1. Open letter to Michael Shermer in response to his letter...

Comment #65262 by joaquinvalencia on August 23, 2007 at 11:46 am

Regarding "tactics", I have heard Dawkins (and possibly Harris) specifically state that he agrees that his tactics are not the only ones that should be used.
I have been watching "God's Warriors" on CNN and I find I can only watch 10-20 minutes at a time without becoming furious. The constant "assertions" of authority over other people in contravention of law makes me so angry that ONLY a little bit of Dawkins, Harris, or Hitchens can calm me down.
After watching "Enemies of Reason part II" and listening to Deepak Chopra pull a Ted Haggard in calling scientists "arrogant" because they insist on defining words, I decided to read Chopra's latest: "Life After Death". He goes from broad assertion to broad assertion and the closest he comes to substantiating any of his hypotheses is the occasional anecdote: "I know a guy who sometimes sees the spirits of the dead leave their bodies"...followed by 12 pages of horse$#it about astral planes and vibrations.
I'm glad someone in the public eye is standing up and calling this drivel what it is!

2. A Matter of Faith

Comment #64862 by joaquinvalencia on August 22, 2007 at 5:44 am

"...and now for the other side" Does this mean that EVERY time they interview some nut-job religionist an atheist will have the opportunity to rebut? Didn't think so!

3. Interview with Richard Dawkins

Comment #63617 by joaquinvalencia on August 15, 2007 at 5:26 am

I've just read (as much as I could stomach of) the "arguments" made by darwin2 and the counterarguments. I am not a scientist and would so enjoy some feedback on an analogy that's come to mind for the fallacy at the root of (some of) darwin2's faulty reasoning. I would like to refine this analogy. I suppose some of this could come under the umbrella of the anthropic principle, but here goes:

It would be easy to look at pebbles in a stream, and seeing how smooth they are, assume that an "agent" of some sort had polished them, many stones (most?) found on land tending to be irregular in shape and rough in texture. If we hold this belief then we fail to see that these pebbles are smooth precisely because of the irregular constant clashing with other pebbles which has taken place over countless years. Had we been present at the geological (?) beginning of the stream, we would have seen rough stones being exposed by the erosion (?) caused by the rushing of water, and then clattering against one another for years (decades?)leading to the situation we see now of smooth pebbles on the creek bed.

The universe "looks" ordered now because we have come into it "late", and the upheaval of billions and billions of years of tumult has smoothed many of the "edges" making it appear as though it was ordered all along. Had we come into the universe early on it would have seemed a total disorder, at the same time, if our part of the universe were still in the process of "smoothing out" then we would not exist because there would not be enough stability for life to have evolved into a complex enough form to be able to see what appears to be "order" in the universe.

Comments?

4. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Edd Doerr

Comment #58572 by joaquinvalencia on July 25, 2007 at 8:07 am

Hitchens: 2+2 is clearly not 5
Doerr: Many people define 5 as being 4 and therefore you are wrong when you criticize people who say that 2+2=5.

5. All the mistakes of the godly are merely metaphor

Comment #57756 by joaquinvalencia on July 20, 2007 at 10:58 pm

As a BYU attending, mission serving, married-in-the-temple, now EX mormon (and proud atheist) I can tell you that members of the LDS church do not believe in anything that can possibly be described as a metaphorical God. Their God has flesh and bone and nothing of the story of creation is allowed to be taken as metaphor by members in good standing. Period. There are MILLIONS of Mormons.
I was one of them.

Don't we have to acknowledge at some point that there is a correlation between atheism and intelligence? Yes, there are believers who are "more intelligent" than I am in the sense that they would score higher on an IQ test, but many, many believers ARE believers because they can't see through the circular and specious arguments that are presented to them as conclusive.

While not all believers are stupid, it is much easier for the stupid to believe.