201. Even non-believers must recognise the moral necessity of Christianity

Comment #30687 by Steven Mading on April 9, 2007 at 10:50 am

This one aspect of the article really annoyed me: He describes the practice of Christians having doubt about what they think and engaging in some introspection about it, and he describes the practice of atheists doing the same, and then compares the two and makes the claim that Christians do their introspection more so than atheists do theirs. There's two problems with that - first of all there's the fact that it's false to claim that atheists are less introspective on their topic, and the second, and much larger problem is that he's operating on the incorrect premise that a christian thinking about his religion and an atheist thinking about his a-religion are two independant activities. They aren't They are thinking about SAME things, but coming to different conclusions about it.

Introspective Christians and introspective atheists are not thinking about two entirely different topics. They're thinking about the exact same topic and coming to different conclusions about it.

What he seems to forget is that a very large number of those atheists BECAME that way because they were introspective Christians who ALREADY did the self-examination thing on the topic of god, and that's WHY they are no longer Christians.

He acts as if, after that happens, these newly-minted atheists now need to start over and go through the exact same process a second time, even though no new evidence showed up overnight about the topic, the only thing that changed is their conclusion.

202. Crucifixion 'makes God into a psychopath'

Comment #30402 by Steven Mading on April 8, 2007 at 2:17 am

I've always had this same complaint about Christianity and when I try to ask actual Christians about it they present arguments that are utterly baffling in thier nonsensicalness. y complaint is this: How is it that one's transgressions can be absolved by punishing Jesus, who's the wrong guy? In terrestrial matters, If I've committed a robbery, and you confess to the crime even though it wasn't you that did it, the reason that you successfully saved me from having to go to prison and put yourself in my place to take the prison time for me is because you tricked people into thinking you were responsible instead of me.

In other words, this trick only only works because unlike the alleged character "God", the jury lacks omniscience. If they did figure out that your confession was false, and they did figure out that I was really the one responsible, then there's no way any modern court system would let you serve the prison time for me, even if you claim that you love me deeply and willingly would serve prison time in my stead. In such a scenario it doesn't matter that you are willing to do that - you're still the wrong guy and if the jury knows this, so you can't save me from punishment that way.

When the jury is god, you can't fool him into thinking you did the crime. He knows it was me.

This feature doesn't make any damned sense, and I couldn't figure it out for the longest time - even if one accepts all the other premises of Christianity this one still doesn't make any sense. It seems to come totally out of nowhere.

And now I think it's starting to make a little bit of sense to me where it came from. The notion that another person cannot serve prison time for you is actually a new, modern idea. It used to be the case that in ancient justice systems one could trade-up punishments a lot more than today. One could say, "oh, I'm supposed to live as a slave for a year as my punisment? Well, considering the going rate these days for slave labor, how about if I just pay you that amount instead as a fine? Wouldn't that be an equivilent punishment?" So, what I'm getting at is that our modern notion that punishments only count if they are applied to the actual culprit was not always the way people looked at it. People used to look at it as a debt - and like any other kind of debt, trades can be made and other equivilent payments can be substituted. The punishment was actually a virtually tradable item just like a number on paper in a bank account is.

So, with a mentality such as the people who wrote the bible had at the time, ALL punishments could be substituted and traded, sort of like a negative form of currency. Given that mindset, the notion of Jesus paying someone else's punishment for them makes more sense. It's just in modern times that we've come to realize how utterly horrible a system of tradable punishment actually is. To a person living in bronze age mesopotamia, it would have made more sense.

203. Militant atheists: too clever for their own good

Comment #30086 by Steven Mading on April 7, 2007 at 12:06 am

To be more explicit about what I said in the above comment:

The pre-poll's numbers were: 826 for + 681 against + 364 dont-know = 1871 participants.
The post-poll's categories were: 1205 for + 778 against + 103 dont-know = 2086 participants.

There were 215 more participants in the second poll.

204. Militant atheists: too clever for their own good

Comment #30083 by Steven Mading on April 7, 2007 at 12:03 am

Why did so many more people participate in the second poll after the debate than participated in the first poll preceeding the debate? Did a bunch of people show up late and miss the first one? Or does that show a sort of meta-effect of the debate - that in addition to changing some people's minds about religion it also changed some people's minds about whether or not it was important to participate in the poll?

205. The God Debate

Comment #29764 by Steven Mading on April 4, 2007 at 3:29 pm

The incorrectly-named truthseeker said, in comment 107:

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." - Albert Einstein.

Further examination of what Einstein used the word "religion" for clearly shows that he was using it in such a way that it just isn't even close to the same concept at all as religions such as Christianity. He had a habit of using words like "god" and "religion" in ways that have nothing to do with the common definitions of those words.

Also, in comment 106, he said:

Otherwise, why don't you just "live and let live"?

It never ceases to amaze me the level of doublethink that goes on in the mind of the believer like "truthseeker" here, who spreads falsehoods about atheists, and if they defend themselves and protest about it, that is evidence that his accusations were right (in his mind), leaving atheists in a catch-22 situation. (It's exactly like the dishonesty of accusing someone of being an alchoholic, and then saying "if you deny that you have a problem, that's just what I'd expect an alchoholic to do, so it proves you have a problem...")

206. Atheist says he's victim of religious hate crime

Comment #29719 by Steven Mading on April 4, 2007 at 12:31 pm

I dislike the application of "hate crime" laws because they make already-illegal activity more illegal based on the (assumed) mindset of the person doing it, and that's essentially instituting the Orwellian notion of thoughtcrime - that what you think can be a crime.

I'd rather see the abolition of hate-crime laws, but if they are on the books and they do exist, at least have the honesty to enforce them evenhandedly, and not according to a double-standard. So, yes, if hitting someone for being religious is a hate-crime, then hitting someone for speaking agaisnt religion is also a hate-crime.

207. Richard Dawkins: Author of the Year!

Comment #28481 by Steven Mading on March 29, 2007 at 11:00 am

Not that I want to disparage Peter Kay in any form because I think he is an amazing comedian.He has a great joke about how he prayed to god to get him a new bike when he was young and was told that was wrong, so he went and stole someone else's and prayed for forgiveness still makes me giggle!

I heard precisely the same joke from Emo Phillips. (in fact it was so identical it didn't even substitute some other type of stolen item - it also used a bike.) I think someone's been taking someone else's material (not sure who had it first).

On the topic, yeah - Congrats to Dawkins - but I think the book award is better than a knighthood. Knighthood has been so watered down now - I doubt that musicians, writers, and actors are going to be defending Britain any time soon.

208. Neil Peart cites The God Delusion in new album's liner notes

Comment #27996 by Steven Mading on March 27, 2007 at 2:28 pm

I have to think that when he talked about adopting puppies that were "rescue dogs" he meant "rescued dogs" - otherwise it just doesn't make sense. You don't use puppies as rescue dogs - they need more training.

But yeah, Rush good.
I want the new album. Now. There was a time when I was worried they were going to do nothing from now on but more recompilations of existing songs, retrospectives, concert videos, and so on.

I like their ability to make the music REALLY FIT the mood for the words (impressive given that the words are written by the drummer, who does not write the music.) Their songs celebrating life and joy SOUND fast and energetic and upbeat, while their songs of sadness just SOUND sad.

209. The Case for Teaching The Bible

Comment #27816 by Steven Mading on March 26, 2007 at 11:19 pm

I have taken Civ I, which is a basic humanities/history ( I have no idea if they call it that every where else) class at KU. Almost always people come down rather hard on the bible, and rightfully so. Yes the believers in the class got pissy, but oh well, though we had a wonderful professor so maybe this would not be every ones experience. Also the Time article refers to high schools, but i would like to think class discussions could be critical of the bible.

What I fear comes in two varieties:
1 - There is a strong trend of the believers to falsely characterize the act of articulating very strong dissent with their opinion as being identical to the act of infringing upon their rights to have those opinions. Such a characterization is complete bollocks of course, but in the realm of school boards, majority opinion can trump facts - so what I fear happening is that a student who expresses the opinion that the bible is total bullshit (even if not using swear-words to do so) would be falsely equated with expressing bigoted hate speech. Remember this is high school, not college. A key difference between the two is compulsory versus elective attendance, which carries with it massive legal ramifications.
2 - Imagine how many times a believer has characterized a strong critic of religion as being a critic merely because he's misinformed about what the religious texts actually say, and too lazy to do the research. (Consider the many rebuttals to Richard Dawkins along those lines). These people seem to be using a criteria that assumes it is impossible to be familiar with their claim without being in agreement with it. It's clear that RD (and others) is very aware of the claims about religion being metaphorical, or about which parts are not generally taken literally anymore, but his critics do not see that. They see him refusing to give those claims false respect that they don't deserve, and then assume this means he is not familiar with them. Now, where am I going with this? Well, imagine now if one of those people who make that type of false counterargument to the skeptics is the person teaching the bible class. Think about it. To someone of that mindset, taking a passage as if it was intended literally but is false, as an atheist typically would, would show that the student is factually incorrect. They would claim that the correct understanding is a metaphorical one, which salvages the notion that the passage could be true in some sort of way. They would take the atheist's literal debunking of the statement as being evidence of the atheist not having paid attention. Thus it could actually detrimentally affect the student's grade, even if the instructor doesn't consciously realize they are being biased.

210. The Case for Teaching The Bible

Comment #27757 by Steven Mading on March 26, 2007 at 3:10 pm

The fear I'd have with such a class, if I imagine my younger self having been enrolled in it is the utter incompatability between being honest and being polite to believers. It's one thing to make people literate about ancient myths nobody in the class will be a believer in - like teaching about the ancient greek pantheon for example - for the sake of basic cultural literacy. But when it comes to the bible, I just can't imagine a class where honest inquiry, like "hey, wait, this part contradicts that part" would be tolarated by the believers. And so it's not possible to teach the bible as a work of literature without getting too close to that fuzzy line between the desired goal of tolerance of a religion and the despicable goal of mandatory respectfulness and uncritical speech toward a religion.

211. Gimme That Old Time Religion (Bashing)

Comment #27727 by Steven Mading on March 26, 2007 at 11:04 am

J.J says:

"You and Harris are not just trying to argue that religion is irrational--which is relatively easy--but that the nasty and violent among the religious are the better representatives of their faiths, which is a much tougher thing to prove, and with Christianity at least, probably impossible."

All adherents of Christianity must necessarily ignore some parts of what their religion says, given that their religion says self-contradictory things.

So the important question becomes, WHICH parts are being ignored.

The more moderate, friendly christians are ignoring the ones that are central, core to the religion itself. - For example, the notion that belief in Yahweh via Jesus Christ is the only means of salvation - the ONLY one. That's not some minor little point - that's the foundation of the entire religion. And any person who follows that notion and fully believes it must necessarily be disrespectful and intolerant of other religions, or of the idea of not having religion at all, because when they spread those ideas and deconvert Christians, they are causing those ex-Christians to go to hell. Think about that - the most important primary core belief of what Christianity is makes it so that if you really believe it fully, then people who try to fill your head with contrary ideas are actually engaging in behavior that will condemn you and your family to hell of you let them win you over.

212. New clues to why we see red

Comment #27723 by Steven Mading on March 26, 2007 at 10:43 am

DavyB said: "Purple is not really a spectral color. It is true that some people see a faint band of violet at the far blue end of the rainbow. I don't think anyone knows for sure why that is."

I always thought it was a harmonic affect tickling the red receptor.
The blue end of human vision is about 400nm wavelengths.
The red end is about 700nm

Half of 700 is 350.

So what might be happening is that as the wavelengths get down close to 350, we approach the first-order harmonic (the doubling of frequency) of the frequency the the red receptor is looking for, and so the red receptor registers a false positive because it's starting to get close to "2x red".

And that's why bluer than blue looks violet - the 2x frequency harmonic is generating a signal on the red receptor.

And that's why we can simulate violet by giving our eyes a signal of red and blue on a computer monitor. Even though that's an entirely different input spectrum than the one in nature that produces a violet sensation, it stimulates the receptors in the same way, generating an optical illusion of violet.

213. GM mosquito 'could fight malaria'

Comment #27720 by Steven Mading on March 26, 2007 at 10:30 am

I'm concerned with the role that mosquitoes play in the food chain. Making them die out entirely by sterlization may be a bad idea. The idea of making them no longer be carriers or malaria seems more prudent.

214. Nigeria teacher dies 'over Koran'

Comment #27719 by Steven Mading on March 26, 2007 at 10:25 am

While it is true that a common term for virgin and the word for white raisin are the same (much like the English word "cherry"), many other passages (other than the one that gives the number 72) do give explicit descriptions of the virgins one will be rewarded with in heaven that are not abmiguous and do use other terms for virgin than the "white raisin" term. So in theory the argument about "white raisins" not being virgins can only be used to discount the part where it gives a count of 72 of them. So maybe you could use that argument to say the number of virgins one will find in heaven is not really 72 because that passage was talking about raisins. But you can't use it to claim that one is not promised virgins in heaven. It's only the place where a count of 72 is given where this linguistic ambiguity exists. In the other places where the Islamic texts state that one is rewarded with virgins in heaven, there is no such ambiguity.

215. If only gay sex caused global warming

Comment #27186 by Steven Mading on March 23, 2007 at 12:52 pm

I think the biggest worry is still overpopulation. Trying to fix global warming by altering how much pollution is generated per person is just a stall tactic that attacks the symptom, not the cause. As long as the population continues growing exponentially, pollution will outgrow our ability to mitigate it. (Because our mitigations are generally linear in nature (i.e. "This new form of electrical plant only pollutes 30% as much per killowatt-hour as the one it replaces, yea.", but the population growth is exponential.)

If we could flatten human population growth rates to a generally linear graph, then a lot of other problems become possible to solve - global warming being just one of them. If we fail to do this, then a lot of those problems will always remanin impossible to solve, global warming being one of them.

And it is possible to flatten growth. Much of Europe has done it. The key obsticle to doing it is religious attitudes about sex, procreation, and birth control.

216. The Salem Hypothesis

Comment #27184 by Steven Mading on March 23, 2007 at 12:39 pm

An engineer learns science and builds things with it.
A scientist learns science and build more science with it.

Both start out by learning what science has already discovered. It's what they do with it that makes them different. Both are important. Both are useful. But don't trick yourself into thinking they are identical.

217. The Fourth Flea!

Comment #26756 by Steven Mading on March 21, 2007 at 2:02 pm

From post 44, by kkant"
"2) RELIGIOUS INDOCTRINIZATION OF CHILDREN IS ABUSE:
...
If I've misrepresented Dawkins' views and/or the book here, someone please correct me."

Well, I don't know if Dawkins thinks indoctrination of children is abuse, but I do know that this isn't what he was talking about in TGD. (It might be something he mentioned elsewhere though - he's written an awful lot of things I haven't read.)

In TGD, the point he was making was that the premature labelling them as members of the religion was abuse - not the teaching to them of the religion, but the claim that they are already members of it the moment they are born into a family with parents who believe it. If you haven't thought about it yet yourself, and haven't agreed to what it says yet yourself, then you are NOT a member of the religion yet. Religion is NOT hereditary. The belief does not transmit from the parents to the child unconditionally like genes do. It's something you pick up later in life via deliberate conscious thought.

Imagine a mother talking to her very small child for the first time about the religion she follows. The instant she says - "This is what we believe" she's lying. The child (part of that 'we') does not yet believe it.

By talking to the child as if his belief in the religion was already there to begin with, just by being part of the culture, as if it's not something he needs to voluntarily enter into before it becomes his, the child's ability to think for himself about the issue is stunted.

This is why I think atheists experience such dripping ire and hatred by the religious - people's belief in god predates their higher cognative abilities because it happened as a very core part of what their parents told them, at that young age when you accept everything you're told, and use that as the axioms you build other beliefs on for the rest of your life. The belief in god happens so early in life due to this labelling that in the mind of the thusly labelled person belief in god becomes an axiom to build arguments on, rather than a concusion of arguments derived from lower axioms.

218. The Fourth Flea!

Comment #26752 by Steven Mading on March 21, 2007 at 1:48 pm

Cheshire cat said:
"The barrier for entry to the serious debate is not belief but knowledge."

It would be wonderful if that was true. But the problem is that by defining it so that one must agree with the claims of theologians to enter into the debate, you do make it so that only believers are allowed in.

I'm well aware that modern theologians claim the religion was never intended to be believed literally. But if you insist that I am required to agree with that claim before I can speak on the subject, you are indeed asking for more than just knowlege of what claims they have made. You are insisting on agreement with the claims they have made.

219. The Fourth Flea!

Comment #26751 by Steven Mading on March 21, 2007 at 1:42 pm

cheshire cat, your post #40 is very wrong, in several ways. Let me iterate them:
You seem to be saying that the fact that there is a long tradition in Christianity of interpreting Genesis as not really true means Dawkins is making a strawman argument. Here's the problems with that:
1 - St Augustine did not invent Christianity. A lot of Christin history predates him - so a quote by him does not prove your claim that genesis was always not meant to be taken literally by Christians.
2 - Dawkins was talking about a lot more than just Genesis. Some of the claims the bible makes are impossible to metaphor-away without losing the core of what the religion actually is, and yet they are indeed claims about objective reality too. For example - Did Jesus Christ the man actually exist or was he a legend? If he existed, are the four gospels in the Bible that are alleged to have been written by some eyewitnesses of him a reliable tale of the events in his life, or not? That's an objective question for historians, not a subjective question for theologians. Did Jesus Christ actually come back from the dead or not? Again, a necessary defining characteristic of being a Christian, and an objective historical claim, not a subjective "opinion". Is there in fact an afterlife? Again, an objective claim about the reality of the universe, not a subjective one. Did the universe have a deliberate designer that made it? Again, an objective claim about the reality of the universwe, not a subjective one.

The idea that Genesis is the ONLY place where Christianity makes objective claims that should be dealt with scientifically and not religiously, and therefore the one quote by St Agustine proves that this religion is entirely meant to be subjective in all its claims, is complete bollocks.

220. The Fourth Flea!

Comment #26747 by Steven Mading on March 21, 2007 at 1:22 pm

From comment #24:
When people attack him for not knowing any theology they have a point.

Not really. First off, he does know some theology - he just doesn't agree with it, or consider it worthwhile to pursue it any further than a cursory look because it's already wrong before you go any further with it than that. Secondly, a person who does not find religion to be convincing does not become a theologian. By saying that being a theologian is a prerequisite for talking about religion, Dawkins' critics end up creating a barrier for entry to the topic where the only people allowed to talk about religion are believers. It's a nice closed circle tautology to shut out all atheists - you can't discuss religion unless you are a theologian, and no theologians will claim the topic of their study is a sham.

221. The Religion Clause Divided Against Itself

Comment #26453 by Steven Mading on March 19, 2007 at 12:13 pm

The problem is that the flowery wording of the phrase in the First Amendment has multiple interpretations, all of which are technically accurate use of the English language, but have drastically different results. The clause should have been written more clearly. Let me explain:
[i]Congrss shall make no law [b]Respecting[/b] the [b]Estasblishment[/b] of Religion[/i].

Both the word "respecting" and "establishment" here have nasty ambiguities.

First of all let's look at "Respecting". Unfortunatley it has two meanings:
Meaning 1-A [i]Giving an attitude of admiration to[i]. example: "I am respecting your willingness to put your life on the line for your cause."
Meaning 1-B [i]Regarding to the topic of, or in relation to, but not necessarily posatively or with an attitude of respect[/i]), as in "This is my view respecting the taste of coffee: Its too bitter, so I can't stand it. Yuck."

Given that little difference, a ban on making a law "respecting" something can mean two different things. It might mean you can't make a law about the topic at all (meaning 1-B), or that you can't make a law that is respectful to it (meaning 1-A).

(I think most people would assume meaning 1-B was meant, but the ambiguity is technically still there. The next meaning is the big problem though.)

The next ambiguity is the target of the statement - what is is that congress is not supposed to make a law about (or respecting)? - it's not supposed to make a law about "Establishment". Here's the reall nasty ambiguity:

meaning 2-A: "Establishment" could be a noun meaning "the thing which has already been established". example: "I'm going to go visit the Establishment for Fine Arts today."
meaning 2-B: it could be a "nouned verb" meaning "the activity of establishing - i.e. the activity of causing something to become established which was not previously established beforehand." example: "I announce today that I'm making a new fund and donating one million dollars to it to get it started. This constitutes an establishment of an institute for fine arts."

That's the really messy ambiguity there. Is "establishment of religion" a reference to an activity congress might engage in, or is it just a synonym for just "the existing establishment we already have, called religion."

Depending on what choice you pick for 1-A vs 1-B and 2-A vs 2-B, you get four different versions of what the clause is telling us:

1-A, 2-A = Congress cannot make a law that has an admirable stance toward the insititue called religion.
1-B, 2-A = Congress cannot make a law that touches upon the subject (for or against) the institute called relgiion. (This is the interpretation most of us here would take).
1-A, 2-B = Congress cannot make a law that has an admirable stance toward the activity of starting up a new establishment of religion.
1-B, 2-B = Congress cannot make a law that touches upon the subject (for or agaisnt) toward the activity starting up a new establishment of religion. (This is the interpretation most fundies want us to take - that congress is merely forbidden from starting a new state religion.)

222. A 'Sad First' in the History of the Congress

Comment #26085 by Steven Mading on March 16, 2007 at 3:22 pm

Why is it that these dishonest people equate the right to disagree with religion with the oppression of religion? I'm sick and tired of their spin-doctoring dishonesty. All this guy did is declare that he isn't one of them. How the hell does that equate to a silencing of them?!!

I know it's not nice to call someone dishonest. But it happens to be true - they ARE being dishonest, and people need to call them to task for it.

223. When They Came for the Homosexuals...

Comment #26080 by Steven Mading on March 16, 2007 at 3:04 pm

[blockquote]
Makes me feel sad as it puts me off ever visiting the United States Of America. Even though I know not everyone is like this, but I somehow feel I'd be condoning it.
[/blockquote]
The US has a massive difference in culture between urban and rural areas. Essentailly, in a rural area it's possible to spend week after week interacting only with people who are exactly like you in every way - in religion, in race, in accent, in politics. That makes it easier to foster factually incorrect predjudices about people who are not like you - because you don't have the chance to interact with any counterexamples to disprove the predjudice. In urban areas, the constant contact with people who are counterexamples to predjudicially held beliefs tends to cut down on the number of people who act like the spray-painting jerks in this story.

224. U.S. Mint goof creates 'Godless dollars'

Comment #24919 by Steven Mading on March 9, 2007 at 9:21 am

After Washington, the presidents to be honored on dollar coins this year will be John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

Putting them on coins that violate the first amendment is NOT honoring them.

225. Conservapedia v Wikipedia

Comment #24759 by Steven Mading on March 8, 2007 at 11:11 am

What do you call it when a group becomes so insane that it becomes impossible to tell the difference between satire of them and their genuine opinions?

I still can't tell if conservativopedia is a joke.

226. Religion and Politics

Comment #24391 by Steven Mading on March 6, 2007 at 11:21 am

Carl Sagan's book "Contact" had a vastly different take on religion than the movie did - massively so. The movie tried to show Ellie's experience as being just the same as religion and thus paint her attitude toward religion as hypocritical in the end. The book did no such thing (for one thing, the wormhole vehicle in the book could take several people on the trip, so it wasn't just Ellie going alone, and the collective testimony of all those who went painted the same picture, as opposed to Ellie trying to convince people on her own.

227. Books on Atheism Are Raising Hackles in Unlikely Places

Comment #24378 by Steven Mading on March 6, 2007 at 9:36 am

"Well, if you understood enough, you'd agree with me."

What they really mean is:

"If you thought like me, you'd agree with me."

Exactly. All too often people confuse "understand" with "listen" - condescendingly stating that a person who doesn't agree with how they think must necessarily not be listening. I see three basic levels of response to another's statement:
1 - listening.
2 - understanding.
3 - agreeing.
Some people's views are so wacky and insane that the only way to go from level 1 to level 2 is to actually become just as insane as them - until you do that, you just can't understand their "reasoning". The fact that I don't understand another's position might not be a deficiency on my part. It might be a deficiency on the part of their position that makes it inherently impossible to understand if one wants to remain sane.

228. Darwin's God

Comment #24251 by Steven Mading on March 5, 2007 at 2:45 pm

"Post hoc" just means that *you* are thinking about it after the fact. My point is that it is very easy and often tempting to retroactively attribute motivations for actions that were not the real motivations at the time.

And your evidence that this is what was happening is what, exactly?

As a test to see if the person has attitudes like religious faith the test is very broken because it would requrie faith to assume the professor didn't have any alterior motive and have some trap in the box - It takes faith to assume the box really is magic, and it also requries faith to assume the box is safe and this is not a mundane trick of some sort. He's not testing whether or not the person has faithful tendencies with this test, as he falsely claims.

229. Darwin's God

Comment #24250 by Steven Mading on March 5, 2007 at 2:40 pm

JJ Ramsey:
That may be a good post hoc rationalization for why one doesn't put one's hand in the box. However, you and all the other people saying that this is a bad demonstration are presuming that the students' reactions to the box are based on conscious critical reflection rather than a more gut-level response.

They have plenty of time to think things through - they hum and haw about whether or not to put their hand in the box. It's not a post hoc rationalization. There's plenty of time for thinking it through the first time.

230. Darwin's God

Comment #24220 by Steven Mading on March 5, 2007 at 11:13 am

From the article:
Put in your driver's license, he says, and most do, but only after significant hesitation. And when he tells them to put in their hands, few will.

What a terrible experiment. That doesn't have anything to do with a propensity for religious belief. There are plenty of mundane secular reasons to be fearful. For example, why is the instructor reluctant to show what is inside the box? It could be a trick and its an animal of some sort, ready to bite. The religious explanation doesn't have to be true for there to be a real thing to be afraid of there - a spring loaded trap - or even just something slimy and icky. That's the sort of thing you'd subject a pencil or a driver's license to to test it, but not your own hand. Fear of the man with the demonstration box who won't tell you what's inside it and yet wants you to stick your hand in anyway is not religious fear. It's fear of human beings.

231. William Crawley meets Richard Dawkins

Comment #23426 by Steven Mading on February 28, 2007 at 2:39 pm

comment by Mark RL:
Its only natural a parent that believes his religion is "THE" religion then of course they are naturally going to force it upon their kids. If the parent had doubt's about god then letting the child make his mind up comes into it because once again its what the parents believes.

I still think you're missing the point. It's not the dogmatic teaching that's the problem Richard (and I) were talking about. It's the implicit claim that the child is *already* a believer in the religion the instant he's born into the family. Even if you believe your religion is correct, you still know that a child of, say 1 or 2 years old still doesn't believe it yet. To claim that the children are autmatically the same religion of their parents until otherwise stated is actually a deliberate boldfaced lie. By default they have no religion until they learn one. Even the believers in a religion have to (if they feel like being honest) admit that that's true.

232. William Crawley meets Richard Dawkins

Comment #23397 by Steven Mading on February 28, 2007 at 11:56 am

LDmiller says in a post above: "RD has often said that if the universe were designed by a god "it would look much different", but he never elaborates on that. Sam Harris does the same thing on many occasions for many statements. "Because I say so" seems to be an adequate reason to both of these gentlemen."

The problem is that to give that specific answer, a more specific definition of god is needed first. If THIS god designed the universe, the universe would be different in THIS way, but if THAT god designed the universe, the universe would be different in THAT way, etc.

In general, the argument goes like this: In order for your god to exist in any relevant fashion, it must affect the world in some way. Otherwise the universe where it exists and the one where it doesn't are identical universes, and thus it doesn't exist. So, the claim that god could exist but not in a fashion that has any evidence (the "you just gotta have faith" line of "reasoning"), one has to be positing an irrelevant god.

233. William Crawley meets Richard Dawkins

Comment #23396 by Steven Mading on February 28, 2007 at 11:44 am

Janus, the reason for Dawkins' attidue about categorizing children into religions being abuse (which I agree with) is this: It's dishonest to claim these children have decided to be in the religion, or have decided to believe its tenets. They're children - they don't understand yet. Leave them open to decide later. By telling them at an early age that they already believe something ("we" believe this, and "we" believe that) before they even know what it is yet, the parents are circumventing the normal process of learning and insteaed are merely brainwashing. Tell your kid about your religion, sure, teach him what its tenets are, sure, but don't lie to him and claim he was born into this world already believing it out the the womb. Religious belief is not geneticly inherited. It's learned. The child is not a member of a religion until HE says so.

234. Atheists come in last

Comment #23177 by Steven Mading on February 26, 2007 at 3:56 pm

BizzaroDawkins said:
"Considering that the Constitution is based on biblical concepts, there will never arise a contradiction between the two documents."

Well, if we lived in some Bizzarro's world where the constitution was actually based on bliblical concepts, that would make sense. But meanwhile over here in the real world where the rest of us live, they are very incompatable documents. I don't have much space so let's start with the 1st Constituional Amendment and the 1st Biblical Commandment - One says no law may prohibit the free excercise of religion, while the other says that Yahweh is the only god one is allowed to have. Those are 100% opposite rulings that can never be reconciled except by ignoring one or the other.

235. The questions science cannot answer

Comment #21590 by Steven Mading on February 10, 2007 at 3:21 am

This common attempt to persuade (which can be trimmed down to "science is inadequete because it only answers HOW, not WHY - for WHY you need god and religion") is a tautological fallacy. It assumes the existence of the universe is because of deliberate sentient action before it even begins. What makes me say that? Easy - this: The word "why" - look at what it actually means and how it differs from the word "how". The word "why" CONTAINS THE ASSUMPTION that there is a deliberate intent behind something. When you ask "how did it happen?", you're asking for a technical explanation of a sequence of events, but when you ask "why did it happen", you're asking what the sentient motivation of the do-er that did it was. So the moment you ask why the universe exists, you are assuming there is a sentinece behind it before you even begin examining possible answers. If there was no sentience behind the creation of the universe, then the question "why does the universe exist" would be an invalid question that assumes facts not in evidence - akin to asking the inflammatory question "have you stopped beating your wife?" when you never started beating your wife.

In other words, the notion that science's inability to answer "why" is some sort of gaping hole that needs to be filled by religion is already assuming the existence of god before you even begin. It's a dishonest line of inquiry to ask the question "why" before you've established that there is a creator. The notion that the question "why" is a valid STARTING point to lead one to the conclusioon that there is a creator is not honest because the act of asking the question already assumes a creator.

236. The Current: Part 3: The Religious Right

Comment #21513 by Steven Mading on February 9, 2007 at 3:49 pm

Riley, the analogy is not apt and here's why: In the civil rights movement SOME of the protestors were upper-class and white, but they did not make up the majority of those involved in the protest. In the 9/11 attacks ALL the perpitrators were middle-class - not just some of them. Not just a tiny part of the movement. All of them.

While I do agree that there is a direct correlation between economic status and the rise of despotic movements, don't forget that there is also a direct correlation between economic status and religiousity. I think it works like this:

Step 1 - bad economic situation, which leads to:
Step 2 - people getting desperate and more willing to believe comforting bull, which leads to:
Step 3 - both despotism and religiousity, which can then easily feed each other in a snowballing recursive fashion.

237. Are politics in your DNA?

Comment #19501 by Steven Mading on January 27, 2007 at 4:51 pm

( in 2. Comment #19453 by Homo economicus on January 27, 2007 at 9:36 am, he said: Did Frank Herbert know something we did not? In the Dune series other memory (ego/memories) of ancestors was passed genetically. Are we heading in that direction? )

I very strongly doubt that is possible. Isn't the DNA pattern you have in you when you are an adult having sex and concieving children the same one you had when you were a baby? How can the memories of what happened to you when you were, say 20 years old, be encoded in a pattern that is identical to what it was when you were 10 years old, which is identical to what it was when you were 5 years old, and identical to what it was when you were developing in the womb?

238. Grief Without God

Comment #19499 by Steven Mading on January 27, 2007 at 4:40 pm

I find the tendency of religious groups to exploit the intense emotional pain and separation anxiety of the death of a loved one as a tool to reinforce their propaganda utterly rephrehensable. A co-worker died several years back - he was a nonbeliever and was quite adamant about it. Since he died rather young, unexpectedly of a surprise heart attack, he had no will made out, and no suggestions on record for how to conduct his funeral. So his mourners got the default religious service. - Massively religious. Sheer utter shameless exploitation of the emotions of the survivors. I can't stand going to religious funerals anymore because of the anger that wells up in me - how DARE these people exploit my grief like this. I came here to remember a passed friend. The eulogies by close family and friends are always much more useful than the propaganda-filled eulogies given by the clergy.

Ms Anonymous - you shared a painful memory with us and that took courage. I wish you the best of luck with your book and hope it helps you work through the grief you must be feeling.

239. Guest Host Bill Moyers with philosopher Daniel Dennett

Comment #19399 by Steven Mading on January 27, 2007 at 12:02 am

From: 23. Comment #18849 by Riley:
---
I would love to hear someone who sees merit in the "bad cop" technique, explain how engaging in behavior intended to shame, intimidate and/or belittle a segment of people can work as an effective means of persuading such people (or anyone else observing or participating) to be more rational. Or is there some other goal involved?
---

The problem is your mischaracterization of this as the intent. It's not the intent. It's a natural side effect of merely telling the whole truth and holding nothing back. Being nice about religion requires that one hold back and only tell a subset of the truth, and sort of nibble around the edges of the truth. When Dawkins is in "bad cop" mode, he's not INTENDING to shame and indimidate. He's INTENDING to be forthright and honest. That this causes offense is a side effect, not the intent.

240. A Culture of Faith, Devoted Yet Complex

Comment #19188 by Steven Mading on January 25, 2007 at 1:13 pm

To nine9s: Reacting to a person who is spouting the same old dishonest propaganda you've heard many times before with an outright, short, plain dismissal borne of pent-up frustration is not a case of being arrogant. You are right to state that it's not an effective persuation technique for Dawkins to use, but you're are wrong to state that it's a case of arrogance on his part. And remember that the the Tv show you're talking about (which is not called The God Delusion by the way - that TV show aired a year earlier than that book came out), was not an attempt to persuade Haggard. It never pretended to be. It was an attempt to document his behavior for others to see. Dawkins wasn't trying to persuade Haggard - that's a lost cause. He was trying to persuade the audience of the TV show.

241. Gentle Rottweiler

Comment #17278 by Steven Mading on January 12, 2007 at 4:31 pm

Thalesian said in the first comment:
"After America's experiences in Iraq, perhaps ethnic identity is as dangerous as religion (if they don't already both stem from the same vice)."

Actually, the big problem is the world's tendancy to mix ethnic identity with religion as being one in the same. Consider the Sunni/Shia thing: They are religions, and yet they can also be treated as ethnicities because people mis-label children as being the religion of their parents long before the children have any idea what that's really all about - and so people tend to view their religion as a definitional integral part of who they are. That prevents intelligent discourse on the subject because they don't treat it as just yet another idea that can be freely accepted into or freely rejected. They view it as being a permanent thing just as much as, say, one's race is.

242. Questionable Mission

Comment #16646 by Steven Mading on January 7, 2007 at 8:55 pm

This is the backdoor that US theocrats use to circumvent the 'spirit of the law' of the First Amendment while still following the letter of the law of the First Amendment - and that backdoor is the fact that the First Amendment only names Congress, not the President nor the Supreme court . It says CONGRESS shall make no law respecting...etc, not "All 3 branches of the US government shall take action respecting....etc"

Activities of the Executive Branch of the US government (which includes all enforcement of laws and powers, and all foreign relations and military power) and so ends up encompassing the FBI, the CIA, the military, are not technically "laws" passed by congress per se. Opening an embassy is considered entirely outside the legaslative branch's power - it's an act of foriegn relations and is thus entirely up to the excutive branch.

And that's how they sneak this stuff in and it's all still technically legal despite being obviously in opposition of the original intent of the First Amendment.

I also think this has a lot to do with the trend to put more power into the Executive branch than it had before - It gets more things out of the jurisdiction of Congress, and thus the jurisdiction of the First Amendment, and thus lets people make a more theocratic government.

243. God's Enemies Are More Honest Than His Friends

Comment #15188 by Steven Mading on December 29, 2006 at 11:52 am

Ernest Sparks says: "The problem with "atheism" is the "ism" suffix. It automatically suggests something brewed up in a mind, with social consequences to follow."

Actually, the problem is that the order of operations in English prefix and suffix parsing isn't clear. "Atheism" is composed of three parts. The base is "theus" for god. The prefix "a-" means "without or lacking". The suffix "-ism" means a an ideology. The meaning is different depending on which order you pull those apart in:
1: (a-theus)-ism : Taking the lack of god and making an "-ism" out of it.
2: a-(theus-ism) : Lacking the "-ism" that there is a god.

Meaning 2 is more accurate at describing actual real-world atheists, but Meaning 1 is how most people view it, and it represents the false boogeyman version of atheist that most people envision.

244. The Courtier's Reply

Comment #15185 by Steven Mading on December 29, 2006 at 11:39 am

I've often felt that The Emperor's New Clothes was the perfect fable to demonstrate the utter frustration we atheists feel in dealing with the arguments of believers, and the hypocracy of their accusations of arrogance. Mr. Myer's parody puts this point forward quite well.

The "you can't criticize religion until you spend years studying previous theologians" argument is utterly frustrating because it will automatically cut off anyone who can tell what a sham the whole subject really is. People who see the sham for what it is aren't going to continue spending their lives researching it. Once you've seen enough to see to see the sham for what it is, studying further nuances beyond that is a waste of time.

245. 10 myths - and 10 truths - about atheism

Comment #14964 by Steven Mading on December 27, 2006 at 1:38 pm

I was with Harris right up until the last one - number 10: "10) Atheism provides no basis for morality."

Actually, that's true. The error that the anti-atheist crowd makes is that they sneak in the unspoken premise that "therefore atheists won't be moral". The error is in their assumption that morality cannot come from anything other than one's stance on supernatural things. They assume quite falsely that since they believe their morality comes from their supernatural beliefs, that this must mean everyone else in the world has to base their morality on supernatural beliefs also. They cut out the possibility of a person who does have morals that come from something entirely unrelated to their stance on the supernatural. In so doing, they sweep under the rug the acutal moral foundations most atheists tend to use and arrogantly act like they don't exist.

So the problem isn't that the phrase "Atheism provides no basis for morality." is false. It's actually true. The problem is that it has about as much relevance as saying "Stamp collecting provides no basis for morality." Yeah, so? Who said that that has to be the source of morality in an individual? Just because stamp collectors don't derive morality from the hobby of stamp collecting doesn't mean they don't derive morality from something else instead.

246. Talk in Class Turns to God, Setting Off Public Debate on Rights

Comment #13773 by Steven Mading on December 19, 2006 at 11:11 am

As for compulsory teaching of religion, I think there is a very strong line to be drawn between teaching "This religion is something a bunch of people believe and so we're studying it to learn about history and culture" versus teaching "This religion is something that we're learning because it is true."

After all, we have no problem with teaching ancient greek mythology in public schools. It's just that children, when tested on it, are not required to answer as if the myths were true - they're just required to answer as if they were literature stories. If they believe they are fictional literature stories, that is fine and they're allowed to say so just so long as they show signs of having actually read the stories and remembered them.

I would have no problem with religion being taught in schools *that* way - i.e. if a student turns in a paper on a Bible chapter, and in that paper is allowed to refer to God as a fictional character, and can still get an "A" grade if he proves he understands the story but just doesn't agree with it being true, then that would be fine. The problem is that I strongly doubt the capacity of a strongly Christian teacher to take that approach and not have reprisals on that kid or knock that kid's grade down for getting it "wrong" in the eyes of the teacher.

If it was possible to teach religion as a cultural and literary phenomonon at the level of high school, I'd be okay with that. I just don't think it's actually possible to give it that type of approach when many of the people in the classroom think of it as TRUTH and many other people think of it as BUNK. It's going to be impossible to leave aside the question of whether or not its true while talking about it.

247. The Trouble with Atheism

Comment #13769 by Steven Mading on December 19, 2006 at 10:53 am

One complaint I have in general about these kinds of arguments against atheism is that they all make the same mistake of assuming that atheism must be a full drop-in replacement for everything they attribute to religion. I.E. Since they think morality comes from religion, that means atheism better have a morality attached to it or else the atheist is throwing away morality when replacing religion with atheism. So they look for the morality in atheism and either invent an alleged atheist moral code and show it to be bad, or they point out that atheism has no moral code and then accuse atheists of not having morals. This strawman argument comes from them, perhaps deliberately, or perhaps ignorantly, ignoring the case that is actually the most common among atheists. This most common case is that atheists are finding their emotional and moral inspirations from sources that are entirely outside the jurisdiction of the religion vs atheism debate altogether. You don't need to take any particular metaphysical stance on god in order to feel empathy for the suffering of others, for example. Morality does not derive from religion, nor does it derive from opposition to religion. It's completely external to religion. Atheism merely opens up one's eyes to the opportunity to go search somewhere else for morality other than in religion. It does NOT specify that atheism is the cause of that morality or the place to go look to find it - it just rules out religion as one of the the places to go looking for it.

And again, it all goes back to their false notion that atheism is a dogma of multiple beliefs all tied together into one package like religions do it. It's nothing of the sort. It's just a word for ruling-out certain types of beliefs, but without specifying any further which of the many alternative beliefs, if any, might be picked instead.

248. Religion for a Captive Audience, Paid For by Taxes

Comment #12737 by Steven Mading on December 13, 2006 at 1:40 pm

TranshumanAtheist, I have a huge problem with it even without the tax support angle, and here's why: Being kept in prison means you are in a government enforced institution (if a private citizen does it, it's called kidnapping). Therefore anything and everything that is being done to you, and being forced upon you while you are there automatically qualifies as being government sponsored no matter who pays for it.

And if they decide that your punishment should vary depending upon your religion, then you bet that counts as government establishment of religion. It's a textbook case for it.

It doesn't sound so bad if you phrase it as "if you act religious you get nicer treatment." But when you phrase it the other way around, "if you refuse to act religious you get stronger punishment", then what's wrong with it becomes very clear. And the second way I phrased it is much more accurate to what's happening, given that your curtailment of freedom that you get from being in prison is an active punishment by the government, rather than just an instance of the government passively letting things be as they naturally would (which is what the first phrasing makes it falsely look like is the case).

249. Scientologists get £270,000 subsidy

Comment #12733 by Steven Mading on December 13, 2006 at 1:03 pm

I don't understand the difference between classifying something like Scientology as a cult rather than a religion. In fact I don't understand the differentiation between cult and religion that so many people make in the first place - the only real honest difference seems to be the size of the membership rolls and that seems to be about it. Both cults and religions engage in exactly the same reprehensable behaviors and have beliefs of equal "wackiness" - the only difference is that cults are small enough that it's politically safe to treat this wackiness as it deserves to be treated, while religions are not.

250. Atheists: The New Gays

Comment #8518 by Steven Mading on November 21, 2006 at 1:51 pm

Bill Gates's company has no problems engaging in almost-truths and half-truths and underhanded tactics of the sort that Karl Rove would author.

Example 1: Jacking up the price of its products for computer manufacturers who don't follow the policy of exlusively selling Microsoft OS'es only. (They jacked it up by an amount larger than the profit margin the manufacturers typically work with, and voilla competitors to Microsoft for pre-installed OSes dissapeared off the market.)

Example 2: When Microsoft first wanted to get into the spreadsheet business with their new product "Excel", they deliberately doctored their next release of their OS to make it so the biggest spreadsheet competitor product at the time (Lotus) would behave incorectly on the new OS.

I could go on.

If you want a champion of truth and honesty, Bill Gates isn't it.

The internet, the medium which you are reading this message via, was originally opposed strongly by Microsoft - they considered it a useless toy and instead wanted people to use their commercial MSN service (which did not begin as an internet website like it is now, but rather as its own seperate dial-up service). They only turned this attitude around when they had no choice. Just like the many church leaders who claim the modern liberalized values we enjoy today are the product of their relgion when just the opposite is true, Microsoft got people to believe that they were pro-internet all along and they should be thanked for it.