1. Religion vs science: can the divide between God and rationality be reconciled?

Comment #263584 by dloubet on October 11, 2008 at 8:54 pm

How does one do science when one believes that there's a supernatural being -- in principle -- capable of undetectably fudging scientific observations? Wouldn't the existence of such a being cast all observations, past and present, in serious doubt? I'd say that the whim of a supernatural universe influencing being of absolute power and unknown motives, as well as being totally immune to any scientific controls, should invalidate all observations to date or at least call them into serious question.

The being could, for instance, make it appear that masses attract in a certain way, when in fact they do not. The being could just be pushing the planets and galaxies around in a manner that looks like the force of gravity, but decide to stop doing that tomorrow.

It would seem to me that the belief in a god should reduce science to second-guessing the whim of an all-powerful supernatural being. The scientist would have to simply HOPE that the god didn't decide to affect his experiment. Is hope a proper scientific control measure? Is the claim, "Oh, the god would never meddle in scientific experiments" a proper control?

I don't think so.

2. Robert Winston criticises dangerous 'science delusion'

Comment #247366 by dloubet on September 14, 2008 at 10:55 am

If arguments are divisive, then he's being divisive, is he not?

3. Pope condemns 'pagan' love of money, power

Comment #247362 by dloubet on September 14, 2008 at 10:52 am

Have not money, the thirst for possessions, for power and even knowledge, diverted man from his true destiny?"

4. Robert Winston criticises dangerous 'science delusion'

Comment #247356 by dloubet on September 14, 2008 at 10:42 am

Far too many scientists including my good friend Richard Dawkins present science as the truth and present it as factually correct. And actually of course that clearly isn't true."

5. Supernatural science: Why we want to believe

Comment #234925 by dloubet on August 22, 2008 at 8:47 am

I've always said that with religion, even the village idiot can feel like Einstein, because he can make statements that no one will contradict.

Also, religion is the ultimate in name-dropping, and allows you to pass off your own opinions as those of the ultimate lawgiver.

Religion plays to our vanity.

6. US school district sued over homophobic 'witch hunt'

Comment #234511 by dloubet on August 21, 2008 at 1:21 pm

Many in the community support Davis and feel outsiders are forcing their beliefs on them.

7. Knights Templar 'Heirs' Sue Pope For Billions

Comment #233763 by dloubet on August 20, 2008 at 11:44 am

Oh, so NOW they appeal to evidence!

How about if their followers say they'll never contribute to the church because the church can't prove there's a god?

8. After Bibles seized, U.S. group won't leave Chinese airport

Comment #233218 by dloubet on August 19, 2008 at 11:40 am

Who are `the Chinese'. This law is enacted by the Chinese Government. They are a totalitarian regime kept in power by a massive police force and extensive control of information. If you challenge this you will certainly get into trouble. But what you deserve is a medal.

Do you accord the Burmese, Iranian and Zimbabwian governments the right to run their country the way they please ?

9. After Bibles seized, U.S. group won't leave Chinese airport

Comment #232722 by dloubet on August 18, 2008 at 2:26 pm

I'm afraid I have to side with the Chinese. They are a soverign nation and can run their country however they like. If you travel there with the express purpose to break the law, you get what you deserve if you're caught.

10. Do subatomic particles have free will?

Comment #231967 by dloubet on August 17, 2008 at 11:28 am

Random does not equal free will.
Determined does not equal free will.
Why would a mixture of the two equal free will?

I don't think free will even constitutes an illusion. An illusion requires that you misinterpret some observation. Can anyone clearly describe where "free will" enters their decision-making? If not, then they're not observing anything that can then be misinterpreted as free will.

Free will isn't even an illusion, it's just an assertion.

11. Petrol pump pilgrims keep faith

Comment #231957 by dloubet on August 17, 2008 at 11:09 am

Now 'pray' for blind people to see or grow their arms back.

Oh wait, you can't!

12. More than 100,000 rare gorillas found in Congo

Comment #224845 by dloubet on August 5, 2008 at 6:51 pm

Let me be the first to welcome our new primate overlords...

13. Common New Atheist Fallacies

Comment #200973 by dloubet on June 28, 2008 at 4:46 pm

I don't think I've heard an actual ad hom argument used by an atheist. Such an argument would have to say something like, "You're stupid, therefore god does not exist."

I've never heard an atheist utter such rubbish.

14. Synthetic Copycat Of Living Cell Underway: Life, But Not As We Know It?

Comment #186486 by dloubet on May 30, 2008 at 10:54 am

Hey! You said Cylon as if it's a BAD thing.

Where's my perfect robot body?

And my flying car?

Dammit.

15. Group wants Wi-Fi banned from public buildings

Comment #186108 by dloubet on May 29, 2008 at 3:32 pm

"Electro-sensitive people"?

Give me a break.

I say we test them in a double-blind experiment to see if they're as sensitive as they say they are. And if they're not, they foot the bill for the experiment, and the lawyers.

Any takers?

16. Does Time Run Backward in Other Universes?

Comment #184927 by dloubet on May 26, 2008 at 12:56 pm

The whole article is easily falsifiable. Just provide an example of an egg putting itself back together and entrophy is falsified.

17. Anti-Evolution Film Misappropriates the Holocaust

Comment #172495 by dloubet on April 29, 2008 at 4:07 pm

Is there some official Hebrew lower caste that Ben can be a member of, or do we just get to call him unclean?

18. For sale: 13-year-old virgin

Comment #161077 by dloubet on April 14, 2008 at 6:51 pm

Ok, here's a rational argument against multiculturalism: Survival.

The more brains we have working on problems, the more problems get solved. If one of those children condemned by their culture to be nothing more than a prostitute could instead have a real choice as to her future, perhaps she would be the one to cure cancer, or negotiate a peace treaty, or save the fucking whales.

When a culture robs the human race of brain power, it's objectively working against the furtherance of the human race.

Screw multiculturalism.

19. Inadequate, private and late apology with grotesquely inadequate excuse

Comment #159187 by dloubet on April 11, 2008 at 2:54 pm

Davis didn't just put forth an opinion, she ORDERED the guy out of the chair. She usurped due process. She wiped her ass on the constitution.

Resigning's too good for her.

20. Cult leader Pyotr Kuznetsov tries suicide after realising he was wrong about doomsday

Comment #154890 by dloubet on April 3, 2008 at 10:47 pm

If the prospect of having to face a bunch of people you wrongly convinced to live in a cave for upwards of a year isn't a sufficent reason to attempt suicide, I don't know what is.

This isn't a story of mental illness, this is a story of abject stupidity, stubborness, and embarrassment.

And so I feel perfectly comfortable in laughing at the story because I'm quite comfortable with my own brand of stupidity, stubborness, and embarrassment.

The only difference is the scale.

21. Supreme Court to consider Ten Commandments vs. 'Seven Aphorisms'

Comment #153605 by dloubet on April 1, 2008 at 4:34 pm

It reminds me of that awesome Snicker's advertisement: The ad opens in a football team locker room during the pre-game prayer. When the priest finishes, a rabbi takes his place, and the camera pans back to reveal a line of various religious figureheads snaking out the door. The voice-over asks, "Gonna be there for a while? Have a Snicker's."

That's the whole issue in a nutshell.

22. Who wants to kill the elderly?

Comment #153602 by dloubet on April 1, 2008 at 4:27 pm

To the religious, the very existence of atheists implies a condemnation on the atheist's part. To them, the very fact that we don't agree with them means we think we're smarter than they are.

And that's just the starting point of the dialogue.

23. 'We Make Our Own Heaven'

Comment #151363 by dloubet on March 28, 2008 at 2:49 pm

I would imagine that thinking freely means there are no ideas that are not allowed.

Children are born atheist, you have to teach them to be theist.

And what's with the stilted redundancy?

"People are the force for good in the world and so I believe in people that their goodness will create the goodness that we have in the world,"

WTF?

24. Flipping particle could explain missing antimatter

Comment #147498 by dloubet on March 20, 2008 at 5:43 pm

You know, if it takes less energy for a particle to flip than is released by it's annihilation, that sounds like a path to nearly free energy to me. (But probably only because I'm not a physicist)

Flip-annihilate-repeat, sounds like a plan.

25. Two More Fleas

Comment #144377 by dloubet on March 15, 2008 at 9:14 pm

Has secularism in the terrible twentieth century been a force for good?
Not even close to being close.

Two Words: Norman Borlaug.

26. Fleabytes

Comment #144376 by dloubet on March 15, 2008 at 9:12 pm

Hey, if theists want to compare 20th century body counts, no problem, but I get to include Norman Borlaug.

27. Two More Fleas

Comment #142526 by dloubet on March 12, 2008 at 4:01 pm

Even if we granted this idiot's implication that secularism is a force for evil, and got down to arguing numbers, Norman Borlaug kicks Stalin's ass around the block.

28. Out of the Blue

Comment #140808 by dloubet on March 8, 2008 at 4:33 pm

If you drive a car, you're engaged in a transhumanist experience. The car is a device to allow you to go faster than your ordinary legs can carry you. It's no different from a more lurid furturistic robotic exoskeleton except for the fact that it's big and clumsey, and you have to go outside to get into it, and the interface is less transparent, and it's usually noisy and smelly. So give the transhumanists a break.

The thing I find interesting about the ground-up brain approach is that it will be fascinating to see if a simulation of consciousness ceases to be a simulation, and instead becomes the real thing, and at what point that happens.

Does Moore's law really apply to the simple addition of more and more chips to a system? It seems you could simply buy your way past ML with unlimited funds and resources. (Please forgive my flippant and ignorant use of the word "simply", I will understand if there are complicating factors I am unaware of that interfere with the brute addition of more processors.)

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

Comment #133115 by dloubet on February 25, 2008 at 3:58 pm

Well, just have the god do something it supposedly did before, stop the sun in the sky for a day. If it wouldn't immediately prove the existence of the god, at least I would be forced to take more seriously the claims of its followers.

30. Cutting Edge: Baby Bible Bashers

Comment #130489 by dloubet on February 20, 2008 at 5:16 pm

WTF? When did "bashing" become synonymous with promoting? These aren't Baby Bible Bashers, these are Baby Bible THUMPERS! Baby Bible Bashers presents the unlikely image of a bunch of atheist children insulting the bible.

I must have been completely out of the loop on this little linguistic development.

31. Ethical storm as scientist becomes first man to clone HIMSELF

Comment #114280 by dloubet on January 21, 2008 at 6:04 pm

The Onion is already way ahead of us in reducing the wonder of the miracle of birth.

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/miracle_of_birth_occurs_for_83

I would think the admonition "Be fruitful and multiply" is enough to cheapen the event.

32. The OUT Campaign has its own Flea!

Comment #107491 by dloubet on January 4, 2008 at 3:54 pm

So we have Christians willingly imitating the actions of atheists. Interesting.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

33. The OUT Campaign has its own Flea!

Comment #107485 by dloubet on January 4, 2008 at 3:49 pm

So, Christians choosing to imitate atheists.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

34. Controversial Anti-Muslim Dutch Film Adds to Already Simmering Tensions

Comment #97654 by dloubet on December 12, 2007 at 1:35 pm

"He would like to see that every Muslim woman is in prayers and held at home and that they have no rights, but he's not looking at Muslims these days," she said. "The Koran is a matter of interpretation, just like the Bible and the Torah. You need to interpret, not take it literally."

So Zainab al-Touraihi, are you willing to go on record denouncing your more extreme or fundamentalist bretheren?

35. Functional Neuroimaging of Belief, Disbelief, and Uncertainty

Comment #97648 by dloubet on December 12, 2007 at 1:23 pm

As regarding <3 being a sideways boner, wouldn't that depend on how many equals signs you have between them?

You know what they say about a guy with a lot of equals signs...

36. Islam's Silent Moderates

Comment #95102 by dloubet on December 7, 2007 at 10:56 am

That'll look even worse, Jack! Better that there'e no moderate Mulsim marches, than have one with only two participants.

At least let us maintain the **illusion** that there's a huge sea of moderates. ;-)

37. Atheism's Wrong Turn

Comment #93167 by dloubet on December 2, 2007 at 11:06 am

Oh, for--

Sigh.

Maybe we need to start up our own minuteman vigilante squad to catch and deport illegal strawmen.

38. Same Flea, Different Name?

Comment #85909 by dloubet on November 7, 2007 at 1:01 pm

Alas, in this case, STLstrike3, I think it would be checkers.

And you're right, jesus_Christ_himself, dogshit was the first thing I thought of when I saw the cover. What the hell were they thinking?

39. What the New Atheists Don't See

Comment #84351 by dloubet on November 1, 2007 at 9:40 pm

It's worse than that Theocrapcy, the faith heads agree with their god-character that atheists DESERVE to be tortured forever in a lake of fire.

It's not that they just think we will, it's that they consider such a thing Perfect Justice. Their worship paints them as complicit in such atrocity.

Shudder.

40. Pope's 'morning after pill' speech criticized

Comment #83650 by dloubet on October 30, 2007 at 7:38 pm

Nah, the Catholic church is just as murderous as the islamic religion, they just do it under the counter, so to speak. How many are dying of AIDs, for lack of condoms, in Africa?

They are murdering people right before our eyes.

And getting away with it.

41. Atheism is a religion and you're as bad as the fundamentalists

Comment #81414 by dloubet on October 24, 2007 at 5:17 pm

Atheism is a religion just like bald is a hair color, or not playing baseball is a sport, or not collecting stamps is a hobby.

Those are the sound-bite responses, for sure.

42. You can't be moral without God!

Comment #81408 by dloubet on October 24, 2007 at 5:07 pm

The obvious response is to turn it back upon them.

I was on an atheist call-in cable access show, and a theist posed this very question. He asked why I wasn't out raping and killing if I didn't believe in a divine law-giver. I responded by asking him if that's what he would rather be doing if not for the strictures of his god.

Rather than surrender the point, he said yes.

I like to think he didn't mean it, but that he had to say it so that he wouldn't lose the point.

But turning the question back on the theist is certainly the sound-bite response to that argument. If he says yes, then you can point him out as a monster, and if he says no, then you can point out that he's just sunk his own argument.

43. A new website addition: Debate Points

Comment #81401 by dloubet on October 24, 2007 at 4:59 pm

How do we present our counter-arguments?

In my opinion we need a sound-bite response as well as a carefully reasoned explanation.

We need the sound-bite to combat the lies-per-second ratio the theists present. We've got to have rapid-fire comebacks ready to prevent the eye-rolling of your audience that occurs when one launches into a more lengthy and tedious rebuttal.

There's also the issue of the sound argument versus the persuasive argument. Since many audiences respond better to emotional appeals, should we construct arguments that pander to that? I know it makes my skin crawl, but I have a feeling that a general audience will respond better to a good argument-from-consequences than a more carefully reasoned essay.

One thing I can't bring myself to abandon are the qualifiers I use to present arguments. "It seems" and "In my opinion" are completely accurate, but pale in comparison to the cock-sure arrogant presentation of theistic discourse. For some reason, audiences love a guy that speaks with certainty and confidence, even if he's spouting total bullshit.

So how far are we willing to edge out of the "present the facts" catagory and into the "manipulation" catagory? Neuroscience is finding that we're all rather manipulable. Should we use that?

44. Prejudicial concerns

Comment #80927 by dloubet on October 23, 2007 at 2:43 pm

Cowalker, I think the writer is saying the exact opposite.

He's suggesting that the vegetarian should resign from his checkout position rather than adopt the draconian procedures you've outlined. ;-)

Denis

45. A Response to Jonathan Haidt

Comment #69818 by dloubet on September 12, 2007 at 11:20 pm

Pardon me as I light up a cigarette in the afterglow.

Was that as good for y'all as it was for me?


Sam's clarity is unmatched.

46. Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris: The Unholy Trinity ... Thank God.

Comment #63572 by dloubet on August 14, 2007 at 10:43 pm

I've said before that my ideal atheist spokesman would be someone with Sam's clarity, Dawkin's voice, and Hitchen's vocabulary.

47. The Bible's literary sins

Comment #63202 by dloubet on August 13, 2007 at 1:32 pm

"Would you even prefer to read all that bunk about demons in the New Testament, unleavened as it is by humour or the intriguing possibility of the lead character finally losing his virginity, to Harry Potter?"

Losing his virginity to Harry Potter?! Why you little devil!

48. Who's Minding the Mind?

Comment #61270 by dloubet on August 4, 2007 at 12:16 pm

The religionists have to have their free will to shield their god from any responsibility for human behavior. Even they understand it makes no sense to punish a robot for its programmed transgressions.

49. Texas Leads U.S. in Teen Birth Rate

Comment #59002 by dloubet on July 26, 2007 at 11:27 pm

"The idea that just giving them a lot of information is going to solve it, I think, is kind of naive,"

Has he checked?