Comments by Brian English

1601. To beat extremism we must dissolve religious groups

Comment #222130 by Brian English on July 30, 2008 at 5:36 pm

Found this on wiki: Sacred Hadith

Apparently they rank higher than other Hadith, but less than the Quran....

1602. To beat extremism we must dissolve religious groups

Comment #222129 by Brian English on July 30, 2008 at 5:32 pm

Goldy, this was the brew
Hayward's 5000

1603. To beat extremism we must dissolve religious groups

Comment #222128 by Brian English on July 30, 2008 at 5:28 pm

Thanks Layla. I'd read somewhere that there is a small section of the Hadith that is considered the word of God like the Quran. Thus the Quran wouldn't be complete. Have you heard this?

1604. To beat extremism we must dissolve religious groups

Comment #222123 by Brian English on July 30, 2008 at 5:10 pm

Dalton damaged. Ring sting factor not too high. Heat shield not ablated during reentry. Perhaps more curry next time. :)

Oh, and I tried an Indian brew. 7% alcohol. Not bad. Thanks for the suggestion of the Chicken Korma (I think it was you).

1605. To beat extremism we must dissolve religious groups

Comment #222114 by Brian English on July 30, 2008 at 4:35 pm

It is perfect, complete, eternal, and immutable

Al, you've probably already answered this n times. But how can the Quran be complete if there are sacred Hadith? Not just ordinary Hadith.....

Goldy, I satisfied my chicken Korma urge last night. Ahhhhhhhhh. The dalton shall be sufficently damaged later....

1606. Council ban on atheist websites

Comment #221611 by Brian English on July 29, 2008 at 9:39 pm

mmmm, hot vindalooo, ***drools***

1607. Atheism FLEAmix

Comment #221607 by Brian English on July 29, 2008 at 9:36 pm

Is this book in the flea market yet?

http://www.amazon.com/End-Reason-Response-New-Atheists/dp/0310282519/ref=pd_sim_b_4

I love the blub: response remains a powerful, passionate, irrefutably sound set of arguments for Christian thought. The clarity and hope in these pages reach out to readers who know and follow God as well as to those who reject God.

Irrefutably sound? Probably airy fairy stuff that you can't refute because it isn't an argument...

1608. Council ban on atheist websites

Comment #221605 by Brian English on July 29, 2008 at 9:34 pm

mmmm, Chicken Korma.......

1609. Atheism FLEAmix

Comment #221603 by Brian English on July 29, 2008 at 9:33 pm

Amazon says that it's only 112 pages. Probably not much bang for buck page wise, if nothing else....

1610. Council ban on atheist websites

Comment #221599 by Brian English on July 29, 2008 at 9:30 pm

Carto, how would you describe the Scottish?

1611. Council ban on atheist websites

Comment #221573 by Brian English on July 29, 2008 at 8:15 pm

So that's your plan to loose the man-boobs Goldy? Don't you know that wasting away isn't good for your health?

1612. Atheism FLEAmix

Comment #221530 by Brian English on July 29, 2008 at 5:55 pm

Fizhburn, you can pen a book using your god logical operator.

The one that basically functions the opposite of the conjunction operator:
P & Q is true iff P and Q are true.
P g Q is true irrespective of the truth values of P and Q because the god operator (g) is omnipotent and does what it fucking likes and you'll beat me up if I disagree.

1613. Faith is not the answer

Comment #221512 by Brian English on July 29, 2008 at 5:19 pm

It's Christmas in heaven....

1614. Faith is not the answer

Comment #221471 by Brian English on July 29, 2008 at 4:46 pm

Goldy, if you can drive it across the puddle and it still be in working order I'll consider it. :)

1615. Atheism FLEAmix

Comment #221467 by Brian English on July 29, 2008 at 4:45 pm

Predicting David Robertson in the next 24 hours. This prediction is not based on fuzzy feelings but on induction.

1616. Faith is not the answer

Comment #221464 by Brian English on July 29, 2008 at 4:42 pm

Goldy, you're a whore with man-boobs. This site has gone down hill. Where's wooter and jooter when you need them?

1617. Catholics To Pope: Lift Birth Control Ban

Comment #220822 by Brian English on July 29, 2008 at 5:13 am

Bonzai, you're right. But the irony is, they'll breed a lot of kiddies, but refuse to educate them. So you have the irony of those kiddies collecting the Darwin award because they remove themselves from the gene pool due to ignorance. It's all Darwinian in the end, isn't it?

1618. Catholics To Pope: Lift Birth Control Ban

Comment #220819 by Brian English on July 29, 2008 at 5:10 am

Decius, I forgot. Italy is one of the most wealthy countries in the world. You don't need 10 kids to ensure your retirement. Women are educated and can make choices. This probably has an effect on birth rates (natality) too....

1619. Catholics To Pope: Lift Birth Control Ban

Comment #220817 by Brian English on July 29, 2008 at 5:08 am

Steve, mater hommunculi.

1620. Catholics To Pope: Lift Birth Control Ban

Comment #220815 by Brian English on July 29, 2008 at 5:06 am

Decius, Spain and Italy have defacto state religions, like England. The church gets fat and lazy (how many Cardinals does Rome have compared to something like Australia?) In countries where the church has to struggle for power over people, it's not lazy and it's stance on contraception does have an effect....

1621. Catholics To Pope: Lift Birth Control Ban

Comment #220813 by Brian English on July 29, 2008 at 5:04 am

Carto, it's possible that Aids will one day be curable. Unfortunately children won't be, unless you want to be charged with murder....

1622. Catholics To Pope: Lift Birth Control Ban

Comment #220806 by Brian English on July 29, 2008 at 4:58 am

Thinking of it, is there such a thing as "artificial conception"?

Well, apparently people use an ATM machine, so why not artificial conception?

EDIT: natural conception: praying to Mary that your husband doesn't impregnate you again and that you'll have your first period since you were married 20 odd years ago.....

1623. Catholics To Pope: Lift Birth Control Ban

Comment #220805 by Brian English on July 29, 2008 at 4:57 am

Laurie, for your consideration: http://philosophicalneuron.blogspot.com/2008/07/its-intuitive.html

EDIT: you already know about my unkempt mind sludge....

1624. Catholics To Pope: Lift Birth Control Ban

Comment #220802 by Brian English on July 29, 2008 at 4:54 am

Are we Catholics then? No, we're Protestants and fiercly proud of it! Martin Luther may not have realized the full significance of his actions when he nailed his thesis to the Wittenberg church, but because of his actions I can now go down to the local store and ask for condom. In fact I can say "Harry, I want to buy a condom. No, make it a French tickler because I am a Protestant."

I understand your pain TWP. I'm probably wrong in the above, but it's been a few years....

1625. Catholics To Pope: Lift Birth Control Ban

Comment #220797 by Brian English on July 29, 2008 at 4:49 am

There's some lovely filth here Dennis....

1626. Catholics To Pope: Lift Birth Control Ban

Comment #220793 by Brian English on July 29, 2008 at 4:44 am

Good blog post Quetz!

1627. Catholics To Pope: Lift Birth Control Ban

Comment #220790 by Brian English on July 29, 2008 at 4:19 am

Help! Help! I'm being repressed!

Want to see the violence inherent in the system? That's what I'm talking about....

1628. Catholics To Pope: Lift Birth Control Ban

Comment #220768 by Brian English on July 29, 2008 at 3:08 am

by virtue of having been taught constantly and definitively, over a period of many centuries, by a consensus of Popes and Bishops around the world

Argumentum ad traditionem et senectum?

1629. Catholics To Pope: Lift Birth Control Ban

Comment #220766 by Brian English on July 29, 2008 at 2:59 am

Laurie, that's ex cathedra, not ex catheta. They must have made a mistake as they certainly are taking the piss like a catheta......

1630. Catholics To Pope: Lift Birth Control Ban

Comment #220733 by Brian English on July 29, 2008 at 1:33 am

Dr Doctor, you bet me too it!

1631. Catholics To Pope: Lift Birth Control Ban

Comment #220732 by Brian English on July 29, 2008 at 1:32 am

General Prayer Fault, works for me. I was imagining some blue screen of death that one could get on Win98 when one dereferenced a NULL pointer (0x00000000).

Steve, don't put too much mental effort into it. It was my usual idea (scientific skepticism): our senses and thoughts are generally reliable, but not perfect which doesn't mean we reject either but that we don't claim things as being 100% true just because we think they are......

1632. Catholics To Pope: Lift Birth Control Ban

Comment #220729 by Brian English on July 29, 2008 at 1:29 am

I was looking out windows or trying to look up cute girls' dresses. Luckily, I'm not the smartest cookie in the jar, but I remember things pretty well. And any RE exam just relies on regurgitating stuff from memory and not questioning or thinking, so it was perfect.

1633. Catholics To Pope: Lift Birth Control Ban

Comment #220728 by Brian English on July 29, 2008 at 1:27 am

Steve, check out my latest blog post. Mike's had a look and left a comment. Maybe you might find some charm in it. I thought I was making a good point, but I may not have been....

1634. Catholics To Pope: Lift Birth Control Ban

Comment #220725 by Brian English on July 29, 2008 at 1:25 am

Now you're getting it Steve. What were you doing during RE classes?

1635. Catholics To Pope: Lift Birth Control Ban

Comment #220724 by Brian English on July 29, 2008 at 1:24 am

I think there must be a low level swizzling prayer system where you think the prayer is going to a name but it is really going to an actual address somewhere outside of the universe, address 0x000000.

A GPF? No, you're working with intel. The Catholic church works with unintel.

1636. Catholics To Pope: Lift Birth Control Ban

Comment #220720 by Brian English on July 29, 2008 at 1:20 am

Steve, you're missing the big picture. Saints intercede on your behalf. So, God is convinced by your tout (Saint), but God knows in any case. This would seem to rule out the need for Saints, but polytheism runs strong in the Catholic church. Anyway, according to the Catholic church, if you receive a sacrament from a defrocked priest, but you didn't know he was defrocked, then you and God are cool, therefore, if you pray to a Saint that you believed was a Saint, then you and God are cool. There's so much leg room in religion. :)

Do you know that although the Catholic church is very authoritarian it has a doctrine that says nothing you do is a sin unless your conscience tells you so. So, you could piss off the whole Catholic world and be excommunicated yet still be in God's graces if you did it in good conscience. I think this is how the church gets around the fact that many saints (Francis of Assisi) were originally persecuted for heretical doctrines but later it was revealed that they were doing God's work (TM).

But you were Catholic, so I guess you knew this.

1637. Daniel Dennett: Autobiography (Part 1)

Comment #220714 by Brian English on July 29, 2008 at 1:13 am

I think Spinoza is saying that nature - thus life, choices, and all that jazz - are the same thing as God. Given that starting assumption, free will is no more free than the anything else that is bound by nature. It's probably very similar to what Christians argue for when they use the Cosmological argument, everything totally dependent on everything before, but with one small difference. God is nature, so God has no choice or free will either.

I think what compatibilists like Dennet argue is that, though every choice we make is not random. It is a combination of environment, genetic makeup (can humans fly by choosing to flap their arms? I think not), upbringing and personal preferences based on the previous givens.

The thing about free will was that if it was random or not influenced by everything else, people would just start doing things not because they chose to, but because of random thoughts that have no relation to their brains or desires. This is not possible for materialists (even rabidly insane ones, we still think there's an explanation) and for believers who want it because they think it allows us to be morally responsible enough to be sent to hell it's no help either. If a random thought popped into your mind without your decision and not based on anything you think or are how are you responsible for that?

1638. Catholics To Pope: Lift Birth Control Ban

Comment #220666 by Brian English on July 28, 2008 at 8:31 pm

It made sense. More so than my posts. :)

1639. Catholics To Pope: Lift Birth Control Ban

Comment #220663 by Brian English on July 28, 2008 at 8:26 pm

Goldy, were you the Mike who posted on my blog? Thanks if so.

1640. A third of Muslim students back killings

Comment #220639 by Brian English on July 28, 2008 at 6:45 pm

Mitchell, she probably owns a few firearms too. ;)

1641. A third of Muslim students back killings

Comment #220634 by Brian English on July 28, 2008 at 6:31 pm

Goldy, have you soiled my blog yet?
http://philosophicalneuron.blogspot.com/2008/07/its-intuitive.html

1642. Catholics To Pope: Lift Birth Control Ban

Comment #220620 by Brian English on July 28, 2008 at 5:34 pm

You cynics annoy the shit out of me.

I am not a dog thank you. :)

From dictionary.com:

[Origin: 1540�"50; < L Cynicus < Gk Kynikós Cynic, lit., doglike, currish, equiv. to kyn- (s. of kýōn) dog -ikos - ic]

1643. Daniel Dennett: Autobiography (Part 1)

Comment #220613 by Brian English on July 28, 2008 at 5:16 pm

There are still more sciences to be discovered, and still more philosophy to be done to keep the existing sciences moving ever forward.

Totally, philosophy can give justification for the scientific procedures we use, and the clarify how much knowledge we get from science. It can correct or suggest modifications in the current and future methods.

I think many scientists who are at the cutting edge, or pushing theories in their fields are doing philosophy anyway.

Spinoza, I was reading the SEP yesterday about rationalists. According to SEP, Spinoza was a rationalist, and more particularly, a monist. Thus nature and God are identical as there's only one thing. I probably got that wrong but anyway, just out of interest, what is it about rationalism that convinces you? Personally, I find empiricism convincing, though it ends up with Hume's fork or a verification principle that is meaningless in its own terms (I think). Rationalism seems to place intuition as the source of clear knowledge, but science and math demonstrate many counterintuitive truths.

1644. Catholics To Pope: Lift Birth Control Ban

Comment #220609 by Brian English on July 28, 2008 at 4:58 pm

You're my intellectual hero Carto. :)
It usually is MPhil, or Steve Zara, but I'm fickle. They'll have to work hard to get my hero worship, or not as I'm fickle.

1645. [UPDATED] Venomous Snakes, Slippery Eels and Harun Yahya

Comment #220573 by Brian English on July 28, 2008 at 3:29 pm

old dusty, and when the world collapses, it will be religion that takes the reigns and blames technology for the collapse. Welcome to the dark ages 2.0.

1646. [UPDATED] Venomous Snakes, Slippery Eels and Harun Yahya

Comment #220568 by Brian English on July 28, 2008 at 3:24 pm

Joe, before you go to bed. Can you please provide any arguments for the existence of God? We do not care that you are so simple of mind that you believe in the Quran. If you wish to convince us, forget the Quran, use some logic.

1647. [UPDATED] Venomous Snakes, Slippery Eels and Harun Yahya

Comment #220566 by Brian English on July 28, 2008 at 3:23 pm

The Bavarian Illumaniti perhaps?

Tell me more about this Bavarian Illuminati epeeist. I've not heard of them before. Do they drink liter Steins? Is MPhil among their number?

1648. A third of Muslim students back killings

Comment #219989 by Brian English on July 27, 2008 at 11:13 pm

I didn't expect the Spanish inquisition...

1649. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #219987 by Brian English on July 27, 2008 at 11:09 pm

Txpiper does seem somewhat confused. Is he trying to shore up his own non-belief in evolution or convince us that evolution is internally inconsistent?

1650. Sydney brothels say Pope's visit will give business a leg-up

Comment #219975 by Brian English on July 27, 2008 at 10:00 pm

Good idea. Steven Hawking might be available. ;)

Either Richard or PZ can do both science and atheism.....

If all that fails, Goldy is a lab tech, he does science.