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moakley
SFN Regular

USA
1888 Posts

Posted - 09/04/2006 :  17:40:10   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send moakley a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by GK Paul

Folks remember what I said in the Caesar's Messiah forum. The farther you get away from God (necrophilia etc.) the more suffering you will experience(in the long run); and that includes societies getting away from God.

This stuff will happen, unless we wake up.

Pascal's wager again? How utterly pathetic.

Alright, GK Paul, trott your God out here, let's see if it is worthy of worship.

I can not conceive of any creator God who would gift its creation with such abilities, reason and critical thinking, and place restriction on the use of those abilities.

Life is good

Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned. -Anonymous
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pleco
SFN Addict

USA
2998 Posts

Posted - 09/04/2006 :  17:44:04   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit pleco's Homepage Send pleco a Private Message
That's fair - we proved Coulter lies, now you can prove god exists and is the christian god...you'll be the first if you do it! How exciting!

But before you do, please provide comments to The List...we wouldn't want to get off track now would we? (despite your desparate attempts to do exactly that)

by Filthy
The neo-con methane machine will soon be running at full fart.
Edited by - pleco on 09/04/2006 17:45:14
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R.Wreck
SFN Regular

USA
1191 Posts

Posted - 09/04/2006 :  17:57:14   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send R.Wreck a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by GK Paul

Folks remember what I said in the Caesar's Messiah forum. The farther you get away from God (necrophilia etc.) the more suffering you will experience(in the long run); and that includes societies getting away from God.

This stuff will happen, unless we wake up.



The cruel, vain god portrayed in the holy babble is something any thinking person would want to be far away from. When it comes to morality, your god is about as useful as tits on a bull.

The foundation of morality is to . . . give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about things beyond the possibliities of knowledge.
T. H. Huxley

The Cattle Prod of Enlightened Compassion
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Dave W.
Info Junkie

USA
26022 Posts

Posted - 09/04/2006 :  18:22:04   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Dave W.'s Homepage Send Dave W. a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by GK Paul

Folks, this guy Singer isn't some professor holed up in a back office. Coulter claims the liberal clery at The New Yorker has hailed Singer "as the most influential living philosopher" and that the New York Times says of Singer "{N}o other living philosopher has had this kind of influence."
Good for him!
quote:
Folks remember what I said in the Caesar's Messiah forum. The farther you get away from God (necrophilia etc.) the more suffering you will experience(in the long run); and that includes societies getting away from God.
Yes, I remember your unsupported assertions. Why should I have faith in them?
quote:
This stuff will happen, unless we wake up.
You and your fellow doomsayers have been saying that for the past 50,000 years (wait - when did humans gain speech?). Why is it that you see people who don't agree with you as evil incarnate? Jesus certainly didn't see them that way.

- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too.
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GK Paul
Skeptic Friend

USA
306 Posts

Posted - 09/04/2006 :  18:28:00   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send GK Paul a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.

quote:
Originally posted by GK Paul

No wonder Hitler and the Nazi scientists loved Darwin so much...
When did Hitler or any Nazi scientists ever even mention Darwin? Hitler was a proud Christian, and committed his atrocities in the name of God.

On page 271 Coulter gives a quote from Mein Kampf where Hitler talks about the "higher evolution of living organisms". I don't have time to talk about how she claimed Hitler embraced Darwism. Read 271 and 272 if your serious about learning more.

She also quotes a book "Hitler Table Talk" where it claims Hitler believed "The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity"


"Something cannot come from nothing" -- Ken Tanaka - geologist

"The existence of a Being endowed with intelligence and wisdom is a necessary inference from a study of celestial mechanics" --Sir Isaac Newton


GK Paul
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Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist

USA
4955 Posts

Posted - 09/04/2006 :  18:31:53   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Cuneiformist a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by GK Paul

Folks, this guy Singer isn't some professor holed up in a back office. Coulter claims the liberal clery at The New Yorker has hailed Singer "as the most influential living philosopher" and that the New York Times says of Singer "{N}o other living philosopher has had this kind of influence."

Folks remember what I said in the Caesar's Messiah forum. The farther you get away from God (necrophilia etc.) the more suffering you will experience(in the long run); and that includes societies getting away from God.

This stuff will happen, unless we wake up.

Yawn. Could it be that Coulter is pulling quotes out of context? Indeed, it's so. The Times quote is from a book review, where the reviewer-- a university professor and not a member of the paper's editorial board-- said that Singer's influence is great among animal rights activists. So the "liberal clergy" line is just Coulter trying to distort reality so she can make her "liberalsim=religion" theme work.

But as we've all noted, she can only make it work if she pulls quotes out of context, twists the truth, and otherwise makes things up. The Times doesn't claim Singer to be what Coulter says. Indeed, a search of Singer in the paper's news section shows that its coverage is based largely on the fact that people at Princeton protested his hiring. I wonder-- did Coulter mention that? Did she note that much of the university community protested the hiring, or that the Times devoted coverage to the protestes? Did she?

I didn't think so.
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moakley
SFN Regular

USA
1888 Posts

Posted - 09/04/2006 :  18:34:16   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send moakley a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by R.Wreck

When it comes to morality, your god is about as useful as tits on a bull.

That's interesting. In Indiana they were considered less useful when found "on a board." This provides an option I hadn't cosidered.

Life is good

Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned. -Anonymous
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Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend

Sweden
9688 Posts

Posted - 09/04/2006 :  18:37:02   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Send Dr. Mabuse an ICQ Message Send Dr. Mabuse a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by GK Paul
I believe lying is wrong.
Yet you readily accept known untruths...
Even untruths that have been proven so.
I'm curious how you rationalize the combination.

Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
Dr. Mabuse whisper.mp3

"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse

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Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend

Sweden
9688 Posts

Posted - 09/04/2006 :  18:42:29   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Send Dr. Mabuse an ICQ Message Send Dr. Mabuse a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by GK Paul
On page 271 Coulter gives a quote from Mein Kampf where Hitler talks about the "higher evolution of living organisms". I don't have time to talk about how she claimed Hitler embraced Darwism. Read 271 and 272 if your serious about learning more.

I don't have access to the book. Please quote relevant passages, so I can review them.

Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
Dr. Mabuse whisper.mp3

"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse

Support American Troops in Iraq:
Send them unarmed civilians for target practice..
Collateralmurder.
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HalfMooner
Dingaling

Philippines
15831 Posts

Posted - 09/04/2006 :  18:44:25   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send HalfMooner a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by moakley

quote:
Originally posted by R.Wreck

When it comes to morality, your god is about as useful as tits on a bull.

That's interesting. In Indiana they were considered less useful when found "on a board." This provides an option I hadn't cosidered.

The Southern version I heard was, "tits on a boar hog."


Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive.
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Valiant Dancer
Forum Goalie

USA
4826 Posts

Posted - 09/04/2006 :  19:57:38   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Valiant Dancer's Homepage Send Valiant Dancer a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by GK Paul

Folks, this guy Singer isn't some professor holed up in a back office. Coulter claims the liberal clery at The New Yorker has hailed Singer "as the most influential living philosopher" and that the New York Times says of Singer "{N}o other living philosopher has had this kind of influence."

Folks remember what I said in the Caesar's Messiah forum. The farther you get away from God (necrophilia etc.) the more suffering you will experience(in the long run); and that includes societies getting away from God.

This stuff will happen, unless we wake up.



And what, GK, has this got to do with the lies contained in aforementioned "Godless" book concerning evolutionary theory?

Until you uttered his name, I was blissfully unaware of Mr. Singer. Although, given Ms. Coulter's track record, I would like to examine the context and full text of the speech she quotes.

What a societal magazine has to do with philisophical thought is, likewise, beyond me. There are several philosophical trade journals which may express different views on the importance of Mr. Singer.

So, again, we are left with yet another protracted fallacious appeal to authority and prejudical language fallacy.

Cthulhu/Asmodeus when you're tired of voting for the lesser of two evils

Brother Cutlass of Reasoned Discussion
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Valiant Dancer
Forum Goalie

USA
4826 Posts

Posted - 09/04/2006 :  20:06:37   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Valiant Dancer's Homepage Send Valiant Dancer a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by Dr. Mabuse

quote:
Originally posted by GK Paul
On page 271 Coulter gives a quote from Mein Kampf where Hitler talks about the "higher evolution of living organisms". I don't have time to talk about how she claimed Hitler embraced Darwism. Read 271 and 272 if your serious about learning more.

I don't have access to the book. Please quote relevant passages, so I can review them.



The Hitler quotes that spring to mind used Darwin as a jumping off point for social Darwinism which had only the name in common with Darwin's work. The phrase "social Darwinism" was a concept considered by Herbert Spencer. And a term only coined in 1944 by Richard Hofstadter.

Hitler accepted evolution as a means to introduce social Darwinism.

This invalidates evolution....... how?


Cthulhu/Asmodeus when you're tired of voting for the lesser of two evils

Brother Cutlass of Reasoned Discussion
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Dave W.
Info Junkie

USA
26022 Posts

Posted - 09/04/2006 :  20:13:44   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Dave W.'s Homepage Send Dave W. a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by GK Paul

On page 271 Coulter gives a quote from Mein Kampf where Hitler talks about the "higher evolution of living organisms".
The whole book is online. The relevant quote can be found here:
In our case this term has no meaning. Because everyone who believes in the higher evolution of living organisms must admit that every manifestation of the vital urge and struggle to live must have had a definite beginning in time and that one subject alone must have manifested it for the first time. It was then repeated again and again; and the practice of it spread over a widening area, until finally it passed into the subconscience of every member of the species, where it manifested itself as 'instinct.'
He's talking about learning skills and obviously believes in some sort of Lamarkian "inheritance of acquired characteristics" (how else could an "invention" become an "instinct"?), and so may have used the word "evolution," but certainly wasn't a Darwinist.
quote:
I don't have time to talk about how she claimed Hitler embraced Darwism. Read 271 and 272 if your serious about learning more.
Ah, it's the old "if you're serious about this you'll support my arguments for me" routine. Seen it. Boring.
quote:
She also quotes a book "Hitler Table Talk" where it claims Hitler believed "The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity"
According to many sources, Hitler was talking about organized religion, not his own Christianity. See here for one of many examples:
A damaging blow to any apologist argument against Hitler's Christianity comes from the fact that nowhere in any known source does Hitler denounce his Christianity or Jesus.
Too bad for Coulter, who can't recognize her fellow traveller in propaganda: Adolf.

- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too.
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Kil
Evil Skeptic

USA
13477 Posts

Posted - 09/04/2006 :  21:30:57   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Kil's Homepage  Send Kil an AOL message  Send Kil a Yahoo! Message Send Kil a Private Message
Well, here is what a little bit of research gets you. I asked Michelle who is a bit of a Sartre expert if Sartre could have said such a thing. Her answer? “Not very likely because he didn't believe that.” She immediately typed in the quote and within a few seconds we got the lowdown on the quote. What Coulter has done here was very sloppy. As it turns out, what Sartre is doing here is talking about a concept that Ivan Karamazov espouses in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. In other words, Sartre was writing about a concept. Dostoevsky wrote about the concept through one of the bothers but the quote never really appears anywhere except as a paraphrasing of the concept by Sartre who erred when he cited Dostoevsky directly.

quote:
From: Dostoevsky Didn't Say It

Exploring a widely-propagated misattribution
by David E. Cortesi:

Did Sartre Start It?

On a page of the Humanism.org site I found this:

Referring to one of the inspirations of Existentialism, Dostoyevsky, Sartre says: Dostoyevsky wrote: If God does not exist, everything is permitted and for Existentialism this is the starting-point .

Aha! Could it have been Sartre who started all this trouble? On a page of quotes (the number of web pages that are just collections of quotes is truly staggering) we find:

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)

"The existentialist...finds it extremely embarrassing that God does not exist, for there disappears with him all possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven....Dostoevsky once wrote, 'If God did not exist, everything would be permitted, [sic]

As with most such collections of quotes, the compiler omits to give the source for the text, which greatly reduces the value of the site. However, if this correctly reflects Sartre's understanding, it would explain a great deal.

To begin with, consider the difficulty, pre-Internet, of verifying a one-sentence quotation in a book of a quarter-million words like The Brothers Karamazov. You come across this very appealing sound-bite in the in the work of a well-known writer like Sartre, and you'd like to use it.

Then suppose that you, like me, get a little tremor of suspicion. "Did Dostoevsky really say exactly that? And did he put it in the mouth of a character, and if so, which character?" Until a very few years ago, the only way you could answer such questions would be to sit down and reread The Brothers Karamazov (or, if you are a full professor, assign that job to a research assistant). Who could justify that amount of time to verify a single well-known quote? You would go with the quote as you have seen it, trusting in that prior writer.

Very possibly Sartre is the "authoritative" source whose mis-attribution is the root source for this widespread mistake. Was he at fault? Perhaps he mis-remembered his reading of Dostoevsky; or perhaps he read a French translation of the novel that did indeed use the sentence. In either case, he was sloppy in attributing the idea to Dostoevsky, not his character.

The Web Makes Honest Scholars of Us All

With the internet, it is no longer necessary to propagate such errors, and writers of honesty should no longer do so. Most "great books" are online in full-text versions (see for example the English Server at CMU; there are also multiple searchable versions of the Bible, Quran, and the Buddhist canon). A search through a book the size of The Brothers Karamazov takes minutes. A search for prior work using Alta Vista or any of the similar engines also takes less than an hour to carry out.

There is really no excuse for guessing at, or simply re-inventing, citations, as so many seem to have done with Dostoevsky.

Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.

Why not question something for a change?

Genetic Literacy Project
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Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend

Sweden
9688 Posts

Posted - 09/04/2006 :  21:43:14   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Send Dr. Mabuse an ICQ Message Send Dr. Mabuse a Private Message

quote:
Originally posted by Dr. Mabuse

quote:
Originally posted by GK Paul
On page 271 Coulter gives a quote from Mein Kampf where Hitler talks about the "higher evolution of living organisms". I don't have time to talk about how she claimed Hitler embraced Darwism. Read 271 and 272 if your serious about learning more.

I don't have access to the book. Please quote relevant passages, so I can review them.


I referred to Godless, not Mein Kampf...

Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
Dr. Mabuse whisper.mp3

"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse

Support American Troops in Iraq:
Send them unarmed civilians for target practice..
Collateralmurder.
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