101. Should We Rid The Mind of God? A Debate

Comment #199367 by Nova on June 25, 2008 at 3:31 pm

It was exactly what I expected. McGrath played the liberal/moderate Christian well. Using sophistry to obscure the debate with irrelevant qualms very often so he could sneak his points in without evidence. Atkins shredded all his nonsense but he just kicked up more dust with his irrelevant babble. The 'why question' trick is a classic and commonly used example of this. Another example of his obscuration was his pathetic talk about his feelings and him bringing up what other people have said when he could have just explained the point himself. I must admit I expected to see at least an attempted application of at least one of the tired and useless proofs of god but I think, consciously or subconsciously, McGrath knows they would be obliterated instantly and that obscuring what we know by rambling about the limits of science is perfect cover to insert his emotions as if they are actual evidence and is the only strategy left for the theologian in a sophisticated debate.

I'm glad to say it still failed though, though no where near as much as it should have. I can quantify this objectively though not conclusively. The audience always gave a courtesy applause at the end of a long speech that either Atkins or McGrath made. Occasionally they gave a bonus if Atkins or McGrath made what they felt was a particularly poignant point. I counted about three or four for Atkins but only one for McGrath. The audience was in Atkins favour. Particularly interesting was that Atkins said he would probably lose the audience when he explained what he was going to explain and then he explained how so called 'why questions' weren't real questions - and he got an applause.

102. Should Strident British Atheist Richard Dawkins Dictate Education Policy to US States? Barbara Forrest Apparently Thinks So

Comment #197311 by Nova on June 21, 2008 at 5:24 pm

Antangil:

My US History is a bit hazy... but wasn't Louisiana purchased from the French by Jefferson? By my recollections, Louisiana was _never_ a British colony...

The Louisiana Purchase included the current state of Louisiana but was much bigger than that. It comprises around 23% of current US territory.

The idea that the US was a British colony is wrong in 2 ways. Firstly, 13 colonies seceded, it would be correct to say Virginia, Delaware or New Jersey were colonies of the Kingdom of Great Britain (not the current nation-state of Britain and the one commonly associated with the British Empire as explained in my second point) but the US was formed by former colonies after they seceded. Secondly, when we think of a British colony we think of one of the current nation-state of Britain, all the traditional British colonies where British colonies in this way: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India. However, the thirteen states that seceded and then became the US were only colonies of the Kingdom of Great Britain, not the United Kingdom, it was a different nation-state. The United Kingdom was formed on the first day of the 19th century.

103. Is the Universe Actually Made of Math?

Comment #196329 by Nova on June 19, 2008 at 4:46 pm

Adam Frank:

In his theory, the mathematical universe hypothesis

A hypothesis is speculation a theory is supported, get it right.

I didn't think this was controversial at all. It's not a new "hypothesis". Nothing has ever been presented which can't be represented at its most fundamental level as mathematics. More than that, nothing can even be proposed that can't be at its most fundamental level cut down to mathematics. The moment you think about any quality it has to be quantified. You could say some things are just 'smaller' and some just 'bigger' but then there might also be 'medium' things and you might as well just use '1', '2' and '3'.

104. Oystein Elgaroy - the Christian defender who became an Atheist

Comment #195055 by Nova on June 17, 2008 at 3:53 pm

Atheism sure is smashing ahead, while we get well known Christian personalities like this guy and Dan Barker, all the Christians have are people who sorta kinda didn't believe in God so they were atheists - well maybe agnostics or deists - well they didn't really think about it... but then they found Christ and were saved! The conversion examples they give are pathetic.

MarcLindenberg:

Man, McGrath's book was terrible... I read it expecting maybe some good arguments, but man it sucked.

That's the only way to put it. It sucked.

Really? You actually read it? The whole book?! Then your more resilient than me. I think just flicking through it singed my retinas and I've barely looked at it since.

105. Vatican bans Dan Brown film Angels & Demons from Rome churches

Comment #194935 by Nova on June 17, 2008 at 12:35 pm

I'm surprised the Times (admittedly specifically the journalist Richard Owen who wrote the article, but they have editors to check for individual bias) got so blatantly biased towards the end over such a trivial issue. Authors always make factual mistakes in their books and if you are out to find them of course you can collect a fair amount. That is true of any author who writes about real places, real organizations and real events.

106. Gay brains structured like those of the opposite sex

Comment #194903 by Nova on June 17, 2008 at 11:37 am

I'm interested to know how this relates to so called butch gays and fem gays and also lipstick lesbians and butch lesbians. Is it that the lipstick lesbians and butch gays have brain structures more similar to the brain structures of the straight version of the sex of their genitals?

On another note

Cartomancer, in your first post you said your identical twin brother is straight, normally identical twins that grow up together (and more remarkably, even those that don't) have very similar personalities, so this would be a big divergence from that and would point to a non-genetic origin of sexual orientation, though I guess that would be consistent with what the article says about the differences being forged in the womb or early infancy.

107. Only a Theory

Comment #193493 by Nova on June 15, 2008 at 5:35 pm

phil rimmer:

I've found Ken Miller very useful indeed. I see it as all part of Sam Harris's "going under the radar" strategy. We need to do it more. I often concede a deist God, for instance, just to get in close.

The problem I have with it is it fails to recognize that religion is not random falsehood which manifests in many areas which individuals or small groups can eliminate, it's a large scale phenomenon of poor thinking. There needs to be organization to stop it as a phenomenon - ironically my point is that we need THE END OF FAITH but as such a widespread phenomenon Sam's approach would be the worst way to try to make our way to what his book's title proclaims precisely because it would destroy the we altogether.

Without an organized rationalism movement there is no consensus or resource to research what has been reached through critical thinking and what has been accepted on tradition, if we did what Sam did and just disorganized and eliminated irrationality where we saw it we would quickly lose form and merge with everyone else with their own agendas, it would be impossible to tell who was a rationalist and who wasn't and this would be fine if there was only random falsehood around and almost everyone was trying to eliminate it, but the fact is is that there is organized falsehood and it is being actively propagated and adapts to methods to eliminate it, so we need organization to identify its status and coordinate moves against it.

LaTomate:

Ken Miller is a deist

No he isn't this is wishful thinking, that would be a colossal dissent from Catholicism. He may dissent with great difficulty from some of the Vatican's decrees but no Catholic can go completely against them because then by definition they are no longer Catholic. We must be aware he is only with us on one front because Catholicism is evil.

AoClay:

I hope he's a deist that just wants to go under the radar or something, but that's probably condescending

He could equally be an atheist under the radar and it is not at all condescending to wish someone was not infected with evil. Unfortunately, because I agree he's smart and a powerful advocate for evolution, it is wishful thinking as I said earlier.

108. Stephen Hawking: ministers' £80m error puts science at risk

Comment #193461 by Nova on June 15, 2008 at 4:22 pm

mordacious1:

The U.S. will take all the scientists the UK has to offer. You can keep the cretinist "scientists".

This is an odd statement to make since your losing scientists to us and other countries that aren't so infected with religion that they don't allow stem cell research on government property.

109. Trailer for Religulous

Comment #190803 by Nova on June 9, 2008 at 3:23 pm

Szkeptik:

Maher isn't against modern medicine. He's against the tens of thousands of marketed medications that are made by companies for income alone and the illnesses they are made to cure are often just made up.

In your attempt to defend him you just tarnished Maher even more! The view you just expressed, whether Maher holds it or not, is crazy, making medicines is very hard and there is often a fine line between a medicine and a poison so drug companies are regulated and your idea their medicines don't work because they're just for profit is absurd because of this.

Then somehow you believe that these companies have silenced or brainwashed the entire medical profession to get illnesses they made up to go unchallenged. You rank very high on the wacky conspiracy theorist meter.

110. John McCain: America a Christian nation, needs Christian president

Comment #190706 by Nova on June 9, 2008 at 12:25 pm

FightingFalcon:

Perhaps it's because your country was founded upon such "stupid" principles that you can't look to it for inspiration.

The American Experiment was such a unique and far-sighted achievement that we Americans constantly look at our beginnings to see what type of model country we should be. America hasn't seen a group of such highly gifted and intelligent men as our Founding Fathers since 1789. It's only natural to look to them for inspiration given our current crop of "leaders"...

Yes, they were special (though not that special!, I'd challenge you to prove, other than with patriotic hubris, the statement "America hasn't seen a group of such highly gifted and intelligent men as our Founding Fathers since 1789") but shouldn't ideas be evaluated on there merits and not on what people years ago thought of them? Their world was so far from ours that surely it's silly to use their world view today simply because it was their world view. Though the Founding Fathers were special, it was only for their time and in our time their views aren't radical. I think it's fine to be in patriotic awe (within reason) but what reason is there to think their views are so important in shaping an America more than 200 years after they signed the Declaration of Independence?

Why is it important if America was established as a nation of Christianity? (Again, displaying the Founding Fathers as having had a unified idea of what America was going to be is very misleading, there were many Christian Founding Fathers, its silly to think that some of them didn't want it to be a Christian nation, at the same time, some obviously wanted it to be a nation of reason) It's silly to just defer all decisions on a nations policy to what it was founded on, if it was proven that America really was a Christian nation (just a thought experiment) would you really just accept that and say "OK! Fine, you win, establish a theocracy!".

It's nice to see them as heroes which they were and it's OK to believe in what they say BUT not just because they said it, which is what happens now.

Steven Mading:

On the debate about why people in the US care what the "founding fathers" said - Do you think it's relevant know the difference between what's legal today and what's illegal today? I think it is. So do the courts and the lawmakers, obviously. Well, to know what's legal and illegal you have to know what the constitution means, which DOES mean delving into the minds of the historical figures that put it together and voted on it.

A coherent legal code shouldn't require the reader to know the personal opinions of the people who wrote it.

111. John McCain: America a Christian nation, needs Christian president

Comment #190409 by Nova on June 9, 2008 at 3:44 am

I think it's silly Americans care so much about the views of the founders of there nation. My nation, the UK, was formed by a stupid union based on stupid monarchy in trying to reconcile the monarchs territories into one state, a completely stupid premise for founding a nation, but I think it's important what the UK's like now and I think Americans should stop worrying themselves about what the founding fathers thought, except in a purely historical sense and not in a political sense like it is often used. Rather than asking "what did the founding fathers create this nation to be like?" (as if they all agreed on that!) you should ask "what do we want the US to be like now".

112. Couple charged in Norway over genital mutilation of daughters

Comment #190405 by Nova on June 9, 2008 at 3:04 am

Goldy:

I think this has been beaten to death now. No, it is not a race, but what is your mental image of a Muslim? I dare say it is nothing like the face you see in the mirror every morning...

Yes, but the fact Islam has no face means there cannot be racism to Islam. It would have to be perhaps Arab racism or something (though only 20% of Muslims are Arabs). I think attributing any racist aspect to hate of Islam is a ridiculous lie, spread by the 'liberals' talked about earlier. There are all kinds of minority races in Europe, do people really believe that for no apparent reason it is only the ones that are Muslim that have a persecutions complex? Pretty big coincidence.

Culture and religion are attached to race, obscuring true racism. Often people just don't like a certain culture which is attached to a race and then it is instantly labeled (again by the 'liberals' mentioned earlier) racism. This is why multiculturalism is a sham, culture is unity, nothing else unifies society, there can be unique subsets of culture, but ultimately there must be connection.

113. The day of judgment

Comment #189584 by Nova on June 6, 2008 at 2:56 pm

the United States, responsible for more than four-fifths of the world's scientific research

I don't believe that, firstly, it would be very hard to prove objectively and secondly a statement sounding as absurd as that would need very heavy evidence. The EU has an economy larger than the US economy in GDP (nominal) according the World Bank (for 2006) and the International Monetary Fund (for 2007) (the CIA says the US is bigger in that measure for 2007, funny the odd one out is the US own secret service) and all three organizations say the EU economy is bigger than the US economy in GDP (PPP) (World Bank for 2006, the other 2 for 2007), so even if for some strange reason every other country in the world was only putting a tiny fraction of their economy toward scientific research they would still muster more than a fifth.

114. Darwin still causing waves after 150 years

Comment #188830 by Nova on June 4, 2008 at 5:49 pm

EvidenceOnly:

They believe that they are made by God in his/her/its image but refuse to make use of this God-given ability to think critically.

Since they also believe that everything exists for a purpose, they should accept that their critical thinking has a purpose as well.

Don't you know? Thinking critically isn't God given it's the work of the devil - why do you think the tree Eve took the fruit from was called the Tree of Knowledge?

115. Ben Stein 1, Yoko Ono 0 in 'Expelled' copyright spat

Comment #188396 by Nova on June 4, 2008 at 3:33 am

Timothy B. Lee:

(The film greatly exaggerates the persecution of intelligent design advocates)

It would have been better not to express an opinion at all on the validity of Expelled's persecution claims than to express this one. It seems anti-Expelled but the trouble is that it agrees that there was some persecution because in order for something to be exaggerated that thing has to exist in the first place, even if in small amounts. There was no persecution of IDiots. It was all faked. That's one of the travesties.

116. Town moves against Islamic school

Comment #188385 by Nova on June 4, 2008 at 3:12 am

NakedCelt:

I mean there are no such people. I mean there is no conspiracy and no infestation. I mean the fact is that the general climate of opinion is more liberal than your own, and the tone of BBC reports simply reflects that. Build a bridge and get over it.

There is no 'general climate' - views organize into groups and there is a liberal group. You obviously didn't read my last post properly because I said "I'm not referring to some kind of organized campaign that has specific motives" so it's simply misrepresentation for you to say "there is no conspiracy" to me as if I think there is but that doesn't mean groups of people don't group together and dominate certain parts of culture and media. You can see from the BBC's style it is infested. "general climate of opinion is more liberal than your own" its the distortion of facts and the misrepresentation of event I can't stand, liberalism as an ideology has good points but I think it gets corrupted often. "Build a bridge and get over it" is simply a crude ad hominem which you just made up. I am just sad to see society being tricked. I have nothing to get over you made that up.

117. Character Attacks: How to Properly Apply the Ad Hominem

Comment #188276 by Nova on June 3, 2008 at 3:52 pm

Nice to know that in 208 years of US history political views and language haven't changed that much.

Unfortunately, they have gone backward. Nowadays it is inconceivable that a non-religious person could become president (deism is the only kind of non-religious theism (the motto of the World Union of Deists is "God Gave Us Reason, Not Religion") and was virtually the only kind before Darwin, for obvious reasons).

118. MPs reject calls to cut abortion limit

Comment #187407 by Nova on June 2, 2008 at 5:34 am

AllanW:

Oh dear, Nova.

Your whole rant is predicated upon the word 'suffer'; please define it.

I assumed that would be self evident - basically someone suffers if something he/she doesn't want to happen happens and he/she knows about it.

119. Town moves against Islamic school

Comment #187403 by Nova on June 2, 2008 at 5:24 am

NakedCelt:

So? It's still wrong.

What do you mean it's wrong? Thats the people the term has come to represent.

NakedCelt:

Given how very vague you've been about who these people actually are, that's an amazingly specific statement to make about their motives and beliefs. I note again the word "infested".

I'm not referring to some kind of organized campaign that has specific motives, just a subculture that generally holds the same views and imposes them and, yes, infests the BBC.

120. Town moves against Islamic school

Comment #187054 by Nova on June 1, 2008 at 8:27 am

NakedCelt, I was simply using liberal to represent what it typically refers to today in Britain, I didn't lump them together they are lumped together in normal discourse.

NakedCelt:

I am speaking from my first-hand knowledge of New Zealand and Australian discourse. I'm telling you, this is how racists talk in this part of the world. Note, for instance, that the woman quoted said "We are Aussies, OK", not "We are Christians, OK" or "We are secularists, OK".

So you are subjectively judging they are racist by the way they talk yet you cannot quote them saying anything actually objectively racist. I agree that perhaps some of them are racists, but no racist points were brought up so this is still not a racist issue, the BBC is infested with liberals who slipped that in to heighten the profile of Muslims due to a very misguided distortion of multiculturalism.

I mean liberals like Madeline Bunting who despite calling RDs The Root of All Evil? unworthy of a great scientist still looked ridiculous in a debate with him when she claimed to be Catholic yet when Dawkins asked her if Jesus had a biological father or not - a simple question - she actually refused to answer it saying it wasn't that simple, these kinds of people are often called liberals and this is the mindset I am referring to.

People who will distort and obscure the truth to any length in order to let any oddity be accepted in society to the extent that whether a particular historical figure had a biological father becomes a paradox of the universe. There 'anything goes' and 'odd viewpoints enrich us' philosophy is nice in principle but is taken to ridiculous extremes.

121. Town moves against Islamic school

Comment #186869 by Nova on May 31, 2008 at 2:08 pm

NakedCelt the only part of your post that actually had anything to do with race was "Can I just say this without being racist or political?" which was someone renouncing that it was racist! You too are seeing a racist issue where there is none. You also ask me to look up the word liberal, telling me what it means which shows you have not looked at my post closely because I say at the beginning I use the term very loosely.

122. Religion is a product of evolution, software suggests

Comment #186571 by Nova on May 30, 2008 at 4:49 pm

religion only takes hold if non-believers help believers out â€" perhaps because they are impressed by their devotion

Many agnostics cede ridiculously to religion in the name of 'respect'.

123. Town moves against Islamic school

Comment #186570 by Nova on May 30, 2008 at 4:39 pm

Note: I use 'liberal' and 'liberals' very loosely but this term is generally used to refer to the group I'm referring to.

It's the massive infestation of liberals in the BBC which makes it keep using the absolutely infuriating lie of 'race' in this article. WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH RACE? Nothing. It has just become the common defense of Muslim defending liberals who support a crazy distorted multiculturalism whatever the cost (democracy, freedom of speech) to equate any dispute involving Muslims with a racial issue. Its an amazing travesty that issues which are purely religious can have 'race' slapped onto them to make it sound higher profile.

Whenever you criticize Islam your called a racist, its the sheer unthinking state of the people who use the term that astonishes me and the power of the freedom hating liberals who manipulate it to their advantage - they even popped xenophobia in there once to raise the profile to something it has nothing to do with even more. It greatly infuriates me that the liberal media has transformed Islam into a nationality and a race to inflate its profile when it is criticized and they just get away with it and no one notices.

124. Lab agrees to test Shroud of Turin for new theory

Comment #183713 by Nova on May 22, 2008 at 3:08 pm

This article shows how ridiculous the claims of the Shroud of Turing are.

The amazing thing about the whole incidence for me is how religion makes an obvious forgery into a 'controversy' - if this were not religious everyone would have denounced it as the obvious forgery it was straight after it was analyzed and this is yet more evidence of the need to eradicate religion.

125. MPs reject calls to cut abortion limit

Comment #183698 by Nova on May 22, 2008 at 2:21 pm

Dawn Primarolo, the health minister said:

The upper limit was set by parliament in 1990 at 24 weeks because scientific evidence at the time was that the threshold of viability had increased.

It has always been linked to the potential viability of the foetus outside of the womb. That was the case in 1967. It was the case in 1990 and certainly the case now.

I'm pro-choice but this is a terrible way to base when abortions can happen - people who use it show themselves to be shallow thinkers. What bearing does it have on the basis of morality whether it can survive outside the womb or not? We're trying to stop suffering, well whether it can survive outside the womb is physiological and has nothing to do with whether it can suffer.

We need to discover as accurately as we can when it developers the ability to suffer and once it has developed that ability abortion should be illegal, before that it should be absolutely fine with not consultation or reason because nothing suffers, it is especially silly and telling of the shallow thinking of those who made the law that there are so many requirements for abortion, if the fetus can't suffer, why not it be an easy decision? If it can, it should be illegal, there is no basis to have some sort of middle ground where its hard to get an abortion but possible because something can't half suffer.

Christine McCafferty, the Labour MP for Calder Valley said:

Abortion should be a private decision between the patient and her doctor, just like any other medical treatment.

Why is it so difficult for societies, even one like ours, to give the power to decide to those who carry the consequences?

I only use pro-choice because it is what the pro-abortion block uses. It has nothing to do with choice, and my views on abortion don't need to employ a ridiculous freewheeling amount of choice given to the parents. In particular:

to give the power to decide to those who carry the consequences?

This is bogus because if parents abort a fetus capable of suffering then they aren't the only ones who carry the consequences.

It should all revolve around when it can suffer, better to pick out and eliminate the bogus pro-choice idea that the basis of the legal abortion limit should be based around if the fetus can survive outside the womb and the pro-choice argument from womens freedom and then to use the valid utilitarian argument that abortion should be fine and easy when the fetus can't suffer and that it should be illegal beyond that (as far as we can know when it gains the ability to suffer - in the case of uncertainty we should always go below the lowest estimate to stay on the safe side).

126. In God's Name

Comment #183655 by Nova on May 22, 2008 at 12:26 pm

AdrianB:

The possibility that these people are seeking political power needs to be as scary to the moderate theists as it is to us

Moderate theists are very inactive about all these issues. Moderate theists are always the first to yell "thats not my religion!" when we criticize religion but the last to tell the actual fundamental theists that what they are doing is wrong, it is always the atheists in the front line fighting the fundamentalists.

The reason is that, deep down, they know they wouldn't have a leg to stand on - they have seen the passages in their holy books the fundamentalists use to justify their beliefs. They know that their beliefs are based equally on faith as the fundamentalists and that it would undermine their enterprise to criticize fundamentalists. You'll never see a moderate/liberal theist preaching that fundamentalism is wrong from the pulpit. This is why all religion needs to be eradicated.

127. 16% of US science teachers are creationists

Comment #183595 by Nova on May 22, 2008 at 10:19 am

Bob Holmes:

The researchers polled a random sample of nearly 2000 high-school science teachers across the US in 2007. Of the 939 who responded

Not technically a fair survey. It could be biased by the fact that people of a certain view respond more often - so, for example, it might be that only 8% of biology teachers would turn out to be YECs if the other roughly 1000 that didn't respond all accepted evolution, it could be that YEC biology teachers jump at the chance to slap their wacky beliefs onto a poll but that many of the evolution accepting ones think of it with more apathy and can't be bothered to respond.

A situation like this could easily be happening and the fact that about half amount of those polled didn't respond would have definitely biased the results in some way.

128. Non-religious summer camps develop niche

Comment #183079 by Nova on May 21, 2008 at 11:02 am

DjSouthPaw:

i do indeed think God's existence is equal in probability to fairies ( less then 1% chance )

but i will not go so far as to say that it fits in to the same technical agnosticism i apply when i think my dinner table is made of wood, and that it's solid.. thats taking it to far in my opinion

Why is the knowledge that your table is made of wood more certain than that god doesn't exist? It would be a complicated situation for somehow your dinner table not to be made of wood when it looks like it is but by using incredible odds you could think of one. God is a very complicated idea but by using incredible odds you could think of a way god exists.

However, since we can't calculate the probabilities I don't see how you can put the idea that your dinner table is made of wood as more certain than that god doesn't exist. What if the trees that were used to make that table where the result of loads of sudden mutations in an explosion of improbability and this caused them to be made of a substance which looks and feels like wood but in some other ways isn't wood. What I wonder is how you can says that this improbability is less likely than the equally complex amount of parameters that need to be fulfilled to create god, he is smarter than humans and has loads of amazing abilities, so it would be way less likely than a human body assembling by chance.

Even if you maintain that we can be more certain of a table being wood than god not existing, surely both are sufficiently incredibly improbably enough that we can treat them as facts? If god is taken as too likely so that we can't treat his nonexistence as a fact then there are a multitude of other ridiculous things that we cannot say don't exist. I wouldn't advocate teaching atheism as a fact without any explanation like a dogma but teaching it as a fact and showing the reasons why.

129. Non-religious summer camps develop niche

Comment #182570 by Nova on May 20, 2008 at 2:33 pm

Epinephrine:

Atheism/agnosticism. This is a bit of a line-drawing fallacy, unless you feel that atheists are those who claim with certainty that there is no god, in which case anyone with a rational approach is at most agnostic. You can't rationally claim that there is no god, so you are either an extreme agnostic or irrational. The label "atheist" is of little use if you only use it to denote certainty in the non-existence of deities. If instead you use it to define those people who don't believe in a god, then it does come down to a question of belief. I don't believe in a god, but I can't be certain of the non-existence of god, so I am both atheist and extremely agnostic.

So in practise we are all agnostics but there is a difference between practising agnostics give a sizable chunk to the 'god exists' idea, they do give more credance to gods existence than fairies, we are atheists because we equate gods existence to fairies - that is the practical line and there are many people on both sides to show it is not simply a "line-drawing fallacy".

DjSouthPaw:

well Nova, it's about being technically agnostic. the likely-hood of God being reduced to that of russel's teapot or fairies

technical agnosticism to avoid being hypocritical when calling theists deluded for claiming certainties about god and god,s will

that doesn't make you Agnostic on the fence sitting

Epinephrine:

Right - so you teach facts, you teach reasoning, and when (inevitably) they ask for your opinion, you explain what your opinion is, and why you hold it. If your 5 year old is like mine, she'll ask something like, "but you can't be sure, can you?" And I said, "no, I can't be sure."

And that's your choice - you either explain your reasons and opinion, and allow her to make her own, or you choose to present opinion as fact, something I can't agree with. Obviously, we continued to discuss it, and I imagine it'll come up again.

Technically we can't be sure of anything. There is a tiny chance that everything are senses are telling us is wrong. Does this mean we shouldn't teach anything? No because the chance is too tiny. What if there was a majority belief that a monster would appear on earth tomorrow if we don't sacrifice half the worlds food every day? We can't prove this monster doesn't exist but this doesn't mean we shouldn't teach people it doesn't and the same goes for god. If people had a widespread belief in fairies, then would it really be right to feel squeamish in pointing out the fallacies just because we can't prove they don't exist?

Unless, of course, you give far more chance to god than fairies or destructive monsters that can appear out of nowhere, in which case you are a practical agnostic. We are all technically agnostics - its just some are practically atheists, seeing god as no more likely as fairies. I think opinion is something you are unsure of but still have conviction in - the existence of god is so unlikely that to treat it as opinion that he doesn't exist is absurd. I would obviously always protect the rights of theists to hold their beliefs as I would protect the right of flat earth believers to hold their beliefs though. I just think that as evolution and round earth should be taught as fact so should atheism.

130. Non-religious summer camps develop niche

Comment #182539 by Nova on May 20, 2008 at 11:50 am

Epinephrine:

What I won't do is teach her that there is no god.

I only teach her truths, not what I believe.

Yes, I have heard many atheists espouse this view but I don't understand it. There is no reason not to teach what the facts tell us and surely you are an atheist because you observe the facts pointing towards atheism, then, in what way, is teaching atheism different to teaching anything else? Unless your belief in atheism is not fact based - the only other alternative I can think of is faith. Surely, if you are not sure enough of atheism to teach it that makes you an agnostic.

131. Geeks and Guinness: the formula for sexy science

Comment #182523 by Nova on May 20, 2008 at 10:39 am

Lucy McDonald:

physics A-level has dropped by more than a third from 43,416 in 1991 to 28,119

I'm annoyed by this piece of reporting because it is nearly useless without accompanying information on the state of biology and chemistry - it could be that many who would have taken physics have instead taken chemistry and that science as a whole hasn't suffered as much, or maybe only physics is suffering and the rest of science isn't - maybe not but we can't know without the full facts.

132. Richard Dawkins Interview on TVOntario

Comment #181891 by Nova on May 18, 2008 at 3:47 pm

BW022:

Canada would appear as progressive on non-belief as most European countries. Certainly ahead of Ireland, Spain, Italy, etc. Likely something close to Britian, France, etc.

Statistically it is in between America and Britain/France - as Richard said in this interview.

phil rimmer:

Sabastien and BW are right about Canada. It is a glorious piece of Europe set in fabulous American countryside. My first visit there last December was a delight. Cultured, intelligent, quietly self-confident, they took to my unarguable talents straight away. Such good taste!

Well historically this lines up - it was a British possession until 1931 so it would have more British and thus European aspects to it.

133. God and Science Collide in Nation's Capital

Comment #181847 by Nova on May 18, 2008 at 11:42 am

Shermer, who describes himself as spiritual and agnostic

This is just completely untrue - here he says:

I do not believe in God

so he's not an agnostic he's an atheist.

134. Gimme that Old-Time Irreligion

Comment #181844 by Nova on May 18, 2008 at 11:29 am

Norman Levitt:

even as Western Europe eagerly abandoned its historical obedience to Christianity, and turned itself into a society where atheism is pretty much the norm, the persistence of officially-established churches and similar vestigial institutions notwithstanding. I don't expect America to move that far that fast.

This reversal of fortunes must be one of the most amazing spectacles of history.

135. The amazing intelligence of crows

Comment #181532 by Nova on May 17, 2008 at 11:15 am

Quine:

taking care of a friend's CAG parrot for two weeks, and I can tell you the things they can do just fly in the face of our usual ideas of their small brain size

Indeed, African Grey Parrots are the only competitors for the title of worlds smartest bird with Carrion Crows. BTW, it is not brain size but brain size in comparison to body size that is used to measure intelligence. This measure is not precise but it works and both Carrion Crows and African Grey Parrots have very large brains in comparison to the size of their bodies.

136. Turkish Islamic author given 3-year jail sentence

Comment #180722 by Nova on May 15, 2008 at 3:54 pm

Turkish Islamic author given 3-year jail sentence:

The court decision comes at a time when political tensions in officially secular but predominantly Muslim Turkey are high as the ruling AK Party faces a court case that seeks its closure for alleged Islamist activities, a claim the party denies.

This is very worrying. Will Atatürk's great democratic secular nation crumble? Relinquishing all it's great progress since the fall of the Ottoman Empire and becoming the sick man of Europe once again? Only time will tell.

137. Vatican: It's OK to believe in aliens

Comment #180623 by Nova on May 15, 2008 at 11:51 am

Vatican: It's OK to believe in aliens:

Pope John Paul declared in 1992 that the ruling against Galileo was an error resulting from "tragic mutual incomprehension."

LOL! Even after all this time it's still mutual incomprehension as if somehow Galileo weren't clear enough - the Vatican still can't admit it was solely at fault.

138. The Neural Buddhists

Comment #179688 by Nova on May 13, 2008 at 2:01 pm

I've noticed that new age garbage eases people in, leading them into a false sense of security with reasonalbe statements and then spews crap at them when there off guard. I picked up a new age book and the cycle of reasonable statement to unfounded rubbish seemed to go on for the whole book. Here's some examples I found in this article:

Scientists have more respect for elevated spiritual states. Andrew Newberg of the University of Pennsylvania has shown that transcendent experiences can actually be identified and measured in the brain (people experience a decrease in activity in the parietal lobe, which orients us in space).

reasonable

The mind seems to have the ability to transcend itself and merge with a larger presence that feels more real.

followed by crap

First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships. Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions. Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love.

other than the religious part of the second point and I don't know about the third but this seems reasonable

Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is.

followed by crap!

Vergil typed:

I think what he is saying is that advances in science demonstrate that slithy toves do gyre and gimble in the wabe. Furthermore, the borogroves are all mimsy, and the mome raths outgrabe. And a good thing too.

While this is satire I think it humorously (and more briefly) illustrates what I said, real advances in science is presented, it's the conclusions drawn that are gibberish.

139. The Neural Buddhists

Comment #179667 by Nova on May 13, 2008 at 1:43 pm

Over the past several years, the momentum has shifted away from hard-core materialism. The brain seems less like a cold machine. It does not operate like a computer. Instead, meaning, belief and consciousness seem to emerge mysteriously from idiosyncratic networks of neural firings. Those squishy things called emotions play a gigantic role in all forms of thinking. Love is vital to brain development.

Steven Pinker's How the Mind Works totally destroys this nonsense of David Brooks - I'm on page 177 now and it's an eye opening experience and shows how shallow the concept of the soul is.

Genes are not merely selfish, it appears. Instead, people seem to have deep instincts for fairness, empathy and attachment.

A complete and regular misunderstanding of the whole point of the Selfish Gene. I haven't read it but I know Richards point was that it is the genes and not necessarily the organism that is selfish.

140. 85% of Americans Want a Presidential Debate on Science

Comment #179648 by Nova on May 13, 2008 at 1:13 pm

A majority (84%) also agree that scientific innovations are improving our standard of living

WHAT?! This is very bad news! 16% of Americans think science has contributed nothing to humanity!

A majority of U.S. adults say that past scientific research has contributed "a great deal" or "a lot" to their quality of life today (67%) and that today's research will continue to do so in the future (72%)

More crazy, what do these 33% think gave them everything they see around them? It's the sheer unthinking nature of them that baffles me! (how can more (72%) think science will help us in the future than think it helps us now (62%)? Or is that 72% of the 67% think it will help us in the future, so that only about 50% of Americans think science is of any use whatsoever?)

141. 'My daughter deserved to die for falling in love'

Comment #178446 by Nova on May 11, 2008 at 12:39 pm

History_Junky typed:

If the west used the money it spends on war and instead decided to use that money to build schools with western education for free

I think we should have left them alone. Saddam's regime was very bad for the people but not as bad for the people as now (neighboring Saudi Arabia was much worse - Saddam's regime wasn't even Islamic) - I agree with RD that the invasion was simply revenge for 9/11. However, do you honestly believe we can just walk into these barbarian lands that despise us and say "We're just gonna build a school here that teaches western values which will eventually undermine your totalitarian regime - don't worry, completely free!"

Leila said:

She was killed by animals

No, this horror is a uniquely human weakness, this is an unintended insult to nonhuman animals.

142. Church of Scotland mediators to quell disputes

Comment #178262 by Nova on May 11, 2008 at 3:47 am

This is a good example of memetic evolution in action.

143. $271 Million for Research on Stem Cells in California

Comment #178107 by Nova on May 10, 2008 at 2:02 pm

Podaar typed:

Utah and New York have the same level of religiousness, but Texas is quite high.

Oregon appears to be America's utopia of freedom from religion at 27%.

Thanks for the info! I'll be very interested in the 'theocracy' evidence when it arrives.

In the case of Utah it isn't the amount of religiosity that counts, its the fact its so unified, New York has much more diverse religion than vastly Mormon Utah (about 69 percent according to http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761577046_6/Utah.html#s58) with such unity the religious are far more powerful (in addition Mormonism is a comparatively strict and demanding type of Christianity). I didn't mean theocracy in the legal sense I meant in the sense that thats what its sometimes like in practice, with people in Texas being afraid to come out as atheist for fear their businesses will lose customers.

144. British Airways takes beef off the menu to avoid offending Hindus

Comment #178062 by Nova on May 10, 2008 at 11:29 am

FightingFalcon typed:

I'll take your word for it, mate! Looks like I'm getting minced meat pie at the pub tonight :D

Heh heh :D

145. British Airways takes beef off the menu to avoid offending Hindus

Comment #178058 by Nova on May 10, 2008 at 11:15 am

FightingFalcon typed:

Right....but India only represents a minority of BA's customers. Like I said earlier, why remove it on ALL flights. I can definitely understand why they would remove it on flights to/from India but not all.

It is economically inefficient to have lots of different menus for different flights. It is much cheaper to stick to a set few foodstuffs to buy and get delivered.

I'm kind of surprised to hear that. I've lived here for a year and never once have I touched the beef. Call me crazy but mad cow/hoof-and-mouth outbreaks here have kinda driven me away from British beef...

This did scare many away from British beef and like autism from the MMR vaccine it is completely illogical and unscientifically based because there is no human form of mod cow or foot and mouth disease nor is there even close to being a human form so please stop worrying.

146. British Airways takes beef off the menu to avoid offending Hindus

Comment #178055 by Nova on May 10, 2008 at 11:08 am

This isn't about offense at all, we read about Muslims so much that some of us and this newspaper have jumped to the conclusion this is about offense, its not. Hindus generally don't get offended or force their viewpoints on others, as this shows:

The Hindu Council UK said:

That said, Hindus are tolerant of the beliefs of others and do not expect everyone to stop eating a food because they do not eat it.

This is simply a business decision because Hindus choose personally not to eat beef. That is perfectly fine on both the Hindus' and BA's part - because a large amount of customers would never buy it, beef was less profitable than other options.

This newspaper is right-wing and is just plain lying when they say that it was to avoid offending Hindus who never expressed offense - it just wants to get its political views across which are not anti-religion but 'traditional values'.

I dislike being the defender of religion - ultimately the metaphysical claims of Hinduism are irrational dogma and like all religions humanity would be better off without them. I defend it because like Buddhism, Hinduism is responsible for almost no trouble to society and our real enemies at the moment are the really damaging religions of Christianity in the States and Islam in Britain.

147. Richard Dawkins interviewed by John Humphrys on Cardinal Murphy O'Connor

Comment #177640 by Nova on May 9, 2008 at 12:03 pm

Matt7895 typed:

By the way, to anyone who isn't sure who John Humphrys is... he recently wrote a book called 'Confessions of a Failed Atheist'. He is an agnostic.

Also importantly a large part of that book is allocated to criticizing Richard with the same kind of spectacular failure as the theist books which criticize him.

148. $271 Million for Research on Stem Cells in California

Comment #177620 by Nova on May 9, 2008 at 11:23 am

jmrunning3 typed:

I'm so glad California has the foresight to self-finance

No thanks to the federal government - did you know that for every $1 California gives to the Union it only gets 80 cent back? It is normal for the rich parts of a country to help the poor - the former West Germany even has an explicit tax to help the former East Germany - but it annoys me because that 20 cent goes to progress stopping theocratic states like Texas and Utah (funny the more religious states are usually the poorest, looks like God is skint).

149. Churchgoing on its knees as Christianity falls out of favour

Comment #177602 by Nova on May 9, 2008 at 10:48 am

The difficulty is in retaining the children who have churchgoing parents. So long as churchgoing is something that gets you laughed at, so long as there is a social stigma attached to being a churchgoing young person

This is very important. Amongst the vast majority of Britain's youth, religion is very uncool.

150. The History Channel might do something right

Comment #176051 by Nova on May 6, 2008 at 12:46 pm

This is brilliant because the public desperately need to learn about evolution; in addition it harms religion which is also brilliant.