It's Forty Two! » YouTube http://blog.itsfortytwo.net Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything ... Fri, 20 Aug 2010 17:26:16 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Catholic whining http://blog.itsfortytwo.net/2010/08/catholic-whining/ http://blog.itsfortytwo.net/2010/08/catholic-whining/#comments Fri, 20 Aug 2010 17:20:15 +0000 Species8472 http://blog.itsfortytwo.net/?p=339 Some of you out there may have caught the YouTube video by some fundies that call themselves “RealCatholicTV” that was posted last week. I came across it via PZ Myers blog. The video was describing their vision of a catholic dictatorship (their words) which of course included a vision of enforcing all the kinds of oppression that we know from history follow from such dictatorships. They of course realised, by the massive response, that such ideas are not very welcome in a free world that so many people have fought for and died to achieve. As the cowards they are, these fundies, they took down the video. Possibly also due to people reporting it for being overly hateful to for instance gay people, which I myself reported them for. Or maybe also because, I hope, that a large number of Catholics and other Christians reacted to such an outrageous video.

Now they’ve posted a pure whining video as a follow-up to the one taken down. Of course, they are moderating the comment section on YouTube, so don’t even bother commenting there. They seem to only allow cheerleader-comments through the filter. They are after all not too into the whole freedom of speech thing. It’s a bit of a nuisance when you plan to replace the free world with a Catholic theocracy as they’ve toned it down to.

The laughable aspects of this whining video is of course the obvious childish “but so do you” approach. They accuse the free world of being a dictatorship of relativism. Funny that. A democracy tend to reflect the attitude and ideals of the majority of its people. The free world does not want somebody with a superiority-complex (a pope in this case) to decide on behalf of everyone what’s best for them. That was actually a key argument in their original video. The pope knows best, better do what the pope says. The pope speaks to God you see, and the voices tells him what to do. Well, the voices also spoke to Hitler. We do not want such lunatics running our lives.

The video culminates in a smug fire-and-brimstone lecture which is nothing but a pitiful attempt to scare people into submission, not that any sane person would buy into such crap. This sorry excuse for a human being, Michael Voris, is probably looking forward to see us all burn in hell. His divinely inspired love for us spawns of Satan isn’t quite the selling point he think it is, but it is what we’d expect from a faith with its long tradition of corruption, abuse and oppression of other people’s freedom. Not to mention a clergy of less integrity than a school-yard rapist.

Here’s the YouTube-posted drivel in question, enjoy!

Share this post

]]> http://blog.itsfortytwo.net/2010/08/catholic-whining/feed/ 0 Science can answer moral questions http://blog.itsfortytwo.net/2010/03/science-can-answer-moral-questions/ http://blog.itsfortytwo.net/2010/03/science-can-answer-moral-questions/#comments Tue, 30 Mar 2010 21:18:11 +0000 Species8472 http://www.itsfortytwo.net/wp/index.php/2010/03/science-can-answer-moral-questions Sam Harris has made an excellent albeit a bit short TED talk about science and moral questions:

He naturally got a lot of negative critique for this talk. He is not claiming that science can dictate morals exactly, what he is saying is that there are moral truths to be known.  The fact that science has no complete explanation for reality, does not prevent the existence of scientific truths, as does not the lack of a scientific model for morals prevent there from being any moral truths.

Sam Harris has posted a response to the critique here:
Moral confusion in the name of “science”

Share this post

]]> http://blog.itsfortytwo.net/2010/03/science-can-answer-moral-questions/feed/ 0 Open-mindedness http://blog.itsfortytwo.net/2009/10/open-mindedness/ http://blog.itsfortytwo.net/2009/10/open-mindedness/#comments Fri, 09 Oct 2009 12:20:35 +0000 Species8472 http://www.itsfortytwo.net/wp/index.php/2009/10/open-mindedness This excellent YouTube video takes care of the accusation we sceptics often has thrown after us that we need to be more open-minded. This always bugs me because my inquisitive mind is very open to new ideas. I’ve spent most of this year learning quantum physics for fucks sake. Being open-minded is however not the same as naivety…

Enjoy the video :)

Share this post

]]> http://blog.itsfortytwo.net/2009/10/open-mindedness/feed/ 0 The tension between science and religion http://blog.itsfortytwo.net/2009/10/the-tension-between-science-and-religion/ http://blog.itsfortytwo.net/2009/10/the-tension-between-science-and-religion/#comments Tue, 06 Oct 2009 09:25:02 +0000 Species8472 http://www.itsfortytwo.net/wp/?p=127 A talk by physicist Steven Weinberg. It is well worth the listen.

“Steven Weinberg, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin, where he founded its Theory Group and holds the Josey Regental Chair of Science, was awarded the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics with colleagues Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow for combining electromagnetism and the weak force into electroweak force. He has written several popular books including the prize-winning The First Three Minutes, The Discovery of Subatomic Particles, and Dreams of a Final Theory.”

Share this post

]]> http://blog.itsfortytwo.net/2009/10/the-tension-between-science-and-religion/feed/ 0