Hi! I'm a tech guy, skeptic, feminist, gamer and atheist, and love OSS and science of all stripes. I enjoy a good bit of whargarbl now and again, and will occasionally even seek it out. I am also apparently responsible for the death of common sense on the internet. My bad.
I have opinions. So do you. You want to share them with me. I would like to do likewise. Please don't expect a platform for proselytizing that will go unchecked and unchallenged, though. Contact me via the clicky thingies under my banner.
The commenting rules are simple: don't piss me off. This rule has worked for me for a decade; I have never found a need for any other rule, because any other rules leads to rules-lawyering. Just remember --
this is my property, not yours.
Oh please, oh please, oh please, tell me this was a joke! Tell me some sick jerk just thought thought this would be an entertaining way to make fun of the Christians. Oh please tell me it is all just a joke.
In the frightening chance that this is not, indeed, a joke. Please tell me that someone in law enforcement is investigating this sick son of a bitch for his unhealthy obsession with little girls bodies.
This has got to be one of the more twisted things I have ever seen you post Jason. Please please please tell me this was a joke.
Yeah… don’t worry, Landover Baptist is called a “Poe”, in that it violates Poe’s Law: it’s impossible to create a parody of any fundamentalist religion that someone doesn’t mistake for true. The scary part is how much it echoes reality.
I am beyond relieved to know for certain that this was a joke. It’s still sick and the guy who did it needs to be smacked. I feel compelled to admit that the “body parts are dirty shameful things” part is an unfortunate part of some organized religions. However, there must be many other ways to make fun of it, if you feel so compelled. This just made my skin crawl, joke or no.
Yes, that was more than a little bit disturbing. Fucking around or not, that was completely fucked – unfortunately, it is impossible to say absolutely that was a joke.
Oh come on! it is a p*** take!!
DuWayne: it’s totally possible to say absolutely that it was a joke, if by joke you mean “parody” or “Poe”. It crosses several lines, it’s true, but knowing Landover Baptist, there’s a 99.9% chance no real e-mail from a real girl exists.
The implications of such a joke, that fundamentalists of all stripes have an unhealthy obsession with sex and sexuality, is deadly serious, however.
That was absolutely hilarious. The guy even sounds like one of those depraved pastors from some deluded church in the south. I just wish the right people would hear this guy and say to themselves
“that sounds just like Pastor Bungholer”.
No, Daniel. Your god doesn’t forbid it, because Yahweh doesn’t exist. The lack of Christian arguments from reason on this site reflect their relative scarcity. The best you have is William Lane Craig, who’s a polished debater, but hardly reasonable.
The very best argument I have against every god is that humans have invented hundreds of thousands of them and none of them have been presented with any evidence. You forget that I do not state outright that there IS no god, because there COULD be a god outside the scope of this universe. But such a god would have absolutely no resemblance to your god, or any of those other ones that have been proposed.
You’re proposing that there’s a god. If I propose that there’s a unicorn in my garage, you’d ask for evidence, not take it on faith, because a unicorn is an animal that has never been observed directly (something like a god), and therefore requires more evidence than my saying “I have a car in my garage” which is very likely and can be taken on faith.
So where’s your evidence?
God forbid you entertain your readers with Christians who argue their case from reason, right? By all means, let your readers continue to mock the whole array of people who profess Christianity based on videos and audio clips of ignorant individuals who fancy their words as being gospel.
That would be your concept of your god.
To be honest, Daniel, I really don’t give a shit if you believe in any gods or not. It just so happens, that I, and many like myself, do not. We don’t need anything like a god or religion in our lives. We couldn’t care less about your deities or your faith, so long as you don’t try to intrude upon our lives with them, as so many Christians do.
We don’t need to have any argument against theism. Theism is meaningless to us. God is meaningless to us. Bring us a single empirical shred of evidence for your god, and we might change our minds.
I highly doubt that you’ve actually examined William Craigs work. I am willing to bet your familiarity with him is limited to YouTube. I could be wrong, perhaps you do study his work, which would cause one to question WHY you think he is being unreasonable in any of his arguments?
After all, your beloved Dawkin’s, no doubt your foremost popularized spokesperson posits that the best defense against Theism is the question “Who created God?”. Let’s not discuss who has more refined spokespersons, but rather the intellectual suicide you fanatic internet atheist’s commit everyday.
So let me ask the question….
What is YOUR best argument against Theism? And not particularly Christian theism, but the existence of God in general.
I suppose that the “god” you are imagining “…outside he scope of this universe…” is truly nothing like the God we believe in. The very concept of God means that He is a maximally perfect being—a being that has every possible perfection—which would include being omnipresent. So, if God exists in another possible world, God would exist in this world also. So, the notion that God could exist in another possible world, but not ours is rather ridiculous, unless you define God as something other than a maximally perfect being.
If you propose that there’s a unicorn in your garage, I have positive reasons for not believing that it’s true; namely, that if we are speaking of the mythological animal, then I know for good reasons that the probability is very low that there actually is a unicorn in your garage. I know this has low probability based on the fact that almost no one I know or know of has ever reported to see a unicorn.
I, however, do not have any positive reasons NOT to believe in God, which makes the probability of there actually being a maximally perfect being go up. Furthermore, there are also good reasons why I believe that God exists in all sorts of areas of intellectual inquiry. Some of which are:
1. Cosmological singularity; namely, that if (1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause and (2) the universe began to exist, then (3) the universe has a cause
2. Origin of Genetic “information” in Biological Systems
3. Epistemological Reasons which include
(A) A Priori Beliefs; or warranted beliefs we make that aren’t contingent on experience. (Theism, not naturalism, best explains why our cognitive faculties are reliable and why these a priori beliefs make sense in a theistic universe)
(B) Ontological Argument
(C) Justified belief in abstract objects such as logical truths, mathematical truths, ethical truths, testimonials from other “minds”, all of which remain objective
So, your question “…where’s your evidence?” cannot be so easily answered seeing as how you didn’t mention what specific evidence you want? If there was evidence for God, what would you want that to be? Or rather, what evidence would enable you to finally believe that God exists?
Let’s knock out #1 right off the bat. We DON’T know that the universe began. We don’t know what came before the Big Bang because that event wiped out all evidence of the prior state, but we can extrapolate that there was a quantum foam containing all the matter of this universe. Did that quantum foam spring out of existence ex nihilo, like your suggestion that God spoke it into existence? I seriously doubt it. This foam could have been an emergent property of other dimensions, other branes in a multiverse. This is all highly speculative. The only “began” that we can talk about, is the beginning of the universe’s expansion, which is when time itself began. Because time is only measurable in relation to the start of the expansion, there is no before. If there is some other measure of time, we can’t access it because it’s extrauniversal.
#2 is a really hoary old Intelligent Design argument. Biology is an emergent property of chemistry, and what “information” is contained in DNA is not only not the only possible arrangement of the chemicals to create fractal-like biology out of seemingly arbitrary strings of lipids, but it’s also more fuzzy than any kind of “coding language” where you could have major errors in the script and still come up with the same basic biology that’s viable and alive. Like the math behind fractals, we can figure out what those formulae are that created the beautiful and seemingly designed creatures that have emerged on Earth, but that doesn’t mean we invented the math, nor that math itself is anything but a human-imposed rationalization of the emergent properties of this universe.
And the epistemological arguments just don’t hold any sway for me, knowing that humans are excellent at rationalizing incorrect positions. All of them start with the belief that there HAS to be a higher power, and work their way from there. (And I don’t believe C is justified at all — all these “truths” are human-made rationalizations of the emergent properties of the universe, as I mentioned in my argument against 2.)
And finally, even all these arguments that you make for the possibility of a god are arguing against something I don’t deny — that there COULD be an extrauniversal deity that pressed “go” on the quantum foam and started the Big Bang, but they do NOT justify your belief in Yahweh specifically, or the foundational text that swayed you to belief in the concept to begin with.
I’m not terribly interested in having a full-out debate right now. You go ahead and get the last word, because I know you won’t leave it at this. Before you do though, could you go back and read all the comments from the last time you trolled about your god here? And perhaps I can suggest to some of my friends that they come rebut what arguments you’re sure to come up with?
I wasn’t particularly interested in having a full on debate either, but I still wanted to get to the core of what it is that you DO believe. From my understanding, you do believe that there is a possibility of there being a God, but you are not persuaded by “my deity” in general. I guess your not an atheist after all!
Your multiverse objection is a wonderful extrapolation, but it doesn’t quite “knock out” my first point. The multiverse argument doesn’t address the philosophical problem at hand. Your multiverse extrapolation just extends the number of events into an infinite regress, which mathematically isn’t plausible. Why in the first place do you seriously doubt that the universe came into existence ex nihilo? So you also agree that something “extra-universal” exists—doesn’t God fall into this category?
Your point regarding #2 isn’t persuasive in the least bit. I’m not even sure you made a case against the design inference from genetic information. I’d like to discuss this at length, perhaps when your up for it, but we obviously don’t have the room here to discuss it, because I am sure you have more to say about it.
You said “…humans are excellent at rationalizing incorrect positions…”, couldn’t this also apply to your position? So is your argument that because humans can rationalize incorrect positions that my position is incorrect? Couldn’t I also argue that your position is likely incorrect because humans are excellent at rationalizing incorrect positions?
You argued “…all these ‘truths’ are human-made rationalizations of the emergent properties of the universe.” Can’t it also be argued that this statement itself is also a human-made rationalization of the emergent properties of the universe? If so, are you arguing that there is truth to my argument?
So I guess we are debating the wrong thing, I guess I am supposed to argue the case for Christianity. I am rather surprised to know that your NOT an atheist after all.
Dan J,
Give me a empirical shred of evidence for logical truth, mathematical truth, ethical truth, or empirical evidence for the existence of other minds. Please, I’ll be waiting.
Heh. The very concept of the maximally perfect hamburger is one that exists, is in my hands, and nobody is going to prevent me from eating. It would be less than perfect if it didn’t exist, right? And yet, here I am, hamburgerless.
Prove that any of these things exists outside of the minds of human beings first. They are human-imposed abstractions and rationalizations of reality.
You don’t understand my position at all, evidently. You think “atheist” is only used for people that are gnostic atheists — that actively disbelieve in any gods, that state that the existence of any god can be proven or disproven and that such existence is disproven. You’re right to think that this is a fallacious position to take.
And yet MOST atheists, even Richard Dawkins, consider themselves *A*gnostic atheists. It’s on my “most read list”, so you have probably read this explanation before. If not, do so now. It explains my position quite clearly.
The default position to take on any claim without evidence, is disbelief until the evidence proves otherwise. You disbelieve in unicorns not because they are “mere mythology”, since they are mentioned in hundreds of stories and are mentioned several times in your holy and inerrant Bible, but because without extraordinary evidence the claim can be easily dismissed. Your god, I’m afraid, is also mythology. Just like Zeus, Mithra, Horus and every other mythological god. There is no tangible difference. If there was, that difference could only be *evidence*.
No scientist, no atheist, claims to have a monopoly on the complete and accurate truth of the universe. I suspect we have this universe’s properties far closer to correct than any Bronze-age mythology, though.
I just wanted to reply to Daniel’s question in the comments, “What is YOUR best argument against Theism?” I know it was addressed to you, Jason, but it got me thinking and I really wanted to share the thoughts.
Firstly, I don’t see the need to ascribe sentience to whatever caused the start of the universe, if there was indeed “something” that caused time to begin. I am perfectly content to believe that a random quantum fluctuation could have marked the start of the Big Bang, or a chance interaction between multidimensional membranes, or even that there is no time zero but that time itself extends back infinitely. Infinities are not mathematically impossible; they are in fact required in order to explain a lot of physical phenomena. Sometimes the infinities make calculations difficult, but that does not mean that the infinities themselves don’t exist. And even with the infinities, these kinds of theories are much less complicated than demanding that a sentient being had to exist before there was anything in which to exist. Occam’s razor easily trims away this complication, at least to the minds that are willing to accept that randomnesses and infinities are perfectly reasonable physical concepts that can be described mathematically.
Secondly, I think that the notion of this god dude being “a maximally perfect being” really makes it sound like a fiction that was created by humans in order to get other humans to believe in it (whether it be to help such humans be better people, or to get them to donate money to the cause). And what’s worse is that the stories depict this so-called perfect dude getting angry about stuff (highly unreasonable behaviour), and declaring that some animals are okay to eat but not others (so, did he goof up in making some of them?). Such contradictions disprove the supposed perfection, which makes it highly suspect whether the guy actually exists… or if he is just a myth, like all those Greek gods that were once worshipped and now known to have been invented to help humans explain things they did not understand.
I do think the God concept is still useful to some people, particularly those who are uncomfortable with the idea of infinities or randomness or that some things cannot be proven because they cannot currently be tested. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the explanation of such things is divine or outside of the realm of science; it just means that our conceptual understanding is in a state of perpetual growth, just like the universe. There does not need to be someone who knows everything about the universe in order for the universe to exist with the amazing complexity that it has, because as mentioned above, the universe is simpler to explain if there is no such being.
However, I do have an explanation of what could be interpreted as God, which helps me not feel so nauseous when people I care about profess their worship of this deity. I think the universe itself can be considered to be god-like. It created itself, it is omnipresent, and it contains all the rules that guide its own evolution. One may even say that it is self-aware, at least through the perceptions of the sentient beings contained within the fabric of the universe. However, this is a distributed sort of consciousness, not one that sits on high and judges us–though we do judge each other, and it is important to consider whether others would think our actions are bad. The increasing awareness that the social internet provides is an excellent way for us to gain awareness of what good we can do, as well as the impact of the bad things we could do, and so it is an excellent tool to promote ethical behaviour. Jean-Paul Sartre said “Hell is other people,” but in this perspective, God is other people as well. We are all part of God, or the Universe as I prefer to call it.
Furthermore, if we need some kind of higher purpose to guide us, we could take to heart the notion of helping the universe be more aware of its own workings, including of course the physical and biological sciences, but also in how we sentient beings interact with one another. We could make use of logical arguments, mathematical proofs, empirical observations, and ethical reasonings, in order to find the way to best help the universe in its evolution. (I’ve purposely avoided the word ‘truth’, because truth is subjective.) Or, we could just believe some age-old fairy tales and not bother trying to figure anything out… sorry, no, that doesn’t sound very worthwhile at all.
I’m sure that our cultural evolution has benefited from some religious beliefs (except the extreme ones that advocate destroying people who believe other things), but I’m even more sure that these beliefs are almost done being useful to us. We can avoid doing bad things because we have evolved to have guilt complexes, not because some book tells us the things we’re not supposed to do. We can be good people for the sake of improving the universe, instead of being good people just so we don’t suffer in the afterlife. We have the capacity for intelligent discussion, and so we should find ways to learn from others and improve our own perspective, so that we can grow as people, as cultures, as a species, and so we can more effectively fulfil our destiny to be the perception organs of the universe. (I highly recommend the book The Universe is a Green Dragon as an inspirational guide to this perspective.)
As a final point, I just want to note that language, like culture, like the universe, has evolved and grown to the state it is now, and if we want to keep it improving, we should be careful not to let misinterpretations get in the way of our understanding. Specifically, Daniel, please note that you have used the word “your” (which means “belonging to you”) in several places where you meant to say “you’re” (which means “you are”). These sorts of mistakes tend to reduce the likelihood of people taking you seriously, and since this discussion seems to be important to you, I thought I would let you know this.
Qrystal, I apologize that I didn’t spell “you’re” when it was necessary, I didn’t realize we were critiquing our spelling and grammar here, but thanks anyways! Where did I make this mistake, I don’t see it?
Besides that, I would rightly classify you as somewhat of a Deist, or so it seems from your description of God. Now, let’s be perfectly clear, we aren’t discussing what people are most comfortable with when it comes to beliefs. There are several reasons why an infinite number of things or events leads to self contradictions. For example, what is ∞ – ∞? The multiverse extrapolation doesn’t best fit the evidence when it comes to modern cosmology and I hope I can discuss this with someone at length sometime soon.
It’s all nice that you “…don’t see a need…” for my belief system and that the description of a maximally perfect being “…sounds like a fiction…”, I could easily posit that your fantasies of how biological complexity came about undirected over millions of years “…sounds like a fiction…” to me. The problem is that Darwinist’s don’t look at the evidence and infer that such and such happened, they tell these stories because of their prior commitment to naturalism, which is a philosophical position (a rather bad one at that). In fact, naturalists (or materialists) are rather close minded because for them the Darwinian theory is the only option they have. On the other hand, Christians have the luxury of following the evidence where it leads, allowing us a sort of freedom when it comes to scientific research. For example, is it plausible that the Universe is only 6-10,000 years old? Probably not, but this isn’t a Biblical standpoint, the Bible doesn’t teach that the age of the universe is 6-10,000 years old. So when someone who says, “well it’s pretty evident in the study of astronomy especially that the Universe is about 13.5 Billion years old,” this is no problem for the Christian theist.
As for the reference to empirical observation, there are several things you rationally believe that CANNOT be proven using the scientific method and likewise are subject to basic empirical observation. For example, Mathematical truths are unseen, unheard, and untouched; we however can “translate” it’s truth into our own abstract ideas such as numbers and other characters. But the actual TRUTH of mathematics is evident, yet it presupposes science, so that it isn’t accessible via the scientific method. The same goes with logic from reason. You cannot empirically observe logic, yet you rationally believe it’s true. In order to empirically observe anything, you must presuppose logical truth, so that if you can’t empirically observe something doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Furthermore, much like the way we can manifest mathematics in the form of abstract objects like numbers, we can see inferences from design in nature and from things like the fine-tuning of the Universe.
Jason, your reference to the unicorn in the Bible (which was mentioned about 9 times, not in hundreds of stories as you proposed) it the word rĕ’em in the Hebrew. This is far from the mythological creature that we see in little girls books now. In fact, almost all later translations of the Bible (not KJV) place a different name in place of the word “unicorn” as the KJV translators put originally. Why? Because the actual animal rĕ’em is unknown, but the Bible likens it to a type of Oxen and one that could possibly be used for plowing fields (if it was able to be tamed). Thanks for the input on this though.
Bullshit. Next contestant please, this one’s getting pretty f’ing boring.
Daniel, you keep comparing your deity to abstract concepts that do not exist in physical reality. Does this mean that you believe your deity is also such an abstract concept?
I know that mathematics works to help describe the reality that I experience. Your deity has never helped anyone better describe and understand our Universe. You keep trotting out old points like “fine-tuning” of the Universe that have been refuted by people who actually know the science for years.
Old bullshit is old, but it still stinks.
Daniel:
The guys in the white coats are back. Time to take your pills and settle down for the day. I know the straight jacket’s uncomfortable but you must wear it so you don’t hurt yourself. These voices you’re hearing are all just in your head and in time they may go away. But until they do just STFU!!!