101. Merkel wants EU to be vocal about Christian roots

Comment #23772 by jeepyjay on March 2, 2007 at 3:40 pm

I'm surprised no-one seems to have cited the recent "Brussels Declaration"

http://www.avisionforeurope.org:80/

No it's not abut eating sprouts being good for you! It's about secularism being good for Europe.

102. If God is talking to you, too, Mr Cameron - don't listen

Comment #23475 by jeepyjay on March 1, 2007 at 2:28 am

Portillo writes: "Many fine things are done by people because of their faith. As an MP I sawa number of examples. And as we mark the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade we are reminded that William Wilberforce, who brought it about, was a man driven by religious conviction who eschewed political ambition."

This is buying into the christian propaganda. Wilberforce may not have sought to be Prime Minister, but he was the front-man for the antislavery movement because he was an MP and the Quakers and others who urged him on and did a lot of the spade work were disenfranchised.

He used his influence with the King to promote his evangelical views through the "Society for the Suppression of Vice", which led to persecution of freethinkers like Richard Carlile and the attempted supression of Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man". I've researched this recently:

http://secsoc.blogspot.com/2007_02_01_archive.html

He deserves credit for his work on the abolition of the slave trade, but there was also a more negative side to his influence.

103. Believing Scripture but Playing by Science's Rules

Comment #22155 by jeepyjay on February 13, 2007 at 4:43 am

Which paradigm will he follow if he encounters a situation in which they conflict and his personal survival is involved? For instance if he encounters bird flu? Does he accept the use of antivirus treatment based on evolutionary theory? Or can he talk himself round this somehow?

Is this ability for doublethink a survival advantage? Should we all be trying to develop it? Does he really know which of the paradigms represents the real truth? This article raises more questions for me than answers.

Edit: 14 Feb: Here's another, older, example of doublethink, cited by a correspondent to the BCSE forum.

http://home.austarnet.com.au/stear/realsnelling.htm

104. Evolution Sunday

Comment #21898 by jeepyjay on February 11, 2007 at 2:13 pm

PZ writes: "I'm sure the participants in Evolution Sunday mean well and are sincere in their wish to reconcile faith with science,"

Yes I think they are and should be encouraged, otherwise more religious believers will be seduced even further away from science and reason, into the camp of the creationists.

PZ continues: "but we'll do far more to promote reason in this country if we withdraw from all participation in the church and let religion wither away from disuse,"

But it is not "we" (atheists) who are involved in the church. We have already withdrawn. Presumably by "we" here he means "we Americans". But getting believers to withdraw from the church is not an easy thing for them to do. It's like withdrawal from a drug dependency. A slow process may be better than going cold turkey all at once.

105. Meet the Relatives. They're Full of Surprises.

Comment #21668 by jeepyjay on February 10, 2007 at 1:08 pm

The museum's website still has the details of its previous brilliant exhibition about Darwin

http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/darwin/

It gives a comprehensive introduction to evolution in easily understandable form and very well presented.

In response to gimliben-watsit I suspect that the Divine was created in the image of man, rather than the other way round.

106. Do stop behaving as if you are God, Professor Dawkins

Comment #21032 by jeepyjay on February 7, 2007 at 10:59 am

This phenomenon of one author hanging on the coat-tails of another is nothing new. I've just been reading Bertrand Russell's essay "Why I am a Rationalist" In it he says:

"We ought not to commit ourselves to dogmatic negations any more than to dogmatic affirmations; we ought merely to say that there are a great many propositions about which men and women feel pretty certain, but, concerning which they have no right to feel certain, and it is our business as Rationalists to try to make them see that those things are not certain. I am told that that is a very wicked position to maintain. I have here a book recently published which I commend to your attention. You may or may not know that some little time ago, under the auspices of the National Secular Society, I delivered a lecture on "Why I am Not a Christian." Now, It appears that I did not know why it is that I am not a Christian; and here is a book which will tell you why I am not -- by Mr. H. G. Wood, who is a somewhat eminent member of the Society of Friends, a body for which I have the greatest respect. His book is called Why Mr. Bertrand Russell is Not a Christian. It seems that the reasons are not those which I thought they were. He says in one sentence: "The main reason why he is not a Christian is that he simply does not know what religion is." One might say that Mr. Wood is not an Agnostic because he does not know what Agnosticism is. After all, I had all the benefits of a Christian education, and he did not have the benefits of an Agnostic education; so that possibly the argument might be considered two-edged. Nevertheless, I commend the book to your attention, and you will then know why it is that I am not a Christian."

Great good humour on his part, you must admit!

107. Durham Council Votes To Continue Saying Lord's Prayer

Comment #19410 by jeepyjay on January 27, 2007 at 1:29 am

I'm glad this is not the "real" Durham (UK)!

Excuse my pedantry, but I was amused by eccles' accidental introduction of the concept of "hypocracy", which means "rule by hype": we see so much of this these days. It only takes a lobby group or the press to blow up a subject out of proportion and the politicians immediately start legislating on it.

108. The Bright Revolution

Comment #19189 by jeepyjay on January 25, 2007 at 1:22 pm

Just a few disconnected thoughts on terminology.

In the UK the name "Godfrey" is most prominently associated with the most elderly member of the Home Guard troop in the "Dad's Army" comedy. Hardly the required image I should think.

Why does everyone compare "Bright" with "Gay" all the time? It is more analogous to the use of "Green" by environmentalists. Bright signifies attachment to the ideas of the Enlightenment and as such makes perfect sense.

While I am an Atheist, I am not an atheist for emotional reasons. I am a Rationalist (under which I include Empiricism as well as Logic) and it is the application of Reason that has led me to my Atheistic views, which are only a small part of my worldview. When Religion and Theism are defeated (some hope!) I will not need the term Atheism, but will still be a Rationalist.

This site is part of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, not the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Atheism.

109. Britons unconvinced on evolution

Comment #18815 by jeepyjay on January 23, 2007 at 4:11 am

This is old news, and it was a badly flawed poll. During 2004-5 I tried to get some views about the evolution / creationism debate from the bishops of the Church of England and it was apparent then that many of them did not understand the issues:

http://www.leicestersecularsociety.org.uk/creationism_cofe.htm

It is perfectly possible for religious believers to believe in both evolution and creation (in fact that is the official position of the Roman Catholic Church). So they can call themselves both evolutionists and creationists.

Of course what is now meant by most commentators when referring to "creationism" is not merely belief in a creator, but "young earth creationism" (YEC) that takes Genesis as literal, in some interpretation, including the chronology based on the biblical genealogies back to Adam and Eve, which Bishop Ussher famnously traced back to 4004 BC. However most modern creationists are now extremely vague on the actual date of creation, possibly because they deny the validity of all scientific dating methods, so have no reliable way to decide the issue.

110. Intelligent design to feature in school RE lessons

Comment #18806 by jeepyjay on January 23, 2007 at 3:55 am

Where is all this going to stop? How do they decide what counts as "Religious"? Does it merely depend on the strength of the latest lobby group? What about Spiritualism, Scientology, Atlantis, Hollow Earth, Alien Abduction, Gnosticism, Aleister Crowley and the Golden Dawn, Kabbala, etc etc etc. There would be no time to teach anything sensible.

111. Beyond the Believers

Comment #17930 by jeepyjay on January 17, 2007 at 3:31 pm

The cartoon made me laugh, but on second thoughts I think the rationalists should be thought of more as firefighters or fog dispellers than fighting men with guns. The weapon is the enlightenment of science dispelling the darkness of faith from the minds of the god-befogged. Not the killing of believers.

112. Atheist Outreach: Group Coaxes Unbelievers Into the Open

Comment #17845 by jeepyjay on January 17, 2007 at 2:42 am

What does Bronstein mean by saying "I would use reason and faith to guide my life." Faith in what - human potential?

The 100 membership of the NYC Atheists is quite good. It's difficult to get unbelievers to join anything, they're too independent. Leicester Secular Society membership has only just risen to over 100 (though it was more than twice that figure in the past). Membership went down during the mid 20th century when the threat from religion seemed to have reduced. It's going up again now, quite rapidly, because of the clear rise of religious influence in politics.

113. Copy of The God Delusion Purchased for $20,000

Comment #17508 by jeepyjay on January 14, 2007 at 8:03 am

As regards symbols, Freethinkers have long used the Pansy (French: Pensee = Thought), and Humanists have various forms of the "Happy Humanist" (an H shape with a dot in the upper space). The Brights now use a "sunray" type symbol. Do we really need more?

114. Copy of The God Delusion Purchased for $20,000

Comment #17502 by jeepyjay on January 14, 2007 at 7:18 am

Homo economicus wrote: "May have to try the Leicester Secular Society if they have anything like that sense of fun." Thanks for thinking of us, as a matter of fact tonight if you're quick you can catch a Martial Arts Display by the Karate Club that use our basement; and on 28th January we're celebrating Burns Night (join up in advance and its free).

115. Reason, Unfettered by Faith

Comment #17349 by jeepyjay on January 13, 2007 at 2:21 am

zoro: First you said: "Deductive logic never yields new knowledge: it leads only to information that's consistent with the premisses." Now you concede: "Deduction certainly can lead to new insight or new understanding or even new knowledge" thanks for that.

You go on: "But insofar as it's correct that there's an objective reality "out there", upon which we can all eventually come to agreement, then "objective knowledge" of it can't be increased via deduction." This again is clearly wrong.

Supposing that we accept Newton's law of gravitation as established then we can use it to deduce Kepler's laws of planetary motion. Similarly if we accept Maxwell's electromagnetic equations we can use them to deduce many practical results concerning the operation of electromagnetic equipment.

I agree with you and Dawkins that theology is a vacuous subject. There's no need to argue that with me. All I'm arguing against is your thesis that seems to regard "reason" as somehow unscientific.

To suppose that theorems (such as those of Pythagoras, Appollonius, Menelaus etc) are inherent in Euclid's assumptions (axioms, definitions etc) and ignore the deductive process by which they can be proved seems to be a sort of irrational mysticism on your part.

116. Reason, Unfettered by Faith

Comment #17169 by jeepyjay on January 11, 2007 at 11:47 am

In common with many others, zoro claims: "Deductive logic never yields new knowledge: it leads only to information that's consistent with the premisses." I don't think this is true. Euclid's Elements sets down a series of very simple assumptions and by a chain of deductive reasoning arrives at the Pythagorean Theorem (and many others). Is this not new knowledge? It may indeed be implied by the assumptions, but the implication is by no means obvious.

Whether the Pythagorean theorem is true in the "real" world (as opposed to the mathematical fantasy world of Euclidean Geometry) of course is another matter. Who has seen a "point" with no dimensions, or a line of no thickness? Applied mathematics sets up an approximate correlation between the mathematical model and reality, where points are dots and lines are paths of light rays for instance. A lot of other aspects of the mathematical model are discarded or ignored (for instance that between any two points there is an infinite continuum of other points).

The point I was trying to make about mathematics is that if we allow that it is a legitimate way of thinking, of use to science, then how can we disallow other uses of reason, applied to abstract concepts as opposed to empirical data?

For instance metaphysical or philosophical musings about the nature of the universe or of human society, ethics and so on? Even about hypothetical gods? So long as the hypothetical nature is recognised.

117. Reason, Unfettered by Faith

Comment #17075 by jeepyjay on January 10, 2007 at 3:54 pm

I'm finding this "epistemological love-fest" as JohnC calls it, fascinating. I hesitate to spark off zoro again, but zoro, what's your take on infinity in mathematics? Is it just fantasy in the same way that angels are? Do the different varieties of infinity, countable, continuum, etc, exist in reality? Or is it all a mathematicians Platonist religion? (I incline to think that it is.)

118. Reason, Unfettered by Faith

Comment #16882 by jeepyjay on January 9, 2007 at 11:22 am

In response to zoro who wrote: "Kudos to Krauss, but I wish he wouldn't "buy into" the clerics' terminology: the confrontation is not between faith and reason, but between faith and science."

In fact many people, myself included, understand "reason" to mean a combination of logic and empiricism, not just logic alone. Thus "reason" includes "science" but is wider, including philosophy and mathematics as well as natural philosophy (as science used to be called).

119. Without God, Gall Is Permitted

Comment #16383 by jeepyjay on January 6, 2007 at 11:38 am

To zoro and John Phillips: You may estimate the probability of existence of God is near zero, but would you bet your life on it?

120. Executing Saddam Hussein was an Act of Vandalism

Comment #15814 by jeepyjay on January 3, 2007 at 6:54 am

There was nothing special about Saddam. Have you not heard of "the banality of evil"? Power corrupts. The problem that needs to be addressed is not how to stop such people gaining power, it is how to depose them once they have the power. As for keeping people in prison for purposes of psychological research - even prisoners have human rights.

121. What are you optimistic about? Why?

Comment #15744 by jeepyjay on January 2, 2007 at 12:23 pm

Rationalists aren't optimists. They are realists. I read a few of the other submissions to the Edge question and found the relentless optimism maddening. It makes many of the contributors sound like they're on ecstasy or something. Calm down all of you please! Get real!

122. Beliefwatch: Blasphemy (Challenge)

Comment #15741 by jeepyjay on January 2, 2007 at 12:03 pm

If you want to do some blaspheming that is no joke, how about taking on Mohammed or Allah? Just a few cartoons last year caused a whole lot of trouble.

123. What I found out about God

Comment #14669 by jeepyjay on December 24, 2006 at 4:46 am

It's a bit odd that Humphrys doesn't mention his other two interviewees. Didn't he get anything from them to think about? I thought the rabbi was the most candid, about the idea of god evolving over time until it has now almost disappeared. One more push and it may be gone. The archbishop was extremely vague aboout everything.

124. The Grinch Delusion: An Atheist Can Believe in Christmas

Comment #13372 by jeepyjay on December 17, 2006 at 10:08 am

I have to adnmit to being something of a Grinch about Christmas. I shall be spending it as quietly as possible, and trying to avoid those endless carols on all the TV and radio stations. One carol service a year would be sufficient. Where's my humbugs.

125. Book answers the atheists' prayers

Comment #11991 by jeepyjay on December 9, 2006 at 3:16 am

"When he rebuts St Anselm's 1078 ontological arguments for the existence of God, ..."

Actually he only had one argument as I recall, but they were published in the year 1078. Yorkshire Post subeditors at work?

126. Humphrys In Search of God

Comment #6385 by jeepyjay on November 14, 2006 at 2:25 am

I thought the interview with the Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, which I heard this morning, was by far the best of the three programmes. Unlike Williams and Ramadan, Sacks didn't evade the questions and in fact answered them with considerable candour.

It seems that his God regards the human race as now being grown up enough not to need his direct intervention (no partings of the Red Sea any more) and that the story of Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac (aborted at the last minute) was when God (or was it men's idea of God?) changed to being merciful rather than demanding human blood sacrifice.

Perhaps when human beings have grown up a bit more God will be able to go away altogether.

127. Humphrys In Search of God

Comment #4974 by jeepyjay on November 7, 2006 at 4:38 am

I listened to the interview this morning with Tariq Ramadan and couldn't find anything much to disagree with in what he said, except when he got onto religion. It's difficult to see any connection between his religious belief and his otherwise rational secular views.

128. Surviving 'Jesus Camp'

Comment #4243 by Jeepyjay on November 3, 2006 at 2:50 am

According to this report, Ted Haggard has resigned, due to accusations against him of homosexual activity:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/nation/4307615.html

I find it difficult to believe someone could be such a hypocrite or behave in such a stupid way.