1. Dare we stand up for Muslim women?

Comment #270577 by davidstvz on October 24, 2008 at 9:57 am

When I read stuff like this, it makes me wonder how anyone can believe in God. The human body and psyche have an appalling ability to suffer immensely under bad circumstances. Unfortunately that was a necessary part of our evolution. Thank... uh... science we've found ways to disable pain via medicine.

Also, I'd like to round up all the people that think its a good idea to throw acid in someone's face and do very bad things to them. Forget an eye for an eye. That's not good enough for such a deliberate and destructive act. Someone should work them over Dr. Danco style:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dexter_characters#Dr._Danco

2. Teacher tortures, kills boy

Comment #188233 by davidstvz on June 3, 2008 at 11:55 am

"That should include killing girls and women for violating insane religious rules, anyone who abandons a religion, anyone killed in a religious war, anyone killed because of a different religion or no religion at all, women that bleed to death during sexual mutilation because of religious beliefs..."

The problem is that we have no objective definition of good. We each have our own personal definition as atheists, and religious people have their own interpretation of their religion's morality.

To a fundamentalist, when the eternal happiness of you and your family might be compromised by an apostate, it makes perfect sense to aggressively punish apostasy. That religion can cause good people to do "evil" things really isn't that great of an argument against religion because "evil" is subjective.

Of course, this kind of thing is good if you want to appeal to peoples' emotions which I suppose we might as well try in addition to other tactics.

And I too find the biggest surprise to be that the teacher may be punished. Honestly, I'm not holding my breath.

3. Lab agrees to test Shroud of Turin for new theory

Comment #183699 by davidstvz on May 22, 2008 at 2:22 pm

The only thing I find interesting about the shroud is that the forger apparently went through the trouble to use cloth with a weave that was particular to the correct time and place.

4. Losing Our Spines to Save Our Necks

Comment #176407 by davidstvz on May 7, 2008 at 8:56 am

Brilliant? Sure, but he's preaching to the choir. This *really* needed to be in the NYT, even if it had to be watered down first.

5. Hitchens vs. Hitchens

Comment #157783 by davidstvz on April 9, 2008 at 2:17 pm

I'm an ardent atheist and my brother is a fundamentalist Christian. These things happen sometimes.

6. Evidence can't shake your faith if your faith excludes it as evidence

Comment #134982 by davidstvz on February 28, 2008 at 12:24 pm

This isn't meant to be an argument against atheism (I hope; if so it's terribly week), but it does raise a good point about the near impossibility of evidence changing a Christian's beliefs. You have to change their foundational assumptions before you can chance their belief.

7. The Dog Allusion

Comment #130925 by davidstvz on February 21, 2008 at 1:53 pm

"I would somewhat disagree on the fact that you can't tell if your animals love you or not. Ive seen plenty of dogs and cats that wait by the door for an owner who just got home from work and they ignore the other people in the room."

That's just selfishness. Even human love could probably be reduced to selfishness. Of course, that's a cynical way of looking at things, and I don't endorse cynicism (except for brief periods of introspection and perhaps dispassionate discussion).

8. 'Telepathic' Genes Recognize Similarities In Each Other

Comment #123792 by davidstvz on February 7, 2008 at 4:11 pm

What a stupid title for this article.

9. This deadly religious resistance to vaccinations

Comment #97139 by davidstvz on December 11, 2007 at 1:39 pm

Don't forget the religious loons in America who, although they believe in vaccines, are reluctant to give girls the HPV vaccine (human papilloma virus) which causes genital warts and a lot of cervical cancers. Naturally, their excuse is that they don't want to encourage illegitimate sexual behavior. What a bunch of dicks.

10. U.S. circumcision rate drops

Comment #51093 by davidstvz on June 21, 2007 at 12:34 pm

I just wanted to say that the New Testament (Paul in particular) is very clear that circumcision of gentiles (non Jews) is completely unnecessary. He says that was part of the old covenent and you can forget about it now.

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

Comment #46453 by davidstvz on May 31, 2007 at 9:52 am

#29, that's hilarious