51. Atheists go on the political offensive in God-fearing US

Comment #38002 by mandrellian on May 6, 2007 at 3:52 pm

"Mr Dawkins is an advocate of increasing atheist militancy."

A very poor and uninformed choice of words. Nowhere in Dawkins' writings have I heard him advocate militancy. Action, organisation & public awareness, yes, but not militancy.

@ Bizarro: if you're accusing Dawkins of "hyper-dogmatic vitriol", perhaps you should re-read your bible and reflect on the old saying about the pot and the kettle ...

52. God Exists. A Formula Proves it.

Comment #37972 by mandrellian on May 6, 2007 at 2:22 pm

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e39/anonymgrl/farside.jpg

Spot on, Gary.

53. Where Is Atheism When Bad Things Happen?

Comment #33331 by mandrellian on April 19, 2007 at 10:00 pm

Posted as response to the hateful punk's bile-expulsion at AOL:

"D'Souza, you are unbelievable. What an opportunistic & callous use of an unspeakable tragedy to push your agenda for the week. I've read some half-thought juvenile grade-school bigotry from you before but this takes the cake. In seeking to dehumanise atheists by asserting that they're all just sitting back, heartless, soulless and viewing this awful massacre as a mere mathematical anomaly, all you've done is shine a shameful, ironic spotlight on yourself and exposed yourself as a person as callous and as devoid of compassion as those you demonise. The response to your "article" by a teacher at VT pretty much sums up what a lot of us feel toward your "thought" on this topic.

Do you not think for one second that there may be atheists among the victims (or their families)? What would you say to them? "Too bad about your murdered son being destined for Hell and all, but he should've signed up to my magic book club"? Would you have the courage to say "where's your science now, you godless heathen?" or would you just type a few sentences of knee-jerk, hate-filled drivel from the distant safety of your keyboard (not to mention the safe distance of not having any loved ones at VT) and post it? The answer to that is clear. And you can bet those atheists who lost loved ones at VT are crying as hard as anyone else for their lost sons, daughters, brothers, sisters ... and they'd take as much offense to your "thoughts" as would a religious person if you'd asked "where's your saviour now, god-boy?"

Do you not think atheists know "evil" when they see it? Do you not think people who don't read magic books can see the dark stain left on all of humankind by this kind of tragedy just as clearly as those that do? Perhaps they see it clearer than the faith-based community, as they have no cataracts of faith obscuring their vision. They can certainly see the seeds of evil & hatred in mild rants like yours (and the less-than-mild but far less coherent rants by the many "godly" comrades you have in the media), for it is always the moderates in any clique that make it possible for the extremists and fundamentalists to survive at all. You are an enabler of the very evil and hatred you condemn and that you see amongst non-theists.

Modern science may not have all the answers to everything, but it certainly doesn't pretend to know (that is, to have faith in) things it doesn't know. It doesn't presume to soothe pained souls by cooing "it's god's plan" or "they're in a better place", because science doesn't know either of those things and will happily admit it. Those who use science (for science is merely a tool, not a philosophy or belief system and carries no preconceptions about, well, anything) refuse to believe things that they don't know. In that regard, your much-loathed "modern science" is a lot more honest, both with itself and with those it speaks to, than your religion or any religion. To demonise science itself is to not understand it. It's a tool of discovery, not a means of comfort, not a way of life, not a set of rules telling me what to do or what to eat or what to wear or who to worship. It's about time religionists like you realised that science is not competing with religion. It's discovering whatever in the world (and out of it) can be discovered and not hiding in the darkness of history, refusing to come out and look around.


M"

...

Was a bit knee-jerk myself actually, to be honest :) But this idiot consistently gets my back up. It's also Friday arvo here in Melbourne and it's a slow one, so I let him have my entire stream of consciousness :) I don't care if he reads it, I just had to say it to him.

M

54. Atheism isn't the final word

Comment #32326 by mandrellian on April 16, 2007 at 9:36 pm

I'll be happy when I can safely stroll into a hotel room and not find a Bible lurking in the top drawer of the bedside table. I'd love to be able to answer my door on a Saturday morning without worrying about which variety of domesticated vacant-looking book-basher is standing there waiting to ask if I want to talk about God.

I'll be happy when religionists stop projecting their own traits onto atheists. Atheists don't try and convert people, they don't build monolithic churches and constantly beg for your money on TV, they don't frighten you with stories of eternal torment at the hands of an infernal boogie-man and they don't look verifiable facts in the face then elect to take the word of an ancient book or a licensed religionist.

Atheists don't want to "win", we want people to stop being wilfully ignorant. We want people like the author to actually understand what our argument is before trotting out the same tired responses. such as "religion = morality".

But I must thank the author for one thing: I now have a couple more books on my "to-read" list :)

55. Peanut Butter, The Atheist's Nightmare!

Comment #27873 by mandrellian on March 27, 2007 at 5:10 am

Zounds.

Funny? yes.

Sobering and even a jot scary - due to the fact that the Sherriff Of The World subscribes to similar, um, well, flat-out idiocy (since he replaced scotch with Jesus) and has access to several gigatons of nukular warheads? Also, a big yes.

What will these frighteningly stupid people do next? Try and convince us that some magic book has all the answers and that we should believe in the magic book (and disbelieve everything else, of course) because the book itself tells us we should believe in it? Oh, hang on ...

56. Lonely Atheists of the Global Village

Comment #26358 by mandrellian on March 18, 2007 at 9:43 pm

^^^ Exactly, Quine...

To point out the obvious, Novak's trying to put out a bushfire with an empty bucket. A really, really big - but really empty - bucket.

I much prefer reading Andrew Sullivan's discussion with Sam Harris. Of course, he's out of his league against Mr Harris, but at least he's comparatively coherent (and a lot less long-winded) while presenting his utterly unconvincing arguments. Novak's lengthy rambling left me quite unimpressed and, to be frank, in need of a nap.

M

57. 'God Is Not a Moderate'

Comment #26355 by mandrellian on March 18, 2007 at 9:08 pm

"Why wouldn't God, then, design us in such a way as to find belief in divinity quite natural?"

Ah, "design". Quite the charged word these days - bane of scientists, crutch of Creationists, slight annoyance to people who just want a phone that bloody works, damn it!

I prefer this paraphrasing: "Why couldn't man, then, have evolved in such a way as to find belief in nature quite divine?"

As usual, Mr Sullivan manages to take a circuitous route around Mr Harris' argument but returns yet again to the well-worn, stale & crumbly "I believe in faith because I have faith in what I believe". It's about as good an argument as saying "I believe Brand X have the best petrol stations because the Brand X advertisements tell me so".

He also, for good measure, throws in the standard diversionary tactic about science and history requiring leaps of faith just as faith itself does. Of course, we're all aware that the main difference between faith and the above disciplines is that faith can't be checked or verified in any way - which of course is very convenient for a good few billion people.

Eagerly awaiting Mr Harris' response ...

Mandrellian