1. Richard Dawkins discusses Einstein's new letters

Comment #181024 by Steven Mading on May 16, 2008 at 10:04 am

32. Comment #179910 by MIND_REBEL on May 14, 2008 at 1:38 am
There's absolutely no case for Einstein being an atheist. We actually end up looking really bad trying to make this case.

In order for it to work, we'd have to rewrite history or redefine the word atheist. I say we just stop while we're behind.

The quotes you gave indicate that it was actually Einstein who was rewriting the definition of the word atheist. Yes, it's true that Einstein didn't think he was an atheist, but that's because he was confusing atheism with nihilism. If he actually went by the modern definition of the word, he would qualify as an atheist.

2. Vatican: It's OK to believe in aliens

Comment #180225 by Steven Mading on May 14, 2008 at 11:59 am

"The bible is not a science book", says the article.
Well, it's not sucessful as one, that's for sure, but it DOES make claims that are in the same realm of investigation as science (and gets them wrong). This claim is Stephen Jay Gould's "Non-Overlapping Magisteria" garbage again, Let me give several examples of what's wrong with that:

When the Bible claims to describe how the earth was created, it's trying to be an astrophysics textbook (and failing at it).

When the Bible claims to describe how men and women were created, it's trying to be a biology textbook (and failing at it).

When the Bible claims to describe an order to create a circular structure with a circumference three times its diameter, it's trying to be a geometry textbook (and failing at it).

When the Bible claims to describe that a global flood occurred within human history, it's trying to be a geology textbook (and failing at it).

When the Bible claims the pyramids were built with Jewish slave labor, it's trying to be an anthropology textbook (and failing at it).

The bible is not a science book, yes, but that's not because it's trying not to be, it's because it's trying and it's failing at it.

3. 85% of Americans Want a Presidential Debate on Science

Comment #180218 by Steven Mading on May 14, 2008 at 11:36 am

From /13. rod-the-farmer/

But there are enough of them that when they are active or vocal, there is a strong possibility they can over-rule the majority, who may well be too busy to cast a vote, or even raise their voices. As I say, good news AND bad.

What ends up happening in our winner-take-all psuedo-democracy is that a minority that unthinkingly votes homogeneously in lock-step can end up deciding the election even when opposed by the majority, if that majority is thinking, intelligent, and therefore has differences of opinion and does not vote homogeneously. This is why the evangelicals have such strong power in our elections and elected candidates have no choice but to avoid offending them. (Candidates don't always avoid offending them, but the ones who are like that don't end up becoming elected candidates.)

4. 85% of Americans Want a Presidential Debate on Science

Comment #179701 by Steven Mading on May 13, 2008 at 2:17 pm

On the one hand this sounds like a great idea with promise, but on the other hand I think it would backfire. Think about what would happen to any candidate that made a scientifically sound statement that happens to be hostile to religion. Because that would kill the candidate's chances of being elected, we'd end up hearing a lot of NOMA bullshit being spread around in that debate.

5. 'My daughter deserved to die for falling in love'

Comment #179600 by Steven Mading on May 13, 2008 at 12:24 pm

The disgusting thing about this is how the police and neighbors supported the guy on this. If it was just the one guy, it could be chalked up to individual psychosis. When it's the majority of the power structure, then it's the whole culture that's at fault, and anyone who says this has nothing to do with Islam is lying. And they should be ashamed that their lying is protecting the guilty culprit.

6. Losing Our Spines to Save Our Necks

Comment #175441 by Steven Mading on May 5, 2008 at 12:27 pm

The problem is caused by the metaphor dodge.

We've all seen it, right? The moderates within a religion only follow the nice half of the religion's tenets. They could simply state this outright by saying something along the lines of, "I don't follow the whole religion - I only follow these parts of it". But they NEVER speak this honestly, NEVER. Instead they will swear up and down that they are following the *actual* religion, the *correct* way, and that the reason they *appear* to not follow some parts of it is that those parts were intended metaphorically, and those of us who don't get that are being too small-minded to understand.

To the moderate believer, I say this: No, we understand perfectly well. We understand that you are trying to find some cognitive dissonance that will allow you to reconcile a bronze-age ethos that you believe is infallible because you think it came from god, with your modern ethos that shies away in terror at things like stoning women for merely touching men, or at killing someone for teaching the "wrong" religion, which are right there in the bronze-age ethos you're reading. So you come up with this metaphor dodge to try to deal with it. But, calling it a metaphor doesn't fix the problem. What the hell is the moral lesson we're supposed to take away from a "metaphorical" instruction to stone someone to death?

Until we fix that metaphor dodge problem, we can't speak openly about the terrors of Islam (or any other religion) without the message being utterly twisted or at best completely ignored.

If the moderate believers would simply learn to phrase things honestly, and say "We don't really believe this religion all the way, we only believe this, this, and, this part of this religion, and not the other stuff", then there would be the freedom to talk about that other stuff openly, and not have this stupid hand-wringing of trying to pretend it's not part of the religion.

7. Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier

Comment #171769 by Steven Mading on April 28, 2008 at 7:54 pm

Pretending that people in the middle east cannot do anything about this because it's inherently part of the culture is racism. It's saying, "These poor people are too stupid to know they're doing something wrong". No, they're not helpless to this sort of thing. Holding people accountable for the evil they do regardless of their parentage is the opposite of racism. The source of this kind of garbage is their religion, and religion is not something you're born with it's something you're taught. If a westerner man was brought up by his dad to believe that violence against women to keep them in their place was justified, and as a result he ended up committing murder, no western court would ever exonerate him because of his upbringing. So why the hell do we not treat muslims who do the same thing with the same level of disgust? To "forgive" them for these actions because of their culture IS racist.

"It's not their fault, they're too primitive to know better" is NOT an attitude that is flattering to a people.

8. Investigating Atheism

Comment #168893 by Steven Mading on April 25, 2008 at 12:40 pm

Jefe, Commenty #18
"" * Atheism is not discredited by the 'atheist tyrannies' of Hitler and Stalin.""

There is misinformation rolled up in this little statement, that demonstrates a lack of understanding of Hitler and Stalin on the part of the Cambridge group.

Not really a promising start.

I'm sick and tired of calling this "lack of understanding". I'm beginning to think they damn well know they're lying and this is deliberate propaganda. They can't actually be so stupid - they have to know they're lying.

9. Mecca should become core to measure time zones: scholars

Comment #165260 by Steven Mading on April 21, 2008 at 9:15 am

j.mills said:To be fair, there is the old complaint that world maps typically plonk Europe in the middle - not only horizontally, but vertically, since the commonplace Mercator's Projection can't show the poles and usually cuts off more south than north (who cares about Antarctica?).

This ignores the fact that there is very good practical reason for putting Europe in the middle - it means the left and right edges where the map splits the world occur through the middle of the pacific ocean instead of through populated landmasses.
And all flat projections will be misleading. The only way to get the right picture is with a globe.

10. Richard Dawkins' secular army must be stopped. God is behind some of our greatest art

Comment #160670 by Steven Mading on April 14, 2008 at 9:11 am

I'd like to rant about a slightly different aspect of this article. The fact that it's attributing a stance to Richard that is 100% the opposite of the stance he put forth has been covered already.

I want to point out a frustrating fallacy that is quite common in the arguments of those who defend belief. It's a fallacy this article shares:

Goal: To make it seem that religion is responsible for the contributions of famous people of past centuries.

Argument: Compare the religiousity of famous people in past centuries to the religiousity of people today. Notice how they were so much more religious? Clearly this means religion is responsible for their great works.

The fallacy: If you compare their religiousity to people of their OWN time period instead of to people today, suddenly everything changes. Often it is the case that they were LESS religious than the common average person was back then. These were not contributions of the people pushing for more religion. These were the contributions of people who were at the forefront of reason at the time.

11. Anti-evolution bill clears another hurdle

Comment #157668 by Steven Mading on April 9, 2008 at 11:56 am

FightingFalcon wrote:

Are you two serious? Do you have any idea what the US would look like today had the Confederacy won? Take a trip to the Deep South of America today and you'll understand why we should all be thankful that the Union won.

The "win conditions" for the Confederacy were not to take over the Union. They were simply to remain separated and continue existing as a different country. The north would still have existed too. In which case the US would NOT be like the deep south - it would just simply not have included the deep south.

And I sometimes do think that would have been a massive improvement -FOR the north.

12. Rep. Davis: The Worst Person in the World

Comment #157656 by Steven Mading on April 9, 2008 at 11:45 am

Comment 31: by Lionel A had this:

Oh! Is it not about time representative Davis' photo' at:

http://www.ilga.gov/house/Rep.asp?GA=95&MemberID=1148

was brought up to date, although perhaps there will not be a need for that page for much longer.

What's funny is that when I pulled up that page in another tab, the browser abbreviated the title of the page as "Illinois General Ass". (-embly)

Seems appropriate to me.

13. Rep. Davis: The Worst Person in the World

Comment #157648 by Steven Mading on April 9, 2008 at 11:32 am

The typical sort of response to an atheist asking for proper separation of church and state is something along these lines: "what's the problem, why do you atheists think you have anything to complaining about here?" What makes this situation so much worse than that is when her comments drifted into the "atheists should not be allowed to be full participants in government" sort of area. When she said that he had no right to even be there at the microphone raising his complaint at all, that's when she really went too far.

14. Anti-Quran Film Fitna Pulled From Web Due to 'Threats'

Comment #152675 by Steven Mading on March 31, 2008 at 10:27 am

32. Comment #152335 by riki on March 30, 2008 at 6:06 pm
You can't publish works that incite violence.

False.
The Koran and the Bible are still being published.

15. My quest to get de-baptised

Comment #152671 by Steven Mading on March 31, 2008 at 10:17 am

People are confusing the issue by saying "de-baptism" when the term they should be using is "excommunication". That's causing many of the other posters to miss the point and think you're talking about trying to undo the historical fact that you were baptised. They're not getting it. They're not understanding that what bothers you is the fact that they're using that baptism to dishonestly count you as a member today.

What you're looking for is an excommunication.

16. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #151291 by Steven Mading on March 28, 2008 at 12:35 pm

craigyk:

But I don't think it's very nice, or even smart, to try and "change" people's minds about specific issues by attacking the root of their belief, when quite frankly, it is a valid one.

I agree, when it is a valid one. But instead of that imaginary world where belief in god is valid, how about over here in the real world?

17. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #151289 by Steven Mading on March 28, 2008 at 12:29 pm

Dr Benway

I know a university physicist who does research on the sun. He believes the sun has much to do with global warming. He's said to me, "But you can't say these things aloud or they'll destroy you."

Take away the sun and I guarantee there won't be any more global warming. I'm pretty sure everybody thinks the sun has much to do with it.

18. Police: Girl Dies After Parents Pray for Healing Instead of Seeking Medical Help

Comment #150846 by Steven Mading on March 27, 2008 at 1:16 pm

And this is why dishonesty pisses me off. Diabetes is easily treatable if discovered (though usually not curable, a reasonable regimen can keep you alive and of sound mind and body for a long time once the problem is discovered). Most of the time diabetes is first discovered in a person because incorrect blood sugar levels get bad enough to cause symptoms that are hard to understand. A *sane* person, after experiencing nausea, tendencies to faint, mental disorientation and confusion, lack of any energy, that continues to get worse over several days, consults a doctor, and then that's when the diabetes gets discovered.

This child didn't have to die, or even have that bad of a life. If the family weren't the sort of people who dishonestly pretend faith is laudable when they know darn well it's just an excuse for lying, this wouldn't have happened.

I'm sick and tired of having to pretend faith in god is merely a delusion. It's more than a genuine mistake - it's a deliberately dishonest practice to pretend that faith is a good reason to believe something is true.

19. Saudi Arabia Leader Calls for Interfaith Dialogue

Comment #150824 by Steven Mading on March 27, 2008 at 12:58 pm

Others have already commented on this, but I have to add my voice to this too. These two sentences back-to-back in the article, when taking in conjunction, really piss me off:

"We have lost sincerity, morals, fidelity and attachment to our religions and to humanity," Abdullah said Monday, deploring "the disintegration of the family and the rise of atheism in the world �" a frightening phenomenon that all religions must confront and vanquish."

Abdullah's message of tolerance comes at a time of religious tensions caused by the re-igniting of a two-year-old controversy over Danish cartoons deemed by Muslims to be insulting.

"Message of tolerance", my ass.

20. It looks like Man crucified

Comment #149300 by Steven Mading on March 25, 2008 at 12:20 pm

by Bonzai
I sometimes have that feeling while reading this site, it is as if there is some kind of crusade going on by the "rational" zealots where many of whom,--not all,--mostly succeed only in setting up strawmen. The argument boils down to "if you say you're a Christian you must believe in what I say you believe in or you're just lying or being evasive." And usually "what I say you must believe in" happens to be the most crass forms of Biblical literalism only found in the Southern U.S. and very few places outside.

Can you tell the difference between "stop falsely attributing to Christianity the things you believe in that contradict Christianity" versus, as you incorrectly put it, engaging in a strawman fallacy? There are many people who call themselves Christians while outright rejecting large parts of the religion and refusing to admit that they are rejecting it. Instead they lie by pretending the bits they don't like were never intended to be believed literally in the first place. There is a giant difference between telling someone that they are misattributing a belief to Christianity versus telling them they don't have that belief.

If the moderate Christians would be more honest about what the bible actually says and just come out with it and admit that they aren't really following it, then we could finally have an intelligent argument with the fundies who do actually do believe it and show them where their errors are. But when people like you and "Spinoza" jump in and dishonestly pretend the metaphorical, redefined interpretations of the bible that the moderates use are in fact the original "correct" meanings, you are getting in the way of that happening.

If you are honest, you will admit that the following two things are different:

1) Telling Christians they are lying when they claim that beliefs X, Y, and Z come from Christianity.

2) Telling Christians that they are lying when they say they have belief X, Y and Z.

What we're doing is #1 and what you're incorrectly thinking we're doing is #2.

21. God's cure for gays lost in sin

Comment #146862 by Steven Mading on March 19, 2008 at 1:49 pm

(which thanks to science can now be achieved for two women, if I understand it right. They can fabricate sythetic sperm from bone marrow)

This method is guaranteed to always produce a daughter - never a son. (If you randomly select either the X or the Y from the male's XY genes, and pair it with one of the X's from the female's XX genes, half the time you get XX and half the time you get XY. But do the same thing with an XX paried with another XX, and all possible combinations result in XX.)
That's why I believe that if the technology you describe starts to become common and cheap, the human race will eventually become mostly female, or perhaps even entirely female. Even if only 5% of the population uses this method of procreation, eventually in enough generations that would shift the male/female ratio well toward the female side. And female homosexuality would probably become more commonplace as this happens.

So, fellow men, perhaps our days are numbered if women no longer need us to procreate the species. And the thing is, I don't really feel threatened by that. I find that I just don't *care* if that happens. It's not like it lessens my life any, or lessens my contribution to humanity.

22. I don't believe in atheists

Comment #143672 by Steven Mading on March 14, 2008 at 9:47 am

I stopped reading early on when the article told the bit fat lie that Christopher Hitchens and the other three "horsemen" all agree on the issue of Iraq. That's a pretty huge glaring error there that proves the article is being dishonest.

I also saw hints that it was going to go into the common mistake of equating hatred of a belief with hatred of the people who believe it. You can hate the belief, but feel pity for the ones who believe it.

For example, I don't believe most(*) Muslims are somehow less capable of rational thought than anyone else, but rather that they were just unlucky to be born in areas where Islam is the local tradition. Having been lied to all their lives, they are the victims of the culture they were brought up in.

Most of the "new" atheist arguments are against the belief, not the believer. But our culture has a common false premise that religion is a part of a person's unalterable identity akin to race or gender, and that thus dislike of a religion is akin to racism. They are wrong. It's more akin to disliking a political party and arguing against it.

(* - The exception, of course is those who decide to convert to Islam later in their adult life not having been brought up in it - for them I do think it is right to hold them accountable for their religion.)

23. The ethics of mixing science and religion

Comment #143031 by Steven Mading on March 13, 2008 at 11:32 am

A real scientist accepting the money from the Templeton Foundation gives them massive credibility in the eyes of the public, and giving them credibility is detrimental to science. So the question is, are you selfish enough to set back the work of all the other scientists in order to get a benefit to your particular project?

24. Richard Dawkins' US Tour begins this week

Comment #138109 by Steven Mading on March 4, 2008 at 12:27 am

To Tovi who asked about tickets for Madison:

If you see this reply, please go read this thread I made on the forums:

http://www.richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=37492&p=725318#p725318

I will know tomorrow if this is feasable.

25. Survey shows Non-Religious Outnumber Those of Every Single Faith (But One)

Comment #138106 by Steven Mading on March 4, 2008 at 12:18 am

In all fairness, I don't think the conclusion that the non-religious is the largest grouping save one is really fair. The category "non-religious" is a conglomerate of several subcategories. To be fair, it would have to be compared to conglomerations of the other categories at the same level of collective conglomeration. (In other words, don't compare it to just baptists or just catholics or just mormons, and so on - compare it to the more generic category "Christian".)

26. America: slouching towards the Enlightenment

Comment #135027 by Steven Mading on February 28, 2008 at 1:12 pm

"Secular unaffiliated" is a seperate category from agnostic or atheist.

Why? That's like making "protestant" and "methodist" two different categories. It's going to really screw up the results when you make overlapping categories like that and thereby split up a group into two different groups when it's really NOT two different groups.

27. Evidence can't shake your faith if your faith excludes it as evidence

Comment #132508 by Steven Mading on February 24, 2008 at 10:06 pm

Another journalist spreading the lie that atheism is a belief system.

Nothing new here. Same old dishonesty as always.

28. How he was sentenced to die

Comment #132507 by Steven Mading on February 24, 2008 at 10:04 pm

And people wonder what we atheists have a problem with theocracy and what's so bad about it.

THIS is what's so bad about it.

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

Comment #129040 by Steven Mading on February 18, 2008 at 2:27 pm

Comment #128803 by AdrianB
Have you not seen the birth rates of women that are "sex-slaves" compared to that of women that have freedoms?

This alone is enough to explain how it endures so long.

Exactly. A meme that says "thou shalt breed as much as you can" combined with "thou shalt teach this to your children" is a meme with massive replicating power, for obvious reasons.

30. Ayaan Hirsi Ali asks for protection

Comment #128261 by Steven Mading on February 16, 2008 at 4:13 pm

Perhaps if she gets French citizenship she won't have to rely on the A.E.I. They're using her and I don't think she realizes it. She speaks against Islam by advocating secularism instead. But they do it because they'd like people to convert to Christianity instead. They have no problems whatsoever with theocracy as long as it's their religion in charge. They're using her in an enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend sort of way.


At any rate, it looks like it's time for another donation to her security fund. Now, where did I put that paypal information from last time...

31. US military accused of harboring fundamentalism

Comment #127563 by Steven Mading on February 15, 2008 at 12:21 pm

This practice is undeniably illegal under the US constitution. Military officers are granted a lot of authority to give orders to their subordinates, much more so than for a typical civilian boss/employee relationship. That authority comes from the U.S. Government. As such, a military officer in the U.S. Armed Forces must never use that authority to coerce their subordinates into any religion whatsoever. PERIOD.

BUT, Doing something about that means having to convince the supreme court - nine lifetime appointees - of the obvious truth of that.

And that's damned near impossible these days.

Deciding who gets to appoint the next few supreme court judges is a far more important consequence of the upcoming election than anything else the next president does. These 9 people have been effectively forming an impenetrable firewall between the rules of the U.S.A. on paper and the what the U.S.A. actually practices for real. So much of the dishonest bull that the presidency is getting away with can be traced back to this problem. In practice the law doesn't actually mean what it says - it merely means what these 9 people are willing to lie and CLAIM it says.

32. Pleas for condemned Saudi 'witch'

Comment #126895 by Steven Mading on February 14, 2008 at 12:49 pm

This story does not surprise me at all. I try to feel anger at it and sadness for the woman involved and yet all I can feel is numbness. We've heard it all before and we'll hear it again and not a damn thing we do or say will make any bit of difference.

Religion is justification for being a villain, and showing criticism of it makes us out to be the villains in the public's eye.

How the hell do we fight this? I'm feeling such despair over the futility of it all. If you tell the truth and show some basic human decency and compassion for the victims of religion then people will act like you're a hatemonger who just set fire to their favorite teddy bear. Is humanity doomed to perpetuate the evils of religion forever?

33. What he wishes on us is an abomination

Comment #126192 by Steven Mading on February 12, 2008 at 3:18 pm

Most modern Christians are nice people who don't obey the really awful parts of the bible. They way they do this is by deceiving themselves into thinking those parts aren't there, or that they are not the 'real' important parts, or that it takes a subtle 'enlightened' view to interpret them 'correctly' (read: in a way that's not embarrassing to a person of modern morality). We've all seen this and I don't need to go into detailed examples here again.

What I'm wondering is I keep getting this depressing thought that maybe that's the only path out for Muslims as well. That tricking themselves into thinking their Koran is nicer than it really is (and all the problems that view will cause down the road for the freethinkers who try to argue about it later), just might be the only way to soften the conflict and let them modernize their ways. In other words, is it the case that we have to accept the lie that the religion is nice and good in order to provide people with an escape clause that lets them dump the attrocities from their religion without having to drop their belief entirely?

Obviously the honest solution would be to just drop the religion. But if that's not possible, is allowing the lie that it's nice at the core and it's only man-made corruptions that made it bad (as the writer of this article claims) - is allowing that lie to stand really the only choice?

It's depressing to me that it looks more and more like the answer is yes. It's a disgusting lie - but it's a lie that might save 500 million women worldwide.

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

Comment #119200 by Steven Mading on January 31, 2008 at 11:43 am

This is why Christopher Hitchens is full of crap when he claims atheists should have supported the Iraq occupation because it (as he dishonestly claims) is fighting the Islamacists. I didn't support the Iraq operation explicitly because Afghanastan is where the bigger problem is, and leaving it to a skeleton crew of soldiers while you waste time in Iraq was a huge, huge boon to the Taleban. Fight them where they live. The Iraq distraction from the real problem allows the Islamacists to come back into power, as is being demonstrated here.

35. Richard Dawkins on The Big Questions

Comment #118183 by Steven Mading on January 30, 2008 at 12:57 pm

Being an American, I haven't seen other episodes of this TV show before. If this episode is a typical example, then the format seems almost designed on purpose to prevent coherent discussion. It flips between the panel of experts, the audience, and then.... the American actor from Torchwood? It just seems so random.

36. New atheists or new anti-dogmatists?

Comment #117117 by Steven Mading on January 28, 2008 at 9:37 am

What the article fails to explain is what the author thinks the difference is between faith and religion, or more accurately what form of religion would not be rooted in faith.

He apparently does think that there's a difference, since he accuses Dawkins and Hitchens of "incorrectly" treating them as the same. But given that faith is the foundation of ALL religions I have ever heard of, and if you remove it all you have left is a philosophy rather than a religion, I can't see what the author's trying to get at.

37. Lewis Black - The Devil's Handiwork

Comment #115064 by Steven Mading on January 23, 2008 at 1:35 pm

Lewis black is a wonderful comedian. His bits where he appears occasionally on The Daily Show are excellent.

The only thing is, I worry he's going to have a heart attack on stage at some point with his angry delivery style. I'd hate to be his cardiologist.

The bit where he talks about how Christians should ask Jews what the Old Testament means since it IS their book after all is great too.

38. Three Little Pigs 'too offensive'

Comment #115059 by Steven Mading on January 23, 2008 at 1:31 pm

Pigs are just as forbidden under Jewish kosher rules as they are under Muslim rules.

So why don't they care about the Three Little Pigs offending Jews?

Answer: Jews don't have a history of reacting with outrage and violence toward those don't bother following Jewish religious rules. It's the same reason nobody gets worried that McDonalds might be offensive to Hindus who hold cows to be sacred.

Establish a history of irrational violent outrage toward those who do not abide by your religion's strictures and watch people bend over backward to accomodate you instead of telling you to knock it off.

I wish people who gave a damn about human rights would stand up to that crap.

39. Three Little Pigs 'too offensive'

Comment #115055 by Steven Mading on January 23, 2008 at 1:23 pm

Al-rawandi, here's what the deal is with pigs:

Without really good means of meat preservation, pork can be a rather dangerous meat. A lot of what infects pigs can also infect humans. So in a pre-refrigeration culture, eating pork makes you more likely to be sick than eating other meats. Eventually people started to see a pattern there. At a time when many believed sickness to be related to evilness (caused by demons and so on), they came to the conclusion that eating pork is evil. This meme survived very well since its adherents were less likely to die of food poisoning.

A lot of the kosher rules can be explained the same way. Even if the reason for them is bullcrap and the useful kosher rules are packaged inside of a lot of irrelevant 'junk' rules, the extreme cleanliness imposed by the rules does tend to increase survivability. So much like a DNA mutation that contains one useful gene packaged with several bits of "junk" DNA, the junk gets carried along with the useful part.

40. Stop revisionist Christian nation House Resolution 888

Comment #114316 by Steven Mading on January 21, 2008 at 11:41 pm

"Summer Scale" is making the same mistake many on his side of the issue make - that of forgetting the the torture is being used on people who have no yet been proven to be guilty of anything. We have nothing to go on but trust in the administration's ability to know who's guilty already without having to bother with little things like proof. I have no moral qualms with giving known terrorists poor treatment. I do have huge moral qualms with giving people poor treatment as a tool to FIND OUT whether or not they are terrorists. "We'll torture you until you confess and tell us who your accomplices are" is abhorrent practice used when you're not really certain the person is actually guilty or not.

41. Stop revisionist Christian nation House Resolution 888

Comment #113896 by Steven Mading on January 21, 2008 at 12:31 am

I sent the letter of to my representative. (idea - edit the letter - don't send the default form. I think if they get copies of the same form letter they might not take it as seriously. Edit each one and make it your own.

Unfortunately my representative (Tammy Baldwin, D-WI) didn't vote against HR 847, so I doubt she'll be receptive to this either. But we'll see.

42. Questions Delay Creationist Master's Degrees

Comment #112624 by Steven Mading on January 17, 2008 at 3:25 pm

I like the approach taken by the approval board. If they just dismissed the creation institute out-of-hand then it would have been easy for the creation institute to do the standard dishonest pretend persecution thing and claim they were only denied because of a bias existing, as in Ben Stein's "Expelled". But this way, the institute were told they could be treated as an accredited science school - so long as they show that they're actually teaching their creationism subject as a science and not as something else. It's a safe requirement to put on it, knowing full well that they can't live up to that standard because what they do isn't really science and we know it. It's a way of denying them without having it look like bias. Instead they get denied for the correct reason - that despite labeling themselves as doing "science", what they actually do does not fit the definition of science because there isn't peer review and isn't repeatable testing of falsifiable hypotheses.

By sticking to the definition of what makes science different from other disciplines, it's trivial to show that what the creation institute does is not science.

43. Interview with Neil Shubin, author of 'Your Inner Fish'

Comment #112620 by Steven Mading on January 17, 2008 at 3:08 pm

Colbert (well, his fake persona where he pretends to be a fool) seemed uncharacteristically nice to his guest in this interview.

44. Dinesh D'Souza: Winner of the 2007 Bad Faith Award

Comment #112129 by Steven Mading on January 16, 2008 at 11:56 am

It's a copyright matter, nothing to do with it making them look ridiculous.

bhoytoy, Those are not mutually exclusive. The church of scientology uses copyright law as a tool to suppress ridicule. They have a long, well established history of doing this.

Real religions don't copyright their religious texts - they let them spread as far and as cheaply as possible.

45. Fish out of water: Your Inner Fish

Comment #111354 by Steven Mading on January 14, 2008 at 12:22 pm

Vinelectric, there are multiple types of problems that are all called by the same name "hernia". That they have the same name doesn't mean they have the same cause. Just that different causes lead to similar symptoms. The writer was only talking about one specific kind of them, and was not attempting to claim his explanation was for all maladies called by the name "hernia" - just the kind involving the genital area. (To wit: a "hernia" is just a name for ANY time some part of the guts in the abdomen (large or small intestine) pokes through the muscles that wall-in the abdomen area on all sides. There's even types of hernias that occur on the top wall of the abdomen. I had one of those once - a very bad cold virus I had for a few weeks caused me to 'wear out' my diaphram from all the coughing, to the point where I tore the diaphram muscle, and then a bit of small intestine started poking through the tear, forcing me to breathe in small shallow breaths for a few weeks until the muscle healed. (I hated it when someone made me laugh - it hurt like hell.)

Anyway, the point is, the author never claimed to be talking about ALL hernias.

46. 'Letter to a Christian Nation' now available in paperback

Comment #111327 by Steven Mading on January 14, 2008 at 11:29 am

On the "herding cats" comments - Note that THEISTS ALSO have large "splintering" into vastly different groups, for example, some have names like "Christians", "Jews", and "Muslims". What you need to remember is that in EXACTLY the same way that merely knowing someone is a theist doesn't tell you enough information to figure out their entire worldview, neither does merely knowing that someone is an atheist. It's just ONE property, one ingredient (or lack thereof) in the big picture.

47. Why (Almost All) Cosmologists are Atheists

Comment #110614 by Steven Mading on January 11, 2008 at 3:34 pm

Here's a statement I often make, in one form or another: "If human life was god's deliberate intent in making the universe, then why are we such a puny infinitesimal portion of that universe (in terms of both distance and time) that in most calculations our entire existence would round down to zero? If the universe was made by a god that thinks in an anthropocentric fashion (as all the ones we've posited do), then the vast majority of the universe has no purpose to this god. That doesn't make any sense."

I think a cosmologist is better placed than anyone else to see the above problem and understand it intuitively - what the heck is the rest of the universe FOR if it was created for the purpose of housing us humans.

48. Moderates Storm The Religious Battlefield

Comment #106753 by Steven Mading on January 3, 2008 at 11:58 am

"War is Peace!"
"Freedom is Slavery!"
"Skepticism is based on blind faith!".

49. The OUT Campaign has its own Flea!

Comment #106739 by Steven Mading on January 3, 2008 at 11:33 am

It's the same story all over again: "Your bias against allowing me to oppress you is oppressive to me. How dare you oppress my religious convictions by not letting me use them to oppress your convictions against religion."

50. Here's an improvement on democracy

Comment #98805 by Steven Mading on December 14, 2007 at 11:43 am

Any "Democracy" that puts into its constitution that its laws must be in accordance with a particular religion is automatically NOT a democracy the moment it does that. Such a clause makes it so that the religious leaders get the final say in what is and is not a law. It gives them ultimate veto and judicial power, making them effectively much more important than the bulk of the voters (and the immense influence they have over the voters too adds to the problem, although it could be argued that a secular charismatic person could have the same people-influence as a religious one.)

So while I sort of agree with the article, I'd phrase it differently. It's not that we should promote secularism first and then get around to democracy later, but that we should stop telling the lie that theocratic "democracy" is actually democracy at all. It isn't.