101. Christianity 'could die out within a century'

Comment #197348 by Shuggy on June 21, 2008 at 8:05 pm

It'll be a worry if Christianity and Judaism die out leaving Islam as the only monotheism. Islam's quite triumphalist enough already. They need each other to show their adherants that there are other ways of being monotheists (since we're never going to be fast enough at weaning them of that one god too many). It'll be like the Magisterium of Lyra's world in the His Dark Materials series. In a way, a world-wide California of crazy cults, but all safely small, would be better.

102. Gay brains structured like those of the opposite sex

Comment #194429 by Shuggy on June 16, 2008 at 7:12 pm

Steven Mading:

How does this affect the claim that transsexualism and homosexuality are entirely unrelated things? I've heard it claimed many times that one's mental gender is something different from one's sexual orientation. This study seems to imply that's not true - that homosexual orientation is caused by being the opposite gender in the brain.

I agree. If the study had found transsexuals had the brain of the opposite sex, it would make a lot more sense.

This takes us back to "a woman trapped in a man's body" descriptions of homosexuality (has anyone else heard of "The Invert" by "Anomaly" [1927] - a little handbook of self-hatred if ever there was one? I keep my copy upside-down in the bookshelf, it seems only appropriate.)

As a gay man, my anecdotal experience is that gay men's sexuality is much more like strait men's (only directed at men) than strait women's, and conversely lesbians' more like strait women's (only I'm much more tentative there).

Eg. The tendency of men, strait or gay, to fetishise the anatomy of their preferred target gender. The tendency of women not to, but to be attracted holistically. The tendency of men, strait or gay, to put sex ahead of relationships, and women vice versa.

103. George W Bush meets Pope amid claims he might convert to Catholicism

Comment #193724 by Shuggy on June 16, 2008 at 12:26 am

I don't care if Ratzo was a HJ as a kid (though calling him a Nazi feels good, if cheap), but he pretty much singlehandedly consolidated JP2's policies against homosexuality and birth control. As a gay man I resent being called "morally disordered". It took me a long time to line my ducks up, and I was a lot more disordered when I was trying to be strait.

And how many paedophile priests are holed up in the Vatican, hiding from justice, right now?

104. Logical Proof of the Existence of a Divine Creator, Why Atheism is Not Logically Sound

Comment #192626 by Shuggy on June 13, 2008 at 5:04 pm

Yet those who doubt the existence of a Creator believe that an entire universe, containing all of the billions of elements necessary for life to form, may have come about without a builder.

Billions? Does the man know NO chemistry?

would it then be possible for billions of species to spontaneously come about, each with a male and female of each kind so that they could exist in the long run?

Or biology?

the fact that these planets do not collide as meteors do, that they have gravity

Or physics?

Yomin Postelnik is the President of IRPW, a company that offers business plans, funding advice and facilitation, SBA loan applications, SWOT analyses, bold and effective marketing strategies, general business development and grant writing and research for non-profits and certain qualified businesses.

Quite possibly.

105. Male circumcision is a weapon in the sperm wars

Comment #190954 by Shuggy on June 10, 2008 at 1:55 am

Didaktylos on June 7, 2008

One of the most interesting suggestions I've ever heard for the origins of infant circumcision is that it served as a test for haemophilia.

A test to destruction? Quality control at source? Since haemophilia had (and has?) no cure, the only benefit of that would be not having to feed a child who wouldn't reach maturity. And that hardly explains, why the penis? And why not girls? (Of course we don't know they didn't cut girls as well, back then.) Oh yes, boys are much more likely to get haemophilia because it's carried on the X so they only need one gene for it. But why not just a little prick...?

106. Male circumcision is a weapon in the sperm wars

Comment #190946 by Shuggy on June 10, 2008 at 1:25 am

Redpen:

Removal of foreskin is mutiliation in the same sense as cutting one's fingernails not because both grow back but because neither one serves much use.

But it does. In any case, there is only one person qualified to decide that.

I try not to waste a lot of time defending the m-word. "Mutilation" is a removal by cutting that the speaker don't approve of. But if the most minor and sterile of Female Genital Cutting is mutilation, then so is circumcision.

A better analogy may be the common cosmetic surgery of removing extra skin around the neck.

And if that were done messily, that would be considered mutilation, no? Circumcision is often done messily. In fact the web of the frenulum makes it difficult not to.

[quote] Only if you count the infections caused by medical and medically-ordained parental meddling with infant foreskins, as above.[/quote]

(The format here is < blockquote > < /blockquote > for some reason.)

This is merely anecdotal, but every uncircumcised person I've known has had issues with infections at one point or another. In fact, one recently had his foreskin removed because the issue was so bothersome.

That is merely anecdotal. 3/4 of the men in the world are not circumcised. That's an awfully big population that you didn't sample. I think these Friend Of A Friend reports of "infections" in the foreskin are mainly common in circumcising societies, because they reinforce the status quo. How many infections has any of us had in the past year? And how many just cleared up? And how many men do you know who aren't circumcised but have never mentioned it because they've never had infections?

Incidentally, he reports no change in sensation or sensitivity (just as every study has essentially concluded).

There have only been about six studies. Three of them (Masters & Johnson, Bleustein et al., Payne et al.) reported no difference because they didn't look at the foreskin. One (Gray, et al. reported no difference, but then it reported virtually no sexual dysfunction at all, either (perhaps because it merged a five point scale down to a three-point one). Or perhaps because the men had all volunteered to be circumcised and were being paid to take part. Or perhaps because it was part of the trials to prove that circumcision prevents HIV, and that was the result they wanted.... The fifth found that "circumcision removes the most sensitive part of the penis." The sixth, in China found

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the erectile function of adults after circumcision.
METHODS: Ninty-five patients were investigated on erectile function by questionnaire before and after circumcision, respectively.

RESULTS: Eighteen patients suffered from mild erectile dysfunction before circumcision, and 28 suffered from mild or moderate erectile dysfunction after circumcision(P = 0.001). Adult circumcision appeared to have resulted in weakened erectile confidence in 33 cases (P = 0.04), difficult insertion in 41 cases (P =0.03), prolonged intercourse in 31 cases (P = 0.04) and improved satisfaction in 34 cases (P = 0.04).

CONCLUSIONS: Adult circumcision has certain effect on erectile function, to which more importance should be attached.

107. Male circumcision is a weapon in the sperm wars

Comment #189947 by Shuggy on June 7, 2008 at 9:10 pm

Circumcision is one of the less painful forms of mutilation

Says who? Not Nelson Mandela for one.

Elightenme:

Approx 8% of uncircumsised men suffer from relative-phimosis, which importantly only causes mild to intense discomfort in later stages of coitus, whilst leaving the victim otherwise functional.

I had a number of years of anxiety caused by this, and reluctance to seek medical attention , but once I did, the doctor's diagnosis was quick and simple; "that's gonna have to come off".

I was quickly sorted, and wished I had had it done sooner.

Others' mileage may differ. Maybe if you'd gone to the doctor sooner ... ? There are lesser treatments for phimosis than cutting the whole thing off, some non-surgical. (True phimosis does not occur in babies, when the foreskin is naturally attached to the glans, but it's often "diagnosed" and circumcision prescribed. There are also often absurd claims about how soon the foreskin "should" retract, leading to iatrogenic phimosis, true adhesions - where the torn foreskin heals in contact with the torn glans - and hence "chronic remunerative surgery".)

RedPen:

an uncircumsized penis gets infected relatively commonly

Only if you count the infections caused by medical and medically-ordained parental meddling with infant foreskins, as above.

(And I usually abhor spelling flames, but anyone who claims to speak with authority about circumcision should learn to spell it. The suffix "-cise" (meaning to cut) is invariable.)

108. Male circumcision is a weapon in the sperm wars

Comment #189696 by Shuggy on June 7, 2008 at 2:20 am

48. Comment #189684 by Corylus on June 7, 2008

Shuggy:

I have published an discussion of circumcision as a memeplex, that goes some way to explaining why it continues.

Very interesting, also extremely clear with a great layout. Must have taken a huge amount of work to produce.

Many thanks. Graphics like the cartoon and whack-a-mole were things I'd done years before, that just fitted in.

Greyman:

Infant circumcission appears to have been developed only by one particular culture.

Two. The UK and US did not directly adopt Jewish infant circumcision, but had an interim stage in the late 19th century of circumcising boys to punish them for masturbating, or to prevent masturbating. That can explain why the meme "a boy should look like his father" never protected baby sons of intact fathers. The intact fathers had intact sons, who were circumcised later and became circumcised fathers who had their sons circumcised to look like them. (Something similar may have happened in ancient Israel.)

109. Male circumcision is a weapon in the sperm wars

Comment #189631 by Shuggy on June 6, 2008 at 6:59 pm

Christopher Wilson's database seems to come from the school of anthropology that ignores anyone who doesn't wear a grass skirt. MGC is widely practised in the US, Israel, the Philippines, South Korea and used to be prevalent throughout the English-speaking world, none of them societies noted for polygyny.

Wilson's theories might help explain why the custom was instituted, millennia ago in Africa, Polynesiaa and Australia, but I have published an discussion of circumcision as a memeplex, that goes some way to explaining why it continues.

al-rawandi:

One tribe in Australia takes a sharpened needle like stick and shoves through the base of the penis making a hole through all the important stuff.

That way semen comes out of the hole, and he will only impregnate a woman when he covers the holes with a finger during sex.

Reminds me of a joke about an accident involving a shotgun.

Punchline: "No," said the surgeon apologetically, "a flautist. He'll teach you the fingering."

110. The day of judgment

Comment #189628 by Shuggy on June 6, 2008 at 6:47 pm

And how could one be more serious than the writer of this prayer for the interment of the dead, from the Book of Common Prayer, an incantation of bleak, existential beauty, even more so in its beautiful setting by Henry Purcell: "Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay."

Credit where credit is due: Job 14 1-2

111. When two worlds collide: threat of class warfare over faith-based schooling

Comment #187775 by Shuggy on June 2, 2008 at 3:50 pm

Alarm bells start sounding ... They get even louder ... And they reach a crescendo

No, they reach a fortissimo. The whole thing was a crescendo.

- Mistress Pedanté

Ah, I see Branko has beaten me to it. But a climax, Branko?

112. Character Attacks: How to Properly Apply the Ad Hominem

Comment #187771 by Shuggy on June 2, 2008 at 3:38 pm

6. Comment #187615 by AmericanGodless on June 2, 2008 at 11:32 am

I don't get it. The doctor says lose weight and the patient is concerned that doctor is herself overweight. The author says this is unfair personal criticism. But when a neighbor advises on lawn care, the author says it is relevant whether the neighbor's lawn is healthy. What's the difference? Why would "tu quoque" be fair in the latter case but not in the former?

Because the health of the neighbour's lawn demonstrates that their lawn care advice works, at least on that lawn. The doctor's fatness does not demonstrate that fatness is healthy. If the doctor were giving advice on HOW to lose weight, her own inability to benefit from that advice would be relevant, but not compelling evidence that it was false.

In general, it is not ad hominem to attack a professional for behaving contrary to the principles of that profession, whatever else they do wrong. A doctor should not spread disease, a journalist should not write falsehoods, a police officer should not commit crimes, and attacks on them for doing these are not ad hominem.

113. Karma comedians

Comment #187327 by Shuggy on June 2, 2008 at 12:33 am

19. Comment #186766 by ThoughtsonCommonToad on May 31, 2008 at 9:31 am

[18. Comment #186765 by mordacious1 on May 31, 2008 at 9:29 am]

If Karma existed, GW Bush would have had four sons, and they would all have died in Iraq...

I realise you wrote that to provoke but that's pretty disgusting.

How so? It's a hypothetical. It's not the same as wishing that fate on W's real sons, or even wishing he had sons to wish it on.

Actually, I have some sympathy for a very abstract kind of karma, in so far as nasty people are punished for their nastiness by not being nice people, and vice versa. My grandmother used to say that not only was the Kingdom of Heaven within you [- attributed to Jesus, more or less, Luke 17:21 - "Kingdom of God" actually] but so is the Kingdom of Hell. And of course another way of putting it is "What goes around, comes around."

114. Random Acts of Evolution

Comment #187306 by Shuggy on June 1, 2008 at 9:32 pm

esuther asked:

Would some of the biologists in the group also please explain to me how a creature can have a bigger genome than homo sapiens? Or a 'more efficient' one?

Why not? We are among the least specialised of the animals. To make a big brain, our main specialisation, you need a gene that says "make brains" (and all animals with any brain have that) and a gene that says "make this much" which is the same as the gene in the other animals but with a higher value of "this". I am of course speaking in crude terms of something that is very complicated, but it's just as complicated for all animals.

Two factors that make our development look more complicated than it is:

1. The most complicated element in it is the working cell, and one of those is carried forward from each generation to the next, like the bug that makes yoghurt or ginger beer.

2. Much of the development is shaped by earlier and adjacent development. So a muscle attachment will cause the development of a bone of a particular shape, and vice versa. This was borne home to me strikingly in a pathology lab when I examined the skulls of two-headed - or rather two-faced, single-craniumed lambs. Clearly there has been no evolution of two-headed lambs, but the separate parts had more or less normal bone-structure (more where they were far from the join, less where they were closer), while the joins themselves had bones that were variants of the normal, modified by the presence of the other half. They did their best to work as well as they could with what they had, which in two faced animals is not often very well.

115. The Mind-Altering Role of Incense in Religion

Comment #186672 by Shuggy on May 31, 2008 at 1:22 am

And as anyone who has attended a bris, ... knows, religion has always been instrumental in marking the passage of individuals through the life course ... something that people love to do.

No baby is on record as ever having loved attending a bris.

Apeseed:

...it was meditation that led the Buddha to declare that all the gods of Hinduism were creations of the mind and the sense of a permanent self was an illusion. People just didn't listen to what he was trying to tell them because they were too busy building a religion up around him.

I love the story that when the Buddha was dying, his disciples asked him, "Master, what form should your tomb and memorials take?" Being beyond speech, the Buddha replied by putting one inverted empty bowl on top of another one, signifying that once the human husk was empty there was no point in trying to contain it. Instead his followers built huge and elaborate stupas, in the form of inverted bowls on top of each other.

116. Car dealership advert tells atheists to 'shut up'

Comment #186669 by Shuggy on May 31, 2008 at 12:55 am

we at Kieffe & Sons Ford wonder why we don't tell the other 14 per cent to sit down and shut up.

Tell away. You can't make us.

epeeist:

Seriously though, aren't all religions just a pyramid sales scam?

With a Chinese finger trap built in.

117. Is Science Killing the Soul?

Comment #185071 by Shuggy on May 26, 2008 at 9:15 pm

Well, in the passage I've just quoted, Sagan seems to be criticizing religions not just for getting it wrong, which many people would accept, but for their deficiencies precisely in the sphere in which they are supposed to retain some residual virtue. Religions are not imaginative, not poetic, not soulful. On the contrary, they are parochial, small-minded, niggardly with the human imagination, precisely where science is generous.

Yet oddly, some of our greatest art and music is based on religion. It's as though Haydn, Bach Mozart, Beethoven, Verdi and Dvorak; Michaelangeo, Leonardo, Giotto etc. looked into Christianity (and their counterparts into Judaism and Islam) and drew out the soul that ought to be there, but isn't. Faure, I'm told, was an atheist, yet his Requiem is among the most soulful.

In the 1970s, Dan White was given a light sentence for murdering the mayor of San Francisco because his mind was addled....

Funny, I've never seen it put like that. He didn't only murder the mayor, and I think most of us gayfolk would have said, "In the 1970s, Dan White was given a light sentence for murdering Harvey Milk, the first gay supervisor (and some other guy), because his mind was addled..."

...addled from too much junk food, the infamous Twinkie Defense.

Like most gayfolk, I've always taken it for granted that any defence would have done, and the real reason he got a light sentence was homophobia (the SF gay community certainly did so, and rioted, burning 12 police vehicles, at the verdict.) But that doesn't explain the light sentence for murdering Moscone.

118. Ore. Court: Boy Has Say in Circumcision

Comment #181970 by Shuggy on May 19, 2008 at 1:07 am

Dad appeals teen son's circumcision to U.S. Supreme Court
Posted by The Oregonian May 16, 2008 14:08PM


A divorced father who wants to circumcise his 13-year-old son against the wishes of the boy's mother is trying to take his case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

James Boldt, who converted to Judaism, argues that preventing him from circumcising his son violates his constitutional right to practice his religion.

The U.S. Supreme Court accepts a small fraction of the appeals it receives. A decision on whether it will take the case is not expected until the fall

Earlier this year, the Oregon Supreme Court ruled that the trial judge should determine what the boy wants.

Boldt's ex-wife, Lia, a member of the Russian Orthodox Church, says her son doesn't want the procedure but is afraid to tell his father.

Lia Boldt also argued that circumcision was dangerous, a move that drew the attention of national Jewish organizations and an anti-circumcision group based in Seattle.

James Boldt now lives near Olympia. Lia Boldt lives in Jacksonville.

James Boldt has custody of the boy, which he says gives him the right to make religious and medical decisions for his son.

The couple married in the early 1990s and lived in Grants Pass. She filed for divorce in 1998. The child initially lived with his mother, but his father later won custody.

The father started studying Judaism in 1999 and later converted. He said he gradually introduced the boy to Judaism. By 2004, the child wanted to convert, which meant getting circumcised.

The boy had recently turned 9 when his father scheduled the procedure.

The mother went to court. The judge ruled in favor of the father, but ordered him not to circumcise his son until the mother had finished her appeals.

-- Ashbel S. (Tony) Green; tonygreen@news.oregonian.com

http://blog.oregonlive.com/breakingnews/2008/05/dad_appeals_teen_sons_circumci.html
That site accepts comments.

119. Richard Dawkins Responds to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Comment #181665 by Shuggy on May 17, 2008 at 9:40 pm

Since RD said

This storm in a teapot deserves little time or attention from me, and less from anyone else, so I hope this can be the last word.

you really don't need to worry, qomak, that he's going to make too much of this charlatan anymore.

"clearmind" said

i would not be so stressed out to prove evolution is a fact

RD doesn't need to prove evolution is a fact. Darwin did that 150 years ago, since then we've just been working out the details.

120. UC Berkeley is going to court over Evolution website

Comment #180875 by Shuggy on May 16, 2008 at 2:22 am

At the risk of sounding like I support the PJI, I think this is very sloppy wording and thinking:

Of course, some religious beliefs explicitly contradict science (e.g., the belief that the world and all life on it was created in six literal days)

Science is not "the world and all life on it took somewhat longer than six literal days to come into being." That is just the current understanding of the conclusions to be drawn from the evidence found by scientific methods and reasoning. Science must be always open to contradiction, and someday scientific evidence could emerge showing that the w and all l on it were indeed c in 6 l ds. I know the likelihood approaches zero with near-infinite probability, but we must never close the door against it. Science is a collection of methods of learning about nature, and I think this page should rather defend the methods of science against the attacks of those who would replace them by revelation, holy books, etc.

121. Group finds Starbucks logo too hot to handle

Comment #180868 by Shuggy on May 16, 2008 at 1:58 am

a naked woman on it with her legs spread like a prostitute

Do prostitutes spread their legs in a different manner from other (naked) women? How do these people know? Actually, if they were legs and not tails, they would be spread more like a contortionist, or someone suffering some kind of rubbery-bones syndrome.

Grumpy Max:

I thought it must be a lady pouring out two bags of coffee in front of her. I thought the scales were the beans, tumbling out.

By George, he's right! It does look like that, more anyway than the prostitute version.

122. Vatican: It's OK to believe in aliens

Comment #180454 by Shuggy on May 15, 2008 at 2:10 am

Did Jesus have to die for them too - second time over?

"For God so loved the every world with intelligent life that he gave his only all his begotten sons ..."
John 3 16,
Jhon ||, |----,
Dzhon 10, 121,
Zhon §,¤ ...

123. Vatican: It's OK to believe in aliens

Comment #179931 by Shuggy on May 14, 2008 at 2:22 am

Pope John Paul declared in 1992 that the ruling against Galileo was an error resulting from "tragic mutual incomprehension."

And exactly what did Galileo not comprehend?

As a gay man, what I want to know is, what if the aliens have one sex or three (or more or none), will it be sinful for aliens of the same sex to have sex with each other?

What (if they're humanoid, and attractive to us) about sex with aliens? What if it can "transmit life" - ie result in hybrid childriens?

Whatever the answers are, I'm sure
1. the Church will deliver them with 100% certitude.
2. they will be such as to maximise guilt.

124. Muslim Rebel Sisters: At Odds With Islam and Each Other

Comment #174614 by Shuggy on May 3, 2008 at 1:12 am

28. Comment #174544 by rod-the-farmer on May 2, 2008

For some time now I have been arguing that if it truly IS a choice, then why don't the men choose to wear it ? Why is it that some (surely not all) muslim men cannot control themselves when confronted with the sight of a womans' hair ? Or her neck/legs/etc. ? How about a moderately form-fitting dress ? Or even a tight sweater !

The other evening in a city street I saw two women, one in full-length skirt, long sleeves and veil, the other, presumably her daughter, in sprayed-on jeans, knee-high high-heeled boots that made her hips swivel - and headscarf! I imagine it's the last bit of Islam she's going to let go, or maybe the last bit she obeys her parents about.

125. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #174566 by Shuggy on May 2, 2008 at 5:39 pm

Sorry if this has been followed up (I searched the next few pages and found nothing)

29. Comment #172201 by FightingFalcon on April 29, 2008

Many of Hitler's close associates (although not himself) were also homosexual.

1. Ernst Roehm
2. ?

This is often claimed as a homophobic smear, either of Nazis or gay folk, but how much truth is there to it? There can't have been many, or they can't have had much power, and they must have been DEEPLY closetted, or the Nazis wouldn't have strengthened paragraph 175, closed the gay clubs, sent the gays to the camps where they were bottom of the heap, and so on.

126. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #173404 by Shuggy on April 30, 2008 at 6:15 pm

DickDawkins (any resemblance ...) wrote:

I don't think he's qualified to answer the God question. If he were to write a book on the proof of evolution, if he hasn't already, I'd definitely think it would've been a credible book.

He has. Several. You ought to read them.

However a biologist answering the god question to me is like a mathematician solving an engineering problem. There are commonalities, but I don't think the mathematician is qualified to solve the engineering problem.

So what would qualify someone to "answer the god question". I feel a T-shirt coming on, something like "Theology is a study without a subject."

127. Ore. Court: Boy Has Say in Circumcision

Comment #173256 by Shuggy on April 30, 2008 at 2:46 pm

Correction: The father's name is James H. Boldt.

128. Ore. Court: Boy Has Say in Circumcision

Comment #172700 by Shuggy on April 30, 2008 at 12:01 am

Update: David Boldt has filed a Writ of Certiorari to the United States Supreme Court in the matter of Boldt v Boldt.

"Misha" Boldt is a young man, now 13, who faces an unwanted circumcision occasioned by the (alleged) conversion of his custodial father. The father is an attorney who managed to gain sole custody of his son. The divorce has been long and public and acrimonious.

The natural mother (representing her son) lost at the lower level and again on appeal to an intermediate Oregon court. Doctors Opposing Circumcision interposed an amicus brief
and were partially successful in getting the intermediate Court ruling overturned. The Oregon Supreme Court ruled that the boy's testimony was necessary and a hearing must be held. They did not, however, forbid the circumcision or suggest the boy's opinion would be determinative. The Court's opinion and DOC's briefs are
both on the DOC website, http://www.doctorsopposingcircumcision.org/info/appeal.html

DOC maintains it is the Court's job to protect the boy until he is an adult, since it is very likely he would cave in.

Suggesting the child must be consulted is a very powerful precedent for the future.

Now the father has appealed over the heads of Oregon, directly to the US Supreme Court, which he is able to do.

DOC needs to file a response to the father's Petition for Writ of Certiorari, if only to preserve the issues on appeal. It is not required that a Petition for Writ be replied to, but failure to do so means the case could be decided on the grounds the Petitioner (the father) selects.

One attorney has donated hundreds of hours of his time. DOC wants him reimbursed so he can continue.

The American Humanist Association in Wash DC, offered to help if the case went federal, and it now has.

DOC fears the Supremes might see it as a unique religious freedom issue and take the case. For that reason they think it vital to reply to the father's petition.

Based on a message from

John V. Geisheker, J.D., LL.M.
Executive Director,
General Counsel,
Doctors Opposing Circumcision
DoctorsOpposingCircumcision.org
2132 Westlake Ave. N., Suite #150
Seattle, WA 98109
tel 1. 206. 465. 6636

Please contact him if you have any queries, or can help.

129. Is religion a threat to rationality and science?

Comment #171727 by Shuggy on April 28, 2008 at 6:18 pm

This would have been more of a debate if they'd shown each other their first drafts, and perhaps their second.

I'd like to know what Winston has to say about the man languishing in prison for "blasphemy", never mind whether he uses a bus on Saturday. (Wouldn't a bus be OK, with the driver as a Shabbas Goy? Or would he have to pay on Friday before dusk, or wait till nightfall? But for all I know the rabbinical definition of "work" includes stepping up on to the step - or the bus has been defined as a beast of burden.)

"But, oddly, the more we use science to explore nature, the more we find things we do not understand and cannot explain." What (on earth) is odd about that? Each answer raises new questions, and so it should. He seems to be grateful for new Gaps for his God to be a God of.

I find LRW to be a very engaging person, but the more I learn about what he thinks, the more infuriating he is.

130. Responses to 'Gods and Earthlings' by Richard Dawkins

Comment #169853 by Shuggy on April 27, 2008 at 1:20 am

Either the universe has always existed, or it was created by someone who has always existed.

Or someseveral, or some-many, or something, or ...

If the latter is improbable, as he claims, then why is not the former also?

Read the book - because god/dess/es amount to as much complexity as they explain. And for the same reason that in the statement "Either the book fell off the shelf because of a draught/earth tremor, or because a witch/ghost/fairy pushed it" the latter explanation is improbable, but not the former.

Could it be that the latter might make moral claims on all of us, something that would threaten our desire to be morally autonomous?

This is such a stretch it's hard to know where to begin. The short answer is no, RD is more intellectually honest than that, and has repeatedly said that the moral consequences of a statement are quite independent of its truth value. IE, if there is/are a god/dess/es, there is/are one/some, and then we would have to face whatever moral consequences follow from that, including perhaps being required to take sides in battles between god/dess/es. But as usual, the writer is thinking only of the male-like, patriarchal God of the middle Eastern monotheisims (and more particularly one of the three - I doubt that his God says RD may have four wives).

131. Yoko Ono sues over use of John Lennon videos

Comment #169845 by Shuggy on April 27, 2008 at 12:27 am

Comment #168680 by Lionel A on April 25, 2008

and link to the poll at:

http://www.myspace.com/expelledthemovement

It's currently running at

Yes [ID should be taught in schools]
854 votes (0.21%)
No
409659 votes (98.49%)
Not sure
175 votes (0.04%)
What is it?
5300 votes (1.27%)

You couldn't make that up, it's like a Zimbabwean election. My guess is some evil Darwinist has hacked the voting. Or else the whole page is a hoax.

132. Mount Vernon schools to hire investigator in Bible case

Comment #169830 by Shuggy on April 26, 2008 at 10:59 pm

Burning crosses into children's arms sounds utterly off the wall, but also very easy to prove. Let's just see photographs of the crosses.

133. Student's 'Be Happy, Not Gay' t-shirt ok

Comment #169414 by Shuggy on April 26, 2008 at 3:32 am

As a gay man, I can't help feeling that "Be ... not gay" (my ellipsis of course) goes beyond freedom of speech to an attack on my identity (CF "No Blacks" "Juden Raus"), and certainly in a student context where I might have to sit behind such a message.

In terms of retaliation, among the atheist messages at The Wero Shop, "What Would Judas Do?" would probably get up their noses most.

134. The simple falsehood at the heart of Expelled

Comment #169379 by Shuggy on April 25, 2008 at 11:28 pm

9. Comment #158272 by ryanjevansuk on April 10, 2008 at 9:19 am

... painful as it might be, I really want to watch Expelled to see if it is as bad as the reviews I have read suggest but I certainly don't want to pay to see it.

Don't expect to see it in theatres. It'll be coming to a church near you. Just pass the bucket on when it reaches you.

135. Richard Dawkins' secular army must be stopped. God is behind some of our greatest art

Comment #169377 by Shuggy on April 25, 2008 at 11:14 pm

"...but it was Dawkins that people were worshipping."

It's a great tribute to our age that a scientist can still be greeted with more adulation than a pop princess. But I can't help noting the irony of the imagery that Dawkins' reception has conjured up. Falling at his feet? Worshipping?

Does it not occur to this idiot that a man who has directed Doctor Who, Torchwood and Queer as Folk might possibly have known exactly what he was saying?

136. Richard Dawkins: 'Growth in creationist beliefs a problem for schools'

Comment #156562 by Shuggy on April 7, 2008 at 9:50 pm

apparently, Australia is supposed to be a Catholic country.

It has a high (nominally) Catholic population and the church is powerful*, but it's not a Catholic country, as say, Spain is a Catholic country.

*They say "fillum" and "haitch" as a result of the Irish teachers, and they're behind NZ in women'r rights and gay rights (no civil union there, so far as I know).

137. Russell T Davies: Return of the (tea) Time Lord

Comment #156069 by Shuggy on April 6, 2008 at 3:48 pm

"It's one of the great gay myths, the chucking out of the teenager."

It bloody isn't! Just because it didn't happen to him and doesn't happen as much as it used to, doesn't mean it doesn't still happen.

138. Who wants to kill the elderly?

Comment #154160 by Shuggy on April 2, 2008 at 7:18 pm

The Bishop specifically referred to "surplus" old people. Before we even begin to debate voluntary euthanasia with him, we need to find out what he thinks he means by that. If people who want to be euthanased consider themselves "surplus" it might be a valid argument, but instead they usually consider themselves to be in intolerable pain, with negative quality of life, and less unhappy out of the world than in it. As it stands, his use of "surplus" is a gratuitous swipe at a straw person.

139. CEAI Action Alert for Science Teachers

Comment #154155 by Shuggy on April 2, 2008 at 7:07 pm

The Florida Family Policy Council (FFPC) is a state based pro-life, pro-family, pro-marriage educational advocacy group that is associated with Dr. James Dobson and Focus on the Family.

So let's untangle that. They're anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-gay-marriage, and associated with a pro-beating-of-children group (James Dobson is the author of "Dare To Discipline").

What do these things have in commmon with being anti-evolution?

140. BBC 'too scared to allow jokes about Islam'

Comment #154151 by Shuggy on April 2, 2008 at 6:58 pm

I can't wait to see "The Mullah of Dibley" or "Imam Ted".

Come to think of it, is "The Vicar of Dibley" or "Father Ted" shown in the US?

141. Thy will be done

Comment #154147 by Shuggy on April 2, 2008 at 6:53 pm

And what would an atheist prayer look like ? "Please save us from all these deluded people and their lack of reason, make it so."

Certainly not, because that is addressed to a non-being. It would have to be of the form "May we save ourselves ... etc."

142. Thy will be done

Comment #154144 by Shuggy on April 2, 2008 at 6:49 pm

"Would they have walked out if it had been a rabbi or an imam?" he asked.

The question arises, why wasn't it a rabbi or an imam?

The first question is loaded precisely because Judaism and Islam are minority religions in the UK while Christianity is the default religion. So walking out on a Christian prayer is seen for what it is, rejecting religion, whereas walking out on a rabbi or imam would have been (incorrectly) seen as anti-Semitic or anti-Islamic.

143. Supreme Court to consider Ten Commandments vs. 'Seven Aphorisms'

Comment #153753 by Shuggy on April 2, 2008 at 1:53 am

I don't see that allowing everything is a solution, when the first four of the 10 Commandments are so toxic to all but their believers. Sure nobody could argue with Thou Shalt Not Kill (including zygotes, and except thy enemies and feeble-minded 16-year-olds whose lawyers were asleep) and Thou Shalt not Steal (but creative tax returns are OK), but those are about the only ones.

No other gods but Me? There goes freedom of religion.

No making/worshipping graven images? What if it's part of my religion?

144. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #150487 by Shuggy on March 27, 2008 at 1:59 am

I'm intrigued by RD's use of "artless". Artlessness is commonly represented as a good thing, implying lack of guile and so on. Here it's a bad thing. Perhaps someone who knows about art (with or without knowing what they like) can explain.

I have to say I was amused by

I pursued the matter until the audience's hostile demeanour persuaded me that there was no point in continuing.

I can well imagine that an audience that laughed at the "jokes" in Expelled would not take kindly to RD's logic, clarity and remorseless pursuit of the truth. They probably wouldn't like his accent, either.

145. Writer Arthur C Clarke dies at 90

Comment #148768 by Shuggy on March 23, 2008 at 9:54 pm

Rational G:

Not to be picky, but, the screenplay to 2001 came first, co-written by Clarke and Kubrick. The novel came later.

Fathom:

To be pickier still the novel "The Sentinel" came first on which the screenplay was based.

Pickiest: "The Sentinel" was a short story. SPOILER: A mysterious structure (pyramid?) is found on the Moon. They break in and realise that it is a transmitter that has been broadcasting to a distant galaxy, but when they broke in, it stopped. And that is what it was for. The End.

What piqued my imagination was his vision of a computer-generated city in The City and The Stars (something we haven't yet quite achieved). I wrote an essay for a student paper about the future of computers using that as the epigraph in 1967, - not knowing from what about computers - and won a prize, judged by an editor who then offered me my first job (at which I was dismal, but that's another story).

So I have ACC to thank for springboarding my career, but since neither of us believes/d in survival of the "spirit" I'll abstain from apostrophising him.

146. Belief in Belief

Comment #140577 by Shuggy on March 7, 2008 at 10:50 pm

I believe completely that God was at the center of your transformation as well. You see, he doesn't only love and act on the part of the faithful. He loves you an equal amount.

I'm sure this is a better god than the one who only helps those who belong to this or that narrow sect, but unfortunately, one non-existent being can't really be better than another non-existent being. I'm sure too that this makes you feel good, and it feels good to feel good, and one probably lives a better life when one is feeling good, so you can say this helps you live a better life.

However, the problem arises with all the ones whose lives this God doesn't transform when they most need it. Doesn't S/He/They love those people as much? And some really good people get a really raw deal, dying young of painful diseases and the like. Does S/He/They hate those people? It boils down to a variety of the problem of evil. You might call it the problem of lack of good. (Shades of Dilbert's Prince of Insufficient Light darning you to Heck!)

147. Church exhumes Padre Pio

Comment #140511 by Shuggy on March 7, 2008 at 3:37 pm

The Vatican said the charismatic monk's corpse was taken from the church crypt on Sunday to conserve it "for generations of future worshippers'' as it was under threat from humidity.

Hang on! Isn't one of the tests of sainthood that their remains remain uncorrupted? "For Thou wilt not ... suffer thy Holy One to see corruption." - Ps 16:10 (Cue Handel) Doesn't the "threat from humidity" prove what was obvious, that he was no saint?

148. How to abandon your God

Comment #140507 by Shuggy on March 7, 2008 at 3:20 pm

He seems like a nice guy who is genuinely trying to put into words a lot of people's attempts to make sense of the numinous ideas they have, confronted with how big and mysterious the whole shebang is. Being cold-blooded and "there isn't an OT God so there isn't any god at all so stop blathering" about it may make you feel better, but it won't address a lot of people's feeling that he is saying the kind of thing they want to say.

Is there a possible discussion about pantheism/Einstein's god that isn't just dismissive?

149. Add another flea to the list...

Comment #138098 by Shuggy on March 3, 2008 at 11:35 pm

Comment #132917 by notsobad on February 25, 2008 at 12:01 pm

The subtitle is hilarious. It just shows how desperate they got.

No, I think it's clever marketting. Since "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" are guaranteed (?) in the US Constitution (Declaration of Independence?), this is a dogwhistle way of saying atheism is unAmerican. Hell, it's practically unAmerican not to buy this book!

150. Evidence can't shake your faith if your faith excludes it as evidence

Comment #137482 by Shuggy on March 3, 2008 at 1:29 am

I found this a useful thought experiment:

Suppose [a fairy] were to appear before Dawkins, even as he was delivering another lecture on the delusion that [fairies] exist[]. Would such an experience change Dawkins' views?

Fish has spent his whole career pointing out why it wouldn't: not because of the nature of [fairies], but because of the nature of interpretation. As long as Dawkins remains who he is now, he will remain incapable of seeing [a fairy].

After all, a genuine [afairyist] must interpret such an event as a temporarily inexplicable hallucination, or a sudden psychotic break, or a clever technological trick - in short, as anything but evidence that [afairyism] is false.

Now what, Mr Campos, is the fundamental difference between fairies and angels of the Lord (or indeed of Anyone Else) that makes extreme scepticism about the one seem reasonable and about the other not?