Comments by godma

Comment #139893 by godma on March 6, 2008 at 4:13 pm

That was beautiful. I'm enriched for having read it. Even though there was little if anything there that I hadn't read before in Richard's books and elsewhere, and I had no interest at all in Midgley, it's still a joy just to follow along with such a clean and humorous rebuttal.

This particularly made me smile:

"The imagination reels at what a mind labouring under Midgley's definitional misconception must make of almost any of the modern literature on animal behaviour."

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

Comment #100817 by godma on December 19, 2007 at 11:39 am

This is much easier than most of you are making it. It takes only one sentence, in fact:

The motivation to act requires more than mere disbelief.

People are led to their actions much more (if not entirely) by the beliefs they have than by the lack of a belief. In fact, there might be a strong argument that the mere lack of a belief is not itself operative at all.

So when some atheists do bad things, it is because they happen to have certain beliefs about the world that lead them to do those bad things (e.g. the supremacy of the Aryans, the belief in Marxism/Nazism/Maoism). It is not merely because they lack the belief in God.

3. God Talk on 'The View'

Comment #71687 by godma on September 19, 2007 at 1:02 pm

Does anyone else here think maybe this kind of thing serves a meta-purpose of revealing how intrinsically ridiculous the faith-based perspective is? Part of me feels that the more it's talked about non-dogmatically and with a variety of viewpoints, the more the central message comes out that faith-based belief is absurd.

4. Alex the Parrot

Comment #69735 by godma on September 12, 2007 at 12:47 pm

"But to say whether Alex loved the human who taught him, we'd have to know if he had a separate conceptual grasp of what love is, which is different from understanding the context in which the word occurs"

I'm not so sure that the difference is real or (if it is real) significant. What, ultimately, is the "meaning" of a concept anyway, aside from the particular (supposedly unique) network of associations that happens to exist in one's mind between that concept and all others?

By supposing that "meaning" is anything more than a context-dependent, relative term in this sense, is to imply that our perception of "meaning" corresponds to something absolute and objective. And this seems to me to be a form of magical thinking. Of course, maybe there is an objective basis for what we think of as "meaning", but we are not in a position to be able to verify this.

I would argue that the only significant difference between what the parrot means and what we mean when we each say "I love you" is the degree of complexity of relationships that exist between that statement and all other concepts in the brain of the speaker. To say it means more to us than to the parrot is simply to say that the concepts (I, you, love) are more complexly related to the rest of our neural networks than to those of the parrot.

5. Intelligent Design and Creationism/Evolution Controversy

Comment #53633 by godma on July 2, 2007 at 10:59 am

I think it's legitimate to call it a political or religious controversy, just not a scientific one.

6. Intelligent Design and Creationism/Evolution Controversy

Comment #53509 by godma on July 1, 2007 at 7:33 pm

I happened upon it last night on tv (re-broadcast on a local college channel) and thought she got the points across very well. Thanks for posting it, Josh.

7. Yes, the universe looks like a fix. But that doesn't mean that a god fixed it

Comment #52906 by godma on June 28, 2007 at 1:03 pm

I like Davies' line of reasoning, for the most part. But there's one main theme that bugs me.

"the answer is to be found within nature, not beyond it"

If there is an answer, then yes, but not because we're sure that's where it is...only because that's the only place testable. And that's self-defining, because we will always call the scope of what is testable "nature". If we discover "more" to nature, that will only expand the scope of what we think of as nature.

I like the analogy of 1000 people all flipping coins. Since there is just about a 1/1000 chance of a coin coming up heads 10 times in a row, it's not impressive that one of those 1000 people would see that result. Now imagine how special that one person would feel if he did not know about the other 999 people.

8. What I Think About Evolution

Comment #46610 by godma on May 31, 2007 at 7:48 pm

Here's the email I just sent to the NY Times:

Dear Editor,

After reading the article you published by Sam Brownback regarding his justification for not believing in evolution (Opinion, 2007-05-31), I feel compelled to write in with a quick response to counter one of his inaccurate claims.

Senator Brownback grossly mischaracterized Darwinian evolution when he claimed that it in some way implies that humans are a "historical accident". In fact, this is completely the opposite of what evolutionary theory actually says. Darwininian evolution, of course, does not produce body designs by "accident" (for humans, nor for any other species of organism), but rather by the non-random process of natural selection.

According to the theory, our physical characteristics are the result of many many generations of certain advantageous genes being passed down more successfully than others. "Success", in this case, is primarily a matter of which organisms win the competition for mates and resources, and only very rarely is a matter of chance or accident.

Clearly, given the overwhelmingly non-random nature of this process, for the senator to claim otherwise indicates, at best, a lack of understanding of the theory itself. At worst, it's intentional slander.

9. What I Think About Evolution

Comment #46599 by godma on May 31, 2007 at 6:53 pm

I would love to see an evolutionist publish a response in the same paper. At the very least, pointing out the popular mischaracterization that evolutinary theory implies that humans (or any other species) are an "historical accident".

This is slanderous, and should be cleanly countered. Darwininian evolution, of course, does not produce body designs by "accident", but by natural selection.

10. 'The Day They Kicked God out of the Schools' & Rebuttal

Comment #34156 by godma on April 23, 2007 at 11:49 am

That first video is yet another example of a Christian shooting himself in the foot by revealing the ridiculousness of his position to the world. The absurd implications and overall offensiveness of this video just help to make our case. How stupid does one have to be to actually believe that their loving and forgiving God decided to punish innocent students merely because our government upholds the first amendment?

I think that, on average, this video and others like it will actually backfire and help our cause more than that of the creators.

11. Panel discussion on atheism where no atheists are included

Comment #21093 by godma on February 7, 2007 at 2:43 pm

Debbie Schlussel responds to all the e-mail she's been getting on her blog.
http://www.debbieschlussel.com/archives/2007/02/when_atheists_a.html

12. Panel discussion on atheism where no atheists are included

Comment #20821 by godma on February 6, 2007 at 5:42 pm

I'd like to believe that this will go toward proving the point that atheists are unfairly discriminated against by the culture. The two anti-atheists on the panel were obviously over the top. Any Christian watching this should be embarrassed.

It just might be helpful to our cause to have things like this aired from time to time (so long as it doesn't become the norm). It reveals the ridiculousness of the opposition's viewpoint so well.

13. Blashpemy Challenge Interview

Comment #20080 by godma on January 31, 2007 at 9:18 am

Some others here have already said this, but I'll add my thoughts anyway.

Although on one level it seems very silly and a bit juvenile. I think it's serving a valuable purpose for the promotion of reason and denouncing of superstition.

1. it encourages closet atheists to come out.
2. it helps expose the ridiculousness of faith in the truth of scripture
3. it is a solid viral campaign, attracting more and more attention over time.

We should admit that the main task for this cause today is social change, not the same old intellectual argument. The logical arguments have been around, largely unchanged, for a long time. They are great, but what we need now are not new arguments but good outreach programs, PR, and political/social organization.

14. Executing Saddam Hussein was an Act of Vandalism

Comment #15866 by godma on January 3, 2007 at 11:54 am

I have a few reactions to the idea that politicians and scientists should refrain from speaking out on subjects outside their respective pigeon holes. It's come up several times, and I was particularly bothered by this in the comments of the Templeton Foundation representative (on what he called "scientism") at the Beyond Belief 2006 conference (watch those videos if you haven't already).

Basically, I strongly reject the idea that anyone, scientist or otherwise, should keep quiet on political matters. Our society and culture benefits greatly from a diversity of opinion from a variety of sources, and politicians' opinions don't deserve any special respect. The citizens all get to share their opinions and the politician's role is to try to reflect the will of their constituents as much as possible.

Secondly, just because someone is a scientist doesn't mean that everything they say in public is to be taken as science. Science is a collaborative effort, and the results of science will stand on their own, regardless of what any individual scientist happens to think about those results. People should understand this (I think most do), but if they don't then the correct response is not for the scientists to shut up, but for the people to be better educated by society.

Likewise, politicans should not be scolded for speaking out on "scientific" matters. Either they're doing real science or they aren't, and that will be determined by the community of scientists. Anything else is just their opinion, and they have as much a right to share it as anyone else has. The audience should be afforded the respect of being able to judge the opinion on its merits, and the qualifications of the speaker based on his or her own merits.

15. Richard Dawkins on The Late Late Show with Pat Kenny

Comment #12525 by godma on December 12, 2006 at 11:34 am

Re: comment 12266 by seals

"but would it necessarily follow that, having lived a full lifespan, we should still see death as being "not right""

It depends. On the one hand, any character traits that only appear after one's genes are passed on are less likely to be selected for or against (versus those that existed beforehand). There can still some selection pressure, though, since even after passing on one's genes, they can stick around and help their offspring survive. You'd expect genes that predispose people to stick around and help the family to be selected for, somewhat.

16. Richard Dawkins on The Late Late Show with Pat Kenny

Comment #12247 by godma on December 11, 2006 at 12:35 pm

Both sides use old, rehashed arguments, but that's just the nature of the beast. It's not that the arguments need to be improved, it's that our arguments need more visibility and to be represented clearly and accurately. Dawkins does a superb job of both. It's a PR issue for the purposes of motivating social change, and is only proximally about actual debate.

The example of fundamentalism being tied to a book was maybe a bit flawed, but pretty trivially so, I think. The real point has to do with granting unwavering loyalty to any authoritative standard (book or otherwise). Dawkins made this point immediately afterwards and it was brilliant. Trust in any theory should be dependent on the strength of the evidence for and against it.

17. Richard Dawkins on The Late Late Show with Pat Kenny

Comment #12225 by godma on December 11, 2006 at 10:28 am

One thing Dr. Dawkins could have said that I think would have made a stronger point would have been in response to the guy who was complaining about Dawkins' "narrow" standard of evidence.

The point is that the standard for evidence that people use to justify their religious beliefs rarely, if ever, would be sufficient to justify their non-religious beliefs. Faithful people themselves carry around this double-standard, so there's no need to discuss it in terms of inter-personal differences in standards.

There are lots of fun examples one could make, substituting some other kind of thing (like Sam Harris's enormous diamond buried in the backyard, or Carl Sagan's dragon in the garage), and see how spectacularly the same justification fails to convince.

18. Richard Dawkins on The Late Late Show with Pat Kenny

Comment #12222 by godma on December 11, 2006 at 10:03 am

While it is indeed frustrating how dense, confused, and misinformed people continue to be (and I'm sure this must be enormously frustrating for Dr. Dawkins...answering the same stupid questions over and over with only trivial variation), I was not frustrated by these videos.

Stuff like this is great, because Dr. Dawkins makes great points, and the opposing side does a great job of showing themselves up. This is surely not good enough to convince strong believers, but I can't imagine that it isn't helpful to reasonable people nearer to the middle of the spectrum.

19. Morality

Comment #7169 by godma on November 17, 2006 at 12:58 pm

Good point, Aaron.
Maybe the best answer to the theist's "why is X wrong?" would be something like "because we've evolved genetically and culturally to feel that it is wrong".

20. Science vs religion

Comment #6752 by godma on November 15, 2006 at 1:44 pm

I hope you all are sending these (the best ones, anyway) also to Charlene's e-mail. It's entirely possible that she's not reading these comments.

21. Richard Dawkins and the "new atheists" come to America

Comment #6544 by godma on November 14, 2006 at 5:44 pm

"There are hundreds of resources on this site to help you understand your faith and know what you believe and why."

Wow. Why on earth would someone need someone else in order to know what they themselves believe? This gets at the heart of it, I think.

22. Is There a God?

Comment #4394 by godma on November 3, 2006 at 5:14 pm

"[...]we should similarly dismiss science as a delusion because it fostered the craniologists of the 18th century [...]"

So...the brand of monotheism Simmons has in mind is one that has continually revised its beliefs as new evidence and more sophisticated reasoning came around? What religion does he have in mind? Surely not one that believes in miracles.