January 2012
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Criticising a lack of respect serves what purpose? →
Those criticising Dawkins for lacking respect seem to be confused about the definition of respect. There is no reason Dawkins should show respect to beliefs which he finds patently absurd. He should probably tolerate them, and he does, but there is no reason to give them any more respect than they deserve. Some say he is strident. I really don’t see it. He is very measured and polite, but he...
November 2011
2 posts
A message for those considering voting
“if you do decide to vote, you have a duty to not reduce the quality of the median vote.”
Making the informed choice is what democracy should be about, as opposed to merely ticking boxes for the sake of it. Don’t vote unless you’ve put some serious thought into it. That doesn’t mean picking a party or local politician because you identify with their branding. It...
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Government intervention
The questions I ask when the idea that government should do more things comes up are “Do I trust the government?”, “Am I still likely to be able to trust the government in the future?” and, most importantly, “Will the government intervention be better than it not intervening?”. Where the benefits of government intervention are not clear and large, it is likely...
March 2011
2 posts
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“Dance like you’re stamping on a human face forever, love like you’ve been in a...”
– Warren Ellis (via digitalyn) (via notevensurewhy)
February 2011
5 posts
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Pricing goods in times of scarcity
I was intending to write about other ideas first, but I think this is an important idea to try and get people to understand. I was at work the other day, strangely enough - yes, I have a job so my life now revolves around that - and of late much discussion has revolved around the recent earthquake in Christchurch. It is the second high impact earthquake in the last six months and was a lot more...
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If your political position can be defined with one word, you’re not thinking hard enough.
I saw words to this effect a few days ago and I agree. It is also frustrating seeing and hearing people make comments on politics (or any issue really) without considering the ramifications of what they are proposing:
x is bad/not enough therefore we should support y
Sure y sounds lovely, but what...
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Anybody see a problem here? →
So in recent times, Bobby Franklin, a Georgia state representative said of homosexuality:
The Bible says it’s a capital offense. You want someone with unrepentant criminal behavior? And it’s not just that, neither should adulterers, neither should thieves, neither should a lot of things. The church is full of sinners, but we’re told in 1st Corinthians it rattled off the homosexual, the...
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Cantona, hero:
It has come to my attention that upon being asked as to his best moment in 2007, Eric Cantona said this:
My best moment? I have a lot of good moments, but the one I prefer is when I kicked the hooligan.
If you don’t know the incident to which he is referring, it’s about 56 seconds into this clip.
The press conference after this event is also notable.
He later went on to...
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Age of Reason: 10 Misconceptions of Atheism by Sam... →
ageofreason:
Several polls indicate that the term “atheism” has acquired such an extraordinary stigma in the United States that being an atheist is now a perfect impediment to a career in politics (in a way that being black, Muslim or homosexual is not). According to a recent Newsweek poll, only 37% of Americans would vote for an otherwise qualified atheist for president.
Atheists are...
January 2011
2 posts
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Shit journalism files: The Guardian, not... →
Wikileaks got the blame for putting a US embassy cable regarding Zimbabwe into the public domain. They were soundly condemned by the media and various pundits for endangering Morgan Tsvangirai and the potential for some semblance of democracy in Zimbabwe. As it happens, Wikileaks did not choose to release the cable into the public domain and publish it. It was the Guardian newspaper which made...
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“It is the very finitude of my existence that brings forth the honey. That I...”
– Robert H commenting in response to Fr. Tim at the Pharyngula piece, “Bad Diagnosis”
December 2010
14 posts
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“Why don’t you believe in God? I get that question all the time. I always try to...”
– — Ricky Gervais, “A Holiday Message from Ricky Gervais: Why I’m an Atheist”
I’m not a big fan of Ricky Gervais’ comedy but this is a serious piece and a good read even if his story as to when he became an atheist seems a little glib. (However, that’s...
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“I could start a math-based religion devoted to finding “the solution.”
– Zeno in the comments of the Pharyngula post The Latest Ark News from Kentucky. The conversation between Zeno and hyperdeath that follows is amusing.
“This is exactly what my body looks like. So why... →
syntheticpubes:
This is a reblog from a few days ago. It’s a statement I see regularly.
I was pleased when I first started hearing this sort of thing. The goal of Synthetic Pubes is to highlight the beauty and animal magnetism of ‘normal’ bodies that have not been twisted and shellacked in Photoshop. I feel like we need to publicly acknowledge that not all areolae are perfectly circular and the...
You know what?
You know what? Fuck it. When you prove it’s true and good is when you get to tell me it’s inspirational rather than a fucking oppressive system used in an attempt to control society and the interactions that occur within it. Especially if you’re a cafetarian (which it’s pretty much impossible not be, given the contradictions: pick this and you exclude this.)
And if...
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zoereid asked: A woman who has offered to be a wet nurse is concerned that she might get infected from nursing a child who is sick. She was specifically concerned about a child recently vaccinated (she does not vaccinates her own children). Is there any validity to that concern?
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Respect and ideas.
Respect should only be granted where there is something worthy of it. Ideas are not worth respect simply because people hold them. They are worth tolerating, but respect is a sign of esteem. The idea which is illogical, poorly justified, at odds with evidence, abhorrent and so-on is not worth my respect and I will not give it. If I were to do so, I would demean that which is worth respect.
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Stream of thoughts on existence of a god or group...
This isn’t totally mapped out or written prettily but I thought I’d put it out there anyway.
biblebeltatheist and seekthetruth-islam have been having a bit of debate about Islam the Qur’an. seekthetruth-islam seems to put a lot of stock in the Qur’an being a miraculous text. biblebeltatheist disagrees and rightly asks for proof. However, what I want to note is that even...
tahlalaliaaa asked: Thank you for the present suggestion for my baby brother. I'll have to look that up, I wanted to get him book or something more educational for his little developing brain.
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Atheist bus adverts
Some people are getting upset about bus adverts which state: “Millions of Americans are Good without God”. Some companies refuse to accept them. There is even a reasonably subtle bias in the article. But what exactly is the problem? The advert does not say that those Americans who feel they are with God are not good. The implication is not even there.
Keep on with the religious...
November 2010
4 posts
5 tags
“The joy of being in this city has worn off. I sense, vaguely, that I’m...”
– — Spider Jerusalem [writer: Warren Ellis], “Year of the Bastard” in Transmetropolitan: 17
Resonant.
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October 2010
8 posts
hatefulatheist asked: First off, you tried way too hard to sound intelligent, and second off, you're wrong, Atheism is to deny the existence of any and all Gods. Not just a particular one.
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Catholic government PSA.
I’m posting this as a PSA. This is Michael Voris, of Real Catholic TV, talking about what he thinks government should be.
The man is deluded. Even if, hypothetically, religion provides morality (an idea I disagree with fundamentally as I believe religion is a human construct, the primary purpose of which is not to provide morality), where institutionalised - as in the Catholic Church -...
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WatchIf this behaviour continues, women’s rights will be set back greatly. This isn’t about children. It’s about the oppression of women. A foetus is not a baby or a child. Much as we don’t call ourselves pre-dead corpses, a foetus is not a pre-born child. Any such description is an attempt to emote and further damage those considering what is already a difficult procedure to...
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On belief and respect.
On the topic of beliefs, my friend stated this:
What I’ve discovered is that people don’t believe what they believe because they pulled it out of a hat. People stand for something because they truly believe in it. After all, you wouldn’t believe in something you thought was not correct so in that way all of us should respect each others sincerity and not belittle. Because in doing that...
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Freedom of speech.
Some people suggest freedom of speech should be curtailed. I disagree. While I am not libertarian in the sense that I believe that property rights means that you can deny someone service on the basis of some arbitrary characteristic you’ve chosen to single out, I believe that denying the right to free speech goes too far down the lines of thought policing. If a society goes down that...
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September 2010
6 posts
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How do I get my delicious feed into tumblr?
I just signed up to delicious in the hope that I could cross-post links into tumblr much in the manner that “Stuff I like” shows up. Is there any way to do this?
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WatchTim Minchin’s Pope Song has been going around the internet of late. The lyrics are a little more insightful if you actually listen to what is sung outside the refrain of “Fuck the motherfucker”.
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On Islamic facial coverings.
France apparently has significant problems with immigrants and integration. From the reaction of the French politicians and from what has been shown by my brief perusal of media coverage, I assume that a high proportion of these immigrants who are not integrating well are either followers of Islam or perceived to be such, and regardless, it is their following Islam that is seen to be a large part...
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On burning the Koran.
People have been getting uptight about Terry Jones’ proposed Koran burning. Some have come out and said that if he doesn’t burn it, they will. Others have come out and strongly condemned the idea that a man can burn a book he holds no reverence for. I find it bizarre that because a belief has religious roots and the person with such a belief has chosen to be offended by...
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Moral barometer?
Many Christians (and those of other religions?) seem to believe that if one is an atheist (or even an agnostic?) that one lacks a moral barometer: “Without belief in God”, they say, “why would the atheist be motivated to live a moral upstanding life?” This confuses me. Surely, if their creator-god exists and has given humans free will to make the choice whether or not to...
August 2010
8 posts
7 tags
“…Another writer again agreed with all my generalities, but said that as an...”
– Carl Sagan, “The Burden of Skepticism” in Skeptical Enquirer, Vol. 12: 46
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Tony Blair makes noise. Shouldn't. Remains...
World religions are threatened by forces both from within themselves and from the wider world, said Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister, today.
…
Christians and Muslims represent about half the world’s total population between them.
…
“Each was made to feel an outsider. Each stood out against the conventional teaching of the time. Each believed in the universal...
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Thoughts on "Too big to fail"
As the economists and accountants should know, sunk costs are just that: sunk. You are not going to recoup them and they should not be impacting upon your decision-making processes. However, strangely enough, because of all that has been sunk into them certain people hold that there are things which are “too big to fail”. Nothing is “too big to fail”. Everything does,...
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“the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of...”
– John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, http://www.utilitarianism.com/ol/one.html
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Andrew Williams and Cameron Slater
I thought I’d use this post to detail a problem with democratic politics that I intend to consider more specifically later.
North Shore mayor Andrew Williams has threatened legal action against right-wing blogger WhaleOil.
The move follows postings by WhaleOil - real name Cameron Slater - criticising the Auckland Super City mayoral candidate for drinking in a local bar.
…
After...
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Just a thought.
While institutions are necessary for the continued functioning of society, not all institutions that exist in society are necessary or give the best provision. This is illustrative of the, or my, fundamental problem with institutional structures and the cause of my distrust. Institutions are typically set up for a specific purpose, but by definition, they become entrenched in the social structure,...