151. Mrs Darwin's diaries go online

Comment #25442 by jonecc on March 13, 2007 at 6:32 am

By the standards of great thinkers, he seems to have been a reasonably nice man. Certainly when you compare him with contemporaries like Marx or Nietzsche he's easier to admire on a personal level.

152. How my eyes were opened to the barbarity of Islam

Comment #24782 by jonecc on March 8, 2007 at 2:14 pm

This is a very brave and important piece, with implications for us all.

It should be noted that Afghanistan is generally considered to be one of the most reactionary societies on earth, much more reactionary than say Turkey or Egypt.

That's because they interpret their holy texts literally, and make more effort than most to actually live by them. Where Turkey had Kemal and Egypt had Nasser, the Afghans have never had an extended period of secular government, except when it was imposed by the Soviet Union.

What a riposte to religious claims of morality Afghanistan is. Worse than Kansas.

153. She's No Fundamentalist: What people get wrong about Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Comment #24688 by jonecc on March 8, 2007 at 4:08 am

For those of us on the left, the problem posed by the Enlightenment goes something like this.

In terms of core issues like women's rights, gay rights and anti-racism, the secular humanism the Enlightenment gave birth to is clearly light years ahead of other models currently available, most of which are based on the unholy pre-Enlightenment alliance between kings and priests.

However, the societies which have got the closest to realising those principles have an intolerable position of economic and political dominance over the rest of the world, and use that power not to promote Enlightenment values, but in the pursuit of markets and resources.

The problem for us is how to separate the baby from the bathwater. In Iraq, for instance, it seems virtually impossible to identify any faction that you could reasonably support.

154. Atheist Apostle

Comment #24364 by jonecc on March 6, 2007 at 7:28 am

See, as if to mock me, it's just magically happened. Checking my comment, I see the required code. Thank you, simplicio, you've just led me to the answer.

155. Atheist Apostle

Comment #24363 by jonecc on March 6, 2007 at 7:26 am

Thanks, simplicio, I should have been clearer.

Comment 10 was mine. What I wanted to do was to make the link I put in there clickable, so that it took you directly to the page. For instance, csharpdressedman, in comment 24128 on God: the failed hypothesis, added the link http://www.ffrf.org/radio/, but his is clickable whereas mine is not.

156. Atheist Apostle

Comment #24344 by jonecc on March 6, 2007 at 5:05 am

Sorry, I'm only semi house-trained. How do I make the link at the end of comment 10 active?

157. Atheist Apostle

Comment #24343 by jonecc on March 6, 2007 at 5:00 am

When people talk about atheist regimes who suppress religious practice, they seem to be talking without exception about regimes deriving from the Leninist takeover of Russia or the Maoists in China. I'm not aware of any regime not espousing a perverted Marxism that has done this. Even Marx himself was opposed to the suppression of religion, on the grounds that it just encourages them.

However you categorise historical human rights abuses by theists and atheists, the important point is who's doing it now.

In the pluralistic democratic societies we live in today, the only people advocating state control of religion are theists. Whether Christian, Muslim or whatever, they are the people demanding limits to free speech, the establishment of Biblical or Sharia law, etc.

Of course, this isn't all theists, and may well be a minority of them, but given their historical record it's hardly surprising if the rest of us are concerned.

With regard to the conflict between the "political" or "theological" approach to Islam, there's a very interesting discussion between Harris and others here.

http://beyondbelief2006.org/Watch/

158. Religion and Politics

Comment #24276 by jonecc on March 5, 2007 at 4:11 pm

With regard to Medina-Sidonia's speech, I had always assumed there was a large pinch of irony in it. He was certainly a highly reluctant commander, who had no expectation of victory, and seems to have wanted to establish the reasons for his failure before it occurred.

159. Ayaan Hirsi Ali Feature

Comment #24268 by jonecc on March 5, 2007 at 3:50 pm

Because those of us on the left want to be supportive to people who experience discrimination, because we oppose US wars, believing them to be wars for markets and resources, because we sympathise with the position of Muslims who don't support the bombers of 9/11 or 7/7, we want to believe that Islam is a peaceful and benign religion which is sometimes hijacked.

I would have argued something like that until I actually read the Koran. I then realised that Islam was opposed to fairly much everything I had ever fought for - women's rights, gay rights, personal liberties, an egalitarian society. It's not surprising that someone like Ayaan Hirsi Ali ends up walking into the arms of the American right, given our craven failure to face up to reality.

Since the Danish cartoon incident, I have noticed a shift on the left. People are starting to differentiate between supporting people under military occupation and giving a reactionary, conservative religion a free pass. Also, there is increased awareness that most of the victims of Islam are themselves from Muslim backgrounds, and are entitled to our protection and support.

160. Atheists Take On Religion

Comment #24245 by jonecc on March 5, 2007 at 2:03 pm

To answer Riley's comment (18), many American survivalist factions identify themselves as Christian. I just watched a TV program in the UK about Timothy McVeigh, and the literature quoted was a hodge podge of military imagery, Aryan Nation style racist supremacism and Rapture-style apocalyptic fantasy.

The fundamentalists also typically demand that US support for the state of Israel not be tied to any requirement to respect the human rights of Palestinians, and continue to back the US in Iraq despite an estimated death toll of 6,000,000 Iraqis since the invasion.

161. Was there ever dog that praised his fleas?

Comment #24133 by jonecc on March 5, 2007 at 1:15 am

I read the McGrath book. As well as the usual canards (Hitler was an atheist, Dawkins is a fundamentalist, etc), he at one point mentions that the book of Hebrews, described in the Bible as one of Paul's epistles, is considered by modern scholars to have been written by somebody else. Dawkins includes it in a consideration of Paul's work, and McGrath mocks this.

Now in Robin Lane Smith's book Truth and Fiction in the Bible he also makes this case, apparently quite reasonably so far as I can tell, but can you imagine this working in any other field? That a crucial statement of a belief should be discovered to have been written by someone other than its claimed author, and that this should be considered an argument for the defence of that belief?

162. Bishops must not sit in reformed House of Lords

Comment #23489 by jonecc on March 1, 2007 at 3:58 am

The particular problem in Britain is that we are still officially a religious country. The Queen numbers among her titles the sobriquet "Defender of the Faith", the Anglican (Protestant) church is known as the Church of England and the Prime Minister appoints the Bishop of Canterbury, its head. In practice, of course, Prince Charles visits mosques, the Prime Minister appoints the Bishop the other Bishops ask him to and the Church of England is three different churches. The name for the belief that this is a funny way to run a railroad is disestablishmentarianism.

In America, there are constitutional guards against this kind of thing, but all the politicians have to pretend they're devout. In Britain, we have a state religion, but the Prime Minister has to pretend he isn't as religious as he actually is. You couldn't make it up.

163. Religion in Conflict: Are 'Evangelical Atheists' Too Outspoken?

Comment #23292 by jonecc on February 27, 2007 at 3:53 pm

Nice to read a piece about Iraq which isn't taken in by either side. Just because we like science and deprecate religion doesn't mean we have to be politically naive.

650,000 to 900,000 dead Iraqi civilians is a lot. It sounds like more than even Saddam would have killed if he'd still been in power. Does anyone know how many people he murdered in his thirty or so years in power?

164. The Certainty Bias

Comment #23249 by jonecc on February 27, 2007 at 6:34 am

In general, this post combines statistical acumen with political naivete.

Politicians don't tell us about stuff like WMD because they think they're true, whether it is or not, they do it because making us believe it coincides with their goals. These goals usually revolve around markets and resources. Even if we did manage to educate them, we would simply be teaching them to manipulate us more effectively

165. Does Evolution Select For Faster Evolvers? Horizontal Gene Transfer Adds To Complexity, Speed Of Evolution

Comment #19849 by jonecc on January 30, 2007 at 9:17 am

SF, thanks very much. How wonderful that we can just click a button and watch these guys. I shall work my way through this video, and indeed most of the ones listed on the same page.

I do think you ought to trim your tusks, though, before you lose an eye or something.

166. Does Evolution Select For Faster Evolvers? Horizontal Gene Transfer Adds To Complexity, Speed Of Evolution

Comment #19841 by jonecc on January 30, 2007 at 8:24 am

It's obviously hard to make predictions with a statistical group of one, but when I first saw the figures I was struck by the way that monocellular life seemed to get going virtually as soon as the asteroid bombardment stopped, by the standards of geological time. The jump to truly sophisticated multicellular life then took about 3 billion years, whilst the jump from there to mammals in space took about half a billion.

If this pattern was typical of the galaxy (which I realise is a BIG if), then you would expect life to evolve fairly quickly when conditions suited it, but to often stay "stuck" (from our multicellular viewpoint) at the simple stage. Where it goes multicellular, it's got a good chance of going sentient.

Just a thought.

167. No exemption from gay rights law

Comment #19839 by jonecc on January 30, 2007 at 8:07 am

ddovala

I think you may be confusing an adoption agency with an orphanage.

Adoption agencies simply place children with families. Once this has happened, the agency relinquishes responsibility to the family, and unless there has been some arrangement for access by the natural parents that's largely an end to the process.

168. No exemption from gay rights law

Comment #19818 by jonecc on January 30, 2007 at 4:28 am

It's a good sign, but there's still work to be done.

In our attempts to create a level playing field for beliefs, we face a problem. We tend to tell our children that it's up to them what they believe, whereas some theists tell them they have to believe the metaphysics they happen to have been born into or they will be subject to God's wrath (and in the case of Islam that of his followers).

We typically feel that this is wrong, and in many ways would like to stop theists doing this, but we are uncomfortable with the idea of the state interfering with the child parent relationship too deeply.

In the case of children being put up for adoption, it would be very practical to insist on legally binding agreements to give the child the kind of pluralist education that will enable them to function in the modern world. People who were unable to pledge not to scare their kids half to death with visions of hell would simply be rejected.

I myself was adopted at age 10 months, the arrangements being handled by the state. My adoptive parents were both atheists, but I wasn't sent to atheist school on Sundays, or taught catechisms about the wonders of Darwin. I was left to make up my own mind, and chose a secular world view as most people with a genuine choice are likely to do.

I dread to think what might have happened if I'd been handed over to some nutty theists to be "raised in the true faith", whichever of the Heinz 57 varieties that might have been.

169. Blasphemy Challenge on FOX

Comment #19649 by jonecc on January 29, 2007 at 5:14 am

In particular, the reason why it was important for Brian Flemming to agree to be interviewed is that otherwise the interviewer could have ranted on in the same way, and then explained how atheists are too scared to show their faces on TV and meet the argument.

170. Arguing for Atheism

Comment #19234 by jonecc on January 25, 2007 at 5:13 pm

In my opinion, many of these events—and others often attributed solely to religion by atheists—were less religiously motivated than politically driven, or at the very least involved religion in the service of political hegemony

171. Radical cleric sparks fury in Australia

Comment #18636 by jonecc on January 22, 2007 at 6:33 am

I really would beg you all not to let nutty theists like this lead you to oppose immigration by people from countries which are officially Muslim.

I work in an adult education centre, where a lot of my students are originally from countries where Islam is the dominant religion. Our manager is a woman, and so are many of the senior staff. Us men take direction from our line managers in a normal everyday way without thinking about it, as you would. There are women only English classes, mainly taught by white British women as it happens. I've talked to those tutors, and you'd better believe the difference in attitudes to gender has been noticed by their students, and will be acted on.

A lot of people from those communities are NOT relgious, but it's hard for them to say so. These people need our support. If they had never come to Britain, they might never have been exposed to other ideas. When they visit their home countries, when their children visit, when they email relatives, the ideology of liberation leaks out.

If we believe that secular ideas are better, we have to believe that contact between our secular world and other worlds where secularism has been suppressed is likely to have positive outcomes. The vast majority of people who suffer from the repressive strictures of Islam are not white, and they need us.

I was talking to a Somali man at a party the other night. He was about 25, atheist and a doctor. We shared a bottle of gin. His presence in our society is better for him, for us and in the end for Somalia, and on balance he is far more representative of his community than the nutters who get in the papers.

172. Discussion of The God Delusion

Comment #18144 by jonecc on January 18, 2007 at 3:10 pm

With regard to the discussion about the cultural legacy of religion:

I'm sure we all hope Bach will continue to be sung in cathedrals. That is what the Church of England will be for. After the demise of theism, they can be responsible for the continuation of the musical and architectural heritage. Frankly, a lot of them are nearly there already.

And the cultural themes will survive. I'm listening to a Russian Orthodox choir on CD at the moment, and it reminds me more than anything of the kind of thing Communists used to sing when they ran Russia. The biggest danger to the cultural heritage of religion isn't cultured atheism, it's Big Brother and the inanities of mediated culture.

173. Can Jews and Evangelicals Get Along?

Comment #18131 by jonecc on January 18, 2007 at 1:36 pm

Whether mainstream Evangelism is or is not theocratic in the same way as sharia law is a matter of debate. In practice they certainly like to sit on the President's shoulder if they can.

There are, though, overt Christian theocrats. Their beliefs are known as dominion theology, and there is a summary of their beliefs here.

http://www.biblicist.org/bible/dominion.shtml

Notice in particular the idea of the death penalty for adultery, homosexuality and blasphemy. Charming.

174. Christian Shrine Needs Two Exits, Israel Says

Comment #17880 by jonecc on January 17, 2007 at 7:57 am

The problem for the theists' point of view is that this is all happening in the middle of a theological and political war zone. The eastern and western Christians have been squabbling since Roman times, and the Eastern Orthodox churches still haven't got over the Catholic sacking of Constantinople in 1205. On top of that, the colonisation of Palestine by European and American settlers has been given a theistic interpretation by the naive. This whole squabble over health and safety is as if the Chinese had interfered in the battle of the Somme to point out to both sides that their trench systems had inadequate damp proofing.