13, 2008 at 6:08 pm

as usual, religion poisons everything.

14. Cal scientist reflects on Darwin's genius

Comment #126143 by Gustaf Sjoblom on February 12, 2008 at 1:53 pm

Epinephine you are obviously correct, and as I said I don't care very deeply about this and I'm far from sure that my approach would be fundamentally better.

That beeing said would personally prefer an arbitrary date or the date of the first publication of The Origin of Spieces. And I would prefer to call it Natural Selection Day (on principle, Darwin day sounds alot better). :P

I would just prefer to steer away from individuals since it creates problems. For example Darwin day makes it a little bit to easy for ID to make the disgusting point to people that Darwin got this and that wrong and therefor we should throw the entire Theory of Evolution out the window. While its not a good argumentation, not even an argumentation at all, it sadly works on some people. :(

15. Cal scientist reflects on Darwin's genius

Comment #126112 by Gustaf Sjoblom on February 12, 2008 at 1:18 pm

I would personally feel better about celebrating dates of discovery rather than days of birth. Even if Darwin was the man who had the ideas it is the ideas and the process and not the person that should be celebrated.

I'm probably in the minority here, and I don't really care that much, but I think that it sends the wrong message and can easily be misunderstood.

16. Bill Maher on Larry King Live

Comment #125576 by Gustaf Sjoblom on February 11, 2008 at 4:04 pm

" [...] to deny the efficacy of science based medicine is irrational."

Couldn't agree more. Turning away from real medicine and turning to pseudo-science is very dangerous. Its like cherrypicking the worst of religion and just go with it.

I must say that I as a non-american have no good picture what is really going on over there on these issues, but it really seems like you need to get things under control over there. :(


"Most diseases of affluence can be turned off and reversed simply by diet and lifestyle (vegetarianism mainly). But these are cheap fixes and no one makes money off them."

You are not really trying to blame the healthcare industry for Americas obesity are you? And I'm sure that you are not trying to say that they say that people shouldn't lose weight? If people don't know that its bad for you to eat fastfood and don't exercise then you have an educational problem.

17. Bill Maher on Larry King Live

Comment #125503 by Gustaf Sjoblom on February 11, 2008 at 1:27 pm

I don't care much if someone calls himself a deist, it doesn't really matter.

I like him because he really knows how to make religion look exceptionally stupid, I think he does that better than any other comedian including others I normally find funnier such as Izzard, Black and Carlin.

Here he is very straigtforward and clear and gets the message across. Props to him for that.

18. Hitchens and Boteach Debate on God

Comment #125189 by Gustaf Sjoblom on February 11, 2008 at 3:50 am

How on earth is it possible that these debates are still going on when one side has been practicing the technique of 'you win the debate today, they won't check the facts until tomorrow'.

That technique should not be able to keep a nation uneducated for over 100 years, partly in a time period that we call the age of information!

Anybody who is interested in truth would find out that the Rabbi is either a liar and/or an idiot in no time. And then this should be passed on from friend to friend until everyone who cared about truth would have a decent grasp of what is real and what is not and after seeing that the lying/idiocy is almost exclusive to one side...

I just don't get it.

19. Battle of the Chambersburg billboards

Comment #124621 by Gustaf Sjoblom on February 9, 2008 at 10:54 pm

This is about as intelligent a question as asking why homosexuals hate America, i.e not very.

20. 10 cc of atheism

Comment #124614 by Gustaf Sjoblom on February 9, 2008 at 10:44 pm

[So what happens?]

One can only hope that the hospital assigns another doctor who makes the other diagnostic and is wrong and the patient dies. And afterwards says that he only made the assesment because he felt compelled to respect their religious views, and says that he realizes now that was a big mistake.

Please, please, let it be like that.

21. Sprinting down the evolutionary highway

Comment #121846 by Gustaf Sjoblom on February 4, 2008 at 8:37 am

Over the course of the last 10000 years selection pressure has been strong, it might have declined steadily but it is still there.

Today we still see people dying from desise, or having problems with it causing them to perhaps not have as many children as they otherwise might have had. We also still have such things as sexual selection.

I'm pretty convinced that we still have plently of selection for evolutionary processes to work with.

22. Are Darwin's Theories Fact or Faith Issues?

Comment #120399 by Gustaf Sjoblom on February 1, 2008 at 3:12 pm

*OBS! Simplifyed*

Simmons: The Brain is complex, I cannot figure out how it could have evolved, so it couldn't.
PZ: Sure it could.
Simmons: Then explain.
PZ: *explains how it works*
Simmons: But you cannot be sure! It COULD also have been designed!
PZ (and myself): Hahahahahahaha!


This is probably the most clear case I've ever seen of dismissing a natural explanation for the preferance of dogma.

23. Pope says some science shatters human dignity

Comment #120118 by Gustaf Sjoblom on February 1, 2008 at 9:21 am

"When human beings in the weakest and most defenseless state of their existence are selected, abandoned, killed or used as pure 'biological material,' how can one deny that they are being treated not as 'someone' but as 'something,'" he said." It is something, not someone. I don't deny that.

24. Morality and the 'new atheism'

Comment #119582 by Gustaf Sjoblom on January 31, 2008 at 5:08 pm

Why be good if you are a christian. You can just do evil and then ask forgivness and accept Jesus and you are home free.

This is as good an argument as the anti-atheist argument.

25. New atheists or new anti-dogmatists?

Comment #117133 by Gustaf Sjoblom on January 28, 2008 at 10:15 am

I do wish that Prof. Dawkins had written something like this early in The God Delusion.

I think it would have resonated very well with many readers.

26. Why people believe weird things about money

Comment #111077 by Gustaf Sjoblom on January 13, 2008 at 12:52 pm

This is quite an interesting concept when applied to, for example, international economics. Especially in the political context.

27. Face to faith

Comment #82874 by Gustaf Sjoblom on October 28, 2007 at 5:13 am

"Dear scientist, don't work on your mysteries. Bring us your mysteries for we can use them. Don't squander precious ignorance by researching it away."

28. Migrations influenced immune evolution

Comment #77652 by Gustaf Sjoblom on October 10, 2007 at 2:16 am

Not beeing an expert on the subject I would still assume that there is a rather large difference between the precence of anti-bodies and a genetic difference due to envoirnmental differences.

29. Al Gore on Reason

Comment #44952 by Gustaf Sjoblom on May 25, 2007 at 4:17 pm

I have to redraw my previous post, having read the article linked by Disumbrationist: http://blog.antidelusionist.com/2007/04/23/al-gores-slideshow.aspx

I'm truly disgusted by this. To read that a man who arguably has done a lot to make the world react to a worldwide problem in the same breath promotes dogma over reason.

The title of his book is an insult to reason.

30. Al Gore on Reason

Comment #44944 by Gustaf Sjoblom on May 25, 2007 at 4:08 pm

Gore is a baptist, as far as creationst I'm pretty sure that he would agree that evolution happened and you only need to read his book (or watch the movie) to be certain that he isn't a "young earth" creationst.

My guess is that he, like most in politics, is reluctant to answer question about his faith as he is bound to lie.

Its a tragic situation overall.

31. The Conversion of the Casual Evolutionist - You can't spell love without evolve

Comment #44104 by Gustaf Sjoblom on May 23, 2007 at 10:18 am

While this is satirical there is enough truth in there to confuse those of us who have a bit deeper understanding of the concept of evolution.

We are not really the best audience for this though as we are more likely to point out errors in reasoning rather than enjoying the fun parts.

Overall I think it is quite funny, at least the first read.

32. Army to EO Reps: 'Discrimination Against Atheists OK'

Comment #37084 by Gustaf Sjoblom on May 3, 2007 at 10:58 am

This story is compleately unbelieveable. How can america be about 100 years behind the rest of the western world in these issues?