(talk.origins)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_east/3191506.stm

Did Darwin evolve his theory?

Professor Pearson found the theory in a 2,000-page account

The originality of the idea behind one of the great scientific discoveries - Darwin's theory of evolution - has been questioned by a Cardiff academic. A theory which predates Charles Darwin's 1859 book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, has been discovered.

An account of natural selection has been found in a document dated 1794.

Professor Paul Pearson from Cardiff University tracked down the earlier publication by geologist James Hutton in the National Library of Scotland.

''It is possible that an old half-forgotten concept from his student days later resurfaced'' Prof Paul Pearson

In the middle of the second volume of the 2,000-page account is a chapter on the selection theory.

Darwin studied in Hutton's home town of Edinburgh, which at the time was famous for its scientific clubs and societies.

Professor Pearson said: "There is no question of Darwin knowingly stealing Hutton's idea.

Well, DrSilence, you seem to be wrong again, Darwin did not steal it from Wallace, but from someone else earlier. See, i proved you were wrong and that he was not a plagiarizer........oops, oh, he still IS a plagiarizer, only stole it from someone even earlier........hmm, then we wonder why his followers resort to forgeries, frauds and deception, aren't they simply following their role model?

cheers

DarwinistsforDonkeys

What Darwin did was discover the single most important fact that any member of any sentient species can ever discover, and recognize it for what it was. Neither evolution nor natural selection were entirely new concepts but nobody had put them together and recognized their significance. This is what Darwin did, recognize evolution, describe the basic mechanism by which it worked and understand the significance of that thought. Maybe he didn't quite fully grasp just how important the idea was but he knew it was a big one. The full perspective may take a little longer to develop. I'd be willing to bet that in ten thousand years time if there is still something that would be recognizably an encyclopaedia, if it contains an entry for "science" it will contain an entry for Charles Darwin.

It hardly devalues either Darwin or his theory that it wasn't created from thin air. One would hardly expect such a theory to be created from nothing by divine creation. There is no problem with Darwinism having memetic antecedents, but that does cause a problem for the religion based on the life of the virgin-born son of God.

Saul of Tarsus was a plagiarizer. Charles Darwin was a scientist.

(alt.smokers)

It looks as though you need to brush up on your reading comprehension skills a a little. What are you smoking? Extra lights or something?

Try this then, buy a pack of Marlboro full flavoured (Red Pack), put on a nicotine patch and, while chewing on several sticks of nicotene gum light up five Marlies at the same time. Maybe the nicotene rush will be enough to get those synapses firing.

Sheesh!!!

An alternative is to hold your breath for a minute, then keeping that breath held turn round three times quickly, lie down on the floor and then jump upright. That will give you just the same "rush" as smoking, and it's free. And as it's obviously not cool you won't be tempted to do it more than is good for you. The one minute breath holding suggestion applies to non-smokers, smokers can skip that part of the procedure.

(alt.smokers)

"Kyoteee"

wrote in message news: On Wed, 10 Dec 2003 18:35:49 GMT,

"Dan Peduzzi"

wrote:

I think most reasonable people would agree that the enforcement of certain codes of conduct is necessary and justified. There are times when a civilized society must dictate the rules of acceptable behaviors.

Who gets to decide what is "acceptable" behavior ... you? ! ROFL

Kyoteee?

What a horrendous mental image I have of this woman rolling about on the floor laughing. Hideous.

After a while you start to build a mental of picture of people on newsgroups. Do you remember the advert with Wyclef Jean and the woman from the trailer park? The first time I saw her I called her Kyoteee to myself. Now I'm seeing her rolling about cackling like an old witch in half an inch of discarded cigarette ash.

http://www.rushes.co.uk/virgin_autograph/index.htm

I feel the need to start drinking heavily...

...man, have I got enough to drink? Now another advert enters my head, Drink Canada Dry.

Yup, that's about how much I'd need.

-- Martin Willett

(alt.smokers)

Alex W. wrote: > "Martin Willett"

"Uncle Block" wrote in message

>>> Anti-Smokers Have Profound Reverence for Property Rights

Isn't it amazing how people respond to posts without reading them?

For some irony is obviously just an adjective used to describe

ferrous metals.

> Or a type of wifely duty... ;-)

Smokers have a habit of assuming that if smoking isn't banned then

it's welcomed, that an ashtray is an invitation to smoke. That isn't

the way things really are outside Planet Smoker.

The obverse also holds true: anti-smokers have a habit of

assuming that their preferences must be catered for in any

and all surroundings.

What a terrible idea, the interests of the majority being pandered to. I ask you, what is the world coming to? They'll be stopping you beating your slaves next.

There is a fundamental asymmetry here with smokers and public areas such as bars. The bar owner almost certainly doesn't want people smoking in his bar per se. These days many smokers buy their drugs wholesale or on the black-market, not from bars. The bar owner has to put up with smoking to get the trade. The bar owner has to foot the bill for ventilation and redecorating. Redecoration costs money. My smoking in-laws redecorated their lounge every year and it still looked dirty most of the time, we redecorate when we fancy a change of colour.

The bar owner will still pull in extra income by selling tobacco and lighters to those who run out or forget their smokes.

Moreover, redecoration is part of the cost of doing business, whether the place permits smoking or not. Bar and restaurant fittings and furnishings have a short life, regardless of smoke.

As a cigar smoker, I have a very particular perspective on the issue. I can tell you that those establishments which cater to my happy little band of Lovers of the Leaf most certainly want their customers smoking. It's an integral and necessary part of their appeal. Try imagining a sports bar without sports coverage. A cigar club/bar depends on people like me to come in, browse through the humidor, pick out a cigar and settle down for a few hours puffing away at my stogie and consuming several highly profitable measures of Scotland's finest distillate.

Of course, such a bar has a legitimate function. In the old days there were smoking rooms in pubs. That's great. A separate room for smokers to smoke. The problem came when smokers thought it was reasonable to take their fags with them when they went to the bar, to the toilets and to anywhere they wanted to go.

The whole world should not be a smoking room. That's what I'm saying. Smokers make the mistake of defining themselves as smokers as their main identity and think that places that don't welcome smoking don't deserve their business, although this only seems to work for places that serve alcohol and food for some reason, smokers still find it within themselves to get on buses or go to cinemas that don't tolerate smoking, and indeed go to work in offices and shops that don't tolerate smoking inside. It seems it's OK to go to work for 8 or 10 hours a day without indoor smoking facilities but if they sit down for a meal in a restaurant not being invited to smoke is seem as a great insult.

Smokers drive away custom as much as attract it. I hardly ever go to pubs. If I will stand in the rain rather than share a bus shelter with a smoker (enclosed on only one side) why on earth would I want to share a fully enclosed room with a smoker? Hell, I cross the fucking road not to be following smokers, why would I voluntarily be in a room with them?

On the other hand, bars in New York City now have to employ extra staff to keep an eye on the smokers who have been banished outside, to make sure they do not run off without paying their tab and to clean the refuse from the sidewalk which was previously dealt with by the regular staff inside the place.

That's dumb. Really dumb. Why can't places that operate a tab system just have smoking rooms? One door, clearly marked "smoking room", no exit to the street. Powerful extraction fans (not venting direct across a public footpath, yuck!). Perhaps even two sets of doors to create an "airlock" effect. No drinks, no music, no chairs, no encouragement to stay. Just a fume cupboard for people. A room designed around one specific function. We need to reverse the idea of "the sociable smoke", perhaps make the smoke booths big enough for only one at a time.

Pub toilets fulfil a single function. They are lit cheaply and harshly, they are finished in easy-clean surfaces. They are often unheated. They rarely have piped music. There is no encouragement for people to congregate in them. People in pub toilets get the very clear impression that the owners of the pub want them in and out of that particular room as fast as possible, the room costs money and it is there out of duty, not to encourage people to come in off the streets just to use that one room. Pubs should offer smoking rooms in the same fashion. "If you must, these are the facilities..."

Or the pub should be a smoker's pub, clearly marked "smoking throughout" so the signs can be read as people drive by.

I'll even change seats not to near a person who has recently smoked (tertiary smoking). Smokers make people put up with them. No choice, they just impose their habit on the world around them. There's no (blows smoke) law against it, what's your problem? In some ways it's like homosexuals. Because it isn't illegal they think they can ram it down our throats (oo-er) whenever they want and if we have a problem that's our problem, they will just do their own thing. There is a need to understand that everything that isn't illegal shouldn't automatically be approved of to infinite degree.

Who's asking for total approval? All that we ask for is a reasonable amount of tolerance and accommodation, up to and including some space to congregate in peace.

That seems reasonable, unfortunately there are also the those smoking reactionaries who think the way to fight oppression of smokers is to talk about ways to counter-attack. They do their cause no good at all. That's why sometimes I get a buzz out of teasing them, the more they react the more they damage their own cause. They reinforce the stereotype of smokers as ignorant, bigoted, selfish lowlife. One in particular springs to mind: short posts, abusive, non sequitur arguments and all the charm and wit of a KKK Grand Wizard's harridan mother-in-law. No name no pack drill.

Many business owners are forced to accommodate smokers simply because they are common and obnoxious (read that any way you want to).

Smokers are about a third of the population. It doesn't make sense to have a town with 20 bars in it all allowing smoking or none allowing smoking. A sensible approach is to institute some planning regulations. Sell licences to sell alcohol to smokers and licences to serve alcohol in a smoke free environment. It might be possible to be clever with this so that it can be done without coercion, simply through the price mechanism, if less than half the bars are smoke free how can they be catering to the two thirds majority who don't smoke? Make those licences cheaper, or even charge for one licence and pay a bounty for the other kind until the balance is created. There should be bars for smokers and for non-smokers, and this matter should be sorted out by something more sensible than stand-up slanging matches between groups of fag-wielding pub-crawlers and waiters making theatrical gestures with towels.

An admirable attitude, and one I have advocated myself in the past.

Now try running this past ASH and see how far you get.

There are several kinds of anti-smoker. There are people like me who don't like the smell of smoke and want to be kept well away from it but don't think a total ban is workable, just, morally defensible or sensible. And there are the nannies who want to stop people being naughty and doing the dirty habits they might enjoy. The second bunch deserve all the ridicule they get, but please don't aim that ridicule at every non-smoker or ex-smoker who wants to live a normal life without the hassle of trying to avoid mixing with smokers in the act of smoking.

Let's tell the truth about the dangers of smoking, neither denying the risks nor amplifying them beyond the ample evidence, let's allow people to smoke in private and in some well segregated public spaces, let's learn to live with each other.

-- Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org/

> Oh, man, I sure wish someone would post some short, one-line anti-Israel
> posts. I mean, I worked like a slave all day, thinking "Man, I just can't
> wait to get home, kick off my shoes, and read some short, one-line
> anti-Israel posts that basically just consist of a couple links." But then
> I get to the newsgroup and - what the heck? There's none to be found!
>
> Get with it, people!
>
> Cheers,
> Jon
>

OK, how about this: give one good reason why the USA should bankroll Israel,
one good reason why this is in the interests of gentile Americans. Just one
reason why the foreign and defence policies of the USA should be directed
towards achieving the ends of a bunch of arrogant psychopaths who define
their nationality by religion and ethnicity rather than residence, who don't
even have oil to sell and seem dead set on getting America into a war with
every country that does have significant oil reserves. Come on, explain how
this is wise. Explain why most Americans allow the Jewish and rabid
fundamentalist lobbies to play these expensive games.

Assume you are talking to an American with ancestors from, say, Bulgaria, a
country with a similar population size to Israel (but bigger area, much
poorer, and with much more need of foreign aid, which of course it doesn't
get because most of it goes to rich Israel). How are his interests served by
US policies to Israel? I'll wait while you go and look up where Bulgaria is.
A clue: it's somewhere between Israel and France. Oh come on, you do know
where France is don't you? A clue,:it's between the USA and Israel, you know
where that is don't you? I bet you could draw a map of it from memory even
if you have never been there.

The US recently gave $45 million to needy Bulgaria. It's a start. Since the
founding of the state of Israel the US taxpayer has contributed over $91
billion.

And the benefit has been... what? Apart from each Israeli citizen receiving
more benefit from US taxation than a US citizen, what have American citizens
gained? Anything?

And when people point out this information they are shouted down as being
some kind of evil Nazi anti-Semitic gas chamber feeders. Why?

Is Israel the USA's pet tapeworm?

Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org/

>> This is atheist news group, not a I HATE JEWS group. Atheist
>> tend to not be bigoted, we just don`t support any religion.
>
> Fair enough, although Martin's post was completely political and
> non-religious in nature.
>
> Keep in mind that being Jewish is much more than a religion. Jews
> also have racial, national, and cultural identities outside the sphere
> of their religion.
>
> That said, I have yet to see a compelling reason why the events in
> Isreal should be any of America's business.
>
> Jon

It was not religious in nature, I'm non-religious, I'm an atheist. I have no
problem with Jews, I like Jews, as people. I don't understand Zionism, or
perhaps I understand it too well, I can't see how it can be seen as a
legitimate political aspiration to "go back to your homeland" nearly two
thousand years after some of your ancestors left it and start to push around
the "interlopers" who have been living there in the meantime, and get the
support of another country most of whose people have no connection with you
racially, ethnically or religiously, and get them to pay for it. Willingly!
Either I'm crazy and missing something big here or a lot of people are
missing something big here.

Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org/

> I will pray that God will fill you with the Holy Spirit. Do you really
> believe that you can manipulate the one that created you.Gods word says he
> died for you because he loved you is that a bad thing or is that a good
> thing you must be confused and that cant be from God because he don't cause
> confusion you must be from Satan and you must be a demon.I will pray for
> you that God will fill you with his Holy Spirit.God love you A Christian
>
>

I will tell you what I really believe:

1] I was not created

2] There is no god, there are no gods.

3] There is no Satan

4] Evil is a human construct. It is a meaningful abstraction in the same
sense as speed, danger, Belgium and honesty are meaningful abstractions but
it is not a force that can be personified or have its own agenda or motive
force. Actions can be evil, people can act in evil ways but there can no
more be a Lord of Evil than there can be a Lord of Speed. The only Prince of
Darkness is Ozzy Osbourne.

Of course I don't believe I can get God to smite me, and you don't believe
so either. We both know God can't do that, but your mind has to hold onto
the idea that God could do it if he chose to do it so you need some flabby
excuse to explain why he chooses not to do it. It reminds me of the children
asking the glove puppet to dance. We all know the puppet has no legs but the
operator pretends the puppet whispers in his ear some other reason why he
doesn't want to dance that day.

You are deluded. There is no God. Now run along and get a life, don't waste
it, you will not get another one.

Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org/

(alt.english.usage, alt.usage.english)

MC wrote:

In a story reported here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60363-2003Dec12.html

A woman breaks a lifetime of silence to announce that she is the illegitimate mixed-race daughter of former U.S. senator James Strom Thurmond.

In it she is quoted as saying, "I did not want anybody to know I had an illegitimate father."

I believe that's the first time I've come across "illegitimate" referring to a parent.

Is it... er... legitimate?

Logically speaking it makes sense. A legitimate father is one who is legitimately married to your mother. If your father was not married to your mother than in this sense of the word he was not a legitimate father, hence illegitimate.

It also makes a lot more sense than saying the child is illegitimate, if illegitimacy is a sin then it surely must be a sin of the parents, the child was incapable of withholding consent to be born illegitimate but the parents did have that chance. If you change illegitimate to bastard then the sense is lost, a bastard father is a father who is a bastard (literally or figuratively), not a father of bastards. But illegitimacy has several meanings which blur together in the concept of raising a child out of wedlock, meanings which can be covered by replacing illegitimate with either bastard, improper, or not according to law. In the sense of not according to (God's/state) law then a father can be illegitimate.

The whole matter could be cleared up by creating a new word for a father of bastards.

Has anybody got a suggestion for a suitable eponym?

-- Martin Willett

I am somewhat new to this question, but I have been reading a number of scholars who have proposed that there never was an historical Jesus--that the entire story of his life was a myth.

I was aware of the formal difference of opinion regarding Jesus' divinity, but I didn't know that anyone had been seriously questioning his very existence.

I'd like to learn more about this. Does anyone have any links or other information that might be helpful?

Jeremy

Many Christian websites will seek to "prove" the existence of Jesus by referring to texts written by various Jewish and Roman "historians" of the time. However, not a single one of those historians records a first hand account of Jesus the man and most of the historians mentioned were not born until well after the time of Jesus.

The account that is closest to being contemporaneous is the account written by Flavius Josephus. This is widely regarded as likely to have been amended by later Christian hands, although many Christians often do not mention this. If you come across any source that quotes Josephus without mentioning the possibility of pious fraud you must regard the entire source as suspect. But even if you do take this account as being accurate and unmodified, the work of as good as historian as you are ever likely to meet at that time, it is still far from an eye witness account of the life of Jesus. At best it is an account of what Josephus believed to have happened, with no description of how he came to know it. Josephus must have known the story through the people who were telling the stories: the Christians. Josephus was too young to have met Jesus himself.

There is no doubt about the historicity of Christianity and the broad outline of the life of Paul. There were Christians in Jerusalem and elsewhere in the late 30s CE. That is undisputed. However the Christian claim is that these people were telling stories about a man who had just lived and died among them. And yet the greatest story-teller, and the first Christian author, is Paul, a man who never met Jesus as a man, only as a vision of the risen son of God. The epistles of Paul are full of stuff about the divinity of Jesus and his sacrifice, and his status as the Son of God but they contain hardly anything about Jesus the man. To Paul Jesus wasn't a teacher or a philosopher, he was the risen Lord. He wasn't a man to Paul at all. He was The Man, a symbol of Man. At least that is what Paul himself says.

There is a gap at the heart of the Christian story. The gap in which a man may or may not have walked. A few decades after the time of Paul the persecuted cult-leader mythic stories about Jesus appear in the form of anonymous gospels, but far too late to be reliable as history, there is plenty of time for a cult to spin enough myth to fill in the gaps. The fact that these gospels, written by religious obsessives, seem to confirm "prophesies" in the scripture should be taken as evidence that they were written to do just that. The gospels are prequels, written after the main story told by Paul, written to order, to tell the story how their branch of the new cult wanted the story told.

Why do people persecute cults? Think about it: why do people persecute cult leaders today, because they are putting forward a great new truth? Come off it. New religious truths don't happen today, they happen "in ancient times", simpler times, when people weren't as smart as they are now. But 30 CE was "today" for the Roman empire, not the time of myths, the time of politics, law and order and charlatans begging on the streets, stirring up the slaves and conning gullible people out of their money with the promise of heavenly salvation. Things don't change. The Roman empire would look upon Christianity exactly as George Bush's government looks on the Moonies and Scientologists, they would not for one moment be phased by the idea of some "new religious truth" but they would be mildly alarmed by the growth of a socially destabilizing cult that seems to extort money out of gullible people with the threat of punishment after death. The Roman empire would not see itself as primitive and heathen, it would correctly regard itself as the pinnacle of intelligent and civilized life in the known universe. It would not be afraid of some Jew with a good line in religious bunkum, conning a few old ladies out of their money. The Romans didn't write much about what the early Christians believed in, because they simply didn't care, just as we don't care about the silly stories put about by modern cults.

Churches form from cults when the second and third generations believe their own stories and the leaders of the cult are sincere believers. Was Joseph Smith a total charlatan? Probably. But I would not for one moment suggest that the current leadership of the Mormons is a bunch of manipulative charlatans knowingly duping their congregations. That is how cults turn into churches, charlatans dupe sincere people who believe the dogma of the cult and go on to sincerely convince other people. This remarkable transformation from con-trick to cult to church only needs to happen once and then the church may continue to exist in perpetuity unless it meets some powerful alien culture with the power to rock it to its foundations. Churches absorb attacks from their own culture and evolve mechanisms to cope with such challenges, that is why the Pope can believe he can turn wine into blood with a few words of mumbo-jumbo but he also believes in evolution and the Earth going around the Sun.

Martin

> You all know that God exists but yet you hate him.
> So much energy is being put into something you claim does not exist is an
> irony.
> The excuse that you hate religion being thrust down your throat is just a
> decoy for you defiance of God.
> I don't believe in pixies yet I don't devote whole websites to them?
> Quit lying to yourselves and admit what you already know.
> That is that God exists and is the superior universal being and that you
> hate that fact.
> Relgion is just your lame excuse for a segue.
>

I'm sorry if it confuses your world view but other people are not simply
simpler models of you but in denial.

Most people who declare that they are atheists do so because they do not
believe in God/god/gods. A few are, as you rightly surmise, in some kind of
adolescent angst stage and do hate their image of God. Some are even hating
the God which they deny exists, although naturally you can't really hate
something unless it has some kind of reality to you.

I don't hate God and most of the atheists I converse with don't hate God. It
is absurd to hate what you don't believe exists. Do you hate Ernst Stavro
Blofeld and SPECTRE or love James Bond? It's an absurd idea. Many atheists,
such as myself, want there to be a god but don't believe there is one. Many
don't want there to be a god and don't believe in him. Should that read "and
so don't believe in him"? Perhaps. But I'm far too smart to imagine that
whether or not God exists has anything to do with whether I believe he does.

The existence or non-existence of God is a fact, my belief is just an
opinion. Opinions, as a general rule, don't change facts one way or the
other. I am holding a pen in my hand, whether I believe it is red or believe
it is blue does not change the pen. I see no reason to conclude that the
existence/non-existence of a supreme ruler and creator of the universe is
affected by a force (belief, faith, mind-control or whatever you want to
call it) that cannot even change the colour of a pen.

--
Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org/

> Martin,
>
> I've just read your "Why I am an Atheist." on your website.
>
> In one paragraph, you explain how you saw morals as logical, etc. Hurting
> people was bad, cos it hurt people.
>
> Bravo. I've never done anything good because I feel I need to (for a God or
> church) Nor have I refrained from lying and stealing, for the fear that I'd
> go to some warm place underneath my feet.
>
> Do you think that most people in our society need this motivation toward
> applying moral integrity?
>

I don't think most people would need this type of treatment if they were
brought up well. Unfortunately so many of "the lower orders" are basically
instructed not to do x because they might get caught. I see it on a daily
basis in the shop I work in, children are told not to poke their gruby
fingers into the expensive equipment because the man is watching them. I
feel like going up to them and shouting at the top of my voice why don't you
teach your children not to do that because it is wrong, and explain why it's
wrong. That way your children will be able to learn to chose to do the right
thing because it is the right thing.

I was given a decent education in morality with Christian trappings. But the
trappings didn't matter. The decency and morality work on their own. I don't
lie because it's wrong. I don't steal because it's wrong. I know it's wrong.
I can also explain why it is wrong to myself if I catch myself doubting the
workings of my conscience. But what happens to those people who are merely
taught not to do X because it's wrong and God sees it and will punish them?
What happens if they decide that they don't believe (or don't want to
believe) in God? Then they think they are free to do what they will.

Teaching morality through religion is a bad way to teach morality. You only
need to look at how many Christians there are in prisons. Morality should be
free-standing and independent of religion. Unfortunately religious people
know that morality is their strong card, they try to associate their sky
pixie with anything good that happens from a butterfly to an orgasm, and
they insist that God and Morality go together just like the far right always
like to associate their repellent ideologies with the flag, patriotism and
national pride. They try to stop themselves being attacked in the same way
that Saddam Hussein does, by putting his missiles next door to Mosques and
schools, Christians wrap their God around anything that is seem to be good:
morality, family, national pride etc.

Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org/

uk.religion.christian

> This idea has been kicking around in my mind for some years and it's
> finally taking shape as something usable: Assuming that there are some
> aliens out there, and that they are in some sense "fallen", but their
> biology is radicaly different from ours, what sort of bible would they
> have?
>
> We occupy a "predator" ecological niche, more or less. We hunt, either
> directly with spears or indirectly in Sainsbury's. A lot of the imagery
> in our scriptures is about swords an chariots and that sort of thing.
>
> But what if a "prey" species became sentient, then fallen? Let's say
> deer became people. Wouldn't you expect them to have images that were
> all about running and hiding and finding safe places? Rather than an
> angel with a flaming sword guarding that garden, might they not talk
> about running away and not being able to find their way back?
>
> OK, there is an ulterior motive. I'm tinkering this one up for a SF
> story.
>
> Any ideas, folks?
>

Naturally any alien species worthy of the label intelligent will have
evolved communication, intelligence can only arise through communication.
With communication comes infection, the exposure to ideas that will spread
because they have an appeal. Religion. Religions will arise spontaneously
and will be challenged by scepticism and will evolve effective means of
surviving such attacks. Strategies such as reward and punishment and the
virtue of faith will arise in order to bolster the successful replicating
ideas.

I have much more of a problem in working out how a prey species could evolve
intelligence. How would intelligence benefit a gazelle or a rabbit?
Experience on this planet shows that herbivores and the consistently preyed
upon do not develop great intelligence. Intelligence requires long lifespans
which are inconsistent with being a prey species. The brightest herbivores
on the planet are elephants.

Lion goes up to warthog and asks who is the king of the jungle.

You are says the warthog.

Lion is pleased and moves on to the zebra, who is king of the jungle?

You are says the zebra.

Lion moves on to the elephant. Who is king of the jungle? Elephant picks up
lion, whirls him around his head three times and tosses him into the top of
the nearest tree.

OK, OK. Just because you don't know the answer there's no need to get all
aggressive.

Elephants have long lives that can go with the development of greater
intelligence, but that lifespan is only practical because they are immune
from predation. In the presence of effective predators huge herbivores are
as stupid as proverbial dinosaurs, and why should they be any different?
There is no evolutionary pressure to make them smarter.

Herbivores do not get smart because success for herbivores comes from
fecundity not profundity. Herbivores are divided into two groups, the quick
and the dead. To remain quick a herbivore needs to run fast, stay out of
trouble and breed early. That is why rabbits are so successful. When was the
last time a rabbit won Mastermind, got made poet Laureate or Archbishop of
Canterbury? Rabbits will never evolve to be smart. Neither will deer. To get
smart a herbivore will need to grow bigger to allow for a bigger brain and a
longer lifespan, as soon as it gets big enough to be invulnerable to
predators it loses the main reason to be any smarter, intelligence will
plateau at that level. Unless it can develop another reason to be smart,
such as sexual selection for smarts, as happened in our species. But I'd
guess that deer would be fixated on antlers, tusks or something else and
would never click over to seeing brainpower, especially as evidenced through
faithful copying ability, to be the desirable trait the females sought. (Oh
yes, sex will evolve too, just like on Earth, it is inevitable). Our
intelligence only became possible by a runaway sexually powered arms race of
selection for intelligence as evidenced by the ability to replicate patterns
of behaviour seen as desirable. We don't need to be super-bright to be
omnivorous primates, baboons manage fine with intelligence levels similar to
pigs and squirrels. It was language and copying behaviour that were our
peacock's tail, the criteria that females sought out. Sex created culture.
Culture created self-aware intelligence, which in turn created religion. And
once a religion is created it will be probably die early or quickly evolve
the means to fend off scepticism indefinitely, unless overtaken by a more
powerful culture in a short crisis, in which case the religion of the
conquerors will take its place.

Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org/

>> Experience on this planet shows that herbivores and the consistently
>> preyed upon do not develop great intelligence.
>
> But that is exactly what we were before intelligence - scavengers of
> whatever was going, always alert for things that wanted to eat us.
> We're not exactly built for speedy hunt and killing are we? (without
> any sort of weapon, bear in mind)

Yes, that's why we needed to be bright, to hunt and co-operate and make new
strategies, and new alliances, not to eat grass and fruit. Herbivores are
dull of brain and do not share or cooperate, their only social behaviour is
exploiting each other as "bovine shields".

>
>> Intelligence requires long lifespans which are inconsistent with
>> being a prey species.
>
> You do talk a lot of rubbish, don't you? A long lifespan is
> inconsistent with needing to be fit enough, and uninjured enough, to
> catch prey.

Oh, right, I get it, that explains why we're extinct. Ahh. Hmmmmm. Maybe
not.

Long life does not imply decrepitude, look at albatrosses, nobody really
knows how long they live, they only started being ringed in the fifties.
Albatrosses don't go about in zimmer frames, they catch their prey despite
living much longer than most animals of their overall mass.

You cannot live a long time and live off grass, because no matter how well
you try to stand in the middle of other walking meat factories eventually
your relative decrepitude is going to get you singled out and eaten. In
contrast living in a social species that values knowledge and sees
individuals as special you can enjoy life long after your useful work is
over, look at the House of Lords.

>
>> Canterbury? Rabbits will never evolve to be smart. Neither will
>> deer. To get smart a herbivore will need to grow bigger to allow for
>> a bigger brain and a longer lifespan, as soon as it gets big enough
>> to be invulnerable to predators it loses the main reason to be any
>> smarter, intelligence will plateau at that level. Unless it can
>> develop another reason to be smart, such as sexual selection for
>> smarts, as happened in our species.
>
> My, my, you seem very sure of that. I was under the impression that
> the best theory to date was that our brain grew massive when we moved
> from the forests onto the plains - we started to walk upright and so
> needed extra insulation in the tops of our heads.
>

Where did you learn that, Rudyard Kipling?

What a totally absurd idea, our brains evolved as insulation? Our brains
which are so huge they seriously threaten the life of our women as they give
birth to us, all that for insulation? In the class mammalia insulation comes
in the form of fat and hair, at much lower cost and risk. If we just needed
to evolve a pith helmet made of meat-stuff that would have been easy, and we
wouldn't have needed to inflict in on our unborn.

Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org/

>> Herbivores are dull of brain and do not share or cooperate, their only
>> social behaviour is exploiting each other as "bovine shields".
>
> Madame Moderator, are you going to allow this personal abuse to pass? I
> gravely resent being characterised as "dull of brain".

I was refering to herbivorous species, not voluntarily hebivorous members of
an omnivorous species. Apart from higher levels of anaemia, flatulence and
self-righteousness herbivorous Homo sapiens are otherwise quite normal.

>
>> What a totally absurd idea, our brains evolved as insulation? Our brains
>> which are so huge they seriously threaten the life of our women
>
> You need to adjust your line length, mate. The line break there caused some
> really raised eyebrows on my part!

How do I do that? What settings should I tweak?
>
> God bless,
> Kendall K. Down
>
> P.S. For the benefit of anyone who didn't see the original post, I wish to
> point out that the reason women's lives were threatened was "as they give
> birth to us".
>

This is a very real issue. Gorilla mothers are twice the size of women and
their babies are half the size. Death in childbirth is common for our
species but rare for other species, we are pushing brain size as far as it
will go, any bigger and we will kill too many of our mothers, unless
Caesarean sections are now taking the evolutionary brake off... That would
be interesting. I have (as you might already have guessed) a big head. My
daughter was born by caesarean section and is doing very well at school.
(Routine caesarean births are unknown among animals except for bulldogs, as
we have bred them with bigger heads and narrower pelvises to the point at
which they cannot give birth vaginally at all.) Perhaps a few more
generations of evolution like this in our species and by assortative mating
(big headed men preferring big headed women who remind them of their mothers
and sisters and women wanting a man who reminds them of their father and
brothers etc.) and there could be a new impetus towards even greater brain
size. An interesting thought, don't you think?

Whoops sorry, I forgot for a moment where I was posting this, forget I
mentioned thinking. If you promise not to force me to pray I promise not to
force you to think. OK, deal?

Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org/

uk.religion.christian

>
>> The simple
>> fact that Christianity is still around proves that it has sufficient
>> immunity to disproof to continue to exist in the face of logical
>> challenge.
>
> What positive evidence for the falsity of Christianity do you believe has so
> far come to light?
>

None whatsoever. First we need a definition of what form such disproof could
take? Do you care to offer one?

I suppose I could prove Christianity was wrong if I could prove another god
did what you claim for your god, but how I could I prove that there is no
God? What evidence would convince you that you and most of your ancestors
have been talking to the empty air all these years? Tell me what I have to
do.

But we know the answer to that don't we? If I sit in front of my webcam and
die that is evidence your God won't be messed with. If I don't that is
evidence your God will not play childish games. Heads I lose, tails God
wins. Evidence shmevidence, you have faith. Evidence only counts if it backs
up your faith, if it doesn't it's the work of the Devil.

New SMITETIME: Thursday, 20th March, 20:30 GMT.

Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org/

uk.religion.christian

> What is the point of this exercise?
>
> Reading your site, I would guess your aim is to demonstrate that God
> won't smite you (since you don't believe in God, there's no way
> that you could logically expect anything to happen), and then to
> use that as 'evidence' for your point of view. Or have I misunderstood
> you?
>
> Trouble is, from what I've read here, I don't think even the most
> conservative
> Christians on this list would believe that God is likely to deliberately
> 'smite' someone for being an atheist, especially if those atheist
> beliefs were reached after an honest consideration of all the evidence.
> So you won't have proved anything (other than that if God exists
> then he has not chosen to smite you at the given time - which incidently
> is perfectly consistent with even a literalist interpretation of the Bible
> - something about 'do not put God to the test'... :) )
>
> Simon
>

That's about the size of it. I'm pointing out the absurdity of the
situation. The most powerful force in the universe and yet he acts like the
glove puppet that whispers in his master's ear "what's that Sooty? You don't
want to show the boys and girls your legs? OK, if that's the way you feel
about it, I understand."

God will not smite me now because that would prove he exists and it would
prove he could intervene and therefore it would prove he has been blatantly
ignoring billions of prayers each year since back in the old days when the
story tellers weren't quite so subtle and clever. Back in the old days he
left his enemies scattered about the place with gay abandon. (How does a god
have enemies?) Later he gave up those crude ways, because after all God is
unchanging and good. Errr... brainache.

Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org/

uk.religion.christian

>> If they are genuine trolls the only way to deal with them is not to feed
>> them at all.
>
> That's not always true. Sometimes, troll-feeding can be amusing. And
> sometimes a troll can provide a helpful object lesson for other
> readers.
>

Ah, signs of intelligent life at last!

Have you ever considered what St Paul would do if he had a news feed? I'd
say he'd have been a world class troll. Unfortunately there is only one word
to cover people who make provocative postings when really there should be
several. I class myself as a creative poster and a serial mass debater. I
try to educate, amuse, provoke to thought and generally ginger up
newsgroups. The bad trolls try to put people down and annoy the members of
the group. I get no joy from trashing a newsgroup or provoking bitter
personal attacks, that is childish. I do enjoy making a bit of a splash and
stirring people up out of their apathy.

I'm sorry I seem to have hit and run. As often happens there was a delayed
reaction, I thought the fuse had gone out and so I'd walked away, but now
the sparks are flying and I hadn't noticed.

Well, I'm back, at least until Thursday 20th at 20:30 GMT when I might be
getting fried by one of the thousands of gods that man has devised to punish
himself with.

Don't miss the (in)action on the Smitecam

http://mwillett.org/SMITECAM.htm

Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org/

>> He's just said that he likes to provoke. He's just enjoying himself
>> by being obnoxious.
>
> Please read the charter, and desist from personal abuse.
>

I'm not trying to be obnoxious, although some people may find me trying and
obnoxious that's more their problem than mine.

The Smitecam is a cunning stunt I admit, but it is not aimed at simply
annoying people. I am trying to jolt people out of their normal ways of
thinking and to try some other ideas. I'm trying to use humour not blatant
shock tactics.

It is hard to attack ideas that people wrap around themselves without being
seen as attacking the people. Ideas, causes and their defenders often use
the tactic of standing together so closely that any attack on one is easily
portrayed as an attack on the other. The National Front march with the Union
Jack and then claim people who are attacking them are attacking their flag
and patriotism. Saddam Hussein will no doubt put anti-aircraft missiles next
to mosques and schools to try to prevent attacks on the missiles. People
associate their identity with their religion so they can defend their
religion from logical attack by saying it is a personal attack. Make no
mistake about this, I am not making any personal attacks on individual
Christians, I like Christians. My wife, mother, father and sister are
Christians. If I put in the odd jibe at "fundies" that is aimed at the
pig-ignorant and loud mouthed Christians who most Christians would probably
wish were Satanists if you could get their candid opinions on the subject.

The idea of the Smitecam is to show that God's mysterious ways look
identical to God doing nothing at all. Now I have a very simple explanation
for why this is the case, but I find it very amusing to listen to the
alternative explanations. God does want to punish me for being a sinner but
not until after I have lost my capacity to sin or to tell anybody else about
the mistake I have made. Doesn't that ever strike you as a little fishy? No
God doesn't intervene like that. Errr, I mean any longer. Yes, of course he
did smite people before, because the Scriptures say that he did, but, well,
he was younger then. Impetuous.

Perhaps he's settled down now he's found a good woman and had a son?

soc.religion.christian 08-01-y4

Dear child, I am not a Christian. I see myself simply as a Theist, that being a much more philosophically tenable position than that of agnosticism or atheism. Calling people child, brother, sister etc. does not convince anybody of your wisdom, your maturity or your good intentions. It comes across as annoying and patronizing. If that is your intention please carry on, my dear. Always remember that aggressive atheism is every bit as much a faith-based belief system as is the belief in God, for if you categorically assert that there is no God then you likewise have to offer the same set of proofs for this position as you demand from those who do believe there is a God.

Adding the word "remember" into a sentence full of new material does not fool the intelligent into thinking that it is merely a prompt to memory, something they already knew, accepted and internalized. That might work in church, but it doesn't work with people who have been taught how to think in a generic way, those people who have the full use of their brains.

Atheism is not, always, a faith position. Weak atheism does not require any faith. I freely admit that some atheists do exhibit faith just as some atheists play the guitar, some atheists are homosexual and some atheists were the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Atheism is a rather broad church.

Far too many of you use the bible as a convenient straw man, as if to suggest that the entire edifice for the belief in a Creator hinges on the objective truth of what is contained in the Old and New Testaments. Both these works, and for that matter all of the formal documents surrounding the world's great religions, must be read, must be viewed as allegorical in nature, as representative in very broad sense of this profoundly deep intuition in mankind that our being, our soulness, as it were, has its roots in a Divine Creator. This is the wellspring of all our notions of right and wrong, good and evil.

The Bible is not just a straw man. Many Christians do see the Bible as the source of all wisdom in the world and the very definition of the word truth. It is entirely reasonable to attack that position. Of course other theists only use the Bible as a drunk uses a lamp-post, more for support than illumination. By claiming the Bible is good when you want it to be and saying it's just a book when it is inconvenient the pick-and-mix Christian or theist becomes immune from disproof. But something that cannot be disproved isn't necessarily true, when a scientist meets something that cannot be proved he or she does not simply accept it, they go off and find something more productive to work on.

Now you can argue that these are silly notions, but you cannot argue that man as a species has heretofore categorically rejected the notion of God, or of His existence. The very fact that we can even formulate such a concept should suggest the very real possibility of His existence. After all, nothing that even man creates comes to fruition without first visualizing it in one's mind. However, in the case of God, we cannot do this, nor can we create Him, but rather merely hope to behold His presence once our wondrous journey here is complete.

This does not follow at all. Ideas do not continue to be propagated because they are objectively true, they are propagated if they appeal to the mind of either a teacher or a learner, or both. Of course truth is one reason why ideas are appealing, but it is only one kind of appeal, it is not the universal explanation for the propagation of all ideas. Gossip that is juicy travels faster than gossip that is true but dull, sometimes gossip that is widely believed to be false still manages to travel very effectively. People want to believe that Cher has had some ribs removed and Richard Gere gets intimate with his pets, in the absence of very powerful proof that it is false people will want to believe it. If we cannot purge ourselves of religion we should not conclude that religion is normal, good or healthy any more than we should conclude the same for house dust mites, herpes and the common cold. That which has what it takes to survive and be propagated will survive and be propagated: nothing else follows. Unless you want it to, unless you use faith to square any inconvenient circles, and then, for you and only you, anything is possible.

Faith is simply denial of reality by the act of will. It has never moved a single mountain, I keep waiting for Christians to send me the map references, but it looks like I'll have to wait until doomsday, whenever that is, or was. Any idea that is sold in a package with faith has to be treated with extreme caution. Gather around boys and girls, switch off your critical faculties, you won't need them for the next few minutes, just sit and listen to me. Doubting what I am about to tell you is naughty and you will be punished for it, believing what I tell you is A Good Thing, the best thing in the world... Faith stinks, doesn't it?

It is very easy to imagine into mythical existence any number of entities such as gods, angels, demons, Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy etc. Such stories are passed on if they appeal to either the teacher or the learner, or both. Myths get passed on if they appeal to people and they cannot easily be demonstrated to be false. Gods are very difficult things to disprove, gods only die when the people who believe in them are wiped out or have their worlds turned upside down by clashing with a much more powerful culture. Protestant Christianity triumphed over the Americans and many Africans because the invaders who brought that religion had better guns, germs and steel, but where mature religions with a history of standing up and fighting their corner such as Catholicism, Hinduism or Islam arrived first the same religion did not drive out the earlier beliefs. The fact that various religions are distributed in the way they are says a lot about geography, history and psychology and nothing at all about the reality of God.

-- Martin Willett

alt.gothic.fashion

>> Frances Kathleen Moffatt wrote:
>
>>> Meh. I mentioned this thread to my SO (I do have one--as far as I
>>> know, size was not a criteria in this decision) and he poked around
>>> the guy's site and found some stuff I'd missed on the first
>>> run-thougH:
>>> The idea that you don't have a right to carry a child to term if you
>>> find out it's going to be crippled in some way.
>> Really? Where does it say that? You'd have have thought I'd know
>> about that if I was meant to have written it.
>
> Does the phrase "I do not believe that people have a right to breed,
> they certainly do not have a right to knowingly breed cripples" mean
> anything to you? The BIG Problem in your politics section?
>

It is one thing to say that somebody does not have a right to do
something and quite something else to say they should be prevented
from doing it. I don't think that people do have a right to knowingly
breed cripples and misfits confident that the state will see to it
that their needs are met. By that I mean that such behaviour should
not be supported or defended in law. My wife doesn't have the right to
slap me, even if I'd been caught buggering a badger while dressed in
her wedding dress, her right to slap me would not be defended in the
courts because she has no such right. But it doesn't follow that a
police officer observing such a slap would arrest her. Can you see a
distinction here? If I take a photograph in Trafalgar Square I will
almost certainly take the photograph of other people, I don't have the
right to do that, the courts would not back me up in my right to take
photographs of strangers. But actually stopping me from taking a
photograph that contained a stranger, that's something else again. The
way I see it breeding cripples is not an absolute human right that
should be defended, and we should be questioning whether or not it is
worth stopping people from doing it, and if so, how.

>>> The idea that
>>> society doesn't affect gender roles and behaviour, they're purely
>>> genetic (and thus homosexuality is useful in mini-doses--for
>> < example,
>>> it will help you be empathic and concerned with your grooming--your
>>> genes are sort-of woman, so so are you).
>> Purely genetic? Utter rubbish. Many identical twins have one gay twin
>> and one straight one. Of course it isn't all genetic.
>
> whack Bad misreading, no donut. You claimed that gender roles were
> purely genetic, not societl. You also claimed that homosexuality was
> useful in allowing you to breed as long as you only got mini-doses,
> and explained how easy it was to see homosexuals as female in some
> behavioural ways.
>

I did not claim that gender roles were purely genetic, that would be
absurd, almost as absurd as the current dogma that people are born as
blank slates which society shapes for some sinister reasons. Gender
roles are determined by sex and society, both together.

Can you allow me to represent my own views myself please? I can
understand exactly what Marx meant when he said “Ce q’il y a de
certain, c’est que moi, je ne suis pas marxiste.”

>>> The idea that it's right to
>>> take money away from people because they earn it from providing
>>> something to thousands[1], and you wouldn't pay them that amount
>>> yourself.
>> People's capacity to earn money is determined by supply and demand,
>> not their inherent worth,
>
> That is correct. Unless you happen to feel like such a poor put-upon
> underappreciated genius who just isn't being paid what they deserve
> for being such a brilliant mind, when people who actually provide
> something that others are willing to pay for get material rewards
> even though you don't think they should, this is hardly a problem.
> If you don't like it, don't support them.
>
>> Almost without exception
>> the supremely rich are those people who have some way of tapping a
>> huge number of people for a modest amount of money.
>
> Probably true.
>
>> Most people don't
>> have a talent of that sort, they have to extract their modest amount
>> of money from a modest number of people.
>
> Correct.
>
>> And you saying that the rich
>> deserve whatever they get because of all the hard work they put in
>
> I'm not saying that. I'm saying the rich deserve their money because
> they managed to provide something to people that were willing to pay
> for it in sufficient quantity that they got rich. Deal.

In this case deserve means simply "able to charge, backed by law and
custom", not quite the same as I mean by the word deserve. As the vast
majority never have and are never likely to get such replicable skills
I see no good reason why they should surrender to the current status
quo. If the skills I use to earn money (the third best salesman in
a team of three) could be replicated and sold by other people I
wouldn't be rich, I'd be unemployed, as there are better people at
doing my job than me. That is surely the case for the vast majority of
people on this planet. If the best bus driver could be replicated and
those skills applied elsewhere 99.99999% of bus drivers would be
redundant and one or a handful would be fabulous wealthy. I'll bet the
same is true of every skill you have ever earned money from too. The
rich are those who happen to have something that other people can sell
for them, ideally without diminishing anything they own. Windows is a
perfect example, Bill Gates gets rich because other people write
software for him which other people again sell to hundreds of millions
of people around the world and in the process nothing is taken away
from Mr Gates at all. I bet Bill Gates loves capitalism, and the
"don't knock them just because you're jealous" line in politics. What,
exactly, are you gaining from this failure to observe and be aware of
your own position in the power structure of a capitalist economy?

>
>>> The idea that you can only deal with circumcision by
>>> hating your body and your parents or lying to yourself.
>> You have another suggestion do you?
>
> Yes. Accept that you've been circumcised, and get on with your life
> as best you can. Look! No wallowing in self-hate! Look! No
> self-deception! I realize this may be a hard concept for you.
>

You can accept it and get on with your life, but how do you do that if
you know it is a bad idea, unjustified mutilation? The choices are
stoicism, resentment or denial. I agree stoical acceptence is morally
the correct approach, but by far the hardest. It's much easier to
listen out for reasons which suggest it isn't a bad idea, in the same
way that smokers block out the avalanche of evidence that smoking is
harmful and listen and tune in to the trickle that suggests it isn't,
and in a country where there are millions of men who have been
circumcised and millions of parents who have chosen to circumcise the
supply of explanations and cover-stories is large. In Britain those
ideas seem laughable because there aren't millions of people wanting
to believe them.

>>> The
>>> acknowledgment that much of people's aesthetic judgement is based on
>>> outside influence contrasted with his own apparent utter conviction
>>> that he really knows what's beautiful and his own judgement isn't
>>> influenced, not at all.
>> Don't be silly, of course my judgement is influenced by other things,
>> but I try to be aware of those influences and choose which ones I
>> allow to influence me rather than be passive and deny that there has
>> been any such process. I know that my self is a lie, I don't need to
>> lie to defend it.
>
> Never said you lied. Said you were a small-minded, high-handed,
> self-righteous, patronizing, resentful mysogynist.
>
> Torrain

I resent the small minded bit. Unfair. Large-minded, high-handed,
self-righteous, patronizing, resentful mysogynist. Closer. Much
closer.

--
Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org/

talk.origins

Nathan Baum wrote:

> None of this explains the particular example you cited, mainly because
> nobody knows with any degree of certainty why the mammoth became
> extinct, although it is almost certainly connected to the changes in
> the environment that followed the end of the ice age.

And the hand of man (especially the spear-throwing hand of man) is
also strongly implicated. The mammoth was proverbially big, made of
meat, lived in a fridge, covered in fur, armed with tusks big enough
to use for tent poles and almost certainly had a penis the size of a
man. Apart from evolving brightly coloured concentric rings over its
vital organs it would be difficult to imagine any animal that more
cried out "come and have a go if you think you're hard enough!" to a
proud hunter with newly developed hunting skills.

--
Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org/

>>> There's nothing in this story to indicate he intentionally rammed his
>>> car. It was most likely an ACCIDENT. But feminasties will look to
>>> distort any story into to one of alleged male violence.
>>>
>>
>> Of course it was an accident. People often drive across cities on
>> Christmas Day and "accidentally" crash their car into their in-laws
>> house. It happens all the time. Why only a few months ago there was a
>> case where a man took his estranged children for a drive and
>> accidentally forgot he had a petrol lawnmower running in the back of
>> the sealed and centrally-locked car, and would you believe the
>> Feminazis thought that was some kind of a murder too. I guess they
>> just don't have brains as well developed as you do.
>>
>> Why do you (any of you) think the reporting of an instance of
>> violence by one man is some kind of general indictment of all men?
>>
>> Surely the lesson from tragedies like this is that children are not
>> the property of their parents, but their responsibility. Both parents
>> (if they are aware of the fact of parenthood) should be responsible
>> for the children but no single adult should have the power of life
>> and death over a child. If there are ideas going around that support
>> this notion that parents own their children they should be
>> challenged.
>>
>> We need much better systems to cope with the conflicts between
>> parents so children are not damaged. Men should stop thinking they
>> own children, women should stop using access to children as a
>> weapon. We need to address this issue and stop fighting for men's
>> rights and women's rights like six year olds saying girls are better
>> than boys.
>
> So, socilaist idiots like you think, "the state owns the children",
> this type of stupidity and thinking makes things happen all because
> stupid people like you, promote the state cause in the laws of
> removing children from fathers, and make children suffer every day
> bacause of corrupt legislation and laws, the day is coming when
> polititians will suffer a great blow to themselves when those
> children removed from their fathers will take back what is there
> right, slavery is a crime too idiot. And so are preverted laws.
>

What does preverted mean?

Did I say the state owned the children? The children own themselves.
The parents, the government and the whole of humanity owes those
children certain duties of care. There needs to be changes in the way
children are treated, especially in the cases of divorce or the
breakdown of "relationships".

There is a huge industry that runs on making money from dysfunctional
relationships. There is a great profit to be made by helping
relationships "irretrievably breakdown" so that the professionals can
come in and carve themselves a few slices of the assets. There is no
money in harmony and patching up, nor in an adult and sensible parting
of the ways. The only way the lawyers get a cut is if there is anger,
bitterness, division and a pig-headed determination to see "justice"
at whatever cost (however big the fees).

By fulminating against women you are simply playing into the hands of
your manipulators, the more angry you are the more you are prepared to
fight, the more you fight the more opportunity the family break-up
industry gets to take its slice of your pie.

It's the fault of the system. I know. My sister is a family law
lawyer. She's a genuinely nice person, she likes children, she likes
men, she even gets on tolerably well with social workers. She doesn't
want to mess up lives, screw over fathers and take children into care
but that's what tends to happen all too often. The adversarial legal
system is at fault. When lawyers are paid to fight for a cause they
first have to make sure there is a cause for a fight. Lawyers make
grievances. If I could have handled my parent's divorce I could have
saved them (and my inheritance) thousands. But no. You can't go having
somebody who cares for both parties trying to sort out an amicable
arrangement, you need to pay somebody to fight. Both sides. Two fees.
Professional fees. Big fees.

It's a stupid system that creates division. The lawyers want to see
the men thinking all women are heartless manipulative bitches and the
women thinking all men are psychotic womanizing cheats hiding their
money from their children. Divide and rule. The lawyers divide you to
rule you. Of course the lawyers are bright enough to see what is
happening but powerless to stop it even if they see how crazy it is.
They are trapped in the terrible situation just like the infantry in
the opposing trenches in the First World War. They have to fight, at
least be seen to fight, even if their heart isn't in it.

I have a suggestion. Lawyers should pitch as mediators. A couple would
be obliged to seek out a single lawyer to see if they could come up
with a mutually agreeable settlement, without rancour. The fee for
that mediation would be paid by both sides and would be non-refundable
in the event that one decided to hire another lawyer and take it
through the traditional adversarial system instead. It might work, if
it only worked in 10% of cases the benefit to the rest of the
community would be enormous: fewer broken homes, fewer divorces, fewer
custody battles and fewer tragic murder-suicides.

--
Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org/

>> There doesn't have to be an illegal porn trade, there wouldn't be if
>> there was no legally enforceable copyright on pornographic images.
>> Hack an illegal commercial porn site, repost the images for free and
>> the courts would say well done that man, very public spirited. If you
>> can't legally charge for the stuff, anybody who does pay for it
>> illegally can republish it, where's the profit?
>
> The trouble with this approach to undermining organised
> crime is that there'll always be something considered too extreme for
> society to
> accept its non-criminalised availability. If the profit opportunities
> move
> to child porn and snuff, for instance, there'll be more of that stuff.
> People want what is forbidden. It's human nature. And the invisible
> hand
> will supply.
>
>> Criminals are not going to stay in that market any longer than blokes
>> in loose-fitting suits and speedboats stayed in the US rum importing
>> business when the rules changed.
>
> Plenty of those guys found jobs smuggling illegal drugs
> instead.

Not all of them. Most of them went legit, and into something that paid
better than shipping rum. There isn't a fixed amount of crime that
must happen that only gets shifted around by government action. When
homosexuality was decriminalized a million men didn't decide not to
return their library books because they missed the thrill of being a
criminal.

I really don't think a hundred million men will suddenly decide they
want kiddie porn because it's the only stuff that is still illegal.
Men don't consume porn because it's illegal, you are confusing it with
drugs. Most people don't want what's forbidden, they just want what
they want. Perhaps Goths are different and only want what other people
don't want or don't approve of simply because other people don't like
it. But that isn't normal. I admit there is an element of curiosity in
a lot of porn: midgets, pissing, animals, scat (don't ask, don't tell)
and the like but for most men that curiosity is quickly sated.

--
Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org/

Nathan Baum wrote:
> Martin Willett wrote:
>
>> Can you spell?
>
> Yes, I merely can't read. Was searching google, not google groups.
>
>> "Nathan Baum" in Google Groups yields 11 hits.
>
> 14, today.
>

I've boosted your ratings. Stick by me kid and you'll go far.

>> "Martin Willett" yields 4,890
>
> I'm getting 'about' 4,900 for "Martin Willett" today.
> There's 2,140 posts that you wrote, and 760 that contain "Martin
> Willett wrote:", which I'll take to be replies. That leaves
> approximately 2000 apparently spontaneous messages about you.
>
>> In Google itself Martin Willett yields 43,600 hits, one of the hits
>> on the first page is referring to somebody else, as are three on the
>> second page, it goes even more downhill after the fourth page.
>
> Indeed. Most of those hits are for people called Martin, or Mr/Ms
> Willett. But not Martin Willet.
>
> A search for "Martin Willett" produces 735 hits.

Ah I see. On the worldwide stage, how famous am I compared to other
annoying British people. OK, good game:

OK, I get beaten by Judith Chalmers (1,040) Dale Winton (5,490)
Richard Whiteley (6,420) and Roland Rat (3,500)

But I'm a more famous annoying twat than:

Lawrence Llewellyn-Bowen = 399

Roland Rivron = 225

Annabel Giles = 325

Dominik Diamond = 408

Bruno Brookes = 662

and

Lynda Lee Potter = 446

Maybe one day I'll be in the Jeremy Clarkson league (12,900) but I
doubt I could every reach the dizzy heights of Benny Hill (80,300).

I'm surprised there was only one hit for Ainsley Fucking Harriot,
perhaps not everybody uses his middle name.

>
> Regardless of that,
>>> nobody suggested a link between hits and criminality.
> So what's your point?

I don't know, I've forgotten in all the excitement. Now hang on, yes,
I think the idea was to point out that a very large number of posts
have been generated in response to my posts but I haven't had my
wrists slapped by anybody in authority because I don't do anything to
break any really important rules. I don't drive away the regulars, I
don't abuse people who haven't volunteered for it, I don't try ever
more desperate means to "win" arguments and I usually melt away again
after ten days or so. I don't pursue vendettas against people across
multiple threads. I keep my debates mostly in the one thread, but I do
sometimes make a genuine helpful contribution to other threads as I
pass through.

All in all I'm a saint really, brightening people's lives and helping
them have new and unusual thoughts.

--
Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org/

Perplexled? In what way? Why would it be difficult to come to terms
with something old being good? It is no more a puzzle than why Coca
Cola or Jack Daniels taste pretty much the same now as they did 100
years ago, if it ain't broke it don't need fixing. Only people who
don't understand evolution would consider that some kind of a mystery
in search of an explanation. A seashell with a big penis isn't trying
to evolve into an eagle, it's trying to live and breed. Its strategy
for life works, therefore there will be no pressure on it to change.
We are as complicated as we are because we fucked up (but survived)
living as single cells, we fucked up (but survived) living in the sea,
we fucked up (but survived) living on four legs on the ground, we
fucked up (but survived) living in the trees and then we fucked up
(but survived) living the easy life as hunter-gatherers.
Sophistication is proof of survival through fuck-ups. If Wile E Coyote
could just outrun the Road Runner he wouldn't need to buy any of that
stuff from Acme, and if he was killed he wouldn't get the chance.

--
Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org/

DarwinistsforDonkeys wrote:
> An atheist was taking a walk through the woods, admiring all that the
> "accident of evolution" had created. "What majestic trees! What
> powerful rivers! What beautiful animals!" he said to himself.As he
> was walking alongside the river he heard a rustling in the bushes
> behind him. He turned to look. He saw a 7-foot grizzly charge
> towards him. He ran as fast as he could up the path. He looked over
> his shoulder and saw that the bear was closing in onhim. He looked
> over his shoulder again, and the bear was even closer. His heart was
> pumping frantically and he tried to run even faster. He tripped and
> fell on the ground. He rolled over to pick himself up but saw the
> bear right on top of him, reaching for him with his left paw and
> raising his right paw to strike him. At that instant the Atheist
> cried out: "Oh my God!....." Time stopped. The bear froze. The forest
> was silent. As a bright light shone upon the man, a voice came out of
> the sky: "You deny my existence for all of these years, teach others
> I don't exist, and even credit creation to a cosmic accident. Do you
> expect me to help you out of this predicament? Am I to count you as a
> believer?" The atheist looked directly into the light, "It would be
> hypocritical of me to suddenly ask You to treat me as a Christian
> now, but perhaps could you make the BEAR a Christian?" "Very well,"
> said the voice. The light went out. And the sounds of the forest
> resumed. And then the bear dropped his right paw ..... brought both
> paws together and bowed his head and spoke: "Lord, for this food
> which I am about to receive, I am truly thankful"
>

Please explain why an atheist (no capital letter, it isn't a religion)
would automatically assume that a voice coming from a bright light
would be the Christian God? That strikes me as typical behaviour of
the Christians who claim to have been atheists. They obviously weren't
very good at it. And none of them ever seem to have anything published
until after their conversion, starting with Saul and going through to
any number of trashy authors of the present day.

"Ummm. That's unusual. How can I explain that? Oh, it must be
everything that I ever believed is wrong and the Christians are right.
Fair enough."

What do you take us for? That is a parable, a story made up, in every
detail, with three totally fictional characters (credulous atheist,
talking bear, almighty Christian God) in order to make a person think
a particular thought. Would you take a blonde joke as evidence that
blondes were stupid? Why would anybody ever take a parable as evidence
of anything?

http://mwillett.org/atheism/footsteps.htm

--
Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org/

> Can anyone tell me what the equivalent male term is for Diva?
>

Divot?

Silly sod!

--
Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org/