That Anglican archbishop, Rowan Williams, is complaining about the atheists again.
I’m not avoiding the point that the coolness of atheism is very much in evidence. The problem is it’s become a bit of a vicious circle. Atheism is cool, so books about atheism are cool.
They get a high profile, and books that say Richard Dawkins is wrong don’t get the same kind of publicity because atheism is the new cool thing.
It’s difficult to break into that, but plenty of people are trying.
He’s making a very common error of perspective. I hate to break the news to all of you, but atheism is not cool. It’s not cool at all. It’s the domain of nerds and geeks and sciencey weirdos with beards and snarky women who are way smarter than the guys chasing them. We are not rock stars. We are not fabulously sexy (well, except for Brian Cox). We tend not to have loud movie star personalities (well, except for Neil deGrasse Tyson). Nothing personal, but if you put together a line-up of one of the Kardashians, Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber, Daniel Radcliffe, and Richard Dawkins, and showed them to the average person on the American street, most of our citizens’ eyes would light up in recognition at the first four, and look quizzically at the guy on the end. And no, it wouldn’t help much to swap in Brian Cox for Richard Dawkins.
But that’s the point: cool is a relative thing. Coolness depends on what you contrast it with. And that’s really Rowan Williams’ problem.
It’s not the coolness of atheism. It’s the lameness of religion.
Look at me. I’m moderately popular, and I’m a schlubby college professor at a small college. I’ve got a beard and I wear nerdy ties. I’m nobody. But stand me next to a priest, or a creationist, and the contrast makes me look white-hot and super-cool, even though I’m not. It’s been my cunning trick for years.
So the problem for Williams isn’t that atheism is cool at all — it’s that our cool/lame quotient rockets to stratospheric heights whenever we’re in opposition to old geezy wankers who are chanting antique gobbledygook about magic rabbis and dead people. And those apologists trying break into our schtick? All they are doing is making us look cooler.
There’s only one solution. If the priests just fade away and stop looking like such gomers next to us, then atheism will look much, much less cool. We’ll have to compete with Michael Bay and video games and porn for attention, and then there won’t be anyone chattering about how cool we are any more.
OH NO! I just revealed the secret to making atheism irrelevent — for all the religious folk to disappear into the woodwork. Now we’re dooooomed!
Yes, the lame quotient on the religious side is astronomically high.
The book publicity statement is pretty damn out of whack as well.
This post is cool, snarky, sexy, and geeky. But most of all, it is very funny.
Havent our minds’ eyes suffered enough with the hosing imagery in the previous post?
Here here…. Rowan Williams can’t even answer straight questions in debates with Richard Dawkins. And I feel for him, and the rest of the priests and pastors that got to study in seminary and get taught ‘Biblical’ history, textual criticism, and the history of the Bible itself, and then feel constrained by congregations that only want to hear that Jesus is real, and Jesus is love. I think when you compare the atheist popularizes and the religious, its clear who feels the most intellectually comfortable.
The vaguely humanoid toad fundie leaders who claim to speak for an Imaginary Sky Monster and want your cutest teenage boys and girls and your money, aren’t cool.
They do make good bad guys for movies and books though without having to even try.
And why did the atheist burn his mouth? Because he was eating pizza BEFORE it was cool…
Daniel Radcliffe is an atheist … but you knew that, as I’ve got this information from this very blog … so therefore you put him in there deliberately … which means, there is a secret meaning to decypher …
… so, that’s how conspiracy theorists start to think.
Excuse me, but I am a sex god. I know this because I wrote as such on Facebook only the other day. Also, why else do women wilt whenever they see me? Hah! Take that, Brian ‘professor’ Cox!
I’ve been waiting to be recognized as cool. Finally.
I don’t know, it’s kind of hard to say what’s cool in what context. I read one person complaining that evolution was often accepted by kids because it was cool, at least by comparison with ID/creationism, when he thought that evolution should be accepted due to the evidence. On that score, obviously most people aren’t going to be convinced by the evidence, as they’re simply not going to be that scientific.
And it is important that evolution be cool by comparison to rank bilge like ID/creationism. It probably will continue to be, simply because the latter are so incredibly lame.
Likewise, atheism can be reasonably cool, if it’s part of telling conventional ideas to fuck off. Most atheists aren’t all that cool, it’s true, but the idea of cutting through the BS and pieties can very well be cool.
Glen Davidson
I am cool! My mummy says so!
We do appear cooler than religion mainly because we do tend to have answers to questions. Not “silly answers” but ones people are beginning to associate with.
That and religion isn’t really giving itself a great name what with Christianity and Islam attempting to set fire to their own reputations as fast as possible and Israel every so often doing the same to the reputation of Jews.
The only people with relatively intact reputations in the west are the Hindus and other associated religions, mainly because people don’t get to hear about their crazy.
That and I would point out that Ricky Gervais and Dara O’Brien are pretty cool atheists. As are Penn and Frank Zappa.
I beg to differ, PZ; I find “nerds and geeks and sciencey weirdos with beards and snarky women who are way smarter than the guys chasing them” ALL ridiculously sexy–whether they’re standing next to priests, Kardashians, Brad Pitt, or whomever. Give me an atheist with a brilliant mind, progressive liberal feminist leanings, and a kind and compassionate heart–and I’m a puddle of drool.
Two things:
1. You ARE cool. Awesome and cool.
2. You ARE right, if the religious go away, atheism (and all associated cool) goes away with it.
No religion == no atheism == we go back to just being (awesome) nerds and (awesome) geeks.
I see it more as an issue of silliness. It gives me infinite amusement to think about the things Christians wholeheartedly believe and for some reason they can’t step outside of themselves and see how really silly it is those things that they actually believe in (i.e., the magic bearded man doing all his magical things, noah’s ark, adam and eve, etc. etc. etc.). So every encounter, argument, discussion I have with them it always just ends up being really comical in that you can’t do anything else but just laugh at the situation because if you replace all their statements with say a unicorn, or goblin, or trolls in place of Jesus then the entire silliness of the discussion becomes apparent to them. But at that point they just think you’re trying to make fun of them which I guess it’s something I cannot avoid. It’s just inevitable that they will get made fun of for believing silly things.
So if cool/lame can be defined as lame being the one being laughed at and made fun of and cool being the person doing the laughing, then HELLS YEAH atheism is cool. lol.
You forgot Sam Harris – he is sexy as heck. And deGrasse Tyson is also hot. Nerds are hot. And cool. Religion and all magical thinking (especially astrology) are lame.
Nice post. I have a problem with the Archbishop labelling atheism as ‘cool’, but for different reasons. It seems an easy way of dismissing nonbelief for the religious: ‘Oh, it’s just in fashion.’ Here’s the thing: atheists are persecuted around the world for not kowtowing to religious authority. I wonder what their reaction would be to having their situation regarded as frivolous.
If we’re dooooomed is something dreadful in the future, what is the present tense phrase? The dooming has begun?
And the sooner, the better.
“PZ: Its been my cunning trick for years.”
*** Act 1 Scene 1
Rewind some twenty, thirty years, PZ Myers in a basement contemplating a disected zebrafish embryo, random colleague walks by. ***
PZ(cries out): I have a cunning plan!
PERSON(stops, looks in the door quizically): Oh? What is it?
PZ: Now I know, I finally know, what is my destiny!
PERSON: *snark* Cutting up zebra fish the next few decades?
PZ: NO! It is my destiny to become a hugely sexually attractive famous and adored atheist, with my own band of science-minded followers!
PERSON: How do you want to accomplish that?
PZ: I will walk about in a beard, wear lame ties, and constantly mention cephalopods! I will criticize and engage in debates with creationists and pompous religious fools! I will be so cool! I will be the tentacled overlord! MWUAHAHAHAHA!
PERSON: Good luck with that then, I’ll just pop along, shall I.
*** End of scene 1 ***
Sort of the Limbaugh tactic of spouting nonsense that is unreasonably popular and demand to be hailed as brave for being so “politically incorrect”
Simon says:
Ah… I’ve got it. Daniel Radcliffe’s initials are DR, which stands for Delivery Room. Daniel Radcliffe doesn’t belong in the group to which he was assigned, which implies that the subject of PZ’s post is about to be born, but doesn’t belong in a delivery room. This in turn implies the imminent rising of a cosmic horror, too hideous to contemplate.
PZ speaks of a “common error of perspective”, which clearly refers to monstrous non-Euclidean geometries not of this word. He also speaks of chanting and magic and dead people, suggesting savage cults worshipping god-like beings in states of death-like sleep.
He finally speaks of doom. This can only mean one thing. Cthulhu is rising!
Iä Cthulhu! Iä Cthulhu! Iä Cthulhu!
@IndyM
To be fair, Brad Pitt *is* an atheist.
I don’t think that the coolness of atheism is the most important reason that Richard Dawkins’s own books outsell books like “The Dawkins Delusion.” I think it might also be related to the fact that Dawkins’s books are well written and interesting and usually very educational, while the other books really only exist to make money by capitalizing on Dawkins’s name to the tiny group of people who (a) know who Dawkins is, but (b) hate him.
Most people have never heard of him. The group of Christians who know his name and would pay for a book criticizing him is probably a lot smaller than the group of people who have heard of evolution and would pay for a book explaining it clearly.
Why would it be a problem if atheism were cool? That only makes sense if you’re openly out to destroy it whether it’s a tenable position or not.
Neil deGrasse Tyson doesn’t love you as much as you love him:
I wouldn’t have thought of the godless as more or less cool, but agree that placed next to religious people you can definitely gain some cool quotient simply by having answers.
I recently encountered a former middle school teacher who was in my high school graduation class many years ago. I haven’t bothered to tell him directly about my atheism since it didn’t seem relevant. But then he sent me a link to an awful video produced by Liberty University. It was an attempt to show that Fibonacci numbers were found in nature because it was god’s secret finger print. I don’t think he was agreeing with the religious content, just liked the pictures and the apparent relationship between say the number of seeds in the head of a sunflower and the Fibonacci sequence. I sent him back a rather pointed explanation of why the religious explanation was totally bogus. Now he is emailing me all the time with requests to explain other things and their supposed religious meaning. The latest is guantum entanglement and dark matter. I’m no physicist, but I can understand scientific explanations enough to make sense of them to others (entanglement makes no sense at all of course).
All of a sudden, I seem to be the ‘cool dude’ who knows stuff. I wasn’t the cool dude before. He must be realizing that I’m an atheist and is more interested than put off. A strange place for me to be. It’s nice to know I don’t have to upgrade my wardrobe either.
Perhaps Bishop Williams should appoint special “youth ministers” who grow out their sideburns, wear turtlenecks and love beads, and play folk music on flat-top guitars. They could point out how Jesus was a long-haired radical who didn’t trust authority, just like today’s young people.
Surely that will make religion more cool, right? Can’t you will dig where I’m coming from, Bishop Williams?
I think this is his goal. It is trivializing but it is also positive to me. Because it’s something he’s forcing himself to deal with, which means there is enough presence to make him equivocate. It’s “just a fad” is bullshit, and we know it. Because thinking for yourself has never been a fad.
It’s always been something people have had to fight for because there have always been people who will do just about anything to control others.
@ tkreacher
I had no idea–I stand corrected! :)
Atheist rock stars include Frank Zappa, Shirley Manson, Beth Ditto, Nick Cave and Bob Geldof.
I thought we were done with using ‘lame’ as a pejorative.
As for “not cool”, I don’t know what you folks are talking about.
I carry my lunch in LuluLemon bag—posting this is today’s “one thing that scares me”—wear pants that are way too tight and show off my boxer-brief lines, and the ratio of frame-to-lens in my glasses is so high my prescription simply reads ‘camera obscura’.
But, whatever. I like, totally don’t care about those sorts of superficial things. I just wear whatever feels good. No big deal.
Tyson could be bothered to edit his own page but not to click on the atheist wiki page link?
Wiki:Person X is bald
Person X: no I’m black
Wiki edit: alough claimed to be bald by many bald people he is in fact black
Makes about as much sense
PZ: I think the true secret of your success is you’re FUNNIER than the opposition:
“It’s not cool at all. It’s the domain of nerds and geeks and sciencey weirdos with beards and snarky women who are way smarter than the guys chasing them.”
I have to laugh when I see that.
Yeah, Lennox, Hart, and McGrath are real dim bulbs, so slow they can barely catch a cold.
You have heard of fads, haven’t you? Dan Brown was mildly good-looking, but that doesn’t explain the popularity of his schtick, either.
The real difference between The God Delusion and The Truth Behind the New Atheism, is that I know what I’m talking about. When talking about religion, Dawkins is Dan Brown with a British accent.
I know you’re really into this “cult of smart” thing — we Christians are stupid by definition, therefore I must be a moron. But what better explains your success, and that of Dawkins, is that you are good writers, and amuse people — sometimes, even when you mean to. That, and the fact that lies still make it half-way around the world, while the truth is putting its shoes on — we’ll win in the long run.
Atheism isn’t cool at all! Hell, I’m still pissed! I grew up believing in reincarnation and advanced aliens from the Pleiades with amazing spiritual/technological powers, guardian angels, Atlantis, lost Venusian civilizations. That was cool! I thought that if I progressed enough spiritually I would be able to remember my past lives, talk to my dead father, astral project to the center of the galaxy. So. Fucking. Cool.
And wrong. So stupidly wrong. So ridiculously completely fucking wrong. Instead, I now embrace real science, humanism, and knowing that this life is the life I need to live. It’s a good thing. It’s made me healthier, made me responsible for my actions and worthy of my good deeds.
But it ain’t cool. I want astrally project back in time to Atlantis and hang out with unicorns! But then, I want a lightsaber, too.
David Marshall
Hahaha.
Good one!
It’s not by definition, and it’s not necessarily relative: on an absolute scale, Marshall is a moron.
Ah, poor Billy. Life was so much simpler in the ‘good old days’ when you could simply burn the pesky unbelievers at the stake. None of this namby-pamby free speach back then…
What Archbishop Williams doesn’t grasp is that books like the God Delusion exist to raise public consciousness about the unearned, privileged position religion is granted in our society and lay out the case for why religion should not be viewed as somehow inviolate and beyond criticism. They do not exist as part of some kind of atheist ‘mission’ dedicated to the accrual of ‘converts’.
More often than not, it is not atheists or atheists publications that create more atheists:- it is the fact that religions – all religions – have no basis in fact, paired with the well documented abuses and corruption of the vast majority of those who claim any form of authority based upon the supposed will of an unevidenced sky-fairy, that leads many people toward atheism as the most rational and ethical course available to them.
Atheists don’t make atheists so much as religion – the true (and very, very ugly) face of religion – does.
What a wonderful example of how not to construct a logical argument. Just because people believe something – even if they really, really believe it – does not make it true. The fact that the church is persecuted in certain countries says precisely nothing about the accuracy of the church’s claims about the existence of a putative afterlife or the claim that a carpenter who may have lived two millennia ago was actually the superpower-possessing demi-god product of the divine rape of a twelve year old girl. Nor does it prove the existence of a magic vapour that is supposedly the seat of the mind, or that a Bronze Age creator myth is the architect of the entire universe.
It also does nothing to mitigate the harmful actions of the church. It doesn’t make clerical misogyny and homophobia any less repugnant, for instance. Nor does it make child-rape* OK.
I don’t think that becoming as annoying as the JWs is much of a strategy for improving the CoE’s fortunes.
That is a frightening statistic, if it actually applied beyond the small sample size. ‘Defending the family’ is almost universally recognised as code for rabid homophobia and misogyny. Apparently, we can’t have the gays marrying, no siree, because… um… marriage is sacred and… um… god hates queers. Or something.
Why is it that, while he says ‘greater recognition’, I can’t help but feel that he means ‘greater power’, particularly over what goes on in people’s bedrooms, and most certainly not limited only to the bedrooms of the faithful.
Then we get Cameron weighing in with his two cents worth and promptly proving, once again, what a prat he is;
What ‘message’ would that be? I seem to remember the Pope trying to blame ‘secularism (and thus atheists) for the rise of Nazism last time he was here. I wonder if Cameron really wants to be associated with such hate speach? As for ‘social responsibility’, well, I don’t think that Pope Palpatine is in any position to lecture on that, given the fact that he was so deeply involved in the cover up of clerical child rape, and still refuses to acknowledge the Catholic Church’s culpability in the matter, favouring blaming homosexuals or hippes or basically anyone else.
And let us not forget his stance on contraception. By propogating lies about condoms, he has further exacerbated the acute and chronic overpopulation of many poor countries, thus contributing to ongoing poverty and the continued lack of opportunities and equality for women in those cultures, and is indirectly responsible for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of preventable deaths through HIV transmission.
Ratzinger is hardly the poster child for responsibility. He is a wretched example of inflexible dogma trumping reason, ethics and compassion.
Apologies for the lengthy post.
* Yup. Anglican priests have been caught at it too.
“I have a plan so cunning, you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel.”
Thanks for the humor, PZ. My day has been…fml.
No, because you’re a fallacy-spouting ignoramus you’re functionally a moron. Can’t even get that right, can you, dolt?
Glen Davidson
Ah, DM drops another turd. The long run has been the past 2000+ years. In case you haven’t noticed, the ‘long run’ trend is not going the way of the religobots.
How’s that feel? Knowing that someday, most religions of today will probably be comparable to what the greek, norse, and other religions of the past are now.
I for one think Dawkins is a hottie.
David Marshall:
Ah. I see you like to steal from those much more intelligent than you. That’s a good ploy, when you have very little original material yourself.
Really, though, the reason atheism is growing, and Christianity is shrinking, is because atheism is simply more logical than theism. Lennox, Hart, and McGrath may be intelligent, but they are also deluded. Charles Manson is generally considered on smart fucker. That certainly doesn’t make his ideas right.
It’s easy to point out where theism in general, and Christianity specifically, fail. The entire metaphysics of Christianity is based on question-begging. Every single shred of apologetics used to defend Christianity is based on fallacious and specious assumptions, with nothing of substance supporting them. No matter how logical the conclusions, the conclusions are suspect simply because they are based on faulty axioms.
So, your assertion that atheists believe Christians are “stupid by definition” is simply wrong. Some are smart. Some are not. The only thing they have in common is that their theology is based on poor assumptions.
But good try. You go on believing what you will. Go on stealing from your betters. Pretend you are superior because you believe in the sublimely ridiculous, if that makes you feel better.
So the Archbishop is going for the “it’s all just a phase” gambit. Mighty long “phase” on my part, 44.5 years so far.
There’s so much fail in what DM posted, but this bit he quoted:
he was unable even to parse correctly. David, PZ’s saying the snarky (atheist) women are way smarter than the guys chasing them. You, of course, interpreted to mean that PZ thinks atheists are oh so much smarter than the Christians. Maybe have a complex about being a bit dull-witted, though, so we should excuse you.
Williams has it wrong: what’s “cool” in religion is being cool — meaning in the middle between hot and cold. “Whatever people want to believe is fine with me” — otherwise expressed as “whatever.” Believe in God? That’s fine. Don’t believe? That’s fine. The most important thing — the sine qua non of being “cool” — is that you shut up about it.
Don’t argue for a position. You can state yours — but only casually, as a minor little mention. “The Ultimate Meaning in Life is God, which grounds all Being and gives worth to all things and without which there is no Hope, Love, or Purpose: but your mileage may vary. Whatever.”
“Fundamentalists” are loosely defined, among the Cool, as “people who tell others they’re wrong.” They care about the issue. That includes Fred Phelps and Richard Dawkins. People have the right to their “faith” — which means they have a right to remaining untouched by any breath of criticism, analysis, or serious discussion. The Cool never, ever tell anyone their religion might be wrong. It’s always “I believe differently — but that’s no problem. I respect your belief. I leave it alone. I don’t care. It’s all cool.”
The Cool are in the middle between the extremes. They can sneer at both sides while staying completely out of the debate and keeping all their passion for the people who already agree with them. Doesn’t Williams know that?
If not, then he’s uncool himself.
The limit of Atheism/Religion, as Religion goes to zero coolness, tends toward infinity, or something like that.
Tell us again that you’re an historian, Dave. I want to see just how fast that one makes it halfway around the world.
Don’t get me wrong: I do consider it a step up for you to add ‘quotes folk sayings and calls them fact’ to your resume—’constantly name drops’ was beginning to look a little lonely. But the only way you’d be able to say something cogent about great minds is if one of them hollowed you out and used you like a ventriloquist’s dummy.
PZ: I would have expected a better come back than that, but we all have our down days.
Care to debate a “moron?”
How about the proposition, “Christianity has done the world more good and less harm than atheism?”
Or how about, “PZ Myers trusts too much in incompetent historians?”
Or we can debate my intelligence, if that’s all the better you can do, and you don’t mind me holding all the cards AND the better looks.
Ah, buck up, Marshy, you’ll say something smart someday.
Well, probably not.
But it could happen, however unlikely.
Glen Davidson
Brownian, I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again (’cause I repeat myself when I’m drunk): I want to have your children. Very, very, much.
So, let me know when I can come and get them.
David Marshall #46 wrote:
No. How about “does God exist?”
If it doesn’t, then all your other arguments are moot. And we will win in the long run.
Focus.
“It’s the domain of nerds and geeks and sciencey weirdos with beards and snarky women who are way smarter than the guys chasing them.”
I am offended by this blanket statement, PZ. I am no where near smart enough to consider myself a nerd.
That being said the atheists are the cool ones. Seriously, have you ever even tried to get group sex started with a bunch of conservatives?
@28:
Also Eddie Vedder, Nick Mason, and a number of others.
It’s more of a stimulus/response sort of thing with Marshall. He reads something on Pharyngula, and then he drops some names. The context doesn’t matter—he just drops some names, and that’s it: an appeal to authority. That’s what he thinks an intelligent argument is: finding the smartest collection of names he agrees with, and latching on like a remora.
Read through his posts here and see how often he drops names without even bothering to assert the positions of the individuals behind them. Remember that line by Vezzini in The Princess Bride? “Let me put it this way: have you ever heard of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates?” That’s all he does here.
We all do this to some degree, but David Marshall makes it abundantly clear that, for all his blather about being a Christian, it’s other Christian apologists who occupy his waking thoughts and give him reason to continue, not Jesus.
I think the citizens of Carcassone, Jerusalem, and Magdeburg, among thousands of others, would beg to differ with you on that. As would the European Jews of the 20th Century.
@ Gregory Greenwood: Bravo–wonderful post.
OT question: it’s 4:54 PM here in NYC; why are the time stamps on the comments 4 hours ahead?
Where is Josh? He needs to make short work of Dingleberry Marshall.
Hey David Marshall, guess what? Looks are also relative.
You want to dance this dance? This can be decided by a squeeze-off.
Groud Rules/ How to play:
-At the sound of “Go”, the contender must flex their butt muscles in hopes of attracting the most amount of desired sexual partners as possible.
I don’t think you want to step into my arena; I’ve launched a thousand ships, piloted by middle-aged women, with this ass.
Hardly an original proposition, Marshall… it’s been done several times, like this example, which admittedly is catholic-church-centric in focus… but they all pretty much end up the same way.
“and latching on like a
remoracandiru”There, fixed it for you! :-)
David Marshall @ 31;
Intelligence does not amount to infallibility. They are smart people. They just happen to be wrong in this instance because the evidence does not support their claims.
Atheism has quite the half-life for a fad. There have been atheists for thousands of years, despite the best efforts of charming theists like the inquisition to torture and murder them out of existnce. All over the world there are atheists who risk at best social ostracision and a loss of opportunity in their personal and professional lives, and at worst murder at the hands of fanatics (quite possibly with tacit or even open state sanction), all in the name of this passing ‘fad’. Hardly the same as blue being the new black, is it?
On what basis do you claim to know what you are doing, and that Professor Dawkins does not? As a scientist, Professor Dawkins is used to evaluating evidence and its ability, or otherwise, to support a hypothesis. As an evolutionary biologist, he has an intimate knowledge of the mechanisms by which living organisms develop. This seems like a very strong basis on which to say that he knows what he is talking about to me.
There is no ‘cult of smart’. Most atheists are rationalists, and rationalists value evidence. The evidence does not support religious truth claims of any stripe. I am in no position to comment on whether you are a moron or not. ‘Christians’ are a very diverse group. Some are intelligent, some are less so, but none have any evidence for their religious truth claims.
This quote is hardly appropriate. You are conflating your religious ‘truth’ (your unevidenced beliefs) with the interpretation of reality that best fits the available evidence – the ‘factual truth’ for want of a better phrase. The two are not equivilant. We do not share whatever ‘pesonal revelation’ lead you to your religion. We can only be convinced by evidence, and even then all conclusions are tentative and subject to reassessment should the evidence change. We do not trade in the absolute, so-called ‘revealed truths’ of religion.
Also, I am curious. How would you define ‘winning in the end’? you cannot hope to convince everyone, because without evidence the rationalists will never be convinced. How else would you ‘win’? Without trying to silence dissenting voices, that is?
I cannot speak for all atheists, but for me this is not about ‘winning’, in the sense of any final defeat or destruction of religious belief. The future I would want to see would still have religious people in it, it would simply be the case that religion could never be used as a source of authority, a basis for discrimination, or a means to accrue unccountable power. People could believe anything they want, but they couldn’t call it the truth without first making a rational case supported by evidence as to why it should be considered such. No more people would die or lives would be ruined to answer questions no more relevant than how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
I do not remember who said it, but the following sentiment about the US Republican Party is applicable to religion;
‘You are entitled to your own opinions, but you are not entitled to your own facts’.
mikeg:
Hell. You’ve launched me with that ass.
You think you’re going to win with wankery like that? It’s like you seriously stopped and thought to yourself, “Think, Davey, think: what worked when you were fourteen?”
The problem with someone like you, Marshall, is that you don’t even recognise that you tripped over your own fucking shoes while stepping into the ring.
Is that your attempt at ‘fronting’, or do you think question-begging is just as reasonable as appealing to authority?
You’d best stop hanging around so many Christian apologists like yourself, David. You’re beginnning to believe your own bullshit.
Right. Live David’s got the courage to stick to the real argument. Even Christians know “the armour of Christ” is just a figure of speech.
DM #31:
Unfortunately you’ve yet to show us that you know what you’re talking about. You’ve set up a strawman atheist and attack it quite proficiently. Unfortunately, we real Gnu Atheists don’t recognize the atheist you’re beating into the ground. It certainly doesn’t resemble any of us.
Christians are not necessarily stupid. You may be, but that’s you, not Christians in general. No, what Christians, and all other goddists, are is delusional. You believe in a figment of the imagination and think it’s somehow real. That’s delusion, not stupidity.
Gregory Greenwood:
QFFT.
Meh, the atheist booksales combined don’t even get close to people like Rick Warren. The Purpose Driven Life sells over 52 million copies. Kind of puts the popularity of The God Delusion (which as far as I can see, is around 2.5 million) into perspective.
Atheism isn’t cool, it’s a niche market that’s been largely untapped until the last 5 years or so.
Nigel,
Awww yeah! Do you home brew?
Gregory Greenwood #58
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
[David Marshall is busy compiling a list of smart people who he can claim think he’s smart, which he will paste here because he thinks that’s an argument.]
Matt Damon is cool, sexy, smart, and does not rely on skygawds and other doodads to guide his life (other than special effects in movies — but we know those are manmade).
Furthermore, Matt Damon’s mother is cool.
Damon is not taken in by the libertarian version of capitalism.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFHJkvEwyhk
Damon also knocks “intrinsically paternalistic” views. He has come out against the misogyny of James Bond films.
We should find out if Matt Damon’s mother is an atheist.
And …. if your mother is cool, does the cool rub off on the spawn?
Damon is cool because he’s smart and well-informed, so take that Rowan Williams
No, not stupid — and I think it’s more a matter of confusion than delusion in many cases. We’re into clarity.
Consider a group of people who believe in the Loch Ness Monster and seem to have got it fixed into their heads that the Loch Ness Monster is like the proposition “it is good to help endangered species.” Attempts to get them to consider other explanations for Monster sightings — or even to get them to describe what the monster is supposed to look like or what it’s supposed to be or how it’s supposed to live — all end up sidetracked by impassioned defenses of appreciating the interconnectedness of the environment and plaintive appeals to empathy for animals and sneering condemnations of those who want to hunt for values with sonic radar.
The time stamps are now Greenwich Mean Time, aka GMT, UTC, or Zulu time.
Dunning-Kruger Effect. ;)
@ ‘Tis: Thanks. And that was a dumb question on my part. :/ (I was expecting USian time stamps on this blog…)
I’ve already heard this one. Maybe we can ask the question about countries? Then we could talk about how evolution is essentially an English tradition, but without the French we could never have known about oxygen, and so on.
Because that’s exactly how this sort of “debate” usually goes. Only with countries, I think you might notice how vapid it actually is to scramble for triumphs and failures for one flag or another without any real overview or context to show how they matter.
And if you don’t notice, at least it wouldn’t be the exact same zombie argument raised a thousand times before.
This will only happen, I think, if the profit motive is taken out of religion. Calling attention to yourself is almost a prerequisite for making money, at least in the service industry.
David Marshall says:
I presume that was sarcasm, but it’s substantially true. However, in the case of Lennox and McGrath, it would be more accurate to describe them as “washed up”. Lennox used to be a mathematician; now he trades on his residual scientific reputation to bleat out stupidest-of-the-stupid creationist canards to gullible audiences. McGrath achieved a doctorate in Physics, but has done nothing of note since. (Incidentally, why do you never get washed up theologians becoming mathematicians or physicists?)
I’m not sure who you mean by Hart. I hope you have someone better in mind that that pompous gasbag David Bentley Hart, whose only discernible talent is the ability to take the single argument “Dawkins is an idiot” and extend it into vast diatribes of pretentious sneering.
Keep telling yourself that. It’s a more palatable truth than the fact that The God Delusion is a best-seller, whilst your vanity-published dreck is read by no one.
If you want people to start respecting your awesome debating skills, why not actually present some proper arguments, rather than indulging in your usual empty boasting?
ROTFLMAO!
I’m with comments 49 and 52. Cut the arguments from authority and from consequences. Show us there’s a god, or you might as well go to Sweden.
Hey, don’t knock Daniel Radcliff, he’s a major nerd.
He can sing the elementsong;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSAaiYKF0cs
He also was quite interesting on QI.
Admittedly, Rowan is implicitly talking about the UK*. I really don’t think The Purpose Which Is Called “Driven Life” Because It’s Missing A Fucking Hyphen And A Fucking Copyeditor has sold many copies there.
* Americans have no monopoly on confusing their country with the whole world.
[David Marshall, fingers tired from Control-C-ing the positive reviews on his Amazon.com page, checks in, sees that PZ hasn’t accepted his challenge to fisticuffs behind the bleachers at 3:00, and breathes a sigh of relief.]
@ David Marjanović:
The Purpose Which Is Called “Driven Life” Because It’s Missing A Fucking Hyphen And A Fucking Copyeditor
Hee hee hee. I love you for this.
Seriously though, who doesn’t think that their position is right? There are dozens of responses to The God Delusion, and I wonder how many of them have their author think that “I’m less informed on the topic than Dawkins is.” That’s the bias of personal introspection, we think it makes sense to us when we can clearly see where others went wrong.
It might be that you’re better informed on religion than most, but are you in a way that matters? I’m sure pretty much every astrologer is more informed on astrology from I – I have no idea what the difference between the Age of Aquarius and Age Of Pieces means. Yet I’m pretty confident that astrology is hokum. Because while I know little about the details of astrology, I have a reasonable understanding of physics, astronomy and biology. I have read about studies done that looked at the empirical merits of astrology. And from those, no matter how deeply I look into astrology, those scientific problems are not going to go away. Actually knowing what you’re talking about when it comes to astrology doesn’t make astrology any less relevant to the case for astrology.
There’s a wonderful moment in a BBC live astronomy programme with Brian Cox and Dara Ó Briain where they show a video from the night before of their outside observer as he turned having just missed a shooting star. Brian mentions that it’s “almost as if he knew”, sees Dara’s cold stare and says “but that would be woo woo, and we don’t believe in that”.
(All from memory, so I could easily be wrong on the quotes.)
Hey – I’d always been told that you Murricans didn’t know the word “wanker”, that it was totally rightpondian. You’re not a hasher, are you, PZ?
Perhaps it’s the comfort of one sort of delusion that makes one comfortable with others. For instance, Rowan Williams trots out this tired turd:
It’s the old “but why would people die for it if it weren’t true?” argument Christians like to use, when dazzled by their own god-inspired brilliance they forget that nearly every major faith (and no small number of minor ones), has had adherents sacrifice themselves for their devotion.
Most teenagers grow out of the “I’m the only one who’s ever felt this way” self-centredness, but it seems integral to the arguments of shitty apologists.
How does that work? Plenty of smart people believe in the healing powers of alt-med; plenty of smart people believing in psychics and other mystical mental powers; plenty of smart people fall for scams; plenty of smart people believe in conspiracy theories; etc. Part of Dawkins book, along with many others, has been to look at why smart people come to believe in such beliefs. Part of the message of the sceptic and atheist literature has been just how easily it is we can be fooled. The only book I’ve read where it’s come out and said it’s because people are stupid was S. T. Joshi’s God’s Defenders.
There is a difference between a stupid belief, and a stupid person. Homoeopathy is by all accounts a huge steaming pile of bullshit, yet it’s researched, defended, and pushed by very smart people.
I was having a good day until I read this. Now I’m having a frikkin’ awesome day.
The line about smart, snarky women made me smile. Thank you so much for noticing.
Which is why I tried to give global sales figures. As far as I can see, The God Delusion has sold just over 2 million in English, and sold a few hundred thousand in others (the only figures I could find were from the German edition).
IndyM @ 62;
It doesn’t sound like such a bad vision of the future, if I do say so myself, and yet so many theists seem to assume that it is all just a front, and we baby-eating atheists are actually already planning the re-education camps for when the Grand Council of the High Priests of Atheism seizes power…
‘Tis Himself, OM @ 65;
Thanks for the catch.
So the lineup is: Liar, Liar, and a cool guy with a beard not on fire.
David Marshall #31
No, it’s completely voluntary.
@ Gregory Greenwood:
I totally agree with you. It’s a logical, rational, and tolerant vision of the future; however, theists absolutely can’t bear it when anything threatens their vision of a Norman-Rockwell-God-Fearing-Land-Ff-The-Free-Brave-Straight-And-White-AMERICA (which never really existed). It makes me so tired. Why are facts and logic so frightening to these people…?
Because they have been taught, from the moment they could talk, to believe in something which directly contradicts observable reality, has no basis in fact, no basis in history (Christianity itself has a basis in history, what it is based on left absolutely nothing in the historical record (though the Old Testament does have a basis in history — it completely contradicts much of what we know)), and is completely and totally illogical.
Or, shorter, they are Christians. And reality and Christianity are mortal enemas.
IndyM @ 90;
Oddly, I think the fact that their idealised vision of America never really existed may be part of the appeal to them – they value what they see as the clean cut fantasy over the messy reality. They have an astounding ability to simply ignore anything that runs counter to their worldview. Thus, the idealised America-that-was is and will always remain the ‘shining city on the hill’ – the perfect ‘greatest country’. Little glitches like slavery and the attempted genocide of indigenous American peoples can be brushed aside as unimportant when set against the aspirational quality of the American dream. Of course, the American dream is only a dream if you are a privileged, white, christian male. To anyone else it can look a lot more like a nightmare.
We even get a version of the same thing over here in the UK. There are still a few dire-hards who hold a ludicrously rose tinted view of the ‘civilising’ influence of the old British Empire.
You and I both.
I cannot say for sure, but I think it might be that, at some deep, largely unacknowledged level, they know how ridiculous religion is, what with its magic, invisible sky fairy, holy necromancy, eternal ‘afterlife’ and the like. If your entire life is based upon believing something that you have a queasy feeling may be hockum, then you only have two choices:- behind door one we have the painful road of objectively and rationally examining your beliefs in the light of cold, hard evidence and, when it becomes obvious that those beliefs are erroneous, undertaking the difficult task of reordering your entire world view.
Behind door two, however, is the option to simply deny anything that threatens your established worldview, declaring war on reality itself if that is what it takes. This is a far easier path. It requires no re-evaluation of your life, no need to develop self-awareness, and it comes with a bonus package of smug, self-righteous piety that encourages you to feel that you are extra special because your faith is so pure that reason cannot ‘corrupt’ it.
Of these two options, path two is by far the easier at first glance. For all the rewards of rationalism, to some it must seem a thorn-strewn path to be walked barefoot, with no hope at the end, requiring much sacrifice for little reward, but this is because they place so little value on what rationalism offers – freedom. Freedom from dogma and delusion and a chance to understand the universe as it actually is, to the best of our current scientific ability to do so, and that is a thing far more precious and far more wonderous than any pale religious mythology.
Of course, the options take on a new light if you belong to part of the religious authority structure. If your power and privilege are dependent upon religion, then it would be that much harder to honestly evaluate those beliefs that are your bread and butter. Easier by far to secure your comfort and power and call it virtue.
To such a person – lets take Pope Ratzinger as an example – facts and logic that run counter to his proclamations as pontiff are a decided threat to his station and influence, hence his ludicrous claims that condoms are engineered with microscopic holes to allow the HIV virus through, among others.
I’m just popping in to mention that Rowan Williams is planning to retire early and to return to academic life where, one hopes, he will find the intellectual standards more rigorous than among wall-to-wall Christians.
(And the dreadful password this new system has produced for me feels like discrimination against the elderly. I will never be able to remember it and will be able to copy it only when my eyes are having one of their better days. Like, is that a lower case “ell” or a capital “eye’? Boo!)
Brother Ogvorbis, Hominy Lovin’ Hominid! @ 91;
Sounds painfull…
;-)
“We’ll have to compete with Michael Bay and video games and porn for attention, and then there won’t be anyone chattering about how cool we are any more.”
Compete with porn and video games? And that´s different from now? What do you think I do now, watch creationist videos all the time? Naa, P & VG, that´s not a threat to atheist blogs. Quite complementary, indeed.
Cheers, Joachim
I agree that Williams’ talk of atheism as “cool” is an attempt to trivialize it as just a passing fashion, a flavor of the day, soon to be replaced by the next.
As to sexy atheists, I’d prefer Sasha Grey over Brian Cox, but that’s just me.
;)
Er, All Hail Tpyos? That was, of course, supposed to be ‘enemies,’ not enemas.
[OT]
Maureen, you don’t like your password? Why not change it?
DBM, fuckwitted idjit:
That hasn’t been proven, so citation needed, along with you apologies for being a abject irrelevant idjit, presuppositionalist, and total intellectual vacuum.
[addendum + OT]
Maureen, look above the comment box where it says “Logged in as maureenbrian” — your name should be a link to the “Dashboard” where you can change your display name and password, among other things.
ObOT:
I’m not cool because I’m an atheist; I’m an atheist because I’m cool.
Maybe not except for just him, but definitely except for him.
Care to actually show solid and conclusive physical evidence your imaginary deity actually exists, and your babble is anything other than mythology/fiction. IIRC, you got trounced into the ground when you tried that before due to your presuppositions, and lack of solid and conclusive physical evidence, making you that moron…care to try again fuckwittted idjit?
Maureen, I keep a little black book (actually a little address book), with usernames and passwords for the sites I register at. Useful for the AARP aged crowd.
Its not so much that Marshall is a moron – its that he is completely dishonest. He doesn’t even know how to be honest.
Gregory: Some of the other answers are amusing, at least to me, but you raise some serious points, so let me answer them first.
I agree that atheism has been around for thousands of years: anthropologists find doubters in primitive tribes and villages. The fad I referred to isn’t atheism, it’s this particular brand.
When I say I know what I’m talking about, and Dawkins doesn’t, I’m referring to many key issues he addresses in The God Delusion, not to his views on evolution, on which I would not dare debate him.
On the “cult of smart,” I was responding to comments PZ has made, not to your apparently reasonable views.
“How would you define ‘winning in the end’? you cannot hope to convince everyone, because without evidence the rationalists will never be convinced. How else would you ‘win’? Without trying to silence dissenting voices, that is?”
I was answering PZ in the style of his OP. But I do think truth tends to endure, while fads come and go. Simply put, Voltaire, Marx, and Feurbach thought Christianity was on the way out centuries ago: it did not happen for them, nor do I see much reason to expect what John Loftus calls “the End of Christianity,” or Harris’ “The End of Faith,” any time soon.
That old Welsh Git should clean up his own Church first – defrock Pedophile Priests and hand them over to the police.
Then he should not use the word “Cool” unless he is referring to temperature.
David Marshall,
A revealing admission, though actually that should read credible evidence. But yeah.
—
See, the difference between you and I is that all my beliefs are provisional — or do you dispute that? :)
I am in no position to comment on whether you are a moron or not. ‘Christians’ are a very diverse group. Some are intelligent, some are less so, but none have any evidence for their religious truth claims.
Don’t worry, the rest of us are in a position to do so from seeing this cabbage with legs vomit his delusion on every carpet he sees here.
David scumbag Marshall is a moron, and a deluded fuckfaced one at that.
Take it to the bank.
Heh. Perhaps I was a tad too subtle for David in my previous.
His admission is that for his side to win, rationalists must cease to exist.
(Then only the irrational will remain)
Citation needed fuckwit. You are no where as intelligent as you think you are, and his points need solid physical evidence to be disputed.
Why on a “Cult of Smart” are you even responding? If you were smart, you would have shut the fuck up months ago when we exposed you as a presuppositionalist liar and bullshitter. QED, you aren’t smart.
My atheism is provisional fuckwit, but until you show me the eternally burning bush or equivalent, fuck off.
@ Gregory Greenwood: I also think (and forgive me if I’m stating the obvious) that theists are completely terrified of the fact that there’s “nothing” out there–that there’s no Magic Man in the Sky to commend them for being good; no afterlife as a reward for whatever hardships they endure in this life; no explanation for human cruelty or madness, or destructive natural phenomena etc. The notion of death itself–of nothingness, of meaninglessness–is their worst fear. Instead of trying to create meaning in their lives through their work or passions or talents, they’d rather just ascribe everything to the Great Sky Daddy and be passive followers of the cult (but picking and choosing those aspects of religion that are favorable to their stations and situations). Rationality is, as you say, the much harder path to take–as well as the much more frightening one. For, basically, one has to face him/herself and confront exactly what is and is not there. It’s much easier for the frightened sheep to write everything off to magic and fairy tales and not think about the things that are threatening to their mental comfort.
And there’s also what you stated: “…it comes with a bonus package of smug, self-righteous piety that encourages you to feel that you are extra special because your faith is so pure that reason cannot ‘corrupt’ it.”
I’m still blogcrushing on you, btw! :) And please dispense with that Marshall troll.
@ Brother Og: Word. And I loved your typo. :)
@ Aquaria:
Don’t worry, the rest of us are in a position to do so from seeing this cabbage with legs vomit his delusion on every carpet he sees here.
Love.
It must thrill you that Islam is also true by that “standard” (mindless prejudice, in fact). Despite the fact that it is incompatible with Xianity, which is also true by that bit of trash.
Yes, stupidity and lies have long been forecast to disappear, yet astrology and Mormonism remain, along with theism. There are good reasons relating to the fact that humans aren’t first and foremost evolved to discern truth, but I’m sure that you’re not interested in why you’re stuck in fallacious argumentation and stupid prejudice. You’re only interested in reinforcing your faulty thinking, while pretending that it makes you superior.
And so stupidity propagates itself.
Glen Davidson
David Marshall and so many other outspoken theists like him are actually wielding their considerable intelligence in the defence of their emotional attachment to their beliefs. Clever apologists down through the centuries have come with many arguments for their favourite deities, just never any actual evidence.
The annoying part is where they think that their rationalisations that have worked so well on themselves, must also work on others. Non-believing atheist/agnostic others, that is.
That moron comment was simply a rhetorical red herring to distract his opponents, as I see it.
Evidence, David. Evidence and not just argumentation, or you are wasting our time.
@Robert Tobin
I’m not sure how much trouble the Church of England has had with not handing over criminal priests. Note it does not obey the Pope (if anything relations are a bit icy right now). Williams does need to move on allowing women and gays full rights in his church and to stop preventing other religions (such as the Quakers and Unitarians) who want to solemnize same-sex civil unions from doing so (legally civil unions have to be completely secular with no hint of religion even if the couple wants some religion in the ceremony).
In England and Wales btw in 2009 67% of all marriage ceremonies were civil (up from 62% in 1999).
David Marshall @ 106;
Doesn’t that play into the myth of ‘New Atheism’. Like Christians, Atheists are also a diverse bunch – perhaps even more so, since we do not have any established dogma or formalised structures of authority. All that one needs, at the most fundamental level, to claim to be an atheist is a lack of belief in god(s). Many atheists are also rationalists and skeptics, but these are simply common associated characteristics, not requirements. In so heterogenous a, for want of a better term, ‘community’, we are each a ‘brand’ unto ourselves.
If we are to speak of ‘new’ and ‘old’ atheism as loose labels, then the principle difference is that contemporary atheists are less inclined to engage in debate on convoluted theological grounds and instead cut straight to the chase – is there any evidence for god? If the god proposition cannot be established, then any other pontification on matters religious is instantly rendered moot.
As of yet, no one I have ever met or even heard of has come close to presenting credible, still less compelling, evidence for the existence of any deity.
But isn’t it true that Professor Dawkin’s background in scientific disciplines and his advanced understanding of evolutionary biology lies at the very heart of his arguments for atheism? Evolutionary biology demonstrates how all manner of observed attribuites of modern life, including human intelligence, could have evolved without any need to refer to a creator deity. If, as seems to be the case, god is superfluous to the explanation of the existence of life, and further that this notional deity is regularly used to justify all manner of terrible acts of religious violence and oppression whilst remaining tellingly silent, is it not reasonable to state that not only is belief in god unevidenced and thus irrational, but that even a ‘faithist’ argument that such belief, even though in something untrue, may be beneficial to society fails because religious belief has caused terrible harm to human’s throughout history? What would be your counter-argument to such an observation?
Here we must differ. I do not believe that PZ indulges in any ‘cult of smart’. He simply demands evidence for any claims, and extraordianry evidence for extraordinary claims. You may not like his discursive style, but his rationality is unimpeachable.
As I noted above, I (and I would guess many atheists) am less concerned with concepts of any metaphysical ‘truth’ as I am with actual, hard evidence to back up religious truth claims. On the topic of the future of theism, I would agree with you in so much that I am as close to certain as I ever get that religion will not die out entirely in the short to medium term. Even in the long term (I am talking many thousands of years), it is likley some people will cleave to some form of belief system that we would recognise as religious in character. However, I do not believe that Christianity is any special case among religions. Countless other faiths have come and gone over the aeons. Once upon a time, the Greek, Roman and Nordic pantheons had legions of devoted followers, some of whom doubtless had fervour to match even the most committed contemporary Muslim or Christian, but times and cultures changed and ultimately those religions were replaced by newer faiths – including Christianity. I see no reason why Christianity itself won’t ultimately suffer the same fate.
To preempt a possible response of yours, if I may be so bold, atheism is different because, contrary to the statements of some prominent religious apologists, atheism is not a religion. It is a non-belief in gods, and so long as anyone believes in unevidenced deities, someone, somewhere will ask ‘where is the evidence for that?’ There will always be those who will not take extraordinary claims at face value, and that is all that is needed for atheism and skepticism to exist.
Thomas Aquinas’ famous aphorism is insufficient – if no evidence is possible for those without faith, then the null hypothesis that god is simply a human social construct must hold, at least for those of us who prize reason over piety.
David Marshall wrote:
Except for the key issue of the lack of evidence to support believing in a god or gods, of course. Which, as has been noted in this thread, is kind of the only issue that’s actually relevant when it comes down to it.
It wouldn’t matter how smart or stupid a believer was if they could produce that evidence; it would speak for itself.
mikeg:
Not nearly enough. But when I can, most definitely. I have a Mack & Jack inspired brew I’m working on called “Last of the Fireflies Ale.” And another I call “Mean Porter.” ‘Cause I took all the porter recipes I could find, and averaged them. Get it?
Turned out pretty damned good, too.
JohnnieCanuck #115
Marshall, like every other goddist who argues with the heathen*, doesn’t actually have evidence. He’s got handwaving, tap dancing, the old shuck ‘n jive, and “everyone knows.” What’s more, he knows he doesn’t have evidence, because if he did he would have produced it for the awe and amazement of the heathen.
*Heathen is everyone who doesn’t believe exactly the way he does. Marshall is very quick to label other Christians as “not true Christians,” especially if they act in a manner Marshall considers prejudicial to Marshall’s idealized Christianity.
David Marshall:
What would be the “most key issue” Dawkins got wrong in The God Delusion that you get right?
Seriously. Inquiring Minds Want To Know.
IndyM @ 112;
QFT. I think you are right on the money here. For some people, the idea of a vast and fundamentally disinterested universe is terrifying. The idea that, in the grand scheme of things, not only does no individual have a special destiny, but even if the entire human race ceased to exist tomorrow then nothing much would change. The planets would contine on their stately voyages through the void, the stars would still burn with nuclear fire – business as usual for everyone and everything except one species of semi-sentient ape on a backwater planet on the spiral arm of one galaxy among… who knows? Billions? Certainly. Trillions? Quite possibly.
To such people the idea of a hand on the tiller – any hand on the tiller – is preferable to the notion that the universe just is, and has no need for a steersperson or a creator.
This is why so many religious apologists accuse atheists of ‘nihilism’. They assume that, since we see no meaning in the innate structure of the universe, that we can see no meaning in anything. The idea that it is up to the individual to create their own meaning in their lives is alien to them, because they believe that all meaning must ultimately flow from their god. For this to hold, all atheists must be ‘lost’. The idea of a happy and socially functional atheist blows a big hole in their worldview, because if atheists don’t need god, does anyone else?
Technically a Christian would have to be presented with evidence before they can willfully ignore it and warrant “delusion”. Until then, any given individual may have been too sheltered/lazy/uninterested/preemptively-misinformed to have sought the evidence on their own. And a lack of reflection and critical thinking experience makes apologetic distractions and fallacious ‘evidence’ like revelation
seemfeel credible.And that’s without even considering the emotional manipulation and conditioning to set up fear/tribalism/identity/etc mental blocks.
Please, I am at a Fundamentalist recovery program and I have to take this in class. I refer to that class as ‘Psychotic Demented Strife’, ‘Painfully Dreary Lives,’ ‘Pathetically Dreamy Lies’, and so on, but yours is brilliant! May I use that line? Hilarity will ensue, I promise!
Oh, so you know you are full of shit. Perfectly acceptable marketing tactic for Christians. Bravo, keep up the good work ;)
I wish I had a cool hat like the pope and his posse, maaaaaaaan.
I wish I had an execution device as a symbol, that is seriously cool, duuuude. Popsicles are wicked cool – o – mundo, cat. ZOMFG, rad booksales are the kewl-EST of forever all! Suckers are deliciose, but cool? Of Course, they have the bitchinist book sales:
God doesn’t think you are cool, fuckface, he thinks you are forever hot stuff!
There are two separate, but both interesting, issues at play here. The first is whether or not a belief any intellectual validity – creationism is dead, scientifically speaking, for example. The second is whether or not it propagates from person to person – creationism is well alive, culturally speaking, for example.
That religion hasn’t died out isn’t really much of a problem considering what is known about human psychology. There’s no grounds to think any of it is true, and grounds to think that much of it is sheer nonsense, in needing to explain why religion propagates. It’s for the same reason that we don’t have to posit aliens in order to explain UFOs, crop circles, alien abductions, etc.
I’m actually with you that religion will persist and win out; it has done so in the past and it’ll continue to do so again. But in terms of the intellectual content behind it – it’s already lost and had been lost for centuries. The fact that there are Mormon apologists should be indication enough that simply making a case for one’s beliefs doesn’t have anything to do with the validity of said beliefs.
Bizarrely when liberal believers pull the postmodern/solipsistic “true for me” or devalue everything that isn’t their invisible buddy, they’re the nihilists.
And because we devalue that one precious thing into nonexistence, obviously we can’t care about anything within reality which they ignore (at least while indulging that compartment).
CompulsoryAccount7746:
Indeed. And so they are (I call it ‘reality’). ;)
In other words, while people have X as a potential explanation, there will be people taking said explanation. Especially when X fits in well with our intuitive psychology. It’s why sleep paralysis was once thought demonic, and now is part of the alien abduction experience. If Christianity were to die, then people would interpret what Christians interpret as the holy spirit through whatever beliefs persist in the culture. And the fact of the matter is now, we have enough knowledge of other religions and other cultures that anyone who can profess to have being touched by the holy spirit should really doubt their interpretation!
Gregory Greenwood (#117)
Hell, it’s worse than that. Even if we were to extend theologists the epistemic charity of allowing them to build a case upon argument alone, they haven’t yet managed to produce a single such argument that doesn’t work equally well to justify belief in the god of a religion that contradicts their own!
A. Noyd, nice one!
Paging Mr. Marshall, … Mr. David Dingleberry Marshall…
Please pick your apologetics at the white courtesy phone…
Don’t know atheism are where all the geeks at. Everything is done FOR SCIENCE!
Nigel @121: Let me channel David for a second and answer your question. *ahem* “Read my book.” Anything else you’d like to ask while he’s away?
John Morales:
Cute. I’ll add a hopefully obvious addendum anyhow…
Confirmation bias and overconfidence in one’s own perception can play powerful roles in skewing one’s subjective model of reality. Add in sketchy positive reinforcement from peers who, in vague sloppy language, affirm they experienced the same things… you get the idea.
Or you may be referring to soaking up science through cultural osmosis, in which case it’s a matter of how divergent a given kook is from the general population. See: History Channel.
Claims like “apocalypse next Tuesday” are instances where the theist self-provides contradictory evidence to deludedly ignore.
A. Noyd:
And whooo doggie do they have a helluva mountain to climb once we stop granting them this clemency.
Rey Fox:
Not nearly enough name-dropping or dancing around the subject. You’d suck as a David Marshall impersonator.
And believe me, that’s a good thing.
Though Radcliffe is an atheist, theists (and perhaps even atheists that aren’t active in the “movement”) probably don’t think of him as a face of atheism or even care about his religious beliefs (or lack thereof). Or, to put it more bluntly, he is not famous for being an atheist.
David Marshall
Ah, but Christianity today isn’t the same religion it was in the time of Voltaire, is it? There was a time when ordinary Christians wouldn’t have employed evasive rhetoric about “literalism” or argued from consequences when pressed on whether they really believed all the metaphysical claims of the religion.
Sure Christianity may not go away completely, but keep in mind that there are still people around who worship Odin regularly. You might want to consider what that fact says about the veracity of viking cosmology.
I expect Christianity will “win” in much the same way Asatru has. Some people will always find it alluring, because they like the stories, or because it helps them feel connected to their antecedents. If that’s the kind of winning you had in mind, then congratulations.
Hyperdeath #74: The issue was intelligence, not career path. If you want to talk about the latter, Richard Dawkins veered off pure scientific research into “meaningless metaphors,” science popularizing, and theological diatribe long ago.
Or if the question is, “Who’s cool?” I’ll go with Lennox.
“I hope you have someone better in mind that that pompous gasbag David Bentley Hart, whose only discernible talent is the ability to take the single argument “Dawkins is an idiot” and extend it into vast diatribes of pretentious sneering.”
Good Lord! I would think that talent would be appreciated here.
“It’s a more palatable truth than the fact that The God Delusion is a best-seller, whilst your vanity-published dreck is read by no one.”
I didn’t publish the thing, nor the new Spanish version. It’s a book of middling publishing success. But as has been pointed out, if numbers are the issue, all the Gnus combined fall behind Rick Warren OR Dan Brown. And they’ve got a long ways to go wo catch up with the word’s best-selling work by an atheist: Quotations From Chairman Mao.
To answer your final question, why do you expect “proper arguments” from me, but put up with reams of indulgent dreck from fellow atheists? My books, and even blogs to a lesser extent, are full of detailed arguments. What I’m answering here is trash talk. There’s no reason to show off in a pig trough.
When substantive claims are made, I have responded with as much or more substance than most posters, as you should admit, if you aim to be fair. It seems to me you’re indulging a curious double standard.
David Marshall, the preacher formerly known as Googlemess, said:
Well, I think whoever bet that the answer would be “read my book” has won.
Gregory: Yes, I agree atheists are highly diverse. That’s why I don’t compare “Christianity” or “Hinduism,” to “atheism,” but to atheist ideologies like communism or secular humanism. Deny God, and you can go a lot of different ways. I try not to generalize; though sometimes run into pockets of anger and obtuseness that make it tempting.
Dawkins says surprisingly little about science in The God Delusion, and even with some of that, is unduly sloppy.
Yes, I admit that evolution makes atheism more plausible.
But you segue into an historical argument that really is central to GD, and that I think is just plain false, at least in emphasis. I think, and have argued, that in fact Christianity has acted as the greatest tool of liberation in history. Yes, I know all the contrary arguments: this is one of the fields in which I have the advantage over the 4 chief Gnus. (Hector Avalos and Richard Carrier try to rush into the breach, but they stumble right and left.)
I don’t believe in a “faithist” argument, as you call it, and argue that that is one of Dawkins’ biggest mistakes. (Though all the Gnus regularly commit it.)
On Myers, you misunderstand me. I like his style. That’s one reason I read his blog. I don’t care what he, or touchy followers, call me: insults detached from reality don’t really sting. It’s Myers’ facts I dispute.
We obviously disagree about what we both see as the core issue: the evidence for the evidence for Christian faith.
On the future of Christianity or atheism, of course all of us are just barking at the moon: God only knows.
And we all know that the enema of my enemy is my friend.
…Which sounded really good until Rule 34 occurred to me. I’m not going to do that particular google. I suggest you don’t either.
PZ was making the mistake of thinking USA-centrically. You have to remember that Willy is a Church of Tory – err, sorry, – England capo di tutti capo and in the UK even the church knows that it is terminally uncool. Hell, even gamers are cooler.
David Marshall:
Idiom. What that actually means is “Nobody knows”.
This is an assertion without proof. Hitchens rule. Assertions without proof or data can be dismissed without proof or data. The troll is just wrong.
Here is another assertion. Marshall is boring and predictable. The proof. His last 50 posts are just wild assertions without proof and lies.
David Marshall also is mentally ill, Narcissistic Personality Disorder most likely. The proof. Read the DSM IV and wikipedia entries.
FWIW, NPD is one of the bad ones. It is treatment resistant and a lot of killers and serial killers show this. I don’t have much data, but a lot of them seem to gravitate to religions as a cover and rationalization for their personality problems.
“We’ll have to compete with Michael Bay and video games and porn for attention”
I beg to differ, the above in regards to atheism are non-overlapping magisteria
Ron Lafferty was a LDS polygamist cult leader wannabe. He didn’t get too far after he slit the throat of a baby and killed its mother because he claims god told him too.
He is thought to have NPD.
A lot of cult religion on a personal basis is just a cover for mental illness.
As a couple people have mentioned… Daniel Radcliffe *is* an atheist. Which is pretty cool for me, as a minor Harry Potter fan (I’m a youngun, gimme a break).
David Marshall (#139)
Once upon a time, there was a man who liked to excuse his shortcomings by pointing to those around him and saying they were no better. In fact, he would often talk of how, unlike everyone else, he could become the gentlest of gentlemen in the company of gentlemen, and the sagest of sages in the company of sages, but that he had no reason to show off in the company of lesser beings.
For reasons he never could fathom, this did not endear him to anyone, and he increasingly found himself wanting for company till, eventually, so few people would invite him to their fire or share food with him that he ended up hungry and cold with nowhere to go. Wandering about, he happened upon a pigsty whose denizens had been thrown their slops not moments before. Of course, there was nothing for the man to do but get down on all fours in the mud and push his way between the fat flanks of the gorging swine to get his fill from the trough.
When all but a scrap or two had been finished off, a few of his former acquaintances passed by and demanded to know what on earth he was up to. He raised his head and blurted that he was doing nothing worse than what the pigs were doing, and that there was no need to show off in a pig trough. And when the men and women shook their heads and turned away, he shrugged at their stubborn inability to be persuaded by his superior reasoning, then wallowed down against a bristled back, and fell asleep, just as the pigs were doing.
Um… we are really, really, cool when you compare us to people like Pat Robertson and Kent Hovind.
David Marshall wrote:
Liar. You’ve got no arguments, detailed or otherwise. If you had anything other than special pleading, goalpost shifting and other forms of intellectual dishonesty you’ve have posted it here to shut us up. You haven’t; ergo you’ve got nothing.
I suppose a bunch of old men walking around wearing frocks could be considered cool in some circles.
Glad that David Marshall volunteered himself to show the coolness contrast effect in this very thread. And was gentlemanly enough to talk about Christianity as if it were obviously true while not arsing himself to make the case for such a perspective, because he believes he has already made points of “substance” and we can just read his blog and book for the answers anyway. Grand. Wake me when David is done calling his evasiveness “substance” and actually decides to show why Christianity is oh, so obviously true.
Old men who walk around wearing frocks might be considered cool in some circles.
Sorry about the double post. Didn’t think the first one went through :X
Care to debate a
moronpiss-ant?fixed.
and the answer should be obvious.
David Marshall wrote:
No, you both agree there isn’t any – because if there was, you (or someone else) would have presented it by now, and there wouldn’t be any atheists.
What you disagree on is whether that lack of evidence matters. Dawkins, being intellectually honest, believes – as do most, if not all, atheists – that it does matter; you, being a dishonest hack, lie and try to distract people from noticing that there is no evidence.
David Marshall makes me feel like one of the popular kids. Or what I imagine the popular kids felt like, anyway.
David Marshall reminds me of my Auntie.
She had a similar style of “debate”.
She was schizophrenic.
David Marshall:
Depends on what you mean by “most posters.”
And it seems to me you’re indulging in a curious dance in which you answer nothing of note. You seem rather to focus on the trivial, the meaningless, and the trash talking, rather than anything of substance.
For instance: what is the single key issue Dawkins gets wrong? That’s a simple, substantive question, which you ignore. I’m after a single point of debate, one that demonstrates your philosophical or logical superiority.
Here’s another point you have failed to establish: a single bit of credible evidence for the existence of a god. Any god. I’m not even talking about establishing evidence for the Christian god, which is a far more difficult proposition.
So, no, David Marshall. You don’t respond to substantive claims, let alone as much more more than most posters.
Here’s a demonstration of your philosophical confusion. Communism is not a specifically-atheistic ideology. A case could be made that the Jesus-character from the Bible effectively espoused communism. There is nothing ideologically incompatible between communism and theistic Buddhism. The pushing of atheism in modern communist countries is an attribute of central governmental control, and not required of communism itself.
While a better case could be made for secular humanism as an atheistic ideology, it too is not incompatible with Christianity. Ask Unitarian/Universalists about that. In spite of the common use of “secular” to mean “atheist heathens” in the Fox News crowd, “secular” does not require — or even imply — atheism.
If this is the level of sophistication in your books, I question your assertion you know what you are talking about.
Completely OT – I have changed my password and I apologise for wittering.
No you don’t. Show us solid and conclusive physical evidence that your imaginary deity exists, and the babble isn’t a book of mythology/fiction, or shut the fuck up. That would be substantive and honest. Any religion based on such false premises as an imaginary deity and book of fiction has no substantive answers. Just mental masturbation, tap dancing, and parlor magic tricks, like all your responses.
That’s a fairly common complaint here, which would mean something if there weren’t people making genuine argument. Of all the flaws of this place, there’s a lot of smart, well-educated people who do try to put forward arguments.
So even if there are people who add nothing to the conversation (and really, who can blame them?), why not just ignore all that and address those who do? Because even if that’s a small percentage, they’re still the ones making arguments and not getting answers. Because there are some of us who do these discussions because we are interested; interested in seeing whether our own position stands up; interested in whether there are arguments or evidence they haven’t considered; interested in seeing how others approach the same question and evidence; and so on.
At least for me, I’m sick of being told I don’t get it, or that I’m ignorant, or that I’m closed-minded, yet I’m never explained just what it is that I’m missing. I try to understand, I try to see it from a Christian perspective, read arguments, try to learn more, yet I really can’t seem to get what it is I’m missing. It’s so frustrating that I feel like writing it all of as obfuscatory bullshit.
David Marshall:
Fuck, Dude, I’ll debate you. Propose three topics, and I’ll choose one.
Out of fairness, do you want a three-beer handicap, or a four?
The other interesting thing about the “new atheist” position is that it wasn’t something I was ever taught. When I became an atheist, I hadn’t read any atheist literature, I hadn’t heard any of the arguments for atheism, I hadn’t been preached to by atheists, and I certainly didn’t have the threat of hellfire if I chose to be an atheist. But I did have scripture, I did have preachers coming into my school, and I grew up a wider culture of belief. Yet with all that, I became an atheist. It wasn’t to shock my parents, it wasn’t to fit in with other children. It was that the notion of God seemed silly – much in the same way as Santa Claus or fairies, and especially in light of myths and legends from other cultures (I used to love to read different mythologies and stories).
So I’m really not sure where this “fad” thing comes from, reading Dawkins et al. I see the arguments that make perfect sense in the light of modern knowledge. And the fact of the matter is that I’d be an atheist even if Dawkins had never published The God Delusion, as really there’s no good case for God. Or if there is a case, religious believers who try to make the case are keeping it from me. Or perhaps I’m too entrenched in my atheism to see a good case when it’s made. Who knows. Of course I think my case for atheism is fairly solid, but I’m interested in seeing if that’s not the case. It’s why I try to discuss it with others. It’s why I spend a lot of time reading books, listening to lectures, hearing interviews and debates.
Maybe I’m wrong, and if I am I’d like to know why. And there’s only so much introspection one can do on their own cognition, I’m human after all…
David Marshall @ 141;
As observed by nigelTheBold, Wagering against Pascal @ 159, neither communism nor secular humanism are necessarily atheistic in character, and to call them ‘atheist ideologies’ is a stretch. Theistic communism is perfectly possible, and secular humanists simply place their humaism seperate from any religious belief, it does not mean that they are also automatically atheists, although many atheists (myself included) are secular humanists.
Here we run into a fundamental point of disagreement between us. I would say that, in order to ‘deny’ god, then the god proposition must first be established. Otherwise ‘denying god’ is equivilant to ‘denying leprechauns’. Certainly, ‘denying’ god is in no way comprable to the denial of phenomena that have the support of credible evidence, such as evolution or anthropogenic climate change.
The God Delusion was written as a book for mass consumption, not as an advanced evolutionary biology paper. I found the arguments put forward to be logical and a reasonable series of objection to religion and its undeserved privileged status as being ‘beyond debate’ in the eyes of many within society.
You are streets ahead of the young earth creationists then.
I would think that the weight of history is against you here. Christianity cannot have seemed to be much of a force of liberation when it was used to justify salvery (“hewers of wood and bearers of water”). Or when it was used as the basis for pogroms against jewish and other minority faith communities. Or when colonialism was put forward as a project to ‘civilise’ and bring ‘christian salvation’ (at the point of a firearm) to the ‘savage’. Or when christian ‘holy wars’ have been fought, such as the hideously brutal crusades. Or when women were murdered as witches without evidence, or ‘heretics’ were burnt at the stake for not towing the party line. It has also done little to emancipate women and homosexuals, and has instead been a continuing force against movements toward equality for these groups.
I would say that only your own privilege and confirmation bias leads you to state that Christianity is such a great force for liberation. There are millions alive today whose personal experiences would lead them to differ with you.
I was simply including the ‘faithist’ perspective (that religion is a social good even without the existence of god) in the name of completeness.
You can only really counter evidence with stronger or more complete evidence. The trouble is, there is no evidence for religion, and so the null hypothesis is the fall back position for anyone who is viewing the religious phenomenon without any ‘perosnal revelation’. If genuine, compelling evidence for religion was forthcoming, then the vast bulk of atheists, PZ included, would re-evaluate their beliefs. But no such evidence is forthcoming.
You have not actually put forward any evidence for christianity, so it seems to me that what we actually disagree on is the importance of evidence in relation to christianity. You seem comfortable to believe in its absence, but for an atheist and rationalist such as myself, that lack of evidence is a deal breaker. To me, belief in god is no more evidentially supported, and thus no more rational, than belief in vampires, werewolves or fairys.
I agree that it is impossible to predict the future with certainty, but I would pharse it as ‘no one knows’. Not me, not you, not any human. Plumbing the precognitive abilities or otherwise of god is moot unless the existence of such a being is established. Otherwise we are left with a debate no more fruitful than asking; who is stronger? The Incredible Hulk or Superman?
I, for one, have always thought reason and reality were kinda cool, so it makes me happy that more people may be starting to finally see things my way.
But then, I’m just one of those snarky women.
Even if you have heard all the counter-arguments, I’m really perplexed how you can say that in light of slavery, inquisitions, witch burnings, conquistadors and other colonialism, the teaching of the inferiority of women and other races, persecution of homosexuals – something of which is still going on today, etc. The loudest voices against enlightenment values and individual autonomy are almost always the ones wrapped in piety.
@David Marshall re: 141
OK then. Evidence for the supernatural followed by evidence for your particular interpretation of it. That shouldn’t be too hard for you to produce.
Chop chop. We’re getting tired of waiting here.
The closest one can come to the shadow of a fraction of a grain of truth in DM’s assertions is that there have of course been some good people striving for the greater freedom of their fellow human beings who happen to be theists of one flavour or another. Of course he does not, however, come anywhere near showing that those who have done this have done so because they were/are theists: it’s blindingly obvious that theism – let alone any specific flavour of it such as xtianity (much less DM’s own preferred sub-flavour, whatever that happens to be) – is not a necessary or sufficient condition for doing, or attempting to do good. There’s nothing in DM’s wittering to counter Steven Weinberg’s well-known “With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”
And THIS is why I say we need more than science, why I say we need history and philosophy. So when shit-spraying obscurationists like DM show up, we can refute them on their own grounds.
Learn philosophy and logic. Learn some koine Greek and some Hebrew. Read things by people outside the debate, neither Christian nor atheist, like Hyam Maccoby.
As to “cult of smart,” this is why INT and WIS are separate stats. Apologists like DM are very good at using their formidable INT score to argue for their intuitions and beliefs, which go largely unquestioned at the core. This is the same pathology we see in Craig, the same one we saw in Bahnsen and van Til, and the same one we will continue to see across apologetics.
No single field is going to shut these people up. It’s going to be the combined synthesized knowledge of the sciences, history, philosophy, logic, comparative religion, and text criticism.
LOL, I get no end of entertainment listening to bible thumpers claim christianity is the basis for almost everything in the world today, like democracy, our justice system, rational inquiry, and probably boats, medicine, bah blah blah…
I don’t know how the fu*k they think society held together in Egypt, Greece, east Asia if everything came from christianity.
The funniest irony I snicker about when they claim these things, is that every fucking thing in christianity is copied! I mean virgin birth, execution and resurrection 3 days later, 12 disciples, creation accounts, angels, God – His Son – spirit triumvirate, hell, conversations with the devil, among others, walking on water… In fact, it sure looks like Christianity is a direct rip-off of Krishna.(and several others, but of course, it must be coincidence that almost everything in the Bible just happens to be virtually identical to previous religions – down the the last frikking detail!
Yeah, Christianity is the antithesis of justice, morality, democracy, liberation, I mean, c’mon! Unions are responsible for liberation
Uh, tushcloots? The old Krishna link has been disproven nine ways from Sunday. I believe what the similarities show is that, in the transition from man to mythical figure, Yeshua bar Yousef was vested with these stories as a way of making him appeal to potential converts.
Check your goddamn sources too. Anyone who takes Zeitgeist and ESPECIALLY Kersey Graves seriously is a kook. Acharya S., I’m less sure about, but am also leaning to crackpot territory for her.
I rather think the majority of Jews and gays, to name just two obvious groups, would raise a cynical eyebrow at this typically dishonest hogwash.
On a broader scale, it is remarkable that it is precisely as the hold of Christianity on the public sphere has weakened that various other social phenomena have strengthened: democracy and accountable goernment, freedom of expression and indeed religion, science, gender, racial and LGBT equality, and action against slavery and child abuse, to name just a few. Whatever Christianity’s effects in earlier centuries, this is undeniable by any honest and reasonably well-informed observer.
David Marshall:
The phrase you used was “dim bulbs”. McGrath and Lennox may have once been bright, but their light faded long ago. They may still be intelligent, but they show no sign of it.
Dawkins in primarily a science popularizer, and a good one at that. (No one here claims that he’s a working scientist.) As for “theological diatribes” he did so once. His last two books have been about science.
Since when was pig-ignorant creationism “cool”.
Yes, Dawkins doesn’t sell as well as Rick Warren or Dan Brown, but that doesn’t alter the fact that he achieves sales figures that most authors could only dream of. The difference is that between great success and phenomenal success.
I have a very simple question for you: Did you at any point pay Harvest House money? If so why? If the book is anything even approaching “middling” success, then money should be regularly flowing in your direction. If not, why not?
Who arranged the Spanish translation? Did you have to do anything besides approve it, and then cash the cheques?
Because the “trash talk”, although rude, often contains substantive comment. You’re indulging in the tedious Internet-moron tactic of priggishly criticizing rudeness, whilst completely ignoring actual content.
Then why do so incessantly? Your boasting would be more tolerable if it had at least some substance.
Where?
More to the point, DM commits so many fallacies I don’t even know the names of that his reasoning is suspect. That little dig at “most popular atheist publication” is a prime example.
Here’s a hint, Davey: “where your love is, there your religion is.” Can you honestly tell me that the cult of personality that arose around Mao (and other people like him), with its unquestionable dogma and repression of thought and complte stunting of moral and intellectual progress and utter disconnection from reality didn’t have all the trappings of religion?
When you’re not allowed to look directly at Dear Leader’s picture because it will blind you, or told that Comrade President was born from heaven and heralded by a double rainbow, that is religious myth. Pure and simple.
Those supposedly atheist regimes had all the hallmarks of religion, including, I would say, something that answers to God. You are not only wrong, but fractally, cosmically, 100%, 180 degrees off the mark wrong, and I will thank you to stop using this argument in the future. Good day, sir.
Hazuki:
In what sense is a Jew outside the debate?
(Which AFAICT ain’t atheist vs. Christian, but atheist vs. theist)
@176
Much of the debate is Christian vs atheist here. Modern Judaism is, let’s be fair, mostly Deism, with the exception of the fundamentalist groups. And within their own religion, Jewish fundies are a small proportion compared to Christian fundies in theirs.
Maccoby’s insight is important because he is extremely scholarly and approaches what is after all a Jewish story from a learned, Jewish perspective. He has fascinating things to say on the Triumphal Entry and what followed, in light of superior knowledge of Zecharias’ prophecies and what they mean for a Jewish milieu. Among other things, he points out that it is likely the Triumphal Entry happened around the feast of booths, not passover.
Thanks for that response, Hazuki.
‘Welcome :) Sorry I don’t have much more to contribute now. I get too emotional about these things.
Can someone explain to me why McGrath’s name frequently appears on these lists of “smart” theists? I’ve heard nothing from him to suggest that he’s capable of forming a coherent argument. He’s a bug-eyed simpleton.
Isn’t Daniel Radcliffe and Atheist? Fairly sure he’s said something to that effect.
Ewan MacDonald: “Can someone explain to me why McGrath’s name frequently appears on these lists of “smart” theists? ”
[Speculation alert! Speculation alert!]
Probably the same reason why C.S. Lewis regularly appears as an example of a good apologist, according to Christians: Christians don’t care if the arguments are actually decent, because they already agree with the nonsense trying to be proved. All they want is something that sounds authoritative. Pretty much the only qualification for being one of the Great Sophistricated Theopologists is writing/speaking ability. Having objectively good arguments from an outsider’s perspective is entirely beside the point to the people who would herald these men and (sometimes) women as champions.
It’s pretty much the same deal with Conservative “Intellectuals” as well. For the longest time, I was banging my head against the wall, wondering why idiots like Dinesh D’Souza and David Horowitz were lauded as paragons of Republican smartness. And I guess I know now: It’s because the way they write and speak reflect intelligence, even if their actual arguments are completely illogical and are so often blatant bullshit. Their target audience already agrees with them, so they don’t care if the logic is irretrievably flawed. It’s all about the writing/speaking ability and that thin scholarly veneer. That’s where the judgment that these people are good at their jobs begins and ends.
CS Lewis is a TERRIBLE apologist though. His own personal beliefs hinged entirely on the idea that Jesus was myth given form…in other words, basically the inverse side of the “well Satan imitated Jeebus back in time!” argument Eusebius and other early apologists used.
His other arguments are utter claptrap too. The famous Lord, Liar, or Lunatic trilemma is the canonical (har) example (to which we should add Mistaken, Mythological, and Misattributed).
David Marshall
Not surprising that you are unaware of Christian communism. Ignorance seems to be a requirement for your position.
When you compare Christianity to secular humanism, wtf do you need your god for? Selling your books?
This makes sense. I also think McGrath cultivates an image of ever-so-slightly elevated dignity, i.e. he’s always very careful about his tone, always appropriates the language of ‘respect’, and as such has as his rhetorical redoubt the moral high ground.
Then leave and never come back, you dissembling fucking jackass. If I could physically spit on you for your dishonesty and cowardice, I would.
Agreed, Haruki. I would also add that Lewis’s much lauded “Mere Christianity” apologetics opus, where he makes his famous false trilemma, spends only the first quarter or so of the book trying to convince people that Christianity is true, and does it mostly through this argument:
1. People have morals, and morals are (mostly) similar all around.
2. Ergo, there are Moral Laws that exist out in the aether somewhere that all people are psychically aware of, and this is the only explanation for the similar moral codes between cultures.
3. There must be a Moral Lawgiver, which I call God (because obviously Laws are Things, and not just abstract descriptions of the general way things behave…)
4. And there’s a smattering of archaeological evidence showing that Biblical locations actually existed, so therefore Jesus is Lord. Now, let’s move on to talk about Christianity as if it were undeniably true.
It’s truly fantastic tripe. But, like I said, that doesn’t matter to people who already believe 3 and 4, because they don’t care about the utter bullshit used to arrive there, as long as author does, and it happens in a way that seems well-written, rather than well-argued. I would say that the fact C.S. Lewis’s moronic arguments are so well-received is a key support for the idea that this kind of writing is not praised by its supporters for its actual intellectual merit. From what I gather, the same is true of the vast majority of The New Atheists’ fleas, with DM’s precious McGrath being foremost among them in inanity.
Jesus christ…even by the standards of this blog which as people like me lowering the maturity level to age 7 you’re a fucking child.
Goddamn, E-mail me and I’d gladly debate you. Soul subject is “The Christian God is Real”
Noyd #148: A clever response. Someone has to FEED the pigs, though. :- )
David Marshall’s continual name-dropping in lieu of evidence (or even argument) very much in evidence.
In the land of the blind, the guy who can name ten other blind guys the fastest is king, apparently.
I will be impressed if one of these people can answer the problem of evil. I have read several dozen theodicies (though they all boil down to less than half a dozen archetypes) and was more and more disgusted by each one.
I have to confess. I thought when I heard the basics of the Liar Lunatic or Lord argument was from Lewis’s pre-Christianity days and thought it was a good argument against Christianity.
A sample of how “full of detailed arguments” (if full of shit==full of detailed arguments) David’s books are
See especially chapter 4, where idiot David simply assumes that the liars of the DI are in fact good faith critics of evolution, rather than the frauds and charlatans that they have always proven to be.
He faults the evolution side for not being open to the evidence, obviously meaning that bullshit deserves respect. In that chapter, aside from attacking evolution over the matter of abiogenesis–when the two are only hazily connected–David never rises above mere tone trolling and acceptance that his fellow mindless apologists are every bit as worthy as those who have honestly pursued the matter. Berlinski is treated as if he were a meaningful critic, rather than an ignorant supercilious whiner, which anyone knowledgeable recognizes him to be (David hardly being knowledgeable, of course).
Anyway, everything available in this preview is lame and dumbass, basically trite nonsense that one might hear from a middling pastor or some such person.
Glen Davidson
Ing #192:
Yeah. It always seemed a copout to choose “Lord,” when the other two are almost infinitely more probable. Hell, by C.S. Lewis’s logic, David Koresh was a prophet, and Charles Manson is God. And that argument applied equally to Mohammad even during Lewis’s lifetime.
When I was a young and self-labeled agnostic (though I was an atheistic agnostic), my girlfriend gave me Mere Christianity and some book in which I first encountered the second law of thermodynamics argument. She said, “These wil change your life.”
Yeah. They sure did. After reading them, I was more than willing to call myself an atheist. After all, I reasoned, if this is the best Christians can do, it is lukewarm water posing as strong hot coffee.
As it turns out, it’s not the best Christians can do. The best they can do is as my daughter did: she said, “Look, Dad, I feel the presence of God in my life. It’s not logical, and there is no proof. But he helps me, and I see his influence every day. It doesn’t always make sense to me, either.”
So far, that’s the best apologetics I’ve ever heard: “I accept the existence of a god against all reason and evidence.” That’s weak herbal tea posing as weak herbal tea.
Glen Davidson:
Yeah. That’d fit with his arguments here, in which he derides atheists for the most pessimistic possible interpretation of Christianity’s influence on history, while he himself takes the most pessimistic, and often completely distorted, view of the influence of atheism on history. It seems David Marshall must own a pair of the world’s rosiest glasses, tinted to a Christian hue.
Ante #152: This thread is not about the truth of atheism or Christianity, and no one has given any evidence either way. PZ claimed Gnus are really smart and more “cool” than their critics. In support of those contentions, his followers have offered such stunningly clever rejoinders as “you’re functionally a moron,” “you’re just trying to sell your book,” “fuckwit!” and debated whether the non-conformist (myself) is mainly stupid or dishonest.
I doubt any objective observer could follow this thread, then go back and read the OP, without amusement.
But I never really aspired to being “cool,” anyway. So I’m happy to give PZ and his followers that crown, if they want it, and to think, if they like, that their responses have been witty and clever. Maybe one reason I like Lennox is that he is NOT cool: he’s a rolly-polly grandfatherly type with an Irish brogue who makes serious, adult (even magisterial) arguments, treats opponents with old-fashioned kindliness, and carries himself with good cheer and dignity.
You really would be better advised not to tell lies when you have already demonstrated their falsehood in the same thread:
But I guess you’re just too stupid to keep track of what you’ve said.
But I never really aspired to being “cool,” anyway. So I’m happy to give PZ and his followers that crown, if they want it – David Brooks Marshall the lackwit
Read the OP again. PZ’s whole point is that atheism is not cool, but appears so (only) when compared with the spewings of apologists for religion.
Funny you should mention the problem of evil, Haruki. I was just thinking of Plantinga when thinking of examples of Sophistricated Theopologists and was looking into his Greatest Resolution of the Problem of Evil Evar: Transworld depravity and the free will defense. Basically, God needs us to have complete free will in order for moral good to be truly good, and in every possible world where we have free will and are able to do evil, there will be people doing evil. Of course, he doesn’t show how free will makes sense with an omniscient God. He doesn’t try to justify his belief that preventing evil actions would impinge on free will in light of the fact he is defending a God that supposedly intervened a lot in our history. He doesn’t ever seem to contemplate the possibility that evil actions be allowed, but the consequences of those actions on others rectified by God. He doesn’t even seem to think of the possibility that there are actual good and neutral actions, and that we could have free will limited to good actions and harmless but still ultimately selfish actions, and still have a distinction between good and not-good, without having unprovoked violence still on the table. And, of course, he does nothing to address natural disasters, disease, etc. that have nothing to do with human free will and which are the FAR greater indication that God isn’t good or is impotent than the fact that humans are able to do bad things.
It is a defense against one of the weaker points of the problem of evil, it introduces free will as something vital to God despite the fact that it highlights inconsistencies in the same way the problem of evil does, and it lacks the creativity to imagine scenarios where a God could surely prevent human evil while allowing good to be meaningful. Yet, according to wikipedia, Plantinga’s free will defense is considered to be good by philosophers, and appears to be highly esteemed as an answer to the problem of evil. Truly amazing.
And that’s why you’ve spent so much time in this thread to refute PZ’s position? Because you don’t really care after all?
Do you actually believe the shit you write? Do you care so little for honesty?
Then try emulating him, instead of being the smarmy, dishonest piece of shit you are.
Nobody here thinks you’re kindly, serious, adult, or dignified.
No one needs to give evidence for the non-existence of gods. It is the very lack of evidence that leads us to conclude that your god is imaginary, a quirk of your neural circuitry. However, since you came in talking about how Christianity is “the greatest liberator EVAR”, it is now about the truth, both of Christianity itself, and of your patently false claim.
It’s cute that you think being a Christian is non-conformist. But anyway, yeah–insulting you is definitely cooler, according to the traditional definitions of “cool,” than making claims you can’t back up, name-dropping, and trying to get people to think a fairy tale is true. Clever or not.
David Marshall @ 196: “This thread is not about the truth of atheism or Christianity, and no one has given any evidence either way.”
VS.
David Marshall @ 31: “The real difference between The God Delusion and The Truth Behind the New Atheism, is that I know what I’m talking about. When talking about religion, Dawkins is Dan Brown with a British accent….That, and the fact that lies still make it half-way around the world, while the truth is putting its shoes on — we’ll win in the long run.”
You see that quote? That’s what you came in here with: an insulting diatribe about how you are so much smarter than Dawkins on the topic of religion, that atheists are lying, and that Christianity will win. Not about the subject of coolness. So, where are the fucking facts supporting your position? You were called a moron for your first post as well as your history of doing this same shit, and your response is to handwave about the issue at hand (even daring to suggest debate topics in your second comment on this thread that have NOTHING to do with the veracity of your views like you suggested in your first post) and act aggrieved about receiving *gasp* insults in response to your own insulting first post. But you can’t just shut up, or actually try proving your views so that we can say “hey, maybe he’s not just a pompous moron”. You just keep acting offended and coming up with excuses for why you can’t show that you are so obviously right in this thread. And you do it over and over and over again, pretending that you did nothing to prompt the insults and the demands for actual support for your position. It’s transparent and annoying.
David Marshall
We are not PZ “followers”.
Pharyngula is not a religion, it is a neighbourhood pub.
PZ is not a priest, he is the bartender and bouncer*.
*speaking of which…
No he didn’t. It’s already been pointed out to you how you stumbled, why not retract, admit you were wrong, and move on?
Glen: I would be shocked if you accurately represented my book, or anything else in the sphere of reality, but of course you don’t:
“In that chapter, aside from attacking evolution over the matter of abiogenesis–when the two are only hazily connected . . . ”
Baloney. I never “attack” evolution. The chapter is called “the RIDDLES of evolution” not the “errors” of evolution. It follows a chapter in which I argue FOR common descent. I certainly don’t claim the difficulties of abiogenesis in any way discredit, say, natural selection.
“David never rises above mere tone trolling and acceptance that his fellow mindless apologists are every bit as worthy as those who have honestly pursued the matter . . . ”
More nonsense. Those chapters, which in no way depend on the work of any apologist, though they cite both sides, and offer original arguments as well (though I don’t claim to be a scientist) were critiqued and passed by anti-ID scientists in related fields at Oxford, Oregon State, and SPU, before publication. Chapter three criticizes creationist views that I think are wrong, arguing that “Darwin was a great scientist,” “the world is old,” “life is connected,” and “evolution can make you an intellectually fulfilled atheist – if you don’t ask too many questions.”
But I would be amazed if you had described my arguments accurately.
DM: “PZ claimed Gnus are really smart”
Waffler: “No he didn’t. It’s already been pointed out to you how you stumbled, why not retract, admit you were wrong, and move on?”
PZ, again: “(Atheism is) the domain of nerds and geeks and sciencey weirdos with beards and snarky women who are way smarter than the guys chasing them.”
Are you claiming that PZ only means that Gnu WOMEN are smart, and that only compared to “the men chasing them?” (Apparently because only stupid men are attracted to female atheists, for some reason?)
And it is a total misread on my part to suppose that “nerds,” “geeks,” and “sciencey weirdos with beards” is intended, in PZ’s off-hand way, as the male counterpoint to the “smarter women?”
Come on, now! I’m supposed to be the moron, here! Put your bloody thinking caps on, already!
David Marshall:
Interesting choice of words.
Almost all of your arguments are essentially magisterial — that is, arguments from authority. You seem the eschew logic and reason in favor of of the assumption that you are right. It doesn’t surprise me that one of your favorite apologists does essentially the same thing.
David Marshall, #205:
And which questions would those be, exactly? Or do you merely hint that there are questions, without actually asking those questions?
David Dunning Kruger Marshall:
The contents of your book is bog-standard I’m-not-a-creationist-buttery. Yes, you accept common descent. Good for you.
That’s a bit like a holocaust denier conceding that yes, Hitler probably was antisemitic. It’s such a pathetically small concession, that it counts for nothing.
Your “riddles” are bog standard creationist drivel. You many not quite plumb the same depths as Ray Comfort and Lee Strobel, but you’re still a scientifically illiterate kook.
BTW:
Helmuth Nyborg did research with these results: “Atheists scored 1.95 IQ points higher than Agnostics, 3.82 points higher than Liberal persuasions, and 5.89 IQ points higher than Dogmatic persuasions.”
Just sayin’.
Liars like you don’t expect honestly from those about whom you lie, due to projection.
Since you can’t actually deal competently or honestly with anyone or anything, you resort to the usual, lying your ass off.
First of all, you do attack evolution in the only way you know how, by tone trolling, you idiot.
Secondly, abiogenesis isn’t properly a “riddle” of evolution at all. It’s a “riddle” of what came prior to evolution, at least for the most part. Fuckwit.
Say, moron, why do you think I linked to your idiot book’s preview? Would I do so in order to show that I was improperly representing your twaddle? Of course not, it’s to back up what I say about it.
And I don’t care if you accept “common descent.” Behe does too, but the evidence that shows common descent is actually the evidence of reproduction plus mutation, natural selection, and other known mechanisms of evolution, so evidence of common descent (when that’s all there is evidence of) is ipso facto evidence against the intervention of “design.”
So don’t play your idiot word games here, shithead. We mean “evolutionary theory” when we say you argue against “evolution,” which both conventionally and for good reason indicates that you’re lying again. But of course, you’re commenting, hence lying.
Here’s what you say, lying hound:
And then you choose quotes from the people you normally malign, rather than dealing with the actual literature of evolution, all the while not recognizing what liars your type really are. It’s a truly sleazy spectacle, clearly designed to cast aspersions on evolution via your misuse of quotes. Fallacious buffoon.
Lying fuck, you deliberately took my statement out of context–and without the proper ellipse to indicate what you cut out. I wrote:
So, liar, why did you leave out what I acknowledged and then pretend that I was denying the legitimacy of the complaints that abiogenesis is lacking in results? Obviously because dishonesty is first nature to you.
So what, moron? The issue I raised is the fallacious manner in which you attack evolution, both through sleazy tone-trolling bias and the illegitimate implication that difficulties in abiogenesis raise doubts about evolution. You’re an egregious fuckwit.
I did, and you lied in your standard dimwitted fashion, taking care to dishonestly misquote what I had stated.
Holes and the way you dig them deeper in order to show that you never dug them in the first place.
Glen Davidson
From David’s book.
Chapter 3, page 55: “All humanity came from one man and one woman,” we read….Genetics has settled the matter in favor of Moses. Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, notes that one of the surprises from the research into human genes is the discovery that people of all races on earth share 99.9 percent of their DNA. This is unusual, he added…We are, he concludes, “truly parrt of one family”.
Chapter 4, page 64: At times like this, the scientific community can resemble a tree fort with a sign affixed to the wall: “Gurlz Kepe Out!” Only instead of girls, the excluded party is identified as creationists, fundamentalists, or even (in one strange instance) Republicans.
65: arguments against evolution as “antiscientific” (assaults on our club) and “doctrinaire” (carrying the odor of a rival, theological club).
66: Nor should we pay attention to people who waste time debating whether Intelligent Design or evolution are “real science” or not. David Bohm once defined science as “openness to evidence”. The best scientist-or theologian- is not someone who shouts, “Heresy!” when he hears strange views, but one who listens carefully and responds with reason and evidence.
*****
Sure, he accepts evolution in Chapter 3, but he harps on creationists being Expelled! and deliberately caters to the “teach the (non-existent) controversy” mindset.
nigelthebold: “And which questions would those be, exactly? Or do you merely hint that there are questions, without actually asking those questions?”
The short answer is: Don’t these things looked so very designed?
The long answer: Don’t these things looked so very designed? Wouldn’t God want to leave wiggle room for doubt? Aren’t people who see subtle workings of God in biology and evolution and have their faith justified just so darn smart? Isn’t the alternative to seeing God in natural phenomenon holding out until you see God’s hand “push the moon across the sky every day”?
The most accurate answer: The same old borderline IDiot bullshit.
I notice that David Marshall is being very coy on whether or not he had to pay “Harvest House” to publish his book.
It seems like it was vanity published after all.
@199
That was PRECISELY the defense I had in mind, Plantinga’s version. And it is trash. It also shows that the man has zero acquaintance even in passing with neuroscience. I wonder what he makes of split-brain patients and primary sociopaths.
Leaving aside all the question-begging about free will it does, he has to answer this:
Is there free will in heaven? If not, it is not the ultimate value, and the defense fails. If so, can you sin? If not, there is no free will. If so, then it follows that God IS capable of making a “possible world” with free will and beings who can sin but never wish to. In which case, a) why create a world aside from Heaven? and b) why create something worse after you create something better?
This is pathetic if that’s the best they have. If there is a God I hope it God-smacks them for making it look so bad.
If you put that line on in the UK, atleast half of them will know him because the BBC, like most other European public TV stations, also gives atheism a voice while it usually does not give evangelicals a voice so here it’s usually liberal christian vs. atheist. Oh, and those public tv stations are actually made for information and not just for making profit by showing whatever people want. Thanks Odin I live in Europe
David Marshall:
Exactly. You are being persecuted for being right, and atheists are rude and nasty and therefore wrong. So now we have your evidence for god!
Hazuki, brilliant additions. I am beginning to wonder if apologists are secretly striving to be the first to make an argument that is truly fractally wrong.
Not that I hold out much hope of actually getting a substantive response from him, but:
David Marshall, here are some questions from reading the sample of your book linked above.
1. What are your thoughts on radiocarbon dating? Are you still taken by the comic from all those years ago?
2. Why do you suppose atheists understand theology less than those who study theology? What is the cornerstone of theology that makes it amenable to study? What is its epistemology?
3. In what way is “God is three in one” lucid?
4. How was the triune god discovered?
5. What is the oldest dog breed? How long has humanity been breeding dogs for specific characteristics? How is eugenics indistinguishable from the breeding of dogs or other domestic animals?
6. Where does Genesis say the universe came from nothing?
7. Did Dr. Richard Sternberg follow established editorial process when publishing the Stephen Meyer paper?
8. What is the meaning of the word “antiscientific?”
9. Was Meyer’s paper scientifically sound, or did it contain scientific errors? (I figured I’d give you a hand on that one.)
10. Do any current models of biogenesis rely on the spontaneous self-assembly of DNA?
There. While some of these are multiple-question entries, each item represents essentially a single question. 10 substantive questions culled from the free section of your book. I hope you are still willing to provide substantive answers.
I’m claiming that the only place PZ mentioned anybody being smarter than anybody else (in his post) was when he clearly claimed that the ‘snarky women’ were ‘smarter than the guys chasing them’*. Explain who these ‘guys chasing’ the nerdy/geeky/sciencey types are supposed to be, in your interpretation. Priests, evangelists, and theologians are ‘guys chasing’ the nerdy/geeky/sciencey types? That would be a particularly odd thing to say. You have some basic reading comprehension problems, which show up all over the place.
You’re not supposed to be. It’s just how things worked out.
* – I don’t claim to know whether PZ is correct about ‘snarky women’ atheists and ‘guys chasing them’. I think it was a throwaway line that only a particularly challenged reader would pay much attention to.
@217
That’s “brilliant?” Apologetics is in much worse shape than people think, then. I don’t even have any formal training in theology or philosophy o_O
Sorry. Question 5 should read (in part):
Hazuki:
Apologetics is in terrible shape. But then, it doesn’t have much to work with, does it?
Anyone of above-average intelligence with an education in skeptical thinking can take on pretty much any apologist. Apologists tend to wrap their writing up in philosophical jargon to give it a veneer of respectability, so a moderate level of reading comprehension is required, but otherwise, it’s fairly easy to take on an apologist on their own turf.
That’s why I had no problem offering to debate David Marshall. He’s no Marty Fields (a fellow I once debated who had far more subtle apologia, and from whom I learned a lot). (Hey! I just did some name-dropping of my own. Oh, frabjous day!)
Hell, he’s not even a Plantinga.
Nigel, those questions aren’t what this thread is about!!!
@222
I think I may have wasted too much time worrying over apologists *sweatdrop* Plantinga is one of the best, and that was one of his best arguments, and I wasted it after about 60 seconds of thought. These people bluster on and on.
Rhetorical question here, presumably what a lot of people are thinking: Why didn’t David himself link to a substantial preview of a book of his out there, rather than just referring to some supposedly great stuff that is out there?
Any chance he really knows that it’s hardly going to blow away anyone who asks hard and probing questions? And that it’s really aimed at ignorami who he hopes know little about how analytical thinking is done?
Even if he’s in denial of the fact, one rather suspects that he knows on some level that this is pathetic stuff.
Glen Davidson
@225
If the samples are representative of the book as a whole, he is in deep trouble.
Rey Fox:
What? I thought it was about demonstrating our total intellectual dominance, and flexing our superior coolness muscles.
Drat. My teeth aren’t nearly sniny enough for Rhinebeck. I only have three weeks to get back into fighting shape.
You won’t let us have any fun. I pout in your general direction.
PS: It doesn’t matter anyway, as David Marshall has yet to answer any questions directly posed to him.
PPS: You are right. Tearing apart David Marshall’s lame arguments aren’t what this thread’s about. But it’s so much fun!
The fact of the matter, Hazuki, is that the reason why I found your observations “brilliant” was simply that they attempted to look at whether the arguments were consistent with objective scientific observations relevant to subject matter, and whether the arguments attempting to prop up Christianity were consistent with other aspects of Christianity. These are the two major ways that philosophers and theologians offering up apologetic arguments consistently fail. I am not a theologian or a philosopher myself, but you don’t need to be to see how these arguments are lacking. You just have to a decent grasp of logic and a decent knowledge of scientific facts and principles. Because, apparently, apologists don’t.
Yes, and free will is a completely moot point, as Adam and Eve where created with free will first, but were pure and innocent. I often ask, since they had no knowledge of good or evil, how could they even form the intent to be bad or disobey God if they couldn’t conceive what that even meant? Further more, since God told them they would surely die, they didn’t even have the concept of self preservation or that dying was *bad*. They couldn’t form moral values yet God punished them and tiny infants for immorality. Also, if God didn’t give them the concept of good and evil, why did he give it to the snake? WTF?
Yet more to that, why didn’t God have them die when He explicitly outlined that they would if they ate from the tree? He could easily have made a new pair of pure humans, and be done with it. Obviously, he immediately took the cruel and dishonest road using patently false reasoning, in order to, what, inflict pain and suffering and preserve and foster this new reality He inflicted?
In fact, this is good argument(AFAICT) that God valued, to the point of dishonest encouragement, judgement, pain and suffering, and condemnation above, or to the exclusion of, love? It appears He completely set the stage in order to unleash vindictive cruelty as His primary purpose for making anything and everything, FFS!
Fuck, it happened again! Every time I read or talk about the bible, I see new reasons that it is technically Fucked Right Up!
It’s exactly opposite the claim that if I only read and understood the bible, I would see the truth and be converted. I, in fact, become disgusted to ever greater depths, is what happens.
Let’s ask God:
“Isaiah 45:7
I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.”
Fuck, dude, I even treat my socks better than that.
tushcloots:
Listen, Honey, Daddy only beats you because he loves you.
tushcloots,
That was AMAZING.
Amazingly, I don’t think that is the most absurd claim of the afternoon. About 10 1/2 minutes in he comes up with this gem of an idea
In fact the only explanation for the idiocy that he and Frank Skinner came out with was that they had a bet on who could come out the most dodgy ideas about atheism.
Unfortunately, most apologetics concerning the problem of evil don’t even rise to the Plantinga level. What’s usually said is “gawd moves in mysterious ways” and “if gawd does it, it ain’t evil.”
Most apologists won’t admit that according to their own propaganda the Abrahamist god is a sadistic bully who kills people just because he can. The most extreme form, the Calvinistic god, doesn’t give a shit about the people he supposedly created. Your actions and motivations can be good, bad or indifferent. If you win the lottery then you’re going to Heaven, if you lose then you really lose. And this is supposed to be a “loving,” “omnibenevolent” deity.
I really hope you’ve taken David Marshall out of context on this, because if you haven’t…. woah!
Kel:
It’s not out of context. He also uses the idea that the universe came from nothing as proof that Genesis is correct, even though I can’t find a line in Genesis that states the universe came from nothing. In fact, it seems to have been formless and empty, with water over which God could hover. That’s a long way from empty, unless he’s retconning the fuck out of it.
He likes to usurp the findings of science to shoehorn his ancient book of myth into the cracks.
What a laughable load of tawdry trash David Brooks Marshall the Liar’s book is, to judge by the section available! For example, Marshall scolds the “New Atheists” for their scepticism about personal testimony, without reflecting for a moment that if we are to accept such testimony in the case of the resurrection of Jesus, we must certainly accept it in the case of alien abductions: there are far more witnesses to the latter than to the former, and they give first-hand accounts, unlike the gospels. Again, DBMtL claims we do (and must) trust our reasoning and senses – and tries to make out that this is similar to faith in God. But only an idiot or a young child has faith in their reasoning and senses in anything like the way Christians are exhorted to have faith in God: to carry on believing and trusting in God whatever happens. Those of us who are not idiots or young children realise that both our senses and our reasoning powers are fallible, and in particular, prone to lead us to the conclusions we prefer.
Oh, by the way, DBMtL, do get yourself a better editor (my guess is, you edited this putrid pile of piffle yourself, which would admittedly have been the most humane course of action). The possessive form of Dawkins is Dawkins’ or Dawkins’s. It is definitely not Dawkin’s.
What’s the opposite of ‘cool’?
Shouldn’t that be ‘hot’?
What’s so preferable about being ‘cool’ again?
Yeah, Genesis was very clear that the universe was created by God. “1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”
Kel:
Right — but I don’t see anything about the method of creation, or that there was specifically nothing. In fact, Gen 1:1 reads more like a prologue: “God created the heavens and the earth, and this is how.” I surmise that from the intentionally-vague first verse, and the very specific following verses.
But then, how anyone can get concrete ideas of reality from the poetics employed is beyond me. I am perhaps too intellectually limited.
The interesting thing about faith is that it commits one person to defend a position, no matter how absurd. Given what is known about mythology, and the history of the universe, it’s fairly safe to say that Genesis is myth – derived Babylonian myth at that. It’s not meant to be a modern account of history. So it’s surprising just how much people try to make Genesis into an actual account of history, and try to fit modern scientific fact in with Genesis – or even go so far to argue that modern science supports Genesis!
Now I don’t know if David Marshall believes this, hopefully when he says “he knows what he’s talking about” he has enough knowledge as to not take Genesis as an accurate or God-given account of Big History*. But this is the problem when arguing for something held by faith – it’s a commitment to a particular point of view, and as such all evidence has to be made to fit it.
* To use the term of David Christian
DM: “But I never really aspired to being “cool,” anyway.”
Brownian: “And that’s why you’ve spent so much time in this thread to refute PZ’s position? Because you don’t really care after all? Do you actually believe the shit you write? Do you care so little for honesty?”
Do try to follow. The point of Myer’s OP is to dis “apologists” and “religion” as “lame,” “uncool,” and stupid, even by comparison to nerdy but clever atheists.
This position does not need to be “refuted,” because anyone with any sense will just laugh at it: the “cool” part because it is so adolescent (who cares?), the “smart” part because it is so obviously untrue.
Richard Carrier is what, a more accomplished historian than Allan Chapman, or even Gary Habermas?
And that’s what I did, from the first post: Laugh. And the more tightly bound the poster, the more ridiculous he or she has made PZ’s comments seem by trying to defend them.
But carry on.
Yes, carry on with not addressing any of the issues brought up above. You said to read your book for your arguments, arguments you made in your book were brought forth and discredited, and all you can do is whinge over how no one here but you has any real “sense”.
And before you complain about how terribly off-topic that would be, I would wager PZ has no qualms with allowing you to present your proof (as oppose to your “proof”) in any thread even remotely related. We’re all waiting to convert based on your irrefutable evidence, there’s no reason to hold back.
Yep, the truth is hard to take, isn’t it.
No, you being smart is obviously untrue. Especially compared to the regulars here, who are laughing at your stupidity. All apologists have is misinformation (lies), and handwaving. Your attitude I quoted is an example of both.
And that is what we have been doing at your fuckwittery. LAUGHING AT YOU!!!! You are nothing but comic relief. Nothing intelligent or cogent or pertinent, just comic relief. Bwahahahahahahahaha
Simple answers to simple questions:
A: The Archbishop of Canterbury.
Ante: Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not “offended.” People can say any fool thing they like, and often do, here.
But when I’m outnumbered 20 to 1, I can’t answer every single silly jibe, or go back and read every prior post, so I tend to start with people who seem to have something serious to say. When all that is left are the dimmer remnants of the Puppy Pack, and the conversation is going every direction but the point of the OP (did Harvest pay me, or did I pay Harvest? — heh), it’s probably time to pick up the marbles and go home.
Addendum:
Kel:Actually, Nigel did take the quote from page 55 badly out of context.
Waffler: You essentially admit your earlier claim that I was wrong in saying PZ claims Gnus are “really smart” was itself wrong, but decide to snark it out and pretend I’m the one with the reading problem! Impressive!
Where do I “essentially admit” that? Be specific!
Is it normal to have pangs of regret over verbally abusing somebody like David Marshall? I’ve come to the tentative conclusion that he really doesn’t understand the things people say to him, and it may not be willful. He just doesn’t read much of what anybody says very carefully. He misconstrues, misinterprets and misunderstands what seem like the simplest of points, but maybe he’s not intentionally misrepresenting anything: he just doesn’t get it.
David Marshall:
Hey, now. Get your attributions right. That was anteprepro doing the quoting. That kind of sloppy scholarship will win you no friends here.
All I did was back it up. It seemed you were indeed attempting to validate the Adam and Eve creation with using Francis Collins quotes. And even after re-reading it, if that wasn’t your intent, then either I can’t read for comprehension worth a tinker’s damn, or you were being sloppy in your argument.
In which case, it would be nice if you were to explain your intent, rather than just say it was taken badly out of context.
David Marshall:
Obviously untrue? Research indicates atheists tend to have higher IQs than theists — 3 points higher than liberal theists, 5 points higher than fundamentalist theists. Your “obvious” here seems to not correspond to reality.
It seems you can’t be bothered to answer any post, actually. All of #246 was spent whinging (“puppy pack” — I have to admit, that’s pretty fucking cute), and expressly not answering even the simplest of direct questions or rebuttals.
DM #241
Obviously you care or else you wouldn’t spend so much time and energy whining about being declared uncool.
Okay, David I really, really will. But you see, it’s very hard when after you made the point you claim to make in comment 31 because the argument is so very obviously self-refuting, you feel the need, 20 hours and 165 comments (seven of those yours) later, to drop in and snivel that even though we atheists so obviously aren’t cool, so what and it doesn’t really matter and you never even wanted to be cool anyway, and we can keep our crown if we want it, so there.
Very much like a petulant child on the playground.
And, since your point was that we’re so obviously childish that the very thought of us being smarter or cooler is laughable on its face, you decided to spend a day, on and off, roughhousing with the pigs in the trough.
And that was to prove exactly what?
YOu’ve claimed that you’re uninterested in sharing actual arguments—yeah, yeah, they’re “in the book”—so that really only leaves wallowing in the trough as your intent.
I hope you enjoyed it. I mean, nobody here asked you to come. You popped in on your own.
But if you just came here to enjoy rolling around in the pen, what does that say for your thesis that we’re so-o-o-o-o-o much more childish than who? You? The guy who shows up to a blog, admits he thinks he’s too much better than us to even bother to make arguments, and by the way the claim isn’t worth refuting anyway.
Right. The gulf between our behaviour is how wide again? Just because you don’t drop f-bombs?
Waffler:
I think this goes back to Kel’s point in #240. David Marshall and folks like him are stuck trying to reconcile their belief with their knowledge. Reading the bits of his book available linked above, he does seem to be an intelligent person. He’s just an intelligent person stuck in the unenviable position of reconciling fact and fiction.
Take, for example, his analysis of Dawkins on intelligent design (beginning on page 63). He notes that Dawkins says in one breath, “An example of irreducible complexity would indeed be a blow to Darwin’s theories,” followed by, “A search for an irreducibly-complex organ would be unscientific.” From this, David Marshall concludes that Dawkins admits irreducible complexity is a potential threat, but then claims that Dawkins disallows irreducible complexity as unscientific.
This is, of course, a strange interpretation. What Dawkins is saying is that, should we run across a demonstrable example of a liver evolving from nothing, evolution would be thrown into disarray. However, a search for a liver evolving from nothing is an unscientific way to approach this potential shortcoming of evolution. Which it is. And that’s essentially what Behe and his ilk attempt. This is no different than admitting finding a rabbit fossil in the cambrian would be a blow to evolution (an example David Marshall uses), vs actually searching for that rabbit fossil in the cambrian. The former is scientific; the later is ideology.
This is a subtle distinction, one that David Marshall exploits (out of ignorance rather than malevolence, I think) for his own end — the rationalization of his beliefs. He would allow cherry-picking of data (like Behe does) rather than a rigorous application of the scientific method: follow the evidence, wherever it may lead, and whatever sacred cows it might tip. (SEE today’s faster-than-light particles for a specific example of real science in action.)
What David Marshall seems to think should happen in science is the pursuit of data in the service of ideology (such as happens in the intelligent design circles). And so this colors his presentation of Dawkins’ comments.
In any case, I think this all is tied to Kel’s analysis in #240. It isn’t exactly David Marshall’s express intent, but in the end, he has such little material to work with, it’s all he can do.
I notice DM (what is it with people named DM and batshit insanity?) is simply ignoring all the things he can’t answer. He reminds me very much of a person called Zilche in Undernet #apologetics, though somewhat less frothy than ol’ goose egg.
This seems to be a common thread among apologists :D
Has the lying pissant coward David Marshall provided any evidence that supports the validity of a belief in the Christian god? No?
Has he whined about every other possible issue he can in order to hide the fact that he knows there is no evidence that supports the validity of a belief in Christian god? Yes?
I guess I’m now two colours of unsurprised.
Okay, Mr. Marshall, I’ll toss you a softball: Can you point to one bit of evidence, evidence which can be independently verified, of the existence of any god?
Danger Mouse isn’t batshit insane. A little slow on the uptake occasionally, but not even really bonkers.
Yes, but Danger Mouse is a cartoon. We expect him to act like a cartoon. We don’t expect people to act like cartoons.
So what’s “in context” then?
I’d be happy if David Marshall would act like a cartoon. They’re generally logical (okay, it’s often internal logic, but there’s still logic) and there are usually few unanswered questions at the end of the cartoon.
Unless Marshall is in a Krazy Kat cartoon. There logic does not always apply.
Interestingly, IR is a reasonable explanation for the opposite phenomenon – for an apparently useful adaption which somehow is not observed in nature, despite in many cases being a relatively easy thing to achieve for even human-level intelligent design, with all it’s limitations.
Things like macroscopic full-axle wheels, communication with radio-waves, organic control of fire, metallic skeletons, etc.
The difference between Dawkins and Marshall is that, unlike Marshall, Dawkins is honest with his definitions. He spends the first full chapter of “The God Delusion” defining exactly what he means by “God”, and describing exactly what kind of god he is going to argue against in the rest of his book. And he also explains exactly why he has chosen to use that particular definition of god (it’s the definition of god that the majority of regular religious people believe in, and the definition that motivates the religious crusade against science).
He lays that right out for the reader at the very beginning. No waffling, no wishy-washiness, no vague concept-begging, no goalpost shifting.
amphiox:
Exactly. If we were to see these things, with no biological antecedents at all, then we’d have to fall back, regroup, and try to figure out where evolution through natural selection went wrong. This could very well lead us to intelligent design (say, like that from David Brin’s Uplift series).
It would be foolish of us to assume our genome has been meddled with until we observe some actual evidence of meddling, though. That’s all Dawkins was saying. Yet David Marshall interprets it into something far more sinister.
Again, I don’t think that’s a conscious choice. I think he does it reflexively, out of a desire to reconcile his knowledge with his faith.
David Marshall:
Can you point to any evidence, evidence which can be measured or independently observed, pointing to the existence of any god?
I would LOVE to see his theodicy too. That should be amusing, if the fact that even Plantinga doesn’t have a working one means anything. We could play a logical-fallacy drinking game, except I only have one liver and will die without it :(
Okay. I drank 3 beers in preparation for tonight’s debate, but it seems David Marshall will not engage, even with a fair handicap.
So, I shall go to bed.
However: the offer still stands, David Marshall. I am more than willing to participate in a debate with you, in the forum of your choice. You give me a menu of three topics, from which I choose one. Then we debate.
While it seems you are more comfortable sniping from the snuggly-warm comforts of the vanity press, I suspect you’d like a fair chance at one of us “New Atheists” that has all the hep kids dancing these days. I’m a minor player, certainly — but, in all of my New Atheist arrogance, I suspect I’d give you a run for your money.
And I’m completely serious about the 3-beer handicap. You’re gonna need it.
What are you talking about? Danger Mouse is amazing! The Gray Album was pure genius. Plus all that stuff with Cee-Lo in Gnarls Barkley? Well, perhaps he is a bit insane, but in a good way.
I was really looking forward to Nigel’s 3-beer handicap debate with David Marshall. Why don’t debate societies do that more often? That’s such an awesome idea, a 3-beer handicap.
Ah, so I am accused of quoting something out of context by the Honest and Honorable David Marshall? Laughable. Do I look like a creationist?
The original quote I made in an earlier comment, from page 55 of DM’s book: “
A fuller quote, including paragraphs before and after and excluding an omitted sentence and phrase:
I believe that all of you who are not David Marshall will find that the extra context adds fuck all, and doesn’t vindicate David Marshall’s idiotic statements and insinuations. Surprise, surprise.
Yup. Looks like a crock to me.
Maybe that page is out of context, that there’s some point in between the beginning and end that puts all that into perspective. Because if not… :S
Seriously? I mean, seriously?
David Marshall has no understanding of basic Marxism. Marx was promoting a “classless” society, not a “cashless” society.
Probably got his knickers so twisted over the names coined for “mitochondrial eve” and “y chromosome adam” that he’s conveniently forgotten that these individuals lived some 60 to 140 thousand years apart, and were both members of viable (obviously) human populations; he’s also forgotten that these are merely the unbroken matrilineal and patrilineal lines. To try and twist this into some sort of specious argument “in favour of Moses” is terminally stupid or terminally dishonest; take your pick (well, could be both stupid and dishonest, I suppose)
That pretty much speaks for itself. It would have been simpler had you just admitted that your book was vanity published in the first place.
Ah, but then it would have been much, much harder for his inane and vain attempt to pretend to be an authority. Most of us knew he wasn’t the authority he pretended to be after his second post months ago. Since then, we have been laughing at him.
David Marshall:
Can you point to any evidence, evidence which can be measured or independently observed, pointing to the existence of any god?
There is only one true Danger Mouse. and his prophet is Ernest Penfold.
Brother Ogvorbis:
Sigh
I can’t believe how short-sighted you puppies in the pack can be! It doesn’t matter if any gods exist. Christianity freed the slaves. It cured cancer. It invented ice cream. It built the pyramids. Christianity put the bop into bop-op-a-doo-wop. It sent men to the moon, and brought them home again, and caused them to testify in congress that NASA is embarrassing. Christianity invented science. It taught folks how to nap flint arrowheads. It brewed the first beer. In invented writing for the sole purpose of providing you with God’s word (the word? “Fuck you, heathens” which is technically three words).
Why, without Christianity, there’d be no smiles on children’s faces, no outstanding special effects in your movies, no thrill rides at Cedar Point, no grilled steak and mushrooms in port reduction, no missionary position, and no female orgasm (yes, Christianity even solves that Riddle of Evolution).
So please. Show a little respect.
/snark
Wow. I made the mistake of going to the Amazon page for Marshall’s book and reading the comment threads. Boy, does David Marshall spin like a jet turbine when someone writes a detailed, negative review outlining the deficiencies of his book.
It seems one of Marshall’s attacks on evolution is the “there are no beneficial mutations” canard. And this after he admits evolution is probably true! In a strangely-lamarckian turn, he wonders why baseball players haven’t developed cow-like hides on one hand.
At least, that’s what I glean from the conversation I read.
I may have to check his gook out from the library, take it out behind the woodshed, and give it a good sound thrashing.
If you did that in written form, I’m sure we’d all be amused!
Also, that was a very awkward spelling error in the last paragraph :)
knap flint
Although I wouldn’t surprise me if Christers put rock to sleep.
ACN:
<sheepish>Uhm… I really meant “book.” I really really did.</sheepish>
chigau:
And the errors just keep on piling up. I’m on a roll today!
I’m goin’ back to bed. Some days it just doesn’t pay to get up.
If you have access to a copyright library, then good luck to you. (It will probably be in some annexe to an annexe of the level three basement, stored in a rack of mobile shelving.)
As for a regular library having it… Bwahahaha!
Brilliant!
Is it just me, or did anyone else hear Nigel’s description of the wonders of Christianity as a 1960s propaganda reel narrated by Troy McClure?
Now, if we can just get a freckled, tow-headed kid named Billy or Butch to stand in for the audience (“Gosh, mister! Can Christianity fix my scooter?”) and get chucked on the chin by Troy (“It sure can, kid, it sure can!”)
Don’t snigger! Those films taught a generation of children that hiding under their desks will protect them from a nuclear strike by the Reds. Surely one could do wonders for a religion that’s as least twice as absurd and half as useful.
♪ ♫ Duck and Cover ♫ ♪
Brownian:
I didn’t, but I do now.
Oh, I’m so doing this. I might have to start a blog, but I’m doing it.
I was thinking more along the lines of The Kids in the Hall’s God is Dead skit.
@284
In order to give it its proper place of honor, no. It will be stored in a dark basement past a broken staircase with no lights in a disused lavatory with a sign on it saying “beware of the leopard.”
hyperdeath:
Yeah. I’ve been having a similar problem with Dawkins’ The God Delusion. It seems my library never has it, though they have 3 copies listed. It seems it’s always checked out.
Yep. Almost exactly the same problem you describe. Almost exactly.
Some offices won’t let attendees bring potential weapons into a meeting, but innovators can easily turn board tables, chairs, laser pointers, or even powerpoint slide transitions into deadly instruments. The prevailing idea now is to remove all content from meetings, so that individuals that might be potentially dangerous (or useful) are lulled into a state of non-threatening torpor.
My mind jumped to the Cowardly Lion’s song song about courage. (“What put’s the ‘ape’ in ‘apricot’?”).
The depths of historical ignorance revealed in these sentences is truly impressive. Both hatred, and class oppression (which was Marx’s target), long preceded the invention of money (about 600 BCE, in the Anatolian kingdom of Lydia). It is true that in Marx’s eschatology, the arrival of communism would involve the abolition of money, and a society organised on the principle: “From each according to ability, to each according to need.” But of actual communist regimes – none of which IIRC have claimed to have reached communism – only the Khmer Rouge actively* suppressed the use of money, and while there was certainly plenty of hate involved in their rule, it seems odd to associate it specifically with that policy when they were also enslaving, torturing and murdering people in large numbers.
*During the Russian Civil War the peasants refused to accept the money in circulation as payment for agricultural produce (trade and industry had largely collapsed so there was nothing to buy), and the Bolsheviks resorted to seizing it without payment to feed the urban population. But this policy of “War Communism” was a desperate expedient, and they established a new currency as soon as they were able.
horrorshow
That was just mean ;)
How about the proposition “David Marshall does know how to pick a single issue debate topic” I will be arguing against the assertion.
“Chocolate is better than vanilla and less salty than chips” is a similar question. And it’s either the cause of a) stupidity and being unable to narrow focus or b) an intentional attempt to set up a situation where you can use 1 unrelated assertion to assert the other is true. It’s taking two dichonomys and acting like they’re really one. I’ve seen other apologists use this rhetorical trick before. (A1) Either there is a God and (B1) there is objective morality or (A2) there is no God and (B2) there is no morality. Statements A1+A2 are a proper dichotomy as are B1+B2, by linking them this way you attempt to sneak in and convince people that A1 is true if you can show B1 or some other combination.
Also FFS, hasn’t David M been here long enough and done enough slagging, book whoring and general insipidity to be boring to anyone else?
You can’t get ought from is, but apparently you can get is from ought.
Or so the fallacy-wielding “scholar” supposes.
Glen Davidson
Hmm. Last comment was foiled by tabbed browsing. Mentally put that one into the Fantastical Dr. Fox thread. Anyhoo…
Isn’t that just like a Christian apologist? Can’t be bothered to get the fucking details of actual history or biology right—stuff that can be looked up in any old textbook.
But, when it’s time to discuss the nebulous and divisive nature of the god that ~30,000 different sects of Christianity call the One True God™, why it’s practically a fucking crime that Dawkins didn’t perfectly refute the one in DBMtL’s head.
But it’s just that kind of out-of-the-box thinking that translates one group of Christians advocating against the slavery practiced by another group of Christians into overall win for humanity. Kinda like fake sacrificing your godly mortal body to pay yourself reparations on behalf of a third party whose crime was learning what constituted a crime or not.
Brownian:
When you put it like that, it does sound kinda silly.
Okay, raven, you have got to stop doing that. It’s inflammatory, it’s discriminatory against individuals with mental disorders, it’s discriminatory against otherwise mentally-healthy religious people, it’s poor argumentation, and it’s just all around bullshit.
To suggest that, based on his behaviour here, that DM has NPD (rather than just being a blowhard), and then to conflate that with some likelihood of being a serial killer is the absolute fucking height of intellectual dishonesty and irresponsibility. It’s disgusting. Don’t fucking do it anymore.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that Christianity isn’t true because it’s silly; I’m saying that it’s absurd on its face to then argue that YHWH or his sorta sacrifice is logical, rational, or even ethically-binding.
Brownian #291
So you’ve heard of my company’s executive leadership meetings.
I’ve never understood the concept of Christian redemption. Yahweh is pissed at humanity because supposedly two of them failed a test which they were set up to fail. So several thousand years later Yahweh rapes a girl who gives birth to Yahweh Junior who’s actually Yahweh himself, only kinda different, but not different enough to be a separate god but sort of a slightly different version of Yahweh, if you don’t look too close or you if you do look close enough or something like that but inscrutable, really inscrutable, maybe, perhaps.
Anyway, Yahweh Junior, who’s called Jesus for short, gets tortured to death so Yahweh Senior is all happy with humanity again, maybe, perhaps. But Jesus didn’t really die. He had a bad afternoon and a day and a half later he’s all better, rolling big rocks around and having folks stick their hands inside his body and shit like that. Because Jesus didn’t really die since he’s god and gods don’t really die (it’s in their contract, just ask Osiris). Why Yahweh Senior didn’t poof himself all happy (he’s omnipotent, it’s in the Big Time God contract, just ask Zeus or Odin) is another one of those inscrutable things that only Sophisticated Theology™ can explain, maybe, perhaps.
No, but my organisation’s executive leadership clearly has.
I’ve never understood the concept of Christian redemption.
That’s because it makes about as much sense as slapping an “I support the troops bumper sticker means you’re ‘patriotic’. Don’t think. Just place your hand over your heart and watch for any sign that somebody else isn’t doing it with as much fervor as you are. They’re probably a Jew or a Communist.
And even if he did die, isn’t death just what God ordained for everybody? If your spouse does the laundry every day, and you pop into the basement exactly once to toss in a load of dirty socks, would you be justified in asking your spouse to revere you for eternity because of your sacrifice? And, if you were the one to invent dirty laundry in the first place, wouldn’t your spouse be justified in cubing you for stew meat?
“Hi God! Thanks for getting around to beta test the idea of life you condemned all of us to, after we’ve been doing it for 150,000 years. What’s that? You died? It was painful and unpleasant?
Altogether now, everyone: Awwwwwww, poor fucking cupcake!
Next time, try dying of cancer. Or being eaten by a lion. Or freezing to death. Or drowning. Or starving to death. Or dying of thirst. Gosh, there are just so many methods of death you invented that you just have to try.
Come back soon. See how long you fucking last this time around. We don’t have Romans anymore, but we’ve got Sicilian mafiosa. They’ll have you begging to be crucified, if they leave you your tongue.”
I’m sad David Marshall went away in a crybaby huff. He’s missing out on some fairly sophisticated theology.
I realize theology is as hard as physics, biology, and knitting, all rolled up into one, but I am having a dandy time. And, I’m learning a lot.
Brownian. Sir. Please continue. ‘Tis and Ing, feel free to jump in at any time.
David Marshall just doesn’t know what he’s missing. But I guess he has a bunch of negative Amazon reviewers to deal with. Character assassination doesn’t happen all by itself.
Poor David Marshall. He has so much to learn from us.
How to avoid presupposition.
What evidence is and how to use it
Why his deity is imaginary
Why his babble is a book of mythology/fiction
Why Xiananity is built on mental quicksand, and isn’t rational
Why religion has held back civilization
How to think skeptically
Why theists and apologists are full of bovine fecal matter
How not to fool yourself
How not to show abject fuckwittery to people smarter than you
He has nothing to teach us, but he has a lot to learn.
I’m disappointed he went away after explaining it was out of context – but not clarifying what he meant. After reading that passage, I’m getting the distinct impression that he’s arguing that modern genetics supports the biblical narrative. And surely David Marshall knows what he’s talking about so that’s got to be out of context – because if he knows anything about genetics or mythology, then I don’t know why he thinks a) that genetics supports the biblical account, b) why anyone should expect the biblical account to be accurate, or c) that the biblical account was written by Moses.
I really hope he comes back to clarify, because if not…
It’s for the better. After all, we’re too lowbrow to understand his sophisticated thought, and he’s too highbrow to descend to our level, so what good reason could he possibly have for coming here? To scout the enemy? He’s already told us he thinks we New Atheists are faddish pifflers. We’re a Little League team. What’s he learning from us?
What do I know? The only theology I know is my own fear-based musings as a young Catholic boy. I haven’t spent the time in the lab dissecting God’s eyes and titrating Holy Spirit into Erlenmeyer flasks and whatnot, like the theologians have. I just thought about it.
But even then, I frankly never got the ‘comfort’ aspect. I was terrified of hell, and what’s more, I came to think (I have no idea why) that the gate to heaven was narrow and only a few found it. And the key had something to do with sin. But since everything was some sort of sin, and nobody came up with a scale (one masturbation was worth two little lies, or whatever), nor a cutoff point beyond which you were destined for hell, the idea of getting into heaven was a sort of lifelong job interview where you never knew if your CV was just one publication short of welcome aboard.
So, when Jesus tells the one thief at Golgotha, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise,” I thought the thief was the luckiest man on earth, because none of us can ever know for sure we’ve earned our place in heaven (evangelicals who think they’re saved because they spoke some majick are the most self-deluded assholes in history). And then it occurred to me that Jesus himself lived his whole life knowing he’d be having dinner with Dad as soon as he died. And if you have nothing to fear from the afterlife, then what is death but an incovenient ‘bad afternoon’, as ‘Tis puts it?
In short, even according to the universe in Christian mythology, Jesus’ death was nothing, because he was immune to one of the most important motivations in Christianity—the fear of eternal damnation. Hell, the very story of the Martyrs themselves illustrate that death is nothing for those who do not fear hell.
Since Jesus could not possibly know the fear of damnation, then how could his death possibly mean anything, unless one simply declares it does by assertion?
How did Moses write the account of his own death?
If you were to get clarity with David Marshall, he’d completely disappear.
Really, clarity shouldn’t be too much to ask for; especially in light of this supposedly being an intellectual pursuit.
Brownian:
And this is why I’m glad you continued.
I was never much of a believer. I found out when I was 20 that my mom was an atheist. Mom and dad figured we kids should make up our own minds. Dad kinda believed in something. He called himself a Christian, but never stepped foot in a church, that I ever saw. (These days, he’s a deist at most.)
Aaaanyway, even without any faith, I realized the Jesus-on-the-cross thing never made any sense. I mean, he’s God, right? So he knew he wasn’t going to die.
And at this point, my Sunday School teacher would interrupt. “Uhm, nigel, he was also mortal.”
I figured, as long as Jesus was God, his sacrifice on the cross was no real sacrifice. I mean, “Sacrifice” means giving something up, right?
“Uhm, nigel, eight-year-olds aren’t supposed to ask questions like this. Can you hush up now? Please?”
I didn’t even consider the additional burden of the fear of hell. Probably because I never really feared hell.
That’s an interesting twist.
Kel:
I don’t know why y’all keep questioning him. He knows what he’s talking about.
I thought that was the best reason to question him. What’s the point of asking people who don’t know what they’re talking about? David Marshall is in the know, therefore he’s the best point of information to gain that knowledge.
Kel:
Well. You’re supposed to listen to him. Not to question. He has Much To Say™! And he just knows sooo much more than either of us.
I lubs him.
*Snicker, tee-hee, bwahahahahahahaha*
I’m pretty sure DM is reading this, and “laughing” at us laughing at him. Me, I’m laughing at the thought his “laughing” at our laughing.
(And much joy was brought into the world!)
See, this is where Sophisticated Theology™ comes into play. Sophisticated Theologians™ like David Marshall know these things and, if you’d just buy his book, you’d know too.
If it isn’t available for free download, it isn’t worth the price. For free, it is over priced…
I bet the vast majority of the copies was sold in the USA, so Williams likely doesn’t know it was a bestseller anywhere. The God Delusion, in contrast, has certainly been sold a lot in the UK.
But surely you agree that Christianity has faded out a lot in the First World over the last 100 years?
QFT!
Of course. I just think it’s somewhat beside the point, somewhat.
Not “still”. Again. It’s an outgrowth of 19th/early 20th-century romanticism/nationalism.
Was it sold that much? It was mostly distributed for free…
FIFY.
A lot older than Hitchens!
So true!
Logically speaking, we don’t need to. We only need to point out that they aren’t standing on any grounds whatsoever.
No evidence, no belief.
Agreed.
It means he thinks Christianity has faded out even more than I imply above.
The whole thing is an obvious allusion to the Rebeccapocalypse.
Is there an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent god?
As long as this isn’t answered with “yes”, the questions you ask have only entertainment value. They’re like asking how time travel works under the assumption that Star Trek is true.
Actually, that’s all a mistranslation. It’s all a single sentence: “In the beginning of God’s creation of the heavens and the Earth, when the Earth was confused and empty and God’s breath hovered above the waters, God said: ‘Let there be light’, and there was light.”
PZ was deliberately using Williams’ wording.
And do pay attention. Just after you’re informed that you can’t get to “Dawkin’s” from “Dawkins”, you make “Myer’s” out of “Myers”? Embarrassing.
Liar!!! If I can read every comment, and I do, then so can you.
We’re communicating in writing here. Even if we tried, we couldn’t pull a Gish gallop on you. You have all the time in the world to answer every single tiny jibe, however silly, one by one.
Really, man, what are you doing on a blog when you don’t read every comment on the very threads you “contribute” to!?!
*innocent whistle* :-°
Seconded!
*headdesk*
*headdesk*
*headdesk*
*CRASH*
*headfloor*
*headfloor*
*headfloor*
Naaah. The Honorable Gentlemen will simply blow you up with the entire width of the highway you’re driving on. That’s a better way to make a statement.
Damn, Brownian, that’s good. I’d never considered this. It means that Jesus’ “sacrifice” was even more trivial than I’d previously thought. We’ll have to keep this in mind the next time David Marshall or one of that ilk shows up to harangue us.
When I “clarify” butter I get a lovely, pale yellow, translucent substance on top, with a bunch of whiteish, lumpy stuff on the bottom.
Is there a metaphor in there, somewhere?
Probably a labored one, at best.
Hume’s Fork, correct?
Agreed. Though I thought that PZ made the topic global when he said “and showed them to the average person on the American street”. But I’m not sure how that takes away from my point that The God Delusion, and other books like it, are catering largely for a previously unexploited niche market.
Looking at the bestsellers in the UK over the last 13 years or so, The God Delusion doesn’t even feature in the top 100. Bill Bryson’s A Short History Of Nearly Everything came in at #23. So it should, it’s a fantastic book…
In an unrelated query, do cephalopods lend themselves to being dipped in clarified butter, or is that more of an arthropod thing?
Is it in poor taste to discuss the consumption of the cephalopodic overlords? :)
ACN
Everything is better with butter.
Lazybird: “Not surprising that you are unaware of Christian communism. Ignorance seems to be a requirement for your position.”
Sigh. Sometimes I think arrogant stupidity is a prerequisite for yours.
I wrote a paper on a Liberation Theology for my Marxist Philosophy professor 30 years ago. He was a practicing communist revolutinary, but he called it a “thoughtful paper.” Had you even crawled out of your egg by that time?
Honestly, there was a time I almost bought some of the propaganda about “Brights.” Interacting with this kind of presumptuous inanity has disillusioned me.
He was a practicing communist revolutinary
uh, practicing where, exactly?
and just how long until the glorious revolution takes place?
Interacting with this kind of presumptuous inanity has disillusioned me.
well, you know what to do then.
FUCK OFF.
David Marshall
Is that in your book?
Doesn’t seem to improve the idiocy of Marshall. Perhaps it’s the main exception.
Glen Davidson
David Marj: But surely you agree that Christianity has faded out a lot in the First World over the last 100 years?
No. There seem to be more practicing Christians in the US than there were 100 years ago. Fewer in Europe, but that has waxed and waned for a thousan years – check out Rodney Stark’s Secularization, RIP.
Whoever you’re quoting, is garbling my argument something fierce. Try not to believe what you read secondhand too often.
stop churning out one liners…
There seem to be more practicing Christians in the US than there were 100 years ago.
there seem to be more Americans in the US than there were 100 years ago, too.
fuckwit.
Whoever you’re quoting, is garbling my argument something fierce.
frankly, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out he was quoting you.
hack.
Like the accounts of the life of Jesus Christ?
David Marshall
It works like this:
you type one of these: < (it is usually above the comma “,”)
then you type:
blockquote
then you type one of these: > (it is usually above the period “.”)
then you paste whatever you have copied (I assume you know how to do that)
then you type one of these < followed by one of these /
then you type
blockquote
then you type one of these: >
<blockquote>whatever shit you are quoting</blockquote>
.
It’s so easy, a child could do it.
I imagine your professor had a great deal in common with Reg Shoe.
It’s interesting that David Marshall has the opportunity to chastise people over his knowledge of Marxism, but won’t take the time to defend the claims where he claimed it was out of context.
What gives?
As ichthyic mentions, looking at the absolute number of Christians is silly. What you should do is look at the percentage. I don’t have the numbers from 100 years ago, but in 1990 86% of the population in the US identified as Christian. In 2009, it was 78%. (Source). The ‘no religion’ category was the fastest growing one during that time. The first world has been getting less religious for a while now and the US seems to finally be joining them.
But evidently had no more success at that than you have had at scholarship – maybe he just hadn’t practised enough. He might at least have taught you how to form a possessive, though.
He’s a habitual liar. When called on a lie, his usual technique is to ignore the challenge completely.
KG, that makes him a liar and a coward.
Oh yeah, and learning the most basic of HTML is apparently beyond his level of competence.
(I guess religion has ossified his brain)
ummm, how could anyone possibly know this?
You should live so long! Are you suggesting that if it doesn’t, that will be because of the decline in Christianity? If so, on what grounds?
Indeed it will. Its apparently explosive growth there in recent decades coincides with a move to a much more economically unequal society and the end of the “iron rice bowl”, in which the state, in return for obedience, guaranteed a level of provision in housing, education, care for children, the sick and elderly. My hunch is that the relationship was causal – that times of socio-economic insecurity favour religion – and that the adoption of a replacement social welfare system, which is happening in a somewhat piecemeal fashion, will slow the process. There is support for the general hypothesis that socio-economic inequality correlates with individual religiosity (and favour for religious involvement in politics) in recent research: see Tim Müller’s multilevel analysis of survey data from 55 countries, and the references therefrom. Differences in Gini coefficient on income partly (but only partly) explain differences between the USA and European countries. Incidentally, this paper also provides some evidence (contrary to what Rodney Stark’s 1999 article Secularization: RIP* would lead one to expect, that modernization (as measured by the Human Development Index) does correlate negatively with individual religiosity across societies, at least for the countries studied, which were predominantly Christian or Muslim by tradition. Hypotheses derived from Stark’s “supply side” theory of variation in religiosity across societies were not suppported.
*Cited by David Brooks Marshall the Liar above. Unlike Marshall, Stark is a respected scholar in the field of sociology of religion, although he is, like Marshall, a bit of an IDiot when it comes to evolution.
Like most of Christian teaching, this is simply pulled out of some theologian’s arse. AFAIK, there is not a particle of evidence that healthy bodies suffer more physical pain than unhealthy ones, or that punishment justly inflicted is any easier to bear than punishment unjustly inflicted. Moreover, horrifying as it is, crucifixion is relatively brief – particularly so in Jesus’s case if the gospels are to be believed; many people have suffered repeated torture for years on end. In any case, you are ignoring Brownian’s main point: that according to Christian doctrine, Jesus knew he would not only survive his physical death, but would not then risk eternal damnation, but would get to “sit on the right hand” of his father in heaven.
Technically, in this case, he answered the challenge with a bald assertion.
“Oh, I’m wrong on communism am I? Well, some nameless guy before you were born didn’t think so when I wrote a paper—now lost to the ravages of time—and he was a real communist so there.”
What person older than 8 would think this was any kind of rebuttal whatsoever?
Well, there’s certainly nothing else in the gospels to suggest he’s Samuel L. Jackson’s character in Unbreakable. Furthermore, if Jesus propensity for suffering were so much greater, then how would he have survived fasting in the desert at all? If your character has super extra-pain feeling characteristics, it’s usually a good idea to mention them, and to do so long before the painful climax on which your character’s motivation hinges.
As for the greater sense of injustice, this gets dicey. First of all, children of varying levels of innocence are killed all the time in unjust circumstances. Hell, other than the idiotic taint of original sin, fetuses are presumably just as innocent as Jesus. If they are not; say, that they commit sin via their fetal thoughts, then the concept of sin starts to become meaningless and indistinguishable from being human. If that’s the case, then Jesus also sinned, or he wasn’t human. Likewise, if Jesus was too perfect, too innocent, he was also not human.
And the story again falls apart as soon as Jesus is no longer human.
And, as KG points out, this doesn’t touch the aspect that Jesus still knew he was going to end up in heaven as soon as he died. Since we’ve established that whatever he was, he wasn’t fully human. So, he was a god. The problem with gods (especially omnipotent ones) is that they can (and in the case of YHWH, they do) do everything. It’s still a stretch beyond the ludicrous to claim that a deity that created a universe 13-14 billion years ago and over 90 billion light-years in diameter still couldn’t hack a bad afternoon.
KG said:
Perhaps more than a bit. He appears to have embraced the “teach the controversy” ideology:
I also liked this little excerpt from the same text:
I’d be careful before citing Stark as an authority.
Horrorshow:
Seriously? Jesus suffered the ultimate pain because he had a perfect body? How the fuck does that make the least amount of sense? One could just as easily argue that Jesus barely suffered at all, because the perfect body would make one more resistant to pain than our imperfect, normal-mortal bodies. But, of course, the idea that Jesus had a “perfect” body is nowhere mentioned, anywhere, and is entirely contrary to the point of Jesus living as a mortal in the first place. Are you sure you aren’t thinking of Heracles?
Ah, the “agony of injustice”. Brilliant excuse. Far more so than making shit up about perfection meaning super pain senses.
Oh, but I note you’ve done nothing, in either of these “explanations” to address the fact that Jesus would have been certain about his afterlife, an eternity of bliss and peace to compensate for a day of suffering and dying. While other people who are executed suffer more because they lack such comforting knowledge. To say nothing of those who executed wrongfully, but aren’t Christian, so they get tortured forever for their troubles. The feeling of being unjustly executed pales in comparison to the certain knowledge that you will live in on a perfect world, forever. You claimed that knowledge of this would not “negate the pain”, but I also see no reason why the feeling of “injustice” would increase the “pain” more than the certain knowledge of death being impermanent would decrease it.
I’m glad that someone came around to give us an example of the quality of theopologism for us. David Marshall’s pathetic dodging could only cut it for so long.
chigau (曇) #323
Ghee, I don’t know.
By sheer numbers, yes. But considering the increase in population, and looking at percentages thereof, maybe not. That is the problem with your answers. They aren’t complete enough to make real sense. Just white noise to cover your lack of truthfulness.
horrorshow:
Wow. That all makes perfect sense.
Y’know, it’s like the Trinity. While Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit are all three separate aspects of a single God (the one we call God, or YHWH, or Jehovah), they’re all the same, even though one of the three is God. In that way Christianity is not a polytheism. When you pray to Jesus, you’re really praying to God, even though Jesus was also a mortal human, though he couldn’t really die.
And the transitive death/long-nap-in-a-cool-cave of Jesus was a substitute for the immensity of punishment promised by God for sinners: eternal damnation, and a nice suite in Hell.
How does one afternoon of pain make up for all the millions who were supposed to suffer eternal unbearable pain and torture? How is it in any way equivalent? By what algebra of pain does Jesus’ crucifixion (a punishment many went through) in any way make up for the 1*10^8 people * (infinity) seconds * excruciating pain?
Even if I accept your explanation as even vaguely not pulled out of someone’s ass, horrorshow, it doesn’t make fucking sense. The algebra is simply all wrong. The punishment suffered by Jesus simply doesn’t add up to the clemency granted. So the claim that Jesus “paid due” simply doesn’t hold water, even with your bullshit rationalization.
This whole not-pology of God’s makes clear one thing:
God’s punishment for sinning was completely fucking arbitrary.
If the debt of sin could be paid with such slim currency, if God could commute our sentence on such flimsy pretext, then his entire system of justice was not based on some innately-divine need for justice, some balancing of the scales. The original punishment wasn’t necessary, even with the rather bullshit setup of original sin. If an infinity of unbearable torture for millions of people can be negated by an hour of exquisite, loving pain by a single man-god chimera, then the original punishment was patently greater than the crime.
It was a rigged system, where God had his thumb on the scales of justice. It was an arbitrary system constructed at the whimsy of a capricious deity.
Christianity makes a mockery of God.
David Marshall:
Did you, or did you not, write this:
Your understanding of Marx isn’t in question here. Your understanding of the historical context of the application of Marx is. You claim directly that we have learned from the application of Marx “that people can hate one another in a cashless society.”
Question: which communist state was cashless, and under what circumstances?
Your reading for comprehension is about on par with your writing for clarity.
David Marshall:
But less than there were twenty years ago.
Also: bullshit on the “more Christians” claim. As it was pointed out, there are more people in the United States now than in 1900. And, turns out, the percent Christians of the population in Northern America was greater in 1900 (97%) than in 2005 (83%).
http://pewforum.org/uploadedfiles/Topics/Issues/Politics_and_Elections/051805-global-christianity.pdf
Also, the world was 35% Christian and is now 33%.
@309, 313
Sounds like me in CCD. Right down to being told to shut up because good girls don’t ask so many questions. Fuck, but they screwed me up badly.
@David Marshall
You are done here. We fact checked your claims and they run the gamut from weasel-wording and twisting and taking things out of context to absolute, fractally-wrong bullshit. Your constant name-dropping and refusal to answer direct questions further weakens your standing. And like all apologists I’ve encountered, you flee direct challenges and leave a cloud of diarrhea in the water to cover your escape, much like a pygmy sperm whale. Only dumber. Please do the world a favor and jump into a volcanic crater.
Inane question here. If the christ had the perfect body, would not the christ have perfect control over that body? Would not the christ be able to decide that he will not feel pain?
Theological questions are so much fun because they do not need to be based on reality.
Seen on a t-shirt:
“Pain is weakness leaving the body”
but Jesus was perfect, not weak.
Unless weakness was part of
hHis Perfection.You can never tell with deities.
e
No idea. :-) You know way more about philosophy than I do.
1) Evidence?
2) What kind of Christianity are they practicing? Will they treat you as subhuman if they find out that you “live in sin”? Will they boycott stores that are open on Sunday? Will they spend day and night preaching to (or fighting) their neighbors who belong to a slightly different denomination and are therefore hellbound? You know, there are plenty of Christians left in Europe; but very few of even those who go to church every Sunday will do any of these things.
I just read it (it’s on Google Books). It’s interesting, but mostly beside the point – my point being that Christianity has bleached out in Europe. It’s still there, there aren’t many atheists, but what kind of Christianity is it that most people believe in?
It’s also remarkably superficial on a few issues that seem to be outside the authors’ field of expertise. For instance, it’s true that when communism ended, religion came back, but church attendance and other indicators of religiosity never reached pre-1917/1948 levels; they only reached western European levels (as the authors point out, suddenly oblivious to what that means), and in some countries (East Germany, the Czech Republic) they have stayed well below that.
It’s even borderline dishonest in comparing medieval ignorance to today’s nonbelievers, many of which have ceased to believe precisely because they understand several religions full well.
I was quoting you.
Sure, but that’s beside the point, isn’t it?
Catholicism is a roaring success there, simply because it’s an alternative to the official ideology (outward communism plus quite ruthless capitalism). I wonder how far it will go. Short answer: what KG said.
Theo-logic !!
*barf*
…Sorry. I’ll clean that up. Right after I…
*barf*
Stark clearly is ten times as stupid as I thought.
The ignorance! It burns!
Thread won.
David Marjanović@363,
Stark’s “Secularization R.I.P” article also, as a commentary on it I found noted, moves the goalposts concerning what counts as religion in making his case:
– that is, any supernaturalist beliefs seem to count as evidence against secularization in the present, but not in the past.
that’s the most hilarious thing I’ve read today, especially since ichthyic called it
Damn. I realized I mixed something up.
David Marshall:
David Marshall, I’d like you to take that argument up with David Marshall. He’s the fucking mutton-headed ninny-muggins who called communism an “atheist ideology.”
Why don’t you save us all some time and just start contradicting yourself in every single post?
Oh. That’s right. You already do.
I wonder how we can make this more efficient? We already assume you’re going to misrepresent not only us, but yourself.
Citation needed.
OMG you were there? Quick, page DBM!
The important question is, how many Christians are Scotsmen?
I take this as an example, but pretty much everything you say has the same quality – bare assertion (the figleaf of “Christians believe” doesn’t hide this, especially as it’s quite obvious that many Christians do not share all of your beliefs that you are presenting in this way, e.g. many Protestants do not accept the “Sacred Tradition of the Church”), without even a pretence of evidence or rational justification. It’s boring, and, on a sceptical blog, rather rude.
horrorshow:
Physical, fair enough.
Emotional agony? Emotional agony despite of intellectual foreknowledge is a form of irrational insecurity.
—
Strange that Christians (or so you claim) consider Jesus to have been physically perfect yet emotionally crippled, eh?
(Hardly admirable, that)
I find myself repeatedly using this rule when reading horrorshow’s comments.
horrorshow said:
In view that you’ve talked about “The Sacred Heart”, “the Mass”, “the Church”, and the Immaculate Conception, I think what you meant is that you were saying what Roman Catholics believe about Jesus.
Now I ask, when you say:
are you referring to Christianity in general or Roman Catholicism in particular?
horrorshow:
This is rationalization. It is, at best, an effort to stave off actual logical fallacies inherent in the most sacred text of Christianity, the Bible. It’s this kind of patent silliness that makes Christianity so obviously made-up.
But even once a year is still only 1/365th that which each of his other sufferers would’ve paid, had they not been saved. So again, the algebra just doesn’t work. This is not an equation, but the inequality:
Jesus’ suffering < suffering saved
In fact, I'd say:
Jesus' suffering << suffering saved
(That's "far less," and not a shift operator.)
So my argument still stands.
Apart from the fact that this is just another turd extruded from a theological rectum, it makes nonsense of the claim about the extra-special-super-dooper injustice of the crucifixion: since Jesus already knew he was going to heaven, and since he could have chosen not to feel pain, it’s obvious that he was punishing himself. Now I know we’re now bound to get another theological turd about how wonderfully self-sacrificing this was, but you can’t consistently claim something is self-inflicted and that it’s the greatest injustice the world has ever seen. It’s absurdities like this which mean that really, I’m no more interested in your ludicrous tower of rationalisations for Catholic gobbledegook, than I am in hearing a scientologist expatiating on the evils of psychiatry, or how I could become an operating Thetan.
nigelTheBold@374,
I’m not sure where you get “once a year” from. Catholic Mass is said every day IIRC. It doesn’t make horrorshow’s nonsense any less nonsensical of course.
KG:
Ignorance of Catholic practices, I imagine.
Thanks for the correction.
To be fair, maybe priests raping children is one of those Sacred Traditions. At least 1,000 years of tradition.
Brother Ogvorbis, Hominy Lovin’ Hominid!@378
Well in that particular case, they surely have Biblical warrant. Did not Our Lord Himself say: “Suffer, little children!” (Luke 18:16)?
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, young Billy and Jane rejoice in the Lord for they know He is the one that truly suffered.
What pathetic fucking dodges, horrorshow.
That’s great: This Christian belief about Jesus makes no sense unless the problems brought up are actually addressed. I’m glad that you find them indefensible enough to not actually bother to defend them as logical, preferring to simply handwave them way as a “Christian belief,” and therefore not needing justification or consistency with reality.
Wow. So this isn’t about torture or death or anything that is actually imagined when one thinks of sacrifice: Jesus’s sacrifice was getting his feelings hurt due to suffering things related to normal people’s sacrifice that he didn’t really suffer as much as a normal person. Theopologetics at its finest!
But, here’s the problem that you seem to deliberately avoid: The student prepared for the exam will dread it less than one who isn’t. Do you understand that? Do you understand that it doesn’t need to “cancel out” the pain completely, but may slightly lessen it? Especially since you invoke “emotional pain”, since what would lessen “emotional pain” more than knowledge that the torment, death, and humiliation doesn’t ultimately matter?
This doesn’t even address what the quote you “responded” to was saying!
That’s just fucking grand. Care to actually tell us why it actually makes sense, or is the fact that it is a “traditional teaching” sufficient for you to believe it? And the doctrine (obviously not an argument) is even more ridiculous than you were originally given credit for: In Mark 15, Pilate remarks that Jesus died so soon, after six hours on the cross. People dying through crucifixion can last for hours, like Jesus, or last for days. Jesus’s perfect body had a lot of quit in it for someone made so legendary for his suffering and sacrifice.
Oh, a Catholic. Still, what is the justification for this “perfect body” doctrine?
Yeah. Logic and facts don’t matter, because “were you there!?”.
lol, now I wonder if he’s just yanking our chain.
Jesus chose to suffer and die. But he obviously suffered more than any other human in that same position, without that choice, and without the certain knowledge that they will live on after dying. But don’t believe me, the traditions I refuse to cite say it is true. [eyeroll]
re Chinese religiosity:
it’s not only Catholicism that’s a hit, but also Falun Gong…
From my own experience, the traditional religions of China (and also Japan) are quite ritualistic and do not offer answers some people are seeking in a turbulent environment with an increasing degree of inequality. As a Buddhist/Taoist/Shintoist, you go to the temple/shrine to make your offerings and buy your talismans and make your prayers, but the vast majority does not concern itself with the teachings in any detail (only a tiny minority does). So when a religion offers a personal relationship to god and more or less clear answers, then it will be more attractive.
Now, I wonder if the fact that Catholicism is losing adherents to more aggressive forms of Evangelical Protestantism in Latin America and Asia (not sure about Africa, but probably there too) is also due to the fact that Catholicism has become too ritualistic in parts… I ran into books by Joel Osteen translated into the respective national language in Asia…
I thought it was, “Suffer, little children, that I may come into them.” Or onto them. Anyway, the actual verbage rarely matters with the bible or sacred tradition. Anything can be justified through creative interpretation of any sacral writings. Or traditions.
Indeed Stark does this. Good catch.
I’ll read the paper.
Complete news to me, and I grew up Catholic, had religious instruction in school, and my mom still goes to church almost every Sunday.
Every priest is obliged to read a mass every day, even if nobody else participates. That’s usually done very early in the morning. Laypeople are only supposed to attend on Sunday and holidays (and were obliged to do so till the 2nd Vatican Council in the 1960s).
The lurkers support David in e-mail.
Well no, because the yellow sun of Earth…wait, we are talking about Superman, right?
*spoing*
I missed this in Horrorshow’s comment:
Does any fictional character actually think? Or, if we accept the words attributed to the fictional character Jesus as real, then which version? The bible has been tranlated multiple times (with the inherent difficulties regarding translating words to keep the nuance), edited, expurgated, added to, and miscopied so many times that even biblical scholars are unsure of the original meanings behind many of the political statements in the New Testament. So, Horrorshow, how do you know what Jesus is/was thinking and how do you know that you are not creating a Jesus, your own personal Jesus (who happens to hate those you hate and approves of those of whom you approve) out of your beliefs?
That’s not an answer. That’s an assertion. (And, it’s not at all as good as the question would seem to deserve.)
If the question was “what do a bunch of apparent fucking morons tell themselves to quell the niggling doubts about the divinity of a person who lived and died very much like a regular ol’ human”, then what you wrote would be an ‘answer’.
The only unfortunate aspect of Original Sin is that those who believe in it seem capable of other extraordinary feats of self-delusion.
Don’t do that again, horrorshow. Don’t spout a bunch of bullshit that’s nothing but question-begging and appeals to authority, and then hide behind “that’s what the church teaches”. I won’t speak for others (that’s your shtick), but I’m actually not interested in the 1,209,837th example of how Christian theology relies on individuals having absolutely no ability to discern a claim with content from one with none. Maybe that shit will silence a clever and precocious child in Sunday school, but it has no place here.
If there’s a theological claim that relies on an understanding of non-Jesus humans (other than their propensity to believe absolute garbage if delivered with authority) or the natural universe, then by all means, share. Otherwise, just write ‘goddidit’ and save us all the ts;drbwih*. Because whenever you write something as stupid as “I know what I say doesn’t jibe with human physiology, but I’m talking about Jesus” that’s all you’re saying.
*Too stupid; did read, but wish I hadn’t.
Brother Ogvorbis: I believe the “answer” to that is “The Sacred Tradition” (i.e. The Worldwide Child-rape Protection Racket told me) and other assorted non-answers. I eagerly await horrorshow’s attempts to dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge every line of inquiry.
Same here. But if you and I were True Catholics™, David, I suppose we’d still be drinking the wine and calling it blood.
*snortle*
*clenched-tentacle salute*
(Except that: 1. I’ve never drunk any wine, because I like neither grape juice nor alcohol; 2. even when I still believed, I was certain that the entire church had been getting it obviously wrong for 2000 years and the whole “this is my body/blood” business was meant symbolically.)
@389
And regardless of how long he suffers it or not it’s a moot point. The entire atonement is ridiculous. The more these people try to explain their beliefs the worse they make their God look. Omniscient, omnipotent, all-loving, and the best he can do is sacrifice himself to himself to stop himself from thowing his creations into the hell he created for the sins he knew they would commit. Brilliant!
But the whole transubstantiation thing is a cornerstone of Catholicism. Having the guy in a dress mumble the hocus pocus* means the cracker becomes a Jebus Cracker with extra added Jebus just for you to take to the pew to show your non-Catholic friend, thereby getting cursed by Bill Donahue.
*There’s an argument that “hocus pocus” originated from a corruption or parody of the Roman Catholic Latin liturgy of the Eucharist, which contains the phrase “Hoc est enim corpus meum.”
It depends who you talk to about Stark, but sociologists, in general(AFAICT), don’t have much regard for Stark:
Abstract(paid article)
Rodney Stark has recently argued that secularization theory stands or falls with the historical existence of an “age of faith,” which is thought to present a contrast with our present religiously-mixed situation. He presents much recent evidence that the medieval period does not fit that description. But he misconceives the issues. First, faith is not the most natural description of medieval religion, which is better seen as religious culture. As Lucien Febvre pointed out, those populations literally could not express themselves outside of a religious idiom, unlike today. Therefore, we commonly adopt a different sense of the term “secularization” in reference to culture (things or institutions) than when referring to people (beliefs). Second, although Stark warns that in assessing religion today we must remember not to restrict ourselves to Christianity, he violates that principle in insisting on proper religion when assessing medieval society. Third, he assumes that in speaking of secularization, one must mean secularization theory. This ignores a descriptive sense used in historical scholarship. Thus, Stark is announcing the demise of the concept of secularization just when it is becoming a larger and more important problem for scholars.
Also
Stark’s age of faith argument and the secularization of things: a commentary
Rodney Start has repeatedly attempted to bury secularization. But his latest effort, “Secularization, R.I.P.” (Stark 1999) involves some common and serious mistakes. In that article he refutes the idea that medieval Europe can be described as an Age of Faith. He presents much evidence that “lack of religious participation was, if anything, even more widespread in medieval times than now.” And since “the only shred of credibility” for secularization theory is the supposed contrast between such an age of faith and our present situation, he thinks that dismissing that Age of Faith makes it impossible to speak confidently of a decline of religion. So, in line with his title, “secularization” would cease to be a live concept.
In the course of his argument, Stark makes some other points that need to be addressed. First, he questions the connection so often made between secularization and “modernization,” and most especially with science. Second, he notes that secularization theory does not limit itself to a discussion of social or cultural differentiation, but makes explicit claims about belief. Third, he challenges the assumption that secularization is irreversible. And finally, he reminds us that we should not be talking just about Christianity, but about religion generally.
[…]
At the risk of summarizing work presented elsewhere (Sommerville 1992), 1 must make good on these bare assertions. Showing how many things were secularized will show, by implication, how many things were a part of medieval religious thought and practice. We might not even think to associate them with the concept of faith. It should make us aware of the fact that to ask whether one was religious (had religious faith or belief) was not as relevant back then as to ask how one was religious.
Sir Isaac Newton is famous as a pioneer of modern thought for having pictured a uniform grid of space on which a rational age could plot all activity within the universe. The fact that it was an Englishman who accomplished this may not be surprising given the fact that the religious geography of England was the first to be destroyed. Henry VIII removed the religious landmarks that had provided a locus for grace. Shrines disappeared, taking pilgrimage with them. Monastic lands were sold, taking a whole way of life with them. Friaries and chantry lands were now available for urban development, ending many social services sponsored by the Church. The spaces inside churches lost their different uses and new church buildings were designed as auditoriums, for the Word of faith rather than for the lost rituals. Protestants offered a religious justification for all of this, asserting that God was everywhere, and nowhere. In this, they showed the shifting ratio between culture and faith.
[…] Full article
Sorry for the long quotes, just thought I’d make it easier for D. Marshall to see how easy it is to make clear reference to supportive information, or supportive bullshit in his case.
One more. I’ve stated, around here somewhere, That I have been involved with a fundamentalist society for several years. They have never once, in church or class or informal discussion, nor prayer, for that matter, said anything remotely indicative of any suffering by Jesus, the Christ Almighty, after he lied to his disciples(return before you sleep/this generation passes) and then scurried off to a life of profound pleasure and serenity. In fact, the bible tells of heaven being utterly without any pain or suffering or anger or evil or sin et-fucking-cetera.
It’s been pointed out to them, fundies here in chapel, that how in the name of heavenly bliss and all that is pure and holy, if there is no evil possible in heaven, did God’s number two in command, Eosphorus, later Lucifer, declare war on
Big DaddyGod?To which they replied, “That’s a very deep question. Obviously you are very smart, but this requires a complex answer not fit to be discussed right now(in church/revival/bullshit hour). I would love to discuss this with you and explain later, how does next Tuesday, March the 23rd, 2112 sound?” (I made the last part up, but she really did say all this, except she said “later” instead of Tuesday, March 23rd, 2112, (when the Priests of the Temples of Syrinx are holding their bake sale and later the guitar bonfire/marshmallow roast.))
We now have Catholic and Charismatic/evangelical testimony that have no idea what horrordoh is talking about re: JC eternal pain or suffering.
What did I miss… Oh, yeah. HorrorHo, when I knew my shit down cold, I couldn’t wait to write my exams. The only apprehension I felt was after our gr. 12 math test where I somehow added -4 + -2, and got 7. After that I learned to settle down and quit thinking ahead to the beer soiree and double check my answers and quit trying to finish in half the time of the next fastest nimrod (who was 1 of 4 school reps in the Reach for the Top competition). Yes I was very anxious before exams, but only because I couldn’t wait for the good times to follow. I find it curiously illuminating that you chose such an analogy, as if it indicates something, but I can’t quite make the correlation.
Hazuki:
Hey, wait a second. You make God sound like a Bond villain.
Come on, you can do better than that.
Kel: “It’s interesting that David Marshall has the opportunity to chastise people over his knowledge of Marxism, but won’t take the time to defend the claims where he claimed it was out of context. What gives?”
Just skim all the stuff aimed at me in this forum, and tell me how long it would take you to answer half of it. I’m skipping #165, also on Marxism, for want of time. (Though more careful reading would solve that one.)
But reflecting on this dispute, I think I’ll post a blog entitled, “Zombie Attack! The Intellectual Laziness of the New Atheism,” this evening, after the sun goes down, appropriately. Need to take the dog for a walk first.
I’ll be sure to focus on Nigel’s challenge. He can bring the beer.
While you’re into it, you could as well write a book with the same title: “Zombie Attack! Jesus is back and he’s coming for your brains.” I’m sure it would sell much more than Zombie Laden.
Earlier you said: “But when I’m outnumbered 20 to 1, I can’t answer every single silly jibe, or go back and read every prior post, so I tend to start with people who seem to have something serious to say. When all that is left are the dimmer remnants of the Puppy Pack, and the conversation is going every direction but the point of the OP (did Harvest pay me, or did I pay Harvest? — heh), it’s probably time to pick up the marbles and go home.”
So the Marxism knowledge jibe is worth responding to, but clarification on you claiming you were taken out of context isn’t? Yet you’ve had times to make several jabs at the posters here, as well as at the new atheists. Yet you can’t even take a few seconds to clarify what you meant. What’s the point of even responding?
Also aggrandising one’s own knowledge is pathetic. If you really know what you’re talking about, why do you have to point it out instead of actually demonstrating it?
Pardon me, sirrah, but you must have mistaken us for people who give a shit about what college you went to.
horrorshow:
Y’know, I didn’t know catholics outnumbered protestants to such a degree, but it’s true. And, as you say, if you add the “Orthodox” along with that (and my experience with Russian Orthodox is that it’s much closer to catholicism than protestantism), that’s quite a large number.
That actually gives me a bit of hope. Not that I think catholics are any less batshit-insane than fundamentalist protestants, but at least their crazy seems to be devoted to quantifying the amount of suffering Jesus endured (and, apparently, continues to endure, all through choice), rather than trying to exclude the teaching of evolution in school.
Now if only we can get the pope on our side for same-sex marriage and reproduction management. That’d be fucking great, in an align-yourself-with-batshit-crazy kinda way.
Or call it, “There weren’t falling for my emphatic assertions that I’m so very, very smart, so I retreated here to engage in tu quoque.”
Just, y’know. If you wanted to be honest.
Oh, and it’d be nice to get the pope to start actually doing something about the child and teen molesting that goes on in his organization. That’d also be really keen.
horrorshow, could you get on that? ‘Cause really, before we tackle same-sex marriage and reproduction management together, we’re gonna hafta clear up that “cover up for the sexual abuse of children” thing.
Marshall is a thoroughly tiresome turd, and I’m beginning to get the impression that his primary purpose for posting here is simply to spam his feeble blog. I’ll probably get around to banning him someday soon if he keeps this up, but for now, I’ve put his url in the blacklist. He might dry up a bit if he can’t advertise.
horrorshow said:
This doesn’t sound as a good reason for using the word “Christians”, which clearly includes people that don’t agree with Catholic dogma, when there’s a perfectly good word to describe those who share your beliefs about the Sacred Heart, Immaculate Conception, the Mass, etc.
I’m sure other groups of Christians have their own rationalizations as to why they’re the true followers of Jesus. Even if this includes magic appearances of angels, or having the most perfect translation of the Bible…
Fair enough. (I’ve still not seen any change in the trend of secularization, though.)
PZ Myers said:
How dare you, PZ? I’m sure Marshall will be so angry he’ll write a blog post about that, too.
Because, y’know, the height of intellectual achievement is the determination of the amount of agony suffered by Jesus, the number of angels that can dance on the head of a penis, and the precise vintage of wine Jesus would prefer to transubstantiate to his blood. (And don’t get me started on those over-priced crackers — did you know most of them were made from people? From people!)
Here’s what the intellectual laziness of the new atheism amounts to:
“Hi. I’m nigel. I’m a new atheist. Well, really, I’ve been an atheist all of my life, and the atheism I subscribe to is no different than the atheism that has been around for thousands of years. But whatever. Insecure Christians hafta call you somethin’, I reckon.
“In any case, here’s my intellectual laziness: I refuse to entertain as reality anything which you can simply daydream. I mean, if it doesn’t have an empirical presence, anyone can make up anything about it, amiright?
“Aaaaanyway, I’m lazy because I just can’t be fuckered to bother with any of that shit. If anyone can make up anything, what’s the point? All it is is a contest to figure out which make-believe set of bullshit laws is accepted by the most people. (As a hint: it helps if the person making shit up wears ridiculous though stunning robes, and a really funny hat.) So really, what’s the point? A popularity contest between Bible-inspired slash fiction? I mean, everyone knows Jesus and Mary Madelene got it the fuck on. She was there to redeem Jesus, not the other way around.
“So next time you’re thinking you’re all hot shit because you know which way the divine wind blows, blow on this: it ain’t true if it ain’t real. And reality is what we can touch, feel, measure, compute, or otherwise detect. Mmmkay? Making shit up about shit that ain’t real doesn’t count as morality, ethics, history, reality, or anything else that really counts.
“It just makes you a particularly sad player in the world’s most pathetic MMORPG.”
So:
-David Marshall comes back to, once again, respond to one person by saying that he can’t respond to everyone. And leave that as his only comment. Oh, aside from calling us zombies and intellectually lazy. Project much?
-Horrorshow disappoints by cherry picking a few tangential points he can sort of address instead of dealing with the meat of the objections here: That his little nugget of theologetics makes no fucking sense, and doesn’t make fucking sense in several different ways. Slightly better than David Marshall in this thread, but that’s an increasingly low bar.
I am disappointed, but not very surprised. Needs better handwaving, and I honestly don’t think these two are up to the job. Defending the indefensible is hard work, and these two have proven themselves too thick to do anything except regurgitate the ideas of others (horrorshow) and act like a pompous, indignant asshole who refuses to address anything of merit (DM). Guess I’ll need to find someone else who will finally convince me that Christianity makes any sense at all.
David Marshall:
How long would it take you to answer even one post? Because you haven’t, so far.
Strangely enough, I think it’d be great to sit around drinking beer with you. And that is completely separate from the debate challenge. (And I’m absolutely sincere.)
But I’m still serious about the challenge. Though not tonight. Crantinis are far more interesting right now.
Nigel:
Well, there’s the invisible fire-breathing dragon that lives in my garage. She doesn’t leave footprints and she came from Russell’s Teapot. I keep telling her she’s made up, but it just doesn’t do any good…
Caine:
Is she well-trained? If so, might I borrow her for a short time? I have a need for an invisible fire-breathing dragon. I won’t say what that need is, but David Marshall’s refusal to engage in serious debate is pissing me the fuck off right about now.
Nigel:
She’s quite affable and fairly well-trained. Of course you can borrow her!
Caine:
Exxxxccelent! I plan to use her to counteract the power of David Marshall’s god, and the sidekick Jesus. That will leave David Marshall exposed, leaving my army of ninja-trained monkeys to finish him.
And now is the time I cackle maniacally.
Bwahhh-hah-hah-ahahahahaha!
Or is that too predictable?
horrorshow also said:
I almost missed this. I admit it’s interesting, but I can’t really call it cool. Maybe that’s because I’ve been bombarded by Virgin Mary imagery till I was sick of it.
Anyway, I’d rank Dies Iræ much higher in the Catholic cool scale.
horrorshow (#398)
So, you’re saying you… er, sorry, that Christians don’t believe god is omnipotent or omniscient. That, when it comes to this universe at least, your god isn’t the highest of the higher powers, and there’s something else doing the real string-pulling.
that’s the most hilarious thing I’ve read today, especially since ichthyic called it
I’ll add it to my scoreboard.
;)
the answer is obvious, isn’t it?
2+(-2)=0
IOW, just delete his posts to save time.
In the time it took you to write this needless jab, you could have answered my question and clarified your position. Complaints about lack of time ring hollow when you still have time to complain.
horrorshow:
Well, of course I’m right—not for the reason you imagine—but because I’ve restated your own claim.
I am mildly amused* by your attempted sarcastic barb, wherein you imagine the possible alternatives are either being emotionally crippled (as you claim Christians claim Jesus was) or being emotionless.
(Revealing it is that, as a Christian, emotional health is beyond your conception)
—
* Amusement is an emotion.
horrorshow,
Indeed. Do you think this might be anything to do with the number of the hierarchy caught shielding child-rapists?
A feeble quibble. The point is that the supposed voluntary nature of Jesus’s suffering is incompatible with a claim that his crucifixion was the greatest injustice evar. If you choose to keep your hand on a stove as it heats up, you have no cause for complaint if you get burned.
A neat trick, but entirely spurious. You are evidently quite unable to show that the doctrine of the atonement makes any sort of sense, and so take refuge in pretending to misunderstand sarcasm.
Yeah. If only the god they claim to believe in were real, he might have some interest in distinguishing his one true church from every other organisation on Earth, but alas.
Brownian:
Oh, but hasn’t He? I’d say the mass child molestation cover-up makes the Roman Catholic Church quite the distinct institution. Others may try child molestors in their midst, and still others may try to cover-up a case, but none comes close to the Catholic Church in sheer numbers of rapists hidden from the light of day and shuffled around to assure that the Catholic Church saved face. An example of true Biblical morality if I’ve ever seen it. But, yeah, the real problem with the Church is it isn’t confident enough.
Commenters here have demonstrated that similar things go on in Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist synagogues, mosques, and temples. So, God’s one true church isn’t even unique in its kiddie-fucking douchebaggery.
Yes, unlike our resident theologians and Christian ‘experts’, who dodge, duck, weave, and run away. Christ’s armour is flimsy indeed.
Nigel, Kel: OK, it took longer than expected to finish Zombie Attacks: The Intellectual Laziness of the New Atheism. In it, I also answer your challenge, and show how The Truth Behind the New Atheism is taken out of context, above. The two of you seem to know how to argue, and I’d be happy to hear your rebuttals.
PZ is looking more and more like the head zombie, here. He posts yet another nasty shot at Christians, one of an unending series of such shots. I show why his claim is incoherent, and challenge him to debate. Rather than stand up to the challenge directly, or show why I am wrong, he simply calls me names, and now threatens to ban me from the site.
Intellectually lazy, indeed. Well, I guess grant proposals, exotic sea creatures and a stable of tame sycophants don’t argue back, anyway.
No, your alleged rebuttal was incoherant. And the truth of such matters isn’t solved by debate. It is solved by the facts. The facts are you are an Xian apologist of dubious honesty, integrity, and intelligence. You are nothing but a presuppositionalist. You did nothing but continue your long line of foolish posts, all assertion and no evidence. You can’t even prove your imaginary deity exists, or your babble is inerrant. All you have is posturing and trash talk. Which is why you should just fade into the bandwidth. You have nothing cogent to add to any discussion.
PZ: And I’m beginning to get the impression that you can’t stand up and argue your claims, fairly, against a Christian who can argue back.
You post yet another nasty shot at Christians, one of an unending series of such shots. I show why your claim is incoherent, and challenge you to debate. Rather than stand up to the challenge directly, or show why I am wrong, you call me childish names, and now threaten to ban me from your site.
Here you’ve got all the advantages. This is your blog, and you direct conversation any way you like. You have hundreds of fans who will light into any Christian who shows up, and use the nastiest language to try to intimidate them, and as a substitute for thought. (Language which you, hypocritically, claim to detest when directed, say, at female atheists.)
I have an atheist friend, whom I’ve been debating on-line for about 11 years, who used to work with you in a lab in Oregon. He said you seemed like a nice guy, and he’d like to see us debate.
Maybe the “glory” has gone to your head. A pity: I like your blog, in some ways – the cool pictures, the humor, the suffer-no-fools pretence, and most of all the fact that you’re wrong about almost everything. It’s a pity you’re teaching your disciples how to be sure to lose the debate in any less friendly environment.
Another friend, a biologist, told me he doesn’t like your site because it’s too nasty. I tried to look beyond that, and almost thought I saw something more impressive. But I should have take a hint from the fact that you seem to have weeded out all real opposition here, long since.
Calling me a “moron” and a “turd” is stupid and childish. But if I call you a “coward,” and a “bully,” I think those words might sting, because the evidence seems to point (I am sad to say) more and more towards just those qualities.
Glad that David Marshall was courageous enough to make his argument about why he was “taken out of context” on his personal blog, instead of in this thread. Guess he doesn’t want to ruin his streak of posting contentless noise.
Not unique, just prominent in the magnitude of its cover-up. Like being a mass murderer among serial killers.
As for the armor of Christ: I’m beginning to suspect its meant to match with tinfoil “helmets”.
David Marshall sez:
Are you sure you aren’t actually a moron? Are you very, very sure? Because you seem to not understand what the nature of the opposition to gendered insults around here, conflating that kind of language with any other form of vulgarity/insult. Do you genuinely not understand, or are you trying to score cheap rhetorical points?
Is anyone else seeing David Marshall sitting in a room full of stuffed animals? One of whom is his friend who thinks the atheists are mean, one of whom is his atheist friend who is a really nice guy and never ever disparages religion in any way, one of whom is a publisher, several of whom are respected academics who reviewed his book, a few of whom are the most intelligent apologists in the word who would wipe the floor with any of us in a debate, one of whom is his mother, etc.?
By the way, I know PZ claims that we’re uncool and all, but to me, you guys are the fucking bee’s knees.
Ahhhh DM, yet another angry blog post published at your personal blog…Sorry bro, not going to help you build traffic.
And what do we call theists like yourself, who are afraid of folks who don’t believe in their imaginary deity too? And who get upset, and try to force us to acknowledge their imaginary deity, and not criticize their religion despite it being based on the twin lies of an imaginary deity and a book of fiction?
Like they say, a debate looks better on your resume than PZ’s. He’s too busy for the likes of your limited abilities. Besides, he has the twin handicaps of truth and ethics. You have neither.
I’ll do a favor for Brave Sir David, and post some snippets from his much talked about blog over here. You’re welcome.
David Marshall: Firm advocate of the existence of pink unicorns in distant galaxies.
(Note to David: That was a joke. I know you wouldn’t have gotten it because you are the kind of person who thinks that one must believe in something because we can’t , with 100% certainty, prove it doesn’t exist, despite having no proof that it DOES exist.)
Irony, anyone?
Yeah, who would ever suspect David Marshall of lying. (/Foreshadowing)
No, I did no such thing, you insufferable fuckwit. I excluded one sentence that seemed to have no bearing on anything. And I quote the whole fucking thing once you accused me of misrepresenting you, because you refused to actually defend yourself other than to say that I misrepresented. I didn’t intentionally misrepresent you, because your writing was so poor that I wasn’t quite sure what you were trying to say. But according to you, that first sentence of the paragraph has no bearing on anything at all. “All humanity came from one man and one woman”, in your paragraph, is an idea challenged by a mish-mash of other random points of view and the presentation of these ends with “Genetics has settled the matter in the favor of Moses”. If you didn’t mean to suggest that the first quote had anything to do with the second, then you are just an incredibly inept writer. The idea of Moses advocating the idea of human genetic unity is nowhere even hinted at in the text. You are a dishonest slimeball, DM.
Double dose of irony.
And, it was as pathetic as I expected. I await the arrival of a decent theopologist.
Wait a minute. Marshall is seriously arguing for Russell’s Teapot? Now I’ve seen everything.
David Marshall:
While I like and respect PZ, I’m not so much a fan of him as I am of this site, of the people who post here (like Sastra and Kel and Caine and Brownian and Cuttlefish and the whole great horde).
These forums aren’t an extension of PZ. He’s the keeper of keys and poster of posts, certainly. But your assumption that we are merely an obsequious gang of ne’er-do-wells who jump at PZ’s beck and call simply ignores the fact that we are making arguments of our own. The fact the arguments line up nicely is because we have an epistemological source that is both objective and consistent.
Again with the “disciples” assumption. Is your world so authority-driven to assume we’re disciples? I brought my attitude here. I didn’t learn it from PZ. The reason I’m here isn’t because I’m PZ’s follower. It’s because I like his attitude, and the attitude of the people around me. That’s the difference. We’re here because we like the group, and not because we like the head of the group.
Religion, meanwhile, seems to thrive on authority-based gatherings.
Read the whole paragraph, and it is clear that its clear meaning is that, contrary to many alternative theories, genetics shows Moses right in maintaining the genetic unity of the human race
So how exactly did Cain find a wife in the land of Nod, again, according to “Moses”? The clear implication in Genesis 4 is that the earth outside of Eden is already populated. Else, who is it that Cain is afraid will find and kill him?
I work at a science museum, and many of the people I work with have never heard of him.
On the other hand, I don’t think most of those people are very cool…
Nigel, maybe someone should start a page over at the wiki along the lines of “Topics people have openly disagreed with PZ on Pharyngula” for easy reference whenever that particular charge comes up. For instance, the Apple/iPad debate going on just now on http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/09/26/the-magic-of-reality-for-ipad-right-now
pelamun:
That is an excellent suggestion. An excellent suggestion indeed.
He’s right. I remember now there’s a verse in Genesis that says exactly that: “And God said, let there be race of hominids, and let them share most of their genetic material. And God called them Homo sapiens: and so it was created the binomial nomenclature”. It’s right after “Let there be saber-toothed tigers” and before “Beware of the mighty llama”.
Marshall is seriously arguing for Russell’s Teapot? Now I’ve seen everything.
yup. As I think has already been pointed out, Marshall is nothing if not self contradicting.
Sometimes in the very same post!
but now it’s just getting tedious.
And I’m beginning to get the impression that you can’t stand up and argue your claims, fairly, against a Christian who can argue back.
where, where?
*looks around*
oh, wait, you meant YOU?
ROFLMAO
If only the god they claim to believe in were real, he might have some interest in distinguishing his one true church from every other organisation on Earth, but alas.
hell, he evidently can’t even be bothered to do it for the 40 thousand or so CHRISTIAN sects, let alone all other religious organizations.
And DM still will not answer a direct question. Even when the same softball has been tossed his way three times. Almost like he has no answer at all.
I await the arrival of a decent theopologist.
I stopped holding my breath on that one over a decade ago.
You’re sad to say?
Words mean nothing to you, do they David? Just a collection of sounds you use a shibboleths, eh? You’ve done nothing here but revel in the excuse to avoid substance in favour of whinging about tone. Why else would you come here and do the same thing every time?
But, since truth means nothing to you, then I’ll cop too: I’m absolutely heartbroken to know that you’re a dishonest lying shit. I’d really hoped that you might have some compelling arguments rather than smug jibes about “intellectual laziness among atheists.” I’m practically despondent that you treat truth so lightly, and I’m fucking depressed that you’re at all representative of the community of apologists.
You and me, we’re just swimming in pools of tears, eh, David?
If you think any aspect of your whining, from the “I thought you were supposed to be smart” to your “I’m just so disappointed in you, PZ,” is not completely par for the course for trolls, then you’re an even worse scholar than we thought, David.
I think there’s an iPhone app now that physically zaps you if you use the terms “lemming”, “hive mind”, or “echo chamber” on the internet, those terms being so ubiquitous among the complaints of trolls without anything substantive to say.
As for being sure to lose debates in a less friendly environment, by less friendly do you mean “verbal debates, where one can’t simply scroll to see what I’ve previously written and contradicted myself”? Because it’s noteworthy that you think of yourself as witty for having chided David Marjanović for relying on secondhand sources when such sources are the very crux of your faith, and your apologetics nothing more than attempts to justify hearsay.
David Marshall (#428)
It’s not a pretense, which is why you are being threatened with a banning. When you try to add two and two you always get something besides four, don’t you?
I had managed to remain unaware of Russell’s Teapot somehow. One less thing I’m ignorant about.
That’s one of the big reasons I like this place. Thanks, horde!
You and me, we’re just swimming in pools of tears, eh, David?
Have I told you today how much I love you?
Although I think I’m missing an allusion here, I agree that you people are the bee’s knees.
And this place is the cat’s ass.
All I was alluding to was the original post.
I think he’s conflating “cool” with “popular” here. For my money, some of us atheists are the epitome of cool. And then some atheists are fascist nerds. But not devoting your life to groveling before a magic man in the sky should be automatic cool points whatever your measuring system is.
Why thank you. And you, sir, are the cat’s meow. The Darb. As Jake as they come. Hittin’ on all sixes, I say.
Getting back to 2011…
You probably already know this. But yes, his world absolutely is.
Beyond this revealing bit, and his previously remarked-upon (and comically vapid) direct appeals to authority, look also at his every ‘request’. His whole attitude here simply screams (a deeply presumptuous) authority. He still seems to figure he’s somehow in a position, effectively, to demand a hearing, from anyone he chooses, and even, specifically, who shall make that time, give him a podium on which to spew his deliriously vacuous brand of cosmological codswallop. That’s just the way it works in his world. He’s serving a deity’s interest, and thus he gets the authority to do so. Figures he may demand of any unbeliever that they hand him the mic and the concomitant implied stature for a one-on-one any time he likes. Respect mah authoritah, ye craven unsaved! I am proselytizer, hear me blather!
‘Tis the very nature of such faiths, bred in the bone, the nature of what he is and what his lot always have been, and always shall be, so long as there are such pestilential boors and bores on this Earth. For when you’re selling hokum of such magnitude, you aren’t going to get anywhere unless you have this manically inflated sense of your own and its importance. It helps, indeed, enormously to believe, ultimately, that they must listen to you, must accord you respect, however much you have failed on the actual merits of your offerings so far to earn it, for the simple reason that your god commands as much.
This is why dealing with the religious is always so like dealing with an oddly (and incredibly unwarrantedly) arrogant door-to-door brush salesman. If they didn’t simply assume beforehand your time and attention was theirs to waste, and that it wasn’t somehow already their right simply presumptuously to stick their foot in the door continually and repeatedly to hawk their tawdry wares, there’d be none of ’em left around. The incompetent mangle of superstitions they flog would quickly become extinct.
… indeed, stretching the metaphor a mite, I wonder if there might have been something in the way of recent selection in this department for ever-increasing levels of cravenly desperate, stubborn salesmanship. Seems to me it’s what should happen, on balance, the more the product itself is revealed by the cold light of history to be such dreadful rubbish.
Why can’t you just post it here? Indeed, why are you spending the time telling me that you’re going to do it instead of just doing it? I see you have the time to chastise PZ and the people here:
“You have hundreds of fans who will light into any Christian who shows up, and use the nastiest language to try to intimidate them, and as a substitute for thought.”
I have been trying to argue with you on point. So far, you’ve given one response to me that was to one of the points I was arguing, and even that was a throwaway comment. Yet you have time, again, to have a jab at people here while you still don’t engage with a single person in debate.
How about instead of complaining about intimidation, drop the petulance and actually show that you “know what I’m talking about”. Because while you can complain and jab at the people here about the use of language, at least the people here are trying to put arguments. A 7 paragraph jab at PZ and the people who post here while not even answering a simple question is not the way to show that it’s everyone else who is intellectually lazy.
All I asked was for a simple clarification, because it seemed to me like you were suggesting that modern science has vindicated the Christian origins stories. Yet you’ve spent several posts since then having a go at people, and with no irony intended complained about their language and tactics. What kind of substitute for intellectualism is that?
Better to use direct language than to passive-aggressively pretend you’re not. You suffer from Faux Syndrome, where you believe loud declarations become facts because they’re loud. Why would someone want to debate, or even discuss, anything with you, when you are unable to answer questions? I’m quite ready to believe in religion as soon as it’s proved to me (as are most here), yet you seem unable to do that.
Bold fail.
How’s this for a substitute for thought?
Plenty of people come here with the strongest conviction that it is they who knows what they are talking about, and that the people here are ignorant to their truth. That there are people who will complain constantly about the tone and attitude of people here, yet don’t give any arguments to support their position, nor engage with any of the serious points or posters.
There are intelligent, well-read people who do engage in discussion here. It’s easy to ignore the hostility of this place and focus on the points; I really can’t see what you gain from adding to that hostile attitude without having at least some intellectual substance too. That you can spend the time insulting the people here who are trying to engage with your arguments is being cowardly; it’s being a child; it’s being intellectually vacant – and intentionally so.
Grow up David!
Actually, when I was saying seriously it wasn’t to the Adam & Eve, but that the bible in any way has an accurate description of the story of our species. The only sense in which it is right is what people read into it once we have the knowledge!
That would be kind of hard for him, seeing as he had no power or influence over the affairs, the Chinese, Indians, Northern Europeans, Greeks, Amerindians, Australians, Polynesians….
Not even the Egyptians, beyond a single evening’s worth of culling.
Hell, his control over even the Hebrews was, per the available documentation, rather piss-poor. So poor and ill-managed, as it were, that the Big Kahuna in the flaming pillar forbid him from entering the Promised Land as punishment for his ineptitude.
Heh. And let’s not forget that this documentation has a, say…particular…slant to it that is unverified in any of the OTHER documentation.
Not forgetting the dog’s bollocks. And doesn’t the cat have pyjamas as well as a meow?
I must say, this DM chap is rather ill-mannered. To complain endlessly about other people’s intellectual standards while consistently neglecting to address a single specific question – well it’s just shoddy, really.
Sadly I know nothing about cricket and care less, or I might conjecture that he probably bowls underarm too (or tries to, but even so he still misses the point).
I have been trying to argue with you on point. So far, you’ve given one response to me that was to one of the points I was arguing, and even that was a throwaway comment.
I have to admit, Kel, that after watching so many of these attempts at back and forth with creationists over the years, you appear to have some sort of remarkable invisibility field or something, but it only seems to work towards the very creationists you try to engage.
I’m betting even the bolding will be insufficient to mark you as visible to your intended audience (DM in this case).
have you considered leasing your invisibility tech to the US military?
lol, though now that you’ve said creationist David Marshall is going to get outraged that you haven’t read him properly and it’s symptomatic of the poverty of the new atheists ;)
Kel,
No worries; Matthew 5:3 has it covered.
I’m super, thanks for asking.
horrorshow:
1. Your concession is noted.
2. Irrational psychic agony is hardly indicative of emotional health, is it? :)
3. Well, you’ve just now introduced this addendum to your contention; your original claim (my emphasis), to which I responded, was: Intellectual knowledge of the coming Resurrection would not negate the external and internal pain of the Crucifixion.
(You specified pain both physical and internal (i.e. emotional) and gave the reason as the Crucifixion*. Clearly, the physical pain was not due to the fate of others!)
—
* Why the capitalisation? Thousands upon thousands were crucified by the Romans; he was just another rabble-rouser.
horrorshow:
You mean humility of spirit as exemplified by such aphorisms as Psalm 14:1? :)
horrorshow:
Since they can be measured, of course they are real. They are emergent behavior of the complex information processing system known as the brain. So, not only can these things be measured independently (that is, by observing behavior and/or performing psychological tests), they can be measured directly, by observing changes in the brain.
This is such a ridiculous gotcha! question. It does nothing to further your goals of proving some shit about the existence of God, and simply demonstrates that, yes, the application of science can be used to investigate even the intangible.
Meaning that, since you can’t detect or otherwise measure your god, it probably simply doesn’t exist.
Okay, history isn’t an emergent behavior of the brain. History is measured and computed based on historical evidence (duh). One of the reasons history is sometimes contentious is because the records left are often incomplete, and so the margin of error in the measurements* is often large, and open to wildly differing interpretation.
* Measurements, as in judgements of the veracity and importance of particular records, for instance.
ichthyic:
It’s because Kel’s so nice, I think.
I stumbled on Pharyngula at the time of “Expelled from Expelled.” I had read articles linked here before, but I’d never wandered into the comments. Not long before Expelled, though, I had come to a strangely incongruous conclusion: being nice doesn’t help in these discussions.
In my experience, the theists that engage nice people are generally the ones that don’t require much engagement. They’re like the John Shelby Spongs of the world — nice, fairly liberal in the theistic beliefs, and already involved in the discussion. I mean, really involved. They’ve done more than paint up their face and put on a Team Creationist jersey in preparation for screaming judgements from the sidelines. They don’t need a neophyte like me trying to challenge their beliefs. They’ve real philosophers and biologists and essayists for that. While I’d hesitate to call their arguments for a god “sophisticated,” they themselves are sophisticated — or at least, their rationalizations are very much built on complex chains of reasoning that isolate their assumptions from direct attack.
No. The ones at my level are ones like David Marshall, or good ol’ horrorshow here. While horrorshow doesn’t seem to require much poking at with a stick, people like David Marshall do. He’s not ready to have an actual debate about his beliefs. He’d rather pop in, drop his magisterial (to use his word) turds (to use PZ’s), ignore anything that might demonstrate his utter ignorance, and move on.
David Marshall just wants to demonstrate his superiority. It’s his intellectual equivalent of humping our legs, or peeing on our carpet (the one that ties together the whole room, dontcha know). Folks like him are so used to ignoring anything but direct confrontation, they don’t even notice the nice folks, the ones who provide polite intellectual debate.
Anyway, I finally delved down into the Pharyngula comments not long after I started realizing all this. It was a revelation to find folks who’d already come to the same conclusions.
I see horrorshow still hasn’t proven his imaginary deity exists, or that babble is anything other than a book of mythology/fiction. He just unintellectually wants to pretend both his deity and babble aren’t fiction, which is typical of Xian presupposition proselytizing. The problem with Xian theology is built on the two lies which horrorshow hasn’t proven. Ergo, nothing but bullshit.
St. Thomas Aquinas, being so holy and intelligent, might have known that the particular exchange you quote was with anteprepro, not me.
I see all kinds of fucking reasons for the shit you write. I was Catholic once, too. So I understand self-serving intellectual cowardice very well. I spent time in churches full of it.
If Jesus was real and the Bible is a 100% true account why does the Bible itself give 4 versions of the story?
Well, the only argument either horrorshow or David Marshall have made here is: smarter people than you believe it so shut your sass mouth.
I remain…unconvinced.
Brownian:
David Marshall has gone one further: he insists that he is one of those smarter people. That, in spite of the evidence to the contrary.
Horrorshow:
You have trouble reading, don’t you? I said what “the meat of the objections” was in the very quote you lifted, and it’s not just to do with my objections, but everyone’s. Luckily, you actually do try to touch on some of the relevant aspects in your latest post. Try.
There is no logical reason nor any evidence to believe that it is the case, you drooling ignoramus. That’s why the original claim you made, whether it was original or just a point of doctrine vomited out, makes no fucking sense because it assumes something that has yet to be proven. Can you follow at least that much? And your last sentence seems to deny the idea that we can know anything about people’s psychological states. Please inform the field of psychology that it should just quit while its ahead and go home.
I did, you fucking idiot. And you support that with every fucking inane argument you make for why Jesus really suffered most of all, despite knowing that death isn’t very serious, having the choice to suffer, living on in paradise, and only “suffering for all eternity,” according to you, because of the injustice of being executed. Do you not see how piss-poor the argument is for his suffering is, from an objective perspective?
Yeah. Because everyone fears everything the same exact amount, it’s only fear or not fear, nothing resembling soemthing quantifiable involved. Nosiree. You are trying to be difficult here: You believe that it makes perfect sense that injustice would increase suffering and state it as undeniable truth with no need for evidence, but don’t believe it makes sense that people who know they will live after death will fear death less. That is blatantly inconsistent, that is the point I’m trying to point out, and that is the point that flies right over your fucking pinhead every time.
ORLY? Better explanation, but still, the relevant quote.
You only addressed his last sentence or two. You didn’t address the main point: That fetuses and children are arguably as innocent as Jesus was. And that a concept of sin that makes even fetuses sinful is a ridiculous one. But, yes, you did address something that he said in that quote at least. Good for you.
Ah yes, thank you. It does seem that he is the source of this particular nugget.
Nice argument from authority you got there. And essentially admitting that what you Church considers “perfect” doesn’t actually have to make sense. You realize that you presented this as a matter of philosophy, and not just Catholic wankery, right?
Sigh, why don’t you just leave if interacting with us is such a chore for you? (I guess I should ask myself the same question, because your incredible obtuseness is wearing my patience thin). Psychology is a science, based on logic and evidence in case you were unaware of that. And the original “doctrine” is in the form of a philosophical argument, relying on logic and if that logic is shown to be faulty, then the “totally not an argument” is shown to make no fucking sense. The “psychology” assumed to be at work in your defense of your Aquinas copy and paste job bears little resemblance to actual human psychology, and yet you keep invoking it as an attempt to shield your petty little “totally not an argument” from criticism. It’s especially transparent because your precious Jesus is supposed to be God himself, and yet apparently this only makes him suffer more than the average human and fear death as much as people who are actually mortal. Invoking human psychology to defend the illogical presumed thought process of a mangod is an entertaining ploy, but it is even more entertaining that you’ve needed to present your mangod as something so pathetic in order to defend the idea that he suffered.
Everything you’ve offered up so far has been complete and utter tripe, horrorshow. And has been getting progressively worse. You do realize that, right?
In any case, the paucity of actual content in their appeals to authority screams more loudly than any dying deity, no matter how holy* the intelligence trying to shore up the plot holes in the resurrection story.
*And to even use ‘holy’ as an adjective of authority on a skeptic’s blog is just so question-begging…English doesn’t have the word to sufficiently convey how idiotic that is.
Seriously, does anyone here deny that say Superman is braver than most knowing that he will survive an artillery shell? Or that the Doctor is more likely to take a bullet for someone because he knows that if he dies he will probably get better?
horrorshow (#466)
So, do you agree with my statements about
yourChristians’ beliefs about god at #417 or do you disagree but overlooked that I was talking to you? Here they are again, just in case: “So, you’re saying you… er, sorry, that Christians don’t believe god is omnipotent or omniscient. That, when it comes to this universe at least, your god isn’t the highest of the higher powers, and there’s something else doing the real string-pulling.”No, he wasn’t a victim, since he was the one that created the law requiring himself to be killed. God himself decreed that the only possible payment for original sin was his own death. Any humans involved were simply the executioners. The sentence was his own.
So effectively, Jesus commited ‘suicide by Roman’.
@Ing:
I, in particular, consider Superman to be incredibly weak, actually. The man is unbelievably strong, invincible, and fast. He is a super-human and continues to go and rescue people knowing full well he cannot be harmed no matter what the consequence (aside from Kryptonite of course.)
It is Batman who is the stronger hero. Bruce Wayne is a guy, a man. He’s got human qualities, he’s got human strengths. If he’s punched, stabbed, or shot – he gets hurt. He can die, and he knows he can die. He still, however, will go in to rescue Gotham despite this, despite the knowledge that his next rescue could be his last.
Ing said:
I just made up some theological explanations, none of which can stand close scrutiny. You can pick any number of them, even if they are mutually contradictory:
___
a. Because God’s Mysterious Ways.
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b. Because only The Lord could write Four different Accounts of the same Sacred Story. No mortal would be capable of such a Magnificent Feat.
___
c. To test your Faith. If He had revealed Himself to the World through a single accurate version of The Gospel, the Gift of Belief would be reduced to a mundane activity such as higher mathematics and brain surgery.
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d. Prophecy! In the Old Testament, God said: “There be four things which are little on the earth, but they are exceeding wise” (Prov. 30:24). These Four Things are the Gospels, which The Lord promised to His People and which were delivered by His Son. God says they are “little” because the Gospels are short in comparison to the whole Holy Scriptures. Nevertheless, they are “exceedingly wise” and would spread throughout “the earth”.
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e. For HIS OWN GLORY, GOD did not record all HIS TEACHINGS in a single narrative, as a man would have done. Instead, HE SO LOVED humanity that left ALL HIS WISDOM registered in FOUR GOSPELS!
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f. There is no contradiction: just as The Father, The Son and The Holy Ghost are just One God, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John form a single Book.
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g. Even prominent non-believers agree that the narrative presented in the Christian New Testament represents one of the greatest stories ever written. It is remarkably humane in how it portraits the protagonist surfacing from among the Judæan working classes to a position of prominence and leadership of his people, before being abruptly and unjustly condemned to a painful death. During his saga, the Son of God is subject to all types of human experiences, from the certitude of being betrayed and angst in face of an brutal destiny to highest peaks of joy. All this multitude of feelings could not be transmitted to the reader by a single linear account. Instead, the Bible magistrally describes its climatic story not once or twice, but four times. In each turn, the experience is reinforced and enriched by the personal touch of each of the narrators, who also take part in the narrative. This divine work is still unmatched in matters of art and spiritual insight, and modern authors still vainly try to emulate it, as Lawrence Durrell did in his “Alexandria Quartet”.
___
h. Only a dilettante in theology could seriously attempt to criticize the apparent “contradictions” in τα Ευαγγέλια, as if they posed a challenge to modern scholars. The oxymoron is easily solved if one understands the context in which the early Christian writings first appeared and how they spread in a miraculous rhythm among the lower strata of the Roman Empire (Empalatinaikos, 1982). In such a diverse environment where the worldviews of the Roman pragmatism and the Hellenic philosophy strived against a substract of Germanic, Hyberian, Celtic, Dacian, and Egyptian belief systems for a spotlight in the marketplace of ideas (Frankel and Wolf, 2003), it would be extremely naïve to suppose that a sect recently emerging from The Levant (and persecuted by Emperors and Barbarians alike) would be able to outcompete all the concurrent ideologies in a few centuries while keeping the same tone originally conveyed to win the hearts of the people of Jerusalem. The four Gospels attributed to early followers of Christ and the different perspectives that they represent to the prospective believer are not simply caprices of the authors who “could not be bothered to produce a coherent narrative”, in the words of an impatient skeptic. On the contrary, they are part of a carefully contrived strategy to successfully communicate the new faith to the largest number of people in the shortest possible time (Ipinsky and Caramazzo, to be published). History records the success of this carefully conceived plan, which resulted in the conversion of the whole Europe to Chistianity. Such an enormous enterprise could not have been the mere work of chance: as Albert Einstein puts it, “God does not play dice”.
@Phalacrocorax:
I’m personally most fond of the argument thus:
“If I said I met John, Joe, and Mark at the store, and Mark later says he met John at the store, it’s not a contradiction! Mark’s just not recounting meeting Joe and I, that fully explains the ‘contradictions’ in the Gospel!”
Re: Phalacrocorax
If something ever happens to Nigel and as such Pharyngula loses one of its top parodists/satiricists, I want one of you to write “That boy was our last hope,” to which I’ll reply “No, there is another.”
Just wanted to say thanks for a very enjoyable thread, Pharyngulols! And, option h is my favorite answer to the Paradox of the Gospels from Phalacrocorax’s list of theological explanations.
The Bible is Voltron? Who forms the head?
How much conversation can someone have over whether Han shot first? Doesn’t at some point a sense of futility kick in?
Horrorshow, still no evidence for your imaginary deity, or your babble is inerrant. Which means the inane theology you keep mentioning is nothing but mentally masturbated lies, based on two false premises. What an intellectual loser if you can’t see that problem. Your deity doesn’t exist, and your babble is mythology/fiction. Deal with the truth elsewhere.
horrorshow:
Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum was mockery.
(You know how Passiflora edulis got its name?)
—
PS One needs context when reading the Babble.
Ah, I can’t resist.
I adduce Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34.
(MPD Jebus?)
horrorshow said:
Well, I admit I don’t. I mean, I understand the fundamentalist concept of original sin:
“One day, a talking snake convinced a female hominid to offer an apple to a male hominid, which prompted the so-far vegetarian T-Rexes who were roaming around the Eden to attack the giant sloths. This really pissed off a super-powerful humanoid entity, who then expelled the humans, cursed them with eternal damnation, and chopped the snake’s legs off.”
___
I can even imagine the scholarly approach to the problem:
“The mere fact that you have to question me about the concept of Original Sin clearly proves the naïvité and general intellectual laziness of the so-called “New” Atheists. Even Voltaire, an avowed unbeliever, admitted the inherently sinful essence of human nature and dared not to question the Church about this teaching. I laugh at the scholarly bankruptcy of the commenters of this blog, who parrot the same sophistical inanities like a band of drunk dockmen, unaware of the works of Stuttenberg, Salasviescu or a even Charleston. Merely setting your eyes at any of the essays of Pierre Danois would be sufficient to settle the matter, but I won’t ever demand that from this gang of philosophically illiterates.”
___
However, I’m not aware of the Catholic instance. Can you tell me approximately when the Original Sin occurred and what’s the mechanism of inheritance?
I removed the stupidity for you. God’s plan was to kill himself. Say it with me. Pray it with me. God’s plan. No matter how many dupes he suckers into his scheme, he’s the one the first decided the trigger had to be pulled, because he’s a fucking moron, apparently.
I’m not arguing the guilt of everyone else. I’m arguing for God’s guilt, which even you have admitted to.
So, let’s dispense with the “Poor, poor, poor innocent li’l Jesus never meant nobody no harm nohow.” He decided he had to die, and he decided it had to be done by others’ hands.
Suicidal individuals do this to the police all the time. It’s even called ‘suicide by cop’, and the cops who get dragged into it by a manipulative suicidal individual often have a hard time dealing with the guilt afterwards. I hope the Romans and Jews felt none when they fulfilled your deity’s sick fucking wish.
@horrorshow
For relative (and likely conventional) values of good, of course he can. But you don’t need a brain imaging device. Just put the subject (with their consent) in situations that demand a “good” or a “bad” action from the person and observe what happens. Or interview the subject and people who know the subject and find out about that person’s life. Or, you could always spy on the subject over a long period of time and record your observations. (How else do you think Santa Claus–oops, I mean God–does it?)
Well, to hear you use it, it’s two words you think you can say when you can’t otherwise argue against the reality that the entire salvation concept of Christianity is dumber than fuck, so you need to invoke some magic goddidit.
I’d argue that since that’s exactly how you use it, you have no fucking idea what it means.
Horrorshow sez:
Dude, what do you think <a href="http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/marks/colon.htm" colons are for ? I admit my sentences can get convoluted, but that’s no excuse in this case.
Are you seriously making a dodge about the truth of your not-argument in saying that “well, old literature wouldn’t more ‘insightful’ if they referenced modern psychology, so nyah”? You sink to new depths with each response. Also, you are ignorant of the field of psychology if you think it is all, or even mostly, quacks. Who would’ve thought horrorshow would be ignorant!?
It doesn’t actually matter: the onus is on you, asserting that suffering is increased by injustice. There is no way to prove my speculation about Jesus’s knowledge of the afterlife either way, because no other person would have such certainty in the face of death. The only other way is to look at death anxiety in people facing imminent death and look at to see how it corresponds to their confidence in an afterlife. All I was able to find was only roughly close to that mark:
Here belief in God and belief in afterlife are negatively associated with death anxiety
Here it is negatively related to religiosity
Here Christians score lower in death anxiety than non-believers (and Muslims, for some reason).
And here only the very religious and the not-so religious have the least amount of death anxiety in old age, and religious practices need to line up with belief about afterlife well in order to alleviate death anxiety. It says “The findings support the hypothesis that firmness and consistency of beliefs and practices, rather than religiousness per se, buffers against death anxiety in old age.”
Though I doubt any of this matters to you, because psychology is just quackery, right? Which justifies your regurgitating Aquinas’ assumptions regarding psychological phenomena. He’s just so intelligent and holy that what he says trumps the deamnd for evidence, 750 years later.
“Objective perspective” is a theoretical perspective that the average hypothetical person with no dog in the fight would have. Not like that statement you responded to even mattered. But, sure, quibble over that. Go right ahead.
Ugh. Why do you even bother responding to people? You clearly don’t understand a fucking thing and dig deeper with every response. Did I ever suggest the existence of “fear units”? No, you said that I was using a “quasi-mathematical” of psychology by saying that it was possible to have a reason to fear something more or to fear something less, and that they have different orders of magnitude. Injustice wouldn’t make you feel fear/pain by an order of magnitude greater than certain knowledge of life after death would make you feel less fear/pain. That’s what I said. I never attempted to make exact mathematical predictions in the first place, you fucking moron.
And I’m saying the same thing about your fucking harebrained idea that injustice increases pain, and pointing out that you are being inconsistent. But you are too fucking thick, so it hasn’t sunk in yet.
Yeah, I just don’t understand it. It’s not that it is a wretched belief that I would hope most believers wouldn’t be swayed by in judging the innocence of fetuses or infants. No, it’s just too sophistimicated for me.
The word you’re looking for is just “bias”, not “cognitive bias”. “Cognitive bias” is a psychological term, referring to the ways that humans think that deviates from what would be expected if humans acted/thought perfectly logically and unselfishly , with heuristics being a prominent example. But, again, I wouldn’t expect you to know that, since you are willing to discount the entire field of psychology because the APA sounds overly liberal in a grand total of two parts of its “about” page. You’re just a master of logic. I’m glad you’ve taken it upon yourself to be the Grand Arbiter of What Is and Is Not Science. Whatever would we do without you?
Except that I’ve cited a Biblical passage to show why all of this is just handwaving bullshit, in addition to pointing out that the assumption that injustice leads to more pain is flawed and getting you to concede that “perfect” doesn’t actually mean anything except what is needed for Aquinas to spin his yarn. But whatever, I’m the only one merely asserting things here, right Mr. “Psychology isn’t real science because I said so”?
Whatever you say, Spewer of Someone Else’s Not-Argument.
You sure like to be the relativist, don’t ya? Strangely common among Christists.
So, you have thus far thrown an entire scientific field and the definition of “perfect” under the bus in your attempts to respond to me. Can anyone in the audience predict how much further horrorshow can dig himself into his hole?
horrorshow:
Don’t be intentionally dense.
While, yes, it’s possible to image people’s brains as they do activities (such as answer questions about morality), that’s not the way it’s typically done. In this case, there are measurements for morality based on psychological evaluation. No fancy-shmancy brain imaging equipment needed. Run a battery of psychological tests, evaluate the responses, and blamo!, instant morality measurement.
It seems you are making the mistake of assuming there is some kind of substance called “morality” that is measurable like an electric current. In that sense, morality isn’t real. It isn’t physical. Morality is merely a set of behaviors within the context of social interaction.
Morality requires interaction. A person lost in the desert can’t be moral or immoral. They can only operate within the context of being lost alone in the desert. They can destroy cactuses, and whatever they want, and it’s neither moral nor immoral.
(Some might argue any interaction between an intentional agent and other living things may constitute a moral decision — in that case, substitute “lost in a lifeless desert” instead of just “desert.”)
This rather proves that morality itself isn’t a substance or energy or self-existing ideal, and it doesn’t have existence outside the framework of the complex system of the brain. Without conscious thought, without the understanding of the repercussions of your actions, morality simply doesn’t exist. At all.
So please. Don’t pretend you don’t know how measurement of these things go. You measure love every time you judge whether or not a person is fond of you. If you want clinical measurements, you can take someone into a lab, where they can measure galvanic skin responses, heart rate, and eye dilation (among other things) in order to measure the amount of “love” a person has for you.
Just in case you really are dense, though, I’ll break it down for you.
Emotions and moral judgement are a result of complex interactions within the brain. These emotions and judgements affect your actions. That is, they have a direct, measurable affect on reality. Thus, they are real.
While we’re getting better at directly measuring the complex interactions within the brain, it’s a lot easier to measure the results of the emotions and judgements — your actions. Some of your actions (or reactions) are involuntary, such as the increase in heartrate when in the proximity of someone you desire. Others are completely within your control, such as the actions you take on moral judgements. For instance, you may recognize an action as immoral, and perform that action anyway. Or, you may think an action is perfectly moral, but choose not to perform that action.
All of your actions are measurable. And as it turns out, these measurements provide an excellent way to indirectly measure your emotions and morality.
Uh, dude references Aquinas and bolsters his appeals to authority with capitalisation. Classicalists who put that much effort into demonstrating their classicalist nature often do so because they daren’t let the conversation move on from the old masters and reveal how little they know about anything else.
This fucknut may not know anything about psychology, but I do.
*Facepalm*
Well, I really fucked up those links.
The first link, which is obviously borked, is to here: http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/marks/colon.htm. (It was mostly a joke link)
There is no link for the “Christians score lower”, which is here:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13674670802351856
The giganto link still works, but was supposed to end well before it does. It ends before another link on the second “cognitive bias” in my response, leading to a relevant wikipedia page.
Let no-one accuse me of being tech savvy.
Religious organizations and apologetics have been losing ground ever since they lost the right to imprison, torture, and execute people who disagreed with them, around 1700. Social strictures can keep the lid on the right to think for oneself only so long.
horrorshow:
You haven’t shown any logical reason to believe Jesus existed, let alone that he experienced pain much more intensely than the others crucified that day. Your entire argument is nothing but a series of unsupported assertions.
Isn’t there a Biblical passage about motes and beams?
Perhaps you are ignorant of this, but the APA is primarily a professional organization dominated by clinical practitioners, not research scientists. Therefore its varied statements and practices are generally not that relevant to the science of psychology.
Speaking of cool apps (“hive mind,” etc.), a university student has designed a wallet that gets slimmer as your bank balance goes down, so you know by feeling it whether you can afford to splurge.
Waffler: I’m sure he’ll just find another inane reason to dismiss psychological research. He will defend his irrational hunches and misunderstandings until the day he dies, when his body finally reaches the state that his brain has been in for years.
I think “knowing what measurement is” is like Original Sin: it works when horrorshow needs it do, and it doesn’t when he needs it not to.
Voilà: horrorshow’s very first comment, number 294:
He chose those two photos for a reason, and he knew that we’d generally agree with the assessment of physical attractiveness: his point depended on it.
When apologists pray, they should pray for a better memory of what they themselves write than people like me have.
And you, nigel, are much more kind to this dishonest ass than he deserves.
Brownian:
I know. I know.
I don’t know why horrorshow’s equivocation and sophistry doesn’t bother me as much as David Marshall’s — I guess because horrorshow’s rationalizations are so patently and humorously ridiculous. It’s almost like watching an episode of Ax Cop.
On second thought, it might be more like watching Battlefield: Earth.
In the future, I’ll watch my language.