1. Richard Dawkins slaps creationists into the primordial soup

Comment #213885 by Ian on July 19, 2008 at 7:21 am

I'd like to second Steve's recommendation of In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg. It's well worth an hour a week and intorduced me to subjects I never knew I was interested in. It's even improved my understanding of subjects I thought I knew already.

In Our Time is available as a podcast HERE, as are past programmes - including two with Richard.

On the subject of British TV, I can add Horizon, Equinox, Have I Got News for You, Mock the Week, Marcus Brigstock and of course QI to the list of quality viewing; but really these are looking like islands in a sea of shoddy, demeaning, superficial and sensational bilge.

Big Brother should be titled Voyeurs Watch Narcissists and counts as the most abject intellectual masturbation. It is poison to the mind, to peoples' view of their community and an unethical degradation of human dignity.

Just my two cents. :-)

2. PLEASE WRITE IN SUPPORT OF PZ MYERS

Comment #209118 by Ian on July 11, 2008 at 3:34 pm

I think Richard, you need to prepare a press release of your own, about how Thomas E. Foley is making a complete fool of himself over what is purely a letter writing campaign in support of PZ. How proud you are of our response and how it is strictly non-violent.

Just a suggestion. :-)

3. An Irishman's Diary

Comment #208937 by Ian on July 11, 2008 at 12:11 pm

Your result for The Commonly Confused Words Test ...
Advanced

You scored 93% Beginner, 93% Intermediate, 87% Advanced, and 67% Expert!
You have an extremely good understanding of beginner, intermediate, and advanced level commonly confused English words, getting at least 75% of each of these three levels' questions correct. This is an exceptional score. Remember, these are commonly confused English words, which means most people don't use them properly. You got an extremely respectable score.

Thank you so much for taking my test. I hope you enjoyed it!

SMUG MODE: OFF

(Not really... :-)

4. PLEASE WRITE IN SUPPORT OF PZ MYERS

Comment #208601 by Ian on July 11, 2008 at 4:16 am

I penned the following for cl@catholicleague.org:

Sir/Madam,

I write in protest at the conduct of your representative William Donohue in calling for the dismissal of PZ Myers, associate professor of biology at the University of Minnesota, Morris.

I realize that given your beliefs, the removal of a consecrated wafer from a communion service is a serious matter and sympathize with your distress at the original incident. However, it is co commitment upon you to understand that non Catholics will see this matter differently and have every right to express their opinion without fear of reprisal, under the first amendment of the US constitution.

Therefore, I question Mr. Donohue's judgment in calling for Professor Myer's dismissal and the wisdom of having him as spokesperson for your organization.

It seems questionable that anyone who treats the US constitution so cavalierly has any right to call themselves an American and anyone who acts against the principle of free speech has any right to call themselves democratic.

Yours sincerely,

Ian B...

I don't see why President Bruininks should have all the fun. :-)

5. PLEASE WRITE IN SUPPORT OF PZ MYERS

Comment #208511 by Ian on July 11, 2008 at 2:06 am

I drafted the following:

President Bruininks,

First, let me apologize for the inconvenience you and your staff are enduring at the moment, but I do feel compelled to add my support to that already sent for Professor Myers.

I have nothing against Catholics, who are welcome to accommodate whatever beliefs they wish, but I do think it important for religious groups to understand that non-believers are simply not bound by those beliefs.

What, to a religious person is the deepest sacrilege, is to a non-believer a trivial matter and one to which the reaction seems not merely disproportionate, but hysterical.

For this reason and the principle of academic freedom, I ask you, President Bruininks to quietly resist any pressure to punish Professor Myers in any way.

Professor Myers is a credit to your institution and through his Pharyngula blog, is helping to ensure that The University of Minnesota is one of the places biology students will want to study for their degrees.

Regards,

Ian B...

But when I sent it, I got the following error message:

An unknown error has occurred. Subject 'Support for PZ Myers', Account: 'mail.virgin.net', Server: 'mail.virgin.net', Protocol: SMTP, Server Response: '451 4.7.1 : End-of-data rejected: ip has temporarily exceeded the allowed mail recipient relays per day', Port: 25, Secure(SSL): No, Server Error: 451, Error Number: 0x800CCC6A

I shall try again later. :-)

6. Atheist soldier sues Army for 'unconstitutional' discrimination

Comment #208005 by Ian on July 10, 2008 at 1:04 pm

Is that now a reason to go to war with another country?

That is so quaint.

7. Can't Darwin and God get along?

Comment #205322 by Ian on July 7, 2008 at 5:09 am

Hi Teratornis,

Thank you for your thoughtful response. Sorry for not being able to reply before this, but I work long hours and find it difficult to find time to even read such a generous response, leave alone respond in kind.

It's possible that Darwin's reluctantance to publish his big idea was down to a forboding about how it would be construed, abused and misrepresented. If so, then he was in closer agreement with you than I am.

If a liar takes an idea and twists it to mean something it wasn't intended to, then the new meaning is the responsibility of the liar, not the original author even if the liar attributes it to the author. It's necessary therefore, to read Darwin in order to assess to what degree his writings justify the stance attributed to him.

Having read quite a bit of Darwin's writings, I can confidently state that there is no justification for eugenics and that Darwin is a particularly clear writer it is hard to misconstrue.

The other way of assesing Darwin's influence over Hitler is to examine Hitler's writings and here the evidence is even more unequivocal: Hitler not only demonstrates no sympathy with Darwin's ideas, he expressly repudiates them. It follows therefore, that not only is there no evidence for a link between Darwin's ideas and Hitler's, but that Hitler pursued his goals not because of Darwin, but despite him.

There is only one reason Darwin's name is linked with Hitler's: religious liars, with Ben Stien being only the latest.

Incidentally, Nietzsche suffered a similar fate thanks to his sister Elizabeth, who was a Nazi sympathiser. She systematically misrepresented Nietzsche's writings to favour the Nazi cause. However, Nietzsche's ubermensch was a human type, not a racial one. In fact, Nietzsche was not anti-semitic, despised the Germans and admired the arabs and japanese for what he thought was thier noble spirit. Also, Nietzsche was never diagnosed with syphilis and the only reason anyone thinks he was is religious people's penchant for casual slander.

Science is how we know what to expect. If we didn't have science (and the majority of people effectively do not have scientific knowledge), we would still realize the climate crisis in due course, for example when atmospheric CO2 rises high enough to melt enough ice to inundate coastal areas. People don't need science to see the waves lapping against the third story of their favorite beach hotel. If a runaway global greenhouse triggers another ocean anoxic event, the resulting die-off will be plainly apparent to everyone who lives long enough to see the die-off underway.

I'm relying heavily here on Jared Diamond's writings, but I think the cases of the Easter Islanders and the Mayan's prove you wrong here. Furthermore, the experiences in the Americam mid-west during dust bowls shows that the farmers, while praying for rain, showed no understanding that it was their own farming practices which were the cause of their trouble.

Peoples all over the world have attributed both long term climate and short term weather events to supernatural causes, to God's anger etc, sometimes in the face of rational explanations - take Katrina or the Boxing Day tsunami as examples. This shows a complete lack of understanding which only science can give, because only science can create the satillites which can give us an overview of the world and only sciencists think on the scale necessary for such understanding to occur. This is not reification, but merely the realisation of the miserable failure of religious viewpoints to help people understand the world around them. To undertsand global phenomena, you have to think on that level.

Can you propose a realistic scenario which could have avoided the massive drawdown of fossil fuels which thus far has occurred in positive mutual feedback with the expansion of science?

I don't feel I have to. During the iron age, here in the UK, the entire island was stripped of the oak forest which carpeted it before humans arrived. When the first aborigines arrived in Australia they found a lush and verdant land, which they devastated with the firestick, a practice still in use today. The Romans devasted vast areas of north africa in order to build their navy, creating the sahara we know today. None of these peoples had any modern science to draw upon and it's questionable they even understood that they had bought about the disaters they did.

The sort of understanding you are bringing to your arguements is a prouct of modern science, it didn't exist before people like Darwin gave us a way of understanding things on a global level. Although ideas like the ecological indian have flourished, the evidence is that Hobbes was closer to the truth than Rousseau; the state of nature is 'poor, nasty, brtuish and short'.

"Wisdom" has no existence apart from individual humans who know things. At present, knowledge transmits only imperfectly from one human brain to the next. The thinking of the departed luminaries you list simply is not some sort of collective possession of humankind. All that remains of their thinking is what they managed to write, or pass on by other means such as an oral tradition to people who yet survive. With each copying of information, mutations can creep in, so over time the "wisdom" of, say, an Isaac Asimov will change, depending on what future folks make of it.

You completely miss what I mean by wisdom. Wisdom is merely(!) appropriate knowledge, so I'm in no danger of commiting the reification fallacy. The people in my list were merely the people who had appropriate knowledge and tried to share it with people generally. It was people's folly which meant their words were not heeded enough and which ensures people give weight to the Ted Haggards of this world instead of the Dawkins and Dennetts.

Wisdom drives out folly and the only way to improve your balance of wisdom is to use critical thinking to sift the wisdom out, constantly adjusting your worldview to approximate closer and closer to the truth.

8. Prayer refusal pupils 'disciplined'

Comment #204621 by Ian on July 5, 2008 at 11:32 am

I can't honestly see how anyone is going to be happy about this, especially Moslems, who could regard this as a debasement of worship.

Kudos to the young lads, education is supposed to be about empowerment, not submission.

9. Can't Darwin and God get along?

Comment #204096 by Ian on July 4, 2008 at 6:13 am

Brian:

And Plato got the idea from Sparta. This was in the time or just after the 30 tyrants. Who were in power because Athens had lost the Pelopensian War against Sparta. Plato blamed the Athenians for allowing artists and political types to be rulers in the losing side that ended up with the installation of the 30 tyrants and the death of his beloved master Socrates....So he devised a Spartan system to rid society of artists and politicians, but have philosophers, not soldiers as the rulers.

You need to study your classics a little deeper. Plato admired the Spartans and along with Socrates, was part of a group that included the quizzling Alcibiades, who betrayed Athens to both the Spartans and Persians.

Plato was not a democrat and in his writings makes several criticisms of democracy, which unfortunately still stand today.

The point of my citing The Republic was to prove the anticedance of Eugenics and your Spartan comments add nothing to that, thank you.

Darwin's model for natural selection wasn't animal breeding. He used animal breeding to seque into natural selection. First show selection, then later show that selection doesn't require man. But his ideas of natural selection came from competition for resources, not desired traits for human satisfaction.

References to domestic breeding are made throughout The Origin of Speices, not just in the first two chapters. There is constant reference to the similarities between natural selection and domestication, to the point where I think it fair to say that domestication is only a special case of natural selection!

As has been pointed out before, Darwin's contribution was to describe the process by which evolution happens. The idea was in the air already, because animal breeders knew that the model of God creating everything as it is was wrong and that is why Darwin started to keep pigeons himself; he needed to study variation under controled conditions.

The idea of competition for resources comes not from Darwin, but from Thomas Malthus, as Darwin freely aknowledges. It was Darwin's genius to realise that Malthus plus Variation equals Natural Selection.

10. Can't Darwin and God get along?

Comment #203445 by Ian on July 3, 2008 at 12:09 am

Teratornis:

Interesting post, but there are errors:

Hitler publicly repudiated the idea that humans came about through natural processes, which rules out belief in Darwinism.

Eugenics is new only in name - Plato proposed it in the Republic. It is based upon animal breeding, which was Darwin's model for Natural Selection.

In Origin Darwin makes it very clear that organisms are adapted for local conditions only. The idea of overall superiority - as proposed by the Nazis for the aryan race - was foreign to Darwin's theory.

In short, if anybody came out of reading The Origin of Species with the idea of Eugenics, it's because they carried it in with them. Seriously, Darwin had nothing to do with it.

The other thing I want to raise is how do we know about the climate crisis? Science.

What is happening is the scientific method writ large; we've had the porposition and now we're having the critique. Of course, if people were less ignorant of science, then much of what is to come could have been avoided; but then again, there have always been advocates of science and its method of reasoning: T H Huxley, J B S Haldane, the late Arthur C Clarke, Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov to name just a few. People could have listened.

The progress of wisdom is always through folly, but it is monumental folly to blame wisdom for it.

11. Can't Darwin and God get along?

Comment #203431 by Ian on July 2, 2008 at 11:14 pm

One interesting evolutionary fact about Australia's snakes is that they have no vipers. All of Aus's snakes are elapids or colubrids - with one or two exceptions, the vipers never crossed Wallace's line.

There's a whole part of the venemous snake game you guys miss out on. ;-)

12. Can't Darwin and God get along?

Comment #202784 by Ian on July 2, 2008 at 1:19 am

Laurie:

In terms of actually killing people, the most dangerous snake is Africa's saw-scaled viper. It's problem is a crap threat display: it rubs its sides at people, making a sound like two peices of sand paper. Not noticing, people step on it and it bites them in self defense. Since the people are often days from medical care, they die before they can get help.

As the late Steve Irwin more than proved, most snakes are very tolerant, even the famously bad tempered ones. You have to convince the snake you are a threat. There are exceptions though; the fer de lance is territorial and has been known to attack land rovers. :-)

13. Richard Dawkins on Doctor Who

Comment #201725 by Ian on June 30, 2008 at 7:40 am

Did I just read people complaining that Richard shouldn't have answered a question about astronomy?

Do you not watch television?

I ask because you seem to have some strange expectation that the people who speak on TV do so on the basis of some expertise. How quaint.

~

Richard, you were fine.

I think the scriptwriters caught the 'exasperated scientist following the evidence' aspect of your character really well. Not for you the bewildered 'but that's impossible!' reaction.

Cool. :-)

14. Should Strident British Atheist Richard Dawkins Dictate Education Policy to US States? Barbara Forrest Apparently Thinks So

Comment #197109 by Ian on June 21, 2008 at 5:57 am

There is no gravity.......GOD sucks

That needs to be made into a teeshirt. :-)

15. Behe's Empty Box

Comment #193244 by Ian on June 15, 2008 at 3:47 am

The section he's referring to is on page 159 of my Penguin edition - it's in the index. :-D

No, not quite. The way I read it, Richard is trying to illustrate the difference of something which is impossible in principle and something which is merely massively unlikely. There is no law which states that all the atoms in an object can't move in unison, but it's only one vanishingly small possibility among all the permutations in which the billions of atoms could move.

Behe is telling the truth in order to decieve, a common tactic among the religious.

16. New British Petition: Stop the Nightmares

Comment #191823 by Ian on June 11, 2008 at 11:20 pm

Signed. Thank you.

I find it disturbing that a scientist like Richard Dawkins would support a vague measure like this that is apparently unsupported by evidence-based research ("talk to people who have experienced it"?) and that capitalizes on our visceral emotional response to the suffering of children.

1. Try listening to what Richard has actually said these last few years. He always makes himself clear.

2. Watch the interview with Jill Mytton on the Root of All Evil interviews DVD.

Whether or not the UK government actually does something or not isn't really important. The important thing is to affect the zietgiest. It's another case of raising consciousness.

Regards,

(-: Ian :-)

17. Karma comedians

Comment #186840 by Ian on May 31, 2008 at 11:49 am

Stone's comments are on this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVb9SjtaaeQ

I've just watched it twice. It seems to me that she was asking a question, not implying the suffering of Chinese people was deserved.

My impression is that for her, the most important aspect of the interview was her tribute to the Tibetan Foundation.

Buddhism carrys over many concepts from Hindu beliefs, including karma and samsara - the cycle of reincarnation.

Compared to Scientology, Buddhism is a massive improvement. I have read a handful of Buddhist texts and have taken something useful from each - I just don't believe it's true.

18. Car dealership advert tells atheists to 'shut up'

Comment #186030 by Ian on May 29, 2008 at 11:45 am

My friends, please don't waste any more of your time on this insignificant person and his insignificant publicity stunt.

Let this be the last post on this subject.

19. Mail-boat record 'proves Darwin stole his original ideas from a Welsh scientist'

Comment #185106 by Ian on May 27, 2008 at 12:32 am

I do agree, but I'll add one small point: the English are at least as bad...

I think it time I introuced Braidwood's first law: Other people's patriotism is boring.

A little something for people to remember when posting on an international forum. :-)

20. Mail-boat record 'proves Darwin stole his original ideas from a Welsh scientist'

Comment #184670 by Ian on May 25, 2008 at 11:41 pm

Darwin's priority is safe. It is well known that he wrote an abstract of his theory in 1842, which was stored in a closet under the stairs of Downe house, to be published in the event of his death.

It is also well known that Darwin consulted friends on his theory, including Sir Charles Lyell, who had urged him to publish.

Furthermore, Wallace failed to follow the theory through to its logical conclusion and apply it to humans.

Anyone who wants to know more can consult Darwin by Adrian Desmond and James Moore.

21. Kenya mob reportedly burns 11 'witches'

Comment #184253 by Ian on May 24, 2008 at 7:20 am

Lucas:

The scapegoating of the elderly serves a social purpose in that it allows the tribe/village to focus all their problems into one physical form, and then destroy it...

I promiss you it does no such thing. The problems don't go away and people are smart enough to recognise it.

This is more about settling scores than serving some social function.

The same was true of witch murdering in Europe, where the local magistrate ended up with the witch's land.

22. Richard Dawkins interviewed by John Humphrys on Cardinal Murphy O'Connor

Comment #179923 by Ian on May 14, 2008 at 1:58 am

Hey, we tried to be reasonable.

We were like "um, limeys, could you um, like, go away?"...

Diacanu, could I possibly ask you not to be so racist? There is a point in the process of simplification where what is produced is both misleading and offensive.

The American War of Independence was deeply unpopular in England at the time, both because of the cost and the liberal sentiments that so influenced the formation of the USA, were at work here too.

There were a great many Englishmen like Thomas Paine who played a pivotal role in the formation of the USA, so in their name you should put away your toy soldiers.

23. My Response to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Comment #179526 by Ian on May 13, 2008 at 11:16 am

Orion:

It doesn't matter what reason you're doing it for - if you stop eating meat then you are a vegetarian.

That is a strong candidate for the most idiotic thing I've ever read.

Vegetarianism is a moral choice, not a catagory, so the reason it's done is absolutely pivotal.

The whole point of the 'Hitler was a vegetarian' smear is to attack vegetarians by implying they are the same as him. However, if Hitler's vegetarianism wasn't based on a moral stance, then it simply isn't the same and the word should not be applied and the distinction preserved.

Since the term vegetarian was established before Hitler's birth as belonging to people who take a particular moral stance, the term simply doesn't apply to him because he didn't hold that opinion.

24. British Airways takes beef off the menu to avoid offending Hindus

Comment #178200 by Ian on May 10, 2008 at 8:43 pm

Sorry if anyone got here first, but it appears you only have to have principles if you're in economy class.

Fly business and you can be as depraved as you wish. Perhaps they'll introduce roast puppy...

25. My Response to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Comment #178133 by Ian on May 10, 2008 at 2:57 pm

JantjePietje:

There are many people who speak German like Hitler, who have a moustache like Hitler, who are a vegetarian like Hitler, who paint and so on.

Wrong. Hitler was not vegetarian.

According to Dianne Cook, his personal cook during the 1930s, Hitler's favourite meal was stuffed squab; a squab being a pigeon chick. Also, Hitler's fondness for bavarian sausage was well known.

Hitler did eventually stop eating meat, but it was not for moral reasons, he was suffering stomach problems and simply cut out whatever he thought upset him.

26. My Response to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Comment #177513 by Ian on May 9, 2008 at 8:09 am

Dear Rabbi Boteach,

I write in response to your open letter to Richard Dawkins and Richard's response to you. I have read your letter and watched the You Tube video of your Idea city talk. As well as sending this letter directly to you, I will post it on Richard Dawkins dot net.

I will follow your rabbinical teaching and respond to your points in turn:

I don't personally think it was wise of Richard to have made his remark, especially on World Holocaust Rememberance Day; not because it isn't true, but because of the hyper-sensitivity of the Jewish community. In truth, like Hitler, your are a populist speaker and you do use some of his techniques, so it's not inconcievable you might fall into one or two of his errors.

Personally, I doubt Richard was aware that the date was special to you in this way, because like most goyim he goes about about his life without The Holocaust praying on his mind. This is not to say The Holocaust did not happen or is not important - it must never be forgotten - but that it doesn't inspire guilt in people who had no part in it. The situation is similar to Slavery: one's ancestors may have been complicit or worse, but personally, I feel no responsibility. Can you catagorically say no Jews owned slaves and if you can't, do you feel guilt about what was done to black people? Do you mark anti-slavery day? Do modern day slaves concern you?

You defend yourself against this critique - that you rant like Hitler - by pointing out how everyone enjoyed your talk, but really, this is no defense. Are you really taking the position that populariy licences ranting? If so, may I remind you that Hitler was popular.

I must question your equation critiquing Isreali policy with anti-semitism. Put simply anti-semitism is just racism, it's basis is a set of myths and lies; it makes no attempt to discriminate between good and bad people who happen to be Jewish, but dehumanizes them all. While I accept that many people who critique Isreal are anti-semitic, that cannot be used to disregard critique of Isreali policy when that policy is questionable.

I'm sorry you feel sleighted by Richard's treatment of you, but really is that conclusion fair? Is it not possible that the he wanted to get home and that the last flight meant he couldn't stay to rebut you publicly? That no rebuf was intended and that you should follow the teaching of those Rabbis in "always do your best to judge people favourably..." instead of just parroting it.

On having seen your speech, I'm not surprised to hear Richard was 'glued to it', because I was rivited and it wasn't my marriage that was derided. That is what you did, even if it was not your intent and you should be ashamed of yourself. Whatsmore, it came from someone who claimed to be a friend and yet couldn't even remember whether Richard was married, leave alone his wife's name. I know Lala's name, yet pretend no acquintance.

Returning to your speech, it contains several misrepresentations which betray either negligent ignorance of science or deliberate misrepresentation, the first of which I wish to address is the status of a thoery in science.

In your specch, you reminded everyone that evolution was 'only a theory'. This is wrong on two counts: Firstly evolution was an observed fact before Darwin published The Origin, in which he explained the theory by which he sought to explain it. Natural Selection is the theory, evolution the fact it seeks to explain.

The other fork of your mistake is portraying a theory as something not quite proven; that there is a progression from hunch to hypothesis, to theory, to fact. This is entirely misleading, as my comments above show. A theory is a model or process which seeks to explain a phenomenon. Einstien's theory of general relativity explains gravity, quantum theory explains the behaviour of subatomic particles and Darwinian Natural Selection explains the apparent evolution of organisms over time.

The question I have to raise now Rabbi is this: Are you so incompetent as to not understand this about science, or are you lying? I can see no third possibility.

Another assertion from your speech is that belief in evolution denies us the 'possibility of becoming angels', which is what religion gives us.

Perhpas you are not aware of how important a figure within biology Richard Dawkins is. He is not just a popularizer, he has done seminal work. In his first popular book The selfish Gene, Richard ends Chapter Eleven with these words: "We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators."

I think even you can admit that these are not the words of someone who denies moral responsibility, of someone who says you're just a machine, so you can do what you want. Furthermore, Richard has repeatedly said that while evolution is the best explanation for how we came to be here, it is absolutely the worst guide as to how to behave. So why do you represent people who accept evolution as if they lacked morality?

Be assured Rabbi that becoming an atheist does not affect your interest in or feeling of being bound to morality and your sort of arguement is as offensive to me as being called Hitler is to you. Please, don't let the Holocaust rob you of your sensibility.

Inevitably, you bought up the issue of the big four bugaboos: Hilter, Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao. You said you weren't going to use them to argue against us, but only after you'd cemented the association. Of course the first place to start is to call you out on the lie that Hitler was an atheist. Atheists don't send their soldiers into battle baring the words: "gott mit uns" on their belt buckle. Atheists don't ban freethought organisations or close educational establishments which don't have Christian indoctrination as part of the sylabus, as the Nazis did in 1933. Atheists don't as far as I know have masses held in celebration of their birthday, as Hitler's was by order of the Roman Catholic churche. All these are historical facts, so why do you and other religious people continue to perpetrate this lie?

Now I'm not saying Hitler was a mainstream Christian and don't doubt that he hated organised religion, but that doesn't make him an atheist. Sorry, but if you're going to dichotomize the world, Hitler is one of yours.

Regarding Stalin, I have recently finished Robert Service's biography and I have to admit it made me very angry with people like you. As I read the book it was increasingly bought upon me that Stalin's atheism and even communism had very little to do with what he did. Stalin was just a bad man whose psychological make-up would have made him evil irrespective of the regime if it wasn't a constitutional democracy. Put simply, if you want to understand what happened, nothing about atheism and little in communism are relevant. You have to take a wider view to ask why ordinary people didn't try to stop Stalin at the start, including what the rest of the world was like outside of Russia and of course, the levels of corruption within the religious organisations of the time.

If stopping such things from happening again is important, then using them to spread intolerance against any religious group, even atheists, is a grotesque abuse and degradation of the memories of all their victims

On the issue of Oxford's chapliancy, I too disapprove of priviledging of the C of E, but ask why should there be a chaplaincy at all? Surely, what is important is that people are free to worship and study as they wish, so why do you or anybody else need official recognition. By divesting itself of religious affiliations, the university can then get on with the good secular business of education

Returning to your letter, we come across another misrepresentation of evolution. That you don't believe complex organisms like ourselves could arise spontaneously,is one thing we agree on, so why you use the word in connection with evolution? After all, a process of natural selection lasting millions of years is hardly spontaneous, is it? In your talk you bandied about figures for the age of the universe up to 30 billion years as if it was likely to change. However, the current estimate of 13.7 billion years is well established and there is a high degree of confidence that it will not change, because it is based on a fundamental understanding of the universe. Similarly, the age of the earth has stood at 4.5 billion years since my youth and the oldest fossils remain at about 3 billion years. So why attack science, by spreading the misleading impression there is doubt?

Rabbi, I am a simple honest man. I want to know how religious people can think they serve the good by misleading people?
Again, I have to ask why the religious cannot represent our side of the arguement honestly, before attacking it? To my simple mind doing what you do is like pouring poison into a cup: it drives out the good air that was there before.

Regards,

Ian Braidwood.

27. Shaw TV Interview with Richard Dawkins

Comment #175245 by Ian on May 5, 2008 at 2:02 am

Tearsintherain:

...why base our life on evidence?

Civilisation is sharing, living up to the agreements - formal and tacit - that are what make it possible for people to live in families, communities and nations. Evidence is reason/s to believe something that is open to scrutiny and therefore, binding. Living in harmony with the evidence brings you into harmony with others who also follow the evidence and helps you avoid living in bad faith with them.

Why is the scientific approach better than a faith approach?

The scientific approach generates evidence, so when you meet someone who has a different opinion to you, you can use evidence to come to agreement and spread the community of good faith.

In the sense you use the word, faith only means conformity, so when you meet someone who will not conform there is no basis of agreement and the issue becomes a trial of strength. This is why religion and other dogmatic approaches lead to violence.

Are somethings just not a question of science?

It's impossible in advance to tell in principle what things are amenable to the scientific movement, because scientific knowledge is cumulative. In my opinion, there are two criterior which influence what a scientist will study:

1. Prior interest in the field of research.
2. Apparent amenability of the subject to investigation.

So science is human and there is little to be afraid of. It is also hugely rewarding and can lead to insights which are nothing short of profound.

Regards,

(-: Ian :-)

28. Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier

Comment #174195 by Ian on May 1, 2008 at 8:51 pm

You are in a Muslim society and women should live under religious laws. The father has very good contacts inside the Basra government and it wasn't hard for him to be released and what he did to be forgotten.

Translation: "We are racist and corrupt."

Just thought I'd make that clear.

Poor girl.

29. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #165046 by Ian on April 21, 2008 at 1:38 am

Diacanu, we were both beaten by Socrates, thankfully. :-P

30. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #165030 by Ian on April 21, 2008 at 12:11 am

Hmmm:

I don't think Darwin was responsible for the holocaust...but it does seem to me to a logical end point to a purely naturalistic philosophy based on survival of the fittest...

Darwinian evolution is an explanation for the adaptive variety of life. It does not and is not supposed to tell people how to live. It is a scientific theory, as is Einstein's General Relativity, but you wouldn't try to base your morality on gravitaional lensing, would you? Similarly, it is a simple mistake to base your morality on Natural Selection.

Today, most morality - secular and religious - is based upon the idea that certain acts are inherently wrong and awareness of the consequences of acts which may otherwise have no moral weighting either way.

No one bases their morality on Darwinism.

...Anyone care to explain the naturalistic basis for morality and compassion? What part of naturalism argues against helping nature out?

Is it really necessary to have an explanation for compassion? Isn't it good enough to feel and act upon it?

I could use Evolutionary Psychology to speculate, but this would only explain why we feel compassion, not provide any imperative for it or tell us what it is that makes one act better than another.

Similarly, using God as explanation doesn't really tell us why any particular act is good or bad - only that God approves or disapproves of it, allegedly. If that is all there is to right and wrong, then there is no such thing as goodness in itself.

I prefer to think of goodness as being a real quality that acts can share in to various degrees or be devoid of. In this I follow the Greek philosophers, whose great ethical writings have had as much influence upon us all, even the religious.

If you look at history, it is clear that despite the dominance of religion, many very bad things have been done. Doesn't this fact make you wonder whether the religious, despite their convictions, actually have knowledge of right and wrong?

31. Yoko Ono, Filmmakers Caught in 'Expelled' Flap

Comment #162434 by Ian on April 17, 2008 at 1:13 am

RE post 21:

We're sorry, we were unable to accept your request as the following issues have occurred:
That gift certificate code is not valid, please re-enter.

DANG! I'm so dissappointed! ;-P

32. Richard Dawkins on The Big Questions

Comment #158808 by Ian on April 11, 2008 at 4:03 am

Most of Abdul's points are dealt with on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Holocaust_denial

I will no longer deal with him, except to state that my description of him as preternaturally stupid was, in my judgement, entirely proportionate.

33. Richard Dawkins on The Big Questions

Comment #158089 by Ian on April 10, 2008 at 4:08 am

ASMarques, I find it interesting that you complain that:

you people always seem so utterly unable to argue without resorting to constant evasive action through expletives and moral characterisations...

and then continue with:

I mean, you keep saying "just let those deniers of the Supreme Holocaust Truth Written in the Platonic Sky speak freely, and then proceed to confound their logic and calmly demolish their allegations in public in a civilized way" but then -- lo! -- a humble denier steps out of the woodwork and all you do is follow Dawkins's example and shout "liar!" at him...

...which isn't hyperbole, is it? Heaven forbid.

Now, if you're going to cry foul, you have to play within the rules yourself, don't you agree?

Now as to your attack on the figures for Aushwitz dead not affeting the 6,000,000 over death toll for Jews:

1. The Wiki article I linked to clearly states there are no exact figures. The 6 million figure originated with Adolf Eichmann and was for Jewish victims in toto, not just in Auschwitz-Birkenau.

2. This undermines the bait-and-switch tactic you've used, whereby you point to the widely differing estimates of Auschwitz-Birkenau in order to discredit a figure which has remained stable. Of course 6 million people did not die at Auschwitz, only you and the occasional hot headed fool ever claimed they did.

3. Auschwitz-Birkenau is not the only death camp the Nazis set up, there were five others: Chelmno, Majdanek, Belzec, Sobibór and Treblinka. With Auschwitz-Berkenau, these account for some 4.46 million people. This does not include Dachau and Belsen, which were forced labour camps and account for another 85,000 or so people.

4. No one claims all the victims were gassed. In the beginning, many were shot. People were also worked to death, victims of medical experimentation, malnutrition and diseases like Typhus.

5. These other causes of death make your dodgy assertion that none of the bodies autopsied showed signs of being gasses moot. The fact stands that when you take away a person's self determination, you have a duty of care.

6. Again, I remind you that nearly half the victims of the Holocaust were not Jewish, yet you don't even consider them worthy of mention. There, if no where else, lies evidence of simple antisemitism on your part.

Basically Marques, your tactics deliniate your dishonesty. By even setting up the Auschwitz-Berkenau straw man to knock down, you've shown your intentions are to mislead.

On top of that, you are so preternatuarally stupid as to come onto a forum headed with the name Richard Dawkins and try to blind people with science.

I pity you: the more you wriggle, the deeper you impale yourself.

34. German Church admits aiding Nazis

Comment #158023 by Ian on April 10, 2008 at 2:08 am

I'm afraid the churches' record on human kindness has never been as good as they tell you or as you'd expect from their claim to piety.

This is largely because they tend to align themselves with (and come from) the middle classes and so inherit a conservative(small C, people) agenda.

On the subject of standing up against the rise of Nazism: like the communists in Russia, the Nazis had significant popular support - enough for people to fear retribution if they spoke out and of course, once they'd caved in on misdameanours, it became increasingly difficult to oppose more serious crimes. It is by enticing people on to slippery slopes like this that such regimes get and then increase their purchase upon the population.

We'd all like to think we wouldn't co-operate, but in truth we'd never be given enough information at the start to make it clear what was going on.

It would be better to hope you'd have the courage to go back on your word when you realised what was happening.

35. Reviews of Expelled

Comment #158012 by Ian on April 10, 2008 at 1:24 am

Well I do have to thank Expelled and Michael Shermer for answering an open question: Just how long the Cambrian Explosion actually took - 80 million years.

Those paeleontologists do deal in large timescales, don't they?

Anyone want an airbag which inflates in 80 million years?

Which reminds me of a collegue I used to work with in a garage. Blythly, he assured us that airbags do not explode, "It's just that the gases expand really, really quickly."

36. Richard Dawkins on The Big Questions

Comment #157760 by Ian on April 9, 2008 at 2:02 pm

Mphil,

In a perfect rational world I'd agree, but we weren't there then and we aren't there now.

As well as the duty based ethic you are using, we have to consider the utilitarian dimension of morality. Would it be the most moral way to avoid causing civilian casualties if it meant there were even more victims among your own people and among those in concentration camps?

Awful as they are, I think Dresden and Hiroshima (though not Nagasaki) were justified, in that they helped bring an end to the conflict overall. How many thousands more would have died in a prolonged war? How many more victims of the Holocaust oblitereated?

I also find any equivalence between the Allies and Nazis odious in the extreme, because only one side tried to enact The Final Solution.

Finally, I dislike talk of what is and is not justified in war. Morality has usually left the arena before the first shot has been fired.

37. Richard Dawkins on The Big Questions

Comment #157700 by Ian on April 9, 2008 at 12:39 pm

- al-rawandi:

You're welcome.

I've learned that a little research is always a good idea and Wikipedia is always useful.

Also, I googled ASMarques and found that he's an odious character who flogs this dead horse at every opportunity he gets.

Hopefully, he'll soon learn Richard Dawkins.net isn't fertile for him.

38. Richard Dawkins on The Big Questions

Comment #157665 by Ian on April 9, 2008 at 11:55 am

ASMarques, I've looked at the websites you've linked to and have to ask why you think this convincing?

Your statements are easily falsified by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_holocaust ,where there are plenty of photographs to look at, including empty Zyclon B cannisters, human hair collected from the victims and of course, lots of corpses. And everything is properly cited, so you can (and should, given your position) go back to the original sources.

Your fixation with Jews leaves out the other victims of the Holocaust: nearly 3 million Soviet POWs, nearly 2 million Poles, half a million Roma and a quarter of a million disabled people, not to mention all those pink triangles.

In fact the Jews only(!) made up just over half of the victims of the holocaust. Not exactly consistent with a zionist conspiracy, is it?

Another point worth correcting you on is the necessity of the allies to justify what they did during the conflict. It should be remembered that both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan had committed acts of aggression before either the UK or US entered the war and that for every Dresden there was a Coventry. There really isn't any need for the allies to justify their position; it was war and war is not nice.

The fact that your point of view leads you to neglect just under half the eleven million victims of the holocaust is more than enough reason for you to reevaluate your position. You are supporting a conspiracy against a stupendous amount of evidence, with a clear antisemitic agenda and from which there appear to be no beneficiaries.

What does it take to make you abandon your position?

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

Comment #154906 by Ian on April 4, 2008 at 12:25 am

I think it's funny and tragic.

The imagery is funny, as is the folly, but no one who has ever dealt with, or suffered a mental illness could fail to sympathise with Poytr. He has suffered a disillusionment of earth shattering proportions, but at least he got the message when the cave started collapsing.

His followers however, cling to their delusion because their vanity won't let them admit they were wrong. So here we have in microcosm what the religious do every day: charmless, narrow-minded clinging on to falsfied doctrine.

'Don't challenge our beliefs!' 'Don't shatter our illusion!' or as it really should be said: 'Let us be a bigot on this one, okay?'

40. Sean Carroll on the Today Program

Comment #154230 by Ian on April 3, 2008 at 12:13 am

Too Short!

I prefer Sean B Carroll, but then that's just my biophilia coming out. Both Seans are a credit to their name.

I read Carroll's earlier book Endless Forms, Most Beautiful and it's one of the best books on biology I've ever read; right up there with Richard and Mark Ridley.

41. Vote on freedom of expression marks the end of Universal Human Rights

Comment #153064 by Ian on April 1, 2008 at 1:56 am

We, boys and girls, have been outflanked, so this should be taken as a warning of an ongoing process. We've been naive to fight this war on only one front.

Our representatives seem not to deem the rights of individual people as important enough to protect. Where were the US and Australian representatives? Where were the passionate defenses of principle of the freedom of expression?

It's time to realise that allowing corruption doesn't just allow parasites to weigh us down, but it creates a weak spot through which our enimies can attack.

Modern politics has become bean counting - merely a matter of running an economy - and it should come as no surprise that people fixated on money should be for sale and willing to bargin something of which they see no value for themselves.

It's time to get political, before the religious outlaw honesty.

42. Expelled Overview

Comment #149575 by Ian on March 26, 2008 at 12:21 am

Thanks for this, Josh.

Apart from PZ's initial post, this is the best article I've read on this debacle.

It seems to me that this movie will entrench views on both sides and that any non-IDer will be pushed further away. It may well be counter productive.

43. Seven new deadly sins: are you guilty?

Comment #141431 by Ian on March 10, 2008 at 12:10 pm

Cartomancer, I got level 1:

"You encounter a seven-walled castle, and within those walls you find rolling fresh meadows illuminated by the light of reason, whereabout many shades dwell. These are the virtuous pagans, the great philosophers and authors, unbaptised children, and others unfit to enter the kingdom of heaven. You share company with Caesar, Homer, Virgil, Socrates, and Aristotle. There is no punishment here, and the atmosphere is peaceful, yet sad."

I'll soon jolly the place up, locked away forever with Socrates and no friggin god to worry about is my idea of heaven.

...Thinking a little more on this, I reckon heaven is the zeroth level of hell. The place where they put all the sycophants: there to encounter an ego even bigger than their own.

Oops! I think I just got bumped down a level! ;-)

44. Richard Dawkins on five of his favorite books

Comment #133257 by Ian on February 26, 2008 at 1:40 am

Thanks everyone for your lists, I've really enjoyed reading them.

The Black Cloud is rightly considered a classic of science fiction. It's not very well written, but one of the strengths of SF is that it can accomodate all sorts of writers.

My favourite fiction:
1. Lord of Darkness by Robert Silverberg - loosely based on a true story about an englishman who lives among cannibals. It's sounds similar to The Red Strangers, in that Silverberg tells the rationale for cannibalism so well you start to sympathise with the natives. Then he pulls the plug and you are shocked by your feelings.

2. Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg - This is SF, about a man who is loosing his ability to read minds and how his ability acts to isolate him. There is a section where in his youth, our hero rides the mind of a bee, a fish and his copulating sister.

3. The Empire of Fear by Brian Stableford - an alternative history, in which there are biologically plausible vampires (a big claim here :-) who use their immortality to rule Europe. The story is about a scientist who travels to Africa to discover the secret of the vampires.

4. The Fountains of Youth by Brian Stableford - Mortimer Gray is a historian born into a world where he is among the first generation of people to be born imortal - or more exactly [i]e[i]mortal. Growing up with people who he knows are going to die, he becomes fascinated with the idea of death and how it affected how people lived.

5. Small Gods by Terry Pratchett - It's very hard to choose which of his many novels to include. Ostensibly a comedy fantasy, this one examines people's relationships to their deities. In this, gods derive their power from the belief of the faithful. The mighty and terrible god Om decides to manifest Himself on the disc, but instead of appearing as a mighty bull, he can only sum up the power to manifest himself as a tortoise, because people no longer believe in him as much as they fear his church.

Non-fiction:
1. The Selfish Gene - One day, as a spotty youth, I was walking along, mulling over who evolution is for. I concluded that it must be for the genes, because they are the only entity which survives and there I became stuck. Then, some weeks later I was browsing in a bookstore in Croydon, when I came across this. It could have been written for me and I still remember the shop assistant asking me if I was okay, I was shaking so much when I reached the till.

2. On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin - You really need to read the man himself to appreciate how brilliant he was. Darwin combined a talent for detailed observation with something which seems to be rare: the ability to think in terms of processes. He understood life in terms of movement.

3. The Republic by Plato - This may be over 2000 years old, but people were just as much people then as they are now, so this is just as relevent as it ever was. To Plato and Socrates I owe release from religious chains I hadn't even realised were there. They shifted my view of goodness from conforming to a set of standards to trying to encourage behaviour which had certain qualities. Thanks to Plato virtue and innocence are no longer synonyms either. This is how books change lives.

4. Freedon and Organisation 1814 to 1914 by Bertrand Russell - This is another book which shifted my perspective, this time politically. I now view the political tensions as not between right and left, but as between personal freedom and the need for organisation or social cohesion - both legitimate claims upon people as social animals. Russell always brings great depth of knowledge to his arguements which is enriching in itself.

5. Huxley by Adrian Desmond - Like Darwin, which he wrote with James Moore, this not only tells the life story of its subject, but takes you into world he inhabited; deepening your understanding of the man and the time. Although known as Darwin's Bulldog, Huxley's main contribution to science was to transform it from a hobby into a profession. All scientists and through them, us, owe a debt to Huxleys tenacity, but also his vision. As well as a demon debater, Huxley was also a faithful and devoted family man.

45. The argument from oranges

Comment #128448 by Ian on February 17, 2008 at 3:05 am

I think the best response to this was given by the adjudicator: "Thank you very much..." with a nice strong undertone of '...for wasting our time'.

There is nothing to fear in this old fool.

46. Murder plot against Danish cartoonist

Comment #126302 by Ian on February 13, 2008 at 12:22 am

What's the matter AGN, did the chance to be first to comment go to your head? Go outside for a few minutes and take some deep breaths. Let some oxygen into your brain and think a little more carefully.

Call it revenge or retaliation, torture is still barbaric. By calling for it, you are becoming just like the people you despise. After all, they think they are retaliating for crimes committed against Islam and moslems. If people cannot stand above splenetic reactionary impulses, how can the sickening cycle of adolescent vindictiveness stop?

Both you and Moslem terrorists need to grow up a bit.

47. Are Darwin's Theories Fact or Faith Issues?

Comment #121147 by Ian on February 3, 2008 at 2:40 am

Whilst I'd like to add my compliments to those already given to Dr Myers, I'd like to make a suggested debating tactic for the future.

For instance, Given such well documented examples as whales, basilosaurus is clearly a whale, yet significally different from any living specimen. The largest living carnivorous cetacean being only two-thirds the size; so not only do we have intermediates, but offshoots as well.

Similarly, not only do we have homo habilis as part of our ancestral line, we have h.neaderthalis as an offshoot that left no descendants today.

48. A Letter From Hell

Comment #115912 by Ian on January 25, 2008 at 3:08 am

What a cynical peice of manipulation!

You know, this is only going to work on the sensitive ones who already have enough to deal with, given the general low-grade scumminess of everyday life. Upon those who are already bullied and isolated, and will ensure their isolation becomes deeper as they are transformed into fully fledged god-botherers.

Poor schmucks.

49. Honour Killings

Comment #113968 by Ian on January 21, 2008 at 5:24 am

Ian, sadly, I realize it was not the Onion.
Steve

And I accept - indeed share - your incredulity. I googled the man's name, hoping to find The Onion's website. At least then, I would only have had to deal with an issue of taste.

Ian

50. Honour Killings

Comment #113688 by Ian on January 20, 2008 at 10:38 am

The hypocrisy of the Western society is clearly seen whereas an Australian Judge failed to jail nine males who admitted gang-raping a 10-year old aborigine girl in 2005, saying the victim probably agreed to have sex with them and a UNICEF Photo of the year shows, a bridegroom, 40, with his 11-year old bride in Afghanistan. In my opinion, a UNICEF photo of the year must show a nine year British girl having a baby...

Dear Mr Ahmad,

A short lesson in sex. Human females cannot become pregnant until they have their first period, a time called menarche. The average onset of menarche varies between populations from 12 and a half to 18 years of age, with the low recorded among poor afro-americans. It is therefore IMPOSSIBLE for UNICEF or anyone else to show a picture of a nine-year old girl of any cultural background giving birth.

You are an ignorant, loathsome, bigotted fool and I'm afraid Steveroot, quite real.