1. British schools are falling for the pseudoscience of Brain Gym. Why fill kids' heads with nonsense?

Comment #160609 by minstrel on April 14, 2008 at 8:26 am

complain about Brain Gym's misrepresentation of, um, reality.
Since when did reality ever get in the way of making money? This is a confidence scam if I've ever heard one.

2. Gorilla slaughter sparks campaign

Comment #85547 by minstrel on November 6, 2007 at 6:16 am

I hope this mountain gorilla tribe has enough sense to migrate to where it is safer like Uganda or Rwanda. Given their high intelligence, I wouldn't be surprised if they figure it out.

3. Mother dies after refusing blood

Comment #85307 by minstrel on November 5, 2007 at 1:13 pm

The mother isn't the only victim in this case. Religion has uselessly made victims of the poor husband, the children and the close family. They will suffer the consequences of their own self-imposed idiocy. Even as athiests, we must respect a person's right to live, think and die as they please; as long as they don't take anyone else with them.

4. Ayaan Hirsi Ali: abandoned to fanatics

Comment #77689 by minstrel on October 10, 2007 at 7:15 am

By rights it is actually the duty of the Muslim community in The Netherlands to step up and protect her. The message that Muslims would send to fanatics by funding her protection would speak volumes.
The poor Dutch didn't know what they were stepping into when they agreed to sponsor Ayaan Hirsi Ali. I applaud their altruism in the face of fascism, but it has made them a magnet for fanatics now.

5. CNN Debate on Koran in Toilet

Comment #60613 by minstrel on August 2, 2007 at 12:54 pm

What a bunch of cry-babies. The very worst hate crimes are perpetrated by Muslims on a daily basis. I will accept their outrage over a Koran in a toilet when I see them clean up their own house.

6. Fewer Muslims 'back suicide bombs'

Comment #59078 by minstrel on July 27, 2007 at 7:49 am

I would just like to point out that the countries in the Middle East that border Israel have the greatest acceptance of suicide bombings with civilian targets. Those countries not bordering Israel have a much lower acceptance. To me, this means that Muslims disproportionately support suicide bombers if they're going to kill Jews.
Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Indonesia have very high Muslim populations and a refreshingly high proportion of them reject the concept.
Reading the report is quite helpful. The suicide bomber question is at the bottom on page 156.

7. Transcending God: An interview with Christopher Hitchens

Comment #56842 by minstrel on July 17, 2007 at 12:58 pm

Yeah. I always thought YODA would be a great bass player.
LOVE your avatar too, by the way... {drool}

8. Transcending God: An interview with Christopher Hitchens

Comment #56792 by minstrel on July 17, 2007 at 8:50 am

I don't see how anyone can argue against keeping traditions. Can anyone think of a bad reason to bring the family and friends together to commemorate something?
You may not buy into the story that a supernatural force delivered the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt, but anyone can agree that we can celebrate being free from slavery to act, think, and express ourselves as we please. Just becasue the bedtime story is a fairy tale doesn't mean there's no moral.

9. A force for good?

Comment #55208 by minstrel on July 10, 2007 at 8:53 am

Oh dear! It would appear that Vallely has not only moved the goalposts, but has left the playing field entirely!

Have you forgotten, Mr. Vallely, about the torment of Hellfire? Purgatory? Heaven? The afterlife? Demons, angels and devils? The Messiah? These are hallmarks of religion that are explicitly defined to extort followers. Have you forgotten that Jesus is supposed to be (chuckle) the son of God on Earth? Are you sure you are Christian?

What Vallely has left out speaks louder than what he actually put into his essay.

10. A force for evil?

Comment #55175 by minstrel on July 10, 2007 at 7:40 am

Ah! Another grandiloquent, profuse, pseudo-cerebral rant on the perils of "religion". Nothing disseminates the ignis fatuus of elite intellectualism quite like the practice of torturously expounding facile philosophical points in the most labyrinthical way imaginable. Sans oublier de mettre quelques mots en français pour démontrer sa profondeur culturelle. Bravo!

11. God not out of the question for most Canadians

Comment #54246 by minstrel on July 6, 2007 at 5:56 am

The underlying conclusion one can draw from all of these polls is that good schooling is the CURE for superstitious beliefs.

12. Christopher Hitchens and Al Sharpton

Comment #53821 by minstrel on July 3, 2007 at 11:42 am

What an ugly bit of network TV tripe. Chris Matthews is just a self-serving ratings parasite bringing two highly inflammatory personalities together to air the sparks. Hitch is no less opportunistic and is obviously looking to plump the sales of his book by bending over for Matthews and Sharpton.
Anyone presuming to belong to the intellectual elite should refuse to appear with Al Sharpton.

13. Lecture on Neo-Darwinism

Comment #52845 by minstrel on June 28, 2007 at 7:43 am

It's funny that engineers should be mentioned here.
My brother is a brilliant aerospace engineer. He works on the most complex avionics systems in the world and he's damn good at it. Why am I telling you this? {sniff, sniff} Because he thinks ToE is bogus. {sob!} BTW: He is totally unreligious.
I was pretty torn up about this until I read The Ancestor's Tale which devotes some time to the "tyranny of the discontinuous mind". My brother is a victim of his own "discontinuous mind". To him, things are pass/fail, live/die, go/no go; he does not see a continuum between them. It's a good thing too...
Imagine an engineer looking at the specs of a shipment of I-beams for a new bridge or overpass. The specs MUST be within the design tolerances in order for the bridge to be strong. There is no continuum between pass and fail. They either pass or they fail. Letting through I-beams that just barely fail may not mean the bridge will certainly collapse but engineers are trained to observe the discontinuity for safety (and liability).
As a result, engineers have trouble seeing the continuum of evolution in geological time. Type-Three Secretory Systems to flagella, light sensitive cells to eyes, Broca and Wernike regions of the brain originally adapted to hearing now re-mapped to master language, etc.

I have not disavowed my brother nor will I ever tell him what I think about his discontinuous mind. His mind has been adapted (trained) to his chosen environment very successfully. His wife and future children will no doubt benefit greatly from his discontinuous mind. He is free to believe what he wishes, and I'm free to lovingly disagree.

14. Interview with Christopher Hitchens

Comment #50642 by minstrel on June 19, 2007 at 7:33 am

Well done, Little Atoms.

15. Tome truths

Comment #49587 by minstrel on June 12, 2007 at 1:02 pm

Atheism has only just scored its first goals and Grayling, like a football hooligan, is cheering team-Atheism and betting on team-Religion's downfall. Has he checked the scoreboard lately? Invoking the image of the Wizard Of Oz, he writes as if the movie is almost over and Dorothy's happy ending is just around the corner; cue the music and roll the credits...
The fact is that it is really far too soon to tell whether the Dennett, Hitchens, and Dawkins books will have a truly lasting effect. Maybe one day a great Kansas tornado will rise and carry The Vatican off, but Atheism still has many more goals to score before that happens.

16. Don't Know Much Biology

Comment #49245 by minstrel on June 11, 2007 at 6:15 am

Regarding comment #31

Everybody knows geeks can't get laid.

17. Christopher Hitchens on Religion

Comment #48495 by minstrel on June 8, 2007 at 7:29 am

That was a thoroughly enjoyable show.
I was especially floored by how Hitchens called the mega-church Pator "incredibly arrogant" for preaching that he healed his daughter's Hodgekin's disease through prayer. I always thought that faith-healer's claims were just foolish, but Chuck really pressed home the arrogance of preaching that they have the power to heal diseases.
The real arrogance comes when they essentially preach that God obeys their command to reverse a disease that God purportedly designed and infected people with in the first place! As if God would essentially say "Gee. You're right! I see the error of my ways. I shouldn't have infected your daughter with Hodgekin's. Let me clean that up for ya!"

18. Doctors Opposing Circumcision: An Appeal for Misha

Comment #32503 by minstrel on April 17, 2007 at 7:41 am

Forcing a 12 year old boy to undergo circumcision is absolutely wrong. It would affect him for years to come and his moronic parents are ignoring the boy to which this penis is attached. Forcing him to be circumcised is child abuse.

On the other hand, people on this board are clearly and badly misinformed on infant male circumcision. Atheism, unfortunately, isn't a vaccination against ignorance. Furthermore, I see a disturbing rush to equate male circumcision with female genital mutilation. Let me assure you that they are NOT synonymous and should not be confused.

If you want to talk about useless and harmful bodily mutilations, maybe you should consider the ballooning practice of so-called "cosmetic surgery" which takes perfectly good breasts, tummies, and faces and turns them into grotesque caricatures of nature for the sake of vanity. Botched boob jobs, tummy tucks and face lifts have caused more misery in the 50 years it has been practised than thousands of years of male circumcisions. When 18 year old girls are getting boob jobs so that boys at school will like them more, protests against male circumcision sound like a Doberman chewing on a baited steak while the burglar cleans out the house.

19. Kadra attacked in public

Comment #32229 by minstrel on April 16, 2007 at 8:40 am

justme said: "...the same could be said of male circumcision."
BigJohn said: "It is a religious crime perpetrated for no scientific medical reason."

Would you be surprised to know that 5000 years after it was first practised, male circumcision has only recently been shown to decrease transmission of HIV by ~50%?
I'm certainly not advocating female genital mutilation (I love female genitalia way too much for that!), but when denouncing gods or religions, we should take care not to toss the baby along with the bathwater. We may very well have adopted customs and rituals perpetuated by religion that conferred significant selection advantages without knowing it! Who knows what STDs are less transmissible thanks to circumcised penises? Who knows what other customs may confer selection advantages that we haven't yet realized?

20. Sex, Love, and SSRIs

Comment #31152 by minstrel on April 11, 2007 at 7:08 am

Yorker asked: Can someone please explain to me why these drugs are prescribed in the first place?

Committing or ideating suidice is worse than not being able to orgasm; the benefit outweighs the risk.

21. Snake Oil and Holy Water

Comment #28440 by minstrel on March 29, 2007 at 7:47 am

HappyPrimate:
I will happily concede that a "thirst for knowledge" is needed as well. I think my point was that many just want their universe spoon-fed to them rather than quench the thirst for knowldge themselves.
Dawkins' discourse requires one to think logically, but Goodenough seems to be supplying the warm and fuzzy imagery that many people think science lacks intrinsically.

22. Snake Oil and Holy Water

Comment #28306 by minstrel on March 28, 2007 at 5:21 pm

PaulJ:
You said: Isn't this what Richard Dawkins does?

I think you are overestimating the intelligence level of your average Joe. Dawkins appeals to people of relatively high education, income and intelligence. A narrow demographic.

23. Snake Oil and Holy Water

Comment #28231 by minstrel on March 28, 2007 at 12:45 pm

What do you think would happen if, 100 years hence, humanity realizes the error of its ways and casts religion off as obsolete and misleading? Will everyone suddenly become brilliantly logical? Will the masses of laypeople suddenly understand evolution, general relativity, or LeChatelier's Principle? I think not. Some will seek to understand their place in the universe using language to describe universal principles that is far less rigorous than Dawkins is used to.
Ursula Goodenough seems, based purely on Dawkins' description, to be trying to bridge the gap between those who understand some of the mechanics of the universe and those who are hopelessly lost in a sea of scientific understanding. Dawkins has called it 'pseudoreligion', but perhaps Goodenough has actually stumbled onto something! Why not use common language to showcase the vastness of the universe, the movement of celestial bodies, and the mechanics of life? Why not compose purple prose soliloquies and (gulp) psalms expounding on natural wonders? Is it because the language of science has become so steeped in rigor that it has been wrung dry of humanity?
Science should not simply be the domain of scientists. It should be accessible to all in a language they can understand. For that to happen, scientists are going to have to slacken the reins of rigor.