351. 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.

352. 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.

353. Here Comes the Fourth Musketeer.

Comment #33621 by Spinoza on April 20, 2007 at 6:19 pm

Russell, if you like Mackie, check out Blackburn's version of expressivism (Quasi-realist projectivism)... that is, if you haven't already... I think he provides a better ethical stance than Mackie's "meh", though Mackie is of course right to think objective moral values would be "queer".

354. Here Comes the Fourth Musketeer.

Comment #33603 by Spinoza on April 20, 2007 at 5:23 pm

Very amusing guys... Ahahaha.

355. Gay hate church to picket VT gun rampage funerals

Comment #33592 by Spinoza on April 20, 2007 at 4:44 pm

Someone get Children's Aid to remove the children from that cult, they're border-lining on having permanent harm done to them.

The younger children might still be salvageable.

This is CLEAR child abuse... they are willfully bringing their children into their twisted protests and harm is being done to them (see: getting hit by stuff thrown at them, and getting hit by cars, I think)

It's not JUST that they're evil.. Fred Phelps IS evil.. and the parents are ignorant AND evil. The children are just ignorant.

Just sad...

356. Here Comes the Fourth Musketeer.

Comment #33568 by Spinoza on April 20, 2007 at 3:38 pm

I'm a little confused about purchasing (a) book(s) that just confirms or reiterates something I already know.

I love these guys for speaking out, but I somehow get the sense that the books are written for someone else... lol.. Like the people who aren't going to read them (or are going to pretend to and then denounce them for no good reason).

Ah well, keep on keeping on. Allied Atheist Alliance or United Atheist League? LOL

357. Doctors Opposing Circumcision: An Appeal for Misha

Comment #32375 by Spinoza on April 17, 2007 at 1:03 am

I have no problem with infant circumcision... not because it's medically beneficial (that is either not true, or not certain)... but because many women like it (and many other women are turned off by uncircumcised men)! :P, and the pain is probably (given various factors I don't need to delve into) not all that bad for an infant... and you don't remember it anyway.

To force a 12 year old child to maim himself is ridiculous... definitely child abuse. It should not be about "doctors opposing circumcision", but "doctors opposing religiously motivated child abuse".

... I just don't know about infant circumcision though... It's not clear that it's unethical...

358. Atheism isn't the final word

Comment #32371 by Spinoza on April 17, 2007 at 12:49 am

Corylus, about Dennett, the reason they probably avoid him is likely that Dennett went to such great pains to write a book that wasn't antagonistic, and treated the subject fairly and objectively, that most theists probably either didn't realize what sort of book it is (Breaking The Spell I mean), or don't know about it.

It is a great book though... philosophically not amazing... even atheist philosophers can find several bones to pick over the methodology... but I don't expect my pop-philosophy to be anything more than what it is. Dennett has contributed so much to academia that he's allowed to write these pop-philosophy books...

359. Atheism isn't the final word

Comment #32356 by Spinoza on April 17, 2007 at 12:00 am

To be fair, that's probably the least stupid thing he said... The great Leibniz thought the argument from design was pretty good... obviously for much more complicated reasons... and he was a genius AND an uber-Christian... of course... the argument from design isn't very good. Leibniz probably wouldn't have believed it today... he was bordering on Spinozism at the time anyway...

360. Atheism isn't the final word

Comment #32353 by Spinoza on April 16, 2007 at 11:35 pm

The COMMENTS on the actual USAToday website are insane... I reported the top one as hate speech! AHAHAHA

361. Atheism isn't the final word

Comment #32350 by Spinoza on April 16, 2007 at 11:29 pm

Also... it's a RED HERRING to start comparing who's done what in the history of the world... good theists vs. good atheists... I mean a real viciously fallacious argument.

If you're only nice because your religion tells you God's gonna be pissed if you're not... then YOU'RE NOT nice, you're just pretending to eat your veggies so God will let you eat dessert, of course, you've actually fed the broccoli to the dog when God wasn't looking (little did you know, the dog is God).

362. Atheism isn't the final word

Comment #32347 by Spinoza on April 16, 2007 at 11:24 pm

Lol... sorry... just makes me very annoyed when people talk such obvious bullshit and get away with it.

363. Atheism isn't the final word

Comment #32346 by Spinoza on April 16, 2007 at 11:24 pm

"What would a world without God look like? Well, for one, morality becomes, if not impossible, exceedingly difficult. "Thou shalt not kill" loses much of its force when reduced from commandment to a suggestion. How inspiring can it be to wake in the morning, look in the mirror, and see an accident of evolutionary history — the end product of the random collision of molecules?"

IDIOT! LEARN SOME FUCKING MORAL PHILOSOPHY OR SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

364. New Primate Species Found In 42 Million-year-old Texas Fossils

Comment #32237 by Spinoza on April 16, 2007 at 10:03 am

If there were a God, he'd be going "Ahahaha, I'm STILL fucking with you! Hahahahahaha!"

Which just makes me smile.

365. Kadra attacked in public

Comment #32097 by Spinoza on April 15, 2007 at 4:13 pm

What about clit rings? Heeheehee...

366. Against God

Comment #32094 by Spinoza on April 15, 2007 at 3:16 pm

" 17. Comment #32072 by cangrande on April 15, 2007 at 12:56 pm
Popular atheism is not new — Bertrand Russell's classic Why I Am An Atheist was written half a century ago

Bertrand Russell's classic is not called "Why I am an atheist" but "Why I am not a Christian," and it was written in 1927 which would make 'three-quarters of a century ago' a better choice of words."

GOOD CATCH cangrande, I was just about to post that myself, but scroled down to check whether some other yeoman had caught it himself...

Man... I wish people cared about GETTING THINGS RIGHT. (this is distinguished from caring about what is true, which usually means caring about what one either believes, or wants to be true, the use of a second verb in the sentence makes it much stronger...)

367. Coming out as atheist: Noel Gallagher & Gabriel Byrne

Comment #31801 by Spinoza on April 14, 2007 at 10:57 am

1. Colbert is not an atheist.
2. Why the hell do people want "publicity" for atheism? That seems very silly to me... indeed, foolish. I don't want people "converting" to atheism for the wrong reasons, and I don't want people professing to be atheists for no good reason.

I happen to like the Gallagher brothers (I think they're just hilarious, and consistent in their attitudes), but I could give a fuck if famous people are atheists... famous people aren't necessarily SMART people.

3. David, that's stupid (though admirably attempted). There is a term out there in the world, used by a great many people. The term is "God". Whether it has a referent or not, it doesn't matter, those who don't believe it has a referent are in a literal sense, taking a stance about the epistemological and ontological status of that referent, and that's what is meant by "atheism". It's like saying I can't say I'm a non-believer in Santa Claus or Unicorns because there's no referent for the negation of the proposition. That's just a misunderstanding of what is being negated. What atheists are negating is the BELIEF in a non-existent entity. "atheism" can just as easily mean "without belief in the non-existent entity denoted by the term 'God'".

This pop-philosophy BS of "atheism is the wrong word to describe us" is just untenable, in my opinion (as a philosopher).

368. Medical 'Miracles' Not Supported by Evidence

Comment #31678 by Spinoza on April 13, 2007 at 8:10 pm

I am so tired of CRAZY fucking retards usurping Quantum Physics to suit their cracked out bullshit.

I don't know how many times I've repeated the Feynman mantra "If you think you understand QM, you don't understand QM."

The Internet is breeding these insane people like crazy though... they get these chain-letter emails, and they read the wikipedia versions of complex theories and think they understand it... so they try to apply it to some bullshit they already believe, and they figure because no one they speak to understands the concepts or words they're USING (but not understanding themselves) that that serves as adequate justification for their claims...

Man... I'm just so tired of it... I can't keep reading these things... It's too painful.

369. Einstein & Faith

Comment #31574 by Spinoza on April 13, 2007 at 10:37 am

""The fanatical atheists," he wrote in a letter, "are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who--in their grudge against traditional religion as the 'opium of the masses'-- cannot hear the music of the spheres.""

Einstein had a point.

In the zeal to denigrate, atheists (I am one) often misunderstand the is/ought distinction.

He was, though, for all intents and purposes, according to every major religion, an atheist with regard to their conceptions.

As am I.

The subtlety of the language ought not to be overlooked.

370. Militant atheists: too clever for their own good

Comment #30364 by Spinoza on April 7, 2007 at 9:00 pm

Hehehehe...

371. Militant atheists: too clever for their own good

Comment #30239 by Spinoza on April 7, 2007 at 10:20 am

"At least they will not blow themselves up."

Of that, I am not certain... if the collective intelligence of atheists wanes, then we will end up with something a lot like those 2 episodes of south park (the one where they parody Richard Dawkins).. with atheists fighting each other for stupid reasons...

Like the atheists who think we shouldn't be trying to convert theists (dumb people), and the atheists who think we should be... we might have an atheist schism :|

372. Militant atheists: too clever for their own good

Comment #30091 by Spinoza on April 7, 2007 at 12:25 am

To be perfectly honest,... one of the issues I have had with Dawkins (though I LOVE the guy's work for a great many reasons) and many of his followers is that they want to "win" people over to the right side (the atheist side)...

But I don't want that... I WANT atheism to be an elitist position.. I want it to REMAIN true that most of the most intelligent people on earth are atheists, and most of the least intelligent are theists...

I hate it when there are stupid atheists... And there are (let's not lie to ourselves)... It really makes me angry... because they ARE damaging the integrity the atheist position has always held (that of regarding logic, consistency, and truth higher than blind faith and allegiance to tradition).

I am starting to wonder if the recent movement to gain more people to the atheist "cause"... the fence-sitters, as it were, is going to irreparably damage the virtuousness of the intellectual atheist position...

I don't want people to blindly follow Dawkins, or Dennett, or Harris, to just repeat their arguments over and over and over, and scream and shout at the "stupid theists"... to hate religion, and to glorify themselves as righteous upholders of the absolute truth...

And it's starting to scare me that more and more DUMB atheists are crawling out of the woodwork to follow the POPULAR trend that these pop-philosophy books have started...

WilliamP, I think we are already starting to see those "faith-based atheists" abound... and it is making me sick.

373. The Most Hated Family in America

Comment #29695 by Spinoza on April 4, 2007 at 7:41 am

They're crazy, defective, disgusting "things"... but people's responses to them are also pretty disgusting...

It serves no purpose to give crazy people the finger, to scream and yell at them and give them the attention they're looking for.

This is basic parenting.

374. Stephen Hawking Says Universe Created from Nothing

Comment #28880 by Spinoza on March 31, 2007 at 12:58 pm

Yorker, criticism accepted. However, I feel I should deign to point point that judging the literacy of someone on the Internet based on a "comment" is probably not a good idea. Especially since it wasn't a literacy issue, but an ambiguity issue, one that was in part your fault since it should have been clear that when I used "this" I was speaking in general, whereas if I had said "that" I would have meant the directly preceding post (yours).

Oh, and as for the debate about IQ, I feel I should also clear that one up. IQ is NOT mental age divided by life age, multiplied by 100. It hasn't been for a long time. Now it is simply an artificial bell curve based on percentile.

The reason IQ tests are not built to measure beyond 170 is that an IQ of 160 is in the 99.99th percentile (.01% of the world's population). Einstein's IQ was 160.

In fact, percentile IQs are generally lower than the old (Mental/Life)*100 scores...

Goethe's IQ of 210 is an estimate (and probably wrong)... but the man was certainly beyond brilliant if you know anything about him. :) (He was also an atheist!)

375. Stephen Hawking Says Universe Created from Nothing

Comment #28296 by Spinoza on March 28, 2007 at 4:37 pm

Yorker, I think you completely misunderstood everything I said...

Since you decided to pick nits, I'll admit that I should not have said "before anyone else" about Leibniz's calculating machine... that was a mis-speak about a totally irrelevant point.

Your entire post consisted of attacking irrelevancies and attacking me personally... which is bad form, it's people like you who make us atheists look like idiots. (this is not an ad hominem since I'm not invalidating anything you said be saying it, I'm just stating a fact).

You made the assumption that my use of the word "retarded" was directed at PEOPLE... when the LANGUAGE I used (which you apparently have trouble understanding) clearly shows that I intended it to be directed toward the ARTICLE.

As for my comments about quantum physicists, it's a purely logical point. If QM tells you something illogical, then something is wrong. Creation Ex-nihilo is illogical. Therefore if QM implies creation ex-nihilo then something is wrong with QM.

That's all I meant...

And you are clearly the one who is disturbed by my comments, otherwise you would not have made it an issue in the first place... I stand by what I said, and if I were actually mistaken you'd address the issue, rather than insulting me... but whatever man... I'm gonna let it go now.. you can reply if you like.. but try not to ad hominem so obviously...

376. Stephen Hawking Says Universe Created from Nothing

Comment #28196 by Spinoza on March 28, 2007 at 10:00 am

Yeah... I should clarify... I didn't mean my list of 10 people to be exhaustive, nor uncontroversial, nor correct, nor absolute... it was just an example of 10 people I'd think of before thinking of Hawking or Penrose, or Godel for that matter... or Turing, or Dawkins, or Weinberg, or Descartes...

Yorker is actually creeping me out a little bit, he is starting to remind me of Stuart Hammeroff... getting angry and defensive when people don't agree with his narrow subjective view of things... The similarities go as far as this worship of Penrose...

Oh and I should also mention that there are random Penrose worshipping nut jobs on several forums I've been to... or maybe there's just one, and it's Yorker.

Of course Penrose did some great work, and Hawking has done some... but they're human... as Einstein was... and as EVERYONE is.. and they can fuck up... they can have limitations to their understanding... their view of the world can be mistaken...

And in this case, I'd say logic is clearly failing some great minds...

When Quantum physicists talk about "nothing" they don't literally mean "nothing" the way it's used in colloquial language... and if they do... they're confused...

Real creation ex-nihilo is pure and utter nonsense. If quantum physics is telling us that that's what happened, then there's something wrong with quantum physics...

I am not going to venture a guess as to what... though I have an idea, based on what little I know of the field...

377. Stephen Hawking Says Universe Created from Nothing

Comment #28194 by Spinoza on March 28, 2007 at 9:51 am

LOL, Yorker, I made that list up off the top of my head.. I didn't "get it from somewhere"...

And Quine, yeah you're right... Archimedes is up there, but Leibniz didn't ONLY invent calculus on his own (after Newton), but he was a polymath, he was doing huge amounts of philosophy (he has some 30,000 pages that have yet to be translated into English at an archive in Germany)... he invented a computer 300 years before anyone else (it never got built)... etc. etc. Of all the universal geniuses, Leibniz was one of the best... even though I personally don't like his work in Philosophy (too Christian, lol).

Anyway... the objections to the things I said are funny... When I said "This is retarded" I meant the article... I meant the idea that the universe was created ex-nihilo. Nothing more... I do not engage in ad hominems... I didn't mean YOU were retarded, Yorker... I have no idea why you got so defensive...

378. Stephen Hawking Says Universe Created from Nothing

Comment #28166 by Spinoza on March 28, 2007 at 7:29 am

And by the way, Penrose isn't even close to the top 10 smartest ever.

1. Geothe
2. Einstein
3. Leibniz
4. Newton
5. Spinoza
6. Plato
7. Aristotle
8. Kant
9. Wittgenstein
10. Hume

Q.E.D.

379. Stephen Hawking Says Universe Created from Nothing

Comment #28164 by Spinoza on March 28, 2007 at 7:27 am

This is retarded...

I really wish Einstein hadn't recanted his view on this in favour of the pseudo-Christian ex-nihilo big bang...

There's NO reason to think there was "nothing"... I don't care what the math tells you... the math is wrong.

380. Neil Peart cites The God Delusion in new album's liner notes

Comment #28075 by Spinoza on March 27, 2007 at 8:37 pm

Say what you want about Ayn Rand, if you have a certain personality type, the characters of Roark and Galt are BRILLIANT... her philosophy is garbage though... no one doubts that... Peart was into her work 30 years ago... (dedicated 2112 to her) but hasn't said a word about her since then... so whoever said they don't like Rush because of Ayn Rand, give it another shot...

The guy who said there is no good Canadian music is a silly bitch... there are loads of crappy Canadian bands... I agree.. (god I hate Nickleback and all the creed-soundalikes, but these are common in the US too...)

But there are several extremely good Canadian bands (especially indie) who are currently doing great things... i.e. Godspeed You! Black Emperor, The Arcade Fire... and my old favourite from a decade and a half ago, I Mother Earth...

Remember, we've got 1/10th the population of the US, and we live right above you guys (the culture dominance is staggering, but certainly appreciable often)... so you gotta take that into account when you consider our music industry... if there are 300,000 active American bands (low estimate) signed to major/indie labels, then there are likely somewhere around 30,000 active Canadian bands... and out of those two sets... you might get 1000 bands worthy of listening to from the Americans... and transitively speaking, that leaves Canada with probably 100 bands worth listening to...

Out of those 1000, and 100, probably 1% of them are getting played on the radio regularly... so 10 American bands, and 1 Canadian...

See what I'm saying?

381. The Case for Teaching The Bible

Comment #27762 by Spinoza on March 26, 2007 at 3:27 pm

I don't think it should be its own class.

I think there should be high-school electives for the English requirement where you can choose to read sections from one of any of the major canons of the world's religions, and/or write a comparative summary, critical analysis, or literary paper on it... It should be an English class... and I'd have no problem if my kids were interested... I have ALWAYS been an atheist, and I read the entire bible when I was 9. I know more about the damned book than most religious people I know, and we should not be afraid that knowledge of the Bible will corrupt our atheist children, if we start talking like that, we're no better than the crazy religious nuts.

382. Are You Right Eyed Or Left Eyed?

Comment #27726 by Spinoza on March 26, 2007 at 11:03 am

Interestingly, I'm a left-handed person who suffered an injury to my left eye as a young child (8 years old), but was "Gifted" prior to, and after this, especially in terms of reading comprehension...

When thinking about this article, I wonder if there is a correlation among left-handed people with "right-eyedness", which I must be, by necessity, since I definitely don't read with my left at all (too blurry). And in such a case, left-handed, right-eyed people should be just as benefited by this arrangement as right-handed, left-eyed people.

Maybe?

383. Brain Injury Said to Affect Moral Choices

Comment #26939 by Spinoza on March 22, 2007 at 12:31 pm

This article assumes far too much.

Namely, that utilitarianism is true.

Which almost no one thinks it is.

Hence why brain-damaged people will adhere to it.

And anyway, this commits the fallacy of the is/ought distinction.

Just because brain-damaged people choose utilitarian principles doesn't mean they ought to (morally), and it doesn't mean we ought to either.

Oh, and by the way, utilitarianism isn't the only naturalist position in ethics (for those of you who know what I'm talking about)...

I rather think Blackburn's Quasi-realism is better... and these brain-damaged people don't operate under expressivism (since they CAN'T)... therefore they're not moral according to Blackburn (and me). Q.E.D.

However, this is interesting for other reasons.. even if the assumptions made in the article are ridiculous.

384. The Fourth Flea!

Comment #26646 by Spinoza on March 20, 2007 at 10:19 pm

"I was at a philosophy conference in Dublin last week, celebrating the work of Hilary Putnam, a brilliant man. It was very interesting that even here, where religion was only discussed for half an hour (it was a four day conference), Dawkins was mentioned by Putnam. Now Putnam was quite disparaging of Dawkins, though he acted like he had never read Dawkins' work. This was a shame for me, because I suspect that the story Putnam would tell concerning religion would be similar to the so called Einsteinian view of religion and so he wouldn't be a million miles away from Dawkins' position."

Well, keep in mind that Putnam is good friends with Alvin Plantinga (though they disagree about theological matters quite a bit), and Putnam is also known for the enormous changes in his academic career since the early years, flipping entirely on a few things... perhaps he's just not overly concerned with being right about this... a passive "deist"... not very useful at all if you care about such things, I suppose... but that's his choice.. the man is brilliant for a great many other reasons.

It is a shame that he felt the need to discourage vehement criticism though...

385. Did You Know? Shift Happens - Globalization, Information Age

Comment #25700 by Spinoza on March 14, 2007 at 6:54 pm

Globalism is dead... lol

386. Free Speech

Comment #25629 by Spinoza on March 14, 2007 at 11:36 am

WOooOooO! Holla at a UofT!

387. Understanding Genetics - Daniel Dennett Interview

Comment #25180 by Spinoza on March 10, 2007 at 5:27 pm

I'm a "Proof Reader" of religions, not a sifter. :)

388. Why there are almost no genuine atheists

Comment #24580 by Spinoza on March 7, 2007 at 11:54 am

[quote]Bush is considering nuclear war because of his religious delusions.[/quote]

I seriously doubt that this is true, and seems to be the silly sort of speculative comment weak atheists tend to make.

I really wish more of us were as intelligent as we all like to think we are (on both sides of the divide by the way).

Bush is an idiot and a cretin, but not because of some Far-Leftist Chomsky-vision fantasy that he's preparing us for a nuclear showdown in 2012 (to coincide with the end of the Mayan calendar and Nostradamus' prediction of end-times LOL).

Atheism and silliness like this ought not be conflated.

389. Why there are almost no genuine atheists

Comment #24484 by Spinoza on March 6, 2007 at 9:26 pm

Gordon Brown, I too recognized IMMEDIATELY the lack of understanding of the Euthyphro problem, and I thought that EXTREMELY ODD for a law professor (since Philosophy is often the undergraduate degree for many lawyers).

I said as much in my comment to him.

I told him that I as an atheist think he OUGHT to have known better. ;)

390. The Dawkins Confusion: Naturalism ad absurdum

Comment #24078 by Spinoza on March 4, 2007 at 4:46 pm

To Janus, (from a fellow Atheist philosopher)

Your post was good, but I thought I should point out one minor issue... you ask the theist to show you a simple mind...

Well, Leibniz did exactly that 300 years ago. That's what a Monad is.

Just FYI.

391. The return of God?

Comment #23878 by Spinoza on March 3, 2007 at 10:02 am

I've been aware of Craig for at least half a decade now... and I think the man is a horrible philosopher who "wins" debates by committing serious errors. The guy is not a well respected man in philosophical circles, and imho, someone needs to once and for all make him look like a fool.

392. Atheists come in last

Comment #22845 by Spinoza on February 23, 2007 at 3:03 pm

Um...

"Family and religious life

While working at the corporate law firm Sidley & Austin in the summer of 1989, Obama met Michelle Robinson, an associate attorney at the firm.[118] Michelle and Barack Obama were married in 1992 at Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ by their pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.[119] They have two daughters, Malia, 8, and Natasha, 5.[118] A theme of Obama's keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, and the title of his 2006 book, The Audacity of Hope, was inspired by one of Rev. Wright's sermons.[120] In the book, Obama describes his non-religious upbringing:

I was not raised in a religious household. My maternal grandparents, who hailed from Kansas, had been steeped in Baptist and Methodist teachings as children, but religious faith never really took root in their hearts. My mother's own experiences as a bookish, sensitive child growing up in small towns in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas only reinforced this inherited skepticism. [...] My father was almost entirely absent from my childhood, having been divorced from my mother when I was 2 years old; in any event, although my father had been raised a Muslim, by the time he met my mother he was a confirmed atheist, thinking religion to be so much superstition.

Obama writes that his religious convictions formed during his twenties, when, as a community organizer working with local churches, he came to understand "the power of the African American religious tradition to spur social change":

It was because of these newfound understandings–that religious commitment did not require me to suspend critical thinking, disengage from the battle for economic and social justice, or otherwise retreat from the world that I knew and loved–that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ one day and be baptized. It came about as a choice and not an epiphany; the questions I had did not magically disappear. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side of Chicago, I felt God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.[121]"

Barak is a United Church of Christ follower... not even close to Muslim or Atheist.

393. We all fund this torrent of Saudi bigotry

Comment #21511 by Spinoza on February 9, 2007 at 3:47 pm

There's nothing "wrong" with circumcision. In fact, it has several awesome benefits. ;-)

1. Now proved to reduce risk of AIDS
2. According to many women it looks nicer.
3. It is EASIER to keep clean (obviously it's clean after you shower regardless, but you SWEAT... and that is not tasty after being under foreskin... hahaha)
4. It does deaden nerves... but this allows men to last longer! (and I have honestly never heard of a circumcised man complaining about how shitty his orgasms were.... COMPARED TO WHAT?)
5. Yeah I thought perhaps it shouldn't be done without the consent of the child.. but then they might just be pissed when they got older that you didn't get it done for them when they were too young to be fully conscious of the pain! (or at least, to remember) lol.

394. Does Richard Dawkins exist?

Comment #21416 by Spinoza on February 9, 2007 at 5:33 am

Isn't the easiest way to debunk this sort of retardation the following:

1. It took a few billion years for our DNA to form into these "complex patterns".
2. "The God Delusion" was (probably) written in billionths of that time (perhaps a year, or two? maybe less)
3. Ergo, if God exists, he's incredibly retarded.

395. Atheist Rap: Extian, The Verse from Atheist Nation Pt III

Comment #20664 by Spinoza on February 5, 2007 at 3:51 pm

"Liked it. Even if I didn't understand all the words. Not used to listen to rap. Can it be that being 66 and not being American has something to do with it?"

That's funny, sir. I don't generally "listen" to rap either, but I had no problem understanding a word he said. Articulate, with a good sense of rhythm and rhyme... Very impressive.

396. U.S. 'Satisfied' With Religion's Public Role, But More Want Less

Comment #20587 by Spinoza on February 4, 2007 at 3:43 pm

It won't open because there's a U in the word "quotes".

http://www.twainquotes.com

duh...

397. 12 Year Old Girl Prodigy Paints Pictures of God

Comment #19081 by Spinoza on January 24, 2007 at 5:38 pm

Why did you paint the portrait of Jesus?


It was God's timing; I had been looking for a Jesus model for two years, and I could not find the right face. Then one day I asked my family to pray with me all day. We petitioned God to send the model right through our front door. The next day a tall carpenter came in. He was so humble, and I was surprised that he agreed to model for me. But a week later he called back to say that he was unworthy to represent his master. We all prayed together again, and a few days later he called back to tell us that God wanted him to do it, but he had to cut his hair and beard in three days. So we took a few pictures and I studied his face for a long time. After dozens of sketches, I started painting. It took me 40 hours to finish the first Jesus painting –The Prince of Peace-- and I still remember I lost four teeth in that time!

:|

398. Pat Robertson: God told me of 'mass killing' in 2007

Comment #15924 by Spinoza on January 3, 2007 at 9:40 pm

Poor, sad, pathetic old man...

I really hope the Mujahadeen can't understand Evangelist.