1. Dawkins: a theologian's perspective

Comment #262001 by lol mahmood on October 7, 2008 at 6:26 pm

Richard Dawkins reminds me of someone passionately convinced of the virtures of sight, confronted by people trying to explain to him the concept of smell. Such a person might be absolutely committed to the view that vision alone can understand and explain reality.

2. Leading geneticist Steve Jones says human evolution is over

Comment #261986 by lol mahmood on October 7, 2008 at 6:04 pm

I'm surprised no one's mentioned the film Idiocracy yet. Its premise is that highly intelligent people have fewer children than 'trailer trash', and with the decline of external selection pressures (predators, incurable disease, famine, etc. - as far as I can remember the film ignores the continued effects of these in the 'third world') the dumb outbreed, and eventually supplant, the bright.

3. Big Bang or Big Bounce?: New Theory on the Universe's Birth

Comment #261591 by lol mahmood on October 7, 2008 at 5:20 am

That straining noise you can hear is the sound of all the 'uncaused cause' cosmological christian apologists trying to shoehorn 'goddidit' into the hypothesis....

4. Christian group calls for a Christian university in Britain

Comment #259871 by lol mahmood on October 4, 2008 at 3:47 am

decius, I'd like to add christian medicine to the list. If the faitheads all agreed to use only prayer instead of the National Health Service the rest of us would benefit from a small, but significant saving in NHS expenditure. It'd be the christian thing to do!

5. Debate: Would We Be Better Off Without Religion?

Comment #259393 by lol mahmood on October 3, 2008 at 10:09 am

Some vague idea of a universal supernatural force in the world is sufficient in my mind to qualify something as religion

religion

• noun
1 the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.
2 a particular system of faith and worship.
3 a pursuit or interest followed with devotion

theism
• noun
belief in the existence of a god or gods, specifically of a creator who intervenes in the universe

deism
• noun
belief in the existence of a supreme being, specifically of a creator who does not intervene in the universe

6. Debate: Would We Be Better Off Without Religion?

Comment #258197 by lol mahmood on October 1, 2008 at 2:50 pm

Right...(cracks knuckles)...I pinched this from Wikipedia:

"Although many self-described atheists tend toward secular philosophies such as humanism and naturalism, there is no one ideology or set of behaviors to which all atheists adhere; and some religions, such as Jainism and Buddhism, do not require belief in a personal god."

You can have an atheist astrologer, an atheist spiritualist, an atheist nihilist, an atheist philanthropist, an atheist communist, an atheist capitalist, an atheist conservative, an atheist tyrant, an atheist suicide bomber, etc.

Any of the above could also be a theist, believing in a personal god, or a deist or pantheist. Atheism says nothing about any ideology, even a religious one, it just sees no trace of a theistic god.

An atheist can be as irrational as the craziest fundy faithhead, and his/her reasons for atheism can be as irrational, personal and unprovable as anything even the least convincing religious apologist could cook up.

Stalin/Mao/Pol Pot, etc. did not suppress religions because they didn't consider them to be true. They did it because they needed to suppress opposition, destroy rival internal power blocks or develop scapegoats. Atheism did not offer these individuals revealed wisdom justifying their policies.

On the other hand, when the infamous 19 flew those planes into the twin towers they could point to sacred texts to support their actions. When the IRA and UDA took potshots at each other they could show you the bible verses to justify it. When Joseph Kony's despicable Lord's Resistance Army force children into military slavery, they can prove to you that god is on their side. Sacred texts are the living core of organised religion, and they are self-contradictory, obscure, ambiguous and utterly totalitarian.

Organised religion says you must believe this or that thing, however contradictory.

Atheism merely notices that you don't believe in a god.

7. Debate: Would We Be Better Off Without Religion?

Comment #257830 by lol mahmood on October 1, 2008 at 7:19 am

Everyone should take in a couple at least. He seems to be a very gifted debator, however deluded! I reckon if Craig can't save you, no one can.
I'd love to hear RD take him on properly. I know he doesn't do cretinists (i think Craig is a YEC, although i've never heard him explicitly defend that particular brand of lunacy) but a cold, logical dissection of Craig's arguments is long overdue. I think Bart Ehrmann came closest when he tackled him on the historicity of the resurrection.

8. Debate: Would We Be Better Off Without Religion?

Comment #257819 by lol mahmood on October 1, 2008 at 6:53 am

no worries. Just listening to a WL Craig debate in which he keeps chuntering on about 'the claims of atheism' and the usual stalin/pol pot stuff. He won't concede that there are no such claims and can't see that simply not believing in the supernatural says nothing about totalitarianism, whereas much of organised religion is inherently totalitarian.

9. Debate: Would We Be Better Off Without Religion?

Comment #257807 by lol mahmood on October 1, 2008 at 6:29 am

hey steve,
I'm pretty sure i didn't specify anything as the opposite of atheism.

10. Debate: Would We Be Better Off Without Religion?

Comment #257797 by lol mahmood on October 1, 2008 at 6:08 am

Riley,
Religion has plenty of content. None of it survives objective critical analysis, but there's plenty of it!

Atheism has no content. It is, by definition, no more and no less than the lack of theistic content.

11. Debate: Would We Be Better Off Without Religion?

Comment #257670 by lol mahmood on September 30, 2008 at 11:36 pm

The best argument against the Stalin/pol pot, etc. tactic is to remind them that atheism is a 'concept without content'. It's not a unifying ideology like, for example, a religion. Atheism is just the lack of credulity regarding the claims of theistic religion.

12. 'God as Science Fiction'. Richard Dawkins at the Edinburgh Book Festival

Comment #257499 by lol mahmood on September 30, 2008 at 1:58 pm

could someone post an mp3 up, please?

13. Pullman defiant over US protests against Northern Lights

Comment #257456 by lol mahmood on September 30, 2008 at 1:04 pm

Small Gods is amazingly incisive for what is ostensibly a humorous light fantasy.
I'd read a few earlyish discworld books and thought Pratchett was just a passable Douglas Adams copyist until i found Small Gods. I now think he rivals Swift as a satiricist and is grossly underrated.
The Dark Materials novels are ok, definitely a case of diminishing returns.

14. Debate: Would We Be Better Off Without Religion?

Comment #257161 by lol mahmood on September 30, 2008 at 6:29 am

"What about people who become religious as adults?"

I've pretty much always been an atheist, ever since I was old enough to apply any kind of basic critical thought to the question of god, but for all that; I still harbour irrational beliefs, which I know are irrational, but which I cannot shake off.

For example, I'm an outwardly optimistic character, generally positive in the face of most challenges, but deep inside I believe that whenever I look forward to a desired event it won't happen; something unexpected will derail it. I know there is no causal relationship between my desires and what happens in the world, but I cannot lose the belief; even though I know that it is false. So, my rational brain simultaneously entertains logical, rational ideas (such as a strategy for achieving a given objective) and illogical, unproven irrational ideas (whatever I plan, if I'm looking forward to the outcome it won't happen).

As a child I used to try to 'fool' my inner pessimism by avoiding anticipation of a hoped for outcome. I still retain a primal conviction that this is a necessary step to achieving something, even though I know it isn't. I think it's just a mis-firing of my inherent pattern-seeking tendency; a mental legacy from our early primate ancestors.

So, the point of sharing this with you all is that I think it helps to explain later life conversions to religion, especially among card carrying atheists. Perhaps the Flews and Morgans have their own long-term internal struggles with theistic irrationality, which they are currently losing. Perhaps they have been resisting the internal call of the irrational for so long that its persistence has finally worn them down. Perhaps constant exposure to theistic memes has also played a part, the external achieving synergy with the internal.

15. Does faith have a place in medicine?

Comment #250450 by lol mahmood on September 19, 2008 at 5:50 pm

Doctors who can't be religiously neutral in office hours shouldn't be doctors. Medicine is a secular discipline.

16. Creationist Britain (would you Adam and Eve it?)

Comment #250221 by lol mahmood on September 19, 2008 at 5:18 am

"the number of white evangelicals in the UK is falling (offset by black evangelicals, in London mostly from Africa). "

The irony here is delicious; we exported missionaries spouting Christ-inanity to 'improve the lot of the heathen savages of the dark continent' (or whatever). Now a bunch of African evangelists are over here with a similarly inane mission. What goes around comes around....

17. Creationist Britain (would you Adam and Eve it?)

Comment #250215 by lol mahmood on September 19, 2008 at 4:58 am

"I had the same sort of religious upbringing as a child, but just remember it to be an ordeal, not fun at all. Strangely, I have never believed in God, never felt a divine presence and always regarded it as ludicrous, as far back as I can remember. Maybe I just don't have that God lobe in my brain? :)"

Vaal, I grew up the same. My parents weren't religious (my Mum's a cultural Christian, my Dad's a cultural Muslim, but neither is in any sense a theist), but we had religious assemblies every morining at school (in the 70s), I went to a Methodist Sunday school (mainly to give my folks a break on a Sunday morning, I suspect), I was a Cub Scout (christianity loomed large in most hings we did) and various of my aunties and uncles were committed god/allahbotherers, but I never felt anything divine.

Funnily enough, I wanted to believe for a long time. As Dennett has suggested do many; I believed in belief without ever manging to feel it.

If I get left behind in the rapture because of my failure to find god through Jesus, it won't be for the want of trying (as child, at least)!

18. Creationist Britain (would you Adam and Eve it?)

Comment #250055 by lol mahmood on September 18, 2008 at 11:53 pm

what a badly written mess! It's just a bunch of quotes stitched together. There's no attempt to analyse what any of the interviewees have said.

19. Evolution fine but no apology to Darwin: Vatican

Comment #249883 by lol mahmood on September 18, 2008 at 3:48 pm

The Bible isn't even compatible with itself! How many contradictions can one book contain?

20. The Holy Laughter Anointing

Comment #248855 by lol mahmood on September 17, 2008 at 4:36 am

"You decide to upload this just now because you want to have some influence on the US election"

I'm sorry, but thinking that ANYTHING uploaded to this site is going to influence voting in the American election really is deluded!

Does anyone honestly think that more than the tiniest fraction of the American electorate regularly visits?

21. Our scientists must nail the creationists

Comment #247211 by lol mahmood on September 14, 2008 at 6:00 am

I'm not sure exactly where reiss is really going with this. On the face of it he does seem to be proposing a useful alternative to alienating creotard kids, a kind of atheist 'wedge' strategy to keep them engaged in science classes so their misconceptions about evolution can be addressed. On the other hand, there's the danger he's actually proposing a more subtle theistic wedge to sneak creotardism into science lessons.
Kids go to school to lose ignorance not gain it, but if a bit of initial pandering is necessary to keep them engaged for the long term, don't the ends justify the means?
Hounding reiss out of the rs just makes it look like 'Expelled' was true!

22. Anglicans back Darwin over 'noisy' creationists

Comment #247181 by lol mahmood on September 14, 2008 at 4:56 am

one thing that's always bugged me is the way the 'not my god' brigade take atheists to task for working from a simplistic understanding of theology, but make no attempt to tackle the noisy fundies whose theology must, therefore, be equally flawed. I view this move by coe as a positive move towards doing the right thing. Perhaps the archbish could recruit big al mcgrath to the cause and get him debating the wl craigs et al instead of mouthing gibberish at rd and then lying about the outcome.

23. Anglicans back Darwin over 'noisy' creationists

Comment #247167 by lol mahmood on September 14, 2008 at 4:24 am

Cerebate and paula, some interesting ideas there. I've heard rd (and others) debating with the likes of mcgrath and lennox and apart from rd backing mcgrath into a corner over the idea of miracles i've never thought they really exposed the theology at it's basic level ( although hitch does a good job on the immorality of blood sacrifice).

24. Creationism call divides Royal Society

Comment #247140 by lol mahmood on September 14, 2008 at 2:51 am

Hmmm... In light of Reiss' clarification above, i do wonder whether rd and others aren't in danger of being sucked into an unnecessary witch hunt. I thought the original statements were a bit unclear anyway. Is this just a storm in an interstellar teapot?

25. Anglicans back Darwin over 'noisy' creationists

Comment #246868 by lol mahmood on September 13, 2008 at 12:35 pm

hey quetz,
Thanks, i'll check it out.

26. Anglicans back Darwin over 'noisy' creationists

Comment #246865 by lol mahmood on September 13, 2008 at 12:29 pm

hey quetz,
(call me lol, btw)
It's a puzzler. Seems to me the most likely answer is they consider much of the narrative to be hand-wavingly metaphorical. However, I can't see how you justify treating one bit as metaphor and another not. Seems to me you just end up drowning your theology in an unstoppable flood of metaphor and are left with a book of myths and questionable morals.
Oops, there i go; preaching to the converted...

27. Anglicans back Darwin over 'noisy' creationists

Comment #246857 by lol mahmood on September 13, 2008 at 12:07 pm

Hey d'arcy, thanks for the endorsement. Perhaps this is the wrong site to pose the question, but i an genuinely puzzled; how can any form of christianity that accepts salvation through christ's sacrifice also accept evolution, which fatally undermines the whole story. If adam and eve and original sin and the fall aren't true, then why did yahveh incarnate, torture and kill himself (as his son, or whatever)?
How do moderate christians square the circle?

28. Anglicans back Darwin over 'noisy' creationists

Comment #246797 by lol mahmood on September 13, 2008 at 8:16 am

I honestly cannot understand how christianity (the belief that the blood sacrifice of the christ removed the burden of adam and eve's original sin from humanity) is in any way compatible with acceptance of darwinian evolution (a scientific theory that clearly falsifies the story of adam and eve). Can anyone explain the theology?

29. Teachers should tackle creationism, says science education expert

Comment #246285 by lol mahmood on September 12, 2008 at 5:09 am

As no one else has done so, i'd just like to endorse pizza-gut's astrology/economics analogy, comment 60 . Made me spurt coffee, etc.

30. Knowledge regained

Comment #245816 by lol mahmood on September 11, 2008 at 12:45 pm

Duff, have you seen the film Idiocracy? It proposes the idea that natural selection no longer favours those humans most fitted to surviving, but rather those who breed like rabbits, regardless of their intrinsic Darwinian 'value' (for want of a better word, 'cos I'm tired). A lot of faithtards of all kinds favour large families, I suspect atheists tend not to (this is me asserting without a scrap of evidence), so the religulous could well end up outbreeding the reality based community...

31. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #245719 by lol mahmood on September 11, 2008 at 11:15 am

"Britain. Shariah courts. Asylum for fundamentalists, deportation for dissidents. "

I'd just like to echo Roger's "Eh?"

We're a long way from Shariah courts in Britain, mate. The Archbish of Cant made a passing reference to the concept a while ago and the redtops (aka tabloids) haven't stopped whooping about it since. Al, surely you're not sinking to that level!! Tell me it ain't so!

And as for France; ignoring whatever might be said about their personal hygiene and general sullenness, the French are are none too PC and pretty hardcore about secularism, banning headscarves from schools and what not...

32. What does atheism say about the purpose (or the meaning) of life?

Comment #245611 by lol mahmood on September 11, 2008 at 7:23 am

Thanks Jin. As you say, the question is a bear trap; it tempts the incautious person to try to present a subjective view as objective. Posed by a theist, it drags the atheist into irrational argument. I've heard many theist apologists describe with absolute revulsion the logical conclusions of atheism; that there is no meaning or purpose to life (whatever that means), there is no absolute or objective morality, all of existence is finite and pointless, etc.

A theistic audience recoils in horror; sometimes an atheistic debater tries to refute these points. But if I were there on the podium I'd just nod along and smile and reply: "Yep. That's about the size of it".

None of this leads me to either amoral nihilism or existential despair, as many theists assert it must.

33. What does atheism say about the purpose (or the meaning) of life?

Comment #245575 by lol mahmood on September 11, 2008 at 6:10 am

Interesting question, both profound and meaningless. If an answer is offered in the same spirit that the question is usually posed then it tends to fit the proposition by (someone, can't remember whom) that a theory that explains everything explains nothing.

To really tackle this question head on you need first to parse it:

What do you mean by 'Life'?

What do you mean by 'meaning'?

and, for good measure:

What do you mean by 'of'?

Any suggestions?

34. Anthropologists Develop New Approach To Explain Religious Behavior

Comment #245492 by lol mahmood on September 11, 2008 at 12:52 am

"My conclusion is that Creationism has been chosen because a) it's more likely to come up in normal conversation and thereby identify the speaker as a card-carrying Christian; and b) because it doesn't commit the believer to actually DO anything."

Nah, it's because evolution makes a lie of Genesis and original sin (Adam and Eve, etc.) which means there was no need for Jesus' blood sacrifice, which makes a lie of the whole basis of Christianity. It's that simple. A Christian who accepts evolution is only nominally a Christian, as far as I can tell.

35. McCain's VP Wants Creationism Taught in School

Comment #243405 by lol mahmood on September 5, 2008 at 5:31 pm

Y'know; I wonder whether the Palindrone is such a poor choice after all. The whole pregnant-17-year-keeping-the-baby-and-marrying-the-father bit, far from being an embarrassing admission of the failure of family values, is actually confirmation that she really does practice what she preaches.

She doesn't believe in abortion, so she has demonstrably not been party to aborting either a Downs child or her daughter's early, wedlock-free pregnancy. Meanwhile, the 'liberal' media (to many conservatives the words 'liberal' and 'media' are practically interchangeable) has gnawed away at these issues in a fairly unsavoury fashion. It's a near-perfect passive aggressive approach to politics; 'your attack on my transgressions is more reprehensible than my transgressions'. If it's only half as calculated as I'm suggesting, it's outrageous, coldly cynical, and probably (potentially) very successful.

Edited for typos

36. Porn pastor's wife vows to stand by him

Comment #237481 by lol mahmood on August 26, 2008 at 2:34 pm

...and DR rises to the playground level!

37. Religion out of medicine, a new message for Ontario doctors

Comment #231876 by lol mahmood on August 17, 2008 at 8:51 am

"doctors may not be allowed to discriminate on basis of sky-fairy tales!"
Beggars belief that such a thing is in any sense 'news'.

38. Petrol pump pilgrims keep faith

Comment #231872 by lol mahmood on August 17, 2008 at 8:43 am

interesting combination of dunderheaded magical thinking and common sense practical action!

39. We need to stop being such cowards about Islam

Comment #229765 by lol mahmood on August 14, 2008 at 2:50 am

It's not ad hominem. Ad hominem would be me calling him names for no reason. My arguement is that his position as an egoist makes his opinion untrustworthy.

From his wikipedia page....

40. Call to teach biblical creation as science

Comment #229753 by lol mahmood on August 14, 2008 at 2:32 am

There's an interesting discussion over on this blog:http://strawmen-cometh.blogspot.com/2008/08/flood-gates-open.html

A creationist/fundie stated what he would require to start to change his mind on his belief in Christianity is "a clear demonstration of the fallibility of the Bible". So contributers have been giving him just that, focusing on simple logical and logistical problems in the story of Noah's Ark and the flood. Worth a read.

41. Richard Dawkins branded 'secularist bigot' by veteran philosopher

Comment #223364 by lol mahmood on August 2, 2008 at 5:04 am

Did anyone ever explain why Flew only reviewed the index of TGD?

42. The Trolls Among Us

Comment #223358 by lol mahmood on August 2, 2008 at 4:53 am

Hey! Who's got a problem with 'lol'?

43. Vicar supports Life of Brian ban

Comment #222852 by lol mahmood on August 1, 2008 at 2:19 am

The really ironic thing about all this is that Life of Brian doesn't make fun of Cheeses at all! It satirises in group/out group tribalism, left wing politics, false prophetry, idolatry, etc. and ends with an uplifting message of cheerfulness in the face of extreme adversity. The few scenes where Cheeses appears are fairly respectful of him. The church should embrace this film; it's practically a propaganda piece for Anglicanism!

44. To beat extremism we must dissolve religious groups

Comment #221958 by lol mahmood on July 30, 2008 at 11:23 am

ishruul,

Love your avatar! What is it?

45. To beat extremism we must dissolve religious groups

Comment #221942 by lol mahmood on July 30, 2008 at 10:40 am

nova, al, everyone,

Please just call me lol.

I think there are survey data to suggest that radicalisation is more pronounced in the more educated muslims and converts, although i would accept that less educated third world muslims may be fundies from birth, so to speak.
Unfortunately,This actually increases the risk that an islamist will eventually acquire nuclear or other 'dirty' weapons, and undermines the view that education is the answer. Nothing's ever simple, is it!

Lol

46. To beat extremism we must dissolve religious groups

Comment #221929 by lol mahmood on July 30, 2008 at 10:12 am

Nova (and possibly Al),

I think Islam is intrinsically resistant to reform, but that doesn't mean that multi-cultural tolerance and (other weasely sounding words like stakeholder management, respect, diversity, etc.) can't move it along by successive small increments.

It won't happen overnight, but it's better than trying to, on the one hand, impose democracy on a pre-enlightenment civilisation (Afhanistan and most of the rest of the middle east) or coming down too hard at home (in the UK, anyway) and turning Islamism into the rallying cry for rebellious, impressionable youngsters that it's rapidly becoming.

When I was a kid I drank incessantly, took drugs, spiked, coloured and shaved my hair, got tattoos, and generally made a pre-asbo nuisance of myself, all in the name of punk. If I were now 25 years younger, who knows; I might be espousing radical islam and demanding that those who doubt its peaceful benevolence be beheaded.


..and then sometimes I just think: "Ah bollocks to it. Fuck the lot of them and the camel they rode in on."

47. To beat extremism we must dissolve religious groups

Comment #221924 by lol mahmood on July 30, 2008 at 9:59 am

Moderate muslim views are a distinct minority, because, as al has said, moderate muslims are generally considered to be more or less apostate.

48. Atheism FLEAmix

Comment #221907 by lol mahmood on July 30, 2008 at 9:32 am

irate,

My other half booked her in because it was cheap and looked well-run. We thought there might be a bit of zombie worship here and there, but I grew up in an environment of daily Christian assemblies and prayer, etc. without ever believing much of anything.

When she started yelling "Cheeses loves all!" out of the car window at passing strangers we began to regret it...


Incidentally, every time she asks about Cheeses being nailed to a cross, I really struggle to keep a straight face...

49. To beat extremism we must dissolve religious groups

Comment #221902 by lol mahmood on July 30, 2008 at 9:28 am

Never had to lie about it yet. To a lot of girls, a touch of the tar brush adds some 'eastern promise'!

50. Church exorcism protected by First Amendment

Comment #221898 by lol mahmood on July 30, 2008 at 9:24 am

Radiohead/Michael,

Yeah, that's the first thing I thought when I read this. I can't believe it'll stand up to scrutiny.

"her church group allegedly kept her captive for two days " That's kidnap, surely, whatever the rationale!