1. An Open Letter to Richard Dawkins

Comment #96824 by Asta Kask on December 11, 2007 at 1:32 am

He's welcome to defend the two million killed by the Aztecs and Incas, the two million killed by the thugees, the hundred-thousand killed in the St. Bartholomew's day massacre, the seven million killed during the 30 years-war, or the six to ten million killed by the Japanese in WWII (when the state of Japan was a kind of theocracy).

No? He only defends true Christians? Well, if he can't be obliged to defend all theists, why should atheists be obliged to defend all atheists? He's playing by a double standard and this standard must be exposed.

2. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc. were atheists, and they were terrible! Answer that!

Comment #96124 by Asta Kask on December 10, 2007 at 3:14 am

You should not forget the 6-10 million people who were killed by the Japanese in the name of religion. Stalin, Hitler and Mao had 20th century technology but the conquistadors and the people who burned witches certainly did their best with the means available.

3. Chimps beat humans in memory test

Comment #93713 by Asta Kask on December 4, 2007 at 1:37 am

So? There are birds who can remember the exact location of 100+ caches where they store nuts. I can't find the book I was reading and put down "temporarily" yesterday.

4. Arguments From Design, First Cause, Something Rather Than Nothing, Fundamental Constants

Comment #87010 by Asta Kask on November 11, 2007 at 1:46 am

Steve99, do we know if the constants can vary independently of each other? And what the probability is of them having the current set-up?

Either way, although it may imply a fine-tuner, it doesn't imply the biblical God. The biblical God is omnipotent, and such a God would have no need of fine-tuning. An omnipotent God has to be able to create a universe exactly like this one except for the strong force being twice as strong as it is. Otherwise he is not omnipotent.

5. Can we at least demand 'Secular Communion'?

Comment #87008 by Asta Kask on November 11, 2007 at 1:35 am

It's not a particularly offensive cartoon. It's not particularly funny either, but humor is a very difficult thing. But perhaps the atheist movement should start burning churches? :)

As for the question of cooperating with christians - if we agree on the issue, why not?

6. Science owes its origins to Christianity or Religion

Comment #86105 by Asta Kask on November 8, 2007 at 6:47 am

Come to think of it, this view of nature as ordered is much older than Pythagoras. It was present in ancient Indo-European myths as a war between Artus (Law) and Nethain (Chaos). This would be about 7 000 BC. It was present in ancient Egypt as the struggle between (I think) M'aat (Law) and Maug (Chaos). It was present in Babylon as reflected in the struggle between Marduk (Law) and Tiamat (Chaos). It was present among the Aztecs - the reason they sacrificed blood was to give the gods the power to uphold the order in this universe.

7. If you don't accept the supernatural, you obviously think life is depressing, meaningless and cold

Comment #86024 by Asta Kask on November 7, 2007 at 10:09 pm

Listen to "What a wonderful world" and ask yourself if that's not enough to find joy in the world?

8. Religion is not incompatible with Science: 'Non-Overlapping Magisteria'

Comment #86023 by Asta Kask on November 7, 2007 at 10:04 pm

All miracles are incompatible with a God who intervenes. Apart from that, the biblical God has a number of problematical properties. For one thing, he introduces a privileged perspective and frame of reference, thus contradicting the Special and General Theories of Relativity. It's certainly possible that he contradicts the uncertainty principle - it depends on whether you believe that there are "hidden variables" or not. His ability to create matter and energy from matter would lead him into conflict with the First Law of Thermodynamics. And so on...

9. Science owes its origins to Christianity or Religion

Comment #85808 by Asta Kask on November 7, 2007 at 7:03 am

Dinesh D'Souza claims that there are three postulates that lie at the foundation of science and which are explicitly derived from Judaeo-Christianity.

i) The universe follows certain laws

ii) These laws can be understood by humans

iii) These laws take mathematical form

I think this view is completely untenable. These three postulates are derived from Pythagoras and were transmitted via people like Parmenides, Plato and Aristotle. We don't know when Pythagoras died, but it was probably before the Persian wars, somewhere around 500 BC.

The historian Flavius Josephus claims that much of Pythagoras's philosophy came from the jews. He refers to the lost (?) works of Hermippus of Smyrna who lived some 150 years after Pythagoras. F.J. himself lived some 600 years after Pythagoras. We do not know if they are correct, but we should be sceptical, especially since statements i) and ii) (above) are quite common among pre-Socratic philosophers.

Either way, D'Souza makes it a bit easy for himself. He quotes the Muslim scholar al-Ghazali as an example of how wrong you can go if you do not follow Judaeo-Christianity. But the Moslems are surely just as much a part of the Abrahamitic tradition as the Christians, and if D'Souza claims that the beneficient influence stems exclusively from Christianity then the question becomes how Christ could have influenced Pythagoras who lived five centuries earlier...