Comments on: D’Souza vs. Atheists, the Human Brain vs. Reality http://toddseavey.com/2007/04/21/dsouza-vs-atheists-the-human-brain-vs-reality/ Conservatism for punks. Sat, 22 Nov 2008 05:59:58 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.9 by: ToddSeavey.com » Blog Archive » Character and Christianity — D’ Souza vs. Hitchens http://toddseavey.com/2007/04/21/dsouza-vs-atheists-the-human-brain-vs-reality/#comment-4304 Sun, 21 Oct 2007 19:08:33 +0000 http://toddseavey.com/2007/04/21/dsouza-vs-atheists-the-human-brain-vs-reality/#comment-4304 [...] By contrast, both Dinesh D’Souza and Christopher Hitchens have said some pretty nasty things about atheists and religious believers, respectively — even though D’Souza has worked with enough libertarians that he, too, must know and like some atheists, while Hitchens has spoken admiringly of George W. Bush in the past and clearly understands that Bush is motivated partly by a sense of religious mission.  It should be interesting to see, then, how negative their claims about “the enemy” get at the debate they’re doing tomorrow night (Monday, Oct. 22, 2007) under the auspices of King’s College, for free at the Ethical Culture Society at West 64th and Central Park West on the question “Is Christianity the Problem?” [...] […] By contrast, both Dinesh D’Souza and Christopher Hitchens have said some pretty nasty things about atheists and religious believers, respectively — even though D’Souza has worked with enough libertarians that he, too, must know and like some atheists, while Hitchens has spoken admiringly of George W. Bush in the past and clearly understands that Bush is motivated partly by a sense of religious mission.  It should be interesting to see, then, how negative their claims about “the enemy” get at the debate they’re doing tomorrow night (Monday, Oct. 22, 2007) under the auspices of King’s College, for free at the Ethical Culture Society at West 64th and Central Park West on the question “Is Christianity the Problem?” […]

]]> by: ToddSeavey.com » Blog Archive » Book Selection of the Month: “I Am a Strange Loop” by Douglas Hofstadter http://toddseavey.com/2007/04/21/dsouza-vs-atheists-the-human-brain-vs-reality/#comment-1166 Sat, 14 Jul 2007 20:27:24 +0000 http://toddseavey.com/2007/04/21/dsouza-vs-atheists-the-human-brain-vs-reality/#comment-1166 [...] I Am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter is the antidote to the sort of reductionist anti-reductionist arguments that say that meat and molecules can’t lead to self-awareness, laughter, and joy (such as Dinesh D’Souza’s vicious, vile, petty, and obscenely-timed argument that atheists can’t meaningfully respond to horrors such as the massacre at Virginia Tech [where, as it happens, my girlfriend Koli was an undergrad two decades ago]). While most of the human race has for millennia envisioned mind and body as two completely different substances (able thereby to intuitively grasp the otherwise unsettling fact that a person is gone even when a dead body remains), Hofstadter, quite reasonably I think, suggests that minds are better thought of as complex patterns — self-reflexive (thus looplike) ones — in the atoms of our brains, much as a traffic jam is a higher-order phenomenon composed of cars or Hamlet is a complex pattern made up of what would seem like mundane words taken individually. [...] […] I Am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter is the antidote to the sort of reductionist anti-reductionist arguments that say that meat and molecules can’t lead to self-awareness, laughter, and joy (such as Dinesh D’Souza’s vicious, vile, petty, and obscenely-timed argument that atheists can’t meaningfully respond to horrors such as the massacre at Virginia Tech [where, as it happens, my girlfriend Koli was an undergrad two decades ago]). While most of the human race has for millennia envisioned mind and body as two completely different substances (able thereby to intuitively grasp the otherwise unsettling fact that a person is gone even when a dead body remains), Hofstadter, quite reasonably I think, suggests that minds are better thought of as complex patterns — self-reflexive (thus looplike) ones — in the atoms of our brains, much as a traffic jam is a higher-order phenomenon composed of cars or Hamlet is a complex pattern made up of what would seem like mundane words taken individually. […]

]]> by: ToddSeavey.com » Blog Archive » Capt. America Has a Burrito in His Pants http://toddseavey.com/2007/04/21/dsouza-vs-atheists-the-human-brain-vs-reality/#comment-157 Wed, 25 Apr 2007 03:13:00 +0000 http://toddseavey.com/2007/04/21/dsouza-vs-atheists-the-human-brain-vs-reality/#comment-157 [...] And speaking of cherry-picking (no pun intended), I mentioned in a couple recent posts the tendency of people to believe what they want to believe, and that I think thorough examination of empirical evidence is the antidote. Context-dropping can make even the most accurate data worse than useless, though, so it’s important to keep in mind points like one made recently by Dawn Eden, hardly an arch-materialist but in this case doing empiricists a favor, when she notes that in the rush by many critics to point out the failure of abstinence-only sex education to keep kids from losing their virginity at a young age or practicing safe sex with greater frequency (something the website I edit at work has itself repeatedly noted), often omitted is the fact that all forms of sex education seem to be pretty ineffectual at altering the rates of these phenomena. That’s hardly a ringing endorsement of abstinence-only classes but reason to wonder how much difference sex ed makes in general. (Of course, if you took the time to listen to both traditional and abstinence-only classes, you might discover a vas deferens — thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all week. For similarly sophisticated laughs, by the way, I recommend the Wikipedia entry on flatulence.) [...] […] And speaking of cherry-picking (no pun intended), I mentioned in a couple recent posts the tendency of people to believe what they want to believe, and that I think thorough examination of empirical evidence is the antidote. Context-dropping can make even the most accurate data worse than useless, though, so it’s important to keep in mind points like one made recently by Dawn Eden, hardly an arch-materialist but in this case doing empiricists a favor, when she notes that in the rush by many critics to point out the failure of abstinence-only sex education to keep kids from losing their virginity at a young age or practicing safe sex with greater frequency (something the website I edit at work has itself repeatedly noted), often omitted is the fact that all forms of sex education seem to be pretty ineffectual at altering the rates of these phenomena. That’s hardly a ringing endorsement of abstinence-only classes but reason to wonder how much difference sex ed makes in general. (Of course, if you took the time to listen to both traditional and abstinence-only classes, you might discover a vas deferens — thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all week. For similarly sophisticated laughs, by the way, I recommend the Wikipedia entry on flatulence.) […]

]]> by: Todd Seavey http://toddseavey.com/2007/04/21/dsouza-vs-atheists-the-human-brain-vs-reality/#comment-131 Sun, 22 Apr 2007 17:26:36 +0000 http://toddseavey.com/2007/04/21/dsouza-vs-atheists-the-human-brain-vs-reality/#comment-131 In the mid-90s, after a few of D'Souza's well-wishers, myself included, heard him speak (Or had we just heard the late Reed Irvine? Memory fades), we had a drink nearby, possibly at the Plaza, after which Free-Market.net and FAQFarm.com (since absorbed by ISIL and Answers.com, respectively) founder Chris Whitten and I, the two libertarians present, politely said our goodbyes but coincidentally both forgot to chip in toward the tab, obviously in ironic contradiction to our strongly-held pro-property rights philosophy. Chris is a multimillionaire now and so could repay the group, but our portion was apparently picked up by failed NY lieutenant-governor candidate and all around swell guy Dan Mahony, who says he prefers continuing to hold it over my head. And now you know. P.S. I also once saw D'Souza -- much of whose work, I should confess, I still like -- debate Christopher Hitchens about affirmative action, and moderator Ed Koch did one of the few non-ironic doubletakes I've ever seen when Hitchens made the un-p.c. argument that regulations mandating larger bathroom stalls for the handicapped might also have unintended benefits for the homosexual community. That was also the night that I discovered that my fellow NYPress writer Daniel Radosh (of Radosh.net), sent to cover the event from a left-wing angle while I was sent by the Press to cover it from a right-wing angle, shared my frustration that we weren't instead both at our homes watching the Doctor Who TV-movie that aired on ABC that night. It was a reminder there are priorities that transcend politics. In the mid-90s, after a few of D’Souza’s well-wishers, myself included, heard him speak (Or had we just heard the late Reed Irvine? Memory fades), we had a drink nearby, possibly at the Plaza, after which Free-Market.net and FAQFarm.com (since absorbed by ISIL and Answers.com, respectively) founder Chris Whitten and I, the two libertarians present, politely said our goodbyes but coincidentally both forgot to chip in toward the tab, obviously in ironic contradiction to our strongly-held pro-property rights philosophy. Chris is a multimillionaire now and so could repay the group, but our portion was apparently picked up by failed NY lieutenant-governor candidate and all around swell guy Dan Mahony, who says he prefers continuing to hold it over my head. And now you know.

P.S. I also once saw D’Souza — much of whose work, I should confess, I still like — debate Christopher Hitchens about affirmative action, and moderator Ed Koch did one of the few non-ironic doubletakes I’ve ever seen when Hitchens made the un-p.c. argument that regulations mandating larger bathroom stalls for the handicapped might also have unintended benefits for the homosexual community. That was also the night that I discovered that my fellow NYPress writer Daniel Radosh (of Radosh.net), sent to cover the event from a left-wing angle while I was sent by the Press to cover it from a right-wing angle, shared my frustration that we weren’t instead both at our homes watching the Doctor Who TV-movie that aired on ABC that night. It was a reminder there are priorities that transcend politics.

]]> by: Brain http://toddseavey.com/2007/04/21/dsouza-vs-atheists-the-human-brain-vs-reality/#comment-130 Sun, 22 Apr 2007 16:46:01 +0000 http://toddseavey.com/2007/04/21/dsouza-vs-atheists-the-human-brain-vs-reality/#comment-130 When did you stiff D'Souza for drinks? When did you stiff D’Souza for drinks?

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