51. Good God! A politician who doesn't believe...

Comment #101988 by SurfDude on December 21, 2007 at 10:50 am

4. Comment #101911 by joeyoap on December 21, 2007 at 6:32 am

Well I think being asked if you believe in god may be a relevant question if your interview is for archbishop of canterbury.

Are you entirely sure about this?

52. This Week's Flea

Comment #101317 by SurfDude on December 20, 2007 at 8:16 am

74. Comment #100931 by Don_Quix

I like to think of myself as a "rational extremist" ;)

As a devout "extreme rationalist" I take exception to the above.

Rational extremist splitters.

53. Clegg 'does not believe in God'

Comment #101242 by SurfDude on December 20, 2007 at 6:17 am

66. Comment #100950 by KiwiInOz

I'm happily atheist and am married to an agnostic Catholic (in a catholic church). All three of my kids went to a Catholic primary school (the youngest is still there). My eldest daughter is agnostic, my eldest son is atheist, and my youngest son hasn't got there yet but laughs at the inanity of the bible stories. I have christian, agnostic and atheist friends. I can understand where this guy is coming from.

Very well said. QED this debate in my opinion.

54. Clegg 'does not believe in God'

Comment #100785 by SurfDude on December 19, 2007 at 10:29 am

Don't worry too much about the children. My brothers and I all went to mainstream Catholic schools at the insistence of my Irish mother and none of us are particularly religious (least of all me). It helped having a pragmatic father with a strongly agnostic scientific background. Nick Clegg strikes me as someone who will have a positive influence intellectually on his children.

The truth is that most Catholic schools in the UK have very high educational standards and teach Evolutionary theory in science class and religion according to the national curriculum.

55. THE FOUR HORSEMEN - Available Now on DVD!

Comment #99478 by SurfDude on December 16, 2007 at 6:26 pm

All I can say is, MORE!

With that in mind, (and unless someone else has suggested this already as I have not yet read all the comments) I would request that this foursome meets at the very least quarterly for regular RDFRS publication.

56. Atheists' sign sparks controversy

Comment #97767 by SurfDude on December 12, 2007 at 3:56 pm

A whole reading of the Bible points to its central message.

That it doesn't, in fact, have one?

The babble has hundreds of different, largely contradictory messages. It is also intensely dull.

57. Interview with Christopher Hitchens

Comment #93726 by SurfDude on December 4, 2007 at 3:25 am

Aside from giggling girlishly at CH's witticisms, right at the end of the piece, the female interviewer is heard to say, "wow, what a voice". A significant crush, methinks.

Incidentally, my girlfriend and I watched the clip on YouTube last night and she made precisely the same observation, so please - no accusations of sexism!

My point? Sex sells. Or, more to the point, a mesmerizing, eloquent voice sells. Atheism can be sexy!

It always helps to have a compliant interviewer teeing you up for a slam dunk. Kudos to Joe Scarborough for this one.

58. Interview with Richard Dawkins

Comment #92415 by SurfDude on November 30, 2007 at 1:02 pm

I almost forgot! Excellent interview - calm, thoughtful and respectful. Anyone wavering in their belief will find much comfort in RD's words.

59. Interview with Richard Dawkins

Comment #92412 by SurfDude on November 30, 2007 at 12:58 pm

Re Comment 16.

All religions, especially the evangelical and fundamentalist varieties, encourage their credulous adherents to breed like rabbits, thereby propagating their particular brand of nonsense. The majority of atheists / humanists etc tend to be educated and enlightened and if they breed at all, it usually results in smaller families.

We will not get rid of religion for a very, very long time because it will out-breed us rationalists. That being said, I plan to give it a damn good kicking wherever I can.

60. 'Muhammad' teddy teacher arrested

Comment #90834 by SurfDude on November 26, 2007 at 1:29 pm

".... they feared for Ms Gibbons' safety after receiving reports that men had started gathering outside the police station where she was being held."

Very little more needs to be added to this desperately sad story.

61. Frequently Asked Questions about the Ayaan Hirsi Ali Security Trust

Comment #89646 by SurfDude on November 21, 2007 at 10:57 am

The Big Pill:

Very good question regarding the AEI (and very diplomatically asked too!) As a politically slightly right of centre atheist who picks and chooses the best from both sides, I would be horrified if the AEI saw a penny of these donations. It does however strike me as highly unlikely, so I have made what I consider to be a reasonable assumption on that basis.

As far as I am concerned, one's personal charitable donations should always remain private, even on an anonymous message forum.

That is all.

62. Bill Moyers interviews Jonathan Miller

Comment #87850 by SurfDude on November 13, 2007 at 11:15 am

More than any other, Jonathan Miller is someone I feel I can relate to in terms of my own personal experience. Though I may have grown up with a religious Mother and an intellectual agnostic Father and went to a Catholic School, I, like Miller, have never felt in the least bit religious.

I never had a readily identifiable moment when I suddenly freed myself from the shackles of dogma, it was simply never there in the first place.

I am also somewhat resigned to the possibility that humans have not been "designed" well enough to free themselves from the need from a designer. On the other hand, ridiculing the ridiculous is, for all its likely ultimate futility, great sport.

63. The New Atheists on Organized Freethought

Comment #83462 by SurfDude on October 30, 2007 at 5:09 am

Ilovelucy,
He needs an emergency transfusion, stat!

Pastor Deacon Fred is an absolute genius. If anyone has read the message boards on the Landover site, they lampoon fundie christians by the simple pretense of assuming the most fundamentalist high ground of all - that of 100% biblical literalism. It is a joy to read so many a-la-carte christians get their sensible (or in the case of catholics, raunchy) knickers in a twist when they are told in no uncertain terms that they are not true christians.

64. The New Atheists on Organized Freethought

Comment #83179 by SurfDude on October 29, 2007 at 7:37 am

Being based in the UK, I am relatively new to the RRS and have taken a little time to check out their modus operandi. They are proof positive that non-believers / atheists / brights / rationalists / humanists / etc are very much NOT a well-defined group with a shared belief system.

I have no particular problem with their brashness, however because they make a lot of noise (as opposed to 99% of atheists who are thoughtful and discrete), your typical theist will be likely to assume that all non-believers fit the same stereotype. The RRS would do well to reflect upon this.

My personal position is that being an atheist (or whatever description fits your personalised variant of this) requires dignity and humility. It should ideally never be necessary to resort to cheap tactics to get a point across. Ridiculing theism may be disrespectful, but not necessarily overtly rude - there is a distinction between the two.

Christopher Hitchens is someone I admire greatly for being forthright but polite and it goes without saying that RD, SH, DD et al are unfailingly gentlemen of the highest distinction.

I am honoured to share an intellectual position with them and would be grateful to have even half their intellect.

65. Honest Mistakes or Willful Mendacity

Comment #70011 by SurfDude on September 13, 2007 at 4:28 pm

..he has spent so much of his life contemplating his navel that all his thoughts now get caught up in the swirling vortex of it, landing dizzy, confused and incompletely digested in his gut, where they mingle with bile and re-emerge later in the only biologically possible form via the only biologically possible route.

I almost spat diet coke all over my laptop ...

I doubt I'll be able to get the imagery out of my head for months.

66. Won't anyone stand up for God?

Comment #69767 by SurfDude on September 12, 2007 at 4:30 pm

Something perhaps not mentioned here is the fact that it is Christian defenders of their god who are having a hard time rebutting the arguments from Dawkins et al, whilst a certain other prominent Abrahamic faith seems to think that it has somehow escaped scrutiny.

I wonder if any Christians out there (and more to the point, the author of the quoted article) would leap to the defense of a Moslem defender of what is to all intents and purposes, the same deity.

67. In Defense of Witchcraft

Comment #69765 by SurfDude on September 12, 2007 at 4:21 pm

The God package has some undesirable content, but the Not God package lacks morality, any purpose or point to life, etc. In fact, the Not God package requires far more intellectual weakness, because you have to pretend that Hitler was wrong to kill millions of Jews, homosexuals, gypsies etc. With the God package, you are surrounded by people saying (and singing) stupid things, but why is it the less reasonable option?

It is now very well documented that religions (all of them) have taken basic built-in human evolutionary morality and repackaged it in order to gain control over the credulous. I rather like Hitchen's dismissal of the false god = morality assertion with his recounting of the story of Moses leading the Jews out of Egypt to the promised land (ironically proven beyond a doubt to be demonstrably false by no less than the Israeli archaeologists whose sole task was to find evidence in its favour). Does anyone really believe that the Jews in question thought that murder, theft, rape and incest were a-ok until Moses set them straight? (Mind you, rape and incest weren't exactly mentioned on the stone tablets now were they).

As an aside, it is likely to be true that there are those who need the fear of "divine" punishment in order to prevent them from acting on what in some cases may be genetic abnormalities (such as those with an inability to empathise and who therefore feel no remorse, though this often occurs some time after the horse has bolted). There are others who merely prefer to have someone else, in most cases their religious leaders, interpret and define morality on their behalf, because they have no desire to think for themselves.

68. Review of Richard Dawkins' new book 'The Fascism Delusion'

Comment #69748 by SurfDude on September 12, 2007 at 2:30 pm

I am new here and after lurking for some time, decided to register today.

Thank you Dr Benway for the lengthy chuckle from which I will segue somewhat cryptically to:

"Philosophically, half a bee
Must ipso-facto half not be.."

And Goldy, that marryourdaughter website made me do a swift double-take as one can almost imagine that sort of thing to be a reality in certain states of the US. I wonder how long it is before someone actually puts it into practice. I shudder ..