1. Democratic Candidates on a Personal God

Comment #64589 by Jared on August 20, 2007 at 9:15 pm

Here's how I'd answer, if I were somehow running:

"I notice that none of the other candidates addressed the specific terms used in the question, something I will be careful to do. I do not believe in a personal god, and do not feel compelled to accept any sort of god as true. But that is my own opinion on the matter, and as President I would be certain to accept and respect people simply as people, and regardless of their faith or lack thereof.

I do not think that there is any power contained in prayer, nor any other force yet known to man, to prevent such disasters or stop them once they've begun. There are only two options: knowing what preparations are possible to prevent any disasters we ARE capable of preventing, and acting swiftly and effectively to lessen the impact on life and property of any disasters we do not or cannot prevent.

As to prayer, I believe the choice to pray or not to pray is personal to each individual. If the act of praying makes you feel better, or gives some form of comfort to those around you, then so be it. For me, the only source of comfort I find in troubled times is knowing the role my own knowledge and actions have played, accepting those situations where I've done my best, and learning to improve in those instances when I have not. I will leave the praying to those who find it helpful for themselves. I prefer contemplation, informed discussion, and reasoned action."

Who'll vote for me in 2020? :-P

2. Is this another Sokal Hoax?

Comment #28994 by Jared on April 1, 2007 at 5:27 am

::sigh::

This is the sort of stuff that drives me up the wall. I end up encountering a lot of it in the literature from my field (film studies), and it never manages to make any sense. As this sort of material becomes the intellectual 'norm' in liberal arts academia, I find myself begrudgingly turning more and more anti-intellectual.

As Chomsky has implied about Derrida, it COULD be that I just don't understand this school of thought. But I'd like to think that I'm intelligent enough, and that its incumbent upon the authors to demonstrate what bearing the things they say have on practical reality. For me, that's the key issue: WHY is anything these people say necessarily so? I've yet to find a sufficient answer.

3. Happy 66th Birthday, Richard Dawkins!

Comment #27670 by Jared on March 26, 2007 at 4:14 am

A very happy birthday to Professor Dawkins!

It is my hope that you never get tired of hearing people say 'Your work has changed my life,' because that is precisely what I've come here to tell you.

Since I first read 'The Selfish Gene' some years back, my way of looking at life on Earth has been fundamentally altered. It is strange to think of a gene survival machine, such as myself, taking pleasure from reading about its own true nature, but there you have it.

So again, happy birthday to YOUR survival machine, Professor, and may there be many more birthdays (and many more books and documentaries) to come!

4. Religion

Comment #26967 by Jared on March 22, 2007 at 4:51 pm

Ha, Yorker beat me to it...should have refreshed the page before posting...funny stuff!

5. Religion

Comment #26966 by Jared on March 22, 2007 at 4:50 pm

'God bless Joe Pesci!'

This has always been one of my favorite Carlin rants, without a doubt. Along the same lines, I also enjoy his revision of the Ten Commandments (which may have been posted here once before, I can't recall now). But if it hasn't been, it should be :)

6. The Certainty Bias

Comment #23164 by Jared on February 26, 2007 at 3:20 pm

Instead, we must have the MRI, or the CT scan, or whatever. Even, as in my case, when the patient is willing to live with uncertainty, the doctor has a problem with it.

I think that doctors have a pretty good reason to strongly suggest tests. It's way too easy to get sued these days for missed diagnoses. To a doctor, I think, ordering tests is about more than being comfortable with 'uncertainty.' With the prognoses for so many problems depending on early detection, it makes sense to want to find out what's what for certain in order to assure the best chance of treatment and a high standard of care.

Most patients are not going to use Bayes' theorem to determine their risks! And while I think that, of COURSE, any and all treatments are up to the patient, it's a bit unreasonable to assume that a doctor is just going to let people go without expressing disappointment and trepidation. If a condition that COULD, in theory, have been confirmed or ruled out by a simple test ends up costing a patient his or her life, the doctor comes out looking bad and the family may not KNOW that the test had been refused.

And again, there's the simple matter of wanting to do as good of a job as possible. Even when, as a teen, I worked in a supermarket, I always wanted to make sure that people's groceries were bagged properly. If a customer wanted to walk out with things falling out or packed in a way that the bag was likely to rip, I would be disappointed and try to prevent them. Groceries are hardly as important as one's health, so why shouldn't a doctor also feel that erring on the side of caution is the proper strategy?

7. Interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson

Comment #20125 by Jared on January 31, 2007 at 2:19 pm

OK. I may not be the first to say it, but I don't care. deGrasse Tyson for President '08! :-P

I know, I know, he'd never take the job... but it doesn't hurt to dream, does it?

8. Blasphemy Challenge on FOX

Comment #19630 by Jared on January 29, 2007 at 1:46 am

I am, typically, loath to apologize for the actions of my less thoughtful countrymen. However, I once more feel that it is my duty as a rational, reasonable American to apologize to the world community for Fox News. Granted, Fox's Mr. Murdoch is an Aussie, but let's be realistic: America is where this crap flourishes and it is this that allows it to be pumped out to the rest of you. Again, my apologies.

Every sentence Kasich spoke was FULL of emotional impact words and 'spin' words. Brian did well to not address the garbage and to stick to his key points, although you could tell, by the end, that his patience was running out. And who could blame him?

The most disgraceful bit came right at the conclusion, when Kasich told Brian that he 'hoped he turned around' or whatever his exact words were, suggesting that he had 'erred' from the path of the 'true' faith, Christianity. Could you imagine the uproar if he had said something like that to a Jewish or Muslim guest? But because, to the Fox Newsites of the world, a lack of belief is not a position worthy of respect, Kasich gets away with it.

This stuff just angers me to no end. Thankfully, most of the people who watch that dreck already agree with it, so he's only preaching to the converted. Still, it's a shame that even they get such a negative and one-sided portrayal of the atheist movement.

9. Mr. Deity

Comment #18357 by Jared on January 20, 2007 at 3:10 am

Brilliant stuff. I'd watch this show were it on TV. Too funny!

10. Secret Life of Brian

Comment #16674 by Jared on January 8, 2007 at 2:33 am

Denoir,

I guess I was thinking of the States, where I'm not sure that, even now, the film could be aired on a non-cable TV station. But I take your point about the UK, things seem to have improved here. But back in my home country, there are far more Whitehouses than I'd care to think about.

I keep wanting to throw in quotes from her verse in Pink Floyd's "Pigs (Three Different Ones)" but I can't find a good place to do so!

11. Secret Life of Brian

Comment #16636 by Jared on January 7, 2007 at 7:02 pm

Thank you ever so much for posting this! The fact that 'Life of Brian' is still as relevant and controversial now, if not MORESO, is somewhat chilling. As fantastic a film as it is, there's nothing I'd like more than for people to be able to see it from a more detached perspective...a perspective where 'Oh, people used to believe in that stuff?' is a more common response than 'they can't talk about my savior that way!'

I'm not sure we'll ever get to that point, but it's worth a try. Thanks for giving me something rather interesting to watch while recovering from a heinous ear infection :)

12. Without God, Gall Is Permitted

Comment #16324 by Jared on January 6, 2007 at 4:38 am

Logicel:
Thank you! I appreciate the compliments :) It makes it worth the EXTRAORDINARY ammount of time it took to make that video using Windows MovieMaker...I cannot in good conscience recommend that program to anyone, as useful as it COULD be.

And yes, YouTube is QUITE inconsitent with commenting! It would not let me comment on a friend's short film, and kept sending me through a loop of "confirming my email address" despite having done that several times previously. Oh well, I'm glad you liked it and don't need a rating to tell me that :)

13. Without God, Gall Is Permitted

Comment #16294 by Jared on January 6, 2007 at 1:19 am

I'm going to cast my lot in among the 'young' here. Ageism of any sort is silly. Have any of you looked at Phil Plait's summary of the arbitrariness of a year? Pretty interesting stuff.

I mean, age is merely a statement of how many times, roughly, you've been around the sun. A simple count. It's no measure of what's happened to you in those years, no description of how much you may or may not have experienced or learned. It's no absolute. I'm sure that there are some people in their fifties who've got far, far less of an idea about the world than many people half their age; heck, that's a simple product (sometimes) of the advancement of education and the progress of information: we simply know more now than our forbears did, and there are many cases where it shows (though not as many as I would like!)

But even that misses the mark. Age is only one of many factors you can use to assume information about another human being. Beyond certain developmental issues, age speaks little about intelligence, cognitive faculty, education, social circumstance, or any of the other things that might contribute to 'maturity' or 'immaturity' in an individual. As someone who as always been 'older' than my age, I take it as an insult when someone calls me 'young' as if that invalidates my arguments.

Yes, a well-lived, well-educated 60 year old is likely to have more experience than a well-lived and educated 20 year old. In that case, time clearly is the trump card. But even that says nothing about the youth's ability to express him/herself, nor about much else. I understand the attitude that LDMiller is criticizing, but I think even he'd be surprised to learn that some of the 'immature' people, the people whose attitudes he is mocking, are likely older than he expects. Age is a poor guarantee, on all fronts.

14. Pat Robertson: God told me of 'mass killing' in 2007

Comment #15947 by Jared on January 4, 2007 at 12:34 am

mintcheerios:

Hmm. You know, I think even I'd watch Robertson if he made predictions on behalf of Poseidon. That's far too amusing to me. :) At least then he'd have some credibility as far as his predictions for coastal storms and tsunamis are concerned!

15. Beliefwatch: Blasphemy (Challenge)

Comment #15619 by Jared on January 1, 2007 at 4:24 pm

Since the other thread got old before I managed to put this together, I'll post a link to my own blasphemy challenge:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgZC86Y92VU

I did this according to the guidelines I came up with through the course of reading the other thread. Enjoy :)

16. A Christmas thunderbolt for the arch-enemy of religion

Comment #15108 by Jared on December 29, 2006 at 12:59 am

Binx Bolling:
I don't have time to reply fully, I'm afraid, but I wanted to point out a couple of things:

Here's a challenge: [...]
I call shenanigans and say your challenge is irrelevant to what I was saying. However, I take your point about 'begging the question' of whether how people feel has a logical connection to some kind of prescriptive morality. As the question is unanswerable, in any practical sense, I'll withdraw it.

I agree that reason and logic can be applied to questions about good and evil, just as they can be applied to questions about the nature of god. While the reasoning may be sound, if the the premises are faulty, the conclusions will probably be wrong.

Ah, but how can there be a 'right' or 'wrong' on a moral question if there is no underlying morality? Wouldn't 'wrong' be an irrelevant definition in your world view? Or, if you simply mean that any kind of morality is 'wrong,' then where do the 'faulty premises' enter into it? To you, ALL such premises are faulty and the argument can never have merit. That is, of course, unless there is some natural 'right' and 'wrong' to be applied in questions of good and evil.

See, there's a little Nietzsche in all of us!

Yeah, there was when I was sixteen years old and depressed by all the people 'holding me down'. That I was saying YOU could take the Nietzchean route was by no means my way of saying that I would approve of your behavior or join you in it. Nietzsche was a brilliant thinker, to be sure, but I'll be damned if I find as much to agree with as I grow older, and I'm nowhere near old.

We call Stalin bad. What we really mean is that his actions failed to conform to socially acceptable norms. We will punish that kind of behavior when possible because it threatens our own self interest.

Self interest, or the interest of the group? I think that as social creatures we have an amount invested in living in groups, and I think we are likely to 'punish' actions that would harm our group. Or do you deny that altruism exists?

Now that we have that sorted out, let's take the next logical step and eliminate both. There is no god. There is no ought. We are free to act any way we please.

I think it's impossible for you to eliminate 'ought,' again due to the interdependent nature of our species. But please, do try, and tell me how your efforts fare. Just as the desire to convince EVERYONE to be rid of god is likely impossible to fulfill, you may find the same is true in 'eliminating' ought for good. Within a generation (or conceivably even less) these precepts would be likely to return via the same biological routes that gave rise to them in the first place.

I agree with your premise that man is 'responsible' enough to live without 'ought,' in principle. But I do not think it is possible in practice. Man, as an animal, tends towards order and social grouping. That is undoubtedly true. I would wager that 'ought' is a byproduct of our urge to group, perhaps because it helps lead to group stability, but I can't say for sure. Certainly the ability to conceive of 'ought' or at least 'ought not' is conducive to better social grouping.

I guess my basic problem with RD and TGD is that they are ostensibly atheistic, but not really[...]

Don't you mean they are atheistic in FACT but still 'irrational' in principle? After all, atheism means nothing more than the lack of belief in a deity. It says nothing about what other beliefs you may have about leprechauns, psychics, OR morality.

You are, then, taking issue NOT with his claims of atheism, but with what you perceive as the mixing of support for rationalism (leading to a logically atheistic conclusion) and irrationality (leading to a belief in 'ought' and morality). Why didn't you say that in the first place instead of calling us all dogmatic and reactionary for not listening to the pap in this article which, ostensibly, has little to do with your real grudge? You would have saved us a lot of time and typing.

Personally I cannot speak for RD on that. I think it's a bit presumptive of you to call his belief in morality 'irrational' without having him explain it himself. Clearly if we can all spill this much ink trying to prove whether there are rational grounds for keeping concepts of 'good' and 'bad' around, he at least deserves the same opportunity.

His book, as we have already determined, was (unlike this conversation) not geared towards being a philosophical examination of the rationality of morality. Again, that is the book YOU would like him to have written, not the book he wanted to write. Just because you find his pseudo-Hegelian perspective hypocritical in your narrow Nietzschean point of view doesn't mean it IS irrational to think that way. I'd be willing to read what RD has to say about that side of the coin, so to speak.

I suppose I wrote a more full answer than I intended to. Oh well. Kudos to Jonathan Dore, JohnC, and Kingasaurus for their recent good posts, with which I largely agree, as well.

17. A Christmas thunderbolt for the arch-enemy of religion

Comment #15071 by Jared on December 28, 2006 at 5:37 pm

Binx Bolling:
Please don't take me out of context like that again. You know as well as I do that I meant Dawkins straddles the is/ought line in terms of your bit about morality. I certainly did not mean it as applied to the whole work.

I disagree with your sentiment that prescriptive premises are required to create prescriptive conclusions. I think that one could write a series of descriptive premises about conditions and trends in how action X makes percentage Y of the population feel, making a logical case, and then conclude that action X should be considered 'bad.' This is obviously a logical abstraction and not the precise means by which this principle works in society, but I think it is evidence enough for my point.

I also disagree with your refutation of my premise about a rationally derived 'good,' where you say 'Replace 'good' with 'God' or 'the Tooth Fairy,' two other concepts for which there is no empirical evidence.' You clearly know that I'm implying a social consensus here and not something as nebulous as a Tooth Fairy or God. There is empirical evidence that people put their heads together and decide how 'good' something is, which is all that I'm saying. In that case, your refutation is irrelevant.

When making personal choices, why should I care what the general moral concensus is, beyond considering how it might affect consequences not in my control, such as a prison sentence if I get caught?

Ahh, NOW we finally see what you are getting at! The short answer is that, you're right! You shouldn't care, as nothing more than an individual. I still suggest you'd come up with a sense of morality even if you were born and raised in utter social isolation. But that's besides the point. Morality is CLEARLY a social construct most likely derived from our judgment making and cost/benefit analysis faculties, as I've suggested before.

If you do not care about the risks of socially taboo behavior, then you certainly do NOT need to choose to share society's semi-consistent constructed morality! You are still going to be committing acts fitting some sort of personal criteria which, for all intents and purposes, comprise a system of morality. We can go into the infinite regress of 'if you choose to act against the common morality, then your morality says it's OK to act against common morality. But what if you KNOW it's not OK to act..." and so on, but let's not as to do so would not get us anyplace.

I was not necessarily making a Platonic argument, as you suggest above, by stating that, taking as a given the existence of natural faculties within our brains that would give rise to a form of morality, we can suppose the existence of 'morality' at an intellectual level. I merely meant to say that conceding that our brains tend to work in a certain manner (ie pattern recognition, judgment, risk analysis, memory) it is inevitable that we should create 'morality' as a concept.

And I will preempt your likely riposte to this, as well. Those same functions have a tendency to create a 'god' concept, as well. Neither the 'god' nor 'morality' concepts need to have any ACTUAL existence or truth to exist as concepts (NOW I'm getting a bit Platonic). The trick to BOTH of these is that we can use another faculty of our brain, the ability to reason, to temper or even eliminate these concepts.

I also notice that you ignored my last paragraph about the irrelevance of your criticisms of Dawkins. I wonder if I can take that as a tacit recognition of the illegitmacy of your claims against him? That doesn't mean that your points are not interesting in a general sense, merely that they don't have to apply to TGD. You say "the straightforward reasoning applied in TGD has morphed into what seems to be a whole lot of impenetrable mumbo-jumbo" and I agree, but I think that is due to YOUR line of questioning (which is, after all, philosophical) and no fault in RD's book.

18. A Christmas thunderbolt for the arch-enemy of religion

Comment #15052 by Jared on December 28, 2006 at 2:08 pm

Binx Bolling:

Ah, I'm glad that we've come to your actual disagreement with Dawkins at last! It's good to see that your argument about the ad hominem and arrogance claims has little to do with your intentions.

You are right to point out Dawkins's hesitation to face morality head on. I think he is trying very hard not cross Hume's line from 'is' to 'ought' so to speak. There's a huge difference between description and prescription, as you note, and science is most definitely descriptive and not prescriptive.

That has little bearing on whether REASON is descriptive or prescriptive, or on whether the things that science describes can help people decide on a prescriptive function. I would argue that, through application of reason, humans can come to prescriptive conclusions independent of those derived from 'revelations' thousands of years old.

Obviously there is no such thing as a 'subatomic morality force' or a property of 'good' or 'evil' and I take your mentioning this as an attempt to bait us into your narrow Nietzschean conception, which I personally will not go for. It is possible to understand WHY something is often considered 'good,' however, and although people may disagree with any prescribed definition of it (as well they should; such concepts are prone to change) humans CAN use logical thought to come to some sort of general consensus about what is, at a given moment, 'good.'

This does not answer your question, however, of the provenance of our ability to decide 'good' and 'evil,' nor our (in your mind) hypocritical applications of these concepts to our society but not to those of other apes. And I think this is where your argument weakens. Despite our genetic similarities, we are NOT chimpanzees. Several of our faculties have improved through evolution since we separated from the chimp/bonobo line. Included amongst these improvements, putatively, is an improved decision making faculty within the brain. It is a likely consequence of the improvements within our decision-making/judgement mechanisms that we have expanded our applications of whatever basic 'morality' chimps possess.

I also point out that you chose only to respond to part of JohnC's post and ignored a significant part, that being the following:

The likely explanation is that a combination of evolutionary "rules of thumb" and common cultural development have given us a sense of "ought" that is reliably but not infallibly shared by all Homo sapiens alive today.

In this way, evolution allows for a general faculty of decision making and cost/benefit analysis that, in some sense, must be shared amongst all homo sapiens. Whether we all come to the same agreements based on the judgments produced by this faculty is largely culturally based. We've seen how easily this can be manipulated by leaders who have great influence, and environment plays a large part as well. That is why our 'morality' is somewhat flexible yet not quite utterly relativistic.

As Kingasaurus points out above, the words we use to describe concepts of 'good' or 'evil' in no way legitimate an ACTUAL tangible existence of either. So, whether your 'guilt' in burning down your neighbor's house is derived biologically or not, your decision to do so is only 'evil' in so much as it goes against what the flexible and rational 'moral' consensus dictates to be an acceptible action.

You can switch the debate to philosophical concepts of 'good' and 'evil' which CERTAINLY do not exist in the same way as an object like this plate of leftover pork roast in front of me. But even without switching from is to ought we can posit the existence of faculties capable of creating a conceptual morality and, from that, infer that such things do exist on a purely intellectual level. I think any attempt to implement a 'morality' that is not rationally and socially defined in the terms outlined above would be an illogical step. We need not invoke gods or demons in discussing the existence of sensations or thought processes when biology and sociology can certainly do so in more concrete terms.

If your trouble with Dawkins is that he will not admit that there is no general, overarching, prescriptive 'morality,' I think he has done so, if only tacitly. If you are suggesting, as it seems, that humanity in general can live without coming to various consensuses on issues of behavior, that is another thing entirely and is FAR beyond the scope of Dawkins's work (not to mention irrelevant to it as THIS is the way we have developed and evolved, which is the best grounds from which Dawkins can examine the issue.) If you'd like to continue questioning it's necessity, I invite you to write a follow up to Beyond Good and Evil and examine evidence for what is, at the moment, purely a speculative argument. However it seems irrational to criticize Dawkins for not writing the book you want him to have written, as it were, rather than the book he has chosen to write.

19. A Christmas thunderbolt for the arch-enemy of religion

Comment #14993 by Jared on December 28, 2006 at 12:56 am

(THIS is going to be a long post, so I apologize and invite anyone who'd like to skip this to do so now)

Binx Bolling:

Thank you for the civility of your reply. I still disagree largely with your characterisation of those of us who comment on this site. Perhaps that description fits some, and since I don't use the forums I may, in fact, be missing more. However, out here there are at LEAST as many thoughtful, rational people who criticize both these articles AND RD as there are groupthink-infected types. I'd actually argue that there are more, but I'm not up for a statistical analysis at this hour! Regardless, please look at posts by Sancus, Logicel, Yorker, JohnC, and far too many more whose names don't come to mind immediately and tell me that they fit your description of dogmatic adherence.

As to rejection of all criticism out of hand, that may happen a bit more than I'd like to think. However, I'd say that much of the criticism has been been debated and discussed before and that, although the authors of the various critical texts may not have time to read ALL OTHER reviews/articles related to Dawkins or TGD, we here do. We see the trends and, like humans of any stripe, get tired of the same arguments. The results are often quite funny, like P.Z. Myers' Courtier's Reply linked from the front page here.

Regardless, neither you NOR Cornwell have shown WHICH bits of logic it is that Dawkins's hubris is supposed to have overstepped, and that is the issue I am getting at. Here's a quote from the article:

But then, what need of scholarship when in possession of a superior intellect like yours! You are described on the book's dustjacket as "one of the world's top three intellectuals". Not a peer-group verdict, but the opinion poll of a small-circulation, avowedly atheistic, British monthly.

There is no hint of a criticism of any actual argument made by Dawkins here, only an emotional appeal for the reader to consider his 'hubris' about being a leading intellectual. I might add that, in most cases, the book jacket is somewhat out of the author's control as it is, in and of itself, a marketing device designed to 'sell' the book, as it were, and not a direct statement of the author (who quite frequently doesn't even write the description/summary of the book on the jacket).

Another quote:
There was a time when Oxford dons prided themselves on modesty — the more learned, the more unassuming. But your self regard, Richard, has assumed bizarre proportions, privately and publicly. Witness the admission that you allowed Mrs Dawkins, the former Lalla Ward of Doctor Who fame, to declaim out loud The God Delusion in its 400-page entirety; not once but twice. As you usefully inform your readers, such a service is best performed by a partner with appropriate speech and drama training

Where, in this, is Cornwell pointing out a rational argument made by Dawkins that his hubris is ruining? I don't see one, I only see a string of what could be described as vitriol directed at the WIFE of the man whose logic Cornwell is supposed to be attacking. I have taken large quotes so as not to be accused of quotemining. I realize that this bit follows on the heels of Cornwell questioning Dawkins's background reading, which may be a fair criticism. None of what is said, however, in either of the two following quotes, attacks a single piece of logic.

This is why I qualified it as an ad hominem: it IS one. You can attack a man's hubris, if you like, by showing how it has impacted his logical process. Cornwell does not do this, and therefore has made a fallacious (or, at least, currently irrelevant) argument. If you wish to be more specific and make a text-based critical claim, please do! It would at least cast off the taint of the ad hominem of which Cornwell is guitly.

You say that we try 'to convince differently minded people to join us (aka "evangelism")', and perhaps my overly-long post here is an example of my evangelizing to you, though I would not characterize it as such. Nor do I, for instance, go and post arguments on Theist websites trying to convince them to 'come on over.' I can't speak for the others, though that is not the general impression I get from most. When we 'evangelize,' it is in the fashion of logical debate or argument (such as we are having now) where each side presents a case and hopefully some middle ground is met. If logical debates and academic arguments are evangelizing, then there are a lot more evangelicals in the world than I thought :)

I also disagree with your assertion that we have '(a) religious impulse, programmed into us by evolution.' I tend to think that we likely have an evolutionary impulse that religion uses, rather than to say that 'religion' is inborn or that it cannot be shaken. And, as social animals, we ALL tend to look for groups (or seek 'fellowship,' as you said) in a way that has little to do with religion. It may use some of the same machinery that religion uses, but in the end it is religion which is subverted here, and not the impulse.

In other words, the fact that both atheists and theists seek to group is NOT an indication of 'religiosity', but an indication that humans tend to seek groups. Your argument is no different than saying 'I think that because sports fans and church goers tend to seek fellowship, church goers should be careful not to be seen as too sports-fan-like!" Correlation does not imply causation and, in this case, I think it's the generic instinct that wins out and not one of its specified forms: the community-seeking side of religions.

Anyway, this post ran on and on, and I do apologize. I just had all of these thoughts in my head and needed to commit them here in response to your post because I'm really interested in seeing your response. Cheers!

20. A Christmas thunderbolt for the arch-enemy of religion

Comment #14977 by Jared on December 27, 2006 at 5:23 pm

Binx Bolling:

I disagree. RD's comment had little to say about this particular article. His respect for Cornwell's intelligence seemed to be of a more general sense and not in praise of any subtlety of thought or argument within this piece.

I don't think this article is particularly thoughtful. It is filled with ad hominem attacks on Dawkins's supposed lack of humility, all of which are irrelevant, whether true or false. People commenting here have ably noted this and pointed it out. No, that does not disprove any logical points Cornwell makes. It simply cuts his argument down significantly.

Furthermore, his attack on Dawkins's self-confessed 'literal-mindedness' is something of a straw man. Dawkins's boredom (in Cornwell's example) stems from what seems to have been a seminar regarding critical, interdisciplinary interpretations of figs. I can't blame his mind for straying to Darwinian views rather than listening to a bunch of academics go on about figs! It isn't, as Cornwell seems to suggest by his suggestion that Lear be replaced with a medical study, that Dawkins is against 'art' or 'artistic truth'! At worst, Dawkins is unimpressed by non-empirical critical interpretations of this 'truth,' at best he's saying that that sort of truth has little or nothing to do with scientific truths about the universe. The arguments that follow from Cornwell's faulty premise are then, by this logic, swept away.

Other commenters have taken on Cornwell's remaining points (many of which we've encountered in NUMEROUS articles on this site, making them by no means exceptional) and refuted them in what seems to me to have been a thorough and somewhat professional manner. This is why I take issue with your claim that :

Cornwell is no idiot. Repeatedly denouncing him and his arguments does nothing to refute them and only makes adherents of TGD look like just another fundamentalist sect.

I agree that attacking Cornwell himself is no more logically tenable than Cornwell's own personal attacks on Dawkins. And, for all commenters who only 'denounced' his arguments, there have been several who HAVE refuted them with good, logical arguments. You almost seem to be suggesting that, as Cornwell is 'no idiot' and is a thoughtful and erudite man, we have no right to dispute his logic and claims! Furthermore, you imply that, by applying logic to a piece that is somewhat lacking in it, we risk becoming like the non-logical, unthinking fundamentalists we oppose! I could not disagree more, on either count.

21. Fallen Angels Assault: Heaven at Christmas

Comment #14896 by Jared on December 26, 2006 at 2:10 pm

I'm going to have to say that, unlike denoir, I don't think that there must needs be anything good OR bad in patriotism itself in nature, nor do I equate it with nationalism per se.

I see nothing wrong with being happy with where you live, especially if you've chosen to live there. I see even less wrong with supporting the ideals on which a country was founded, even in times when those ideals are being trampled by the powerful.

I feel that there are TYPES of patriotism, and that the type most worthy of fear is (as always) the BLIND type. The sort that does it for the reasons you suggest: religion, the current adminstration, belief in some sort of 'chosen' country. Not for any rational consideration of what is SUPPOSED to make the United States 'exceptional' or different.

I think anyone who just supports whatever the country does is, to me, far less patriotic than those of us who choose our battles, so to speak. I am an American, and speaking with so many Europeans since leaving the US for school has only thrown that into sharper relief.

I support my country's ideals, not its leaders or current agenda. Those ideals are, to an extent, rational ones and that, to me, makes supporting them a logically defensible position. And to my mind, NOT supporting the leadership when it subverts those ideals is the highest form of patriotism available. That's how I divorce my own patriotism, for what it's worth, from nationalism or any other tenet that suggests infallibility.

It may not be the popular form of patriotism, but I think it is the better form, perhaps, and does not warrant being tarred with the same brush used against nationalists and blind patriots.

Just my two cents, though, as a frustrated fan of the American constitution :-P

22. The Courtier's Reply

Comment #14884 by Jared on December 26, 2006 at 10:30 am

My good Robert O'Brien, in your haste to be a smart-alec troll, you neglected some salient information:

1. Ed Brayton's educational status or putative failure as a comedian do nothing to either credit or discredit his logic. This argument is called an ad hominem attack.

2. Ed Brayton's opinion of Myers or Dawkins have nothing to do with quork's point that you have an award named after you for your trolling.

3. Ed Brayton's information about TGD, which may very well be accurate, still has little to do with you.

When you try to counter someone's claims, stick to attacking those claims rather than bringing in irrelevant information. Otherwise I fail to see how anything you say is better than the 'pseudoargumentation' of which you accuse Dawkins.

23. A Mission to Convert

Comment #14800 by Jared on December 25, 2006 at 7:08 am

JohnC:
"William James? Wittgenstein? Are they the stuff of real religious belief?"

I know some academics who can't even slog through Wittgenstein. I hardly think that my ultra-religious, Roman Catholic grandparents have him in mind when they think about their faith or their god. That, indeed, is one of the biggest repeated flaws in reviews of TGD: ignoring the fact that MOST PEOPLE DON'T KNOW PHILOSOPHY OR THEOLOGY!

24. A Mission to Convert

Comment #14744 by Jared on December 24, 2006 at 9:50 pm

Aussie:
The sheer extent of this article alone is flattering.

No kidding.

Is this the complete article? If so, I'd hate to be Lewis Wolpert or Joan Roughgarden. Some review, here! A summary one-paragraph dismissal and perhaps another mention each somewhere within a sprawling mass of text dedicated to Dawkins. Why even bother to mention Roughgarden's or Wolpert's books at all, I wonder?

25. The Courtier's Reply

Comment #14733 by Jared on December 24, 2006 at 7:59 pm

Robert O'Brien:

Fair enough. For that portion of my post, you have my apologies.

That in no way means, however, that you haven't been a troll :-P No worries, I'll not feed you any more!

[Sorry about that Jared and Robert O'Brien. I have fixed the piece of code that was causing this error. -Josh]

26. The Courtier's Reply

Comment #14731 by Jared on December 24, 2006 at 7:49 pm

Hmm, Robert O'Brien, that avatar looks familiar to me. Perhaps that's because it's my own userpic and is a portion of a photograph I took. Funny that you'd use it.

As I may have inadvertantly made the image public domain by using it here, I probably can't ask you to cease using it.

It's a pity, though, that so wise a bird as a raven gets adopted by such a thoughtless troll.

27. Orr on Dawkins

Comment #14719 by Jared on December 24, 2006 at 6:21 pm

Rosenhouse says almost exactly what I would WISH myself capable of saying about Orr's article. Well done, sir!

28. The Courtier's Reply

Comment #14717 by Jared on December 24, 2006 at 5:20 pm

I read this over at Pharyngula earlier today and found it utterly fantastic. P.Z. Myers is a brilliant man!

I'm reminded, in a way, of Bob Dylan's 'Subterranean Homesick Blues,' when he says (albeit in a different context):

'You don't need a weather man
To know which way the wind blows'

29. A Christmas thunderbolt for the arch-enemy of religion

Comment #14715 by Jared on December 24, 2006 at 5:11 pm

I'm sorry. After reading about a quarter of this and hearing absolutely nothing new, I simply cannot rationalize spending any more time on it.

The author claims Richard Dawkins is immodest...um, so taking on the guise of GOD HIMSELF is the height of modesty?

The fact that all of these attacks against Dawkins himself (who CARES if he let his wife read his book aloud???) are being substituted, by and large, for attacks on his logic does two things for me:

First, it shows me that the believers truly do not have solid ground on which to stand and are the ones (as Eagleton said in the title of his own GHASTLY review) lunging, flailing, and mispunching. None of them has yet landed a solid blow.

Second, the increasing frequency of publication of these stale arguments shows that Dawkins has touched a nerve, and that these people are most definitely put off! To me, that can only be a good thing. A book about god's likely non-existence that bothers no-one is an ineffective book.

Thank goodness this debate is back in the public eye. It probably would require more faith in humanity than I have currently to assume that people will recognize Dawkins's superior logic and not simply follow these ill-informed screeds. However, I have little reason to not at least HOPE that some people are seeing through the mist of religious indoctrination and finding more important and tangible things in life than god.

30. 10 myths - and 10 truths - about atheism

Comment #14714 by Jared on December 24, 2006 at 5:00 pm

There's a discussion about this piece going on over at www.fark.com , with all of the typical snark and foolishness, alongside the harried words of frustrated reasonable folks as well.

Some seem to think that Sam is making straw-man arguments...which blows my mind, considering that, clearly, all of the myths he so effectively refutes are, in and of themselves, STRAW MEN! Sometimes people simply astound me...

31. Oh, we Brits of little faith

Comment #14712 by Jared on December 24, 2006 at 4:56 pm

Science, at most, makes God an unnecessary hypothesis, not an unreasonable one.

Right. Would you care to give me the 'reasons' that make god 'reason'able, please? Because I'd very much like to hear them.

For an article PUTATIVELY about the UK and religion, he devotes a lot of ink to the United States. In comparison to the UK, perhaps it makes sense, but there's a lot more to it than what he says. Again, the correlation with the 'wealth' of the US and the prevalence of belief is faulty. I'm fairly certain the statistics would back that the wealthiest regions in the US are also the most secular, and vice-versa.

Religion, if it is to mean anything, has to be challenged, debated and dappled with doubt.

The only proposition within this article with which I fully agree!

32. How the Great Atheist got polite society standing

Comment #14709 by Jared on December 24, 2006 at 4:49 pm

...

(that's all I can manage without loosing a stream of well-deserved profanity at the author of this absolutely absurd piece)

33. The Only One in Step

Comment #14690 by Jared on December 24, 2006 at 10:59 am

Martha (#14685):
I think that it is rather natural for kids to rebel in one way or another, regardless of how they are raised. It's part of the experience of learning to define yourself not as a child, but an individualized adult. The question you raise is not of whether the rebellions take place, but of whether the rebellions are actual or are merely symbolic.

There is a rather common streak in adolescents of rejecting any kind of authority. It happens most noticeably in cases where the parents are autocratic and overly protective. It also happens, often in ridiculous ways, when parents are guilty of nothing other than love and respect!

But I do agree with the spirit of what you've posted...the rebellions tend to more often be these ridiculous and symbolic ones if a child has been taught to respect themselves. That's sort of like giving them baby steps to their eventual recognition of autonomy so that, when they get there, the shock is not so great as to provoke the more dangerous kinds of rebellion.

Some parents don't give their kids enough rope; others give them just enough to hang themselves. But the best parents give them a rope that's already been cut, and when the child finally tries to make a break for it, they realize that nothing has been holding them back the whole time.

34. CBC Segment on Evangelist Christians

Comment #14678 by Jared on December 24, 2006 at 6:27 am

FrostbitePanda,

You're right, I did make a rather sweeping generalization. I suppose I should have specified "southern suburbs with large evangelical communities or megachurches in the vacinity, or where the teaching of science is going to be insufficient or tainted with ID rhetoric..." Should I go further? :-P

And, in the purposes of full disclosure, I should say that I come from small-town New England, where it seems that the ACTUAL faith is less important than the social function of the church. Why people couldn't just have a separate social club is beyond me, but I suppose this one is too ingrained in their culture to be thoroughly exorcised with such ease.

Regardless, it could (theoretically) be almost as difficult to raise a non-theistic family there for the same social reasons. All I know is that I'd rather be where someone is less likely to be ostracized for the BELIEF part than for the social function part. As long as my hypothetical kids wouldn't be mocked publically for questioning religious doctrine in school, anywhere's good enough for me :)

Either way, and as much as I LOVE cities, I'd probably prefer to raise a family in the suburbs. Not for any "the towns are wholesome and the cities are degraded" reasons, but moreso for logistical simplicity and ease of supervision. It's hard to know what your kids are up to, wherever you may live. I'd like to make engagement with their lives as easy on me as I can!

Plus, I like the bit about being somewhat forced to leave in order to find culture and things of interest, as it would force me (as a hypothetically responsible parent) to get involved and bring my kids on trips to various cultural institutions. In this way, I suppose, I'm recapitulating my own upbringing, but I have VERY few complaints about how I was raised OR how I turned out.

35. An imaginary deity is denounced and debunked

Comment #14627 by Jared on December 23, 2006 at 7:05 pm

Gotcha, Blaine, thanks for the clarification :)

I agree with Kimpatsu's restatement of Dawkins's position, to a point. I think that, had evolutionary science been extant at the time when most of the Enlightenment deists, and those they inspired, were around, it is likely that some of them would have dropped the notion and opted for atheism. But I'm not sold on the point, for a large variety of socially motivated reasons. It is, at best, a reasoned guess and far from a certainty (no matter how much I'd like for it to be!)

36. An imaginary deity is denounced and debunked

Comment #14624 by Jared on December 23, 2006 at 6:57 pm

Blaine:
Do you have a quote handy where Dawkins says that? I'm not saying he doesn't, it's been a while since I looked at or heard him read from the book. I remembered that it just involved isolated quotes that might CONSTRUE an anti-religious bent, but that didn't explicity state "These men were atheists." There's every chance in the world I'm wrong, though.

I know that there was not a unified stand against institutionalized religion in the beginning. From what I've read about Jefferson, his opinions on the matter were somewhat controversial in Virginia at the time. Nonetheless, his advocacy of church-state separation does speak strongly for him. I don't think he was against organized religion, simply a state-sponsored one.

37. What I found out about God

Comment #14619 by Jared on December 23, 2006 at 6:33 pm

I'm going to say that I didn't mind this article at all. I thought it considered things quite well. I did not listen to the radio program, so I can't speak for that part, but this piece at least seemed decent, well-humoured, and rational.

If, in the end, Humphrys decides to be agnostic, that's his choice. He doesn't proselytize it, and says he knows it isn't good enough for some people. Meh, so be it. I'd rather read dozens of articles of this sort than that postmodernist BS posted around the same time! :)

38. What I found out about God

Comment #14606 by Jared on December 23, 2006 at 4:12 pm

I take his appropriation of the newly-unemployed Mr. Rumsfeld as a 'great thinker' to be sarcastic, Mr Blue Sky, but I may be wrong. If I am, YIKES!

39. An imaginary deity is denounced and debunked

Comment #14600 by Jared on December 23, 2006 at 3:49 pm

I believe, Blaine, that Dawkins DOES argue that the Founding Fathers were Deists who (at least in the case of Jefferson) weren't terribly fond of having religion as a national institution.

But I also think he makes a statement that "Pantheism is sexed-up atheism. Deism is watered-down theism," which certainly would say that, if deists, the Founding Fathers weren't atheistic. You are right, either way, to point out the wishy-washy opinion of religion that most of them held!

40. Fallen Angels Assault: Heaven at Christmas

Comment #14597 by Jared on December 23, 2006 at 3:41 pm

Another in the long line of articles saying we can't be good without god. ::Yawn::

But this one comes with the added benefit of misinterpreting the goals of atheist activists. We don't necessarily all want to cut religion out of the world (although I don't know that it'd be so bad if we DID). We merely ask to keep it out of public policy and schools, and to legislate not from a position of one particular faith but rather in a way that protects us FROM any particular faith's perspective. That's all.

Man, we REALLY are the least-trusted minority in America!

41. CBC Segment on Evangelist Christians

Comment #14593 by Jared on December 23, 2006 at 3:16 pm

Blaine,

I'm not sure that you have proven much of anything. You've shown me that you have ignored the points brought up by people counter to your position and continued to call things 'argument from authority' fallacies when others have used the LOGIC behind certain thinkers' positions rather than merely saying something is good because Friedman said so.

Nor have you made ANY points in explanation as to why who 'funds' a thinker should matter as long as their logic is sound. In that regard, you're the one who has made a fallacious argument by attacking the backers rather than demonstrating the ways in which the ideas proposed function as you've argued they function.

If you're exposing a conflict in interest, that may well be the case: show it to us! Explain why, say, Friedman's conclusions about the system are unduly influenced by the backers you say support him, and are not logically tenable. You can't just go and discard the man for being who he is, that won't cut the mustard. WHY is he wrong? Which premises and/or conclusions are logically flawed?

If people back Schwarzenegger because he's a celebrity and for no other reason, that's all well and good. Can you prove it? What policies of his do you refer to? Where is his logic flawed? I honestly do not know enough about him to argue for or against him, but as you keep bringing him up, the burden of proof is on you. What are his 'retrograde' opinions and how are they related to the free market?

I am not seeking to argue any further about the benefits of one economic theory over another because, as I said above, I've done no research in any way and can't adequately defend my position. However, at this moment, I'm only saying that you have not adequately stated or proven your claims about the position you hold, or listened to and successfully rebutted the reasons put forth by those holding the opposite one. Until then, the debate is far from over.

42. CBC Segment on Evangelist Christians

Comment #14588 by Jared on December 23, 2006 at 2:55 pm

mikkala:

I take issue with your use of the term 'un-natural'. I don't believe that anything humans have done (or are capable of doing) is unnatural, as we are ourselves part of nature. We were 'made' by nature and all of our innovations and ideas, bad or good, spring from within our brains, which are also a part of nature. Even atomic energy, which we have used in terrible and destructive ways, is part of nature for better or for worse. The atom was there and, given a long enough time frame, SOMETHING would discover it and learn how to use it. That thing merely happened to be us. Even Professor Dawkins has argued as much, calling the ways in which a species affects its environment, as well as the technologies it creates, part of its 'extended' phenotype and, in that regard, just as natural as the color of our eyes (another phenotypic effect).

I could even argue, since 'un-balanced' and greedy systems seem far easier to create than fair and balanced ones, that self-interest is, in the long run, more 'natural' than leveling the playing field for a group. I make no value judgments on which is the 'better' method, but I merely comment on your word choice. In truth, altruism is also 'natural' and my argument about ease is fallacious. I'm just trying to make a point.

Anyway, sorry for that bit of pedantry, I just have a thing against the word 'unnatural.' Anyway, moving along... :)

43. The Komodo Dragon's Tale

Comment #14432 by Jared on December 22, 2006 at 12:05 pm

Thanks to Prof. Dawkins for the exclusive tale! An interesting read, to be sure.

Now I'm becoming extremely curious about the history and development of sex-determining chromosomes through evolutionary time. I wonder at which point the current 'systems' developed: before, or after the mammals' most recent common ancestor with the reptiles. I'd have some (quite likely rather naive) questions about the way we determine males and females if the reptilian heterozygous females and homozygous males were around first and mammalian homozygous females/heterozygous males developed after the 'split'!

This is why I value science! These sorts of questions would never arise from the spontaneous 'creation' of all animals and the whole 'Adam's rib' theory of the origin of human females!

44. The problem with secularism

Comment #14403 by Jared on December 22, 2006 at 9:45 am

AcesUp:

Thanks for that...man, it reminds me of a lot of the the stuff I've had to read about film theory for my MA...I really wonder if postmodernists believe they make any sense to anyone when they string those words along in a jumble.

They seem to hold the position that, because they are (presumably) talking about confusing and difficult subjects, they have to use difficult language. That, or they are trying to sound erudite. Either way, it betrays the obscurantism of that school of thought.

I wonder what someone like George Orwell, who firmly believed in clarity in communication, would think about this stuff. His essays, which still hold up today, are persuasive and show profundity of thought without resorting to absurd and overblown verbiage.

45. The problem with secularism

Comment #14352 by Jared on December 22, 2006 at 6:00 am

As much as I'd like to rip this piece to shreds, I instead would like to profess my hope that Professor Dawkins himself posts and tears it apart.

Granted, his collected works do precisely that, and it would be redundant for him to do so again here...but I'd still love to see his response!

46. CBC Segment on Evangelist Christians

Comment #14278 by Jared on December 21, 2006 at 9:40 pm

JohnC:
I don't really wish to argue the point too much further as clearly you've got a lot more interest in the subject and have done research that proves it. The fact that I'm not as interested in sociological and political research doesn't make me any less entitled to have an opinion, it just means I'm not going to be able to make a convincing argument without doing research I don't at present have the time or inclination to do. You've not yet convinced me, but as I don't think I can do a better job, you win for the present.

All I will say is that it is dangerous to confuse the ideals of a particular group (in this case, libertarians and similar factions) with what that group would do in a given situation where all of the variables are already on the table. Oftentimes, what would be ideal and what will actually work best NOW are quite different.

The mistake of most failed systems is the confusion of the ideal with the real. While theoretically I support as small a government, with as few duties, as possible, I at least know that in practice it may not work out that way, particularly when we've had sprawling bureaucracies for so long.

I repeat, I don't have the cure. I'm still not sold that you've named the right ailment, or picked the right course of treatment, but it's all beyond my ability to diagnose anyway, so I'll leave you to it. Cheers!

47. The Trouble with Atheism

Comment #14252 by Jared on December 21, 2006 at 4:39 pm

Yorker:
I don't know much about practical web development, coding, Flash, or any of that. Data entry and QA were my main areas in my time working for a start-up web company. That and training people, which has been a trend throughout my life. So, although I don't know how much I'd be able to contribute above the level of content, keep me posted if that's something you'd like. Cheers!

48. I love the commercialisation of Christmas

Comment #14250 by Jared on December 21, 2006 at 4:27 pm

princepetr:

I think you were referring to me, and not to Jiten, who was supportive of Marx.

Well, I can't personally speak for economists, only what I've read about Marxism in my travels through academia, where the point of his current irrelevance has been raised several times. I'm not much interested in economics or socialist theories so I know no more than that.

And as to the 'transitional phase,' and Lenin's predictions...I'm not sure, but I'd hazard a guess that there's a reason for the failure of the state to wither away. And, my hunch is, that the reason is that humans tend towards power structures and hierarchies, and certain people tend to want to dominate. I think it is likely part of human nature that this occurs, not any failures of each particular state that has tried.

Even though the man in your userpic was a committed socialist, he too expressed doubts that a socialist state and freedom could ever co-exist. Regardless, your statement that 'the state needs to be destroyed before socialism and freedom can co-exist' is debatable, but even under an assumption of its truth, my question is: how long after the state is destroyed does something very much like the state rise up again?

49. I love the commercialisation of Christmas

Comment #14234 by Jared on December 21, 2006 at 3:13 pm

Jiten:
I would wager that it's largely because most of Marx's theories are now taken seriously primarily within the liberal arts and academia rather than amongst practicing economists. I've seen it stated numerous times that Marx and Freud share the interesting distinction of being used primarily in areas outside of their own speciality long after they were more or less abandoned by economists and psychaitrists, respectively. While this isn't entirely true (there are still some true Freudians, and several third-world economists [and, nominally, China, Cuba, North Korea, etc] hold to some form of Marxism), functionally speaking the letter-of-the-law Marxist movement has gone down. Just because he made some insightful points and proposed solutions doesn't mean that his solutions were tenable in real-world situations.

As to your second point, it's not as if ANY alternative to Capitalist society will necessarily erode freedoms. It's just that the existing ones do, in varying degrees, by force, policy, or coercion. Whether it's good, bad, or indifferent is another story; it's simply a matter of fact.

50. I love the commercialisation of Christmas

Comment #14228 by Jared on December 21, 2006 at 2:39 pm

I can see Yorker's point in that he is not supporting the company using such awful labour practices, which is commendable in thought if not necessarily (as has been pointed out by Edutheria and kcjerith) in practice. Unfortunately I think any abuses of the capitalist system occur just there, on the SYSTEMATIC level, and so until the reason for using unfair labour practices disappears, they'll likely continue to do so whether we support them or not.

I'd also like to join the respect parade for Edutheria, who has said what I often cannot express well enough when dealing with people who are less inclined towards economic liberalism and the capitalist way. Bravo!

We might need you on the board about the CBC story, as we're having a discussion that might swing in a similar direction :)