The geographic and temporal spread argument, part 3

Published by davinci on October 24, 2010 in reflections on religion and religion. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

(Part 2 is here.)

There are a number of important differences between exotic animals and supernatural beings that make it reasonable to acknowledge the existence of the former without likewise accepting the existence of the latter. For one thing, we have direct evidence of tigers, which anyone can independently verify. We have photographs and video recordings of these animals, and like many people I have seen actual tigers with my own eyes. No one has ever produced an image of a deity or an angel, except through the medium of art as produced by human hands. Historically, sightings of tigers were recorded independently in different cultures, and yet the descriptions of these creatures were remarkably similar. The same cannot be said of any supernatural being… » [Expand post] [Permalink]

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  1. The geographic and temporal spread argument, part 6
  2. The geographic and temporal spread argument, part 4
  3. The geographic and temporal spread argument, part 15
  4. The geographic and temporal spread argument, part 5
  5. The geographic and temporal spread argument, part 11
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Why Computer Scientists Should Adopt Open Notebook Science

Published by davinci on October 23, 2010 in ★grads.net, academic writings and open notebook science. 0 Comments

I wrote this essay using MediaWiki (formerly at the address http://stargrads.net/wiki) as a proof-of-concept to see if I can write an essay or a paper online. Since I’m removing MediaWiki from this web site, I have copied its contents below… » [Expand post] [Permalink]

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  1. Open notebook science
  2. An essay on open notebook science
  3. Overcoming my writer’s block, part 5: writing about open notebook science in high school
  4. My depression in Waterloo, part 3: my Master’s degree in computer science
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Old Help:Setup wiki

Published by davinci on October 23, 2010 in ★grads.net and programming and technical issues. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

The content of this post used to live at http://stargrads.net/wiki/Help:Setup, and described how I had set up the software for this web site. I am archiving the contents of that page here for the reasons described below. It probably won’t interest anyone except for nerds… » [Expand post] [Permalink]

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  1. Wikindx macro plug-in for WordPress
  2. Using the Ajaxified Expand Post Now plug-in with Rob Miller’s Footnotes plug-in
  3. Using jsMath with WordPress, bbPress, and Wikindx
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Removing cruft and re-organisation

Published by davinci on October 23, 2010 in ★grads.net. 0 Comments Tags: , .

When I first made this web site, I didn’t know what it was going to be about. I threw together a lot of tools that I wanted to experiment with. Most of these became unused after some time, and are just taking up space and bandwidth.

I have a much better idea now of where this web site is headed. Therefore, I’m going to be doing some trimming and re-organising this weekend. It should be much more sleek and focused afterwards. In the mean time, many things will probably be broken.

– davinci 12184

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The geographic and temporal spread argument, part 2

Published by davinci on October 23, 2010 in reflections on religion and religion. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , .

(Part 1 is here.)

This lack of corroborating evidence for an event for which there ought to have been plenty of evidence, within the very book (or rather, collection of books) in which it is recorded, is bad enough. But the problem only gets much, much worse, the further away one moves from the immediate geographic area of a religion’s influence. The religious expressions and observations of people in the border regions between two religions become fuzzy and blended, and can be molded to accommodate either side. In the heartland of one religion, however, no trace of any evidence supporting another can be found… » [Expand post] [Permalink]

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  1. The geographic and temporal spread argument, part 11
  2. The geographic and temporal spread argument, part 12
  3. The geographic and temporal spread argument, part 16
  4. The geographic and temporal spread argument, part 5
  5. The geographic and temporal spread argument, part 18
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The geographic and temporal spread argument for religion as a human creation, part 1

Published by davinci on October 22, 2010 in reflections on religion, religion and social issues. 5 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

I consider this argument to be one of the strongest for the thesis that religions are created by human beings. It’s also an argument that every person I have ever known who became an atheist as a result of an in-depth study of religion has come up with on his or her own. From this, I infer that this argument is ubiquitous amongst atheists who had once been theists, and yet scant attention has been paid to it in writing. This is probably because it is “too obvious”, but this is one of those observations which are really obvious only in retrospect. It is not obvious to religious believers who have never been seriously exposed to another religion nor to the study of the history of religion outside of a pious “Church history” or its equivalent… » [Expand post] [Permalink]

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  1. The geographic and temporal spread argument for religion as a human creation, conclusion and overview
  2. The geographic and temporal spread argument, part 16
  3. The geographic and temporal spread argument, part 14
  4. The geographic and temporal spread argument, part 15
  5. The geographic and temporal spread argument, part 11
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Why I am Not a Non-Buddhist

Published by davinci on October 22, 2010 in reflections on religion and religion. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

If I ever write a book explaining my religious views, that’s what it will (not) be called.

In the mean time, I am writing a series of posts about religion. This was prompted partly by a spate of recent popular books on atheism, which I think made the case rather poorly.

A number of people have asked me to specifically write about the relationship between the West and Islam, and what I think about how educated Westerners should discuss Islam with Muslims.

There are a number of other topics in religion I can write about, but I’ll start with those. It’s not as if they’re not challenging enough.

– davinci

If you like this post, you might also like:

  1. The geographic and temporal spread argument for religion as a human creation, part 1
  2. The geographic and temporal spread argument, part 11
  3. The geographic and temporal spread argument, part 9
  4. The geographic and temporal spread argument, part 15
  5. Islamic societies and the economics of ignorance, part 2
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A message for college and university students regarding Clubs Days

Published by davinci on September 29, 2010 in politics, religion and social issues. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

The following is an article I wrote for Clubs Days. I’m also going to condense it into a pamphlet on paper, which I’m going to hand out.

If you’re a college or university student, it’s the beginning of a new school year, which means that there will probably be some kind of event to introduce you and the various student organisations on campus to each other. This event is typically called “Clubs Days” (or “Clubs Week”). And whether there’s such a formal event or not, you will undoubtedly be approached by members of numerous religious, political, and other interest groups who will try to convert you to their points of view.

College or university is a time of exploration, and I strongly encourage you to consider and examine the ideas that you encounter… » [Expand post] [Permalink]

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Four famous self-help books

Published by davinci on September 6, 2010 in a life in books. 0 Comments Tags: , .

This picture shows four of the most famous self-help books of all time: How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz, and The Greatest Salesman in the World by Og Mandino.

I didn’t find these books particularly inspiring or helpful… » [Expand post] [Permalink]

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  1. A life in books
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Revenge as a Motivation for Abusive Parents

Published by davinci on June 21, 2010 in autobiography and personal. 6 Comments Tags: , , , , .

As I have alluded to in my previous post, I’m current reading Alice Miller‘s For Your Own Good[1].

(Coincidentally, she passed away just a few days before I wrote that post, although I didn’t know about this at the time.)

I’m only about half way through the book, but one particular idea really struck me, and I wanted to write something about it. It’s so obvious in retrospect, and explains so much about the behaviour of my biological parents towards me throughout my life, that I’m shocked that I hadn’t thought of it earlier myself… » [Expand post] [Permalink]

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  1. Most advice given to people with abusive parents is wrong
  2. The causes of my depression, part 18: my parents blamed me for 9/11
  3. Thirteen Abusive Behaviours
  4. The causes of my depression, part 10: “the Machine”
6 Comments