Feb 10 2013

When will you realize…your god isn’t a nice guy?

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Religion

by PZ Myers

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21 comments

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1

Holms

10 February 2013 at 10:45 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

God is all powerful and all knowing!
Ah, but which god?

http://vimeo.com/50531435
2

Sastra

10 February 2013 at 12:02 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Well, to be fair God’s a shit to everyone. I mean, it’s not as if men get off easy. Hell is hell.

I love it when people try to excuse the misogyny, tribalism, and honor-based moral code in the Bible with the reassurance that God had to speak to people in language they’d understand. A revelation too radical and ancient people would have rejected it outright. No, God reveals His unchanging moral nature of perfection in little stages, gradually introducing slightly better barbarisms until the humanist-based Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th century finally allowed people to recognize what God really meant to say. Milk before meat. We weren’t ready yet.

Uh huh. What a load of nonsense. You have to really, really want to deceive yourself to deceive yourself with that one.
3

Azuma Hazuki

10 February 2013 at 1:00 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Oh, but don’t worry, it’s all for the glory of God! Anything you don’t understand is irrelevant; rest assured this is is the best of all possible existences, and everything, even the endless torment of billions, is necessary for the maximal glorification of God in a universe with free will!

…I have had this exact argument used on me. Never have I wanted more to kick someone in the junk with the excuse “all part of God’s plan, shithead” than this. That, right up there? That is Calvinism. That is presuppositionalism. That is disappearing up your own asshole and hermetically sealing it off.
4

johnm55

10 February 2013 at 2:07 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I do enjoy it when religionists try to explain natural events as *God’s plan*. I get thoroughly pissed off however, when they try to give their god the kudos for the work of brilliant doctors nurses and scientists.
5

johnm55

10 February 2013 at 2:12 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I do enjoy it when religionists try to explain natural events as part of *God’s Plan*. It pisses me of however when they try to give their god the kudos for the work of doctors nurses and scientists.
6

theignored

10 February 2013 at 2:19 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

That is something that I saw once. The fstdt link is outdated so you’ll have to go here to read the original article.

God is the only one who possesses intrinsic worth, and if he decides that the existence of evil will ultimately serve to glorify him, then the decree is by definition good and justified. One who thinks that God’s glory is not worth the death and suffering of billions of people has too high an opinion of himself and humanity. A creature’s worth can only be derived from and given by his creator, and in light of the purpose for which the creator made him. Since God is the sole standard of measurement, if he thinks something is justified, then it is by definition justified
7

theignored

10 February 2013 at 2:50 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

And…you all know me by now: I just have to make this worse. Here’s another example of a xian taking the character of his god as portrayed in the bible. The friendly atheist listened to some Baptist nut and it almost broke him.

Guess what? His wife has several entries in the FSTDT site herself. And yeah…she’s as batshit as one would expect her to be considering who her husband is.
8

Lenard Lindstrom

10 February 2013 at 3:26 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Sastra #1 says:

I love it when people try to excuse the misogyny, tribalism, and honor-based moral code in the Bible with the reassurance that God had to speak to people in language they’d understand.

To make understanding easier, God could have pre-installed the necessary concepts while creating the various languages of the earth (Gen 11:1-10). God could then have made statements such as, for instance, “Equality, good. Misogyny, bad. …”
9

Marcus Ranum

10 February 2013 at 3:49 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

If we really thought this god thing existed, wouldn’t we be morally obligated to try to track it down and kill it with a couple nukes?
10

great1american1satan

10 February 2013 at 4:37 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Time to bust out my classic Nietzsche/Voltaire mashup…

“If God was not already dead, it would be necessary for someone to kill Him.”

And that’s all the wit I’ve ever displayed in 36 years of life. Thank you, thank you.
11

paulburnett

10 February 2013 at 10:08 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

“If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him” – Zen Master Linji Yixuan, the founder of the Rinzai sect, died 866 AD.
12

salahhesali

10 February 2013 at 10:52 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Yeah… actually, this video… it’s shit.
13

salahhesali

10 February 2013 at 10:54 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

@paulburnett Show me one founder of a religious cult that didn’t have an itch against the previous guys. Probably Buddha… hm… but besides him.
14

glodson

10 February 2013 at 10:59 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I still remember, quite easily, all the dumb excuses made so that the god of the bible isn’t actually evil. The one I finally settled on was “the Bible is bullshit except for these parts that I kind of like.”

Turns out, it is all bullshit if one requires any evidence. And even the parts I liked weren’t really all that good when I really examined it.
15

Crudely Wrott

10 February 2013 at 11:05 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I’m sure that the voice that spoke to the two acolytes had something at least borderline profound to say but it was lost to me. I have a bit of a hearing impediment, you see.

While I appreciate the art and technical skill of audio engineers, I must pose this question:
Why in the world is important dialog rendered unintelligible to me and many other listeners who, should the lines be clearly heard and comprehended, might not only benefit from such enlightenment but also be loud and persuasive supporters of what was actually said? That assumes that you thought the dialog was important in the first place, of course.

This trend began in the late 50s or during the 60s when the notion of speaking machines became regular movie fodder. Without fail, or with few exceptions, all non human voices were rendered in a way that seemed mechanical or at the far end of a long pipe or both. The result is unintelligible speech. At least for me.

That sort of audio “enhancement” flat defeats the intent of speech. For many who have had some degradation to their hearing over time, this makes the artificial voices more noise than speech.

I really wish this old habit would die and go away. I’d rather have subtitles, please.

The upshot is that while I got the general drift of the video, I missed all of the subtle points, having to rely only on the reactions of the two humans.

Please, producers and audio engineers and sound artists, please. We are able to make artificial voices sound just like real people these days. How about you ease off on the reverb and echo and phase shifting and create distinctively disembodied voices that can actually be understood by people? Including people like me and people who can’t hear near as well as I.

It might enhance your storytelling foo by some measurable amount. OK? Thanks.
16

Crudely Wrott

10 February 2013 at 11:13 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Sorry for the OT comment but this is something that has been bugging me for twenty odd years or better.

Hat tip to the patient accommodation of the Horde.
17

frog

11 February 2013 at 12:28 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Crudely Wrott: Could you hear any of what the god character was saying? There’s a fuzzy bit right at the start of her lines where it sounds as if both a man and a woman are god. Then when she’s talking to the women, she’s echoy but intelligible to people with good ears.

Towards the end, she goes unintelligible because all four people are speaking at once: the two human women, the female-voice god, and a male voice with god that I interpreted as her tech-support/IT guy helping her figure out the universe program. That whole bit is a garbled, but I sorted out the gist by focusing on one voice or another.

I have really, really, really good hearing, and I had problems with it. I have to assume that the creator of the video wanted that last part to be all jumbled-sounding.

Also, perhaps it is more clear to British people? (I don’t know where you are from Crudely Wrott.) I often have a hard time understanding British accents unless I turn the volume up a bit.
18

John Morales

11 February 2013 at 4:59 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Sastra:

Well, to be fair God’s a shit to everyone. I mean, it’s not as if men get off easy. Hell is hell.

Um.

The referent is not the afterlife, it’s life. You know, here on Earth, not there in Hell.

Where women supposedly submit to men and all that.

(Whence your purported fairness?)
19

Anri

11 February 2013 at 6:34 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

That PDF reminds me of our ex-resident Calvinist, heddle.
20

texasaggie

11 February 2013 at 11:48 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

But there is progress. Two of the more important members of that whacked out KS church that demonstrates against gays at military funerals (Westboro?), granddaughters of the founder, have renounced that church because they say it is evil and are at least moving in the right direction. Be grateful for small favors.
21

Azuma Hazuki

13 February 2013 at 12:17 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

@6/theignored and 19/Anri

That’s ANY Calvinist though. I can sort of understand why this holds appeal to intelligent believers (and make no mistake, ol’ Dynamite-Heddle was not stupid) is because it’s about the only way you can justify all that junk.

Presuppositionalism has lots of problems, but if you don’t think TOO hard about it it looks airtight from the front.