1. Brian Lehrer interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #34353 by vavictus on April 23, 2007 at 9:22 pm

Good Stuff,

Dawkins is getting better and better at communicating his views.
He was already excellent, but he's improved nonetheless.

2. Hey Mom, I'm an Atheist

Comment #31467 by vavictus on April 12, 2007 at 8:29 pm

Grabbing the kid, shouting at the kid in his face,
threatening the kid, being totally inconsiderate of the kid's psychological well-being and intellectual health,

if this isn't child abuse, it is certainly criminally negligent of providing proper care for a child.
This mother is failing here as a parent, failing badly. Failing to provide care and understanding and support for the child. And it's not a passive failure, but an active one as she is actively trying to undermine his intellectual well-being.

3. Hey Mom, I'm an Atheist

Comment #31224 by vavictus on April 11, 2007 at 3:47 pm

Two Words:

Child Abuse.


Glad he's old enough to take the heat now.
It's terribly sad there is any heat to be taken in the first place though.
What a fucked up mother.
They smear their memetic viruses all over the weak, poor, defenseless, and even their own kids and think they're helping somehow. How revolting.

Been there, seen this.
Pretty common:

Mom, I don't believe in this anymore, and I feel better now. I actually feel healthier and happier than ever before.

Mother: We should have taken you to church more!

Translation of mother's words as understood by son/daughter: "What you feel healthier? Clearly we should have made you even more sick, in fact, so sickly that you could never possibly recover."

"Or, you've been negatively influenced by your friend or you negatively influenced your friend."

Translation to kid: "negative" in sentence above must mean that I or my friend are much more healthy now and therefore, being healthy is a bad thing in my mother's eyes.

Fucking, yikes.

4. Peanut Butter, The Atheist's Nightmare!

Comment #29760 by vavictus on April 4, 2007 at 3:16 pm

Just wait till we actually DO make new life from scratch.
It's not so far away.
Let's see what these people try to do then.

5. Religion useless to Dawkins

Comment #29718 by vavictus on April 4, 2007 at 12:20 pm

What, does she think everyone who reads Dawkins will be pushed into their swimming pools by God?
If there is a God, doesn't he have anything better to do?

If she had drowned in the pool,
now that would have been something.
Too preoccupied by natural selection to realize that it was operating on her too. ;)

6. Public Acceptance of Evolution

Comment #24940 by vavictus on March 9, 2007 at 11:56 am

This is piss poor for the US, but not at all surprising. Why is it not accepted? Because it's not stressed enough in school. People are not forced to think its implications through. In short, people don't understand evolution. It's not particularly surprising that they're not sure what to think about it when they don't Know anything about it to begin with. The solution is education. Perhaps people like Dawkins could try to get more specials on channels like National Geographic, where evolution is explicitly addressed in length. Also, whoever writes science textbooks, should relate everything in biology to it over and over and over again throughout the book (and not just biology, but all topics). After all, evolution is related to or easily related to any topic relevant to life, so it could readily be incorporated in an effective fashion.

7. U.S. Mint goof creates 'Godless dollars'

Comment #24939 by vavictus on March 9, 2007 at 11:47 am

The "In God We Trust" line is new anyway.
It's not like it was on the original coins or bills, just like "under god" never used to be in the Pledge.

8. Atheists Take On Religion

Comment #24937 by vavictus on March 9, 2007 at 11:41 am

Those percentages are such nonsense.

I bet at least 30-40% are agnostic a good amount of the time. And agnostic basically means uncomfortable atheist. All the polls reflect is that 14% are bold enough to admit their position when asked. The surveys should be worded in a different way. Like, are you absolutely certain there is a god? Are you absolutely certain there is an afterlife? Then you'd see a very different percentage I bet, because then people would feel social pressure in the other direction, i.e.: a pressure to use a bit of reason in their heads.

Also, they keep trying to bring religious language to talk about the non-religious. ****This move needs to be pre-emptively cut off in interviews.**** People need to bring the bogus move up, in the interview, show why the fundamentalist thing applied to atheists is just a bunch of nonsense, and shoot it dead Regardless of Whatever Else is Said in the interview or whatever the interviewer asks. This will make it impossible for them to repeat this nonsense argument ad hoc without being disingenuous.