Bradskii

They are arguments for deism, not God.

Which atheist is presenting God like that? The fsm isn't a version of God. The only way that I know what God is meant to be is by being told by those ...

I read the book last week. It was like reading the script. Hardly anything was changed and even some of the dialogue was verbatim. The film played out...

In no particular order: The French Connection: Hackman at his superb best Lawrence Of Arabia: Epic In Bruge: Brilliant casting and script Snatch: A br...

That implies that there is a winning strategy in evolution. There isn't. Nobody wins. It's either stay in the game...or lose. If we had failed then yo...

'Cept the prejudice bit. Otherwise we agree. Yay for blind physical laws!

Do no harm. You're half way there. The golden rule will take you most of the rest of the way. And reasonable arguments might help to reach a final dec...

How we got here has no impact whatsoever on determining a sense of morality from a secular viewpoint. And 'prejudices'? A position not based on reason...

I don't see that at all. Even if you say 'God did it' we'd still want to know how. As we have done with evolution. And the formation of stars and blac...

Secular humanism. You've not heard of it as an alternative to religiously based morality?

He's simply saying that we know how we got here. If you know of any other means other than the evolutionarty process, then let's hear it. But let's fa...

Abstract entity? That's an odd way to describe physical laws. As in Newton's First for example. And yes, it's just a description. Of something that ha...

In many years on Christian forums, I have never seen an atheist claim that. Although I have very often read Christians who claim that they do. And tho...

I agree.

So how about this view? "...we must understand what it means to be a gene machine, what it means to be programmed by genes, so that we are better equi...

I'd concur. For example, a body will remain at rest or continue in motion at a constant speed until it is acted upon by some force. There had to be so...

This is categorically wrong. In thinking that red, for example, only exists if there is someone around who decides it's red. But we don't do that. Wha...

Which is what I reject. I completely accept that what we see is not necessarily an accurate representation of objective reality. But that's internal t...

The argument is that a ceramic frog (or a train in the interview quoted) is objectively different to you as it would be to me because our senses inter...

Built one out the back a few years ago. Takes at least a couple of hours and a reasonable amount of wood to get it up to pizza temp. But if you've a f...

It has nothing to do with my evolutionary prospects. Just as the ceramic frog and the drinks coaster also on the desk have nothing to do with them eit...

I'm not assuming that physical laws exist. They do. And everything is determined by them. Why those laws exist as they do is an interesting question.

In which he says: 'Snakes and trains, like the particles of physics, have no objective, observer-independent features. The snake I see is a descriptio...

I was thinking of Dave Shakespeare. He wrote 'Hamlet II - The Quest For Vengence'.

They're both randon. Monkeys are typing them. The chances of getting both sequences are identical. It's just that someone wanted those in advance. It'...

There's an objective universe. It exists and operates whether we are here or not. Rocks will still roll down hills at a constant rate. Galaxies and st...

I'm not using it as an explanation. And I'm not making an argument. It was Lanza making the argument that things with an infinitely small chance of ha...

Boldly of course.

I got to about 11 mins in and he's riffing on a variation of the '747 in a junkyard' proposal with his million monkeys typing Hamlet. And what are the...

I remember asking a question a few years ago prompted by such a comment: Would you prefer to go backwards and follow your lineage right back to the ve...

Can't disagree with any of that. Especially when you say that we control our own evolutionary path now. There's an argument that there is no limit fro...

I'm an atheist, so there's no dilemma for me.

I'd go with that. But I might say 'without 100% certainty'. But you could certainly include evidence in that definition. In fact, it would be required...

The evidence will help us make a decision. But you wanted to know whose beliefs are correct. If the belief is based on evidence then evidence should s...

Well...yeah. We have to agree on what we want. If you want a socialist country and I want a capitalist one then we're goi g to be arguing for differen...

No direction. Unless you want to claim a divine purpose. Nature doesn't think 'Hmm, if this mammal was slightly smarter, then it would have a better c...

This is evolution 101. This is basic biology. We are not clones. So my kids are not going to be exactly the same as me. They will be subtlety differen...

And I asked you if you wanted to start another thread on social Darwinism. Especially as it relates to eugenics. Or do you want to discuss his thread ...

That's dangerously close to the old 'why are there still monkeys?' question.

I was a good runner back in the day. My son is better. My daughter not as good. If foxes were chasing the three of us, my daughter and her slightly sl...

I believe I'm going to have another g and t in a few minutes. But that's preference, like what you have for tea. I think we should restrict ourselves ...

Fundamentalism strikes me as springing from absolute certainty. I'll use the term 'certainly' in common parlance but push me and I'll back away from i...

Exploration. We have an insatiable desire to see what's over the next hill. The galaxy is the itch. We are going to scratch it.

Perhaps that should be 'fundamental religious belief.' In which case I would agree.

Now that is abject nonsense. Value is a human construct. Do you think nature values an organism over another? You make your own value in life. Family,...

You need to protect that which is yours. Food, cattle, weapons, crops, home, women (yeah, those too back then).

This from a little further in the preface to the book: '...a surprising number of the world’s earliest cities were organized on robustly egalitarian l...

More testosterone?

I'm about a third the way through it. I have to say that I don't agree with a lot of what they say. They seem to use quite small exceptions to try to ...

I've often thought that for me to be here, some of my ancestors must have, at some time, done a few really horrendous things. Take a direct line back ...