1. Crack annoyance squad wanted

Comment #203579 by SmartLX on July 3, 2008 at 7:38 am

For those not familiar with the Chaser, they're a satirical comedy team with their own TV show who specialise in daring piss-takes on the street, and even in people's workplaces. They ARE a "crack annoyance squad".

They're so despised by the government and the police for repeatedly exposing their incompetence (the APEC stunt was a masterstroke) that this law may well have been formulated partly with the Chaser in mind.

2. Richard Dawkins Public Lecture - Liverpool 08

Comment #197854 by SmartLX on June 22, 2008 at 7:15 pm

It's also the largest crowd Dawkins ever saw to lecture to. He couldn't actually see the other one, the lights were too bright.

Good Q&A session, mostly giving RD a chance to mention stuff he didn't get to. The last question's about Haggard, and the audience quite enjoyed it.

TeraBrat, string theory has been tested in a way. The tests so far have generally been purely mathematical exercises to determine whether known phenomena are accurately predicted, but that's still a test.

What makes it a theory, however, is the fact that rather than a simple hypothesis it's an entire system, a complete set of mechanics that can be applied to the physical world. You can make predictions with it, you can model it in a computer, you can stick it into a calculator.

I should mention that there are actually five different string theories, which explain and match various phenomena with varying degrees of accuracy. A new "M-theory" aims to unify them all, and good luck to it.

3. Richard Dawkins Public Lecture - Liverpool 08

Comment #197809 by SmartLX on June 22, 2008 at 5:42 pm

No, hang on, it's not the one from a while back. It's the same lecture, but delivered in a different place, to a different audience. I realised when he didn't announce that it was the largest audience he'd ever addressed, like he did in the previous recording.

That means the Q&A will be all new, and this is definitely worth watching.

4. Logical Proof of the Existence of a Divine Creator, Why Atheism is Not Logically Sound

Comment #190806 by SmartLX on June 9, 2008 at 3:28 pm

Re: severalspeciesof in #72,

"It sucks like a Hoover.
I was going to say 'like a Kirby', but I didn't want to offend a particular contributor here, sorry... (Kirby is an exceptionally expensive line of vacuum cleaners here in the U.S.)

5. The Great Evangelical Decline

Comment #188826 by SmartLX on June 4, 2008 at 5:04 pm

Great to see you here, Christine.

I'm very interested in the 20% or so of evangelical congregations which are in fact growing; the megachurches, TV studio churches and so on. Are they aware that they're likely siphoning members from smaller groups and effectively closing churches, and do they care? And what happens when they're nearly all that's left?

6. Opponents of Evolution Adopting a New Strategy

Comment #188825 by SmartLX on June 4, 2008 at 4:48 pm

I just want to pick up on the expression "American sense of fairness". Australians have roughly the same thing: the ubiquitous notion of a "fair go".

I'm wondering, you folks from other places, does every democratic country think it's the fairest of them all or is it just us two?

7. My Response to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Comment #177869 by SmartLX on May 9, 2008 at 9:31 pm

If you want something done right...or at all...

I finally got to a computer where I could use the sound and skimmed the YouTube videos (just search for "Boteach Dawkins" and you'll find them). Short version verdict: it happened, it was a proper debate, but Boteach didn't beat Dawkins. He did however yell like mad.

It was a good while ago, as you can see by the apparent colour of RD's hair at the time. Two teams of two debated some variation on "does God exist?" as one instalment of an annual event. RD was on one side with Prof. Peter Atkins. Boteach and a third professor were on the other.

There are only two videos: the first 10 minutes and the last 10 minutes. You get the beginning of Atkins' turn, and then answers to the last audience questions by Boteach then RD. Boteach is so loud compared to the others that you can't possibly leave the volume on one setting for the duration.

The winner was meant to be decided by an audience vote, but almost equal multitudes of people put their hands up for both sides and nobody bothered to count so they declared both sides to have won. It was apparently the first time the religious side had ever "won".

Therefore when Boteach says atheism lost, the only way he isn't lying is if he judged it himself, in retrospect, based on the performances and audience reactions during the debate. Unless someone goes to Shmuley's site and buys the whole video, we can't examine that judgement properly.

But no, he didn't beat Dawkins in anyone's mind but his own.

8. My Response to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Comment #177517 by SmartLX on May 9, 2008 at 8:14 am

Hey, can we settle something important? Did the two have a real debate, or just one speech after the other? Is Boteach lying or not?

I'd watch the YouTube links but I'm without sound where I am.

9. My Response to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Comment #177214 by SmartLX on May 8, 2008 at 7:09 pm

Demotruk, with Haggard RD might have found a loophole or something in Godwin's Law: compare someone to the Nazis without them even realising it.

Haggard clearly didn't have a clue what a Nuremberg rally was. He only got mad and threw RD and his crew off the property because he perceived his congregation as being called animals (his own conclusion, if evolution were true).

10. Lungless frog discovered in Borneo

Comment #158582 by SmartLX on April 10, 2008 at 7:25 pm

Click the link for the picture. The thing's like a real-life Goomba.

"All things bright and beautiful, all - yeeaaargh!"

11. Did pre-big bang universe leave its mark on the sky?

Comment #158579 by SmartLX on April 10, 2008 at 7:21 pm

Another spanner in the works of the Cosmological Argument. Yay!

12. Discussion between Richard Dawkins and Paula Kirby

Comment #157286 by SmartLX on April 8, 2008 at 8:45 pm

Yes, too much time was given to the man who wanted to list fulfilled prophecies (of course, he should have had one or two ready to go right off the bat).

That said, if as he implied there are specific fulfilments which are commonly presented to Christians as evidence, why haven't they been thrown at us lately?

The most likely reason is that they are only accepted by already devout Christians and are thus no good for proselytising, but what if this is something most Christians don't even want skeptics to touch?

Does anyone know which prophecies the guy would have mentioned if he'd been able? I'd like to see whether there's a means of internal reinforcement of the faith here which could be freshly undermined.

13. First 'Rule' Of Evolution Suggests That Life Is Destined To Become More Complex

Comment #146101 by SmartLX on March 18, 2008 at 3:53 pm

Ah, and the dicyemid mesozoa is a parasite. Whoops, went off half-cocked.

14. First 'Rule' Of Evolution Suggests That Life Is Destined To Become More Complex

Comment #146087 by SmartLX on March 18, 2008 at 3:41 pm

Seems to me you only need one exception to bring this First Rule crashing down, and PZ Myers might have found it: the dicyemid mesozoa.

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/03/dicyemid_mesozoa.php

Have I got it wrong, or is PZ of the opinion that this little critter evolved from something more complex?

Maybe the First Rule only applies to crustaceans.

15. Christopher Hitchens on Books & Ideas

Comment #123283 by SmartLX on February 6, 2008 at 8:00 pm

Anyone know anything about the debate he mentions first thing when he, RD and AC Grayling demolished some religious types?

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

Comment #120370 by SmartLX on February 1, 2008 at 2:27 pm

I think it's time to remake an old chestnut:

PZwned.

17. Clegg 'does not believe in God'

Comment #100862 by SmartLX on December 19, 2007 at 1:19 pm

I'm cautiously optimistic for the kids, because I was in roughly the same situation: a Catholic mother, an atheist father and a Catholic upbringing (albeit in Australia).

I think all it took to get my wheels turning was the knowledge that someone I love and respect did not buy into Christianity at all. Clegg's children won't be ignorant of that fact for long now that it's on the public record.

18. CBC News: Sunday - Richard Dawkins

Comment #100345 by SmartLX on December 18, 2007 at 2:05 pm

Bonzai (re: 61)

Robespierre was not an atheist, or even anti-religion. He was a deist; the obnoxious sort of deist who used his god's prescience to involve him in daily affairs in advance.

The evidence of this is the cult he set up, intending it to be France's replacement national religion: the Cult of the Supreme Being. It got nowhere, of course, because he lost power and then his head.

I've seen Robespierre increasingly lumped in with all the non-religious bastards like Stalin in the anti-atheist propaganda. His case is easier to dismantle than any of them, as you can see.

19. Daniel Dennett Debates Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #92901 by SmartLX on December 1, 2007 at 5:27 pm

A few people now have wondered out loud whether it's worth debating D'Souza and his ilk. I think those on our side are afraid not to.

This has nothing to do with his debating skills. It's actually something like the superstition that every time you say there's no such thing as fairies, a fairy drops dead. Every time D'Souza broadcasts the same arguments, it might be the first time someone has heard any discussion at all on the subject and they could believe him first, prejudicing themselves against the counterarguments.

(Incidentally, the man shouts because if an audience is already inclined to believe him, it will make them cheer. We saw that v Hitchens. D'Souza tries to work the whole room to sound like he's winning. It's so grating this time because the audience isn't whipping up like the other one, so he "dies".)

My point is that D'Souza will broadcast his arguments with or without an opponent. If he couldn't line up debates, he'd line up plain old speeches and interviews and have no obstruction to his rally techniques. He'd crow about atheists turning him down too, as he has with RD in his blog.

Frankly, I'd rather someone was always there to say, "Excuse me, but..."

20. URGENT APPEAL: Please Help Protect Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Comment #88746 by SmartLX on November 18, 2007 at 8:58 pm

ASonOfLiberty, though I'd like to know RD's reasons for turning D'Souza down (if he even did), RD may not even have to soil his hands on D'Souza.

On November 30 D'Souza goes up against Daniel Dennett at Tufts University, Dennett's home ground. The subject is the existence of a deity. How do you reckon that will go?

My source is D'Souza on Wikipedia. Anyone got more details?

21. Mind your manners

Comment #88228 by SmartLX on November 15, 2007 at 1:18 pm

An individual person can be properly Marxist. But no, we haven't seen a regime based on Marxism as written.

Shooting for "family values", as you imply Rtambree, is becoming a straightforward euphemism for pandering to the religious right. A lot of conservative Christian (or Christian-led) organizations even have "Family" in the title: Focus on the Family worldwide and its Family Research Council, the American (and the Australian) Family Association and the Australian political party Family First. Know any others?

22. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #88151 by SmartLX on November 15, 2007 at 1:41 am

Either there is a god or there isn't. A believer can't simultaneously claim the rational support of a god by way of its existence and an atheist's incoherence by way of its nonexistence, as long as both people are in the same universe. (You might stop here if you want to move on; that's enough to cast doubt on the general soundness of the argument.)

Therefore, even if both sides accepted the dependence of rationality on the existence of a god (which an atheist never would), an atheist then has no reason to entertain the arguments of anyone on the planet, let alone a believer, and can't be convinced of anything.

That more or less puts the kybosh on using this argument to persuade atheists. Doesn't prevent it being used on unsure believers though, but there's plenty in this thread to deal with that.

23. Fox News Discussion on 'The Golden Compass'

Comment #85682 by SmartLX on November 6, 2007 at 8:21 pm

Love the point where the host committed himself against Gaylor more than Morris would have dared. (Listen for the word "stupid"). That moment belongs in documentary montages of ill-informed, unprovoked rants as part of a picture of the antagonism we face.

24. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #82182 by SmartLX on October 25, 2007 at 7:55 pm

What gets me the worst, by the way, is that D'Souza refers to us as "the atheist", singular. You can hear echoes of old hate speeches..."the Jew", "the infidel", "the uncivilised man", "the Hun" and of course "the unbeliever".

As if we all have a single psyche and he has his finger on it. That's what makes me mad.

25. War in Heaven: Hitchens Meets D'Souza on Home Turf

Comment #81029 by SmartLX on October 23, 2007 at 11:31 pm

Freaking atheist-communist association. I'm tired of it. Has anyone brought up the following points before, here or in a debate?

1. Communism pre-supposes atheism, fine. (Stop me right now if I'm wrong there.) That's a long way from saying that atheism is the core of Communism and that all else follows. Christian governments do their deeds in the name of God; Communist governments do their deeds in the name of their leaders and above all Communism. That's the belief they declare.

There's a reason there was no symbol for atheism until so recently: nobody ever used it to marshal an army, even if the soldiers were officially atheist.


2. A religion is inseparable from its ideology, which I define roughly as its rules for living (for Christians, that's the Ten Commandments plus any direct instruction by God, Jesus or anyone else speaking with holy authority).

You could make a wobbly case that Communism is a religion but nobody would deny that it has a very strong ideology. (Speak up if there's a better word than ideology, you know what I mean by it).

Therefore any defined religion conflicts with the ideology of Communism. Communism declares atheism because every religion is competition. This is one thing Communists alone got right: they're comfortable with atheism because they know full well it isn't a religion (no accompanying ideology, see?).

Atheism is a default. It does not drive Communists to do anything, let alone commit atrocities. It just gets religion out of the way so they can start laying on their own awful propaganda. Makes it stick better.


There. That's what I'd say to D'Souza, in better public speaking language of course. What do you think?

26. A Face-Off Over Faith

Comment #75509 by SmartLX on October 2, 2007 at 10:16 pm

Please take the period off the end of the Fixed Point link, it's stopping the link from working without editing.