1. Religious groups want Russian cartoon channel shut down

Comment #146166 by paulcaira on March 18, 2008 at 5:44 pm

Isn't promoting homosexuality like promoting size 11 feet?

2. Writer Arthur C Clarke dies at 90

Comment #146158 by paulcaira on March 18, 2008 at 5:37 pm

To be yet pickier, "The Sentinel" was a short story, not a novel.

3. Richard Dawkins on five of his favorite books

Comment #135852 by paulcaira on February 29, 2008 at 9:49 am

Wow, the rationalists round here sure love their fantasy....

:-)

4. America: slouching towards the Enlightenment

Comment #135181 by paulcaira on February 28, 2008 at 4:47 pm

Hmmm. "9/11 leads to 300% increase in atheism".
Why do I think we won't be seeing that headline?

5. Earth's Final Sunset Predicted

Comment #135178 by paulcaira on February 28, 2008 at 4:41 pm

Even if humans don't "go extinct", surely the odds are that nothing resembling them will exist in a billion years time?
It's hard to help the feeling that humans are an unstable species, but if they survive, they will surely transmute into something very different. Probably back to some kind of cave-dweller?

6. The religiosity test: Doubters need not apply

Comment #106915 by paulcaira on January 3, 2008 at 5:16 pm

rtambree:

If it wasn't The Onion, could anyone tell that wasn't genuine?

Beyond satire.

7. This Week's Flea

Comment #100953 by paulcaira on December 19, 2007 at 5:35 pm

I don't know if anyone else has said this, but I have my doubts about the wisdom of describing every critical book (crap though the standard of criticism may indeed be) as a "flea". Surely this ought to be reserved for those like, say, McGrath's, which rip-off the title or appearance of an existing book.
Aren't the others just "engaging the debate" (even if we think there is no debate to be had)? It seems a low and slightly unworthy ploy to me....

8. If Muslim doctors are intolerant, let them go

Comment #77562 by paulcaira on October 9, 2007 at 5:11 pm

There was a similar (and rather more succinct) piece by Libby Purves in yesterday's Times.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/libby_purves/article2617350.ece

9. Richard Dawkins and the New Age fakers

Comment #64203 by paulcaira on August 18, 2007 at 3:58 pm

Pedants' Corner:
In one part of the programme, RD asks people to go out and look at the sky "The light from some of these stars has been travelling to us since the dinosaurs were alive" (paraphrase).

Unless I missed some detail, this is not strictly true. No naked eye object is 60 million light years away.

10. Floods are judgment on society, say bishops

Comment #53691 by paulcaira on July 2, 2007 at 3:55 pm

I have also replied:

Dear Mr Dow,

If you have been correctly reported in the Sunday Telegraph, you appear to be claiming that the recent flooding in Yorkshire can in some way be attributed to a divine response to homosexuality and Western capitalist dominance. I used to think that claims like this were the sole province of the kind of Americans who think that the Earth was created 6,000 years ago, and that there were dinosaurs on the ark. I am alarmed to hear them coming from an Anglican priest. Disagree with their theology though I might, I had always assume that they had a degree of rationality.

I'd be interested to hear whether you believe that all natural disasters are God's punishment, and whether each is crafted to the most prevalent evil of the time, or whether some disasters are just random. If so, how are we to know which is which? I notice you don't mention paedophilia, for example. Shouldn't God be punishing us for that, too? Or was that Hurricane Katrina? What about abortion, and stem-cell research. Should the Tsunami be blamed on those?

What about death in general? When a child dies, for example, is it in general a punishment from God on the parents for their wickedness, or is it just that sometimes children die? Again, how are we to know? When parents die leaving orphaned children to fend for themselves, is it God punishing them for being black, or is it because of the virulent spread of AIDS cause by a church (not yours, I acknowledge) that won't let them contain it with condoms?

Seriously, do you actually believe this stuff, or is it just that you have to dream up something to say on a Sunday to justify your stipend?

Yours sincerely,

Paul Caira

11. Protesting the Creation Museum

Comment #48380 by paulcaira on June 7, 2007 at 4:17 pm

I don't know about this. Surely this place is rapidly going to become the laughing-stock of the thinking world isn't it? Aren't the options for this museum going to be:
a) realise that most of the visitors are laughing at the them and close down.
b) realise that most of the visitors are laughing, and start laughing all the way to the bank
c) realise that most of the visitors are not laughing but take it seriously and that the US has suddenly become a third world country, because all the scientist have left for Europe, where they're allowed to do stem-cell research?

Do we have to picket? Isn't that what theists/anti-abortionists/anti-vivisectionists do?

12. Those fanatical atheists

Comment #47662 by paulcaira on June 5, 2007 at 7:48 am

I don't know why I've only just seen this article, but it really is outrageously good. I printed it off and gave it to the chaplain of the school where I work. Maybe he'll use it in his classes.

13. 6 Billion Bits of Data About Me, Me, Me!

Comment #47660 by paulcaira on June 5, 2007 at 7:44 am

At the risk of sounding even more pedantic, 6 billion characters of a 4-base code, is 6 billion characters in base 4 (this pun of 4-bases in base 4 has really only just occurred to me) which is 12 billion bits (as in binary digits), not 6 billion, as each base 4 digit needs to be replaced by 2 binary digits.

(Well I told you it was pedantic)

14. Bible drawn into Hong Kong sex publication row

Comment #42074 by paulcaira on May 17, 2007 at 3:10 pm

konquererz,

Yes, I'm sure bible study (which I'd never attempted before, having been raised a catholic :-) was the beginning of my deconversion.
If you read the bible, (in this case, the Gospel of Mark) with a good commentary and an open mind, it is astonishing how quickly you realise that it is all a load of utter, utter bollocks.

This is what is depressing about those Discovery Institute classes where they spend all day studying nothing but.

15. The Creation Museum: Prepare to believe

Comment #41023 by paulcaira on May 15, 2007 at 11:03 am

I really, really hope that those people saying that it will be good publicity for atheism and turn (the god squad in) the US into a laughing stock are right.
An alternative scenario: Hollywood gets hold of this. It goes big time. It become bigger than Disney

.... and civilisaton as we know it collapses.

16. A Bunch of Monkeys

Comment #39607 by paulcaira on May 11, 2007 at 9:22 am

rusure: Thanks very much, but I'd be very surprised if I hadn't, at some subconscious level, cribbed it from Richard.

17. God . . . in other words

Comment #39299 by paulcaira on May 10, 2007 at 9:26 am

Actually, the most annoying part of this article as published (which mostly I liked a lot) hasn't appeared here. It's in the last paragraphs where she says something about 'he doesn't understand the Logos.'
That words have power isn't in dispute. Richard would hardly have a career if it weren't for that fact. Logos, on the other hand, is all that mumbo-jumbo about 'the Word' being made flesh and is an absurd piece of nonsense that it really isn't required to understand.

Paul.

18. A Bunch of Monkeys

Comment #38880 by paulcaira on May 9, 2007 at 11:33 am

I have my problems with this. I think it's excellent in its way, but part of the problem I find with theists and others is that they say things like 'What you think we're JUST a bunch of monkeys/collection of chemicals/set of replicators' etc, and imply that the reductionism reduces us. I usually reply that the word JUST isn't justified. We're not JUST a bunch of chemicals, we are exactly the kind of bunch of chemicals which went to the moon, wrote Shakespeare's plays, the symphonies of Mozart, and are capable of deep and complex emotions and thoughts.

So we're not just a bunch of monkeys. Or apes. We're homo sapiens. And we are special, in lots of important and objectively measurable ways. It's just that that doesn't mean there's a God.

19. Interview with Christopher Hitchens

Comment #36481 by paulcaira on May 1, 2007 at 10:04 am

The drunk thing is interesting. I've been thinking recently - 'Hell, humans do loads of things that are irrational - get drunk when it's bad for them and makes them foolish, carry on smoking when they know it's going to kill them, buy £400 handbags because they've been hyped - maybe religion's like that. Just part of our irrational nature.'
But of course, the difference is that no one is expected to take these irrational behaviours seriously or to respect them. To the extent Hitchens may have been drunk, our respect for him may have been diminished. But when a bishop or rabbi is wheeled up on TV or radio, we're expected to respect him more...

20. 'god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything' by Christopher Hitchens

Comment #36185 by paulcaira on April 30, 2007 at 12:38 pm

"By all means let an observant Jewish adult male have his raw-cut penis placed in the mouth of a rabbi. (That would be legal, at least in New York.) By all means let grown women who distrust their clitoris or their labia have them sawn away by some other wretched adult female. ...'

21. Against All Gods, by A C Grayling

Comment #36176 by paulcaira on April 30, 2007 at 12:21 pm

Vinelectric: I am very interested in this idea of existence being necessary when applied to such things as universes and minds. What could it mean for the universe not to have existed? There isn't really a choice is there? Likewise for my mind never to have existed is impossible. (For this last sentence to make sense, you have to read 'my' yourself, not substitute 'his'... Perhaps I should have written 'one's'.)