401. Fleabytes

Comment #156206 by Cartomancer on April 7, 2008 at 5:25 am

Has that puffed-up little mountebank finally buggered off yet? About bloody time...

402. Russell T Davies: Return of the (tea) Time Lord

Comment #155930 by Cartomancer on April 6, 2008 at 10:40 am

Oh, and surely a pair of Latin teachers of all people would have some language to talk about their son's coming out with:

Fili, cinaedus es? Nobisne dicis ut in cubiculo pueri reclinere malis quam in cubiculo puellae? In fundamentum id capere delectis? Non cura, fili meo, in Imperio Romano gerendus fuit omne tempore! Et non enim incipiamus discurrere de Graecis...

403. Russell T Davies: Return of the (tea) Time Lord

Comment #155923 by Cartomancer on April 6, 2008 at 10:22 am

Those who have followed Russell T. Davies' work might also remember that he highlighted the large number of gay men who are fans of sci-fi and fantasy in Queer as Folk too. The character Vince (ironically enough a namesake of mine) in QaF was also a huge Doctor Who fan and had stacks of old videos of the programme in his flat. I'm pretty sure that portrayal was one of the things which made the BBC consider Davies for the job of reviving the Doctor for the modern age.

I think I saw an interview with Davies about this, where he said that it was probably the imaginative and escapist element that chimed with so many gay men. There's something about us as a minority which encourages us to live in several different and very separate worlds all the time - with our families, with our straight friends, at work and if we decide to mix with other gay people for the purposes of coupling or copulation. Or at least there traditionally has been this pressure - maybe it will reduce with increasing acceptance in society. Sir Ian McKellen thinks a similar tendency to play many different roles and a need to be different people for different audiences is what attracts so many gay men to a career in the theatre.

404. Russell T Davies: Return of the (tea) Time Lord

Comment #155921 by Cartomancer on April 6, 2008 at 10:11 am

People have always indulged in hero-worship and fandom. There's nothing new about it and nothing wrong with it. In the sixties it would have been Elvis or the Beatles. Before that people followed actors and playwrights and looked up to military heroes and kings. Historians and biographers such as Livy and Plutarch wrote of the deeds of great men and encouraged others to follow their example. Before that hero-worship actually was hero worship and people built tombs to their respected chieftains, shamans and warriors.

An expression of who we admire or wish to emulate is nothing more than an expression of the values we ourselves hold dear - of nothing less than who we are. It is an identity statement and a way of confirming and shaping our personalities. By the nature of a man's heroes shall ye know him...

Give this, isn't it great that lots of people identify with, admire and want to emulate what Richard Dawkins stands for? Who else in the public eye represents these values? Science, reason, that sense of wonder at the universe, unabashed intellectualism, common sense, compassion, unwillingness to pander to the status quo when something is wrong and can be made right, that genteel debonair demeanour that only a kindly, silver-haired Oxford don can carry off...

You can probably tell that I'm something of an RD fanboy myself by now. I even had a small poster of him on my wall for a long while!

405. Dawkins warns of human extinction

Comment #155902 by Cartomancer on April 6, 2008 at 9:14 am

Means the same thing? Means the same thing? I understand perfectly well what "brokenness" means thank you very much, and substituting a synonym won't change the fact that it has no relevance to the discussion of the human condition whatsoever. Human beings are not "broken" - there is no perfect original template from which we have diverged, we simply are the way we are.

And if you want additional substantive criticisms then fine, you shall have them:

Richard used the phrase "without extremism of this kind". You will note that he did not say "without religion". The hyper-nationalistic pragmatism of the Viet Cong and the communist dogmas of the Cubans very much do fall under the category of "extremism of this kind" - to wit, dogmatic certainty and unshakeable conviction in one's own rightness irrespective of the evidence combined with a systematic lack of sympathy for those who do not agree with your position.

Also, why do you assume that all ideologies are merely after-the-fact justifications for individual personal choices? What does motivate individual personal choices if not the contents of that person's mind? How is it possible to talk of human individuality if you do not accept that differing ideas can motivate differing behaviour? Is everyone who professes to a sincerely-held belief merely wearing a cynical mask to cover their own selfish ends? What personal selfishness does your gaudy roman catholic ideology mask I wonder...

Got to go to Mass now

I see you have taken my suggestion that you fuck off back to the Middle Ages to heart after all...

406. Dawkins warns of human extinction

Comment #155893 by Cartomancer on April 6, 2008 at 8:54 am

human beings in their brokenness

Brokenness? Brokenness? Take your vile, dehumanising new-testament claptrap and fuck off back to the Middle Ages where you belong.

407. Russell T Davies: Return of the (tea) Time Lord

Comment #155882 by Cartomancer on April 6, 2008 at 8:30 am

Cartomancer's list of his top three favourite things in the whole wide world:

1. Sci-fi and Fantasy geekery
2. Gayness
3. Richard Dawkins

Much jumping up and down with barely-concealed schoolboyish excitement was had after reading the above article. I can't wait to see Richard in Doctor Who - the idea is simply magnificent. In fact, now Richard is retiring from his Charles Simonyi post, why can't we have him as the Doctor permanently!

Davies' account of the creeping acceptance of young gay people in British society is spot on too - if anything it's much more advanced than he supposes and progressing much more quickly. Though I share Davies' jealousy that my teenage years couldn't have been like that. Still, some things just make you feel good about the world

Ecce gratum et optatum, ver reducit gaudia!

408. Anti-gay Okla. lawmaker attracts 1,000 backers

Comment #155861 by Cartomancer on April 6, 2008 at 5:50 am

Does it not bother you even slightly that Sally Kern is onto us? Does this point to infiltration within the Enclave?

My best guess is that she's one of Spymaster McKellen's double agents. I suspect she was planted in the Oklahoma state legislature to discredit the gay terror theory by associating it with crazy religious crackpots. This is probably a follow-up to the marvellously successful efforts of Agent Haggard, so I wouldn't be at all worried - did you seriously think that straight people were intelligent enough to figure us out?

As Head of Geological Gay Terrorism, I am worried.

Ah, so you're the one in charge of that. Well, I can report some modest successes for you then. Gay sex has certainly made the earth move for me of late!

409. Dawkins warns of human extinction

Comment #155859 by Cartomancer on April 6, 2008 at 5:27 am

Some of the name frequencies are mentioned in the appendix of J.D. Tabors book. The source mentioned of the frequency : Lexicon of Jewish names in Late Antiquity : part1 (Tubingen: Mohr, Siebeck, 2002) Time span 330BC to 200AD.
I hope that this source is reliable ?!

I'm sure the source is very reliable as far as it goes (any cataloguing activity done by German historians is, in my experience, usually maddeningly precise and comprehensive, if deadly dull to read). Nevertheless, I have serious doubts about using such as lexicon for making probability calculations of the sort mentioned. In the absence of census records the lexicon would have been compiled from all the names found in semitic literary and legal sources from the appropriate period, so the individuals it records are very unlikely to be a representative sample of the population as a whole. Legal records would probably be a better bet than literature, but I sincerely doubt that enough of this material survives for a representative sample. Also, this is a 530 year period we're talking about, and naming customs must have changed dramatically across that time, especially with the influx of first Greek then Roman culture into the near east.

What would a "lexicon of modern English names 1478-2008 AD" look like? What if it were compiled solely from a handful of high court case records, three issues of Hello! magazine from the late nineties and the combined writings of Samuel Johnson, Stephen Fry, Terry Pratchett, Richard Dawkins and David Starkey? How many John Smiths would the frequency calculations from this document say there should be? Say that an archaeologist in the year 4000 AD found a piece of gravestone dated to 1994 AD. Using this document and the same calculations, how certain could he be that the grave belonged to the late John Smith MP, former leader of the labour party?

410. Beware the Believers

Comment #155788 by Cartomancer on April 5, 2008 at 8:03 pm

P.S. Sorry for all the swirlies, noogies and snuggies. Didn't realize they'd render you permanently immune to sarcasm.

What are swirlies, noogies and snuggies? Sound like the names of three quaint 1950s street gangs to me...

411. Dawkins warns of human extinction

Comment #155763 by Cartomancer on April 5, 2008 at 4:28 pm

Ah yes, William Lane Craig...

Well, the simple answer is that there are as many views on his stuff as there are historians. It essentially comes down to whether you share his evangelical molinist catholicism or not. Fortunately, the vast majority of sensible historians do not.

I myself have had cause to look at some of his stuff on the Philosophy of Time in connection with my masters thesis, which was on the changing perception of time in twelfth- and thirteenth-century scholastic thought. Sadly, while he claims to take Einstein and Lorenz into account in his theological writings, I can't see much to what he says that goes beyond an uncritical reception of the sixteenth century catholic orthodoxy. Basically he talks the talk of modern philosophy, but his ideas are anachronistic and backward - highly ironic for someone who claims to be an expert in the philosophy of time.

The problem with the Earman claim is that, since we have never actually verified the occurrence of a miracle, and everything we know about science and the nature of the universe suggests that they cannot happen, the only sensible figure to put on the probability of a miraculous occurrence is zero. Well, ok, infinitesimally higher than zero, but for all practical purposes zero. The probability of ANY other explanation that has been verified as even theoretically possible will therefore always be massively higher than this. Even recourse to super-advanced aliens or time travelling space lobsters is more plausible than humans doing magic, because we at least know of a possible mechanism by which those things could happen.

Furthermore this sort of thinking generally ignores the fact that the "calculations" an historian has to make - especially an historian working with such flimsy evidence as an historian of the ancient near east at this time necessarily has - are so massively provisional that they hardly prove anything. A sensible historian will never even get to debating whether Jesus actually did turn water into wine or rise from the dead - he should really have stopped when he understood the allusive and unreliable nature of the sources for these claims. Put simply, the chance that the person who told us the story is making it all up is always so much more probable than the claims the miracle story makes that the Ehrman calculation is entirely unnecessary.

412. Anti-gay Okla. lawmaker attracts 1,000 backers

Comment #155757 by Cartomancer on April 5, 2008 at 3:51 pm

But now I am really worried! What if the conclave expelled us for this? It would ruin my life!

Don't worry, I'm sure the sinister Masters of the Conclave will take your noble efforts to further the cause of queerdom in the spirit in which they were intended. The Grand Strategos of All the Lesbians might be a tad tricky to convince - she likes to run a tight ship so they say, and often stamps her Doc Martens to get what she wants - but I'm sure the remaining members of the council will talk her round eventually. Archmagister Elton and the Keeper of the Great Sparkly Handbag are known to be particularly sympathetic to mavericks, so you should be fine. If that fails I could always have a word in the ear of the Pornographer-General or the Head of Corrupted Youth to speak up on your behalf...

413. Dawkins warns of human extinction

Comment #155753 by Cartomancer on April 5, 2008 at 3:39 pm

Funnily enough I am Cartomancer (though my friends generally know me as Vincent), but I'm afraid biblical history is not really my speciality - I'm a Graeco-Roman classicist and European medievalist in the main, and more an historian of ideas than an archaeologist or political historian. For what it's worth, though, Roland F's information seems accurate, though I would emphasise that it is very dangerous indeed to come to all but the most speculative conclusions about particular historical individuals on such evidence. One reliquary inscription alone and divorced from any corroborating evidence - even in cases where the reliquary itself is known genuinely to be authentic (this one isn't) - is a very poor basis for certainty. I'm not entirely sure I understand this mathematical calculation for the combinatoric likelihood of the names either - I struggle to see just how someone can come up with any numerical probability at all for something like that unless they have accurate and significantly complete records of name frequencies among the semitic peoples of the area at the time.

Actually, while I'm on the subject of historical methodology, I think I should say something so blatantly obvious that it probably doesn't really need saying. Even if we were to find a full, complete and empty tomb and prove that it belonged to an itinerant preacher called Jesus at the right time - even if we had eyewitness accounts from hundreds of different reliable witnesses that he performed his miracles, rose from the dead and did everything else he was supposed to have done - it would still not be evidence for any sort of supernatural activity. Why? Because we've already got much much better evidence that these things could not possibly have happened. That evidence comes from modern science - miracles are impossible, apotheosis is impossible, simple as that. Scientific evidence pretty much ALWAYS trumps historical evidence in the grand scheme of things, because it is far more reliable. This is no fault of the historian of course - it's the nature of what we have to work with. The scientist can repeat his experiments and come up with new ones, and has built-in methods for ensuring the accuracy of his evidence, whereas the historian must make the best job with anything that comes to hand.

This used to be, and in some circles still is, an unpopular thing to say about historians. The discipline is being fought over by literary-minded (sadly all too often postmodernist) thinkers, who feel it should be done in the same way as literary studies (translation: warble on about trendy new theories and make it all up as you go along), and more conservative sorts such as myself who see history as more akin to science because it is an evidence-based discipline. My own field, the history of ideas, is particularly prone to this sort of conflict.

414. Fleabytes

Comment #155699 by Cartomancer on April 5, 2008 at 9:26 am

I am impressed you even have these, let alone position them by the door.

They're ten a penny when you live near Glastonbury. I thought a sacrificial athame and the wicker man might be overkill though.

415. Fleabytes

Comment #155691 by Cartomancer on April 5, 2008 at 9:13 am

Jehovah's Witnesses? I like to keep a ram's skull and an ornate-looking chalice by the door for when they turn up. Then I can toy with the objects while I greet them and say something like "splendid, the other side have arrived..." in a deep and sinister voice. It really gets them panicking.

416. Beware the Believers

Comment #155642 by Cartomancer on April 5, 2008 at 6:13 am

It's sad really. I suppose it is because you are living in a country where vocal theists are uncommon, so that you aren't often confronted with the limitations of your prejudice. Nevertheless, it does make me wonder how you developed these notions... perhaps from hanging around this echo chamber?

Here's a clue for you and those that share your prejudice: Fred Phelps is an agent provocateur.

Neverthelss, I detect a hint of playing the victim here. You do seem awfully keen to assume that everything we say is a direct attack on you, and that we are necessarily misrepresenting your position rather than just discussing a position that we disapprove of in the abstract.

For the record, pretty much all the vocal theists I have ever encountered in this fine country - almost without exception - have been homophobic bigots. The non-homophobic theists have, without exception, been intensely private and non-vocal in their faith. And the "echo chamber" of RD.net has, if anything, actually mellowed my utter disdain for the religious mind. As far as Fred Phelps goes, actually I despise him far less than I despise mainstream theist homophobes like the Bishop of Carlisle or Sally Kearns. Phelps is an inhuman monster, but his homophobic campaigns are simply a sad attempt to provide focus and hold his vile brood-cult together now he is too old and decrepit to beat his wife and children like he used to. He's a fringe lunatic - it's the mainstream ones who hold power that I'm worried about.

417. Beware the Believers

Comment #155640 by Cartomancer on April 5, 2008 at 6:08 am

Actually, I feel that perhaps an apology is in order with regard to the presentation of my final comment. I stand by the comment itself, but by introducing it with "finally" in line with my "firstly... secondly... thirdly..." scheme I did indeed imply that the criticism was directed at the same source as the others - Kardashovel. It did indeed come across as a culminatory point, rather than as an appended afterthought to the main text as I intended, and I apologise for my sloppy presentational skill.

I actually noted, when reading through the thread before I commented, that Kardashovel was being unfairly accused of this dismissal. It was in one of annabannana's comments:

Secondly, you believe that abortions are immoral, Steve, Cartomancer, Quetzalcoatl, and I believe that (up until a certain point) abortion is not immoral. I'll leave the other three out of this since you seem to want to exclude them based on their being men. But I am capable of undergoing an abortion (I assume they would undergo it, could they, since they don't think it to be immoral) and so if I were to have one, would you not think me to be immoral?

I now suspect that nobody has actually made this substantive point on the thread themselves, it just arose as a misunderstanding. That's enough to deserve a refutation of course, but I should probably have been clearer about the source of the sentiment.

418. Cult leader Pyotr Kuznetsov tries suicide after realising he was wrong about doomsday

Comment #155635 by Cartomancer on April 5, 2008 at 5:54 am

When I mentioned this to my husband, he said that one laughs for a second or two at first, as the image (hitting the head with a block of wood) is cartoon like.

Exactly. We are not laughing at the man in reality - we are laughing at a little cartoon we have come up with in our own heads.

Oh, and Bonzai, of course I wasn't assuming that everyone who didn't laugh was condemning those who do out of hand. But I have certainly detected that sentiment more than once on here.

419. Cult leader Pyotr Kuznetsov tries suicide after realising he was wrong about doomsday

Comment #155629 by Cartomancer on April 5, 2008 at 5:44 am

I think the dissent on this thread over humour stems from a fairly simple division between the participants - a division between those who feel that laughing at the misfortunes of another is, de facto and necessarily, cruel or immoral, and those who feel it is not.

As one who falls into the latter camp, I am tempted to characterise the "moral high horse" brigade as well-meaning but overbearing. This would perhaps be unfair however, given that they are simply people for whom expression of sentiment and deep-seated moral feelings cannot easily be separated. It seems that, for this section of the contributing public, an expression of amusement automatically suggests disdain or callousness toward the object of amusement. They do not easily see the distinction, which the other half see, between the amusing abstract form and the underlying serious issues. For them the two are inseparable.

Now, I do not want this to be understood as a criticism of their position. I don't think it is possible to decide or helpful to speculate on whether one "should" make the distinction between form and substrate in this situation - both seem to be valid ways of approaching the world. I can and do see a distinction, and I do not appreciate people telling me that I shouldn't, just as they would not appreciate me telling them that they should. Ironically, it is an issue of sensitivity to the different mental patterns of others!

I am not laughing at mental illness qua mental illness and suffering. I am not laughing at Pyotr Kuznetsov the man, or his tragic problems. Indeed, I know hardly anything at all about the man - only what I have read here, and that is very little. What I am laughing at is the idea of failed doomsday prophecies and the slapstick image in my head of a man hitting himself over the head with a log. The fact that these ideas and images were put into my head by Pyotr Kuznetsov's story is immaterial. In all honesty the mental picture I am laughing at must look nothing like what really happened out in Russia last month - the news report has abstracted many of the details, and my reading of it has abstracted a stage further. Why should I not laugh at the innocuous funny images inside my head? Why should I not share my amusement with others? Would anyone seriously suggest that my appreciation of these images reduces my capacity for compassion, empathy or understanding? I certainly resent such implications.

Who does this harm? It certainly won't harm Mr. Kuznetzov - he almost certainly will never read anything we say here or even realise that any of us exist. Will it influence mental health policy where we are? Is a printout of this thread going to find its way to the corridors of power and form the basis of a new mental health provisions act? We, on an internet forum, are too far distant, too far removed, from these events for our contributions to matter in the slightest - so why should any of us feel guilty about what we say here? The only sensitivities we need bear in mind are those of the other posters and readers on this forum.

I would, perhaps, go further. Those who claim empathy or sympathy with Kunetsov almost certainly do not feel it for the man himself either. What they feel is the normal empathy and sympathy of their own, toward their own picture of mentally ill people, which has been brought to their minds by the story of Kunetsov. You simply cannot empathise properly with someone you have only heard about in a few sentences in a news article. You can sympathise, but not very deeply - there is no direct connection. Everyone here is fitting the Kunetsov story into their own mental and emotional picture of mentally ill people, and in some it brings to the surface all the emotions conjured by that picture as a whole. This is perfectly normal, and natural. It does not make the prophets of universal sympathy among us hypocritical or wrong. It just means we react in different ways and express different things.

Ultimately all our posts on internet forums are a form of self-expression. Some people feel it more important to give the impression "I am a sensitive person who feels for the plight of the mentally ill", others "I am a person with a sense of humour and an appreciation for good slapstick" or "I am a person who believes passionately that no area of human activity should be arbitrarily excluded from the remit of comedy". Just because you prefer to emphasise the one in no way means you reject the other. I like to think I am both sensitive and passionate about freedom of comedy - and I most certainly can laugh and cry at different aspects of the same situation at the same time with no trace of hypocrisy.

420. Beware the Believers

Comment #155611 by Cartomancer on April 5, 2008 at 4:45 am

Is this directed at me? If so, why?

Only inasmuch as you might subscribe to it. I don't think I picked it up in your posts, just generally across the discussion. Contrary to popular belief there are other people apart from you making statements here too...

421. Anti-gay Okla. lawmaker attracts 1,000 backers

Comment #155609 by Cartomancer on April 5, 2008 at 4:35 am

You know we can't give you the schedule as it is a secret operation, but the Vatican, Discovery Institute and Liberty University are on the schedule.

I thought we decided that Liberty "University" wasn't important enough to attack at the last meeting of the Secret Conclave of Sodom? Did I miss the reversal of that decision while the hot dancing boys were on?

422. Beware the Believers

Comment #155562 by Cartomancer on April 4, 2008 at 9:23 pm

Dude, Steve Zara and I both tried to raise those points with him

You're right of course. I should have recognised that the same themes I brought up were championed by you two and others in my absence - I would hate to think I came across as dismissive of what has actually been said over the last hundred comments or so. I think I'm just frustrated that I missed out on making my own rebuttal earlier. Oh well, such are the perils of straying from RD.net on a friday evening for the somewhat more nefarious comforts of Oxford's night life...

423. Beware the Believers

Comment #155560 by Cartomancer on April 4, 2008 at 9:01 pm

Oh dear oh dear oh dear. I leave RD.net for the evening and the debate steams ahead without me. I guess I should have predicted that. I should probably also have predicted that our friend Kardashovel would spout some inconsequential nonsense and assume it was a successful rebuttal of my arguments. Since nobody has taken him to task for me I guess I had better do the deed myself...

First of all, oh shoveller of the inane, you have not refuted the irrelevance of future possibilities for this particular debate. You said:

I'm not [talking about the potential for future suffering]. I am talking about a prospective future possibility of living a life... and it sounds like you would vote to pull the plug on the respirator because the comatose patient is taking up bed space that could be used for someone who is fully alert.

Why is the potential for "living a life" so important? Why do you choose "living" and not "suffering" as the benchmark of your concerns? In order to suffer in the sense we are talking about, a being must necessarily be alive, but the opposite is not true - not all living beings can suffer in this sense. That is where the examples of the tumour and the daisy come in - both are living beings, but neither has the capacity for suffering. These two things not only have the potential for life but are, in fact, actually alive. It is the capacity for suffering which we use to determine whether immoral cruelty has taken place.

Furthermore, we must get it straight in our minds just what potential really means here. What precise actual harm does destroying potential actually do? "Potential" is simply an idea in our minds - it has no extra-mental reality or existence of its own. Potential itself is not alive and cannot suffer. "Ah", you say, but destroying potential can cause harm to human beings too - you cite the example of switching off the respirator of a comatose man who stands a reasonable chance of recovery. That is indeed true - destroying potential can harm human beings - but the crucial difference between the two cases, which you have overlooked, is that the comatose patient is an actual human being, who really exists, but the conceptus or foetus is only a potential human being. One day it could develop the ability to suffer, but that ability is not present yet. As such, destroying the conceptus destroys only potential - it prevents the future existence of a human being, it does not terminate the existence of an already extant human being. There is no ethical difference, therefore, between aborting a pregnancy before the foetus has developed the ability to suffer and deciding not to have sex and concieve it in the first place. To put it in more amusing terms - if aborting a fertilised conceptus is equivalent to murder, then so is refusing to have heterosexual sex whenever humanly possible. The man in the coma on the respirator is a different case, because he exists now and, as such, has all the relevant human rights. If he recovers then his life will continue, whereas the aborted conceptus's life will never begin in the first place. How absurd it is to credit something with rights that doesn't even exist! Ah, sorry, I forgot - you've not exactly got a spotless record when it comes to dealing with non-existent beings have you...

Secondly you raise the question of mentally handicapped human beings:

What you should carefully consider is that there are some humans who sadly have less capacity for emotion and intellect than a chimp in a lab. Should we use them for experimentation instead, since they are less sentient and their physiology is even closer to our own?

Aside from the glaring non-sequitur that a lack of sentience would automatically consign someone to life as a test subject, you raise an interesting detail. You do not raise a valid argument however. The crucial question of suffering should always be borne in mind - is the benighted individual in question capable of suffering? I used the term "sentience" in my definitions, though I was careful to keep the idea of suffering centre stage. Concepts such as intellect are not strictly relevant here, though they do contribute to certain definitions of sentience elsewhere. Sure, some human beings have much less capacity for suffering, emotional response, and awareness of their surroundings than is normal - but they still have some. The only human beings truly incapable of suffering are the totally braindead ones - whose bodies have to be kept alive artificially anyway. These are not living, suffering human beings as I understand the term. Your recourse to the suggestion that the bodies of such individuals be routinely used for research purposes says more about your own lack of scruples than the issue at hand. The ghoulish "frankenstein science" overtones of your comment are a profoundly unworthy of you and deserve to be left at home. Actually many people do donate their bodies to science quite willingly, as do the relatives of the deceased. Your argument here is about who gets to decide what to do with dead people, and that's not what we are discussing. Inasmuch as a human being, or any other animal, has the capacity to suffer it should be afforded a certain degree of protection under the law. I repeat once more that conceptuses and the braindead cannot suffer.

Thirdly you attempt to tar me with the brush of hypocrisy when I bring up the tangential issues surrounding abortion:

it is interesting to note that you would argue that abortion might be the moral choice depending on potential future circumstances, but that it could never be immoral based on potential future circumstances. I wonder what you think about that observation...

Here you fail to understand that I was very specifically discussing late-term abortions where some capacity for suffering in the foetus has developed, not the main issue of early-term abortions where it has not. Once the capacity for suffering has developed the issues become more complicated, and the well-being of the mother, the foetus and anyone else affected should be taken into consideration. This is not discussing potential human beings anymore, it is discussing actual ones - and the potential future circumstances can now affect actual, existing human beings.

Finally, I think it the height of condescension to assume that I, as a gay man who will never have children or face the prospect of having an abortion, am, because of that fact, somehow less qualified to speak on this issue than other people. We are not talking about individual situations here, we are talking about underlying moral codes - and that's an abstract discussion anyone can join in with irrespective of whether they have a vested interest in the outcome. One does not need personal experience to come to rational decisions - only sufficient evidence and proper methodology.

424. Dawkins warns of human extinction

Comment #155325 by Cartomancer on April 4, 2008 at 10:27 am

Spoken by a man who comes from Glastonbury I believe. Not too far from the Isle of Avalon...

Indeed so. Most people round there are ascending to the heavens on a regular basis - or at least away with the fairies. It's amazing the weird people you see at certain times of the year up the Tor - I once caught a gaggle of nuns sliding down the side on their bottoms in the middle of winter.

425. Dawkins warns of human extinction

Comment #155317 by Cartomancer on April 4, 2008 at 10:20 am

In fact... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_who_have_been_considered_deities

426. Dawkins warns of human extinction

Comment #155311 by Cartomancer on April 4, 2008 at 10:14 am

It was a myth, and a regular one in human history.

Yes. Apotheosis is a distressingly common myth - every bit as common as virgin birth if not more so. Pharaonic rebirth among the stars, Archaic Greek hero cults, Hellenistic royal cults, the Roman imperial cult, the semitic Jesus cult, Japanese ancestor Kami worship, Native American ancestor spirits...

In fact you'd be hard pressed to find a mythical hero figure worthy of his salt who didn't ascend to the heavens...

427. Dawkins warns of human extinction

Comment #155302 by Cartomancer on April 4, 2008 at 10:08 am

Ah. So it was nothing more than unsubstantiated personal prejudice after all. Glad we've got that sorted out...

428. Dawkins warns of human extinction

Comment #155298 by Cartomancer on April 4, 2008 at 10:04 am

And what poison will you be ingesting to show us your faith in Jesus?

I think Artful is exo-toxic rather than endo-toxic Al-Rawandi...

429. Beware the Believers

Comment #155296 by Cartomancer on April 4, 2008 at 10:02 am

I had just a few years of being slightly cool, then Labour got into power, and started being nice to me and it all ended.

I didn't even have that. They'd been in power for eight years and the age of consent was equal by the time I got things straight in my own mind and told everyone that I was a raving bender. Not even a funny look or wrinkled up nose. It was most disappointing.

430. Dawkins warns of human extinction

Comment #155283 by Cartomancer on April 4, 2008 at 9:51 am

Rather a strange thing to do, wouldn't you say, placing the highest stakes bet possible on one specific rider when you don't even know that there's a race on at all?

431. Beware the Believers

Comment #155267 by Cartomancer on April 4, 2008 at 9:38 am

I mean, these days even being gay is not that naughty. I try my best to appear exciting and edgy through my immoral attitudes and no-one notices :)

Tell me about it! When I came out at 22 I thought I might finally be able to flaunt something about myself which would be considered cool, slick and charismatic by society at large. Alas everyone still thinks of me as the irritating, neurotic and socially inept geek they always did. It's not fair - do I have to walk around in leather fetish gear with a boy on a chain to get noticed or something?

Damn society for getting so bloody tolerant all of a sudden!

432. Dawkins warns of human extinction

Comment #155206 by Cartomancer on April 4, 2008 at 8:28 am

Oh stop it Steve, you know how embarassed public praise makes me feel.

Well, ok then, maybe just a little...

433. Dawkins warns of human extinction

Comment #155199 by Cartomancer on April 4, 2008 at 8:25 am

Understanding the contribution made to our culture and society by religious ideas is not the work of a theologian - it is the work of an historian of ideas, or failing that an anthropologist or a sociologist.

Inasmuch as somebody calling themself a theologian studies this, they are not studying "theology" defined as the study of the nature and properties of god.

434. Dawkins warns of human extinction

Comment #155191 by Cartomancer on April 4, 2008 at 8:19 am

Is there some objective standard of appropriate praise and sentiments of appreciation for internet forums now then? When did gushing praise for people we respect and admire suddenly become a bad thing?

435. Dawkins warns of human extinction

Comment #155180 by Cartomancer on April 4, 2008 at 8:13 am

If he does not, not all that much is lost by believing in Him.

Apart from the truth you mean? Oh, and ten per cent of your income, your ability to make sensible moral decisions and critically assess evidence and the respect of all right-thinking people the world over? Sounds quite a high stake to put on the world's flimsiest tip-off to me...

436. Dawkins warns of human extinction

Comment #155168 by Cartomancer on April 4, 2008 at 8:03 am

Theology, narrowly defined as the study of the properties and nature of god, is a non-subject, because god does not exist.

The bible, on the other hand, very much does exist. I have seen several of them quite recently as it happens. I've even read them in the past. Its existence can be objectively verified. Moreover, as a cultural document it can offer us all manner of insights into peoples of a bygone age.

437. Beware the Believers

Comment #155157 by Cartomancer on April 4, 2008 at 7:49 am

I have already implied this. When the foetus concerned becomes able to suffer. This is not a clear-cut line in reality that one can slap a precise label on, though generally such an arbitrary label is necessary in framing legal provisions.

And, actually, the moral question is not nearly that simple. Even once the foetus is capable of suffering, there is still the negative impact of carrying the pregnancy to term on the well-being of the mother to consider. I even think it should be seriously discussed whether the quality of life the prospective child will lead should not be a factor - is it moral to insist that a child be born into crippling poverty and almost inevitable death rather than offer a late abortion to prevent the suffering? Is it moral to do that even if you know the mother will probably expose or abandon the child anyway? Morality is never simply black and white in the real world.

438. Beware the Believers

Comment #155146 by Cartomancer on April 4, 2008 at 7:46 am

I have already stated my criterion. Sentience, including the ability to feel pain. Inasmuch as a 35-week old foetus can suffer, it should be afforded some rights. Inasmuch as it cannot, it remains merely a collection of alien cells to be nurtured or disposed of as necessary.

What is your criterion, and why is it relevant?

439. Beware the Believers

Comment #155140 by Cartomancer on April 4, 2008 at 7:42 am

I was not making an assertion of fact, I was merely pointing out the corollaries of your assertion. Note the "If... then" construction of my sentence. I think most people realised that what I was getting at is your failure hitherto to come up with a valid distinction between tumours and conceptuses. Without such a valid distinction you simply cannot treat them separately in ethical terms.

We all agree that tumours and daisies are not human. The important point is WHY we do not classify them as human, and what additional characteristics a conceptus might possess that make you say it is.

440. Beware the Believers

Comment #155120 by Cartomancer on April 4, 2008 at 7:27 am

Please explain why the tumour does not qualify but the conceptus does. All you have done so far is simply assert this by fiat. If you want to afford the one human rights but not the other then you need a valid basis on which to make the discrimination.

441. Beware the Believers

Comment #155117 by Cartomancer on April 4, 2008 at 7:23 am

Of course murder and killing have ethical connotations. I was using them because they are the sort of deliberately contentious terms you and the anti-abortion lobby are throwing about.

"Murder" contains the element of intent, and the element of killing a sentient being. We would not say someone "murders" a daisy by plucking it from the ground because it is not sentient. Where the lion in your example does not qualify for the "intent" part of the definition, the conceptus in mine does not qualify for the "sentient being" part. There is no difference here between terminating a pregnancy and picking the flower.

If a tumour is not an individual human being then the conceptus is not an individual human being either. It is, like the tumour, a collection of alien cells in the body of an actual human being. The only difference is what it may one day become, and as I have outlined earlier that is an irrelevant concern.

I don't drink coffee, but thanks for your concern...

442. Beware the Believers

Comment #155105 by Cartomancer on April 4, 2008 at 7:15 am

Why does this "realistic chance of becoming a baby" matter?

If I was given large amounts of money and support to acquire a medical degree and specialise in heart surgery I could probably end up saving thousands of people's lives in my surgical career. There is a realistic chance I could be a heart surgeon. Does this mean it is immoral for me not to do everything in my power to become such a surgeon? Is the government immoral for not providing the finances and compelling me to do this?

I might commit suicide tomorrow. I have a realistic chance of becoming a corpse. Does that mean it is immoral not to bury me today?

You simply cannot take a prospective future possibility for suffering as an argument for compelling action in the here and now. In the here and now that collection of cells is just that - a small, unthinking, unfeeling blob of protoplasm. It is not a baby. It has less sentience than a headlouse. That is the "individual" we are dealing with.

443. Beware the Believers

Comment #155095 by Cartomancer on April 4, 2008 at 7:02 am

I'm afraid religion is nothing but the kind of group-think that often leads to genocidal catastrophes. Science, the one true Oracle of Reality we have, provides the objective standards and political and ethical philosophy are what interprets them into workable societal models.

Religion is simply an irrational parasite on this process.

Also, if you define the individual from the moment of conception, that means that the majority of fertilised eggs which occur thanks to sexual intercourse are murdered by the natural biological processes of the female body - pregnancies generally result in many such naturally aborted companion conceptuses. And is this bundle of cells truly an independent individual if it cannot survive outside the conditions of the womb? By this same definition cancerous tumours could be considered as individuals...

444. Whale 'missing link' discovered

Comment #155077 by Cartomancer on April 4, 2008 at 6:24 am

Why should a mortal man, the sport of chance,
With no assured foreknowledge, be afraid?
Best live a carefree life as best we may.

- Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannos

445. Whale 'missing link' discovered

Comment #155058 by Cartomancer on April 4, 2008 at 5:48 am

We build towers of sand because we find towers beautiful, and all we have to build them with is sand...

I find the idea that life is without an objective, metaphysical meaning entirely liberating and wonderful thank you. It allows me to impose whatever meaning I like onto its fabric, and live my life how I want to the best of my ability. It heightens and glorifies my sense of wonder, of love, of achievement and of excitement knowing every day that my successes and my failures are mine and mine alone, and not to be credited to some distant, whimsical arbiter of fate. The tragedies of my life are made more poginant too - there is no reason, no animus, no intelligence punishing me according to its crazy ineffable plan, no vengeful bloated sky-tyrant who despises what I do. No, the only things that cause tragedy in my life are the cold, grinding wheels of unfeeling, unthinking circumstance. What candle can your petty anthropomorphic explanation of fate hold to this grand and majestic vision of the universe?

I laugh. I cry. I love. I hate. I live. I learn. I die. What more meaning could you want from life?

In order for my life to have meaning I don't need a god. I just need me. How I got here is a wonderful and interesting story - a true story that we can learn more about every day - but ultimately it is irrelevant to the purpose of my life. I am here. That is all that matters. What I do now I am here is up to me. IT doesn't mean anything, and nor should it have to - I do enough meaning for the entire cosmos and so does each and every one of us.

446. Cult leader Pyotr Kuznetsov tries suicide after realising he was wrong about doomsday

Comment #155053 by Cartomancer on April 4, 2008 at 5:43 am

Actually, this story with all its credulity and humorous use of logs reminded me of Aesop's fable of the Frogs who desired a King:

A group of frogs lived happily and peacefully in a pond. Over time, however, they became discontented with their way of life, and thought they should have a mighty king to rule over them. They called out to the great god Zeus to send them a king.

Zeus was amused by the frogs' request, and cast a large log down into their pond, saying "Behold, your king!" At first, the frogs were terrified of the huge log, but after seeing that it did not move, they began to climb upon it. Once they realized the log would not move, they called out again to Zeus to send them a real king, one that moved.

Annoyed by the frogs, Zeus said, "Very well, here is your new king," and sent a large stork to the pond. The stork began devouring frogs. In terror, frogs called out to Zeus to save them. Zeus refused, saying the frogs now had what they'd wanted, and had to face the consequences.

447. Pastor attacks scientist's talk

Comment #155050 by Cartomancer on April 4, 2008 at 5:36 am

Actually, I've just noticed some consciousness-raising that needs to take place. The title of this article "Pastor attacks scientist's talk" should immediately and instantly sound as ridiculous to us as if it were "Chef attacks economist's talk" or "Hairdresser attacks historian's lecture" or "Dustman attacks astronomer's book". I think we really need to hammer home that priests should be credited with no intellectual credibility or standing of their own simply by dint of being priests.

How about "unpleasant little scotsman whines at professor's discussion"? Captures it much better in my mind...

448. Protests no concern for outspoken atheist

Comment #155026 by Cartomancer on April 4, 2008 at 4:52 am

RobinDinsmore, comment #34 -

With most relgious people I would be inclined to agree with you, but as far as Robertson goes I think he has demonstrated outright, knowing duplicity on this very site far too many times to be let off with the excuse that his mental programming makes him do it.

Just ask Paula Kirby...

449. Whale 'missing link' discovered

Comment #155015 by Cartomancer on April 4, 2008 at 4:30 am

Where is your common sense?
Does THIS really look like a WHALE to you?!

Yeah, the thing is you're confusing your own investigative method (have a quick look and jump to conclusions) with the scientific method (gather evidence, form hypotheses, test hypotheses, test hypotheses again, alter hypotheses, test again, etc. etc.). Just because you have no more effective tool at your disposal than taking a quick peek and deciding on the spot does not mean that everyone else is the same. "Common sense" is hardly ever the most effective investigative tool to use once we scratch the surface of reality.

Take a look at a picture of yourself as a baby. Go on, a really good cursory look so you get the full revealing force of occasional casual observation. How can that pudgy, tiny drooling thing possibly be you? It's only a foot tall - you're much bigger than that! It can't even walk or talk or eat solid food yet - you can do all of those things! And we're supposed to believe that this soggy, gurgling lump of flesh is an ancestral form of you? Pull the other one! Ok, its brain is probably about as developed as yours is now, but really, all this human infant theory that science tells us about, so much dross...

The reason we find scientific conclusions so compelling is precisely the method used to reach them - the painstaking investigation and theorising and taking evidence into account. And we also understand the provisional nature of those conclusions. Scientists are indeed constantly changing their minds with new experimental results and the uncovering of new evidence - doesn't the fact that the theory of evolution by natural selection has remained intact for 150 years in this powerful reducing crucible of science give you at least some inkling of its explanatory capacity and predictive power? Much more its fit to the evidence.

450. Cult leader Pyotr Kuznetsov tries suicide after realising he was wrong about doomsday

Comment #155002 by Cartomancer on April 4, 2008 at 4:12 am

It is like laughing at a cripple.

Well, yes, it is. But cripples do funny things too. There may be certain concerns over the propriety of laughing in public at such things, and particularly over laughing in the presence of the people concerned if it will damage their confidence, but what harm does it do to acknowledge in a forum such as this that we do, in fact, find them funny?

Laughing at someone's silliness does not, in itself, indicate that we think any less of them. Most of the disabled people I have met are prone to having a good laugh at their own involuntary silliness, and don't mind when others join in - it lessens the sadness and seriousness of the occasion. I think we very often laugh at things like this precisely because they are so tragic and we feel a deep-seated need to blunt the edge of the concern we feel. If we weren't laughing we would be crying - and what good would that do anyone in this situation?