1. Scientists Draw Link Between Morality And Brain's Wiring

Comment #43419 by chance on May 21, 2007 at 10:39 am

Henri,

Sorry to call you out like this, but your ramblings make little sense and your overweening arrogance is irritating and rather pathetic, given the limited cognitive abilities you have displayed.

Luthien has been more rational, pleasant, and fact-based and certainly deserves more well thought out responses. As more of a lurker here, I enjoy Luthien's contributions immensley, and admire her restraint and civility.

I am not quite so patient, I'm afraid. So you, on the other hand, may wish to either shut your trap, or actually engage your brain before submitting a response.

2. Orr vs. Dennett/Dawkins

Comment #28502 by chance on March 29, 2007 at 12:55 pm

J.J. Ramsey said: "Because complexity is a vague concept, and there are many different possible working definitions for complexity, not all of which will yield comparable metrics."

This is not at all true. Complexity is not vague at all, nor are there many possible different working definitions. There is a very specific measure of complexity. Do some reading/research on Information Theory and Claude Shannon. You may find that the Ultimate 747 argument makes more sense after that.

3. Darwin's God

Comment #24236 by chance on March 5, 2007 at 1:03 pm

J.J. Ramsey said:

""There are plenty of mundane secular reasons to be fearful. For example, why is the instructor reluctant to show what is inside the box? It could be a trick and its an animal of some sort, ready to bite."

That may be a good post hoc rationalization for why one doesn't put one's hand in the box. However, you and all the other people saying that this is a bad demonstration are presuming that the students' reactions to the box are based on conscious critical reflection rather than a more gut-level response."

I'm afraid I don't follow this logic. There's nothing post hoc about it. It's not like they only have a split second to decide. They have plenty of time for critical reflection.

Further, the very fact that it isn't clear what the cause is means that it's a very poor demonstration indeed.

4. Young, British Muslims 'getting more radical'

Comment #19856 by chance on January 30, 2007 at 10:01 am

OK - maybe I should have been more clear. I was taking the lead from the article which stressed the difference between the younger Muslim generation and their parents. One way to read the article is "young Muslims more radical than their parents" another less reactionary way is "young people more radical than their parents". I'm not pretending that radical young Muslims are no more dangerous than radical young goths or punks, but you'll agree that discovering that young people's opinions are more radical than their parents' isn't - in itself - much to get excited about.

I'm trying to be brief, but (in the UK) the political capital the younger generation are spending actually goes back to the 70s when race politics first emerged. Policy designed for 'inclusiveness' had the opposite effect because it stressed the value of idiosyncratic differences and the "rights" to uphold them. Back in the 70s a "radical Muslim" would be so called (by Muslims) because of his secular tendencies - the drive towards recognising differences rather than searching for commonalities and shared values made secular Muslims less popular because they didn't offer anything distinct in the way of identity. The sad fact is that the government is still using the same tool to fix the problem. More recently, the report into the London bombings by the 'extremism taskforce' (made up of mostly Muslim leaders), published its conclusions which suggested that the best way to combat extremism, was by recognising Muslim grievances and enabling moderate Muslim leaders to wield greater political power, better reflection of Islam in school curricula, etc.

What I'm suggesting is that taken in context, the article represents young Muslims cashing in the victim chips earned by their parents. Thanks to multicultural politics "Muslim grievance" and "Muslim identity" and "the culture of Islam" are now all official "currency". Muslim women and girls who cause controversy demanding the "right" to express their "religious heritage" even - or perhaps especially - when their parents neither agree nor demand it, are simply doing what most young women do. It just so happens that this carries considerably more weight than a miniskirt and lipstick. It's the politics and the practice of identity. IMO the survey represents just this attitude when put under direct scrutiny.

What it doesn't represent is a basis for the kind of policies that have been suggested above. The fact that people can make the straight-faced suggestion that places of worship should be closed, that Muslims should be prevented from entering the country and ideally deported or "incentivised" to leave is frankly abhorrent. Skinheads in the 70s were quite expert in creating "incentives" to leave the country. It's this kind of juvenile, reactionary rhetoric that justifies accusations of "militant atheist" and "secular extremist" and lends credence to the fact that atheism is an "intolerant ideology" as bad as any religion.

5. Young, British Muslims 'getting more radical'

Comment #19706 by chance on January 29, 2007 at 11:05 am

"Janus - I don't dispute the morally repugnant literal reading of the Qur'an or theocracies that follow it, but there is nothing obvious about the assumption tha"t immigrants will even have, let alone demonstrate opposing values to the extent that they constitute a danger. There is no evidence here of the threat posed by "most" of these people. You're simply making it clear that you strongly oppose Muslim doctrine and that you are fearful of its literal implications and therefore fearful of its followers. In short, there's nothing here to justify the kinds of measures you're advocating.

You're also painting all Muslims as literalists and failing to give credit to the seemingly limitless human capacity for comfortably sustaining internally contradictory 'truths' in order to live an externally functional life. Yes it's self-deluding and yes it gives rise to all sorts of ridiculous faulty logic and I'd be the first to support any sincere campaign to educate our way out of it, such as reaching a democratically agreed consensus on the flawed 'faith school' policy, or the kind of comparative religious curriculum proposed by Dennett. But lamentable as it may be, such thinking doesn't necessarily give rise to dangerously twisted characters - at least not "most" of the time and certainly not with sufficient frequency to warrant forced closure of places of worship and immigration controls based on which holy book you prefer to read."

I'm not sure who's painting who as anything. All Muslims are certainly not literalists. And even less are violent. But there is also a significantly large population who are both fundamentalist and violent. Far too large to ignore. And from everything we know, that group is getting larger, no doubt largely in part due to the U.S.'s invasion of Iraq. I just can't think of a better way to stir up anti-western sentiment and send previously rational people flocking to a radical Islamist banner. Ugh.

"As for the article at the head of this discussion - if you see anything here that backs up your fears then you need to first think seriously about the politics of identity and the failed experiment of multiculturalism in the UK. When your government loses the ability and confidence to communicate with the nation as a unified nation and instead resorts to a programme of 'multicultural initiatives' via unelected 'community leaders' formulating policy according to 'community concerns' - then the end result is that communities gain a tangible amount of political clout. It is therefore in the interests (and only to be expected) of individuals to identify strongly with their community. For young Muslims in the UK they've earned a significant amount of political capital from a government desperate to garner sympathy and support from domestic Muslims for a shitty foreign policy. Identifying strongly with that community means participating in the rhetoric upon which the community earned its political capital; fighting the fights associated with that community and if you can rub the older generation up the wrong way in the process - all the better! The political capital earned by the moderate parents for being 'victims' is being spent by their nominally empowered offspring."

You had me on this until the end. I just don't see the "rub the older generation up the wrong way" connection. It's just so completely anectdotal and non-fact based that... well, sorry. I just can't agree with that without something backing it up. You led up that with a very nice account of how communities can ban together and gain clout in a government that is losing its ability to keep the nation unified. Then you just sort of jumped somewhere else.

"IMO the kind of opinion reported in this survey is more accurately viewed as rhetoric. Readers of the Daily Mail will no doubt love it, but let's not forget that these are 16 - 24 year olds. How many of us in our late 30s early 40s even remember what we felt strongly about at that age let alone still feel that way? Most importantly ask yourself this - how likely are these youngsters to grow up and find a secure personal identity in tune with the tolerant secular society in which they live whilst people are calling from pogroms and deportations based simply on the religion of their parents?"

The problem is that it won't really matter what these 16 - 24 year olds think when (if; remember, they're encouraged to be martyrs. Usually by older Muslim leaders who, for some reason, don't feel the need to die for martyrdom...) they're approaching 40. What matters is what they're doing now. And the track record just isn't good. We've got to focus on what we know now, whether or not we like it. What we know is that Islam is inherently a violent religion, and the expression of that violence has been getting worse. While there are many, many Muslims that are prefectly nice people, there is also an unfortunate number of Muslims who are not. And the scary part about this is a) these are the ones that actually closely adhere to the religious tenets of Islam and b) the number is getting larger. We can't weed these out effectively because it is unacceptable to espouse anything that will cause undue hardhsip to innocents.

So, I am still against anything like what has been voiced by TheCodeCrack or Janus. But I'm not deluding myself either. This is a problem. And it isn't magically going away.

6. Young, British Muslims 'getting more radical'

Comment #19698 by chance on January 29, 2007 at 10:37 am

It's a thorny problem. I can't really agree with TheCodeCrack's solution, but we have to face the fact that it's going to get worse before (if) it gets better. The crux of the problem is that they hate us, often mindlessly, and are willing to do things we aren't. So while I am secure in our respect for freedom and privacy, that does handcuff us in a way. We will bend over backwards to preserve their freedoms, while they use them to commit atrocities.

I find myself becoming more depressed, because I don't really see a way to avoid a world war without drastic measures. At the current rate, Islam will overrun Europe, and at some point that will erupt into war. The U.S. will be drawn into it as well, and presumably Canada. Who knows what China will do, but they're sure to be grinning ear to ear as the rest of the world destroys itself. That's not even mentioning India and Pakistan...

Maybe I'm just in a pessimistic mood, but it's a bleak picture.

7. A Free-for-All on Science and Religion

Comment #8605 by Chance on November 21, 2006 at 8:14 pm

I wouldn't be so pessimistic. We may not see an end to religion in our lifetime, but that does not mean it won't happen. In my opinion, the best we can do is educate people. Improve the education system overall, and focus on moderate and open-minded believers. You'll never change a militant believer's mind, they have to have some sort of extreme experience do it for them.

Religion is just a crutch, really. A phase. A step. Training wheels, if you will, that never got cast away when we learned to ride. Religion was a perfectly logical idea when humans had very little knowledge to explain why things were happening. We were children. Now, as a whole, we know better, but some people refuse to grow up.

8. Controversial Religious Summer Camp Closed

Comment #5369 by Chance on November 9, 2006 at 5:25 am

Hi from America. I just spent the last year working to for the victory on the 7th, and, like you, I notice a strange lack of weight on my shoulders. My wife and I were discussing this at our victory dinner last night: it has been 6 years since we haven't had the horror of the current administration lurking in the background of our lives.

There is a reason why Bush isn't going to be impeached: Cheney is next in line, and the entire admin is completely disfunctional now. If you didn't get a chance to watch Bush's presser yesterday, it was surreal. Basically stood up and told the American public that he had been lying to them about Rummy. It was a full meltdown. Rush Limbaugh did essentially the same thing.

The entire Repub apparatus is falling apart. Its great:) We have a boot on their neck, and we aren't going to let up. You don't think investigations are coming? That the Dem leadership isn't to manage a steady trickle of corruption, lies about the war, and criminial activity for the next two years until we have a chance to vote these fuckers out?

Has there ever been a lamer duck president?