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Comments by Shuggy


251. The Only One in Step

Comment #57873 by Shuggy on July 21, 2007 at 6:59 pm

... isn't this still a form of the Appeal to Authority fallacy? Perhaps I've missed the point, but I can't see what intention this article has besides influencing a reader to believe in evolution by virtue of other people that believe in it.
You could take it that way, but try this: extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence, and he is demonstrating just how extraordinary this claim is, compared to the mainstream view.

252. Why I Believe Anti-Evangelism Is Wrong

Comment #57586 by Shuggy on July 20, 2007 at 3:22 am

What a straw person! Discussing beliefs, pointing out logical or internal fallacies or contradictions with fact, is not

... to take them through their religion and brick by brick tear down it's foundation. ... to strap them down, a la A Clockwork Orange, and force them to watch Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris videos until they see the light, hallelujah!
I don't even know anyone who wants to do those things. But "religious instruction" comes close to the reverse.

253. All the mistakes of the godly are merely metaphor

Comment #57572 by Shuggy on July 20, 2007 at 1:05 am

Imagine you found a population in the US where the majority of the people believed that 2+2=5
But people who believe in The Trinity believe that 1+1+1=1, from which 2+2=5 can readily be derived (as can any other proposition at all).

I've always wanted to ask someone like Meyers — or Dawkins, or Pinker — how much smarter he thinks he is than, let's say, Heraclitus or Socrates or Maimonides or Newton, who thought hard about religion and didn't dismiss it as nonsense.

Why would anyone think I regard myself as smarter than Newton?
Newton himself said (quoting Bernard of Chartres) "If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." so he would be the first to acknowledge that later scholars could see still further.

254. Is there an Artificial God?

Comment #57229 by Shuggy on July 18, 2007 at 3:54 pm

I love DNA too, and I was very pleased by the 4th age of sand, which sounded like it was going to be utter nonsense (or someone had misheard him) and proved to be something you and I are both right in the middle of - this one-to-several communication, which has the useful sorting feature that people reading are probably interested in what is being written - and you can't get much more self-referential than that.

255. Convict sues God for broken contract

Comment #57227 by Shuggy on July 18, 2007 at 3:36 pm

How can they say God not a person when S/He/It/They 's/'ve done all those Acts of God?

And how can they say S/He/It/They is/are not a person when Enron (I think it was) is?

256. Insurance for Sex Abuse: A policy tailor-made for the Catholic church

Comment #56958 by Shuggy on July 18, 2007 at 12:49 am

Russell Blackford wrote:

... the employer's vicarious liability is asserted. Remember that the Catholic Church itself is an abstraction; it's the individual priests who commit the acts. Therefore, liability has to be vicarious...

Of course it's vicarious. The Pope is the Vicar of Christ on Earth.

Reminds me of the oldie but goodie:

"To the woods, to the woods!"
"No no!"
"To the woods, to the woods!"
"My mother wouldn't like it!"
"Your mother's not going to get it."
"I'll tell the Vicar!"
"I am the Vicar."

Vicarious? - Nefarious!

257. Police plea on genital mutilation

Comment #55919 by Shuggy on July 12, 2007 at 9:43 pm

Morro:

Cultural reasons? Cultural reasons? God damn the liberal media! It's not the culture that encourages it, it's the RELIGION that encourages it.
No, not all FGM is Islamic, some in sub-Saharan Africa is tribal.

All three of your examples are of MISTAKES, though. A "successful" male circumcision is not anywhere near as extreme as a "successful" female circumsisions.
Not always. There is overlap between the worst of one and the least worst of the other. The surgery is never necessary. The practitioners all did their best. (I guess you could blame the babies for having the wrong kind of foreskin or the wrong kind of blood....) Here is a link to some "successful" circumcisions:
http://www.circumstitions.com/Botched.html

258. Police plea on genital mutilation

Comment #55657 by Shuggy on July 11, 2007 at 10:28 pm

Morro wrote:

Female genital excission is as follows:
The clitoris and inner labia are cut or carved, (occasionally scraped) away, and twine (consecrated holy twine!) is used to stitch the outer labia together. A small hole is bored just off to the side, to allow the flow of urine and blood, both from periods and from bleeding due to the excission. The girl is then bound at the legs for a period up to two weeks, in order to facilitate healing of the abominable wound that they've created. The upshot of this is that the vagina forms a mass of scar tissue that makes intercourse literally impossible, outside of extreme physical trauma, usually caused by either a knife, or extended periods of rough thrusting on the wedding night.

So yes. While male circumcision is an obscene religious blood sacrifice, it's nowhere NEAR on the level of female "circumcision."

You can't generalise. FGC isn't always that bad, MGC sometimes is. They're on two overlapping bell-shaped curves of severity. I've just been reading about a baby who lost half his glans in Florida
(http://www.circumstitions.com/Complic.html#mogen).
More recently, a boy died in Pakistan
(http://www.circumstitions.com/News26.html#pakistan)
another (non-religious, and as RD points out, babies don't have religions anyway) in Ottawa
(http://www.circumstitions.com/News25.html#death)
and scores of tribal boys die every year in Southern Africa.

When we're talking about human rights, why are we distinguishing between the sexes?

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

Comment #55652 by Shuggy on July 11, 2007 at 9:59 pm

Our current "morals" are therefore just a way station on the road. No sense getting really attached to them, right? When I am traveling, I don't get attached to motel rooms. I don't weep when I have to part from them. So, in the future, after every ferocious moral denunciation you choose to offer your reading public, you really need to add something like, "But this is just a provisional judgment. Our perspective may evolve to an entirely different one some years hence,"
It's an interesting concept, but the evolution of morals is the evolution of a memeplex, and it is under our conscious control, like the evolution of a car, or a computer or any other human creation. That means we are working to improve it, and we won't throw out any feature we find useful. Our morality isn't likely to evolve into parasitism or exploitation, like some of those species of which the male is now just a bag of gonads inside the female.

One way in which our morality has yet to improve, for example, is our treatment of animals, in keeping with their actual level of consciousness. Does Wilson think that when we do that, we will abandon the equality of the sexes or resume slavekeeping - to mention just a couple of issues on which religious morality was markedly deficient for millennia.

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

Comment #55650 by Shuggy on July 11, 2007 at 9:40 pm

robert s quote:


But here is some evidence for you, in no particular order.
The engineering that went into ankles.
Back to the argument from design are we? Who was the knucklehead who designed ankles to be so easily twisted?

Bees fooling around in the flower bed.
They're not fooling, if they don't work like little boggers, they die.

Forgiveness of sin.
Who made sin? As Hitchens says, the vicarious atonement is odious (as odious as whipping boys)

Joyous laughter (diaphragm spasms to the atheistic materialist).
What nonsense! You need to believe in a sky-fairy to enjoy laughing? What a peculiar religion you must have!

The peacock that lives in my yard.
Runaway sexual selection. He dollies himself up like that because he's "desperate" for (sexual) attention. If he doesn't, his line dies out. The fact that we like the look is a by-product.

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

Comment #55644 by Shuggy on July 11, 2007 at 8:57 pm

Is there such a thing as atheist hypocrisy? When another atheist makes different ethical choices than you do (as Stalin and Mao certainly did), is there an overarching common standard for all atheists that you are obeying and which they are not obeying? If so, what is that standard and what book did it come from? Why is it binding on them if they differ with you? And if there is not a common objective standard which binds all atheists, then would it not appear that the supernatural is necessary in order to have a standard of morality that can be reasonably articulated and defended?

I've heard something like this often in the past: "But if there's no God, no absolute standard of morality, how can you condemn Stalin/Hitler/Mao?" To which my answer (difficult to express concisely): "You and I have no difficulty condemning Stalin/Hitler/Mao, I because they broke the Golden Rule (and I know I wouldn't like what they did to be done to me), you because they broke the arbitrary rules of your God. But you seem to have a prior assumption that they must be condemned, and no doubt that I will agree, and I do. Why not just go with that?"

I don't think much of his expression of it, because
1. Who says it has to come from a book?
2. How does the supernatural help? All it means is that someone said "I had a vision, I was supernaturally prompted to proclaim/write." That doesn't make it so.

262. A force for evil?

Comment #55576 by Shuggy on July 11, 2007 at 2:57 pm

coretemprising wrote:

Any of you criticizing Grayling for any reason really really need to listen to the faith head who followed him, one Prof. Ramadan, to hear in action the difference between clarity and mud. What a bunch of convoluted nonsense from this supposedly educated individual. JesusMary&Joseph save us!
"Religion is the means to educate yourself." Gack!
By all means ask the webmeisteren to put it up somewhere we can see it. The thing is, we expect those people to talk nonsense, but we like our own to make themselves clear. JesusMary&Joseph? Still-recovering Catholic, are you?

263. A force for good?

Comment #55571 by Shuggy on July 11, 2007 at 2:47 pm

Why isn't Vallely telling the Bishop of Carlisle he believes in the wrong God?

264. A force for evil?

Comment #55392 by Shuggy on July 11, 2007 at 1:17 am

broshiesq:

What's easier, editing a pre-written passage or expressing it first yourself?
Editing it, of course, but so what? I didn't do it because it was easy, I did it to help me understand what he meant, and once I got it into my own words, I understand it much better.

Patte Lanus, whatever else it may be, an 89-word sentence containing six figures of speech is not "concise".

I should say that for the most part, he is very clear: his sentences, though long, flow logically from one idea to the next. And of course I agree with what he says.

265. A force for good?

Comment #55321 by Shuggy on July 10, 2007 at 3:15 pm

religion doesn't make better people, but it makes them better than they would be without it.
Since nothing has ever shown that religious people are better than others, doesn't that suggest that it is only people who are naturally worse than others who become religious, and religion has only succeeded in bringing them up to normality? Sounds like ethical Prozac.

Now I'd better have a look at the article itself.

266. A force for evil?

Comment #55319 by Shuggy on July 10, 2007 at 3:02 pm

That is the essence of the thing, no matter how slippery the gloss, how polysyllabic, how evasive and gestural, how cloaked in appeals to mystery and depth and the convenience of our own epistemic limitations, that theologians and apologists invoke in their continuous attempts to move the goalposts whenever they come into the firing line for holding what is, fundamentally, exactly the same kind of commitment - exactly the same intellectual delusion - as is involved in believing that there are pixies and gnomes lurking invisibly among the rhododendrons.

The pixies and gnomes and rhododendrons are far enough away from the goalposts and the firing line, but the goalposts and the firing line are too close together - they put me in mind of juntas executing people in stadia.

The thought is good, but he badly needs a good editor.

My rework:

"That is the essence of the thing that theologians and apologists invoke, no matter how slippery the gloss they put on it, no matter how polysyllabically they express it, no matter how evasive or gestural they are, no matter how they cloak it in appeals to mystery or depth or to the (convenient) limitations of our ability to explain it. They continuously attempt to move the goalposts whenever they are challenged, but fundamentally they hold exactly the same kind of commitment and suffer from exactly the same intellectual delusion as someone who believes pixies and gnomes lurk invisibly among the rhododendrons."

267. Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature

Comment #55020 by Shuggy on July 9, 2007 at 6:00 pm

Harvard anthropologist Frank Marlowe contends that larger, and hence heavier, breasts sag more conspicuously with age than do smaller breasts. Thus they make it easier for men to judge a woman's age (and her reproductive value) by sight—suggesting why men find women with large breasts more attractive.
If this were so, sagging breasts of any size should be unattractive and perky breasta of any size attractive: hence the uplift bra, I guess. But why should (heterosexual) men be so impressed by such a relatively indirect measure of age?

Alternatively, men may prefer women with large breasts for the same reason they prefer women with small waists. A new study of Polish women shows that women with large breasts and tight waists have the greatest fecundity, indicated by their levels of two reproductive hormones (estradiol and progesterone).
The leaves out the sexualisation of the breast in different cultures. Ironic isn't it, that cultures where breastfeeding is discounted and discouraged (such as ours) also seem to sexualise the breast (because men want what they didn't have as babies?) to the point of augmenting women's breasts by surgery at the expense of their ability to lactacte?

268. Won't anyone stand up for God?

Comment #55001 by Shuggy on July 9, 2007 at 4:26 pm

Duff:

Stephenray,
I thought the correct answer was; "because one leg is both shorter." And wasn't it: "what's the difference between a duck?"
No, definitely "One of its legs is both the same." But yes, a duck because ducks are (and the word "duck" is) inherently funny.

269. Physician, Heal Thyself

Comment #54993 by Shuggy on July 9, 2007 at 3:48 pm

konquererz:

I hear religious people stating that "all religions and all people in a religion aren't bad, some religion does some good some of the time". Well, thats really not good enough. Religion is only as strong as its weakest link. The link that thinks killing people in the name of god is the weakest link, creating a burden on society, much more so than it helps society.
And one purpose of religion is supposed to be to make people do good. When religion makes people do evil, like doctors harming patients, one's sense of justice is outraged.

Nick6742:
...procedures he would not do because of religious conviction. There are also some girls who attended a conference with several of us and refused to share a hotel room with even 1 male because of religious convictions, forcing us to book 2 hotel rooms needlessly.
But people still have a right to freedom of conscience. If one doctor won't do, say, abortions, because s/he considers that the foetus suffers, and another because s/he believes it destroys a soul, are we allowed to say "Your reason is OK, you needn't do them, but your reason is irrational, you must do abortions"? Or if the women refused to share because the guy (not Nick, of course) was a creep who was going to come on to them? Drawing these distinctions is not always easy.

270. Richard Dawkins talks about Darwin and his visit to the Galapagos

Comment #54737 by Shuggy on July 8, 2007 at 7:34 pm

Bizzaro doesn't really deserve this much attention, but

I am surprised that the wildlife on the Galapagos (the finches in particular) is still so revered by evolutionists as evidence for common descent.
I am astounded that someone can actually miss the point of Darwin's finches. Nobody has ever denied that they are all finches. Their common descent is breathtakingly evident. What stunned Darwin was their evident variation and adaptation to different, previously empty, ecological niches. From this he was able to extrapolate the rest of evolution.

Actually, Darwin and Newton have this in common, they were able to draw a universal from a particular; Newton's genius was seeing that the earth falls - just a little - towards the moon, and the apple, Darwin's, that we could and did diversify away from the other apes and the finches by exactly the same mechanism as they diversified away from each other.

271. Interview with Dan Dennett on Danish TV

Comment #54577 by Shuggy on July 7, 2007 at 10:01 pm

alovrin:

I wonder if [DD] really believes the religions that are around today exist because they have passed some time test. It seems to me the reasons run much deeper than that, or was he just paraphrasing for TV.
They do evolve, and the great majority are extinct, so the big ones tend to be old, but they can spread with extreme rapidity, as eg Scientology and Moonism, within living memory.

272. Interview with Dan Dennett on Danish TV

Comment #54523 by Shuggy on July 7, 2007 at 4:14 pm

It seems to me that one of the functions of religion is to bring people together and engage them in a shared activity where they can submerge themselves in the joint identity. Singing, praying, even (for the Quakers) silence, are all means to that end. I suspect that for young people rock concerts (and night clubs?) serve the same function. In some places, perhaps political rallies.

Is there some way we can bring that to consciousness and mobilise it for good (without the supernatural)?

273. Unorthodox Atheist

Comment #54200 by Shuggy on July 6, 2007 at 2:29 am

Do they allow Ray Bradbury's Farenheit 451, I wonder?

274. Unorthodox Atheist

Comment #54142 by Shuggy on July 5, 2007 at 3:28 pm

Darcy wronte:

If our young friend wants to visit say the wikipedia page for Index Liborum Prohibitorum,
That's librorum, also known as the Index Expurgatorius.

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

- just one more outrage the Catholic Church will try to sweep under the carpet.

275. Unorthodox Atheist

Comment #54141 by Shuggy on July 5, 2007 at 3:19 pm

She also said that since the book was not in line with the school's curriculum, it was inappropriate for school. I then asked her what she meant by this: if I were to be reading it by myself on campus, would I be breaking a rule? According to her, yes. My English class is not allowed to read Grapes of Wrath because it was deemed unsuitable for non-AP classes by the school board. I happen to be a Steinbeck fan. I asked her if it would be inappropriate to read Grapes of Wrath in school. Her answer was, in my case, yes.
How can a place call itself a school that doesn't encourage reading as widely as possible?


("non-AP"?)

276. Floods are judgment on society, say bishops

Comment #54140 by Shuggy on July 5, 2007 at 2:52 pm

Here in New Zealand, we've just had two series of tornadoes in three days - all in Taranaki, one of the most conservative provinces in the country. One on Wednesday wiped out - half a hardware warehouse. One did most damage in the town of Oakura, which is populated largely by retired people. I suppose God moves in a mysterious way....

277. At a Theater Near You ...

Comment #53994 by Shuggy on July 4, 2007 at 7:36 pm

Serious asked:

but has muslim *religious* leaders (as opposed to "community leaders") in the UK or elsewhere condemned the attacks?

I think not.
I don't understand Muslim leadership. It seems as though Muftis and Imams and Ayatollahs are all autonomous and can interpret the Qu'ran how they like - unlike ordinary Muslims. Now if they were Roman Catholic Jihadis, we'd know Whose Holiness to blame. Judaism seems to have the same non-hierarchy, but they've never been so disunited. I don't get it.

278. When is a bishop like a suicide bomber?

Comment #53993 by Shuggy on July 4, 2007 at 7:20 pm

geckoman wrote:

It is particularly odd that Islam uses the promise of sex in Paradise as a reward, while it does everything to censure sexual practice on earth.
This suggests that a better tactic in the War on Terror might be to offer the pre-Jihadis their Paradisal reward here on earth and save them a lot of trouble. Sort of like the Flirty Fishing of the Children of God.

"Hey, Bomber-Boy, come over here and take off that vest (and everything else). Me and my 71 friends here can offer you everything they're promised, and you don't need to smear your liver and pancreas all over the road."


The Schuermannator wrote:
or the Celestial Teapot (much luv, Shuggy!)
Thanks Schuerman, but the credit belongs to Bertrand Russell.

279. When is a bishop like a suicide bomber?

Comment #53875 by Shuggy on July 3, 2007 at 8:53 pm

I wonder if Thomas Sutcliffe reads this site:

41. Comment #53529 by Shuggy on July 1, 2007 at 11:55 pm
One diocesan bishop has even claimed that ... the introduction of pro-gay legislation, ha[s] provoked God to act by sending the storms that have left thousands of people homeless.
In other words, that Bishop's God is a homophobic, genocidal, capriciously malevolent bully. Um, now where have I heard those words before?
The floods that have devastated swathes of the country are God's judgment on the immorality and greed of modern society, according to senior Church of England bishops.
Isn't that exactly what the Jihadis say their works are? So can we add "terrorist" to RD's list?
Maybe I deserve a tipoff fee?

280. Christopher Hitchens and Al Sharpton

Comment #53874 by Shuggy on July 3, 2007 at 8:33 pm

Science has helped me acquire a greater appreciation of God, the Supreme Designer and Creator of all that exists.
Interesting when the more we learn about nature through science, the less necessary any Designer or Creator becomes. If S/He/It/They used evolution to design us (or if S/He/It/They didn't), S/He/It/They chose a very inefficient, cruel and wasteful way to do it, and not do it very well. The "Supreme Designer and Creator" really goes with the 6000-year age and the earth at the centre, with man on top. Trying to have it both ways doesn't really work.

281. Christopher Hitchens and Al Sharpton

Comment #53730 by Shuggy on July 3, 2007 at 12:33 am

Matthews is an idiot. He asked (in the last segment) "How do you [give your life in a war-front] without religion?" Hitchins said this insulted all those who fought for a secular constitution, and assumed that they would not have fought without religion. Matthews got all high and mighty about Hitchins not being God to know what Matthews' assumption was. Even Hitchins wasn't quick enough to say "You just told us."

282. Christopher Hitchens and Al Sharpton

Comment #53553 by Shuggy on July 2, 2007 at 3:19 am

the great teapot asked

Does Sharpton not know that the s comes before the k in asked.
Where he comes from, it doesn't. This is only a problem if it leads to misunderstanding, as in "What's the time, Lizzie Borden?" "I don't know, I'll just aks Poppa."

283. Floods are judgment on society, say bishops

Comment #53529 by Shuggy on July 1, 2007 at 11:55 pm

One diocesan bishop has even claimed that ... the introduction of pro-gay legislation, ha[s] provoked God to act by sending the storms that have left thousands of people homeless.
In other words, that Bishop's God is a homophobic, genocidal, capriciously malevolent bully. Um, now where have I heard those words before?

The floods that have devastated swathes of the country are God's judgment on the immorality and greed of modern society, according to senior Church of England bishops.
Isn't that exactly what the Jihadis say their works are? So can we add "terrorist" to RD's list?

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

Comment #53305 by Shuggy on June 30, 2007 at 5:02 pm

Single-handedly, Behe is taking on Ronald Fisher, Sewall Wright, J. B. S. Haldane, Theodosius Dobzhansky, Richard Lewontin, John Maynard Smith and hundreds of their talented co-workers and intellectual descendants. Notwithstanding the inconvenient existence of dogs, cabbages and pouter pigeons, the entire corpus of mathematical genetics, from 1930 to today, is flat wrong. Michael Behe, the disowned biochemist of Lehigh University, is the only one who has done his sums right.
This, taken by itself, is just an appeal to authority. Everyone could be out of step except our Michael, the next Galileo. (Coupled with his publishing outside the peer-review framework, and his other egregious errors, though...) but
You think?
does cap it off nicely, and deserves to enter the memosphere (another great neologism) as an alternative to "Yeah, right." and "Not."


CJ22:
pwn3d
I (amazingly) understand and heartily agree, but don't see how that's an improvement on "pwned", since in predictive mode, you'd just hit "3[def]" twice for e, and - on a Nokia - have to hit it 4 times or hold it down for 3. (Or is "pwnd" - since the 3 is silent - constantly running away from comprehensibility?)

285. God Hates the World

Comment #53182 by Shuggy on June 30, 2007 at 2:20 am

I was going to say so too, Billy. I see from Google Maps that there's a Twatt in the Orkneys and on Shetland. Am I right that with 2 ts it's pronounced twaet (rhymes with cat), means "numbskull" and is only a little bit rude? I'm reminded of Ogden Nash's
The one-l lama is a priest,
the two-l llama is a beast,
and I will bet a silk pyjama
there isn't any 3-l lllama.

286. Rival to evolution may enter schools

Comment #53152 by Shuggy on June 29, 2007 at 5:12 pm

phasmagigas:

maybe it could include the 'wetapunga' cricket the worlds largest insect (well, one of them) in the discussion, afterall it means 'god of ugly things' if i remember correctly.

Wëtä are a kind of locust, and the wëtä punga (Deinacrida heteracantha) is indeed the giant wëtä. I have the greatest suspicion about this "god of ugly things" story: none of the references I could find have any authority; none of the several meanings of "punga" has anything to do with ugliness or gods. Wëtä is the name of the whole group of insects. The Mäori pantheon is very purposeful, as my first post indicated - what would a god of ugly things do or explain? Beauty is subjective and by many standards, the giant weta is a very handsome insect. My gut instinct says this is a modern myth, the kind of thing that tourist guides make up.

287. God Hates the World

Comment #53137 by Shuggy on June 29, 2007 at 3:44 pm

Just in case it gets lost, here again is Phelps' biblical justification for his stand, cut and pasted from the Westboro Baptist website,
http://www.godhatesfags.com/ :

# JESUS CHRIST DIED ONLY FOR THOSE WHO BELIEVE.

* "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." John 3:16.
* See also John 13:1, John 17:9, Ephesians 5:25, etc.

# ONLY GOD'S ELECT HAVE THE CAPABILITY TO BELIEVE.

* "Therefore they could not believe, because that Esaias said again, He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart; that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them." John 12:39,40.
* See also John 10:11,26, Matthew 11:25,26, Acts 13:48, Romans 9:19-24, etc.


In summary, sodomites are wicked and sinners before the Lord exceedingly (Gen. 13:13), are violent and doom nations (Gen. 19:1-25; Jgs. 19), are abominable to God (Lev. 18:22), are worthy of death for their vile, depraved, unnatural sex practices (Lev. 20:13; Rom. 1:32), are called dogs because they are filthy, impudent and libidinous (Deut. 23:17,18; Mat. 7:6; Phil. 3:2), produce by their very presence in society a kind of mass intoxication from their wine made from grapes of gall from the vine of Sodom and the fields of Gomorrah which poisons society's mores with the poison of dragons and the cruel venom of asps (Deut. 32:32,33), declare their sin and shame on their countenance (Isa. 3:9), are shameless and unable to blush (Jer. 6:15), are workers of iniquity and hated by God (Psa. 5:5), are liars and murderers (Jn. 8:44), are filthy and lawless (2 Pet. 2:7,8), are natural brute beasts (2 Pet. 2:12), are dogs eating their own vomit and sows wallowing in their own feces (2 Pet. 2:22), will proliferate at the end of the world bringing final judgment on mankind (Lk. 17:28-30), have been finally given up by God to uncleanness dishonoring their own bodies among themselves, to vile affections, and to a reprobate mind such that they cannot think straight about anything (Rom. 1:23-28), have wholly given themselves over to fornication and gone after strange flesh (Jude 7), must be pulled as faggots from the fire (Jude 23), and have no hope of Heaven unless they repent (Rev. 22:15), which they can't do in their prideful state (Jer. 6:15). They need to hear this truth if they are to have any hope of penitence, faith in Jesus Christ and salvation (I Timothy 4:2-4).


I would still like to know if and why and how DR disagrees with any of this.

288. The Stupidity of Fox News is Truly Beyond Belief

Comment #53008 by Shuggy on June 29, 2007 at 2:01 am

Writer: Rod Serling from the story "It's a Good Life" by Jerome Bixby, first published in the 1953 collection Star Science Fiction Stories No. 2.
Thank you, Wikipedia.

289. The Stupidity of Fox News is Truly Beyond Belief

Comment #53006 by Shuggy on June 29, 2007 at 1:52 am

RabbitDynamite

Does anyone remember the twilight zone episode where everyone has too be happy in a town or a psychic boy will send them to the cornfield? That's what the fox news is like. Only with more stupid crap and patriotic chest-beating.
TemporaryAura
"It's a good thing you done, son, a real good thing.
Now wish it into the cornfield!"

I remember the story, but not on Twilight Zone. Wasn't it by someone like Ray Bradbury (Pohl? Sturgeon? Sheckley? - I'll goggle it in a minute and find out for sure), and called "It's a Good Day" I remember one of the things he turned someone into wasn't described, and that was the most frightening part of all.

290. The Stupidity of Fox News is Truly Beyond Belief

Comment #53004 by Shuggy on June 29, 2007 at 1:44 am

Lamentz:

"The Miracle of childbirth" whenever i hear this statement im always reminding of the late Bill Hicks classic take on it.

"Childbirth is no more a miracle than going to the toilet and taking a crap...its a chemical reaction. End of story.

That's a bit of an oversimplification: topologically, the human body is a doughnut and craps are just what's left of the food that didn't make it through the walls, plus dead bacteria (and, presumably, live bacteria that didn't swim upstream fast enough).

On the other hand, the formation and then the detachment of the placenta, and the extraordinary transformation of the infant bloodstream within seconds of birth are, figuratively, miraculous - the miracle of evolution, with all its flaws. The extreme difficulty (and complexity) of human birth is an extreme example of the compromises that had to be made for us to have our extraordinary brains.

And the Catholic Church's answer to all those deaths in childbirth? "They've gone straight to Mary."

291. Egypt mufti says female circumcision forbidden

Comment #52994 by Shuggy on June 29, 2007 at 12:30 am

Gordon wrote:

To my knowledge this type of circumcision has been stopped.
Glad to hear it, but even the conventional kinds can be fatal, which is sort of worse than FGC.

Boy found dead after botched circumcision

A boy (15) has been found dead by fellow circumcision initiates near
Orange Farm, in the Vaal

June 25, 2007, 06:15
A 15-year-old boy has been found dead by fellow circumcision
initiates near Orange Farm, in the Vaal Triangle. Police say the boy was
among nine initiates circumcised by an illegal surgeon.

A postmortem will be conducted to establish the cause of death.

The other boys aged 15 and 16 have been sent home, while police
search for their surgeon. Yesterday, another initiate died in
Potchefstroom in the North West.

Since the start of the circumcision season, five initiates have died from
botched circumcisions in the Eastern Cape.

Yesterday, police arrested an initiation surgeon in connection with the
deaths of two of the five boys near Port St Johns. His accomplice, a
17-year-old boy who's believed to have run the illegal initiation school,
was arrested on Saturday.

Villagers believe witchcraft is to blame for the boys' deaths.

source: http://www.sabcnews.com/south_africa/crime1justice/0,2172,151431,00.html

Witchcraft, yeah, right.

Here's a followup to the original story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6251426.stm
Egypt forbids female circumcision

292. God Hates the World

Comment #52949 by Shuggy on June 28, 2007 at 4:44 pm

we flee wrote:

106. Comment #52040 by Shuggy

" would hardly to be an exaggeration to say that RD and "Rev" Phelps are basically in agreement about the nature of the God of the Hebrew scriptures/Old Testament; "...one of the most unpleasant characters ... malevolent bully" only Phelps likes him. "


Again this is why the video was posted. RD and Phelps do believe in the same God.
RD does not believe in any God/dess/es! If DR hasn't understood that yet, one wonders what he thinks he's doing here.

They disagree about the same God. That's good. They're not at cross purposes. What's DR's problem with that?

I'm still waiting to see how DR justifies a theology that's any different from Phelps', given they use the same bible. I gave a whole raft of Phelps' quotes on an earlier page. How does DR rebut them, and "the Devil can quote scripture" doesn't cut it, because how are we outsiders going to tell the difference?
Dawkins needs the likes of Phelps to bolster his argument.
RD devotes precisely ONE paragraph of TGD to Phelps (pp 290-1). This is just silly: everyone picks the best examples of what they're arguing against to bolster their arguments. The question is, how does DR distance himself from Phelps?
Fundamentalists on both sides need each other.
How, exactly, does Phelps need RD? I don't know if he's ever mentioned him (Nor, so far as I know, did Falwell.) When your god hates America and you picket Coretta Scott King's funeral, you really don't need atheists.

293. Rudy Park Comic Strips

Comment #52705 by Shuggy on June 27, 2007 at 9:06 pm

Thanks, Fedler.

294. Sally on Sunday with Alister McGrath

Comment #52703 by Shuggy on June 27, 2007 at 8:18 pm

I won't download Real Player because it's so toxic. Please someone put it up as Quicktime or something.

295. 'I have never been happier' says the man who won gold but lost God

Comment #52694 by Shuggy on June 27, 2007 at 7:09 pm

I never realised religious people took the "Life is a like a tin of sardines (it's very small and compact - and you can't seem to find the key)" sketch so literally.

The best of luck to him!

296. Rudy Park Comic Strips

Comment #52691 by Shuggy on June 27, 2007 at 6:51 pm

What's Maxim?

297. Rival to evolution may enter schools

Comment #52690 by Shuggy on June 27, 2007 at 6:43 pm

Intelligent design (ID) is one of a wide range of theories of origin currently taught as part of the Religious, Moral and Philosophy Studies (RMPS) SQA course,
I trust the theory of origin that Papatuänuku, the Earth Mother, and Ranginui, the Sky Father, were locked in an embrace until they were cruelly separated by their children, Täne (God of Forests and Birds), Rongo (cultivation and the peaceful arts) Haumia-tiketike (uncultivated foods) etc, over the opposition of Tawhirimatea (the God of Storms) and Tumatuaenga (God of War), will be given equal time on the Religious, Moral and Philosophy Studies (RMPS) SQA course, and doubtless there are indigenous Scottish theories, perhaps involving Ghoulies and Ghosties and Long-legged Beasties that ought also to be given equal time.

298. Egypt mufti says female circumcision forbidden

Comment #52675 by Shuggy on June 27, 2007 at 5:32 pm

It's ironic that Gordon was in the Yemen and his message has been followed by all those "NO! NO! Cutting little girls is oh so different from cutting little boys!" messages, because male circumcision in the Yemen was (at least in the 1920s) worse if anything. See
http://www.circumstitions.com/yemen.html

Here is the relevent section:

As will be seen from the accompanying photos, the whole of the skin from a point just below the umbilicus to the root of the penis, with all the hair-bearing area, and all the skin of the penis, as far as the scrotum, is removed. In some cases, as in photo No.2, a portion of the penile urethra is also removed, of course unintentionally. Several such cases of loss of a portion of the urethra, in one case fully one inch, have been treated at this hospital.

Case No.1, photo No.1, -- An Arab, aged 25, resident of Mugawiya, the slave of case No.2, was circumcised 12 years ago. The wound took about seven months to heal, resulting in left inguinal hernia, with extensive scarring. This man was operated on by Major M.S.Irani, I.M.S., the Acting Civil Surgeon, Aden, on 8th November, 1920, and was discharged cured on 25th November, 1920.

Case No.2, photo No.2, -- An Arab, aged 40, resident of Mugawiya, was circumcised 12 years ago. The wound took about two months to heal, resulting in urethral fistula two months after the operation, the fistula being situated at the root of the penis. This man was operated on 17th November, 1920, by Major M.S.Irani, I.M.S., The Acting Civil Surgeon, Aden, who secured a flap from the skin of the scrotum to form the floor of the urethra, taking over flaps from either side of the scrotum to cover up this inverted flap. The wound exhibited healthy signs of healing, but the man, being very anxious to see his native land, and, probably, his bride, left this hospital of his own accord, on 25th November, 1920, equipped with simple surgical dressings.

In short, MGC at its worst is worse than FGC at its "best", and as human rights issues, they are both the same.

Yes, it's good to see the Mufit of Egypt come out against FGC, but it's going to take a long time to eradicate the practice. Curiously, there is only one instance (a small tribe that gave up MGC) where there is FGC without MGC: clearly each "justifies" the other and if we could stop arguing about which is worse, we could eradicate both more quickly.

299. Egypt mufti says female circumcision forbidden

Comment #52419 by Shuggy on June 27, 2007 at 2:08 am

JonnyJ:

In regards to male circumcision, it is most definitely not the same thing as female circumcision,
They can be as similar as you want (eg surgical removal of the clitoral hood), but throughout the western world only the female operation is outlawed (except for pressing medical need), totally, and usually with explicit disregard for religion or culture. It's a complete double standard.
the procedure is not as dangerous
Dangerous enough:
http://www.pulsus.com/Paeds/12_04/Pdf/zwol_ed.pdf
sexual feeling or desire is not affected (once healed)
Feeling certainly is:
http://www.circumstitions.com/Sexuality.html#sorrells
and there are some good reasons for doing it later in life like conditions such as phirmosis which are extremely common.
So do it later in life, when it's absolutely needed, which is very rare (lots of men are quite happy to have phimosis).
Also along my travels I've read about medical benefits such as lessening the liklihood of catching AIDs see below:
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7791763
This has been widely debated elsewhere but in brief:
  • Cutting the studies short would lead to a spurious appearance of effectiveness
  • A greater proportion of circumcised men in Kenya got HIV than the control group in Uganda, so whatever they do in Uganda (such as campaigning against promiscuity) was more effective than circumcision
  • Circumcision is not cost-free or risk free
  • Some studies suggest that FGM would also reduce HIV
  • The circumcised men were treated very differently from the control group, possibly changing their behaviour
  • These scientific experiments may not replicate well in the field
  • It's going to be very hard to get the message clear, "this will have an epidemiological effect, but you are not now safe and must go on wearing the condoms"

300. The Stupidity of Fox News is Truly Beyond Belief

Comment #52284 by Shuggy on June 26, 2007 at 4:04 pm

The miracle of childbirth!? Is he (or was it she) kidding!? Tell that to all the millions of mothers and babies who have died in childbirth because peripelvic birth hasn't kept up with our enlarged cranium or bipedality.

See also
http://jitcrunch.cafepress.com/jitcrunch.aspx?bG9hZD1ibGFuayxibGFuazoxMzdfRl9vMS5qcGd8bG9hZD1MMCxodHRwOi8vaW1hZ2VzLmNhZmVwcmVzcy5jb20vaW1hZ2UvMTUyOTI2MjNfNDAweDQwMC5qcGd8fHNjYWxlPUwwLDM1NSwyNTYsV2hpdGV8Y29tcG9zZT1ibGFuayxMMCxBZGQsNjIsMTEyfGxvYWQ9bWFzayxibGFuazoxMzdfRl9tYXNrX28xLmpwZ3xjb21wb3NlPWJsYW5rLG1hc2ssTWFzaywwLDB8Y3A9cmVzdWx0LGJsYW5rfHNjYWxlPXJlc3VsdCwwLDQ4MCxXaGl0ZXxjb21wcmVzc2lvbj05NXw=

(or http://www.cafepress.com/wero.82544823)

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