I am an atheist because there is no god.
I was raised in an increasingly religious environment–the parents I grew up with took us to church every week (Catholic & eastern Orthodox), and they sent us to Catholic schools. I listened, I tried to believe, I memorized everything they told us in Religion class & tried to understand how people believed it.
But I could not believe.
After my parents split up, my mother became gradually more religious. Here’s the fun part: I am autistic & have temporal lobe epilepsy. My mother went from a bit off to absolutely convinced that I was possessed by demons. Eastern Orthodox don’t even really do the exorcism thing-certainly not the way evangelicals do-but I had not one, not two, but three exorcisms. Being waterboarded with holy water is still being waterboarded. Could any really loving god allow this, or my mother’s increasing use of church and marathon prayer sessions as punishment? I’m thinkin’ not.
So I survived years of abuse because “god told me to do it”. No god I knew or was told about would do that, but I kept trying to believe. I got straight As in religion class. We had to pass a religion test to graduate high school; I scored high enough to get “advanced scholar of catechatical knowledge” on my diploma.
Yet still I had doubts.
That summer I went to an Eastern Orthodox church camp to coach Special Olympics for a week. Being teenagers, all of the volunteer coaches snuck out of our cabins and stayed out way too late. I was surrounded by kids with whom I should have a lot in common, except they seemed to have no doubts at all, while I saw all the ritual as a routine, but nothing that meant anything to anyone but the people doing it.
It hit me that I am an atheist that summer. We were laying in the outdoor volleyball court looking for shooting stars. It was beautiful-I had never seen so many stars, and had certainly never seen so many shooting stars. We were all very quiet except for the occasional muttering about the beauty of God’s creation–and at that moment I knew, absolutely KNEW, that there was no god who put all those stars there. There was no god who made us and the plants and the stars and the things so far out we did not know about them. It was so vast and beautiful that saying some guy in the sky (but not really the sky-some kind of other dimension or something) put them there just for us was far too conceited and just didn’t make sense. There’s so much out there humanity may never experience, and no one put it there, and that was far more awe inspiring to 17 year old me than “goddidit”.
I was born an atheist, I couldn’t learn not to be, and reality is so much cooler anyway.
Kassiane
Kassiane,
You become yet another reason I sneer at those goddists who claim no apostates really tried to believe.
—
(Good on ya, Kassiane)
Holy crap, Kassiane!! Waterboarding? Really unbelievable. Unbelievable. I hope you eventually had someone in your corner to support you. Either way, you have my sympathy and respect for surviving such circumstances. The exceedingly sad thing is that one shouldn’t have to “survive” childhood.
Indeed Kassiane you make my experience with xtianity feel very mild. You have my admiration for surviving and escaping.
Great post Kassiane, thank you.
Off topic, fullyladenswallow, I love your username! African or European? :D
Hearing people go on like that, to me, this is sorta like arriving in a strange city somewhere, looking up at a skyline of imposing skyscrapers, and some kid out of nowhere, seeing you looking, sez, without prompting: ‘Neat, huh? My dad built those!’
And you’re impressed. Acknowledge his father is one hell of an architect. Then you walk down the street a bit, find yourself looking at a nice garden, and the kid pipes up again to say: ‘Also, My dad planted those flowers!’
You’re again impressed. If now more than a bit suspicious. And ’round about the time the radio comes on and it’s some hit song and the kid says ‘And my dad wrote that, too!’, you figure it out.
Also, you kinda feel for the kid, who, you figure, apparently isn’t much thrilled with his real life, however it’s going, if he feels he’s gotta make up stuff like that.
(/But he’s still sorta annoying. So you hail a cab just to get the hell away from him.)
As somebody with mild Asperger’s (and thankfully without epilepsy), I cannot think of any word strong enough to describe how much that disgusts me. How was your mother not charged with child abuse?
Psst, the “waterboarded” remark appears to me to be metaphorical.
Glen Davidson
Kassiane
Hope it helps you to know that there is a huge community of atheists here who are full of admiration for the way you came through that ordeal. Horrifying to think there may be other children who are still suffering like that but sadly don’t have the intellect or strength of character to break out. If only we could help them. Very best wishes to you.
After watching “Finding Your Roots” on PBS over the weekend and having my bias confirmed that Rick Warren is a complete douche-nozzle (and that religion in general must go away), this essay just made me a tad bit angrier, but also more determined to rid this world of that nonsense.
.
Great entry, Kassiane. Please think about submitting it to Melanie Brewster at Columbia University. She is collecting WIAAA letters for her book Atheists in America: Narratives from an Invisible Minority. Your essay deserves more exposure than this limited audience.
.
Here’s the submission info.
Glen Davidson @7:Psst, the “waterboarded” remark appears to me to be metaphorical.
Even so, it’s still a nasty thing to do to a kid just because of ignorance of a medical condition.
Dawkins says something similar.
Paraphrasing: The stage is too big for the play.
According to the bible the entire universe is tiny, just the earth with a few planets and the sun orbiting it. The sky is just a dome with some lights stuck on it for stars.
We now know the universe is 13.7 billion years old, the visible universe which isn’t even all of it, is many times that in light year size due to expansion, and our galaxy, one of billions of galaxies, has a trillion stars.
It’s hard to imagine that huge amount of space and mass energy was created just for us. The truth could just be that it was created by the god XZRPSTY, for his chosen creatures, giant squids swimming in methane seas 2 million light years away.
Some forms of baptism are getting close to water-boarding.
“I was born an atheist, I couldn’t learn not to be, and reality is so much cooler anyway.”
This would make a GREAT holiday card. Or biz cards to hand out at conventions, especially to zombie evangelicals.
You are amazing for coming through all of that to be a good person. Thank you for sharing your story.
Fargo, the “true coat” scene:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5gwc4UizUc
Replace true coat with the supernatural deity of your choice.
Loud #4:
Thank you. African, but I don’t believe it’s been substantiated as yet.
Kassiane
Beautifully done.
My heart goes out to you for what you experienced at the hands of religion and a loved one.
It sounds like you’ve come to a nice place in your life now. Outstanding!
:)))
neko
THIS! /\/\
#18, @AJS:
Seconded. (You beat me to it).
@ Glen Davison #7:
Kassiane’s a good friend of mine, so sadly I’m able to report that it was, in fact, literal waterboarding.
@ Philip #6: I asked Kassiane that question, and here’s her reply verbatim: “Because I’m autistic, and she was all church-active.” Sad thing is she’s right.
Kassiane,”Here’s the fun part…” You have an absolutely demented sense of humor, and my deepest admiration.
This piece brought to mind the sad fact that evangelical Christians are the most strongly pro-torture demographic in America.
Your discussion of your exorcisms reminded me of the (first) Virginia Tech shooter whose mother dealt with her son’s mental illness by taking him to church to pray away the demons.
I look at the “good” Christians I know and see that except for a few inexplicable ideas, they believe and act like any godless secular humanist.
And I wonder how anyone can think that goodness is a product of religion rather than just something innate in a person.
Thanks for your account, Kassiane. I can concur on the baptism thing. Some churches do it by full immersion tilted backward. Slightly uncomfortable. Good thing it only lasted like 2 seconds.
@ allie #20
With hindsight, it isn’t that surprising. No wonder I’m slightly misanthropic at times.
By sheer coincidence, I am writing a sci-fi piece at the moment where one of the characters is like Kassiane, and some people think she’s possessed when she has a seizure – which doesn’t go down well with the protagonists.
Kassiane:
-You have tremendous strength of will. To go through such awful experiences and not be broken…to come out of all that with a refreshing perspective on reality…I tip my hat to you.
____________________________________________
barbyau:
-Yet they still try to paint themselves as pro-life. More like pro-fetus. Once you’re born, then it’s ‘eff-you!’
It makes me wonder if someone like Sarah Palin would waterboard a child. She doesn’t seem to consider it torture, but an ‘enhanced interrogation technique’. Is it also a way to handle unruly children?
Yes.(caution : triggering material)
kemist:
-It saddens me to know that the answer to my query is yes…
NOOOOOOOOO…
That comes with autism. I’m barely on the spectrum, and my will is 1) often too strong for my own good and 2) drives my mom crazy, even now, and I’ll be 30 this year.
Has been noted often.
That about sums it up for me.
Wow, you’ve tolerated some gut wrenching stupidity there Kassiane. Incredible.
Your mother and those preacher men belong in gaol.
I ask all animal lovers to go and see this movie in your nearest theater coming Friday, 20th April. The portion of first week collection goes to Jane Goodall Foundation.
You can watch with your kids
It’s not “torture,” it’s “tough love.”
.. right?
And what does the chimp have to do with this thread.
drummer25
Nice victim blaming asshole.
dinamalar, its rude to derail. Take it to TET or stfu.
Kassiane
Thank you for sharing your story. I am glad you are alive to tell the tale and hope your life gets better. I love your last sentence, it’s very beautiful.
How could you possibly know that there is no God? Have you even tried to look for God? How can this be a rational position to assume?
Again, HOW do you know this? Was it some sort of mystical revelation? Do you think that star formation is as straight forward a process as that of crystallization? Has it ever occurred to you that the myriad of stars, nebulae and galaxies that you stare up at cannot have been produced by accident but are instead testimony to the work of a divine Creator?
Once again, HOW do you know this? Do you think making a human, or for that matter a tree, is a trivial matter of just mixing a few genes together?
You show us the solid and conclusive physical evidence for one paranoid fuckwit. Until then, the null hypothesis is non-existence.
Yep, nothing, since it doesn’t exist.
How can it rational to presume your imaginary deity exists without evidence?
HOW do you know your imaginary deity exists and isn’t a delusion in your mind, oh paranoid one?
That drivel is for you believers.
Presupposition on your part. Science does very will without your imaginary deity. No need for it ever.
Where is your evidence for. Put up or shut the fuck up paranoid loser.
Why is it the godbots assume that atheists haven’t “looked for gods”? Like many atheists, I read the Bible cover to cover several times. I’ve also read the Book of Mormon, the Qu’ran, and other religious texts. I talked to various flavors of goddist and I even prayed about the matter. What finally convinced me there were no gods was the absolute lack of evidence for gods. Believing in something for which there is no evidence is not a rational position to assume.
You’re asking the wrong questions. Why is a “creator” needed? What created the creator? How do you know your sadistic, bullying asshole of a god is the creator? Why would a creator who made billions of galaxies and trillions of stars be interested in how often you masturbate?
Hi Kassiane. I was actually very lucky as a child, at least with respect to the treatment accorded me by my parents with respect to religion. I grew up in semi-rural Wales, and attended Sunday School for a while – partly because my friends also attended – but my parents were explicit about allowing me to reach my own conclusions. I’ve never believed in God, in spite of my various half-assed attempts to study the phenomenon by observing practising Christians in their natural habitat.
I suspect that religion is partly rooted in social function, perhaps an innate tendency fostering group bonds, and partly rooted in the fear of death – nobody’s ever come back to talk about it, after all, except in the most sketchy of senses.
I can empathise quite strongly with your experiences, though, as I’ve had my own parental issues albeit directed along different axes.
Please define what counts for you as “evidence” for gods, as opposed to ordinary material objects that can be readily observed by science?
A Creator is needed to explain the wondrous and harmonious creation around us. The nature of God is that he is an unbegotten Creator who transcends temporal causality and who is both timeless and changeless.
Because masturbation and random ejaculation is a waste of life and energy.
You need to provide conclusive physical evidence for your imaginary deity. Evidence that will pass muster with scientists, magicians, and professional debunkers, as being of divine, and not natural (scientifically explained), origin. If stupornatural, you must equivalent evidence for the stupornatural. Something equivalent to an eternally burning bush. And the burden of proof is upon you prove your claims correct.
Nope, science does a great job of doing that while ignoring your imaginary deity/creator demonstrating the folly of such an idea. Where is evidence that a deity/creator is needed, and not just an assertion, which can be dismissed, on your part?
Typical godbot preusppositional sophistry in order to avoid having to show evidence for something that doesn’t exist. Word salad, full of sound and fury, meaning nothing. Poof, dismissed as an assertion without evidence.
Yet you keep up the mental masturbation and meaningless ejaculations here. What a loser
Still no evidence, as your OPINION is not evidence. Try the peer reviewed scientific literature for evidence.
“A Creator is needed to explain the wondrous and harmonious creation around us”. No, you need a creator to explain the wondrous and harmonious creation around us – I’m happy with the (real) scientific explanation.
I reckon you are a “waste of life and energy”, yec, or at least of space. Still, a bit of comic relief isn’t a bad thing, eh?
Kassiane:
I had thought about putting my own story up here but, after reading such inspirational tales as yours and others, I realise I really had a smooth run. Now that I think back on it, atheism for me was inevitable; yet it was still with a sense of profound relief that I discovered it was OK not to believe, nor even pretend to believe, as I did for so long.
But the Deity is itself believed to be non-physical. Hence, any physical evidence for its existence must be indirect. However, we do have evidence for an intelligent creator and it is manifest in our own bodies and the the body that is the material universe. But you choose to ignore this evidence.
And the “scientific” explanation is what exactly? That everything is just the product of chance and necessity, accidence and blind causality? LOL.
Kassiane: thank you for sharing your story.
Ah, I see yec manages to illustrate why I hold so many of the religious in such contempt – faced with a horror story in which a mother tortures her handicapped child because she has been indoctrinated with bronze age fairy tales, they jump to the defense of said fairy tales…
Still I also pity them – it must be sad and frightning to feel so insignificant that they have to project an anthropomorphic guiding hand the accept reality.
Kassaine on the other hand has both my admiration for his (her?) strength of character and my gratitude for sharing an inspirational story. Good luck for the future Kassaine!
Assertion without evidence, poof, claim dismissed. Besides the deity interacted with matter. It is material.
Cite the evidence for that claim from this library. Or shut the fuck up with that asserted, but not evidenced claim, as POOF, claim dismissed.
Poof, unevidence claim dismissed unless you show evidence from the library in the link above.
Yec123:
I’m afraid you are mistaken. You see, your god was actually created by my god because my god couldn’t be arsed to do it hirself (xe was too busy with chess club.)
My god also thinks your’s is a bit of a jerk and would smite hir ass but, you know, chess club.
{see how this works, yeck123? I have exactly as much evidence for my story as you do for your’s.}
Kassiane:
Excellent. Also a little frightening. I never thought of baptism as waterboarding.
Also, I wish to apologize on behalf of humanity that yec decided it was more important for him to babble about his delusions than to actually read what you wrote.
Something that can be measured or observed would count as evidence for the existence of gods.
Please cite evidence you have, evidence that can be measured or observed, for the existence of gods.
If something is non-physical, what is it?
And where is this indirect evidence?
Really? Where? All that we see, all that we are, are that we can measure, all that we can, in any way, observe, can be explained naturally. There are mysteries out there. There are things we have not learned or discovered. And we keep refining our view of the universe. But every single piece of evidence continues to confirm that the universe is natural.
So. Where is this evidence of the existence of gods that you have?
FFS, is yec123 gonna be trolling all the ‘Why I am an atheist’ posts? Because I for one am really sick of him.
Maybe yecch! is afraid that these essays may lead more to reality.
Wait, what? We do? And it’s manifest in the material world, you say? Great! That’s the sort of thing we’re after. So, go on then, where is it?
Ah, well, reality… We can’t be having any of that nasty stuff!
Drummer25: Fuck you and fuck your victim blaming. I’m fucking tired of seeing (usually white, usually male) atheists who haven’t experienced abuse or even the sorts of social pressures that oppressed groups deal with all the time declare blithely that anyone who can’t swimmingly overcome such experiences is stupid or weak.
Fuck you again, because I’m so sick of this bullshit that I could spit.
Dinalamar: WTF does that have to do with this thread?
Usagichan: Yep. Yech123 reminds me of the d00ds in rape discussions who, when informed that the woman they’re arguing with has been raped, don’t even acknowledge it, because empathy might get in the way of their victim-blaming arguments. I.e., a hoggler.
Then get off the internet and do something useful, jackass.
Thank you, Kassiane.
————–
yec “trekker” 123:
Did you know that women masturbate too? Did you know women do not* ejaculate when we come? Did you know no eggs are wasted on female orgasm?
* yes, yes but no point confusing the issue **
** see what I did there?
This is one of the most impassionate and beautifully written WIAAA posts yet.
I am inspired to write my own now.
Lots of phenomena are non-physical, such as your own thoughts or vision. They do not consist of any material substance and cannot be measured.
Then there are things like “dark matter/energy” which are not physical and invisible but nonetheless are real all the same because they have an effect on that which can be observed. I repeat that scientific investigation is limited by our own very limited means of sensory perception. Reality is more profound.
Really? So science has solved the origins of life and the universe, has it? Science can’t even begin to explain the origins of the natural laws it affirms as so important let alone that of matter itself. Why should anything exist at all? The atheist cannot address this most fundamental of mysteries. The theist, on the other hand, realizes that existence is necessarily derived from a Supreme Being who did not begin to exist but always has been and shall be.
You are a living sign of God’s existence. Blind natural laws sure as heck didn’t build you up cell by cell. It is time for you to recognize your Creator and not live a life of denial and ignorance. Don’t put your faith in atoms and F=ma.
Nope, and nope.
Have you never heard of functional MRI ?
Absolute bullocks, you disengenuous idiot.
My thoughts are chemical and electrical processes happening within my brain. We can even see evidence of them with the right equipment.
Vision is also an chemical and electrical process. We can even see evidence of it happening.
We know, thanks to science, much of what is happening.
Read the whole fucking paragraph you lying asshole!
Nope, it didn’t. A process that evolved over 500 million to 1,000 million years allowed me to grow within a woman’s womb.
It’s my life and my energy to use* as I see fit.
* If it’s a “waste”, then you’re doing it wrong.
You sure seem offended at the notion that someone can “know” that there’s no god just as surely as you “know” that there is one. Is that because you know how flimsy your case really is? I’ve read all your arguments, and it would appear that this god is specifically set up to be impossible to really “know” (his attributes are no different from those ascribed to imaginary friends the world over). Hence, he ain’t worth my time or energy.
(Because when I’m done masturbating, at least I have something to show for it.)
Also, I would hope it wasn’t a mystical revelation, because that’s a worthless way to come about knowledge.
I agree, the vastness and complexity of reality makes religion seem small and tawdry. The stage really is too big for the play.
Hee hee. It thinks it can tell us what to do.
Faith is crap. You’ll know danged well that F=ma when you smash your face into a brick wall.
Funny, I see abiogenesis and evolution, without any need for your evidenceless and imaginary deity. Try again with real evidence.
No evidence from the peer reviewed scientific literature from YEC in its #56 post. POOF, post dismissed without evidence. Try again, with real evidence.
Avoiding having to provide evidence is as good as acknowledging to the lurkers that your deity is imaginary YEC. Real evidence requires real citations.
Really? So what are they made of? How can they be measured? Even if your blind assertion is correct, thoughts and vision are just the outcome of material processes. They themselves are immaterial: it is not like a thought is composed of so many atoms whereas a neuron obviously is.
Really? And what is the evidence for this evolved and strictly naturalistic developmental process? How come this process continues to elude and frustrate leading scientists even though you know all about it?
I never said the Deity was unknowable only that He cannot be directly known from making observations of matter. As well as through reason, he can be known from our own intuition of Him and by the experience of revelation.
One method is fMRI. You already knew this, so why ask again ?
Just like how my imaginary friend disappears when anyone else is around.
In other words, making shit up.
Well no. Evidence is not personal in nature like that. This has been explained to you many times, so you have no excuse for your ignorance.
@ yec
Not really, and no.
You posit the existence of an entity who created the physical universe, and unless your form of faith ascribes in viewing God as the Watchmaker (did His job, got away, and is not to be involved with us ever again), this entity is still around and interfering with human history.
In short, this entity is having an influence on the physical world. This influence is likely to leave physical evidence which science can address. Among other things, cause and effects wouldn’t always be true, and true randomness wouldn’t always be on. In the proper setting, a coin should land more often on one side than the other
If god’s influence itself is really indirect (say, limited to sending dreams to prophets), and indistinguishable from natural events (no measurable differences between normal dreams and prophetic dreams), then god cannot be proven.
It’s the ghost delusion: sure, immaterial ghosts without any ability to interfere with the material world could exist. But since they cannot act on the material world, we cannot prove their existence, and why should we care anyway?
You may want to argue that God is the fabric of the universe – that he embodies/became the value of the electron mass, the force of gravity, and other physical laws.
But in this case, I have three bad news: in this setting, a god would be indistinguishable from the universe itself and, again, could not be proven to exist; he (it?) is impotent, as it cannot act upon the universe without modifying the existing physical laws; and more importantly, this idea of god has nothing to do with the Christian dogma, which, again, posits a busybody of an entity, not a passive watcher.
How can one reason about an imaginary being without being delusional? Still no evidence for your imaginary detiy, and the avoidance of having to supply real and solid evidence smells like a manure pile at a factory pig farm.
Therefore, argumentum ad Star Trek.
You are a tedious gasbag and a fucking fool.
What makes you think so?
If it’s changeless, how can it cause changes? If it’s timeless, how can it do things, let alone do them at a particular point in time?
So you didn’t even know how short-lived sperm cells are? They’re constantly generated and broken down, and the rest goes out in the urine. They’re not stored. In case you’ve ever begotten, the sperm cell that did it was at most two days old.
You’re not leaking magical life force or anything when you wank, and you’re not in the least diminishing your future fertility (beyond, at most, two days).
Recently, a paper came out saying that very frequent ejaculation – 21 times a month! – decreases the risk of prostate cancer by simply rinsing the ducts and preventing whatever buildups from forming. The number is so high that I’m skeptical, but the paper is out there. Google Scholar is your friend.
LOL.
Let’s start with the utter basics: why is DNA the material of heredity?
DNA falls apart when stored in water. All organisms constantly repair it*; this takes up a lot of everyone’s energy.
More robust alternatives are well known, here’s one, but no known living being uses any of them; it’s all DNA, DNA, DNA – except for RNA viruses, and RNA is a lot less stable than DNA. (Those viruses get away with it by delegating all repair and replication to their host cells.)
So what kind of bright decision was it to use DNA?
More specific to humans: why are vertebrate eyes built the wrong way around? The light has to pass through a layer of blood vessels and nerves before hitting the light-sensitive cells, and then it has to pass to their other side to trigger the detector at the far end of the cell. Cephalopod eyes are the right way around, demonstrating that there’s no physical necessity for having inside-out eyes.
Or why do we eat, drink and breathe through the same hole, so we can choke on food?
Or why are we born through a ring of bone that requires awkward compromises between brain size, stability in walking and running, and death? Kiwis lay eggs that are, in relation to the mother’s size, much bigger than a human newborn; like all birds in the last 65 to 100 million years, they lack that stupid ring.
Where should I continue? I could go on for hours. Indeed, if you search the archives of ScienceBlogs Pharyngula, I have repeatedly gone on for hours.
Each of these cases of Stupid Design can be explained by evolution from a common ancestor. Ask me details, and I’ll provide them.
Do be specific. I think I know where you’re going; it’s wrong. :-)
There are, all taken together, four ways how something can come into being:
1) Chance.
2) Necessity (in other words, causation by the laws of physics).
3) Intelligent design.
4) Evolution.
Evolution is a complex combination of chance and necessity; it can’t be reduced to one of them. Being descent with heritable modification, it can only happen to entities that are capable of reproduction with imperfect inheritance; but to them it cannot help happening.
Why?
Are you trying to make an argument from personal incredulity? That would be funny.
Not baptism – exorcism.
…while, on the other hand, one egg is wasted a bit more often than once per month on average? No comparison to the billions of sperm cells that are wasted every two days, but still.
Transcranial magnetic stimulation…
Thoughts and vision are what the brain (with the eye in the case of vision) does. They’re not things, they’re not substances, they’re activities.
And these activities can of course be measured. To various extents, they have been. It’s just difficult to place an electrode next to several points along a nerve cell in a living brain; that’s why it’s so far not possible to read minds in any detail, and why what is possible is expensive and cumbersome.
The part of vision that happens in the eye of vertebrates is especially well understood. Every cause and effect from the incoming photon to the synapse with the first nerve cell in the sequence is known; take a textbook of molecular biology (or, as a first step, Wikipedia!) and look them up.
what is this I don’t even
Of course they’re physical. Dark matter is matter, it even has measurable mass; go here and here. That’s how it was discovered! Dark energy is energy; the acceleration of the expansion of the universe that it causes is likewise measurable.
Not in every detail, but it’s come pretty far, especially on the latter.
Well, perhaps the question itself is wrong…
LOL! That’s the easy part! Matter is just a form of energy. Once you’ve got a Big Bang and energy, you’ll automatically have matter.
Because it can. Nothing stops it.
After all, there are way more ways for there to be something than to be nothing. Think about what a kind of state nothing is: it’s perfectly symmetric, with an infinite number of symmetry planes through every point… that’s just one of an incredibly large number of alternatives, so it’s not very probable to occur.
That things happen because they can is well known. Learn more about Heisenberg’s uncertainty relation.
Statement from refusal to educate oneself.
Why do you assume that extra step?
I wasn’t built up cell by cell. Ever heard of DNA replication and cell division?
And F = ma is an oversimplification of E = mc². Let me walk you through it:
E = Fs
a = v/t
v = s/t
a = s/t²
as = s²/t² = v²
Fs = mas = mv²
E = mv²
This is wrong. Instead of any velocity, you have to insert the velocity into this formula, the basic velocity c.
The word you’re looking for isn’t “time”, it’s “evidence”. I, for one, am not capable of believing without evidence. You’ll have to present a reason to believe, or I won’t be able to. I can’t recognize something that’s by all evidence not there.
…Yeah. That, too.
What’s up, PZ? I thought the limit was six links? I posted a comment with six links, and it’s being held in moderation.
So, as usual, in two parts: part 1:
What makes you think so?
If it’s changeless, how can it cause changes? If it’s timeless, how can it do things, let alone do them at a particular point in time?
So you didn’t even know how short-lived sperm cells are? They’re constantly generated and broken down, and the rest goes out in the urine. They’re not stored. In case you’ve ever begotten, the sperm cell that did it was at most two days old.
You’re not leaking magical life force or anything when you wank, and you’re not in the least diminishing your future fertility (beyond, at most, two days).
Recently, a paper came out saying that very frequent ejaculation – 21 times a month! – decreases the risk of prostate cancer by simply rinsing the ducts and preventing whatever buildups from forming. The number is so high that I’m skeptical, but the paper is out there. Google Scholar is your friend.
LOL.
Let’s start with the utter basics: why is DNA the material of heredity?
DNA falls apart when stored in water. All organisms constantly repair it*; this takes up a lot of everyone’s energy.
More robust alternatives are well known, here’s one, but no known living being uses any of them; it’s all DNA, DNA, DNA – except for RNA viruses, and RNA is a lot less stable than DNA. (Those viruses get away with it by delegating all repair and replication to their host cells.)
So what kind of bright decision was it to use DNA?
More specific to humans: why are vertebrate eyes built the wrong way around? The light has to pass through a layer of blood vessels and nerves before hitting the light-sensitive cells, and then it has to pass to their other side to trigger the detector at the far end of the cell. Cephalopod eyes are the right way around, demonstrating that there’s no physical necessity for having inside-out eyes.
Or why do we eat, drink and breathe through the same hole, so we can choke on food?
Or why are we born through a ring of bone that requires awkward compromises between brain size, stability in walking and running, and death? Kiwis lay eggs that are, in relation to the mother’s size, much bigger than a human newborn; like all birds in the last 65 to 100 million years, they lack that stupid ring.
Where should I continue? I could go on for hours. Indeed, if you search the archives of ScienceBlogs Pharyngula, I have repeatedly gone on for hours.
Each of these cases of Stupid Design can be explained by evolution from a common ancestor. Ask me details, and I’ll provide them.
Do be specific. I think I know where you’re going; it’s wrong. :-)
There are, all taken together, four ways how something can come into being:
1) Chance.
2) Necessity (in other words, causation by the laws of physics).
3) Intelligent design.
4) Evolution.
Evolution is a complex combination of chance and necessity; it can’t be reduced to one of them. Being descent with heritable modification, it can only happen to entities that are capable of reproduction with imperfect inheritance; but to them it cannot help happening.
Why?
Are you trying to make an argument from personal incredulity? That would be funny.
Not baptism – exorcism.
…while, on the other hand, one egg is wasted a bit more often than once per month on average? No comparison to the billions of sperm cells that are wasted every two days, but still.
Transcranial magnetic stimulation…
Thoughts and vision are what the brain (with the eye in the case of vision) does. They’re not things, they’re not substances, they’re activities.
And these activities can of course be measured. To various extents, they have been. It’s just difficult to place an electrode next to several points along a nerve cell in a living brain; that’s why it’s so far not possible to read minds in any detail, and why what is possible is expensive and cumbersome.
The part of vision that happens in the eye of vertebrates is especially well understood. Every cause and effect from the incoming photon to the synapse with the first nerve cell in the sequence is known; take a textbook of molecular biology (or, as a first step, Wikipedia!) and look them up.
OK.
I’m convinced.
There was a Creator™.
Now which one was it?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_creation_myths
Part 2 of 2:
what is this I don’t even
Of course they’re physical. Dark matter is matter, it even has measurable mass; go here and here. That’s how it was discovered! Dark energy is energy; the acceleration of the expansion of the universe that it causes is likewise measurable.
Not in every detail, but it’s come pretty far, especially on the latter.
Well, perhaps the question itself is wrong…
LOL! That’s the easy part! Matter is just a form of energy. Once you’ve got a Big Bang and energy, you’ll automatically have matter.
Because it can. Nothing stops it.
After all, there are way more ways for there to be something than to be nothing. Think about what a kind of state nothing is: it’s perfectly symmetric, with an infinite number of symmetry planes through every point… that’s just one of an incredibly large number of alternatives, so it’s not very probable to occur.
That things happen because they can is well known. Learn more about Heisenberg’s uncertainty relation.
Statement from refusal to educate oneself.
Why do you assume that extra step?
I wasn’t built up cell by cell. Ever heard of DNA replication and cell division?
And F = ma is an oversimplification of E = mc². Let me walk you through it:
E = Fs
a = v/t
v = s/t
a = s/t²
as = s²/t² = v²
Fs = mas = mv²
E = mv²
This is wrong. Instead of any velocity, you have to insert the velocity into this formula, the basic velocity c.
The word you’re looking for isn’t “time”, it’s “evidence”. I, for one, am not capable of believing without evidence. You’ll have to present a reason to believe, or I won’t be able to. I can’t recognize something that’s by all evidence not there.
…Yeah. That, too.
What do you mean when you claim it eludes and frustrates us? How many of us have you ever talked to?
And if “our” intuition and experience is wrong, how do we find out that it’s wrong?
Sigh. Yet another testamonial to the cruelty of religion hijacked by a godbot.
Hey, yec, what evidence do you have that we’re not all flecks of cheese in an omelet cooking in a cosmic frying pan?
You may think we’re god’s special creation, but really we’re just brunch.
Just A Lurker @ #33
My comments were showing sympathy for those who unfortunately haven’t got the the independence of mind that Kassiane showed, and are therefore trapped. How could you possibly interpret that as victim blaming – unless you’re a self-righteous trouble maker. And you use of invective is just pathetic unjustified road rage. Why start internecine warfare when we’re all on the same side?
yec: Um, did you fucking read the links I posted for you? No, probably not. This makes you a stupid troll unwilling to learn.
How the fuck can one believe this drivel and believe in the story of Jesus. The story of Jesus sounds like a change of mind.
Yeah, that one has bothered me for decades. It is also one of the reasons why I left my faith and my church.
So your creator, this ominscient, omnipotent, overall omniomni creature, is a male? Does he have sexual organs? A prostate gland? Ear hair? Does he sweat? Bleed? Fart?
And is there a female of the species? Or is that why he goes around accosting underage virgins in the desert?
He sometimes turns them into heifers in order to hide the evidence from his wife.
Oops! Wrong myth!
Apparently, Yahweh/Jehovah/Allah holds heifers in higher esteem than women.
drummer25
I’m not the only one who caught it. Take your tone trolling and shove it. Ms. Daisy explained it better than I.
You said:
So what, you don’t have admiration for those who come through that ordeal differently? Or that don’t come out it?
Putting the onus on the victim. So sad they don’t have the intellect or strength of character to help themselves. Basic victim blaming and this kind of comment got called out on the last (or the one before it?) WIAAA thread.
Oh, woes me, I can’t help them unless they help themselves.
You sound like a condescending asshole.
Drummer25,
Your comment did imply that those who are stuck in such an abusive situation must be either weak of character or lacking in intellect. It’s condescending and insulting.
Hey Kassiane, ALL CAPS CALE here!
Everyone else: If it weren’t for Kassiane telling me what a stupid misogynist I was being back in my younger stupider days, I would have never felt motivated to learn anything about feminism. Though her story is hard for me to read, it really makes me happy to come across her sharing it here.
Yec123: Go fuck yourself. You are a compassionless monster. You don’t give two loose fucks about the suffering Kassiane has gone through, do you? You just care that someone is besmirching your beloved fairy tale.
People like you pop up every single time this discussion happens. In every case you and they have nothing of value to contribute, just a bunch of derailment and impassioned defense of your bloodthirsty bronze-age sheep-god.
I piss on your religion.
Just A Lurker @ #82
I’m baffled as to how my comments could be taken so negatively. And I apologise for not making my point more clearly. I’ve been an atheist since I was thirteen and that’s many decades ago. During that time I’ve helped many people of all ages to break free from religion and I admire all those who break free by whatever means.
But there are those, and I’ve met many, who have been so thoroughly programmed from birth by their parents and their community that have very little chance of changing their position without extra help from the likes of us. Kassiane did this, by her account, by reasoning and intuition and without help from anyone else. I’m certainly not denigrating the intellect of others. But what was it that Kassiane had which others didn’t? I don’t know whether it was powers of reasoning, strength of character, natural skepticism or whatever, but they were qualities which enabled to work her way free.
Sorry if you think the words ‘intellect’, ‘strength of character’ were badly chosen, maybe ‘intuition’ and ‘powers of reasoning’ would have been better. I was trying to identify what it was about Kassiane that gave her the power and insight to achieve what she did in those tough circumstances. I’d be interested to know how Just A Lurker, Daisy and Pentomid would describe the qualities that Kassiane, and others, have shown in overcoming their problems.
No offence or condescension was intended. But why do you assume the worst and jump in with the abuse rather than giving your alternative view and offering a bit of constructive criticism.
yec @ 42
“And the “scientific” explanation is what exactly? That everything is just the product of chance and necessity, accidence (sic) and blind causality? LOL.”
Suits me. Godidit is the ultimate “LOL”.
Perhaps it was the tone trolling that annoyed people. The condescension and pomposity might also have been off-putting. Perhaps if you didn’t come across as a smarmy prig, your comments would be read in a more favorable manner.
Like eyes that don’t work properly (why am I myopic, astigmatic & presbyopic? All at the same time?)
Like appendices
Like ears that don’t work properly (why did I keep going deaf as a child?)
Like joints (why am I suffering the pain of osteoarthritis in my fingers?)
Like jaws (why did my jaw hinge fail to open properly for over 6 months until appropriate medical intervention?)
Like backs (don’t get me started on backs)
Like digestive systems (why do 3 people I know suffer from Crohn’s disease?)
Like cancer
Like knees
like lungs(why did my lung keep spontaneously collapsing?)
Evidence of a creator? Either evidence of no creator, or of a bloody stupid one. An incompetent idiot that would have failed first year engineering.
Physics fail.
There’s nothing immaterial about vision. Vision is the detection & interpretation of light. Light is made up of photons. Photons can be measured. Very accurately. I do it every day in my work.
Idiot.
They have an effect which can be observed. That makes them physical.
Idiot.
I’ve news for you. I don’t need to put faith in either atoms or f=ma. There is more than enough evidence that they not only exist, but they behave according to definable theory. F=Ma has worked for me every time I have used it. It has never failed. Can you show documented evidence that it has failed?
No?
Fail again.
Idiot.
Ever heard of an electron? It can be measure too. I can suggest an experiment for you to experience the reality of them. Take a fork. insert it into electrical outlet in wall (you know, the same one that your computer is plugged into). Hold tight to it. Switch on. You’ll have plenty of evidence of them & you may well finally get the evidence or lack thereof of your creator. Good Luck.
Presupposition. Fail.
Now that one, I’ll accept without too much need for evidence ;-)
Or that the entire universe wasn’t sneezed out of a being called the Great Green Arkleseizure? And that we should be living in fear of the time called “The Coming of The Great White Handkerchief”?
I like to think that Interstellar Nebulae are giant godlike beings, and we’re what happens when one of them rips a particularly wet fart.
jeeez, Catnip, you’re a mess.
Have you tried prayer?
or rum?
I haz rum!
chigau (違う), rum sounds like it will have more efficacy than prayer.
Interestingly, for my age, I’m something of a paragon of health. Compared to some people. Also, I don’t have all the ailment that I listed & the ears & lung thing are much more things from my youth. One of the few benefits of age is that ear canals get bigger and lungs get tougher. And backs get stronger, when the correct muscles are developed.