1. FiveLive debate on faith and discrimination

Comment #17268 by jbannon on January 12, 2007 at 2:09 pm

I couldn't believe what I was hearing (apart from the idiot Islamist contribution claiming that it was undemocratic - that's a laugh for a start). We might as well say that somebody with a big nose is sinful! Why won't the idiots learn? We are all human first and discrimination is wrong on any basis.

2. Secret Life of Brian

Comment #16714 by jbannon on January 8, 2007 at 8:56 am

scooternye wrote:
"I am almost inclined to disagree with this statement as much as I believe that if someone can't control their behavior just because someone is speaking his/her mind, then the "bully" needs to be knocked down, not the person speaking."

I think "incitement" is a valid offence as I don't think that one should escape from responsibility if another goes on the rampage because one has encouraged them to do so. Criticism should always be protected of course as should expressing a point-of-view, even ones we vehemently disagree with. But there is a difference between these and direct incitement to violence.

3. Secret Life of Brian

Comment #16691 by jbannon on January 8, 2007 at 4:55 am

Yeah, I love The Life of Brian. It really is hilarious and takes the mickey out of everyone, including the Romans. The Meaning of Life caused a bit a storm in a teacup as well, especially the lampooning of the Roman Catholics attitude towards sex and the sex education piece. Christians have absolutely no sense of humour.

With regard to Deep Purple's lampooning of Mary Whitehouse, it's OK but Pink Floyd's portrait of her on "Pigs (Three Different Ones)" is really vitriolic (as is the portrait of Margaret Thatcher on the same song).

4. Sam Harris's Faith in Eastern Spirituality and Muslim Torture

Comment #16487 by jbannon on January 6, 2007 at 9:11 pm

ryanbooker wrote:
"The situations are not different. Sam Harris never argues that torture should be part of our standard bag of tricks or even common. He simply suggests, quite rightly, that if there are situations under which we deem the death of completely innocent people acceptable, there must be situations under which we deem the torture of most likely NOT innocent people acceptable."

I beg to differ. The situations are different and I never said that the death of innocents was acceptable, it is never right to kill innocents, I said it may be justifiable as a choice of the lesser of two evils, and there is a difference. I have still committed an evil by downing the plane, it's just a lesser evil than allowing the death of thousands.

On the torture angle the primary aim is to directly inflict misery and pain for the purpose of gaining information from a "possibly guilty" person. There are scenarios where torturing one might be justifiable, to save torturing ten say, but again that is a situation of hobson's choice (i.e. no choice at all). There is a choice with the scenario you gave and it is probably more effective than torturing an individual because the information so gained would almost certainly be unreliable.

Aside: I think the treatment the US has meted out to "illegal combatants" is disgusting. They were labelled "illegal combatants" for the express purpose of denying access to people like the Red Cross and Amnesty International.

I am not of the opinion that morality is relative. I don't buy absolute-relative dichotomies as to my way of thinking these are false dichotomies (as is objective-subjective). Morality is certainly contextual to a degree, how could it not be because this is where all the useful information resides, but it is not relative. If we start going sown that road then we're into the cesspool of post-modernism and I presume people don't want to go there.

5. Sam Harris's Faith in Eastern Spirituality and Muslim Torture

Comment #16453 by jbannon on January 6, 2007 at 4:10 pm

Rayanbooker wrote:
"It seems to me that the justification you use for shooting down a plane could easily be used to justify the torture of someone in similar "ticking timb-bomb" circumstances."

Ask yourself this question. What do you do with the torturers on the other side who are designated "enemy"? By torturing you give them carte blanche to do the same thing. There is a fundamental difference between the two scenarios as presented. On the one hand there is a real and present danger and in the other there is not.

6. Sam Harris's Faith in Eastern Spirituality and Muslim Torture

Comment #16446 by jbannon on January 6, 2007 at 3:53 pm

I haven't read the book so I can't really comment fully. However I will say that if Sam Harris is arguing that killing innocents is morally acceptable or that torture is morally acceptable then he is barking mad. This is the kind of thinking sloppy use of utilitarian arguments leads to. One must not put ends above the means used to achieve them as that is just asking for disaster.

There are of course times when innocents are killed and this can sometimes be justified. E.g. if I had to order the shooting down of a passenger aircraft to prevent it from being crashed into a densely populated area then I would do so. However, this does not mean I have not committed an evil, I have and I would have to properly justify it and live with the consequences.

As for torture, that surely is never justifiable. Not only that, it isn't even very effective in its aim. Does Sam think that the US regimes' suspension of the rights of "illegal combatants" is justifiable?

7. God-less

Comment #16440 by jbannon on January 6, 2007 at 3:33 pm

By gimlibengloin:
"I don't dispute that humans can act morally without faith in God. What I dispute is whether they can provide a justification for it. How does an atheist label one action as right and another as wrong? What criteria does he/she use?
Why is it wrong to kill the innocent? Or to rape? Or to steal?
Is it 'more' wrong to kill a man than a horse? If so, why?"
I suggest you get your head out of wherever it is and use your brain. We learn from experience and evolution gives us a moral sense. Why do you need some kind of absolute authority anyway, especially one that doesn't exist? Are you suggesting that without that authority we are all going to go on a rampage? I think not.

8. Do galaxies follow Darwinian evolution?

Comment #15719 by jbannon on January 2, 2007 at 8:54 am

Darwinian theory often gets applied in areas where it should not be, including galaxies, ideas and what not. It seems to be in vogue at the moment for some reason (simplicity?).

9. 10 myths - and 10 truths - about atheism

Comment #15201 by jbannon on December 29, 2006 at 1:37 pm

Very probably Wishavian. It was meant as a bit of a joke and was half remembered from a TV advertisment about health & safety at work.

@David Robertson
I see David that you have not addressed my comments. The warmed over TAG strategy you use has proven completely useless. The fact is that theist and atheist alike behave in moral (and immoral) ways and we all get our morals from the same sources - our intuition based on our empathy. Of course, how categorical imperatives get expressed finally is extremely complex and they do change over time, but this is what we would expect with such a complex species as human beings.

The bottom line is that morality is human and that there is no ultimate authority. We arrive at authoritative moral principles by intersubjective agreement (and in some cases by violence). How this will finally play out, if it ever does, no-one really knows but we do have an opportunity to move away from biblical precepts which, to be frank, are grossly immoral. It is in our own hands, not controlled by some invisible being.

10. Beyond Belief 2006 Videos

Comment #15162 by jbannon on December 29, 2006 at 8:18 am

I've watched all the sessions over the past few days and have it bookmarked to watch again. It is difficult to give an overall assessment of such a long conference.

Scott Atran had some good points, particularly on the psychology of terrorism, and I felt that I agreed with his point that the conference didn't really address the issue of human irrationality properly. Let's face it, we're all irrational at some time, even scientists. I also agree with him on the idea of memes but that is a separate discussion.

As an aside, I wonder if science is really as rational as many of the respondents supposed. Sure, when looking at papers it all appears very reasonable and rational but I wonder if the process of arriving at the results is as rational as the presentation appears. I'll take a bet that it is nowhere near as solidly rational as it at appears: there will be trial-and-error, intuition, flashes of inspiration and so forth. This pretty much holds for all human beings no matter what the field of endeavour.

Joan Roughgarden I think made some good points over the kind of language used in Darwinian theory and a plea to make sure we are covering all the bases. She got a rough ride from Richard which was a bit unjust in my view. Mind you, her use of the parable of the mustard seed and the parable of the sower left me with a nasty taste in my mouth. The parable of the sower as she presented it was sure to be interpreted as having one very bad meaning by religionists.

I think on balance that the psychologists and social scientists made good contributions in spite of the negative comments made above.

That's just a sample and much more could be said about the other presenters, much of which were excellent and good fun. Overall though I felt that in this kind of rareified intellectual atmosphere insufficient attention was paid to what life is actually like in the trenches. I would have appreciated more in that area.

11. 10 myths - and 10 truths - about atheism

Comment #15033 by jbannon on December 28, 2006 at 11:10 am

From David A Robertson:
"Stephen you are right that atheism does not provide a basis for morality. You are wrong in assuming that non atheists all assume that therefore atheists won't be moral. I would argue that atheists are moral – although they have no real intellectual, consistent and logical basis for being so."

Oh no! The TAG defence! One is tempted to say "so what?". What intellectual, consistent and logical basis does Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism.... provide? Abrahamic faiths simply say "because God says so". What kind of intellectual, consistent and logical basis is that? It simply replaces what we know, that humans as social animals are moral animals, with the arbitrary and subjective view of some invisible tyrant! That's a consistent basis for morality? Then why has morality changed since biblical times? Why is the morality of the New Testament different from that of the Old Testament? And who says that the Christian basis is true whilst other religionist positions are not? The TAG argument fails in its mission David, try another because this one is becoming rather boring!

12. 10 myths - and 10 truths - about atheism

Comment #14974 by jbannon on December 27, 2006 at 4:59 pm

From David A Robertson:
"As Dawkins so brilliant put is in The Blind Watchmaker - "In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe had precisely the properties we should expect if there is at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference". That is the atheist position – no good, no evil, just blind pitiless indifference."

This is just the standard "atheism=nihilism" defence and as such it misses a very important point. Ever heard of levels of description David? At one level of description all I am is organised matter, but then the same goes for any object: a brick, a bolt, a bar, a cup (all travel downwards not up). The point is that at the level of the universe this quote makes sense but it does not make sense at the level of humans, just as my examples don't make sense at that level. Humans create their own meanings David and their own morality. There is no "god" to guide this creation, just the faculties we possess as a result of our evolution as a social species. Far from this meaning that we are prisoners it means that we are to some extent in control of our own destiny, both individually and collectively. Try thinking positively without your god for once, it might do you some good.

13. Oh, we Brits of little faith

Comment #14797 by jbannon on December 25, 2006 at 6:35 am

"How did this land of saints and sects lose religious vehemence and vocation?"

I suggest to this self-satisfied twit of an author that he come to Scotland and watch an Orange Order parade or watch the self-styled evangelists on the street corner to see what damage religion (and Calvinist doctrine in particular) has done to my country. What other cure is there for the disease of sectarianism than to get rid of the ridiculous bullshit propogated by these intolerant mysanthropists?

14. Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching

Comment #14688 by jbannon on December 24, 2006 at 10:42 am

"These days, theology is the queen of the sciences in a rather less august sense of the word than in its medieval heyday."

And a good thing too! Imagine what we would have achieved had theology still been the "queen of sciences" today. Not much I would suggest. We would still be going around believing that the earth is flat and the sun revolves around the earth. The key to good modern science is evidence whereas back in the good old days of theology it was the dictat of the theologian that decided which theory was to be held as true. Has the author forgotten that Galileo was charged with heresy and only recanted under threat of torture? Thank you, but I think I'll pass on that one.

He seems to describe a theology which, in spite of his protestations to the contrary, is not particularly mainstream. I wonder if he's read the Westminster Confessions or the various creeds. Much of what he says about atonement for example is heresy in both Reformist and Roman Catholic doctrine and he seems to misread quite a lot of Paul. Not that I'm an expert theologian, but I'm familiar with many of the standard interpretations. E.g., he entirely ignores Calvinism, surely the most repellent of all Christian doctrines, and one which infects not only Northern Ireland but also my own country (Scotland) with the sectarian delusion. Even if, as seems to be the case, he leans towards an Arminian interpretation of the gospel accounts, this still does nothing to ameliorate the central message of all Abrahamic faiths - the claim of exclusive access to the truth and the penalty of death (in whatever form) for violating that truth.

His criticism of Richard's zeitgiest, which he used in respect of morals, seems to me to be reasonable, though from a slightly different perspective. Many of the ideas of secular morality have been around a very long time and predate Christianity, yet we see a continual struggle to have them eliminated by the religionist. "Modern" TAG arguments taking a presuppositionalist stance always argue from the "impossibility of the contrary". Now, in spite of the circularity inherent in much of TAG thinking, it is incredibly popular among the religionists as a response to moral argumentation from a secular perspective. The zeitgiest Richard refers to does not seem to me to be able to overcome these arguments on its own. A conscious, concerted effort will be required to get people to see that secularism is a valid choice when it comes to universalising moral standards. It does not help either when we have modern meta-ethicists arguing for various forms of moral eliminativism that are so counterintuitive to the vast majority of people. Modern moral philosophy has done us no favours in this regard though there are some notable exceptions.

His remarks on rationality I agree with in part. In and of itself, reason will not provide us with truths about the world. It is merely a tool we use to formalise ideas and the relations between them. We are quite unable to deduce truths about the world (whether scientific or otherwise) without making some sort of appeal to experience. Indeed, knowledge itself is impossible without experience. The problem is that the experience of god to which he indirectly refers cannot be used as a justification when making knowledge claims. When making reasonable claims about morality one must base that on what people do independent of their belief in god (or not as the case may be).

15. What I found out about God

Comment #14673 by jbannon on December 24, 2006 at 5:21 am

From Niels Thorsen:

"I prefer to call this perception rather than think of it as 'meaning'. What exactly is your point? If it is that we cannot really *know* anything for certain, than what is the point of discussing it in the first place?"

Well, this isn't really the place to discuss the difference between perception and meaning. That is precisely my point. Science as a discipline is not absolute, indeed it is impossible for it to be so. However, I do not view this as a bad thing. Say rather that it is open and leads to critical questioning. If this weren't so there would be no room for freethinkers like Dawkins would there?

16. What I found out about God

Comment #14637 by jbannon on December 23, 2006 at 9:49 pm

Imagine one of our stoneage ancestors way back sitting next to a little brook with a piece of bone and a flint. He sharpens the bone with the flint and makes a hole in one end. Then, taking a piece of a plant, he makes a little fibre rope and uses that with his needle to sew two pieces of skin together to make part a of piece of cloth that he wraps round his legs to keep them warm. Design? I would say so. True, it's rather crude and was initially probably learned through a trial-and-error process but the intention is perfectly clear. This is what I mean by teleological causation. It is the same with meaning. All meaning in the universe is created by humans (or more generally by sentient creatures to allow for alien civilisations and non-human animals with a degree of sentience).

17. Fallen Angels Assault: Heaven at Christmas

Comment #14634 by jbannon on December 23, 2006 at 8:58 pm

He also posed us atheists the same dilemma: is the act moral because we approve of it or do we approve of it because it is good?

18. What I found out about God

Comment #14622 by jbannon on December 23, 2006 at 6:52 pm

From Sancus:
"Okay, but I still don't think it's truly ironic, since Rumsfeld's words are characteristic of someone blatantly forcing himself into an "agnostic bubble," and we know what kind of danger that leads to, right?"

It would appear that agnosticism is a "dirty" word to some. Agnosticism is a claim about knowledge, not about belief or even truth. E.g. I am atheistic (I do not believe in god or gods) and agnostic (I do not know whether or not any gods exist). Personally I have never bought any of the "strong atheistic" philosophical arguments. To me they're just as much "buffoonery" as the theistic arguments. Let me put it this way: there are valid logical arguments from both points of view but, given the lack of available evidence, we cannot be sure either side is correct, although given what we know of the universe at this point the existence of such a being seems unlikely.

I will go further and say that my beliefs about gods are not even connected with questions of existence. I would not "believe in" god even if such a being a being existed and especially not if it was anything remotely like the god of Abraham. Richard's description of this being in "The God Delusion" is absolutely spot on. However, even if god turned out to be entirely benevolent I would not surrender sovereignty over myself to such a being. I will not do this for any man so I see no reason why I should for any god. It seems to me that Richard's book is misnamed. Rather than calling it "The God delusion", it should have been called "The Sovereignty Delusion". The single thing that the "three great religions" have in common is the believers' willingness to surrender their own sovereignty over their own being. Once that is done all things become possible, including genocide!

I will go further still. It would appear to be a popular misconception (delusion?) that science can provide the answers to all questions about how the natural world works and further that those answers will be absolutely true. However given the nature of modern science this is simply false because at its core it is an empirical discipline. There is no guarantee that any scientific theory will provide a true picture of the way in which reality actually works, no matter how well it is supported by evidence. This has to be the case since we derive everything we know about the real world from our experience even if it is technologically enhanced. Of course, this does not devalue science in any way, and it could be said to be one of science's greatest strengths, because it is still by far the best method of constructing models that approximate reality. It should not, however, be confused with truth in any absolute sense.

One final question (and this should be an easy nut to crack): As an atheist I assert that teleological causation exists. Can you take a guess at what I mean by that?

19. What I found out about God

Comment #14611 by jbannon on December 23, 2006 at 4:40 pm

I think some people need to switch their irony meters on before reading the comments about Donald Rumsfeld. John Humphrys is not a fan of neo-conservatism!

20. Fallen Angels Assault: Heaven at Christmas

Comment #14604 by jbannon on December 23, 2006 at 4:01 pm

"...Atheists and the unchurched undervalue the extent to which they are getting a free ride on the social strength that religious-based virtue provides. It's one thing to write in a book that we don't need them. But I'd rather not run the real-world experiment of navigating without them."

I wonder what pills this guy has been taking. I suggest he change his medication and, while he's at it, have some appreciation of history. This is a typical piece of historical revisionism claiming that the cardinal virtues are religious (and in his terms this obviously means Christian). Even someone like me who is just an interested layman and not particularly well read in history knows perfectly well that these virtues he lists are not unique to either the religious in general or to Christianity in particular. He should try reading Epicures, Aristotle, Plato, Confuscious and that's just a couple off the top of my head that predate Christianity.

21. The Only One in Step

Comment #14554 by jbannon on December 23, 2006 at 7:27 am

I must admit that I am tempted to say that these people should be banned from practising science altogether. I know that we're not supposed to discriminate against people on the grounds of religious belief but these people are just crazy. They certainly should not be allowed to teach science for fear of spreading their ignorant delusions. How can any modern scientist come up with such drivel? I mean someone who actually studies thermodynamics arguing that evolution violates the second law? It is quite beyond my understanding.

22. Open Debate: The Righteousness of Blasphemy

Comment #14494 by jbannon on December 22, 2006 at 5:32 pm

"British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw articulated a simple philosophical limit in a characteristically convoluted way: "The right of freedom of speech in all societies and all cultures has to be exercised responsibly and does not extend to an obligation to insult.""

Yes, I thought this a piece of cowardly backsliding by the then foreign secretary and Tony Blair's comments weren't much better. The publication of the cartoons lampooning Mohammed should have been defended and were decidely not an exercise in racism.

[Aside: They seem to have shifted their stance somewhat lately with demands for integration].

However, there is one point that I think has been missed here and that is that it is impossible for an unbeliever to blaspheme anyway. How can one blaspheme against a being one does not believe exists? By the same token, how can one be guilty of blasphemy by lampooning the prophets of a non-existent god? The idea is oxymoronic.

As for the comment about "not extending to an obligation to insult" well of course it doesn't extend to that, but then it doesn't extend to an obligation not to insult either. One may be as insulting as one pleases since insult is not slander, just so long as one expects to be insulted in turn. This is a lesson perhaps Muslims who were offended by the cartoons ought to learn since they demand the freedom to be offensive about the nature of secular society.

23. It is possible to respect the believers but not the belief

Comment #14407 by jbannon on December 22, 2006 at 9:54 am

The author makes an appeal for "multiculturalism" and this is all well and good but what he does not say is that this is encumbent on religious believers as well. Here in the west we take certain freedoms for granted such as freedom from harm, freedom of speech, freedom of association and so on. We also take seriously the notion of equality before the law (hence "justice is blind" - though this metaphor can have problems). Yet we see these freedoms being attacked all the time as "decadent", "relative", "subjective" and what not by those same religionists who demand the same freedoms. We see constant demands for establishment of church, interference by religionists in school curricula, demands for the implementation of the law of god (whether biblical or qu'ranic) and so forth.

Am I, as an atheistic libertarian socialist, to respect these views simply to avoid being painted as an "imperialist"? I think not! My duties as a citizen mean that I must respect the rights of other citizens and this I will do, but being a citizen in no way obligates me to respect their beliefs, nor does it obligate me to respect the rampant willful ignorance we see masquerading as belief. I will go further: anyone who demands for the implementation of law inimical to human rights (such as Shariah) cannot call themselves a citizen and may as well leave.

24. Ken Miller on Intelligent Design

Comment #14024 by jbannon on December 20, 2006 at 7:21 pm

Excellent stuff. Well presented and funny. I sat right through it including the question & answer session. As a former Roman Catholic myself I can understand Ken Miller's religious beliefs, though needless to say I don't agree with them, and they certainly don't seem to have any effect on his critical faculties. It is good to see a theist standing up and defending critical scientific enquiry and exposing the ID agenda for what it is.

25. The Trouble with Atheism

Comment #13809 by jbannon on December 19, 2006 at 1:49 pm

This programme was so full of strawmen arguments and ad hominem attacks it is difficult to know where to start.

Why can't believers get it into their heads that the terms "theism" and "atheism" says nothing about a person other than a stance about the belief in some god or gods? E.g., As an atheist I do not need to believe in the theory of evolution. I could equally well believe that ID is correct and that the "designer" is a little green man from somewhere in the vicinity of Beetlegeuse or some previously existant computer programmer.

The usual strawmen are the Communist and Nazi regimes. I wonder. Could it possibly be that because Mr Liddle is neither a Communist nor a Nazi that this is colouring his views? I'll take a bet that this is the case, just as it is with so many believers who use this argument. No matter how many times we point out that we do not support the atrocities committed by either regime it seems we cannot escape this ridiculous argument. Sure, some Nazis and Stalinists were atheists, so what? It is nothing more than the generalisation fallacy.

I'll leave it there for now.

26. A man who believes in Darwin as fervently as he hates God

Comment #13599 by jbannon on December 18, 2006 at 4:37 pm

I'll skip the rather unsubtle ad hominem in the piece and skip right to the argument. Basically, it's a yawn! We've heard all this before: bereft of god we have no moral centre and are liable to become genocidal maniacs at any moment as we revert back to the Hobbsean state of nature. It just demonstrates the kind of baleful influence religions have that we still hear these kinds of arguments. One might be back in the days of Calvin or Saint Augustine! We are all totally depraved and we can never rise above our animal nature. Yet here's the problem. The vast majority of theists and atheists alike do not revert to this nature. In other words, people are not good because of religion but in spite of it.

The single thing that all genocidal actions have in common is the adverse effects of "group think". Individuals can lose their self identity in the group, so much so that they lose their sense of empathy for their fellow creatures and their common humanity. Literally, the other becomes untermensche (and I use the term deliberately). This is the main reason why we see genocidal acts as is amply demonstrated by recent events.

Also we see that the openness of science to the modification of existing theory is seen as a weakness. I wonder when this guy will learn that, far from being a weakness, this is science's great strength. Sure it means that scientific knowledge is not absolute and that evolutionary theory might well change into something completely different, but whoever said that any knowledge was absolute? Believers need to understand that such absolutes simply don't exist and wishful thinking will not make it so.

Finally we have the usual charge of moral relativism unsubtly disguised as a charge of the relativism of history. However, instead of saying that because morality has changed over the years means that we are caught in a relativistic prison, could it not be read as that we have actually learned something? This evidently doesn't occur to the author of this piece. Perhaps he would rather that we were still discriminating against women, blacks and homosexuals just because it says they're inferior in some dumb book whose contents date back to the bronze age.

27. Richard Dawkins on The Sunday Edition

Comment #13413 by jbannon on December 17, 2006 at 2:31 pm

I saw the conversation this morning on TV. As a socialist myself (in the French revolutionary rather than Marxist tradition) I found Tony Benn surprisingly very disappointing as he is usually a sharp debater and was one of the left's better politicians. The argument from morality, which almost the entire conversation consisted of, is just so dumb. Mind you, that goes for most apologetic arguments. Tony Benn kept banging on about how science doesn't tell us what we ought to use technology for. Well of course it doesn't, that's not its job! Don't get me wrong, I don't buy this "science is value-free" nonsense, but the job of science is to tell us how the world works, not what we ought to do about it; that's up to us humans to decide.

I thought Richard did reasonably well in spite of the continual interruption. One small criticism is that I don't think he pushed hard enough. Perhaps he was just giving the questioners room to hang themselves!