151. Interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Comment #58590 by Steven Mading on July 25, 2007 at 9:49 am

To use the rhetoric that automatically labels any sort of criticism of a particular idea as phobia, unconditionally, no matter what the criticism actually is, is a propaganda tool designed to stifle honesty. There can exist islamophobic criticisms, but that does not mean that all criticisms of islam fall into that category. Peter K is spreading dishonest propaganda.

152. Face to faith

Comment #58097 by Steven Mading on July 23, 2007 at 11:56 am

Bonzai said:

The repeated mantra that "religion is false" and therefore not worth studying is ignorant, shallow and tiresome. Yes, religion is factually false but so are the writings of Shakesphare. Would people dismiss literary and theatre scholarship just because "they are all stories"?

You only got one thing right - and that is that there can be value in studying religion without having to believe it's true to study it as a cultural phenomenon. That's true. What's false, and infuriatingly haughty about your claim is that you act like this means it is 'shallow' to criticise the truthfullness of religion. Where do you get off claiming that the kind of religious study you would prefer, (studying it as a cultural phenomenon) is the only type allowed, and that any type of analysis of its truth value is somehow closed-minded or bigoted?

The part you're deliberately ignoring is that we don't live in a world where massive numbers of people try to claim the plays of Shakespere were nonfiction. Furthermore they were not presented by the author with the intention that people who watch the plays believe they are true. Religion is NOT like that at all, and you damned well know it. It is not presented as a deliberate fiction. It is fiction, yes, but there is a massive difference bewteen fiction being presented openly and honestly as fiction, versus fiction being presented as if it was nonfiction. The first is honest, the second is not.

Stop pretending that we live in a world where people merely present religions as interesting enlightening fictional stories in same the way they present aesop's fables. The religious most emphatically are NOT doing that. And stop defending dishonesty and claiming that those who fight agaisnt it are being "shallow" to do so.

153. Phony Piety on the Far Right

Comment #57455 by Steven Mading on July 19, 2007 at 12:10 pm

The theme running through the articile that really annoys me is not that conservatives are calling liberals unreligious, but that the author of the article decided that doing so must necessarily constitute an insult of liberals. The author is operating from the premise that being less religious is automatically a bad horrible thing.

The conservatives are right, they ARE more closely following the religion than the liberals. But that's not a insult to liberals to say that. There'd be no need for stupid holier-than-thou arguments if people stopped assuming that more holy = more good.

154. The New New Atheism

Comment #56611 by Steven Mading on July 16, 2007 at 2:27 pm

Why do the same people who insist we are wrong to criticise the bible with a literal reading of it still think it's right to believe that jesus literally rose form the dead and was literally the son of a literal god? The answer is, of course, that they take it literally wherever it would be helpful to the propigation of the religion to do so, and they take it figuratively wherever it would be harmful to the propigation of the religion to take it literally. They do what is necessary to keep it going and work backward from that goal to decide which parts to take literally and which parts to dump. Those that don't do this don't propigate their ideas. Those that do do this get to pass their ideas on. The just-a-metaphor dodge is an evolved response to help the religion survive in the face of criticism.

155. The US map of faith

Comment #55807 by Steven Mading on July 12, 2007 at 12:27 pm

The map is very misleadingly labeled. The title claims it's a map showing religious adherants, but the fine print says its actually a measure of church congregations. Those two are not the same thing at all. If you are an adherant of a religion that does not automatically mean you are going to a church congregation - there are some religious people who don't believe their religion requires being in a church. Furthermore, if you used to attend a church in the past, but no longer are a believer and don't do so today, there is a good chance you are still counted as part of the congregation.

156. Is Christianity Good for the World? A discussion between Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson

Comment #55534 by Steven Mading on July 11, 2007 at 1:10 pm

I read through this and was annoyed by Wilson's constant attempt to claim that Christianity represents an absolute morality system which makes it better than some relative one. If Christians really followed an absolute unchanging moral system, then why don't they stone people to death for wearing cotton/polyester blend clothing, as dictated in Leviticus? The answer is, of course, that their system has changed and adapted over time. Anyone who is aware of history and still claims Christian morality is unchanging is a liar.

The thing is, if Christians really did treat the morality espoused by their religion as an absolute that does not evolve, then they would all be following the moral norms of 2000 years ago, and clearly they are not doing so.

157. Won't anyone stand up for God?

Comment #55259 by Steven Mading on July 10, 2007 at 11:26 am

Isn't it strange that God and He still attract capitals?

Even fictional characters are still capitalized if they are proper nouns. i.e. "Robin Hood", or "James Bond". The distinction between "God" and "god" in English is whether you are using the name or the generic noun. i.e. "God" means "Yahweh", while "god" means "perhaps Yahweh, or perhaps Zeus, or perhaps Odin, or perhaps Apollo, etc..."

158. Brainwashed children plead to die as martyrs in Red Mosque siege

Comment #55234 by Steven Mading on July 10, 2007 at 10:01 am

I agree with Bonzai that the different religions have varying levels of badness. I do not agree with his implication that one must restrict ones self to only criticizing whichever happens to the the worst of the set and giving the rest a pass.

159. Inferior Design: Richard Dawkins reviews Behe's lastest book

Comment #53861 by Steven Mading on July 3, 2007 at 4:05 pm

[b]From Dawkins himself:[/b]
The biological definition of a species is that, under natural conditions, members of the same species freely interbreed with one another but not with members of other species.

Doesn't that definition completely break apart when dealing with things that reproduce asexually like amoeba? It would end up meaning each individual amoeba is a species unto itself, never breeding with any other individuals. As a biologist, how is this definitional problem dealth with? (And when countering the creationists who claim there's never been a witnessed example of speciation, getting a rock-solid definition of what speciation actually is first is an important step.)

160. In Defense of Witchcraft

Comment #52567 by Steven Mading on June 27, 2007 at 9:52 am

I didn't even notice there was such a thing as the "alternative content" comment page until people pointed it out here and I explicitly looked for the link on the page. I disagree with "mind_rebel" much more often than I agree, but I don't see how his comment *this time* was worthy of bumping off like that. *This* time it wasn't that bad at all. Granted, I'd still say he's wrong, but this time around his case was put forth politely so it could be politely argued against.

161. Supreme Court nixes suit over faith-based plan

Comment #51866 by Steven Mading on June 25, 2007 at 12:32 pm

One scary thing about this ruling is that to avoid having to address the actual issue they ruled that no citizen has standing to even try to sue the government over constitutional issues just for the sake of the constitutional issue itself, It must be attached to some other incident in which the citizen was wronged. So in other words, to avoid having to even hear the case about the office of faith-based initiatives, they destroyed a key means of enforcing the constitution in general, for ANY constitutional issue.

162. Create a back-up copy of your immune system

Comment #51340 by Steven Mading on June 22, 2007 at 12:04 pm

I wonder what would happen if they screwed up the records and later on infused you with some other customer's stored immune cells instead of your own. Would the imported immune cells attack good cells in your body because the imported immune cells have foreign "friend or foe" idenfication critiera?

163. 'Purity' ring case in High Court

Comment #51338 by Steven Mading on June 22, 2007 at 11:53 am

Either:
A) Uniform strictly required where physically possible.
or
B) The uniform is totally optional. Ignore it if you like.

What I don't like is this situation:

C) Religious reasons to break the uniform core are allowed, but other reasons are not.


I also don't like this situation, which is what the French seem to be going with:

D) No uniform code except to ban religious-themed clothing.

Either a uniform code is required regardless of religion, or it should be ignored regardless of religion. Don't give religion special privilege and don't give it special prohibition either.

164. Atheists: stand up and be counted

Comment #50507 by Steven Mading on June 18, 2007 at 1:35 pm

5. Comment #50496 by blueollie on June 18, 2007 at 12:59 pm

Compare that to the US, where in 2006 atheists were not represented in Congress at all.

Strictly speaking, this isn't true. There is a congressman from California (Pete Stark) who openly doesn't believe in a personal god:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/17/BAGFRONAJD6.DTL

The stat was for 2006. Pete Start didn't publicly declare his freethinker status (he's a bit unclear if he's agnostic, atheist, or something inbetween) until 2007. The stat was true at the time it was published.

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

Comment #50371 by Steven Mading on June 17, 2007 at 10:08 am

Benway and Arildno - Both of you mistook what the other person said.

To "Dr Benway": You made the mistake of assuming that because "Arildno" said Stalin was secular that he was using "secular" the same way the religious right in America does. He was not. He was not referencing Stalin's repression of religion when he said that. He was referencing Stalin's non-religious motivations. He was using "secular" in the correct way - to mean non-religious rather than anti-religous.

To "Arildno": "Dr Benway" was not espousing the American parochialism - he was under the false impression that you were, and he was arguing against it, not for it.

166. Quackbuster causes too much flak for university

Comment #49927 by Steven Mading on June 14, 2007 at 6:06 am

CEOs are more powerful than priests in our secular, capitalist society.

You're drawing a difference that doesn't exist. Ever seen a MegaChurch? Ever seen a Benny Hinn broadcast? Ever seen "mediums"? Ever seen an episode of Pat Robertson's TV show? Many preists ARE CEO's.

167. Baptists Warned About Islam, Atheism

Comment #49781 by Steven Mading on June 13, 2007 at 12:22 pm

"Sauronlord", keep in mind that while there is bad stuff in both Islam and Christianity, One is less free to re-interpret the scripture to make one's self believe it says something it doesn't in Islam. So the bad things in Islam are more likely to have real-world effects through its believers than the bad things in Christianity (since so many of Christianity's believers can easily change the religion into something nicer while deceiving themselves into thinking they're following the original meaning of the religion.)

168. PBS Revelation: Network's 'Wall Of Separation' Has Religious Right Genesis

Comment #49774 by Steven Mading on June 13, 2007 at 11:59 am

People are entitled to make up their own opinions, but they aren't entitled to make up their own facts.

I haven't seen this show yet (hasn't aired yet) but I have seen the argument made by others many times before, and the way they make the argument is by making up their own facts. It's truly disgusting for two reasons - the first of which is that it's disgusting to invent revisionist history (and thus falsify information for generations of future people) to promote an agenda, but also there's the fact that human morality has gotten more mature since the late 1700's so even if their falsified version of history was correct that still would not be a good reason to go to a theocracy today. You'll notice nobody's out there making the argument that we should go back to having slavery based on the fact that the founding fathers kept slaves.

169. The Benny Hinn Report

Comment #49519 by Steven Mading on June 12, 2007 at 8:50 am

This is the sort of thing that more moderate believers end up protecting when they set up the social climate where to subject faith-based belief to rational scrutiny is treated as if it was a bigoted thing to do. If that attitude was not pervasive, then charlitans like Benny Hinn would have been prosecuted for fraudulent business practices long ago.

170. Can we really learn to love people who aren't like us?

Comment #48998 by Steven Mading on June 10, 2007 at 12:39 am

On the issue of ethnicity coming first and religion coming second - consider this: ethnic groupings are caused by long histories of segregated breeding. What causes people not to interbreed? Religion.

So I do not agree that ethinicty comes before religion. Religious "us vs them" mentality causes the islolation in the first place that strengthens group separation and thus gives rise to competing ethnicities.

171. Can we really learn to love people who aren't like us?

Comment #48997 by Steven Mading on June 10, 2007 at 12:35 am

In order for atheism to be defined as a protest against one's former religion, as the rabbi does here in this article, one must first assume that all atheists are ex-theists. That is not the case. There do exist atheist households where children never were made to believe in god in the first place. Belief in god is not the default. It's the most common, but that's not the same thing as the default.

172. A Quote Against Theocracy

Comment #48550 by Steven Mading on June 8, 2007 at 10:56 am

I liked Narnia as a kid too, but even though I didn't realize it was meant to be a Christian allegory at some points, there was one recurring theme that felt wrong and "icky" (that it later turns out was the allegory he was shooting for, but I wasn't familiar enough yet with Christianity to catch it.)

That "icky"-inducing theme was the idea that unquestioning acceptance of the lion Aslan (I don't remember if that's how it was spelled, that's a guess from memory) was always associated with goodness, while any slight doubt of Aslan was always associated with wickedness. The heroes were right because they trusted Aslan. Accepting the authority of him was more important than anything else. Anyone who rejected him inevitably ended up being a horrible, bad person in the end. This theme gets really strong in the last book of the series, "The Last Battle", which is obviously modelled after the end of days biblical stuff.

I enjoyed the books (except for the slightly icky feeling that something was a little bit off about the theme of worshipping Aslan) back when I was ignorant of the bible as a kid. Now that I know more about this reprehensable belief system and can see what Lewis was shooting for, I dont think I could enjoy the stories ever again.

Before, I didn't notice the allegories to Christianity. Now I can't help but notice it, and that ruins the enjoyment.

173. A Quote Against Theocracy

Comment #48373 by Steven Mading on June 7, 2007 at 3:44 pm

Given how much he espoused how allegedly perfect and true and wonderful Christianity was, it's nice to see he wasn't a total putz about it, though. It's too bad about the people who keep quoting him, though. Many of them seem to think Theocracy would be just nifty so long as it's Christian Theocracy.

174. Atheism is the absence of belief

Comment #48372 by Steven Mading on June 7, 2007 at 3:40 pm

"Atheism is not only a viable alternative to faith, it is, I believe, the most probable, most promising, and most positive view of life."

As an atheist, in all honesty I have to disagree with how this point is put forth, as it contradicts the main point of the article. If atheism is a non-belief, then it isn't a view of life. Nor is it promising. It does throw away religion, which is a source of having a negative view of life so it's good to ditch it. But it does not guarantee a positive outlook will be adopted instead. It merely opens the way to choose another view of life instead of the negative one espoused by religion. It's still entirely possible to fall into a negative view of life for secular reasons, however.

To give an analogy, while it's good for an alchoholic to stop drinking, refraining from drinking is not a positive quality in their life, it's merely the removal of one negative one.

175. Wanted: Moral Education for Secular Children

Comment #48364 by Steven Mading on June 7, 2007 at 3:18 pm

"DV82XL" said:

Teach the skill of reason and you should have no need to "espouse a set of normative values and principles" which anyway has the odor of dogma about it which is the antithesis of objective methods for testing claims of truth.

Even though math is just a natural product of reason, there's still a need for a seperate class in school devoted to math. Even though chemisty is just a natural product of reason, there's still a need for a seperate class in school devoted to chemistry. So why raise the objection you do about a seperate class for ethics? A lot of what is taught in school is just specific narrowed-down examples of applying reason.

176. Man to die over insult

Comment #48036 by Steven Mading on June 6, 2007 at 11:16 am

What's creepy is the similarity between the Palestinian kindergarten video and the Jesus Camp trailer.

That similarity is deliberate. The Camp being shown in Jesus Camp was set up precisely as a respose to Islamic madrasses, by Christians who thought they should fight fire with fire and set up a place to 'teach' their children to be just as forceful "defending" the faith as madressas-taught children are.

177. The Myth of Secular Moral Chaos

Comment #48013 by Steven Mading on June 6, 2007 at 9:15 am

17. Comment #47882 by krogercomplete on June 5, 2007 at 11:18 pm

Because you can *never* know that the to be tortured actually has the knowledge you seek, torture is never justified.

What would be your answer if we actually could know for a fact?

There is no such thing as a situation where we can be sure someone has the information we want, yet we do not yet know what that information actually is. The point is that the only way to be sure the torture would be justified to extract information (because we already know the person actually has the info) is to be in a situation where it is also unnecessary to do so (because we already know the info), so that removes the one case where one could justify torture. There are no cases left once that one is done away with.

178. Hamas Kindergarten Graduation Ceremony

Comment #47750 by Steven Mading on June 5, 2007 at 12:34 pm

The Palestinians want to live there because they have allways done so.

The Israelis want to live there because their land was "given" to them by this god-character.

That's the way it looks if you only go back a few years in history. If you go back further, the ancestors of the modern Palestinians ALSO moved into the land and took it over, from the ancestors of the Israelis. It's changed hands between the two more than just in the current century.

179. Should Science Speak to Faith? A dialog between Lawrence Krauss and Richard Dawkins

Comment #47419 by Steven Mading on June 4, 2007 at 1:09 pm

(Deleting my own comment - it was attached to the wrong article.)

180. Beggars belief: Robin McKie on The God Delusion

Comment #47416 by Steven Mading on June 4, 2007 at 12:57 pm

42. Comment #47253 by shade51 on June 3, 2007 at 6:23 pm
To whatever extent it may be true that atheists tend more toward liberal politics, the cause may very well be that religionists have done such a good job of identifying themselves with conservative politics - and vice versa. So many conservative social policies seem to be designed to please the religious right, at least in the US, that it is at least understandable that atheists may tend to shy away from conservative/Republican politics. I'm not saying that it's right or wrong - just one possible explanation as I see it.

I think it's much more accurate to say that the right pushes atheists away, rather than to say that atheists tend toward liberal politics. It's more of a case of atheists escaping from the religious right, than of embracing the liberal left. In other countries where the right is not as tied to religion as it is here in the US, you will find it much more common to find conservative atheists than here in the US.

181. The Dawkins delusion

Comment #45902 by Steven Mading on May 29, 2007 at 2:55 pm

These books can just as legitimately be read as allegories, poetry or fables, depending on one's inclination.

This is a naive view. They are not presented as fiction. These texts were written with the intent that they be believed, as opposed to, say, a fable or allegory like the race of the tortise and the hare, which may contain a message, but one is not expected to believe in talking rabbits and animals gathering to watch a race in order to get the moral of the story. On the other hand, much of the bible fails to work as any kind of allegory if you don't actually believe it. It's full of stories about Jesus claiming to be the son of god and how you must accept that to get saved. I'm sorry, but you are dead wrong - if one doesn't believe the bible is truth, and therefore does not believe Jesus really was god's son, then there is NO moral allegory left to salvage from that. Similarly, keeping the sabbath holy has no meaning if you don't believe the 7-day creation myth. And let's talk about Abraham being willing to sacrifice his son just because God said so, and how this is portrayed in the bible as a GOOD thing for him to have thought that way - remove the belief that god exists and there is NOTHING whatsoever that is the slightest bit ethcially uplifting about what's left in that tale - all that's left is a tale of blind obedience to an imaginary authority being more important than actual compassion for actual people.

The key problem with religion is that it provides this notion of faith, which is essentialy the idea that truth is a subjective matter of opinion. No. It is not. If two people disagree about a fact, the reason is that at least one of them is incorrect. The only things that are truly subjective are matters of preference, such as "I enjoy X but I don't enjoy Y".

182. The Dawkins delusion

Comment #45855 by Steven Mading on May 29, 2007 at 11:58 am

Uhm - Dawkins understands the wishy-washy middle-ground believers quite well. He just doesn't agree with them, or consider their thinking to be valid.

It's highly frustrating when people mislabel those who disagree as being people who don't understand. It is entirely possible to understand perfectly well what's going on in the thoughts of a person you completely disagree with. Disagreement is not evidence of lack of understanding.

183. Sam Harris Strikes Back

Comment #45825 by Steven Mading on May 29, 2007 at 11:03 am

When arguing against atheists, it's common for the believer to bring up the point that the adoption of monotheism historically led to betterment of cultures and is responsible for much of what made the western world succeed so well. Hedges brought it up too. I think Sam's reply fell flat because there is a far stronger reply one can give, one that destroys the whole point being made and really brings the dishonesty of this argument to the surface, and that point is this:

What preceeded monotheism was not atheism. It was polytheism - the polytheism of the greeks and romans - the polytheism of the pagans and heathens.

The historical cases of monotheism (alegedly) bettering mankind were not cases of the addition of a god belief making things better as is the connection the believers want people to make.

It's just the opposite - when a polytheistic society adopts monotheism, it's REDUCING the number of gods people believe in, not increasing them..

Therefore anyone who tries to claim that the historical effects of the spread of monotheism throughout Europe somehow have any impact on the issue of atheism versus theism is being dishonest. It's just comparing one theism to another theism.

The spread of Christendom was not a case of atheists becoming theists. It was a case of one kind of theist becoming a different kind of theist.

I think that's a far stronger counterargument than the one Sam used becuase it completely avoids the issue of whether or not the spread of monotheism in Europe was a good or bad thing, and thus avoids having to bring up such a controversial historical interperative issue. All that matters is that it really has nothing to do with atheism because pre-christian European pagans Weren't atheists in the first place!.

184. Comic in US 'hate speech' row

Comment #45638 by Steven Mading on May 28, 2007 at 4:04 pm

It is literally impossible to express some types of religious opinion without engaging in hate speech toward atheists (and members of religions other than your own). If you claim morality requires belief in god, that's hate speech toward atheists, and yet it's impossible to express certain religious positions without making that claim. If you claim your religion is the only means of engaging in moral behavior, you are engaging in hate speech merely by repeating what your religion says, and the only way not to engage in the hate speech is to never tell anyone what your religious beliefs are. So religious freedom requires the allowance of hate speech on the part of the religious. What really pisses me off is that only religious people are allowed this dispensation. If you say something that is disparaging of a group, but you think it is truthful because your religion says its true, nobody can punish you for it. If you say something equally disparaging of a group, but you think it is truthful for some reason OTHER than religion, then you can get in big legal trouble for it. Religion gets protection from hate-speech laws. Atheists do not. It's a double-standard.

185. God help us all - The No. 2 book on Amazon right now is a

Comment #45575 by Steven Mading on May 28, 2007 at 9:07 am

Is anyone else sick of the term "Islamofacism" (which my spill chocker underlines). A portmanteau word designed to create fear and hatred.

If it keeps being used then I shall have no compunction but to talk of "Christofacism" when referring to the likes of the Dominionists.

A more apt term would be Islamotheocracy. What the Islamacist movement wants is not a fascist government, it's a theocracy. Both are bad types of government, but for entirely different reasons. To misunderstand which type of bad government is being promoted by this movement is to be unable to do anything constructive to counter it. You can beat a fascist movement with the tool of war, but you can't beat a theocratic movement with the tool of war. With a theocatic movement, each phsyical combat defeat the movement suffers makes it more fanatical and makes it recruit more people.

And the reason our US goverment will not acknowlege that it's a theocratic movement behind the terrorist organization Al-Quaeda is that to label it as such is to admit that theocracy is bad, which they wont do since they're Christian theocrats themselves.

186. 'Einstein - His Life and Universe'

Comment #44396 by Steven Mading on May 24, 2007 at 1:47 pm

Einstein's invocation of the word "God" conveyed succinctly and powerfully the sense of reverence he felt.

The fact that he also had to often qualify what he meant afterward proves that it was not a succinct way to get the point across. To judge whether it was succinct or not you have to add the later qualifications he had to give and consider them part of the necessary verbosity.

Einstein didn't call himself an "atheist" because in his view people who labelled themselves this way in his days were aesthetically challenged and were remarkably lacking in imagination. I think he might have a point after reading some kneel jerk posts on this thread and others concerning Einstein.

You're not doing a good job of defending Einstein if you attribute beliefs in incorrect stereotypes to him like that. I don't think he was that dumb.

187. 'Einstein - His Life and Universe'

Comment #44266 by Steven Mading on May 24, 2007 at 12:31 am

Einstein (and Spinoza) simply used a different definition of "god" that was so different from the mainstream that to be honest and forthright they should have just used a different word or made up a new one. If I claim I own an automobile, and then later on explain myself further by saying "well, it only has two wheels, and it doesn't have an engine, and instead I have to pedal it, but to me that's an automobile" then I'm really not being honest - what I'm talking about isn't an automobile. It's a bicycle. That's what the pantheistic "god" is like - If you have a strong sense of wonder about the universe itself then we already have a word for the thing you find wonder about - it's called "the universe". Calling it "god" just feeds people useful propaganda soundbites to use later. (To revisit my bicycle example, If I was to go on and describe how my two-wheeled no-engine "automobile" doesn't pollute and gives me good excercise, people who prefer automobiles to bicycles could pull that statement out and claim I was saying automobiles have those properties when I wasn't really talking about automobiles at all, but about bicycles.

People pull out Einstein's god quotes as if he was talking about 'god' when he was just talking about the universe itself, and using dangerously sloppy language to do so.

If you're a pantheist, please don't describe the thing your talking about with the word "god" - you're just setting yourself up for misunderstanding and misquoting later on.

188. Would the World Be Safer Without Religion?

Comment #43388 by Steven Mading on May 21, 2007 at 8:40 am

Nina, there is no such thing as sincere faith. Faith is, by definition, believing something while admitting to one's self that there isn't a reasonable reason to do so. That is inherently dishonest. The phrase "sincere faith" is an oxymoron. Sincerity would be to drop a belief if you know it's not a reasonable one, rather than spread the notion that there is some other type of thinking that does not require coherent thought and yet is still legitimate. Faith is not some seperate type of rationale for belief. It's just a re-naming of rationales that fail to disguise the fact that they fail.

189. God grief

Comment #41982 by Steven Mading on May 17, 2007 at 12:02 pm

The notion of a satan figure that is always lurking in the shadows trying to dissuade the faithful with arguments that trick you into thinking they are reasonable when they allegedly aren't - this is what makes it impossible to argue down a fundamentalist with facts and logic. The idea of the whispering seductive satan behind the disbelievers' arguments means that if your arguments start to seem convincing to the believer, the believer thinks, "Uh Oh - these argument are sounding convincing, that must mean Satan is behind this! I must do the morally right thing and refuse to be swayed by these arguments!"

It's a pre-programmed defense mechanism the meme uses to survive, and its extremely effective.

190. Television evangelist Falwell dies at 73

Comment #41704 by Steven Mading on May 16, 2007 at 4:01 pm

Dower said:
So, save your energy, kids. I won't be responding to any follow-ups.

I'm not replying for your sake. I'm defending my and other people's reputation against false slanderous accusations. When you falsely equated a sense of gladness Falwell is gone with hatemongering, you engaged in slander. And that is inexcusable. If I tolerated dishonesty, I'd go to church.

191. Television evangelist Falwell dies at 73

Comment #41699 by Steven Mading on May 16, 2007 at 3:49 pm

It is sad to see anybody wasting their lives following some sky-god, and rejoicing over their deaths is hateful

There is a huge difference between feeling sympathy for one who has been duped versus feeling sympathy for the one who responsible for doing the duping. Fallwel isn't some innocent gullable starry-eyed person who fell for an enticing lie. He's one of the dishonest people who deliberately propigated a lie to further his aims. He's not innocent in this. He's not the victim, he's the perpitrator.

And it's not hate that makes me glad he's gone - it's compassion for all the people who's lives he's ruined by spreading lies about them. Now he can't do that anymore. The problems resulting from the legacy of his speeches and political actions will linger on for a while, but at least he's no longer able to add any more problems to the pile.

I have no respect whatsoever for people like Falwell who don't care if their lies slander others in the process of serving their own ends. By default everyone deserves respect at first, but people who act like Falwell did give up that right.

192. Television evangelist Falwell dies at 73

Comment #41694 by Steven Mading on May 16, 2007 at 3:39 pm

OK, get with it. Prove my claims false. And by the way, the name is Dower.

The proof already there is in the history of this comment page. It takes immense dishonesty to claim as you have doen that what you read here matches what Falwell said.

193. Television evangelist Falwell dies at 73

Comment #41630 by Steven Mading on May 16, 2007 at 12:20 pm

I'm glad Dover is incorrect in his many false claims that what was said in this forum is equivilent to what Falwell said. I'm glad he's incorrect about that because I'd agree with him if he was correct. But luckily over here in the real world, his claims that the comments here are the same tactics as Falwell used are not based in honesty but in strawman fiction.

194. Television evangelist Falwell dies at 73

Comment #41627 by Steven Mading on May 16, 2007 at 12:14 pm

When someone is causing extreme damage to humanity, it actually is a good thing for him to be gone. Dover and the people who agree with him are missing the whole point. Being glad that Falwell is gone is not a matter of hating Falwell. It's a matter of loving humanity and enjoying the fact that the man will not continue to foment human suffering as he did while he was alive.

Being glad that Falwell is dead is no more "hateful" than being glad if the news surfaced that Bin Laden was dead.

195. Disney daughter calls Muslim Mickey evil

Comment #39395 by Steven Mading on May 10, 2007 at 1:41 pm

On the Disney question - one thing they did was to singlehandedly change the rules about public domain material so that things don't end up falling into public domain after a reasonable time anymore. They didn't want Mickey Mouse to become public domain, so they keep (sucessfully) lobbying congress to increase the duration of copyrights to their current absurd levels.

They're also at the forefront of the whole "there is no reason anyone would have to circumvent restrictive software other than piracy" falsification. (For some of us, we have to circumvent it because our platform isn't supported.)

196. Christopher Hitchens and Al Sharpton: A Debate God Is Not Great

Comment #38925 by Steven Mading on May 9, 2007 at 1:54 pm

"he kept Hitchens on the ropes with his repetitive demand that Hitchens address religion *itself*,
without reference to history or scripture."

That doesn't make sense. That's like asking someone to comment on geometry without reference to lines, angles, circles, or shapes.

197. Richard Dawkins in the Time 100

Comment #37118 by Steven Mading on May 3, 2007 at 12:22 pm

It is not a gesture of good will to say that Dawkins is merely arguing his premises in The God Delusion, as Behe did here. To say that is to ignore the existence of any of Dawkins reasoned arguments in the book.

It's a repeat of the classic put-the-burden-of-proof-on-the-wrong-party tactic theists use frequently. They invented the idea that an entity called God needs to exist, so the burden of proof is entirely theirs. It is not a "premise" to start from the default hypothesis that a proposed entity shouldn't be believed to exist until there's a reason to believe it.

198. Now Muslims Get Their Own Laws In Britian

Comment #36816 by Steven Mading on May 2, 2007 at 12:14 pm

The article is very unclear about the key issue that matters as to whether this is an outrage or not: Do all parties enter into it willingly? If so, then it legally has the same status as hiring an arbitrator and signing a contract agreeing to abide by the arbitrator's decision. And as much as I would consider anyone willingly submitting to Sharia law to be a complete fool for doing so, it shouldn't be illegal to be stupid in cases where your stupidity only hurts yourself and not others.

Of course, when dealing with religion, the distinction between "willing" and "unwilling" can be very hard to define.

So I guess what I'm saying is this: This article expresses an outrage over something while simultaneously being too vague on a key piece of information that would help me determine whether or not the outrage is justified. That makes me suspicious of the article.

199. 4 Sermon for Matins: 'Dawkins and The God Delusion'

Comment #36518 by Steven Mading on May 1, 2007 at 11:59 am

I really get angered at the dishonest line of rhetoric that smoothes over how appallingly bad religion is at accuracy by trying to pretend that religion never made any claims of explanation, or never was about trying to understand the universe (the non-overlapping magisteria claim). It's historical revisionism at its finest to pretend that the current gaps that their god-of-the-gaps resides in are the same gaps as they always were, and that never in history have those gaps been shrunken or taken over by science.

Currently most modern Christians no longer try to claim that the bible gives a real account of history. They no longer believe that a god made mankind at the same time as the plants and animals. They no longer believe that the "begat list" is a meaningful record of the number of generations that have passed. Most no longer believe that 100% of all people who haven't followed the christian religion are destined to hell. These are wonderful examples of people being open-minded enough to CHANGE their religious beliefs when they clearly didn't stand up to reality. But what really angers me is that so many of them will simply not admit that this does represent a change to their religion (that would call into question the notion that their relgion is the infallable word of god, after all.)

Instead they engage in historical revisionism by pretending that the newest interpretations were the "right way" all along - the way the texts were originally intended to be read - and anyone who says otherwise is clearly not "well informed" enough.

200. Against All Gods, by A C Grayling

Comment #36163 by Steven Mading on April 30, 2007 at 11:04 am

36. Comment #36155 by Vinelectric on April 30, 2007 at 10:27 am
Belief in a personal God could be on the way out but untill atheists can persuade us that 'Why' is 'How' (as suggested by Peter Atkins) then people will always ask Why the hell are we here!! Why did the big bang occur and why does evoultion work at all.

Ask yourself what the actual difference is between the word "how" and the word "why". I think the difference is this: "How" asks what the process was that made something happen, while "Why" asks what the motivation for it was. But here's the thing - If you're asking for what the motivation behind the creation of the universe was, and ending up later on with the answer "God did it", then you're committing the logical fallacy of assuming your conclusion before you begin. In other words, for the question "why" to even be relevant in the first place, one must assume a creator. Otherwise there's no sentience and therefore no motivation to even be asking about and the correct answer to the qeustion "why" would then be "mu".

As soon as you make the assumption that "why is the universe here" is even a valid question in the first place, you've already assumed a creator before you even get started.