1. The importance of doubt

Comment #66398 by greg_m on August 29, 2007 at 11:39 pm

"Hitler starved and gassed them (religious believers)"

So Hitler's motivation was to fight religion, rather than his deluded belief in a quasi-religious ethnic myth? A pathetic attempt to align neo-atheists with Hitler (and Stalin).

2. Richard Dawkins at the Edinburgh Book Festival

Comment #65809 by greg_m on August 26, 2007 at 8:34 pm

Is there any chance some kind and clever soul (excuse the misnomer) could convert this to an MP3? My place of work does not allow streaming.

3. Could these books be part of the problem?

Comment #61575 by greg_m on August 5, 2007 at 8:32 pm

Darned if I could figure out how to post an image, but another shocker is 'The Complete Idiot's Guide to Being Psychic': http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Idiots-Guide-Being-Psychic/dp/0028629043/ref=sr_1_1/002-3474964-7384026?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1186370845&sr=1-1

The irresposible morons who publish this nonsense need to be boycotted.

4. Debate between Sam Harris and Chris Hedges

Comment #50573 by greg_m on June 18, 2007 at 8:28 pm

Hedges poetic definiton of religion is best (and rather crudely) refuted by Jack Nicholson's character Melvin in the film As Good as it Gets:

"People who talk in metaphors should shampoo my crotch."

Hedges completely personal and metaphoric definiton ("Sam gets it wrong; religion really is...") is irrelevant to the debate about genuine truth-claims made by religions.

5. U.S. circumcision rate drops

Comment #50564 by greg_m on June 18, 2007 at 7:30 pm

"I like the idea of him looking like his dad"

This has to be the dumbest line of argument in this whole debate. It's just as well his dad had not suffered testicular cancer and had one removed, otherwise they would have had to lop off one of those from the newborn as well.

6. We stand awed at the heights our people have achieved

Comment #49641 by greg_m on June 12, 2007 at 5:19 pm

Fantastic, PZ. I was hoping someone was going to come out strongly against the blood-boiling Fish piece.

Fish and others who take this poetic, literary line seem determined to not recognise that reasonable beliefs about the external world and our emotions are different things, even if they can and do influence each other to some extent. This article should herald the next step for us militant atheists to take: a positive campaign showing that religions have no monopoly on expressing the rich tapestry of human emotions that give life its real meaning.

7. Tome truths

Comment #49363 by greg_m on June 11, 2007 at 4:08 pm

Onfray was interviewed (via an interpreter) last night on ABC Radio National's Late Night Live with Philip Adams. He was pretty good, he as a slightly different angle to the other chaps. You can download it here:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/latenightlive/stories/2007/1946553.htm

8. Don't Know Much Biology

Comment #48172 by greg_m on June 7, 2007 at 12:43 am

"The religious conviction that "man" is unique in ways that really matter is compelling in many ways—surely our language, art, music, and science itself are unique products of life on this planet—but holding our uniqueness to be a dogma immune to scientific analysis is an arrogant, and ultimately foolhardy, declaration of authority".

I think this is a really important aspect of the debate. Fundies often say "human life is not special if evolution is true", and I think there are many atheistic people who actually encourage this view. A good example was a dreadful video posted on this website a few weeks ago about humans being 'Just Another Monkey', which tried to dismiss any special value to humans. This is a hideous mindset, deserved of scorn.

To defeat religious waffle we need to celebrate the genuinely unique and valuable traits and achievements of human beings, as well as demand evidence for our beliefs.

9. Religion and Child Abuse

Comment #47541 by greg_m on June 4, 2007 at 11:31 pm

What a scary story, Bizarro. I live in Australia, and I can also curse my country without a care, but we have laws against owning assault rifles and handguns. I don't see that this is unreasonable; we have far fewer mass shootings that you do in the US. I'm not jealous.

Have a look at what Hamas teaches children (http://richarddawkins.net/article,1231,n,n), is this a great demonstration of freedom also?

10. A Bunch of Monkeys

Comment #39806 by greg_m on May 12, 2007 at 1:54 am

The correct pronunciation of 'Nietzsche' isn't the be all and end all, but at least knowing how to say it may avoid you sounding like a nonce if you ever discuss him with your fellow apes.

Click on the red speaker to hear the pronunciation:

http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?sourceid=Mozilla-search&va=nietzsche

11. A Bunch of Monkeys

Comment #39762 by greg_m on May 11, 2007 at 9:44 pm

This is largely relativistic self-hating piffle that shows why some atheists are easy targets for hare-brained religious zealots.

"The monkeys make trophies and give them to other monkeys like it means something". Well yes, we'd like to think that human intellectual and artistic achievement is the very definition of 'meaning something', and recognising such achievement is part of a very meaningful human culture.

"Some of the monkeys read Nietzsche (which should be pronounced 'Neecha', by the way, not 'Neechy'), without realising that he was 'just another monkey". 'Just another monkey'? Relativism at its very worst. The creator of this clip is just another monkey; Nietzsche was a towering intellect with an immense gift for prose.