1. Richard Dawkins interviewed by John Humphrys on Cardinal Murphy O'Connor

Comment #177948 by oeditor on May 10, 2008 at 3:26 am

Murphy-O'Connor said that he hadn't heard the earlier interview with RD, because he'd been praying at the time. As must have been the BBC technicians who could have played it back to him before he went on air. Or was he flagellating himself for the best part of an hour?

2. Sexpelled: No Intercourse Allowed

Comment #163775 by oeditor on April 19, 2008 at 2:45 am

The YouTube version is "no longer available". Is this a breakdown of some sort, or have the cretinists sat on it?
Brian

3. In Britain, creationist theory is evolving

Comment #145754 by oeditor on March 18, 2008 at 5:22 am

Just for the record, does anyone have a link to an archive of the school stuff removed from the AiG site? It must be in Google's cache somewhere but a quick search doesn't show anything obvious.
TIA
Brian

4. Mitt the Mormon

Comment #91622 by oeditor on November 28, 2007 at 5:31 pm

Why all this fuss about a bit of plagiarism? Wasn't all this 'mormon' nonsense pinched from Rev. Solomon Spaulding's manuscript of his novel? Google, btw, is far less reticent about this if you restrict your query to UK sources. Are our USA friends missing something?
Brian

5. Arguments Against Evolution

Comment #81803 by oeditor on October 25, 2007 at 8:00 am

>The Second Law of Thermondynamics:
>If evolution breaks the Second Law of Thermodynamics, then so does >LIFE.
Of course. But that's looking at it from a thermal point of view. The creationists have now conflated heat with information, and Andy McIntosh is going around saying that even if you can add information to a system, it can't do anything with it unless there is a (divinely implanted?) "machine" in the system (McIntosh's Demon). By this argument he declares evolution impossible.

Since thermodynamics and information theory are difficult to understand, punters are easily blinded by pseudoscience. Does anybody know where there's a robust understandable refutation of this nonsense?
Brian

6. His word: Attacking religion can seem like breaking a butterfly on a wheel

Comment #51505 by oeditor on June 23, 2007 at 7:01 am

>Bringing back the "butterfly on a wheel" phrase is >horrid enough
And allowed the subeditor to use it as a headline, ignoring the next sentence where Baddiel went on to say that religion was no butterfly.

7. An Inquisition in science's name

Comment #51501 by oeditor on June 23, 2007 at 6:43 am

RE: OFFTOPIC CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
>he looked sullen,
My wife and I watched the programme and we both thought he looked ill. If he felt as bad as he looked, he did very well to turn up at all.
Brian

8. The Great Mutator

Comment #49735 by oeditor on June 13, 2007 at 7:24 am

"To my knowledge, such a statement is unique. Biology departments do not customarily assert publicly that they support a theory known for more than a century to be true. This is equivalent to a chemistry faculty announcing that "we are unequivocal in our support of atoms""

An engineering department, however, has come pretty close. Prominent UK creationist Prof. Andy McIntosh works as a professor of thermodynamics at the high-ranking University of Leeds. His university has this to say about him:
"The university wishes to distance itself publicly from theories of creationism and so-called intelligent design, which cannot be verified by evidence"
Since the professor, wearing his creationist hat, asserts that evolution is impossible since it would contravene the second law of dynamics, the university appears to be distancing itself from his professional opinion as well as his religious ones. The quote is from a letter by RD,
http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,1975176,00.html
citing a Leeds University press statment:
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/media/news/mcintosh.htm

Brian

9. The Blairs' Witch Project

Comment #45336 by oeditor on May 27, 2007 at 8:03 am

"In my mind, weapons of mass destruction which can be mobilised in 45 minutes are from the same category as creationism and Light Beings."

I've always thought that rather than a lie, it was a failure to understand. I suspect that what was originally meant was that it took 45 minutes to *assemble* binary weapons from two separate components already in position ready for use.
Brian

10. Against All Gods, by A C Grayling

Comment #36408 by oeditor on May 1, 2007 at 3:59 am

40. Comment #36170 by kaiserkriss on April 30, 2007 at 12:10 pm
Sulfolk Blue: Try the Science light approach.. A good book and an easy read is Bill Bryson's "A short history of nearly everything".

11. Street Evangelist Saves 300 Souls From Enjoying Park

Comment #33846 by oeditor on April 22, 2007 at 6:22 am

" 1. Comment #33758 by _J_ on April 21, 2007 at 4:07 pm
Spot on Onionage, as usual.

Reminds me of the guys I saw at the Edinburgh Festival for a few years running. Maybe it's just my memory, but I recall them as a daunting, haggard and grey bunch, like extras from The Addams Family or Dawn of the Dead, waving banners of doom and shouting - positively shouting - hardline Revelations claptrap at the throngs of festival goers."

I wonder if that was Prof. Andy McIntosh? He was preaching there with the United Beach Missions in at least 2001. Info from Tinshill Church Magazine no 222 (no longer on line).

Brian

12. Christians at Bible publishers have their throats cut

Comment #33038 by oeditor on April 19, 2007 at 3:40 am

"Now the police found a special drug in one of killers' blood, that cancels faith and conscious."
My initial reaction was to crack a joke about "anti-geraniol" but then I wondered if it was true? Were these religious maniacs deliberately drugged? If so, is this commonplace? What drug was it? Or were they just on geraniol after all?

Brian

13. Medical 'Miracles' Not Supported by Evidence

Comment #31752 by oeditor on April 14, 2007 at 4:46 am

"It's about channeling energy and resonating with the person. The principles of quantum physics explain many of these intuitive mystical aspects of attention and intention,"
And there was I, thinking it was a divine, local and temporary, suspension of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Andy McIntosh, where are you when we need you?
Brian

14. Praying for the Apocalypse

Comment #30897 by oeditor on April 10, 2007 at 9:03 am

"31. Comment #30769 by cheshirecat on April 9, 2007 at 6:13 pm
There is some argument about how big heaven is though i don't know where they get this figure from. It does say my fathers house has many mansions or something though."

It must be pretty well mapped out - some woman is selling lots there. Like the entrepreneur who's sold thousands of lots on the moon. Can't have been very well publicised though - at the last count she'd only sold about 15. C'mon you fruitcakes, get in line to book your spot. Only 143,985 remaining!
Brian

15. Growing Up in the Universe: 2-Disc DVD Set

Comment #29189 by oeditor on April 2, 2007 at 2:51 am

I see the discs are NTSC. How likely are UK schools to be able to play them on their PAL (I assume) equipment?
Brian

16. Darwin 'was committed to publish'

Comment #28859 by oeditor on March 31, 2007 at 10:16 am

Comment #28762 by Russell Blackford
"I think you'll find that the last supposed witch executed by any method in England was way back in the 17th century. I doubt that that was on his mind in the 1830s-1850s, whatever else was."
Maybe, but the last witchcraft trial in Britain came a hundered or so year later in 1944!
http://heritage.scotsman.com/myths.cfm?id=1597372006
The last witch burning in Europe seems to have been as recently as 1793, only 16 years before Darwin's birth http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/1000years.htm and elsewhere. Of course, if you travel outside Europe you can find places where such things are much more recent. like Congo in the closing years of the 20th century. "Children are being accused of sorcery and chucked onto the streets.
The unlucky ones are murdered by their own family members before they escape." and
"The sect - run by a free-thinking Congolese Bible teacher called Prophet Onokoko - has 230 children on its books. All are accused of witchcraft."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/575178.stm
Brian

17. Dispatches: Undercover Mosque

Comment #18377 by oeditor on January 20, 2007 at 7:25 am

Lionel A wrote:
"I wonder if this is mentioned somewhere in the Hadith, a book of perhaps equal importance to the Qur'an. Some of it can be found at:

http://www.iiu.edu.my/deed/hadith/other/hadith_500.html#NOTE"

Bear in mind whatever the (dubious) provenance of the Koran, Muslims themselves recognise that the Hadith were largely made up for political or theological reasons. They became so numerous that they had to be purged and most of them were thrown out. The remaining ones merely represent a consensus. Wikioedia touches on the matter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadith. There is a discussion at http://hadith.rationalreality.com/ It's not the lightest of reads, though.

Brian

18. The Only One in Step

Comment #14536 by oeditor on December 23, 2006 at 3:53 am

Joadist wrote
>When asked how God could have created the Universe >in a period of Seven 24-Hour days, he explained:
>
>God's Days are not the same length as Earthly days.

McIntosh would dispute this. He makes no bones about it - he believes that the six creation days were of 24hours each.

Brian

19. Sunday Sequence with William Crawley

Comment #12759 by oeditor on December 13, 2006 at 4:50 pm

>I'm as sure as is Prof. Dawkins that McIntosh is >well aware of the overwhelming evidence for >evolutionary theory. I therefore wonder if he has >been pushed into this position of prominence by his >co-religionists because of his faculty position?

I don't think so. He's been prominent in the Young Earth Creationist cult for years, and goes all over the world lecturing and preaching his beliefs. What ever else, he's really committed to them. The mystery is how he can square it with his science - even if he is a mathematician/engineer rather than a biologist or geologist.

Brian

20. Creation vs. Darwin takes Muslim twist in Turkey

Comment #12685 by oeditor on December 13, 2006 at 9:02 am

>No where in history has there been such a book that >has been memorized by so many, that has been studied >so extensively other than the Glorius Quran.

No where in history has so much time been wasted by so many memorizing rubbish. Christians have probably wasted as much time studying their Bible, but at least they don't tend to TOTALLY stuff their minds with it.

Brian

21. Vicars in a Twist

Comment #12681 by oeditor on December 13, 2006 at 8:23 am

>Another page from the site I linked in my No. 16 >comment: >http://objectiveministries.org/members/#AMILLER

Not to mention
http://objectiveministries.org/creation/slot.html
where Dr. Richard Paley teaches all you need to know about the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Exactly as preached by Prof. Andy McIntosh.
Well worth browsing the site, too :-))

Brian