1. Fury at funeral songs ban

Comment #211240 by Opisthokont on July 15, 2008 at 4:27 pm

Wow. Yes, this is insensitive. It is disrespectful. But also, there is something telling in the concept of "celebrating a funeral".

2. An Original Confession

Comment #207356 by Opisthokont on July 9, 2008 at 3:05 pm

The Origin seems to be one of those love/hate things. I have (I can say with some pride) read the whole thing, and enjoyed every page. Darwin's prose is long-winded and florid, but clear and direct more often than not. The style takes a little getting used to, but it is definitely worth the effort.

3. Degrees of religion

Comment #206068 by Opisthokont on July 8, 2008 at 4:27 am

This is the sort of thing that I wish we would hear more of from Western Muslims, but I would rather it be without the copious apologies. This article almost makes it seem like its author feels guilty for not being more militant (in the proper sense of the term). Secularist Muslims should be proud of their stance, not ashamed of it! That cannot help but be far more effective overall than to try to apologise one's way into civilisation.

4. Religion's role in the climate debate

Comment #205232 by Opisthokont on July 6, 2008 at 10:00 pm

Exactly how is it a "refreshing change that it is scientists who are coming under the cosh"?! In the US, of course, there is nothing different about it: scientists have been "under the cosh" for generations there -- and as someone who used to live there I can assure anyone that there is nothing "refreshing" about it. "Oppressive" is more like it.

It sounds to me like this commentator likes the thought of our host being held accountable for what he sees as the excesses of modern atheists (such as, for example, wanting not to be discrimitated against, or desiring to keep their governments from passing religiously-motivated policies, or trying to prevent their children from being indoctrinated), and that "the high priest of atheism" (do they have any idea how much that title irritates us?!) is interchangeable with "scientists". And here I was under the impression that Liberal Judaism was better than that. Yes, it would be a good thing for the religious to quit denying reality, but it would also be a good thing for them to quit representing themselves as idiots.

5. Tablet Ignites Debate on Messiah and Resurrection

Comment #204889 by Opisthokont on July 6, 2008 at 4:57 am

My first reaction to this (which I see others have had as well) was that the Christians would see this as more prophecy in favour of their central myth. It would be nice if they would read further, but then, they could read further already into the current literature anent the prevailing and preceding myths of the turn of the first millennium CE and get the same message. Ultimately, those who care for the truth will understand more of it, and those who prefer validation of their myths will get that instead. Depressing, really, given how many of the latter there are.

6. It can be right to discriminate against the religious

Comment #202317 by Opisthokont on July 1, 2008 at 9:39 am

This is fantastic -- we need more of it!!

7. CFI-UN Hamid Karzai Letter

Comment #202038 by Opisthokont on June 30, 2008 at 4:52 pm

Re: #202025 (#29 above): I have been thinking along the same lines, myself. Imperialism is a dirty word these days, and with good reason. However, it happened, and we cannot simply pretend that it did not. What are now the First and Second Worlds occupied the Third, and when the empires fell apart, just withdrew. This may have been unavoidable, but to expect the formerly occupied nations to have the same values as their former occupiers after such treatment is not reasonable. The last act of an empire should be to educate the people that it is about to leave alone, to show them how to run a country and how to take care of their own. The reins of power must be handed over gradually; the transition should not be so abrupt. People cannot expect fair elections if they do not know what a fair election is, or how to run one. Freedom of speech must be demonstrated before it can be appreciated. We have squandered our opportunities to withdraw from empire responsibly, and (if the current mess in the Middle East is any indication) will continue to do so. I almost wish for the return of imperialism in the Third World, if only so that it can then be abolished in such a way as to leave the Third World capable of joining the First. I would hope that it goes without saying that I would rather improve their lot in another fashion, but a return to imperialism is at least preferable to genocide!

8. Vatican bans Dan Brown film Angels & Demons from Rome churches

Comment #194357 by Opisthokont on June 16, 2008 at 4:14 pm

ghuckin: you must not have read Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, then. I cannot imagine anyone approaching their depths of awfulness. Check out this ongoing critique of the Left Behind novels if you have any doubts.

9. Vatican bans Dan Brown film Angels & Demons from Rome churches

Comment #193892 by Opisthokont on June 16, 2008 at 7:42 am

Actually, I am not too bothered by the Vatican not wanting filmmakers to use their churches. It is their property, after all. If it were publically owned, that would be a different question. Not wanting people to use your property to do something that casts you in a bad light is an understandable and defensible position.

Of course, I agree completely with the Noodly Master on the conspiracy angle....

10. Unlike Others, U.S. Defends Freedom to Offend in Speech

Comment #192303 by Opisthokont on June 12, 2008 at 6:08 pm

No-one should ever suffer legal consequences for publishing truth. Period. Any exception to that is a hideous miscarriage of justice.

As for gun laws, I am very happy not to feel like I need to own a gun for personal protection. I think it a preposterous notion that guns should be necessary for personal security. Those defenders of the US Constitution's Second Amendment who posit this seem to want to recreate the lawless culture of the pre-twentieth-century frontier. I want no part of that.

But it has been pointed out that the Second Amendment was actually intended as a guarantee that the people should be able to resist and rebel against their own government. This was meant to insure that the Revolutionary War that started the country's independence was in principle possible to happen again. However, there are a number of factors behind the Revolutionary War that made it an outlier. Most civil uprisings have not gone well for anybody. The conditions under which American independence was established are nowhere in evidence in that country today. As far as I can tell, the Second Amendment is thus a dangerous anachronism that should be scrapped.

I should mention that I am not opposed to all gun ownership. Target shooting and hunting are not unreasonable activities. But I do not think it acceptable to give up expectations of one's physical safety, and that does not mean requiring a deadly weapon in order to assure it.

11. Animal Science Without Evolution

Comment #184713 by Opisthokont on May 26, 2008 at 3:00 am

I like how something that is "accessible to a child" enables people to "become virtual experts in the field." Obviously all those scientists are wasting their time with grad school!

12. How Are Humans Unique?

Comment #184464 by Opisthokont on May 25, 2008 at 11:12 am

Last I checked, I was a human being, and I have absolutely no problem at all with considering myself an animal. Likewise, I have no difficulty considering myself a eukaryote, or a living thing. The problem that this author alludes to here is not with the classification but rather with the emotionally charged connotations that most people have with the word "animal". These range from an inferred lack of civility to a denigration of those features that make humans unusual to the outdated and incorrect scala naturae. None of these things are accurate. We are not humbled by belonging to the animal kingdom: we are given a place by it. We are a part of Nature; we are native inhabitants of Earth; and counting ourselves amongst its other inhabitants is merely an acknowledgement of our relationship to them -- ecological as well as evolutionary. Working to assert and to affirm those critical relationships is a far more important and necessary goal than reassuring ourselves of our imagined superiority.

This is not to say that we are not in fact superior in many ways: our intelligence and our capacity for communication at least are unmatched, as far as we can tell. However, these are only some of many traits, many others of which are significantly inferior to those of other organisms. It is not a question of overall superiority that we should focus on, but rather an examination of values: we are superior in things that we care about, can make up for many of the others, and can do without the rest. Again, there is nothing humbling in this. We must merely be honest with ourselves.

13. Mount Vernon schools to hire investigator in Bible case

Comment #168885 by Opisthokont on April 25, 2008 at 12:30 pm

The problem here, with this teacher, is not that he was explaining the meaning of Christian holidays to his class. He was actively proselytising his students. Moreover, he was doing so in a science class. He has absolutely no business even bringing up the topic in such a circumstance, and he should not be allowed to push his beliefs on his students.

Meanwhile, I am highly suspicious of the efficacy of sending an investigator to his class to observe his behaviour. Unless he is a complete moron, he can act like a civilised, secular teacher for the period that the investigator is present, and revert to his previous behaviour afterward. I would be surprised if he were not at least to tone down his activity during such a period. How stupid would he have to be to continue burning crosses into students' arms if he knows that such activity is controversial?!

One can only hope that he is not so wily as I expect, and that whatever shenanigans he has been up to can be documented. But I doubt that such is possible. The administrators have tipped their hand, and any hope for an objective confirmation has been eliminated.

14. Lynchings in Congo as penis theft panic hits capital

Comment #166644 by Opisthokont on April 23, 2008 at 11:10 am

This sort of thing disgusts and depresses me. What scares me about it is that it is a massive argument in favour of active cultural imperialism: the imposition of cultural change by those who "know better" -- in this case, the scare quotes can come off! But how is education not exactly that? What other cure to this stupidity is there?

15. Judge orders La. school district to stop Bible giveaways

Comment #166606 by Opisthokont on April 23, 2008 at 10:39 am

Two quick reactions:

First, I would like to know under what pretense the principal and his allies think they have "very good" chances of appealing this. I do not get the sense that there is information missing from this account.

Second, I would like to emphasise that the plaintiffs in this case wish to remain anonymous "out of fear of retaliation by schoolmates and neighbors". Atheism still has a long way to go before it is anywhere near the threat that the fundamentalists think it to be!

16. Biologists Take Evolution Beyond Darwin Way Beyond

Comment #155895 by Opisthokont on April 6, 2008 at 8:58 am

Wow. These people just do not know science! Nothing here is news. More than that, though, these people do not know how science works. Science does not move from one earth-shattering discovery to the next in sudden dramatic leaps. It is a process. Yes, there are significant figures guiding that process, but ultimately it is a group endeavour, a slow and cautious and collaborative (or competitive, depending on the field and the problem) movement towards (and, occasionally, even away from) a better understanding of nature. This representation of science as always changing paradigms, as a "connect-the-dots" exercise between great ideas proposed by great scientists, only hurts the public perception of science. Whatever the lay reader may gain from this article (and factually it leaves a fair bit to be corrected), their perception of what science is and how it works will be distanced further from reality, which is a genuine shame.

17. Vatican: Islam surpasses Roman Catholicism as world's largest religion

Comment #152869 by Opisthokont on March 31, 2008 at 4:54 pm

It amazes me that the Catholic Church regards its particular branch of Christianity as being as distinct from all others as any of them are from Islam. It amazes me more that the Catholic Church ignores the massive rifts separating Sunni from Shi'ite from a number of other sects of Islam. I suppose that this is just the Catholic superiority complex asserting itself once again, but it still amazes me.

18. Saudi Arabia Leader Calls for Interfaith Dialogue

Comment #150165 by Opisthokont on March 26, 2008 at 2:07 pm

I was going to complain about how "deploring ... 'the rise of atheism'" is a "message of tolerance", but then I noticed the source. The Christian Post is not likely to be a bastion of rationality when it comes to atheism, a point that is proven here!

19. Happy Birthday, Richard Dawkins!

Comment #150159 by Opisthokont on March 26, 2008 at 1:57 pm

Unlike any religiously-based holiday, birthdays are worth celebrating for more than the traditions that have grown up around them. I have always thought them more important than Christmas. Happy birthday, Richard!

20. Jesus saves

Comment #147042 by Opisthokont on March 19, 2008 at 5:41 pm

Wow. What a disorganised piece of writing! I started losing track of the author's meaning with the confusing paragraph mentioned in comment #20 (and had the same reaction myself), and it only went downhill from there. What point is it trying to make? That study of religion is a waste of money and effort? Such arguments are often applied to research of all stripes, and should be dismissed as strongly as possible whenever encountered.

On the other hand, I do truly appreciate the comments here! I will be passing them on to friends.

21. Atheists claim censorship by billboard company

Comment #146241 by Opisthokont on March 18, 2008 at 8:04 pm

I am glad to see sense here: there is no insult to freedom of speech when any private entity declines to support another's point of view. We would applaud a publisher who refused to print works endorsing creationism. The fact that we are on the opposite side here does not give us any justification to change our stance.

Now, I object to billboards in general, but that is another battle.

22. First 'Rule' Of Evolution Suggests That Life Is Destined To Become More Complex

Comment #146189 by Opisthokont on March 18, 2008 at 6:09 pm

Evolution is far more than a change in genes. Regulation of genes is at least as important as the genes themselves, and changes in regulation are not as easy to trace as changes in genes. Genes are regulated both by elements on the chromosome and by environmental factors, and environmental factors include what other cells are nearby. Development of complexity is itself far more complex than simply the evolution of genes.

Likewise, multicellular organisms are far more than the sum of their cells. Much of the matter in our tissues is not cellular: bone, skin, and blood, for instance, are largely comprised of extracellular material. This material is synthesised and maintained by cells, of course, and much of that is done by genetic programs -- but much of it is not, dependent instead upon intercellular signalling. Some of it is dependent upon signalling from outside the animal, such as by the mother during gestation. These interactions, more than anything else, are responsible for the complexity of modern life. Above a certain minimal complement of genes, the size of the genome is irrelevant to complexity.

As for directionality, this article implies that the evolution of more complex developmental networks (necessary for more-complex forms of multicellular life) is inevitable. Perhaps that is so (and I think it likely). However, confirming that hypothesis will involve far more than merely analysing genomes for "complexity", however one defines it.

23. Seven new deadly sins: are you guilty?

Comment #141416 by Opisthokont on March 10, 2008 at 11:21 am

I am amazed (naive of me, I know) that these people claim that humans are too obsessed with sex, at the same time as they claim that contraception is a mortal sin. I suppose that the logic is that if everybody abstained all the time, contraception would not be necessary (every sperm is sacred, after all). But still, even thinking that far requires the subject of sex to come up, and fussing about whether other people are doing it safely seems a bit, well, obsessive.

As for how seriously this gets taken, it might be safely ignored by Catholics in Europe and North America, but I have been told by Argentinian and Colombian friends that the Church has immense sway over what gets allowed in Latin America. There may not be anything technically illegal about (say) selling contraceptives, but if the priests frown upon it, social pressure will (and does) stop people from selling them. And then there are the insane punishments for getting an abortion in some Latin American countries....

24. Darwin's dangerous idea

Comment #138279 by Opisthokont on March 4, 2008 at 6:18 am

Re: #5 --

... America is in serious decline, or if it continues on present track, will be very soon.

Perhaps only then will America wake up to the importance and value of a science education and how it translates or delivers values back to the society at large.

25. Pleas for condemned Saudi 'witch'

Comment #126866 by Opisthokont on February 14, 2008 at 11:26 am

Wow.

I fail to see how upholding a death penalty, for an imaginary (and "undefined"?!) crime, tried without proper legal proceedings, by a court that obviously operates outside of the law, is in the public interest.

I would rather live with nineteenth-century technology than give money to these people, if it came to that.

26. Cal scientist reflects on Darwin's genius

Comment #125973 by Opisthokont on February 12, 2008 at 10:42 am

Three things irritate me about this piece.

First, atheism is listed as one of the "heartless ills of society", without any further attention. This passing mention reinforces the public perception of atheism as an undesirable position, and should not go unchallenged.

Second, nothing is made of how absurdly and provably false is the connection between Darwin's work and atheism or the rest of those "ills". People need to be aware of this.

Third, the writer has bought into the Discovery Institute's hype about there being "more than a few rebel scientists" who advocate Intelligent Design. I am a bit surprised that this was not caught, but of course catching that would imply that someone with more than a high-school science education had read this and cared.

I am e-mailing the author about this (in more tactful language) but doubt that there will be much effect. Call me cynical....

27. Conservative Rabbis to Vote on Resolution Criticizing Pope's Revision of Prayer

Comment #124818 by Opisthokont on February 10, 2008 at 10:19 am

Actually, I do not see much of a problem with the Pope's revisions, from a doctrinal standpoint at least. He is merely formalising what most Christians, if pressed, would probably admit to thinking themselves. What else is the point to converting people? Do Christians not think it a good thing when a Jew converts to Christianity? They believe that their religion is better than the Jewish religion, or else they would be Jews themselves. The Pope is just being honest, in his characteristically impolitic fashion. It does make one wonder how someone so consistently tactless could rise to the levels that he has, though. I suppose that it is just a question of impressing only the appropriate people....

28. Sentenced to death: Afghan who dared to read about women's rights

Comment #118901 by Opisthokont on January 31, 2008 at 6:28 am

There is so much wrong here that it can be hard to keep in mind that there are three different outrages to protest.

The first is the crime: blasphemy simply should not have legal consequences. I think that everybody in this forum (save some trolls) will agree with that. However, we are dealing with a prehistoric mentality in Afghanistan; the threshold of what constitutes an insult is stupefyingly low. This deserves protest, but so long as the Afghan government and courts control their people's access to information, little will come of it without more aggressive intervention.

Second is the punishment, which I doubt anyone in the West would argue to be severe to the point of hysterical incoherence. The sentence here is so blatantly in violation of human rights that it makes for an easily appreciated icon of fundamentalist repression. A civilised and principled world community would demand, in no uncertain terms, that failure to overturn this sentence would result in consequences unfortunate to the present regime in Afghanistan. We have a highly visible rallying point here, and should act upon it.

Third, and perhaps more importantly, is the process. Denial of due process sounds like a comparatively benign problem, a matter of bureacracy more than anything else. Nothing could be further than the truth: this man was not treated fairly, and the system (such as it is) was abused. Legal representation is a right. A fair trial is a right. I would argue that a secular court is a right as well: religion should have no input into the legal system. But we must pick our battles, and if Afghans allow clerical courts, ensuring that they are fair is probably easier than combatting their existence in the first place.

29. Atheism and Violence

Comment #117808 by Opisthokont on January 29, 2008 at 5:28 pm

It never fails to astound me when people like Mr Oakes say what they do. They obviously have never talked with an atheist, or given any serious consideration of an atheist worldview. Given that, why do they think that they know what we think? They assume that atheism leads to communism, violence, lawlessness, eugenics, and any number of other (often mutually contradictory) things. Some say that atheists claim that, because there is no God, humans must take God's place; some (occasionally the same ones) say that atheists claim that humans are "just another animal". Why do they not actually ask an atheist?

Yes, yes, I know, I should expect no different from people who are told to believe without questioning, that doubt is wrong, that the traditions and myths and centuries-old ethical codes that they happened to be born into are superior to all others. I am more than a little dismayed at the number of "rebuttals" to atheist works that make clear, early and often, that their authors have not actually read any of the material that they think that they are rebutting. Do they have any idea how foolish and unprincipled they make themselves seem? If so, do they care? I would imagine that they do, since many style themselves as scholars, but they nevertheless fail in some essential elements of research. Discussing matters with the subjects of their research (and it is not as if we were unwilling, assuming that they are honest) would be a very good start.

30. Scientists want rewrite of Earth's time line

Comment #117415 by Opisthokont on January 28, 2008 at 6:52 pm

Sorry, I should have clarified: I meant the discovery and colonisation of the New World by Europeans, beginning with Columbus's voyages. This is not meant to be Amerocentric: it was only shortly afterward that circumnavigation was attempted, and the discovery and colonisation of many other places than just North and South America. I consider it a notable event in that it signified the advent of the loss of biodiversity due to human activities beyond what invading species were capable of by themselves. The only comparable event that I can think of was the Polynesian expansion throughout the Pacific, which had a similar but much less pronounced effect. My point is merely that, if an alien in the distant future were to examine fossils laid down in the present age, he/she/it would see a sudden point at which everywhere started to resemble everywhere else a lot more than it used to do. The world became interconnected in a way that it had not before, and I merely posit that that was a milestone. I acknowledge that I may well be underestimating the amount of change wrought by human migrations before the European Age of Exploration commenced, but I still maintain that the earlier change was not as sudden.

31. Scientists want rewrite of Earth's time line

Comment #117387 by Opisthokont on January 28, 2008 at 6:08 pm

I have toyed with this idea myself, although I considered the pivotal event not the Industrial Revolution but the discovery of the New World. The Industrial Revolution may represent a more significant turning point in the development of the abiotic world, but I would argue that the biological implications of worldwide travel warrant some consideration. The distribution of domesticated animals and plants changed entirely, and contributed to several localised but extreme extinctions.

I must say that the name bothers me a little. "Anthropocene" translates to "human-recent", which is a bit clumsy. What about "Hypercene"?

All that being said I am not sure that the idea is fully warranted. But it is an interesting idea nonetheless.

32. The real danger in Darwin is not evolution, but racism

Comment #115160 by Opisthokont on January 23, 2008 at 5:20 pm

Right, and Hitler's religiously-inspired views of the Jews had nothing at all to do with anything.

On the other hand, Hitler's whole political platform was based on the superiority of everything German -- culture as well as race. Based on that, we should also ban the music of Richard Wagner and the writings of Goethe. The Brothers Grimm were highly concerned about preserving the German culture (that was their primary motivation for compiling their collections of fairy tales) -- should their other main pursuit, linguistics, be denied us as well? I suppose if we just pretend that Germany did not exist at all, we would be that much better off.

Meanwhile, this fellow criticises people for not referring to Darwin's most famous book by its full title, while apparently either ignorant or suppressive of the contemporary meaning of the term "race". I suspect that he has not actually read Darwin himself, either -- or if he has, he has done so only with the intent to twist the meaning of every sentence that he can into condemnation, regardless of context or intent.

The misrepresentation (not to mention the fallacious appeal to consequenses) is painful. But, I must add, snark is a lot of fun, and I suppose that I should be happy for people like this that I can have a chance to practice the latter.