51. US military accused of harboring fundamentalism

Comment #127563 by Steven Mading on February 15, 2008 at 12:21 pm

This practice is undeniably illegal under the US constitution. Military officers are granted a lot of authority to give orders to their subordinates, much more so than for a typical civilian boss/employee relationship. That authority comes from the U.S. Government. As such, a military officer in the U.S. Armed Forces must never use that authority to coerce their subordinates into any religion whatsoever. PERIOD.

BUT, Doing something about that means having to convince the supreme court - nine lifetime appointees - of the obvious truth of that.

And that's damned near impossible these days.

Deciding who gets to appoint the next few supreme court judges is a far more important consequence of the upcoming election than anything else the next president does. These 9 people have been effectively forming an impenetrable firewall between the rules of the U.S.A. on paper and the what the U.S.A. actually practices for real. So much of the dishonest bull that the presidency is getting away with can be traced back to this problem. In practice the law doesn't actually mean what it says - it merely means what these 9 people are willing to lie and CLAIM it says.

52. Pleas for condemned Saudi 'witch'

Comment #126895 by Steven Mading on February 14, 2008 at 12:49 pm

This story does not surprise me at all. I try to feel anger at it and sadness for the woman involved and yet all I can feel is numbness. We've heard it all before and we'll hear it again and not a damn thing we do or say will make any bit of difference.

Religion is justification for being a villain, and showing criticism of it makes us out to be the villains in the public's eye.

How the hell do we fight this? I'm feeling such despair over the futility of it all. If you tell the truth and show some basic human decency and compassion for the victims of religion then people will act like you're a hatemonger who just set fire to their favorite teddy bear. Is humanity doomed to perpetuate the evils of religion forever?

53. What he wishes on us is an abomination

Comment #126192 by Steven Mading on February 12, 2008 at 3:18 pm

Most modern Christians are nice people who don't obey the really awful parts of the bible. They way they do this is by deceiving themselves into thinking those parts aren't there, or that they are not the 'real' important parts, or that it takes a subtle 'enlightened' view to interpret them 'correctly' (read: in a way that's not embarrassing to a person of modern morality). We've all seen this and I don't need to go into detailed examples here again.

What I'm wondering is I keep getting this depressing thought that maybe that's the only path out for Muslims as well. That tricking themselves into thinking their Koran is nicer than it really is (and all the problems that view will cause down the road for the freethinkers who try to argue about it later), just might be the only way to soften the conflict and let them modernize their ways. In other words, is it the case that we have to accept the lie that the religion is nice and good in order to provide people with an escape clause that lets them dump the attrocities from their religion without having to drop their belief entirely?

Obviously the honest solution would be to just drop the religion. But if that's not possible, is allowing the lie that it's nice at the core and it's only man-made corruptions that made it bad (as the writer of this article claims) - is allowing that lie to stand really the only choice?

It's depressing to me that it looks more and more like the answer is yes. It's a disgusting lie - but it's a lie that might save 500 million women worldwide.

54. Sentenced to death: Afghan who dared to read about women's rights

Comment #119200 by Steven Mading on January 31, 2008 at 11:43 am

This is why Christopher Hitchens is full of crap when he claims atheists should have supported the Iraq occupation because it (as he dishonestly claims) is fighting the Islamacists. I didn't support the Iraq operation explicitly because Afghanastan is where the bigger problem is, and leaving it to a skeleton crew of soldiers while you waste time in Iraq was a huge, huge boon to the Taleban. Fight them where they live. The Iraq distraction from the real problem allows the Islamacists to come back into power, as is being demonstrated here.

55. Richard Dawkins on The Big Questions

Comment #118183 by Steven Mading on January 30, 2008 at 12:57 pm

Being an American, I haven't seen other episodes of this TV show before. If this episode is a typical example, then the format seems almost designed on purpose to prevent coherent discussion. It flips between the panel of experts, the audience, and then.... the American actor from Torchwood? It just seems so random.

56. New atheists or new anti-dogmatists?

Comment #117117 by Steven Mading on January 28, 2008 at 9:37 am

What the article fails to explain is what the author thinks the difference is between faith and religion, or more accurately what form of religion would not be rooted in faith.

He apparently does think that there's a difference, since he accuses Dawkins and Hitchens of "incorrectly" treating them as the same. But given that faith is the foundation of ALL religions I have ever heard of, and if you remove it all you have left is a philosophy rather than a religion, I can't see what the author's trying to get at.

57. Lewis Black - The Devil's Handiwork

Comment #115064 by Steven Mading on January 23, 2008 at 1:35 pm

Lewis black is a wonderful comedian. His bits where he appears occasionally on The Daily Show are excellent.

The only thing is, I worry he's going to have a heart attack on stage at some point with his angry delivery style. I'd hate to be his cardiologist.

The bit where he talks about how Christians should ask Jews what the Old Testament means since it IS their book after all is great too.

58. Three Little Pigs 'too offensive'

Comment #115059 by Steven Mading on January 23, 2008 at 1:31 pm

Pigs are just as forbidden under Jewish kosher rules as they are under Muslim rules.

So why don't they care about the Three Little Pigs offending Jews?

Answer: Jews don't have a history of reacting with outrage and violence toward those don't bother following Jewish religious rules. It's the same reason nobody gets worried that McDonalds might be offensive to Hindus who hold cows to be sacred.

Establish a history of irrational violent outrage toward those who do not abide by your religion's strictures and watch people bend over backward to accomodate you instead of telling you to knock it off.

I wish people who gave a damn about human rights would stand up to that crap.

59. Three Little Pigs 'too offensive'

Comment #115055 by Steven Mading on January 23, 2008 at 1:23 pm

Al-rawandi, here's what the deal is with pigs:

Without really good means of meat preservation, pork can be a rather dangerous meat. A lot of what infects pigs can also infect humans. So in a pre-refrigeration culture, eating pork makes you more likely to be sick than eating other meats. Eventually people started to see a pattern there. At a time when many believed sickness to be related to evilness (caused by demons and so on), they came to the conclusion that eating pork is evil. This meme survived very well since its adherents were less likely to die of food poisoning.

A lot of the kosher rules can be explained the same way. Even if the reason for them is bullcrap and the useful kosher rules are packaged inside of a lot of irrelevant 'junk' rules, the extreme cleanliness imposed by the rules does tend to increase survivability. So much like a DNA mutation that contains one useful gene packaged with several bits of "junk" DNA, the junk gets carried along with the useful part.

60. Stop revisionist Christian nation House Resolution 888

Comment #114316 by Steven Mading on January 21, 2008 at 11:41 pm

"Summer Scale" is making the same mistake many on his side of the issue make - that of forgetting the the torture is being used on people who have no yet been proven to be guilty of anything. We have nothing to go on but trust in the administration's ability to know who's guilty already without having to bother with little things like proof. I have no moral qualms with giving known terrorists poor treatment. I do have huge moral qualms with giving people poor treatment as a tool to FIND OUT whether or not they are terrorists. "We'll torture you until you confess and tell us who your accomplices are" is abhorrent practice used when you're not really certain the person is actually guilty or not.

61. Stop revisionist Christian nation House Resolution 888

Comment #113896 by Steven Mading on January 21, 2008 at 12:31 am

I sent the letter of to my representative. (idea - edit the letter - don't send the default form. I think if they get copies of the same form letter they might not take it as seriously. Edit each one and make it your own.

Unfortunately my representative (Tammy Baldwin, D-WI) didn't vote against HR 847, so I doubt she'll be receptive to this either. But we'll see.

62. Questions Delay Creationist Master's Degrees

Comment #112624 by Steven Mading on January 17, 2008 at 3:25 pm

I like the approach taken by the approval board. If they just dismissed the creation institute out-of-hand then it would have been easy for the creation institute to do the standard dishonest pretend persecution thing and claim they were only denied because of a bias existing, as in Ben Stein's "Expelled". But this way, the institute were told they could be treated as an accredited science school - so long as they show that they're actually teaching their creationism subject as a science and not as something else. It's a safe requirement to put on it, knowing full well that they can't live up to that standard because what they do isn't really science and we know it. It's a way of denying them without having it look like bias. Instead they get denied for the correct reason - that despite labeling themselves as doing "science", what they actually do does not fit the definition of science because there isn't peer review and isn't repeatable testing of falsifiable hypotheses.

By sticking to the definition of what makes science different from other disciplines, it's trivial to show that what the creation institute does is not science.

63. Interview with Neil Shubin, author of 'Your Inner Fish'

Comment #112620 by Steven Mading on January 17, 2008 at 3:08 pm

Colbert (well, his fake persona where he pretends to be a fool) seemed uncharacteristically nice to his guest in this interview.

64. Dinesh D'Souza: Winner of the 2007 Bad Faith Award

Comment #112129 by Steven Mading on January 16, 2008 at 11:56 am

It's a copyright matter, nothing to do with it making them look ridiculous.

bhoytoy, Those are not mutually exclusive. The church of scientology uses copyright law as a tool to suppress ridicule. They have a long, well established history of doing this.

Real religions don't copyright their religious texts - they let them spread as far and as cheaply as possible.

65. Fish out of water: Your Inner Fish

Comment #111354 by Steven Mading on January 14, 2008 at 12:22 pm

Vinelectric, there are multiple types of problems that are all called by the same name "hernia". That they have the same name doesn't mean they have the same cause. Just that different causes lead to similar symptoms. The writer was only talking about one specific kind of them, and was not attempting to claim his explanation was for all maladies called by the name "hernia" - just the kind involving the genital area. (To wit: a "hernia" is just a name for ANY time some part of the guts in the abdomen (large or small intestine) pokes through the muscles that wall-in the abdomen area on all sides. There's even types of hernias that occur on the top wall of the abdomen. I had one of those once - a very bad cold virus I had for a few weeks caused me to 'wear out' my diaphram from all the coughing, to the point where I tore the diaphram muscle, and then a bit of small intestine started poking through the tear, forcing me to breathe in small shallow breaths for a few weeks until the muscle healed. (I hated it when someone made me laugh - it hurt like hell.)

Anyway, the point is, the author never claimed to be talking about ALL hernias.

66. 'Letter to a Christian Nation' now available in paperback

Comment #111327 by Steven Mading on January 14, 2008 at 11:29 am

On the "herding cats" comments - Note that THEISTS ALSO have large "splintering" into vastly different groups, for example, some have names like "Christians", "Jews", and "Muslims". What you need to remember is that in EXACTLY the same way that merely knowing someone is a theist doesn't tell you enough information to figure out their entire worldview, neither does merely knowing that someone is an atheist. It's just ONE property, one ingredient (or lack thereof) in the big picture.

67. Why (Almost All) Cosmologists are Atheists

Comment #110614 by Steven Mading on January 11, 2008 at 3:34 pm

Here's a statement I often make, in one form or another: "If human life was god's deliberate intent in making the universe, then why are we such a puny infinitesimal portion of that universe (in terms of both distance and time) that in most calculations our entire existence would round down to zero? If the universe was made by a god that thinks in an anthropocentric fashion (as all the ones we've posited do), then the vast majority of the universe has no purpose to this god. That doesn't make any sense."

I think a cosmologist is better placed than anyone else to see the above problem and understand it intuitively - what the heck is the rest of the universe FOR if it was created for the purpose of housing us humans.

68. Moderates Storm The Religious Battlefield

Comment #106753 by Steven Mading on January 3, 2008 at 11:58 am

"War is Peace!"
"Freedom is Slavery!"
"Skepticism is based on blind faith!".

69. The OUT Campaign has its own Flea!

Comment #106739 by Steven Mading on January 3, 2008 at 11:33 am

It's the same story all over again: "Your bias against allowing me to oppress you is oppressive to me. How dare you oppress my religious convictions by not letting me use them to oppress your convictions against religion."

70. Here's an improvement on democracy

Comment #98805 by Steven Mading on December 14, 2007 at 11:43 am

Any "Democracy" that puts into its constitution that its laws must be in accordance with a particular religion is automatically NOT a democracy the moment it does that. Such a clause makes it so that the religious leaders get the final say in what is and is not a law. It gives them ultimate veto and judicial power, making them effectively much more important than the bulk of the voters (and the immense influence they have over the voters too adds to the problem, although it could be argued that a secular charismatic person could have the same people-influence as a religious one.)

So while I sort of agree with the article, I'd phrase it differently. It's not that we should promote secularism first and then get around to democracy later, but that we should stop telling the lie that theocratic "democracy" is actually democracy at all. It isn't.

71. U.S. Congress Recognizing the importance of Christmas and the Christian faith

Comment #98802 by Steven Mading on December 14, 2007 at 11:19 am

eHudson, you are incorrect about this bill. It doesn't just say "We should be allowed to say Merry Christmas". If it said that, I'd agree with it. What is says is more like "We should be allowed to say Merry Christmas because our nation was founded on Christian traditions" and that's the problem. It's not the conclusion of the bill that bothers me, it's the historical revisionism in its "whereas" clauses that bothers me.

72. U.S. Congress Recognizing the importance of Christmas and the Christian faith

Comment #98800 by Steven Mading on December 14, 2007 at 11:15 am

Congress (especially the House) passes pointless bills all the time that have no enforceability. This is yet another one. But I don't think the point is enforceability. I think the purpose is this little bit of historical revisionism right here:

Whereas the United States, being founded as a constitutional
republic in the traditions of western civilization, finds
much in its history that points observers back to its roots
in Christianity;

Our form of government came from the founders looking back further in history than the Church-supported Monarchies that dominated all of Europe at the time, and looking instead to a government style that preceded monarchies. - a style from ancient Greece and Rome - two cultures that worshiped polytheistic pantheons when they created their concepts of democracy and republic.

There's a reason "Democracy" is named after a Greek guy.

That's the only part of the resolution that bothers me and makes me sick - it legislates a revisionist lie about history into law. (Like amking everyone's money say "In god we trust" when the truth is "In god some of us trust".)

73. Biologist fired for beliefs, suit says

Comment #96321 by Steven Mading on December 10, 2007 at 10:55 am

Imagine a member of a religion that says alcohol is verbotten (let's say Islam, although there are others too). Now imagine that person gets hired as a bartender. Then refuses to serve drinks with alcohol in them. That would be acceptable grounds for firing him, since his stance is incompatable with doing his job.

So how is this any different?

74. Double-checking Dawkins

Comment #93371 by Steven Mading on December 3, 2007 at 12:01 am

This takes me back...
I remember doing that stuff on a Commadore 64, which hade similar memory mapped I/O (heck, it used the same motorolla 6502 cpu as the apple 2). (BUt the 64 had way better sound, with more complex poke's to get it working as an FM synthesizer.

Wow. I never knew the Prof was a computer wonk as well as a biologist. My respoect grows.

75. In the name of God: the Saudi rape victim's tale

Comment #91791 by Steven Mading on November 29, 2007 at 10:08 am

One really sad thing is that the only reason she even got any attention from the courts to try to bring her rapists to justice at all is because her husband stood up for her and helped force the issue, and since he's a MAN, they had to listen. His associates were telling him that the "right" thing to do would be to divorce her, but instead he fought for her. He deserves some credit for bucking the trend and instead believing the radical notion that women are actually people.

76. This Friday: Debate between Dan Dennett and Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #91654 by Steven Mading on November 28, 2007 at 9:29 pm

Trying to remain calm and yet still efective in the face of the direct lying of D'Souza is very very hard. You either make the mistake of being too nice, thereby acting as if d'souza's rhetoric is respectable and honest and giving it an air of credibility it doesn't deserve, or you make the mistake of letting your temper rise, which makes you look bad. The little patch of effective debating technique with D'souza lays between those two scenarios, but it's very very narrow. But, if anyone can find that narrow band and stay in it, it's Dan Dennet. He's a good choice for whom to debate him.

77. Turkey probes atheist's 'God' book

Comment #91506 by Steven Mading on November 28, 2007 at 1:20 pm

Yes, this is good for promotion of the book, but don't forget that an ordinary individual might have to suffer a year in prison over it for the "crime" of being honest. I'd rather get the free promotion some other way.

78. My life under a fatwa

Comment #91455 by Steven Mading on November 28, 2007 at 11:00 am

mrjonno wrote:

Electoral systems make a big difference too. The UK and US have the 'first past the post system'. Effectively if you get 40-50% of the vote you get 100% of the political power , if you get 0-40% you get zero political power. With proportional representation (which you get in the rest of Europe) every vote counts (which is more democratic in some ways but has the disadvantage it allows small extreme parties to grow)

Actually, the big problem with proportional representation is that it codifies and makes into law the concept of political parties being more important than individual candidates. You vote for a party, to give that party seats in the government. You don't vote for a person (not technically). In the US you vote for a person, and the fact that this person's advertisement campaign happens to be backed by funding from a private club known as a "political party" is merely a common practical convention rather than being enforced by anything in the constitution.

That being said, I still do prefer the proportional system to what we have in the US now, but I think an even better system than both of the above is one of the runoff types where you can vote for a third-party candidate without throwing away your vote, because you'll have a chance to go for your second-best choice if your preferred choice gets eliminated. This method allows compramise candidates to win in races with multiple factions (candidates who are not necessarily anyone's first choice, but are most people's second choice. (There's many different systems for doing this, with pro's and con's to them, but all are better than the first-past-the-post system. Most start with the notion of not merely voting for one candidate, but voting for a ranking of candidates: "this is my first choice, then this is my second choice, then this is my third choice, etc..."

79. Bankrolling Ali's Asylum

Comment #91451 by Steven Mading on November 28, 2007 at 10:33 am

Drive1 posted this:

There was a typo in the donation system that misdirected one-time donations for preset amounts to SamHarris.com instead of SamHarris.org. Please do go ahead and cancel any payments you have made to SamHarris.com, as indicated below.

I just wanted to say thank you for the explantion. I did a donation that way and PayPal gave me a warning message a few days later claiming that the recipient of my payment has not picked up the payment yet. I didn't realize there was an error, I just thought that since the paypal link for the fund had only been recently turned on that maybe the samharris side of things wasn't finished being set up yet, so it was maybe not a big deal that it was taking a few days to claim the payment.

Now I know that it would linger forever if I left it there.

Is there some way for samharris.org to ask PayPal to send a notification out to all the people with pending payments on that account to let them know they need to do it over again? As it stands anyone who didn't notice your note won't realize their payment will remain unclaimed forever.

80. Frequently Asked Questions about the Ayaan Hirsi Ali Security Trust

Comment #89675 by Steven Mading on November 21, 2007 at 1:07 pm

GSP: Your points are predicated upon the false premise that everything her employer AEI says is something Ayan also says. Actually listen to what SHE says when asked about the topics and you do not get a picture of someone in full agreement with AEI.

81. Getting Overheated

Comment #89529 by Steven Mading on November 21, 2007 at 2:40 am

Monosilabbiq, I agree fully. The solution to global warming (solution, rather than just the temporary delay of the problem that comes from conservation), has nothing to do with oil and coal and everything to do with latex. Want to fight global warming? Start by getting the church to shut the hell up and let people use condoms.

82. Frequently Asked Questions about the Ayaan Hirsi Ali Security Trust

Comment #89527 by Steven Mading on November 21, 2007 at 2:22 am

Hey, the login finally works again so I can comment (I was a victim of the login problem that's been going around so I couldn't comment on this article before).

This is NOT a fund for promoting one person over another, or for saying that Ayan's life is worth more than other nameless people's lives. It's a fund for promoting the right to be honest even when the honest things you say are disliked.. It's a fund for promoting the right to shout "the emperor has no clothes" instead of having to join in the lie with everyone else around you.

And that right, when used, DOES result in saving the lives of people. Ayan speaks for womens' rights in a way that I'd like to believe will result in a reduction in deaths down the road.

I'd managed ot avoid the PayPal thing for a long time, but this fund was the first thing that made be knuckle under and finally set up with PayPal.

83. Malaysia firm's 'Muslim car' plan

Comment #87911 by Steven Mading on November 13, 2007 at 3:40 pm

So if you had one of these cars and used it in South America somewhere, shouldn't the Mecca-finding compass point down into the ground at the opposite side of the Earth?

Is the car programmed to shut off the engine 5 times a day according to the prayer schedule and the current GPS location and time of year? (The prayer times are set based on dawn/dusk times, so they vary by season and location (What do they do in the arctic or antarctic, I wonder). Most muslims who are not in a muslim majority area, where they don't have automated reminders of the times, have to look up a chart based on their location and what time of year it is to see what the correct times are to pray).

84. FFRF 07 Conference Footage

Comment #85236 by Steven Mading on November 5, 2007 at 10:46 am

My complaint about Hitchens' speech is that he used the exact same tactic Bush uses to scare people into agreement - to tell the lie that your only options are to totally support the current war or to let the terrorists have free reign. That's it. Only those two options exist. No other - as far as Hitchens would have us believe that's all there is to it. This is lying, plain and simple, and he deserves to be treated as a liar for putting forth that position. He leaves no room for the nuanced view that perhaps what we're doing is INSTALLING a theocracy in Iraq (read the new Iraqi constitution - It mandates that Iraq be an Islamic country with laws in alignment with Islam.), and that isn't much better. He ignores the fact that the bigger problem was in Afghanastan and we are only putting in a puny token effort there and the Taleban is coming back into power there BECAUSE we're wasting resources in Iraq instead.

His notion that we must either be supporting Bush's stupid military actions, or else supporting a totally pacifistic lack of miltary actions at all, is totally lying bullshit. He ignores the existence of the option of supporting DIFFERENT military actions.

85. What the New Atheists Don't See

Comment #85229 by Steven Mading on November 5, 2007 at 10:20 am

The moment you decide the question "what is the purpose of our existence" has any validity as a question whatsoever, you have ALREADY assumed our existence is the result of some thinking entity's deliberate planning. Otherwise the notion of there being a "purpose" behind our existing is totally meaningless. Saying there is a purpose behind it means you are assuming some sentience WANTED it that way. You are assuming deliberate intent.

In other words, before you can meaningfully ask the question you must FIRST establish that there actually was some sentince behind our existence.

If you use this question to convince someone to start believing in the existence of that sentience, you are engaging in dishonest circular logic. If you start from a state of not assuming yet that a sentience was behing our existence, then the question of what our purpose was doesn't make one iota of sense yet.

86. Lessons in hate found at leading mosques

Comment #83800 by Steven Mading on October 31, 2007 at 10:15 am

Posted by Bonzai
Mainstream Judaism and Christianity don't take the bible literally. The holy books themselves may say very nasty things but they can be read allegorically. But the books in question here are interpretative works of the Islam religion by Muslim theologians, they are what these people truly believe!

While I agree that Islam does not use the metaphor dodge as much as Christianity does, and therefore their books are more in-line with their practices, I still think there is a huge problem with viewing the bible as allegory. An allegorical tale to teach what lesson exactly? Even when people don't believe the bible is actually telling true stories, there's still a huge problem - exactly what is supposed to be the allegorical moral of a story that says it's good to stone people to death for leaving their religion?

With an allegorical tale like, say, the race between the tortise and the hare, you can glean a nice moral lesson from the story even though you believe it to be fiction - slow and steady perseverance beats fast spurts with lazy interludes. But with bible "allegories" it is often that not only are they untrue, but they also teach morals that are completely deplorable. (For example, what is the nice moral of the story of Abraham deciding it was okay to sacrifice his son just because a giant powerful authority figure told him to? The moral of that story is that obedience to the biggest authority is automatically virtuous and you should ignore your own puny lsser moral objections and just obey.)

So all I'm saying is that it's false to characterize the nicer nature of modern Christians as being the result of them taking the nasty bible stories as mere allegory. Even if you took them as allegory you'd STILL end up with exactly the same deplorable morality. The reason modern Christians are nicer is NOT because they converted the bible from truth to fictional allegory. It's because they simply ignore parts of it altogether, and don't even take it as allegory either.

To "heal" Islam requires something similar - not JUST turning the holy texts into allegories - that's not sufficient. The notion of accepting that parts of it are just okay to purely ignore altogether is what's needed.

87. The US is a Christian Nation

Comment #83549 by Steven Mading on October 30, 2007 at 11:35 am

The reference to "year of our Lord" does not prove much; the signing on Thursday, July 4, does not prove that they worshipped Thor or Julius Caesar.

That's a great point, but to use it in a debate against people who are ignorant enough of history to claim the US is a Christian Nation, you'll have to spell it out for them. These same people aren't going to realize that Thursday is a modern mutation of "Thor's day" and that July was named after Julius Ceaser.

88. Don't write off religion - it can be the key to a stable family

Comment #83291 by Steven Mading on October 29, 2007 at 2:17 pm

This meme seems out of control.

What Dawkins said: LABELLING children as already being members of their parents' religion before they even finish learning about it and making up their own minds is child abuse.

What the uncontrollable meme claims he said: Teaching children about the religion of their parents is child abuse.

Can this one ever be corrected? Probably not now.

89. American kids, dumber than dirt: Warning: The next generation might just be the biggest pile of idiots in U.S. history

Comment #81916 by Steven Mading on October 25, 2007 at 11:43 am

I think a huge part of the problem is the simple fact that the tendency to think of "nerds" as being worthy of scorn keeps getting stronger and stronger. The peer pressure that acedemic success is something to ridicule will destroy a lot of very young minds just as they're starting to get curious.

90. FFRF 07 Conference Footage

Comment #81902 by Steven Mading on October 25, 2007 at 11:27 am

I may be in the minority here, but I believe that the US attacking Iran would be morally justifiable even though the Iraq war was not (although I'd be insane if I thought the US was capable of doing it at the moment given how large a percentage of the troops are already committed. Note I'm just talking about moral acceptability here, not about whether current deployments make it feasible.) Iran actually IS a theocracy. Iran actually does state their intent to drive out Israel. Iran actually does threaten the US in speeches. I think one of the biggest terrible effects of the Bush administration is the "boy who cried wolf" problem. By being so very very wrong before, and lying about causes for war before, now nobody will believe it when a REAL cause for war comes along.

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

Comment #81887 by Steven Mading on October 25, 2007 at 11:00 am

Here's the response I'd give:

"How" and "why" are very similar questions, But the one real way in which they differ is that "why" is asking about motive instead of method. "Why" is asking what the INTENT was. Therefore, if you are in a debate about whether or not god exists then the moment you even ASK the question "why instead of how" the universe is the way it is, you have already generated a circular argument - because the very question, the way you are asking it, ASSUMES some sentience made things the way they are on purpose. If you want to debate honestly, then FIRST you have to establish the sentient designer existing, and THEN you can act as if the inability to answer "why" is some kind of a weakness or deficiency. If you haven't established the sentient designer yet, then the question "why" the universe is like it is is completely meaningless.

92. FFRF 07 Conference Footage

Comment #81442 by Steven Mading on October 24, 2007 at 6:11 pm

Thanks for downloading the streams and making them work better. I didn't like the MMS links either, being a linux user, but with a few firefox extensions and an updated Xine player I was able to play the files, but it was a pain.

As far as Hitchens goes, my concern with him is that he jumps from the reasonable stance that Military action against an ideology that wants to enslave the world should not be viewed as an evil thing it's a good idea, over to the stance that therefore anyone who does not support Bush's war is being stupid and naive. When he does this he glosses over the fact that Bush's war is actually fighting TO SUPPORT AN IRAQI GOVERNMENT THAT IS AN ISLAMIC THEOCRACY. Characterizing it as if if was a fight of secularism versus the humanity-enslaving concept of Islamic theocracy is a lie. It's exactly like when Bush lies by claiming the war has something to do with 9/11. If he actually cared about 9/11 he'd have spent all the effort on Afganistan instead of sending a token force there while selling the US on their OLD Iraq plan they had all along even before 9/11.

When Hitchens tries to portray it as "You must either support this war or surrender to islamic theocracy" he excludes the existence of any sort of middle ground between those two insane viewpoints. It's the same sort of "lets pretend this issue is simpler than it is and speak like children" trick that Bush himself does when selling the war.

93. FFRF 07 Conference Footage

Comment #81064 by Steven Mading on October 24, 2007 at 2:00 am

It seems more than one link got broken when this was copied from my original forum post to this front page. I think Josh (the website admin) had to edit the URLS and accidentally messed a few up. My post in the forum has the correct URLS:

http://www.richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=27327

I hope someone can read this and correct the article's URLs. I can't do it myself.

94. FFRF 07 Conference Footage

Comment #81024 by Steven Mading on October 23, 2007 at 11:09 pm

OOPS.
I made an error in cutting and pasting those URLS.
The saturday part 1 audio-only link and the saturday part 2 audio-only link both point to the same place.

It should be changed so the saturday part 1 audio-only link is this:
mms://71.87.25.133/evt/evt_071013_ffr_saturday.wma
instead of this:
mms://71.87.25.133/evt/evt_071013_ffr_saturday_2.wma

95. Atheists aren't a bad lot

Comment #80614 by Steven Mading on October 22, 2007 at 10:27 am

On the subject of being nice despite being an atheist:

I remember a TV episode by Dawkins from a while back called "Nice Guys Finish First" (you can find it on youtube) where he discussed game theory and the prisoner's dilemma, and tackled the question of whether morality can develop evolutionarily as a meme or not. It's too complex to explain it all here but it was a great idea - basically a very simple prisoner's dilemma game was made: You have a partner. You win either 1,3, or 4 points each game depending on how it went: If you pick "share" and your partner picks "selfish", you get 1 point and your partner gets 4. But if you both pick "share" you both get 3. Obviously the most overall points will be gained collectively if everyone shares, but it's not by a very large margin. (3+3 points = 6, 1+4 points = 5).

Then computer programmers were called upon to participate in the contest by writing software that would play this game using whatever strategy they feel like, and then the hundreds of different programs they make would compete in a big random-matchup free-for-all to see who got the most points after several trials and random partner matchups between them.

The end result was interesting: It did NOT favor the nice sharing algorithms. It favored the selfish bastard algorithms, seeming to indicate that cooperation is NOT a win in this game.

BUT then a similar try was run a second time with one change. This time each program had an ID that the other programs would know about. When a program is randomly paired with a partner, it would be told "you are about to have a game with program number 151" (or whatever number it was). And the programs were allowed to have memory so they could keep a record of how previous partner programs behaved. In other words, they could remember who betrayed them in the past when they tried to share and got screwed over. Programmers were then asked to write software for this version of the contest that would take this new information into account. THEN the most successful software ended up being the software that would tentatively share to see what the partner does, and form a memory of which other programs didn't share back, and stop being sharing toward the other software only if it shows a consistent history of not sharing back. In a large number of trials, the programs that used some variant of this generous-by-default-but-selfish-if-betrayed style of strategy ended up dominating the scoring all across the set of programs.

The result: In prisoner's dilemma cases, there is an evolutionary incentive for being nice, but ONLY after many trials, and only if you have a way of reliably identifying other individuals, and the ability to remember their past behavior.

Another interesting tidbit is that the software that didn't make vendettas permanent, that would occassionally try to extend the olive branch and do a few trial sharings every so often with a known selfish partner and re-asses that partner if the sharing went well did slightly better than the ones that made their shunning permanent.

Over a large number of trials, the strategy that works best is to be generous by default and assume your partner will reciprocate, and only behave defensively if there is prior evidence that some particular individual won't share back.

In other words, nice guys finish first.

96. Fox News Attacks 'Godless' Free Thought Radio

Comment #78292 by Steven Mading on October 12, 2007 at 11:22 am

Speaking of which, the FFRF has its annual convention this weekend, starting tonight.

97. The Price of Freedom

Comment #77436 by Steven Mading on October 9, 2007 at 9:54 am

Fanusi, Fighting Islam is a great idea. The Afghanastan portion of the war, with the Taleban as the enemy, was justified and should have received the bulk of the effort. We don't disagree with Hitchens when he says we are at war with Islam. We disagree with him when he helps spread the propaganda that this is what invading Iraq was all about. Our operations in Iraq have helped, not hindered, the Islamacist movement. Why didn't we put this much effort into rooting out the rest of the Taleban? Why did we divert our attention from Afghanastan to Iraq? It sure as hell wasn't to help fight Islamacism, since the Taleban was (and hopefully you can understand the thinly veiled extreme understatement here) just a wee bit more theocratic than Saddam was.

98. The Price of Freedom

Comment #77432 by Steven Mading on October 9, 2007 at 9:39 am

Keith, the reason for the confusion over why Hitchens would support the Iraq war is chiefly over this one point: Bush claims it had something to do with the terrorists of 9/11. It did not. Hitchens bought into it and repeats the mantra that it's all about the war on terror. There may have been good justifiable reasons for it. It's just that fighting terrorism was certainly NOT among them. There might be all sorts of valid reasons for the war, ousting Saddam among them, but I could at least disagree respectfully with someone who thinks those reasons made it worth it. But specifically on one particular reason - the allegations that it had something to do with terrorism - Putting forth that position means he fell for propaganda hook line and sinker, and is helping to spread it every time he repeats it. And I thought he was smarter than that.

99. The Price of Freedom

Comment #77169 by Steven Mading on October 8, 2007 at 4:22 pm

I have read her book.

I'd be willing to contribute something to her personal defense if it comes down to that, but ideally it shouldn't have to (and there's no way a private group of sympathizers would raise anything matching the 2 million per year that the dutch government has been able to put out.)

I fear for her life at this point. I'll keep watching this space. Presumably if such a trust fund ends up being set up, the news will get announced here.

100. Response to My Fellow 'Atheists'

Comment #77142 by Steven Mading on October 8, 2007 at 2:56 pm

Harris' approach is much better than that of "KeepTheReason" over in the forums.
KeepTheReason: STOP SAYING ATHEIST!!! LABELS ARE IMPORTANT! Use this New Label Instead!!! Everyone who does not agree clearly is a moron. (Okay, so it's not expressed that clearly in his actual posts, but I think I have summarized the point accurately).

Harris: Labels in general aren't important, period. Don't swap atheist for some other label, just don't bother with a label in the first place.

I find myself much more likely to agree with Harris.