351. Richard Dawkins on The Big Questions

Comment #157740 by Cartomancer on April 9, 2008 at 1:41 pm

Was that it? A couple of links to dodgy propaganda sites, a few tenuous fantasies on the nature of political spin, a big dollop of unsubstantiated pseudo-reasoning and an unfailing inability to answer any of the questions we put to him? And then he runs away claiming that he can't have a proper debate with us!

I take it back - these guys are just like the moron creationists we normally get!

352. Richard Dawkins on The Big Questions

Comment #157573 by Cartomancer on April 9, 2008 at 9:26 am

a battalion of alarm-bells

A peal or carillon of alarm-bells surely?! (well, amusing and pointless pedantry is a current concern on the thread right now)

353. Richard Dawkins on The Big Questions

Comment #157567 by Cartomancer on April 9, 2008 at 9:18 am

He simply believes that the Jews are so good at running the world that they can keep hundreds of thousands of survivors from leaking the truth.

Of course! How silly of me!

They can barely run a small middle-eastern country properly! I think the Jewish track record for incompetence at world domination speaks for itself...

354. Richard Dawkins on The Big Questions

Comment #157563 by Cartomancer on April 9, 2008 at 9:11 am

I am generally very careful to give as much voice to my aspirates as I can. It was historical usage (I'm guessing some time during the nineteenth century) that tended to diminish the presence of the "h", which is why it became formalised. I'm simply following the formalised version - I didn't come up with it!

Also "a historic" can sound far too much like "ahistoric", which could cause confusion.

355. Richard Dawkins on The Big Questions

Comment #157550 by Cartomancer on April 9, 2008 at 8:53 am

"an" historian is just one of those little linguistic anachronisms that becomes enshrined in formal use. It originated because the aspirate "h" has such a negligible phonetic value that the succeeding vowel sounds virtually like the first letter of the word, and it was more comfortable to say with the palatal "n" separating the two vowel sounds.

I never used to use it, but my supervisor got me into the habit because it's accepted as a proper part of formal academic style in most places.

356. Richard Dawkins on The Big Questions

Comment #157546 by Cartomancer on April 9, 2008 at 8:46 am

If the case for there having been a Holocaust rested solely on the individual testimonies given at Nuremberg and other postwar trials then yes, there would be significantly more room for doubt. However, it doesn't. This is an historical question, not a legal question - the court in which it is decided is the court of academic historical enquiry conducted over the last seventy years, not the hothouse environment of the courtrooms at Nuremberg. Postwar self-justification might have influenced what evidence turned up initially, and the public spin put on that evidence at the time, but to assume that all academic historians of the last seventy years - whose sole purpose is to get past the spin and find out what really happened - share in this motivation is irrational and deluded. It is also fiercely hypocritical given that the denial crowd wear their anti-semitic prejudices so blatantly on their sleeves.

What has Sir Ian Kershaw got to give positive spin to the allied invasion of Germany for? He's English - we have no laws against holocaust denial here. And it's the height of fatuity to think that legitimate historians are afraid to deny the holocaust because they fear for their careers - they don't do it because there is no good evidence to support that position. I would lose my career too if I denied that the Crusades ever happened. Were such a position tenable then the academic establishment would entertain it, even if it proved politically controversial. Remember Fritz Fischer?

As with any historical investigation, all the pieces of the puzzle are not present. But those which are present tell massively that the Holocaust did happen. How do you explain the missing six million strong cohort in the population? How do you explain the forensic evidence which has been gathered in the meantime? How do you explain the remarkable coherence of the disparate stories from every quarter - far beyond the abilities of any human conspiracy to manufacture.

Why is it that no Holocaust survivor has ever come forward and admitted that they just made their whole story up to get sympathy - or that they were told to say it all by allied lawyers and spin-doctors on pain of death? Surely we would have had at least one in the last seven decades if your claims held any shred of truth?

And you still haven't explained the mass outbreak of contagious incompetence among one specific subset of historians over the years or the inner workings of the Grand World Conspiracy either.

357. Richard Dawkins on The Big Questions

Comment #157519 by Cartomancer on April 9, 2008 at 8:16 am

It was all for the holocaust deniers. I'm curious Clydey - what makes you think any of it was directed at you?

358. Richard Dawkins on The Big Questions

Comment #157494 by Cartomancer on April 9, 2008 at 7:24 am

Wow, a real live Holocaust denier. So you do exist after all!

As an historian (yes, I use "an" too) I often compare Holocaust denial to creationism. I feel there is a big difference, however, in that the Holocaust deniers generally try to present their case in terms of historical fact and evidence, whereas creationists just use silly things like claims of irreducible complexity and arguments from personal incredulity. As such, it should theoretically be possible to have a meaningful debate with the Holocaust denier - providing their expressed commitment to evidence-based reasoning is sincere and not just a smokescreen for controversial political views of course.

Richard Dawkins once wrote an article about creationism where, instead of pointing out the blatantly obvious things that were wrong with it as an idea, he simply pointed out how grossly and drastically wrong the entire scientific establishment would have to be if creationist claims were true. I think a similar approach is fruitful here.

Now, I'm not an historian of the twentieth century. To my classical sensibilities "holocaust" generally just means "entirely burned" in Greek and is used in a ritual context. Nevertheless, historians of the twentieth century are far from thin on the ground - in fact in my own university they seem to outnumber all the other modern historians put together. Perhaps inevitably Germany has the greatest number of historians who concentrate on the Weimar period, the Second World War and the Holocaust - big names include Hans Mommsen, Klaus Hildebrand, Martin Broszat, Eberhard Jaeckel, Joachim Fest and Karl-Dietrich Bracher. In England we have Sir Ian Kershaw, in the US there is Christopher Browning, and those are just a selection of the top names in the field. I have deliberately avoided mention of Yehuda Bauer and other jewish historians as a sop to the anti-semitic prejudices of holocaust deniers, though I feel I should stress that I have added this piece of rhetorical occupatio in order to point out that I do so for the purposes of ridicule and to expose a lack of open-mindedness rather than because I agree with them in any way.

These historians do not agree on everything of course. There are major differences of opinion between them, and you can even fit them into various schools of thought - such as the internationalists and the functionalists who disagree on the precise factors which made Nazi Germany into what it was. There are lots of interesting and important debates to be had in twentieth century history given the state of the evidence. What connects all of these historians, however, is their strong commitment to proper source analysis, the rules of evidence and sound epistemological method. That's what makes eminent historians so eminient.

Now, given that 99% of academic historians in the field - and 100% of credible academic historians - consider the basic facts of the Holocaust as you have defined it beyond reasonable doubt, there are two options. Either they are correct and the basic facts really are beyond reasonable doubt (though of course there is disagreement over specifics), or what we have on our hands is quite simply the most massive conspiracy that humankind has ever dreamed up in its entire recorded history. That thousands, if not millions, of independent and impartial academics have studied all the evidence available and come to broadly the same conclusions as to its veracity is not something that can be dismissed lightly. By suggesting that they are all totally wrong you are, at a stroke, either impugning the professional credibility of the entire academic establishment the world over, or suggesting that there exists a secret organised conspiracy to deliberately misinform academics which is so massive in its extent and power that it overshadows the resources of any other human organisation that there has ever been.

Were the entire jewish population of Israel, every Romany gypsy on the planet, all the homosexuals in Europe and half the black people in Africa to band together and devote themselves night and day to maintaining such a conspiracy then maybe, just maybe, we might be able to pull it off. That's how ludicrous the suggestion is. And it's more than that - this conspiracy would have to encompass at least three generations of people to perpetuate it from the mid 1940s to the present day, and maintain links across five continents throughout that time - all safely concealed from the eyes of anyone who might grow suspicious.

What advantage, what possible reason, might I ask, could maintaining such a massive conspiracy possibly have for all those concerned? If it's reparation money then it's possibly the least successful conspiracy there has ever been as well as the largest. If it's specifically to excuse the foreign policy of the state of Israel then it's also highly ineffective.

And, the most laughable thing of all, we're supposed to believe that a tiny, maverick band of revisionists are the only historians in the last 70 years capable of rational reflection on the evidence. A maverick band, I might add, whose leaders are convicted criminals, known neo-nazi sympathisers and prominent anti-semites. I was in Oxford, as I usually am, the evening David Irving came to speak at the Oxford Union. I remember it well, because a friend and I were actually accosted and threatened by twenty or so of Irving's thuggish black-shirted acolytes when we were leaving a local gay pub a few streets away from the union building. This left me in no doubt as to the kind of vile, bigoted people who fill the upper echelons of the negationist cohort.

So what's the more likely explanation for the current state of affairs -

a) the total and simultaneous professional incompetence of virtually every historian on the planet.
b) the existence of an unprecedentedly massive and entirely successful global conspiracy among people with little personal interest in maintaining such a conspiracy, or
c) the existence of a tiny group of vile racist, homophobic, right-wing conspiracy theorist crackpots who are trying to back up their disgusting prejudices by manipulating historical fact - and fortunately failing miserably to do so.

Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora...

359. Fleabytes

Comment #157463 by Cartomancer on April 9, 2008 at 6:07 am

You know, after reading that FCOS post I can't help but feel it might not be the genuine article. I got the impression that the real Richard Morgan was rather more eloquent than that. It didn't seem like his style to me - and I'd certainly never have him pegged for running off to Robertson's camp. I might be wrong, but I suspect some unscrupulous FCOS boggart might be trying to take advantage of this little disagreement for his own ends.

360. Cult leader Pyotr Kuznetsov tries suicide after realising he was wrong about doomsday

Comment #157280 by Cartomancer on April 8, 2008 at 8:21 pm

Signed
Paula the Not-So-Benevolent Dictator
;-)

Would it be too terribly pedantic of me to point out that it should probably be dictatrix? You have scolded me for forgetting your gender once before...

361. Discussion between Richard Dawkins and Paula Kirby

Comment #157273 by Cartomancer on April 8, 2008 at 8:01 pm

Now, Cartomancer, the fact that you can even conceive of such musically-related humour makes me dubious about your protestation of a music-absent life...

Oh lyrics I'm fine with. They're just words after all, just like poetry. No problem with words or poetic metre. It's things like tune, melody, rhythm, harmony, beat, polyphony and so forth I have no idea where to start on. In fact I could hardly tell you what those words are supposed to mean and how to distinguish one from another. I can hear music - I just don't know how it gets that way...

And bops? Well, anywhere you can find drunken eighteen year old undergraduates I'm there...

362. Discussion between Richard Dawkins and Paula Kirby

Comment #157265 by Cartomancer on April 8, 2008 at 7:39 pm

Another fine Richard Dawkins performance undoubtedly, and Paula comes across just as lovely in person as she does on here. I have to say, though, that I'd have preferred a little more conversation, a little less reaction, maybe...

(Note to self, stop paraphrasing Elvis lyrics)

I understand the importance of taking audience questions, but I think it makes the event seem rather disjointed and scattergun in its approach when that goes on for over twice as long as the material that the questions are actually supposed to be on. I'm not a fan of soundbytes and brief, off-the-cuff responses when I know that Richard is capable of a far more in-depth discussion of the issues. Relying on the spontaneous whimsy and prejudice of the audience to set the agenda just generates a grab-bag of unrelated and undeveloped tangents. It also lets in amusing but intellectually barren crackpots like our hallucinating friend at the end there - when we could have had someone ask a meaningful question about something important. If Paula had remained in control, I'm sure the later parts of the discussion would have been much more profitable and interesting.

363. Richard Dawkins: 'Growth in creationist beliefs a problem for schools'

Comment #156942 by Cartomancer on April 8, 2008 at 12:20 pm

Well, I'm not sure contrarian tendencies are limited to only children. I'm often exceedingly contrarian and I blame it on being brought up with a twin brother - expressing a contradictory opinion becomes an important part of asserting your individuality.

364. Richard Dawkins on The Big Questions

Comment #156939 by Cartomancer on April 8, 2008 at 12:17 pm

There's no other explanation for bad things happening than to conjure up big red pointy-eared daemon that's pulling all the strings? What! Did someone who wants to be taken seriously in our society ACTUALLY SAY THAT! I'm quite simply flabbergasted at the casual way in which this man disregards having to think about and analyse complicated historical problems. He actually betrays himself later on when he says something like "it's really very simple" with that approving tone. He actually does believe that a very simple answer which doesn't require any thinking is always the best answer. William of Ockham would be spinning in his grave to know he had such a facile co-religionist as that odious little man.

I need a lie down after that...

365. Richard Dawkins: 'Growth in creationist beliefs a problem for schools'

Comment #156880 by Cartomancer on April 8, 2008 at 11:00 am

I am an only child. I am super adept at being alone. In fact I almost prefer it sometimes.

That's interesting. It has been my experience too that only children cope much, much better with being alone - and also generally have much better social skills and less problem meeting and talking to others - than do people with very close sibling relationships. The causes are not far to seek. Ironically this means that they are both more comfortable without human company and better able to acquire it, whereas sociophobic, lonely people like myself crave the company of others but can't seem to get it.

366. Richard Dawkins: 'Growth in creationist beliefs a problem for schools'

Comment #156870 by Cartomancer on April 8, 2008 at 10:51 am

Loneliness. Being happy on your own. Yes, indeed. Never managed that. I'd like to though - it'd certainly make life easier in all sorts of ways. I spent the first eighteen years of my life inseparable from another however, his happiness inseparable from mine. Then it all changed. That's quite a habituation to overcome. But I'm trying.

367. Richard Dawkins: 'Growth in creationist beliefs a problem for schools'

Comment #156858 by Cartomancer on April 8, 2008 at 10:36 am

People seem willing to risk all their happiness betting on another person. Never wager your happiness on another human being.

The legion of counsellors, psychiatrists, Jungian psychoanalysts, cognitive behavioural therapists, doctors, advisors and hangers-on, who work night and day to keep my fragile sanity intact, all say much the same thing.

I should probably avoid going any further into my psychological problems here though. We're already woefully off-topic as it is.

368. Richard Dawkins: 'Growth in creationist beliefs a problem for schools'

Comment #156852 by Cartomancer on April 8, 2008 at 10:25 am

Would you feel more hurt and betrayed if you find your partner A) having sex with someone else but with no emotional attachment or B) having an intimate but Platonic friendship with someone else with whom your partner will divulge even things that he/she wouldn't tell you? For example, she may be heterosexual (so you are a male) but she has a very close girl friend.

I wish this were a question I could answer in the abstract, but I fear my own emotional experiences rather prevent me from being able to approach it rationally. My first and only love, the man I adore more than anyone else in the world (with the possible exception of my twin brother), has been with his boyfriend for five years now. They do have sex, and they also have a very close intimate friendship which certainly must involve telling each other things they don't tell me. I have to watch this from the sidelines and there's nothing I can do about it. It's the purest and harshest agony I have ever experienced - I can't bear to be without him, but every time I see him I am reminded painfully of that out-of-reach happiness which I will never know. This has driven me to clinical depression, the evaporation of all my self-esteem and even the verge of suicide over the years.

I summary, I'm not the person to ask.

369. Richard Dawkins: 'Growth in creationist beliefs a problem for schools'

Comment #156753 by Cartomancer on April 8, 2008 at 8:20 am

Drug use harmful? Certainly
Motivated by a desire to "escape reality"? I would say motivated by a preferential desire to experience one part of reality over another. That and chemical addiction - which is also real.

370. Richard Dawkins: 'Growth in creationist beliefs a problem for schools'

Comment #156745 by Cartomancer on April 8, 2008 at 8:15 am

People grow up refusing to face reality. From the time they are children, they are fed a steady of diet of fantasies, religion being one among many. Fairy-stories, movies, sports, just to name a few, contribute to this. Adults spend their time thinking about how they can divert their attention from reality (i.e.: where will I go tonight after work; what's on TV; where will I go for my next vacation; what new, exciting experience can I indulge in) Nobody wants to live in THIS world

I find this an incredibly sad viewpoint to take. Fantasy is not about escaping from "the real world" - it's about using the imaginative capacities we possess to explore and enjoy particular aspects of the real world. What is this mysterious "reality" from which we divert our attention by reading books and watching films and dreaming, and how is it defined? Why is going to work "real" but going on holiday "escaping"? They both impact on your awareness in the same way. What is necessarily "unreal" about what we read and see on television? Why should we afford it a different status from the way looking at something out the window makes us feel? Our brains do not actually percieve the "real world" directly at all - everything we experience is mental modelling.

The imagination, for my money, is the defining feature that makes us human. It lets us enjoy every aspect of the world - and heightens, rather than masking, our experience of it.

371. Richard Dawkins: 'Growth in creationist beliefs a problem for schools'

Comment #156732 by Cartomancer on April 8, 2008 at 8:03 am

I get the same rights, and all my friends, straight, gay, religious and atheist consider it the same as "normal" marriage.

I certainly agree that it's most of the battle won, now that we have civil partnerships with all the same substantive rights, but I and a number of other gay people are still uneasy about the differing nomenclature. If nothing else it's incredibly patronising to arbitrarily choose different names for the same thing based on who you're giving it to. I often use the following examples. Would we stand idly by if the government decided that women were not allowed "driving licences" like men have but instead had to get "civil vehicle operation licenses"? What if ginger-haired people were not allowed to register the birth of their children but instead had to complete "civil offspring propagation" certificates? What if left-handed people didn't pay VAT through the normal channels but instead paid a comparable rate "Sinister Persons' Goods Levy"?

Nobody would even dream of entertaining such nonsense. And yet, when it's gay people involved, somehow the implicit discrimination goes under the radar. If it is substantially the same thing then why not call it the same thing? "Civil partnership" sounds like a neutral, dispassionate, bureaucratic term. It sounds like registering for a dog licence or starting up a small business. "Marriage" on the other hand carries a huge complex of positive connotations in our society, including strong emotional attachment, love, sacredness and so forth. Even if the intention is not there, the very language we use implies a distinction - and people pick up on that. The fact that, in this case, it was clearly a sop to the religious lobby makes it rankle even more.

Now, I must confess that I have something of an extreme viewpoint on the issue. I think that failure for any group to recognise gay marriage on the same terms as heterosexual marriage should be punishable under the Provision of goods and services discrimination act. This would include religious organisations, especially christian churches and islamic mosques. They could stop offering their kind of marriage at all, but if they did offer it then they should be legally compelled to offer it to everyone. Trite religious prejudice should be no barrier to equality before the law.

372. Richard Dawkins: 'Growth in creationist beliefs a problem for schools'

Comment #156250 by Cartomancer on April 7, 2008 at 7:36 am

for example, in Boston 'then they came for the Catholics' has been added!

Given the extent to which the Vatican was in Hitler's pockets at the time, that's a pretty bold and anachronistic claim to make!

373. Richard Dawkins: 'Growth in creationist beliefs a problem for schools'

Comment #156244 by Cartomancer on April 7, 2008 at 7:12 am

It seems as if the established mainstream clergy have never read the proverb:
When they came for the Jews, I didn't speak up, for I am not a Jew.
When they came for the homosexuals, I didn't speak up, for I am not a homosexual.
When they came for the communists and socialists, I didn't speak up, for I was never one of them.
When they came for the democrats, I didn't speak up, for most of them didn't share my faith.
When they came for me, there was no one left to speak up on my behalf.

The sentiment is sound, but it is even more powerful in its proper context. This "proverb" is actually an adaptation of a famous poem by the German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemoeller, who was imprisoned at Dachau during the second world war and narrowly escaped execution at the hands of the Nazis. His colleage Dietrich Bonhoeffer was not so lucky. Niemoeller was concerned about the inactivity of the mainstream German church and intellectuals in the face of increasing Nazi totalitarianism. The actual version goes something like this:

First they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak out - because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Does seem a tad reductio ad hitlerum to equate creationists with the Nazis (though they appear to have no such scruples in return) but the principle of making an early stand to avoid letting the problem get out of control is similar I guess. Admittedly Niemoeller was not the whiter-than-white resistance hero that postwar America painted him to be - he was actually a top-ranking German U-Boat commander during the first world war, and much of his early theological writing is sharply anti-semitic (though not murderously so). His main concern also seems to have been protecting the German protestant churches from falling under Nazi control, rather than liberal humanitarian decency, though his stay in the concentration camps did change his mind on a lot of things.

374. Russell T Davies: Return of the (tea) Time Lord

Comment #156226 by Cartomancer on April 7, 2008 at 6:22 am

I recall as a kid watching Freddie on the television jumping about in a leotard. "Wow, I thought, he looks just like a P.E (physical education) instructor!"

This to me was the epitome of masculinity.

This brings up another interesting point which I was discussing with a straight friend the other day: how to characterise the interest of male homosexuals in, and approach of male homosexuals towards, overt displays of masculinity - particularly with regard to these kinds of hyper-masculine archetypes. The sort of things my friend was thinking of (which shows you how out of touch he is with modern gay "culture") are things like the traditionally masculine personas adopted by the village people (construction worker, policeman, biker etc). He also mentioned that someone else he knows participates in what is known in the gay world as "bear" subculture - basically a niche subculture for large, hairy, and often fat, pierced or tattooed gay men - and he wondered what on earth that was all about. To these I could add a few more examples, such as the iconic gay cowboy image, the bodybuilder, the rugby player (Dieux de Stade calendars anyone?), and the strange sexual fascination an awful number of gay people seem to have with "chavs" and similar assorted council-estate riff-raff (just look at the premium rate chatlines section in the back of any gay magazine if you don't believe me!).

My friend seemed to think that the prevalence of these hyper-masculine archetypes in gay "culture" could be explained as a subversive way of disarming the threat they might implicitly pose towards vulnerable, less than hyper-masculine gay men. In this view it's a form of co-option - to adopt the trappings of the oppressor and show that you're not frightened of him, that you're just as tough and determined yourself. Also perhaps trying to offend and unbalance the aggressor by showing him that he can't hide behind his trappings and feel safe from being tarred with suspicions of homosexuality. In fact, it might be about claiming those trappings so successfully that if he persists in them he is actually more likely to be tarred. It's kind of the flipside of the prominently effeminate gay stereotypes and affectations that abound also - which might themselves be either a conscious assertion of difference from the heterosexual norms or a blatant and controversial attempt to offend and unbalance narrow-minded bigots who see effeminate behaviour in a negative light. This view smells an awful lot like 1960s and 1970s political radicalism and trendy postmodern cultural theory to me, with all its talk of reclamation and empowerment, but I can just about see the point. I expect there is an element of conscious political posturing to it, or at least there was 30-40 years ago and especially with regard to cultural pioneers like Queen, the Village People and Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

Nevertheless, it does carry the rather condescending implication that gay men are naturally unmasculine and self-define largely by victim status. My own explanation is a rather simpler and more prosaic one. What is the one thing that defines the male homosexual? Sexual attraction to males. All the cultural/subcultural stuff is a socially constructed add-on and, while it certainly influences the thinking and even the erotic imagination of many gay men, at bottom the one thing that we all share is a sexual attraction to men. Is it surprising, therefore, that so many of us should find masculinity so alluring! It seems almost too obvious to need saying, but if someone like my friend could overlook it so absolutely that he needs to take refuge in a complex theory of subversive co-option I begin to wonder whether it actually is that obvious to people at large. Has the effeminate stereotype gained too much popular currency for it to be as obvious as it should be?

Which is not to say, of course, that all gay men find hyper-masculine men supremely sexually alluring. A good number of us (me included) have tastes which run very much to the opposite end of the spectrum - to the boyish, the unthreatening, the clean-cut, the gentle and the sensitive. Some even like outright effeminate men, and there's nothing wrong with that either (though I suspect the psychology behind it is perhaps slightly more complex). It's a dangerous thing to generalise too much in this area. But surely my underlying point about masculinity must have some mileage?

375. Fleabytes

Comment #156212 by Cartomancer on April 7, 2008 at 5:44 am

When a religious person says "I'll pray for you" to me, I generally respond with "And I'll think about you when I'm next on the toilet. I doubt it's going to do either of us any good though".

376. Fleabytes

Comment #156206 by Cartomancer on April 7, 2008 at 5:25 am

Has that puffed-up little mountebank finally buggered off yet? About bloody time...

377. Russell T Davies: Return of the (tea) Time Lord

Comment #155930 by Cartomancer on April 6, 2008 at 10:40 am

Oh, and surely a pair of Latin teachers of all people would have some language to talk about their son's coming out with:

Fili, cinaedus es? Nobisne dicis ut in cubiculo pueri reclinere malis quam in cubiculo puellae? In fundamentum id capere delectis? Non cura, fili meo, in Imperio Romano gerendus fuit omne tempore! Et non enim incipiamus discurrere de Graecis...

378. Russell T Davies: Return of the (tea) Time Lord

Comment #155923 by Cartomancer on April 6, 2008 at 10:22 am

Those who have followed Russell T. Davies' work might also remember that he highlighted the large number of gay men who are fans of sci-fi and fantasy in Queer as Folk too. The character Vince (ironically enough a namesake of mine) in QaF was also a huge Doctor Who fan and had stacks of old videos of the programme in his flat. I'm pretty sure that portrayal was one of the things which made the BBC consider Davies for the job of reviving the Doctor for the modern age.

I think I saw an interview with Davies about this, where he said that it was probably the imaginative and escapist element that chimed with so many gay men. There's something about us as a minority which encourages us to live in several different and very separate worlds all the time - with our families, with our straight friends, at work and if we decide to mix with other gay people for the purposes of coupling or copulation. Or at least there traditionally has been this pressure - maybe it will reduce with increasing acceptance in society. Sir Ian McKellen thinks a similar tendency to play many different roles and a need to be different people for different audiences is what attracts so many gay men to a career in the theatre.

379. Russell T Davies: Return of the (tea) Time Lord

Comment #155921 by Cartomancer on April 6, 2008 at 10:11 am

People have always indulged in hero-worship and fandom. There's nothing new about it and nothing wrong with it. In the sixties it would have been Elvis or the Beatles. Before that people followed actors and playwrights and looked up to military heroes and kings. Historians and biographers such as Livy and Plutarch wrote of the deeds of great men and encouraged others to follow their example. Before that hero-worship actually was hero worship and people built tombs to their respected chieftains, shamans and warriors.

An expression of who we admire or wish to emulate is nothing more than an expression of the values we ourselves hold dear - of nothing less than who we are. It is an identity statement and a way of confirming and shaping our personalities. By the nature of a man's heroes shall ye know him...

Give this, isn't it great that lots of people identify with, admire and want to emulate what Richard Dawkins stands for? Who else in the public eye represents these values? Science, reason, that sense of wonder at the universe, unabashed intellectualism, common sense, compassion, unwillingness to pander to the status quo when something is wrong and can be made right, that genteel debonair demeanour that only a kindly, silver-haired Oxford don can carry off...

You can probably tell that I'm something of an RD fanboy myself by now. I even had a small poster of him on my wall for a long while!

380. Dawkins warns of human extinction

Comment #155902 by Cartomancer on April 6, 2008 at 9:14 am

Means the same thing? Means the same thing? I understand perfectly well what "brokenness" means thank you very much, and substituting a synonym won't change the fact that it has no relevance to the discussion of the human condition whatsoever. Human beings are not "broken" - there is no perfect original template from which we have diverged, we simply are the way we are.

And if you want additional substantive criticisms then fine, you shall have them:

Richard used the phrase "without extremism of this kind". You will note that he did not say "without religion". The hyper-nationalistic pragmatism of the Viet Cong and the communist dogmas of the Cubans very much do fall under the category of "extremism of this kind" - to wit, dogmatic certainty and unshakeable conviction in one's own rightness irrespective of the evidence combined with a systematic lack of sympathy for those who do not agree with your position.

Also, why do you assume that all ideologies are merely after-the-fact justifications for individual personal choices? What does motivate individual personal choices if not the contents of that person's mind? How is it possible to talk of human individuality if you do not accept that differing ideas can motivate differing behaviour? Is everyone who professes to a sincerely-held belief merely wearing a cynical mask to cover their own selfish ends? What personal selfishness does your gaudy roman catholic ideology mask I wonder...

Got to go to Mass now

I see you have taken my suggestion that you fuck off back to the Middle Ages to heart after all...

381. Dawkins warns of human extinction

Comment #155893 by Cartomancer on April 6, 2008 at 8:54 am

human beings in their brokenness

Brokenness? Brokenness? Take your vile, dehumanising new-testament claptrap and fuck off back to the Middle Ages where you belong.

382. Russell T Davies: Return of the (tea) Time Lord

Comment #155882 by Cartomancer on April 6, 2008 at 8:30 am

Cartomancer's list of his top three favourite things in the whole wide world:

1. Sci-fi and Fantasy geekery
2. Gayness
3. Richard Dawkins

Much jumping up and down with barely-concealed schoolboyish excitement was had after reading the above article. I can't wait to see Richard in Doctor Who - the idea is simply magnificent. In fact, now Richard is retiring from his Charles Simonyi post, why can't we have him as the Doctor permanently!

Davies' account of the creeping acceptance of young gay people in British society is spot on too - if anything it's much more advanced than he supposes and progressing much more quickly. Though I share Davies' jealousy that my teenage years couldn't have been like that. Still, some things just make you feel good about the world

Ecce gratum et optatum, ver reducit gaudia!

383. Anti-gay Okla. lawmaker attracts 1,000 backers

Comment #155861 by Cartomancer on April 6, 2008 at 5:50 am

Does it not bother you even slightly that Sally Kern is onto us? Does this point to infiltration within the Enclave?

My best guess is that she's one of Spymaster McKellen's double agents. I suspect she was planted in the Oklahoma state legislature to discredit the gay terror theory by associating it with crazy religious crackpots. This is probably a follow-up to the marvellously successful efforts of Agent Haggard, so I wouldn't be at all worried - did you seriously think that straight people were intelligent enough to figure us out?

As Head of Geological Gay Terrorism, I am worried.

Ah, so you're the one in charge of that. Well, I can report some modest successes for you then. Gay sex has certainly made the earth move for me of late!

384. Dawkins warns of human extinction

Comment #155859 by Cartomancer on April 6, 2008 at 5:27 am

Some of the name frequencies are mentioned in the appendix of J.D. Tabors book. The source mentioned of the frequency : Lexicon of Jewish names in Late Antiquity : part1 (Tubingen: Mohr, Siebeck, 2002) Time span 330BC to 200AD.
I hope that this source is reliable ?!

I'm sure the source is very reliable as far as it goes (any cataloguing activity done by German historians is, in my experience, usually maddeningly precise and comprehensive, if deadly dull to read). Nevertheless, I have serious doubts about using such as lexicon for making probability calculations of the sort mentioned. In the absence of census records the lexicon would have been compiled from all the names found in semitic literary and legal sources from the appropriate period, so the individuals it records are very unlikely to be a representative sample of the population as a whole. Legal records would probably be a better bet than literature, but I sincerely doubt that enough of this material survives for a representative sample. Also, this is a 530 year period we're talking about, and naming customs must have changed dramatically across that time, especially with the influx of first Greek then Roman culture into the near east.

What would a "lexicon of modern English names 1478-2008 AD" look like? What if it were compiled solely from a handful of high court case records, three issues of Hello! magazine from the late nineties and the combined writings of Samuel Johnson, Stephen Fry, Terry Pratchett, Richard Dawkins and David Starkey? How many John Smiths would the frequency calculations from this document say there should be? Say that an archaeologist in the year 4000 AD found a piece of gravestone dated to 1994 AD. Using this document and the same calculations, how certain could he be that the grave belonged to the late John Smith MP, former leader of the labour party?

385. Beware the Believers

Comment #155788 by Cartomancer on April 5, 2008 at 8:03 pm

P.S. Sorry for all the swirlies, noogies and snuggies. Didn't realize they'd render you permanently immune to sarcasm.

What are swirlies, noogies and snuggies? Sound like the names of three quaint 1950s street gangs to me...

386. Dawkins warns of human extinction

Comment #155763 by Cartomancer on April 5, 2008 at 4:28 pm

Ah yes, William Lane Craig...

Well, the simple answer is that there are as many views on his stuff as there are historians. It essentially comes down to whether you share his evangelical molinist catholicism or not. Fortunately, the vast majority of sensible historians do not.

I myself have had cause to look at some of his stuff on the Philosophy of Time in connection with my masters thesis, which was on the changing perception of time in twelfth- and thirteenth-century scholastic thought. Sadly, while he claims to take Einstein and Lorenz into account in his theological writings, I can't see much to what he says that goes beyond an uncritical reception of the sixteenth century catholic orthodoxy. Basically he talks the talk of modern philosophy, but his ideas are anachronistic and backward - highly ironic for someone who claims to be an expert in the philosophy of time.

The problem with the Earman claim is that, since we have never actually verified the occurrence of a miracle, and everything we know about science and the nature of the universe suggests that they cannot happen, the only sensible figure to put on the probability of a miraculous occurrence is zero. Well, ok, infinitesimally higher than zero, but for all practical purposes zero. The probability of ANY other explanation that has been verified as even theoretically possible will therefore always be massively higher than this. Even recourse to super-advanced aliens or time travelling space lobsters is more plausible than humans doing magic, because we at least know of a possible mechanism by which those things could happen.

Furthermore this sort of thinking generally ignores the fact that the "calculations" an historian has to make - especially an historian working with such flimsy evidence as an historian of the ancient near east at this time necessarily has - are so massively provisional that they hardly prove anything. A sensible historian will never even get to debating whether Jesus actually did turn water into wine or rise from the dead - he should really have stopped when he understood the allusive and unreliable nature of the sources for these claims. Put simply, the chance that the person who told us the story is making it all up is always so much more probable than the claims the miracle story makes that the Ehrman calculation is entirely unnecessary.

387. Anti-gay Okla. lawmaker attracts 1,000 backers

Comment #155757 by Cartomancer on April 5, 2008 at 3:51 pm

But now I am really worried! What if the conclave expelled us for this? It would ruin my life!

Don't worry, I'm sure the sinister Masters of the Conclave will take your noble efforts to further the cause of queerdom in the spirit in which they were intended. The Grand Strategos of All the Lesbians might be a tad tricky to convince - she likes to run a tight ship so they say, and often stamps her Doc Martens to get what she wants - but I'm sure the remaining members of the council will talk her round eventually. Archmagister Elton and the Keeper of the Great Sparkly Handbag are known to be particularly sympathetic to mavericks, so you should be fine. If that fails I could always have a word in the ear of the Pornographer-General or the Head of Corrupted Youth to speak up on your behalf...

388. Dawkins warns of human extinction

Comment #155753 by Cartomancer on April 5, 2008 at 3:39 pm

Funnily enough I am Cartomancer (though my friends generally know me as Vincent), but I'm afraid biblical history is not really my speciality - I'm a Graeco-Roman classicist and European medievalist in the main, and more an historian of ideas than an archaeologist or political historian. For what it's worth, though, Roland F's information seems accurate, though I would emphasise that it is very dangerous indeed to come to all but the most speculative conclusions about particular historical individuals on such evidence. One reliquary inscription alone and divorced from any corroborating evidence - even in cases where the reliquary itself is known genuinely to be authentic (this one isn't) - is a very poor basis for certainty. I'm not entirely sure I understand this mathematical calculation for the combinatoric likelihood of the names either - I struggle to see just how someone can come up with any numerical probability at all for something like that unless they have accurate and significantly complete records of name frequencies among the semitic peoples of the area at the time.

Actually, while I'm on the subject of historical methodology, I think I should say something so blatantly obvious that it probably doesn't really need saying. Even if we were to find a full, complete and empty tomb and prove that it belonged to an itinerant preacher called Jesus at the right time - even if we had eyewitness accounts from hundreds of different reliable witnesses that he performed his miracles, rose from the dead and did everything else he was supposed to have done - it would still not be evidence for any sort of supernatural activity. Why? Because we've already got much much better evidence that these things could not possibly have happened. That evidence comes from modern science - miracles are impossible, apotheosis is impossible, simple as that. Scientific evidence pretty much ALWAYS trumps historical evidence in the grand scheme of things, because it is far more reliable. This is no fault of the historian of course - it's the nature of what we have to work with. The scientist can repeat his experiments and come up with new ones, and has built-in methods for ensuring the accuracy of his evidence, whereas the historian must make the best job with anything that comes to hand.

This used to be, and in some circles still is, an unpopular thing to say about historians. The discipline is being fought over by literary-minded (sadly all too often postmodernist) thinkers, who feel it should be done in the same way as literary studies (translation: warble on about trendy new theories and make it all up as you go along), and more conservative sorts such as myself who see history as more akin to science because it is an evidence-based discipline. My own field, the history of ideas, is particularly prone to this sort of conflict.

389. Fleabytes

Comment #155699 by Cartomancer on April 5, 2008 at 9:26 am

I am impressed you even have these, let alone position them by the door.

They're ten a penny when you live near Glastonbury. I thought a sacrificial athame and the wicker man might be overkill though.

390. Fleabytes

Comment #155691 by Cartomancer on April 5, 2008 at 9:13 am

Jehovah's Witnesses? I like to keep a ram's skull and an ornate-looking chalice by the door for when they turn up. Then I can toy with the objects while I greet them and say something like "splendid, the other side have arrived..." in a deep and sinister voice. It really gets them panicking.

391. Beware the Believers

Comment #155642 by Cartomancer on April 5, 2008 at 6:13 am

It's sad really. I suppose it is because you are living in a country where vocal theists are uncommon, so that you aren't often confronted with the limitations of your prejudice. Nevertheless, it does make me wonder how you developed these notions... perhaps from hanging around this echo chamber?

Here's a clue for you and those that share your prejudice: Fred Phelps is an agent provocateur.

Neverthelss, I detect a hint of playing the victim here. You do seem awfully keen to assume that everything we say is a direct attack on you, and that we are necessarily misrepresenting your position rather than just discussing a position that we disapprove of in the abstract.

For the record, pretty much all the vocal theists I have ever encountered in this fine country - almost without exception - have been homophobic bigots. The non-homophobic theists have, without exception, been intensely private and non-vocal in their faith. And the "echo chamber" of RD.net has, if anything, actually mellowed my utter disdain for the religious mind. As far as Fred Phelps goes, actually I despise him far less than I despise mainstream theist homophobes like the Bishop of Carlisle or Sally Kearns. Phelps is an inhuman monster, but his homophobic campaigns are simply a sad attempt to provide focus and hold his vile brood-cult together now he is too old and decrepit to beat his wife and children like he used to. He's a fringe lunatic - it's the mainstream ones who hold power that I'm worried about.

392. Beware the Believers

Comment #155640 by Cartomancer on April 5, 2008 at 6:08 am

Actually, I feel that perhaps an apology is in order with regard to the presentation of my final comment. I stand by the comment itself, but by introducing it with "finally" in line with my "firstly... secondly... thirdly..." scheme I did indeed imply that the criticism was directed at the same source as the others - Kardashovel. It did indeed come across as a culminatory point, rather than as an appended afterthought to the main text as I intended, and I apologise for my sloppy presentational skill.

I actually noted, when reading through the thread before I commented, that Kardashovel was being unfairly accused of this dismissal. It was in one of annabannana's comments:

Secondly, you believe that abortions are immoral, Steve, Cartomancer, Quetzalcoatl, and I believe that (up until a certain point) abortion is not immoral. I'll leave the other three out of this since you seem to want to exclude them based on their being men. But I am capable of undergoing an abortion (I assume they would undergo it, could they, since they don't think it to be immoral) and so if I were to have one, would you not think me to be immoral?

I now suspect that nobody has actually made this substantive point on the thread themselves, it just arose as a misunderstanding. That's enough to deserve a refutation of course, but I should probably have been clearer about the source of the sentiment.

393. Cult leader Pyotr Kuznetsov tries suicide after realising he was wrong about doomsday

Comment #155635 by Cartomancer on April 5, 2008 at 5:54 am

When I mentioned this to my husband, he said that one laughs for a second or two at first, as the image (hitting the head with a block of wood) is cartoon like.

Exactly. We are not laughing at the man in reality - we are laughing at a little cartoon we have come up with in our own heads.

Oh, and Bonzai, of course I wasn't assuming that everyone who didn't laugh was condemning those who do out of hand. But I have certainly detected that sentiment more than once on here.

394. Cult leader Pyotr Kuznetsov tries suicide after realising he was wrong about doomsday

Comment #155629 by Cartomancer on April 5, 2008 at 5:44 am

I think the dissent on this thread over humour stems from a fairly simple division between the participants - a division between those who feel that laughing at the misfortunes of another is, de facto and necessarily, cruel or immoral, and those who feel it is not.

As one who falls into the latter camp, I am tempted to characterise the "moral high horse" brigade as well-meaning but overbearing. This would perhaps be unfair however, given that they are simply people for whom expression of sentiment and deep-seated moral feelings cannot easily be separated. It seems that, for this section of the contributing public, an expression of amusement automatically suggests disdain or callousness toward the object of amusement. They do not easily see the distinction, which the other half see, between the amusing abstract form and the underlying serious issues. For them the two are inseparable.

Now, I do not want this to be understood as a criticism of their position. I don't think it is possible to decide or helpful to speculate on whether one "should" make the distinction between form and substrate in this situation - both seem to be valid ways of approaching the world. I can and do see a distinction, and I do not appreciate people telling me that I shouldn't, just as they would not appreciate me telling them that they should. Ironically, it is an issue of sensitivity to the different mental patterns of others!

I am not laughing at mental illness qua mental illness and suffering. I am not laughing at Pyotr Kuznetsov the man, or his tragic problems. Indeed, I know hardly anything at all about the man - only what I have read here, and that is very little. What I am laughing at is the idea of failed doomsday prophecies and the slapstick image in my head of a man hitting himself over the head with a log. The fact that these ideas and images were put into my head by Pyotr Kuznetsov's story is immaterial. In all honesty the mental picture I am laughing at must look nothing like what really happened out in Russia last month - the news report has abstracted many of the details, and my reading of it has abstracted a stage further. Why should I not laugh at the innocuous funny images inside my head? Why should I not share my amusement with others? Would anyone seriously suggest that my appreciation of these images reduces my capacity for compassion, empathy or understanding? I certainly resent such implications.

Who does this harm? It certainly won't harm Mr. Kuznetzov - he almost certainly will never read anything we say here or even realise that any of us exist. Will it influence mental health policy where we are? Is a printout of this thread going to find its way to the corridors of power and form the basis of a new mental health provisions act? We, on an internet forum, are too far distant, too far removed, from these events for our contributions to matter in the slightest - so why should any of us feel guilty about what we say here? The only sensitivities we need bear in mind are those of the other posters and readers on this forum.

I would, perhaps, go further. Those who claim empathy or sympathy with Kunetsov almost certainly do not feel it for the man himself either. What they feel is the normal empathy and sympathy of their own, toward their own picture of mentally ill people, which has been brought to their minds by the story of Kunetsov. You simply cannot empathise properly with someone you have only heard about in a few sentences in a news article. You can sympathise, but not very deeply - there is no direct connection. Everyone here is fitting the Kunetsov story into their own mental and emotional picture of mentally ill people, and in some it brings to the surface all the emotions conjured by that picture as a whole. This is perfectly normal, and natural. It does not make the prophets of universal sympathy among us hypocritical or wrong. It just means we react in different ways and express different things.

Ultimately all our posts on internet forums are a form of self-expression. Some people feel it more important to give the impression "I am a sensitive person who feels for the plight of the mentally ill", others "I am a person with a sense of humour and an appreciation for good slapstick" or "I am a person who believes passionately that no area of human activity should be arbitrarily excluded from the remit of comedy". Just because you prefer to emphasise the one in no way means you reject the other. I like to think I am both sensitive and passionate about freedom of comedy - and I most certainly can laugh and cry at different aspects of the same situation at the same time with no trace of hypocrisy.

395. Beware the Believers

Comment #155611 by Cartomancer on April 5, 2008 at 4:45 am

Is this directed at me? If so, why?

Only inasmuch as you might subscribe to it. I don't think I picked it up in your posts, just generally across the discussion. Contrary to popular belief there are other people apart from you making statements here too...

396. Anti-gay Okla. lawmaker attracts 1,000 backers

Comment #155609 by Cartomancer on April 5, 2008 at 4:35 am

You know we can't give you the schedule as it is a secret operation, but the Vatican, Discovery Institute and Liberty University are on the schedule.

I thought we decided that Liberty "University" wasn't important enough to attack at the last meeting of the Secret Conclave of Sodom? Did I miss the reversal of that decision while the hot dancing boys were on?

397. Beware the Believers

Comment #155562 by Cartomancer on April 4, 2008 at 9:23 pm

Dude, Steve Zara and I both tried to raise those points with him

You're right of course. I should have recognised that the same themes I brought up were championed by you two and others in my absence - I would hate to think I came across as dismissive of what has actually been said over the last hundred comments or so. I think I'm just frustrated that I missed out on making my own rebuttal earlier. Oh well, such are the perils of straying from RD.net on a friday evening for the somewhat more nefarious comforts of Oxford's night life...

398. Beware the Believers

Comment #155560 by Cartomancer on April 4, 2008 at 9:01 pm

Oh dear oh dear oh dear. I leave RD.net for the evening and the debate steams ahead without me. I guess I should have predicted that. I should probably also have predicted that our friend Kardashovel would spout some inconsequential nonsense and assume it was a successful rebuttal of my arguments. Since nobody has taken him to task for me I guess I had better do the deed myself...

First of all, oh shoveller of the inane, you have not refuted the irrelevance of future possibilities for this particular debate. You said:

I'm not [talking about the potential for future suffering]. I am talking about a prospective future possibility of living a life... and it sounds like you would vote to pull the plug on the respirator because the comatose patient is taking up bed space that could be used for someone who is fully alert.

Why is the potential for "living a life" so important? Why do you choose "living" and not "suffering" as the benchmark of your concerns? In order to suffer in the sense we are talking about, a being must necessarily be alive, but the opposite is not true - not all living beings can suffer in this sense. That is where the examples of the tumour and the daisy come in - both are living beings, but neither has the capacity for suffering. These two things not only have the potential for life but are, in fact, actually alive. It is the capacity for suffering which we use to determine whether immoral cruelty has taken place.

Furthermore, we must get it straight in our minds just what potential really means here. What precise actual harm does destroying potential actually do? "Potential" is simply an idea in our minds - it has no extra-mental reality or existence of its own. Potential itself is not alive and cannot suffer. "Ah", you say, but destroying potential can cause harm to human beings too - you cite the example of switching off the respirator of a comatose man who stands a reasonable chance of recovery. That is indeed true - destroying potential can harm human beings - but the crucial difference between the two cases, which you have overlooked, is that the comatose patient is an actual human being, who really exists, but the conceptus or foetus is only a potential human being. One day it could develop the ability to suffer, but that ability is not present yet. As such, destroying the conceptus destroys only potential - it prevents the future existence of a human being, it does not terminate the existence of an already extant human being. There is no ethical difference, therefore, between aborting a pregnancy before the foetus has developed the ability to suffer and deciding not to have sex and concieve it in the first place. To put it in more amusing terms - if aborting a fertilised conceptus is equivalent to murder, then so is refusing to have heterosexual sex whenever humanly possible. The man in the coma on the respirator is a different case, because he exists now and, as such, has all the relevant human rights. If he recovers then his life will continue, whereas the aborted conceptus's life will never begin in the first place. How absurd it is to credit something with rights that doesn't even exist! Ah, sorry, I forgot - you've not exactly got a spotless record when it comes to dealing with non-existent beings have you...

Secondly you raise the question of mentally handicapped human beings:

What you should carefully consider is that there are some humans who sadly have less capacity for emotion and intellect than a chimp in a lab. Should we use them for experimentation instead, since they are less sentient and their physiology is even closer to our own?

Aside from the glaring non-sequitur that a lack of sentience would automatically consign someone to life as a test subject, you raise an interesting detail. You do not raise a valid argument however. The crucial question of suffering should always be borne in mind - is the benighted individual in question capable of suffering? I used the term "sentience" in my definitions, though I was careful to keep the idea of suffering centre stage. Concepts such as intellect are not strictly relevant here, though they do contribute to certain definitions of sentience elsewhere. Sure, some human beings have much less capacity for suffering, emotional response, and awareness of their surroundings than is normal - but they still have some. The only human beings truly incapable of suffering are the totally braindead ones - whose bodies have to be kept alive artificially anyway. These are not living, suffering human beings as I understand the term. Your recourse to the suggestion that the bodies of such individuals be routinely used for research purposes says more about your own lack of scruples than the issue at hand. The ghoulish "frankenstein science" overtones of your comment are a profoundly unworthy of you and deserve to be left at home. Actually many people do donate their bodies to science quite willingly, as do the relatives of the deceased. Your argument here is about who gets to decide what to do with dead people, and that's not what we are discussing. Inasmuch as a human being, or any other animal, has the capacity to suffer it should be afforded a certain degree of protection under the law. I repeat once more that conceptuses and the braindead cannot suffer.

Thirdly you attempt to tar me with the brush of hypocrisy when I bring up the tangential issues surrounding abortion:

it is interesting to note that you would argue that abortion might be the moral choice depending on potential future circumstances, but that it could never be immoral based on potential future circumstances. I wonder what you think about that observation...

Here you fail to understand that I was very specifically discussing late-term abortions where some capacity for suffering in the foetus has developed, not the main issue of early-term abortions where it has not. Once the capacity for suffering has developed the issues become more complicated, and the well-being of the mother, the foetus and anyone else affected should be taken into consideration. This is not discussing potential human beings anymore, it is discussing actual ones - and the potential future circumstances can now affect actual, existing human beings.

Finally, I think it the height of condescension to assume that I, as a gay man who will never have children or face the prospect of having an abortion, am, because of that fact, somehow less qualified to speak on this issue than other people. We are not talking about individual situations here, we are talking about underlying moral codes - and that's an abstract discussion anyone can join in with irrespective of whether they have a vested interest in the outcome. One does not need personal experience to come to rational decisions - only sufficient evidence and proper methodology.

399. Dawkins warns of human extinction

Comment #155325 by Cartomancer on April 4, 2008 at 10:27 am

Spoken by a man who comes from Glastonbury I believe. Not too far from the Isle of Avalon...

Indeed so. Most people round there are ascending to the heavens on a regular basis - or at least away with the fairies. It's amazing the weird people you see at certain times of the year up the Tor - I once caught a gaggle of nuns sliding down the side on their bottoms in the middle of winter.

400. Dawkins warns of human extinction

Comment #155317 by Cartomancer on April 4, 2008 at 10:20 am

In fact... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_who_have_been_considered_deities