en-us https://www.intensedebate.com/users/582400 Comments by weepingcross http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2013/04/dawkins-and-flying-horse.html#IDComment633114193 There may be some mileage in considering how certain constrained forms of social media tempt otherwise intelligent people (of various beliefs) into saying silly things when they might be better off being plainly factual, as I understand the Heresiarch is. I'm not on Twitter. Wed, 1 May 2013 23:58:25 +0000 http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2013/04/dawkins-and-flying-horse.html#IDComment633114193 http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2013/04/dawkins-and-flying-horse.html#IDComment633108177 "I don't understand why Hasan is citing Decartes, Locke, Rousseau etc as peole who made statements without evidence or proof" He's not, he's arguing precisely the opposite, apparently, in trying to deny that faith requires belief in something without evidence. Wed, 1 May 2013 23:44:07 +0000 http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2013/04/dawkins-and-flying-horse.html#IDComment633108177 http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2013/04/why-thatcher-deserves-proper-funeral.html#IDComment617131484 "not to mark the passing of such an extraordinary figure with extraordinary ceremonies would be unimaginative, myopic and cheap" I can offer a Solemn Exorcism if anyone's interested Thu, 11 Apr 2013 18:10:46 +0000 http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2013/04/why-thatcher-deserves-proper-funeral.html#IDComment617131484 http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2013/04/maggie-moderate.html#IDComment616845342 When I was in High Wycombe I got the lucky chance to write a new history of the town and while doing the research (and having had the experience of buying a house while I was there) I was struck first by the massive escalation in house prices which really took off from the mid-1980s and also by the escalation in the number of estate agents, solicitors and surveyors who all clustered around two streets in the town centre. I ended up writing (I thought a bit hyperbolically) that those two streets had become the real engine of the whole local economy. Now it seems not hyperbolic at all. This has been the great economic fact of the last thirty years, but it still seems that too few people realise it. I finally despaired of the coalition when I heard a minister declaring that what the country really needed was to get house prices rising again. Thu, 11 Apr 2013 09:46:27 +0000 http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2013/04/maggie-moderate.html#IDComment616845342 http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2013/04/maggie-moderate.html#IDComment616842208 However, I think there's a point. Had Mrs T been more of a 19th-century conservative and less of a 19th-century liberal she might have grasped that sometimes social institutions, habits and customs exist to mitigate human selfishness rather than restrain human goodness. Thu, 11 Apr 2013 09:40:28 +0000 http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2013/04/maggie-moderate.html#IDComment616842208 http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2013/04/maggie-moderate.html#IDComment616301047 Thanks very much for this - it saves me wasting energy and mental effort writing anything about it. Everything I'd want to say has been included here, down to the generation of the conditions that led to property price inflation and the appalling damage that's done our economy. What comes over most powerfully is the fantasy nature of so much of our political narratives. Wed, 10 Apr 2013 16:32:39 +0000 http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2013/04/maggie-moderate.html#IDComment616301047 http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2013/03/how-implementing-leveson-threatens.html#IDComment598831573 Ah, on re-reading I see you do say rather more specifically the right-wing press "*provides a platform* for the articulation of traditional Judaeo-Christian values" rather than directly promotes them. It still seems to me that such contributions would be rather fatally vitiated by the poisonous morality of everything around them. Mon, 18 Mar 2013 23:27:21 +0000 http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2013/03/how-implementing-leveson-threatens.html#IDComment598831573 http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2013/03/how-implementing-leveson-threatens.html#IDComment598828373 Which right-wing press are you thinking of that promotes Christian values? You surely can't be alluding to the Daily Mail, with its spite, rage, materialism, xenophobia, and deeply inappropriate attitude to underage girls? Or at least, if you are, we probably think of Christianity very differently. As I suspect we may. Mon, 18 Mar 2013 23:21:20 +0000 http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2013/03/how-implementing-leveson-threatens.html#IDComment598828373 http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2013/03/city-bonuses-pay-for-our-schools.html#IDComment596155984 Whatever the motivation of the EU over this, I'm sure most people in the UK would like to see the City hammered to make it contrite and reformed in character. Speaking as a paid guardian of public morals, I would love that to happen, but it's very hard to see how cutting their bonuses will make bankers and banks morally better. However, if their antics actually serve to beggar the public, as they apparently have, it makes some sense for the rest of us to be protected from the consequences of such reckless stupidity and, if reining in bonuses contributes to that, that's reason enough. "There might be fewer disasters if traders were more risk-averse, but there will also be fewer jackpots" - well, that depends whether you think periodic economic cataclysm is a price worth paying for the temporary exhilaration of periodic bubbles, cataclysm which causes great misery and, in extreme circumstances, death. - As for the EU - do you think Mr Lenton is still with us? Fri, 15 Mar 2013 15:10:47 +0000 http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2013/03/city-bonuses-pay-for-our-schools.html#IDComment596155984 http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2013/02/rennard-fox.html#IDComment581897705 You might interpret 'Susan's' comments as meaning that she felt ignoring Chris Rennard's alleged behaviour was more politic than making a fuss about it, not because he had any direct influence over who was and wasn't selected as a parliamentary candidate, but because you wouldn't want to get a reputation as a tiresome troublemaker. I can remember occasions when, back in the Old Days when I used to pay far more attention to the envelopes from Cowley Street that dropped through my letterbox, that the then-Mr Rennard was spoken of in hallowed and nigh-miraculous terms. Fri, 1 Mar 2013 13:48:45 +0000 http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2013/02/rennard-fox.html#IDComment581897705 http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2012/11/papal-balls.html#IDComment488041341 People often misunderstand each others' ideas, and it may not always be down to stupidity, or wilful misrepresentation with the intent of scoring debating points. It may be just not grasping the idea, because understanding somebody else's point may require you to enter into a line of thought which has come from an entirely different direction from your own. For instance, I know I have a tendency to emphasise the unchosen, involuntary elements of human behaviour, and I get the impression your thought is entirely opposite, so to follow your reasoning I have to work hard to step back from my own attitudes. If I see what I think is a lacuna or contradiction in your thought, I'll ask you to explain, not because I’m trying to catch you out, but because I want to understand. Perhaps I’ve got it wrong, and there isn’t a lacuna or contradiction, in which case I will learn something; perhaps I’ve got it right, and as a result you will hone your argument. Given that people hardly ever change their minds completely as a result of a conversation, the aim of conversing must be to advance understanding: just setting out to 'win' by using logical fallacies is boring (well, I think so anyway). I understand your position better now, even if I don't go along with it all. Mon, 12 Nov 2012 13:36:04 +0000 http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2012/11/papal-balls.html#IDComment488041341 http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2012/11/papal-balls.html#IDComment487225752 A) I wandered back on to see what the Heresiarch had to say about the ABC and B) I had no intention of this conversation being competitive. I genuinely wanted to find out how Woolly justifies regarding human beings as separate, in this respect, from the rest of the natural world. I'm not satisfied by the explanation, but I understand it, and it's actually not *very far* from my own thinking. Thank you for the discussion. Sun, 11 Nov 2012 16:33:28 +0000 http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2012/11/papal-balls.html#IDComment487225752 http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2012/11/papal-balls.html#IDComment486108095 Why is it *not* arbitrary to accept that all non-intentional aspects of human identity are the results of evolutionary pressures and imperatives, but the conscious intentions behind our actions aren't? What makes the human mind special, and not evolutionarily-impelled? Sat, 10 Nov 2012 12:49:34 +0000 http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2012/11/papal-balls.html#IDComment486108095 http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2012/11/papal-balls.html#IDComment486085171 The point is that our behaviour is evolutionarily-determined because there isn't anything *else* that can have given rise to it; the evolutionary system has no 'outside' to it, nothing that could bring in some sort of pure intentionality which hasn't already arisen from evolutionary imperatives. The relationships of human beings and how they arrange and order them, via for instance the legal system, are obviously (I would have thought) related to our evolutionary history in a much more direct way than atomic forces - except that atomic forces are a necessary condition of us existing in the form we do. In that very remote way, yes, the legal system is a result of the WNF like everything else: not an absurd proposition at all. But evolutionary determinism (I'm not sure I want to use that phrase, but can't think of a better one) is more direct than that. Sat, 10 Nov 2012 12:25:49 +0000 http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2012/11/papal-balls.html#IDComment486085171 http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2012/11/archbishop-welby-just-dont-mention-rock.html#IDComment486075015 I don't think that was the reason *why* he was elected. Sat, 10 Nov 2012 12:14:37 +0000 http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2012/11/archbishop-welby-just-dont-mention-rock.html#IDComment486075015 http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2012/11/archbishop-welby-just-dont-mention-rock.html#IDComment486073936 Yes, I think you're quite right. There's plenty of historical precedent. Sat, 10 Nov 2012 12:13:34 +0000 http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2012/11/archbishop-welby-just-dont-mention-rock.html#IDComment486073936 http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2012/11/archbishop-welby-just-dont-mention-rock.html#IDComment486073112 Because of the other point: until the Church of England (as opposed to other provinces of the Anglican Communion with which it has a relationship) decides that it wants to consecrate women bishops, it wouldn't be sensible to try and import one. The Church of England isn't the only bit of the Communion this applies to, there are other bits where there aren't women bishops. Sat, 10 Nov 2012 12:12:38 +0000 http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2012/11/archbishop-welby-just-dont-mention-rock.html#IDComment486073112 http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2012/11/archbishop-welby-just-dont-mention-rock.html#IDComment486008667 No, the reason for picking him (apart from any positive qualities he may undoubtedly have) is that he's an evangelical and it's their turn, and that he's not as bad as any of the other possibilities. Given the current climate about child protection in the Church none of the existing crop of bishops is very likely to have been covering up for paedophile priests. There are, it's no secret, issues in the Diocese of Chichester whose procedures have apparently not been as tight as elsewhere. This is almost certainly because Bishop Eric Kemp who was there for years was a saintly man who found it impossible to believe that everyone around him wasn't a saint as well. Sat, 10 Nov 2012 10:46:11 +0000 http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2012/11/archbishop-welby-just-dont-mention-rock.html#IDComment486008667 http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2012/11/papal-balls.html#IDComment486000235 That underestimates the radicalism of the evolutionary insight. What evolution provides us with are not just 'tools' (bodies, minds) for doing with what we please, but also the impulses which determine what we choose to do with them. We may intend to design a legal system which meets certain demands we feel we have, but the fact that we feel those demands is itself a result of our evolutionary heritage; and this isn't just an assertion, but a matter of logic. How else could it be otherwise? Sat, 10 Nov 2012 10:33:28 +0000 http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2012/11/papal-balls.html#IDComment486000235 http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2012/11/archbishop-welby-just-dont-mention-rock.html#IDComment485286799 You are absolutely right and I stand corrected, or reminded. Easy to forget Wales is ecclesiastically foreign. Fri, 9 Nov 2012 18:18:24 +0000 http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2012/11/archbishop-welby-just-dont-mention-rock.html#IDComment485286799