Comments by jagmarz

Comment #81573 by jagmarz on October 24, 2007 at 11:12 pm

Given that 0 = 1, all things may be proven, through nice, simple, easy to understand, but ultimately meaningless and nonsensical logic. What's not to like about religion? God exists, therefore atheists are illogical. QED. Game over. Next!

Hmm. I wrote the above trying to be sarcastic, but it's depressingly close to the original. Demonstrate to me that it's impossible (or even illogical) for the rational to arise out of the irrational; THEN we can address the rest of the question. As a counter example - roll a die and predict the result. You can't. But roll it 100 times and the sum will be extremely close to 350. Order out of chaos; rational out of irrational. It's what the universe is built on, but I suppose that's not really proof, since god created the die in the first place...

2. CBC Atheism and Humanism Documentary

Comment #77261 by jagmarz on October 8, 2007 at 10:27 pm

Didn't the kids' camp freak anyone else out?

Most of these kids aren't old enough to make Rational decisions. At their age kids should be curious, not certain! So all their testimonials are just Jesus Camp all over again from the other side.

Sad evidence of Atheist dogma, exactly what we should be avoiding.

-- Mario

3. Like any half-decent atheist, I'm fond of a bit of religion

Comment #67811 by jagmarz on September 4, 2007 at 11:06 pm

These are questions I have thought about, myself.

We have science, the established protocol for establishing knowledge. Well and good.

But that begs the question ... is knowledge all there is? How deep must our knowledge be? Is purity of knowledge sufficient? After all, we must all certainly act in the absence of absolute knowledge about anything. Worse, science is telling us it's ALL based on fantastically complex systems that are, at heart, random processes. Where's that electron now? Don't even try to talk to me about certainty!

What things can we be said to know, without being able to prove them? It seems there is a great deal that falls into this category, at least partly because we can't all know the details of everything. We can all accept, for instance, that water freezes at 0C, but ... the physics involved probably escape most people. And anyway, why should they care?

And there's the danger. Because if we get too complacent about what we can accept without proof, then we have opened ourselves up to exploitation.

Dr. Dawkins' books speak to me, mainly because I'm a liberal American who's watching his country go off the deep end. Everything that matters, everything real is in one particular edition of one ancient book -- anything which contradicts must simply be wrong. Amen. Perhaps I'm seeing a phantom menace; perhaps the devout believers aren't trying to quietly assume all the reigns; perhaps I've read too much Ludlum. Maybe all of us have.

It's been said that to fight fire, you use fire; this, I believe, is exactly Dr. Dawkins' tactic. Does it undermine the side of reason to resort to the same tactics used, seemingly so successfully, by those pushing religion? Maybe. Has it raised the ire of those same proponents? Absolutely! Has it raised the visibility of the atheism movement? No doubt there! Prof. Dawkins has repeatedly used the analogy of the gay movement in deliberately outing itself, so I think the comparison can rightly be drawn about Gay Pride parades as lightning rods, serving roughly the same function as these books. By creating an almighty splash, they draw a fantastic amount of attention and necessarily move the center of the debate a little in their direction. Even if they're being laughed at in some quarters, at least they're getting some attention, now. That's the first step.

4. Richard Dawkins at the Edinburgh Book Festival

Comment #65811 by jagmarz on August 26, 2007 at 8:44 pm

As to the final question - whom does this book convert... Well, it strikes me that, if it pushes the radical religionists even further out on their tenuous branches, so much the better. The more crazy rationalizations and arguments they make, the further they distance themselves from the mainstream, and THAT is a good thing.

-- Mario

5. I'm gonna be a MOVIE STAR

Comment #65174 by jagmarz on August 23, 2007 at 4:59 am

So here's how I see this.

They're making a movie, with a heavily biased point of view. That's their right. No complaints on that score.

They've interviewed Mr Myers under false pretenses. Well, that seems a bit slimy, but, probably, that's done all the time, too.

The question is not "Will the movie be heavily slanted in favor of ID?" - we know it will. The question is "Will they misrepresent the opinions of the interviewed?" That remains to be seen.

I've visited the website and watched the trailers. There's one clip from an anti-ID interview, but it's very short, basically saying that ID can't be considered science. Probably if it were a longer clip, the point would be clearer, but -- hey -- it's the trailer, after all.

So, we'll see.

-- Mario

6. I'm gonna be a MOVIE STAR

Comment #65118 by jagmarz on August 22, 2007 at 11:53 pm

Ben Stein is not only an actor, he's an economist and a lawyer. He also has regular columns in the American Spectator (or did; I only read it in the library), so he may even have helped fund it.

I find it a bit disturbing that members of the rational community are ready to jump all over this film, based on faith, before they even see it. Although I'm sure we all expect that they will have twisted everything PZ said, we don't KNOW that, yet.

After the film comes out, THEN will be the time to raise a stink.

Also, heads up: folks, make a personal recording of your interviews for just such situations. How interesting it might be to present a comparison of "what I said" vs "what they included".

-- Mario

7. The Bible's literary sins

Comment #63273 by jagmarz on August 13, 2007 at 7:04 pm

I once tried slogging through the Bible, and (egregiously skipping all the begats), got as far as the Exodus, where Moses (and his family) were the only ones allowed to own wealth. At that point, I though "hmm, pretty good scam" and just couldn't go on.

8. Scientist Build a 'Brain' From Rat Cells

Comment #53235 by jagmarz on June 30, 2007 at 8:03 am

I *hate* not being able to condense these thoughts more clearly. But this article seems like a good backdrop for the question:

Where does evolution go from here? Will homo sapiens be replaced (seems logical from the historical record)? By what? Descendants of ours? Creations of ours?

It seems that the purely biological processes of evolution are now essentially dead, thanks in large part to modern medicine.

So that leaves... cultural evolution? technological evolution? genetic engineering?

I've read science fiction for as long as I can remember, and always cheered for the disenfranchised robots or artificial persons, with some sense of safety since these were comfortably far in the future.

Now, I'm not so sure.

However it is that we got here, it now seems inevitable that we'll be the Designers for the future. Isn't that ironic?