1351. Interview with Richard Dawkins

Comment #63861 by steve99 on August 16, 2007 at 12:53 pm

However behind science is God, The Supreme Designer and Creator of All that exists.

As there is clearly no need for a designer, or creator, he is both pointless, and must be rather bored, not having much to do. Tell you what. If you can invent an unnecessary God, then I can invent a companion for him... perhaps they can play scrabble together or something to while away eternity...

See? I can play the "just make things up" game too!

1352. Interview with Richard Dawkins

Comment #63858 by steve99 on August 16, 2007 at 12:49 pm

Steve99 my poem "THE ETERNAL CLOCK OF TIME" may answer this for you.

Nope, sorry. You made a clear mathematical assertion: "God is infinite". If you made this assertion based on any serious foundation, you can answer my question: What type of infinite? Countably infinite? The infinity of the continuum? Or some higher order?

This is a simple question. It requires no poetry or interpretation. If you *know* that God is infinite, you must have some basis for that, so can answer. If you can't answer, that tends to indicate you are just making things up.

1353. Interview with Richard Dawkins

Comment #63845 by steve99 on August 16, 2007 at 12:13 pm

So I am in the right department to discuss my beliefs and to listen, respond and respect the beliefs of other posters here.

But you don't respond. You simply ignore any respectable scientific idea that challenges your beliefs.

1354. Interview with Richard Dawkins

Comment #63751 by steve99 on August 15, 2007 at 4:23 pm

If you hit your finger with a hammer when you try to hang a picture, the violation of the law of physics is hitting your finger with the hammer.

Interesting. So which law of physics is violated? Conservation of energy? Of momentum? Of charge? Or are you just using words like 'law of physics' without having a clue what they mean?

1355. Interview with Richard Dawkins

Comment #63740 by steve99 on August 15, 2007 at 3:35 pm

He is infinite

This is a claim that needs clarification. As I am sure you know, there are many kinds of infinity, of different sizes. Is God infinite in the sense of the countable numbers? Or is he infinite in the sense of the real numbers? Or some higher infinity?

If you make a claim like this, then presumably you have a reason for making it, and you know precisely how infinite God is, so can answer my question.

Of course, if you are just making things up and just playing with words, you won't be able to.

1356. Interview with Richard Dawkins

Comment #63727 by steve99 on August 15, 2007 at 2:42 pm

the_assayer: Sorry... not getting at you... misread. Have edited to correct.

1357. Interview with Richard Dawkins

Comment #63721 by steve99 on August 15, 2007 at 2:18 pm

Darwin2: You claim that the universe needs a creator. This is a naive point of view, assuming that 'creation' makes any sense. According to some theories of the origin of the universe, it does not. Just to mention two: (1) The Hawking-Hartle model (put simply) states that the Universe 'just exists'. There was no point of origin in time, as time loses meaning as you try and get back to 'time zero'. There is no creator, as there is no time at which a creation occurred. (2) Max Tegmark's idea of the multiverse is that all possible universes exist, based on all possible mathematical ideas. In other words, there is no place for any creator or intelligence to initiate, fine-tune or select anything - everything that can exist, does.

The moral of this is - if you are going to try and use physical ideas to justify the existence of God, you had better first get seriously educated about physics.

1358. These preachers of hate must be exposed

Comment #63475 by steve99 on August 14, 2007 at 12:58 pm

David: I will continue to argue enthusiastically with you on this, and on other threads, but I welcome your support for Dawkins' position. I can only hope that this helps you see the real dangers of faith and doctrine, and that you start to understand the dangers of selective interpretation of old magic books. You have your interpretation - but how do you justify that over other, far nastier versions?

1359. These preachers of hate must be exposed

Comment #63444 by steve99 on August 14, 2007 at 7:18 am

And I don't think see the need to bite David every time he says anything, even when it's reasonable.

Sorry to disagree, but I am afraid that I do, especially when he says may seem reasonable, but as I have pointed out here it is flawed and based on inconsistency and hypocrisy. I realise we all suffer from these failings to some extent, but David has stuck his neck out, and is a minister in a Church, and has written books about his views.

I also have to say, yet again, that I'm not very impressed by the moderate-religionists-enable-extreme-religionists thesis.

I think we see such enabling all the time. Just look at the current state of the Anglican church, where rabid homophobes and oppressors of women are pacified by the moderates in a (probably doomed) attempt to keep the church together.

There is also the question of what 'moderate' means. I believe there is a deep undercurrent of suppressed unpleasantness in what we today consider to be supposedly moderate and civilised societies. This is not specific to religion, but general. It does not take much for many people to vote for pretty unpleasant right-wing parties or to explicitly state some shocking opinions. Fortunately, it is now considered impolite to express such opinions publicly. Except in one sphere - the sphere of religion. I believe that religion - even supposedly moderate versions - are acting as an outlet for some reactionary views: "Me, homophobic? - no way! However, you can't deny what the bible says, so no marriage or equal rights for them." Faith, even 'moderate' versions, is one of the last routes for people to be bigoted in polite society.

1360. These preachers of hate must be exposed

Comment #63412 by steve99 on August 14, 2007 at 5:05 am

I don't think it is fair to this website to have every thread I post in, dominated by questions about what I believe.

You post as a publically identified representative of a religion. You chose that position. It is only reasonable to point out to readers who may not realise that your particular brand of Christianity has its own deep prejudices and other unpleasant views. This helps to put your posts into context, and raises serious issues with some of them (like your attack on 'spin').

1361. These preachers of hate must be exposed

Comment #63378 by steve99 on August 14, 2007 at 3:35 am

I also agree with the comments - except rokorts. Why spoil a good case by then lumping together all religions as the same?

For the obvious reason that without the respect for faith in our society, there would not be attempts to cover up such hateful speech.

What matters is whether what was said was true - not whether the British thought police or the spin doctors of New Labour think it is 'off message'.

Coming from you, that is a bit rich. You regularly come here and try and 'spin' both the bible and the doctrines of your church, because much of what they include is 'off message' against the image you wish to present. If you are insisting we judge these people by what they actually say, they we should be allowed to judge your church by what it says, and what it says includes much that is hateful and prejudiced.

1362. Interview with Richard Dawkins

Comment #63347 by steve99 on August 14, 2007 at 2:06 am

I am willing to listen openly to any arguments and am willing to engage in a mutually respectful dialogue with anyone who would like to discuss in depth their arguments against the existence of God.

I see no evidence of this. For example, when it is pointed out to you that the Universe is not complex, you simply ignore this, and keep claiming that it is. Presumably you must either understand the universe more than those who have studied physics and mathematics over the past century or so, or you just can't face the fact that a core pillar of your faith is just wrong.

1363. Interview with Richard Dawkins

Comment #63220 by steve99 on August 13, 2007 at 2:35 pm

Some commenters, who actually know quite a lot about science, then take the trouble to put the (not-arrogant) believer right on various points he has misunderstood.

I have given up trying to explain things to this believer... I just feel that it is a good idea to counter such bad science when it is posted on a public forum; perhaps explanations might help others to explain things to believers more open to persuasion.

Incidentally, something I feel is not discussed enough in forums such as these is the importance of non-equilibrium thermodynamics (of which Chaos Theory is just a part) in explaining order and structure in the universe. It is yet another way that complexity can appear without the need for a creator. It takes natural selection on living things to produce finely detailed 'designs', but simple physics and mathematics can do a huge amount alone...

1364. Interview with Richard Dawkins

Comment #63198 by steve99 on August 13, 2007 at 1:18 pm

The universe is infinitely more complicated that the Space Shuttle and must have had a Designer and Creator.

You keep getting this wrong, no matter how often it is explained. The universe is NOT complicated at all. It is very simple indeed... at one point it was no more that pretty evenly distributed hydrogen + helium with slight randomness, probably imposed by quantum effects. All you need is that, combined with a large-scale attractive force (gravity) and you get concentrations of mass and energy that allows non-equilibrium thermodynamics to work and you get spontaneous generation of order and structure. This requires no creator or designer at all.

1365. Charles Brooker's screen burn

Comment #62788 by steve99 on August 11, 2007 at 12:35 pm

If scientists studied religion more seriously, they would conclude that it is possible for one God to exist and for human self-awareness (THE SOUL) to continue after death.

Just doesn't work that way, sorry. You see, religion *starts off* with the belief that these things are possible, it does not provide any evidence for them being so.

1366. The new preface to The God Delusion paperback and Q&A

Comment #62607 by steve99 on August 10, 2007 at 10:34 am

I didn't take the question very seriously at first (booze will do that to you) but, to get to the point, I read a book called Just Six Numbers, by Martin Rees. I realised how utterly profound the intricate ballance of the universe is. If a hygrogen atom at the opposite end of the universe was 1 iota bigger or smaller, no Earth, no humanity. The fine ballance of the moon in relation to Earth's delicate orbit, etc. Rees even finds himself, though having written a secular book, forced to deal with the obvious religious implications in the ballance of creation.

I think this is the wrong way to look at things. Firstly, sure, there are some constants that have to be very finely tuned, but others don't have to be. Just read Stephen Baxter's story 'Raft' to see how life could cope in a universe with a hugely different gravitational constant, for example. Other things you describe as finely balanced really aren't... the moon's orbit has varied considerably over the lifetime of the Earth.

Also, fine-tuning is no argument at all for a creator. There is a way of thinking about this that I may be used before on this site. Take a look at the Mandelbrot set... it is a mathematical object of huge complexity, all from a very simple process. Now, most of the space described by that process is very dull indeed, but there are small areas which when magnified have an intricate beauty. The 'space' of universes could be somewhat similar in nature. There is a very, very small set which can contain complexity and life, but that small set is an inevitable part of the whole, just like the patterns in the Mandelbrot set. It is no surprise that life, which needs complexity, arises in the areas which allow complexity to exist.

Also, you limit the possibilities for life... it needs neither Earth or Moon, and certainly does not need a planet orbiting within the 'Goldilocks Zone' around a star. For example, there could turn out to be more life in tidally heated moons of gas giants, even in our solar system, than on rocky planets with surface water.

1367. Why Richard Dawkins is right on alternative medicine - but not when it comes to religion

Comment #62482 by steve99 on August 10, 2007 at 12:30 am

When muslims call for violence because of the publication of a few cartoons, and christians try to stifle the teaching of science, interfere with contraceptive use across the world with disastrous results, and attempt to influence political opinions on matters such as gay rights even in such moderate countries like the UK, I have to wonder where this "little other than an assembly of ethical opinions" religion that Lawson speaks of is supposed to exist.

1368. Scarlet Letter Campaign Update: A Victory

Comment #62276 by steve99 on August 9, 2007 at 7:25 am

As one of the most popular anti-Christian hate sites on the Internet

Typical of the religious; PZ does his best to condemn them all, and they they think he is only picking on *their* religion!

1369. Atheist 'Metaphysics' and Religious Equivocation

Comment #62251 by steve99 on August 9, 2007 at 5:29 am

However, since "qualia" is not an objective quantity, this may be difficult. As I understand it, qualia is a shorthand for the subjective quantity of perception. Why do we experience particular wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation (625-740nm) as "Red" - why not "Blue"? Is my "Red" the same as a hummingbird's "Red"?... and so on.

Yes.

We could hypothesise that qualia is an emergent property of how our brain is wired, I have no problem with this.

But there is indeed a real problem with this. Not only do we not know how qualia emerge from how our brain is wired; we don't even know how to begin to think about how to even start to deal with such emergence. Brain wiring is simply arrangements of atoms that result in certain flows of information. Why should that produce any subject experience at all? In fact, why should there be subjective experience as a result of flows of information in the brain, and not as a result of flows of information in other systems? These are profound questions that we have not even begun to start answering, but they are questions we have to answer before we can even consider how qualia could be 'emergent'.

1370. Atheist 'Metaphysics' and Religious Equivocation

Comment #62249 by steve99 on August 9, 2007 at 5:23 am

Qualia is scientific, or purely philosophical notion? I've seen it from time to time, but not with science. Can you give me a few pointers, either a brief description, or a book. Thanks.

That is a difficult question. I can't point at any book. However, I can't see how it can be a purely philosophical or abstract idea as we experience qualia all the time - in fact, it could be argued that our sense of existence and self-awareness consists of nothing but qualia (if one could include the sense of time passing in the category). This is why I find it so extraordinary when people try and argue against the existence of qualia.

1371. Atheist 'Metaphysics' and Religious Equivocation

Comment #62233 by steve99 on August 9, 2007 at 2:22 am

Differentiation in the experience of the redness of red and the blueness of blue is fully accounted for in the differing firing rates of the various cone receptors in the eye etc.

I really don't think it is, as is illustrated by the fact that it is possible to imagine 'qualia swapping' - someone who would see blue instead of red given the same firing rates of receptors. I am not arguing that someone *would* see blue instead of red... simply that because we can imagine this, that the difference in experience is far from fully accounted for. Indeed, I would go as far as Chalmers and say that at our current level of understanding it is not accounted for in any way.

1372. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #62230 by steve99 on August 9, 2007 at 2:16 am

This is bullshit. No matter what metaphysical model you pick, you've still got the same phenomenological world to explain. "God did it" is not a mechanism, unless you can explain how God did it, in a manner that's predictive and repeatable.

There is one metaphysical model that fits - perfect determinism, where everything we experience is precisely determined across all time. That way, God could make it appear like QM was operating. However, this would wreck another aspect of DG's fragile worldview - the existence of at least some free will.

1373. Atheist 'Metaphysics' and Religious Equivocation

Comment #62225 by steve99 on August 9, 2007 at 1:24 am

Science doesn't deal with the subjective.

I would argue that it certainly does. Just consider psycho-active drug research and development.

1374. Atheist 'Metaphysics' and Religious Equivocation

Comment #62224 by steve99 on August 9, 2007 at 1:21 am

One reason that I may be dismissive is that the notion of qualia simply isn't new.

So 'old' notions should be dismissed? The idea of inheritance is a very old notion too...

Descartes started this whole duality thing a long time ago with his cogito ergo sum and the rest.

Here we go confusing a belief in qualia with dualism again.

Most qualists, if indeed they can be called that, cannot even agree on a working definition of what qualia may be.

But that is clearly no reason to believe they don't exist. To use an appropriate analogy for this site, there was a long gap between Darwin talking about natural selection, and there being any working definition of the *mechanism* of inheritance that could produce natural selection.

And in response to the comment about science explaining the natural world, but not experience - how do we know there is a natural world? Obviously through our repeated, testable experience of it. We are entitled to ask why we get these experiences. I expect good scientific answers to them...

1375. Atheist 'Metaphysics' and Religious Equivocation

Comment #62167 by steve99 on August 8, 2007 at 1:48 pm

Dan Dennett refers to the proponents of "qualia" as "closeted dualists". Qualia is kind of a loaded term that refers to a number of things. It may mean a difference between the mind/brain or soul/body, or simply what you consider the specific taste of a fruit might be. However, if you take seriously our evolutionary past it becomes frankly inconceivable that a soul comes into play at any given point. Would a soul enter into the body in the early homonids? Earlier? It's kind of absurd.

I think you are confusing sensible questions about the nature of qualia with attempt to talk about 'souls'. These are not the same thing at all.

I feel a deep sense of dissatisfaction when I come across arguments that attempt to dismiss qualia. It is the same feeling I get when I find physicists attempting to say that 'time is an illusion'. One of the main points of science and philosophy should be to explain experience. What we experience is the passage of time, and qualia. Trying to hand-wave those away seems to be to be betraying what science and reason are for. I also don't get a feeling that qualia are any less important the more we discover about neuroscience. Indeed, the more we know about mechanisms, the stranger it seems that that those mechanisms make red look like *that*.

Also, arguments about the existence of qualia can't also be dismissed by saying it would be improbable that experience could vary from person to person. That is not the point at all. A strong argument for qualia is that we can even conceive of the possibility of experience being different.

I don't share your optimism that this problem will be solved any time soon.... we aren't really sure what the nature of the problem is, let alone how to progress with it.

And as for Dennett's argument about proponents of qualia being dualists - I happen to think that is just wrong. If theories of mind turned up that explained qualia using the physical world as we know know it, I don't think many 'pro-qualia' people would object.

1376. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #61646 by steve99 on August 6, 2007 at 4:55 am

know of. Indeed a huge problem for naturalism is its apparent inability to deal with consciousness. In my mind consciousness is an absolute show stopper – I mean no naturalist has really any idea how a material system could become conscious.

And also no supernaturalist has really any idea how a supernatural system could become conscious. If you claim that you do, please explain why red looks like *that*. I am not saying that naturalism can help with this - what I am saying is that you get no further towards answering such questions with your approach.

1377. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #61639 by steve99 on August 6, 2007 at 4:01 am

Now if there was some reason to believe that our brain produces our capacity for having conscious experiences then we would have a good argument for believing that there is no experiencing after death, because after death our brain gets destroyed.

And we do have such an argument. If someone's brain gets damaged, then their consciousness can be reduced.

Now, either our brains produce consciousness, or God is very cleverly monitoring the status of each brain cell in order to make sure what we experience is precisely correlated with what is happening in our brain. He does this even to the point of making people suffer from dementia when the signs of senility appear in the brain. So, even if your God exists, there is not the slightest reason to believe that he will abandon the 'emulate brain state' process when the brain is destroyed on death.

1378. A Designer Universe?

Comment #61629 by steve99 on August 6, 2007 at 3:37 am

So if the universe is infinite now, it was infinite to begin with?

Yes.

So did it "big bang" in every part of it, or just "our" part?

We don't know.

If only in our part surely the rest of the surrounding universe would have resisted it.

It is not like that. It is not a 'bang' into existing space... it *makes* space.

If it exploded in every part simultaneously (assuming simultaneity makes sense in an infinite universe) well that must have been some bang!

Indeed!

1379. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #61599 by steve99 on August 6, 2007 at 12:41 am

Dianelos: You have missed out two of the deepest objections.

1. Your worldview is based on very poor understanding of logic, and you fall into obvious philosophical traps.

2. You make completely unjustified assumptions, like:

I am conscious and I don't understand consciousness, therefore there is a God, and he is good and Jesus lived.

1380. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #61515 by steve99 on August 5, 2007 at 1:29 pm

That pretty much defines (and permits) your whole rosy, subjective theology, Dianelos. You've invented an entirely new meaning for the word "memory." Alas, there can be no truly meaningful discourse when words are defined subjectively and contrary to common usage.

You missed out an adjective in your description of DG's theology - fradulent. This may sound harsh, but it is correct in the same way as Dawkins' use of the word 'delusion', though harsh, is correct. A fraud is a deception made for personal gain. Dianelos deceives himself about terms like 'memory' and 'perfect' in order to gain the comfort of his belief in God.

Also, your use of the word anthropomorphic is revealing. It illustrates a huge flaw in Dianelos' reasoning, and one that is well known in terms of theology. His God seems to have put a lot of effort in to make an apparently beautiful world for Dianelos, to give Dianelos an understanding of things, and an idea of what morality is all about. However, this involved an awful lot of suffering throughout evolution (and even in the current world) for other, less sentient, creatures, and even for humanity before Dianelos. In Dianelos' worldview, ideal theism works very well for him, but not so well for so many of us. This seems to me to be an expression of either extreme naivety about what his philosophy implies, or extreme arrogance. Out of politeness, I suspect the former.

1381. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #61506 by steve99 on August 5, 2007 at 12:05 pm

Perfect memory is the one that remembers all that is good and forgets all that isn't

Perhaps that explains why there is so much suffering in the world... as suffering is bad, God keeps forgetting about it, and so continues making the same mistakes over and over.

1382. A Designer Universe?

Comment #61503 by steve99 on August 5, 2007 at 11:41 am

Of course, if Darwinism is truly up to the job of producing the complex life (as I think it is) then the biospheres which pop into existence spontaneously, as it were, would be in a negligible minority (counting across the entirety of the many-worlds multiverse***) and we would almost certainly be right to assume that we are not living in one of them.

Yes, this is right. However, I believe that there is a bit of a problem with idea of multiverses that not many people who discuss it seem to realise... it is not clear what it really means to apply statistics (and terms like 'unlikely') across casually disconnected regions (such as individual universes).

1383. A Designer Universe?

Comment #61453 by steve99 on August 5, 2007 at 7:51 am

The physicists here will set me straight, but I've an impression there are limits upon those probability branch paths of the multiverse.

Is there a possible universe where I am David Bowie with the power to fire laser rays from my damaged eye, so that when I sing, "throwing darts in lovers' eyes," I can blind a few audience members for the sake of irony and dramatic effect?

The answer would be "no" I suspect.

You are right. The limits are probably on what is phyically possible.

1384. A Designer Universe?

Comment #61421 by steve99 on August 5, 2007 at 5:30 am

I wonder if, eight years later, he still thinks this is possible? How does one reconcile the idea of an infinite universe with the big bang? Surely if it all began as a small seed 14 billion years ago, it cannot now be infinite.

Can anyone explain this?

Big Bang theory says nothing about the size of the entire 'seed', all it says is that the universe started off in a dense state, and the region we can see started off as a very, very small region.

1385. The Out Campaign

Comment #61394 by steve99 on August 5, 2007 at 3:08 am

then you should read the gospels to find out that it was really steve99 who tried to stir it up with respect to e acutes.

Naah... you need to understand the true meaning of what I was saying...

monothéism = mono-thé-ism

thé being French for....

1386. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #61374 by steve99 on August 5, 2007 at 1:46 am

For example to ask "what's the square root of -1?" greatly depends on whether you are in the context of real or of complex numbers.

What? This makes no sense at all, sorry.

As for the question above it should be obvious that in a worldview according to which the fundamental aspect of reality is consciousness to ask how did consciousness arise is meaningless.

No, it is not meaningless, and more that in a worldview in which a fundamental aspect of reality is matter, it is still meaningful to ask 'how did matter arise?'. Simply saying 'matter is fundamental' is no answer.

It is also a huge and unjustified step to claim that consciousness is fundamental. You keep saying that we can't know what reality is.

Right, but two observations. First, by saying that some problems do indeed disappear from a change in perspective, aren't you contradicting what you said above that a question is either universally meaningful or not?

No, because I said that the question of consciousness was universally meaningful or not - I explained clearly why this was so, and I was not generalising. If I seemed to generalise, I was explaining things badly.

Second, I think you are changing the question into "How did my consciousness arise?" and I agree that that question is universally meaningful.

Yes, that is what I meant.

You may ask, how does that work exactly, how does God create other persons and their experiential environment? This comes close to be a meaningless question the way "How does mass bend spacetime?" is a meaningless question

It is not a meaningless question. This very problem is being worked on by theoretical physicists.

Now, according to idealistic theism, all of reality consists of conscious experience structured as one person, God.

This is where you lose me. What evidence do you have for this, or what reason for believing it? All you can know for sure is that there you are aware, and that there are probably others who are also aware. That is it! You can, of course, extrapolate to some common consciousness... but where is the evidence? And where is the evidence that this common consciousness is in any way perfect or good? There is none... none at all.

I am afraid that posting more about Christianity and dogma is, at least for me, a waste of time. I had too much of that as a child, and just won't read it.

This is actually one thing I find very hard to understand - the detail that believers go into about things for which they have no evidence at all. I can understand why uneducated humans might believe in the existence of, say, a god of thunder, but how do they get to the stage of knowing the God's name, his relatives, his relationships and so on?

Dianelos - I have a suspicion that what you think is reasoning that got you from basic ideas of consciousness to the Trinity and Jesus and all that was actually done backwards - you 'retro-fitted' your worldview onto Christianity. Well, I could do the same, I am sure with, say, the greek gods. I could perhaps claim that Zeus and Athena represent two levels of mind... and so on. It is all stuff and nonsense!

I can't very well answer without using lots of theology ;-)

But you still haven't answered. It is all supposition about truth and beauty. Not a single clear statement about why we have conscious experience and why red looks like it does.

1387. The Flea Circus Invites a Newcomer!

Comment #61278 by steve99 on August 4, 2007 at 12:44 pm

I'm sorry Stephen I just cannot let your remarks pass.

It is surprising what remarks you do let pass. I know what you are doing - it is a well understood psychological tactic. When people are putting forward challenges to your core beliefs, it can be comforting to try and win minor victories on minor issues. Someone challenges what you mean by bibilical truth - why not argue with someone else about the religiosity of Hitler? Someone has a problem with the your Churches' dogma - why not pick an argument about the religious beliefs or otherwise of those involved in the abolition of slavery? David, this is a distraction. Any views you have on these matters depend on your core religious beliefs, and these are being challenged.

1388. The Flea Circus Invites a Newcomer!

Comment #61221 by steve99 on August 4, 2007 at 8:04 am

First of all I would listen to them and hear what they have to say.

What I don't understand is why you don't listen to us. Again and again, serious and sensible questions have been put to you, and you don't answer. At the core of things is the matter of personal interpretation. I have shown you deeply unpleasant passages from St Paul, which I am sure you disagree with. I hope you will think on that, and it may help you to realise that far from being an authority on morality, the bible is a book we have to filter in order to get anything approaching what we consider fair and reasonable these days - even the New Testament. The question then is how do we filter it? Using our own innate sense of right and wrong combined with what we find from discussions with others. Don't you find it interesting that almost all 'moderate' religious belief results from putting a filter based on our natural humanity between us and the original 'good books'?

1389. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #61197 by steve99 on August 4, 2007 at 5:44 am

After all, a benevolent God would not create us with the cognitive capacity to form meaningful questions we can absolutely not answer, would S/He?

Excellent! At last a testable property of God.

In the 50's, Alan Turing proved that that some computational problems are undecidable: easy to state, but you can't answer whether or not a computer will solve the problem in finite time.

Therefore, I have proved, according to your assumptions, that God is not benevolent.

That was simple! Progress at last....

1390. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #61158 by steve99 on August 4, 2007 at 1:22 am

Not only is there evidence for God, but that evidence consists of the whole of our experience of life and therefore is inescapable (nobody can really say to have lacked that evidence).

Yes they can. All that our experience of life is evidence for is that... we are experiencing life - nothing more. There is not the slightest reason to extrapolate a God from that. This is not a naturalistic argument - it is a simple logical one.

1391. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #61054 by steve99 on August 3, 2007 at 1:03 pm

If one person is allowed to assert first person data as equivalent to third person data, then everyone may do the same. If we allow you, we must allow Osama Bin Laden.

Absolutely... and this is where all the intricate framework of the worldview that Dianelos has constructed fails.

At the core, it is based on what *he* feels is right, and what *he* feels is absurd. The arrogance of that position is frightening. It is precisely the same arrogance shown by religions fundamentalists and terrorists.

1392. The Out Campaign

Comment #60843 by steve99 on August 3, 2007 at 1:36 am

I take my position from the NT. I do not discard the stuff I do not like the taste of – there are parts of the Bible that I do not like the tast of but I accept that my personal taste should not be the determining factor.

I have to question this.

I am sure you support equality for women. However, let me remind you what Paul says:

1 Corinthians 14

33: ...As in all the churches of the saints, 34: the women should keep silence in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as even the law says. 35: If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.

Shameful for a woman to speak in church?

Let's look at more from Corinthians:

6: For if a woman will not veil herself, then she should cut off her hair; but if it is disgraceful for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her wear a veil. 7: For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. 8: (For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. 9: Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.)

I find the tone of these things very distasteful, and I am sure you do as well.

Ephesians:

22 Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church,

The husband is the head of the wife? I am sure you don't accept that - I am sure that if you had a daughter, you would not want her to enter into a marriage in which was dominated by her husband.

I could go on, but I feel here I have pointed out instructions on behaviour from the New Testament that I would hope that you do indeed discard.

1393. The Flea Circus Invites a Newcomer!

Comment #60837 by steve99 on August 3, 2007 at 1:04 am

Let RD debate me and if he hammers me I will promise to repent in sackcloth and ashes and never post on here again.!

I don't see a point in this at this stage, as I think you will be 'arguing past each other'. I don't believe there would be a common ground of rules of proof and evidence.

This is why some of us have been so annoyingly persistent at challenging your fundamental assumptions, such as 'why do you believe this in the bible and not that' and 'what does an oath mean to you'. We need to know where you are coming from....

Having such a debate now would be much like the amusing 'Football vs Cricket' sketch from Mitchell and Webb.. you would use different rules, no-one would be quite sure who stands where, and it would be difficult to know what 'winning' means.

1394. The Out Campaign

Comment #60821 by steve99 on August 3, 2007 at 12:27 am

Why do you think there exists a stereotype that gay men cannot throw a ball well, and are generally bad at sports like women? Why do you think there exists a stereotype that homosexual men are effeminate?

This is an interesting question. Two possible reasons I can think of are

(1) Being gay frees people from the culturally imposed constraints on behaviour, so gay men are freer to express a broader range of mannerisms and image, from the very macho 'bear', to the highly effeminate gay man.

(2) It is a way (even if perhaps unconscious) of advertising gayness in a 'safe' way that is acceptable by society.

Do the gay people you know help their siblings mate? What kind of absurd notion is that?

It isn't absurd at all. It is nothing so weird as 'helping to mate'; it can be as simple as providing a helping hand when things get a bit tough - helping to look after your nieces and nephews, or younger bothers and sisters. This kind of thing is well known in biology... the communal rearing of offspring by both parents and previous young in the scrub jay is a specific example.

1395. The Out Campaign

Comment #60816 by steve99 on August 3, 2007 at 12:09 am

Charlou:

Reproduction isn't 'turned off' in homosexuals. Their biological ability to reproduce still exists, they're just not 'mating' with the right gender necessary for procreation.

That does not result in offspring, and that is what counts in terms of selection.

I just wonder if, in the case of some homosexuals themselves, the need to know is fueled, at least in part, by a perceived need to validate their own existence?

No disrespect intended, but I find it a bit odd for someone to post on the site of one of the most respected researchers into evolution that they don't see a need to explain homosexuality :) Just think about it - a significant proportion of the population of humans (and many, many other animal species) insists on having sex (often exclusively) that does not result in the propogation of their genes. Trying to explain this is not (at least for me) about trying to validate homosexuality as a valid way of life - it is about trying to explain what is an intriguing biological question.

Yorker:

This is for all you homosexual buffas. My youngest brother is gay, or should I say was gay. Now in middle-age, he still has his male partner of many years but recently took a girlfriend also. All three share the same house but the male has been relegated to a room where he sleeps alone.

What do you make of that?

He is bisexual. Sexuality is a continuum. I think the word 'bisexual' is underused; for exaqmple, it seems that if a man who has been in a relationship with a woman for most of his life has sex with a man, he is then 'gay'. Things are almost always more complicated. In my experience it is common for people to have attractions to both sexes; it is just that these are not equally strong.

1396. The Out Campaign

Comment #60615 by steve99 on August 2, 2007 at 1:02 pm

Yeah, because surely, that isnt absurd at all.

Not only is it absurd, the consequences of truly believing that those who die in infancy go straight to heaven are frightening... it means it that the best thing that can happen to new-born children is death, as they go straight to heaven without any possibility of failing to achieve that by being corrupted with evil ideas during their potentially long lifetime.

I really do wonder about David's intelligence when he claims to believe such obvious nonsense.

1397. The Flea Circus Invites a Newcomer!

Comment #60607 by steve99 on August 2, 2007 at 12:14 pm

I do feel saddened though that what appears to be a reasonable individual,

Personally, I think David probably is a reasonable individual; I see no reason to think that he is not an admired member of his community, and thought of well by family and friends. However, I think he suffers from a major problem, in that he is really isn't capable of the level of debate he is trying to engage in. He seems to seriously misunderstand the points he is arguing with in Dawkins' work, and comes up with arguments that he seems to thing are convincing and original, but are in reality tedious and unimaginative, having been previously discussed and dismissed many times before. I think he is simply out of his depth intellectually.

1398. The Out Campaign

Comment #60574 by steve99 on August 2, 2007 at 9:35 am

I know I'm way behind in this discussion and you've probably gone off on 20 tangents since this one. Could it be that homosexuality occurs as a common accidental by-product of another gene that produces other beneficial effects? For instance, sickle-cell anaemia

The idea that homosexuality may be a side-effect of genes with other benefits is an interesting one. One theory I have heard that seems possible to me is that humanity has such a strong and diverse sex drive that homosexuality is an inevitable outcome... it is at one end of the 'bell curve' of sexual behaviour. I am not really convinced, however, as it involves turning off reproduction in some people, and that should have a major selective disadvantage. My feeling is that there must be some positive benefit to survival of genes.

I do like your parallel with sickle-cell anaemia and malaria...it raises interesting questions. However I find it hard to think of what the equivalent of malaria would be for sexual behaviour - what is the thing that provides the selection pressure?

Another possibility is the one about many animals having non-producing members of a group, and this being beneficial to the group as a whole, but I don't like this because it seems to imply group natural selection.

It doesn't need to imply that. If gay people can help with the upbringing of their siblings, or of their siblings' children, they are helping a significant number of their own genes to survive.

1399. The Out Campaign

Comment #60453 by steve99 on August 2, 2007 at 1:43 am

I would be very interested in seeing these scientific studies which show that homosexuality is a good way of preserving genes. Could you let me have the references please?

Sure.

Kirkpatrick R. C., 2000. The evolution of human homosexual behavior. Current Anthropololgy 39(1): 385-413

This discusses how homosexuality may have a role in social cohesion.

Corna, F., A. Camperio-Ciani and C. Capiluppi, 2004. Evidence for maternally inherited factors favouring male homosexuality and promoting female fecundity. Proceedings: Biological Sciences 271: 2217-2221.

Provides evidence that having homosexual genes in men may boost fertility in women.

people accuse me of not answering the question when I do not speak about homosexuality.

And that is fair, as it goes to the core of your beliefs. It is a symptom of the selectivity of your interpretation of religious texts.

and an unwillingness to listen to any other point of view on anything.

If someone has what you consider a fundamentally flawed core set of beliefs, it is entirely reasonable to question those beliefs rather than to deal with arguments based on those beliefs. A standard procedure in logical argument is to question assumptions. Many of us here feel that your assumptions are highly questionable.

1400. The Flea Circus Invites a Newcomer!

Comment #60448 by steve99 on August 2, 2007 at 1:28 am

That's what makes you a flea in my book.

Indeed. But part of the nature of flea-ness also includes parasitism. David could have written a book simply called 'Challenging Atheist Myths', but he didn't. He wrote a book called 'The Dawkins Letters: Challenging Atheist Myths. And here we have the parasitism. The other part of the nature of flea-ness is size, and that is where your argument comes in. I have watched Dawkins discuss religions with intelligent and highly educated Christians - the debate with the Bishop of Oxford is a good example. The problem with David is that unlike such intellectually respectable believers, he is such a poor debater.