101. Another Flea is Born

Comment #62561 by CJ22 on August 10, 2007 at 5:58 am

It's Huxley, a mirror copy of this pic:

http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en-commons/thumb/b/b7/180px-Thomas_Henry_Huxley_-_Project_Gutenberg_eText_16935.jpg

102. Scarlet Letter Campaign Update: A Victory

Comment #62553 by CJ22 on August 10, 2007 at 5:00 am

It does beg the question of whether a parody that's so hard to distinguish from a real website isn't as damaging as a real one would be, to those taken in by it.

103. Public Debate on Complexity and Evolution

Comment #61312 by CJ22 on August 4, 2007 at 3:02 pm

Cheers Yorker, something to listen to when I go for my walk tomorrow :)

104. The Flea Circus Invites a Newcomer!

Comment #60519 by CJ22 on August 2, 2007 at 5:49 am

[quote]As I said most of this website bears all the characteristics of the most religious fundamentalist website.[/quote]

Ah. Can you point me to the calls for Jihad, book burning, expression of longing for the apocalypse, discussions on how to exorcise a child without killing them, calls for people of alternate sexuality to be put to death etc., discussions on just [i]how much[/i] God hates this that or the other? I must have missed them in my browsing.

Your attempts to paint atheists as fundamentalist is starting to sound like Tourettes. I know your religion is based on the principle of 'repeating something often enough makes it true', but I take exception to you attempting to make us into something any rational person would see we are not, just to make it easier for you to dismiss us.

By repeating the phrase 'fundamentalist atheist' constantly, you are attempting to close down thought and discussion on the issue, exactly what you claim to be criticizing. I call hypocrite.

Just because somebody is confident of their position doesn't make them a fundamentalist. I'd hazard a guess that the vast majority of atheists on this forum would say they would be willing to change their mind about the existence of a deity if sufficient evidence were given to them - in what way is that 'fundamentalist'? Can you offer the same in reverse? Again, hypocrite.

But you're a smart man, and you know all this. That makes you a mendacious hypocrite.

Bizarrely though, even if we excepted that what you say is true...what does that get you? That atheists are as bad as theists, so there? Weak man, very weak.

105. CNN Debate on Koran in Toilet

Comment #60511 by CJ22 on August 2, 2007 at 5:31 am

I choked on my cereal when he said that SB :)

106. The Flea Circus Invites a Newcomer!

Comment #60451 by CJ22 on August 2, 2007 at 1:37 am

I'll cheerfully read your book David, I'm just damned if I'm going to pay for the privilege. But from all the reviews and comments I've read, it seems to be little more than a straw man and ad hominem attack, with little logic or reason that holds water unless one accepts your superstitious assumptions, so don't whine about it if all you get back is the same.

107. CNN Debate on Koran in Toilet

Comment #60326 by CJ22 on August 1, 2007 at 3:24 pm

The real victory here is that when CNN wanted to put together a debate about religious hate-crime, they called a Jew, a Muslim AND an ATHEIST!

108. The Flea Circus Invites a Newcomer!

Comment #60318 by CJ22 on August 1, 2007 at 3:05 pm

You know what, I'm really bored with Christians. Can't we have somebody coming in to bat for one of the other teams for a bit? It seems like they're all keeping their heads down and letting the big boys play. Where are the mormons, the scientologists, the muslims, the wiccans? We need some original arguments to shred!

109. Religion is Hard

Comment #59762 by CJ22 on July 30, 2007 at 3:08 pm

I'm going to see him at the Glee Club in Birmingham in October. I saw him last year too at the Artrix in Bromsgrove. Good live stand-up. I think he may have found a constituency :)

110. Philip Kitcher - Living with Darwin

Comment #59640 by CJ22 on July 30, 2007 at 3:02 am

I'm getting a little tired of these self-appointed "peace brokers" who imply that gentle people like the professor and others are uncaring militant fundamentalists because they dare to complain and would they please stop rocking the boat.

The implication that natural selection and other scientific principles are NOT in conflict with religious faith is a feat of double-think of unparalleled proportions by religious moderates and wincing agnostics.

At the very least, natural selection contradicts any religious principles that posit a young earth. It also contradicts any concept that involves a deity 'nudging' evolution as it goes, since no such nudges are apparent. The very MOST that one could believe and still accept natural selection is the most non-interventionist of deities who set the ball rolling initially and then left the universe to unfold in all it's cold and relentless cruelty. That is not the deity that the vast majority of the religious in this world believe in. That is a kind of deity to which only a theologian could subscribe.

Kitcher clearly has the agenda of pushing 'secular humanism' as the face of secularism rather than the more unpalatable atheism, perhaps on the basis that the religious are less likely to be alienated by a more friendly, conciliatory approach. Such a Vichy-esque approach is guaranteed to get steam-rollered by fundamentalists who have no interest in truth, rationality, fairness or honesty.

111. OUT Campaign Launched, 'Scarlet Letter' Shirts Now Available!

Comment #59551 by CJ22 on July 29, 2007 at 2:31 pm

I'm ambivalent on the subject, if that helps?

112. OUT Campaign Launched, 'Scarlet Letter' Shirts Now Available!

Comment #59244 by CJ22 on July 28, 2007 at 2:05 pm

Where do the proceeds for these items go? To the RDF?

113. Don't eat at the Outback Steakhouse on Route 3...

Comment #59018 by CJ22 on July 27, 2007 at 1:46 am

"but are glad their book doesn't speak clearly and directly to incest."

On the contrary, the bible explicitly condones incest, so long as there's no other alternatives within easy reach. See Lot, God's poster-boy.

I feel sorry for this guy. His faith is an accident of birth, and it's combined with a simple wit and a fundementalist-without-the-complicated-bits education. Had he been born in a more enlightened part of the world, he'd be a dim but harmless and well-meaning member of society.

As it is, he spends his time lying, distorting and propagandizing on YouTube, because the people around him tell him he's doing Jesus' work. He's a victim too, and a classic example of how religion poisons everything.

His parents and his pastor should be ashamed of themselves.

114. Richler defends atheism

Comment #58820 by CJ22 on July 26, 2007 at 8:27 am

"He then smiled and told them they were from the bible. No one believed him."

I hope he whacked them over the head with the damned thing and told them to go read it.

115. How could God allow 26 pilgrims to die in a crash?

Comment #58737 by CJ22 on July 26, 2007 at 2:37 am

Jamison's God and no god at all appear to be semantically equivalent. You could remove his God from the universe and it would still be the same. In which case, what bloody use is his God?

If I'm not mistaken, doesn't Jesus say that if you pray sincerely for something you will get it? How does the power of prayer square with bad things happening to good people.

This article has a fatuousness that could only be generated by somebody so blinded by faith that his conclusions precede his reasoning.

116. Richler defends atheism

Comment #58734 by CJ22 on July 26, 2007 at 2:27 am

I note there's no comments feature on the article, nor link to contact the author, which in this day and age makes it a cowardly polemic.

I do think the whole 'brights' thing was a mistake. It's handed the religio-fascists a rod to beat atheists with. But this piece is wickedly propagandist and distorting, and the author should be ashamed at sneering at legitimate grievances. How many atheists in congress? Who's the least electable minority in America? Atheists aren't using the language of 'equal rights' as a means of getting special favours, they just want a voice. Kay's opinion is obviously that atheists should stfu and go back to being oppressed quietly.

117. Richard Dawkins on Hardtalk

Comment #58480 by CJ22 on July 25, 2007 at 2:36 am

The simple truth is that some labels are wicked and some are not. You wouldn't be comfortable labelling your child an 'ugly' child, and describing him as such, would you? It depends on what baggage the label brings with it, and clearly labelling someone as 'polite' (a simple, socialising property) does no harm , whereas labelling somebody with a negative, non-socialising property (such as 'ugly', or 'stupid') or with an over-arching meta-property such as a belief system ('christian', 'marxist') does. I'm not sure your analogy is a good one Fides.

Labels on children tend to be self-fulfilling, as children are suggestible. If you tell a child it is polite repeatedly, it is more liekely to be polite, or at least to have politeness available as a social strategy. If you tell a child it is 'no good' often enough and forcefully enough, then it's likely to end up in in the pen. If you tell a child it is christian often enough, then it is liekly to grow up with the impression that this is not a matter of choice but an accident of birth and unchangeable. You are removing your child's choice to question. That's why the label is negative, because it takes away your child's right to make an objective choice. (Actually, to be more accurate, it RESTRICTS your child's right to choose, since circumstances may allow the person he becomes to overcome your conditioning, if he has the strength of character).

118. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Edd Doerr

Comment #58475 by CJ22 on July 25, 2007 at 2:09 am

"My Unitarian church recently asked me why my pledges had decreased."

Did you reply "Why the hell are you keeping score you money-grubbing bastards??" as you should have done ;)

The worst moderator was that guy from TruthDigg, moderating between CH and whoever the dupe-of-the-week was that week. He seemed to think he was entitled to his opinion and it was okay to pick a side and back up that speaker. He even made a point of declining to be apologetic for it. I tend to agree, where there are only two speakers involved, agree a format, have somebody there to enforce it, but otherwise keep schtum.

119. In defense of dangerous ideas

Comment #58241 by CJ22 on July 24, 2007 at 5:31 am

Quite. What's wrong with comparing Negroes with Caucasians, or with Mongoloids etc.?

It's actually quite hard to take all the semantic noise out of a sentence :)

120. Must the US president believe in God?

Comment #57829 by CJ22 on July 21, 2007 at 11:28 am

The whole thing is peculiar. Clearly, swearing in the name of a god one didn't believe in would be pointless. But that leaves the question of what a pledge to be honest that does not include an implicit fear of punishement is actually worth. Is a secular pledge actually worth anything, legalistically?

@Bonzai. I think you were spot on with your point 2. Whenever I visit the states, religious institutions always smell to me like any other business. On a visit to Utah I was frankly shocked at how corporate the LDS church is. I understand that over the years the church has bought and sold large and small businesses and owned and operated large corporations and conglomerates. At what point does it stop being a church and start being an industry? Religion has managed to wind it's way into the social fabric of the US society because it's been able to fill the role of the missing social services that the USG should be providing, or at least managing.

121. Town Hall Seattle: God Is Not Great

Comment #57517 by CJ22 on July 19, 2007 at 3:23 pm

The link to the MP3 file doesn't seem to be correct.

122. Is there an Artificial God?

Comment #57371 by CJ22 on July 19, 2007 at 3:33 am

"Is using "man" as Adams used it here still common usage in the UK?"

Don't you worry your pretty little head about it.

*ducks

123. Town Hall Seattle: God Is Not Great

Comment #57359 by CJ22 on July 19, 2007 at 2:59 am

I'm holding out for another 'sheep-faced loon' comment myself.

124. Beyond Belief: Atheism (with AC Grayling)

Comment #56972 by CJ22 on July 18, 2007 at 2:27 am

Beyond Belief is a rather incestuous pro-religion programme (it's been running for years and they've only just got around to considering atheism as a belief issue??). This was always going to be an ambush. Under the cirumstances, AC did a great job. The audience for this programme were not atheists, but the middle-ground religious.

I had to laugh when the presenter asked what the Koran had to say on athiesm. "Not much" was the experts reply. "It says they must be killed, then suffer an eternity of the vilest torment" was mine.

125. Fears Grow Over 'Mega Mosque'

Comment #56702 by CJ22 on July 17, 2007 at 1:36 am

"And so Europe's transformation into Eurabia contiues..."

Yeah, they got us right where we want them. I'm scared...

UNITED KINGDOM
Total population: 58.8 million
Muslim population: 1.6 million (2.8%)

126. Fears Grow Over 'Mega Mosque'

Comment #56609 by CJ22 on July 16, 2007 at 2:21 pm

Hmm, I'm not so sure. There's something to be said for keeping all your bad eggs in one basket. At least we'll know where they are. I wonder if the security forces think that a mega-mosque is a bad idea?

127. Kenya: The Death of Religion And Rise of Atheism in the West

Comment #56606 by CJ22 on July 16, 2007 at 2:17 pm

If he's seen all that, one has to wonder why he's hanging out in those sorts of bars.

128. Before the New Atheists: Confessions of a Lonely Atheist

Comment #56486 by CJ22 on July 16, 2007 at 2:35 am

A thoughtful and well-written piece - well worth reading the whole thing. I can't help but feel this is the sort of piece that will reach a thoughtful theist more effectively than any amount of polemic, and help them see the point-of-view of the vocal atheists.

129. Hitler Was an Atheist Who Killed Millions in the Name of Atheism, Secularism?

Comment #56482 by CJ22 on July 16, 2007 at 2:14 am

"Hitler can be explained by 'free will' "

The other problem with free will is "whose free will?" While it may have been an act of free will for Hitler to do what he did, and an act of free will for the Nazis to support him, where was the free will of his victims? The exterminated Jews were not granted free will to act - in fact, the more free will Hitler got, the less the Jews had. Since there were more Jews than Hitlers, doesn't that add up to LESS free will? That's a slightly sophistic point, I know.

Free will was also brought up with regard to the Virginia shootings. It sickened me. Those poor kids weren't offered the free choice of whether to get shot or not. If God granted the shooter the choice of whether to murder or not, he took all the choices away from the victims.

The 'free will' option as an answer to the problem of evil is distastefully immoral, and typical of Christian double-think.

130. The fundamentalist delusion

Comment #56404 by CJ22 on July 15, 2007 at 4:02 pm

@Enlightenme - are you sure you didn't just discard a false one? Did you actively replace it with a new one? When I take my shoes off at night, I couldn't in any sense be said to be changing my shoes. Just a thought.

Anyway, I'm happy for the religious ranters to get as hot under the dog-collar as they like. It's called giving them enough rope. If ad hominem is all they got, then that will soon start to become obvious to even those who picked the religious side of the argument.

131. Brainwashed children plead to die as martyrs in Red Mosque siege

Comment #54807 by CJ22 on July 9, 2007 at 2:59 am

Waco had no appreciable effect on xtian fundementalism in the US. It's just too easy for people to claim "that's not my faith", or to publicly disavow the lunatics while secretly agreeing with them.

132. Intelligent Design and Creationism/Evolution Controversy

Comment #53563 by CJ22 on July 2, 2007 at 4:22 am

Agreed chbg, I do get annoyed with scientist who argue that evolution is not incompatible with religion. If that regligion includes a Young Earth hypothesis, then it damn well IS incompatible.

133. Floods are judgment on society, say bishops

Comment #53561 by CJ22 on July 2, 2007 at 4:19 am

Somewhere there's a village short one idiot.

134. Scientists Find Earliest Sign of Cultivated Crops in Americas

Comment #53270 by CJ22 on June 30, 2007 at 1:05 pm

Well, here's, to the day they invented alcohol. Cheers.

135. Inferior Design: Richard Dawkins reviews Behe's lastest book

Comment #53268 by CJ22 on June 30, 2007 at 1:04 pm

pwn3d

136. Scientists Link Housecats to Wildcat Subspecies

Comment #53018 by CJ22 on June 29, 2007 at 2:50 am

10,000 years and they still haven't figured out how to open the tin. Tsk.

"Carlos A. Driscoll of the National Cancer Institute and colleagues spent more than six years collecting species of wildcat from Scotland to Israel."

Um, why are the National Cancer Institute doing this? Shouldn't they be curing cancer or something?

137. Scientists Find Earliest Sign of Cultivated Crops in Americas

Comment #53017 by CJ22 on June 29, 2007 at 2:43 am

What I find interesting about these dates for things happening is that they can only ever really go BACK in time. So any date accepted as the earliest date for which we have evidence should be considered a maximum (or minimum, I'm not sure which would be applied here, nomenclature is ambiguous) - the latest possible date for which this event could occur.

When you consider the odds against us happening to stumble upon the earliest POSSIBLE archeological records for an event (i.e. records for the first time the event occurred), then it's a reasonable assumption that these events occurred significantly before the earliest record. Makes you wonder how accurate our picture is - by definition it's going to be conservative. Just how old is our civilisation?

As for the religious, anybody who still continues to believe in a young Earth despite the torrent of evidence to the contrary, is just being willfully ignorant and obdurate, and is probably a lost cause.

138. Lecture on Neo-Darwinism

Comment #52940 by CJ22 on June 28, 2007 at 3:06 pm

Mine would be a picture of that God's Warrior women from the US Wife Swap, and the caption "'Evolved' is a relative term..."

139. I believe that there is no God.

Comment #52846 by CJ22 on June 28, 2007 at 8:01 am

I don't have any problem not being able to prove my certainty about the non-existence of God. I accept it is a faith position, and would never claim it proven beyond doubt. I would claim it proven beyond REASONABLE doubt, but that's an opinion. I would however, then refer them to the more standard atheist position, that the non-existence of supernatural elements in the universe is unlikely, can be considered proven.

140. I believe that there is no God.

Comment #52785 by CJ22 on June 28, 2007 at 4:44 am

I'm certain there is no God (7.0). The evidence suggests there probably is no God (6.99). No problem.

141. Rudy Park Comic Strips

Comment #52780 by CJ22 on June 28, 2007 at 4:16 am

"What's Maxim?"

Porn for cowards.

142. Lecture on Neo-Darwinism

Comment #52777 by CJ22 on June 28, 2007 at 4:08 am

*Bangs head against table.

143. Science of the Soul? 'I Think, Therefore I Am' Is Losing Force

Comment #52774 by CJ22 on June 28, 2007 at 4:03 am

You really do have to wonder why, instead of finding ever more elaborate and obscurantist ways of dodging round the issue, they don't just throw their hands up in the air and say "Okay, you got us, it's all crap..."

Give it up! For fucks's sake! Grow up!

144. Researchers May Remake Neanderthal DNA

Comment #52596 by CJ22 on June 27, 2007 at 12:11 pm

Question: I'd always understoof that part of the definition of whether two individuals were of a different species was whether they could interbreed or not. If neanderthals and hom. sap. sap. could interbreed, are they still different species?

On reflection, horse and donkeys can interbreed (or something like that), so I guess I have the wrong end of the stick.

145. Is this another Sokal Hoax?

Comment #52539 by CJ22 on June 27, 2007 at 8:07 am

Hmph, I thought the first rule of Quantum Feminist Mnemotechnics is "Do not talk about Quantum Feminist Mnemotechnics!"

We'll have to move Der Tag forward now!

146. God Hates the World

Comment #52482 by CJ22 on June 27, 2007 at 5:41 am

Robertson, the definition of insanity is repeating the same actions over and over, expecting a different outcome.

To you, reason is a purely subjective experience isn't it?

147. Messiah

Comment #52412 by CJ22 on June 27, 2007 at 1:45 am

Many of the techniques used by Brown are outlined in his book "Tricks Of The Mind". He re-iterates in there that he does NOT use actors, take it or leave it. Interestingly, Brown does NOT believe that there is any such thing as a hypnotic trance state.

148. Germany imposes ban on Tom Cruise

Comment #52115 by CJ22 on June 26, 2007 at 7:42 am

"publicly professed"

I like that phrasing. It sounds seedy, as it should.

149. The Present Threat of the Religious Right to Our Modern Freedoms

Comment #52068 by CJ22 on June 26, 2007 at 4:53 am

You two appear to be arguing the colour of shite :)

It's largely irrelevant anyway. The US's 'codified' constitution is no more immune to temporal change than is the UKs grab-bag. As Tabash points out in the video, the constitution only means what any given SCOTUS takes it to mean.

BTW, the UK is signatory to the European Convention On Human Rights, which covers much of the ground a written constitution would.

150. The Present Threat of the Religious Right to Our Modern Freedoms

Comment #51723 by CJ22 on June 24, 2007 at 10:49 am

I do think our American friends (and Christopher Hitchens, who never fails to mention it) need to stop taking comfort from the fact that they have a written constitution which may or may not advocate the seperation of church and state.

For one thing, even a written constitution is subject to interpretation (just look at the second amendment!). Secondly, does anybody really believe that if a fundementalist power-bloc gets enough control, that seperation wouldn't be subject to 'amendment' (or ingored de facto)? Fundementalists are NOT democrats, by definition.

The fact is that in the UK, the fact that we have a state-sponsored religion actually protects us, because that religion is a soppy middle-of-the-road type of religion, as luck would have it. The US is democratic process is potentially subject to any powerful lobby group with enough aggression and cash to subvert it. It doesn't matter how many people support it (though a popular mandate does help I'm sure).

I would be really worried about this if I were a citizen. What worries ME is that where the US leads, the UK usually follows, and we're already seeing signs that certain organisations in the US are quite willing to export their mummery to like-minded countries. The LDS is already sinking lots of money into temples in the UK, as are other sub-cults, including a frighteningly aggressive dominianist movement.