1. No atheist burials in Co Donegal

Comment #239190 by esuther on August 29, 2008 at 8:22 am

>>>>>I thought all dead people were atheists. I've never heard a corpse express even the slightest hint of religious sentiment on its own. Generally they're quite happy to sit there and fall to pieces<<<<<

Good point, Carto.

I only wish there would be a moment of reflection after a person was dead, sort of like the light spot at the center of the tv screen right after you turn it off. A moment for the believer to realize that no angels, no devils, nobody, nothing, was going to come along and take them any place, that in just about a second, the light was going off forever. The "Oh, shit," moment.

2. More Americans Question Religion's Role in Politics

Comment #236300 by esuther on August 24, 2008 at 1:01 pm

I find myself agreeing with newandrew. 3,000 can't possible give a good picture of such a widely diverse population as the entire United States.
How did they make sure the respondents were truly random? WHO did they poll?
If it was a telephone poll, it would be tilted toward the people who tend to be at home during the day: that is, women without jobs. If an internet poll, it would query more of the young. Or the politically engaged who would bother to respond.
So I want to know: Did they poll the full spectrum of ages? Of economic classes? Of educational levels? Was it truly nation-wide?
In all, 3,000 seems like nothing to me. I lived in Manhattan with that many people on my BLOCK, for Jeebus' sake.

3. Supernatural science: Why we want to believe

Comment #234538 by esuther on August 21, 2008 at 2:16 pm

"Why are people so eager to accept ....outlandish creatures and ideas??

This may be one of the few things that separates humans from animals, that is, the tendency toward fantasy. Parents tell their children stories, in some households the stories are religious, in others they are just fairy tales. But it is hard to imagine a child growing up with no stories at all. Even in the absence of parental stories, children absorb narratives from outside and fantasize about themselves doing heroic things.

For some reason, we never quite seem to outgrow this. Even those of us who have the intellectual fortitude to reject religion and mysticism still are willing to suspend disbelief for a movie or a play or a good novel, and I am inclined to think the part of the brain operating is the same both for a good movie and for a good religion.

I remember myself as a young child being able to vividly imagine myself walking with the shepherds to a stable in Bethlehem to see the Christ child. It was so real to me. I shook off religion very early on, but the image of being on that hillside with the shepherds is still quite clear.

Something to do with infantile imprinting, I suppose. In any case, the pleasure, the sheer "reality" of fantasy is what made me a fiction writer. My characters are quite real and three dimensional to me, since I spend so many hundreds of hours creating them and having things happen to them. I can well understand how Jesus et al can seem real to a fundie. That part of the brain keeps functioning and in most people, it is more powerful than the rational part.

4. A flea we missed?

Comment #231213 by esuther on August 16, 2008 at 12:57 am

I would imagine the reform Jewish 'take' on Dawkins would differ slightly from that of Christians.
Reform Jews, like Unitarian Christians, are the most secularized of their faith and I think fall squarely into the 'believers in belief' class.
But modern Judaism has the added element of valuing the community as much as the dogma. Jews in my personal sphere seem to retain their Jewish identity NOT because they believe a single feature of the Old Testament, but because they believe in themselves.
So I can see a whole lot of reform Jews going to temple (and circumcising their sons) just to sort of mark out the steps of being Jewish while not giving an iota of credence to any of the myths behind it all.
I lived most of my life in New York, where a large segment of my friends (and fellow professors) were Jews who were atheist in all but name, but Jewish only in name. They were Jews because they said they were. Period.

5. Big-brained Animals Evolve Faster

Comment #230830 by esuther on August 15, 2008 at 8:43 am

There is a theory that is Asthma psychosomatic. I tend to agree.

Please do not add to the spread of this really vicious myth. Millions of children have suffered terribly from this outrageous ignorance, and were withheld medication that could save them from hideous distress and crippling damage to their lungs, simply because the people who should have been taking care of them insisted it was
1) all in their heads
2) a bid for attention

I was one of those children and I become enraged when I think of the nights I stayed awake nearly suffocating, hour after hour. Imagine breathing through a single soda straw, having to use all your strength to get enough air through that straw, and never being able to put it aside and get a real breath. In my case it was not until adolescence that I discovered it was an allergy to dust mites (my parents kept a pretty dirty house) and animal dander. Living in a clean house and taking the correct medication finally made it possible for me to have a normal life.
Please also keep in mind that there is an equally outrageous 'theory' that migraines and spastic colon, and any number of other ailments are psychosomatic.
That is not to say there is no psychological damage from having asthmatic attacks. Imagine a small child, deprived of the one basic thing that you need from minute to minute, and being ignored or reproached, and not understanding why. A child who can't breathe cries a lot, doesn't sleep, develops behavior problems, fails in school. Just imagine YOUR life, breathing through a single soda straw. How long before you went a little crazy?

So, please, don't spread the myth.

6. Rushdie condemns cancellation of Muhammad novel

Comment #230631 by esuther on August 15, 2008 at 1:46 am

Isn't it a bit harsh to mention outright "Censorship"? Doesn't the author still have a right to take the book elsewhere to be published? Or are contracts such that the publisher owns it and it would take a lot of effort to allow another publisher to take the work off them?

That would depend on the terms of the contract the author signed. I write atheist/anti-religious fiction myself, but for a tiny press that no one has noticed. My contract stipulates that the book WILL be published by a certain date and if it is not, then I regain rights. If the publisher in the case of the Aisha novel has paid an advance, and does not specify a "to be published by" date, then the author is paralyzed. She has effectively sold the rights to the novel and cannot take it elsewhere unless the publisher dissolves the contract or violated one of its terms.

7. Rushdie condemns cancellation of Muhammad novel

Comment #230617 by esuther on August 15, 2008 at 1:07 am

You have to wonder how these bomb-threateners decide who to threaten, and for what. Surely anyone who wants to silence a novelist for a sweet little novel about Aisha would be even more incensed by the writings of Richard Dawkins who brazenly attacks their entire religion as nonsense. And yet Dawkins' publisher goes on merrily publishing one 'blasphemy' after another, without blinking an eye.

Go figure.

8. Rushdie condemns cancellation of Muhammad novel

Comment #230614 by esuther on August 15, 2008 at 1:02 am

>>>>put out by a coalition of writers, publishers and human right organizations.<<<

I'm not sure what this means in terms of being a viable entity for publication of other risky publications. But I think it might be the way to go, to continue publishing items that otherwise might endanger a single publisher.

I certainly can understand the timidity of the publishing house, if someone threatens to harm your business or your staff, but it is nonetheless critical to find a way to stand up to the threats and the fanaticism, and such dispersal of publication might be the way.

Suggestions?

9. God's Warriors

Comment #230234 by esuther on August 14, 2008 at 1:05 pm

I saw the first part, Jewish Warriors, and bits and pieces of the other two. My main criticism is that it is way too gentle in its treatment of what is clearly a threat to world peace.

Amanpour never quite takes the position that ALL of these people are fanatics and f--king DANGEROUS. Perhaps we are to conclude this for ourselves, but I found it a bit irritating for her to be interviewing really hateful people and never alluding to the insanity of their position. The issue of Israeli expansion is touched upon way too lightly too, and there is no mention, as I recall, of the fact that militant Zionism is one of the sparks, maybe the primary spark, for militant Islam.

10. Do stop behaving as if you are God, Professor Dawkins

Comment #229165 by esuther on August 13, 2008 at 7:32 am

I'm marking this nw a troll. He obviously does not grasp what is meant by 'discussion and is simply pouring out his stream of consciousness. If he's going to claim all the sand in the sandbox, he'll have to take his bucket and go home.

11. A set of previews of 'The Genius of Charles Darwin'

Comment #223328 by esuther on August 2, 2008 at 3:30 am

Don't bother to read the "Times On Line" article about the Darwin documentary. It's a really stupid article, by someone who wants to sound oh so clever while portraying Dawkins as an obnoxious anti-religious religious fanatic. All the familiar accusations of atheism/Darwinism as being just another religion.

12. Is Killing Liberals a Hate Crime?

Comment #223014 by esuther on August 1, 2008 at 8:56 am

The purpose of the criminal justice system is to fairly punish the perpetrator and/or provide restitution to the victim.

Ahem. I believe the purpose of the criminal justice system is to determine whether a person charged with a crime is actually guilty of that crime.

Your focus on punishment as the primary function of the court is, well, medieval. Perhaps you have forgotten the principle of presumed innocence. Why else have witnesses and a trial?

13. Can Jews and Evangelicals Get Along?

Comment #223004 by esuther on August 1, 2008 at 8:31 am

To claim that Jews have a hold on America's foreign policy is over the line.

The last time someone drooled that kind of bullshit here, it was an Israeli settler.

Or is that you, TeraBrat? Where ya been, girl?

14. Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Thinking about Morality

Comment #221979 by esuther on July 30, 2008 at 12:02 pm

Isn't that slightly similar to the 'choice' that drove Sophie to suicide in "Sophie's Choice"?

She had to sacrifice one child to save the other one so she sacrificed the younger one, but the decision destroyed her. (the fact that in the end both children were killed of course worsened the guilt).

Although I had trouble following the discussion of the experiment, I do see, I think, what is being measured.

Did the experiment ask such things as: Would you smother a baby to save five people? five hundred people? What if the baby was already sick? What if it was someone else's baby? Or an ugly baby. (Ugly children are in fact more abused.) There are even more shades of gray in the dilemma.

I don't know where I'd land on that spectrum. I'd probably start crying myself and they'd have to smother me. Of course that would free me from the moral dilemma.

15. Catholics To Pope: Lift Birth Control Ban

Comment #220756 by esuther on July 29, 2008 at 2:06 am

Re Communion in general

I spent my childhood in various protestant churches. My parents were 'lazy' christians who just thought it was nice if the kids got some manners by going to church. Any church.
So I remember taking communion the protestant way, which is very undramatic and business like. Deacons went along the aisles with trays with dozens of tiny glasses of grape juice and teensy pieces of cracker. Almost every one took some, I certainly did because I wanted to be like everyone else. But I felt no awe, nothing. It was like someone handed me a mint or a lemon drop (which would have tasted better.) My point is that I suspect millions of christians have the same lack of religious experience when they take communion. It's ritual for the sake of ritual, like saying "amen". I sense there is a deep valley between the ritual and the awe and that is where atheism can start to grow.
Certainly it did in me; by the time I was in Jr. High School I had figured out it was all voodoo and stayed in the church because I loved singing in the choir (and had a serious crush on the choir director.) Which suggests that the number of church goers gives no real indication of the strength of faith.

16. Catholics To Pope: Lift Birth Control Ban

Comment #220440 by esuther on July 28, 2008 at 12:41 pm

Unfortunately we have Catholics (and various other Christian groups) and Muslims in a determined effort to outbreed each other to the death.

Orthodox Jews also. It's one of the ways they beef up the settlements they spread all over Palestine.

All the orthos, Xian, Mslm, Jwsh, seem to agree that women belong home and pregnant.

Gag.

17. A Holocaust Denier Hits Manhattan (And Hearts Hitchens)

Comment #220058 by esuther on July 28, 2008 at 3:33 am

>>>>>Europe jails people for thoughts and words? And they consider the Americans to be the religious nuts.<<<<

Germany and Austria are not "Europe."

18. Escape or betrayal.

Comment #218408 by esuther on July 25, 2008 at 12:02 pm

>>>>>As DamnDirtyApe noted FGM earlier, I should regurgitate a statistic I heard recently. In (Orthodox Christian) Ethiopia, of the order of 24 million girls have been mutilated these last 25 years, resulting in around 3 million deaths, or as many dead females as in the Holocaust. <<<<<

I would love to be able to track down this statistic. Can you provide any more information about its source?

19. Richard Dawkins slaps creationists into the primordial soup

Comment #217279 by esuther on July 24, 2008 at 6:06 am

Richard Morgan

I am new to this thread and so can only ask the simplest and most basic question.

What was the experience you had that gave you irrefutable evidence of the Christian God?

I ask in all seriousness because I need to know if this experience is available to me or anyone else. Can I find God in this way? Did you experience it through prayer? Did you experience a miracle (which I guess I could never hope for).

This is a very serious question. If the God you experienced is real, that shatters the truth of billions of the rest of us non-Christians, so please help us to know what it was that revealed the Truth to you.

20. The brain in love

Comment #214978 by esuther on July 21, 2008 at 6:08 am

.....James?

Carto, Is that a love poem to someone named James?
Aimes?
Baines (bad rhyme, though there IS a Baines at Oxford)
Danes? (all of them?)
Gaines
Waynes (maybe two of them?)

Anyhow, sweet poem.

21. The brain in love

Comment #214959 by esuther on July 21, 2008 at 5:45 am

Another thought, which may or may not be useful. Left-handedness, spread throughout the human population seems to be survival-neutral (except maybe for baseball players, who I understand, have an advantage). Why does it persist? Is there a gene for it? It is clearly not in the same category as being six-fingered, which COULD be considered aberrant but it never goes away.

Hmm, I am wondering now if there is archeological evidence of lefthandedness in ancient or even pre-historic cultures. A left-handed sharpening tool? Saber-tooth tiger skull smashed by a left-handed blow?

I'll have to check with Ned Flanders at his Leftorium.

22. The brain in love

Comment #214950 by esuther on July 21, 2008 at 5:29 am

I can see how - on a continuum - a species with a tendency for bisexual behaviour could be naturally selected for. This would result in stronger bonds, better co-operation etc. amongst members of the species. Rampant heterosexual behaviour and purely homosexual behaviour would be both be extremes of 'the norm'. This would, perhaps, go some way to explaining why we are all slightly bisexual and exist on the continuum.

I rather like irate_atheist's thesis, but then I am gay myself and prefer to think of my orientation as being part of the whole evolutionary process and not an aberration like, say, mental illness.
I CAN attest to the fact that I have experienced romantic love of Wagnerian intensity and feel every bit as fulfilled as someone with a hubby and gaggle of babies. As Steve Zara pointed out, homosexuality is too widespread throughout the animal kingdom to be aberrant. I think sexual orientation (and love) are very complex, multi-symptom (not sure that's the right word here) events that probably involves a score of genes and another score of environmental factors. I can "imagine" myself as a hetero mommy, but being a lesbian is just more (ahem) 'natural'. While I am sure there are lots of people on this list who would deny having any trace of same-sex urges deep down inside (and who I am to judge?) I still think it is accurate to suggest that the human race has an unmistakable bisexuality to it (I mean of interest focus, not only of reproductive mode).

23. Anti-Darwinists turned away by Israeli academia

Comment #212385 by esuther on July 17, 2008 at 6:17 am

Al Rawandi wrote

I went to a museum in Riyadh (I forget the name). I was shocked to see all kinds of fossils and dinosaurs, and the theories on the extinction of dinosaurs. I don't recall any exhibits on evolution, but I have the feeling it may have been presented... but I cannot promise that.

Riyadh! I have this morbid fascination with Saudi Arabia. Politically there is every reason to detest it: it's subjugation of women, it's Wahabiism, it's being in bed with the US oil companies, it's owning a chunk of US assets, etc. (I'm sure you can add more.) But I am fascinated by it (like a child by a dinosaur I suppose) and dying to go there. Unfortunately, as I understand it, unaccompanied women cannot travel there. And I'm (ahem) assuming that a woman accompanied by a lesbian lover would also not be welcome.
So hows about you and me making a little trip. I'll pay for the (separate) hotel rooms.

24. Anti-Darwinists turned away by Israeli academia

Comment #212285 by esuther on July 17, 2008 at 1:14 am

I would like to know if there are any Muslim evolutionary biologists.

Of course there are. Contrary to the image that so many Americans have of ALL Muslims being bearded fanatics or women in chador, there are evolutionary scientists in the big universities. A friend of mine has worked a great deal with geneticists in Cairo studying mummy DNA.

I realize it is much more fun to hate Muslims if you view them all as fundamentalists, but there are secularied Muslims too. Muslim scientists may not be at the forefront of genetics, but they are in the global scientific dialog, and, like American scientists, also at odds with the fundies of their respective countries.

In addition,here is an interesting article from Nature Genetics on a large genetic project being developed by the Arab League

http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v38/n8/full/ng0806-851.html

and a quote from it in case you don't want to bother:

Ghazi O. Tadmouri and colleagues (Nucl. Acids Res. 34, D601�"D606, 2006) have assembled the CAGS database, CTGA, that at the time of that publication listed 692 phenotypes for some 235 genes that have been found to be mutated in people living in Arab countries. About a third of the genes responsible for these genetic conditions have not yet been identified, so even in its current state, the CTGA database indicates that the populations it covers constitute a considerable resource for understanding single-gene disorders. Another useful feature of the database is that it assembles links to a large number of regional English-language medical journals that may be unfamiliar to an international readership.

25. Church Cancels Teen Gun Giveaway

Comment #211756 by esuther on July 16, 2008 at 9:39 am

Hmm. As a fence straddler, I have been following the arguments in all their nuances here. I'm wondering if I have maybe lost the thread though.

It seems to me that Al is the main proponant of gun ownership (at least the one who doesn't sound like a lunatic) But Al said that if you are white, not in a gang, don't do drugs or get involved in crime generally, it is extremely unlikely you will be shot. That seems to eliminate the justification for owning a gun for defense.

My experience with a lunatic arsenal building father suggests that as well, leaving gun ownership not for defense, but for the pleasure in shooting things.

I understand that pleasure. I used to own a lovely .38 revolver and loved to shoot it on a shooting range. Because I lived alone in a one room cabin in an isolated area, and had been brutally attacked by a stick wielding maniac in a field a year earlier, I kept it loaded and under my night table.
Then one day, a friend brought her four year old son to my house and he found the gun and pointed it at me.
That pretty much ended my gun romance. I took my chances with stick wielding maniacs unarmed after that.

I live in Europe now, and am pretty glad that no one but the police has handguns or assault rifles. Sticks maybe, but I can live with those.

26. Church Cancels Teen Gun Giveaway

Comment #210986 by esuther on July 15, 2008 at 10:54 am

this Saturday I'll be at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus watching the dress rehearsal (much less noisy in the audience and altogether more relaxing) of this year's performance of Richard Wagner's "Walküre"


Lucky bastard. I used to work in opera management (in New York) and got to see free opera at the MET. Though I never got to Bayreuth, I DID see a fantastic Ring cycle at the MET with a traditional staging. Die Walkuere was FABULOUS, with Hans Sotin singing Wotan.
However, in the final moments, when Wotan strikes the rocks with his spear and calls out the god of fire, a spark was supposed to just cause a big flash before the fake fire lightshow started. But on this night the spark didn't go out but instead ignited the plastic 'rocks' and they started to melt with a sort of orange glow. There is no danger of conflagration at the MET, everything is fireproofed. But the set started melting and the audience could of course see it. Poor Wotan had to sing his moving farewell while right under his butt the mountain was REALLY burning. Finally, you could hear a SSSSSSCCCHHHHH, as a stagehand crept underneath or behind the set and extinguished it.
It makes a good story now, but I bet Hans Sotin tells it differently. It ruined his big moment.

27. Church Cancels Teen Gun Giveaway

Comment #210662 by esuther on July 15, 2008 at 12:30 am

My father, an old-school man of the deep south (US) had a veritable arsenal in his closet. Several rifles, an M1, three or four handguns, automatics and old police revolver, even a damned crossbow. Through his sixties, he made his own ammunition and went regularly to a firing range to shoot it.(We lived in California) His main argument for having so many guns is the argument put forth by several posters here; to defend his home against burglars. Although, given his background, I am sure he also tacitly included communists and Mexicans.
But as he got older, he got careless about who he made friends with. He let 'a friend' stay in the house while he was living elsewhere and when he moved back home,every one of those guns was stolen.

Daddy's little contribution to the streets of Los Angeles.

I'm just sayin'

28. Degrees of religion

Comment #209756 by esuther on July 13, 2008 at 7:43 am

Sorry, I do find that rather sexist and racist (why can't the boyfriend be a nice nonbelieving Indian?). Perhaps the offensiveness will be more apparent if I turn this around and assert that the non-believing European boyfriend will end up converting because you know, white guys think with their dicks and they have a fetish for women from exotic cultures.

Oh, for chrissake. Okay, let me AMEND that remark to: maybe she will meet ANY non-believer of any sex, race, or sexual orientation or offer of friendship, or good cocktail party conversation, and eventually come to be influenced by the enlightenment of that person or those persons.

WE ALL are influenced by our friends and lovers since they fill much of the verbal space we live in, and the closer we are to them, the more influence they can have. And I am thinking specifically of a Moroccan woman (my Arabic teacher) who went to mosque and faithfully followed Ramadan fasting until she met a nice Italian man, fell in love, moved in with him, and found herself edged another few meters toward apostasy. So you may take my suggestion as based on experience and get off your high horse.

29. Degrees of religion

Comment #209740 by esuther on July 13, 2008 at 6:37 am

No. This is not good enough. Even trying your hardest won't cut the mustard if you're not trying to do the right thing. What statements like this do is raise up blind unconsidered effort as the prime human virtue above actually thinking and trying to work out what the best course of action would be.

Hey, guys. Give the woman a break. Not everyone leaps from belief to atheism in one fell swoop. As a Muslim woman (obviously from a Muslim family) she already is struggling with the mental migration into a new cultural mindset and it sounds like she is doing pretty well. If everyone doesn't jump in her face and accuse her, or even imply that she is still a 'fellow traveler' to fanaticism, she could take the next few steps. After all, she has a very deep hole to climb up out of (wow. a lot of prepositions there!).
I know a few women like this. Give them time and, ideally, a nice non-believing European boyfriend who will help her evolve a little further.
(I recently met a woman who even made it from being an Islamic housewife to a non-believing lesbian, so it IS possible, but it takes time and small steps, not a slap in the face.

30. IT'S A GODDAMNED CRACKER!

Comment #207085 by esuther on July 9, 2008 at 7:00 am

I'm more concerned and worried over the outrage and sheer blood lust this action has generated-that's the real problem here surely?

I agree, it seems to me this bloodlust reaction IS the point. THIS is the danger of religious fervor. I think the kid was a rude too, but if I have to choose between a rude person or a run-to-the-newspaper screaming, murder-threatening, expulsion threatening mob, I'm with the rude guy.

31. IT'S A GODDAMNED CRACKER!

Comment #207073 by esuther on July 9, 2008 at 6:32 am

Perhaps the hand should be stayed a little in poor countries where the church does provide some hope to the desperate and hopeless, but at an affluent middle-class university in the states? Students SHOULD be doing this kind of thing, stirring up the ennui and inertia of a jaded world, changing minds and bringing people out of comfortable muddle-headedness. Small-minded theistic conservatives have no right to expect protection from being stood up and ridiculed, their silliness exposed for all to see - especially ones who conduct their silliness in public and at the taxpayer's expense. They certainly have no right to molest and hound their jovial ridiculer in this way.

This consideration has me solidly on the side of ridicule. US catholics do not need protection - from rationality of all things. In the US, this kind of voodoo is a threat to enlightenment liberal societies have taken centuries to achieve. No one HURT any catholics, the student only exposed them to ridicule (which they would not have suffered anyhow if they hadn't had a public screaming fit). If the student had, say, stolen a chalice, we would have a real crime. But the stealing of a wafer which had been given to him, is nothing but a public statement by a rational person that wafer-voodoo is as primitive as cutting off the tip of your penis for God. (Oh, right...)

32. Did newborn Earth harbour life?

Comment #203591 by esuther on July 3, 2008 at 7:59 am

It looks like the ancestral forms of life from which we all evolved were thermophiles - able to live at pretty high temperatures.

Ah, that could explain the origin of my hot flashes.

33. Stephen Hawking's explosive new theory

Comment #202287 by esuther on July 1, 2008 at 8:28 am

If they don't find any kind of Higgs boson at the LHC, then the most popular idea of how particles get their masses is wrong. There are other ideas around, for example something called technicolour. But if nothing beyond the SM is seen at the LHC, then I guess we will not know which directions to explore. And worse, it will be hard to get funding for a bigger accelerator. But for a theorist I guess the scenario where no Higgs and no supersymmetry is found will be the best.

Hey I love threads like this. I have no idea what those guys are talking about, but for sure I am going to use these expressions at my next cocktail party.

34. Aliens need Christ's redemption, too

Comment #201715 by esuther on June 30, 2008 at 6:38 am

EX CA YOOS ME!

I was told, I was GUARANTEED, that I was created in god's image.(holds up mirror, licks fingertip, brushes eyebrow.)

If god and I are...like... mirror images, then there can't be any furking aliens unless they look like me. You got that?

So conversion schmaversion. There will be NO converting of wormy, slimey, bug-eyed, tarantula shaped, SigourneyWeaveralien-shaped aliens.

I got it all right here in writing.

35. Evangelical grunts

Comment #200934 by esuther on June 28, 2008 at 2:29 pm

I never quite grasped the role of religion and chaplains in the military. An army is a force of trained killers -- irrespective of what they end up doing or what euphemisms they use to describe what they do (i.e. defense, bringing democracy, securing the pipeline, blah blah). They are TRAINED to kill upon command, and that is their function.
I see no place whatsoever (in the military) for a religion of peace, which Christianity claims to be. A real Christian chaplain would stand before the troops and say "don't go!".
All the rest is just layer upon layer of bullshit.

36. Your Brain Lies to You

Comment #200926 by esuther on June 28, 2008 at 2:14 pm

For two thousand years we were hated because we supposedly killed Jesus. Now we are hated because we are responsible for his birth. No matter what it's always the Jews fault.

Give it a rest, will you? We know this song by heart.

37. Spanish parliament to extend rights to apes

Comment #200206 by esuther on June 27, 2008 at 4:37 am

Any of you who thinks the spanish inquisition was the only one that existed, or the worst, please read some up to date history books on the matter.

Quite right. In the Netherlands, Italy, Mexico, England -- what's more, it didn't end after the counter-reformation either. Doesn't the Church still have its Index of Forbidden Books?
I have been up to my nostrils in Inquisition research for my novel Sistine Heresy (to be released in January 09). My religion-bashing contribution to the world of popular fiction.
Lots of sex in it too. (Renaissance Rome: duh.)

38. Creationist critics get their comeuppance

Comment #200161 by esuther on June 27, 2008 at 2:05 am

Am I the only one on the list to just find out that Andrew is the son of ferocious anti-feminist, anti-civil rights activist Phyllis Schlafley?

On another thread people were discussing whether intelligence can be inherited. Obviously stupidity and willful ignorance can.

39. Spanish parliament to extend rights to apes

Comment #200148 by esuther on June 27, 2008 at 1:39 am

Gay marriage, Church out of education, AND genuine protection for large primates. Way ahead of the curve.

I guess I can forgive Spain for the Inquisition now.

40. God hates Mars

Comment #199698 by esuther on June 26, 2008 at 7:59 am

Snickers is the best. Twix is good too.
Zero is a great chocolate bar.

Oh ye Philistines of chocolate. Here in Brussels there is CHOCOLATE. Several different companies, but all of them produce dizzyingly delicious chocolate. Chocolate that calls your name from the refrigerator. Chocolate that owns your very soul. The chocolate that god, if god existed, would eat until he got a rash.
There is a reason that you have to have training and a license to become a "chocolatier".

All the rest of that greasy brown stuff that you are eating is as nothing. Nothing, I tell you.

41. Mormons urged to back ban on same-sex marriage

Comment #199593 by esuther on June 26, 2008 at 3:40 am

So why don't women hold the door for me? Maybe it's just Irish women? Or maybe it's me? :)

Actually, I hold doors for men all the time. But then I'm a lesbian so that may disqualify me for the delicate female modality.

And seriously, guys. What's up with this feminist bashing. Surely you realize that "feminists" is like "blacks" or "jews" "housewives"or "democrats". It stands for a whole spectrum of ideas and personality types. At the core of feminism is the idea that women should have the same shot at success as men. How that works out in detail is disputed amongst feminists too. So please just give it a rest. Some of you have a pretty obnoxious straw woman set up that is easy to knock over. There are of course unreasonable feminists blacks/jews/housewives/democrats, but that does not address the central qualities and ideas of those groups. Feminists in general aren't out to abuse men (except for those men who might like it, but that's another webpage.)

42. Mormons urged to back ban on same-sex marriage

Comment #199557 by esuther on June 26, 2008 at 1:16 am

Thanks for everyone's good wishes. I will be sure to mention that a bunch of my atheist net-friends have sent them.

Corylus

May their lives together be more Mozart and Verdi than Puccini and Wagner :-)

Actually their lives are mostly Handel, Gluck and Monteverdi. Countertenors usually sing baroque opera. Although the roles are heroic and flashy, and musically a tour de force, if you are not into the genre, they will seem very very sissy.
An acquired taste.

43. Mormons urged to back ban on same-sex marriage

Comment #199312 by esuther on June 25, 2008 at 1:52 pm

As it happens, I am going to my first gay wedding next week. It is in the UK and so is legally only a civil union, but both the guys are in opera (one is a counter-tenor, the other a director) so you can imagine how they both look forward to the pomp and circumstance. Most of the invited guests are in opera so I expect it will be very theatrical.

I take it from the general tone of this thread that I may extend your collective best wishes.

44. World Youth Day condom protest against Pope

Comment #199157 by esuther on June 25, 2008 at 8:53 am

Border Collie
Quite right!
We KNOW why the Catholic Church has IssYews about queers.
All these men who deal with their repugnance for sex with women by putting on dresses and chanting in Latin. Oh, Puleese.

And I know a dozen dykes (I'm allowed to use that word) who used to be in convents.
The Church is a sodding HAVEN for people who don't want to do the hetero thing and cannot, for the world, imagine an alternative other than living with their own sex and playing dress-up.

They all look like such clowns, the Catholic boys in their lace dresses and pointy hats, the Jews in their curley things and beanies, the Muslims with their prayer bumps and their asses in the air, and the evangelicals in their polyester suits and puffy pink faces.

45. 'I despise Islamism': Ian McEwan faces backlash over press interview

Comment #198516 by esuther on June 24, 2008 at 7:29 am

Al, Vin, Advocatus, I don't think there is much point in discussing Israel/Palestine with Tera Brat. She was a settler and has the settler mentality. Lest you see that remark as a snide ad hominem, you need only to go to the Einstein thread to see her breathtakingly racist (and sometimes contradictory) view of Palestinians. She will counter any argument you might make with her own Zionist statistics and interpretations and the iron clad view that Palestinians are all jihadists hungry for Jewish blood and that the holocaust has given Israelis permanent immunity from guilt for their own ethnic cleansing.
The stereotyping of all Palestinians as potential terrorists is the most troubling since it simply terminates dialog with them (for which they themselves are then blamed)
I spent many hours in conversation with Palestinian doctors, engineers, teachers and others in Ramallah wondering how to counter that mind-set. It is extremely difficult to counter because Zionism is a sort of religion and certainly the most aggressive settlers are the religious zealots.
The puzzling thing is that Tera Brat claims to have renounced Judaism but still holds to the idea that in some mystical way, Jews are entitled to Palestine and that any and all resistance to the spreading of Israel over the remaining tatters of that country is defined as terrorism. Given that entitlement, and the mantra of "security" Israel is justified in waving matches at all the fuses in the middle east and looking to the USA to back it up when something explodes. And of course it will.
Brace yourselves. Iran has oil AND finds itself now as the enemy de jour of Israel. War seems terribly likely.

46. How Darwin won the evolution race

Comment #198469 by esuther on June 24, 2008 at 4:31 am

Unfortunately for Lamarck, it has not survived the scrutiny of science. Generations of cats which have had their tails docked have not evolved into tail-less cats. Acquired characteristics are not inherited, though the idea persisted as a serious scientific concept into the 20th century.

Nor are there Jews or Muslims - except Mohammed - born without a foreskin.

eyyeeeewwww
(very good point though, ridelo. And a good thing too. How else could all those smug moyels and mullahs signal the holiness of god's chosen penises if they couldn't do their snippage while saying the magic words.)

47. Sarcasm Seen as Evolutionary Survival Skill

Comment #198466 by esuther on June 24, 2008 at 4:09 am

Humor certainly seems to be a feature of advanced intelligence, and to exist on a continuum. Chimps (and infants) laugh when you tickle them. Older children (and some of my, ahem, more limited, acquaintances, laugh at pratfalls, snot hanging from someone's nose, pies in the face, slapping matches, etc. As you move up the level of complexity, you get into areas which require common understanding of the 'set-up'for a joke to work. Word-play jokes only work for people adept in the language (I speak both French and German, and even when I 'get' their word-plays, they are never amusing.) Jokes based on penis size that men and some straight women -- neither category of which I belong to -- seem to find so hilarious, drop like rocks at my feet. But sarcasm I can appreciate, and would adore an evening's conversation with Cartomancer.
Of course, sarcasm too has many levels, but as it gets subtler, you have to acknowledge the wit of the one inflicting it. You can find yourself laughing along with someone who has just made fun of YOU. I quite like the subtle sarcasm of "riiiiight" and the archetypal gay sarcasm of "oh puleese."

However, one of the funniest, jokes I ever saw was a "Far Side" cartoon. It was three dinosaurs, two of them holding their bellies in derision as a small furry mammal scampered past them. One of the dinosaurs, however glances up and peers at some mysterious new substance that the reader knows is snow. The very process of studying the cartoon and slowly having the light go on in the brain, made me laugh out loud and and forward the cartoon to dozens of friends.
Far Side gets my personal "best of cartoons" prize, just as Life of Brian gets my "best ever religious critique" award. Both are sarcastic at a pretty high level.

48. The Flea Delusion

Comment #197711 by esuther on June 22, 2008 at 2:14 pm

Actually, why don't I just ask.

Josh, how many languages has TGD been translated into? The blurb that says "over a million and a half copies" is already old -- does that refer to sales in all languages? If so, it dates before I bought those two copies in French.

49. The Flea Delusion

Comment #197699 by esuther on June 22, 2008 at 2:03 pm

I wonder how many copies of Richard's book have been sold worldwide, that is, in all its translations. I ask because I have given two copies of it in French to friends (just doing my part here) and I know it is available in other European languages too. I don't recall seeing any French fleas -- although I will have to look closer next time.
I'm willing to bet that most of those flea books are all small run short-lived publications and certainly not translated.

I don't suppose it is possible to get any numbers regarding flea sales, but there can't be very many. People looking for rationalizations of their wobbling faith have already bought the first ones.

50. It Doesn't Take an Einstein

Comment #197204 by esuther on June 21, 2008 at 10:47 am

Tetra

So, it's yes on all questions then. Wow. It seems you are locked into a pretty primitive and hate-filled world view. I haven't heard those kind of stereotypes since my KKK grandfather raved about the niggers wanting to rape white women. It would be too exhausting to pick away at all the myths and partial myths, and twisted facts you have offered, so I will simply ask you to answer the final -- probably the most important-- question.

What do you propose as the final solution for the Palestinian problem? What should be done with all those angry Palestinians? What would you like Israel to look like in 50 years and how should it get there?