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Comments by Buddha


1. Religion's role in the climate debate

Comment #206488 by Buddha on July 8, 2008 at 12:07 pm

locri:

The positive feedback you mention is the amplification I was referring to. You will find both terms used in the literature for the same thing.

I'm sorry you've experienced such a roasting from some of the other posters. I hope it doesn't put you off joining in with further debates.

2. Religion's role in the climate debate

Comment #206308 by Buddha on July 8, 2008 at 8:59 am

@locri
CO2 has an amplifying effect on initial sources of warming. There is plenty of evidence that many of the warming and cooling periods in Earth's history match up with orbital forcing, which is then amplifyed in effect by CO2 - a bit like wearing a jumper on a hot day.

The warming trend we are seeing at the moment cannot be explained by orbital forcing, or any other proposed hypothesis. The smoking gun is the huge amount of CO2 we are producing, which will have an additive warming effect as it increases. Whether CO2 lags temperature or not doesn't change the fact that increasing CO2 by short circuiting the carbon cycle will warm us up regardless.

3. Religion's role in the climate debate

Comment #206009 by Buddha on July 8, 2008 at 2:55 am

@locri

The point still stands. On the very links you posted RealClimate mentions that CO2 couldn't have caused the initial 1/6 of warming and it only "could" have caused the other 5/6ths. The don't know what really caused that warming. They suspect that it's a positive feedback effect, but suspicion does not equal evidence.

Likewise it does not provide evidence that CO2 does NOT have a warming effect, as you seemed to infer in your original post. The point of the article is that CO2 may not necessarily initiate warming, but it will certainly amplify it considerably when it happens.

The most important part is they admit that climate is not usually driven by CO2, but now because man is in the equation things obviously must be so different. I don't quite follow that logic. There is so little we truly understand about the climate and to make such definite statements is kinda silly.

CO2 is one of many forcing factors alongside Milankovitch orbital cycles, solar insolation, mountain building etc.. Humans are having a big impact because we are short-circuiting the carbon-cycle by digging up coal and oil and burning it extremely rapidly. The actual RATE of increase in atmospheric CO2 in the past 150 years is unprecedented.

Do you have proof that CO2 caused a giant warming spike that effected the dinosaurs? If not, leave silly statements like that out please.

A combination of CO2 and Milankovich forcing is the best theory we have to explain the various hothouse periods in Earth's history. That includes the late Cretaceous - T-Rex was wearing speedos and sunglasses in Alaska at the time. ;-)

And yes, La Nina is happening, but just a short few years ago 2008 was supposed to be "the worst year yet" just like almost every other year. The apocolypse keeps getting pushed back because it isn't fitting their computer models. That doesn't inspire much confidence. They know the cycles of La Nina, so they should
have been able to figure that out years ago. (If they know the climate as well as they say they do.)

Who is "they". Politicians? Sloppy journalists? Tabloid columnists? If you actually read the original peer-reviewed literature you will tend to find that scientists usually bend over backwards to moderate their predictions according to the evidence available. It's a fast moving and very complex field of research and our knowledge is being refined on a daily basis.

4. Religion's role in the climate debate

Comment #205583 by Buddha on July 7, 2008 at 1:28 pm

Not to be a party pooper, but the levels of CO2 measured in the past (via ice core samples) have been determined to have an average of an 800 year lag after temperature at high resolutions of the timescale. Therefore, in the past CO2 has decidedly NOT caused warming. There are many that believe because things are different (influenced by man, this time) that the rising level of CO2 now will cause temperature increase, but that's a different argument than what happened in the past.

That old chestnut again:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/co2-in-ice-cores/

and..

http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn11659

CO2 has only been shown to increase temperature with certainty in a closed laboratory environment and not an open planetary environment.

Try telling that to the dinosaurs!


The IPCC has recently said that the warming effects are "taking a break" and will pick up again in a few years. Huh?


We're in a La Nina phase, so the next few years will be cooler:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/hadleycentre/news/cc_global_variability.html

5. Origin of the Novel Species Noodleous doubleous: Evidence for Intelligent Design

Comment #205571 by Buddha on July 7, 2008 at 1:11 pm

Well it convinced me. Schneider and Frederick are inspirational to-martyrs for the cause.

Shiver me timbers!

6. Religion's role in the climate debate

Comment #205424 by Buddha on July 7, 2008 at 9:02 am

Creationists sometimes say "scientists are dogmatic and corrupt". Climate change deniers say "scientists are exaggerating".


The frustrating thing to me is that climate scientists have been, in the main, very measured and cautious in their analysis of MMGW, so far.

The false impression of exaggeration comes from sloppy journalists that take titbits of scientific research out of context for the sake of a good story helped by a small minority of hysterical environmentalists ready to jump on any bandwagon. Combine that with a growing host of armchair experts with blogs who feel they are owed an equal say against published peer-reviewed research and you end up with a public thinking that scientific progress happens through soundbites and opinion polls.

7. Religion's role in the climate debate

Comment #205263 by Buddha on July 7, 2008 at 1:30 am

My own view is that global warming is just a new millennial cult like the one that surfaced in 2000 with the Y2K bug; but read the debate and make your own mind up.


The Y2K bug was far from being a millenial cult. I personally spent 2 years fixing some very real Y2K problems in my organisation that would have caused many difficulties for us. The fact that the Y2K bug turned into a damp squib was more to do with the enormous amount of corrective work conducted by IT specialists around the world in the lead up to 2000 rather than a cult of fantasy.

Also, I see plenty of parallels between global warming skeptics and creationists. They both spout out fallacies and regurgitate out-dated information that has been repeatedly debunked for years. Unfortunately, this is a strategy that strikes a chord with the scientifically illiterate general public. There is plenty of valid debate and argument within the climate science community, but the central fact that Humans are short-circuiting the carbon cycle and that CO2 is an extremely effective greenhouse gas with a residence time in the atmosphere of 1000's of years is not disputed at all.

8. Decades Later, Still Asking: Would I Pull That Switch?

Comment #204917 by Buddha on July 6, 2008 at 7:17 am

And here's Derren Brown reproducing it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6GxIuljT3w



I have the dubious honour of being friends with the actor in the Derren Brown show that was pretending to be electrocuted during the Milgram experiment.

Aside from occasional appearances as a thug in "Eastenders" or "The Bill", you can regularly find Adrian playing in a band with his brother around the pubs of SW London: http://www.myspace.com/getduffy

9. Merger of U.S. earth science agencies proposed

Comment #204911 by Buddha on July 6, 2008 at 7:04 am

On the face of it, this seems to be an eminently sensible idea. It's only through a holistic systems approach that we can come close to begin understanding the dynamics of our planet.

The danger is that such mergers have a tendency to be a front for budget cuts.

10. Science is thrilling - except in our schools

Comment #203965 by Buddha on July 4, 2008 at 1:43 am

I'm thinking about becoming a Physician Assistant once I graduate with a BSc (Hons) in Life Sciences from the Open University next year, but I also think it would be cool to qualify as a teacher and spend a day a week teaching biology and chemistry to secondary school students to inspire the next generations.


I'm in a similar position. I will be completing BSc(Hons) Geosciences with the Open University in just over a year. I have seriously thought about a career change to become a science teacher, as communicating scientific concepts and making people go "Wow!" is something I really enjoy.

My problem is that I currently have a well paid career in IT and I would need to take a more than 50% hit in salary to retrain as a teacher.

Will my life will be more fulfilled doing teaching, or staying where I am and not constantly worrying about how I'm going to pay the mortgage?

11. A secular world is a sane world

Comment #200657 by Buddha on June 28, 2008 at 3:39 am

You can always rely on Pat Condell for a wonderful turn of phrase:

God peddling faith jockies


Love it!

12. Only a Theory

Comment #193422 by Buddha on June 15, 2008 at 2:59 pm

Kenneth Miller is an excellent defender of science and seems to be a very decent and honourable chap - regardless of his other interest in bronze-age mythology.

After all, many vicars and bishops here in the UK are atheist or agnostic, so I suppose it just boils down to ying and yang.

13. Court Claim: Chimps Are People, Too

Comment #191527 by Buddha on June 11, 2008 at 6:13 am

I'll support Chimpanzees rights to be "people" when we start jailing them for stealing bananas!

14. Complex Synapses Drove Brain Evolution

Comment #191275 by Buddha on June 10, 2008 at 1:39 pm

I didn't mean to be too critical, but I don't believe that genome can be anything like the same kind of thing as software. I say this as a programmer with 40 years experience (!). It is far more like a robust recipe.


There's a growing trend of opinion that genetics/genomics is a discipline of computer science rather than of wet biology. David Deutsch, in his book "Fabric of Reality", explores the argument that evolution itself is an emergent property of a Quantum Theory of Computation - an extension of Turing's original theory.

15. Complex Synapses Drove Brain Evolution

Comment #191124 by Buddha on June 10, 2008 at 9:02 am

@ Steve Zara:

One thing we can be pretty sure that the genome is NOT like is an operating system. Just about all software systems we know are very fragile - change a single character and it is possible to bring the whole thing down. Living systems (including the brain) are robust. Major parts can be damaged and changed, and they carry on.


It was an analogy rather than a literal comparison I was making, though there are some point mutations in genomes that are extremely deleterious to the organism. The main advantage that DNA/RNA has over Windows Vista is it's ability to repair damage and errors in it's coding. Computer scientists have started using similar biological techniques to develop resilient software for mission critical apps.

16. Complex Synapses Drove Brain Evolution

Comment #190944 by Buddha on June 10, 2008 at 1:23 am

Those 20-30,000 genes in the genome can encode a staggering number of proteins because they can be expressed in a multitude of combinations. Proteins themselves then introduce another staggering layer of complexity by their subtle folding structures and interactions with each other. Also, some studies have indicated that the 98% of so called "junk DNA" may not be wholly useless after all.

The Human genome needs to be viewed as a computer Operating System rather than a recipe book. A computer programming language may have only a few dozen instructions, but it's the combination and interaction of those instructions that provide the infinite variety of software applications.

17. Darwin still causing waves after 150 years

Comment #188905 by Buddha on June 5, 2008 at 1:46 am

For anyone who's already read popular science books on Evolution and wants to dip their toes into more of the meaty technicalities of the subject, I can strongly recommend "Evolution" by Douglas J Futuyma. It's a beautiful undergraduate text that doesn't require too much previous knowledge other than basic high-school biology and maths to get stuck into.

http://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Douglas-J-Futuyma/dp/0878931872/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1212655270&sr=8-1



Even if you don't understand it, it's a pretty weighty tome that is perfect for whacking IDiots round the back of the head.

18. Scientists rally against creationist 'superstition'

Comment #187111 by Buddha on June 1, 2008 at 9:52 am

@ Miss Harry:

Hi Buddha,

The OU course is going to be a 10 point science short course, so yes, it will be level 1. Should be a good entry level course.

Am not ready for level 3 yet myself, am working my way through the Cert in Contemporary Science before thinking about level 2 and above courses! Hope S366 Evolution is still going when I am ready for that, though.


You'll be doing 3rd level courses before you know it and you've also got Summer Schools to look forward too - they are awesome! I'm sure Evolution will continue to exist in some form at 3rd level, as it's a fundamental topic. Unfortunately, the OU does struggle to find the balance of courses that their funding can provide.

One of the specified courses on your Contemporary Science Cert. is S193-Fossils & History of Life. I did that a couple of years ago and is highly recommended if you've not already considered it.

Good Luck!

19. Scientists rally against creationist 'superstition'

Comment #187031 by Buddha on June 1, 2008 at 6:33 am

I'm currently studying the Open University's S366 Evolution course as part of their Geosciences degree programme. This covers much of the meaty technicalities of the subject and will leave the student in no doubt as to the breadth of evidence underlying evolutionary theory. I'm hoping that the new course on Darwin they will be introducing will be a Level 1 course, which don't assume to much previous knowledge and are ideal for the layman to dip his/her toes into the water.

For anyone in UK/Europe who has a desire to increase their scientific knowledge, then I cannot recommend the Open University highly enough. No previous qualifications are required. All you need is enthusiasm and around 15 hours of spare time a week.

http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/science/index.htm

20. In God's Name

Comment #182802 by Buddha on May 21, 2008 at 1:53 am

This was a well made, but disturbing documentary that finally convinced me that these nut-jobs are really on the spectrum of mental illness.

My only criticism was the point where the presenter challenged the idiot who thought the Earth was only 6000 years old by saying scientists know the Earth is much older due to carbon dating. Geological dating of the Earth uses different radioactive isotopes with half-lifes of many millions of years e.g. Uranium, Thorium, Strontium, Rubidium etc. Carbon dating is only useful for a few thousand years.

I may be being picky, but it's a common error that these numpties like to jump on.

21. 'My daughter deserved to die for falling in love'

Comment #178480 by Buddha on May 11, 2008 at 1:36 pm

Abdel-Qader Ali, you are an oxygen thief and a scumbag.

22. Orangutan attempts to hunt fish with spear

Comment #172438 by Buddha on April 29, 2008 at 2:57 pm

This story is utter twaddle. I wasn't fishing, I was actually trying to retrieve my car keys!

23. Tyrannosaurus rex protein proves dinosaurs evolved into birds

Comment #169953 by Buddha on April 27, 2008 at 5:46 am

@rod-the-farmer:

A definition of taxa (singular: taxon) is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxon. Essentially, it's a name that describes an organism, or group of organisms.

Raja is a genus of Skates: http://www.first-nature.com/fishes/raja_batis.htm

Cladograms such as this are constructed by defining various characteristics of each organism (number of teeth, length of tibia, volume of skull etc.) and then building the relationship between those organisms by minimising the number of character differences between each one i.e. closely related organisms have fewer character differences than distantly related ones. This is the Principle of Parsimony.

Often, with large cladograms there may be many arrangements of the tree structure that can give equally parsimonious results. When this happens an average "consensus tree" will be constructed that includes the features of those equally parsimonious trees that are in agreement. This is where the "bootstrap" confidence values are calculated.

You can try this for yourself at home by downloading the PHYLIP software package (http://evolution.genetics.washington.edu/phylip.html) and using the PARS module to process your own character matrices and generating your own cladograms. A good project would be to analyse the evolutionary relationship between your household pets and the wife - just make sure you use the goldfish as the outgroup ;-)

EDIT: For an excellent primer to evolutionary relationships that also covers taxonomy and cladistics for the layman, I can't recommend RD's "The Ancestors Tale" highly enough.

24. Tyrannosaurus rex protein proves dinosaurs evolved into birds

Comment #169440 by Buddha on April 26, 2008 at 5:16 am

@rod-the-farmer

I agree, truly neat stuff. However, I went to the cladogram mentioned in Comment #9, by Angels on a Pinhead, to see if I could understand the science a bit more. Nope. I must be dumb, but so are several of the people posting there as well. Is there anyone watching this site who could explain that cladogram to us non-techie types ?



The cladogram is a tree diagram that arranges taxa in a nested series of sister groups to show the relative relationship between them. The tree is rooted to an outgroup taxa, which is very distantly related to the other taxa in the tree (in this case "Raja" on the far left).

The values between 0 and 1 on the tree may be "bootstrap values", which indicate the degree of confidence that the relationship is correct i.e. 1 = complete confidence, 0.8 = 80% confidence

25. Scientists take drugs to boost brain power: study

Comment #159378 by Buddha on April 12, 2008 at 3:52 am

Comment #159010 by headcold on April 11, 2008 at 10:37 am

Using hallucinogenic drugs coincides directly with my final break from religion and associated metaphysically supported stuffs. After realizing that while tripping on mushrooms or DXM I went through a variety of emotional states, from great fear to extreme joy and "genuine" religious experiences, I finally started to understand that maybe I was just stimulating a part of my brain that made me hallucinate into thinking that there was something divine in the world.


Same with me. I was a regular recreational user of LSD many years ago. It was very apparant that the intense pseudo-mystical experiences you could have were just down to chemical processes screwing with the neurons. It was what finally convinced me of a definite neurological cause to all religious experience and that Timothy Leary was in fact a complete tosser.

26. Scientists take drugs to boost brain power: study

Comment #158898 by Buddha on April 11, 2008 at 6:42 am

I too abused amphetamine at college. Unfortunately, rather than hitting the books and revising, it just gave me the urge to drink obnoxious quantities of lager and jump about to very loud techno.

27. Biologists Take Evolution Beyond Darwin Way Beyond

Comment #155929 by Buddha on April 6, 2008 at 10:37 am

@Steve Zara -I doubt it. Genes are what are what replicate and are passed on. Genes can have effects at those levels, but they are still primarily where changes start.


Memes?

28. Russell T Davies: Return of the (tea) Time Lord

Comment #155925 by Buddha on April 6, 2008 at 10:29 am

I hope the Archbishop of Canterbury doesn't cotton on to the fact that RD is married to a regenerative transmuting Time-Lord. Technically, that would be bigamy.

On a tangent I found this alternate profile of the Prof.: http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins

29. In His Name We Pray, Ramen

Comment #152195 by Buddha on March 30, 2008 at 12:09 pm

Bah! Pastafarianism is an upstart, baby religion. We Discordians have been singing praise to Her Wot Done It All since the 70's.

Hows -that- for credibility?

Hail Eris


All Hail Discordia!

Note that this is comment #152195, which contains two 5's (Law of Fives). It was also posted in 2008(2008 - 8 = 2000, 2000 / 1000 = 2), and on March 30 (30 / 10 = 3) thus giving 23!!!

Spooky eh?

30. No Admission for Evolutionary Biologist at Creationist Film

Comment #148099 by Buddha on March 22, 2008 at 4:04 am

Dr. Dawkins, who like everyone was asked to present identification, said he offered his British passport, which lists him as Clinton Richard Dawkins.



Clinton!?!?

Clint sounds much better. Suggests an enigmatic cigar chewing outlaw - diddley-doo-wah-wah-wah...

31. In Britain, creationist theory is evolving

Comment #144639 by Buddha on March 16, 2008 at 1:51 pm

I just had brief visit to the Answers in Genesis website and the first thing I clapped my eyes on was this foul piece of bare faced dishonesty:

If dinosaurs evolved from amphibians, there should be, for example, fossil evidence of animals that are part dinosaur and part something else. However, there is no proof of this anywhere. In fact, if you go into any museum you will see fossils of dinosaurs that are 100% dinosaur, not something in between. There are no 25%, 50%, 75%, or even 99% dinosaursâ€"they are all 100% dinosaur!


How about Archosauria, Ornithodira, Dinosauromorpha etc. you truth distorting, lying scumbags!

Good luck to those of you who will be challenging them during their talks in the UK this month. If they come anywhere near Monkey World in Dorset, I shall give them both barrels!

32. Contribute to science directly by volunteering some of your computer's processing power!

Comment #140345 by Buddha on March 7, 2008 at 7:08 am

I've been a BOINC member for about a year now running both SETI@Home and ClimatePrediction. I would advise anyone with modest hardware avoid ClimatePrediction as it requires serious number crunching otherwise you may not meet the submission deadlines for the work units. My 1.6GHz Duo Core 2GB RAM laptop has been chugging away for 6 months and is only 25% through it's model run that needs to be finished by July. My other PC that I use for gaming eats through SETI@Home work units in about 3 hours.

My experience of BOINC is that it is very stable and doesn't interfere with what I'm doing - you just need to ensure you have enough RAM e.g 1GB

It's certainly a great way to participate in leading edge scientific endeavour and I can't recommend it highly enough.

33. Charles Simonyi Professorship in the Public Understanding of Science

Comment #125235 by Buddha on February 11, 2008 at 5:28 am

I would nominate Jim Al-Khalili who is currently Professor of Physics and Chair for the Public Engagement of Science at the University of Surrey. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Al-Khalili

He's an excellent communicator of science and regularly appears on TV & radio here in the UK. His recent BBC Four TV series "Atom" was absolutely sublime and one of the best pieces of science programming that I've ever seen: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/atom.shtml

He's only 45 and unlikely to croak anytime soon.

34. Sharia law in UK is 'unavoidable'

Comment #123657 by Buddha on February 7, 2008 at 1:10 pm

In the name of all of those people throughout British history who have fought and died for our freedom and democracy and all those who have contributed to the enlightenment of the modern age....Over my dead body!

35. Happy Birthday Josh Timonen!

Comment #118925 by Buddha on January 31, 2008 at 7:09 am

Happy Birthday Josh and thanks for your efforts in making this a great site. January the 30th is my birthday too and it's an honour to share it with you.

36. Launch of 'Atheists in Foxholes' Book Anthology

Comment #116250 by Buddha on January 26, 2008 at 3:25 am

I spent a short time in the British Royal Navy. Again, to bolster some of the comments here, the main motivation for me was to give something back to defend the notions of freedom, fair play and democracy rather than nationalism.

I hope that Pat Tillman's story gets in to the anthology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Tillman

His family suffered some absolutely disgusting treatment from senior officers after his death due to his professed non-belief.

37. Did mozzies, not a meteor, do for the dinosaurs?

Comment #109618 by Buddha on January 9, 2008 at 9:28 am

Even when we do our worst to mess things up, many species thrive. Just look at our cities, filled with pigeons, rats, cockroaches, predatory birds...


More than half of all the worlds original forests has already been converted to other uses by us e.g. agriculture. It's estimated that another 50% could disappear in another 50 years at current rates. When an estimated 70% of known species exist in tropical rain forest environments it's easy to see where the extinction comes from. Also, consider around 30% of the world's coral reefs have been damaged through fishing, sediment run-off from soil erosion (due to agriculture & deforestation) and rising sea temperatures.

You're right about Humans not having god-like powers to wipe out all life. I think we'll have destroyed the food-chain we rely on long before that happens. I'm quite sure once we've wiped ourselves out species diversity will explode and life will thrive once again - until the cockroaches evolve and learn how to make SUV's ;-)

38. Did mozzies, not a meteor, do for the dinosaurs?

Comment #109479 by Buddha on January 9, 2008 at 5:44 am

Not quite yet. The permian extinction killed of 95% of all non-microbial species. We would have a problem achieving even a fraction of that even with a full-out nuclear war.


E.O. Wilson, The Future of Life (2002), estimates that up to 50% of all species could be extinct within 100 years, bearing in mind that the end-Permian extinction occured over a few million years. The rate of extinction of the past 50 years is now reckoned to exceed that of the dinosaurs.

39. Did mozzies, not a meteor, do for the dinosaurs?

Comment #109070 by Buddha on January 8, 2008 at 9:08 am

but I don't know of many examples (none TBH) in the history of the Earth in which evolutionary mechanics (in this case the rise of insects, flower plants and deceases) lead to complete worldwide eradication of the dominant species in a relatively short geological time span.


The rise of Homo Sapiens is a very good example of evolutionary mechanics leading to the widespread demise of the dominant species. We are currently undergoing possibly the biggest extinction event in Earth's history, primarily due to our activities.

40. Did mozzies, not a meteor, do for the dinosaurs?

Comment #108994 by Buddha on January 8, 2008 at 5:33 am

Because dinosaur fossils are relatively rare, the dating of the appearance and disappearance of a particular species can be difficult to pin down: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signor-Lipps_effect

The ultimate disappearance of the dinosaurs was instantaneous with the K/T boundary impact event, however, instantaneous in geological terms could be 100,000 years. Many species were in decline in the lead up to the K/T boundary and it is possible that some dinosaur species may have survived into the early Tertiary.

41. Clegg 'does not believe in God'

Comment #101205 by Buddha on December 20, 2007 at 5:08 am

I suspect Mr & Mrs Clegg are committed to bringing up their children as catholics more out of a desire to get them into a decent nearby "faith" school.

I know plenty of godless heathen parents who suddenly get an overwhelming urge to baptise their kids once they start researching the schooling options in their area.

42. THE FOUR HORSEMEN - Available Now on DVD!

Comment #99049 by Buddha on December 15, 2007 at 10:47 am

Absolutely sublime. Thank you very much.

43. Chimps beat humans in memory test

Comment #93754 by Buddha on December 4, 2007 at 5:58 am

Chimps arn't that smart. I saw a TV prog recently with an interview of a psychologist who managed to conclusively prove that Chimps are incapable of following the plot to Shakespeare's Othello.

Something to do with the fact that they are limited in their ability to mentally project themselves to empathise or imagine other peoples motives to any great degree.

44. Religious scholars mull Flying Spaghetti Monster

Comment #88860 by Buddha on November 19, 2007 at 4:52 am

I for one shall deal a blow to the infidels with my bolognese bomb-vest and achieve glorious to-martyrdom!!!

Peace be udon you.

45. A third of adults believe God watches over them

Comment #87550 by Buddha on November 12, 2007 at 12:45 pm

A spokesman from the TearFund was interviewed on BBC Breakfast News on Friday morning. He said that the results of this poll "clearly shows that Christianity and Islam is exploding around the World".

The irony left me chortling quietly to myself.

46. Sir David Attenborough on God

Comment #86760 by Buddha on November 10, 2007 at 5:16 am

Though I have the greatest respect for David Attenborough, he does get on my nerves sometimes. There have been a couple of occasions when myself and Mrs Buddha have been taking a quiet weekend out in the bush for a bit of a rest, when he turns up with a bloody camera crew. We're minding our own business and he just crouches there whispering to himself then expects a cuddle.

47. Internet used to target extremism

Comment #84086 by Buddha on November 1, 2007 at 6:19 am

On my way to work this morning I walked past a young muslim girl in a hijab who was wearing a poppy. I felt quite moved at this. Maybe there is a glimmer of hope for the future after all.

For those of you not from the UK or Commonwealth the significance of the poppy is best explained here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_Day

48. Are the 'New Atheists' avoiding the 'real arguments'?

Comment #83907 by Buddha on October 31, 2007 at 3:44 pm

This is one of the best articles posted here in a long time. I was almost wincing at the end of each sentence. I'm glad I'm not Rowan Williams - it would have been awful to have been on the receiving end of that intellectual kicking.

49. You can't prove that you love someone, so don't expect proof of God

Comment #81736 by Buddha on October 25, 2007 at 5:45 am

A quick google came up with this potted summary on the biochemical basis of "love":http://people.howstuffworks.com/love6.htm

Even if not 100% correct it shows that there are many avenues of scientific endeavour on the subject

50. A new website addition: Debate Points

Comment #81284 by Buddha on October 24, 2007 at 2:31 pm

"It's not possible to be a true scientist and believe in the supernatural"

This was Craig Venter's response to being asked if he was religious on BBC Newsnight the other day in a piece about his work on synthetic lifeforms.

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