201. Teen's death blamed on faith healing

Comment #196661 by Lucas on June 20, 2008 at 10:04 am

comment 11 - Hey, marv78rpm, go fuck yourself. Back off my state. I wasn't even born there, nor do I live there now, but back off nonetheless. Need I point out the stupidity of blaming the actions of the Followers of Christ on the state they live in? Wasn't there a problem in Minnesota recently? Splice in any geographic location and you would be wrong, and you would also be pissing off the people who live there or love the place. And as I've repeated many times, and apparently need to keep repeating, there is not a more affable and intellectually comfortable place for atheists in the US than Oregon. It's just too bad the economy sucks.

202. Kenneth Miller on Colbert Report

Comment #195467 by Lucas on June 18, 2008 at 9:27 am

Colbert is indeed a practicing and fully believing Catholic, or at least that is what he says when NOT playing his public persona. (Look for the NPR interview from 2005). I also think he is a highly intelligent man with a top notch bullshit-o-meter. I would venture his religiosity is probably more complex than any of us can conjecture.

203. Reverse Engineering The Brain To Model Mind-body Interactions

Comment #192584 by Lucas on June 13, 2008 at 1:14 pm

Ran across this a couple days ago. Seems to indicate that brain deterioration is perhaps less powerful than we think. Am I wrong? Is there indeed some sort of specific loss of cells, proteins, synapses, dendrites, etc. that are normal and not environmentally created? I guess what I mean is, given the ability to, say, grow a new body and transplant an old brain into it, would the brain cease to function just because it is old?

"115-year-old Woman's Brain in Tip-Top Shape"

http://www.livescience.com/health/080609-oldest-brain.html

204. From Big Bang to Us - Made Easy

Comment #192580 by Lucas on June 13, 2008 at 12:56 pm

First one is great. Especially liked that last line. I appreciate the condensing of this information, not just because it simplifies it for the layman, but because it is dense and quick, without filler. I don't feel like I'm being spoken to like a child as I do with most science documentaries. No BS here, just facts, explained lucidly.

205. Unlike Others, U.S. Defends Freedom to Offend in Speech

Comment #192265 by Lucas on June 12, 2008 at 3:43 pm

Peace - Nah, I sort of thought you were kidding. Almost deleted my post, but I figured I'd leave it in case somebody actually did think otherwise.

206. Intelligent people 'less likely to believe in God'

Comment #192261 by Lucas on June 12, 2008 at 3:37 pm

7Fred7 - "I imagine that would be unlikely to be picked up in a standard survey. " Absolutely, and that's why standard surveys do us almost no good. I do encourage everyone to do that UCCS thing on the Featured page, though. The more data the better, even if there are flaws in the methodology. Of course, as I've pointed out before, the religious make-up of Colorado Springs is quite interesting. You gotta wonder who these professors actually are. See "Religion and Public Life in the Mountain West: Sacred Landscapes in Transition" by Jan Shipp et al.

207. Intelligent people 'less likely to believe in God'

Comment #192245 by Lucas on June 12, 2008 at 3:21 pm

mordacious1 - Black Bolt in fact has no voice; or rather, his whisper can shatter worlds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Bolt

I've considered changing the avatar to my real face, as Black Bolt looks particularly arrogant in this drawing by Moebius, but I figure we all learn about each other in some oblique way by the avatars we choose. We might learn more by seeing each other's actual faces, but then again maybe not.

As far as the discussion goes, I just think we should all be more careful about writing off religious believers as either crazy or stupid. There are just too many counter-examples. That doesn't mean that ignorance and mental imbalance don't help encourage the acceptance of absurd belief, but there must be something more to it. I've angled my work to try to figure out what this something is, but I don't expect any clear results anytime soon. I once said to my friend something like, "All religion is caused by epileptics, schizophrenics, junkies, and conmen." This was a gross over-simplification, and while I still think it's sort of true, as I was speaking about messiahs and leaders, not followers, I think it ignores the fact that some totally sane, sober, honest people have religious experiences, visions, etc., and they communicate those. Outright derision, and blowing it all off as crazy and stupid, cuts us off from further fruitful inquiry.

208. Intelligent people 'less likely to believe in God'

Comment #192184 by Lucas on June 12, 2008 at 2:27 pm

Well, that's all very nice, but this guy has proven nothing. It is FAR more complex than he presents it. The religious = stupid, or ignorant, or uneducated argument holds a kernel of truth, but over-simplifying does not help us reach the actual answer. There are lots of correlations and causes, but there has simply not been enough work done to make any conclusions. Gallup polls are almost meaningless to the larger question here.

209. Unlike Others, U.S. Defends Freedom to Offend in Speech

Comment #192175 by Lucas on June 12, 2008 at 2:14 pm

"Is it really as simple as that? Only masser can have a gun, not the cotton picker?"

Awfully predictable and petty reaction. From what I can tell, Al is just stating the facts, with no judgment, racist or otherwise, implied. There are of course myriad social reasons that explain these facts, but I'm not an expert, so I'll leave it. Sufficed to say, all sorts of historical injustices have indeed occurred, but even with complete sympathy and empathy toward those causes and the victims of such injustices, usually one dude shooting another has nothing to do with anything other than greed or rage, neither of which are excused by social ills.

210. Unlike Others, U.S. Defends Freedom to Offend in Speech

Comment #192130 by Lucas on June 12, 2008 at 1:31 pm

"compensate Muslims for injuring their 'dignity, feelings and self-respect.' "

The waaaaaambulance is on its way! Waah! Waah!

EDIT: Peace, you got to it first. I guess "ditto" will do.

al and FF - Yup. Spot on, both of you.

211. Godless

Comment #192118 by Lucas on June 12, 2008 at 1:15 pm

The Obama video is great. If he stuck to that, we'd all be happy. It's too bad he has to, or feels he has to, pander to the believers. There are parts of this speech that the most fervent would object to, but I think most believers would be okay with what he said. They would do well to realize that they would all benefit from this attitude toward religion.

EDIT: Also, I'm happy to let him say a bunch of pandering crap to get into office, as long as he actually operates according to the ideas in this speech.

212. The 14-year-old Afghan suicide bomber

Comment #192101 by Lucas on June 12, 2008 at 12:53 pm

FF- "If these people voluntarily choose to live in the 7th Century, there isn't much we can do about it. This is the price you pay for imposing democracy on a society that isn't ready for it."

Absolutely right.

213. The 14-year-old Afghan suicide bomber

Comment #191107 by Lucas on June 10, 2008 at 8:14 am

bucketchemist - Yeah, okay, maybe I was being a little bit extreme, but I really didn't mean that literally. It was a purposefully provocative phrase. But killing people that brainwash children into murdering themselves and others seems fair, and is definitely not the same kind of "evil." If you consider all killing of humans to be equally bad, no matter the circumstance, then there is no point in arguing this any further.

al-rawandi - We're on the same page here, I think. I was just exaggerating. Although, have you seen the new Rambo movie? That thing Rambo does to the Myanmar soldier who is about to rape the missionary lady? I would do that to these guys. Seriously. There are some people who are so despicable and detrimental to other living creatures that they should be simply removed from the population. But I think bombing and major warfare is just too imprecise and costly.

214. The 14-year-old Afghan suicide bomber

Comment #191019 by Lucas on June 10, 2008 at 5:52 am

"The mullahs who groomed him are guilty of a child abuse that is every bit as bad as the sexual abuse perpetrated by most pedophiles." I'd say it's far, far worse, actually. Coercing children to murder involves both child abuse and conspiracy to murder, and leads to the death of the child and many others. This poor kid. He is guilty of nothing. He was used and abused and threatened into a course of action he clearly was not interested in himself. Punishing him for attempted murder would be like punishing child sex slaves in Thailand for prostitution, as if their actions are in any way their own fault.

Am I right that given the information the kid has, our soldiers over there could go find these two Mullah jackasses, gut them like pigs, and disband the school? What have we been doing over there for the past 7 years if this is still going on? Does it not make sense, in the interest of saving lives, to go to the source?

215. Trailer for Religulous

Comment #190827 by Lucas on June 9, 2008 at 4:33 pm

lozzer - "I like Maher but i wish he didn't support the terrorist organization PETA." Okay now that is just a fucking retarded thing to say. Some of you seem to be taking your "sciencism" a little too dogmatically. It is perfectly reasonable to be opposed to medical testing on animals. Personally, I don't like when people hurt animals either, but I recognize the usefulness of medical testing for my future immortality as a weird nano-cyborg. So be it. I do think its a little odd to treat animals worse than humans. What Bill Maher thinks about this subject is about as relevant to his atheist activism as the kind of porn he prefers. Read the ad hominem article. Do like your avatar there, though.

Soilworker - Ha ha!

Nova - Who do you work for? In what delusional reality do you live in that pharmaceutical companies DON'T profit from deception and bribery? Generally, I'm very happy with all the wonderful drugs there are, but there are indeed quite a few that are harmful or useless or worse, and sold to over-medicated rubes who look for all their answers in pill form.

216. Couple charged in Norway over genital mutilation of daughters

Comment #190345 by Lucas on June 8, 2008 at 11:00 pm

RamziD - There are occasional "sea of glass" statements on this page, and they are usually heavily denounced. We tend not to let people get away with saying stupid things like that, or anything stupid, like your original comment. You have a very small, tiny point, and a point worth noting, but you're totally being too sensitive in this instance, unless you were commenting on more than the posts on this article. No amount of petulant "oh, I used the wrong word, you nit-pickers" bullshit gets you out of playing the race card so stupidly. Most of everything else you have to say is fine, but that was a stupendously lame and offensive remark, so show some humility and stop sounding like a wounded teenager. We should of course be ever-vigilant in our watch for xenophobia and racism, especially when it is mixed in with other more rational attitudes. But crying wolf helps no one.

On another note, when I was doing work in Africa in 2004, I actually had a number of my non-African colleagues spout that cultural relativist crap about FGM. I was astounded, and their moral weakness disgusted me. That said, I bailed out of there partially because I was very agitated and confused about my reaction to some of the more horrifying cultural realities. I decided that there was a line to be drawn, and that one should neither impose one's moral system entirely nor assume that a different system is okay out of respect for different cultures. Some things are just not okay to do, and I became more and more vocal about that as I lived there, putting me in some danger, given that I was supposed to blend in, not antagonize. But when you see five young children giggling with glee while stoning a stray dog to death in a pit, or hear of your neighbor raping his 9-year-old daughter, you damn well have a right to say, "No! You cannot do this. You must be punished for this." If you do not act on this, you are weak, and worse, you are complicit.

217. Albinos, Long Shunned, Face Threat in Tanzania

Comment #190332 by Lucas on June 8, 2008 at 10:12 pm

So the question, then, is: should these witchdoctors be held accountable for encouraging traffic in human body parts? I suppose that kind of depends on whether the witchdoctor in question is purposefully deceiving people in order to profit from murder, or if he/she honestly believes in what they tell people. Are they just con artists or do they really think they are helping? Does it matter? How can we even know? There are more benign effects and uses of witchdoctor magic than this one, but even then people are being deceived. Should the believers be held accountable for their gullibility? They are rubes, but not just rubes; murdering rubes.

If the Tanzanian government really wants to protect albinos, it will search out and put out of business these witchdoctors. They are not hard to find; I've met a few. If they really want to protect albinos, they will publicly and loudly discourage superstitious belief. But there are many, many reasons why they will do neither, not the least of which is the cognitive dissonance between "albino parts are not magical" and all the other crap they DO believe.

218. A word for nonbelievers

Comment #189655 by Lucas on June 6, 2008 at 10:35 pm

Well done. This is what we should all be doing. Let's do it!

219. Hints of 'time before Big Bang'

Comment #189650 by Lucas on June 6, 2008 at 10:27 pm

The universe does too have boarders! Millions of us! But of course it has no borders...

sorry...

Otherwise, dragonfirematrix, yes. You're freakin' on it. Humbling thoughts, eh?

"Hey, folks, just a little humor for what is likely to be the reality of the universe and our existence. " - Can I use that for the title of a book?

220. Hints of 'time before Big Bang'

Comment #189609 by Lucas on June 6, 2008 at 4:43 pm

Steve, your bread metaphor is awesome. I really like the idea of infinite, eternal, multidirectional expansion, and the multiverse being kind of squishy and constantly moving. I guess what I was saying above could be said as: universes could be kind of like cookies on a baking sheet when you don't space them out enough and they expand and merge into each other.

221. Hints of 'time before Big Bang'

Comment #189576 by Lucas on June 6, 2008 at 2:25 pm

"Their model suggests that new universes could be created spontaneously from apparently empty space. "

I've been saying things like this for years. Glad they finally have some data to back up the idea. I think I've gone into the eternally exploding multiple universes thing before, but basically, yes, universes come out of apparently nothing. However, they do come from something, probably dark matter or other invisible forces, or from the collision of parts from different universes. There is no big crunch, nor is there any singularity. (Spot on, Steve, spot on.) Time is linear, to some degree, and space is infinite in every direction. There is no void, really, but there is probably a finite amount of matter and energy. Maybe not, though. Each universe may expand to the point of going cold and disapating, without contact with any other extra-universal matter or energy, depending on how much space there is inbetween expanding universes. The flat answer to what happened before the big bang is likely just what happened after, and has and will over and over again eternally. Matter and energy just change shape. It's like an endless fireworks show in space, where the space itself creates the explosions.

222. The Great Evangelical Decline

Comment #188834 by Lucas on June 4, 2008 at 6:08 pm

Squinky - Mmm, I don't think so, actually. Check out the ARIS survey and the various articles that have been written based on its findings. Sure looks like atheism (or the term I prefer, non-belief) is on the rise. I think that a lot of the distortion in perspective around here comes from geographical location. When you're in the middle of a super religious region, it's hard to see how it's declining.

liberalartist - Of course we shouldn't just stand by. I said as much. Personally, I'm gearing for one of those postdoc positions at the NCSE in a few years to see if I can't do something to help spread good science education.

Christine - Hang out a bit, there'll be plenty of profanity. Where's Diacanu when we need him?

FightingFalcon - Thank you, sir.

223. Darwin still causing waves after 150 years

Comment #188724 by Lucas on June 4, 2008 at 12:24 pm

JLD - I believe Prof. Coyne has worked/is working on this, and...

kaiser - His stress of "accept" over "believe" in his lecture was indeed right on.

224. The Great Evangelical Decline

Comment #188719 by Lucas on June 4, 2008 at 12:16 pm

"What all this means is that we were duped."

I don't know if I've said it here, but I've been trying to argue this basic point for a couple of years now. The success of the Bush administration and vocalness of the Evangelicals has created an overblown perception of their power and influence. I have definitely said it here recently that all our worrying and whining about creationism is similarly overblown. The reality is that we have three key advantages: there are more of us, we are smarter than they are (not inherently, but in terms of education and knowledge base), and, fortunately, we're right. They really don't stand a chance. That's not to say we should become lax in our defense of evolutionary science or the principles of western enlightenment, but we do often seem a little overly reactionary and paranoid. Don't worry. We're winning these arguments, despite the loudness of some of our opponents. Consider this phenomenon more like the bleat of a dying sheep than a call to arms; they are desperate, because they understand that they're losing even better than we do.

225. Sun's properties not 'fine-tuned' for life

Comment #183658 by Lucas on May 22, 2008 at 12:34 pm

It's all very clear to me now, Don Quix.

226. Kenya mob reportedly burns 11 'witches'

Comment #183638 by Lucas on May 22, 2008 at 11:59 am

When I was living in Malawi, I made a joke about how I could probably convince people in my village that I was a powerful sorcerer. It wasn't funny. I was warned with extreme seriousness to NOT do that, as another American had done so once and was harassed and driven out of his village. Apparently it took some time for him to figure out what he had said to cause all the problems; then he had to leave the country.

I also talked at length with a witchdoctor and watched him perform an exorcism on a woman who was bedeviled by the demons of alcoholism. There is a very long anthropological history to all this, probably from the first time an ape ate a mushroom. All of this is pretty typical tribal religion. The scapegoating of the elderly serves a social purpose in that it allows the tribe/village to focus all their problems into one physical form, and then destroy it, thus destroying their problems. It is also a way of culling the herd of its weakest members. Are there any anthropologists out there that care to explain further?

I would caution against taking such a negative view of traditional African religion, though. Yes, it is equally stupid and incorrect as any other religion, and there are plenty of examples of misguided, ferocious violence. But you cannot look at a superstitious African villager the same way as you can a creationist from Arkansas. There is a difference between following along with your stone age society without any opportunity or knowledge to know any better and the willful ignorance within a modern society shown by religious crazies in the west. Example: I mentioned dinosaurs to my language teacher, who had a college degree and spoke perfect English, and he was blown away. He had never heard of them. I drew a bunch of cartoons and explained the timeline and what their names were and all that, and he still didn't believe me. When I explained that the skeletons of these giant lizard monsters were still in the earth all around us, he laughed and insisted I was pulling his leg. The point is that no one had ever mentioned dinosaurs to this fairly intelligent man before. Ever. That is very different from people who have been learning about dinosaurs from grade school, have access to the internet, and then deny paleontology.

227. Proving ID is Creationism

Comment #183255 by Lucas on May 21, 2008 at 3:52 pm

Good video. Never hurts to hear more detail and have more ammo.

One thing, though - and I mean no disrespect to anyone here - but I'm getting really sick of the use of the word "IDiots." It annoys me almost as much as "New Atheists" and is equally useless as a descriptor. Really. Sort of clever to begin with, not so much anymore, and it seems to often take the place of saying something substantive. And its a lame insult at that. Anyone with me on this?

228. Non-religious summer camps develop niche

Comment #182475 by Lucas on May 20, 2008 at 8:00 am

Sounds good to me. I'm going to send the link to my mom and see if my little brother can go as a field test (we are very far apart in age). Meanwhile, I'd like to witness these camps in action. I wonder if I can get a job with them and/or get a grant to observe them and interview the kids and counselors. This could take a couple years, but I'll let you all know if I can come up with something more nuanced than the above article.

229. 'Spiritual' dentist fined $10,000

Comment #180165 by Lucas on May 14, 2008 at 10:06 am

I had one of my most mystical experiences ever at the dentist's office one time. It involved a whole hell of a lot of nitrus oxide and a cheesy poster of a polar bear stapled to the ceiling. I became that polar bear, man. It was wild.

230. The Neural Buddhists

Comment #180150 by Lucas on May 14, 2008 at 9:24 am

David Brooks is almost always wrong. I do not respect him very much. And while there is much to argue with in this article, his most basic, general point strikes me as right on. He's got the details all jumbled up and clearly comes from a limited perspective, but I think there is indeed room for a type of 'mystical atheism.' Okay, so twenty of you just spat flames, I know. Your instincts are good, because if I heard that term from anyone other than myself or Sam Harris, I'd think it was New Age bullshit too. I'm quite familiar with Deepak Chopra and his ilk, and the various attempts to merge spirituality with pseudo-science. It's crap. BUT, what I mean is something else entirely, and while I'm not sure I mean anything close to what David Brooks means to say, he does seem to have picked up on something that may be related.

Now, exactly what do I mean by 'mystical atheism'? Well, it's hard to parse out; I've only been thinking about it for a few days. It does not in any way, even in a very loose New Age way, suggest the existence of the supernatural. Nor does it intend to suggest, as Brooks does, that changes in brain chemistry amount to anything other than physical processes. But the hardline atheism we tend to talk around here is unnecessarily strict and closed. The term has come to mean, at least to our detractors, something close minded and unwilling to recognize the mystery of the unknown and the human experience of the numinous. Of course, what we don't know could be anything, and I encourage imaginative ideas about what might be out there (or in there, or in-between there), but without lazily falling into superstition. There is indeed a numinous feeling attainable by humans, and this is most definitely attained by the proper coaxing of the brain, with mediation, LSD, or whatever. So what I hope to mean by 'mystical atheism' is a clear recognition of the falsehood of all religion and superstition merged with an acceptance of mystery and transcendental experience. I think. I would also add that from my understanding of mysticism, most mystics, openly or not, tend not to believe literally in whatever mythical structure they use for their mystical practices. The highest and most practiced Taoists, Kabbalists, and Sufis, know darn well there is no god or gods. That's the difference between mystics and priests (to put it very, perhaps overly, simply).

I'm just floating this out there for a test run to see what you all think.

231. Childish superstition: Einstein's letter makes view of religion relatively clear

Comment #179551 by Lucas on May 13, 2008 at 11:45 am

RD - Do you think you could buy this letter and have it scanned and posted here?


Colwyn - The two creation accounts were written by two different people, or groups of people, at different times. (This is why we need more education in the history of religion.) That's why you get no answer from theists; as far as they're concerned, God wrote it.

232. Atheists are nice people who will roast in hell, says Cardinal

Comment #177803 by Lucas on May 9, 2008 at 6:02 pm

So he'll just let us go to hell and not bother us until then? Awesome. That is a perfectly fair compromise. That should be our new slogan: We're going to hell anyway, just ignore us.

Don Quix - There is a beer volcano, so I'm told. And a stripper factory.

233. My Response to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Comment #177678 by Lucas on May 9, 2008 at 1:16 pm

John Galt - Exactly how much power God and Satan have has always been a logical problem for believers. If God is omnipotent, why is there suffering? Can't he just make it stop? Or is Satan the source of the suffering? Isn't God more powerful than Satan? This is only the tip of the iceberg. It gets worse. I do not encourage you to read much of the biblical exegesis on this point, as it is mind-numbingly stupid, but it's out there, and if you wish, go for it.

I would, however, take a look at the Gnostic Gospels, in particular the Gospel of John (I think, its been awhile). You'll find that in 1st century Egypt many Christians believed in a complex pantheon of various gods, angels, demons, powers, and principalities. If I remember correctly, God created Satan - and some others, Sophia (Wisdom), at least - and then Satan created the earth. So, yeah.

234. My Response to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Comment #177669 by Lucas on May 9, 2008 at 1:03 pm

fides - Yeah, you make good points. But there is something very annoying about people who paint a giant target on their back, always face that target towards everyone, outline it in highlighter, and then get pissed when someone offends them. "Never tell anyone your weaknesses. They will use them against you," said some famous badass who I can't remember. I mean, I've got soft spots, but I'm not about to announce them, much less constantly remind everyone of them. It's deliberate victimhood.

Let's look at three examples. African Americans don't like the "N" word, rightly so. They are offended if someone who is not black uses it in their presence, rightly so. I'm white, and I'M offended if I ever hear that. How many people use the "N" word to the faces of black folks? Very, very few. Why? Well, we could say because racism is gone, or we could be honest and say they would get their asses kicked, by the black person and everyone around them. Freedom of speech; freedom of come uppance; all good. Jews don't like Hitler, rightly so. They are offended if someone mentions him in their presence, rightly so. How many people bring up Hitler with the Jews? A few. Why? Because, while they will probably not get their asses kicked, they will be shunned and ostracized by anyone who hears of it. Muslims don't like cartoon of Muhammed. Rightly so? They kill people when they draw cartoons of Muhammed. Rightly so? Almost no one draws cartoons of Muhammed and mails them directly to Muslim extremists. Why? They may very well blow up your hometown or hunt you down and kill you. Do you see my point? There are different levels of offense, with different levels of righteousness, and different levels of response. Shall we then curb our speech based on how much violence we may get in retaliation? Well, I suppose, but that's not a precedent I'd want to set. If you use the "N" word, you're an idiot, a racist, and a asshole. If you mention Hitler to Jews, you're just an asshole. If you draw Muhammed, you're... a cartoonist?

"If consequences dictate your course of action, I should play God and just shoot you myself." - Tool

235. My Response to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Comment #177555 by Lucas on May 9, 2008 at 9:43 am

Ian - I agree with your points, good of you to make them, but like screeching, bad punctuation and grammar doesn't help one's argument much. Take more care. You actually forgot a verb here and there, and ended questions with periods.

Almost all 120 posts so far were agreeable, so I won't say anything specific to any one of them. I will say that I am unimpressed with anyone using Hitler as a rhetorical tactic, and am disappointed in Richard. But his point was solid. It was an astute comment, and I know it was purposefully provocative, but I think the tactic is below him; I do not agree with some here who suggest it is okay to lower ourselves to the level of debate of our ignorant opponents. Yes, they throw the Hitler crap at us all the time, but we cannot criticize them for it and then do it. I know it feels good to sling the crap back, but we lose out. That said, fuck the hypersensitivity of Jews to the mention of the name Hitler, for so many reasons. 1) He killed more than just Jews, so they should really stop laying exclusive claim to the horrors of the Holocaust, 2) Many, many other genocidal acts have occurred, before and since, including the extermination of Palestinians by Israeli settlers, 3) This sympathy card has been played far too many times, and we should no longer tolerate it. I don't want to be so callous as to say, "Get over it!" I have spoken personally to survivors of the Holocaust. I would not insult or disrespect them in any way, for any reason. But I am fucking sick and tired of Israelis, rabbis, and other pieces of shit pulling out the Holocaust as their get-out-of-anything card. They disgrace the survivors, the dead, and their memory by doing so.

All that aside, I'm all for using whatever weapons we have against the believers. If Jews don't like to be reminded of Hitler, I want to paint little mustaches on every Palestinian child they kill. If Muslims don't like cartoons of their prophet, I want a feature length fully animated movie of his life.If Christians are afraid of satan, I want pentagrams on every surface.

Okay, I just had a vision of a 20-foot animatronic Muhammed with a Hitler mustache and a pentagram carved into its forehead. With glowing red eyes. Heh. Equal opportunity offense.

236. Museums teach society lacking in science literacy

Comment #174109 by Lucas on May 1, 2008 at 4:36 pm

EDIT

237. Museums teach society lacking in science literacy

Comment #173734 by Lucas on May 1, 2008 at 7:30 am

I worked at OMSI in Portland, OR for about a year, though sadly, only in the Science Store. I must say it did feel good to see the kids out there learning science, and I used to smoke out back with a biologist who ran some of the bio exhibits. He was always so psyched about making new stuff for the kids to learn from. My only criticism, which I think is widely applicable, is that some of the museum was a little too low-brow, aimed at toddlers, such that 12-yr-olds were bored. It was, and is, too much like a children's museum. Which have their purposes, no doubt, but I often felt like the most science those kids were learning was from the books and games and models and toys I was selling their parents to take home. It was particularly satisfying when parents came in at X-mas and spent $200 on science-learning gifts. How's that for subversion of religious holidays?

238. Religion a figment of human imagination

Comment #171638 by Lucas on April 28, 2008 at 4:32 pm

This is all totally right on. It seems a bit obvious to me, but I'm happy to get some anthropologists on my side. There is indeed a point at which we were physiologically able to imagine, though I think the slow evolution of this occurrence is missed when you think of it as a sudden, single event. I have a theory about what I call 'powerful fictions', but I'll spare you all. It goes along quite nicely with the article above.

Mitchell - You're correct to stress language, and the mental abilities of animals are often underestimated, but I would be careful also of overestimating them. Most creatures on earth are significantly less mentally developed; that is a fact. A few, like whales and dolphins and chimps and elephants, may be awful close to what we can do. "Good luck, and thanks for all the fish!" and all that, sure. But this article is not really about animals. It's about humans, and most likely different groups of humans that evolved at slightly different rates, allowing some to produce art and imaginative stories, as well as lie, con, and grift, at an earlier time. Who do you think won out? Who do you think took advantage of who? It may be that we have since been divided very generally in to the tellers and the listeners. Those of us here interested in the origin of religion should be paying very close attention to this period of human development. Again, I'll mention the bi-cameral mind thing. There may be a link here.

239. Science leads to killing people

Comment #170970 by Lucas on April 28, 2008 at 7:40 am

Wow, what crap. But Stein is not the first celebrity to go bat shit with this stuff. Ever see Kirk Cameron, or MC Hammer, or Chuck Norris, or... Mr. T? I mean, the first two are lame, but those second two are awesome! And yet I've seen them on TV saying the same kind of shit Stein just did. Let's spread our disgust around equally.

(I love you Mr. T. I'm sorry.)

240. Soldier Sues Army, Saying His Atheism Led to Threats

Comment #170592 by Lucas on April 27, 2008 at 8:51 pm

Comment #62 - DamnDirtyApe - Yes, you're on to something there. Rumsfeld and Richard Perle, and a few others, I think, were thinking along those lines, so I heard. There may be no evidence for that though, could just be crackpot, but it does make some sense.

Everybody check out these guys:
www.atheistfoxholes.org/speeches.php

The speeches they have transcribed here are great. I've quoted them in research papers.

My best friend was in a submarine many years ago, and his bunkmate (the dude who used the same bunk while my buddy was awake) found some horror stories (werewolves and cannibals, etc.) and some death metal lyrics (about satan, torture, etc.) in my friend's stuff. He showed them to the chaplain. The chaplain sent my friend to shore for psychiatric evaluation, so he decided he'd had enough of the Navy and pretending to be a baby-eating satanist. He was honorably discharged, to his great joy.

My other buddy was a captain in Iraq round about 2004 or so, and the thing he hated most was the dumb ass evangelicals under his command. You should hear him curse those guys. He's an outspoken man of great size and volume, and, just the opposite of the major in this article, he berated them endlessly whenever they brought up Jesus or God. But then, I'm sure he berated them endlessly about all manner of things.

Some of you have brought up the Air Force. There is a point here worth investigating. Colorado is an interesting state, somewhat starkly half atheist/half fundamentalist Christian. Guess where the Air Force base is? I'm hoping to do some research there, and the Air Force aspect is something I'll have to make a point of looking into. I'd love to hear from anyone here who may have Air Force experience. Also, if anyone has seen A Guy Named Joe with Spencer Tracy... heh. Heaven is the Air Force. God is a general. The pilots are angels.

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

Comment #169261 by Lucas on April 25, 2008 at 4:48 pm

Mould, too. Yes. And lots of other creatures. Apes are just pretty close comparatively.

The creationists problem is not the inability to grasp all this if they were well educated on the subject. It is that their religion codifies an ancient human psychological need: to think of ourselves as above or better than all the other creatures. This may in fact have some evolutionary basis, in that it may have been a psychological necessity so that we could justify killing and eating other creatures (all of this, of course, once we'd developed enough to give a shit.)

242. Mount Vernon schools to hire investigator in Bible case

Comment #169253 by Lucas on April 25, 2008 at 4:43 pm

I'm with ebugogo. This guy must submit to the children he branded branding him with pentagrams. I'll do it myself if they'd rather not smell his flesh.

243. Humans nearly wiped out 70,000 years ago, study says

Comment #169231 by Lucas on April 25, 2008 at 4:26 pm

So then, we could have massive nuclear holocaust, leave a couple thousand alive, and bounce back? Well, things are looking up!

Bonzai - You forget us spacefaring folk will also be cloning ourselves, extending our lives and/or becoming cyborgs.

mikethebike - Fully agree, that's what's needed. Will they fund it? No.

95% now. Ha ha we win.

244. Student's 'Be Happy, Not Gay' t-shirt ok

Comment #168588 by Lucas on April 25, 2008 at 8:16 am

I'm a big fan of wearing whatever slogan you wish on your t-shirt, although unfortunately I think this instance exposes a double standard. I can't remember exactly, but there have been many cases where kids have not been able to wear shirts that were far less bigoted. Anybody care to look those up? I have to get to work.


And like I've said before, I'm all for free speech, but it ends where my fist begins -- the Die Hard 2 example -- so I just hope there is someone in that school with the inclination to beat the shit out of that twerp.

245. Lynchings in Congo as penis theft panic hits capital

Comment #167594 by Lucas on April 24, 2008 at 7:29 am

Nighttripper - No, King Missile. See the link provided above for the video.

emmet and irate - Spot on indeed. Africa was a turning point for me. I was trained as a sociologist and anthropologist and historian of religion; we are not to interfere or discourage, merely observe and catalogue. I came away from the place with a bit more salt. Just as the Scottish missionaries had saved them from paganism before me, it seemed that I or someone else should try to save them from both their own tribal religion and the white man's religion that had been forced upon them. The syncritism was fascinating. I almost felt a need to be like an atheist missionary, educating with science, combating superstition. But that rubs me wrong somehow. Who am I to decide what is best for them to believe? Who am I to crush their dreams of salvation while they starve to death and die of AIDS?

246. Lynchings in Congo as penis theft panic hits capital

Comment #166974 by Lucas on April 23, 2008 at 2:20 pm

Can't believe it took me to say this, but...

De-TACH-able PE-nis, da da dun dun, da da dun dun (etc.)

Am I the only one that remembers that song?

More seriously, when I lived in Africa I had a very long talk with my two friends Mack and Mavuto, natives, about the witch that fell out of the sky naked and cursed the village. Without being too mean, I tried to explain to them why this clearly had not happened. When they claimed to be eyewitnesses, I asked them for a description of the witch and the night in question. They, of course, had no details. My mission there was to convince them that condoms would stop them from getting AIDS (Mack and Mavuto were engaged in this effort as well), and this was almost impossible, as their religious folk had told them condoms would make them impotent, or, indeed, their penises would fall off. I got nowhere by trying to explain the AIDS virus to people who have never been told what blood or cells are. These folks, my adopted people, were not stupid. They were simply uneducated, and had been duped by only slightly smarter priests, of both the Catholic and native variety. I don't know which is worse. It seems that in that country, maybe converting to Christianity was a step up, because at least the Christian Africans thought rape and murder were bad things to do, unlike most others.

247. Responses to 'Gods and Earthlings' by Richard Dawkins

Comment #166005 by Lucas on April 22, 2008 at 4:53 pm

Steve, you're taking a hard line, but you're essentially right. Stryer, you're essentially right as well. I think you guys are talking about different kinds of discussions, though, in different contexts.

I'll use myself as an example. Like I said, I'm no scientist, but I read or watch whatever the scientists put into a form my humanities-educated brain can understand. Many of my friends are scientists. I love positing ideas to them based on my lay understanding so that they can explain what's wrong with it. I don't pretend to have a detailed grasp of physics or biology, but I get the basics and have been educated on these subjects both formally and informally.

All of this allows me to make fairly good guesses about stuff like the structure of the cosmos, but I will of course always defer to the experts. I would never dare tell a physicist he was wrong unless I'd worked the problem out for myself using the same science.

So there are different catgories here. Yes, Steve, people with no science knowledge, or even those with some but not a lot like me, should not really be involved in serious discussions about objective reality. But less serious ones, like on this site, sure. We can all speculate, and we are free to ignore the speculations of those who are clearly unknowledgable.

I guess I would also just add that ya ain't gotta be a scientist, but its awful dumb to ignore and refute what they say. I for one am counting on those guys in labs and planetariums to provide me with a cyborg body and faster-than-light spaceship so that I may explore the universe (or multiverse) forever. Keep at it fellas! And ladies! (When I say guys, I mean gals, too.)

248. Responses to 'Gods and Earthlings' by Richard Dawkins

Comment #165925 by Lucas on April 22, 2008 at 3:38 pm

That one could derive comments such as these from the article RD wrote is simply amazing. Some people you just can't reach, no matter how simple you make it.

In my view, based on considerable lay and academic, but not professional, study of astrophysics and the cosmos, the universe is most likely both finite and infinite, both eternal and bound by time. It all kind of depends on what you mean by universe.

The difference between me and the folks above is that I base my theories on, to the best of my understanding, the actual, scientifically observable data. I make no claim to absolute truth or knowledge of reality, just a good solid guess that is ever-changing. Add a little sci-fi imagination, and there are all kinds of possibilities that are far more probable than any God of any kind. There's more likely a Galactus.

249. Pope's Views on Science Invoke Spirited Debate

Comment #165484 by Lucas on April 21, 2008 at 2:04 pm

Yikes, Darth Ratzinger is right. The guy actually kind of looks like Emperor Palpatine, especially the face he makes when he's torturing young Luke with lighting bolts. Man that's creepy.

250. Resentment Over Darwin Evolves Into a Documentary

Comment #165465 by Lucas on April 21, 2008 at 1:47 pm

Let me reiterate what someone else pointed out before: Ben Stein also was/is a supporter of Nixon and Kissinger. He really considers Kissinger to be a hero. He is bat-shit crazy. Does he actually believe all this crap? Yes. He is bat-shit crazy.

And I, for one, am done with this subject. It's over. We've beat it to death here. They've already managed to get far more attention than they deserve from us. They are pathetic and have no hope of winning this debate, so one final chuckle, and we should drop it. I won't be clicking on any more articles on this site that tell me more stupid shit about these morons. We've made a mountain out of a mole hill, and I'm prepared to bury it.