User talk:Neural

Anyone can use this page to contact me or discuss anything with me in a reasonable manner, but personal attacks and insults will just be deleted when I notice them. This is the stance I'm taking on the issue of insults, and I will leave this message here so everyone knows in advance, before wasting time with petty attacks... -Neural 00:01, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

"God in the schools"

Hi Neural, as you've discussed this with the subject before I thought I'd bring this to your notice as I happened to see it. Particularly this bit:

"Richard Dawkins and his friends are completely mistaken when they sneer at religious teaching of children as indoctrination of helpless victims. Children are in fact interested in all the great theological questions and are constantly asking such questions, usually beginning "Why?" and "How?" When they grow up, they are free to reject what they have been taught"

It struck me as a bit like saying 'It's ok to brainwash them cause when I've finished they have a choice?' Miamomimi 17:26, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

It seems like that to me, too. I'm not in favour of censoring religious ideas from kids - far from it. But I am definitely against presenting these ideas to children as facts, as often seems the case. Teachers in these faith schools don't see it as their job to teach kids to weigh up different arguments and think for themselves - they seem to see their job as convincing kids that "X religion is true. Y, Z, and all the other religions are what other people believe. Here is why X is true." Instead, teachers ought to focus on teaching kids conceptual tools and how to think for themselves. I'm of the view that faiths schools are just wrong. Religious indoctrination has no place in education whatsoever. -Neural 14:37, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I stumbled upon your page and thought I'd add my voice to the debate. I go to a faith based Christian High school, and am what you would call a fundamentalist. However, for most of my school life I went to a ordinary Joe public school. And here's the irony, they teach evolutionary biology in a far better, meticulous and more convincing manner than I ever had it taught to me in a public school. All the teachers have biology degrees from various secular university's and they teach it in a totally unbiased way, which may be hard to believe. They even go as far as debunking some of the popular Creationist arguments, such as the law of entropy, among others. I can honestly say there is no indoctrination of any kind. They present the evidence, and encourage students to make up their own mind. In fact, the public school system in which I attended was actually quite biased, and indoctrinated students with their version of Secular Humanism, they even had Brokeback Mountain lessons plans [1] that ask "What can you personally do to make the world a safer and more accepting place for LGBT people?" I believe that would fall under your dislike category as, something similar to "Attempts to enforce brands of religious morality by passing laws that apply to everyone, religious or not."

Now, I'm not trying to argue with you or change your mind or anything, but I just wanted to give you another perspective on faith-based schools. All the best and a Merry Christmas to you and yours. --Sicamous 05:54, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Hi Matt - I thought I'd pop by and tell you about a debate that Richard Dawkins is taking part in here, along with the very impressive (in print anyway) Chris Hitchens but on getting the link I notice it's sold out and also that you may not be a Brit! Oops. Anyway, I heard Richard Dawkins in an interesting prog on R4 discussing altuism with Melvyn Bragg here - they have a listen again facility usually. So hey, it's the thought that counts and I will now be ashamed I wasn't quicker and not darken your user with such stuff again (but they do have cancellations sometimes so I thought I'd mention it) All best, Miamomimi 11:03, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi to Sicamous and Miamomimi.. Sorry for the lack of response until now, but I've been away from the internet for a fair while. I made the error of trying to upgrade to broadband, not realizing that my computer needs a network interface card for the free modem I've been sent. I still haven't got around to sorting this out, so I'm accessing this from a local library. It's a pain because the net-nanny thing seems to filter out most of the pages on wikipedia for having forbidden words like "s.exual".

Sicamous, I'd advise you to read The God Delusion. The arguments therein may illuminate you. I grew out of faith (as I see it) long ago, but that book may be one of the best sources on atheism and reasons why theism is quite a weak stance. As for me, I'm not likely to be swayed towards any supernatural belief-system that has nothing to stand for it other than the ardent belief of many well-meaning people. I'm not sure who said it but... "when one person suffers from a delusion, they call it madness. When many suffer from the same delusion, they call it religion." Obviously, without believing in the religion, I'm going to find people forcing narrow religious morals on others to be fairly offensive, however well-meaning the people doing the preaching...

Miammomimi... yes, I am a "Brit". Thanks for those links - I think I've missed the Christopher Hitchens one. On a similar subject, I noticed that Rod Liddle is going to be narrating a polemic called The Trouble with Atheism on TV soon (C4, I think). From the write-up of it, it seems that he generally misrepresents Dawkins and tries to slur atheists in general. For instance he apparently asks how Dawkins can rule out the possibility of God altogether. Well, Dawkins never does. In the God Delusion, the biologist constructs a case for why "God almost certainly does not exist". It's impossible to prove a negative, after all. Liddle also asks how religion could be the root of "all" evil. Again, Dawins makes a point that no one thing is the root of all anything, and the title of his The Root of all Evil? documentary was insisted upon by the producers at Channel Four. And Liddle tries to discredit atheists by pointing out that Stalin was one. Wow. And Bin Laden was a theist. There are evil people in the world.

Thanks for the comments, everyone. Happy Christams or paganmas or whatever anyone wishes to worship...

-Neural 15:30, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. I was not trying to argue for or against Christianity or Atheism. Such arguments only go in circles. I was, however, trying to argue FOR Christian schools. In that the academic success Christian schools is far greater than the public schools throughout my country (Canada).

As for reading the God Delusion I have been trying to take it out at the library but it seems to always be out and has holds on it tell the end of time. I have heard Dawkins quite a few times on radio and TV, and have read some of his Essays on the internet, and remain unconvinced. Maybe I am a lost case, just too delusional. Although, as would Dawkins, I would love to see a world without "shiny-suited bouffant-haired televangelists" I never did like those guys. Again, thanks for responding, and a Merry Christmas to you and yours. --Sicamous 17:12, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Hi Neural, sadly I missed the Liddle thingy but caught some other stuff (which sounded better from the write-up, probably because it was presented by a historian). It was about the cherry picking of the Bible contents and the political agenda of the Roman Catholic Church which all European Christianity is based upon. Good stuff. I2 have changed the venue of the Dawkins debate and have been selling more tickets. And Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Miamomimi.

Libertarian stuff

Happy New Year Neural - I came across this today and thought it may be of interest to you. I'd never heard of the Libertarian Alliance before but think they make a good point here. Regards, Miamomimi 14:37, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Dawkins Delusion

For anyone interested, the article on Alister McGrath's book The Dawkins Delusion? could do with a lot of work by somebody neutral on the topics of McGrath, Dawkins, and God. So far, the article appears to have been put together by McGrath's fan-club, people who dislike Dawkins, and nobody else. I don't want to get involved in editing this as I am biased in favour of Dawkins. -Neural 12:44, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Gender neutral language?

It seems to me that your indication of support for gender neutral language is a bit far fetched. What do you propose to say instead of "mankind"? Humankind? Man and woman kind? It seems this is similar to forms of political corectness, which only seem to stifle honest debate, by adding a whole new layer of convoluted and absurdly complicated language. --CaptainSurrey 02:54, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

No, I don't think it is too convoluted to use the neutral term "humankind". It's a more logical term to use, anyway. -Neural 11:27, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Animal rights activism

Hi Neural. I wanted to hear your thoughts on Knut the polar bear and his treatment in the Berlin Zoo. I've written an article on my blog about it. http://stopardtech.blogspot.com/ —The preceding unsigned comment was added by CaptainSurrey (talk • contribs) 03:03, 7 May 2007 (UTC).

Hi. Sorry for the delay. Fortunately, I remember the case of knut the polar bear cub. My view of the fanatics who want knut killed to stop him becoming too humanized? In view of the dwindling numbers of polar bears, and the conservation efforts of the zoo, I think those who want to kill knut are misguided fools. Presumably, they'd rather have no polars at all than a polar bear "tainted and corrupted" by contact with humans. I would rather there be polar bears in the wild, and none in zoos. But given the situation, killing knut would be madness. -Neural 11:24, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Image:Asimohonda.jpg

Hello, Neural. An automated process has found and removed an image or media file tagged as nonfree media, and thus is being used under fair use that was in your userspace. The image (Image:Asimohonda.jpg) was found at the following location: User:Neural. This image or media was attempted to be removed per criterion number 9 of our non-free content policy. The image or media was replaced with Image:NonFreeImageRemoved.svg , so your formatting of your userpage should be fine. Please find a free image or media to replace it with, and or remove the image from your userspace. User:Gnome (Bot)-talk 04:36, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the help. -Neural 11:25, 22 May 2007 (UTC)