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Comments by Shuggy


201. 'Jesus loves you' email

Comment #66137 by Shuggy on August 29, 2007 at 2:29 am

That's right:

Jesus is his own father
God is his own son
The Holy Ghost did it

and if you don't believe that,
you're going to Hell

202. Anger over 'blasphemous' balls

Comment #65997 by Shuggy on August 27, 2007 at 6:32 pm

How many flags are on the footballs, I wonder. So just how big is the Saudi flag? So can you actually read the name of Allah, or just deduce that it is, in some sense, there, because there is a Saudi flag, which we know has the shahada on it, in which is included the name of Allah?

I wonder if they covered the name with an inkblot, would that make it all right? Somehow I suspect it wouldn't. Or if they scraped it off?

Of course, telling them to "lighten up" won't get you anywhere. This kind of righteous offence-taking is seldom about the thing itself, but the act of taking offence, and especially the act of displaying your faith by taking offence where everyone can see you taking it, and take it with you - just another of the shared rituals that keeps religions together.

203. Shop targets U.S. hunters with camo Bibles

Comment #65687 by Shuggy on August 25, 2007 at 3:47 pm

I've just been reading in David Sloan Wilson's "Evolution for Everyone" about "stealth religion", by which he means the likes of Ayn Rand's Objectivism, Marxism and Maoism (and I'd add psychoanalysis and psychotherapy).

I don't think he had in mind anything as literal as this.

204. Mother Teresa's '40-year faith crisis'

Comment #65571 by Shuggy on August 24, 2007 at 10:08 pm

Very odd. She really believed in belief. I guess she prayed "Lord, I believe, help me in my unbelief!" a lot. A pity she didn't talk to anyone but believers about it.

Another way of looking at it is that she couldn't break the habit of (addiction to?) belief, though the part of her intellect that had previously interpreted good feelings resulting from belief as feedback from God, stopped doing so.

What's really annoying about her is that for 48 years she continued to behave as if not only the catholic God existed, bad enough, but that all the other teachings of the church were true as well. She never once seemed to have let herself think, "Well, if there is no God, what follows from that? What is the basis of my morality? Not even "What can I salvage of my faith?"

This is annoying (from TIME):

Not all atheists and doubters will agree. Both Kolodiejchuk and Martin assume that Teresa's inability to perceive Christ in her life did not mean he wasn't there. ... But to the U.S.'s increasingly assertive cadre of atheists, that argument will seem absurd. They will see the book's Teresa more like the woman in the archetypal country-and-western song who holds a torch for her husband 30 years after he left to buy a pack of cigarettes and never returned.
HelLO-o! We're over here. You don't need to use the speculative future tense, you can ask us. Actually, if (since) God doesn't exist, it's not as if he walked out. The man in the song might come back.

205. God Bless Me, It's a Best-Seller!

Comment #64329 by Shuggy on August 19, 2007 at 3:29 pm

34. Comment #64276 by Riley on August 19, 2007 at 8:52 am

Hitchens wrote on p.54 of "God is Not Great":

"Orthodox Jews conduct Congress by means of a hole in the sheet"

What would compel Hitchens to write something like this to begin with?
To whom does he credit the source of such information?

I suspect that the crumb of truth is that Orthodox husbands and wives may not touch for about two weeks of the month. It would be logical for them to sleep with a sheet between them during that time to prevent accidentally touching. Jokes about holes in sheets would follow.

But yes, it certainly was shallow of CH to swallow the full-blown urban legend version unchecked.

Notice that he has renounced that claim and removed it from future editions of the book.

206. God Bless Me, It's a Best-Seller!

Comment #64200 by Shuggy on August 18, 2007 at 3:49 pm

The archbishop's church is about to undergo a schism. More than 10 conservative congregations in Virginia have seceded, along with some African bishops, to protest the ordination of a gay bishop in New England. I ask him how it's going. "Well"—he lowers his voice—"I'm rather trying to keep my head down." Well, why, in that case, I want to reply, did you seek a job that supposedly involves moral leadership? But I let it go. What do I care what some Bronze Age text says about homosexuality? And there's something hopelessly innocent about the archbishop
Hopelessly guilty, rather of trying to have a bob both ways. Never mind what some Bronze Age text says, how dare he sacrifice millions of gay people (to homophobic attacks) on the altar of church unity? This is not just about gay bishops, it's about the right of gay people to live undisturbed (especially in countries like Jamaica, Nigeria and Zimbabwe). Both Anglican and Catholic churches are criminally weak on this issue.

207. God Bless Me, It's a Best-Seller!

Comment #64195 by Shuggy on August 18, 2007 at 3:00 pm

A three-hour debate with the Reverend Mark Roberts ... I ask him if he believes the story in Saint Matthew's Gospel about the graves opening in Jerusalem at the time of the crucifixion ... He replies that as a Christian he does believe it, though as a historian he has his doubts. I realize that I am limited here: I can usually think myself into an opponent's position, but this is something I can't imagine myself saying, let alone thinking.
Suggested reply:

"I see only one head, Reverend."

208. God Bless Me, It's a Best-Seller!

Comment #64192 by Shuggy on August 18, 2007 at 2:43 pm

13. Comment #64146 by Jopses on August 18, 2007 at 3:44 am

Schubert, too, was suffering from neurosyphylis and died as a result of it. Remarkably, he wrote the best work, like Winterreise, during his final illness. So much for the `detrimental` effects of this STD.
You beat me to it, but I was going to say (Frederick) Delius.

But what an extraordinarily rude question, and what an extraordinarily polite answer! You can take Hitchens out of England....

209. God Bless Me, It's a Best-Seller!

Comment #64138 by Shuggy on August 18, 2007 at 1:55 am

I get to try out my latest slogan, echoing what Jefferson said about the "wall of separation" between church and state: "Mr. Jefferson—build up that wall!" Mr. Dobbs leans over and, on-camera, pins an American flag to my lapel.

You might like to wear the slogan next to your flag:
http://richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=21867 but I like that point that the religious right is more concerned about keeping government out of the church (especially taxation) than the church out of government.

210. Richard Dawkins and the New Age fakers

Comment #63960 by Shuggy on August 17, 2007 at 3:10 am

28. Comment #63437 by Jiten on August 14, 2007 at 6:15 am

I hope Dawkins has something to say about psychoanalysts as well-they're complete charlatans.
You're talking about the religion I was brought up in (but escaped from). They're not charlatans, they really believe their "Heads I win, Tails you're overcompensating" explanations of everything.

211. The Bible's literary sins

Comment #63944 by Shuggy on August 16, 2007 at 11:48 pm

28. Comment #63342 by suffolkthinker on August 14, 2007 at 1:57 am

If you think the Bible is bad (and I do), then for a laugh read The Book of Mormon. Reads like a cod impersonation of the King James Bible.
"Reads like", madam? Nay, it is.

"And it came to pass that I tried to read the Book of Mormon, and I cried Wo, wo, wo!"

As Mark Twain really did say, if you took out "And it came to pass that", the BoM would be a pamphlet.

212. The Bible's literary sins

Comment #63938 by Shuggy on August 16, 2007 at 10:15 pm

4. Comment #63202 by dloubet on August 13, 2007 at 1:32 pm

"Would you even prefer to read all that bunk about demons in the New Testament, unleavened as it is by humour or the intriguing possibility of the lead character finally losing his virginity, to Harry Potter?"

Losing his virginity to Harry Potter?! Why you little devil!

And since the lead character of the New Testament is St Paul ...

213. Unreasonably superstitious

Comment #62704 by Shuggy on August 10, 2007 at 11:34 pm

I don't understand why the lawyers cautioned RD against including the interview with the tarot reader.
Me neither, but I think he did use another with one who said the same thing and he kept mum about his dad.

Can't have been much of a cold-reader. There's always a save, like "Ah, he thinks about you a lot and how it'll be when he's passed over - that looks a lot the same to the inner eye, you know."

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

Comment #62504 by Shuggy on August 10, 2007 at 2:03 am

but the modern Christian concept of Hell means little more than permanent separation from God:
And that means what exactly? In what sense are we now not separated from this God
person/thing/entity/concept?
the notion of being tortured by sulphuric flames for eternity is as dead as Hieronymus Bosch.
Or as alive as Benedict XVI. Didn't he reaffirm the naïve version for some villagers only a few weeks ago - while affirming the sophisticated one to another audience?

215. Another Flea is Born

Comment #62486 by Shuggy on August 10, 2007 at 1:02 am

Church signs: you can make your own at
http://www.churchsigngenerator.com/

I expect some very funny avatars using these.

216. New age therapies cause 'retreat from reason'

Comment #62219 by Shuggy on August 8, 2007 at 11:59 pm

Flagellant:

I get pissed off by nonsense, too. I once asked an astrologer to tell me my 'birth sign'. She got it on the seventh go.
Chance predicts success after about 5 goes (1 in 12 of getting it the first time + 1 in 11 the second time [unless they're blockheads who guess the same again] + 1 in 10 the third time + 1/9 + 1/8 = 0.51). I've done it often and overall they don't score above chance. Then they say "Oh, but astrology's much more than birthsigns." A moment later they're back to "Typical Gemini" etc. If the sunsigns don't fit, they try rising signs, then something else, and if all else fails, "Oh, you're not behaving in accordance with your true character" - in other words, astrology isn't wrong, you are.

217. Could these books be part of the problem?

Comment #61320 by Shuggy on August 4, 2007 at 3:45 pm

stereoroid wrote:

There actually is a Religion For Dummies book. Authors: Rabbi Marc Gellman, Monsignor Thomas Hartman - how objective!
I wonder how it treats Islam - or indeed
Protestantism/Hinduism/Buddhism/Shintoism/Jainism/Confucianism?

218. CNN Debate on Koran in Toilet

Comment #60848 by Shuggy on August 3, 2007 at 2:05 am

troyreynolds86 wrote:

I have never been a supporter of legislating "hate crimes". My main objection is that it places a greater emphasis upon certain motives for evil deeds over other motives while rendering the deed itself as a secondary consideration. Using the obvious example, a racially motivated crime, while being breed from a hatred of a race and is more morally repugnant for that reason alone, shouldn't be treated as a greater crime because we would be legislating thought, in this case detestable thought, but in fairness to the First Amendment even the ugliest thoughts of all are still protected.
I take the point that thought is inviolate, but a hate crime is defined by the group status of the victims, not the thought. A crime directed against a group is aimed at intimidating the whole group on a "There, but for chance, go I" basis. Can we not work up a definition that makes that the focus, rather than the interior motive of the attacker?

Leaving a Qu'ran in a toilet is directed at the group, but a very minor example of the genre, since the level of threat is very minor. Muslims take offence more from a blasphemy/bibliotatry point of view, a very different argument.

219. The Flea Circus Invites a Newcomer!

Comment #60442 by Shuggy on August 2, 2007 at 1:04 am

Keith asked:

Dingo Dave,
In the New American Standard Bible, are the names changed from Moses, Noah and Seth to Chuck, Randy and Skip?
If you want a really depressing version, try the Jehovah's Witness bible. I think it's called the New International Edition. Not only is "God" and "The Lord" changed to "Jehovah" throughout (of course, even though that is a made-up name), but because they don't believe The Cross^TM had a crossbar, it's called the "execution stake" or some such. Throughout, not only are all the Thees and Thous and ye's changed to yous, but all the poetry is sucked out - the whole thing is put into the flattest possible English.

220. The Flea Circus Invites a Newcomer!

Comment #60352 by Shuggy on August 1, 2007 at 4:41 pm

D'arcy wrote:

Wee Flea may be pleased to learn that I intend to buy myself a new Bible. Any ideas about which edition it should be?
Don't buy, get a Gideon from a hotel. They should be pleased, it'll be far more read than where it is. Mine has a gold cover. It's called the New King James Version, which seems to mean without the anti-Papist introduction, with "you" for "thou" and "ye", and "favor" for "favour", etc. Failing that, get a KJV for the poetry, and Goggle any passage you want modernised or clarified. The Internet is chocker with Bibliolatry.

221. The Flea Circus Invites a Newcomer!

Comment #60344 by Shuggy on August 1, 2007 at 4:25 pm

Hey, Nice cover, David! (It seems unkind to call you Flea in this context.)

It resembles an Escher tessellation of animals. And it nicely illustrates the incredible diversity of life that led Darwin from Creationism to Evolution, even if it is confined to vertebrate animals, overloaded with quadrupeds, and has more than its fair share of elephanta.

But...

  • Why is the unicorn's tail nearly as big as its body?
  • Why is it visible?

222. The Out Campaign

Comment #59886 by Shuggy on July 31, 2007 at 2:59 am

What I'm delighted that RD calls

... yet another delightful T-shirt ... "Don't pray in [my] school, and I won't think in your church."
is available at http://www.cafepress.com/wero/1440313
along with "Blasphemy is a Victimless Crime" and others that I think are more likely to open up discussion than the Scarlet Letter.

223. Religion is Hard

Comment #59614 by Shuggy on July 30, 2007 at 12:03 am

Preach it, Brothah! Hu-MAN!

224. Don't eat at the Outback Steakhouse on Route 3...

Comment #59153 by Shuggy on July 27, 2007 at 4:02 pm

Richard Morgan wrote:

Well, I'm sorry for all you guys, but you ARE going to roast in Hell, you know that, don't you?
What is the use of discussions and forums when we have the revealed truth? It's all so silly. Can you imagine the scene:

"It's raining again today."

[silly argument by analogy omitted, where divine revelation is assumed to be as obvious as rain]

You still think that absolute divine truths should be "discussed in Forums"? [silly preemptive quibble omitted]

OK, Richard, since you're here, discussing in a Forum something you think is beyond discussion, I won't dispute that "we have the revealed truth". I'll just ask WHICH revealed truth you're talking about -
  • The Torah?
  • The rest of the Hebrew Scripture ("Old Testament")
  • The New Testament (Greek Scripture)?
  • The Apocrypha?
  • The Qu'ran?
  • The Book of Mormon?
  • Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures?
  • The Great Controversy?
  • The Urantia Book?
  • Others I can't remember just now?

ALL of those have had the claim of Divine Revelation made about them. Are they ALL absolute divine truth? Are we going to burn in Hell if we don't believe them ALL?

225. Don't eat at the Outback Steakhouse on Route 3...

Comment #59030 by Shuggy on July 27, 2007 at 2:54 am

Could he just straighten up his webcam?

He obviously thinks RD controls our thoughts the way his pastor controls his.

Notice how me omitted the left hand side of the screen, where our names are, to make it look more unanimous?

226. The hitch in Hitchens' thinking

Comment #59026 by Shuggy on July 27, 2007 at 2:31 am

God is that mysterious force that works upon us and through us to seek and achieve truth, beauty and goodness.
So is there a mysterious force that works upon us and through us to seek and achieve lies, ugliness and rottenness? If not, why do we find the first three so hard to achieve?

227. The hitch in Hitchens' thinking

Comment #59011 by Shuggy on July 27, 2007 at 12:39 am

If god is a verb, who or what is the subject? Does Hedges maintain that the Universe Godded, has Godded, would have Godded, did God, Gods/is Godding, would God, will God, and/or will have Godded?

The question is not whether God exists. ... God is that mysterious force that works upon us and through us to seek and achieve truth, beauty and goodness. God is a verb. God is a process accomplishing itself, not an asserted existence.

So there is a mysterious force and a process, but not a question about whether it/they exist/s. I find that hard to get my head around. Especially "mysterious".

RD says (ADC, p139)
Roman Catholics, whose belief in infallible authority compels them to accept that wine becomes physically transformed into blood despite all appearances, refer to the 'Mystery' of the transubstantiation. Calling it a Mystery makes everything OK, you see. At least, it works for a mind well prepared by background infection. Exactly the same trick is performed in the 'Mystery' of the Trinity. Mysteries are not meant to be solved, they are meant to strike awe. The 'mystery is a virtue' idea comes to the aid of the Catholic, who would otherwise find intolerable the obligation to believe the obvious nonsense of the transubstantiation and the 'three-in-one'. Again, the belief that 'mystery is a virtue' has a self-referential ring. As Douglas Hofstadter might put it, the very mysteriousness of the belief moves the believer to perpetuate the mystery.


... One is tempted to quote Lewis Carroll's White Queen, who, in response to Alice's 'One can't believe impossible things', retorted, 'I daresay you haven't had much practice ... When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.' Or Douglas Adams's Electric Monk, a labour-saving device programmed to do your believing for you, which was capable of 'believing things they'd have difficulty believing in Salt Lake City'.... But White Queens and Electric Monks become less funny when you realize that these virtuoso believers are indistinguishable from revered theologians in real life.


Hedges seems to be doing the same, spreading obfuscation, not light.
The question is whether we concern ourselves with, or are utterly indifferent to, the sanctity and ultimate transcendence of human existence.
Prior to that is the question of whether human existence has
  • sanctity
  • ultimate transcendence
?

228. The Only One in Step

Comment #57873 by Shuggy on July 21, 2007 at 6:59 pm

... isn't this still a form of the Appeal to Authority fallacy? Perhaps I've missed the point, but I can't see what intention this article has besides influencing a reader to believe in evolution by virtue of other people that believe in it.
You could take it that way, but try this: extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence, and he is demonstrating just how extraordinary this claim is, compared to the mainstream view.

229. Why I Believe Anti-Evangelism Is Wrong

Comment #57586 by Shuggy on July 20, 2007 at 3:22 am

What a straw person! Discussing beliefs, pointing out logical or internal fallacies or contradictions with fact, is not

... to take them through their religion and brick by brick tear down it's foundation. ... to strap them down, a la A Clockwork Orange, and force them to watch Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris videos until they see the light, hallelujah!
I don't even know anyone who wants to do those things. But "religious instruction" comes close to the reverse.

230. All the mistakes of the godly are merely metaphor

Comment #57572 by Shuggy on July 20, 2007 at 1:05 am

Imagine you found a population in the US where the majority of the people believed that 2+2=5
But people who believe in The Trinity believe that 1+1+1=1, from which 2+2=5 can readily be derived (as can any other proposition at all).

I've always wanted to ask someone like Meyers — or Dawkins, or Pinker — how much smarter he thinks he is than, let's say, Heraclitus or Socrates or Maimonides or Newton, who thought hard about religion and didn't dismiss it as nonsense.

Why would anyone think I regard myself as smarter than Newton?
Newton himself said (quoting Bernard of Chartres) "If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." so he would be the first to acknowledge that later scholars could see still further.

231. Is there an Artificial God?

Comment #57229 by Shuggy on July 18, 2007 at 3:54 pm

I love DNA too, and I was very pleased by the 4th age of sand, which sounded like it was going to be utter nonsense (or someone had misheard him) and proved to be something you and I are both right in the middle of - this one-to-several communication, which has the useful sorting feature that people reading are probably interested in what is being written - and you can't get much more self-referential than that.

232. Convict sues God for broken contract

Comment #57227 by Shuggy on July 18, 2007 at 3:36 pm

How can they say God not a person when S/He/It/They 's/'ve done all those Acts of God?

And how can they say S/He/It/They is/are not a person when Enron (I think it was) is?

233. Insurance for Sex Abuse: A policy tailor-made for the Catholic church

Comment #56958 by Shuggy on July 18, 2007 at 12:49 am

Russell Blackford wrote:

... the employer's vicarious liability is asserted. Remember that the Catholic Church itself is an abstraction; it's the individual priests who commit the acts. Therefore, liability has to be vicarious...

Of course it's vicarious. The Pope is the Vicar of Christ on Earth.

Reminds me of the oldie but goodie:

"To the woods, to the woods!"
"No no!"
"To the woods, to the woods!"
"My mother wouldn't like it!"
"Your mother's not going to get it."
"I'll tell the Vicar!"
"I am the Vicar."

Vicarious? - Nefarious!

234. Police plea on genital mutilation

Comment #55919 by Shuggy on July 12, 2007 at 9:43 pm

Morro:

Cultural reasons? Cultural reasons? God damn the liberal media! It's not the culture that encourages it, it's the RELIGION that encourages it.
No, not all FGM is Islamic, some in sub-Saharan Africa is tribal.

All three of your examples are of MISTAKES, though. A "successful" male circumcision is not anywhere near as extreme as a "successful" female circumsisions.
Not always. There is overlap between the worst of one and the least worst of the other. The surgery is never necessary. The practitioners all did their best. (I guess you could blame the babies for having the wrong kind of foreskin or the wrong kind of blood....) Here is a link to some "successful" circumcisions:
http://www.circumstitions.com/Botched.html

235. Police plea on genital mutilation

Comment #55657 by Shuggy on July 11, 2007 at 10:28 pm

Morro wrote:

Female genital excission is as follows:
The clitoris and inner labia are cut or carved, (occasionally scraped) away, and twine (consecrated holy twine!) is used to stitch the outer labia together. A small hole is bored just off to the side, to allow the flow of urine and blood, both from periods and from bleeding due to the excission. The girl is then bound at the legs for a period up to two weeks, in order to facilitate healing of the abominable wound that they've created. The upshot of this is that the vagina forms a mass of scar tissue that makes intercourse literally impossible, outside of extreme physical trauma, usually caused by either a knife, or extended periods of rough thrusting on the wedding night.

So yes. While male circumcision is an obscene religious blood sacrifice, it's nowhere NEAR on the level of female "circumcision."

You can't generalise. FGC isn't always that bad, MGC sometimes is. They're on two overlapping bell-shaped curves of severity. I've just been reading about a baby who lost half his glans in Florida
(http://www.circumstitions.com/Complic.html#mogen).
More recently, a boy died in Pakistan
(http://www.circumstitions.com/News26.html#pakistan)
another (non-religious, and as RD points out, babies don't have religions anyway) in Ottawa
(http://www.circumstitions.com/News25.html#death)
and scores of tribal boys die every year in Southern Africa.

When we're talking about human rights, why are we distinguishing between the sexes?

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

Comment #55652 by Shuggy on July 11, 2007 at 9:59 pm

Our current "morals" are therefore just a way station on the road. No sense getting really attached to them, right? When I am traveling, I don't get attached to motel rooms. I don't weep when I have to part from them. So, in the future, after every ferocious moral denunciation you choose to offer your reading public, you really need to add something like, "But this is just a provisional judgment. Our perspective may evolve to an entirely different one some years hence,"
It's an interesting concept, but the evolution of morals is the evolution of a memeplex, and it is under our conscious control, like the evolution of a car, or a computer or any other human creation. That means we are working to improve it, and we won't throw out any feature we find useful. Our morality isn't likely to evolve into parasitism or exploitation, like some of those species of which the male is now just a bag of gonads inside the female.

One way in which our morality has yet to improve, for example, is our treatment of animals, in keeping with their actual level of consciousness. Does Wilson think that when we do that, we will abandon the equality of the sexes or resume slavekeeping - to mention just a couple of issues on which religious morality was markedly deficient for millennia.

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

Comment #55650 by Shuggy on July 11, 2007 at 9:40 pm

robert s quote:


But here is some evidence for you, in no particular order.
The engineering that went into ankles.
Back to the argument from design are we? Who was the knucklehead who designed ankles to be so easily twisted?

Bees fooling around in the flower bed.
They're not fooling, if they don't work like little boggers, they die.

Forgiveness of sin.
Who made sin? As Hitchens says, the vicarious atonement is odious (as odious as whipping boys)

Joyous laughter (diaphragm spasms to the atheistic materialist).
What nonsense! You need to believe in a sky-fairy to enjoy laughing? What a peculiar religion you must have!

The peacock that lives in my yard.
Runaway sexual selection. He dollies himself up like that because he's "desperate" for (sexual) attention. If he doesn't, his line dies out. The fact that we like the look is a by-product.

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

Comment #55644 by Shuggy on July 11, 2007 at 8:57 pm

Is there such a thing as atheist hypocrisy? When another atheist makes different ethical choices than you do (as Stalin and Mao certainly did), is there an overarching common standard for all atheists that you are obeying and which they are not obeying? If so, what is that standard and what book did it come from? Why is it binding on them if they differ with you? And if there is not a common objective standard which binds all atheists, then would it not appear that the supernatural is necessary in order to have a standard of morality that can be reasonably articulated and defended?

I've heard something like this often in the past: "But if there's no God, no absolute standard of morality, how can you condemn Stalin/Hitler/Mao?" To which my answer (difficult to express concisely): "You and I have no difficulty condemning Stalin/Hitler/Mao, I because they broke the Golden Rule (and I know I wouldn't like what they did to be done to me), you because they broke the arbitrary rules of your God. But you seem to have a prior assumption that they must be condemned, and no doubt that I will agree, and I do. Why not just go with that?"

I don't think much of his expression of it, because
1. Who says it has to come from a book?
2. How does the supernatural help? All it means is that someone said "I had a vision, I was supernaturally prompted to proclaim/write." That doesn't make it so.

239. A force for evil?

Comment #55576 by Shuggy on July 11, 2007 at 2:57 pm

coretemprising wrote:

Any of you criticizing Grayling for any reason really really need to listen to the faith head who followed him, one Prof. Ramadan, to hear in action the difference between clarity and mud. What a bunch of convoluted nonsense from this supposedly educated individual. JesusMary&Joseph save us!
"Religion is the means to educate yourself." Gack!
By all means ask the webmeisteren to put it up somewhere we can see it. The thing is, we expect those people to talk nonsense, but we like our own to make themselves clear. JesusMary&Joseph? Still-recovering Catholic, are you?

240. A force for good?

Comment #55571 by Shuggy on July 11, 2007 at 2:47 pm

Why isn't Vallely telling the Bishop of Carlisle he believes in the wrong God?

241. A force for evil?

Comment #55392 by Shuggy on July 11, 2007 at 1:17 am

broshiesq:

What's easier, editing a pre-written passage or expressing it first yourself?
Editing it, of course, but so what? I didn't do it because it was easy, I did it to help me understand what he meant, and once I got it into my own words, I understand it much better.

Patte Lanus, whatever else it may be, an 89-word sentence containing six figures of speech is not "concise".

I should say that for the most part, he is very clear: his sentences, though long, flow logically from one idea to the next. And of course I agree with what he says.

242. A force for good?

Comment #55321 by Shuggy on July 10, 2007 at 3:15 pm

religion doesn't make better people, but it makes them better than they would be without it.
Since nothing has ever shown that religious people are better than others, doesn't that suggest that it is only people who are naturally worse than others who become religious, and religion has only succeeded in bringing them up to normality? Sounds like ethical Prozac.

Now I'd better have a look at the article itself.

243. A force for evil?

Comment #55319 by Shuggy on July 10, 2007 at 3:02 pm

That is the essence of the thing, no matter how slippery the gloss, how polysyllabic, how evasive and gestural, how cloaked in appeals to mystery and depth and the convenience of our own epistemic limitations, that theologians and apologists invoke in their continuous attempts to move the goalposts whenever they come into the firing line for holding what is, fundamentally, exactly the same kind of commitment - exactly the same intellectual delusion - as is involved in believing that there are pixies and gnomes lurking invisibly among the rhododendrons.

The pixies and gnomes and rhododendrons are far enough away from the goalposts and the firing line, but the goalposts and the firing line are too close together - they put me in mind of juntas executing people in stadia.

The thought is good, but he badly needs a good editor.

My rework:

"That is the essence of the thing that theologians and apologists invoke, no matter how slippery the gloss they put on it, no matter how polysyllabically they express it, no matter how evasive or gestural they are, no matter how they cloak it in appeals to mystery or depth or to the (convenient) limitations of our ability to explain it. They continuously attempt to move the goalposts whenever they are challenged, but fundamentally they hold exactly the same kind of commitment and suffer from exactly the same intellectual delusion as someone who believes pixies and gnomes lurk invisibly among the rhododendrons."

244. Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature

Comment #55020 by Shuggy on July 9, 2007 at 6:00 pm

Harvard anthropologist Frank Marlowe contends that larger, and hence heavier, breasts sag more conspicuously with age than do smaller breasts. Thus they make it easier for men to judge a woman's age (and her reproductive value) by sight—suggesting why men find women with large breasts more attractive.
If this were so, sagging breasts of any size should be unattractive and perky breasta of any size attractive: hence the uplift bra, I guess. But why should (heterosexual) men be so impressed by such a relatively indirect measure of age?

Alternatively, men may prefer women with large breasts for the same reason they prefer women with small waists. A new study of Polish women shows that women with large breasts and tight waists have the greatest fecundity, indicated by their levels of two reproductive hormones (estradiol and progesterone).
The leaves out the sexualisation of the breast in different cultures. Ironic isn't it, that cultures where breastfeeding is discounted and discouraged (such as ours) also seem to sexualise the breast (because men want what they didn't have as babies?) to the point of augmenting women's breasts by surgery at the expense of their ability to lactacte?

245. Won't anyone stand up for God?

Comment #55001 by Shuggy on July 9, 2007 at 4:26 pm

Duff:

Stephenray,
I thought the correct answer was; "because one leg is both shorter." And wasn't it: "what's the difference between a duck?"
No, definitely "One of its legs is both the same." But yes, a duck because ducks are (and the word "duck" is) inherently funny.

246. Physician, Heal Thyself

Comment #54993 by Shuggy on July 9, 2007 at 3:48 pm

konquererz:

I hear religious people stating that "all religions and all people in a religion aren't bad, some religion does some good some of the time". Well, thats really not good enough. Religion is only as strong as its weakest link. The link that thinks killing people in the name of god is the weakest link, creating a burden on society, much more so than it helps society.
And one purpose of religion is supposed to be to make people do good. When religion makes people do evil, like doctors harming patients, one's sense of justice is outraged.

Nick6742:
...procedures he would not do because of religious conviction. There are also some girls who attended a conference with several of us and refused to share a hotel room with even 1 male because of religious convictions, forcing us to book 2 hotel rooms needlessly.
But people still have a right to freedom of conscience. If one doctor won't do, say, abortions, because s/he considers that the foetus suffers, and another because s/he believes it destroys a soul, are we allowed to say "Your reason is OK, you needn't do them, but your reason is irrational, you must do abortions"? Or if the women refused to share because the guy (not Nick, of course) was a creep who was going to come on to them? Drawing these distinctions is not always easy.

247. Richard Dawkins talks about Darwin and his visit to the Galapagos

Comment #54737 by Shuggy on July 8, 2007 at 7:34 pm

Bizzaro doesn't really deserve this much attention, but

I am surprised that the wildlife on the Galapagos (the finches in particular) is still so revered by evolutionists as evidence for common descent.
I am astounded that someone can actually miss the point of Darwin's finches. Nobody has ever denied that they are all finches. Their common descent is breathtakingly evident. What stunned Darwin was their evident variation and adaptation to different, previously empty, ecological niches. From this he was able to extrapolate the rest of evolution.

Actually, Darwin and Newton have this in common, they were able to draw a universal from a particular; Newton's genius was seeing that the earth falls - just a little - towards the moon, and the apple, Darwin's, that we could and did diversify away from the other apes and the finches by exactly the same mechanism as they diversified away from each other.

248. Interview with Dan Dennett on Danish TV

Comment #54577 by Shuggy on July 7, 2007 at 10:01 pm

alovrin:

I wonder if [DD] really believes the religions that are around today exist because they have passed some time test. It seems to me the reasons run much deeper than that, or was he just paraphrasing for TV.
They do evolve, and the great majority are extinct, so the big ones tend to be old, but they can spread with extreme rapidity, as eg Scientology and Moonism, within living memory.

249. Interview with Dan Dennett on Danish TV

Comment #54523 by Shuggy on July 7, 2007 at 4:14 pm

It seems to me that one of the functions of religion is to bring people together and engage them in a shared activity where they can submerge themselves in the joint identity. Singing, praying, even (for the Quakers) silence, are all means to that end. I suspect that for young people rock concerts (and night clubs?) serve the same function. In some places, perhaps political rallies.

Is there some way we can bring that to consciousness and mobilise it for good (without the supernatural)?

250. Unorthodox Atheist

Comment #54200 by Shuggy on July 6, 2007 at 2:29 am

Do they allow Ray Bradbury's Farenheit 451, I wonder?

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