1. Catholic priests cane YouTube over blasphemous vids

Comment #259217 by Corona Dave on October 3, 2008 at 5:03 am

>So the offending act is not an offence against real live humans but is an act of desecration, just as is the cracker-theft.

your argument would be valid if not for the fact that there are still people alive today who witnessed personally or had close relatives in the holocaust. it is not even certain a historical Jesus even existed let alone anyone to be personally grieving.

also, even when all the relatives are dead, it is still true that the holocaust was an exceptionally bad event in human history and is important to understand. whereas the host isn't about remembering and understanding how horrible it is to have people tortured and killed for their beliefs, but instead is related to nonsense religious beliefs associated with it. disrespecting the host would be more like disrespecting the Jewish belief about circumcision rather than disrespecting the actual crime of the holocaust.

however, I consider this an argument about how decent people should choose to behave, and am not in favour of censorship in these cases.

blasphemy can be a celebration from a free speech point of view. it's either the 1st commandment or the 1st amendment and I would always choose a society in which people freely blaspheme over one that didn't.

2. Why Dawkins is right and his critics are wrong

Comment #234985 by Corona Dave on August 22, 2008 at 10:28 am

I've noticed this behaviour a lot.

my suspicion is that it is the symptom of a mediocre mind.

when these "mediocre atheists" are arguing with theists, they can feel good about not being as foolish/uneducated as the theists and not believing in religion.

however, when faced with an "exceptional atheist" like Dawkins, they see someone roughly like themselves but more successful in pretty much every way.

this undoubtedly injures their ego. the only way they can make themselves feel better is to attack Dawkins et al. in some way - find some metric by which they can consider themselves better. the easiest way to do this is an appeal to political correctness or moderation. moderation or "equal time" is a false virtue that is unfortunately prevalent in modern society, and I think these "mediocre atheists" think that if they claim Dawkins (et al.) is no better than a fundamentalist theist - he is a "fundamentalist atheist" - then they can conveniently put themselves in a moderate middle ground and perhaps even consider themselves in some way "more rational" by not being "fundamentalist", even though the thing they are refusing to be "fundamentalist" about is indeed the truth/evidence/logic, which in reality is neither democratically accountable nor subject to the policy of "equal time with falsehoods".

or, in a word, jealousy.

3. Degrees of religion

Comment #206277 by Corona Dave on July 8, 2008 at 8:08 am

A great Hitchens clip where he argues the case against 'moderate religion':

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DKfJfKb5y0

4. Degrees of religion

Comment #206265 by Corona Dave on July 8, 2008 at 7:57 am

>Yeah, well, don't denigrate it until you've actually done (or attempted) it! It's not very easy, especially the "no liquids" bit! ;-)

What has easy got to do with it? It's a retarded thing to do, full stop.

I hear that Seppuku is difficult too, doesn't mean I have to respect people for trying it, or that I need personal experience before I criticise those who do it.

>But what really made it difficult for me was the "no liquids" -- in a desert, with 95-degree temperatures (fortunately, Ramadan is only now starting to shift over to summertime...).

Changing to summertime to make it easier!? If that doesn't show how absurd and meaningless the whole thing is...

You're an idiot for doing it and ought to be ashamed of yourself. However, it's far more likely you'll rationalise your self-harm into some meaningful experience. Even cutting yourself has the 'benefit' of releasing endorphins so self-harm is easily rationalised, but it doesn't mean we should respect those actions by people.

5. Sharia law 'could have UK role'

Comment #204188 by Corona Dave on July 4, 2008 at 10:39 am

>Severe physical punishments such as flogging, stoning and the cutting off of hands would not be acceptable, he said.

and what of other, 'not severe', physical punishments such as punching and kicking?

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

Comment #200728 by Corona Dave on June 28, 2008 at 7:09 am

>How does freedom of speech allow you to hold down and torment a teenage girl??

three easy steps:
1. the supreme court is mostly Catholic
2. they consider the pope a higher authority than the constitution
3. the Catholic church considers exorcism a valid procedure

the Catholic members of the supreme court have voted the Catholic position every time regardless of the constitution.

if the supreme court had the ability to write new laws, America would be a de facto Catholic theocracy.

7. Common New Atheist Fallacies

Comment #200503 by Corona Dave on June 27, 2008 at 6:29 pm

>First they ignore you...

when did atheists ever have the luxury of being able to ignore religion? :-)

8. Common New Atheist Fallacies

Comment #200476 by Corona Dave on June 27, 2008 at 5:38 pm

>I thought his point that "ridicule is not an argument" was a good one.

'ad hominem' is not an argument, but I think ridicule of IDEAS can be valid, and that can extend to people who accept those ideas but only so long as you keep it focused on the idea rather than the person.

when you find yourself presented with an idea that is so stupid you don't know where to start, then using ridicule can be appropriate and kinda like answering 'mu' to a yes/no question that contains faulty assumptions.

if it's trivial to ridicule something, it suggests there is a flaw there. can someone come up with a counter to this by ridiculing a 'good idea', such as freedom of speech?

I think Hitchens ridicules Christianity when he presents his 'history of humanity according to Christianity' (humans being born and dying for 100,000 years before god steps in etc.) but I think his tone is perfect. there are ideas that are so repulsive that we should take a stand against them, and ridicule is a way of letting people know they are out of order and ought to be ashamed of themselves for believing such a thing.

I love the way Hitchens often challenges/dares religious people to say out loud what they really believe, which is an attempt to expose them (or rather, their ideas) to ridicule, but a valid one in my opinion.

9. On this Day: Galileo Sentenced for Believing Sun Is Center of Universe

Comment #197737 by Corona Dave on June 22, 2008 at 3:08 pm

>Comment #197690 by mordacious1 on June 22, 2008 at 1:51 pm
>Yes, and it took 375 years for the pope to issue a half-assed apology.

>[edited] for bad math, thanks overmann

>actually it's probably 372 or something. My math students used to get extra credit when I did that.



The whole thing is moot anyway since the new pope has rescinded that apology, declaring the persecution of Galileo to have been "reasonable" given the evidence available at that time; apparently Galileo's reasoning and evidence was insufficient to warrant his claims i.e. the new pope has declared Galileo was a bad scientist and was just lucky he turned out to be right.