We had a debate on the subject “Is Atheism or Islam More Rational?”, between Hamza Tzortzis and Dan Barker, at UMTC last week. It’s now on youtube. It’s agonizing. Tzortzis is a kind of cut-rate Islamic William Lane Craig, and again he repeated his lies about the Quran containing inexplicably accurate embryology. It does not, and I’m tired of telling him so.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
That’s the problem, Muslims and IDiots are much happier to repeat their nonsense than we are to repeat the truth that opposes it.
Good thing we have an internet now, where often there are people willing to repeat the truth after everyone else has sickened of responding to the same stupid lies.
Glen Davidson
Who ya gonna believe? Me or some lying embryologist?
But the Quran predicted the discovery of the red shift and the expanding universe! There’s a passage that states that Allah “spreads” the heavens above us! Could you get any clearer than that??
I also love the claim that the Quran successfully predicted that skin that is burned and allowed to heal, and then burned and allowed to heal, and on and on … would really be painful. They didn’t even know about nerves back then! Will wonders never cease?!
Muslim attempts to merge science and religion are just as unsuccessful as the Christian ones, and both are as silly as the pseudoscientific babble that comes out of New Age. The solution to this problem is not to make your religion less open to looking stupid. The solution is to figure out it’s either wrong, or pointless.
I wonder what goes on in his mind. Either
1) he has himself convinced that PZs doubts are not to be taken seriously because
1a) he thinks PZs arguments are faulty or
1b) it is an priori fact any that the Quran contains accurate science because it has to because it is god’s word, and no further critical checking of the actual text is necessary or can trump this evidence. Critical inquiry can in principle not reveal new information about this holy text.
or 2) He sees that PZs arguments are good and chooses to lie because he
2a) can’t stop now or
2b) the need for conversion of unbelievers justifies lying.
2c) lying for the honor of Allah is a pious act
Does that sound exhaustive? I myself tend towards a mix between 1b) and 2c)
Why would he believe you, PZ? Sure, you might have the facts on your side, but you’re an atheist, so you must be lying. Somehow. He’ll find the way you’ve tricked him eventually, use new evidence to prove that he was right all along, and finally vindicate himself. Or will just stick with his misconceptions in the face of contradictory evidence. Whichever is more convenient.
I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s *nearly* impossible to get someone to change their mind / admit they were wrong once their public reputation depends on that untrue claim. Their reputation takes precedence over the truth because it’s what’s keeping them fed. This guy will probably never knock it off with the embryology thing, but at least we can try to get the attention of the people he’s preaching it to *via* him, people who are still capable of quietly revising their worldview… (I’m always proud to present myself as proof that this works in practice.)
PZ clearly sent me
The only thing Hamza Andreas Tzortzis has convinced me of is that embryos are chewable and might produce excellent bubbles in the mouth of a dedicated masticambulistophile.
Oh, why do the gods only whisper evil into my ear?
Because the gods themselves are evil. Just read any holy book, you’ll see.
“Our book successfully postdicted scientific finding X” is not a selling point even when it’s true.
Want to impress me? Build a flying car with your understanding of the Koran before science builds it – not after.
@ Alexs #4
You forgot 2d: He’s financially invested in the spreading of islam and will have to find a real job.
Sastra,
The Hindu ones – currently fervently going on in India – ain’t doing too hot either. Just one difference: these efforts ARE the source of pseudoscientific babble a la Deepak Chopra.
If a mans livlihood depends on not understanding something you can rest assured he will not understand it.
I forgot who that quote is from. Anyone know?
PZ, did you honestly think he would change his tune about embryology in his holy book? It’s not that he’s religious, any idiot can do that. He’s a creationist and they rarely, if ever, change their opinions.
But I suppose you could argue that he simply has too much invested in continuing to spread his lies in the name of big al.
@13: Wikiquotes suggests that’s a paraphrase of Upton Sinclair.
#13 nemothederv
I think that’s Upton Sinclair. The original quote is
According to the great god google anyways,
@15 Brownian.
That sounds about right. It’s been awhile since I’ve read it.
Corrected for posterity:
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”
– Upton Sinclair
Oh good, a fellow acolyte. Tell me, Andrew, does google tell you to cleanse the Earth with fire as well? Because I’ve either been chosen for a special and prophetic task, or I really should consider using those SafeSearch filters.
#18 Brownian.
No, no, godgle isn’t speaking to you it’s just a figment of your imagination.
He only speaks to me and only I can properly interpret the holy search results (for a small tithe) Anyone else who claims to be able to decipher the sacred algorithms is a false prophet!!!!
Honest, would I lie to you just to earn a dollar or two (tax free)?
Oh, good. An opportunity for schism. Andrew Brown: you are a heretic!
And they say we atheists don’t understand religion.
Here’s a poll to pharyngulate:
http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/2011/11/is_it_art_or_christian_bashing.html
Alex (#4):
I don’t think it works that way. This is how I think it works:
“I want to show that the Quaran is a good authority. It would be really excellent if I could argue that it had scientific validity, so as to be an authority. Let’s go looking for evidence that supports this view.”
This is in fact how most people operate most of the time: they attempt to find evidence to support their position, rather than the other way around. This is what a liberal education in general is supposed to teach us to avoid. (By demolishing students’ pet theories and presuppositions in any one part of their mental world, you throw doubt on them all, and thus teach them to question their opinions.) STEM fields sometimes do this well; sometimes not.
Recently, I overheard a theist saying that he quells the repartees of atheists by saying “Do you celebrate Christmas? YOU CELEBRATE JESUS!”
So btw, logically speaking, in any circumstance where someone asks you “Why?” you can saying “because JESUS!”, throw a smokebomb, and run.
These are the rules of debate.
@21 Mumon
Art or christian bashing?
Can’t both be true?
I’ll vote to keep it.
As has already been pointed out, why do the Quorans “scientific” predictions only relate to things we know IN THE CURRENT DAY? Where are the instructions, recently translated, that show us how to build a fusion power plant and hence solve the worlds energy problems? Where is the cure for cancer or HIV?
Hey, I noticed no religious people post comments on here. I guess that’s good, who would want their groupthink shattered?
@26 fredblogg
Haven’t you heard?
HIV is a curse on da gays for sinning.
Cancer is punishment for smoking that heathen ritual stuff Native Americans use.
See? They have an answer for everything.
Possibly because when they do they keep being asked to pony up evidence of their claims (I’m looking at you ‘Tis)and when the horde points out to them they can’t do it they keep retiring butthurt. This is a horde not a group, with diverse opinions on a range of subjects. We only have one unifier, which is the requirement that you back up your claims. Religion is one huge unjustified and unsupported claim and goddists don’t like having this uncomfortable fact pointed out to them
The link at 21: The actual indignation over this display is something to the effect that it is the “start of the holiday season” and this is a sacred time, so hurting Christians’ feelings in one of 100 displays in an art exhibit movie display is extra offensive. They are offended because they consider this the Christmas season. In the 15th of November. 40 full days before Christmas. If we give the same radius of sacred immunity to Easter, then we get some time in February, and then only from late May/early June to Halloween in which Christians are unable to claim Super Offense to something making light of their beliefs. 160 days out of the year are the days that we need to just stfu about their religion and let them have their sacred, sacred days without worry about other people’s opinions about their sacred, sacred beliefs. Obviously, they are completely cool with us criticizing them on the other 205 days though / eyeroll
I reject the Browns and Brownians — a former colleague of mine had ROOT privileges at Google, which he rejected in favor of Facebook. Sure, Google was holy, and is part of the history of Facebook, but there is no God but FB and Zuckerberg is his prophet.
As for convincing a fanatic: if fanatics cared about evidence they wouldn’t be fanatics, they’d be something else.
@27 J.B.
Actually, religious people come here all the time. We welcome them. There’s nothing more fun than a hardcore fundie.
Seriously, if you are one feel free to speak your mind. There’s nothing we’d enjoy more than commenting on it.
Just remember, reality can be cold and harsh.
Hey I notice you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. I guess that’s good, because then you’d realize how fucking wrong you are.
No, don’t worry, just go ahead and present your religious argument if you have a good one. As long as you respond to criticisms and don’t resort to insipid preaching, it’s well appreciated. After all, who would want to falsely be an atheist if there is watertight evidence for a personal god! :)
Somebody Is Wrong On The Internet???? *Sharpens titanium fang, and grabs a grog.*
Plenty of religious people post here. Just less so than the non-religious ones. Which is good, because most of the religious posters tend to post smarmy nonsense like you just did. But don’t fool yourself: we disagree with one another a lot, so the groupthink is minimal. But don’t get overconfident, because we disagree with religious trolls to an even greater degree than we disagree with one another over other topics. And dealing with those trolls is where the community thrives. If you paid attention more carefully, you’d find that when we are dealing with trollish comments (like yours) and standard religiobabble, we all often have very diverse approaches in terms of form and content of our objections. And therein lies the irony: Pharyngulites are very good at coming up with original, varying responses to content. The trolls who come in here accusing Pharyngula of being a unthinking, uniform hive mind, however…pretty much spew the same old shit. Same misunderstanding the nature of Pharyngula (two of the people who received Molly Awards for commenting here were religious), same stock phrases (echo chamber, groupthink), same level of snippiness and brevity, and same belief that their complaint EVEN MATTERS. But, I guess I shouldn’t call that ironic: the fact that a religious person is hypocritical and blind to that fact is as surprising to anyone as the sun rising in the east.
eric:
Who needs a flying car, when you can have a flying horse?
I can understand why it might appear to be groupthink for you point of view but what you have to understand is that many of us here heard all these apologetic arguments before.
Are you familiar with the acronym P.R.A.T.T?
Premise Refutted A Thousand Times.
That’s where alot of us around here are at when it comes to religious views.
Fond memories of EvolutionSkeptic…
Only those that are really serious in their quest for understanding. You should go find the posts related to that person. We were nice, ES listened, commented, read, we continued to be nice, no flame war ensued (mostly) and you know what? ES saw our points and thus, the light and was saved.
It’s that easy really.
JC
JB would appear to be a drive by troll, not even bothering to try for the flounce. Shame, the fangs aren’t as sniny as they could be!
Hey, I noticed no religious people post comments on here. I guess that’s good, who would want their groupthink shattered?
Yes, it’s clear you indeed would not like your groupthink shattered, JB.
come back if you change your group-mind.
I’ll be sure to force a theist to comment here at gunpoint in order to satisfy J.B.’s idiot journalist’s sense of ‘balance’ just as soon as my firearms acquisition certificate comes through.
Even the youtube comments know this guy isn’t making sense.
That’s a very bad indicator for him.
I wish Hamza would debate an ex-muslim. We’d eat him alive.
Dan did good, but someone ought to rip apart the Quran in one of these debates.
I’ve gotten through the first half hour.
“The infinity of god is qualitative and not quantitative”
Uh….can someone explain to me what the fuck that even means?
It’s like Star Trek. He uses sciencey words out of context so it sounds like it might make some sort of sense but really doesn’t. Maybe it would be better if he wore an air filter over his eyes.
“The subspace anomaly is qualitative and not quantitative”
No, Star Trek is better.
Well, we all have a talent for noticing something. I noticed that this year’s Republican candidates are all brilliant polymaths, who disdain to stoop to personal criticism of the President.
… on the other hand, I failed to notice that JC is actually J.B.
Mumon, if no actual Christians are being harmed, it’s not christian-bashing.
406 actually: they’re talking about Christmas 2012.
Do you mean, what is he trying to say? Or what does it ACTUALLY mean?
What he’s trying to say is that infinity is a concept, not a number. When he says god has infinite knowledge, it means that he does not have an amount of knowledge, it means that he both possesses all possible and impossible knowledge and at the same time IS the knowledge in a special sort of way that only deities can accomplish. He doesn’t just know how many molecules exist in the universe – he knows all the possible and impossible molecules in all the possible and impossible universes.
What does it ACTUALLY mean? It’s just yet another attempt by a religious person to cloud the issue by blabbling about definitions instead of actually getting to the point and presenting his evidence (this is of course what ALL apologists do all the time – argue about definitions and distract from the lack of evidence). He probably saw some mathematician or physicist talking about infinity on youtube and appropriated the concept for his god-babbly.
Concerning the Sinclair Lewis quote, I think Mark Twain put the same idea more succinctly:
“Tell me where a man gets his corn pone, and I’ll tell you what his opinions are.”
In other words, the concept of god is incoherent.
*ears currently hurting*
Contrary facts are of the devil and must be shunned. Thus the pious man may debate infidels without fear of losing his finest arguments to pesky refutation.
Personally I have yet to decide if this is good or bad, it means we can deploy prepared rebuttal against their prepared claim.
On the other hand it gets so tiresome.
I am about 25% through the Qoran and it is every bit as awful as I expected. I never knew Muhammad simply chopped up the bible and reassembled it with his own ignorance and epileptic ramblings.
Hmm, looks like J.B. won’t be coming back. And I was just finding a decaying echidna for him. The SIWOTI syndrome is strong in these ones…
stubby: Don’t forget the paedophilia!
A few late responses but here goes-
@Sastra – New Age is as UN-scientific as atheism (take note of the UN), new age or the Koran (response to early posts in this thread) -To all Muslim defenders, koran post-date by 600 years the reality of Christ, they are a construct of Roman Catholicism.
@ Brownian (early post) – Are you male, female or hermaphrodite(LGBT does not count biologically), you attack the fetus process based on the incorrect Islamic presupposition of truth.
Your further comments are just additional “brain farts” of other atheist that can only quote Dawkins or Darwin in their insignificance and error – other arguments are your defiance of realities you can only “perceive” to know or understand – no truth and no reality !!
You further “faithfully, religiously, aesthetically”, quote others and compare Moslem with Christianity – this unfortunately does NO credit to your atheistic, inquisitive, scientific, evolutionary mind since history and reality seems to prove you wrong on an academical level !!
@ Andrew Browman – Great point – most people atheist pr religious hate the point of “understanding”. Even God says in the Bible, “with your knowing, get understanding”.
@ Luara-Ray: As an Atheist, why do you celebrate Christmas? By now the whole world knows that Xmas is a pagan holiday that atheists hate the most – talk about the truth of the Bible that God will confuse those who hate him !!!For those that are not sure – Jesus does nor get re-born every Xmas (BTW: X= the Masonic, Crowlian(witchcraft. satanism)
Conclusion: Atheists will die side by side to Christians, Muslims, New Agers in the time to come and it will be the rich, influential, cool, whatever you want to call them – they will order our death !!!!!
You can risk “me and darwin/dawkins” and hope that you are not dispensable, or you can be a fool in this world and …… Jesus is His name
I couldn’t finish the video.
Nutjobs “why are you so angry?” was too much to bear.
So who won? *chuckles*
Rob seems a bit goats on fire! but since he appears to be a godbot, I’m going to ask him one simple question: Where is the Bible right where the Koran is wrong? Of course he can’t answer that because both books are horridly wrong on science, wrong on morality, etc.
@59 Rob
Hello rob. Nice to meet you. JB didn’t work out but you seem enthusiastic. I’d debate your inanity but I just sat through as much as I could of a two hour babblefest and my head is starting to hurt. I’m going to turn the lights down low and take a nap. Good luck to you.
Rob:
Heh.
@59 Rob
Wait, whut?
Umm, Rob, you read a lot like the label on Dr. Bronner’s soap.
i meant 58…..sorry. I need that nap
Andrew Brown #28
It’s not my fault. I can’t help it. Please don’t beat me.
So, Rob, are you going to pony up some evidence to support your belief in Jesus?
Is this an attempt at Pascal’s Wager? Because it doesn’t make sense otherwise.
Hi Rob! Normally I play nice but today has been rough and frankly your piss-poor excuse for a contribution isn’t helping. Read what you wrote back to yourself and tell me: do you like looking like a four year old spraying half-chewed french fries across the table thinking he is taking part in an adult conversation? Do you think you do your god a service by publicly being illiterate and semi-incoherent in His name?
Well, I managed to make it through a whole 57 seconds of the vid. The holy guy said something about “bow and prostrate” and that was all I needed to hear to know that holy guy is a self-righteous, arrogant asshole.
I’m now going to wash my brain with some beer.
Oh hai, it’s nemothederv! So, I guess since you’re around there’s no reason you can’t respond to this, or this, or perhaps this, from the “Underperforming” thread.
Rob, what the hell are you talking about? Can you formulate a coherent sentence explaining what it is you are for or against, and why? Your writing gives me headaches.
Dear Rob,
Jesus didn’t approve of arrogance, you know. You reek of it.
As for the few of your points I could understand (is English not your first language?).
Yes, I enjoy Christmas, as a celebration of family and love. It does not, for me or my family, have anything to do with Jesus. Atheists do not hate Christmas. If you are referring to the so-called “War on Christmas” that is a fake issue. People say “Happy Holidays” because (I know this will be a shock for you) not everyone celebrates Christmas but several other religions do have celebrations at roughly the same time. There is nothing wrong with acknowledging this fact.
And, erm… This?
The first part is true. Atheists, and theists all die. Every single one of us. As for the “rich, influential and cool”, they can only gain enough control to kill us if YOU KEEP VOTING FOR THEM because they tell you they believe in your God.
Rob,
It’s Brown like the pompous whiner from the Grauniad. The quote itself has nothing to do with an imaginary man in the sky, even if he did have a broken clock moment and one of his mouthpieces said something worthwhile.
Einstein also said something similar
The point is that the more you understand the world the less room there is for your sky daddy.
Religion was our first and our worst attempt at understanding the world. Some of us now know better
@58, Rob
You have a talent for incoherency.
I’ve had plenty of fundie friends complain about substituting “X” for “Christ” because they didn’t realize the origin of the abbreviation, but this is the first time I’ve seen it contributed to the Freemasons. Yay conspiracy theories!
Rob
Whoa dude. Heavy.
Were you blasting Ummagumma when you came up with that.
Alex, Tyrant of Skepsis:
I’ve argued with Hamza a bit. I believe it’s “1a) he thinks PZs arguments are faulty”, but with a catch: he seems to not be very creative, and I think philosophy is mostly an exercise in rote learning for him.
So I think he’s continually thinking “surely these atheist arguments must already have been debunked, if only I could learn all the techniques.”
On second thought my speculation may not be exhaustive. There may be some 1b going on in there too. But I think it’s mostly 1a.
Yeah, this is my gut talking, informed by hunches from the lackwitted way he responded to me.
JB, you’re free to speak your mind here – so shut the fuck up.
Rob @ #58:
I teach ESL Rob, and you are not doing well. What is your native language? If it’s English, you are a blithering dolt.
In your last clause, are you drive-by dissing some innocent Mexican, or do you mean that “there is a fool in this world and his name is Jesus?” If you are saying that the whole Jesus thing is foolish, then many here certainly agree, it is foolish. But, since you took the trouble to post, which is a tacit statement that you consider yourself educated and articulate and your comment trenchant, we must assume that you mean what your words say, and that the central figure of Christianity is a fool.
By the way, you have achieved something: That is the stupidest iteration of Pascal’s Wager I have ever seen.
Yup; you got some weapons-grade stupid going there, Rob.
Well done to those of you who worked out the devastating logic of Pascal’s Wager which Rob was using, I mean how can you counter slam dunk arguments like that?
Game over man, game over.
Jessa @ #75:
Yep! It looks like someone has taken a bigger dose of chi-rho than he can handle, and has the logorrhoetic flux as a result.
Most of the Jewish attempts like the execrable Aish Discovery Seminar aren’t any better. The standouts such as Rabbi Nathan Slifkin get cast into outer darkness, and all their works are banned by the Orthodox.
Yeah, I disagree with much of what Rav Slifkin says, and I think his efforts are probably ultimately doomed. But at least he’s trying to reconcile people to the fact that religious books cannot be used as science texts, and a religious life does not preclude acknowledging physical reality.
Not the best debate topic really. Much more interesting would be one in which there is some doubt as to the conclusion, like “Is Scientology or Islam more rational”.
Oh agony is right. I listened to the whole thing just to see the show. Hamza reminds me of Deepak…a whole bunch of rapid-fire babble comes out, and it has the veil of making sense, but makes no sense when one tries to piece together his fragments in a coherent fashion. To Islamic believers/followers it must sound awefully impressive, and I highly suspect that is his main purpose for spouting bullshit…just like Deepak.
This “bullshit baffles brains” offensive is of course all these woo-sayers have in their arsenal, and so one would expect nothing different from them. They would make good politicians.
Dan Barker could easily have just said that there is no objective evidence for the existence of god, and so the rational position is non-belief. He does this in one part of the debate of course, but that would make for a pretty short 15-second debate, and lots of silience in the rest of the 33 odd minutes he had to fill…
Not believing in gods seems rational to me. “God” is such a poorly defined concept that I am sceptical that it means anything at all. Specific gods as portrayed in various religions that feature magic and myth are clearly either fiction or invented “just so” stories to appease the inquisitive nature of the human mind. It is reasonable and logical to defer belief in something that you have no evidence for. It is illogical to accept the existence of something without compelling evidence or powerful reasoning. It is unreasonable to encourage belief in something that has no basis in fact.
Islam needs to move out of the 6th century and make an effort to catch up with the Enlightenment and more modern philosophical ideas. So does Christianity for that matter.
How is this even a debate? Religion has nothing to back up its assertions. Atheism makes no claims beyond a lack of belief in gods.
Hamza has clearly retreated from a position of “this is a miracle” to the position of “If we pretend that cartilage is already bone, and we pretend that myoblasts are already muscle, then the Quran is NOT WRONG.”
I think this is an excellent opportunity for a certain embryologist to prove once and for all that there is a very persuasive argument for a scientific error in the Quran.
KG said:
I just want to make it clear that JC is a much, much different, as well as totally separate entity than whatever else it might be that “J.B.” is.
Totally.
JC
I adore that he proved the Koran was true … by quoting from the Koran as part of his assumptions about the nature of the universe.
Embryology in the Quoran? That trumps seeing Jesus on a piece of toast. Where do I sign up?
The so called embryology in the quran is wrong. Muhammad or whoever else authored the quran did in fact take incorrect details from the Greek Science. Such as the quran saying we developed from a clot!
Muslims are trying to reinterpret the word, but unfortunately for them their own greatest scholars disagree with them. This is explained in this youtube video!(watch?v=3oDgbVk6HRg)
Today, I went to the beach front with my children. I found a sea shell and gave it to my 4 year old daughter and said “You can hear the ocean if you put this to your ear.” She put the shell to her ear and screamed. There was a hermit crab inside and it pinched her ear. She never wants to go back! LoL I know this is entirely off topic but I had to tell someone! Now I want to ask you something else. I ‘ve heard the Mediterranean Diet is a very good way to help stave off cancer. is that true? And one more thing, have you heard about the “telic 22 diet”? (search on google to learn about it) Ive heard some incredible things about it and my mate lost a ton of weight with it.
The faithful really do think about their book what Douglas Adams wrote about the Guide:
“…though it cannot hope to be useful or informative on all matters, it does make the reassuring claim that where it is inaccurate, it is at least definitively inaccurate. In cases of major discrepancy it was always reality that’s got it wrong.”
QFT!!!
You misunderstand. We celebrate kurisumasu, the Japanese festival of love and rampant consumerism. <broad, toothy grin>
The X is Christ himself. X and P are Ch and R. Christogram – look it up. Hint: the entire New Testament is written in Greek.