1. President Obama: Bad News For the New Atheists and Other Fundamentalists

Comment #278981 by Ubiquitous Che on November 5, 2008 at 1:08 pm

Funny how you can always tell when someone hasn't actually read the material they claim to be criticising, ain't it?

For example, Breaking the Spell is hardly an "evangelistic one note New Atheist book" - I actually felt a little bit let down that Dennett didn't push harder in it. It was much too forgiving for my liking.

Silly Mr. Schaeffer. :P

2. Why Children Like to Share

Comment #273542 by Ubiquitous Che on October 28, 2008 at 9:11 pm

#4: Christopher Davis: "There is no such thing as conspicious altruism."

Actually, I'm not too sure about that.

I'm not qualified to say this with certainty, but I think there's an evolutionary argument to be made for why we could have the capacity for genuine altruistic feeling.

Basically, skill in deceit is one of the greatest natural weapons ever evolved in the animal kingdom. Much in deception can be learned through trial and error - but to be really good, it helps if the deceiver can get inside the head of the deceived, see the world from their perspective, think what they're thinking, feel what they're feeling.

So once you can see things from someone else's perspective, all of your 'selfish' cognitive equipment can easily misfire and respond to the perceived plight of the other on similar terms as if it were the plight of the self.

So just to repeat myself - I can't claim this kind of thing with any degree of authority or credibility. I haven't the expertise for that. But I can say that there is an argument to be made for how altruism could have wormed its way into humans without being specifically selected for by the environment. It's just the same thing that makes us such skillful liars and manipulators also forms the basis of compassion and altruism. The same knife can be used to prepare a salad just as easily as it can be used to murder, after all.

3. Novel on prophet's wife pulled for fear of backlash

Comment #230538 by Ubiquitous Che on August 14, 2008 at 8:21 pm

In her defense, the tone of that piece actually does fit.

She structured the prolouge to start in the middle of the story to give a glimpse of the idealized understanding of A'isha's life and temperament. All tawdry adventure/romance stuff. I could join everyone with scoffing at this, but then I'd have to sheepishly own up to my own affection for tawdry adventure/fantasy and adventure/sci-fi writing. :P

Towards the end of the prologue the author switches from third-person to second-person - the idea is that instead of describing A'isha's story from a camera perspective, the character A'isha is now addressing the reader directly from beyond.

It's a really cheap and clumsy way at communicating the chief theme of a work of fiction. That being said, I think it's doing the book a disservice to dismiss it entirely with such cavalier abandon. Although I do have my reservations about the quality of the work, I think there is some good potential in this subject for a scathing critique of the treatment of women under the heel of Islam.

http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/images/uploads1/Prologue-JewelMedina.pdf

Not sure how long that link is going to work for. :P

4. Saudi Arabia Bans Dog Walking in Capital

Comment #230390 by Ubiquitous Che on August 14, 2008 at 3:47 pm

In the words of my departed grandfather:

Never trust a man that doesn't like a dog.

5. Novel on prophet's wife pulled for fear of backlash

Comment #230358 by Ubiquitous Che on August 14, 2008 at 3:07 pm

I know I'm quite late to the party, but I need to get my two cents in.

Everyone keeps on going on and on about how bad a novel it is. The presumption seems to be that the 'radical segment' will be getting all hot-and-bothered because the book depicts Mohammed in a relationship with a child. However, none of you have read the book yet.

Neither have I. But I have read the prologue. Yes, it's in the rather stunted prose of all torrid romance novels. Not my cup of tea. However, I think the themes of the novel stem a little deeper, and that the controversy over the 'sexuality' of the book is really just a cover.

Take this excerpt from the prologue:

Of course, they know now. Where we are now, all truth is known. But it still
eludes your world. Where you are, men still want to hide the women away. You, in the
now, they cover with shrouds or with lies about being inferior. We, in the past, they erase
from their stories of Muhammad, or alter with false tales that burn our ears and the
backs of our eyes. Where you are, mothers chastise their daughters with a single name.
"You A'isha!" they cry, and the girls turn away in shame. We cannot escape our
destinies, even in death. But we can claim them, and give them shape.

The girls turn away because they don't know the truth: That Muhammad wanted
to give us freedom, but that the other men took it away. That none of us is ever alive until
we can shape our own destinies. Until we can choose.

Now, whether we take this as a valid position on the opinions of Muhammad or not, the simple fact of the matter is that this novel seems to be angling at exposing the inherent sexism and misogyny so dominant in Islamic culture for the unjustified prejudices that they are.

I for one would prefer that Islamic culture would just fall over like the absurd smoke-and-mirrors act that it is. But any attempt to recast Islam in terms that could help to chip away at the subjugation of women at the hands of Islam is still a step in the right direction, even if it is not a step as far as I would have liked.

6. The moment of truth

Comment #223308 by Ubiquitous Che on August 2, 2008 at 1:43 am

It might be an odd comparison, but I knew a Hindu girl that converted to Islam. When you think about it, that's even weirder than a Jew converting to Islam. Not just the thought of a woman willingly submitting to Islam (!!!) but because Islam claims to be Judaism 3.0.

It's one thing to go from the Torah to the Qu'ran. It's something else entirely to jump to the Qu'ran from the Vedas.

Just thinking aloud.

7. New Zealand man sells his soul to 'Hell'

Comment #203829 by Ubiquitous Che on July 3, 2008 at 6:40 pm

Just for the record, I was leading the bidding until it broke the $85 mark. :P

8. Muslims outraged at police advert featuring cute puppy sitting in policeman's hat

Comment #203313 by Ubiquitous Che on July 2, 2008 at 3:53 pm

Islam hates puppies?

In the wise words of my late grandfather: "Never trust a man who doesn't like a dog."

9. Muslim countries win concession regarding religious debates

Comment #196370 by Ubiquitous Che on June 19, 2008 at 8:09 pm

And Jefferson wept.

10. Bacteria make major evolutionary shift in the lab

Comment #191379 by Ubiquitous Che on June 10, 2008 at 6:51 pm

acs: If you haven't yet, check out PZ's article on this subject over at Pharyngula. There's already creationists out and about attempting to twist the results to look like Theistic Evolution. Here's an exerpt of Myers':

This is simply baffling. Behe claims that he has shown in his book that the result observed by Lenski and colleagues could not occur without intelligent intervention…yet it did. He is trying to argue that an experiment that showed evolution in a test tube did not show evolution in a test tube. Behe's claims are comparable to someone living after the time of Kepler and Newton trying to claim that because Copernican circular orbits don't fit the data cleanly, the earth must be stationary - in response to research that shows the earth is moving. That is how backward Behe's claims are.

11. Bacteria make major evolutionary shift in the lab

Comment #191287 by Ubiquitous Che on June 10, 2008 at 1:57 pm

That's fantastic. I know it's already been proven, but it's always good to put another nail in the coffin of the 'benign mutations are impossible' argument.

Very glad it got reposted.

12. A moral test for true believers, Rudd style

Comment #189135 by Ubiquitous Che on June 5, 2008 at 2:07 pm

"The head of the Australian Reproductive Health Alliance, Jane Singleton, said more than 500,000 women a year died from childbirth or related causes."

That should have been the first line in the article, not the last.

It's stuff like this that makes me seriously think about move back to Australia from New Zealand so I can re-register to vote against nonsense like revoking aid on grounds of religious pretensions.

13. Physicist Claims First Real Demonstration of Cold Fusion

Comment #187763 by Ubiquitous Che on June 2, 2008 at 2:51 pm

I've seen a lot of optimistic skepticism regarding whether or not the demonstration was legit. That's as may be - I'm a software developer, not a physicist.

However, I've also seen a lot of comments along the lines of "Big Oil will crush this tech boo-hoo" going on... And I personally doubt it.

My understanding of the oil thing is that our planet is operating under something very similar to Frank Herbert's 'Law of the Minimum', because the main thing that is currently holding back the growth of the economies in developed countries is the fuel source - oil - and this fuel source is *mostly* controlled by a very small number of people.

So would the owners of the oil companies try to crush this new technology? Most probably.

However, the owners of the oil companies are only wealthy and powerful because governments make them so - and it is very much in the best interests of those governments to get this new fuel technology for themselves.

American politicians can be pretty dumb - but I don't think that even American politicians are inept enough to risk staying on the petroleum standard when China could get hold of cold fusion, and vice versa.

I'm also very much in favor of undercutting the basis of the Saudi wealth that has been funding extremist Islam. If you want to kill wolves, trap rabbits.

14. Religion is a product of evolution, software suggests

Comment #185359 by Ubiquitous Che on May 27, 2008 at 3:40 pm

First off - the link to the code is missing in this article. I'll try and find it in the source.

Secondly, I'm a bit skeptical of the assumption that the ability to spread unverifiable information was an addition... Unverifiable information is part and parcel with deceit. Deceit is the natural weapon of humanity, as opposed to other animals that have to make do with tooth and claw.

If anything, the tendency to spread verifiable information should be the new thing.

Still interested to see the code, though.

15. Town moves against Islamic school

Comment #184981 by Ubiquitous Che on May 26, 2008 at 3:56 pm

I grew up in Australia, and I agree that there's a very deep current of racism and xenophobia in the culture there.

That's deplorable enough, of course... But in this case it's doubly unfortunate, because the issue at hand is that the Camden community is concerned about the possibility of a large popluation moving into their community with no intention of integrating, and with strikingly different values to that of the current community.

This isn't a racist concern, because it's about opposing community values. Islam isn't a race - it's a religion and a value system. Camden is allowed to be concerned about the introduction of a new value system. It's just unfortunate that racism is present in the town as well, because it undermines a set of concerns that are not racist in any way whatsoever.

Also, the concern isn't xenophobic. Phobias are irrational fears - this concern is rational. But once again, it is unfortunate that the citizens in Camden seem to be xenophobic as well as very rationally concerned about the changes the school might bring to their community values. It confuses the issue.

So yes - they're racists and xenophobes, and that's to their shame. But at the same time, that doesn't mean that they can't have a valid point. In this case, I think they do.

I know nothing about Andrew Wynnet, but he made the right move when he tried to ensure that the objections to the school would be phrased in terms of planning rather than race or religion. I just with that the rest of them could work out why that's a good idea, so that they'd stop shooting themselves in the foot.

Oh, and I used to live around the corner from Pauline Hanson's fish and chip shop. She should have stuck to chips. I preferred her chips to her politics. She was good at chips. The people she sold the shop to were useless on the fish and chip front.