1. George Scales, War Hero and Generous Friend of RDFRS

Comment #111375 by Dunc-uk on January 14, 2008 at 1:03 pm

From reading the wonderful write-up that Richard has given you it seems clear that you have lead a rich, fulfilling and varied life. Long may it continue! It is wonderful that you have chosen to donate so much from your own earnings for the cause of reason and science. All the best, everyone here at RichardDawkins.net is wishing you a swift recovery!

2. New attempt to end blasphemy law

Comment #109686 by Dunc-uk on January 9, 2008 at 1:43 pm

Comedian Stewart Lee co-wrote Jerry Springer the Opera, I recently posted in the forums about his 2005 show in which he talks a bit about the blasphemy debacle and how it affected him:

http://richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=31042

3. This Friday: Debate between Dan Dennett and Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #91527 by Dunc-uk on November 28, 2007 at 1:53 pm

The topic is definitely more biased in "our" favour than the Hitchens talk... D'Souza won't be able to use any of his silly claims of the great works of Christianity, as that has nothing to do with the central question of Gods existence. That said, Dennett is mild mannered and could simply be bulldozed by Dinesh, who is in many ways the closest to the Christian equivalent of Hitchens.

4. The absurd world of Martin Amis

Comment #90417 by Dunc-uk on November 25, 2007 at 4:21 am

Lets keep this in proportion... Morris is not criticising anyone who criticises Islam. He's critiquing Martin Amis apparent view of Islam, based upon what he actually says.

The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order. What sort of suffering? Not let them travel. Deportation – further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they're from the Middle East or from Pakistan... Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children...

Strip-searching people because they look foreign? Deliberately hurting a community? That's ludicrous.

On the other hand, Morris' article isn't great... his tone is overly mocking and his parody of Amis and Hitchens as flashers does not endear me to him.

5. Hello Again, Michael Behe!

Comment #86304 by Dunc-uk on November 9, 2007 at 12:47 am

Why on earth does every mention of Michael Behe link to a picture of Lindsay Lohan? Am I missing something?

6. Internet used to target extremism

Comment #83901 by Dunc-uk on October 31, 2007 at 3:37 pm

I've got to agree with Spinoza... young Muslims are just not going to be interested in an atheist message. British muslims need to be liberalised, and learn to respect (and appreciate) British liberal values.

Personally, I do hope this panel of women doesn't include anyone wearing Islamic dress. Provoking British Imams into criticising this panel will help to stoke the argument in the muslim community and hopefully start the process of de-radicalisation.

7. Egypt's fight against female circumcision clashes with tradition

Comment #80484 by Dunc-uk on October 22, 2007 at 12:46 am

It is horrendous that this vile practise still persists in the modern world, I am not aware of any possible medical benefit for FGM... and I hope that soon the term "male genital mutilation" replaces that of male circumcision. This sort of surgery must be performed on consenting adults only. Ban everything else.

8. Interview with BHA President Polly Toynbee

Comment #68063 by Dunc-uk on September 6, 2007 at 12:58 am

From Wikipedia:

In 2004 Toynbee was awarded the 'Most Islamophobic Media Personality' title in the Annual Islamophobia Awards. [7]

She is also critical of Christianity and Judaism. She wrote:

"The pens sharpen – Islamophobia! No such thing. Primitive Middle Eastern religions (and most others) are much the same – Islam, Christianity and Judaism all define themselves through disgust for women's bodies"

Of course, the group issuing such an accolade are a somewhat more dubious bunch. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annual_Islamophobia_Awards">

9. Review of Darwin's Angel: An Angelic Response to the God Delusion

Comment #66937 by Dunc-uk on September 1, 2007 at 3:31 am

stuff about BVM

OK, I think I missed the satirical tone of your first post... but the point was a serious one.

10. Review of Darwin's Angel: An Angelic Response to the God Delusion

Comment #66933 by Dunc-uk on September 1, 2007 at 3:16 am

Well, you might try Matthew Fox of the Creation Spirituality Institute in California. But then he's a defrocked Dominican friar and an authority on Meister Eckhart..... but his vein of Creation Spirituality and theology has appeal to the fringes of the christian communities.

Thankyou, that is a start. I've just been to his website and scanned through the available text, sadly there isn't much on offer to read for free. Now I'm assuming that you're familiar with his work, so could you please direct me to where he tackles any of the following subjects:

- Arguments on the existence of god.
- Arguments on the truth of his particular beliefs, or his religion more generally.

I would prefer greatly anything he has offered up for free, or a summation of his arguments made by someone else. I wish to avoid being faced with an insurmountable task, since most arguments can be distilled into only a few key points.

Or if you have time, could you summarise these arguments yourself? I am genuinely interested.

11. Review of Darwin's Angel: An Angelic Response to the God Delusion

Comment #66926 by Dunc-uk on September 1, 2007 at 2:40 am

Has anyone noticed that in the endless references made by these apologists to "serious modern theology" there is not a single name, book, essay or text that we are encouraged to read?

Dare I say, their argument weighs better if they can keep it that way? Dare I also say, that many of the people propagating this meme are not in a position of having studied any?

12. Another view

Comment #66189 by Dunc-uk on August 29, 2007 at 7:55 am

"Complementary medicine" as a term is a clear case of clever marketting... when cast in this light, there seems nothing wrong with it. Why would we deny people things that they can take in addition to modern medicine, if they make them feel better?

The answer is simple... the misleading part of complimentary medicine is the "medicine". What these people are actually getting is "complimentary therapy". As Dawkins pointed out, patients are getting far more attention, time and the "personal touch" in complimentary therapy that modern medicine often denies them. This is a failure of the application of modern medicine that has far more to do with budgetary constraints, than actual medicine. There is nothing in the anecdotal evidence to legitimise the absurd claims by practitioners of "complimentary medicine".

13. Rational Atheism

Comment #64859 by Dunc-uk on August 22, 2007 at 5:33 am

It is very clear that softly softly does not catch monkey.

I'm sorry, but the evidence suggests that this simply isn't true. I don't know of any poll that claims religiosity is increasing worldwide, nor in the US. See this recent article that got posted here:

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/paul07/paul07_index.html

I'm with Shermer (and Thor), for the most part, I'm also quite disapointed with some of the comments in this thread, particularly fonex_86. If I'd adopted the sort of shrill, ranting style of some of the posts above when discussing religion with some of my faithful friends, I wouldn't have got anywhere near as far as I did.

Please, can we not rise above our own stereotypes?

14. PZ Myers sued for a negative review in a blog post

Comment #64604 by Dunc-uk on August 21, 2007 at 1:50 am

I can't really see anything in Myers review that looks out of the ordinary for a negative review, compared to your average restaurant review for example. As annoying as it must be to be sued by someone, I can't see how this idiot has a case.

15. Good luck, Dawkins!

Comment #63853 by Dunc-uk on August 16, 2007 at 12:33 pm

To close the debate on whether Sue Blackmore supports Dawkins...

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/sue_blackmore/2007/06/we_of_little_faith.html

I, for one, do not want to live in a world where religious faith is respected. I do not want more "faith-based initiatives". I do not want more faith schools, and our great universities should continue to teach people to think for themselves, to respect the truth, and to take nothing on faith.

16. Our Lives, Controlled From Some Guy's Couch

Comment #63355 by Dunc-uk on August 14, 2007 at 2:43 am

It takes memory and computational power to run a simulation. Each fundamental particle in the simulation must be recorded in memory by a finite number of bits of information. Those bits are, in turn, manifested in the "real" world by real particles. There is therefore quite clearly not a 1:1 mapping between real particles and simualated ones... otherwise the simulation is not a simulation and the two worlds are effectively identical.

So each iteration in the set of simulated universes is orders of magnitude smaller and simpler than it's parent. Even if the "top" or "real" world is infinite in size, realistically the simulation it houses cannot be infinite and hence the universe it simulates is finite and bounded. This in turn restricts the size of the simulation that the child universe can accomodate, and hence the worlds it can simulate etc.

So basically, the universe regression cannot be infinite.

Moreover, any computer system running in our universe is subject to random corruption, however unlikely. This might manifest itself in the crashing or irregular operation of otherwise bug-free code. Any simulation we run in our world, will likely only run for a finite time before crashing, or revealing it's true nature to it's inhabitants. So if we are running in a simulation, we can expect to find out eventually... or spontaneously cease to exist.

I'm tempted to lump this into the "nice idea, but not credible" category. I was completely lost at the 20% likelyhood valuation.

17. Why Richard Dawkins is right on alternative medicine - but not when it comes to religion

Comment #62496 by Dunc-uk on August 10, 2007 at 1:45 am

I take great umbridge with the phrase "retreat to ethical highground". There are three big problems with this:

- In what sense can a Christian be said to have "retreated to the safe high ground of ethics" if they believe in god, the divinity of Jesus (as part of the holy trinity), an afterlife, the resurrection (and optionally the virgin birth). These are all claims about the universe/multiverse we live in.

- I have never met a single mainstream Christian that has espoused this sort of "retreated" viewpoint that is suggested by the article, and I live in England. I've discussed religion several times with university educated, moderate people.

- If someone seriously rejected all of the aforementioned metaphysical statements, but still called themselves Christian then I would consider this a position of intellectual ignorance. I doubt anybody in their right mind, if starting with an ethical "clean slate" and with access to all the philosophy of ethics from every source humans have created, would choose to live thier lives by the heavily reinterpreted theological interpretation of Biblical ethics. The Bible without god in its raw form is very bad philosophy. Nobody would bother putting the effort in that theologians have, to derive a sensible morality from the Biblical moral chaos.

[UPDATE] I forgot my 4th objection.

- There is nothing moral about preaching the immorality of contraception. A friend of mine at Oxfam is constantly troubled by the influence of Catholicism in Africa. Aids is spreading like an epidemic, and many of the lucky few with the access to contraception (and adequate education) are turning it down, for the simple reason that Catholic proselytisers got there first. Nor is it terribly moral to instruct over a billion people to stop giving money to Amnesty International. Not to mention the coverup of paedophilia and harassment of gay people. This is not a moral high ground.

18. Philip Kitcher - Living with Darwin

Comment #59736 by Dunc-uk on July 30, 2007 at 1:28 pm

I think Philip is missing the point a bit, with regards to the "big four" Atheism books... in order to attract people away from their entrenched religious beliefs into your arguably more enlightened humanistic worldview, you need to do two things:

1. Extol the virtues of humanism.
2. Point out the inadequacies of their incumbent views.

Clearly, the latter has to be done first with the former waiting in the wings to charge in at the right moment. There would be no point speaking at length about the wonders of humanism to a liberal Christian, if all they say at the end of it is "you sound happy, good for you. I'm happy too.". It's an ugly fact of life that you need to bring people down before you can help them back up. Nevertheless, I also think it is quite pointless to spend time angrily deconstructing someone's beliefs in front of then, only to walk away at the end without providing them with an alternative. We need books like Philip Kitcher's just as much as we need "shrill" critiques like The God Delusion.

People don't like to change their worldviews willy-nilly, especially if they are worldviews into which they have invested considerable effort and emotion... and people really don't like to admit when they are wrong.

19. Christopher Hitchens and Al Sharpton

Comment #54595 by Dunc-uk on July 8, 2007 at 3:03 am

"I know who I am, why I am here and where I am going."

No you do not. You have decided who you are. You have chosen an explanation of why you are here, and a method of selecting where you are to go.

As much as you might believe something, however fanatically or absolutely, that does not make it true. You may have decided to ignore all other possible explanations, but you do so in faith. Your faith that whatever you believe is literal truth does not make it any more true.

Do not tell us that you "know" when that knowledge is based upon faith.

"What happens after death is unknown. I wonder if atheists speculate on what consciousness would be like if consciousness indeed does survive after death."

There is no evidence of anything happening after death. Making a claim that something happens after death is an extraordinary claim - i.e. one that has no known, proven "similar" precedent.

Atheists will speculate on post-mortal consciousness when it's existence is proven, or at least gains some material, evidential weight. The nature of such evidence would be an event in which interaction with the dead was the most reasonable hypothesis.

Life on other planets is not an extraordinary hypothesis. There is a precedent (life on this planet) and it most certainly is testable. Evolution lends no prohibition to extraterrestrial life, I would argue that evolution suggests life will attempt existence in every possible arena. It is therefore less credible to claim that it fails on every single one of those except earth. Time, investigation and research will tell. Theology cannot provide a definitive answer.

20. At a Theater Near You ...

Comment #53933 by Dunc-uk on July 4, 2007 at 9:14 am

"Condemnation so far emanates from muslim leaders in liberal democracies."

Then again, so does alot of support for extremism. It has to be fought on home turf before we have any chance of any sucesses propogating back to the middle east.

"A muslim solution to a muslim problem would be great. But I fear it is as likely as Colin Montgomerie winning the Open."

I agree, but that shouldn't stop us demanding it.

21. At a Theater Near You ...

Comment #53927 by Dunc-uk on July 4, 2007 at 8:45 am

I would agree with most of this article... it is fair in not blaming moderate Muslims, but places the onus of reform at their feet.

I am ideologically behind "new atheism" (or whatever you want to call it), but I don't see the intellectual marginalisation of faith as a viable short or medium term solution to the extremist problem. That is not to say that we shouldn't try anyway (the long term is a worthy goal), but something else is needed. I do see it as inevitable in the long term, as suggested by the increasing irreligious nature of the west and Europe in particular. However, there is almost nothing that I, as an atheist, can do or say to prevent borderline-radical Muslims from taking that final step into madness. Change has to be affected by other Muslims.

Moderate, peace-loving Muslims must align themselves with non-Muslim, anti-terrorist sentiment and openly oppose radicalism (and to be fair, many are). They must fight it on an ideological level in the mosques and amongst their peers, and if necessary combat extremism via collusion with the authorities.

Aggressive foreign policies on the part of the west are definitely not helping, but these are slowly being quashed by the weight of shifting public opinion - a far more legitimate, peaceful and democratic process. Call me a raving liberal, but I really do think change cannot be properly affected by force. Governments can be fought and defeated militarily, but ideoligies have to be fought on an intelllectual level. Nevertheless, much islamic terrorism is independent of the west or our actions... obvious examples would be the recent shoot-outs in Pakistan by those supporting Sharia Law, or the sunni-shia infighting all over the world.

22. Row over religion's role in US jails

Comment #52101 by Dunc-uk on June 26, 2007 at 6:38 am

I am very interested to see if a secular system could work as well at reforming prisoners. For all it's ills, a belief system that can absolve any crime by the mere practise of conversion and request for forgiveness must be very attractive to someone that has commited terrible acts. Couple that with a loving god figure and I'm not suprised that these schemes are so successful. That doesn't make them "right" in any sense, just succesful at rehabilitation. For example, I for one would not necessarily want to try to deconvert the "Son of Sam".

Can a secular scheme be as successful? Can humanist values and an increased understanding of the social contract (for example) have the same rehabilitating effect? I really hope so, but I don't know of any such schemes.

On the other hand, I can see how these religious indoctrinations could be harmful... if the resulting reformed character is meek and mild and even willing to contribute back to the community they harmed, then I find it hard to fault them. But if they take up the mantle of an anti-gay or pro-life stance with all its potential for militancy, then I would have a problem.

Does anyone have any info on secular equivalents and their relative successes?

23. The Benny Hinn Report

Comment #49329 by Dunc-uk on June 11, 2007 at 2:00 pm

It is astonishing that this sort of thing is legal... this man is using peoples faith, not to mention their fear, desperation and gullibility to make money. This is the worst sort of con-trick... at the very least, most standard con artists have the decency to cut and run and leave their victims to learn from their mistakes. This man gets repeat customers, eager to be ripped off again and again.

Faith not only enables good people to do evil things, but it allows good people to have evil done to them... and for them to be thankful for it! Sickening.

24. Al Gore on Reason

Comment #45908 by Dunc-uk on May 29, 2007 at 3:15 pm

I don't know if this has been mentioned in this thread yet - I'm not about to hunt through 4 pages of discussion - but the contentious slides in Als presentation are featured in the extras of the UK edition of his DVD "An Inconvenient Truth". Here the scene is subtley different from what was reported in the neurotransmission link. Note that my quotes are not exact and are from memory, but they are

He starts off by saying that he "doesn't want to get sucked into this debate" and then cracks the joke about the trial in his home town. He then says something like "but lets go along with the scientists for a minute" to a smattering of laughter. He briefly says that "faith and *evolution* are not in conflict" and then talks about the emergence of man in "it's current form roughly 190,000 years ago". I took the subsequent "Adam and Eve" text that only fleetingly appears on the screen to be metaphorical and not literal. It was a pandering to his potentially faithful audience in the hope of not discrediting his important message with their prejudices against an unrelated topic. He was avoiding the lesser issue of creationism vs evolution clouding their judgement of the more important issue of climate change.

Also, to anyone that says Al Gore is using this important issue to get elected: watch AIT and see the 20 year old footage of him banging this same drum. His election attempt would have been his opportunity to make a bigger difference on climate change, not the other way around... more's the pity he was cheated out of his chance.

I don't think Al Gore is a creationist, though I accept that he is probably a man of some sort of faith. He is however completely willing to submit to and champion a scientific explanation of events. In that sense, his book is in many ways as valid a contribution to the rational cause as any other.

Update - More can be read on Al Gores faith here : http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/e2247.htm