Googling "Eastern Groin Groper" I find only two references; one to Bryson and one to Dawkins (apparently quoting Bryson). Could Bryson have made this up? There is a fish called the Eastern Blue Groper.

In a similar situation, I have said "Let us all say grace silently, after the fashion of Quakers", and after about half a minute, "Thank you" or "Amen", and everyone is satisfied.

Or where a form of words is demanded (and not specified, as one seems to be at Oxford), I say something like "Let us bring our minds together to give thanks to all the forces and people who have produced and prepared this food, and combined to bring us together here to share and enjoy it, and each other's company." In those terms, the idea of grace is quite benign.

By speaking in general terms, you can include any deities that others may believe in, while not doing violence to your own beliefs.

And a nod to Deep Fritz.

I'm a little puzzled by "I ... refrain from calling ostentatious attention to my unbelief" though. Hasn't he done that a bit already? When you're Richard Dawkins, probably the most famous atheist on the planet, doesn't saying grace equally ostentatiously call attention to your unbelief as well?

12. Comment #469960 by huzonfurst on March 17, 2010

I have to quibble with Richard when he described atheism as "the belief there is no god." This is not accurate, because strictly speaking it is the *lack* of a belief. Calling it a belief plays into the hands of the deluded, enabling them to put religion and atheism/science on the same level - and now they can point to Richard Dawkins to support this claim.

Put it in context, the caller wanted to know the difference between atheism and agnosticism, so RD gave the strong forms of both.

(I don't know why he and others think the distinction is too hard for newcomers:

1a. plain (I won't say "weak") agnostic: I don't know if there are god/dess/es or not.
1b. strong agnostic: Nobody can know if there are god/dess/es or not.

2a. plain atheist: I don't believe there are any god/dess/es.
2b. strong atheist: (I believe) There are no god/dess/es.

13. Comment #469985 by biggles1 on March 17, 2010

The numerologist was an absolute crack-up! I wonder if he still would have arrived at his mysterious series of 7's if he'd analysed Genesis in its ORIGINAL HEBREW....!!

I think he said it did. RD's answer was good, but I think what also needs to be said is that those games have no rules. You're allowed to look for any kind of pattern, and whatever pattern you find "proves" what you wanted to prove.

Look at it from the other end, this guy is saying God said "I'll dictate my Sacred Word to these prophets, and in it I'll put this pattern of sevens to, um, to... umm.... well, I'll just put it in anyway because I can."

48. Comment #469984 by Phasic on March 17, 2010

Geocretin said:

Notice: Vileness and lies concentration exceeds 6.022 x 10^23 per paragraph..

Are you calling Melanie Philips a lying mole?

Damn! I posted that (without the "lying" and a capital M) but it didn't arrrive. Still, I thought I'd 'ave a g[adr]o.


And she seems stupider than a worm-cast.

Watching Fielding, a creationist, speak, Dawkins looked as if he was witnessing a talking cat.

Can someone please upload that?

50. Comment #469564 by Steve Zara on March 15, 2010

I have heard somewhere recently that battle for gay rights has changed its nature considerably in the USA over the past couple of decades. Apparently, many conservatives actually wanted there to be gay marriage, as it would have indicated acceptance of "family values" by homosexuals

I doubt this very much. Conservatives have always needed GLBT people to be the Eeeeevil Other.

Taner Edis doesn't really come to grips with the objection that the members of the "communities" in question may NOT agree with what the clerics or "community leaders" dictate, so why should they, the leaders, be able to enforce coercive powers on their flock? What of those who are barred from the top positions, such as women in Catholicism, Islam, and Orthodox Judaism, gays, those holding "heretical" beliefs, and so on?

It depends what you mean by "their flock". As long as people can leave a flock, there should be considerable leeway in the kind of damfool rules they can impose. That's where Islamic "Death to Apostates" is intolerable.

Yet over the Tasman, "Almost 4 out of 10 people did not specify a religious affiliation in the 2001 Census" according to Statistics New Zealand, both the present and previous PMs have professed no religion, and MPs make an affirmation instead of an oath of office with hardly a mention.

12. Comment #469691 by Gibbon on March 15, 2010

For those people who wish to know, the man who introduced Richard Dawkins was Bernard Beckett. He is a science writer and school teacher.

He's also a novelist for young adults of some acclaim. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Beckett . We had him to speak at the NZ Skeptics Conference last year and he was excellent.

14. Comment #469523 by vilbigr26 on March 15, 2010

Why do atheists insist that variations in gene replication are random? Is it not conceivable that God chose these variations by actualizing one of several possible quantum events (e.g. tautomeric shifts, wobble pairing).

Of course it is. Absolutely anything is conceivable when you admit a supernatural being with infinite powers - that's the trouble with doing it. Why should he go to that trouble when, at 9am on the morning of Monday, October 22, 4004 BCE, he can just say "Let there be light" and there will be light, and so on till Saturday? Or the FSM or the Great Teapot could do the same thing. It's conceivable.

And your unskilled person seems to have stumbled into Paley's watchmaker's workshop.

32. Comment #469489 by RDfan on March 15, 2010

Nunbeliever: I could run through the state-sponsored evils that Britain (Oscar Wilde; Alan Turing), Germany (under Hitler and the Gestapo), and Cuba (under Castro)to name a few random countries, perpetuated against gays...but I won`t bother as you already know about them.

And the first few have been requited. Did you miss the apology and the statues and monuments?

Uganda is a big place (there are over 15 local languages spoken)

That's interesting, because in "The Homosexual Matrix" C A Tripp says that countries with many languages have more homosexuality than monoglot regions. (I'd say because actions speak louder than words)

17. Comment #469400 by Lendear on March 14, 2010

To say that natzism was a homosexual movement must certainly be wrong. To say that a much larger percentage of the original natzi group, when compared to the german population, were, is probably correct.

What is your evidence for that (somewhat extraordinary) claim? If they were, why did they burn Magnus Hirschfeld's library in 1933?

As someone who grew up gay and unaware of it in the 1960s, going to school balls, as they were called, was sheer Hell. Absolutely nobody was Out, let alone proud - to act on it was a crime - and the idea of taking a male partner would have horrified me as much as the rest of the schools (single-sex schools, Boys' High or College would hold a joint affair with Girls' High or St Margaret's). Finding and taking a partner was bad enough, but the s-s environment meant these were virtually the only opportunities for opposite-sex interaction, and awkward doesn't begin to describe it - even if you were strait.

So I want to say a loud cheer to Constance McMillen just for getting this far, and if she and her darling can have a ball, that's just the icing on the cake.

So does the blasphemy law ban speaking against the FSM, the Great Teapot, or the Tooth Fairy? And if not, why not?

scientific and religious knowledge

What is an example of "religious knowledge"?

the central claim that all things known and unknown in our Universe originate from the purposive actions of a Creator is, we believe, totally consistent with what we know about the Universe.

Of course it is! "The purposive actions of a Creator" are totally consistent with anything anyone or anything might know about this universe, any other in any multiverse, or any universe at all, possible or im-. A Creator is like a 600 lb gorilla on its birthday. (What does a 600 lb gorilla do on its birthday? Whatever it likes.)

One wonders, with Laplace, what need they have of that hypothesis.

Jeff Tallon at least is a real scientist, having done important work in superconductors.

In Wellington, one of the questioners began, "I want to throw my undies onstage."

39. Comment #469059 by hairybreeks on March 13, 2010

He was disgusted to find that many parishioners (newly emigrated from GB) openly expressed their unbelief, and considered it was his mission to spread the word exceptionally vigorously so as to convert them.
It seems not to have occurred to him that those unbelievers may have emigrated precisely to get away from that sort of aggressive evangelism.

By "parishioners" I imagine you mean people who lived within his parish, rather than those enrolled at his church. NZ had a flood of immigration from the UK after the war: there was a scheme by which the fare was very cheap. They also sent a few "orphans" whose parents were alive, to whom they have recently apologised.

Christchurch, as its name implies, was founded as an Anglican settlement, but that doesn't count for much these days. NZ is a very secular country, with about 1/3 of the population, including the last two PMs, professing no religion.

6. Comment #467373 by Nastika on March 8, 2010 at 10:23 am

Comment #467366 by Shuggy

Can we seriously believe that the kiwi, the moa, the kakapo, the takahe, the pukeko and the weka walked from Mt Ararat ... leaving no trace on the way?

Here's the best creationists can come up with.

Warning: following this link can seriously furrow your brow...

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/nab/how-did-animals-spread

Thanks, Nastika. I L'dOL at the way he used the rarity of fossilisation to explain the paucity of fossils on the way, when they're constantly berating us about the "missing links".
I particularly liked:

The principal error of this view is that it starts from supposed scientific anomalies, such as the fossil record, rather than from Scripture.

Anomalies?

Dawkins ranged through his latest book, The Greatest Show on Earth, citing the special place of Australia's marsupials among the compelling evidence for evolution through natural selection over creationism.

Lovely. And when he speaks in Wellington on Wednesday, he can equally cite the special place of New Zealand's flightless birds among the compelling evidence for evolution through natural selection over creationism.

Can we seriously believe that the kiwi, the moa, the kakapo, the takahe, the pukeko and the weka walked from Mt Ararat (beside the kangaroo, the koala, the emu, the platypus, the echidna, the wombat and the bandicoot, before saying a fond farewell at Sydney Harbour), leaving no trace on the way?

54. Comment #467214 by ridelo on March 7, 2010

When somebody mentions to me "Eine kleine Nachtmusik" automatically I hear in my mind the first notes "pompom pompom pompompompompompom".

The first notes of (the first movement of) "Eine kleine Nachtmusik" are "POM- pomPOM- pomPOMpomPOMpomPOM---"

Therefore memes do not exist.

6. Comment #466387 by keithapm on March 4, 2010

It says "ox". I'm looking at my bible right now and I mean it quite clearly says "ox" and ONLY ox. It doesn't say 'ox and whatever other animals in a persons charge... blah, blah'. Since when is a whale an ox? The only way you could interpret that as meaning ANY animal would be if you didn't take the bible literally but... These people just seem to sink to lower and lower levels of stupidity...

I think they made up a rule a long time ago (so long that they've forgotten they ever did it) that said you could substitute, like my mother's baking: "Where it says treacle, you can use golden syrup or brown sugar dissolved in water" That kind of thing. So electricity is a kind of fire, and so on. It probably means you can use rocks or a harpoon gun, too.

7. Comment #465506 by black wolf on March 1, 2010 at 8:40 pm

Well...

http://i.imgur.com/Nbnuw.jpg

...and not to prayer.

19. Comment #465553 by popecorkyxxiv on March 1, 2010 at 11:09 pm

Once upon a time the Christian right tried to raise stink about the Monty Python film "Life of Brian". This came to a head when Michael Palin and John Cleese went on a tv debate show and argued with Malcolm Muggeridge and Bishop Mervyn Stockwood. At the end of a long draw out debate that included many veiled threats about where the Pythons will go when they die, it was decided by the audience that the atheistic Pythons won. Not because their belief was right, not because they made better arguments or had better logic; the reason the Pythons won is that they were the ones who behaved themselves. The Pythons were polite, honest, and straight forward; while the christians threatened, raged, dodged and were overall barbaric.

And one of the Pythons reported in a documentary about the film (on the DVD), how shocked he was when the Bishop said to him afterward, "Well, I think that went all right, don't you?" or words to that effect, indicating that he had treated it purely as a media event and didn't believe a word he'd said.

16. Comment #465538 by root2squared on March 1,

Now if I were to make a board, it would be surrounded by an electrified frame with a helpful suggestion - touch this to meet Jesus.

At christmas, I was in the South Island (of NZ) and saw this sign:
http://forum.richarddawkins.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=8111&start=280
and it WAS protected by an electric fence, as I found out.... (Maybe that's why it wasn't vandalised.) ... but I didn't meet Jesus.

It's frightening, but is it a side-effect of the ongoing Enlightenment? That, as sensible people leave religion, only the crazies are left to run the shop...?

1. Comment #465610 by RightWingAtheist on March 2, 2010

I wonder what it would cost to have those words carved into the other side of Mt. Rushmore.

A lynchin'.

"His kind of true believers" be damned!* We're true unbelievers.

*Or its secular equivalent. Suggestions?

469. Comment #465478 by Anthroban on March 1, 2010 at 7:46 pm

The night of the long knives is apparently not yet over, and it seems some persons slyly left their Shutzstaffel uniforms at home.

I call Godwin (veiled version).

(The post is so ill-referenced I have no idea what side I would take regarding its content.)

From the update:

We understand that for some of you it was a place to hang out and converse with like minded people but we are not looking to be a social network. There are many other sites that provide this service.

I'm glad to hear it. Please suggest some (not just any old social networking sites, but ones where atheism is a given and intelligent discussion is the norm).

I wish they wouldn't use "massive" to mean "big". An earthquake does not itself have any mass. The word they want is something like "powerful". "Mighty" would be good but sounds too laudatory. Suggestions?

The biggest surge on to Japan was 1.2 metres, which is quite serious, so Fox News was just premature.

The problem with a tsunami is that the more serious it is, the less warning you get. Here in NZ we had a lot of warning, a lot of interest, but then not a lot of action, which risks making people complacent when the next one comes.