1. Religion & Culture Panel

Comment #36870 by iwentdowntotheriver on May 2, 2007 at 3:08 pm

I have tried everything but my realplayer won't play this. Anyone know where I can get a copy of it in some other format?

2. Study: Religion is Good for Kids

Comment #34918 by iwentdowntotheriver on April 25, 2007 at 3:07 pm

I think many of the comments so far have been missing the point. Of course religion is good for kids in certain ways. I don't see why one has to disagree with this in order to be an atheist. What this study shows is a challenge to all of us atheists. And its a pretty big challenge so we would do well to concentrate on it. How do we fullfil the social and moral aspects of religion (the strong sense of community, the easily understood moral rules) in our children when we are atheists? I do not think it is as easy as it sounds; there is not going to be any sense of atheist 'community' accessible to our children. So we have to look at the ritualisation that above and beyond religion seems essential to our culture and come up with new ways of giving our children a sense of belonging in the world. Secular-humanism for Kids in other words. Pure atheism, the simple disbelief in something, will not do it for the very young.

3. The Fourth Flea!

Comment #26743 by iwentdowntotheriver on March 21, 2007 at 1:09 pm

docwhat and Caesar@

"Alternative viewpoints indeed...
Just another big book of bla bla designed to use big words to make people turn away from the one true christ. (or something to that effect).
I'm pretty sure he hasn't written anything we haven't all heard before. Also I can't seem to understand how people like that can warp their minds in such a way that they can still doubt the truth of the bible, pisses me off."

the above is a restating of Caesar Best's Post but switching around the focus and applying it to the god delusion itself. This is merely to restate my opposition to unsupported statements. I have gone on Christian forums and have been amazed at the type of stuff on them, I would have hoped a group of people coming together in the name of RATIONALLITY would not so easily fall into the discourse of irrational believers. Fellowship, friendship and community are all valuable and these forums do serve that focus, but I am really shocked that people are willing to be irrational in return for such fellowship.

We have a job to do, it only makes it harder and gives theists ammunition when we ACT LIKE THEM.

Thats all I'll say on this for now, though, may I remind that this is not a personal attack, many on these forums use similar irrationallity.

4. The Fourth Flea!

Comment #26666 by iwentdowntotheriver on March 21, 2007 at 3:09 am

"Well, keep in mind that Putnam is good friends with Alvin Plantinga (though they disagree about theological matters quite a bit), and Putnam is also known for the enormous changes in his academic career since the early years, flipping entirely on a few things... perhaps he's just not overly concerned with being right about this... a passive "deist"... not very useful at all if you care about such things, I suppose... but that's his choice.. the man is brilliant for a great many other reasons."

It was quite a shock to me all the same, the more philosophers of note I meet the more I see a real contradiction between the logical consistancy of their work and the logical consistancy of their lives.

Also concerning my previous post where I criticize the irrationality of commenting on things one knows nothing about, many have quoted Caesar and said that his'hers was a reasonable position to take. But there is quite a bit of quote mining involved, his full post was :

"Alternative viewpoints indeed...
Just another big book of bla bla designed to make sure people don't all at once stop paying their church contribution (or something to that effect).
I'm pretty sure he hasn't written anything we haven't all heard before. Also I can't seem to understand how people like that can warp their minds in such a way that they can still believe the unbelievable, pisses me off."

This is much more then the line that people generally quote from his post,
"I'm pretty sure he hasn't written anything we haven't all heard before."

Any book of this type has some value, if nothing else because it will be read by some people and hence will influence the opinions of some people. So let us read it and defend ourselves against its claims, or don't read it and simply be silent.

I cannot beleive people said I am being too hard, if a 'beleiver' did the same thing, ALL of the people on these boards would be up in arms. We must hold ourselves to rigid standards of discourse; there are irrational theists, irrational atheists and rational atheists, I personally want to stick with the final option.

5. The Fourth Flea!

Comment #26605 by iwentdowntotheriver on March 20, 2007 at 5:05 pm

I was at a philosophy conference in Dublin last week, celebrating the work of Hilary Putnam, a brilliant man. It was very interesting that even here, where religion was only discussed for half an hour (it was a four day conference), Dawkins was mentioned by Putnam. Now Putnam was quite disparaging of Dawkins, though he acted like he had never read Dawkins' work. This was a shame for me, because I suspect that the story Putnam would tell concerning religion would be similar to the so called Einsteinian view of religion and so he wouldn't be a million miles away from Dawkins' position.

This reminded me that change takes time, it is one thing not to give overt respect to religion/irrationality, something I am not condoning, but it is quite another to become frustrated that everyone is not suddenly becoming atheists. We need to take it easy, the change will come by putting structures in place, the first series of books are very inflammatory, fulfilling the real need to shock people out of their stupor. The next wave in a few years will/should be more persuasive, more 'how to' with regard atheism.

One other thing, I am constantly shocked by the numbers of people on these boards who are what I term 'irrational atheists'. When one sees a book emerge like the one above, the rational response is to form one's own private opinion, read it if one cares to do so, then post a comment about its merits/flaws. Saying that it is just like another book, without even reading it just makes one as irrational as the vast majority of religious thinking reviewers who comment on Dawkins, Harris etc. talking in a way that would imply that they had not even read the book.

Caesar Best (above) is by no means unique in posting negative comments on things they have not even read. (His/her post implys that he/she has not in fact read the book in question, if they have, then I offer them a full apology.)

6. Senator calls for answer on creation of universe

Comment #23985 by iwentdowntotheriver on March 4, 2007 at 2:27 am

Just for those who mentioned Conservapedia, I checked it out and was not surprised at the tosh I was reading untill I found the following article:

http://www.conservapedia.com/Atheism

At this date, it is quite restrained and I have few disagreements with it. Either an Atheist snuck in and wrote it, or Christian Fundamentalists have suddenly started to listen to what we're all about.

7. The questions science cannot answer

Comment #21660 by iwentdowntotheriver on February 10, 2007 at 12:33 pm

I am getting very tired of all this carry on from theists usually but also from many atheists who are not willing to see the actual dichotomy that is taking place here.

First of all religion is the combination of two different things that are intertwined within the religious narrative. The first is a world view that attempts to explain things like creation, the movement of the planets etc. The second is an ethical system handed down by a super-natural god.

Now theists usually place science as being opposed to religion as a whole. Science in actual fact is only opposed to the first of these, and its extremely successful in its challenge. Hence the brilliance of modern theories of evolution, cosmology etc. Atheists often offer science as a complete alternative to religion but it is not and they are letting down the side of rationality when they do.

There is another aspect of the rational which challenges the second of these two things and that is philosophy in general and moral philosophy in particular.

The challenge is usually represented as:

Science vs. Religion

Instead it should be:

Science and Moral Philosophy vs. Religion

8. Evolution Debate - Pigliucci vs Hovind

Comment #20510 by iwentdowntotheriver on February 3, 2007 at 2:31 pm

I have checked out hovinds website and the $250,000 challenge and was disgusted on one level but very frightened on another level. Forget evolution being taught in schools, kids need to be taught what science itself is because shockingly there seems to be some debate on the definition of science. Popper, Mach et al. would turn in their graves.

(Of course I jest when I say 'forget teaching evolution')