51. [UPDATED] Venomous Snakes, Slippery Eels and Harun Yahya

Comment #208124 by Cartomancer on July 10, 2008 at 3:40 pm

Al-Rwandi -

I'm not sure who you're counting as "philosophers", but I'd certainly fly the flag for Al-Kindi and Ibn Al-Haytham (Alhacen or Alhazen to the Latins) for their work on optics, and some of the earlier commentaries of Al-Ghazzali on Aristotle are fairly perceptive (though we don't like him for obvious reasons). Al-Rhazi (Rhazes) was fairly important for medicine too, but I seem to recall that he was something of an outsider as well.

52. Religious bigotry upheld in court

Comment #208106 by Cartomancer on July 10, 2008 at 3:22 pm

Ooh, I don't know Ian - using my words in other contexts might offend my religious sensibilities...

53. Religious bigotry upheld in court

Comment #208091 by Cartomancer on July 10, 2008 at 3:10 pm

First, a disclaimer. I do not have the details of the tribunal's ruling to hand so I cannot tell what the decision was based on and why this bigoted woman "won the case". There is mention of harassment. If indeed there was some kind of unacceptable harassment - actual harassment mind, such as her bosses shouting serious abuse at her all the time or pushing her over in the lunch queue, not just them expecting her to do her job properly and insisting that she does so - then the decision is the right one. I suspect this is not the case however, because the decision has been touted as a blow for "religious rights" and she is crowing about this aspect of the proceedings rather than being personally ill-treated.

So I shall assume henceforth that the reporting is accurate and the decision really is a kick in the teeth for equal rights.

I damn well hope that Islington Council appeals the decision and the proper judges at a real court shoot it down in flames like the nasty piece of bigotry it is.

But I would go much, much further. In fact I think the law of the UK, particularly the 2007 Goods and Services (Discrimination) Act, compels us to go further. Not only should all civil registrars be compelled to perform gay marriages, so should all religious institutions which offer marriages. All those vicars and priests and imams and rabbis and grand hierophants and what have you. All of them. No exceptions.

Inasmuch as ANY marriage is a public service and carries legal implications, it should be offered to all irrespective of the personal prejudices of the vendor. Anything less is de facto, and de iure, support for discrimination.

The only way that "religious rights" would be infringed were if the government started convicting people of thought crimes. You're still free to believe whatever the hell you like in Britain - you're just not afforded any special privileges in your behaviour because of it. At bottom, that's all religion is - personal opinion. It has no objective reality to it beyond the patterns of neural activity in the heads of its sufferers. It has no place in secular legislation at all.

As has been noted in previous posts, the litmus test in this situation must surely be "would the tribunal have come to the same decision if the action were based on non-religious factors?" If she had just stood up and said "I'm a homophobic bigot, I don't want to do it", there is no way the tribunician arbitrators would have taken her side. Why is homophobia ok if you contracted it from a two thousand year old book read at you by an elderly paedophile in a dress, but not if contracted down the pub from skinheads in their unreconstructed patriatrchal machismo?

54. [UPDATED] Venomous Snakes, Slippery Eels and Harun Yahya

Comment #207948 by Cartomancer on July 10, 2008 at 10:32 am

Oh, and it's rare that I express congratulations, but I must just say that I loved Fanusi's "You cower before an image of the moon, while we have walked upon it" line. I'm definitely going to be using that one next time a mad mullah crosses my path.

For my part, I generally ignore "islam" when discussing the intellectual achievements of the arab and arabised world in the middle ages. As indeed even the most devout islamic scholars did when writing anything of value. Avicenna (also a Persian, from Bukhara) was one of the most phenomenal and precocious polymaths the world has seen, and despite his fervent attempts to reconcile faith with philosophy he never let the silliness of his religion interfere with his scientific and logical studies in the way modern islamic "thinkers" habitually do. He was sometimes accused of blasphemy (as Thomas Aquinas was briefly after he died) but professed that if he was an infidel then there were no muslims in all mankind. He'd memorised the entire koran by the age of seven, but spent the rest of his life reading and learning from as many other books as he could - making no distinction between the learning of his co-religionists and that of infidels. He is someone a lot of modern muslims could learn a lot from.

55. [UPDATED] Venomous Snakes, Slippery Eels and Harun Yahya

Comment #207943 by Cartomancer on July 10, 2008 at 10:30 am

I take it the marriage is off then?

56. [UPDATED] Venomous Snakes, Slippery Eels and Harun Yahya

Comment #207881 by Cartomancer on July 10, 2008 at 8:48 am

Wikipedia says he was from Nestorian stock. So a christian and a monophysite too. Interesting.

57. [UPDATED] Venomous Snakes, Slippery Eels and Harun Yahya

Comment #207876 by Cartomancer on July 10, 2008 at 8:43 am

Actually, let us assume for the sake of argument that Arabic scientific success from the ninth to the twelfth centuries actually was divinely inspired and proves that Allah was Top God.

Presumably European scientific success in the next eight centuries can similarly be ascribed to Yahweh and Jesus - who became Top Gods as Allah faded into the background. And he got more generous in his patronage as he dwindled into deistic otium and disappeared altogether.

Furthermore Greek scientific success must similarly be attributed to Hermes, Hephaistos, Athena and Apollo. And Egyptian success before that to Thoth. And Babylonian and Sumerian success to Astarte and Ishtar.

But today the greatest scientific advances of all are taking place under the auspices of no god whatsoever. Looks like we can do much better without interference from on high...

58. [UPDATED] Venomous Snakes, Slippery Eels and Harun Yahya

Comment #207871 by Cartomancer on July 10, 2008 at 8:38 am

I had no idea Hunayn ibn Ishaq was actually a christian. That's quite ironic really. From my perspective in the twelfth century he was unwittingly re-christianised through misleading ascription of his writings. Part of Hunayn's medical writings were translated in Monte Cassino at the end of the eleventh century by Constantine Africanus and his students, and soon became the basis for the Salernitan medical corpus that formed the introductory medical course throughout the later middle ages. Hunayn's very first introductory work, the isagoge, was attributed by Salernitan medics to a mysterious christian writer called "Johannitius" and gained fame under that name. It is highly likely that this occurred because Constantine's most senior student and aide was called Johannes Afflacius, and it was probably he who did the translation from Arabic.

59. [UPDATED] Venomous Snakes, Slippery Eels and Harun Yahya

Comment #207856 by Cartomancer on July 10, 2008 at 8:24 am

DO NOT FORGET THAT IT WAS THE MUSLIMS WHO TOOK EUROPE OUT OF THEIR DARK AGES AND ORIGINATED THE SCIENCES AND HOW IT WAS THE BOOK OF GOD , THE QU'RAN THAT INSPIRED IT ALL

Since my doctoral thesis is actually about european scholarship in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, I feel it incumbent upon me to correct this simplistic falsification.

What happened in the central middle ages was that a number of northern european scholars began to feel the need to expand their intellectual horizons beyond the traditional Latin liberal arts curriculum which had monopolised European learning since the fall of the Roman Empire. As such they went abroad in the mediterranean looking for classical works, especially greek scientific works and above all the lost books of Aristotle, which were not currently available in Latin translation. It is true that Arabic civilisations had preserved a good deal more of this matter than the west, although not as much as the Byzantine world where better translations came from (Greek to Latin is so much easier than Arabic to Latin). The majority of the translation activity took place in Sicily and Toledo, thanks to a relatively small number of individuals such as Adelard of Bath, James of Venice, Hermann of Carinthia, Gerard of Cremona and later on William of Moerbeke. Overwhelmingly it was Greek texts - Aristotle, Galen, the Hellenic fathers - that were brought back, not their Arabic commentaries. The only major works of Arab scholarship that the west acquired and made use of were the writings of Avicenna, mainly the Canon of Medicine and De Anima, Alhacen's optical works, a few Aristotelian commentaries by Al-Ghazzali and later on the commentaries of Averroes. There was a translation of the Koran into latin by Robert of Chester at the behest of Peter the Venerable, as well as histories of the saracens, but that soon passed into obscurity.

Arabic science was far in advance of European science until about the twelfth century. But this had nothing to do with islam, it owed everything to the same spirit of curiosity that inspired the Greeks, and the greek writings which formed the basis for their ideas. It is no coincidence that the mechanical writings of Heron of Alexandria were preserved mainly in Arabic manuscripts, and the Arabs showed great promise in all fields of engineering. Once Latin writers acquired the greek sciences and, eventually, the spirit of scientific curiosity (in my view a development of scholastic ideas, not in contradistinction to them) they improved on and expanded the arabic ideas, as well as native Latin ideas, to create the flowering of science in the Renaissance and Enlightenment that hasn't really slowed down.

Meanwhile, in the Arab world, Greek science and Aristotelian rationalism lost favour. The story of Al-Ghazzali is well known, and he epitomises the trend. He abandoned rational Aristotelianism for a superstitious, occasionalistic fundamentalist islam, and in so doing condemned his people to eight centuries of backwardness and technological stagnation. Arab science occurred in spite of islamic teachings, not because of them. During the golden age of the caliphate muslim rulers were enlightened folk who took their islam with a good pinch of common sense - much as moderate christians and even moderate muslims do today.

60. [UPDATED] Venomous Snakes, Slippery Eels and Harun Yahya

Comment #207839 by Cartomancer on July 10, 2008 at 8:04 am

You're not going to be the only one crying if he actually goes through with it!

61. [UPDATED] Venomous Snakes, Slippery Eels and Harun Yahya

Comment #207834 by Cartomancer on July 10, 2008 at 7:57 am

Aww, don't listen to the nasty people Joe, with all their difficult questions about evidence and long scientific words that you don't understand. They just don't appreciate your... err... unique personal qualities. I'll marry you big boy, since you're clearly on the market. I'll even wear cowboy boots at the wedding if you like - it seems to turn you on. Kiss kiss my Sicilian stallion.

I told you I had appalling taste in men...

62. [UPDATED] Venomous Snakes, Slippery Eels and Harun Yahya

Comment #207675 by Cartomancer on July 10, 2008 at 5:25 am

Y'know, the idea that babies are all born as muslims makes a lot of sense. It'd certainly explain why all they do is shout loudly at the tops of their voices demanding food and shelter from others, don't contribute anything useful to society, make a mess of their surroundings, can't engage in intelligent debate and crap themselves and start crying whenever something they don't understand comes along...

63. IT'S A GODDAMNED CRACKER!

Comment #207074 by Cartomancer on July 9, 2008 at 6:44 am

Perhaps it was childish. Good. Catholic beliefs are pretty childish themselves - fight fire with fire I say. Insensitive? Of course - but often you have to deeply offend people to show up how flawed their belief system is. And were they really as offended as they make out? Really? Over a little bit of wafer, whatever the symbolism? I can't believe they really were. I strongly suspect they were just posturing and puffing as loudly as they could to conceal the fact they don't believe all the nonsense either and feel guilty that they don't. They're just afraid of being revealed for the kooks they are and try to conceal the fact with all the bluster of a wounded pride act. And if they really, really do believe that the host is made of magic then they are mentally ill or seriously deluded and in need of medical or educational help. It is truly outrageous that anyone can stand up in a secular society and claim such a ridiculous basis for their vile conduct.

I was under the impression that most catholic services are open to the public for attendance, but maybe that's just because I'm more familiar with anglicans. Either way, if it was a private affair then he was clearly invited in and formed a part of the private club just as much as the more orthodox members who were offended. Assuming he was culturally a catholic then he has even more right to stir things up and show how embarassing it is that the people around him take all the medieval nonsense so seriously.

I have very little time indeed for the claim that nominally belonging to an institution is somehow a compelling reason for putting up with things you don't like. It's the most fundamental and uncritical font of patriarchal conservatism you can imagine, a font which vomits forth people like the despicable pseudo-fascistic Stephen Glover of the Daily Mail:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1027571/Gay-priests-marrying-smirking-Prince-insidious-cult-self.html

64. IT'S A GODDAMNED CRACKER!

Comment #207062 by Cartomancer on July 9, 2008 at 6:12 am

Ah, good old Transubstantiation! It's been pointed out by several posters before, but saying they're acting like it's still the middle ages is dead right here. Literally gallons of ink were spilled over thorny eucharistic problems by the top minds in Europe for hundreds of years. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries the debate over how exactly the eucharist should be interpreted was the most prominent academic debate of all. Paschasius Radbertus in the ninth century raised doubts that christ's body and blood were really there in the host and John Scotus Eriugena probably weighed in on the subject in the next century. But it was Berengar of Tours in the eleventh century who stirred it up properly, claiming that there was no real physical change in the host and wine and the process should be understood mystically, perhaps even symbolically. He was imprisoned, and eventually forced to recant, though probably not excommunicated. Roscelin of Compiegne, Peter Abelard and many others joined the fray in suceeding years - unorthodox views on the eucharist became a popular shibboleth for heresy. From the start, the church line was always that christ's body is really there in the realest way it could be.

The debate was largely settled by the time Aristotelian thinking entered the Latin world at the end of the twelfth century. The first use of the term "transubstantiation" was not Aquinas as many have thought, but as far as we can tell the late eleventh century poet and bishop of Tours Hildebert of Lavardin. It became official church doctrine at the fourth Lateran Council in 1215. Basically the philosophical alternatives to "transubstantiation" were "consubstantiation", whereby both christ and the bread exist in the same matter at once, and "annihilation" whereby the bread is actually annihilated into nothingness and replaced entirely by the body of christ from its position in the heavens. Both of these were henceforth considered errors, if not outright heretical.

Aquinas' use of Aristotelian metaphysical terminology to explain how the process occurred was simply an attempt to elucidate an article of faith with contemporary science. He was hugely influential, and pretty much all later scholastics held some version of his idea, but it is important to note that his explanation was never in itself considered an article of faith. All the church required was that you believe it happens by transubstantiation, it never required you to believe that transubstantiation happens in a particular way. As such Scotus, Ockham, Henry of Ghent and others all had their own versions and discussed all kinds of arcane questions as to how the physics of transubstantiation really worked. In particular Aquinas' idea that the accident of quantity (the "prime form of corporeity" which turned matter into a tangible body) remained from the original matter, was disputed quite fervently. All were agreed, however, that the body of christ must be present on the altar in its entirety. Every last bit in each and every morsel, nay, each and every particle of the bread and the wine. Otherwise you would get the silly situation that you might only get a small piece of toe or liver, which is decidedly less impressive. The mechanisms used for explaining the immanence of the soul in the body were adapted to explain this for the most part.

But, returning to the article at hand, host desecration was a massive worry for intelligent theological types. We know this because there are a huge number of quodlibetal questions preserved which deal with it. The quodlibet was an obscure form of medieval university disputation. It was a penitential activity, performed at easter and christmas by university masters, and involved them answering, on the spot but in full dialectic fashion, any questions the assembled audience of students and congregants would throw at them (usually they chose their own questions for debate, most commonly by taking them from the Sentences of Peter Lombard). Notaries would then take down their answers. As such the topics raised in a quodlibet are a good barometer of what the learned folk of the time thought were pressing moral, ethical and scientific issues - during the crusades, for instance, you would get lots of questions about how christians should treat captured infidels, whether the fall of a holy city had any special eschatological relevance and so forth.

But host desecration was always a perrenial favourite. And what questions they did ask! What happens if you eat the host but vomit it up again straightaway? What happens if bits get stuck in your teeth? What if the priest fluffs the words? How far through the digestive tract does it have to get before you've absorbed all the christ out of it and it's merely bread again (because it would be unseemly to crap out christ at the other end). In northern Europe you often got the "can we use cider or beer instead of wine, because we can't grow grapes up here" question (the answer was generally no). Then there was "what happens if an infidel accidentally or dishonestly eats the host?" or "how long does the host remain transubstantiated if you don't eat it straightaway?" as well as more erudite metaphysical posers such as how christ's body can be entirely in heaven and entirely on the altar at the same time (indeed, entirely on several altars at the same time if multiple priests are performing multiple eucharists simultaneously). This last one even caused a number of theologians to posit that Aristotle was wrong in his assertion that the same body cannot be in multiple places at the same time, or multiple bodies in the same place - quantum mechanics for theologians!

All very interesting for an historian of ideas like myself. But it really does surprise me to learn that there are still catholics today who believe this stuff so fervently. Perhaps it shouldn't. I thought most catholics were of the opinion that, well, we're supposed to believe it's really the body of christ, but of course it isn't, that's just silly. We'll treat it as a powerful symbol thank you very much. More candles!

I must say that my leanings are strongly toward mischevious iconoclasm in this case, and I wish the student concerned had actually gone further. I think it is vitally important that catholics the world over are disabused of their narrow, medieval mindset and shown just how plain ridiculous their cult is to outside eyes. It's one thing to believe something yourself, quite another to expect others to respect your belief when they don't share it. And this belief is just plain silly, however earnestly it is held. Perhaps the hand should be stayed a little in poor countries where the church does provide some hope to the desperate and hopeless, but at an affluent middle-class university in the states? Students SHOULD be doing this kind of thing, stirring up the ennui and inertia of a jaded world, changing minds and bringing people out of comfortable muddle-headedness. Small-minded theistic conservatives have no right to expect protection from being stood up and ridiculed, their silliness exposed for all to see - especially ones who conduct their silliness in public and at the taxpayer's expense. They certainly have no right to molest and hound their jovial ridiculer in this way.

65. [UPDATED] Venomous Snakes, Slippery Eels and Harun Yahya

Comment #206740 by Cartomancer on July 8, 2008 at 5:55 pm

Maybe the prison wardens confiscated his scissors and he drank all the paste?

66. [UPDATED] Venomous Snakes, Slippery Eels and Harun Yahya

Comment #206733 by Cartomancer on July 8, 2008 at 5:51 pm

Maybe he just blunted his scissors and ran out of paste?

67. [UPDATED] Venomous Snakes, Slippery Eels and Harun Yahya

Comment #206598 by Cartomancer on July 8, 2008 at 2:12 pm

Alexander was an interesting fellow. At times he subscribed to a form of my twin brother's religious leanings - Autotheism. Despite indications that it's a much more widespread philosophical position, at my last search dear brother Gavin was still the only openly autotheistic individual on facebook...

68. A trip to the Creation Museum

Comment #206588 by Cartomancer on July 8, 2008 at 1:54 pm

Behind the windows of these homes, televisions show scenes of secular life: a boy surfing the internet for porn, a girl casually chatting on her cell about getting an abortion.

And what gratifying scenes they are too! I'm sure the boy is delighted that he has such a wonderful tool at his disposal for exploring his erotic urges. I know I was at his age! And the girl's parents must be proud that she knows her own mind, and is so confident and responsible in dealing with life's little setbacks.

Sign me up for those millions of years!

69. McDonald's Makes Jesus Cry

Comment #206580 by Cartomancer on July 8, 2008 at 1:36 pm

You mean we've been rumbled on the top-secret "project sand" thing? Damn, the Secret Conclave of Sodom will be seething when they find out. Now I'm going to have to cook up an even more heinous and depraved way to bring the nuclear family crashing down into a sea of moral tirpitude. Some kind of remote-controlled exploding hats maybe?

As it happens this particular homosexual has had a lifelong love affair with the warm, tasty cuisine purveyed under those magnificent golden arches. I've probably put away enough chicken McNuggets to keep the National Lesbian and Gay Chamber of Commerce in business for several years. And the one on Cornmarket Street is now open until 3am every day of the week, making it so much more convenient for someone with my vampiric circadian rhythms.

70. [UPDATED] Venomous Snakes, Slippery Eels and Harun Yahya

Comment #206545 by Cartomancer on July 8, 2008 at 1:03 pm

I've just had a worrying thought. Maybe Wooter has contracted islam and brought his drawer full of sock puppets with him?

Either that or the Black Gate of the Morannon has opened once more.

71. Sir John M. Templeton, Philanthropist, Dies at 95

Comment #206336 by Cartomancer on July 8, 2008 at 9:34 am

The only "progress" that can be made in the field of religion is the complete abandonment of it as the ridiculous nonsense it clearly is. As such everyone who has thrown off the shackles of theistic myopia deserves a Templeton prize - for realising that the "spiritual realities" the old coot espoused were never there in the first place. I never had the virus myself, so I'm ineligible, but I encourage Richard and all the other noble people on this site who did once labour under such misapprehensions to make their claim.

Just goes to show that the ability to push large numbers of banknotes around the world doesn't make you any smarter as far as the important questions go. I respect Templeton's commitment to improving the world, I just wish he'd had the sense to find a better way of doing so.

72. [UPDATED] Venomous Snakes, Slippery Eels and Harun Yahya

Comment #206326 by Cartomancer on July 8, 2008 at 9:24 am

Reports filed with the police early on Tuesday reveal details of a daring heist on the International World of Scissors superstore, followed by a similar ransacking of Sticky Pete's Paste Emporium scant hours later. Forensic teams believe that the windows of both stores were smashed in with a large islamic creationist textbook before their stock was looted. The thief is estimated to have made off with at least forty pairs of high-quality pinking shears and over twelve gallons of copydex.

Police are still looking for a mysterious man named "ertu" who may be able to help them with their inquiries.

73. Degrees of religion

Comment #206279 by Cartomancer on July 8, 2008 at 8:10 am

but I truly, honestly believe that as long as a person is doing their best, they are doing enough... As long as a person's actions do not harm anyone and stay within the range of their moral barometer, I think they deserve respect.

No. This is not good enough. Even trying your hardest won't cut the mustard if you're not trying to do the right thing. What statements like this do is raise up blind unconsidered effort as the prime human virtue above actually thinking and trying to work out what the best course of action would be. Just because something takes effort to do it is not necessarily worth doing - putting your back into the job is hardly ever as effective as putting your head into it.

In this case the moderate British muslims are wasting their effort trying to achieve a precarious balance between modernity and medievality, trying to reconcile the irreconcilable. If they actually sat down and realised that there is an easy way out - stop pretending to believe in the quaint supernatural nonsense and just treat it as sentimental cultural baggage like most western people do - they could save themselves all the hassle of cognitive dissonance and devote their mental energies to something worth doing instead.

Trying desperately to square the circle is not a virtuous or praiseworthy act, especially when you know full well that it can't be squared. Muddling along with a head full of contradictions is not a noble cause. A hypocrite is not something one should stand up and proudly admit to being - while we are all hypocrites in some ways, most of us recognise that hypocrisy is an intrinsic failing and try to address it, or at least cover it up and have the good grace to feel embarassed about it.

Ultimately, I suspect, the only reason people do these things is because they have failed to successfully examine their belief that there is a spooky semi-benevolent sky tyrant up there who really will reward you for simply trying. Anselm's monologion and proslogion are full of such stuff - "oh how far short of your ideals I come, my efforts are next to nothing, all I can do is try my hardest and hope". It's a pathetic masochistic false modesty, a quick-fix get-out-of-pondering-difficult-moral-questions-free card. It draws the sting of failure and encourages only muddle-headed mediocrity, making people secure in the knowledge that nothing matters beyond tying your colours to a mast - any mast will do - and shouting for all you're worth, irrespective of whether you're shouting the right thing or anybody else is there to hear you.

74. Churches' secret talks to stop gay surge

Comment #205555 by Cartomancer on July 7, 2008 at 12:54 pm

The real question is how popular and influential each of the two opposed factions in the church will turn out to be, and which will come out on top. I really don't know how this will play out.

Obviously we've had tensions between liberals and conservative, bigoted elements in the anglican church since its inception, and the whole edifice has been kept together because nobody really brought the subject up before. Now a split is looming it could go either way - the conservatives might gain the upper hand and reduce the influence of both sides, or they could depart as disgraced schismatics and gradually lose respect and power compared to a revitalised, forward-looking liberal orthodoxy. I would like to think that their message is becoming increasingly irrelevant to modern Britain and their congregations will dwindle fastest of all, especially as their stern, blue-rinse supporters die out. Immigration from more conservative societies may scupper this however.

My powers of prophecy are dark here.

75. Churches' secret talks to stop gay surge

Comment #205533 by Cartomancer on July 7, 2008 at 12:25 pm

Well, obviously personal prejudices are a crucial part of the decision, but prejudices are rarely held in isolation from the cultural climate. If there weren't any bigoted, homophobic, misogynistic churches out there as alternatives then people's prejudices in these directions would quickly melt away. Bigotry would not be acceptable anywhere, and the powerful urge to conform to society and its power structures would wear away at their prejudices until only the negligible crackpot fringe is left. Since there are respected organisations out there who espouse bigotry, the bigots can derive comfort and support for it from the fact that there are lots of other people out there who share it.

In my experience bigotry is hardly ever a properly thought through position. People just acquire it unconsciously from the attitudes of their society, and those few who feel the need to justify it will grasp at whatever explanations they have readily to hand - be those explanations religious, scientific or simply an appeal to authority and tradition.

76. [UPDATED] Venomous Snakes, Slippery Eels and Harun Yahya

Comment #205530 by Cartomancer on July 7, 2008 at 12:17 pm

What baffles me is why this guy decided to send his gilded nonsense out to academic scientists, who would have the knowledge and experience to very quickly dismiss it outright, rather than to laypeople who might be drawn in by its claims.

The only answer I can think of, which if true would expose the colossal arrogance of this man, is that he genuinely believes his theory is sound and will convince even specialists in the field. I could be wrong in the further assumption that he has never studied evolution, or indeed any biology, in even cursory detail, and thus his arrogance is even greater still, but I wouldn't like to bet on it.

77. Religion's role in the climate debate

Comment #205523 by Cartomancer on July 7, 2008 at 12:11 pm

Gah! Apparently Ipsos is a big company, and MORI is the surveying group. That's why it's grammatically unusual - it's not actually a Latin phrase at all, merely a corporate mashing together of words.

78. Churches' secret talks to stop gay surge

Comment #205516 by Cartomancer on July 7, 2008 at 12:00 pm

I'm not sure it's entirely down to personal feelings and the arrogant assumption that they themselves are right and their chosen institution has got it wrong. I suspect it has a lot to do with market forces and choice between alternatives.

Were there only one church available, as there was for much of European history, they'd probably just take the changeover in their stride, grumble a bit, and move on. Because we now live in a media age where all the alternatives are apparent, believers can pick and choose which church they think has got it right. And they're influenced by the other churches too. "Those catholics and evangelicals are awfully determined and unwavering in their beliefs" they think, which appeals to the conservative mind-set much more than the wishy-washy anglican dithering they have subscribed to by default. Initially this manifests itself in trying to get the anglicans to behave more like the catholics, but eventually it leads to defection.

They'd doubtless never become muslims or sikhs or whatever, but catholicism and protestantism have had a long history of interchange in Europe and most european christians would think of themselves as christians first, by denomination second (except in areas such as Northern Ireland where there are unresolved tensions).

79. Churches' secret talks to stop gay surge

Comment #205509 by Cartomancer on July 7, 2008 at 11:46 am

The thing that is totally beyond me is the number of women who are against women bishops.

Its not just the oppressors in a stable abusive relationship who cling to and honour the system that put them there. Slaves in the classical world often thought it their lot to be enslaved and didn't complain. Similarly with serfs in the Middle Ages, and the working classes in the early modern world. I guess there are a lot of people who derive comfort from a feeling of knowing their place, who is above them and who below. If you grow up in the system it seems a whole lot more comforting staying put than abandoning your certainties for something better.

There seems to be a kind of masochism at work, whereby the more they suffer from oppression, the more pious and self-assured they become.

Oh, and I do seem to be out of date on the gay scene don't I? I must collar some more delightful young things and get them to set me straight as it were...

80. Churches' secret talks to stop gay surge

Comment #205492 by Cartomancer on July 7, 2008 at 11:15 am

Does that date me, or what?

Now now Steve, it could be worse - you could have said Bros or Wham! - which would have put you even earlier in the palaeolithic according to the official homo-geological dating scheme. After extensive consultation with the modern queer youth (those who didn't run away as soon as they saw me in any case), I am reliably informed that it's a Mr. Mika and somebody from America called Rufus Wainwright that the cool kids are listening to now.

I appreciated Take That during my teenage years in the same way I appreciate Wimbledon today - with the sound off and my finger hovering over the slow-motion replay button. And I was bloody glad when that ugly Mancunian bastard Robbie Williams buggered off to do his own thing and left the attractive ones to get on with it. When I was feeling really dirty I switched to East 17. I think I did quite a few "gay surges" in front of them too. What on earth was I thinking?

81. Religion's role in the climate debate

Comment #205383 by Cartomancer on July 7, 2008 at 8:00 am

An "ipsos mori" poll?

What's that - they quiz people who are "to be expired themselves"

Sorry to be pedantic but "morior, mori, mortuus sum" is a deponent verb in Latin, which means that it has a passive grammatical form but an active meaning. "Mori" is the infinitive form, and simply means "to die", not "to be dead" as the passive -or, -i, -us sum ending might suggest. Ipsos is in the plural accusative form, which is odd because morior is an intransitive verb and so can't take a direct object. I suspect, however, that the phrase is taken from a reported speech accusative-and-infinitive form "(they say that) they themselves are dying", which would make sense.

82. Churches' secret talks to stop gay surge

Comment #205377 by Cartomancer on July 7, 2008 at 7:54 am

Vaal - I am reliably informed by an ex member of the Israeli intelligence services that Old Man Ratty is indeed as gay as can be, and has been sleeping with a fellow priest for over thirty years.

Hardly surprising. Hypocrisy is the national sport of the Vatican.

83. Churches' secret talks to stop gay surge

Comment #205374 by Cartomancer on July 7, 2008 at 7:48 am

Would there actually be any anglican clergy left if you took out all the women and gays, apart from Rowan Williams, John Sentamu and their pet tortoise Anselm?

Still, I like the sound of this "gay surge". I wonder if they'll be having one anywhere near me in the future? Can we invite the current Wimbledon champion to the next one? Pleeease!

84. Tablet Ignites Debate on Messiah and Resurrection

Comment #205188 by Cartomancer on July 6, 2008 at 6:15 pm

Entirely likely based on what?

Entirely likely based on everything we understand about biological processes and both organic and inorganic chemistry.

Please define what it is about "life" that makes you think it would be so difficult to evolve. I am genuinely curious. In fact please give us an accurate definition of the precise difference between "living" and "non-living" things that we could use to predict just how hard it would be. If it involves anything more than complex chemistry I would like you to provide the evidence that this is so.

Anyway, I've already said once that I have other matters to attend to. Go read Dawkins. Go on. Do it now.

85. Tablet Ignites Debate on Messiah and Resurrection

Comment #205182 by Cartomancer on July 6, 2008 at 6:11 pm

That's like saying that a from a tornado in a junkyard you would get a fully assembled Boeing 767.

I'm glad you've saved me the further effort of responding to you. The fact you bring up the old Hoyle chestnut tells me all I need to know. You clearly have not read The God Delusion, which sets out all the counter-arguments you need in clear, witty, very readable detail and all for the cost of a cheap mass-market paperback. Go and do that and then come back if you have questions.

This is fortunate too, because I have some more stick-shaking to return to before bed...

86. Tablet Ignites Debate on Messiah and Resurrection

Comment #205178 by Cartomancer on July 6, 2008 at 6:06 pm

Josephus did say some things of value. But we have lots of good external evidence with which to corroborate his account of Masada. By comparison his account of "christus" is very meagre indeed, and supported by very little - nothing beyond a few vague textual references from much later. Certainly no archaeological evidence. As an historian, Josephus too is only as good as the evidence he had to hand, and his account of christus can only have been very much second hand.

Furthermore, Homer's historical credibility skyrocketed when Shliemann found Hissarlik in the Troad - does that mean his gods are more likely to be real?

87. Tablet Ignites Debate on Messiah and Resurrection

Comment #205175 by Cartomancer on July 6, 2008 at 6:00 pm

You're still not explaining to me using science, not science fiction, how life began. How do you know life is a series of complex chemical reactions? The bottom line is, one talking from an evolutionary standpoint cannot legitimately explain the origins of life.

I find it a bit rich that I'm accused of resorting to science fiction as an explanation when all you've come up with is purest unevidenced fantasy.

Nevertheless, I shall dignify that with a response because it appears you have not understood what I am saying.

Everything we have learned about "living" things over the last several thousand years has shown us that the only observable difference between them and "non-living" things is the degree of complexity they exhibit in their chemical processes. Soul, psyche, anima, elan vital - they're all medieval phlogistons - they don't exist. We have precisely zero evidence for any of them. "Life" has linguistic meaning, but it is not a properly scientific term.

What I am saying is that the animistic idea that what we recognise as "life" magically came into existence all at once is flawed. "Life" is not a digital phenomenon, and it is entirely likely that something once existed, and may still exist, which we would only consider "half alive", or fractionally alive, because it is a transitional stage from the "non-living" replicator to the "living" one - its chemistry is getting more complex but has not become complex enough that we are comfortable calling it alive.

If tailless animals can evolve into tailed ones, why the hell could a "non-living" replicator not evolve into a "living" one?

Sure we haven't worked out exactly how it DID happen in our case, but we're working on it. It's a plausible explanation that uses only phenomena we have good evidence for, it makes predictions and it has massive explanatory value. That makes it science I'm afraid...

88. Tablet Ignites Debate on Messiah and Resurrection

Comment #205170 by Cartomancer on July 6, 2008 at 5:46 pm

Titus Flavius Josephus? Hah! Hardly a passage of that badly stitched-together confection of folk-history is above suspicion, and most is generally considered a later interpolation. He wasn't even BORN when jesus was supposed to have died and can only have heard about it second or third hand (the antiquitates iudaeorum was written in 93 AD). Besides which he is hardly a reliable witness and doesn't exactly give the same story as the other sources. He doesn't even use the name Jesus at all.

For an overview of the controversy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus

89. Tablet Ignites Debate on Messiah and Resurrection

Comment #205167 by Cartomancer on July 6, 2008 at 5:41 pm

Re: Sodom and Gomorrah: What Brian English said. Only louder.

Has it really never occurred to you that the account in genesis may contain the germ of something which actually happened but was embellished with all kinds of supernatural nonsense afterwards?

The Trojan War as narrated in the Iliad is a very similar case. There is now good evidence that the war happened (especially since Kaufmann's excavations in the nineties), where before it was considered just a romantic myth. But do we infer from this that Apollo and Zeus and Poseidon are real? That Paris really awarded the apple of Discord to Aphrodite and in so doing doomed his people to their end? That Achilles really was the invincible son of Thetis? That Philorcetes' magic bow is still out there somewhere? That Odysseus really built a giant wooden horse and suffered ten years of hard voyages through magical kingdoms in the sea before returning home to his wife, guided by the hand of Athena?

As an interesting aside my pub quiz team at the Turf Tavern on Tuesday nights is called Wadham and Gomorrah.

90. Tablet Ignites Debate on Messiah and Resurrection

Comment #205164 by Cartomancer on July 6, 2008 at 5:34 pm

Oh, and "spontaneous generation" is an antiquated Aristotelian notion much beloved of the medieval scholastics but with no place in modern scientific parlance. It's a term which was used to indicate such things as the appearance of worms from rotten meat, and fish from water, because these were considered to be acts of non-sexual reproduction by pre-modern biology. The term you want is abiogenesis, which I am led to believe is also a somewhat misleading notion because "life" as we understand it did not suddenly happen, but rather emerged gradually through evolutionary processes. "Life" is not some magic vital spark but rather a series of increasingly complex chemical processes - and it's impossible to draw a line in the evolutionary sand and say that it has now appeared here in this simple structure where it was not present before in the previous one. It's a classic "how many beans make a heap" kind of problem.

91. Tablet Ignites Debate on Messiah and Resurrection

Comment #205160 by Cartomancer on July 6, 2008 at 5:27 pm

It's been proven that figures such as Jesus and David are historical, not mythical

I positively love the way you assume that such a thing is possible beyond any shadow of a doubt.

History, even more than science, is based on probability and guesswork. We have a certain amount of evidence available from textual and material sources, often very little evidence indeed when we go back more than a couple of centuries, and very occasionally some more turns up that we weren't aware of before. We take what we can find, assess it, and draw speculative conclusions based on what we have in front of us. The conclusions of any historian are only ever as good as the evidence he is working from. In the case mentioned - the historicity of itinerant rabbi Jesus ben Joseph or that icon of gay love King David - the evidence is not sufficient to warrant any real degree of certainty either way.

We can, as we must, come to a best guess, but that guess must be massively speculative in nature thanks to the fact it is based on the unreliable testimony of a meagre handful of sources writing many decades after the fact.

When more evidence is discovered, the best guess must be reassessed. That's how historical scholarship works. This very article demonstrates one of those rare occasions on which new evidence has come to light and the thinking changes slightly. In this particular case it may well be very good evidence that the stories we have about the Jesus character fit much better with the contemporary judaic apocalyptic tradition than previously thought. As such, the likelihood of historicity drops somewhat, and conversely the likelihood of mythological origins increases. But we're still playing a highly speculative game and no firm conclusion can be reached.

On the question of Jesus possessing any kind of divine nature, however, we can be very sure indeed that he did not. This is because that is a scientific question about the nature of reality on which massive amounts of evidence exist - such things are simply not possible.

92. Tablet Ignites Debate on Messiah and Resurrection

Comment #205116 by Cartomancer on July 6, 2008 at 3:35 pm

Before you leave Cartomancer...do you think you could use that stick to pry me out of here?

Well, all right, just this once. I'm in a generous mood today!

Unfortunately, there are kooks who think they can explain resurrection through QM, and we have to counter all arguments. We are done with that, I think. :)

Do these people actually try to suggest a plausible quantum-mechanical mechanism for resurrection though? I'm guessing there must be recourse to some kind of magic in their arguments at some stage, because if there isn't then why does this count as a "miracle" at all? If you really can use some kind of theoretical quantum sorcery to bring yourself back from the dead then where does this "son of god" business come into the equation? Surely the rest of us could do it too if it were possible through purely natural agency?

And if you can't then that leaves us right back where we started - with recourse to invoking magic. It's just a case of at what level of causation you want to introduce the hocus-pocus.

And even if it were possible you still need to explain how this jesus fellow came by his knowledge of the necessary quantum sorcery and the required equipment to put it into effect. Invoking "divine knowledge" just puts it back in the territory of assertion by fiat. Ultimately the most likely explanation, by a huge margin, would always be that it didn't happen.

93. Prayer refusal pupils 'disciplined'

Comment #205113 by Cartomancer on July 6, 2008 at 3:21 pm

Pah! Mimicking muslim prayer rituals is nothing! You should have seen what I got my students to mime when we were doing the comedies of Aristophanes!

In retrospect maybe the strap-on theatrical phalluses were going a bit far. And I probably should have curbed their enthusiasm a little in the cross-dressing scenes. They're sure as hell never going to forget those lessons in a hurry though...

94. Tablet Ignites Debate on Messiah and Resurrection

Comment #205110 by Cartomancer on July 6, 2008 at 3:14 pm

I'm terribly sorry, I appear to have the wrong thread...

I only came here looking for a nice comfortable bit of biblical archaeology and cultural history after watching the series finale of Dr. Who on I-player. Instead I find long extracts from high-end cosmological physics papers which my poor addled little humanities-student brain cannot even begin to fathom. Baryon annihilation eh? I'm sure they make some kind of cream for that these days.

I think I shall just leave quietly and wait until the grown-ups have finished their conversation. Fortunately there are more pictures of the delightful Rafael Nadal on the internet than you can shake a stick at right now, so I'll just be... well, shaking a stick if anyone wants me!

95. The Boundaries of Belief

Comment #205095 by Cartomancer on July 6, 2008 at 2:36 pm

I suspect it is simply a result of a few people getting the negatives and double-negatives confused in their surveys, over-interpreting the questions or mixing up the boxes at the top and bottom of the choice. This would come under that 5% margin of error that Sam Harris is talking about.

For instance, someone who answers the first question "are you a theist, a deist, an agnostic or an atheist?" with "atheist" might then assume that the remaining questions are specifically about their atheism. As such the "Do you believe there is a personal god?" question might be interpreted as "How strongly do you believe what atheists believe about the existence of a personal god?" and they might thus choose the "absolutely certain" response because they think it means "I am absolutely certain that there isn't one" when combined with an initial expression of atheism in the earlier questions.

Or they knew that the box they wanted would be at one end of the selection, but accidentally picked the wrong end because they were in a hurry. Or the person filling out the form for them wasn't paying enough attention. This might be especially common if the "atheism" end of the selection wasn't always in the same place. For example, imagine if the first question were "do you believe there is a personal god?" with the first choice being "strongly disagree" and the fifth "strongly agree", but the next question were "do you believe that the christian bible is a book with no special properties beyond those of any other book?" with the same range of responses in the same order. In such a case it is entirely reasonable to expect many people will simply assume that putting 1. all the time will yield the most atheistic response, where in fact it will sometimes have the opposite effect.

96. Richard Dawkins on Doctor Who

Comment #204506 by Cartomancer on July 5, 2008 at 4:52 am

My little Mary Poppins pastiche didn't even get a rise out of him. I'm annoyed now - especially since I haven't been able to get the tune out of my head for three days. I really don't want to have to do the entire score of South Pacific, but I will if this persists...

97. Evangelical Christians sign up to a 'Church within a Church'

Comment #203212 by Cartomancer on July 2, 2008 at 1:15 pm

Well, it has been nearly 475 years since Fat Harry Tudor schismed off the Church of England from the Church of Rome in the first place. I think we're well overdue for another schism by now.

Though in shocking parallel moves the gay community might very well split over the admission of openly practicing bishops and vicars into its fold. "Ordained members of the Anglican clergy were anathematised at the First Council of Sodom in 540 BC" said a spokesman for the League of Traditional Gayness this morning, "it would be a betrayal of everything the rainbow flag stands for to allow them into our seedy bars and sauna clubs now". Liberal queens were quick to condemn these words: "We should understand the hardship and sacrifices these brave clergymen have had to go through in the past, and tolerate their peculiar activities like the inclusive community we are."

98. Muslims outraged at police advert featuring cute puppy sitting in policeman's hat

Comment #203188 by Cartomancer on July 2, 2008 at 12:53 pm

There we go, I've fixed the problem. Nobody in the Tayside muslim community could complain about that surely?

99. Muslims outraged at police advert featuring cute puppy sitting in policeman's hat

Comment #203170 by Cartomancer on July 2, 2008 at 12:38 pm

how does one go about posting images in a comment out of interest?

100. Muslims outraged at police advert featuring cute puppy sitting in policeman's hat

Comment #203141 by Cartomancer on July 2, 2008 at 12:07 pm

The operative question here is one of police effectiveness. Of course it's a damnably silly thing to be offended by, and anyone who does feel such offense should get over themselves and start living in the real world. Nevertheless, with the muslim community in a substantial number of areas already feeling isolated and victimised by the police, forcing this sort of thing on them would be counter-productive. Since the campaign is all about raising consciousness to the new non-emergency number, it has de facto failed if it is refused by people who would spread the message. A very simple solution would be to produce an alternative postcard for people who don't like dogs with a cat or a budgie or the precocious tenth century arab polymath Avicenna sat in the hat.

That's assuming it's any more than one or two people. If it's not, just put the cards up on public noticeboards and in nearby shops run by people who don't have a problem. Or send them to people's houses.