1. The Neural Buddhists

Comment #180450 by njwong on May 15, 2008 at 2:06 am

I'm quite surprise Richard Morgan has reverted back to religion. But since he cited that he had an incredible epiphanic experience on April 12, then so be it. Whatever he experienced must have been so incredibly real to him that nothing we say would dissuade him of the sensation, or turn him back.

I am more convinced of this after watching the V S Ramachandran documentary "Secrets of the Mind" that I linked earlier in this thread (post 50). I am truly amazed how powerful our brain can be in creating delusions.

In the documentary, besides the patient who believes he is god, there is another patient who believes his parents are impostors when he sees them visually, but has no such problems acknowledging them as his parents if he simply talks to them over the phone. Because of an accident, the connection between the visual centre of his brain to the long term memory store was severed, whereas the connection between the auditory centre and memory was not. Hence, he simply cannot "recognise" his parents if he sees them, but can if he just hears them.

If our brain wiring were thwacked for whatever reason, our blemished brain might create an illusion so realistic (e.g. an epiphanic experience) that no external party will convince us that what we have experienced isn't real. However, since our brains also control logic thinking, even rational thinking will be skewed. If that is the case, no amount of persuasion or evidence by others will convince us otherwise of the delusion that our blemished brain has formed.

2. The Neural Buddhists

Comment #179813 by njwong on May 13, 2008 at 8:01 pm

Speaking about neuroscience, I caught this wonderful Nova documentary called "Secrets of the Mind" featuring V S Ramachandran investigating the working of the mind on some of his patients. I found the patient who believes he is God very intriguing.

http://www.veoh.com/videos/v5581876CT9rmEg?searchId=8010879891514178&rank=1

(Note: The video is hosted on VEOH (can't find it on YouTube or Google Video), and VEOH requires you to install a web browser plug in to watch the whole hour long program. Without the VEOH plug in, you can only watch the first 5 minutes of the documentary from your web browser.)

3. The Stupidity of Dignity

Comment #179196 by njwong on May 12, 2008 at 9:21 pm

Comment #179085 by skyhook87 on May 12, 2008 at 1:54 pm

You can find the "Human Dignity and Bioethics:Essays Commissioned by the President's Council on Bioethics" here in full.

http://bioethicsprint.bioethics.gov/reports/human_dignity/

I especially enjoyed Dennett's chapter as well as his commentary.

Many thanks for the link, SkyHook. I was googling for it earlier, but couldn't find it. Instead, Google returned me a link to the US Government Bookstore which was selling the book itself for US$68.60 (international price)!!!

http://bookstore.gpo.gov/actions/GetPublication.do?stocknumber=017-023-00218-0

I wanted to read Kass's essay myself to form my own opinion. After having read it, I have to agree fully with Steven Pinker's criticism. Kass's essay is too biased towards Christianity, and would hardly persuade readers who are non-Christians (the number of bible references is amazing - and it is so clear from the writing that Kass believes that all the bible stories are literally true). Dennett's essay is much better as he adopts a more neutral stance, and cites secular examples that can be related to by anyone regardless of religion or lack of. (Of course, the Christian fundamentalists would probably say otherwise.)

By the way, I guess you must be an ardent Dennett fan - what with your moniker being Skyhook.

NJ

4. Discussion between Richard Dawkins and Paula Kirby

Comment #178279 by njwong on May 11, 2008 at 4:34 am

Thanks Paula for a very interesting link. When I read Dr Donald Boyd's missive, it was obvious to me that he is well read (he quoted page and paragraphs from The God Delusion, and seems to know about quantum mechanics). Yet, "he doesn't even deign to consider" that no god need be postulated to explain many of the things that he finds mysterious. Just like all the other flea writers, Boyd seemed to have read TGD and walked away with no new understanding of why atheists do not find the belief of god compelling. As Geoff commented, Boyd's personal belief that the Old Testament is a treasure trove filled with "fulfilled prophecies" is a testament to the rationality of his person and the woolliness of his thinking.

However, after reading Boyd's colourful "transcription" of the Inverness event, I think RD should write a sequel to the TGD called "The God Delusion FAQ" where he answers in more depth many of these questions and answers that were raised to him during his book tours/speeches/lectures. Sam Harris did it with "Letters to a Christian Nation", his sequel to "The End of Faith", so I believe RD will have a stunning success on his hand with this companion volume to the TGD :-)

5. The History Channel might do something right

Comment #176265 by njwong on May 7, 2008 at 3:30 am

Qin Shi Huang was also responsible for the Great Wall of China.

6. What really goes on at the Large Hadron Collider

Comment #176217 by njwong on May 7, 2008 at 12:11 am

Boy, did I enjoy Brian Cox's talk. In fact, I found his presentation so educational and delightful that I just had to read up on what exactly a "Higgs Boson" particle was. I wrote down my understanding of "what is a Higgs Boson" at my blog (it's the second half of the blog entry). If you are like me, and do not have a strong background in particle physics, you might find my simplified explanation helpful:

http://njwong.blogspot.com/2008/05/lhc-and-higgs-boson.html

7. The History Channel might do something right

Comment #176216 by njwong on May 6, 2008 at 11:43 pm

Comment #176209 by darlets on May 6, 2008 at 10:55 pm

Krause put the price tag on a movie at $50 million in his chat with Dawkins.

I too was surprised at the US$50 million figure thrown up by Krauss. I believe BBC produced the amazing Planet Earth series (12 one-hour episodes) with a budget of only US$25 million. (Although 5 years to make it seems a tad too long...) But then, perhaps the US$50 million only applies to US productions. I do believe if they make a Cosmos like series today using effects from Australia or New Zealand, it can be done for much less.

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

Comment #172676 by njwong on April 29, 2008 at 9:31 pm

Annabanana, MPhil,

Yes. It is very unfortunate that she did that (erased all her posts). It definitely did not help her cause a bit. However, I did read all her posts (including the original "unedited" post) before they were all deleted. I personally didn't find her original comment to be as bad as trolls like seeker_of_truth, wooter etc. However, because of Al's initial attack on her, that started the ball rolling and resulted in her leaving the site.

I totally agree with MPhil that RD.NET is one of the best sites on the internet for its level of debate and reasonableness. And though I may have come out as "against Al", I need to state that I have great respect for Al's opinions and viewpoints on many other topics, though I tend to think he comes out sometimes as being too strong and forceful. But then, "religion" is indeed a very controversial and hot topic that can get many of us emotionally worked up.

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

Comment #172655 by njwong on April 29, 2008 at 8:45 pm

Comment #172191 by emmet on April 29, 2008 at 10:23 am

The only person to actually call her a liar straight up was me. I absolutely unreservedly and unapologetically stand behind that statement.

She went back and edited a post and was trying to wring an apology out of al-rawandi based on his "misreading", she and other posters said things like "If you go back and look at what I/she actually wrote". At one point, al-rawandi even apologised to her for unfairly characterising her "original" remarks as racist. When she was asked if she had edited the post, she lied. She persisted in lying until she was called on it by me.

She was not "taunted", she was held to account for her lies, and screw her "explanations": they were post-hoc justifications of her gross dishonesty.

If she'd said "OK, I was angry and my post wasn't clear, I changed it to clarify my intended meaning", nobody would have batted an eyelid, but she didn't, instead she lied repeatedly in order to extract an apology from another person for "misreading" a post, which he had not misread. She even admitted that what she had done was dishonest herself before she went and deleted all of her posts.

Actually, I felt Al-Rawandi's post in Comment #171529 is the one that triggered all this. I did read Bunny's original post with all the CAPITALISED DENOUNCEMENTS, but as I had explained in my earlier post, I didn't read it as a racist slur against all Iraqis. Both yourself and Al may have your reasons to read her last statement as an insult against all Iraqis, but I am sure you could also understand that others, like myself, understood that her rantings were against the father and the men who released him.

Unfortunately, Al did initiated the personal attack in his very first post to Bunny. And I believe you reap what you sow, so Bunny responded in like manner to Al's post. And the thread degenerated rapidly.

As someone else had said in this thread, we ought to put things into perspective. Others have mentioned that they edit their posts, as many as 12 times sometimes, to clarify their positions. I think Bunny did so likewise, and changing "them" to "men like this" is simply clarifying her position, not that she is basically a dishonest person. I think when she said that she did not edit her post, she was thinking that she did not change the positioning of her post, so she didn't "edit her post". This is like Einstein making all those comments about "God doesn't play dice", and then clarifying that he doesn't believe in God - it is just semantics. But the fundamentalists will keep harping on the fact that since he used the word "God", therefore Einstein is a believer, and therefore he is a liar when he tries to clarify his position.

Therefore, when you and Al kept harping on "her dishonesty" over that edit, I just felt it was a bit overboard. It is like the fundamentalists who keep saying over and over again about Stalin and Lenin being evil, and that they were atheists. By repeatedly bringing up this association again and again, they hope to tarnish the picture that therefore all atheists are evil. When reading your replies to Bunny, it felt the same. Bunny is a basically a liar and dishonest person because she didn't admit that she edited "they" to "men like this".

Anyway, since Bunny has quitted the RD.NET site, please consider yourselves victorious. You have gotten rid of another "undesirable" from this esteemed oasis of rational thinking and clear thought. (Hmmm, why does this reminds me of what Al said in his first reply to Bunny about the Nazis?)

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

Comment #171948 by njwong on April 29, 2008 at 3:03 am

When I read Bunny's first comment a few hours ago, I felt the SHOUTING IN THE LAST SENTENCE just reflected Bunny's anger that a 17 year old girl had been killed and that the killer was freed because it was societally acceptable in Iraq for fathers to kill their daughters for reasons of "honour". Perhaps Bunny was emotionally affected because the victim was the same gender (and perhaps even the same age). Anyway, I thought Bunny's rant was fine as far as forum postings go. Forum posts are exactly that - they are comments made at the spur of the moment - and may not be well phrased.

And to my surprise, along comes comment #171529 by al-rawandi who said

You didn't mention anyone in particular. You only ever mentioned Iraq in a general sense. Thus your racist outburst must be read in the same sense.

Although you may be an angy feminist, you also happen to be spewing racist nonsense. So don't try to back track now. Go post on some other site, you are only providing fodder for the theists that seek to paint atheists as Nazis and racists.

Sorry, Al, but I read and understood Bunny's angry and poorly worded comments to be just that - a spur of the moment rant in a forum comment. However, I cannot understand how her statement of anger will provide "fodder for theists that seek to paint atheists as Nazis and racists."

I understand that Bunny had went back to edit her original post to change the word "they" to "men like this" to better reflect her actual thinking. I don't think she is a racist because her English was poorly worded (English may not be her native tongue). I think it is just that - poorly worded English - unlike your condemnation of her forum post as "racist outburst".

However, what gets my gall is your constantly taunting her as a LIAR in all your follow up comments harping about her edit of her original post as being dishonest - without bothering to accept her explanations. I guess Bunny felt that your constant slandering/character assasination of her person over these forum posts was just too emotionally affecting, probably as emotionally affecting as the original news article itself, so much so that Bunny finally deleted every single post of hers on this thread!

Nah. We don't need Bunny's post "to paint atheists as Nazis and racists" when we have atheists like yourself doing exactly that. Your personal attacks on a fellow atheist in all your replies to Bunny is indeed exemplary of what being reasonable and rational atheists are all about.

11. Orangutan attempts to hunt fish with spear

Comment #171545 by njwong on April 28, 2008 at 2:50 pm

Comment #171017 by Verylee

... I thought that Orangutans ate fruit and bugs in the main ...

I've just watched the Jungles episode of the BBC "Planet Earth" series on the internet. The chimpanzees featured in the last segment (41:00 to 48:00) not only ate fruits (figs), they also eat other chimpanzees!

http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=20082

There is also a BBC article that says chimpanzees have also been observed to hunt with spears:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6387611.stm

12. Investigating Atheism

Comment #167286 by njwong on April 23, 2008 at 8:49 pm

Although I agree that the Cambridge site has a pro-religion bias, I still think it is useful and quite well done. They have consolidated many atheism topics in an easy-to-navigate site.

For instance, the section "Atheist Arguments - For Disbelief" condenses much of RD.net's "Debate Points". For a newcomer to atheism, it is much easier to read a condensation of the main arguments at the Cambridge site than to wade through the forum-type responses at our RD.net site. Of course, there is merit to both approaches, but I personally prefer the more succint and concise Cambridge layout as compared to reading hundreds of forum-post responses on each topic in RD.net.

RD.net has a huge treasure trove of news type information. I feel that it needs to add a similar encyclopedic/wiki style information section so that we can provide the same information that the Cambridge site is now doing, but written with our pro-reason and pro-rationality bias.

13. Mecca should become core to measure time zones: scholars

Comment #165185 by njwong on April 21, 2008 at 7:31 am

They'll probably want the world to adopt the Islamic calendar next. Narcissistic egomaniacs.

14. Richard Dawkins' secular army must be stopped. God is behind some of our greatest art

Comment #160315 by njwong on April 13, 2008 at 11:43 pm

Foolish drivel written by an ignoramus who didn't read the man he is criticising.

15. Lungless frog discovered in Borneo

Comment #158859 by njwong on April 11, 2008 at 6:01 am

In Singapore's Straits Times paper, it was mentioned that the scientists nicknamed the frog as "Barbie", short for its scientific name, Barbourula kalimantanensis.

http://www.straitstimes.com:80/Free/Story/STIStory_225610.html

The Straits Times article stated that Barbie was first given to Dr Djoko (Dr Bickford's Indonesian colleague) in 1978, and Dr Djoko had been hunting for it ever since, but they couldn't find it again until now, 30 years later. Talk about dedication.

Indonesia unfortunately has a very bad track record with protecting the environment. Indonesia is notorious for having the highest rate of habitat destruction in the world.

16. Reviews of Expelled

Comment #158283 by njwong on April 10, 2008 at 9:32 am

Like the reviewers at Scientific American, I too was wondering what was the ulterior motive for the Expelled producers to give Scientific American a private screening of the film. Surely the Expelled producers would know that Scientific American would not be giving the film a positive review.

And then it dawn on me: there is no such thing as bad publicity. All publicity is good publicity.

And indeed it worked. Scientific American gave so much coverage to the film that no matter how savagely Scientific American criticises the movie, the publicity will translate to some much needed box office takings. That strategy worked brilliantly when they expelled PZ from the screening last month, generating lots of "publicity" in the media, so they are doing it again :-)

17. 'We Make Our Own Heaven'

Comment #151559 by njwong on March 29, 2008 at 1:40 am

When I was doing my Open University course, one of the managment subjects I had to study was "The Learning Organisation". One of its concept is that adults use different methods of learning as compared to children. Adults have a wealth of experience (simply because they are older) they can reflect on, whereas children do not. Therefore, to teach something effectively, you need to use different methods to teach adults as compared to children. Children, with no emotional/bias baggage to deal with, are easier to teach (indoctrinate?), and can be taught through demonstrations and repetitive reinforcements. Adults, who have to contend with the emotional bias they have "learned" when growing up, normally learns best if they come upon the subject on their own terms, especially if the new subject they are learning "contradicts" the emotional bias that they have built up over the years.

I thus agree that Critical Thinking should be taught to children, but maybe not as a formal subject per se, but maybe through demonstrations and examples (Socrates dialogues?) set to a children context.

I find similarity in this with the learning of English (which is not my mother tongue). I dreaded English when taught grammar (what the hell is a gerund? a split infinitive? and all the other formal grammatical rules - and their names!!! - that we had to learn). Instead, I learn English through demonstrations and examples (reading story books).

I believe the same approach could be applied for teaching Critical Thinking to children. When the children are older, they can then be taught Critical Thinking as a formal subject - if they have not already started learning it on their own.

NJ

18. Expelled from Expelled: PZ story goes global

Comment #150466 by njwong on March 27, 2008 at 12:52 am

I have to agree with Steve. The internet, and particularly the blogosphere, is not the real world.

I am reminded of Howard Dean's 2004 presidential candidacy. Although he was hugely popular on the internet, the majority of folks out there don't use the internet, and Dean got kicked out early from the race.

All the hoo and hah from the rationalist blogs will not dent the potential market for this movie in the real world. We will need to let this film die on its own de-merits. Rationalist sites should move on from this topic, as continuously harping on this will simply give free publicity to this movie which it doesn't deserve.

19. Happy Birthday, Richard Dawkins!

Comment #150461 by njwong on March 27, 2008 at 12:30 am

(That is "Happy Birthday" in Chinese.)

NJ

20. Flipping particle could explain missing antimatter

Comment #146755 by njwong on March 19, 2008 at 11:07 am

Interestingly, I was just browsing a blog that has compiled and captioned several very beautiful pictures of the LHC. The photos (which the blogger tastefully selected from CERN's huge public archive) impressively shows the LHC in its immense and breathtaking majesty:

http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2008/03/time-machine-worlds-biggest-particle.html


One of the comments a visitor left on the blog left me in stitches:

David Bryden said...

What a waste of money. God put all we need to know about the Cosmos into His holy book.

Here at Creationism Labs, we seek the Truth in our own way. We hurl King James Bibles together at great speed, smashing them into tiny bits of paper which we paste together to form new Divine Revelations.

21. Berlin gallery in Islam art row

Comment #137376 by njwong on March 2, 2008 at 6:31 pm

All this talk about the stone cube reminds me of the Borg from Star Trek and the Borg cube. "Resistance is futile. You shall be assimilated..."

22. Sea reptile is biggest on record

Comment #135201 by njwong on February 28, 2008 at 5:29 pm

Everything that Philip Pullman wrote in "His Dark Materials" has a scientific, literary, philosophical, or religious background/allusion. I recently read "The Rough Guide to Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials" by Paul Simpson, which has a good write up of all these areas that provided the inspiration for His Dark Materials. Apparently, Pullman even applied for a grant to visit Svalbard prior to writing the 1st novel, but the grant was rejected, so Pullman had to do his research using the public libraries instead.

23. Sea reptile is biggest on record

Comment #135187 by njwong on February 28, 2008 at 5:07 pm

I first heard of Svalbard when reading Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" (The Golden Compass). In the novel, the island is the kingdom of the armoured bears.

24. Richard Dawkins on five of his favorite books

Comment #133344 by njwong on February 26, 2008 at 5:17 am

1. Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain)
2. The Foundation Trilogy (Isaac Asimov)
3. The Lord of the Rings (JRR Tolkein)
4. Contact (Carl Sagan)
5. The Naked and the Dead (Norman Mailer)

5 is insufficient (I have lots of favourites), but these were the ones that affected me when I was younger.

25. The Lava Lizard's Tale

Comment #131648 by njwong on February 22, 2008 at 9:45 pm

Comment #131607 by miaka on February 22, 2008 at 5:00 pm

Have to agree with Shuggy. Am I missing something? What was this documentary even about? It doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Seriously, can anyone summarize the main point in this video--I'm genuinely interested to know what it was.

You were probably expecting a BBC documentary like video, as I was too when I first watched it (because of Josh excellent editing techniques). However, this expectation is too high (you must not compare this to a well financed BBC documentary). Instead, think of this as a sophisticated video-blog, and you will appreciate this better.

In most documentaries, you either take the approach of filming everything you can capture, and then cut a film out of the footage you have (eg. "Planet Earth"), or, you write a script before hand and then film to the script (eg. "Journey of Life"). Notice that in both cases, the film produced is always conceived from a VISUAL point of view

However, Josh and RD's video was originally an essay printed in TEXT media. The entire essay has now been transferred VERBATIM to a video, and moving images have been edited in to accompany the words. Thus, we should more rightly view it a better produced video-blog (eg. Pat Condell's videos) than a documentary per se.

However, I agree that the mental comparison to a BBC documentary is hard to shake, no thanks to Josh excellent video work! RD has done documentaries before, and he knows that to make a proper documentary from a book, you must always rewrite the script to present your points from a visual point of view. (That's what screen writers do - almost all films made from books do not follow their book source verbatim - save movies from Shakespeare's plays.) A documentary is not the intent of this particular video. Think of it more as poetry accompanied by pictures.

26. The Lava Lizard's Tale

Comment #131003 by njwong on February 21, 2008 at 5:08 pm

I think the video is great for the limited resources Josh had to work with. It is simply not possible to compare or expect the same production values as that of a well financed BBC documentary.

I would like to make some suggestions for future "tales":

1. Captions for names of animals as they are first introduced - for example, it would be nice to see the word "Tropidurus albernarlensis" displayed when the lava lizard is first shown. Also, captions of photos and picture sources (like the photos of the footprints, tree rings, Dali painting).

2. A simple map showing Santiago in relation to the rest of the Galapagos Islands superimposed on one of the scenery shots.

However, this is a great video-blog as is. Adding too many effects, or giving it a more documentary-like feel, may detract from the "Ancestors Tale" approach of the narrative, and may be overkill and not suitable for this and the next 2 tales.

27. Fleabytes

Comment #130031 by njwong on February 20, 2008 at 12:10 am

I just spent 2 hours reading Paula's excellent review and the comments after it. Time very well spent. Thanks, Paula, for writing it.

I think Josh has classified this article in the wrong category. It should not be grouped under the "News" section, where it will rapidly scroll down and be out of sight in days. This article is an exclusive RD.NET ORIGINAL, and deserves to be placed in the "Featured" section where it can be displayed prominently for a much longer period! We seldom see original articles written exclusively for RD.NET, and surely Paula's article qualifies as one.

28. 'Frog from hell' fossil unearthed

Comment #129347 by njwong on February 19, 2008 at 2:15 am

It is curious why we like to nickname a larger-than-normal animal a creature "from Hell". Why not name it a creature "from Heaven"? Or to be truly agnostic, "Frogzilla" :-)

Anyway, there is a YouTube video about a "giant" toad caught in Darwin Australia. It is only 1 kg and 38 cm long though, so it is not as big as the Beelzebufo, but boy, are both of them ugly :-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Zwh7wX5jMk

29. Earliest bats did not 'see' with sound

Comment #126672 by njwong on February 13, 2008 at 10:39 pm

Comment #126496 by bluebird on February 13, 2008 at 11:16 am

Bats are so cool! Fortunately, bats are now more accepted by the public as the amazing, beneficial creatures that they are.

Unfortunately, the Pteropid fruit bat was found to be responsible for the Nipah virus, which killed 106 people in Malaysia and Singapore back in 1999:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nipah_virus#Emergence_2

There is a 20 minute documentary on YouTube about the Nipah virus and its devastating effects in Malaysia (entire towns were abandoned - 1 million pigs were culled - a 700 million dollar industry was completely decimated). Please note that the video contains horrific images of pigs being culled by shooting:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=1Y1id_KZ06w

30. Scientists discover way to reverse loss of memory

Comment #118535 by njwong on January 30, 2008 at 6:31 pm

Reading this article reminds me of the science fiction story "Flowers for Algernon" (which won both the Hugo and Nebula awards):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowers_for_algernon

We do need to investigate whether there are any undesirable side-effects to deep-brain stimulation in the longer term. I welcome any cure for Alzheimer's Disease, but I am not so sure of using deep-brain stimulation to improve a healthy person's mental ability until long term studies show that the treatment has no harmful side effects.

31. The Science behind the Large Hadron Collider

Comment #117008 by njwong on January 28, 2008 at 3:16 am

In non-US countries, we spell "metre" the French way for distance, and "meter" for the measuring device. Only in US-spelling is the spelling "meter" used for both distance and measuring device, causing the problem with the "micrometre"/"micrometer" you mentioned.

I believe "klicks" for kilometre has been used in the army as early as World War II (heard "klicks" used by the characters in the "Band of Brothers" TV series).

I like this word, but it doesn't seem to have caught on with writers in general. I don't believe "klicks" can ever replace "miles", even though they are both one-syllable words. "Klicks" just doesn't write well (e.g. "miles and miles of padi fields" versus "klicks and klicks of padi fields", "milestone" versus "klickstone").

32. Interview with Richard Dawkins

Comment #116935 by njwong on January 27, 2008 at 8:28 pm

RD: God, what a naive question!....

Well, John did manage to irk the professor into swearing with the "God" word.

This fun phrase should be added with the other cool one featured in the Richard Dawkins talking doll :

RD: Of course there is no god. Don't be silly!

NJ

33. Moderates Storm The Religious Battlefield

Comment #106376 by njwong on January 2, 2008 at 6:53 pm

42. Comment #106291 by Stormkahn on January 2, 2008 at 3:58 pm

[Does the dance of joy!] Welcome to the brave new world Mr Ehrman. [waves from blighty]

Actually, Dr Bart Ehrman is a professor and the chairman of Religious Studies of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and also the author of the book "Misquoting Jesus."

He was an evangelical Christian as a teenager, and was very interested in what he thought was God's true message. However, Dr. Ehrman's subsequent close analysis of the Bible and research into the field of textual criticism destroyed his faith in the Bible.

Dr Ehrman is now an agnostic, and is a prime example of someone who has looked at Christianity deeply but found it to be faulty as a religion.

He gave a very illuminating lecture (the lecture is part of the "Heyns Lecture Series") on biblical manuscript tampering at Stanford University on 25 April 2007:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=397006836098752165&hl=en

NJ

34. Do our leaders believe in God?

Comment #102262 by njwong on December 22, 2007 at 7:58 am

Mere education is not enough. As Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins have mentioned, the 9/11 muslim terrorists were highly educated. Same with the Glasgow Airport terrorists (doctors even - so much for the Hippocratic Oath).

A course in critical thinking - as others have voiced in RD.NET, is probably an essential component that education needs to provide.

35. Christmas with Christopher Hitchens

Comment #102214 by njwong on December 22, 2007 at 2:51 am

Interesting to learn that Hitchens enjoys Tom Lehrer. Here is Tom Lehrer's "The Vatican Rag":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3f72CTDe4-0

And here is Hitchens himself singing Tom Lehrer's "Christmas Carol" mentioned in the article:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7SFlbzkv4Q

NJ

36. Way of the Master Radio talks about Dawkins' Christmas Comments

Comment #100720 by njwong on December 19, 2007 at 7:54 am

42. Comment #100517 by devolve on December 18, 2007 at 7:19 pm

Wow, quill. Thanks (I guess... maybe) for the Way of the Master links. I had never heard Dan Barker before, but now I think I should read his book....

I learnt of Dan Barker and the Freedom From Religion Foundation radio show when this site published the Fox News news video criticising the radio program.

http://richarddawkins.net/article,1741,Fox-News-Attacks-Godless-Free-Thought-Radio,Media-Matters


I found Dan Barker's writings and debates from the following page on the Freedom From Religion Foundation web site:

http://ffrf.org/about/bybarker/#story

If you have time, you should listen to his talk "Losing Faith In Faith" (a 1 hour 14 minute podcast) in which he goes into more detail about how he gave up his religion after 19 years as a fundamentalist Christian preacher.

I had also listened to Dan's debates in "Does God Exist?" which was held in February 29, 2000, as well as "Does God Not Exist?" which was held in January 2003. That was the first time I realised that many of the debating arguments used by Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris against the religious right in their recent debates have actually been employed long before by Dan Barker. I find Dan Barker to be an excellent speaker!

Dan Barker is currently working on a book about preachers who have lost their faith. This was actually mentioned by Richard Dawkins in "The Four Horsemen" video.

37. Here's an improvement on democracy

Comment #98504 by njwong on December 13, 2007 at 7:57 pm

As a student of history, I bought Peter Watson's book "Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud" earlier this year. At 1118 pages (the paperback edition) and 36 chapters, this was a tome by every definition! It took me more than a month to complete it (a chapter a day). But it is very good, and I highly recommend it!

For members of this site, chapter 7 "The Ideas of Israel, The Idea of Jesus" is definitely worth reading. Muhammad is covered in chapter 12 "Falsafah and al-Jabr in Baghdad and Toledo". (Note: "Falsafah" is "Islamic Philosophy based on Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism". "Al-Jabr" is "Algebra").

38. Controversial Anti-Muslim Dutch Film Adds to Already Simmering Tensions

Comment #97781 by njwong on December 12, 2007 at 4:10 pm

Actually, the Koran is already available online, so it is quite pointless to ban it, except to make a political statement. Banning books is not effective in this day and age:

http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran

39. Golden Compass

Comment #97774 by njwong on December 12, 2007 at 4:02 pm

A YouTube link from one of the comments at the OneGoodMove site is funnier than this comic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VABSoHYQr6k

40. FFRF 07 Conference Footage

Comment #88569 by njwong on November 17, 2007 at 9:36 pm

Sam Slater in comment 13:

13. Comment #81457 by Sam Slater on October 24, 2007 at 7:00 pm

What's with the songs? Holy crap!

I feel sick here...

Kizumoto in comment 17:

17. Comment #82308 by kizumoto on October 26, 2007 at 3:14 am

Yeah the songs.

Dan Barker loves to write and sing those not so funny songs making fun of religion.

Forgive him! His organization has done so much for the Church-state separation cause, he deserves his little eccentricity....

It was thanks to the article "Fox News Attacks 'Godless' Free Thought Radio" (http://richarddawkins.net/article,1741,Fox-News-Attacks-Godless-Free-Thought-Radio,Media-Matters) that I learnt about the Freedom From Religion Foundation, and heard some of Dan Barker's beautiful atheistic songs.

I read Dan Barker's writings at:

http://ffrf.org/about/bybarker/

and was most impressed to learn that he was a fundamentalist Christian minister for 19 years before he became an atheist in 1984.

He has been doing debates with theologians for the past 20 years. In fact, he argued most of the same debate points that are now being rehashed with the recent debates against the new atheists (Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris etc):

This is a transcript of a debate Dan Barker held in January 2003 against a Muslim cleric:

http://ffrf.org/about/bybarker/barker_rajabali03.php

If you read this, you will see that Dan Barker is a brilliant debater in the same intellectual league as the "New Atheists" (Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris et al). And Barker, because he was a fundamentalist evangelical Christian minister for 19 years before his deconversion, has a winning argument that none of the "New Atheists" can use:

...If you can give me evidence for a god, I will change my mind...

I've done it before and I will do it again. And I would like to hear you say the same thing: that you would change your mind, if the evidence warrants it.

NJ

41. Why Science Will Triumph Only When Theory Becomes Law

Comment #88567 by njwong on November 17, 2007 at 8:48 pm

I was reading Christopher Hitchen's "The Portable Atheist" (TPA) and found that in Charles Darwin "Autobiography" (chapter 11 in TPA), Darwin himself uses the phrases "laws of nature" and "law of natural selection":

"...the more we know of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible do miracles become..."

"...The old argument from design in Nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered...."

Also, the phrase "Laws of Evolution" has been used by Thomas Huxley (Darwin's bulldog) in an 1880 article titled "On the Application of the Laws of Evolution to the Arrangement of the Vertebrata and more Particularly of the Mammalia" (http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/SM4/Vert.html).

So there are historical precedents back in the 1800s to referring to evolution and its mechanisms as laws. We probably need to reinstate such usage to put an end to the silly semantic arguments by the creationists.

NJ

42. Fox News Attacks 'Godless' Free Thought Radio

Comment #78443 by njwong on October 12, 2007 at 11:46 pm

15. Comment #78304 by philos

... In other news, the dems try to pull a fast one again. Pathetic.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1907687/posts

http://michellemalkin.com/2007/10/08/graeme-frost-and-the-perils-of-democrat-poster-child-abuse/

I am not sure why philos posted the above links (seems off topic to me), but here is the other side of the story from more reputable news organizations (than Faux News):

The Swift-Boating of Graeme Frost
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1670210,00.html

Sliming Graeme Frost
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/12/opinion/12krugman.html?th&emc=th

NJ

43. Not So Fast, Christian Soldiers

Comment #65356 by njwong on August 23, 2007 at 7:38 pm

I seriously doubt any proselytisation moves by Christians in a Muslim country will be effective. Change must come from within the Muslims themselves.

There is a very interesting commentary by Diana Muir in the Washington Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/17/AR2007081701691.html

In her article, she mentioned that for the Christian Enlightenment, it was the powerful Catholic Church that was oppressive and always resorted to the sword to bring people back to religion. The reformers were thus able to succeed in bringing about Reformation due to the people's disgust at such abuse of power by the authorities.

In the Muslim world today however, it is however the reformers who are resorting to the sword to bring people back to religion. It is the reformers who want to bring back fundamentalism into their society, while it was the other way round in Christianity where it is the reformers who wanted to reject fundamentalism.

Therefore, the background situation is not exactly the same as those that brought forth the Christian Reformation. I feel it is very much harder for the Muslims to bring about their own Enlightenment.

44. Science and the Islamic World

Comment #62685 by njwong on August 10, 2007 at 9:24 pm

It is quite depressing to read about the collapse of the Golden Age of Islam where progress in science, mathematics and philosophy was suddenly halted and was replaced by backward looking religious zealotry. Although Islam was founded in the 600's (~610 CE), the sciences flourished only from the second half of the 700's (~751 CE). However, after 700 years of scientific progress, Islamic science declined in the 1400's, and has still not recovered today.

Thus, 700+ years of scientific progress could not prevent scientific thinking from being destroyed by the religon virus.

The parallel for western civilisation today is that the 700+ years of scientific progress since the Renaissance could also be stopped in its tracks by religion.

Sam Harris' message in "The End of Faith" is ever more important. With Islamic terrorists having potential access to atomic bombs (and who have no qualms about using them), fundamentalist Christians in US government/military who may unconsciously want to bring forth Armageddon to hasten the Rapture, religion is not only endangering science, but can threaten civilisation and the world. It would really be tragic if such horrors were to come to pass because of people's irrational belief in myths.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_science#Decline

45. Atheist 'Metaphysics' and Religious Equivocation

Comment #62018 by njwong on August 8, 2007 at 12:31 am

The phrase "I place my faith in science" is a commonly uttered construct even by atheists and agnostics (in fact, I recently found Carl Sagan saying it in one of his lectures in his book "The Varieties of Scientific Experience - A Personal View of the Search of God"). Obviously, we are using the word "faith" to mean that we have "confidence in something - after giving it much thought and studied consideration". This is not exactly the same as the religious meaning of "faith" which implies "embracing a belief unquestioningly despite evidences of the contrary".

Similarly, the word "God" is used to both mean the Abrahamic god figure by Judeo-Christian followers, or the Universe/Cosmos by atheists and agnostics.

Because of such ambiguities, atheists and agnostics should perhaps try to avoid using such terms (although this is extremely difficult due to sheer force of habit), and use "confidence" and "Universe" instead when that is their intent. This may reduce the number of arguments due to quibbles over semantics.

46. Islamic Creationist and a Book Sent Round the World

Comment #57356 by njwong on July 19, 2007 at 2:55 am

I found that you could download his book as a PDF file from his web site:

http://www.harunyahya.com/index.php

He is very prolific. There are actually 2 versions of "Atlas of Creation" (labelled as volume 1 and volume 2). Make sure you get both volumes :-)


http://www.harunyahya.com/books/darwinism/atlas_creation/atlas_creation_01.php

http://www.harunyahya.com/books/darwinism/atlas_creation_II/atlas_creation_II_01.php

(The zip files can be downloaded from the "Acrobat PDF" hyperlink from the above pages.)

Both versions (volumes) are 800 pages each. I think their contents are similar, but the emphasis is different (based on the Table of Contents). The second version presents the same facts, but is written as a direct refutation of Evolution.

I've got to admit that the production values of this publication is really staggering. The book is really beautifully illustrated.

His home page is also very colourful, and lavishly designed with all kinds of interactive animations.

His books and web site reminds me of the Creation Museum usage of 3D special effects, beautiful animatronic dinosaurs, models of Noah's Ark etc. Amazing eye candy designed to sway gullible people.

The problem is that children and naive adults are very susceptible to these visual tricks (beautiful book => implies content must be true. Otherwise, why would they publish it?).

Comparing Dawkins/Harris/Hitchens/Dennett's books, which are just dry words on dry pages, versus the eye candy spewing out of every page in this 800 page tome, the child's mind can be easily persuaded into accepting its false teachings.

The battle between Religion and Science is starting to look interesting....

47. Christian sports workers degree ridiculed

Comment #45034 by njwong on May 25, 2007 at 11:48 pm

On comment #44962 by jvc:

There is a longer version of the video (1 minute longer - and much funnier) at this other link:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=i2TicMbH4OY