1. Swatting attacks on fruit flies and science

Comment #276539 by hao on November 2, 2008 at 1:19 am

RE: Comment #276492 by j.mills:

how is any vote, never mind the 'majority', wasted in a first past the post system? if by voting your vote will be 'wasted', isn't NOT voting a *bigger* waste of your vote? it guarantees you won't be counted!

i think proportional representation is disadvantaged because, among other things, it often results in fractured governments.

2. Swatting attacks on fruit flies and science

Comment #276378 by hao on November 1, 2008 at 7:03 pm

j.mills:

that wasn't my point. i was pointing at that all electoral systems have flaws, often similar ones. i think the person who quoted churchill about democracy being the 'least worst' form of government was right. the first past the post system is probably more effective than most.

3. Religion: Bound to believe?

Comment #276026 by hao on November 1, 2008 at 4:40 am

Sounds like 'atheist but-ery' to me. People are 'bound to believe', except the increasing number of atheists, even majorities in many countries in Europe?

Seems condescending to say 'let them have their religion'.

4. Swatting attacks on fruit flies and science

Comment #276024 by hao on November 1, 2008 at 4:38 am

I don't think the electoral college system is as bad as some people seem to think it is. As someone else said, in the UK we also have 'marginal seats' where, supposedly, your vote matters more.

I don't see how the fact that there are 'swing states' makes those votes matter more and votes in other states matter less. They're simply more closely followed in media coverage. Voters in other states still contribute to the electoral college vote for their candidate. It is simply that the winner is more predictable.

If voters swing the other way, as they do due to things like demographical changes, there can be 'new' swing states, such as Virginia in this election. Did votes in Virginia matter less before this election, when it wasn't a 'swing state'? I think not.

The Economist has a very interesting article on the american electoral process:

http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12511205

5. [UPDATED] Richard Dawkins on Harun Yahya's Atlas of Creation

Comment #264685 by hao on October 15, 2008 at 4:05 am

@rod:

There were a lot more ex-muslims upstairs who didn't want to appear on camera, for obvious reasons. Overall, it was a pretty balanced audience.

6. [UPDATED] Richard Dawkins on Harun Yahya's Atlas of Creation

Comment #264664 by hao on October 15, 2008 at 3:22 am

I'm in the audience. I'll refrain from linking my picture with Richard again :)

Great talk, and yes, it is much better with the slides. If anyone in the audience was worried about their safety they could ask to be edited out, so I wouldn't be worried Layla. There was a lot of security on the day as well, with bag checking etc going on. The panel discussion with Richard is great too.

7. Yoko Ono, Filmmakers Caught in 'Expelled' Flap

Comment #162505 by hao on April 17, 2008 at 3:17 am

I thought 'fair use' was for NON-COMMERCIAL purposes ONLY. Sounds like bullshit to me. IANAL (I Am Not A Lawyer)! Any lawyers here? Russell Blackford? Although I'd guess you'd have to be familiar with American IP law..

Aha, wiki says "While commercial copying for profit work may make it harder to qualify as fair use, it doesn't make it impossible. For instance, in the 2 Live Crewâ€"Oh, Pretty Woman case, it was ruled that commercial parody can be fair use." Although the case citied is parody, whereas it doesn't seem the Expelled would be (I've not seen the movie though). I guess they could argue that.

"the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work." (Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. § 107) is also a factor to consider..

If maureen is right, then it would seem the distributor(s) would want to drop the film, just to cover their asses.. Seems fair to me, although the Expelled people could just play the 'free speech' card again, which is just bullshit. (They could use any other medium they want.) Also, crime doesn't come under 'free speech'..

And copyright infringement can come under criminal law! (As the producers of Expelled seemed to know, with their talk of 'traitors' or whatever it was and "$250,000 fines").
Wikipedia: "In addition to the civil remedies, the Copyright Act provides for criminal prosecution in some cases of willful copyright infringement.. A fine of not more than $500,000 or imprisonment for not more than five years, or both, for the first offense.."

8. Why do we believe in God? 2m study prays for answer

Comment #129794 by hao on February 19, 2008 at 3:24 pm

Bonzai,

I don't think I made my distinction quite clear. This study aims to explore the evolutionary origins of religion. What you give are generally conscious psychological motives (e.g. comforting, etc.) as to why people believe or continue to believe despite the lack of evidence. This is a similar distinction to Richards's distinction in The Selfish Gene of the evolutionary consequences of a seemingly 'altruistic' action and the quite separate psychological subjective 'motives' for such an action.

For example, you said science can often be driven by taste, passion or aesthetics. These are explanations as to why science *appeals* to some people and how it can motivate their work. It does not explain how science got started in the first place. Someone sitting in a cave did not invent religion or science because it appealed to their passions or emotions. For that to happen religion would have to have an adaptive advantage. Rather, religion, and science, evolved because it appealed not to our emotions, but for reasons that are less clear, perhaps our pattern-seeking or theory of mind. This is what this study aims to explore.

Early Judaism is not the only religion that lacks an afterlife. Many tribal religions don't necessarily believe in an afterlife either. In any case, since belief in an afterlife is not a universal aspect of all religion, there must be another reason why religion evolved apart from as a comfort from death. Even its comforting aspects are unclear (in the evolutionary sense), for you can see religion as creating the anxiety over death which it then has a 'solution' for. It might be a source of comfort to a lot of people in the modern world, but you have to look at it from the point of view of having an evolutionary advantage to our ancestors. I could argue that the costs, in terms of survival, to build an entire belief system outweigh the supposed benefits of comfort that it provides. In what way then is it built in to our genes? In the evolutionary sense, comfort can not be the only explanation for the origins of religious belief. I guess this points to the idea that religion is a by-product of evolution rather than a direct consequence of it: it comes about as a consequence of many other human attributes, such as pattern-seeking, agent detection, causal reasoning, and sociability.

I agree that you explanation is valid for why religion (or science) continue to persist, but accounting for their origins is somewhat more complex. It is essentially a debate over whether religion is a byproduct or an adaptation. I'm not sure I'm being clear enough, but Pascal Boyer explains this point better in Religion Explained.

9. Why do we believe in God? 2m study prays for answer

Comment #129562 by hao on February 19, 2008 at 10:06 am

Bonzai,

... the ability to anticipate our own death and imagine an afterlife is the most potent driving force behind all religious beliefs.

That's misleading. Not all religious beliefs involve an after life, it's mostly the Abrahamic religions that have it as a central doctrine. (Early Judaism didn't have it either). Our awareness of our own death might be one reason why such ideas and beliefs appeal to a lot of people but it can not be the central 'reason' for the evolutionary development of religion. It's an important distinction.

10. Why do we believe in God? 2m study prays for answer

Comment #129554 by hao on February 19, 2008 at 9:53 am

A bit of a digression but:

I would be interested to hear which arguments by McGrath Justin Barrett supports. I have yet to see a viable argument from him.

There is no suggestion that Justin Barrett supports McGrath. Read what it says more carefully:

Justin Barrett, a psychologist who has been quoted in support of arguments by both the atheist Richard Dawkins and his critic, Alister Mc-Grath . . .

Richard

Of course it doesn't mean J. Barrett himself supports McGrath, but presumably he has been quoted by both McGrath and Richard.

From the article it seems that Barrett does believe religion has some 'nature' component, so maybe that's the argument both Richard and McGrath cite: that religion is nothing but an evolved mental state, or in McGrath's view, "that's how God created us", or something of the like. Anyone read McGrath and can clarify?

I favour the by-product explanation myself but this study might shed some light on that. Just needs to be taken with a pinch of salt as it's Templeton money, no reason to mistrust it entirely.

11. Archbishop's 8 March centennial message: Let Sharia Law govern women's lives, Amen!

Comment #128641 by hao on February 17, 2008 at 1:44 pm

Amen!!

12. A Mutant Obsession

Comment #123127 by hao on February 6, 2008 at 1:32 pm

Seconded! Watching the Christmas lectures was quite a big turning point for me too, one could say the point of my 'de-conversion'. I like what Douglas Adams has to say on this:

"And I thought and thought and thought. But I just didn't have enough to go on, so I didn't really come to any resolution. I was extremely doubtful about the idea of god, but I just didn't know enough about anything to have a good working model of any other explanation for, well, life, the universe, and everything to put in its place. But I kept at it, and I kept reading and I kept thinking. Sometime around my early thirties I stumbled upon evolutionary biology, particularly in the form of Richard Dawkins's books The Selfish Gene and then The Blind Watchmaker, and suddenly (on, I think the second reading of The Selfish Gene) it all fell into place. It was a concept of such stunning simplicity, but it gave rise, naturally, to all of the infinite and baffling complexity of life. The awe it inspired in me made the awe that people talk about in respect of religious experience seem, frankly, silly beside it. I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day."

13. Female Muslim medics 'disobey hygiene rules'

Comment #121443 by hao on February 3, 2008 at 12:08 pm

These people are basically demanding to be allowed to KILL PEOPLE because they they are too damn brain-dead to roll up their sleaves??!! This is sheer lunacy!!! These people need to be laughed out of any serious profession, public or otherwise.

I think the politicians are getting it wrong when they focus on the 'tax-payer money' bit. This would be MURDER, plain and simple. This business of gloves is just nonsense. If they want to open up a private hospital where all the women wear veils and people are refused treatment for alcohol-related diseases or STDs, then any muslims stupid enough to go there for such sub-standard and plain dangerous treatment are welcome to, but this would also involve their own medical, nursing, and everything else schools (segregation?), because any self-respecting educational establishment should expel them outright, it's as simple as that.

I go to the University of Leicester and they are certainly going to be hearing my views on this!!! See if this will get any reaction from so-called 'moderate' muslims, though I've never heard anything from them in other cases. I expect they are but figments of someone's imagination.

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

Comment #120075 by hao on February 1, 2008 at 8:35 am

Whenever the topic of the veil comes up, and some muslim men say that muslim women have equality with men, I am reminded of a tactic sometimes used in debates. Team F will argue FOR, and team A will argue against. The date is set, and when the teams arrive, the moderator says the assignments were accidentally reversed, and team A will argue FOR, and team F against. Of course, the teams complain, saying "We studied and researched the position we were originally given". The moderator responds "You should also then know the strategy of the opposing view, and have answers for them. Just use the strategy you thought they might use against you, starting NOW." I would like to use the same argument against muslim men who support the wearing of the veil. I am told this habit (pardon the pun) is only about 400 years old. Therefore, to PROVE that muslim women are treated equally, all muslim men who supported the veil in the past, will now wear it, for the next 400 years. Of course, none of them will live 400 years, but their descendants will have to take up the....habit. They will not be allowed out in public without a female member of the family to accompany them, nor will they be allowed to drive a car, own property, etc. After all, men and women are equal in islam, are they not ? Goodness knows, women should be shielded from seeing things that might arouse them, like whiskery faces, strong calves, and ohh, those muscular forearms !

Hear, hear!! My thoughts exactly!

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

Comment #119430 by hao on January 31, 2008 at 3:25 pm

'If you kill the fundamentalists, you will get 1000 more fundamentalists'.


Dhimmi talk and expressive of the "morality" of slaves.
Frightened to get hurt?

If you DO hit hard, you will scare off others.
Why do you think brutal dictatorships and slave states like the Roman Empire are so successful states?

Because its contemporary critics (for example the slaves, common men etc) have been terrorized into obedience.


The naive statement "that it only will get worse" does not take into account well-documented psychology.

Of course, desultory, inconsistent practices frightens no one, only enrages.
Again, by reading history, it was not the systematically vilest regimes that were toppled, but the UN-systematically vile ones (those that retained some shreds of decency, for example).

Utter tosh!! You must not know anything about history. The Roman empire, Nazi Germany, the USSR, never had any dissenters, uprisings or rebellions? Are you mad?? Could they ever stamp them out completely?

As for 'well documented psychology', I will not presume you know anything on that subject either, maybe you have references?

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

Comment #119123 by hao on January 31, 2008 at 10:35 am

I don't agree with censorship agn, and I don't necessarily oppose your views, but why must you post everything three times???

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

Comment #119115 by hao on January 31, 2008 at 10:29 am

I also sent a similar letter to Sayeeda Warsi, Vice Chairperson of the Conservative Party. Both her and Lord Ahmed went to Sudan to work for the release of Gillian Gibbons. Let's hope they're not too cowardly this time.

http://www.writetothem.com/write?fyr_extref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theyworkforyou.com%2Fpeer%2Fbaroness_warsi&who=38777

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

Comment #119085 by hao on January 31, 2008 at 9:58 am

Outrageous! I too am unsure whether voilence or diplomacy is the best approach to dealing with Islam (it is NOT just the 'fundamentalists'). My first thought was that perhaps voilence can be justified sometimes, I've never felt so angry in ages! But, to paraphrase the fundamentalists, 'If you kill the fundamentalists, you will get 1000 more fundamentalists'. Ultimately, it is probably a war of ideas. Islam is in a desperate need of reformation, and not enough muslims care about it to do anything.

I sent a message to Lord Ahmed, as I vaugely remember his speaking out on something similar some time ago. Pressure from infidels may not work, but from 'one of their own' it just might. Write to him if you are in the UK.

http://www.writetothem.com/write?fyr_extref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theyworkforyou.com%2Fpeer%2Flord_ahmed&who=31059

Feel free to borrow from mine, given below.

Dear Lord Ahmed,

I am writing to you as a Muslim member of the House of Lords, in regards to the recent reports of Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, an Afghan journalist, sentenced to death for exercising his democratic right to free speech by downloading and distributing a report on the oppression
of women in Islam from the internet. He was also denied legal representation in his 'trial'.

I am confident you will condemn this barbaric and unjust treatment of a fellow human-being and Muslim as an affront to the fundamental human rights of the Afghan people and a crime against humanity. I am sure you are also aware it also totally goes against the views of mainstream Muslims and is nothing more than a relic of a barbaric age, perpetrated by Islamic fundamentalists.

I hope you will condemn this travesty of justice in public and urge the Afghan government and President Karzai to overturn this man's sentence, and not allow Afghanistan to decay back into the barbaric autocracy it was under the Taliban, and which our nation and our allies fought so
hard to liberate it from.

I look forward to you representing the voice of the majority of mainstream Muslims, and of free citizens everywhere.

Yours sincerely,