1. Award-winning comedian George Carlin dies

Comment #197933 by Severus on June 23, 2008 at 12:52 am

Good night george.
hopefully at some time in the future someone with a time machine will come back and take your DNA away with them to fast breed honest, decent, fearless and intelligent human beings. shame no one thought of it before.
enjoy your sleep, you earned it.

Severus

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

Comment #182797 by Severus on May 21, 2008 at 1:39 am

Severus

A few years ago i studied under one of the people who worked on the shroud at Oxford in 1988. he spoke to us about the shroud as an example of Radiocarbon dating.
He had heard many of the competing theories for why the original C14 date was supposedly wrong and didn't believe any of them. as for the CO2 theory he suggested to me that for the cloth to have become tainted enough during the fire, to throw off the result by 1300 years it would have had to be burned to such an extent that it was almost entirely carbonised; i.e burned to a crisp.

3. Investigating Atheism

Comment #167386 by Severus on April 24, 2008 at 1:30 am

took a quick look at the site. pictures and photo's of protests against atheism mmm!the argument about atheism and violence is skewed every so lightly on hinting that atheism caused all the horrors in Stalins russia.
other parts of the site are written in such a way that makes my spidey sense tingle with anxiety. remember Oxbridge is still in essence a very religious set of institutions, this site should be taken with a spoonful of caution until the background is thoroughly investigated.
keep the faith guys

4. BBC 'too scared to allow jokes about Islam'

Comment #154258 by Severus on April 3, 2008 at 2:06 am

As a stand up comedian (occasionally) i have in the past done material on religions and each time whether it is christianity or islam or any others i have been greeted with laughter at he time and criticism afterwards. one guy pulled me up, outside the gig, after i had done a sketch on some alternative ten commandments and asked me why i hated god and had to be taken away by his girlfriend. so i can tell you from first hand information that it seems pepople are still 'hard wired' to be very uncomfortable when you criticise or make fun of any religion.
it also depends on the level of the joke; if you make a joke about trying to buy a church to turn it into a block of flats you get a polite laugh, if you call god a paedophile for symbolically marrying millions of seven year old girls every year you get a shocked 'how dare you' silence and deep intake of breath.
britain has a long history of being able to make fun of its institutions, including the church but i beleive they 'allowed it' as long as they continued to be a powerful institution, as they are now losing their power they are beginning to panic and react badly to any criticism.
as for Islam, their reaction to humour is simple, 'we've decided that it's not acceptable so you can't do it, discussion over, if you continue to do it we'll react violently. people are rightly afraid of violence and as such are becoming cowed into suppressing their right to criticise. i firmly beleive that the more an institution denies you the right to do something, especially when it is part of a global strategy of world domination then the more we should stand up in the clubs, on radio, inprint and on television and make them realise, we know how stupid you are, and we're not afraid to tell the world.
Comedy is the only medium where you can genuinly say what you really think and go that little bit further with criticising those who think they are untouchable, long live comedy.

5. CEAI Action Alert for Science Teachers

Comment #154252 by Severus on April 3, 2008 at 1:51 am

The whole point of Science is to be self critical. if they are unable to grasp this simple concept then they don't have the capacity to be teaching anyone. perhaps their superiors should be asking them what they understand the scientific process to be or how many of the tens of thousands of papers available that critically analyze evolution they have actually read. either they are incompetent or they are lying.

Severus

6. Why I Believe Anti-Evangelism Is Wrong

Comment #57339 by Severus on July 19, 2007 at 1:17 am

Well now Tyrone. You believe that i should keep my opinions to myself or to the enclosed Forum, where i don't attempt to enslave the faithful with my fundamentalist, (yes i saw the Capitals) views.
Lets look at that for a minute then.
interference in Politics.
Interference in schools and education.
Interference in Other countries and other cultures.
Demands made.
Demands granted.
Opinions and Cultures and Politics changed at the point of a sword, or a gun or a Thermonuclear bomb.
Crusades and Imperialism.
Immunity from Criticism.
Violence, threats, Prayer in schools, State religion, The church roof fund, missionaries, evangelism, street marches, street protests, papal bulls, kidnapping videos, leaflets through the letter box, stopping people on the street, outdoor prayer mmetings...
when the orange lodge march down a street in Scotland or Ireland they are not doing sdo to keep their opinions to themselves. when the bishops issue a press release stating that floods are gods punishment for a society which allows homosexuality they do not do so to keep their opinions to themselves. when the church of the Latter day Saints knock on my door on a sunday afternoon to tell me the Good News they do not do so to keep their opinions to themselves. when i got thrown out of the Scouts because i would not read the obligatory prayer at the end of the night it was not done so because the organisation was keeping its opinion to itself, when muslim extremist threaten to kill me because i hold a different opinion to themselves they do not do so...do i really need to go on.
it is not that extremism is the ugly face of religion, it is not that i am trying to convert others around me, it is not that moderate, quiet, Sunday morning religion is harmless and should be immune from critique.
there is an incessant attack on our cultures, our children,our education, the way we live or the fact that we live at all, our political structure and whether i am free to spend a quiet sunday morning without my privacy being breeched by God's Good News.
this is now a matter of defence, every aspect of my choice of life is being assaulted. moderate and extremist working hand in hand to demand that i fall into line, that my children are taught ridiculous non-science, that i must not express my opinion in public in case i upset someone.
i am no fundamentalist, i am no polemicist, i am no missionary for the new religion of atheism. i am just a bloke thoroughly p****d off at being assaulted, invaded and threatened by a group of people that don't seem to recognise the world for what it is but will happily put a gun to my head, both metaphorically and physically, to make sure that i am equally blind and dumb.
you stay quiet if you want, they'll find you, they'll love you, you're just what they're looking for;
i've got a voice and i'm going to use it.
i don't care if i ever convert anybody, that's not my point, but if they ever dare to tell my children that the world was made yesterday by a fairy man in the sky and that if i don't accept this then harm will come my way, then my voice they will hear.
i can't ever remember meeting a christian,Jew or Muslim who was worried about talking to me about their religion in case i was accidentally converted.

7. I believe that there is no God.

Comment #52763 by Severus on June 28, 2007 at 3:02 am

Scarlet inside

i do not believe i am who i am; i just am.
i do not have to look in the mirror in the morning to check if i am still me, i am me.
believing there is no god is the wrong issue. belief in the abscence of something, starts from the position that there is a possibility that, that thing exists and i do not believe in that thing.
put simply, my point of view is that there are no gods, i do not have to believe that there are none as i do not have to believe in many other equally obvious things; that the sun moves around the earth, that an aardvark can attain an honours degree in particle physics, that the colour green ia an insect. we could argue for all of these seemingly impossible things but that's what it would be, an argument, a debate an intellectual(ish)discussion. these are things that just are not. i am a thing that is me.
if we begin the argument from the religious point of view, we start on a losing foot, the religious can never be convinced if they 'understand' that we are arguing against the thing which they 'know' exists.
we must begin the argument with, i am who i am, we are who we are, the world is what it is, the universe is the universe and could not be anything else, otherwise it would be something else. if you want to add something else to my life then you have to prove to me that that thing exists.
'i do not believe', is the wrong place to start my life.
i am me, i am happy, i am a useful and self-fulfilled member of society, now what was it you had to tell me about invisible super beings in the clouds?

8. UK Christians 'suffer for faith'

Comment #26386 by Severus on March 19, 2007 at 4:03 am

Christians feel that they are being discriminated against, jews feel that they are discriminated against, Muslims feel that they are discriminated against, blacks feel that they are discriminated against, asians feel that they are discriminated against, the irish feel that they are discriminated against, the english feel that they are discriminated against, mothers feel that they are discriminated against, the poor feel that they are discriminated against, women feel that they are discriminated against, Falun gong feel that they are discriminated against, aboriginals feel that they are discriminated against, the san people of Namibia feel that they are discriminated against, the indiginous indian populations of South America feel that they are discriminated against, short people feel that they are discriminated against, old people feel that they are discriminated against, people with ginger hair feel that they are discriminated against...
frankly i'm not sure if therre is anyone left on the planet who does not feel that they are discriminated against, hated, reviled, loathed or pushed around by at least one other group of people. i'd like to ask the question, who's left, who on this sorry little world of ours does not feel as if they are discriminated against and what if anything does this tell us about discrimination.
Is it endemic, fundamental to the human psyche, part of the genetic make up, an evolutionary necessity, non existent, who knows.
what i do know that as a short person, i am one of those groups, as a childhood (albeit unknowingly and unwillingly) catholic i have been in one of those groups as a scots/irishman i am in at least two more groups and yet i have never felt it necessary to conduct a survey amongst myself with the obvious intention of demanding changes to the laws of my country to make my group the only one which must not be discriminated against. Diversity is the most wonderous thing that we have but it has its problems, and its responsibilities.

9. 160,000-year-old jawbone redefines origins of the species

Comment #25547 by Severus on March 14, 2007 at 4:15 am

to teapot believer

The determining of age depends on the materials to be measured.
there are a whole battery of tests which can be made, including,
Radioactive decay: which measures the ticking clock of decay from the point when the compound began ticking.there are many radioactive elements which can be measured, Uranium 238, Thorium, Carbon 14...
Amino-acid racemization, which measures the chemical changes in organic substances after death.
Electron spin resonance, thermoluminescence, optically stimulated thermoluminescence, Varves, tree rings, Archaeo-magnetism, Obsidian Hydration.

few of them are absolutely perfect but they are repeated, tested, checked, monitored, improved, evaluated and cross-referenced over and over again. thousands and thousands of examples constantly being re-examined, under strict scrutiny and compared. 'Errors' or 'anomalies' rarely go for long without being challenged. can't remember an exact website for a quick look but maybe the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain site might have a link.

10. My critics are wrong to call me dogmatic

Comment #21989 by Severus on February 12, 2007 at 5:05 am

Richard was correct in one asssertion he has made. we are not yet ready to take on the debate with the religious. he called for a methodology which we could use to promote our position and social status such as was used by the gay pride initiative and the equal rights groups.
in recent months i have noticed (please correct me if i am wrong) that instead of leading the argument we are spending more time defending our position, answering our critics and coming second in the p.r. contest.
the words, Fundamentalism, dogma, faith, belief and others have been turned back upon us by the religious as they organise themselves for the debate.
they are more attuned to managing and administrating a p.r. campaign than atheist are and are 'cleverly' using our own arguments against us.
it is time, i feel that we began to push on in the race and are seen to be leading the debate, driving the nails of terminology into their arguments, refusing to play the game in their ball park, as seems to be happening now and developing confident and unrefutable arguments.
i know that most of our arguments and criticisms are, to us, undeniable and should be 'deadly' to the religious ideologies but i just can't help thinking that we are fragmented, defensive rather than offensive and weak in the debate.
if changing the world is down to who has the better debating skills, then it is a sad, terrible world but the fight, currently, is not on the battle field but in the lecture halls and book shelves and i find it distressing to see our own criticisms turned against us. we have to be sharper and smarter than that.
maybe, as a triviality, we should return to an earlier discussion about which terminology we should use to describe ourselves and the things that we know and feel.

11. Creationism special

Comment #17626 by Severus on January 15, 2007 at 7:16 am

Lewis Wolpert, far from being pompous, is exhibiting the kind of frustration with I.D. that many of us are feeling. the religious factions that claim to adhere to such a 'theory' are lying; not a very nice thing for 'Christians' to do. he is absolutely right in his statement that it is no more than a disguised attempt to insert religion into the parts of schooling where it does not belong; if indeed it belongs anywhere in school. the argument over evolution is simply a targeted point of modern culture that they have chosen to aim at in a war against secularism. it has been a well thought out and very well organised attack but it has nothing to do with science or the validity of any theories within science, it is no more than a devious attempt at slipping in under the radar and trying ot increase the influence of religion in our society, as such it must be resisted as much as possible and i commend Dr Wolpert for his anger and frustration and his and Dr Conway-morris's Bluntness. Polite rhetoric and diplomatic acceptance of the other guy's point of view will lead us to defeat in our battle against the insanity of supernatural fascism.

12. Intelligent design is a science, not a faith

Comment #17008 by Severus on January 10, 2007 at 4:33 am

Why do christians always feel the need to lie.
almost everything they say about their new scientific wonder theory is couched in such a way that at no time must they ever mention the 'G' word. Oh yes, they say, there was a designer, but we're not saying who it was. why is his/her/its identity a secret. what are they afraid of?

13. Atheists' bleak alternative

Comment #12861 by Severus on December 14, 2006 at 5:23 am

I don't for a moment believe that the banning of the cross by B.A. and the panic over xmas decs by management had anything to do with religion at its core.
if we know anything about business it's that they care only for money. it's just a devico ensure that they don't put off any potential customers. those fear addicts who would whip up a storm in a t-cup would have the country believe that they are attacks on religion's 'right' to exist.
religion has no right to exist it must compete with all other forms of thought.
even so if it is losing the battle it is not because someone at B.A. decides that, no, rememeber, no! religious icons are allowed.it is because the world is seeing religion for what it is, pointless and dangerous.

14. In Search of Lost Time

Comment #12471 by Severus on December 12, 2006 at 5:05 am

As an archaeologist i was agog at this article when i first saw it but i think and know that there are many more relevant articles in the field of archaeology out there which deal with the principles of evolution, the growth of ritual and religion and the development of the humans in general, i am sure that these would be more interesting to the readers and subscribers to this website. what about recent, Hominid discoveries in Eastern Europe, or Gibralter, what about little foot, or Homo Floresiensis.
there's loads about cave paintings and carvings including some interesting new ones in England and North Africa.
there's loads of stuff out there.
p.s. i've just realised that i'm talking to myself.