1. Have We Ever Faced An Enemy More Stupid Than Muslim Terrorists?

Comment #247032 by Susac on September 13, 2008 at 8:37 pm

You know, I don't think the article gives the suicide bombers enough credit. They are trying to do something hard that takes some technical expertise and some nerve.

The obvious solution is simple - we should all encourage suicide bombers to practice practice practice! Just keep detonating yourself in a nice safe isolated area until you have perfected your technique, THEN make your video message! Think of the confidence you will project when you KNOW you can detonate yourself reliably!

2. Better Know a Lobby - Atheism

Comment #241519 by Susac on September 2, 2008 at 12:36 pm

Richard Dawkins

[quote]"Hilarious?" Really? Name one "hilarious" thing he said. Just because he is SUPPOSED to be funny doesn't mean he IS funny on all occasions, let alone "hilarious".[/quote]

Eh, I got a chuckle. I agree it wasn't Steven at his best.

BTW, I do have the correct answer to Steven's question

Q: "What do atheists yell when they are having sex?"

A: "We yell 'OH GOD OH GOD!!!' but we do it without any guilt about taking the lord's name in vain!

3. Ayaan Hirsi Ali & The Big Ideas Forum

Comment #239828 by Susac on August 30, 2008 at 11:54 am

The big obvious error the first speaker is making is that the idea of global warming does have a clear physical mechanism for it to occure, and it makes predictions that are testable.

This is not at all like the idea that Zeuse makes the lightnig.

Be skeptical about global warming, sure, but don't just assume that it's not happening either. Something is making the ice caps melt. Why should it not be us?

4. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc. were atheists, and they were terrible! Answer that!

Comment #143673 by Susac on March 14, 2008 at 9:48 am

I have not seen anyone post this rebuttal. I would consider it a "second point" to make in such arguments.

Given that Fascism is a secular movement and that it lead to mass murder, you have to notice something:

ONLY COOKS AND FRINGE GROUPS PRACTICE FACISM.

The reason for this is that fascism is a BAD IDEA. Secularists today take a look at history, and recognize that fascism is a bad idea, and we have successfully marginalized anyone who believes in this idea, because it is a bad idea.

Religion on the other hand simply REFUSES to give up its BAD IDEAS.

The Bible/Quran/Torah etc. is the word of god? BAD IDEA!

Your religion is right and everyone else is going to hell? BAD IDEA!

The Bible is internally consistent and doesn't contradict itself? BAD IDEA!

Be fruitful and multiply in a world with 6 Billion people in it? BAD IDEA!

The book of Genesis is an historical account of the creation of the world? BAD IDEA!

The flood of Noah ever happened? BAD IDEA!

The God of the Bible is a just and loving god? You've got to be kidding me!

We atheists have the flexibility of thought that lets us look at an idea and its consequences and reject it based on its merits and its internal and external validity. No one practices fascism today because we recognize what a bad idea it is. So we threw it out!

Can you say the same about your religious beliefs?

I didn't think so.

Your beliefs are not valid ways of relating with the world any more then facism is a valid way of relating with the world. What makes your beliefs not valid is that they are not consistent with the evidence and they have negative consequeces in the world. Same as Nazi Germany. To paraphrase Sam Harris, no country ever commited genocide because it was too reasonable.

If you cannot answer the question "what would prove to you that the bible is wrong" then you have no point of reference to determine what is true. If you cannot determine what is true, you have no way of knowing when you have a bad idea on your hands. As long as you refuse to find a way to falsify the bible, you are efectively refusing to test reality. This prevents you from determining the validity of your beliefs. This is a blind spot. You can't tell a good idea from a bad idea in this blind spot.


I suppose that this same sort of blind spot is what allowed Hitler to kill all those Jews.

5. Atheists don't believe in anything

Comment #85987 by Susac on November 7, 2007 at 5:16 pm

I don't know what EEA means.

In any event, you can't look at most people as moral or immoral. Morality expresses itself in the culture at different intensities and in different ways depending on the complex stressors of the situation of that individual. Take for instance a person who is living in poverty. let's say this person may has psychological and emotional problems, 3 kids by 2 different people and a mild drug problem.

Most people wouldn't consider him moral. At the same time, the INSTINCT for morality is still there, it is just not getting expressed in ways that you consider culturally valid. For example, this person is likely to be extremely generous with his resources (poor people are generally MUCH more generous than rich people). And his mental illness and drug abuse may be in response to his failure to cope with his low social status and the stressors that this puts on him.

Given a change in his environment, like Eliza Doolittle, he may be able to function at a much higher level of socially exeptable morality based on the circumstances of his social status.

Remember, in humans, instincts express themselves as tendencies toward a specific behaviour that is experienced as an emotional response. The above individual may experiencee a great deal of shame about his life, because he is not achieving the status and resources that make his life meaningful and fulfill his role as a provider for his kids. This shame is his moral instinct expressing itself. He may not handle this shame well and act out by using drugs or becoming violent, but this is a statement about his coping resources and not his morality.

An Immoral person might include say, a sociopath or some specific sorts of brain injury. Most people are conditioned to adaptive responses to their environment had operate within moral peramiters that are defined for them by their social milue.

6. Atheists don't believe in anything

Comment #85983 by Susac on November 7, 2007 at 4:59 pm

Simple answer:

I believe that moral people are fitter and more likely to reproduce than immoral people.

Complex answer:
Morality is defined by evolution as what is best for the survival of the genes. This expresses itself in humans as a drive to cooperate and treat one another fairly. This is an instictual response to the human condition that manifests itself in such emotional responses as empathy, altruism, and compassion. These character traits increase survivablitiy by allowing the individual to be more successfull in both aquiring resources through cooperation and attracting mates through demonstration of a willingness to share resources with kin. Because human beings have big brains that take a long time to develop, and because we are so helpless during that development these instinctual responses were strongly selected for in our species, since socialization, task specialization and education, and the sharing of resources is absolutely necessary for the survival of our young.

The end result is that we are moral because morality IS fitness.

7. What's the evolutionary advantage of offering your place to an old woman on a bus?

Comment #85582 by Susac on November 6, 2007 at 9:15 am

I think that the answer to this question is found in the emotional responses of both the gentleman giving up his seat and in those of any onlookers.

Clearly the behavior itself is completely culturally embedded, but the emotions driving the behavior are instinctual.

The primary emotional response system/instinct at play here is empathy. The ability to empathize with your fellow human's situation has strong survival value as it promotes "tit for tat" negotiating strategies. Indeed, most people who give up their seats would probably say that they would want someone to do so for them if the tables were turned. This strategy has already been demonstrated to be the best negotiating strategy by R. Dawkins in mathematical models.

An outgrowth of this strategy is tribalism - human beings are basically pack animals, and the care for the elderly and solidarity of the tribe and tribal members is instinctual in us, and serves our individual gene survival, because the knowledge and wisdom of elderly tribe members has huge survival value for all. Psychologically that bus becomes a tribal unit for the gentleman giving his seat, no matter how loosely defined.

Finally the behavior has sexual selection value. Any on looking females who observe his largess are likely to view his compassion favorably and size him up as a good risk for mating selection, since his compassion and generosity could presumably be generalized to his own offspring.

Now none of these are conscious drivers of the behavior (except, perhaps empathy). The individual giving up his seat just knows that he feels better about himself when he does so. This self concept is reinforced by cultural norms that the gentleman "should" give up his seat. These cultural norms are also an expression of the above three instinctual values that drive human behavior. As such the individual's behavior is driven "internally" by his own instincts, and "externally" by the cultural milieu that is informed by the instincts of all the humans in the culture.

8. Honest Mistakes or Willful Mendacity

Comment #69461 by Susac on September 11, 2007 at 10:23 am

Richard, I'm afraid that the tone of your above article was somewhat naive.

Willfully disregarding the meaning and intent of the writer is the MEAT AND DRINK of religious apologists. Mr. Cornwell is simply practicing the intellectual dishonesty, character assassination and obfuscation that are standard issue for faith heads.

I believe there are some basic assumptions that we non-believers have about how people think that make it hard to communicate with people of faith. Since people of faith don't make these basic assumptions their reasoning seems incredible to us.

The most common assumption that we make is that authority has no purchase on the truth. For a faith-head authority IS the truth.

A more basic thing that we skeptics don't commonly get is that in order to have faith; you have to be ready and willing to believe your own lies. Faith REQUIRES that you deceive yourself in order to work. We don't think like that.

What Mr. Cornwell is counting on is that his readers will simply accept his authority and use it as validation for their own self deception. Ad-hominid attacks on you are part of the strategy, since tearing you down is de facto building him up. He doesn't need to beat your arguments; he only needs to gain the emotional support of his readers. He expects to win through politics, not reason. Unfortunately, this is a VERY realistic expectation. This is one of the defense mechanisms of the virus of faith.

In short, faith is fundamentally dishonest.

9. Rats influenced by the kindness of strangers

Comment #56803 by Susac on July 17, 2007 at 10:11 am

I think that this conversation is missing the obvious. This is not a study about rats engaging in altruistic behavior as a product of their genes.

This is a study about rats LEARNING altruistic behavior. The capacity of rats to learn this behaviour is a product of their genes, but the behaviour itself is influenced by environment. In this case, the second rat is being modeled behaviour by the trained (first) rat. What this shows is that the operant conditioning provided to the first rat was trasmitted (virus-like) as social modeling to the second rat.

This indicates a few things:

1) rats are social creatures (no suprise there), and are capable of learning from each other.
2) rats can model behaviour off of each other, and will do so even if the behaviour is not directly rewarded.
3) rats may experience something like empathy (a very mamalian trait). This is only inferred, however, since one cannot know the motivation of the lever-puling behaviour. Feeding the neighboring rat may have been incidental to it's motives.

This shows a CAPACITY for behaviour that is supported by genetic make-up, but the behaviour itself is learned. I bet you can also teach rats to be selfish.