Comments by Shuggy

251. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams criticizes popular atheist writers

Comment #78726 by Shuggy on October 14, 2007 at 2:22 pm

39. Comment #78639 by PaulJ on October 14, 2007

Watch Craig defend mass murder....

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5767

Utterly despicable. I feel unclean after reading Craig's piece.

Agreed. He says objective moral values exist, and then says God isn't bound by them.

252. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78552 by Shuggy on October 13, 2007 at 2:51 pm

Dianelos:

If, as we agree, at least Quakerism offers no logical path to wicked behavior then we have falsified Dawkins's proposition that all religion offers such a logical path.

Sadly, "Quakerism" is not a unitary entity. It has suffered several schismlets in its 300-year history, such that there are Quaker churches (mainly in the US) that are - but, perhaps, for periods of silence in their services - indistinguishable from other mainstream christian denominiations such as Baptists (this is the kind of Quaker that Nixon was), and Quaker meetings whose religion is much more like Einstein's. When you refer to Quakers as distinct from other denominations, you are presumably referring to the second kind.

Quaker meetings offer as much of a logical path to wicked behaviour as secular humanistic ethical systems do. But if we have some way of defining "wicked behaviour" that we can test these systems against, why bother with the systems at all, and not just go straight to our test?

That is what annoys me about the whole Inquisition/Crusades vs Mao/Stalin/H----- discussion: we can judge those - and find them all evil - without reference to what some deity says or does not say, so why bother with the deity?

253. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78546 by Shuggy on October 13, 2007 at 2:33 pm

no matter how well a naturalist writes a book on ethics, that book will not make as much sense as a book on ethics written equally well by a theist

Can anyone make any sense at all of that sentence?

254. Muslims tell Christians: 'Make peace with us or survival of world is at stake'

Comment #78416 by Shuggy on October 12, 2007 at 6:28 pm

47. Comment #78182 by GBile on October 12, 2007

Pappa Ratzi I know, but who are all these Beatitudes ?

They're the ones who didn't make it to the Sermon on the Mount. Most of them are manufacturers of dairy products.

255. Muslims tell Christians: 'Make peace with us or survival of world is at stake'

Comment #78130 by Shuggy on October 12, 2007 at 1:13 am

The phrasing has similarities to the New Testament passage: "He that is not with me is against me" - a passage used by President George Bush when addressing a joint session of Congress nine days after 9/11.

This connection seems to be a pure invention of the Daily Mail, who seem to be referring to Matthew 12:30 and Luke 11:23: "He who is not with me is against me..." and forgetting Mark 9:40 "...whoever is not against us is for us" (That both statements can not be true seems to have excaped the Divine Inspirer of the Greek Testament, but then as RevCort reminds us, He made the laws of logic, so he can break them too.)

What I want to know is, what happened to their epistle to the Jews? (Not to mention the Buddhists, Confucians, Shintoists, etc.)

256. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #78082 by Shuggy on October 11, 2007 at 6:43 pm

revcort:

But you assume that the one who created the very laws of logic you mention is also bound by them.

Ah! God is above logic? That explains everything! And I mean everything, and anything. God can be omniscient and not omniscient at the same time, omnipotent and non-omnipotent. In fact the answer to anything might as well be (apply finger to lips) "Wibblewibblewibble!" as anything else.

257. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #78079 by Shuggy on October 11, 2007 at 6:30 pm

revcort:

God inspires people to pray for the very things that He intends to answer

So let me see...

A little girl is dying of cancer. Her parents pray that she will live.

1. She lives. God has answered their prayer.
2. She dies. Because...
2a. God hadn't inspired their prayer (they just prayed from the selfish wish that their daughter should live.)
2b. God answered their prayer, but not the way they thought. (He moves in a mysterious way... It was for the greater good... Sometimes the answer to prayer is "No".)
2c. He intended her to live but he was distracted at the time.

or...
3. She lives or dies because cancer is an organic process that isn't affected by prayer one way or another, because there are no god/dess/es.

258. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #78072 by Shuggy on October 11, 2007 at 6:07 pm

revcort:

But the one thing you'll never do is choose God without Him first choosing you.

So the ones God doesn't choose to choose him are sh!t out of luck.

259. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #78017 by Shuggy on October 11, 2007 at 1:46 pm

walk:

Oops! I forgot - - - with god all things are possible! I suppose even 1+1=3. (Silly me.)

Well, with Trinitarians, 3=1 (from which it can be shown that any proposition at all is true)

260. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #78013 by Shuggy on October 11, 2007 at 1:38 pm

revcort:

Why would He want to stop something from happening if He has already ordained it to happen perfectly?

What use is intercessory prayer if God never changes his mind?

261. Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously

Comment #77820 by Shuggy on October 10, 2007 at 5:42 pm

30. Comment #72226 by steve99 on September 20, 2007

Anyone who prays obviously believes to some extent in an interventionist God.

I think a lot of would-be modern theists have it both ways. They believe in a non-interventionist, compatible-with-science-and-rationality, ground-of-all-being god AND they pray to Him/Her/It.

262. Shalom Auslander, Voicing a Comic 'Lament'

Comment #77289 by Shuggy on October 9, 2007 at 12:51 am

What's comic about it? I thought it was horrendous. His son didn't "become a Jew" when he was given a secular circumcision on about the second day in hospital, as I gather his family berated him with later. (He wouldn't have if it'd been done on the 8th day either - he was a member of the Jewish community by birth if his mother was, so the Orthodox say, or his father, according to the others) And to do it when he was still in an incubator....

I'm full of pity for the father, but more for the son. Auslander seems to think it's still all about him.

Here in New Zealand we've already noticed that the title is the same as a hit play of 1981 (Search on Greg McGee) - I wonder if he knew that, and if he's breaking copyright?

263. Interview with Richard Dawkins

Comment #76702 by Shuggy on October 6, 2007 at 7:40 pm

It's nice that he admires RD so much, though he sounds a bit like a televangelist. Mine cut out right after "Thor" (which my aunt told me when I was 11 - only in her version Thor met a woman on a golfcourse and had his way with her, next day she met him again and asked his name. ... She replied "Tho am I")

Richard seems to be changing his atavar - just as well, that young woman was going to do herself an injury.

264. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #76469 by Shuggy on October 6, 2007 at 12:35 am

We flee:

As regards Korea � 200 years ago there were no Christians in Korea � now there are 45%. How does this square with RD's oft repeated assertion (which he worked out when he was 9!) that your religion is determined by your birth. If that were true then surely the Koreas would all still be Buddhist?

This is like the anti-evolutionists who ask "If man evolved from apes, why are there still apes?" Other things being equal, people stay in the religion of their birth (and it was really smart of RD to figure that out at 9), but other things are not equal. Christianity is evangelical, Buddhism is not (so far as I know). Some varieties of Christianity are more evangelical than others, and some varieties (notably Catholicism) have changed their evangelicity with time. (At least, no pairs of scrubbed Catholics in suits, or dowdy Catholics dragging along a child, have knocked on my door for many a Saturday morning.)

265. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #76451 by Shuggy on October 5, 2007 at 11:32 pm

102. Comment #76446 by devolved on October 5, 2007

I've just heard RD say that people do terrible things "in the name of religion". I agree. But they do terrible things in the name of all sorts of causes including patriotism and science. Religion isn't the problem, people are.

But not all people do terrible things. When they do terrible things in the name of science, that can be shown to be a misuse of science, because science says nothing about what people ought to do. And I tend to agree with Samuel Johnson that "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel", but I'm lucky to live on an island.

RD didn't say religion was the only thing people do terrible things in the name of, but religion's job is, or ought to be, to prevent people from doing terrible things, and in fact, ideally, making them do nothing but good things.

Perhaps he and all we infidels are naive in thinking something is more terribly wrong when religion makes people do terrible things, than when something else does. But how come we, and most religious people today, can agree that people of past ages were wrong to do terrible things in the name of religion? Our morality has advanced, and it's no thanks to religion. Example; thanks to evolution, we now know that there are not "higher" and "lower" animals, and bears feel pain as we do. We no longer bait bears with dogs or put them on hot plates to make them "dance". (Yes, some of us still do terrible things to bears, but at least we no longer have that excuse.)

266. The Problem with Atheism

Comment #75748 by Shuggy on October 3, 2007 at 2:46 pm

11. Comment #75522 by Robert Maynard

ChrisMcL,

Why don't we just do with the "A" word what African-Americans have done with the "N" word.

Atheist, please!

Yes, what, make it a word that only we can use about ourselves?

I was wondering if part of the problem is that it is a noun, and it reifies (thingifies) us, like "a gay" or "a Black". Sam seems to be saying that though we should stop calling ourselves atheists, we should continue to do what we do, namely, athe (pronounced "ay-THee"). We should keep on atheing at every appropriate opportunity.

And his example of meditation is only one of the ways in which religion makes people feel better. I don't think we give nearly enough attention to the satisfaction people find in submerging themselves in a crowd, giving meaning to some group activity like waving your hands in the air, singing, speaking in chorus, standing, sitting and kneeling together. We propose to take that away from people and offer them nothing in return. No wonder they don't like us.

267. Letters: Theology has no place in a university

Comment #75178 by Shuggy on October 2, 2007 at 1:52 am

Do universities in Muslim countries and Israel have departments of theology? Presumably they teach Muslim and Jewish theology. How about Eastern countries? Buddhist theology? Confucian theology? Taoist? Shintoist? (If such studies can be called theology.) See where I'm heading with this? They presumably all teach conflicting theologies. What do they do - if anything - to resolve their differences?

Now, there are precedents. When I was at university, our Psychology Department was completely in thrall to the Behaviourists. Psyhology was defined as the study of behaviour. Skinner ruled, and mentalism and "mind" were swearwords. Anyone who said "Freud" "Jung" or "Adler" was hung up by their thumbs, more or less. I gather few psychology departments are so hard-line nowadays, but that came about by way of intercommunication between different departments and the forging of some kind of consensus that makes some room for ideas about mental processes (or so I'm led to believe, never having studied psychology). So is there any kind of intercommunication between different schools of theology, and are they getting close to a consensus?

268. Dawkins - what can't he be blamed for?

Comment #75107 by Shuggy on October 1, 2007 at 8:46 pm

But it's quite hard for it to deliver an equivalent to the consoling satisfaction many people find in a church service or Friday prayers...

I maintain that the consoling satisfaction of doing something, anything, together in a group, is one of the main things that keeps religions going. (And this makes football not too different from a religion.)

"Come on in, the water's chilly" isn't going to appeal to everyone.

But "What they're doing together is really rather silly" has truth on its side.

In the 1980s I flirted on the edges of a variety of New Age spiritualities, and they had that appeal, and also a lot of related self-serving beliefs, of the "Everything is for the best" variety. In the nature of things, it's much easier to believe things that make you feel better, regardless of their truth value.

269. AAI Convention webcam

Comment #73966 by Shuggy on September 27, 2007 at 12:00 am

What a nice ceiling!

270. New Rules: A Religious Test

Comment #73964 by Shuggy on September 26, 2007 at 11:57 pm

Census: Here in New Zealand, it has a list of options (ending with "Other:_____________" so all bases are covered). When "No Religion" was put on the list, the number shot up, partly, we guess, because people suddenly realised they didn't have to put the religion they were brought up in, and partly because it consolidated all the people who'd been putting "Atheist" "Agnostic" "Rationalist" and "Freethinker" etc. When that happened, they had to move it to the top of the list (where it logically belongs anyway) Now 1/3 of the public ticks "No Religion", ahead of everything except all Christian denominations lumped together.

Oaths: I insisted on taking an affirmation when I went as a Conscientious Objector to military training in the 1960s, because my case was going to be non-religious. As well as the obligatory "What would you do if ... was raping ... ?" I was asked "Do you believe in the Word of God or [dripping with scorn] a Scientific Evolution of the world?" My lawyer had to point out that though I wasn't religious I was sincere in my beliefs (and I was the first "hoon" to get off).

Now the Prime Minister and half the Government takes an Affirmation ("I, name, solemnly sincerely and truly declare and affirm that .... ")

271. New Rules: A Religious Test

Comment #73962 by Shuggy on September 26, 2007 at 11:35 pm

5. Comment #72627 by Richard Morgan

Does anybody know where I can buy Magic Mormon Underwear? And does it have the same effect as Viagra?)

No, you have to be a registered loo^h^h^hMormon to buy it (though it sometimes comes up on eBay). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_garments

Viagra? No, but men who wear Temple Garments are statistically likely to have more wives than other men.

272. Alex the Parrot

Comment #73934 by Shuggy on September 26, 2007 at 4:10 pm

I can't believe you've gone 15 posts about a Dead Parrot without ...

273. Talking Action Figure Jesus

Comment #73407 by Shuggy on September 25, 2007 at 1:20 am

HappyPrimate:

"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."

Cor 13 11

274. Taking exception to Jake

Comment #72985 by Shuggy on September 23, 2007 at 5:20 pm

I'd never heard of Sheri Shepherd. What did she (really) say?

275. Censoring Sir David

Comment #70310 by Shuggy on September 14, 2007 at 9:21 pm

35. Comment #69867 by Luthien on September 13, 2007 at 3:17 am

hungarianelephant, I remember in primary school being laughed at by the teacher (and the whole class) when I explained that, since colour is reflected light, black was technically not really a colour at all. Her reply was something along the lines of "If black isn't a colour, how can you have black paint?". The same teacher listed Astrology on my report card as one of my interests (it was Astronomy of course!!!).

With teachers like that it makes you wonder how anyone ever got an education!

I had

A teacher who insisted the Sun is the centre of the universe, because "uni" = 1 and "verse" = centre . You figure it out.
The same teacher who asked us use to use a list of words in sentences, including the words "Christ" and "spice". I wrote "In the time of Christ, people used many spices". She hauled me up to her table and solemnly told me I'd broken the Commandment against Taking The Lord's Name In Vain. (AD anybody?)
A teacher who asked us what electricity is, and I, who'd just been reading about it, said "electrons jostling each other." (I was about 8.) "No!" he said. "Nobody knows what electricity is."

So my answer to your question is, "in spite of the 'educators'".

276. A Response to Jonathan Haidt

Comment #70088 by Shuggy on September 14, 2007 at 3:19 am

I know a little about pre-European Maori culture, and apart from the slavery, cannibalism and inter-tribal warfare (like we've given that up?), they did have a belief system with some values worth keeping. For example, their creation myths made all humans animals and plants related - not unlike reality (more so than the biblical
one). Their tendency towards warfare gave them keenly honed diplomatic skills to prevent it. So don't mock the whole of the wisdom of the Aztecs, about which I suspect Sam knows next to nothing.

As for "Melanesias", Melanesians comprise hundreds of tribes and languages, with history recorded for only a few generations. We have no idea what wisdom they may have had and lost.

277. A Response to Jonathan Haidt

Comment #70086 by Shuggy on September 14, 2007 at 3:10 am

11. Comment #69819 by jonjermey on September 12, 2007 at 11:22 pm

But take heart: happiness measures are notoriously unreliable (see here for instance),

That link doesn't work, but this one, http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/338 , with the full stop removed, does.

278. Griffin's 'offensive' Emmy speech to be censored

Comment #69548 by Shuggy on September 11, 2007 at 4:56 pm

Do they really think the Creator of the Universe aka His Own Son has input into Emmy-winning performances?

279. Review of Richard Dawkins' new book 'The Fascism Delusion'

Comment #69321 by Shuggy on September 10, 2007 at 10:00 pm

Adam Roberts failed to mention Dawkins' most conspicuous lapse. Nowhere in The Fascist Delusion does Prof. Dawkins make any reference to, let alone give any credit to Il Duce for, the now-proverbial punctuality of the Italian railway system. This more than anything illustrates his overweening arrogance and hostility towards Fascism.

280. We need a more intelligent religion debate

Comment #68883 by Shuggy on September 9, 2007 at 2:50 am

For example there is surely something religious in the communal ecstasy of a rave, or a pop concert, or a play, or a sporting event, or a political rally.

...or a little old lady sitting at home knitting. With religion defined this broadly, what is NOT a religion? Indeed, I have found the Hindu concept of "karma yoga" (the yoga of action) useful. Doing good, or at least non-harm, can be a meditative, uplifting practice (and it may do some good). But it's "religious" only in the broadest, non-evil, sense.

Some would say that these events are quasi-religious, that they echo religious worship, but are distinct from it. But how on earth is one to make the distinction?

To some extent CH is to blame with "Religion poisons everything". We should specify "theism poisons everything". RD defines the god he doesn't believe in more crisply. Belief in supernatural entities without evidence seems a useful dividing line.

281. The Fleas Are Multiplying!

Comment #68819 by Shuggy on September 8, 2007 at 7:18 pm

107. Comment #68816 by nrvous on September 8, 2007 at 7:09 pm

I wonder if there will, over time, occur a sort of Darwinist process whereby the fleas' descendants inherit the strengths of their progenitors, while the weaknesses (circular arguments, ad hominem attacks, flaccid reasoning...) fall by the wayside.

But I think you'll find, those are the strengths of the flea books. If not, what are their strengths?

282. The Fleas Are Multiplying!

Comment #68817 by Shuggy on September 8, 2007 at 7:10 pm

Thanks, Corylus! I'd really like to read fleapowder for the others, too.

Humanist2:

Most believers of my aquaintance, especially the christian ones, are so woefully ignorant of their own religion, we won't even bring up the issue of comparative religions.

I was visiting a historic church with some Jewish friends, and a young dean of some kind was explaining to us that a stained glass window showing the Good Samaritan had been donated by a Jew who had been driven from his Synagogue for marrying a Christian, in thanks for the welcome he'd received from her church. It was news to the Dean that Samaritans weren't Jews (though the whole point of the story of the Samaritan woman at the well is that they weren't).

283. Court bans Christian cross on private land in public park

Comment #68613 by Shuggy on September 7, 2007 at 10:15 pm

a lone white metal Latin cross

There's something about that "lone" that adds to the bias of the headline. Are they suggesting three would be intolerable but one is all right? Am I paranoid in thinking they are trying to suggest loneliness? (Poor little cross, not harming anyone.)

The bigger question for me - ignoring the constitutional issue - is, how big is it, how high up is it, from how far away can it be seen? IE, in a National Park, how much of an eyesore is it?

In two of our main cities we have them on prominent hills, lit up at night, visible for miles in all directions, but only, thank Minerva, around Easter. In another, flat, city, we have an illuminated cross at the top of a clock tower in the central square, all year round. In all three cases, protests fall on deaf ears, probably because christians and the apathetic outnumber opponents, and we have no constitutional separation of church and state.

284. Interview with Richard Dawkins and John Cornwell

Comment #68606 by Shuggy on September 7, 2007 at 8:32 pm

He clearly thinks that religious believers shouldn't be members of civil, democratic society.

Whaaa- !

He parallels religion with a cultural virus

Cornwall doesn't seem to have heard of memes, and thinks the parallel with a virus is condemnation of the vilest kind, rather than a simple analogy based on their shared simplicity, replication, selection and hence evolution.

which has terrible precedents in the 1920s and 1930s in Germany

OK, Godwin's Law. Bzzt! Thank you for playing.

285. Honest Mistakes or Willful Mendacity

Comment #68598 by Shuggy on September 7, 2007 at 6:33 pm

... when an old man dies, "The child that he once was "died' long ago. . . From this point of view, the moment when the old man finally expires is no different from the slow 'deaths' throughout his life." Tell that to a teenager dying of cancer, and his family.

What CAN you tell a teenager dying of cancer that would console them, for heaven's sake?! What do they tell teenagers dying of cancer? "So long as you believe that Jesus died for your sins and put your trust in Him totally, you will go to Heaven and be with God and His angels."

What do you say when the teenager says "Well, actually I can't believe that."? "Oh, in that case you're going to Hell, to suffer eternal torments."

Actually, I think I'd rather take what consolation I could from the first thought, even it its limited form, "The child I used to be is dead, but that's all right."

It's certainly dishonest to take a consolation intended for one circumstance and use it in quite another, like telling the parents of a dead baby "Well, she had a good innnings," or "celebrating the life", as happened here recently, of a baby abused to death by her own family.

I agree, it's hard to tell whether this is malicious or stupid. I'll charitably say stupid, because some people just never grow past stupid arguments.

286. Bible Belter

Comment #68567 by Shuggy on September 7, 2007 at 4:00 pm

Matt Buchanan, in the course of an otherwise rave review in the Sydney Morning Herald, hit home with this:

He is also occasionally guilty of crassness. For example: "In the very recent past we have seen the Church of Rome befouled by its complicity in the unpardonable sin of child rape, or as it might be phrased in Latin form, no child's behind left." Hitchens squanders a lot of trust with that vulgar lapse: readers suddenly catch sight of him chortling at his desk and it's not pretty, or funny, and it impugns his seriousness elsewhere.

An undeniable lapse but not a characteristic one.

joshuaslocum's point about the parallel hypocrisy of "No Child Left Behind" is a good one, and also Dean Peterson's about how trivial the evil of making wordplay about priestly abuse is, compared to that of committing it.

The slightly odd habit of downsizing self-important leaders by calling them "mammals" is a lesser error of tone that might be corrected in a future edition.

But Prof. D, you of all people must affirm that they, like all of us, ARE mammals, something many of them would deny. CD is not a zoologist or he might have called them chordate or gastrulate or something further back in evolutionary history. As Nefrubyr almost pointed out, calling them "primates" might be confusing.

The second commonest complaint from reviewers is that Christopher Hitchens attacks bad religion. Real religion (the religion the reviewer subscribes to) is immune to such criticism. Here is the theologian Stephen Prothero in the Washington Post:

To read this oddly innocent book as gospel is to believe that ordinary Catholics are proud of the Inquisition

One of the peculiarities of religion, and the RC church in particular, is that the laity, having little or no control over the acts of the clergy, need take no responsibility for them. That's pretty much what a hierarchy means.

. . . and that ordinary Jews cheer when a renegade Orthodox rebbe sucks the blood off a freshly circumcised penis.

"Renegade"? These are the most Orthodox of the Orthodox, carrying on a tradition (metzitzah) begun in the second century CE.
Mohel, not rebbe.
The baby has just had part of his penis cut off. He's not going to care much how the blood is removed.
Muslims, Polynesians, Philippinos, South Koreans, tribal Africans and "civilised" Americans, but hardly anyone else, do something very similar and equally inhumane, lacking only that detail.

287. Like any half-decent atheist, I'm fond of a bit of religion

Comment #67840 by Shuggy on September 5, 2007 at 1:40 am

Yet never in our history has that influence been so weak, its doctrines so torn by doubt, its preaching so uncertain.

Isn't that an argument for disestablishment? Why on earth should such an institution have a privileged hand on the steering wheel of British government?

Listening to the Toynbee tirades one might imagine that this country was in the hands of a latterday Torquemada, or that Thomas Cromwell was once again sending heretics to the rack.

It almost is, if you live in Nigeria or Zimbabwe, and in the name of Anglicanism.

Instead, we have an Archbishop of Canterbury who agonises, publicly, over the complexities of the Christian faith, and a Church that is on the point of tearing itself apart because the liberal argument on homosexual priests is becoming unstoppable.

Oh I wish! But the more powerful part is likely to be the homophobic part, based in Nigeria.

288. 'Root of All Evil? The Uncut Interviews' Released on DVD

Comment #67829 by Shuggy on September 5, 2007 at 12:59 am

Some at least of the clips available after the trailer has run are parodies - I think.

289. The Flea Circus moves to your iPod!

Comment #67548 by Shuggy on September 3, 2007 at 7:13 pm

HappyPrimate:

Simply the idea that one cannot read a book and decide for themselves what to make of the content without assistance from someone else is delusional in and of itself.

No, quite often an argument presented without rebuttal is superficially convincing. Remember Russell (throwing his tobacco tin in the air) exclaiming "Great Scott, the ontological argument is sound!" There's no better way to look critically at an argument than to read what its enemies have to say. If they can't find the holes in it, who can?

EvolveDNA:

The Ipod idea is really akin to "Bible studies" where a victim is told what interpetations are

The worst examples being the Q&A at the end of any article the "Awake!" or "The Watchtower"

So I wait with bated breath for one of the other penguins* to download the MP3s and tell us how bad they are.

*In a book of my childhood, I learnt that penguins jostle on the edge of an icefloe till one falls in, to see if there are any seals about. I still don't know if it's true.

290. Orthodox Call on Sinners To Give Chickens a Fairer Shake

Comment #67227 by Shuggy on September 2, 2007 at 8:13 pm

Comment #66741 by Vaal on August 31, 2007 at 7:32 am

...maybe they could do us all a favour by leaping over a cliff like lemmings (sorry, insult to lemmings)

No, urban legend, helped along by Disney, who had them flung over the cliff.

"Gallus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi..."
"Chicken of God, who takes away the sins of the world..."?
No, it doesn't sound the same, somehow.

291. The Sacrifice of Reason

Comment #67097 by Shuggy on September 1, 2007 at 11:29 pm

Comment #66403 by Valadon on August 29, 2007 at 11:53 pm

Professor Dawkins:

This is my favorite part of Sam's very well written article:

"Let the good news go forth: we live in a cosmos, the vastness of which we can scarcely even indicate in our thoughts, on a planet teeming with creatures we have only begun to understand, but the whole project was actually brought to a glorious fulfillment over twenty centuries ago, after one species of primate (our own) climbed down out of the trees, invented agriculture and iron tools, glimpsed (as through a glass, darkly) the possibility of keeping its excrement out of its food, and then singled out one among its number to be viciously flogged and nailed to a cross."

Since you bring it to our attention, I'd say it is very good, but marred by "glimpsed (as through a glass, darkly) the possibility of keeping its excrement out of its food," since that happened well before iron tools.

I'd suggest instead
"glimpsed (as through a glass, darkly) the possibility of not wiping large numbers of equally civilized people off the face of the earth"

292. Teresa, Bright and Dark

Comment #66668 by Shuggy on August 30, 2007 at 9:49 pm

Notice that, just like RD with "Reverend" Ted Haggard, CH shows no schadenfreude at all towards Mother Teresa? He's gone up in my estimation. It'd be so easy to do a Nelson Muntz "HA-ha!"

293. Teresa, Bright and Dark

Comment #66667 by Shuggy on August 30, 2007 at 9:42 pm

44. Comment #66480 by Veronique on August 30, 2007 at 5:28 am

The point is that our aborigines DID understand how to limit population growth and practiced a methodology that eludes us today.

Eludes us? Infanticide? Rather, I'd say we evade it, and rightly so. Abortion is surely prefereable.

294. Teresa, Bright and Dark

Comment #66666 by Shuggy on August 30, 2007 at 9:37 pm

39. Comment #66465 by stereoroid on August 30, 2007 at 3:51 am

One more thing: did anyone notice the following CH statement?
I tend to believe that the absence of evidence is the evidence of absence.
On the one hand, this is an obvious logical fallacy - there might be evidence that you have not (yet) seen. I hope he doesn't literally believe that.

On the other hand, it's the kind of attitude I sometimes have to take, when faced with believers who see any expression of uncertainty as a chink in your armour. You try and tell them "when I don't know something, that doesn't mean your particular deity has the answer either", but it's not the best use of my time...

I see "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" as being like "you can't prove a negative." If the circumstances are sufficiently defined: in this room, at this time, a real, flesh and blood elephant, 1) you can prove its absence 2)absence of evidence for it IS evidence of its absence with the same proof in both cases - "Look, no elephant." The trouble is that God is almost by definition, impossible to define precisely enough to make such a claim.

295. Teresa, Bright and Dark

Comment #66365 by Shuggy on August 29, 2007 at 7:39 pm

There ought to be a better term than "topic drift". As usual, here we have a topic stampede, or a topic deviation, or a topic loss, or a topic escape.

It occurs to me that the very word "abortion" is too ambiguous because pregnancy includes everything from zygote to crowning. Most reasonable people would have no trouble with "aborting" a non-implanted zygote (or even, conveniently, define pregnancy to begin at implantation). And most reasonable people would object to "aborting" after labour had started. (Me, I think Roe vs Wade got it about right, and I'm with Hillary Clinton that "abortion should be safe, legal and rare", to which I would add, EARLY)

Now, back to Mother T. What a pity she never confided her doubts to someone brave enough to say, "You're perfectly right, Jesus is not present in the Eucharist, nor anywhere else, and God is not answering your prayers because he isn't there. Welcome to reality, now how are you going to get funding for your good works?, because they're still good." (insofar as they were, which CH casts considerable doubt on.)

296. Christopher Hitchens and Bill Donohue on Mother Teresa

Comment #66338 by Shuggy on August 29, 2007 at 6:01 pm

I didn't know this word a couple of months ago* but now I can use it with confidence:

PWNED!

*and I still don't know how to pronounce it.

297. BBC Trust rejects Opus Dei appeal

Comment #66139 by Shuggy on August 29, 2007 at 2:40 am

pantsandboots wrote:

Fiction is a place for the imagination to run wild, no one should complain about its bearing to real life.

But it can become more than irritating if fiction consistently misrepresents something you have an interest in publicising the truth about. Imagine if every TV drama portrayed atheists as amoral? (I suspect they don't only because there are probably a lot of us in TV.)

Shall I start being offended at every fictional misuse of science as a scientist?

Not when it's obviously a plot device, or the whole field of science fiction would be objectionable, but if every scientist on TV was portrayed as mad, or heedless of humanity's welfare, there would be a case.

As for Opus Dei, it's creepy and possibly dangerous, but portrayals like the Da Vinci Code's didn't look at its real issues.

298. '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

299. 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.

300. 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.