101. Christopher Hitchens is Not Great

Comment #41379 by jonecc on May 16, 2007 at 3:32 am

The thing which annoys me about the kind of argument this guy makes is the way they try to smuggle beliefs through the evidence gatecheck under the cloak of art. He says his religion is more like Picasso, the other day a British vicar said his was like a Shakespeare play.

To stretch the metaphor, we need to shine the X-ray machine on that kind of thing. Are you making claims about the world, or just about the events inside your own head? If you're having your own private shadow play, have fun. If you're saying there's a spiritual aspect to the actual physical world, prove it.

102. Furor over author Ayaan Hirsi Ali's visit stirs debate on religious freedom

Comment #40690 by jonecc on May 14, 2007 at 5:18 pm

As Bonzai says, plus Shi'a opinion is with the Sunni. There are some dissenting voices, arguing for instance that the Bukhari text is a forgery, but they are a minority, and viewed with suspicion by the mainstream.

103. Furor over author Ayaan Hirsi Ali's visit stirs debate on religious freedom

Comment #40662 by jonecc on May 14, 2007 at 4:39 pm

In the article, Zahida Chaudhary claims that the doctrine of the death penalty for apostasy is a radical doctrine, opposed by mainstream Islam. This is incorrect. Although it doesn't appear in the Koran, it occurs in several hadith (sayings or deeds attributed to Mohammed), for instance the quote by Imam Bukhari mentioned above (comment 40530).

There is a useful if short discussion of the subject if you search for apostasy on Wikipedia, but the best summary I've read is in Leaving Islam: apostates speak out by Ibn Warraq.

As JMaze says, The political left has not found a way to deal with the problems of Islam and remain "culturally sensitive".. If we don't, then racists and nationalists will.

104. French Muslim women opt for hymen surgical cons

Comment #39822 by jonecc on May 12, 2007 at 3:41 am

Actually, I think the preoccupation with female virginity is mainly about property and inheritance.

In a patriarchal society, fathers want to pass their assets down to their sons, but they need to know that their sons are their sons, therefore they are keen to see evidence that their wives haven't had sex with anyone else. The reason why male virginity is less of an issue is that in a localised society where everyone knows everyone else no-one can be in any doubt who the mother is.

This preoccupation predates monotheistic religion, and occurs throughout the world, because all patriarchal societies face the same problem.

In Ayaan Hirsi Ali's book Infidel, there is a harrowing description of Somali girls being raped after the breakdown of civil society, then being abandoned by their families because they are no longer virgins. I read the book a few months ago, but the horror of it lingers.

105. French Muslim women opt for hymen surgical cons

Comment #39815 by jonecc on May 12, 2007 at 3:07 am

Note to Americans and Australians:

That was great - like daytime TV for the educated. Can you schedule the next one when us Europeans aren't asleep?

106. The Encyclopedia of Life

Comment #39561 by jonecc on May 11, 2007 at 6:13 am

Brilliant. As in the original meaning of brilliant - shining a light.

Fantastic. As in the original meaning of fantastic - from the Greek, to make things visible.

As Robert Maynard says (#39338), now we just have to wait for the inferior creationist rip-off.

107. Disney daughter calls Muslim Mickey evil

Comment #39532 by jonecc on May 11, 2007 at 4:32 am

catchy_nick:

The problem with Disney is indeed his anti-semitism. Fortunately most of the other studios were owned by Jews anyway, so at least his racism didn't stop them finding work. It was a different story for black people, obviously.

108. Lou Dobbs w/ Hitchens on Al Sharpton's Bigoted Remark

Comment #39518 by jonecc on May 11, 2007 at 3:42 am

The difference between Sharpton and Imus is that Imus was using hate-speech, in this case racial epithets, whereas Sharpton just said that Mitt Romney wasn't a 'real' believer.

If we let believers muddy the waters between the two, then any attack on religious belief becomes hate-speech.

109. Fortune-telling no longer in the cards in Philly

Comment #39134 by jonecc on May 10, 2007 at 4:20 am

Russell Blackford:

It's a ticklish area. You'd want to see a clear distinction being made between a statement of belief in paranormal phenomena, which comes under the heading of free speech, and an promised benefit to a consumer, which would be a false commercial claim. Another question with legal repercussions would be whether the provider of the "service" believed they were offering something genuine, or whether they were out-and-out charlatans.

110. Atheist offers to send letters post-Rapture

Comment #38838 by jonecc on May 9, 2007 at 9:41 am

John Phillips:

I've just emailed to ask him.

111. Unholy row at clergy soccer game

Comment #38150 by jonecc on May 7, 2007 at 6:02 am

The thing that amused me was the idea that soccer matches help to bring people together. They've obviously never watched the game in Britain. I spent Saturday night in a bar celebrating my team Bristol City's promotion, and half the chants were aimed at local rivals Bristol Rovers.

I didn't join in those chants, by the way.

112. Those fanatical atheists

Comment #38146 by jonecc on May 7, 2007 at 5:53 am

He makes some good points around the concept of moderation. It's always struck me that the problem with this concept is that it depends what historical era you are measuring it in. Presumably a moderate Aztec would have believed you had to sacrifice some prisoners of war to the Gods, but maybe not quite so many. A moderate 17th century Briton would have thought the laws covering slavery could stand a little gentle tweaking.

From the point of view of a 22nd century citizen, no longer burdened with religion but struggling to reclaim their coastal city from the sea, our idea of moderation might seem similarly unhelpful.

113. A Split Emerges as Conservatives Discuss Darwin

Comment #38142 by jonecc on May 7, 2007 at 5:38 am

I can't find the reference, but I seem to remember Richard Dawkins describing himself as slightly left of centre.

In general, I've known a lot of scientists who tend towards Marxism. This may be because traditional Marxism endorses scientific materialism.

That may be the first time Christopher Hitchens has been described as apolitical.

114. God Is in the Dendrites

Comment #36449 by jonecc on May 1, 2007 at 7:08 am

The idea that some people are unable to hear God does have a theological history. For instance, in the Koran it talks about people who will never hear the word of Islam because "Allah has stopped up their ears".

For some reason these people are still sentenced to burn in hell for all eternity, which has always struck me as a bit harsh under the circumstances.

115. We aim to misbehave

Comment #35061 by jonecc on April 26, 2007 at 5:34 am

I get this all the time as well. If people accuse me of "arrogance", "dogmatism" or the like, I just say "no, this is robust debate". We debate robustly in all other fields, why should religion be any different?

116. Study: Religion is Good for Kids

Comment #34927 by jonecc on April 25, 2007 at 3:20 pm

Whilst I agree with iwentdowntotheriver that we need to come up with ways to fill the gap that some people currently fill with God, I don't think we've been given enough information to draw any conclusions.

In particular, the non-churchgoers include the children of people like us, but also children who don't go because their parents' lives are too chaotic to take them, perhaps because they have adult size problems like drug/alcohol abuse or mental illness, or because they work such long hours. You would expect those children to function worse.

If the survey differentiated between religions, if 'religion' in this instance had a definition like 'ethical value system' and if secular humanism was included as an option, it would be interesting to see the results.

117. Jesus 'Love-Bombs' You

Comment #34917 by jonecc on April 25, 2007 at 3:07 pm

It reminds me more than anything of pyramid selling. Once you've bought in to the franchise, you rise by bringing more schmucks under you.

The thing I wonder is, to what extent are the people at the top of the pyramid cynical about what they're doing? After the revelations about Ted Haggard I'd strongly suspect he was one of the charlatans (he struck me as highly insincere in the Richard Dawkins interview, even before all his sexual shenanigans came out), and I doubt the top bananas would be attacking global warming research unless big business was encouraging them to, but how many of the middle fry are simply love-bombing the vulnerable like they were love-bombed at a miserable time in their own lives?

118. Atheists split on how to not believe

Comment #34812 by jonecc on April 25, 2007 at 10:35 am

With regard to the constant use of the word militant about writers like Dawkins or Harris, this is what was often said about feminists back in the Seventies and Eighties (and in some quarters probably still is). It normally seems to mean "forcefully arguing a case which has yet to be generally accepted".

Despite the cacophony of abuse, feminists managed to change things, and so can we.

119. Flea Circus!

Comment #32992 by jonecc on April 19, 2007 at 1:02 am

I read the McGrath. It was short, and had no other obvious virtues.

As I read the apostrophe on The Dawkins' Letters, I hope the publisher has made a mistake, because otherwise they're publishing Richard's private correspondence with his family.

120. Dawkins vs Haggard: the Python Edition

Comment #29911 by jonecc on April 5, 2007 at 1:07 pm

It's quite insightful about Haggard, as a man who maintains a deeply absurd proposition with utter conviction, while all along he's secretly longing to be doing something entirely different, preferably involving cross-dressing.

121. The Most Hated Family in America

Comment #29599 by jonecc on April 3, 2007 at 2:28 pm

The really depressing thing about the program was how successfully the belief system transmitted itself from generation to generation. Grandad Phelps taught it to his daughter, and she taught it to her (11) children. It's hard to see how it could ever end.

Of course, you would expect the surviving religions to be successful at this, by definition.

122. Is this another Sokal Hoax?

Comment #29029 by jonecc on April 1, 2007 at 8:43 am

I've tried to translate the first paragraph. This is what I've come up with.

Connectivity is a feminist value, so the Internet works well for women. Quantum feminism is the network of feminist discourse online. The Internet gives the discourse a structure and a means of navigation.

There is a problem with the old-fashioned Internet, which is that because there is no physical journey in hypertext, it emphasises each stage on the Back/Forward procession, rather than the space between them. This is unfair on those spaces, which are cruelly neglected just because they don't really exist.

123. Snake Oil and Holy Water

Comment #28142 by jonecc on March 28, 2007 at 6:15 am

As Dawkins says, if you criticise the words in the Books, the statements made by Pope or Ayatollah, or the rituals that people practice, you are accused by religious "moderates" of caricaturing religion. It doesn't matter how carefully you differentiate your attacks on that kind of literalist religion from your attacks on the more intellectual kind.

In Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation, for instance, he goes to great pains to explain exactly who he's talking about, only to be attacked for not having done so.

124. Hell is real and eternal: Pope

Comment #28016 by jonecc on March 27, 2007 at 3:29 pm

"The problem is not only that our sense of sin has declined, but also that the world wars and totalitarianisms of the 20th century created a hell on earth as bad as anything we can imagine in the afterlife," Professor Bagliani said.

125. Atheist banned from committee on religious education

Comment #27412 by jonecc on March 24, 2007 at 12:56 pm

Richard Morgan

As ghostbuster said, there are reasons why atheists should want comparative religion to be taught. By pointing out that across the world entirely different ideas are simply asserted to be true, it tends to undermine the idea of belief through divine revelation.

When I was at school religious education just meant going through bits of the Bible. These days, it's much more far ranging.

Can US readers tell me, is there such a thing as Religious Education over there, or is it excluded by the Constitution?

126. Germany Cites Koran in Rejecting Divorce

Comment #27268 by jonecc on March 23, 2007 at 4:50 pm

ghostbuster

Does it say that the husband asked to be considered under sharia law? My reading of the article is that the ruling was a bizarre aberration from the judge, instantly rejected by all sides, which has been reversed.

Contrary to your statement, British law is not trumped by religious law. The discussion about veils only arose because the state has just given schools the right to ban them if they wanted to. Meanwhile, Catholic adoption agencies have been told that they don't have the right to ignore the new law making it a crime to discriminate against gay people, despite their religious sensibilities.

Abu Hamza, the militant jihadist, is currently serving a 7 year sentence for soliciting murder and inciting racial hatred. Demonstrators waving placards demanding the murder of the Danish cartoonist were arrested, and at least one sent to jail (does anyone have a reference for this?).

None of this suggests a climate of pandering to religious minorities (in Britain, all religions are a minority). You ask, "So why are we running so scared of offending them?" It doesn't seem to me that "we" are.

127. Germany Cites Koran in Rejecting Divorce

Comment #27254 by jonecc on March 23, 2007 at 4:29 pm

Muslim opinion on the age of Aisha at marriage varies from 6, with the marriage being consummated at 9, to 23.

There is an informative summary of the subject here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aisha%27s_age_at_marriage

128. Britain Proposes Allowing Schools to Forbid Full-Face Muslim Veils

Comment #27161 by jonecc on March 23, 2007 at 10:05 am

Big T

Thanks very much for your private email following on from this thread, the contents of which I greatly appreciated. I've been trying to reply, without success. There seems to be some kind of a technical glitch. I'll keep trying.

129. The Salem Hypothesis

Comment #27145 by jonecc on March 23, 2007 at 9:33 am

Do all theoretical scientists have a bedtime? Is it centrally controlled?

130. The Salem Hypothesis

Comment #27138 by jonecc on March 23, 2007 at 9:06 am

As so many of you are engineers, can you teach us any of your songs?

131. The Salem Hypothesis

Comment #27135 by jonecc on March 23, 2007 at 9:05 am

I would imagine that as many creationists have an aptitude for technical problems as anyone else, and those creationists that do would probably be uncomfortable with theoretical science, so would tend to go into applied science, therefore engineering. Therefore you'd expect to meet a lot of creationist engineers, especially in a country like US where a lot of people are creationists in the first place.

I would also imagine that most engineers would tend towards science or Maths at school, whatever their religious beliefs. If it turned out that science-minded creationists took the same subjects at school as science-minded non-creationists, but then the split occurred as soon as the option to specialise became available, this would back this up.

I assume that in the US students are able to specialise in Maths, Physics, Chemistry and/or Biology at school, then choose more precise subjects such as Physiology or Electrical Engineering at college or university, as in the UK.

132. Britain Proposes Allowing Schools to Forbid Full-Face Muslim Veils

Comment #26909 by jonecc on March 22, 2007 at 8:43 am

Deimos: OK, fair enough.

HunterZolomon
I think I've covered my response to your point in my above posts. I'm certainly not implying any approval of the niqab, or the values that lie behind it.

I'm leaving this discussion now, as I've got things to do. I've started a discussion on how we discuss Islam in the General Posts section of the Forum.

133. Britain Proposes Allowing Schools to Forbid Full-Face Muslim Veils

Comment #26902 by jonecc on March 22, 2007 at 8:15 am

Adrian
Why, because you don't like religious belief, should people be compelled to remove such symbols from public places? If you were wearing a T-shirt saying "There is no God", would you want to be made to remove it?

ghostbuster
Of course some people disagree with pluralist democracy. Not all these people are religious. Some people believe in the revolutionary overthrow of the state by the working class. Some people believe in fascist dictatorship. There are still people who believe in government by the monarchy. The test of free speech is whether we can cope with people who would destroy free speech, and vanquish them by the power of argument.

I don't understand why the expression of personal belief should be considered so offensive, whether in schools or anywhere. Why shouldn't people who believe in Islam, or anarchism, or the way of the Jedi, be able to wear the niqab, or an Anarchy-A, or a small pin in the shape of a light sabre? What are the consequences of this that they should outweigh the right to self-declaration?

134. Britain Proposes Allowing Schools to Forbid Full-Face Muslim Veils

Comment #26899 by jonecc on March 22, 2007 at 8:05 am

And now we have someone referring to "hyper sex drive Arab men". If that isn't racism, what is?

Back with some relief to courteous keith. Of course there are worse abuses than rules around the hijab, and it should also be noted that the kind of civil liberties I'm talking about would get short shrift in the Cairo Declaration.

With regard to Britishness, it seems to me that Britishness is what British people do. By defining it and demanding that people declare allegiance to your definition, you undermine free speech as you try to defend it. In any case, wearing the niqab isn't in itself in contradiction to those values. Not all Muslims support the forced imposition of sharia law on those who disagree.

When I talk about historical baggage, I suppose I'm thinking more than anything of the 1970s when I grew up. At the time, Britain was a much more racist country than it is now. "Paki-bashing" was popular enough to have a name all of its own, and discrimination against all ethnic minorities was routine. I'm not saying we shouldn't be critical of Islam, but given this history I think we should take the trouble to be reasonable and accurate, and not indulge in xenophobic or racist slurs.

You have been, and that's why I'm taking some trouble to differentiate between your contributions and those of some others.

135. Britain Proposes Allowing Schools to Forbid Full-Face Muslim Veils

Comment #26890 by jonecc on March 22, 2007 at 7:30 am

I agree, sanjiv, Muslim women, and for that matter Muslim men, are subject to a con. I'm not sure it's the government's job to address that though. If we had the secular government we want, rather than one that appoints Archbishops and encourages faith schools, surely it would avoid the subject of religion, focussing instead on issues like health care and the roads.

It is someone's duty, though. I think it's probably ours.

136. Britain Proposes Allowing Schools to Forbid Full-Face Muslim Veils

Comment #26884 by jonecc on March 22, 2007 at 6:46 am

The reason why it's different from the Danish cartoons debate is that in that debate we were on the side of civil liberties, whereas in this debate we're on the side of increased restrictions.

I know that most Muslims don't wear it. I pointed that out above. In fact, hardly any girls wear it. One of my arguments against the concerns raised, for instance over school security, is that it's only a problem if large numbers of girls are wearing it, which isn't the case.

I personally dislike the niqab intensely, and I think it's use is rooted in misogyny. I'm very uncomfortable with the idea of banning religious practices, though, if only because that brings us down to the level of the theists.

And it isn't the case that everyone else faces similar restrictions on religious garb. Sikhs wear turbans, for instance.

You say that most of the girls would welcome a ban. How do you know that? I'm not saying you're wrong, and if you showed me some proper research justifying that I'd very probably change my view, but I'm not aware of any.

I agree that religious sensibilities shouldn't be given special privileges over other issues of principle, but I'm not sure what the vital issue of principle is, and I can't help wondering whether the government are more concerned about their vulnerable northwestern constituencies than they are about the issue itself.

Thanks though for raising the level of debate.

137. Britain Proposes Allowing Schools to Forbid Full-Face Muslim Veils

Comment #26873 by jonecc on March 22, 2007 at 5:06 am

I entirely agree, aleprechaunist, the debate shouldn't be inter-racial or inter-cultural. If people would abstain from remarks like "let them emigrate to Saudi Arabia or Aghanistan", then we could all treat it in that way.

Here - http://secback.blog.co.uk/2007/03/17/apostasy~1911512 - is something I wrote about apostasy in the Islamic tradition. I'd like to think it could serve as an example of how you can be critical of Islam without descending to that level.

138. Britain Proposes Allowing Schools to Forbid Full-Face Muslim Veils

Comment #26869 by jonecc on March 22, 2007 at 4:25 am

epeeist

Yes, it's true, there is a jihadist element within young British Muslims. This is a serious problem.

But the discussion isn't about Muslims who want to force the entire world into Sharia law at the point of a Kalashnikov. The discussion is about girls who want to wear a piece of cloth across their own faces. That isn't the same, and it simply isn't the case that all girls who want that support the jihadists.

139. Britain Proposes Allowing Schools to Forbid Full-Face Muslim Veils

Comment #26868 by jonecc on March 22, 2007 at 4:21 am

And one thing no-one seems to have grasped is the small scale of the issue. Some of you seem to think we're talking about half the Muslim girls in Britain. In fact, there will hardly be any schools with more than one or two. This is because women from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Somalia, the most common countries of origin, don't generally wear it.

There's a school near me whose students come about 30% from a Muslim background, and I don't know of a single girl wearing a veil. I teach adults, and although I've had hundreds if not thousands of adult female Muslim students, I've never had one veiled student in my class.

And Big T, the percentage of Muslims in France is about 10%. I expect you got the idea about the big French takeover from Sam Harris, who comes out with it in Letter to a Christian Nation. In any case, do you really think all French Muslims would vote for sharia law? How little you understand the subject.

I yield to no-one in my loathing of Islam as a religion, but given our own historical baggage we really ought to take the trouble to make our criticism as reasonable as possible.

140. Britain Proposes Allowing Schools to Forbid Full-Face Muslim Veils

Comment #26866 by jonecc on March 22, 2007 at 4:06 am

Big T

You see? Start with remarks about people going back where they came from, and people like DavidJMH start crawling out from the woodwork.

The point many contributors are missing is that unlike for instance the Danish cartoons case, this is an instance where we are trying to impose limitations on them. Taking a hard line against civil liberties in this case just makes it harder to argue for them in other cases.

Anyway, it may be that the case for doing so is overwhelming, although personally I'm not convinced, but it should surely be possible to do so without reference to people's origins. In any case, most Muslim schoolgirls are British citizens, born in Britain, so their definition of Britishness is just as valid as anyone else's.

141. Britain Proposes Allowing Schools to Forbid Full-Face Muslim Veils

Comment #26802 by jonecc on March 21, 2007 at 6:32 pm

See, now that's just the kind of thing that ruins a discussion like this.

Some of us, Big T, are trying to have a nuanced, subtle debate, where we balance freedom of worship with the requirements of a school, where we consider the best course of action to protect the interests of the girl concerned, who clearly cannot be blamed for living the belief system she's not been given much of a choice about.

Then you wander by, with your offhand bigoted remarks, and suddenly we're back in the dimly remembered age of space hoppers and casual xenophobia. Did the Nineties pass you by entirely?

142. Britain Proposes Allowing Schools to Forbid Full-Face Muslim Veils

Comment #26781 by jonecc on March 21, 2007 at 4:01 pm

I wasn't arguing that it's a good thing, and I don't like the religion behind it.

The question, though, is whether you make those girls better or worse off by banning it.

If it's not allowed, the most likely response from their parents will be to withdraw the girls from state schools and put them in a private Muslim school. At the moment, at least they will learn a wider range of subjects, mix with other kids from different backgrounds and get to see women in senior roles.

The problem really is with the idea of school uniform. I've never liked the idea, I hated it when I was at school and I've never changed my view.

143. Britain Proposes Allowing Schools to Forbid Full-Face Muslim Veils

Comment #26754 by jonecc on March 21, 2007 at 1:56 pm

Ah ha. I've just checked them out in Wikipedia, which says that the IHRC "campaigns against what it sees as violations of the human rights of Muslims." I can see how anyone who believed in the literal word of the Koran would see human rights as dependent on your religion.

144. Britain Proposes Allowing Schools to Forbid Full-Face Muslim Veils

Comment #26753 by jonecc on March 21, 2007 at 1:49 pm

Actually, I don't see why girls that want to wear it shouldn't. The argument that it undermines security in schools seems specious, as hardly any girls wear it, and an agreement could perhaps be reached in which girls who wear it also wore name tags issued by the school.

I was fascinated to learn that there was an Islamic Human Rights Commission, though. I wonder what their position is on apostasy?

145. Religious Conviction vs. Political Dogmatism

Comment #26733 by jonecc on March 21, 2007 at 12:00 pm

In the most recent Congressional elections, the Republican right lost ground, primarily over Iraq. For the first time since 9/11, the US has swung towards the Democrats.

Now that they're facing a Democrat in the White House the next time, and Democrat majorities in Congress and Senate, it's hardly surprising if there's a political realignment going on.

You can expect a battle from the old guard though.

146. Christian soldier takes up arms as hustings near

Comment #26534 by jonecc on March 20, 2007 at 6:41 am

The baffling thing is the level of importance they give to gay issues. You'd almost think they were protesting too much ...

This guy is the Bishop of Motherwell. You'd be looking at Motherwell along time before you came to the conclusion that gay adoption was its most urgent social problem. We're dealing with a man who acts as if the promotion of homophobia is a more urgent goal than unemployment, decaying housing stock, drug addiction or any of Motherwell's other problems.

147. US TV Commercial for The God Delusion during Countdown with Keith Olbermann

Comment #26521 by jonecc on March 20, 2007 at 5:01 am

Bremas, did you mean your post as it sounded? You seem to be describing the Da Vinci Code as a good read.

I read it, but I'm not sure that's quite how I'd describe it. I distinctly recall having a false start, when the first sentence of the book was so trite and hackneyed I had no option but to hurl the book across the room.

148. Stephen interviews Ayaan Hirsi Ali author of Infidel

Comment #26144 by jonecc on March 17, 2007 at 7:48 am

The point with Ayaan, though, is that we on the left could have done better for her and people like her. We've consistently failed to grasp, and I still find myself constantly having to make this point, that by resisting fundamentalist Islam (by which I mean the belief that the Koran is the literal word of Allah) we are supporting not the neo-cons, who were quite happy to work with the fundamentalists in Afghanistan, Indonesia and other places when it suited them, but the people who have suffered directly through that literalist belief. If you actually read the Koran, it rapidly becomes very clear that people who follow this book are not our natural allies on any subject.

149. Evangelicals battle over agenda, environment

Comment #25580 by jonecc on March 14, 2007 at 7:05 am

It's important to remember that the same business interests who back the Republican Party also back the evangelicals. They don't want the kind of limitations on business it would take to tackle global warming, so they're getting all their mouthpieces to campaign against them.

Recently, though, there's been a swing towards liberalism in America, which is bound to be reflected in religious movements, as those movements are subject to the same social forces as everyone else. We're witnessing this conflict being played out.

I hope the liberal evangelists win, as it would be really nice if industrial civilisation survived long enough to become truly secular.

150. Did You Know? Shift Happens - Globalization, Information Age

Comment #25575 by jonecc on March 14, 2007 at 6:52 am

Excellent as they are, I can think of many ways that Google Maps could be improved. Better resolution, detailed mapping of wider areas, more regular updates.

With regard to Moore's Law, as I understand it this was originally related to the number of transistors on a circuit board, although it's used in general parlance to mean "how fast computers get better". I would have thought the most important measure at the moment would be bandwidth, which for me in the UK has more than doubled in the last year and a half, since I've been with my current supplier.

Not that simple number crunching in itself guarantees machines with human capacities anyway. It's how you use it that counts.