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Comments by Friend Giskard


1. Bill Good Interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #173282 by Friend Giskard on April 30, 2008 at 3:15 pm

So do I.

2. Ancient serpent shows its leg

Comment #159683 by Friend Giskard on April 12, 2008 at 8:17 pm

Fried Griskard, I just noticed your imput, and I don't understand most of it. I think you are disagreeing with me, and saying that you don't think that snake legs are cute in the first part. I have no glue what the second thing you are saying is, I think it ends with asking if I understand. Which I don't..sumimasen. I understand the words watashi, as the most formal version of "I". Kawaiku nai to mean "note cute" and omoimasu to mean "I think". I thought that "wa" was used when refering to people, and "ga" used when refering to things...or is "wa" also used when refering to animals as well?

I'm incredibly knew to learn it. Which I'm sure you must have picked up from my inaccurate sentene.


Hi Mitchell
In the brackets I just made the not very witty remark that hereabouts everyone understands Japanese.

[Since you are just starting out, I can't resist giving a little advice I wish I'd had when I was starting. {This is way off the topic of this thread so I'll keep it short} Do yourself a favor and go to http://kanji.koohii.com/
and start learning the kanji now at an easy rate of five or ten a day (while continuing your normal studies). It is not necessary to understand any Japanese to get through this stage, and by the time you are ready to start reading, 2000 or more kanji will already be familiar friends. Because I had no-one to give me this advice when I was starting out I had to put my Japanese studies on hold for months when I wanted to start reading just to get through this time consuming, exhausting and BORING task. Good luck with your studies.]

3. Ancient serpent shows its leg

Comment #159581 by Friend Giskard on April 12, 2008 at 3:04 pm

Don't get too excited. This might be seen (not by me!) as confirmation of the Genesis story. It was only after the Fall that the serpent was made to crawl on its belly as a punishment. It obviously had legs before that, otherwise there would have been no punishment. Properly read, Genesis actually predicted this discovery.

[watashi wa hebi no ashi ga kawaiku nai to omoimasu. (koko ni wa minna nihongo o wakaru n'desu)]
edit: spot the deliberate grammatical gaffe.

4. My Argument With God

Comment #131589 by Friend Giskard on February 22, 2008 at 4:09 pm

75% of Americans are God-fearing Christians; 75% of prisoners are God-fearing Christians. 10% of Americans are atheists; 0.2% of prisoners are atheists.

This is only because we atheists are too smart to get caught. [evil laugh]

5. Conservative Rabbis to Vote on Resolution Criticizing Pope's Revision of Prayer

Comment #124850 by Friend Giskard on February 10, 2008 at 11:14 am

Richard Morgan is stupid.

6. Admitting that you have no religion is not politically correct

Comment #121950 by Friend Giskard on February 4, 2008 at 11:57 am

While this university is indeed technically a secular institution, secular does not denote taking an active stance in opposition to the principles and status of religious beliefs and practices.

But apparently secular does denote taking an active stance against secularism. Mind boggling hypocrisy.

7. There Are No Ghosts in Your Brain

Comment #120490 by Friend Giskard on February 1, 2008 at 7:53 pm

Hey, Josh. Any chance of hosting these vids at richarddawkins.net? Google servers don't support pause and resume, so those of us with slow connections are buggered.

8. Math Religion Trouble

Comment #120428 by Friend Giskard on February 1, 2008 at 4:12 pm

So, in conclusion it's a respectable hypothesis, but not one borne out by experimental data.

OK. Your statistical sample of one has been noted, and will be taken into consideration next rethink.

9. Math Religion Trouble

Comment #117850 by Friend Giskard on January 29, 2008 at 7:54 pm

[Following on from comments 34, 35, 47, 48 & 52]

If I were recommending the use of mockery as a tool for changing people's minds, NakedCelt would have a point. But that was not my intention. Perhaps I should have been clearer.

The point of the mockery that I am advocating is immunization, not cure. That is why I stressed in my original post that it needs to be witnessed by the young.

Young people brought up with religious traditions can easily get the unjustified idea that religion is respectable. They see that their parents, whom they trust and respect, are religious. They see the deference that is accorded to priests and imams. They see centuries of religious tradition, colleges of theology, religious architecture and art. They see religion embedded in the forms and language of government and the symbols of the state.

In these conditions it can be hard for an individual, without outside, help to come to the conclusion that it is all just one huge, steaming tower of horseshit. After all, how could all those respectable, intelligent people have had it so wrong for so many centuries?

There should be voices in the land, credible voices, loud and clear, which never go away, pointing out that it is all ridiculous, that the priests and the imams are all idiots deserving no respect, and that, yes, all those people really were wrong for all those centuries -- that Mohammed and Paul and others like them have made fools out of billions.

Don't let them make a fool out of you.

By holding back from pointing out what is ridiculous, we are colluding in the illusion of respectability.

10. Math Religion Trouble

Comment #116783 by Friend Giskard on January 27, 2008 at 11:47 am

"It's repellent for atheists or agnostics," he admonishes, "to personally and aggressively question others' faith or pejoratively label it as benighted flapdoodle or something worse. Those who do are rightfully seen as arrogant and overbearing."

Twit.

Religion needs to be held up for public ridicule as often as possible, especially before the eyes of the young. While we have no actual vaccine against religion, we can still weaken its power to take hold of young people's minds by fostering an atmosphere in which the point of view that holds religion to be utterly ridiculous and contemptible is highly visible to all members of society. If the media were to give frequent exposure to the point of view that laughs at religion, and openly reviles the pushers of religion, they would be doing for the public no less a service than the doctors who immunise us against certain diseases.

As long as there remains any part of the world in which political power is wielded, or basic human rights are denied, in the name of religion, the mockery and belittling of religious beliefs should be regarded as an absolute moral good.

11. Ore. Court: Boy Has Say in Circumcision

Comment #116352 by Friend Giskard on January 26, 2008 at 9:45 am

No matter what your opinion of circumcision is, as it's been said many times on past threads about this story, doing this to a boy at that age IS child abuse!

So why is it not child abuse if you do it to an infant? What's the difference?

12. Three Little Pigs 'too offensive'

Comment #115006 by Friend Giskard on January 23, 2008 at 12:18 pm

I can see why they might be offended. It does look like Mohammed.

13. Life-Forming Chemicals Found in Distant Galaxy

Comment #114624 by Friend Giskard on January 22, 2008 at 1:33 pm

Just to add all that I know about religion in Star Trek.

I remember in one of the original episodes, Kirk and the crew meet Apollo, last survivor of the ancient gods who once lived on Earth. Near the the end Kirk makes a statement to the effect that we don't need those gods anymore because one god is enough for us.

In contrast, though, check out Picard's explicitly atheistic rant against religion in an episode called "Who Watches the Watchers".

14. Interview with Ian McEwan

Comment #114214 by Friend Giskard on January 21, 2008 at 2:53 pm

you wouldn't expect a Baptist minister to go around calling himself a Darwinist

Surely this should read, "you wouldn't expect a Baptist minister to go around calling himself an a-Darwinist". Probably the fault of an inattentive sub-editor.

15. Britain cannot put its faith in religiously divided schools

Comment #113626 by Friend Giskard on January 20, 2008 at 8:05 am

Comment #113533 by Slyer on January 20, 2008 at 12:33 am

I need to start my own atheist school, atheists only! No doubt that the fundies wouldn't approve. :)

In fact someone has very recently tried to start a secular (not atheist) school in Britain, but the government soon put a stop to it. Read about it here:
http://www.secularism.org.uk/secularschoolingforgetitsaysthec.html

16. The God Delusion: Now Available in US Paperback

Comment #113364 by Friend Giskard on January 19, 2008 at 11:43 am

Comment #113350 by Ed-words on January 19, 2008 at 10:56 am

Hey, Richard,
(yeah, like i know him)........

When Richard comments in these threads, he undersigns with his first name. I have taken this as signalling that he expects to be called by his first name around here.

17. Why (Almost All) Cosmologists are Atheists

Comment #110590 by Friend Giskard on January 11, 2008 at 2:40 pm

I am pretty sure he isn't, as he is talking about our universe possibly being the result of a quantum fluctuation in an empty enternal universe.

I just think he has slipped up (or oversimplified) a bit in one place.

I suppose we'd have to ask him what he meant. But I don't think there's anything careless about this essay. It is clearly a distillation of years of deep thought.

18. Why (Almost All) Cosmologists are Atheists

Comment #110582 by Friend Giskard on January 11, 2008 at 2:08 pm

What has this got to do with differential equations?

Differential equations are the "patterns" that Carroll talks about.

19. Why (Almost All) Cosmologists are Atheists

Comment #110577 by Friend Giskard on January 11, 2008 at 2:04 pm

Determinstic versions of QM (such as Many Worlds) imply that the state vector does not collapse, instead all possibilities are real. Reality splits, so that there are multiple copies of an individual; one for each quantum possibility (to put it simply). The entire system is entirely deterministic, but for any single copy of an individual, it appears like state vectors have collapsed.


You have something there. Carroll is obviously talking about the whole ensemble.

20. Why (Almost All) Cosmologists are Atheists

Comment #110567 by Friend Giskard on January 11, 2008 at 1:53 pm

Even deterministic versions of QM don't help much for any given universe. Any individual's history will seem random (and hence can't be predicted in advance) even if the whole ensemble is deterministic.

wtf?

21. Why (Almost All) Cosmologists are Atheists

Comment #110562 by Friend Giskard on January 11, 2008 at 1:44 pm

quantum mechanics is not time symmetric in any given universe because of the collapse of the state vector.

True. All who believe in state vector collapse must concede this. Sean Carroll here is obviously talking only about the deterministic part of QM. Perhaps he is one of those who are betting that ultimately QM will turn out to be wholly deterministic. (I am agnostic about the correct interpretation of QM.)

22. Why (Almost All) Cosmologists are Atheists

Comment #110557 by Friend Giskard on January 11, 2008 at 1:32 pm

Presumably you mean that I said something incorrect. What do you think was incorrect?

If you are dealing with laws that are time symmetric you can just as easily calculate what happened before your boundary conditions as after. So there is no justification for saying that the "after" case was caused by the boundary conditions, but that the conditions before were not. All Carroll is saying is that the arrow of time does not appear in the physics at this level of description, and therefore neither do cause and effect.

23. Why (Almost All) Cosmologists are Atheists

Comment #110548 by Friend Giskard on January 11, 2008 at 1:20 pm

I have not (yet) seen it derived from simpler principles.


You should read a book on statistical physics.

24. Why (Almost All) Cosmologists are Atheists

Comment #110545 by Friend Giskard on January 11, 2008 at 1:14 pm

If you solve such equations for a general 3-body system, I would be interested.


I can solve them numerically. But this is irrelevant. And how you would classify the second law is also irrelevant.

25. Why (Almost All) Cosmologists are Atheists

Comment #110541 by Friend Giskard on January 11, 2008 at 1:04 pm

Donald and Steve Zara you are both talking out of your arses. Do you know anything about differential equations? (BTW the 2nd law of thermodynamics is not a fundamental law.)

26. The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief

Comment #109655 by Friend Giskard on January 9, 2008 at 12:14 pm

Any chance of Richard's foreword appearing here?

27. The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief

Comment #109652 by Friend Giskard on January 9, 2008 at 12:08 pm

I know this is off topic, but WOOHOO!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7178439.stm

28. Did mozzies, not a meteor, do for the dinosaurs?

Comment #108567 by Friend Giskard on January 7, 2008 at 8:53 am

I'm disappointed. When I read the title I thought this was going to be about prehistoric muslims.

29. Three wise men just legend: archbishop

Comment #101289 by Friend Giskard on December 20, 2007 at 7:26 am

He went on to say that while he believed in it himself, new Christians need not leap over the "hurdle" of belief in the virgin birth...


It would be nice to have a direct quote to this effect, so that the we have something to point to next time he tries to pretend that Christians don't believe any of the wacko stuff RD and others rightly say they believe.

Where is this BBC interview?

30. Happy Newton Day!

Comment #99021 by Friend Giskard on December 15, 2007 at 8:46 am

Interesting fact. Newton was actually born on the 4th of January by the Gregorian calendar which we use today, but England was was still using the Julian system at the time.

(For the same reason the Russian "October revolution" really took place in November.)

31. Springer opera court fight fails

Comment #94345 by Friend Giskard on December 5, 2007 at 11:49 am

Actually this is bad news. The National Secular Society was hoping (as was I) for the opposite decision, as their newsletter (23 November 2007) explains:

The National Secular Society has been cheering on a Christian activist who is trying to revive Britain's archaic blasphemy laws. The NSS wants Stephen Green to be permitted to bring his case so that the blasphemy law can be tested in court, found wanting and, effectively, abolished.


Keith Porteous Wood, Executive Director of the National Secular Society said:

We hope that leave for this case to proceed will be granted and if it does we predict that it will fail. If it does it would ironically make Stephen Green the person to hammer the final nail into the blasphemy law on which he is so keen, but which the National Secular Society has been fighting to abolish for 140 years. The law has, in the past, resulted in jail terms, sometimes with hard labour, that have shortened the lives of brave secularists, when they published remarks or cartoons which today would be seen as trivial.


So you see, the decision against Green at this stage is not a victory for free speech.

32. Interview with Christopher Hitchens

Comment #89373 by Friend Giskard on November 20, 2007 at 1:13 pm

Video download link:

http://www.notableinterviews.com/ChristopherHitchens.divx.flv

(You'll need a .flv player such as VLC media player.)

33. Why Science Will Triumph Only When Theory Becomes Law

Comment #88058 by Friend Giskard on November 14, 2007 at 12:39 pm

Ugh. "Law of evolution" sounds daft, and a bit dogmatic.

I suppose "model" is a rough equivalent to "theory" that has none of the connotations of half-assed guesswork. "The evolutionary model of life on earth." But if we replace one word with another, after a time it will inevitably become tarnished the in same way .

Richard has often compared the theory of evolution (the common descent part, at least) with the idea that the earth is round, in terms of the certainty with which it is held to be correct.

What word to we usually use for that?

34. Losing faith in Quebec

Comment #86420 by Friend Giskard on November 9, 2007 at 7:20 am

Feck! Monoape got in about two seconds before me.

35. Richard Dawkins at AAI 07

Comment #85627 by Friend Giskard on November 6, 2007 at 2:13 pm

41. Comment #85616 by Zzyx1170 on November 6, 2007 at 1:36 pm
Friend Giskard, I placed an mp3 of this on RapidShare at:
http://rapidshare.com/files/67908305/Richard-Dawkins_AAI-07.mp3

Woohoo! Nice one.

36. Richard Dawkins at AAI 07

Comment #85566 by Friend Giskard on November 6, 2007 at 7:49 am

An mp3 would be appreciated.

37. Are the 'New Atheists' avoiding the 'real arguments'?

Comment #83898 by Friend Giskard on October 31, 2007 at 3:29 pm

I wonder how Edmund Standing feels about having wasted three years of his life studying this shit.

38. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath

Comment #79467 by Friend Giskard on October 17, 2007 at 10:45 am

Thanks to Zzyx1170 for the mp3. 255 frigging megabytes is way too big for me.

39. 1996 Richard Dimbleby Lecture

Comment #73195 by Friend Giskard on September 24, 2007 at 12:07 pm

I haven't watched the video, but is this the lecture where he says that werewolves would violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics?

Does anyone want to have a go at spelling out exactly why this is so? Sure, it sounds about right, but, although I do know a bit about physics, I don't know how I would go about proving it.

How come werewolves are impossible, but warrior robots disguised as planes and cars (I would imagine) are not?

40. Why are we Muslims so self-destructive?

Comment #73190 by Friend Giskard on September 24, 2007 at 11:45 am

The savages are taking over and, as Rahim says, they are stronger and will drag all the faithful down into the pits of hell.

You faithful are the sea in which the savages swim.

41. Scientific Literacy and the Habit of Discourse

Comment #73181 by Friend Giskard on September 24, 2007 at 11:32 am

Comment #73169 by Quine

The young Einstein was rebuffed by the establishment of physics

Someone has misinformed you. He was not. There may have been one or two eminent individuals who were stuck too in the past to get on board. But, on the whole, the importance of his work was quickly recognized.

42. Yes, it's a Hobbit. The debate that has divided science is solved at last (sort of)

Comment #72567 by Friend Giskard on September 21, 2007 at 5:30 pm

"It's a little shot to our over-inflated modern human egos."


[shrugs] Doesn't bother me...

...But, then, I'm a robot.

43. Enough religion. Stop shoving it down my throat

Comment #70460 by Friend Giskard on September 15, 2007 at 2:58 pm

DerrickB (Comment #70411) quotes Stephen Fry.

"I know that lies will always fail and indecency and intolerance will always perish..."

I wish that were so! But lies, indecency, and intolerance can, and do, last for thousands of years. We doctors call this unpleasant phenomenon religion.

44. Bible Belter

Comment #68313 by Friend Giskard on September 6, 2007 at 7:25 pm

joshuaslocum,

I sympathize. I've said things myself on the internet so dumb that I've had to change my identity.

45. Bible Belter

Comment #68308 by Friend Giskard on September 6, 2007 at 7:06 pm

Hey, people. Keith (#68267) is being humorous. Duh!

And no, he's not new here.

46. Bible Belter

Comment #68246 by Friend Giskard on September 6, 2007 at 2:04 pm

Comment #68214 by Robert Maynard

I had assumed he was referring to Latin grammar.

I get it. I just wanted to show off my Latin proficiency.

(Cuius enim occasiones faciendi rarissimae sunt. Ignoscas.)

47. Honest Mistakes or Willful Mendacity

Comment #68201 by Friend Giskard on September 6, 2007 at 10:34 am

Willful Mendacity

Why the Latinate periphrasis? Just call him a liar. Since he demostrably is a liar, to do so should be quite lawyer-proof.

48. Bible Belter

Comment #68193 by Friend Giskard on September 6, 2007 at 10:21 am

or as it might be phrased in Latin form, no child's behind left

Actually, in Latin that would be:

Nullius pueri anus praetermissus

49. Bible Belter

Comment #68151 by Friend Giskard on September 6, 2007 at 8:55 am

Richard and Hitch have made a slight blunder. If I'm not mistaken, the injunction to kill apostates does not appear in the Koran but in the hadith.

50. Interview with BHA President Polly Toynbee

Comment #67963 by Friend Giskard on September 5, 2007 at 11:58 am

Bolton accused Toynbee of wanting to put a stop to religion having any influence on the way we run our society. She should have responded to this calumny by pointing out that the aim of secularists is to ensure only that religion does not have undue influence.

Religion should have no more political influence than other special interest groups such as political parties, trade unions etc.

It is exasperating to me how one will never hear a member of the British government endorsing this morally unassailable goal.

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