1. Faith in Britain today

Comment #176989 by stephenray on May 8, 2008 at 12:32 pm

Interesting that the best illustration he can find is of what a baby learns by looking at his mother.
Some babies, of course, grow up and find out that their mother is far from being perfect love.
Some babies never even get that look from their mother right from day 1.
And of course all babies grow up to understand that life is considerably more complex than they could possibly have imagined when they were three years old, never mind three minutes.
If believers (of all ages) would grow up to understand that life is considerably more complex than their silly books tell them, maybe humankind would become rather more mature than the believers would like us to be.

2. 'Darwin chip' brings evolution into the classroom

Comment #158053 by stephenray on April 10, 2008 at 3:07 am

AAAARRGHHHHH!!

SKYNET!!!

Run for the hills...

3. They prayed to cast Satan from my body

Comment #145245 by stephenray on March 17, 2008 at 11:56 am

It's interesting that people who are apparently atheists will use the word 'evil' so freely.

It's a religious concept, guys. Evil on the one side, grace on the other.

What these people at Mercy Ministries are, is IGNORANT. They also appear to be LACKING IN COMPASSION, which is a problem since Christianity, if anything separates it from other religions, is compassionate.

4. The Great Tantra Challenge

Comment #144581 by stephenray on March 16, 2008 at 11:17 am

How much harm can you come to from someone who needs to devote one hand all the time to stop his sheet coming off..?

5. Should Galileo's tomb be opened for DNA tests?

Comment #141454 by stephenray on March 10, 2008 at 12:58 pm

Seems weird that the Catholics are getting huffy about exhuming Galileo for valid scientific tests but have no problem with not only exhuming Padre Pio but also putting his (definitely not incorrupted) corpse on display for the faithful.

Couldn't be that the second leads to cash in the collection boxes while the first will not, ya think?

6. Out of the Blue

Comment #141165 by stephenray on March 10, 2008 at 6:24 am

Perhaps the brain of a baby might be a better analogy for a superlarge computer with sufficient neurons and sufficient synapses. But since none of us can remember anything from our first few days (principally because the RAM has not yet been constructed) I think it safe to say that neither a new-born baby nor a newly-switched on brain-mimicking computer are self aware.

However, for humans it comes pretty quickly after that. But what else is there, in the brain, apart from neurons and symapses, that makes the brain into a learning machine?

There are the relationships between the different parts of the brain - motor control and feedback, visual processing, auditory processing - the autonomic functions, redundancy.

Think about it this way: if you connect a billion processors together, and power them up, what happens? Nothing, surely. Just a lot of power doing no work (apart from heating the room). It's the program that makes things happen.

So the question of whether - if at all - supercomputers can become self-aware should not be focussing on the complexity of the machine, but on how it is programmed.

These things are happening, obviously - expert systems and such like - but it's much sexier to print stories about thousands of processors than it is to go into dull detail about complex software.

7. Crossing the Divide

Comment #139682 by stephenray on March 6, 2008 at 11:51 am

It wasn't that long ago that I twigged to the fact that creationists don't just think that evolution is wrong and mistaken, they really do believe that there is an 'evolution conspiracy', that there are thousands, hundreds of thousands of biologists, chemists, university and school administrators, book and magazine publishers, editors, film makers, TV program makers, TV company managers, etc - all determined to peddle an untrue story about how organised complexity came to be on this planet.

The only way you can acquire such a bizarre and non-sensical belief is if your parents indoctrinate you into it, or if you are terminally stupid.

My congratulations to Mr Godfrey, and let's hope he helps his children to a better understanding of the universe than he got from his parents.

8. How to abandon your God

Comment #139494 by stephenray on March 6, 2008 at 1:54 am

HOLD IT!

Lot of nonsense being talked here. Only people who did NOT have landlines were excluded. This doesn't mean that young, technically savvy people would not have taken part in the survey, since plenty of them have a landline as well as a mobile phone (cellphone - which I always thought was what the prisoners used in US penitentiaries, but hey).
The question is, did the survey allow for the possible small bias against people who don't have a landline?
It would, of course, have excluded homeless people, but who cares what they believe?

9. Pleas for condemned Saudi 'witch'

Comment #127164 by stephenray on February 15, 2008 at 2:06 am

Gymnopedie:
Mentioning beheadings reminds me of an American veteran who visited Saudi Arabia before and at the port they were cutting off the hands of convicted thieves. What a great welcome for the troops!

Next time, your friend should try to avoid travelling with so many ex-cons!

10. My Saudi Valentine

Comment #126701 by stephenray on February 14, 2008 at 2:12 am

"We "date" over the phone or by instant messaging, and we enjoy exchanging gifts - through our chauffeurs or housemaids."

Jeez, it's a hard life in Saudi.

11. Sharia fiasco

Comment #126586 by stephenray on February 13, 2008 at 3:47 pm

Oooh, Pat!

Nobody tried to censor the Three Little Builders book! What happened was it was dismissed from a children's literature prize shortlist. That may be a bad thing, but it's a long, long way from trying to censor the book.

Not fair.

From someone who generally enjoys your work.

12. Murder plot against Danish cartoonist

Comment #126382 by stephenray on February 13, 2008 at 5:32 am

Al-Rawandi:

"They don't torture people. Saudis, Israelis, Iranians, and Chinese do this."

And the Americans! The use of phrases such as 'enhanced interrogation techniques' don't fool anyone who doesn't wish to be fooled.

See the report of Daniel Levin, at the time US Assistant Attorney General (http://www.usdoj.gov/olc/18usc23402340a2.htm) though once he filed the report he didn't last long.

13. Inventor Doesn't Dare Say 'Perpetual Motion Machine'

Comment #125123 by stephenray on February 11, 2008 at 2:12 am

The question has to be asked and answered.

Where is the energy coming from? If the machine is really generating more energy than it is using up, then it makes everything we know about physics automatically suspect.

Oh, and to those people who say 'He says he doesn't understand what's happening and he's asking scientists to look at it' - well, that gambit worked, didn't it? That's got all of you thinking he isn't a fraudster already.

14. Charles Simonyi Professorship in the Public Understanding of Science

Comment #125119 by stephenray on February 11, 2008 at 2:04 am

Adam Hart-Davis might do well.

15. Apologetic billboard replaces atheistic sign

Comment #123334 by stephenray on February 7, 2008 at 1:54 am

One wonders whether the billboard company routinely replaces adverts for all products and services of which it did not approve, with new adverts setting out its views...

16. Ken Ham in Leicester April 2008

Comment #114838 by stephenray on January 23, 2008 at 2:35 am

Ken Ham - isn't he that chinese TV chef with the big grin?

17. Honour Killings

Comment #113919 by stephenray on January 21, 2008 at 2:16 am

He's talking about binge drinking and teenage pregnancy in an article asserting that islamic education will prevent honour killings.

Fuckwit.

Presumably the moslem girls (for I don't suppose he cares a toss for what moslem boys get up to) will also have to be locked in their room when not in school, with no TV, radio, internet access or mobile phones, to ensure that their religiously pure eduction isn't contaminated by real life.

18. The New Theology

Comment #113556 by stephenray on January 20, 2008 at 2:36 am

Another illustration of the maxim that 'a little learning is a dangerous thing' - in this case, from literature.

Blake's god was anything but the milk-sop namby-pamby from Blake's poem The lamb. The point about Songs of Innocence is that they have to be taken together with Songs of Experience. Duh.

19. Ben Stein Bribing Schools to See His Anti-Evolution Movie 'Expelled'

Comment #112741 by stephenray on January 18, 2008 at 2:59 am

Speaking as someone with two degrees, one in law, and called to the Bar in 2002, I find it absolutely astonishing how many trained lawyers in the US apparently cannot think properly.

You know, the process by which you consider a hypothesis and look at the evidence one way or another and formulate a response to the hypothesis.

You have all the lawyers in the White House and environs who apparently cannot tell the difference between interrogation and torture; you have Ben Stein who appears to know next to nothing about a subject on which he is quite prepared to pontificate on for lengthy periods of time whilst never actually breaking the surface of the sea of idiocy in which he is drowning; and don't get me started on Ann Coulter.

Maybe there are a lot of lawyers in England who can't think properly. I've not encountered any.

20. Dinesh D'Souza: Winner of the 2007 Bad Faith Award

Comment #112108 by stephenray on January 16, 2008 at 10:35 am

Personally, I would have voted for Ann Coulter.

Never mind apes, that woman is evidence that homo sapiens is related to slime.

21. Researchers use neuroimaging to study ESP

Comment #108503 by stephenray on January 7, 2008 at 4:59 am

Oh dear.

A waste of research dollars because, as any fule kno, the brain is not the seat of ESP.

ESP is a broad-spectrum response of the entire body's cell network (a bit like Hubbards' engrams) and, in any event, being extra-sensory is not detectable with devices that are designed to measure electrochemical phenomena in the brain.

:o|

22. The OUT Campaign has its own Flea!

Comment #106540 by stephenray on January 3, 2008 at 5:42 am

Radesq wrote: "I was excited when I saw Christian OUT pop up in the discussion thread. I thought someone had come up with a new cleaning product."

I'm having lunch while reading, and that made me swallow an orange pip. I hope you're happy.

23. The Evangelical Rebellion

Comment #103510 by stephenray on December 26, 2007 at 3:04 am

It's hard to be optimistic about the future of the world when you think that the republican choice seems to be between Romney and Huckabee - both of whom should never run the country - and the democrat choice is between Obama and Clinton - neither of whom seem as though they could run the country...

...but then, who imagined George Bush could be as 'successful' as he was?

24. Abstinence Programs Face Rejection

Comment #100630 by stephenray on December 19, 2007 at 2:46 am

MuNky82: your question
"Simple and quick question to ask a religious fundie who is pro-abstinence-only sex ed:
Why did god create our bodies and hormones to have such urges at such a 'young' age?"

betrays a fundamental failure to engage with modern theology.

God did it, of course, for the same reason that he carefully created a tree, put brightly coloured fruit on it capable of bringing the knowledge of right and wrong to the primordial couple, and then said: "See that tree over there? The one with the brightly coloured fruit? *No touchee, no eatee*, OK?"

On a related point, wouldn't it be better, if we wanted teenagers not to have sex, to make it compulsory? Any fule kno that teenagers will refuse to do anything they are told...

"Oh, no, it's my 12th birthday next week. Now I have to have sex every Saturday night until I leave school..."

25. God rest you merry atheist

Comment #99983 by stephenray on December 18, 2007 at 2:46 am

This is ridiculous.

I sing along with Nellie the Elephant, but I don't anthropomorphise animals; I sing along with Puff the magic dragon but I don't believe in dragons; I sing along with Seven Seas of Rhye and the Fairie Feller's Master-stroke but I've no idea where Rhye is and I don't believe in Fairies; I sing along with Der Fliegende Hollander but I don't believe in an eternal sea captain. So hell yes, I sing along with a good carol and a good hymn.

26. Creationists plan British theme park

Comment #99547 by stephenray on December 17, 2007 at 3:12 am

Generally, what I'd like to know is this.

Where do I object to these pillocks getting any type of public funding? Fair enough if woo-woo mudwit rich businessmen want to waste their money on it, but there are far more important things for European and English grant money to be spent on.

Especially when, for example, arts funding has just been told to get ready for serious cuts.

27. Creationists plan British theme park

Comment #99543 by stephenray on December 17, 2007 at 3:10 am

Quote Northern Bright:

"Is it just me, or is this a spectacular non sequitur?"

That's what I was thinking. It's when there's *no* sex or violence on TV that I think about getting drunk...

28. Voyager 2 probe reaches solar system boundary

Comment #98091 by stephenray on December 13, 2007 at 4:19 am

The whole rocket thing is unbelievably antiquated. It would be like running railways on steam ... er

Anyway, NASA should be using a linear accelerator. Cheaper, safer, greener...

29. U.S. Congress Recognizing the importance of Christmas and the Christian faith

Comment #98077 by stephenray on December 13, 2007 at 3:44 am

It's ironic, innit?

We have an established church here in the UK but if we assigned a factor of 100 to the obsession with religion in US politics, the factor over here would be about 2.

It's the education, I reckon. Generations of kids have grown up in the US without learning any analytical skills.

30. Girl, 16, dies after hijab dispute with father

Comment #97393 by stephenray on December 12, 2007 at 2:33 am

Ooops.

It may be that religion is involved with 'honour killings', but it isn't necessarily the cause. It's a social/cultural thing, isn't it?
For a start off, yesterday's BBC Radio 4 programme 'Taking a stand' featured the *Sikh* brother of a *Sikh* woman who was 'lured' to India and killed by her mother in law because she was planning to divorce the woman's son - an 'honour killing'. I know I have heard of honour killings amongst Hindus as well.

Now, we don't have honour killings in countries in the 'christian' world, but let's not over-egg the pudding and attribute this killing to Islam.

Admittedly this murder appears to have been set off by the daughter's refusal to comport herself according to the dictates of her parents' religion, but the distinction is important, even if it is a fine one.

Where an act of criminal stupidity is prompted by religion, let's say so. Where it is attributable just to primitive ignorance, let's say *that*.

And while I'm at it, can we find a suitably insulting and disgusted alternative to the phrase 'honour killing', which makes it clear to the fuckwit pigs who approve of such acts that they are simply inexcusable and unforgiveable?

31. Functional Neuroimaging of Belief, Disbelief, and Uncertainty

Comment #97387 by stephenray on December 12, 2007 at 2:18 am

Interesting, and wholly supporting the talk presented by one of the speakers at Enlightenment 2.0 who discussed thought experiments in which people were invited to respond to, eg, the thought of eating sterlised cockroaches during a famine (or something like that) and who react viscerally and then rationalise their response, rather than consider the situation and give a considered response. He said he had set up situations where the response was 'I know I'm wrong and I can't justify my decision, but I just can't bring myself to accept the proposition.'

It would be interting to repeat the experiment, carrying out some form of test beforehand to divide the candidates into sceptics and believers and see if the sceptics are any less likely to make judgments in the instinctive rather than higher cognition areas of the brain. And whether that is a cause of or an effect of having a sceptical disposition...

32. An Open Letter to Richard Dawkins

Comment #96895 by stephenray on December 11, 2007 at 4:10 am

I was wondering where the good Father thought that Marxism had failed?

There've been plenty of totalitarian regimes which claim to draw on Marxist ideas, but clearly did not in fact do so.

33. A Call For a Presidential Debate on Science and Technology

Comment #96891 by stephenray on December 11, 2007 at 4:04 am

FAT CHANCE!

You think any of these dummmies is going to sign up for a debate in which they envisage saying "Uh - I don't know..." over and over again for an hour?

34. Biologist fired for beliefs, suit says

Comment #96121 by stephenray on December 10, 2007 at 3:08 am

Know what I find most offensive about this claim?

That Hahn was cited as a separate defendant.

As an English lawyer, it's clear that Hahn was acting in the course of his employment when he dismissed Abraham. If he exceeded his authority then that's a matter for his employer to take up.

As far as Abraham was concerned, he's not entitled in my view to have any feelings about Hahn except as the person who administered WHOI policy on this occasion.

The hope is, of course, by citing everybody and his dog the dork and his dorky christian lawyers are hoping to find a chink in the armour.

Bleagh, as Charlie Brown would say.

35. Mitt Romney's Faith In America address (as prepared for delivery)

Comment #94985 by stephenray on December 7, 2007 at 5:27 am

Dig the stuff he says after the bit about what Americans have sacrificed in the name of liberty.

'We got no land, no treasure, no oaths of fealty.'

Um. That's - what's it called - a half-truth, right?

36. Mitt Romney's Faith In America address (as prepared for delivery)

Comment #94984 by stephenray on December 7, 2007 at 5:22 am

It's a goldilocks speech!!

"Over there in Europe, they are a godless bunch with empty cathedrals. And over there in raghead land, they are so enthusiastic about their beliefs that they're gosh-darned killing each other. But over here in the good ol' US of A, the porridge is just right, not too hot and not too cold."

Brigham Young had to flee to Utah because the Mormons were a bunch of self-serving credulous twits who liked being able to marry as many wives as they liked and the local christians didn't like that one bit.

And gues what? It turns out that polygamy is not an essential tenet of Mormonism after all, because they dumped it in order to gain statehood for Utah. So those early Mormons weren't, as Romney suggests, persecuted for their religious beliefs at all.

37. Colouring book warns kids of pedophile priests

Comment #94975 by stephenray on December 7, 2007 at 5:04 am

Did anyone see about the US Marine Chaplain/Priest who was HIV positive and sodomising the recruits?

No, it's not a joke, it's in today's LA Times (or possibly ysterday's).

(Sort of reinforces what my acquaintaces in the Paras have always told me about Marines...or shouldn't I say that?)

38. Sherri Shepherd needs to go away now

Comment #94602 by stephenray on December 6, 2007 at 3:30 am

I have never heard even the most bizarro christians claiming that nothing predates christians. Their whole religion is predicated on the fact that Judaism predated christianity. You know, Abraham, Moses, Daniel, Job, Solomon, David - several hundred years at least before Christ popped up and said "Whoa! Well done guys but - uh - you got it all wrong. Let me explain..."

Not only does this woman - who I never heard of before - not know anything worth knowing, she doesn't even know anything about her own religion.

39. Fox: 'Atheist Outrage' over holiday 'Tree of Knowledge'

Comment #94599 by stephenray on December 6, 2007 at 3:21 am

Oh boy.

Kudos to quetlcoatl for his remark about apples and the tree of knowledge!

Now I have to dry out my keyboard.

On another note, I really hate it when people on TV and radio who I support and approve of are interrupted by other people who are debating them.

So I have to strongly disapprove when people I support are interrupting other people in the same way. If you can't take part in the programme without restraining yourself, or don't believe you'll get a fair crack of the whip, then don't accept the invitation.

It's really important. It's one of the reasons Mr Hitchens is at the bottom of my list of good atheist debaters (and why he is on the top of the list of the TV producers, since he makes for good ratings).

40. Evolution and Texas

Comment #94290 by stephenray on December 5, 2007 at 6:51 am

It's a vicious circle.
Kids don't know much about evolution because it isn't taught as thoroughly as it should be. Then because they don't know much about it they are easy meat for the ID pillocks who burble about there being 'no evidence' for evolution, or 'too many gaps', or whatever. So they say, 'sure, teach the controversy, whatever', which means kids don't know much about evolution because...
I think it was in Natalie Angier's book The Canon that she talks about a conference on evolution in which the scientists present new discovery after new discovery, building on what biologists already know is an indisputable mountain of evidence that proves evolution by natural selection as the explanation for the diversity of life.
All the journalists are demanding to know why they've never heard about this stuff before, why no-one told them about the overwhelming evidence...well, duh.

41. Nurses Told to Turn Muslims' Beds to Mecca

Comment #94282 by stephenray on December 5, 2007 at 6:41 am

Can I just ask everyone to remember how reliable is the UK media?
In the 1980s, stories appeared in - well, at least all the UK tabloids, possibly all UK national papers - about an inner london council (Haringey? Brent?) where the authority had ordered that the nursery ryhme 'Baa-baa-black-sheep' was to be banned from local schools. The head of the authority was Bernie Grant, a black man with strong left leanings who despised tabloid journalist (that's three strikes, then!) and a huge hate figure for the right wing press of the day.
Of course, everyone went off like fireworks rockets - 'ridiculous' 'political correctness gone mad' - and so forth.
Little by little it turned out that it was a hoax. The hoaxer even went public. One newspaper was sold the story, didn't check it, all the other newspapers read it in the first edition and added it to their later editions, etc.
Even now, you'll find people that still think it happened.
Whatever you read in a paper, WAIT! See what happens over the next few days, see what other journalists say, and particularly the BBC (despite everything, still one of the most reliable sources in the world). Nowadays, check the blogosphere too.

42. Boy dies of leukemia after refusing treatment for religious reasons

Comment #92505 by stephenray on November 30, 2007 at 4:19 pm

Re BNCBright - I'm more worried that somebody with bizarre religious beliefs is teaching philosophy. Maths, French, Physics, etc., maybe; but philosophy? If you have a faith all the questions of philosophy have the same answer, surely?

43. Boy dies of leukemia after refusing treatment for religious reasons

Comment #92503 by stephenray on November 30, 2007 at 4:18 pm

This sort of thing is going to keep on happening until religion is stripped of its free ride - "you cannot call this into question because *it is my faith*."

44. Pupil defends teacher in Muhammad teddy furore

Comment #91680 by stephenray on November 29, 2007 at 1:08 am

It seems nobody complained for several weeks.

Am I the only one who wonders what her real offence was? The one that made some parents go and spread their religiously-inspired malice where it would do the most damage?

Yech. I feel so outraged (about her and the poor Saudi girl sentenced to 200 lashes) that I'm beginning to think that maybe RD is wrong. In the face of such outrageous disregard for common humanity, I *can* see atheists setting out to kill in the name of destroying religion...

45. Mitt the Mormon

Comment #91557 by stephenray on November 28, 2007 at 2:41 pm

Isn't the problem here that all the people in Europe who were too dumb to respond 'Yeah, yeah, whatever you say' to the potentates of the time as they propogated their faith, ended up fleeing to America?

Therefore until that helpless lack of pragmatism is blended out of the gene pool the US is always going to be fucked up about religion.

46. Bankrolling Ali's Asylum

Comment #91553 by stephenray on November 28, 2007 at 2:35 pm

I didn't know Hitchens and Harris had drawn some parallel with Aayan and Nazi europe.

It is, of course, nonsense. Aayan fled Holland not because of the political administration of that country, but because it's (believed to be) easier for moslem terrorists to get to her there than it is in the US.

We use a phrase in law: 'it's a distinction without a difference'. Hitchens and Harris drew a comparison without a similarity.

47. Tony Blair: Mention God and you're a 'nutter'

Comment #90665 by stephenray on November 26, 2007 at 4:14 am

It's astonishing to see someone intelligent enough to pass the Bar exam extolling the attitude to religion in politics in the USA over the attitude we have to it over here.

It's yet another instance of RD's assertion that religion is a like a virus; it causes a disease that destroys the brain's ability to think clearly.

Oh, and once again I feel like puking thinking of the amount of money a retired Prime Minister is going to make dawdling around the world being paid to burble idiocies in front of an adoring audience of rich twits.

48. The absurd world of Martin Amis

Comment #90664 by stephenray on November 26, 2007 at 4:11 am

Oh, curses. It's finally happened.

I'm forced to disagree with someone who's criticising Martin Amis...

It's like being a dog trying to decide between two lampposts.

49. Taking Science on Faith

Comment #90662 by stephenray on November 26, 2007 at 4:02 am

From steve99

What Davies is talking about is the the assumption that there are fixed laws of physics that exist outside the universe. For example, string theorists would probably claim that string theory is a fundamental law, and which universes exist are determined by it. Davies worries that such claims are too inflexible.

50. Taking Science on Faith

Comment #90660 by stephenray on November 26, 2007 at 3:55 am

Ahh, this old chestnut.

"Science is no better than religion because it needs faith, and that faith is that the universe can be explained."

It does not require faith to believe that the universe follows laws.

This is because it is an inescapable observation that the universe is ordered. If it were not ordered, then we could not exist to observe it, since it would be random. Examples of its order are everywhere, from the fact that things never fall upward through to the fact that people never die, live life in reverse and are subsequently born.

It is a simple, first-order deduction of no difficulty whatsoever to say that the order of an ordered universe can be investigated and explained.

Not the faintest scintilla of faith is required.