1. Teen trained to be suicide bomber feels tricked

Comment #311741 by NakedCelt on January 4, 2009 at 5:22 am

Comment #310887 by al-rawandi:

I was really expecting this to be about a Methodist, but much to my shock it turned out to be a Muslim.

Shocked, Shocked I tell you!

How shocked?

2. Would you Adam and Eve it? Quarter of science teachers would teach creationism (Response by Dawkins and Jones)

Comment #305860 by NakedCelt on December 23, 2008 at 7:36 pm

Not really on topic, but speaking of creationists... this is too funny not to share.

January 15, 2009 - AP/REUTERS - George W. Bush Delivers Presidential Farewell Address (TRANSCRIPT)

President Bush enters conference room and approaches podium

BUSH: My fellow Americans...

President Bush spreads his arms in an encompassing gesture

BUSH: THE ARISTOCRATS!

From here: http://community.livejournal.com/metaquotes/6914080.html

3. Giving Up on God

Comment #286876 by NakedCelt on November 19, 2008 at 1:06 pm

Come to think of it, what does "God Save the Queen" actually MEAN? That isn't a rhetorical question....

It was originally "God Save the King", and it was written during the Jacobite rebellion of 1745, when the English forces had suffered defeat at Prestonpans. (In the event, the Jacobites were defeated at Culloden the following year.)

The original contained the following additional verse, not used today:

Lord, grant that Marshal Wade
May by thy mighty aid
Victory bring.
May he sedition hush
And like a torrent rush,
Rebellious Scots to crush,
God save the King.

4. Atheism, a positive pillar

Comment #286245 by NakedCelt on November 18, 2008 at 11:55 am

The implication that Europe, contrary to non-agricultural societies, enjoyed immunity to disease developed through a closer contact with livestock is then turned onto its head to explain the fall of Feudalism (in his view, and not without merit, due to the plague), as if the pandemic distinguished between professions and in plain contradiction with the premise.

Er... what?

Are you under the impression, or do you think Diamond is under the impression, that there is such a thing as "immunity to disease"? There is immunity to influenza, and immunity to measles, and immunity to smallpox, and immunity to bubonic plague... Just because a population has developed a creditable armoury of immunities against a wide range of pathogens doesn't mean a new one can't decimate them.

And "distinguished between professions" -- sorry, that's plain pig-ignorant. Farming became a specialized profession during the Industrial Revolution. Before that, the whole population was in close contact with animals. Even nobles had dogs, hawks, and horses. Disease vector utopia.

Not for a second would Diamond consider the uselessness of domesticating new wild animals when one could just introduce one's own livestock and rapidly populate an entire continent in a safe and efficient way.

Except he does, although he uses plants to illustrate the point.

...solitary specimens and small groups have more or less spontaneously adjusted to farm life... Moose... orphans are known to become completely domestic, and even adults can be easily tamed.

Diamond spends an entire chapter on this. Tameability is one prerequisite for domestication; another is the willingness to breed in captivity. There are others. So far from proposing one quality called "domesticability", Diamond lists, I think, nine qualities that animal species must have if they are to be successfully domesticated.

Is it reasonable then to think that domestication in general was not an option available to the Native Americans? Certainly not, most likely they simply couldn't figure out the process and relied on the seemingly infinite availability of wild game as if it were a gods-given gift.

"Figure out" the "process"? You find a baby animal without its mother, you take it home, you feed it. Foragers do it all over the world. And do please explain how the Sioux, after millennia of being too dumb to domesticate deer and bison, became world-renowned horsemen within fifty years of the introduction of the horse. No, they didn't get it all off the whites, or they'd have used saddles and bridles.

The flaws you're finding in Diamond are of your own making.

5. Atheism, a positive pillar

Comment #285966 by NakedCelt on November 17, 2008 at 10:19 pm

decius -- One of us certainly seems to be pissed off. The other, I can assure you, is merely amused.

Please give me an update on Western Civilization's current plans for dealing with Peak Oil and global warming.

Should I? Are we a failed society, or are we failing because of peak oil?

Somebody should, not yet, and yes if everybody answers the way you just did. You say we are capable of "thinking abstractly and planning ahead"; was that an example?

Ah, no. "Chances are we will move to other sources of energy and rule out oil." Well, that's all right then. Excellent abstract forward planning, that man. "Chances are."

However, we were confronting native american with western civilisation.
Didn't it occur to you that the resources in America were as plentiful as in Europe , and indeed when Western civilisation arrived to America it thrived, genius?

Please enumerate the domesticable animals of the Americas. Jared Diamond answers this argument explicitly and in great detail. He may be justified or he may be not, but it is clear you haven't bothered to engage with his arguments. Your opinion on them is therefore worthless.

I googled the first article I found... I didn't read it...

I rest my case.

Do me a favour, I am not interested to debate you. Please refrain from further correspondence, or be prepared to be ignored.

Correspondence? This is a public forum, dude. I'll say what I perceive to be true. It's up to the whole forum whether I'm ignored.

6. Atheism, a positive pillar

Comment #285960 by NakedCelt on November 17, 2008 at 10:01 pm

Our brains are adaptable, sure, but evolution is economical. It would not have had considerable amounts of neural networks hanging around waiting for some future extension of the ability to do abstract processing.

Excellent point. And note, decius -- foragers have brains as large and energy-hungry as Westerners'. Make the appropriate deduction.

7. Atheism, a positive pillar

Comment #285954 by NakedCelt on November 17, 2008 at 9:31 pm

decius...

Sorry, I am a bit tired. You can find plentiful of criticism of the naivete of Diamond, who attempts to explain history through geography without providing evidence for his claims.
Here is a link.

...aaand it becomes evident that you don't read the ones you do like either. Callahan isn't saying Diamond has no evidence or is being postmodern. Quite the opposite -- Callahan argues that Diamond is trying too hard to be scientific in a domain where the principles of science do not apply. (That's an automatic Diamond 1, Callahan 0, on my scorecard.) A quote:

The view that "vast, impersonal forces" largely determine the course of history, whether those forces are taken to be "the material conditions of production," as in Marxism, or geographical circumstances, as in Diamond, naturally suggests that individuals can do little to affect their own future.

Let me present a precise logical equivalent...

The view that genes largely determine the lives of living things, whether those genes are taken to be protein or DNA, naturally suggests that individuals can do little to affect their own future.

8. Atheism, a positive pillar

Comment #285949 by NakedCelt on November 17, 2008 at 9:20 pm

Decius:

Consider his cavalier dismissal of the intellectual hegemony of Western civilisation.

Er... where? It would be a phenomenal coincidence if there were two Jared Diamonds who had both written books titled Guns, Germs, and Steel, but we're clearly not talking about the same work.

Unless anything short of "We are the greatest! We are super geniuses! We are the superest super culture that ever lived!" constitutes cavalier dismissal.

Then consider the reason he gives for the failure of Mesoamerican and Southamerican civilisations: mismanagement of resources.

Duh. Doesn't that denote an incapability and a failure to think abstractly and to plan ahead?
Something he can't certainly accuse the Western civilisation of.

Please give me an update on Western Civilization's current plans for dealing with Peak Oil and global warming.

You are right, he wasn't implying any of that. His point was demolishing the idea of western intellectual hegemony in favour of casual environmental advantages.
Even though he quickly contradicts himself, as I showed.

...where, exactly?

Some people believe (and it seems decius is one of them) that intelligence is the singular, one, and only constraint on technological advancement -- that a naked man alone in the middle of the Sahara could provide himself with food, water, and shelter if he simply thought rigorously enough and applied his thoughts to his situation.

To do that he would need magic. Well, if there is one idea that has given the West a firm advantage, it is this: there ain't no magic. All science is predicated on that premise. Resources are not something you can ignore.

The statement "We don't need to take resource depletion seriously because we plan ahead" is a self-contradiction. Planning ahead consists of taking resource depletion seriously. Same with "We can trust our knowledge without question, because it's scientific". As soon as you trust without question, you cease to be scientific.

Consider the following:

We don't need to worry about Peak Oil.
Why not? Because it's not going to happen.
How do you know? Because they thought it was going to happen in the 1970s, and they were wrong.

What this adds up to, examined critically, is "Peak Oil hasn't happened yet, therefore it will never happen." Whatever this is, it isn't intelligent. King Hubbert's conclusions have often been denied, but his science hasn't been faulted.

Finally, it's simple ignorance to maintain that foragers live in a less complex world than we do. The technology is less complex, and for that very reason the far less amenable complexities of nature impinge more directly.

9. Atheism, a positive pillar

Comment #285912 by NakedCelt on November 17, 2008 at 7:43 pm

Decius -- Jared Diamond is required reading here. Speaking of Mediterranean civilization -- consider the Phaistos Disk. Someone invented printing 3,000 years ago... and nothing came of it. Why? Because it takes more than the existence of the idea for a piece of technology to take off.

Wheels, for instance, are of strictly limited use without draft animals, and comparatively few animals are suitable for domestication. It's possible that American horses or camels, or Australia's giant wombat, might have been among those few -- but we'll never know, because the original settlers of those two continents had good enough weapons technology to wipe them out (while lacking, alas but inevitably, a sufficient communications infrastructure to notice that the extinctions weren't merely local).

Australia in particular entirely lacks cultivable plant species, and it is almost entirely unsuitable for growing the crops of nearby New Guinea unless you have the technology to build sophisticated irrigation systems. Australia contains some of the world's earliest and most sophisticated rock art, and it was settled by the world's first boat-builders. It wasn't innate stupidity that held the Aborigines back after that. Without crops you can't give up the nomadic life, and if you're a nomad, non-portable technology is useless. You can carry a steel knife around, but to make one you need a blast furnace, and they're a bit bulky to carry.

10. Islamic Theologian's Theory: It's Likely the Prophet Muhammad Never Existed

Comment #285744 by NakedCelt on November 17, 2008 at 2:34 pm

gazzaofbath,

And John the Baptist is indeed mentioned by a contemporary writer but he doesn't mention Jesus.

If you mean Josephus... well, he does. Or at least, his book does. But as it directly calls Jesus the Messiah, and we know from later Christian commentators that Josephus was not a Christian, we can be quite certain that this was some meddling Christian copyist's interpolation. What we don't know, and probably never will, is whether the Jesus passage was entirely invented by the scribe or whether Josephus originally simply described him as a rabbinic teacher whose following had not disappeared by his own time, a generation later.

I'm well aware that the Christ concept is derived from an amalgam of beliefs popular around the Mediterranean at the time, but I don't see that it's inherently more plausible that they should create an entirely fictional central figure than that they should accrete to an existing executed religious teacher.

I'm quite happy to consider the possibility that Jesus never existed. I think it rather less likely than the alternative, because the Gospels include more than a few elements that don't seem to me to fit very well into Christian doctrine or the ethos of the time. But I'm quite open to being persuaded otherwise.

Jesus' teachings on how to achieve eternal life are quite distinct from Christian belief from St. Paul onward -- if you drop the long "I am divine" discourses from John's Gospel which are clearly the product of a very different mind from the pithy phrasing of Matthew, Mark, and Luke's Jesus (and the action-y bits of John, for that matter). Forget faith, forget sacrificial death, forget grace and The Spirit and all of it. Jesus repeatedly and clearly taught that you achieved eternal life by selling your worldly goods and donating the proceeds to the poor. Christians have been explaining it away ever since.

Frequently, the Gospel-writers themselves fail to take Jesus at his word. What if Jairus' daughter, whom Jesus supposedly raised from the dead, really was "not dead, but sleeping" as he insisted? When those he healed proclaimed him the Messiah and he "ordered them not to make him known", what did he actually say? Did he perhaps say "Don't go round telling people I'm the Messiah"? And when he told his patients that "your faith has made you well", did he mean "God has rewarded your faith by healing you" as Christians interpret it, or was he in fact history's only honest faith-healer, declaring openly that he owed his power to the placebo effect? (Which, back then, would have seemed just as magical...)

Most suspiciously of all, there's his attitude to women. Rabbis back then were not supposed to even talk to women, much less dine with them and make friends of them and let them wash their feet; and the Gospel-writers know that, because they report the bystanders' surprise and discomfort on those occasions. When he spoke against lust, Jesus laid the responsibility for it solely on men ("Whoever looks on a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery in his heart"), with not a word about the women's role as sexual temptresses -- in sharp and startling contrast to the tirades against female seductiveness in both Judaism before him and Christianity after him.

None of which remotely constitutes historical evidence that Jesus existed. It just makes the idea that somebody made him up, in that time and place, that bit less plausible.

11. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #285728 by NakedCelt on November 17, 2008 at 1:52 pm

I really can't be hedgehogged reading 214 pages of politicality, but I have had a good look at the last page or two. I can correct DarwinsPitbull on a rather crucial point.

I spent a Saturday night recently with a bunch of socialists of varying degrees of leftwardness, talking about government and capitalism and what not. You know what struck me?

The more vehemently Marxist a socialist is, the less happy they were with the State. (Socialists say "state", not "government"). Not merely with the State as it currently exists, but with the idea of having a state in the first place.

Socialists want a society where production is the task of a network of workers' co-operatives, where decisions are made by consensus at appropriately local scales. I can very nearly agree with that; I don't think that such a society would or necessarily should lead to (or require) the abandonment of the concept of money and markets, but its similarities to the visions of non-Randian libertarians like David Brin, Matt Ridley, Paul Graham, or Michael Shermer are far more striking than the differences.

Where I disagree with the Marxists (quietly, on Saturday night, but I have not been shy about saying it in print in the past) is on the necessity of violent revolution. That, I think, more than anything else, explains the autocracy that Communist countries became. Socialists think Stalin was an aberration; I can't agree. Socialist revolutions have always ended up bringing dictators to power: bloody ones like Stalin, Mao, Ceaucescu and Pol Pot, or comparatively benign ones like Fidel Castro or Muammar Qaddafi. (And you know you've got trouble when Castro and Qaddafi are "comparatively benign".)

Why? Simple. It's Red October, you've stormed the Bastille or whatever. Now what? Now the whole country rejoices and embraces your vision for society? Not on your life. The old regime will want back in if they possibly can. You have to keep fighting remnants of them wherever they appear. And no matter how much you try, they'll still be there. Because there is no line, no clearly defined boundary, where what you're doing stops being "mopping up remnants of the old regime" and becomes "squelching any dissent that arises".

(There's an exception, of course, which is when the "old regime" is not just old but based in some other country entirely, and your revolution hasn't dismantled it but merely kicked it out. Then it's entirely plausible that it'll decolonize and grant you your independence when keeping you under control is no longer worth its while.)

Violent revolution, in turn, comes from the Marxist division of humanity into "classes"; the idea that the capitalist class cannot be outvoted or persuaded into the socialist ideal, because they'll always act in the interests of their class and they -- by definition -- have more power than the working class. I've tried to tell socialists that the rich don't actually have class consciousness; that they act in their own best interests, not in each other's best interests. I haven't had an answer but I haven't persuaded one to back down either.

Some more moderate lefties still believe in "class" but, rather than wanting to eliminate the capitalist class, they want to keep it in check through the power of democracy. This is where the statism that DarwinsPitbull complains about comes from. Real Reds want to eliminate the need for the Welfare State. They just use a method that actually produces the opposite.

12. Islamic Theologian's Theory: It's Likely the Prophet Muhammad Never Existed

Comment #285665 by NakedCelt on November 17, 2008 at 12:54 pm

There's very little data demonstrating the existence of William Wallace and William Shakespeare. It just so happens that those pieces of evidence which do exist are very good. For all the huge legend that has grown around William Wallace -- Braveheart actually toned it down a bit -- the only things we know for sure about him are that he won a battle at Stirling Bridge, lost one at Falkirk, and was the first person executed for treason by hanging, drawing, and quartering. That's it.

I am, therefore, sympathetically inclined to the view that there was a real Muhammad, and for that matter a real Jesus, a real Moses, and heck, a real Hercules. You do (as with William Wallace) have to sift out a lot of clearly exaggerated or invented material, but the absence of historical documentation does not, by itself, give a definitive answer to the Occam's-Razor question "Which is more likely, invention from scratch or exaggeration of a real person?"

13. Islamic Theologian's Theory: It's Likely the Prophet Muhammad Never Existed

Comment #285018 by NakedCelt on November 16, 2008 at 2:13 pm

NakedCelt, I personally think Europe has a greater chance of being a right wing Christian theocracy than a part of a caliphate...

So do I -- but your premise was "...should Islam take over Europe".

14. Islamic Theologian's Theory: It's Likely the Prophet Muhammad Never Existed

Comment #285005 by NakedCelt on November 16, 2008 at 1:36 pm

For anyone who harps on about Eurabia, this should be a good example of what would happen to Islam should it take over Europe :-)

If the takeover preserved Europe's social democracy, prosperity, and relatively shallow income curve, sure. I have my doubts.

15. Teaching hate in UK schools

Comment #279893 by NakedCelt on November 6, 2008 at 2:49 pm

I agree with Thomas Jefferson who thought that democracy wouldn't work too well without a well-educated, critically-thinking populace. The US democracy is threatened every bit as much by citizens who think Jebus frolicked with dinosaurs as it is by foreigners on one-way flights.

Quoted for truth.

16. Teaching hate in UK schools

Comment #279883 by NakedCelt on November 6, 2008 at 2:29 pm

If people aren't entitled to a free education, they should be. We mustn't leave the Sarah Palins of the world the slightest excuse.

17. Teaching hate in UK schools

Comment #276623 by NakedCelt on November 2, 2008 at 5:24 am

Muslims are massive cunts.

(Please don't take that out of context.)

I assure you, they are nowhere near as much fun.

I suppose we can see one tiny glimmer of optimism in this video, in that at least the Muslim woman clearly understands that the violent passages are something that needs to be excused or explained away. The textbook writers presumably didn't.

18. Interview with Richard Dawkins on fairy tales and retirement

Comment #276618 by NakedCelt on November 2, 2008 at 4:15 am

Well, it looks like some news media are determined to present Richard as a fairy-tale-hating curmudgeon: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/3255972/Harry-Potter-fails-to-cast-spell-over-Professor-Richard-Dawkins.html

19. Countdown: Palin Wants To Help Special Needs Kids By Doing Away With Science

Comment #272926 by NakedCelt on October 27, 2008 at 10:41 pm

I think we all benefit by living in a society where all children are educated. Palin herself is a living example of what can go wrong in a society where some people are not educated. It's the same argument as for emergency services, or the police, or the armed forces. Those with greater assets have a greater stake in the system and thus, I would argue, should in fairness contribute more to maintain it.

However, I'm not particularly enamoured of governments. Progressive taxation, sure, but if a company decides voluntarily to contribute to the economy -- to employ locally, for instance, to buy local supplies, to fund educational institutions, to help out with environmental efforts -- then they should get a concession to at least that amount on their tax. And I think networked community trusts are a better idea than governments, certainly for healthcare and possibly for schooling as well; networked, so that they can still take advantage of economies of scale, but capable of responding quickly to changes in local conditions, as governments are not.

20. Interview with Richard Dawkins on fairy tales and retirement

Comment #272889 by NakedCelt on October 27, 2008 at 10:08 pm

The only way I could prove it to her was in an environment like this, and using some of her own words I was goating you into defending yourselves. Well done! and I am very sorry for appearing so stupid. I swear I'm telling the truth.

Heh! So you were performing an experiment on us. Fair enough. Although your ethnographic method leaves something to be desired -- you don't get people's real beliefs or attitudes when they're being all guarded and defensive.

An illustration of childhood scepticism -- this is, of course, nothing more than an anecdote, and as such not much good for establishing a scientific fact, but at least it shows that scepticism is possible in childhood...

When I was three, my father told me about a man called Neil Armstrong, who stepped onto the Moon and said "That's a small step for a man, a giant leap for mankind." Only... he didn't mention anything about a spaceship, and I had somehow made it to the age of three without ever hearing of them. (I could name about twenty dinosaurs, mind you.) I pictured a colossal giant, with clouds around his knees, stepping from the earth into the sky -- well, doesn't "Arm-Strong" sound like the kind of name a storybook giant might have? -- and I concluded that my father was trying to play a little trick on me. I didn't challenge him with it, though; he did seem so very earnest.

21. Interview with Richard Dawkins on fairy tales and retirement

Comment #272856 by NakedCelt on October 27, 2008 at 9:49 pm

Dan2,

Is imagination a bad thing?

Clearly no. A healthy imagination, quite apart from anything else, is a prerequisite for doing groundbreaking science. (I hope it goes without saying that all the hypotheses we imagine have then to be confirmed against experimental evidence before they can be accepted.)

Do you actually think that fantasy books are a bad thing?

I don't, personally. I was fascinated by Middle-Earth and Narnia as a child, and by the Discworld as a teenager; I still enjoy all three. I don't recall ever being under any illusion that the books were true, probably because my parents made it very clear that stories aren't real. I do remember having a nightmare about the Goblins when my mother had read that chapter of The Hobbit to me, but I had been having nightmares previously anyway. And, unlike my nightmares, it turns out Bilbo escapes.

Okay, do you think there are a significant amount of people that are actually brought up believing "spells and wands" are real?

Define "significant", and "spells and wands". Considering that the promulgators of The Secret think it's how magic really worked...

My reading, my conversations about childhood with adult friends, and my conversations with children, lead me to believe that children are able to tell whether Mum and Dad mean it or are just telling a story to amuse them. But I don't have systematic evidence, and I concur with Richard that it would be a very interesting question to research. Our intuitions about how our minds work and how society works are often right -- except when they're completely wrong, as with our intuition that women talk more than men.

22. Interview with Richard Dawkins on fairy tales and retirement

Comment #272845 by NakedCelt on October 27, 2008 at 9:35 pm

I think the confusion here is this. Dan2 wants to know our opinions on the question at hand -- whether childhood fairy tales help or harm the process of becoming rational. Others, thinking he is trying to second-guess Richard's opinion, have responded by suggesting he wait for the evidence as Richard himself says. Dan2 thus gets, in answer to his questions about our opinion, a statement about what Richard has said. Being evidently (for reasons best known to himself) inclined to think us hero-worshipping sheep, he finds this confirms his opinion of us and wastes no time expressing his scorn. At least, that's the most charitable explanation I can think of -- that Dan2 is merely being mildly dismissive, not deliberately trolling. If that's not correct, and Dan2 is trolling, then yes, he should leave. But if his rudeness is due to a false impression, surely it's in everyone's interest that we correct that impression.

23. Interview with Richard Dawkins on fairy tales and retirement

Comment #272835 by NakedCelt on October 27, 2008 at 9:21 pm

Well, then, how about this board have a go at drafting a research plan to help find the answer to Richard's question? Some sensible starting hypotheses, and maybe the beginnings of an experimental methodology?

24. Children need to be sprinkled with fairy dust

Comment #272196 by NakedCelt on October 27, 2008 at 5:14 am

irate_atheist,

...some kind of innate BS detector...

A rather inconsistently effective BS detector, I fear.

25. Dare we stand up for Muslim women?

Comment #272160 by NakedCelt on October 27, 2008 at 3:41 am

I'd personally answer the question posed in the title of the article: "Dare we not?"

ThoughtsonCommonToad -- By the same trick of logic, should we ignore faith schools in the UK because Ireland has it so much worse?

26. Children need to be sprinkled with fairy dust

Comment #272154 by NakedCelt on October 27, 2008 at 3:30 am

Richard,

...my intuition suggests that a diet of wizards and magic, where anything can change, at the shake of a wand, into anything else, might predispose a child to lazy habits of thought, avoiding the urge to question how and why things really happen.

I don't think I've ever read a fantasy story where "anything can change, at the shake of a wand, into anything else" -- except for a deliberately bad one written by Isaac Asimov to illustrate that very point. A story where the hero could fix anything without effort would fall apart as a story. Magic may be real in fantasy stories, but it's seldom easy and never without consequences.

27. Children need to be sprinkled with fairy dust

Comment #272148 by NakedCelt on October 27, 2008 at 3:17 am

My sister and her husband are teaching their children that everyone plays a game at Christmas where you pretend Santa Claus is real. That seems to me much the best way of doing it; lets the kids in on the fun without spoiling the joke. Her eldest (five years old as of this writing) certainly seems to find it intensely amusing.

I don't believe serious ethnographic research has ever been done specifically on child beliefs. Probably because the ethnographic method entails first immersing yourself in the subjects' social world, which an adult researcher obviously could not do in a group of children.

Research absent, I suspect (but wouldn't dream of claiming as fact) that those who've grown up with fairy tales, who've been encouraged to imagine worlds different from the real one, are better equipped to tackle questions like "Why is the real world the way it is, and not like the stories?"

I should also point out that the association of fairy tales with children is an unusual feature of our society, not a universal.

28. Creationists declare war over the brain

Comment #269366 by NakedCelt on October 22, 2008 at 9:35 pm

So it isn't a southern thing - just anti-Aussie

Probably the keyboard set-up I guess

I don't think so -- you just copied and pasted a couple of question marks, am I right? And they still came out as apostrophes.

29. Creationists declare war over the brain

Comment #269360 by NakedCelt on October 22, 2008 at 9:22 pm

By the way -- I'm writing from New Zealand. Question marks??

30. Creationists declare war over the brain

Comment #269358 by NakedCelt on October 22, 2008 at 9:21 pm

This is C. S. Lewis's "Argument from Reason" all over again. Give him credit for intellectual honesty: at least his religious conversion from atheism was a genuinely logical conclusion from this basic false premise.

31. Mapping a clan of mobile selfish genes

Comment #269346 by NakedCelt on October 22, 2008 at 8:50 pm

"'But if I were a person who did not value trust, nor anyone's freedom but my own, why would I care what it said about me to those who did?'

I agree, why would you care.

Not sure I would care so much about what others thought of you, I would think it would be most important to you about what YOU think about you."

If I didn't care about anyone's freedom but mine, that fact would not affect my opinion of myself. If I don't care what effects my actions have (except to myself), why would the fact that my actions have negative effects for others bother me in the least?

"In either case, the person's self-interest of getting jollies by hurting others is satisfied or not hurting others, is satisfied."

In which case morality is not simply a matter of serving one's self-interest, as such. Your self-interest can be served by entering co-operative contracts, or by coercing others. The two might be equivalent from a self-interest point of view, but they are still not morally equivalent. Therefore, there is more to morality than self-interest.

32. Mapping a clan of mobile selfish genes

Comment #269327 by NakedCelt on October 22, 2008 at 8:21 pm

"'by coercing the other person'

This is manipulation and control; you can do it, no one would stop you, but then you would not be living your life by such statements of upholding freedom to others

What does it say about you, the person, that would engage in such behavior? (rhetorical, of course)"

It says some very unpleasant things -- unpleasant to the real me as one who values trust and freedom. But if I were a person who did not value trust, nor anyone's freedom but my own, why would I care what it said about me to those who did?

"As such, the observation of such behavior by others would either lead them toward you or away from you."

Not if I could coerce them towards me. I take your point; I should care about how others perceive me because it will affect how they behave towards me. But that is edging towards the relational model and bolstering my point.

33. Mapping a clan of mobile selfish genes

Comment #269313 by NakedCelt on October 22, 2008 at 8:06 pm

"Denying freedom of choice is manipulation and control."

So what, if it serves our self-interest to deny others freedom of choice?

"Living your life in self-interest at no cost to others without their consent, gives you and the other person freedom to decide to enter into contracts of cooperation."

Without trust as a prime value, how do contracts work?

And what if I can get more out of the deal -- in my self-interest -- by coercing the other person than by our freely entering a co-operative contract?

34. Mapping a clan of mobile selfish genes

Comment #269278 by NakedCelt on October 22, 2008 at 7:31 pm

Personally, I favour the relational model: social individuals value, and act to preserve, their relationships with other social individuals. The relational model has the advantage of fitting the empirical facts, but as a basis for moral theorizing it has the additional advantage that it solves the dichotomy between selfishness and altruism. We'd hardly condemn the "selfishness" of someone who acted continually to preserve their relationship with another person -- but even the strictest Randian wouldn't scorn their "altruism" either. Additionally, since relationships depend on trust, it indicates trustworthiness as a prime virtue, which (although this is hardly philosophically rigorous) certainly confirms my personal ethical intuition.

35. Which science book should the next US president read?

Comment #257658 by NakedCelt on September 30, 2008 at 10:38 pm

For #6 I propose Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. Though I think what's happened is that the review of the Axelrod book, and the graphic of Intervention, have somehow fallen off the page.

36. Which science book should the next US president read?

Comment #257642 by NakedCelt on September 30, 2008 at 10:01 pm

There's a mismatch at #4 between the article and the graphic.

37. Sincerity no substitute for evidence

Comment #244890 by NakedCelt on September 9, 2008 at 5:05 pm

You seem to have forgotten the little point I made earlier about the inaccessibility of scientific language. Most scientific papers are clear and economically written -- to those who have mastered the language, i.e., specialists. To non-specialists, they are masses of incomprehensible jargon. Of course I wouldn't ask a scientist to publish ground-breaking research in laymen's terms -- not when they're writing for fellow-specialists. But when it's time to present the new knowledge to the public, that is what must happen.

Most people do not read scientific journals because scientific journals are full of jargon. Most people do not take the time to learn the jargon and figure out what it all means, not because they are fools, or arrogant, but because they don't have the time. And if they're concerned about their health, they're certainly not going to take a three-year undergraduate medical course, just so they can read technical medical journals, before they decide what to do about their concerns. They're going to trust the experts. That is, they're going to trust the people who seem, to them, to the best of their ability to judge, to be experts.

What I'm saying is that if scientists don't want people to be sucked in by pseudoscience, then it is incumbent upon scientists to make real science available and accessible. Putting scientific journals that only scientists can understand on library shelves is not enough by a long shot.

38. Sincerity no substitute for evidence

Comment #244396 by NakedCelt on September 8, 2008 at 4:10 pm

Finally, you say:

And -- for me as a layman -- "the scientific consensus" is effectively an authority opinion. I can't help remembering, from my days as a geology student before I switched to anthropology, that the scientific consensus on continental drift until about the 1960s was that it was hokum. They taught us that to make sure we understood about science being amenable to new evidence.

This is wrong. Even though you eventually arrive to the crucial difference on your own, somehow you fail to connect the dots.

Regardless of who you are, scientific consensus is the very opposite of an authority opinion. Scientific consensus is based on the best available evidence and can be swayed when new and better evidence becomes available (as it is case in the example that you provided), while an authority opinion is by definition a rigid position uninformed by evidence.

Well, I certainly hope so. But, from my point of view as a non-specialist, all the testing, all the collecting and assessing of evidence, happens behind closed doors. If I had only slightly less scientific background than I do in fact have, I would have no way to tell that the vitamin supplements people weren't also gathering and assessing evidence, behind equally closed doors, just as effectively. After all, the labels on my echinacea bottles say the use of echinacea is scientifically supported.

I'm glad scientists test theories against evidence, but unless that process is popularized and published, as far as the general public is concerned it comes down to faith; faith in those who call themselves scientific. Well, the alternative medicine industry calls itself scientific.

39. Sincerity no substitute for evidence

Comment #243887 by NakedCelt on September 7, 2008 at 4:37 pm

Well, thanks for the information re echinacea, decius. However I am still seeking to understand immunology in general; one of the attractions of this site for me is the access to scientific understanding at a conversational level. In particular, how is the concept of "boosting the immune system" meaningless? I did indeed check the article you linked to -- you'll see I quoted it in my previous reply -- but the nearest thing I could find to an answer to this question was in Comment #233702 by J Mac:

The immune system is not a single one-size-fits-all-conditions entity. Even if you somehow boosted one aspect of the immune system how would that be helpful? Immune cells like all others eventually face senescence as they are able to replicate a finite number of times. In fact it is not uncommon that many age related problems and causes of death are due to the individuals immune system essentially running out of gas. So, my question to the people who make the above mentioned statement is: Would "boosting" the immune system mean that cells of the immune system would be encouraged to replicate or discouraged? The former might reduce long term health while doing nothing for the present condition, the latter certainly couldn't help the present condition.

As a layman I'm afraid I still don't see a fundamental problem with the idea of introducing some substance to the bloodstream that, while present, makes the cells of the immune system do whatever it is they do more efficiently than they would otherwise. And -- for me as a layman -- "the scientific consensus" is effectively an authority opinion. I can't help remembering, from my days as a geology student before I switched to anthropology, that the scientific consensus on continental drift until about the 1960s was that it was hokum. They taught us that to make sure we understood about science being amenable to new evidence.

Plus, I'm hoping to write a science fiction novel in which immunology is a major feature. Like I say, I've been looking for information aimed at the non-specialist, and there really is nothing out there (beyond the high-school level metaphor of white blood cells as the body's police force). I can handle complexity as long as it's explained clearly step by step. Please, help me out here.

40. Autism and Vaccines: Why Bad Logic Trumps Science

Comment #243885 by NakedCelt on September 7, 2008 at 4:05 pm

What gets me:

I'm autistic (Asperger's Syndrome). And, though I know it's neither rational nor fair, whenever I read something like this, somewhere in my brain the message I hear is I would rather my children die of measles than turn out to be like you.

41. Sincerity no substitute for evidence

Comment #242935 by NakedCelt on September 4, 2008 at 7:13 pm

I have no intention of promoting pseudoscience. But, as a layman, telling the difference between science and pseudoscience in immunological matters comes down to "Who's the real expert here?"

I don't think "alternative" medicine is better than "conventional" medicine. I consider science the better option every time. I do have quite a few friends who are into alternative medicine -- to avoid needless quarrels I generally discuss the placebo effect with them in positive terms like "the body healing itself", etc.

I think we agree that medicinal substances can be derived from plants, and that scientific, evidence-based pharmacology is a better tool for doing so than feelnice alternativeness. Other than a few medicinal substances that herbalists and traditional healers may have stumbled on first by accident, I don't think alternative medicine has much to teach scientific medicine -- though I hope medical scientists are combing through the herbalists' materials looking for such substances as thoroughly as they would pursue any line of enquiry.

Well, maybe doctors could learn a few tricks of marketing and presentation from alternative practitioners as well.

My query is about echinacea, not alternative medicine in general. Now, let's see.

The absurd notion of "boosting one's immune system" has already been thoroughly debunked in this very thread.

Said "debunking" consisting of this:

However, the egregiously unfounded comment that I quoted is a dangerous one to make.
It implies a complete misunderstanding of how the immune system works and has evolved. It also opens the door to some of the worst quackery on the market.

and this:

It's not possible to "boost the immune system." The statement is meaningless. I guess you could say that inflammation and allergic reactions denote a "boosted" immune system, but who wants that?

and a linked article saying this:

In addition, many companies in the "health food" industry have produced vitamin concoctions claimed to "strengthen the immune system" of healthy persons...

Many health-food retailers claim to carry products that can help HIV-infected patients by boosting their immune system. This claim is false.

An assertion does not constitute a debunking. The above posts, and the article, seem to be made from a standpoint of genuine scientific expertise. But surely you wouldn't want me to believe something just because an authority said so?

"A complete misunderstanding of how the immune system works and has evolved"? Guilty as charged. Along with most non-specialists. I read as much science as I can get my hands on and my head around, but there is nothing out there, nothing, that explains to non-specialists how the immune system works and has evolved. You can find works aimed at lay audiences on evolution, on relativity, on neuroscience, and even some valiant attempts at quantum physics, but nothing about immunology.

And you wonder why people still go to alternative practitioners.

I've got about an undergraduate-level understanding of cell biology. From that standpoint it seems to me that, whatever immune cells do, they might do with greater or lesser efficiency; and that there might be some substances that increase their efficiency substantially; and that some such substances might occur in plants. If this is a misunderstanding, I welcome the chance to correct it. Please treat me as a layman to enlighten, not an opponent to discredit, and explain where I'm going wrong.

42. Sincerity no substitute for evidence

Comment #242915 by NakedCelt on September 4, 2008 at 6:02 pm

Interesting! Do you have an agreed-upon yearly quota of infections? How does it work? Does the Germ Pool Committee inform you via registered letter, or do you pay a subscription for a guaranteed minimum of seasonal ailments?

The early symptoms of a cold show up, and then fade in a couple of days. If the symptoms of a cold show up when I'm off the echinacea, I end up coughing and sneezing for a couple of weeks. I don't know enough about viruses or the immune system to have much of an idea what this means.

This is the trouble, you see. I'm a university graduate, but, not being a medical graduate, I don't have the specialized knowledge necessary to judge these claims on their merits. I can't, for instance, understand the technical language in your average medical journal. I have to trust people who seem to be experts. I think this is where most of the "gullible" people whom the article is complaining about are at as well.

Think about that next time your response to a layman's query is a string of insults.

43. Theocratic Sect Prays for Real Armageddon

Comment #240651 by NakedCelt on August 31, 2008 at 7:33 pm

See, I fear this kind of thing is likely to gain a lot of power in the coming economic crisis...

44. Sincerity no substitute for evidence

Comment #235408 by NakedCelt on August 23, 2008 at 1:53 am

I take echinacea as an immune booster over winter. I don't get colds the way I used to before I started. Now obviously that's an anecdote and it could be a placebo effect -- except that another placebo, that being prayer back in the days when I believed in it, failed signally at the same task.

It's worth noting that some treatments now fully absorbed into scientific medicine were discovered as traditional cures -- quinine as relief for the symptoms of malaria, for example.

A lot of "traditional" cures began as legitimate discoveries; what's not legitimate is the non-evidence-based theories built to explain them. Since new "cures" are often formulated on the basis of such theories, this means that the legitimate stuff is mixed in with an awful lot of crap. It's worth investigating each claim individually in a spirit of cautious open-mindedness. Once something is exposed as quackery, it should be abandoned, but you shouldn't dismiss everything a traditional healer does as quackery simply because some of it is.

Finally, while "big pharma" is not the conspiracy some make it out to be, I can't help thinking it's responsible for a little quackery here and there in its own right -- antibiotic treatments for viral infections stand out in particular.

45. The best way to undermine the jihadists is to trigger a rebellion of Muslim women - and establish energy independence

Comment #227791 by NakedCelt on August 10, 2008 at 4:09 pm

Comment #226540 by Bonzai:

Is there any place where Christians still run Inquisitions and burn heretics? There are many Muslim theocracies where blasphemy is still a capital offense. Is there any Christian theocracy except for the Vatican,--even which doesn't run according to the law of Moses? But there are many Muslim theocracies and all of them impose Sharia.

"Still" is a critical word here. Christianity is benign for now because it happens to share living space with the Enlightenment, in turn a consequence of the Reformation. I think it entirely possible that creationism in the States could kill American science the way al-Ghazalian occasionalism killed Islamic scholarship. If that happens, there is no reason in the world why the US should not collapse into Christofascist barbarism. I quite agree with you that this hasn't happened yet, but that's no call for complacency.

As for the article itself -- 100% agreement. Though I don't think the alternative to Middle Eastern oil is oil somewhere else. We should be focusing serious scientific attention on alternative energy sources.

46. Is Killing Liberals a Hate Crime?

Comment #222718 by NakedCelt on July 31, 2008 at 7:08 pm

Comment #222487 by Ascaphus:

It is interesting that many churches and denominations and evangelical organizations have taken up the cause against hate crime legislation. I don't know their reasoning behind this, I just find it amusing whenever these groups - supposedly the source and foundation of all ethics - are opposed to laws protecting the rest of us.

I know their reasoning; they don't want people to stop them targeting gays.
http://www.chick.com/bc/2004/tolerance.asp

47. Escape or betrayal.

Comment #217900 by NakedCelt on July 24, 2008 at 6:36 pm

Are you getting this, Fanusi? This is point #13 from our little exchange.

48. [UPDATED] Venomous Snakes, Slippery Eels and Harun Yahya

Comment #217268 by NakedCelt on July 24, 2008 at 5:50 am

Reading the thread backward to find Fanusi's response -- since he PMed me to say it was there, but not which post -- I was unimpressed to find this:

just spotted this. I think this is usually the case but there are important exceptions.

As far as I can tell there wasn't any good economical reason for Genghis Khan to conquer half the world and then not knowing what to do with it.I am open to changing my mind on this, but based on all I know it the Mongolian conquest was simply an monumental act of vandalism fueled by vanity,

Also I cannot see what economical incentive Hitler might have for invading the U.S.S.R.

*nods* Exactly, Bonzai. This is the old, Marxist, materialist view of human history, and what it excludes is the fact that human beings have minds and the contents of those minds that guide them. Any model of human history that doesn't consider fanaticism, wide-scale, raw fanaticism, and the worship of power and war for their own sake, is doomed to fail.

The Jihadist mentality isn't limited to Islam. When Mussolini invaded Ethiopia, he did so because, in terms of his fantasy-ideology, he had to, he had to to prove, to others, but above all to himself, that he was recreating the Roman Empire. When Hitler spoke of the Thousand Year Reich, he was doing the same thing. Communism had a similar messianic vision, and thus desired to spread under the same method.

To answer Bonzai's point -- can you really not see even the slightest, most short-term economic benefit from invading large swathes of territory and taking over their productivity? I certainly don't claim that all wars were driven by long-term economic benefits -- but they all bring sufficient economic benefits to keep on funding them. Ambitious territorial grabs do indeed often fail in the long term.

But for Fanusi to turn that around and say that I ignore the fact that human beings have minds is absurd. What I say, what I have been careful to say each time I have brought this up, is that human beings are constrained by economic factors. Since human minds are free, they pull in different directions, with the result that on the scale of societies and nations they tend to cancel each other out. On the large scale, those economic constraints accordingly emerge as the dominant forces.

That's an over-simplification, of course. Above and beyond that, there are certain motivations that nearly all people have in common, which, on a timescale of decades to centuries, exert a perceptible cultural drift -- as described by RD himself in The God Delusion under the heading of "the changing moral Zeitgeist". But very few wars take place on a decades-to-centuries timescale.

Now to Fanusi's main post.

You may argue that Graeco-Latin civilization spread northwest after the fall of the Empire, but in that case it is legitimate to ask -- why northwest and not northeast into Russia or south into Africa? The answer has to do mainly with food production. You can't have specialized scholars if everyone's living hand-to-mouth.

What I would - and did - argue is that Russia did recieve some of the Helenic strain, which is why it produced Dostoyevsky and Tesla (amongs others), but it was by far the weaker legacy. Now, there was a much stronger influx into England of these ideals. Why is a very good question, and one worth some debate. And, of course, the Helenic strain never descended in Africa because of the formidable natural barriers to it. Nevertheless, North Africa was completely Hellenized before Islam came.

North Africa would include Ethiopia, which has retained Eastern Orthodox Christianity despite being surrounded by Islam. I ask again, why did Ethiopia not undergo the Enlightenment?

You seem to have conceded by basic point, that it is the presence of the Helenic strain underneath Christianity that made the Enlightenment possible. You have relegated food production to 'sundry causes'.

Actually, I was simply trying to anticipate your answer, not conceding to it. If by "Helenic strain" you mean the preserved works of the Greek philosophers, then I'm sure it was a necessary factor -- but the Islamic world preserved them too, for a while, and indeed Christian Europe had to rediscover many of them via the Arabs.

I have not at all relegated food production to "sundry causes". Food production is a perpetual constraint on human endeavour. I hope it goes without saying that human endeavour can improve it, but it can never, ever be ignored. On the society-level scale it is paramount.I still would like to hear why, if it weren't for Islam, Byzantium would not have undergone the Enlightenment.Because -- as in Ethiopia -- Orthodox Christianity would have retained a regional monopoly on local thought. The Enlightenment occurred in a place, and at a time, when two faiths were competing for hearts and minds and neither was able to gain the upper hand.

Despite your individualistic political leanings, you insist on discussing Muslims as a collective unit,

How, exactly, am I supposed to discuss the effects of Muslim immigration and their views in any other way? Noone seems to gripe about using that kind of language about any other group, say, when looking at the recent ghastly polls about the number of American Christians who reject evolution. And when you have one hundred and eighty-six million who support the 9/11 attacks, and another three hundred million who think they were 'somehow justified', then I believe this language may have something going for it.

It's also ironic, since I'm the one who advocates an appeal to individual Muslim minds to help break the hold of Islam on them.

Not good enough, Fanusi. Go back and look at the exchange between us that I quoted. You agreed to a (sarcastic) suggestion from me that each individual Muslim today be held responsible for the past actions of other Muslims in other parts of the world. That's a very different matter from merely treating Muslims as a bloc for the sake of the argument.

You poured scorn on Scott Atran for saying only a few thousand Muslims pursued jihad. By the Qur'an's definition of jihad, which includes preaching and propaganda, you'd be right. But Atran makes it quite clear that by "jihad" he means specifically violence, and in particular terrorism. You can argue with his choice of terms, but to claim that you have defeated his argument with this definition is to commit the logical fallacy of equivocation

So, you're conceding that he has no idea what he's talking about when he uses the term Jihad? Good to have that out in the open.No, I'm not conceding that at all. Do you know what the equivocation fallacy actually is? Because you just committed it again. Yes, Atran uses the term "jihad" the way an unschooled Westerner might use it rather than the way a Muslim or an expert on Muslims might use it. But a quibble over terminology can only ever prove points about terminology. Scott Atran was talking about terrorism, genocide, jihad by armed force. If what he says about jihad by armed force is true, then his argument stands, regardless of what label he uses for it.

I'm not sure whether I quoted Atran correctly as saying there were a "few thousand". I do know that he has personally researched Islamic terrorism. I'm not sure whether he would consider genocide to be the same as terrorism. All much the same from the victims' point of view, of course, but the underlying motivations and social conditions might arguably be quite different, and as such it probably falls outside of Atran's argument.

I said all wars had economic causes; you called this "so ignorant it's unbelievable". I replied that, while individuals might go to war or even lead others to war for ideological reasons, war is both such a costly and such a risky business that any war effort lacking solid economic underpinnings would fail. Therefore, conflicts that do escalate into major wars always have an economic basis.

Sorry, I read that as saying that wars had to have an exclusively, or primarily economic basis. If you are now saying that people don't go to war when they are physically unable to do so - who can argue with that? But it's a pointless tautology. When the means are there, wars are very often driven by ideology which the whole history of the Twentieth Century proves.

It's not a pointless tautology at all. What is the "primary" influence on anything depends very largely on the scale and scope of what you're considering. At the individual level, beliefs are powerful; at the society level, economics dominates, for reasons I explained above. (As a crude analogy, a simple model of physics on the human scale must take gravity into account but can pretty much ignore electromagnetism; on the atomic scale, it's the other way about.) Which one of the determining factors is "driving" events, and which is merely a "condition", is not ultimately an especially meaningful question.

Hitler was a nasty, hateful, obsessive crank, but nasty, hateful, obsessive cranks are a dime a dozen in any Letters to the Editor page. The question still remains: why did this particular nasty, hateful, obsessive crank command such attention and such loyalty? And that can't be explained without reference to the economic conditions of the time.

You told me I couldn't know that unless I'd actually visited Camden itself.

I said no such thing. I asked you to provide evidence that the views in Camden were the result of racism and not of legitimate fears about Islam. Which you still have failed to do.

If the fact that what they say looks and sounds and feels exactly like, and is in exactly the place where one might expect, and is supported and endorsed by, Australasian racism, does not count as evidence, what does?

You've repeatedly accused the Palestinians of "genocide" and said that Israel has to hit back or it will be destroyed. I pointed out that the comparative body counts on the respective sides are highly unbalanced, and in precisely the opposite sense from what you are suggesting. According to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for instance, the total Israeli death toll from Qassam rocket fire, ever, is 15 -- less than two days' worth of deaths on the Palestinian side from the retaliation.

What I have said is that the agenda of the Palestinians is explicitly genoidal, which is obvious to anyone who studies their propaganda in their television, radio, schoolbooks etc.. Israel is better armed than they, and a damn good thing too. If it weren't, it would have long since been wiped out by the Muslim Arabs.

I concede the point that it is the agenda of the Palestinians, not their capability, that you were describing. However, to consider the Palestinians a threat you must take their capability as well as their intentions into account. And I still maintain Palestinian hostility is aggravated, not intimidated, by Israel's actions.

I replied that this was only because no Christian country is currently suffering the same socioeconomic conditions as the Islamic world; and further predicted, in some detail, that when the economic effects of Peak Oil hit the United States we can expect to see what will be, effectively, a Christian Fascist explosion.

For the record, I have spoken - often - about this danger, but what would cause it is either catastrophic Islamic terror or the collapse of one of Europe's countries into civil war or Shariah. I keep pointing out that we deal with the problem now with harsh, but civilized measures, or face the unthinkable later.

Assuming that Islamic terror really is a bigger threat than Peak Oil, which I do not concede.

Before the Reformation, the Church was effectively a branch of the government in practically every European state -- "no bishop, no king". Why did the Reformation open the door to the Enlightenment when the Catholic/Orthodox split hadn't? Because the Reformation wasn't a geographical split. It created a situation where states could not favour one faith without falling prey to extremists from the other

"A branch" - hard to argue with that. But the Church and the Government were in perpetual conflict, and this opened the gap in which the Enlightenment could grow. This is because Christianity isn't a political doctrine in the way that Islam is.

Not now. But it was. And, particularly, it was especially right at the dawn of the Enlightenment. It's in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that you get the doctrine of Kingship By Divine Right.

Your comments that letting it into Western nations will make Islam less dangerous is refuted by the fact that there are preachers so radical in the UK that they would never be tolerated in, say, Iraq.

You are also ignoring that it took the slaughter of the 30 years war, not to mention all the other internecine fighting, to get people to realise that religious toleration was essential, as the alternative incurred simply too high a price. I think that the disillusionment we see with Islam in Iraq results from similar causes. But I don't want that experiment run in London and Berlin, thank you.

Do you notice how those two paragraphs contradict each other, Fanusi? I was about to reply to the first one on the basis of the 30 Years' War and other internecine fighting and the fact that it brought people to realize that religious toleration was essential. So the radical preachers in the UK don't refute my comments at all, because the Enlightenment happened precisely when there had been radical Protestant and Catholic preachers at each other's throats.

I sympathize with your apprehension about "running the experiment" in London and Berlin, but it's somewhat at odds with your proposal to defeat Islam "whatever the cost". So, what you meant was, whatever the cost provided we're never actually at risk?

You've repeatedly described the Crusades as a "defensive" conflict. If so, why did Crusaders kill Christians and Muslims alike in the countries they invaded

Because this is the Dark Ages we are talking about, when war wasn't a bowl of sugar pops. Get that straight. I've been harshly critical of that, especially the disastrous Fourth Crusade which weakened Byzantium fatally.And the Jews and Cathars in Europe? How did their deaths prevent Islamic expansion?

What I will not, however, hear is this nonsense that the poor widdle Muslims were just minding their own business and then those nasty European Christians waged war on them unprovoked. It's hogwash and mendacious hogwash at that.

The Caliphate was a large, aggressive military power, yes. But it had already been powerful for centuries before the Crusades, while Europe was wallowing in the Dark Ages. Like any military power, it took territory where it was expedient, and refrained from taking territory where it was not expedient. It was certainly not a direct threat to France, the Holy Roman Empire, Britain, or the Papacy.

You say six million African Muslims convert to Christianity each year. I pointed out that Christian evangelists work by reaching out in hospitality to their target audience before -- take note of this, it's important -- before they declare any sympathy to Christianity or any dissatisfaction with their current belief. That is the key to the Christians' success. You clearly like the idea of adopting such a successful strategy, but you can't seem to bring yourself to commit to the central, indispensable, key tactic of it -- pre-emptive outreach.

Hmmm - didn't I say something about calling for a campaign of cultural Imperialism to break minds away from Islam? And that we should support those Muslims who have suffered from the Arab Supremacist ideology that is part and parcel of Islam, such as the blacks in the Sudan or the Kurds or the Berbers? Why, yes, yes I did.

Would those Muslims still be part of your ban on immigration? Even as refugees? Because that doesn't sound very supportive to me. And your "campaign of cultural imperialism" consisted of -- do I remember correctly? -- pamphlet drops and TV and radio broadcasts. The sort of thing that Christian evangelists persistently find to be ineffective. Personal contact, before a change of belief takes place, is essential. Your immigration plan would make it much harder.

You want there to be "grave consequences" for publicly preaching jihad. How are you intending to prevent those who privately seek jihad from meeting secretly and plotting terror attacks?

Since we can't prevent the preaching entirely we should just roll over and demonstrate that we'll do nothing against those threatening our lives and our civilization? And that's going to dissuade the Muslims? Won't it rather show them that we're push-overs and unwilling to fight for our values, while dispiriting those who want to break free but are afraid to and see that if Westerners aren't willing to stand up against Islam, why should they?Islam thrives on grievances. Certainly, we must do something. But we must do something intelligent, not the knee-jerk reaction of "kick 'em all out" and end up clearing the way for the most extreme jihadists.

You think Muslims will spontaneously turn apostate from within the dar al-Islam -- I say apostasy is far more likely in contexts where there are genuine alternatives to Islam already in place to fit into. Blocking Muslim immigration would thus prevent many Muslims from apostasizing.

I've never said that. What I have said is that our first concern is our survival and separating ourselves from Islam and cordoning it off is essential to that. Breaking the hold of Islam on the minds of Muslims is a very long process and we can hardly do that when our own contries go under Shariah, now can we?

I do not grant that this is an imminent threat. As I said above, personal contact is essential to changing beliefs, and cordoning Islam off is only going to make that far harder.

Most cultures encompass multiple values and ideals, including freedom, justice, and decision-making by consent. An effective method of countering Islamic dominance would be to seek out social structures within the target cultures that embody those values, and enable and nurture those

Such as what, exactly? Those examples you cite are non-Islamic, a sign of its hold weakening. Well great. No problems there. Let's support that all the way. But seeking out 'moderate Islam', whatever the hell that is, is a waste of time.

Which would be a nice knock-down argument if I had said "seeking out moderate Islam". Though I could very well argue that a "moderate Islam" might, just for instance, possibly, be an Islam which coexists with lesbian marriage and female toplessness as in the African cultures I described. Those women are themselves Muslims, so I'm not sure what you mean by calling their practices "non-Islamic". And they're not "a sign of its hold weakening"; they're both age-old traditions -- a sign that it never had that strong of a hold in the first place. Which I think tells against your image of Islam as an urgent all-encompassing threat to civilization.

Something has gone wrong here.

Only... Milosevic was an Orthodox Christian Serb; the Bosnian Muslims were among his victims.

You haven't answered that one at all. And you didn't quote the question here:

You have a magnificent ability to miss the point. Our first business is to survive. If someone is advocating Shariah, whether they believe it or are stupid or are doing it out of fear - what difference does that make? They're still a threat. And my point - for the millionth goddamn time, NC - is deal with the problem now or face far less pleasant solutions in the future.

A point which you need to support with evidence of the imminent threat. There is a difference between ""they'd hurt us if they could", which I grant, and "they have the power to hurt us badly and are on the point of doing so", which I don't. In any case, the point you seem to think you're answering was this:

Go tell that to a domestic violence protection programme. See how long it takes for them to stop laughing.

That is to say, "police protection" is laughably ineffective for people who need protection from violence by their own family; which is what Muslim apostates would be facing. Your suggestion of providing police protection without personal outreach is therefore woefully inadequate.

I provided an argument against Ayn Rand's central philosophical position. You said I was "taking refuge behind jargon", so I expanded it. I've presented that expansion twice now, on the Sharia Law and Ian McEwan threads, and I'm not going to do it a third time. Click the "Other comments by NakedCelt" link and you'll find it.

I don't have the time to go searching for it now; but the fact that you can't repeat it... You're track record with these points isn't too good so far, so let's leave that one as 'undecided.

*sighs* All right, here it is again.

Ayn Rand wasn't the greatest anything. Her metaphysic was basically Aristotelian essentialism, her "solution" to the Problem of Induction merely a rehashing of the No True Scotsman fallacy. The same fallacy also underlies her supposed success in deriving an "ought" from an "is"...

Aristotelian essentialism is not quite as supernaturalistic as Platonic essentialism. Aristotelian essentialism is the view that everything has a fixed "nature" which causes it to behave in certain ways and not in others. Hence the laws of nature.

Aristotelian essentialism is most often wielded against the Problem of Induction. As I'm sure you're aware, the Problem of Induction goes like this. Just because things have happened a certain way once, twice, a hundred or a billion times before, does not mean it is logically necessary that they happen that way the next time. Consider the following argument:

1. Fire burned today.
2. Fire burned yesterday.
3. Fire burned the day before yesterday.
4. Therefore, fire will burn tomorrow.

Not logically valid. And no number of additional days when fire burned will make it logically valid.

Science is purely descriptive; each scientific observation of what fire does is simply equivalent to another "Fire burned on Tuesday 23 September 1980" or whatever. The "laws" of science are simply a statement of what nature has been observed to do up until now. The fact that you can discern all kinds of pretty mathematical patterns in those observations still doesn't provide certainty that the patterns won't be disrupted tomorrow.

Aristotelian essentialism attempts to solve the Problem by asserting that it is (for instance) in the nature of fire to burn. If it doesn't burn, it isn't fire. A misleadingly popular solution, because it doesn't solve anything. The fallacy can be exposed thus:

"All Scotsmen are mean by nature."
"But my uncle Alasdair is a Scotsman and he's not mean."
"Well, then, your uncle Alasdair can't be a true Scotsman."

That's why it's called the No True Scotsman fallacy. And it opens itself right back up to the Problem of Induction.

Let us suppose we are investigating something that seems to be fire, to see whether it really is fire. We'll call it "phlox" in the meantime. If it doesn't burn, we know it's not fire, because it is the nature of fire to burn. We now have the following argument:

1. Phlox burned today (and so proved to be fire).
2. Phlox burned yesterday (and so proved to be fire).
3. Phlox burned the day before yesterday (and so proved to be fire).
4. Therefore, phlox will burn tomorrow (and so prove to be fire).

This is just as invalid as the previous argument. Aristotelian essentialism adds precisely nothing to the case.

Ayn Rand thought it did. She was wrong.

What does make the argument valid is the magic word "probably".

1. Fire burned today.
2. Fire burned yesterday.
3. Fire burned the day before yesterday.
4. Therefore, fire will probably burn tomorrow.

Which is fine. A deterministic universe is simply a special case of a probabilistic universe in which all the probabilities happen to be set at 1 or 0. That quantum physics appears to be probabilistic is a confirmation that science is indeed plumbing the depths of reality.

Objective morality is likewise untenable. Moral judgements boil down to statements of the format "Action X is good" or "Action Y is bad". One can rephrase such sentences as "You should do action X" or "You should not do action Y" without any loss of meaning -- unless we posit an essence of good and bad, which, as we have just seen, would add nothing to the case. But "should" statements can be rephrased again: "Do action X." "Don't do action Y." Again, no meaning is lost, and this time it is clear that they are not statements at all but imperatives. An imperative cannot be true or false. ("Don't do action Y." "That's not true!" Makes no sense.) Since moral judgements are imperatives, moral judgements cannot be true or false.

If that looks like the beginning of a slide into the chaos of total moral relativism -- tough cookies. Reality is under no obligation to conform to our preferences.

(As a matter of fact, I don't think it's quite as desperate as all that...)

Your proposition to halt immigration, not of brown people, nor of Arabs, nor of people who hold passports from Middle Eastern countries, but of people who believe one particular thing rather than another, would require border guards to become thought police. Basic political principle: when considering granting any government department new powers, always imagine first what a government with beliefs diametrically opposed to your own could do with them.

Er... During the Second World War, immigration from Germany was none too easy, and there was a sharp eye on sleepers. What, exactly, would the outcome have been if you had hundreds of thousands of Germans immigrating who openly declared their support for Nazism - or hundreds of thousands of Japanese who believed in the divinity of the Emperor?

Did I miss something? When did we declare war on Islam? I mean officially, not just you. And that's not a minor detail. It's one thing to say we should seek out spies under special, legally circumscribed conditions, such as when war has been formally declared. It's quite another to say we should do so just because we believe ourselves to be under threat, without having any formalities or procedures to pass through first. That way fascism lies.I compared the crime rate among Muslims in Europe to the crime rate among African Americans in the States. You said I was insulting African Americans. I said: check the statistics, then.

You are. You're drawing an equivalence between race and religion - the exact same equivalent you accuse me of, btw. So, are African Americans devoted largely to tyranny, do black churches routinely say rape and paedophilia is A.Ok? Do tell. I'd love to know the kind of sites you've been browsing.We were talking about crimes committed, not who endorses them.

You have repeatedly asserted that they do, but never backed up the assertion, and as a large part of your case depends on it, I'd really like to see what your justification is.

*BEEP* The Third Reich, the USSR, Maoist China, North Korea, the KKK, slavery, the Jihad of fourteen centuries, the routine practice of Islamic child rape justified by and with reference to Muhammad's example - sorry, do you really know that little about humanity and its history?I see your reading problem has resurfaced again. Let me clarify.

What I did not say:

Belief does not influence behaviour. Circumstances are everything.

What I said:

Behaviour is driven by context-specific beliefs. General beliefs, including religious beliefs, do influence behaviour, but they do so via the fact that we draw on them under specific circumstances to derive specific beliefs from which we decide what to do.

I have met plenty of Christians who share the witchcraft beliefs of the fifteenth-century Catholic Church. I have met none who regarded the fifteenth-century Catholic response to witchcraft with less than complete horror. Beliefs matter, but they are not the only thing that matters.

What I have said is that we have no obligation, none, to risk our necks for those who won't, for whatever reason, begin to think and learn and find the courage that brings. If they apostasize, great. Every free mind is a valuable addition. If they leave our countries, not so great, but it gets the sword off our necks.

Who's talking about "obligation"? I'm talking about strategies that work versus strategies that don't work. I don't think the threat is anywhere near as urgent as you say, but if it is, that simply makes that distinction all the more important. And turning away from the fearful and the weak and saying "not my problem" is a strategy that doesn't work.

49. [UPDATED] Venomous Snakes, Slippery Eels and Harun Yahya

Comment #212914 by NakedCelt on July 17, 2008 at 8:35 pm

Geez Louise. I have a busy week at work and the thread explodes all over the place.

Some time far, far back on this thread, Fanusi said to me:

If Islam is what made the difference, why didn't the Orthodox Christians in those same areas -- think Ethiopia and Russia -- experience the Enlightenment?

Simple. Both of those may have been Christian, but they were not Hellenic. Russia is really on the outskirts of Western Civilization - the Graeco-Latin strain is weakest there.

Britain, too, was on the outskirts of Graeco-Latin civilization. It was one of the last parts of the Empire to be conquered and one of the first to be relinquished. Yet it, along with France, was the source of the Enlightenment. Scotland, which was never Roman at all, was an important centre of the Enlightenment. You may argue that Graeco-Latin civilization spread northwest after the fall of the Empire, but in that case it is legitimate to ask -- why northwest and not northeast into Russia or south into Africa? The answer has to do mainly with food production. You can't have specialized scholars if everyone's living hand-to-mouth.

Fanusi:

It is worth noting that the Helenic strain may have been weak in Russia, but it still developed. It managed to reach the Industrial Revolution, which is more than can be said for the Muslim world. The reason it never developed fully is because Russia was strangled by an ideology perhaps as evil as Islam - Communism.

And yet it was under Communism that Russia experienced its great expansion of industry. Communism at least did not strangle industry the way feudalism had. Many Western intellectuals were attracted to socialism in the '30s for a very simple reason -- the Communist countries were not suffering the Depression. Communism actually seemed to be working. With hindsight, of course, we know that it was an illusion, that the state-run economy also never experienced the postwar boom the way America's did, and that this is because coercion is seriously bad for economies.

It's also worth noting that the countries today which enjoy the highest standards of living, the best environmental conditions, and incidentally the lowest levels of religious belief and practice, are not in laissez-faire North America but in social-democratic Scandinavia.

Fanusi:

es, point #7 of the 19 that I'm still waiting for an answer from you on. You know, on the UK Sharia thread that you suddenly stopped answering.

Oh dear, nineteen is it? Care to list them here? And do you care to make sure that they aren't ones I have torpedoed repeatedly?

Sure.

#1: Despite your individualistic political leanings, you insist on discussing Muslims as a collective unit, to be treated as if each were guilty of the sins of all. I sarcastically summarized your attitude as

Muslims took land in Kashmir and Constantinople, therefore no Muslim has a right to complain about land being taken from them anywhere until all Muslims, collectively, redress those historic thefts.

and you replied

By George, I think he's got it! Correct.

#2: You poured scorn on Scott Atran for saying only a few thousand Muslims pursued jihad. By the Qur'an's definition of jihad, which includes preaching and propaganda, you'd be right. But Atran makes it quite clear that by "jihad" he means specifically violence, and in particular terrorism. You can argue with his choice of terms, but to claim that you have defeated his argument with this definition is to commit the logical fallacy of equivocation.

#3: We were discussing the causes of war. I said all wars had economic causes; you called this "so ignorant it's unbelievable". I replied that, while individuals might go to war or even lead others to war for ideological reasons, war is both such a costly and such a risky business that any war effort lacking solid economic underpinnings would fail. Therefore, conflicts that do escalate into major wars always have an economic basis.

#4: We were discussing how far racism and anti-Islamic sentiment overlapped. I told you that (in particular) the reaction of the citizens of Camden, Australia, to a proposed Muslim school was clearly motivated by racism. You told me I couldn't know that unless I'd actually visited Camden itself. I replied:

Much as we might make rude jokes about each other's countries, the fact is that we form a cultural continuum. Camden would have to be quite bizarrely cut off from the rest of Australasia to produce an ethos that coincidentally sounded exactly like Australasian racism but wasn't.

It was also telling, I said, that openly racist and nationalist organizations in Australia voiced their support for the school's opponents -- further evidence that their sentiments were racist in character (you thought I was claiming the racist organizations were behind the whole thing, which I was not).

#5: You've repeatedly accused the P