The New Atheists - A Near-Total Failure? October meetup

The next meetup is Sunday October 11th 2009 at 6pm at The Clarendon Hotel  156 Devonshire St, Surry Hills.
The guest of the evening will be Peter Bowden, from University of Sydney. Peter Bowden’s research is primarily concerned with individual and institutional ethics. He is currently a Research Associate in the Department of Philosophy at Sydney University, working on institutional ethics, runs with others a Philosophy Cafe (Philo Agora) in Sydney and is on the National Committee of Whistleblowers Australia.
Abstract: "The New Atheists - A Near-Total Failure?"
Peter Bowden describes himself as a Huxley Agnostic, although tending largely to agree with Richard Dawkins. Thomas Huxley, Darwin’s bulldog, coined the term agnosticism, presumably from the Greek, agnostos, unknown or unknowing. He stated that we do not know whether God exists or not. Peter Bowden certainly does not know. Nor that we can prove it either way. But he does believe that an all-powerful, all-knowing and all-loving God who listens to our prayers is highly unlikely. Even logically impossible.
The new atheists are Dawkins along with Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris. The Four Horsemen they call themselves and the can be found on the web. Adding in Michel Onfray and his recent publication The Atheist Manifesto only extends the concern that they are all barking up a dead end canal.
The reason is that they show a complete ignorance of human nature. Even if they correctly identify the reasons why human beings came to develop a God or Gods , and religion, they do not recognise the messages behind the stories that they themselves are telling
And until they do they will continue to be voices crying in the wilderness. Except that they do not appear to be even part way to accepting their own messages

Note: This meetup will start at 6pm, with the topical hour and take place in the Clarendon Hotel, 156 Devonshire St, Surry Hills.

Originally posted by Ian Woolf

Christopher Hitchens on ABC's Q and A Forum

You can watch Christipher Hitchens gracefully endure the harranguing of his opponents on ABC's Q and A with Tony Jones: http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s2695716.htm
download episode WMV | MP4 (average size 200MB)

Originally posted by Ian Woolf

Darwin's Dangerous Idea on SBS

SBS has posted a pro-creationist blog entry here: www.sbs.com.au/documentary/blogs/view/id/113372/t/Darwin%27s%20Dangerous%20Idea in response to the documentary Darwin's Dangerous Idea which is being shown on SBS1. The text has obviously not been through a spell-checker, and is unashamably apologetic creationist. Blogger Mark Jones advocates creationism and attacks "Darwinism" as unscientific.
"Surely God is big enough to account for a world that is continually in a state of being created."
"Id like to know if every aspect of evolution can be definitively proved in the modern lab."
Now SBS offers space for people to comment, and when I looked there were 3 comments. I naturally wrote my own comment,and somehow its ended up there twice  Write your own comment and expand the debate. You can also watch the entire episode on the SBS website for the next two weeks, so be quick if you missed it.
Here's my comment:
The evidence is strongly in favour of blind evolution and against design and manufacture by an intelligent person. The evidence is strongly in favour of evolution and strongly against creation of any sort. There is nothing we can observe that requires the concept of a "soul" or "spirit" to be explained.

In the absence of any need of "creation" or "souls" to explain anything we experience or observe on the Universe, why invoke these pre-scientific superstitions?

If you are seriously suggesting that an intelligent non-human is magically intervening to badly design over billions of years what would take even humans just a few centuries, then you haven't really grasped the concept of evolution. Its lack of awareness is crucial to its mechanism. Yes, every aspect of evolution can be definitely proved scientifically.

We can explain the world successfully without "creation" and without "souls", "spirits" or "ghosts".  The world is full of enough wonder without invoking magic. As Laplace explained to Napoleon, "creation", we have no need of that hypothesis.

Originally posted by Ian Woolf

Christopher Hitchens streamed live from Sydney Opera House

Christopher Hitchens is opening the Festival of Dangerous Ideas run by the St James Ethics Centre at Sydney Opera House at 8pm tonight. You can watch the live stream video of his talk here from 8pm (and after) : http://www.abc.net.au/tv/fora/stories/2009/10/06/2706358.htm

 MP3 Audio [48 MB]
MP4 Video [333 MB]

Originally posted by Ian Woolf

Jesus: All about lies!

I just thought I'd send out a salute to the genius who grabbed the url jesusallaboutlife.com. For those who haven't been past a church in NSW or WA in the last couple of months, there's a campaign with the slogan "Jesus: All about life" and a great many churches have a large poster out the front with that slogan.


The parody site is brilliant and comes up #4 on a google search. I'm sure this campaign will afford us many opportunities for slander and enturbulation

I wonder if it's got something to do with "Collect '09"?


UPDATE

I've also found out that the url allaboutlife.com has been linked to Secular Thinking.com

A friend of mine, Dr Chaotica has just put out the song 'All about Life'

Nice work, peeps!

Originally posted by Critical Mass

Victorian churches can legally discriminate on grounds of sexuality and marital status

In a new equal opportunity bill to be introduced next year, Victorian religious groups will no longer be allowed to discriminate based on the grounds of race, disability, age, physical features, political belief or breastfeeding. Sure, that sounds great, but it's interesting that two of the major sources of discrimination amongst religious communities, sexuality and marital status, will not be included in the new bill.

The gut reaction is likely to be something along the lines of "well great, if the churches are going to discriminate, it'll just drive people away from them, aiding in the secularisation of Victoria", but what is often forgotten is the role that religious communities play in community support, employment and social services. This means that religious schools will be able to deny employment to adequately trained people if they are homosexual, a single parent or even living with a de-facto partner, if their religion supports it. It means that welfare could be denied to single parents. It is a disgrace.

More interestingly, many of the religious communities who will be selectively discriminating against these groups will still be recieving tax benefits which are compensated for by the taxes paid, in part, by the very groups that they are discriminating against!

So what's next?
























News sources
The Age
SMH

Originally posted by Critical Mass

Happy Singer and some guy

Dave being told off for "inappropriate" posing with a cardboard cut-out:

Jason and the Pope

 Rachel at Theology on Tap:

World Famous Singing Priests explain where their millions in royalties will go at Theology on Tap. 

Originally posted by Ian Woolf