1. When two worlds collide: threat of class warfare over faith-based schooling

Comment #187781 by calyx on June 2, 2008 at 4:20 pm

I watched the episode of 'insight' that the article refers to. Did anyone else see this?

It was interesting to see, they had a lot of video clips of faith based schools and everyone there saying how awesome it was to have such a great sense of community and all that. :roll: not biased at all.

The atheist viewpoints on the program didn't get that much of a say, the main athiest guy was continually interupted by one of the teachers at a christian school.

I did like the fact that the faith schools visited each other, and talked about their views and that. Personally I realised how silly faith was when thinking about the multitude of different god's.

At one of these visits, a christian girl asked the lecturer (on islam) why women had to wear the veil and men didn't, after flopping around a little he says "god said to do it". Made me laugh.

2. Top 6 Incestuous Relationships In The Bible

Comment #185859 by calyx on May 28, 2008 at 9:28 pm

Or maybe not, considering that comment about incest happening a lot in tribal societies is true

3. Top 6 Incestuous Relationships In The Bible

Comment #185858 by calyx on May 28, 2008 at 9:19 pm

I think that the "yuck" feeling people have about incest is circumstantial evidence for a fundamental subset of our morality having an evolutionary basis.

Personally I think there is a fundamental evolutionarily created set of morals, social ones overlayed on that (like the ones Dawkins describes) and then a personal set on top of that, to make a multi-layered system of morality.

4. Does Time Run Backward in Other Universes?

Comment #184219 by calyx on May 24, 2008 at 1:28 am

I think you are being unecessarily hostile to this idea, as you have yourself said, its just brain candy. What's so wrong with discussing this sort of thing, its interesting to me and i'm sure it is to other people too, I'm not about to say that I believe any of this, if something has no evidence to support it I won't believe it, but I can still find it interesting.

On another note, it's been suggested that once that new particle accelerator get's going, in a book about string theory that I was reading the other day, they may find some new particles which will offer some circumstantial evidence for string theory.

Also I don't think im wrong in saying that the work that these people are doing on these theories and other's in the past have opened up new testable theories and are helping to advance our knowledge of the universe.

"this is no different than theology"

Which Is why I have to utterly disagree with you on that point.

5. Six 'uniquely' human traits now found in animals

Comment #184150 by calyx on May 23, 2008 at 7:42 pm

New Caledonian crow. To extract tasty insects from crevices, they craft a selection of hooks

Does anyone remember that crow video that was posted the other day, showing the crow in the lab making a hook out of a piece of wire and using it to get some food out of a pipe? In the video it was suggested that the crow had figured out that a hook was the instrument that needed to be used and then made one, it seems that these birds have been making hooks in the wild, it's quite a bit less remarkable. (Although the video is pretty cool)

Am I wrong about this?

6. Scientists discover 'frogamander' fossil

Comment #183850 by calyx on May 23, 2008 at 2:50 am

Yeah I don't know hey, I have a creationist friend of mine at uni who I argue with, not only does he refuse to admit there is any evidence for evolution whatsoever, but he even admits that no matter what happened he would never change his mind anyway. I'm sure that's pretty typical.

Even if we had a mega evidence mountain, maybe a mobile one, we could parade it around through cities and things, wouldn't make a difference though :)

7. 'Reverse Evolution' Discovered in Seattle Fish

Comment #183751 by calyx on May 22, 2008 at 5:30 pm

Calyx says:
Its titled, reverse evolution
The Foot says:
interesting. I'm sure it's substantial

Ah-hah, i knew it. The title is being interpreted by creationists in a way that is appealing to them, i sincerly hope that this makes more of them read it :D

8. 'Reverse Evolution' Discovered in Seattle Fish

Comment #183740 by calyx on May 22, 2008 at 4:58 pm

Im confused,

I liked the title, reverse evolution sounds like evolution is going backwards and thats good cause it makes evolution sound bad, yaheey for god.

But then it says something about some fish evolving and thats impossible right cause it clearly says in the ATLAS OF CREATION:

Because all scientific findings show the manifest fact that evolution never happened

Oh well I will ignore this for now and be happy knowing that there are more gaps for me to rejoice in because of god lovingly showing us the frogamander

/sarcasm



This picture is one of the few things that I can agree on with creationists.

Seriously though, I agree with many of the posters in this thread in saying that reverse evolution is a really bad choice, you guys should be making science more accessible to the public especially when it comes to evolution, not introducing phrases that confuse things unnecessarily. Surely a better title would have been something about the "fast-track" evolution in these sticklebacks, we have evolution we can see, that's pretty important!

I can't wait to print this article off and show my creationist friend at uni, I can't wait to see his reaction to this :D.

EDIT: I take that back about the wording of the title, thinking it through, it's something that will actually attract creationists and other's to reading this article because from the outset it sounds like the conclusion is going to be something they might like... little do they know *wrings hands*

9. Scientists discover 'frogamander' fossil

Comment #183731 by calyx on May 22, 2008 at 4:29 pm

This is much better, croco-squirrel!

10. Non-religious summer camps develop niche

Comment #182531 by calyx on May 20, 2008 at 11:02 am

Stew282 I interpreted what they were saying more along the lines of anti-theism than athiesm. I think they were talking about not teaching children that 'Religion is all evil'.

11. Non-religious summer camps develop niche

Comment #182529 by calyx on May 20, 2008 at 10:58 am

After watching the Jesus Camp documentary, I'm glad to know that at least they are attempting to be neutral, that camp was so one sided it wasn't funny. Watching that film genuinely scared me, especially the comment the woman made about fundamentalists in Islam. It's deplorable to think that one could respect suicide bombings and actually want to cultivate that sort of behaviour in Christian's. Some of the kid's bought that too, really saddening.

I sent my Christian father a link of Jesus Camp and he had this to say about it.

Watched quite a lot of the TV program. Very extreme, very American, dreadful. A very unbalanced film about very unbalanced people.

How you can expect to find any 'balance' at that Camp is beyond me, but at least our version of it is attempting to do exactly that.

12. Non-religious summer camps develop niche

Comment #182473 by calyx on May 20, 2008 at 7:55 am

still not sure what i'm going to do when and if i do get kids, religion is so unpopular and dead in Sweden, that by merely mentioning my resentment towards it might cause my kids to seek religion out of pure reversed Psychology =D

But of course once your children see all the immoral swedish atheists raping and killing indiscriminately nothing you say will have any bearing - they will undoubtedly realise the only way to be moral is through god.

/sarcasm

13. Non-religious summer camps develop niche

Comment #182469 by calyx on May 20, 2008 at 7:47 am

"They're good, moral kids without organized religion," Fox said of his daughters

I hope camps like this will hope to sway at least some of the people who subscribe to the view that atheist people are immoral, it annoys me to know end to hear that.

"Before I attended I used to feel really embarrassed," she said. "I was afraid my friends would reject me if I said I didn't believe in some higher power."

This is one of the things that Dawkin's has been aiming to achieve, it's nice to see that in some small way some children are becoming less afraid of admitting that they don't subscribe to any particular religion.

"We really try not to label the kids," she said. "When a kid is 8 or 10, asking them to say 'I'm an atheist,' or 'I'm a Catholic' -- at 8 or 10 we don't think that kids are able to make a decision about their world view."

This is what Richard was saying when he was talking about the invariably distorted statement about "child abuse" it was about labelling, not education. I'm very glad to see that at least some people have got this right, and are aware that it takes some time for a person to make up their mind's upon a worldview.

This seems like a pretty good idea to me, I like the things I have heard about this camp, unlike that atheist church article.

14. Geeks and Guinness: the formula for sexy science

Comment #182433 by calyx on May 20, 2008 at 5:29 am

Someone should send this article to the person that was asking for an atheist church.

15. Mayor challenges pope during Genoa visit

Comment #182430 by calyx on May 20, 2008 at 5:12 am

I watched a Louis Theroux Documentary on hunting last night, about game animals in Africa farmed exclusively for hunting.

They were using crossbows to kill the animals for fear of scaring the others with the loud noises of guns :).

I would prefer a lion burger if your keen on a trip.

16. Mayor challenges pope during Genoa visit

Comment #182425 by calyx on May 20, 2008 at 4:46 am

Most people don't like to associate themselves with the slaughtering process, I think it's the same reasoning that leads me to like pro-choice as a phrase over pro-abortion.

I don't like abortion, but if it's necessary then I'm for it.

I don't like killing animals either, but I'm not gonna let that get in the way of me eating a fine steak :)

17. Mayor challenges pope during Genoa visit

Comment #182204 by calyx on May 19, 2008 at 11:32 am

My ex-girlfriend had an abortion, for social reasons I suppose, I mean her life wasn't in danger or anything, we just didn't want it.

I suppose this would be seen as immoral by most people right?

This is Illegal in Italy aswell?

Im in Australia.