Comments by nine9s
1. Aiming for knockout blow in god wars
Comment #45377 by nine9s on May 27, 2007 at 1:01 pm
Bremas, my recent bookstore visit was exactly the opposite of yours. TGD was displayed prominently in the science section, as was "The God Hypothesis." "End of Faith" and "God is not Great" were both on top shelves in the politics sections. I wasn't even looking for them, but they were displayed so prominently that you couldn't miss them. All that time that atheist books are spending on the bestseller lists is really paying off.
2. Aiming for knockout blow in god wars
Comment #45374 by nine9s on May 27, 2007 at 12:55 pm
"These atheists are so passionate, dogmatic, they have created their own secular religion."
I find it endlessly amusing when religious people try to badmouth atheists by talking about how "religious" we are. "You're just like me, you friggin moron." Like the people who say weird things like "I don't have enough faith to be an atheist." I thought faith was supposed to be a good thing, nimrod!
Comment #39948 by nine9s on May 12, 2007 at 11:22 am
Scott Atran said:
...problems of human existence that have no enduring logical and or factual solution, such as avoiding death, preventing deception, anticipating catastrophes, overcoming loneliness, finding love or ensuring justice.So there's nothing logical about avoiding death or finding love, or the rest of what he mentioned? In what universe? It's perfectly logical to pursue these things. They define human happiness and flourishing. I've never understood this usage of the word "logical." If pursuing a life that's well-lived is illogical, what is logical? What qualifies? It's crap arguments like this that give logic a bad name, as if logic were inapplicable to human needs.
4. Apocalypse Of The Honeybees
Comment #39630 by nine9s on May 11, 2007 at 11:24 am
Am I the only one who finds this article a bit ridiculous? Honeybees aren't the only thing around that's pollinating plants--lots of insects share that job. Wasps for instance. Honeybees aren't even the only type of bees. If wild honeybees have already declined by 90% and we still haven't felt anything with regard to food shortages, or even higher produce prices, then how are we supposed to take this Armageddon-via-bee-parasite story seriously?
5. Interview with Pierre Rehov
Comment #38558 by nine9s on May 8, 2007 at 3:49 pm
The problem with this analysis is that the Tamil Tigers were the first group to develop the suicide bomber, in the modern era, and they are secular.So what? The only other group of people to follow suit are fundamentalist Muslims. As Harris says, where are the Christian, Jewish and Buddhist suicide bombers? Doesn't that say something about Islam?
Iraq had never had any suicide bombers at all before the illegal invasion.Again, so what? When Germany invaded Holland, how many Dutch people suicide-bombed other Dutchmen? When Iraqis bomb eachother, the fault lies with the Iraqis doing the bombing. Nobody "causes" suicide bombing except the individuals who decide to do it. Unless of course you want to make the curious argument that Americans are free to choose not to invade Iraq, but Iraqis are constrained by their animal nature to kill eachother.
Curiously, this video and some of Sam Harris' writing (and all of Christopher Hitchens bumptious ravings) nicely dovetail with the propaganda needs of the present US/UK warmongers.Right. Sam Harris is a stooge for Bush. Yeah, I see it.
By the way, what to you would be a reasonable cause for war? Anything? What kind of rationale would a person need to accept for going to war, without being called a "warmonger" by you?
6. Lou Dobbs Interviews Christopher Hitchens
Comment #37625 by nine9s on May 5, 2007 at 11:39 am
There is still an old U.S. law that says all immigrants need to renounce their former citizenships and become true Americans,This is true for Americans who want to become citizens of other countries, but not for foreigners who want to become Americans.The late Peter Jennings was a dual citizen of Canada/US, as are Alanis Morissette and my stepmother.
I live in Canada now - a proud "tossed salad" rather than a "melting pot" - and the U.S. embassy here says that if I want to be a Canadian citizen I have to give up my U.S. citizenship. It's that black-or-white mentality of "either you are or you're not." This is why Arnold Schwarzenegger cannot run for the presidency.
By the way, why do Canadians have to trash America every chance they get? You don't see Americans pissing on Canada for its faults.
Comment #36561 by nine9s on May 1, 2007 at 2:33 pm
What does TED stand for?
Comment #36558 by nine9s on May 1, 2007 at 2:25 pm
"To save mankind requires the wholesale rejection of environmentalism as hatred of science, technology, progress, and human life."
This comes from the Ayn Rand Institute, which is the haven for the minority of objectivists (maybe 10%, in my experience with several college Ayn Rand clubs) who are goose-stepping fundamentalist Randroids. The review here of TGD came from a different organization. Most of the legitimate criticisms of Ayn Rand's followers are about the bizarre cultish behavior of people who treat her teachings like a new set of Commandments to be obeyed.
She herself was aware of this phenomenon and spoke scathingly in "The Art of Nonfiction" of "fundamentalist Objectivists" who invoke "Objectivist bromides" as substitutes for original thought.
"Philosophy" is Objectivist code for "Objectivism".That's absolutely untrue. Objectivists talk voluminously about the impact of philosophy on life, for good and for ill. They/we have no concept of the "right philosophy" being the "only philosophy."
"Collectivism" is Objectivist code for "making any concession to the existence of other people."No, collectivism refers to the idea that people belong primarily to a group as opposed to themselves. Rand wrote volumes about the importance of benevolence, of respecting the rights of others as you expect yours to be respected, and most especially about the importance of romantic love. Her main point about collectivism was that our worth is not determined by how much we contribute to society, and that every human being is an end in him/herself. That sounds to me a lot like a "concession to the existence of other people."
"Mystics" is Objectivist code for - anyone who disagrees with a word of Objectivism?A "mystic" is someone who believes in the supernatural. I don't think anyone on this forum qualifies.
9. New Planet Could Be Earthlike, Scientists Say
Comment #35252 by nine9s on April 26, 2007 at 5:49 pm
If the planet doesn't spin on an axis, wouldn't that mean that it doesn't generate a magnetic field that shields the planet from radiation? Maybe it's a cockroach world, Planet of the Apes style.
Comment #29551 by nine9s on April 3, 2007 at 11:19 am
Alison's point on time metaphors is well taken, but... so what? Why would anyone spend their time parsing metaphors like this rather than, say, solving crossword puzzles or sudoku?
That "time" post read something like a drug trip: Oh my god, Time. Wow. It flies, there's some left, but it's not really a thing. Time is a Resource, and I want to Save some of it. Oh my GOD, man. That's so totally deep.
Let me guess: Postmodernism began in the sixties?
Comment #29547 by nine9s on April 3, 2007 at 11:09 am
Jonathan Dore:
Ellen -- I for one greatly appreciate the time you took to spell out an intelligible sketch of what the quoted passages were on about. But doing so confirms my impression that this mode of thought is essentially pointless, uninteresting (because it points out the obvious), and parasitic upon real intellectual achievement.Bingo. Very well put, Dore.
Since my proposed boycott of september hasn't worked, I'll go ahead and put my two cents in. September, I couldn't care less about your bad childhood, your quotation mark phobia, your hypersensitive feelings, your bizarrely enigmatic "motivation" for being on this forum, or the dick you got cut off. You are a rude, obnoxious, pathetic -- shall I say? -- jackass, and you need to either put up or shut up. You don't need to be profound or learned, you just need to contribute and not waste our time with your abysmal behavior and your boo-hoo story. You've been edited by the moderator several times now, and you still haven't said anything substantive about the subject at hand.
Let's troll this guy's ass and get him/her/it out of here.
Comment #29364 by nine9s on April 2, 2007 at 4:32 pm
Wow! Nearly midnight and the commentary rages on...It's just after work here in the US! ;)
Apparently, I am not postmodern because my work is 'naive' and 'too primitively aesthetic'. I'm always asked the question: "But what is it saying? What is your point in this?"My reaction would be: "If you want commentary, read a newspaper. And there's nothing 'primitive' about beauty." Congrats if the worst thing people say about your work is that it's "aesthetic" and not ideologically loaded!
Comment #29359 by nine9s on April 2, 2007 at 4:13 pm
Ooh, ooh, a puzzle!
How many postmodernists does it take to change a lightbulb ?
Two: One to ponder the subtextualities of change regarding the cultural hegemony of the electrical/manual pseudoduality and the other to call a janitor.
Comment #29321 by nine9s on April 2, 2007 at 2:54 pm
"Postmodernism is a school of thought based upon the rejection of objective reality."The gibberish, I think, is the natural result of believing in relativism. Since "there are no standards," you'll look ridiculous if you strive for objective knowledge. So you simply spew forth verbiage, declare it to be "deep" (just like heaps of scrap metal become "art" via the magic of declaring it so), and you get tenure. Voila! A clear defense of relativism is probably impossible, so arguments based on relativism probably can't be very clear.
When you look at a postmodernist text though, what jumps at you is not the thoughts presented (or more often that not, lack of) but instead the language used. The gibberish. The masquerading behind scientific-sounding jargon. The definition above is not complete without acknowledging this fact.
If the definition still needs tweaking, does anyone have any suggestions?
Comment #29313 by nine9s on April 2, 2007 at 2:38 pm
from your experience people usually use that ace...there are times and people who do not, not because they dont know what they are talking about, but because they have different expectations of communication.Obviously your expectations here do not include having a civil conversation on important intellectual topics. That's what the rest of us are here for, and you are wasting our time. Either explain for us why we should take postmodernism seriously, as you have claimed to be able to do, or go away.
I propose that all further posts by "September" be ignored on this thread until he/she makes a meaningful contribution. Any seconds?
Comment #29305 by nine9s on April 2, 2007 at 2:22 pm
Ok, so postmodernism is relativism. However, I'm going to assume that there's some reason that we don't just call it relativism, and ask: what else is it?Relativism is just one concept: "There is no objective reality." Postmodernism is the fleshing-out of relativism, the reinterpretation of the world (or should I say "world"?) according to relativism. So postmodernism is relativism writ large. Postmodernism is relativism, but also its correlaries and logical consequences. So I stand by my last definition: Postmodernism is a school of thought based upon the rejection of objective reality.
Does this clarify?
Comment #29298 by nine9s on April 2, 2007 at 2:12 pm
September said:
Instead, let me ask you a question, what would make you think that I would care to provide you with the workings of postmodernism? dont jump to anymore quick conclusions on this one. And why dont you just call up your buddy richard rorty?One thing I've learned though debating and discussing issues is that when people have good arguments, they use them. No one surrenders when they have the ace of trumps up their sleeve. People only tapdance around like this when they don't know what they're talking about.
Comment #29295 by nine9s on April 2, 2007 at 2:03 pm
Is postmodernism relativism?Yes. Postmodernism also includes all the correlaries of relativism, along with all the "theory" that's been based on relativism.
So, thanks to your question, Jef, I'll modify my definition just a bit:
Postmodernism is a school of thought based upon the rejection of objective reality.
Comment #29286 by nine9s on April 2, 2007 at 1:27 pm
Can anybody produce a single, clear, meaningful and coherent definition to rebut this negative impression?Here's a shot at it: Postmodernism is the rejection of objectivity.
Everything that gets called "postmodern" can be traced back to a denial of objective reality. If there is no objective reality, then nothing is good or bad, true or false. One mode of behavior is as good as another, so if other countries want to treat women like slaves, then that's their reality. To criticize someone for underachievement or having a child out of wedlock is to violate that person's right to their own morality. Without objective standards, anything goes.
Comment #29264 by nine9s on April 2, 2007 at 10:28 am
In my last year of college, it was announced that Derrida was coming to campus to give a talk. It was in 2000 or 2001, I think. I knew he was a philosopher, but I didn't know he was still alive; I probably would have guessed he was one of those old Enlightenment philosophers. Anyway, I went to the talk, and it was standing-room only. The aisles were packed, people were sitting on the floor, and people were hanging out the entrance doors. A real-life, big-name philosopher! The fire marshall would not have been pleased. I expected some postmodern B.S., but I also thought this was a good opportunity to try and glean something insightful from it.
I was disappointed, to say the least. After a minute or two (that's all it took) the talk was totally incomprehensible. Now, I'd also been to a similar physics lecture with a physics grad student I was dating, and I didn't understand that either. But at least the physics lecturer used language intelligibly. Derrida just played word games: He would talk about the various meanings of one word, which led to defining one of those meanings, which led to "exploring" the web of meanings for another word, peppering it all with bizarre "isms."
After maybe twenty minutes (maybe more, I don't really remember), I just couldn't stand it anymore. I squeezed past the people in the aisles and the people hanging out the door, bitterly disappointed that I lived in a world where no adults seemed to even be interested in intelligibility or in life's important questions. Outside the doors, I spotted a classmate and we talked about the nonsense that today passes as philosophy. We were at least able to confirm for each other that some sanity was left in the world, but a few students standing against the whole of academia aren't going to feel very secure about their independent findings. Thankfully I had already discovered Ayn Rand's writings, which are a model of clarity, and met some other Rand fans I could philosophize with.
I fucking hate postmodernism. It's a totally inexcusable breach of rationality, of character, of the trust that students have that their teachers can point the way toward meaningful answers to humanity's deepest questions. Postmodernists are frauds, pure and simple. Any merit that it may actually have is apparently buried so deep in bullshit that only the tenured have the time and inclination to wade through it. Meanwhile, legions of students are being taught every year that life is meaningless and incomprehensible, and any desire to make sense of it all is a sign of intellectual immaturity, something that college should help them grow out of.
Sorry for the length. I'm pretty bitter about the subject, to say the least.
Comment #28933 by nine9s on March 31, 2007 at 4:56 pm
Every politics student that ever there was knows that the major cause of war and violence in the twentieth century was nationalism.Nationalism? Those wars were about the powerlust of a few highly imbalanced men who knew how to manipulate their populaces.
When you say "nationalism," what do you mean?
Comment #27478 by nine9s on March 24, 2007 at 8:51 pm
I'm sure I'm not the first to have noticed that Harris, having offered Sullivan the opportunity to reflect on the unreliability of human intuition, proceeds with brilliant symmetry and eloquence to echo the Monty Hall problem in his threefold choice of theistic belief – two goats or a Lexus.I saw that too! After talking about Monty Hall he offers the three theistic possibilities, and knowing Sullivan won't choose (A) atheism, he eliminates that one, leaving whichever one he DID pick (probably Catholicism, I suppose) with a 2/3 chance of being wrong!!! Utterly freaking brilliant.
23. Gimme That Old Time Religion (Bashing)
Comment #27402 by nine9s on March 24, 2007 at 11:47 am
"The problem with Harris is that like his opponents on the religious right in America he is moved by hatred and contempt to write what he does."I wonder if Clarkson has ever seen Sam Harris speak. Harris is probably the calmest, most Zen-like public intellectual I've ever seen. If he's so full of hatred, he should quit the atheist gig and become an actor.
Also, Clarkson seems to think that Harris is an atheist in order to get rid of the religious right:
"[Harris believes] that antireligionism is the response to the religious right because religion itself in all of its forms is responsible for it. No religion; no religious right. Simple, right?"Like so many critics of Harris and Dawkins, it seems unfathomable to him that Harris believes what he believes because he thinks it's true and for no other reason. Maybe Christians routinely "choose" what they believe based on the benefits they get from it, so they naturally assume that atheists decide to be atheists in order to get under Christians' skin.
I'm really struck by the inanity of RD's and Harris' critics. I always knew that our perceptions can be colored by what we want to see, but this is ridiculous. People are really, truly, not all that interested in the truth. I say that not just because they disagree with me, or because they put forth bad arguments (which they do). I say that because they always seem to talk about motives, about consequences, about comfort, about the benefits they derive from believing in fairystories. I can respect someone who's wrong about God and puts forth arguments for his existence, but I can't muster any respect for someone who believes out of ulterior motives.
Sorry for all the melodramatic italics.
24. If only gay sex caused global warming
Comment #27169 by nine9s on March 23, 2007 at 10:43 am
Phaderus, thanks for the lengthy response. I don't know enough of the hard science to say one thing or the other about most of these topics, so I'll leave a lot of what you said alone. Here are a few things I think I can comment on:
Claim: The self interest of scientists and the media in keeping their
jobs and grant money is the main reason they continue to say that GW exists.
Reply: The implication is that the 80% of the scientific community
who agrees with GW is lying to keep their jobs.
Eighty percent of the scientific community is not in climate science, so I think this objection is a little over the top. Even if eighty percent of climate scientists agree that man-made CO2 is causing GW, that leaves a pretty big gap: you'll never find 20% of physicists who doubt the Big Bang. Also, I don't think that all those 80% are conspiring for funds. But I do think that there's an awful lot of groupthink when it comes to political matters, and since most professors are politically liberal, it would make sense for them to huddle together when people on the right oppose them. It doesn't mean the scientists are wrong, of course.
Claim: All climate models are unreliable and biased by the researchersThat seems a bit unfair. I've always heard, from scientists on both sides of this debate, that climate models are inherently tricky and shouldn't be taken as proof of anything. One of the people on the video said that the wrong data (10 percentage points, rather than 4.5 or whatever it was) were routinely plugged into these models as a "precaution," but when you're exaggerating by a factor of two every year, that adds up stupendously quickly.
to give favorable results.
Reply: What a huge conspiricy. The entire peer review system that
science uses is set up to help avoid this, so they all must be in on
it.
Claim: Extreme weather like hurricanes and tornadoes are due to the
differential in temperature between the poles and the tropics.
Therefore claims that hurricanes are caused by GW are false and
therefore GW is false.
Reply: I have always heard that extreme weather was due to local high
temperatures and temperature differences.
Don't "local...temperature differences" verify the claim? After all, weather takes place somewhere, and wherever that somewhere is, is local. I know that sounds like splitting hairs, and I'm not a scientist, but isn't a reduction in temperature differences thereby going to reduce extreme weather?
Anyway, one thing that bothers me about this whole issue is that people don't give us hard numbers. The Great Global Warming Swindle says that volcanoes spew out more CO2 than all industries combined, but it never gives us those numbers, and neither do the GW proponents. How much CO2 gets produced every year? How much is from humans? Animals? Volcanoes? How much is in the atmosphere now? How much of an impact does CO2 have on the atmosphere, and how do we know? How important is it relative to other greenhouse gases? Would it be easier or cheaper to adapt to global warming or to prevent it? People don't seem to be asking those questions because they've already picked sides based on their political tribal affiliation.
I'm coming across here as a global warming skeptic, but in a way I'm just playing the sides. If I were on a conservative site I'd be calling them on the carpet, too.
25. If only gay sex caused global warming
Comment #27151 by nine9s on March 23, 2007 at 9:43 am
What do you guys think of this video? It makes a pretty persuasive case that global warming is caused by a cyclical increase of solar activity and cosmic rays, and that we're due for a temperature downturn in fifteen or twenty years. It's British, so I imagine some of you guys have seen it already. I'm not sure what to think.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=XttV2C6B8pU
26. Why creationism is wrong and evolution is right
Comment #26974 by nine9s on March 22, 2007 at 5:17 pm
Maybe there is a British/American divide with regards to the ironic "Earth is probably not flat" comment, but that may just be because of the pathetic state of philosophy in our American universities. Our professors tell us stuff like "The world is probably round," but without any intended irony. I don't know if British intellectuals are as enthralled with postmodernism as ours are, but an American philosophy class is basically going to tell you that there are no answers to anything, that all is opinion.
A co-worker of mine was taking a community college course on philosophy about a year ago, and her teacher told the class, "you can't prove this pen exists," but without explaining that proof is based on sensory evidence, making sensory evidence even more fundamental than proof. So, evidently, her class came away with the impression that we can't know anything, and there's no such thing as facts.
27. Why creationism is wrong and evolution is right
Comment #26842 by nine9s on March 22, 2007 at 12:16 am
Endless Forms, if you don't want to talk about the blurb at the top, then don't talk about it. Sheesh. We're talking about it because it was interesting.
28. Why creationism is wrong and evolution is right
Comment #26833 by nine9s on March 21, 2007 at 9:48 pm
Norman Doering, thanks for pointing out that there is no "probably" about the world being round. I get really peeved when scientists say preposterous things like that, things that they clearly don't believe. Obviously there are some things we can be certain of. Theoretical physics will probably never reach that stage, but for christssake, we know that storks don't bring babies. This just gives ammunition to the evolution-deniers: "No one can be certain of anything, so Christianity is just as good as science. Do you want to trust God or trust a system that isn't sure where babies come from?"
Comment #26283 by nine9s on March 18, 2007 at 9:55 am
You bunless, cut-wienered krauteater!
I love it!
Comment #26282 by nine9s on March 18, 2007 at 9:52 am
Back in college in 1997, a group of friends and I did "Kissing Hank's Ass" as a skit for a party in my co-op. One of my favorite college memories involves me and one of those friends practicing in the university library and loudly cracking up when I got to the line, "Isn't it worth a little kiss on the ass?"
31. Yanoconodon, a transitional fossil
Comment #26281 by nine9s on March 18, 2007 at 9:44 am
I think I remember Michael Sherman saying that any time you find a transition fossil, the creationist will still say, "Well what's the transition between the first fossil and the transition fossil?" So every transition fossil found will create the need for two more transition fossils. The way he put it was actually funny, though. ;)
32. Atheism hasn't hurt Fremont Rep. Stark
Comment #26278 by nine9s on March 18, 2007 at 9:37 am
"It's not courageous to make a simple statement about personal beliefs,'' he told about 70 people at the San Leandro City Hall. "What is courageous is to stand up in Congress and say, 'Let's tax the rich and give the money to poor kids.' Now that's courageous.''What a crock. Taxing the rich and giving to the poor is exactly what his political party believes in. "Toeing the party line--now that's courageous!"
33. Stephen interviews Ayaan Hirsi Ali author of Infidel
Comment #26277 by nine9s on March 18, 2007 at 9:28 am
I've finaly decided to get a copy of Infidel, it sounds like a good read.
Wikiquote has a bunch of quotes from Infidel, if anyone's interested: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ayaan_Hirsi_Ali
34. Stephen interviews Ayaan Hirsi Ali author of Infidel
Comment #26170 by nine9s on March 17, 2007 at 12:18 pm
AEI came to Ayaan, not the other way around. "But I also intended to meet with Christopher DeMuth, the president of the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington that was interested in offering me a job. ... When I had been approached for a think tank position in the United States, I thought that perhaps it could take my ideas to a larger platform and give me more time to develop them." Pages 339-340. Doesn't it say something good about AEI that they would hire a world-renowned atheist?
I've said this before, but the main thrust of AEI is economic and political issues, and Ayaan has said that she supports lower taxation and fewer benefits, since she's seen what happened when her fellow refugees were given enough money to live on -- they sat around on their asses and nursed imaginary grievances. So Ayaan and AEI have their basic politics in common, but there are of course differences. Would she really be more at home in a university full of politically correct socialists?
35. Stephen interviews Ayaan Hirsi Ali author of Infidel
Comment #26169 by nine9s on March 17, 2007 at 11:59 am
Pantore said:
Acording to AEI,Walmart is a blessing to the USA...LOL.
"A McKinsey company study concluded that Wal-Mart accounted for 13 percent of the nation's productivity gains in the second half of the 1990s, which probably made Wal-Mart about as important as the Federal Reserve in holding down inflation. By lowering consumer prices, Wal-Mart costs about 50 retail jobs among competitors for every 100 jobs Wal-Mart creates. Wal-Mart and its effects save shoppers more than $200 billion a year, dwarfing such government programs as food stamps ($28.6 billion) and the earned-income tax credit ($34.6 billion)."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/13/AR2006091301573.html
36. Stephen interviews Ayaan Hirsi Ali author of Infidel
Comment #26101 by nine9s on March 16, 2007 at 10:40 pm
C'mon, Pantore, get it over with. Do your little AEI spiel.
37. Non-believers can be bigoted too
Comment #25617 by nine9s on March 14, 2007 at 10:35 am
People talk about the rise in fundamentalism, but generally I think the world is getting much more secular. It's pretty evident to me that as a society we're less religious today than we were fifty years ago. Fundamentalist Islam has been growing since the 70's due to oil money funding Saudi religious extremists, but I'm not so sure that fundamentalist Christianity is any greater than it has been historically.
38. Non-believers can be bigoted too
Comment #25614 by nine9s on March 14, 2007 at 10:26 am
Too often they are interested solely in the question of the truth and falsity of a religion's creed, and tend to ignore the other dimensions of faith.After quite a few months of reading the pathetic criticisms of RD and Sam Harris posted on this website, something seems very clear: People are just not interested in the truth. "To hell with integrity, I want my goddamn delusion, okay? Just leave me alone!"
39. Remote sheep population resists genetic drift
Comment #25598 by nine9s on March 14, 2007 at 9:00 am
Does anyone know where exactly Haute Island is? Google Earth has apparently never heard of it, and the only mention of it I found on Google and Yahoo referenced this study.
40. How my eyes were opened to the barbarity of Islam
Comment #24816 by nine9s on March 8, 2007 at 5:58 pm
I'm going to say "Ayaan Hirsi Ali" just to see if Pantore comes out and does his little AEI dance.
41. She's No Fundamentalist: What people get wrong about Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Comment #24785 by nine9s on March 8, 2007 at 2:35 pm
Two of our leading intellectual commentators, Timothy Garton Ash (in the New York Review of Books) and Ian Buruma, described Hirsi Ali, or those who defend her, as "Enlightenment fundamentalist[s]."Enlightenment fundamentalist.
This really gets me mad. So now anyone who acts on principle or takes ideas seriously is a fundamentalist. People do the same thing with RD: they see someone who's passionate about knowledge and the truth, and they call him a fundamentalist. I guess it's easier than thinking.
42. Why there are almost no genuine atheists
Comment #24479 by nine9s on March 6, 2007 at 9:07 pm
Stephen J, have you read any Ayn Rand? She makes a very persuasive case that life itself is the standard for morality, and that we can rationally justify moral imperatives ("oughts") by looking at what promotes one's own life and the lives of others. "So, why 'ought' I try to promote my life or the lives of others?" Short answer: We just can't help wanting to do it, so we might as well learn to do it well.
The comment about "avoiding yellow" being akin to "avoiding pain" seems more than a tad reductionistic. "It's just pain." Or try "It's just nuclear annihilation." This line of reasoning seems to be more of an assertion than an argument, something like, "There is no point to avoiding or gaining anything." I just don't think a person can be alive and be indifferent to pain, or happiness, or the lives of others. There's nothing irrational about that.
43. Long live satire
Comment #24394 by nine9s on March 6, 2007 at 11:52 am
The president of the university's Islamic society said "I found the magazine hugely offensive ... freedom of expression does not constitute a freedom to offend."Like hell it doesn't. "If liberty means anything, it means the right to tell people what they don't want to hear." ~Orwell.
On this note, did everyone see the South Park episodes about the Muhammad cartoon controversy? Wicked smart. You can download them on iTunes. Season 10A, I think.
44. Religion in Conflict: Are 'Evangelical Atheists' Too Outspoken?
Comment #23383 by nine9s on February 28, 2007 at 9:19 am
650,000 to 900,000 dead Iraqi civilians is a lot. It sounds like more than even Saddam would have killed if he'd still been in powerHere's what the Associated Press has to say:
"Iraqi civilian deaths are estimated at more than 54,000 and could be much higher; some official estimates range into the hundreds of thousands. The UN Assistance Mission for Iraq reports more than 34,000 deaths in 2006 alone."http://www.netscape.com/viewstory/2007/02/24/americans-underestimate-iraqi-death-toll/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fhosted.ap.org%2Fdynamic%2Fstories%2FD%2FDEATH_IN_IRAQ_AP_POLL%3FSITE%3DAP%26SECTION%3DHOME%26TEMPLATE%3DDEFAULT%26CTIME%3D2007-02-24-07-28-45&frame=true
The numbers of Iraqi dead is highly controversial. Wikipedia has an article on The Lancet's surveys showing 600,000 people dead: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_surveys_of_mortality_before_and_after_the_2003_invasion_of_Iraq#The_second_study_.282006.29
Comment #23206 by nine9s on February 26, 2007 at 7:38 pm
I find it very doubtful Al-Jazeera English has its own translators.
Why? It's a Middle-Eastern network broadcasting to Middle-Eastern expats, and no one there speaks Farsi? As wice said, after the whole world heard those words about wiping Israel off the map, don't you think a "bad translation" would have been removed from the English Al-Jazeera website a year and a half later? Wouldn't Ahmageddinouttahere have raised holy hell about it?
Comment #23205 by nine9s on February 26, 2007 at 6:57 pm
AJ Rae:
I don't even try to tell atheists what to think, I thought this site was populated by atheists grounded in rationalism. You're evidence this is not the case.Thank you for proving my point. Rather than just addressing my arguments, you decide that I must be irrational, since you think I'm wrong. Apparently people can only disagree with you if they are not "grounded in rationalism." Exactly what I was talking about.
There's science on the "climate change will be moderate" side too. I haven't read enough of it all to make an informed decision (but then, very few people have), and that's why I remain a global warming agnostic. "So why, nine9s, do you accept quantum theory? Have you read the science?" No. The science on quantum theory is settled. There are kinks to be worked out, of course, but no real science disputes it. This simply isn't the case with global warming. I've read material on both sides, and the reading is damn hard. Anyone who says it's cut-and-dried in favor of one side is only listening to one side.
The truth is obvious and backed by peer-reviewed science
and the top scientists, including Richard Dawkins. That's the truth, if someone has any better science I welcome them to publish it and enlighten me.One website on the skeptical side is Friends of Science: http://www.friendsofscience.org/ While it is a minority viewpoint, there is indeed science that points away from global warming catastrophism. It's funny that I never hear facts coming from the enthusiastic environmentalists except in the most general terms. There's a lot to be discussed on the topic, but usually it's reduced to "WE'VE GOT TO DO SOMETHING, ANYTHING, OR WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!!"
47. Faith
Comment #23112 by nine9s on February 26, 2007 at 12:26 pm
Hey PsyPro, great comments. You should post more often.
48. Faith
Comment #23111 by nine9s on February 26, 2007 at 12:25 pm
"What I find really distasteful is not just the tone of their rhetoric, but their lack of doubt," she says. "No scientific method says that there is no doubt. If you don't accept there's doubt in all things, you're being intellectually dishonest. "
Does she doubt that "if you don't accept there's doubt in all things, you're being intellectually dishonest"? Or that "no scientific method says that there is no doubt" (whatever that means)?
Comment #23104 by nine9s on February 26, 2007 at 11:12 am
AJ Rae:
Nuclear war? As if America can be defended in this regard, first to develop them, first and only to use them, and has the most of them?We were fighting the Nazis when we were developing them. They were trying to develop them, too. Were the Allies supposed to lie down and accept defeat should the Nazis develop them first?
What really matters now, today, with nukes is who has them and what they plan to do with them. No one cares that France and Britain have them because they're not going to do anything stupid with them. Iran and North Korea, though, are run by the loony bin. It's the difference between an adult handling a gun and a bratty kindergardener handling a gun.
if you read the media they're constantly using hyperbole and deliberately misinterpretations, and so are politicians. I thought Atheists would be a little more sensible about this sort of thing.Interesting you should say that, considering you bought into this particular piece of spin:
The American Enterprise Institute pay scientists and others to lie about science.Actually, they just did what think tanks do: they invited a panel of people -- including those who wrote the government report they were supposedly bribed to refute -- to debate the issue and paid those who showed up for their trouble. If you're interested in AEI's side, here's the link:
http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.25586,filter.all/pub_detail.asp
If, on the other hand, you're not interested in learning the other side of the story, then please don't try telling us what atheists are supposed to think.
Not trying to limit the effects of Global Warming because you're afraid of losing money is pretty evil.This assumes that everyone, even conservatives, agrees on what's true, and that they only pretend to disagree on global warming so they can satisfy their evil intentions. This is a serious blind spot for those on the left: the assumption that the truth is obvious and the only reason people disagree with the left is a refusal to see. As long as liberals honestly believe this, they will never understand conservatives.
Comment #23103 by nine9s on February 26, 2007 at 11:00 am
AJ Rae, does the BBC do the translating for Al-Jazeera, as well? Because the quote from #16 clearly shows that Al-Jazeera itself uses the wording of "wipe Israel off the map" to translate what Ahmadinnerjacket said. That's a hell of a coincidence if the translation is so bad. Unless of course Al-Jazeera copies the BBC for its translations. Which I guess is possible...
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