Comments by PristinePanda

1. Charles Darwin investigated whether blondes have more fun

Comment #227782 by PristinePanda on August 10, 2008 at 3:47 pm

What about dogs or cats with blonde fur? Do they have more fun?

Comment #227300 by PristinePanda on August 9, 2008 at 4:25 pm

On another note (a bit OT) hopefully Richard will publish his next book on evolution in time to make it a nice antithesis to that stupid piece of tripe Rick Warren is releasing this winter, The Purpose Driven Christmas.

Purpose Driven Christmas? Give me a break. I wish I was joking

3. Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture 2008

Comment #224834 by PristinePanda on August 5, 2008 at 6:01 pm

What does Steven Pinker's talk have to do with Douglas Adam's memorial?

4. Brainwashed by a parasite

Comment #224833 by PristinePanda on August 5, 2008 at 5:48 pm

The parallels are indeed obvious. Dan Dennett routinely utilizes this particular ant in lectures as an example of malevolent memes. Pretty cool, eh? Reminds me of those perfidious god memes that infect the brains of some of us.

5. Richard Dawkins branded 'secularist bigot' by veteran philosopher

Comment #223373 by PristinePanda on August 2, 2008 at 5:36 am

Yes, lol mahmood. It's because Anthony Flew is going senile; he's in his dotage. It's quite sad and not really a laughing matter, but one has to wonder why he's not a little more docile. Most people become relatively munificent when they start to lose their minds; not Flew - he's become a raging lunatic.

Maybe a Sky God-lover spiked his Jesus Juice.

Deserter - you have to recall that Flew is a deist and Einstein found the idea of a personal god to be infantile. Einstein also said that he didn't like atheists quote-mining him either:

"In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views."

As far as I can understand, he's a pantheist, but some people might mistake his belief for deism if they know nothing about him.

He also said

You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth."

That last quote always cracks me up :D

6. What's wrong with science as religion

Comment #222580 by PristinePanda on July 31, 2008 at 2:48 pm

I used to think Salon.com was a fairly respectable publication (not knowing much about it).

Now I have to conclude that it's gone down to the level of The National Enquirer when it posts this type of article on the front page.

7. What's wrong with science as religion

Comment #222531 by PristinePanda on July 31, 2008 at 1:58 pm

I read about this guy on PZ Myer's blog Pharyngula. Apparently PZ Myers gave a legitimate but critical review of something this douche bag wrote and he got his feelings hurt. Now he's just trying to make some inane retaliation.

Myers's responded to him here:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/karl_giberson_strikes_back.php

8. Catholics To Pope: Lift Birth Control Ban

Comment #220638 by PristinePanda on July 28, 2008 at 6:44 pm

The Reformed Church of Alfredo of the FSM has as much validity as Catholicism Oo

Knowledge is Power
Power Corrupts
Study Hard
BE EVIL

9. Catholics To Pope: Lift Birth Control Ban

Comment #220571 by PristinePanda on July 28, 2008 at 3:28 pm

Every sperm is sacred. Every sperm is great.

10. Daniel Dennett: Autobiography (Part 1)

Comment #220459 by PristinePanda on July 28, 2008 at 1:11 pm

I wish Dennett was about two decades younger so he would stick around with us for a bit longer. XD We need more atheistic philosophers like him!

11. Catholics To Pope: Lift Birth Control Ban

Comment #220456 by PristinePanda on July 28, 2008 at 1:09 pm

Conversely, for centuries monks have been taking vows of celibacy for the sole purpose that any wealth they might accumulate over their pathetic lives goes right back into the Catholic Church. Isn't that wonderful? :D

12. Biology Enters 'The Matrix' Through New Computer Language

Comment #219822 by PristinePanda on July 27, 2008 at 3:10 pm

I agree, the singularity is near! Everyone here who hasn't read any Kurzweil I command to do so now! XD

13. Islam subway ads cause stir in New York

Comment #216031 by PristinePanda on July 22, 2008 at 5:10 pm

Even better, New Yorkers should plaster ads selling copies of Salman Rushdie's depictions of Mohammad all over town.

The former site of the WTC should have a fifty story statue of Mohammad in a suicide vest with the words "IMAGINE NO RELIGION" printed on it while wearing a dunce cap and a copy of the Koran partially lodged in his rear.

14. Richard Dawkins on Al Jazeera English

Comment #215396 by PristinePanda on July 21, 2008 at 7:22 pm

Comment #215377 by Mitchell Gilks on July 21, 2008 at 6:21 pm

His belief is quite reasonable. If we consider our species to be a successful species (which is pushing it being that we are only roughly 200 thousand years old) then based on past successful species, we should expect to last about eight million years. Given the precedent set by other successful species.

His belief, although apparently initially reasonable, is not so if you consider the accelerating growth of human technology (which is now just passing the knee of the curve). It's possible that within 40 years a technological singularity will occur which will totally eclipse human intelligence. It is an innate nature of evolutionary processes to accelerate as time progresses: firstly, the introduction of DNA; secondly, the human prefrontal lobes; thirdly, the creation of technology, and fourthly the eclipse of human intelligence via GNR (Genetics, Nanotechnology, and Robotics) with an emphasis on robotics.

It is fallacious to assume that technology will continue to evolve in a linear fashion; we are just now reaching the knee of the curve of an exponential phenomena, at which point it will become quite evident to all that technological growth exhibits exponential, and in some cases, double exponential growth.

Natural selection is in the process of being eclipsed by technology and will most likely be entirely irrelevant within the next half a century. When a computer passes the Turing Test - and in all likelihood that will occur by the mid 2020s - Strong AI will inevitably eclipse us.

You might be interested in reading The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Ray Kurzweil. You should also probably read a short bio of Ray Kurzweil and objectively observe the accuracy of his past predictions. Many people disagree with his future predictions, but quite a few respectable scientists agree with his views as well. I'm sure you'd find it intellectually stimulating, at the very least. :D

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil

www.kurzweilai.net

15. Richard Dawkins on Al Jazeera English

Comment #215360 by PristinePanda on July 21, 2008 at 5:40 pm

It's interesting that RD believes that in ten million years or so that the human species will have evolved/become extinct, end of story. I believe that the Singularity will occur quite soon in fact and don't regard it as being too anthropocentric of a belief as there is plentiful evidence that it could very well occur and take over from biological evolution.

16. Richard Dawkins on Al Jazeera English

Comment #215356 by PristinePanda on July 21, 2008 at 5:22 pm

Those creationists always suffer from the same aneristic illusion - they always say to Dawkins one more more of the following:

...Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc. were the greatest mass murderers of all time and they were atheists.

or

...How can you be moral without god? If I didn't have god, I would go around raping, killing, plundering, and being a total bum to my heart's content.

or

...Being an atheist requires just as much faith as being a Christian does.

or

...I just can't understand how I could have evolved from an ape. I mean, look around, why haven't the other monkeys evolved into humans?

etc.

It all becomes quite tedious quite expediently and I can sympathize with Dawkin's cogent if rather bland use of the same examples to excoriate the same inane, moronic cavils every time. Sometimes I wish Richard would talk a bit more about selfish genes when refuting creationist arguments or mix it up a bit, you know?

17. Richard Dawkins on Al Jazeera English

Comment #215353 by PristinePanda on July 21, 2008 at 5:11 pm

Think how much better all those creationists would be if they would only consult their pineal gland!

18. Surgeon General Nominee Dismisses Homosexuality Paper

Comment #215339 by PristinePanda on July 21, 2008 at 4:52 pm

Here's an atheist dating site: www.atheistnexus.org

19. The brain in love

Comment #215017 by PristinePanda on July 21, 2008 at 7:39 am

There's quite a bit of interesting information on the topic of kin selection in The Selfish Gene, and I'd recommend everyone who hasn't already read it to do so.

I first read it after I learned that it was the book that caused Douglas Adams to apostatize. I figured anything that Douglas Adams read had to be good. :D

20. Antony Flew reviews the Index of The God Delusion

Comment #214503 by PristinePanda on July 20, 2008 at 2:33 pm

Hopefully a few Einstein quotes will elucidate the matter for those uncertain of his spirituality, all taken from the English wikipedia:

You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth."

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal god and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."

"A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms"it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man."

21. Antony Flew reviews the Index of The God Delusion

Comment #214494 by PristinePanda on July 20, 2008 at 2:20 pm

The fault of Dawkins as an academic (which he still was during the period in which he composed this book although he has since announced his intention to retire)

This is libel, to say the least.

He'll be 70 years old, he deserves to choose to voluntarily retire.

22. Jefferson Bible reveals Founding Father's view of God, faith

Comment #214394 by PristinePanda on July 20, 2008 at 11:26 am

You can't imagine a president doing this today?

Well that's exactly what Bush has been doing to our constitution lately. :D

23. Jefferson Bible reveals Founding Father's view of God, faith

Comment #214392 by PristinePanda on July 20, 2008 at 11:23 am

Slaves, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in the sincerity of your heart, as to Christ.
Ephesians 6:5

And here we find a biblical justification for slavery. W00T!

24. Jefferson Bible reveals Founding Father's view of God, faith

Comment #214381 by PristinePanda on July 20, 2008 at 11:01 am

In case anyone is interested, you can read a copy of The Jefferson Bible here:

http://www.angelfire.com/co/JeffersonBible/

25. Jefferson Bible reveals Founding Father's view of God, faith

Comment #214370 by PristinePanda on July 20, 2008 at 10:34 am

Who's saying that? O;o

26. Jefferson Bible reveals Founding Father's view of God, faith

Comment #214368 by PristinePanda on July 20, 2008 at 10:33 am

Too bad the link doesn't work.

27. Texas State Board of Education approves Bible course for high schools

Comment #214311 by PristinePanda on July 20, 2008 at 7:48 am

lol

28. Texas State Board of Education approves Bible course for high schools

Comment #214175 by PristinePanda on July 19, 2008 at 8:14 pm

Some knowledge of the Bible is important merely to understand the plethora of biblical allusions, motifs and themes underlying our culture.

It's beneficial to learn about the Bible even if only to be able to refute Christianity better via a realistic knowledge of the contents of the monstrosity.

You're worried about an elective requiring Bible reading? I was required to read passages from the Bible for AP English Literature in high school, and that's definitely not an elective.

Of far more pressing concern is getting ID out of our public schools. Biblical literacy never hurt anyone. I sincerely doubt that any Christian can read said book cover to cover and not apostatize. :D

29. Calling World Conference on Dialogue a Symbol of Unity Among Different Traditions

Comment #213629 by PristinePanda on July 18, 2008 at 5:17 pm

These fucking idiots are why humanity won't outlive this century

Exactly what I was thinking. Whether there is intelligent life on this planet or not is debatable. Perhaps it's a tendency of evolved sentience in our universe to devise a religion that it, as a species, can never quite throw off and ends up destroying it.

The probability of a species developing and/or being unable to outgrow a religion should perhaps be added to the Drake equation.

btw, irate atheist, your avatar looks more like an irate Pentecostal minister to me - in fact, it reminds me a lot of that Eli Sunday in There Will Be Blood. ;O Is it a picture of you?

30. Researchers Discover Remnant of an Ancient 'RNA World'

Comment #213280 by PristinePanda on July 18, 2008 at 11:11 am

It's not as if self-transcribing RNA will do anything to convince IDiots of the fallacious nature of their dogmas - scientists could eliminate all gaps and the God meme would still remain prolific in the memeplex.

I'm hoping that the Singularity will allow us to eschew all such religious nonsense.

The concept of abiogenesis is nothing new, of course, but it's nice to see some actual proof of said conjectures.

31. Bush Bureaucrats at Dept. of Health and Human Services Redefine Contraception as Abortion

Comment #213273 by PristinePanda on July 18, 2008 at 11:04 am

I wish Obama was an atheist, but he would never have made it past the first primaries if he was.

32. Bush Bureaucrats at Dept. of Health and Human Services Redefine Contraception as Abortion

Comment #213250 by PristinePanda on July 18, 2008 at 10:38 am

I most likely would cease to believe in American democracy altogether if McCain happens to get elected this November - I highly doubt I could endure it.

The sheer inanity of the proposal is breathtaking. However, even if it is passed, I doubt that it would last long, as half of the population would decry it.

33. Ten Commandments' of race and genetics issued

Comment #212960 by PristinePanda on July 17, 2008 at 10:59 pm

The term "created" does not necessarily imply a theistic view of the universe. To view the term as implying a creator in this sense is to take the statement too literally - often times scientists and others use the term conveniently to refer to our present condition as distinguished via evolution - created via change over time.

We were created just as everything else was - albeit not by a deity but by natural selection.

34. Children Are Naturally Prone To Be Empathic And Moral

Comment #210014 by PristinePanda on July 13, 2008 at 6:36 pm

Has anyone besides Clappers ever read any Pinker? Indeed, this is just another obvious quasi-common knowledge factoid disproving the concept of tabula rasa.

Of course children are born with empathy... we don't need religion to teach us basic morality.

35. Evangelical grunts

Comment #200858 by PristinePanda on June 28, 2008 at 10:44 am

What does one expect? By now it's obvious that if you enlist in the US military you should be a Protestant Christian - there's no freedom of or from religion in the military, I'm sad to say, as much as there should be. It's an egregious violation of human rights, to say the least.

36. Texas Supreme Court rules church can't be sued in exorcism

Comment #200854 by PristinePanda on June 28, 2008 at 10:41 am

Three cheers for judeo-christian nutjobs! Just another proof that we're living (hopefully) at the very dawn of the evolution of our species. Sometimes I wish that I was born a few thousand years later. :D

37. A secular world is a sane world

Comment #200711 by PristinePanda on June 28, 2008 at 6:29 am

Nice video :D

38. PZ Myers - Expelled from Expelled

Comment #200709 by PristinePanda on June 28, 2008 at 6:25 am

Really feel like beating the dead horse a bit more, eh? I thought we've all heard enough about this by now, but I suppose the Canadian release is cause for a minor revival in denouncing the moronic film.

PS: Nice avatar, Naturalist1; <3 Q

39. Psychiatrists: Least Religious But Most Interested In Patients' Religion

Comment #200516 by PristinePanda on June 27, 2008 at 7:11 pm

That does sound interesting- definitely worth giving a listen. I'm not sure how you would go about distributing it, though.

40. Rapture site sends unbelievers their last chance ... via email

Comment #194826 by PristinePanda on June 17, 2008 at 10:05 am

Hehe, I would be VERY happy if all of the billion or so Christians disappeared instantaneously - the world would be a much nicer place.

I want the Rapture to occur as much as they do :D

41. Saving Us from Darwin

Comment #192296 by PristinePanda on June 12, 2008 at 5:50 pm

Good stuff.

I know this is off topic, but I'm having a hard time keeping up with the combination of everything posted daily on RD.net PZ Myer's site Pharyngula, and 13 other feeds I subscribe to using Google Reader. Keep up the good work! ;D

42. Logical Proof of the Existence of a Divine Creator, Why Atheism is Not Logically Sound

Comment #190655 by PristinePanda on June 9, 2008 at 10:34 am

I agree, this is just another restatement of century-old creationist dogma; however, few of you seem to have addressed the absurd claim that the Bible is scientifically accurate.

"Until this discovery, the Bible's statement that "there is nothing new under sun" seemed like a statement that was ready to be disproven. Reasoning went that somewhere in the universe there must be new energy or matter developing. But there wasn't. Universally accepted science showed us that less than 200 years ago. The Bible told us that about 3,000 years before."

You're quoting from Ecclesiastes, the book in which Solomon contemplates the meaninglessness of life, and you're taking it out of context. By saying "there is nothing new under the sun", Solomon is not referring to anything scientific but merely stating that he's a nihilistic suicidal moron who is contemplating a life without god. This statement was not intended to have any cosmological context whatsoever.

2. Entropy - Um, again, this is obviously not cosmological in intention - every religion emphasizes the destruction of the condemned and the passage you quoted merely states that your pathetic god, when he goes on a tirade at the End of Days, will destroy the earth and shit like that. This has nothing to do with entropy or anything of the sort.

Perhaps you can explain the passage in the Bible in which it is stated that the sun stood still for an entire day for that illiterate nomadic tribe. That passage clearly reflects a geocentric world-view in which our sun revolves around our planet and it would be conceptually easier for our sun to "stop." In the heliocentric model, the earth revolves around the sun.

In addition, this fails to account for the movement of our galaxy around others in our section of the universe, so to have our sun "stand still" makes absolutely no cosmological sense.

"Scientists who have thought over the issue are generally in agreement on this as well."

*Chokes on his latte"

I suppose you're referring to your IQ 70 creation scientists, eh? Show me a single respectable scientist that has contributed _anything_ to society at all, if you would please.

43. Senate bill allows display of Lord's Prayer, 10 Commandments

Comment #186450 by PristinePanda on May 30, 2008 at 9:52 am

What's next, posting passages from Leviticus on the walls of every building? Maybe passages detailing the disemboweling of pregnant women or the stoning of homosexuals? Sounds like a good idea to me.

Let's regress further and start using cubits and drams to measure things, and why don't we post pictures of Jesus in courtrooms?

This can't lead to anything good.

44. That's it. Texas really is doomed.

Comment #184828 by PristinePanda on May 26, 2008 at 9:11 am

People like Don McLeroy are walking demonstrations at why the US fails in math and science education.

comment removed by OBC

45. Five Things Humans No Longer Need

Comment #183987 by PristinePanda on May 23, 2008 at 11:13 am

I could do without goose bumps, thank you.
You can find a nice song about vestigial features of the human body sung by Dan Barker in # April 29, 2006 - Somewhere Over the Rainbow . . . Rhymes for the Irreverent: Freedom From Religion Foundation's Podcast. It cracks me up :D

46. Sun's properties not 'fine-tuned' for life

Comment #183557 by PristinePanda on May 22, 2008 at 9:08 am

Even if our sun possessed many unique features which made it especially useful for supporting life, the anthropic principle states that we should take into account the fact that we exist when observing conditionals for existing, and that there is no need for divine intervention for us to have come about, because we exist by mere virtue of existing.

There are many other cosmological variables that Creationists and ID proponents use for their case for an intelligent designer, such as our planet's distance from our sun, the position of our moon, and others. However, these are all invalidated equally by the anthropic principle.

Therefore, the finding that our sun is not "unique" merely serves to demonstrate that perhaps the universe has more instances of life than we previously thought, and change the Drake equation slightly.

This article should be seen less as a method by which to refute the Rare Earth hypothesis and more as a method of merely increasing the probability of the existence of life elsewhere, as the Rare Earth hypothesis is already disproved by the anthropic principle.