1. George Scales, War Hero and Generous Friend of RDFRS

Comment #114359 by zdravko on January 22, 2008 at 4:10 am

Dear George,
thank you for everything you have given humanity,
for being such a decent and good-hearted human being. Your humaneness and courage will never be forgotten.

I am a young man who is trying to find meaning and purpose in his life. Sometimes this search is disheartening and painful for me, but reading about the life of people like you gives me
strength and inspiration to continue and not give up. Your life is so full and meaningful.

I very much appreciate the trials and difficulties you have overcome in your life, in particular your war experiences.

I wish you a very speedy recovery
from a very successful operation.


Zdravko from Melbourne Australia

2. Changing my Mind

Comment #106235 by zdravko on January 2, 2008 at 2:20 pm

we have to beat the theist at their own game.
We have to show them how patient, placid and
composed we are in disputed with them, because we try to be rational
as much as we can. Let them lose their temper.
It will only show their irrationality and weak
arguments

3. Mother Nature is Not Our Friend

Comment #105816 by zdravko on January 1, 2008 at 9:33 pm

by natural selection I mean
survival of the fittest and
by sexual selection I mean

Geoffrey Miller's theory described in his
book
"The Mating Mind"
I highly recommend it if you have not read it.
Check it out on Amazon.
Now I have to work and will no longer follow this thread.

4. Mother Nature is Not Our Friend

Comment #105815 by zdravko on January 1, 2008 at 9:31 pm

as I said we can adapt to any crap food, but
I personally do not want to be
a transitional part of the adaptation process.
Lots of people will have to die before the survivors
gradually adapt to all sorts of poisons. Nobody wants to be part of that
transition, so we stick to what we have already adapted to. If science allows us to change
the environment so that it best suits us, then
I think natural selection has stopped for humans,
the only evolution we are going to see in humanty

will be due to sexual selection .
I could be wrong of course.

5. Mother Nature is Not Our Friend

Comment #105811 by zdravko on January 1, 2008 at 9:24 pm

Diacanu, thanks for the comment.

I am not sure exactly what you mean, but
perhaps I agree with you about the trust issue.
I do not trust anyone , even
scientific institutions, with the food I eat
(pesticides, genetically modified foods etc).
Even if they say it is safe, I am skeptical.
We know so little and science is done by fallible
corruptible human beings (corporations
funding research is always suspicious). I would consume
unprocessed food as much as possible since I believe
our bodies have adapted to "natural" organic food.
But I am also aware that eventually we will
have to willy-nilly eat the new foods.
I am just buying time. Time will increase
our understanding ( side-effects will become known),
time will remove the effect corporate greed, political struggles etc. Eventually we will
figure out how to make genetically
modified or otherwise processed foods safe.
But at this stage I would avoid it as much
as possible.

6. What We Believe: Atheism

Comment #105806 by zdravko on January 1, 2008 at 9:08 pm

Good article and I agree:
"What we are left with in the end is what
we have given to others"

or as someone said, but can't remember who:

"People who find life meaningless without a God
have never looked at their suffering fellow
human beings with compassion. "

7. Mother Nature is Not Our Friend

Comment #105754 by zdravko on January 1, 2008 at 7:06 pm

Brilliant article. I have always argued with
people who say that our modern lifestyle
goes against nature. But our lives have stopped
being natural the moment we
acquired consciousness and started to
gain mastery over the material world? Without caesarian section and antibiotics
most of us would naturally not be living now.
A life saving intervention on the beach to
save a drowning tourist is quite unnatural as well.
people always assume that Natural must be good,
possibly because in
the food industry greedy producers
have been adding
"unnatural" chemicals and preservatives
that have turned out to be harmful.
If we eat these chemicals and preservatives
for another 10,000 generations our bodies would
adapt and then not eating them would have
to be considered unnatural.

8. What have you changed your mind about? Why?

Comment #105686 by zdravko on January 1, 2008 at 2:21 pm

ID is an implausible idea, but if someone
presents a mathematical model that shows it can work,
then we should examine it seriously or else
we would b e dogmatic. Until then we are right
to consider it nonsense.
I do not see at all how "God did it" can be modeled mathematically. There is
no physical interaction that can be simulated
on a computer.

9. Pope's exorcist squads will wage war on Satan

Comment #105506 by zdravko on December 31, 2007 at 6:54 pm

the pope with his pompous hat (mitre?)
reminds me of the photo with John Paul II sitting
on a gilded throne and next below him a starving child. Not cynical enough?

10. It is possible to be moral without God

Comment #105501 by zdravko on December 31, 2007 at 6:40 pm

for many people accepting the harsh fact
of materialism is hard. People find
the responsibility of providing meaning to their lives overwhelming. The same goes for morality. It is so much
easier to have some deity decide it for you. The
collapse of the celestial
dictatorship ( Nietzche ?) gives us too much freedom.....


People see how rational
and good the Darwinian account of morality is,
but still choose alternatives to simply to avoid
the existential suffering cause by materialism
(not every atheist suffers of course).

Hmm another reason to become
a snobbish atheist?

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-thinkingchristians.htm

This is interesting given the fact
that there are so many intelligent people
who are devout.

11. Carl Sagan's COSMOS begins airing on Jan 8th

Comment #104437 by zdravko on December 28, 2007 at 1:34 pm

Cosmos was the first DVD that I purchased with my
DVD player this year. Definitely get it if you want
to experience spiritual reverence based
on rationality and not
superstitions and religion

12. Archbishop of Canterbury Praises Richard Dawkins

Comment #104431 by zdravko on December 28, 2007 at 1:25 pm

What the bishops says is acceptable only if by "God" he means
a deist creative force( about which nothing can be knowable), certainly not the deity of any of the
religions of the world.