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Comments by hungarianelephant


551. Fleabytes

Comment #134739 by hungarianelephant on February 28, 2008 at 6:47 am

Ah, the English Imperialism card. How original.

552. Fleabytes

Comment #134719 by hungarianelephant on February 28, 2008 at 6:20 am

Just so we're clear, clearthinker, are you saying that there are any other tenets of atheism, apart from (a) non-belief in gods and (b) materialism?

553. The Salamander's Tale

Comment #134663 by hungarianelephant on February 28, 2008 at 4:43 am

Hey! I'm only 34. The days of our age are threescore years and ten. Says so in the instruction manual.

554. Fleabytes

Comment #134659 by hungarianelephant on February 28, 2008 at 4:39 am

Oh, ok. Sex is sinful except when you do it with God, and Mary was a virgin even after a few shags. Albeit, presumably, a somewhat flushed and sticky virgin.

I'm glad we got that cleared up.

555. The Salamander's Tale

Comment #134657 by hungarianelephant on February 28, 2008 at 4:37 am

Steve Zara - I'd also like to see the mark showing that we meet approved Alpha Centauri standards of design and manufacture. They'll be receiving a strongly worded letter of complaint about my back problems.

556. The Salamander's Tale

Comment #134647 by hungarianelephant on February 28, 2008 at 4:17 am

Spot the wooter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGR0BriodkM

557. Fleabytes

Comment #134642 by hungarianelephant on February 28, 2008 at 4:10 am

scottishgeologist - That made my brain hurt. Horse designed by a committee.

558. Fleabytes

Comment #134625 by hungarianelephant on February 28, 2008 at 3:51 am

epeeist - Thanks for the link. I haven't read Graves in years.

An alternative hypothesis is that theologians make it all up as they go along. But it couldn't be that, could it?

559. Fleabytes

Comment #134606 by hungarianelephant on February 28, 2008 at 3:26 am

Well now the whole Original Sin thing is pretty bizarre too. Eve eats a fruit and that affects all the seed of her womb forever. We hear a bit about second and third generations, and then nothing until Psalm 51, "In sin was I conceived". So apparently it's now about sex, not fruit.

Of course, God is perfectly capable of creating people without recourse to sex. Jesus was conceived without sex. So was Mary. So were Jesus' brothers and sisters. Adam was made from dirt, and Eve from his rib. You'd think, then, that he'd be able to come up with a regular means of reproduction that was not inherently offensive to him. I mean, he's the ultimate creator, isn't he?

Then just to add confusion, humans develop artificial means of reproduction. Does the church delight in our newfound ability to be conceived without sin? No, it has a pink wobbly. I can't imagine why.

560. Fleabytes

Comment #134589 by hungarianelephant on February 28, 2008 at 2:57 am

Paula Kirby - What interests me about the liberals' view that hell is just a metaphorical concept is that the whole of Christian theology collapses as a result. What exactly is the Saviour Jesus supposed to be saving us from, if there's no hell?

As I understand it, we're being saved from the "eternal separation from God". I'm not sure exactly why eternal separation from God is regarded as a bad thing. He doesn't seem to keep the kind of company I'd much enjoy.

The whole Jesus in hell thing is more than a little peculiar. I think the rationale is that the soul is eternal, and he didn't go to heaven, so he must have been somewhere else, and since the only places are earth, heaven and hell, he must have been in hell. There's also a theory that he must have gone to hell in order to save the people, or possibly just the Hebrews, who were already there.

This seems to have been dreamt up in the second or third centuries and has zero biblical support. There's even a suggestion that it's the corruption of a sun-worship tradition - after the solstice, the sun's arc stays low for three days before it starts to rise again. Hence the 25 Dec celebration, marking the lengthening of the days.

561. Fleabytes

Comment #134553 by hungarianelephant on February 28, 2008 at 1:30 am

Morning all. Another 400 posts. Did nice Mr Robertson answer epeeist's question yet, or shall I come back later?

562. Fleabytes

Comment #134091 by hungarianelephant on February 27, 2008 at 8:30 am

BillySands - Did I also mention I have a friend who was told she will go to hell if she ever married a protestant?

That's nothing. My Irish great grandfather married a Protestant, and as a result was sent to Wales.

563. Fleabytes

Comment #134076 by hungarianelephant on February 27, 2008 at 7:47 am

I remember hearing a story of a child who was punished once for puking up jesus.
Angela's Ashes?

564. The Salamander's Tale

Comment #133947 by hungarianelephant on February 27, 2008 at 3:50 am

Having previously argued for the removal of wooter's account here, and for the inclusion of an "Ignore" facility, I have a confession.

I'm developing something of an admiration for wooter. He (I'm assuming not she, or "it" if as I suspect wooter is actually epeeist's random comment generator) doesn't understand even the most basic concepts in evolution, can't get his head around physics, and is utterly unable to look at the universe from anything but an anthrocentric viewpoint.

He has several dozen intelligent and articulate people arguing back at him. He plainly doesn't speak the language properly. And yet he continues undaunted, posting the same utter rubbish, week after week.

He has the tenacity of the Duracell bunny. What a shame he can't apply it to something more useful.

565. Pakistan blocks YouTube over blasphemous video

Comment #133535 by hungarianelephant on February 26, 2008 at 10:10 am

al-rawandi - That sounds spookily like Bush foreign policy circa 2002, at least as articulated. I recall arguing with a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat that it was the healthiest shape US foreign policy had been in for at least 30 years.

I'm on board with you here & wish that the US would learn not just from its own mistakes, but from colonial and post-colonial mistakes as well. Come to that, it would be nice if Europe could do likewise.

So, what are you going to do about Pakistan? Is Musharraf a good guy or a bad guy? Or potentially both? Do we leave it alone or what?

The point is that it's not always completely black and white, and sometimes you need to swallow hard and make a Faustian pact. Churchill understood this, which is why he felt able to do a deal with that notorious atheist monster, Stalin.

566. Pakistan blocks YouTube over blasphemous video

Comment #133528 by hungarianelephant on February 26, 2008 at 9:49 am

Now it's you who's misrepresenting me. I didn't attempt to use bin Laden to justify the invasion of Iraq. Whatever other justification there may have been, that wasn't it, whatever a majority of the US population thought.

As I recall, the US government did explicitly request that the Afghan govt turn him over. They didn't. The US tried to bomb him. Didn't work. So now we needed a new plan. If the current one isn't up to much, do we have any better ideas?

We can't turn the clock back to 1980 or 1936 or any other given moment. You have to deal with the situation in front of you. I'm sure very few people here will disagree with the general principle of non-intervention and assistance to decent regimes (the corollary of which is that presumably there should be no assistance to indecent regimes). All I'm saying is that it's not quite so easy to make it stick.

567. Pakistan blocks YouTube over blasphemous video

Comment #133517 by hungarianelephant on February 26, 2008 at 9:26 am

al-rawandi - 1936 ... oil ... well, that's kinda the point, isn't it?

There was a pretty serious foreign policy issue around that time, as I seem to recall, and oil was going to have some considerable importance in the years to come. If the alternative was allowing the Iraqi oilfields to fall into the hands of Hitler, then I think I'd have been inclined to strike up a few dubious alliances to counteract that. Just as Indian nationalists were quite happy to live with the imperial forces for the time being, when the alternative was the Japanese. No sense in making the best the enemy of the good.

If I've misrepresented what you've said, that is an accident, for which I apologise. "Material resposibility" and "contributing factor" mean pretty much the same thing to me; I guess we're still divided by a common language and I'm happy to adopt yours, if you're prepared to learn to spell "aluminium".

Tree-huggy ideas, as you put them, are great and for the most part sound like a good way of building your foreign policy. Certainly, it seems an improvement on anything currently on offer. But the fact remains that the Monroe doctrine eventually broke. At the most basic level, it's impossible to cut yourself off from the Islamic world when there's a nutter who's declared a fatwa against your entire country, and has established a mountain base from which to launch attacks against you.

568. Pakistan blocks YouTube over blasphemous video

Comment #133502 by hungarianelephant on February 26, 2008 at 8:56 am

al-rawandi - I appreciate you didn't blame imperialism for all the world's ills. I was making the point that it's a bit more complex than that.

Israel - another post-colonial British state - is also a functioning and stable democracy. A lot of people don't like it, but it ought to make the point that there was no a priori preference for monarchies. India was handed over to democratic rule. So was Malaysia, after the communist uprising was put down. So was most of Africa. Doubtless there were some dodgy deals done in the Middle East and elsewhere, but on the whole the British tried to leave something relatively stable, even if it didn't later turn out to be very successful. Which is why they didn't generate any mess anywhere on the scale of what happened in the Congo, for example.

I don't think the French are a shining example of how to dismantle an Empire. They are still trying to intervene in such places as the Cote d'Ivoire, where they have no business being. Until the going gets tough, when they run away (Indochine, Lebanon, Rwanda ...)

I think you're ribbing us by suggesting that British policy in the Middle East is materially responsible for Islamic fundamentalism. No? If not, then you're going to have to suggest some reasonable alternatives for what could have been done at the time, and why it would have panned out any differently.

569. Pakistan blocks YouTube over blasphemous video

Comment #133489 by hungarianelephant on February 26, 2008 at 8:35 am

Former British colonies also have a rather unfortunate habit of regressing economically after independence.

Zimbabwe was 5x poorer than the UK when it achieved independence. It is now 28x poorer. Pretty hard for Mugabe to blame that on the imperialists, though he's giving it a pretty good try.

At the time of the creation of the Irish Free State, the 26 counties constituted one of the richest countries in Europe. By the 1960s, the Irish Republic was one of the poorest.

India took 40 years to arrest its relative decline after 1947.

None of this is a justification for imperialism, but it might add a little perspective.

570. Pakistan blocks YouTube over blasphemous video

Comment #133463 by hungarianelephant on February 26, 2008 at 8:05 am

epeeist - The only improvement that I could see was that you can now go into a pub for a drink on Sunday.

Having recently been in a Holyhead pub on a Sunday (yes of course while waiting for the ferry to Ireland), I'm not sure I'd characterise that as an improvement. A very odd place.

571. Pakistan blocks YouTube over blasphemous video

Comment #133407 by hungarianelephant on February 26, 2008 at 6:59 am

epeeist, that wouldn't be the prelude to the kissing joke, would it?

572. Pakistan blocks YouTube over blasphemous video

Comment #133406 by hungarianelephant on February 26, 2008 at 6:58 am

al-rawandi - I am a Welsh Nationalist.

What do I win?

The right to speak a language with no vowels (although no one was preventing you from doing so in the first place), invent place names, have an expensive talking shop in Cardiff paid for by the English taxpayer, and be able to discriminate against anyone who can hold a conversation without spitting.

Next question?

573. Church is paying a high price for its celibacy rule

Comment #133245 by hungarianelephant on February 26, 2008 at 1:17 am

(OT) mundusvultdecipi - Sorry to disappoint you, but I'm a mere outsider, a blow-in and a Sasanach to boot. My (half Mayo) kids will be growing up here though. I'm hoping that we may be accepted as locals within 70 years or so. Do keep up the northsider jokes.

574. Feb 12th: Happy Darwin Day!

Comment #132865 by hungarianelephant on February 25, 2008 at 10:20 am

Cats. Herding.

Good luck with that.

575. Feb 12th: Happy Darwin Day!

Comment #132857 by hungarianelephant on February 25, 2008 at 10:03 am

Or we could take the Yahoo approach.

[ignore this user]

It didn't work too well with Yahoo because you were limited to ignoring 100 users. Should be enough here, though. Hell, I'd only need two.

576. Church is paying a high price for its celibacy rule

Comment #132815 by hungarianelephant on February 25, 2008 at 8:25 am

Evelyn - Fine film, if with a slightly corny ending. I'd add The Magdalene Sisters and Song For A Raggy Boy.

577. Church is paying a high price for its celibacy rule

Comment #132811 by hungarianelephant on February 25, 2008 at 8:19 am

Tyler - You're a northsider? I'm looking out over the bay towards Blackrock right now.

Last time out, Richard "defend the indefensible" Bruton topped the poll here. But then his opponents were: Spawn of Haughey, Ivor Freebie, Derek McDowell, some very intense woman who claimed to be a Green, Finian McGrath (who makes Jackie Healy-Rae look like a sane, principled gentleman) and the Shinners.

But if you don't vote, the wrong lizard might get in.

Even so, I'm minded to agree with emmet. The indemnity deal was an absolute disgrace, & almost certainly unconstitutional.

578. Church is paying a high price for its celibacy rule

Comment #132796 by hungarianelephant on February 25, 2008 at 8:02 am

emmet - So we'll put that down as "No I won't be voting for the Soldiers of Bribery next time, thank you."

That's two of us. Anyone else?

579. The Salamander's Tale

Comment #132788 by hungarianelephant on February 25, 2008 at 7:58 am

"Also, God cannot be self-caused nothing can create itself, because that would mean that it existed before it came into existence, which is a logical absurdity."

Can you spot any logical error here?

580. Church is paying a high price for its celibacy rule

Comment #132781 by hungarianelephant on February 25, 2008 at 7:48 am

Gymnopedie - I wonder what precise aspect of being a Catholic priest drives them to rape children.

According to the Ferns enquiry, a number of paedophiles were attracted to the priesthood precisely because of the free and trusted access to children. Pretty disturbing stuff.

581. Evidence can't shake your faith if your faith excludes it as evidence

Comment #132770 by hungarianelephant on February 25, 2008 at 7:39 am

David EldenThe question is, based on the 'clever alien' argument, shouldn't we be agnostic about Genesis 1:1?

Well I'm not absolutely sure that Genesis 1:1 is a strictly deist claim. It's clear from what follows that "God" means something very specific, and not a creator at large. It also posits the existence of heaven, for which not an iota of evidence, other than the book itself, has been put forward. (Interesting that God appears not to have thought of making hell at this point. But I digress.)

Insofar as there may ultimately have been a creator, I personally don't think it's a sufficiently interesting question to bother having an opinion on. If the creator / clever aliens stopped there, it has no bearing whatsoever on what we do with our lives. I'm happy to concede the possibility to theists and say "Now what?" Does that count as agnosticism?

582. Church is paying a high price for its celibacy rule

Comment #132759 by hungarianelephant on February 25, 2008 at 7:27 am

Slightly more seriously, it appears to me that the whole celibacy thing is a big red herring.

Irish boys used to be pushed into the priesthood because of the status it brought to the family. Now that the RC church has squandered its status, you'd only become a priest if you have some kind of call to ministry and you don't mind people thinking that you're a bit odd. Father Dougal Maguire, of irate_atheist's avatar fame, is a recogisable figure, but doesn't fit any more.

Not even the religious in Ireland are shedding many tears for the demise of the church. In fact, putting the boot in is something of a national pasttime. It would almost make me feel sorry for it. Almost.

583. Church is paying a high price for its celibacy rule

Comment #132752 by hungarianelephant on February 25, 2008 at 7:21 am

Four priests defect to the Church of Ireland ... that's sure to mean much better ministry for the remaining 17 people in the congregation.

584. How he was sentenced to die

Comment #132719 by hungarianelephant on February 25, 2008 at 6:52 am

bucketchemist - I would agree, although due process is a concept inherent in US and UK law, but I'm not sure it features in Afghanistan, I would suspect not.
I have no idea whether it features explicitly or not. The point is that the rule of law does require it. This is not simply a question of whether the law is a just one or not. In other words, I don't think you can jump straight to your question 3.

585. Evidence can't shake your faith if your faith excludes it as evidence

Comment #132717 by hungarianelephant on February 25, 2008 at 6:48 am

David Elden - How can the idea of a creator be a scientific hypothesis if no evidence can support or refute it?

That probably does support NOMA, as far as it goes.

The problem is that it only deals with Genesis 1:1. By the time we get to Genesis 1:2, the bible is making falsifiable scientific claims about earth and water existing prior to light. And this is, well, false.

586. Evidence can't shake your faith if your faith excludes it as evidence

Comment #132713 by hungarianelephant on February 25, 2008 at 6:43 am

Steve Zara - I am afraid I just can't think right now of a single piece of evidence that would convince me that an Abrahamic religion-type God exists.
Dr Benway raised an interesting possibility back when he was still posting regularly. It involved every autopsy one day showing an inscription on the femur of the deceased, saying somthing along the lines of "It's all true. Signed Yahweh."

Of course, that still wouldn't tell us how to reconcile the various contradictory bits of the bible.

587. How he was sentenced to die

Comment #132652 by hungarianelephant on February 25, 2008 at 4:46 am

bucketchemist - That's an odd interpretation of the rule of law.

Most jurists would say that at the very least, it also includes the concept of due process. This doesn't just mean that the procedures are laid down in advance, but also that there's some reasonable opportunity to put your case. A four minute hearing, without access to a lawyer or opportunity to speak, doesn't constitute any meaningful standard of due process.

588. Fleabytes

Comment #132647 by hungarianelephant on February 25, 2008 at 4:33 am

Not even anything about soil, chickens, seven layers of protection and snowflakes. He isn't really trying, is he?

589. Fleabytes

Comment #132646 by hungarianelephant on February 25, 2008 at 4:31 am

Praise to Quetz. Not only does our deity not leave us with instructions we can't properly understand. He even works out what other people are on about. Beat that, Yahweh.

But ... no actual evidence, then. How surprising.

590. Fleabytes

Comment #132641 by hungarianelephant on February 25, 2008 at 4:20 am

Sorry, got to post 600 and I can't take any more.

Is it safe to assume that clearthinker hasn't come up with any evidence for the existence of God, yet?

591. Evidence can't shake your faith if your faith excludes it as evidence

Comment #132581 by hungarianelephant on February 25, 2008 at 2:06 am

Bonzai (132541) - "No believer will find his faith shaken by evidence that is evidence only in the light of assumptions he does not share and considers flatly wrong."
To the extent that this is true, it is an observation about the mindset of the believer rather than a demonstration that "evidence" has no meaning.

Agreed, but it's also fair to say that people generally will hold tightly to an established belief system, taking any ambiguous facts as evidence for their own position and shouting down anything to the contrary. It even happens here in the oasis of clear thinking occasionally, as I'm sure we've all seen - though having said that I can't think of any other group who would readily challenge statistics favourable to their point of view, as in the "atheist prisoners" discussion on another thread.

Campos sounds like a law professor who has spent more time than most in a court. Huge amounts of legal time and energy are devoted to creating "impressions" in the jurors' minds, which it is hoped will create the framework for them to build a mental picture. It's become the fashion for the prosecution case to begin with a mountain of prejudicial stuff of marginal relevance, which often should never have been admitted in the first place. If you simply concentrate on presenting evidence on behalf of your client, you will be acting in the finest legal traditions. You will also probably lose.

This stuff carries on well beyond the courtroom. Most white Americans believe OJ did it. Most black Americans don't. How could this be, when they heard the same evidence? (Clue: what if only the parts that favour your prejudice count?)

592. Don't blame Islam for terrorism, expert says

Comment #131357 by hungarianelephant on February 22, 2008 at 10:23 am

Well I should point out that I didn't say it would be smart. And even if it were, I have no doubt that the Pentagon could find a way of fucking it up.

You see a similar pattern with Christianity as well. Even the supposedly uniform Catholicism has a very different flavour in Ireland, France, Columbia or the Philippines. And yet all of those cultures are strongly coloured by Catholicism.

The question I'm posing is why anyone should assume that Arabs have the monopoly on deciding what is and is not Islamic. The Malaysian Muslims I have met have some pretty wacky notions, but they're a lot easier to live with than the former. Why shouldn't they get to decide? Can't we bung them a few dollars to set up madrassas competing with the petrochemical funded ones?

[Edited for weird Friday grammar]

593. Don't blame Islam for terrorism, expert says

Comment #131349 by hungarianelephant on February 22, 2008 at 9:53 am

Arab tribal ethos it may very well be, but Islam has been very successfully exported to non-Arab countries, including Afghanistan.

Take Islam out of the equation in Afghanistan, and what have you got? A war of independence against the Soviets, which no Arabs have any business ever being involved in. No Taleban, no Al-Qaeda training camps, no 9/11.

I sometimes wonder if the West's military interests might best be served by stirring up anti-Arabic feeling in non-Arab Muslim countries. Not that I'm advocating it, but I could see it coming. Just as I sometimes wonder in my cynical moments whether the real plan in Iraq isn't to create a situation in which the Sunni and Shia kick seven shades of shite out of each other, spread the conflict throughout the Middle East, and let us sell arms to both sides.

594. Moral thinking

Comment #131339 by hungarianelephant on February 22, 2008 at 9:22 am

Thanks, Cartomancer. I'd assumed that to be the case outside the context of the inter-war dictatorships, which seem to be all that get taught in schools these days.

It seems to be your view - forgive me if I am missing the subtleties - that it's the stability or otherwise of the society that leads and the liberalism or otherwise that follows. If so, that has important implications for policy-making, as it suggests that (assuming that we can all agree that Freedom Is A Good Thing) the most important thing a government can do is to try to create stability, or at least not to upset it. And conversely, that if you want to start a dictatorship, first create instability within the society.

(I wondered if this was a little off topic, given that it has nothing at all to do with Star Trek. Oh well.)

595. Moral thinking

Comment #131309 by hungarianelephant on February 22, 2008 at 8:13 am

Cartomancer - We historians have known about the tendency towards liberalism and freedom of dissent in stable societies for ages!

Is there any observed converse tendency, viz. unstable societies => illiberalism and suppression of sedition?

596. Fleabytes

Comment #131235 by hungarianelephant on February 22, 2008 at 5:15 am

The churches have a membership that runs into millions.

Well, possibly. In my experience, this is the most spookily accurate portrayal of the vitality of the largest church in the UK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dDrwcWqpP4

597. Fleabytes

Comment #131232 by hungarianelephant on February 22, 2008 at 5:04 am

So, still no evidence, then.

598. Fleabytes

Comment #131213 by hungarianelephant on February 22, 2008 at 4:08 am

irate 447 - Now THAT's humour.

599. Fleabytes

Comment #131210 by hungarianelephant on February 22, 2008 at 4:06 am

clearthinker - I'm certain that I don't speak for everyone here, this being a place of disparate views, but I can think of nothing more boring than reading your response to Paula's long review of your book replying to Prof. Dawkins' critique of religion. Except maybe golf.

However, what I'd really like to see is some evidence that a supreme omnipotent deity exists, or that there are serious reasons to doubt materialism.

You claim to have this. Why not post it here? You might or might not win any converts, but your approach so far hasn't been very successful, so isn't it worth a go?

600. Fleabytes

Comment #131205 by hungarianelephant on February 22, 2008 at 3:56 am

I don't actually know why I was banned - four times!

Oops. There goes no. 9 again.

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