101. Sprinting down the evolutionary highway

Comment #122080 by BAEOZ on February 4, 2008 at 3:39 pm

Why then does malaria still persist in Africa? Because the mosquito that spreads it is also adapting, says Esteban Parra: Genetically, humans are "in a race with disease, a very dynamic race."
This seems wrong. A mosquito is not malaria. It carries malaria. The malaria would need to adapt to changing blood groups and other immune system changed. Perhaps they meant that mosquitoes have adapted to human attempts to eradicate them with poisons. But that would not be relevant to a discussion on beneficial adaptations against malaria.

102. God vs. Gridiron

Comment #121605 by BAEOZ on February 3, 2008 at 7:33 pm

Genius Cartomancer. Genius.

103. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #121138 by BAEOZ on February 3, 2008 at 1:46 am

Well, I'm going to call it a night. Read your posts MPhil. Very good. Much better than mine. :)

104. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #121135 by BAEOZ on February 3, 2008 at 1:34 am

What is that even supposed to mean?

That if you define science as anything you want, ignoring contradictory evidence, then ID, religion and any other bunk you like is now science.

105. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #121131 by BAEOZ on February 3, 2008 at 1:30 am

I read the 2nd and the attack on science (the 3rd) and had had enough. The first chapter was so execrable that I didn't have many more in me. But I posted on his inane argument that science isn't falsifiable. Sad.

106. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #121128 by BAEOZ on February 3, 2008 at 1:28 am

was interested in hearing the crappy arguments.

Well, did you know that science isn't falsifiable? Vox said so.

107. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #121124 by BAEOZ on February 3, 2008 at 1:26 am

He can hear his friends speak and talk to them. Would he not have to trust the words of his friends and yet have no way of varifying things for himself?

If he's alive, then someone(s) care(s) enough to feed, clean and empty his crap bowl. It's a lot of evidence to base his assumption that they're speaking the truth (at least about feeding, cleaning and emptying his poopy jar. What they do with the poop, he'd have to take on faith).
Such a poor argument.

108. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #121122 by BAEOZ on February 3, 2008 at 1:24 am

Hi MPhil,where's your review? I read 3 chapters and suffered neural seizure of the stupidity overload variety.

109. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #121120 by BAEOZ on February 3, 2008 at 1:23 am

Why dont people ever say they smelled or tasted god?

Who wants to smell divine butt I guess?

The obvious reason is we communicate through language, not smell so much or taste. We talk to ourselves all the time internally. The voice of God is just another voice that our brain creates.

110. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #121116 by BAEOZ on February 3, 2008 at 1:20 am

Well Greyman, if you really and honestly have seen the pink unicorn then you are right.

OK. I agree with MPhil. That is so far past reasonable that it must be (poor) satire. I mean if I really, honestly believe God is telling me to kill the_assayer, then I must be right. I am the angel of death.

111. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #121112 by BAEOZ on February 3, 2008 at 1:16 am

To ask- Can we touch/smell/fell/see him is a tricky question

Nothing tricky about it at all actually. That's why I say you're not being that honest. You know you can't (touch/smell/feel/see him).

What if that is not enough?

Grow up. We live for a short time. There's no reason to suppose the world isn't any more than it is. There's no reason to suppose that life goes on after death anymore than there is to suppose that life goes on before birth.

112. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #121108 by BAEOZ on February 3, 2008 at 1:11 am

You people have not experienced it and hence are skeptical like how I am about colours.

No. Colors, as in electro magnetic wave lengths of certain frequencies that we can measure. Color-blind, blind or not, are about as real as you get.
No matter how honest you think you are, you aren't as honest as you could be. You have nothing to prove God, not in the sense of "proving" in the scientific sense (by observation and rejection of hypothesis that don't fit the evidence) as you've already admitted. But worse, you don't have it in the only sense of the word prove that means what you think it means, that is, mathematical proof.
If only you were open minded enough to see the world and not convince yourself of deities and accompanying fantasy. If it can't be measured. We can't say anything of it.

113. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #121103 by BAEOZ on February 3, 2008 at 1:01 am

If there's no evidence of something. And no way to show it, touch it, see it, or for everybody or anybody to measure it. It's best not to assume it's real. :)

114. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #121099 by BAEOZ on February 3, 2008 at 12:57 am

MPhil. Thank you for your timely comment.

115. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #121097 by BAEOZ on February 3, 2008 at 12:53 am

Show me this qualia you speak of. And you've seen god have you? Otherwise your meta argument is meta-mortem.

116. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #121092 by BAEOZ on February 3, 2008 at 12:39 am

Sorry, I was waiting around last night, itching for a debate. I spent all of today (Sunday) out with mates, playing the guitar, drinking too much beer and generally enjoying the gorgeous weather.

God has this meta quality to it.

And did you know that the speed of light is relative to the heartbeat of an how's-a-ma-gotcha? No? Then how do you know that god has a meta quality?

Does "red" need evidence for its existance?

No, because red doesn't exist (it's a wave of light with a certain frequency, your brain evolved to distinguish it in a certain way we now name red). Just like numbers don't exist. Don't confuse thoughts and reflexions of abstracts, with reality.

117. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #121087 by BAEOZ on February 3, 2008 at 12:26 am

That's about the shittiest thing I've ever heard of.

Agreed Anna. They have no respect.

Blacknad:

He has completely misrepresented it of course, and I think I now see the uselessness of asking people to read it and debate it.

I can only presume you haven't read the book because the quote I posted was from the 2nd chapter, not the preamble. How's about you do a bit of research and stop assuming a priori that you're not a dullard? Because the evidence suggest your are.

The short discussion on religion and mental health demonstrating that religion is positively identified with good mental health.

Usage of pure heroin, in controlled dosage, has no nasty effects (and won't reduce your lifespan), except for addiction (which it shares with religion, but unlike religion actually is based on something real) and is identified with feeling fucking great. What's your argument? That because something feels good, it doesn't matter if it's a lie? Argument ad consequentiam. When you grow up, you might look up that error of logic.

118. Hitchens V. Boteach

Comment #120717 by BAEOZ on February 2, 2008 at 11:25 am

Your ethics are of a shoddy sort if they involve supporting a violation of international law, undertaken on the basis of lies and fabrications,

Steve said he supported it for the removal of a Tyrannical dictator. That Hussein was a tyrannical dictator would mean that Steve was not supporting the invasion on basis of lies and fabrications. He said his belief may have been naive. But why does he bare the responsibility of the dishonest actions of politicians?

119. Documents detail church coverup

Comment #120712 by BAEOZ on February 2, 2008 at 11:19 am

contempt charges against the archdiocese.

Why? They work for God. Man made laws don't apply! When God wants a priest to bugger. Bugger he must. God sees all, he must approve. No?

120. Morality and the 'new atheism'

Comment #120708 by BAEOZ on February 2, 2008 at 11:05 am

Hi Guys. New photo Steve. Cool.

We will invoke our rational faculty of course, but reason can be rationalised self-interest.

How can reason. The faculty of logical thought, be the product (rationalised) of itself?

Seems like a category error or something....

121. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #120584 by BAEOZ on February 2, 2008 at 4:01 am

What's up with posting/editing these days?

122. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #120496 by BAEOZ on February 1, 2008 at 8:06 pm

Diacanu, it's a poopy variety.

123. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #120492 by BAEOZ on February 1, 2008 at 7:57 pm

OK. I've read the first few chapters. It's pretty standard fare. High on smug insults and low on facts.

Atheism lead to the excesses of the French revolution, and all the world's major masacres. Dawkins doesn't follow the scientific method and thinks Vox telling his children that God loves them is worse than child abuse. Hitchens is a drunk. Sam is an "ectasy-popping" type who thinks it's ethically ok to comtemplate wiping out Vox (difficult one that ;P). Dennet's wrong but not as bad as the rest. Vox can out think those intellectual types cause he's thought deeply about AI in computer games.

There's three churches of atheism:
High-church, the intellectuals, middle aged, suffering from Asberger's (he got this from PZ's blog.) That's why Richard is apparently so annoying (at least to Vox.)
Low-church atheists, who are over represented in prisons and very materialistic.
And agnostics who aren't so bad and upset the autistic high church types.

The second chapter tries to define science. Vox grabs a definition from the OED highlighting the point that it must contain systematic observation and experimentation. He rejects any Popperian definitions of science based on this reasoning:

Let's begin with postulating that a study of the language of the gods is not proper science, whereas a study of the color of swans is.
I base this premise on the classic example of a falsifiable proposition, the statement that 'all swans are white.' The fact that one could prove this proposition to be wrong by observing a black swan makes it falsifiable and therefore a proper scientific matter. It is not the truth or untruth of the proposition that is important, only the fact that the truth or untruth could be determined by observation. The problem here is that the proposition 'all gods speak Aramaic'
is equally falsifiable, given that the theoretical observation of a monolingual Greek-speaking god would suffice to falsify the proposition. This would therefore make divine linguistics a legitimate matter of science, the current difficulty of observing gods notwithstanding.
And however impossible it might seem to credit, divine linguistics has indeed been an object of serious contemplation throughout history by some of Mankinds greatest minds, including Dante and
Leibniz.

I can imagine all sorts of weird and wonderful things. Imagination doesn't confer existence. His example is a hypothetical about a falsifiable fiction. - He also uses an argument to authority (Leibniz and Dante) to back up his argument. In the previous chapter he said authority didn't mean much. - Science deals with what it can observe. What exists. If you can't falsify a hypothesis, everything's in. All the metaphysical bunk you want. He redefines science to suit himself. Those pesky scientists are wrong about what science is. Take that PZ and Richard! Let's study invisible pink unicorns! Oh wait, we can't observe them.....

Anyway, this definition allows Vox to think that religion and science are compatible. By the way, the dark ages weren't Dark, and the church didn't persecute scientists. :)

Vox mentions that Christianity is easy to falsify. What he means by this is unclear. He's so proud of the fact that we can't prove that God and Jesus don't/didn't exist*. How would we falsify it?

The third chapter attacks science. Apparently science is bad. It's done some positive things but has created many evils. Scientists are bad too. I guess it's sciences' fault that governments want bigger bombs. Damn that methodological naturalism and it's need to bomb, rape and pillage. Religion has been around for yonks and never threatened the world. Science in a few hundred years has. Science indirectly caused Global warming. Religion good, not responsible for anything, not even overpopulation. We gotta get rid of science. So that religious types can't kill us with the products of science. I like Vox, he sees that it's the method, not the usage of its products that's the problem.

I'm done for now. May look at more later. It's already failed completely on logic, was just nasty in that smug way and was very light on the truth. So, I don't expect it to improve.

*He says the usual thing about not being able to prove a negative. Funny, I can prove the law of non-contradiction, that 5 is not less than 4 etc, etc, etc. Vox might need to rethink that one.

EDIT: This post is poorly structured. You have an idea of the book that inspired it. I felt myself loosing intelligence reading it. That, and I was too tired. :P

124. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #120304 by BAEOZ on February 1, 2008 at 11:57 am

Anna. I hope you didn't mistake my little poke as anything but sillyness.

Anyway, I still see you're referring to this nebulous European approach. When I think you do mean British, and probably English. I know the British Isles are part of Europe, but most of Europe doesn't speak English as a mother tongue. My point was, if there is such a thing as European English, it's not the English of England* (which arguably would have the standard dialect and orthography), which can claim the language. This is not to disparage American English, but the English (people) invented English (language) if you know what I mean.....

Anyway, I speak Strine, so I have no horse in the race. :)

*There are many dialects and accents in England. But I think they have one they think is correct. Received English perhaps? The website is slow as...

125. Are Darwin's Theories Fact or Faith Issues?

Comment #120298 by BAEOZ on February 1, 2008 at 11:48 am

Simmons seriously is ignorant. If that's the level of knowledge on a subject required to write a book. Look out Hawkins and Penrose. I'm gonna write about unifying the theories Quantum Mechanics and Relativity! I suck at Math, have very little idea of QM and Relativity. But who cares? I'll just make it up and sound upset when someone says I'm ignorant.....Profit!

126. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #120241 by BAEOZ on February 1, 2008 at 10:57 am

Cool. Thanks Epeeist. I got my arguments mixed up.

Now, let me formulate this....

If Chomsky's correct, we should have good grammar.
My grammar sucks.
Therefore Chomsky's wrong?

Aristotle is having a post-mortem fit right about now...

127. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #120226 by BAEOZ on February 1, 2008 at 10:46 am

What kind of evidence is there for it?

Is Modus Tollens the logical method that employs one counter example to destroy an inductive argument? If so, select many of my posts to destroy Chomski's argument.....

128. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #120204 by BAEOZ on February 1, 2008 at 10:34 am

I read a little about Chomsky's idea that we're born with an innate grammar when I had to do a developmental psych. unit. (Grammar isn't innate to myself judging from a large sample of my posts. Maybe I'll go with Spanish.....La gramática no es lo mío...)

129. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #120201 by BAEOZ on February 1, 2008 at 10:31 am

Quetz be praised! How goes it creating and sustaining deity?

130. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #120199 by BAEOZ on February 1, 2008 at 10:29 am

I like green Ham....

131. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #120196 by BAEOZ on February 1, 2008 at 10:28 am

Al-rawandi. The Scots speak Scottish English, Scots or Gaelic. :)

132. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #120191 by BAEOZ on February 1, 2008 at 10:24 am

here tend to be discrepancies in European English and American English

Just to be a smart-arse a la Richard M. What would qualify as European English? I mean English is obviously the language of England. Scots is the English of Scotland. I'm sure theirs and Irish dialect there too. What is European English and who are the native Europeans who speak the same?

133. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #120182 by BAEOZ on February 1, 2008 at 10:14 am

Grammar, sexual habits of Koalas, rabid Vox Day supporters. This thread has it all.

134. Morality and the 'new atheism'

Comment #120002 by BAEOZ on February 1, 2008 at 4:38 am

Well, that's it for me. I'm going to call it a night. Thanks all, and have a good one. :)

135. Morality and the 'new atheism'

Comment #119999 by BAEOZ on February 1, 2008 at 4:35 am

At which point the process starts or in which order is hard to say.

Having just read the first few pages of Hume's Treatise on Human Nature I'll venture that ideas always follow impressions. That is, we never have the idea of a number without having the impression (sensation, i.e. sight, sound, touch, reflexion) of some non-abstract collection that that number represents. Of course, if you think Hume's bollocks then ignore this post.

136. Morality and the 'new atheism'

Comment #119998 by BAEOZ on February 1, 2008 at 4:32 am

MPhil. You're spot on. The editing doesn't keep the formatting, and after you've posted, you don't get another "Post a comment" box, you get to edit your post. Requiring you to refresh the page....

137. Morality and the 'new atheism'

Comment #119995 by BAEOZ on February 1, 2008 at 4:30 am

Let's say I rent a house. I earn 100 dollars a week, but I have to pay 110 dollars in rent. Therefore I am $10 in debt or -$10 in front. That quantity can also be expressed as owing $10 to my landlord. But expressed as a negative number or a positive. I'm in trouble. :)

138. Morality and the 'new atheism'

Comment #119990 by BAEOZ on February 1, 2008 at 4:23 am

Why I am not a Christian is very cool too. You can find the text online. History of Western Philosphy is a brick, probably don't want to read that online.

Isn't a cipher (symbol) representative of a number (abstraction) representative of a quantity (real thing)? Wouldn't it go in that order?

Works for me: symbol representing idea, representing impression (Humean type terms.)

139. Morality and the 'new atheism'

Comment #119987 by BAEOZ on February 1, 2008 at 4:21 am

John Wilkins, a philospher of biology, thinks that the hard problems are just inability to express experience. http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/2008/01/cosmos_a_cool_magazine.php Comment #5

140. Morality and the 'new atheism'

Comment #119978 by BAEOZ on February 1, 2008 at 4:14 am

I'm going to have to read more of Bertrand Russell. His name comes up all over the place, and I have read practically nothing of his work. Any recommendations?

History of Western Philosophy. It's not technical and the man could write.

141. Morality and the 'new atheism'

Comment #119972 by BAEOZ on February 1, 2008 at 4:10 am

ci·pher
1. zero.
2. any of the Arabic numerals or figures.

142. Morality and the 'new atheism'

Comment #119971 by BAEOZ on February 1, 2008 at 4:08 am

Numbers as a concept, or numbers as symbols to be manipulated?

Numbers are concepts. Ciphers are the symbols that represent numbers. ;)

143. Morality and the 'new atheism'

Comment #119968 by BAEOZ on February 1, 2008 at 4:06 am

It's hard differentiating between plurality and number. When you see a duo, you're not seeing a number, you're seeing a plurality (at least as far as Bertrand Russell is concerned) which is an instance of number......

144. Morality and the 'new atheism'

Comment #119963 by BAEOZ on February 1, 2008 at 4:02 am

Is anyone else finding comment posting really weird today?

Weird was the Vox Day thread. This is just confounding. I don't get the current posting regime.

145. Morality and the 'new atheism'

Comment #119957 by BAEOZ on February 1, 2008 at 3:59 am

Numbers:

Created by the human mind to count the objects in various assemblages, numbers have no reference to the individual characteristics of the objects counted.

Richard Courant What is Mathematics?

A number is anything which is the number of some class. Such a definition has a verbal appearance of being circular, but in fact it it not.

Bertrand Russell Philosophy of Mathematics Sorry for the quotes, smart people explain it better than I.

146. Morality and the 'new atheism'

Comment #119952 by BAEOZ on February 1, 2008 at 3:50 am

Steve, can you help me out here. When I hear number s are universals, I think that the person is saying that somewhere out there in the wispy nether there exist numbers. From our previous discussions, I assume that's not what you mean. I see numbers as abstractions from experience. How do you see them?

147. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #119949 by BAEOZ on February 1, 2008 at 3:47 am

Praise be Quetz! For thou art generous. (And possessing of a great blog http://musingsofastrangemind.blogspot.com/ OK, let's move on from discussing my (supposed) better qualities. :) Remember, my avatar is an imp. Got to appear tough and indigent....

148. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #119945 by BAEOZ on February 1, 2008 at 3:33 am

Thanks Steve. That's an honor from a guy who I believe (from posts) is probably the most honorable and sincere genius to post on this site. This is not to denigrate any other posting genius. I think Epeeist is genius too, same for many others (Russell, Richard M,Bonzai, Paula, Dr.B in their own way) that mentioning them makes me think I've missed out on those who deserve mention.....That probably sounds over the top. Sorry. Thanks for the site Epeeist. I'll check it out. Did you know that (according to a book about morality and evolution by Neil Levy) that the naturalistic fallacy isn't a fallacy? It's a mistake, but the logic is correct, so it's not a fallacy....You probably did.

149. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #119941 by BAEOZ on February 1, 2008 at 3:26 am

I read enough to not value his intelligence. But a pathetic avatar has camp value. Wasn't that what some posts were referring to?

150. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #119934 by BAEOZ on February 1, 2008 at 3:23 am

I don't think I'm any good at logic or reasoning. You have deigned to post at my blog, so you know I'm very journeyman. But, I've an interest somewhere between watching a car crash type voyerism and being challenged to respond philosophically that I'll probably give it squiz. The thing is, I suck at critique, so whilst I may vehemently disagree with vox virus, will I be able to express it coherently?