1. The Sea Turtle's Tale: Back to the sea, and back again to the land

Comment #286590 by Alun ap Rhisiart on November 19, 2008 at 1:09 am

Rod, the photographer is Steve McCurry, from Magnum, a great photographer, as you say.
http://www.magnumphotos.com/Archive/C.aspx?VP=XSpecific_MAG.PhotographerDetail_VPage&l1=0&pid=2K7O3R13O2CM&nm=Steve McCurry

2. Face to faith

Comment #243705 by Alun ap Rhisiart on September 7, 2008 at 2:28 am

I still think religious 'education' is much to blame. If you study music you start with scales. If you study maths, you start with addition. If you study religion, you start with whatever the local flavour is - what? In the local primary school they teach Christianity, Judaism and Islam (ie only one religion, one god). No context.

So in conversation with Christians, I say, 'who am I describing? Someone from the Middle East a long time ago. Born on December 25th, his mother was a virgin, three Magi came to his birth bearing gifts. He grew up as an itinerant teacher with 12 disciples, and performed miracles. He was called The Good Shepherd; The Way, the Truth and the Light; Saviour; and Messiah. He had a last supper, and was killed, but came back to life after three days. His followers celebrate this every year, and baptise themselves with water'.

You are correct, of course, I'm talking about Mithra, first mentioned in the Rig Veda, perhaps 1200 - 1700 years BCE. The story was well known to the greeks and the romans. Christians think their copy is unique and incredible, however.

3. Genesis and the origin of the Origin of the species

Comment #240181 by Alun ap Rhisiart on August 31, 2008 at 2:46 am

What more can be said? I have sometimes had the misfortune to listen to 'Thought for the Day' on Radio 4 (which only allows contributions from people unable to think, in general); Jonathan Sacks had appeared on numerous occasions, and I have never yet heard a sensible word uttered from his mouth. This is par for the course.

It is a nice illustration of how vacuous theist arguments are, I guess.

4. Getting Overheated

Comment #227022 by Alun ap Rhisiart on August 9, 2008 at 7:42 am

I'd like to put two sides to this case.
First, I have Gore's video, and I have to say it is so full of holes you could drive a truck through it. The climate is changing, it is getting warmer, no question. The question is, are we causing it, or contributing significantly to it? Remember that CO2 is a rare gas, and it is still a rare gas even after all the millions of tons that we pump out. The affect of it on warming is straightforward physics and not in dispute. The amount is not very much. What is worrying is the idea that there is a positive feedback effect of CO2 on water vapour, and it is this that is responsible for most of the warming in the scenarios we are shown.

What you have to keep in mind is that the scenarios are the result of running computer models. I have also modelled natural systems, and I'm well aware that you can get any result you like by tweaking the parameters. So, are there any parameters fed into this model that are uncertain and significant? Yes! Water vapour and cloud cover is very significant, but is also the area that isn't well understood, so there are big assumptions here. Recent results from NASA's aqua satellite do not confirm the IPCC models. If that part is wrong, I think we can ignore the rest. Remember, temperature started rising before the main CO2 emissions got underway, which is a good thing, because we needed to emerge from the Little Ice Age.

Now, I think scientists here are talking beyond their data, and are doing so because of the possible serious consequences if we wait too long, and I don't blame them for that. We must also keep in mind a certain bias - doomsday predictions like this crop up periodically, if anyone remembers the books from the '70s like the Club of Rome report 'Beyond the age of waste' and similar books.

Furthermore, it is not the case, as Stephen Fry seems to maintain, that taking these steps is all gain and no pain. It is tremendously expensive to try to do this on an accelerated timescale, and there are many things - such as eradicating malaria - which would be a better use for the money.

So far, so skeptical, so I am in favour of not doing anything? Not at all. Oil is going to run out anyway, and long before that the price is going to go up and up, so we ought to prepare for it while we have time to develop the alternative technologies. Further, the location of oil reserves is problematic. Much of it is in unstable parts of the world, and particularly in muslim countries. This causes us real harm, as the great wealth pouring in to Saudi Arabia has directly caused our current problems with islamic extremism. People look at the situation and say, 'Look, Allah must like how the Saudis do things, see how he has given them this wealth', and so wahabist nonsense is gaining a foothold in parts of the islamic world that previously lacked it. So it is very much in our interest to remove this source of dependency as soon as possible - but not necessarily on a breakneck timescale as the global warming alarmists would wish.

5. Do they really think the earth is flat?

Comment #224553 by Alun ap Rhisiart on August 5, 2008 at 5:19 am

I disagree, but then nobody so far has explained to me why creationists aren't flat earthers (or maybe they are, they are keeping quiet about it for tactical reasons). It isn't a matter of proving a negative (which I'll come to), it isn't a question of theism, but creationism.

Creationists put great store in taking the bibble literally, otherwise why stick to this fairy tale? But in fact that story (well, stories, there are several creation myths in the bible) has been disproven. Furthermore, it isn't just evolution that creationists attack, it is cosmology too (and as a byproduct of dismissing evolution they are inevitably led to later attack geology, nuclear physics, and much else). Given that their sticking point on accepting evolution is that it says something else in Genesis, how can they get away with not being held to the rest of Genesis (and Leviticus, and Job...)? Ergo, to be consistent, creationists must be flat earthers.

Proving negatives: well, I can prove that this computer is NOT switched off at the moment. It is not true that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. That is only true until you look in the right places, where evidence ought to be. You can say that there is an elephant in my living room right now, and I can't prove you are wrong simply because I lack evidence - I am not there. If I go to the living room, however, and there is no evidence there, and no marks in the carpet, nor odd steaming piles, then I think we can conclude from this absence of evidence that the elephant is, indeed, absent.

6. Embracing goodness, without God

Comment #224490 by Alun ap Rhisiart on August 5, 2008 at 3:28 am

Gone are the days, she says, when people feared being labelled as immoral for lacking a religion. Atheists, she says, have made the case that religion is not a prerequisite for being a good person.

This sort of thing always does get to me, the tying of morality and religion. We know we don't get our morals from religion - not even the religious people, on the whole (excepting some muslims who do, and are thus beneath contempt).

Furthermore, if you think about it for a while, it is clear that christianity is inherently and fundamentally unethical and immoral. Christians, on the whole, tend to act morally in spite of the damage done to their moral sense by their religion, and I guess deserve credit for that.

7. Do they really think the earth is flat?

Comment #224470 by Alun ap Rhisiart on August 5, 2008 at 2:50 am

What I don't understand is why creationists and biblical/koranic literalists generally don't all admit to being flat earthers - genuine ones. After all, if you deny evolution simply because it says something different in the bible, and ditto for the age of the universe, the time it takes for light to reach us from distant galaxies, solar lifecycles, etc, you must deny a spherical earth too. I don't understand how they can get around that, it literally says it is flat.

8. Embracing goodness, without God

Comment #224453 by Alun ap Rhisiart on August 5, 2008 at 2:22 am

dvespertilio uttered:

Atheist is, of course, a description of what someone in not. But for myself it is really only a default adjective in a list of two others that rank ahead of it: humanist and naturalist. I believe that human values ( which incidentally should and rightly must extend to concern for other species and the environment) are primary, and naturalism is the best way to understand and describe the cosmos of which we find ourselves part. So I am humanist, naturalist and atheist, in that order. Puts a more positive spin on the matter for me.

I think you started out OK, but diverted at the end. Atheism is living 'without gods', and not really a positive attribute, I agree. Humanist is a something reasonably specific - see wikipedia article, which I don't have an issue with, at least the secular humanist part. I could say my stance is naturalist (in the philosophical sense) and rationalist (with a small 'r'), and a consequence of this is that I live without reference to gods.
I agree that the bit about evolution and darwin is odd, and I think it is a theist seeing things from a theist perspective: they must worship something and accept somebody as an authority, so it must be Darwin. Of course, evolution is pretty devastating to the bible, but then so is most of science (and navigation, come to that - we use spherical geometry, which isn't needed on a flat earth).

9. Texas Fiction Science

Comment #219174 by Alun ap Rhisiart on July 26, 2008 at 12:02 pm

Border Collie, yes, I understand what you are saying. I was partly being facetious, but not entirely. First, it needs to be said that no serious discussion of the theory of evolution needs to be afraid of discussing 'strengths and weaknesses', it is actually desireable. Most people have no conception of just how strong and well supported it is.

The other thing, following from that, is that in many ways it doesn't matter what some idiots say to get around the rules, the important thing is having good, qualified, science teachers. If you have those, this is not a threat at all. If you don't what does it matter, they are going to mislead their students anyway.

10. Texas Fiction Science

Comment #219009 by Alun ap Rhisiart on July 26, 2008 at 3:43 am

I don't understand the problem. I think it is good that teachers get to teach the strengths and weaknesses of evolution theory.

Let's see, strengths. Well, you can talk about how we know how old the earth is, so that gives us plenty of time. Then the maths of how often mutations occur, and how you calculate time to fixation for different selection pressures. Then you can talk about fossil sequences like horses, whales, humans. Then you talk about different types of mutations, opsin genes, MC1R genes, how sometimes it is exactly the same base pair, but other times you can change many things in a protein to get the same result (potassium-channel blocking neurotoxins, for example). You can then talk about evolution, including speciation, being observed in the lab. And so on.

Then you move on to the weaknesses. So, you talk about how some people are just too stupid to understand even the rudiments. How it doesn't provide adult children with a security blanket. Erm.. ok, that's that side dealt with.

11. Antony Flew reviews the Index of The God Delusion

Comment #216316 by Alun ap Rhisiart on July 23, 2008 at 1:18 am

There is much more on this story at http://secweb.infidels.org/?kiosk=articles&id=369 if anyone wants some background. Clearly, he has become increasingly confused about the matter over the last few years.
See also http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/stenger_25_2.html

12. Antony Flew reviews the Index of The God Delusion

Comment #215463 by Alun ap Rhisiart on July 22, 2008 at 1:20 am

I am uncomfortable with the way some of this discussion has gone. Too many posters here have written disparagingly about Flew, when he is not the villain here. We have become all too familiar with the idea that lies and deception are synonymous with christianity of late, and now we have this. Hit on Varghese, sure, he deserves it, but Flew is no longer able to defend himself, and is the victim.

Anthony Flew was an excellent thinker and writer when he still had his wits. This parody is not reason enough to belittle him now. Attack the 'reasoning' that Varghese has put in this book, but let's leave the personal attacks out of it.

13. [UPDATED] Venomous Snakes, Slippery Eels and Harun Yahya

Comment #207297 by Alun ap Rhisiart on July 9, 2008 at 1:13 pm

What is that smell? Aw, Jeesh, who drove those cattle through here! The place is full of it! Who's going to clear this lot up?

It has been an education of sorts. I did not realise that people this stupid could operate a keyboard. I have to say that for the first few ertu posts I thought, brilliant! Perfect Poe! Then it gradually dawned on me that he actually believed the drivel he was spouting.

No, I take it back, this is a con. NOBODY is this stupid! Then again, there is nothing like islam for destroying brain cells, I guess.

Calilasseia, many thanks for the references, much appreciated.

14. Holiday in Hellmouth

Comment #189970 by Alun ap Rhisiart on June 8, 2008 at 12:59 am

EvidenceOnly: I haven't read that book, but I read his earlier(?) one 'Misquoting Jesus' which, although somewhat long-winded and repetitive at times, certainly gave me the impression he knew his subject well. Your account here doesn't quite correspond with what I had understood about the afterlife, so I wondered which is correct.

I had understood that in Judaism originally, an afterlife was not on the table. Yahweh abused and murdered people, but at least once dead he let them be. Then the greeks (actually the Macedonians, I guess) invaded Judea, and quickly learned that they made more progress by attacking on the sabbath. So, if the Jews were being true to their god and keeping the sabbath, why didn't he protect them? That was when the priests came up with the get-out clause, 'He does reward you, but not in this life. Unfortunately you have no way to verify this, but, Hey! Would I lie to you?'.

One other point, an irritation of mine. Will people please stop saying 'God'! This is a bit of xian newspeak, designed (successfully by the looks of it) to make people forget that humans have invented thousands of gods, with no more evidence in favour of one than another. Putting it this way makes it sound like it is a choice between believing in 'God' or not believing in him, but that is a false dichotomy. If you mean the old Hebrew tribal war god (Exodus 15:3), Yahweh, then say so explicitly! Note that Ehrman says, "convinced that if there is a God, it is certain it is not the Christian God", but thinks there will be just one, if any. There is no reason to think this.

This is pertinent to me at the moment: we have withdrawn my 7 year old daughter from RE (as well as RO, obviously) not because we are against the idea of RE, but because they don't try to educate but to indoctrinate, and this is one of the ruses. They have to teach three world religions, with Christianity being one. Which do they chose? Christianity, Islam and Judaism! That isn't three religions, that is one religion with different subsets of prophets, it is all the religion of Yahweh. Naturally, they do not teach anything about Egyptian, Greek or Pagan gods first, because then the children could put the bible stories into context, and realize that Moses-in-a-basket is a retelling of the story of Horus as a baby; that virgin births were common in myths of the Mediterranean; that the idea of resurrection is at least as old as the story of Osiris and Seth, and so on.

Alun