201. Youtube hater, I respect your right to free speech.

Comment #70745 by Spinoza on September 16, 2007 at 8:29 pm

It is broadcasting out of Mississauga actually... and they lost a lot of funding, so it actually doesn't get far off the campus, unfortunately. (They have been trying to raise money to get the gov't to let them broadcast a stronger signal for at least half a decade now... it doesn't seem to be going well).

But you can certainly listen online.

Here is the website: http://www.cfreradio.com/

(the Listen Online feature seems to be broken at the moment... It is all new management this year so they are trying to fix a lot of broken stuff...)

I will post a big message in the boards when it starts airing though (probably sometime in Oct.)

202. Youtube hater, I respect your right to free speech.

Comment #70743 by Spinoza on September 16, 2007 at 8:11 pm

BONZAI!!!!!

You hit it RIGHT on the head.

203. Youtube hater, I respect your right to free speech.

Comment #70740 by Spinoza on September 16, 2007 at 7:55 pm

Mitchell, I hear you... I think you have a solid way of thinking about the larger issues... Where we differ is merely in the trifling details.

Ksskidude, I hear you as well... The stories I have heard from people I know who taught in KS are scary. A place where creationism is the NORM sounds, to my Northern ears, like something out of the foreign affairs section of the newspaper.

Oh, and by the way, for those of you questioning what I am personally doing RIGHT NOW to "consciousness raise" for atheism... I am a radio DJ for a campus radio station here in the greater Toronto area, and I am currently working on a philosophy/science/music program that will run 3 hours a week and be broadcast both in my area and on the internet.

I will post a link to the show in the RD forums when it gets set up so you can listen in.

Of course the discussion topics will include religion, faith, God (these are three separate issues), but also biology, education, neurology, physics, ancient philosophy, skepticism...

Oh, and the music will be awesome too (and related to the discussion for each show).

Just throwing that out there for those of you who think I might be an apathetic ivory-tower "Geistesmensch". (this is the ACTUAL German word for intellectual, but if you do some fun wordplay it can be literally translated as "Ghost of a man". LOL)

204. Youtube hater, I respect your right to free speech.

Comment #70736 by Spinoza on September 16, 2007 at 7:40 pm

No. And I have no time for it at the moment (I also find politics, sociology, and economics all vulgar in the worst way), but needless to say, I don't think a staffer at the New Yorker is capable of making that argument work, true though it may be.

In any case, though I am NOT a fan of Ayn Rand's philosophy... I am essentially the embodied character of Howard Roark. It's uncanny, but there you have it.

I expect insults should follow.

205. Youtube hater, I respect your right to free speech.

Comment #70731 by Spinoza on September 16, 2007 at 7:18 pm

USA_Limey, you are correct in several of your observations...

However, as I mentioned to Zaphod in a PM, I'm actually not averse to "grass-roots" stuff at all.

What I am averse to is this vapid atheist proselytizing by people who just want "more people!" as opposed to simply caring about the truth... and their invective ridden, bullshit laden, irascible, stench-ridden, cantankerous diatribes TOWARD non-public figures.

That is disgusting.

Yes, I used the term "idiots" in general to refer to people who don't know what the hell they're talking about. It is a mildly offensive term, but not so bad, all things considered...

I think any "idiot" can better themselves through education.

Not through bandwagon jumping and politique-esque campaigns that goad them into joining a "cause".

Perhaps in the end I am just anti-democratic.

Goes with the ivory-tower territory though, doesn't it?

206. Youtube hater, I respect your right to free speech.

Comment #70726 by Spinoza on September 16, 2007 at 7:04 pm

With regard to Ksskidude's question, yes of course I have... All day long every day when I went to a Catholic highschool by my own choice because this particular school had better educational standards than the public school I was allotted to attend. It soon became apparent that of the more intelligent members of said school (perhaps the top 15%, say) nearly all of them were either atheist or agnostic (and the latter is simply logically valid atheism).

In fact, most religious people here in Canada feel more trodden on by secular values than vice versa. (Just ask any Ontario Catholic!).

Of course they're just being childish and pissy.

It looks, from your username, ksskidude, that you hail from Kansas?

That may explain our differing view on the matter.

I feel for you. And I encourage you to fight the good fight down there, if that is where you're from. (I have heard from some professors who had the sheer "pleasure" of teaching at one of your "amazing" universities... I admit, there it really is pretty sad).

But the rest of the world is not like KS. Most large urban centers (Toronto, New York, LA, Melbourne, London, etc) have no overwhelming religious majority, and atheism is not even an issue... if you walked around with a sandwich-board all day proclaiming you were an atheist... people would just ignore you... they don't care because many of them are too!

LOL.

207. Youtube hater, I respect your right to free speech.

Comment #70710 by Spinoza on September 16, 2007 at 5:36 pm

Spinoza I for one would like to know what you have done to help change the religous strangle hold that is on America?

I am studying for my Ph.D. That is what I am doing.

I will be one less philosopher who believes (irrationally) in God.

And anyway, I'm not American.

To ask me what I have done would have been like asking A.C. Grayling what he had done BEFORE he published his doctoral dissertation, established his reputation, and went on to write pop-philosophy books, some of which belie his atheism and anti-religious sentiment.

However, I am not defined by my atheism. Perhaps that is part of the problem here. Many of you have made your lack of belief in God a dominant character trait... and that just seems silly to me.

Dawkins certainly hasn't done that... he just wrote a book, did the promotional tour, and a few TV specials.

He's moved on to irrationality in the health-system now, while many of you are still obsessing over how to make the whole world reject what they see as something deeply tied to their culture, heritage, family, and communities. (I mean here that they SEE IT that way, not that it actually is that way).

In any case, I'm not impressed by any of this at all.

We shall see in a few years if I join Harris or Dennett, or Dawkins on a podium somewhere (perhaps I will deign to let you all know who I really am at that point), but until such time, the question "What have YOU done?" is folly.

Most people don't even know this site exists, nor the Rational Response Squad.

208. Youtube hater, I respect your right to free speech.

Comment #70709 by Spinoza on September 16, 2007 at 5:29 pm

Hmmm, so a Spinoza scholar shouldn't use the name Spinoza for an online handle...

That's quite odd.

209. Youtube hater, I respect your right to free speech.

Comment #70696 by Spinoza on September 16, 2007 at 4:13 pm

You are the epitome of elitism.

You're right! I already admitted as much.

Since when did elitism in intellectual circles become an insult?

The intellectuals ARE the elite minds. I'd rather not get into a tit-for-tat with anyone about credentials... but Dawkins, Dennett, Grayling (and Harris soon) are ALREADY the elite! Most of us haven't done one-fiftieth of the reading those men have done... or one-hundredth of the writing (at least not on their level... how many of us plebes have published under OUP?).

To operate on the pretense that atheism isn't elitist is silly. Of course it is... and it damned-well should be!

No one needs to be told that Kent Hovind is a fucktard.

WE ALL KNOW IT ALREADY.

The only people who don't know are people who either haven't heard of him, or are already enraptured (pun intended) with him.

If you want to show people on Youtube that atheism is right, or that religion is detrimental (these are TWO DIFFERENT QUESTIONS, by the way... some of you fail to separate them)... then it is far better to present accessible, positive, well-written pieces that are rather like the written Dawkinsian "editorial-style" or "review-style" pieces that we often see posted to this site.

If you are distressed about Kent Hovind, present your case without attacking the man (ad hominem!)... present the truth.

We could use far less emotion and far more logic... I dare say.

To paraphrase a well known talk-show host responding to Bill O'Reilly:

"Loud does not equal right."

210. Youtube hater, I respect your right to free speech.

Comment #70683 by Spinoza on September 16, 2007 at 3:33 pm

Hitchens is so much more erudite in his blunt veracity than anyone from the RRS.

It's not even a fair comparison.

There is a difference between a bald insult, and an insult you can back up with argument.

211. Youtube hater, I respect your right to free speech.

Comment #70675 by Spinoza on September 16, 2007 at 2:55 pm

What am I doing here?

I'm an atheist and I like Richard Dawkins.

I didn't know this site was just for sheep (thanks for pointing out what I was thinking already, Zaphod!)

It says "RichardDawkins.net : The Official Richard Dawkins Website". Not "RichardDawkins.net : The Official Headquarters for Devotees of Richard Dawkins' Brand of Proselytizing Atheism"

All this talk of "getting people on our side" is laughable when people who were already on board are alienated by simple-mindedness and rhetoric that they had striven to remove themselves from in the first place.

Indeed, you may be right oxytocin (great name by the way), I haven't made a post in the forums in months, and I generally only post on articles where someone has said something so subtly stupid that it begs for correction.

Otherwise, I come here to read the latest articles on science, and the Christopher Hitchens videos... and think that the majority of people who post here are mental peons, whether they believe themselves to be or not. (this is my pro-ivory-tower mentality and I stick by it, I think it better to be ivory-tower-worthy than a pig in Zen).

There are quite probably many people here who agree with me. I know I have had interesting discussions with Russell Blackford (whom I never did end up getting in correspondence with about the Simon Blackburn ethical stuff... but I just don't have time at the moment), and several others (I rather like Quine, the philosopher and the member of this site!).

So it can't just be me who finds certain members of this site irascible.

Irascible BEYOND BELIEF.

212. Youtube hater, I respect your right to free speech.

Comment #70664 by Spinoza on September 16, 2007 at 2:14 pm

Ultraviolet G, I agree.

From the moment I came to this website I noticed that there are some very knee-jerk, very angry people who frequent this site, and there is not much that can be done to avoid them.

I have gotten into it with Yorker once before, as I recall, and it was quite silly then too.

So this time around, I expected it to go badly (hence my "castigate me now" comment in my original post).

My criticisms remain though.

If all you care about is "getting people to OUR side." then fine... but that can be done easily with repetitive and easily memorable slogans, TV-ads, easy-to-read pop-culture phenomena books like The God Delusion or Letter To A Christian Nation.

The Rational Response Squad is not really going to convince anyone to "join OUR cause"... they're just going to convince people to get a free DVD, or bandwagon jump until they get tired of it.

The only thing that can convince people to actually BE an atheist, and to support the right to be atheist in places were it is being beaten down, is the truth.

No door-to-door vacuum salesman tactics... no kitschy videos...

This is all child's play in the end.

The only thing I've ever seen come from the richarddawkins.net community worth anything at all has been Dawkins' work himself.

Everyone else here seems to be merely plebeians in a Panem et Circenses sort of movement that says one thing and does another. (The Rational Response Squad is silly, and I think it weakens the strength of atheism in a non-intellectual sense, since it makes us all look like we're high-school pseudo-intellectual philosophy buffs, when most of us aren't, and some of us actually DO know what we're talking about).

The only vindicated Atheism is the one which the individual has understood for themselves via the failed arguments of theists.

Anything else IS privy to the criticisms many people launch at Atheists.

There is, in dialectic, this thing called the Principle of Charity, and when you evaluate your interlocutor's arguments you cannot simply say "Hey you just committed a straw man" even if it prima facie looks like one.

You have to give them the benefit of having said something that is prima facie valid/sound, and then evaluate it from there.

Anything else is bad argumentation.

Dawkins and Hitchens and Dennett and Harris and Grayling all know this.

But apparently not all their "followers" do.

213. The Dawkins debate

Comment #70617 by Spinoza on September 16, 2007 at 10:12 am

"Both Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein believed in God - but they weren't as clever as Mr Richard Dawkins. Thank you Mr Dawkins for leading us on to the shining path of atheism - that godless religion that gave us the gulags and the 'great leap forward'."

R Smith , Manama , Bahrain

I am so tired of people saying that Einstein believed in "God".

WHAT GOD?!

The answer is Spinoza's.

And that "god" is no God any theist purports to believe in.

It's the exact opposite.

For 300 years Spinozists were castigated and abhorred and railed against for being "Atheistic, Nihilistic and Fatalistic."

And ya know, two out of the three are true. (Spinoza's work when understood well is the opposite of nihilistic).

And Einstein was a Spinozist, not a theist.

People need to be reminded over and over that their "God" is not their brother's "God".

When people use that word they mean quite possibly an infinite number of different things.

Einstein meant an infinite natural universe that expresses itself via natural laws.

That is not the God of any theist I know (except MAYBE some process theologians... but they're barely theists anyway :P)

214. Youtube hater, I respect your right to free speech.

Comment #70614 by Spinoza on September 16, 2007 at 10:01 am

From Yorker: "They annoy me too, but I'll refrain from calling you one..."

How childish. You're not going to get far with this sort of pseudo-witty remark.

You are exactly the sort of moron that makes large parts of the "Atheist Movement" (whatever the hell that is) look completely ridiculous in the eyes of most people (and it does, especially to intelligent atheists).

To say that the psychology of the "new atheist" is irrelevant (which is exactly what you've done), is to ensure the continued marginalization of atheism as an intellectually satisfying position.

To make atheism a "cause" rather than simply a fact is to marginalize it a priori.

I am ALL for fighting the intrusion of religion into matters where it does not belong, but proselytizing should remain firmly in the religious camp and stay the hell away from my atheism.

Perhaps YOU don't get it. You seem to care more about "winning friends" and getting people on "your side" than you do about being capable of proving your case.

And all this nonsense about it being no time for "elitism" is complete nonsensical double-talk... Of course you're all ELITIST... you think that people OUGHT to be a part of YOUR group because YOUR group is the right one.

That's nothing if not elitist.

Atheism is true, on this we all agree. There is no God.

And yes, if a religio-political issue arises that needs to be addressed, it is certainly helpful to have more people on your side.

And yes, the truth matters, and we should make people aware of the fact that their beliefs are false.

But you don't do that by proselytizing. Why do you think people slam doors on the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormons?! Because it's a despicable, abhorrent, ugly tactic to take your fight door to door. It's the salesman mentality that puts me off.

The truth does not need salesmen, it provides its own vindication.

We are merely needed to provide the path to it.

Not to coerce, or to prod, but to be CONSISTENT, and think rationally, and critically.

Does no one think that the methods of atheist camaraderie and interaction with everyone else need to be hashed out RATIONALLY? That is, why is it enough that our god-believe is rational (that is, follows the logic to the non-assent to any unproven existential claim for the existence of a deity)... To be truly rational we should be considering whether our actions "in the name of the Truth" follow, given our desired conclusion.

And I just think this thread of dialectic, and this article, are perfect examples to illustrate why I think we could use a few less idiots in the atheist "camp". So to speak.

To quote Corky Romano: "You catch more bees with honey than with vinegar." :-)

215. Youtube hater, I respect your right to free speech.

Comment #70594 by Spinoza on September 16, 2007 at 8:02 am

To Prufrock and Yorker:

I don't think so. I think that's silly.

Indeed, I must admit that one of the criticisms of the Rational Response Squad did seem valid, and that is that perhaps many of the people who took the "Blasphemy Challenge" were the same kind of idiots who think that TimeShare scams really give away a free boat.

This may or may not be true, but honestly, the larger a population, the more likely it is that at least some of the members of that population are idiots.

Idiots annoy me, and I really wish no atheists were idiots.

But it seems more and more likely that there is a phenomenon of bandwagon atheism that The God Delusion has started... and it's not even clear that some of the "converted" even know what concepts they're disbelieving in.

I've heard atheists proclaim that Richard Dawkins is the closest thing they have to a god.

What the fuck is that?!

I have actually been laughed at when I've said that Dawkins is one of my favourite writers... (usually this is from people who have only heard of The God Delusion, or maybe read it, but never read The Ancestor's Tale, Selfish Gene, etc etc).

But in any case, the whole idea of proselytizing to and TRYING to "convert" people to atheism kinda sits funny with me.

If you think it's a good idea, go for it...

I just happen to be one atheist who doesn't like it.

Feel free to castigate me now.

216. The Atheists Interviews

Comment #69513 by Spinoza on September 11, 2007 at 2:39 pm

I knew people weren't going to understand what I said.

I've been an atheist my whole life. I have myriads of arguments for it..

But as a philosopher I MUST be agnostic of necessity. It's a function of logic.

I can rule out conceptions of a God which fall prey to contradictions (a la the problem of evil)...

But philosophical agnosticism is a general point... it says that we don't rule out possibles a priori.

We can however, discern impossibles, and rule them out.

217. The Atheists Interviews

Comment #69499 by Spinoza on September 11, 2007 at 1:49 pm

FVThinker is right.

It's the Bertrand Russell position.

We are, ALL OF US, "teapot agnostics".

No serious philosopher/scientist, or person who truly understands modern symbolic logic, can affirm Atheism as an empistemologically (perfectly) CERTAIN position.

Anyone who SAYS they can, and do do this, is simply confused... That isn't what they are doing.

There is a separation between atheism as a rejection of theism, and agnosticism as a philosophical position.

Both Russell and Dawkins are "philosophical agnostics", while simultaneously Atheist.

And I am as well. :)

... I know the above will confuse at least some of you... and I may get emotional responses saying "HEY SPINOZA FUCK YOU I AM AN ATHEIST AND I AM 100% CERTAIN THERE IS NO GOD!"

To respond a priori:

Yeah, I know, me too, but that is merely to misunderstand the point being made. :)

218. Creationism raised as Ont. election issue

Comment #68508 by Spinoza on September 7, 2007 at 11:04 am

@ Ultraviolet G:

Who used the word "tenant"?

219. Creationism raised as Ont. election issue

Comment #68324 by Spinoza on September 6, 2007 at 8:14 pm

I agree with Crazymalc (that is to say, I agree with Dennett).

I am also a resident of Ontario and I went to a Catholic highschool AS AN ATHEIST.

They didn't require that I be Catholic (I think I was able to get in because my mother is a lapsed Catholic... LOL).

In any case, I've never been Catholic, but I got a better education at an Ontario Catholic highschool than I would have at the public school I was supposed to go to.

With the exception of random MANDATORY masses (which I eventually managed to figure out how to skip out on, after going to a few as an impartial observer)... their teachers tended to be far better than the public school counterparts.

And interestingly enough, my religion teachers sort of "under-the-table" told us most of what the Vatican says is B.S.

Grade 11, we had the choice to take WORLD RELIGION. Which many people did, including myself.

And in Grade 12, we got the choice of religion OR PHILOSOPHY (yes, it had a slightly CATHOLIC bent to it... but by no means did we skimp on the LOGIC or the existentialists, or the various philosophy of religion and ethical debates concerning religion... of which I was often the lone bastion of rationality (which made it all the more interesting). Oh, and the public schools often don't even offer philosophy (THEY DAMNED WELL SHOULD).

However, clearly these discrepancies in standards are not a result of Catholicism inculcating academics...

I think it just happens to be a contingent fact in Ontario.

In any case, it is HIGHLY unlikely that the publicly funded (and yes, highly anachronistic) Catholic school system in Ontario would EVER be abolished... there are far too many Catholics in Ontario (especially outside of the GTA) for that to happen.

So the only way to have EQUALITY is to allow public funding for all PUBLICLY WANTED religiously inclined schools.

BUT, I think many many many caveats should be added...

It is already FAIRLY safe, since the Catholic schools are required to teach the same EXACT curriculum... they just substitute MANDATORY gym class in grade 9 for mandatory religion class.

And like I said, science and philosophy-wise, my school was far far far better than any public school. Much as I admit that to my own chagrin.

So, I think Dennett is absolutely right. Compulsory WORLD religion and religious history/literature classes would be a GREAT thing to institute.

Taught as a history or literature class, not an indoctrination.

220. Christopher Hitchens and Bill Donohue on Mother Teresa

Comment #66374 by Spinoza on August 29, 2007 at 8:47 pm

Shuggy, it's pronounced "Poned" (like 'boned').

And yeah... Bill Donahue is quite silly, as are most Catholics... especially born-again ones. Crazy bastards have been saying dumb shit for thousands of years now...

221. The world's oldest bacteria

Comment #66004 by Spinoza on August 27, 2007 at 7:04 pm

That there is a science journal called "PNAS"... makes me laugh.

222. A hole lot of nothing found by astronomers

Comment #65705 by Spinoza on August 25, 2007 at 10:21 pm

Nobody has yet answered my question properly... all I've gotten so far have been different configurations of the same obscurities... or things I already knew.

No space is empty if by empty you mean void of anything. That's just a logical point.

So what do astrophysicists mean by "empty space" or by "nothing"?

223. A hole lot of nothing found by astronomers

Comment #65515 by Spinoza on August 24, 2007 at 2:33 pm

What do Astrophysicists mean when they say "Nothing"?

Yes, void of "matter"... but there's a big freaking space... surely there's "something" filling the space... otherwise there wouldn't be any space there.

I think...

So yeah, any astrophysicists in the house?...

224. Sleights of Mind

Comment #64667 by Spinoza on August 21, 2007 at 8:16 am

Before I had ever read Dan on Qualia, I denied the existence of Qualia (in a class on philosophy of mind).

Interestingly, I reject them for the exact same reasons as Dan.

Oh, and by the way, Mary the colourblind neurosurgeon who knows EVERYTHING there is to know about red, doesn't learn anything new about red when she sees it for the first time.

225. Artificial Life Likely in 3 to 10 Years

Comment #64382 by Spinoza on August 19, 2007 at 10:03 pm

Evolution, being built on purely random sequence of events, is still a random process in the larger sense.

That's false.

It isn't built on "purely random sequence [sic] of events" and it isn't "still a random process" in ANY sense EXCEPT if you think "random" means "not the result of intelligent purposive Aristotelian formal causation".

If THAT'S what is meant by random, then evolution is random...

But it isn't random efficient causation, it's entirely determined efficient causation.

Bizarro Dawkins, I'm sorry, but you just don't really understand what you're talking about.

226. The Out Campaign

Comment #59844 by Spinoza on July 30, 2007 at 8:37 pm

Russell Blackford hit it right on the head. Perfect.

Absolutely right on.

227. OUT Campaign Launched, 'Scarlet Letter' Shirts Now Available!

Comment #59354 by Spinoza on July 28, 2007 at 9:13 pm

Yes, I agree with Monsieur Maynard, it's the web-address that I have a problem with...

Not really because I don't want to be considered a petulant Dawkinsian sheep... But rather, because it's too geeky, too tacky, and oh so 1999.

The actual logo is very nice though.

228. Proboscidean Mitogenomics: Chronology and Mode of Elephant Evolution Using Mastodon as Outgroup

Comment #59174 by Spinoza on July 27, 2007 at 10:06 pm

Pleistocene Park looks so cool.

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

Comment #59172 by Spinoza on July 27, 2007 at 9:52 pm

This is idiotic.

Pure and simple.

An atheist who burns a bible is not doing any harm to YOUR bible.

It's a SYMBOL of the disrespect at least some (not all) atheists have for the book.. we DON'T believe it's the word of God, so burning it doesn't do anything except piss off PEOPLE.

It's clear that this guy is just pissed... he didn't really read the posts properly, nor did he think it through...

That said, I think a lot of people who post here at richarddawkins.net, not only don't really have the same kind of view of religion that Dawkins himself has (many are FAR more "militant" and actually quite rude)... but they don't understand the universe the way Richard seems to (if you know well and love the work of Russell, Spinoza and Einstein, I have a feeling Dawkins is probably far closer to them than to, say, Joe Atheist - Christian Hater who's read Dawkins' books but never taken a university science course, let alone a philosophy course.

Just an observation I've had since I first came to this site...

The idea that there's an overarching "atheist movement" is laughable...

However, there are Atheist organizations (which, no offense, I've found kind of WEIRD... with an almost CULTISH atmosphere... including the Brights (which I signed up for but do not bother with anymore...))

To be quite honest, I'd be happier if only intelligent people were atheists... but this isn't the case... so I dunno.

We atheists lack a particular belief, and we have nothing else in common amongst ourselves it seems.

And that is a very strange way to bond with others...

230. Camp Joins Summer Fun With Teaching Hindu Faith

Comment #58622 by Spinoza on July 25, 2007 at 12:06 pm

Lol. Corylus, "summer camp" does not necessarily have anything to do with "camping".

231. Camp Joins Summer Fun With Teaching Hindu Faith

Comment #58614 by Spinoza on July 25, 2007 at 11:36 am

P.S. Contrary to common misunderstanding Hinduism is a actually a monotheistic religion. All the different Hindu Gods are manifestations of one God,--Vishnu. It is like electricty and magnetism are different sides to the same underlying phsyical phenomenon.

As has been mentioned already, this is wrong.

But the corrections weren't right either.

Hinduism is a monistic religion that believes in a plurality of essences which manifest as devas or gods...

"Brahman" is the ultimate "God", or "Oneness"... it's equivalent in meaning to "Allah" or "Elohim" or other such things...

But the metaphysics developed around it is much closer to Spinoza's... which is far closer to modern QM than say, Leibniz's Monads.

232. Camp Joins Summer Fun With Teaching Hindu Faith

Comment #58551 by Spinoza on July 25, 2007 at 7:08 am

Hinduism, of all "religions", has the most interesting metaphysics, by far...

Indeed, if it weren't for British colonialism, there would be no such thing as "Hinduism", but rather several thousand tribal religions all based out of similar sets of beliefs about the universe.

While they are "wrong" in many ways, they are at least INTERESTING... Schopenhauer once said that Spinoza would be at home on the banks of the Ganges. (his metaphysics of One Substance and Hinduism's concept of Brahman are extremely similar...)

I agree with Ms. Narayanan... one of the coolest things about Hinduism was that diversity...

No one wants to see it become a knockoff of Christianity. (in order to compete)

233. Town Hall Seattle: God Is Not Great

Comment #57312 by Spinoza on July 18, 2007 at 9:39 pm

Jimmy, where's your Dennett and Russell? (they have audio-books available you know... and not just on Atheism... on some kick-ass philosophy too! lol.)

Oh, and A.C. Grayling... he's great too.

234. Town Hall Seattle: God Is Not Great

Comment #57184 by Spinoza on July 18, 2007 at 1:36 pm

I love love love how he always mentions "me". Hehe.

Along with my other heroes: Einstein and Russell.

Just FYI (any of ya who don't know), Spinoza was THE MAN. He always denied being an "atheist" though, but he had his own definition of the word "God" that certainly precluded the existence of any personal God...

And his political work (The Treatise Theologico-Politicus) is just brilliant.

Not to mention the book Einstein called the greatest ever written, The Ethics.

235. Using the 'Beauties of Physics' to Conquer Science Illiteracy

Comment #56939 by Spinoza on July 17, 2007 at 11:28 pm

This is the exact thing I have struggled against my whole life.

I refuse to memorize anything by rote. Hence why I am not a biologist or neurologist or physicist or astronomer (as I sometimes wish I were), but a philosopher.

And yet, even in philosophy, we have this problem because of professors who don't care whether their students UNDERSTAND WHAT THEY'RE REGURGITATING.

I once had to explain burden of proof to a fellow student in a SENIOR, ADVANCED SEMINAR on problems in philosophy.

That bugged the hell out of me.

I also remember in my first year of philosophy, a guy I sat beside ended up with a grade a few percentages higher than me because the tests were multiple choice (and he got one or two more than I a few times because he memorized the readings before the class).

And yet, I'm the philosopher and he isn't.

For good reason.

I once sat in on a 1st year physics class, and realized that half the students didn't understand a word the professor was saying, they just memorized the textbooks.

I had trouble with the math because I hadn't done calculus in 4 years, but I understood EVERYTHING the professor said, and could explain it to anyone, I just needed to practice the math in order to actually solve the test-problems.

236. The US map of faith

Comment #55661 by Spinoza on July 11, 2007 at 10:52 pm

Not to rain on anyone's parade... just an observation... but since the colours are based on PERCENTAGE by district, not on actual population numbers... what you're seeing is going to be skewed by the number of people that live in that area.

Oregon might LOOK "less religious"... but that is probably at least in part due to the fact that it has less people.

And simply because some districts have a ratio of irreligious to religious that's higher than some others doesn't mean that on the whole the state is, itself, less or more religious... That depends on the percentage of the total population of the state.

So yeah, this map is interesting, but probably more than anything shows that the adage "You can prove anything with statistics" is so very true.

I'd like to see the raw data.

237. Praying to a milk jug

Comment #55377 by Spinoza on July 10, 2007 at 10:27 pm

I can't stand that guy's voice... and I think the analogy is awful... but I think by "optical illusion" he just means that people "see" God where they might as well be seeing anything (like a milk jug), since prayers to either will result in the same outcome... and can be rationalized in exactly the same way.

The "illusion" is in "seeing" "God" doing something (either saying "yes", "no", or "wait"), when nothing is really happening.

Although, I'm pretty sure we all know that's not MERELY "illusion", but delusion, since it's actually crazy, rather than merely rationality deceived by the senses (as in illusion).

238. Rats influenced by the kindness of strangers

Comment #54498 by Spinoza on July 7, 2007 at 1:29 pm

It clearly isn't...

Just because rats do it doesn't mean it's perfectly suited to their environment..

Evolution is always in flux...

And anyway, if they got BURNED right after by a dirty rat... I bet they would stop being so quick to be altruistic...

Just like humans.

(i.e. the whole Prisoner's Dilemma thing... something I had studied heavily in political philosophy before reading Dawkins' use of it in The Selfish Gene...)

239. Interview with Dan Dennett on Danish TV

Comment #54495 by Spinoza on July 7, 2007 at 1:00 pm

'meme' just is a way of describing information, and information supervenes on physical 'stuff'. So you PERCEIVE the physical stuff, and apprehend the memes thusly.

i.e. the 'meme' meme is propagated very easily...

I mentioned it at work the other day and told the guy it was like a virus and now it was in his head and would either die out or replicate if he told anyone.

Hahaha.

240. Christopher Hitchens and Al Sharpton

Comment #54002 by Spinoza on July 4, 2007 at 9:11 pm

Spinoza, the word "equivocate" doesn't mean what you think it means. The word you're looking for is "equate".

I know what "equivocate" means; I'm a philosopher.

I used it EXACTLY the way I meant to, and the proper way to boot.

The REFERENT of Sharpton's 'God' is not the same as the REFERENT of Hitchens' 'God'. This is a case of equivocation in an argument, where one referent is substituted for another in different premises... Thus invalidating the argument.

Please think a little harder before you try to correct people who know what they are talking about.

241. Christopher Hitchens and Al Sharpton

Comment #53336 by Spinoza on June 30, 2007 at 9:22 pm

It's very simple, and very subtle, and it boils down to this:

Sharpton equivocates the word "God" in the title of Hitchens' book (which by the way, I just finished and I think is absolutely brilliant, indeed, better than The God Delusion for several reasons), with the word "God" as he wants to use it.

Hitchens did not mean "God" independently of "his" followers... he meant it with CLEAR intellectual prowess, irony, and de rigeur fashion, that the God people PROFESS to believe in isn't great. Not in the slightest.

He could have quickly dispatched with the first part of Sharpton's attack by saying this:

"Sir, you have equivocated the meaning of the term as I used it with the way you wish to use it, and that is devious and fallacious. As I intended the title, it was to be a clear statement about the god people profess to believe in (hence the uncapitalization). So if you think the book was about disproving the existence of "God" independently of its believers, you're wrong... it is simply about showing that the so-called "God" of believers is not great at all."

And it's that simple.

242. I believe that there is no God.

Comment #52856 by Spinoza on June 28, 2007 at 8:41 am

I'm sorry... as much as I sort of admire Penn (I think anarcho-capitalism is dumb though, among other things), he's no philosopher, and he totally bastardizes this.

Atheism is NOT "not believing in God". No philosopher would take that seriously.

The definitions go like this:

Agnosticism is the negation of two propositions:

a) I believe in God.
b) I don't believe in God.

Atheism is the claim that one KNOWS the following proposition:

a) It is the case that God does not exist.

So he's not beyond atheism. He's just an atheist.

Just to make that clear. (ask Bertrand Russell)

243. Darwin Still Rules, but Some Biologists Dream of a Paradigm Shift

Comment #52650 by Spinoza on June 27, 2007 at 4:09 pm

I know far too many philosophers of Science / scientists who HATE the term "paradigm shift".

Nothing in science is EVER a "paradigm shift".

The examples given in this article of "paradigm shifts", to most modern philosophers of science, were not REALLY "paradigm shifts", but just LOOK like it... along with the Einsteinian physics revolution...

These things were far more subtly advanced.

As they should be.

If there is a shift in evolutionary biology, it is CERTAINLY not going to actually BE paradigmatic... it might just appear to be to us though.

244. Researchers May Remake Neanderthal DNA

Comment #52545 by Spinoza on June 27, 2007 at 8:40 am

I know that last comment is a joke... but uh... I'm pretty sure MEMORIES are not in your DNA... if they created a living Neanderthal, it wouldn't know how they went extinct.

Just saying...

245. Trio to rock against religion

Comment #52377 by Spinoza on June 26, 2007 at 10:40 pm

Right, I apologize to MIND_REBEL, that was certainly very harsh of me. (though not unwarranted, in a very obvious way).

It is just that I have this pet peeve about the "Neo-Atheism" movement...

I'm a philosopher (that is, I am a student of philosophy with pretensions of being a philosopher), and an intellectually rigorous atheist (that is, I set about to systematize my atheism, and my objections to theism and religion [as separable conundrums])...

And the most painful thing I have seen in the wake of the pop-atheism "movement", especially here at one of my heroes' websites, has been this strange phenomena of unsophistication, of smugness, and of outright idiocy at times... and I find it harmful.

I once remarked that I LIKE that atheists are a minority... It means that we're probably right, and that we take CARE to make sure that we are getting things right.

It's not simply "We're right because we are, and religious people are dumb."... there are arguments to be made, and questions to be pondered, and so forth.

A criticism of RELIGION is NOT the same as a criticism of THEISM. These are clearly separable (as in Buddhism, and to a far lesser extent, Judaism... that is, of the Einstein/Spinoza "atheistic" Jew...).

And in criticizing religion, I think we ought to take it seriously, to analyze it, to ADMIT when (and if) there is a positive aspect to it REGARDLESS of whether the cosmological status of it is in doubt, or patently false... and to not resort to scapegoating...

Religion is CLEARLY not the only reason Africa is the way it is.

Greed, corruption, the removal of the imperialists (France, Netherlands, Britain, etc etc etc)... tribal warfare, poverty... Religion is involved in these things in many ways... but is not the SOLE cause... though it needs to be attacked.

My personal pet "anti-theism" is against the pope. I think the current one is a scumbag of the highest order (regardless of whether God exists...), and IS to blame for a large amount of suffering in Africa.

However, that villages have no access to clean water or vaccines is not religion's "fault"... it's the fault of a decayed (or undeveloped) infrastructure which is kept down by the greed and despotism of evil people, and the ambivalence of the world which wrought the problems in the first place (the West).

246. Trio to rock against religion

Comment #52229 by Spinoza on June 26, 2007 at 2:23 pm

Their religious traditions are the only thing holding them back.

... man I wish you weren't an atheist, because you're dumb as shit.

247. Egypt mufti says female circumcision forbidden

Comment #52208 by Spinoza on June 26, 2007 at 1:23 pm

Well... the point needs to be made that just because something is POINTLESS does not immediately mean we simply shouldn't do it.

Baseball is essentially pointless. High Etiquette is pointless (i.e. not wearing white after Labour Day).

Indeed, all art is pretty much pointless (or as Oscar Wilde put it, "quite useless").

Let's not get confused here.... circumcision should be abolished if it's BAD, not because it's useless or pointless.

And female circumcision is certainly bad.

Male circumcision is debatable... it's bad if you think that people should always and only make their own choices about what to do with their own body... but then... this isn't universal ANYWAY... since we clothe and feed and bathe our children before they are able to do so themselves, and though circumcision is religious and some people wish their parents had not had it done to them... it's not always the case.

Indeed, I'm glad I had it done for various, non-religious, non-trivial reasons.

248. The Stupidity of Fox News is Truly Beyond Belief

Comment #52206 by Spinoza on June 26, 2007 at 1:16 pm

Do we have to repeat ourselves over and over and over and over?

There are TWO arguments that atheists make.

1. God doesn't exist.
2. Religion is harmful/deleterious/bad.

(1) is a philosophical claim, usually a denial of a particular KIND or conception of God... say, because of illogical attributes (i.e. the problem of evil).

(2) IS A SCIENTIFICALLY TESTABLE POINT. This is the case made by Dan Dennett (who deserves WAY more credit than he has gotten lately... 64,000 copies of his book sold? What the fuck is wrong with you people... buy it AND TGD...)... that RELIGION is a social behaviour that can be studied, analyzed, critiqued, etc.

This has nothing to do with whether God exists. Even if God did exist, there would be good cause for declaring at least some religions (if not all, immediately) bad, or at least, some aspects (many of which are central).

Please for fuck's sake... these people are STUPID, but they're not permanently stupid. Let's not make it easier for them to fight back by conflating (1) and (2).

249. Row over religion's role in US jails

Comment #52001 by Spinoza on June 25, 2007 at 9:47 pm

That's an uninteresting false dichotomy is what that is. LOL.

250. Row over religion's role in US jails

Comment #51986 by Spinoza on June 25, 2007 at 7:42 pm

I think the RDF should fund programs LIKE this (but not necessarily this exact kind...), and teach moral values, basic accounting skills, etc... to people who would otherwise be taken in by religion.

If we truly think religion is not only WRONG in many, most, or all of its claims to truth, but also destructive, then what better way to combat it than by opening up a subversive front to accompany our direct attacks?

Provide social services that have no religious connotations whatsoever. Fight for the right to have them in the same prisons as the religiously attuned services.