Comments by Frying Pantheist

Comment #224082 by Frying Pantheist on August 4, 2008 at 5:03 am

Alters made headlines in Canada two years ago when he was denied $40,000 in federal funding to study whether intelligent design was hurting how science is taught in schools.

The committee reviewing his application said there was inadequate "justification for the assumption in the proposal that the theory of evolution, and not intelligent design theory, was correct."

Well, he got his answer at least.

2. Antony Flew reviews the Index of The God Delusion

Comment #214943 by Frying Pantheist on July 21, 2008 at 5:09 am

He reviewed the index? Makes a change from the title page I guess.

3. You can't be moral without God!

Comment #91044 by Frying Pantheist on November 27, 2007 at 4:55 am

There is one point that I would like to add, not that I think it's the best argument ever, but it's one that hasn't come up here yet. For a minute let's play erm... devil's advocate. Assume that without belief in a god morality has no meaning - how is this an argument in favour of religion?

According to this claim, the only thing you can say in favour of morality is that it is supported by some religion or other. Any attempts to back it up by stating social benefits or the like contradict the initial assumption. So if that's the case, why should we care if there is no morality? You could quite reasonably claim that without a belief in a god there is no point in prayer but saying "without god, prayer is meaningless" is not much of an argument for religion since... well... prayer is meaningless.

4. Poll: Which religion do you associate with?

Comment #65162 by Frying Pantheist on August 23, 2007 at 4:29 am

automath:

Hardly any of the religions I've been associated with over the year are listed, there's no Spiritualism

There's a "spiritual but not religious" option.

Back up to 71% - take that 0% of Hindus!

5. Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris: The Unholy Trinity ... Thank God.

Comment #63643 by Frying Pantheist on August 15, 2007 at 7:35 am

over ten percent of Americans who identify themselves as atheists (closeted or otherwise)

How can you identify yourself as a closet atheist? Surely the whole point of that term is that you don't admit it.

6. Scarlet Letter Campaign Update: A Victory

Comment #62382 by Frying Pantheist on August 9, 2007 at 2:03 pm

From the legal statement on the bottom right:

Many antogonists on the political Left would like to call it political satire so perhaps everything posted here should be understood in that context. Whatever it takes to keep their tiny brains from overloading.

So yes, it's satire, but a very good one at that.

7. In defense of dangerous ideas

Comment #58232 by Frying Pantheist on July 24, 2007 at 4:41 am

[quote="mushroom"]It's nitpicking a bit, but this line was silly.

logicians tell us that a system of ideas containing a contradiction can be used to deduce any statement whatsoever, no matter how absurd

That's only true because "x implies y" in logic is defined to be always true when x is false, so e.g. "the pope shits in the woods" implies "the bible is true" is a true proposition. All this means is that logical "implies" doesn't capture the meaning of implication in normal English, as Pinker surely knows.[/quote]

You don't need to use "implies" in this counter-intuitive sense (Indeed it doesn't work, since "X -> Y" does not imply Y), suppose we start off with

(1) X = TRUE,
(2) NOT X = TRUE

and we want to prove that Y is true. Y is logically equivalent to:

(3) (Y OR X) AND (Y OR NOT X).

But from (1) and (2) we know that each of the OR statements contains a true proposition and so (3) is equivalent to

(4) (Y OR TRUE) AND (Y OR TRUE).

An OR statement is true if either of the propositions is true, an AND statement is true if both are true and so (4), and hence Y, is equivalent to

(5) TRUE AND TRUE,
(6) TRUE.

8. Kansas State School Board Bans Pokemon Due to Evolution Content

Comment #29733 by Frying Pantheist on April 4, 2007 at 1:56 pm

I had to check the date of the original article to make sure you hadn't posted an April fool's joke. Nope, they really are this stupid.

9. Books on Atheism Are Raising Hackles in Unlikely Places

Comment #23860 by Frying Pantheist on March 3, 2007 at 8:21 am

The argument that you can't make a claim about the liklihood of God existing without first looking in detail at theological writings is backwards. The first question is "does any God exist", that needs to be answered first before you can go on to precise details about the nature of that God. This criticism is like saying you can't say astrology doesn't work without first learning how to write a horoscope.

10. What a Friend We Have in Dawkins

Comment #20521 by Frying Pantheist on February 3, 2007 at 4:54 pm

Shuggy:

"("Giftmas" has also been suggested - by Matt Groening in Futurama? - but it doesn't trip so easily off the tongue.)"

It's certainly a lot older than that, a quick Google search found a 1939 article featuring the word (You need to be registered to read the whole thing):

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-1283(193902)14%3A1%3C3%3ANW%3E2.0.CO%3B2-G

Also, the term from Futurama was Xmas, pronounced the way it's spelt and involving everyone hiding from a killer robot Santa Claus.