51. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc. were atheists, and they were terrible! Answer that!

Comment #81864 by thirdchimpanzee on October 25, 2007 at 10:09 am

Totalitarian governments needed to create a thought prison as well as a physical confinement of society, from which there could be no escape. It's the same trick being used in Guantanamo. Since religion is the ultimate escapism it was necessary for Mao and Stalin to persecute religion (Hitler didn't need to because he was religious and popular with most Germans). The correct term to use for Mao and Stalin therefore is anti-Theist, and you can leave atheists out of the picture!

An atheist doesn't necessarily care if you believe in God or Santa or whatever. An anti-theist does care - and Mao and Stalin certainly did care what you believed.

BTW - as an anti-Theist I realise this paints me into a corner, but I'm also a libertarian, and I'm not currently running a large Asian country.

52. Science can answer how questions but only religion can answer why questions

Comment #81848 by thirdchimpanzee on October 25, 2007 at 9:31 am

Thanks for the reminder oisha, and before any other Canadian makes the observation, the traditionally dominant Canadian Liberal party occupies the political centre. Well, at least I haven't seen a left wing Conservative Party (although Joe Clark's 1980's Tories in Canada would have passed muster as liberal Democrats in the US).

Of course, left-wing and right-wing refer to French revolutionary days - if you have one of those fancy new horseshoe shaped legislatures, what terms do you use instead?

53. I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist

Comment #81842 by thirdchimpanzee on October 25, 2007 at 9:13 am

My quick response:

"No - you don't have enough curiosity to be an atheist". It's our curiosity that forces us to look beyond simplistic answers to how and why we're here in this amazing universe.

54. Science can answer how questions but only religion can answer why questions

Comment #81829 by thirdchimpanzee on October 25, 2007 at 8:44 am

Who says science doesn't answer "why" questions? For example,

Why is the half-life of Carbon-14 approximately 6,000 years?

I'm not saying we have come up with a definitive answer, and what answers we are turning up necessarily involve deep matters of sub-atomic physics, but this is a legitimate "why" question.

The same holds for more obvious "why" questions such as Hitchin's "why do I give blood?". I think its been a huge mistake to concede any ground here.

I understand that the religious version of a "why" question regarding the Carbon-14 half-life would be:

What is the purpose of Carbon-14 having a half-life of 6000 years?

The obvious answer is to mess with Genesis, but the real problem is that the second question uses a very narrow definition of "why" - which translates to "what is the purpose". If that is the intent, then the dilemma should be rephrased to read:

Science can answer how and why questions, only Religion can answer purpose questions

I think this formulation is more accurate, but has far less zing to it!

An increasingly familiar tactic of the right wing in the US is to take common words like "liberal" and burden them with such connotations that they cannot be used with their original meaning. This happens naturally over time in any language, but the last few decades have witnessed a very determined effort to "politicise" language. We should not let that happen to the word "Why", which is, in fact, central to scientific inquiry.

55. A new website addition: Debate Points

Comment #81305 by thirdchimpanzee on October 24, 2007 at 3:00 pm

One emerging favourite of the theists is to argue that science points towards theism on the basis that a Universe that follows "laws" implies a "law giver", and our ability to comprehend those laws is further evidence of the divine purpose of the Universe. D'Souza in his debate with Hitchins tries to have it both ways, arguing at the beginning that the rational nature of Universe that we can understand with mathematics supports the idea of a rational God creating such a Universe (he totally mistranalates omniscient to do this) - and then argues later that all Laws must allow of occasional exceptions - which leaves room for miracles.

Whatever shenanigans are being deployed, we do need a solid rebuttal to the idea that a rational universe implies a creator.

I propose three distinct grounds for rebuttal:

1. The Universe is not very rational
Whenever I've seen this argument put forward (as D'Souza did) - its usually buttressed by a simplistic understanding of the science. So D'Souza talks about the inverse square law of gravity, but has no idea that Einstein spent the rest of his career trying to reconcile gravity with the other forces, and failing. I don't think anyone wrestling with 11 dimensions, two of which may be time, would call their world very rational.

2. The Universe is not really "comprehensible" to us
This is a bit harder to explain, but if understanding is connected to the ability to predict consequences, then in many areas of physics, climatalogy, astronomy etc. we are basically reliant on computers processing models to generate visualisations or other "conclusions" that we can then "understand". Our evolved brains are simply no longer capable of performing the mathematics or other modelling required to come up with detailed predictions. Obviously we created the computers and the programs to do the analysis - but in the future we will probably have AI's doing scientific discovery on their own, and "keeping us posted". Either way, the argument that the Universe was strangely made comprehensible to us falls away - our brains simply can't handle 11 dimensions!

3. A Universe that follows laws implies a law giver
Maybe its time to ditch the word "Law" from the the scientific lexicon. There's no "Law of Gravity" - and its an 18th Century concept that looks increasingly suspect. What we have are "models" of various aspects of the Universe, and insofar as the models continue to generate useful predictions, we continue to support them. When they start failing, we refine the model to the point where it might have to be replaced. Our actual legal system (at least the Common Law variety) follows this same pattern - these "Laws" reflect transient understandings of how society or the Universe works. This has nothing to do with "immutable" laws drawn from the Bible or any other religious source - and therefore carries no implication of a "law giver"

56. War in Heaven: Hitchens Meets D'Souza on Home Turf

Comment #81191 by thirdchimpanzee on October 24, 2007 at 11:35 am

D'Souza's opening statements contained an attempt to establish that theism is the rational response to the nature of the universe. He tries to accomplish this trick by a wilful mistranslation, deciding that an omnisicient God translates to a super-rational God, and pretending the Universe conforms to a High School level of mathematics (the Newtonian inverse square laws of Gravitational attraction).

This seems to be one of the favoured tactics attempting to overcome the obvious irrationality of theism - that the world is comprehensible to us humans is proof of theistic design. To counter this, it would be necessary to take to audience on a tour of current Quantum Chromodynamics, discuss the physics of a singularity, or even try to integrate Gravity into the other forces. The mathematical backgrounds needed are beyond most of us, and the computational faculties to evaluate the mathematics are beyond ALL of us. This work is increasingly being done by computers, and we review the visualisations or other summaries of the analysis.

The world is a far stranger place than we imagine, and our ability to comprehend this universe will increasingly depend upon other computer-based intelligences to overcome the limitations of our evolved brains. This is obvious to anyone currently working in any of the sciences - including biology where supercomputers are being used to analyse evolutionary relationships amongs HIV strains.

God(s) add nothing to this understanding - something the ancient Greeks figured out 2,500 years ago. In fact they represent an intellectual bankruptcy in the face of complex reality - and contrary to D'Souza's tired claim of theism and science, it was the rediscovery of Greek science (by way of the Arab world) that helped Europeans claw their way out of the Christian imposed dark ages. Umberto Eco does a very good job of explaining the Church's relationship to science in The Name of the Rose - perhaps D'Souza should be sent a copy.

57. War in Heaven: Hitchens Meets D'Souza on Home Turf

Comment #81118 by thirdchimpanzee on October 24, 2007 at 7:06 am

Comment #81095 by PN.Shreeniwas Aiyer

Guys Who Think Dinesh D'Souza is Indian.

This chap is NOT a Hindu. He is a fundamentalist Christian from India. Hinduism is a religion, though backward like other religions BUT does permit atheism and agnosticism.

I'm not sure is this comment implies that you can't be an Indian if you're not Hindu - I certainly hopes that's not the case. Furthermore - India is itself an artificial construct of British, not Indian, origin. I find it easier to think of India today in the same way we think of Europe today - an attempt by a polyglot group of people to form a economic and social entity in which individuals of whatever origin and persuasion can thrive. The current attempts by the BJP and others to promote the equation Indian = HINDU is (to borrow from Hitchin's) utter POISON on every level.

The Europeans have repeatedly rejected attempts by Christian groups (an infamously Jacque Chirac) to insert a "Christian identity" into the European constitution. Post-independence India was conceived as a secular, inclusive society, and if it is to survive in the 21st Century, Indians need to assert themselves as fellow members of humanity first and foremost. I'm not sure how I would want to define "Indian" so that Sonya Ghandi could have been Prime Minister, and D'Souza should be perfectly OK being called Indian - but it has nothing to do with religion (or language), and I also would not accept a cultural definition (are Parsees Indian?). I think the only definition that would stick is geographic - you're Indian if you were born and raised in the place, or you moved there and declared your identity with the country. This definition works fine for the USA - and it is still the best route to a post-nationalist world.

I remember in Goa talking to a truck driver who had a picture of Jesus on his dashboard, and proudly declared him to be "number one God" - a not unfamiliar fusion of Christianity with the local beliefs. D'Souza and his family sound like the Christian equivalent of Brahmins, just as stuck up with their superiority as their Hindu counterparts. So D'Souza is most definitely Indian, and my main point in bringing that up was the enormous gap between the Middle Eastern mythology that infuses Christianity with the startlingly different mythology of his Hindu compatriats. Jews, Christians and Muslims can intellectually agree to fudge the details of their differences, and claim to be heirs to a common inspiration - but there's no room in there for monkey armies!

58. War in Heaven: Hitchens Meets D'Souza on Home Turf

Comment #81012 by thirdchimpanzee on October 23, 2007 at 10:34 pm

Since Dinesh D'Souza is of Indian origin, it would be interesting to hear his public stand on the veracity of Ram and his monkey army building a bridge to Sri Lanka 1.7 million years ago.

Forget atheism for a moment, there are so many religions past and present that have to be repudiated to believe any one of them - I really would love to hear him declare his 1 billion countrymen and women immoral primitives for not following the one true faith.

BTW - How many died during the partition of India, solely because of their religion. Does D'Souza's family in Bombay have personal recollections of this time?

59. Help Counter the New Atheist Crusade to 'Evangelize' America!

Comment #79744 by thirdchimpanzee on October 18, 2007 at 11:59 am

Part of the idea of a freethinkers summer camp is simply to ensure that kids can enjoy themselves amongst social peers - to whom they do not continually have to explain their world view. It's very liberating for children to be able to do this - even in liberal Seattle my kids had to continually deal with being the only identified atheists in class (the best others could come up with was agnostic).

For the most part, I don't think this problem exists in the UK or Canada. There's religious and other prejudices to endure for sure, but nothing matching the overwhelming assumption in the US that everyone around you is religious.

60. Help Counter the New Atheist Crusade to 'Evangelize' America!

Comment #79704 by thirdchimpanzee on October 18, 2007 at 9:08 am

Having also watched the "New Atheism" video from their site, I have strong reservations about the truthfulness of the "parable" of the atheist philosophy professor who ends up apologising for not having read any of the current crop of Christian "thinkers". As others have pointed out, this person was supposed to be a recent grad student of one of the current atheist authors, but there doesn't seem to be a viable candidate for the position.

At least Islam has the honesty to give a name to lying to unbeleivers.

61. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #79147 by thirdchimpanzee on October 16, 2007 at 9:57 am

Danielos wrote:

I bet you can't do any of these things for naturalism either: you can't PROVE it, you can't even offer one piece of objective evidence for it, and so on. So that's all irrelevant: it's irrational to ask those who hold different ontological belief than you to do things you can't do either. That's why I think it's best not to analyze ontologies individually but only in comparison to each other.

The problem with this assertion, which is crucial to the theists attempts to appear rational, is that it is patently untrue. Science incorporates a powerful, evidence-based approach to understanding our world that has been enormously successful. For example, in comparing two models of the origins of the Universe, a "big bang" or a variation of "steady-state" (e.g. multiverses), there are specific predictions that each model would make about our current physical Universe. We can then look at data - such as microwave background radiation - that lend support or weaken support for competing hypotheses.

You only have to look at human history from 5000 BCE to 1600 CE to appreciate how painfully slow was the progress in science and technology - with frequent "dark ages" where knowledge was lost and had to be re-acquired. The last 400 years have clearly been without precedent in human history - and had nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with the spread of scientific thinking and methodology.

Its the obvious success of this way of knowing - which German captures far better than English in the word Wissenschaft - that has forced religious thinkers to try and play the "evidence" game - and pretend that theism is not only a rational response to the world, but a more rational one than atheism. I say welcome to the game - but in order to play you have to move beyond trying to subvert or manufacture "evidence" . Like old-time priests, we'll judge your worth by your ability to make specific, non-obvious predictions about the world that anyone can hope to discover and verify. Further, these predictions have to be clearly derived from your theistic worldview - otherwise they offer no distinction from predictions made by atheists.

Vague prophecies about future conflicts etc. do not count: they not specific, they cannot be observed by anyone in the present day, and they don't necessarily require god(s). The same obviously holds true for miracles that can be explained using the regular assumptions of science, or cannot be reproduced in controlled conditions.


I think we're all waiting for the first list of theistically derived predictions about our world.

62. Report on Hindu god Ram withdrawn

Comment #79105 by thirdchimpanzee on October 16, 2007 at 6:19 am

Spot on Cartomancer - we never did take this stuff seriously, and the Greeks usually had the coolest mythology. Unfortunately I wasn't introduced to Indian or Chinese mythology at that age, and by the time I was in High School my cynical adolescent self couldn't relate to the stories with any sense of wonder.

Its a shock to find out that there are large numbers of people in many countries who profess to take this stuff seriously. However, as Dan Dennet points out in his presentation to the AAI conference, there may be many who outwardly claim to believe for social/political reasons, but really don't think through the belief in question, or leave the belief to others.

Do the religicos of the BJP really, really believe that 1.7 years ago an army of monkeys built a bridge to Sri Lanka? These same people want India to become a great power rivalling China - and for that they need Indian science and technology. One can only hope that the Indian scientific establishment can show some courage here to face down what is probably a cynical ploy to exploit religion in the face of dramatic changes to the Indian social and political landscape.

However, lives have already been lost in India over this nonsense, and I appreciate that it would probably take much greater personal courage as a scientist to take on the Hindu nationalists than our scientists have to contend with in the States.

63. Report on Hindu god Ram withdrawn

Comment #79026 by thirdchimpanzee on October 15, 2007 at 11:27 pm

I take back what I said about the Indian political class - check out this anti-superstition bill being presented in the Maharashtra State Legislature:

http://www.hindujagruti.org/activities/campaigns/religious/anti-faith-bill/

Here's some of the areas of concern for the religious organisation HJS:

How this bill will impact ?

1. A draconian law that allows the State to arrest without bail and initiate criminal proceedings against those who believe in the power of the divine to cure sickness or any other problems. Law suggests the sentence of 7 yrs of rigorous imprisonment and 50,000 Rupees.

2. All Hindu epics, Bible, Quran will be questioned for their correctness on basis of modern science, thus banned.

3. Alternate medical therapies like Reiki, Pranic healing, Music healing techniques and all other will be banned.

4. All miracles are remarked as "so-called" i.e. fake by this law. So all the saints can be arrested if they are not able to prove the teachings of the religion and divine forces on the basis of science.

Police will have many more uncontrolled powers. Though the name of bill suggest that it is intended to eradicate Black Magic, it is not true. Many expert counselors have clarified that under the name of black magic, this law is actually targeting the Faith and All the crimes listed under this law are already covered under Indian Penal Code (IPC), so there is no need for new law.For detail analysis read Analysis by Experts. The copy of Bill is available under section The Black Magic Bill. Also please join to protest by participating in the online signature drive.

Wonder how we could get similar legislation passed here?

64. Report on Hindu god Ram withdrawn

Comment #79023 by thirdchimpanzee on October 15, 2007 at 11:14 pm

Miaka - I don't think anybody is poking fun at the decision to build a canal or not - as the wikipedia article points out, dredging a shallow portion of the "bridge" to cut a canal was first proposed in the 18th Century - and there could be ecological as well as cultural reasons to say no.

What is hilarious is the apparantly serious effort to claim that the formation is an artifact created as described in the Ramayana. Using NASA imagery to bolster a preposterous claim regarding a geological feature opens them up to all the ridicule we can heap upon them. It's precisely this abuse of science to "support" supernatural mythology that we're fighting in the US and elsewhere. It's not unexpected but depressing to see the once secular political class in India falling victim to this religious nationalism. The Communist Party can strut its manhood by torpedoing a nuclear deal with the US - but appear to have no comment on the doings of monkey armies.

65. Report on Hindu god Ram withdrawn

Comment #79016 by thirdchimpanzee on October 15, 2007 at 10:24 pm

Follow up thought - are the monkeys aware of their illustrious ancestors?

66. Report on Hindu god Ram withdrawn

Comment #79015 by thirdchimpanzee on October 15, 2007 at 10:22 pm

Pardon me - but how does a god Ram and a monkey army create a "man-made" bridge?

67. Fox News Attacks 'Godless' Free Thought Radio

Comment #78433 by thirdchimpanzee on October 12, 2007 at 9:13 pm

I'm sure you're right bouwe - its just that I recall that later politicians (1820's?) referring to Paine as an atheist. But you're absolutely right about Age of Reason in the classroom - there are many birds that could be slayed with that stone.

68. Fox News Attacks 'Godless' Free Thought Radio

Comment #78368 by thirdchimpanzee on October 12, 2007 at 2:30 pm

Thanks for the link glittergulch (Comment #78348) - and the contents bring up an interesting issue - the active reshaping of American history for partisan or religious affirmation. I think this is a quasi-religious phenomenon where the source documents are wilfully misconstrued to support present-day political or religious positions; the "founders" themselves are treated as demi-gods and the whole enterprise (America) has a "virgin birth". By the last remark I mean that we are supposed to overlook the obvious fact that the majority of colonists (not colonized - that would be the Native Americans) were only 1 or 2 generations removed from their British roots, and conducted themselves by and large as an extension of Britain, including a lively press and local legislatures. The fact that early designs for the new flag of the Republic included the Union Jack in the corner instead of the current stars attest to the complex attitudes of the colonist to the "mother country".

It's ironic that the right wing, in other situations (usually racist), are only too happy to play up the Anglo roots of America - but then imagine that 1776 saw the emergence of wholly new society. Rubbish, even the tale of Rip van Winkle describes a Dutchman going to sleep before the revolution, and waking up afterward finding little has changed.

The American revolution was important, but like 9/11 - not THAT important. Britain had a far greater global impact in the next Century than its erstwhile colony. In fact the American revolution was a very British kind of revolution - meaning half-hearted at best. The French at least recognised that slavery was incompatible with universal freedom. What the American revolution and founding was NOT was an exercise in theocracy - the freedoms the Fox bimbette Lauren Green attributes to "the man on the cross" are recognised by most American historians as originating in the British experience (where did Habeus Corpus come from?). My hero from that period is Tom Paine - the english atheist who correctly saw the rottenness of Britain, and hoped for a secular, truly free (i.e. no slavery) America. Although befriended by all the major players of the day (Franklin, Jefferson etc) - he has been practically written out of American history books because of his atheism, and the rather obvious discrepancies between his ideals and the tawdry half-revolution that occurred.

The US doesn't just suffer from a God delusion - too many of its inhabitants suffer an America delusion as well - something that is increasingly worrying to the rest of the world.

69. Religion advances despite science (and thanks to Dawkins)

Comment #73129 by thirdchimpanzee on September 24, 2007 at 7:57 am

How disturbingly Eurocentric this religious debate has become (and I include the US in Eurocentrism). As Cartomancer points out (Comment #72984), the author doesn't appear to understand the evolution of Christian creation myths. The article also conspicuously fails to consider other myths such as Pan Gu from China.

Which brings up a very important point - one of the dominant realities of the 21st Century is, and will be, the re-emergence of China as a world power. While it may be hard to discern the religious/secular balance in that country, even the religious component is very different from anything in monotheistic cultures of the West and Islam. Recent American articles about the growth of Christianity in China are wishful thinking, and most recent surveys put Christians and Muslims at less than 5% of the population.

While Chinese school children can get on with learning about the real world, we in Europe (including Russia) and North America continually have to fend off nutters trying to promote unscientific, and un-challengeable rubbish! The Chinese are not encumbered by trying to accommodate the idiocies of prevailing religions. I can only hope that Europeans, at least, can push back and embrace a post-religious future - but that's probably my wishful thinking.

70. Critical Analysis of Case for a Creator

Comment #72196 by thirdchimpanzee on September 20, 2007 at 2:08 pm

This video is a great example of why science and religion don't mix, and ironically that Strobel was correct in his assertions at the beginning of the video that an understanding of science does lead to atheism - at least an agnosticism that renders god(s) irrelevant.

Giving Strobel the benefit of the doubt here that he was genuinely trying to make a personal discovery - the numerous errors he makes are consistently in one direction: that the Universe is finely balanced environment to a precision that strongly implies a supernatural origin.

The problem, as pointed out in the comments, is that the Universe is far from balanced, and we're scrambling on almost every level to rethink our understanding of the forces at work, with multiple theories in contention regarding the nature of matter, energy and forces connecting them. Therefore this "ultra-fine balance" is not coming from the data, but from the observers prejudice. Its similar to earlier biases that wanted to see all planetary orbits as circle to fit a notion of celestial perfection. Its this kind of intrinsic bias that makes me question to what extent Francis Collins can really be trusted as a scientist.

Which brings me to one very big criticism of this critique - the oft repeated phrase that "science cannot make statements about the supernatural". This is a variation of "non-overlapping magesteria" and is plain wrong. What the scientific approach does say is that the supernatural is irrelevant. There can simply be no connection between the natural and supernatural. Take a concept like an "afterlife" - if this is an entirely supernatural concept, with no impact upon the natural world, then what happens is simply unknowable. There can, by definition, be no way of finding out and any speculation on it would be a complete and utter waste of the only life you do know anything about. If, however, you believe in ghosts, or resurrection, reincarnation etc., then the "afterlife" has violated the separation of natural and supernatural, and science can make statements about the concept. So the "supernatural" is either totally irrelevant to our natural existence, or its not "super"-natural after all.

It seems to me that this critique was made for an American audience still unprepared to accept what a younger Strobel clearly and correctly comprehended - scientific understanding is antithetical to theism in any form. Final note - his conversion moment was not based on any new evidence (I'm utterly discounting his time wasting on the "finely balanced universe"), but on a psychological transformation in his wife. Funny how that goes isn't it - the conversions come about through psychology, the deconversions through reality. "The God Delusion" at work.

71. God Talk on 'The View'

Comment #71707 by thirdchimpanzee on September 19, 2007 at 2:06 pm

Truly atrocious and embarrassing. However, I would offer a slightly different interpretation of a couple of statements:

1. The response to "Do you think the world is flat?"
IMHO I think the person responding said what she did because she felt Whoopi was setting her up, and didn't want to give her any ammunition. This is a really big problem in the US, where public discourse has degenerated into ad hominem attacks at the slightest provocation (occasionally followed up with death threats). I don't believe this person didn't know the Earth was round, but she could spout the equivalent of "I don't recall" to avoid having to deal with the follow up question.

The panel was generally too thick to realise this, and carried on discussing the flat Earth argument as though it was important. What I think Whoopi was trying to do (and I've tried this myself in such debates) is to establish a common fact that both sides could agree upon, and work from that - and Whoopi tried to choose one that was so obvious as to be beyond denial. The woman responding didn't want to let Whoopi get her foot in the door - no matter how idiotic her answer might appear.

2. Barbara Walters and the "internets"
I think she was being sarcastic - in recognition of the quality of the panel. She said a number of things that indicate cortical activity - so this was a sly swipe at the ridiculous direction the conversation had taken.

Which brings up an unfortunate conclusion - Barbara Walters, Whoopi Goldberg, and the person on Whoopi's left all seem reasonably intelligent people who could and should have made mince-meat out of the two bimbettes. Barbara had opened up with a genuinely thought-provoking piece from yesterday's New York Times - and from a complete excess of politeness watched the discussion become hijacked and neutered.

One of the reasons people like Simon Cowell on American Idol and Chris Hitchens do so well on television here is that American audiences will accept a level of rudeness from Brits they will not tolerate from one of their own. Americans will happily shred each other through attack ads, or shout at each other, but to actually spend the time to listen to each other and deliver pointed responses - outside of PBS and Jon Stewart's "Daily Show" - it doesn't happen on US television.

72. Religious education

Comment #71475 by thirdchimpanzee on September 18, 2007 at 8:56 pm

I'm surprised this article in today's New York Times hasn't already been linked:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/science/18mora.html?ex=1347768000&en=dd9759e9cc299aa1&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

but the title is:

Is "Do Unto Others" written in our genes?

Perhaps RE can end up in Biology classes.

73. Religious education

Comment #71271 by thirdchimpanzee on September 18, 2007 at 9:11 am

I'm appalled at what is happening on the RE front in the UK. The only RE I remember from the late 60's was a relatively benign survey of World Religions which would have made disbelievers of any of us that weren't too preoccupied with the girls and their mini-skirts.

If the political clout doesn't emerge to roll back these travesties, perhaps some additional lesson plans and support materials could be developed and made available to teachers. These could apply to any of the religions under discussion, and would basically invite children to consider the aims and morality of the God character(s) in the various Biblical/Koranic/Hindu stories being discussed.

More than few deconversions have taken place following a close reading of the Bible - and consideration of the malevolence of the deity involved.

74. How the Public Resolves Conflicts Between Faith and Science

Comment #70390 by thirdchimpanzee on September 15, 2007 at 8:54 am

Interesting that the major reasons cited by the religious to reject evolution had nothing to say about evolution - Jesus, God or Religion in general. There is only the book of Genesis (as far as I know) that has anything to say about the origin of life and humanity - and I would therefore expect Genesis to be the primary citation.

Which brings up an important point - most religious types simply don't understand or know the fundamental precepts of their own faiths. The Christian fundamentalists who are attacking evolution DO understand the implications of their faith - and I respect them for that. The great majority of Christians, Muslims etc are too intellectually lazy to think it through, and I think what we're seeing in these polls is a basic herd mentality at work.

The pollster doesn't ask the respondents exactly what aspect of Jesus, God etc that causes them to dismiss 150 years of science, and also fails, of course, to elicit any details regarding their own "theory".

The picture in the UK is somewhat better, with twice as many respondents believing in evolution. At 48%, this still isn't a majority, and encouragingly only 22% believed in Creationism.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4648598.stm

I'm sure the majority of American and UK respondents who reject evolution consider themselves otherwise rational members of advanced societies (just watch Ted Haggard proclaim his love of Science to RD). But they are never called upon to actually put the pieces of their "theory" together and explain how they account for even a fraction of the empirical data being generated.

Here's the rub - and this extends well beyond science vs religion - humans are generally ill-equipped mentally to handle to vast quantities of data that are being generated by millions of scientists worldwide. Yet on a planet bursting at the seams with 6-7 billion people, about to tip into major climate change, we are at the mercy of electorates that haven't got clue what's going on!

The Christian right (and their cynical Republican enablers like Karl Rove) have understood this dynamic only too well - to the extent of proclaiming that they can "make reality". The sad conclusion of these surveys is that if reality is defined as the common perception of people - they're right.

I'm not sure we have time to try and correct this through improvements in Science education per se, since regular Science teachers have enough difficulty overcoming the "common sense" physics and biology students bring to the class anyway. I think the British results should be viewed as encouraging - in a society far less religious that the US, with arguably a worse education system, almost half the population can accept the theory of evolution. That this has direct political consequences can be seen from the different treatment of Climate Change in the two countries.

I propose that we change tack in the US and invite ID and Creationism into High School Biology classes, and proceed to demonstrate how these "ideas" are empty of any scientific value, and provide no predictive ability whatsoever. This won't be hard to do - any lessons in comparative anatomy would do to begin with.

75. 'Jane Doe' Testifies as Trial of Polygamist Leader Begins

Comment #70204 by thirdchimpanzee on September 14, 2007 at 10:28 am

Comment #70199 by USA_Limey

I am not trying to pick a fight but surely the concern is whether she was coerced or not.

The coercion is not the only problem here. On what basis do we think its acceptable to allow a 14 year old to get "married"? By any normal understanding she was way too young to participate in such an arrangement, with or without sex. I thought this child-bride slavery is the kind of thing we excoriated countries like India for tolerating.

I'm not sure how social workers are going about trying to help these victims, and I can only guess at the terrible complex of emotions the girl must have been going through. I'm not sure throwing charges of rape about really help - I sort of agree with USA_Limey that we should stay out of consensual teenage sex, and the poor 19 year old is probably just as miserable with this whole business.

But I think the act of marrying a 14 year old should be profoundly repugnant, and I'm dismayed that this isn't a primary basis to prosecute Jeffs. Its obvious that the group tries to bind these girls to their menfolk just as soon as they can, before the girls really have a chance to become independent young women (or as independent as you could be in these cults).

Once again, its sex that sells the story - and the real horror is completely overlooked!

76. 'Jane Doe' Testifies as Trial of Polygamist Leader Begins

Comment #70193 by thirdchimpanzee on September 14, 2007 at 9:46 am

In this case, religion is very clearly the basis for child abuse. One can't help wondering if preserving the "rights" of religious parents to indoctrinate and control their children is partly to blame for the US intransigence in adoption the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

This is from Amnesty International's web site:

The Convention on the Rights of the Child is the most widely accepted human rights treaty - of all the United Nations member states, only the United States and the collapsed state of Somalia have not ratified it. The United States continues to lead a defensive action against Children's human Rights lobbying against further measures designed to protect children - most recently against efforts to stop the use of child soldiers.

77. A Response to Jonathan Haidt

Comment #70048 by thirdchimpanzee on September 13, 2007 at 10:58 pm

As others have observed, the US is not a good starting point for these studies. Let's look at surveys comparing religious and non-religious charitable behaviour outside of the United States. The US is a weird combination of modernity and conservative tradition that really should not be extrapolated to humanity without caution. In societies such as North Western Europe or Japan where non-belief is normal, we may get a better comparison.

I don't know what the results would be, but it does seem relevant that three of the most high profile charitable organisations in the world - Oxfam, Medecins sans Frontiere and Amnesty International are European and resolutely secular.

You only have to consider the admonition by the Catholic Church to its adherents to stop supporting Amnesty International to realise, as Chris Hitchen points out, that "Religion poisons everything" - including charity.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6750887.stm

78. Young Muslims begin dangerous fight for the right to abandon faith

Comment #69458 by thirdchimpanzee on September 11, 2007 at 10:15 am

I agree with other posters that these individuals are showing uncommon courage, and need our support. For most of us, especially those with families - its almost unthinkable to continue with political campaigning in a climate of credible death threats.

However, I think Europe is becoming the real crucible for the emerging clash of civilisations - and I'm not referring to Christianity vs Islam, but reason vs faith. As we know from Christian history, nothing excites the faithful quite so much as the existence of atheists, and therein lies the bigger danger to global Islam.

The US is only superficially an opponent, one that is clearly in over its head in the Middle East. As long as America remains a profoundly religious society, it really doesn't pose much threat to the average Muslim parent - after all there's little prospect a "Muslim child" (apologies to RD) is going to convert to Christianity.

In Europe, however, where the default position is increasingly atheist/agnostic, the danger is far greater that the child will walk away from religion to join his/her peers. Atheism doesn't carry the identity connotations that would make it genuinely difficult for a child of Muslim parents to choose another religion.

I think or hope that European societies will start pushing back hard (no "rivers of blood" please - all strictly legal) against idiocies such as faith-based schools, sharia courts and so on. Without actively trying to deconvert the faithful of any persuasion - it must be clear that any child who wishes to "come out" as an atheist, should be utterly free to do so, whether their background is Christian, Muslim, Sikh or whatever. Any attempt by a religious community to issue or carry out threats against such a choice should be aggressively dealt with - there is no basis in modern Europe for tolerating "honour killings", "honour maimings" or any similar attempts to control the flock.

This reaction is not limited to Europe. I think its worth keeping an eye on what's happening in Gaza and the West Bank. It seems in part that the Fatah-oriented push back against Hamas is also a response by a secular society against a potential theocracy.

It seems no coincidence that the higher profile debates on atheism that are now taking place in the US have emerged in the wake of September 11, 2001. The descent of Iraq from the tyrannical secular into the tyrannical religious, and the reemergence of the Taliban in Afghanistan are providing daily reminders of the brutal realities of religiously-based societies - ones that simply don't belong in the 21st Century.

79. Interview with Francis Collins

Comment #69005 by thirdchimpanzee on September 9, 2007 at 1:15 pm

quoting from Collins in the interview:

If God has given us the brains ...

This utterance alone should demonstrate why it really isn't possible to be a scientist and a believer. Since he proclaims his belief in evolution - what exactly does he mean by this statement? Either our brains, and what we do with them, are the products of organic evolution - or there's some discontinuity that allows "magic man" to step in and provide us with a brain that is substantively different from any other brains in the natural world.

As far as I am aware, the current research is steadily pointing in the direction that our brains differ by degrees from our nearest biological relatives, but there's no evidence for any fundamentally different organisation or other "divine discontinuity" separating our cognitive processes from other primates.

Whether its George Bush declaring that freedom is a gift of God, or Francis Collins that our brains are a gift from God - we should all demand to know when and how the gift was delivered, and what is the return address.

80. A Matter of Faith

Comment #66118 by thirdchimpanzee on August 29, 2007 at 12:05 am

I was just listening to this again, and was struck by two of the opening phrases:

To believe or not believe is a matter or faith...

and a little later about the "cosmic dilemma":

To believe or deny the existence of God

The none too subtle point being made in these choices of phrasing are that atheism is a "faith", and atheists "deny" the existence of God. These words are being uttered by supposedly intelligent American, neither of whom appear to have any grasp of what atheism means.

To NOT believe in something for which there is not a shred of evidence would not be considered an act of faith in any other domain of life - even in America. If two Americans met in the street, and one claimed to be a worth a million dollars, but in every other respect looked like a homeless person sleeping under a nearby Interstate, the other would be reasonably allowed to doubt the story. It wouldn't be considered an act of faith to treat the homeless looking person as delusional. Of course the person could be worth a million dollars, but on the evidence presented most fellow Americans would support a position of doubt.

In the case of the second phrasing, the dichotomy is not between belief and denial, but belief and disbelief. That's why I like the title of Jonathan Millers BBC series - "Brief History of Disbelief". To use the word "deny" carries the everyday implication that the person "denying" is refusing to accept something that quite probably exists.

I don't think either phrasing would be found in a comparable British documentary - but it is part symptom and part cause of the reason atheism has such difficulty being understood in the US. The great majority of Americans, even if they don't actively dislike atheists, really don't appear to grasp the basic concept of "disbelief". There's an old observation (not necessarily true but revealing) that the difference between Candadians and Americans was that Canadians "got" Monty Python, where Americans didn't.

Having said that, and being British/Canadian living in the States, I think that observation is no longer true - and the humour of Jon Stewart's Daily Show, or the Onion, can be every bit as wry and ironic as I used to find in the UK. I agree there seems to be a change in the ZeitGeist, but 9-11 is not the only reason. The internet (particularly YouTube, and websites such as this one) and cable television have allowed separate channels of communication to develop that nourish alternative communities. Atheism is finding a voice here as we build up these "virtual watercoolers" around which people can speak more freely. What 9-11 and the Iraq War have done is shift the conversation a gear toward anti-theism.

To bring it back to the video in this thread - this is a CBS show, speaking to an older audience in the comforting phrases that reassure them the following piece might be interesting but more in the way a travelogue would take its armchair American tourists to visit another culture than a genuine challenge to their world view.

Compare this to the "This Week in God" segments on "The Daily Show":

http://colbertondemand.com/videos/The_Colbert_Report/This_Week_In_God

81. Poll: Which religion do you associate with?

Comment #65336 by thirdchimpanzee on August 23, 2007 at 5:06 pm

I just voted. Atheists are down to 69%, but you have to laugh are the arrogance of the ordering - they were expecting Christians to walk away the the lion's share of the vote.

Of course, if they had simply gone with alphabetic ordering - the results would look better (except for those agnostics).

82. Enemies of Reason

Comment #64984 by thirdchimpanzee on August 22, 2007 at 2:51 pm

Watching the second episode - dealing with alternative medicine - I was reminded of stories regarding the re-emergence of witch doctors in post-apartheid South Africa, and the devastating consequences of their influence on a population trying to contain one of the world's worst rates of HIV.

Until recently I confess to very much a live-and-let-live attitude regarding my atheism, and others belief. But RD is right to turn attention to new age quackery - because it is nothing more that a return to "witch doctors", and will have a devastating impact on a world that is biologically interconnected in ways that allow the global spread of disease in days.

On a recent trip to Northern Australia, we saw rock paintings stretching back more that 10,000 years. But some of the most poignant were recent, and depicted the arrival of Europeans amongst the aborigines. With the Europeans came diseases that devastated the aboriginal population, often taking the young and active. Without any theory of why they were getting sick and dying, many tribes assumed it was the work of witchcraft, and compounded the impact of disease by warring with each other trying to stamp out the sorcery that was afflicting them. This was recorded on the rocks.

The beauty of going to a place like Kakadu is to realise that we are all little changed in 10,000 years - except by now, thanks to our "wonderful" school systems, supposed to know a bit better.

83. Democratic Candidates on a Personal God

Comment #64585 by thirdchimpanzee on August 20, 2007 at 8:15 pm

sabre_truth -

if any one of them had said they meditated instead of praying - they'd have my vote. As atheists we don't think there's anyone or anything on the receiving end of a prayer, but the inner contemplation that might accompany the act of praying could have the benefits you talk about.

Meditation has been a perfectly acceptable term in the Christian lexicon for centuries - but try introducing "meditation" into a US school, the Christians will be up in arms about trying to peddle foreign "religions" in the classroom - even though meditation has nothing to do with any religion. This is the stark reality of the situation in the US - the public that is being pandered to by these displays of religiosity isn't really interested in discovery and insight. That's for hippies and liberals and heretics.

What the religious masses appear to be drawn to is standard issue demagoguery that panders to their prejudices about sexuality, homosexuality, race, and the inherent greed and selfishness of humanity. What the Christian, Muslim, Hindu and Jewish fundamentalists share is a profoundly dystopic view of humanity, one that presumes we are incapable of arriving at moral understanding and action without a manual.

So these shabby excuses for wannabe leaders try to demonstrate their religious credibility by invoking prayer. Instead, they unconsciously revealed the worst consequences of such a mindset, describing how prayer help reconcile them to personal tragedy - rather than spurring them to actions that might avert such tragedies for others. The Enlightenment was about escaping this kind of idiotic fatalism and obedience to "higher powers" - watching this crew is to realise how quickly the US is driving backwards.

84. Science and the Islamic World

Comment #62757 by thirdchimpanzee on August 11, 2007 at 8:27 am

Before we get too carried away with the bashing Islamic science, I think its fair to ask why Galileo, Newton, Leibnitz, Darwin etc. were all European and not Indian or Chinese. Materially speaking, Europe was probably no better off than China or India through much of this time, and certainly more religious overall.

When the British first engaged with the Indian subcontinent in the 1600's I really don't think anyone on the British side (or Indian) thought they would end up creating and running an entity called India. This was a commercial venture that ran amok.

This is a well written summary of the state of science in the Muslim world, and one of the most telling entries (apart from the horror of the acid threat) was the banning of the Nobel laureate Abdus Salam from University campuses because his adherence to a "heretical" Ahmedi sect.

As atheists we're obviously unmoved by any supposedly precocious reference to science in ancient scriptures - but that's not really what's happening here. Like morality, these holy books are being "interpreted" to justify actions that people want to take anyway - and religious types know how to "play the game". The deeper enemy here is orthodoxy - and religion is a one way of establishing orthodoxy. Its a better explanation of why relatively secular China stagnated along with India and the Muslim world.

Even in the western world, why was Darwin English, and not American - after all America was (by their own reckoning) the greatest advance in human society. Victorian Britain probably considered itself as religious as America, but its my contention that Britain (along with France, Holland and a few other countries) were much more tolerant of "heretics" than almost anywhere else in the world.

Darwin knew he was throwing down the gauntlet to religion (all religion - not just the established Church of England) - and his hand was forced by another Englishman - Wallace. Maybe these two could have been French, Dutch or German - but unlikely to have been Indian or Chinese or even American.

Its still astonishing to realise that the man Britons celebrate on their bank notes, and is buried in Westminster Abbey is so reviled in America. I'm not saying religion has nothing to do with this behaviour - but Americans get equally excited about socialists and communists, and the term "un-American" really has no British counterpart.

85. Pentagon: Hold On, Christian Soldiers!

Comment #61928 by thirdchimpanzee on August 7, 2007 at 12:54 pm

Lest we forget what happens to ordinary soldiers who wear the uniform while participating in non-military activities, consider the case of Adam Kokesh

http://www.countercurrents.org/rainer080607.htm

who is having his discharge status retroactively changed for appearing in a street theatre with a uniform stripped of all insignia.

What is sickening about the abusers in this Christian video is that they are deliberately exploiting their positions as officers to lend credibility to their evangelism. I won't hold my breath waiting for a single one of these disgraceful officers to be punished or even have their careers affected. What I can hope is that news of this gets out to the ordinary men and women in uniform who didn't sign up for an "end of days" mission.

86. Interview with Michael Behe

Comment #61700 by thirdchimpanzee on August 6, 2007 at 12:10 pm

Too bad Colbert didn't pick up on the disclaimer from Lehigh University. There are so many ways he could have played with that in the interview...

87. CNN Debate on Koran in Toilet

Comment #60634 by thirdchimpanzee on August 2, 2007 at 2:38 pm

49. Comment #60433 by Fanusi Khiyal on August 2, 2007 at 12:03 am
Fanusi wrote:

No, it doesn't. The "Golden Age" of Islam was when it had recently conquered many non-Islamic populations, and the great minds of Islam were either dhimmi or first- or second-generation converts, who, in fact, were much closer to heretics than muslims. Averroes denied the immortality of the soul.

And guess what? Those greats don't belong to Islam, they belong to the West. Because the West took them in when they were thrown out by Islam. Who the heck is Ibn Rushd? Noone - he became Averroes, and helped inaugurate the Enlightenment. Who is Ibn Sina? Noone - he became Avincenna, one of the great medics of antiquity.

Islam is nothing but stagnation.

It just happens that I was looking a a video posted on YouTube where a prominent Iranian critic of Islam was supposedly being taken to task by a learned scholar on Al Jazeera:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztXaNwbbJQU

In this segment the scholar is citing the glories of Islam at a time when the Christian world was mired in prejudice and ignorance. Guess who his prime example of Islamic enlightenment was - Ibn Rushd! I bring this up because Fanusi is right about the stagnation of Islam, and also of Christianity. What has lifted all of us out of the swamp have been those who have dared to think differently, and in the process be offensive to the faithful.

On topic, I think the example of throwing a Quran at the Mosque door (not placing on the footsteps) is intended intimidation, and unacceptable. Taking someone else Quran is theft - simple. Anything else to do with mistreatment of a Holy Book is fair game. However, lest this be construed as licence to blow up Buddha statues - that was wanton destruction of public property, the Taliban had no claim to own the statues (the were on Hazara land).

88. All the mistakes of the godly are merely metaphor

Comment #57526 by thirdchimpanzee on July 19, 2007 at 4:05 pm

In Kleinman's response to PZ (see 57549) he tries to draw an analogy between pouring ridicule and contempt on a person with only a "high school" understanding of atomic theory (based on an 1925 Bohr model of an atom), and the contempt PZ is showing for religious people and their incomplete understanding of their God(s).

But he unwittingly makes a key point for PZ - the fact is that armed only with the 1925 model of atoms, one can make real and valid predictions of a great deal of Chemistry. In the same way the we might consider Newtonian physics superseded by Einstein, the greater part of our everyday lives can be adequately described by Newtonian mechanics. As far as I am aware, we managed to put people on the Moon using Newton's level of understanding.

What the proponents of a religious world view seem unable to appreciate is the complete inability of their system of understanding to predict anything whatsoever. One of the reasons the Maya developed such a sophisticated level of Mathematics was to enhance their ability to predict eclipses. The ability to make predictions that were material and observable to all would understandably bolster the power of the priests. They built instruments and observatories to help improve their predictive abilities.

If only churches, synagogues or mosques would have any similar utility. The buildings and holy books of these three religions contain practically nothing of any use (compared with the Mayan codices for example) beyond contradictory and misleading "moral" examples and dubious history. To those who would argue these books contain valid prophecies - there's not one that can stand close scrutiny. On the other hand, a Mayan prediction for an eclipse can be easily tested.

A person is far better served understanding the world through the perspective of the Bohr atom than they would be trying to understand it through the Bible, Torah or Quran.

89. 'Purity' ring case in High Court

Comment #51332 by thirdchimpanzee on June 22, 2007 at 11:33 am

Comment #51323 by pewkatchoo

Hilarious and intriguing. I guess God (er Jesus) is taking a timeout from running the Universe to dance with a groupie. I don't think Judaism and Islam have anything to match this "direct" relationship to their deity - which makes me suspicious that Christianity is not really a monotheistic religion at all. It should be placed somewhere between the true monotheisms of Judaism/Islam and the hierarchical polytheism of Hinduism.

Of course, as an atheist, its all fairy tales, but we may have been missing an important characteristic of Christianity. Jews and Muslims are probably much more theologically compatible than either is with Christians (unless they're unitarians).

90. An Inquisition in science's name

Comment #51092 by thirdchimpanzee on June 21, 2007 at 12:33 pm

I have to say that in over 30 years of living in North America (Canada/USA) I really cannot recall a period like the one we're witnessing where religion is being so publicly challenged, and the likes of Manning and Brownback feel obliged to try and match wits with the unbelievers.

Something is afoot...

91. An Inquisition in science's name

Comment #51077 by thirdchimpanzee on June 21, 2007 at 11:20 am

Preston Manning comes from the Canadian "Bible Belt" - Alberta, along with fellow faith-heads Stephen Harper and Stockwell Day.

Its hard to say whether ignorance or politics is at work in the persistent attempts to categorise scientific reasoning as just another belief system. What can be said about his pathetic analogy is that the "truths" being suppressed by the Inquisition were those that might challenge the Church's official delusions. The Church really wasn't interested in any objective truth whatsoever (like the direct observation of another "solar system" orbiting Jupiter), only the maintenance of power and wealth.

That common sense and rationality prevailed in North Western Europe is the reason we're able to communicate on this thread a mere 400 years later. What the Catholic Church was trying to suppress was independent, rational inquiry - the direct opposite of the intent of the contemporary secularists.

I suppose psychologists can better explain why delusional people assume everyone else is equally delusional, but there's a simple test that any honest person might consider.

Imagine a day in a modern economy where you could peer into the activities of everyone in that economy - farmers, physicians, nurses, pilots, petroleum geologists, scientists, automobile workers etc. During the course of their working day they might consult books or the internet to find some answers or insights to their tasks. How many of them will be turning to a Bible, or Quran or other religious text for this purpose? NONE - or at least nobody that deserves to stay in their job.

This is what proponents of the equality of "religious truth" and "scientific truth" want to totally ignore - that in the real world nobody gets their direction for doing non-social work (i.e. work other than counselling others) from religious sources. Today's successful farmer doesn't put seed in the ground and pray for rain - he/she consults weather forecasts, market forecasts and scientific analysis of their soils to decide what to plant and when. In the contest between science and religion - people know where to put their time and money. The religious communities in Canada and the US should be honest enough to acknowledge this reality - and stop trying these facile exercises in equivalence between science and religion.

92. PBS Revelation: Network's 'Wall Of Separation' Has Religious Right Genesis

Comment #49726 by thirdchimpanzee on June 13, 2007 at 7:11 am

As a long time subscriber to PBS I'm heartbroken to see how the institution has been not only neutered but brought fully to heel by the right wing. Living in Seattle, we can also pick up the Canadian public broadcast station (CBC), which aired "Root of all Evil?" in September. Perhaps we could persuade more regional cable organisations to carry CBC, over time the CBC would recognise that it had a significant American audience watching as well. I've seen the reverse situation where border PBS stations have gathered equal support from Canadian audiences.

North America needs an effective public broadcaster that has sufficient funding and a strong enough tradition of independence to be an honest standard for news and documentaries. We can't continue to rely on Jon Stewart and "The Daily Show" for this vital task!

93. Americans believe in both evolution, creationism: poll

Comment #48960 by thirdchimpanzee on June 9, 2007 at 6:12 pm

Maybe that's how George Bush can get away with saying "We don't do torture" while authorising Guantanamo, CIA prisons and renditions. I wish I could get one of those double minds.

94. Man to die over insult

Comment #47146 by thirdchimpanzee on June 3, 2007 at 6:30 am

Perhaps we should also target the Muslim councils in the US, UK, Canada, Australia etc. After all, they are the beneficiaries of a liberal, tolerant environment in which they are free to follow their faith, build Mosques, convert followers and otherwise act as any another other religious group.

It's high time to push these groups to show their support for basic standards of decency and common sense. I'm afraid appeals from Western sources will be dismissed out of hand, and only pressure from Muslim sources would have any prospect here.

I think we also need to recognise that this is not a specific problem with Islam - the willingess of the Anglican Church to turn a blind eye to the murderous homophobia of its African dioceses also warrants our concern and disgust. The principled stand of the US branch (the Episcopalian Church) to continue allowing ordination of Gay priests is an example to be encouraged, and emulated by Muslim societies.

I used to live in Vancouver BC where deadly violence erupted within the Sikh community over the acceptability of using chairs in a local Temple. In reality, the chair dispute was a proxy for the conflict between the conservative orthodoxy, and an emergent "liberal" wing.

It seems to me that we should do all we can to encourage the emergence of more liberal forms of religious observance, one rooted in the humanity of our societal values. There needs to be an international standard that declares blasphemy laws to be an unreasonable constraint of a basic human right of free speech. We're not talking hate speech, where a particular group is targeted for violence, but we are saying the intentional or unintentional disrespect of a religion is protected speech. Here's the Supreme Court's basis for striking down blasphemy laws in New York state (from Wikipedia):

The US Supreme Court in Joseph Burstyn, Inc v. Wilson 1952 held that the New York State blasphemy law was an unconstitutional prior restraint on freedom of speech. The court stated that "It is not the business of government in our nation to suppress real or imagined attacks upon a particular religious doctrine, whether they appear in publications, speeches or motion pictures."

The Muslim Councils in various western democracies should be held accountable to denounce the medievalism practiced by their co-religionists in places like Pakistan.

95. Another Christian Science Fair embarrasses itself

Comment #45142 by thirdchimpanzee on May 26, 2007 at 2:26 pm

devolved, we can all appreciate the sincere effort you're making to point out alternate possibilities, but what appears to have gone right over your head is that science necessarily gives preference to the probable over the possible.

Given the enormous quantities of mutually supporting data that can reasonably and probably be interpreted as evidence of a 4.5 billion year old solar system, and geological timescales of thousands or millions of years - it simply seems perverse to be continually running around trying to find an occurrence where something might have happened at a faster rate than expected.

As someone pointed out in an earlier posting, if you did find a cave where stalactites had grown at a significantly faster rate, you would have found an interesting cave, and perhaps a novel process of stalactite formation. What you could not claim is to overturn the accumulated findings of geology, astronomy and physics on the basis of your cave.

And there's the rub - your underlying framework is a pre-scientific text written 3000 years ago, from which you have deduced a 6000 year old UNIVERSE. So every single piece of data that threatens your single data point must be challenged. On the other hand, if we find evidence that the Universe might be 40 billion years old, or only 5 billion years old, we will have to modify some of our framework, but our scientific understanding doesn't depend on a particular calculation of the age of the universe. In the wild and wacky world of quantum physics, all sorts of things are possible, but also vanishingly improbable.

One more scientific observation, if you conduct 10,000 experiments and 9,999 of the experiments arrived at the same answer, within an order of magnitude, and one experiment was different by a factor of one million - the reasonable thing to do is assume there was something experimentally wrong with the oddball result. You may try to investigate how the experiment had been conducted differently and so on, but at some point you put it aside and carry on with your work according to the 99.9% of results.

The calculation of the age of the Universe from biblical genealogy is that oddball experiment. Put it aside, and you'll find it so much easier to make sense of our wonderful universe.

96. Global Warming (includes commentary about creationism)

Comment #43716 by thirdchimpanzee on May 22, 2007 at 10:54 am

chbg21808 must be misquoting Kyoto:

Kyoto Protocol is a legally binding international treaty through which industrial nations agree to cut back their energy emissions to 7 percent below 1990 levels.

The point of the treaty is to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions - it patently is NOT asking any economy to reduce "energy" emissions, whatever those might be (infrared radiation???). It it this sleight of hand that makes so many of us wary of the arguments put forward by Global Warming skeptics.

I accept that trying to arrive at a common sense understanding of what is going on is hard in a system as full of complex feedbacks and buffers as our climate and oceans. One place to start is to intuitively factor in whatever is clearly an added burden to the environment caused by our activity - hence my earlier recounting of a rough exercise to compare the extent of oil consumption with burning forests. However much people may want to try and discount anthropogenic sources, the uncomfortable reality appears to be that we have a massive system in equilibrium that we have been prodding at for 200 years, and now its shifting. The latest information that the Southern Oceans may be at their limit as a CO2 sink, and be poised with further warming to start disgorging large quantities of CO2 instead, should give everyone pause.

I think the pattern seems clear that almost every climatologist accepts AGW, and is probably increasingly panicked by the prospect of such positive feedback loops starting to kick in.

In the same way that we're confronting religious obscurantism, patience is running out with those who should know better, but continue to try and throw obstacles in the way of urgently needed action on Global Warming. The Science is complex, but as far as I can see, unequivocal - and the global climate is not a machine we should be tipping over to see what happens.

97. Prayer can improve physical health

Comment #43701 by thirdchimpanzee on May 22, 2007 at 10:20 am

Interesting that the other posting from Australia this morning (regarding a review of the recent showing in Oz of the "The Root of All Evil) claimed there were more Jedis than atheists, and this paper cited a figure of 74% of Australians believing in a higher power.

Since my advanced math leads me to conclude that 26% of Australians are therefore atheist (in all but name) - just how many Jedi are there down under?

98. Global Warming (includes commentary about creationism)

Comment #42495 by thirdchimpanzee on May 18, 2007 at 9:40 am

Perhaps some rough calculations would help put some perspective on this. I remember passing the time on a sailing trip with my sons trying to put some kind of figure on the impact of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. I can't remember the details (we were distracted by pods of Orcas), but we tried to stick to High School math and chemistry, estimating how much oil was in a barrel, treating oil chemically as octane, and arriving at an estimate of tonnes of CO2 emitted based upon global oil consumption.

The next step was to estimate the average size of a tree in the Northern boreal forest, estimate how many trees per square kilometer, and regarding the tree as chemically one big carbohydrate arrive at a figure for how many square kilometers would have to be completely burned to release the same amount of CO2.

Our estimate was that the annual global CO2 emissions from anthropogenic sources was equivalent to burning all of Canada's forest. I'm fully aware of how rough this exercise was, but the real point was to try and see how one could grasp the volume of CO2 spewing from the tailpipes of millions of automobiles every single day, year after year. Common sense would suggest that this amount of CO2, coming from non-natural sources, was bound to be having some unprecedented impact on our environment - and correlating these numbers with some tangible image, such as burning forests, would help.

As far as the debate whether "free markets" or regulation would help address the problem, I'm actually in favour of free markets with one proviso: POLLUTER PAYS.
CO2 emissions from cars and factories are pollution, and as long as we can set a reasonable (but correct) cost for cleaning up after ourselves, then let the free market rule. We'll be commuting in electric vehicles in no time.

99. The Creation Museum: Prepare to believe

Comment #41040 by thirdchimpanzee on May 15, 2007 at 11:43 am

This morning's New York Times has an article about the imminent opening of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, where its hoped to recreate conditions that haven't been seen in our part of the Universe for 14 billion years.

This is an enterprise that has engaged many of the world's particle physicists for almost 20 years - and includes major names in US particle physics. The US competition (the SSC) was cancelled partway through construction in 1994 by a Congress that either didn't know or care enough to match the European effort.

Is this connected in any way to the opening of a Creation Museum? I hope not, but it seems almost inescapable that the disinterest in, or aversion to, science that might challenge dogma would have an impact on public policy. Whether the subject is particle physics or stem cell research, America's lead in basic science is being rapidly eroded.

I am more inclined to think that opening a Museum with exhibits such as Noah's Ark (where you can sit inside while God closes the doors!) are the death throes of a anti-science culture desperately searching for ways to compete with the self-evident successes of the science-based world.

I do think there are enough rational Americans to prevent a full-scale tipping into theocracy, at which point another American virtue should start to kick in - the innate competitiveness of this society. The spread of all the worlds major religions was associated, in part, with the attraction of power and success. New converts were made not only at the point of the sword, but also by demonstrating the material success the religion appeared to bring to its followers.

Newly minted religions such as Mormonism and Scientology blatantly use this approach to attract new followers. The devoutly religious in America, who want to deny the fundamental insights of contemporary biology or physics, continue to expect the benefits accruing from the work of scientists and engineers - and they will increasingly be seen as intellectual "freeloaders".

The question has been asked how one could imagine bringing about the same kind of implosion of religious belief in America that we see in the rest of the 1st world. The most convincing answer I have seen is ridicule - not of a mean-spirited type - but nevertheless a reminder to all that places like the Creation Museum might as well include dioramas of Santa and his elves or the Easter Bunny for added credibility.