Comments by madhatter

Comment #86282 by madhatter on November 9, 2007 at 12:32 am

"... it has to do with fear of ethnic groups, many of whom are coming from outside the country and bringing religious practices that seem inappropriate to some Quebecers."

Admirably said.

What? Catholics came from "outside the country" as well? Drat.

2. The benefits of 80 million years without sex

Comment #78445 by madhatter on October 13, 2007 at 12:05 am

Erm, leaving the obligatory sex jokes aside, wouldn't sexual organisms with a larger genome be able to cope with these sort of scenarios as well?
(Disclaimer: my biology is mostly popular-science level)

3. Sam Harris seems like a nice fellow, but very confused

Comment #77251 by madhatter on October 8, 2007 at 9:08 pm

'Abolitionist' used to be a term of ridicule in the Old South. Then people adopted it as label of pride. Now it is completely unnecessary. 'Atheist' should go the same way.

Paine,

Well said!

4. Why are we Muslims so self-destructive?

Comment #73368 by madhatter on September 24, 2007 at 10:04 pm

Nick Good:

Gandhi is rather overrated in India, but your criticisms seem way off the mark. He was hardly an "in-yer-face" Hindu, you need to meet a few of those to see the difference. He was a "moderate", who chose to try to water down and reinvent the unpalatable parts of his religion - using his secular influence to ride over orthodox opposition. In that sense, he's guilty of the same error moderate believers are, which is quite different from being an extremist.

What makes you call him a "racist"?

Gandhi was hardly responsible for the leftist command economics that dominated the latter half of the 20th century in India. That was Nehru, who differed from him on economic policy. Gandhi espoused a kind of romantic rustic self-sufficiency economics that India paid lip service to, but largely ignored (perhaps for the best).

Much of the squalor and poverty in India is a vestige of colonial neglect: India under colonial rule stayed an agrarian economy rather than an industrial one. Indian leaders wasted decades barking up the wrong tree, but they didn't create the problem in the first place.

Now if they could get rid of all this religious strife, it may help more than they realize. India-Pakistan is one situation where the villain of the piece is clear and unambiguous: religion. There is nothing else: no "cultural" differences that apologists can hide behind.

BTW, what is with the "Ghandi" thing anyway, is it that hard to spell "Gandhi" right?

5. Lou Dobbs Interviews Christopher Hitchens

Comment #37560 by madhatter on May 4, 2007 at 11:46 pm

The obsession with virgin birth seems to extend to atheists as well, doesn't it?

Krishna, as has been amply attested, is supposed to have been the *eighth* genetic child of his parents.

Kkant, does it really matter if it didn't make sense for Devaki to have more children? The story goes that she did; and, that's not the least believable part of the story. One doesn't really need to transplant fanciful ideas from one myth to another in an attempt to have them make sense. They're stories, after all.

The Buddha's mother's dream is linked to the alleged transmigration of his soul - transmigration being normal in Buddhist myth - not any sort of divine conception. He was allegedly the genetic child of his parents as well.

6. Huge rally for Turkish secularism

Comment #36007 by madhatter on April 29, 2007 at 9:21 pm

This is the point of *Constitutional* democracy, one feels. Basic principles like secularism should not be overridden by a simple majority.