151. Church and State: Divided we stand

Comment #63668 by Steven Mading on August 15, 2007 at 9:20 am

AWACS77, that last point is, in general, an important principle about upholding human rights in a democracy, and not specific to just religion: When you are in the majority and thus in a position craft laws, always be sure to craft those laws in such a way that you wouldn't mind those laws being used by your opposition if your side ends up in the minority later on.

Not only is it practical in a self-serving way (because you are likely to be in the minority at some point since opinions tend to swing), but it checks that you aren't being unfair against whomever is currently in the minority. It's an excellent principle, akin to the notion that when slicing a pie, the one doing the cutting gets the last pick.

152. Amnesty to defy Catholic church over rape victims' abortion rights

Comment #63153 by Steven Mading on August 13, 2007 at 9:16 am

From the article:

One survivor said: "Five to six men would rape us, one after the other, for hours during six days, every night. My husband could not forgive me after this. He disowned me."

I'm not sure who I'm more angry at - the ones who committed the rapes or the husband who disowns his wife because of it.

153. Why Richard Dawkins is right on alternative medicine - but not when it comes to religion

Comment #62609 by Steven Mading on August 10, 2007 at 10:42 am

I envy Dominic Lawson. The version of planet Earth he lives on, where the religious have thrown away superstition and now no longer believe it, sounds so much nicer than the version of planet Earth the rest of us have to live on.

154. God in the Military - The Pentagon and its Christian Embassy

Comment #61919 by Steven Mading on August 7, 2007 at 11:51 am

Here's what frustrates me: The US military is not powerful because of it's number of troops. Other countries can martial even bigger armies. The US military is not powerful because of good strategy, that's for sure. The US military is powerful because of scientists and engineers receiving big funding money who make the technology they use. And if surveys are to be believed, the subset of the US population consisting of scientists and engineers has a much higher percentage of atheists than the general population at large.

So now that the US military is exceedingly religious, they're using the power of the military to establish theocratic concepts.

In a way they're hijacking the work of atheists. If you're one of these engineers or scientists who works for a military contractor, and you happen to be an atheist, please seriously consider what you're doing to yourself here by putting more power into the hands of those who wish to turn it agaisnt you.

And, no, I'm not advocating a peacenik disband-the-military option here. I'm saying be more selective about whom you hand that military power to. Don't hand it to people who are opposed to you.

155. Arrogance, dogma and why science - not faith - is the new enemy of reason

Comment #61913 by Steven Mading on August 7, 2007 at 11:35 am

This bit in the article really angers me:

The Bible provides a picture of a rational Creator and an orderly universe - which, accordingly, provided the template for the exercise of reason and the development of science.

Because it's one of those cases of telling half the truth with the deliberate intent to decieve. Yes, it's true that the rise of monotheism did give rise to science, but it's a lie to characterize this as an advantage of theism over atheism given that what preceeded monotheism was polytheism, not atheism. This was a shift from many gods to one god (a reduction in gods), not a shift from no gods to one god (an increase in gods).

It's pretty clear what was going on if you read the writings of the early scientists from the enlightenment period. They figured that if the universe is run by one god then it should be more coherent than if it was run by a committe of many small gods each in charge of manipulating things in its sphere of influence. Therefore it should be possible to detect that god's universal coherent rules to the universe that you wouldn't expect to find if lots of small gods ran everything in a hodgepodge manner.

It was NOT an issue of theism over atheism. Not by a long shot.

156. Does the Bible have a place in public schools?

Comment #61907 by Steven Mading on August 7, 2007 at 11:16 am

It's impossible to understand the history of the western world without knowing about what's in the bible, so reading it in school is a good idea, even though it's fiction (for the same reason that understanding greek mythology is a good idea even though it's fiction as well) The problem is that I have zero confidence in the ability of US teachers to grade fairly in a bible reading class.

Consider the vast numbers of believers who are quick to falsely label atheist critiques of the bible as merely being misinformed critiques by people who don't understand the book in context. Imagine how frustratingly dishonest it is when they use the 'metaphor dodge' to exonerate the bible every time the bible says something that we in modern times have come to realize is bad (like advocating the killing of the unbeliever). Most of us have encountered this bit of dishonesty before, and been frustrated by it.

Now, imagine that you're an atheist kid in school and it's your TEACHER that's doing it. A teacher who is responsible for grading you. Grading you on how well you understood the text. When they mislabel "holding the bible accountable for the bad things it says" as "obviously not understanding the bible."

I think it would be wonderful if people could read the bible for cultural relevance and to put western history from the council of Nicea where the anthology known as the bible was first created to today in context in school, and to be graded fairly in such a class regardless of whether they think the bible is believable or not. But I do not believe such a scenario is actually possible within the US. Teachers will bias the grading because all too often believers confuse the act of pointing out accurate disagreements with the book with a lack of comprehension of the book.

157. God Answers Prayers Of Paralyzed Little Boy: 'No' Says God

Comment #61734 by Steven Mading on August 6, 2007 at 2:46 pm

Dr Benway, I know it's absurd that they allegely "interviewed" God. But is it MORE absurd than genuinely held religious beliefs, absurd enough that you can tell people are kidding? I say no. There's a lot of absurdity in religion that you're competing against here. Given the obvious fact that we are a fragile species on a tiny obscure fragile spec around an ordinary sun on the fringe of an ordinary galaxy among so many other galaxies, the notion of a god that cares specifically about us more so than anything else he did in his creation is no less absurd than the notion that if such a god existed you can get interview answers from him. There are people who seriously believe they talk to god and get answers back. So I repeat my point - that a reported claim about religion is absurd does not prove that the speaker was kidding and it's satire.

Were it not for the fact that I already knew what The Onion was (and live in the city where it started on paper before it became an online publication the rest of the world heard about), there is nothing that would help me figure out that it's a joke - yes it's absurd, yes it's hilarious, yes it's silly - but SO IS THE REAL THING.

158. The Gullible Age: Review of 'The Enemies of Reason'

Comment #61710 by Steven Mading on August 6, 2007 at 1:11 pm

posted by Mails:
The success rate of placebos entered folklore when it was shown in trials to be around 35% (Beecher, 1955).
However, other trials have not been so successful, notably Hrobjartsson and Gotzsche in 2001, who concluded the effect was negligable when comparing 100 trials with real medicine, placebo and no treatment at all.

The difference might very well be that nowadays the test subjects are aware of the use of placebos, and how they do noting, and how every medical study will always include a control group gettting placebos. A modern test subject will think, "I wonder if the pills I'm getting are real or if I'm part of the control group and these things are fake." and thus he will not be as likely to trigger the placebo effect in himself.

The power of the placebo is ruined by, well, knowing about the power of the placebo.

159. Atheists of the world: unite!

Comment #61705 by Steven Mading on August 6, 2007 at 12:39 pm

I like the idea, but I don't like the choice of symbol. A big red 'A' doesn't really get the message across, and just looks, well, silly.
Doesn't it defeat the whole purpose to have a shirt that only says these things:

"A"
Richarddawkins.net
Out Campagin.

None of that helps advertise your atheism to anyone who is not already in the know about this campaign's symbols. The word "atheist" or "nontheist" or "freethinker" or any other such term doesn't even appear anywhere on the shirt.

Even just changing the name to "Nonbeliever's Out Campaign" would help.

160. Could these books be part of the problem?

Comment #61035 by Steven Mading on August 3, 2007 at 11:43 am

There's an issue of prior art here. The complete idiot's guide to christianity has been published for a very long time now. In fact, it was the first mass-produced book ever published on the Gutenberg press.

161. God Answers Prayers Of Paralyzed Little Boy: 'No' Says God

Comment #61032 by Steven Mading on August 3, 2007 at 11:34 am

One thing that really annoys me is whenever someone mistakes sarcasm for the real thing, people are quick to criticize the reader for it when rarely is it the reader's fault for not getting it. It's not the reader's fault that no matter how hard you may try to sarcasically portray religious belief, you still can't make it absurd enough that people will be certain you're kidding. The blame for that lays with religion. If there's a group of people who's genuine beliefs are indistinguishable from sarcastic portrayals of their beliefs, that reflects badly on THEM, not on the third party observers who didn't recognize the sarcasm.

Consider this: Yes, this article is absurd, but is it any more absurd than, say, genuine nutcases like the GodHatesFags.com people? It's the existence of groups like that that make religious sarcasm hard to pull off. No matter how hard you try to exaggerate the absurd, you can't out-do the actual genuine absurdity of some of the more absurd fringe groups out there.

162. Camp Joins Summer Fun With Teaching Hindu Faith

Comment #58592 by Steven Mading on July 25, 2007 at 9:56 am

In general I find it rather annoying when people attribute something embarassing in a religion to the "culture" and not the "religion", because they aren't that easy to separate. Religions evolve from the culture, and culture evolves from the relgion. They become intertwined so deeply that they really aren't two different things anymore. The religion is a mechanism for preserving the culture in people's minds, by making people think traditional beliefs and traditional viewpoints are ethically superior to new ones.

Religion and culture are not two different things.

163. Interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Comment #58590 by Steven Mading on July 25, 2007 at 9:49 am

To use the rhetoric that automatically labels any sort of criticism of a particular idea as phobia, unconditionally, no matter what the criticism actually is, is a propaganda tool designed to stifle honesty. There can exist islamophobic criticisms, but that does not mean that all criticisms of islam fall into that category. Peter K is spreading dishonest propaganda.

164. Face to faith

Comment #58097 by Steven Mading on July 23, 2007 at 11:56 am

Bonzai said:

The repeated mantra that "religion is false" and therefore not worth studying is ignorant, shallow and tiresome. Yes, religion is factually false but so are the writings of Shakesphare. Would people dismiss literary and theatre scholarship just because "they are all stories"?

You only got one thing right - and that is that there can be value in studying religion without having to believe it's true to study it as a cultural phenomenon. That's true. What's false, and infuriatingly haughty about your claim is that you act like this means it is 'shallow' to criticise the truthfullness of religion. Where do you get off claiming that the kind of religious study you would prefer, (studying it as a cultural phenomenon) is the only type allowed, and that any type of analysis of its truth value is somehow closed-minded or bigoted?

The part you're deliberately ignoring is that we don't live in a world where massive numbers of people try to claim the plays of Shakespere were nonfiction. Furthermore they were not presented by the author with the intention that people who watch the plays believe they are true. Religion is NOT like that at all, and you damned well know it. It is not presented as a deliberate fiction. It is fiction, yes, but there is a massive difference bewteen fiction being presented openly and honestly as fiction, versus fiction being presented as if it was nonfiction. The first is honest, the second is not.

Stop pretending that we live in a world where people merely present religions as interesting enlightening fictional stories in same the way they present aesop's fables. The religious most emphatically are NOT doing that. And stop defending dishonesty and claiming that those who fight agaisnt it are being "shallow" to do so.

165. Phony Piety on the Far Right

Comment #57455 by Steven Mading on July 19, 2007 at 12:10 pm

The theme running through the articile that really annoys me is not that conservatives are calling liberals unreligious, but that the author of the article decided that doing so must necessarily constitute an insult of liberals. The author is operating from the premise that being less religious is automatically a bad horrible thing.

The conservatives are right, they ARE more closely following the religion than the liberals. But that's not a insult to liberals to say that. There'd be no need for stupid holier-than-thou arguments if people stopped assuming that more holy = more good.

166. The New New Atheism

Comment #56611 by Steven Mading on July 16, 2007 at 2:27 pm

Why do the same people who insist we are wrong to criticise the bible with a literal reading of it still think it's right to believe that jesus literally rose form the dead and was literally the son of a literal god? The answer is, of course, that they take it literally wherever it would be helpful to the propigation of the religion to do so, and they take it figuratively wherever it would be harmful to the propigation of the religion to take it literally. They do what is necessary to keep it going and work backward from that goal to decide which parts to take literally and which parts to dump. Those that don't do this don't propigate their ideas. Those that do do this get to pass their ideas on. The just-a-metaphor dodge is an evolved response to help the religion survive in the face of criticism.

167. The US map of faith

Comment #55807 by Steven Mading on July 12, 2007 at 12:27 pm

The map is very misleadingly labeled. The title claims it's a map showing religious adherants, but the fine print says its actually a measure of church congregations. Those two are not the same thing at all. If you are an adherant of a religion that does not automatically mean you are going to a church congregation - there are some religious people who don't believe their religion requires being in a church. Furthermore, if you used to attend a church in the past, but no longer are a believer and don't do so today, there is a good chance you are still counted as part of the congregation.

168. Is Christianity Good for the World? A discussion between Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson

Comment #55534 by Steven Mading on July 11, 2007 at 1:10 pm

I read through this and was annoyed by Wilson's constant attempt to claim that Christianity represents an absolute morality system which makes it better than some relative one. If Christians really followed an absolute unchanging moral system, then why don't they stone people to death for wearing cotton/polyester blend clothing, as dictated in Leviticus? The answer is, of course, that their system has changed and adapted over time. Anyone who is aware of history and still claims Christian morality is unchanging is a liar.

The thing is, if Christians really did treat the morality espoused by their religion as an absolute that does not evolve, then they would all be following the moral norms of 2000 years ago, and clearly they are not doing so.

169. Won't anyone stand up for God?

Comment #55259 by Steven Mading on July 10, 2007 at 11:26 am

Isn't it strange that God and He still attract capitals?

Even fictional characters are still capitalized if they are proper nouns. i.e. "Robin Hood", or "James Bond". The distinction between "God" and "god" in English is whether you are using the name or the generic noun. i.e. "God" means "Yahweh", while "god" means "perhaps Yahweh, or perhaps Zeus, or perhaps Odin, or perhaps Apollo, etc..."

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

Comment #55234 by Steven Mading on July 10, 2007 at 10:01 am

I agree with Bonzai that the different religions have varying levels of badness. I do not agree with his implication that one must restrict ones self to only criticizing whichever happens to the the worst of the set and giving the rest a pass.

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

Comment #53861 by Steven Mading on July 3, 2007 at 4:05 pm

[b]From Dawkins himself:[/b]
The biological definition of a species is that, under natural conditions, members of the same species freely interbreed with one another but not with members of other species.

Doesn't that definition completely break apart when dealing with things that reproduce asexually like amoeba? It would end up meaning each individual amoeba is a species unto itself, never breeding with any other individuals. As a biologist, how is this definitional problem dealth with? (And when countering the creationists who claim there's never been a witnessed example of speciation, getting a rock-solid definition of what speciation actually is first is an important step.)

172. In Defense of Witchcraft

Comment #52567 by Steven Mading on June 27, 2007 at 9:52 am

I didn't even notice there was such a thing as the "alternative content" comment page until people pointed it out here and I explicitly looked for the link on the page. I disagree with "mind_rebel" much more often than I agree, but I don't see how his comment *this time* was worthy of bumping off like that. *This* time it wasn't that bad at all. Granted, I'd still say he's wrong, but this time around his case was put forth politely so it could be politely argued against.

173. Supreme Court nixes suit over faith-based plan

Comment #51866 by Steven Mading on June 25, 2007 at 12:32 pm

One scary thing about this ruling is that to avoid having to address the actual issue they ruled that no citizen has standing to even try to sue the government over constitutional issues just for the sake of the constitutional issue itself, It must be attached to some other incident in which the citizen was wronged. So in other words, to avoid having to even hear the case about the office of faith-based initiatives, they destroyed a key means of enforcing the constitution in general, for ANY constitutional issue.

174. Create a back-up copy of your immune system

Comment #51340 by Steven Mading on June 22, 2007 at 12:04 pm

I wonder what would happen if they screwed up the records and later on infused you with some other customer's stored immune cells instead of your own. Would the imported immune cells attack good cells in your body because the imported immune cells have foreign "friend or foe" idenfication critiera?

175. 'Purity' ring case in High Court

Comment #51338 by Steven Mading on June 22, 2007 at 11:53 am

Either:
A) Uniform strictly required where physically possible.
or
B) The uniform is totally optional. Ignore it if you like.

What I don't like is this situation:

C) Religious reasons to break the uniform core are allowed, but other reasons are not.


I also don't like this situation, which is what the French seem to be going with:

D) No uniform code except to ban religious-themed clothing.

Either a uniform code is required regardless of religion, or it should be ignored regardless of religion. Don't give religion special privilege and don't give it special prohibition either.

176. Atheists: stand up and be counted

Comment #50507 by Steven Mading on June 18, 2007 at 1:35 pm

5. Comment #50496 by blueollie on June 18, 2007 at 12:59 pm

Compare that to the US, where in 2006 atheists were not represented in Congress at all.

Strictly speaking, this isn't true. There is a congressman from California (Pete Stark) who openly doesn't believe in a personal god:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/17/BAGFRONAJD6.DTL

The stat was for 2006. Pete Start didn't publicly declare his freethinker status (he's a bit unclear if he's agnostic, atheist, or something inbetween) until 2007. The stat was true at the time it was published.

177. A battler beyond belief: Review of 'God is Not Great'

Comment #50371 by Steven Mading on June 17, 2007 at 10:08 am

Benway and Arildno - Both of you mistook what the other person said.

To "Dr Benway": You made the mistake of assuming that because "Arildno" said Stalin was secular that he was using "secular" the same way the religious right in America does. He was not. He was not referencing Stalin's repression of religion when he said that. He was referencing Stalin's non-religious motivations. He was using "secular" in the correct way - to mean non-religious rather than anti-religous.

To "Arildno": "Dr Benway" was not espousing the American parochialism - he was under the false impression that you were, and he was arguing against it, not for it.

178. Quackbuster causes too much flak for university

Comment #49927 by Steven Mading on June 14, 2007 at 6:06 am

CEOs are more powerful than priests in our secular, capitalist society.

You're drawing a difference that doesn't exist. Ever seen a MegaChurch? Ever seen a Benny Hinn broadcast? Ever seen "mediums"? Ever seen an episode of Pat Robertson's TV show? Many preists ARE CEO's.

179. Baptists Warned About Islam, Atheism

Comment #49781 by Steven Mading on June 13, 2007 at 12:22 pm

"Sauronlord", keep in mind that while there is bad stuff in both Islam and Christianity, One is less free to re-interpret the scripture to make one's self believe it says something it doesn't in Islam. So the bad things in Islam are more likely to have real-world effects through its believers than the bad things in Christianity (since so many of Christianity's believers can easily change the religion into something nicer while deceiving themselves into thinking they're following the original meaning of the religion.)

180. PBS Revelation: Network's 'Wall Of Separation' Has Religious Right Genesis

Comment #49774 by Steven Mading on June 13, 2007 at 11:59 am

People are entitled to make up their own opinions, but they aren't entitled to make up their own facts.

I haven't seen this show yet (hasn't aired yet) but I have seen the argument made by others many times before, and the way they make the argument is by making up their own facts. It's truly disgusting for two reasons - the first of which is that it's disgusting to invent revisionist history (and thus falsify information for generations of future people) to promote an agenda, but also there's the fact that human morality has gotten more mature since the late 1700's so even if their falsified version of history was correct that still would not be a good reason to go to a theocracy today. You'll notice nobody's out there making the argument that we should go back to having slavery based on the fact that the founding fathers kept slaves.

181. The Benny Hinn Report

Comment #49519 by Steven Mading on June 12, 2007 at 8:50 am

This is the sort of thing that more moderate believers end up protecting when they set up the social climate where to subject faith-based belief to rational scrutiny is treated as if it was a bigoted thing to do. If that attitude was not pervasive, then charlitans like Benny Hinn would have been prosecuted for fraudulent business practices long ago.

182. Can we really learn to love people who aren't like us?

Comment #48998 by Steven Mading on June 10, 2007 at 12:39 am

On the issue of ethnicity coming first and religion coming second - consider this: ethnic groupings are caused by long histories of segregated breeding. What causes people not to interbreed? Religion.

So I do not agree that ethinicty comes before religion. Religious "us vs them" mentality causes the islolation in the first place that strengthens group separation and thus gives rise to competing ethnicities.

183. Can we really learn to love people who aren't like us?

Comment #48997 by Steven Mading on June 10, 2007 at 12:35 am

In order for atheism to be defined as a protest against one's former religion, as the rabbi does here in this article, one must first assume that all atheists are ex-theists. That is not the case. There do exist atheist households where children never were made to believe in god in the first place. Belief in god is not the default. It's the most common, but that's not the same thing as the default.

184. A Quote Against Theocracy

Comment #48550 by Steven Mading on June 8, 2007 at 10:56 am

I liked Narnia as a kid too, but even though I didn't realize it was meant to be a Christian allegory at some points, there was one recurring theme that felt wrong and "icky" (that it later turns out was the allegory he was shooting for, but I wasn't familiar enough yet with Christianity to catch it.)

That "icky"-inducing theme was the idea that unquestioning acceptance of the lion Aslan (I don't remember if that's how it was spelled, that's a guess from memory) was always associated with goodness, while any slight doubt of Aslan was always associated with wickedness. The heroes were right because they trusted Aslan. Accepting the authority of him was more important than anything else. Anyone who rejected him inevitably ended up being a horrible, bad person in the end. This theme gets really strong in the last book of the series, "The Last Battle", which is obviously modelled after the end of days biblical stuff.

I enjoyed the books (except for the slightly icky feeling that something was a little bit off about the theme of worshipping Aslan) back when I was ignorant of the bible as a kid. Now that I know more about this reprehensable belief system and can see what Lewis was shooting for, I dont think I could enjoy the stories ever again.

Before, I didn't notice the allegories to Christianity. Now I can't help but notice it, and that ruins the enjoyment.

185. A Quote Against Theocracy

Comment #48373 by Steven Mading on June 7, 2007 at 3:44 pm

Given how much he espoused how allegedly perfect and true and wonderful Christianity was, it's nice to see he wasn't a total putz about it, though. It's too bad about the people who keep quoting him, though. Many of them seem to think Theocracy would be just nifty so long as it's Christian Theocracy.

186. Atheism is the absence of belief

Comment #48372 by Steven Mading on June 7, 2007 at 3:40 pm

"Atheism is not only a viable alternative to faith, it is, I believe, the most probable, most promising, and most positive view of life."

As an atheist, in all honesty I have to disagree with how this point is put forth, as it contradicts the main point of the article. If atheism is a non-belief, then it isn't a view of life. Nor is it promising. It does throw away religion, which is a source of having a negative view of life so it's good to ditch it. But it does not guarantee a positive outlook will be adopted instead. It merely opens the way to choose another view of life instead of the negative one espoused by religion. It's still entirely possible to fall into a negative view of life for secular reasons, however.

To give an analogy, while it's good for an alchoholic to stop drinking, refraining from drinking is not a positive quality in their life, it's merely the removal of one negative one.

187. Wanted: Moral Education for Secular Children

Comment #48364 by Steven Mading on June 7, 2007 at 3:18 pm

"DV82XL" said:

Teach the skill of reason and you should have no need to "espouse a set of normative values and principles" which anyway has the odor of dogma about it which is the antithesis of objective methods for testing claims of truth.

Even though math is just a natural product of reason, there's still a need for a seperate class in school devoted to math. Even though chemisty is just a natural product of reason, there's still a need for a seperate class in school devoted to chemistry. So why raise the objection you do about a seperate class for ethics? A lot of what is taught in school is just specific narrowed-down examples of applying reason.

188. Man to die over insult

Comment #48036 by Steven Mading on June 6, 2007 at 11:16 am

What's creepy is the similarity between the Palestinian kindergarten video and the Jesus Camp trailer.

That similarity is deliberate. The Camp being shown in Jesus Camp was set up precisely as a respose to Islamic madrasses, by Christians who thought they should fight fire with fire and set up a place to 'teach' their children to be just as forceful "defending" the faith as madressas-taught children are.

189. The Myth of Secular Moral Chaos

Comment #48013 by Steven Mading on June 6, 2007 at 9:15 am

17. Comment #47882 by krogercomplete on June 5, 2007 at 11:18 pm

Because you can *never* know that the to be tortured actually has the knowledge you seek, torture is never justified.

What would be your answer if we actually could know for a fact?

There is no such thing as a situation where we can be sure someone has the information we want, yet we do not yet know what that information actually is. The point is that the only way to be sure the torture would be justified to extract information (because we already know the person actually has the info) is to be in a situation where it is also unnecessary to do so (because we already know the info), so that removes the one case where one could justify torture. There are no cases left once that one is done away with.

190. Hamas Kindergarten Graduation Ceremony

Comment #47750 by Steven Mading on June 5, 2007 at 12:34 pm

The Palestinians want to live there because they have allways done so.

The Israelis want to live there because their land was "given" to them by this god-character.

That's the way it looks if you only go back a few years in history. If you go back further, the ancestors of the modern Palestinians ALSO moved into the land and took it over, from the ancestors of the Israelis. It's changed hands between the two more than just in the current century.

191. Should Science Speak to Faith? A dialog between Lawrence Krauss and Richard Dawkins

Comment #47419 by Steven Mading on June 4, 2007 at 1:09 pm

(Deleting my own comment - it was attached to the wrong article.)

192. Beggars belief: Robin McKie on The God Delusion

Comment #47416 by Steven Mading on June 4, 2007 at 12:57 pm

42. Comment #47253 by shade51 on June 3, 2007 at 6:23 pm
To whatever extent it may be true that atheists tend more toward liberal politics, the cause may very well be that religionists have done such a good job of identifying themselves with conservative politics - and vice versa. So many conservative social policies seem to be designed to please the religious right, at least in the US, that it is at least understandable that atheists may tend to shy away from conservative/Republican politics. I'm not saying that it's right or wrong - just one possible explanation as I see it.

I think it's much more accurate to say that the right pushes atheists away, rather than to say that atheists tend toward liberal politics. It's more of a case of atheists escaping from the religious right, than of embracing the liberal left. In other countries where the right is not as tied to religion as it is here in the US, you will find it much more common to find conservative atheists than here in the US.

193. The Dawkins delusion

Comment #45902 by Steven Mading on May 29, 2007 at 2:55 pm

These books can just as legitimately be read as allegories, poetry or fables, depending on one's inclination.

This is a naive view. They are not presented as fiction. These texts were written with the intent that they be believed, as opposed to, say, a fable or allegory like the race of the tortise and the hare, which may contain a message, but one is not expected to believe in talking rabbits and animals gathering to watch a race in order to get the moral of the story. On the other hand, much of the bible fails to work as any kind of allegory if you don't actually believe it. It's full of stories about Jesus claiming to be the son of god and how you must accept that to get saved. I'm sorry, but you are dead wrong - if one doesn't believe the bible is truth, and therefore does not believe Jesus really was god's son, then there is NO moral allegory left to salvage from that. Similarly, keeping the sabbath holy has no meaning if you don't believe the 7-day creation myth. And let's talk about Abraham being willing to sacrifice his son just because God said so, and how this is portrayed in the bible as a GOOD thing for him to have thought that way - remove the belief that god exists and there is NOTHING whatsoever that is the slightest bit ethcially uplifting about what's left in that tale - all that's left is a tale of blind obedience to an imaginary authority being more important than actual compassion for actual people.

The key problem with religion is that it provides this notion of faith, which is essentialy the idea that truth is a subjective matter of opinion. No. It is not. If two people disagree about a fact, the reason is that at least one of them is incorrect. The only things that are truly subjective are matters of preference, such as "I enjoy X but I don't enjoy Y".

194. The Dawkins delusion

Comment #45855 by Steven Mading on May 29, 2007 at 11:58 am

Uhm - Dawkins understands the wishy-washy middle-ground believers quite well. He just doesn't agree with them, or consider their thinking to be valid.

It's highly frustrating when people mislabel those who disagree as being people who don't understand. It is entirely possible to understand perfectly well what's going on in the thoughts of a person you completely disagree with. Disagreement is not evidence of lack of understanding.

195. Sam Harris Strikes Back

Comment #45825 by Steven Mading on May 29, 2007 at 11:03 am

When arguing against atheists, it's common for the believer to bring up the point that the adoption of monotheism historically led to betterment of cultures and is responsible for much of what made the western world succeed so well. Hedges brought it up too. I think Sam's reply fell flat because there is a far stronger reply one can give, one that destroys the whole point being made and really brings the dishonesty of this argument to the surface, and that point is this:

What preceeded monotheism was not atheism. It was polytheism - the polytheism of the greeks and romans - the polytheism of the pagans and heathens.

The historical cases of monotheism (alegedly) bettering mankind were not cases of the addition of a god belief making things better as is the connection the believers want people to make.

It's just the opposite - when a polytheistic society adopts monotheism, it's REDUCING the number of gods people believe in, not increasing them..

Therefore anyone who tries to claim that the historical effects of the spread of monotheism throughout Europe somehow have any impact on the issue of atheism versus theism is being dishonest. It's just comparing one theism to another theism.

The spread of Christendom was not a case of atheists becoming theists. It was a case of one kind of theist becoming a different kind of theist.

I think that's a far stronger counterargument than the one Sam used becuase it completely avoids the issue of whether or not the spread of monotheism in Europe was a good or bad thing, and thus avoids having to bring up such a controversial historical interperative issue. All that matters is that it really has nothing to do with atheism because pre-christian European pagans Weren't atheists in the first place!.

196. Comic in US 'hate speech' row

Comment #45638 by Steven Mading on May 28, 2007 at 4:04 pm

It is literally impossible to express some types of religious opinion without engaging in hate speech toward atheists (and members of religions other than your own). If you claim morality requires belief in god, that's hate speech toward atheists, and yet it's impossible to express certain religious positions without making that claim. If you claim your religion is the only means of engaging in moral behavior, you are engaging in hate speech merely by repeating what your religion says, and the only way not to engage in the hate speech is to never tell anyone what your religious beliefs are. So religious freedom requires the allowance of hate speech on the part of the religious. What really pisses me off is that only religious people are allowed this dispensation. If you say something that is disparaging of a group, but you think it is truthful because your religion says its true, nobody can punish you for it. If you say something equally disparaging of a group, but you think it is truthful for some reason OTHER than religion, then you can get in big legal trouble for it. Religion gets protection from hate-speech laws. Atheists do not. It's a double-standard.

197. God help us all - The No. 2 book on Amazon right now is a

Comment #45575 by Steven Mading on May 28, 2007 at 9:07 am

Is anyone else sick of the term "Islamofacism" (which my spill chocker underlines). A portmanteau word designed to create fear and hatred.

If it keeps being used then I shall have no compunction but to talk of "Christofacism" when referring to the likes of the Dominionists.

A more apt term would be Islamotheocracy. What the Islamacist movement wants is not a fascist government, it's a theocracy. Both are bad types of government, but for entirely different reasons. To misunderstand which type of bad government is being promoted by this movement is to be unable to do anything constructive to counter it. You can beat a fascist movement with the tool of war, but you can't beat a theocratic movement with the tool of war. With a theocatic movement, each phsyical combat defeat the movement suffers makes it more fanatical and makes it recruit more people.

And the reason our US goverment will not acknowlege that it's a theocratic movement behind the terrorist organization Al-Quaeda is that to label it as such is to admit that theocracy is bad, which they wont do since they're Christian theocrats themselves.

198. 'Einstein - His Life and Universe'

Comment #44396 by Steven Mading on May 24, 2007 at 1:47 pm

Einstein's invocation of the word "God" conveyed succinctly and powerfully the sense of reverence he felt.

The fact that he also had to often qualify what he meant afterward proves that it was not a succinct way to get the point across. To judge whether it was succinct or not you have to add the later qualifications he had to give and consider them part of the necessary verbosity.

Einstein didn't call himself an "atheist" because in his view people who labelled themselves this way in his days were aesthetically challenged and were remarkably lacking in imagination. I think he might have a point after reading some kneel jerk posts on this thread and others concerning Einstein.

You're not doing a good job of defending Einstein if you attribute beliefs in incorrect stereotypes to him like that. I don't think he was that dumb.

199. 'Einstein - His Life and Universe'

Comment #44266 by Steven Mading on May 24, 2007 at 12:31 am

Einstein (and Spinoza) simply used a different definition of "god" that was so different from the mainstream that to be honest and forthright they should have just used a different word or made up a new one. If I claim I own an automobile, and then later on explain myself further by saying "well, it only has two wheels, and it doesn't have an engine, and instead I have to pedal it, but to me that's an automobile" then I'm really not being honest - what I'm talking about isn't an automobile. It's a bicycle. That's what the pantheistic "god" is like - If you have a strong sense of wonder about the universe itself then we already have a word for the thing you find wonder about - it's called "the universe". Calling it "god" just feeds people useful propaganda soundbites to use later. (To revisit my bicycle example, If I was to go on and describe how my two-wheeled no-engine "automobile" doesn't pollute and gives me good excercise, people who prefer automobiles to bicycles could pull that statement out and claim I was saying automobiles have those properties when I wasn't really talking about automobiles at all, but about bicycles.

People pull out Einstein's god quotes as if he was talking about 'god' when he was just talking about the universe itself, and using dangerously sloppy language to do so.

If you're a pantheist, please don't describe the thing your talking about with the word "god" - you're just setting yourself up for misunderstanding and misquoting later on.

200. Would the World Be Safer Without Religion?

Comment #43388 by Steven Mading on May 21, 2007 at 8:40 am

Nina, there is no such thing as sincere faith. Faith is, by definition, believing something while admitting to one's self that there isn't a reasonable reason to do so. That is inherently dishonest. The phrase "sincere faith" is an oxymoron. Sincerity would be to drop a belief if you know it's not a reasonable one, rather than spread the notion that there is some other type of thinking that does not require coherent thought and yet is still legitimate. Faith is not some seperate type of rationale for belief. It's just a re-naming of rationales that fail to disguise the fact that they fail.