The latest panty-twisting at Uncommon Descent is over the Blasphemy Challenge. The poor dears are so concerned about all the heretics damning themselves that DaveScot is moved to weep and pray over them, and William Dembski writes a letter to Richard Dawkins asking him why he doesn’t expand the challenge to torment the Moslems (note that Dawkins is not responsible for the Blasphemy Challenge, has nothing at all to do with it, and hasn’t promoted it, so it’s rather peculiar of Dembski to act as if he is the Grand Overlord of All Atheists).
This wouldn’t be worth following, except that I think Dawkins’ reply is absolutely perfect.
I had not given the Blasphemy Challenge any thought until you called it to my attention. Now that you have done so, I do not seem to feel strongly one way or the other. As that admirable bumper sticker has it, Blasphemy is a Victimless Crime. So, am I going to send in my own film clip denying the Holy Ghost? No, that is not what Oxford professors do, they write books instead. Do I find it offensive that so many young people are sending in their film clips? No. I hadn’t listened to any of them before you raised the matter. I have now done so, and I must say I find them more charming than offensive. They mostly seem rather nice young people, and they are doing their bit, in their own lively and entertaining way, to raise consciousness and set an example to their peers. I am especially pleased to note how young they are, for organized atheists have, until recently, been noticeably and discouragingly grey-headed. I think we may be witnessing the beginnings of a shift in the tectonic plates of our Zeitgeist. I am delighted to see so many young Americans taking part, in a way that suits their age group better than mine or yours.
It’s a weird and rather stupid request Dembski has made. The reason they are denying one of the Christian gods is because that’s what most of these people have been brought up to believe; Dembski himself would probably have no hesitation about denying Mohammed, so that wouldn’t be much of a challenge. What these people are doing in these clips is rejecting the dogma with which they were indoctrinated, and I agree with Dawkins that this is a most excellent and wise thing for them to do. I would similarly think it excellent if young Moslems were all to cheerfully deny Allah, and young Jews to deny their god, and a whole wave of outspoken unbelief were to sweep across the world.
There’s another great bonus that Dawkins didn’t notice: the spectacle of the creationists weeping and having the vapors at the thought of people rejecting their superstition is simply too delicious.
Oh, my. The email revelations continue, with little Billy Dembski showing off a reasonable, polite letter from Dawkins, followed by grandiose, delusional gloating in a letter from Dembski. This is beginning to hurt; I normally wouldn’t have any sympathy for the Baron Munchausen of Intelligent Design, but this battle is so one-sided it hardly seems fair.
So Billy was going to tattle on Dawkins to his neighbor, George W. Bush? Wow.
Allah doesn’t exist. Okay. I did it. Sorry I don’t have video. I’m a little camera shy.
Richard Dawkins’ mastery of the Queen’s English is nothing less than exquisite.
I deny the Holy Spirit!
Cheers to all, and a very Happy KvD Day!!
I love the reactions to the videos in comments from christians, the range of emotions is hysterical. They come under 3 basic themes.
1. You all think hell is one big party, and it’s not. You’ll regret it.
2. God is too loving to damn you for this silly stunt.
3. You have to believe in god in order to deny a belief in him, or some other disjointed nonsenes, about atheism being a cult.
I don’t get over to Uncommon Descent very often (for the same reason I don’t hit myself in the head with a skillet very often), but I recall that DaveScot soemtimes pretends to be an agnostic.
“It’s a weird and rather stupid request Dembski has made.”
Gee…now there’s a surprise.
Ahem … I make the following confession, that science is fun, or I should say that practicing the scientific method is fun and a rather wonderful way to while ones time away and it can, in most cases, keep one out of mischief, that is, if one practices the scientific method for the love of discovery and for the wonder of unveiling truths. But when one uses the scientific method for ulterior motives, such as discovering what a wonderful bang dynamite produces, then if said scientist removes the science ballcap and put on the entrepreneur ballcap and devises all sorts of money making schemes from the discovery of dynamite, and goes ahead without much forethought and sells said discovery that produces dynamite, and later becomes shocked at what many bangs has produced, then to rectify that error by handing out a prize and money for some peaceable chap who didn’t make the same error, then I think the love of the amoral scientific method can and does easily go afoul, causing untold misery. It is the science that is amoral, it is the scientist that may or may not be moral, or more likely, the scientist that is happy just doing science while leaving the politicians to care for the messy matters of morality.
Ohhhhhhh, that’s rich. Look how Dembski starts off –
“Richard Dawkins continues to publish my past emails to him without permission and I continue to return the favor.”
Who was it who published Dan Dennett’s emails to a third party (Michael Ruse, who sent both sides of the exchange to Dembski without Dennett’s permission) last spring? Why – none other than that very same Dembski.
Man, he’s got gall.
Just to clarify, Dembski’s letter about Islam is in response to Dawkins’ response to Dembski’s query about the Blasphemy Project.
Apparently Dembski believes he can outwit Dawkins. Well, Dembski believes a lot of things.
Uncommondescent.com is getting weirder and more entertaining by the day.
Re: Bro. Bartleby:
Clearly, we need to kill all the politicians, then.
A comment from that thread:
Erasmus, As is plain to anyone with eyes, those young people responding to the Blasphemy Challenge are deluded and parrot verbatim the atheistic tripe as a simple act of juvenile rebellion.
“Parrot verbatim” cost me another irony meter.
(The comment goes on to make the inevitable “inevitable nihilism” point.)
It just shows once again that many believers simply do not get it. They think we are playing a game. We aren’t. Here’s one for all of them:
I deny the Wholey Ghost
I deny the Unholy ghost
and just for Billy and Ann, I deny the flatulent ghost. I fart in its general direction.
We aren’t pretending. We aren’t mad at god. We don’t believe there is any such thing. Personally I am looking forward to Hell. I have a seat reserved at a table with Einstein, Ayn Rand, Hume, Ghandi, Mark Twain and Jennifer Connelly (call me presumptuous, but I think she’ll get there).
For any believers who are confused at this point, my last two comments are tongue-in-cheek. I don’t really think I’m going to socialize with those people for all eternity. But that sure would be a lot more interesting than the choices at the other hypothetical location, at least according to your “standards”.
Look at this. The guy is shameless.
“Since Richard Dawkins thinks he has the right to reprint my letters to him by posting them over the Internet (go here), I’ll assume the same privilege applies to me.”
Well, Bill, maybe he thinks that because you published Dan Dennett’s ‘letters’ to Michael Ruse without asking Dennett, last spring. You have got a fokking nerve whining about Dawkins publishing your emails to Dawkins now.
————-
Back talking to Pharyngula now. I’d post a comment on UD, but I’m sure he wouldn’t publish it. I asked him twice last spring why he hadn’t asked Dennett for permission to post Dennett’s emails on his site (I wrote a news article on the subject for The Philosophers’ Mag, so this was research), but I got no reply. Perhaps there was an email failure somewhere along the way.
Ahem. Maybe I’m mistaken, but I haven’t seen any mention of Dawkins email that precipitated this most recent Dembski spewage (probably because dembski didn’t link back to it – I wonder why?).
http://richarddawkins.net/articleComments,428,Christmas-Present-to-Defenders-of-Darwinism,William-A-Dembski,page2#comments
Bro. Bartleby:
Be careful what you wish for because you might get it. A focus on “moral” science might just lead us to ignore irrational religious concerns about pre-marital sex and mandate comprehensive sexual education even in parochial schools.
But aside from that, slight quibble, since a Muslim is someone who believes in Islam, denying Allah would be apostasy. I would think a more analogous example would be young people living in Islamic states or in pre-dominantly Muslim nations (e.g. Indonesia) denying Allah
Both the challenge and the UD idiocy are priceless. Not to mention astounding how they can say/type such things with the proverbial straight faces!
But I suppose I feel a bit of guilt for making fun of the foolish superstitions of others… okay not really.
This was gold:
Taking that kind of veiled jab at Dembski’s flatulent foley and lack of publications at the same time was a masterful burn.
Correct me if I’m wrong but doesn’t all the Abrahamic religions share the same god. Denying god, not capitalized, would be a denial of all gods, at least the monotheistic ones.
Some of the more interesting comments re DaveTard’s weeping spell just got wiped.
Pity. I was hoping the li’l prick would dry his tears and respond.
Okay, from my Christian perspective, a few observations.
Observation 1: God has a sense of humor. Dembski’s denial of that fact doesn’t change it, though it does suggest Dembski isn’t as close to God as he claims.
Observation 2: Dembski’s blasphemy challenge is exactly the sort of God testing that Jesus warned against when the Tempter took Jesus to the top of the Temple. Consequently, for God it’s no challenge at all. However, it does suggest that, since Dembski now assumes the anti-Jesus position in his gauntlet-throwing to Dawkins, we know at least on which parapet Dembski stands.
Observation 3: The scriptures at Mark talk about those who really deny the Holy Spirit — you know, by acting as if the Holy Spirit doesn’t exist, or by taking other actions that are so contrary to the Holy Spirit. Simply incanting a denial doesn’t do it. Lying wholesale, misleading innocent children into the wicked paths of creationism (wow, there’s a phrase loaded with irony!), cheating on peer review, and in general denying the stuff that creation shows us to be true — THAT’s blasphemy, a rejection of the Holy Spirit.
The video give-away is fun, P.Z., but if you continue to act ethically and otherwise do the things that God would prefer, a simple video can’t get you out of the club.
I’ll let you in on a secret that is known only to rationalists, be they agnostic, theist or atheist: It’s not a club.
If Dembski is really concerned about souls, he needs to start paying attention to footnotes in Jonathan Wells’ stuff, and in the schlock presented to state boards of education under the name of religionists.
The anti-evolution crowd is a ghastly, ghostly mockery of intellectual discussion these days. Sort of Monty Python, but without the wit, charm, grace, humor, intelligence, high production values, costumes, and talented performers Monty Python had.
What a bizarre kind of dishonesty, to pretend to be unsure whether there is a god, when you actually think there is. I don’t know what D’Tard really believes, but he sure does give the impression he’s lying when he says he’s agnostic. Given the overall obvious true motives of UD and the ID movement, I’m sure that among the UD intellinotsia, his duplicity is just seen as one more flavor of the always-acceptable Lying For Jesus.
Except if you’re jewish you deny the existence of g*d. hehe.
My favorite comment over there is from “Smidlee”: “I’m sure Dawkins would love to listen to rock groups like AC/DC since their songs often mock Christianity/church.”
Yes, and he probably also enjoys alcoholic beverages, profanity and casual clothing!
Ophelia, we all know by now that Dembski is entirely witless and dishonest — all he’s got is a ratlike fixation on his bit of dogma.
We had better be right about the atheist thing since it won’t only be Einstein et al down in hell. Dembski, DaveScot, Ted Haggard, the reglars at freerepublic.com, etc. will be there too!
Noting JeffW’s link above, it’s worth noting that Baylor is generally considered out of the running for George W.’s library, now, too.
Ask Dembski who will win the BCS championship. Bet the other way.
Wow. I mean, wow. Every time I read UD I think to myself, “These people are insane.”
How do people operating at that level of fantasyland self-deception and conspiracy theory paranoia even walk down the street to the grocery store to buy food, or wash themselves without drowning in the bathtub?
Incredible.
(But it is fun to read. Heh.)
Ed Darrell: “Ask Dembski who will win the BCS championship. Bet the other way.”
Indeed. Check out his prediction of the Dover decision:
http://www.uncommondescent.com/archives/371
“As I see it, there are three possible outcomes:
” 1. The Dover policy, in which students are informed that the ID textbook Of Pandas and People is in their library, is upheld.
” 2. The Dover policy is overturned but the scientific status of ID is left unchallenged.
” 3. The Dover policy is not only overturned but ID is ruled as nonscientific.
“For what it’s worth, my subjective probabilities are that outcome 1. has about a 20% probability, outcome 2. has about an 70% probability, and outcome 3. has less than a 10% probability.”
Well, considering that young Muslims who publicly reject their religion have fair chance of being killed for their apostacy, I can’t say I’m surprised that they are not present in large numbers. Fortunately, for the time being anyway, the Christian church does not murder heretics.
“we all know by now that Dembski is entirely witless and dishonest”
Ya…well I guess I’m still taking it in; I don’t read him as often as you guys do. I have to admit, I was taken aback at the farting thing. Strange fella.
Saw a beautiful “V” of geese flying overhead this afternoon. I’m pretty sure it’s evidence of God’s design, shorthand for “Virgin,” reminding us about the virgin birth we’re about to celebrate this Christmas.
The question is, if there is no God, and no God’s design, then how do the goosies know to fly in a “V”? :>)
When atheists walk together, do they automatically form an “A”? And what does it symbolize? My guess is it has something to do with anterior apertures. :>)
Merry Christmas, you guys. Someday, I really hope that you grasp this fact: it’s for real.
Uncommondescent.com is getting weirder and more entertaining by the day.
***************************************************
getting wierder – YES
more entertaining – NO
I used to go there for a nice laugh, but UD has become too pathetic to be funny. I stopped going there as I grew tired of feeling pity for Dembski
When atheists fly south, they always form a v, and then they fight like cats and geese over which poor shmo has to be the point, and whether the point atheist has dropped back too soon. When geese walk to church they form a K just to confuse people.
Saw a beautiful “V” of geese flying overhead this afternoon. I’m pretty sure it’s evidence of God’s design, shorthand for “Virgin,”
I thought it was a reference to the well-known and obscene English hand gesture.
The challenge is silly, and the response at UD even sillier. I remember the whole “unforgiveable sin” line–once you’ve heard it it’s guaranteed to fire up Obsessive Compulsive fears about thinking the blasphemous thought you’re suddenly compelled to think after being told not to think it (great technique, and has about the same success rate as the “No!” training about premarital sex).
Strange fella, indeed. Poor, bedeviled, superstitious man. Why are people like that?
The question is, if there is no God, and no God’s design, then how do the goosies know to fly in a “V”?
Is that a serious question?
Since you mention apertures, I have a question too:
If there is no God, and no God’s design, then how does the Amazonian candiru know to swim into the anus, vagina or even penis of a bathing human being, erect a sharp spine to keep itself in place, and begin to feed on the blood and body tissue of its host?
Religion teaches them to be that way.
My fellow atheists should keep in mind that even for Westerners, insulting God the Father/Elohim/Allah and/or Jesus/Isa can incur a death fatwah.
BBC, 1999:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/493436.stm
“An Islamic group based in the UK has issued a death fatwa against a playwright whose London stage production depicts Jesus Christ as a homosexual.
Terrence McNally was sentenced to death by the Shari’ah Court of the UK as his play, Corpus Christi, opened in London on Thursday night. …
The religious edict was signed by Sheik Omar Bakri Muhammad, judge of the Shari’ah Court of the UK. …
He said: “The fatwa is to express the Islamic point of view that those who are insulting to Allah and the messengers of God, they must understand it is a crime.
“The Church of England has neglected the honour of the Virgin Mary and Jesus. It is blasphemy for them not to take action.””
McNally had another death fatwah issued on him in 2002.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_view_of_Jesus
Thanks Kseniya. I’ll thank you for tonights nightmare tomorrow.
Whoa…it was a Susan drive-by.
Many of you may not remember Susan, but she’s a batty-as-they-come fanatical Christian who went on and on in this thread at the old site.
You may be surprised by this, but here comment here was probably entirely serious. She’s that kind of dingbat.
Friggin excellent. Dawkins’ analysis of the young atheists is spot on. He is such a delightful fellow.
Dumb-ass DUMBski needs to learn how to figure out who is in charge of what around here. He is too used to structures of singular authority. Clearly, grass-roots movements are a totally alien concept to him.
I can just imagine his initial reaction to this…. “Oh no! Materialists are damning themselves to hell! Quick, send an email to the Atheist Overlord, Dawkins, and hopefully he will send a decree across the land, forcing his minions to stop! Just like president Bush forced all unmarried people to stop fucking!”
You may be surprised by this, but here comment here was probably entirely serious. She’s that kind of dingbat.
Now you scared me.
Do geese fly in a π formation in Greece?
I think most sober observers would agree that there’s no point in trying to try to distinguish Yahweh from God from Allah, but some of the more insistent religionists get all worked up over the idea that these are just different names for the “one true god” who heads up the monotheistic religions deriving from the seed of Abraham. For example, there are fundamentalist Christians who decry “Allah” as a pumped-up version of a tribal moon god (yet they don’t usually apply the same treatment to Yahweh), thereby denying that “Allah” is just the Arabic word for “God”.
It’s a tedious business, isn’t it?
Wow. I thought she was being funny. Creeeepy.
“Someday, I really hope that you grasp this fact: it’s for real.”
What’s for real, Susan? Your sky fairy?
Re: geese flying in a V:
a) flocking behaviour; b) aerodynamic slipstreaming. But you knew that already.
Actually, it’s not a V. It’s an angle bracket. Geese flying west make an open bracket, geese flying east make a close bracket, and swallows in the middle spell out the Poisson bracket, if you squint really hard.
I thought she was trying to be funny, anyway. My reaction, that her comments were satirical, and, in fact, too heavy-handed to be good satire, does not bode well for the effectiveness of her “witnessing.”
Susan – Why does god make one leg of the goose V longer than the other?
Answer: He doesn’t, there are just more geese on that side.
(Not sure what emoticon to use here.)
faithandshadow moron at Uncommon Idiot
I’ve run out of time. Yikes. But if I ever get back, I’ll answer more of those. I have a response to every one of these versus. It takes some study
Man, these people are sickeningly stupid.
Professor Myers, when you say that creationists will “hav(e) the vapours,” do you mean vapours like anisol or the various organic carcinogens that make up “new car smell”?
Dembski posts those emails somehow thinking it will make Dawkins look bad? Just going on those two messages, one party does indeed come off badly, but it isn’t Richard.
Richard Dawkins’ mastery of the Queen’s English is nothing less than exquisite.
And he managed to work in a book plug. I imagine delicacy prevented him from adding the clause “…write books instead, like The God Delusion.”
“Richard Dawkins continues to publish my past emails to him without permission and I continue to return the favor.”
Surely Dembski should welcome this, since it will allow historians to reconstruct the sociology of the ‘inevitable collapse of evolutionary biology’, just as with his scatological flash animation.
Dembski posts email from Dawkins so he can pretend to be in the same league. I’m sure his fans eat it up, they wouldn’t know the difference.
Geese flying in V formation to symbolize virgin birth?!
Shouldn’t that be a P formation for parthenogenesis?
Hmm, does anyone else think the evil Richard Dawkins may have had something to do with this?
LONDON (Reuters) – Flora, a pregnant Komodo dragon living in a British zoo, is expecting eight babies in what scientists said on Wednesday could be a Christmas virgin birth.
“William Dembski writes a letter to Richard Dawkins asking him why he doesn’t expand the challenge to torment the Moslems”
Magnus said:
“Correct me if I’m wrong but doesn’t all the Abrahamic religions share the same god. Denying god, not capitalized, would be a denial of all gods, at least the monotheistic ones.”
You are correct. And in fact in Islam there is only the holy ghost, no father or son, there is a whole Sura devoted to talking to christians about the lack of a trinity. So in response to Dembski (oh, how I resist the desire to replace an e with a u): we have expanded the challege, or rather, the religions have expanded it for us.
It is pretty amazing that geese know English.
I don’t know if any has said anything or not yet but the Richard Dawkins Foundation posted a bulletin on MySpace about the Blasphemy Challenge so maybe that is why they thought Dawkins was endorsing it
“Richard Dawkins continues to publish my past emails to him without permission and I continue to return the favor.”
Na, und? It’s my understanding that when you send an email, the recipient can do with it what they will.
Susan, it’s not a “V.” It’s a copy editor’s carat showing where to insert something. The geese want your participation. Next time you see a flying V, jump up and insert something so the geese won’t be disappointed.
When atheists walk together, do they automatically form an “A”? And what does it symbolize? My guess is it has something to do with anterior aperture.
anterior?
mouth? nose? eyes? terminus of urethra?
No. Not ethically. Not any more than you’d have the right to publicize things said in private conversations without permission. The blogosphere came down hard on Christopher Hitchens for publicly posting Juan Cole’s e-mail to him without permission; assuming that Billy isn’t lying about not giving permission, then it was not good form for Richard to post it.
I first noticed signs that Bill is finally cracking up back in October, when he posted this statement:
“I am Richard Dawkins’ worst nightmare.”
Delusions of grandeur setting in. Poor guy. The strain of believing a bunch of crappola is getting to him. He’s getting old. Wasting his life on a foolish infatuation. A good day is getting an email from Richard Dawkins. It makes him feel so special. Should we feel sorry for him?
Nah, pass the popcorn.
“I am Richard Dawkins’ worst nightmare.”
BWAAAAAAaaaaaa HAAAAA!!!!!
Yeah, and I’m Casey Luskin’s worst nightmare. Boogah boogah!!!!
Sadly, Bill Dembski won’t live long enough to experience his worst nightmare. None of the believers will.
Yeah, that’s my understanding too. However, given the rather bland contents of the letter allegedly published, I’m not inclined to care much. Incidentally, where did Richard post it anyway?
If Dembski is really concerned about souls, he needs to start paying attention to footnotes in Jonathan Wells’ stuff, and in the schlock presented to state boards of education under the name of religionists.
I tried to ask the dude what he thought of Wells’ stuff. Note this question and this comment from me one the question of what Dembski believes about HIV and AIDS and Wells’ statements regarding same.
Inexplicably, I’ve never been banned; I assume that I could still post there but no one really responds except to pepper me with off-topic questions (this after I was told I was off-topic). “You can’t have meaning in your life without God! You’re an irresponsible carefree young person but someday you’re going to feel pain and need the Lord! Blah, blah!” (Glad to know I’m young. Thanks. I’m just a little younger that Dembski himself.) Yeah, I was never banned. I stalked away after this insulting thread.
This crap about HIV not causing AIDS has consequences. All I was looking for was a simple answer. Are the folks at UD upset over the recent death sentences of the Tripoli Six at all? Why do they prefer to focus on Dawkins all the time? Why do they care about other people’s “blasphemy”? It’s our souls, not theirs. Or do they think that they own our “souls,” too?
The Tripoli Six were sentenced to death and this is what intelligent design advocates focus on–people mocking the holy ghost on videotape. Some priorities.
I know why you haven’t been banned. It’s the shimmying. They’re mesmerized.
Just skimmed the old Susan posts. Whoa! Glad we just caught a whiff this time. What is it about whackjobs and their digital diarrhea?
Never mind, it seems it was a different e-mail, and jeffw already posted the link. I’m not sure that really merits any confidentiality.
This is the post where Dawkins reprinted a Dembski e-mail (according to an earlier post by Dembski on UD). It was that mass e-mail about the farting Flash animation. I’m not an expert on Internet etiquette, but I don’t think posting it is some grave breach of protocol.
Sorry for the redundancy. But that’s the one Dembski linked in a post with the same title without the “II”.
Ed, nice thought and I agree to a large degree but are you saying that you have to be perfect in actionand can work your way into heaven? This seems a dubious thought to me.
How can you even begin to know what God prefers? All you can do is believe what you believe he prefers in any event. I appreciate your sentiment but your thinking seems wayward.
Well, an unsolicited mass mailing is just spam, so if that’s all that Billy is referring to then I agree no breach was made.
Dawkins can take heart.
Now that the internet exists and access is available across the land many atheists are able to communicate and speak freely to one another. Many of the younger free thinkers I’ve come across are stuck in red states or drowning in mega church territory and thought they were alone in their doubts. With the advent of blogs, YouTube, LiveVideo and such they understand that no only are they not alone but that many others both young and old share their ideas and doubts.
They no longer need to raise their children to ‘go along and be quiet’ just to keep them safe. We have a huge network, we offer one another advice and support and sometimes just knowing that you are not alone is all that is needed to find your voice.
I’m glad I bumped into the JREF forums and Skeptico. Now I’ve got a lot of online friends who I can talk openly with. My sense of humor can run free. Naked and freeeee!
I’m not an expert on Internet etiquette, but I don’t think posting it is some grave breach of protocol.
Posting the ravings of well-known lunatics like Bildo Dumbski is never unethical.
If you got an email from Ann Coulter where she mocked you and said some ridiculous baloney, surely you would publish it without hesitation.
Speaking of which, you think Bildo and Ann got a good thing going? I’m guessing Bildo cleaned her carpet at some point.
No, Uber, I’m not saying people have to be perfect.
This was the point upon which Darwin lashed out at fundies of his day. Dembski and crew are working on the assumption that if one does some magic set of incantations, one’s afterlife fate is sealed — and that good people who act ethically cannot gain salvation if they don’t also do the magic incantations. As Darwin described that philosophy, it’s “abominable.” Bad religion.
If P. Z. continues to act in an ethical manner, most Christians would aver, he’s not going to be shut out of a heaven because he didn’t say some magic incantation.
In sum, ethical action is preferred to sanctimonious blather. Always. Jesus even had a parable about it, but I have come to understand that most creationists are not very familiar with those teachings.
Geeze, I’m sounding really cynical, no? It’s a cynicism born of experience.
Ed,
I don’t mean to be picky but who decides what is an ethical manner and what standard are we using? I mean is a man who tells a lie ethical? Who has stolen? Committed adultery? been gay? Took a pen from work? People are people, they all have their flaws. Who can say who is better or worse across the board. In my view most folks come out pretty even in the end.
Aren’t you making the same set of assumptions by pretending the words aren’t important? You have no better way of knowing what is or isn’t then Dembski and frankly I find their theology more consistent than yours on this idea and they are insane virtually anywhere else in life.
And I think your 100% wrong here:
Most Christians? Most Christians think an ethical atheist will get the same reward as they will but refuse to vote for them in a Presidential race? I think your very wrong here Ed, hearts in the right place but I think seriously backwards. Most Christians most definetly think atheists are not going to heaven. Is this even arguable?
It seems to me your theology makes Jesus and his actions superflous to the entire process. Which if your a Christian universalist is ok.
I don’t care one way or the other really I just find your responses here a little odd.
I have it! The geese have a promotion deal with the Wachowski brothers.
Just giving you a little Christmas goose, PZ, to see if you’ve made any progress on this God thing. His design is everywhere, and I’m still praying that you’ll have a “eureka!” moment soon and realize how comic the theory of evolution really is.
How great it would be if you would use your excellent communication skills to ‘xplain how nature works to the rest of us without blaspheming the main Man, God. Remember, He’s makin’ a list, and checkin’ it twice . . . gonna find out who’s naughty or nice. . . . I want you on the “nice” list, PZ. :>)
On your “dingbat” comment: Kid #1 graduated with highest distinction, Phi Beta Kappa, with the prize for the best senior thesis in her major from the U of No’th Car’lina, and is now in law school. Must have a dollop of gray matter in there somewhere, wouldn’t you think? Trying to paint Christian believers as ignorant Gomer Pyles just because we see God’s design and you don’t (yet!) smells a lot like last year’s eggnog. :>)
At any rate, Merry Christmas, and all the best to you and your family.
Ed,
Surely if you don’t believe the Holy Spirit exists, then you will naturally behave as if the Holy Spirit doesn’t exist. Part of that behaviour is being willing to deny the existence of the Holy Spirit. And I understood that blasphemy, in both legal and theological terms, was very much about the spoken (or written) word.
Uber: I find myself agreeing both with Ed and with you on this one. Doctrinally, I think Ed’s got it right. Practically speaking, though, you’re right: the majority of Christians in the US would disagree with Ed.
How about this potential point of agreement: Forget Christianity. Dembski’s recent stunts have reached such a low that pretty much anyone who has an ethical bone in their body is going to have a low opinion of him….SH
ok, then just explain the ethically thing from above. I mean seriously is a kid who has premarital sex behaving ethically? masturbation? I just don’t see anyway that a works based theology makes any sense. Apparently if an atheist gets into heaven it makes Jesus superflous to Christianity as well. So I don’t see how you can say Ed is doctrinally correct whatever the hell that could possibly ever mean. Dawkins and Harris may be correct when they say moderate believers are part of the problem.
Any and all religious doctrines have their backers and naysayers and nary a shred of difference evidence wise between them. In my view the faith alone theolgy has way more going for it logically than a works based idea. John 3:16 there friends. :-)
Dembski is not behaving ethically in this debate but that doesn’t mean I woulnd’t trust him with my car keys. I can’t believe I find myself defending that goof’s character. I just can’t believe it.
ok, then just explain the ethically thing from above. I mean seriously is a kid who has premarital sex behaving ethically? masturbation? I just don’t see anyway that a works based theology makes any sense. Apparently if an atheist gets into heaven it makes Jesus superflous to Christianity as well. So I don’t see how you can say Ed is doctrinally correct whatever the hell that could possibly ever mean. Dawkins and Harris may be correct when they say moderate believers are part of the problem.
Any and all religious doctrines have their backers and naysayers and nary a shred of difference evidence wise between them. In my view the faith alone theolgy has way more going for it logically than a works based idea. John 3:16 there friends. :-)
Dembski is not behaving ethically in this debate but that doesn’t mean I woulnd’t trust him with my car keys. I can’t believe I find myself defending that goof’s character. I just can’t believe it.
Dembski is not behaving ethically in this debate but that doesn’t mean I woulnd’t trust him with my car keys.
Dembski would make an excellent designated driver, I imagine, especially if he knew you had a camera.
This is for Susan, and I hope she reads it.
Ma’am, if you’ve read Pharyngula at all in the last year, you might have noticed my posts and that I identify myself as a Christian. That doesn’t give me any brownie points, though, any more than your beliefs as expressed here would automatically entitle you to respect. Respect must be earned, and the only thing posts like yours are going to earn is well-deserved scorn.
Don’t you realize how arrogant, self-righteous and smug you sound? Don’t you realize that it makes skeptics justifiably angry for people like you to suggest they are not on God’s ‘nice list’? Why don’t you just come out and say what you really mean, which apparently is along the lines of, ‘Ha ha, better wise up or you’re going to hell?’
Shoot, I’d rather go to hell with PZ Myers than spend one minute in ‘heaven’ with someone who thought that honest doubt should be punished with hellfire. You can sprinkle as much sugar as you like on it, but at the end of the day you’re pushing a gospel that’s based on fear, rather than love. And you know what? Some of these folk here are my friends and colleagues. You, lady, can take a hike. Angrily..SH
Shoot, I’d rather go to hell with PZ Myers than spend one minute in ‘heaven’ with someone who thought that honest doubt should be punished with hellfire.
PZ isn’t going to hell. But you just bought yourself a one-way ticket.
That’s right: I’m a petty, arbitrary prick. I thought everybody knew that.
(watches a hundred African kids starve to death)
What do you all think of Pibb Xtra? Too sweet?
Dear God Almighty,
There are some huge bushfires in Victoria that need putting out, and a desperate water shortage. Please could You arrange for some torrential rain? 40 days and nights would be perfect.
Yours sincerely,
Lots of Australians
Um… please: “Young people with moslem parents” and “Young people with Jewish parents”.
Language is important.
Oxford professors write books, young atheists post clips of themselves denying the Holy Ghost on the YouTube, and leaders of the ID movement post Flash animations with fart noises.
Yep, that all seems just about right.
Heres my favourite bit of the whole hilarious exchange, where an IDiot commenting on a previous post has a moment of pure revelation (but unfortunately fails to notice it !)
“25. Fross // Dec 20th 2006 at 6:27 pm
yea, i felt a little embarrassed by this. Personaly I put God and Jesus in the same category as the Easter Bunny and Santa, and I’d feel just as silly if I saw a bunch of youtube videos of kids saying they don’t believe in Santa. I guarantee that most of those kids grew up in a fundy family and while their beliefs have changed, the way they act on professing their beliefs or lack of beliefs has remained the same.
Comment by Fross — December 20, 2006 @ 6:27 pm
26. faithandshadow // Dec 20th 2006 at 6:34 pm
Comparing God to the easter bunny and Santa shows the same level of maturity as these kids making these videos.
Comment by faithandshadow — December 20, 2006 @ 6:34 pm”
MartinC — no doubt. I laughed my ass off when I saw that.
But ID isn’t about religion – no, siree, and they’ll ban you for suggesting it. To paraphrase Lenny, it’s no wonder they keep losing in court…
– JS
To Scott Hatfield: Yeah, but we got that pesky Romans 1 goin’ on. You know: v. 20, “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.” And be sure to see verses 22 and 30-32.
There’s just no excuse for people to remain atheists. Folks who continue to profess doubt about the existence of God, and His obvious Hand in nature, are described at the end of that chapter. Not very happy campers. Is that whose side you’re on? I sincerely doubt it.
I think PZ is a brilliant person who does very well in describing tightly-focused slices of life, but hasn’t been focusing on the big picture about nature and reality and how everything intersects and what it all means. Once he does, he’s going to be a dynamite addition to the Body of Christ. He “gets it” about creation, and now all that’s left is for him to “get it” about the Creator. That won’t happen for him if folks like me don’t step in to his life from time to time to give him a little wake-up call. That’s all I’m about here. Now, in what way is it mean and nasty of me to pray for this to happen for him, and for him to make that leap of faith through which he can gain salvation and eternal life through the grace of our Lord JC?
I just think someone who could watch a magnificent “V” of geese flying, or contemplate the amazing intricacies of human lactation, or listen to a symphony, or look closely at a feather or a hammerhead shark, and NOT recognize the order and design of an all-powerful, all-loving, spectacularly creative God, and in fact can continually “diss” God and ridicule His people here on Earth, as so many of the posters on this blog keep doing, is just being foolish, perverse and obstinate. Yes, it’s blasphemy on its face. And yes, it’s self-sabotage, as those who do this are denying themselves peace and happiness while here, and the life eternal afterwards.
That doesn’t mean I hate ’em by stating this or am trying to rub it in that I’m saved and they’re not there yet; I’m just trying to wake ’em up and point ’em toward the Bible and saving faith, which is the most loving thing a person can do. There’s no time like Christmas for that to happen, and that’s the only reason I dropped in on you guys again.
Hey, Bro: I wish you well. Hang in there. Joy to the world!
it’s Münchhausen, by the way, with “ü”.
We’re here at the Seed-Magazine, the experts for german Um-Louts, as one is supposed to think… ;-)
There’s no time like Christmas for that to happen, and that’s the only reason I dropped in on you guys again.
I wonder what is in the egg nog.
Susan: I’m deeply saddened by your response. You seem to think that because Paul had a beef with the materialist philosophers of his day, that somehow that gives you license to preach hellfire and damnation to PZ.
Please. I don’t believe Paul’s version of the cosmological argument in Romans enjoins us to push our limited understanding down the throats of the unwilling, even if it’s ‘good for them’, the theological equivalent of Brussel sprouts. Why don’t you accept responsibility for your own choices, rather than hiding behind the authority of scripture? For that matter, how can you expect anyone to really believe that what you are doing is loving when, by your own account, the object of your affection is ‘foolish, perverse and obstinate’?
Sure, praying for someone that you care about isn’t “mean and nasty” in itself. Announcing to the whole world in a patronizing way that you’re praying for their salvation, on the other hand, strikes me as an act of clueless insensitivity.
After all, it’s not like you know PZ personally and can establish a context of caring in other ways; you’re a disembodied persona making noises on the Internet. So your claim rings pretty hollow: no one cares how much you think you know until they know how much you care, and I doubt that any nonbeliever reading your message will believe you care about anything other than asserting your beliefs!
Still, let’s assume for a moment that you really aren’t this forum’s answer to Dolores Umbridge, and that you really think that what you are doing is a blessing to ‘the lost’ on this forum. Let’s try a little thought experiment….
How would you feel if you started receiving unsolicited emails from non-believers eager to help you relinquish your delusion of faith? And (while they’re at it) they remark that the reason they want to help you stop being so blind, ignorant, superstitious and wicked is that they (smile winningly) just LUV you! How does that scenario grab you, Susan? I doubt that you would overjoyed.
Grimly…Scott
The “Pascal’s Wager” argument is one of the stupidest pieces of pseudo-logic in the religionist’s arsenal. No wonder DaveScot resorts to it.
Okay, from my Christian perspective, a few observations.
Observation 1: God has a sense of humor. Dembski’s denial of that fact doesn’t change it, though it does suggest Dembski isn’t as close to God as he claims.
Even though Ed Darrell is not a creationist, he’s as big an idiot as any of them, with his hubristic pretense to knowledge about God’s character and desires. These “moderate” morons should not be spared criticism just because they are “on our side” on one particular issue.
Don’t you realize how arrogant, self-righteous and smug you sound?
Of course she doesn’t — or if she does, she thinks that’s proper; righteousness is a virtue, doncha know. For Jesus effing Christ’s sake, get a grip Scott, you saccharine twit.
Apparently Susan believes that a symphony is God’s work. Stuff you, Mozart. Hell, stuff you, John Lennon.
If things of ‘beauty’, like geese and squids, are proof of God’s work, than surely the ebola virus and the Amazonian candiru that Kseniya brought up proves he’s a nutjob.
Doctrinally, I think Ed’s got it right.
What hell does that mean? Stupid arbitrary set of rulesally, Ed has it right.
No Christian “has it right”, moron.
If things of ‘beauty’, like geese and squids, are proof of God’s work
Ah, but it’s much much worse than that — it’s the letter V that the geese form that she thinks is proof of God’s work. Even for a Christian she’s retarded. But in some ways I find Hatfield and Darrell even worse; they think they’re better than her because they have a better understanding of, and superior performance of … Christian doctrine.
Simply incanting a denial doesn’t do it. Lying wholesale, misleading innocent children into the wicked paths of creationism (wow, there’s a phrase loaded with irony!), cheating on peer review, and in general denying the stuff that creation shows us to be true — THAT’s blasphemy, a rejection of the Holy Spirit.
How exactly is lying wholesale a rejection of an invisible ghost, while denying that the ghost exists is not?
Moron.
If it helps, I hereby deny the Shekhinah.
Surely if you don’t believe the Holy Spirit exists, then you will naturally behave as if the Holy Spirit doesn’t exist. Part of that behaviour is being willing to deny the existence of the Holy Spirit. And I understood that blasphemy, in both legal and theological terms, was very much about the spoken (or written) word.
You can prove anything from a falsehood, including that denying the existence of “the Holy Spirit” is or is not “denying the Holy Spirit” and that “lying outright” is or is not “denying the Holy Spirit”. And, as Uber notes, masturbating can also be proven to “deny the Holy Spirit” — as well, of course, as lying outright about masturbating (I never have, Ed — am I now as damned as Dembski?)
This is one reason why religion, or faith, itself is a threat to us all.
truth machine: Please stand closer to the mirror when you type…..
For the record, I’m not claiming that Ed and I have some sort of absolute truth. Shoot, I don’t even know Ed! When I said that he had it right, doctrinally, I meant that I concur with Ed’s sentiment, which is that serious Christians can find theological problems with what Dembski says and does.
Now, that’s the sort of thing that will have no meaning to one (so to speak) outside the fold, but even if *you* find that sort of thing unhelpful, there are quite a few in the pews who do.
After all, Dembski makes technical-sounding claims from math that virtually no layman know anything about and which (frankly) most of us have no business explaining, much less arguing against. The obscure nature of Dembski’s arguments is one of the things that have insulated him, frankly.
On the other hand, you don’t need to know any math to realize that his recent antics will raise questions in the minds of those believers who still hold the odd notion that one should tell the truth. Packaging a few of his most glaring public stumbles of late with a brief summary of his views can, in the right hands, effectively undermine a line of pro-ID argumentation which has otherwise been difficult to effectively counter with lay people due to its technical nature.
As for whether or not Susan can be reached, who knows? She may well regard herself as virtuous and my attempts to shame her into self-examination may be futile. I was bound to try, though. Must be my saccharine side showing, though I’m pretty sure I gave it to her without sugar-coating it, if you’ll bother to read what I wrote again.
At any rate, “self-righteousness” is most certainly *not* a virtue within a Christian context. Those who hand out the moron awards may have the confidence to feel differently, of course. Sourly….SH
“But in some ways I find Hatfield and Darrell even worse”
I think that this, on its face, is a load of bunk.
Hey, it’s great to know that the Lord Jesus is the product of virgin birth – rather puts him on a par with others like that: aphids.
For Susan, merry christmas cause god really loves you.
Here is a nice pict of an Amazonian Candiru which had the misfortune of having an encounter with modern medicine.
Warning, not for the squeamish.
http://camelot.lfhk.cuni.cz/parazitatlas/jpgs640/330.jpg
Note to an ID fanatic. The only reason there is an atheist movement (so to speak) and atheists, is because you persist in believing this crazy God, Jesus and Holy Ghost nonsense and delight in shoving it down our throats.
Think about that.
Without you, we don’t exist! Now that’s some irony for you.
Um, don’t look know, Susan, but your intellectual fly is down.
I suppose one might, at first glance, look at that verse as a warning to those who don’t profess a faith in God immediately. But there’s a deeper meaning there. It says that creation manifests what it manifests, that we should treat reality as reality. It is, in short, a warning to creationists. It says, “Creation is what it is. Those who deny the things creation demonstrates are [without excuse].” Now comes biology and Darwin to discover that evolution is among those “invisible” things that lie behind what is clearly seen, as indeed literally are genes, molecules, atoms, etc.
Nope, for my money, (and fate, if you’re going to keep being stupidly literal about stuff), I’ll stick with the rationalists and P.Z. on this stuff.
A kid in one of our Sunday school classes made a great poster a few years ago: “Jesus came to take away our sins, not our brains.” I suppose we should have it published, and put on billboards.
In the meantime, Romans 1:20 warns us against stupidly denying reality. P.Z.’s on the right side of that equation. You and your bizarre goose stories are on the wrong side of it. Think hard about this one: Christian theology does not claim that unbelievers will burn in hell for standing up for the truth. It’s difficult to read the New Testament without understanding that it’s rather a bad idea to deny reality, or worse, to encourage others, especially children, to deny reality.
Have you ever heard of “slipstream?” Do you have any clue about the physical reasons geese and other migrating birds may fly the way they do, occasionally in inverted V formations? (And, by the way — are you aware that “virgin” is not the word used in the original languages? Are you claiming the geese are theologically wrong?)
Please, stay away from my children.
It’s not as if this weren’t already the subject of much discourse — how is it that such divine things can come from seemingly profane origins? Wasn’t that the complaint of the character Salieri in the play Amadeus?
That was the error the demon Wormwood committed in C. S. Lewis’ entertaining (even for atheists) Screwtape Letters. As his Uncle Screwtape wrote to him, he had failed to understand that a human, conceived in a bed in a fit of appearingly unholy lust, could rise to make noble decisions and do noble things.
And that is exactly the sin (if that’s what it is — it’s certainly error) committed by creationists and IDists. They “disbelieve” science, scientists, and especially the theories of evolution and Darwin, because the information shows that we all come from extremely humble origins. Our ancestors were hairy apes. Their ancestors were even more humble. And all our ancestors, far enough back, aren’t far from the usual creationist epithet of “slime.”
In short, creationists and IDists argue that if we are not of noble birth, we can’t be noble in the end.
Here’s why I find that troubling: The key story of Christian narrative is of a boy born out of wedlock, to a poor family, in such poor circumstances that he had to be laid in the manger of the sheep, in a stable — there among the spittle and loose cud bits, within the aroma of the defecation and urination of domestic animals. And, according to that story, that human of most lowly birth was a manifestation of God. The supreme nobility rising from the supremely humble origin.
Creationism and IDism deny that possibility. They deny at the foundation the very story of salvation that Christianity is based on. And then they have the gall to complain when others deny the story on more rational grounds?
Maya Angelou says, “And still I rise.” Creationism says “Stop it!” The poets, the composers, the scientists, and all of life, refuse to follow ossified and incorrect philosophy. It galls the creationists no end. To them, God’s ends cannot be accomplished by humans, but instead depend on some hairy thunderer with a magic wand.
There is much to be changed in the life, much to be corrected. The issue is whether we choose to understand things and how to make things better, or whether we choose to suffer events as if there were nothing we could do. Geese have enough sense to try to take advantage of a slipstream when they fly long distances. Science is a sort of slipstream for human achievement. I pray that creationists will wake up to take advantage of it.
The symphony is Mozart’s work. There may be divinity in the process; that’s the mystery. Claiming the mystery doesn’t exist won’t help us find another Mozart, nor does recognizing the true origins of the music detract from it. How much reality can people deny before they go really, really over the edge?
Susan: “I think PZ is a brilliant person who does very well in describing tightly-focused slices of life, but hasn’t been focusing on the big picture about nature and reality and how everything intersects and what it all means. Once he does, he’s going to be a dynamite addition to the Body of Christ.”
What part of the body would PZ be, Susan?
What it all means is this: you’re living in a fantasy world. Come off your Jesus high and learn to think for yourself. You’re bright. You can do it! Stop wasting your time on a pretty tale invented by a bunch of displaced, disgruntled shepherds two thousand years ago.
It’s readily apparent that you spout the Jesus nonsense to convince yourself of its reality. Repeating your beliefs incessantly doesn’t make them more real, unfortunately.
Have a nice holiday.
Wow! Scott has written “sourly,” “angrily,” and “grimly” on this post.
Way to go, Scott! That’s the Christmas spirit. There’s hope for you yet!
Ed: Ho ho ho! It makes as much sense to look at a “V” formation of geese and infer that it’s God sending a sign about the virgin birth at Christmastime, as it does for evolutionahooligans to look at nature and infer that it all jumped into place by accident. Migration is enormously complex, and I just don’t see how anyone could look at all those behaviors and avian anatomy and the timing and navigational accuracy and hummingbirds on goosie backs, and believe that it was by random chance that the goosies got into their groove in the first place, all by their chubby little selves. I was trying to zing you guys a little bit with the “V” allusion. It’s abundantly clear that the universe, the Earth, and everything and everybody on it, all the way down to the Christmas goose on your groaning board, are here by divine design.
Got that Psalm 19 thing goin’ on.
Hey, belief is a choice. That’s all I’m sayin’. At Christmastime, I just pray that everybody will have a shot at being able to make that choice, by seeing the big picture, and hearing from neighbors and friends that Christmas is for real, and we ain’t just whistlin’ Dixie about why we’re so happy about it.
To Scott Hatfield: Yeah, but we got that pesky Romans 1 goin’ on. You know: v. 20, “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.” And be sure to see verses 22 and 30-32.
There’s just no excuse for people to remain atheists.
Of course not. Not after this sterling argument limned by you:
1) God exists.
2) If God exists, there must be evidence of his existence.
3) Therefore there is.
4) Therefore God exists.
Who could possibly fail to find that convincing?
That won’t happen for him if folks like me don’t step in to his life from time to time to give him a little wake-up call.
If your wake-up call included actual evidence, rather than content-free quotations of alleged ‘scripture’, then we atheists wouldn’t be hitting the “snooze” button.
I just think someone who could watch a magnificent “V” of geese flying, or contemplate the amazing intricacies of human lactation, or listen to a symphony, or look closely at a feather or a hammerhead shark, and NOT recognize the order and design of an all-powerful, all-loving, spectacularly creative God….
As an amateur musicologist, professional musician, and composer, I’ve listened to many symphonies in my day, and not a single one of them was attributed to anyone by the name of “God”, so I fail to see the connection.
For that matter, the connection to any of the natural items you identify is also far from clear until the theists make the preliminary step of explaining how a supernatural entity interacts with and produces causal change in a natural universe. Perhaps you can get started on that problem?
So… god is Van Gogh?
What part of the body would PZ be, Susan?
The brain. It’s the part of the Body of Christ that’s most poorly represented, especially by Susan.
and believe that it was by random chance that the goosies got into their groove in the first place, all by their chubby little selves.
Of course it wasn’t random chance; it’s physics. Flying in a “V” formation takes less overall energy. Birds flying thousands of miles to migrate would have quickly picked up on it, arriving at breeding sites sooner, not dropping from the skies in exhaustion, etc.
Claiming that birds fly in a “V” formation because for some reason God speaks English, or geese speak English, and desire to indicate “virgin” at the time of the Virgin Birth is an absurd and primitive superstition.
Why not “parthenos” from Greek, “betulah” from Hebrew, or “b’tooltha” from Aramaic? If birds were flying in a formation indicative of pi, bet, or even better the yod-heh-vav-heh of the Tetragrammaton, then that would be impressive.
“or look closely at a feather or a hammerhead shark, and NOT recognize the order and design of an all-powerful, all-loving, spectacularly creative God”
Or a tumor, or the HIV virus, or gangrene, or the aftermath of Katrina, or the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami, or a 3d degree burn, or a rattlesnake bite, or dmoestic life in Congo or Ivory Coast or Uganda or Darfur or Zimbabwe or Lebanon or Afghanistan, or poison ivy, or an orphanage, or a genocide (there are plenty to choose from), or a drought, or a famine, or a pandemic, or a battle, or a war, or a sweatshop, or slavery.
An all-loving god. What a pathetic, cruel, disgusting joke.
I once saw two formations of geese flying side by side. It was more like a W. I was pretty sure that it was a sign….
“Watch out below, we’re about to crap in formation!”
So kind.
Peter Barber wrote:
“Dear God Almighty,
There are some huge bushfires in Victoria that need putting out, and a desperate water shortage. Please could You arrange for some torrential rain? 40 days and nights would be perfect.
Yours sincerely
Lots of Australians”
And deny Shane Warne of getting his 700th? And preventing your lot from wiping the floor with the Poms? I think there are probably a few Australians who would prefer God Almighty let the bush burn for a while – all that smoke makes it harder to pick the flipper.
Yours,
An NZer (begrudgingly saluting the greatest bowler I’ve ever seen)
I like Ed and Scott’s post so I don’t necessarily agree with this:
But I do agree with the latter portion of the sentence. I think Ed’s religion would ahrdly be accepted by the majority of Christians and fankly find it very muddled. He has no real way of showing or knowing what he is saying is any closer to correctness than Demski’s crew and as mentioned I think they are much more logically coherent that Ed on this despite the fact he and I would likely agree on real world issues more readily.
No they do not. They may do alot of things but this they certainly do not do. And I’m still waiting to hear how one can ethically(whatever that is) live their way into heaven. Like I said it makes the entire notion of Jesus unnecessary.
Most people are ethical 99+% of the time. Our mistakes are a relatively minor portion of ours lives which is why they are noticable. That means that on any ‘ethics’ test the vast majority of humans score very high.
Since everybody is reporting everyones crap without permission these days, I feel the need to repost a comment that Richard Dawkins himself made at his website. I got a feeling that Dawkins wont mind if I report this one as long as I attribute it properly:
—begin dawkins quote–
“Now, let me return the favour by reproducing a 2004 e-mail from Dembski to me:
“Dear Prof. Dawkins,
I enjoyed this bit of fun in last week’s Guardian. It might interest you to know that Senator Rick Santorum, who is close to President Bush, endorsed my forthcoming book The Design Revolution. It might also interest you to know that President Bush lives in the same Texas county that I do (McLennan County — his home is about 35 miles from my home). It might futher interest you to know that my university, Baylor, today made a bid on the George W. Bush Presidential Library (for the news conference, go to http://www.baylortv.com).
Why might all this interest you? With the recommendations by Senator Santorum and others close to President Bush, I plan to pay him a visit at his home early next year and have a frank discussion with him about the future of science in the United States and the possibilities for public funding of intelligent design research. I expect your remarks below will help me make my case.
Thanks for all you continue to do to advance the work of intelligent design. You are an instrument in the hands of Providence however much you rail against it.
With all good wishes,
Bill Dembski”
I would be fascinated to hear the current status of Dembski’s bombastic and vainglorious threat to enlist Bush’s personal involvement in ‘intelligent design’ at his university of Baylor. Oh no, I was forgetting, Dembski’s employment at Baylor seems to have come to an unfortunate end (no doubt there is some good explanation for that). Never mind, perhaps his friend Senator Rick Santorum will use his powerful influence in favour of whichever College of Bible Studies may snap Dembski up. Oh dear, silly me I was forgetting, Santorum too is out of a job, booted out of the Senate in one of the biggest upsets in Pennsylvania’s electoral history. Well well, perhaps Bush himself, buoyed up by the runaway success and popularity of his presidency, will still come to the rescue? No, apparently Dembski has given up on his pathetic little power fantasy. In March 2005 he wrote: “I’m afraid with the war in Iraq and the election, I decided to postpone getting in touch with President Bush.” Oh I see, yes of course.
Poor loser Demski, such delusions of grandeur, and now he has nothing better to do with his time than make farting noises over the Internet.”
—end Dawkins quote–
Dembski sure is good at betting on the wrong horse, aint he?
It is disgusting to note all the christian theists arrogantly spouting bilge about a christian god.
It is even more egregious than the bilge spouted by the non-christian theists about their gods, because of the inane certitudes and and a shamelessly proselytising establishment that has inveigled itself like christian cancer through society.
Stupid christian monks are fighting each other in Greece as we speak, and the churches are fragmented everywhere into bigotries of a thousand kinds.
What a bunch of divine hypocrites. And they have the temerity to lecture us on morals and good behaviour.
Pox on all the religious houses !!!
Susan likely cannot be convinced. I just want her to hopefully read these few paragraphs anyway:
The only way to support belief in God is through faith. Faith is belief in something by VIRTUE of its unsupportability. Even if evolution is not true, it has evidence to support it. And even if Christianity is true, it demands belief absent of evidence, merely through unsupported claims in an ancient book.
Like it or not, faith is quickly becoming out of fashion, especially among the youth and the educated. Indeed, the very framework of our higher educational systems teach one to think critically and un-faithfully. Education is the #1 destructor of faith.
Susan, Chrisitan leaders are already talking about the developed world being “post-Christian.” You have only one way to save the souls of all the atheists popping up everywhere: get them to believe in the virtue of FAITH.
So how do you get an evidence-based generation to consider faith a valuable thing? The answer is easy… think about it. Your success as an evangelical depends on it.
Dawkins has commented on Dembski again:
“I have been asked to give my reaction to The Blasphemy Challenge.
[ snipped another elegant but lengthy put down]
The whole matter has also been picked up by P Z Myers on his Pharyngula site (Josh has posted a link) where there are some splendid put-downs of Dembski. Dembski himself has reproduced part of my letter on his own blog but, significantly, he cut the part about his Santorum/Bush braggadocio.”
http://richarddawkins.net/articleComments,425,The-Blasphemy-Challenge,The-Rational-Response-Squad,page4#14068
Dawkins has commented on Dembski again:
“I have been asked to give my reaction to The Blasphemy Challenge.
[ snipped another elegant but lengthy put down]
The whole matter has also been picked up by P Z Myers on his Pharyngula site (Josh has posted a link) where there are some splendid put-downs of Dembski. Dembski himself has reproduced part of my letter on his own blog but, significantly, he cut the part about his Santorum/Bush braggadocio.”
http://richarddawkins.net/articleComments,425,The-Blasphemy-Challenge,The-Rational-Response-Squad,page4#14068
Scott: Yeah, well, there’s a lot more to true love than moon, June, spoon. True love has to do with telling the truth, whether you like it or not. Nobody “loves” traffic signs, either, but they can sure keep you going the right way, and save your life without expecting anything in return. That sounds like true love to me! That’s all I want to be here. Call me . . . a flashing yellow warning light for your soul. :>)
Tristram: Ooh, you got that John 3:12 thing goin’ on. :>) To understand the supernatural probably takes some time with accomodation theory from apologetics. From p. 1 of Norman Geisler’s Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics: “God, because of infinitude, adapts himself to our finite understanding in order to reveal himself.” Just because we can’t understand the supernatural and miracles doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I can’t understand WHY animals know how to migrate and when, how some people can write such beautiful music, where my 6-year-old’s quirky personality comes from, or what gives animals certain instincts, but I accept that they exist, and that’s all anyone can do, at this point. Beyond that, I credit those things to God, because I know Him, and recognize His style, the way you treasure a recipe or a letter because it’s in your grandmother’s handwriting. That’s why I love to see a “V” of geese fly by; that shows the creativity of our Creator, and I love it. It’s a God thing. Remember that the Bible is all true, but revelation is progessive. Little by little, we’re catching on. Keep trying to understand, and one day, you will.
Ophelia: I feel your pain. I don’t like “bad” stuff, either. But one of the milestones of maturity is to be able to take the bad with the good in order to glean the meaning of life from what you see around you. What seems “bad” defines what really is “good,” and we wouldn’t realize it without it. Seven years ago, I got knocked up with a late-in-life, surprise, “whoopsie daisy” baby. Our kids are now ages 23, 22, 19, and 6. At the time, I thought it was the worst thing that had ever happened to me, and I raged against God, kicked my hubby’s bahoonie and moved him out to the barn, etc. etc. Now, though, I can’t imagine life without our adorable Maddy, and can see every day in so many ways why she’s here, and how much good she has already done in her young life. It’s all a matter of perspective. God didn’t make us as little robots or Stepfords in a perfect world; He made us real, with real choices, real dangers, and real consequences. The key is that He also gave us free will. The whole shebang is so that each of us has a chance to choose Him. No, it’s NOT evidence of an unloving God that these bad things exist and haven’t been preventable or solved or cured yet. Remember, if the age of the universe were equated to one calendar year, then the extent of human history so far would only take one minute. So . . . it’s early! Although, as a true Christian, I’ll also tell you: egads, girl, it’s getting late! :>) But God will come through. He said He would, and He always does. Even death and suffering have a purpose, and God’s direct, loving involvement. The purpose is for Him to come closer to us in order to bring us to Him — that’s the whole meaning of Christmas, after all.
I think we need to have a claymation royal rumble between Ed & Scott’s [apparent] version of Jebus the Flying Semite and Susan’s version.
I’d bet $20 bucks on Ed & Scott’s, because it has no identifying characteristics, and it also has the superpower to make up any superpower it wants.
But then again, the vast majority of people who believe in Jebus the Flying Semite do so in Susan’s manner, so if Susan’s Jebus the Flying Semite gains power from its believers, it’s probably going to be more of a tossup.
“But one of the milestones of maturity is to be able to take the bad with the good in order to glean the meaning of life from what you see around you.”
Great, Susan. How mature would you be if that youngest child you mention came down with a slow, debilitating, agonizingly painful, fatal disease?
And more to the point, what are slow, debilitating, agonizingly painful, fatal diseases a sign of? Snowgeese flying in an angle formation are a sign of the virgin; what are horrible diseases a sign of?
To put it more pointedly, why do you find signs in pretty things rather than in ugly ones? Could it be not maturity but selective attention?
Susan, that’s a lovely, sweet, gentle fairy story and I’m sure you’re a lovely, sweet person underneath all that apparent passive-agressiveness. Really, it’s too bad that all Christianity does not believe in the same sweet pastel fairy story that you do, or “witness” with the same saccharine sweetness that you exhibit, except for the parts where you as good as come right out and say, “You dirty, nasty little atheists, I have so much contempt for you.”
PZ can’t you disemvowel this whore?
Susan said:
Are you actually saying that traffic signs express “True Love” for people? You are quite absurd. Try to use better analogies in the future.
Humble origin? What the heck are you smoking? He was (according to Christian doctrine) the only son of the creator and ruler of the entire universe! You can’t get much more un-humble than that. He was born in humble *surroundings*, which is not the same thing at all.
If you had the story of an *ordinary human being* sacrificing himself for the good of all humanity and being exalted by that sacrifice, that would be a very different – and IMO, more inspirational – story. (In fact, some literary figures *do* have this kind of story. Frodo Baggins comes to mind.) But that’s not the story of Jesus. Jesus was about as far as you can get from an ordinary human being. His story isn’t about the heroic potential of each and every one of us – it’s about how he was born destined to be great and everyone else should just shut up and accept his greatness.
It’s practically the exact opposite of the spin you’re trying to put on it.
No!! Please don’t disemvowel her! She’s way too entertaining!
In fact, I can’t wait for her to explain how her most recent gyno exam proves the Gospel of John. ;-)
Susan said: “It’s a God thing.”
I like that expression. Very serviceable.
Iraq? “It’s a God thing.” What style!
The Darfur genocide? “It’s a God thing.”
The threat of a cruel death at the hands of another human being? An excellent opportunity to “choose him.”
But Susan is at home for the holidays with her cozy family, and that’s a God thing, too. No worries. No need to think too much about the “real” world. It all works out in the end.
I think God is a giant pacifier for Susan and she is sucking on him for all she’s worth. She’s a lost cause.
Suck away, Susan, suck away.
Suck on the body of Christ.
George: (with respect to my grumpiness) Gee, thanks. (smiles) And a merry frickin’ Christmas to you!
Ed: Susan’s dementia has you wound a little tight as well, eh? What a wonderful picture ‘we Christians’ present for our skeptical friends. Talk about damned if we do, damned if we don’t. If we stand up to a mealy-mouthed harpy on Christian principles, we’re just more bizarre religionists engaged in schism. If we don’t stand up to her, then we are the silent enablers and appeasers of fundies everywhere.
Uber: You make a good point, but here’s the thing. The degree to which creationists and IDevotees are more logically coherent than a liberal Christian theologically is essentially tied to their commitment to Biblical inerrancy. If you deny that foundationally, as I do, then much of the logical structure evaporates and you’re left with a more level playing field.
And the battle is joined, is it not? They want science to conform to their pre-existing belief system. I want pre-existing belief systems confined to the personal sphere of believers and kept the hell out of science and governance.
stogoe: You make me laugh, but the real beef I have with Susan is ethical, rather than doctrinal. Ed demonstrates the possibility of a doctrinal critique of Susan’s views, but that doesn’t mean you need to thump a Bible to reject her. You simply have to look at where her attitude leads, conclude it’s monstrous, and be done with it.
And I am done with it. Faith be damned if it leads to a loveless Lord and a gospel of fear….SH
Suck on the body of Christ.
Tastes like myrrh!
Seven years ago, I got knocked up with a late-in-life, surprise, “whoopsie daisy” baby. Our kids are now ages 23, 22, 19, and 6. At the time, I thought it was the worst thing that had ever happened to me, and I raged against God, kicked my hubby’s bahoonie and moved him out to the barn, etc. etc. Now, though, I can’t imagine life without our adorable Maddy, and can see every day in so many ways why she’s here
It’s great when they’re finally old enough to clean your toilets, isn’t it?
Ironic, as you note, considering the whole life of Jesus bit. Of course, megachurches are also ironic considering the whole “sell all your possessions and give them to the poor” bit.
From this thread, then, I have learned that geese have more sense than Ms. Williams. I have also been reminded of how annoying smug parasites like her are.
I don’t have a camera, so I had to post my denial on my Live Journal. Still, the important thing is that I committed blasphemy.
Lobotomies for some, brain-damaging drug cocktails for others!
Tristram: Ooh, you got that John 3:12 thing goin’ on. :>)
I see you’re returning to the Pinocchio smiley. It’s a good choice, since everything you’ve said was an incredibly dishonest attempt at misdirection, starting with your wholly irrelevant Biblical citation.
To understand the supernatural probably takes some time with accomodation theory from apologetics. From p. 1 of Norman Geisler’s Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics: “God, because of infinitude, adapts himself to our finite understanding in order to reveal himself.” Just because we can’t understand the supernatural and miracles doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
That’s nice, but where in any of that do you find a mechanism for a supernatural entity producing causal change in a natural universe?
I can’t understand WHY animals know how to migrate and when,
Then why don’t you read the works of ethologists and find out?
how some people can write such beautiful music,
Ask a composer.
where my 6-year-old’s quirky personality comes from,
Ask a child psychologist.
or what gives animals certain instincts,
Go back to the ethologist.
but I accept that they exist, and that’s all anyone can do, at this point.
Some of us think that researching why these things exist and coming up with something better than “They were magicked into existence by an unevidenced deity using an unknown mechanism” is worth the effort.
Beyond that, I credit those things to God, because I know Him,
Then why can’t you tell us what mechanism your XY-sex-chromosome god used to enact causal change in a natural universe?
and recognize His style, the way you treasure a recipe or a letter because it’s in your grandmother’s handwriting.
So what does Ebola indicate about your god’s style? Or fetus in fetu?
That’s why I love to see a “V” of geese fly by; that shows the creativity of our Creator, and I love it. It’s a God thing.
Your creator was creative enough to make them fly in such a way as to be easily explicable using conventional aerodynamics?
Remember that the Bible is all true,
Even the untrue bits?
but revelation is progessive. Little by little, we’re catching on. Keep trying to understand, and one day, you will.
I understand perfectly adequately. In the absence of reasonable answers, you will superstitiously make some up. It’s nothing more than a little bit of warmed-over animism, glossed over with Christianity and a dollop of passive-aggressive proselytization.
I don’t understand why any of you are responding to her.
She’s built walls: a fortress deep and mighty that none may penetrate.
She has her books and her poetry to protect her; she is shielded in her armor, hiding in her room, safe within her womb.
(Apologies to Paul Simon.)
So, ignore her. She can neither convince nor be convinced. Plus, the more you say to her (and probably about her, to my own chagrin), the more she says back (or has no one else noticed that each post takes more page-downs to get past?).
For the Christians here who disagree with her, it is sufficient – more than sufficient – for you simply to say so (to the rest of us), but really: only if you absolutely must.
Besides, I thought this thread was about the Blasphemy Challenge.
Ed Darrell wrote:
From the NIV:
The apologist is telling us denying evolution is a rejection of the Holy Spirit but denying the Holt Spirit is not. This is nonsensical enough, but when apologists like Ed just start making things up to explain away their god sending people to hell for insulting him but not for molesting innocent children, they forget this kind of nonsense is sometimes repeated more than once in their holy book:
Does the apologist want to come back and make up another excuse why saying “I reject the Holy Spirit.” is not a rejection of the Holy Spirit but denying evolution is?
This is somewhat of topic and I know it is not indicative of the religion as a whole but oftentimes when one discusses the is religion good or bad it tends to focus on large ideas wars, killings, etc. I see it’s primary horror in the day to day renderings and harm done. As an example I was on another site today and it linked to a link to a link and I found this comment involving a religious discussion:
‘The situation that Mike described in his response to Lee; is my own…
My mother was my father’s second wife. My father was and is a minister in the Church of Christ. The year I was born my parent’s moved, and the eldership at the church my father was working at basically said that my father and mother were living in sin, and something had to be done.
So my father and mother were at that time both convinced that the only way to fix the situation was to divorce (at least until my father’s first wife died, at which time they felt they would be “released” to reunite.)
As a result, I grew up without a father at home. My mom was a single mom, raising two children, my brother and I, with little to no help from my dad. I speak to my dad about twice a year. He didn’t attend my wedding, either of my graduations, or any school activity I participated in. The stigma of divorce and remarriage led to the secret keeping.
We became the secret family. I have half brothers and sisters who don’t know my brother or I exist. My mom never once talked with me about what happened with my dad, until my sophomore year of college. My brother and I only talked about what happened for first time last year. My mom is so wounded, that at times I can hardly stand to be around her’
It is so sad as to make one weep. And why did this tragedy happen to this family. One reason and one reason alone- religion and human indoctrination. I know this is not how most churches operate but if even 10% do how much are they contributing to human misery for not rational reason whatsoever? How is such a thing defensible to any feeling human?
I once saw two formations of geese flying side by side. It was more like a W. I was pretty sure that it was a sign….
A sign that George Bush is a virgin?
Puzzledly…Kseniya
Susan,
Our kids are now ages 23, 22, 19, and 6. At the time, I thought it was the worst thing that had ever happened to me, and I raged against God…
That really IS a tragedy. Why do bad things happen to good people? When my mother’s children were 12, 14 and 19, she developed a persistent backache which turned out to be ovarian cancer. Five months later, on her daughter’s 20th birthday, she succumbed to the ravages of the disease.
I feel your pain. Really I do.
And let me pre-emptively state that if you suggest that I need to learn to take the good with the bad and chalk it all up to God’s plan, I will hunt you down like a truffle, sneak into your house, paint your Christmas tree black, put a lump of coal in your stocking and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Amazonian Candiru in your underwear.
Actually, Susan, I will risk incurring the disrespect of the Pharyngulan community by saying that I find you well-intentioned and even sweet in an exasperating kind of way, but I must also say:
1. Perceiving messages in the formations of flying birds is a sign, yes: a sign of either hallucinogenic drug use or psychosis.
2. If getting pregnant is the worst thing that ever happened to you, I suggest you drop this business of advising people on accepting the good with the bad.
3. You are dead-on about one thing: PZ “gets it” about creation. I think anyone who loves science “gets it” about creation.
You and I, Susan, we share a love of the Universe. I’d say we share that with most, perhaps all, of the people posting here. The universe is a miraculous place – miraculous in the figurative, mundane sense. The universe is real, and its existence does not imply the necessity of a Creator.
But is there a Creator? I don’t know. I don’t care. Simply being here and having the consciousness to appreciate it is the miracle. For me, that’s enough.
Tastes like myrrh!
By the way, GWW, that was a genuine laugh-out-loud. Thanks. Now I’m having Life of Brian flashbacks!
Historically speaking, how far would humans have progressed if we had to rely on someone as inquisitive as Susan?
(Probably fair to say you’d be freezing your ass off)
Bill Hicks–“A lot of Christians wear crosses around their necks. You think when Jesus comes back, he ever wants to see a fucking cross? Kind of like going up to Jackie Onassis with a rifle pendant on, you know.”
“Once he does, he’s going to be a dynamite addition to the Body of Christ.”
I’m having a good time imagining PZ blowing Jesus’ fingers off come next fourth of July.
Along the lines of Bill Hicks:
Lenny Bruce joked that if Christ had come in our time, Catholic girls would now be walking around wearing little gold or silver electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.
Susan could be for real, but I’m starting to reach my incredulity threshold. She could be someone’s idea of a joke: a bored prankster, typing away in their basement, riling up the Pharyngula boards. Maybe I’m not cynical enough.
Nevertheless, it’s been entertaining.
It’s all good festive fun.
At some point, though, perhaps it’ll be worth considering moving back to discussing the substantive, interesting and useful aspects of ID, instead of farting judges and whether invisible sky daddies invented scrofula and the King’s Evil.
Just in case, y’know, this whole business has turned into a mammoth exercise in food relief for starving trolls.
R
Alienward, I’m not a Christian and I have no dog in this fight but I had to jump in and say your reading skills are seriously underdeveloped if you can’t see how the quote you posted says exactly what Scott says. Can’t you understand a simple metaphor after someone spends hundreds of words explaining it to you? Evidently not. It’s bloody SAYING that all blasphemy is a forgivable crime, but there is another, more serious crime of “blaspheming against the Holy Spirit”) which is somehow not covered under the category “all the sins and blasphemies of man” and is therefore a different order of crime than literal blasphemy. As for what, exactly, that crime might consist of– well, Scott had some ideas which he very patiently explained. Gah… I really don’t care that much, but it irritates me to see someone being so patronising towards someone who seems to be quite a bit smarter than he is. Plus taking the Bible literally is exactly what fundamentalists do and I think it should probably be discouraged in general. Allow the possibility of non-fundie interpretations of the Bible and you might allow some of the less deranged fundies some breathing room to back out of their dangerous belief system.
I have no problem with Ed’s sentiments, but hasn’t anyone noticed that he is presenting the Arian heresy? I think most seminary-educated Christians would take offence, not that that would bother me any.
I am now calling myself “barkdog,” a name bestowed by students and colleagues, because there are simply too many Davids (or Daves) around.
Susan sees a god filled world. Many don’t. Here’s my question, as a non-scientist but someone whose reading of these fora leads me to conclude that no-one seems to change their mind with argument.
If physicists can argue that quantum particles are one third real and two thirds imaginary, that particles behave differently depending on who is observing them or whether they are being observed at all, why wouldn’t the macro world we see be equally er, independent to one’s view point?
Evidence: Susan “sees” God everywhere.
Kali: Yes I can understand and appreciate a good metaphor, unfortunately all I see is an attempted rationalisation by one xtian of their interpretation over another xtian’s interpretation, which is I believe Alienward’s point. I.e. at the end of the day it is all BS, just marginally different BS from either so who cares. Except, not forgetting of course, both Dawkins and Harris’ point that the moderates gives legitimacy to the fundies by justifying belief based purely on faith.
Morion, that is a valid question, but one I think is easily answered, even by a physics layperson such as myself.
The macro world does not behave like the quantum world, which is why phrases like “quantum weirdness” are so ubiquitous. The assumption that it does, or can, leads to what is commonly known as “quantum abuse.”
Consider, also, the famous thought experiment known as “Schroedinger’s Cat,” which seems to be widely misunderstood as a demonstration of how quantum uncertainly means the cat is indeed both alive and dead at the same time, at least until the box is opened and the act of observation determines the cat’s actual state.
However, as I understand it, Schroedinger’s intent was to show that quantum behaviors don’t extend to the macro world, and applying quantum concepts to the macro world yield absurdities like Schroedinger’s Cat.
We can shape our own lives to some degree, and our experience of reality is subjective, but that is NOT the same thing as being able to shaping reality with the “power” of our consciousness. Nope.
Let’s put the Christmas cookies down on the lowest shelf where the kiddies can reach them:
JC is real, evolution is not, and those two truths are not based on blind faith or wishful thinking — but evidence and experience. I’ve met and talked to the Person Whom you guys keep blaspheming in your vain attempts to contend that He doesn’t exist. It wasn’t my imagination — I hadn’t been drinking and certainly not smoking anything — it was in the middle of the night, in my dining room, and He talked to me.
Actually, He “spoke into my heart” — that’s closer to what happened. I didn’t see anything — it was pitch black — nor did I hear anything out loud, but His side of the conversation registered in my mind and I knew it was the Person of Jesus Christ.
I can only describe the feeling I had during and after that brief conversation as awesome and wonderful, but that doesn’t even come close to how great it was.
The conversation centered on some issues I had been having involving my children, and He referred me to some Bible verses I had just read at bedtime, hours before. He asked me questions, which as I answered I saw that He was showing me that I was doing OK with these issues — it was in no sense a scary or shameful experience in any way, even though here I was in my robe and slippers, conversing with the Creator of the Universe! :>)
He was soooo loving and gentle about it, and it was truly the highlight of my entire life.
What happened was, I had awakened in the night and was stumbling through the dark house to go outside and sit in my favorite lawn chair and look at the stars and pray. I stubbed my toe on a dining-room chair in the darkness, and grabbed the back of the chair to steady myself. Suddenly, His Thought came into my mind: “We walk by faith, not sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7), which I had JUST read the night before in my bedtime Bible reading, and pretty humorous in the context, since I had just stubbed my toe in the darkness even though I was in my familiar dining room.
I mean, that statement and the other things He said that night came into my mind, but I didn’t think them, and wouldn’t have: at that point, I was still a pretty lukewarm Christian, one of the “frozen chosen.” I didn’t know the Bible all that well at that point. That’s another reason I knew it was Him, and not my own imagination: I was not capable of thinking up the things He said, or at least, thought into my mind.
Our conversation probably lasted less than a minute, and then it was over, and I just felt amazed and elated and blessed. I was crying, but it wasn’t out of fear in any stretch of the imagination.
After the conversation, I went outside and prayed for a while, then was cold and came in and lay on the couch in our family room to read the Bible for a few more minutes. The moon was so full, I didn’t need to turn on the light to see to read.
As soon as I opened up the Bible, I saw the shadow of a cross that had formed on the pages of the open Bible, formed by the moonlight shining past the window mullions. Between the divine visitation, the super-relevant and super-personal content of the conversation, and that cross, I broke down in sobs of amazement and joy, yielded my life to JC once and for all, and became a born-again Christian.
Now, it was actually Jesus there in my dining room, but more specifically, He came in the Person of the Holy Spirit. That’s how the Trinity works. So by “blaspheming” the Holy Spirit, the one unforgiveable sin, you are saying that the Holy Spirit doesn’t exist.
There is no way, Jose, that I could ever, ever say that, after what I experienced. That doesn’t mean I’m rigid or intolerant or stuck in my way — it just means I’m thoroughly convinced. So when you guys say it, yes, it makes me sad and mad, and yes, I’m going to get in your faces about it. Can’t help it: JC is real, and the Bible is true, but you guys are keeping others from learning the truth by constantly and deliberately misinterpreting the facts about science so that it looks like He isn’t real and the Bible isn’t true.
I really think the whole deal with atheists and agnostics is that they haven’t put themselves in a position to have an experience like that, that confirms what the Bible says is true — that JC loves us personally and individually, came to Earth, died for our sins, rose again, and is living and active with us (Emmanuel — God with us) even today, whether we know it or not.
I think you guys see the same world we Christians do, but your “filter” paints an interpretation of the same facts we see in a negative coloration, God-wise. Nobody wants to change the facts; but you do have the power to change your “filters,” if you’d only stop being so nasty and start honestly looking in to the stuff that people like me see.
I mean, duhhhh our DNA looks fairly similar to a chimp’s — only a couple of hundred million pairs off. :>) But that apparent simian similarity is not because of common descent — has a lot more to do with what we eat and how we get energy than with what our great-great-great-great grandparents were like. It’s because we’ve both got that carbon-based thing goin’ on and have similar ways of getting food. But both humans and chimps show design, not common descent. I mean, a toothpick and a piano are both made of wood; does that prove one evolved from the other? You guys got nothin’ . . . but a boneheaded bias toward evolution simply because you can’t stand the fact that God is real and the Bible tells it like it is.
You guys have major intellectual spinach between your teeth, then. How embarrassing for you! But you’re still kind of cute. I’m praying that this Christmas, that all-loving, all-powerful Person I met in my dining room will come and meet YOU, too, and guide you into saving faith through Bible reading and prayer. You can start right now with the Christmas story in Luke 1-2.
Or you can choose to call me a wacko and go on blasphemin’. But I hope you’ll at least think about this, because it could wind up putting one honkin’ big gift under your Christmas tree: happiness here on Earth, and eternal life ever after.
Fare well, wear a helmet, and remember this: one day, every tongue shall bow and every knee confess (Romans 14:11) . . . or maybe it’s the other way around . . . was up ’til 3 a.m. wrapping presents . . . anyway . . . we’re all going to grok, in the end, that JC is Lord. Joy to the world!
Go away. You’re wasting post space. Your disconnect from reality is sad and your logic is twisted nonsense. Keep glorifying your ignorance, just do it elsewhere. You’re just pissing of people here. You are not even entertaining anymore.
Don’t forget the Kool-Aide…
Oh, Susie, what a happy little delusion. “Sooooo” sweet and gentle. But sorry, I don’t “grok” it, and don’t see any reason to believe that you aren’t desperately inventing tales to try to persuade us all that there’s actually some semblance of reality behind your precious, sparkly little version of Christianity (other than some sort of multiple personality syndrome or misfiring synapse, that is).
Frankly, since I became an atheist, I am much better in touch with reality than I ever was before. If there’s such a thing as Jesus… well, to be honest I vastly prefer Aslan, or even Shiva… but if there really is such an animal, he knows where he could find me if he really wanted to. Which is meaningless. I could say the same thing about the Invisible Pink Unicorn, pbuh…
Nevertheless, I “deny the Holy Spirit” and all similar spun sugar fairy tales twaddled off by wanna-be high priestesses like yourself.
I try so hard to listen politely when sensible people tell me that religious people aren’t necessarily nuts…but then the Susans of the world come along and confirm my suspicions that Religion Equals Insanity.
Seriously. When anyone tells me they are a Christian, what comes immediately to my mind is the sincerely batshit crazy piety of people like Susan.
By the way, Susan is one of those people high on my list of candidates for disemvowelment. I’m torn, though: while she is a waste of space, she is kind of a representative for reason in a very negative sense. I don’t have many of these long-winded examples of why we should oppose Christianity commenting here, so it seems a shame to shut her down.
As soon as I opened up the Bible, I saw the shadow of a cross that had formed on the pages of the open Bible, formed by the moonlight shining past the window mullions.
This sort of happened to a friend of mine, except the shadow of the cross was from Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church. Cast by a streetlight, the shadow spread across my bed of my friend’s boyfriend, a Catholic Priest.
Batshit crazy people do give us examples of why we go off sometimes.
I’m always amazed at how they can possibly function in the real world.
I suppose as long as they don’t have too many responsibilites it’s not to difficult.
Maybe we should have a special section for them, an archive of the insane.
So we know where to go when there’s no chance of an actual discussion and can remind ourselves what a load of dreck it all is.
In a way, it’s kind of nice that Susie-pie’s batshit insane delusion took the form of a warm, comforting encounter with a caring invisible friend, rather than, say, spiders crawling under her skin, or drowning her children… though I really don’t rule the latter completely out if her invisible friend should happen to regretfully request that he needs the children in Heaven now.
No. Not deliberately. Our “filters” may be leading us astray, but we don’t know that, and we don’t believe that. And given that we don’t know that, and that we don’t believe that (our filters are leading us astray), we have no good reason to change our filters to those that we honestly believe will lead us astray.
I can honestly say I have looked into the stuff that “people like [you] see”, and I have found it unconvincing. You are asking me to adopt your filters, but what could possibly motivate me to do that? Remember that I honestly believe your filters are leading you astray. (Now if you want me to try and understand your filters, and how you think, I am certainly willing to do that. But my ability to do so will be limited.)
To cut right to the chase, to understand my thinking, you are going to have to accept that I honestly believe that God doesn’t exist.
Barkdog, all I’m saying is that behavior speaks at least as loudly as words, and that it’s bizarre for Christians so-called to claim they know who will be condemned to hell (if there is one beyond having to deal with such people) on the basis of words that their own actions tend to endorse.
Now, how that says anything about the person or body of God or Jesus, you’ll have to tell me. I think we see Arianism differently. And, who are you to label it a heresy, anyway?
I am, as Darwin was, quite tired of people who claim to have a pipeline to God (reason enough to medicate in most cases) who loudly proclaim that whatever I believe must be wrong (many in my church disagree with them — so what?), and that otherwise good people who act ethically and wisely, and who do valuable public service, are so much out of favor with their version of God that even their public service might be looked at as evil. Whoever it was writing as Paul in scriptures said that we should seek after things that are virtuous and of good report, and honor those things.
Biology is virtuous and does good stuff. Evolution theory, applied, feeds billions and cures millions. The scientists who do the work are good eggs, most of them, and a pleasure to tilt beer glasses with. By most of Jesus’ standards, that means we ought to hang out with working biologists, listen to them, and support their work. A lifetime of trying to live wisely supports that conclusion in my experience.
So, what is it with these people who get their panties in a wad about magical incantations? You know, around Halloween, Dembski and his bunch probably warn against such superstition. But when trying to get attention at the expense of a distinguished scientist, he doesn’t hesitate. The hypocrisy is ugly, the theology is inconsistent at best (and heretical at worst).
Is that Arianism? Is it a heresy? Well, as for me and my house, if it be heresy, make the most of it. Give me liberty and good book, and stay out of my affairs with God. It neither breaks my leg nor picks my pocket if my neighbor believes in no god, or twenty (thanks, T. Jefferson). Faith should manifest itself in ethical behaviors done every day.
Dembski is looking at YouTube instead? No wonder ID and DI are so lost. They don’t have a clue where to look, and if they did, they wouldn’t know what they’re looking for.
PZ: You know, there’s something going on of interest in Susan’s last post, a noticeable elevation of intensity as she described what she obviously interpreted as a supernatural encounter.
I can’t be sure of the full contents of the dish, but I can tell you that I recognize the flavor. I am sure that there are all sorts of people, with all manner of beliefs, who would similarly nod their heads in recognition. The capacity for this sort of experience seems to be one of the hallmarks of humanity, and I would think that both the Templeton Foundation and the Richard Dawkins Foundation would agree that it is eminently worthy of scientific study.
If the woman in question is regarded as sincere, it is doubtless true that the experience in question is a source of comfort and motivation—to her. But (and this bears repeating) this experience itself is *not* Religion. If Susan had kept it to herself, rather than enlisting it as ammunition for her bully pulpit, I doubt any of us would care. It is the worldview she has adopted in order to make sense of her experience that somehow convinces her to say and write the things we find disturbing.
As with reports of ‘spiritual’ experiences, the development of a belief system is widely observed and peculiarly elaborated in our species.
But we can clearly uncouple the latter from the former, as there are elaborate belief systems which do not turn on the question of whether the supernatural exists. One observes that at least one of these (Communism) has demonstrated a potential for savagery and dehumanization that at least rivals the excesses of organized Religion.
One might counter that Communism as practiced *is* an organized Religion, I suppose, but this has the effect of so widening the definition of religion as to make much routine individual activity religious, which would defeat (I think) the point of pilloring Religion in general.
If one maintains a more restrictive, common-use definition of Religion, however, then I feel free to conclude that acknowledging the possibility of spiritual experience, of faith, does not in and of itself make me an enabler of folk like Susan, anymore than acknowledging the possibility of a just economic theory enables Pol Pot. So there I would disagree with you.
On the other hand, if I failed to oppose the attempts of believers to force their Religion down our throats, then I *would* be an enabler. And I can’t argue with you here, in that the vast majority of Christians seem completely unwilling to critically assess the very real threat to our civil liberties, to education and to our very liberty of conscience posed by Religion. Thoughtfully….SH
Ed, I should make clear that I like your outlook. I have always found the Artians and other ethical Christians much more admirabale that the ones that foucus on the orthodox (and to my mind selfish) teaching of personal salvation through faith, especially when they deny the value of works. I commented mainly out of surprise that none of the usual suspects had made an issue of your “heresy” and denied your right to speak as a Christian. It is really none of my business, since I am a complete nonbeliever, but it is always nice to recognize that theists and nontheists can share fundamentals of ethics.
Odd, there is nothing in Susan’s post, that if one replaced “Jesus” or ‘holy ghost’ with ‘Allah’ or ‘Muhammed’ would make a lick of difference, yet each of these very strong beliefs are mutually exclusive.
Delusion is delusion, IMO.
Cheers and merry cephalopodmas to all!
Especially the untrue bits.
Susan,
I’m sure Lashuan Harris knows where you’re coming from:
“I did what you told me and now I am in lockup,” Harris wrote.
While Harris believes she heard God’s voice, it took a series of rational decisions to take her children from Oakland to the pier, undress the boys — one of whom struggled with her — hoist them over the railing and drop them into the water, Allen said.
“She knew you had to die to get to heaven. She knew how to get them to God. They had to die first, and that was her plan,” she said.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/12/21/kids.bay.ap/
Susan,
if you watch migrating geese a bit longer, you’ll notice they don’t just fly in a single “V”. When the gaggle is numerous enough, they fly in branches, eerily resembling tree-diagrams of evolutionary descent, with the foremost goose as the common ancestor.
Them birds are trueblooded Darwinists.
Also, for the umptieth time : Evolution is the total opposite of pure chance ! It’s based on the idea of (Natural) SELECTION. Do try to read more than just an old Iron Age book once in a while, it’s liberating.
Susan, (again)
now I’ve read your inspired post of 12:42 PM, I would like to recommend you “Breaking the Spell” by Daniel Dennett.
You’re encounter of a close kind with God Himself, although real enough, took place entirely within your skull (your heart just pumps blood, your brain is way more interesting).
Yes, He told you what you wanted to hear, because He is a figment of your reality. In evolutionary terms : human brains have developed a talent for religion as a byproduct for certain clearcut survival skills, when our ancestors had to live in the wild (so to speak). Much of it has to do with the imprinting of important knowledge from parents and ‘wise’ elders, just as young geese imprint on the first parent figure they meet upon hatching.
Your epiphany was as real as falling in love or seeing faces in arbitrary shapes or suffering manical delusions, but it in no way whatsoever proves the existence of an external higher power.
Darwin’s idea really is dangerous, as it can explain everything about who you are and where you come from better than any religion ever could.
Now have a merry christmas and make damn sure to enjoy your life.
Ed,
I to appreciate your ethics but find your theology puzzling.
You said:
after you said:
So it seems youhad a problem with your beliefs being called hertical but no problem doing it to DI’s version.
No one denies their value just their necessity. Big difference.
I still don’t see how one can say this human is ethical and that one isn’t and form an eternal reward from works when at the end of the day 99% of all humanity lives perfectly peaceful lives. Whats the point of Jesus if you can work your way into heaven?
Uber: These are just some practical matters. I don’t have a dog in this fight as far as I can see, either.
I can’t speak for Ed, but for myself I don’t pretend to know the elect, or to even to know what the conditions for ‘salvation’ are. I don’t pretend that my differences with Susan amounts to a claim about whether her actions are ‘orthodox’ or ‘heretical’, or (to put it another way) contributing to/working against her salvation.
That’s not my bag. I’m more interested in the consequences of her beliefs, especially in terms of how they lead others to be treated.
In general, when an idea becomes more important to another human being than simple virtues like kindness, compassion and mercy something is wrong with that picture, and you don’t need to do theology in order to figure that out. Nor do you need to be a Christian to call them on their ethical shortcomings. Still, within a Christian context (that you might not share) certain lines of reasoning that raise theological issues may be more effective at persuading other Christians of the truth of your position.
SH
Scott,
I think you are missing my point. Within a Christian context I don’t see how Ed’s position washes even a little. I am not speaking about the nutter from above or ones heresy(which I don’t think is actually possible).
I totally agree.
I would hope not as that would exclude the majority of the world.
I’m not trying to persuade anyone of anything. I was asking questions. Any works based theology essentially makes Jesus unnecessary if all one has to do is be ‘ethical’. I was simply asking what would make one human ethical and another not giving that all humans share an equal amount of success and failure in these areas. What criteria would one use?
Nice yes. At least we should share the fundamentals of ethics. That’s the whole thing in a nutshell. We are all in this together. Prick us and we all bleed, tickle us, we all laugh. No man is an island. All that stuff. Wherever we stand is common ground. Creationists seem, somehow, bothered by the concept that we’re all related, that we’re all involved in the same life, on the same planet, that we should work together.
Methinks you’re misunderstanding physics quite a bit here, since physicists don’t actually argue any of these things. It sounds like you’ve mangled the actual predictions of quantum physics quite a bit here.
Kali wrote:
Ummm, I was responding to a person named Ed.
It’s not metaphor, it says you can even call Jesus a cult crackpot and avoid the eternal fire, but if you call the Holy Spirit a sick evil bastard, you’re toast:
Are you apologists trying to say that when Matthew 32 says “speaks a word against the Son of Man” and then six words later says “speaks against the Holy Spirit” it’s talking about two different “crimes”? Wow, speaks has two different meanings in the same sentence – that Bible sure is complicated.
Kali continues:
I think apologists who believe a book is the word of a god and tell me day means day are saner than apologists who believe in the same book and try and claim day means hundreds of millions of years and speaks means two different things in the same sentence.
Biblical literalists, batshit crazy enough to believe Groucho when he asks, “who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?” must deny reality or suspend their credulity. Sane people can read any piece of literature, and glean what value it contains with the understanding that its literal veracity is an issue entirely separate from its meaning.
What worries me is a subset of theists who purport to be on the side of science, because they are not literalists. They read the Bible and wade hip-deep in layers of metaphor and ambiguity, then claim that their practice is spiritual. Why? they interpret content by waiting to feel the presence of the holy spirit, a numinous tingle, or some other metaphysical hiccup that they reserve the right to define after the fact, calling it a separate way of knowing. How can that be defended as anything more than magical thinking, claiming the capacity to discern the voice of reason while reserving the right to believe the multitude of voices in their heads.
Uber:
I’m sorry, you’re right, I didn’t pick up on the fact that you were actually interested in making a theological point, distinguishing between ‘salvation by faith’ and ‘salvation by works.’
I’m afraid I’m so used to folk here generally deprecating the point of theology in the first place that I sort of filtered that out when reading your original post.
This seems a good spot to mention that Michael Ruse has (somewhat controversially) suggested that supporters of evolution tend to be post-millenialists (eager to do good works to usher in the Kingdom) and creationists tend to be pre-millenialists (convinced the Rapture is due and any attempt to preserve or improve the present world pointless). Ruse even goes so far as to describe the thought of eminent evolutionary biologists like E.O. Wilson (who is not a believer) as ‘post-millenial.’
Anyway, I have no clue what ‘salvation’ actually means to others, much less how others can achieve salvation with or without works. All I can say is, for me ‘salvation’ doesn’t mean earning brownie points or avoiding the flames of perdition. I’m not interested in a gospel of fear, or doing ‘works’ to earn my salvation.
Now, you asked for a criteria for judging whether an individual was ethical, given that all of us are imperfect (or, as we Christians would say, are sinners)…..Might I suggest James Leigh Hunt’s poem “Abou Ben Adhem”? The 25th chapter of Matthew is also apropos…..SH
Ken: This is a longish post. I don’t really disagree with what you’re saying, but I thought I would explore it further in the context of what happened earlier on this thread. I’m sure that much of what I’m about to say you already know, so please don’t feel I’m patronizing. I just don’t want to leave anything out.
First, we all deal to some extent in metaphor. I would say with Pierce that each of us to some degree experiences the world through symbols and signs, and even the fundamentalist recognizes that much of what they believe is not really available as a direct representation: hence the doves and tongues of fire.
So, if a liberal Christian (or, for that matter, a non-believer) receives goosebumps at some point from some metaphor that they find personally meaningful that doesn’t make them any more or less of a ‘magical thinker’ than the fundy. All of us ‘interpret’ the Bible, even non-believers, and I am unaware of anyone, even fundamentalists, who interpret every passage literally.
What, then, would justify reifying metaphors on the basis of such magical thinking? Nothing: I’m with you there, and I share your discomfort with believers who revel in that sort of thing. When I worship, though, I don’t reify the metaphors nor build up theological constructs based on any such reification. Like many others, I simply enter into a state of awareness of what the symbols are, meditate on their *possible* meaning and relevance to my own life, and pray.
It would, indeed, be the stuff of arrogance to insist that my own subjective experience with sign and symbol in the context of worship and prayer *must* be objectively shared by other ‘right-thinking’ believers. Even worse would be to suggest that such an experiential claim goes a long way toward justifying my theology, which is essentially one of the tactics that Susan applied on this thread.
That’s a little bit different from a private experience with (as you put it) ‘the voices in my head.’ All of us, believers and non-believers alike, have such voices; they are simply different aspects of human experience, not all of which are reducible to the tools of reason. It is not ‘magical thinking’ to acknowledge this; it is ‘human thinking’, with all of its kludginess, blind spots and biases, personal and otherwise.
And, I must say that I prefer that sort of experience to the impersonal (indeed, ‘inhuman’) one-size-fits-all indoctrination that comes with any institutionalized belief system….SH
Merry Christmas!
Oh, Scott.
Anything “not reducible to the tools of reason” isn’t worth discussing rationally. At best, “de gustibus non est disputandum,” but damn… If you’re going to try to tell me all believers/non-believers have ‘voices in our heads’ and call it ‘human thinking’ then why the special pleading for spirit, or whatever edge it is you think theism gives you over atheism? Don’t take Dennett’s multiple drafts, or Minsky’s societies of mind, and post hoc rationalize them as brain farts from gawd.
There’s a liberal talk show host in San Francisco on KGO, Bernie Ward, a former Franciscan priest. I occasionally listen to him on his Sunday AM show, “God Talk.” He’ll rail against biblical literalists and right-wing fundies, reserving special scorn for creationist IDiots. He’s generally point for point in lock-step with PZ on such nonsense, adding that not only is creationism bad science but it’s bad theology.
And yet, Offisa Pup, and yet…
Right in the middle of some point where he’s extolling the value of metaphor and parable, he’ll blurt out that he was praying the other day, and the holy spirit told him he ought to participate more in his son’s after-school sports activities.
WTF?
He may as well have been extolling the virtues of snake-handling and drinking sewage, the way it sounded to me. WTF has the holy spirit to do with a feeling about how best to bond with his high-schooler, as far as the atheist, the Jew and the Hindu at the bar are concerned? But because Holy Spirit, whatever that’s supposed to be, spake unto him, or whatever it does, it’s all SPIRITchually sanctified above and beyond whatever it is Homer Simpson might feel, guilting out over missing Bart’s T-ball practice between beer belches at Moe’s Tavern.
I don’t understand the need to transpose feeling to spirituality, unless it’s to exaggerate the import of some notion and feel all special and singled out. I just want to slap anybody I hear talking like that, and tell them to get over themselves.
Oh, and Merry Christmas to you too, and everybody else, Scott. We just got the tree up, topped with a glass-blown flying monkey clutching Toto. Dangling from our lit-up noble fir are pigs with wings, pickles, clowns, witches, wizards, white rabbits, Bonzo Dogs, butterflies, bows and Klingon Battlecruisers. “Tree” is an important and meaning-laden new vocabulary word for the 14-month-old girl. My son got to watch his new friend from Kindergarten light a candle for Hannukah at his house, which has no more religious significance for my boy than do dreidels. Santa is hopefully beginning to feel more like a story motif for him than some magical pixie he’s got to be paranoid about. We must leave something for him to work out on his own…
Ken, you wrote: “I don’t understand the need to transpose feeling to spirituality.”
Hmm. I’m not doing a good job communicating, if that was the impression received. My point is that all of us have those sorts of feelings, and sometimes these feelings are very powerful, and when that happens many people interpret them in ways that are consistent with their religious experience. Similarly, people who are engaged in worship or prayer are to some extent hoping to elicit those sorts of feelings. And that *is* magical thinking, I guess, but what I’m trying to convey is that you could in principle divorce the experience (if not the pursuit of said experience) from the ‘magical’ explanation which followed, don’t you think?
If so, the experience in and of itself is just one of those things that comes with being human, and acknowledging its subjectivity does *not* constitute special pleading for some sort of spirit/soul/vitalistic life force, yada yada yada. I’m sorry if I gave any other impression.
In closing, it sounds like you’re having a wonderful holiday, where a lot of the joy comes from the rediscovery of traditions and experience through the eyes of a child. I envy you: my kids are all grown-up and somewhat jaded. Ha! Wait till they have kids of their own! Then they’ll really have some issues to work out.
Thanks for your thoughtful and spirited reply….SH
Hey Terry didn’t you go on a mission to Europe to preach about the Jesus, Holy ghost crap you’re knocking now?
Jackass