gdp's Comments

Atheist Revolution : Wasting Your Time

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 18:51:57 +0000

This post was interesting and relevant and in no way wasted my time. However, I also read all the above comments, which not only stole valuable seconds from my life without enriching my experience of the world one iota, but also compelled me to write this reply and thus throw away even more precious moments of the fleeting, too-brief time allotted to me on this earth. See you bastards in court.

Effort Sisyphus : Choose Your Destiny: 125 Skeptics Circle

Wed, 2 Dec 2009 20:59:22 +0000

Wait... never mind that, I think we're back in business. Phew. Those were a scary eight minutes. Now, time to take some suspicious, brightly coloured pharmaceutical tablets from a stranger on the internet.

Effort Sisyphus : Choose Your Destiny: 125 Skeptics Circle

Wed, 2 Dec 2009 20:55:57 +0000

This looks really fun and awesomely put together, and I look forward to taking the journey and seeing how deep the rabbit-hole goes... when Wordpress fixes itself. As of about five minutes ago their support boards turned into a frenzy of WTF, so at least it's not just me, but I'm afraid your red pill link is currently broken. Maybe I'll have to go blue for now.

Godless Girl : I'm Out!

Mon, 2 Nov 2009 00:00:26 +0000

Phew! Glad it turned out okay. I second the "everyone", though maybe one step at a time, if there are others to whom opening up might be similarly harrowing.

Atheist Revolution : Idiot of the Week: Ray Comfort

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 20:38:25 +0000

Wow. Apparently, no Christian who's ever had a conversation with an atheist before now has ever thought to ask such insightful questions. Or, if they did, I guess they didn't notice how easily the foolish non-believer caved utterly and started agreeing with everything they were saying. You just have to explain to them what they believe, and then they'll realise they don't really believe it and admit that you were right all along. It's amazing it's taken this long for anyone to notice that.

A Place For My Stuff : Yoder's Good Health Recipe

Tue, 8 Sep 2009 08:38:28 +0000

Add me to the teetotal skeptics list - that's, what, five now? No way those kinds of numbers don't mean something. Maybe the infusion of unicorn blood that gives us our critical thinking super-powers also reacts poorly with ethanol. Oh wait... yeah, I just remembered the Skepchicks too. Well, there goes that theory. (Great post, by the way.)

Atheist Revolution : Is Cheese Ever Morally Justified?

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 14:56:54 +0000

I find your presumption that I lack a belief in unicorns to be morally unjustifiable. But yes, this is another tedious point we seem to have to keep explaining. The author of that article doesn't like Chick tracts because they make God seem "cruel and capricious". I find the Bible does that just as well. Also, I'm not sure if he's making much of a distinction between moral justification and logical justification. The god of the Bible (along with many others) seems, to me, both morally abhorrent and empirically unsupported. It's not just that I'm choosing not to believe because he doesn't seem very nice.

Atheist Revolution : Blogroll

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 17:15:30 +0000

Looks like it had a bad Friday 13th a while back and hasn't noticed anybody's updates since then. I've just pinged it though, and it seems to have spotted me now.

Effort Sisyphus : A Skeptical Journey Through the Universe!

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 23:01:36 +0000

I love my new homeworld! Excellent round-up, setting the standard almost annoyingly high for the next few hosts. And congratulations on the new small person you helped make! I hope it's all worth the absolute horror of the first few days/weeks/years/however long it takes before being a parent actually becomes rewarding and you're allowed to sleep again.

Atheist Revolution : Idiot of the Week: Barack Obama

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 18:29:56 +0000

I suppose I'm not sure precisely what "keep[ing] his personal beliefs separate" would entail. For me, the simple fact that he's still giving Christianity any credence at all would be enough to demonstrate that his scientific approach leaves much to be desired, and that his aptitude for skepticism and reasoning has at least some tendency to be clouded - but there are religious people who do great things for science, and make great arguments on the non-religious side of things. I wonder to what extent believing that Jesus is magic can be described as a failing to keep these beliefs separate. However, having read a bit more about this guy, in particular PZ's latest, I am becoming increasingly convinced that his credibility is significantly impaired where it counts. I'm still not sure I'm convinced it makes Obama a bigger idiot than Sylvia Allen, but I'm coming around to Collins being a bad choice.

Atheist Revolution : Idiot of the Week: Barack Obama

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 12:45:51 +0000

Hmm... I'm not sure if I really think this was the dumbest moment of the week. I think the fact that he's a competent administrator, while not exactly soaring praise, is an important part of a job like this, as well as being a talented scientist. It does count against him that he's quite such an evangelist, but I can't guess how much of a difference that will really make to his ability to do the job well. Will he be able to keep his personal beliefs separate from his work, as Hemant suggests? Or, if he can't, will the science directly suffer, or is the problem more that it's detrimental to the overall conversation to have someone so disposed toward propagating religious nonsense in such a prominent scientific position? (As you can probably tell, I haven't really ordered my thoughts on this into anything as coherent as a solid opinion yet.)

Atheist Revolution : Proposing a Project for Atheist Bloggers

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 19:41:24 +0000

I guess something like this is what I had in mind when I started this thing on my blog that I'm calling the Skeptictionary, but it's turning out to be about as loose-knit as anything else, really. It does mean that, whenever anyone asks me why I bother acting morally or trying to enjoy life if I think death is final, I have a comprehensive answer of my own immediately to hand, but the idea of some kind of collaboration or compilation is an interesting one, and might be more useful. So, the way I'm imagining it, if you want an article explaining an atheist's approach to morality, you browse to 'morality' in this catalogue, and find a list of simple links to appropriate posts. There might be one to something on my blog about this, and one to yours, and one to Greta Christina's, and as many others as we can add to it. If someone accuses atheists on relying on faith, you can look that up - and maybe I and a few others haven't gotten around to writing about that yet, but someone will have, and there'll be a selection of different links there to different people's blogs again. Is that sort of what you had in mind? A wiki might work, to let people add links as and when they find them. Or someone could just set up a site for it and accept submissions and suggestions. I'm tempted to give that a try, but the logistics might need more consideration.