Interesting Stuff Thread

Pygmalion

gaynorvader wrote: »

The last one's not possible, you can't disbelieve that something exists then believe that it is impossible that it doesn't exist. I think it should be:
I don't believe that Australia exists and I don't believe in the possibility that it may exist.

Ah yes, didn't catch that, but I don't seem to be able to edit my post anymore :P

amacachi

sponsoredwalk wrote: »

I think the extras on The Genius of Charles Darwin are great. They are like mini debates & there's like 20 hours altogether, haven't even seen them all yet...

The Steven Rose & Franz De Waal are my favourites.

You'll find random Michael Shermer debates on google video with creationists, holocaust deniers etc... lol & PZ Meyers, Steven Pinker etc...

I love watching any kind of debates so if you have suggestions of old ones you've seen that are kind of obscure or whatever, let us know

20 hours? :S Amazon doesn't mention any, and the first review I came across mentions about 3-4 hours. If there's 20 hours it'll be well worth parting with 20 quid. :pac:

mehfesto

http://www.catholicvoice.ie/

Wow. Just wow.

Government-backed same sex civil unions would encourage and normalise homosexual behaviour, and it would harm natural marriage, children, adults, and homosexuals themselves.

Needless to say I've sent them some lovely e-mails.

Galvasean

Natural marriage? Is that like, when two swans do it?

Ickle Magoo

It's when an invisible super-being impregnates a virgin, isn't it? Jeepers, we can't be having any of that "unnatural" sex....

mehfesto

Turns out it's just a site run by one bloke, or so it would seem.
Nothing really to worry about, I reckons.

He's been e-mailing me back today. Praying for my 'choices'. I told him I wasn't gay, but just concerned about veiled bigotry and he's just been side-stepping the questions since. Oh, and praying for me.

Galvasean

He didn't give you the old,

"Haha you are going to burn in hell!

.....I will pray for you."

response?

mehfesto

Galvasean wrote: »

He didn't give you the old,

"Haha you are going to burn in hell!

.....I will pray for you."

response?

No, but I got:
"The Church can never die and we pray for your conversion from sin."

strobe

The Journey of Mankind.

Interactive map of the journey of mankind from Africa to everywhere.

http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/journey/?

(originally posted by -JammyDodger-)

Dave!

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/morality10/morality10_index.html

Discussions involving Roy Baumeister, Paul Bloom, Joshua D. Greene, Jonathan Haidt, Sam Harris, Marc D. Hauser, Josua Knobe, Elizabeth Phelps, and David Pizarro

Great quality

Sam gets a rough ride from Jonathan Haidt after his talk :eek:

amacachi

Just hoping someone will answer this soonish, have an order ready to go through on Amazon. Does The Genius of Charles Darwin have a ****load of extras? Unfortunately there's also a Dawkins "collection" which seems to be the only DVD of The Enemies of Reason but it seems to have no extras for TGoCD, so I dunno which to buy. :pac:

sponsoredwalk

Sorry man, should have replied with the link. I've seen them all online tbh
but here is the dvd I was talking about.

There are some really great interviews on this & some people who are worth
finding out about.

Herodotus

A well argued and witty rebuke by Johann Harri on the CofE crying anti-christian prejudice in modern day Britain!

The Slow, whiny death of British Christianity

And now congregation, put your hands together and give thanks, for I come bearing Good News. Britain is now the most irreligious country on earth. This island has shed superstition faster and more completely than anywhere else. Some 63 percent of us are non-believers, according to an ICM study, while 82 percent say religion is a cause of harmful division. Now, let us stand and sing our new national hymn: Jerusalem was dismantled here/ in England's green and pleasant land.

How did it happen? For centuries, religion was insulated from criticism in Britain. First its opponents were burned, then jailed, then shunned. But once there was a free marketplace of ideas, once people could finally hear both the religious arguments and the rationalist criticisms of them, the religious lost the British people. Their case was too weak, their opposition to divorce and abortion and gay people too cruel, their evidence for their claims non-existent. Once they had to rely on persuasion rather than intimidation, the story of British Christianity came to an end.

Now that only six percent of British people regularly attend a religious service, it's only natural that we should dismantle the massive amounts of tax money and state power that are automatically given to the religious to wield over the rest of us. It's a necessary process of building a secular state, where all citizens are free to make up their own minds. Yet the opposition to this sensible shift is becoming increasingly unhinged. The Church of England, bewildered by the British people choosing to leave their pews, has only one explanation: Christians are being "persecuted" and "bullied" by a movement motivated by "Christophobia." George Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, says Christians are now "second class citizens" and it is only "a small step" to "a religious bar on any employment by Christians".

Really? Let's list some of the ways in which Christians, and other religious groups, are given special privileges every day. Start with the educational system. Every school in Britain is required by law to make its pupils engage every day in "an act of collective worship of a wholly or mainly Christian nature". Yes: Britain is still a nation with enforced prayer. The religious are then handed total control of 36 percent of our state-funded schools, in which to indoctrinate children into their faith alone.

These religious schools, paid for by you and me, are disfiguring Britain. I know one reason I grew up without the prejudices of some of my older relatives was because I went to school with kids from every conceivable ethnic and religious group, and I could see they were just like me. A five year old will make friends with anyone, and he'll be much less likely to believe smears against those friends for the rest of their lives. But in Britain today, that mixing is happening less and less. Increasingly, the children of Christians are sent to one side, Jews to another, Muslims to another still, and they never see each other except from the window of their parents' cars. After the race riots in Bradford, Oldham and Burnley in 2001, the official investigations found that faith schools were a major cause.

So why keep them? Their defenders say these schools perform better in exams - and at first glance, it seems to be true. On average, they get higher grades. But look again. A number of studies, including by the conservative think thank Civitas, have blown a hole in this claim. They have proven that faith schools systematically screen out children who will be harder to teach: children from poor families, and less bright children. Once you look at how much a school improves the pupils it actually admits, the only real measure of a school's success, it turns out faith schools do less well than other schools - which isn't surprising given they waste so much time teaching them crazy nonsense like Virgin births and Noah's Ark. The British people instinctively know all this: 64 percent want every state school to be neutral when it comes to religion.

Special rights for the religious don't stop at the school gates. They automatically get 26 unelected bishops in the House of Lords. Public broadcasters are required by law to give them large amounts of money and time to screen religious propaganda. Jews and Muslims are allowed to ignore the laws on animal cruelty and engage in the barbaric practice of slitting the throats of live animals without numbing them in order to create kosher and halal meat.

And it seems that, in crucial cases, religious figures are virtually exempted from the law. There is now overwhelming evidence that Joseph Ratzinger, the Pope, was involved for over twenty years in an international criminal conspiracy to cover up the rape of children by priests in his Church. (Check out the superb edition of the BBC's Panorama, 'Sex Crimes and the Vatican', for the evidence.) But when he arrives in Britain in September, our politicians will fawn over him, rather than dialling 999.

Given all this unearned privilege, how can Christians claim they are in fact being "persecuted"? Here are the cases they offer as "proof". A nurse called Shirley Chaplin turned up to work wearing a crucifix around her neck. Her hospital told her that they were worried the elderly and confused patients she worked with could grab at it, so they said she could pin the crucifix to her uniform instead if she liked. That's it. That's their cause celebre. Oh, and a woman called Theresa Davies who worked in a registry office, but refused to perform civil partnerships for gay couples, so... she was moved to working on reception.

In response, Carey and the CofE demand Christians be allowed to break the law requiring them to treat gay people equally when providing a service to the general public - and that any case where a Christian feels discriminated against should be judged by a special court of "sensitive" Christians. If we started allowing religious people to break basic anti-discrimination laws, where would we stop? Until 1975, the Mormon Church said black people didn't have souls. (They only changed their mind the day the Supreme Court ruled this was illegal, and God niftily appeared to their leader that morning and announced blacks were ensouled after all.) Would we let a Mormon registrar refuse to marry black people? Would it be "Mormonophobia" to object?

When Lord Chief Justice Laws, who is a Christian himself, ruled the exemptions demanded by Carey would be "irrational, divisive, and arbitrary", he threw an extraordinary tantrum and said Christians might begin to engage in "civil unrest". When I saw Carey make these threats on television, red-faced and rageful, it made me think of a nasty child in the playground who had been beating up the gay kids and spitting at the girls for years and is finally told to stop - only to start bawling that he's the one who is being picked on.

As their dusty Churches crumble because nobody wants to go there, the few remaining Christians in Britain will only become more angry and uncomprehending. Let them. We can't stop this hysterical toy-tossing stop us from turning our country into a secular democracy where everyone has the same rights, and nobody is grantedspecial rights just because they claim their ideas come from an invisible supernatural being.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a Holy Lamb of God to carve into kebabs - it's our new national dish. Amen, and hallelujah

robindch

Johann Hari wrote:

After the race riots in Bradford, Oldham and Burnley in 2001, the official investigations found that faith schools were a major cause.

Didn't hear that before, though it wouldn't surprise me all that much.

Linky to report anywhere?

amacachi

It's not specifically to do with religion but it is interesting and, in my opinion, it's important as many people as possible see it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A25FRpkbDxU

Turtwig

^^:D

Thanks for giving me a good healthy does of giggles.

robindch

Not sure if this should go here or in the funny side thread, but Mackay of Clashfern seems to have gone mildly bonkers, as he's decided to send out bible to all the courts in Scotland because it's "useful in dealing with our day-to-day challenges":

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/law-chief-urges-scots-courts-consult-the-bible-in-judgments-1.1048316?localLinksEnabled=false

The UK's National Secular Society took a dim view of Mackay's activities:

The National Secular Society wrote:

He and the SBS make absolutely no concessions to the progress of legal thought over the past two millenia. Killing witches and homosexuals and stoning adulterers are all clearly stated legal requirements in the Christian holy book. Are they seriously suggesting that Scottish sheriffs and judges should follow the Bible to the letter?

How would the Scottish seafood industry fare if the biblical ban on shellfish were to be enforced? Would Shetland’s knitwear industry flourish if there was a ban on garments made from two kinds of material, as required in the Bible?

Thankfully, I’m sure the Scottish legal establishment is aware that the Enlightenment has occurred and will continue to dispense justice with mercy unconstrained.

Ickle Magoo

He's an 83 yr old thatcherite who made life peer - he was always a bit bonkers.

robindch

Ickle Magoo wrote: »

He's an 83 yr old thatcherite who made life peer - he was always a bit bonkers.

Perhaps, but from my fading memory of the Thatcher years, I wouldn't have had him down as one of her sterner ideologues.

liamw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_naQhynOg0

Pygmalion

Atheism FAQ, for the Newly Deconverted.

Seems to be aimed at those who are questioning their beliefs, but not entirely ready to give them up due to problems they have with "atheists" as opposed to genuine religious reasons.

strobe

This has been on the internet since forever but I figured I'd stick it here for anyone that hasn't come across it. Could easily have gone in the "hazards" or "funny" thread either.

Creationist poster boy and now imprisoned felon Kent Hovind is doing a radio show when a biology grad student cracks and phones in to call him on his bull****. Hilarity and major ownage ensues.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGfhAevhy_0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lekYXLgTZeU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvkHoMXAc7M

Video related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sEIiWKSzJA

Turtwig

strobe wrote: »

This has been on the internet since forever but I figured I'd stick it here for anyone that hasn't come across it.

I'm pretty sure I posted this earlier in some thread somewhere. It's so awesome thanks for reminding me of it and letting me listen to it again.

MagicMarker

Hitchens on what seems to be an Australian version of Question Time along with a panel of theists. I'm only on the second part but it's quite good.

If you haven't seen it, check it out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kulwG7_MSXw

MagicMarker

The Q&A above turned out to be really good, here's another one with Richard Dawkins from March of this year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtVZ23GfmDo

strobe

MagicMarker wrote: »

The Q&A above turned out to be really good, here's another one with Richard Dawkins from March of this year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtVZ23GfmDo

Lmao......oh dear sweet zombie Jesus. I almost felt sorry for that politician, watching him squirm.

strobe

Richard Dawkins vs(?) Lawrence Krauss.

A talk with Dawkins and my new favourite living physicist Lawrence Krauss dealing with science education, religion, physics, evolution and more. This is good sh1t.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLctxRf7duU

Part one of 12....you've all used youtube, you know the drill.

Turtwig

strobe wrote: »

Richard Dawkins vs(?) Lawrence Krauss.

A talk with Dawkins and my new favourite living physicist Lawrence Krauss dealing with science education, religion, physics, evolution and more. This is good sh1t.
<Youtube Dawkins, Krauss interesting conversation.>

Part one of 12....you've all used youtube, you know the drill.

That's the conversation of Dawkins that theists love to refer to.
[His aim is to kill religion.]

robindch

From the drawer marked "WTF" comes a video of an ROV down 1250m that comes across a screwdriver, a cheap-looking pressure cooker and a proud mum:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rp4Ua2DieGo

amacachi

MagicMarker wrote: »

The Q&A above turned out to be really good, here's another one with Richard Dawkins from March of this year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtVZ23GfmDo

That is the greatest audience ever.