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Comments by j.mills


1. Group Asks for Divine Intervention to Ease Oil Prices

Comment #204151 by j.mills on July 4, 2008 at 8:39 am

If Yanks pray for lower prices, and Saudis pray for higher prices, how does god decide? I'm inclined to think he'll camouflage his intervention so cunningly that it will be indistinguishable from the normal operation of the markets...

(What happens if enough people pray for there to be no god?)

2. Sharia law 'could have UK role'

Comment #204144 by j.mills on July 4, 2008 at 8:31 am

As I understand it, voluntary mediation under Sharia law already exists and so long as it IS voluntary and doesn't conflict with the REAL law, it seems no more objectionable than going to counselling or arbitration.

That seems to be all that Lord Phillips and Rowan Williams mean, and if so, rather than it going too far, I'm wondering why they bothered opening their mouths and causing a storm in a teacup. The obvious backlash to their comments means they've probably done more harm than good.

Incidentally, Nova, many British Muslims were born here - probably most by now. They're as entitled as any other citizen to seek a change in the law, and since they generally AREN'T seeking that and represent only about 4% of the UK population anyway, it's not going to happen. Islam may present stuff to worry about, but this isn't it.

3. New Zealand man sells his soul to 'Hell'

Comment #204076 by j.mills on July 4, 2008 at 5:08 am

Limerick Summary News Service!

A New Zealander traded his soul
For thirty-eight hundred dollars, that's all.
Instead of baking in Hell,
He'll sniff the fine baking smell
Of eternity's long pizza hall!

4. Former state science director sues over intelligent design e-mail

Comment #203533 by j.mills on July 3, 2008 at 5:21 am

Hobbit said:

When I tried to explain that those who innocuously believe in the sky fairy empower those who then go on to do evils things in the name of their particular sky fairy, he got very upset and told me I was being disrespectful of others beliefs.


Common misunderstanding. Courtesy obliges me to respect your RIGHT to hold absurd beliefs. No reason I should respect the beliefs themselves, particularly when they are asserted without evidence.

5. Aliens need Christ's redemption, too

Comment #202208 by j.mills on July 1, 2008 at 3:37 am

God cannot make a universe so large that He gets lost inside it.


So not omnipotent after all then.

This weary geezer seems to think SF is failed theology. If anything, it's the opposite.

6. Saving Us from Darwin

Comment #192454 by j.mills on June 13, 2008 at 5:09 am

A model of clear exposition. Great writing.

(Is this the same guy who wrote The Pooh Perplex?)

7. New Online Survey

Comment #191598 by j.mills on June 11, 2008 at 9:33 am

Haven't had time for this yet. But I hate poor design and inapplicable answer options in questionnaires. I had to fill in a 3-page form to get a new wheelie bin(!), and it asked:

How long has your bin been missing?
(a) less than 5 days
(b) more than 5 days
(c) other

"Other"?! I could only assume it meant EXACTLY 5 days!

Pardon me. [/rant]

8. Opponents of Evolution Adopting a New Strategy

Comment #189027 by j.mills on June 5, 2008 at 8:21 am

Weaknesses in evolutionary theory? By all means give students an overview of the debate around punctuated equilibrium, or whether there is any meaningful form of group selection other than kin selection. It's a bit advanced and time-consuming for high school, especially if you also apply the policy to gravity, quantum, religious studies, etc. But I've no objection in principle.

Or am I missing something? [Innocent blink.] Is that not what they meant? Did they mean, some christians would prefer this not to be true? 'Cause I've gotta think that's not really a weakness of evolutionary theory, more a weakness of reasoning among those christians.

9. The Great Evangelical Decline

Comment #189000 by j.mills on June 5, 2008 at 7:34 am

Whether evangelical intransigence is pleasing to God isn't anything that humans can ever be absolutely sure of. If it is pleasing to him, God may send a great revival that will sweep the country and restore them to their place of predominance.

(Put aside why you'd believe there's a god.) If it is possible for Man to act against the will of god, how could we attribute anything to god's 'pleasure'? Who's to say s/he/it doesn't hate revivals and cherish Hindoos and atheists?

Contrarily, if it is not possible to act against the will of god, there goes free will and sin, and everything must be what god wants.

"If it is pleasing to him, God may..." - not exactly a readily falsifiable hypothesis, is it? "If he likes string, he may also like drawing in the sand."

See, this is - not to go on, but - this is a little-mentioned leap of logic in the theist case. EVEN IF there's a god, and EVEN IF god 'wrote' the Bible (or whatever scripture), and EVEN IF everyone could agree on its message, that STILL wouldn't demonstrate that following 'the message' of the Bible was what god wanted of people.

If the scientific conclusion from the evidence all over god's universe (expansion of space, fossils, geology) is not to be relied upon, on what basis should the Bible itself be privileged? It's just as likely to be a lie, a joke, a test, as is archeopteryx. In the absence of evidence, god must be unknowable, and all theology just wild (you can't even say, "informed") speculation.

10. Darwin still causing waves after 150 years

Comment #188977 by j.mills on June 5, 2008 at 5:25 am

I think KRKBAB (#28) has a point. Stuff like The Ancestor's Tale is fascinating to us pop-science gluttons but intimidating to those who don't even read their own Bible.

For my money, the best Dawkins book for beginners is River Out Of Eden, which was written for the Science Masters series of introductory texts. Even that isn't a pocket-sized tract that could be handed out at the door of the temple. The Ladybird Book of Natural Selection is what we need! :)

11. The Great Evangelical Decline

Comment #188973 by j.mills on June 5, 2008 at 5:02 am

Just on this discrepancy between the apparent decline in evangelical membership and the strident public voice of creationism etc; a quote from a novel by John Crowley:

Secret societies have not had influence in history. However, the notion that secret societies have had influence in history has had influence in history.

Something to chew on there. And if that doesn't keep you awake, chew on this:

E.T. plus Vangelis = EVangelisT!

Spooky, huh?

12. Character Attacks: How to Properly Apply the Ad Hominem

Comment #188153 by j.mills on June 3, 2008 at 9:25 am

Al-rawandi, is that supposed to be some ironic ad-hominem gag or did you not read the article above? How would it be relevant to scooternyc's comment if Dershowitz was a plagiarist?

13. When two worlds collide: threat of class warfare over faith-based schooling

Comment #188141 by j.mills on June 3, 2008 at 9:07 am

@Ramases: you can start at http://www.antiacademies.org.uk/ - which, as the address suggests, takes a position.

Here's the process. The Govt wants academies (g*d only knows why), so it pressures county councils to convert schools. This may be by merging schools, often with a completely new building or at the least massive refurbishment. All schools in England (UK?) are going to benefit from a wave of funding called Building Schools For The Future (BSF), and the Govt is known to be telling counties that they'll go to the end of the queue for BSF unless they 'consider' (= accept) an academy or two. Blackmail, basically.

Counties roll over and ask for sponsors. A sponsor for an academy can be anyone, basically, so long as they can put a bid together including £1.5m to go into an endowment. This can be supplied over 5 years and the school gets only the interest, so it's a pittance really. (If you're a university who wants to be a sponsor, I think the endowment is waived altogether!)

Once all the decisions have been made, a lip-service consultation process is gone through (stage-managed 'debates', biased questionnaires, one-sided information). There have actually been successes in delaying academies through protest at this point, though I don't know if any academies have been quashed outright. I think some plans have fallen through for want of a sponsor.

ULT is the biggest sponsor so far, with a dozen or so academies - more secondary schools (with sixth forms) than many a local authority. The proposed sponsor for an academy in Preston was Carphone Warehouse. Dixons sponsored one, then pulled out, leaving the county to pick up the tab. That Vardy creationist car-dealer fellow has an academy or two.

Once the go-ahead is given, capital costs (mainly for building) of typically £25m are supplied by Govt, along with an extra £1m-ish per year for the first 4 years. The Govt continues to pay all the school's running costs forever. Note the massive inequity this creates with neighbouring schools. (In my borough there are 5 other secondaries - which means all that money will be squandered on just 20% of children, while the rest will inevitably feel second-class.)

Admissions criteria, exclusion policy, what subjects and qualifications to teach, staff pay and conditions, can all be set by the sponsor, who can also decide whether to bother accepting special needs students. (Staff transferring have protected conditions, but only until they accept a change, such as a promotion, for which they'll have to move to the sponsor's own contract.) Academies, as private organisations, are exempt from most education law, including the Freedom of Information Act (!) - which means it is incredibly difficult for researchers to find out what these schools are teaching.

Attainment improvements so far have been paltry, and easily attributed to the huge funding and policy freedoms rather than to 'innovative' private sector leadership. Indeed, the Govt has routinely had to send in its experts to get academies on track - at further expense.

Before the first dozen academies had reached any exam results, Blair expanded the scheme to 200 academies. Before any cohort of students had been through a 5-year cycle in an academy, he expanded it to the new target of 400 - about 10% of UK secondary schools.

The school I'm at will become an academy "open to all faiths and none", but "with a religious character". RE lessons will be "mainly Christian", Christian festivals will be celebrated and all students and staff will be expected to subscribe to the academy's "Christian values" - respect, service, hard work, discipline and compassion. Anybody know where in the Bible that list comes from?! Me neither. The co-opting and re-branding of ordinary aspirations as "Christian values" is something I find particularly galling - is there a school in the world that wouldn't support those 'values'?

If you're really interested, there's a PriceWaterhouse Coopers report, a National Audit Office report and a Select Committee report, variously critical, all online on Govt sites. I expect you've enough to be going on with...

(Oh, here's an MPs Committee of Enquiry report: http://www.antiacademies.org.uk/downloads/MPs-report.pdf )

14. When two worlds collide: threat of class warfare over faith-based schooling

Comment #188024 by j.mills on June 3, 2008 at 6:57 am

Haven't had time to read everybody's posts, but wanted to tell you about my workplace. It's a secondary comprehensive school in the UK and in September it will become an Academy. This means that the government will throw (typically) £30m at it, and continue to pay the running costs, whilst freeing it from the sensible restrictions applied to state schools (admissions, exclusions, staff conditions, curriculum) and handing over control to a private sponsor.

It's a bonkers scheme that is quietly ripping through the UK education system. The sponsor in this case (as in many) is a religious organisation, United Learning Trust, essentially a CoE charity (which puts no money in!).

The county council sold this scheme to the public (to release government funding for other projects) as Promoting choice and diversity. Yet the school is right next to an existing CoE secondary school, and two miles away from any other secondary school in any direction! Where before you had one faith-based school beside a 'secular' one, now you will have two faith-based ones. So much for promoting diversity. (A bankrupt goal in the first place.)

Bugger choice: give me excellence.

(Meanwhile I'm taking a severance payment and scarpering. Yuck!)

15. Character Attacks: How to Properly Apply the Ad Hominem

Comment #187988 by j.mills on June 3, 2008 at 5:39 am

This article just seems like a statement of the bleedin' obvious.

After 9/11, someone told Bush that "This is the time for wisdom, not power." I thought that had merit; didn't matter in the slightest that it was Saddam who said it, but that was used as argument to dismiss it. (Who needs wisdom anyway?)

You concentrate on what's being said, not who's saying it, otherwise you end up with squalid squabbles at Prime Minister's Question Time and tin-pot 3rd-world dictators 'disappearing' their dissidents. I might enjoy it when Hitchens derides his opponents, but it isn't really adding to the debate. One's aspiration should always be to address the argument, not the speaker.

16. Random Acts of Evolution

Comment #187472 by j.mills on June 2, 2008 at 7:50 am

Does anyone of a biological bent know what it COSTS us to carry around all that junk? I realise that DNA makes up only a tiny fraction of each cell, but then again we have trillions of cells. Does a lot of our food go into maintaining freeloading genes, or is the resource requirement trivial?

17. 'Uncontacted tribe' sighted in Amazon

Comment #187399 by j.mills on June 2, 2008 at 5:13 am

Unusually for this site, there's precious little comment about religion in this thread - their religion. It's entirely possible there are no atheists in their tribe, and simply seeing different people with different languages and behaviour, with all this cool stuff but no gods (or different ones), may be difficult for them to deal with. Seeing how big the world is must dimish their own universe and everything they've believed up to this point.

Their vulnerability to disease is probably the biggest concern, but the psychological effect of expanding their universe is not trivial. It's not like us meeting aliens because we're open to the possibility already.

I don't have an answer as to whether they should be contacted. Maybe their women are oppressed and need to know about their human rights! But I do think that if they are contacted, even if the individuals survive the diseases and culture shock, their culture itself is a goner, destined to become a quaint relic at best. It's a decision to value individuals over societies - the needs of the one over the needs of the many, to slip in another Star Trek reference!

18. Storm erupts over 'virginity' divorce

Comment #186361 by j.mills on May 30, 2008 at 8:00 am

Well, I expect none of us will have much sympathy for the groom here, but it's worth noting that he hasn't only discovered his wife's not a virgin: he's also discovered that even before they're married she's lied to him about something she knew was important to him. Maybe not well matched from square one...

19. Synthetic Copycat Of Living Cell Underway: Life, But Not As We Know It?

Comment #186270 by j.mills on May 30, 2008 at 3:17 am

Honestly, aren't there enough cells in the world already? Skin cells, brain cells, stem cells, sex sells, terrorist cells, death sells, Microsoft Excels, selsa dip?

It's really just a capsule, a shell. Doesn't say what scale the picture is. Blue hot dogs could be very marketable. "Synthetic cell shell sells!"

20. Fossil reveals oldest live birth

Comment #186245 by j.mills on May 30, 2008 at 2:35 am

Limerick Summary News Service!

An archangel must have cut with a sword
This fish's umbilical cord.
As his cut made two fish,
Gabriel made a wish:
"Keep creating joke fossils, oh Lord!"

21. Fossil reveals oldest live birth

Comment #186232 by j.mills on May 30, 2008 at 2:00 am

Sounds a bit fishy to me.

(I'm here all week, folks.)

22. Mark Steyn vs. the 'Sock Puppets'

Comment #185914 by j.mills on May 29, 2008 at 4:40 am

Human rights are a vital instrument for defining a space of free action around each citizen that the state cannot intrude upon. They mark a genuine step forward in the progress of civilisation.

But there is no right not to be offended, and there is a right to free speech. This case seems way, way off what the relevant legislation must have been intended for. Whether there is ever an argument for quashing "hate speech" is a difficult question for society to haggle over, but this case is plainly not in that category. It gives Canada a bad name.

23. Religion is a product of evolution, software suggests

Comment #185169 by j.mills on May 27, 2008 at 6:16 am

This focusses on a putative gene for evangelising. The Dennettian approach is to focus on the structure of the information evangelised - does the transmitted content facilitate its further transmission? If you're looking for a genetic component, I'd say look at our susceptibility to information, be it good or dud.

24. Top 6 Incestuous Relationships In The Bible

Comment #185165 by j.mills on May 27, 2008 at 6:07 am

And Cain knew his wife, and she conceived, and brought forth Henoch: and he built a city, and called the name thereof by the name of his son Henoch.


Kinda keen, Cain, ain't he? Building an entire city when the world population is, like, six?

25. Animal Science Without Evolution

Comment #185144 by j.mills on May 27, 2008 at 4:42 am

In reference to finding a term for religious people in denial, Nalfeshnee said:

I propose: DEVOLUTIONIST.

"devolution" means "the handing off of power to a central authority".


No. It means handing off power FROM a central authority - government relinquishing some of its power to regional or local levels. The notion is about smaller and smaller groups taking responsibility for decisions. As such, it's wholly inappropriate as a description for dogmatists following a pope, priest, book or deity.

"Deludee", the original suggestion, is nicely neutral. "Worshippers" also captures the submissive mindset.

26. The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing, ed. Richard Dawkins

Comment #180958 by j.mills on May 16, 2008 at 7:55 am

I found it an elegant and interesting book, though oddly structured in having mostly biology in the first half and much more emphasis on hard sciences in the second. Didn't actually learn a great deal (or if I did I've forgotten it all!), but it's very enjoyable.

27. Churchgoing on its knees as Christianity falls out of favour

Comment #177406 by j.mills on May 9, 2008 at 3:34 am

the Prince of Wales who, on his Coronation, hopes to become Defender of Faith rather than Defender of the Faith.


This is deeply weird. Surely faith in 30 million Hindu deities is as threatening to Christianity as atheism is. What does Chuck want to defend, the right to believe any old tosh, as if this is inherently better than the unbelief of those spoilsport atheists?

This is another example of disparate and incompatible religions incoherently making common cause only in their opposition to atheism, as if that alone actually meant their beliefs had something in common.

(Good letter, Barry!)

28. The History Channel might do something right

Comment #176279 by j.mills on May 7, 2008 at 4:52 am

The blurb sounds sensationalist to me. (Would it hurt them to say "95% of ANIMAL species"?) Isn't Dawkins working on an evolution series? That's probably the one to look out for.

I'm always kinda disappointed by those fabulous Attenborough BBC wildlife shows, "The Blue Planet", "Life On Earth", etc. They present lots of wonderful footage but they're less good at hammering home the messages, perhaps aiming too low. I'd welcome some computer graphics in those things - not CGI dogfights and rendered dinosaurs, but evolutionary trees and simulations of DNA replication.

As for science movies - "An Inconvenient Truth" was pretty good and did well.

29. Is Liberal Catholicism Dead?

Comment #175884 by j.mills on May 6, 2008 at 7:46 am

Limerick Summary News Service!

Liberalist Catholics decline!
See the counter-intuitive sign:
"The child abuse scare
Demonstrates that we were
Not sufficiently hard in our line!"

30. Neanderthals were separate species, new study finds

Comment #175807 by j.mills on May 6, 2008 at 5:06 am

Limerick Summary News Service!

Sunday's organigram teaches
Neanderthals were a quite separate species.
Did we kill them all off
With a spear or a cough,
Or sidle up and invade their warm niches?
(Ooer, missus!)

31. Tyrannosaurus rex protein proves dinosaurs evolved into birds

Comment #168589 by j.mills on April 25, 2008 at 8:16 am

Limerick Summary News Service!

Big reptiles like T-Rex and Steg
Carried plenty of meat on the leg.
Hence the modern-day chicken
Is quite finger-lickin'
As breast, goujon, nugget or egg.

(Please note that this limerick excludes the role of selective breeding, growth hormones, force-feeding, tailored environment, intensive farming methodology and secret spice recipes.)

32. Student's 'Be Happy, Not Gay' t-shirt ok

Comment #168544 by j.mills on April 25, 2008 at 7:38 am

I once saw a chap walking through the centre of Manchester, turning heads all the way with his T-shirt. I think it was from a Motley Crue tour. It was baggy and black, and in huge white letters it said (without asterisk!): JESUS WAS A C*NT.

Now, that would test the school's freedom of speech policy! :)

33. Humans nearly wiped out 70,000 years ago, study says

Comment #168528 by j.mills on April 25, 2008 at 7:26 am

Studies using mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down through mothers, have traced modern humans to a single "mitochondrial Eve," who lived in Africa about 200,000 years ago.


This is phrased as if mEve was a discovery rather than a logical inevitability. Yankee slant, I fancy.

2000 humans, though. A situation ripe for drama. Why doesn't Hollywood realise that good science makes better movies than bad science?

34. Yoko Ono sues over use of John Lennon videos

Comment #168519 by j.mills on April 25, 2008 at 7:21 am

I wouldn't want to see Expelled stopped if they are within their rights; but if, as I hope and suspect, they're in breach of the law, then f*ck 'em! :)

35. If God Is Dead, Who Gets His House?

Comment #165706 by j.mills on April 22, 2008 at 4:28 am

Here we are again. Atheist just means not believing in gods. It's entirely possible (if unlikely) to be an atheist who thinks evolution is wrong, or that the earth is flat, or that it's okay to have sex with children, like many a priest.

The characteristic that defines a group is the only characteristic necessarily shared by all members of the group. Atheists are at least as diverse as other groups. If some of us are humanists, then they're free to gather as humanists; if fascists, then let them gather as fascists. Nothing unites atheists beyond atheism - just look at the diversity of posts above. Can't found a church on nothing.

36. Resentment Over Darwin Evolves Into a Documentary

Comment #165654 by j.mills on April 22, 2008 at 1:41 am

Directed by Nathan Frankowski

How come we never hear this guy defending his movie anyway? In the Scientific American interview, producer Mark Mathis kept hiding behind the 'fact' that he didn't make the editorial decisions. So why don't we hear about the guy who did giving an account of himself?

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

Comment #165647 by j.mills on April 22, 2008 at 1:21 am

al-rawandi said (sarcaaastically):

And the solution, of course, is to make the Muslim world more like 7th Century Arabia, and all will be well.


Actually, that seems to have been a better environment for science than the present-day Middle East. Roll on the Dark Ages!

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

Comment #165187 by j.mills on April 21, 2008 at 7:31 am

They also called the Arab governments to abandon the new world maps "because they are forged to serve Western interests."


To be fair, there is the old complaint that world maps typically plonk Europe in the middle - not only horizontally, but vertically, since the commonplace Mercator's Projection can't show the poles and usually cuts off more south than north (who cares about Antarctica?).

Mercator also grossly distorted size to preserve shape, for reasons important to 16th century navigators, and as it happens this broadly diminishes the apparent size of the poorer countries. None of that was done with political intent, but it may be that the continued prevalence of that acclaimed projection is partly down to unconscious political effects.

The famous Peters Projection and other equal-area projections are a response to this, trying to put the countries of the world in a clearer perspective. (Even made it to an episode of West Wing!) It's a better map for the classroom wall.

But the best place to get your view of the world is a globe.

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

Comment #165173 by j.mills on April 21, 2008 at 7:09 am

A group of Islamic scholars presented on Saturday "scientific evidence" to prove that Mecca was the core of that the zero longitude passes through the holy city and not through Greenwich in the UK.


Switzerland-based inventor patents a 'cuckoo' clock... I await the 'proof' with interest! I'm reminded of Hitchens' comment that you can't argue against such statements, only underline them.

(Hey, I got first post! :) )

40. Evolution exhibit shows why nobody's perfect

Comment #165170 by j.mills on April 21, 2008 at 7:04 am

Doesn't Philadelphia mean 'city of brotherly love'? Kind of appropriate for an exhibition of our ancestry. Tell me when it reaches Accrington. :)

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

Comment #162656 by j.mills on April 17, 2008 at 7:15 am

Experimenting with turning off the italics:

Ah, that worked. It just needs closure (don't we all?), in the form of angle brackets around "/i".

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

Comment #162597 by j.mills on April 17, 2008 at 5:49 am

"Not only does she feel the need to license the song out, she probably held out for the highest bidder."


What does Boyce mean? Were there lots of creationists bidding to use "Imagine" in their own movies?? Are there more on the way?!

43. Evolution fray attracts top scientist

Comment #162453 by j.mills on April 17, 2008 at 2:12 am

Ulp! Sorry about the italics! Too late to edit my post.

44. Evolution fray attracts top scientist

Comment #162441 by j.mills on April 17, 2008 at 1:32 am

As long as a few specialists in key positions think correctly, everyone else can pretty much believe as they like about evolution and origins.

Sad but true. I guess some people secretly think they aren't capable of understanding all that high-falutin' science, and one of the attractions of ID/creationism is that it's so simplistic (=dumb) that anyone can understand it.

It's a shame that more people don't pick up a pop-science book and have a go, because you don't need to be a scientist to be enlightened and exhilarated by, for instance, The Selfish Gene. I don't think people come away from their education with the confidence to try expanding their minds: it's easier to make a self-deprecating joke of your own ignorance than to risk the humiliation of trying and failing to understand.

People need to be enthused!

45. Victims: Pope Benedict Protects Accused Pedophile Bishops

Comment #162013 by j.mills on April 16, 2008 at 2:09 am

Why is the Catholic church against child abuse? I don't remember any condemnation of it in the Bible - on the contrary, if anything.

Granted it's against the LAW of course, but then so is driving over the speed limit, and there's no push from the Vatican to root out the speeding bishops.

So has the Vatican decided that something is wrong even though there's no word from God on the matter? Whither now, 'absolute universal morality'?

46. Science Debate 2008

Comment #161349 by j.mills on April 15, 2008 at 7:39 am

It would be nice to think that candidates would have credible and informed views on the importance of science, and some idea of what they would fund or prioritise, even if they don't know an enzyme from an enema. They should have a position on how it's taught and what it means for contrary religious beliefs.

But it's not obviously in their interests to clarify their positions...

47. The books that inspire me

Comment #158187 by j.mills on April 10, 2008 at 7:33 am

sheepscarer said:

If Hitler had written a great literary novel, would it be lauded as such?


Norman Spinrad's novel "The Iron Dream" is supposedly written by Adolf Hitler, in an alternate universe where he emigrated to the US and became a hack science-fiction writer instead of a dictator. A very eccentric and interesting book, with an essay about it tagged on, written by a fictional academic. (Thus Spinrad gets to satirise both Hitler and academia.)

(Mind you, if you only ever read one Norman Spinrad novel, make it "Russian Spring".)

48. German Church admits aiding Nazis

Comment #158178 by j.mills on April 10, 2008 at 7:17 am

Alfonso's bleak conclusion reminds me of Roger Waters' lyric:

Can't
. you
. see?
It all makes perfect sense
Expressed in dollars and cents,
Pounds, shillings and pence.
Can't you see?
It all makes perfect sense.

("Amused To Death", fantastic album.)

49. Commentary: Democrats finally getting religion on religion

Comment #158159 by j.mills on April 10, 2008 at 6:48 am

Well, plus, ya know, call me a pedant, but ain't prostitution still illegal in the UK? Whether it should be is another debate, but while it is I think we're entitled to be interested when an MP breaks the law... (See Cameron's comedy wrong-way cycling, for another example.)

50. German Church admits aiding Nazis

Comment #158131 by j.mills on April 10, 2008 at 5:41 am

Hitler was an avowed Occultist and Ariosophist. There is no reason to believe that he was a Catholic or even a Christian.


Er, apart from his repeated declarations of his Christianity?

Falcon, if what a person SAYS is their religion cannot be taken as, uh, 'gospel', then how on earth DO you determine a person's religion? Two people who believe themselves Christian can have wildly different views on (for instance) God's take on homosexuality.

My point is that there's no consensus benchmark of values that you could use to check if a person's deeds correlated with a particular religion. So surely if Hitler says he's a Christian, he's a Christian? If that's not so, then what criteria DO you use?

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