myata

Regardless of historical roots (which can be argued many ways) the only solution I can see is the multi-pronged continuous and relentless anti-gang campaign. Feel-good-blame-yourself-for-the-sins-of-the-world attitude won't bring any changes.

We have laws to prosecute child sex tourism. And a few days ago there's been a lot of the noise to take in a military officer (from Bangladesh?) because he could be extradited and judged in less than 100% absolutely perfect conditions. Why isn't the same standard being applied to Canadian companies operating abroad? Could it be ... the money?

I see you have little doubt in your absolute rightfullness. That's somewhat (or a lot) reminiscent of the very things you were trying to negate.

So how about showing it (open-mindedness, tolerance, etc) toward others first, before wanting something from them? Including the beliefs they hold sacred even if they may not be true or rational for you. Good place to start is with yourself. That's there one has best chance to succeed.

No one is asking you to disprove anything. You can continue to firmly believe in non-existence of monkey god. However if someone else wants to believe in it - that reason should suffice, for me at least. If it does not exist, "non-existence" of what are you trying to prove here? Why even bother writing about something that does not exist (for you)? Or could it be that you'd like your point of view be accepted by everybody, in the same way as some religions do?

Most certianly, but some of "you" may choose to not limit their notion of reality strictly to what is dictated by a certain theory. Not to mention that no newtonian theory (or in fact, any scientific theory) can prove that Chinese monkey god does not exist somewhere in the multiverse. It can only state with certainty what can happen in its domain of application. There's no evidence that theories of Newtonian mechanics can be applied to the domain of spirits any better than to quants or e.g to explain genetics.

It's certainly wrong to want to attack one's neghbours in retaliation to their attack on you. What about attacking non-neighbours without any obvious cause though?

What you fail to understand is that your understanding of "exists", "evidence", "reality" is implicitly tied into what you are willing accept as such (i.e. reality). That may be exact opposite of how a believer from e.g. China may see the world. In her view, the "monkey god" can be as real as your disbelief in it in yours. And for me, none of you two would hold the upper hand. I'm agnostic to absolute atheism as much as the "monkey god" belief.

Alas, even that definition ties "rationality" to the logical or reasoning framework of which different people may have totally different ideas. I agree though that 1) absolute proof does not exist either way; 2) maybe because different people have different interpretations of "logic", "reasoning", "proof" i.e there's no common or absolute framework of reasoning; and 3) regardless of the above, what is the point of trying to disproove something someone deeply believes in? The only domain in which "I" can make the absolute judgement is my individual view of the world. As soon as there are two of us, agnosticism is the only rational way to go. Presuming that rational means "equally acceptable to all". Which interestingly ties into discussions on democracy or foreign policies. I'm agnostic to your god, you - to mine. That works. "You have to believe in my god" or "I in yours" - doesn't. Neither does "stop believing in your god". In a particular instance of "I", it can be agnostic to all gods.

Now that the "default" argument has been clearly disproven, we'll have to take Dawkin's word on what is "natural" or not. Hardly a "rational" position.

Even when discussing "Chinese monkey god", I don't believe one can make a good argument without 1) learning all the intrinsic details of the belief; and 2) perhaps being a beliver yourself. It's near impossible to disprove somebody else's faith and I'd question if there's any point in attempting it.

You can disprove your oun interpretation of the idea, but not someone else's belief. There's simply no point because the absolute proof does not exist. Agnosticism (at least with respect to others' beliefs) is the only truly rational point of view because it does not attempt to impose one interpretation of rationality upon another.

Such form of "atheism" would be no different from any religion that attempts to impose certain particular view of the world. Why many religions and some atheists are still so bent on it, after all the tragedies of the past is quite puzzling.

As has already been explained, religious people are not "atheists" to other religions. They are simply performing rituals that they learned. If someone were to be brought up performing a ritual from a different religion on different days of the week, they would be very content about that (a la "Pi"). The need to believe is "natural" because of consciousness of human beings; the form the belief is taking is learned from the environment outside. Using misleading, even if clever, terminology twists does not add one single bit to understanding of these phenomena.

What is indoctrination in your view? Should children be allowed to participate in family activities? Celebrations? Imitate their parents as children do? Or they'd have to wait outside till they strike certain age? Should parents be allowed to indoctrinate math? music? chess? tennis? Why? Now as Scott rightfully mentioned, children are usually taught many things besides religion. Like listen to the teacher, obey certain rules and so on. How many of those should be considered "indoctrination"? And who gets to decide what constitutes one / or not? As mentioned earlier, the last thing I'd like to do is to apologise religion. Except that certain atheist ideas a la those attributed to Dawkins in this thread sound no more credible than 6,000 years old Earth.

Surely, it's a lesser evil than having some state run Central Commission decide what is a good thing to teach kids at home and what not? BTW, I'm not arguing that religion (especially formal dogmatic kind) is necessarily a good thing. Just that unsubstantiated gross simplifications like "religion is unnatural" or "religion is a form of child abuse" add any value to the discussion. Being a "weak" atheist myself, I find "militant" forms of both religion and atheism equally pointless and repulsive.

That in itself is quite a ridiculous statement. Most parents introduce their children to religion because it's their own belief, not to impose the dogma. Who's there to decide what would be the "natural" and positive education that should be allowed and what not? A consilium of lofty scientists like minded to Dr. Dawkins? On the matter of whether religion (organized or spiritual) is really "unnatural", how would one explain 1) its huge upsurge in the post-communist countries (after generations were raised on state imposed "natural" atheism); and 2) such a high level of penetration in most societies? If, instead of religion, involuntary involvement was perpetrated in the activities that do not come easily (i.e., "naturally") to an average individual, like e.g. chess, math calculus or body bending a la Cirque du Soleil, would the rate of success be the same?

Control by whom?

I agree it wasn't necessary. The example with language only needed to demonstrate that the point about " no to some religions " equals " no to all religions " is hopelessly flawed. In fact, by bringing up the "taught" argument, you yourself have disproven Dawkin's point. The other religions aren't being practiced not because of some natural predisposition to atheism, but quite obviously because they haven't been taught.

With the quotation in reference the author attempts to infer that the fact of being ignorant of some religions proves the natural predisposition to be ignorant of all. The obvious logical flaw which the example with the language exposes is that there could be another, simplier explanation of the condition: ie. that the other religion had not been taught. Just as me not knowing ancient Arameic does not prove natural predisposition to alinguialism, the fact that someone pray Allah and not Hindu in no way proves any natural predisposition to atheism. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, every single civilzation has invented some kind of supernatural belief. And the example with atheistic regimes shows that these believes have very strong roots in the culture. Therefore the statement in question is 1) logically inconclusive; 2) practically incorrect.

You mean, humans have no predisposition (genetic, cultural etc) to learning a languge? Then, perhaps, you could try to teach a newborn pup (or any animal of your choice) to speak e.g. Portugese? Actually, history has given us a nice experiment, in the example of post communist countries, some of which were strongly enforcing non-religious education, even for several generations, and are currently experiencing revival of religious tradition (e.g Russia). I wouldn't look for the hand of god in this though. Being conscious animals, humans tend extend their perception of consciesness to the outside world, from the times immemorial.

Also: if the same argument was applied to other aspects of human culture - such as language - it'd lead to the absurd conclusion that the "default position" for most of us would be "alingual" (i.e not speaking any language) simply because we don't happen to speak 99% of the world's other languages.

Here's more on the missile defence: CBC story. Now both Russia and China are telling very clearly that this missile defence idea is a major concern for the world's stabilty and may spark a new round of arms race. Not to worry. Oral assurances and the all-time liberty speeches should suffice. It's that kind of attitude that drives credibility of the US foreign policies straight into the ground. And with that attitude they have so little chance of being recongnized as a leader internationally no matter how much they'd talk about it.

According to numerous public statements, Putin will not seek reelection this time around. Barring any extraordinary developments, it would be pretty hard to back out of the pledge this close to the elections (March 08?). BTW there're already several candidates with reasonably close chances of winning. So at this point I'll reserve my judgement till after the elections. And I'm not sure what (if any) role will the US's professions on democracy and so on play in this process. Their credibilty is wearing thin pretty much everythere on the planet.

Just for the sake of being factual, to the best of my knowledge, there hasn't been any evidence linking Putin to the assassination in London. Do you have any information to the contrary?