101. URGENT APPEAL: Please Help Protect Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Comment #88704 by Zaphod on November 18, 2007 at 3:40 pm

I will buy both of her books(was planning to anyway). She can use the proceeds of that to contribute to her security and I get two books to read.

Perhaps America should fit the bill for her security since they are fighting a war on terror and she is being terrorised by religious bigots. I guess that doesn't make Halliburton and Blackwater as much money as invading a country does.

102. 'Secular Believers'

Comment #88520 by Zaphod on November 17, 2007 at 9:58 am

I watched this program a few weeks ago and found it interesting although I didn't agree with everything in it.

103. Allan Gregg interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #87537 by Zaphod on November 12, 2007 at 12:04 pm

I love how Spinoza (the user on this website) takes a contrary position to most atheists on this site. It makes for enjoyable reading of the comments.

And even today, philosophers are quite useful, contrary to popular opinion. Just go watch the Beyond Belief 2006 videos again, and you'll see what philosophers are capable of :)

104. Allan Gregg interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #87328 by Zaphod on November 11, 2007 at 8:17 pm

I never would have guessed you are a RATM fan Spinoza.

105. Allan Gregg interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #87326 by Zaphod on November 11, 2007 at 8:12 pm

@PeterK

An ad Hominem isn't the same as an insult or an opinion.

Saying "His argument is false because he is an idiot" would be an ad Hominem.

Simply stating his opinion "I am so tired of idiots" is not an ad Hominem.

106. Allan Gregg interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #87307 by Zaphod on November 11, 2007 at 6:41 pm

1. Comment #87204 by AppliedMootist on November 11, 2007 at 1:07 pm
Why doesn't RD acknowledge that a proof of a theistic god is possible and has already been done by Victor Stenger in God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist.


Am I missing some critical point that disproves Stenger's thesis? Someone give me a hand here.

107. Pat Robertson Says Giuliani Presidency Appears in Book of Revelation

Comment #86571 by Zaphod on November 9, 2007 at 4:15 pm

I can taste stomach acid.

108. Same Flea, Different Name?

Comment #85998 by Zaphod on November 7, 2007 at 6:38 pm

Is this going to be another book refuting a strawman.

109. Debate between Michael Shermer and Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #83651 by Zaphod on October 30, 2007 at 7:38 pm

The winner of a debate is the person who was better at debating. Formal debates like this don't end in truth being won on one side.

D'Souza is a contemptible tool.

110. Sam Harris at AAI 07

Comment #82571 by Zaphod on October 26, 2007 at 6:53 pm

When the gentleman asked Sam Harris "What do you call yourself?", why does Sam have to choose one thing? He could hypothetically have said "I am a liberal, I am a democrat, I am an atheist, a spiritualist, a humanist, a bright, a free thinker, an intellectually honest member of the human race"

Atheist isn't who you are. It describes one thing you are not. A theist.

111. Atheists don't believe in anything

Comment #82555 by Zaphod on October 26, 2007 at 5:29 pm

I believe in Kung Po Chicken.

Oh you spicy, sweet, and sour temptress.

112. Richard Dawkins receives the Deschner Prize

Comment #79781 by Zaphod on October 18, 2007 at 1:56 pm

http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/john_kessler/giordano_bruno.html

113. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath

Comment #79773 by Zaphod on October 18, 2007 at 1:38 pm

The Hitch gave a great opening statement and McGrath was his typical vacuous, wishy-washy, weasely self.

114. In honour of Dan Dennett

Comment #76900 by Zaphod on October 7, 2007 at 4:36 pm

I very nice speech from Richard Dawkins. I have 4 of Daniel Dennett's books and every time I have seen him on-line giving talks or interviews he has always seemed like a very likeable person. Difficult not to like really. He enjoys the work he does and it shines through in his books and his talks.

115. Larry King Interviews Kathy Griffin

Comment #71384 by Zaphod on September 18, 2007 at 4:00 pm

I am offended when moronic so called superstars collect awards and thank god when in reality what they are arrogantly saying is "Thank you god for making me so much better than the rest". Censorship is stupid.

The only problem I have with this is that I don't find Kathy Griffin particularly funny.

116. Religious education

Comment #71381 by Zaphod on September 18, 2007 at 3:46 pm

If religious education is to be mandatory it should have a secular module in it like humanism.

117. Youtube hater, I respect your right to free speech.

Comment #71250 by Zaphod on September 18, 2007 at 7:41 am

Comment #70870 by Yorker on September 17, 2007 at 5:42 am
avatarGoing over the posts in this thread had me laughing my head off at the behaviour of these wise stand-alone elitists, namely:

Spinoza
Gilks
Zaphod
Bonzai

Apologies to anyone I've missed, please add yourself to the list if appropriate.

Look at how they pat each other on the back comment by comment, even when the comment is clearly weak or wrong! It's striking how they've formed themselves into a delightfully chimp-like GROUP, exactly like the GROUPS they so despise! Indeed, their behaviour is exactly like the territorial rituals displayed by chimps when defending against a more powerful GROUP! The only thing missing is the genital-handling part, difficult I admit, under these circumstances.

An anthropologist would be proud!

Did I say group? I meant GROUP!

118. Youtube hater, I respect your right to free speech.

Comment #70753 by Zaphod on September 16, 2007 at 8:55 pm

Comment #70746 by Dr Benway on September 16, 2007 at 8:35 pm
avatarThe Wisdom of Crowds is entertaining. The premise is simple but has far reaching implications. Essentially, groups under certain conditions can enjoy the benefits of signal averaging.

Signal averaging example: sound a tone during an EEG recording, and you won't see much. The brain's response to the tone will be buried in too much background noise. But sound the tone 20 times, average the 20 EEG tracings together, and you'll see an obvious response to the tone. With enough samples, the background noise cancels out.

Wise crowds are made up of truly independent parties, each with access to information relevant to some probabilistic question. The predictive power of an appropriately diverse group over time will outperform any specific expert's predictive power.

If ever you find yourself in a group of the like minded, don't linger.

119. Youtube hater, I respect your right to free speech.

Comment #70713 by Zaphod on September 16, 2007 at 5:56 pm

Comment #70710 by Spinoza on September 16, 2007 at 5:36 pm

However, I am not defined by my atheism. Perhaps that is part of the problem here. Many of you have made your lack of belief in God a dominant character trait... and that just seems silly to me.

120. Youtube hater, I respect your right to free speech.

Comment #70655 by Zaphod on September 16, 2007 at 1:22 pm

My comments in regards to her(sablechicken) idiotic video.

Working hard and not getting much sleep because of it doesn't make you part of a cult. She is mental.

Her video is flooded with logical fallacies and irrational statements. I doubt she cares but I felt embarrassed for her when she gave her opinions. It was like watching one of those people who can't sing on American Idol.

I notice she never showed Angrylittleglrl's blasphemy challenge video. It would be hard to say she looked hypnotised and unhappy, wouldn't it.

I don't smoke and guess what I am an atheist.

She actually said the sentence "He put himself on the radar and now its come home to roost" eh WHAT THE FUCK!

I don't want creationists like her to have anything to with science. She is a moronic bastard. She would end up killing herself with a kids chemistry set. Perhaps she could stick to bible bashing. Please!

121. Youtube hater, I respect your right to free speech.

Comment #70651 by Zaphod on September 16, 2007 at 1:15 pm

1. Comment #70530 by Sinful Messiah on September 15, 2007 at 11:18 pm
Does Brian Sapient hurt the public image of atheists with his low brow humor and unprofessionalism?

Should Dawkins distance himself from these armchair amateurs?

As atheists, do we need unsophisticated, belligerent representatives?

122. A Response to Jonathan Haidt

Comment #69863 by Zaphod on September 13, 2007 at 3:03 am

Check out the response of PZ Myers here http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/09/arguments_for_morality_are_not.php

123. The Rise of Atheist America

Comment #68845 by Zaphod on September 8, 2007 at 11:33 pm

What an idiotic website, magazine and article. History revisionist much?

124. We need a more intelligent religion debate

Comment #68580 by Zaphod on September 7, 2007 at 4:27 pm

Quetzalcoatl-

Zaphod-

We need more intelligent unicorn debate

Unicorns are extinct. The Hippogriffs ate them all.

125. We need a more intelligent religion debate

Comment #68451 by Zaphod on September 7, 2007 at 7:53 am

We need more intelligent unicorn debate.

126. The smallest signs of retreat

Comment #68450 by Zaphod on September 7, 2007 at 7:53 am

Madeleine Bunting after one sentence I can tell you either read the God Delusion with your eyes shut or you have never read it. John Cornwell set up straw men against Richard Dawkins and at points I had the feeling he was just completely telling lies. If you had read the God Delusion you would have seen how inaccurate a portrayal of Cornwell made of Dawkins arguments. I find it amazing and ridiculous that John Cornwell has written a book long response to The God Delusion when he seems he hasn't read it and has perhaps just read 1 or 2 bad reviews of it.

I think she should stick to writing her book about the countryside because unless she is going to actually read a book before criticising it she is going to keep looking foolish.

127. The God of the Bible is No Delusion!

Comment #68265 by Zaphod on September 6, 2007 at 3:03 pm

Hi Billy et al,

I am sorry you had to sit and listen to the pious, sanctimonious rhetoric of an anti-science obscurantist quack-hack.

I read this in an AC Grayling review of the book "Scientists Confront Intelligent Design and Creationism"

Again: what a waste of effort is here provoked by the necessity to quash absurdity. Take just one example in illustration. Creationists contest isotopic dating techniques which show that the earth is billions of years old by suggesting that "since the Creation one or more episodes occurred when nuclear decay rates were billions of times greater than today's rates. Possibly there were three episodes: one in the early part of the Creation week, another between the Fall and the Flood, and the third during the year of the Genesis Flood" (this from a publication by a creationist group calling itself RATE – "Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth"). Brent Dalrymple calmly points out that for this suggestion to be true would require changes in fundamental constants including Planck's constant and the speed of light, which in turn changes the nature of light and many other physical and chemical properties, and thus the universe no longer works – or a very different one would result. Such is the quality of thought, which in understatement Dalrymple describes as "incredibly naïve".

128. Christopher Hitchens on BookTV

Comment #67742 by Zaphod on September 4, 2007 at 3:09 pm

I watched this last night and the last 30+ minutes not long ago. Really enjoyed it.

129. What do these atheists understand of religion?

Comment #67396 by Zaphod on September 3, 2007 at 9:05 am

Not a programme for the rowdy and brash God bashers, obviously, in particular Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, who really are perilously close to losing their flawlessly rational heads as they fulminate like demented fire-and-brimstone preachers. Such men know it all, they don't listen, and presume to judge people they won't ever understand.

Radio 4's John Humphrys has taken on the fanatic atheists in a new book about faith and the human urge to believe. Some aspects of our nature are not susceptible to scientific enquiry, cannot be dissected, categorised and validated in terms that would satisfy the "rational" disbelievers, whose intellect is colossal but imagination puny.

130. Review of Darwin's Angel: An Angelic Response to the God Delusion

Comment #67019 by Zaphod on September 1, 2007 at 10:57 am

Cornwell clearly believes, as I do, that angels are not wispy, winged beings in ethereal nightgowns, but something far more subtle and profound: archetypal images that dramatise the invisible realities. As such, they can act as symbols for the formless elements of physics; but also for the creative imagination.

131. CNN Request for 'I-Reports' on religion

Comment #65068 by Zaphod on August 22, 2007 at 7:59 pm

Faith is the get-out-of-jail-free-card that certain people give themselves so they can believe the ridiculous.

132. PZ Myers sued for a negative review in a blog post

Comment #64649 by Zaphod on August 21, 2007 at 6:12 am

This takes the little credibility he had after you trounced his book and flushes it down the toilet. In science(I hope) what you would do is defend your book against criticism. If he couldn't do that he could just ignore it. He might be angry and want revenge on you for destroying what he consider revolutionary ideas. Also he might just want publicity for his book and suing a prominent atheist blogger and scientist in the current marketing Zeitgeist(atheism sells) is shrewd.

133. God Bless Me, It's a Best-Seller!

Comment #64173 by Zaphod on August 18, 2007 at 10:05 am

"May 14, Austin, Texas: A phone-in with WPTF ("We Protect the Family"), a conservative talk-radio station in North Carolina. The questions are very civil until the end, when I am asked if I know the anti-Christian works of Friedrich Nietzsche. I say that I have my differences with Nietzsche, but that I know his stuff. Am I aware, inquires the questioner, that when he was writing that very stuff he was suffering from terminal syphilitic decay? Slightly baffled, I reply that I have heard as much but don't know it to be true. Do I think, comes the next question, that there is a similar explanation for my own work? Should have seen that coming. My response is that I obviously can't be the best judge but that it's very compassionate of him to ask."

Perhaps Hitchens should have replied "Maybe Paul on the road to Damascus was suffering from a similar illness"

134. 'Delusion' Revisits Faith Vs. Reason Debate

Comment #63004 by Zaphod on August 12, 2007 at 8:37 pm

Sounds like another person who hasn't read the book. I doubt the reviewer has read William James - The Varieties of Religious Experience either.

135. Interview with Richard Dawkins about 'The Enemies of Reason'

Comment #63002 by Zaphod on August 12, 2007 at 8:32 pm

Richard(host) seemed more rational than Judy, Judy seemed like she wanted to believe certain things.

136. Interview with Michael Behe

Comment #61127 by Zaphod on August 3, 2007 at 7:36 pm

Oh my FSM. He almost used a Ray Comfort argument. If you take something away from a mouse trap its no longer a mouse trap. Is he serious with this?

137. They let anybody onto the faculty at Oxford nowadays

Comment #60742 by Zaphod on August 2, 2007 at 7:17 pm

I don't think PZ is a better writer than Richard as such but he is more abrasive and comedic. He combines reason and logic with some great quips and humour. Alistair McGrath is an intellectually dishonest flea and I am glad whenever anyone takes him down a peg. He seems to attack stupid atheist stereotypes and sometimes it as if he is just making shit up.

I am looking forward to PZ's book.

138. Interview with Richard Dawkins on 'The Selfish Gene'

Comment #60686 by Zaphod on August 2, 2007 at 5:15 pm

To Yorker

Bill Hicks had Pancreatic cancer.

139. CNN Debate on Koran in Toilet

Comment #60417 by Zaphod on August 1, 2007 at 9:54 pm

Lets all get a long and walk in fields of flowers and pat bunny rabbits while we eat honey. Please tell that guy to dispel his naivety. If you disagree with someone it can offend them. Should be never have disagreements. If you think certain beliefs and idiotic and vulgar you offend them. Should we not give our opinions for fear of offence. Personally I will give mine any time I blood well choose too.

140. In defense of dangerous ideas

Comment #58436 by Zaphod on July 24, 2007 at 8:00 pm

The idea that ideas should be discouraged a priori is inherently self-refuting. Indeed, it is the ultimate arrogance, as it assumes that one can be so certain about the goodness and truth of one's own ideas that one is entitled to discourage other people's opinions from even being examined.

141. In defense of dangerous ideas

Comment #58433 by Zaphod on July 24, 2007 at 7:35 pm

To the people who have criticisms. Steven Pinker isn't listing his personal opinions or beliefs.

Did you even read what he wrote after he listed the "DANGEROUS IDEAS". By the way dangerous doesn't mean only stuff you think is cool. It may be something you disagree with. READ WHAT HE WROTE!

Perhaps you can feel your blood pressure rise as you read these questions. Perhaps you are appalled that people can so much as think such things. Perhaps you think less of me for bringing them up. These are dangerous ideas -- ideas that are denounced not because they are self-evidently false, nor because they advocate harmful action, but because they are thought to corrode the prevailing moral order.

142. Richard Dawkins on Hardtalk

Comment #58432 by Zaphod on July 24, 2007 at 7:30 pm

Go Kinesin Go

143. Richard Dawkins on Hardtalk

Comment #58431 by Zaphod on July 24, 2007 at 7:29 pm

I disliked this interview. I thought the interview was a bit of a prick. I felt I could have pwned him on so many of the issues.

"Stalin was an atheist", "Einstein believe in god"

Give me a break.

Maybe it is because I feel I have heard all the arguments so many times that I now treat these sort of questions with contempt and consider them naive.

DID THE INTERVIEWER EVEN READ DR DAWKINS BOOK!

144. Religion beat became a test of faith

Comment #57862 by Zaphod on July 21, 2007 at 5:23 pm

My soul, for lack of a better term, had lost faith long ago — probably around the time I stopped going to church. My brain, which had been in denial, had finally caught up.

Clearly, I saw now that belief in God, no matter how grounded, requires at some point a leap of faith. Either you have the gift of faith or you don't. It's not a choice. It can't be willed into existence. And there's no faking it if you're honest about the state of your soul.

Sitting in a park across the street from the courthouse, I called my wife on a cellphone. I told her I was putting in for a new beat at the paper.

145. Face to faith

Comment #57757 by Zaphod on July 20, 2007 at 11:05 pm

Comment #57748 by Janus on July 20, 2007 at 9:55 pm

It's not a courtier's reply; the guy's a sociologist, not a theologian.

That said, I don't see the point of this article. As I was reading it I kept telling myself, "Ah, this must be where he starts giving us reasons to believe what he's saying." But he never does. This is nothing more than an argument from authority.

146. Face to faith

Comment #57746 by Zaphod on July 20, 2007 at 9:29 pm

Courtiers reply anyone?

147. Can the rest of us have our planet back?

Comment #57745 by Zaphod on July 20, 2007 at 9:28 pm

Funny stuff.

148. Darwin or Design

Comment #57522 by Zaphod on July 19, 2007 at 3:43 pm

A criticism of the book I would have from the get go is that is suggests ID/creationism is on equal footing with the theory or evolution. In reality as a scientific theory this is clearly not the case.

149. Darwin or Design

Comment #57519 by Zaphod on July 19, 2007 at 3:35 pm

Isn't ID just the argument from incredulity? Hasn't this been stated and confirmed many times?

150. Darwin or Design

Comment #57515 by Zaphod on July 19, 2007 at 3:21 pm

"Nice, answer the jokey ad hom rather than the substantive point."

Yet in reality inside the cell you find long strings of coded information, programmable protein synthesizers, error correction codes etc. Such objects are the stock in trade of what a field like computer science deals with.

Why should biologists take a claim to something outside their field ?