1. Brown says embryo research is key to life

Comment #182300 by wolf mechanics on May 19, 2008 at 3:56 pm

Where do I sign up to offer *my* eggs for medical research? I certainly won't be needing them.

2. What do these atheists understand of religion?

Comment #67759 by wolf mechanics on September 4, 2007 at 4:22 pm

wolf mechanics, I'm at Auckland University. Unfortunately I missed this eclipse - I was in Austria with my wife and daughter, showing them the finer parts of the old Hapsburg Empire :-)

I am at Auckland Uni also; in fact I make my way "leisurely" (read: lung-burstingly, if I miss the bus) up to the Grafton campus every few weeks for medsci labs.

It's a small world :)

3. What do these atheists understand of religion?

Comment #67606 by wolf mechanics on September 4, 2007 at 2:06 am

Goldy:

The moon thing also struck a cord with me. There were numerous pictures put into the university medschool email system of the lunar eclipse seen here in NZ. Why would us scientists do that, I wonder.

Ah, another Kiwi!

I too was staring at the moon for most of that night, I had a perfect view from my living room :)

Which medschool are you at, out of curiosity?

4. Psychiatrists are the least religious of all physicians

Comment #67562 by wolf mechanics on September 3, 2007 at 7:53 pm

"Because psychiatrists take care of patients struggling with emotional, personal and relational problems," Curlin said, "the gap between the religiousness of the average psychiatrist and her average patient may make it difficult for them to connect on a human level."

So whether or not two humans can connect on a human level depends upon a superhuman imaginary friend?

5. India to charge writer Nasreen with 'hurting Muslim feelings'

Comment #67553 by wolf mechanics on September 3, 2007 at 7:26 pm

This is exactly the sort of thing that the phrase "WTF" was invented for.

Under Indian law, promoting "disharmony or feelings of enmity, hatred or ill will" between religious groups is punishable by up to three years in jail.

Even if you look past the glaring unfairness of this law only applying "between religious groups", and the fact that if you replaced this phrase with "towards all and sundry" there wouldn't be enough prisons to hold all the muslim offenders, HOW IS ISLAM NOT INHERENTLY BREAKING THIS LAW EVEN AS IT STANDS NOW?!

6. What do these atheists understand of religion?

Comment #67354 by wolf mechanics on September 3, 2007 at 5:39 am

Faith is the light of the moon above and that light in the sea, reality and spirituality

Tripe, anyone?
Clearly faith IS a disease, and it attacks Wernicke's area.

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

Comment #67222 by wolf mechanics on September 2, 2007 at 6:39 pm

Haha, the more the merrier, Lauregon!

Haiku seems to make itself up if you're trying to occupy your mind whilst walking, as it kind of matches the rhythm of walking footsteps.

Perhaps that's why I find limericks harder. It's more of a skipping rhythm - I'd probably do myself a grave injury locomoting in such a fashion.

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

Comment #67190 by wolf mechanics on September 2, 2007 at 2:52 pm

Northern Bright:

There was a young woman called Salley
Whose foes said her words didn't tally.
When asked what she thought
Of this violent onslaught,
She said, "I blame that Richard Dawkins."

Richard Morgan:

There was a reviewer called Vickers
The champion of all cherry-pickers,
Who reviewed a book
Without taking a look -
She must wear pre-twisted knickers.

HAHA! these are classic!
A book of atheist verse would be a wondrous thing indeed. Sadly I've never been much good at limericks, but I like haiku;


Argument from "We're sophisticated theologians, damn it!"

Old man in the sky?
Ha, no one *really* thinks that!
God is, um, physics.

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

Comment #67060 by wolf mechanics on September 1, 2007 at 4:22 pm

re: Wee Flea's comment, point 2:

It simply means that her brain has just imploded in public so violently that those of us on BOTH sides of the debate are wincing collectively.

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

Comment #66917 by wolf mechanics on September 1, 2007 at 2:02 am

Ah, yet another gruesome case of attempting to shoehorn the word "physics" onto a hideously misshapen appendage that it will never fit.

11. OUT Campaign Launched, 'Scarlet Letter' Shirts Now Available!

Comment #59316 by wolf mechanics on July 28, 2007 at 7:26 pm

I am an American.

The out campaign website (at the checkout page if I am not mistaken) has a British flag on which you can click to have the page in English. Aside from it not being necessary (no other language is offered), it is slightly offensive since the audience for this site is, supposedly, an international one. If I was an American "on the fence", after seeing that this website is apparently filled anti-American non-Americans, seeing the British flag as a symbol for the English language could make me go nuts!!! (Sounds stupid but you'd be surprised.)

Would this still be a cause you would whinge for had the flag on the site been an American one?

The second half of your post is just weird. The whole world is not conspiring against America. We, the rest of the English-speaking world, are not using the British flag as a symbol for the English language as a statement against America.

English is a language which does in fact hail from England. That is why it is referred to as "English". England is part of Britain. The Union Jack is more widely recognized than the English flag. Thus, the Union Jack is used as a symbol for the english language, instead of the flag from any other english-speaking country in the world. Do any Australians, Canadians or New Zealanders here feel personally insulted that their flags are not used?

As for your argument that it's unfair because the site is "supposedly international", what do you make of the fact that the US dollar comes up as the default payment option?

Who knows; maybe as outcampaign.org adds content they will use the word "favourite", construct another version of the site which uses "favorite", then add an American flag button which you use to view it.

12. 'Purity' ring case in High Court

Comment #53533 by wolf mechanics on July 2, 2007 at 12:23 am

Any kid with half an ounce of brainpower would have just worn the ring on a chain, as a necklace, hidden under their shirt.

13. The infinite wisdom of Richard Dawkins

Comment #52716 by wolf mechanics on June 27, 2007 at 10:44 pm

Is:

Paul!

If, if, if...

We say!

Is, is, is!!!

I see I have gone unheeded. IF you stick to what IS you would make a lot more sense.

Then again your if's never happened either so why should I expect mine to...

That's what I don't understand about the "Argument from Shakespearean Monkey". It seems to effectively say:

1. We are unlikely.
2. A monkey typing Hamlet would be unlikely.
3. THEREFORE, GOD EXISTS.

So... since a monkey HASN'T typed Hamlet, god does not exist?

I may as well offer this as a counter-argument: throwing an M&M into the air such that it traces a clean arc and is then caught neatly in my mouth seems to me a feat of marvellous co-ordination. Given a large number of M&Ms and a lot of time, most of them end up lodged in eyes, lost forever under furniture, or cracked on wooden floors. However, on approximately the 9108348259th attempt, the astonishing event occurs. After this, despite being encouraged by the taste of dentist's nightmares, I can't bloody do it again.

"THE LONE SUCCESS WAS A MIRACLE DIRECTED BY GOD.", I could declare. But it is clearly not: it's just that on this attempt, all factors (the amount of muscle applied to the throw, the angle of the arm, the weight of the M&M, maybe even the colour for visibility, the tilt of my head, the wind resistance, WHATEVER) were in the right place at the right time.

You will notice that neither this analogy, nor that of monkey shakespeare, actually prove anything about the origins of the universe. So why are things of this type so often trotted out as valid points?

14. The infinite wisdom of Richard Dawkins

Comment #52381 by wolf mechanics on June 26, 2007 at 11:46 pm

Imagine a monkey gets up from a typewriter and hands me a manuscript, and it is word for word Hamlet. It could just be a fluke, a one in (let me work out how many letters in Hamlet, multiply by 26 or, allowing for punctuation and numbers, 50 odd...) - well, quite a large number. What are the chances that everything would fall into place in this particular manuscript? It's possible, but a better explanation would be either that there are billions of monkeys hammering away, or that there is an intelligence behind the typing.

Or that someone dressed in a monkey suit is taking the piss!

You can't turn this argument around and point it at the designer - it just doesn't work.

That's right. The argument from design DOESN'T work when you eventually regress to the point where you are considering the designer itself, which is precisely why I, personally, am unsatisfied by it.

However, I do realise I'm taking from this paragraph a different meaning than was intended. Could you please explain what you originally meant by it? If you can't use your own argument to explain the designer itself, then what do you use?

15. The infinite wisdom of Richard Dawkins

Comment #52379 by wolf mechanics on June 26, 2007 at 11:21 pm

atheist_peace

Since the vast majority of China is Buddhist, I usually assume that Chinese immigrants here are Buddhist as well. But I often meet Chinese Christians and always wonder how Christ's imperialists got to them too.

I live in Auckland, New Zealand, and there is a large Asian population here (mostly Chinese). I was surprised to discover that many Chinese students in the same classes as me at university (biology and medical science) are christian. Taking cheap shots at the professors lecturing on evolution, declaring the "obvious" intelligent design of hearts being dissected in labs, blah blah blah.

And of course there are plenty of NZ european christians handing out their leaflets (or bombarding lecture theatres with them before classes enter), writing advertisements on the ground in chalk for christian recruitment groups disguised as other things (the scam changes weekly - "getting in shape for summer" complete with little chalk barbells drawn on the pavement, "book club" "help with exam stress" etc), directly locating lone students and then going in, sharklike, for the attack... ugh. Their sneaky approach makes my skin crawl.

16. What I Think About Evolution

Comment #46895 by wolf mechanics on June 2, 2007 at 5:24 am

It does not strike me as anti-science or anti-reason to question the philosophical presuppositions behind theories offered by scientists who, in excluding the possibility of design or purpose, venture far beyond their realm of empirical science.

Yet any card-carrying member of the god squad would strike you down as the anti-christ for questioning the philosophical presuppositions behind their "theory" of creation.

More to the point, I would argue that these nutbar ideas are the ones venturing much too far beyond their native realm of idiocy whenever they try to force their way through the door of a science classroom.