










1. Losing Our Spines to Save Our Necks
Comment #175684 by NakedCelt on May 5, 2008 at 9:40 pm
I could list other examples of encounters with editors and publishers, as can many writers, all illustrating a single fact: While it remains taboo to criticize religious faith in general, it is considered especially unwise to criticize Islam. Only Muslims hound and hunt and murder their apostates, infidels, and critics in the 21st century. There are, to be sure, reasons why this is so. Some of these reasons have to do with accidents of history and geopolitics, but others can be directly traced to doctrines sanctifying violence
which are unique to Islam.
2. Religion a figment of human imagination
Comment #171981 by NakedCelt on April 29, 2008 at 4:07 am
I can't back this up off the top of my head, but the source was a clued-up psychologist, so hopefully others will be able to verify it. What I've heard is that you can teach lots of different animals in Skinner boxes to press one switch and get food, and avoid pressing another switch because it gives them electric shocks. Move the animal to a new box with new switches and it starts from scratch, unless it's a human, who, having learned to fear one switch, will transfer the fear to all switches. That sounds like "imagination" to me, but the psychologist reckoned it was a by-product of having evolved language (which requires that very same ability/tendency to generalize concepts).
3. Science 2.0 -- Is Open Access Science the Future?
Comment #167285 by NakedCelt on April 23, 2008 at 8:38 pm
Having 'open source' science would be a tremendous idea if the world were more rational and knew what to do with it. Unfortunately, the reality is that science has to be wary of giving creationists fuel for their canards.
4. Russell T Davies: Return of the (tea) Time Lord
Comment #156124 by NakedCelt on April 6, 2008 at 10:05 pm
The BBC promises this will be even more intense in episode six, "The Doctor's Daughter".
Comment #149599 by NakedCelt on March 26, 2008 at 1:39 am
Here, I've got an idea. There's got to be somebody on this site who works for a magazine or newspaper or something that does reviews. They could volunteer to review Expelled, meaning they get to see it for free. And they could take along a video camera, record it, upload it to the 'Net, and let us all tear it to bits without paying the creationists a cent.
Comment #148738 by NakedCelt on March 23, 2008 at 6:12 pm
Comment #148701 by MPhil:
Using such a term as an ordinary word to describe simply an overbearing official seems to me to be belittling the suffering of the victims of the Nazi-regime.
Maybe I'm a bit oversensitive - but I think taking care not to belittle the Nazi-regime, its crimes and the suffering of its victims is an honorable thing.
7. Don't blame Islam for terrorism, expert says
Comment #148411 by NakedCelt on March 23, 2008 at 2:34 am
Comment #143385 by Styrer-:
To suggest, in any degree whatsoever, that America (however you wish to define it) bears any responsibility whatsoever for the attacks of 9/11 is to strike an utterly wrong-headed propitiatory stance which I cannot condemn strongly enough. By doing so you shamefully re-direct blame from the true and sole perpetrators of this act of mass murder: warped and despicable Islamic fundamentalists drenched in faith who despise everything that civilised, democratic countries represent.
Comment #142063 by NakedCelt on March 11, 2008 at 8:12 pm
Trying to articulate where his religious beliefs stand now, Godfrey's eyes fill with tears. "It's been so long, a lifelong struggle, to sort out," he says. He has flirted with atheism but found it too depressing. Several years ago, he stopped attending church for a year before returning. He believes in God today, he says, but tomorrow may be different.
9. Fleabytes
Comment #136756 by NakedCelt on March 1, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Comment #136728 by Brian English:
WHERE THE FUCK WERE YOU LAST NIGHT? WAIT....IS THAT LIPSTICK.....????
Aphrodite been straying again?
10. Don't blame Islam for terrorism, expert says
Comment #136741 by NakedCelt on March 1, 2008 at 4:17 pm
Comment #133713 by Styrer-:
Fuller is simply adding his voice to the most contemptible imperative: 'Blame the fucking victim'.
Comment #135202 by NakedCelt on February 28, 2008 at 5:34 pm
What's the mutation rate in bdelloid rotifers?
12. Don't blame Islam for terrorism, expert says
Comment #131934 by NakedCelt on February 23, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Comment #131118 by Fanusi Khiyal:
The sickening, masochistic cowardice of Islamic apologists, is nothing more than the fear of confronting true evil.
13. Don't blame Islam for terrorism, expert says
Comment #131009 by NakedCelt on February 21, 2008 at 5:18 pm
Comment #130970 by Teratornis:
It's like lighting a match in a room with a gas leak. It's not fair to blame the resulting explosion only on the match, or only on the gas.
14. Machines 'to match man by 2029'
Comment #128693 by NakedCelt on February 17, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Nanos in the brain? Maybe.
AI equal to human intelligence? I don't think so. Not because it's impossible in principle, but because human intelligence takes so damn long to achieve. AI and linguists together figured out that, to make a machine that can have a sensible conversation with a human being, it needs to have a degree of real-world knowledge comparable to the human being. And that, like it or not, means a learning time comparable to the human being. A childhood of over a decade.
Still could be done if someone wanted to do it, but it'd never, ever be commercially viable. Same reason there are no elephant farms. Same reason, come to think of it, that human eugenics will never work by the time enough generations have passed for the effects to be obvious, society's values will have changed completely and they won't be running the breeding programme any more.
15. Murder plot against Danish cartoonist
Comment #126164 by NakedCelt on February 12, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Comment #125962 by agn on February 12:
Torture the bastards and make them reveal their networks, what family members were in on it, what imams they know of who has spoken in favour of terror, the names of mosque attendants under such speeches.
Enough is enough.
Whatever else is right, it is utterly wrong to employ the argument that we Europeans must do to savages and Asiatics whatever savages and Asiatics do to us. I have even seen some controversialists use the metaphor, "We must fight them with their own weapons." Very well; let those controversialists take their metaphor, and take it literally. Let us fight the Soudanese with their own weapons. Their own weapons are large, very clumsy knives, with an occasional old-fashioned gun. Their own weapons are also torture and slavery. If we fight them with torture and slavery, we shall be fighting badly, precisely as if we fought them with clumsy knives and old guns. That is the whole strength of our Christian civilization, that it does fight with its own weapons and not with other people's. It is not true that superiority suggests a tit for tat. It is not true that if a small hooligan puts his tongue out at the Lord Chief Justice, the Lord Chief Justice immediately realizes that his only chance of maintaining his position is to put his tongue out at the little hooligan. The hooligan may or may not have any respect at all for the Lord Chief Justice; that is a matter which we may contentedly leave as a solemn psychological mystery. But if the hooligan has any respect at all for the Lord Chief Justice, that respect is certainly extended to the Lord Chief Justice entirely because he does not put his tongue out.
16. Exorcism undergoes a revival across Europe
Comment #125736 by NakedCelt on February 12, 2008 at 12:45 am
Comment #125711 by MelM:
Even at Amazon.com's reduced price of 216USD, it's pricey and I'd have no use for the Latin text. I'm hoping that the a 1 volume English version will be published for the general reader. The old translation is available and cheap so I may end up getting it just to see what the mentality was like.
17. Blind Faiths
Comment #125692 by NakedCelt on February 11, 2008 at 9:12 pm
Comment #120625 by Fanusi Khiyal:
Saying that the Eucharist is only metaphorically the body and blood of Christ is the same thing as saying that either the Bible is a fable, or the sacraments are ineffective. Either of those strikes Christianity at the root.
No, they do not. Precisely because there are many different books in the Bible, interpretation is a must. There is nothing in the scene of the last supper that makes it mandatory to believe in transubstantiation; there are ways of reading that differently, which is not so for Naskh. Doubting the efficacy of the Eucharist doesn't strike at the root of Christianity. What would is doubting the divinity of Christ. And it is that that is the equivalent of doubting the innerancy of the Qur'an.
It is hard to exagerrate the reverence that the believing Muslim has for the Qur'an. In the same way that a believing Christian holds Christ to be the Word Made Flesh (a platonic influence here), the believing Muslim holds the Qur'an as the Word Made Paper. To doubt even a word of the Qur'an is the same thing as a Christian doubting Christ's divinity. After that, what faith is left?
In Islam the worst concievable sin, worse than murder, theft, lies, worse than anything, is shirk, unbelief.
Invoking poverty to explain Islam and Jihad, rather than the doctrine itself, is like invoking the treaty of Versailles to explain Nazism and blitzkrieg, instead of the doctrine itself.
Driving Muslims towards apostasy? Are you seriously so drunk on testosterone you can't imagine what effect confirming al-Qaeda et al's propaganda about The Great Satan would really have in Muslim communities?
Are you so shrouded in confusion that you think al-Qaeda is our only problem?
Or do you really think that if we play nice, and crawl and grovel sufficiently, it will spare us?
With Europe rapidly turning into Eurabia, with preachers so evil that they were expelled from Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt fearlessly doing business in London, with Iraqi Muslims complaining that the sermons heard in Britain's Mosques being too extreme for their country, I believe your simplistic vision of Muslims correcting their thinking on being confronted with the obvious superiority of our Civilisation, might be a trifle flawed.
"Continual Jewish presence"? Yes, but so what? So what if there have always been people in the Holy Land who happened to have the same beliefs as another bunch of people in Russia or Spain? Why does that mean the people in Russia or Spain have the right to take land off people in the Holy Land who don't happen to share those beliefs?
Perhaps I am misunderstanding you, but you gave the impression of holding opinion that jewish presence in the form of Israel was encroaching on the Muslim Arabs 'who lived there originally'. My point was that the Jews lived there originally, and if anyone has a historical claim on that area, it is them. So, that argument doesn't go anywhere. And if you are going to argue right of conquest, then the arab muslims loose out on that one to.
By "fixing" Iraq, though, I mean getting to the point that people aren't starving or getting shot and are enjoying basic human rights there.
Well, good luck.
And even though an occasionalist god intervenes constantly in the universe, he does so according to a plan that he has known since before creation.
Not so. An occasionalist god intervenes at every single moment. Everything is Inshallah - if Allah wills it. He could suddenly decide to make all muslims polytheists, or reverse his commandments, or make the sun change course, and the muslim is forbidden from speculating about this. He is only supposed to obey the divine will, never, ever seek to understand.
That is a huge, huge difference from the theist god who has set up rules that he occasionally violates (impregnating Mary and so on). Because such a god has a plan, and you may inquire as to what it is. That is a very big difference.
18. Blind Faiths
Comment #118862 by NakedCelt on January 31, 2008 at 5:01 am
Comment #118160 by Fanusi Khiyal:
NakedCelt I'm glad to see that you at least understand that the threat to civilisation today comes from Islam and no other faith.Comment #118160 by Fanusi Khiyal:
More importantly, have you ever met or studied the views of Christian fundies?
I just have to think of some of the things I was taught, as a teenager, in my Christian youth group, about Satanism and the occult. Satan is real and hates God and the whole universe check. Satan has a whole lot of minor evil spirit servants check. People contact these spirits through vile anti-Christian rituals check. The evil spirits are really there and really do come when called check. This is the same thing as the "sin of witchcraft" in the Bible check. The devil-worshippers have infiltrated society check... Would it be better for a country to be run on these beliefs than on those of fundamentalist Islam? The question, you see, is not which Abrahamic religion is dominant, but whether Abrahamic religion is dominant.Comment #113895 by NakedCelt:
Islamic fundamentalism is currently roaring and ravening while Christian fundamentalism is just beginning to rub the sleep from its eyes.If this is how carefully you read things, that doesn't bode well for your credibility either.
Not wishing to repeat myself, al-Ghazali made his case based on chapter and verse of the Qur'an and the Hadith. This was why he was so successful.
And then you have the endless plagiarisms. Ali Ben Isa measured the circumference of the planet you say? He was only copying - yes, literally copying - worked performed by Erastothenes of Cyrene a thousand years previously. That's like saying my learning calculus is an 'achievement'. As Bertrand Russel noted, the Arab muslim scholars - such as they were - acted more as copyists or librarians, rather than original thinkers.
Together with Ali Ben Isa in 827, he measured at 35 degrees north geographical latitude, in the valley of the Tigris, the length of a meridian and thus the Earth's circumference, getting a result of 40,248 km (or, according to other sources, 41,436 km). The two researchers measured in Arabian ell, and determined the geographical latitudes of the end points they used from the star altitudes in a celestial horizontal coordinate system.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes :
Eratosthenes knew that on the summer solstice at local noon in the Ancient Egyptian city of Swenet (known in Greek as Syene) on the Tropic of Cancer, the sun would appear at the zenith, directly overhead. He also knew, from measurement, that in his hometown of Alexandria, the angle of elevation of the Sun would be 1/50 of a full circle (7°12') south of the zenith at the same time. Assuming that Alexandria was due north of Syene he concluded that the distance from Alexandria to Syene must be 1/50 of the total circumference of the Earth. His estimated distance between the cities was 5000 stadia (about 500 geographical or nautical miles). He rounded the result to a final value of 700 stadia per degree, which implies a circumference of 252,000 stadia. The exact size of the stadion he used is frequently argued. The common Attic stadion was about 185 m, which would imply a circumference of 46,620 km, i.e. 16.3% too large. However, if we assume that Eratosthenes used the "Egyptian stadion" of about 157.5 m, his measurement turns out to be 39,690 km, an error of less than 1%.
Comment #118160 by Fanusi Khiyal:
After the Reformation, sure.
No, not after the reformation. Christianity has always separated Church and State, and this is one of the most significant innovations in the history of philosophy. Where, prior to Christ, was this found? In ancient Greece, where Socrates was executed for being against the state religion? Rome, where the Emperor was divine? Japan? China? Tibet? India?
No, the Church-State distinction is a unique legacy of Christianity. There is a very real difference between a ruler who takes religious inspiration, or religious consultation, and absolute rule according to Divine Law. You'd do well to understand that.
And Christianity never was totalitarian. Christ's teachings of humanity have always been seen to supercede the nightmare of the Old Testament. That is right from the start.
The Byzantine Emperor Justinian I instituted the punishment of death for apostasy in the Corpus Juris Civilis (Body of Civil Law), directed towards Jews, Samaritans, Manichζans, and other heretics (10 c., "De pag.", I, 11). This legal statute formed the basis of Western European law for several centuries.
With an omnipotent, omniscient creator god, the distinction between occasionalism, deism, and any position in between, is fairly empty.
No, it is not. Francis Bacon, one of the greatest minds who ever lived, was able to advance the Enlightenment so much because he passionately believed that studying the World was a way of understanding a God of order. Such a view would have been stark heresy in Islam.
...which was mythologized away by the time the New Testament was complete.
Not even sure what this means.
Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols.
And I gave her space to repent of her fornication; and she repented not.
Behold, I will cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation, except they repent of their deeds.
And I will kill her children with death; and all the churches shall know that I am he which searcheth the reins and hearts: and I will give unto every one of you according to your works. Revelation 2:2023 (Jesus speaking in a vision)
And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held:
And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?
And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellowservants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled. Revelation 6:911
Rejoice over her ["Babylon", i.e. pagan Rome], thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets; for God hath avenged you on her. Revelation 18:20
And after these things I heard a great voice of much people in heaven, saying, Alleluia; Salvation, and glory, and honour, and power, unto the Lord our God:
For true and righteous are his judgments: for he hath judged the great whore ["Babylon", i.e. pagan Rome], which did corrupt the earth with her fornication, and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hand.
And again they said, Alleluia And her smoke rose up for ever and ever. Revelation 19:13
And he that sat upon the throne [Jesus] said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.
And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.
He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.
But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death. Revelation 21:58
It is irritating to have to repeat oneself, but I apparently have to: saying that "naskh" is a human construct is the same thing as saying that either the Qur'an is imperfect, or that Muhammad made things up for his own benefit. Either of those strikes Islam at the root. Naskh wasn't something dreamed up by later jurists; it's in the Qur'an itself.
soon. Muslims see themselves as being on the downside of an unfair economic world situation; they are
Oh, sure they are. Recipients of ten trillion dollars of unearned wealth from beneath their sands, and countless billions more in Infidel aid.
The reason that muslims are at the bottom of the heap is that Islam rots everything that it touches. This tired, shopworn marxism is utter nonsense.
We should be assaulting Islam right left and centre: breaking apart the Dar al-Islam whereever possible, cutting off aid to Muslim countries, thus draining away the money weapon, end Muslim immigration, supporting apostates and human rights groups, not to mention infidel minorities in Muslim countries, shutting mosques and expelling or executing jihadists preachers in our own, and launching an agressive campaign of counter Da'wa, driving Muslims towards apostasy.
Contra to what you seem to believe, integration of those muslim populations that we already have will only work if we are unafraid to lay down the law, and lay it down hard. We need to be unafraid to say "The free ride is over. Every other religious group has learned to behave itself. You will do so, or be expelled." And why do we want a 'fixed' Iraq? A free and democratic Kurdistan, combined with a deep fissure between the Sunni and Shia will split and weaken the camp of Islam internally, which is exactly what we want. And so on.
What about Zionism? How, exactly, does believing in one religion rather than another make the land your ancestors lived in 2500 years ago belong to you rather than the people who've lived there since the Crusades?
...
There is so much wrong with that statement that I have trouble knowing where to begin. Judea has had a continual - continual, mind you - Jewish presence for over three thousand years. The Muslims overran it as conquerors - I have already written about the Crusades elsewhere, and I am tired of repeating myself. The modern Muslim Arab presence is mainly due to mass migration in the 19th century. And finally, the State of Israel is less than one thousandth of the Muslim Arab lands, and is the only one of those that can be called civilised. I have already explained this in detail.
they were "operative" when Europeans colonized America
Oh Jesus - as it were - it looks like someone's taken to the Michael Moore school of journalism and historical accuracy.
"We shall be as a City upon a Hill, the eyes of all people are upon us...," the Puritan John Winthrop wrote. The Puritans who disembarked in Massachusetts in 1620 believed they were establishing the New Israel. Indeed, the whole colonial enterprise was believed to have been guided by God. "God hath opened this passage unto us," Alexander Whitaker preached from Virginia in 1613, "and led us by the hand unto this work."
Promised Land imagery figured prominently in shaping English colonial thought. The pilgrims identified themselves with the ancient Hebrews. They viewed the New World as the New Canaan. They were God's chosen people headed for the Promised Land. Other colonists believed they, too, had been divinely called. The settlers in Virginia were, John Rolf said, "a peculiar people, marked and chosen by the finger of God."
This self-image of being God's Chosen People called to establish the New Israel became an integral theme in America's self-interpretation. During the revolutionary period, it emerged with new force. "We cannot but acknowledge that God hath graciously patronized our cause and taken us under his special care, as he did his ancient covenant people," Samuel Langdon preached at Concord, New Hampshire in 1788. George Washington was the "American Joshua," and "Never was the possession of arms used with more glory, or in a better cause, since the days of Joshua, the son of Nun," Ezra Stiles urged in Connecticut in 1783. In 1776, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson wanted Promised Land images for the new nation's Great Seal. Franklin proposed Moses dividing the Red (Reed) Sea with Pharaoh's army being overwhelmed by the closing waters. Jefferson urged a representation of the Israelites being led in the wilderness by the pillar of fire by night and the cloud by day. Later, in his second inaugural address (1805), Jefferson again recalled the Promised Land. "I shall need...the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our fathers, as Israel of old, from their native land and planted them in a country flowing with all the necessities and comforts of life."
The sense of divine election and the identification of the Americas with ancient Canaan were used to justify expelling America's Indigenous Peoples from their land. The colonists saw themselves as confronting "satanic forces" in the Native Americans. They were Canaanites to be destroyed or thrown out.
Listen, I have been discussing civily with you. But it irritates me when I make points, backed up with considerable scholarship, and you seem not to have read them.
Comment #118598 by NakedCelt on January 30, 2008 at 7:32 pm
If I were recommending the use of mockery as a tool for changing people's minds, NakedCelt would have a point. But that was not my intention. Perhaps I should have been clearer.
The point of the mockery that I am advocating is immunization, not cure. That is why I stressed in my original post that it needs to be witnessed by the young.
Young people brought up with religious traditions can easily get the unjustified idea that religion is respectable. They see that their parents, whom they trust and respect, are religious. They see the deference that is accorded to priests and imams. They see centuries of religious tradition, colleges of theology, religious architecture and art. They see religion embedded in the forms and language of government and the symbols of the state.
In these conditions it can be hard for an individual, without outside, help to come to the conclusion that it is all just one huge, steaming tower of horseshit. After all, how could all those respectable, intelligent people have had it so wrong for so many centuries?
There should be voices in the land, credible voices, loud and clear, which never go away, pointing out that it is all ridiculous, that the priests and the imams are all idiots deserving no respect, and that, yes, all those people really were wrong for all those centuries -- that Mohammed and Paul and others like them have made fools out of billions.
Don't let them make a fool out of you.
By holding back from pointing out what is ridiculous, we are colluding in the illusion of respectability.
Comment #117775 by NakedCelt on January 29, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Comment #117479 by Janus:
Ridiculous beliefs need to be ridiculed sometimes, though. Never doing so creates the impression that they aren't ridiculous.
If you come across someone who believes that Elvis Presley is still alive, you don't nod politely, and carefully, non-offensively begin to point that the Elvis believer might have made one or two logical errors, do you? You just laugh, or stare incredulously, or shake your head in amazement, or ask if the guy is quite sane.
Comment #117472 by NakedCelt on January 28, 2008 at 10:59 pm
Comment #117358 by Steve Zara:
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. How can anybody be such a fucking moron? You're full of shit, Giskard, and you know it. I mean, how can anybody take such an obviously intellectually bankrupt position seriously? You must have the brains of a footballer...
Have I convinced you yet?
I think you are confusing laughing at beliefs and ranting at people.
22. Blind Faiths
Comment #117380 by NakedCelt on January 28, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Comment #115980 by Fanusi Khiyal:
You don't gain credibility by referring to Mark Rosenfelder as a "whackjob". I don't always agree with him, but he's earned my respect; he supported the war on Iraq when it began, then reconsidered his position in the light of the evidence something I'm still waiting for from you
Okay, first of all, I was unaware that a position on Iraq was a litmus test of accuracy. For the record, my position is a partition that gives maximum control to Kurdistan.
More importantly, the reason I called this man a whackjob is that his thesis of tolerant Islam has been definitively exploded.
Al-Ghazali made the case that any form of trying to understand the laws of nature was inherently heretical. He was able to do this beause Islamic metaphysics are, to use the technical term, occasionalist . In the West, and this is also true of Christianity and Judaism, things are explained in terms of cause and effect: A causes B. Not so in Islam; A is only the means by which B is caused by Allah. If I light a candle, it doesn't burn, according to Islam, because I have lit it, but because Allah at that point wants that candle to burn. There is a section of the Qur'an railing against the Jews for saying that Allah's hand is bound; they are referring to the view that you can infer any laws of nature, as they imply a limitation of Allah's power.
It's worth noting that in THe History of Western Philosophy Mohammedan Culture and Philosophy takes up nine pages in a eight hundred and thirty-six page book. And as regards the achievements of Islam in the last seven hundred years, you could fit them onto the back of a matchbox.
Ali Ben Isa(9th century)
He was an Astronomer. Together with khalid Ben Abdulmelik in 827, he measured the Earth's circumference, getting a result of 40,248 km (or, according to other sources, 41,436 km).
Armen Firman (c. 830, Cσrdoba, Spain - ?, Spain )
He made one of the earliest examples of a parachute.
Ibn Tahir al-Baghdadi (980, Baghdad, Iraq - 1037, ? )
He wrote about different systems of arithmetic in a work of great importance in the history of mathematics.
Ibn Al-Baitar (1197, Malaga, Spain - 1248, Damascus, Syria)
One of the greatest scientists of Muslim Spain and was the greatest botanist and pharmacist of the Middle Ages.
Ibn Bajjah ( ?, Saragossa, Spain - 1138, Fez, Morocco)
He had a vast knowledge of Medicine, Mathematics and Astronomy. His main contribution to Islamic Philosophy is his idea on Soul Phenomenology, but unfortunately not completed. He was also the teacher of Ibn Rushd.
Ibn al-Banna (1256, Marrakesh, Morocco - 1321, Marrakesh, Morocco)
He wrote a large number of works including an introduction to Euclid's Elements, an algebra text and various works on astronomy.
Al-Baqillani (?, Basra, Iraq - 1013, Basra, Iraq)
Muslim theologian. He introduced the conceptions of atoms and vacuum into the Kalam. He extended atomism to time and motion, conceiving them as essentially discontinuous. Once when he entered the court of the Roman Emperor while he was among his Christian monks and priests, he mockingly said to one of the priests: "How are you? How are your family and children?" to illustrate a point.
Al-Battani (850, Harran, Turkey - 929, Qasr al-Jiss, Iraq)
His best-known achievement was the determination of the solar year as being 365 days, 5 hours, 46 minutes and 24 seconds.
He was able to correct some of Ptolemy's results and compiled new tables of the Sun and Moon, long accepted as authoritative, discovered the movement of the Sun's apogee, treated the division of the celestial sphere, and introduced, probably independently of the 5th century Indian astronomer Aryabhata, the use of sines in calculation, and partially that of tangents, forming the basis of modern trigonometry...
Christianity had important 'fault lines' allowing reform: separation of Church and State,After the Reformation, sure.
a non-occasionalist metaphysics,Like Islam before Al-Ghazali? Not consistently, anyway. With an omnipotent, omniscient creator god, the distinction between occasionalism, deism, and any position in between, is fairly empty.
and the character of Christ as a pacifist....which was mythologized away by the time the New Testament was complete.
Reformers could argue that they were trying to return to the original teachings, but in the case of Islam, that kind of an argument only leads straight to Salafism or Wahabism.Unless and until a reformer declares that naskh is only a human construct and there's some other way of interpreting the Qur'an that lets in things like "Let there be no compulsion in religion". There's no theoretical reason why that shouldn't happen.
Hence, Islamic reform is very unlikely - the best we can hope for is to bring this evil down.Thank you for exemplifying the major practical reason why there isn't likely to be Islamic reform any time soon. Muslims see themselves as being on the downside of an unfair economic world situation; they are. They consider their civilization to be under attack; it is. Their best option might quite likely be to abandon Islam, secularize, scientify, and join the modern world, but they won't consider that until it stops feeling like surrender. And that means the West has to take a constructive and relationship-building approach to the Muslim world. That'll involve, among many other things, (a) weaning ourselves off oil, (b) getting the fuck out of Iraq, (c) fixing Iraq, and (d) integrating Muslims in Western countries into their adoptive communities. (b) and (c) might be quite hard to do both of. You can thank Bush for that.
I'll say it straight: Moses, Joshua, et al., all those Jewish and Christian heroes-of-the-faith I named, were "totalitarian" "warlords" just like Muhammad.
They were warlords, but not totalitarian, and - this is very important - if you speak to any modern Christian or Jew they will say that the horrors of the Old Testament are descriptive, not perscriptive.
That is, if you're not an Amalekit or a Philistine (tribes long since extinct), you have nothing to worry about.
Those commandments are long since nonfuncional. Once again, you can argue about this but the very fact that you can argue is the point.
There is not, neither in Christianity of Judaism, such an open-ended commandment to wage total war on nonbelievers and subject the whole world to a totalitarian political system, as there is in Islam. The Qur'anic curses on the jews, Christians, Polytheists, and infidels of all stripes are very much operative today, and are routinely quoted by jihadists to attract a following.
Comment #117356 by NakedCelt on January 28, 2008 at 4:02 pm
3. Comment #116783 by Friend Giskard:
"It's repellent for atheists or agnostics," he admonishes, "to personally and aggressively question others' faith or pejoratively label it as benighted flapdoodle or something worse. Those who do are rightfully seen as arrogant and overbearing."
Twit.
Religion needs to be held up for public ridicule as often as possible, especially before the eyes of the young. While we have no actual vaccine against religion, we can still weaken its power to take hold of young people's minds by fostering an atmosphere in which the point of view that holds religion to be utterly ridiculous and contemptible is highly visible to all members of society. If the media were to give frequent exposure to the point of view that laughs at religion, and openly reviles the pushers of religion, they would be doing for the public no less a service than the doctors who immunise us against certain diseases.
As long as there remains any part of the world in which political power is wielded, or basic human rights are denied, in the name of religion, the mockery and belittling of religious beliefs should be regarded as an absolute moral good.
24. Blind Faiths
Comment #113895 by NakedCelt on January 21, 2008 at 12:17 am
Comment #113653 by Fanusi Khiyal:
I never denied that there is a hideous record of oppression thanks to Christianity. I was concentrating on nonsense like this:
Historically, for instance, Islam has been much more tolerant.
I don't know what whackjob maitains that website (bear with me, I'm feeling a trifle malicious today), but this is utter nonsense. May I suggest a good online book? "The Monks of Kublai Khan", which has good material on the decline and destruction of Nestorian Christianity thanks to the Muslims.
The key point about Thomas Aquinas is that he was canonised by the Catholic Church, while his islamic equivalent - Averroes - was persecuted as a heretic. There is a reason for this and that is that Islam regards any kind of scientific or rational study of the world as inherently heretical. It is viciously anti-Reason.
It was Ibn Tufail ("Abubacer" to the West), the philosophic vizier of Almohad Caliph Abu Yaqub Yusuf, who introduced Averroes to the court and to Ibn Zuhr ("Avenzoar" in the West), the great Muslim physician; both men became friends. Ibn Rushd later reports how it was Ibn Tufail that inspired him to write his famous Aristotelian commentaries:
Abu Bakr ibn Tufayl summoned me one day and told me that he had heard the Commander of the Faithful complaining about the disjointedness of Aristotle's mode of expression or that of the translators and the resultant obscurity of his intentions. He said that if someone took on these books who could summarize them and clarify their aims after first thoroughly understanding them himself, people would have an easier time comprehending them. "If you have the energy," Ibn Tufayl told me, "you do it. I'm confident you can, because I know what a good mind and devoted character you have, and how dedicated you are to the art. You understand that only my great age, the cares of my office and my commitment to another task that I think even more vital keep me from doing it myself."
In 1160 Ibn Rushd (Averroes) was made Qadi of Seville and he served in many court appointments in Seville and Cordoba, and in Morocco during his career. At the end of the 12th century, following the Almohads conquest of Al-Andalus, his political career was ended. Averroes' strictly rationalist views which collided with the more orthodox Islamic views of Abu Yusuf Ya'qub al-Mansur led to him banishing Averroes though he had previously appointed him as his personal physician. Averroes was not rehabilitated until shortly before his death. He devoted the rest of his life to his philosophical writings.
Averroes is most famous for his translations and commentaries of Aristotle's works, which had been mostly forgotten in the West, and for his early secular thought. Before 1150, only a few translated works of Aristotle existed in Latin Europe, and they were not studied much or given much credence by monastic scholars. It was through the Latin translations of Averroes's work beginning in the 12th century that the legacy of Aristotle became more widely known in the medieval West... His ideas were assimilated by Siger of Brabant and Thomas Aquinas and others (especially in the University of Paris) within the Christian scholastic tradition which valued Aristotelian logic.
Who
Come on, do I really need to spell this out?
25. King Me!
Comment #113552 by NakedCelt on January 20, 2008 at 2:26 am
I disagree. There are ways and ways of arguing with believers.
The trouble is not that believers are irredeemably stupid. I used to be one, and I don't think my enlightenment involved my actually growing any new brain matter. The trouble is this:
I'm sure we've all been in the situation where we're arguing with someone and we just know they're wrong, but we can't quite verbalize the reason why they're wrong. If you stump a believer in a head-on argument, they simply assume that they are in that precise situation, and hand-wave it away.
No. There is a way, and it goes like this.
1. Distasteful as it may be, start out playing by the believer's rules.
2. Confine yourself to gaining one point per argument.
Recently, I was in a car with a friend of mine, who's a very decent, soft-spoken old gentleman who happens to believe in Lemuria, Atlantis, and things like that. Well, he happened to mention pole shifts.
Now, I could have started talking astronomy and basic physics, but (a) I don't have the facts ready to hand and (b) he'd have figured I'd been taken in by "orthodox science", and things would have ended up much like the characters in the comic strip.
Instead, I said: "Well, there certainly hasn't been a pole shift in the last few thousand years, because the Great Pyramid had a shaft leading from the central chamber aimed exactly at the present celestial North Pole." (Something I'd heard on a documentary somewhere.)
And he accepted it immediately.
That's how it's done.
26. Blind Faiths
Comment #112678 by NakedCelt on January 17, 2008 at 6:58 pm
Comment #110851 by Fanusi Khiyal:
Actually, I have quoted much of the same material in my long arguments with Christian fundies, about the horror that Christ's exaltation of faith an unreason unleashed, about the connections with the Holocaust. As I said, I am not exactly a defender of Christianity.
But that does not mean Christianity and Islam are equivalent. There is a very real difference between a religious system that has been, on occasion an accessory to totalitarianism, and one that is fascist and totalitarian quite literally from day one.
1. There was a separation of Church and State, meaning that enlightened Princes and rulers could support freethinkers 2. The fathers of the Church, particularly St. Clement, could not bear to rid themselves of their loved pagan writings in Greek and Latin and so prserved them by reinterpreting them in Christian terms; this became the bedrock on which the great thinkers of the Enlightenment built. 3. Thanks to the scholastic tradition of the Jesuits and others, the culture of intellectual Western Europe was suffused in Greek and Latin; the classics were known by everyone in the intellectual classes. 4. Many of the clergy in fact aided the enlightenment reformers, because they wished to return to what they saw as Christ's true message of humanity, and 5. Theologically, the God of Christ is a rational one - that is, he is bound by rules, and you can reason about his nature. The importance of this cannot be overstressed; it was St. Thomas Aquinas who ended the Dark Ages, and there is a direct line from him to Bacon. This is emphatically not the case in Islam; the very idea of 'natural laws' is blasphemous. Allah is a being of total whim, capable of ordering whatever he wants, and even the idea of trying to study the natural order is heresy.
The key to understanding Islam is that it's very, very much like Christianity-- not the watered-down kind that offers singing and sleeping twice a year, but the systematic ideology that wants to convert the world to The Way-- "the" here indicating that there is no other Way to worry about. And if you think that "jihad is inherent to Islam", go ask an evangelical about the Great Commission.
There are differences, of course. Historically, for instance, Islam has been much more tolerant. Christian Europe barely tolerated the Jews and suffered no resident Muslim communities at all; Islam gladly accepted resident Christian and Jewish minorities...
The key point, perhaps, is that for a thousand years Islam saw Christendom-- with a good deal of justice-- as a forgettable pile of barbarism. As one vivid example: a 12th century writer mentions how a Crusader baron summoned a local, Syrian physician when some of his followers were ill. The doctor found a knight with an abscess on his leg; he applied a poultice, the abscess burst, and the man felt better. He also examined a woman with a "mental disorder"; he prescribed a mild diet. A "Frankish" (European) physician declared that the Syrian obviously knew nothing of medicine. For the knight, he prescribed amputation-- by axe. The amputation took two blows; the second killed the patient. The woman with a mental illness was said to have a devil in her head; he shaved her head, inscribed a cross on it, pulled off the skin to expose the skull, and rubbed it with salt. She died immediately.
Pay particular attention to points 4 and 5. Get into any argument like this with a Christian and they will argue that things like the Witch Hunts or the anti-jewish pogroms are unsuportable given Christ's teachings. Now you can argue about this, but the very fact that you can argue about it is the point.
This simply can't be done in the case of Islam. Would Muhammad approve of anti-Jewish pogroms? You betcha; he organised the damn things himself. Wars of conquest? Yup. Raiding and banditry? Hell, that's how he made his living. Killing of anyone who even ventured to criticise him? Uh-huh. Extermination of native populations that don't convert? Take a guess.
In fact, let's expand our comparison a little. Where else can you find a figure like Muhammad in the history of religion and philosophy? Christ? Hardly. Siddharta, the Buddha? Nope. Lao-Tzu, the founder of Taoism? Definetly not. Confucious? Aristotle? Plato? Any of the Greek philosophers? Don't make me laugh.
There is one parallel, and only one that springs to mind: Another warlord who came to a broken and divided people, unifying them, and bringing a message that controlled the totality of every aspect of life, was visciously anti-reason, exalted war and militarism, and said that the woman's place was Children, Kitchen and Church.
Think about that.
27. Blind Faiths
Comment #110689 by NakedCelt on January 12, 2008 at 12:59 am
Comment #110002 by Fanusi Khiyal:Christianity is any nicer or more reasonable, at its roots, than Islam.
That's easily done:
"The Malleus Malificarium is not one of Christianity's roots".
Comment #110002 by Fanusi Khiyal:
But Muslims killed more than that during one single genocide in East Timor. And that was a minor genocide by the standards of this religion; it's nothing in comparison with, say, the Armenian genocide, of the Hindu Holocaust, already mentioned.
Comment #110002 by Fanusi Khiyal:
Now, let's turn to those 'roots'. The actual roots. Christ says the following:
Put up again thy sword into his place: All they that take the sword shall persih with the sword
And here is what the Qur'an says:
Fight those who do not believe in Allah, ... nor follow the religion of truth... until they pay the tax in acknowledg-ment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection."
Qur'an, Sura 9:29
A bit different, no? Muhammad is also know, by and to pious Muslims, as the Prophet of the Sword.
Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. Matthew 10:34 (Jesus speaking)
And he [Jesus] said unto them, When I sent you without purse, and scrip, and shoes, lacked ye any thing? And they said, Nothing.
Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one. Luke 22:3536
Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols.
And I gave her space to repent of her fornication; and she repented not.
Behold, I will cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation, except they repent of their deeds.
And I will kill her children with death; and all the churches shall know that I am he which searcheth the reins and hearts: and I will give unto every one of you according to your works. Revelation 2:2023 (Jesus speaking in a vision)
And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held:
And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?
And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellowservants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled. Revelation 6:911
Rejoice over her ["Babylon", i.e. pagan Rome], thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets; for God hath avenged you on her. Revelation 18:20
And after these things I heard a great voice of much people in heaven, saying, Alleluia; Salvation, and glory, and honour, and power, unto the Lord our God:
For true and righteous are his judgments: for he hath judged the great whore ["Babylon", i.e. pagan Rome], which did corrupt the earth with her fornication, and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hand.
And again they said, Alleluia And her smoke rose up for ever and ever. Revelation 19:13
And he that sat upon the throne [Jesus] said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.
And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.
He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.
But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death. Revelation 21:58
They answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father. Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham.
But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham.
Ye do the deeds of your father. Then said they to him, We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God.
Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me.
Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word.
Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. John 8:3944
Although such beasts are unfit for work, they are fit for killing. And this is what happened to the Jews: while they were making themselves unfit for work, they grew fit for slaughter. This is why Christ said: "But as for these my enemies, who did not want me to be king over them, bring them here and slay them." [Luke 19:27; the speaker is a character representing God in one of Jesus' parables.] You Jews should have fasted then, when drunkenness was doing those terrible things to you, when your gluttony was giving birth to your ungodliness not now. Now your fasting is untimely and an abomination. St John Chrysostom, 387
Now from the time of the Passion of our Lord there ceased not amongst the Jewish people, who chose the seditious robber and rejected Christ the Saviour, either external wars or civil discord... The Lord shews how Jerusalem and the province of Judaea merited the infliction of such calamities, in the following words: "But take heed to yourselves: for they shall deliver you up to councils; and in the synagogues ye shall be beaten." [Mark 13:9] For the greatest cause of destruction to the Jewish people was, that after slaying the Saviour, they also tormented the heralds of His name and faith with wicked cruelty. The Venerable Bede, between 709 and 726
As a proof of the truth and credibility of the matter we now adduce something which we have heard from the lips of Theobald, who was once a Jew, and afterwards a monk. He verily told us that in the ancient writings of his fathers it was written that the Jews, without the shedding of human blood, could neither obtain their freedom, nor could they ever return to their fatherland. Hence it was laid down by them in ancient times that every year they must sacrifice a Christian in some part of the world to the Most High God in scorn and contempt of Christ, that so they might avenge their sufferings on Him; inasmuch as it was because of Christ's death that they had been shut out from their own country, and were in exile as slaves in a foreign land. Thomas of Monmouth, 1173
They are real liars and bloodhounds who have not only continually perverted and falsified all of Scripture with their mendacious glosses from the beginning until the present day. Their heart's most ardent sighing and yearning and hoping is set on the day on which they can deal with us Gentiles as they did with the Gentiles in Persia at the time of Esther. Oh, how fond they are of the book of Esther, which is so beautifully attuned to their bloodthirsty, vengeful, murderous yearning and hope. The sun has never shone on a more bloodthirsty and vengeful people than they are who imagine that they are God's people who have been commissioned and commanded to murder and to slay the Gentiles. In fact, the most important thing that they expect of their Messiah is that he will murder and kill the entire world with their sword. They treated us Christians in this manner at the very beginning through out all the world. They would still like to do this if they had the power, and often enough have made the attempt, for which they have got their snouts boxed lustily. Martin Luther, 1543
We reject the absurdity and the neo-Marxist-Leninist distortion that somehow all men are created equal. We believe that this Humanistic tenet of philosophy from the so-called "Age of Enlightenment" is diametrically opposed to true Christian teaching. Thus, if you believe, as the Bible teaches, that no comes to the Father except through Jesus Christ, the Son [John 14:6]; and that there is no other name or authority given under Heaven or earth whereby men may be saved [Acts 4:12]; and that the Apostle Paul was right in saying that the religions of the heathen were nothing but demon-worship [I Corinthians 10:20], then you too are a Christian Supremacist, a bigot, and the object of hatred by Talmudic Jews, Jewish, Zionistic supremacists, neo-Marxist supremacists, and Humanist supremacists, all of whom hate the Living Christ, His Holy Word, and His Holy People. The Christian Separatist Church Society, 2001
Comment #110002 by Fanusi Khiyal:
I'm guessing you're an ex-Muslim
I do not know where you get that impression. I'll take that as a complement, since those that convert out of Islam tend to be first-rate human beings - Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ibn Warraq, Wafa Sultan, Walid Shoebat etc. - while those that convert into it tend to be, shall we say, less intellectually endowed than most - Adam Gadahn, Ibrahim Hooper.
I feel strongly about Islam because I deeply value such minor things as Justice, Freedom, Reason, and Civilisation. You know, minor matters.
28. Blind Faiths
Comment #109780 by NakedCelt on January 9, 2008 at 5:10 pm
Comment #109677 by Fanusi Khiyal:
Listen, I'm not defending what the Christians have gotten up to over the centuries. But to believe that modern day Christianity is the equivalent of Islam, or that Christ and Muhammad are equivalent characters, isn't just unfair and unjust, it's pathalogical.
29. Blind Faiths
Comment #109386 by NakedCelt on January 9, 2008 at 12:57 am
There are two civilizations.
One is moderately enlightened, mostly populated by moderate religious believers with a few extremists in the background. It has the best science and technology of any society in the contemporary world. Its recent past includes a fair amount of blood, and even the odd shameful massacre. It does have an undercurrent of militarism to a lot of its relations with other societies. It also has a powerful majority religion, many of whose clerics are impressively scholarly. Nevertheless, it's probably better to grow up in that civilization than in most other places on Earth, although a few oppressed minorities within it might well beg to differ.
The other is impoverished, scientifically backward, tribalistic in the worst sense, feudal, ruled largely by warlords, infused with a violent honour code, and fanatically devoted to its religion. In recent years, some of its members have attacked the strongholds of the first civilization in the name of that religion, wreaking shocking destruction in the process. A very small group of hereditary rulers are very rich, partly as a result of trade with the first civilization. Oddly, the worst extremists seem to be coming from that particular ruling group's country.
One civilization's chosen religion is Christianity. The other's is Islam. Which is which? That depends on the answer to another question: are we talking today, or a thousand years ago?
Undoubtedly, religion matters. But it's not all that matters. The difference between the West and Islam today is not that one has an inherently peaceful religion and the other an inherently violent one, any more than that was the case during the Crusades. The difference is socioeconomic, historical, and geographical.
To switch topics a little remember the "What have you changed your mind about?" essay question? We've seen Richard's response on this website, and I think a few others as well. Go to this page:
http://www.edge.org/q2008/q08_9.html
and scroll down to Scott Atran's essay. It's not perhaps all that new an observation; as Richard says in TGD, it doesn't get religion off the hook because religion still catalyses the formation of violently opposed social groupings in the first place. But it does open a whole new line of possibilities for a solution. What if, instead of browbeating religious communities with satire and well-reasoned but unlikely-to-be-listened-to polemics, we went out of our way to be friendly to their members, to knit them into our society's social networks before they have time to organize for its destruction? I don't mean being all-accepting and all-respectful and leaving them alone to do their own thing, I mean precisely not leaving them alone but making sure each young man of Muslim origin has a stake in the wider community before friendship networks of resentful religionists have a chance to form.
Comment #104864 by NakedCelt on December 29, 2007 at 7:31 pm
Hmmm. This is in response to the article, not the debate thread:
"Happy Holidays" sounds terribly bland to me, as it evidently does to Professor Dawkins. But you have to remember that both of us are non-American English speakers, for whom the word "holiday" primarily means what Americans call a "vacation". I understand that "holiday" still has some of its original connotation of specialness (it's derived from "holy day") for Americans, which it has lost for the rest of the English-speaking world. Americans, imagine having to say "happy vacations", and you'll understand how the rest of us feel.
And this is a response to a debate back on the first couple of pages. Somebody described Copernicus as living in "the dark ages" when you could get "burned at the stake". Somebody else objected that Copernicus lived in the Early Modern period, not the Early Mediaeval period which is so often popularly referred to as the Dark Ages (though not by mediaeval historians). True enough, but the burning at the stake was the point, and that reached its zenith in the Early Modern period. It might not have been The Dark Ages, but it was a pretty dark age. Arguably the Enlightenment began as a backlash against it.
31. God rest you merry atheist
Comment #99883 by NakedCelt on December 17, 2007 at 6:23 pm
Does no-one but me find "God rest ye merry gentlemen, pass on your DNA" funny?
32. Go Ahead, Rationalize. Monkeys Do It, Too
Comment #86219 by NakedCelt on November 8, 2007 at 6:31 pm
Bonzai pointed out:
In order for someone to abandon his religion, something has to happen to erode his faith at the "gut" level.
Agreed. I am coming to realize that simply dissecting and pointing out the logical flaws in apologetics is not sufficient; what those kinds of beliefs need is a good thorough mocking, with heaping dollops of amused sarcasm and a disdainful snort or two for garnish.
33. Washoe, the sign-language chimp dies
Comment #85406 by NakedCelt on November 5, 2007 at 6:43 pm
Not so; Washoe never mastered complex grammar and never discussed abstractions, but she was quite capable of conversing in simple sentences about her immediate world. Read Roger Fouts' Next of Kin. He does draw some possibly unwarranted conclusions, but if Washoe was no more than a trained parrot then he's not just jumping to conclusions, he's lying through his teeth.
Chomskyan linguists objected on the basis of their own signing chimp, Nim Chimpsky but, as Fouts points out, Washoe was brought up like a child whereas Nim was trained like a dog. There's a difference.