101. Floods are judgment on society, say bishops

Comment #53591 by PrimeNumbers on July 2, 2007 at 6:27 am

Maybe insurance companies and other people effected by the flooding should send the bills to this Bishop, after all, it's his god that did it. Maybe a class action suit from the victims would stop him admitting his god's guilt?

Perhaps any devout non-gay flooded anglicans should sue for breach of contract? After all, the money they gave to their church was divine protection money.

Perhaps the only way to stop this nonsense is to treat religion as any other business.

102. Floods are judgment on society, say bishops

Comment #53487 by PrimeNumbers on July 1, 2007 at 4:36 pm

Of course, it was god's incompetant design of humans that allows them to go gay in the first place. We know being gay is not a choice, but how you're born.

Of course, if this Bishop believe that god is doing this, he's as imoral as his corrupt god.

103. Christopher Hitchens and Al Sharpton

Comment #53308 by PrimeNumbers on June 30, 2007 at 5:40 pm

Sharpton doesn't come across well, does he? He doesn't appear to be too bright either. I guess that's what happens when you have to use half your brain's power up trying to deal with the compartmentalisation of the stupidity of religious belief from what's left of your intellect.

Sharpton's endless argument of "godditit" is tiresome. "God" is an explanation that can't contain itself. The universe looks, works and appears just as it would if there was no god.

104. Rival to evolution may enter schools

Comment #52822 by PrimeNumbers on June 28, 2007 at 6:23 am

Perhaps, an ant under a penny, you're right an that ID shouldbe taught in Science class, in the section "what is science?" as an example of what is not science, and why. At the same time they can show that ID is totally wrong and tell children that it's a load of old bull.

105. 'I have never been happier' says the man who won gold but lost God

Comment #52606 by PrimeNumbers on June 27, 2007 at 1:03 pm

Great article. Good work Jonathan!

106. The Stupidity of Fox News is Truly Beyond Belief

Comment #52241 by PrimeNumbers on June 26, 2007 at 2:48 pm

What an absolute moron who hasn't read the books he's claimed to have. To parrot the old "eye is too complex" is to show his gross stupidity. To claim Atheists just want to believe is perhaps more of an example of the problem's going on in his mind. It's a manefestation of his own inadequacies. Because most of the people on this planet don't beleive in his god, that makes him vulnerable. He's complaining about this books as they hurt him as they diminish his faith and power. He's scared. Those 10% of Americans who think he's a moron, an idiot are very telling. Those 10% are undeniably brighter than he is.

As for Atheists sticking to science - fair enough, we'll use science and all that's good about the modern way of life, and he can stick to his speciality - Bullshit. Science however can rationally talk of religion. It can test the power of prayer, it can test supposed miracles. Mathematics and logic and science can prove beyond reasonable doubt that he's wrong and we're not. What a moron.

107. Egypt mufti says female circumcision forbidden

Comment #52237 by PrimeNumbers on June 26, 2007 at 2:36 pm

Just because male circumcision is not "as bad" as female, it doesn't make male circumcision somehow "ok". Deicide, if you were intact, you'd probably have fear and revulsion to having a bit of your anatomy cut off. I know I would. When it's done to a child for no medical benefit (and medical benefits are very very rare indeed) they don't really know any different.

108. The infinite wisdom of Richard Dawkins

Comment #51701 by PrimeNumbers on June 24, 2007 at 7:20 am

Yes, he's a complete idiot and an embarrassment to Canada. At every chance possible the crazy beliefs of these fundies need to be publically outed.

109. In the name of the Father

Comment #51511 by PrimeNumbers on June 23, 2007 at 7:28 am

They just don't get it, do they....

Is there any rational explanation to a big lie being told to old and young alike, being told under threat of eternal punishment? Then the lie is embelished so that people are to feel "sinful" if they don't go with the lie. Then the dogma stops the lie from changing.

I don't care if some people who beleive the lie do good. I'm sure they'd have done good anyway, after all, it's a lie. You speak to your normal moderate, and even less than moderate religious fruitcakes they they're not keen of the moral outrages of the bible any more than we are. They just compartmentailise, "apologise", and keep their religion.

There's the basic evil of religion right their, the evil of the lie, and the thought of "heaven" that stops people living this life to the full and justifies the most outrageous of crimes.

Religion is Evil.

110. 'Purity' ring case in High Court

Comment #51268 by PrimeNumbers on June 22, 2007 at 7:17 am

Amazing how these christians, in all their moral goodness, don't like obeying the rules when they feel like it.

But now she's left school - perhaps she's looking for a job? As a potential employer would you employ someone who sued their school over something as trivial as this?

111. Hitchens vs. Hitchens

Comment #51181 by PrimeNumbers on June 21, 2007 at 9:26 pm

There is no objective morality, but quite frankly Atheist morality than the evil that is the God that has a hell, that invents "sin", and who's spokespeople bugger little boys.

Peter just isn't half his brother.....

112. Rushdie knighted in honours list

Comment #50892 by PrimeNumbers on June 20, 2007 at 10:34 am

This "paying respect" to stupid religious viewpoints is exactly what Dawkin's book is about. Or should I say, the stupidity of paying respect to religion.....

1) only individual people can deserve respect - religions' can't be respected as they're not people

2) Islam is plain stupid

3) those who justify terrorism, those who say death to Rushdie, death to Queen, death to Britian should be dealt with sharply.

4) no aid to countries that allow their people to behave like this

5) no aid to countries to ministers who behave like this

113. U.S. circumcision rate drops

Comment #50859 by PrimeNumbers on June 20, 2007 at 8:21 am

Yes, bad science (having a pre-determined outcome in advance) and bad methodology (not taking into account number of sexual encounters) bad medicine (not having lab experiments that show the lack of foreskin vector for HIV, and indeed, other studies showing that the foreskin cells have a protective effect) and bad statistics (stopping experiment early, calling the change of 2% in rates a 60% change by dividing one by the other) etc. etc. Bunk from beginning to end.

And it's not peer reviewed....

114. Rushdie knighted in honours list

Comment #50722 by PrimeNumbers on June 19, 2007 at 4:28 pm

Reading the BBC reports on this it just gets worse and worse... I think it's wonderful that Salman is a Sir and this has brought "offense" to Muslims as it shows them for what they are - the moaning minnies of the world, and that their religion is wrong and bad if it can't stand up to the odd bit of criticiscm.

115. U.S. circumcision rate drops

Comment #50547 by PrimeNumbers on June 18, 2007 at 5:48 pm

thebigredmachine, those studies have been debunked though, and there are other studies that show the opposite.

116. Rushdie knighted in honours list

Comment #50436 by PrimeNumbers on June 18, 2007 at 6:22 am

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6763119.stm

Now Pakistan is in on the act.

117. Call for 'post-9/11' RE teaching

Comment #50368 by PrimeNumbers on June 17, 2007 at 9:18 am

In RE class we were never taught that Muslims had the death penalty for people who un-convert from Islam. You'd think that'd be a pretty important piece of info. Instead, you get Islam-lite, and Xtianity-lite. You don't get told about Muhammed's child bride....

Good thing that Atheism (I don't believe in God) is pretty much untouched in Atheism-lite (no God). It's hard to make the message much simpler :-)

118. Rushdie knighted in honours list

Comment #50365 by PrimeNumbers on June 17, 2007 at 8:18 am

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6760927.stm

Now Iran, that paragon of virtue, is daring to criticise this honour given to Mr Rushdie.

They think it offends them - what a blinking surprise. They're always being offended by something. Muslims the world over need to be told a few things:

Being a muslim doesn't make you special,
Like all religious beliefs, should be kept private,
Go around threatening people with death sentences and you'll be treat like the small stupid squabling children you are.

119. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #50301 by PrimeNumbers on June 16, 2007 at 3:05 pm

Before objective morality can be seen as an issue, there must be proof of objective morality and I see none here.

120. A battler beyond belief: Review of 'God is Not Great'

Comment #50300 by PrimeNumbers on June 16, 2007 at 3:04 pm

Yes, "faith" is the problem, not religion. It's just that religion is the most obvious "faith" thing. I'm an afaithiest as well as an atheist.

Faith is stupidity, guillibility, lazyness and dogma all roled into one.

121. In the know

Comment #50291 by PrimeNumbers on June 16, 2007 at 1:23 pm

Funny that although we can't prove the non-existance of unicorns, zeus, thor etc. we don't tend to be agnostic towards unicorns, zeus, thor etc. It's only on the big G god that people become agnostic, which to me, increasingly sounds like a amount of moderation towards respecting religions belief - as in, "I'm not going to say you're wrong, only that we can't ever know". We don't go into such pussy-footing talk when it comes to unicorns, pink and invisible or otherwise, or with santa claus or anything else nobody generally believes in. Atheist and proud of it. It doesn't matter if gods can't be proved or disproved - we should treat their belief or lack of it like anything else we believe or not.

Now for a creator god - they must by definition be the most important thing in the universe - their marks of creation must be everywhere. There's no way that something as important and fundemental could leave no evidence.

I'm saying that the more fundemental a property of something, the easier it should be to detect that property. That makes the lack of evidence for god, even in the small section of the universe we know perfect evidence for their being no god.

122. In the know

Comment #50211 by PrimeNumbers on June 15, 2007 at 6:02 pm

Scientific dogma - that's the belief that science works? Right? Where would this idiot be without science - in the dark ages without his cellphone and internet and at most only a few people would ever know his lack of mental abilities. Because of scientific dogma, the whole internet can now find out....

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

Comment #49970 by PrimeNumbers on June 14, 2007 at 10:06 am

Rellgion, to me is two things - 1) obeying your elder / leader / pope, and 2) turning off your brain.

If you put those two together, to me, it's pure poison.

124. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #49788 by PrimeNumbers on June 13, 2007 at 12:43 pm

Dianelos: "The signs though are not good. The problem of consciousness and the failure to account for objective goodness appear to be insurmountable problems for naturalism. And as for naturalism's descriptions of reality, things appear to be deteriorating right now. "

Is there any reason to think that there is an explanation for consciousness other than as an emergent phenomena, and that there is indeed an objective goodness? Before you can show failings in materialism, you must show that there is an explanation and there is more to consciousness. Not only have you not done this, I don't see how you can do this in any rational way.

Indeed, if these are indeed failings of naturalism, any super-natural god would have to posit a super-super-natural expanation for them occuring for themselves.

125. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #49168 by PrimeNumbers on June 10, 2007 at 7:09 pm

The problem of the supernatural, is it means letting go of the hold of reason, and in esscence, the supernatural is un-reasonable. As soon as you allow supernatural in a discussion, logic, reason and all sense go out of the window. The problem is, that using supernatural as an explanation explains nothing. Supernatural only explains things by adding something even more un-explainable into the explanation. It's a dead end to knowledge and reason. It's a dead end to any discussion.

126. Scopes Two

Comment #48236 by PrimeNumbers on June 7, 2007 at 6:46 am

Well, it's not just USA voters - it's the whole of the rest of the world who thinks that anyone who has this rigid fundamentalist biblical interpretation of the world is stark raving bonkers.

127. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #48233 by PrimeNumbers on June 7, 2007 at 6:39 am

Generally two definitions of atheism:

a) belief that there are no gods

b) no belief that there are gods

- Best ask which an atheist is, if they even care.

128. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #47978 by PrimeNumbers on June 6, 2007 at 7:28 am

Quite frankly, I don't think the word "perfect" has a real-world meaning. And if it did, it would be inherently contradictory.

129. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #47475 by PrimeNumbers on June 4, 2007 at 4:10 pm

Steve99, I think you state my point a lot better than I did. God can never be an objective source of morality because to God, that morallity is now subjective. And yes, it's passing the buck....

130. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #47474 by PrimeNumbers on June 4, 2007 at 4:08 pm

It seems to me that circumstances dictate morality. It's wrong to kill, but if you're killing a crazed axe murderer to protect your wife and daughter, you've actually done good.

If as is suggested above, morality comes from God, it's pretty obvious that his circumstances as creator of the universe, are going to be very different from ours here. God doesn't have to deal with crazed axe murderers attempting to kill his family, so why should we expect him to provide a moral for that occaission?

Never the less, the written works of the Christian god show a total LACK of morality. The argument from morality does not address the problem of communication on how we are to receive updates and bug fixes on the morality code.

131. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #47471 by PrimeNumbers on June 4, 2007 at 3:59 pm

Dianelos, "God is perfectly good". How do you know that? What even does that phrase mean? If you're defining god as the source of all morality, then of couse good == good, but then the phrase "God is perfectly good" adds no useful information as it's just a restatement of your definition.

What Atheists are using is the standard mathematical logic of "proof by contradiction". You posit something, follow through from that statement and see if you get a contradiction. That's the esscence of the argument from evil.

Why is there no greatest prime number? Because there are an infinite number of primes, and given all the primes below a certain number it's always possible to create a new prime from them that is greater than any of them.

Your example of abortion has a problem : "which of these is the correct ethical precept?", in that the answer could be "none" and the answer could be "there is NO right answer for all circumstances and NO right answer even for specific circumstances." I think any God defining morality would have the same problem as there will be circumstances where there is NO right answer, and we, as humans just have to do what we've always done and muddle on through as best as we can, and accept that we can be put in situations where we cannot possibly do right.

132. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #47423 by PrimeNumbers on June 4, 2007 at 1:18 pm

If Plantinga has to posit a completely non-physical, essentially non-knowable "beyond" the physical world, then quite frankly, he's lost. Because, that's just a "get out of jail" free card, because once you posit that, logic, science and the human senses can no longer help us, and you can "win" any argument by positing whatever the hell you want.

133. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #47366 by PrimeNumbers on June 4, 2007 at 8:49 am

The problem of morality is not a problem for Atheists, but it is one for Theists. For Theists, it's the problem of where their God get's his morality from, and that God either logically thinks it out for himself (and hence we could do the same), or he picks it arbitarily, and hence it's not better or more absolute a morality than if we had picked it out for ourselves. On top of that, there's the communication problem, in that we don't see as many burning bushes these days :-)

Atheist's morality is empirical - we see what works and change and adapt to circumstance.

134. Man to die over insult

Comment #47191 by PrimeNumbers on June 3, 2007 at 12:03 pm

No, the news media didn't drop the ball - they'll have burried it. For some strange reason, they don't seem to think it's good to publish stories showing muslims to be backward medieval murdering bullies.

It's just like at school when they talk about the world religions - they never tell you about Muhammed's child bride, what the Koran says about atheists or non-believers or those who wish to stop being Muslim (death to all of the above).

They sanitise it all.

The fact is that there's a significant number of Muslims who are evil, and those that are not, by not coming out and condemming them, are evil by proxy.

135. Man to die over insult

Comment #47187 by PrimeNumbers on June 3, 2007 at 11:26 am

The Pakistan Ambassador to Canada can be found here: parepottawa@rogers.com - this is what I've emailed him:

--

Hi Mr. Musa Javed Chohan,

RE: http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007%5C05%5C31%5Cstory_31-5-2007_pg13_1

I was horrified to hear about this poor man's plight and possible execution. Can you please assure me that you will stop any harm coming to Younis, and perhaps you might like to offer to have him come to Canada where he would be able to live in peace and never have to face death for his freedom of speech. I'm sure all Canadians would like you to intervene on his behalf.

--

I doubt I'll hear anything. Every right thinking person should be comdemming this situation. It's just not acceptable at all that evil religious thugs can behave in this way, and to think that they call their religion one of peace - peace by the sword - agree with us or die. They're evil scumbags of the worst kind.

I'd hope every muslim group or "council" around the world would be condemming such action and pressuring Pakistan let him go. Personally, I think he'd be better off moving to Canada where he could say whatever he wants without the government trying to kill him.

136. The Dawkins delusion

Comment #45873 by PrimeNumbers on May 29, 2007 at 12:39 pm

Faith is believing in something without evidence. When it's religion, it's called faith, when it's anything else it's called stupidity and guilibility.

137. Comic in US 'hate speech' row

Comment #44673 by PrimeNumbers on May 25, 2007 at 7:05 am

This is not hate speech, it's "pity speech", as you want to pity all those poor muslims with the illness of islam.

It's not racist as muslims are not a race. Religion is a choice. You choose to beleive what you want. If I thinkt hat choice is stupid I have every right to say so.

Condell did not urge any action to be taken agains muslims. He ridicules them, yes, but they are utterly ridiculous. He calls them out for what they are and indeed insults them, but those insults are all based upon their own personal choice of following one of the daftest religions on the planet.

And ideed, it was humorous and utterly hilarious.

138. Atheists: Get off of our country!

Comment #44622 by PrimeNumbers on May 25, 2007 at 5:43 am

Reads like a form letter to me and I'm sure i've seen very similar writing elsewhere on the internet, in responses to articles etc. Would be good to track it down if possible....

139. I Don't Believe in Atheists

Comment #44323 by PrimeNumbers on May 24, 2007 at 11:07 am

You've got to call a spade a spade, and god is not this indescribable force or want for meaning - it is what it is and a universal creator who can know and can do everything and is worthy of worship, or at least that's what the definition says. You can't just play "the definition game" and define god away like that.

The problem probably isn't religion itself, but orginised religion for sure. Problem is not the odd individual believing the opposite of their senses and evidence, but of orginised groups who play definition games to try and hide the fact that it's utter bollocks from their own common sense.

140. Hitchens on Falwell, Part 2

Comment #43755 by PrimeNumbers on May 22, 2007 at 12:58 pm

Why shouldn't Hitchins go on TV and say he doesn't like a man, dead or otherwise when that man, when alive said the most horrible things about gays, atheists, liberals, rationalists, Jews etc. Mincing words and giving respect to people where no respect is due just gets you into trouble. It's like "appeasing" an evil dictator.

All these televangelists live a lovely life full of the trappings of wealth, but all that money comes from the poor guilible Xtians he's conned all the cash out of. That's neither moral nor Xtian.

141. Hitchens' flat world

Comment #41974 by PrimeNumbers on May 17, 2007 at 11:48 am

But atheism does not have a problem with morality. Theist do though, for if it is the case that morality comes from their god, then they have the issue of it being a subjective morality in relation to that god, or else if they claim it's objective, then it's objective without reference to their god, and hence objective in it's own right and their god is not necessary.

142. Hitchens on Falwell

Comment #41843 by PrimeNumbers on May 17, 2007 at 7:18 am

At least with Hitchins, he's saying the same thing about Fallwell after he's dead as before he's dead - no hypocracy there. But do you think Hitchins would have had a public forum to critically ridicule Fallwell if he hadn't just popped his clogs? Often it's on the death of someone like that that allows people like Hitchins to say what needs to be said in public.

Good on you Hitchins. Let's see if you can get on TV to say similar things about the other televangelists out there.

And yes, I do believe Fallwell knew he was conning people - how can you not when you're oh so much more wealthy than your flock?

143. Hitchens' flat world

Comment #41457 by PrimeNumbers on May 16, 2007 at 6:34 am

They forget that nature itself, the boundless infinities of mathematics, the beauty of the universe, are more then enough to inspire us, and make our lives full of wonder. They forget the babies and children and helping others are more than enough to give us meaning in this world. They forget that truth is more powerful than the lie, and that lies don't really comfort, don't reall bring hope, don't really ease suffering. And perhaps neither does truth, but we'll all admit we'd prefer the truth in the end.

And that's what's wrong with the objections. Just because they've been living with the sweetest stickiest most rotting sugar in their coffee all their lives, they can't imagine taking coffee without a sweetener and actually how wonderful it tastes once your mouth adjusts to it's bitter nuances.

144. Kirk Cameron Proves That God Exists

Comment #40154 by PrimeNumbers on May 13, 2007 at 11:35 am

Sure the guys and gals at RSS could have done better, they could have demolished the preachers in many, many more ways, but they did end up making some very good points also. Not everyone has experience of being on TV and handling people. I've seen Dawkins do some not so hot interviews too. I think it's a case of, "if you think you can do better, then do so!". Let's hope you have a steady stream to Jehovas Witnesses to your door to give you fodder to practise on. I still remember the day I had them running off down the street refusing to give me their literature. How funny.

145. Kirk Cameron Proves That God Exists

Comment #39876 by PrimeNumbers on May 12, 2007 at 7:03 am

Basically, a rather poor argument of design, that never quite made it to an argument from design. Of course, the retort about "God's universe factory" was hilarious, but the theistic arguments didn't even get far enough along their "logic" to warrant even that.

Now, perfect design might point to a single creator, but botched design like we see all around us (no, we don't see design around us, but you get my point) obvioulsy points to polytheism. Neither does it rule out intelligent aliens who did it. Or perhaps time travelling humans from the future, who go back to the dawn of earth and seed it with life....

146. Londonistan Calling

Comment #39466 by PrimeNumbers on May 10, 2007 at 7:18 pm

"Religion should only be allowed between consenting adults in private" = Perfect.

147. Lou Dobbs w/ Hitchens on Al Sharpton's Bigoted Remark

Comment #39409 by PrimeNumbers on May 10, 2007 at 2:30 pm

Well done Hitchens! You made fools of the fools.

148. World's most prominent atheist takes on the Biblical God (and other topics)

Comment #39256 by PrimeNumbers on May 10, 2007 at 8:23 am

Dirty rotten liars! Even if there was a heaven they'd not be going as they're liars.

149. Londonistan Calling

Comment #39147 by PrimeNumbers on May 10, 2007 at 5:01 am

Well, religion being the dirty bad habit it is, it really should be done in private. But for Muslims, it's not a religion, but a way of life. That's why they're not Muslims who are British, but "British Muslims". They put their chosen (evil) lifestyle up there with their citizenship and country.

Quite frankly, I don't care what stupidities you believe as long as they're believed in private and you don't go on about it. Keep it to yourself and all is pretty good. But put up banners in the street saying I should be killed for criticising your chosen lifestyle should be met with them being locked up (in special circular cells so they can't figure the "right" direction to pray in). Bacon sandwiches being a special treat for good behaviour.

150. Londonistan Calling

Comment #39002 by PrimeNumbers on May 9, 2007 at 5:56 pm

Well, the first thing to do is lock up those who are holding those plackards inciting violence and death.

Then, those who think they're Muslim first and British second need to have their citizenship removed and be deported. They obviously think they're in the wrong country and should leave. It's "integrate or leave" time. I don't care if they're born there or not.