51. Religion and Child Abuse

Comment #47690 by Jonathan Dore on June 5, 2007 at 9:43 am

I would oppose "banning" parents from teaching certain propositions to their children at home (school is another matter) not out of respect for their rights as parents to foist nonsense on their children, but because:
a) banning a *belief* (as opposed to a practice), however nonsensical, turns it into a victim of oppression, thus giving it a moral legitimacy that, in religion's case, is undeserved (this was the great mistake of the communist revolutions in their treatment of religion); and
b) it would be unenforceable, and unenforceable laws tend to be flouted. It's not good for the integrity and credibility of any legal system for its laws to be flouted, and that flouting to be widely known.
Taken together, these two factors would make the idea a "lose-lose" scenario for secularists.

52. Beggars belief: Robin McKie on The God Delusion

Comment #47155 by Jonathan Dore on June 3, 2007 at 7:40 am

Logicel: yes, exactly. It doesn't matter if you're not a "joiner" by nature; you don't *have* to get involved in lots of activities. But if you can just pay your membership dues to one such organization, preferably a national one, you're doing something positive. The more members such organizations have, the more people they can claim to represent. As the numbers grow, the more power they'll have in lobbying government, the more seriously they'll be taken by the media, and the more influential the atheist viewpoint will become. The religious are over-represented in the public sphere partly because they speak through so many different organizations. Atheists have to start allowing themselves to be represented organizationally, or else once the current spate of books is over we're not going to be able to get our voices heard in debates on education and other policy questions where the secular viewpoint desperately needs to be asserted.

I've just returned to the UK after a few years abroad and last week joined the National Secular Society (www.secularism.org.uk); they did a great job last year in organizing opposition in parliament to the "religious hatred" bill that would have risked criminalizing criticism of religion. If you can afford it, I'd encourage everyone here to join one of these organizations.

53. Hitchens and Prager Debate

Comment #46068 by Jonathan Dore on May 30, 2007 at 5:56 am

Russell writes:

Excellent post jonnec, but I wonder what the best way is to answer such a question when you've agreed to answer "yes" or "no".

Surely the best response is not to agree to a "yes or no" answer in the first place. If anyone tries to get you to limit your answer to yes or no before they've even told you the question, it's always because they want to lead you into a semantic trap. This is a familiar trope of TV courtroom dramas, when counsel forces a witness to give a reply that seems to discredit the main thrust of their testimony, but only because the question is phrased in an artificially limited (or artificially open-ended) way. No one should fall for that, or be required to accept those limitations, in the real world.

It's a bit analogous to the story of a reporter asking Richard Feynman if he could summarize on one sheet of paper what he had won his Nobel Prize for. Feynman replied that if he could write it on one sheet of paper it wouldn't have been worth a Nobel Prize.

As soon as you look at it in that light, the unreasonable arbitrariness of the attempted limitation is immediately clear.

54. Those fanatical atheists

Comment #38564 by Jonathan Dore on May 8, 2007 at 4:04 pm

mjr1007 writes:

In quantum mechanics nothing occurs unless it's observed.

Sorry MJR, but that's just spectactularly, completely wrong. Who or what gave you that idea?

The act of observing influences the event.

Ah, I begin to see the source of your misunderstanding. The scale on which this "influencing" takes place is subatomic. The only way you could theoretically "observe" individual subatomic particles is by firing photons at them: any electron that you hit with a photon is deflected by the encounter. That's the extent of the influence. Nothing that you "observe" in everyday life by simply looking at it in the frequency range of visible light is being influenced by you looking at it -- you're simply seeing the results of the natural interactions between photons and subatomic particles. No star observed through a telescope is being affected by you observing it.

Thing occur without human observation.

Indeed they do!

Things must have been observed.

What is the logical connection, or even vague causal link, between this statement (and your first one) and statements two and three? Absolutely none. What is the evidence supporting such a deduction? Absolutely none. You have simply a) misunderstood the nature of "observation" in relation to quantum mechanics (statement 2), and b) made the illogical and completely unsupported leap to the idea that observation is somehow necessary for an event to occur (statements 1 and 4). The only thing observation is necessary for is observing.

The last four terms in your series, which rely on statements 1 and 4, are therefore without basis.

55. Massive explosion is brightest-ever supernova

Comment #38534 by Jonathan Dore on May 8, 2007 at 2:08 pm

I thought super novae were uniformly bright, and as a result were a good yardstick for measuring their distances from us. So, are they saying that this one was closest?

It's Type IA supernovae (white dwarf drawing off material from main sequence binary) that have a consistent maximum brightness. This new find would be a Type II (star of more than about 9 solar masses, which explodes due to catastrophic collapse when radiating pressure is no longer sufficient to sustain the structure against gravity), where the maximum brightness is proportional to the mass.

56. Unholy row at clergy soccer game

Comment #38124 by Jonathan Dore on May 7, 2007 at 3:16 am

*Howls* of derisive laughter, Bruce!

57. How multiculturalism is betraying women

Comment #36846 by Jonathan Dore on May 2, 2007 at 1:48 pm

Yes, there was an article about this case on 22 March (http://richarddawkins.net/article,776,Germany-Cites-Koran-in-Rejecting-Divorce,NYTimescom-Mark-Landler). Following protests, the judge was recused from the case (see www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,druck-473017,00.html).

58. New Noah's Ark ready to sail

Comment #36148 by Jonathan Dore on April 30, 2007 at 9:58 am

Laurence Winch-Furness writes:

were there any woodworms on the Ark? That would have been funny: "Right, now have we got all the insects? And the woodworms? Yes? Oh good, now.... ahhh, shit...

You should have some fun reading Julian Barnes's "A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters". The first chapter is told from the point of view of just such a woodworm, stowed away on Noah's Ark.

59. Pundit Christopher Hitchens picks a fight in book, 'God is Not Great'

Comment #36021 by Jonathan Dore on April 30, 2007 at 12:06 am

joshuslocum -- I was nonplussed as to what the author could possibly mean, so thanks for elucidating what he was on about; no apologies for pedantry necessary to point out such a ridiculous misuse of an ordinary word.

Russell -- "even more ultimate than the antepenultimate"? Why surely it could only be "preantepenultimate"?

60. Doctors Opposing Circumcision: An Appeal for Misha

Comment #35723 by Jonathan Dore on April 28, 2007 at 2:52 pm

bitbutter writes:

An attribute would only disappear if there were strong selection pressures _against_ those who possessed it.

... but that is precisely what those who support the medical "argument" for routine infant circumcision claim -- at least implicitly. They suggest that having a foreskin does indeed increase the risk of a range of life-threatening diseases, and that this justifies circumcision as a preventitive measure. If that were true, the foreskin would be strongly selected against.

But it isn't.

61. Atheists split on how to not believe

Comment #34523 by Jonathan Dore on April 24, 2007 at 10:45 am

On the question of whether atheists should join atheist organizations, I'm inclinced to think it's a good idea, not necessarily because you want to spend a lot of, or even any, time in communal or group-building activities, or because you agree 100% with their platform, but simply because the larger their membership is -- the more people they can claim to speak on behalf of -- the more influence they can exert in political lobbying and in the media. A large cause of the total marginalization from public discourse that atheists have formerly suffered in the US is the fact that the organization claiming the title "American Atheists" is, in membership terms, a pipsqueak on a par with a shoe-buckle collectors' club. If it, or any other similar organization, had a membership on a level with the NRA or the southern baptists -- i.e. a membership that actually reflected something like the real numbers of American atheists -- then the political, legal, judicial, educational, media, and cultural environment in which atheism was discussed in the US would be totally transformed.

62. Doctors Opposing Circumcision: An Appeal for Misha

Comment #32388 by Jonathan Dore on April 17, 2007 at 1:39 am

I have no problem with infant circumcision... not because it's medically beneficial (that is either not true, or not certain)... but because many women like it (and many other women are turned off by uncircumcised men ...

Spinoza -- I've enjoyed your posts, but I can hardly believe I'm reading this. Mutilation of the most sensitive part of the body "because women like it"? I understand that exactly the same argument applies in East Africa to justify clitorodectomies: men like it, and are "turned off" by women with intact clitorises. Not really much of a justification, is it?

Women in the US may have become accustomed to seeing uncircumcised men because infant circumcision is practised so widely there (not just among Jews and Muslims), supposedly on health grounds. It's just what women there have got used to. In most of Europe the practice is still largely restricted to religious groups, so women there are not frightened of foreskins.

As for the supposed health benefits of circumcision, reduced susceptibility to disease etc, the answer is simple: if not having foreskins provided any sort of survival advantage, human males would have evolved without one.

63. Nisbet and Mooney in the WaPo: snake oil for the snake oil salesmen

Comment #31941 by Jonathan Dore on April 15, 2007 at 2:17 am

Leave aside for a moment the validity of Dawkins's arguments against religion. The fact remains: The public cannot be expected to differentiate between his advocacy of evolution and his atheism. More than 80 percent of Americans believe in God, after all, and many fear that teaching evolution in our schools could undermine the belief system they consider the foundation of morality (and perhaps even civilization itself).

As Johan suggests above, I would have thought an obvious place to start for anyone who wanted to do something about the above percentage would be to point out loudly and repeatedly that, outside the United States, believers tend not to have this problem. The RC Church (hardly a bastion of louche liberalism) has accepted evolution without quibble for about a century; so has the worldwide Anglican Communion, and almost any other mainstream Christian church with pretensions to international status. If this simple fact were repeated and pondered often enough and forcefully enough, perhaps a more significant portion of those 80 per cent would begin to ask themselves what makes them so special that they refuse to admit something that the vast majority of their fellow believers have already long taken on board. By refusing to even acknowledge the issue, people like Nisbet and Mooney implicitly submit to the American Exceptionalist mindset that is so unfortunately characteristic of US Christianity.

Once that mindset is breached, the centre of debate will have shifted (thanks dthuleen) from one direction; then they'll all be a bit closer to the shift that Dawkins, Harris et al. are making from the other side.

64. Militant atheists: too clever for their own good

Comment #31126 by Jonathan Dore on April 11, 2007 at 4:45 am

Re real names:

I always use my real name because it helps keep me "honest". It saves me from making an argument I can't defend, from using rhetoric to make a position sound more absolute than it is, and from insulting people for gratuitous effect.

65. Postmodernism Disrobed

Comment #29473 by Jonathan Dore on April 3, 2007 at 3:30 am

Ellen -- I for one greatly appreciate the time you took to spell out an intelligible sketch of what the quoted passages were on about. But doing so confirms my impression that this mode of thought is essentially pointless, uninteresting (because it points out the obvious), and parasitic upon real intellectual achievement. A very sad thing for universities today that it has become entrenched in academic disciplines, such as English and Music, that used to be about the study and analysis of bodies of real work, but are now being assimilated, Borg-like, into branches of this insipid philosophizing -- an obfuscatory froth of commentaries upon other commentaries.

Seems to me that philosophy, which used to encompass the whole of reasoned thought before the introduction of the scientific method, probably still has an essential role only in questions of moral and political thought. (Even logic is probably best thought of now as a branch of mathematics.) Outside those areas, it's hard to see where its continuing relevance lies, except as a historical study of past modes of understanding.

smurrish -- I'm sure Dawkins understands perfectly well that the "modern" in "postmodernism" is a reference to "Modernism" with a capital M. Nothing he wrote suggests he doesn't.

66. Religion useless to Dawkins

Comment #29332 by Jonathan Dore on April 2, 2007 at 3:12 pm

Article useless to man or beast.

67. Richard Dawkins Explains 'The God Delusion'

Comment #29103 by Jonathan Dore on April 1, 2007 at 4:02 pm

"I think you may be extrapolating a little too much from your impressions of Germany. As this is an English-language site, most non-American contributors here are probably Brits, and the situation you describe in Germany is unrecognizable as a picture of the UK."

Unrecognizable to you, no doubt. As I happen to be able to read English as well as German, it is very clearly recognizable to me. Your implied assumption that I am tarring all the citizens of Britain with the same brush is nonsense, and is not claimed in anything I've said.

Well, since you've failed to differentiate anyone below the level of "European" over the course of several long posts, I think it's a pretty fair inference to draw. If you don't want people drawing inferences, be more specific.

As a secondary point, getting a feel for a culture involves a lot more than reading selected writings (and selected, it seems, in order to maintain the sense of grievance). It involves living with it up close. I lived in the UK for the first 38 years of my life, so you'll excuse me if I feel my perception of the extent of anti-Americanism in the UK is more finely attuned than yours.

I am not at all surprised that no one would have commented on it [Dawkins's alleged anti-Americanism] before, particularly on this site where, in general, Dawkins is preaching to the choir. Americans, in general, are not obsessed with Europe as so many Europeans are obsessed with the United States, and go about their business blithely unaware of the nature and magnitude of anti-American hate in Europe and the rest of the world in general.

If you knew anything about this site, you'd know that it posts all the unfavourable reviews as well as the favourable ones. And since the subset of Americans who have made public comments about TGD are, by definition, the ones who have read it, and therefore would have been exposed to what you call its "in-your-face, crude, and plentiful incidences of irrational anti-Americanism", the rest of this paragraph is irrelevant.

As for Dawkins' many friends in America, visit Davids Medienkritik and have a look at the many propaganda magazine covers on display there. Note, in particular, the collage of "Spiegel" covers at the top of the page. Do they strike you as coming from a "friend."

No they certainly don't … but what does this, or the rest of your long paragraph about Der Spiegel, have to do with Dawkins, or him having American friends?

As for my assertions regarding anti-Americanism themselves, your attempts to debate them are generally limited to assertions that they are "immoderate," "unnuanced," repeated too often, etc. … Instead, you take the usual easy way out, attempting to portray me as "unnuanced," "immoderate," "thin-skinned," one who poses as an "aggrieved victim," or, in a word, a person whose arguments you don't really need to address because that person is not sufficiently virtuous to be worthy of your sublime attention.

Well, I did discuss a sample accusation in some detail (see my four numbered points above in post 113), but you seem to have conveniently ignored that. I wonder why, if you're genuinely interested in discussion rather than free-form ranting?

"Your fellow Americans can stick up for themselves, but your description of those who broadly agree with Dawkins as "hating their own country" is a contemptible attempt to simply shut down and de-legitimize criticism."

This is a complete distortion of what I said, but, again, it is hardly surprising.

A distortion? No, a quotation. Here is what you said (post 108):

Right, he [Dawkins] doesn't tar those Americans with the same brush who happen to agree with him, and there are many. The particular flavor of ideology to which Dawkins subscribes, and which includes a perception of America as the hated out-group as one of its pillars, exists throughout the world. It is hardly excluded from the United States. Many Americans share that ideology and hate their own country with an intensity at least on a par with Dawkins.

Why bother to post something that you then feel obliged to disown? Why not calm down a bit and post something more considered and defensible in the first place, rather than assuming that everyone who doesn't immediately agree with everything you say is your enemy?

68. Gimme That Old Time Religion (Bashing)

Comment #29035 by Jonathan Dore on April 1, 2007 at 9:19 am

"Nor is it clear that the bulk of the religious really buy the idea that faith is belief without evidence. The existence of conservative Christian apologetics, and the attempts of creationists to show that the creation myths are really supported by science, would indicate that Christians aren't that comfortable with belief without evidence."

What do you think that evidence is then? Or rather, since you claim not to be a Christian yourself, what do you think they think it is? If you think there is such evidence, then on what basis are you not a believer yourself? If you think there isn't, then what is your (increasingly desperate) point?

69. Richard Dawkins Explains 'The God Delusion'

Comment #29027 by Jonathan Dore on April 1, 2007 at 8:36 am

Helian, it's not a pretty sight to see someone taking themselves quite so seriously when lamenting how an apparently formerly admired figure has, sigh, not lived up to the observer's Olympian standards of rationality and fairness. Standing on one's dignity affords a rather narrow platform.

I think you may be extrapolating a little too much from your impressions of Germany. As this is an English-language site, most non-American contributors here are probably Brits, and the situation you describe in Germany is unrecognizable as a picture of the UK. This is a country where, for example, Rupert Murdoch owns a quarter of the national daily press, and his two greatest competitors are the Telegraph and the Mail, both of which vie with Murdoch's titles for the honour of being as pro-American as possible. This is not a country that generally suffers from insufficient pro-Americanism, and a shared language makes it all the harder to demonize a nation through being unaware of the range of opinion and nuance within that country.

This is the country that shaped Richard Dawkins, so it would be a mistake to regard him as partaking of the unreasoned, instinctive, propaganda-based reaction against all things American that you regard as characterizing German society (whether it does or not is another matter). He has lived and worked in the United States, and knows countless Americans whom he clearly admires. Does it not give you pause that, among the thousands of Americans who have read TGD, and the hundreds who have publicly commented on it, both for and against, you are the first one (as far as I know -- you'll correct me if I'm wrong) who has levelled the charge of anti-Americanism? If this is such an obvious facet of the book, do you really think no one would have commented on it before now?

Your repeated attacks on undifferentiated "Europeans" living in a propaganda-benighted mindset and obsessed with treating Americans as a "hated out-group" (it is possible to repeat that phrase too often, by the way) are far more immoderate and unnuanced than anything that appears in TGD. Your fellow Americans can stick up for themselves, but your description of those of them who broadly agree with Dawkins as "hating their own country" is a contemptible attempt to simply shut down and de-legitimize criticism. Since when does hating the policies of a particular administration, or drawing attention to a series of unhelpful interventions in other countries, equate to hating your own country? It is precisely because they love their country that they hate to see its name associated with actions, policies, and attitudes that they find detestable. Where have I seen this tactic before? Ah yes: anyone who criticizes Israel is an anti-Semite, and Jews who do so must be self-haters.

Although you disclaim being thin-skinned enough to take any criticism, that's unfortunately how you come across. To give just one example, your criticism of Dawkins's use of Donald Rumsfeld as an example (of someone widely despised today, in illustration of the theme of moral progress) is as follows:

The salient fact here is that he chose an American politician who happens to be an icon of evil to the left to illustrate his point. He could have made his point in countless other ways, illustrating it with countless other individuals. Of course, the fact that "evil" Americans are constantly chosen to illustrate such "points" is of no significance to you [sane1], and it doesn't surprise me that you don't get the point. After all, your ox isn't being gored.

Several points here:
1) TGD is a popular book written for a popular audience in 2005–06. Is it hugely surprising that the author, in searching for an example of a contemporary powerful political figure who has had a major impact on global current affairs that is widely considered malign, would fasten on Donald Rumsfeld? Would the point have been as immediately clear to a largely Anglo-American readership if Dawkins had cited, for example, General Than Shwe of Burma?
2) The fact that Dawkins could have cited a non-American but chose not to means, you suggest, that Dawkins's motive must have been anti-Americanism. Your logic necessarily means that any American name cited in this context would have been evidence of anti-Americanism, and therefore that the only way Dawkins could be absolved of the charge would be for him to have cited someone of any nationality other than American. In that case, by the same logic, citing General Than Shwe would have made him a running dog of anti-Myanmarism.
3) If examples of powerful politicians who have a disproportionate influence on world affairs today seem to you to be disproportionately American, please reflect on a rather obvious fact: The United States is the world's sole military superpower as well as being a cultural superpower and the world's largest single national economy. Isn't it likely that a list of such people would be disproportionately American? Similarly, if one is making a list of religious fundamentalists who overlap with the previous group, isn't it rather obvious that, as the most religious country in the developed world, the US is going to be rather strongly represented? If European names appear infrequently among the list of politically powerful religious wingnuts, perhaps it's because Europe, as a collection of increasingly post-religious societies, offers rather thin pickings by comparison (except for various popes who, you'll know if you've read TGD, come in for their fair share of stick too). By your reckoning, it seems, it is "anti-American" merely to notice these facts.
4) You say "your ox isn't being gored", but seem to have forgotten that the contributor you are addressing (sane1) clearly stated in the post to which you are responding that he is American too. Seems to me he has as much of a right to "own" a piece of what it means to be American as you do. He doesn't feel Dawkins is goring his ox. Why do you?

The site on which you posted your critique, Davids Medienkritik, seems to be populated by similarly thin-skinned contributors eagerly dedicated to seeking out any real or perceived criticism of the United States in Germany, no matter how minor, and loudly decrying it as an unwarranted insult, or as a symptom of some deeper malaise. Playing the aggrieved victim is usually of limited effectiveness; when it's done on behalf of the world's most powerful country, it's an especially unattractive spectacle.

70. Gimme That Old Time Religion (Bashing)

Comment #28905 by Jonathan Dore on March 31, 2007 at 2:43 pm

J.J.

Our dialogue seems to be spiralling in ever-tightening circles of repetition. I've made four -- now five -- separate posts to this thread emphasizing that in Harris's picture the circles are of diminishing reasonableness (I can't quite believe I'm having to type that phrase again!), yet you continue, with Clarkson, to ignore what is staring you in the face and focus obsessively on the secondary, and inessential, characteristic that Harris equates with unreasonableness -- namely "purity" of faith. I broadly agree with that equation; you apparently do not, but whether one does or not does not affect the strength of Harris's point, which is that the unreasonableness of those in the central circle is defended and enabled by the lesser, but fundamentally related, unreasonableness of those in the outer ones.

Sorry, but either you've got it now or you haven't. I'm not going to say it a sixth time.

71. Gimme That Old Time Religion (Bashing)

Comment #28368 by Jonathan Dore on March 29, 2007 at 1:49 am

"So you don't disagree with the actual biblical prescriptions on homosexuality, only with the emphasis that extremists give to it"

Considering that I'm not a Christian, I feel quite free to disagree with the Bible on homosexuality.

Ah, I see. You simply defend other people's arguments for them, but refuse to defend the implications of those arguments.

Actually, I don't think fundamentalists lose much sleep over their attitudes to the poor. I'm sure they're quite able to convince themselves that, in terms of charitable donations and personal generosity, they're fulfilling the letter of the law. Of course they grossly ignore the question as much as possible, but I don't think they pretend that the biblical injunctions actually mean the opposite of what they do, which is the feat of gymnastics a modern-day believer in the OK-ness of homosexuality would have to do.

But as I said in my last post, I'm curious as to why you (and Clarkson) invest so much in an objection that has no impact on Harris's argument.

72. Gimme That Old Time Religion (Bashing)

Comment #28275 by Jonathan Dore on March 28, 2007 at 3:27 pm

J.J. wrote:

You have yet to show that jihadists and dominionists really do take their faiths "straight from the original texts."

Hmm, I've also failed to show that water flows down hill, but do I really need to? Perhaps it's to do with the fact that they say explicitly that they do and, in argument, always rely on quoting texts from their magic books, rather than relying on later commentaries, complex theological positions, or traditions of interpretation. I consider such people to be representative of their faiths in a pure (i.e. simple, unadorned) form, though not, thankfully, numerically representative of their populations. You apparently do not consider them representative, but I'm unclear as to what problem you (and Clarkson) think this poses for Harris's argument even so. The concentric circles, as I keep saying and you keep ignoring, are of diminishing reasonableness. Whether you consider the most unreasoning of believers to be "true" representatives of your faith or not, Harris's point is not diminished: all believers, in whatever circle, share the same basic attitude that makes them a part of the structure in the first place: the attitude that faith -- belief without evidence -- is a virtue. By creating societies in which this attitude is fostered, majority faith communities (whether they are in the mainstream or not, and whether they are holding "truly" to the central tenets of their belief or not) are creating and sustaining the essential conditions that the toxic extremists need in order to function: a supply of volunteers, primed by upbringing in unquestioned belief in a supernatural imaginary friend, and taught the habit of reverencing a holy book. All the extremist need do is appeal to the eager young mind to believe more intensely, and take the words of the holy book more literally. The change of emphasis in the extremists' theology is a minor step compared to the habits of uncritical thought that make their recruiting task possible in the first place.

Jonathan Dore: "Surely it doesn't matter if the bible only mentions homosexuality in passing"

Of course it does. You are trying to argue that the purest form of Christianity is the extremist one. Yet a form of Christianity that focuses on a few verses in the Bible while ignoring major themes like care for the poor can hardly be said to adhere to the Bible that closely.

Sorry to go back to an old point, but, as an aside, I loved this delightful example of mental gymnastics. So you don't disagree with the actual biblical prescriptions on homosexuality, only with the emphasis that extremists give to it (i.e. the fact that they embarrassingly draw attention to it)? Or do you mean that since there are only three verses in the bible that mention homosexuality, it doesn't matter that all three of them explicitly condemn it? In fact, there being only three verses means, in fact, that the true understanding of the Christian position is that homosexuality is actually just fine and dandy. After all, if God was really against it, he would have ensured that there were, oh, at least a dozen verses condemning it, wouldn't he?

Instead, why not just accept the fact that your tolerance of homosexuality is the product of your being an educated, humane, early 21st-century person in a reasonably civilized part of the world, and a partaker in the general moral zeitgeist of the times, rather than pretending that you have discovered a tolerance of homosexuality in Christianity that twenty centuries of believers before you have failed to uncover.

73. Gimme That Old Time Religion (Bashing)

Comment #27976 by Jonathan Dore on March 27, 2007 at 1:23 pm

Jonathan Dore: "YES, Harris is saying (as Dawkins is with his Gerin Oil trope) that the more extreme forms are the purer ones"

If this is the case, then Clarkson has understood Harris quite well, as he writes that Harris believes that "the most 'extreme,' of those speaking in the name of Christianity, Islam or Judaism, adhere to most strongly, and best represent the central tenets of their respective faiths."

"Best represent" (Clarkson's words) suggest that he understands Harris to mean jihadists and dominionists are most representative of Muslim and Christian believers today (as is made plain by his later response along the same lines, that "there are few theologians who are not jihadists or dominionists themselves who would place such controversial groups at the center of their traditions"). Well so what? -- Harris never claimed they were. Rather, jihadists and dominionists are simply the purest of believers -- that is, their faith is taken straight from the original texts, with as few overlays of modernity as possible. The mainstream of Christianity today, in which I assume you situate yourself, is, as I mentioned earlier, a much modified version of that faith, which is the result of a profound and complex interaction with five centuries of science and humanism. I'm sorry if you're offended by the idea that this modern mainstream is "impure", but if you can imagine a Luther or a Boniface VIII transported to the modern world, but with all their instincts for certainty and authoritarianism intact, who do you think they would most recognize kinship with -- you, or a dominionist? It is no discredit to you that they might prefer the company of Rousas Rushdoony.

In Islamic terms, the mainstream is not jihadist, but its distance from this purest form is less than in the Christian case, for a number of reasons: the generally low level of education among the populations of Islamic states; the inherently more bellicose content of the Koran; the widely held belief that the Koran is the actual words of god, rather than just inspired; and the sense of grievance against the West that is carefully fostered by religious authorities in Islamic nations. The concentric circles of deteriorating reasonableness are more tightly drawn in Islam, but the principle is the same.

74. Are You Right Eyed Or Left Eyed?

Comment #27750 by Jonathan Dore on March 26, 2007 at 1:59 pm

I seem to be right-eyed, but the focus in my right eye is much worse than in my left. Bugger.

75. GM mosquito 'could fight malaria'

Comment #27749 by Jonathan Dore on March 26, 2007 at 1:51 pm

Phaeonix and Steven Mading: your caution is sensible and necessary, of course. However I think in this case experiment can be made fairly safely: the GM chcaracteristic, since it is sterility, by its nature cannot be passed on into the gene pool, so the area over which it is effective is limited by the number of sterile insects released at any one time and place. By controlling this fairly carefully, presumably researchers could then assess the impact of the loss of mosquitoes in a given area on species that predate them, such as dragonflies, before any larger-scale releases are attempted.

In terms of the abstract question of specicide, mosquitoes are the only species I can think of that I would contemplate doing this to, but I haven't thought deeply about the subject and would welcome other views on the ecological factors to be considered.

76. Gimme That Old Time Religion (Bashing)

Comment #27709 by Jonathan Dore on March 26, 2007 at 8:39 am

To move such people you have to appeal to them on an emotional level. If we are rational, we must face reality and accept human nature.

That's an interesting point, gaijin51. Can you give us an example of the kind of approach you mean please? Humour? Indignation?

77. God and His Gays

Comment #27708 by Jonathan Dore on March 26, 2007 at 8:26 am

Indeed at the time the 'scientific' consensus amongst the liberal elite [Hume, A. Huxley, Wells] was that some races were superior to others (which of course could have some scientific basis - we may want all races to be equal but what if there was empirical evidence - as these men thought- that one race was superior?). Thankfully men like William Wilberforce and many other Christians accepted the biblical teaching that all human beings were created equally in the image of God and that therefore there was no basis for discrimination. I'm glad that science has (mostly) caught up...

David, your memory is rather selective. Abolitionism was part of a general Enlightenment movement that brought the best out of the Christian position, not a Christian movement that pulled the Enlightenment along with it. I offer for consideration a couple of paragraphs of Steven Weinberg on the subject:

It is certainly true that the campaign against slavery and the slave trade was greatly strengthened by devout Christians, including the Evangelical layman William Wilberforce in England and the Unitarian minister William Ellery Channing in America. But Christianity, like other great world religions, lived comfortably with slavery for many centuries, and slavery was endorsed in the New Testament. So what was different for anti-slavery Christians like Wilberforce and Channing? There had been no discovery of new sacred scriptures, and neither Wilberforce nor Channing claimed to have received any supernatural revelations. Rather, the eighteenth century had seen a widespread increase in rationality and humanitarianism that led others -— for instance, Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan -— also to oppose slavery, on grounds having nothing to do with religion. Lord Mansfield, the author of the decision in Somersett's Case, which ended slavery in England (though not its colonies), was no more than conventionally religious, and his decision did not mention religious arguments. Although Wilberforce was the instigator of the campaign against the slave trade in the 1790s, this movement had essential support from many in Parliament like Fox and Pitt, who were not known for their piety. As far as I can tell, the moral tone of religion benefited more from the spirit of the times than the spirit of the times benefited from religion.

Where religion did make a difference, it was more in support of slavery than in opposition to it. Arguments from scripture were used in Parliament to defend the slave trade. Frederick Douglass told in his Narrative how his condition as a slave became worse when his master underwent a religious conversion that allowed him to justify slavery as the punishment of the children of Ham. Mark Twain described his mother as a genuinely good person, whose soft heart pitied even Satan, but who had no doubt about the legitimacy of slavery, because in years of living in antebellum Missouri she had never heard any sermon opposing slavery, but only countless sermons preaching that slavery was God's will. With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil -- that takes religion.

(The whole article, entitled "A Designer Universe?", can be read at www.physlink.com/Education/essay_weinberg.cfm).

Your remark was also somewhat achronological -- "At the time" ... but which time was that? Wilberforce and Hume were (just) contemporaries, but both were a century before Wells and Huxley, and in the intervening century, of course, Darwinism had rather radically changed understanding of human origins. In the 20th century, if science hadn't finally shown the fundamental genetic unity of all humans, many among the religious might still be making "children of Ham" arguments to justify discrimination -- and what would you have to argue with against them, except positing your favourite bible verses in opposition to theirs, with no objective basis on which to choose between them? You seem strangely unmoved by the vast expansion in the frame of reference of human understanding that evolution and genetics have brought about. For you, it seems, knowing the scientific truth of human origins is a matter of indifference.

What if some races really were inferior to others? An interesting question. The moral imperative to treat each other equally would still be there, based on the moral instincts we have evolved with (originating from close kinship relationships and now a hardwired response to all humans, and even many non-humans), available to all whether religious or not, and the foundation of whatever worthwhile morality religion has, and falsely claims as its own invention.

78. The Moral Necessity of Atheism

Comment #27682 by Jonathan Dore on March 26, 2007 at 5:57 am

CH has great gifts as an extempore speaker, but the downside is an occasional error resulting from a reliance on memory rather than checking facts. The most recent thinking on the expansion of the universe is that it will expand forever, not reverse in a big cruch. And I may be wrong, but I'd be very surprised if the US Constitution is still the only one in the world, even among acknowledged democracies, that makes no mention of God.

I'm greatly looking forward to his forthcoming book "God is not Great" ... but I hope the publishers will have had it fact-checked, or he'll be giving the theists point-scoring material to distract attention from his arguments.

79. GM mosquito 'could fight malaria'

Comment #27677 by Jonathan Dore on March 26, 2007 at 5:22 am

I'm slightly concerned at the approach of attacking malaria, or anything else, by breeding stronger, healthier blood-sucking insects. What strikes me as a better, more radical solution to all the problems caused for all of the many species that mosquitoes parasitize is the work done to develop GM sterile males (see www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,3605,1588727,00.html). By mating with females but failing to produce offspring, this population would swiftly eradicate all mosquitoes within a target region.

80. Gimme That Old Time Religion (Bashing)

Comment #27662 by Jonathan Dore on March 26, 2007 at 3:30 am

The problem is that even in a bible-verse pissing contest, about the only place where the moderates and liberals are in a weaker position than the extremists is creationism. Just about all the other Christian Right positions either emphasize something only occasionally mentioned in passing in the Bible (like homosexuality), or not dealt with in the Bible at all (like abortion). The bulk of the law in the Old Testament is superseded by Paul and the author of the letter to the Hebrews. The Sermon on the Mount provides a serious roadblock to Christians advocating violence, and to get around it requires exegetical kludges at least as bad as those used to stretch Genesis to accommodate evolution. A "clear, rational, empirical, neutral basis" would certainly be a better footing for debate, but the idea that "belief that there is a supernatural god who commands certain actions [in some holy book] and condemns others" concedes much to the extremists only works if the contents of the holy book tend to advocate extremism. As it stands, Christian theocracy has tepid biblical support at best.

Surely it doesn't matter if the bible only mentions homosexuality in passing: every time it is specifically mentioned, it is expressly stated to be an abomination, in Romans no less than in Leviticus. Crafting a more tolerant or forgiving attitude from scripture requires taking other passages, about other matters, and presuming to extend them to include homosexuality as well (even though their authors would probably have been horrified by such an extension). In other words, it is a process of metaphorical or analogistic interpretation, which works only among those who have already -- through other social, cultural, or intellectual means, available to anyone, religious or not -- agreed to the proposition that homosexuality should be tolerated or forgiven, and therefore have an emotional and intellectual investment in seeking out an understanding of scripture that they can mould to fit this previously arrived-at conclusion. But how can such a person argue against a literalist who points out, not unreasonably, that there is no need for a metaphorical interpretation of a subject that scripture does actually mention concretely and specifically? For anyone who allows the Bible to have authority (those who assent to "God's existence and Jesus's divinity"), the logic is inescapable, and the literalist wins.

Where a subject is not treated specifically, like abortion, all biblicists must argue from analogy or by an appeal to something like the concept of legal precedent. But the extremists seem to have no trouble in marshalling an arsenal of "sanctity of life" quotes (when it suits them, of course) with which to bombard fellow believers who would allow abortion. Nor do they seem to have much trouble in convincing a large proportion of Christians of their interpretation (for instance, the entire Roman Catholic Church is doctrinally committed to this view).

The bulk of the law in the Old Testament is superseded by Paul and the author of the letter to the Hebrews.

But does it say anywhere precisely which laws were superseded, and which not? Rarely. Dietary laws seem to be binned, but any claim that prohibitions of homosexuality are superseded runs up against Paul's clear statement that they are not. So where does that leave, say, stoning someone who disrespects their parents? Or someone who has sex with a farm animal? Or any of the cacophonous welter of bizarre misdeameanours with which the OT law concerns itself. Plenty of fertile ground for the extremist, then, in which to invoke Jesus's statement: "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil." "Not destroy" sounds pretty much like "not supersede" to me, if I wanted it to. In a compendium authored by dozens of writers with varying intentions, opposing temperaments, and often contradictory understandings, is it any wonder that the Bible is a mess that allows almost anyone to claim its authority in support?

And then the evidence of history: Christian theocracy has indeed used biblical support, quite successfully, in many times and places over the past two millennia, and some of the places where it took strongest root, like Calvin's Geneva or 17th-century New England, were places where the Bible was most widely read and referred to -- places which, by your reasoning, ought most to have undersood that it lends "tepid support at best" to their position. In a world where "the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity", even tepid support has, unfortunately, been quite sufficient.

ETA: One more thing. You guys appear to be saying that Harris does not think that the extreme forms of religion are the purer ones, and that moderate religion is diluted. I gather, then, that Harris would disagree with Dawkins' "Gerin Oil" metaphor

I'm not sure why this point is so difficult to understand, but you have misread me in exactly the same way that Clarkson misread Harris: YES, Harris is saying (as Dawkins is with his Gerin Oil trope) that the more extreme forms are the purer ones, and I was agreeing with them. Purer, simpler, more literal, less dependent on outside referents or metaphor, and thus less "contaminated" by cross-cultural influences and cross-disciplinary knowledge. This is the extremist position in the innermost circle, the position of least reasonableness. Christianity's five-hundred-year-long housetraining by its collision with secularity and science means that, thankfully, this position is no longer mainstream, though it has made a frighteningly powerful resurgence in the US in recent decades. The mainstream (in terms of numbers) occupy the circle a couple of rungs out, as Harris very clearly says.

81. The Moral Necessity of Atheism

Comment #27532 by Jonathan Dore on March 25, 2007 at 7:30 am

Hitchens is going to be at the debate in Westminster Central Hall on Tuesday, along with Dawkins and Grayling -- hope somebody will be recording that to put up here!

82. Polish woman wins abortion case

Comment #27399 by Jonathan Dore on March 24, 2007 at 11:43 am

DavidJMH, if you read Kkants post (no. 24, above), then you clearly didn't understand it, so I'll spell it out again.

This woman became pregnant for a third time deliberately, fully intending to bear, keep, and bring up the baby. Only AFTER becoming pregnant, however, was she told that giving birth again would bring on her blindness. (i.e. she DIDN'T KNOW it would have this effect BEFORE SHE BECAME PREGNANT.) Her original decision to become pregnant was not, therefore, irresponsible in any way.

I'm sorry, but I don't think it's possible to express it any more simply. If you still don't get it, please enrol in a remedial English-comprehension course.

83. Polish woman wins abortion case

Comment #27370 by Jonathan Dore on March 24, 2007 at 8:54 am

DavidJMH, did you actually read the article, or kkant's post no. 24? The basis of your criticism seems to be a misconstrual of the sequence of events. Try reading before jerking your knee.

Or are you a common-or-garden troll?

84. Gimme That Old Time Religion (Bashing)

Comment #27354 by Jonathan Dore on March 24, 2007 at 7:58 am

Within every faith one can see people arranged along a spectrum of belief. Picture concentric circles of diminishing reasonableness: At the center, one finds the truest of true believers-the Muslim jihadis, for instance, who not only support suicidal terrorism but who are the first to turn themselves into bombs; or the Dominionist Christians, who openly call for homosexuals and blasphemers to be put to death.

In taking this view, Harris adopts as legitimate, the claim of jihadists and dominionists that they embody the True Religion. There is no basis for his claim. Islam and Christianity are quite diverse, historically rich and there are few theologians who are not jihadists or dominionists themselves who would place such controversial groups at the center of their traditions. And certainly no independent scholars would agree with Harris that dominionists and jihadists represent the core of their respective faiths.

Clarkson seems to make an obtuse misreading of Harris here: the concentric circles, as Harris says, are of diminishing reasonableness, not diminishing centrality or mainstreamness in their respective traditions, so Clarkson is objecting to a point precisely opposite the one Harris is actually making. It is precisely the more reasonable, more mainstream people in the outer circles whose attitudes and habits of thought unwittingly support the activities of the extremists within.

Those on this spectrum view the people further toward the center as too rigid, dogmatic and hostile to doubt, and they generally view those outside as corrupted by sin, weak-willed or unchurched.

And Harris shares the same sneering view of liberal Christians, Jews and Muslims as the most fanatical of jihadists and dominionists. He adopts their terms and presents them as epitomizing the faith, and then adopts their method of invective, calling others weak, heretical, apostate, zeal-less.

Clarkson fails to notice that the very quote that he thinks shows Harris's contempt for liberals is in fact presenting religionists' views of each other; and presents religious liberals' views of extremists, and vice versa, as equally contemptuous of the other. Harris is not taking sides here -- these are religionists' self-inflicted views, as Clarkson's attitudes towards extremists presented here clearly demonstrate.

The problem is that wherever one stands on this continuum, one inadvertently shelters those who are more fanatical than oneself from criticism. Ordinary fundamentalist Christians, by maintaining that the Bible is the perfect word of God, inadvertently support the Dominionists-men and women who, by the millions, are quietly working to turn our country into a totalitarian theocracy reminiscent of John Calvin's Geneva. Christian moderates, by their lingering attachment to the unique divinity of Jesus, protect the faith of fundamentalists from public scorn.

The mere shared belief in the divinity of Jesus does not prevent Christians of all stripes from disagreeing, scornfully or otherwise, on everything from minor matters of doctrine and ritual to the most profound issues of war and peace.

Again, Clarkson fails to perceive Harris's rather clearly stated point on the nature and extent of this "sheltering" and "inadvertent support". By agreeing with extremists on the fundamental point of God's existence and Jesus's divinity, liberal Christians have no clear grounds on which to stand from which to refute the extremists' interpretation. They have already conceded the most important ground of all to the extremists: namely, the belief that there is a supernatural god who commands certain actions and condemns others (among other things). Once this ground is conceded, "debate" or "criticism" between religious groups of varying degrees of moderation becomes a mere footling question of which biblical verses one likes and which one doesn't, which aspects of doctrine one prefers to emphasize and which one doesn't, which interpretive traditions one holds dear and which one doesn't. What it doesn't provide is any clear, rational, empirical, neutral basis on which to make a judgement between these conflicting truth claims. Only standing outside religion altogether does that.

85. Orr vs. Dennett/Dawkins

Comment #27060 by Jonathan Dore on March 23, 2007 at 4:04 am

hightrekker -- what's the paper for which your post no. 14 is the abstract? (Title, publication details etc.). I'd be interested in reading the whole thing.

86. Polish woman wins abortion case

Comment #26744 by Jonathan Dore on March 21, 2007 at 1:09 pm

Thanks cnewell, I stand corrected. I must have extrapolated too far from the Irish legalization of homosexuality and divorce.

87. Polish woman wins abortion case

Comment #26655 by Jonathan Dore on March 21, 2007 at 2:07 am

The sad historical context here is that communist Poland used abortion extensively simply as a means of birth control. That made an association in Polish minds between abortion and communist oppression, which in such a Catholic country simply made a further reason to oppose it; in the post-communist era, therefore, abortion became one of the first targets for the new, pious masters of Poland -- a move that presumably seemed progressive to them but from a Western perspective was clearly a backwards step, all the more so for being linked to increasing difficulty in access to contraception, thanks to the very same Catholic church. I'm surprised the EU allowed Poland entry into the union with such laws in place; perhaps they assumed that if Ireland and Spain can legalize abortion, so too eventually will Poland (and in the meantime, increased freedom of movement in the EU will usually solve the problem with abortions abroad, as abortions in the UK largely solved the problem for Ireland in the years before legalization there).

88. The Religion Clause Divided Against Itself

Comment #26484 by Jonathan Dore on March 19, 2007 at 4:48 pm

Steven Mading: Although I don't want to give fundamentalists any succour, I don't think in practice there is much ambiguity about the actual meaning of the words -- your interpretation 1-B 2- B seems to me clearly the one that is meant. "Respecting" in this case obviously means "regarding", and "establishment" is clearly to be understood in the sense in which Madison would have understood it, i.e. the sense in which the Church of England was (and is) the Established Church of that country, i.e. an integrated part of the country's polity, with a specific constitutional role alongside that of parliament and the crown. This is clearly what Madison wanted to avoid happening in the US.

Rather, it seems to me that the ambiguity comes when one has accepted this meaning and asked the logical next question: why not? Why *shouldn't* Congress make a law establishing a religion (i.e. integrating it politically into the country's system of government)? To answer that, one must speculate on Madison's intentions. His scepticism is well known, but so too surely is his desire merely to prevent one faction dominating another. My personal suspicion is that Madison would ideally have wanted to make his rationalist and anti-clerical agenda more explicit, but that this minimalist wording was probably as much as he could get past the folks who then voted to have chaplains.

89. The Religion Clause Divided Against Itself

Comment #26426 by Jonathan Dore on March 19, 2007 at 8:51 am

John P writes: "I'm not sure how to resolve it, short of banning religion."

Surely the only way it's going to be resolved is by the gradual de-religicization of US society as whole (through other means than the law) and the consequent change in outlook of people -- from average citizens to supreme court justices -- in interpreting the establishment clause. Of course, that won't be accomplished by banning religion (and I'm sure you weren't suggesting it would be), which would only give it a moral credibility it doesn't deserve, so one can only hope that at some point, somehow, a sense of religious exhaustion will set in, as it has in Europe after so many centuries of religious passion, and its power as a fundamental cultural and political force will evaporate. If there is any comfort to be taken from the present situation, it is that the tug of war hasn't yet managed to pull the secularist team over the line even at this high water mark of public religiosity. Publicizing the framers' well-established contempt for religious zeal will surely help make many people pause and think again, since if there's one thing Americans seem to agree on it's usually respect for the framers.

90. Remote sheep population resists genetic drift

Comment #26088 by Jonathan Dore on March 16, 2007 at 5:28 pm

Haute Island is in the Kerguelen archipelago. It's the small island just offshore from the main island (Grande Terre), and is centred at 49 degrees 22' 30" South, 69 deg 55' 30" East. Google Earth has a Panorama shot of an underwater scene (labelled "Vivre") anchored on it.

91. Books on Atheism Are Raising Hackles in Unlikely Places

Comment #23871 by Jonathan Dore on March 3, 2007 at 8:58 am

What a strangely pointless article. I kept waiting for Mr Steinfels to start giving us his opinions about the causes or unifying themes of these attacks, but after merely quoting them, the article ended and that was that. So what? What a waste of newsprint (and electrons).

92. William Crawley meets Richard Dawkins

Comment #23742 by Jonathan Dore on March 2, 2007 at 11:06 am

Toivo -- I don't think you'll get much argument from anyone here. The idea that these working assumptions (such as "the universe is real and not an illusion") are open to any serious vulnerability is as silly as you suggest. These are simply the kind of desperate barricades thrown up by believers in a last-ditch attempt to protect the integrity of what they think of as their intellectual domain.

93. William Crawley meets Richard Dawkins

Comment #23642 by Jonathan Dore on March 1, 2007 at 11:26 pm

A very good interview, but regarding the vulnerability of the underlying assumptions of science to the same critique as the underlying assumptions of religion, I was disappointed that Dawkins didn't point out the crucial difference: that the assumptions needed to make science work are exactly the same for everyone, and are demonstrable and testable as such. I have to assume I can't walk through walls? Well you can't damn well walk through walls either.

Religious assumptions, on the other hand, are entirely internal and subjective; there is no standard of testability to them that would provide an objective benchmark against which to compare your and my responses.

94. Religion in Conflict: Are 'Evangelical Atheists' Too Outspoken?

Comment #23291 by Jonathan Dore on February 27, 2007 at 3:51 pm

"This, of course, is reminiscent of the battles between Roman Catholics and Protestants in Europe, such as the Hundred Years War in the early modern period, when there were disputes about the hegemony and authority of the Bishop of Rome."

A minor slip, but that should of course be the Thirty Years' War (1618-48). The Hundred Years War was a nationalist/dynastic struggle between England, France and Burgundy (though it goes without saying that it went on so long partly because all the combatants thought their invisible friend was fighting in their corner...).

95. Memo: Stop teaching evolution

Comment #22750 by Jonathan Dore on February 21, 2007 at 6:33 pm

Presumably what's going on here is that this is yet another pathetic variation on the familiar attempts made by creationists over the years to claim that evolution is a "faith position", i.e. if you successfully tar it with the same brush as religion, it too will get banned from US classrooms.

When you don't have an argument, you just keep shouting the same thing over and over in the hope that one day someone will believe it.

96. Richard Dawkins interview with Paula Zahn

Comment #22219 by Jonathan Dore on February 13, 2007 at 3:06 pm

64. Comment #22204 by Bremas on February 13, 2007 at 12:40 pm
"It never ceases to amaze me how deep the idea of god runs in American culture ... I currently find myself in a debate with my father over the book "The God Theory" by a Bernard Haisch ... I've never seen the man step foot in a church or mutter the word god in my entire life. But he won't budge."

An interesting question, Bremas. Perhaps part of the answer is that, for your father's generation, belief in god seemed to be an essential part of the "free world's" identity, necessitated by the assumed unbelief of the communist world. This was certainly the thinking behind the addition of the "under God" clause to the pledge of allegiance in 1954. Anything that smacked of atheism, to that mindset, would have seemed to be dangerously aligned with the communist world rather than with the West.

97. The questions science cannot answer

Comment #22048 by Jonathan Dore on February 12, 2007 at 5:59 pm

148. Comment #22017 by Robert O'Brien on February 12, 2007 at 10:45 am
"I read the 3rd and part of the 4th chapters and I would characterize Mr. Dawkins' attempts to refute philosophical theism as sophomoric at best."

I stand corrected. You've read ... about 15 percent of the book then. From this admittedly small sample, rather than "characterizing" Dawkins' arguments, which enlightens nobody, why not share with us the actual flaws in logic that you've detected in them?

98. The questions science cannot answer

Comment #21920 by Jonathan Dore on February 11, 2007 at 7:18 pm

140. Comment #21885 by Robert O'Brien on February 11, 2007 at 12:45 pm. "Mr. Dawkins' criticisms of philosophical theism in The God Delusion [sic] are nothing more than an extended horse-laugh and, as such, do not constitute valid arguments."

Thanks, Robert, for demonstrating that you haven't actually read 'The God Delusion'. Why not give it a try? Not scared, are you?

99. Do stop behaving as if you are God, Professor Dawkins

Comment #21142 by Jonathan Dore on February 7, 2007 at 5:58 pm

6. Comment #20905 by Richard Dawkins on February 7, 2007 at 2:08 am
"Alister McGrath has now written two books with my name in the title."

Quite -- as Oscar Wilde might have said, for someone to write one book with one's name in the title might be fair, but to write two seems to be somewhere between a schoolboy crush and stalking. Since his career seems to consist, as it were, entirely of commenting on RD's, perhaps one should speak of him having a "metacareer"?

100. Panel discussion on atheism where no atheists are included

Comment #21133 by Jonathan Dore on February 7, 2007 at 5:27 pm

Sad that Ted Turner no longer has any input at CNN. Where's a billionaire atheist broadcaster when you need him?