If it can’t be measured and grasped (in the understanding sense of the word, if not the tangible sense), how do you know what you’re even talking about?
That’s one of my big questions I’ve never gotten a good answer to, in case any trolls want to try.
tsigsays
What’s it’s grasping in it’s hands, my precious.
Renésays
So THAT is what the priests have been doing, grasping and measuring?
Let us strip away our fixation on that which is actually knowable, and which we know to be true. Let’s strip away our fixation on mere facts and reality. Just stop worrying about whether what I say is actually true or not. You are getting sleep. Very sleepy. When I snap my fingers, you will repent for your thousands of acts of masturbation.
Doc Billsays
I like how the Pope stands there in his gold-threaded robe and gold hat and jewel-encrusted cross to lecture people that they should give up material possessions.
Too rich, in many ways.
Reminds me to dig up the old film, Shoes of the Fisherman, with Anthony Quinn.
Don Quijotesays
BBC News,
Speaking from the top of a pile of money just withdrawn from his bank His Scumbagness The Rat urged the world to help the famine victims in the Horn of Africa. Dressed in robes of finest gold trimmed cloth and holding a golden crosier he lamented the commercialisation of the Christmas festival and urged worshippers to “see through the glitter”.
I assume henceforth all donations from individuals will be returned and the Church will survive for the foreseeable future on the ludicrous pile of money he sleeps on every night.
=8)-DXsays
Is it just mue or is the pope really making a penis joke?
So much of religion makes more sense if you see it as a test by God of how guillible and nasty you are. Think that gays should be oppressed or that women shouldn’t have any sort of autonomy or personal authority and zap! you’re in big trouble when you meet the Big Boss.
“If it can’t be measured and grasped (in the understanding sense of the word, if not the tangible sense), how do you know what you’re even talking about?”
Oh, it can’t be measured and grasped by us, but it could by someone with a properly functioning sensus divinatinus.
How do you know if you’ve got a properly functioning sensus divinatinus? If yours tells you the same things as the pope does, it works. See how easy that is?
Azuma Hazukisays
Oh, but Screechy, if you agree with the Pope it’s the Devil deceiving you! He’s making you think, in your pride, that you are one of the elect with a functioning SD, but in reality he’s trapped you in the worst possible illusion.
Only van Tillian Calvinists go to heaven!
screechymonkeysays
Oh crap! But, but, but… if I can’t rely on officious jerks in fancy dress telling me what to think, how will I know what to think?
saguhh00says
Chemical abiogenesis:
chemical elements of aminoacids (components of living cells) in hot water.
1 – formation of aminoacids. Formation of independent DNA and RNA.
2 – aminoacids form proteinoids.
3 – proteinoids form microspheres.
4- microspheres absorb independent DNA and RNA.
5 – microspheres + DNA and RNA = nucleated microspheres.
6 – DNA and RNA in nucleated microspheres self-organizes.
7 – nucleated microspheres form proto-cells.
8 – proto-cells evolve into archeabacteria
NOTE: If you doubt this is possible, how is it there are ATHEISTS + NO GODS ??”
crocswsockssays
To the pope: “Our”? You have no such fixation, so shut the fuck up.
To “saguhhoo” [makes provocative finger quotes]: Kindly remove your underpants from your head.
littlejohnsays
Obviously he’s talking about bananas. They can be conveniently grasped and measured.
Chiralsays
Alternate Caption: “This is not the glitter you’re looking for.”
saguhh00says
To “crocswsocks”
My head was in a toilet when I wrote that.
To the Pope: Fick dich. Also, I’ll take even the stupidest explanation for life I made up rather than the Pope’s advice any day. I think Ratzinger was talking about biochemistry, since proteinoids can be measured.
It was watching the parish priest surrounded by all that gold, but telling us every Sunday we should help the poor, which first made me start questioning the validity of his claim of holding any sort of moral authority. And I just can’t understand why not more people develop the same doubts when hearing a speech like this…
Sure, he wants to strip away the material, like the material witnesses and the evidence that he is a pedophile enabler. “Pay no attentin to reality, enter my world where I am a King.”
VegeBrainsays
Dear Pope: The only possible conclusion I can make about your statement is it was intended as comedy.
air101says
Meanwhile in far-flung islands of the Philippines:
When I first saw that picture in the news yesterday with the caption about how the pope was naysaying the materialism of christmas, I thought to myself, “Couldn’t he at least put down his giant gold stick before he says stuff like that? Also, there’s no way that anyone could survive the mental whiplash of saying something that diametrically opposed to how they’re living, so the pope is clearly a zombie.” Or something like that.
marellasays
You are getting sleep. Very sleepy. When I snap my fingers, you will repent for your thousands of acts of masturbation.
And give me all your money. That is the most important bit.
carliesays
From the pfft link: (emphasis mine)
The Papal mozzetta had a small hood on the back, which disappeared after Vatican II but has recently been restored. In wintertime, the Papal mozzetta is of red velvet trimmed with ermine (this also fell out of use after Vatican II, but Pope Benedict XVI began again to wear a winter mozzetta trimmed in ermine fur). In summer, the Papal mozzetta is of red satin. The Pope wears a pectoral cross suspended on a gold cord over the mozzetta. He may also choose to wear a red stole with gold embroidery over the mozzetta, even when he is not officiating at a service. Traditionally during the Octave of Easter, the Pope wears the white paschal mozzetta, which is of white damask silk trimmed with white ermine. While the paschal mozzetta fell out of use during the pontificate of Pope John Paul II, it was returned to use in 2008 by Pope Benedict XVI. Since the 13th Century many Papal portraits have shown the pontiff wearing the camauro, a red velvet cap which covers the ears, and is trimmed with ermine. The camauro fell out of fashion with the death of Pope John XXIII, but has recently been revived by Pope Benedict XVI. Traditionally, he wears special red satin or velvet Papal slippers indoors, and red leather Papal shoes outdoors. The Papal shoes were traditionally red, though Pope John Paul II would sometimes wear black or brown leather shoes. Pope Benedict XVI has restored the use of the traditional red Papal shoes.
Bit of a fashionista, that Benedict.
forjosays
Where can I get a hat like that?
'Tis Himself, OM.says
There are times when a boy just needs to be pretty.
alysonmierssays
I saw him earlier today (via Yahoo) talking about “superficial glitter.” That’s right, Mr. Red Prada Shoes is talking about superficial glitter. I shared it with my (theist) parents; we had a good laugh.
Well I have no gaydar to speak of, but this pope makes even my dim alarms buzz. How many women would even dream of trying to pull off red velvet, ermine and embroidered silk?
All the weirdness of Alice’s Wonderland or Frank Baum’s Land Of Oz has nothing over reality. Here is a guy who sent letters to all the Cardinals threatening them if they reported child abuse to the local authorities. He then became Pope. Now he has restores all the opulance of the Papacy during a world wide recession. He stands before us holding a gold staff and complains about materialism during Christmas. What an utter Toadie. My apologies to the amphibians.
•44% told the 2011 Baylor University Religion Survey they spend no time seeking “eternal wisdom,” and 19% said “it’s useless to search for meaning.”
•46% told a 2011 survey by Nashville-based evangelical research agency, LifeWay Research, they never wonder whether they will go to heaven.
•28% told LifeWay “it’s not a major priority in my life to find my deeper purpose.” And 18% scoffed that God has a purpose or plan for everyone.
•6.3% of Americans turned up on Pew Forum’s 2007 Religious Landscape Survey as totally secular — unconnected to God or a higher power or any religious identity and willing to say religion is not important in their lives.
a portable throne or armchair carried by twelve footmen (palafrenieri) in red uniforms. The sedia gestatoria is accompanied by two attendants bearing the Flabella, large ceremonial fans made of white ostrich-feathers…
It really just speaks for itself, doesn’t it.
Emrysmyrddinsays
*tap, tap* This thing on?
Afternoon, all. I’m on a mobile and can’t seem to find the latest Endless Thread; I just wanted to post a cheersome link for all those suffering post-consumerism blues after the gluttonous holidays. It made me smile; I hope it does the same for at least one other person.
Emrys, wasn’t she was just precious, thanks, that cheered me up no end.
John Phillips, FCDsays
As to this pope, you know, he could genuinely be the best person on the planet, but with those eyes I would still think him from Mordor and rightfully seated alongside Sauron, or somewhere even worse. Sadly, if only for the many victims of his employees, we have his own department’s records to prove that he belongs there. In fact, Sauron would probably be in awe of him and of what he and his organisation gets away with.
ed54says
Says the man of material adornment designed specifically to invoke natural feelings of authority.
elronxenusays
That speech is going to become a massive footbullet for the Catholic church.
Aquariasays
I just threw up in my mouth reading that.
What numbers are we up to now with children raped by priests? 100K in America alone?
If I ever saw that piece of shit somewhere, I’d say, “Sit down and shut up Ratzi, you fucking scumbag. No kid should ever be anywhere within 100 parsecs of a Catholic church, to save them from you child-raping slimeballs.”
Pay no attention to the man behind the red silk, ermine-trimmed curtain.
majorpriapussays
Witnessing pz myers’ verbal assaults against religious idiots’ specious sophistry is little different than anyone present crowing about winning a gold medal the “Special Olympics”.
Yeah? Big deal.
The majority of Christians do not believe that Evolution contradicts the Bible. The Catholic Church definitely endorses evolution. Your denigrating picture of the pope prompted me to finally speak up.
As just one example, in 2009, the Vatican held a special conference to mark the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s “The Origin of Species.”
Rome had declined to invite intelligent design speakers because they felt the theory lacked scientific merit.
OK – Just to keep this debate honest – Benedict did recently sack Father George Coyne, as director of the Vatican Observatory because the American Jesuit priest remained true to the Pontifical Academy’s previous pronouncements which contradicted the Benedict’s atavistic and more naïve version of “intelligent design” which contradicts the views of his predessesor.
The concept of “loyal opposition” would appear to be impossible in the face of Benedict’s “gleichschaltung” and all semblance of Catholic intellectual debate has now been stifled… or almost.
More than 300 professors of Roman-Catholic theology have written the Memorandum “Church 2011: The Need for a New Beginning” because of the worldwide crisis of the Roman Catholic Church; opening defying the current pope and contradicting current church dogma on a variety of issues. https://exchange.nbed.nb.ca/,DanaInfo=www.pro-memorandum-2011.org+home.html
Meanwhile, all mainline Protestant denominations embrace evolution.
That was long-winded! What is my point?
As far as the existence of God or any other religious belief is concerned – science is neutral. As a matter of fact, many scientists are devoutly religious. In other words it is possible to be intelligent, lucid and religiously devout. Myself, I would be lucky to maybe score two out of three.
The fact remains that PZ Meyers and his cheerleaders are being blatantly unjust in tarring all religious believers with the same brush.
PZ Meyers has also made my task as a Biology teacher more difficult. The intellectually dishonest shills and snake-oil artists who make their livings on speaking tours before gullible audiences are beyond redemption. I share Myers’ outraged exasperation. Unfortunately, I cannot post pharyngula on my school website. Those students teetering on the fence would be turned off by what would be perceived as intellectual bullying.
Having said that – Pharyngula has become my favourite blog.
My irony meter just exploded!!
Don’t worry, the Church will help you get rid of your material possessions!
If it can’t be measured and grasped (in the understanding sense of the word, if not the tangible sense), how do you know what you’re even talking about?
That’s one of my big questions I’ve never gotten a good answer to, in case any trolls want to try.
What’s it’s grasping in it’s hands, my precious.
So THAT is what the priests have been doing, grasping and measuring?
And let us focus on the abstractions themselves. They’re more real than what you see, my Plato tells me so.
I guess the answer is computers, but they cost money, you know.
Glen Davidson
Let us strip away our fixation on that which is actually knowable, and which we know to be true. Let’s strip away our fixation on mere facts and reality. Just stop worrying about whether what I say is actually true or not. You are getting sleep. Very sleepy. When I snap my fingers, you will repent for your thousands of acts of masturbation.
I like how the Pope stands there in his gold-threaded robe and gold hat and jewel-encrusted cross to lecture people that they should give up material possessions.
Too rich, in many ways.
Reminds me to dig up the old film, Shoes of the Fisherman, with Anthony Quinn.
BBC News,
Speaking from the top of a pile of money just withdrawn from his bank His Scumbagness The Rat urged the world to help the famine victims in the Horn of Africa. Dressed in robes of finest gold trimmed cloth and holding a golden crosier he lamented the commercialisation of the Christmas festival and urged worshippers to “see through the glitter”.
(slightly addapted)
Dick move, pope.
I assume henceforth all donations from individuals will be returned and the Church will survive for the foreseeable future on the ludicrous pile of money he sleeps on every night.
Is it just mue or is the pope really making a penis joke?
While you’re busy striping away the material, could you please keep you penis’ out of the little boys?
So much of religion makes more sense if you see it as a test by God of how guillible and nasty you are. Think that gays should be oppressed or that women shouldn’t have any sort of autonomy or personal authority and zap! you’re in big trouble when you meet the Big Boss.
Man in phallus hat…
“If it can’t be measured and grasped (in the understanding sense of the word, if not the tangible sense), how do you know what you’re even talking about?”
Oh, it can’t be measured and grasped by us, but it could by someone with a properly functioning sensus divinatinus.
How do you know if you’ve got a properly functioning sensus divinatinus? If yours tells you the same things as the pope does, it works. See how easy that is?
Oh, but Screechy, if you agree with the Pope it’s the Devil deceiving you! He’s making you think, in your pride, that you are one of the elect with a functioning SD, but in reality he’s trapped you in the worst possible illusion.
Only van Tillian Calvinists go to heaven!
Oh crap! But, but, but… if I can’t rely on officious jerks in fancy dress telling me what to think, how will I know what to think?
Chemical abiogenesis:
chemical elements of aminoacids (components of living cells) in hot water.
1 – formation of aminoacids. Formation of independent DNA and RNA.
2 – aminoacids form proteinoids.
3 – proteinoids form microspheres.
4- microspheres absorb independent DNA and RNA.
5 – microspheres + DNA and RNA = nucleated microspheres.
6 – DNA and RNA in nucleated microspheres self-organizes.
7 – nucleated microspheres form proto-cells.
8 – proto-cells evolve into archeabacteria
NOTE: If you doubt this is possible, how is it there are ATHEISTS + NO GODS ??”
To the pope: “Our”? You have no such fixation, so shut the fuck up.
To “saguhhoo” [makes provocative finger quotes]: Kindly remove your underpants from your head.
Obviously he’s talking about bananas. They can be conveniently grasped and measured.
Alternate Caption: “This is not the glitter you’re looking for.”
To “crocswsocks”
My head was in a toilet when I wrote that.
To the Pope: Fick dich. Also, I’ll take even the stupidest explanation for life I made up rather than the Pope’s advice any day. I think Ratzinger was talking about biochemistry, since proteinoids can be measured.
Test!? but I didn’t study!
Well, here’s one back for the Pope.
http://youtu.be/cQ9sJVJMiYM
Adam Buxton.
It was watching the parish priest surrounded by all that gold, but telling us every Sunday we should help the poor, which first made me start questioning the validity of his claim of holding any sort of moral authority. And I just can’t understand why not more people develop the same doubts when hearing a speech like this…
That’s some bad hat, Harry.
Sure, he wants to strip away the material, like the material witnesses and the evidence that he is a pedophile enabler. “Pay no attentin to reality, enter my world where I am a King.”
Dear Pope: The only possible conclusion I can make about your statement is it was intended as comedy.
Meanwhile in far-flung islands of the Philippines:
http://www.inquirer.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/page-one-12262011.jpg
For reference, the Pfft on Papal regalia and insignia.
When I first saw that picture in the news yesterday with the caption about how the pope was naysaying the materialism of christmas, I thought to myself, “Couldn’t he at least put down his giant gold stick before he says stuff like that? Also, there’s no way that anyone could survive the mental whiplash of saying something that diametrically opposed to how they’re living, so the pope is clearly a zombie.” Or something like that.
And give me all your money. That is the most important bit.
From the pfft link: (emphasis mine)
Bit of a fashionista, that Benedict.
Where can I get a hat like that?
There are times when a boy just needs to be pretty.
I saw him earlier today (via Yahoo) talking about “superficial glitter.” That’s right, Mr. Red Prada Shoes is talking about superficial glitter. I shared it with my (theist) parents; we had a good laugh.
Well I have no gaydar to speak of, but this pope makes even my dim alarms buzz. How many women would even dream of trying to pull off red velvet, ermine and embroidered silk?
christine, you know how it is… There’s No Business Like Show Business!
All the weirdness of Alice’s Wonderland or Frank Baum’s Land Of Oz has nothing over reality. Here is a guy who sent letters to all the Cardinals threatening them if they reported child abuse to the local authorities. He then became Pope. Now he has restores all the opulance of the Papacy during a world wide recession. He stands before us holding a gold staff and complains about materialism during Christmas. What an utter Toadie. My apologies to the amphibians.
Measure and grasp this, buddy:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/story/2011-12-25/religion-god-atheism-so-what/52195274/1
•44% told the 2011 Baylor University Religion Survey they spend no time seeking “eternal wisdom,” and 19% said “it’s useless to search for meaning.”
•46% told a 2011 survey by Nashville-based evangelical research agency, LifeWay Research, they never wonder whether they will go to heaven.
•28% told LifeWay “it’s not a major priority in my life to find my deeper purpose.” And 18% scoffed that God has a purpose or plan for everyone.
•6.3% of Americans turned up on Pew Forum’s 2007 Religious Landscape Survey as totally secular — unconnected to God or a higher power or any religious identity and willing to say religion is not important in their lives.
But will he be restarting the tradition of:
It really just speaks for itself, doesn’t it.
*tap, tap* This thing on?
Afternoon, all. I’m on a mobile and can’t seem to find the latest Endless Thread; I just wanted to post a cheersome link for all those suffering post-consumerism blues after the gluttonous holidays. It made me smile; I hope it does the same for at least one other person.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/little-girl-upset-with-the-way-toys-are-marketed?
Emrys, wasn’t she was just precious, thanks, that cheered me up no end.
As to this pope, you know, he could genuinely be the best person on the planet, but with those eyes I would still think him from Mordor and rightfully seated alongside Sauron, or somewhere even worse. Sadly, if only for the many victims of his employees, we have his own department’s records to prove that he belongs there. In fact, Sauron would probably be in awe of him and of what he and his organisation gets away with.
Says the man of material adornment designed specifically to invoke natural feelings of authority.
That speech is going to become a massive footbullet for the Catholic church.
I just threw up in my mouth reading that.
What numbers are we up to now with children raped by priests? 100K in America alone?
If I ever saw that piece of shit somewhere, I’d say, “Sit down and shut up Ratzi, you fucking scumbag. No kid should ever be anywhere within 100 parsecs of a Catholic church, to save them from you child-raping slimeballs.”
I take the test every year. I’m still negative.
Fuck you pope.
Pay no attention to the man behind the red silk, ermine-trimmed curtain.
Witnessing pz myers’ verbal assaults against religious idiots’ specious sophistry is little different than anyone present crowing about winning a gold medal the “Special Olympics”.
Yeah? Big deal.
The majority of Christians do not believe that Evolution contradicts the Bible. The Catholic Church definitely endorses evolution. Your denigrating picture of the pope prompted me to finally speak up.
As just one example, in 2009, the Vatican held a special conference to mark the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s “The Origin of Species.”
Rome had declined to invite intelligent design speakers because they felt the theory lacked scientific merit.
Creationists and IT morons were quite upset – http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,505385,00.html
It gets better – Pope Benedict XVI has appointed Edward M. De Robertis to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
Here is his inaugural address: EVO-DEVO: THE MERGING OF EVOLUTIONARY AND DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY
http://www.hhmi.ucla.edu/derobertis/EDR_MS/Evo-Devo_page/EVO-DEVO.html
OK – Just to keep this debate honest – Benedict did recently sack Father George Coyne, as director of the Vatican Observatory because the American Jesuit priest remained true to the Pontifical Academy’s previous pronouncements which contradicted the Benedict’s atavistic and more naïve version of “intelligent design” which contradicts the views of his predessesor.
The concept of “loyal opposition” would appear to be impossible in the face of Benedict’s “gleichschaltung” and all semblance of Catholic intellectual debate has now been stifled… or almost.
More than 300 professors of Roman-Catholic theology have written the Memorandum “Church 2011: The Need for a New Beginning” because of the worldwide crisis of the Roman Catholic Church; opening defying the current pope and contradicting current church dogma on a variety of issues.
https://exchange.nbed.nb.ca/,DanaInfo=www.pro-memorandum-2011.org+home.html
Meanwhile, all mainline Protestant denominations embrace evolution.
That was long-winded! What is my point?
As far as the existence of God or any other religious belief is concerned – science is neutral. As a matter of fact, many scientists are devoutly religious. In other words it is possible to be intelligent, lucid and religiously devout. Myself, I would be lucky to maybe score two out of three.
The fact remains that PZ Meyers and his cheerleaders are being blatantly unjust in tarring all religious believers with the same brush.
PZ Meyers has also made my task as a Biology teacher more difficult. The intellectually dishonest shills and snake-oil artists who make their livings on speaking tours before gullible audiences are beyond redemption. I share Myers’ outraged exasperation. Unfortunately, I cannot post pharyngula on my school website. Those students teetering on the fence would be turned off by what would be perceived as intellectual bullying.
Having said that – Pharyngula has become my favourite blog.
Best regards to one and all.