Comments by Bonzai

Comment #287599 by Bonzai on November 20, 2008 at 11:25 am

aq

Huh again (re#390)

Are you sure you are not answering someone else?

2. The Sea Turtle's Tale: Back to the sea, and back again to the land

Comment #287584 by Bonzai on November 20, 2008 at 11:04 am

Maybe they mean "nude killer".

3. The Sea Turtle's Tale: Back to the sea, and back again to the land

Comment #287566 by Bonzai on November 20, 2008 at 10:51 am

Richard Dawkins

What do you think of some Americans pronouncing nuclear as "new-cu-lar"? Now even I can't stand that. :)

4. The battle rages on in Texas

Comment #287549 by Bonzai on November 20, 2008 at 10:32 am

Tyler

The priest had no issue with teens watching a movie rated 18, containing blood, guts, murder, zombies (go figure!)

Why so surprised? Isn't that what Jesus' story is all about, down to the zombie part?

**********************
A kid in a Catholic school saw the crufix hanging on the classroom wall. He asked the teacher, "who is that naked guy nailed to the cross?" The teacher hesitated a bit and replied, "See, this is a guy who failed school, if you don't work hard it will happen to you too!"

5. God enough

Comment #287541 by Bonzai on November 20, 2008 at 10:23 am

aq

Huh?

6. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #287538 by Bonzai on November 20, 2008 at 10:22 am

But I am sure the left will find a way to blame this on Bush also.

"The Left"? Where the hell have you been for the last while? EVERYONE blames Bush, including McCain and Palin. Get a grip.

7. Is Obama the Antichrist?

Comment #287529 by Bonzai on November 20, 2008 at 10:05 am

i heard the sing of the beast was actually 999

The "sing" of the beast? I didn't know that the anti-Christ is a rock star. Might as well, they always say music corrupts :)

8. The Sea Turtle's Tale: Back to the sea, and back again to the land

Comment #287521 by Bonzai on November 20, 2008 at 9:54 am

Carto

I agree, the people who tend to correct pronunciation (or, rather, to recommend their own preferred pronunciation) are, almost without exception, snobs of the highest order. Generally they do this in order to show off a knowledge of the pronunciation in the original language, and thereby show themselves to be more cosmopolitan than you are. I find this roundly infuriating, especially since I hold no pretensions to being cosmopolitan and object to the idea that one would automatically assume it is a desirable thing to be.

Tell me about it! In my native Hong Kong there is a bunch of egg heads (actually it started with only one egg head) in one university pushing for "proper pronunciations" of the Cantonese dialect.

They have somehow gotten the attention of TV stations and the government so they are getting a lot of public exposure. They also force students who attend that university (a big one) to take a mandatory course on "proper spoken Cantonese" regardless of their majors. They claim that many common words are mispronounced and insist that these words should be pronounced in some obscure ways like they were 1000 years ago.

I think this is a joke, I have no idea how they infer the "correct pronounciations" because there were no tapes or CDs 1000 years ago, maybe they dug up some mummies and had conversations with them. Another thing is, Cantonese is a dialect and it is very informal and flexible. It is well known for its rich and colouful swear words, clever double entente and puns. You kill it the moment you try to make it too rigid.

The unfortunate part is nowadays media personalities and government spoke people actually switch to the "proper way" of pronunciations for fear of being labeled uneducated or illiterate.

Whenever I visit I would deliberately speak in the common way,--the "wrong" way,-- especially when I am in the company of "educated people". When faced with the language Stalinists the only way to respond is to give them the finger.I hate language police of all stripes, this ties in well with the discussion on the other thread.

9. God enough

Comment #287505 by Bonzai on November 20, 2008 at 9:35 am

She was convinced that she was "ok" with herself and didn't care at all what anyone else thought of her. In good fun (my type of fun) I said she did, and offered a $50 bet to prove it. She accepted saying this would be the easiest $50 she ever made, until I pointed out that she cared enough about what I thought of her to wager $50 to prove me wrong. Had she been fine with what people thought of her, she would have refused the bet and not cared about my opinion.

How do you come to that conclusion? She might just want to win $50!

EDIT: Mitchell just beats me to it.

10. Puncturing the Acupuncture Myth

Comment #287051 by Bonzai on November 19, 2008 at 5:24 pm

Well, in a sense placebo effects work both ways. Many symptoms maybe at least in part psychosomatic in nature and pumping chemicals in your system probably would do you little good.

My late grandmother had a very strange faith in needles. I am not talking about acupuncture, but injection. Whenever she got sick she would demand the doctor to give her a shot, thinking that merely taking drugs would not cure fast enough.

At first the doctor of course refused and told her to go home and take the medicine. She would moan and groan and linger in bed for days complaining that the medicine didn't work. The next time when she got sick and went to the doctor, she would pester him again for a shot. After many times the doctor was finally fed up and gave her a shot whenever she visited. According to grandma she recovered much faster with the shot than without. She had a theory that the doctor refused to give her the shot before because he wanted her to come back for a second visit so he could bill her again.

My mother happened to go to the same doctor. A few years later the doctor told my mom that actually the shots he gave my grandma was just placebo shots of glucose solution. He did that because he was sick and tired of arguing with her.

Eventually everyone in the family knew that except grandma. But she did feel better.

11. God enough

Comment #287039 by Bonzai on November 19, 2008 at 4:42 pm

James Stewart writes first year calculus text books.
He is at McMaster university. Beyond that I don't know anything about him.

12. God enough

Comment #287021 by Bonzai on November 19, 2008 at 4:10 pm

Steve

Maybe you would like to take a look at this book if you haven't already

http://www.amazon.com/Symmetry-Perspective-Equilibrium-Chaos-Physical/dp/3764321717

13. God enough

Comment #287017 by Bonzai on November 19, 2008 at 4:05 pm

Steve

There is an interesting connection with some of the work of Ian Stewart which shows how what appear to be complex biological structures or behaviours can come from very simple origins combined with certain patterns and symmetry. Examples are ways that animals walk, and patterns of colouration.

I know. Stewart and Golubitsky wrote a few books and many articles on symmetry breaking bifurcations. I know Martin Golubitsky and have taken a graduate course with him on this very topic.

14. God enough

Comment #287011 by Bonzai on November 19, 2008 at 3:55 pm

shaunfletcher

What Kauffman is suggesting is that there are emergent principles in biology above the level of natural selection: the evolutionary equivalents of entropy and temperature, where natural selection is equivalent to the interaction between atoms.

Also below. So you can read "reductionism" either way, there is no up or down.:)

He seems (and I am not going further than seems as Im commenting on this article only) to be taking his illustrative parallel much much further than it deserves.

In his books and articles (and the works of others) he argues that there may indeed be universal principles underlying these apparently diverse phenomena beyond just laying out parallels. Afterall, ideas like bifurcations, symmetry breaking and self organization are universal.

15. God enough

Comment #286998 by Bonzai on November 19, 2008 at 3:31 pm

Janus,

I've noticed a pattern: People who know they're wrong but don't have the guts to admit it to themselves have the following tendency in common: They absolutely love to call their opponents names like "fundamentalist", "radical", "totalist", "ideologue"

That may be, but sometimes the labels do fit.

Why do you think I should waste my time responding to tripe like the following?

I mean, wake up. First, he's an anti-reductionist. Supernaturalism is a sub-category of anti-reductionism.

Second, his favored 'explanation' for the mystery of consciousness is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that's just as mysterious. Explaining mystery with mystery is a trademark of supernaturalists.

This is exactly the kind of flimsy, PC motivated heretics hounding that I am talking about. I see no reason why he or I has to even honour this with an answer. Does a scientist have to clear with the Inquisition for "materialism" presided over by amateurs like yourself before he can do his research? Kauffmnan's ideas are extremely fruitful and interesting but I doubt that you can even understand. If you are so great write your own book to address the scientific questions he asks based on "reductionism",--whatever hell that means.

EDIT: Come to think of it maybe I was wrong in calling you the Grand Inquisitor, you sound a lot more like the party hacks in Stalin's Russia who denounced "bourgeois, non Marxist science" because some scientists seemed to have ideas that were at odd with "dialectical materialism",--at least to the uneducated ears of the Commissars,-- which was, of course the only true "scientific" worldview.

16. Giving Up on God

Comment #286969 by Bonzai on November 19, 2008 at 2:42 pm

Actually the election outcome is troubling in some respect. I read that in Ohio Obama actually got less votes than Kerry did in 2004 even after so much work and money have been poured into the state to get the votes out. He won the state only because McCain was doing even worse. Apparently a lot of evangelical voters who supported Bush in 2004 were staying home because McCain was too liberal for them.

17. God enough

Comment #286963 by Bonzai on November 19, 2008 at 2:37 pm

Janus

What the hell are you babbling about? Are you the grand Inquisitor? Sorry, I think scientifically you are out of your depth.

18. Is Obama the Antichrist?

Comment #286960 by Bonzai on November 19, 2008 at 2:36 pm

Don't worry, Rev. John Hagee assures us that Obama can't be the anti-Christ because the anti-Christ can't be black.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mvFspqtGR4

19. God enough

Comment #286954 by Bonzai on November 19, 2008 at 2:32 pm

I downloaded Wolfram's book from his website. It turned out to be a huge file (IIRC it was almost 900M) with no table of contents or index. I deleted it afterwords.

20. God enough

Comment #286947 by Bonzai on November 19, 2008 at 2:28 pm

Brian

You mean the oft-repeated accusation that atheists are a mirror image of fundamentalists is true?

Not all atheists of course, not Dawkins himself. But sometimes I feel as if I am defending people against heresy charges in front of the Inquisition here.

I remember some posters on this site almost calling Dawkins a sellout when he admitted that he enjoyed singing in a Church around Christmas. Oh, the horror.

21. God enough

Comment #286934 by Bonzai on November 19, 2008 at 2:16 pm

Brian

I am tired of the "atheistic correct" language police here. They are the Godless Puritans.

22. God enough

Comment #286928 by Bonzai on November 19, 2008 at 2:11 pm

Caudi

Sorry, but "There's a consciousness in the universe,"

To add to Steve's point,--that we are conscious hence the universe is,-- when we contemplate on the universe, it is God engaging in introspection. How does that sound? :)

23. God enough

Comment #286916 by Bonzai on November 19, 2008 at 1:50 pm

Are the Kauffman "critics" of this thread reform fundies? They seem to share with religious fundamentalists an inability to read beyond strict literalism.

I use "critics" in quotations because there isn't really any substantial criticism of Kauffman's idea here. All these "critics" try to do is in some ways paint him as a "supernaturalist" based on poor reading comprehension.

24. God enough

Comment #286907 by Bonzai on November 19, 2008 at 1:40 pm

In a sense Kauffman is actually even more "reductionist" than Dawkins, it all depends on how you orient the direction of reductionism.

In the Neo Darwinian view exemplified by Dawkins, biological structures are the products of historical accidents and contingency. Natural selection is opportunistic and ad hoc. Kaffmann, however, argues that there are deeper structural principles at work in creating biological structures, in addition to to the haphazard working of natural selection. The origin of these principles is not biological, but from a lower level of physics, chemistry and universal laws that govern pattern formations.

That is why I never find words such as 'reductionism' too useful as they mislead easily.

25. God enough

Comment #286899 by Bonzai on November 19, 2008 at 1:30 pm

Steve

Good posts.

26. Hitchens Debates Rabbi Wolpe on God

Comment #286577 by Bonzai on November 19, 2008 at 12:13 am

epeeist

Note his review of The Jesus Family Tomb: The Discovery, the Investigation, and the Evidence That Could Change History by Simcha Jacobovici. He is forced to admit that he hadn't actually read the book.

Maybe he is paid by Amazon.com to write reviews. Didn't he say he had to attend to a boring job for a while? I can see how it would be boring to review books that one hasn't read.

27. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #286565 by Bonzai on November 18, 2008 at 10:42 pm

Why don't these union leaders just buy out the company and run it the way they think it should be run. Let them actually have to be the CEO and lets see how well they run a company.

Because in this country people are brainwashed into thinking that workers cannot manage production themselves. CEO's and upper management have inflated compensations not because they are so indepensible for production, but because they (supposedly) serve the interest of concentrated wealth.

Check this out

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragón

and this

http://www.hour.ca/film/film.aspx?iIDArticle=4553

28. Puncturing the Acupuncture Myth

Comment #286457 by Bonzai on November 18, 2008 at 3:14 pm

deius

Most of your reply to my post regarding Diamond's evidence was adequately and brilliantly answered by NC. There is nothing I could add to those points.

I will reply to your other points (those are minor points) later when I am done with my work tonight. Stay tuned.

P.S. But if you don't mind me saying there is no reason to take a debate elsewhere to this thread and indulge in ad hominem when the people involved cannot defend their views.

29. Puncturing the Acupuncture Myth

Comment #286435 by Bonzai on November 18, 2008 at 3:00 pm

Titania

decius,

What thread?

http://richarddawkins.net/articleComments,3345,Atheism-a-positive-pillar,USA-Today,page5#286234

I think decius has a bruised ego after Naked Celt really demolished him so he has to take it here. :)

30. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #286130 by Bonzai on November 18, 2008 at 8:10 am

nakedcelt

Where I disagree with the Marxists (quietly, on Saturday night, but I have not been shy about saying it in print in the past) is on the necessity of violent revolution. That, I think, more than anything else, explains the autocracy that Communist countries became. Socialists think Stalin was an aberration; I can't agree. Socialist revolutions have always ended up bringing dictators to power.

I think totalitarianism would be the likely outcome of any 'Utopian revolution', not just Communism. The goal of such revolutions is not simply to set up a new government and create new institutions, but to transform society at its core. They seek to recreate society itself. As such they need to recreate 'new people'. By that logic the new state/government can't be democratic because the "old people" would then be empowered.

When a Utopian revolution takes place in a country with predominantly "old" people, where most people lack the awareness and vision of the new society, such as Russia in 1918, or France in 1789, the revolutionaries have to murder the present in order to bring in the new, that's when it becomes deadly. These revolutions are like premature birth.

But I agree that Stalin was kind of an aberration. He fitted more into the old Tsarist mold than a communist revolutionary. Trotsky might have turned into a monster too had he won, but we would never know. Interestingly Lenin was planning to remove Stalin, sensing that there was something wrong with the man, but he was dead before he could do it.

Mao was a complicated character, I think it would not do history justice by attributing the Mao phenomenon to Communism. He was a great Emperor who had risen from the peasant rank. There were a few of those in Chinese history. He found his inspirations from the Chinese classics rather than Marx, as he himself admitted. Most prominent orthodox Marxists were purged from the CCP as soon as Mao took control of the party.

"Communism" in China was to a large part traditional peasant Utopianism mixed with some Marxist rhetoric. The 1949 revolution has a close precursor, the Tai Ping Rebellion in the 1860's. The similarities were uncanny, only that the Tai Ping rebels appropriated Jesus rather than Marx for their slogans.

31. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #286118 by Bonzai on November 18, 2008 at 7:45 am

DP's view about education and taxes is entirely predictable because in his twised mind children are private property of the parents. So paying for state school system to raise the next generation of citizens (and tax payers) to him is like home owners paying property taxes.

32. Hitchens Debates Rabbi Wolpe on God

Comment #286115 by Bonzai on November 18, 2008 at 7:39 am

God = Good Old Dianelos.

33. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #286106 by Bonzai on November 18, 2008 at 7:20 am

Frankus

I use Youtube daily in my teaching. I use it to show the students cool and interesting and relevant stuff and we use it to share our own ideas and creations.

So, had Jim Prentice brought in his new copyright law you would have been toasted. Good that he is no longer the minster of industry.

34. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #286105 by Bonzai on November 18, 2008 at 7:17 am

Titania

My fourth grade teacher once told me that if you don't finish a book it means you don't understand it. Damn the woman, now I have to finish every book I start.

Or you understand it by reading just a few pages, most forth grade books are like that.

35. Hitchens Debates Rabbi Wolpe on God

Comment #286098 by Bonzai on November 18, 2008 at 7:06 am

Dianelos believes he is in a purely supernatural/mental reality. There is no physical world at all. It is all illusory. The active "force" in this reality is "mind".

Then why not my mind? It certainly seems more real than Jesus. Maybe I = Jesus = Dianelos = you?!

I am more convinced that Dianelos is high on acid. Maybe he's cool dude to smoke a joint together and listen to Marley.

36. Hitchens Debates Rabbi Wolpe on God

Comment #286096 by Bonzai on November 18, 2008 at 6:58 am

Actually, the more I read Dianelos the more confused I am. What is he trying to argue? It seems that his "God" is something like aether, not detectable, does nothing yet has a mind (or is a mind).

I think he is high between his "very boring tasks". If that is the case good for him.

37. Hitchens Debates Rabbi Wolpe on God

Comment #286004 by Bonzai on November 18, 2008 at 12:34 am

Brian (sorry fixed the typo already)

If you grant this, then a mind isn't an extra-temporal entity

I would say the mind is not even a disembodied entity. It has to have "content",--attributes. All attributes of "minds" that we know are tied to a body and bodily experience. By that I don't just mean mind has to have a material substrate. Rather, much stronger, we cannot even describe what a mind does without referring to things such as perception, emotions, memory, etc.

Pure computational power can be described abstractly, but it would be a stretch to call that a "mind".

38. Hitchens Debates Rabbi Wolpe on God

Comment #285996 by Bonzai on November 18, 2008 at 12:19 am

Brian

God can't be a mind under Dianelos' ideas as he's explained them because God exists outside of time and is thus Platonic and invariant

Then what the hell does it do? Just sitting there being "one"?

I guess he's saying a mind is like his Platonic numbers.

You can describe numbers, say specific things about them (theorems in number theory, say) and do things with them.

What can we say about Danelos' God and what can we do with it?

39. Hitchens Debates Rabbi Wolpe on God

Comment #285994 by Bonzai on November 18, 2008 at 12:15 am

Danelos

Naturalists ascribe reality to the concepts entailed in the model of general relativity, so they believe that mass curves spacetime. But they don't ascribe reality to the concepts entailed in the model of quantum electrodynamics, so they don't believe that between our observing a particle at A and then at B that particle has passed through all points of the universe

Obviously there are different kinds of "naturalists" as you obvious know based on my recent intense debate with certain people here.

If I understand your question about QED correctly one possible answer could be that renormalization is mathematically fishy. Summing over all "histories" typically leads to divergent integrals and the way to fix it, though works, doesn't make mathematical sense (If any first year student tries to pull something similar in a calculus exam he would get a big fat zero, no question about it)To many this indicates some crucial understanding of the underlying process is still missing.

That's difficult to do because nothing about the mind appears to be corporal in the first place. We can't fail knowing what consciousness is: consciousness is how it is like to be us. Now we do detect a particular class of stable patterns *within* conscious experience which we call material things (e.g. apples) but it is very difficult to argue that consciousness itself is a material thing or has some necessary connection with material things. That's why the famous mind-body problem is so hard.

All these attributes I mentioned are corporal in the sense that they are tied to a material subsrrate. You can alter these attributes by changing the state of the body.

What is a "pure consciousness" without perception, without will, without personality, without emotion, without memory? It is not "like what it is to be us".

Again give me a reasonable description, otherwise "pure consciousness" is only a word with no meaning.

Sorry I haven't a chance to read your take on metaphysics, I will take a look when I get around to it.

40. Atheism, a positive pillar

Comment #285978 by Bonzai on November 17, 2008 at 11:25 pm

decius

Well, one of the tenet of PoMo is that western values are just another narrative. Western civilisation is therefore no more advanced than any aboriginal culture. This is eerily similar to Diamond's thesis.

When did Diamond say that Western civilization,-- as it stands now,--is no more advanced than aboriginal cultures?

Based on what I read he was trying to understand "why" indeed that is the case (Yali's question)

In an attempt to answer that he asked the broader question of why some civilizations developed into higher level of sophistications while others didn't.

That doesn't sound like denying some societies are materially more advanced than others. It was his starting point.

Maybe I am missing something or you are reading a different book.

I totally agree, but he fails to provide evidence. He just tells a beautiful story. In history departments he is the butt of all jokes.

That is another surprise to me. Actually he laid out his evidence very carefully and made rather compelling arguments based on evidence. You may disagree with his intepretations of the data, but it would be difficult to argue that he did not present evidence.

If it says that Diamond provides evidence for his pseudoscientific claims, you will find 1000 other which say he doesn't. Look them up for yourself, I don't care.

Actually I did look up some of the critics. First off there are quite a few people who disagree on ideological ground, like some Marxists. Those are hardly more "scientific" by any stretch of the imagination.

A common criticism by professional historians is that Diamond overemphasized geography and natural constraints while ignoring finer points such as institutions and culture.

Now first of all if you want to argue like a hard nose empircist there is much more concrete data you can gather from Diamond's angle than by talking about things like "culture".

Secondly, Diamond has acknowleged that he was interested in the broad picture, outlining some powerful natural constraints that sent civilizations on divergent courses in the very begining. He did not address the fine, proximity causes of individual events which are well covered by conventional historians. He looked at 13000 years of human history from a bird eye's view. The critics who argue that he didn't put enough emphasis on say the role Renaissance might have on the industrial revolution are completely missing the point.

I sense that you are offended because Diamond didn't say loudly enough "the West is BETTER". Making this kind of value judgement has nothing to do with science.

41. Interview with John Lennox

Comment #285962 by Bonzai on November 17, 2008 at 10:07 pm

John Blund was indeed at twelfth century theologian.

And James Blunt is indeed a horrible 21st century pop star. :) Don't know why I write this.

42. Hitchens Debates Rabbi Wolpe on God

Comment #285946 by Bonzai on November 17, 2008 at 9:14 pm

Brian

Sorry, I trademarked them already. :)

43. Hitchens Debates Rabbi Wolpe on God

Comment #285940 by Bonzai on November 17, 2008 at 9:05 pm

Dianelos

Teapots are things produced on Earth

Have you observed a disembodied mind? Where?

Everything we know about "mind" and "intelligence" comse from observing ourselves,--humans,--and to a lesser extent animals.

What is a disembodied mind like? Care to describe it?

Does it have perception of time flow, spatial dimensions, colour, size of objects? Does it have memory? Does it have a personality? Now all these attributes are tied to the body as observing brain damaged patients, --among other things,--clearly reveals.

So substract away everything that is coporal about the mind, what is left? What is "pure consciousness" like?

I want descriptions.

44. Atheism, a positive pillar

Comment #285933 by Bonzai on November 17, 2008 at 8:34 pm

Decius

He isn't even mainstream - his work is speculative, unscientific and appeasing PoMo's ideas

I am afraid you are being unfair.

How did he appease POMO ideas? I don't know what is the standard of "scientific" rigor is in macro history. Perhaps you can point us to a few authors who in your opinions are more scientific?

As for not being mainstream, I think that is what ground breaking original synthesis is all about.

Of course not all original ideas are intellectually rigorous, but then it is not true either that ideas deviating from the mainstream are automatically wrong and should be dismissed out of hand, especially when you are talking about a discipline where the mainstream approach is anything but scientific,--from what I have gathered ,that's why I ask you for references. At least Diamond tries to approach the subject scientifically using multidisciplinary methodology and data.

P.S. On the other thread about the existence Mohammad it seems that you have no problem embracing ideas which are way off the mainstream and completely at odds with professional consensus. And you did that apparently based only on the his conclusion rather than the case he built since I don't think you have read his books or papers at all.

45. Atheism, a positive pillar

Comment #285926 by Bonzai on November 17, 2008 at 8:11 pm

Decius

Duh. Doesn't that denote an incapability and a failure to think abstractly and to plan ahead?
Something he can't certainly accuse the Western civilisation of.

I didn't sense that Diamond was taking an adversary, them better than us mentality. It seems that in some way we tend to fall in the same trap of short sightedness when it comes to over exploiting our resources. In that way more advanced societies may actually fuck up more spectacularly.

Another book on a similar theme is Ronald Wright's 2004 Massey lecture. It is published under the title "A Brief History Of Progress". Highly recommended.

(P.S. Seeing from this perspective DP's idea that we should entrust our long term welfare to the "free market" which is only good at rewarding short term thinking is completely insane)

46. Atheism, a positive pillar

Comment #285918 by Bonzai on November 17, 2008 at 7:57 pm

decius

The stimuli we receive are of a much higher complexity and we deal with many of them as if they were our second nature, almost automatically.

Many people recieve their stumuli from TV these days. It is not really that complex a task to use the remote.

I know people who wake up everyday, go to work in some service jobs that don't require a lot of skills, go shopping, watch TV .. It seems that this is the typical lifestyle of a large number of people.

47. Atheism, a positive pillar

Comment #285890 by Bonzai on November 17, 2008 at 7:09 pm

Actually as individuals we are probably on average dumber than humans who live in technologically backward societies.

One benefit of civilization and technology is that we are protected from natural selection and we don't have to live on our wits everyday.

48. Atheism, a positive pillar

Comment #285886 by Bonzai on November 17, 2008 at 7:03 pm

Mitchell

Everyone didn't invent a wheel, only a few people did, and everyone else was taught about it. I wasn't saying that the native Americans lacked all of the things I mentioned. I meant that Europeans had much more of all of it. So I think that a Native American would have had the idea eventually, but just didn't before Europeans showed up.

You should check out Jarad Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" if you haven't already. In it he gave a fascinating geographical account for technological innovations.

For example, he made the case that a major reason for the technological sophistication of "Eurasian" civilizarions( Europe, Asia and the Middle East) was the availability of large, domesticable animals such as horses and cows.

Apparently very few species can be domisticated. For example there is none in Africa (nobody has been able to domesticate the zebra, for example, which otherwise might be a good alternative to horses)

49. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #285720 by Bonzai on November 17, 2008 at 1:41 pm

sciros

DP has been presented with an overwhelming amount in this thread alone, but remains stubborn in his simplistic and inaccurate convictions.

That is exactly what a pitbull is like. They are very stubborn and they are also known to be one of the most stupid breed of dogs.

50. Atheism, a positive pillar

Comment #285708 by Bonzai on November 17, 2008 at 1:31 pm

flying goose

I might be wrong, but that is freedom.

years ago I put on a uniform and carried a rifle and was prepared to defend that freedom with my life. What i was defending was human freedom, not truth, which can take care of itself.

I agree with your sentiment. However, in the real world it is not so much atheists trying to force you to give up your belief. It is religious people running around trying to shove their beliefs down others' throats. I am not saying all religious people are like that, clearly you are not,--if you are still religious. But enough of them are. Just think of the missionaries!

It is also the religious people who condemn others' lifestyle as "immoral" and wish punishment on them either in this life or the afterlife. While atheists here do tend to take a dim view on religious beliefs. None as far as I know argues religious belief in and of itself is immoral and that people who hold such beliefs should be punished.

So yes, I agree whole heartedly with you on the freedom to believe (and not believe), but I think you are arguing with the wrong people over this.