What can we expect of a theocracy? One thing is for sure: you won’t be able to criticize the church or church leadership. Here’s an example from Florida.
Mac Brunson is the pastor of one of those awful megachurches, an organization that has been growing fast and sucking up lots of money for expansion. A member of his flock who was a bit concerned at the direction the church was taking set up a blog, FBC Jax Watchdog, and anonymously expressed dismay at the way the church was being run.
I saw possible abuses at our church shortly after our new pastor arrived, regarding acceptance of a $307,000 land gift just three weeks after he arrived – even though his own Pastor’s Guidebook cautions pastors against accepting large gifts! I watched as we spent $100,000 to renovate 3600+ square feet of our newly constructed children’s building to provide the pastor and his wife and secretary luxury office suites. I saw the preacher vacate the pulpit unannounced, I heard him say he took several Sunday nights off because he had to finish a book manuscript. I saw us spending money on the A-Group, a church marketing consultant and promotions firms. The head of this firm, Maurilio Amorim, came to be involved in personnel decisions at FBC Jax the first year of Mac’s tenure, at a church and city that he knew nothing about. I saw us develop promotions plans to “raise revenue” at our pastors conference through charging for advertising and selling “promotions packages”.
The pastor also gets a salary of $300,000. The universe is always telling me I went into the wrong line of work.
Simple public criticism — it’s a good thing. As you might guess, though, Pastor Brunson did not appreciate the inquiries into his cash flow (which, as we all know, is the principle purpose of a church), and hired a private investigator to find out who this critic might be. This is where it gets ugly. The blog did not post anything illegal, was not doing anything but documenting problems in the church, but the investigator successfully got a subpoena and compelled Google to release the identity of the blogger. The blogger is now banned from the church (which, to my mind, is a net positive), and his name has been exposed.
What is most troubling is that the investigator was able to get a subpoena and expose the identity of an anonymous blogger on the sole grounds that a disgustingly rich pastor was annoyed by him — not by citing any actionable behavior. You might want to think about this if you’re on google/blogspot and think that your anonymity is safe. It apparently doesn’t take much effort to crack open google and fish your name out of it…perhaps only a local judge with sympathies for some religious goofball who doesn’t like you.
Oh, wait, actually…what’s most troubling is the pastor’s salary. And he claims “he is one of the lowest-paid mega-church pastors in the Southern Baptist Convention”. Gee, so all I have to do is start lying for Jesus and maybe I can make those kinds of wages? I guess a biblical piece of silver has been inflated to be worth about $10,000.
The only good news here is that Pastor Mac Brunson’s high-handed behavior should focus a little more scrutiny on his money-making enterprise. Could we please start taxing the churches?
(via Daily Kos)
Paging Sen. Grassley
Perhaps we are just destined to always have a stupid majority. If being ripped off and abused does not wake up the sheeple, then rationalists shouting into the wilderness certainly is not going to do it. What will?
Not a name/oath I invoke much, but in this case, it seems somehow apropos: Jesus H. Tap-Dancing Christ.
That said, if you look at it this way, some entertainment industry salaries do run in that range. This particular brand of theater isn’t to my taste, but maybe it is to those who regularly attend.
The critical difference being that theater salaries get taxed.
They’ve really got a helluva thing going, don’t they? Have done since, well, caves, I suppose.
No kings,
Robert
‘Underpaid’ pastor: $300,000 Contributes nothing positive to society.
Average professor is what, 60-80K? Less at small liberal arts schools, more if youre a full professor at a big uni? Do stuff like, I dunno, CURE AIDS.
Christianity is so gross.
I grew up with this guy. He used to be the pastor at my Grandmother’s church, and did roughly the same thing there. I suppose I owe him though, he’s one of my earliest influences in becoming an atheist.
Is he accepting applications?
Robert, something I’ve been meaning to ask you:
Kings?
Love,
A
From the article highlighted phrase links to…
“A blogger critical of First Baptist Church Pastor Mac Brunson wants to know why his Web site was investigated by a police detective who is also a member of the minister’s security detail.”
A police detective is moonlighting working private security for a sectarian organisation???
Worse, he then uses his official position in the public police force to do the bidding of the sectarian religious organisation that pays him????
Are these not massive conficts of interest and in violation of the fundamental ethical requirements of a pubilc and accountable police force?
Not sure how things work in the US, but back home the cop would get fired.
This is awful. Google is quickly becoming Teh Evil with all this teaming up with fundies to out anonymous bloggers and shut down atheist youtube accounts. Unfortunately, they are already at the “too big to fail” stage for millions of gmail users.
There is no bizzyness like jeebus bizzyness!
The problem seems to be that 99% of the sheeple are so scared of being ostracised by their co-jeebus lusters and think fawning over the ‘witch doctors’ is required so as to gain a little leverage with god and score brownie points that they dare not question…that tis how religion works…how it has always worked.
A flock fears its head honcho….cos they have the power to curse you in life…and unto death!….that is how it goes..apparently!
Theocracies alway end in bloodshed and corruption. In Iran, the Mullahs have families and found dynasties. It is estimated that 1/2 of all the oil revenue in the country is siphoned off by clerics and their families.
In the USA, the first thing the fundies would do is loot the treasury. And then start fighting among themselves over who get their privilege of stealing from the population.
“Could we please start taxing the churches?”
That is a slogan I’d like to see on a t shirt.
Number of megachurches: 1364 (http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/youmit/campus_tours_info_sessions/index.shtml)
Amount a “poorly paid” preacher makes: 300k
Taxes for that bracket: 33% (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_States#Year_2009_income_brackets_and_tax_rates)
300k*.33*1364=135,036,000
*whistles* And this is a low estimate…now add in “normal” preachers and property…wow…
No wonder we have such a giant deficit…
And exist some calculation of how much of the national income( in any country ) is lost to churches?
Im my part of the U.S. the city pays garbage collectors something like $35,000.00 + benefits. How is a pastor performing a more important social service than this?
Here’s a guy who’s in the top 10% of salaried Americans and he’s complaining that he’s underpaid.
You got that right.
Many Christians would be quick to argue that this is “unchristian” behavior on the pastor’s part — and they are quite sincere — but I think a good argument can be made that it’s the predictable outcome of a world view which often puts its main emphasis on the virtue of cultivating an attitude of obedience, submission, humility, and accepting authority. If the pastor can both justify his behavior with scripture and insist that what he does, he does not for himself, but for God, it’s going to be hard to put the brakes on. Disagreeing with him, morphs into disagreeing with God.
Sometimes I think the only thing more fruitless than atheists arguing that the religious aren’t being sufficiently reasonable, is the religious arguing that other religious aren’t being sufficiently Christ-like.
Of course it doesn’t take much to crack open Teh Google. (Start of a storyline. Note the title. Iä! Iä!)
*If* he is in the business of salvation then it really isn’t a particularly large salary.
*If* he isn’t then he still might not be overpaid.
It depends on whether his impact on his congregation is positive or if it negative.
why keep sheep, if for not to fleece?
It depends whether or not you view your sheep as a commodity or if you love your sheep.
I blame the board. The pastor does not own the church and any board that treats him as the owner has betrayed the congregation. What is the church president’s excuse for this failing?
Rookie, just in case you miss the addition to the I Give Up thread.
I’m sure they love fast growing coats and high metabolism.
He obviously is grossly overpaid as far as the value of his work in a rational sense, but as his salary is voluntarily paid by those who consume his product, I don’t mind that. i do mind that they can then deduct that money from their taxes.
And, contrary to the assertion above, pastor’s salaries are taxed just like anyone else’s income, including “theater salaries.” In certain circumstances (not attained by many), pastors may be exempted from social security, but their income is taxed just like yours and mine (at least, my job-income, not my gambling-for-cash income).
What depends on that? Whether he gets paid >$300k/year and then says he’s underpaid?
Janine,
I took note. There is a saying:
“Don’t eat a banana in front of a hungry Gorilla.”
I’m not eating a banana but rather I’m cultivating them so that everyone can have one…
Pete Rooke #21 wrote:
I think that thinking of the people whom you work with as your “sheep” is dangerous. We don’t accept that attitude from teachers, or doctors, or others who might presume on their expertise to make people depend on them.
WTF? Seriously, Rooke: What the fuck?
Ever notice those giant cathedrals dotting xtian europe, built at a time when the huge majority of the population was living barely above subsistence level? Or the massive edifices of Vatican City? Xtian clergy have always done pretty well for themselves (and those old-school types did it without television).
Is that fucking Mabus again?
Speaking of “too big to fail” – does anyone know if there’s some sorta nifty application out there that would allow one to download a local copy of ones Gmail?
Rookie, that made no sense. But that is to be expected.
And yet we can say that there is something called a human condition which is perfectly coherent with Darwinism’s account of biological determinism.
What, no fucking ASCII roses today?
Was it something we said?
Not strictly true: from the linked article
Google takes a *lot* of flak over its approach to issues of privacy. When justified, this is all to the good. This, however, much like the furore that erupted over the JREF suspension or – rather more amusingly – over the pulling of various anti-Obama blogs during the election, is not one of those times.
well, he’s admitting to spamming, PZ. That’s evidence.
New Jersey recently caught a set of these guys. They got on the church council, disbanded the church council giving themselves authority to handle the church’s funds, sold the church building, and used the funds to buy themselves a mansion (for the main pastor and his wife) and a yacht (for the youth pastor). Plus giving themselves nice fat salaries. The prosecutors seem to have made a deal with them, reinstating the church council and turning the properties over to the church. The pastors are still on staff and it doesn’t look like fraud charges will be brought, but that state of affairs may not last long.
Nightshadequeen @ 13:
Although you’re right that this represents a significant chunk, you need to check your math. 33% is the marginal tax rate of a progressive tax system. Properly calculating on the $300k assumption, we get:
$84,142.50 for a single individual (~ 28.0%)
$76,821.00 for a joint couple (~ 25.6%)
I didn’t include “married filing separately” or “head of household” because with pastors those would likely be in a significant minority. Multiplying out by the megachurch estimate of 1364 gives a range from $104,783,844.00 to $114,770,370.00; this is $20-$30 million below your $135 million estimate.
It depends whether or not you view your sheep as a commodity or if you love your sheep.
Like a priest loves his congregation?
Eww, I won’t get that mental image from my head for a while…
AdamK at # 7:
Short version, so as not to derail thread too much, it’s simply my affirmation of the rule of law and the consent of the governed, my denunciation of the rule of kings and similar fiat.
No kings,
Robert
If he is in the business of salvation, shouldn’t knowing he’s getting to spend eternity kissing Jesus’ ass and calling it ice-cream in person (well, in spirit) reward enough?
More to the point – where does a church get enough money to pay their shill that much? Obviously, it’s been a heck of a long time since I’ve been unlucky enough to find myself inside a woo-house, but I certainly don’t recall anyone tossing fifties into the collection plate.
Janine,
substitute pearls of wisdom for bananas in the second instance.
I left a friendly comment at the dissentors’ blog ^_^
I suggest we all show our support, yes?
-Cokehead
In both the US and Canada, gambling winnings are taxable income.
Rookie, you cannot fool me. You have no wisdom to dispense.
More to the point – where does a church get enough money to pay their shill that much?
For most franchises, 10 percent of your earnings is the standard encouraged, but tacit, tithing.
Pete, your own church (the Catholic one) denies your priests/pastors/witchdoctors the right to marry and – as far as I know – they live reasonably ascetic lifestyles in other respects. Not the Pope, of course; he lives in a palatial art museum, just like Jesus wanted.
Are you saying your church is wrong and should shower all of its
wolvesshepherds with cash? It could certainly afford it.Janine,
if you listened with open ears you might be surprised. I believe that many here have learned from me.
Say, does that raving and repetitive moron have a point? Witness the wisdom of the Rookie.
The question of money, who earns it, who keeps it (or spends it), and who pays taxes on it (or not, as the case may be) is vital to understanding religious organizations. If one could enforce transparency through some reporting scheme, and make sure all corporations (including religious ones) paid taxes, then more people would understand what they’re getting into when they join.
Here’s a copy of a post from ex-mormon.org (posted in 2008):
“This is just an estimate as the Mormon church does not publish its finances. It appears in the US, the Mormon church takes in $5-8 billion a year in tithing alone. It gives out less than $65 million ( less than 1.3% of tithing income) in humanitarian aid. It gives back to local congregations (wards) less than 1.5% for their activities. This does not include income from the many business ventures the Mormon church owns which may well more than double what it receives in tithing.”
The LDS Church seems to own cattle ranches, department stores, etc. And they run missionarymall.org and other non-profits that look iffy to me.
In a post above, someone commented on Vatican resources. It smells like exploitation.
Rev,
would you affirm my previous statement to Janine. Have you learned from me?
Hey Sili, you can download all Gmail messages for free (see Gmail’s POP or IMAP tutorials). Gmail also has a new tool called Offline Gmail that caches your email on your computer (it requires another Google application, though).
The ability to download your messages is a big plus for Google against Microsoft and Yahoo! while it lasts.
I could live for a decade or three on $300000… *sigh*
why is it that often the people contributing least to society seem to be paid most…?
I’m all for taxing those fuckers. they do nothing to deserve charity status
Learned what? I can’t say there is any bit of knowledge I’ve gained beyond witnessing a behavioral pattern that I can attribute to a certain way of thinking.
Am I missing something?
Pete Rooke,
Are you out of you friggin’ mind? I sure hope you are a Poe.
I know I am going to regret this. What regular here has learned from you, Rookie? You have a strict idea of gender roles. You are very much the prude. You seem to think that the incredulous have an equal weight in arguments against people who have studied their fields. I do not see it.
From post #60:
True. So very true.
http://despair.com/mis24x30prin.html
No kings,
Robert
When the blogger writes that the pastor has never even met him, I had to snicker. The Bible clearly states that there are to be no church buildings, no pastors, nothing. People are to congregate in their homes, and take turns reading . . . well, just the men reading, of course.
There are lots of sadly delusional people in the world, convinced that they have the truth, and the duty to pound the truth into the rest of us. It’s a good thing that they haven’t anything like the talents or the tools, and that the megachurches keep so many of them off the streets.
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!
Thank you Chimpy!
I don’t blame Google for complying with a subpoena, I want to know on what grounds the judge issued one. According to the article:
Sounds like possible judicial malfeasance to me.
Very off topic, but Janine (of now concrete moniker),
Is it weird that, since your name is Janine, and you are (I assume, since you post here) an atheist, that every time I see a comment from you, an image of Janine Garofalo pops into my head?
Sastra,
would you affirm my statement to Janine. Have you learned anything from me?
I’d be very surprised if that were true.
From the article: “Rich said he never…photographed Brunson’s wife…”
When asked if he had photographed Brunson’s wife, he should have innocently asked “Which one?”
Yup. I’ve learned that rational, logical, evidential, testable information doesn’t take hold in a brain with “the woo”.
When you would laugh at the idea of “wee people in the forest”, but so easily believe in “invisible people in the sky”, and not only believe it, but insist that everyone one else believe it… your credibility with rational people is shot in the foot before you even begin to open your mouth.
Are you serious? About all anyone could learn from you, Pete, is to take far more time in constructing analogies – in order to avoid coming across as a creepy man wearing a gimp suit who’s jacking off to torture porn in his mother’s basement.
You and facilis are the resident tag-team of intellectual dishonesty and general cluelessness. I doubt many (if any) would miss you if PZ put his foot down and plonked your ass.
testing typekey singin. IGNORE ME!
I’m willing to be wrong Pete if you can show me where I did learn something. I may be an asshole, but I’m a fair asshole.
No, I have never canceled my Yahoo account. The other point is that when I realized how easy it is to find out who a pseudonymous blogger is (or a commenter,) I just went to using my real name.
Well would you describe yourself as open-minded?
Does it seem like it to anyone else that Rooke quickly returned to the grumpy old Catholic man persona following Survivor, Pharyngula?
GMacs, thank you, that is very kind. I wish I was as funny as her. But her name is spelled Janeane. There are too many ways to spell my name.
And, yes, it may not be obvious but I am an atheist.
Me? Yes.
But not so much that my brain falls out.
/cliche
heddle,
We don’t think Pete’s a Poe. If he is then he’s setting a record for maintaining the façade.
Frankly considering the post from his tentacled bloggy one, I’m thinking of bailing on this thread until the roach traps start working.
No not you pete.
Have sheep. Will fleece.
Pete Rooke #80:
Now I’m on the spot, because I know we’ve had some interesting conversations but I can’t actually recall anything specific right now. I could, of course, cop out and say “yes” in the sense that we learn from everyone in some way, but that wouldn’t be fair to you.
Can I say ‘yes’ if you don’t follow up with “okay then, what?” ;)
Pete Rooke wrote:
Would you? As an atheist I can lay down some things which would change my mind about the existence of gods. Can you say the same about your beliefs? What would make you stop believing in your god?
Points taken, H.H. and Mike Haubrich, FCD. Google probably faced a very difficult legal situation that would have been costly to fight, and there is no right to anonymous blogging.
you’re probably right
Yes, Pete, we’ve learned from you. We have learned how intellectual dishonesty can ruin a perfectly good human mind. We have learned that you value superstition over reality and we have learned that your education is woefully deficient.
Okeh, good. That makes it 1-1. And it isn’t clear that simply because a majority (if it is a majority) haven’t learned anything from me then I lose. Some fish is better than no fish I like to say.
I do feel for those of you who are sans killfile.
Wowbagger,
I am open-minded, yes.
Pete Rooke wrote:
Really? Then why didn’t you answer this question – What would make you stop believing in your god?
Actually, if you do it right, it isn’t easy at all in most states. Especially states with anti SLAPP suit laws, a lot in the west at least.
The courts have ruled many times that anonymous free speech is protected under the first amendment.
The subpoena looks flakey to me. The blogger should have been able to file a Motion to Quash and get rid of it.
He should also have used standard anonymity tactics, offshore web sites and proxy servers. That won’t stop the FBI too often but most other investigators won’t be able to track it down.
You can’t blame Google too much, for this at any rate. They are required by law to answer any subpoena or contest it. It is usually easier for them to just fold up.
and, checkmate.
At 48….
it’s been a heck of a long time since I’ve been unlucky enough to find myself inside a woo-house, but I certainly don’t recall anyone tossing fifties into the collection plate.
My family in Texas has been brainwashed into tithing.
My mom pays around $300 a month …My sister even more.
I’ve had to warn my sister that if our moms retirement runs out ,she’ll have to deal with my disgust and anger for the rest of her life.
The IDiots are tryng in the extreme. Pete and this nut case PZDummy are very annoying. Good grief they must be off their rockers to spend so much time spewing so much stupid.
GMacs@#77
Nice to see I’m not the only one who thinks of her like that. I thought I was just creepy.
I seem to remember some kind of religious book describing how difficult it is for a rich man to get into heaven… and wasn’t there something about not storing up riches on earth?
Amen brother PZ!
These guys really are the boils on the butt of humanity.
Wowbagger,
If I knew beyond “a convincing argument” then I wouldn’t believe in God.
Anonymous free speech is protected under the first amendment. To the point that few even bother trying to out bloggers and posters anymore. The case law is extensive. Not too sure what happened with the Florida case but something screwball happened.
Wait
is this
your answer to this
amhovgaard,
…I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.
That’s appalling. Simply fucking appalling. Why are Christians so blind? And ignorant of their own so-called saviour’s teachings?
My mother was sucked into the Jim Baker- PTL (Pass the Loot) club. Happily, she did not waste too much money before the thing went bust.
Rev,
yes it was.
The Bible is a convincing argument? For what? Talking Snakes?
Do the scribblings of desert nomads in the Middle East automatically discredit, and render null and void, every other recorded deity in human history? What if somebody makes up a better, more cool deity in a few years, and it catches on… in 100 years time, if the majority of the planet’s population believe in FSM… does that make it real, in your mind? Is belief in and of itself, proof for you?
That’s not what I asked. Why are you afraid of answering the question?
And ‘convincing argument’? Which one? More likely you simply want to believe for all the same lackluster reasons the religious everywhere believe, and have selected the ‘argument’ that allows you with the least cognitive dissonance.
I guess my question is which convincing argument?
Don’t be so open minded that your brain falls out…
wtf does that mean…? what the bloody hell is “knowing beyond an argument”? this better not be another one of those “i know in my gut” types of knowing…
Pete Rooke: Look up “sarcasm” in a dictionary.
Matthew 19:21
Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.
http://bible.cc/matthew/19-21.htm
Seems pretty straight forward.
Looks like our servant of God is working damn hard at being a servant of Mammon, too.
Meanwhile, the Digital Cuttlefish, poet laureate of the science blogosphere, has retired to spend more time supporting the Cuttlefamily.
Sounds like he’s setting up for ‘religion being the default human condition’ to me.
sarcasm |ˈsärˌkazəm|
noun
the use of irony to mock or convey contempt : his voice, hardened by sarcasm, could not hide his resentment. See note at wit.
ORIGIN mid 16th cent.: from French sarcasme, or via late Latin from late Greek sarkasmos, from Greek sarkazein ‘tear flesh,’ in late Greek ‘gnash the teeth, speak bitterly’ (from sarx, sark- ‘flesh’ ).
It is quite simple. If I knew that there was something the would convince me not to believe in God, and what it was, then I wouldn’t believe in God!!!!
And I don’t mean to reduce this to a tautology.
Maybe Pete’s having troubles with the concept.
Basically, Pete, if you can’t explain there’s something which would make you stop believing in your god then you aren’t, in fact, ‘open-minded’.
Your mind would be closed to the possibility that your god doesn’t exist. Closed is the opposite of open.
Just a reminder: trolls starve for lack of attention.
It sheds light on the reason that so many anti-taxers are Christian. Betwixt God and Government they are truly squeezed. One of the two provides a return, yet they rail at the productive one and flock to the other.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
Since God is the positive claim, shouldn’t it be the other way around? That you should have evidence or arguments that convince you that God is there as opposed for asking for a negative? The best anyone could ever do is show that the arguments you use as justification for your beliefs do not hold water.
Pete Rooke: Look up “sarcasm” in a dictionary.
Which is why novelists prefer irony. Sarcasm fails on the page.
too late
Pete Rooke #137 wrote:
The first question I think we’re asking is whether it’s possible — at least in theory — that you could be mistaken, and God doesn’t exist, and never has existed. There are other explanations for whatever it was you thought God explained best.
Is it possible that you might be wrong?
yes, it is, Pete… I know exactly what it would take for me to believe in a God. Evidence. Everything else is hearsay.
Can we please stop using Pharisee as a negative descriptor? Its use derives primarily from the fact that the Pharisees were the ruling Rabbis around the time of Jesus and a bit after him so the Christians reacted against them and tried to ascribe every nasty, negative thing they could think of. Most all modern Jews are descended from the Pharisees and all forms of Judaism (with the exception of Karaism) is essentially some variation of Phariseetic beliefs. Use of this as a negative simply reinforces essentially anti-semitic stereotypes. If you want to say someone is a greedy, selfish jerkwad just say so.
*clenched tentacle salute*
Cuttlefish, your poetry will be sorely missed, but you depart for all the right reasons, and I hope you know that you go with the fondest wishes of many here.
Until once more thy digital pen doth sear the digital page with words joyously writ to delight and astound, fare thee well!
No kings,
Robert
Hmmm… seems that somebody took offense to our resident troll’s continued harassment:
From his “website”:
Perhaps if it was proved that everything does indeed equal nothing and that everything came from nothing as Peter Atkins asserts. If human consciousness was explained in naturalistic terms comprehensively.
OH NO!! WE HAVE TO HAVE A MEMORIAL!
QUICK SOMEONE BURN SOMETHING!
Gah.. blockquote fail.
I see. you’re simply unclear on the concept of what open-mindedness and critical thinking are.
just because we know what kind of evidence/argument it would take to convince us of any given theological standpoint, doesn’t mean we actually believe it. the evidence needs to be presented in reality, not just given as a hypothetical argument.
if you claim a priori that no evidence can convince you, then you are as a matter of fact closed minded.
So can anyone recommend some good blog-hosting services that do not simply fold under pressure?
Obviously Google can not be trusted.
Petey, come on. That’s not an answer.
Desert Son #147 wrote:
I second this, with clenched tentacles.
Thank goodness I bought two of Cuttlefish’s poetry books before they were all gone, is all I can say (my Mom liked hers very much).
(First Sven, now cuttlefish? Real life intrudes on internet time? This has to be stopped…)
And why not?
Since Pastor Fox has failed to address this, perhaps Mr. Rooke will have a go:
If you believe Jesus died, He couldn’t be God, because God is, by definition, immortal.
Right?
Pete demonstrates a lack of imagination that matches his lack of intellectual honesty.
How about the appearance and irrefutable existence, via a demonstration of an act of omnipotence of a god other than your own who states that he/she/it is the only true god but he/she/it is not the Christian god?
And you call yourself open-minded? Please.
ok, the second one is a valid point. the first one doesn’t even make sense.
though I’d be very curious what you mean by “comprehensively”, since everything about consciousness I’m aware of has already been explained in naturalistic terms. so what’s missing?
WordPress, perhaps
It’s a dodge and a strange sort of straw man. Everything doesn’t have to equal nothing for god to not exist.
What does everything equaling nothing even mean?
“Bind nothing! Let there be no difference made among you between any one thing and any other thing; for thereby there cometh hurt. But whose availeth in this let him be the chief of all!” Liber AL. 1. 22. peace Beloved..
If human consciousness was explained in naturalistic terms comprehensively.
so since it actually IS, then…
what?
are you done, Pete?
or will you endlessly move the goalposts on that one, too?
here, let me turn it around on YOU:
how does ANY religion sufficiently AND “comprehensively” explain how the human mind works for us to be able to make predictions that are testable and produce results we can use to not only further our knowledge, but help people that have serious mental health issues?
go.
Pete.. go watch some videos of chimp behaviour.. they aren’t much different than us. They don’t have a language, per se, and they didn’t benefit from having a smaller jaw, thus letting our brain size to get bigger, which made us walk upright..
Chimps display all the feelings, emotions, and thoughts that we do.. they are essentially, human, as was Neanderthal. Homosapiens can think a bit better in the abstract. Some trout can swim faster than other species of trout.
The Digital Cuttlefish, Vol. 1 is still available on Lulu, fortunately.
It means precisely what it implausibly suggest. See Peter Atkins Beyond Belief talk for details. If this is not the case then I want to know what caused the big bang because mathematicians have shown that infinity is simply a concept not a reality. The universe cannot be infinite.
Pete Rooke #150 wrote:
I don’t think anyone has ever said that “everything comes from nothing.” When we get into early cosmology and theoretical physics, we’re in a very counter-intuitive area where normal rules on cause and effect don’t apply. If astrophysicists agreed that “there was nothing that everything came from” — that things have always existed in some form — would this persuade you? Or would you want to read the technical papers and check their work?
As for consciousness, the vast majority of neurologists accept mind/brain dependency, they argue only over the details. We don’t have any reliable evidence for activities of mind which are not brain movements. Again, I’m not sure what a ‘comprehensive’ argument for consciousness would look like to you. A one-to-one correspondence between neural activity and thought?
if you insist… *bubble bubble*
What I’ve learned about you Rooke, is that you’re a FECKING TOOL for feeding the TROLL!
Moron!
oh i see. god of the gaps argument and an argument from incredulity re: the Big Bang.
Just testing to make sure that when the inevitable happens and that whoreson sack of pus and shite Dennis Markuze forces PZ’s hand, that I can still post.
If this is not the case then I want to know what caused the big bang because mathematicians have shown that infinity is simply a concept not a reality. The universe cannot be infinite.
what the fuck does one have to do with the other?
or haven’t you gotten that far in your elementary school astronomy book yet?
*sigh*
we had such high hopes for you.
I’ll check in on you in about 10 years. Maybe you’ll be saying things that aren’t completely ignorant.
Is god infinite?
I’m falling asleep. But yes he does assert that. I might be convinced if it were possible to create conscious artificial intelligence.
A test post, as well as a question for Pete Rooke:
You suggested that pastors and preachers for megachurches were performing a job (saving souls) so they deserve what they make, even if it is something as high as $300,000 a year. So why should churches be treated differently from any other wage earning business in that they are not taxed, since they are providing a service just like any other business from what you seemingly implied?
Re: jasonk
No, but the folks behind The Pirate Bay are launching a new anonymity service soon. It won’t protect you from having your blog pulled by whoever’s hosting it, but it ought to make it very, very difficult for anyone to find out who you are.
It isn’t.. it’s 14 billion or so years old. “Our” universe, that is, that which we can detect and observe. Extraverses? Now we’re into the theoretical… as we can’t detect or observe them… yet, at least.
ichthyic, i’m guessing he’s having word definition problems with the words “infinite” and “universe”. to my knowledge, mathematics show that our universe is finite in space. don’t know about time, but even if our universe was temporally limited, that says nothing about reality itself, in which “something” might have existed in some form.
I’m also not even going to try explaining “the beginning of time” to rooke.
The best way to keep Google from giving up your real name to a questionable subpoena is to give Google a fake name when you sign up. Sure, it’s a violation of their terms of service, but all they can do is cancel your account. If you use an IP proxy service like Anonymizer, it will be really difficult for law enforcement to track you down. Unless you are committing fraud or larceny on a grand scale, they aren’t going to have the resources to track you down.
I’m curious if God is infinite, Pete?
I would actually expect this to be a many-to-one correspondence, much as in statistical physics, many microstates map to the same macrostate. That is, if you have a balloon full of gas at a known pressure, volume and temperature (variables we can measure at a gross, macroscopic level), the molecules inside the balloon can be in a stupefyingly large number of arrangements, zipping about in zillions of different ways.
This philosophical attitude can be made quantitative, at least in a preliminary fashion.
So finding different levels of consciousness in other animals, finding a link between brain activity and actions, seeing that the brain acts before we make decision, injuring the brain causing a loss of function, and the fact the brain is an evolved organ not enough for you?
Nice to see you admit to playing a god of the gaps though. Most people try to hide such a thing.
goalpost shifting. not a sign of open mindedness.
First Baptist has been a downtown eyesore for many years. They are ABSOLUTELY HUGE!
They even have a fucking LIGHTHOUSE!
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/photos/thumbs/lrg-4663-p1090962.JPG
They have been around forever, this is no new and fast growing church, they are a behemoth!
Pete, all your arguments for your god can be applied to other gods. By virtue of rejecting the possibility that you are correct in your argument for the existence of a god but which is not the god you worship then you are not ‘open-minded’.
Pete Rooke:
Question of time. The reason why we cannot do that for the moment is that the human brain is something very complicated. But I am convinced that, one day, we know enough about it to create artificial intelligence and artificial consciousness.
Fifty years ago, many people was convinced that “life” was something magic that Science could not understand. And we know now that life is just an ADN/protein machine.
One century ago, somebody “demonstrated” that it was impossible to build a machine playing chess.
Nope, then we would be gods in your world. You still don’t get it.
The idiot Mabus/Markuze is firing up his spam machine again. I have just deleted another stack of comments, and I have also deleted your replies.
Furthermore, I am banning Pete Rooke for ignoring my earlier admonition to lie low, and instead babbling on here about Mabus.
I’m serious. It’s zero-tolerance time for dealing with this bozo.
I bet petey went to bed. The questions started to get hard.
1. Mathematicians do not show what is “concept” and what is “reality”. Mathematics is the manipulation of concepts (optionally fuelled by stimulants). It is science which determines which bits of mathematics are useful in describing the natural world and predicting its behaviour.
2. “Infinity” is not a number. One can, however, construct systems of numbers — such as the surreals — in which infinitely large numbers arise and can be manipulated through arithmetic. Philosophically, then, “being infinite” is not so different from “being even” or “being odd”, at least, not as different as one might’ve thought at first glance.
Pete Rooke Author Profile Page | April 11, 2009 8:53 PM
It means precisely what it implausibly suggest. See Peter Atkins Beyond Belief talk for details. If this is not the case then I want to know what caused the big bang because mathematicians have shown that infinity is simply a concept not a reality. The universe cannot be infinite.
You’re right pard, this universe ain’t big enough for the both of us. Draw!!
never mind
Point the first. Everything came from something, we just don’t know quite what. And neither do you, you’ve just decided you do know because the answer you made up makes you feel warm and fuzzy. Point the second. Pretty much done, as Kel has indicated. That the answer does not make you feel warm and fuzzy is not an indicator of much.
Self-awareness to particular degrees has been shown in other animals. Chimpanzees for instance are fully conscious. They have done experiments with chimpanzees where the chimpanzees would bet not whether they knew the answer but whether they knew whether they knew the answer. How much more do we need to show that consciousness is an evolved trait – that memory, that creating causal relationships in the world, that building tools, that planning for the future – these are all done in various degrees by other animals throughout the animal kingdom? We may not be able to look and go “that’s consciousness” but we can show that everything we believe that makes up consciousness is present throughout the animal kingdom. What else needs there to be?
I hereby give PZ an enormous virtual chocolate non-easter bunny to try and make up for the Mabus clean-up, and for banning Rooke. And maybe a 3-pack of Cadbury eggs, too.
PZ, guillotine operator, wrote:
Pete leaves as he entered – in a blaze of stupid.
Awww, Pete has to go? Too bad, keep in touch, bye-bye.
PZ’s blog and he warned him but frankly I didn’t want him banned.
Well, he is from Quebec. Persecution Complex is the default human/political condition there.
And I’m not wasting more typing or reading on Rooke.. It’s sad that there are people that dense, but it is an unfortunate reality.
Rooke was fun to toy with. Troll or no, he showed some signs of intelligence, even though they were masked by willful ignorance. I disagreed with almost everything he said, but he was amusing (“inflict[ing] oral sex on a women [sic]” is comedy gold).
Mabus/Markuze/PZDUMMY/(whatever he goes by this week) is just an annoying spammer. So long, and don’t let the door hit ya where the FSM split ya.
1. TPB is probably going to disappear in a week when the courts shut them down.
2. Even if not, TPB can’t maintain a decent service besides their torrent tracker: http://baywords.com/
Newfie, good pionts but walking upright came before the big brains. Australopithecines were chimp-like in terms of cranial capacity but walked upright in a reasonably efficient way, though they still had some arboreal morphology. The brain expansion started slowly from there. There is no iron clad theory for why this happened, but you basically have the social brain hypothesis where early humans had to keep track of social relationships, deception, cooperation, etc, and the diet driven hypotheses, where increased meat eating or underground tubers both required and allowed for bigger brains.
Rooke wouldn’t have been banned…except that I had rather plainly told him he was treading on thin ice with me, and then he had to particularly flout my suggestion by engaging with the spamming moron, which I had told everyone was going to be out of line.
He exhibited an intolerable amount of stupidity.
Maybe now that he can’t speak, he can actually go and read what other people have said to him and try to take it on board. especially when it comes to ID and the DI.
Oliver, I missed your post within all the spam. Thanks for pointing out how the pastor was able to get the subpoena in the first place. I also now see ImmortalityLTD‘s way of getting around being outed by Google :)
thanks for the corrections, you are wise and make great pionts. :)
If churches can ban members like this, couldn’t one make the argument that they are, in effect, a private club? Wouldn’t that open them up for taxation and loss of any special status? Churches are supposed to be welcoming to all…that’s the whole point of their mission.
I mean, this guy may deserve to lose any leadership positions he had in the church for being at odds with the pastor (even though the pastor should get smacked for his own petty and worldly behavior), but to outright ban a member from the church itself smacks of taking advantage of the advantages given to churches by governments at all levels.
Megachurches would make a very promising target for taxation…that’s where the big money is!
Admitting anyone is not a stipulation on their 501c3 status AFAIK.
but IANAL
what other internet acronyms can i use?
LOL
WTF
nm
Another test… gosh that sign-in is confusing with its utter lack of feedback…
Assuming this works this time, I’m distraught that Rooke has gone: I was learning so much from him.
I’m pretty damn sure Jesus kept bitching about rich people being bad.
Yet another christian hypocrite. A savage one at that.
Thank you PZ. Thank you!
I won’t be missing the rookie.
But it would be interesting to see how he would weasel his way out of “infinity is a concept not a reality” trap when applied to his god.
I did learn one thing from him though-that he was a very irritating troll.
The best way to get rid of religion would be to get them to read their own books. Remember the church goers handing out pamphlets in front of Dawkins talks? Someone should hand out pamphlets in front of churchs with bible quotes on them.
Also, I recently noticed that my city has road signs pointing to the church’s sometimes. What’s that about? It’s like the big H for hospitals or the airport ones, but they say Brigeland Methodist Church and a big arrow, like somebody in desperate need of some praying can veer off the road to find the nearest shrine. I wonder if they pay for it or if the city does.
Even after all of this, the Rookie probably still thinks he had anything to offer here. Perhaps he did but he was not wise enough to heed warnings. He was good for the unintentional hilarity but he creeped me out even more.
Actually, I don’t blog anonymously. I use my real name, so I am accountable for every word I say.
No taxes, free adverts, and interested party campaign contributions? Some would think it a cabal of sorts, if so inclined.
PZ, can I suggest you get someone you trust to help control this rather large and unruly group of howler monkeys? You are single handedly trying to do what most large blogs do with a number of moderators.
I’m amazed you don’t go to bed every night with a headache.
@ #180 If churches can ban members like this, couldn’t one make the argument that they are, in effect, a private club? Wouldn’t that open them up for taxation and loss of any special status? Churches are supposed to be welcoming to all…that’s the whole point of their mission.
Just the opposite, in fact. Religions are exempt from all sorts of anti-discrimination laws, both in hiring and accepting devotees. They have many special privileges besides tax exemptions.
A cabal indeed. I’m always shocked when religious absurdity pops up in my life. I don’t really know anyone who goes to church. I just feel sorry for all you rational people who live in the thick of it. Keep fighting the good fight!
I went to a church today.. for a baptism of one of my friend’s daughter’s.
I got yelled at by the rector for taking photos.
i didn’t know Episcopalians thought that you could steal their soul with a picture.
learn something new every day
lol
Back to the topic (the leeches in Florida, not the trolls on teh internets), why or how is supposedly taking photographs grounds for a subpoena?
I know the blogger claims shehe did no such thing, but let’s assume, for the sake of argument, shehe did: What’s the issue? It’s always been my understanding that photographing a person, even without that person’s consent, and provided the photographer is (e.g.) in a public space and not violating the photographee’s privacy (by, e.g., photographing the photographee through an open window of the photographee’s home) is legal. Rude, perhaps, but legal. (The “professional” paparazzi test this concept almost to destruction, deliberately following the victims, climbing into trees (e.g.) and using telephoto lens, at all hours of the day. I seriously doubt the blogger did anything like that (plus, of course, shehe claims there were no photographs to being with).)
IMNAL (obviously!), but I presume there is, by now, a reasonably large body of case law, and quite possibly, legislation… So why or how is supposedly taking photographs grounds for a subpoena?
Ah, the air smells a little sweeter and the sun will shine a little brighter with those two gone. Thanks, PZ.
Bah. Pete was a dumbass, was totally self unaware and more than a bit creepy but I kind liked having him around.
Back to the fray late…
Oh woe, and woe! We used to have the most beautiful of boobies – wOO+ missing in action for sooo long.
The wonderful Cuttlefish, gone. And Sven, gone.
It takes the twirl out of me.
Wait, what happened to Sven and Cuttlefish?
Sven says he’s done and Cuttlefish retired to focus on the little Cephalopoda
Does anyone know what happened to wOO+ ?
Damn what’s next the loss of smart asses, dumb chimps, sluts, lesbians, teh gays and the godless?
I’ve got a few more months of the egg money paying for the internet & phone service…then it will be good night sweethearts for me too.
I’m off to see the Dead tomorrow so who knows, I could be kidnapped by a cabal of hot hippie almost underage twirlers.
that or I’ll be at work and back here on Tuesday.
#157 – my favorite part about that lighthouse is that not only is it totally cheesy and kind of ugly, but it’s attached to a parking garage that’s the size of a city block in the middle of downtown. (I do like that it makes it easy to give directions to out-of-towners, though.)
I have so much antipathy towards the FBC. They practically run this city, or if not them, then an affiliated church.
I’m not at all surprised by this affair, and I don’t think that anyone who is at all familiar with the FBC in Jacksonville and is also somewhat critical of it would be surprised either.
Pastor Brunson’s “flock” has been purged of its black sheep.
That’s showing ’em, Mac! Keep those sheep in their place – subservient, pliant, and fishing in their pockets and purses for hefty donations to the Mac Brunson lifestyle enrichment fund.
Okay I don’t really understand how to blockquote but I think this is how it works. *fingers crossed*
[blockquote] Bah. Pete was a dumbass, was totally self unaware and more than a bit creepy but I kind liked having him around. [/blockquote]
After the whole survivor episode it just feels so sudden. No closure. I missed the whole crackergate episode so I only got to know him during the funny “never inflict oral sex on a woman” phase. He was almost endearing.
Now you see here Chimpy, twirling is a serious matter.
And if you want to get the real *taste* of a Dead concert, wander by mistake into the venue ladies room.
Inquiring minds – know. ;)
Damn. Sorry Rev. I fail at the internet.
Don’t apologize to me. I hold no authority here. I’m just a random chimp who spends too much time here.
use the greater than less than symbols instead of the [
Ariel – Oh! Me, me!
Oh I’ve seen the boys too many times to count (last estimate was 120+, some are very fuzzy) and have had a few excursions into the ladies room. Some on purpose, some not.
This will be the first time minus Jerry though, sort of. I saw some shows with Phil a while back
Warren Haynes isn’t Jerry but he’s damn good.
This time though I’ll be a good boy. No extra curricular activities for me these days. The job has these “random” things to ensure that doesn’t happen.
Oooh yay! Chimp is my new internet mentor.
Damn it.
I wanted to be all smarty pants.
< then block quote, then >
make your quote – Hi Bill!
then
Your standards have
slippedcollapsed.*ducks flying poo*
Shee-it.
So much for me trying to teach HTML codes.
*snort*
Rev. BDC helped me learn to stop worrying and love bacon again
Not happy with the registration thing.
Not happy with the rookie getting banned,there are worse than him.
Not happy with Sven retiring(well,or,being a slacker and not registering lol).
Not happy with Cuttlefish retiring.
Hm,not happy.
Doubting Foo @157, is there an actual operating light in that ridiculous lighthouse? I have a hard time believing anyone would tolerate a powerful lamp flashing away in the middle of a city.
Farewell to the Wookie, from whom I’ve learned to never again take the word “inflict” for granted.
Ah, my Dead shirt, and crochet Dead beret are in my summer wardrobe (aka Addams family, uncle Knick Nack) so of course I’ve forgotten what year I saw Jerry Garcia last.
Oh wait – he was ALIVE the last time I saw him.
Clinteas – I join you in not being happy.
I’m not happy about registration, which I may or may not be able to accomplish…given my state of internet ignorance.
Don’t give a fiddlers fuck about ol’ Rooke.
I’ll miss Sven!
Waaah, again about the Cuttlefish.
This may be interesting. We’ll see who rises from the ashes after Keester Sunday. Might not be me. *grin*
Pastor? How the hell can a man call himself the “pastor” of a megachurch? “Pastor” implies a good-shepherd kind of guy, who knows each of his parishioners and visits them when they are ill. The right word for Mac Brunson is “preacher”.
“Preacher-man” and “fat-assed preacher-man” would work, too.
PZ was really pissed about this,and the rookie fell victim to the cephalopod master’s rage LOL
Patricia,
you have a day to get the registration sorted out,its not that difficult,just use some email addy and a password to register your nickname with typekey.
I was going to say about the whole google/gmail thing upthread:
Google is evil.
Im not going near it without anonymizer on and cookies for all google* domains blocked,and I wont be seen dead with a gmail account ever.
And,just a question,who pays the good pastor’s salary??
greedy Pharisee
Really not a good choice of words.
*fingers crossed*
The preview button works better.
Mac Brunson was also pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, which I visited several times with my wife when she was a member of it (we both later joined a Unitarian Universlist church together). Seeing what has happened since he left Dallas makes me glad to not even be a Baptist, let alone one in Jacksonville, Florida.
Everything came from something, we just don’t know quite what.
Don’t be so sure. You might want to read http://www.positiveatheism.org/crt/stenger1.htm
@217:
Not that I’m aware of, there isn’t. It’s just a fancy show-piece attached to a frigging enormous parking garage. But there may be a spotlight of some kind in the top, like car dealerships use, though I’ve never seen it when I’m driving downtown at night (which, admittedly, isn’t all that often, since downtown isn’t really the “middle” of the city anymore).
Pete Crook, I know you’re gone but no doubt you will be lurking so. The only thing we have learned from you is about you and what we have learned about you doesn’t a pretty picture make.
As to Cuttlefish, his news makes me a Very Sad Monkey for he brought joy and a ray of light on an otherwise often maddening post subject. The Poet Laureate of Pharyngula will be sorely missed. Return when you can and let us hope it is not too long.
blf & keri,
It appears there once was. Perhaps when the church collects enough power over local government, they will be able to light their beacon once more.
I found this in the comments following the Jacksonville.com article, by one educ8er.
Pete Rooke banned for abject turdery? ‘Bout time.
Cuttlefish spending time with his family? Tragic for us fans of the CuttleWorks, but an understandable priority choice. However, in the UK when a member of parliament is off to “spend more time with his family” it usually means he has been caught “looking for badgers” on one of London’s heaths or parks. Of course looking for badgers doesn’t in any way involve sucking cock. That is a terrible suggestion and his wife is standing behind him. Pity really. We need more openly gay MPs.
A senior member of a faith based organisation getting paid a hypocritical quantity of cash and taking whacking gifts? I am shocked, shocked I say. Did I mention I was shocked?
Louis
Ignore this. Just testing registration.
Of course it is: it’s called “superstition”.
It’s a disgrace. Shouldn’t especially preachers be beacons of morality and positive behavior, selflessness and civil courage? And then they rage about “materialists”. Reality check: If you rage against evil materialistic evilutionists(TM) and make more money than to just satisfy your basic human needs (staying alive, that is) you are a hypocrite!
I don’t think he really deserves the money, but that’s in the same way I don’t think football players deserve all the cash they make and as long as someone is willing to pay for such things, well, bad luck for you.
No,why?
A preacher is just some liar in a position of power who fools the gullible,there is no intrinsic morality or somesuch attached to it.
Its what they make you believe,but if you look at it rationally,there is nothing there.
Holy Crap! Yeah, how do you get a subpoena when there are no infringements of laws involved? It’s apparently too easy to get a subpoena. Shame on the Google people for not challenging the subpoena – or does that cost too much money so they just give into this sort of abuse?
Well, with any luck at least the blogger may think about the sort of people he/she associates with. If a buddy of mine got thrown out of a group I was in for no good reason, I’d leave too.
Pity there’s no hell for these pastors; the most we can hope for is that they contract some horrible disease.
I dont care much for this “die miserably” rhetoric,to be honest.
Arguing and having different opinions is one thing,wishing someone you disagree with and who in your mind is a bad person disease or death does make you just as bad as them,AFAIC.
Oh man.. Get a schedule change, CRooke gets banned! I miss all the fun!
Oh please please please pipe up, Stupid Fuck and Fallacious! I so want you two dimwits to be next. But I’ll settle for Stupid Fuck.
I disagree. GIVING them a bad disease makes you just as bad as they are. Wishing them harm just makes you human.
Fixed that for you.
Beh, this Pete Rooke guy is fucking up my comment-reading hobby. Every time I see a comment authored by him, I skip it, but because everyone keeps feeding that dunce, I can’t read anything interesting (not that the old-timers here aren’t doing a good job making him appear like an idiot, but they really needn’t try so hard)
Please, guys, you are all interesting and witty and awesome, do an old lurker a favor and talk to EACH OTHER and not to Pete? I don’t care that he’s stupid, he’s so fucking BORING.*
*I wrote this comment after trying to file through the thread and see if Pete is still starring in it. Blargh.
Freidenker @240, see #161.
“Fixed that for you.”
Apparently someone who has never realized the difference between thoughts and behavior.
RickR,
feel free to speak for yourself and wish anyone you like death or disease,even if you will be so gracious as not to act on it.
Its not what I do.And no particular mental straining is required either,to keep myself from wishing people bad things.Maybe its just me.
Clinteas,
It’s not just you.
@clinteas
The offensiveness of the situation is that their status and income is predicated on the intrinsic morality of their calling.
While I agree with you that once you buy into paying someone $300k p.a. for pretending to intercede on one’s behalf with an invisible man in the sky, they’re more or less at liberty to behave as they wish, since one has pretty much dispensed with logic at that point.
Where I disagree is that accepting payment to do so does impose an obligation to practise what one preaches, or at least make better stab at pretending to do so.
Apologies for the poor construction of theabove. I was distracted by the hatefully capricious TypeKey sign in.
On which subject, I’m going to have to return to a condition of interested disengagement: plainly registration does have to be implemented but until I can log in using OpenID – and believe me I’ve tried some creative approaches to getting it to work – I’m done.
@PZ: since this is the last time I’m going to be commenting for a while, just wanted to say many, many thanks for a wonderful blog.
You do, however, go out of your way to call people “assholes” merely for not thinking the same way as you.
Peter Rooke’s banning at that point was regrettable IMHO.
He had just grandiosely informed us :
and BDC neatly skewered him with the question
I was looking forward to the answer.
Naked Bunny,
I dont think thats fair.
I called him asshole for stating that wishing someone harm was somehow intrinsically human.
Wishing people harm who disagree with us is not hardwired into our brains.We decide what we wish for people,its our free will to wish anybody harm or not.
Thats what I reckon,anyway….
@ Louis #230
“A senior member of a faith based organization getting paid a hypocritical quantity of cash and taking whacking gifts? I am shocked, shocked I say. Did I mention I was shocked?”
I sense that you might be a it shocked, Louis. Perhaps you ought to sit down and have a cuppa until you get your legs under you again.
I know it’s always difficult to bear when one’s expectations are met, exactly, over and over again. Take heart, Louis, we’re all here for you during this tough time of hearing the very thing you probably expected to hear about a greasy, used-car-salesman-esque “Preacher” at another monstrous mega-church.
Elmer Gantry, anyone ?
An important story that needs telling over again.
What is a surprise to me is that there is any surprise concerning this event. From Ted H. to Tammy Fae to Jimmy Swaggart to Oral Roberts to…
These cons have been liberating the credulous from their money as long as I can remember (and that is a while, kids). No humble homes or offices for these folks. They have ARRIVED.
Where did he say it was “intrinsic”? It is very common, just like religiosity and a desire for long-term justice. Part of being human is having countless foibles and wishes and desires that are not necessarily universal. Just because you don’t share some of them doesn’t make them automatically bad.
Now you’re the one making universal claims of what sort of thinking is intrinsically human!
I don’t know if anyone else has commented on this, but aratina, that’s a fairly ignorant statement. As far back as in 1998 I downloaded my hotmail emails, and as far as I know, it has been possible to download yahoo emails for nearly a year (and probably longer if you have Yahoo Plus).
Thanks aratina,
I’ll look into that. I was vaguely aware of the POP/IMAP thing, but have never been techsavvy.
It may be a Google tool, but once it resides on my harddrive it’s hopefully less likely to disappear down the memoryhole.
@Kristjan Wager
And I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but your tone makes you sound like an asshole.
A simple “actually that’s not true:” followed by the fascinating details of your adventures in email access would have sufficed.
The churches have always been corrupt.
And your tone makes it seem like are ignorant on the definition of the word ignorant.
It’s not necessarily an insult to call someone ignorant.
Happy dead jewish guy day Chimpy!
I’m making peppered sausage gravy & biscuts for breakfast.
Is it Sammy Davis Jr. day?
I’m perusing the night’s pretty tame comments and prepping for the Dead.
Sausage gravy and biscuits sounds yummy. I had a bagel and lox.
Not sure if that has some easter significance or not but it was good.
have fun today. Hopefully no one angers “he who napalms with tentacled fury”.
I’m shocked and dismayed that PZ is evidently against the separation of organized religion and the state. If the government starts taxing churches, that would further erode what remains of that separation. Those pernicious megachurches would immediately attempt to buy the politicians (even more than they do now), and who could blame them?
Let’s leave the loonies be and keep them out of political influence as much as possible.
I’ve heard of those lox’s but never seen one.
Have fun with the Dead!
I wholeheartedly agree we have to tax these greedy bastards. I think Warren Buffett takes a salary of $100,000 a year.
@Rev. BigDumbChimp
Lucky for me eh! Otherwise I’d be under the misapprehension that you were being insulting by telling me that I’m “unlearned” concerning the meaning of the word. Of course if you were being sarcastic, you would be… but since your point is that you can call someone ignorant without intending to cause offence, obviously you aren’t. Right?
My reading of “ignorant” in the case in point was that its tone was aggressive to an unwarranted degree.
$300,000 a year? Holy crap! That’s way more than I make as a surgeon, and it’s more than most of my colleagues make (at least those whose salaries I have some idea of), and doctors actually contribute something to society.
Well I already said goodbye on the registration post, but I just want to pipe in one last time to express my disgust at these money grubbing psychopaths, bitch about how my mother gave away my college fund to her church, and continues to give them over $200 a month and how I would like to see the tongues of every preacher, priest, imam, guru and woo-meister cut out and the offending individuals put to work cleaning polluted superfund sites without safety equipment.
That is all.
Sili @255-
what you’re referring to is known as an e-mail client.
It’s a software package which has to be installed.
In the windows world, there is the microsoft product called “outlook” (I think), or the open source Mozilla Thunderbird. These can be configured to retrieve and send e-mails via hotmail, and probably Gmail as well.
I said it made it seem as if you were “unlearned” concerning the meaning of the word.
You may very well not be.
More unwarranted than you calling Kristjan Wager an asshole for using the term correctly concerning the statement that was made?
@Rev. BigDumbChimp
According to my reading of ignorant as it was used, yes.
On a strictly literal interpretation of the word, plainly he is correct to call Aratina “ignorant”. But that doesn’t attend to the nuance of its usage: “you might not know that…” he would have been no less accurate and rather more pleasant. To my ear (so to speak) he was being condescending towards someone a) well-intentioned and b) only half wrong. He was, therefore, behaving like an asshole and I called him one.
Last time I looked around the joint, the ignorant were pretty well tolerated here. It’s the stoopid that get a swift boot to the tokus.
Every church I was a member of, back in the day, the entire budget including salaries was open to the congregation at the AGM. The pastor was an employee who received a reasonable salary, in the same ballpark as what his congregants were making. You can dismiss the whole enterprise as a waste of time and resources (and aside from a few community Good Works, I would now mostly agree), but it was by mutual consent all round, without exploitation. Think of it as just another special-interest club (though one with charitable status, for no very good reason).
Situations like this one, however, go well beyond that: they need to be seen as high cash-flow businesses, with the pastor as the CEO who (like his counterparts in the secular corporate world) always finds ways to siphon off ridiculous amounts of that money to his own direct or indirect benefit.
BTW: Please, try to keep straight what we’re talking about regarding “tax exempt” as applied to churches. AFAIK, in both Canada and the US, pastor’s salaries are taxable as income, same as yours and mine. I believe the relevant issues are: 1) Church property being exempt from municipal property tax (is there any other class of real estate that enjoys this exemption? On what basis?) and 2) Donations to the church being eligible for tax deductions on the part of the donor. Tax deductible charity is good, in principle — but in this case, a high fraction of the donations are used solely for the maintenance of the organization and its infrastructure, rather than any larger humanitarian purpose.
Have you all read the comments at the site? It’s the all-too-typical Christian response of blame the victim.
Thank goodness we have you around to interpret internet nuances for us and then scold us when we misbehave.
Never mind that Kristjan is in the IT industry and has some knowledge on these things and may only be correcting that statement. And also never mind that he is from Denmark and the correct usage of the term ignorant may be exactly what he was going for.
But no, you’ve decided he was behaving like an asshole so of course you are correct because you know it to be so.
Maybe he was behaving like an asshole, it is possible I don’t deny that. I behave like an asshole all the time, and I get called on it rightfully so, but who cares when we can just call him one because we know we know his intentions.
@Rev. BigDumbChimp
What part of “To my ear (so to speak) he was being condescending” means that I’m appointing myself the arbitrator of nuance?
Since all I did was say so, then perhaps its time to let the matter drop?
fine.
Perhaps it is the 4 or five questions about my Easter church plans I’ve been asked today that have me in a grumpy mood.
Consider it dropped and even an apology for jumping down your virtual throat.
None required: perfectly fine with a bit of robust dialogue.
In fact perhaps it would be an appropriate moment for me to extend similar apologies to Kristjan:
@Kristjan Wager
I’m sorry I called you an asshole: I shouldn’t have been so rude.
This Pete Rooke thing is hilarious. He writes in English, but there’s no actual meaning behind it. It’s just the usual religious woo. What is so disappointing is that you cannot actually have a reasonable conversation with him (or the other christian nuts) because they don’t subscribe to logic. It’s English — but just random words.
In #93 the Pete the Rooke intoned [before getting the axe]: “Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
In Greek there is καμηλος [kamēlos] ‘camel’ and καμιλος [kamilos] ‘rope’ – most scholars feel that some tired or illiterate transcribing monk was responsible for this fallacy of trying to push a camel through the eye of a needle. [But of course it IS the inerrant word of god. . .] And since Jebus seems to have a boner for rich people getting into heaven, I would guess that the good pastor Brunson is going to be a crispy critter. Unfortunately I don’t believe such crap, but it is a pleasant image.
300,000 dollars is a bit more than our (UK) prime minister gets (and he gets taxed too). The pastor looks after a few thousand? while the PM has 60 million. Scary. Even if you think he’s ‘saving souls’, you have to reckon that merely believing in Jebus is supposed to do that, while the pastor merely interprets the Wholy Babble on Sunday mornings. Christ Almighty! as the saying goes. Talk about fleecing sheep.
Thanks goodness for that tax exemption!
Kristjan Wager:
It would probably help if you provided the details about how you were able to accomplish such things. There is this:
but it does look like Hotmail allows you to download your email as of January 2009. It’s not like people who believe in ethical business practices are going to run from Google to Microsoft, though.
Actually Oliver, you are right. I was being an asshole. I just have a low tolerance threshold for people to make statements like
when the fact is, google was the last to actually provide this functionality, and hotmail has done it for a decade. I run into this sort of stuff all the time, and it has started getting on my nerves. Yes, google has done a lot of good stuff, but honestly, they are latecomers to most of these things.
I shouldn’t have jumped down aratina’s throat so hard, and I apologize for that. Aratina, calling you ignorant on the subject, was perhaps technically correct, but not really necessary, and I could have put it more constructively. I’m sorry about that.
As I said, Hotmail has had that functionality for at least a decade, so it’s hardly new.
None of the companies mentioned (Microsoft, Google, Yahoo) would be my choice, if I look at it from a purely ethical view. Personally, I use all three, but also use others (my own domains), so obviously it’s not my priority in choosing email vendors.
I must admit I’ve always had some issues with gmail though, but that’s related to privacy issues rather than other ethical issues.
Gah! I meant download for free, Kristjan. So ya, that was pretty dumb for me to say. Sorry.
Not only do churches not pay taxes, but the law excuses them from even reporting their finances. Other non-profits report their finances on IRS Form 990 and can be audited by the IRS. Those 990’s are also a matter of public record available for anyone to review. But religious institutions, all self determined to be religious, are wholly exempt. They are supposed to pay taxes on and report the finances of associated commercial enterprises, like stores, coffee shops, travel agencies, publishers and the like but many don’t. Pastors do pay income taxes on their salary but they get a parsonage allowance, the cost of their house and home, on the assumption that paying taxes on the imputed income in that would be a hardship. So if you’re a preacher, the earnings needed to cover your mortgage, home maintenance, utility bills, and real estate taxes are tax free. A nice deal if you can get it.
I’m with PZ on this. Churches should not only pay taxes but be required to release an annual report and their tax return for all, both supporters and doubters, to see.
I dont think thats fair.
I called him asshole for stating that wishing someone harm was somehow intrinsically human
Actually you didn’t. That you think you did illustrates your confusion.
P.S. It’s quite possible that wishing someone harm is both to be an asshole and to be human. It helps to understand that “just makes you human” means, as Naked Bunny said, “Part of being human is having countless foibles and wishes and desires that are not necessarily universal” — not that, if one is human, one necessarily wishes others harm. But hey, Clinteas, such poor comprehension just makes you human.
Gah! I meant download for free, Kristjan. So ya, that was pretty dumb for me to say. Sorry.
Wars have been fought over omitting a word … another illustration of being human.
re: sciencey stuff at #226
so… the universe was caused by some weirdness that split zero energy into X positive and X negative energy. to my brain that only makes sense if energy were made of something, but I if I remember correctly, it isn’t, right?
*head go boom*
this is why i prefer biology to physics :-p
Testing TypePad – please ignore
So here is what RickR said @ 238:
I disagree. GIVING them a bad disease makes you just as bad as they are. Wishing them harm just makes you human.
And my answer was:
And now Im getting comments like this:
WTF? Where do you get the idea that I call him asshole for not agreeing with me? Thats just silly.I call him that for thinking humans have some inborn tendency to wish others bad,as if we didnt have a choice here.It has nothing to do with not agreeing with me.
And this:
Well Im glad the commenters here know better than myself what I was trying to say.
Naked Bunny’s point I see,but nothing sacred’s condescension is nothing but annoying,and of course doesnt add anything substantial.
I wish people could refrain from the interpretation of the intentions behind other commenter’s posts and thoughts.Its becoming a bad habit here.
I read the thread after all the crap had been mopped up. (Yeoman’s work, btw, PZ.)
As for Pastor Pete Rooke, I won’t miss him. Plus, being banned here will give him more time to minister to his flock at St. Chad’s Omega Church.
(Oh, wait, that priestly persona, which he flaunted so shamelessly when he first showed up here last year, was totally fabricated. Pete’s a knee-roll short of a book bound in the skin of a loved one delivered by a cankerous milkman. Good fucking riddance.)
to my brain that only makes sense if energy were made of something, but I if I remember correctly, it isn’t, right?
It only has to make sense to the degree that the math is well formed and logically consistent — intuition is useless at that level. By “something”, you presumably mean mass. Energy and mass are convertible one to the other (e = mc2). Beyond the equations, energy and mass aren’t defined in physics; they are primitive concepts.
Not only isn’t the universe designed and constructed by a mythical being created in our image, it is not constructed in accordance to our daily experience with “things”. The universe can be modeled as the elaboration of a probabilistic equation. You and I and everything around us are aspects of this mathematical elaboration – subcomponents of an abstract logical function. Many people find this absurd because it seems to deny that they and the world they live in is real. But what does “real” mean? Something is real if it inhabits our universe … so what is real is anything that is an element of the elaboration of the same equation. We are real, the objects around us are real, our minds are real because they are elaborations of our brain processes, our thoughts are real, our thoughts of gods and ghosts are real … but gods and ghosts themselves are not real, as they are nowhere to be found in the mathematics that defines the universe. I think that I, and all the things I relate to, and even the relationships and the mental process of relating, all being aspects of a mathematical construct is pretty cool, sort of like that newagy holistic “we are one” notion except that this is based on accurate knowledge and understanding.
Well Im glad the commenters here know better than myself what I was trying to say.
I didn’t say anything about what you were trying to say, I only commented on your actual words, which were to the effect that people who want to do harm to people are assholes, not that someone who says that such people are assholes is an asshole. That is plain as day, and that you would so stupidly and so dishonestly misrepresent my words tells me that, human or not, you’re not worth my time.
Correction:
I didn’t say anything about what you were trying to say, I only commented on your actual words, which were to the effect that people who want to do harm to people are assholes, not that someone who says that such people are human is an asshole.
I call him that for thinking humans have some inborn tendency to wish others bad,as if we didnt have a choice here….I wish people could refrain from the interpretation of the intentions behind other commenter’s posts and thoughts.Its becoming a bad habit here.
What a hypocritical jackass. It is you who interpreted the intentions behind RickR’s words. And you grossly misinterpreted them, as a number of people who aren’t have tried to explain to you. And yout stupidity and intellectual dishonesty seem to have no bound, as you write “have some inborn tendency to wish others bad,as if we didnt have a choice here” — as if having a tendency implies no choice! It’s really hard for me to grasp how anyone can be that stupid, but there it is. But I’m pretty sure that the fact that you have been so clearly a wrongheaded ass will cause you no shame and will result in no change in your behavior, but instead will only cause you to defend yourself further — also something that commonly occurs in humans — but not all humans, and not all the time. It’s a tendency, but you can choose not to follow it. Or you can continue to be an asshole.
Finally, a good clue that someone is being an intellectually dishonest ass is when they remove something from its critical context; in this case, Clinteas quoted my “Actually you didn’t. That you think you did illustrates your confusion.” while omitting what it referred to, which was
I called him asshole for stating that wishing someone harm was somehow intrinsically human.
And is that what Clinteas did — call RickR an asshole? This isn’t a question of interpreting Clinteas’s intent, as he assholely objected to me doing, but rather a straightforward empirical question that can be answered by searching Clinteas’s comments for the word “asshole”. And here’s what that search turns up:
#239
Is that Clinteas calling RickR an asshole, as he claimed, or is not, as I claimed? The answer is quite obvious. So once again, Clinteas, you’re an asshole.
Ok, now I’m done with you, asshole.
Aratina –
I have had an ordinary Yahoo account since 2000 and have had it downloading into Outlook since 2001.
I now run an iMac at home (leopard) and a laptop for work (vista). With both, the mail software configures almost automatically – I gave it my email address and password, and it contacts the server and does the rest, none of that fiddling about with POP etc.
I can imagine that it’s one of those things that if no one told you about it, why would you know it existed? Hotmail, Yahoo etc certainly have no reason to let you know.
Any noobs wanting a walkthrough on setting it up, let me know.
Ok, one more thing about Clinteas that I just ran across … he and Walton have something in common:
Clinteas: I call him that for thinking humans have some inborn tendency to wish others bad,as if we didnt have a choice here
Walton, in response to “libertarians tend to be economic illiterates”: I’m sure the late Milton Friedman would have been rather amused to hear himself described as an “economic illiterate” by some guy on a blog.
John Morales: the phrase “tend to be” is not normally interpreted as “without exception”.
‘Tis Himself: First off, I said “libertarians tend to be economic illiterates.” [Emphasis added] Do I have to explain what the verb “tend” means? I hope you’re not illiterate in English as well as in economics, political science, history, and general knowledge.
Truthy,
you seem beyond your best times.
The logic and truth is gone,the shit flinging,misrepresenting and condescension is all thats left.
Bit sad,really.
But fling away,I dont care.
#9 This is awful. Google is quickly becoming Teh Evil with all this teaming up with fundies to out anonymous bloggers and shut down atheist youtube accounts. Unfortunately, they are already at the “too big to fail” stage for millions of gmail users.
I am currently migrating to gmx mail, owned by a German company, United Internet. I love its features. If this company is not some big scam then I recommend it over gmail. Big Brother Google was giving me the creeps. The only thing I miss is using their Picasa Web Albums.
I know that the religion angle and the salary are the hot topics on this story, but the blogger’s treatment is disturbing to me, especially when I heard about a guy whose home was searched for having a blog critical of the Phoenix police force. This kind of thing used to only happen in other countries: http://is.gd/sdXE.
I haven’t seen it here or anywhere but it is my question. Why does this (Or any) Minister need a “”Security
detail””?? Jim Jones had one and he used it to intimidate his followers and the disillusioned followers?? Also…Who pays for it the JSO or his congregation??
Typekey test.
Re-test typekey
Just to clear up some things:
1. Very few pastors make anywhere near $300,000 per year, so for those of you saying you should get that job, forget it – many more pastors make $25,000/year than $300,000 – that is the fact.
2. Pastor’s pay income taxes just like everyone else. Yes, the church itself is a non-profit and tax-exempt, but not the pastor. Not only does he pay income taxes, but he is considered self-employed, so he pays the full 15.6% to Social Security.
3. I have followed Mac Brunson’s story – does he seem like a jerk? Yes, he does. Abused his power? Yes, he has. Just don’t assume that all pastors are like that…they are not.
Michael
Pastor in Virginia