101. Fear of censure deflects The Golden Compas

Comment #93807 by Northern Bright on December 4, 2007 at 8:36 am

Nothwithstanding your inexcusable attitudes vis a vis Lyra, you're clearly not entirely insane. Hmm.

Aaaah - you smooth talker, you. That's the nicest thing anyone's said to me in ages ;-)

102. Fear of censure deflects The Golden Compas

Comment #93795 by Northern Bright on December 4, 2007 at 8:21 am

Northern Bright & AllanW:

If you have no interest in fantasy or don't want to read a book aimed at children, the series probably wasn't going to do much for you. But I'm a little confused how you'd pick up the books and not realise what you were getting into.

In my case it wasn't really from choice, thelogogryph. It had been chosen by my book group and there's not much point being in a book group if you're going to refuse to read books you wouldn't normally choose to read.

I have no problem with reading books aimed at children - but in that case give me Arthur Ransome any day!

103. Fear of censure deflects The Golden Compas

Comment #93790 by Northern Bright on December 4, 2007 at 8:15 am

If passions ride high enough, maybe we can split the atheist community (again), this time on the basis of something genuinely trivial! Wouldn't that be fun?

Yea! Bring it on! Schism in the atheist community! We could divide into the Real Atheists and the True Atheists (Continuing). Or the Free Atheists and the Reformed Free Atheists. Though, of course, once we'd done that we would have lost every last shred of credibility when declaring that atheism is not a religion!

104. Fear of censure deflects The Golden Compas

Comment #93787 by Northern Bright on December 4, 2007 at 8:08 am

My partner has all three books in the trilogy. He really liked them :)

Oh dear. If it were me, I'd be thinking of changing my partner, but you may not want to do that ... Not before reading the books, anyway ;-)

105. Fear of censure deflects The Golden Compas

Comment #93782 by Northern Bright on December 4, 2007 at 7:57 am

Irate_atheist; I was holding back. No swear words used :)

If you'd been in my house whilst I was reading it, you'd have heard plenty.

106. Fear of censure deflects The Golden Compas

Comment #93779 by Northern Bright on December 4, 2007 at 7:54 am

Northern Bright: Just look what you have started! I am going to have to read it now, just to know which side I am on....

Ah well. Just don't say you weren't warned, steve99. Any chance you can borrow a copy from someone? It seems such a shame to pay real money for one.

107. Fear of censure deflects The Golden Compas

Comment #93775 by Northern Bright on December 4, 2007 at 7:50 am

15. Comment #93774 by AllanW on December 4, 2007 at 7:46 am
Thank you, Allan W. You are clearly a man of taste and discernment :-)

To my mind you have summed up the book perfectly. I gave my copy to a charity bookshop, but I think putting it in a composter would have been kinder, actually. It would have removed the possibility of it being inflicted on some other poor unsuspecting innocent.

Now then, must get back to my current favourite book: How to anger and alienate people in one simple lesson.

:-)

108. Fear of censure deflects The Golden Compas

Comment #93773 by Northern Bright on December 4, 2007 at 7:46 am

13. Comment #93772 by briancoughlanworldcitizen on December 4, 2007 at 7:37 am

LOL!! That's pretty mild, compared with the abuse I was expecting! :-)))

Metaphysics has always fascinated human beings

No, not me. Maybe I'm not a human being? That would explain a lot! ;-)

You must be a very bad person indeed. This is the only explanation.

Well, you're not the first to put forward this suggestion ...

:-)

109. Fear of censure deflects The Golden Compas

Comment #93771 by Northern Bright on December 4, 2007 at 7:29 am

I have only read Northern Lights, the first of the His Dark Materials trilogy, and I absolutely loathed it.

I am normally very circumspect with books, but I'm afraid Northern Lights found itself being hurled across the room with great force several times during my reading of it. If it hadn't been the chosen book for a book group I used to be part of, it would have been one of the very VERY few books in my life that I have started reading but never finished.

There are very few books I absolutely detest - but this was one of them. I found it horrendously self-conscious, totally incredible (even in a fantasy context), and the girl heroine utterly vile.

Maybe it's just me and works of complete fantasy. Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings did absolutely nothing for me either.

I know I'll be in the minority on this - so can anyone tell me what they see in it?

110. Atheism's Wrong Turn

Comment #93715 by Northern Bright on December 4, 2007 at 1:46 am

Downunder

To Northern Bright and to Dr. Benway.
Having abandoned my 80 years of indoctrinated catholic reasoning, I have a problem now with celebrating X-mas. Stripping the biblical, traditional X-mas crib story of all religious connotations appeals to me more than replacing it by a father X-mas figure. What stimulates an atheist into that X-massie feeling?

I think there are 4 excellent reasons to "do" Christmas:
1) you are a Christian and believe in what it is celebrating
2) you have children young enough to be entranced by the excitement and enchantment of it
3) you are seriously into family get-togethers, or tradition of any kind
or
4) you just enjoy it.

I have to say that none of the above applies to me, and so I don't do Christmas at all - I am a Christmas-free zone!

Actually, I do like Christmas trees - the real ones, that is; but I have learned from experience that real Christmas tree + small house + dog with exuberant tail = more hassle than it's worth!

Although I don't doubt that many people do genuinely relish Christmas, I'm also sure we're not alone, Downunder - I'm quite convinced there are many, many people who would gladly give it a miss if it weren't for the social and family pressure to conform.

111. Atheism's Wrong Turn

Comment #93553 by Northern Bright on December 3, 2007 at 1:09 pm

70. Comment #93551 by ubermensch on December 3, 2007 at 1:01 pm

Excellent response, Ubermensch. I hope they do publish it.

112. Papal encyclical attacks atheism, lauds hope

Comment #93544 by Northern Bright on December 3, 2007 at 12:38 pm

Ah, Papa Ratzi. I went right off him when he chased Saint Diana and caused her car crash.

Or am I getting muddled?

113. Atheism's Wrong Turn

Comment #93521 by Northern Bright on December 3, 2007 at 11:06 am

Why Dawkins refuses to take this idea to its logical conclusion--to say that raising a child in a religious tradition, like other forms of child abuse, should be considered a crime punishable by the state--is a mystery, for it follows directly from the character of his atheism

Well, no, actually. The character of his atheism is to use rational argument to convince believers that their beliefs are unfounded and, in the case of young children being filled with horror stories about eternity in a lake of fire, actively harmful - and thereby to persuade them to STOP DOING IT.

No one, not even Dawkins, I'm sure, would suggest that a parent telling their child that Jesus loves them is going to emotionally cripple that child for life. But the most fundamentalist believers don't stop there. There's a follow-on, which is - if you don't love him back you'll burn in hell for ever. Of COURSE that's damaging and harmful, and of COURSE no parents should do that. What parent would tell their child, "I love you dearly, darling, I'd die for you if necessary; and if you don't return the compliment, I'm going to lock you in the coal cellar and starve you to death"?

But does Linker really believe that State intervention, legislation, criminalisation, is the only way to deal with this? If so, he is FAR more illiberal than Dawkins, who is attempting to PERSUADE and CONVINCE parents that to do this is harmful to their children.

Nowhere in any of the "horsemen's" writings will you find the suggestion that the teaching of religion as truth should be made illegal and persecuted by the State. Out of interest - who here on this forum would support such a move? I despise religion more with every article by one of its apologists that I read - but there's no way I would support such a suggestion, and my guess is that very few - if any - of the regular atheists on this forum would either.

No, the way forward - the only one being suggested by any of us, so far as I can see - is an ongoing campaign of argument, debate, promotion of science, and challenging of the previously unchallenged dogmas of religion. What's so illiberal about that?

This claim that atheism is akin to illiberalism is closely related to the claim that atheism must lead to Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and the like. It is proffered by the religious because they are unable to counter the actual arguments put forward by Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, Dennett & co, so their only hope is to persuade people that these atheists are demons in disguise.

"The fools says in his heart, there is no God." This verse from Proverbs always leaves me feeling torn - if atheism has been around for so long, it's rather depressing that it hasn't yet made more headway ... yet on the other hand, I'm encouraged that, even in an age where religious supersition was, it could be argued, excusable given the lack of scientific understanding, even then there were humans who were logical enough, rational enough and brave enough - and can you imagine just how brave they would have had to be? - to say "No: there is no God!" I find that pretty inspirational.

114. Judgement Day: Intelligent Design on Trial

Comment #90508 by Northern Bright on November 25, 2007 at 11:34 am

JFHalsey:

I don't understand how that works. Can a species not just lose a chromosome? Or might our common ancestor not have only had 23, and only the other three primates developed the 24th one? I don't know enough about chromosomes to understand the issue. Can someone help me out?

There's been quite a lot of discussion about this recently on another atheist forum I make a nuisance of myself on, and the question was finally resolved by reference to the Forum on this website, which goes into a lot of detail on the question:
http://www.richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=29312

One of the contributors to the other atheist forum offered this admirably clear summary. It rests on the idea that the 24 chromosomes became 23 through 2 of them having become fused:

As I understand it, if an individual received the fused chromosome from one parent and the two separate chromosomes from the other parent, the two sets of chromosome would still be able to 'match up', making the individual viable. This means that the members of a population could have both types of chromosome at the same time. However, if the fused chromosome conferred some advantage over the two separate chromosomes, then that would eventually come to dominate.

Does that help at all? I don't remotely pretend to have really understood the science involved, but I did find the explanation offered above very clear.

115. Tony Blair: Mention God and you're a 'nutter'

Comment #90443 by Northern Bright on November 25, 2007 at 7:05 am

I do agree with those who have pointed out that Blair and his government brought in some very welcome legislation during his 10 years in office - as well as some extraordinarily draconian legislation that has led to our being arguably the most spied-on populace in the free world.

However, the specific policies are not the issue for me. All political leaders end up doing things that we hadn't anticipated and that we quite possibly wouldn't have supported if we had. To me what matters is the principle. When the chips are down and there's a really tough decision to be made, how is that leader going to deal with it? Is s/he going to think it through long and hard and rationally, is s/he going to consult with the best brains available, is s/he going to weigh up option A vs option B, is s/he going to think laterally and come up with an option C ... or is s/he going to light a candle, close his/her eyes, fold his/her hands and ask God to reveal the right path?

Regardless of the specifics of the issue, and regardless whether "God" gets the right answer in my view or not, I don't want to be governed by someone who believes fervently in something, when fervent belief in that Something requires the suspension of all critical faculties and rational thinking.

Rtambree: Yes, both Brown and Cameron are theists so far as I know, and I don't believe there was an opposition leader throughout Blair's 10 years in power who wasn't. So you might argue that we're going to get landed with a religious "nutter" (Blair's own term, I hasten to add!) anyway. But I think we need to draw a distinction here: there is a certain level of espousal of Christianity which is considered polite, decent and desirable in British public life. This bears no resemblance to the fervent religious faith that Blair is now admitting to. Even in British society I think there would be some discomfort about having an avowedly atheist PM, which no doubt accounts for many politicians' apparent mild religiosity. By the way, I see this as pretty hypocritical, so please don't think I'm endorsing it as a political stance. But Blair has been hypocritical too - deliberately concealing a religious fervour that would have diminished him in the electorate's eyes.

So, given the choice between one hypocrite who'll make big decisions based on reason and rationality, and another who'll make big decisions based on what God tells him, I'll go with the one who's rational any day.

116. Tony Blair: Mention God and you're a 'nutter'

Comment #90413 by Northern Bright on November 25, 2007 at 4:09 am

Rtambree:

What I find interesting is why countries elect leaders that are MORE religious than the average of the population. Blair is a classic example, but it happens in Australia, north America and western Europe. Do religious people have more energy to enable them to get them to the top? Or do atheists not mind voting for nutters? Quite a few poeple on this forum have admitted voting for Democrat theists like Kerry and Gore.

The whole point here is that we didn't KNOW how much of a nutter Blair was! By the implication of his own admission, we wouldn't have elected him if we had.

Interesting question as to whether the highly religious are more inclined to stand for office, though. Maybe their belief that God is on their side makes them more confident of their political convictions?

117. Tony Blair: Mention God and you're a 'nutter'

Comment #90400 by Northern Bright on November 25, 2007 at 2:45 am

This article presents us with a challenge. Tony Blair is quite right: in the UK it would be considered unseemly for a politician to bang on about his or her faith. However, as this article makes abundantly clear, this in no way prevents our politicians from basing their decisions on their faith anyway.

There is something hugely anti-democratic in this: a potential Prime Minister who campaigned on the basis that they would legislate according to their religious beliefs could almost certainly not get elected; but once elected, there is nothing to stop them doing just that.

So it strikes me that the challenge really isn't JUST to achieve the separation of church and State that we still don't have in the UK (though that would be a good start); but to continue to persuade individuals everywhere (potential politicians included!) that religion is irrational and not something that grown-ups should be basing their lives on. Until INDIVIDUALS wake up to this fact, there will always be individuals in positions of power who use their religion when making decisions that affect the rest of us, whether they declare this fact publicly or not.

For once, I agree wholeheartedly with the Archbishop of York:

The Archbishop of York, the Most Rev John Sentamu, said: "Mr Blair's comments highlight the need for greater recognition to be given to the role faith has played in shaping our country. Those secularists who would dismiss faith as nothing more than a private affair are profoundly mistaken in their understanding of faith."

Religion DOES play a larger role in shaping our country than many of us realise, and faith IS clearly more than a private affair. This is why faith, even when held privately, must be challenged at every opportunity.

118. Malaysia firm's 'Muslim car' plan

Comment #87721 by Northern Bright on November 13, 2007 at 1:01 am

It's going to be pretty dangerous driving this car. After all, you can't see much through a blacked out windscreen with just one see-through area 8cms wide by 2cms deep.

119. Can we at least demand 'Secular Communion'?

Comment #87716 by Northern Bright on November 13, 2007 at 12:56 am

I agree that it's considerably easier to have faith in an imaginary God, who at least is incapable of doing anything to disappoint us, than to have faith in physical humans who regularly demonstrate our manifold imperfections.

You're not really agreeing with me, Teratornis, since I wasn't bringing faith in a god into my point at all. To my mind such a faith is childish and ludicrous. However, it also seems childish and ludicrous to think that there are any guaranteed happy endings at all - humans have the power to bring about further great improvements in our lives, but we also have the power to destroy everything. Given that with modern technology it will take only a very small number of people to destroy everything, I can't say I feel very optimistic about our prospects. And I certainly can't share the BHA's rather Julianesque confidence that all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.

However, fortunately for us all, if we look at the long sweep of historical progress, we see that in many ways things are better for many of us (although not for all of us) than they were for most people back in the Middle Ages.

I'm not questioning that for a moment. But that doesn't mean I feel inclined to put humans on any kind of pedestal, or that further human progress is inevitable.

No, I'll stick with the term "atheist" to describe myself - it's what I am, after all! And despite my "RD.net name", I don't actually refer to myself as a "Bright" either. I'm atheist and proud of it! :-)

120. Allan Gregg interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #87221 by Northern Bright on November 11, 2007 at 2:01 pm

I never read Stenger but if he claims that science actually has a proof against the existence of any God imaginable then he is definitely overstating his case.

No, he doesn't claim this. What he does is to take as his hypothesis the existence of the god posited by Christianity/Islam/Judaism - i.e. with a given set of characteristics (a god who answers prayer, who reveals himself to particular individuals, who performs miracles on occasion, who created the universe and life with humanity in mind, who created the laws of physics, etc etc) - and systematically works his way through those characteristics and demonstrates how science shows that THAT god does not (or in the very weakest case, need not) exist.

It's actually a superb book and one I'm recommending all over the place at the moment. Not least because it's very comprehensive in the evidence it supplies against the existence of that god, and because it's noticeably different from the other books that we're possibly more familiar with. I found the science a little bit heavy in one or two places (I have no scientific background at all) but generally it was perfectly accessible and comprehensible, and I learned a lot from it.

121. The Psychology Behind Cults/Religion

Comment #87185 by Northern Bright on November 11, 2007 at 12:01 pm

1) Find lonely, desperate people

2) Break them down: Make them feel much worse about themselves

3) Build them back up: make them feel good about themselves again

4) Repeat 2-3 until their sense of self-worth is completely dependent on you

5) Reveal the "true" beliefs of the cult and take all their money

This is interesting, but a little simplistic, I think. The author defines any religion as a cult and my experience of mainstream Christianity is that it does NOT take lonely, desperate people and break them down, it takes lonely, desperate people and hooks them in by giving them apparent acceptance, companionship, love - in other words, by building them up. Which might not be such a bad thing if it were to stop at that, but of course we all know it doesn't: the "unconditional" acceptance that's on offer at the beginning rapidly becomes very conditional indeed.

What this article fails to recognise is that lonely, desperate, vulnerable people are perfectly able to feel guilt without anyone imposing it from outside. The church cleverly (you could say "cynically") exploits this.

There's also more to the way the church hooks newcomers in than is suggested by this article: by claiming that it's ONLY in the bosom of the church that you'll be safe from the evils of the world, that it's ONLY your "church family" that can be truly trusted and depended on, and by painting a false image of the "badness" of all those outside the church.

How many times have we heard Christians answer "I really don't know what I'd be capable of without God" when we challenge them as to whether they truly believe they'd be more like to commit murder if it weren't for their religious belief? So undermining their belief in themselves and their own moral judgements is a huge part of what the church does - but I still say it happens AFTER the new recruit has become emotionally dependent, not as part of the process of bringing that dependence about.

122. Richard Dawkins at AAI 07

Comment #87064 by Northern Bright on November 11, 2007 at 6:06 am

415. Comment #87058 by Dr Benway on November 11, 2007 at 5:52 am

krisking: God provided an animal sacrifice at the last moment, having seen Abraham's complete trust in God.

Good practical joke on Isaac, eh?

Yeah. Bet he was chuckling away to himself for years afterwards: "Ah, that Jehovah. You've got to hand it to him, he's a real comic genius. He really had me going there for a moment, the old rogue."

But the provision of an animal to kill made it all just fine. After all, the really great thing about animal sacrifice is that no one could possibly find the concept the least bit repugnant and ignorant, could they?

123. Can we at least demand 'Secular Communion'?

Comment #87035 by Northern Bright on November 11, 2007 at 4:13 am

I thought this was a great article by PZ and I agree with him totally on every point he makes in it (though, like several others here, I'm inclined to interpret the cartoon as offensively stupid rather than offensive per se.)

To me, the best bit of the article is his scathing assault on the sheer inanity of moderate religion. This is something that has struck me more and more of late, and that I'm finding myself feeling more and more impatient with.

PZ's quite right - you are most unlikely to find a Methodist terrorist, but Methodists who genuinely believe that closing their eyes, holding their hands together, bowing their heads and repeating some magic words will a) contribute to world peace, b) heal the sick and c) stop it raining on the day of the church picnic are ten a penny. And it's just STUPID. It's offensively stupid. To me, more and more, it's the stupidity that's more offensive than the nature of the religious belief itself - it's offensively stupid the way racism or homophobia or astrology or mindless, drunken violence are offensively stupid. It is SO stupid that it demeans people and PZ is dead right: NO WAY should we be pretending that it is in any way a good thing or an acceptable thing.

I have become far more hostile to religion over the last year or so than I ever used to be before, and it's not because of 9/11 and it's not because of "the New Atheists" - it's because of Christians and the sheer inanity and wanton ignorance of their arguments and beliefs.

By the way, I'm with PZ on his discomfort with the term "humanist" too. I'd LIKE to be able to sign up as one, and there's so much in what they stand for that I agree with wholeheartedly. But I keep looking at the British Humanist Association's website and its description of what humanists believe, and I can't overcome my sense that it's just too breathy and idealistic for me. It says, for instance,

Humanists believe that people can and will continue to find solutions to the world's problems - so that quality of life can be improved for everyone.

... and I just can't put that much faith in humanity, I'm afraid. There may well be problems that we will never be able to find solutions to and, even if we can and do, the notion that everyone's quality of life will be improved as a result just smacks of the same kind of naivety that so enrages me in its religious form.

124. Believe it or not, courtesy counts

Comment #84055 by Northern Bright on November 1, 2007 at 4:51 am

What an extraordinary article: "It's ok if you don't believe in this stuff, but can't you just pretend you do - or at least, keep quiet about your unbelief - when there are religious people within earshot?"

This is also an article that conveys the puniness and irrelevance of religion every bit as much as RD, Hitch or Sam could have ever hoped to do.

After all, if religious belief is so fragile, so easily crumpled, it has to be handled with kid gloves; if its tenets are so flimsy that they cannot withstand more than a water-cooler level of debate - that just leaves a pathetic, empty shell, and an open admission that believers have no good reason for holding their beliefs.

This isn't a request for courtesy. It's possible to challenge belief (or anything else, come to that) very robustly indeed, without ever becoming rude or aggressive or offensive. This is a request to leave religion alone, to leave believers alone, to keep quiet and keep our unbelief to ourselves. Sorry, Carlin - the answer's "no".

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

Comment #83525 by Northern Bright on October 30, 2007 at 10:18 am

Two comments here.

First: I can't believe for a moment that this problem is limited to the US. I've recently started a basic science course with the Open University in the UK, and it literally spells out for us how to use a calculator. Not a graphics calculator or a scientific calculator - just a perfectly ordinary, bog-standard 0-9, +, -, /, X and = calculator, such as I taught myself to use, aged 9, when they were such a new invention that not even my teacher at primary school had yet used one.

Secondly, I've recently been reading David Robertson's (i.e. Wee Flea's) book written in response to TGD, and in it he clearly suggests that declining educational standards in the UK are linked to the decline in Christianity and the rise of secularism. If he were right, you'd expect the US to have sky-high educational standards. Sadly for his argument, I suspect we didn't need the article reproduced here to tell us that isn't the case.

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

Comment #79489 by Northern Bright on October 17, 2007 at 12:26 pm

"where campers must try to prove that imaginary unicorns, used as a metaphor for God, don't (STET) [sic] exist."

;-)

127. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath

Comment #79428 by Northern Bright on October 17, 2007 at 8:40 am

To make it a contest, the theists would need to put up someone meaner, nastier, more aggressive, less introspective, less odd, and ... let's face it ... less scrupulous than McGrath

Russell Blackford, there's nothing scrupulous about McGrath, as a quick read of his antidote to The God Delusion would show you. It's an utterly disgraceful book - and I don't say that because I don't agree with the arguments he makes in it, but simply because he never, at any stage, rises to the point of making an argument AT ALL - he simply writes abuse about Richard Dawkins. It took my breath away, and for all the wrong reasons.

128. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath

Comment #79214 by Northern Bright on October 16, 2007 at 1:16 pm

44. Comment #79208 by NAIANF87 on October 16, 2007 at 12:58 pm

evidential basis of atheism???

I'm sorry but I don't understand your comment, NAIANF87. Are you quoting something said by either McGrath or Hitchens and questioning the validity of the notion, or are you genuinely asking what the evidential basis of atheism might be?

129. God Hates the World

Comment #79209 by Northern Bright on October 16, 2007 at 1:04 pm

I'd like to add my voice to the welcome too, Nate. And my admiration for having had the courage and strength to break free of the horror of your family background and upbringing. Like others, I look forward to reading your views on this website. All the best to you.

130. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath

Comment #79204 by Northern Bright on October 16, 2007 at 12:52 pm

I can't abide Alister McGrath, but actually I thought he put up a better fight here than I was expecting: I truly thought Hitch would chew him up and spit him out again, but I don't think the battle was as one-sided as that.

That said, everyone who has commented on his aggravating mannerisms and deliberate obfuscations is absolutely right, and I shared the temptation to hit fast forward when he came on. (Though I didn't give in to it, I hasten to add!)

What REALLY made me laugh was the way he hastened to tell the audience, within the first minute or so of his speech, that he used to be an atheist. I have just finished reading his book, "The Dawkins Delusion?" and - I promise I'm not exaggerating here - by page 2 of the main body of the book, he has told his readers no fewer than SIX times that he used to be an atheist!!!! He obviously thinks this is a killer argument.

And not one he limits to just atheism, either: in the course of his performance in this video, he also tells us he "used to be a scientist", "used to be a Marxist", and "used to be a historian" too. He obviously doesn't have much staying power. If he takes Hitch on a few more times, with a bit of luck he'll soon be saying "I used to be a Christian" too...

131. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams criticizes popular atheist writers

Comment #78910 by Northern Bright on October 15, 2007 at 11:07 am

I see you rationalist types are happy to rave on without having seen what the Archbishop actually said.

What a silly comment. Are we to take it that you never express opinions on anything that you are only familiar with through other people's reports? - Iraq, say, or the Third Reich, or evolution, or nuclear weapons? Or the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, or the Sermon on the Mount?

We have seen the promotion for the event, which made it clear what sort of comments the AB was going to make. (Or do you think that when the question is asked: "Do Richard Dawkins and other outspoken critics of religion actually understand what religion really is?" - especially in the context of a speech entitled: "How to misunderstand religion" - it's possible that the Archbishop is going to hold forth for an hour before pronouncing that yes, RD and co understand religion perfectly well?) We have also now seen 2 reports from the event which both show that, in fact, that's NOT the conclusion he came to, and which quote from his talk (hard copies of which had in all likelihood been distributed to the press before the event).

Our comments are based on the AB's comments as reported. The consistency of the 2 reports, both with each other and with the pre-event publicity, does not suggest that he's been misrepresented. And of course, he's more than welcome to come on here and post a reply if he feels otherwise. :-)

132. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams criticizes popular atheist writers

Comment #78877 by Northern Bright on October 15, 2007 at 7:26 am

Anybody got a link to what the Archbishop actually send at the University of Swansea? It's really rather pointless to comment on a newspaper report.

No, there's no press release on the A of C's website. However, this is how the event was promoted on the University of Swansea website by the university's Anglican chaplain and, to judge from the newspaper reports afterwards, the speech would appear to have been as advertised:

Do Richard Dawkins and other outspoken critics of religion actually understand what religion really is?

That is the question that will be addressed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Reverend and Right Honourable Dr Rowan Williams, in a major public lecture at Swansea University at 4pm on Saturday, October 13.

In his first significant speech in his home city since his enthronement in 2003, Dr Williams will focus on what he sees as some of the most common mistakes made by contemporary opponents of religion in books such as Dawkins's The God Delusion and God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens.

The lecture – entitled How to Misunderstand Religion – will be given in the 330-seat theatre in the Taliesin Arts Centre at the University.

By the way, it wasn't just the International Herald Tribune that carried the report: there's an account in the Telegraph too - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/14/nfaith114.xml

133. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams criticizes popular atheist writers

Comment #78872 by Northern Bright on October 15, 2007 at 7:06 am

Funny, another Christian "scholar" said god doesn't have to be complex.

That's absolutely right, notsobad - John Cornwell in Darwin's Angel refers to the simplicity of God.

This is what happens when people base their belief in something for which there is no empirical evidence whatsoever: it leaves them free to make it all up as they go along.

God's complex? Fine. God's simple? No problem. God's green? Yes, that's right. God's purple? Yes, an interesting insight.

And they get away with it because God is beyond all human constraints and is therefore able to be all these things at one and the same time. Well, YOU prove it isn't true!

It would almost be comical, but for the fact that it's almost unbearably pathetic.

134. Richard Dawkins receives the Deschner Prize

Comment #78749 by Northern Bright on October 14, 2007 at 5:28 pm

A great honour, and a great speech to mark it with.

I particularly liked the line about the recent attackers in London and Glasgow: "Their brains had been hijacked by faith just like an airliner hijacked by terrorists."

135. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams criticizes popular atheist writers

Comment #78682 by Northern Bright on October 14, 2007 at 9:41 am

"Primates to star on top of Christmas trees"

Given the spin the Anglican church has got itself into on the subject of gay priests, it can surely only be a matter of time before one of the more fundamentalist clergy points out the inappropriateness of the Archbishop of Canterbury being represented as a fairy.

136. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams criticizes popular atheist writers

Comment #78640 by Northern Bright on October 14, 2007 at 2:34 am

He urged atheist writers to better understand religion.

By which he really means, to suspend their disbelief and stop applying their irritating demands for evidence to something for which, clearly, there is no evidence whatsovever. Or in other words: "Cut us some slack, guys. Stop asking us to prove things - you know that's not fair."

No doubt it would be reasonable to assume that he's also urging theist apologists to better understand scientific explanations for the existence of the universe, the origin of life on Earth, the origins of morality etc?

No? Oh, silly me.

137. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #78506 by Northern Bright on October 13, 2007 at 10:29 am

2429. Comment #78482 by Richard Morgan on October 13, 2007 at 6:43 am

At least in these discussions, most of you guys come across as:
humourless,
unfeeling,
cynical,
supercilious,
semi-lobotomised word- and idea-processors.

You have a right to your opinion, of course, Richard, but no right, I'm afraid, to expect other people to change what they do because of it. If you don't like the discussions when they get more in-depth and technical, there's a simple solution - don't read them.

Personally I always learn a great deal from the posts that attempt to flesh out the science and logic of the discussions and am grateful to people like steve99 and others for posting as they do.

I've said it before, but it's still true: this forum is big enough for people of all tastes and interests. It's not reasonable to expect to like everything that's posted here. But just because you don't like a particular style of post, doesn't mean that no one else does.

138. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #77515 by Northern Bright on October 9, 2007 at 1:21 pm

Change of topic here, but I couldn't find anywhere else remotely appropriate to post this.

I never thought it possible that I might one day feel sorry for Alister McGrath, and especially not after having read his appalling "flea" book (The Dawkins Delusion), which is just a disgrace and a sickening waste of trees ... but today I found myself feeling just a flicker of sympathy for the man.

Why? Because I saw the banner at the top of the home page of RD.net, announcing that McGrath would be debating CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS on Thursday!!!!!!!! Proof positive that the man is mad. He's going to be eaten alive!

What wouldn't I give to see a video of THAT discussion?! There's going to be a transcript, apparently, but not immediately - and besides, a transcript is a pretty tame substitute for actually WATCHING Hitch wipe the floor with him.

Sorry. Bit of Schadenfreude slipping in there. But go on, be honest - you feel it too, don't you?
;-)

139. Call for major science campaign

Comment #77087 by Northern Bright on October 8, 2007 at 12:08 pm

Those students who have an aptitude for, and desire to pursue, math and science will do so.

Those who don't won't.

But good teachers are more likely to alert students to the fact that they have an aptitude for something, don't you think? And certainly more likely to make students want to pursue it. I certainly wish the science teachers I had at school many years ago had been a bit more inspiring. At the time I just thought it must be a boring subject or that my brain wasn't wired for it. Now I know otherwise!

140. The Future Forum Presents: Christopher Hitchens and Marvin Olasky

Comment #76986 by Northern Bright on October 8, 2007 at 3:09 am

for an excellent overview, i recommend stenger's God The Failed Hypothesis.

I'd just like to second that. It's an excellent book and includes a number of arguments that I haven't seen elsewhere.

141. Honest Mistakes or Willful Mendacity

Comment #76971 by Northern Bright on October 8, 2007 at 1:49 am

Veronique
:-)

142. In honour of Dan Dennett

Comment #76876 by Northern Bright on October 7, 2007 at 2:29 pm

Some comic relief perhaps...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrShK-NVMIU

Lovely! I'd never seen that one!

143. Be Good Now, Or Else

Comment #76874 by Northern Bright on October 7, 2007 at 2:19 pm

Well this is course the very relativistic business that has the more educated theists so exercised. Who decides what human rights even are?

Well, since the God of the Bible would have condemned our hypothetical criminal to hell on the basis of actions performed under the influence of faulty hardware/software designed and provided by God himself, I think we can safely leave him out of the moral equation, don't you?!

This kind of technology, and plenty of others (heard of crowd dispersal by intense pain?) are going to give ethicists plenty to talk about in the future.

I agree - and I think the ending of the article would have sounded less sinister if it had acknowledged as much.

144. Be Good Now, Or Else

Comment #76860 by Northern Bright on October 7, 2007 at 1:52 pm

Ah ... no, I didn't see it in a "Minority Report" sense, where the "criminal" is arrested prior to the crime. I would imagine this used post crime to identify optimal .... treatments?

OK, I see what you're suggesting now! I wonder if societies could cope with such a tailored response to criminal tendencies though. There would presumably have to be some effective treatment available for such people before this approach could be beneficial to society (as opposed to the individual offender).

But would that throw up ethical concerns too? Let's say it were possible to "re-program" an offender's brain to reduce the likelihood of re-offending. I can see the argument in favour, from a purely utilitarian point of view. But could it be argued that this would be interfering with their personality in some way and would therefore constitute an infringement of their human rights?

Fascinating as the insight is into how the brain affects conformity to social norms, it just seems to me that any application of this new knowledge has the potential to be ethically fraught. I hate to sound like a Daily Mail reader (I'm not!!) but "thin ends" and "wedges" spring to mind!

(Actually, on reflection, your average Daily Mail reader would probably approve of re-programming criminals' minds. As long as you could still hang' em and flog 'em too, of course.)

145. Be Good Now, Or Else

Comment #76850 by Northern Bright on October 7, 2007 at 1:22 pm

I took it to mean "identify".

Yes, so did I, BCWC ... but to what end? What should society do with a potential criminal (or whatever) who has not yet committed any wrongdoing? I'm not normally someone who sees threats to civil liberties around every corner, but I confess to feeling a little twitchy about this. IF I've understood Raichle's comment correctly, of course.

146. Be Good Now, Or Else

Comment #76839 by Northern Bright on October 7, 2007 at 12:48 pm

the study suggests it may one day be possible to predict how a particular person might behave by scanning his or her brain. "We may not be able to pull out individuals now," Raichle says, "but the mere suggestion that you might be able to do that is important."

I'm not sure I've understood what Raichle is suggesting by "pull out" here. Is it just me, or does it - in the context - sound vaguely sinister?

147. Scandal brewing at Oral Roberts U.

Comment #76822 by Northern Bright on October 7, 2007 at 11:32 am

!!!!!! Scottish Free Church!!!!!

You know, just when you are trying to erase such thoughts, along comes Wee Flea's church.

SG There's an article in their magazine this month called "The Joy of Calvinism". Now THERE'S a phrase you won't hear very often! :-)

148. A Nation of Christians Is Not a Christian Nation

Comment #76811 by Northern Bright on October 7, 2007 at 10:55 am

Good to see someone in the press tackling this misrepresentation head-on.

149. In honour of Dan Dennett

Comment #76770 by Northern Bright on October 7, 2007 at 7:20 am

I agree with all the comments above. Wonderful quotes from Dan Dennett in Richard's speech, and topped and tailed with such evident sincerity and humility.

shaunfletcher I'm glad things turned out the right way for you, and agree wholeheartedly about the lack of thanks for medical staff. My mother spent the last month of her life in an NHS hospital, where she was not only nursed but genuinely cared for by an amazing team of staff, who sat with her, hugged her, chatted with her, rubbed handcream into her dried out skin, and were 100% honest with her about her condition at every turn; even the emergency doctor who'd admitted her in the first place and no longer had any formal role in her care popped by in his break to see how she was getting on. From the most senior consultant to the car park attendant, I didn't encounter a single member of staff at that hospital who wasn't 100% committed to looking after both her and us, her family. I can honestly say it turned what could have been a harrowing experience into a rather beautiful one. Yet when I made a point of thanking them and telling them how much it had meant to me, it was clear that they were genuinely taken aback. One of them actually said that they normally only ever got to hear complaints. How sad.

I have been reading some of the "flea" books recently and have been struck by the small-mindedness of them, the lack of warmth, the lack of humanity, the sheer meanness. Returning with some relief to the writings of Richard Dawkins, Victor Stenger and Christopher Hitchens, I find them by contrast full of a zest for life, a generosity of spirit, a genuine and full humanity, a questing spirit of enquiry and a sense of adventure. And the speech above encapsulates all of that, of course.

I say "thank goodness" for intelligent, generous, humble, invigorating, inspiring, secular humanists. The world would be a much poorer place without them.

150. Scandal brewing at Oral Roberts U.

Comment #76614 by Northern Bright on October 6, 2007 at 12:42 pm

Amazing how so many are ready to pounce on someone when they fall. No compassion. No mercy. No tears for those who made a mess of their lives and the lives of others.

Are you serious, mother2eight? You want us to feel sorry for these people?

OK, let's give them the benefit of the doubt and acknowledge that nothing has yet been proven in a court of law. But if they've really done what it is alleged they have done (and let's face it, such corruption wouldn't be unprecedented in the world of high-profile Christian evangelists, would it?), you'd still want us to feel sorry for them?

If proven guilty, they would have lied, cheated, stolen, indulged in inappropriate relationships with minors, grossly deceived and conned people who had given money in good faith, and indulged in the crassest acts of blatant hypocrisy.

And evangelical Christians claim that atheists have no morality!