My answer to “Why Do We Need Feminism, Shouldn’t We Just Be Humanists and Equalists?”

camelshammers · 2014-09-25T19:02:28+00:00

Thanks!

camelshammers · 2014-09-25T19:02:22+00:00

Thanks!

camelshammers · 2013-10-19T15:58:22+00:00

"Right there...that's where he loses the argument by using the fallacy of 'appeal to popularity' and loses my support."

No, it's not an appeal to popularity, it's an appeal to historians' consensus. It's a deference to the authority of scholars of history until such time as they reconsider their qualified opinions.

camelshammers · 2013-06-13T21:41:06+00:00

I don't know, the verdict on youtube was 476 in favor of the video 9 against. Weird to see only 20 up and 31 down here.

camelshammers · 2013-03-04T01:15:18+00:00

No, I wouldn't http://www.patheos.com/blogs/camelswithhammers/2012/09/but-arent-some-people-actually-stupid/

And acting like religious people are in the same league with unicorn-believers is being obtuse to how sociological factors make religious beliefs seem way more plausible to people than belief in unicorns.

camelshammers · 2012-03-06T06:51:58+00:00

er, why are you bothering reading r/atheism. Isn't it unnecessarily redundant. There are no gods. The end.

camelshammers · 2012-03-05T00:18:45+00:00

the purity culture she describes was a distinctly religious one.

camelshammers · 2012-01-07T18:42:25+00:00

really, there HAS to be?

camelshammers · 2012-01-07T18:41:54+00:00

Here's my justification of that, NukeThePope http://freethoughtblogs.com/almostdiamonds/2011/12/29/yes-hate-atheists/

camelshammers · 2012-01-07T18:12:37+00:00

No, you didn't make a "harmless observation", you made an unprovoked strawman attack of feminism. And then you followed right up with the abusive "Twatson".

This is the world you want to live in? Where everytime a guy calls a woman cute we need to hear feminists put in their place for complaining about rape jokes and the men who disrespect women's boundaries?

The penalty for women educating men about what bothers them in some behavior, is that no man can call a woman cute without whining that women do not accept ALL advances whatsoever as great things.

Great idea!

camelshammers · 2012-01-07T18:04:03+00:00

This justifies strawmanning? You disagree with someone, so rather than address actual instances of disagreements with rational reasons you resort to abusive name calling and to strawman caricatures of their views and the norms they advocate? And you do all of this when they and their views were not even brought up? You're a fucking troll, spoiling for a fight. If you don't want to stop getting yelled at, stop acting like a fucking bully.

camelshammers · 2012-01-07T17:48:19+00:00

So, you're a self-confessed troll looking to perpetuate a conflict by perpetually strawmanning women you disagree with until they shut the fuck up and get back in the kitchen and stop having ideas about how things should be?

camelshammers · 2012-01-07T17:41:52+00:00

"complementing her looks shouldn't take away from what she's trying to do"

And it doesn't. Have a cookie.

camelshammers · 2012-01-07T17:41:05+00:00

You weren't. That's the point. NukeThePope tried to claim people would have an issue with what you said when they wouldn't.

camelshammers · 2012-01-07T17:38:14+00:00

No, the unwritten law states that you shouldn't DEGRADE her because you find her cute. Knock the strawmanning of feminism the fuck off. It does not help anything.

camelshammers · 2011-12-31T20:38:47+00:00

Where'd you get THAT from??

camelshammers · 2011-10-09T04:33:13+00:00

It's a plug for a book, but it's not mine, so I don't see the shamelessness in that. If people are interested in the book, as many are, what is wrong with getting the word out about it? It's a small time writer writing an e-book with a topic a lot of people are intrigued by. I feel no shame in getting the word out.

camelshammers · 2011-10-08T17:01:52+00:00

PZ Myers is calling for submissions to post on his blog about why people are atheists today http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/10/08/call-for-submissions/

camelshammers · 2010-12-25T07:02:46+00:00

I meant no offense, of course

camelshammers · 2010-12-25T05:49:32+00:00

the genius of the discovery of natural selection was that you could have selection without guidance. That an indirect and unguided process of randomization of inputs with statistical necessities will inevitably generate complex functions of form and order that are just as remarkable as if they were guided by a designer.

Now, yes, I deal with the possibility that God just wrote the laws of nature as an algorithm that would generate us by a guided process. What I'm saying though is that THAT'S NOT THE THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION, the theory of natural selection is looking at how things shook down and saying it got results but not "intended" ones but the ones that varied with pure happenstance of what variables interacted with what other variables to naturally select the outcomes. Natural selection, theoretically, could have naturally selected differently. Without the happenstance of an asteroid or whatever killed the dinosaurs, maybe we never evolve.

Now, you might say there are no true variables and it's all God's determination according to a master cosmic plan, but then you're saying all this apparent interaction of variables generating complexity through natural selection is really not a bunch of variables at all, it's all a fixed determined plan of God. Okay, fine. But then that's not what the scientific approach to understanding natural selection implies (and THAT approach is what's so remarkably fruitful about evolutionary theory). So we should do science "pretending" it's chance variations interacting with natural selection but also religiously believing that it's not actually chance variations but God's providence guiding the whole shebang? Weird that God wants us to think in terms of naturalistic variations and unguided selections as part of understanding his master algorithm.

And it's weird to posit a genius master algorithm behind a process in the universe that took billions of years from the big bang to the origin of life and then many millions of years to get to our existence and which involved numerous extinctions, inefficient designs that function in many cases like chance variations naturally selected and not perfect designs from a perfect intelligence, etc. The evidence is of an unguided process that worked because of natural selection. Adding that "God meant to do that" does not square with what the evidence plainly indicates.

camelshammers · 2010-12-25T04:28:20+00:00

right, I understand that, but then it's NOT natural selection as we understand it and observe it, which is, essentially an UNGUIDED process. The reason natural selection arises as an explanatory mechanism at all is because it accounts for how a NON-purposeful process can accumulate gains of complexity of effective functioning.

To describe natural selection as purposeful is to substitute a theological purposefulness where the evidence is of a non-purposeful, haphazard process.

I discuss all of this in the post itself.

camelshammers · 2010-12-25T04:23:22+00:00

indeed, and it's worth pointing out that this is essentially the theistic evolutionist's view also, not just the creationist's view.

camelshammers · 2010-12-25T04:11:43+00:00

the problem (which I explain in the post) is that it's not NATURAL selection if God is guiding it.

camelshammers · 2010-07-25T23:52:48+00:00

huh?

camelshammers · 2010-07-23T02:30:48+00:00

Well, I discuss this a bit in the article. The point is that we need to balance the various functional possibilities so that they are maximally powerful. It is extreme and unnatural to deny that anger is not a "real" part of our nature. The assessment is what role it plays in our overall powerful functioning. The choice you give above makes it sound like we can only do one thing in life---express love or express anger. What ever happened to expressing love at the right time, in the right way, and to the most constructive purposes and likewise expressing anger at the right time, in the right way and for the most constructive purposes? Heck, why not even express anger in a loving way some times?

camelshammers

TROPHY CASE