Comments by Nova

151. $271 Million for Research on Stem Cells in California

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

Podaar typed:

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

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

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

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

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

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

FightingFalcon typed:

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

Heh heh :D

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

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

FightingFalcon typed:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Hindu Council UK said:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Matt7895 typed:

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

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

156. $271 Million for Research on Stem Cells in California

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

jmrunning3 typed:

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

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

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

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

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

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

158. The History Channel might do something right

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

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

159. In God we doubt

Comment #174658 by Nova on May 3, 2008 at 5:23 am

the_assayer typed:

The weak atheistic position, or normal atheism is the belief that the evidence is not yet in to conclude positively that there IS a God

How come weak atheism is now "normal atheism". Dawkins argument The Ultimate Boeing 747, described in chapter 4 of TGD, but briefly outlined in pages 188 to 189 is a strong atheism argument. It's not just that there's no proof of god, it also that he would have to be so complex that the probability of him existing would be minute. Obviously we can't know god doesn't exist in the very technical sense - because the chances are minute but not nonexistent but if one uses this reasoning we can't know anything other than we exist for certain. There is a minute chance that your senses are lying when they convey that you are touching and/or seeing something. So things with a minute chance must be assumed to have no chance in practice.

I agree with Dawkins in TGD that this argument has never been properly rebutted - the only rebuttal so far is that this is a narrow materialist view but this is not a rebuttal in itself: god doesn't have to be physical for this argument to apply, even a ghost that does what god does would be complex. Saying god is simple doesn't help because he can do many complicated things with many stages and simple things don't.

The Argument from Control/Measurement Mechanisms

Another argument I thought up is that nothing could ever be omnipotent or omniscient because in order to know about or control something you need something else to use to do this - you can't control or measure something with nothing (how would you distinguish when you control/know about it and when you don't?). Of course once you have established a mechanism to control/measure something that in turn has to be controlled and measured to be omnipotent and omniscient so you create a new mechanism and then that needs to be measured and so on in an infinite regress. Thus, philosophically nothing can ever be omnipotent and omniscient. People will says this is too materialist/reductionist but this is not a rebuttal - the control/measurement mechanism could be a nonphysical ghost or a psychic mind ray and the argument still applies!

160. Muslim Rebel Sisters: At Odds With Islam and Each Other

Comment #174499 by Nova on May 2, 2008 at 2:02 pm

as if Luther

A religious reformer? Yes. A moral reformer? Certainly not!

The Wikipedia article on Martin Luther:

Much scholarly debate has concentrated on Luther's writings about the Jews. His statements that Jews' homes should be destroyed, their synagogues burned, money confiscated and liberty curtailed were revived and used in propaganda by the Nazis in 1933�"45.[9] As a result of this and his revolutionary theological views, his legacy remains controversial.[10]

Why don't we use Christianities role in fostering antisemitism more often against the Christians who claim a direct link between Darwin and the Holocaust?

161. Bill Good Interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #174053 by Nova on May 1, 2008 at 1:48 pm

Geodesic17 typed:

Someone needs to setup a call center to answer people's questions.

Better yet simply an automated system to rebut these stupid arguments...

You have reached the arguments against atheism response line:

Press 1 for the rebuttal to the argument from Hitler and Stalin.

Press 2 for the rebuttal to the argument from Irreducible Complexity.

Press 3 for the rebuttal to the argument from god is the only source of morality.

Press 4 for the rebuttal to the argument from atheism needs faith.

and so on!

162. Gunk in T. Rex Fossil Confirms Dino-Bird Lineage

Comment #169203 by Nova on April 25, 2008 at 3:54 pm

moderndaythomas typed:

An all too common media blunder, it's closer to the truth than saying that humans descended from apes. Or rather, Ben Stein.
And then again I'm sure the apes resent that.

Humans are apes.

163. Ben Stein Vs. Sputtering Atheists

Comment #165291 by Nova on April 21, 2008 at 9:50 am

P.Z. Myers predicts the movie is "going to appeal strongly to the religious, the paranoid, the conspiracy theorists, and the ignorant �"�" which means they're going to draw in about 90 percent of the American market."

LOL

Very true...

164. A Conversation with Expelled's Associate Producer Mark Mathis

Comment #164753 by Nova on April 20, 2008 at 4:47 pm

It will be interesting to see how Mark Mathis tries to wriggle his way out of this one.

165. Religion is 'the new social evil'

Comment #164725 by Nova on April 20, 2008 at 3:46 pm

The comments on this article on the Times Online are encouraging.

166. Faith healing church parents charged over toddler's death

Comment #153848 by Nova on April 2, 2008 at 6:44 am

MelM: Nova,

If you take too long to write your comment, you'll lose it. And sometimes I lose them by accident. So, once I get something started, I do a select-all/copy and especially just before I hit submit. Others may write off-line but I haven't gone that far yet.

Thanks I'll keep that in mind. :)

167. Holy communion

Comment #153839 by Nova on April 2, 2008 at 6:32 am

I just want to point out that this is the view of Richard Norman, not of the New Humanist as a whole. I'm was amazed to discover that both Richard and Christopher are contributors to the New Humanist.

Richard Norman: It all demonstrates what a deeply contradictory phenomenon religion is. But we know that. And if religion is so contradictory, that's probably because human beings are a deeply contradictory species.

This seems to be what I will call the Inevitablist argument from some of the non-religious it basically goes "religious irrationalism is part of human nature, there no point in fighting it as it will never go away" well, in select areas it has nearly gone (scandinavia) so that argument is flawed. Illogicallity will always be a part of human nature but organized insanity (religion) is too general to be an inherent feature.

168. Faith healing church parents charged over toddler's death

Comment #153665 by Nova on April 1, 2008 at 7:36 pm

I did write a long post about this abortion discussion but when I clicked send something went wrong and it was all lost :(

169. Beware the Believers

Comment #152291 by Nova on March 30, 2008 at 4:02 pm

ThoughtsonCommonToad: Some may have pointed this out already but this is promotion for expelled. The "machine" is the machine that expels scientists who question Darwinian natural selection.
TAKE A LOOK AT THIS SCREENSHOT

ficklefiend: Hmm, that Expelled logo does seem very prominent

That is not the real Expelled logo. The real one has the 'x' spray painted on, it's on their website if you want to check.

170. Beware the Believers

Comment #151971 by Nova on March 29, 2008 at 7:54 pm

Jack Rawlinson: I have to say to the people who think this is pro-ID and anti-atheist: please develop a sense of what irony and satire is. Because you're embarrassing yourselves.

Unbelievable.

Theres no need for rudeness and ad hominem attacks. I wouldn't jump to conclusions, I understand satire/irony very well but I am still undecided as to whether it is on our side (it may be somewhere in-between, as some have suggested). Sometimes things are done so overtly people think it must be satire, but the designers may just not know subtlety. On the other hand, I understand what your saying because we must be wary of Poe's Law: Any parody of fundamentalism will be mistaken by someone for the real thing by someone.

TwiddleFlare: This is a viral Ad campaign for the Movie Expelled.

It is trying to paint Richard Dawkins as the ring leader in some conspiracy to "expel" people from science, who are not part of this money hungry posse with an agenda. (All of the people being charicatured in the video)

This is obvious when the machine throws the person out of the lab, with an "expelled" on his head. Or when the machine have a big dollar sign around its neck. (yes a parody of rap, but also trying to show they have an agenda)

Childishly calling him Dick to try and belittle.

The mocking tone when saying "He's smarter than you, hes got a science degree!", which is trying to paint education as a trivial thing. And appeal to the hatred of science among believers.

Lines like "Even if i was dislexic i would still hate god", would never be written by an rational Atheist, and paints a very negative picture of irrational intolerance.

The final clue is the producion value. This was not made by an amateur on youtube, it is very well put together, with a purpose and with funding.

Please do not support this rubbish.

And that could all be a big parody of the ID new 'were being persecuted' tactic. It seems too overt to be what it appears to be. It is ludicrous to suggest it was made by the Expelled team. The logo on the guys head is not actually theirs, it is just similar. Expelled is a completely different approach with amazingly poor quality (and especially the pathetic attempted humour) which rules the idea it was made by the Expelled team out completely. The IDiots at Expelled couldn't even begin to conceive of this. I agree with your observation it is well put together and thus probably comes from a group and definetly comes from a source that knows computers and rap culture, probably not IDiots then, though still could be (and it could be done by a person/team unaffiliated with the ID movement but being paid by IDiots to design it).

I still think there is a chance it could be anti-us, somewhere in-between or pro-us.

171. Beware the Believers

Comment #151917 by Nova on March 29, 2008 at 4:51 pm

Rational_G: And us science types can be a little arrogant at times

Really? From what I've seen scientists seem exactly the opposite, sometimes to an almost ridiculous degree. It just seems that scientists have the authority of evidence on their side so when they finally burst under the pressure of all the BS in the world, they are demonized as arrogant. The great thing about Richard is he's not afraid of telling it straight.

Is it too much to hope that the designer of this clip will come forward in some way (maybe anouther YouTube clip) at some point and explain it somewhat despite it's seemingly purposeful ambiguity.

172. Christian Socialists head for more radical Labour territory

Comment #151900 by Nova on March 29, 2008 at 4:28 pm

epeeist: And the Labour party was (and no longer is) socialist

Their website still describes them as a party of democratic socialism.

173. Beware the Believers

Comment #151837 by Nova on March 29, 2008 at 2:39 pm

Whatever side it's on, the meer fact this has sparked debate as to what side it's on and has ignited such a big discusion is amazing in itself.

Whatever side they are on, if the designers saw/see this they will be pleased with themselves.

madame_zora: Of course my first thought was that Richard detests balls hats worn sloppily- sorry Richard that you were maligned so egregiously!

He does - he said so specifically on British debate show 'The Big Questions'!

174. I always aim to misbehave

Comment #151828 by Nova on March 29, 2008 at 2:07 pm

Jack Rawlinson: By the way, that hilarious video Barry Pearson linked is obviously on our side. I can't believe the number of people who don't get that. I guess some folk have a missing satire/irony gland... :-)

I wouldn't jump to conclusions, I understand satire/irony very well but I am still undecided as to whether it is on our side. Sometimes things are done so overtly people think it must be satire, but the designers may just not know subtlety. On the other hand, I understand what your saying because we must be wary of Poe's Law: Any parody of fundamentalism will be mistaken by someone for the real thing by someone.

175. Beware the Believers

Comment #151736 by Nova on March 29, 2008 at 9:26 am

The part where a scientist in a lab supposedly discovers something "else" than evolution not to mention that he gets thrown out and the
'Expelled' logo is shown promenently shows this to probably be meant to be insulting (as well as the whole 'science machine' keeping scientists in order theme). Though maybe not as Robert Maynard wrote

Robert Maynard: that the ID metaphor of persecution is being subverted for laughs, as if Dawkins is responding to this complaint with "Yes, we're totally doing that... biaatch!"

it could be a parody of the ID new 'were being persecuted' tactic.

I noticed extreme irony in it at one point - there is a part where the RD charecter holds up a dollar and says something like its all for the money "I'll still be poppin' my collar earning more dollars than Allah". This is amazingly hypocritical considering the vast wealth that the religious leaders steal from their followers. From the televangelists adding "donations to the lawd" to their own pockets, to the convert-taxing Vatican to the huge oil weath of the Saudi king and Sultan of Brunei, the religious leaders are rich around the world.

As Richard Dawkins said at TED (http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/113) the religious lobby is massively financed and the main reason he was appealing to TED was precisely because he didn't have the money (and by extension, atheism doesn't) to found an atheist Templeton Foundation equivelent (and by extension, to rival the wealth of the religious in general). The religious must literally be thousands of times richer than sceptics. The ticket to heaven is expensive and the religious leaders play the ticket sellers!

176. I always aim to misbehave

Comment #151724 by Nova on March 29, 2008 at 8:56 am

Barry Pearson: Nearly but not quite off-topic - words can't describe this, it has to be seen. (4 minutes).

Barry Pearson: Is it meant to be insulting? There is no consensus at YouTube. Some think it is pro-atheist pro-science irony/sarcasm. I suspect the same.

The part where a scientist in a lab supposedly discovers something "else" than evolution not to mention that he gets thrown out and the
'Expelled' logo is shown promenently shows this to probably be meant to be insulting (as well as the whole 'science machine' keeping scientists in order theme). Though maybe not as Robert Maynard wrote No 73 at http://richarddawkins.net/articleComments,2409,Beware-the-Believers,RandomSlice,page2#comments the richarddawkins.net entry on this

Robert Maynard: that the ID metaphor of persecution is being subverted for laughs, as if Dawkins is responding to this complaint with "Yes, we're totally doing that... biaatch!"

it could be a parody of the ID new 'were being persecuted' tactic.

I noticed extreme irony in it at one point - there is a part where the RD charecter holds up a dollar and says something like its all for the money "I'll still be poppin' my collar earning more dollars than Allah". This is amazingly hypocritical considering the vast wealth that the religious leaders steal from their followers. From the televangelists adding "donations to the lawd" to their own pockets, to the convert-taxing vatican to the huge oil weath of the Saudi king and Sultan of Brunei, the religious leaders are rich around the world.

As Richard Dawkins said at TED (http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/113) the religious lobby is massively financed and the main reason he was appealing to TED was precisely because he didn't have the money (and by extension, atheism doesn't) to found an atheist Templeton Foundation equivelent (and by extension, to rival the wealth of the religious in general). The religious must literally be thousands of times richer than sceptics. The ticket to heaven is expensive and the religious leaders play the ticket sellers!

177. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #136566 by Nova on March 1, 2008 at 12:23 pm

I know Wikipedia isn't the most reliable source but according to it:

"Writing as Vox Day in a WorldNetDaily column that puts forward his Christian Dominionist beliefs, Theodore Beale has made certain controversial statements. He has called women's rights "a disease that should be eradicated" [9], suggested that the Holocaust proved that deporting millions of Mexicans from the United States was feasible and that women who engaged in extramartial sex and were raped, could not be considered, a "wholly innocent victim". [10]."

Also in Wikipedia:

"Political party Libertarian"

How can he say that and yet be a member of the Libertarian party! I know it would seem hypocritical of them to be selective about membership, but in what way does this nut consider himself a libertarian.