Comments by StewE17

1. Daniel Dennett Debates Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #93409 by StewE17 on December 3, 2007 at 5:18 am

It's a pity that other issues weren't discussed, for example, in all of Dinesh D'Souza's fire-and-brimstone preaching he continually assumes that the universe was specifically created just for us humans.

2. I didn't know the FLEA CIRCUS was back in town!

Comment #85118 by StewE17 on November 5, 2007 at 3:00 am

Looking at the listings on her books on Amazon, it seems that no-one has bothered to review her books. Poor woman, no-one will take her seriously.

3. Is Christianity Good for the World? A discussion between Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson

Comment #55725 by StewE17 on July 12, 2007 at 4:52 am

I don't know why Hitchens bothered to get involved in arguments against such casuistry from a faith-head. All he needed to do was refer to this piece of research:

http://moses.creighton.edu/jrs/2005/2005-11.html

or to this synopsis (excusing the typos):

http://www.freethinkerscs.com/articles/whycantweallbejapanese.htm

4. Why the Gods Are Not Winning

Comment #36346 by StewE17 on May 1, 2007 at 1:11 am

Devolved: the Chinese premier who commented on the French Revolution was Zhou Enlai.

5. The God disunion: there is a place for faith in science, insists Winston

Comment #34698 by StewE17 on April 25, 2007 at 12:27 am

Lord Winston thinks, "there is a body of scientific opinion from my scientific colleagues who seem to believe that science is the absolute truth and that religious and spiritual values are to be discounted". He doesn't seem to have confidence that the scientific method is a better way of finding out about the world than religion: a strange stance for someone who calls himself a scientist.

6. Free Speech

Comment #25515 by StewE17 on March 14, 2007 at 1:02 am

Christopher Hitchens is being very brave in voicing what the vast majority of reasonable people feel. He will have probably attracted the attention of the most violent of the Islamofascists.

7. When the ain'ts go marching in

Comment #25221 by StewE17 on March 11, 2007 at 4:43 am

Yes, cheshirecat, I have been to a humanist funeral. No gods and no worshipping.

8. The Blasphemy Challenge

Comment #13171 by StewE17 on December 16, 2006 at 3:08 am

To RichardC who said (#13126, Dec 15 5:39pm): "I would like to see the DVD 'The God who wasn't there' but I don't think it's available in the UK yet."

This DVD is available from the National Secular Society: www.secularism.org.uk

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Quotes of Note:

"I doubt that religion can survive deep understanding. The shallows are its natural habitat. Cranks and fundamentalists are too often victimised as scapegoats for religion in general. It is only quite recently that Christianity reinvented itself in non-fundamentalist guise, and Islam has yet to do so (see Ibn Warraq's excellent book, Why I am not a Muslim). Moonies and scientologists get a bad press, but they just haven't been around as long as the accepted religions. Theology is a respectable discipline when it studies such subjects as moral philosophy, the psychology of religious belief and, above all, biblical history and literature. Like Bertie Wooster, my knowledge of the Bible is above average. I seem to know Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon almost by heart. I think that the Bible as literature should be a compulsory part of the national curriculum - you can't understand English literature and culture without it. But insofar as theology studies the nature of the divine, it will earn the right to be taken seriously when it provides the slightest, smallest smidgen of a reason for believing in the existence of the divine. Meanwhile, we should devote as much time to studying serious theology as we devote to studying serious fairies and serious unicorns. "

Richard Dawkins

"Certainly I see the scientific view of the world as incompatible with religion, but that is not what is interesting about it. It is also incompatible with magic, but that also is not worth stressing. What is interesting about the scientific world view is that it is true, inspiring, remarkable and that it unites a whole lot of phenomena under a single heading."

Richard Dawkins

"The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry."

Richard Dawkins

"...when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong."

Richard Dawkins

"The so-called Christian nations are the most enlightened and progressive...but in spite of their religion, not because of it. The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anesthetic in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve. And every step in astronomy and geology ever taken has been opposed by bigotry and superstition. The Greeks surpassed us in artistic culture and in architecture five hundred years before Christian religion was born."

Mark Twain

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