Tamilnation

Our favorite terrorists raise the bar

Are the Tamil Tigers terrorists? Is Hezb'allah? Is anyone?

I don't know. I know that, according to the people I know who are Sri Lankan, the problem with the LTTA is that they can't compromise, they won't allow integration. They don't want people to stop being Tamil... so they kill other people who aren't Tamil. And their own, of course, but more quietly and with less pride.

Same problem the irish are having, I guess. This is why I gave the highlander an irish first name and a scottish second name even though I'm a cajun and the girl is polish. What the hell... I say, you can be whatever damn ethnicity you want. I'm going back to being a man of color.

YouTube - George Galloway debates Christopher Hitchens: Part 1

YouTube - George Galloway debates Christopher Hitchens: Part 1

Think what you will of Christopher Hitchens, George Galloway may be the most disgusting human being I have ever seen speak on a stage. And I've watched Henry Kissinger debate Ariana Huffington while William F. Buckley presided.

When Did I move To Iran?

US Supreme Court Wizzes On Constitution, Wipes Butt With Bill of Rights

When did I move to a country where we were allowed to kidnap foreign nationals and put them in prison camps in Cuba indefinitely? When did we lose our decency? When did we decide that a United States Military Base was not "US Soil", and that the law didn't apply there? Was it just 9/11, or has it always been this way.

When we, as a people, decide to hold ourselves above the law we destroy everything we value and stand for. It is a greater blow than any terrorist could ever strike.

In the end, freedom has made America great. And if we bring back slavery, it will drag us down.

Cory Doctorow 1

Music Industry 0

Fans +several million.

Are we better off without religion?-Audio / Video-Podcasts-TimesOnline

Are we better off without religion?-Audio / Video-Podcasts-TimesOnline

ARGH! He did it AGAIN. Dawkin's again, in this debate, floats the absurd idea that religion EVER had the best explanation for anything. But just ceding that point gives the lying scum in the churches of the world their out, as if the manifest fact that they have always just been making shit up is overtaken by the fact that other people were more easily duped.

The only honest man in this debate is Hitchens, who is feared and hated even by atheists for having the courage to say what needs to be said. Bravo, Christopher.

Dawkins still doesn't get it

Dawkins still doesn't understand

Yes. For centuries the most powerful argument for God's existence from the physical world was the so-called argument from design: Living things are so beautiful and elegant and so apparently purposeful, they could only have been made by an intelligent designer.

Wrong, Richard, wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. You couldn't be more wrong.

Why do I say this? Because that has never been a good argument for the existence of God. It really hasn't. The existence of thunder was never a good argument for the existence of thunder gods. The existence of creation does not imply a creator god. The fact is, as you often point out, you need an explanation for god in order for a creator god to be an explanation of anything. So even before Darwin, or Newton, or Copernicus, or even jess there was no good reason to believe in god. A creator still begged the question, even in ancient greece.

Where Dawkins goes wrong is in being afraid to actually come right out and say that odds are, if the Romans had been outright atheists instead of devout pagans, roman civilizaiton would not have become christianized and the dark ages would not have happened. Christianity set civilization back a thousand years, easy. And Islam is poised to do the same thing.

One of the few things that Jack Chick gets absolutely right is that the catholic church has always been a con job, a front, a way to screw the little guy. Where he goes wrong is in thinking that the whole jesus story somehow isn't. Well, it is.

The short answer is "no"

So, about midway through this interview, our hero, Richard Dawkins, was asked the following question:

"Don't the same critiques you level at religion apply to the foundations of science?"

Dawkins demurs. He equivocates. He makes a lousy joke. But what he doesn't say is "No."

But the answer is no. Not the hemming, hawing, hedging answer that RD gave, but a simple, straightforward, NO. You cannot apply the critique to metaphysical naturalism that it assumes facts not in evidence. It does not. It assumes only those facts which are in evidence. Thats what naturalism means.

What the simpering twit who asked this question meant was that by not assuming the existence of facts not in evidence, somehow, metaphysical naturalism was making some kind of fundamentalist statement, taking a position based on no evidence. And that critique doesn't make any damn sense at all, and the fact that purportedly brilliant people consistently fail to recognize how nonsensical that is just floors me. I think it might be that Dawkins is afraid of looking stupid, of looking like he doesn't have any answer, so he's terrified to just ask the idiot across from him what the heck he means by such an asinine statement, by perhaps simply saying "I'm sorry, but I don't follow your reasoning at all. What on earth do you mean?" Columbo would do a better job.