1. Global Warming (includes commentary about creationism)

Comment #44003 by Slartibartfast on May 23, 2007 at 7:07 am

Oh, I forgot...

It is the kind of lawyer type language used by Phillip E. Johnson to dispute evolution, that sounds very clever on paper, but when you cut to the heart of it, it is meaningless.

2. Global Warming (includes commentary about creationism)

Comment #43976 by Slartibartfast on May 23, 2007 at 5:41 am

In 20 years time, Brian won't have to "try again". By then, the politically driven science behind AGW, will of collapsed under the weight of its own stupidity.

3. Global Warming (includes commentary about creationism)

Comment #43966 by Slartibartfast on May 23, 2007 at 5:16 am

Brian, see what I mean? Much as I do admire your persistence, you're obviously wasting your time. Try again in 20 years or so...

4. Global Warming (includes commentary about creationism)

Comment #43958 by Slartibartfast on May 23, 2007 at 4:57 am

QUOTE... 222. Comment #43867 by Slartibartfast The position and arguments of the „AGW deniers" ...CLOSE QUOTE

I have already commented on why denial is a false representation of the scientifically skeptical position in post:

36. Comment #41779 by chbg21808 on May 17, 2007 at 12:34 am

So, I will not repeat myself here.

5. Global Warming (includes commentary about creationism)

Comment #43867 by Slartibartfast on May 23, 2007 at 2:53 am

Hey guys,

just listening in to your debate. Brian, I know exactly how you feel. I had a similar online discussion with an American several years ago and it was similarly fruitless.

The position and arguments of the „AGW deniers" made me think up the following scenario: imagine a lifeboat out on the sea with two people in it. At one point, they notice that their boat appears to be very slowly filling up with water, for no immediately discernible reason. One of them says: „er, hey, I'm not 100 % certain but this boat would appear to be very slowly filling up with water for no immediately discernible reason, hadn't we better do something about it?"

To which the second one replies: „Well, first of all, you said yourself you're not really sure if it's filling up, didn't you? And even if it were filling up, how do you know that it will continue to do so? Water goes up, water goes down. Plus, even if we could be 100 % sure that our boat will, in fact, continue to fill up, we don't have the faintest idea about the cause. Might have been you accidentally cutting a hole into the bottom with your banana knife, might have been a shark nibbling away, the point is, we simply don't know. And finally, think of the waste of effort and energy if we started looking for holes or scooping out water and then it turned out there'd never really been any danger of us sinking after all... Hey, where the hell has that boat gone? And why am I underwater all of a sudden and being eaten by a shark?"

Cheers
Slartibartfast

6. The God of the Bible is No Delusion!

Comment #42655 by Slartibartfast on May 19, 2007 at 12:31 am

Hey guys,
was just listening in to your debate (kudos to all of you, by the way; if only everybody were able to discuss these issues in such a civilized manner!) and saw this:

I think they are making it up to be honest, but there is not an index on the bible on "Some more of god's mistakes" for me to find the place.

You were pretty much correct. It comes mostly from Paul. And it would be very, very nice to have that index! :)

7. Christopher Hitchens and Al Sharpton: A Debate God Is Not Great

Comment #38737 by Slartibartfast on May 9, 2007 at 4:48 am

On comment no. 45 (#38631) by Harlon57 (somewhat late, but still felt necessary):

"In WWII, The german people lost their will to fight because we bombed them into submission."

The majority of "the German people" didn't have a "will to fight" the 2nd World War in the first place (contrary to the 1st World War, and mainly because of it). Certainly, those 25000-35000 refugees and other civilians who died in Dresden didn't have a "will to fight".

Those fanatics and lunatics who still did have a "will to fight" in February 1945 were not daunted by the bombings but rather strengthened in their hatred and "will to fight", as evidenced by the Nazis' propagandistic exploitation of the bombings.

Best regards
Slartibartfast

8. Christopher Hitchens and Al Sharpton: A Debate God Is Not Great

Comment #38729 by Slartibartfast on May 9, 2007 at 4:28 am

Logicel,

regarding your responses to Romin_Devourin and Harlon57: you're absolutely right, these guys are an embarrassment to their consexuals (such as yours truly). And rest assured that not all males have the lack of brains, testosterone surplus and general outlook on life of Neolithic cavemen.

Best regards
Slartibartfast

9. Just 120 Trillion Miles From Home

Comment #36095 by Slartibartfast on April 30, 2007 at 7:32 am

Yeah. Another motto might be "bringing peace and tranquility to habitable planets across the galaxy by crashing spacecrafts into them at half the speed of light". :-)

10. Just 120 Trillion Miles From Home

Comment #36090 by Slartibartfast on April 30, 2007 at 7:01 am

Another problem not mentioned in the article: you wouldn't merely have to attain sufficient speed and carry the appropriate amount of fuel to do so. You'd have to carry twice that amount to be able to brake the spacecraft again in time for arrival, otherwise it would simply zoom past its target. Also the necessary braking process would significantly prolong the journey time.

So, I guess we really do need that warp drive soon... That Hawking chap said he was working on it, didn't he?

11. Is God poison?

Comment #31502 by Slartibartfast on April 13, 2007 at 2:48 am

Veronique,

wow, is this guy for real? I mean, I didn't manage to read all of it, but he seriously seems to believe that some mysterious capitalist conspirators in the U.S. were directly responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Now THAT is what I call deluded...

Best regards
Slartibartfast

12. Is God poison?

Comment #31491 by Slartibartfast on April 13, 2007 at 12:39 am

Helian wrote:

"There are, of course, a host of valid and logically supportable reasons for criticizing the US for its actions over the last 50 years, not to mention in the last five years, or the last year. That, however, is neither here nor there when it comes to assessing whether negative assessments of American actions among the citizens of other countries are justified."

Rtambree's comment:

"Huh? How does the second sentence follow from the first? Why isn't it "neither here nor there" if they are valid criticisms?"

Helian, I didn't understand the logical relation between those two sentences either, and I agree with the other posters that you have, so far at least, utterly failed to clarify what, precisely, constitutes "Anti-Americanism" in your view. My impression is that you think only Americans themselves should be allowed to criticise the Bush government and the religious right, because if foreigners do it, they MUST be "Anti-American" because they're foreigners and can't possibly know the first thing about the U.S., even if they propose exactly the same arguments as Americans themselves.

And PLEASE, don't rely on "Spiegel" covers to assess German public opinion of the U.S. (For the record, Bush was actually delighted about the one with the caption "Die Bush-Krieger", with him depicted as Rambo in front of Rice, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Powell, and ordered a copy of it.) If the French and Germans were to think that "Sun" headlines were representative of English public opinion on their countries, it would be 1914 all over again.

From your posts I gather that you are American and live in the U.S. Well then, turning your main argument against you, I believe that your image of Germans in particular is severely distorted and that your judgement of German public opinion is superficial, paranoid and ill-informed. I am German and I do live in Germany, and to say that most Germans are "Anti-American" is simply ridiculous. It is true that a lot of people (not only the media) are concerned about the actions of the current U.S. government and that people like Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney are widely detested and deriled. For example, while I would disagree with Mr. Dawkins that America is "an incipient theocracy", legitimate concern can be expressed at the extent to which Bush and his fellow ideologues are letting their fundamentalist religious ideas influence their policy-making and are tearing down the wall of separation between religion and state matters. This is definitely NOT what Hamilton, Madison and their contemporaries had in mind in 1789.

Again, you yourself keep saying that legitimate criticism can be raised against the U.S. government. But if foreigners do it, it's "Anti-American", apparently. Note that all those „Spiegel" covers on the site you linked to express a bias exclusively against the Bush government and its actions, NOT against „America" or „the Americans" as a whole. So, even „Spiegel" manages to distinguish between the U.S. and its government. And the German media covering of the U.S. (even of Bush) is much more varied than you keep stating. The „Frankfurter Allgemeine", an Anti-American propaganda newspaper? Ridiculous!

Of course, when assessing and judging a foreign country and/or its government, there will always be mistakes, distortions and oversimplifications. That is in the nature of things. You can't get everything right about a different country if you haven't lived there all your life (even a lot of natives, American, German or otherwise, don't know everything, or even a lot, about their own country). If people are wrong on something in your opinion, you're free to point it out to them. But there's no need to go and label them „Anti-Americans" just because their view of your country is, necessarily, an external one. That is, I repeat, paranoid and ill-informed.

Best regards
Slartibartfast

13. Is God poison?

Comment #31182 by Slartibartfast on April 11, 2007 at 9:19 am

Helian,

please don't detract. Honestly, I've read all posts made in reply to you and was completely unable to find any instance of "Anti-Americanism". "Anti-Bushism" maybe, but that's a different thing entirely. You keep defending the U.S. against a bunch of people (us other posters) who haven't even attacked it. You ostensibly take offence at people not properly distinguishing between the current Federal government (which you say yourself it's o.k. to criticise) and the country as a whole, but throughout this thread, the only person who fails to make that distinction is yourself. Every time someone expressly emphasises that they do in fact make that distinction, you keep shouting "ha! Yet more propaganda by hateful Anti-Americans!" at them. I don't get your point.

Best regards
Slartibartfast

14. Is God poison?

Comment #31170 by Slartibartfast on April 11, 2007 at 8:55 am

Helian,

from your posts, it would seem that everyone who criticises the current Federal government or the (other) right-wing Christian fundamentalist activists at large in the U.S. is automatically "Anti-American" in your opinion, even if they keep saying at the same time that this criticism does NOT apply to "the U.S." or "the American people" or "American culture" as a whole but only to the Bush jr. government and to religious extremists.

To my mind, this stance is just as misguided as saying that anybody who criticises the government of Israel and its actions, or the actions of radical militant Orthodox settlers, is an Antisemite solely by virtue of that fact. It smacks of McCarthyism: if you criticise the U.S. government and are a U.S. citizen, you're "Un-American"; if you are a foreigner, you're "Anti-American".

I think this kind of self-absorbed defensiveness is rather disturbing.

Best regards
Slartibartfast

15. Is God poison?

Comment #30850 by Slartibartfast on April 10, 2007 at 4:18 am

No, Cregaune, it is an even sadder reflection on the fact that you are an excoriatingly, or even (dare I say it?) coruscatingly ignorant person. :-)

Best regards
S.

16. Is God poison?

Comment #30835 by Slartibartfast on April 10, 2007 at 3:33 am

Honestly, I didn't get the point of this article. While reading it, I was at several points expecting Mr. Bethune to start arguing that atheists and religious moderates ought to make a concerted effort to fight against extreme religious dogmatism and that atheists should take caution not to alienate moderate believers (something I believe has a lot to be said for; for the record, I'm an atheist married to an extremely moderate Catholic :-) ).

However, no such argument was forthcoming. Instead, while Mr. Bethune himself listed all sorts of evils, past and present, wrought by religious dogmatism, at the same time he seemed somehow angered by the arguments advanced against that same dogmatism by Mr. Dawkins, Mr. Harris, Mr. Hitchens and others, or perhaps even by the fact that such arguments are made in public at all. This is evident from the fact that he resorts to ridicule and ‚tu quoque' attacks (e.g.: 'merciless schoolboy-level mockery of religion'; '[o]f course, what they disdain as the arrogance of faith [...] is matched by their own' etc.). Mr. Bethune's rhethorical(ly intended) question 'can't Harris see a single positive reason for religion's ongoing vigour?' tellingly goes unanswered by himself.

So, as I said, I don't get the point. Mr. Bethune seems to be angry at religious extremists, and he seems to be angry at 'radical atheists', but he somehow fails to make clear why exactly he's so angry at everybody. Can anyone eludicate?

Best regards
Slartibartfast

17. Prophets of the new atheism

Comment #30500 by Slartibartfast on April 8, 2007 at 8:39 am

Concerning post no. 58 by briancoughlanworldcitizen:

Brian, thanks a lot for the clarification. It seems I had indeed misunderstood your first statement; I thought you had meant to say that the Communist/Nazi ideologies had a specifically and necessarily religious basis, and my point (unnecessary as it turned out) was that this is not the case and that you can have irrational dogmatism with or without religion. I wholeheartedly agree with everything you said in your last post, especially the statement that 'religion and dogmatic irrational societies are subsets of the same problem', i.e. the absence of rationality.

Best regards
Slartibartfast

18. Prophets of the new atheism

Comment #30489 by Slartibartfast on April 8, 2007 at 7:51 am

Concerning post no. 39 by briancoughlanworldcitizen:

'We also need to robustly reject the idea that communist societies were secular in any meaningful sense. Communisim, Nazism and "Rawandaism" all fit neatly under the umbrella of religious dogma. Any system that has true beleivers, dogma and kills "heretics" co-opts all the flaws of humanity that religion does.'

Brian, I'm not completely sure I grasped your point there, but I suspect that you mistakenly equated two sets of opposed concepts that ought to be kept apart. The first one is the opposition between atheism and theism, the second between rationalism and dogmatism. While these two distinctions did and do often coincide and while religion certainly can be a powerful catalyst, or justification, for totalitarian dogmatism, the connection is not a necessary one. The Communist and Nazi regimes of Stalin and Hitler were of course utterly – and terrifyingly – inhuman and irrational because of their inbuilt dogmatism, but I fail to see any compelling evidence that their dogmatism was a specifically religious one (just as I fail to see any evidence that they were specifically "atheist" regimes). Thus, for example, while Hitler did take advantage of widespread religious antisemitism for promoting his agenda and employed religious references in his speeches to appeal to certain sections of the populace, he didn't have anything but contempt for Catholic officials and priests who opposed his "euthanasia" programmes on religious grounds. His dogmatism was based on hatred, prejudice and a complete lack of basic humanity and compassion. Religion was incidental to his agenda, he simply used it where convenient. The same goes – signs reversed – for the alleged "dogmatic atheism" of the Communist regime in the Soviet Union.

So, I think that neither side in the atheism/theism debate can really make a convincing case out of the Nazi/Communist examples, simply because dogmatism is not necessarily based on religion, nor on the rejection of it.

Best regards
Slartibartfast

19. Remote sheep population resists genetic drift

Comment #25520 by Slartibartfast on March 14, 2007 at 1:41 am

My very dear Lords and Ladies,
contrary to the previous poster, whom I must strongly admonish for his/her completely unwarranted Francophobian outburst, I do resist the temptation of making a similarly whimsical comment on the lines of "I thought it was only Welshmen who...".
Cheers
S.