Comment 59 by sharkeggs :

We only know that the universe had a beginning.

Not my understanding, we only know that the universe was in existence after the Planck time.

Comment 11 by memeweaver :

They fail to notice that by continually appeasing a minority who will never vote for them, and will never be satisfied by any appeasement (witness the routing of Labor in the Queensland state election, and what the Christian right voters said), they betray their voting base, who now wander off to greener pastures.

Kipling got it right

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;

But we've proved it again and again,

That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld

You never get rid of the Dane.

Comment 35 by Mr DArcy :

Well science has some say about the shape of electrons "real" or not. Now whether or not the instruments are up to it, I couldn't possibly say, but at least this activity has progressed my understanding of electrons.

They used an instrument based on lasers to do the investigation. Now, how do lasers work? What is the theory behind their operation?

Don't get me wrong, I am a realist when it comes to the existence of electrons. However there are problems when it comes to entities which are not directly observable or rely on instrumentation for observations. It is a truism in philosophy of science that all observations are theory laden.

While I have as much affection for the post-modernists as Alan Sokal there is still plenty of mileage in good philosophy.

Quine has raised neuroscience as an explanans for a number of philosophical problems, I would agree with him but I don't think we have a full science of mind as yet. Philosophy of mind is still a useful discipline and if you read someone like V.S. Ramachandran it is something that he takes into account in his work.

There is also a good deal at the foundation of physics too. Are electrons and quarks real? Certainly we have no direct observational evidence for their existence, only indirect evidence. The indirect evidence is that from instruments which are built using theories which themselves implicitly assume the existence of such particles.

There is a famous discussion between Boyle and Hobbes about the air pump, in their day a notoriously unreliable instrument which could only give results when it was "working properly". But as Hobbes pointed out, what does one mean when one claims it is working properly? Surely one is making a circular argument. This of course continue in the work of Duhem and W.V. Orman Quine, namely that all theories are under-determined and that it is impossible to test a theory in isolation since all theories are dependent on auxiliary hypotheses.

One can go further, fields are postulated to avoid "action at a distance" and to preserve the spatio-temporal locality that causality seemingly requires. But one can also question whether fields are real and whether causality is a universal.

Comment 30 by Mr DArcy :

I wouldn't want to deride Derrida, but de desire is strong.

Why not, other philosophers do. John Searle famously said Derrida gave bullshit a bad name.

Comment 73 by Alan4discussion :

History suggests that the the Tory version of "Localism" is about central government abdicating responsibility for local problems, while opening up loopholes for local opportunists!

You missed the other bit, if localism is a success then call-me-Dave will take the credit for it. If it goes tits up then he will be able to pass the blame.

Pickle's claim is arguable. The bill only gives councils the right to consider things which are properly the business of the council.

Could, for example, Sheffield declare that it would not grant planning permission to businesses which took part in this central government scheme or Tower Hamlets council close down bank and building society branches in its area because they did not abide by Sharia law on usury? The answer is almost certainly not, they are not the business of the local council.

In a similar way I think we will probably find that the same is true of mandating a particular set of prayers as part of a council meeting.

Comment 8 by tdcolvin1 :

A wonderful counter-argument to Sayeeda Warsi's latest comments... http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/13/militant-secularisation-christianity-lady-warsi

One might also try this link

Not my phrase, but one I have stolen from elsewhere "Warsi is Britain's answer to Sarah Palin. But she isn't as clever"

Comment 8 by Metamag :

Who did not sneak into the country but were groomed by it thanks to intellectually and morally bankrupt lefties and failed permissiveness of multiculturalism.

And your evidence that they were:

1. Groomed by lefties
2. That said lefties are intellectually and morally bankrupt.

If you are American then I think you might be better posting on a Faux News site, here in the UK you might try the Daily Mail.

And another one

Incidentally, another incident to add to the list.

Comment 131 by Grizwald Grim :

As I suspect many Atheists have never experienced the comfort from a religion that others do, it seemed a mother would be the best comparison to aid in understanding the emotional reaction that results from having one's religion mocked.

You are wrong. There are many posting here who used to be members of a religious community. Steve Zara was a Catholic as was I.

Comment 17 by epeeist :

Click on Denis Alexander's picture or name at the top of the article. This gives a very brief profile. The one thing that is missing from it is that he is on the board of advisors for the Templeton Foundation.

And while I think on (slightly dimmed by the Christmas cheer). I find it interesting that the sub-editor who in all probability commissioned this piece, Andrew Brown, is a Templeton journalism fellow as is another writer in the belief section, Mark Vernon.

Something to remind its readers of if more Templeton fellows turn up to write columns.

Click on Denis Alexander's picture or name at the top of the article. This gives a very brief profile. The one thing that is missing from it is that he is on the board of advisors for the Templeton Foundation.

Comment 5 by drumdaddy :

I'd walk my dog by there at least three or four times daily.

And allow it, nay encourage it, to cock its leg at the appropriate location.

Reading some of the epitaphs and comments on them it becomes apparent that while some (many) may have disagreed with his politics or his way of life that it is the comments from Christians that are the most vile. The sheer vituperation and glee that he is dead and the gloating on his possible punishment by their god leaves one sickened. Really, religion does poison everything.

Comment 267 by Ignorant Amos :

Comment 253 by Mark Jones

Is this the right room for the wanking symposium?

Been to a few of them in my time Mark....but we're not allowed to talk about it.

Old Bernard Manning joke:

Doctor: You'll have to stop masturbating

Bernard Manning: Why, am I going blind?

Doctor: No, but you are upsetting the rest of the people in the waiting room.

Comment 229 by Tedilasllaves :

The Marxists and users of contraception are not following what the Catholic Church teaches. As far as I'm aware not a single 'ex cathedra' teaching of the Catholic Church has ever changed and this is what informed Catholics are talking about when they speak of Catholic teaching.

You do realise that the Pontifical commission on birth control produced a majority report which stated artificial birth control that was not intrinsically evil and that Catholic couples should be allowed to decide for themselves about the methods to be employed. According to the majority report, use of contraceptives should be regarded as an extension of the already accepted cycle method.

However, it was vetoed by the then pope Paul VI who accepted the minority report.

Comment 18 by MichaelE :

If their dream is to refute Darwinian evolution, it may help to have at least a basic understanding of the theory first.

Let's assume that one of these students comes up with a killer experiment that shows the TofE is false. All that this shows is that the TofE is false. What it doesn't do is provide validation of any other hypothesis.

Comment 12 by Atheist Mike :

Gotta love the labour party, we have our own little saudi arabia now thanks to them.

You presumably also blame the Labour Party for setting up the Forced Marriage Unit, and for MPs like Ann Cryer for speaking out against forced marriage and honour killings.

Comment 14 by susanlatimer :

It was the strangest thing. I didn't go in with a chip on my shoulder but I left with one. I was there to honour a great man and all they talked about was how great Jesus was.

My father and his family were Catholics and I have had to attend a number of Catholic funerals. My experience in each case has been the same as yours. Little mention of the person whose funeral it was except for their contribution to the church and the rest of the service being a hard sell for Catholicism.

My father had ceased to be a Catholic by the time of his death but we still had a Catholic funeral for him so as not to upset my grandmother. The priest took great delight in attacking my father's politics and his atheism, it was all I could do to stop myself hitting him after the service. As it was it turned me from being apathetic about religion to realising what a malign influence it has on society.

Forget the service, remember your uncle as he was.

Comment 9 by Extreme-Madness :

Why is Stephen Hawking does not commit suicide! Sick joke, but unfortunately some people think seriously. I just read an article in a Croatian weekly political magazine "Objektiv". Author of the article is obviously wonder why Stephen Hawking does not commit suicide because he does not believe in God,

It was only after people started to commit suicide in order to get to heaven earlier that it was declared a sin.

Comment 30 by decius :

Also, the strong support the catholic church offered to both Hitler and Mussolini should account from something.

Let's not forget that the Vatican as a "state" was established by the Lateran treaties, signed while Mussolini was in power.

But how about Franco, or Pinochet?

Comment 293 by Bill23 :

Geodel's theorem proves that to be impossible because any TOE will be incomplete or inconsistent, and so cannot both correctly model every real world event and at the same fail to make false predictions.

Gödel's theorems are standard mathematics and logic and hence are deductive in nature. Science is inductive and abductive. I am not sure how the former has any impact on the latter.

On top of that science is concerned with observations which are particular, contingent and probabilistic rather than the universal, necessary and certain.

Comment 192 by Schrodinger's Cat :

Again...come off it. What the feck else can 'scientific explanation' mean other than that something has been scientifically explained ? I don't see 'possibly scientifically explained'. I don't see 'possible hypothesis'. I see 'scientifically explained'. Most rational people would take 'scientific explanation' to be a statement that a phenomenon has been explained.

Scientific explanation is a fairly tricky concept, you really need to do some reading to get an understanding of it.

Ooh, I see that article isn't open for comments. Otherwise the more ultramontane Catholics who post on the site would be down on it claiming that "it was nothing to do with the current or previous popes" and that "it was just knee-jerk anti-Catholicism" and "there is no organisation in the world that provides better child protection than the church" or the classic "how many scout masters and teachers abuse children?" (tu quoque much?).

Comment 19 by Letsbereasonable :

Comment 14 by Steven Mading

Well I think the article makes it clear that the churches dotting the English countryside are preserved as beautiful buildings more or less by default, since hardly anyone ever goes in them, except tourists and those wishing to preseve the quintessential Englishness of the distant countryside vistas, and very nice they are too.

Except of course that fewer tourists are going as well. I was in Lincoln recently and wanted to go to the cathedral to look at its copy of the Magna Carta. However given the entry fee of £6 I, and seemingly many others, just turned around and walked away. At that sort of price I would rather visit somewhere like Tattershall castle or Clumber park

Comment 13 by Marc Country :

Guardian link bait... horrible writing by nobody at all that mentions Richard Dawkins at some point. This stuff is their bread and butter.

Untrue of the Guardian, definitely true of Andrew Brown and a couple of other contributors, namely Mark Vernon and Theo Hobson. You should note that the first two are recipients of the Templeton journalism fellowship.

Comment 121 by James Moors :

"We are required by law to provide worship, twice a day." she said, with rather more smugness than the situation perhaps warranted. I didn't push her any further because she promised to excuse my children from worship, but it did occur to me that she could not possibly have been correct about the requirements of law to provide religious worhip.

Not my understanding. An assembly based on "broadly Christian principles" is all that is required by law. Ask her to give you a reference to the law in question.

Comment 65 by Robert Howard :

Even in the UK, with an established religion, there are now more non-religious than religious.

Is this true or is it just wishful thinking? I don't know if the results of the most recent census have even been published yet, but if they have, do they really reveal that atheists outnumber theists?

Have a look at the British Social Attitudes Survey, a summary of the finding on religion can be found here.