651. Egypt's fight against female circumcision clashes with tradition

Comment #80488 by mmurray on October 22, 2007 at 1:21 am

There is a discussion in Jarrod Diamond's `The Third Chimpanzee' which sheds light on how this madness may have arisen. It talks about how you would expect a species to evolve if, like ours, it finds itself under evolutionary pressure for the parents to care for the children for longer periods. In our case as we evolved more sophisticated methods of obtaining food it became harder for our children to feed themselves so there was a benefit to both the parents caring for the children for say 10-15 years. The gene (I know it might not be as simple as single gene) that makes the father care for the children will only get passed on if the father is caring for *his* children. The mother, of course, knows they are her children. Some animals evolve systems where after fertilization of the female the vaginal passage is blocked from further attempts at fertilization by a plug of some kind deposited by the male. It would seem the the human chimp evolved a range of (horrible) social systems to achieve the same outcome: control of female reproduction by males.

Before anyone raises the issue note that I don't subscribe to the idea the evolution is some kind of moral justification. The practice of FGM and all the associated notions of `honour' are relics of our past that should be disposed of as quickly as possible.

Michael

652. God's honest truth?

Comment #79881 by mmurray on October 19, 2007 at 12:18 am

School is one of the few things I consider right to force people into. Without schools, democracy do not work. I consider it a right to be "indoctrinated" by the school curricilum, because it's content is strongly protected against falsehoods as well as political and religious influence.

Personally I would also go for compulsory voting in elections as an essential part of democracy although I think there should be a `None of the above option' on the ballot slip.

Sorry off topic but an election looms where I am.

Michael

653. Richard Dawkins receives the Deschner Prize

Comment #79530 by mmurray on October 17, 2007 at 3:13 pm

If we are going to berate the faithful for thinking they are the centre of a god's creation and that he has a special plan for them we must reject hubris and egocentrism in all its forms. Who are we to say the current state of the biosphere is optimal or should be frozen as is for all time - not to mention of course this is a ridiculous hope. We should get over ourselves. Who do we think we are?

Well there will be a lot of other species who are affected by climate change. Not just homo sapiens who are actually pretty adaptable.

Why does opposition to religion imply that we can't say that humans are a species worth looking after and preserving? Are you suggesting that next time someone gets sick we should let them die because the life of the bacteria or viruses attacking is just as important as theirs ?

The reality is that the majority of the world will not take your point of view and there will be massive disruption, war and disease as people try to relocate to better climates and nations try to get access to water. As a species we will adapt and survive I am sure but there will be a lot of human pain and suffering. That IMHO is a bad thing -- you may not agree of course.

Michael

654. Richard Dawkins receives the Deschner Prize

Comment #79101 by mmurray on October 16, 2007 at 5:49 am

And no one got back to me on my other point, probably because it was considered moronic but it is actually central to the debate. If the Earth is warming why is this a problem?

Well speaking as someone who lives in a very dry continent, in a city that depends for its drinking water on a river system that may be to saline to drink in a couple of years if the drought doesn't stop it seems like a problem to me.

Michael

655. Richard Dawkins receives the Deschner Prize

Comment #79053 by mmurray on October 16, 2007 at 1:59 am

mmurray: "I am afraid you misrepresented his views through selective citations."

Now you are misrepresenting me! I didn't say that. Mine was the post before.

Michael

656. Richard Dawkins receives the Deschner Prize

Comment #79030 by mmurray on October 15, 2007 at 11:37 pm

But then new nuclear power technology is much safer than hitherto.

I keep hearing this story as our conservative government is pushing it had for political reasons - they hope to split the opposition on it. But when I look around it seems that the next generation nuclear power technology that is being talked about is just a speculative as the plans to clean up coal.

Even if you can make the reactors safe there remains the unsolved problem of how to safely store radioactive waste for hundreds of thousands of years. Sure everyone will talk about vitrification and deep storage but so far they don't know how to do it and that has been the answer for a long time now.

Admittedly this was mostly browsing wikipedia.

Michael

657. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams criticizes popular atheist writers

Comment #78643 by mmurray on October 14, 2007 at 3:05 am

There is something irritating about the hypocrisy of people like this. Happy to go along with all the mumbo-jumbo associated with christmas and easter but at heart he probably doesn't believe in the virgin birth or the resurrection. Why doesn't me admit that he agrees with Richard that there is no personal god that answers prayers and is interested in our sex lives.

Michael

658. A Revelation

Comment #78625 by mmurray on October 13, 2007 at 11:24 pm

Well, given that the only conferences one could attend were the various church councils held to formalise points of doctrine you'd probably get invited and told to recant or have copies of your works ritually burned (this happened to Abelard twice, at Soissons in 1121 and Sens in 1141, both at the instigation of his nemesis St. Bernard and Bernard's nasty little bootlick William of St. Thierry). The closest thing to "publishing" that existed was having your works copied out by university stationers or the friars of your own mendicant order, and you wouldn't get that far if you weren't largely orthodox in your thinking. Your ideas might be ridiculed and argued against by other authors who did circulate widely however, as those of the Cathars were. Tenure at Universities was again done by co-option, some chairs belonging to the mendicant orders and others to 'secular' masters. You wouldn't get the required theology degrees if you consistently espoused heretical ideas, so that too was out.

Sorry I didn't mean literally that people then would publish or go to conferences. I was trying to respond to your comment

This is not really all that different from modern science except that the facts which needed explaining in the first place come from scriptural assertion as well as observation and (occasionally) experimental test.

in as much as I think the big difference is what happened if you found a theory that disagreed with what was regarded by others in the field as true. In fact I was setting out the worst of what might happen to you in modern science. What also might happen is you get applauded for your new idea because finding new and better ideas is what science is supposed to be about. The fact that both modern scholars and medieval scholars used logical disputation and argument seems to me a superficial similarity. The medieval scholars were supposed to be trying to find theories to support a pre-existing view of the world whereas modern science is trying to understand the world. IMHO these are two very different things.

Of course particlar individuals may have been trying to understand the world but I don't believe that was what the Church wanted them to do. I don't have a problem by the way with medieval scholars not understanding as much about the world as we do or believing in some form of deity. IMHO the latter was reasonable until Darwin killed of the argument by design.

I am no expert in medieval history but I don't see anything in what you are saying to suggest that science would not have proceeded more rapidly without the church and the inquisition. Was that what you were saying or were you just saying the church was not as big a brake on scientific progress as we are often led to believe by simplified accounts?

Michael

659. Muslims tell Christians: 'Make peace with us or survival of world is at stake'

Comment #78472 by mmurray on October 13, 2007 at 4:08 am

That link was broken because of the wrapping

http://www.himalmag.com/2007/october_november/between_imperialism_and_Islamism.html

660. A Revelation

Comment #78420 by mmurray on October 12, 2007 at 7:09 pm

This is not really all that different from modern science except that the facts which needed explaining in the first place come from scriptural assertion as well as observation and (occasionally) experimental test.

What if, after thinking about it, you came up with a theory explaining why the virgin birth DIDN'T happen. Did you have trouble getting your papers published, invited to conferences and getting tenure or did you get burnt at the stake?

Michael

661. Muslims tell Christians: 'Make peace with us or survival of world is at stake'

Comment #78411 by mmurray on October 12, 2007 at 6:02 pm

No, you don't try to co-exist with that. The only thing you talk about with them is how they are going to cry "Uncle!". And that, btw, was exactly what Regan and Thatcher did with the Gorb. Communism had been beaten, everyone knew he was over a barrel and they were negotiating how he would give in.
That is just not true the US talked with them about how they were going to avoid blowing each other, and everyone else up. There was a long period when the two sides lived with each other. I still think the Regan/Thatcher policy of pushing the arms race until the point that the Soviet Union went bankrupt was really, really dangerous. In hindsight you can think it was clever but if it had gone wrong or a lesser statesman than Gorbachev had come along we might not be here. He might have been over a barrel economically but militarily they could have wiped us all out.

Michael

662. A Revelation

Comment #78409 by mmurray on October 12, 2007 at 5:39 pm

On the question of Christianity's support for science in the early days I recently stumbled across this web site via New Scientist.

http://www.archimedespalimpsest.org/

Apologies to those who know what a palimpset is but I didn't at the time. Basically if you found yourself in need of some paper for a prayer book the sensible monk went down to a nearby heathen library grabbed a few books, scraped of all the rubbish on them by non-believers such as Archimedes, rebound them and wrote ditties to the glory of their one god (The Man Who Lived!) on them. Sort of the Christian equivalent of blowing up the Buddha's of Mamyan IMHO. This particular act of vandalism occurred around 1200. Luckily modern science can be used to recover ancient science.

Michael

663. If Muslim doctors are intolerant, let them go

Comment #78200 by mmurray on October 12, 2007 at 5:44 am

A comment here

http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/yasmin_alibhai_brown/article3038472.ece

from Yasmin Alibhai Brown.

Michael

664. Muslims tell Christians: 'Make peace with us or survival of world is at stake'

Comment #78196 by mmurray on October 12, 2007 at 5:27 am

Jews are briefly in the letter. According to the Guardian the history of the letter is

Organised by the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought, a non-governmental organisation based in Amman, Jordan, the document comes a year after another open letter to the Pope following a controversial speech in which he quoted a medieval text linking Islam and violence.

so it is in part a letter aimed at the Pope. That would be one (non-sinister) reason for leaving out Jews from the discussion.

Michael

665. Muslims tell Christians: 'Make peace with us or survival of world is at stake'

Comment #78174 by mmurray on October 12, 2007 at 3:39 am

We should be trying to convince them to abandon Islam, first and foremost, because anything less than that is useless.

And the likelihood of this happening is ... ?

Translated from the original arabic, this letter says,

It's only 29 pages and it's in english -- why not read it (not that I have of course)?

Michael

666. Muslims tell Christians: 'Make peace with us or survival of world is at stake'

Comment #78150 by mmurray on October 12, 2007 at 2:24 am

27. Comment #78130 by Shuggy

The contradiction you are worried about is mentioned in the document as follows:

He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me
scatters abroad. (Matthew 12:30)
For he who is not against us is on our side. (Mark 9:40)
... for he who is not against us is on our side. (Luke 9:50)

According to the Blessed Theophylact's Explanation of the New Testament, these
statements are not contradictions because the first statement (in the actual Greek text of
the New Testament) refers to demons, whereas the second and third statements refer to
people who recognised Jesus, but were not Christians.

Michael

667. Muslims tell Christians: 'Make peace with us or survival of world is at stake'

Comment #78110 by mmurray on October 11, 2007 at 10:20 pm

The Guardian have a report on this here

http://www.guardian.co.uk/religion/Story/0,,2188742,00.html

Michael

668. Muslims tell Christians: 'Make peace with us or survival of world is at stake'

Comment #78108 by mmurray on October 11, 2007 at 10:15 pm

You might want to read the whole letter here

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/11_10_07_letter.pdf

as the Daily Mail is perhaps not the best paper.

While it would be nice if all the worlds religions disappeared in a puff of smoke it is unlikely in the immediate future. This kind of approach at least holds out some home for a moderate version of Islam arising. While this might seem unlikely Christianity manages to wriggle out of the nastier stuff in the Old and New Testaments when it wants to.

Michael

669. Muslims tell Christians: 'Make peace with us or survival of world is at stake'

Comment #78080 by mmurray on October 11, 2007 at 6:34 pm

So now I am confused. I thought we kept getting told religion doesn't cause wars ....

Michael

670. How China Got Religion

Comment #78049 by mmurray on October 11, 2007 at 3:52 pm

This "important move to institutionalize management on reincarnation" basically prohibits Buddhist monks from returning from the dead without government permission: no one outside China can influence the reincarnation process; only monasteries in China can apply for permission.

Surely this has zilch to do with religion and everything to do with stopping the exiled Dalai Lama who is `outside China' from having any political influence.

When in 2001 the Taliban in Afghanistan destroyed the ancient Buddhist statues at Bamiyan, many Westerners were outraged — but how many of them actually believed in the divinity of the Buddha?

Not even the Buddha believed in the divinity of the Buddha. But why would I have to believe in the divinity of the Buddha to be outraged by the destruction of a piece of human cultural history?


Michael

671. 'Dirty War' priest gets life term

Comment #77918 by mmurray on October 11, 2007 at 5:37 am

Thanks BAEOZ. I was just thinking this article would be a good place to slip in Pell's latest! I grew up a Catholic in the 60-70's and I never understood the Catholics who thought they had a right to do an individual deal with God -- I thought that was what Protestants did and we just obeyed the Pope's encyclicals. But maybe things have changed I gave up on the whole mess around 1972.

Anyway we mustn't complain about Pell too much he just `blessed' the leader of the opposition or at least his policy on catholic schools :-)

Michael

672. Ayaan Hirsi Ali: abandoned to fanatics

Comment #77613 by mmurray on October 9, 2007 at 9:36 pm

Comment #77525 by notsobad on October 9, 2007 at 2:15 pm
"I still need an explanation why she, while protesting against Muslim extremists, worked for Christian extremists, American Enterprise Institute?"

As well as the `any port in a storm' or perhaps `only port in a storm' theory mentioned above do we have any reason to believe she is not right wing in some or all of her thinking ? I can see the struggle she had to make to obtain individual freedom against the group-think of Islam leaving her more attracted to notions of individual liberty than to those of group solidarity. But I'm just guessing.

Personally I never understood what part of `I don't believe in gods' implies you are left of centre in your politics which seems to be a common assumption made around here.

Michael

673. The Religious Right's New Tactics for Invading Public Schools

Comment #77561 by mmurray on October 9, 2007 at 5:08 pm

These people sure are attention whores. Why do they insist on having to make everyone else listen to their religious blabbering? Is saying a quiet prayer by yourself not good enough for God? Do you have to make a public nuisance out of yourself and insist that everyone else hear you before God will be satisfied? I'm convinced that it is not prayer that these people are concerned with but rather access to minds for brainwashing.

Christianity has always been about converting people to the one true god. I think this goes back to the god of the old testament who was a jealous nutter whose second commandment was `you shall have no other gods before me.' In the new testament christ told the disciples that they were to be `fishers of men'. It is one of the fundamental problems with christianity fitting into a democratic society IMO. Most of us, I think, would be happy enough to leave it alone but it is not always happy to leave us alone.

My children were raised without any religion but they learnt about this aspect of religion early on in the video game Age of Empires where you can use priests to convert the other person's troops to your side. I was a little confused the first time I heard a shout of `stop priesting my men' from the bedroom - I had never thought of priest as a verb :-)

Michael

674. The Price of Freedom

Comment #77356 by mmurray on October 9, 2007 at 5:57 am

when or if she visits Australia,

She was at the Sydney writer's festival in June this year. I don't know who provided security.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/author-calls-on-muslims-to-reform/2007/06/02/1180205582657.html


Michael

675. The Price of Freedom

Comment #77348 by mmurray on October 9, 2007 at 5:37 am

Oh yes, I would too... But would your government?

Who knows -- at the moment they are in pre-election mode so they are only spending money on marginal electorates and buying votes. I don't expect she would figure in those calculations

Thanks for the information.

Michael

676. The Price of Freedom

Comment #77313 by mmurray on October 9, 2007 at 2:55 am

It is a question of "Should the dutch government indefinetly pay for the protection of someone living abroad?". In which even Hirshi Ali agrees that that is not a reasonable demand.

If you read the article by Harris and Rushdie they say that the Dutch Government promised protection everywhere and anywhere before she agreed to become a politician. (See the link above in post 19.)

I don't know about Holland but here in Australia ex politicians get very, very well looked after. I don't think we have anyone living under protection overseas but if it was needed by someone as brave as Ali I would support it.

Michael

677. The Price of Freedom

Comment #77293 by mmurray on October 9, 2007 at 1:13 am

Have a look also at

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-harris9oct09,0,3734484.story?coll=la-opinion-center

which gives another take on the issue.

Michael

678. Response to My Fellow 'Atheists'

Comment #77259 by mmurray on October 8, 2007 at 10:22 pm

In his latest speech and the response, he made many good points, but also created a lot of confusion and got distracted on meditation, which has nothing to do with the topic. Having said that, I think we should forgive Sam for being imperfect, like the rest of us.

Actually it had lots to do with the topic. His point was that a lot of people who turn to religion could have their `spiritual' needs met by meditation. By rejecting their needs as not appropriate in some atheist materialist utopia we lose a lot of potential supporters just as (he seems to feel) we lose supporters by calling ourselves atheists.

Michael

679. In honour of Dan Dennett

Comment #76912 by mmurray on October 7, 2007 at 5:37 pm

Personally, I would encourage considerable caution about accepting the interpretations Gould presents.

That wasn't really my point. He has been dead now for 5 years so anything he has written is clearly out of date in terms of what is current thinking. I am not personally that interested in arguments about the exact workings of evolutionary theory. But if people don't read Gould because of these controversies they are missing some wonderful science writing. I don't think he is wrong about: (a) the contingent nature of history, (b) the depth of geological time, (c) the myriad of examples of bad design that support evolution by natural selection, (d) the fact that creationism is a load of unscientific rubbish or (e) the fact that evolutionary theory does not support racism. If you want a book on science and racism and the `Bell Curve' farce his Mismeasure of Man is brilliant.

I note also in that review of Dennett's book by Maynard Smith he comments on the excellence of Gould's essays as distinct from his place in the modern evolutionary theory community. The former point was the one I was trying to make.

Michael

680. In honour of Dan Dennett

Comment #76907 by mmurray on October 7, 2007 at 5:06 pm

I would encourage those of you who haven't read Gould to forget about punctuated equilibria and the argument with Dawkins over NOMA and go and read some of his essays or his books such as "Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History".

You can find some of the essays on-line without too much trouble.

Michael

681. Hirsi Ali Returns to the Netherlands after Losing Body Guards

Comment #76499 by mmurray on October 6, 2007 at 2:17 am

You can believe whatever you want but i know this woman has been lying about a lot of things, and this is one of them.

Actually I would like to believe what is true. At the moment -- like many here -- I basically have her book to go on. You are saying that she lied about being genitally mutilated when she said it happened in her book. Do you really know this or are you just assuming she lied about this because she admitted to lying to get immigration status?

Michael

682. The Problem with Atheism

Comment #76464 by mmurray on October 6, 2007 at 12:26 am

1. Can you do as Sam suggests and still hold down a day job?
2. Can you just do it part time or is it full-time only?
3. The constant inner commentary that, if you're successful at meditation, you manage to stifle during the day. What happens to it at night?
4. Does it represent some kind of primal consciousness? If so, why is it so hard to attain? Has culture so mishaped us? If it's not in some way natural, is it just a clever trick, analogous to holding you breath and making yourself go dizzy? That is, something amusing for a few minutes on your ninth birthday but not something you'd want to do all day, every day for the rest of your life?
Please direct me to a website where it is all made clear.

(1) What do you think Sam is suggesting? Typically people meditate 30 minutes to an hour a day. It's no different to doing yoga or working out except in those cases you can see what is happening in terms of muscle stretching and muscle, aerobic etc fitness. For meditation you can watch what is happening in the brain but it is less obvious why it has benefits.

(2) See my answer to (1).

(3) I am not expert but I don't think you ever stifle the inner commentary except for deep meditation perhaps. You certainly aren't going to stop it while walking around during the day -- it is more about being able to cut it back to a dull roar.

(4) It is tempting to think you are dropping back to what it was like before we developed language and started to think verbally like we do now. I don't know enough about that to hazard a guess. It is also plausible that the kind of experience where the self disappears (sort of like runners high) is just the mental processes that create the feeling of having a self going briefly into suspension. I don't think we understand consciousness enough to decide on this either. I agree it could just be a party trick of no great significance. However many people find it beneficial so if it is a party trick that helps people why not. Practising meditation carries no metaphysical baggage in terms of things that you have to believe.

I don't have a web site I can point you to. Why not find somewhere that teaches meditation and try it or pick up one of any number of books and try them. I assume if you are posting here then like me you would prefer to avoid the ones that wrap it all up in religion or energy fields and rubbish. I would also avoid the ones that smell too much like guru's and cults but that is my preference.

If you are interested in more of Sam's thoughts on this kind if thing try

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/sam_harris/2007/01/consciousness_without_faith_1.html

and for his take on Buddhism

http://www.shambhalasun.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2903&Itemid=244

Michael

PS: Is that Reginald Perrin on you avatar ?

683. Hirsi Ali Returns to the Netherlands after Losing Body Guards

Comment #76458 by mmurray on October 6, 2007 at 12:02 am

Besides that Hirsi Ali has not been genitally mutilated,

So you say she is lying in her book ?

Michael

684. Hirsi Ali Returns to the Netherlands after Losing Body Guards

Comment #76400 by mmurray on October 5, 2007 at 5:50 pm

So if 60,000 of us commit $100 a year ...

Michael

685. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #76396 by mmurray on October 5, 2007 at 5:44 pm

As for Dr. John Lennox, as a graduate of Oxford, I fear for its future academic reputation when it employs academics spouting credulous, specious nonsense such as this shoddy excuse of a scientist.
They employ him as a mathematician. Or perhaps more correctly Green College employ him as a mathematician. I wasn't aware of him as a mathematician until this debate came up but checking the usual places he seems to have a very good publication record in group theory. It's not my area so I can't judge the detail but he publishes in the right kinds of places and with people I know so I would assume he perfectly capable of doing the job he is employed for. I don't see any reason to regard him as a `shoddy excuse of a scientist'.

Michael

686. Teachers 'fear evolution lessons'

Comment #76386 by mmurray on October 5, 2007 at 5:00 pm

Aren't their some crackpot `faith' schools you can send your kids to in the UK that teach intelligent design ?

Michael

687. Hirsi Ali Returns to the Netherlands after Losing Body Guards

Comment #76197 by mmurray on October 5, 2007 at 3:02 am

2 men for 8 hours in 3 shifts makes 6 men for 24 hours. 100 Euro's/Dollars an hour per man is 4800 Euro's/Dollars a day for 6 men. Times 365 is 1.752.000 Euro's/Dollars. That already get's you well on the way toward 6 million (though i have also read something that was closer to 3 instead of 6 million)

Something still doesn't make sense to me here. So you employ 6 people for 8 hours each day every day of the year and pay them $6,000,000 -- that's $1,000,000 for working 8 hours a day every day of the year. Excellent pay.

I think the problem is your $100 an hour. For a standard working week that is $100 x 40 (hours per week) x 52 (weeks in the year) = $208,000 a year. That is a good salary from where I come from. Do security staff really get $100 an hour?

Michael

688. The Problem with Atheism

Comment #76116 by mmurray on October 4, 2007 at 6:55 pm

You forget, there once was a word for non-racists, it was called "Abolitionist". These brave men and women (give credit where it is due, most were religious) spoke up, in some cases took up arms, to free the slaves.

You are confusing racism and slavery. Racism did not go away when slavery was abolished.

If you are not happy with an occasional tasty tidbit, the love of a kind woman, a refrigerator full of beer, modest career success, etc., and you think you are going to find happiness in jettisoning all your desire for these things, then commit suicide (no, don't!).

Don't tell me your day job is some kind of counselling ? :-) Seriously the evidence suggests there will be a lot of people who don't feel like you and I think Sam is suggesting it is a bad idea to hand them all over to the religious groups.

Michael

689. The Problem with Atheism

Comment #75950 by mmurray on October 4, 2007 at 6:20 am

mmurray I haven't read any books by the Dalai Lama. I was taught a little about Buddhism though by someone very keen to present it in a modern and secular manner.

I think a fair few things the Dalai Lama says are at odds with science, but my view is that they needn't be, since enough of Buddhism can survive a full acceptance of modern science.

BaronOchs -- you might enjoy that book as it is the source of the oft quoted quote of the Dalai Lama's that if science contradicts Buddhism then Buddhism should change. He, of course, doesn't believe that mind reduces to matter which probably is what allows him some scope to believe in things like reincarnation.

Michael

690. The Problem with Atheism

Comment #75939 by mmurray on October 4, 2007 at 5:57 am

Buddhism doesn't consider mind and matter to be separate.

Funny when I typed those words I thought I was likely to get corrected by someone who actually knows something about Buddhism which I don't :-)

I was basing this on the Dalai Lama's book 'The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality' where he says Buddhism divides reality into

(1) Matter - physical objects
(2) Mind - subjective experiences
(3) Abstract composites - mental formation

He also claims that, although various Buddhist traditions differ on the point they all basically agree that you cannot reduce (2) completely to (1) even though (2) depends on (1) to occur. This is what I meant by separate. My take on scientific materialism (which I agree with) is that all of (2) and (3) can be reduced to (1).

Michael

691. The Problem with Atheism

Comment #75925 by mmurray on October 4, 2007 at 4:52 am

I would appreciate some rebuttal arguments about this.

Hi Veronique,

No that's not me I am in Adelaide :-)

On the rebuttal's I am not sure. There is some interesting stuff on Sue Blackmore's website. She is a very long time meditator (and also drug user I think). She started out studying paranormal things and give up, due to lack of success, and moved into more mainstream things like consciousness.

You can find it at

http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/

She has an explanation for near death experiences in terms of how the brain behaves when you deprive it of oxygen.

I don't know what her explanation of OBE's (out of body experiences) is.

There is also something I only recently learnt about called sleep paralysis where people become conscious but unable to move. It is often accompanied by an intense feeling of pressure on the chest and or the presence of someone else in the room. Have a look at the wikipedia site

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis

I would have thought the seeing things not there are `just' hallucinations although that is easy for me to say not ever having had a hallucination! There is just no evidence of energy that is different to the energy we understand in physics. Of course a lot of people use the word energy to mean all kinds of things.

In the buddhist meditation tradition they say that you experience all kinds of what we would call paranormal phenomena during higher levels of meditation. But these are to be ignored as they are not the aim of the meditation from a Buddhist perspective. I have never had anything like this happen -- lucky if I can sit still for the 30 minutes :-)

Michael

692. The Problem with Atheism

Comment #75904 by mmurray on October 4, 2007 at 2:40 am

Hi All,
like most of you I agree with Sam Harris about the labelling bit. But I have difficulty with the whole transcendental thing.

I think the rest of your comment is confusing meditation and all the weird things various gurus and religions claim about meditation. It does seem to be possible to change mental states doing meditation, there is scientific research into it and many people will claim to have benefited from it. That makes it seem worthy of study particularly as we are some way from understanding how the brain works and, in particular, how consciousness works. I don't think any of the above implies you have to buy into the whole enlightenment and guru thing or the buddhist idea that mind is some kind of entity separate from matter.


Michael

693. Hirsi Ali Returns to the Netherlands after Losing Body Guards

Comment #75859 by mmurray on October 3, 2007 at 10:31 pm

Certainly. There must be at least a couple. :-)

And I cut Hirsi Ali some slack because of her background. I can see how tempting that particular extreme must have looked under the circumstances.

And if I remember the book properly she got little support from the left in Holland at the beginning because she was seen as disruptive of the idea of multiculturalism which tends to be a left wing thing. I would also think that the fact that she had to fight for her freedom in such an individualistic fashion against social pressures to conform would lead her to sympathise with a right wing perspective of individual rights.

Michael

694. The Problem with Atheism

Comment #75856 by mmurray on October 3, 2007 at 10:16 pm

I may be wrong but it certainly doesn't sound like the Australia I heard about from friends and acquaintances (Actually the most negative thing I heard about Australia is its widespread racism especially against Asians, not that it is on the verge of becoming a theocracy)

I don't think anti Asian racism is the issue it used to be. Historically we had all the usual white anglo-saxon colonial prejudices about the inferiority of asians coupled to justifiable resentment of the very nasty treatment of our prisoners of war by the Japanese. If you look at this very recent survey

http://sydney.edu.au/us-studies/docs/Survey%20Presentation-3%20Oct%2007-Part%201.pdf

particularly the bit at the end about Japanese investment you will see how things have changed.

I won't go into the ongoing problems with our treatment of the indigeneous Australians we stole the country from in 1770 but you can get a nice short account in Jarred Diamonds book The Third Chimpanzee.

As for religion it is intruding more here as it is intruding more everywhere. Our current prime minister regards this as a christian country and himself as a christian and the opposition leader is a public christian as well. This is not done with the same intensity as it is in the US but it is still unusual by Australian standards to have the discussion at all. The health minister at one point trained as a catholic priest so you can guess what his attitude is on various issues. We had to take away from him the right to control RU486 and stem cell research has been an ongoing fight. The Government has also changed the law to enshrine marriage as something that can only occur between people with different dangly bits.

Ten years of conservative rule has not improved the country.

Michael

695. The Problem with Atheism

Comment #75816 by mmurray on October 3, 2007 at 6:38 pm

My blog on his talk and the use of atheism in politics:

Nice post on your blog. I think your point about politics is particularly important. Atheism has to be for everyone not just lefties just as we hope non-racism and looking after the environment are for everyone.

Michael

696. The Problem with Atheism

Comment #75784 by mmurray on October 3, 2007 at 4:10 pm

To fritter away half of your few precious decades on earth achieving nothing but a greater attention to your mental processes sounds like a waste to me. What a shame that would be: we've only got one life.

Most people who meditate aren't putting in anything like half of their waking time. In any case most people `fritter away' a lot of their lives worrying about the future, reliving things in the past and doing anything but living in the present. One of the aims of meditation is to be able to enjoy the one life you have and not waste it in pointless mental activity and avoid having to finish their lives with the Mark Twain quote:

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.

Michael

697. The Problem with Atheism

Comment #75783 by mmurray on October 3, 2007 at 4:03 pm

I mean I do love the idea of a god who ... sends dead children to a heavenly paradise ...
You love the idea of a god who kills children :-(

Michael

698. Letters: Theology has no place in a university

Comment #75207 by mmurray on October 2, 2007 at 3:51 am

Would I be correct in assuming that the statement "its leading theological halls are not fit to admit school-leavers" is identical in meaning to "its leading theological halls are not fit to admit students"?

No I think it only applies to students who have just left school and are expecting an Oxford undergraduate education. Further down he quotes the report as saying the education the theological colleges provide "does not resemble an Oxford experience in its essentials" and is not "a suitable educational environment for the full intellectual development of young undergraduates".

Michael

699. Dawkins - what can't he be blamed for?

Comment #75143 by mmurray on October 1, 2007 at 11:13 pm

I maintain that the consoling satisfaction of doing something, anything, together in a group, is one of the main things that keeps religions going. (And this makes football not too different from a religion.)

I agree, except I suspect a lot more people watching football know that their `faith' is a bit of a pretend than do in a church. I guess that is partly due to the modern commercial football where club loyalty for players depends on the price. Maybe religion would be better if the rabbis, bishops, popes and imams all changed `team' regularly: `And rumours abound this week that Tehran Mosque has offered $2,000,000 for Ratzinger. Sources at the Vatican deny any such deal and are confident that Ratzinger intends to see out his contract .... '

On the whole it seems to me that football (and similar sports) are a useful safety valve for our genetically inherited tribalism. Of course it can go over board into football hooliganism and extreme right wing politics.

Michael

700. Religion as a Force for Good

Comment #74937 by mmurray on October 1, 2007 at 7:15 am

And another one ....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2180725,00.html

Michael