tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post6893988572269495914..comments2023-10-26T22:06:11.166+11:00Comments on Metamagician3000: For those who haven't seen it, more stupidity from the Colgate TwinsRussell Blackfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12431324430596809958noreply@blogger.comBlogger63125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-63280803922361113062009-08-20T08:27:48.863+10:002009-08-20T08:27:48.863+10:00Brian K.: "Your priggish concern trolling is ...Brian K.: "Your priggish concern trolling is really tiresome."<br /><br />Okay, pointing out over-the-top and hypocritical Nazi references is now concern trolling. Understood.J. J. Ramseyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00763792476799485687noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-47764451363208409302009-08-20T08:02:18.454+10:002009-08-20T08:02:18.454+10:00Oh, Ramsey, give it a rest, or get a life, or some...Oh, Ramsey, give it a rest, or get a life, or something. Your priggish concern trolling is really tiresome.Brian K.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-24173785235305386312009-08-19T11:32:15.410+10:002009-08-19T11:32:15.410+10:00Laughing, as any human who understands our conditi...Laughing, as any human who understands our condition would.Ken Pidcockhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15236539087094493564noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-42165227455984011432009-08-19T06:25:26.441+10:002009-08-19T06:25:26.441+10:00The flaw in that argument is treating ignorance (l...<i>The flaw in that argument is treating ignorance (literal meaning) as if it were a genetic trait. Knowledge freely passes through inheritance lines and so is not constrained by genetics. (My own parents were devout fundamentalists)</i><br /><br />I never said it is a genetic trait; it isn't. But it takes a lot to educate a child, and if your parents are fundies, you are most likely to be brainwashed too. So it ends up being propagates as if it was a genetic trait <b>most of the time</b><br /><br />In fact this is what I wrote in the same post:'<br /><br /><i> if there is a very low probability that if your parents were idiots, you aren't going to be one too,</i>Georgi Marinovhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12226357993389417752noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-75850330166462444372009-08-19T03:23:20.808+10:002009-08-19T03:23:20.808+10:00Ms. Benson, I took a look at your latest rant on M...Ms. Benson, I took a look at <a href="http://butterfliesandwheels.com/notesarchive.php?id=2875" rel="nofollow">your latest rant on M&K</a>. You quote M&K saying,<br /><br />"The New Atheism has become a counterproductive movement, dividing us when we ought to be united...Atheism is a philosophy that goes beyond mere science--a philosophy that its adherents have every right to hold, but that will never serve as a common ground that we can all stand upon."<br /><br />and then follow it with, "Note the fascism ..." You then go on to write sarcastically of "the wonderful <i>Gleichschaltung</i> to come," where <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleichschaltung" rel="nofollow">"Gleichschaltung"</a> is "a Nazi term for the process by which the Nazi regime successively established a system of totalitarian control over the individual, and tight coordination over all aspects of society and commerce."<br /><br />Let me get this straight. M&K using "attack" and "assault" idiomatically to refer to non-violent conflict, not okay. Likening the actions of M&K to those of the Nazi regime, which is known for its horrific violence, is just peachy.J. J. Ramseyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00763792476799485687noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-42320739347839052632009-08-19T01:36:02.528+10:002009-08-19T01:36:02.528+10:00The Darwinian implications are that if you have a ...<i>The Darwinian implications are that if you have a group of n people where k aren't idiots and k is much less than n, and if each individual in the n-k group has on average m1 offspring while each individual in the k group has m2 offspring, and m2 is less than m1, and if there is a very low probability that if your parents were idiots, you aren't going to be one too, then in the end the population will end up being almost entirely dominated by the idiots.</i><br /><br />The flaw in that argument is treating ignorance (literal meaning) as if it were a genetic trait. Knowledge freely passes through inheritance lines and so is not constrained by genetics. (My own parents were devout fundamentalists)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-19774114610590946712009-08-18T11:42:39.654+10:002009-08-18T11:42:39.654+10:00OB: "The Tacitus tag is famous and the passag...OB: "The Tacitus tag is famous and the passage as a whole isn't"<br /><br />So are you suggesting that what you meant by the tag isn't what the tag means in context?<br /><br />OB: "Jesus -- do you spend all your waking hours looking things up in an effort to say 'tu quoque' to the evil atheists?"<br /><br />Short answer: No.<br /><br />Long answer: No, and you reminded me of a quote from Stephen Colbert: "You see, you don't need the right facts when you have the right inflection." Ok, since you are writing not speaking, it isn't inflection, exactly, but it is an adept bit of innuendo. Nice rhetorical flourish there. Also, it's a nice way to make me look bad for (gasp!) actually seeking out the context of the quote to verify what it means.<br /><br />Furthermore, what I'm doing is not so much a <i>tu quoque</i> as it is pointing out a double standard. Myers' "brass knuckles" comment is at the very least tolerated, while M&K's far less colorful idiomatic use of "attack," etc., is somehow beyond the pale.J. J. Ramseyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00763792476799485687noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-30664825560414464772009-08-18T09:24:12.811+10:002009-08-18T09:24:12.811+10:00Oh for fuck's sake, J J Ramsey - are you despe...Oh for fuck's <i>sake</i>, J J Ramsey - are you desperate, or what? The Tacitus tag is famous and the passage as a whole isn't - I'm more familiar with the tag than I am with the whole passage. I even know the <i>Latin</i> for the tag which I certainly don't for the whole passage - so I don't take the tag to be equivalent to saying Jerry Coyne <i>assaulted</i> the NCSE.<br /><br />Jesus - do you spend all your waking hours looking things up in an effort to say 'tu quoque' to the evil atheists? What a bizarro hobby.OBnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-57152067690506436182009-08-18T05:44:36.385+10:002009-08-18T05:44:36.385+10:00A fuller translated quote from Tacitus is this:
&...A fuller translated quote from Tacitus is <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0081%3Achapter%3D30" rel="nofollow">this</a>:<br /><br />"Robbers of the world, having by their universal plunder exhausted the land, they rifle the deep. If the enemy be rich, they are rapacious; if he be poor, they lust for dominion; neither the east nor the west has been able to satisfy them. Alone among men they covet with equal eagerness poverty and riches. To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a solitude and call it peace."<br /><br />So it's not okay for M&K to use metaphors of violence, but it's okay for you to use a quote that alludes to particularly savage violence.J. J. Ramseyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00763792476799485687noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-65909152332688343722009-08-18T04:31:58.483+10:002009-08-18T04:31:58.483+10:00As Tacitus so wittily said, they made a wilderness...As Tacitus so wittily said, they made a wilderness and called it peace.Ophelia Bensonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-18451882094243803362009-08-18T03:24:30.167+10:002009-08-18T03:24:30.167+10:00"Did it ever occur to you that M&K see Da..."Did it ever occur to you that M&K see Dawkins, Harris, Myers, and so on as stirring up hatred, and they accordingly use metaphors of violence to express this stirring of hatred?"<br /><br />Yes, they are fighting very aggressively for peace. :-)<br /><br />http://blog.beliefnet.com/scienceandthesacred/2009/07/a-call-for-peace-in-the-sciencefaith-battle.html<br /><br />Of course, these "calls for peace" have nothing to do with the promotion of their book.Matti K.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-76302004172440021172009-08-18T02:10:34.647+10:002009-08-18T02:10:34.647+10:00Benson: "The intention is obviously to stir u...Benson: "The intention is obviously to stir up anger and hatred"<br /><br />What is so obvious about that? Think about the common ways to stir up hatred against a particular group. Name calling is a common technique for doing this. Exaggerating the evils of the opposition by, for example, suggesting on shaky evidence that the moderate members of the opposition cover for extremists, or using rhetorical sleight of hand to imply that they generally hate women, or using a Chamberlain analogy to <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2006/12/hitler_zombie_massacre_over_evolution_pa.php" rel="nofollow">liken the opposition to Nazis</a>, is also another such technique. One can also spur people to attack or cheer on an attack of an effigy of one's opposition by, for example, defacing or destroying symbols meaningful to the opposition, which has the added benefit of riling up the opposition as well. These are things that people on your side are doing.<br /><br />Did it ever occur to you that M&K see Dawkins, Harris, Myers, and so on as stirring up hatred, and they accordingly use metaphors of violence to express this stirring of hatred?J. J. Ramseyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00763792476799485687noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-54052117537856677542009-08-18T00:53:56.859+10:002009-08-18T00:53:56.859+10:00"M&K is not accusing anyone of violence.&..."M&K is not accusing anyone of violence."<br /><br />Of course they are. They said, for instance, that Jerry Coyne "assaulted" the NCSE. Michael Ruse the other day called the "New" atheists "people who are aggressively pro-science, especially pro-Darwinism, and violently anti-religion of all kinds." <br /><br />Of course the language is figurative, and no one says otherwise, but it doesn't have to be literal to do its dirty work. The intention is obviously to stir up anger and hatred, and it will do that. The twins are playing with fire - and they can't even claim to be doing it innocently, because people have been telling them that's what they're doing.Ophelia Bensonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-30996451379710206852009-08-17T22:03:19.245+10:002009-08-17T22:03:19.245+10:00Roko said: "We see that Israel does rather we...Roko said: "We see that Israel does rather well out of it: a booming high-tech centre, nuclear weapons 30 years before its enemies, and a global network of loyal, rational supporters".<br /><br />You must be joking. At the moment the former Prime MInister is under indictment for corruption, a current Minister is being indicted; the President has stepped down to answer charges of rape. Israel has been sharply criticised for its behaviour in recent wars. Its politics are dominated by loony religious parties - recently a group of rabbis flew in a plane around the border of Israel blowing horns to ward off swine 'flu! And this is your example of a model religious country!Tobyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02755923759289978768noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-20022497740840822902009-08-17T13:15:07.765+10:002009-08-17T13:15:07.765+10:00...belief is considered equivalently good or even ...<i>...belief is considered equivalently good or even better than scientific reasoning...</i><br /><br />(Of course, I should acknowledge that some folk* think that ALL questions, or at least any that are of any importance, are scientific questions (as opposed to political or social questions), which are to be investigated using the correct scientific methods. This would, one presumes, include the relative value - measured in some appropriate units - of belief vs science.)<br /><br />*no citation - personal observation from blog comments.cnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-68968337950239747812009-08-17T12:54:36.580+10:002009-08-17T12:54:36.580+10:00...belief isn't irrelevant
I didn't say ...<i>...belief isn't irrelevant </i><br /><br />I didn't say that belief is irrelevant, merely that it is/may be irrelevant to science (and that I think that the converse - "belief must be relevant to science" - is not true).<br /><br />How the world judges the value of belief vs science is an entirely different question, which is not a scientific question (unless you want to revisit the fitness value of "believers/idiots" vs scientists). It is fundamentally a social/political question, and tied closely into the educational system (hence the discussion about the stance of the NCSE). I reiterate - belief is not necessarily bad science (though it may be); it is fundamentally irrelevant to science per se (though relevant to "science in society", if it may be phrased that way).ckc (not kc)noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-6371657505375909332009-08-17T12:37:59.390+10:002009-08-17T12:37:59.390+10:00That's arguing over semantics.
Once again, I...That's arguing over semantics. <br /><br />Once again, I will state the obvious and repeat that belief isn't irrelevant because there is the small detail that in the world we live in belief is considered equivalently good or even better than scientific reasoning and this is a very real problem which we have to address.Georgi Marinovhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12226357993389417752noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-43924631196677474002009-08-17T12:34:26.279+10:002009-08-17T12:34:26.279+10:00...belief is bad science (or that it is incompatib...<i>...belief is bad science (or that it is incompatible with science, to be precise)...</i><br /><br />Here is the crux of my disagreement with you, I suspect. Bad science is bad science (many things will fall under this rubric) - things which are incompatible with science (including some beliefs) are not <b>necessarily</b> bad science, they are merely irrelevant to science. [They may not be irrelevant to scientists, either as scientists or as people, but they should not be characterized as bad science unless it's warranted.]ckc (not kc)noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-70506983223598331242009-08-17T12:23:28.617+10:002009-08-17T12:23:28.617+10:00Science has nothing to do with belief. Belief has ...<i>Science has nothing to do with belief. Belief has nothing to do with science (good or bad).</i><br /><br />Total nonsense. Belief is the antipode of science, and in that sense science has very much to do with it because it has to battle it all the time. To point out that belief is bad science (or that it is incompatible with science, to be precise) is precisely the right thing to do. Everything else is burying your head in the sand / not understanding what science isGeorgi Marinovhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12226357993389417752noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-83346883157627325672009-08-17T12:06:52.409+10:002009-08-17T12:06:52.409+10:00...explain to them that while they are free to bel...<i>...explain to them that while they are free to believe whatever they want, it is bad science to do so...</i><br /><br />Science has nothing to do with belief. Belief has nothing to do with science (good or bad).ckc (not kc)noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-15524975748609534242009-08-17T11:35:39.976+10:002009-08-17T11:35:39.976+10:00BTW, Georgi Marinov, see this XKCD strip: http://x...<i>BTW, Georgi Marinov, see this XKCD strip: http://xkcd.com/60</i><br /><br />That's a very mistaken distortion of my views.<br /><br />I don't understand how exactly you decided that I am decrying the decline of something that I don't think has ever existed? Or that I have elitist views? <br /><br />If anything, what I think we should be aiming for is for each and every person on this planet to be on an intellectual level comparable with the brightest minds out there. And I think this is what we should be aiming for not just because it would be good, but because otherwise we go extinct in the not so long term (because the idiots take over as I said above). <br /><br />But it isn't going to happen without some top-down intervention, and this is what few of even the most radical among the "New atheists" realize. And they can't connect the dots because doing good science among other things requires being able to overcome even the most cherished beliefs that has been imposed by you by the culture you have been raised in, and each of us has those. In this case it is the belief in democracy and the fear from totalitarianism, imposed on people's minds by decades of Cold War that gets in the way and makes them not want to see the obvious - that if you have people who don't want to listen to what you say to them, and what you have to say to them is really really important, you better forget about your damn democracy and force them to hear it. And nobody here is advocating mandatory teaching of atheism in schools, not at all, this would backfire very badly, and it is not good science. Just teach the kids how to think critically, show them the incosistencies in the Bible, and explain to them that while they are free to believe whatever they want, it is bad science to do so. These are perfectly good scientific positions, and to prefer to keep entirely silent on the issue instead of saying these things is to betray our mission as scientists.Georgi Marinovhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12226357993389417752noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-38273354575498920982009-08-17T11:15:47.735+10:002009-08-17T11:15:47.735+10:00BTW, Georgi Marinov, see this XKCD strip: http://x...BTW, Georgi Marinov, see this XKCD strip: http://xkcd.com/603/J. J. Ramseyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00763792476799485687noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-92077592083120903522009-08-17T11:14:28.094+10:002009-08-17T11:14:28.094+10:00Torbjörn Larsson: "the newly minted term '...Torbjörn Larsson: "the newly minted term 'New Atheists' is a misnomer and so seems to be used solely for the purpose of a slur."<br /><br />It was a term minted in <i>Wired Magazine</i> originally to describe the authors of books on atheism that managed to be covered in the mainstream media--which was the main new thing about the "New Atheism." It's not so much a slur as it is fuzzily defined.<br /><br />Torbjörn Larsson: "It doesn't seem so, as it _is_ concern trolling."<br /><br />Ok, so PZ Myers uses the colorful violent metaphor about "steel-toed boots and brass knuckles" once or twice, and this is okay, and objecting to it is even concern trolling. Dawkins makes a reference to an actual war and likens himself and his allies to the fighting Churchill as opposed to the cowardly Chamberlainers, and this is okay, too. M&K use "assault" and "attack" as metaphors (and rather colorless ones at that), and this--rather than the metaphors, name-calling, and assorted insults from Myers, Dawkins, Coyne, and so on--is what projects the images of the "New Atheists" as "vicious and violent."<br /><br />Ophelia Benson: "But I don't think I make a habit of accusing groups of people of various forms of violence when all they are doing is writing things."<br /><br />M&K is not accusing anyone of violence. No one is going to read them and come off thinking that Dawkins is going to shoot off an AK-47 at the Archbishop of Canterbury while PZ Myers grenades churches and Sam Harris bombs mosques.J. J. Ramseyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00763792476799485687noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-73570316737888266542009-08-17T10:41:14.341+10:002009-08-17T10:41:14.341+10:00...the long-term prospects aren't good.
...we...<i>...the long-term prospects aren't good.</i><br /><br />...well, in a "Darwinian" sense, the long-term prospects (fitness-wise) are very good indeed for the idiots (except that there is no good/not-good in evolutionary processes). If you're going to argue the evolutionary processes (fitness) involved in superstition/reason in human populations (especially as affected by the stance of the NCSE and/or the colgate twins), you'll have to develop some more sophisticated data than a correlation.ckc (not kc)noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-42720631587111349712009-08-17T10:32:17.590+10:002009-08-17T10:32:17.590+10:00Oh, hell, I used accede wrong, didn't I?
Wel...<i>Oh, hell, I used accede wrong, didn't I? </i><br /><br />Well, it depends what you meant, but I would guess that you used it correctly (or as intended). The equating of "faith-friendly" with "acceding to power" is what caught my attention.ckc (not kc)noreply@blogger.com