Comments by Shuggy

Comment #314148 by Shuggy on January 6, 2009 at 10:12 pm

Meikol, the god you posit is something like the God of the deists, but as a part of the universe it can't have played any role in creating the universe. There are plenty of novel thoughts. So write a novel. Maybe it'll be the next Harry Potter or His Dark Marterials. There have been short SF stories based on humans as farmed ants, and movies like The Truman Show. They can be useful ways of encouraging thinking about the nature of reality, but not serious alternatives in their own right.

The slogan on the buses is on a variety of other products.

2. Beyond Belief: Darwinism and religion

Comment #312780 by Shuggy on January 5, 2009 at 2:48 pm

The "emergence" within Protestantism of very literal approaches? Or "survival beyond their best-by date"?

3. Beyond Belief: Darwinism and religion

Comment #312771 by Shuggy on January 5, 2009 at 2:38 pm

7. Comment #312752 by squinky on January 5, 2009 at 1:54 pm

This just sounds like a joke:

A Jew, a Muslim, and a Rabbi all sit down to talk about evolution. The Jew says...

Punchline: A Jew, a Muslim, and a Rabbi all sit down to talk about evolution.

You've lost me, squinky. Those are not mutually exclusive categories: a rabbi is a Jew, by definition.

4. Does Religion Make You Nice?

Comment #312490 by Shuggy on January 5, 2009 at 1:55 am

I don't know how much slack you should cut them, but some people are sadly deficient in reasoning skills. They were simply never taught any elementary logic. If they went to church schools that focussed on rote learning, with threats if they challenged anything they were taught, and faulty arguments were used in their "education", then how could they ever learn to think straight? The world is organised so that people deficient in such skills can manage very well, and even excel in fields where that is not a requirement (such as art - could that be why artists who DO appreciate logic and then play with it, notably Escher, appeal to geeks like us?).

In short, I'm afraid she's real.

5. What do atheists do at Christmas?

Comment #311179 by Shuggy on January 2, 2009 at 8:27 pm

243. Comment #308347 by Wosret on December 29, 2008

The toilet water myth (though I would suppose it could involve any water) I believe was started by a Simpson episode, where Lisa erroneously claimed this.

No, no, it's much older. Oh dear, the young, who can't remember anything before The Simpsons!

It is false. Water swirls in the direction of the initial direction of the flow. It can swirl in either direction depending on this.

In theory it could be true: the minute coriolis force caused by the earth's rotation could make a perfectly still body of water swirl in one direction rather than the other, opposite directions in the two hemispheres. You would have to take extraordinary measures to make it still enough, and I don't think anyone has ever done it. It is strong enough to affect the swing of a large, long (Faucolt's) pendulum, but I don't know how long it has to swing before it settles into its pattern.

But the people who run below decks as their liner crosses the equator and expectantly fill handbasins are certainly wasting their time.

On topic and topical: has anyone ever rejected the christian year-beginning? (I know some have started renumbering, eg AW [After Woodstock].) And if so, when did they begin the year?

6. For scholars, a combustible question: Was Christ real?

Comment #308216 by Shuggy on December 29, 2008 at 3:40 pm

At exactly what point did the doctrine of God as Loving Heavenly Father arise? Was it Jesus or Paul? If Jesus, then his historicity may be of some interest. Otherwise, Jesus the man is of hardly any historical interest whatever.

7. Heaven for the Godless?

Comment #307879 by Shuggy on December 28, 2008 at 7:44 pm

The main reason people believe in Heaven and Hell is because the world is not fair. Heaven and Hell seemed to make it fair. And never underestimate the power of people to believe in what it feels good to believe in.

The primitive afterlife wasn't much but it reconciled the lifeless body they saw with their inability to believe that the person they knew had ceased to exist.

Then as people discussed their wishes into being, they developed the idea of two afterlives, for the good and for the bad, with no doubt a fairly simple decision-making tree, probably based on "more good than bad" -> Heaven and vice versa. It was probably those people who made the afterlives eternal, just because the idea of death after death would seem to create new problems. I can't work out just when the idea of infinite bliss vs infinite pain came along, but it seems to have been pretty much set up in the teachings of Jesus.

Then the churches got hold of Heaven and Hell and imposed their ideas on them, using them as - as Tom Paine called them - bribe and threat, with belief in their version of the facts the sole criteria for acceptance, and adding in their absolutism - nothing but perfection is good enough - at a relatively late stage. Even as they were adding it, it would be apparent that nobody was going to get in, so they devised the Atonement as a loophole, with belief the necessary condition to lock the faithful into their system.

This is all pretty much off the top of my head. Does anyone have any documentation of the actual sequence of events?

8. Richard Dawkins explains his 'Scarlet A' lapel pin - The Out Campaign

Comment #307381 by Shuggy on December 27, 2008 at 10:29 pm

60. Comment #305680 by MelM on December 23, 2008

I think there's need for some text to go with the pin.

Badges etc. with a little "-theist" after the first leg of the "A" are here

9. Richard Dawkins explains his 'Scarlet A' lapel pin - The Out Campaign

Comment #307332 by Shuggy on December 27, 2008 at 5:03 pm

9. Comment #305144 by Eshto on December 22, 2008 at 5:54 pm

Were those the ladies picking the sperm donors?

They could do a lot worse than pick RD. But I'm reminded of George Bernard Shaw's response to a noted beauty who said "Mr Shaw, we should have a child. Imagine, with my looks and your brain...!"

GBS: "But suppose he should have my looks and your brain...?"

10. Jimmy Carr on Richard Dawkins

Comment #304364 by Shuggy on December 20, 2008 at 8:35 pm

And there was me thinking Jimmy Carr was just a C list figure of fun in the world of light entertainment. I now see that I was wrong as he is now being feted as one who's opinions we should value and who's thought processes we should endevour to emulate.

Glad to hear it! It's always healthy to have your ideas shaken up.

(RD isn't a great comedian, either....)

11. Win Ben Stein's Mind

Comment #297307 by Shuggy on December 4, 2008 at 11:48 pm

25. Comment #296713 by Dhamma GOD DAMNIT!! I just had my first Jehovas witnesses ever knocking on my door, ... I've always wanted to have a discussion with one of them for the sake of amusement. Does anyone know if they'll come back when I didn't even get the chance to welcome them in?

I think they operate on the general principle that if you don't actually drive them out with contumely and menaces, they'll be back.

12. The Religion of Peace Strikes Again

Comment #297300 by Shuggy on December 4, 2008 at 11:18 pm

Comment #297287 by DarwinsPitbull
Comment #296992 by Bernstein
My position has been consistent this whole time. Those who have been paying close attention will realize this. I think homosexuals would have had it easier if they simply lobbied for equivalent rights for their unions than lobbying for the right to "marry" per se. I don't object to them calling it "marriage", but I don't see why I need to support it either. I won't oppose it, though. The fact that "marriage" and its associated rights are now tied together in some places is not my problem. Perhaps they will realize their "mistake" (relatively few places will actually let them call it "marriage" in the short term due to ignorance) and instead take the easier approach (i.e. just fight for the rights which is what matters, after all) since it had been demonstrated to me that the word "marriage" doesn't really mean anything anyway. In short, I feel it's my obligation to vote for them when I think they are doing it right and my obligation to at least not vote, when I really think they are doing it wrong.

I haven't been following this discussion that closely but I tend to agree with what you said there if I understand you correctly. So you believe gay people should have the same rights as married people, but if people don't let them call it marriage then they should just accept that? If so then what is the big problem? I am for gay people having the same rights as hetero people, but if they give gay people the same equal rights but say "You just can't call it marriage", then who cares. If thats the case then they are not fighting for equal rights, because they are actually getting them, but they are fighting for a word which I think is rather ridiculous

If we'd had a chance to start from scratch, this would be a fair position - that's pretty much what we have in New Zealand, and we're reasonably happy with it, "civil union" equal in every way to marriage, in fact it's said they just went through the Marriage Act and Twinked® out all reference to the sex of the partners - but the state of California legalised gay marriage and called it marriage, and Proposition 8 took that away, leaving thousands of couples married, and many more wanting to marry and not being allowed to. It's the flagrant discrimination we object to. Having tasted fine champagne, we're not going to be fobbed off with methode champagnoise.

I only learnt yesterday that not only couldn't racially mixed couples marry in the US until quite recently, but slaves could never marry each other - or rather, their marriages weren't recognised by slaveowners or the law. It is, after all, about freedom.

13. Atheists want God out of Ky. homeland security

Comment #296317 by Shuggy on December 3, 2008 at 12:42 pm

but this is a foundational understanding of what America is."

I have long loathed what I call the American tautology (unfair, but that's where most of them come from) - dossying up a noun by qualifying it with the adjectival form of an abstract noun that means the same thing. ("maturational rate of growth" "aspirational hope"). This nearly qualifies.

14. Review of 'The Four Horsemen'

Comment #294301 by Shuggy on December 1, 2008 at 12:21 am

4. Comment #293997 by Gwiss on November 30, 2008

Maybe it's a message delivered to our collective unconscious by the Super Friends: Jesus, Moses, Buddha, Mohamed, Seaman, Joseph Smith, Krishna, Lao Tzu. They must be in need of our help!!

You missed out Mary Baker Eddy, and who's Seaman?

18. Comment #294289 by MatthaiNazrani on November 30, 2008

"A kind of political Newton's First Law [...] begets a powerful and equal counterforce." huh?

Would make (a little) more sense if they said "Third Law".

15. Richard Dawkins: An Exclusive Profile

Comment #294291 by Shuggy on November 30, 2008 at 11:47 pm

Invite Jesus to dinner only if the shops have closed and you're out of bread and fish.

16. Children of God?

Comment #293716 by Shuggy on November 30, 2008 at 12:08 am

In a real sense, religiousness is the natural state of affairs. Unbelief is relatively unusual and unnatural.

Just another natural thing that humans will have to learn to rise above, then, like our tendency to solve problems with force and violence.

The virtue of things "natural" is infinitely malleable, depending on who wants what. It is the religious who usually despise what is "natural" as being "animal", "subhuman" etc. but here, if religion is "natural", that makes it a Good Thing, even a True Thing.

17. Vatican thanks Muslims for returning God to Europe

Comment #293421 by Shuggy on November 28, 2008 at 10:41 pm

Bonzai:

they would rather circle the wagon with Islam

My phrase too. They feel beleaguered so they close ranks, never mind that they disagree about almost everything except the all-pervasive sky-man (in two very different versions) and life after death (in two dramatically different versions).

Robotaholic, I think you mean "honour" killings. The Catholic Church has no time for euthanasia either.

18. Just a little jab, won't hurt

Comment #290143 by Shuggy on November 24, 2008 at 6:20 pm

Religion, like influenza, does come in a few different varieties, but they share a lot of common features

I am currently exercised by how religious folk cope with the fact that there are so MANY varieties of religion, and all the people who belong to all the others seem to live very well, thank you, and be very nice people, even though they are going to the eternal torments of Hell. Don't religious folk ask themselves once in a while, "How is it that I was among the tiny minority to be so lucky as to be raised in the faith of the Reformed Right-with-God Paedobaptist Presbymormodists (Eastern), when all those others are damned?"

19. Educated Catholics have sown dissent and confusion in the Church, claims bishop

Comment #286589 by Shuggy on November 19, 2008 at 1:08 am

However, every human endeavor has a dark side, due to original sin and concupiscence.

Strange, um, coupling. The first (if you take the bible literally, as Catholics are not required to do) is some kind of inherited tendency to evil.

The second -

concupiscence /kn"kju:pIs()ns/ n.ME. [(O)Fr. f. late L concupiscentia, f. concupiscent- pres. ppl stem of concupiscere inceptive of concupere, f. as CON- cupere desire.] Eager or inordinate desire; immoderate sexual desire, lust; Theol. desire for worldly things.C. CHAPLIN There’s a dame that arouses my concupiscence. But she looks very expensive. - SOED

Oh lordy, it's got a special theological meaning. Who knew? I was going to refer to the demonisation of a normal biological desire, but what are "worldly things" but things?

20. Christian group halts book launch

Comment #284260 by Shuggy on November 14, 2008 at 7:26 pm

Sadly, freedom of speech means freedom of speech for twats too.

21. Gay Marriage Outlawed in California

Comment #281827 by Shuggy on November 10, 2008 at 11:27 pm

is there any logical reason why we should prevent say a polygamist from demanding that all of his marriages are legal?
Im interested in knowing what the folks here think.(this isn't a slippery slope argument).

It's telling that your hypothetical polygamist is male. Polygamy seems to be a purely patriarchal institution, always polygyny, never polyandry. If it were a relationship of equality, there could be no objection (that I can think of), yet they seem to be more stereotypical (and oppresive) than most marriages, quite Stepfordic. (Odd, given women's greater sexual capacity, and the theoretical freedom of non-pregnant wives to work.)

22. Gay Marriage Outlawed in California

Comment #281757 by Shuggy on November 10, 2008 at 8:13 pm

"We're not going to sit at the back of the marriage bus any more!"

23. Somalia: Rape Victim Executed

Comment #278268 by Shuggy on November 4, 2008 at 2:24 pm

(Edit: I wrote this before I learned it was confirmed that she was 13.)

I'm playing devil's advocate here, and this is a thought in progress (I am absolutely opposed to the death penalty), but do the Muslim clerics etc who support the death penalty for adultery, and the men who enforce it, suppose that this provides some balance against false accusations of rape? Women are not going to accuse men of rape falsely if there is a real risk of them being convicted of adultery. It seems crude to us, compared to "innocent until proved guilty" and a demand for strong evidence, but is that the intent?

Can a single woman be convicted of fornication under the same circumstances? What is the penalty?

And of course it reeks of the double standard, to us, who regard sexual expression as a human right rather than a can of worms.

I was trying to remember the word Margaret Atwood coined in The Handmaid's Tale for this kind of thing, but I had to look it up:

PARTICICUTION

24. Fred Phelps's son is an atheist: Running from hell

Comment #277461 by Shuggy on November 3, 2008 at 9:38 pm

Severalspeciesof:

Are there degrees of fucktardism?...

Fucktardity (cupidity)
Fucktardiness (tardiness)
Fucktardry (bastardry)
Fucktardation (retardation)

Steve Zara:

their claim to God-ness

Goddity (oddity)
Goddiliness (bodiliness)
Godernity (modernity)
Godification (modification)

25. Fred Phelps's son is an atheist: Running from hell

Comment #277456 by Shuggy on November 3, 2008 at 9:31 pm

Nullinifinity:

...a particularly puzzling sign which read "Hell, is real, just ask Matt!" I had no idea what they were doing at my school, or who "Matt" was. So, I walked up to them and asked them! Normally I am too shy to talk to strangers, but it's not everyday that a famous cult just shows up at your doorstep. They explained that they were upset about my school putting on some play about this kid named Matt who did drugs and was gay (or something like that). I didn't even know about this play before. Come to think of it, I should have went to see it, if only to spite the Phelps cult. Anyway, the cult member who I spoke to was Shirley Phelps (I recognized her from the internet). She was actually very polite - as she asserted that Matt was a rebel against God and is now burning in Hell

Matthew Shepard was a young gay men who was picked up by two thugs in a Laramie, Wyoming, bar, tied to a post and rail fence and fatally beaten in 2000. The Phelps Cult picketted his funeral, but a group of "angels" shielded the sight from the mourners. A play about the events is called "The Laramie Project". The WBC website continues to celebrate what they believe to be his Hellish torments.

26. Swatting attacks on fruit flies and science

Comment #276200 by Shuggy on November 1, 2008 at 2:55 pm

But since God created fruit flies and humans separately (Gen 1 21 if fruit flies are "winged birds" or 1 25 if they are things "that creep on the earth", and Gen 1 27) they have nothing to teach us. [/sarcasm]

27. Barack Obama Exposes The Bible

Comment #275173 by Shuggy on October 30, 2008 at 10:21 pm

90. Comment #275149 by dansam on October 30, 2008 at 9:36 pm
I'm liking Obama more & more!!!!/

Me too. And the person who put it up on Youtube is a fucktard. I like the comment there, "He's just mad because now he has to pick his own damn cotton."

28. Somalia: Rape Victim Executed

Comment #274393 by Shuggy on October 30, 2008 at 3:10 am

The penalties for being accused as a female adulterer are severe everywhere, regardless of legal logic, evidence, or culture. There must be some evolutionary psychology explanation – I have no idea what it is but the situation is such an obvious strategy that it is continually reinvented by rapists.

Does it have to do with proof of paternity? If women are allowed to sleep around, the children they bear and I support might not be mine, and that would be a loss to my DNA. Whereas if I can rape women and impregnate them and get away with it, I multiply my DNA with very little effort. Those two are pretty inconsistent, but when was this consistent?

29. Interview with Richard Dawkins on fairy tales and retirement

Comment #274041 by Shuggy on October 29, 2008 at 2:31 pm

j.mills on October 28, 2008 at 8:56 pm
Fuller said:

If you can 'magic' the plot back together you can band-aid any incohesive story line. And where's the suspense, if a character has magic powers?

Well, generally it's gotta have an internal logic to it, as if it were a science. Genre fantasy usually does, creating opportunities for original but coherent plotting. Fairy tales notably don't have such logic, with the magic being strikingly random - though generally aiding the Good Guys.

In the Grimm's version (or maybe it's Perrault's) of Rumplestiltskin, for instance, our heroine is struggling to guess the villain's name whilst walking in the woods, when suddenly the ground opens up to reveal a kitchen in which his name is mentioned. The story offers no explanation whatsoever. I contend that kids, the target audience, don't care, or some kinda pretext for that incident would have found its way into the story.

I don't know who said "No great art was ever made out of Plasticine." (And is it a coincidence that the greatest sculptures are made of the most resistant material, marble?) Fairy tale characters have magical powers, but not generally godlike ones. There's usually a catch. The seventh fairy at Aurora's baptism couldn't undo the witch's curse completely, only change it from death to sleep. Cinderella's fairy godmother couldn't make the pumpkin stay a coach forever or even all night (why not? - well, another universal theme from Adam and Eve onward is that if there's a prohibition, someone will break it).

A world, even a fantasy world, with no rules at all, would be a rather tedious dream world.

On RD's point about people disliking science. They fear what they perceive as the Frankensteinian, wild, dangerous aspects of science, but they still love the beautiful magical aspects, and I don't know about you, but knowing that cellphones and GPSs [? - those satellite thingies that tell you where you are] and computers are heavily science-based fills me with awe and joy towards science.

30. Sarah Palin's War on Science

Comment #273607 by Shuggy on October 29, 2008 at 1:33 am

11. Comment #273314 by Goldy on October 28, 2008 at 2:22 pm

Heheheheheh! I'm glad my choice is easy - Key or Clarke, along with one party or another, along with....
Love proportional representation!

You mean John Key or John Key or Helen Clarke - or Winston or Tariana ....

But yes, until the US gets PM, they're screwed.

31. No-God squad climb aboard the atheist bus

Comment #270699 by Shuggy on October 24, 2008 at 1:39 pm

Stephen Green of Christian Voice predicts that such displays will be covered in graffiti. As he dares to declare: “People don't like being preached at”!

Oh come on! (Or, get off!) Is this so different from the signs outside every other church? What's so different about it being on a bus? And telling people there's probably no god is confrontational, but telling them there certainly is one (who's going to send you to Hell for believeing in Him the wrong way) is not? And telling people not to worry but to get on with their life is "preaching"?

Talk about a double standard!

32. Dawkins: a theologian's perspective

Comment #262976 by Shuggy on October 10, 2008 at 1:04 am

...countless people profess to an experience of something beyond the material or the natural which the naturalist can always try to explain away, but finds it hard to do so because of the sheer mass of such testimony.

Never mind the quality, feel the width. One argument against this kind of thing is the variety of religious experience - and the way it always conforms to the subset that particular believer belongs to. Lutherans hardly ever see the Virgin Mary, for example. Buddhists are seldom blessed with the stigmata.

today it is hard to find many examples of Christian extremism

Hmm...
Pastor Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church
David Koresh and Waco, Texas
Jim Jones and the People's Church
Ted Haggard
Warren Jeffs and the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
and how about all those crooked televangelists ... ?

33. The rival to the Bible

Comment #262968 by Shuggy on October 10, 2008 at 12:07 am

...the Epistle of Barnabas. This goes out of its way to claim that it was the Jews, not the Romans, who killed Jesus, and is full of anti-Semitic kindling ready to be lit. "His blood be upon us," Barnabas has the Jews cry.

Had this remained in subsequent versions, "the suffering of Jews in the subsequent centuries would, if possible, have been even worse", says the distinguished New Testament scholar Professor Bart Ehrman.

But Matthew goes further: "His blood be on us and on our children!" Matthew has the Jews cry. (Matt 27:25) If Baranbas had had the last word, there might have been no persecution of subsequent generations of Jews.

34. The camp that 'cures' homosexuality

Comment #262955 by Shuggy on October 9, 2008 at 11:41 pm

This movement is EVIL.

For ~32 years (from about 5 onward) I struggled against SSA. I only acheived wholeless (to use their terminology) when I embraced it.

(My story is a bit peculiar: I was immersed in a neo-Freudian variety of psychotherapy, not religion - or rather, the religion I was immersed in was a n-F v of pt. If anything it's worse than self-confessed religion because from a self-confessed religion you can see lots of people embracing other self-confessed religions, but n-F pt claims to be a New Truth that the rest of the world just hasn't embraced yet, and it's infallible becauase it wears the mantle of Science. But the general principles are the same.)

So I know all about the struggling, the self-deception and the denial. These people are nothing new.

----

None of these "ex"-gays mention it, but I get the impression that a disproportionate number of "ex"-gays are survivors of sexual abuse. This would figure, if the abuse just screws up their sexuality and self-esteem and leaves them inclined to have sex with anything. If the kind of counselling they deliver undoes that damage, and they were fundamentally heterosexual beforehand, then yes, they might be cured, but not of gayness, which they never had.

35. New Rules for Sarah Palin and Her Witchdoctor

Comment #261946 by Shuggy on October 7, 2008 at 4:45 pm

Thomas Eagleton was stood down as vice-presidential candidate in 1972 because he confessed to having psychiatric treatment. But an exorcist for witchcraft is OK?

36. New Rules for Sarah Palin and Her Witchdoctor

Comment #261480 by Shuggy on October 6, 2008 at 10:47 pm

SARAH PALIN
for
MAYOR of
STEPFORD
not
vice-PRESIDENT

37. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #243701 by Shuggy on September 7, 2008 at 1:54 am

Criminally libellous but:

The reason she was made running mate? She has a blue dress.

38. Participating In Religion May Make Adolescents From Certain Races More Depressed

Comment #243487 by Shuggy on September 6, 2008 at 12:36 am

7. Comment #242960 by robotaholic

wow, this study is different than most studies in that they used a sample of 12,000! - most studies you see are like 1,500 or 10, or i dunno not 12,000-

Large sample sizes are good for detecting subtle effects, but if the depression caused by religion is that subtle it's not very interesting.

Increasing the sample size reduces the margin of error, but at a tapering-off rate - huge sample sizes are no better than moderate sized ones for most purposes.

39. Opening minds

Comment #243438 by Shuggy on September 5, 2008 at 9:27 pm

9. Comment #242868 by Border Collie

If I happened to be a science teacher (I was a teacher), I think I'd start off by not even mentioning evolution or Darwin. I'd start off with agricultural plants and animals. I'd show the students dogs, corn, cattle, cotton, whatever. I'd show them the different breeds and I'd put those different breeds on an approximate time line of when they originated by artificial selective breeding. That would at least give them a mental picture of variation, the actuality of change in form, etc. I don't exactly know how I'd jump the next gap from artificial selection to natural selection, but I think it would be easier if the students, for example, knew how and when chihuahuas showed up on the planet.

That's good, but creationists would say "Yes, but chihuahuas were deliberately bred, like Intelligent Design." In parallel with that, I'd teach the obvious similarities between the different species of cats, dogs, other mammals, birds, reptiles fish, and such plants as are visibly similar, like oranges and lemons (not the banana!). And then get them to draw up their own family trees and think about the similarities there.

On another level, I've just been making a cake, and thinking how the strength of an eggshell is just enough for it to be brought to hatching if it's cared for, and how that balance was achieved. I guess calcium is in fairly short supply or they'd be gratuitously stronger. So you could ask kids about what would happen if eggshells were thinner or thicker.

Incidentally, would this link up to the evolution of parental care? If the shells were stronger, the birds could abandon them (some do, and rely on fermentation to keep them warm) but because they're there at hatching, they're available to go on feeding them.

40. Opening minds

Comment #243420 by Shuggy on September 5, 2008 at 7:46 pm

Dhamma, the use and non-use of the articles "the" "a" "an" is one of the trickiest things in English. When you're mastered that, you're just about ready to start on humour. I speak English like a native (because I am one) and I'm finding it hard to figure out why we don't say "the Evolution". We do say "the evolution" of anything other than life, such as inventions, and when we specify life or some branch - the evolution of animals, the evolution of plants. Is it because "evolution" is an abbreviation for "the evolution of life"? Or are we treating evolution as a mass-noun?

41. Bettany and Connelly to Star in Creation

Comment #243411 by Shuggy on September 5, 2008 at 6:46 pm

"The Da Vinci Code" was crap, but Bettany was good in it. Isn't he a bit young and sexy to be playing Darwin, or wasn't Darwin always an old man with a white beard, as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks assured us?

The Harun Yahya site is funny. He provides so many dated pictures of himself on this page, that you can follow the progressive dewhitening of his beard and temples.

42. Gaming Evolves

Comment #241204 by Shuggy on September 2, 2008 at 1:58 am

Aren't IDers just going to say "Sure it gets better because it was Intelligently Designed™ at the outset, and humans playing God are driving the organisms to greater complexity, etc. so Nyur Nyur Nyur." ?

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

Comment #241181 by Shuggy on September 2, 2008 at 1:26 am

The believer might continue that Darwin helped us to understand one of the key ideas of the Bible: the kinship between humans and animals. The first humans were forbidden to kill animals for food. The covenant with Noah after the flood was made also, as Genesis ix states five times, "with every living creature". The Bible forbids cruelty to animals. This is the polar opposite of the view of Descartes, that animals lack souls and therefore can be used as we will.

You mean, like Gen 9:2-3? (God is speaking to Noah.)

"And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be on every beast of the earth, on every bird of the air, on all that move on the earth, and on all the fish of the sea. They are given into your hand.

"Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. I have given you all things, even as the green herbs."

Seems to me that after the non-historic Flood this very anthropomorphic God reversed his vegetarian edict for no apparent reason, but hadn't yet put into effect his capricious division into "clean" and "unclean". Pufferfish wasn't yet lethal and sharks not yet man-eating. And if Descartes believed humans had "souls" then humanists parted company with him long ago.

The repetitions of "every living creature" occur in God's promise to send a rainbow and no more floods. It wasn't exactly a promise he could be picky and choosy about. Floods are like that. (The end of the chapter is the curious story of Ham "seeing Noah's nakedness" and Noah cursing his son Canaan as a result - this myth resulting in the slavery of Blacks for centuries thereafter.)

Thank Wotan Darwin doesn't have to "help us to understand" any of this archaic confusion! Instead he cast a bright light on the TRUE relationship between humans and the other animals.

44. Better Know a Lobby - Atheism

Comment #240673 by Shuggy on August 31, 2008 at 8:51 pm

What do atheists call out during sex?

NSFW

Same as everyone else...

NSFW

"Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!"
(Why did you think it was called fucking?)

45. God Only SEEMS Nonexistent!

Comment #240638 by Shuggy on August 31, 2008 at 6:26 pm

16. Comment #240415 by NewEnglandBob

Diacanu is correct about the existence of lots of satire. truth/beauty is off base. I give it 3.14926...out of 5 stars

Why 3.14926... looks like a pretty irrational number to choose. (and 0.766... more than pi...?)

I clicked at "killing of the firstborn" and KNEW it was satire with God on a milk carton - that's just not believers' humour, strange though theirs may be.

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

Comment #240620 by Shuggy on August 31, 2008 at 5:21 pm

80. Comment #240211 by keith

Are you saying that the basic laws of the universe (Martin Rees's Just Six Numbers) evolved from something more simple?

That's certainly an intriguing idea. One can imagine "zones" of the early universe ("pre-"Big-Bang?) with random laws, most of which caused those zones to collapse or annihilate themselves or simply stay empty, and ours is (the?) one to survive.

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

Comment #240615 by Shuggy on August 31, 2008 at 5:13 pm

Does anyone of you know what a 'Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth' is ?

He's not quite the King of the Jews, so is he just a naughty boy?

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

Comment #240610 by Shuggy on August 31, 2008 at 5:02 pm

83. Comment #240262 by SoManyStars

"And we might add, in the spirit of Godel's Theorem, that there are truths within the system that cannot be proved within the system."

Don't you jump on the back of secular maths, spirit or otherwise.

He's shortcircuiting an argument from a much more sophisticated religion: people who believe in Einstein's god grant that s/he/it can't be proved or disproved, but they'd probably also grant that s/he/it didn't exactly "exist" either.

That's not Sacks' god, who forbade Adam and Eve to eat meat and sent the Flood but warned Noah, might as well be an old man with a white beard, and is as easily disproved, or rather debunked.

You still can't count the correct number of fish and loaves!

Don't blame a Rabbi for Christian mythology.

49. A Teacher on the Front Line as Faith and Science Clash

Comment #240152 by Shuggy on August 31, 2008 at 1:41 am

Instead of agreeing with the proposition that "Is there a God?" is a question outside science, I think Campbell could have kicked for touch (as we say in this Rugby-mad country) by taking the Joad* Amendment:

"It depends what you mean by God. Einstein believed in a God who didn't play dice with the universe. If you believe that God intervenes in the universe in particular ways, some of those ways can be tested, others can't. Science can only look at what can be tested. For example the proposition that the Earth was created 6000 years ago fails every scientific test that's been put to it...."

*Prof Cyril E M Joad was famous on the BBC "Brains Trust" programme for beginning his answer to many questions with "It depends what you mean by..."

50. A Teacher on the Front Line as Faith and Science Clash

Comment #240141 by Shuggy on August 31, 2008 at 1:12 am

I wonder if Campbell was wise to begin by writing "EVOLUTION" on the screen? Wouldn't that put up the barriers right away? And I'm not sure if I'd begin with obviously unnatural selection like Mickey Mouse. I always like to start with obviously related sets:
cats, lions, tigers lynxes
dogs, wolves, foxes
camels, llamas, alpacas (I think)
oranges, lemons, limes, grapefruit (or are they bred?)
daffodils and narcissi
... in fact, teach them taxonomy. Demonstrate the similarity of all this to a family tree.
Work in artificially selected breeds of dogs, say. (Maybe compare that with Mickey, and the shrinking cellphone and the faster, lighter, more reliable, more comfortable car.) "And before people were creating breeds of dogs by artificial selection, what was happening?"

Get the idea of Natual Selection working, and the mutability of species going before you ever mention the E-word.