1. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #163650 by tstinchcombe on April 18, 2008 at 5:46 pm

2480/#163641 by markg:

Ellen Degeneres is a comedian who happens to be a very out Lesbian. She now also has her own nationally syndicated talkshow. She's also famous for partially causing Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana, according to Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.

...except that apparently Robertson didn't actually say it:

http://www.snopes.com/katrina/satire/robertson.asp

Tim

2. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #163537 by tstinchcombe on April 18, 2008 at 1:39 pm

Penguins don't fly? Haven't you lot seen this yet?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dfWzp7rYR4

;-) Tim

3. Reviews of Expelled

Comment #159006 by tstinchcombe on April 11, 2008 at 10:27 am

Here's an interesting little piece, related to the SciAm tape of Mathis' conversation (and contains a transcript of several parts of it), from the blog of Chris Heard, Associate Professor of Religion at Pepperdine University, entitled

"Why Ken Miller isn't in Expelled?"

Answer: because having an evolutionary biologist who is a devout Catholic in the movie would completely blow its premise out of the water:

http://www.heardworld.com/higgaion/?p=999

Tim

4. Fleabytes

Comment #157123 by tstinchcombe on April 8, 2008 at 3:05 pm

7524/#156804 by Quetzalcoatl:

I just found this VERY interesting post on "The Dawkins Letters" thread of FCOS. I suggest everyone gives it a read:

Well when I got in earlier this evening, I was going to read this, but got distracted making tea etc., so I have only just gotten around to reading it, and I have to say I'm rather stunned. I agree with alovrin in that maybe he is missing companionship, or maybe he is still searching for some sort of self-identity - who knows. And as Sam Harris (and probably others) freely point out, one thing churches are good for is building communities, where one can go along and join in and feel accepted among like-minded people. I wish him well in his quest for inner peace or whatever it is he is searching for.

As for me, I'll just stick to mainly lurking, and draw much 'companionship' from those characters here whose rapid-fire wit, banter and repartee often result in a good belly laugh or slapping the table by turns (hardly what I would call 'a joyless bunch').

Tim

5. Fleabytes

Comment #156934 by tstinchcombe on April 8, 2008 at 12:08 pm

7520. Comment #156503 by mikejswalker on April 7, 2008 at 5:06 pm

Has this thread shrunk. Is someone jealous of our efforts to get the 10k mark. Bizarre.

Yes. Last night when I left it, it was up at 7741. The gremlins are at work again, or someone is doing a lot of housekeeping...

Tim

6. Fleabytes

Comment #155827 by tstinchcombe on April 6, 2008 at 2:22 am

The Incredible Shrinking Thread?

To easily keep tabs on where I've read to, I jot down the number of the last post I read. Yesterday this thread was up to 7674, then a while later dropped to 7670, a few more posts appeared and it was back up to something like 7673, and now again this morning it is down to 7669. It's beginning to look more like a stock index or something. Someone must be doing some 'housekeeping' - fair enough I suppose, but it is going to play havoc with cross-references to previous posts...

Tim

P.S. And I'm still hoping Robertson/'clearthinker' might return to explain himself further on some points of debate he has not explained himself fully on...

7. Upside-down church sculpture on hit list

Comment #155731 by tstinchcombe on April 5, 2008 at 12:07 pm

People just love to have something to moan about, or be offended by. When 'The Minotaur and the Hare' first appeared in Cheltenham, all the busy-bodies were in uproar because they thought the minotaur was rather rude:

http://www.cheltenham-guide.com/the-minotaur-and-the-hare.htm

As for the upside-down church, I kind of like it, especially when floodlit at night.

Tim

8. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #148873 by tstinchcombe on March 24, 2008 at 12:33 pm

92. Comment #148790 by flyingfsck:

Well, an interview by Ben Stein must be the most torturous experience ever. Were the victims strapped into Vogon poetry appreciation chairs?

Could be a T-shirt in there somewhere - how about:

"I'd rather listen to Vogon poetry...
than watch the movie 'Expelled'"

?

Tim

9. Fleabytes

Comment #148334 by tstinchcombe on March 22, 2008 at 4:48 pm

AlanF 6779/#148299:

Great post, very informative!

Tim

10. Fleabytes

Comment #148172 by tstinchcombe on March 22, 2008 at 8:37 am

This:

6663. Comment #148086 by mikejswalker:
David,
I have looked and looked and i cannot find anywhere where Professor Dawkins says teaching religion is as bad as sexual abuse.
Can you give me the page number etc?

and

6662/148085 by Philip1978

and

6467/#147632 by clearthinker

just made me re-read Chapter 9 of TGD. Certainly, there are specific instances of abuse cited by RD that he regards as worse than sexual abuse, and they are accurately quoted in Robertson's post 6467/#147632. However, from 6467/#147632:

If you believe that teaching children about religion is equivalent or worse than sex abuse or violence (which is clearly what he has been saying) then quite clearly they should be protected from such abusive beliefs.

I would argue that RD is 'clearly not saying' this: RD is railing against indoctrination of children with their parent's beliefs; nearer the end of the chapter he makes it quite clear that children should be taught about religion, but not in an uncritical fashion.

It could hardly be clearer and yet so many of the Dawkins followers are so blind to what he has actually written and which I have clearly evidenced above that they will just accuse me of lying

I would suggest that the accusations are being levelled because surely there is a difference between 'teaching' and 'indoctrination', and that this is being overlooked here?

Tim

11. Fleabytes

Comment #147796 by tstinchcombe on March 21, 2008 at 9:21 am

6322. Comment #147203 by clearthinker:

The vast majority of people in Britan are not Christians because they are growing up in a secular society where atheist myths are generally believed (science and religion are opposed, religion is the root of all evil etc). Therefore it must be true and they don't bother to question it beyond that. My aim is simply to get people to question and to think for themselves. Not just to accept the handed down received wisdom from others.

Well, maybe your aim is coming about: it could be that Britons actually are thinking for themselves, and are coming to the same conclusion as many here - that Christianity is bronze-age myth-making that has little relevance in today's society.

Tim

12. Fleabytes

Comment #147779 by tstinchcombe on March 21, 2008 at 8:34 am

Well, there apparently have been prayers said for RD, as the 'Prayer Diary' section of this issue of the Free Church of Scotland's 'The Monthly Record' testifies:

THURS. 15 Pray for Dr Richard Dawkins, a confirmed and aggressive atheist, who has a lot of input in the media. Maybe through our prayers he will come to know with certainty and with joy the God he now thinks is 'a delusion'.

FRI. 16 Remember too Rev David Robertson, Dundee, who is responding in open letters to Richard Dawkins' book, 'The God Delusion'. Pray that he will be given clarity in his presentation and that the Lord will open hearts and minds to His Truth.

http://www.freechurch.org/pdf/monthlyrecord/march07.pdf

Tim

13. Fleabytes

Comment #147729 by tstinchcombe on March 21, 2008 at 6:57 am

6502. Comment #147713 by phasmagigas:

New Orleans Flood: divine disapproval of that Degenerate woman.

so which woman is that? am i missing some satire here?

Well, I seemed to recall hearing mention of Ellen Degeneres (hence the 'degenerate' bit) in relation to Hurricane Katrina, and a moments Googling revealed this:
http://www.datelinehollywood.com/archives/2005/09/05/robertson-blames-hurricane-on-choice-of-ellen-deneres-to-host-emmys/
Should have guessed it was some loony comment, in this case from none other than Pat Robertson!

Tim

Edit: Ooops! Looks like it is not that simple! This comes from Wikipedia:

In fact, Pat Robertson was falsely credited with having asserted that God sent Hurricane Katrina as punishment for the selection of Ellen DeGeneres to host the Emmy Awards. A Dateline Hollywood article satirically purported that Robertson had stated: "By choosing an avowed lesbian for this national event, these Hollywood elites have clearly invited God's wrath, [...] Is it any surprise that the Almighty chose to strike at Miss Degeneres' hometown?"[15] Because Robertson had made similar pronouncements in the past, this was believed by many to be a factual report.[16] [17]. This article has since been cited as a possible truth in The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.

Need to go check my copy of TGD now, but I still assume it is the source of the 'that Degenerate woman' quote.

2nd edit: p239 TGD, as a footnote, with a brief discussion as to its truth/falsity, along with a link to snopes.com (ref [17] in the Wikipedia article):
http://www.snopes.com/katrina/satire/robertson.asp

14. Fleabytes

Comment #147469 by tstinchcombe on March 20, 2008 at 2:23 pm

OT - Akiane:

My guess: 'if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is'. Apparently still no decent proof that she is doing the painting herself, for instance an uneditted video.

There's a good comment here from a professional painter, No. 246, about halfway down:

http://religiousfreaks.com/2006/12/15/akiane-kramarik-inspired-by-god-or-just-plain-crazy/

...which contains a link to a video news piece (top right corner):

http://www.kutv.com/content/news/specialreport/story.aspx?content_id=110D722E-A08E-4864-A01B-81C2368496F2&gsa=true

Tim

15. Fleabytes

Comment #147444 by tstinchcombe on March 20, 2008 at 12:29 pm

6331. Comment #147214 by clearthinker:

There is nothing I can do about the 'nasty' remarks - you perceive what you want to perceive and pick up what you want to pick up.

Yes there is. Break the silly cycle of name-calling and rebuttals - ignore it all, and instead of spending hours typing replies like the above, engage in some proper debate (there are plenty of examples hereabouts to show this is possible).

mixmastergaz has provided a great starting point at 6392/#147324. Let's hear, in detail (i.e. not just one-liners), what your side of the argument is.

Tim

16. Two More Fleas

Comment #144577 by tstinchcombe on March 16, 2008 at 11:04 am

@clearmind: your previous posts have demonstrated both a lack of understanding in certain areas and an unwillingness to listen and learn, so I contend that your 'personal information' is relevant to these discussions. Again from your previous posts, it seemed unlikely that you would give a straight answer, so I apologise for the indirect approach and if by that you feel insulted - the nature of your response however has indeed shown that my expectation was correct.

If you demonstrate a willingness to debate by the normal rules - listen, admit to mistakes/flaws when the other side points them out, modify your arguments and re-state your case etc. - then you will earn the right to respectful debate.

Tim

17. Two More Fleas

Comment #144474 by tstinchcombe on March 16, 2008 at 7:00 am

284. Comment #144428 by epeeist:

We don't know a gender or age. All that has been divulged is that the poster claims not to be a native English speaker, supposedly has a BA and an MA and purports to be a teacher of primary school children.

Well I certainly hadn't picked up on the 'not a native English speaker' from the posts. But even so, I'm rather surprised that someone with both a BA and an MA is incapable of recognising when they are so out of their depth. (Though having said that, I've seen first-hand how someone with a degree from a middle-eastern establishment has struggled because that degree was clearly well below the UK first-degree level.)

I'm reminded of Dan Dennett's advice, in 'Breaking the Spell', to those who don't think evolution is "...about as well established as the fact that water is H2O", which is to "Educate yourself in evolutionary theory...the endnotes to this chapter provide all the references you will need to get going, and it should take only a few months of hard work" - the emphasis in my mind being the "...few months...", i.e. 20 minutes reading something on Wikipedia isn't going to turn you into an expert - it will actually take a little more application than that!

Tim

18. Fleabytes

Comment #144463 by tstinchcombe on March 16, 2008 at 6:15 am

5523. Comment #144429 by mixmastergaz:

Tea: Some while ago in the depths of this thread there was a small, but detailed, diversion into the relative merits of various beverages - tea, coffee, Remy Martin etc. I don't recall there being any clear concept of 'a winner'.

Missing posts: David Robertson has posted under a number of accounts, some of which were 'blocked', apparently due to his behaviour. At around the same time, some 300 or so posts apparently got 'deleted', including a large number of Robertson's, a fact he has reminded us of several times earlier in this thread, as 'clearthinker' (this should be easy to check, by clicking the 'Other comments by..' link). From what I saw last night, because so many others' posts are also missing, I suspect this was not deliberate. We probably won't really know unless someone makes a direct application to Josh to look into it (as I would be staggered if he were to pick up such a request by virtue of it merely being posted in one of these threads...).

As for music, I have often felt that much of 'Black Sabbath's work, if not overtly atheistic, is pretty irreverent in nature. The title track to their 'Eternal Idol' album being a favourite (it is what I regard as very heavy - I love it, but Sabbath is probably an 'acquired taste'!).

Tim

19. Two More Fleas

Comment #144424 by tstinchcombe on March 16, 2008 at 3:51 am

Just out of interest, has clearmind/wooter/etc, ever given any indication as to his/her age? Clearmind/wooter - would you care to enlighten us?

I only ask as his/her responses indicate to me that possibly this is someone fairly young, perhaps 13 or 14, who is way out of his/her depth when compared to many here, yet has enough (computer) savvy to cut-and-paste large tracts from Wikipedia, which is where most of comment 264/#144343 above comes from, thus giving the illusion that the poster might know what he/she is talking about!?

Tim

20. Fleabytes

Comment #144331 by tstinchcombe on March 15, 2008 at 4:04 pm

Unfortunately it seems that the '3rd letter' thread that Paula cites is bang in the middle of the 'missing 300 posts' mystery, as becomes clear at the bottom of page 3, where all the references to previous comment numbers are clearly all screwed up:

http://richarddawkins.net/articleComments,300,Dawkins-Delusion-3rd-article-Same-Stupid-Title,David-Robertson,page3#comments

Thus it is no longer possible to view that thread, and/or its posters, in its original light.

It looks as though only the first page of comments is available at web.archive.org, but from that it is clear that it is not only David Robertson's posts that are missing - there are plenty of others which aren't there too. It seems that Nov 2006 was the time of the big server switch-over, so maybe those posts got lost then?

Tim

21. Fleabytes

Comment #141945 by tstinchcombe on March 11, 2008 at 12:43 pm

4485. Comment #141783 by scottishgeologist

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html

Thanks for that great link, and fourth one down (8th March), a superb picture of 'Messier 104', aka the 'Sombrero Galaxy', one of my favourites!

I find its sheer beauty breathtaking, and I use a picture of it as my desktop: it's what, some 50,000 light years across (i.e. pretty darn big!), and a very, very long way away, and some people have the audacity to suggest that some godman in the sky created it so that we humans might exist here on earth? What bollocks, I say - to me it shows just how utterly insignificant we are.

Tim

22. Fleabytes

Comment #137814 by tstinchcombe on March 3, 2008 at 1:54 pm

2930. Comment #137758 by scottishgeologist on March 3, 2008 at 12:48 pm:
...
http://www.thecourier.co.uk/output/2006/07/25/newsstory8579896t0.asp

from whence

...fears a "small group of seculists" are plotting to squeeze Christian ethos...

Is this a small band of marauding posh people on bicycles? Or is this an alternative spelling I'm unaware of?

Tim

23. Fleabytes

Comment #137223 by tstinchcombe on March 2, 2008 at 2:25 pm

Paula (2742): LOL! One of the reasons I generally lurk rather than posting, is that others such as yourself are clearly better skilled at posting such incisive comments than I am, but yes, that was pretty much along the lines of what I was thinking!

Ste5e (2743): Indeed, I was watching a Bart Ehrman video just the other day (I think it may have been linked from this site somewhere), in which he says there are something like 50,000 sources for the bible (can't remember exact detail, but it was definitely 10's of thousands, and it may have been just the NT, not the whole), and he really laboured the 'copy of a copy of a copy' point. My surprise is that as Robertson is 'in the business', how come he is not aware of this, or does he choose to ignore it?

(And no, I'm not related "a David who graduated from ETHS"!)

Tim

24. Fleabytes

Comment #137191 by tstinchcombe on March 2, 2008 at 1:47 pm

Well, I've been following this highly-entertaining thread through all its ups and downs: I thought it was going to die a death over the removal of the 'death threat' posts, but it survived; and when the odd 'religite' wanders along - Hello and others - it adds a whole new meaning to 'throwing the Christians to the lions' (apparently showing they really don't have any decent arguments to give).

But that link given by RickM above (#2712) moves me to post:

[Adam:] Let us be honest, the text we use is ancient and has been rewritten a number of times. We can't realistically claim everything contained within its pages is 100% accurate and if we do then we are making impossible claims. Jesus is an excellent role model, he brought a message from God to love thy neighbour, but we have to accept the Gospels became more and more embellished the later they are written.

[DAR:] Let us be honest. You only think that the text has been rewritten a number of times is because you have been told that. I have seen no evidence for that. And I do not think it is impossible to claim that God so inspired the writers that what they wrote was without error. In fact it should be easy for you to prove your point - can you point out errors in the Bible?

(My emphasis.) So every single time it was passed on (possibly orally as well as written), translated from one language to another, and copied many, many times, the scribes never once made a mistake, ever, because 'God was looking on'? Now I truly understand the difficulty in engaging with the man if he is capable of believing that - he appears to be in some alternate reality to the rest of us (though I'm a little surprised that he accepts so much without evidence that he is apparently asking for some in this case...).

I'm stunned by the naivety.

Tim

25. Add another flea to the list...

Comment #132967 by tstinchcombe on February 25, 2008 at 1:20 pm

From the author's website, a quick skim of his bio suggests he is heavily into 'religious persecution':

http://www.davidaikman.com/Biography.asp

"His expertise in religious freedom in Asia and the Middle East goes back 25 years..."

"in... 1999, Dr. Aikman visited Russia and China, respectively, to investigate the status of religious freedom in both those countries."

"...include multiple guest appearances on C-Span and CNN, ... in connection with breaking world events, especially in the Middle East or in Asia, religious persecution around the world, and his books."

"Ph.D. Russian and Chinese History; dissertation topic: "The Role of Atheism in the Marxist Tradition," 1979."

So maybe it is no surprise the 'new atheism' has got him jittery...

26. Fleabytes

Comment #130937 by tstinchcombe on February 21, 2008 at 2:06 pm

As a frequent visitor to the site, but virtually-never-poster, this article has moved me to comment: Paula, simply superb!

If you have the fortitude to add more fleas to your collection and to turn it into a book, I'll be standing in line at the signing!

Tim

27. Sunday Sequence with William Crawley

Comment #12284 by tstinchcombe on December 11, 2006 at 1:45 pm

In post 34/#12181 above, Richard notes that the audio file posted cuts off at 1hr 45mins - the full version with the last 5 minutes is at the BBCs 'listen again' page for the show:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/ulster_aod.shtml?ulster/sundaysequence

Tim