51. The coming religious peace

Comment #132008 by quill on February 23, 2008 at 10:11 pm

What would be the atheist version of "Jesus saves", or "what would Jesus do?"?

"There is no religion higher than truth."

And yes, that comes on a bumper sticker. :)

52. The coming religious peace

Comment #131990 by quill on February 23, 2008 at 7:09 pm

:)

The more you tighten your grip, Governor Tarkin...

53. The coming religious peace

Comment #131987 by quill on February 23, 2008 at 7:01 pm

DBA,

If you believe the polls, Christianity will drop below 69% of the population this year. This is down from 85% as recently as the '90s. So the odds are pretty good that we'll see the religious dwindle to a minority within our lifetimes.

However, it sure seems like the Christians are really sinking their pious claws into everything. I cannot remember a time when religion was such a large part of politics.

That's true, but I tend to think it's because they see the writing on the wall. Religious groups seem to know that their influence is slipping away, so they're using what power they have now, as kind of a stopgap measure. But it won't work. The more abusive they become, the quicker society will reject them.

Also, keep in mind that while religious groups may be challenging evolution with more ferocity now than ever before, they are also losing every single time.

54. Over half of Britons claim no religion

Comment #131466 by quill on February 22, 2008 at 1:07 pm

In a 23-page report published this evening, a UN rapporteur claims the 2001 Census findings that nearly 72 per cent of the population is Christian can no longer be regarded as accurate. The report claims that two-thirds of British people now do not admit to any religious adherence.

I'm sure someone's pointed this out already, but "no adherence" does not mean "no religion". The fact that people do not attend religious services does not mean they are not religious. We should be counting people based on what they claim to believe, not in whether they adhere to their religious practices.

Honestly, I'd be willing to bet that a slim majority in the US, or something at least approaching one, do not attend church services either, but that does not make them atheists.

55. Bart Ehrman, Questioning Religion on Why We Suffer

Comment #130527 by quill on February 20, 2008 at 7:12 pm

pkruger:

Another response could be:.."But exactly what would he be 'testing ' us for? For all the other times when he decides to, or cannot do anything to prevent us from experiencing misery?"

I usually just point out that an all-knowing deity would have no need to "test" us to see if we are righteous in the first place. He would know already, right?

Btw, I find the shirt funny.

56. Bart Ehrman, Questioning Religion on Why We Suffer

Comment #130326 by quill on February 20, 2008 at 10:34 am

Ah, Moody Bible Institute, where "Bible" is their middle name.

57. Cutting Edge: Baby Bible Bashers

Comment #129846 by quill on February 19, 2008 at 4:33 pm

I am surprised other moderate Christians do not condemn them.

You see, it's the unspoken rule. Moderates do not speak out against fundamentalists. Same team and all.

58. State Approves Evolution As 'Scientific Theory'

Comment #129671 by quill on February 19, 2008 at 12:54 pm

You know, that's not as crazy as it sounds. Look how much money Ron Paul has convinced people to give to him.

59. State Approves Evolution As 'Scientific Theory'

Comment #129645 by quill on February 19, 2008 at 12:13 pm

You know...

I wonder if it might be possible to call a kind of general intellectual strike.

As in, teachers, professors, engineers, scientists, serious journalists, artists, newspaper editors, public intellectuals, etc. just STRIKE for a little while until all these nitwits get the message.

Do you think?

60. Cutting Edge: Baby Bible Bashers

Comment #129636 by quill on February 19, 2008 at 11:53 am

Tyler Durden:

Terry Durham @ 7:44 "I know that God was speaking to me 'casuse I could hear his voice, sometimes he sounds like me but I say no, it's God."

Yeah, I did that as a kid, too - I attributed some of my thoughts to God, and some of them to the devil. Of course it was me just having ordinary thoughts the whole time, but I imagine a lot of Christians grow into adulthood without ever figuring that out, and it leads to all kinds of weird obsessive/schizophrenic behavior where they start fighting against their own thoughts, pitting one hemisphere of the brain against the other, never finding any peace, etc. Religion really is a delusion in some senses.

And onlysky, you're right, homeschooled kids are 75% evangelical, not 95%. My mistake.

61. Cutting Edge: Baby Bible Bashers

Comment #129356 by quill on February 19, 2008 at 2:32 am

Is one of the problems "home-schooling"? Are there any national exams that the children HAVE to take to show that they are being given a general education at home or do they simply withdraw from any recognised education?

Evangelicals who can't afford to send their kids to a private evangelical school home-school them instead. Then when they "graduate", they either don't attend college, or they attend a Christian college, often an unaccredited one. So they basically go through their entire lives without any real education.

Whenever I see anything about home-schooling, it appears to be only the sick/deeply deluded and/or stupid parents who do this. Apologies if I am generalising on very, very little knowledge about it, but that is how it seems from my home in the UK.

No, you're correct, something like 95% of homeschooled kids are evangelical. Or as Professor Dawkins would say, have evangelical parents.

What is going on in the US? I'm not being patronising - I am very much aware that the flow is heading towards Britain, but what can we do to stop this?

I'm not sure that anything can be done at this point. Sometimes a civilization just implodes. There are too many things that have gone wrong all within the span of a generation.

Every year, the percentage of religious people in the US shrinks, and the percentage of nonreligious people grows. But by the time the roles are completely reversed, what kind of society will we have left?

I keep coming back to the media's role in all of this, but the plain fact is that something like this will never be shown on American TV. It doesn't matter how liberal the network, they'll never show it. Even Jesus Camp was never shown in mainstream theaters. Expelled will be; Jesus Camp was not. It doesn't get out there. American bookstores still generally do not sell Dawkins' books. D'Souza's books yes, Dawkins' books no. We have to buy them online, just as we have to watch films like this online, because nothing critical of religion, nothing with any substance whatsoever, is ever presented by our shallow, cowardly, money-driven, ratings-obsessed media.

62. Cutting Edge: Baby Bible Bashers

Comment #129324 by quill on February 19, 2008 at 1:32 am

Every atheist should know the Bible inside and out. Did you know the King James Version mentions unicorns six times? It actually talks more about unicorns than about gay people. :)

63. Cutting Edge: Baby Bible Bashers

Comment #129297 by quill on February 19, 2008 at 1:11 am

There are much more bizarre things in the Bible than a talking donkey.

This video really should be in the "favorite articles" section, imho. Even though it's deeply disturbing.

MPhil, no, there are no laws against beating children in the US. In fact, it's a national pastime. When we can't beat our own kids, we beat our neighbors' kids. And their grandparents, too. We Americans are an extremely violent people, unlike you Germans.

64. Cutting Edge: Baby Bible Bashers

Comment #129223 by quill on February 18, 2008 at 9:54 pm

Population 80% evangelical...

See, I mean, how do you even begin to change a society like that? It'll take them at least a century to catch up with the rest of the world.

65. Bill Moyers Interviews Susan Jacoby

Comment #129171 by quill on February 18, 2008 at 7:29 pm

Oh! I get it now.

I didn't associate fairies with wishes coming true. More like missing teeth, which made no sense.

66. Bill Moyers Interviews Susan Jacoby

Comment #129166 by quill on February 18, 2008 at 6:46 pm

Well, let me put it this way:

I think reading a novel actually dumbs you down more than watching a documentary.

As a side note:



A link to this guy's cartoons was posted on the Obama/Clinton thread. I've been trying to piece together what this is actually trying to say... anyone?

Source: http://www.oneimage.org/

67. Bill Moyers Interviews Susan Jacoby

Comment #129153 by quill on February 18, 2008 at 5:26 pm

I don't think Jacoby is correct, though, in her suggestion that television is to blame. Honestly, reading books will dumb you down just as much. It's not as if reading words on a page requires a great deal more brain activity than following along with something on television. They're both passive entertainment. It depends on what television you watch, or what books you read.

68. Bill Moyers Interviews Susan Jacoby

Comment #129100 by quill on February 18, 2008 at 4:04 pm

Well, in that case you were probably correct - that was what was said by others at the time. That's kind of my point - the media did not say what it should have said.

I agree that the word "troops" is a euphemism, by the way. Kind of Orwellian, as she said, like the way the Soviets referred to their soldiers as "soviet heroes" rather than "soviet soldiers". Or like saying "marine sharpshooters" instead of "marine snipers", "surge" rather than "escalation," and "war on terror" rather than "occupation of Iraq".

69. Bill Moyers Interviews Susan Jacoby

Comment #129090 by quill on February 18, 2008 at 3:53 pm

Well, I guess I misunderstood, Steve... That's good.

70. Bill Moyers Interviews Susan Jacoby

Comment #129083 by quill on February 18, 2008 at 3:50 pm

Goldy,

No kidding... It's like how the Bushites now are saying that Iran is the enemy, because Iran is aiding the Palestinians.

You mean, like we've been aiding the Israelis for the past fifty years?

It's like we don't even think of other nations as having rights anymore. Like there is one set of rules by which the US abides - namely, we do whatever we want - and another set of rule by which other nations have to abide.

71. Bill Moyers Interviews Susan Jacoby

Comment #129074 by quill on February 18, 2008 at 3:38 pm

I don't even know where to start with that...

No offense, but you should have known, frankly, that it would never have had the "desired effect". You should not have let yourself be manipulated into thinking that invading a country like Iraq was going to solve any of the issues that caused 9/11 in the first place, but that it would only exacerbate them. 9/11 was a symptom of a world becoming more dangerous, and invading Iraq was the answer? When did we even become a society that makes war so easily? I just don't know where to begin.

It seems at the time that you were getting all of your information from the national media outlets that I've just been saying were not presenting the facts. You should have done more homework. Is it really too much to ask that you make that much effort, at least, before you support an invasion of a country? Google existed in 2003.

Even at the rinkydink community college I attended at the time, our third-world sociology professor was telling us all that it would not solve any of our problems, for various reasons, and that there was no basis for it in the first place. That information was out there.

Sorry for being so judgmental.

72. Bill Moyers Interviews Susan Jacoby

Comment #129059 by quill on February 18, 2008 at 3:18 pm

Chemical weapons perhaps, but there you're talking about the kinds of chemical weapons used in the Iran-Iraq war - WWI-vintage mustard gas mostly. That's quite different from the "mushroom cloud" that Bush described.

When I say that every educated person knew there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq... like Goldy just pointed out, all the inspectors kept saying there were none, all of the governments aside from our own and Blair's said the same thing, we couldn't get UN approval because the UN was not convinced, there was not a shred of evidence ever produced, and anyone who understood the region in the first place knew that Saddam's regime and al-Qaeda were mortal enemies, not collaborators, and that Saddam routinely killed terrorists and there was no connection between Iraq and 9/11. Yes, we all knew that, if we were paying attention... maybe you had better things to think about...

But my point was that the media never just presented the facts leading up to the war. They didn't stand up to Bush, just like they won't stand up to Ben Stein. Some liberal bias, right?

73. Bill Moyers Interviews Susan Jacoby

Comment #129047 by quill on February 18, 2008 at 2:54 pm

The media is the most influential factor in this dumbing-down. Like I said before, when "Expelled" comes out, all of our national news outlets will report it as a "controversial film" that "has some scientists riled up". They won't report it as something blatantly false. Out of fear of losing their cherished objectivity, they'll essentially make beliefs interchangeable with facts.

I honestly think this same trend directly contributed to the invasion of Iraq. Every educated person knew at the time that there were no "WMDs" (don't you love those press euphemisms, by the way?), but the media insisted on presenting it as an issue of "some people believe there are, and some people don't". If they had just reported on the plain facts for once instead of "some people's" opinions, we could have avoided this fiasco altogether.

Perhaps this is a problem with privatized media, that they are too concerned with ratings to tell the truth for fear of offending some of their audiences.

74. Study: Religion colors Americans' views of nanotechnology

Comment #128663 by quill on February 17, 2008 at 2:19 pm

Lucas:

He's the only American novelist worth reading these days as far as I'm concerned.

padster1976:

Typically, americans dislike and do not trust what they do not understand. I saw no support for the claim that they were 'informed'.

Gordy:

I'm interested in the situation in the U.S. [,,,] because I think there's a very real danger that the same thing could be happening elsewhere too.

MPhil:

Abduction of foreign citizens in from their home countries, torturing at least three people by waterboarding only. Using sleep-deprivation and humiliation as psychological and physical torture. Nullifying basic constitutionally granted liberties. [...] ...wait, how does a government like that (and the people who support these actions) still qualify as the 'good guys'? Beats me.

Just highlighting a few phrases here and there...

75. Study: Religion colors Americans' views of nanotechnology

Comment #128419 by quill on February 17, 2008 at 1:19 am

I'm not talking about becoming a superhuman. Really, prolonging lifespan and reversing aging are pretty much in the same category. We're talking about repairing wear and tear on the body.

The human body only ages and eventually dies because it's genetically programmed to do so. A species with a very long lifespan does not evolve as quickly because its gene pool is crowded with too many generations; hence, having a fixed lifespan is actually something of a survival advantage, since it aids adaptability. That's why all animals have evolved to die after a certain period of time.

I imagine at some time in the future, though, we'll be able to change the genetic programming of our offspring so that they simply do not die, or at least, they do not have an "expiry date" as we have now, but would simply continue living until they chose to die.

I assume if you had children, you would want them to have such benefits?

And would you not want to have them yourself?

76. Study: Religion colors Americans' views of nanotechnology

Comment #128417 by quill on February 17, 2008 at 1:09 am

Well...

Clearly I meant reverse aging and not end up looking like Michael Jackson.

As in, a method that works.

77. Study: Religion colors Americans' views of nanotechnology

Comment #128414 by quill on February 17, 2008 at 12:55 am

(Edit: This post has been deleted, because I've realized that I don't really have any desire to continue with the debate on whose country is less sophisticated than whose...)

78. Study: Religion colors Americans' views of nanotechnology

Comment #128409 by quill on February 17, 2008 at 12:37 am

Diacanu, you wouldn't extend your lifespan, reverse aging, etc., if the technology allowed? If not, why? And if so, where do you draw the line? Just curious.

79. Study: Religion colors Americans' views of nanotechnology

Comment #128406 by quill on February 17, 2008 at 12:23 am

John Hammond actually got eaten by composagnathids in the book! His last thoughts were something like, "I should never have played God...!"

I was irritated. I remember thinking something like, "Sure you should have, just next time bring a backup generator."

If I remember correctly, the book version of Hammond was a kind of irascible, argumentative character, too. There was none of that childish wonder that permeated the movie.

80. Study: Religion colors Americans' views of nanotechnology

Comment #128404 by quill on February 17, 2008 at 12:07 am

MaxD,

I noticed that in Michael Crichton's writing, too! The only book of his that I've read was Jurassic Park, but in it there was always this background theme that human beings cannot possibly do this or that, and they shouldn't even try, because anytime they do, something is bound to go wrong.

Edit: And no, this wasn't just for good drama. Crichton inserted the character of Ian Malcolm, the "chaotician", whose only purpose in the story was just to constantly point out that everything was going to end in failure, and it did. There was clearly a point that the author was trying to make about technology in general. Especially when you consider that all of his other books make the same point.

I found it to be rather pessimistic really. Imho, that was definitely one instance of a movie being better than the book it was based upon.

81. Study: Religion colors Americans' views of nanotechnology

Comment #128364 by quill on February 16, 2008 at 8:47 pm

You know, MPhil, it doesn't mean much for you to say "This is coming from someone who greatly values the positive cultural, technological and scientific contributions that came and still are coming from the US," as long as you tend to follow it up with "There's no comparison with Central Europe, though."

Nothing personal, just an observation . . .

82. Study: Religion colors Americans' views of nanotechnology

Comment #128345 by quill on February 16, 2008 at 7:07 pm

I still think annihilation is the way to go. But then, how could that be achieved without releasing even more greenhouse gases?

It's a no-win situation.

83. Study: Religion colors Americans' views of nanotechnology

Comment #128335 by quill on February 16, 2008 at 6:45 pm

Sometimes I think the situation here is getting better, but then another report like this comes out and it seems that a quick annihilation of our part of the planet would be to the benefit of the species as a whole. We do contribute 25% of the world's greenhouse gases, after all.

84. Study: Religion colors Americans' views of nanotechnology

Comment #128330 by quill on February 16, 2008 at 6:41 pm

Diacanu, I said "we in America", not "you in America". I was born here. I have a right to say it should sink into the ocean. ;P

85. Study: Religion colors Americans' views of nanotechnology

Comment #128325 by quill on February 16, 2008 at 6:37 pm

Great, which side of the Atlantic did I offend?

86. Study: Religion colors Americans' views of nanotechnology

Comment #128320 by quill on February 16, 2008 at 6:34 pm

To be fair, I still think American governmental policies regarding religion are actually progressive by European standards. What we in America would consider theocratic--a government-sponsored church, prayer in schools, laws against blasphemy, etc.--are actually the current state of affairs in Britain.

That said, I am beginning to believe that the world would be a lot better off if the United States were not in it.

87. Study: Religion colors Americans' views of nanotechnology

Comment #128315 by quill on February 16, 2008 at 6:28 pm

Grantaire of JC:

Most Americans do not know about nanotechnology

According to the article, the discrepancy is not due to Americans not knowing about nanotechnology. That would have been my explanation, as I would never have imagined that anyone could have found something morally objectionable in the science once they understood it, but apparently the data collectors accounted for that somehow.

This country just needs to sink below the waves.

88. The Search for Truth, God and Braver Scientists in 'Expelled'

Comment #128297 by quill on February 16, 2008 at 5:33 pm

jbasca,

I'd also like to mention that I too was once a born-again, Bible-believing, Spirit-feeling, tract-reading, youth-group going, Christian-rock-concert-attending and yes, evolution-denying Methodist. I used to go onto religious websites and "warn" atheists that they were going to Hell for not believing in God. I read my New International Version cover to cover three times before it dawned on me that my god never existed in the first place. Have you even read it once?

In my opinion, atheists tend to be more knowledgable about religious matters than Christians are. Most of us in America come from religious upbringings and the thing about losing your faith is that, when you do, you make it a point to read every argument for the existence of God you possibly can in order to convince yourself that your religious views are correct.

But those arguments, as you know, don't work. There is no evidence for any god, and the more you read on the subject, the more you understand that there never has been.

On another note, I'd like to congratulate Dan Whipple for having the patience to carefully articulate what's wrong with Ben Stein's movie. Too often we atheists just tend to shake our heads and sigh at the stupidity of these people, rather than engaging in discourse with them, and that's really an advantage they have over us.

89. The argument from oranges

Comment #128288 by quill on February 16, 2008 at 5:12 pm

Hehe. "You wanna wrap it up?" That was brilliant. ^-^

Honestly, I'm not bothered by this, and am actually glad the man gave his speech. The fact that everything in the organic world is related is one of the more beautiful implications of Darwinian evolution.

90. Ben Stein Wins Intelligent Design Money

Comment #127989 by quill on February 15, 2008 at 8:42 pm

I'm not going to bother hoping for "well-published bad reviews", either. Something tells me our American media will be negligent in their duty to society, just as always.

Media outlets will report "Expelled" as "a controversial film" that has "some scientists riled up". They won't present it as the bullshit that it is.

91. Ben Stein Wins Intelligent Design Money

Comment #127977 by quill on February 15, 2008 at 8:26 pm

He's not insane, just depressingly stupid.

What's even more depressing is the fact that BIOLA University (which stands for Bible Institute of Los Angeles University) is internationally accredited.

the majority of Americans are going to flock to the theatre in search of something (mistakenly perceived as intellectual)

Within literally a minute of the trailer, scenes of Nazi death camp footage began creeping in. Ben's portrayal of evolution ("somehow that mud came to life") is so absurd that it can never be taken seriously by any thinking person. But if there are enough unthinking people in the world that BIOLA University is actually accredited... sigh.

92. Murder plot against Danish cartoonist

Comment #127519 by quill on February 15, 2008 at 11:17 am

Now you must also accept burning a man's flesh with a blow torch until he gives you information. You could also shove pins into his eyes. Pour acid in his ear, sodomize him, etc...

All of those things, except sodomy, cause permanent harm and the line between them and battlefield homicide is not as clear as the line between battlefield homicide and waterboarding. Would I rather have my flesh burned with a blow torch, than be blown up by a cruise missile? I would have to say yes. Would I rather be sodomized than blown up by a cruise missile? Again, yes, and I think you would say the same, after consideration.

Still, none of this makes torture permissible because as I've pointed out in the past, torture, including waterboarding, is not an effective means of obtaining information but is in fact counterproductive. So it's reasonable not to allow it. Battlefield homicide results in practical gain, whereas torture does not. The argument against torture has to come down to pragmatism, not ethics, because very little else that is allowed to take place during war is ever ethical.

93. Murder plot against Danish cartoonist

Comment #127513 by quill on February 15, 2008 at 11:05 am

Faulty logic. You have been reading too much Sam Harris. In wartime, the person I shoot in the stomach will be holding a Kalashnikov and pointing it at me.

Says who? You may be a Marine "sharpshooter" (sniper), or you may be some grunt placing a landmine - or perhaps you're behind a computer station on an aircraft carrier, and are merely firing a cruise missile aimed at penetrating some bunker behind enemy lines, which was an example I specifically gave in my last post. This is a strawman argument.

I do not wish to grant that right to torturers.

Again, strawman - I do not wish to grant that right to others either, as I just pointed out, yet again. But the effective arguments against waterboarding are practical ones; there is no ethical basis against it.

So by allowing torture to happen here in the name of "defence" is a mistake.

Again... This is a strawman; I was not arguing that we should allow torture to happen, for "defence" (You're American, aren't you? Why the British spelling?) or for any other reason.

But torture hurts our cause. It doesn't help.

Ditto, that's what I said several comments ago...

94. Murder plot against Danish cartoonist

Comment #127498 by quill on February 15, 2008 at 10:50 am

Flo:
Who the heck said that any of the things you pictured in your war scene are justifiable? They certainly are not.

So shooting someone in the stomach is no longer justifiable during wartime? That's funny, because I'm fairly sure that every military in the world trains its personnel to do this.

To al-rawandi, and others, I would like to pont out again that I am not advocating for waterboarding. I was careful to reiterate that point a number of times. My aim is only to point out that the arguments against waterboarding cannot be made on an ethical basis, because to consider it ethically justifiable to kill during wartime in any of the ways I've described, but not to waterboard during wartime, is hypocritical and self-defeating as an ethical position. Clearly being subject to waterboarding is bad, but just as clearly, it's not as bad as being blown up by a cruise missile. Who here would not much sooner go through a session of waterboarding than to be killed in such a way? Therefore if you consider cruise missiles to be ethically justifiable during war, you cannot decry waterboarding as some special moral crime.

(Btw, please don't argue that the difference between these two is immediacy--there is no immediate danger posed by men holed up in some bunker underground. It is conceivable in most cases that the war could be won simply by surrounding the bunker and demanding surrender. At the same time, terrorists, for example, may be suspected of possessing information that may actually help defeat a very real and immediate danger. Immediacy is not an issue.)

95. Murder plot against Danish cartoonist

Comment #126369 by quill on February 13, 2008 at 4:45 am

Doesn't make it morally entirely unproblematic.

I didn't say it was morally entirely unproblematic. But I am going to say that if national defense is a good enough justification for you to shoot someone in the gut and cause him to die slowly and in agonizing pain over a period of twenty or thirty minutes, then you can't cry moral outrage at someone subjecting him to a few minutes of waterboarding for the same reason. One of these things is clearly more harmful to the person than the other. To claim that to blow someone's brains out for the cause of national defense is ethically justifiable, but that to pour water over his head for a few minutes is some ghastly moral crime, is absurd. You've really got your ethics mixed up if that's your position.

96. Murder plot against Danish cartoonist

Comment #126365 by quill on February 13, 2008 at 4:22 am

Phil, you're actually saying that it's ethically justifiable in war to blow someone's legs off with a landmine, or perhaps just coldly snipe at him from atop a building, scattering his intestines out over the pavement around him, but waterboarding is not?

This is an ethically bankrupt position. If you can justify maiming someone or taking his life during war, you can certainly justify waterboarding him. There is nothing more unethical about waterboarding than there is about all the gruesome ways in which soldiers are typically killed or mutilated in war, and with which you seem to be more or less okay.

If you want my opinion, those eight Japanese officers should not have been sentenced to death. As I said before, I am against waterboarding, but not for any make-believe ethical reason, or because I like feeling morally superior. I'm against it because it's not a reliable source of information.

97. Murder plot against Danish cartoonist

Comment #126361 by quill on February 13, 2008 at 4:09 am

My main point was that torture isn't outlawed because of any ethical reasons. I really get tired of people, especially Europeans, claiming moral superiority by taking such a position. Oh, the US is so unethical, because they waterboard--Please! If it's ethically justifiable in war to shoot some poor fellow in the gut with a hollow-point bullet, or blow his or her arms and legs off, or explode his skull into tiny bits and fragments, or run him over with a tank, or drop bombs on his children, it's certainly justifiable to pour water over his head for a few seconds to make him think he's drowning. It's just not an effective means of interrogation.

98. Murder plot against Danish cartoonist

Comment #126355 by quill on February 13, 2008 at 3:55 am

I doubt much torture ever went on at those prisons. If it did go on, it was for reasons other than intelligence-gathering. Abu Ghraib comes to mind.

Anyway, if you believe our intelligence agencies, only three people so far have actually been waterboarded.

99. Murder plot against Danish cartoonist

Comment #126351 by quill on February 13, 2008 at 3:51 am

It doesn't go on. The intelligent countries don't practice any kind of torture anymore. The US only does occasional waterboarding, and even that is rare, and I doubt they hold information obtained through torture to be of any real value. With countries that really do torture, like China, their main use for it might be closer to political intimidation than intelligence-gathering... And in that case torture might actually be useful, but it's certainly not useful as a means of obtaining information.

100. Murder plot against Danish cartoonist

Comment #126347 by quill on February 13, 2008 at 3:41 am

Yet it doesn't. And I can provide you with all kinds of empirical data to prove it. A torture victim will simply make things up - "my contact is Hasiz al Ruwain in Cairo" - to stop the torture, and in the process send the torturers in a wild goose chase, before he'll ever reveal something of real value. The practice results in a net loss for both parties which is why it's outlawed. Not because it's cruel, but because it's cruel and also pointless.