Comments by beders

Comment #240634 by beders on August 31, 2008 at 6:12 pm

Well, everyone that watches the colbert report regularly knows that any person he interviews in the "better know a..." series has no real chance.

Still, I think Colbert is an atheist himself and he is cleverly hiding it (but giving away clues in every show).

What do you think?

2. From Big Bang to Us - Made Easy

Comment #192774 by beders on June 14, 2008 at 12:55 am

Great videos!
But I'm shocked to hear that some of the posters would think that very logical, simple thoughts about religion would offend students and thus cannot be used in school or for educational purposes.

What about free speech?

Do you really think everything must be toned down to just not offend fundamentalists?

I think that is ridiculous! Instead, after showing these videos, teachers could openly discuss these "heretical" statements and use them - dare I say it - to teach the controversy.

Students may even be clever enough to separate the scientific statements from the polemic ones, which is a good lesson all in itself.

Something is very very wrong if those videos can't be shown in schools.

3. Physicist Claims First Real Demonstration of Cold Fusion

Comment #187609 by beders on June 2, 2008 at 11:09 am

Actually, since Pons and Fleischmann, a lot has happened in this field.

There is a small, but active, community of scientists working in the field now. They are avoiding the term "cold fusion" and use the term LENR - low energy nuclear reactions.
Research is being done in the US, Italy, France, Japan, Russia among other countries.
Budgets are small, but there is a rising interest.

Follow this link for more about LENR:
http://www.newenergytimes.com/Reports/Start.htm

4. Sam Harris debate with Rabbi David Wolpe

Comment #107553 by beders on January 4, 2008 at 6:16 pm

I would not have been able to stay this calm, if I were Sam Harris.

The rabbi kept babbling about how things will go awfully downhill if you take religion out of a society, yet I somehow don't see civil wars breaking out in Sweden, Norway or the Netherlands.

The hitch would have handed Wolpe's ass to him in about half the time.

Still, the clarity of Sam Harris arguments and explanations is superb. I'd really like to get a feeling for the audiences reaction.
Or to put it more bluntly: Who won?

5. Why Richard Dawkins is right on alternative medicine - but not when it comes to religion

Comment #62495 by beders on August 10, 2007 at 1:44 am

Lawson writes:
"the notion of being tortured by sulphuric flames for eternity is as dead as Hieronymus Bosch."

Well, at least not as dead as he likes it to be.
Not according to the successor of St Peter and infallible representative of Jesus on earth, pope benedict.

See, for example,
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21460090-2,00.html

Isn't it amazing to see how small the gaps have become to justify mainstream religion?

Nowadays it seems that every christian only commits to his own private religion, which is made up of the nicer parts of the - for example - catholic doctrine, some convenient unproveable assumptions and heavy cherry picking from the rotten tree that is the bible.

"the Christian churches have retreated to the safe high ground of ethics"

The ground mentioned is so high that there is no place to build churches on.

Cheers,
Jochen

6. Bill Maher interviews Christopher Hitchens

Comment #40857 by beders on May 15, 2007 at 5:21 am

BTW, Mr. Hitchens statement about having to pay church tax in Germany whether you want it or not, is wrong.
If you are not a member of the roman-catholic church, unitarians or jewish community, you don't pay any church tax.

If you are a member of the church, however, the state automatically deducts the tax from your salary.
It is acting as tax collector for the church!
(Which I personally find quite embarassing)

7. 10 myths - and 10 truths - about atheism

Comment #15022 by beders on December 28, 2006 at 9:06 am

David wrote:
" The mathematical probability of God's existence is just over 62 per cent. So says a German science magazine. P.M. tried to settle the issue by using mathematical formulae devised to determine plausibility and probability."

P.M. is hardly a scientific magazine. I'm german and I read P.M. for quite some time when I was a kid. Great storytelling, but scientific? Not really.

Other than that you are dodging the one argument that truly matters: Where is your evidence?

Hearsay doesn't count! Even if your parents, your priest or any other authority you might have insist that Jesus really did rise from the dead. It doesn't make it one bit more true.

I'm pretty sure you investigated the hard biological/medical problems of a resurrection considering Jesus' cause of death.
Is that in any way plausible?

8. The God of the Bible is No Delusion!

Comment #12836 by beders on December 14, 2006 at 1:48 am

Atheist, we keep making the same old mistake: Discussing details of this old book, discussing subtleties of evolution instead of asking the believers the hard questions:

Where is your evidence?
And by evidence I mean evidence for the existence of god and not evidence for historical events described in parts of the bible.

What makes the bible more credible than any scientific paper? What makes the bible more credible than, say, the quran or the gilgamesh epos or the Rigveda of Hinduism?