551. The Archbishop whose words came from same hymnsheet as a Marxist

Comment #25144 by Shuggy on March 10, 2007 at 11:32 am

" He might also have avoided being the second most frequently mentioned individual in his book – if you count God as an individual" Eagleton

" In fact, Dawkins himself is the second most frequently mentioned person in the book [God is number one, if you count God as a person]" Coleridge

Coleridge even seems to have forgotten he is a Trinitarian, which would put RD fourth.

552. Why there are almost no genuine atheists

Comment #24857 by Shuggy on March 8, 2007 at 10:41 pm

or

"Why there are almost no genuine Scotsmen"

553. Public Acceptance of Evolution

Comment #24853 by Shuggy on March 8, 2007 at 9:48 pm

Is the earth hemispherical, then? Where's Australia, South Africa, Brazil, Venezuela, NEW ZEALAND?

(Up there with Iceland, I'll assume.)

554. You can't trust science!

Comment #24851 by Shuggy on March 8, 2007 at 9:42 pm

"Sphericated or Flaticular"? Love it!

555. The God Delusion

Comment #24137 by Shuggy on March 5, 2007 at 1:45 am

50. Comment #21818 by FortunaAdiuvatForte

""Body of knowledge" is such a generalisation as it could mean anything, the hairdresser who worked out how to do a mohican contribted to a body of knowledge, what do actually want the reply to be?"
We turned the page and I think he got away with this. It was Fortuna themself who'd said,
"I would argue that William Paley, Thomas Aquinas, Saint Paul and others have all made notable contributions to the understanding of the universe"
What contributions?

(I suggest that Paley's sole contribution was his watch - by its refutation. Aquinas' "natural law" contributed to misunderstanding. And don't get me going about Paul!)

556. The God Delusion

Comment #24135 by Shuggy on March 5, 2007 at 1:33 am

102. Comment #21922 by Veronique
"To H.Allen Orr

the 747 analogy is Fred Hoyle's not Dawkins & he plainly states that."

I think you are confusing the 747 analogy and the Ultimate Boeing 747 argument (which should perhaps be called the Ultimate Boeing, to avoid confusion).

Hoyle's 747 analogy refers to the improbability of a tornado creating a 747 out of scrap. RD abundantly refutes it. It assumes that the beginning of life had to happen in an all-or-nothing, one-off fashion. RD shows how it can occur by gradual stages.

RD's Ultimate Boeing says that if creation without a creator is improbable, a creator has to be even more so. At first I was irritated by the assumptions he made about the creator's nature to reach this conclusion. But now I ask, what else can you do? I know believers parrot "the uncaused first cause" but that's some kind of (il)logical construct, not a god.

557. The God Delusion

Comment #24134 by Shuggy on March 5, 2007 at 1:17 am

76. Comment #21851 by FortunaAdiuvatForte
"if I am correct, eternal salvation potentially awaits me, if I am not, what have I to fear of nothing, I don't reallylose anything by believing in a God."

Pascal's Wager. Bertrand Russell answered that to the effect, but what if the deity rewards independent thought with heaven and punishes grovelling subservience with hell? Or what if the deity is malevolent and punishes believers just for the hell of it? In that case, it is safer to believe nothing.

And as RD says (more or less), what's the matter with a god who is so obsessed with whether people believe in him or not?

558. Senator calls for answer on creation of universe

Comment #23976 by Shuggy on March 3, 2007 at 9:51 pm

Conservapedia is so bad it's funny. Even the name is backwards: it is a Wiki but not an encyclopaedia, so it should be called Wikiservative.

On the Talk Jesus page, the only entry is someone questioning that anyone denies Jesus' historicity.

559. Can an atheist be a fundamentalist?

Comment #23750 by Shuggy on March 2, 2007 at 12:57 pm

"there are now women vicars, and there will soon be women bishops."
Penny Jamieson was elected Bishop of Otago, the first diocesan bishop and the second woman Anglican/Episocopalian bishop in the world, in 1989. The moral Zeitgeist seems to chart a more than usually irregular course within the church.

560. The Dawkins Confusion: Naturalism ad absurdum

Comment #23634 by Shuggy on March 1, 2007 at 10:26 pm

"After all, couldn't it be that God has directed and overseen the process of evolution?"

Of course it could. God can do anything. He could have created the world five seconds ago with all our memories built into our brains and the rings in the trees (and a 19th century thinker seriously suggested he had). That's the trouble with omnipotence, it can explain *anything* including the bloody ridiculous.

"What makes Dawkins think evolution is unguided?"

Well, how about the fact that it shows not a smidgin of evidence of having been guided? To be specific, some species don't change for millions of years (the tuatara, /Sphenondon puntatus/ 64 million years marking time), while others become extinct. Did God guide the dinosaurs to extinction? I suspect that Plantinga thinks evolution means progress, with us at the top.

561. James Cameron finds grave of Jesus & Son

Comment #23621 by Shuggy on March 1, 2007 at 8:23 pm

A communion wafer for the DNA? No, we can get much closer to the source:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2022820,00.html

The Holy Prepuce!

562. Presentation on Atheism

Comment #22896 by Shuggy on February 23, 2007 at 10:09 pm

In 24. Comment #22882 gwolf said

"The Rapture appeals to people whose lives are truly a "hell on earth" because it offers the seductive fantasy of a quick and glorious escape."

It also offers non-stop imminent hope in the present moment, like always just having bought a lottery ticket.

As I write, The Simpsons is doing The Rapture. Very funny.

563. Is America Too Damn Religious?

Comment #22806 by Shuggy on February 23, 2007 at 1:27 am

In Comment #22799, Sancus asked 'What the hell's wrong with "patriotic fervor?"'

To the extent that it is based in fact, only one country can be better than all other countries, and so it statistically, probably isn't yours/mine.

Even then, your/my country is probably only better in some respects and not others.

Even if my country is better than all others in all ways, patriotic fervour is an unhealthy reaction.

And in the real world, US patriotic fervour is right out of proportion to the US's actual virtues and celebrated for all the wrong reasons.

(I suspect that US quasi-religious devotions to the external trappings of patriotic fervour, especially the flag, the anthem and the Pledge of Allegiance, Freudianly (or do I mean Jungianly?) conceals its opposite, a fundamental instability, and the trappings are a desparate attempt to hold the country together. The world would be a happier place, now there is no Soviet Union, if it would fall into its natural parts, probably four in number, but the need of some for the wealth of the others will probably prevent that happening.)

564. Memo: Stop teaching evolution

Comment #22521 by Shuggy on February 19, 2007 at 1:26 pm

Comment #22496 by gimlibengloin
"Dawkins is so against the idea of believing in a God one can't see, taste, or touch"

I do get tired of this characterisation, like the Old Man With a Long Beard. Atheists aren't idiots: we believe in gazillions of things you can't see taste or touch, just like everyone else: air, electricity, protons, radio waves and so on.

Your God is far less tangible than that: S/He/It behaves exactly as if S/He/It isn't there. Atheists just draw the obvious conclusion.

"but is quite willing to believe in extraterrestrial civilisations"

I think you're confusing RD with Stephen Jay Gould, but both are fall well short of believing in them. Both just say they are not impossible.

"which are also quite outside the boundaries of empirical science."
Nonsense. That's what SETI is all about.

565. Memo: Stop teaching evolution

Comment #22517 by Shuggy on February 19, 2007 at 4:16 pm

"So, Please Fasten Your Mental And Spiritual Seat Belts"

Spiritual Seat Belts, eh? I can't seem to make mine click.

566. The questions science cannot answer

Comment #21896 by Shuggy on February 11, 2007 at 1:51 pm

LZ wrote: "Didn't C.S. Lewis renou[n]ce his religion [la]ter in his life?" Wouldn't make any difference if he had, any more than if Darwin renounced evolution on his deathbed. His work stands or falls on its own merits. Falls, in my view.

As for McGrath's obsession with RD; turf war. "Dawkins STOLE the preciousss! Religion is MINE!"

Worship of RD? Hardly. Most of us read him critically. I've just opened a new thread in the Faith and Religion group about "More sophisticated versions of God" which he fails to address.

And yes, Bravo, Janus!

567. We all fund this torrent of Saudi bigotry

Comment #21344 by Shuggy on February 8, 2007 at 9:02 pm

Linck wrote in Comment 1:
"circumsition probably immunizes men from sodomic thoughts."
Hardly, when something like 85% of US men are circumcised. (Curious that he's only one letter away from "circumstition": see http://www.circumstitions.com)

The substantive story is terrifying: but what proportion of world oil is Saudi? As consumers, have we any choice?

568. Does Richard Dawkins exist?

Comment #21342 by Shuggy on February 8, 2007 at 8:48 pm

They don't seem to have read TGD, since they are just using the Argument from Design. Again.

Now if God would come online here...

569. Do stop behaving as if you are God, Professor Dawkins

Comment #21130 by Shuggy on February 7, 2007 at 5:09 pm

ftvt's comment (78/21104) reminded me of the Charles Addams cartoon of the seedy figure writing "Yes Virginia, there IS a boogy man."

McGrath's "who starts to believe in Santa Claus as an adult?" is a real non-argument: what god/dess/es' existence depends on who believes in them, let alone the age they started? Even weaker is the underlying "*I* started to believe in him at that age, so it's not a silly thing to do" which boils down to "I believe in him therefore he's real" when logic goes the other way.

"X is true because it gives my life purpose" is another non-starter, whether X is McGrath's Christianity, Scientology or Naziism (and there's no doubt that in the 1930s, Naziism gave many Germans' lives purpose - I am not comparing McGrath to a Nazi, only drawing an analogy with this part of his argument).

When McGrath asks RD to stop behaving like God, does he mean the OT God ("jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully" - RD) or NT ("a being of terrific character - cruel, vindictive, capricisious and unjust" - Thomas Jefferson)? Either way or both, it's a tall order.

It is unsurprising that the Professor of Theology at Oxford gets defensive when another professor has great success with a book that claims his field has no subject. His defence is so poor that it just underlines the claim. Can't he do better than that?

570. [Warning: Graphic] Children's foreheads slashed in Muslim saint's name

Comment #20506 by Shuggy on February 3, 2007 at 1:50 pm

Heatnzl wrote:
"Shuggy, It was no myth. At least not to the friends of my dad that I spoke to."
Sorry, Friends Of A Friend won't do. Did you visit the link? The official records do not show any significant numbers of circumcisions. One suggestion is that some were circumcised to punish them for getting VD: desert sand infections were their cover story.

""And was the Afrika Korps not an effective fighting force?". Yes, but not against NZers."
Are you trying to claim that is because they weren't circumcised? You'd think that would be in the official records.

"BTW, what is your response to neander's 'challenge'?"
It seems to be an invitation to ad hominem attacks: "You're only saying that because you're...."

"I feel ashamed. Bothering with male circumcision is trivial compared to the horror of FEMALE 'cirumcision'."
Numerically, male circumcision is much more common, and it's not trivial when the baby loses his penis or dies. Why not oppose both? And infant sex (re-)assignment. And slashing boy's foreheads. None excludes the others.

"Anyone have any references to that?"

http://www.circumstitions.com/FGMvsMGM.html

571. [Warning: Graphic] Children's foreheads slashed in Muslim saint's name

Comment #20483 by Shuggy on February 3, 2007 at 2:17 am

Heatnzl wrote:
"at that time the memory of WW2 and the New Zealand Division's involvement in North Africa were still fresh in memory. In the desert many non-combat 'wounds' were the result of infections caused by sand getting under the foreskin and the lack of sanitation facilities. Circumcision meant an effective fighting force."

Ah yes, the sand myth: see http://www.circumstitions.com/sand.html .

And was the Afrika Korps not an effective fighting force?

572. Root of All Evil? Discussion

Comment #20478 by Shuggy on February 2, 2007 at 11:03 pm

"Extremism isn't a function of belief, it's a function of personality."
OK, but isn't religion supposed to make people BETTER than they were?
What are we to conclude, that the average religious person's baseline virtue/personality is WORSE than the average atheist's, and that the Crusades, the Inquisition, Ireland and the Middle East would be EVEN WORSE if religion had not been a factor?

573. [Warning: Graphic] Children's foreheads slashed in Muslim saint's name

Comment #20299 by Shuggy on February 1, 2007 at 3:46 pm

writenow wrote then:
"Actually circumcision has a practical end --- I've read studies on several-- including one very recent on which said, I think, that women married to circumcised men were less likely to develop cervical cancer. I have to look up the studies to get the exact data."
Yes there are a gazillion reasons (see http://www.circumstitions.com/Stitions&refs.html), all of them more or less shonky, including that one. An early study compared Jewish women with gentile women, but cervical cancer also has a genetic component. A more recent one basically compared Philippine women with women in four other countries - again, many other factors could account for the difference.

"Anyway, circumcision is now performed with anesthetic,"
- some of the time
"and is done at a time when an infant sleeps most of the time"
Actually, he goes into shock, which looks like sleep.
" -- also the child is too young to have the dread of the procedure -- that dread accounts for a lot of the horror."
On the contrary, having no idea what is going on must make it that much worse.

"But this does not discount the pain. It's awful those children were submitted to pain for a religious reason."
It's awful that any children are subjected to unnecessary pain for any reason.

"Anyway, why compare the two. This was about kids getting slashed -- that is the subject matter. And it is awful."
A baby is circumcised in the US every 26 seconds, and it is still condoned throughout the western world. Someone once said something about motes and beams.

"We should have an emotional response. When we stop having emotional responses to physical child abuse, we stop being humans."
Exactly.

574. God and gorillas

Comment #20294 by Shuggy on February 1, 2007 at 3:17 pm

"For example, when she comes upon them looking at a waterfall -- something in nature that is amazing -- they're riveted. She's wondering what's going through their minds and if they may be spiritual in some sense."

I don't doubt that wondering comes very early in primate history, because you have to wonder before you try to find out, but maybe that's all they're doing - wondering.

Maybe indeed they're considering in some sense that the waterfall may be alive, but then I guess the next step would be to wonder what it was going to do next, and in that, they're going to be disappointed.

575. What a Friend We Have in Dawkins

Comment #20290 by Shuggy on February 1, 2007 at 2:46 pm

An excellent review, criticising TGD where I think it needs to be criticised, for what it leaves out.

What Levitt leaves out in his questions about how religion is to be successfully opposed, is something TGD is also not strong on, though it's Dawkins' specialty and creation: the role of religious memes and memeplexes.

For a homely example, the Christianity memeplex (so big and so nearly alive, I want to call it by a bigger name, such as "memenism") comprises a constellation of lesser memeplexes, some of them completely incompatible with each other, such as the Papacy and Pentecostalism, but is also sustained by a whole class of lesser memeplexes that shore it up and permeate secular society, such as Christmas, Easter and even Halloween. I doubt that many of the "devoutest" atheists leave Christmas completely unobserved.

For one small step, I suggest reverting to a name for it whose pagan meaning is almost forgotten: Yule. ("Giftmas" has also been suggested - by Matt Groening in Futurama? - but it doesn't trip so easily off the tongue.)

576. Benny Hinn examined

Comment #20195 by Shuggy on February 1, 2007 at 12:29 am

"If you have enough faith, you will be healed" - a great way to blame the victim: if you're not healed, you didn't have enough faith. And is enough faith to refuse a kidney transplant not enough?

577. James Randi on Larry King Live

Comment #20192 by Shuggy on January 31, 2007 at 11:59 pm

"I'm thinking of the number right now. Go for it!"

Nice one Moopet.

Aussie, the test is whatever you and Randi can agree on that really will test your powers. EG, if you claim to get in touch with someone's dead relatives, you will be required to get in touch with a particular person A's particular dead relative B and get some information from them that only B could know (and can be checked independently). No near-misses will be allowed and no fishing. They will be very specific about the nature of the information. If you claim to bend spoons, Randi will ask "Which way?" and bending it the other way won't count. (And the spoon will be sooty, to rule out handling.)

And most important, before you start you will be required to sign a form saying you believe you can do it and conditions are propitious. In other words, you won't be allowed to say afterwards that you failed because the vibes were wrong or the skeptics cast baleful influences that prevented your powers from working. (It's amazing how many people sign the paper but say this anyway.)

I think it's a really impressive protocol, and people with real powers should welcome it, because when someone passes it will be such an impressive testimony to their powers.

I think Randi will be able to spend the interest for a long time to come.

-----
I agree that King is a nincompoop. He even spelt out J. B. R H E I N when it's Rhine.

578. [Warning: Graphic] Children's foreheads slashed in Muslim saint's name

Comment #20108 by Shuggy on January 31, 2007 at 12:36 pm

Ohuhai asks "Is this any different from any religiously motivated cutting or mutilation? If you are horrified by this ask your self do you accept Jewish circumcision as OK?."

Why pick on religiously motivated circumcision? One US boy is circumcised every 26 seconds - a significant proportion without anaesthetic - for any of hundreds of ever-changing bogus reasons (see http://www.circumstitions.com/Stitions&refs.html) but mainly for conformity. The rest of the English-speaking world used to do it but has largely given it up, but the US has made it part of its culture.

A father in Oregon insists on circumcising his 12 year old son. The mother is taking him to court and needs your help. See http://richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6965
Charity begins at home.

579. 'Hobbit' human 'is a new species'

Comment #19921 by Shuggy on January 30, 2007 at 4:42 pm

I look forward to what creationists will make of this with a mixture of pleasure and dread.

580. She told them the boy was dead

Comment #19362 by Shuggy on January 26, 2007 at 1:51 pm

Comment #19356 by Dobreath
"Comment #19353 by scooternyc "Every "prediction" has a 50% chance of being correct....

...and a 50% chance of being wrong"

This would be true if you were tossing a coin."

Since "psychics" are "working" in the real world with real facts, you'd expect their strike rate to be a lot higher: they're going to say a body is buried in a lonely wood, not on a superhighway median strip, for example.

We had one who mentioned water and grass and trees, with emphasis on the water. The missing youth's body was later found at the bottom of an inner-city light-well (he'd been climbing over roofs, on drugs), and she then said, there would be grass there.

I asked one of the big-name ones on the phone if she could tell what colour socks I was wearing, and she threatened to end the interview.

581. Britons unconvinced on evolution

Comment #19065 by Shuggy on January 24, 2007 at 3:38 pm

If they offer Creationism and Intelligent Design as two options and Evolution as one, then no matter what people really think, they lean the outcome towards C/ID. Can you believe in one without the other?

582. The Bright Revolution

Comment #19060 by Shuggy on January 24, 2007 at 3:06 pm

Why the cute spelling? "godfree" works for me.

583. God's Hostages

Comment #18401 by Shuggy on January 20, 2007 at 3:25 pm

And yet...
Quakers are about as sexually equal as you can get.
Bahais say the two sexes are like a bird's two wings.
Christian Science and Seventh Day Adventism were founded by women and Mary Baker Eddy remains permanently, posthumously head of her church (I don't know how far they go for sexual equality though.)
Some branches of the Anglican church have got as far as woman bishops.

So you can't tar them all with exactly the same brush.

584. Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory

Comment #18176 by Shuggy on January 18, 2007 at 8:25 pm

This is a spoof, but Jack Chick claiming that God drives the strong electromagnetic force is not. It's in that ghastly "Bid Daddy" tract.

585. The God of the Bible is No Delusion!

Comment #17737 by Shuggy on January 15, 2007 at 8:49 pm

Reply to Ben C (as well as "Read The Blind Watchmaker and/or Climbing Mount Improbable!" of course)

"Digital cameras work on the same principle as your eye which is reading this post right now! Digital camera technology is pretty good now-a-days, but its not even close to the marvel of our eyes!!!"

My digital camera doesn't have a blind spot, for the good reason that the wires all go behind the receptors, not in front, so they don't need a gap in the receptors to get to the back. My digial camera was well designed in that regard. My eyes weren't. A squid's eye is better than mine in that regard. (It evolved separately.)

I have that and two other examples of Stupid Design vs Really Intelligent Design at http://www.cafepress.com/wero/2005296

586. Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history

Comment #17736 by Shuggy on January 15, 2007 at 8:35 pm

L E Nielson wrote: ""If God is not, then all is permitted"… how about "If God is on *our* side, then all is permitted"."

In other words "If God is for us, who can be against us" Rom 8 31
and "Who can lay anything to the charge of God's elect?" Rom 8 33

587. Homophobia, not injustice, is what really fires the faiths

Comment #17462 by Shuggy on January 14, 2007 at 12:01 am

"Joadist, anti-discrimination laws in common law jurisdictions typically do not require "definitions" of homosexual or woman or black etc. They outlaw discriminating against someone because you perceive/believe them to be homosexual or of a different race, etc."

"Joadist" is new to me, but wouldn't it mean "It depends what you mean by..."? So wouldn't a Joadist law require a definition? Laws like this should be called something like "subjectivist". They certainly make sense, because a camp, limp-wristed, mincing heterosexual who doesn't get a job etc. for that reason, has still been discriminated against.

588. Intelligent design is a science, not a faith

Comment #17280 by Shuggy on January 12, 2007 at 4:55 pm

Wundergeist wrote: "Did God create separate inlets for food and air with dynamic redundancy (single point of failure design?" Redundancy often makes sense (two hearts would be an improvement), but crossing the air supply through the food supply doesn't.

I've (somewhat Intelligently) reDesigned the human throat to eliminate that flaw (along with a blindspot-free eye and a birth canal that doesn't go through the pelvis) and put them on T-shirts, mugs, mousepads etc at http://www.cafepress.com/wero/2005296