This is from sisterdanger posting in my comments here

"You know that old saying, if you can't beat em, join em.
I was reading
Comfort's blog the other day, as you know, and came to the conclusion that it
really is just a bad idea to put credible arguments on there. But I couldn't get
over the idea that "evil persists when good men do nothing" [paraphrase].

And I got to thinking that there must be a way to seize control of the
game and expose it for the joke it is. So I was reading about that study with
the little israeli kids (I think they were israeli) where they were asked if
Joshua (in the battle of Jericho, which entailed the utter genocide of all of
Jericho, and their property, cattle, holdings, everything burnt down to the
ground) was justified in doing what he did and they said yes for various reasons
all having to do with their religion one way or another (to prevent
inter-breeding, because he was commanded by god to, etc). The control group was
given the same question but had the names switched out for something like
General Lin and the Chinese Army, in which case the children by and large
answered that Lin was not justified in having obliterated this small town (I
think you'll be familiar with what I'm referencing without me having to be 100%
acurate on details).
Suffice it to say, I started to think more about this;
how when stripped of their familiar religiosity, the same scenario would become
morally different (somehow). And then I began to wonder...

What if we all created FSM Diciple characters, and posted on Comfort's
blog denouncing Christianity in favor of Pastafarianism and used their own
argument tactics to support the FSM instead of God? Surely it would have the
awesome effect of illuminating absurdity without requiring the actual work that
legitimate scientific responses does?
Not to mention, our very presence in
such a fashion would just highlight how 'not worthy' of actually accredited
argument he is.

We could adopt names like "Agnolotti" or "Anima", "Bucatini" [fits the
piratey theme] "Candale", "Macaroni" [the mormon implications on that one crack
me up], "Pastina" (I kinda like Pastina myself :)"

I have to admit I agree that this would be an interesting experiment to implement. I intend to create a second blogspot blog to join this movement and see how it goes. I'm not sure how much will be replied to, since Ray's kind of a cock and is too cowardly to allow open posting on his Blog. Anyone interested? I plan to create a hub blog for it, though it really is
sisterdanger 's idea.

Note, i don't expect anyone involved to be dedicated or put a huge amount of time in this. I look at it as mostly an experiment on how the reactions will be and whether Ray will even acknowledge his own arguments lack of sufficiency seen through another lens. My experiment hypothesis is "no". Yarrrr!

god is not Great chapter 3: A Brief Digression on the Pig

As this is a brief chapter, my review of it will be similarly short.

As the title suggests, the chapter discusses the pig in the context of religion, as well as a brief discussion of other dietary restrictions. I get the feeling that this chapter has little real purpose other than as a bit of amusement on the part of Hitchens although he does take some of the issues seriously, as well he should.

He discusses in brief the genetic similarities between humans and pigs as well as the interpretations of why they pig might be so maligned by (in particular) Jewish and Muslim scripture. Sadly there is little of real interest here until the end when he discusses the problem of fanatical pig hate from muslim groups, particularly demanding the removal of innocuous pigs such as in A.A Milne's Winnie the Pooh, or the Three Little Pigs, Ms Piggy, etc ad nauseum. My favorite was that apparently George Orwell's Animal Farm is banned in muslim countries despite the pig being basically the villain.

I suppose he does make his point here. When your religion starts dictating these kinds of things, i.e attacking classic literature, or taking offense at something natural's very presence is absurdity, and downright intolerant. Anyone is free to have their beliefs, but to impose their morals and personal prejudices on the public, unless it is provable that it is to the public benefit and non-dogmatic is unacceptable. Here I must agree that even in dietary restrictions religion -can- poison anything. I'm not saying it alwasy does, but the potential is certainly evident.

Ray Comfort and the fantasy version of reality

Ray comfort is going back home to New Zealand to debate his insane view of creation. And boy howdy he's got a loaded gun filled with arguments... that have been soundly refuted time and time again on his own damned blog. Here's the outline he posted on his blog annotated with my responses:

1. An atheist is someone who believes nothing created everything. If he denies that and believes that “something” created everything, he’s not an atheist.

• Wow Ray. Still believing the "Nothing Created Everything" argument. Most cosmologists and atheists believe that the universe as we know is was created in what is called the "Big Bang." This is where all matter in the universe exploded in a singularity which is still expanding. However what caused the Big Bang is currently an unknown factor. There is a possibility that the universe is in a constant state of expansion and contraction and it could have happened billions of times already. We don't know the cause. Yet. This doesn't mean God is the culprit. I can still be an atheist and not know. I don't know, 100% positive there's no God. But I'm damned near sure, enough to say I do not believe there is a God, and take me out of the agnostic ranks.

2. Man can't create a grain of sand from nothing. How intellectually dishonest is it then to say that there was no Intelligent Designer?

• Cosmological theory is that all matter that is and ever will be in our universe has been there from the beginning. Once again, we don't have knowledge of initial cause, but that's not relevant here. That said, a grain of sand formed on this planet and any planet in the formation stages of the planet when various atomic particles came together. Through billions of years, water and wind erosion, chemical reactions etc we end up with sand. Its not that complicated and was certainly not an intelligent process that came up with sand, but a natural one.

3. Where did females come from (in every species)?

• Let's ignore the patriarchal condescension of the words used, implying that males are the default and females therefore secondary and address the actual non-issue at hand. I will refer readers here for basics on the evolution of sexual reproduction. Ray demonstrates here his absolute lack of understanding regarding evolutionary theory here. Speciation is not spontaneous. We don't jump straight from, say Australopithecus Afaransis straight to Homo Ergaster. One species does not give birth immediately to another. It is the gradual changes over many many generations that change a species into another, and the newest members of the species are compatible with previous members of said species until the genetic differences diverge too far. Normally in a continuous population, evolution will occur while all members o f said population being compatible indefinitely. It is through long separation and genetic change that things evolve along different lines. Males and females don't "evolve" seperately. The population's males and females are not some seperately evolved phenomenon.

4. Which came first? The blood, the heart or the blood vessels?

• Blood.
  

5. There are variations within species, but no species to species transitional forms in the fossil record.

• Disproven so many times that its almost insulting to address this. Firstly, there's Tiktaalik the fish with leg-like protrusions and which may have been partially amphibeous. There's Ambulocetus which is an obvious ancestor to modern whales. And let us not forget Archaeopteryx, the hybrid bird-lizard. You got some 'splainin to do Ray. And don't try the crocoduck line, its not cute, its actually rather pathetic.

6. God made Archaeopteryx with teeth and a tail. It’s a bird, not a dinosaur. He made many weird animals. There's a huge mouse with a pocket in its front that hops all over Australia, horses with stripes, weird desert animals with humps on their backs . . . and He made some birds with teeth.

• Nice assertions Ray! Care to provide any evidence that God did this? All you've proven is that there are many different types of animals on this planet. You haven't proven that God made Archaeopteryx a bird with teeth and a tail. the trouble with this argument is its a complete non-sequitur. It proves nothing, and adds nothing to the debate. Bald assertions are not evidence of God. find something scientific if you're trying to disprove science. Wow. novel idea.

7. Paleontologists have a huge incentive to twist the truth, just a little. If they can find a bone with a lump on it, theorize that it was a limb or a feather, give it an impressive name, say it is 73 million years old, and suddenly he has his picture on the cover of National Geographic magazine, has a book deal and lectures for life. The human propensity to gullibility is evidenced by evolution's many believers. Malcolm Muggeridge: "I myself am convinced that the theory of evolution . . . will be one of the great jokes in the history books in the future." Evolutionists have done to science, what hypocrites have done to religion. We have men who call themselves scientists, when they should have instead got a job with Disney as imagineers.

• Let me state first, that scientists don't normally get on the cover of just about any magazine. Scientists are rarely well known enough outside their own field to be a draw for magazine sales, even for national geographic. What Ray's forgetting is that any scientist who could disprove evolution would want to do so. He would be immediately famous and a scientific icon with... well, book deals, lectures for life, and probably a nobel prize. the incentive is certainly there. Why hasn't anybody done it? Because with the given evidence they can't, and having seen the evidence it is fairly certain they never will.

Ray, if these are really your best, i have all confidence whoever you debate in NZ will stomp on and humiliate you.

god is not Great, Chapter 2: Religion Kills

Alright, today we move on to Chapter 2 of god is not Great, Christopher Hitchens' literary rant against religions of all stripes.

Chapter 1 gave us a good background of our author, while chapter 2 brings some of his charges that "religion poisons everything" home even further. early in the chapter he addresses an interesting question that was asked of him by Denis Prager: He was asked if he was in a strange city in the early evening with a group of people approaching, "would (Hitchens) feel safer, or less safe, if (he) was to learn that they were just coming from a prayer meeting." His emphatic no, demonstrated through the window of Hitchens' personal experience and knowledge was well played, and gave a good idea of why he feels as he does about religion. He goes through lists of places where such an experience could be more dangerous than any regular potential murderer.

He also cites numerous examples of where problems were only exacerbated by religious fervor, and particularly fundamentalism in various areas of the world. He uses mostly the obvious examples, such as Israel and the Middle East, as well as Pakistan and India. I don't particularly disagree with him on any point he made here. Without religious hatreds India would probably still be one country, and Israel would probably have been able to resolve its issues with its Muslim neighbors.

That's where I somewhat start to disagree though. Yes, they probably could have reslved things. But while religious fervor is certainly the largest thing spurning these conflicts onward, it is by no means the only one. There's also a cultural problem, which is simply an issue where the divergent cultures are not terribly compatible. What becomes a real problem though is deciding exactly how much of these cultural differences are religious in nature, which Hitchens I believe does insufficient thought on.

Regardless, Hitchens points out these commonly known religious issues, but also delves into other religious conflicts closer to home. As I've mentioned previously Hitchens is a friend of Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses, and target of his very own fatwah; one of very few (public) attempts for a government head to put a hit out on a foreign national. Multiple people who have worked with Rushdie have died simply by association, and yet around the world the most vocal religious leaders have sided with the Ayatollah Khomeini, or said (effectively) that he should have expected it. Not, that it was reprehensible, and completely overblown, but basically that if he gets killed for it he shouldn't be surprised.

Here, once again, I agree but i don't. The (very real) threats against Rushdie were very clear, and very dangerous. They were a complete abuse of power, and barbaric in their intention, and fundamentalist in their making. That said, Hitchens has a clear Bias, claiming Rushdie as a friend. Yes, religion was absolutely the motivation for the hit called, and that is absolutely unacceptable. At the same time, free speech is a dangerous thing and we need to be ready to take the consequences of what we write. But a novel should never be grounds for murder. There should never, in fact, be any grounds for murder. Religion does exacerbate things, and has caused much death and strife in the world.

In all, this chapter was very interesting, and had alot of good interpretation. I wish Hitchens used more sources in his writing and had other opinions to cite, but one has to realize that this book is basically an opinion piece, not a researched academic paper. For what it is, I am enjoying it immensely.

Roger Scruton: Pathos piece

This is taken from an article on the American Spectator, the quote in particular, including the cuts are as cut by Stephen Law. Full text can be found here.

"Like so many modern ideologies, the new humanism seeks to define itself through what it is against rather than what it is for. It is for nothing, or at any rate for nothing in particular."

The new humanism "seems to have no consciousness of what is clearly announced between the lines of the text [ON THE ATHEIST BUSES], namely that there are no ideals higher than pleasure."

The BHA's "publications imply that there is only one thing that stands between man and his happiness, and that is the belief in God. "

The BHA is the British Humanist Association, and according to the whackaloons on the right wing they don't stand for anything. Now, if you want a discussion of the philosophical problems with this, I'll recommend you go to Stephen Law's blog. What I'm here to discuss is just the pathos of this.

This article is not really an argumentative piece. Its a pieve consisting entirely of pathos. There is nothing here that any Atheist, secularist, or agnostic would be convinced by. Clearly the piece was written for Spectator, well known as a right wing site, to further polarize against the growing tide of non-christianity. In essence, much like Ray Comfort he's making unsubstantiated claims simply in order to help convince his audience they are in the right and not alone; nothing terribly novel, every demographic does it for better or worse.

Possibly most annoying in this piece is Scruton's unending appeals to Jebus as the fundamental rock of morality, as if morality via threat was really a good thing. But by and large they eat it up! The comments show a disgusting amount of hatred for atheism and secularism. One person did bring up a good point though, and its one I don't think about too much, but it is true nonetheless. Atheists are treated in the United States as second class citizens.

To be fair, its not just Atheists. In many ways Women, black people, Muslims, Jews... well, any nonchristian really, is subjected to some discrimination. And they wonder why we don't like their attitudes, and the way they interfere in politics with their religious bronze-aged morals.

The recent decline of Christianity is telling us that the acceptance of atheism in the mainstream is coming, but I dont think it could come too soon.

Conservapedia: Dumpster diving in the lands of the unclean

Guess I should go get my Goth on. Should we expect roving bands of violent Orthodox Jews as well? Insert huge eye roll here.

Can't forget how anti Christian these people in black were, either.

On a Pharyngula trip today I guess.

PZ Meyers is liveblogging his stay in a blizzard. I am far too easily amused by this. Only at Pharyngula

I feel clever

My parody response reponse to Ray Comfort's arguments. Originally posted on Amazon.com

Theists are those who pretend there is a god and a hell, because they can't imagine some way to be moral without being threatened by the great sky daddy with eternal punishment if they aren't. They really know there is no God or Hell, but are so outraged by their lack of an ability to supply themselves with a moral compass that they decide to hate the obvious scientific conclusions, and happily pretend there is such an improbable, despotic being reigning over their morality.