1. Daniel Dennett: Autobiography (Part 1)

Comment #221820 by huxley_leopard on July 30, 2008 at 7:14 am

Yadsmood, I realise that. But a philosopher has to be revolutionary in order to make any contribution at all, whereas any engineer just has to be competent to make a significant and noteworthy contribution to society.

2. Daniel Dennett: Autobiography (Part 1)

Comment #221784 by huxley_leopard on July 30, 2008 at 5:54 am

j.mills - interesting point, thankyou.

If philosophy is "questions that can't be answered", they should at least be questions that may be answered one day in the future, i.e. phrased in such a way as to make them testable should the necessary experimental apparatus be developed.

Developing ways in which to test the hypotheses that are the result of philosophical musings is possibly a much greater challenge!

The attitude of some philosophers, happily become rarer under the influence of those like Dennett, that science is somehow irrelevant to philosophy seems very stupid to me.

Has anyone seen the film made in CERN with John Berger discussing quantum physics with scientists? It's really good.

3. Daniel Dennett: Autobiography (Part 1)

Comment #221753 by huxley_leopard on July 30, 2008 at 4:25 am

Yadsmood - I don't think we disagree about the contribution of DD. I was being deliberately belligerent in the hope of a response.

But saying, "There are not many engineers who can boast of having rendered humanity such a valuable service." however, is a bit over the top, don't you think? Replace humanity with neuroscience and you might have a point. What have engineers done for us apart from basically everything that has improved our lives in any tangible fashion throughout the whole of history? If philosophers stopped philosophising tomorrow, would the world grind to a halt, would scientists lose the ability to think about their own findings, would we all lose our ethical compass? Probably not, but for sure the world wouldn't last very long without engineers to keep everything going.

My argument was not that philosophers are useless (although a lot of them probably are), rather that when they are useful, you could probably describe what they are doing in a more appropriate way than 'philosophy'. If they are thinking and coming up with ideas/hypotheses based on evidence, it sounds more like they are being scientists.

4. Daniel Dennett: Autobiography (Part 1)

Comment #221663 by huxley_leopard on July 30, 2008 at 1:26 am

Scep, I think you're right.

Let me go a little further: philosophy just vanishes up its own arse.

Philosophy has not advanced beyond arguing about fundamentals - platonists still argue with aristotleians. Science gets somewhere. Engineers build useful things with that knowledge.

The only advances in philosophy are really when:
- they 'discover' that the scope of philosophy should be reduced (e.g. Wittgenstein - he should have stuck to teaching or architecture he might have been a little happier instead of being miserable and torturing students),
- they just sit back and think about the ramifications of new scientific discoveries, e.g. in how the brain works (this is reactive and doesn't discover anything new and often scientists, or philosophers with scientific backgrounds, do this best),
- they write about what people have done or thought about in the past (this is really History, e.g. Kuhn was really a historian)

The only worthwhile discovery philosophers have made that I can think of was possibly the scientific method, and it is arguable whether they weren't just 'discovering' something scientists were doing already.

I think philosophy isn't a subject and all these clever people should go do something worthwhile, even sociology would be a step up!!!!

Imagine what Dennett might have done if he had become an engineer.

5. The Flea Delusion

Comment #198032 by huxley_leopard on June 23, 2008 at 4:36 am

To paraphrase Rowan Atkinson:

We must not have delusion,
We must be delusionless,
We must exhibit delusionlessness,
We must not be delusionlessnessless...
Because we don't want to end up, do we, like the blind man in the dark room, looking for the black cat… that isn't there.

6. Tribute to a Beloved Mentor

Comment #184292 by huxley_leopard on May 24, 2008 at 10:32 am

Those of us who have undertaken research will know what a lonely road it is. Getting the attention of supervisors is the greatest challenge and you can sometimes feel like the lowest priority on their incredibly busy schedules. Today's academics are under enormous pressure to publish in peer-reviewed journals and to travel all over the world to attend conferences and seminars, otherwise their funding may be cut - a slippery slope from which it is difficult to return. It's a very harsh world in which the postgrads and undergrads are the innocent victims.

We all need to bounce ideas off people. We need people to read what we've written and give encouragement. We need to feel we may be on the right track. It sounds like Michael Cullen understood this and was very generous with his time to help others. The people who were his colleagues and students were certainly very lucky to have him.

7. Richard Dawkins discusses Einstein's new letters

Comment #182069 by huxley_leopard on May 19, 2008 at 7:28 am

An imaginary blog/forum post in 50 years' time:

It is not clear that Dawkins was indeed an atheist. An analysis of his diaries shows that there were days when he spent literally hours without professing a disbelief in God. We must allow, therefore, that there is a possibility that he may have had doubts about his atheism during those hours, the improbable impossibility being preferable to the probably possibility as Aristotle might have said. Indeed, some unofficial biographers and self-appointed Intelligent Dawkinism (ID) experts at the Douchebaggery Institute have speculated that he may have been placed on Earth by God in order to test the faith of others, and that God ended his life abruptly at the age of 114 precisely because he was rather too effective and things had got a little out of hand. Perhaps he had misunderstood what God meant by 'test'.

In conclusion, ladies and jellyspoons, Dawkins, though he clearly stated on several if not millions of times that he was an atheist and thought God(s) distasteful and a damaging meme self-inflicted on the human race, and campaigned against it(them), there is the very real if not totally unbelievable possibility that he may have once, in secret, believed something about a kind of God/wonder of nature about which we can only imagine.





Wicked, I know. Hope RD doesn't take offence...

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

Comment #182010 by huxley_leopard on May 19, 2008 at 5:38 am

ADParker - if RD is writing a children's book, my vote goes to Quentin Blake to do the illustrations! And maybe he can ask Michael Rosen to help with the text?

http://www.quentinblake.com/index.html

http://www.michaelrosen.co.uk/

9. Richard Dawkins Responds to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Comment #181983 by huxley_leopard on May 19, 2008 at 3:03 am

I just wrote a long comment and it got lost in the interweb ether...

In short i said:

1. People like Hitler get to power and manipulate the masses. Saying he was nuts or that the Nazis were all crazy is wrong and lets them off the hook. They just tapped into pre-existing antisemitism, xenophobia and, well, everyone would like to think they are superior to those guys next door.

2. To have a well-functioning, tolerant, democracy one needs enough freethinking people who make their own minds up about things, who are able to criticise the government or anyone who wants to be the government.

3. Where do we get more of these people? Surely we need as many as we can get?

4. People with a faith can be reasonable, tolerant, freethinking people when it comes to other areas of their lives (e.g. politics), but is it good to compartmentalise like this? Surely it is a weakness that can be exploited?

5. In my opinion, to save the world we need as many people as possible to be freethinkers, and for them to be able to put forward their arguments, or be able to question those that do.

10. Richard Dawkins on The Big Questions

Comment #159864 by huxley_leopard on April 13, 2008 at 9:27 am

I liked the rabbi.

If I ever have to come back as a religious person, I think I'll be jewish.

11. Happy Birthday, Richard Dawkins!

Comment #150160 by huxley_leopard on March 26, 2008 at 1:58 pm

Happy birthday Professor Dawkins!

Best Wishes, Hux.

12. Sharia fiasco

Comment #125055 by huxley_leopard on February 10, 2008 at 8:49 pm

The problem in the UK is that the Church of England has special privileges - for example being the 'state religion', having considerable political influence, owning large tracts of land and having the right to run faith schools. No surprise then that when other religions gain a voice they start demanding similar rights. They want their own schools, their own special privileges (e.g. ability to do legal marriages, the muezzin call to prayer - well, church bells are rung so if we allow that we haven't a leg to stand on have we?) And the Church of England has to either support them or be seen as hypocritical. At least Rowan Williams is not being a hypocrite... if he were against special privileges for other religions he would have to give up his own.

The evolved modern ethical consensus in Britain holds certain values dear, and let's not forget, these have been hard won over many years of struggle, and amongst these are:

Equality.
Freedom of expression.
Freedom to pursue one's religion free from persecution.

Here we have a situation - the mooted possibility of introducing sharia law in the UK, where clearly a literal implementation of sharia law would take us back to the dark ages. However, if it were abridged to only include those aspects which would be acceptable to the evolved modern ethical consensus, then presumably it would be pretty similar to what we have already - so what would be the point?

Luckily, the Church of England is not calling for Leviticus to be made statute, and apart from the odd nutter blaming floods on gays, it is pretty harmless and C of E schools tend to be run quite well, and church music is rather nice, and so are christmas carol services, so it is hard to say too harsh a bad word against them. Unfortunately, affording them privileges opens the doors to anyone else who wants the same for their own religion.

If we had a properly secular society with a proper division between church and state, then this whole mess could be avoided. No, you can't have your own schools because no-one is allowed their own schools to indoctrinate children at the taxpayer's expense. No, you can't broadcast the call to prayer across the city 4 times a day or ring the bloody church bells for hours because no-one has the right to make that much noise and disturb the peace and quiet of the rest of the community. No, you can't have your own laws or special status because no-one is allowed to, we have a bunch of laws we have developed over centuries and kept up to date with current trends that people we have voted for have created and that we mostly all agree on and that is the way things are done round here. No, you can't beat your wife or burn your daughter to death or tell you children they'll go to hell if they aren't good just because that is what it says in your holy book - your right to pursue your religion has limits when it infringes on the rights of others.

Religion as the source of morality and goodness? I think this proposition has been utterly refuted.

13. Richard Dawkins on The Late Edition with Marcus Brigstocke

Comment #116668 by huxley_leopard on January 27, 2008 at 2:46 am

Haven't seen the show yet because I can't get streaming video at work.

Just wanted to say I think kev_s (post 106) is right on the money. Ridicule those in positions of undeserved authority, ridicule the absurd beliefs, ridicule the institutions, but don't ridicule the individual misguided followers. "There but for the grace of scientific education go I".

14. U.S. Congress Recognizing the importance of Christmas and the Christian faith

Comment #99201 by huxley_leopard on December 15, 2007 at 10:06 pm

Pob said:

I am surprised that this forum is not expressing more outrage at this resolution. Most people who have commented on it so far seem to think that it is just a vacuous statement of the obvious, which on the face of it is true, but try reading the following amended version:

The House of Representatives
(1) recognizes white as one of the great skin colors of the world;
(2) expresses continued support for white people in the United States and worldwide;
(3) acknowledges the international cultural and historical importance of white skin;
(4) acknowledges and supports the role played by white people in the founding of the United States and in the formation of the western civilization;
(5) rejects bigotry and persecution directed against white people, both in the United States and worldwide; and
(6) expresses its deepest respect to white Americans and white people throughout the world.

Since the above makes no reference to black people, are we to assume that it is not offensive to them? Of course not! If this resolution had been passed there would be total outrage, and rightly so.

15. Here's an improvement on democracy

Comment #99195 by huxley_leopard on December 15, 2007 at 9:45 pm

Democracy is the child of humanism, not secularism. Humanism being the source of the all humans being born equal idea.

Secularism just means keep your irrational beliefs private and tolerate people of other faiths without trying to convert them or otherwise injure them. To achieve toleration, religion has to be kept out of public areas: schools, government etc.

Politicians making decisions based on reason and evidence rather than revelation sounds like not such a bad thing though.

As an engineer, I am glad that all of China's government is made up of engineering graduates - i didn't know that. Engineers are very good at solving problems. It should be noted that not one of Britain's members of parliament is an engineer. Shocking!

16. Creation college seeks state's OK to train teachers

Comment #99181 by huxley_leopard on December 15, 2007 at 8:33 pm

I found this paragraph particularly scary:

The institute's search for approval in Texas comes just weeks after the science director of the Texas Education Agency resigned under pressure over allegations that she had inappropriately endorsed evolution. She had forwarded an e-mail about a talk in Austin by a professor and author who opposes teaching creationism in public schools.

17. Ask The God Delusion author Richard Dawkins

Comment #99174 by huxley_leopard on December 15, 2007 at 7:58 pm

Mr. Wooter,
I am sorry for your frustration, but your frustration stems from a misunderstanding on your part. You need to read the chapter in The God Delusion on "designed and designoid objects". A glass is obviously a designed object, and no-one is saying it isn't, especially not people who employ reason. However, Planet Earth and all the living things that live on her are not designed objects. To some, they may appear to be designed (hence they may be called "designoid"), but they aren't. They just happened. In fact there is a lot of evidence to show that life on this planet wasn't designed but evolved. We have tailbones. Whales have to come up for air.

There is of course the possibility that a god created the world and all living things, and then planted huge amounts of evidence for evolution just to test our faith. This is Bill Hicks's "Prankster God" running around burying dinosaur bones etc.

There is also the possibility that a god (prime mover) started off the Big Bang knowing exactly what would happen and knowing that a world would be created like ours etc., and in effect designed evolution to create man... this is so ludicrous on many levels, not least because it is not only the hurricane blowing through the junkyard and building a 747, it is someone designing that hurricane.

Hope this goes some way to clearing things up for you.

18. Happy Newton Day!

Comment #99086 by huxley_leopard on December 15, 2007 at 1:24 pm

And Hooke worked with Wren on the Monument to the Great Fire of London, and St. Paul's Cathedral, which were both designed so that they could also be used as giant telescopes (before reflecting telescopes meant they could be much shorter and see further)

19. Happy Newton Day!

Comment #99081 by huxley_leopard on December 15, 2007 at 1:05 pm

I thought the true discoverer of the Law of Gravitation was Robert Hooke. He worked at the Royal Society at the time, and Newton sent him a draft of his paper. Hooke wrote back, "I think you'll find it's an inverse square law". Newton was the first to say, "standing on the shoulders of giants", which was a dig at Hooke, who was a very short man.

20. This deadly religious resistance to vaccinations

Comment #97211 by huxley_leopard on December 11, 2007 at 6:15 pm

I think Ben Goldacre has covered MMR a bit on www.badscience.net

The underlying problem is the general lack of understanding of science in the media and the general public.

A short story that illustrates this:
In the pub, a very intelligent friend of mine tells me that wind turbines only produce enough electricity to run one energy-saving lightbulb. When pressed, he said he believed it was true because he had read it in The Times. The next day, he sent me a link. The journalist had taken the average wind speed in the UK and used that to estimate the annual power output. Unfortunately for him, the power is not linearly proportional to wind speed but proportional to the wind speed CUBED. But lots of people read that article, as he did, and assumed it was correct. That a journalist could make such a fundamental error and not check his facts is nuts. Also, there is no penalty for getting things wrong, though there should be!

21. Why Science Will Triumph Only When Theory Becomes Law

Comment #90262 by huxley_leopard on November 23, 2007 at 8:48 pm

mr.frazzlebottom said, "everytime a person gets on the air or is interviewed defending evolution they are really defending science and therefire they must try to explain just what a scientific theory is."

This is exactly right. One criticism of how Christopher Hitchens dealt with D'Souza in that debate recently is that he did not get into the nitty-gritty of how unbalanced D'Souza's arguments about evidence are. D'Souza quoted Hume's problem of induction and went on about how no matter how many times you demonstrate a scientific theory is correct, it doesn't mean the next time you test it it might not disprove the theory. There is a great quote by Chesterton:

"In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms."

One could apply this to evolution. It fits with the evidence (and has done so many many times, possibly millions of times) and provides useful predictions. Even when anomalies turn up, they are eventually explained within the framework of evolution.

On the other hand, the evidence for the existence of a supernatural being/creator? There is to my knowledge not a single piece of reliable evidence. The theory that a god(or gods) exists does not fit the evidence (no proven supernatural phenomena) and does not provide useful predictions. If a god exists that intervenes in our daily lives, we would be seeing anomalies all the time.

So... double standards Mr.D'Souza? Impossible levels of proof for science otherwise don't take it seriously and for the existence of a god we only require that it hasn't been disproven!

22. Sir David Attenborough on God

Comment #86808 by huxley_leopard on November 10, 2007 at 7:33 am

Michael (mmurray), LOL thanks for that!

23. Sir David Attenborough on God

Comment #86804 by huxley_leopard on November 10, 2007 at 7:27 am

This is great because David Attenborough is loved and respected by so many people in Britain. I hope he does a similar program about creationism as he did about climate change. Perhaps the reason he hasn't is that he thinks it is beneath him to argue with such idiocy! And I would agree if there wasn't such a resurgence of such views and the pressure in some quarters to teach it alongside evolution.

Monoape and Bonzai - I think this argument could run and run. If the Prime Minister believed in fairies or unicorns, most people would think him certifiable and not fit to run the country.

However, I personally have no problem with people believing in gods or fairies based on personal experience, as long as they don't claim there is proof.

If they know that it is their subjective experience only and other people's experiences and beliefs may differ and be equally valid, they are likely to be more humble when it comes to evangelising others or making rational decisions. As soon as they think they are in possession of the one truth, then there are problems!!

24. I didn't know the FLEA CIRCUS was back in town!

Comment #85026 by huxley_leopard on November 4, 2007 at 3:01 pm

Comment #85007 by Crazymalc on November 4, 2007 at 1:33 pm

Comment #85002 by BaronOchs


Crazymalc The guy on the right of the cover is Martin Amis.



Thanks! Why is he there though? I read his entry on Wiki and noted that he is a good friend of Christopher Hitchens, but I can see nothing in his writings that would clasify him into the "New Atheists" in the way that Dennett et. all are.

Can anyone shed any light?



Martin Amis is fairly well-known in the UK for being an atheist. He has written a lot of articles in The Guardian and The Observer newspapers about radical islam in particular.

http://www.martinamisweb.com/commentary.shtml

25. Taking exception to Jake

Comment #72244 by huxley_leopard on September 20, 2007 at 3:05 pm

Russell Blackford raises some interesting points. I am not an extreme Popperian either, but I do think that we cannot erode his definitions too far or they cease to be useful.

An interesting area of study for psychologists is comparing the way we think to the way we think we think. So although the way we work is to have a subconscious 'gut reaction' then try to rationalise it, a realisation that this is the case, or an acceptance that our gut reactions can be wrong, make us able to follow scientific method rationally.

Theology is a subject based on trying to rationalise a gut reaction.

26. Taking exception to Jake

Comment #71882 by huxley_leopard on September 19, 2007 at 8:49 pm

"No. Once again, science is a method. It's a general set of procedures that rest on skepticism, induction, empiricism, and naturalism."

Aren't induction and empiricism roughly the same thing?

And isn't deduction part of scientific method?

Ok i'll stop being a pedant. The article was interesting, because it throws up some interesting questions such as wouldn't the best thing be to teach people how to think in a rational scientific manner, and then let them come to their own conclusions? I can see how for some people this may be better than just telling them they are wrong.

27. Charles Brooker's screen burn

Comment #63953 by huxley_leopard on August 17, 2007 at 1:56 am

Perhaps homeopathy is a sneaky way for doctors to use the no-longer-legal placebo effect by the back door? If so it is very cunning!

Did you hear of the homeopath who forgot to put any chemical in the water? All her patients died of an overdose!
[the principle of homeopathy is that the more you dilute something in water, the more powerful its effect]

28. The Out Campaign

Comment #60562 by huxley_leopard on August 2, 2007 at 8:55 am

Comment by Henri:
"This is a good point: Why hasn't homosexuality died out if it is genetic? Well, you could begin by considering that handicappedness (if that's a word!) has neither died out but is obviously often a genetic predisposition and indicator of 'feeble' (faulty) genes."

I know I'm way behind in this discussion and you've probably gone off on 20 tangents since this one. Could it be that homosexuality occurs as a common accidental by-product of another gene that produces other beneficial effects? For instance, sickle-cell anaemia is an occasional, accidental by-product of a gene that reduces the risk of contracting malaria, hence why it is so common in people of african descent. So the gene is mainly beneficial for most people that have it, and it is more advantageous to have it and run the risk of a small probability of sickle-cell anaemia than not to have it. Hence the natural selection.

Another possibility is the one about many animals having non-producing members of a group, and this being beneficial to the group as a whole, but I don't like this because it seems to imply group natural selection. Homosexuality may be a way of preselecting those non-producing members (pardon the pun) and yet not leaving them unfulfilled.

There are many examples of homosexual behaviour amongst mammals, even male whales masturbating each other by rubbing against each other. It is a complex phenomenon and I'm not sure there is one single explanation that fits all cases.

29. The Out Campaign

Comment #60146 by huxley_leopard on August 1, 2007 at 6:08 am

As the communists used to say:

"Proper tea is theft"

30. The Out Campaign

Comment #59978 by huxley_leopard on July 31, 2007 at 10:02 am

Hypocrisy makes the world go round. I wish more religious people were hypocritical and inconsistent, then they could be tolerant and have friends outside their faith (as many do! good on them). It's the ones who aren't hypocrites who are the problem, they are so inflexible and don't use their own common sense. They call themselves fundamentalists. Italy wouldn't have the lowest birth rate in europe if they weren't ignoring what their pope says about contraception.

At least atheists admit there is a possibility they could be wrong. That's the difference. You can't get anywhere in a discussion with someone who won't ever admit they could be wrong, even if they're right.

This is a quote from the Dalai Lama:
"... the ancient version of cosmology I had been taught... held that the moon was a heavenly body that emitted its own light. But through my telescope the moon was clearly just a barren rock, pocked with craters. If the author of that fourth-century treatise were writing today, I'm sure he would write the chapter on cosmology differently. If science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change."

He rocks!

31. Rapture Ready: The Unauthorized Christians United for Israel Tour

Comment #59688 by huxley_leopard on July 30, 2007 at 7:57 am

This just makes me more convinced that atheists and nonreligious people do need a voice and do need to start organising themselves to make it known that people going around planning the end of the world is simply not acceptable to us. It's views like that that led to the Waco mass-suicide, 9/11 and poison gas in Tokyo's subway.

Ok, ok, herding cats bla bla bla... but really there is quite a lot we all agree on compared to say, a political party, or even a religion. Christians can't agree on what the trinity is or whether genesis is metaphor or literal truth. At least atheists tend to agree about scientific method, equality, sustainability and free thinking, to name but a few things. And at least we are willing to change our views in the light of new evidence - therefore we are reasonable people. We don't have to agree about facts, only about the way in which arguments are conducted. Perhaps that's why this is a Foundation for REASON and SCIENCE, because they are the two things all reasonable people would agree with.

I'm going to buy a 'Scarlet A' t-shirt right now!

Edited to add: Blueollie - good on ya!

32. An Atheist Responds

Comment #58297 by huxley_leopard on July 24, 2007 at 9:24 am

Dear IQHQ, ok I'll bite.

I think what you have missed is not that religion increases the frequency of people's good actions because of the threat of the "great CCTV camera in the sky", but rather that a church (for example) may provide a community within which good actions are more highly rewarded than elsewhere. And I'm not talking about reward in the sense of the 'afterlife', but more immediate tangible rewards such as the 'warm fuzzy done good' feeling, status, power, even sex (yes you will appear more attractive to other godbotherers if you have a good status in that community). In their best, most modern, liberal, enlightened incarnations, churches provide a focus and framework for doing and rewarding altruistic acts. I doubt very much that fear of god is a motivation for most religious people.

I'm sure also that secular groups could fulfill the same role, only without the mumbo-jumbo. For example University Rags are not religious, but provide a framework within which raising money for charity is rewarded by status within the group. I'm sure there's lots more examples out there.

We need to get away from the idea that charity is the province of the religious. And we need to get away from the idea that somehow religious people are motivated by some higher force and therefore of 'purer' motivation - they are after the same terrestrial rewards as the rest of us.

Hux.