51. U.S. Congress Recognizing the importance of Christmas and the Christian faith

Comment #98077 by stephenray on December 13, 2007 at 3:44 am

It's ironic, innit?

We have an established church here in the UK but if we assigned a factor of 100 to the obsession with religion in US politics, the factor over here would be about 2.

It's the education, I reckon. Generations of kids have grown up in the US without learning any analytical skills.

52. Girl, 16, dies after hijab dispute with father

Comment #97393 by stephenray on December 12, 2007 at 2:33 am

Ooops.

It may be that religion is involved with 'honour killings', but it isn't necessarily the cause. It's a social/cultural thing, isn't it?
For a start off, yesterday's BBC Radio 4 programme 'Taking a stand' featured the *Sikh* brother of a *Sikh* woman who was 'lured' to India and killed by her mother in law because she was planning to divorce the woman's son - an 'honour killing'. I know I have heard of honour killings amongst Hindus as well.

Now, we don't have honour killings in countries in the 'christian' world, but let's not over-egg the pudding and attribute this killing to Islam.

Admittedly this murder appears to have been set off by the daughter's refusal to comport herself according to the dictates of her parents' religion, but the distinction is important, even if it is a fine one.

Where an act of criminal stupidity is prompted by religion, let's say so. Where it is attributable just to primitive ignorance, let's say *that*.

And while I'm at it, can we find a suitably insulting and disgusted alternative to the phrase 'honour killing', which makes it clear to the fuckwit pigs who approve of such acts that they are simply inexcusable and unforgiveable?

53. Functional Neuroimaging of Belief, Disbelief, and Uncertainty

Comment #97387 by stephenray on December 12, 2007 at 2:18 am

Interesting, and wholly supporting the talk presented by one of the speakers at Enlightenment 2.0 who discussed thought experiments in which people were invited to respond to, eg, the thought of eating sterlised cockroaches during a famine (or something like that) and who react viscerally and then rationalise their response, rather than consider the situation and give a considered response. He said he had set up situations where the response was 'I know I'm wrong and I can't justify my decision, but I just can't bring myself to accept the proposition.'

It would be interting to repeat the experiment, carrying out some form of test beforehand to divide the candidates into sceptics and believers and see if the sceptics are any less likely to make judgments in the instinctive rather than higher cognition areas of the brain. And whether that is a cause of or an effect of having a sceptical disposition...

54. An Open Letter to Richard Dawkins

Comment #96895 by stephenray on December 11, 2007 at 4:10 am

I was wondering where the good Father thought that Marxism had failed?

There've been plenty of totalitarian regimes which claim to draw on Marxist ideas, but clearly did not in fact do so.

55. A Call For a Presidential Debate on Science and Technology

Comment #96891 by stephenray on December 11, 2007 at 4:04 am

FAT CHANCE!

You think any of these dummmies is going to sign up for a debate in which they envisage saying "Uh - I don't know..." over and over again for an hour?

56. Biologist fired for beliefs, suit says

Comment #96121 by stephenray on December 10, 2007 at 3:08 am

Know what I find most offensive about this claim?

That Hahn was cited as a separate defendant.

As an English lawyer, it's clear that Hahn was acting in the course of his employment when he dismissed Abraham. If he exceeded his authority then that's a matter for his employer to take up.

As far as Abraham was concerned, he's not entitled in my view to have any feelings about Hahn except as the person who administered WHOI policy on this occasion.

The hope is, of course, by citing everybody and his dog the dork and his dorky christian lawyers are hoping to find a chink in the armour.

Bleagh, as Charlie Brown would say.

57. Mitt Romney's Faith In America address (as prepared for delivery)

Comment #94985 by stephenray on December 7, 2007 at 5:27 am

Dig the stuff he says after the bit about what Americans have sacrificed in the name of liberty.

'We got no land, no treasure, no oaths of fealty.'

Um. That's - what's it called - a half-truth, right?

58. Mitt Romney's Faith In America address (as prepared for delivery)

Comment #94984 by stephenray on December 7, 2007 at 5:22 am

It's a goldilocks speech!!

"Over there in Europe, they are a godless bunch with empty cathedrals. And over there in raghead land, they are so enthusiastic about their beliefs that they're gosh-darned killing each other. But over here in the good ol' US of A, the porridge is just right, not too hot and not too cold."

Brigham Young had to flee to Utah because the Mormons were a bunch of self-serving credulous twits who liked being able to marry as many wives as they liked and the local christians didn't like that one bit.

And gues what? It turns out that polygamy is not an essential tenet of Mormonism after all, because they dumped it in order to gain statehood for Utah. So those early Mormons weren't, as Romney suggests, persecuted for their religious beliefs at all.

59. Colouring book warns kids of pedophile priests

Comment #94975 by stephenray on December 7, 2007 at 5:04 am

Did anyone see about the US Marine Chaplain/Priest who was HIV positive and sodomising the recruits?

No, it's not a joke, it's in today's LA Times (or possibly ysterday's).

(Sort of reinforces what my acquaintaces in the Paras have always told me about Marines...or shouldn't I say that?)

60. Sherri Shepherd needs to go away now

Comment #94602 by stephenray on December 6, 2007 at 3:30 am

I have never heard even the most bizarro christians claiming that nothing predates christians. Their whole religion is predicated on the fact that Judaism predated christianity. You know, Abraham, Moses, Daniel, Job, Solomon, David - several hundred years at least before Christ popped up and said "Whoa! Well done guys but - uh - you got it all wrong. Let me explain..."

Not only does this woman - who I never heard of before - not know anything worth knowing, she doesn't even know anything about her own religion.

61. Fox: 'Atheist Outrage' over holiday 'Tree of Knowledge'

Comment #94599 by stephenray on December 6, 2007 at 3:21 am

Oh boy.

Kudos to quetlcoatl for his remark about apples and the tree of knowledge!

Now I have to dry out my keyboard.

On another note, I really hate it when people on TV and radio who I support and approve of are interrupted by other people who are debating them.

So I have to strongly disapprove when people I support are interrupting other people in the same way. If you can't take part in the programme without restraining yourself, or don't believe you'll get a fair crack of the whip, then don't accept the invitation.

It's really important. It's one of the reasons Mr Hitchens is at the bottom of my list of good atheist debaters (and why he is on the top of the list of the TV producers, since he makes for good ratings).

62. Evolution and Texas

Comment #94290 by stephenray on December 5, 2007 at 6:51 am

It's a vicious circle.
Kids don't know much about evolution because it isn't taught as thoroughly as it should be. Then because they don't know much about it they are easy meat for the ID pillocks who burble about there being 'no evidence' for evolution, or 'too many gaps', or whatever. So they say, 'sure, teach the controversy, whatever', which means kids don't know much about evolution because...
I think it was in Natalie Angier's book The Canon that she talks about a conference on evolution in which the scientists present new discovery after new discovery, building on what biologists already know is an indisputable mountain of evidence that proves evolution by natural selection as the explanation for the diversity of life.
All the journalists are demanding to know why they've never heard about this stuff before, why no-one told them about the overwhelming evidence...well, duh.

63. Nurses Told to Turn Muslims' Beds to Mecca

Comment #94282 by stephenray on December 5, 2007 at 6:41 am

Can I just ask everyone to remember how reliable is the UK media?
In the 1980s, stories appeared in - well, at least all the UK tabloids, possibly all UK national papers - about an inner london council (Haringey? Brent?) where the authority had ordered that the nursery ryhme 'Baa-baa-black-sheep' was to be banned from local schools. The head of the authority was Bernie Grant, a black man with strong left leanings who despised tabloid journalist (that's three strikes, then!) and a huge hate figure for the right wing press of the day.
Of course, everyone went off like fireworks rockets - 'ridiculous' 'political correctness gone mad' - and so forth.
Little by little it turned out that it was a hoax. The hoaxer even went public. One newspaper was sold the story, didn't check it, all the other newspapers read it in the first edition and added it to their later editions, etc.
Even now, you'll find people that still think it happened.
Whatever you read in a paper, WAIT! See what happens over the next few days, see what other journalists say, and particularly the BBC (despite everything, still one of the most reliable sources in the world). Nowadays, check the blogosphere too.

64. Boy dies of leukemia after refusing treatment for religious reasons

Comment #92505 by stephenray on November 30, 2007 at 4:19 pm

Re BNCBright - I'm more worried that somebody with bizarre religious beliefs is teaching philosophy. Maths, French, Physics, etc., maybe; but philosophy? If you have a faith all the questions of philosophy have the same answer, surely?

65. Boy dies of leukemia after refusing treatment for religious reasons

Comment #92503 by stephenray on November 30, 2007 at 4:18 pm

This sort of thing is going to keep on happening until religion is stripped of its free ride - "you cannot call this into question because *it is my faith*."

66. Pupil defends teacher in Muhammad teddy furore

Comment #91680 by stephenray on November 29, 2007 at 1:08 am

It seems nobody complained for several weeks.

Am I the only one who wonders what her real offence was? The one that made some parents go and spread their religiously-inspired malice where it would do the most damage?

Yech. I feel so outraged (about her and the poor Saudi girl sentenced to 200 lashes) that I'm beginning to think that maybe RD is wrong. In the face of such outrageous disregard for common humanity, I *can* see atheists setting out to kill in the name of destroying religion...

67. Mitt the Mormon

Comment #91557 by stephenray on November 28, 2007 at 2:41 pm

Isn't the problem here that all the people in Europe who were too dumb to respond 'Yeah, yeah, whatever you say' to the potentates of the time as they propogated their faith, ended up fleeing to America?

Therefore until that helpless lack of pragmatism is blended out of the gene pool the US is always going to be fucked up about religion.

68. Bankrolling Ali's Asylum

Comment #91553 by stephenray on November 28, 2007 at 2:35 pm

I didn't know Hitchens and Harris had drawn some parallel with Aayan and Nazi europe.

It is, of course, nonsense. Aayan fled Holland not because of the political administration of that country, but because it's (believed to be) easier for moslem terrorists to get to her there than it is in the US.

We use a phrase in law: 'it's a distinction without a difference'. Hitchens and Harris drew a comparison without a similarity.

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

Comment #90665 by stephenray on November 26, 2007 at 4:14 am

It's astonishing to see someone intelligent enough to pass the Bar exam extolling the attitude to religion in politics in the USA over the attitude we have to it over here.

It's yet another instance of RD's assertion that religion is a like a virus; it causes a disease that destroys the brain's ability to think clearly.

Oh, and once again I feel like puking thinking of the amount of money a retired Prime Minister is going to make dawdling around the world being paid to burble idiocies in front of an adoring audience of rich twits.

70. The absurd world of Martin Amis

Comment #90664 by stephenray on November 26, 2007 at 4:11 am

Oh, curses. It's finally happened.

I'm forced to disagree with someone who's criticising Martin Amis...

It's like being a dog trying to decide between two lampposts.

71. Taking Science on Faith

Comment #90662 by stephenray on November 26, 2007 at 4:02 am

From steve99

What Davies is talking about is the the assumption that there are fixed laws of physics that exist outside the universe. For example, string theorists would probably claim that string theory is a fundamental law, and which universes exist are determined by it. Davies worries that such claims are too inflexible.

72. Taking Science on Faith

Comment #90660 by stephenray on November 26, 2007 at 3:55 am

Ahh, this old chestnut.

"Science is no better than religion because it needs faith, and that faith is that the universe can be explained."

It does not require faith to believe that the universe follows laws.

This is because it is an inescapable observation that the universe is ordered. If it were not ordered, then we could not exist to observe it, since it would be random. Examples of its order are everywhere, from the fact that things never fall upward through to the fact that people never die, live life in reverse and are subsequently born.

It is a simple, first-order deduction of no difficulty whatsoever to say that the order of an ordered universe can be investigated and explained.

Not the faintest scintilla of faith is required.

73. URGENT APPEAL: Please Help Protect Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Comment #89187 by stephenray on November 20, 2007 at 1:14 am

Here's a thought.

What is to be done if a dozen people in Ayaan's position flee to the USA? Or two dozen?

74. URGENT APPEAL: Please Help Protect Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Comment #88811 by stephenray on November 19, 2007 at 2:54 am

It's entirely probable that Aayan makes more money than me. Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins certainly make fa-a-ar more money than me.

I won't be contributing; I have no money to spare, and insufficient motivation to go without - on this occasion.

Of course, I wish her well.

75. Debate between Michael Shermer and Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #88538 by stephenray on November 17, 2007 at 2:59 pm

Just watching the Shermer / Hovind debate. It's no wonder Shermer had difficulty. Hovind throws up a new, and almost wholly developed straw man with almost every sentence he spouts. By the time he's finished, there is an entire Division of straw men and there's no way one individual could possibly shoot them down in less than several days.

Either someone listening to this half-wit is already intelligent enough to spot the logical disjunctions between what he's saying or he/she is not. If not, then it would take Shermer a whole term of intensive teaching to explain.

76. Debate between Michael Shermer and Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #88537 by stephenray on November 17, 2007 at 2:47 pm

Quote Dicanu:

"[D'Sousa] dated Anne Coulter for awhile.
Says it all.
;) "


You would. Oh yes you would.

77. 'Expelled' Movie: The Extended Trailer

Comment #88518 by stephenray on November 17, 2007 at 9:33 am

Just been watching Phylis Shlafly.

Boy, you Americans are in deep trouble. Over there people appear to take seriously nitwits who - over here - would cause outbreaks of chuckling from the BBC to Land's End.

What you have is a bunch of people who have sat in their dining rooms tucking into enormous meals and come up with a world view which they never, from that moment henceforth, bother to check against reality. Hoo.

78. 'Expelled' Movie: The Extended Trailer

Comment #88517 by stephenray on November 17, 2007 at 9:18 am

Ooo-ka-a-ay.

So now I know why producers cast Ben Stein whenever they need someone to play the part of a complete f---wit. Can't think of a single actor to challenge him in that niche.

79. A third of adults believe God watches over them

Comment #87782 by stephenray on November 13, 2007 at 5:13 am

Who on earth has the view that "faith is increasingly irrelevant in today's secular society"?

It *ought* to be, but any observer more complex than a jellyfish can see that it isn't.

80. Dr Bari: Government stoking Muslim tension

Comment #87430 by stephenray on November 12, 2007 at 5:27 am

I did the causes of the second world war in History A level.

I don't recall terror campaigns being launched by jews in germany prior to the Nazi launch of their programs of ethnic cleansing.

No explosions killing everyday citizens, no rallies calling for germans to be beheaded for insulting the Torah, no progammes operating clandestinely from synagogues training young jews in the utilisation of terrorist methods...

...so how can current england be like Nazi Germany? In the 1930s, jews were bullied and dispossessed and killed simply for being jewish. In the 2000s, moslems are being asked to clean up their own house because young moslems are being persuaded that suicide bombing is an acceptable response to their personal worldview of disenfranchisement...

81. Exorcism death shocks archdeacon

Comment #87429 by stephenray on November 12, 2007 at 5:22 am

Quote Black Wolf: "But we can stir the soup by asking each and every moderate we meet if she believes that there are demons which possess people. If they don't, they're not Christians."

You wish. They simply redefine christianity to mean "Whatever I personally believe."

82. Same Flea, Different Name?

Comment #86076 by stephenray on November 8, 2007 at 4:33 am

Notice how he presents "straightforward" arguments for the existence of god.

That's because - presumably - those pesky convoluted arguments are just too durn hard to follow!!

83. Suffering, Evil and the Existence of God

Comment #85757 by stephenray on November 7, 2007 at 2:45 am

One can only suppose that Flew's mental faculties evaporated with age, otherwise he would see that the postulation of 'an infinitely intelligent mind' provides literally no answer to the question of the complexity or existence of the universe.
Yes, it may be that we have, as freethinkers, to acknowledge that there may never be an answer to "whence the big bang?", but it's no improvement to answer 'an infinitely intelligent mind' cos then we have to go through the whole rigmarole again and ask "whence the infinitely intelligent mind?"

84. Fox News Discussion on 'The Golden Compass'

Comment #85753 by stephenray on November 7, 2007 at 2:36 am

Surely the only required response is: Schools, kindergarten, colleges, national celebrations, sunday school, madrassas, church, christmas, yom kippur, ramadan, easter - one film written by an atheist is gonna turn children into free-thinkers?

If only...

85. The truth in religion

Comment #84461 by stephenray on November 2, 2007 at 4:56 am

"[the universe's] creator is not a capricious magician"

How the hell else to describe him? What did he do to Job? To Abraham (always wondered how his son felt...) To Judas? Other than caprice, what would be the point of creating a universe that is a billion, billion, billion times larger than is necessary for the existence of humans?
...and other important questions. Answers on a postcard.

86. Does fundamentalist religion cause the rejection of evolution? or is it the other way around?

Comment #80520 by stephenray on October 22, 2007 at 3:50 am

Evolution is counter-intuitive? Not to me, it's always seemed to make complete sense, intellectually satisfying.

But if there are people who find evolution counter-intuitive, then quantum mechanics is in really deep trouble...

87. 'Dirty War' priest gets life term

Comment #77948 by stephenray on October 11, 2007 at 8:10 am

For any Brits who've looked closely at the picture of this guy...

"I don't ber-leeve ut!"

88. Scandal brewing at Oral Roberts U.

Comment #76750 by stephenray on October 7, 2007 at 2:33 am

Thought I would browse the ORU website. No results for the search criteria 'evolution', so I went to the academic progammes page and picked 'Biology'.
The Biology faculty has laudable aims: "Another goal is to train students to use scientific and critical thinking skills to accurately discriminate between scientific facts and pseudoscience."

(Ya think they have any particular 'pseudoscience' in mind?)

Hur. I wonder how successful they are...

89. Harper's Index

Comment #75240 by stephenray on October 2, 2007 at 5:41 am

I occasionally have to ask my local bookshop to reshelve Behe's 'Darwin's Black box' from Popular Science to Religion and spirituality.

I think they ignore me but it pleases me to try.

90. Letters: Theology has no place in a university

Comment #75239 by stephenray on October 2, 2007 at 5:38 am

So this guy comes up to me, and says 'Football should be played in the dark'.

And I said 'Well, that's ridiculous! It's as plain as anything that you need light to play sports!'

And he says, 'I'm sorry, but you can't say that. You have to read my 7 volume treatise 'Football should be played in the dark', which itself refers to 73 different learned texts written by 59 very intelligent people, all of whom have examined the question of whether football should be played in the dark. Until then, you're simply not qualified to give an opinion.'

91. There Go The Dinosaurs

Comment #74199 by stephenray on September 27, 2007 at 4:22 pm

It comes to something when an English graduate and a lawyer (- er, that's me) encounters a phenomenon for which, after several minutes thought, he cannot find a description.
I thought about - batshit. But that seemed too...playful. I thought about - idiot, but that seemed too benign. In the end, this guy Chick has managed to pull off a stunt which requires the invention of a new word, one that means dangerously stupid as well as unbelievably dumb.

Oh, wait a minute, there is a word after all.

Moron.

92. Teacher: I was fired, said Bible isn't literal

Comment #73619 by stephenray on September 25, 2007 at 2:42 pm

The biggest scandal is that pupils/students in the US are happy to threaten a teacher with consulting an attorney if the teacher says something the pupil or student disagrees with.
The very fact that that is a possible scenario means free speech has already gone.
If free speech can be once be curtailed in this way, then teachers have to start weighing up what they say for fear of losing their job. That means they've lost their right to free speech, already.
As for the students - hell, get a grip. Your faith is so puny, so weak, so threatened, that you need to rush off to a lawyer because your religion is being denigrated? Perhaps atheism is stronger than we think.

93. Critical Analysis of Case for a Creator

Comment #72532 by stephenray on September 21, 2007 at 1:10 pm

Of course science can comment on the supernatural. What are they talking about?
You can't simply say (although believers do) 'it's outside nature, therefore science cannot comment on it'.
Science can say 'nyaah, rubbish, statistically as likely as a change in the melting point of ice'.

94. Catholic school board in Halton may ban HPV vaccination

Comment #72036 by stephenray on September 20, 2007 at 7:32 am

Who decides the kids are to go to a catholic school?
The parents, that's who.
It is this sort of situation that prompts RD and others to label indoctrination of children into a faith as 'child abuse'. In this case, the adverse consequence could be more permanently harmful than your average paedophile.

95. Religious education

Comment #71201 by stephenray on September 18, 2007 at 3:05 am

From one of the DfES sites:

"Use some optical illusions to establish the idea that there are different ways of seeing the same thing."

Comment ought to be superfluous, but just in case: this is doubly disingenuous.

Optical illusions actually demonstrate that the processing centres of the brain use short-cut algorithms which sometimes produce a defective result. Something looks like a 3-d image but in fact it isn't.

It would be like demonstrating colour blindness and using it to illustrate the assertion that some people are easily fooled.

If this is how standards are set, no wonder all the kids nowadays are getting exam results which would have been impossible 30 years ago.

96. Airline sacrifices goats to appease sky god

Comment #70864 by stephenray on September 17, 2007 at 5:26 am

What worries me is the next step.

Sack the mechanics, buy a buncha more goats...

97. The Dawkins debate

Comment #70424 by stephenray on September 15, 2007 at 12:08 pm

To Peter Hollander: natural selection cannot demonstrate any ability to explain why the earth goes round the sun but that doesn't reflect on the accuracy of either assertion.

Natural selection is simply the name for a process. The best equipped individuals of any species will tend to leave more descendants than the less well equipped, and that the best equipped species will be flourish while the less well equipped will perish. Do you believe that either of those statements is incorrect?

Isn't your problem with origins rather than evolution?

Anyway, your characterisation of 'materialism' is utter rubbish. Science doesn't assert, in the sense that you mean, that matter had to do its own creating and that it must exclude external power. What science says is let's investigate, and let's assume nothing that doesn't follow logically from our observations and the inferences that arise from them. Postulating a sky fairy to pop up whenever the observations or calculations prove difficult or give uncomfortable answers is just wishful thinking.

What makes you think there is any meaning to the question 'Why does nature exist?' You can ask 'How does a fridge attract a hypothesis?' but although the words produce a semblance of meaning, it isn't real.

98. The smallest signs of retreat

Comment #69009 by stephenray on September 9, 2007 at 1:35 pm

Wow, she thinks there's only a 'fine distinction' between 'virus' and 'disease'.

I guess she's also in favour of prescribing antibiotics for viral infections...

99. In God we doubt

Comment #67367 by stephenray on September 3, 2007 at 6:15 am

I reject the assertion that Sartre's conclusion is bleak. It only seems so because we are battered with the opposite viewpoint from the time comprehension dawns on the organism.
I look at pictures of cosmic eggs in the Orion nebula and read about recent discoveries in molecular biology and I don't need spurious 'meanings' to be bolted on to 'life'.
Yeah, I'm pissed off about death, but what're you gonna do?

100. What do these atheists understand of religion?

Comment #67365 by stephenray on September 3, 2007 at 6:09 am

Of course, believers criticise atheists for being certain, just before they boast of having doubts. Well woopee-doo.
There are probably some atheists who have doubts. But isn't the proper view like this:
The reason one doubts something is that the proposition is unlikely.
There's nothing unlikely about the atheist position - 'no supernatural beings, full stop'.
There are a million unlikelinesses in religious belief, however. Where's the credit in doubting something that doubtful?
Where's the fault in being cheerfully convinced of the propositions of atheism, and not doubting it at all?