Ray Comfort is coming out with a new “documentary” called 180, which he claims has such a powerful, irrefutable argument against abortion that it will reverse pro-choice opinions within 30 seconds. Here’s his promo for it, in which he shows people becoming champions of pro-life mere seconds after hearing it.
Uh, wait…what is the argument? It’s chopped out in every example! Check the website, and it isn’t given anywhere! Why?
There’s another video there: it’s a begging video. Ray Comfort asks for lots and lots of donations so they can distribute this amazing powerful movie that will save millions of babies.
But…it’s an argument that a guy with a microphone can present in less than a minute, and it’s easily comprehensible to young distracted people lounging on a beach. This is low-tech and easy. Doesn’t he have an ethical obligation as a fervent anti-abortionist to simply state it immediately? Shouldn’t armies of anti-choice goons be standing outside of clinics right now, chanting it and converting the patients, nurses, and doctors on the spot?
Somehow, it reminds me of this other video.
But no, Ray Comfort refuses to save the billions and trillions and gazillions of little aborted babies sucked out of liberal wombs every day until he gets his Benjamins. Unless, of course, he’s holding back because it’s actually a crap argument, and once it’s out he’ll be a laughing stock, so he’s getting his money first. Either way, he’s a rotten selfish bastard.
SPOILER ALERT! People who have seen the movie report that the argument goes like this: Hitler murdered Jews. Abortion kills babies. Therefore, abortion is just like the Holocaust.
Yeah, Ray Comfort just pulled another idiotic argument out of his ass. So what else is new?
Maybe he’s been studying with Darren Brown.
I’m guessing it’ll be something lame and feeble, like Comfort reciting Psalm 139:14, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made”, and presto, his acolytes fall down and say he’s right.
I’m just glad the whole argument is settled now.
I think he’s afraid he’ll be “called home” if he doesn’t raise the scratch.
His god’s got a BIG gambling problem to pay off, dating back to where he lost that wager with Blaise Pascal. I hear he shoots craps, too.
It’s concussion. Concussion, am I right?
for some reason it reminds me of “Name that Tune.”
“i can convince that beachgoer in *95* seconds!11!!”
“oh, yeah, *i* can convince the beachgoer in THREE seconds!11!!”
“convince that beachgoer!!1!!1!!1”
What you didn’t see:
“If you become pro-life I will throw myself off this pier”
This isn’t for us, it’s for his followers. Comfort indeed.
Why does a video that will convince you of something in 30 seconds need a trailer that is almost two minutes long?
Ray Comfort is more than a fraud, he is an embarrassment to sentient lifeforms. I can’t wait to see this blow up in his face.
Ray Comfort, the “Banana Man”, proves evolution.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfucpGCm5hY
No, not there, but from this:
According to geneticists, we share 50% of our genes with bananas, so, he got the whole 50% banana genes of his mom & the 50% banana genes of his pop, making him totally bananas.
Would I be too far off to guess it has something to do with bananas?
My guess: some variation of “what if your parents had an abortion?”. I’ve had people use that one on me with a smug smile of triumph as if they had formulated an irrefutable logic trap.
Sort of a bait and switch tactic, a’la Eyewitness News:
This raises an interesting idea. If Ray Comfort’s last words are “The Aristocrats” and then he dies all will be forgiven. I will indeed bend knee to “The Way of the Master” because that would be fucking awesome. Otherwise he is welcome to do something anatomically impossible to himself whilst whistling “The Old Rugged Cross”.
Tally Man Tally Man, Tally me bananas.
“It’s opposite day!”
Quelle surprise! A Christian looking to line his own pockets. Again. Blech.
Say, I am sure this has been already considered/done by quicker thinkers than me, but I haven’t heard of it so far.
Remember the story of the bikers who stood between the Fred Phelps Christian thugs and grieving families at a funeral some time ago – and I think the strategy was then employed in many other communities.
Well, I was thinking the other day (right after, “Why the hell aren’t women marching on the Capital by the millions?”), I wonder why various civil rights organizations haven’t seemed to organize volunteers to do something similar outside of Planned Parenthood clinics or other abortion providers premises?
In some communities (the few which still have abortion providers, that is), abortions are scheduled on certain days of the week, I think, which is how the forced birth protesters know when to protest against women attempting to enter the building for healthcare services.
I wonder if it would be possible or practical for volunteers to for a protective pathway to the door of the facility from the drop off curb, and just hold signs which might read things like “Health”, “Dignity” and “Freedom”.
No shouting or confronting the forced-birthers. Just a quiet, protective force for humanity and good sense. Maybe wish the young women and their supporters a gentle good morning.
I’ve begun to think that the pro-choice movement has dropped the ball on this particular aspect of the fight for equal rights to bodily autonomy and full human status for women. We have mostly allowed young women to bear the brunt of the vicious attacks from forced-birthers without back up. And in this culture, an unprotected individual is preyed upon by the slavering hordes. By not thinking of ways to practically and truly stand with women on the steps of the abortion clinic, we ceded the moral high ground to the forced-birthers.
Sorry if too far off topic. It seems that so many of PZs posts just bring a whole passle of tangential/related thoughts to the surface of my muddled mind!
“what if your parents had an abortion?”.
Or a condom.
Or a headache.
Or if they decided on oral sex that night.
Or if they decided to watch TV instead.
Or if the sperm with the X chromosome suddenly sprinted ahead at the finish line.
Or any of a billion other possibilities which would have resulted in “me” not being born.
I guess it’s some lame emotional crap, probably combined with pictures à la “Silent Scream” and so on.
It looked rather staged to me. But it was probably something like what was mentioned above (“what if your parents had an abortion?”) or something equally stupid such as a completely unrealistic, hypothetical situation.
Or, “would you have an abortion?”
I hate the opposite of the “the only moral abortion is my abortion”. Makes me feel as though someone is saying they are morally above me (“the only moral abortion is your abortion”…in other words: I’m better than you and would never have to or consider doing something like that!
I know the argument!!
“Well, if you don’t abort the fetus, it may grow up to someday punch me and Kirk Cameron in our smug, stupid, lying faces! Isn’t that worth taking a chance on?”
It would make me think twice.
@ImprobableJoe:
Probably would make me think about it too…
But yea, I’m putting my money on “what if your parent aborted you?” To which I would respond, “you wouldn’t be here asking me this stupid question.”
*sigh* My post above isn’t really clear. Apologies. Brain is on the fritz lately. And I need to correct one thing about my post:
“But it was probably something like what was mentioned above (“what if your
parentsmother had/were considering an abortion?”) Last time I checked, the woman was the owner of the uterus and the sole decision maker about what to do with it.*sigh*
Was there any doubt it was staged? I thought we were just joking by guessing reasons for an express change of mind.
Apparently award winning.
If thats important enough to be right at the top of the page… I would think a list, or link to a list, of those awards would be in order.
Ugh, I should have said “we appeared to cede the moral high ground” to the Christianists… please don’t take that to mean that I believe in any way that they ever have the moral high ground in fact!
What I mean is that if we don’t step up and say that women deserve our support and protection when seeking to exercise their right to what happens to their own bodies, and if we do not physically stand with them, in the same way those biker “angels” stood for the families of dead soldiers against the Fred Phelps Christian harassment, then are we tacitly admitting that we do not believe these women are deserving of support and protection?
I just think about this, and when videos like the above crop up, or I read about the inroads that Christian evangelists make with young people (young women!) to bring them over to enthusiastic support for forced birth, I really wonder if we shouldn’t be thinking more about very basic gestures of solidarity and respect like this.
That is, of course, if abortion even remains available to women who need it anywhere in this country. :(
Niftyatheist: That’s already being done all around the country, and has been for years. I used to do clinic defense in the DC area back in the early 90s and I’m thinking it’s time to get started again.
I’ve been called evil, a murderer, and a child killer, all while standing to create a channel to the front door.
Heck, a friend of mine was once knocked over by Randall Terry ::spits:: himself while were defending a clinic downtown.
@Mara:
OT: Your daughter is adorable.
I’ve been hearing that one since the 1970’s. My response has always been: “I’d be pretty mad.”
Heh. Yeah. :P
It’ll be a video of a cute dog. A voiceover will state that this is YOUR beloved pet. Comfort will then hold a gun to the side of the dog’s head and demand your support of his “pro-life” agenda – and everything else – or he will kill your dog.
Sampling bias suspected, suggest randomizing/blinding; also, longitudinal study required. Meh.
I’ve seen the full video. SPOILER alert…
Hitler is involved.
I thought it must be “because it makes the baby Jeebus cry”… Isn’t that the substance of all their arguments?
I’ve seen the full video. SPOILER ALERT:
Hitler is involved.
The question “what if your parents had an abortion?” is totally wasted on me. My answer is usually along the lines of : “Well, fuck it.* I sure wouldn’t care about it then.”
*Use of that first sentence depends on who’s asking.
You mean like, “What if Hitler’s parents had aborted him?”
I can see why, deep down inside, that line of reasoning might appeal to certain Christians.
Won’t somebody think about Beethoven?
Sounds suspiciously like Comfort’s God. Has the answers and could offer salvation to everyone if only we’d spend our decades on this Earth worshiping Him. Fail to do that? Fuck you, off to hell.
Comfort has this wonderful argument that will save gazillions of “babies” (they’re fetuses but lets just play along for a second), but won’t share it without money.
Strange… they both sound like immoral frauds to me, in it for themselves and not because they give a flying shit about anyone or anything.
niftyatheist says:
They’re called the Patriot Guard Riders (home page here), and they’ve spread out to a lot of places. Being a rider and member of an American Legion, I’ve seen these guys ride through before, and they (at least the 20 or 25 I came in contact with) are some of the nicest people I’ve ever met.
42
As it is on anyone whose immediate response isn’t “Oh wow, you’re like, totally blowing my mind, dude. Thinking is fucked up.“
Well, I was close.
Ray Comfort has just made me change my view on abortion: I now believe every woman should have the right to abort her child until 62 years after its birth, just in case it turns out to be a complete embarrassment.
Hitler? Is Comfort going to ask for proof and evidence that aborting Hitler is accurate and correct?
@Matt Dillahunty:
Hitler? Does that mean eugenics? Is he seriously going to bring out the eugenics angle?
Woo-hoo! His argument convinces a few young beach-goers! Take that, Science!
Given the changes in the words the folks use in the AFTER shots, I’m guessing he shows them a picture or vid of a nearly-fullterm fetus moving in a uterus, referring to it as a “baby” in a “womb”. Which brings in a lot of emotional loading, of course, and which ignores the fact that most abortions take place early (or would if the forced-birth people weren’t slowing things down as much as possible).
Which isn’t the same as PZ’s idea that there is a simple 30-second oral argument being presented. I think Comfort is showing a clip from his documentary, and wants money to present the whole thing to the world. Though he should just post it on YouTube. Comfort is still skeezy.
I liked how at the end of the vid the Duggars (the 19-children Christian couple) called the vid “life-changing”. Does this mean they are going to stop using her womb like a clown car?
I was at a screening. I walked out of the second half but I took notes during the first half.
-Who is Hitler? The Holocaust?
-Do you value human life? If you were ordered to drive a bulldozer to bury hundreds of living Jews, would you?
-Finish this sentence “It is OK to kill a baby in the womb when…”
-Hitler declared Jews to be non-human, aren’t you doing the same to babies? (Never say fetus always say baby in the womb)
-Abortion is holocaust.
(I walked out at this part)
Don’t leave us in suspense — or force us to actually watch his video in September. So what’s this argument? Somehow I’m always interested to see if these Christians actually come up with anything worth looking at. But it’s usually Ground Hog Day — same garbage eternally.
Beat me to it. That was my first guess as well. Per PZ’s #2, yeah, it’s a given that it’s something completely idiotic that only “converts” people the way every Christian “used to be a diehard atheist until…”
I don’t have, want, or use Flash Player. Can you consider using YouTube’s “new” embed codes which use HTML5 video as well?
Thanks!
That’s supposed to convince people? There’s a graffiti joke that translates to “If abortion is murder then jerking off is genocide.” So yeah, the Hitler joke has been done and overdone and can at most prove the stupidity of Comfort’s point.
And I mean really…Hitler? Come on.
Were you really? Or is that your conjecture about his argument? Because if so, it’s so eerily believable that now I’m betting you’re right. Unless you really were at a screening, in which case betting whether you’re right or not would be rather superfluous.
Where was Ray Comfort during Rwanda or the Gongo? Where was he during Irag or Afganistan? Where is he now during the Cartel wars or the Gang wars all over the world? Millions of people are dying with no choice. Don’t they deserve to live too Ray Comfort? Oh…I’m sorry…did you say they forgot to pay you? Aha! We understand now. May Hell accept you with open arms Ray Comfort!!
The video is freely viewable. This is his ‘award winning’ Hitlers Religion documentary (He bought a Telly Award). He then changed the name to 180.
It’s freely viewable on heartchanger dot com. Password heartchanger.
And yes it’s basically ‘Hitler killed babies, you don’t want to be like Hitler do you?’
Scenario 1:
“What if your mother had had an abortion?”
Scenario 2:
“Abortion=murder, and by being pro-choice you are a murderer. Do you want to be a murderer?! DO YOU?!”
Scenario 3:
“The bible says…”
Scenario 4:
“We have taken your child/pet/parents/iPhone. Become a pro-lifer, or they will be murdered/destroyed!”
Scenario 5:
“Look at this picture of a baby. Would you ever kill that?”
Scenario 6:
“Hitler. That is all. What? Did you expect some sort of argument here?”
Urgh, say Matt (love your show btw), how long into the video before they spring Godwin’s Law?
I suppose it’s useless to mention the Third Reich was anti-abortion, so you could make lots of babies for the Fatherland?
Much the way our modern conservatives want lots of white babies for fear of a dusky planet.
I’ve seen people change their minds on abortion in about 30 seconds too. It was a good friend of mine who, at the age of 18, found out she was pregnant. The young lady was a crazy right-winger, catholic freak prior to her experiences (she was a member of the young republicans at the time). Completely anti-abortion.
No way in hell that was going to work out coming from a very strict Catholic family. If they found out she had premarital relations, she’d have been kicked out right away.
Took about 30 seconds to change her mind on abortion (and I’m sure quite a lot longer to actually make the decision)
Post-experience, she is now sits on the left, and is at minimum agnostic. Oh yea, then she moved to San Fran (from orange county).
Funny how that works, eh?
@BathTub:
Hitler liked dogs and children. He also had a mustache and was German.
The Monty Python video is better than Comfort’s.
WHOAH. He seriously wins the chutzpah award: his first line in the movie is, “I’m Ray Comfort. I’m Jewish, and…” It’s about 58 seconds in, right after the title sequence.
@13 horrabin says:
To which my reply is usally along the lines of – “I wouldn’t have cared”
“But what if your parents had an abortion?”
Hi. Unplanned child here, unwanted, but not aborted. I was adopted as a very little boy. I might very easily not be here had my biological mother made a different choice.
I’ve been told that since I’m pro-choice I should build a time machine, go back in time, and abort myself. Hilarious. This person utterly missed the point – if I did that (impossibility aside), then I wouldn’t be pro-choice! I’d be making a decision about a woman’s body for her, taking away the very choice I support.
erikp @44
I think I read a story like that.
Or maybe I just wish I had.
But Hitler was anti-choice. You don’t want to be like HITLER, do you?
Mara (27), I am so glad to hear it! I must have lived in a virtual cave for the past 30 years, because I had only seen anything like that at an abortion clinic once on the news. (but must confess I rarely watch TV at all – not even the “news” – so I’ve obviously missed a lot of hopeful things like this!). I have never seen it in the communities I have lived in, either. In the current community, the anti-choice, pro-forced-birth contigent is loud and proud and spilling over onto most of the major thoroughfares in town, which is both disturbing and intimidating!
I figured other people had surely thought of it before…so happy to have that confirmed!
If he had really come up with something new he should have submitted it to a philosophy journal. I mean shit, most speech classes ban abortion as a topic because there hasn’t been anything new to say in AGES.
TCS –
Fucking win. +1, good fellow.
Oh man! …. I suffered through the entire video on Vimeo.
It’s Ground Hog Day. Same mindless Christian crap. Nothing new.
There! I saved you from wasting your time. It’s the old Hitler argument.
Did you know that abortion stops a beating heart?
That’s right. a heart.
The symbol of love.
Why do you hate love?
Let’s just hope his argument doesn’t involve any lame demonstrations concerning an apple this time.
Just found out a great aunt I didn’t know existed died of an illegal abortion. Before I was even born.
The very old generation has been turning over family documents.
Apparently she hemorrhaged. She was a Catholic and was taken to a Catholic hospital. The old people claim the hospital knew what it was and just let her bleed to death.
After I got over being appalled, I knew what the Hulk feels like. It’s not possible to have any more contempt for these anti-woman, pro female slavery religious kooks.
And of course, Ray Comfort has nothing. He never has anything.
Did you know a heart beats for a lifetime with no external energy soutce?
That was my first thought.
The answer is obvious. I could and would care less. Literally. As a nonexistent person, my thoughts would be less tangible than a pine tree.
got thru half of it before it made me sick. Cornering ill educated people and leading them by the nose to say what you want is underhanded at best, which is all you can expect from Comfort. Scary thought: I truly hope that he asked a whole lot more intelligent people his questions whose answers he didn’t show, ’cause I saw a lot of ignorance.
Did you know that abortion stops a beating heart?
Big deal. Fishing stops FIVE beating hearts. Six if you actually catch a fish.
When I still lived in the same city as my parents, I used to go to pro-choice events with at least one of them whenever possible. We had just little enough resemblance that when they’d start on the “what if your parents had been pro-choice (apparently they don’t understand the meaning?), I could just say “They are. See?” And then watch the fun as my folks went up one side of their foolishness and down the other. Good times.
I wonder if it would be possible or practical for volunteers to for a protective pathway to the door of the facility from the drop off curb, and just hold signs which might read things like “Health”, “Dignity” and “Freedom”.
My brother was an escort for a while and had a t-shirt that said, front and back, “SHE MATTERS MORE THAN A BLOB OF CELLS.”
I suspect it’s something like this… from Ray Comfort at least two years ago:
Of course, it completely ignores the fact that for every one brilliant mind you abort, you will probably abort several murderers who would have otherwise gone on to kill the potential mothers and fathers of future leaders, artists, etc.
Pointless, but reasonably impressive if you’re only hearing one side of the argument.
Can’t find it, but I recall a Saturday Night Live routine (guest host: Charlton Heston) where Oral Roberts (played by Phil Hartman) is accosted by the voice of God (played by Heston) demanding, “Where’s the money, Oral?”
I managed to watch half of the movie. I got the feeling that a lot of people were just saying what Comfort wanted to hear so that he would go away.
My screensaver is better than Comfort’s video. And I don’t have a screensaver.
Tally Man Tally Man, Tally me bananas.
Actually that should be:
Hey Christian Taliban, tally me bananas.
Tacitus #79, it also ignores the fact that all those supposed situations occurred IN THE PAST, and therefore Beethoven/Jesus/Obama etc are safe from your decision. Oh, some NEW genius might not be born? That’s true of every masturbation and every menstruation…
I went to clinic escort training a while back (will be starting in a couple weeks), and we have to wear these big smocks that just say “CLINIC ESCORT” on them. And agree to 100% non-engagement with the mouth-breathers protesters. Not quite as emotionally satisfying, but befitting of what is, after all, a medical office.
And yes it’s basically ‘Hitler killed babies, you don’t want to be like Hitler do you?’
Except that’s really simplistic about Hitler/The Nazis.
The Nazis made abortion illegal for Aryan women. It was permitted, even promoted, for non-Aryans, especially Jews.
Everything in Nazi policy was about the promotion of the Aryans, to build up their ranks, and to reduce the “undesirables.”
Which is one of the two driving forces behind why the Christscum right are against abortion. They don’t like it that all those brown people are out-breeding the Master Race, and they hate hate hate it that somewhere, somehow, some woman is enjoying sex. Those are 100% of the reasons that Christscum are anti-abortion. Don’t let them fool you with their lies. Dig deep enough, long enough, and you’ll get one of these two answers from Christscum woman-haters, sooner or later.
The Christscum just thinks they’re fooling us by talking about “life” and “conception”. They forget that they’re too fucking stupid to fool the Yeti from the Warner Brothers cartoons (“I will love him, and hug him, and squeeze him, and I will call him George”), never mind anyone with an IQ over room temperature.
I love it when people ask me “what if your parents had an abortiom?”
I am alive because of an abortion. If Dad & his girlfriend hadn’t aborted her pregnancy when they were both 18, Dad would not have gone to the college he went to, would not have met Mom, and so on.
Now what, anti-choicers?
I went to clinic escort training a while back (will be starting in a couple weeks), and we have to wear these big smocks that just say “CLINIC ESCORT” on them. And agree to 100% non-engagement with the mouth-breathers protesters. Not quite as emotionally satisfying, but befitting of what is, after all, a medical office.
Yeah, they’ve really updated their policies since the 80s. My brother was doing it outside the medical office of the one doctor in his small town who performed abortions. The doctor wasn’t associated with Planned Parenthood, or any other major organization. It was just him, his staff, and the few volunteers he could get, against swarms of anti-abortion nuts.
So he took what help he could get.
Ten seconds.
I was going to say that it’s almost as cool to see Matt Dillahunty on here as it was to see Dawkins a few weeks ago, but seeing as Dawkins was being kind of a douche at the time (about the Skepchick thing), I’d say Matt actually wins it.
Anyhoo, when Ray was on the Atheist Experience, Matt got him to breezily admit that of course, he doesn’t believe everything that’s in the Bible. Seriously. So if you ever meet Ray and he quotes the good book, you can feel free to ask him exactly why that passage is one of the ones he believes and not one of the ones he does not.
Aquaria #78:
They hate it when you call it that. I remember so much whining and crying about that being ‘dehumanizing’.
This reminds me of an interview with a member of the youth branch of a right-wing party in New Zealand, which yielded the classic “I think my argument is so powerful that it’s not necessary to talk about it”. And thus a local meme was born. Must be a New Zealand thing.
ChasCPeterson #70
What’s love but a second hand emotion?
PZ, you must have gone through a time warp. First you post an Obama video from two years ago, now you give us a headline that could have been written any time in the last 40.
I’m enjoying the idea that Matt attended the first half of the 30-second argument, and then left. So please don’t correct me.
No one ever asks me that, which is a shame, because the honest answer is “She would have lived longer” and I’d love to hear the response to that one.
It would be difficult to stop a non-beating heart unless it was maybe rolling down a hill.
The Planned Parenthood in my town managed to somewhat thwart protesters by changing their main entrance from the one in the front of the building on the busy main street to the back of the building at the parking lot in the more quiet and residential area. Now the protesters have to decide whether they want to harass individuals walking into the clinic, or make a big public show out on the street in front of everyone else instead.
Not surprisingly, they always choose the front street.
Yeah as I mentioned this was originally called ‘Hitlers Religion’ So its about Hitler right away.
The magic question is essentially ‘When is it ok to kill a child?’
To which my response would be ‘When God tells me too’.
Did you know that fundamentalist Christianity (or any other extremist religion) stops a working mind?
Is it just me, or did they change the password to the video? I can’t get to it via heartchanger.
“But what if your parents had had an abortion?”
well, I guess my soul would be in heaven right now. you do believe fetuses have souls, right?
“Well, yes, but…”
wait, you mean aborted fetuses go to hell?
“Er…”
oh my god, God sounds like a monster!
“Wait, no, of course aborted fetuses don’t go to hell!”
so…what do you think happens to them? reincarnation?
“Well, we can’t say for sure what God’s plan for aborted fetuses is, His ways are mysterious…”
well why don’t you ask Him then?
“Er…you mean now?”
sure, you do believe in prayer, right?
“Here, take a pamphlet and have a nice day bye!”
Yes, Tony Miano is now bragging on twitter about how after a few weeks they’ve finally worked out how to change the password.
It’s been downloaded so I will inevitably end up uploaded elsewhere soon.
The correct answer to all four of Comfort’s idiotic questions is of course “It’s none of my fucking business to recommend anything – it’s the pregnant women’s decision”.
Oh, and fuck you Ray Comfort.
Overgeneralization. Not the case for my mom, who is by and large a wonderful person (and is certainly not a racist or sexist) despite being a fundie Christian. She is against abortion because she genuinely believes it kills a child. Even trying to talk about abortion makes her break down in tears. She gets the same way when she talks about having to put her favorite dog to sleep 50 years ago, or when she’s channel surfing and accidentally lands on news coverage of kids suffering and dying in famines or other disasters; it’s all emotion with her. She put up a pregnant girl (unrelated, not from our church, and previously unknown to us) in our house for seven months to make it possible for the girl to carry her child to term, so she has backed up that emotion with non-destructive action.
I’m sure lots of “Christscum” are anti-abortion because they’re racist or anti-woman, but I’m also pretty sure that lots of “fainting saints” out there are anti-abortion because Being Bad to Puppies, Kitties, Rainbows, Unicorns, and Babies Is Teh Saddest Thing Ebbah.
On that note, I still want a bumper sticker that says “Shooting a doctor stops a beating heart.”
After hearing him refute other religions, and prove christianity true, by showing how the non-christian religions can’t be true, because they don’t solve the problems put forth by christianity, I came to the conclusion that Ray Comfort really is that stupid. I figured, no con-man would ever try an argument that laughably bad.
Then there’s this. If the argument really worked, and he cared about saving babies, he’d give the argument right freakin’ now. So, he’s clearly a con-man.
So, apparently… Ray Comfort is a very stupid con-man.
That was Abraham’s attitude so Comfort should recognize it.
So, I guess the blood of every fetus aborted in the world between now and September 26th is on Ray Comfort’s hands, then isn’t it?
Hilter killed Jews. Ray Comfort, like Hitler is of Western European descent. Ray Comfort should immediately kill himself and save Israel the trouble.
Abortion IS just like the Holocaust.
Behind every clinic there is a set of railroad tracks with a boxcar waiting. The little fetuses are marched onto the boxcar, locked inside and spend days without breast milk as they are shipped to the camps. There, they are forced to work until their little stubby fingers can work no more. When no more forced labor can be extracted, they are summarily marched off to the gas chambers and then buried in mass graves.
If people only knew what REALLY goes on…
Reductio ad Hitlerum! Take that liberals!
and now, some happy babies!
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNt-hIQb0cc&w=420&h=345%5D
That’s funny, the episode reminded me of:
1. Monty Python’s Funniest Joke and
2. Mooney and Kirschenbaum’s Super Simple Secret Recipe For Fixing Everything ™
This is an outrage! Clearly, Ray Comfort is in violation of the Geneva Convention!
@79 – the version I like talks about a woman whose husband has vanished, and whose beloved first son has just died of cancer, when she finds out she is pregnant again.
Not wanting to live without her husband or first son, and hating the thought of bringing another child into the world, she attempts suicide, but is restrained by her relatives. Do you recommend abortion?
If yes:
congratulations, you have just killed Saddam Hussein.
Yeah, I heard Ray Comfort interviewed on ‘Atheist Experience’.
What a complete, irrational, moron. It is unfathonable that people would actually listen and believe his idiocy.
Fantasy: round up these freakin morons and send them in for new thinking brains.
As attributed to Ray Comfort by Tacitus in 79:
Are you shitting me? That’s awesome!
Hit me with some more, Comfort. I’m hoping for Muhammad or Ronald Reagan in the next batch!
Am I doing something wrong or have they changed the password?
Yeah the password has changed.
Here is a mirror. http://youtu.be/zeT37VAH59U
Mirror it.
Tacitus @79,
I’d have to concede to Ray Comfort that this is a tough series of questions. On the one hand, we’d be deprived of Beethoven and Ethel Waters. On the other hand, we’d be spared Wesley and Jesus. So, a wash, basically.
That being the case, why don’t we just let the women in question make the choice, OK?
amc is right. Those involved in the decision to abort should be the woman, her partner, and her doctor. And nobody else……especially not knuckle-dragging godmongers or self=serving politicos.
tacitus #79
So am I to take number 3 to mean that, as a half-black man, I should set out to rape as many 13 year old girls as possible IOT create as many great gospel singers as possible? I mean, any time a black man doesn’t rape a 13 year old, he’s denying possible gospel singers their right to life, right?
And am I to take number 4 to mean I should secretly impregnate as many married women as possible IOT create as many Saviors as possible? Fucking hell, that’s some serious shit. Am I depriving us of god damned Saviors by not impregnating married women?! That’s just unforgivable, right?
By Crom, Ray Comfort is a gibbering fucking idiot. Every time I see his “logic” in action I want to rip my fucking brain out and beat myself to death with it.
I suppose one thing to be thankful for is that his followers are incapable of following a logical construct to its necessary conclusions. If they did, given the absurdity and vileness of his premises – premises they gleefully and ignorantly accept -, we’d really have be on guard.
My guess is that he used the same method as Derren Brown in The System, we only see the few people who were swayed (or possibly who went along with it because they were on camera.
Ray Comfort: “Do you think DNA from the 70’s toy, Mr. Microphone could be combined with human DNA to produce me?”
Person on the street: “That’s preposterous!”
thirty seconds later…
Person on the street: “WOW! I guess it IS possible!”
At the risk of boggling some minds out there, I say that it is the woman’s choice to make. She wants to have a child, then she can have a child. She decides she wants to end the pregnancy, then the abortion should be freely available, and affordable.
I do wonder though, what do the anti choice people think of miscarriages and spontaneous abortions? For that matter, what about still births and extreme microcephalics?
News for you, Comfort, it’s none of your damn business. When you can get pregnant then you can pontificate on your pregnancy.
Ray Comfort seems to do what the Moonies have been known to do at airports- He jumps in front of them, putting them in a state of semi-shock.
But…here’s more scenarios-
Ray Comfort: “Do you think Growing Pains was a good family-values sitcom?”
Person on the street: “Yes!”
thirty seconds later…(after viewing footage of Kirk Cameron’s lips severely twisted into a semi-vagina shape…)
Person on the street: “NO! Stop that! Please! Stop it NOW!”
[and another…]
Ray Comfort: “Is the banana irrefutable evidence that evolution is a myth and that Jesus loves you?”
thirty seconds later…(after viewing this…
Person on the street: “EWWWWW! Get away from me, you creep!!!”
Oh dear.
I made it through most about it (I skipped the horrible pictures from the concentration camps. This kind of thing actually makes me angry because he’s mocking the victims of the Holocaust).
Weird argumentation, comparing apples to rocks, firing nonsensical questions at people who don’t have any chance to really think about the question so they fall for his traps, constant use of “baby” and “child” and “murder”.
Oh, and the last part it’s about how we’re all fornicating adulterous sinners.
Yay!
Oh yeah one of the strange/funny things about the video. All the unborn child pictures are from an ectopic pregnancy, a pregnancy which can kill both mother and child, and hence a perfectly rational justification for an abortion.
Something along the line of 20-40% of fertilized eggs miscarry or spontaneously abort naturally.
So:
(Following the intro to Ray’s Hitler argument)
You: Did you know 20-40% of fetuses abort naturally?
Ray: Yes, I did know that. But that is God’s choice.
You: So therefore God = Hitler.
@Guestspeaker
Oh, but didn’t you know that GOD has a plan? Ineffable! Your stupid little monkey brain just can’t grasp the really good reason why god does this.
Beethoven? I suggest that you check because that, as I remember, is not a true account of his family background. I’ll try to check for myself later but I’m at work and the reference book that I is at home.
I sat through ten minutes of that Comfort biz. Someone spoil it for me. He’s not seriously spending ninety minutes doing all that Hitler stuff to make an argument against abortion?!?!
I’m frankly disgusted.
At (English) secondary school the religion teacher gave us the Beethoven question. We said we wouldn’t have missed him, which gobsmacked the poor man quite severely.
(By that time at least one girl in the class had had an abortion and another had left to have a baby.)
I skipped most of the video, but I caught a cool bit where one girl answered the question “Have you ever looked at a guy with lust?” with “No, I’m gay” (too bad we couldn’t see Comfort’s face when she answered). I didn’t see what he said to her later, or did the “lying, adulterous at heart” part address her too?
Oh, and the whole thing is sick.
Adolf Hitler and Charles Darwin were both carbon based life forms. What this has to do with abortion is entirely up to your capable imaginations. :)
You are pretty wealthy Ray – why do you need other peoples money to propagate such an important message. Use your own! – I am sure your god would approve.
I would like to know if Ray becomes wealthier from this particular “worthy” pursuit or if he actually is willing to take a financial hit to get this mega important message out to the masses.
Who am I kidding? The only people who will waste money on this are the Ray drones. Hook Line and Sinker – maybe Ray isn’t the idiot we think he is. He has found a flow of money and knows how to keep it flowing.
Beethoven was the second oldest child and whilst his mother did contract TB, he was twenty at the time.
Having now actually watched the video. All of them look like they are saying – “If I agree you will go away” – Just like Ray lies for jesus – people lie to get assholes to go away!
Some of them might be plants too – I reckon it’s easy to tell the plants from the “I agree now eff off” folks.
Cant wait to see the documentary!
‘Ray Comfort is a fraud’ must be the ultimate ‘dog bites man’ headline.
‘Ray Comfort is a truthful man and useful member of society’ really would grab the attention.
If you want my opinion, I think that the people they talked to were very credulous – they may have been just as easily persuaded into their original pro-choice stance (like by their friends, for example) as they were persuaded by these evangelical types into the anti-choice stance. Not everyone who makes a decision about something does so rationally, and many naïve people are easily swayed by sophistry and emotive language.
The statement, if true, that they were comparing aborting fœtuses to the Holocaust, is absolutely deplorable. Ray Comfort has some serious issues to work out if he thinks that the sufferring of Jews (being gassed, thrown into concentration camps etc.) is the same as the termination of unconscious clumps of cells.
But I guess that’s what you get from someone with a banana for a brain.
Just wondering if Ray paid all those people to throw away common sense for the camera(which is exactly what it looks like) or if he just weeded out all of
intelligent responses
Once again, Ray the liar spews more bullshit.
What amuses me is, Ray-Ray thinks he’s come up with something new, when in fact religious zealots have been trying that one since 1973. Come along now, Ray. can’t you at least think of something new and different instead of the same tired old canards ?
I will not be holding my breath while waiting.
Chris:
I don’t think so (maybe partly). But he used the old tactic of fireing stupid questions and comparisons at them incredibly fast so they could never ever stop to think and ask “what? Wait, that’s not teh same, that’s nonsense”. I would think that many of them did like 5 minutes afterwards. Combined, of course, with emotional language. Whenever people talk about “babies” in that context, my alarm bells go off. Those people don’t want to have an honest discussion. They want to evoke the picture of happy, washed and dressed and probably sleeping infants, not the picture of the actual “blob” that is there.
Just like that snarky, sharp, totally cool answer to a sexist remark you come up with like 10 minutes after you left foaming at the mouth feeling silly.
Why isn’t there a documentary about pro-choice? This needs to be done.
Just get all the science in there, explain what happens when you ban abortion; illegal abortions and a lot of people – actual, real people – dying as a consequence, etc etc.
The problem is that even though Ray Comfort is a complete loon – so is a lot of other people. People like that are a lot more prone to watching a documentary, biased or not, than to actually go and get the fact themselves.
Here’s a serious question… Who would come across as the stupidest during a debate. Hovind, Ham, or Comfort?
Aquaria says in #86:
Don’t say that, because it simply is not true. Most anti-abortion Christians genuinely believe that abortion is murder of a baby. I don’t deny that there is a lot of misogyny in Christianity, and I’ve seen a fair amount of racism as well, but you should not apply false motives to your opponents. It merely serves to make you look bad.
If you want a biblical quote on abortion, try Exodus 21:22-25
The important thing to see here is that the fetus is not treated as if it were a person, but damages are assessed as if it were property.
The poor thing I see about this – not watching the documentary it’s bullshit – is that poor woman he asks “is there a legitimate reason to have an abortion” – YES! Yes there is!
By asking that question, Ray Comfort is saying he’d be more interested in the life of a child than the life of a woman. If the baby is going to KILL the mother, then Ray Comfort, by that question, is advocating the woman’s death. He’s also advocating that children bear the results of an incestuous rape, or rape victims the results of physical and sexual abuse.
Ray Comfort and people like him are monsters who care jack shit about women. It’s all put square on the woman’s shoulders every time. “She should’ve known better.” “She must know there are consequences to sex.” “It’s her fault.” The man is given no responsibility in all of these, it’s the woman who has to bear the pain, discomfort, cost, and possibility that she’ll die in the end.
Fuck Ray Comfort.
niftyatheist and Mara
Mara, you are now at least peripherally acquainted with another person who had a run-in with Randall Terry at the DC PP. One of our regular antis (currently facing FACE charges (woohoo)) bounced off my back. Randall Terry lost his shit at me, including telling me to eat fewer Twinkies.
I regularly do clinic defense work in DC. there is a local network of people who show up at the clinics and walk the women through the protesters. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to not engage, but it’s important. And yes, we wear bright orange oversized tank tops that say “Pro-Choice Clinic Escort”.
mythusmage,
According to one of our loudest anti-choice protesters (another clinic escort here), stillbirths, miscarriages, etc. are God’s Will. As is the pregnancy. Basically, it is not the woman’s right to determine what happens to her, it is entirely up to God and she’d better realize that he knows what’s best for her and submit.
That I told her I was an atheist only convinced her that I’m satan’s minion who wants to see babies dead as I escort the women in. (She’s equally convinced that I get paid by the clinic and use that money to make car payments. She’s got quite the thing about cars.)
Does she also protest at “normal” gyn wards where doctors try to make sure that miscarriages and stillbirths and premature births don’t happen?
I mean, they’re interfering with god’s will just the same.
“But what if your parents had an abortion?”
Answer: “Then you would have one fewer pro-choice voter to oppose. Now, would you consider that good or bad?”
(And watch the squirming commence.)
And as for this:
The answer is: Perhaps you’re confused – we’re not talking about recommending abortion, we’re only talking about criminalizing abortion. Assuming the women in your examples desired abortions, which situations would be improved by locking them up, in your opinion?
@Anri:
Exactly. Pro-women-dying people (I refuse to call them pro-life, they are anything but) paint pro-choice as wanting abortions all the time in all opportunities, but pro-choice is merely giving a choice to the woman. If the four women in those scenarios (regardless of who they were) desired an abortion, then they should have the opportunity to have one.
@Muse: Awesome :)
I keep thinking I should go through the training, but the problem is that I’m doubtful that I’m capable of not engaging :( I know myself too well and I’ll lose my temper the first time they say something stupid. Which, obviously, is pretty much any time they open their mouths.
But I live in MoCo, so I feel like I should get trained so I can go do escorts at the new Gaithersburg clinic. I’m going to have to think about this.
@Katherine Lorraine: Thank you! I think so too :D
Not sure if it was Ray, but I saw a different video where some fundies went around asking people on the street about evolution. They would first say that they believed in evolution, then the fundies would stump them by asking how a fish could have just walked up on land one day, or other specifics about how evolution happened.
I’m sure this video will contain a similar question. Proving only that there are a lot of people that don’t think much about these questions at all. An argument can be logically sound and still be wrong. If you don’t know enough to know if its premise is false, you are obliged to accept it as possible until you can examine that premise.
Most people don’t think about premises and logic either, so a logically sound argument can dazzle them.
@Mara,
While Carhart is doing great work, he’s not currently working with escorts. We’re in touch with him, but he doesn’t need us right at the moment. However, there are several other clinics in your area that could really use a hand – so don’t let that stop you.
“Hitlers’ mother is pregnant. Would you recommend she have an abortion?”
@Giliell:
Going to hospitals would take “Eeyore’s” time away from Saving The Innocent Babies from Satan. As far as I can tell, she splits her time between protesting/praying at the local clinic and some form of support for the local crisis pregnancy center that she tries to get patients to go to instead.
@Mara,
Muse and I are part of the same escort group, and they always need people; we cover a large area. If you don’t think you can disengage, do what I did for a while – bring sticky foods to shove into your mouth when you open it to shout back.
My question is, how many people aren’t showed? You know… how many people saw right through the bullshit?
Bullshit on the hurt-your-cause fallacy.
Bullshit on the rest as well. They care about “babies” to the detriment of WOMEN – ergo, it’s impossible to be a forced birther and not be a misogynist, intentionally or not.
When asked they always say “if you didn’t want a baby, you shouldn’t have had sex!”
So fail on the claims that this isn’t motivated by slut-shaming misogyny.
The ultimate source of forced birtherism is misogyny. That they dress it up in “i just love the baybehs!” is just proof that they are a) delusional and/or b) craven liars.
The racism is obvious – its why they put up billboards in “ethnic” neighborhoods claiming a “holocaust” of non-white babies. They want to seem not racist by amping up the racism and misogyny directed at WOC.
I bet it involves a can of Coke and a banana.
Nate Havens(161)- Good point. I also noticed that the first couple in the trailer seemed to lean towards pro life, but weren’t sure they had accounted for every conceivable situation. These would probably be relatively easy people to convince.
Uhh, wasn’t hitler totally anti-abortion (for righteous white women, anyway)?
also
People who really believe murder is occuring do not act the way that prolifers typically do. Most people who believe that there is actual preventable murder do something to prevent it and don’t treat one murder victim different from another. They do not advocate a police force to investigate menstrual blood for miscarriage, or to investigate mothers who have miscarried. When actual persons die mysteriously it warrants investigation, and if a fetus is an actual person and dies and does not warrant an investigation, then there isn’t much excuse for their lack of advocacy on that issue. I know they do sentimental crap like buy graveyards for fetuses and shit, but by those measures pets are people too.
Their tactics don’t make a lot of sense to me, either. I don’t know why, if they think there is a mass slaughter of innocent babies, they heckle and hold signs outside the slaughter house. It is quite possibly the least effective way to prevent abortions, but it is the most popular way for pro lifers to be “activists”. If a bunch of real life, would be murderers were parading around you would you try to shame them into stopping? If someone was clearly going to drown a baby at a park would anyone really talk to them the way that abortion protestors do, or would they simple tackle them and save the baby? I know I would fucking tackle someone trying to drown a baby, and I am sure most people would. The entire thing makes no sense in the context of believing that an actual baby is about to be murdered. It makes a shitload of sense in a world where women are supposed to be punished for having sex in unapproved circumstances, and should also be punished for being something besides baby making/raising equipment. They don’t want the women to escape “justice”.
Maybe these people believe it is also wrong to break the law? Fine. They don’t do anything that reduces the number of abortions, even though it is an easy easy solution to the problem to provide birth control to everyone. If they really believe it is murder but believe that sexual “impurity” is a crime that is on par with murder, which is the only real reason that birth control could be considered a bad option for reducing murders, then they don’t fully grasp the moral problems involved with murder and are talking out of their asses when they use the word “murder” to make their point. They are typically pro-war and pro death penalty. Their entire version of morality is “because this book says so”, so it is difficult to say if their really thinking it is murder or not is all that relevant when the comprehension of the problem is so lacking. Even if they genuinely believe it they don’t know what the fuck it really means.
@ Carbon Based.
Your authority to speak for “most” of the forced birth movement comes from where exactly? If there is some reason we should consider you to have privileged access to the motivations and mindsets of the fundies, please disclose it.
And you also shouldn’t openly admit that a lot of forced birthers display the psychological characteristics being criticized at the same time you are denying that those bigotries motivate their stance on abortion. If someone is racist and sexist why shouldn’t we expect that to motivate their politics? Its not like these same branches of christianity weren’t launching diatribes against interracial marriage 60 years ago (or that they aren’t still secretly opposed).
Or are you going to plead with us that they have pure motives for that, too?
You shouldn’t spew empty apologetics for forced birthers on this site. It merely serves to make you look like a tone troll.
Why the hell would I want that?
(since you provided it anyway)
There is a difference between an abortion and battering a pregnant woman into still birth (assuming that is what “premature” means). I would think that would be self evident. Here is a hint: one of them is a medical procedure.
Maybe the fact that modern medicine didn’t exist in 1000+ BCE Jerusalem should give you an hint about the fitness of its inhabitants to provide ethical commentary about modern medicine.
The important thing is to see that it is a passage from a 2000+ year old book of fairy tales, and that even then it is only loosely related to what is being talked about.
You might also notice the connotations about the woman’s status from the statement that it is the woman’s husband who must demand compensation. Is that relevant in your analysis of the mindset of the people who would take that passage seriously?
You know that the gray thing in your head is not just for storing pointy objects, right?
165 Skeptifem…everything. Well said.
skeptifem:
This is the number one evidence demonstrating anti-abortion folks are not about saving a life, but about controlling the lives of others.
What is the number-fucking-one preventer of abortions? Directly, birth control. Indirectly, sex education. Finally, financial independence.
If anti-abortionists were truly for reducing the number of abortions, they’d work their fucking asses off to ensure universal sex education and the ready availability and encouraged use of birth control.
Instead, they campaign against these very things.
How is this in any way rational?
WEll, since we’re talking about religious forced birthers, rationality doesn’t apply.
So, how about practicality?
How is it practical to actively oppose any and everything that does actually reduce the number of abortions, IF your goal is to actually “save babies”?
How can anyone honestly claim that punishing the sluts isn’t the real motivation here when their response to everything is “don’t have sex if you don’t want to get pregnant”?
Bullshit.
Has anyone seen “Lake of Fire”? EXCELLENT documentary on this topic. Very even-handed, but incredibly impactful. Chomsky has some great interview moments.
Most anti-abortion Christians genuinely believe that abortion is murder of a baby.
No, they actually don’t. I know, they’ll say they do, but they’re lying to you, and likely to themselves as well. Most of them have no problem with infanticide being punished to the full extent of the law, up to and including capital punishment. But very few of the rank and file have even given any thought to what they believe the punishment for abortion should be were it criminalized. Ask a forced birther sometime if they think their daughter should be put to death if it so happened that she were found to have gotten an abortion in secret. Furthermore, the organization that has prevented more abortions than any other in the history of the world is Planned Parenthood. If they had such a strong interest in preventing “baby-murder”, they would be its biggest supporters. But they don’t. Their interest is in imposing forced birth as a punishment on women whose sexuality they disapprove of. The public shaming that goes on outside abortion clinics is evidence enough of this.
The anti-abortion movement is committed to controlling female sexuality and bodily autonomy. The rhetoric about “murder” and saving the poor helpless babies is their way of concealing that fact. From themselves in many cases.
“Ah,” will say the smug forced-birther, “but these are births that were never allowed to happen. You are thwarting God’s future-perfect effect-before-cause logical pretzel plan.”
To which you can answer: “Ok. Say your mother had an abortion, then got pregnant with you, a month later. Which one of you should have been born, according to this amazing plan?”
Here’s an incident I recently witnessed as a clinic escort.
A girl and her mother are walking from their car to the clinic entrance. The protesters shout “Don’t go into that house of death! You’ll burn in hell for what you’re about to do! Let us adopt your baby!” etc. The mother loses her shit and screams back “My 13 year old daughter was raped. SHE IS MY BABY!” One of the protesters shouts back “You should have been a better mother!” She starts crying hysterically, screaming “Leave us alone!” over and over. The protesters laugh at her. One of them shouts “Whore!” as the clinic door closes behind them and I wonder if that was directed at the mother, or the 13 year old rape victim.
There are many other incidents nearly as appalling, but this tops the list for now. I’ve broken the non-engagement policy to ask a few of them why they come to the clinic and it’s always “To save babies”. Yet witnessing their 0% baby saving success rate over the past two plus years and the glee they take when their naked cruelty gets a reaction, I can’t believe they want to save the babies for any humane purpose.
Interesting. I commented on YT video about how the argument consists of falsely comparing the legal recognition of a woman’s bodily autonomy to the Holocaust last night, and my comment was removed. After doing a quick search for keywords on the comment list (eg. Hitler, Godwin, Holocaust) I noticed that all other comments that referred to Ray’s comparison have also been removed (I know that they were there before – I saw them last night). Despite that, a lot of snarky comments from atheists remain.
I guess Way of the Master just doesn’t want spoilers in their comment section.
I’m still stuck at “If you said yes to the fourth case, you would have declared the murder of Jesus Christ!”
I mean, the implications here are staggering. Could their god’s plan be thwarted so easily?
“Sorry humanity. I had some overly complex Rube Goldberg plan for your salvation, and unsurprisingly, it got all fucked up. What’s that? Plan B? No, I never do that. Look at Eden: I told Adam and Eve not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, but they would have had to understand good and evil and know right from wrong in order to even obey my directive, and the only way they could have done that is to have eaten from the tree of knowledg—look, I’m not very fucking bright, okay? I stole the fucking tree from Vishnu for mysake! I’m an idiot, a moron, a dolt! I asked the Jews to daub blood on their doorways instead of using my omniscience to determine who was a -hotep and who was a -stein. Never even fucking occurred to me. Mendel had a better understanding of genetics than I, for crying out loud. Apparently it doesn’t involve adorning the mating pen with carved sticks, but I still don’t get why. I mean, frogs are green because they live in water, right? Wait—is water green? Fuck, I should know this one. Anyways, the short answer is, I had a plan: it involved a boy named Jesus getting killed in a weird way after tooling around the mid-East for a few decades and then saying some pretty commie shit that none of his most vocal followers would listen to anyway, but I never counted on an unmarried virgin in a superstitious part of the world in the year 5 BC—sorry, no BC, no AD; I mean 11 Acatl—getting all freaked out by finding herself magically pregnant, so you’re all fucked and going to hell. What’s that? Yes, I made hell. Why, because I love you. Huh? How is that love? Look, if Vishnu had a Tree of Knowledge of What Words Mean, I would have fucking stolen that too, but he didn’t, and so I didn’t, and so between the three of me—don’t even fucking ask—we’re pretty lucky that we got through this interview at all.
No more questions.”
Although Ray Comfort is a boob, and a scary boob, I’d like to get his contact list of people who’ll donate money to anyone. I could use some extra cash.
But seriously on the topic of abortion, as a man, I don’t see why I should have a valued opinion on the subject. I may have some personal feelings one way or the other, but unlike anything else I can think of, there is no male equivalent of pregnancy. There is no possible way I can understand what it is to be pregnant and as such, I not only do not have a frame of reference, I can never have a frame of reference.
Which brings me to a question. Why is it that all the cars I see with pro-life stickers are driven by men?
Which happens a lot BTW. And not in secret.
Fundie xians have higher abortion rates than the general population.
It’s no big deal to them though. Hypocrisy is one of their three main sacraments.
Idiotic argument or not–I don’t get how this is supposed to net him lots of “Benjamins”. It looks like you’ll be able to watch it for free online or order a DVD for a dollar. Again, not saying anything about its actual value/worth. . . just saying, I don’t see how this is a big money-making scheme (which seemed to be the main point of the post.)
Ray “Average Wage” Comfort gets his $120,000+Benefits Salary no matter what, this isn’t directly lining his (and his entire family’s) pockets.
This reminds me of the Penn & Teller show on Showtime – “Bullshit”. They had an episode on “Environmentalism”, where they did a hatchet job on environmentalists in general. One of the tricks they used was a “survey” about “dihydrogen Oxide” and how “bad” it was. Of course, they were talking about water; they made a big deal about how many people didn’t know what water was. and agreed that it should be banned.
The point that I picked up later was that they questioned about 100 people, eliminated 85 who answered correctly, and picked out the most stupid answers to show on TV.
I wonder how many people they surveyed for Comfort’s little screed?
Actually, there is at least an analogous frame of reference–of course, it perfectly underlines the hideous nature of the pro-life position. To-wit:
Imagine a law passed that required all men “of breeding age” to get their genetic code registered. This registry would be consulted (randomly) whenever there was need for a bone marrow or kidney donation, or even one of those “piece of the liver” donations. The donor would not be compensated for his time; in fact, he would only be eligible for the same compensation for his portion of the medical bill for his half of the surgery as is provided to women who give birth. Finally, as a kicker, all men must donate blood every six months, again without exception or compensation. Failure to comply will result in the exact same penalties that would accrue in an abortion case.
The parallels are pretty obvious. (It could be made a bit more precise, I’m sure–select a collection of donor operations that run a similar overall risk to health as a pregnancy, for one.)
After realizing this parallel, I even dropped the ‘blob of cells’ line. It doesn’t MATTER if the ‘blob of cells’ qualifies as a human being or not–it still is living at the expense of the mother’s health, and if we weren’t such a patriarchal society, we would’ve long ago realized the inherent unfairness of that.
Reading all the negative comments I begin to think this could be a huge success.
Usually is the case when things get kicked against like what I read here.
I’ll make sure I get a dvd and watch it for myself.
Poor Galileo was in a situation similar.
How do you measure success? The standard measure of success for Ray with these give-aways is simply ‘did we give these away?’ If yes, it was a success. No joke.
@freemage, I understand the analogy, but both men and women could be subject to forced organ donations so both men and women would have an equally valued opinion. Pregnancy is specific. I as a man can never become pregnant and that was my point. It is gender specific. Even things like castration are non gender specific.
PZ,
If you had actually paid attention to what was said and looked at the info on the website, the video you saw was a trailer and a promo shot, not the actual movie. The actual movie will be made available to all FREE on September 26th to be watched on the website. So, you can stop libeling Ray Comfort now. Thank you.
well done not following the conversation Veritas.
peter vandenberg,
Given Ray’s track record of being such an ass-hole, I would not pay to read anything nor for any of his videos. The guy is a snake-oil salesman of the most vile kind. He is incredibly stupid, and his arguments follow suit. But he knows his audience is stupider, and thus manages to get them to applaud and pay-per-view. He knows he can get away with being such an ignorant imbecile because he has experienced it. He knows his clientele and he exploits it with gusto.
Only someone stupider than him would applaud to this criticism as if it meant that Ray is something close to Galileo. Enjoy eating his shit and licking his ass. You earned it with your stupidity, hands down.
Who is the Australian asking the questions? I’m ashamed.
I think I can answer Comfort’s big scary question:
“It’s OK to kill a baby in the womb when…?”
…it’s a straw man.
Watched it, and came away convinced that what America needs far more than anything is rigorous practice in critical thinking. Ray Comfort is little more than a fairly good salesman; I can only imagine how well he’d push used cars.
“SPOILER ALERT! People who have seen the movie report that the argument goes like this: Hitler murdered Jews. Abortion kills babies. Therefore, abortion is just like the Holocaust.”
No one has seen the movie, so whoever “spoiled” this is a liar. I suspect that would be PZ himself.
When we die, we are going to stand before God and give an account for our lives. Because God is good, He is going to judge each of us according to the perfect, moral standard of His Law. If we’ve ever lied, stolen, taken His name in vain, He will find us guilty of breaking His Law. And because God is good, He must punish our sin; and the punishment God has ascribed for sin is eternity in Hell.
But God is also merciful, loving, and kind in that He provided one way to escape that punishment; and that was through the gift of His Son Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ: fully-God and fully-Man, without sin. He died a horrible, bloody death on the cross that He did not deserve in order to take upon Himself the punishment we rightly deserve for our sins against God. And then three days later He forever defeated sin and death when He rose from the grave.
What God requires of you and me is that we repent–that we turn from our sin, and by faith and by faith alone, receive Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. Jesus said, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.’
So, please, repent and believe the gospel while God has given you time.
Love in Christ
Dean
Er except for all of us who have watched it Ricardo? It’s freely online. If you had even bothered to scan the comments.
http://www.needGod.com
When we die, we are going to stand before God and give an account for our lives. Because God is good, He is going to judge each of us according to the perfect, moral standard of His Law. If we’ve ever lied, stolen, taken His name in vain, He will find us guilty of breaking His Law. And because God is good, He must punish our sin; and the punishment God has ascribed for sin is eternity in Hell.
But God is also merciful, loving, and kind in that He provided one way to escape that punishment; and that was through the gift of His Son Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ: fully-God and fully-Man, without sin. He died a horrible, bloody death on the cross that He did not deserve in order to take upon Himself the punishment we rightly deserve for our sins against God. And then three days later He forever defeated sin and death when He rose from the grave. What God requires of you and me is that we repent–that we turn from our sin, and by faith and by faith alone, receive Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. Jesus said, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.’
So, please, repent and believe the gospel while God has given you time.
Dear dean,
Modern technology gives you an opportunity to address thousands upon thousands of atheists at once in an attempt to save their souls… And that boring, self-contradictory little song-and-dance is all you can come up with? I hope your god doesn’t plan on punishing people who, let’s say, didn’t quite do their best to bring others to him, because if he does, you’re toast.
Dear Forbidden Snowflake,
I only write because I love you and all of your athiest friends. I will be praying for you and for all to Repent and put their trust in Christ’s work on the Cross.
Dean
Are people really still impressed by that moldy old tripe?
Dear Dean, I don’t know about you, but I feel to just shake the dust off of my feet and don’t bother throwing pearls before swine. This conversation is not worth having with unappreciative swine that are ready to trample on any sound reasoning you offer. Their doom is sealed.God have mercy.
Dear Peter, You never know who’s reading. Sometimes those that protest the loudest are the closest to knowing that they need God.
Dean
p.s http://www.needGod.com
I’m not accusing you of having bad intentions, dean. But I do accuse you of saying things that don’t make any sense* and expecting people here to be impressed. I also think that you believe in these things because they feel good to you emotionally, and never use your brain to ask yourself whether they are true or even could be true, – and that an approach like that to life shouldn’t be promoted, because it gets people in trouble.
*here’s why:
If god is morally perfect, why couldn’t he make us morally perfect as well? And whose fault is it if he didn’t?
Either god *must* punish sin, or he can make a loophole for some people to have their sins paid for by someone else (namely, Jesus). You can’t have both.
Or, if he just needs someone to be punished, no matter who, then that’s just ridiculous.
Eternal punishment for a limited period of sinning is immoral and unjust. It serves no goal but petty revenge and sadism.
Being fully god and fully man doesn’t make sense, it’s a contradiction in terms. If he could resurrect the dead, he wasn’t fully man, if he could die, he wasn’t fully god.
^This is the farthest thing from justice that I can possibly imagine. In fact, it’s probably close to being the definition of ‘injustice’. What moral god OR person could possibly think it is a good idea?
And yet, sin and death are still around. Some defeat.
If we “turn from our sin”, then it isn’t “by faith and by faith alone”, is it now?
I can’t believe something that is so obviously not true. Also, I don’t think you’ve spent so much as an hour truly thinking about your beliefs.
Dean, when you say that everybody needs God, you’re projecting because you lack empathy to understand the people who don’t. I know, I was a Christian too. And I did need it so badly that I did not want to let go my faith and it was very hard to do it. But I *had* to do it, although I did not want, in order to be honest with myself because evidences were mounting up against my faith.
But I learned to adapt and live without faith and it’s not only possible but actually better because you loose all prejudices, misconceptions and beliefs that comes with your faith and hinder your understanding of the world. So it’s perfectly possible to live a fulfilling and happy life without faith and not everybody needs God. But I understand that, as a believer that never experienced it, you do not comprehend that. But at least you should accept it when those who do not need it tell you so and not project yourself on them.
Dean no doubt has a mirror attached to his computer screen, so he can sneak peeks at how loving and righteous he is as he suffers so horribly among the unbelievers. Or maybe he’s dispensed with the mirror, having perfected the look of holiness and meekness his handsome, rugged, yet kind visage to the degree he always carries it inside his.
Why, it’s as if Jesus himself was radiating from within Dean’s very body!
***
Dean, you aren’t merely absurd, and utterly, blindly dishonest (that’s assumed by anyone dim enough to defend a human turd like Comfort), you are laughingly, incredibly vain! You truly DESERVE to be a ‘Mer’kin Xian, which is a fate I wouldn’t wish on a three-legged weasel.
May you live even one day of your adult life as a plain, honest, doubt-filled, happy human being. But till that day comes, fuck off.
Sometimes, when reading Pharyngula, I get the impression that it is required that one must assume that all religionists, especially fundamentalists, are working from the basest motives. Aquaria said that either racism or sexism motivates “100%” of all Christians who oppose abortion. For suggesting that this is not the case, I am attacked by Hurin, Nattering Nabob of Negativism.
I know Christians who are opposed to abortion, and I know that racism and sexism does not motivate these people. How do I know this? I have spoken to them about it. I realize that speaking to them as if they are rational people is called “accomodationism” on Pharyngula, and is strongly disapproved of. I even accept that they tell me their actual motives, which is probably worse.
I quoted that bit from Exodus because it is the only thing in the Bible which directly relates to the status of a fetus. According to that passage, a fetus is not a human being. This is ammunition you can use when Christians tell you that according to the Bible, a fetus is a human being. One would think that giving you evidence to support your arguments would not be scorned. Apparently not.
But have you met any Scotsmen?
nope
Most idiotic comment of thread.
Seriously
Dean – grow the fuck up. And get your nose out of my crotch.
Because you really, really want to believe it. That’s it. We’ve explained how it doesn’t matter what they say, IN PRACTICE all their arguments equal misogyny and racism. It was specifically said “dig deeper”. Do you honestly think these dishonest bigots would be upfront in admiting why they’re really forced birthers?
Get a clue.
Another example that shows that prayer just doesn’t work.
Dean, come up with something at least original and entertaining. You’re not even offensive enough to be interesting
You want us to put our trust on a cross?
Dean:
Apparently no one ever told him that real love doesn’t come pre-packaged with so much obvious condescension.
When we hoggle, we are going to stand before Eddie and give an account for our Tuesday nights. Because Eddie is fabulous, He is going to pay each of us according to the arbitrary, nonsensical standard of His menu. If we’ve ever LOLed, picked our teeth in public, taken His sister in a van, He will find us guilty of breaking His bay window. And because Eddie is usually drunk, He must lick our armpit; and the prize Eddie has ascribed for fun is a week in fabulous Laaaaaaaas Veeeegaaass!!!!!
fify(mls)
Carbon Based
No, speaking to them as if they were rational is generally condoned. Accommodationism is when you specifically tell them that their irrational beliefs are more defensible than you believe them to be, usually in order to get them on board with a cause. The NCSE has been criticized for accomodationism because they devote resources to arguing that evolution is compatible with certain monotheistic doctrines. BTW, straw man arguments are also generally frowned upon.
You can assume that the pure motives you are given by the forced birthers are their actual motives, if it makes you feel better. I’m only pointing out that they aren’t going to put “stupid slut should be forced to care for it!” on a bumper sticker, even if that is what many of them happen to be thinking. And if that is what they are thinking, they may also not want to admit it to themselves. You realize that plenty of iniquity has worn pious rhetoric, right?
If you want posts that make similar points from a different angle read Ange’s anecdote of repulsive forced birther behavior (173) or skeptifem (165) and CJO (171) who have explained why the actions of forced birth groups are not consistent with their rhetoric.
As an aeddieist, I don’t believe in Las Vegas, and I don’t lie awake at night worrying I’ll end up in Atlantic City.
Which God?
Congratulaions dean, you’ve just triggered Mr. Fire’s Faith Cliffhanger Problem:
————————–
An old man and a young child are hanging off a steep cliff. Their grip is weakening, the rock they’re holding onto is giving way. If nothing is done soon, they will fall to their deaths.
The old man is a lifetime non-believer. He has, by his standards, lived a full and happy life. However, let’s just also add that he has some late-stage terminal condition, i.e., if you rescue him, he’ll only have a few days left anyway. But: it may be enough time to bring him back to the One True Cross.
The child is a believer, i.e., ‘saved’, and has done everything that, by your standards, will guarantee their place in heaven, were they to die right now. On the other hand, the child has their whole life ahead of them.
You know all this, and you only have time to rescue one of them.
————————–
dean: which one should you rescue?
Does the old man have weapons?
@ Hurin
Dean has a really detailed description on his website of the hell you and I are destined to go to. He has at least got that much carefully worked out. I doubt he knows which god he believes in though. I guess any god that wants to see us in extreme pain forever. There are so many of those I doubt he knows which.
…………………
ProTip: To get teh goddists to go away from a thread or blog forever, simply deny the holy ghost. Once you do that they can never save your soul and their time trying is wasted.
Dear God;
You had me at “endless torment”.
@ Theophontes
You ever wonder how they figure this shit out?
Apple = ungood
Cracker + Grape Juice = plusgood
Deny specific aspect of God = DOUBLEPLUSUNGOOD WITH NO POSSIBILITY OF SALVATION!!!
And if God gets really angry he has to have a virgin pop out a human version of him so that he can have it murdered. Go figure. I never would have guessed.
And here’s a Burning Building Problem, to illustrate why the ‘faith and faith alone’ philosophy is selfish and morally bankrupt:
——————————-
A man and his son are trapped in a burning building. The situation is such that the man can either rescue himself or his son.
Neither is a believer; neither has received Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior ‘by faith and faith alone’. However, waiting outside the building is dean, whose argument for salvation is so strong that whoever survives will declare their faith in Jesus then and there, and be ‘saved’.
The man could commit a selfless act, and rescue his son. But then he would die, unsaved, and go to hell. Alternatively, the man could commit a truly selfish act, save himself, and let his son both die and go to hell.
——————————-
dean: what do you think the man should do?
And follow-up: You would surely agree that a situation like this has likely occurred in real life, many times (minus the part where you are waiting outside, perhaps.) What do you think of God for allowing this type of thing to occur?
On the off-chance that dean hasn’t lost concentration and slunk away:
Why? God, presumably, should already know everything, right?
Is it good to punish greater and lesser crimes equally?
Is theft, or lying, or cursing a friend an equal crime to murder or rape?
Does god punish these crimes identically?
God is kind – but not kind enough to forgive all sin, only sin in those that grovel.
God is just – but not just enough to apply his law to all, only those that do not grovel.
God is wise – but not wise enough to fail to insist on perfection from those he created as imperfect.
God is good – but not good enough to stay his hand in slaughtering millions, saving only those that grovel.
If you encountered a ruler that behaved in such a way, would you call him kind, just, wise or good?
If no reward or punishment lay beyond death, would you love your god? If so, why?
God can give me faith at any time it pleases him. He has not done so, therefore it does not please him to do so – unless you think I can somehow oppose the will of god.
So, which is it?
Is god not trying? Or am I mighty enough to thwart him?
“Christ’s work on the cross.”
Sponsored by Black & Decker.
If Norm Abrams had been on that job the cross would’ve been a lot truer.
Aw, godbot was awake when I was asleep :(
You know, let’s go ahead and grant for a moment that there’s a category of antichoice activists who are sincerely and purely motivated by concern for the babiez.
So what?
That wouldn’t change for a minute that the motive of the anti-choice movement itself (as opposed to these individual anti-choice activists) is misogyny/racism/classism. Because that much is undeniable. Maybe the movement does sucker in a few sheep who are stupid and gullible enough to believe it’s about saving babies’ lives. That doesn’t make it true. And it doesn’t remove the necessity of pointing out that the antichoice movement is dishonest, slimy and rooted in woman-hatred.
So what is the whining about those few stupid, gullible sheep supposed to accomplish? If they’re dumb enough to believe obvious lies then they’re nothing but pawns and if their lying masters were obstructed or deposed they’d wander away to stare at something shiny or walk into glass doors or something.
I noticed on a lot of these posts many people refer to pro-life people as antichoice. What choices are offered in an abortion clinic other than which way you would like your child murdered?
What child? Where is it?
Alex,
What exactly do you think choice is when no choice is offered? No one is forced to have an abortion, it’s an option presented to those with pregnancies, not a requirement.
Alex the driveby troll
1. It is not a child.
2. You swear like people who want abortion to be legal are out there forcing women to abort.
3. It is a choice because it allows women control what happens to their body. Yes, having children is also pro-choice.
4. “Pro-lifers” are not about life. By forcing women to have children they condemn many to have worse life than they can have. In fact, the “pro-life” crowd will result in more women ending up dead.
5. Hmm, a guy complaining about abortion. . .
Care for espouse any more stupid tricks?
I mean to write “care to espouse any more stupid tricks”.
peter vandenberg,
Please do get the hell out of here (shake that dust off). Most importantly if you think that Ray’s bullshit is “pearls.” As I said, eat them and enjoy them. You deserve them. If you wanted to “save” someone, at the very least you would not come with the incommensurable stupidity of calling crap “pearls,” and of comparing an imbecilic snake-oil salesman with Galileo. If you wanted to be heard you would reason first. But it seems like you rather portray Christians as complete imbeciles. Now “dust off” ass-hole.
dean,
If you are going to link to living waters, save it. only imbeciles would fall for such shit. only imbeciles would link to that shit thinking they are doing good.
Oh Alex. Pro-lifers are anti-choice, at least as far as recognizing abortion as a valid option. We can agree on that point, can’t we? I see you’re not taking issue with being called a forced-birther.
But as a matter of fact the clinic where I volunteer does have a patient advocate on staff who offers options counseling to patients who aren’t completely sure abortion is what they want. If the woman is interested in carrying the pregnancy to term, prenatal and postnatal resources are provided. Should she be interested in the adoption option, an adoption counselor is brought in.
Pro-choice means just that. It is not complicated.
Hi All,
Richard Dawkins quote:
The fact that life evolved out of nearly nothing, some 10 billion years after the universe evolved out of literally nothing, is a fact so staggering that I would be mad to attempt words to do it justice. “From tail to tale on the path of pilgrims in life”, The Scotsman (April 9, 2005)
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins
In light of the above quote I find it funny that my intellect is questioned when I share my faith in God with you. Science is supposed to be 100% testable and repeatable, yet no one has ever created something from nothing. Creating something from nothing is unscientific and speaks to your “faith” in the Big Bang.
It would be unkind for me not to share my faith with you given the reality of Hell. God gave us a conscience so that we would know right from wrong. That is why, when we lie, steal, lust, etc., we can come to the realization that we have offended an infinitely Holy God. He is just, so sin must be punished. “But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars–their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur” (Revelation 21:8)
God is merciful and loving. He gave us his son Jesus, fully God and fully man to live a perfect life, die on the cross as a substitute for our sins and rose on the third day, defeating death.
We only have to repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
10 out of 10 people die. Please put your trust in Christ for tomorrow you may be called from this earth and must stand in judgement before a holy and just God.
In Christ,
Dean
Congratulations on showing you can’t follow a discsussion in any meaninful way and when desperate cling to stupid comfortisms like “something from nothing”.
Thank you for confirming that you know nothing of the sciences that you know are wrong.
I bet you don’t know that The Big Bang Theory comes from a Christian?
Dean,
You still have not answered our questions. Which god are you babbling about?
And that jeebus figure. Is there any single feature about it that has not been adequately fleshed out by other historical man-gods? Dionysus (“Son 0f God”) or Attis or Adonis, … I mean these guys also lived on earth as god incarnate and had the same agenda as your jeebus. They where (are!) just as real as yours. Are you just going to ignore this simple fact?
Stop blathering and educate us. Answer our questions for a change.
In Beelzebub,
Theo
Thread’s probably over, but I’m just gonna say what I always say when abortion and Planned Parenthood are brought up by anti-choice fuckjobs.
Planned Parenthood is the reason my daughter was born healthy. I had no health insurance, but because Planned Parenthood gave me a pregnancy test (I already knew I was preggers, they just had to make it official), I qualified for state prenatal care and birth care.
And what did the PP staff do when the pregnancy test came back positive, for the pregnancy I had told them I wanted and planned to carry to term? They congratulated me and sent me on my way with big smiles and their best wishes.
dean, he of little reading comprehension:
Something coming out of apparent nothingness is not only allowed by current scientific theories about the structure of the universe, it is mandated by them. It will be difficult, but please try to learn some science beyong the 5th grade level if you’re going to be critical of it.
Also, we’ve got the echoes of the Big Bang on tape. Anyone tuning to the same frequency on a radio telescope can pick it up. 100% testable and repeatable. When people talk to you god, they always seem to come back with different answers to the same questions… odd, isn’t it?
Tell me, is it that god doeasn’t want to eliminate hell, or that he is powerless to do so?
Was this required?
Could god have done this any other way?
If so, then the whole thing was just grandstanding.
If not, then what other limits does god’s power have?
God only saves those that grovel?
The same can be said for any grade-school bully.
These are very simply questions/issues, surely.
You’ve ignored me once.
Is it that you are unwilling to answer them (and thus miss a chance to save a soul from hell)?
Or it is that you are incapable of doing so?
kristinc, thanks for telling your story.
Of course the staffers at PP smiled and congratulated you. That’s the essence of pro-choice. You, the woman, want to carry to term, you’re allowed to and encouraged in doing so, your choice, hooray ! You, the woman, don’t want to carry to term, you aren’t jailed and forced to anyway, hooray ! Either way, Planned Parenthood stands with you on your choice.
How those anti-choice, anti-woman, anti-life assholes refuse to see the simple good in PP, I’ll never understand.
P.S. Glad your daughter was born healthy. Best wishes to you both and the rest of your family.
Also, we’ve got the echoes of the Big Bang on tape. Anyone tuning to the same frequency on a radio telescope can pick it up.
In fact, the static on the screen of a CRT TV tuned to a dead channel is in part the cosmic background radiation. You can watch the big bang on TV!
Dean,
I sense that you are sincere in your remarks and that you sense bafflement about how logical people can entertain these various theories about “the beginning.” I can also see that you’re stuck on Ray Comfort’s ignorant, derogatory label “something from nothing.” No one really knows what happened at that moment, but science at those scales and energies is simply not subject to Ray Comforts everyday common sense. So his naive dismissal of theories that don’t fit with his every day common sense are … well, ignorant. There are several logical theories, backed up by scientific and mathematical reasoning that don’t require the magic of inventing a supernatural being.
What we don’t understand about you and Ray, is why you have the need to jump to a fantastical complicated explanation for the universe involving a supernatural “god,” when there are several simple scientific explanations, that don’t involve creating a whole complicated god-infrastructure and stepping outside logic. Why do you have the need to invent fantastic explanations when simple scientific ones are right before you? We don’t know which one happened, but they have the possibility of being verified in the future, unlike the “god story” which steps outside logic.
The second thing that baffles us is how you quote back to us the Christian stuff, “the reality of Hell”, “die on the cross as a substitute for our sins and rose on the third day, defeating death” as if you are certain of this stuff, when you just accused us of “faith in the big bang.” You are imputing the same illogic to us that you demonstrate in “your faith.” And you are at odds with all the other religions out who have some other creation story. What makes your Christianity the right one?
I know you’re sincere when you say that it would be “unkind for me not to share my faith,” but it’s hard for a thinking person to take this stuff seriously. There’s no evidence for any of it, so when you come to us and quote these certainties you will, of course, be dismissed and your intellect questioned. Faith never trumps reason and science. And that is probably the place where we’ll always part ways.
Yeah that’s not turning out so great for you.
not out of nothing, out of existing materials.
Dean,
You wrote: “God gave us a conscience so that we would know right from wrong.”
Humanity figured out what worked and what didn’t during the last 100,000 years of so of our evolution. The ancient scribes who wrote the bible, just plagarized it and called it right and wrong. It’s not like we needed some god to figure it out.
Dean,
Try for some substance in your posts. It would also be nice if you actually answered some of the comments instead of giving us the generic your science is wrong and you’re mean, but God loves you anyway. That gets old quickly.
Oh, and dean, I assume you then went on to read the very next sentences of the piece by Dawkins you quoted, right?
It goes:
After all, doing otherwise would be deeply dishonest, and we all know you’re honest, yes?
I mean, being god’s messenger and all.
Dean,
Let’s assume for a minute that you’re right* and that accepting that the Universe began with the Big Bang is indeed “faith”. Obviously, you have “faith” in a very different account of the origins of the Universe.
Obviously, if you’re right**, faith leads different people in very different directions, directions which probably depend on their initial state of mind, emotions and biases. Now, what does that tell us about faith itself? Maybe that faith is not a reliable way to form an opinion about reality? That having faith is nothing like actually knowing? That people who claim to know something through faith (like you “know” about “the reality of hell”, for example) are exaggerating their certainty to crush any doubts in their own hearts about the thing they don’t really know, but merely have faith in?
What do you say, Dean? How do you show us that your faith is better, truer, than the next man’s?
*you’re not
**actually, the point stands even if you’re wrong about the Big Bang, since different people have faith in very different things regardless of that
To Jonathon Delafield, Comment 242 and Forbidden Snowflake, Comment 248.
I appreciate your willingness to review my comments, and while you clearly disagree, you did not resort to simple name calling in response to my post. Thanks.
I recognize that it is difficult for either of you to identify or understand my comments and why I say the things I do, but I will attempt to explain why I know the God of the Bible is the true God.
First, if God exists as He is described in Bible, then it is reasonable to assume that he would have a way of revealing Himself to his believers.
Please, stay with me through this section. The Bible says “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Romans 3:23 and that the “Wages of sin is death” Romans 6:23. What God requires of you and me is that we repent–that we turn from our sin, and by faith and by faith alone, receive Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. Jesus said “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. John 3:16-18. Finally, Jesus said, Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again. John 3:3
The thing is, when you repent and put your trust is Christ dying on the cross for our sins, and rising from the dead on the third day, you experience Christ. You are truly born again. You desire the righteousness of Christ and you truly are regenerated, and want to be obedient to Christ. It is a blessing to experience the love of Christ and why I pray that you experience it as well, which is why I share my faith.
Dean
http://www.needGod.com
If anyone still needs a mirror to watch ‘Hitler’s Religion’ aka 180
Oh please not this again.
You have no way of separating this from emotionally charged confirmation bias, mental disturbance, and a host of other explanation.
none.
Sorry Dean. I did not “stay with you” during that section. When I read it, the words started to merge in my mind, so that my mental subvocalization of the words you wrote sounded like the grown-ups in Charlie Brown’s world. Mwah-mwah mwah mwah mwah-mwah.” This happens every time someone quotes the Bible at me. It’s a bunch of claptrap that would impress a smart person who was born 1,000 years ago. Today, it’s obvious that it’s dated bunkum, just a bunch of Bronze Age herders trying to understand and explain the world. What they did was fine. The mistake you’re making is assuming that it’s somehow relevant and useful to your life.
Being an atheist is a “blessing,” in the metaphorical sense that it is a pleasant and liberating experience. I think most people mean well, and I want people to be happy, so this is why I share my atheist experience with you. Come over to the dark side. (Note: that’s sarcasm. This isn’t actually the dark side, or at least, it’s not the evil side. Assuming you conflate “dark” with “evil.”) We have bacon.
Oh whoops, messed up my tags. Let me try again:
Sorry Dean. I did not “stay with you” during that section. When I read it, the words started to merge in my mind, so that my mental subvocalization of the words you wrote sounded like the grown-ups in Charlie Brown’s world. Mwah-mwah mwah mwah mwah-mwah. This happens every time someone quotes the Bible at me. It’s a bunch of claptrap that would impress a smart person who was born 1,000 years ago. Today, it’s obvious that it’s dated bunkum, just a bunch of Bronze Age herders trying to understand and explain the world. What they did was fine. The mistake you’re making is assuming that it’s somehow relevant and useful to your life.
Being an atheist is a “blessing,” in the metaphorical sense that it is a pleasant and liberating experience. I think most people mean well, and I want people to be happy, so this is why I share my atheist experience with you. Come over to the dark side. (Note: that’s sarcasm. This isn’t actually the dark side, or at least, it’s not the evil side. Assuming you conflate “dark” with “evil.”) We have bacon.
Conclusive physical evidence, or you are just another delusional fool. Conclusive physical evidence that will pass muster with scientists, magicians, and professional debunkers, as being of divine, and not natural (scientifically explained), origin. Something the equivalent of the eternally burning bush. Solid physical, and can be examined at our leisure. Your word is worthless until you pony up said evidence. And to date, not one delusional fool of a godbot has done so. Almost like that conclusive physical evidence doesn’t exist…
It’s also reasonable to assume that a host of other religion’s deities have the same ability.
Alrighty then, dean can’t/won’t answer my questions, looks like.
I guess god’s not bothering to give him that wisdom this particular day.
Pity, too.
With god’s gift of wisdom, he could convert me at once and save me from hell. Not gonna happen, apparently.
I wonder if that’s dean’s fault or god’s?
“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” Proverbs 9:10
Ooh… cut and paste bible quotes! Yay!
“Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.” Psalm 137:9
Dean
It appears you do not want to engage me in this debate.
It also appears clear that you are not even religious, merely crassly superstitious. Let us be clear about what I mean here by offering you this quote to read, from Gilbert Murray:
Stop hiding behind your babble for just a few minutes. Do you understand that you are merely being superstitious and not religious? You are not seeking knowledge but clinging to the babble out of fear of your own ignorance of everything but the intellectual pit you have dug yourself into.
There are many very wise and caring commenters in this thread. Any one of us can help you out, but we will require that you stop lying to yourself.
You have only one life, do not waste it on superstitious nonsense.
“And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother’s wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother.” Genesis 38:9
Yep, I reckon he was very happy, dashing his ‘little ones’ on the rocks… =^_^=
But why did he think that the ‘seed’ might get into his brother?! Could it be that the bible writers were completely ignorant of mammalian biology?!!
LOL
“There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses. So you longed for the lewdness of your youth, when in Egypt your bosom was caressed and your young breasts fondled.”
Ezekiel 23: 20-21 (NIV)
…so long as we’re doing bible quotes, I’ll drag out one of the old standbys.
(I really should get a sign made for sporing events…)
But, yeah, dean’s got nothing.
@Anri:
Oh my goodness me *blush*
Genesis 30:37-39
YAY!!
John 12:47
YAY!!!
2 Corinthians 5:10
BOOOOO
John 8:15
YAY!!!
John 9:39
BOOOOOO
Bible consistency!!
Leviticus 14:49-53
And your leprosy will be cured!
Now which bird do will kill to cure Erectile dis… I MEAN CANCER
Which bird cures cancer?
because that would be important.
Here’s one of my favorite babble quotes, Ezekiel 9:5-7:
“Then I heard the LORD say to the other men, “Follow him through the city and kill everyone whose forehead is not marked. Show no mercy; have no pity! Kill them all – old and young, girls and women and little children. But do not touch anyone with the mark. Begin your task right here at the Temple.” So they began by killing the seventy leaders. “Defile the Temple!” the LORD commanded. “Fill its courtyards with the bodies of those you kill! Go!” So they went throughout the city and did as they were told.”
The Great Pumpkin loves him some wholesale murder!
he really, really loves him some rape too. 2 Samuel 12:11-14:
Thus says the Lord: ‘I will bring evil upon you out of your own house. I will take your wives while you live to see it, and will give them to your neighbor. He shall lie with your wives in broad daylight. You have done this deed in secret, but I will bring it about in the presence of all Israel, and with the sun looking down.’
Then David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” Nathan answered David: “The Lord on his part has forgiven your sin: you shall not die. But since you have utterly spurned the Lord by this deed, the child born to you must surely die.”
So, God delivers victims to rapists and kills children for funsies.
Notice the plural “wives” too – traditional marriage!
Feel the LOVE!
And horses are impregnated by the North Wind!
I can never work out why goddists choose one idiocity over another. What rational do they follow?
Two thousand years ago agriculture was not as scientific as it is today. And making mistakes came at the cost of lives. So people had to come up with some theory as to how it all fits together. They did the best they could in their ignorance. And passed on their “efficacious” rituals to their children as sacred truths.
The whole point though is that we now know that all these rituals and beliefs are superstitious bullshit. Successful farmers use science not white stripes.
Dumb Shit The Bible Says.
Simple, but nicely done.
Here’s a good one! Undeserved retribution, yay God! You’re such an asshole!!
Hi again, Dean!
I agree with this statement, with only one stipulation added: if God exists as described in the Bible, He should be able to reveal Himself to His believers reliably and consistently.
Now tell me, Dean: does that happen? Do all of the people who believe in God as described in the Bible share a uniform, consistent understanding of God and of what He wants from humanity? Or do they form myriads of cults, splitting from one another endlessly, accusing one another of being either depraved heathens or pharisees?
So in the end, this is God’s way of confirming His reality to you. This is the revelation that is supposed to be reliable and consistent. An intense emotional experience. You believe, and expect us to believe, because you felt a profound feeling come over you. Not very convincing, given that other religions, as well as many secular experiences, provide some intense emotions as well. Definitely not a good reason to switch your logic circuits to ‘standby’ and cease asking yourself ‘But is it true?’.
Tigger the Wing:
whut
The story of Onan is mostly consistent with mammalian biology; granted, that’s only because it doesn’t make any non-trivial claims about it, although using ‘seed’ as a synonym for ‘progeny’ does reveal an underlying ignorance about the woman’s part in reproduction. However, the ignorant belief that baby is made from semen only is not in any way essential to the story.
Here’s the quote again:
Nothing factually incorrect here. Onan felt uncomfortable with the idea of sperm donation (that’s essentially what it was), because he didn’t want to have biological children running around that aren’t his children legally. I know a lot of guys who feel the same way – no ignorance of biology required.
Here’s one of my favorites, dealing with alcohol:
Another gem: Psalm 136:10, arguably the most ironic verse in the Bible.
Yes, really. Look it up.
@ Kitty
Wow, your quote! I was reading exactly that on my kindle on my way back from work today. It is worth quoting the piece I read :
(You can get the entire book for free online. “The five stages of greek religion.” It is an absolutely brilliant read for so many reasons. It also helps to put the babble into the context of the times by giving us something to compare too. Here is the link.
……………………………….
@ Dean
Do you understand the dilemma presented here? Do you realise it also applies to your own imaginary sky-god ™?
Ah, quit it. What is wrong with Hell
he is one sick, sick, sick bastard.
dean (#249):
Except you didn’t – all you did was pile up a selective list of biblical quotations outlining a crude authoritarian ideology, none of which provides the slightest rational justification for the claim that a god (a) exists, and (b) is accurately described by the bible.
If you want people to take you seriously, then you need a reasoned argument based on sound premises to show that you have good grounds for believing what you believe. You haven’t done that, so you have not explained how you know anything.
Mind you, you have successfully demonstrated that your version of Christianity is morally abhorrent, although I suspect that probably wasn’t your intention.
So, how do you know that “the God of the Bible is the true God”? Try making an effort this time.
Dean,
You asked that we bear with you, try to understand and read to the end of your post. I did this, but the understand part just does not work here. You violate logic.
Don’t you see the gaping hole in your arguments? You are quoting the Bible as authority which you take on faith. But we know from independent scholarship that the Bible is simply a compendium of ancient texts with no evidence of it being anything more than any of the other ancient books. Nor is there any independent evidence to corroborate any of the fantastic stories that it tells, including the historical existence of someone called Jesus Christ.
Doesn’t this raise just a little bit of question in your mind about the validity of your beliefs? How do you cling to such dogma without the slightest doubt?
Your circular reasoning (I’ll paraphrase and correct me if I’m wrong):
“God exists because the Bible says so, and the Bible is the Word of God, therefore it’s the literal truth”
is why you get dismissed when you speak with atheists.
Dean, a question: How do you get out of this trap? Where is your evidence that the Bible should be treated as authority? And please — to forestall another round of posts — think about how you break out of the circular reasoning above. You can’t just assert that it’s the Word of God. That doesn’t work with anyone outside your Christian culture.
Oh! Oh! Can I play?
Suppose you hear in one of the towns the LORD your God is giving you that some worthless rabble among you have led their fellow citizens astray by encouraging them to worship foreign gods. In such cases, you must examine the facts carefully. If you find it is true and can prove that such a detestable act has occurred among you, you must attack that town and completely destroy all its inhabitants, as well as all the livestock. Then you must pile all the plunder in the middle of the street and burn it. Put the entire town to the torch as a burnt offering to the LORD your God. That town must remain a ruin forever; it may never be rebuilt. Keep none of the plunder that has been set apart for destruction. Then the LORD will turn from his fierce anger and be merciful to you. He will have compassion on you and make you a great nation, just as he solemnly promised your ancestors. “The LORD your God will be merciful only if you obey him and keep all the commands I am giving you today, doing what is pleasing to him.” (Deuteronomy 13:13-19 NLT)
So, if one person in a town has “led their fellow citizens astray by encouraging them to worship foreign gods”, then kill the entire town. Don’t forget the livestock!
@ [All]
I think we haz broken the squeeky toy. It is not coming back. (A bit like jeebus that…)
I was also meaning to ask if it knew that many people have claimed to be the messiah – or at least able to improve on the jewish version of teh sky-daddy ™.
The old ones where jeebus (though there is no evidence that he ever existed) and mohammed (might have existed, though not as he is presented). Then of course there are much more recent versions, for example Jacob Frank and rabbi Sabbatai Zevi. Let us not forget Joseph Smith who modeled himself on mohammed. And then very recently, sentient primates like Moses Guibbory and rabbe Schneerson. All claiming to know the will of Yahwe. All of these have avid acolytes that claim their chosen figure is the correct one. There are dozens of these denizens. Why did he choose the one he did? Why not worship the living messiah,the one and only 又吉イエス (“The only God Mitsuo Matayoshi Jesus Christ”).
I could respect the fortitude of xtians that underwent getting gnawed on by lions in RL for their faith. But so-called xtians that flounce the moment they get gnawed on by rational arguments … it is getting pathetic.
broken the squeeky toy
Well maybe. But I keep on participating in these blog wars with Christians because I hope that they will bring something new to think about. – my eternal optimism or perhaps “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” – Einstein.
But I’ve literally never seen anything new. The seemingly unbreakable conundrum is this: For Christians faith trumps reason. For Skeptics reason trumps faith. I obviously don’t see the two views as symmetric, but there is little middle ground between the two.
These philosophical wars are interesting, but in daily life of little importance — until the underlying Christian illogic starts to intrude upon important things in society. Like STEM education, medical research, gay rights/marriage, choice. etc. Then it gets deadly serious.
broken the squeeky toy
Well maybe … but I hope not. It seems like Dean was trying to engage. It’s not often that this happens. It’s often just preaching a naive, canned message in Christian-speak.
Hi Everyone,
No, I actually haven’t gone away. But I do have a job and a family, so I can’t always wait by the computer to immediately respond to all of your comments. :-)
To Forbidden Snowflake, Comment from 2 Sept at 7:53 a.m., you wrote the following:
I agree with this statement, with only one stipulation added: if God exists as described in the Bible, He should be able to reveal Himself to His believers reliably and consistently.
Now tell me, Dean: does that happen? Do all of the people who believe in God as described in the Bible share a uniform, consistent understanding of God and of what He wants from humanity? Or do they form myriads of cults, splitting from one another endlessly, accusing one another of being either depraved heathens or pharisees?”
My response:
The answer to your question is “yes” God reveals Himself to His believers reliably and consistently. I think where you and most people miss the point is that many people would describe a true Christian as one who goes to Church on Sunday, or professes belief in God, or said a prayer asking Jesus into their heart.
It’s easy to be a false Christian. I know, for many years I was one of them. I used to measure myself by my own human standard. I used to look around and measure myself against those who I sat in church with, worked with, and hung out with. I would say, I’m as good as the people around me and I believe in God and I believe Jesus died on the cross for my sins, so I must be saved. Many Christians fall into this category. But it doesn’t make them true Christians.
The reason that I always ask in my comments “have you lied” or “have you stolen” or “have you ever looked with lust, then you have committed adultery in your heart”, is that these are Ten Commandments. When we recognize that we have sinned against God and His infinitely holy standard, and when we recognize that if we sin just once then we have broken all the commandments, and because God is just he must punish sin, only then can we understand why God sent his Son, Jesus, fully God and fully man to live a perfect sinless life and die on the cross for our sins and was raised from the dead, defeating death.
Let me give you an example. If you had committed some crime, and you were in court and the judge said that you either had to be put in jail forever or pay a one million dollar fine, if like, me, you didn’t have that kind of money, you would have to go to jail forever. But, if someone, say a total stranger, came into the courtroom, and paid your fine, you’d be free to go. That’s because justice would be served. That is what Jesus dying on the cross is for you and me, a legal transaction to save us from our sins. We only have to truly repent (turn from our sin) and put our trust in Christ.
Now, few are the people who truly repent and put their trust in Christ. I understand it’s confusing on your end. After all, you see priests molest children, and Christians engage in sinful behavior. I’m not saying that a saved Christian is perfect or doesn’t commit sin, far from it, but what you see mostly in the Church today are “false Christians.” That is, those that say they believe the facts of Jesus’s death on the cross, but have not repented and put their trust in Christ.
This is very clearly in the Bible in Matthew chapter 7:21-23:
21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ 23 Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’
Just prior to the above verse, Jesus said this in Matthew 7:13-14
13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”
One thing I will say, is that it is very rare for a true Christian to consistently remain in sin. There are very few examples in the Bible. One of them is King David, who committed adultery (Bathsheeba), murdered (Urias), lied about it and therefore broke the other commandments of putting God first, honoring your parents etc.
When King David was confronted with his sin by the prophet Nathan, David realized that he had sinned against God. He wrote Psalm 51 in response.
The point is, those that you see in the world, and in the United States are following the wide gate and the broad road. The one that leads to destruction. There are only a “few” who find the small gate and narrow road that leads to life.
So to the “few” who find the small gate, God reveals Himself consistently and reliably. The problem is that wide gate says “Heaven” and the small gate says “Heaven” but only the small gates leads to Heaven. So, when you look at the world, and all the professing false Christians, I can see your dilemma in trying to discern from your point of view all the hypocrisy that goes on in the Christian churches of today. I can tell you that there are no hypocrites in the true Church of Christ, the one that is filled with true believers who have repented and put their trust in Christ. The problem is that there are “few.”
There is one other item I wanted to address to you, Forbidden Snowflake, and that is your post from 30 August, at 11:49 p.m. I’ve attached it as follows:
1. Dear dean,
Modern technology gives you an opportunity to address thousands upon thousands of atheists at once in an attempt to save their souls… And that boring, self-contradictory little song-and-dance is all you can come up with? I hope your god doesn’t plan on punishing people who, let’s say, didn’t quite do their best to bring others to him, because if he does, you’re toast.
I want you to know, that in the Bible, God commands me to share my faith with all, in season and out of season, and by any and all means as possible. I also am told to as 1 Peter 3:15 states: “But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect”
I also want you to know that I don’t just sit behind a computer and hide behind the Gospel and a computer screen. I also go to food courts and other public places to engage in conversation with people I don’t know and I also share my faith with those I work with etc. That also includes other Christians, which is probably hardest of all. Since I don’t know anyone’s true heart I feel compelled to share with everyone the Good News of Christ. I hope some day, we run into each other.
Finally, to It’spiningforthefyords comment on 31 August 2011 at 5:49 am
If I did have a mirror attached to my computer screen, I would not see some holy looking person who’s self absorbed with his own righteousness, but rather this. I am a dad of two boys, a husband of one wife for 20 years, and when measured against God’s holy standard of the Ten Commandments, a sinner. Just like all of you.
Oh, dean. So you return only to pull the No True Christian™ gambit.
Should we listen to a True Christian™ only? If so, pray tell us: how is anyone supposed to know who is a True Christian™ and who isn’t?
P.S. Don’t bother with bible quotes. For every quote you put out there, one with an opposite meaning can be found. I just can’t be bothered with the effort at the moment.
Hi Tigger_the_Wing,
I don’t know how to discern a true Christian other than to know them for a long time and see the good fruit that they bear from being born again in Christ.
It’s why I share my faith with just about everyone.
But you never truly know someone’s heart. We will all find out when we die and stand before God.
Dean
http://www.needGod.com
Oh hai Dean.
Shorter Dean: mwah mwah mwah mwah mwah mwah.
Do you believe that Vishnu is the eternal, timeless creator of all space and time and matter, Dean? If not, why not? The reasoning behind his existence is the same as your reasoning about Yahweh’s existence: it says so in a book, the book was inspired by Vishnu himself, Vishnu reveals himself to his followers in various ways, therefore he exists.
Frankly, if I were going to be religious, I’d go for Hinduism before Christianity. First, the deities are more fun. The holy ghost? Can’t see it, can’t talk to it. Jesus Christ? What an annoying emo hipster dude. Yahweh? A vindictive, capricious asshole. Now, in Hinduism you’ve got literally thousands of gods to choose from, bearing in mind that they are all just manifestations of the atman, the ultimate source. There’s Durga, the demon-slayer, riding her tiger. There’s Ganesha, the elephant-headed remover of obstacles who loves sweets. There’s Shiva, the ascetic holy man meditating in the mountains. There’s Kali, the dark, bloody destroyer, dancing on corpses. There’s a god for every occasion and they’re all fantastically creative and colorful and tons of fun to worship, if you’re so inclined. I’ve been to Christian services of various kinds and they’re interesting, and sometimes moving, but much less stimulating than Hindu pujas.
Tell me, were I to believe in a god or gods, what makes your weird triune god so much better than the Hindu pantheon?
Hi dean; so why bother?
Since you say only God can know what is in someone’s heart, and your previous post shows you believe that even the person themselves cannot be sure, and since no-one can know what God wants, I repeat: why bother?
What do you get out of repeating what you have been told? What are these ‘fruits’ since you have told us that even ‘saved’ people ‘sin’.
I do not need you to answer these questions for me, as I already have perfectly good answers, but I wonder if you have ever asked yourself these questions?
Hi Tigger_the_Wing,
When I was speaking about discerning a true Christian, it was about someone truly knowing about others. The individual can be sure, but no one can absolutely know about someone else.
The reason that I bother is because God commands me to preach the repentence of sins and the gospel of Jesus. Also, when you are truly born again in Christ, you have a heart for the lost.
God chooses to save people through the preaching of the Gospel. It’s why I try to include it in most of my posts. When I refer to the Gospel, just in case you weren’t sure what made up the Gospel, it’s this.
We are all sinners, God sent His Son Jesus, fully God and fully man to live a perfect life and die on the cross as a substitute for our sins, to rise from the dead on the third day and defeat death. He requires that we repent of our sins and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Dean
I am, apparently, chopped liver.
*deep sigh*
I’m bored…
Sounds like Dean’s just another boring authoritarian. God says to do it, so I do it. No questions asked.
As many people’s mother would say, “If God told you to jump off the Empire State Building, would you do it?”
Heh. At least I’m amusing myself.
Dean
You are stupid. and boring.
Dean,
Are there any Scotsmen in heaven?
BTW, professional counseling is often recommended to assist those that claim to hear voices. Should probably get that looked at.
PS- Check out Matthew 6:5 and 6:6, and ask yourself why you’re breaking your own guidelines.
Hi SallyStrange,
No religion is “truer” than another. “Religion” is man’s futile effort to try to find peace with God. The Christian doesn’t strive to have peace with his Creater. It was given to him in the person of the Savior, Jesus Christ. The uniqueness of Jesus is His statement, “The Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins.” No religion of man can do that. Christianity is not a manmade “religion” but a personal relationship with the one true God.
Christians don’t base their faith on feelings; their feelings are irrelevant to truth. If I am flying from Los Angeles to New York, my feelings about whether I am going in the right direction have nothing to do with the fact. We can know with our intellect that Christianity is true, regardless of our feelings. The Bible’s thousands of fulfilled prophecies, historical accuracy, and many infallible proofs attest to its reliability.
Dean
http://www.needGod.com
Hi Therrin,
Matthew 6:5-6 as you mention above in your p.s. is as follows:
5 “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you
How am I breaking my own guideline?
Dean
http://www.needGod.com
Oh Dean. That’s adorable, and really considerate. Allow me to try to help you understand how truly silly you sound to a non-believer, particularly one who didn’t grow up in your Christian culture.
Great, Hinduism it is then. If they’re all equally “true” or “untrue” (for whatever warped value of “true” you are using) then why not go with aesthetics?
If the effort to find peace with god is futile, then I really don’t see the point in trying.
Obviously, because it’s futile, right? No point striving.
Oh, so it’s not futile. Okay, you’ve contradicted yourself.
From what I’ve witnessed, this is really not unique. Lots of would-be messiahs claim to have the power to make people feel better about the bad things they’ve done.
I’d like to have a personal relationship with Durga, the one true Goddess. Can you arrange that? Oh yes, and why is your god male? If he’s omnipotent, shouldn’t he also be able to gestate fetuses if he wants to?
Well, some Christians do. They’ve told me so. I guess they’re not True Christians (TM)? You’d know better than me. Personally, if someone claims to be a member of X religion, I don’t question it. Seems rude.
Indeed. Of course, you can easily verify your feelings about the direction by using simple technologies, such as a compass. I’ve not heard of any similar types of independent verification for the existence of God. Do you have one? Besides the Bible, of course.
Yep, you can apply your intellect to all kinds of things. You can use your intellect to assess the internal consistency of the Star Trek universe. Doesn’t make it true, of course.
Please name one fulfilled prophesy. Please give one example of an historical accuracy, and also explain why these alleged accuracies should outweigh the many historical inaccuracies.
Also, exactly what are you looking to prove with your infallible proofs? The existence of God? Not so far. There’s no such thing as an infallible proof in the real world; I don’t think you’re using the word “intellect” in the same sense that most people use it.
Ciao!
Anyway, Dean, thanks so much for providing me with my “I’m so completely right compared to how incredibly wrong and stupid you are” dopamine hit. Much appreciated. I’m sure I’ve provided you with a bit of the same. Neurobiology is a funny beast.
Hi SallyStrange,
Apparently my Neurobiology is different than yours. I don’t think you’re stupid, and I take no pleasure in being right. To me, you are like a person who is about to walk off a cliff and is ignoring my shouts to turn around.
It’s rather sobering, if you ask me.
Dean
Hi, Dean,
“Must punish sin”? Could you elaborate on that? Does he have no choice in the matter?
Here are my thoughts about your example, Dean:
1. A court sentence of either jail forever or a million dollar fine is atrocious, because it makes my punishment depend on how rich I am.
And the sad thing is that the analogy to Christianity stands:
Your god supposedly judges people by whether they believe in Jesus. The likelihood of a person believeing in Jesus depends mostly on where she’s born and who her parents are. So according to your god’s plan, some people have a greater likelihood of going to hell simply through an accident of birth. Does that sound fair?
2. That said, someone paying my fine for me is a perversion of justice, since the point is to punish me for my crime, and that doesn’t actually happen.
Obviously, the analogy stands. The idea of penal substitution upon which Christianity is founded is perverse an unjust.
God needs blood to forgive in. Whose blood? Oh, doesn’t matter, actually. God just really really loves him some blood.
So in your scenario, I get an unjust court sentence and someone comes along and pays the fine for me. This isn’t “justice was served”. More likely, “justice was circumvented”. And considering that in your analogy, the judge and the person paying the fine for me are the same person, “justice was butchered” also rings true.
Oh, dean, dean! *Sad shake of head* I do not need to go to the bible for contradictions. You do it to yourself.
What cliff, Dean? Are you talking about hell? Look, I behave pretty morally most of the time. I don’t cheat or steal, I don’t murder, and my lies are pretty small-time. You know, like, “I was late because my truck needed a jump,” rather than, “I was late because I got up late because I watched too many episodes of Enteerprise last night.”
The only Christian strictures I seriously and thoroughly disobey are the ones about believing in god, obviously, and the ones about sex.
If Yahweh’s going to condemn me to eternal torture because of those trivial and harmless offenses, then he’s a monster anyway and doesn’t deserve to be worshiped, even if he were real.
I don’t think you yourself are stupid. You have intelligence, and you use it to justify stupid beliefs. Sorry if I was unclear in my language.
Worse. You Christians are aren’t just shouting, but actively attempting to pull society backwards from the edge of a cliff that exists only in your imagination. You believe the cliff is there because you have been told so, and have ‘faith’. You fail to provide any evidence of its existence, instead insisting everyone else should have faith too. Meantime you are preventing real progress for the rest of society.
Anyway, you don’t actually believe the cliff exists, or you would be far more panicky about the people you say are about to fall off.
Much like they don’t actually believe abortion is murder, otherwise they would be hacking medical databases to locate pregnant women who are trying to get abortions, locking them up, and imprisoning until they give birth.
…You know, to bring it back around to the OT.
With Dean it’s probably the “I’m so completely holy look at me I am even going to save you from yourself whether you want to be saved or not because I am so much holier than you I know you want to be saved even though you don’t realize it yet but I know it because I am so holy compared to you” sanctimonamine hit.
I always found this to be an interesting piece of self-justification.
When you believe in what you do on faith, and acknowledge that so does the other guy, only he believes in something completely different, you have to come up with some kind of distinction between your faith and his, – otherwise the flimsy nature of faith will eventually stare you in the face.
Santimonamine? Probably chemically similar to dopamine, still. ;-)
At least I’m honest enough to admit I get a hit off it.
Well and good then. So practice it in private with your one true God, and leave the rest of us alone.
SallyStrange.
+1
Welcome back Dean.
First off, my comment in my post at #277 “…the squeeky toy. It is not coming back.”, has now been proven wrong by your recent responses. I really did believe you had flounced. Why did I believe this? Well, based on my emotions/feelings and my experience on Pharyngula with similar xtian commentators.
Now a logician would point out that I was wrong to make such a statement. I stated an opinion as a matter of fact. A scientist would say that I did not have the data to make such a statement. Well the data has since proved me wrong. I have been forced by the facts of the matter to confess that I was wrong and amend my position accordingly. Do you understand how this works?
Let us take a case in the bible. As a Real Christian ™ I trust that you will not be a cherry picker wrt your own holy book. Yet what do you make of the following?:
Do you take this as a literal truth? Two thousand years ago such a statement might have gone unchallenged. There was not enough data to say one way or the other. But all this changed just a few hundred years ago. The very idea of what is described in the bible is so utterly out of touch with reality that is is “not even wrong”.
I do not understand why so called “Real Christians ™” get so hot under the collar about evolution. Yeah, I realise it is impossible for both Darwinism and the bible to be right. I think you realise this too. But why even bother taking on the complexities of evolution when the bible has been proven wrong by the most basic facts of astronomy?
(Link)
Secondly, you will notice that the whole concept of being “right” wrt a religion is obviously wrong. You can be “right” within a series of superstitious rules, regulations and confabulations. You cannot be right or wrong in a religion, as there are no “facts” to begin with. A religion is composed of metaphors to inspire and drive forward people to a higher ideal. Superstitious goddists constantly claim that they are religious. But the only criteria they meet are those defining what we mean by crassly superstitious people. One is not inspired by threats of hell and eternal punishment. Cowed into submission yes, but not inspired. (Link to my original quote: #272)
I trust you have not verbally abused your own children by threatening them with hell and future torture. That would be disgusting.
Ooops. Sorry, amphiox! Missed your post. Credit to you for the ‘sanctimonamine’. =^_^=
Dean wrote:
Why, exactly, did Jesus need to ‘die’ in order for God to forgive our sins? I’ve never found a Christian who was able to explain why all of a sudden his/her formerly all-powerful God was forced to play by someone else’s rules.
Well, finally a True Christian ™ shows up.
So, nothing from dean on my little questions about his god’s lack of power.
I suppose I’ll try one more time:
dean, do you believe your god has the desire to stop any person from going to hell?
Do you believe that he has the power to accomplish this?
If the answer to both of the above is ‘yes’, what’s stopping him? Is human willfulness more powerful than god’s command?
Please elaborate.
Thanks in advance.
Hm, with True True Christians ™ being so rare, I feel compelled to ask Dean:
Jesus, is that you?
Wait, how can you be fully man and fully god?
Is he available to hire for sexual favors? Inquiring minds want to know.
My nephew has taken my place as the family fool for jesus, and he is constantly telling everyone it’s not a religion, it’s a relationship with gawd. This must be the current meme. I ask him why he would be ashamed of religion, and he wouldn’t answer.
Dean sez One True God , OK, who are the other Not True Gods?
If Dean is having a ‘relationship’ with jesus, gawd, and the holy spirit, isn’t he gay? If he’s having a relationship with, gawd, jesus, the holy spirit, and a wife, isn’t that polyamory?
I need help understanding Dean.
I still wonder why god’s fully MAN. It’s weird that he’s omnipotent–all-powerful–capable of ALL things–except he can’t gestate a fetus.
SallyStrange,
Because he is a bronze-age god.
In the bronze age, men were the active producers of life, women just the passive receptacles for the homunculi their husbands squirted into them; no more active in the process of life than fields were seen to be in the process of crop-production. That is how a virgin could give birth to a male child; her virgin status merely meant that no seeds had previously been planted in her. God’s seed was the first and he could introduce it magically, sans pénis, retaining her virginity; the gate to her field was still closed. Presumably the baby Jesus and his siblings vaulted over it, if the tradition of her continued virginity is correct!
@ Wowbagger
The answer to this you will find in Mythology 101. Jeeebus was cribbed from the corn gods. The piece you quoted from Dean is a generic charm to make the fields fecund. You could easily swap out any of the names of the yearly corn gods (Attis, Dionysus, jeebus, etc, there are very many guises for the same “son-of-god”…) and you have a good description of what happened in communities all over the known world of the time.
There really were people sacrificed for this purpose. (The classical Greeks were set against this practice, which took place even in Sparta (horrors!) – they regarded the practices as barbaric and superstitious).
The primitive sensibility required a sacrifice to ensure that the crops would grow. The victim, who might even be a volunteer for the occasion, was suspended from a pole and scourged to make him (usually a male) pure. The victim represented the (corn) god itself, so it is quite natural to say that he was both man and god at the same time.
A common feature of the sacrifice was that the victim took on the sins of his community so that the sins would perish with him. This double function of scapegoat and sacrificial offering can be confusing to a rational person. But it does explain why people volunteered to take on this “holy” task. (In the absence of volunteers, criminals were used.)
It would take some time to explain why the bizarre ritual that Dean describes relates so closely to the sowing and reaping of corn. I can just sketch here very briefly in point form:
*Communities where very reliant on the harvest for survival.
* There was no real agricultural science.
* Ritual was driven by tradition and superstitions.
* The god was inherent in the crop itself (in principle you could have pea-gods).
* By harvesting you “killed” the crop to save the community.
* The corn would be buried in the earth.
* To “rise” again.
* … you get the picture.
An abstracted form of the above had to be conducted with a real human representative of the corn god so that by sympathetic magic the next crop would be bountiful. He shed his blood that others might live. (He was also made to ejaculate, though for some strange reason the bible does not mention this part of the ritual.)
@ Tigger_the_Wing
Not all gods at this time where male. But there does seem to have been quite a strong tendency towards patriarchal societies displacing matriarchal societies and this was reflected in an increasingly menz orientation in the gods. The process was quite advanced by this stage. Personally I find this sad. I am quite sure we would all be better off if this had not taken place and we had retained more matriarchal oriented societies. * sigh *
@ Dean
Please engage with me. I have posted a lot of questions to you in the thread above.
You have jeebus on your side. What are you scared of?
John Barleycorn Must Die
There were three men come out of the west
Their fortunes for to try
And they have made a solemn vow
John Barleycorn must die (2x)
Fa la la la, it’s a lovely day
Fa la la la lay o
Fa la la la, it’s a lovely day
Sing fa la la la lay
They plowed him in three furrows deep
Laid clods all on his head
And they have made a solemn oath
John Barleycorn was dead
Well then there came a shower of rain
Which from the clouds did fall
John Barleycorn sprang up again
And so amazed them all
Well then came men with great sharp scythes
To cut him off at the knee
They bashed his head against a stone
And they used him barbarously
Well then came men with great long flails
To cut him skin from bone
The miller has used him worse than that
He ground him between two stones
They wheeled him here, they wheeled him there
Wheeled him into the barn
And they have used him worse than that
They bunged him in a vat
They worked their will upon John Barleycorn
But he lives to tell the tale
We pour him into an old brown jug
And we call him home-brewed ale
So basically, Jesus = beer
Come on Dean, show us your recent signed letter from your imaginary deity telling you to do that. Dated in the last five years, like a proper power of attorney.
Also, show us conclusive physical evidence for your imaginary deity. After all, what better way to show you aren’t a delusional fool speaking for themselves than to show actual physical evidence you are right. So far, all I see are presuppositions, delusions, and you pretending to preach for a phantasm.
Your babble is a book of mythology/fiction. Show with solid and conclusive physical evidence it is inerrant. Might as well cite Harry Potter as without your imaginary deity existing, it has no authority.
@ Sally Strange
Hehehe… you are very close to understanding the Wisdom of the Initiates!
100%, A+, Excellent! Dionysus would be so proud.
That is a folk traditional that very well reflects that aspect of the whole corn-god worship thingy. The concept made its way all around the Middle- east and Europe. One good reason that xtianity grew so well in Europe was that the essence of the jeebus myth was so compatible with their own superstitions. (You would have got bonus marks for linking to Traffic’s version. Link. ;)
I’m totally unfamiliar with Traffic. I was looking for something more akin to the way I first heard it performed, by folklorists and singers John Roberts and Tony Barrand. It was acappella, between sets at a folk music festival, and much more jolly than either the Traffic version or the one I linked to. Particularly with the “fa la la la” chorus. :-)
dean (#280):
Given the sheer diversity of and inconsistency between the varieties of theistic belief in the world, this does not seem to be true – even within Christianity. And to the extent that those beliefs are consistent, this is easily explicable in historical and psychological terms. So if you’re offering the consistency of Christian belief as “evidence” of the existence of your deity, that’s a really piss-poor argument.
In any case, what you really need to show is a reasoned argument (preferably one backed up with empirical evidence) that would convince a skeptic or a neutral observer. A “revelation” that is only available to someone who already believes in God really isn’t good enough.
Which is even worse. If God reveals himself consistently and reliably only to a tiny minority who are already emotionally and ideologically committed to belief in God, then that “revelation” is automatically suspect (and far more plausibly explainable) as the product of confirmation bias and communal reinforcement. You’re not going to convince anyone here of the validity of your beliefs if all you’ve got is the claim that people who already believe in God can find reasons to support their pre-existing beliefs. We already know that, and we already know why those reasons are untrustworthy.
Again, you need something that would convince a neutral party.
Boy, you must be popular at parties.
Here, I think, is where you’re going wrong. You’re treating your excursion onto this thread as an opportunity to bear witness, but you are completely misjudging your audience. You’re trying to convince us how necessary being a Christian is for our salvation, but (a) we see no reason to suppose that we are in any need of salvation in the first place, and (b) that isn’t really the question that interests us.
What most of us are interested in is a reasoned, evidence-based argument that your claims are actually true. Once you’ve established a plausible case for Christianity’s claims, then we can start arguing about the merits of being a Christian. But what you’re doing at the moment is putting the cart before the horse – you’re making a lot of assumptions which we see no reason to accept. It’s convincing us of those assumptions (e.g., the existence of your deity) that you have to work on first.
(#285):
You reckon that people can truly know themselves? I take it then, that you’re not familiar with the Dunning-Kruger effect. Or indeed with much cognitive psychology at all.
People can deceive themselves quite readily about a lot of things – including their own intellectual abilities and the consistency with which they apply them. Which means that they can also deceive themselves about whether the things that they think they know are really warranted. That’s why we need shared, public criteria (such as those provided by the scientific method) for evaluating knowledge claims, in order to minimise subjective error and bias – and this applies to self-knowledge too.
Well in this case, you’d be well advised not to. Firstly, because none of us find biblical quotations a convincing (or interesting) argument, and secondly, because it can get you banned from Pharyngula for the crime of godbotting. If you’ve got a reasoned argument to make, then make it. But crude bible-thumping rhetoric will just lead to you wearing out your welcome. You’re not preaching on a street corner or collaring some unsuspecting shopper at the mall here – you’re talking to an educated and skeptical audience, many of whom have degrees and doctorates in critical and analytical disciplines like science, philosophy, mathematics, economics, history etc.
Things will go a lot better if you recognise this fact and tailor your approach accordingly.
theophontes, thanks for that
offa my fuckina lawn
Dean: You are godbotting. This is a bannable offense.
Let me explain something. I am the host of this site, and I despise you evangelical assholes with every fiber of my being. You are mindless parrots, blind, dumb, and stupid, and you’ve replaced rational thought with a reliance on the authority of your magic book. You can’t have a conversation without quoting your book of lies, and you think some antique phrasing from a hodge-podge of religious morons trumps everything. I regard you with utter contempt.
Cite your imaginary Jesus one more time, shit out another bible quote, whimper piously again about your fucking faith, and you’re gone. And I bet that you are so moronic that you can’t even imagine a discussion that isn’t dripping with god-talk…and I don’t need your kind around here. Go proselytize elsewhere.
@ Sally
I shall have to look out for them. (Can’t say I understand the lyrics, but they are suitably quirky.)
@ Jeebus
Let us play a game of “Where’s Wally?” (That’s Waldo in USAian).
1,2,3, …Where’s jeeebus?
Is he Odin?:
Or is he a Bagabo sacrificial victim in the Philipines?
(Link to image of Marsyas.)
Or is he Attis?
We could go on for weeks in this vein (a pun when discussing Attis) but let us focus on Attis a bit:
How did xtians solve this problem? Simple, the pagans had all been inspired by the devil, who went back in time and spread the false tales to look just like the story of jeebus but at much earlier times. Time travel? Easy, Satan simply inverted the usual order of nature.
Sadly, theophontes, Tony Barrand is now suffering the effects of multiple sclerosis. For a while he still did performances, in his wheelchair and everything, but his mobility is just too limited now. You’ll have to stick with old recordings.
They are also part of a wonderful group called Nowell Sing We Clear, which dedicated itself to reviving really old Christmas and New Years’ carols. During their performances they would break it up between the Christian-themed songs and the pagan-themed songs. I think you’d enjoy it. A fantastic alternative to the typical holiday musical schlock that inundates the airwaves during that season. They have over a dozen recordings by now.
dean (#291):
Now this is more like it. This is the kind of argument that might, if supported by actual evidence and examples actually convince a neutral observer. Unfortunately, you haven’t actually provided any evidence or examples, but I assume that you’re working on that.
However, you should be aware that most of us have heard this claim before, and weren’t impressed by the quality of the supporting arguments. But go ahead, try us.
also for the benefit of fellow USAiams, because I always have to remind myself, “corn” in the above discussion would be barley and/or wheat, not, y’know, corn-on-the-cob ‘corn’ (my people call it ‘maize’).
Time-travelling-by-everything-inversion Satan is excellent. Brilliant (in the USAian sense)(and, I guess, the recent UKian sense too).
About the “Bedlam Boys” song I linked to:
Background: Tom of Bedlam is one of the earliest songs about madness that was first introduced in 1618. Bedlam was a common name for St. Mary Bethlehem hospital in London (now called Bethlem Royal Hospital) which housed the insane. During the 18th century it was a popular diversion to visit the hospital to watch the antics of the poor inmates. Admission was one penny and it is said the hospital realized an income of four hundred pounds a year from visitors.
Er, obviously “Satin” should be “Satan.” Quick copy-paste, beg your pardon.
In the light of PZ’s warning at #324, I withdraw my #327.
@ Sally
Tony Barrand is on Youtube (he is now singing in the background). Linky.
Xmas is just too over the top in China (in Hong Kong they start just after the Autumn festival. Every imaginable festival gets commercialised to the nth degree.)
@ Chas
We make jokes about it, but this was literally their solution. If only Dean had this much imagination, we could be entertained for weeks. How many of today’s so called xtians even know about these kind of problems? I guess they don’t even know their own history.
Yeah, not maize-god (though many did exist in the Americas) but grain-god.
@ Dean
I am starting to feel sorry for you. Perhaps there are no libraries near your house. You have nothing to read except your babble. As if it represents all that we as humans have to say about anything.
Why not take Iain or PZ’s comments as a challenge. Put your holy book and your Chick-lit back in the drawer and then try and answer any of our questions using any other book to prove that the babble is not fiction.
I know a fair bit about mythology, but cannot think of anything I know that will help you in this. Perhaps we need to put the question to a professional historian.
I could write indefinitely on practically every aspect of xtianity and show exactly, with citations, how it is plagiarised or a cheap imitation of a pre-existing religious, mythological or plain superstitious folklore. But not a single thing that would stand in it’s favour.
Dean,
Are you able to provide any independent evidence, (outside of the bible), that we should regard any of it as accurate or true?
You made a small start above The Bible’s thousands of fulfilled prophecies, historical accuracy, and many infallible proofs attest to its reliability. but you immediately fell back into using the bible to justify itself. You need independent evidence.
I hope you know that this circular reasoning would never stand up in court, to say nothing of being examined by logic and science and the people on this blog. There are plenty of sources debunking these prophecy claims.
As Iain states above you have to convince us that your “source” has merit, before you use it on us.
What do you have? Where’s the scholarship? I challenge you.
Pay attention to PZ’s instructions above. If you can’t get away from quoting the bible to justify the bible, then you are wasting your and our time.
ps: I’m risking PZ’s wrath here, but it’s rare that a Christian will show up over here and engage in debate. Show some scholarship and we’ll listen. Quote more bible verses and we’re done.
@ Dean
If you want to be an effective evangical rather than a parrot you need to look up the “outsiders test”. Basically you have to make your case that your religion makes sense to someone who has never heard of it before and has no cultural inclination to accept it based on assertion.
Hello Dean.
I’m going to ask you a very emotional question; one that, I think, utterly proves the doctrine of “only by accepting Jesus Christ as your lord and savior (read: being born again) can you get into Heaven” to be absolutely disgusting.
I would like to tell you a story about my great grandmother; my dad’s maternal grandmother.
Long before I was born, she and her husband owned a bakery in Connecticut and New York: Zwerdling Bakeries. They would as much of their profits as they could and donate them to charity. They would also have special days in which the homeless could come in for free food.
I remember her long after her husband died and the bakeries were closed. She was one of the happiest, loveliest women I’ve ever known. Even when she suffered from Alzheimer’s, she found a way to be charitable. She would donate time, money, and happiness… indeed, she spread happiness almost like a virus.
I’ve seen her take a couple who were bitterly fighting and get them to forgive each other. My dad’s mom swears she stopped that couple from getting a divorce.
She did commit one sin in death, though, Dean. She died a very proud Conservative Jew.
Tell me… is she in Hell?
@ Nate
I have wondered about such things too. The rapture is a specific event in the future (always in the future) that these crazies wait for.
The question is: Does hell currently exist, or will it be froebel-ed together just in time for the last judgement? That would make sense.
Surely the many millions of pagans who died before jeebus message cannot be accountable? Kind and loving people like your grandmother who didn’t get the memo? Is she suffering now until the day of judgement and then gets an extra infinite time of suffering sticky taped onto her sentence?
He justifies all of this nastiness by claiming to be a True Christian ™. Bleeaugh!
I think hell is a little place in Dean’s little mind, where he fritzles away anyone he doesn’t like (almost the entire humanity). He can mentally fap in delight at the imagined tortures for everyone who disagrees with his ideas about jeebus.
The problem that I have with atheists is that they are outraged at the idea (thay they somehow perceive) that someone is trying to make money out of an anti-abortion campaign, yet they cannot see the wrong in killing an innocent baby.
What is wrong with you people?
What’s wrong with you is that you haven’t thought this through.
“Legal, safe and rare” requires that sex education and contraception are available without restrictions, and they require a social safety net so that an unplanned pregnancy isn’t a catastrophe.
Maybe – maybe! – France could get away with outlawing abortion except in case of medical* necessity, in the sense that women wouldn’t start bleeding to death in dark alleys again as they now do in Nicaragua. But the USA? No chance.
But, hey, the actual point of this post is to laugh at the stupidity of Ray Comfort who acts as if he had a new (!) argument (!) like he did when he called the artificially bred, sterile banana “the atheists’ worst nightmare” (that’s a direct quote).
* And remember that the brain is an organ, too.
HAHAHAHAHAA!
Yes, those poor, innocent, adorable little “babies,” sitting fully formed inside the womb, wearing their baptismal gowns, waiting to be born.
Since you think fetuses are babies (a non-scientific point of view, but let’s go with it), and that killing babies is wrong, I presume you equate abortion with murder.
Please share with us what the appropriate prison sentence should be for a woman who gets or seeks to get an abortion. That would be, logically in your vision, murder and attempted murder. Five years? Ten years? We really want to know.
@ David Marjanović
I wasn’t asking what’s wrong with me I was asking what’s wrong with atheists who think that there is nothing wrong with abortion.
Yes, I understand that some cases are difficult. It doesn’t justify the taking of an innocent life though in the vast majority of cases. Never mind laughing at your idea of the stupidity of Ray Comfort take a look at yourselves. You lot make me laugh with you moral outrage at the idea that abortion should be banned because it takes away the mother’s right to choice. Right to choice – and what about the right to life of the unborn baby? Oh, right, yes, it’s not born yet, blah blah blah, so it isn’t a life is it?
And you talk about stupidity……..
And, incidentally, an unplanned pregnancy need not be a catastrophe. There’s always an alternative. Ever heard of adoption….? Lots of childless couples are crying out to adopt.
Innocent my ass. Or are you one of those sunshine and daisies denominations that don’t believe in Original Sin?
@ Jeane Claude
My colleague’s wife had a miscarriage last week. (She is very healthy and has two children.) In other words your god murdered her new baby.
Or was your god strengthening their faith by this “test”. Problem is, they are Buddhist. They are not cut up about what your god has done, but for some reason consider it a natural event. Sad but natural.
About 10 to 20% of all known pregnancies end in a miscarriage. But many miscarriages happen before the pregnancy is even known about. So yes, every year your god (who designed us in his image, remember) choses to kill millions of “babies”.
What a revolting god you have – by your own logic.
Jean Claude (#340):
What about it? On what basis do you assign rights to a human organism at the various prenatal stage of development? And on what basis do you claim that those rights are sufficient to outweigh those of the woman carrying it?
Oh, and if you’re going to try the usual anti-abortionist tactic of trying to focus the argument exclusively on the alleged rights of the foetus, here’s a link to J.J Thompson’s A Defense of Abortion. Just to get it out of the way.
And what is wrong with you that you don’t understand a baby is born, so killing it is homocide. Abortion occurs with a fetus, not a baby. If you can’t use the proper terms, you can’t have rational discussion. As your emotional and illogical screeds show.
Answer the question. Since it is morally wrong, it should be against the law. Or do you disagree? And if you do agree, what should the prison sentence be for murdering an innocent baby?
@Jean Claude
Maybe you’re a troll, but maybe you are a sanctimonious Christian bigot. I can’t tell.
It isn’t a baby; it’s a fetus. Get over it. You invented this crap.
On top of that it’s none of your fucking business and you need to keep your religious bullshit out of public life. That’s why the majority of America wil fight you tooth and nail.
It’s the law of the land and we’ll make sure it stays that way.
#337 & 340 @Jean Claude
Okay. Fine. So you, personally, are against it. Now why not keep your faulty views and ignorance of the science to yourself, huh?
Here’s the deal that you can’t seem to grasp:
Women are not skipping into abortion clinics whistling happy tunes, looking forward to the next fuck they can have after this abortion.
For the two women I’ve known who’ve gotten abortions, it was the hardest decision they’ve ever made. One of them was impregnated by a rapist, and is currently in counseling for PTSD and Manic Depression. Tell me… would you demonize her for what she did?
The other woman was forced into a life-or-death situation. You see, she and her husband already had two young kids. The second birth came with a number of complications, but even the doctors didn’t think a third kid would be a problem. That said, they didn’t actually want one. But that wasn’t going to stop them from enjoying each other.
So they went on all the protection they could afford. He bought condoms, she went on the pill and even the morning-after pill… and one day, all of this failed.
Well, see, here was the problem. Before the second trimester, horrible complications arose, and it became clear that the pregnancy was doomed. The child was going to die before it was born. It was barely hanging on as a fetus as it was. And this was killing the woman. So the choice was: have an abortion and save the mother’s life, or carry the child to term and bury both of them (and this was a 100% guarantee if she didn’t have the abortion).
What would you have done, Jean Claude?
Be specific:
1) In what cases is abortion justified, in your view, and why?
2) How would you punish a woman who chose to have an abortion in other cases, and the medical staff who carry out abortions in other cases, and why.
If you are interested in rational discussion, rather than expressing your sense of moral superiority, you will be willing and ready to answer these questions.
Just curious, Jean-Claude. When does the fetus become a “baby”. Is it a baby when it is a single fertilized egg? Two cells? Four? Thirty-two? How about a single, unfertilized egg? A single sperm? Oh the humanity!!!
And if the fetus has no nerve cells, how does it feel pain, have thoughts…?
How do you bestow humanity on a zygote without making reference to your invisible sky pixie?
Fucking drive-by cowardly motherfucker.
Now that the video is out, it is available to watch for free and unedited so thinking minds can decide for themselves. I’m not sure where “fraud” comes into the video… the historical facts of Hitler can be verified. It’s no big secret that Ray Comfort is a Christian. His blog, website, and videos; including 180, reflect his Christian beliefs and convictions so it is fair to say his views are biased… but then again so are yours.
Ed, biased is one thing, spurious and counter-evidential another.
—
PS Please stop equating all Christians with being slimy liars like Comfort; it’s unseemly and offensive.
(Why, one or two of my friends are Christians!)
Condemnation without investigation is the height of ignorance. Here’s the link to watch the full video.
http://180movie.com/
cmaglaughlin:
So, you’re saying his argument isn’t based on the conflation of abortion with the holocaust?
Because that’s the height of ignorance.
When a known idjit speaks, one doesn’t need to watch videos to confirm he is an idjit.
Okay then…
…Waste of my time.
Summary: it is a short film about an idiot having an argument with people in the street. With added ghoulish exploitation of the Holocaust.
The opening line is Comfort asking someone whether they have heard of Adolf Hitler and the response coming back that “no”, they don’t. Ray Comfort then claims to be Jewish, which is something of a half truth, presumably designed to counter critics who might point out that his use of the Holocaust is distasteful and exploitative. (His parentage is half ethnically Jewish, clearly he is culturally not.)
Most of the people asked early in the video seem to think that Adolf Hitler was a either a communist, mere moustache owner, or have no idea who he was. The Neo-nazis do know, but don’t have anything very productive to say about anything, and only serve to look angry and spout hate about Jesus-the-Jew.
(Aside: it seems odd that Comfort is willing to show footage of piles of the decomposing corpses of Holocaust victims, but feels the need to blur out their genitals. Odd.)
Comfort then proceeds to ask people to finish the sentence; “It is okay to kill a baby in the womb, when…”.
Then there is some tedious shit where he compares abortion to blowing up a building where there might be someone in it.
Ray Comfort then makes himself look like the ignorant, utter bastard he is:
“The safest place on earth is in a women’s womb.”
(Interviewee: ‘Abortion is okay in rape cases.’ To which, the response of Ray;) “Why would you kill the baby for the crime of the father. Which is worse, murder or rape?”
He dismisses the nuanced arguments of people who claim that there are valid reasons to have abortions with trite dogma and binary reasoning.
“You should be dogmatically against the killing of children in the womb. It is the safest place on earth a women’s womb, so why would you say it is okay to kill children in the womb” (Answered with ‘It is a women’s choice…’)
“We’re talking about a holocaust in America, in our country, that is sanctioned by the government.”
“Isn’t that like Nazi Germany… What Hitler did was wrong, but that was his choice, it wasn’t okay, but he did it…?”
After all of that argument, and forcing some of the interviewees to admit that ‘when you put it that way I guess it sorta is similar’ he moves on to his standard Pascal’s Wager, Heaven-and-Hell, we’re all sinners schtick.
In short, it is the usual Ray Comfort routine of haranguing people in the sreet with poor argumentation, offering dogma in place of reason, and claiming victory when he finds people unwilling or unable to argue back. Once again, I find myself thinking that, had I performed quite so badly in making my case, I wouldn’t be putting the video online for all to see.
All of this shit was in the trailer. This version just has more Boring.
@Nerd of Redhead,
You just proved my point.
And you prove my point that idjits like you listen to other idjits like Ray, and think they are smart.
I didn’t need to watch the video to know that all was going to be all fallacious presuppositions. Namely *holds up envelope ala the great Carnac*
1. His imaginary deity exits.
2. His babble is inerrant.
3. A fetus is a human being with status that trumps the woman carrying it.
After all, that is Ray’s shtick.
Don’t need to look to know nothing solid was given in evidence. Ray and real evidence are strangers.
All this was confimed by Bernard Bumner #357.
Of course the argument is chopped out, it is called wisdom and suspense! How else will this video go viral on a subject that has been made completely subjective. How else do you get deceived people to take a second look at the lie they have swallowed down whole? You know, even though you are afraid to post the entire video on your site, the way you presented 180 will entice your atheistic followers to watch it. Curiosity converted that cat.
Challenge….post the entire video. You may get 200,000 hits like Ray did in less than 72 hours.
Repent and believe the gospel
John Morales #353
Do you let them use your toilet?
Why? According to your own propaganda your god is a repellent, sadistic bully with the emotional maturity of a spoiled six year old. It doesn’t deserve belief, only scorn. And it doesn’t say much about you that you feel the need to believe in such a god.
Why would we believe in your imaginary deity, and mythical/fictional babble. I’ve read the latter twice, and Yahweh doesn’t deserve worship. That is one mean sadistic capricious mother fucker. Anybody who worships that monster is as crazy as it is.
Jason:
Why? I have nothing to repent, as I don’t buy into the idiot notion of sin, let alone original sin. As for “the gospel”, anyone who has actually read the bible can tell you it’s full of contradictions and based on earlier, polytheistic religions. There’s no good evidence of Jesus ever existing, at least not the one depicted in the bible. As for the big ol’ sky daddy, meh. Even if it was real, I wouldn’t have anything to do with such an immoral, sociopathic monstrosity.
Sorry Cupcake, no sale.
I regret everything. Bats are bugs.
There. Happy now?
Bats are birds.
Now I’m really going to hell.
Which one?
‘Tis Himself, Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls, Caine, Fleur du Mal (Your parents gave you fellas really odd names, no offense)
Thanks for your comments. I love you guys and hope you will stop worshiping your intellect, it cant’ save you on the day of judgment. I don’t recall how many times I have read the Bible, but the more I read it, the more I see it doesn’t contradict itself. The lie that it contradicts is weak. Greater men than you have attempted, with life long work to disprove the bible and they can’t. Prophecies and history can’t be un written. Please don’t use or pass on weak arguments. What you need to do is read it for yourself. If the book does not make sense to you, it is because you are perishing. Just passing on what the bible says. Also, complete side note… to help you all clarify, just in case you don’t know Catholic, is NOT at all Biblical Christianity.
Think about it. There is clearly a greater “personage” out there. We live in too complex of a uni-verse. Life is too complex, and the math doesn’t add up, there just isn’t enough time in 7+/- Billion years for all of this life to have happened. There must be a “God” out there. The greatest revelation of God has been displayed for us in the man Jesus Christ of the Bible. In His revelation, we read that He died, and that was not for Himself but for the sins of the whole world. I don’t care if you buy the whole sin thing, God does, and He is very concerned with sin. He is so concerned that He put on flesh to die in the place that is prepared for everyone who has ever sinned. On the third day, Jesus arose from the dead. That is the sintcher. I don’t know everyone in the world but all the folks that I know, who have died, stayed there. It is also recorded that 500 people saw Him alive after this resurrection. I don’t know how 11 poor, uneducated fishermen paid off the very powerful, very rich, very jealous Jewish religious leaders who put Jesus to death. These same religious leaders propagated a lie from the very beginning that the disciples stole the body and it is recorded that they (the religious rulers) paid off the guards to agree with this lie. Jesus rose from the dead and one day He will raise YOU from the dead too. Then He will judge you against His own life and the words He spoke here on the earth, that are recorded in the bible. He lived without sin. He rose the dead. He healed the sick and leprous. He said to love those who hate you and He said that, looking with lust is just as bad as doing it.
I believe in Him. I was raised in a wacky mystical, telepathic, mind over matter home. I was taught evolution in school and that I can find hope in myself. I have found all of these things to be lies and the bible to contain the absolute truth. Take care :)
I love you guys and hope you will stop worshiping your intellect, it cant’ save you on the day of judgment
sure it can.
already has.
I was raised in a wacky mystical, telepathic, mind over matter home.
translation:
you were indoctrinated into a cult.
there are ways to treat that, you know.
Bats are birds.
don’t forget that you can produce striped children if you mate in front of a striped stick!
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=1&chapter=30&version=31
I’ve tried to get friends to test this theory, but so far no takers.
Dear ichthyic…. will your intellect save you from death?
Jacob was breeding goats and sheep, not human kids.
Yup, raised in a cult…and Jesus set me free and gave me a sound mind and discernment and truth.
Repent and believe the gospel.
Why? “Bats are bugs” is exactly the result you’d expect from the kind of research done in the Bible.
“Bats are bugs” just proves you’re a Calvinist.
jason:
Y’know, jason, i’ve known a lot of Christians in my lifetime.
Many of them are dead now.
I’ve known many scientists.
They produce drugs and procedures that have more than doubled your lifespan.
I guarantee you, if anything can save you from death (or at least, push death back a few years), it’s going to be intellect.
Dear ichthyic…. will your intellect save you from death?
it doesn’t need to.
my intellect prepares me to make the most out of LIFE.
all your mental illness does is make you afraid of living, afraid of how a fiction will judge you, afraid of making a misstep and ending up in eternal torture.
Fear is the mind-killer.
reason is life.
Jacob was breeding goats and sheep, not human kids.
LOL
but humans are mammals.
and…
so you think you CAN get goats and sheep to produce striped offspring by breeding them in front of striped sticks?
really?
’cause that would be hilarious in the extreme if so.
please tell me it is!
Hey, Jason.
I have a followup question:
since it is obviously not the case that you can breed striped offspring by mating animals in front of striped sticks (and, before you ask, no, it doesn’t work for ANY animal, period), then I have a question:
Doesn’t that mean the bible was lying to you?
not just wrong, since even at the time it was written, I’m sure any goatherder could have told you he couldn’t breed striped kids in this manner, but actually LYING.
doesn’t it bother you that if the bible is the word of god, that god must then be lying to you?
if god can lie to you, what else might not be true in that book?
ichthyic:
Now if that ain’t a loaded question. Someone’s liable to shoot themselves in the foot.
Jason, greater men than you have tried to resolve the obvious contradictions of the bible, and have failed. The best of them have admitted their failure. The weak and morally bankrupt of them have tried to brazen out the lie, like you are doing. But only the gullible are fooled.
Now if that ain’t a loaded question. Someone’s liable to shoot themselves in the foot.
it’s inevitable, in fact.
ichthyic:
/nigel rubs hands gleefullly together
I can’t wait.
Since your imaginary deity doesn’t exist, you will be disappointed.
Lie two, #1 is your imaginary deity.
Lie 3. It was refuted years ago. Centuries ago…
Lie 4, postdated history and prophecy. You obviously have no idea how that thing was put together.
Lie 5, been there, done that, you lie like a cheap rug.
Lie 5. Prove that with conclusive physical evidence from outside of your book of fiction. Evidence that will pass muster with scientists, magicians, and professional debunkers, as being of divine, and not natural (scientifically explained), origin. No godbot to date has passed that test. You need the equivalent to the eternally burning bush, which can be examined.
Nope, Lie 6, there isn’t until you quit claiming, and prove it with solid and conclusive physical evidence. Your failure to lead with the evidence, and think your testament is anything other than showing us your delusions, is pitiful.
Lie 7, In other words, someone who never existed. Not making your case.
Lie 8. Citation from other than your book of mythology needed. Put up, or shut the fuck up.
Enough, you are too ignorant to understand what I have typed so far, being a ignorant and delusional fool, by believing in phantasms.
Jason:
How long have you been on the internet, Sugar? 5 minutes? They’re nyms, not actual names. By the way, I’m not a fella. Don’t be shocked, there are actual women on the ‘net, lots of them.
Oh dear. Lying already. Know, you don’t love us “guys”. You don’t know us, and agape isn’t real, Sugar. It’s a self-manufactured high and an excuse to proselytize. I know, I did my time as a Jesus Freak back in the ’70s at Calvary Chapel.
I don’t worship my intellect, Sugar. I use it. Doesn’t it ever once disturb you that your God only values you if you don’t use your brain, and prefers that you let it atrophy in a trough of repetitive tropes and the necessity of blind, unquestioning obeisance? That’s not a good thing.
There is no day of judgment. There’s death. What you have, along with a sociopathic god figment, is a deep fear of death. I’m not looking forward to dying, but it will happen one of these days. I’m not afraid. However, facing the fact of death is one of the reasons I know it’s important to actually live my life, rather than playing the brain dead zombie waiting for an imaginary afterlife.
Like most liars for Jesus, you haven’t actually read the bible, Sugar. I have. I studied it intensely for over 5 years. I’ve read it from cover to cover, more than 10 times, different versions in different languages. What you’re doing is not reading. You’re taking in little bits while swallowing whole what various religious leaders tell you what you’ve read. You are not reading for comprehension.
Let’s try a simple one here, using Genesis as an example. What did God use to create the animals?
Genesis 1:20: And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
Genesis 2:19: And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air
That’s a contradiction, Sugar. The Bible, all the way through, is stuffed full of them, on every subject. A whole lot of people have shown the bible to be absolute nonsense. Try reading Bart Ehrman, for example. He’s a scholar, a theologian and former theist. What you need to do is educate yourself and stop listening to morons like Comfort.
I’m not perishing, Sugar. There’s no such thing as a soul. Try studying neuroscience.
I can guarantee you that the people here have thought about these things much more than you have. Not only thought, but read, studied and learned about such things. It’s all possible without any of the myriads of gods humans have made up over the aeons. If you can manage to kickstart that brain, try educating yourself rather than swallowing lies whole. Here’s a good start: http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/
Oh and catholic? Please. I grew up catholic. It’s a load of shit, Sugar. The catholic church is also a corrupt, criminal organization which any thinking, feeling, moral person should condemn.
No, there mustn’t. Your god isn’t out there, nor are any of the other thousands upon thousands of gods you don’t happen to believe in.
We’ve already covered the bible nonsense. It’s a mish mash, compiled at different times by different people, much of it is a forgery, and as I said earlier, it was all founded on earlier, polytheistic religions. It’s also one of the most violent, sociopathic, immoral books ever written. It’s a chronicle of hate and immorality. Anyone who actually reads it is well aware of that and finds it to be no guide for an ethical and compassionate life. It’s a guide on how to be a fucking monster.
Oh sin again. Yes, that sky monster of yours is obsessed with “sin” to say the least, as if someone masturbating is the end of world. :eyeroll: I don’t care about your imaginary sky monster’s obsessions, Sugar. Do you care what the invisible fire-breathing dragon in my garage obsesses over? Didn’t think so.
Sigh. It’s all so stupid, Sugar. If God was all you claim, none of that crap was remotely necessary. I’m not going to get into every detail of just how nonsensical it is right now. One thing though – Jesus of the bible didn’t die. He took a short nap then went to sit on daddy’s lap. That’s not a sacrifice. It’s not death. It’s meaningless, a sham, a con.
That’s a flat out lie. You should stop drinking that koolaid, Sugar. There’s no record of this supposed miracle at all.
More bullshit, Sugar. You need an education and a sharp dose of reality, stat.
:Yawns: No, Sugar. Dead is dead. No such thing as a soul, remember? No zombie hordes, no zombie Jesus. That’s all make believe, like Santa Claus. Why did you tack on the bit about lust on the end? Having a hard time keeping your brain bleached, Sugar? Sex is fine, it’s good, it’s bloody fantastic. I’m not about to feel guilty about having sex. Zombie Jesus can find his own partners, then perhaps he wouldn’t be so obsessed with every one else’s sex life to the point of being downright perverted about it. Why is it, Sugar, that all of you goddists are so fucking obsessed with fucking? It’s none of your business what other people do, nor is it any business of your imaginary sky monster.
You don’t say! :eyeroll: Try to be less obvious, Sugar.
Uh huh. Even if that’s true, so what? People do grow up, Sugar, and make up their own minds about things. Well, most people do.
You may have been taught evolution, Sugar, however, I’ll lay money on you not learning one single thing. As a matter of fact, I could guarantee it. What a pity.
Himself,
Well, I do take the piss outta them.
Jason:
(Wow, every single sentence is made of concentrated stupid!
But I’m on a self-control binge; I restrain myself to but 3 mockeries)
1. The correct spelling is ‘sphincter’.
2. Yup. Clearly, being a Christian doesn’t save one from death.
3. It is also written that Christians are weak, foolish people who can’t cope with reality and therefore must delude themselves with a ridiculous fairy-tale.
John:
:snortle:
And here I was, being charitable, thinking Jason meant cincher.
Caine, let it not be said I’m always unkind to idiots; I helpfully provided a correction on two levels. ;)
Looking with lust can’t be as bad as doing it, because it’s not nearly as good as doing it.
And by “doing it” I mean fucking.
In other words, read the Bible and believe. If you don’t believe, it’s your fault.
As I said before, your Bible describes a sociopathic god with morals a mafioso would find immoral. According to the propaganda your god kills people just because he can. Go read 2 Kings 2:23-24. A bunch of children laugh at the prophet Elisha because he’s bald. So your god sends a couple of bears to maul 42 of them. These children didn’t assault Elisa, they didn’t threaten him, they teased him. Elisha whined to your god who decided to do some smiting. And you want us to worship this asshole? Not a chance.
Jason:
Huh. That’s funny. L. Ron Hubbard said almost exactly the same thing in his introduction to his book Scientology.
Huh. That’s funny. L. Ron Hubbard said almost exactly the same thing in his introduction to his book Scientology.
It was pretty clear that Hubbard was a man who could learn from the successes of previous cons.
He would have made WC Fields proud.
Two things that are funny
a) Somehow it being goats and sheep make it BETTER or less wrong?
b) The humor that you would be breeding for kids with goats
My new prison is awesome because this one has a toilet!
No you don’t. If you love me you would know what the most important thing in my life right now is. Go ahead, name it. Everyone on the board has been informed and they would meet only the bare minimum for love at most (no offense). Go ahead. It’s a big one. Anyone who loved me would know. Feel free to pray for the answer.
From what now? The Judge? Hey if I’m a good person and this judge wants to torment me anyway for not believing then honestly we’re all screwed. He clearly isn’t fair and thus there’s no guarantee he’s going to uphold his promise to you.
What were Christ’s last words?
Nonsense. Time can be rewritten |:)x
If the bible doesn’t make sense to those who don’t believe it then Christianity is a failure as an evangelical religion. If you can’t establish the truth of it without presuming it true NO ONE is saved.
Me thinks your grasp of scale is flawed. Do you have any idea how many times “Cheeseburger in Paradise” could be sung in a Billion years?
So you saw this?
HIM?
You really thought this was a selling point for the religion?
Look, being free from religious sexual guilt and being able to just casually ENJOY feeling attracted to people you see and have no intention of having sex with is a wonderful feeling. It’s one of the best parts of the human condition.
The converse of this would also be true and problematic; are you saying that thinking lust about someone is as bad as rape? or rather that rape is as minor as thinking about someone sexually?
You presume too much to think that just because you were hopeless and weak that we all were.
What about Job who was ENTIRELY in God’s favor and was fucked with just because. And then God had the sheer balls to LIE when Job asked why he was made to torment and insisted he was so powerful that Job couldn’t comprehend his mighty mighty ways and his reasons.
I guess “To win a bet with Satan” doesn’t sound good when said aloud.
Note. God had given Job favor and took it away without any sense of guilt or second thought. Do you really trust him to make good on his promise to you?
I don’t recall how many times I have read the Bible, but the more I read it, the more I see it doesn’t contradict itself.
denial is a powerful defense mechanism.
just casually ENJOY feeling attracted to people you see and have no intention of having sex with is a wonderful feeling
True, but then there are also the fantastic feelings of anticipation that occur when you know you have actually connected with someone that you share an interest in having sex with.
then there’s all the feelings associated with getting to know each other for the first time. The dropping of defenses, feelings of mutual trust and caring… all that in addition to the sheer physical pleasure of it.
man, human interaction is fo shizzle!
so many levels involved; so complex; so one of the important things about being human.
I wouldn’t trade it for a thousand gods.
the idea of attaching guilt to such basic levels of human interaction is perhaps the biggest crime perpetrated on humanity by the Abrahamic religions.
It’s simply time that we as a culture, as a society, as a SPECIES, give this travesty called Christianity/Judaism/Islam the boot, once and for all.
It’s time we turn our backs on ideas that do us no good at all; that rob of us the very things that make being human so fucking cool!
ichthyic:
There’s no way I can express my joy at this. All I can say is, “Yeah! What ichtyic said.”
So that’s what I’ll do.
well, it would explain why one of my cats blends in completely with the couch…
Jadehawk:
Well, if you’d stop buying your couches to match your cats, it might help.
That is, if the cats will let you.
Human interaction is fo shizzle!
That was golden, Icthyic.
Thanks for making my night.
any chance you’re going to provide some evidence for there ever being such a thing as “judgment day”? or for this assertion that we’re “worshipping” anything at all, and our intellects specifically?
you must either have horrid reading comprehension, or the attention-span of a hamster on crack.
history contradicts the bible. Most characters in the bible show no signs in the historical record; there is no historical evidence for a global language that split at some point; there is no interruption of civilization at the time the flood is supposed to have happened (and we have excellent, detailed records from a number of civilizations, most notably the Egyptians, covering that period; they all flourished right through the world-destroying flood; odd, no?); there is no record of a large number of Hebrew slaves existing, and then dramatically leaving Egypt; or of a pharao that drowned with an entire army (and again, our records on the Egyptian empires are very detailed and extensive).
As for the prophecies, those that were written after the fact are accurate when they’re “prophesying” the time in which they’re actually written; but hilariously enough, they then screw up the time-period in which they’re supposedly written. Hacks.
mirror, mirror, …
lol. I see. “Read the book, then you’ll believe me! And just in case that’s not going to happen, I’m hedging my bets and saying the flaw is in you, not my prrrrecioussss…. my prrrrreciousssss”
we know what the bible says, we’ve read it.
it’s Catholicism, not Catholic; and they feel exactly the same about whatever flavor of Christianity you profess to be. Not relevant, since you’re all more or less equally wrong.
I have
nope
you copypasted that from somewhere, haven’t you? or do you think that’s how universe is spelled?
too complex for what?
which math, doesn’t add up to what?
says who? all the evidence I’ve seen shows that 7 billion is more than enough time. Also, whence the number 7 billion? That’s neither the age of the earth, nor the age of the universe. Are you just pulling numbers out your ass? Because that’s not a way to construct a convincing argument…
nope. “god” is an unneeded hypothesis. Everything we’ve found so far has been quite explainable without it, and the god-hypothesis adds nothing to our understanding to warrant plugging it into any theory about the universe; especially without any evidence for the existence of anything that could be labeled a god.
speaking of history: Jesus isn’t anywhere in the historical record. Some “revelation”, that.
assertion without evidence. besides, according to the bible “sin” is something your god supposedly invented himself. he could have just not invented it in the first place, or forgiven the sins without sacrificing himself to himself (and one more thing: what sort of “sacrifice” is a bad weekend?)
God doesn’t exist. Besides, what would I care about whether some god “cares” about some random, pointless rules he’s established for how people are supposed to behave, which have empirically shown to make people’s lives worse?
again: according to the bible, it’s your god who invented the concept of sin, defined what is sin pretty much arbitrarily, and created people to be capable of sinning. Far as I can tell, that’s not “concerned”, that’s “sadistically and morbidly overinvolved”; besides, why did he have to “put on flesh to die in the place that is prepared” for sinners? Isn’t he the one who “prepared” that place in the first place? Is god not allowed to change his mind, except through weird performance art? If so, who’s doing the not allowing? If not, what’s the silly charade for?
eh. mythology is full of gods who die and come back. Some of them do so once a year. Jesus isn’t so special in that.
it isn’t “recorded”, any more than it’s “recorded” that aliens landed in South Africa and have been quarantined to a place called District 9
another one of those things that contradicts history, and is really just an example of Christian anti-semitism: you see, Jews weren’t allowed to put anyone to death in the Roman empire.
lol. you keep on using the word “recorded”; I do not think it means what you think it means.
asserted without evidence.
what the fuck does your cultic upbringing have to do with evolution?
Heh.
Jadehawk, “7+/- Billion years” is even worse than you make it out, since it doesn’t state plus or minus what.
I mean, 1 year is less than it, so it works.
So is thirteen trillion (ooh, sorry: ‘Trillion’) years.
And, indeed, so deoes any real number whatsoever!
—
(As well write 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 ± femtoseconds — it ain’t any less specific)
Jason
if you have not given up:
Jesus said (more or less) “And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church…”
You appear to be a protestant which makes you a blaspheming heretic which means you will burn in hell for all eternity.
How do you like them
applespomegranates?God:
(
So it is written. Iä!
)
hah! I didn’t even notice the +/-
now that I have, it kind of looks like 7 years, +/- a billion. That’s one hell of a standard deviation :-p
But God is even more complex.
And God is even more complex.
It adds up even less for the even more complex God.
And yet there was enough time for the even more complex God to have happened?
amphiox, the Idiot God is a Simple God.
(So it is written)
Ing
Heck, even I know this one.
Jason, thread necromancy is bad form. Even Jesus didn’t wait three weeks before replying.
@Therrin:
Actually, it’s not technically thread necromancy because someone else necromanced it on the 26th after Rasy Comfort’s movie came out.
@Caine:
I didn’t know you also went to Calvary Chapel! That’s why I’m so goddamn afraid of coming out trans to my family, cause that church teaches that you abandon people like me.
@Jason:
Finding proof of God and Jesus in the Bible is like finding proof of Dumbledore and House Elves in Harry Potter. It just don’t work.
Jason (368):
So perhaps you can point us towards all these other universes you’ve obviously examined so that we see for ourselves how they vary in complexity, and which ones are created by supernatural agents, and which ones (if any) are not. I mean, how else are you going to determine whether a universe of the complexity of this one is too complex to arise without the intervention of a supernatural agent?
Again, I look forward to your supporting argument for this bald assertion.
The rest of your post reads remarkably like Criswell’s opening narration from Plan 9 From Outer Space, and while less entertaining, nevertheless contains a few nuggets of noteworthy inanity:
Er, no. It was claimed by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:6, and is at best a second-hand, uncorroborated claim. Hell, it’s not even corroborated in the other New Testament accounts (not that that would count for very much from a historian’s point of view).
Firstly, if the Jesus character depicted in the Gospels is based on the life of a real person who ended up being crucified, then that person was crucified by the Romans, not the Jewish leadership. Secondly, even if they were poor, you make the additional and unsupported assumption that they had no access to funds from richer sympathisers or relatives. But thirdly and most importantly, you seem to be implying that the only possible explanations for the empty tomb are either that Jesus rose from the dead or that the disciples removed the body themselves. But the empty tomb story is another unsupported claim, and even if it was found empty, there are other explanations (e.g., that the burial was a temporary one, and that the body was then moved to a common grave without the knowledge of the disciples).
Which is actually the sort of thing that you would expect the disciples and their successors to say, if they had in fact stolen the body. But there’s no need to assume this, because (again) the empty tomb story is questionable, and there are other, historically plausible explanations for it being empty.
Which is a good reason for preferring human moral and justicial systems, which make a clear distinction between thinking about doing something and actually doing it. Your Jesus is simply being an authoritarian asshole here.
@Katherine,
You appear to have missed some words out there: see if you can insert the following words to improve your sentence,
1) …boring, obviously manipulative, predictable, contemptible, illogical, error-strewn, deliberately misleading, repetitious, unoriginal, amateurish…
2) …moustachioed-conman….
I’ll give you a clue; one of those phrases goes before Ray Comfort, and the other, after.
Oh yes, I watched the thing. It was not good.
(Personally, I consider his earlier comedy masterpiece on the Banana to be his only work of entertainment worth merit.)
@Bernard:
I also spelled his name “Rasy” XD
Katherine,
I think we should keep it – Rasy/Racy.
Racy Comfort, with that hair, star of self-satisfying videos with little coherent plot line and gratuitous, exploitative imagery.
It all fits so well.
@Bernard:
I like it! Racy Comfort even sounds like a pornstar. He’s even got the ‘stache.
Katherine Lorraine:
I was there in the tent days in Costa Mesa. I was one of Romaine’s beloveds and lived at Mansion Messiah in Newport Beach. I stayed until a few years after the church/school/Maranatha Village were built. Chuck was seriously starting to froth at the brain back then and when I went to Romaine and couldn’t get a good (or honest) answer to “is being afraid of going to hell a good reason to believe in god?”, I left. Never looked back.
Back then, Chuck & crew were intensely rapture focused. I was there when Chuck declared the universal bar code to possibly be the Mark of the Beast! Yeah.
Really?
How many pairs of animals were on the Ark? How did Judas die? Who is Joseph’s father? How many stalls did Solomon have for his horses?
Actually, I’ll do you one better:
I want you to go through the following list and respond to each one:
A List of Biblical Contradictions
Now, even I will grant you that some of these things are not evidence of the Bible contradicting itself. Instead, some of them are examples of the Bible contradicting known facts about reality (rabbits do not chew their cud, bats are not birds, snakes do not eat dirt, etc).
First off, prophecies mean absolutely nothing. The worst when the people show that Old Testament prophecies were fulfilled in the New Testament.
No they weren’t. It was just written to read like that. The authors of the NT undoubtedly had the OT to refer to while they were writing.
Second, there is no evidence that the Egyptians ever had Hebrew slaves or that those slave revolted. There are no extra-biblical sources for the 10 plagues. There’s no extra-biblical evidence of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, or Moses.
Third, there’s sparingly few extra-biblical sources for Jesus, and the only robust one (Josephus) was most likely a forgery!
Oh. Well ain’t that just damn convenient for you!
Question… have you ever read the Bible? Because I have news for you:
I have.
I’ve read it in English, Biblical Hebrew, and ancient Greek. I’ve participated in Bible studies, in fact. The whole book is one giant mess. It’s worthless, pointless, meandering, confusing, bloody, horribly bigoted (misogynistic, racist, homophobic…), rather pornographic (Song of Solomon, anyone?), violent…
Need I go on?
Which would make this “personage” infinitely more complex.
Planet Earth is about 4.5 billion years old. The universe is about 13.5 billion years old.
And the math is 100% right. There’s more than enough time. Anyone telling you otherwise is lying to you.
Out of curiosity… who’s telling you otherwise? Who’s telling you that the math does not add up?
What a bunch of crap.
The Bible claims that Jesus rose from the dead. The Bible claims that 500 people saw this. There is absolutely ZERO extra-Biblical corroboration for any of this. It’s all part of the story.
Also, Jesus is not the only demigod to have the distinction of rising from the dead. This was common, in fact, in Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Viking, and Celtic traditions. Jesus, in fact, is the last of hundreds.
Finally, the Jews were not allowed to put people to death. It would have been the Romans who did that.
But you never changed. You know why? Because you never escaped from any cult. You just switched from one cult to another.
I was actually listening to some religious radio while driving from Oklahoma to Kansas the other day (sometimes, that’s all you can get out there amongst the wheat fields), and they had Ray on, and he says the reason he doesn’t give away the question(s) in interviews is because if he did so without seeing the effects it has on people, you would be, “Oh, is that ALL it is?”
He compared it to when he does magic tricks for kids – if you give away the secret to how the trick is done, then the magic goes away.
As a magician, I can respect that. As an anti-Ray Comfortist, I agree… it’s probably about the bucks.
So are you saying that a baby isn’t a baby at conception? And if a “fetus” is a baby at conception is it wrong to kill it? If so or if not, what is, or from where does your reasoning come?
a fetus isn’t a baby until it’s born, so it’s just fine to abort it.
@daemian – thank you for your opinion but I was looking for fact. Can you back your statement up? And let me make sure that I understand what you’re saying. Are you making the statement that at no point in the womb of its mother there is life in a child so doing away with it for any reason, any time before birth is simply ok?
Facts? Don’t be ridiculous. This is biology. Everything is gradual with no identifiable boundaries except for conception and birth. Right to lifers have picked out conception. I picked out birth as the other indefensible (but identifiable) extreme. Both are unacceptable to society. Acceptable behavior is somewhere in between. And that is decided by the norms of society, not by some idiot quest after facts. Right now it’s acceptable to abort into the second tri-mester and under rare circumstances into the third. That’s the way society wants it.
But the other societal issue is that this IS a personal issue. It’s none of the right to lifer’s business, so butt out.
Oh, I see….so I am to let the crowd decide and not think for myself? Hmmmm, and your attitude of openness to dialogue with someone that might have a different prospective, something that I would expect to encounter on a “freethinker’s” website, I appreciate that too. It sounds like youre quiet upset that anyone dare come on your turf and “think”?
Truth is friend, I’m not here to bash anyone or cause trouble. I’m looking for truth too……it maybe that you and I are not that different at all?
You’re free to think whatever you want. Just don’t try to impose it on anyone else.
You’re also free to try and change other’s opinions. That’s how the norms of society evolve.
From your rhetoric — calling a fetus a baby at conception — I sense that you are a right to lifer (but surprise me). I presume your motivation is something Christian?
But good luck on this issue. You’ll find you are on the wrong side of history. Most of the younger generation doesn’t agree with you. But you’re welcome to try.
SickWithThis @ #428:
Well, not quite. The point is that the line that divides “OK to abort” from “not OK to abort” is arbitrary, and society (or “the crowd”) is free to determine which arbitrary point is a valid one to grant personhood to the fetus.
You asked a stupid question (“Can you back your statement up?” is a stupid question, given the arbitrary nature of the matter). You got a good answer (“This is biology. Everything is gradual with no identifiable boundaries except for conception and birth”). The problem is that you are not thinking. You are presenting one option as the final conclusion (i.e., life begins at conception) and now are trying to shoehorn “facts” to support this conclusion.
And the truth is that there are no solid, objective boundaries except for conception and birth. There are possible benchmarks (the point at which the fetus develops certain organ systems) but these are also arbitrary. Ultimately, the “ok to abort point” needs to take into consideration the right to bodily autonomy of the woman carrying the fetus, and that’s why “birth” is a more appealing point of divergence than conception.
Ok, now that we’re not just trying blast away at each other we may actually have a good conversation. What if your opinion or my opinion really doesn’t count? What if truth is just truth and the only part that my opinion plays in this whole thing is that if I’m right then when it’s fully revealed I’ll share in the spoils and if I’m wrong I’ll find that I missed the mark? The one thing that’s so hard to understand though is that there might not be an absolute? Not trying to “change” anyone BUT as for this generation, just from looking at the news lately, they might not be as smart as they think they are?
So according to your statement you really don’t “know” beyond the shadow of a doubt when life actually happens and are willing to leave it just open to interpretation about when it’s ok to abort and you’re accusing me of not thinking? What if I told you that I was going to blow up a building but I wasn’t sure if anyone was in it? Would you call me crazy? Would that be ok? Yeah, I don’t like the way the building looks so its gotta go. Doesn’t matter that people are in it…….or not.
@Sickwiththis
Your moral reasoning is undeveloped and at a childish level.
Actually you kind of hurt your argument there with that analogy. A building is an inanimate object whilst a pregnant woman is a human being. Let me repeat that. A pregnant woman is a human being.
The right-to-lifers get lots of traction with zygote=baby=human sentimentality, but fail every time at acknowledging the woman involved as a human being with all the rights and responsibilities of a human being, with all the bodily agency of a human being.
It may be an interesting and intellectually engaging exercise to play with the morals of the abortion sliding scale, but you lose when you fail to acknowledge the specific woman involved as a real (not hypothetical) living, breathing, actual human being.
@Rust – Oh, I see so now I’m just stupid and childish but all you’ve done is result to name calling. And just what is childish about my “moral reasoning”? Is it the thought that if you don’t KNOW that you KNOW that there is NO life maybe you shouldn’t abort?
@ange – thank you for not beginning by attacking me. First off, I don’t want you to think that I am trying to devalue the mother at all. You ARE absolutely right…..she’s a person. My point was not to diminish that fact but to pass that along to the baby living in her tummy too. Clearly many of you don’t see it that what ever is inside a momma when she’s pregnant as a living human being. All I’m asking is, what if it is?
Million dollar question……if it is a living, breathing, human being living inside a moma’s tummy is it wrong to abort?
SickWithThis @ #436:
No, it isn’t.
@437 please explain to me how it isn’t murder then…….
I kinda like hanging out with you guys……I don’t learn anything by talking to a bunch of folks that just agree with me all of the time. Thank you for your dialogue this evening.
SickInTheHead, I will fucking call you a fucking stupid pile of shit because you insist on talking in this way. If there was a fucking fetus in the tummy, the fucking fetus will get digested.
You do not get any bonus points for talking like a four year old.
You are not cute.
SickWithThis,
There is no reason to resort to child speak. In the interest of full disclosure I am a woman and I know that conception occurs, not in the tummy, but the uterus. I know that pregnancy may result in a human. This may bring it to a level you are not comfortable with, but as I woman I do not value potential life on the same scale as I value an established born life (such as a woman’s life).
It seems you may be missing the fact that women are informed, knowledgeable, and aware of their bodies. Also that women choose to allocate resources and these choices are not made out of ignorance.
No, of course it’s NOT wrong to abort.
Why on earth would you think that ?
What’s so goddamn special about the “human being living inside a tummy” [NOT literally inside a “tummy” but you knew that] that it gets to live at the expense of the woman ?
You’re free to donate your blood or organs to anyone who needs them. But NO ONE can knock you out and take one of your kidneys – even though you can live just fine with one kidney – even if that kidney is vitally required to save some innocent child’s life. NO ONE can force you to donate blood unless you agree. Not even one of your already-born children can demand to receive your life’s blood. Why should a not-born fetus have more rights than your already-born children ?
The only reason you think that the “human being” inside a woman deserves to destroy her life against her will is because you don’t think women are really fully human beings with full rights to their own lives.
In any true morality, the woman’s “right to life” wins over the unborn fetus’ “right to life”. A right to abortion is vital to protect the woman’s right to life.
SickWithThis @ #438:
Your question was:
Which I interpreted in several ways:
1. You have a living, breathing human being inside a woman’s stomach. Is it OK to abort?
In this scenario, the human being inside a stomach is not going to remain living/breathing for long, so it must be removed before it also harms the mother. “Abort” may not be the best term to use it, but hey, I didn’t write the question. So out goes the human being, and if it’s dead, it’s only murder if you can prove someone stuffed it inside a woman’s stomach.
(If you think this sounds ridiculous, well… you wrote the question)
2. You have a living, breathing “human being” inside a woman’s uterus. Is it OK to abort?
In this scenario, we’re talking about an actual pregnancy. So the fetus is not quite a fully developed human being (and technically it won’t be for another couple of years). At this point, the mother’s decision regarding her bodily autonomy takes precedence over the fetus because she is a fully developed human being with a distinctly developed sense of self. The fetus, on the other hand, has not fully developed in either realm.
This is not murder because the fetus is not recognizable as fully human, nor is it able to survive without the support of the mother. To grant the status of human being to the fetus would take away part of the status of human being of the mother, and as I pointed out earlier, the mother is a fully developed human being, while the fetus merely has the potential to become a human being.
@sickwiththis
Three things 1) truth, 2) fetus in the stomach, human life and 3) the next generation
Truth is an invention of the human mind and that’s the only place it exists. The rest of the world “just is” — and doesn’t care about what humans think. But your quest after truth in relation to the life of a fetus is pretty useless. Sure — a fetus is functioning biology, but so are all your other organs. You are making the indefensible jump to values, by imputing some inherent value to life beyond what humans have decided.
So what if a fetus is living biology? You are assigning some sacredness to life that just isn’t there. Like all other societal issues this changes slowly over the centuries and is based upon what society has found to work, not upon invocation of your favorite supernatural. We generally don’t kill each other because that’s what works best. And it’s remained that way for millennia, despite our propensity for war and revenge. But society has decided that the value of a fetus does not currently equal a human being. All tradeoffs considered — life of the mother, etc., it’s just fine to abort. You’re deluding yourself if you expect some “truth” to be revealed beyond what we already have in our minds.
As for the next generation, they’re no different than any other generation, no better, no worse, but every generation has survived just fine. I expect the next one will also.
Sickwiththis replied to @437 “please explain to me how it isn’t murder then…….”
Society has decided that this isn’t murder. That’s all there is to it. We make the rules. There’s no higher authority.
The biological machinery that will build a person is not equivalent to a person. Personhood is a status of sapience and sentience that requires an advanced CNS. Fetal tissue is part of the chemical process that produces a person. Aborting fetal tissue from the body of a living person is no more murder than aborting construction half way through is equivalent to trashing a car.
Bullocks. This decision isn’t arbitrary. It’s based on the very good foundations of personhood and bodily autonomy. You cannot ‘murder’ what is effectively a non-person. A potential person is roughly at the same ethical level as a imaginary person.
Furthermore, even a fully sapient sentient being has no right to force itself upon the bodily autonomy and being of another person’s body.
@Ing
huh? I think we’re saying the same thing, but I can’t tell.
Bullshit. the argument is the value of the mother versus the value of the fetus (not the baby, a baby is born). Some folks give the fetus superior value. I don’t, because until it is born, it isn’t a full human being, with the rights and privileges thereof, unlike the woman. It is a parasite living in the womans womb.
Sorry, can’t be done without diminishing the woman and her right to bodily integrity. You know that, so you are a liar and bullshitter by pretending that it can happen.
It’s not a full human being. It becomes one when it is outside of the womb and breathing on its own. End of story.
It isn’t. Biology says its a parasite, that only becomes fully human when it is in the human environment. Outside of the womb and breathing on its own. Basic biology. And fuckwitted leading questions are for losers.
Stupid question. It can’t breath until it is outside of the womb. End of story, except for your stupidity. Which we see in full action.
I’ll get back to you on that when a fetus breathes, mkay?
Your attempts at defense are damaging and imply that it is an arbitrary decision. By your argument slavery would be fine because society has agreed to it.
A) it isn’t
B) It wouldn’t
“Your attempts at defense are damaging and imply that it is an arbitrary decision. By your argument slavery would be fine because society has agreed to it.”
It would be if society decided so, and it clearly was in the past, but in the last few hundred years it is not. I don’t expect it to change anytime soon, but there are no absolutes. Expecting that there are absolutes is as stupid as the Christian’s search for “truth”
Crap. The fact that there are no moral absolutes does not mean either that morality is arbitrary, or that it is merely a matter of social consensus – any more than it is merely a matter of opinion that George Eliot wrote better novels than Tom Robbins. If either were so, it would be impossible to change anyone’s mind on a moral question by argument, which is clearly not the case; in both moral and esthetic judgements, it is possible to bring rational argument to bear on disputed questions by questioning both the internal consistency of expressed positions, and the support adduced for them.
I’ll make it easy for you Ray.
Locate and identify the soul,
determine exactly at what point it renders itself during preganancy,
and then you can say if and when having an abortion is wrong.
You better take notes Ray because we will be checking your work.
Nothing short of this will get you back even an ounce of the credibility that you flushed down the toilet.
Thanks for the entertainment Bannanaman.
Did I mention that you are being timed?
You said 30 seconds?
On your marks, get set, GO!
Fly crocoduck fly!
It would be accepted, but by who? Slavery hurts people, this is a truth, an absolute if you will, but it is not a moral judgment. A moral judgment would be that hurting people is wrong and should be avoided whenever possible, and is one which I find quite satisfactory. In that perspective, slavery is wrong, but I would not say that it is a truth. Some people would argue in favour of stability, growth, or some other metric to build their morals upon, and some of those would see slavery as a good thing. I think this is what you are getting at, but it seems murky.
See I was right. Stop arguing. You’re not helping and you have an amoral view of ethics, so please kindly stop arguing for a stance you do not understand nor do you hold. There are real humanists here who can argue well. You are affirming that the Christian prolife twit is right that he needs Jebuss Christmas for morality. You two are on two sides of the issue but both share the same undeveloped and childish morality.
http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=Secular_morality
Let’s all bow to the lofty Ing. He(She) understands these things better than the rest of us morons.
Helping who? you? lol
@Jonathan
The fact that I understand things better than people who are spouting obvious ignorance does not make everyone else morons.
I don’t have to be smarter than everyone else to be smarter than you, as you have clearly illustrated.
Ing,
Arrogance like yours gives all atheists a bad name. I bet Sickwithit is belly laughing at the atheist cat fight. grow up and get some manners.
I’m not being arrogant. I’m pointing out how he is arguing while buying into the same groundwork that is the theist position. He is ultimately arguing against himself. I brought the citation.
So you deride me for being arrogant enough to advise someone that their poor form is making atheists look bad, because it is poor form that makes atheists look bad?
Yeah, look, there’s absolutely no sense of arrogance in feeling smarter than you. Mediocrity maybe.
This place has arguments all the time, Jonathon. All it means is that it’s not an echo chamber here.
myeck waters:
Not it doesn’t.
(Hah! I slay myself.)
Compared to your ignorant arrogance? Think about that…
In case SickintheHead returns, there’s a big difference between human life and a human. You’re composed of billions and billions of living bits that are 100% human*. However, until they are all working together in a born, sapient, sentient whole, they are not a human being. It ain’t a Ferrari until it’s done a few laps on the test track and driven around Maranello. We’re a bit more lenient. I’m guessing that in most non-tragic cases nearly everyone here would consider you a human being once you make it out the factory doors.
But that’s besides the point. We are all entitled to the right to (as much as we are able to) control what happens in or is done to our bodies. How is forcing a woman to bear a child less a violation of rights than forcing her to abort? Don’t you idiots realize that giving a government the power to force someone to carry to term gives them the power to impose sterility?
*and billions and billions that aren’t.
How easy it is to create a straw man and then demolish it. Comfort’s argument is of course more complex, but he uses the socratic method to expose the fact that many people don’t know why they are pro-abortion.
The point of comparison also is simply trying to address the same reasoning that justified the slaughter of Jews or the oppression of slaves in the south. Dred Scott was denied his freedom because he was deemed “property” and not a human being. Whenever we qualify life we are in for ethical trouble.
Listen without prejudice and you may learn something. There is a reason why there are intelligent on both sides of this issue.
One of the smartest things that Comfort points out is an analogy I’ve heard from the pro-life side before. If you were demolishing an apartment building and heard a sound suggesting that perhaps there might be a person inside, you’d better make absolutely certain that this is not the case before you potentially threaten that life. Or to use another analogy, if you were hunting and saw a movement in the bushes, you would wait and make sure that that was a deer and not a fellow hunter before you pulled the trigger. Let’s cut through the rhetoric and the BS- If we’re unsure about when life begins, then you HAVE TO side with life. That may be inconvenient… but the ethical high ground usually is.
Fuck you, Dale, and your sucky hero Banana-Man, too.
You’re a disgusting bullshitter who is willing to have women enslaved and possibly jailed for murder (which is what your kind think abortion is) and even dead, rather than deal with the uncomfortable fact that we know the fetus is “life” while we also know that the fetus is NOT a “person” whose rights supersede rights of the pregnant woman.
We’re not in the least bit unsure when life begins, so you can take your self-serving BS and shove it right back into your ass where you pulled it from. I know why I’m pro-abortion whenever the woman thinks its necessary. Contrary to your bullshit, there is no “fact” for Banana-Man to “expose” about people not knowing why they’re “pro-abortion”.
I’m the real PRO-LIFE person in this discussion, not you. I”m pro the LIFE of the pregnant woman, and pro the LIFE of her already-born family, the ones whose lives will be ruined if their mother is not able to get an abortion when she needs one. I’m pro the LIFE of the existing family who will starve if another mouth to feed is added to the family. I’m pro the LIFE of the children who will be orphaned when sicko anti-abortionists like you insist that mother die trying to carry yet another fetus to term.
You, you’re pro-DEATH. You’d rather see existing children starve to death than to allow some less-than-fully-human woman (as you see her through your sick religious lens) to have control over her own destiny and to care for her own family without your power to interfere.
People like Banana-Man are the best possible argument for abortion. I”ll be happy to add you to the list if you persist in being a creepy asshole about it.
I bet Sickwithit is belly laughing at the atheist cat fight.
there are 40 THOUSAND sects of xianity.
if this was a “catfight”, wtf would you classify what lead to THAT?
How easy it is to create a straw man and then demolish it.
good thing you recognize what it is that Comfort does for a living.
oh wait…
you do, but you’re so heavily into projection you’re in denial.
my bad.
uh, see a doctor?
Complex???!!!
Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha…..
Socrates is spinning in his grave.
There is a reason why there are intelligent on both sides of this issue.
there actually aren’t to sides to this “issue”.
there is reality, and then there is random shit you clowns make up and then present it as if it were.
We’re not. Life began once, probably about 4 billion years ago, and has continued ever since. A fetus becomes a person at birth, when it begins independent existence, and brings its blood oxygenation up to levels where awareness is possible. Until then, anatomically and physiologically, it is a part of the mother and psychologically it is, as far as we can tell, nothing at all. Those are the simple scientific facts which lying fuckwits like you and bananaman deny.
Oh, SickWithThis, Dale and all you silly, so-called “pro-life” fools who may ever read this. Whenever you deign to stop and ponder the morality of abortion without acknowledging the life, health and well being of the woman within whom’s body is harboring the crux of your argument, you fail hard. No amount of clever word play can justify the exclusion of the woman from this equation.
Women are born humans with established lives in this world. Fetuses are not. Period.
^_-
Well I don’t know about anyone else, but I think it’s time for me to have a nice vodka cran!
Thank you spammer. Don’t mind if I do.
Funny how everybody loses rationality when someone opposes their position. I didn’t belittle nor disparage pro-abortion “believers,” yet when I propose a dissenting voice I’m attacked. Funny that- instead or rational responses you respond with vitriol. Of course we need to consider the mother, and this is why MOST (though not all) pro-life proponents compromise in cases of rape, incest, or when the mother’s life is in danger. Let me state categorically that what we are doing is qualifying the value of life based on our arbitrary judgements which allow abortion to be used in most cases as a form of birth control. As a form of birth control… and I’m the immoral one here!? Comfort’s point in making the comparison is that unjust goverments (including our own in the case of the treatment of Native Americans and African Americans) have always found a way to remove dissenting or inconvenient voices (or people) by dismissing them as non-persons. Just do the research. For a thought-provoking look at the subject, read “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift or the modern version by Franky Schaeffer. We’re not twisting words, but rather attempting to navigate a very difficult moral question. Try a little humility and consideration rather than vitriol!
Oh, and of course when I referred to life “beginning”, I meant the beginning of each human being’s. That, we know scientifically, begins biologically, genetically at conception. Don’t play silly games.
And your opinion is non-religious and rational how?
Nope, you don’t consider the mother a full human being with bodily integrity. You just pretend to do that for posturing.
No, what you are doing in having a fetus trump the woman as far as value goes. That is obvious to the most casual observer. And so far, you are seeing why you are attacked. You lie and bullshit.
Yep, you try to make a decision for the woman. You don’t consider what she thinks to be important. And your babble doesn’t back you up on abortion. So you lie and bullshit to present like it does.
No, you are twisting words. Conflating the word life with the relative human value of an adult woman with a fetus that can’t live outside of the woman. You keep lying to yourself, but stop lying to us.
You try a little humility, and quit trying to make decisions for other adults. In other words, you don’t have an abortion, but shut the fuck up when others do. That would be true humility that you expect from us. Remember the golden rule, which you don’t practice.
That’s birth, when the fetus takes its first breath. And that is what your babble says too. Illiterate.
Still you spit poison. Still I refuse to descend to your tactics. Every so-called “refutation” comes from your biased position, as arguably mine does (that’s what we call a concession- I’m not declaring that I’m right and you’re stupid- I’m conceding that I can see your side while not agreeing with it). I’ve tried to look at this issue from both sides. The foetus doesn’t trump the mother, but we’re talking about a life here… And again, if you want to qualify life as only those whom you would judge to be happy, healthy, or self-sufficient, then we are heading toward a very slippery slope. Heaven help those on life-support- they just stopped being persons. Heaven help the premature baby in an incubator- person or not? We can’t qualify life and make a judgement as to who is worth the label of “person” and who isn’t. That IS what the Nazis did, and Pol Pot, and Stalin, and The USA, and now we look back and say how shameful they all were. Shame on all of us!! Again, I return to Comfort- the supposed “tolerance” of “you don’t have an abortion, and shut up when others do” flies in the face of why we have laws in the first place- to provide for and protect members of our society. The measure of a truly humane society is how it treats the most vulnerable, the elderly, the disabled- those with little voice and no power. Who is the most voiceless? the unborn- they are unable to spit poison back at you while you call them “non-persons”, “genetic material”, “parasites”, etc. If people of conscience don’t speak for them, then who will??
Dale, you will rise to my level when you:
1) Stop lying about the biology.
2) Stop lying about women not being in charge of their bodies.
3) Stop trying to impose your religious believes upon the rest of the world.
4) Stop being a hypocrite with the golden rule, and apply it to everybody.
Then, and only then, will you have risen to the level of the pro-choice crowd.
dale @ #484:
That’s like saying you shouldn’t cure cancer, because hey, it’s alive! And it has structure!
Indeed, that would be a bad idea. However, nobody is talking about quality of life (real or potential) as something that should be considered when talking about abortion, unless you’re talking about the mother. The mother should consider whatever it is she wants to consider, and then makes her decision. Pro-choice is simply about saying that before birth, which represents a clear paradigm shift, the fetus is NOT a person.
Did they? Huh. And nobody told me! How does “in life-support” equal “non-person”?
Premature baby in an incubator = born = person.
Except that these groups de-humanized people based on ideology. Real people, with human connections to others and an unique personality and life experience. Not some abstract conceptualization of personhood that is simply granted to the unborn because they have the potential to become human.
Not to mention, you ARE qualifying life. You’re claiming that a fertilized egg is equally alive as a mother, which is idiotic. And why stop there? Why not qualify sperm and ova as alive? Is masturbation a crime then? Sex that doesn’t end in pregnancy? Are we holding funerals for miscarriaged fetuses?
You know who’s among the most vulnerable in society? Women. Particularly women who come from low socioeconomic backgrounds. They are among the people with little voice and no power. And anti-abortion ideology essentially strips women of personhood the minute they become pregnant. It doesn’t matter if it was accidental, or if they had a change of heart. You’re pregnant, you’ve stopped being a person and have become an incubator.
You know who’s even more voiceless? Children after they are born. Children are actually people. They’ve been born and are developing their bodies and minds, and are often the first people to be swept under the rug when it’s time to cut funding, or shift budgets, or restructure welfare, etc.
The unborn aren’t people. They have the potential to become people, but that potentiality does not trump the actual personhood of the mother. It’s that simple. You’ve fabricated a minority to suit an agenda, and the minute they are born you forget about them.
I am a person of conscience. And I know that the result of criminalizing abortion is: A lot of women dead because of botched back-alley abortions. And that is too high a price to pay.
I agree 100 percent that our society needs to do much more to help children in poverty and young women who choose to have their babies. Absolutely!
Nerd, did I ever mention religion??
Ze Madmax, you’re missing the point- Hitler and the other leaders chose to “dehumanize” humans based on their selective criteria. What makes dehumanization of the unborn any different? We can look back 70 years and condemn the Nazis, but Hitler sanctioned his “cleansing” of Europe of an inferior (not fully human) race, or races based on redefining “personhood”. Do we not see the connection?
Golly, dale, it’s because the unborn aren’t persons yet, so by definition they can’t be dehumanized.
You sure have a hard time with this choosing the correct words to tell the truth thing, don’t you.
Maybe that’s why you have such a hard time with the concept of choice at all.
There is no thing as an unborn child. Either it is born, and a child, or it is in the womb and is a fetus. Learn some biology, and you wouldn’t sound like a religious idjit, even if you aren’t, who is an ignorant fool on top of it all.
You aren’t making your case. Which is why a woman must give up here bodily integrity to a parasite. That is what the biology says. Stop with your presuppositions.
That a Jew could say “Hey, I’m a person” when Hitler dehumanized them.
Any being that has the capacity to understand the concept of person-hood and the sophistication to desire it should not be denied it. A fetus lacks both.
Dale, you do know that Hitler was on your side. German women were forbidden from having abortions.
@Janine
Unless they were Jewish or inferiors…because it was all about removing the blood taint from the population.
Hitler didn’t listen very well when the Jews said, “hey, we’re persons” though… and why not? Because it didn’t fit his paradigm and he didn’t need to listen to them. Dred Scott tried to fight for his freedom, but his voice didn’t count because he was property, not a human being. All of these comments and my retorts come down to one question, at what point does human life begin? You all sound cocksure that a foetus isn’t a person for various reasons (all of which are highly spurious) and I say again, that if we’re not sure, then we need to side with life. That is the most humane conclusion.
If Hitler didn’t like abortion, that doesn’t mean he was on my side. Perhaps he liked smoke salmon, too. But at least he got one thing right. Ironic though!
Golly, dale, it’s because the unborn aren’t persons yet, so by definition they can’t be dehumanized.
The foetus sin’t a human??
Can you point me to the foetus that is arguing for it’s rights?
I’ve told you the standard. All you need is a foetus that can respond to the question. Hell I’ll cede the point even if it answers “no” just as long as it gives any answer.
Genetically: yes
Physiologically: no
Socially: no
Tell me, Dale would you deny rights to a creature that was an intelligent jellyfish?
Life itself is meaningless. Life is nature’s way of keeping meat fresh.
We are to side with the preservation of persons. A person by all accounts requires a functioning brain to produce a mind. We don’t even have that until long after we’re born, we already err on the side of caution because infants are independent anatomically.
Ing, you don’t get to set the standard. A year-old child can’t argue for its rights, nor can a severely mentally disabled person. The standard is not your arbitrary measure. Sorry!
Physiologically a two-month old baby is utterly incapable of surviving without help. Physilogically, a two-month old foetus has a heart beat, a different blood type from the mother. The brain is developed by month 5. Where do we draw the line??
So Dale, I assume you want abortion to be illegal.
Please share with the class what the appropriate prison sentence should be for a woman who seeks or gets an abortion.
Suppose you find out that a woman is trying to get an abortion but she hasn’t gotten it yet. What should the state do in that case? Lock the woman up until she gives birth? Are you making arrangements for foster parents? Increasing the number of orphanages? Or are you just going to condemn the child to a miserable life of being cared for by a person who doesn’t want to care for it and isn’t ready to even if she wanted to?
The dehumanization of a fetus is nothing compared to the widespread misery that would be caused by giving the state the power to force women to give birth against their will.
That doesn’t mean that it’s entitled to use my uterus if I don’t want it there.
Why aren’t you busy trying to invent artificial uteruses? Then the whole question would be moot. Women with unwanted pregnancies could just transfer the fetus from their own wombs to a technological uterus replacement device, then you could collect all the darling babies at the end of the gestation and care for them yourself.
Perhaps I’d like our society to be less casual about abortion and stop treating it as a form of birth control. Yes, I do think we should do more to protect the unborn.
Sorry, careless reading: thought you meant “unborn baby” i.e. 2-month fetus, as the Forced Birth Brigade often does.
Doesn’t alter the content of my post, though.
Why not? Is there a problem with a standard.
No, a two month old can process it’s own nutrients and breath on its own. It requires aid in obtaining the food but physiologically it can preform all necessary functions.
A two month old fetus is an appendage. It requires nutrients and respiration via a third party.
The brain isn’t developed fully until 20-22 years give or take.
We draw the line at birth. Detachment from the host body. And since it won’t even develop the first shades of person hood until a year or so away this is erring on the side of life like you wanted.
We sound bitter!
It won’t get into your uterus magically.
As to your tone, please watch it. I am a father of two, one of whom is an adopted girl who was born with some minor birth defects. I love her with all my heart and blessings to the 16 yr-old who gave birth to her. Don’t assume I’m some kind of uncaring finger-pointer who wants to control you uterus.
It IS a form of birth control. Generally it’s what women do when they hit the 1% of the 99% effective birth control pills, IUDs, or condoms. Sometimes, it’s what women do when they’ve been raped, or learn they have cancer, or that their fetus won’t survive until birth.
What precisely is the problem with that?
If you don’t want the government to step in to force women to give birth, then you’re pro-choice. Shut the fuck up and stop acting like women are witless idiots who don’t understand that sex leads to fetuses leads to babies. Until you have the chance to gestate a fetus yourself, you have no right, NONE, to lecture anyone about the alleged “casualness” of getting an abortion. Fucking woman-hating asshole. Peddle your misogynist bullshit elsewhere.
Why? How is the prevention of birth due to blocking fertilization or implantation different from the prevention of birth due to any other method?
Why is YOUR standard valid but mine is not?
I don’t assume, I judge.
Would you want *ME* to have told you that you MUST have your daughter with birth defects aborted?
Yes, and that’s the part that upsets woman-haters like you: the idea that I might have sex, enjoy it, even get pregnant, and still choose not to become a mother. It just BOTHERS you to think that women might enjoy that degree of freedom. It BOTHERS you that pregnancy and childbirth is no longer God’s punishment for women having sex.
Misogynist asshole, like I said. You are transparent.
About the born, of course, you don’t give a shit, at least if they’re female.
@Dale
Off topic: what are your views on welfare?