701. Vote for the Time 100 - Are They Worthy?

Comment #34596 by Russell Blackford on April 24, 2007 at 3:54 pm

Ugh, the comments above are correct. Smile, Professor Dawkins.

702. One Hell of a Religious Read

Comment #34595 by Russell Blackford on April 24, 2007 at 3:48 pm

On a lighter note, the words above, "cantankerous old cuss", caught my eye. Hitchens is, indeed, not a young man ... well into middle age, and, hey, even older than me. But he's so baby-faced that he could pass for about 30 or 35 in that photo and not much older in some of his TV appearances. Admittedly he's a bit chubby, but y'know I assume he must have a portrait in the attic that looks really worn and sinister by now.

The bastard. ;)

703. The Video: Bill O'Reilly Interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #34299 by Russell Blackford on April 23, 2007 at 6:43 pm

It was fine - the trouble is that it wasn't an interview but (as expected) an attempt by the supposed interviewer to lecture the supposed interviewee. Richard wasn't really allowed to finish off any point that he started to make, since he has actual arguments that involve multiple premises and qualifications, not just sound bites. But his wry smiles made the point about O'Reilly's tactics in the best way. I don't think it could have been handled any better.

I doubt that any damage was done in the eyes of fair-minded people, and in fact it may have piqued their interest, which is all that could really have been achieved by this gig. That, and showing Richard as a calm, considered, softly-spoken academic, not some mad, hubristic technocrat with a penchant for saying "MUAHAHAHAHA!"

O'Reilly's truth relativism was a bit lame and would appear that way to a lot of people, even believers.

704. Here Comes the Fourth Musketeer.

Comment #33951 by Russell Blackford on April 22, 2007 at 8:25 pm

Nice comment, Thor. Perhaps Hitchens just has his own set of beliefs and values that doesn't match up with the popular packages of such on either the right or the left ... and that he is being perfectly consistent by his own lights.

Surely many of us have experienced this, yes? I certainly find that I don't fit in all that well with lefty pc types who can be guaranteed to believe all the usual stuff about how nice religions and traditional cultures are, how terrible it is that there is so much freedom of sexual expression in our society (these people have often read too much rubbish by Andrea Dworkin and sound like the local Taliban), etc. However, I have much bigger problems with social conservatives. Since I have no great love of Ayn Rand or corporate capitalism, even libertarians can annoy me. :)

But I do have a consistent set of beliefs and values (and, fortunately, a lot of friends who share at least some of them). I expect that Hitchens could say the same. Someone is not being inconsistent just because he doesn't buy into one of the ready-made packages of ideas out there in the political and philosophical marketplace.

705. Atheists split on how to not believe

Comment #33941 by Russell Blackford on April 22, 2007 at 6:32 pm

"Militant" is a bad word to use in the current circumstances where militant religionists are quite literally so, with their guns, bombs, and improvised weapons of mass destruction (so far in the form of hijacked aircraft). In some contexts, the word just means something like "radicalised" or "activist". Those would not be bad things to be. But I think some of what we're seeing doesn't even go that far; it is just people being "forthright" or "passionate" about their opposition to supernaturalist belief. Until we start crashing planes into cathedrals or something, it's all good IMHO, but it's misleading to talk about "militancy".

Btw, I'm not necessarily opposed to what Greg Epstein is doing from day to day - it may well do some good. I'm only annoyed when he drags out the idiocy about "atheistic fundamentalism", etc.

706. Here Comes the Fourth Musketeer.

Comment #33912 by Russell Blackford on April 22, 2007 at 4:12 pm

Nickc, it's actually quite common (though annoying) for books to come out with different titles in the US and Commonwealth editions. From my limited experience with this, publishers often seem to have strong ideas about what subtitle will help sell the book to an American audience in particular. I'd guess that the Commonwealth edition has the subtitle Hitchens wanted and the US edition has the subtitle his publisher insisted on for the US market. However, I'm totally guessing here: it could be the other way round, especially given that the US subtitle is the more provocative one (but then again it's the more "commercial" one), or it could be something I haven't thought of. Maybe Hitchens himself had ideas about how to sell the two books in the different markets, though until he says otherwise I'd rank that as the least probable of the obvious hypotheses. Anyway, this is the kind of thing that happens.

On the pagination thing, it seems a bit odd unless one of the editions you are looking at is a hardback or trade paperback and the other is the smaller mass-market paperback size (which requires a lot more pages for the same text). It might not even be accurate. Sometimes what goes up on Amazon in terms of page numbers is just an estimate by the publisher - sometimes even before the final draft of the book is settled - but I doubt that would be the case here with such an important book. You'd hope they'd get such things right.

707. Street Evangelist Saves 300 Souls From Enjoying Park

Comment #33796 by Russell Blackford on April 21, 2007 at 8:59 pm

^That's cool. Like I said, just checking. :)

Thankfully, I don't much encounter people like that, though we do have some in Melbourne. There used to be some who loved hanging around the old city post office. I wonder if they're still there; it's not an area I tend to find myself in much these days.

I'm much more worried about the damage inflicted on children in more private locations where they can't avoid the message because it's from parents or from priests who have some kind of mandate from parents. That situation is much harder to deal with than a wingnut religionist ranting in a park, or on a city street.

708. Here Comes the Fourth Musketeer.

Comment #33794 by Russell Blackford on April 21, 2007 at 8:03 pm

I think it's actually good that not everyone whom I respect agrees with me on every issue, though I can kind of relate to Allan. It's difficult seeing someone as an ally when they disagree with you about something you care about strongly.

All the same, I do see Hitchens as an independent thinker. He doesn't follow some party line across the board - you could never predict that he will have the standard social conservative view or standard pomo pc view - but calls issues as he sees them based on his personal values and beliefs. That's to be respected, though as it happens I disagree with him strongly about Clinton and about the merits of the invasion of Iraq. I agree with him about religion and free speech.

709. Street Evangelist Saves 300 Souls From Enjoying Park

Comment #33793 by Russell Blackford on April 21, 2007 at 7:55 pm

Back on topic, from my earlier post, everyone here does know what The Onion is, right? Just checking.

710. Street Evangelist Saves 300 Souls From Enjoying Park

Comment #33768 by Russell Blackford on April 21, 2007 at 5:16 pm

I've rated and commented on your video, Brian. Is that your narration? Whoever did it, it's very well done. The voice is so calm and clear.

I also looked at, and ranked, the one you were responding to (I ranked it at the "it sucks" or "poor" level, or whatever the lowest level was). However, I'm not in favour of campaigning to take it down if that was what was meant (I'm not familiar with the tagging system, so I may be misunderstanding here). Let the fundies express their misguided views, however disgraceful their opportunism may seem to all of us.

I always feel that the answer to bad speech is better speech, not attempts at suppression. I wouldn't go further than using the ranking system to express my low opinion of the fundie video.

711. Here Comes the Fourth Musketeer.

Comment #33704 by Russell Blackford on April 21, 2007 at 8:24 am

I don't think anyone is likely to be sanctified by RichardDawkins.net, just yet. It's just a few jokes, folks.

712. Here Comes the Fourth Musketeer.

Comment #33658 by Russell Blackford on April 20, 2007 at 11:36 pm

Spinoza: Yeah, do contact me offlist - we mustn't derail this entirely while waiting to get hold of the Hitchens book. I'd like to understand Blackburn's metaethics better, and having it explained by someone who finds it transparent and congenial would help.

Can I nominate Ayaan Hirsi Ali as another musketeer? Anyone reading this thread who hasn't yet read Infidel, go and scratch, bite, and claw your way to it if needed.

713. Here Comes the Fourth Musketeer.

Comment #33641 by Russell Blackford on April 20, 2007 at 8:58 pm

Drop me a note by email if you want to continue it, Spinoza. I've read a lot of Blackburn's material, though, including the article you mention, which I'm actually going to be quoting in my paper at the Australasian Association of Philosophy conference in July. This is all a bit of a hobbyhorse of mine, too. :)

Still, I'd be very pleased to read your take on Blackburn, and I'm open to being influenced by what you have to say, since you clearly know your stuff. I think my email address is in my profile if you want to contact me. My blog site certainly is, and it has my email.

I do think that Mackie is often misunderstood, and with (genuinely) great respect I think that you are slightly misunderstanding him, in common with most of the other commentators. He does, indeed, think that we are normally in error when we make moral judgments for the reason you gave - you're totally correct about that, of course - but what people forget is that he actually provides quite a detailed account of normative ethics in the second half of his book, basing it in a range of human interests, and particularly in the need to supplement our limited sympathies if things are not to go badly (in ways that most of us would recognise as "bad" even though there is not an absolute good and bad independent of our interests). It's actually the second half of the book that I think is most valuable. If you're not careful, you'll find me sending you material I'm working on about all this. :)

714. Sex, Love, and SSRIs

Comment #33639 by Russell Blackford on April 20, 2007 at 8:30 pm

Well, I think that we should also be sceptical about the too-rapid dismissal of science-based psychiatry, much as it's a young science and its methods are inevitably crude.

A friend of mine who knows a fair bit about this has convinced me that we should be a bit more cautious than we currently are about prescribing anti-depressants, and a bit more ready to try cognitive therapy first in less-than-extreme cases. That would likely have been better for Glacian. But that said, I see an awful lot of dismissal of the whole field, and I feel sceptical about that, especially knowing the human tendency to give undue salience to bad outcomes and to tend to overlook good ones.

Popper did put some strong arguments as to why Freudian and Jungian psychoanalysis are not really scientific. Feynman seems to have been influenced by Popper on this, which is fair enough - there are much worse people to be influenced by than Popper. But the Freudian and Jungian psychoanalytic theories are not what we're disputing about here.

715. Here Comes the Fourth Musketeer.

Comment #33629 by Russell Blackford on April 20, 2007 at 7:17 pm

Spinoza, I generally like Blackburn. However, I'm not sure I properly understand quasi-realism ... and I actually prefer Mackie's moral philosophy, which I find quite natural (in more ways than one) and compelling.

Hey, I think it's a bit unfair characterising his stance as "meh"! :)

The second half of Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong tries to apply Mackie's more abstract conclusions to real-world problems, which he does in an eminently sane and reasonable way - I wish everyone would read this book. It's not as if he thinks ethics is arbitrary - he thinks that it's based on real human interests and our actual values. The point is that those values are not (as often believed by both philosophers and "ordinary" people) things that are somehow independent of us and part of the objective structure of the universe in a "queer" way. I totally agree with this. It does undermine a lot of conventional moral thinking, entitling Mackie to call himself a moral sceptic, but he's not telling us "Do what thou wilt shall be whole of the law" or something wild like that, just developing a moral approach that should be congenial to us metaphysical naturalists. If the resulting morality is more pluralistic, less dogmatic, more flexible and down-to-earth than the alternatives, that all seems to me to be something we have reason to welcome.

I can see you're not one of them, but a lot of folks seem to be scared of the error theory of meta-ethics because they think it will lead to nihilism and chaos. But that's not right; it doesn't suggest that morality is just arbitrary or that we have no good reason to have it or that its content is entirely indeterminate. When blokes like Michael Smith think it's a theory of last resort, I think that they are missing the beauty of it, maybe blinded by a craving for some Kantian certainty about what the moral law "really" is.

Have you read Richard Garner's Beyond Morality?

Hehe, this is getting a bit off topic. Still, Mackie seems to me to have done more than almost anyone to develop the nuts and bolts of a naturalistic worldview - including an account of ethics/morality - with real rigour. We need popular writers like Hitchens, but we really need the hard intellectual foundation that someone like Mackie was able to provide.

716. Here Comes the Fourth Musketeer.

Comment #33619 by Russell Blackford on April 20, 2007 at 6:13 pm

For me it will always be David Hume-Bertrand Russell-J.L. Mackie, with Michael Martin as backup.

That said, I look forward to reading Hitchens' book.

717. Gay hate church to picket VT gun rampage funerals

Comment #33616 by Russell Blackford on April 20, 2007 at 6:03 pm

Brian, we're all feeling a bit angry at the moment - or maybe it's just me. :)

The gun rampage in itself was a terrible event, though one that most of us were content to keep our silence about, as we have nothing in particular to contribute. E.g. I've said nothing whatsoever about it on my own blog, and I doubt that many other avowed metaphysical naturalists were running around trying to find a way to exploit the event for their own agenda. But now we've witnessed the obscene responses by the likes of Dinesh D'Souza and these fundamentalist nut-jobs from the WBC. Those responses certainly stirred up some emotions in me.

Sitll, it's worth reminding ourselves that there are many Christians and other religionists in the world who, despite having an incorrect worldview, are good people with moderate, or quite enlightened, attitudes towards such issues as sexuality. Anglican/Episcopal congregations, for example, are often well stocked with such people. There are plenty of folks like that whom I know and like, in some cases very much, even if I and my inner circle of friends are an atheistic bunch of sinners riding the hellbound train.

In short, WBC may purport to represent the views of its deity, but what it does not do is provide a representative sample of what Christians in general are like.

718. Dinesh D'Souza says I don't exist: an atheist at Virginia Tech

Comment #33585 by Russell Blackford on April 20, 2007 at 4:34 pm

Dimwit D'Souza seems to be in denial here with his latest. He made a grave error of judgment - to put it in the most charitable way I can - in the disgracefully opportunistic way he tried to exploit this tragedy, and he is not big enough to acknowledge it and go on to the next topic that pushes his buttons.

I was moved seeing the words of the Virginia Tech professor, reposted here, and also by what some of the students have had to say, e.g. Mr Harry (I think it was) in this thread.

Denoir - yes, religion is comforting. That is doubtless one of the things that make it so attractive, and hence one of the reasons why it persists in the face of the hard evidence. If someone simply wanted to make that point in a neutral way, hooking it on the fact of this horrible college massacre, nobody would be too upset.

But that is not what D'Souza did. The whole tone of his piece - and indeed the follow-up pieces - was hostile and crowing, using the event as an opportunity to attack Dawkins and atheists in general. It is an obscene exploitation of the event. I'd like to think that you can see the difference and understand why many of us feel nothing but disgust, or anger, at his display.

719. NEXT MONDAY: Bill O'Reilly interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #33320 by Russell Blackford on April 19, 2007 at 9:29 pm

RD will fine. Most people couldn't do this gig - I, for example, would probably lose my temper, go red in the face with exasperation, etc., if the guy tried to bully me, and generally not come out of it well. But RD is unflappable and patient; he'll do a great job.

720. Dinesh D'Souza says I don't exist: an atheist at Virginia Tech

Comment #33315 by Russell Blackford on April 19, 2007 at 9:11 pm

We're dealing with somebody (I mean D'Souza) who has demonstrated that he has not an ounce of shame or dignity or basic human decency. I was never a fan of his - quite the opposite, I admit - but I did not imagine that he would sink so low as we've seen in his recent blog posts. I don't even think, now, that there's much point in trying to engage him: anyone can see immediately just how irresponsible and opportunistic he is. He really is scum.

721. Iran Exonerates Six Who Killed in Islam's Name

Comment #33308 by Russell Blackford on April 19, 2007 at 8:35 pm

Ah, I sooooo love these traditional belief systems. They're so cute and cuddly.

I can really see myself transforming into a communitarian over this - hey, and then maybe I can strike it rich with the Templeton folks, like Charles Taylor did.

722. Where Is Atheism When Bad Things Happen?

Comment #33307 by Russell Blackford on April 19, 2007 at 8:31 pm

I left a comment on his blog, but maybe this wasn't the best thing to do: he seems to get some sort of weird pleasure from all the attention, even when it's people telling him that he's behaving disgracefully (as he certainly is on this occasion).

723. Where Is Atheism When Bad Things Happen?

Comment #33278 by Russell Blackford on April 19, 2007 at 7:23 pm

D'Souza's insensitive opportunism is simply breathtaking.

724. Flea Circus!

Comment #33103 by Russell Blackford on April 19, 2007 at 7:43 am

Good one, mr gollo. Yeah, I forgot those titles.

There's also this one, which I really must claim before someone else does:

Fleas and Fools, Lunatics, Lovers, and Poets: McGrath anent Dawkins - the Discursive Symb(i)ology of Late Capitalist Eros

725. Flea Circus!

Comment #32948 by Russell Blackford on April 18, 2007 at 7:35 pm

Maybe I should experience a sudden conversion and cash in before it's too late. Or I could at least "claim" some titles quickly.

Letter of a Christian Denomination
The Godsend of Faith
Breaking with Hell
Darwins' Dangerous Devils
Dennett's Delusional Idea
Hitchens is Not Great
Hitchens is an Ingrate
Hitchens Can Grate
The Dawkins Confusion
The Dawkins Illusion
The Dawkins Desperation
The Dawkins Despoilation
The Dawkins Damnation
The Dawkins Delirium
The Dawkins Dorkitude
Dawkins' Error
Dawkins' End
Dawkins' Faith
The End of Dawkins' Faith
Letters About Dawkins' Desperation
Some Dawkins Derogation
Dawkins' Apostasy
The Dawkins' Apostrophe


and on "our" side

Letter to a Christian Nutcase
The God Defenestration
The Dawkins Delousing
The End of Fleas

726. Sam's Flea!

Comment #32875 by Russell Blackford on April 18, 2007 at 3:41 pm

Mr (or Dr?) Wilson, there's an edit function available - so you can correct your typos without having to write follow-up posts. I use this all the time, because I'm always making typos; it's a handy thing to know about if you're like me.

727. For Some Hispanics, Coming to America Also Means Abandoning Religion

Comment #32137 by Russell Blackford on April 15, 2007 at 11:51 pm

Damn Jim Jones. References to Kool-Aid once had the relatively harmless sense of drinks spiked, as a prank, with LSD.

728. Postmodernism Disrobed

Comment #31757 by Russell Blackford on April 14, 2007 at 5:31 am

Yeah, now the threadjacking is over we're seeing some detailed and insightful comments being made here. I hope no one had just, sort of, given up on the whole thread.

729. Postmodernism Disrobed

Comment #31474 by Russell Blackford on April 12, 2007 at 9:05 pm

I was saddened to see that Kurt Vonnegut - one of the great literary postmodernists - died. Again, though he belongs there with his love of irony, pastiche, etc., and his resistance to certain kinds of understanding of character, he is not someone who deserved to be tarred with the brush that we might apply to, say, Irigaray.

Btw, it is really stretching things to call James Joyce and T.S. Eliot postmodernists. If they were not high Modernists, who was?

730. Even non-believers must recognise the moral necessity of Christianity

Comment #30861 by Russell Blackford on April 10, 2007 at 5:34 am

Noisy acolytes, huh? How about "soft-spoken colleagues"?

731. Postmodernism Disrobed

Comment #30063 by Russell Blackford on April 6, 2007 at 3:57 pm

I also wonder whether "post-modernism" (or "postmodernism")is even the best word for the kind of writing that we're all complaining about, or for the rejection of reason and progress that often seems to go with it.

"Post-structuralism" isn't perfect, either, but at least it comes closer.

The word "post-modernism" covers such a vast range of cultural phenomena that somehow react to modernity, or to Modernism (itself something multi-faceted) or somehow express contemporary anxieties about social heterogeneity or whatever that it's become almost useless outside of a specific context.

In some contexts, for example, it can refer to the writing of, say, Thomas Pynchon or Kurt Vonnegut or William Gibson. Or it can refer to certain styles of architecture that rejected the Bauhaus concepts. Etc., etc. I'd hate to tar all of that with the same brush that we apply to Irigaray and Lacan.

732. Is this another Sokal Hoax?

Comment #29951 by Russell Blackford on April 5, 2007 at 5:08 pm

I do wish people would not assume that this sort of writing has anything to do with the philosophy, at least with the kind of Anglo-American analytic philosophy that is most likely to be encountered in university philosophy departments in English-speaking countries.

That field was largely moulded as an academic discipline by Bertrand Russell - that master of clear expression - and it still bears his imprint, much as it's moved on.

Most analytic philosophers are actually horrified by the kind of writing sampled for our delectation. Whatever the faults of people working in Commonwealth or American philosophy departments, this is not the sort of writing that's typically encouraged. It's more likely to be found in various fields with names like "X Studies": "Cultural Studies", "Media Studies", "Feminist Studies", etc.

733. Postmodernism Disrobed

Comment #29813 by Russell Blackford on April 5, 2007 at 12:41 am

I don't pretend to understand what post-modernism is. That's partly because of my undoubted intellectual limitations, but also partly because it's not just one thing. In part, it's a reaction to modernity, which largely means 18th century Enlightenment thinking and concepts of "enlightenment" and "progress" in general - and the idea that the world can be understood through reason. In part, it's a reaction to the artistic and literary movement we call Modernism, which is something completely different (Yeats, Joyce, Eliot, Lawrence and their counterparts in other languages, and other arts, were seldom, in any sense, rationalists). In part, it's other things again. All these things may bear some kind of complex family relationship to each other, but there's no single theory.

I like the posts by Bonzai on this thread, which seem to ring true for me in the description of what's going on.

What I really dislike amongst a lot of this stuff is the element of epistemic relativism,or truth relativism, that runs through it - I think that epistemic relativism is pretty crazy. I do wish people would be careful, however, when they throw around the word "relativism" as if it's obvious what it means - it can refer to many different things, including some idiotic positions in epistemology, but also some perfectly respectable and arguable positions in meta-ethics (as well as some vulgar and stupid ones).

Finally, the person whose writing does make me think that there's possibly more substance in at least some of the notorious French writers than I can find there (so far) is Samuel R. Delany, one of the writers whom I most admire. My instincts on this are, however, very different from Delany's: I enjoy Richard Dawkins' writing for its explanatory clarity, and I struggle, myself, to write as clearly as I can, whereas Delany wants to argue for the merit of "difficult" writing.

One day, I'd like to put to the test what Delany has to say in defence of the whole enterprise of difficult French writing. The place where he expresses his views most succinctly and (ironically, perhaps) pretty clearly is an extended written interview that he did with Kenneth James, published in his (i.e. Delany's) book Silent Interviews. It would be fascinating to use this as a kind of guide to what one admirable, lucid intellect finds valuable in Derrida, Lacan, etc. - actually use it as a sort of reading guide. I've never managed to put aside the time to do this, alas.

734. A History of Violence

Comment #29369 by Russell Blackford on April 2, 2007 at 4:45 pm

I think that avatar is great, Luthien. I've taken the liberty of "borrowing" it for a blog post of mine that it was apppropriate for. Hope you don't mind my being a copycat.

735. Religion useless to Dawkins

Comment #29363 by Russell Blackford on April 2, 2007 at 4:26 pm

It's just a lightweight, mildly amusing article by someone who seems to have no particular axe to grind. No need to take it too seriously, folks. I'm not about to go off and declare Ms Rife an enemy of the Enlightenment over it.

736. Darwin 'was committed to publish'

Comment #28762 by Russell Blackford on March 30, 2007 at 4:55 pm

^I think you'll find that the last supposed witch executed by any method in England was way back in the 17th century. I doubt that that was on his mind in the 1830s-1850s, whatever else was.

737. Hell is real and eternal: Pope

Comment #28028 by Russell Blackford on March 27, 2007 at 4:11 pm

When I first glanced at the headline, my brain "chunked" it as something like: "Hell is a real and eternal Pope."

That would have been about right.

It would also have made a more interesting article.

738. Atheist banned from committee on religious education

Comment #27856 by Russell Blackford on March 27, 2007 at 4:10 am

On the tangential point, I think it's a matter of personal choice whether or not to use a pseudonym.

On this site, I've chosen to post under my own name - I'm not likely to be harassed, or whatever, over anything I say here. The worst I can do is say something sufficiently stupid to harm my credibility with a potential future employer - or something like that. In some other forum where flame wars are more apt to break out, or if I really wanted to let off steam here (as some people like to do), or if I lived in the US Bible Belt, I'd probably take a different attitude.

On the substantive point, if the kids are supposed to be learning about religions and their social role, history, etc., rather than receiving indoctrination into some religion, surely what we want is simply expertise, not commitment to the value or truth of religion, and not some kind of democratic representation of religious stakeholders. I put the point rather crudely, but it still seems to be right.

But maybe I misunderstand the process or what the subject is supposed to be about. It's not actually clear from the article and I'm not British.

739. Nigeria teacher dies 'over Koran'

Comment #27811 by Russell Blackford on March 26, 2007 at 10:18 pm

Down with ethnic or political conflicts and competition for resources. (Wow, what a great euphemism for religious fanaticism. I must remember it.)

740. Sex in the 1700s

Comment #27810 by Russell Blackford on March 26, 2007 at 10:12 pm

So much prudery combined with so many capital letters.

741. A hundred residents of a Russian village have refused to switch to new passports because they believe the documents' bar codes contain satanic symbols

Comment #27807 by Russell Blackford on March 26, 2007 at 8:33 pm

I'm a horrible pedant. :)

Actually, I still prefer to write "BC" and "AD" and be open about the fact that the calendar is based on the traditional year of birth of Jesus. The more politically-correct BCE and CE still use that year, so I don't see how they are an improvement. In fact, to think of Jesus' alleged birth in 1 AD as inaugurating a "common era" seems like it should be more offensive if anything. Go figure. *shrug*

742. Happy 66th Birthday, Richard Dawkins!

Comment #27796 by Russell Blackford on March 26, 2007 at 6:30 pm

Like thousands of others, I left a message, but here's the little poem that went with it, again (I also couldn't resist making a couple of little authorial changes):

======


Richard, you've reached the age of 66,
The number of 9.9 per cent of a Beast.
So, celebrate! The treacheries and tricks
Of priests and critics won't disturb your Feast.

Tomorrow, yes, there's more work to be done:
Delusions to be combatted, and all.
Today, for once, forget it ... and just have fun:
It's only once a year, so have a ball.

Your plethora of parasites - your curse -
Won't go away. Like fleas upon a hound,
They know they're on a good thing. Then there's worse:
Appeasers, pleased to flee the dangerous ground.

So, take a break - there's soon another year,
Defying darkness, misery and fear.

743. Germany Cites Koran in Rejecting Divorce

Comment #27634 by Russell Blackford on March 25, 2007 at 9:05 pm

Oil on water? Surely she meant petrol (or gasolne) on the fire? Quite the opposite!

744. A hundred residents of a Russian village have refused to switch to new passports because they believe the documents' bar codes contain satanic symbols

Comment #27628 by Russell Blackford on March 25, 2007 at 7:15 pm

Do you mean the sac kof Jerusalem and the destruction of the Jewish Temple?

The sack of Rome is rather different. That was first performed by Alaric the Visigoth a few hundred years later. (Actually, I see that the Gauls did it the first time, some hundreds of years of earlier, but the first time in the history of the Empire was by Alaric in 410 AD. Over the centuries since, various other folks had their go at it.)

(Pssst, Veronique, I don't think you mean "BCE". I think you mean "CE", or "AD" as we used to say.)

Anyway, I love all the religious stupidity that I get to read about on this site. Good for a laugh.

745. Atheist banned from committee on religious education

Comment #27508 by Russell Blackford on March 25, 2007 at 4:33 am

Ah, the stupidity. The people who are most likely to be able to offer something sensible about how religion should be taught are those who are able to look at religion from the outside rather than from inside some religion or other.

746. Richard Dawkins and the dangerous delusion of religion

Comment #25975 by Russell Blackford on March 15, 2007 at 10:40 pm

Some of you would like the novella, "If this goes on ..." by Robert A. Heinlein.

747. A 'Sad First' in the History of the Congress

Comment #25759 by Russell Blackford on March 15, 2007 at 3:35 am

Let's try to avoid ageism, eh? I don't know how old other people here might be, but I'm old enough myself to have parents who are now well into their old age. Making comments about old people dying off doesn't go down well with me, even though I of course realise that as a matter of fact baby boomers and the various generations X, Y and whatever else coming up behind them do tend to be more liberal than "seniors".

748. A 'Sad First' in the History of the Congress

Comment #25732 by Russell Blackford on March 14, 2007 at 9:40 pm

It really is a sad "first", of course. It's sad that this is the first time. The atmosphere in the USA is such that (so we're told) no one else in the Congress has been prepared to state freely and clearly that they don't believe in the existence of any supernatural beings. How sad. That's what I would have expected this article to be about.

749. Non-believers can be bigoted too

Comment #25692 by Russell Blackford on March 14, 2007 at 6:23 pm

Cut Malik some slack. He does make some mistakes, as with quoting one sentence from Harris out of context (it seems he missed the point to some extent).

But Malik is a fairly forthright atheist and a strong defender of the Enlightenment. He has, for example, criticised the concept of "Islamophobia". He thinks that Dawkins, in particular, has made out a good case for atheism.

However, he thinks that some prominent atheists, including Dawkins and Harris, are politically naive in certain ways, and he wants to discuss that. He also wants to discuss what can actually be done to reduce the conflict and hatred in the world, and to address the pychological roots of religion's persistence; he thinks that there is a lot more to be understood and done than merely comprehending and exposing the wrongness of religious belief, even though he approves of that as far as it goes. He thinks that when Dawkins and Harris address the "more" they make errors of understanding.

We should welcome this kind of discussion from people like Malik - disagreeing with them where appropriate but not entering the discussion with hostility or defensiveness.

I do think it's unfortunate that he takes such a negative tone in this particular article - it's much more negative than his review of TGD - and it would be better to be reading about his positive ideas. Some of the things he says, even in this article, have merit. Why not engage him in a cooperative spirit and see what comes of it, rather than dismissing him as another defender of theology, blah, blah?

750. She's No Fundamentalist: What people get wrong about Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Comment #25364 by Russell Blackford on March 12, 2007 at 3:36 pm

I'm no great fan of Ronald Reagan, but "there you go again" - more moral equivalency. Making a decision about whether to attack the reputation and credibility of Ayaan Hirsi Ali for some dubious benefit, or whether to be clear about opposing the unequivocally great evils that she opposes, is being characterised as morally equivalent to advocating violence.

I see it as "choosing sides" because there are consequences here: whether we spend our energies for some dubious purpose, as Hirsi Ali's detractors do, or use them to argue against unequivocal evils. I did say clearly that whatever choice we make must still involve us in producing analyses that match the complexity of the world, but Hirsi Ali's detractors are hardly doing that.

But I was obviously talking about choosing sides in intellectual and policy discussion; I said nothing about engaging in acts of violence. As you say yourself, I didn't even imply anything about "taking up arms". So why slip that in at all?