51. Let us kill all the teddy bears

Comment #94899 by jonjermey on December 7, 2007 at 1:25 am

What's wrong with gay Popes? Would a straight Pope be any better?

After all, is God not everywhere, in all things at all times in every possible way?

Well, no, actually.

But otherwise, good points.

52. Sudan demo over jailed UK teacher

Comment #93613 by jonjermey on December 3, 2007 at 6:22 pm

Geoff - you beat me to it. 'No place in modern society?' Gosh, who would be silly enough to think that?

53. Fear of Barbara Forrest

Comment #92172 by jonjermey on November 30, 2007 at 2:22 am

"Apparently, TEA members are supposed to close their eyes and maximize ignorance before making decisions."

Of course.. this is good Christian practice. If you went about gathering evidence before making a decision then you wouldn't be able to exercise your free will, would you?

54. Tony Blair: Mention God and you're a 'nutter'

Comment #90377 by jonjermey on November 25, 2007 at 12:10 am

So now we know: all three leaders of the Coalition of the Willing were being told what to do by their invisible friends. It would have been nice to know that when were being asked to vote for them...

55. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #88316 by jonjermey on November 16, 2007 at 12:53 am

This seems to be an argument of the following form:

I will string together a lot of poorly-defined words and phrases to make a meaningless assertion. I will then claim that if you understood this assertion my conclusion would be self-evident.

You will attempt to interpret this assertion and I will tell you you're misunderstanding it.

Repeat until one or both of us gets bored.

It's sad that so many people have wasted so much time on it.

56. A new website addition: Debate Points

Comment #88253 by jonjermey on November 15, 2007 at 3:30 pm

On several occasions during the discussion of articles on the Dawkins website contributors have suggested that there should be an Atheism Wiki. After a web search failed to find any existing Wikis that were appropriate, I have decided to set up my own. You can find it at

http://atheistwiki.wikispaces.com

I have set up a framework for the material, and will contribute more from time to time but I don't intend for it to be a one-person project, so fans of the Dawkins site who want to collect and preserve material will have to lend a hand. At the moment contributions to the site can be made by any member of the public, though this may have to change to a membership basis if it gets vandalised.

Hopefully this will provide a less chaotic medium for material like this than long strings of short comments.

57. A Response to Jonathan Haidt

Comment #69819 by jonjermey on September 12, 2007 at 11:22 pm

Assuming for a moment that Christians are in fact happier, healthier and longer-lived than atheists -- who's to say which is cause and which is effect? When a particular superstition permeates society, who's going to be happier: the unquestioning human sheep who put up with it or the thinking people who witness the damage it causes? Are people less happy because they're atheists or do they become atheists because they can't bring themselves to believe nonsense, no matter how comforting it is?

Besides, Christians are supposed to say they're happy. It's in the contract. Let on that you're not satisfied with your tidy Christian life and the God-botherers will be round with their pamphlets in a flash. Much safer to just smile and nod.

But take heart: happiness measures are notoriously unreliable (see here for instance), and it may be that when sociologists claim to measure 'happiness' they are only measuring conformity. Christians are more conformist? No surprise there!

58. Come Out!

Comment #59432 by jonjermey on July 29, 2007 at 3:30 am

Sanjiv -

It's always easier to hold on to a belief when you don't know that other beliefs exist. It's always more comforting to believe something when you feel that everyone around you believes it too. It's always harder to change your beliefs when you don't know anyone in the world who believes differently. Wearing a t-shirt may be no big deal to anyone, but enough people wearing enough t-shirts is going to gradually get the message across - atheists are here, and we're not going to be ignored any more.

59. All the mistakes of the godly are merely metaphor

Comment #57743 by jonjermey on July 20, 2007 at 9:17 pm

Bear in mind too what might have happened to Newton (or Boyle or any other empiricist of the day) if he HAD expressed a disbelief in God - and what actually did happen to Galileo. I wonder how many atheists of the past went silent to their graves for fear of torture and persecution?

Jon.

60. Muslim heads stuck firmly in the sand

Comment #56857 by jonjermey on July 17, 2007 at 1:59 pm

Yes, dmshinty, this is an interesting exercise in doublethink: 'We believe our religion tells us to do this, but we know doing this is wrong, so we must be misunderstanding our religion'. When the problem is perhaps that they are understanding their religion all too well.

61. Praying to a milk jug

Comment #56387 by jonjermey on July 15, 2007 at 2:37 pm

I think something like this is exactly what's needed for believers in the earliest stages of denial. It's gentle but persistent. It reassures the viewer that they're smart and have 'common sense'. It chips away at one of the common cliches given in religious indoctrination. It's not intended for people who subscribe to the Dawkins website, after all.

I hope we can put together a lot more of these and get more and more people looking at them. Mine will be called 'Special pleading for God'.

62. I believe that there is no God.

Comment #53444 by jonjermey on July 1, 2007 at 1:41 pm

There's not much point arguing whether we know or simply believe that there is no God until we agree on what God is.

Do I know that there isn't an incredibly powerful non-human being invisibly monitoring everything I do? No, not with absolute certainty.

Do I know that there isn't an intangible Deity for whom I secretly feel worshipful love and respect? Yes.

So pick your definition and go to it.

63. Yes, the universe looks like a fix. But that doesn't mean that a god fixed it

Comment #53441 by jonjermey on July 1, 2007 at 1:32 pm

The best comment so far on the anthropomorphic principle comes from the late Douglas Adams: "It's as if the rainwater in a puddle was to say: 'What a coincidence! Out of all the possible holes on the planet I happened to land in one that was exactly my shape!'"

One cause of the anthropomorphic principle is a failure to comprehend large numbers - including infinity. It's the failure to distinguish between 'Surprise! I won the lottery!' and 'Surprise! Somebody won the lottery!'. The first is remarkable; the second is inevitable.

Let's say for the same of argument that the chance of our kind of universe coming to exist at random is one in a trillion. (Or a trillion trillion. Or a trillion trillion trillion. Or a trillion to the power of a trillion. Doesn't matter, it all works out the same way.)

Now, once we know the number of different universes that have ever existed or will exist, we can accurately work out the odds on our one eventually turning up. What's that? Oh, shoot - we DON'T know how many different universes have or will existed, do we? But as far as we know this number is infinitely large. In which case the chance of our universe turning up eventually is exactly 100% and no surprise at all. Because over an infinite period of time ANYTHING that is possible will happen. Period.

64. A Compass That Can Clash With Modern Life

Comment #50614 by jonjermey on June 19, 2007 at 5:04 am

What if you were an Imam who had lost your faith - could you issue a fatwa against blindly following what other people tell you? But anyone who obeyed would be blindly following what you had told them, and therefore disobeying the fatwa which they were obeying... perhaps the religious mind would implode under the strain..

65. Is Prince Philip an island god?

Comment #50239 by jonjermey on June 16, 2007 at 1:21 am

It's the part about 'preserving their culture' that I don't get. How can a culture that didn't have any reference to Prince Philip be 'preserved' by getting one? Or do they mean that it's part of their culture to worship something stupid and arbitrary, no matter what? And if so, then what's the good of preserving it?

66. Cult leader sparks Sikh riots with 'guru' stunt

Comment #43473 by jonjermey on May 21, 2007 at 3:02 pm

Presumably the Sikhs already knew that the Dera Sacha Sauda sect didn't believe in their gurus. So why are they reacting? "You can believe something else to us as long as you don't try and express that belief while we're around." So much for tolerance. Sikhism sounds like a very insecure religion to me.

67. The Fastest-Growing Religion

Comment #42686 by jonjermey on May 19, 2007 at 3:55 am

How to have the world's fastest-growing religion:

1) Start a new religion
2) Get someone else to join immediately
3) Disband straight away.

100% growth in five seconds!

68. Brazil's Indians Offended by Pope Comments

Comment #41650 by jonjermey on May 16, 2007 at 1:36 pm

Were they also "silently longing for" smallpox?

69. Two idiots get a forum

Comment #35963 by jonjermey on April 29, 2007 at 3:07 pm

Er...what about apples?

70. A Brief History of Disbelief

Comment #35959 by jonjermey on April 29, 2007 at 3:03 pm

It was Miller who made a classic comment in Beyond the Fringe back in the 1960s:

"Jew? Am I a Jew? Well, no, I'm just Jew-ish, you know..."

71. Darwin's God

Comment #24141 by jonjermey on March 5, 2007 at 2:09 am

I suspect that religion started as a smart person's way of getting an advantage over a strong person. Back when the leader of the tribe was the guy who was handiest with a club, someone smart who wanted power needed to have an imaginary Big Brother to back them up. And since the tribes guided by smart people (ie priests) would naturally do better than the tribes guided by strong people, it would look like God was 'favouring' the first; thus religion became self-reinforcing.

72. Blaming 'The God Delusion'

Comment #13307 by jonjermey on December 16, 2006 at 11:20 pm

Atheists are not the kind of people who lobby governments. Lobbying implies that the democratic process must be manipulated in order to pander to special interests. Most of the atheists I know would find that morally repugnant.

In fact the whole notion of letting your special interests affect your rational judgement of what's right and wrong makes for a pretty good definition of religious belief.

73. The Blasphemy Challenge

Comment #13306 by jonjermey on December 16, 2006 at 11:10 pm

I wish something like this wasn't necessary, but I think it is. Children - especially teenagers - are biologically programmed to behave like the people around them. If they are going to change they need exposure to people who are obviously and unrepentantly different. I'm sure that a lot of RD's appeal is not just based on what he says but on the fact that he says it loudly in public as often as possible. But I don't want to give in even a little way by using the language of religion rather than the language of science. So let's all say as loudly and often as we can: God does not exist.

74. Response to Richard Dawkins' Criticisms in The God Delusion

Comment #13305 by jonjermey on December 16, 2006 at 11:01 pm

Let's see. I approach a man dying of thirst and offer him two identical glasses of liquid. One is pure water, the other a deadly poison. "Sorry, I can't tell you which is which." I say, "That would mean I was limiting your free will to choose." Good one, God!

Rational choice requires information. Withholding information from the decision-maker doesn't contribute anything to 'free will' - it just makes it harder for them to come to a rational decision.

If there really are convincing reasons to believe in God, then God is morally obliged to make them known. Failing to do so is as evil as failing to warn a thirsty man about the poison in his glass.