1. Teresa, Bright and Dark

Comment #66593 by sir_russ on August 30, 2007 at 2:44 pm

Many of the comments here have concerned Mr. Hitchens' position on abortion. From my perspective, Hitchens' take on abortion, pro or con, does not impact how I look at the issue. If Hitchens were to clearly lay out his thinking about abortion, I would be interested in reading it regardless of his specific stance as even when I disagree with him I find him insightful, but it is one of those issues that I have researched over many decades, pondered heavily and arrived at my conclusions. While I am open to new argument and new evidence in all areas of thought, my views about abortion are unlikely to be significantly swayed, regardless of a writers' insightfulness, since, in order to convince me to alter my thinking about abortion, the writer would first need to change my mind about a pregnant woman's right to self-determination.

Fundamentally, I see every person as having a right to make what they consider to be the best decisions for themselves. To me, no one has the right to interfere with another's actions taken in support of their self-interest. I'm a man. I don't get pregnant. That is a natural consequence over which I have no control. I will never be confronted with the decision to terminate a pregnancy for myself and I don't see that anyone has the right to coercively intervene in someone else's personal decision-making in that regard.

2. God grief

Comment #42019 by sir_russ on May 17, 2007 at 1:09 pm

"Such a position assumes that simply because we understand what is going on during an earthquake or when a person is dying of cancer, these events cease to be terrifying."

This is patently absurd. Understanding a natural disaster or disease as originating from a non-supernatural source makes such an event much less terrifying. Viewed from a natural perspective, it is the simply the event itself which instills the terror; construed as supernatural the phenomenon itself is just the beginning. Dealing with the consequences of such an unfortunate event in a natural context consists of facing the reality, picking up the pieces, and addressing the needs of those effected. When viewed with an eye to the supernatural, the catastrophe is just the beginning of the terror and fear, since the horror of the event itself, must be followed up with assigning the blame to those who have brought down the supernatural wrath in the form of the current cataclysm, and attempting the impossible task of satiating the whims of non-existent deities.

3. Richard Dawkins in the Time 100

Comment #37120 by sir_russ on May 3, 2007 at 12:33 pm

waxwings said, "Look for his upcoming book to flop and flop hard," but it may not turn out that way at all.

A friend of mine who is a book broker tells me that groups like the National Association of Evangelicals - Ted Haggard was its last president - often buy a large number of a specific book (50,000 to 500,000 copies) specifically to manipulate the sales numbers to get it onto bestseller lists, when they want to be able to suggest to their adherents that the brisk book sales are a sign from god. Sometimes they never take possession of them, but instead, move them directly to the used book market.

Behe's "Darwin's Black Box" sold around 200,000 copies, and I'll bet this one does at least as well.

As an interesting aside, a longtime friend of mine who is a fundamentalist Christian, bought two copies of "Darwin's Black Box" on the urging of his minister. According to my friend, most of his fellow church members bought one or more. A couple of weeks ago he asked me if I wanted both of them since he had never read them and had no plans to ever do so. Then, earlier this week, at a "bargain" book store, I came across a pile of about 500 pristine "Darwin's Black Box's." It would be at least interesting to know how many of the reported 200,000 sales numbers were actually read.

4. We aim to misbehave

Comment #35181 by sir_russ on April 26, 2007 at 1:43 pm

I too would like to see the statutes disallowing atheist voting.

I have been following separation of church and state issues for decades and have never come across actual law prohibiting atheists from voting. Lots of rumors, but not law.

I've seen the statutes from various states prohibiting atheists from serving on juries, from being witnesses or from holding public office, but not from voting. If you can find that data, please share it. I'm certain that many of us would be quite interested.

Regarding the holding of public office in the US, the Constitution spells it right out that there shall be no religious test for holding public office.

5. Fighting Words: A wartime lexicon

Comment #34965 by sir_russ on April 25, 2007 at 6:26 pm

The local Barnes and Noble here in Lansing MI has "god is not Great" available. I got my copy yesterday. It's a great read. I've read four of his books and this is the best yet.

6. One Hell of a Religious Read

Comment #34852 by sir_russ on April 25, 2007 at 1:03 pm

Barnes and Noble in Lansing, MI has "god is not Great" on the shelves right now. I'm only a few dozen pages in, but it is wonderful. Hitchens creates another great one.

7. Militant atheists: too clever for their own good

Comment #30168 by sir_russ on April 7, 2007 at 6:07 am

Several comments here concern the voter counts before and after the discussion.

Of course there could be many reasons to account for the difference -- technical problems, inadequately informing voters, as well as late arrivals -- but, I think the difference may also reflect a more fundamental human trait: people are more willing to stand up and be counted when it is clear in their minds what their vote means. The larger after vote could result from the discussion participants clarifying the issue in the minds of audience members making them feel more comfortable voting irrespective of whether they agreed or disagreed with the proposition.

8. Peanut Butter, The Atheist's Nightmare!

Comment #27925 by sir_russ on March 27, 2007 at 9:04 am

Abiogenesis is not directly addressed by the biological evolution Missler is attacking, but, of course, his fatuous followers don't understand such a distinction. Biological evolution takes life as its starting point, however primitive that life might be. As we observe him exploiting the ignorance of his onlookers, we should sense the intensifying need to spread the rationalist view to a greater portion of humanity.

Missler and his audience are a woefully ignorant lot who will never analyze the science since they lack the knowledge as well as the intellectual tools to do so. He knows his minions well. As such, he knows he can use his ignorance-based claim - there is no new life in peanut butter - as the foundation for casting shadows over two of the hallmarks of evolutionary science: the experimental basis of evolution and the immense volume of the accrued data supporting it. When he says you and I conduct a billion peanut-butter-container-opening experiments every year and we've done so for a hundred years, he's suggesting that we have a great deal of experimentally-obtained evidence to contradict evolution.

To those who take this man seriously, it is insignificant that he starts with false notions, reasons incorrectly, and reaches wrong conclusions; they do not know the difference. From their standpoint, he has effectively proven evolution wrong.

9. The questions science cannot answer

Comment #21740 by sir_russ on February 10, 2007 at 9:04 pm

On reading McGrath's statement, "It also shows that it makes little sense to talk about "proof" of a world view, whether Christian or atheist," I simply laughed out loud. Where did Alister study comedy?

Let's create a hypothetical world where there are two contrasting world views, one Christian and one atheist, characterized as follows.

The Christian worldview informs me that there's this book that contains the static sum total of all I need to know to live in this world; it never changes, and indeed cannot change regardless of evidence or new knowledge. For instance, if based on a "demon theory" of disease derived from specific passages in the book, I decide to drain blood from people to rid them of the demons and thus the disease, let's call it bloodletting, I can't use the evidence that far more people die when I drain their blood, than when I don't, to justify discontinuing the use of bloodletting. My only option is to keep killing people since I can't use evidence.

The atheist worldview tells me that there is no such thing as the supernatural. Since I don't have demons to cause disease, I'm not going to use bloodletting to let the non-existent demons out. Besides, I can use evidence like whenever people lose lots of blood for any reason, they are far more likely to die. What's more is I can evaluate the Christian bloodletting according to non-supernatural empiricism, and, thus, keep Christians from needlessly killing people. Whenever new evidence is available through new knowledge or better awareness of existing knowledge, I can reassess my techniques and methods in light of this new evidence, for validity, consistency and overall effectiveness. If my current mode of operation is found wanting, I can change it to better fit the new evidence.

For McGrath to say that it makes little sense to talk about "proof" of a world view, whether Christian or atheist, is ludicrous. A normal, intelligent, and moral individual could see immediately that one of these views, the atheist one, will pay much higher dividends for the betterment of mankind. From a simple moral judgement standpoint, if one view is better for more people, it is proof of the superiority of that view.

Where the Christian worldview would call it immoral to change the way things are done to better serve the human community, the atheist way would consider it immoral not to.

10. Panel discussion on atheism where no atheists are included

Comment #21165 by sir_russ on February 7, 2007 at 8:37 pm

sankekorafi

Your message to CNN was great. When you send out such a timely message, please provide your buddies at richarddawkins.net an e-mail address so we can follow suit.

Nice work. Thanks.

Russ

11. Grief Without God

Comment #19506 by sir_russ on January 27, 2007 at 5:18 pm

Speaking of grief, over at Atheist in a Mini Van, the blogger, possummomma, who seems like a very sweet person is being abused by a Baptist minister, called William, after she proudly posted an essay titled "What I want for Christmas" by her eleven year old daughter talking about the teacher's lack of religious sensitivity, and the senselessness of the assignment in a class having children known to be from families practicing Islam, Judaism and Christianity.

http://possummomma.blogspot.com/index.html

Good essay, smart kid, pathetic Baptist.

12. Unscientific American: US Almost Last in Understanding Evolution

Comment #18764 by sir_russ on January 22, 2007 at 9:46 pm

In post 22. Comment #18668, Martha said,

Quote= R J Eskow, The Huffington Post:

"How will their children - and ours - become the great scientists, doctors, and engineers of tomorrow?"

Their children - and ours??? Whatever is that supposed to mean? If, for example, my neighbours choose to indoctrinate their children in a particular way, that doesn't automatically mean that MY children are going to be enculturated/conditioned in the same way. Certainly not!

Martha, I hope you live in a place where reason reigns supreme. I unfortunately do not.

I live in Michigan, USA where our state legislature until this month was lead by true Bush-clone right wing fundamentalist Christian zealot Republicans. Many of them were the spawn of Liberty University, Bob Jones University, Phillip Johnson and Moral Majority anti-science, anti-intellectual traditions. Over the last few years, they have repeatedly attempted to pass legislation that would allow intelligent design creationism to be introduced in public science classrooms. Failing that, their attempts went into trying to enact "teach the controversy" legislation to legally require public school science teachers to discredit evolution and global warming.

While the specific legislators have changed, the combined heavily-moneyed corrupting influences of Christianity and the American Petroleum Institute - both dropping billions to purchase political influence - have not. As such, we have no guarantees that the new crop of lawmakers will be any less easily bought than the last one. These two groups will do whatever it takes to create a public as ignorant as possible, they both want to target public school science students, and both will pay handsomely to buy political sway over curricula as needed.

Most of the parents of public school students in the USA do not understand how important building a good base of scientifically literate citizens is to their own children's future and clearly this also applies to many with the authority to make law.

When most parents are too ignorant of science to speak up in support of good science education for their children - indeed, far too ignorant to model an appreciation of the sciences to their children, and when those elected actually yearn so earnestly for a return to the Dark Ages that they will try to legislate its seeds into reality, one has to ask how we can realistically envision our public school science students not continuing to be further and further outdistanced by the rest of the developed world.

Parents in a modern culture should be able to expect that the issues critical to their children's futures are being adequately addressed in their public schools. Neither the Christianity Industry nor the oil industry should ever be permitted to influence educational content, but legislators here, as well as elsewhere around this country, have demonstrated an immoral willingness to neglect the needs of the students in the short term, and the needs of the society in the long term, if the price is right.

Martha, I hope the situation is better where you are.

13. Homophobia, not injustice, is what really fires the faiths

Comment #17087 by sir_russ on January 10, 2007 at 4:50 pm

Here in the US of A, the Christians are so thick you can't spit without hitting one. They clamor on and on and on about the importance of defining marriage as one man and one woman and yet, they get divorced 50 percent of the time within seven years. Isn't it ironic, isn't it hypocritical, that those self-righteous Christians incessantly demonstrating their disdain for marriage, would want to deny the thing they loathe to others?

14. Without God, Gall Is Permitted

Comment #16391 by sir_russ on January 6, 2007 at 12:57 pm

In post # 55. Comment #16341, Homo Incredulous writes,

Zoro
I am not very good at mathematics, so how can I express my estimate of the probability of a god existing in any understandable and meaningful way?

Homo Incredulous,

Deriving such a probability estimate should be done with as many inputs as possible. Here, I'll point out just three, each of which, while not having quantitative exactitude, implies scant odds that the Biblical god exists. Together, they put the odds of gods at infinitesimal.

One input is the concrete physical evidence. Here there is, of course, no evidence. None of the things which believers consider as positive evidence for their belief have any bearing on the truth of religious claims. The Bible is obviously not evidence of any sort - no corroboration for Biblical claims exist outside the Bible. Notice that though the US is densely - literally as well as figuratively - Christian, the Bible is not used as a standard in courts of law. No one is legally bound to the claims of the Bible which demonstrates that we, as a society, do not take the Bible as truth. Claims of new miracles have largely disappeared from most mainstream religions since we understand the world so much better than did the ignorant - a simple statement of fact not a pejorative - authors of the Bible and other holy books. Where miracle claims persist, they do so as personal anecdotes relating misattributions of personal feelings and revelations, and clear ignorance of the natural phenomena. Personal feelings, anecdotes, and ignorance do not constitute evidence. On this basis alone we start out with an extremely low likelihood that the God of the Bible exists.

A great reference which addresses revealed holy books as evidence is the collection of Carl Sagan's 1985 Gifford Lectures on Natural Theology called "The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God." [edited by Ann Druyan, 2006, The Penguin Press, ISBN 1-59420-107-2] The great man continues to inspire us.

Another input to consider is the claims made by religions: does religion do what it claims to do? Religions claims that they make people more moral, more compassionate, more caring, better citizens. But do religions actually pull it off as they claim? In short: no. Slightly longer: they don't even come close. From a social standpoint, look at the US, for instance, with all of its wondrous religious claims. Now, ask did religion make George Bush or his religiously well-connected Republican legislature better people, better lawmakers, less self-interested, more community, nation and world minded? Did the public religiousness of these people benefit the world? I think we can all agree not.

Several percent of the US populace is incarcerated. US prescriptions for anti-depressants, tranquilizers, and other mood-altering drugs far outpace the same in other developed countries. Child and spouse abuse rates are the highest in the developed world. More than ten million Americans are alcoholics and millions more are addicted to pharmaceuticals or illicit drugs. More than 40 million Americans do not have health insurance and, so, are essentially cut off from access to good medical treatment. Murder rates in the US are the highest in the developed world. Religions actively campaign against rights for some of "God's children" with anti-gay marriage amendments. These are but a few quality of life issues where religions claim they have a beneficial influence, so I ask: Do these factors bear out the claims of religion being a positive force in US society? No!

In fact, it's clear that the case could be made for religiosity being negatively correlated with a healthy society. This idea is bolstered by looking at Canada or Sweden where the religious number but a fraction of what they do in the US, and, yet, when compared in those factors sited, they fare far more favorably. Religiosity does not make for a better society.

Coupling the lack of physical evidence with the clear ineffectiveness of religions to provide the benefits they claim, our extremely low likelihood slides even closer zero.

There are many other inputs that can be considered in assessing the probability of a god existing, but I'd like to end with just one: we know where these myths originated and they do not come from a divine source. Until writing was invented they were simply oral histories and traditions no doubt changing over the centuries as desire to embellish and imperfect memory worked their deeds. These stories are clear manifestations of human creativity each having its own genealogy.

Evidence for the non-divine origin is "revealed" by the profound ignorance of the natural world demonstrated by God - simple examples are the dietary restrictions. For example, God couldn't tell the Bible's authors, "Well-cooked pork is safe to eat because the heat kills the germs." Pork consumption was prohibited for one reason: since God's creators didn't know about pathogens, neither did God.

These are only three factors but there are hundreds.

So then, combining the lack of physical evidence, the clear ineffectiveness of religions to provide the benefits they claim, and our understanding of the non-divine origins of Biblical myths - highlighted by the ignorance of the Biblical God mirroring the ignorance of the Bible's authors - our probability estimate is almost indistinguishable from zero.

15. Without God, Gall Is Permitted

Comment #16364 by sir_russ on January 6, 2007 at 9:15 am

When the author says, "When the very first population of atheists roamed the earth in the Victorian age--brought to life by Lyell's "Principles of Geology," Darwin's "Origin of Species" and other blows to religious certainty--it was the personal dimension of atheism that others found distressing," does he truly expect us to buy the idea that atheistic rationalist thought originated in the nineteenth century?

Non-believers have existed since the first conceptions of deities arose in the mind of man. Well before the Christian era theists as well as atheists were versed in the arguments disputing the existence of gods. Atheism has a noble heritage throughout man's history. Atheism did not spring into existence in the nineteenth century.

In the Abrahamic faiths, followers of any god but yahweh, are all atheists, so that puts Plato, Archimedes, Socrates, Epicurus, Aristotle, Euclid, and Pythagoras along with everyone else living at that time, squarely in the atheist camp.

Concerning the respectability of theology, I find it impossible to respect any discipline which requires no internal consistency and has no universal standard for determining correctness. In the sciences, new ideas must be consistent with the existing ones, even as new ideas put existing ideas under a broader umbrella. In the sciences we have the natural world as a standard: we continually ask, does the idea fit the data?

By contrast, in theology, any one of us can create our own gods, create our own doctrine, write our own holy books. That's right, we can literally, just willy nilly manufacture a new theology and it will have just as much legitimacy as any mainstream religion. Hubbard did just that with Scientology; Smith did just that with Mormonism; and, Mary Baker Eddy did just that with Christian Science. Anyone can do it.

Why can we do this? Simply put, there is no supernatural standard of correctness. What's more, is that a brand new religion, just like the old ones, can be demonstrably false - in fact, it can be purposely fabricated that way - and still be acceptable from a theological perspective. No adjudication, no new theology peer review, nobody's minding the religio-theology store. How should theology be deserving of respect when every idea - no matter how bizarre - is supposed to be acceptable provided we label it theology?