51. Flea Circus!

Comment #33089 by lpetrich on April 19, 2007 at 6:26 am

There have been a few atheist examination of some specific religious leaders and their writings, like:

Earl Doherty's "Challenging the Verdict: A Cross-Examination of Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ"

Robert M. Price's "The Reason Driven Life"

And as to David Robertson, his comments seem like self-pitying whining to me. "Look how they are persecuting me! Waaaaaah!"

Why doesn't he try following the teachings of his "lord and savior" by loving his enemies (us) and turning the other cheek toward us?

52. Atheism isn't the final word

Comment #32352 by lpetrich on April 16, 2007 at 11:30 pm

In the ethnicity-longevity sweepstakes, the Greeks and Chinese beat out the Jews. Back in 1200 BCE, while Pharaoh Merneptah was bragging that "Israel is destroyed, it has no seed", Mycenaean Greeks were busily writing palace bookkeeping records on their clay tablets and Shang Dynasty Chinese were busily writing on their oracle bones.

So should we worship Zeus or the Yellow Emperor?

53. Prophets of the new atheism

Comment #30444 by lpetrich on April 8, 2007 at 4:03 am

In response to mmurray, I wouldn't put it above him; he might say "Thanx for reminding me."

As to religious illiteracy leading to atheism, I think that he ought to clean up his own house first. Look at all the beeelieeevers in Jesus Christ who don't know the first thing about the Sermon on the Mount, for instance.

And I know of numerous deconversions that had been spurred by reading the Bible and discovering that its contents leave a lot to be desired.

54. Prophets of the new atheism

Comment #30415 by lpetrich on April 8, 2007 at 2:53 am

First, that guy totally ignored Richard Dawkins's and Sam Harris's arguments, as so many of their critics have done. Are they conceding that those arguments are irrefutable?

That guy gets his history wrong -- the French Revolution was vehemently anti-Church; only some of the revolutionaries were atheists. Maximilien Robespierre, mastermind of the Great Terror with all its guillotinings, rejected atheism as "aristocratic" and decreed a "Festival of the Supreme Being".

As to aristocratic, Klinghoffer seems to think that atheists are "privileged", being mainly white, well-educated, and bicoastal. I'm surprised that he didn't charge that atheism is mainly a male thing, as Charles Moore has done.

I wonder if we'll be seeing more of this sort of charge, that atheism is bourgeois, using the word in a Marxian sort of way.

Also, his claim that the religion business developed as a "response to the living God" ignores the fact that most of humanity's religions have not featured the worship of the Abrahamic God. So do the Greek gods exist? The Egyptian ones? The Aztec ones? According to what Klinghoffer claims, those deities ought to be considered viable hypotheses.

55. Militant atheists: too clever for their own good

Comment #30235 by lpetrich on April 7, 2007 at 9:45 am

I found that dig at the maleness of the "New Atheists" especially odd, because he ought to look at the religions that he speaks so admiringly of -- nearly all their leaders are male, and it's only relatively recently that female religious leaders have started to become common.

I'm familiar with several atheist activists, and he might be surprised to learn that many of them are female.

And as a former newspaper editor, would he want to hire a semiliterate peasant or a beggar child as his successor?

56. Postmodernism Disrobed

Comment #29124 by lpetrich on April 1, 2007 at 6:22 pm

I think that this also applies to postmodernism:

PZ Myers's The Courtier's Reply:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/12/the_courtiers_reply.php

57. Postmodernism Disrobed

Comment #29083 by lpetrich on April 1, 2007 at 2:37 pm

That infamous Postmodernism Generator site is now at

http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo

58. Is this another Sokal Hoax?

Comment #28960 by lpetrich on March 31, 2007 at 11:26 pm

Reminds me of this Postmodernism Generator: http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo

The server generates randomized fake postmodernism papers.

59. John Paul Sainthood Nun 'Gentle, Simple'

Comment #28523 by lpetrich on March 29, 2007 at 2:49 pm

Has anyone else noticed how paltry and pathetic these miracles seem like by the standards of the miracles allegedly worked by saints in centuries past like St. Francis Xavier and St. Genevieve? Or the miracles of the Bible?

Where have all the "big" miracles gone? Do miracles have some "shyness effect"?

I recall that David Hume pointed out the rarity of contemporary miracles in his Essay on Miracles 250 years ago -- and it's still true today.

60. Gimme That Old Time Religion (Bashing)

Comment #27430 by lpetrich on March 24, 2007 at 2:26 pm

Richard Carrier has some very pertinent things to say. In his deconversion story "From Taoist to Infidel":
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/testimonials/carrier.html

he described his very pleasant religious upbringing in a very liberal Methodist church, where the Bible was used as a handy source of moral lessons, not as a history book, and where being good would get you into Heaven.

There was a serpent in this paradise, however, and that was his Bible-reading. He found that it had a lot to be desired, and he became a seeker -- and a convert to philosophical Taoism. But as the years went by, he moved away from Taoism to a mature secular humanism.

But then he ran into a much more zealous and nasty kind of Xian than he had experienced in his childhood -- and he discovered their attempts to get into political power. He also discovered the complete cowardice of many non-fundie Xians; despite their disavowals of fundamentalism, they were totally unwilling to challenge it.

"Worse, the liberal Christians have no text. In any Bible debate, the liberal interpreter always loses, for he must admit he is putting human interpretation, indeed bold-faced speculation, before the Divine Word of God. And without the Bible to stand on a Christian can be condemned as an unbeliever in disguise. Since being thought an atheist is worse than being thought a prostitute, not many believers are likely to raise their head against Fundamentalism."

And in "Why I Am Not A Christian",
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/whynotchristian.html

he tells us that a friend "as especially frustrated by Christians who routinely come up with implausible excuses to defend their faith, which they don't really examine--as if defending the faith with any excuse mattered more than having a genuinely good reason to believe in the first place. Discussing our experiences, we realized we'd both encountered many Christians like this, who color their entire perception of reality with the assumption that they have to be right, and therefore the evidence must somehow fit. So they think they can make anything up on the spur of the moment and be "sure" it's true. This is the exact opposite of what we do. We start with the evidence and then figure out what the best explanation of it all really is, regardless of where this quest for truth takes us."

61. Lonely Atheists of the Global Village

Comment #26377 by lpetrich on March 19, 2007 at 2:02 am

To expand on my comments about Robert Novak and evolution, it seems almost like he's reinventing the doctrine of the "double truth", taught by some of the followers of the medieval Arab philosopher Averroes (Ibn Rushd). This is the idea that there are two truths, one of reason (for them, Aristotelianism), and one of religion.

In this case, the double truth is what science has worked out (evolution, the Big Bang, etc.) and religion (Goddidit!).

Though I wonder how common this double-truth position is -- Francis Collins may hold some position like that.

And all his talk about rationality and questioning seems almost like "all things to all people", as in 1 Corinthians 9:19-23:

Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.

62. Lonely Atheists of the Global Village

Comment #26329 by lpetrich on March 18, 2007 at 5:33 pm

I read the whole thing -- it seemed to me like PZ Myers's "The Courtier's Reply":

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/12/the_courtiers_reply.php

And it was absolutely riddled with misconceptions and errors. Mussolini's Fascists and Hitler's Nazis were NOT atheists, and they were about as secular as most other political movements of the time. Hitler claimed to be following the will of "the Almighty Creator" and claimed that fighting the Jews was like "the Lord" Jesus Christ's Temple temper tantrum. The Church even got along fairly well with the Nazi regime, and the Pope never excommunicated Hitler and other Catholic Nazi leaders even when it was safe for them to do so.

And perhaps related to that, he mixes up evolutionary biology and might-makes-right "Social Darwinism", which is a mixup that Charles Darwin himself had clearly rejected. But he ought to be aware of the Social Darwinism of the more jingoistic of capitalism's defenders, given what sort of employer he has.

He talks admiringly of medieval monks, except that many ancient texts survived in only a few copies, and sometimes from the recycling of the parchment that they were written on. A mathematics book by Archimedes only survived because someone wanted its parchment for writing a hymnbook.

And he (1) accuses the trinity of RD, SH, and DD of believing in an excessively anthropomorphic conception of God and (2) brags about how we were created in God's likeness. He reminds me of:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/upload/2007/03/hypocrisy.jpg

Furthermore, much of the "growth" of Xianity that he brags about is that of the fundies that he dismisses as literal-minded and otherwise other than True Xians. Yes, disrespectful, Mary-denying, saint-denying, Communion-denying, Church-denying, Pope-denying, Sola Scriptura (Bible-only) heretics. And heretics who poach in traditionally Catholic territory like Latin America.

Then he tried to brag about how scientific and rationalistic his religion is, but then he turns around and comes very close to Credo quia absurdum (I believe because it's absurd). And he brags about what a bumbler his god must be, creating an absurdly imperfect creation. He dismisses evolutionary biology as nothing more than "empirical science", unwilling to ask why the god he believes in was so determined to make Itself look like an unnecessary hypothesis. That seems almost like dismissing heliocentrism as "empirical science", while maintaining that in some deep philosophical sense, the Sun moves around the Earth.

He talks glibly about freedom of conscience, yet his church has denied that for centuries, sometimes enforcing its denial with burnings at the stake. Talking about how persecuted Xians are -- does he have any better argument than self-pity?

My patience has run out here, and I congratulate BaronOchs for also taking the trouble to read it and comment on it in detail.

63. US Congressman Holds No God-Belief

Comment #25388 by lpetrich on March 12, 2007 at 9:20 pm

There is a joke that says that a Unitarian is someone who believes in at most one god.

More seriously, the Unitarian Universalist Assocication has gone far from its origins as Trinity rejecters; they don't have any official position on how many gods they are.

64. Was there ever dog that praised his fleas?

Comment #25018 by lpetrich on March 9, 2007 at 5:57 pm

Adolf Hitler would be hard to call an "evolutionist" -- he showed little interest in evolutionary biology. And contrary to what The Wee Flea seems to believe, evolutionary biology is NOT some moral doctrine of "might makes right" or "greater strength equals moral superiority".

He did claim in Mein Kampf that he was doing the work of "the Almighty Creator" and that Jesus Christ's Temple temper tantrum was a prototypical example of what to do about those pesky Jews.

And why didn't the Pope excommunicate Hitler and other Catholic Nazi leaders? Even after the Allies had conquered Italy and Germany?

On the subject of The Wee Flea's church's messageboards, I've noticed that atheist messageboards like the Internet Infidels Discussion Board tend to be more tolerant of Xians than Xian messageboards often are of atheists.

As to The Wee Flea and the eternal damnation of babies, he might possibly agree with the eminent theologian St. Augustine, who maintained that babies are terrible sinners, guilty of gluttony, jealousy, and other horrible vices (Confessions, Bk. 1, Ch. 7).

I also find The Wee Flea's belief in exclusive salvation rather hard to stomach. Does he agree with the Catholic Church that extra ecclesiam nulla salus (outside the church there is no salvation)? The Catholic one, of course, meaning that he will be sent to Hell when he dies for being a Pope-denying, church-denying, saint-denying heretic. Or with the more strict Muslims that all non-Muslims will go to Hell? And the Koran tells us that the Muslim Hell will be quite a hot one.

His argument "What if there is a Hell" is Pascalian merde de taureau. An argument that implies that one ought to believe in the religion which has the hottest Hell.

I know of someone who ended up deconverting because she could not stomach the thought of her friends and relatives being sent to Hell because they did not believe in the church that she had been converted to.

Humanity has been in existence something like 100,000 years before Jesus Christ was born -- if there was a historical Jesus Christ in the first place. So will all those people in all those millennia be going to Hell?

As to The Wee Flea's claim that we are not biblically literate enough, I note that many atheists and freethinkers have indeed studied the Bible, and often know the Bible much better than the large majority of people who profess to believe in it. In fact, reading the Bible has provoked a large number of deconversions, and even never-believers like myself have discovered that the Bible is overrated when they get down to reading it.

That aforementioned young lady, when she got "born again", decided to give her parents Bible lessons, which involved reading the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. But she found much that she considered cruel and bizarre and soporific, like how the Biblical God is more than willing to commit mass murder.

65. Falwell says Christians shouldn't focus on global warming

Comment #23689 by lpetrich on March 2, 2007 at 4:57 am

Yes, Jerry Falwell is very worthy of "Fundies Say the Darnedest Things" - http://www.fstdt.com

66. Merkel wants EU to be vocal about Christian roots

Comment #23551 by lpetrich on March 1, 2007 at 2:12 pm

What a load of hooey. If one wants "religious roots", one has to go back before Xianity to Europe's old-time religions.

And Hellenic paganism has a documented history that extends back over 3000 years, to Mycenaean Greece.

So give us that old-time religion! :)
It was good enough for Minos
It was good enough for Helen
It was good enough for Hector
And it's good enough for us!

67. If God is talking to you, too, Mr Cameron - don't listen

Comment #23481 by lpetrich on March 1, 2007 at 3:25 am

Let's not forget that many supporters of slavery used religious arguments. Like pointing out that the Bible nowhere forbids slavery and treats it as completely legitimate.

And arguing that black people are subject to the curse of Ham, which Noah gave him and his descendants because Ham had been a Peeping Tom:

Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded [a] to plant a vineyard. When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father's nakedness and told his two brothers outside. But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backward and covered their father's nakedness. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father's nakedness.

When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him, he said,
"Cursed be Canaan!
The lowest of slaves
will he be to his brothers."

He also said,
"Blessed be the LORD, the God of Shem!
May Canaan be the slave of Shem.

May God extend the territory of Japheth;
may Japheth live in the tents of Shem,
and may Canaan be his slave."

(Genesis 9:20-27, NIV)

Susan Jacoby, http://www.susanjacoby.com in her book Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism notes the selectivity of common pro-religious histories, noting that before the US Civil War, southern-US churches were often pro-slavery and northern-US ones were often unwilling to do much about it. And during the US civil-rights movement of the 1950's and 1960's, the same pattern held there also, with the only churches consistently supporting it being the black churches. Many of its participants were not exactly very churchly, often being "spiritual" in some un-organized way, and even secular, which caused some interesting culture clashes in the movement.

68. James Cameron finds grave of Jesus & Son

Comment #23170 by lpetrich on February 26, 2007 at 3:32 pm

I smell a large murid rodent with Linnaean name R. norvegicus.

In this case, survival of enough DNA to be analyzable for evidence of family relations.

That aside, Mr. Cameron ought to release the details of his alleged DNA testing.

-

But post 28 makes me wonder what's at God's left hand.

69. Hunting chimps may change view of human evolution

Comment #22978 by lpetrich on February 25, 2007 at 7:43 am

As to NormanDoering, he ought to explain to us what in his blog might be worth reading.

And as to Koko's linguistic abilities, I've had lengthy arguments with a defender of those claims with someone who works with Koko(!) He claimed that Koko was having a bad day or something like that in that AOL chat session:

http://www.koko.org/world/talk_aol.html

In any case, it's an awful advertisement of Koko's linguistic abilities; one would expect Koko's handlers to have some better advertisement of her abilities.

70. Atheists come in last

Comment #22860 by lpetrich on February 23, 2007 at 4:32 pm

Bizarro Dawkins:

You are all demonstrating a very shallow knowledge of the Bible.

As shallow as the Mariana Trench, no doubt.

In the New Testament (which is the covenant we are now under),

How did you figure that one out?

there are very few commands regarding government and politics, that is, whith the exception of a particular verse that commands us to respect the government.

Then the US Constitution cannot possibly have been derived from the Bible.

Romans 13 states that one ought to obey the existing authorities without qualification, and claimed that *all* government gets its authority from the Xian God. Even ones that officially worshipped pagan gods, like the Roman Empire. Which is contrary to the plain language of the US Constitution's Preamble. And the Declaration of Independence does not mention that sort of a God, but only an ultimate-lawgiver God who doesn't decree the existence of every government that ever was.

And in the New Testament, Peter had a theocratic rule over his followers, and Ananias and Sapphira were zapped for not turning over all their wealth to him.

Freedom of religion is in itself a biblical concept.

Demonstrably false. The only "freedom of religion" recognized is the "freedom" to believe what its authors presume to be the One True Religion. All other religions are scorned as idolatry and devil worship.

Nowhere in the New Testament will you ever see examples of forced conversions,

Its writers weren't exactly in a position to force anyone to convert.

I also noted that our Founding Fathers admired the ancient Greeks and Romans, and had a particulary great admiration for the Roman Republic. In fact, the author of the Federalist Papers wrote under the pen name of Publius, the name of some ancient Roman politician.

So if they were such great Bible-bangers, why didn't they incessantly quote the Bible?

71. Atheists come in last

Comment #22841 by lpetrich on February 23, 2007 at 5:27 pm

Bizarro Dawkins, there you go again.

The US Constitution starts with

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence[1], promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

And continues onward, totally secular and non-Biblical. Its Preamble, quoted above, expresses the Locke-Hobbes social-contract theory of government, which is totally absent from the Bible. Its main forms of government are absolute monarchy and theocracy, government by top-down command, not representative democracy.

There are also no legislative bodies in the Bible, nothing like the House or the Senate. And the Senate's name didn't come from the Bible, but from the pagan Roman Republic. Yes, *pagan*.

Also, the Bible is devoid of any concept of freedom of religion. You must believe in the One True Religion -- or else.

72. Battle for Europe's secular values

Comment #22762 by lpetrich on February 22, 2007 at 4:09 am

(lots of stuff about worth...)

I find it hard to stifle a yawn. The subject of "worth" does not seem like a very meaningful one to me.

("historical" vs. "empirical" science...)

My point was simply that atheists' implied equivocation of the two realms of science is little more than an attempt to muddy the waters. ...

That distinction is completely artificial; a more honest version might be "science that I like" vs. "science that I dislike".

Actually, I'm what I like to call a "soft agnostic". I, like many other skeptics throughout history, choose to define knowledge as absolute certainty. I therefore do not believe that I can know of God's existence.

So everybody who has claimed otherwise is just plain wrong?

"You're deliberately conflating religion and science and thereby suggesting that the atheist table is rigged."

No, actually I'm conflating religion and religion.

Bizarro Dawkins, are you using "religion" as a dirty word?

"it's like saying that you would hate all of humanity unless you were commanded not to by some alleged cosmic superbeing."

That's rather inaccurate. Try this: It would be like saying that I would have no logical justification to value other humans unless I was prompted to by the necessary First Cause.

So you are only following the NFC's orders?

Anyone who calls himself or herself a Christian must follow the commands and example of Christ. If he or she fails to live according to that ideal, then he or she ceases to exist as a Christian.

So it's possible to beeeeelieeeeeve in Jesus Christ and not be a Xian? And I hope that you realize that the large majority of professed Xians are not really Xians by your definition. Many of Jesus Christ's teachings have not been very commonly followed, like where he commands:

Love your enemies.
If someone does something nasty to you, let them do something else nasty to you.
Don't try to demonstrate how pious you are to others.
Don't call anyone any insulting names.
Sell everything you have and give the money to the poor.
Remove parts of your body that make you commit sins.
Don't *ever* say *anything* nasty about the Holy Spirit.
Desert your family to follow him, and love him more than you love your family.
Be rude and disrespectful to your parents.
Forget about trying to earn a living, since God will rain food and clothing down on you.

"The Bible directly commands a lot of things that we nowadays consider VERY odious, like genocide and misogyny."

I don't have the time to explain this, but all of the verses used to support these arguments are either taken out of their literal or historical context, or misinterpreted. You'd be amazed at how many strawmen Dawkins uses in regards to the Bible.

You don't have time to answer critical questions? That's what they all say. :p

Which is a strange response for someone who claims to feel so strongly about how I have allegedly been misinterpreting the Bible and quoting it out of context.

73. Battle for Europe's secular values

Comment #22663 by lpetrich on February 20, 2007 at 11:53 am

I'll now respond to Bizarro Dawkins.

The tendency of atheist ideology to steal concepts from Christianity (as well as from other religions) never ceases to amaze me. You attack religion, but then borrow its ideals and claim them for your own.

What's "atheist ideology"? This seems like projection to me.

(a lot of blathering about "worth" deleted...)

If by "comprehensive education" they mean forcing secular humanist dogma down children's throats, then they seriously need to look up the word "comprehensive".

What's "secular humanist dogma"? Anything that you dislike?

If by "education" they mean stifling any inquiry whatsoever into a logically unjustified claim being touted as science, then they also need to look up the word "education".

What do you mean? Any scientific result that you dislike?

I've noticed that atheists really like to muddy the waters by using the word "science" interchangeably in the context of past events and present, repeatable events, therefore clouding the distinction between historical science and empirical science.

Except that there is no such distinction -- all forms of science are based on extrapolation and inference.

Atheists like Dawkins tend to talk about the science that gave us the cellular phone and helped us discover the laws of thermodynamics, and then talk about microbe-to-man evolution in the same context, as if it somehow carried the same amount of certainty and authority inherent within empirical science. While this statement may not directly state the relationship, it is certainly implied in the language used.

Bizarro Dawkins, you seem rather desperate to discredit "historical science". Could it be because it results in something contrary to certain of your pet beliefs?

"The very notion that you can conceive of people as worthless save for the blessing of your "higher entity" is frankly obscene."

Why is it obscene?

Because it's extremely misanthropic -- it's like saying that you would hate all of humanity unless you were commanded not to by some alleged cosmic superbeing.

While atheists claim that education should consist of information on all religions, they tacitly deny the existence of God (or any supernatural creator) by advocating purely a purely naturalistic causation for the Universe, life, and the diversity of life. As long as the Big Bang, abiogenesis, and microbe-to-man evolution are presented as fact in science classes, then there will always exist a strong prevalence of secular humanism in public education, for this supposed information renders the existence a supernatural creator moot.

Bizarro Dawkins, you are making yourself look like a big fat crybaby. You are only complaining because it does not include your pet beliefs. I don't see you complaining about the rejection of numerous other supernatural explanations, like the demon theory of disease and the angel theory of planetary motion.

"The tendency of Christians to claim ideals which are found nowhere in the Bible as their own is much more astonishing, and hypocritical."

Oh, do tell.

Like democracy, rationality, and feminism. You have to do some extremely selective proof-texting to get those out of the Bible.

(a lot more blathering about "worth" deleted)

"Are you, presumably a religious person, actually claiming that slavery, genocide, and murder arose because of moral subjectivism? Open a history book sometime."

Now you are committing the fallacy of attacking the ideal rather than those claiming to represent that ideal. The perpetrators of such atrocities have in the past used ideals such as Christianity in order to justify their actions, but it would be a serious miscalculation to attribute their actions to the ideal itself.

The No True Scotsman fallacy.

Also, when people try to justify evil actions with the Bible for example, they must do a fair amount of word twisting and verse de-contextualization.

Pure projection. The Bible directly commands a lot of things that we nowadays consider VERY odious, like genocide and misogyny.

When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you, and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods, and the LORD's anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you. This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles and burn their idols in the fire. (Deut 7:1-5)

http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/women/long.html lists:

Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God. (1 Cor 11:3)

A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man. For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. 10For this reason, and because of the angels, the woman ought to have a sign of authority on her head. (it being covered; 1 Cor 11:3-10)

As in all the congregations of the saints, women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church. (1 Cor 14:33-35)

Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. (Eph 5:22-24)

A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety. (1 Tim 2:11-15)

(some more on "empirical" vs. "historical" science...)

And even if "historical" science is less certain than "empirical" science, how would that demonstrate that (say) the Universe is only 6000 years old?

74. My critics are wrong to call me dogmatic

Comment #22409 by lpetrich on February 16, 2007 at 7:39 pm

Homo economicus:

For the sake of inquiry I read "Dawkin's God" after having read "The God Delusion". McGrath's arguments come to the conclusion that christianity gives a beauty to existence, a framework from which to go about life with meaning.

I like to call that argument the "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" argument. Replace "Santa Claus" with "God" in that editorial, and you will see what I mean.

75. Is God a Delusion? Atheism and the Meaning of Life

Comment #22186 by lpetrich on February 13, 2007 at 7:00 am

Alister McGrath has claimed that nobody has ever seen a meme / mind virus. That is because a meme is an abstract idea, not a physical object.

And applying AMG's argument to abstract ideas in general would indicate that they do not exist, because they are not physical objects either.

Meaning that AMG is guilty of something that Richard Dawkins has sometimes been accused of: lack of philosophical sophistication.

76. Is God a Delusion? Atheism and the Meaning of Life

Comment #22180 by lpetrich on February 13, 2007 at 6:46 am

As to violence not being carried out in the name of atheism, I think that that's a weak claim, since atheism is often associated with being anti-religion, and there's been plenty of that sort of violence, notably Communist suppression and persecution of religion.

However, atheism is not necessarily an anti-religion position. One can believe in some atheist or more-or-less-atheist religion like philosophical Buddhism or Taoism. And one can believe that the religion business is desirable in a Plato-royal-lie or opium-for-the-people way.

77. Richard Dawkins interview with Paula Zahn

Comment #22172 by lpetrich on February 13, 2007 at 6:17 am

It seems to me that Richard Dawkins had used the naturalistic fallacy of deducing an "ought" from an "is". One can believe that this is the only existence we have, yet recklessly squander it. Likewise, one can believe in an afterlife, yet act as if it will not happen.

And that panel discussion was a *little* better than that last one, though it was not much better than a shouting match. That preacher complaining that the "radical homosexuals" were imposing their lifestyle on us was an absolute hoot. No homosexual person has ever tried to make me homosexual; they are all content with heterosexual people remaining heterosexual.

78. Believing Scripture but Playing by Science's Rules

Comment #22161 by lpetrich on February 13, 2007 at 5:06 am

kaiserkriss, have you ever considered suggesting to your friends to get themselves and their families books by theistic evolutionists like Ken Miller, Francis Collins, or Joan Roughgarden?

79. Believing Scripture but Playing by Science's Rules

Comment #22159 by lpetrich on February 13, 2007 at 5:01 am

I don't think that Dr. Ross is doing anything like a physicist who works with general relativity and quantum mechanics. That's because GR is essentially a classical-mechanics limit of something or other, and working with semiclassical approximations is an established part of quantum mechanics. It's known when semiclassical approximations will be invalid, so if you use one, you know where it won't work.

I find it curious that Dr. Ross has not endorsed Philip Gosse's theory of created appearance that he expressed in his book Omphalos. The title, the Greek word for navel, derives from the conundrum of whether Adam and Eve had had navels, since they had not been born in the usual way.

He pointed to various cyclic phenomena and noted that they must have been created in the middle of their cycling, so the Universe could just as well have been created in the middle of its apparent history.

However, his theory has sometimes been dismissed as involving divine fraudulence, and Bertrand Russell had gone even further, pointing out that the Universe could have been created in Gossian fashion five minutes ago, with us being created with memories of a much longer existence.

80. Believing Scripture but Playing by Science's Rules

Comment #22002 by lpetrich on February 12, 2007 at 8:39 am

I know who he is:

Andrew Snelling II

After an Australian young-earth creationist who is nevertheless a geologist who writes in professional publications that the Earth has rocks that are over 2.5 billion years old.

81. The God Delusion

Comment #21739 by lpetrich on February 10, 2007 at 8:41 pm

PZ Myers's satire of the argument that Richard Dawkins has ignored this or that seemingly sophisticated theological argument:

The Courtier's Reply - http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/12/the_courtiers_reply.php

And as to Santa Claus, let us consider:

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus - http://www.newseum.org/yesvirginia/

82. The questions science cannot answer

Comment #21736 by lpetrich on February 10, 2007 at 8:13 pm

In response to FortunaAdiuvatForte,

Mohandas Gandhi was a HINDU.

And abolitionist and civil-rights leaders? They were fringe figures in religion, with most northern churches being indifferent and southern churches being hostile. Southerners often defended slavery with Biblical arguments, noting that the Bible takes slavery for granted, and claiming that black people are subject to the curse of Ham (Genesis 9:20-27), meaning that they are to be enslaved and ruled by white people. And during the civil-rights movement, many Southerners defended segregation with the argument that God intended the races to be separate and not mixed -- and called the Rev. MLK and other clerical civil-rights activists frauds and crypto-Communists who were taking orders from Moscow.

Look at documental or archeological evidence and this is substantial, there is more documental evidence for the existance of Christ than for that of Julius Caesar.

The number of medieval copies doesn't count. There's MUCH more evidence of Julius Caesar from his contemporaries than there is of Jesus Christ. And not only is it much less hagiographical, it is much more down-to-earth and much less miraculous.

Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon vs. Jesus Christ's Resurrection:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/resurrection/lecture.html

Christians believe the Bible is an almaganation of books on God and therefore can't all be taken literally.

Tell that to believers in the literal truth of the Bible some time.

some atheists would do well to challenge some of their own literature, darwin's theory of evolutions you could drive a bus through for example yet scientists appear to take it as the blind truth.

Evolution is VERY strongly established -- see http://www.talkorigins.org for more.

83. The questions science cannot answer

Comment #21554 by lpetrich on February 9, 2007 at 11:35 pm

Alister McGrath is such a big baby. His main argument is to whine that those nasty atheists like Richard Dawkins are putting down all us poor believers.

And he refuses to attempt to refute Richard Dawkins's arguments against the existence of a god. One wonders why. Is he unable to come up with good counterarguments? And if so, does he have enough awareness of that to avoid that subject and concentrate on issues where he thinks that he has a stronger case?

Also, this namedropping argument is very weak. I am unfamiliar with Owen Gingerich's arguments, but Francis Collins's arguments are absolutely laughable. Finding C.S. Lewis irrefutable? His Argument from the Tripartite Waterfall?

And I wonder what he thinks about other atheist scientists.

84. The Current: Part 3: The Religious Right

Comment #21530 by lpetrich on February 9, 2007 at 7:48 pm

Chris Hedges had some interesting things to say about the fundie theocrats and megachurches, derived from his abundant experience with them.

He notes that they use cultish recruiting tactics, targeting people who are in vulnerable spots, like when they have lost a job, and making a big pretense of loving and caring for them. Love-bombing, as it's sometimes called.

He also notes their insistence on rigid authoritarianism, like parents' authority over their children, husbands' authority over their wives, and pastors' authority over their congregations, and, of course, the authority of God and His Book.

He notes that megachurches essentually feature cults of personality of their pastors as God's interpreters and earthly representatives. Furthermore, the megachurches are often a society within a society, offering lots of additional stuff for their parisioners.

I think that their creationism comes from their insistence that the Bible must be an absolute authority.

Richard Dawkins himself had experienced some of that in Root of All Evil? when he interviewed the infamous Rev. Ted Haggard. At one point in it, Rev. Haggard claimed that he did not want his flock to be a bunch of hero-worshippers and yes-people who say how great he is and how they agree with everything he says. Then RD cuts to a segment of Haggard's preaching where he gets the audience to say that they are called to obedience. Go figure.

Chris Hedges also tells us of what happened in eastern Europe, like the wars in former Yugoslavia. He notes that what happened with the fall of Communism was a lot of ethnic and social dislocation, and that, rather than old hatreds, led to those wars. And he worries that something like that can happen to the United States, with much of the economy in a slump, and formerly promising career paths, like programming, being outsourced so easily.

Thinking about this, I note that the European Union could well have prevented similar strife in much of post-Soviet Eastern Europe by offering them aid and promising them annexation. A promise which the EU eventually delivered on, happy to say. And in the process, keeping Czechs and Slovaks, and Romanians and Hungarians from fighting each other, and keeping Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians from picking on all the ethnic Russians and Ukrainians in all their territories.

That is a major cause of strife that has nothing to do with religion, though when it is involved, it seems more a reinforcer of tribalism than a peacemaker.

Northern Ireland's strife between Catholics and Protestants is more properly between pro-Irish and pro-British; that one side is a bunch of Mary-worshipping lackeys of the Pope and the other a bunch of disrespectful Bible-only heretics is not a big issue, except perhaps to the Rev. Ian Paisley and his admirers. There is even a joke about how a Northern irish Jew or Buddhist or atheist has to be either a Catholic one or a Protestant one.

However, the churches seem happy to be reinforcers of separate identity; there haven't been a lot of Catholic priests and Protestant pastors who have gotten together to try to get their respective parishioners to get along with each other.

And the weird thing about it is that Xianity is supposed to be a trans-ethnic religion -- something that dates back to its beginnings, where Paul famously stated that people of any ethnicity, social position, and sex can believe in Jesus Christ.

Islam is also supposed to be that way, but that has not kept Arab Sunnis and Arab Shiites from fighting each other in Iraq.

Finally, I do think that Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and other public atheists are doing a good service by making atheism more visible. I don't think that we should hide our atheism just to make friends with "moderates" -- especially if they are not willing to show any respect to us.

85. Panel discussion on atheism where no atheists are included

Comment #20850 by lpetrich on February 6, 2007 at 7:21 pm

I wonder if Karen Hunter in that panel would enjoy being told things like:

* She ought to shut up about religion and let her husband instruct her (1 Corinthians 14:34-35, 1 Corinthians 11:3-10, Ephesians 5:22-24, Colossians 3:18, 1 Timothy 2:11-12).

* She has the curse of Ham (Genesis 9:20-27) on her, and therefore that she should be submissive to white people and shut up.

And Stephen A. Smith also told the latter.

And Debbie Schlussel told that she is nothing but a Christ-killer.

86. What a Friend We Have in Dawkins

Comment #20327 by lpetrich on February 1, 2007 at 9:45 pm

Norman Levitt does have some important and interesting questions that, as he says, Richard Dawkins has not addressed well enough.

What Mr. Levitt calls the Hobbesian viewpoint I like to call Plato's Royal Lie, after what that philosopher had proposed to be the official religion of his Republic. Plato even went so far as to ban his society's official religion, Hellenic paganism, from his Republic as full of bad examples like heroes lamenting and gods laughing.

And I agree that religious liberals are relatively "nice", though I think it legitimate to criticize their beliefs. Like for being less-than-honest in interpreting their favorite sacred books -- why not come out and say that one is taking what one likes and leaving what one doesn't like? That would be better than claiming the authority of the whole book and waving around the the parts that one likes without further explanation, while thinking of complicated, contrived, and specious ways of explaining away parts that one dislikes? That strikes me as lying to oneself.

87. God and gorillas

Comment #20325 by lpetrich on February 1, 2007 at 8:51 pm

I find that article to be hopelessly specious. All Ms. King seems to be saying is "We as a species are hopeless religion addicts."

There's a LOT of variation among religions, from monotheism to polytheism to pantheism to animism. And also afterlife beliefs from shadowy-to-nonexistent to realms of happiness and torment to being reincarnated. And also a LOT of variation in the amount of tolerance of other religions and interest in converting others.

I think that many discussions of religions project Xian stereotypes onto other religions and often presume them universal, even though that is often grossly unwarranted.

-

Also, would Ms. King be willing to believe in the non-placebo efficacy of sorcery? That's been more-or-less universal before modern times, and some "primitive" people have even believed that all sickness and death is due to someone's malicious sorcery. And they believe that even when they are aware of alternative hypotheses, like being attacked by an elephant that one is trying to hunt. However, a sorcery apologist might say that the sorcerer cast a spell of "Sic 'em!" on that elephant.

So why isn't Ms. King casting spells right and left to get what she wants?

And why isn't she defending some of humanity's more odious traditional practices, like war and slavery and sexism? After all, the Bible does say that women should shut up about religion and let their husbands instruct them.

88. He Calls Himself God

Comment #19743 by lpetrich on January 29, 2007 at 5:51 pm

Or better yet, Alexander of Abonutichus. Our only source on him, Lucian of Samosata, describes him in

http://www.epicurus.net/en/alexander.html

He proclaimed the birth of a new god, Glycon, which was actually a snake with a human puppet head.

He got into the advice business, dispensing advice in the form of oracle messages. When Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius asked him what to do about some Germanic tribes, the Marcomanni and the Quadi, who were just north of the Danube River, he responded:

To rolling Ister, swoln with Heaven's rain,
Of Cybelean thralls, those mountain beasts,
Fling ye a pair; therewith all flowers and herbs
Of savor sweet that Indian air doth breed.
Hence victory, and fame, and lovely peace.

Or in less flowery language, throw two lions into the Danube and a great victory will result. Which Marcus Aurelius did, but it was the Marcomanni and Quadi who won the great victory.

When Marcus Aurelius asked about that, Alexander of Abonutichus responded that the god had not revealed who would have the great victory.

Which Lucian then compared to what the Oracle of Delphi had said in a similar situation with King Croesus of Lydia. The oracle had given him a prediction that a great empire would fall if he went into battle against the Medes. But it was King Croesus's empire that fell.

Lucian was a follower of Epicurus, and the Epicuresns were rationalists and critics of religion. So I'm sure that many of us might find the Epicureans to be kindred spirits.

The longest surviving Epicurean text is Lucretius's On the Nature of Things, available online in several places.

And Alexander of Abonutichus's response? In his ceremonies, he and his followers would should "Out with the Epicureans!" "Out with the Xians!" and he said that Epicureans and Xians were unwelcome "atheists".

89. Zeus devotees worship in Athens

Comment #18550 by lpetrich on January 21, 2007 at 4:58 pm

That's fun -- it makes me think "Look who's talking!"

Worship of the Olympians is a lot older than worship of Jesus Christ. Back in 1500-1200 BCE, Mycenaean scribes carefully recorded the offerings given to various deities, which included such well-known ones as Zeus, Hera, Hermes, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Poseidon, and Dionysus, and lots of now-obscure ones like "the Mistress of the Labyrinth", Diwia (a female version of Zeus?), etc.

Going back further is difficult from lack of written records, but one can do a combination of comparative mythology and archeology to look back further. Zeus to the Indo-European deity "Father Sky", Artemis to the Minoan Mistress of Animals and perhaps even to the statuette at Catal Huyuk of a woman giving birth with a big cat on each side.


And what were Jesus Christ's ancestors doing back then? Around 1200 BCE, the Pharaoh Merneptah's scribes recorded in their Victory Stele their triumphs over various Palestinian princelings and city-states, triumphs which included "Israel is barren; its seed is no more".

And as far as could be determined, they were pagan polytheists back then and before.

90. God's Hostages

Comment #18385 by lpetrich on January 20, 2007 at 8:47 am

I forgot to add that Susan Jacoby, in her book Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, noted that feminism has been a mostly secular ideology, without the religious connections of abolitionism and the civil-rights movement.

Indeed, nineteenth-century feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton had caused a lot of controversy with her Woman's Bible on Biblical sexism; some of her fellow feminists thought that it was potentially dangerous to risk alienating possible religious allies with stuff like that.

91. God's Hostages

Comment #18380 by lpetrich on January 20, 2007 at 8:31 am

It somehow seems to me that a lot of Islamic and similar sexism is sexual jealousy that has gone to absurd extremes; there could also be some harem-building instinct involved.

Also, one wonders if strict Muslim men find a woman's uncovered head to be an absolutely irresistible turn-on.

Sexism is not a necessary part of the religion business, but one does have to wonder why it gets so closely intertwined. The Abrahamic religions even go so far as to claim that the One And Only God is male, with at least two of the three Persons of the Xian Trinity being unmistakably male. By comparison, polytheists, even very sexist ones, have worshipped gods that come in both sexes.

And Orthodox Jews have some very sexist traditional prayers. Men are supposed to thank God that they were not born a slave, a Gentile, or a woman, while women are supposed to express resignation to God's decision that they be women and not men.

Sexism is not a necessary part of the religion business, it must be said. Some varieties of neopaganism are very feminist, though it must be said that neopaganism is a very recent invention. But when sexism gets intertwined with religion as it often does, one does get suspicious.

I wonder what Sam Harris thinks about Scott Atran's Muslim apologetics in http://www.edge.org - I call it Muslim apologetics, because it is a shameless whitewash of Islam. Mr. Atran claims that grossly sexist Islamic policies are not really a part of Islam, but the problem is that Muslims themselves disagree -- and disagree rather strongly.

92. Can Jews and Evangelicals Get Along?

Comment #18080 by lpetrich on January 18, 2007 at 8:00 am

I don't think that that guy gets the point. The fundies support Israel because it's part of their end-of-the-world script -- when the Jews refuse to follow it and convert, the fundies are likely to be very pissed.

Also, Mr. Chafets is either unfamiliar with such notable fundie theocrats as R.J. Rushdoony or else he chooses to look the other way. Such theocrats are big advocates of "Biblical law", including turning women into second-class citizens and having extreme punishments for rejecting True Xianity.

And Mr. Chafets swallows fundie propaganda whole when he claims that they are only for the alleged "moral standards" of the US until the last fifty years.

Is it really true that some Israelis privately mock these fundies? I wouldn't be surprised, given these fundies' love of garish end-of-the-world scenarios like the Left Behind books.


For my part, I think that this is an alliance of expediency, something like the Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact.

93. Secular fundamentalists are the new totalitarians

Comment #16342 by lpetrich on January 6, 2007 at 7:07 am

I can't make any sense out of that article. Is it serious or is it a satire?

94. The New Atheists

Comment #16336 by lpetrich on January 6, 2007 at 6:57 am

I disagree with MakingBelieve when he/she claims that "The truth is that only atheists are in a position to fight faith-based societal offences - the religious have no footing, desire or credibility for the task."

I don't think that that's necessarily the case; it may be possible for religious moderates/liberals to challenge their fundie/extremist coreligionists. But there is so little of that happening that one does have to wonder.

And being an atheist does not automatically make one rational, either.

But when theologian Harvey Cox states that "the canons of proof are not applicable to that question", about the existence of God, I suspect special pleading. I wonder if he applies such standards to the gods of religions other than his, or to entities like

The invisible Pink Unicorn
The Flying Spaghetti Monster
Douglas Adams's Great Green Arkleseizure
Bertrand Russell's Interplanetary Teapot
Carl Sagan's Invisible Dragon in a Garage
Sam Harris's Refrigerator-Sized Diamond Buried in a Backyard

It seems to me that this whole "The existence of God cannot be proved" bit is a concession of defeat, since there's a whole theological tradition that states that the existence of God is provable. It seems to me like this:

T: Lots and lots of would-be proofs of the existence of God

A: Rebuttals of them

T: That doesn't mean anything because existence of God is unprovable

(I used some HTML in my post)

95. Left Behind: Eternal Forces on The Daily Show

Comment #15523 by lpetrich on January 1, 2007 at 3:05 am

In this game, you command the Tribulation Force, the people who have converted to the One True Sect of Fundamentalist Xianity after the Rapture.

Your opponents are the Global Community Peacekeepers, commanded by the Antichrist himself, Nicolae Carpathia, the leader of the One-World Government.

Your aim is to try to convert neutral civilians and GCP units, as the GCP tries to do the same to neutrals and your units. And while your units can pray, the GCP ones can swear, though the swearing is all bleeped out. I wonder if anyone will come up with an unbleeped-swearing patch for that game.

The game is full of swipes at fundies' villains; the GCP includes Rock Stars, Secularists, and Cult Leaders. And units can be trained in:

TF - Mission Training Center
GCP - College

And the between-level parts of the game include lots of fundie preaching, including a Hovindian conception of evolution, and also lots of plugs for Xian pop/rock songs, complete with "Buy" buttons. This makes me think of what Jesus Christ had done about all those moneychangers in the Jerusalem Temple.

Over at http://www.iidb.org , I ran a poll on which side that IIDBers might prefer, and those who wanted a side all preferred the GCP -- none wanted the TF.

But the feature that is most likely to make this game's players pray is its instability -- it crashes a lot.


The Left Behind series has a homepage at what else but http://www.leftbehind.com ? And the LB guys have been VERY busy, cranking out not only a 12-book series, but also a 3-part prequel, a military series, a political series, study guides, etc.

And they are working on a sequel, "Kingdom Come", which takes place 1000 years after Jesus Christ makes his Second Coming and smashes the Antichrist and his troops in "Glorious Appearing" (#12 of the series proper). Its plot summary I shall now reveal:

When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth—Gog and Magog—to gather them for battle. In number they are like the sand on the seashore. They marched across the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of God's people, the city he loves. But fire came down from heaven and devoured them. And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever. (Revelation 20:7-10, NIV)

(one can use HTML tags here, and I used "blockquote")

96. God's Enemies Are More Honest Than His Friends

Comment #15153 by lpetrich on December 29, 2006 at 7:01 am

I marvel at Mr. Muehlenberg's comments, since counterevidence for them is so easy for him to find. Is he really serious that atheists are unconcerned with truth, beauty, justice, and love?

And furthermore, most of those "billions" of people have believed in (to him) false gods and false religions and false sects. And since the traditional doctrine of Xianity is that all those who reject the One True Sect of Xianity will suffer eternal damnation, I wonder if Mr. Muehlenberg is also believes that. And I wonder if he agrees with the eminent theologians Tertullian and St. Thomas Aquinas on how one of the joys of Heaven will be watching the torments of those sent to Hell.


And sorry if I seem to keep on spamming my reference to Plato's Royal Lie; I remember reading about it long ago in Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy and being struck by its barefaced honesty.

97. God's Enemies Are More Honest Than His Friends

Comment #15151 by lpetrich on December 29, 2006 at 6:50 am

Sam Harris's argument #2 is what I like to call Plato's Royal Lie argument, after the official religion that Plato had proposed for his Republic. His society's religion, Hellenic paganism, would be outlawed as full of bad examples like heroes lamenting and gods laughing.

Whatever can be said of Plato's quasi-theocratic "utopia", it must be said that Plato was much, much, much, much, much more honest than many religious apologists.

98. An imaginary deity is denounced and debunked

Comment #14632 by lpetrich on December 23, 2006 at 8:53 pm

One has to distinguish between the US Founding Fathers' personal beliefs and what they thought was good for others to believe and practice.

One can believe that all varieties of religion are false yet believe that people ought to be made to practice some religion in order to make them virtuous. In effect, one would believe in Plato's Royal Lie; one would believe that the religion business is desirable as opium for the people.

99. Fallen Angels Assault: Heaven at Christmas

Comment #14631 by lpetrich on December 23, 2006 at 8:41 pm

Yet another advocate of Plato's Royal Lie. Plato's Republic was to have an official religion for the purpose of making its citizens virtuous, a religion that Plato himself considered false.

Notice that Mr. Henninger does not address the issue of how much truth a religion might have, only its ethical effects. And as pointed out earlier, Mr. Henninger reveals his ignorance of a LOT of important history. Pagan Greek and Roman philosophers thought a lot about ethics, but for the most part, they didn't say "We're only following Zeus's orders." In fact, Plato posed a serious dilemma for the divine-command theory of ethics in his dialogue Euthyphro. Is something good because a god like it, or does that god like it because it is good?

100. The Komodo Dragon's Tale

Comment #14510 by lpetrich on December 22, 2006 at 10:08 pm

As to dragon myths, there are plenty of other reptiles to inspire them, like snakes and crocodiles. The bite of a venomous snake can be VERY painful, and crocodiles are predators that can easily grow larger than a Komodo Dragon.