301. Camp Joins Summer Fun With Teaching Hindu Faith

Comment #58614 by Spinoza on July 25, 2007 at 11:36 am

P.S. Contrary to common misunderstanding Hinduism is a actually a monotheistic religion. All the different Hindu Gods are manifestations of one God,--Vishnu. It is like electricty and magnetism are different sides to the same underlying phsyical phenomenon.

302. Camp Joins Summer Fun With Teaching Hindu Faith

Comment #58551 by Spinoza on July 25, 2007 at 7:08 am

Hinduism, of all "religions", has the most interesting metaphysics, by far...

Indeed, if it weren't for British colonialism, there would be no such thing as "Hinduism", but rather several thousand tribal religions all based out of similar sets of beliefs about the universe.

While they are "wrong" in many ways, they are at least INTERESTING... Schopenhauer once said that Spinoza would be at home on the banks of the Ganges. (his metaphysics of One Substance and Hinduism's concept of Brahman are extremely similar...)

I agree with Ms. Narayanan... one of the coolest things about Hinduism was that diversity...

No one wants to see it become a knockoff of Christianity. (in order to compete)

303. Town Hall Seattle: God Is Not Great

Comment #57312 by Spinoza on July 18, 2007 at 9:39 pm

Jimmy, where's your Dennett and Russell? (they have audio-books available you know... and not just on Atheism... on some kick-ass philosophy too! lol.)

Oh, and A.C. Grayling... he's great too.

304. Town Hall Seattle: God Is Not Great

Comment #57184 by Spinoza on July 18, 2007 at 1:36 pm

I love love love how he always mentions "me". Hehe.

Along with my other heroes: Einstein and Russell.

Just FYI (any of ya who don't know), Spinoza was THE MAN. He always denied being an "atheist" though, but he had his own definition of the word "God" that certainly precluded the existence of any personal God...

And his political work (The Treatise Theologico-Politicus) is just brilliant.

Not to mention the book Einstein called the greatest ever written, The Ethics.

305. Using the 'Beauties of Physics' to Conquer Science Illiteracy

Comment #56939 by Spinoza on July 17, 2007 at 11:28 pm

This is the exact thing I have struggled against my whole life.

I refuse to memorize anything by rote. Hence why I am not a biologist or neurologist or physicist or astronomer (as I sometimes wish I were), but a philosopher.

And yet, even in philosophy, we have this problem because of professors who don't care whether their students UNDERSTAND WHAT THEY'RE REGURGITATING.

I once had to explain burden of proof to a fellow student in a SENIOR, ADVANCED SEMINAR on problems in philosophy.

That bugged the hell out of me.

I also remember in my first year of philosophy, a guy I sat beside ended up with a grade a few percentages higher than me because the tests were multiple choice (and he got one or two more than I a few times because he memorized the readings before the class).

And yet, I'm the philosopher and he isn't.

For good reason.

I once sat in on a 1st year physics class, and realized that half the students didn't understand a word the professor was saying, they just memorized the textbooks.

I had trouble with the math because I hadn't done calculus in 4 years, but I understood EVERYTHING the professor said, and could explain it to anyone, I just needed to practice the math in order to actually solve the test-problems.

306. The US map of faith

Comment #55661 by Spinoza on July 11, 2007 at 10:52 pm

Not to rain on anyone's parade... just an observation... but since the colours are based on PERCENTAGE by district, not on actual population numbers... what you're seeing is going to be skewed by the number of people that live in that area.

Oregon might LOOK "less religious"... but that is probably at least in part due to the fact that it has less people.

And simply because some districts have a ratio of irreligious to religious that's higher than some others doesn't mean that on the whole the state is, itself, less or more religious... That depends on the percentage of the total population of the state.

So yeah, this map is interesting, but probably more than anything shows that the adage "You can prove anything with statistics" is so very true.

I'd like to see the raw data.

307. Praying to a milk jug

Comment #55377 by Spinoza on July 10, 2007 at 10:27 pm

I can't stand that guy's voice... and I think the analogy is awful... but I think by "optical illusion" he just means that people "see" God where they might as well be seeing anything (like a milk jug), since prayers to either will result in the same outcome... and can be rationalized in exactly the same way.

The "illusion" is in "seeing" "God" doing something (either saying "yes", "no", or "wait"), when nothing is really happening.

Although, I'm pretty sure we all know that's not MERELY "illusion", but delusion, since it's actually crazy, rather than merely rationality deceived by the senses (as in illusion).

308. Rats influenced by the kindness of strangers

Comment #54498 by Spinoza on July 7, 2007 at 1:29 pm

It clearly isn't...

Just because rats do it doesn't mean it's perfectly suited to their environment..

Evolution is always in flux...

And anyway, if they got BURNED right after by a dirty rat... I bet they would stop being so quick to be altruistic...

Just like humans.

(i.e. the whole Prisoner's Dilemma thing... something I had studied heavily in political philosophy before reading Dawkins' use of it in The Selfish Gene...)

309. Interview with Dan Dennett on Danish TV

Comment #54495 by Spinoza on July 7, 2007 at 1:00 pm

'meme' just is a way of describing information, and information supervenes on physical 'stuff'. So you PERCEIVE the physical stuff, and apprehend the memes thusly.

i.e. the 'meme' meme is propagated very easily...

I mentioned it at work the other day and told the guy it was like a virus and now it was in his head and would either die out or replicate if he told anyone.

Hahaha.

310. Christopher Hitchens and Al Sharpton

Comment #54002 by Spinoza on July 4, 2007 at 9:11 pm

Spinoza, the word "equivocate" doesn't mean what you think it means. The word you're looking for is "equate".

311. Christopher Hitchens and Al Sharpton

Comment #53336 by Spinoza on June 30, 2007 at 9:22 pm

It's very simple, and very subtle, and it boils down to this:

Sharpton equivocates the word "God" in the title of Hitchens' book (which by the way, I just finished and I think is absolutely brilliant, indeed, better than The God Delusion for several reasons), with the word "God" as he wants to use it.

Hitchens did not mean "God" independently of "his" followers... he meant it with CLEAR intellectual prowess, irony, and de rigeur fashion, that the God people PROFESS to believe in isn't great. Not in the slightest.

He could have quickly dispatched with the first part of Sharpton's attack by saying this:

"Sir, you have equivocated the meaning of the term as I used it with the way you wish to use it, and that is devious and fallacious. As I intended the title, it was to be a clear statement about the god people profess to believe in (hence the uncapitalization). So if you think the book was about disproving the existence of "God" independently of its believers, you're wrong... it is simply about showing that the so-called "God" of believers is not great at all."

And it's that simple.

312. I believe that there is no God.

Comment #52856 by Spinoza on June 28, 2007 at 8:41 am

I'm sorry... as much as I sort of admire Penn (I think anarcho-capitalism is dumb though, among other things), he's no philosopher, and he totally bastardizes this.

Atheism is NOT "not believing in God". No philosopher would take that seriously.

The definitions go like this:

Agnosticism is the negation of two propositions:

a) I believe in God.
b) I don't believe in God.

Atheism is the claim that one KNOWS the following proposition:

a) It is the case that God does not exist.

So he's not beyond atheism. He's just an atheist.

Just to make that clear. (ask Bertrand Russell)

313. Darwin Still Rules, but Some Biologists Dream of a Paradigm Shift

Comment #52650 by Spinoza on June 27, 2007 at 4:09 pm

I know far too many philosophers of Science / scientists who HATE the term "paradigm shift".

Nothing in science is EVER a "paradigm shift".

The examples given in this article of "paradigm shifts", to most modern philosophers of science, were not REALLY "paradigm shifts", but just LOOK like it... along with the Einsteinian physics revolution...

These things were far more subtly advanced.

As they should be.

If there is a shift in evolutionary biology, it is CERTAINLY not going to actually BE paradigmatic... it might just appear to be to us though.

314. Researchers May Remake Neanderthal DNA

Comment #52545 by Spinoza on June 27, 2007 at 8:40 am

I know that last comment is a joke... but uh... I'm pretty sure MEMORIES are not in your DNA... if they created a living Neanderthal, it wouldn't know how they went extinct.

Just saying...

315. Trio to rock against religion

Comment #52377 by Spinoza on June 26, 2007 at 10:40 pm

Right, I apologize to MIND_REBEL, that was certainly very harsh of me. (though not unwarranted, in a very obvious way).

It is just that I have this pet peeve about the "Neo-Atheism" movement...

I'm a philosopher (that is, I am a student of philosophy with pretensions of being a philosopher), and an intellectually rigorous atheist (that is, I set about to systematize my atheism, and my objections to theism and religion [as separable conundrums])...

And the most painful thing I have seen in the wake of the pop-atheism "movement", especially here at one of my heroes' websites, has been this strange phenomena of unsophistication, of smugness, and of outright idiocy at times... and I find it harmful.

I once remarked that I LIKE that atheists are a minority... It means that we're probably right, and that we take CARE to make sure that we are getting things right.

It's not simply "We're right because we are, and religious people are dumb."... there are arguments to be made, and questions to be pondered, and so forth.

A criticism of RELIGION is NOT the same as a criticism of THEISM. These are clearly separable (as in Buddhism, and to a far lesser extent, Judaism... that is, of the Einstein/Spinoza "atheistic" Jew...).

And in criticizing religion, I think we ought to take it seriously, to analyze it, to ADMIT when (and if) there is a positive aspect to it REGARDLESS of whether the cosmological status of it is in doubt, or patently false... and to not resort to scapegoating...

Religion is CLEARLY not the only reason Africa is the way it is.

Greed, corruption, the removal of the imperialists (France, Netherlands, Britain, etc etc etc)... tribal warfare, poverty... Religion is involved in these things in many ways... but is not the SOLE cause... though it needs to be attacked.

My personal pet "anti-theism" is against the pope. I think the current one is a scumbag of the highest order (regardless of whether God exists...), and IS to blame for a large amount of suffering in Africa.

However, that villages have no access to clean water or vaccines is not religion's "fault"... it's the fault of a decayed (or undeveloped) infrastructure which is kept down by the greed and despotism of evil people, and the ambivalence of the world which wrought the problems in the first place (the West).

316. Trio to rock against religion

Comment #52229 by Spinoza on June 26, 2007 at 2:23 pm

Their religious traditions are the only thing holding them back.

317. Egypt mufti says female circumcision forbidden

Comment #52208 by Spinoza on June 26, 2007 at 1:23 pm

Well... the point needs to be made that just because something is POINTLESS does not immediately mean we simply shouldn't do it.

Baseball is essentially pointless. High Etiquette is pointless (i.e. not wearing white after Labour Day).

Indeed, all art is pretty much pointless (or as Oscar Wilde put it, "quite useless").

Let's not get confused here.... circumcision should be abolished if it's BAD, not because it's useless or pointless.

And female circumcision is certainly bad.

Male circumcision is debatable... it's bad if you think that people should always and only make their own choices about what to do with their own body... but then... this isn't universal ANYWAY... since we clothe and feed and bathe our children before they are able to do so themselves, and though circumcision is religious and some people wish their parents had not had it done to them... it's not always the case.

Indeed, I'm glad I had it done for various, non-religious, non-trivial reasons.

318. The Stupidity of Fox News is Truly Beyond Belief

Comment #52206 by Spinoza on June 26, 2007 at 1:16 pm

Do we have to repeat ourselves over and over and over and over?

There are TWO arguments that atheists make.

1. God doesn't exist.
2. Religion is harmful/deleterious/bad.

(1) is a philosophical claim, usually a denial of a particular KIND or conception of God... say, because of illogical attributes (i.e. the problem of evil).

(2) IS A SCIENTIFICALLY TESTABLE POINT. This is the case made by Dan Dennett (who deserves WAY more credit than he has gotten lately... 64,000 copies of his book sold? What the fuck is wrong with you people... buy it AND TGD...)... that RELIGION is a social behaviour that can be studied, analyzed, critiqued, etc.

This has nothing to do with whether God exists. Even if God did exist, there would be good cause for declaring at least some religions (if not all, immediately) bad, or at least, some aspects (many of which are central).

Please for fuck's sake... these people are STUPID, but they're not permanently stupid. Let's not make it easier for them to fight back by conflating (1) and (2).

319. Row over religion's role in US jails

Comment #52001 by Spinoza on June 25, 2007 at 9:47 pm

That's an uninteresting false dichotomy is what that is. LOL.

320. Row over religion's role in US jails

Comment #51986 by Spinoza on June 25, 2007 at 7:42 pm

I think the RDF should fund programs LIKE this (but not necessarily this exact kind...), and teach moral values, basic accounting skills, etc... to people who would otherwise be taken in by religion.

If we truly think religion is not only WRONG in many, most, or all of its claims to truth, but also destructive, then what better way to combat it than by opening up a subversive front to accompany our direct attacks?

Provide social services that have no religious connotations whatsoever. Fight for the right to have them in the same prisons as the religiously attuned services.

321. Evolution IS a Blind Watchmaker

Comment #51626 by Spinoza on June 23, 2007 at 9:17 pm

Steve didn't understand it I think...

Even among us atheists, one needs to learn to separate the contingent from the necessary in an analogy... He wasn't showing how evolution in the natural world works, he was showing how it might work among a very specific population of pre-established entities...

In any case I thought this was quite well done.

322. Bill O'Reilly and Kirk Cameron on Atheism

Comment #51179 by Spinoza on June 21, 2007 at 9:16 pm

I am SO fucking tired of idiots bastardizing Einstein. The man did not believe in your retarded man-God... he believed in Spinoza's "infinite natural Substance" "God"... which is atheism at its best anyway, he just chose to take the word "Deus" and redefine it as the knowable, infinite, natural Universe, devoid of mysticism, miracles, supernatural powers, a creator, an all powerful, all good, all knowing being... none of that.

You're damn right I'm an angry atheist... I'm angry because you're all a bunch of fucking morons!!!! AHHHHHHH!

323. Hamas Kindergarten Graduation Ceremony

Comment #47552 by Spinoza on June 5, 2007 at 12:10 am

Methinks you are unaware of your own biases.

They're ALL fucked up, but if we think G.I. Joe or toy soldiers, or war re-enactments are okay for OUR children, then I really see nothing wrong with the above display.

I don't like Hamas any more than the next guy.

I certainly think Israel's right to exist has absolutely nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with political philosophy, law, and the facts.

The Palestinians are indeed guilty of wanting to have their cake and eat it too... I have good friends who are Palestinian, one of whom is anti-nationalist and thinks both sides are wrong, he just wishes the Palestinians could live in peace in Gaza and the West bank (that is, without provoking Israel via Hamas's rockets).

That said, if there is nothing wrong with North American children playing with guns, acting in Civil War plays, etc. etc. and watching G.I. Joe cartoons, playing with the toys, etc. Then there is nothing wrong with this. It's more of the same, and either it's all wrong, or none of it is.

324. Hamas Kindergarten Graduation Ceremony

Comment #47536 by Spinoza on June 4, 2007 at 10:52 pm

Um. How is this worse than G.I. Joe?

Come on... yes, they LOOK scary to you... but there's no evidence of "indoctrination" in this video, any more than there is evidence of propaganda in the old G.I. Joe cartoon.

"And now we know!"

325. Christopher Hitchens at Politics and Prose

Comment #46267 by Spinoza on May 30, 2007 at 5:52 pm

Spinoza and Einstein were NOT "deists" in the sense that the man around 34 minutes says they were.

That's sheer and utter nonsense from an old man who doesn't understand what either of those two great thinkers (both of whom are my greatest "idols" in the most meaningful sense of that word) meant when they used the word "God".

326. Christian sports workers degree ridiculed

Comment #44817 by Spinoza on May 25, 2007 at 10:41 am

University of Glasgow's Dean of Arts is a Pottery professor... so yeah...

327. Another Christian Science Fair embarrasses itself

Comment #44813 by Spinoza on May 25, 2007 at 10:35 am

FUCK!!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Phaeonix... you've just made me so angry... not you... but... man... WHAT THE FUCK!!!! ARRRRRRGH!!


I'm torn between force-educating these idiots and hording knowledge for only those that deserve it.

Anyone with an IQ under 130 should not be allowed to MENTION the name Einstein, because YOU DON'T FUCKING UNDERSTAND HIM. PERIOD.

AHHHHHHH FUCK!!!!

328. 'Einstein - His Life and Universe'

Comment #44106 by Spinoza on May 23, 2007 at 10:21 am

Einstein did believe in "God"... He was an atheist about the Judeo-Muslim-Christian personal God, of course... but he CLEARLY believed in Spinoza's "God" (he said so, many times).

Like Spinoza, he DID refer to "Natural infinite Substance" as "God"... And like Spinoza, he can clearly be construed as an atheist by believers in the personal God of religion (and should be).

But certainly, it's crystal clear what he believed. His favourite book, by the way, was Spinoza's Ethics (he read it to his sister when she was in the hospital, and told her that it was the greatest book ever written).

It's a great book for anyone to read, albeit one of the most difficult to comprehend (and also happens to be my personal favourite, and one of the major subjects of my specialization in philosophy).

He PROVES the existence of "God" geometrically, from axioms and definitions... and choses to refer to the entity he has established as necessary, as "God".

However, this God is identical with the entirety of the natural universe, ALL its constituents, us humans, our passions, thoughts, and physical bodies... and an infinite number of other modes considered under an infinity of attributes, only two of which are available to us humans.

In any case... Whether this book delves into that or not... it's quite clear what Einstein believed, and it was certainly a brilliant view of the cosmos.

329. Hitchens vs. Hannity on Religion and God

Comment #41718 by Spinoza on May 16, 2007 at 5:03 pm

I LOVE Hitchens... love his style... but man.. is he DRUNK as FUCK here?... what the hell!! lol.

With respect to what the last person said... you're absolutely fucking WRONG.

The LAST thing anyone should do is purposefully ignore or downplay their weaknesses... the only intellectually honest position is one which is completely and utterly critical of itself. To fail to do that is to be just like "them"...

330. God . . . in other words

Comment #39073 by Spinoza on May 9, 2007 at 11:58 pm

And he believes in the possibility of a transcendent "intelligence" existing beyond the range of present human experience. It is just that he refuses to call it God.

331. Richard Dawkins on Canada AM

Comment #38374 by Spinoza on May 7, 2007 at 11:02 pm

She's funny... she seems genuinely surprised at the things he's said, and either finds them intriguing or she's patronizing him... I can't tell...

It's odd.

By the way Bonzai, our current PM scares me more than Stockwell Day (who is still around in our parliament and is a cabinet minister under Harper).

I say "scares me" because his eyes creep the fuck out of me...

He seems to have done a good job of separating himself, politically, from his religious beliefs though (unlike before he got elected).

332. God Exists. A Formula Proves it.

Comment #37819 by Spinoza on May 5, 2007 at 9:27 pm

Tipler is an idiot.

His "proof" doesn't prove any particular religion's God exists... it proves that SOMETHING exists... the same way Spinoza's proofs in The Ethics do... but that thing, Spinoza said, was Deus sive Natura... and every Christian who read Spinoza cried "ATHEIST! NIHILIST! FATALIST!"

And wanted nothing whatsoever to do with him.

Tipler is trying to take something like Spinoza's "God" and apply Christian rhetoric over top of it and pretend that the proof applies to the latter.

How fucking dumb is that?!

333. Christians and Atheists to Debate Existence of God in First-Ever 'NIGHTLINE FACE OFF'

Comment #37090 by Spinoza on May 3, 2007 at 11:11 am

Unfortunately I think this is going to make atheists look stupid...

It's a shame that atheist philosophers know better than to debate theists... because they'd at least have a better chance of getting the point across... the Rational Response Squad sounds like a bunch of teenagers who are just angry with "God"...

334. Two idiots get a forum

Comment #35801 by Spinoza on April 28, 2007 at 10:53 pm

Morality has nothing whatsoever to do with evolution.

The only reason idiots bring it up is because they think you have to believe in God to believe in "morality" (because they mean God's commands).

It's too bad these guys are morons, otherwise I would point out that Plato made divine command look utterly foolish 2500 years ago (in the Euthyphro Problem), well before any twinkle of Jesus was in God's eye... lmfao. (whatever the hell that means)

335. Bill Maher - APATHEIST

Comment #35260 by Spinoza on April 26, 2007 at 6:20 pm

I like Maher's affect. I don't know him as a person so I can't judge his personality beyond what I've seen...

Who the hell knows what these people are like off camera?

He didn't say he was an atheist... he's CLEARLY an agnostic... he just said he doesn't CARE... lol

336. Is this another Sokal Hoax?

Comment #35015 by Spinoza on April 26, 2007 at 1:09 am

The stuff about Leibniz's Monadology is all wrong.

Yikes... I am not surprised, but rather, disheartened... that this sort of thing is being promulgated by my very university.

... Actually... you know what... never mind... I figured it out:

Quantum Feminist Mnemotechnics:

The Archival Text, Digital Narrative and the Limits of Memory

Evolving out of the evocative echoes between three countercultural discourses, hypertext, cyberfeminist theory and the Canadian feminist school of writing known as fiction-theory, my dissertation undertakes a study of the function of memory in digital narrative. Both fiction-theory and hypertext fiction arose at a particular moment in time, the 1980s, out of like-minded concerns with language and narrative. Fiction-theorists (especially Nicole Brossard, Daphne Marlatt and Gail Scott--now seen as early practitioners of a form known as 'hypertext-in-print') used the conjunction of fiction and theory to make a self-reflexive space for feminist politics in their writings. Fiction-theory, like cyberfeminist theory, "work[s] the interface" between the creative process and reading, between language and content, between bodies and materialist concerns, and between typographic conventions and discourses within texts (Moyes 309). The method deflects the hegemony of patriarchal thinking by breaking it up into pieces where the syntax and context can be analyzed.

337. Fighting Words: A wartime lexicon

Comment #34976 by Spinoza on April 25, 2007 at 7:53 pm

He's bang on about this:

While some religious apology is magnificent in its limited way—one might cite Pascal—and some of it is dreary and absurd—here one cannot avoid naming C. S. Lewis—both styles have something in common, namely the appalling load of strain that they have to bear. How much effort it takes to affirm the incredible!

338. Study: Religion is Good for Kids

Comment #34894 by Spinoza on April 25, 2007 at 2:13 pm

This type of comparison is silly for various reasons.

Not the least of which is that SUGAR and TELEVISION have more to do with kids attention and behaviour than anything else does.

If it contingently happens that more religious families' children are more attentive, then fine, you have a correlation... but you CERTAINLY don't have causality...

And it's pretty obvious that this is a ridiculous study.

339. Pope abolishes limbo

Comment #34390 by Spinoza on April 24, 2007 at 12:17 am

[quote]You can all dodge the question till the cows come home but without scientific evidence of a mechanism for adding new genetic information the evolutionary hypothesis is just that.[/quote]

What the hell do you think heterosexual procreation does?

340. The Video: Bill O'Reilly Interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #34366 by Spinoza on April 23, 2007 at 10:14 pm

I'm so confused...

What does atheism have to do with mass murder?

The ONLY reason religion has anything to do with evil is the goddamned dogma and hierarchy cause it directly.

The reason Stalin was bad wasn't the "dogma" of atheism... and lack of moral BEHAVIOUR is a contingent property... it can be a property of atheists or theists...

Why doesn't someone mention that?

341. One Hell of a Religious Read

Comment #34356 by Spinoza on April 23, 2007 at 9:33 pm

It's so funny... I got so much shit back in Catholic High school (I was never a Catholic, just FYI.. i went there to fuck with them), for saying I thought Ghandi and Theresa were both immoral.

I also got shit on for saying we have no conscience and charity is immoral.

Hitchens is clearly me mate. (if I can speak like a Brit for a minute).

This is one book I actually will purchase. I didn't buy The God Delusion because I wouldn't have read it... it's not written for me... I read the first chapter and just went "Duhhh...", being the atheist philosopher I am, it wasn't all that interesting (I'm so jaded...)

Dennett's book was awesome though.

And this one looks like it's going to be very good.

342. Pope abolishes limbo

Comment #34126 by Spinoza on April 23, 2007 at 10:04 am

We can only hope that this is the beginning of a perfect slippery slope, where this and subsequent popes reconsider each and every article of dogma and faith, and reject the "hypothesis" of each one, rank and file... until we're left with nothing.

Heh heh heh.

343. Street Evangelist Saves 300 Souls From Enjoying Park

Comment #33937 by Spinoza on April 22, 2007 at 6:26 pm

I didn't notice that this was an Onion article...

I rescind my prior outrage, and substitute laughter.

344. In the beginning

Comment #33925 by Spinoza on April 22, 2007 at 5:41 pm

The world is more and more idiotic every fucking day.

I wouldn't care so much if it weren't so damned painful to see intelligence squandered and all the advances of the Enlightenment crashing down around us all...

345. Atheists split on how to not believe

Comment #33922 by Spinoza on April 22, 2007 at 5:28 pm

This is why humanists bug the shit out of me and I've always felt it would be weird as hell to belong to an "atheist organization".

346. Street Evangelist Saves 300 Souls From Enjoying Park

Comment #33772 by Spinoza on April 21, 2007 at 5:27 pm

Ya know... if a guy like that ever got in my face... and ruined my day out with my family at a park.

I'd grab his fuckin' microphone and scream at him instead, like the following:

"No. YOU'RE GOING TO HELL. YOU'RE NOT SAVED. I'M RIGHT. I'VE READ THE BIBLE MORE TIMES THAN YOU. I'VE TAKEN MORE RELIGION CLASSES THAN YOU. I'VE STUDIED AND UNDERSTOOD MORE PHILOSOPHERS AND THEOLOGIANS THAN YOU CAN COUNT. FUCK YOU. GO HOME AND SHUT THE FUCK UP AND LEAVE PEOPLE ALONE YOU MISERABLE PIECE OF SHIT!"

And then I'd break his microphone.

347. Here Comes the Fourth Musketeer.

Comment #33668 by Spinoza on April 21, 2007 at 2:39 am

I really hope Brian is joking.... really really hope...

348. Here Comes the Fourth Musketeer.

Comment #33643 by Spinoza on April 20, 2007 at 9:24 pm

Ah... interesting... I find most people misunderstand both Blackburn and Mackie... so we are in good company with each other I suppose.

I remember arguing in a seminar in undergraduate with someone who just kept railing against Mackie's position from a theistic perspective... I just said to the guy "But Mackie can't be THAT stupid, you're just straw-manning his position if you construe him that way!"...

But I latched onto Blackburn from the first minute I read him because the guy just brilliantly captures the metaethic of moral discourse, imho.

It's so funny though because the first time I ever read Richard Boyd I went "Oh fuck! What do I do now?" Because he takes the EXACT line of reasoning I wanted to go on in MY philosophical career, namely that we ought to make ethics a science... BUT HE'S A REALIST ABOUT VALUE!!!

He thinks moral judgments point to homeostatic property clusters...

And I agree with him...

But I get off the wagon as soon as he says "And those homeostatic property clusters ARE where the moral values lie"...

Because I just think he's wrong... and so does Blackburn... the value IS THE ATTITUDE... but the types of things we call morally good certainly do line up in homeostatic property clusters... and as such we CAN use observation to improve our moral discourse, and moral METHODOLOGY (this is the Boydian line)...

I am not sure that Mackie would allow this though... and in that sense, perhaps, his is a deficient position... but I shall have to go and re-read the second half of his book...

I also have to finish a paper I'm currently working on on a totally unrelated topic (Leibniz on Free will, LOL)...

But I will certainly check out your blog, and drop you a line via email. :)

349. Here Comes the Fourth Musketeer.

Comment #33638 by Spinoza on April 20, 2007 at 8:28 pm

Russell, we're hijacking this article... but this is one of my "specializations" so to speak...

Mackie doesn't provide an account of ethics... that's why he's an error theorist. He thinks our ordinary moral discourse DOES talk about moral value as if it is objective, and thus, every time we use it, we ARE IN ERROR. He does think it is a useful fiction (famously) though.

Now, while I agree with Mackie's argument from queerness, wholeheartedly... I think he is not the end of the story... I REALLY suggest you read more of Blackburn's stuff... really really really. Especially the article "How to Be an Ethical Anti-Realist".

Interestingly I think Richard Boyd's "How to Be a Moral Realist" is COMPATIBLE with Blackburn's quasi-realism...

That is, I think moral judgments are attitudes, but that we OUGHT to have certain attitudes towards certain events and acts, just in virtue of being moral beings. AND that it's possible to have a logic of values.

Really, check him out... can't stress that enough.

I have not read Richard Garner's book, but I own, and have read many times, Michael Smith's "The Moral Problem" (the book I believe you must be references when you name-dropped Smith, LOL).

I agree with you about M. Smith... I think he is uncharitable to the anti-realist position. But I also think you are leaving yourself in a rough spot if you stick with only Mackie.

I think the RESPONSES to Mackie are where most of the good stuff lies. If you want more suggestions, or to discuss the intricacies of Quasi-Realism. I would be happy to discuss them either on the board, or through IM.

350. NEXT MONDAY: Bill O'Reilly interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #33630 by Spinoza on April 20, 2007 at 7:18 pm

You guys have NOTHING to worry about.

Bill is clearly outgunned, he's going to allow a brilliant scientist on his show... there's no way he will be able to talk or argue his way out of this one... The only thing I can see Bill doing is taking what Richard says and deflecting it a little bit... like if Richard says "We don't take our morals from the Bible, or to the extent that we do, we cherry pick.", Bill might say "But you agree, some of us do take our morals from the Bible, and in that sense, for those people isn't that good enough?" and then Richard will say "No, it isn't... because is that really truly a good person?" and Bill will then say "Yes! I think so."

And so it will go on... lol.