Mar 22 2013

[Thunderdome]

Categories:

Open Thread

by PZ Myers

This is Thunderdome, the unmoderated open thread on Pharyngula. Say what you want, how you want.

This one is just in case you find that other bunny thread too nice.

Status: UNMODERATED; Previous thread

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868 comments

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501

chigau (違う)

28 March 2013 at 12:25 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

theophontes
しばらくねえ？
元気ですか。
502

theophontes (坏蛋)

28 March 2013 at 1:02 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

@ chigau

I have been moonlighting to support my dissipate and extravagant lifestyle. Unfortunately this has impacted on my free(thought) time. And my arse. I should be back to normal by next week.

I trust you are maintaining strict discipline over the myriad myrmidon minions in the interim.
503

John Morales

28 March 2013 at 3:44 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Lofty, Ban on catching cuttlefish introduced

An immediate ban on catching giant Australian cuttlefish in the Upper Spencer Gulf has been introduced as marine scientists try to find the cause of a dramatic decline in population.
504

Tony! The Lonely Queer Shoop

28 March 2013 at 5:32 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

cm @368:
For my part, I am more tham ok with Adria tweeting any pictures. Sexism and misogyny are ubiquitous in American society. For all that women have made advances, there is still so much more to accomplish before gender equality is reached. Until then, the distribution of power and influence in society overwhelingly favors men. To top it off, when a woman decides not to remain silent , she gets a flood of rape and death threats. That disproportionte reaction to three Photos highlights the misogyny in our society as well as the privilege of the men who called for Adria to be raped and/or killed. Their reactions and the social support they receive for them reinforce the power of patriarchy. Until such time as women gain equal social, political, and economic power, they need all the tools available to achieve equality in a non violent manner. Even Twitter.
Until women acheive full equality, the amount of power and pressure they can weild is limited. Feminists need a bigger toolbox to fight back with. Think of using Twitter as an attempt to level the playing field a bit more. Is it the *ideal* way to handle a situation. Not in an ideal world. But in this world, where simply speaking, not smiling, wanting an abortion, wanting to express their emotions in whatever manner they decide, knitting, being an activist and so much more…in a world where women are the targets of harassment, bullying, rape, kidnapping, domestic abuse, inequitable pay, and constant objectification, using Twitter as a tool to express themselves is a reasonable course of action.*
Until such time as women and men are equal, I think the use of less than ideal methods to combat sexism should be encouraged.***?
One day, when equality has been reached, and men and women have equal access to the same methods of dealing with problems, as well as equal support in social arenas and the courts, then I will revisit argents about women using Twitter to highlight sexism

***lest anyone attempt to say otherwise, I do not advocate for nor encourage the use of violencein the pursuit of equality (no mattet what form it takes.

*one of the common ideas I have seen about Adrias tweet amounted to “I do not approve of this. She should done it this way. Implicit in there is that if she complained in another manner means no firing and no rape/death threat s. The problem with that is much likely victim blaming in rape culture, Adria has no control over anyone elae. No matter what activity is under discussion, women will still get threats of rape or murder. There is no surefire way to approch an issue such that there will no misogymistic comments ditevtft
505

Lofty

28 March 2013 at 7:19 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

John Morales, yup, it was just the stupid poll on the advertiser page that annoyed me. It needed a good kicking.
506

chigau (違う)

28 March 2013 at 8:45 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

theophontes
I hope your butt gets better.
As for the minions, I haven’t “seen” them in weeks.
They’re probably up to something.
507

erikthebassist

28 March 2013 at 8:50 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

CM

Consent? So anybody who posts videos, pictures or audio of some one else online with out their consent is doing some unethical or immoral?

So lets stick with kitty dumpster lady since you know about that one and apparently live under a rock otherwise. Whoever posted that online did something unethical or immoral? Assuming they did not have her consent of course.
508

theophontes (坏蛋)

28 March 2013 at 9:04 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

@ chigau

As for the minions, I haven’t “seen” them in weeks.
They’re probably up to something.

They seem to have all migrated to Hong Kong. Luckily I had my camera with me today: Picture.
509

chigau (違う)

28 March 2013 at 9:11 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

theophontes
wholly fork!
What is that store trying to sell???
and the previous picture is shocking and quite NSFW.
510

Antiochus Epiphanes

28 March 2013 at 9:35 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

theophontes y chigau…I’m coming to China in June. Yunnan and likely Guanxi. Have they squidz there, or must I bring my own?

Also, many travel and safety tips are appreciated.

谢谢,

Antiophicus Ephichanes
511

Antiochus Epiphanes

28 March 2013 at 9:36 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

*szzz!*
GUANGXI
512

evilisgood

28 March 2013 at 10:39 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

NateHevens,

If the idea of the membranes is true, it means that our universe is the product of a collision between two spots on two membranes. If the collision can happen once, it means that the membranes are close enough in their space to collide. It would be strange as hell if collisions were such a rare occurrence that number of collisions is in fact finite, considering an infinite amount of membranes and an infinite amount of time… I would argue that it is, in fact, impossible. If there’s an infinite amount of membranes, then there has to be an infinite amount of universes. Even “rare” becomes infinite when dealing with infinities…

Ok, but here’s the thing. So you’ve got infinite membranes floating about in membranetopia (forgive me; I don’t know the technical term for the place where membranes live). If they are close enough to each other to smash together all the time, enough to create infinite universes, wouldn’t that mean the membranes were close enough to smash into a universe? And if two membranes colliding could result in a universe, wouldn’t membranes smashing into a universe all the time be catastrophic? Not to mention the universes smashing into each other? But this universe has rolled along for 14 billion years, give or take a few million. Are we just lucky, or do I misunderstand what could happen if a membrane hits a universe, or if universes hit each other?

theophontes,

This idea of one electron is new to me. If you would like to explain further, I would love to know more.
513

glodson

28 March 2013 at 10:53 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

@ theophontes

You can get something out of nothing (in the form of matter | antimatter, or particles | antiparticles).

This is a minor quibble, and I almost didn’t write this as I’m sure you know what I’m about to write, but maybe it will benefit others. Saying we get something from nothing is slightly problematic. The problem is that, when we are dealing with the virtual particle pairs, saying “nothing” is hard to do. Because of the Uncertainty Principal.

Here comes what I fear is pedantry and condescension. I’ll do my best to avoid this. This paragraph can be safely skipped if one has an understanding of the Uncertainty Principal. Now the Uncertainty Principal(UP) also relates to my post at 461. It is something that many people have heard of, but many don’t quite understand. Even people who have studied it. One common misconception is that it is a limitation with measurement, a problem that could be solved. That’s not true, it is a fundamental property of any quantum system. You cannot escape it. See the Casimir Effect, for example. If UP was just an artifact of measurement problems, this effect wouldn’t exist. The second misconception is that the UP only applies to velocity and position. It is really momentum and position. (Actually, it is the standard deviation, for the sake of precision.) We can use that to make the UP be a statement about time and energy.

Since the UP can be about time and energy, if we have a place with zero energy, the principal doesn’t apply. As such, there’s a vacuum energy, and on a short enough time scale, we can get an antimatter/matter pair of fundamental particles.

Under the normal definition of “nothing,” the statement is true that we can get these pairs to arise from nothing. But under a more strict examination of the universe, it isn’t really nothing. It is the vacuum energy that briefly gives rise to the virtual particles which annihilate each other in an instant. This idea gives rise to the aforementioned Casimir Effect, the Inflation theory of the Big Bang, and even the Hawking Effect.

Which is why studying this material is tough. It is so far removed from our conventional experiences that it is not intuitive. And I fear that I don’t even understand it well enough to explain well.
514

evilisgood

28 March 2013 at 11:05 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

As an aside, I fucking love this shit. Thank you for talking about it with me, and each other!
515

mythbri

28 March 2013 at 11:07 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

More stupidity from the on-going “Anti-Marriage Equality Shit Posted On Facebook” series. The person who posted this thought it made “a very good argument”.

http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2013/03/9432/?utm_source=StandFirm&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=link

Most WTF-quote:

Genderless marriage is not marriage at all. It is something else entirely.

What the ever-loving fuck is a “genderless marriage”? Do homosexual people magically lose their gender as soon as they get married?
516

mythbri

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

Also, I discovered that my Kindle Fire (which I used to comment on the link I posted above) does not recognize the word “homosexual”. It DOES recognize the word “heterosexual”.

Hmmmmm.
517

glodson

28 March 2013 at 11:24 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

@ evilisgood

No problem. I just hope I didn’t fuck up my explanations. Reading through them, I don’t even like them.

@ mythbri

Who knows that this guy meant by genderless marriage. I get the impression that is a person throwing out words as they lack anything resembling a cogent argument.
518

evilisgood

28 March 2013 at 11:46 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

glodson,

You’re doing great. What you seem to be interpreting as pedantry, I’m seeing as precision or specificity. It’s important to me to understand this stuff, and I’m aware that I’m coming into this discussion with some misconceptions. Michio Kaku apparently is not the great science communicator that I thought he was. This is a problem, because any understanding I thought I had about M-theory comes from him, and quite a bit about the modern ideas of particle physics as well. I trust you lot to argue it all out if physics is your thing, and that’s what I’m after.

So, thanks. It’s more important to me than you can know.
519

Esteleth, stupid fucking starchild Tolkien worshiping douche

28 March 2013 at 11:46 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I’ve run into the “genderless” thing before. As near as I can understand, the thought process goes like this:

(1) There are two divinely-ordained gender roles.
(2) Gender is not something that can be subverted or changed – you either perform it properly or you don’t.
(3) If you do not perform your “proper” gender role (defined by your sex), then you are placing yourself outside the system and therefore don’t really have a gender.
(4) LGBT people, by definition, are not properly performing gender.
(5) Same-sex couples, therefore, are couples devoid of gender.
520

NateHevens, resident SOOPER-GENIUS... apparently...

28 March 2013 at 11:54 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

theophontes at #500:

Sorry, but this is “not even wrong”. There is absolutely no reason at all for this to be true, and very likely quite the opposite, You can get something out of nothing (in the form of matter | antimatter, or particles | antiparticles). Spacetime and energy (or “matter” if you will) can certainly come into being ex nihil – it has happened at least once.

“It has happened at least once”…

Wait. You know what caused the Big Bang?

Amazing! Can you tell me? And maybe Cosmologists everywhere, as well?

What has happened at least once is the inflation event. What caused it is still unknown. If the multiverse idea is true, then spacetime (yes, I’m fully aware that this is one fabric) and energy existed before the Big Bang, because there were/are other universes.

So no, my idea is “not even wrong”. Yes, it’s nothing but conjecture, and yes, I could very well be wrong (in fact, I probably am wrong). But I don’t see how existence can happen without spacetime and energy. The idea of spacetime and energy coming into being ex nihil makes about as much sense to me as some omnimax super-being creating everything in six days… that is, not at all. And yes, I know about the whole “something from nothing” thing; I’ve read Krauss’s book, and found it informative, but I’m just not sure I agree with the premise. There’s something missing… I would say that thing is two things: spacetime and energy.

Also, that “nothing” isn’t really nothing. Glodson already said it at #513, but it’s vacuum energy. There is stuff there.

Again… I know about the nearly anti-intuitive nature of all this. And more, I know that the idea of a multiverse could be completely wrong. But the thought that spacetime and energy can come into existence ex nihil makes existence itself practically impossible. Again… without spacetime and energy, how can there be anything at all?

evilisgood @ #512:

Ok, but here’s the thing. So you’ve got infinite membranes floating about in membranetopia (forgive me; I don’t know the technical term for the place where membranes live).

Back when I was trying to be a writer, I tried to come up with a Sci-Fi/Fantasy story (which I’ve since scrapped because… calling it “bad” is a compliment; I am decidedly not a writer). The word I “coined” (not really) to refer to it was “diasty” (combination of dynasty and deity… I was still a deist at the time), so that’s what I use… it’s a decidedly stupid word, but hey… it works for me… :D

If they are close enough to each other to smash together all the time, enough to create infinite universes, wouldn’t that mean the membranes were close enough to smash into a universe? And if two membranes colliding could result in a universe, wouldn’t membranes smashing into a universe all the time be catastrophic? Not to mention the universes smashing into each other? But this universe has rolled along for 14 billion years, give or take a few million. Are we just lucky, or do I misunderstand what could happen if a membrane hits a universe, or if universes hit each other?

Remember, there are perhaps at least eleven dimensions, if not more. So every universe will not exist in just the first three or four. It’s entirely possible that our universe shares it’s space with many others simply existing in different dimensions.

But also… the membranes would likely be finite in size (they would be infinite in number and time, but not size), so they would only “hold” (as it were) a finite number of universes at a time. Plus, the energy dissipation would occur in a finite amount of time, as well, so many universes would eventually dissipate out of existence before another clash occurs. I remember reading something by a theoretical physicist suggesting that 1 trillion years is the longest amount of time that works with the math, which means a universe’s life-span (that is, how long it takes to dissipate away) is 1 trillion years. If it takes 1 trillion years for the two membranes to clash in the same spot again, then only one universe would exist on our spot at a time.

And one more time, in case anyone thinks I don’t realize this: this is all conjecture and speculation. This is currently impossible to test/observe/prove with our severely limited understanding. Also, a confession: most of what I know about this stuff comes from the attempts at popularizing it. I watch shows like “Through the Wormhole”, “How the Universe Works”, “the Universe”, “BBC Horizon”, “PBS Nova”, and read books like “A Brief History of Time”, “The Grand Design”, “The Universe in a Nutshell”, “Big Bang”, “A universe from Nothing”, “Cosmos”, “The Elegant Universe”, “The Fabric of the Cosmos”, etc… so my understanding is limited to… well… that…
521

mythbri

28 March 2013 at 12:19 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

@Esteleth #519

Thanks for the explanation, at least. Still doesn’t make any kind of sense at all.
522

LykeX

28 March 2013 at 12:53 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Aww, and I was just getting my hopes up that he was talking about robots getting married.
523

cm's changeable moniker (quaint, if not charming)

28 March 2013 at 6:26 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

erikthebassist:

you [...] apparently live under a rock

Nah. You said “filmed assassination of a journalist in Iraq and the subsequent attack of his serait sauveteurs”.

Assassination (to me) is pre-planned covert murder of a specific target (see: JFK, Neave, Ghandi, OBL). Which is not what the killing of Namir Noor-Eldeen, et al. was. Had you said “the Wikileaks video showing an Apache gunning down a Reuters journalist” I’d have been on it like a puma.

*shrug*

Consent?

The next time some shithead posts a photo of a passed-out drunk person showing their underwear, I’ll be sure to pass on your highly-considered opinion that the libertarian internet is totes awesome. It’s not like that shit already outnumbers the whistle-blowers 100-1. :-/

—

P.S., if you expect a reply, please don’t. (See next post!)
524

cm's changeable moniker (quaint, if not charming)

28 March 2013 at 6:47 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Rejoice, minions of the Tardigrade and other denizens of the dome!

I depart for a week in the Piddle Valley.

(Google it!)

They say Dorrrzzzettt has wifi now, but I don’t believe it.

But you’ll know soon enough if they do, though. ;-)
525

Caine, Fleur du mal

28 March 2013 at 7:05 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

The Rats are having an absolute blast with the paper Hekuni Cat sent. Mallory & Merlin are especially fond of the glittery paper.
526

cm's changeable moniker (quaint, if not charming)

28 March 2013 at 7:21 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

s/they do/they’re right/@#524
527

cm's changeable moniker (quaint, if not charming)

28 March 2013 at 8:22 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

fuhfuxake.

s/they do/they’re wrong/@#524
528

cm's changeable moniker (quaint, if not charming)

28 March 2013 at 8:32 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

*facepalm*

#527 is completely wrong. Please ignore. :-(

Really going now.
529

Tony! The Lonely Queer Shoop

28 March 2013 at 11:00 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

TL;DR crossposted from the Lounge.

Ok, the following are my thoughts on the major points in Jim’s (the guys I had the religious talk with following sex back during the xmas holidays of 2012) emails that I feel need attention in some way or another. Some things I think he needs a firm correction on (health relate matters), while others, I think he could benefit from knowing that he’s not a piece of shit. I learned long ago that when offering criticism, one of the effective ways of doing so, such that the recipient doesn’t immediately shut down when you begin, is to sandwich your criticisms between compliments. Though not the same kind of scenario, I want to take a leaf out of that book so to speak. I want to open up with my positive thoughts on him, as well as reassuring him that he has value and worth. In between that, I want to offer a combination of my thoughts, as well as giving him some resources to answer any health related questions he may have. Given the depth of his insecurity and self loathing, I intend to take pains to avoid saying anything that gives him the impression that anything I say is an indictment on him. Additionally, while I want to address-to some degree-his religious opinions (how can I not when they’ve so thoroughly fucked him over thus far), I do not want to come across as being so critical of something he finds value in. My fear is that he will reject the far more salient points I want to address, because he is so invested in Christianity.

(I *suck* at this Ctrl-F feature that lets you look for specific key words, otherwise I would provide a link to my original post during Xmas holiday season of 2012, when I initiallly met Jim. It is not necessary reading, but it is relevant)

My purpose in posting this here (and x-posted to the Dome) is to allow for a number of diverse opinions and experiences to inform my subsequent email to Jim. I am not naive enough to think anything I say will allow him to break free from a lifetime of , but as a wise person said earlier “sometimes a crack just needs time to widen”. In addition, there is so much to unpack here, while simultaneously recognizing that I am not a psychiatrist, that the opinions of people whom I respect can help in my response to him. I do not intend for this to be the final word on any of the issues he is dealing with, but if he chooses to once again cut off contact, I would like for my response to be substantial on its own. Finally, I expect nothing from anyone reading this. I know everyone has their own lives and their own concerns, so I do not expect anyone to drop what they are doing to assist me in this. For those that choose to, I have no expectations that you will address everything I bring up.

In no order of importance:
1- My offer after our initial meeting was not empty. I suspected that he would want/need *someone* to talk to about anything, especially the confusing feelings he was having. When he texted me in January saying that he “couldn’t do this any more” and was deleting all of my contact information, I thought I would not hear from him again. That I have, shows all the more that he is struggling to come to terms with a sea of conflicting feelings within himself. Then there’s the sexual component that he has expressed stated that he want to engage in once more. I have told him that as long as he is feeling shame and guilt over our night of sex, that I do not want to repeat that. More on this later.

2- Raised Christian, with no further information about what denomination, Jim was gifted in school and obedient at home and in church. The latter is not a virtue and something I want to discuss in some degree. Obedience to religious thought does no one any good. Given the lack of evidence for any supernatural creator deity, all obedience leads to is blind belief in authority figures. We all know how bad that can turn. What would be a good angle here? Examples of the harm of religion? Religious leaders manipulating and harming their followers? Discussing the why obedience is harmful? I want to avoid preaching to him, but at the same time I think it may be important to convey that a system of morality that depends on our obedience is not one focused on maximizing our happiness while also minimizing the suffering of others.

3- Jim discovered he had an attraction to men at a young age. At some point during his teens, he had a few friends that he had some measure of sexual interaction with. He described these interactions in a prudish, ashamed way. Instead of referring to actual body parts, he refers to “private parts” and oral sex as “doing stuff”. The guilt and shame have been part of him for a long time. This is not just shame and guilt over being gay. It is also guilt and shame over sex in general.

4- At some point in his teens, he was caught by his mother with another guy. She apparently spoke with him about this, and swept the matter under the carpet. The feelings he had following this are saddening. He spoke of disappointing his mother…of disgusting her. He talked of angering and disappointing god. At no point does he discuss his needs and want. It’s all about his mother (and no mention of a father) and the asshole invisible sky daddy.

5- Also apparent that he valued (values?) the opinions of people in his religious community. After the incident with his mother, he became worried about upsetting the opinions of people if they found out his secrets.

6- He became suicidal enough to lay down on train tracks. Thankfully, he decided he did not want to die.
I feel this is a major point that I should touch on, because far too many people, gay or otherwise, have taken their lives because they felt the were disappointing others or god.

7- He turned to god and the church in the hopes of withstanding the urges he had. It became apparent to me here that he sees no distinction between his sexual urges and any emotional connection. He seems to associate being gay with *just* sex. I think his view of relationships and romance, whether homo- or hetero- sexual is flawed. Later comments go a long way to confirming this.

8- He spoke of “investing in the lives of others” after his suicide attempt. Though he spoke of this having some degree of success, I was left wondering “what about YOU?”

9- One oddity…he said he became hesitant to discuss being Christian with others. Given the overwhelming impact of Christianity in the United States, I can’t begin to understand feeling shameful about being a christian. Christianity is *everwhere*.

10- His last year of college, he fell in love with his best friend whom he lived with as roommates. He spoke of becoming jealous when his friend began dating women. I feel some of the actions he describes need to be addressed. He says he turned down jobs in other cities-jobs that offered more money- so that he could remain around his buddy. Jim mentioned that he would sometimes sneak into his friends room at night and watch him sleep, as well as even kiss his body. Violating the privacy of someone is justified in certain extreme circumstances, but not here. This was categorically wrong and extremely creepy. While I understand to an extent-where did he turn to for guidance on how to navigate relationships and dating, especially given his homosexuality-of all the things he expressed disgust and guilt in over his lengthy emails to me, his actions here were not among them. I feel it is important to convey to him that such behavior is not ok. Again though, doing so with care is important. He is in a state of emotional flux and I do not want to unduly contribute to worsening that state of mind. He mentioned that his friend sometimes woke up and he scrambled to explain himself, with diminishing degrees of success.

11- going to a preacher (something else…perhaps he needs to consult someone with the proper education to be a therapist), he was advised to speak with his friend and tell him the truth; which he did. Thankfully, his friend was understanding and they remained roommates and friends, though in time he moved out to get married. I think he downplays the acceptance his friend showed him. I want to briefly talk to him about that. Clearly there are people he cares about that do not reject him upon finding out he is gay.

12- He places misplaced value on not drinking or doing drugs or watching pornography. When speaking of masturbating as a youth, he mentions “only to soft core porn”. His words show that he thinks a good person is someone who does these things. Again, his system of morality is not centered on how and to what degree his actions impact the lives of others, but on being obedient.

13- As a gay man in his late 20s, he was feeling a lot of sexual desires with no outlets. He turned to online sites, along with drinking and watching porn; in part because he was feeling of little worth. He met his first guy from an online site, but nothing came of it (he notes the guy did not look IRL as he did online, and he said he was turned off by how “girlie” the guy was; I despise descriptions that many give towards men that do not act in the socially approved MAN manner; the enforcement of gendered stereotypes is harmful, but amidst all of this, I do not want to run too far afield; )

14- He later encountered one of those people on these dating sites who describes themselves as a masseuse. It is clear Jim thought the guy really was. In addition to an unhealthy view of relationships and sexuality, he displays a naivete that I have little experience with. I suspect this has something to do with being taught to trust the word of people around him, instead of questioning. In any case, he found himself attracted to this guy and they had sexual interactions several times. Each time, Jim would feel disgusted and guilty over his actions. The last time they met up, they had sex, which was a first for Jim. It saddens me to know that in addition to the guilt he faced after they had sex, he also had the added worry of acquiring an STI, despite the fact that the guy put a condom on him. Jim says he went home and sprayed LYSOL on his penis.
This is a definite area that needs to be addressed. As with many people, he is navigating the world of sex with little to no accurate information on the safest way to do so.

15- Following this, he deleted all information of the guy and tried to keep himself busy to avoid any “impure” thoughts. Of course this ended in the exact opposite way he was aiming for. Denying his sexual needs merely meant they would bottle up and express themselves at a later date. Which is exactly what happened. He experienced a period of no sex and staying busy followed by bouts of random hookups. Followed by the intense guilt and frustration.

16- In another display of his inexperience at dating, he encountered a guy online, and from his own words practically begged him to have sex with him. It profoundly bothers me to know that someone devalues themselves so much that they beg for someone to have sex with them. Then he rationalized it away by saying that begging showed that he was trying to the sex about the needs of the other guy. His deeply flawed views on healthy sexuality are painful to read.

17- In time he ran the guy off, and once again, could not deal with his emotions. He turned to his ex roommate, his preacher and his boss-discussing the turmoil he felt. He went so far as to edit the filters on his computer to prevent himself from accessing pornographic sites. Of course we know how successful that was. Over the Xmas holidays of 2012, while at a friends house, he went online and came across one of my profiles on a site, which led to our interaction, and my subsequent TL;DR in the Thunderdome.

Jim says he is getting therapy, but characterizes that as “sad”.

Any and all thoughts from anyone willing to read this TL;DR is greatly appreciated. I harbor no illusions that I will be successful in my endeavors to help Jim, but given that he has few places to turn to, and that he does trust me, I would like to do what I can, with the hope that somehow, someday he will be able to attain a measure of inner peace and focus more on making himself happy in the here and now, all while being responsible in his pursuit of a meaningful life with someone he loves as well as a healthier understanding of human sexuality.

Thanks in advance.
530

Hekuni Cat, MQG

28 March 2013 at 11:07 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Portia:

Can I have an ecookie, Hekuni Cat?

Of course. I’ll give you one even if you don’t join the Dark Side.

Caine, Fleur du mal:

The Rats are having an absolute blast with the paper Hekuni Cat sent. Mallory & Merlin are especially fond of the glittery paper.

Excellent! =^_^= (I’m assuming Mallory and Merlin like the red and silver reversible piece.)
531

theophontes (坏蛋)

29 March 2013 at 12:12 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

@ Antiochus Epiphanes

Yunnan and likely Guan[g]xi.

Yay! Yunnan is my favourite part of China (and Guangxi is pretty damn fine too.)

Will you have time to travel freely? Are you looking for places to visit?

Definitely get yourself to Xishuangbanna (The saying goes:”The person who goes to Xishuangbanna wishes they had not got married so soon.”, wild elephants, laid back), Kunming (Amazing mushroom restaurants… and flower (as in “eat”) restaurants, endless spring, dinosaurs (don’t tell David M) and Dali (stunning lake and mountains, ancient villages). I haven’t been to Lijiang, but it is also pretty cool.

IIRC, the only place I’ve been to in Guangxi is Guilin. To visit a condom factory. When you see the mountains of Guilin, you will understand why they are based there. There are some great local restaurants on the very edge of the river.

You are not going anywhere near Shenzhen or Hong Kong? It would be great to drag you out for a beer.

Tips: *ALWAYS* carry tissues with you. Also small change. ORS, painkillers (paracetamol,) anti-diarrhea and anti-constipation tabs, pen and notebook… are probably a good idea to keep in your bag. Travel plugs … etc, the usual. You can buy super cheap SIM cards here. You may want to download a cheat-sheet of Chinese terms to keep in your pocket and memorise. Thats about it. The place is very safe (compared to USA and the planet in general), so feel free to bring your camera wherever you go. Make sure you have your insurance card with you & endorsed for China …..
532

theophontes (坏蛋)

29 March 2013 at 12:46 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

@ evilisgood

This idea of one electron is new to me. If you would like to explain further, I would love to know more.

This is an idea brought up by John Wheeler and Richard Feynman, coming to grips with how indistinguishable electrons are from each other. Check out his Noble lecture:

As a by-product of this same view, I received a telephone call one day at the graduate college at Princeton from Professor Wheeler, in which he said, “Feynman, I know why all electrons have the same charge and the same mass” “Why?” “Because, they are all the same electron!” And, then he explained on the telephone, “suppose that the world lines which we were ordinarily considering before in time and space – instead of only going up in time were a tremendous knot, and then, when we cut through the knot, by the plane corresponding to a fixed time, we would see many, many world lines and that would represent many electrons, except for one thing. If in one section this is an ordinary electron world line, in the section in which it reversed itself and is coming back from the future we have the wrong sign to the proper time – to the proper four velocities – and that’s equivalent to changing the sign of the charge, and, therefore, that part of a path would act like a positron.” “But, Professor”, I said, “there aren’t as many positrons as electrons.” “Well, maybe they are hidden in the protons or something”, he said. I did not take the idea that all the electrons were the same one from him as seriously as I took the observation that positrons could simply be represented as electrons going from the future to the past in a back section of their world lines. That, I stole!

With regard to the wave nature of extremely small particles (electrons, neutrinos, muons), you may may want to google: Fermions (& bosons).

@ glodson

… I fear is pedantry and condescension.

Not at all, you write really well. (Don’t hold back!)

And I fear that I don’t even understand it well enough to explain well.

Take heart from Feynman:

I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.
533

LykeX

29 March 2013 at 1:24 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Of course. I’ll give you one even if you don’t join the Dark Side.

Sure, the first one’s always free, but then once you’re hooked…
534

theophontes (坏蛋)

29 March 2013 at 2:10 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

@ chigau

What is that store trying to sell???

Women’s clothing. It certainly caught my attention – not that I am their target market.

@ NateHevens,

“not even wrong”

This term tends to get things started with a bang.

Again… without spacetime and energy, how can there be anything at all?

One theory holds that these very concepts only became relevent at the instant of the Big Bang. That it actually created time. Without time, there was no “before”. (Of course, we could be alternating between Big Bang and Big Crunch indefinitely too.)

@ Tony

{proffers chocolate covered hugs (the praline one’s are without kirsch)}

Wheeuw! You are right that your friend needs help. I suspect he may need professional help.

What you can offer him is just being you. Perhaps there is no need to bring up anything negative at all (GAWD, “responsibility”, “shame” and the like). I can imagine that just spending time with you and doing stuff with your friends, may be enough to open up a whole new world to him – one without all those negatives he grew up with. Just take him the hell away from his problems for a little while … let him join the dots.

Jim says he is getting therapy, but characterizes that as “sad”.

An alternative is that you go for counciling. This is not as strange as it sounds. You know what his problems are and you can discuss your interaction with him with someone who can (should) give you good advice on how to proceed. (You would perhaps be advised to check that the professional you engage grocks the issues.)

Jim is very lucky to have a friend like you.
535

chigau (違う)

29 March 2013 at 2:22 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

from theophontes
to Tony

Jim is very lucky to have a friend like you.

Seconded.
536

Caine, Fleur du mal

29 March 2013 at 2:43 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Hekuni Cat:

Excellent! =^_^= (I’m assuming Mallory and Merlin like the red and silver reversible piece.)

No, other glittery paper. Vasco has a lock on all red things. He loves anything red.
537

Lofty

29 March 2013 at 3:54 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Hah, one of our resident magpies (like this one here) was nest building a couple of years ago, and kept coming over to my work area to try steal bits of wire, the chain off my extension ladder, and other shiny bits. Eventually I dug out the old tatty christmas tinsel and left that out. I really couldn’t see wire being good for nesting material! Next morning all the tinsel was gone and the magpie stopped wasting time trying to nick wire.
538

mikmik

29 March 2013 at 5:46 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I’m trying to find an article on gravity or energy equilibrium, but so far here is one that explains the zero point energy and dark energy:
Empty space has more energy than everything in the Universe, combined. It talks about dark energy:

The energy part doesn’t bother me nearly as much as the “dark” part does. The energy part is because it’s an intrinsic energy to space — the zero-point energy — that actually has a positive, non-zero value. I would prefer to call it “vacuum energy” because it’s the energy intrinsic to empty-space, or the quantum vacuum, but this dudesaid “dark energy” before anyone knew who I was and now everyone calls it that, and most of us hate the name, too. Bummer.

– - -

Here is what I am looking for, from Starts With a Bang, as well:
The Physics of Nothing; The Philosophy of Everything. It starts out with the Casimir effect

You removed all the matter, energy, and sources of curvature from your Universe. You are left with empty spacetime. On large scales — where “large” means larger than the size of a subatomic particle like a proton — spacetime indeed looks like that flat grid we referred to earlier. But if you start looking at ever smaller scales, this picture breaks down.

On the tiniest physical scales — the Planck scale — spacetime isn’t flat at all. Empty space itself vibrates and curves, and there is a fundamental uncertainty in the energy content — at any given time — of nothingness.
This quantum vacuum — on these very small scales — manifests this fundamental uncertainty by spontaneously creating pairs of particles-and-antiparticles for very brief amounts of time.

Everywhere. All the time. Even in empty space.

This is not merely some theoretical quantum prediction.

[...]

In the absence of these vacuum fluctuations, you would expect the force between the plates to be dominated by gravitation. But if you bring these plates close enough together, you find that these vacuum fluctuations cause the plates to attract one another! This attractive force is purely quantum in nature, and is the surefire experimental evidence — that’s been around since 1948 — that this is the physical nature of nothingness.

Thus

In the absence of these vacuum fluctuations, you would expect the force between the plates to be dominated by gravitation. But if you bring these plates close enough together, you find that these vacuum fluctuations cause the plates to attract one another! This attractive force is purely quantum in nature, and is the surefire experimental evidence — that’s been around since 1948 — that this is the physical nature of nothingness.

Now, combine this with the one thing this empty spacetime is allowed to do: expand.

Now we get to the equilibrium I was trying to remember at the beginning of my comment. It appears that the vacuum of space is decaying from a state of being a false vacuum(zero point energy has a value/Cassimir Effect) towards a true vacuum:

If the Early Universe existed in a metastable, or false vacuum, state, it would continue to stretch these quantum fluctuations across the Universe — on all scales — for as long as you remained in that state.
But this state does not last forever; there is a more stable state that the Universe will eventually find, just as a ball placed atop the hill above will eventually roll down into the valley below. When this happens, matter and energy spontaneously generate during the transition from the metastable state to the more stable state, through a process known as reheating.

[Skipping ahead]

And one of the most amazing things about all of this is that the Universe as we see it now is still expanding. Not only expanding, but it still contains a small amount of this energy of nothingness.

The graph it shows at this point reminds me of an exothermic chemical reaction that proceeds in two stages, with an area of false equilibrium and a small threshold to overcome(I can’t remember my chem very good – sorry)

We have not fallen into the lowest possible valley of nothingness (region II); contrariwise, we still have some non-zero fundamental energy to spacetime. This fundamental fabric of spacetime — the Universe devoid of matter, energy, radiation, and anything else you can imagine — will eventually, as the stars burn and die and the galaxies separate and every unstable thing decays away, return to a cold, flat, empty, expanding state of nothingness once again.

For the more philosophically inclined among you, I give you Alan Watts, who has this to say about nothingness:

Nothingness is really like the nothingness of space, which contains the whole Universe. All the Sun and the stars and the mountains and rivers and the good men and the bad men and the animals and the insects, the whole bit: all are contained in the void. So out of this void comes everything, and you’re it.

What I get from this is that all matter(and anti-matter), of which we are made, has essentially evaporated out of the vacuum of space!
– - -
One bit as a corollary, that I can’t find, is that this local (temporal) equilibrium we are in is unstable to an unknown degree. This means that if the threshold is broken that everything will quickly decay to the point of a true vacuum, spelling a quick demise of the universe. (I’m not clear on the details). This would be rapid, and we would notice it – the last thing we would ever notice.
I stand to be corrected on this, and I also apologize if other commenters have already covered this stuff. I just woke up a bit early and didn’t have time, yet, to read back several hundred comments.
539

carlie

29 March 2013 at 6:02 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Tony – I have thoughts, but it will take awhile for me to have time to put them down properly.Later tonight I should be able to (about 12-14hrs from now)
540

Antiochus Epiphanes

29 March 2013 at 9:32 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

theophontes:

I haven’t had time to be excited about this trip until this morning. I’m a botanist and we’ll be using Kunming as our base of operations, so we will mos def be eating in the flower restaurant. As far as where we’ll be, it depends on lots of things. Making the right contacts, getting permits (and getting permits recognized), the good will of land owners and managers, prevailing weather patterns and previous collection records. I’m used to factoring in road quality, but I’m guessing that this might not be such an issue. Anyway, I’ll be there for about a month, and I won’t really know what I’m doing until I’m on the ground.

BUT I would love to get to Shenzen. I may have a few wiggle days. I hear that domestic flights are fairly inexpensive in China, and I have been made to understand that I ought to have some FW pearls with me when I return.

I’ll let you know as the time approaches.

And thank you very much for the travel tips. It’s the little things you bring with you that make life comfortable. I’m very happy to hear about the safety of the area. I often travel in places that are kind of crimey; this significantly reduces fun.
541

carlie

29 March 2013 at 9:51 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

AE – jealous! A mutual friend (I seem to remember you both saying you’d met each other at a conference back in the days when I was on facebook) has done a few collecting trips in China – if you want to, email me at carliesinternet at yahoo and I’ll get you both back in touch with each other for travel tips.
542

rorschach

29 March 2013 at 9:56 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

This is an idea brought up by John Wheeler and Richard Feynman, coming to grips with how indistinguishable electrons are from each other.

I was listening to the audiobook of “Surely you’re joking…” in my car on the way to and from work today, the part where he told the Brazilians how fucked up their Physics education was, hilarious.

I hear that domestic flights are fairly inexpensive in China, and I have been made to understand that I ought to have some FW pearls with me when I return.

I’m actually missing China a little bit. It’s safe, and if you can get over the quirks like that no taxi driver speaks any word of anything other than Mandarin, and likely in some dialect that you couldn’t understand even if you had some basic knowledge of it, the landscapes are just phenomenal, the culture is intriguing, and the food mostly gorgeous.
Looks like I’ll be stuck in some airport in Shanghai for 14 hours in June on my way to this conference I don’t really want to go to anymore now, but I guess I could just have a nice weekend drinking too much in Dublin instead.
543

Antiochus Epiphanes

29 March 2013 at 10:22 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

carlie: tag. you’re it.

Alas, I have no gift for language*. I have to make due with pantomime and apology. I have a book and CD to learn some very basic chinese phrases, and I need to get cracking on that.

*It’s my mouth, really. It doesn’t work right, even in English. If I could stick to written communication, I could get by in a few languages. But even when I practice and practice actually saying the phrases, being in a sitch where I need to speak has a tendency to strike me dumb.
544

Rutee Katreya

29 March 2013 at 10:34 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Too gay for religious feminists, now looking like not racist enough for the atheist ones. Ah well, I spent my last few months pretty happily hermetic, that was maybe the stronger choice. XD
545

NateHevens, resident SOOPER-GENIUS... apparently...

29 March 2013 at 11:11 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

theophontes @ #534

Sorry… my post came across a heck of a lot angrier than I was, and that was unintentional.

I’m largely just not seeing how it’s possible for spacetime and energy to have come into existence.

One theory holds that these very concepts only became relevent at the instant of the Big Bang. That it actually created time. Without time, there was no “before”. (Of course, we could be alternating between Big Bang and Big Crunch indefinitely too.)

And I honestly don’t buy it.

It’s for the same reason that I laugh at theists who try to claim that God is “outside” spacetime. There’s no such thing as “outside spacetime” because you need spacetime in order to define outside in the first place.

The logical conclusion to that, as far as I can see it, is that spacetime has to be eternal, because without it, I don’t see how it’s possible that there can be anything at all… even existence itself. Everything we can see that happens happens within the barrier of spacetime. We’ve yet to find anything “outside” of spacetime, and it would surprise if we did, because I’m just not seeing how such a thing is possible.

Same goes with energy. Matter is a form of energy. Everything is energy. Without energy, you have nothing with which to form energy. The Big Bang itself was a blast of energy. How can there be a blast of energy if there is no energy to begin with? And further, if energy cannot be created or destroyed, how could it have been “created” in the Big Bang at all?
546

rorschach

29 March 2013 at 11:17 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I’m largely just not seeing how it’s possible for spacetime and energy to have come into existence.

and

And I honestly don’t buy it.

You might want to google “argument from personal incredulity”. Study Physics or read up on some Feynman lectures, but the fact that you don’t buy something really isn’t exactly earthmoving.
And sorry if my post comes across as less angry than what I am…No, wait…
547

glodson

29 March 2013 at 11:56 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

The logical conclusion to that, as far as I can see it, is that spacetime has to be eternal, because without it, I don’t see how it’s possible that there can be anything at all… even existence itself.

This is an argument from incredulity. And spacetime as a clear origin. In the Big Bang. That is what banged, in a sense. Everything, included spacetime. Which means a clear origin of time.

When we talk about time and space, we have to remember that these are dimensions. Three Spacial dimensions and one timelike dimension. All we need to exist now are the conditions under which we find the universe at the moment. As far as we can tell, these conditions have an origin in the Big Bang. There is nothing about them that leads to the belief that they are eternal. They could be, but I would need to see a good reason.

The Big Bang itself was a blast of energy.

Sorry, this is not true. The Big Bang was a blast of everything. Literally. Here’s a good part to talk about a slight misconception of the Big Bang. We don’t know anything about the moment of the Bang itself. The entire theory of the Big Bang is what happened immediately after the bang. We aren’t even sure if Inflation actually happened. Sure, we have a basis on which to base this. However, it still could be wrong. Some like it because it neatly answers a few questions about the overall structure of the universe, and all.

So, to say that Big Bang was a blast of energy is making a massive assumption. Besides, it was also the start of our spacetime. That’s not energy. To reduce the Big Bang to a blast of energy is to grossly ignore the event, and misrepresent our understanding of the event.

We don’t know, really, what exactly banged. We don’t know the initial condition of our universe. We can maybe extrapolate to about one Plank time after the Big Bang, but not closer. And our understanding will be incomplete until we get a firm grip on a theory of quantum gravity.

Everything we can see that happens happens within the barrier of spacetime. We’ve yet to find anything “outside” of spacetime, and it would surprise if we did, because I’m just not seeing how such a thing is possible.

Yes. But this is a consequence of living in this universe, with this conditions. There is nothing we know of outside of space and time. But that doesn’t mean that space and time have always existed, and the spacetime in which we live has a clear origin. Further, to say that energy is eternal is to make a statement about the singularity. It could have been infinitely dense and hot energy, but we don’t know. Hell, I am not comfortable on making a statement on what the singularity was, other than the thing that banged. I don’t have enough information.

Jumping back…

Same goes with energy. Matter is a form of energy. Everything is energy. Without energy, you have nothing with which to form energy.

This is another a gross oversimplification of the issue. Matter can be converted into energy, true. But this overly reduces what matter is for the sake of your point. this video gives a good overview of what matter is. And as pointed out above by Mikmik in post @ 538(for which I wish I had a good cogent reply but still stuffed with cough syrup, so thinking is tough at the moment), the vacuum energy is always there. Again, tied tightly to our spacetime. And matter is not a form of energy. Matter is equivalent to energy, and there are circumstances under which one can transition to the other, but they are still distinct.

How can there be a blast of energy if there is no energy to begin with? And further, if energy cannot be created or destroyed, how could it have been “created” in the Big Bang at all?

I’ve addressed the blast of energy, but to reiterate, calling the Big Bang a blast of energy is a misnomer. Further, since we are talking about the conversation of energy, it is important to note that the total energy of the universe must be set, assuming the universe is an isolated system. A very safe assumption. However, this doesn’t mean that energy is an eternal property. Part of the problem is that time literally didn’t exist until after the Big Bang occurred. At least, any sort of time we could understand and quantify.

Hawking asked what is north of north pole? The same question applies here. What happened before time? It is a question without any answer. Not without changing the definition of time. Energy, as we understand it, could very easily be tied tightly to the initial conditions of the universe, of which we know nothing.

So I hesitate to call anything we observe in this universe as always existing.
548

rorschach

29 March 2013 at 12:18 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Hey, is LeftSidePositive someone we know? Did I miss something here?
549

Beatrice (looking for a happy thought)

29 March 2013 at 12:27 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Hey, is LeftSidePositive someone we know?

Yes.

Did I miss something here?

Dunno.
550

Tony! The Lonely Queer Shoop

29 March 2013 at 12:30 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Rutee:

I am not certain if i missed something, but is there a post or comment you are referring to? I know Pharyngula has more than a few non racist atheist feminists.
551

LykeX

29 March 2013 at 12:33 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

@rorschach
I’ve definitely seen LeftSidePositive around the FtBlogs and my impression is distinctly positive.
Why do you ask?
552

PatrickG

29 March 2013 at 12:36 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

OT (can you be OT in the Thunderdome?), but Pitchguest has appeared at Emily Finke’s site complaining that she’s overly focused on the loudest trolls, that he personally has never been sexist to a woman, and why oh why is she only blaming men. Anyway, he’s confused.

I kind of want to help him with his confusion, but I keep ending up on the floor paralyzed with laughter. Maybe someone with more buffers against absolute disingenuous idiocy would want to leave a comment. Or not. I’m sure Emily Finke is quite capable of dealing with the wordspew. But here’s a choice sample:

I don’t get it. I’ve never been sexist to a woman in my life. I’ve never treated a woman badly just because she’s a woman. I’ve never treated anyone of any race or gender differently because of their race or gender.

This is the part that just really renders my diaphragm nonfunctional, especially after the Michael Nugent threads.

http://www.thisview.org/?p=99#comment-51358

Original linked from the Pharyngula post http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/03/28/its-not-just-the-internet-it-never-has-been/

Anyhoo, thought someone might enjoy this, back to work for me.
553

evilisgood

29 March 2013 at 12:56 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

NateHevens,

But also… the membranes would likely be finite in size (they would be infinite in number and time, but not size), so they would only “hold” (as it were) a finite number of universes at a time. Plus, the energy dissipation would occur in a finite amount of time, as well, so many universes would eventually dissipate out of existence before another clash occurs.

This is very interesting! But I think I phrased my question poorly, or I’m misunderstanding something, so I’ll try a different way.

Let’s say you have two membranes, A and B. Let X stand for the number of universes on membrane A and Y stand for the number of universes on membrane B. Let C stand for the highest capacity of universes a given membrane can hold in one dimension. X< C and Y < C. Universe F is on membrane A, and universe G is on membrane B.

So, assuming all of the universes in play here are in the same dimension (and making it more specific, let's say it's the dimension our universe exists in), A and B slam into each other at a point where a universe exists. In one scenario, a bit of membrane A collides with universe G. What happens? In the second scenario, universe F collides with universe G. What happens?

I hope this makes some sense.

I'm very sick today, so this is about all I can do for right now. I'll address other stuff (like theophontes' one electron!) as soon as I'm feeling better. Thanks again, you all, for having this discussion.
554

NateHevens, resident SOOPER-GENIUS... apparently...

29 March 2013 at 12:56 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Wait.

Part of the problem is that time literally didn’t exist until after the Big Bang occurred. At least, any sort of time we could understand and quantify.

Is this a fact, then? Scientists know this?

I was always led to understand that this is just one idea, one candidate for the so-called “Theory of Everything”. If String Theory and M-Theory were true, wouldn’t that mean that there was time before the Big Bang? In fact, don’t those theories sort of rely on the idea that spacetime extends beyond our visible pocket of the universe and it’s “start”?
555

evilisgood

29 March 2013 at 1:00 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Oh, also, NateHevens, I wanted to tell you that diasty is a much less stupid term for the place where membranes live than membranetopia. So, well done! ;)
556

consciousness razor

29 March 2013 at 1:03 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

The logical conclusion to that, as far as I can see it, is that spacetime has to be eternal, because without it, I don’t see how it’s possible that there can be anything at all… even existence itself.

If this is just an argument from incredulity, then it’s not much of a “logical conclusion.”

Maybe you should clarify what you mean by “existence itself,” because it doesn’t make much sense to me to say existence is a thing which … uh, err … exists (in spacetime, much less out of it). It’s not a contradiction; but then again, it doesn’t seem to be saying anything useful. Anyway, if “existence itself” depends on spacetime, I’m awfully confused by what that means. And if that were your view, why wouldn’t you just say spacetime is the same exact thing as existence? If they’re different concepts, then what’s the difference?

I guess the real question to ask here is whether you think it makes sense to talk about the existence of things like abstractions (numbers, laws of logic, etc.), which are not physical and are not in spacetime. If any such thing exists but not in spacetime, then it’s a counterexample to your claim. But I really don’t see what the point would be, in claiming either that numbers (etc.) are physical objects in spacetime or else that they don’t exist.

I don’t have a view either way about whether spacetime has always existed (assuming that’s not a vacuous claim — that “spacetime” refers to something a bit more specific than existence). The science is far from settled, so I have no idea. (Even after it’s settled, if I live that long, I’ll probably still be lost.) Whatever the case may be, I don’t see what’s supposed to be impossible about spacetime coming from nothing. Suppose there’s nothing — if you’ve got nothing, then what is supposed to prevent that (or anything, really) from happening? Is there some rule, which isn’t physical and which is in place even without spacetime, that prevents it? If so, then see above, because it’s contradicting your claim that there is no such thing. Richard Carrier wrote a good article about this point last year.
557

consciousness razor

29 March 2013 at 1:04 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Part of the problem is that time literally didn’t exist until after the Big Bang occurred. At least, any sort of time we could understand and quantify.

Is this a fact, then? Scientists know this?

No, it’s not a known fact.
558

glodson

29 March 2013 at 1:06 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I was always led to understand that this is just one idea, one candidate for the so-called “Theory of Everything”. If String Theory and M-Theory were true, wouldn’t that mean that there was time before the Big Bang? In fact, don’t those theories sort of rely on the idea that spacetime extends beyond our visible pocket of the universe and it’s “start”?

No. Spacetime, in this universe, has a clear origin. The Big Bang isn’t energy expanding into spacetime. It is spacetime itself expanding. This is what the Big Bang states. It is the implication of the expanding universe.

If it isn’t the case, if time existed before the Big Bang, then the Big Bang Theory is wrong. In essence, t=0 is the start of this Universe.

If there was something before the Big Bang, the answer is the multiverse. Which doesn’t mean that our spacetime existed before.

String Theory doesn’t change this, as far as I know. I would need to a reference to see what is written that leads you to believe that. There might be other spacetimes out there, a multiverse. And the interactions of these other spacetimes, other universes, could give rise to this other universes. However, this isn’t one spacetime. What we call spacetime has an origin. It cannot said to be eternal.
559

consciousness razor

29 March 2013 at 1:16 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

String Theory doesn’t change this, as far as I know. I would need to a reference to see what is written that leads you to believe that. There might be other spacetimes out there, a multiverse. And the interactions of these other spacetimes, other universes, could give rise to this other universes. However, this isn’t one spacetime. What we call spacetime has an origin. It cannot said to be eternal.

Now you’re getting more specific — you mean our particular spacetime in this universe, not spatial or temporal dimensions in general. But that’s the beside the point.
560

glodson

29 March 2013 at 1:28 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Now you’re getting more specific — you mean our particular spacetime in this universe, not spatial or temporal dimensions in general. But that’s the beside the point.

Well, yea. That’s the only one that I know, for certain, that exists. Talking about the mere existence of spacetime in other universes, and that being eternal, seems kind of pointless to me. Talking about spacetime being eternal because it could exist in other universes in a hypothetical multiverse seems like a dodge of the issue. Which is why I am specific. I’m not even convinced there is a multiverse. There is a basis for it, it is interesting to talk about, it does stem form an understanding of physics, but it is entirely unfalsifiable at the moment.

It is fun to think about. It is fun to hope that other universes parallel to our own exist. It is fun to consider other universes with different formulations of the physical laws, and even different relations that form spacetime. But to make the claim that spacetime is eternal is a stretch.
561

Caine, Fleur du mal

29 March 2013 at 1:31 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Lofty, rats are very attracted to tinsel, but you can’t let them have it – they’ll eat it.
562

dontpanic

29 March 2013 at 2:00 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

One theory holds that these very concepts only became relevent at the instant of the Big Bang. That it actually created time. Without time, there was no “before”. (Of course, we could be alternating between Big Bang and Big Crunch indefinitely too.)

And I honestly don’t buy it.

It’s for the same reason that I laugh at theists who try to claim that God is “outside” spacetime. There’s no such thing as “outside spacetime” because you need spacetime in order to define outside in the first place.

As a working physicist, in an area closely related to cosmology (particle physics), let me just chime in that: I do “buy it” and I suspect so do most of my coworkers. At some level it’s no more difficult to think about than 11 dimensions. “Before” the big bang (and the existence of both space and time) is just an asymptotic limit back in time through the Plank era. Probably invalid to some degree, but not unthinkable. Yeah, argument from authority … Besides glodson beat me to the “north of the north pole” point. 20 years ago or more I’d be really into this discussion; nowadays, I’m more “I’ve got to get this simulation code working so we can compare to data and try to answer these questions” and much less concerned with the big picture.

Yeah, as I read on … what glodson@558 said, too.
563

glodson

29 March 2013 at 2:16 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Ah, I got some of this right.

Good. I’m still studying this material myself. But having read books on the subjects for years, it really hit me hard how little I actually knew and understood. And I’m still finding out how little I actually know. So it is gratifying to know when I get it right.
564

NateHevens, resident SOOPER-GENIUS... apparently...

29 March 2013 at 2:22 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Holy wow.

So, after reading some responses, I went back to check my understanding of spacetime and…

I’m still trying to uncross my eyes.

I’m bowing out of this conversation because it’s obvious I’m flailing a lot more than I thought I was…
565

glodson

29 March 2013 at 2:25 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I’m bowing out of this conversation because it’s obvious I’m flailing a lot more than I thought I was…

I cannot speak for the others, but I have struggled with this material for a long time. And I’m still struggling with it. It is not intuitive, at all. So I understand completely why people get the wrong impressions, form time to time.

Which is why I was trying to be very specific, and a bit nit-picky on the details. And why I hate my own replies because I’m still nit-picking that as I read my own replies.
566

Lofty

29 March 2013 at 10:26 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

@561 Caine,
Yes of course, ratties are omnivores, a bit like those avian fiends, the common seagull. The funniest thing is to eat your lunch at a park bench, throwing odd scraps at the seagulls. Then a magpie joins in and gets to sample the occasional organic treat. The little squawks as they puzzle out their edibility is fun to watch. Eventually they fly off to their family to present the morsel for discussion. Very discerning tastes there.
.
Out of boredom I googled biodegradeable tinsel, found this.
567

chigau (not my real name)

29 March 2013 at 10:26 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Ralph Klein died.
568

Caine, Fleur du mal

29 March 2013 at 10:34 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Lofty:

Very discerning tastes there.

Rats are no strangers to discerning tastes. Most of them are incredibly picky eaters. Right now, the favourite food is rice pilaf.

Oh, xmas trees. Our xmas tree gets decorated with cephalopods and lights. The Ratmas tree (yes, they get their very own fucking fake tree) gets decorated with strings of cheerios, crackers, nuts, dried fruits, calcium chews and other assorted goodies. Here’s Artemis doing some happy thievery in the Ratmas tree: http://ratifiedtwentyfive.wordpress.com/2012/12/21/artemis-wins-photo-of-the-day/
569

Lofty

29 March 2013 at 10:44 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

artemis wins photo of the day
Oh my paws and whiskers, how cute…;-)
570

Caine, Fleur du mal

29 March 2013 at 11:28 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Lofty:

Oh my paws and whiskers, how cute…;-)

She’s a tiny overload of Cute. A master thief, too. :D
571

Tony! The Lonely Queer Shoop

29 March 2013 at 11:47 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

PatrickG:

I commented twice there and initially thought about engaging Pitchguest, but seeing how Nugent’s thread was, and how that douchebag was there, engaging him seemed too much like smashing my head into a brick wall.
572

Caine, Fleur du mal

29 March 2013 at 11:58 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Aauuuuugh.

Carry on.
573

Hekuni Cat, MQG

30 March 2013 at 12:14 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

LykeX:

Sure, the first one’s always free, but then once you’re hooked…

Drat. Another evil plan foiled. I’d better get back to tweaking monsters to kill–I mean–challenge my players next weekend. A DM’s job is never done.

Caine:

No, other glittery paper. Vasco has a lock on all red things. He loves anything red.

I’ll have to see if I can find any more wrapping material in red for Vasco, and in some of the other colors for the other ratties. :)
574

Rutee Katreya

30 March 2013 at 12:44 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I am not certain if i missed something, but is there a post or comment you are referring to? I know Pharyngula has more than a few non racist atheist feminists.

Mm. Not here, that I know of, but it’s awkward just to mention it, and now I will just so I don’t feel too passive aggressive – it’s specifically Ophelia, which I know Josh fucking hates hearing and vehemently disagrees with. I dunno, maybe it is just me, as the common factor, but I would like tot hink it isn’t. Ophelia had no problem with me when I was pointing out her trolls were being racist or sexist or appropriating of racism or the like, so I feel more like it’s a Convenient Thing when it is her trolls, and I’m a ‘parody’ when it isn’t.

It’s kinda funny, in both cases it was almost more the ‘close-ranks and defend’ mentality than a particular asshole that made me go “christ”. Point out the catholic church is sort of insanely anti-gay and people supporting it are partaking in anti-gay bullshit (You know, like I do with pretty much anything sexist), and suddenly Not Cool, and I’m being one of Those Atheists and other bullshit there too. But it was totes fine when I said MRAs were being racist or heterosexist douchebags.
575

erikthebassist

30 March 2013 at 12:51 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

So has any one else seen Life of Pi? I just watched it and thought it was phenomenal. I’m surprised there wasn’t more chatter about it from atheists while it was in theaters as it had a strong pro reason / rationality message, kind of the anti Chronicals of Narnia.
576

a_ray_in_dilbert_space

30 March 2013 at 7:33 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Rant coming:

The Economist has succumbed to the prevalent stupidity that passes for science journalism. They are trumpeting the announcement by the Daily Fail that global temperatures have dipped below the 5% CL of the IPCC projections, ignoring that:

1) It would be more surprising if they had not done so, given that the time series encompasses more than 20 years.

2)That the deep oceans–where most of the heat goes anyway are still warming–and more rapidly than predicted.

3)That if you account for El Nino/La Nina, volcanic aersols and solar irradiance, the warming continues apace–as shown in Foster and Rahmstorf 2011.

And as disappointing as the article itself is:

http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21574461-climate-may-be-heating-up-less-response-greenhouse-gas-emissions

the metric shit-ton of weapons-grade stupid in the comments is enough to make me long for the extinction of our species on Earth.
577

Lofty

30 March 2013 at 7:41 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

the metric shit-ton of weapons-grade stupid in the comments is enough to make me long for the extinction of our species on Earth.

It’ll happen soon enough, I suspect. Most of humanity is asleep at the wheel.
578

a_ray_in_dilbert_space

30 March 2013 at 8:52 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Lofty, it isn’t even that the majority are asleep at the wheel, it’s that the majority of those who aren’t devote most of their cerebral activity to self-delusion.
579

rorschach

30 March 2013 at 9:59 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Why do you ask?

Because Xe sounds familiar. In a “a voice I have not heard for a long time” sense of familiar.
580

Delft

30 March 2013 at 12:44 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Has anyone read the “Sex for the Gods” post on A Million Gods?
I may be misreading it, but to me it sounds like: it’s OK for girl children to be sold into prostitution because of “culture” and “we’ve always done that”.
I found it shocking, because I’ve come to expect feminist positions on FTB.
581

Caine, Fleur du mal

30 March 2013 at 1:10 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Delft:

I may be misreading it, but to me it sounds like: it’s OK for girl children to be sold into prostitution because of “culture” and “we’ve always done that”.

No, that’s not the message. I think you’re misreading some of it. Western religious values aren’t helping this situation. The culture is changing, but that change, like most cultural change, is slow. Sex positive ideas and work is more likely to help make positive changes all the way around.

I sympathise with the frustration felt over things like “14! they’re a baby!” That sort of thing truly is cultural in nature. In the West, people keep their children intentionally young, resenting the notion that a young adult is emerging at that point. I was no child at 14, but hey, my experience was my own.
582

LykeX

30 March 2013 at 1:19 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

@Delft
I agree that at a first pass, it does smell a bit like the kind of cultural relativism that makes me want to go get a sharp knife, but on closer reading, I think it’s a much more pragmatic point (my emphasis):

India is trying to get people to “stop” doing this and considering the teenage years as part of childhood but you are changing culture and that takes time. Remember the land that is Mumbai was traded on a child marriage in Western Europe. Culture changes over time as seen by the cessation of Sati. However to make that change you need a concerted effort through all parts of society. Simple Bans didn’t make Sati go away. It was the accompanying Hindu reform movement and change of social attitude to such actions that made the change. Likewise, child prostitution in the form of the Devadasi will not go away UNLESS you create a societal change that gets people to stick to statutory ages. Which means “womanhood” needs to be decoupled from menses and the ability to bear child as we have done in the west.

I think his (right?) point is not that we shouldn’t push for change, but that we need to be realistic about the amount of work it’ll take.
583

NateHevens, resident SOOPER-GENIUS... apparently...

30 March 2013 at 1:23 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Er… um…

I… uh… kinda sorta need help affording a place to stay for WiS2…

Hope it’s okay that I post this here…
584

Gregory Greenwood

30 March 2013 at 1:50 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I don’t know if anyone else has spotted this, but perennial bigot and religious arsehat Lord Carey has declared that christians in the UK are being ‘persecuted’ by ‘aggressive secularism’ supposedly aided and abetted by the government (this is the same government that is headed by David Cameron – the Prime Minister who famously declared the UK a christian country).

I am sure that American Pharyngulites find this particular refrain very familar indeed – fanatics on both sides of the Atlantic feel that anything short of a theocracy based upon their own particular subcult of sky-fairy-ism amounts to persecution. It seems that there is nothing quite so oppressive for xians as being told that you aren’t allowed to force others to live according to your own ideology…

The National Secular Society accurately characterised Carey’s remarks as “theocratic and anti-democratic blustering”.
585

Delft

30 March 2013 at 1:51 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Caine@581 / LykeX@582
Thanks for your response.
I agree that sex-positive ideas is a good way to improve the sex-workers’ lot (and others’ besides), as we won’t see the end of prostitution anytime soon. Also that we need a cultural change, and this is slow.
The issue I have with the girls’ age isn’t so much maturity – which I agree varies, and is to some degree cultural – but because the girls at that age have no alternative but to obey their parents.
I also didn’t see any empathy for these girls in the post, or any admission that what is done to them is wrong. I mean (freely quoted) the landlord saw me working in the fields, went to my parents and asked them to dedicate me (end of free quote) … and they did. How much more objectifying can you get?
Cultural imperialism won’t help, I know. But I think treating human beings like that is wrong, regardless of culture.
586

Caine, Fleur du mal

30 March 2013 at 2:00 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Nate:

Hope it’s okay that I post this here…

It’s fine, but I think you’d have better luck in the lounge. I’d help, but I am past stone broke at the moment.
587

NateHevens, resident SOOPER-GENIUS... apparently...

30 March 2013 at 2:05 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I’ll post it in the Lounge, then. Thanks, Caine…

And I know what you mean about being past stone broke… :(

Delft, he really is talking about the challenges of changing the culture.

Legal prohibition does not work unless it’s something that’s already fringe in society. Murder, for example, is against the law because we as a culture decided a very long time ago that it was wrong.

It’s why Alcohol Prohibition failed, and why the War on Drugs is a failure. It’s yet anther argument those of us who are pro-Choice can use against the misogynistic anti-Choice crowd.

If you want something to end, you don’t do it by changing the laws… you do it by changing the culture. That, I think, was the point Avicenna was trying to make.
588

Caine, Fleur du mal

30 March 2013 at 2:09 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Delft:

But I think treating human beings like that is wrong, regardless of culture.

Absolutely. I don’t think there’s any argument there. What it comes down to is that in order to make sweeping cultural changes in thought, attitude and actions, you need options. You need privilege. You need alternatives. You need power. And so on. I think the larger point is that it’s stupid to try an outlaw prostitution (and it is), for now, let the women who do have power do what they’re doing, which is providing safety and education for the ability to work and make money later in life, while everyone else focuses on what really needs work: making widespread education available, opening up options, changing attitudes.
589

LykeX

30 March 2013 at 2:13 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I’d help, but I am past stone broke at the moment.

I know what you mean. Let me put it like this: Yay, I made rent this month.
I swear, if I didn’t have a great family, I’m not sure where I’d be.
590

Delft

30 March 2013 at 2:17 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Caine@588
My original beef is that Avicenna doesn’t say that.
May mean that, of course. Read as an isolated piece it didn’t leave that impression on me – and I may be entirely mistaken.
But the argument “this is because of *culture*, and well-meaning foreigners butt out” is usually used to support the status quo.
I completely agree that outlawing the women, or “saving” them is not the answer.
591

Caine, Fleur du mal

30 March 2013 at 2:17 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

LykeX:

I know what you mean. Let me put it like this: Yay, I made rent this month.

Yeah, it’s a damn good thing our house is paid for. However, Mister has to pay rent in the town where he works, so yes, Yay, made the rent this month. In the space of one week, we had to buy two vehicles and drop a thousand bucks into the propane tanks. I fucking hate winter.
592

chigau (not my real name)

30 March 2013 at 2:22 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Caine
re: winter
We heard geese flying overhead this morning.
593

Caine, Fleur du mal

30 March 2013 at 2:23 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Delft:

My original beef is that Avicenna doesn’t say that.

Hmmm. I disagree. Came through pretty clear to me. It might help to keep in mind that Avicenna is primarily directing this at other people in their culture.

But the argument “this is because of *culture*, and well-meaning foreigners butt out” is usually used to support the status quo.

Actually, when talking of problems in India, culture counts heavily and so does the foreigners butt out. India has been in the process of being stomped on by so-called superior cultures for a very long fucking time. I don’t have anywhere near a complete grasp on the complexity of cultural issues in India, so I don’t trust myself to leap to judgments. In this case, I’d rather listen. A lot.
594

Caine, Fleur du mal

30 March 2013 at 2:25 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Chigau:

We heard geese flying overhead this morning.

Yes, I’ve been hearing them too. It’s “everything is fricking dead and now mud season, where the bugs show up before the tiniest spear of green.” Puts me in a sour mood. Also, windy. No sun. Cold. Bleargh.
595

Dalillama, Schmott Guy

30 March 2013 at 2:28 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I know what you mean. Let me put it like this: Yay, I made rent this month.
I swear, if I didn’t have a great family, I’m not sure where I’d be.

Likewise, minus the certainty that I’m making rent this month.
596

Dalillama, Schmott Guy

30 March 2013 at 2:30 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

And, of course, L and D’s families refuse to help at all (back when L was still talking to them at all, anyway). D’s mother could help us, but instead won’t return her calls.
597

chigau (not my real name)

30 March 2013 at 2:42 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Caine
We’re luckier here.
Bright sun and over 10°C temperatures.
We shoveled the snow off the north side of the roof yesterday, now I can get the 6 inches of ice off the sidewalk.
[which I should go do]
598

LykeX

30 March 2013 at 2:44 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

@Dalillama, Schmott Guy
Well, shit. That sounds pretty sucky.

That’s one thing I can say for my family: they maybe incredibly screwed up (two alcoholics, two depressives, one case of Tourette’s and assorted neurotics, including my own anxiety disorders), but when push comes to shove, they stick together.

It’s funny, growing up I figured my family was totally insane, but the more I learn about other people’s families, the more I prefer my own.
599

Caine, Fleur du mal

30 March 2013 at 2:56 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Chigau:

now I can get the 6 inches of ice off the sidewalk.

Almont doesn’t have sidewalks, so there is that, I suppose.
600

carlie

30 March 2013 at 2:57 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

In the space of one week, we had to buy two vehicles and

Holy crap, that’s more than enough to lay anyone flat out even without the fuel. Sorry it all hit at once like that. :(
601

Caine, Fleur du mal

30 March 2013 at 3:09 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Sorry it all hit at once like that. :(

Thanks, Carlie. It’s been one of those years. Mister’s laptop dies, mine dies 5 days later. One space heater dies, 3 more follow suit inside a week. Two more wireless units die. And so on. The only conspiracy theory I’ve ever been tempted to buy into is that anything powered by electricity hates me.
602

Goodbye Enemy Janine

30 March 2013 at 3:24 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

It has been my pet theory for years that all inanimate objects are conspiring against me. Why else did the couch move so that I hit my toe on the corner? And that door frame!

*glares at the door frame*

I know it assumes that it is in a fixed placed. Yet I keep running into it. And it keeps catching the wire of my headphone.
603

LykeX

30 March 2013 at 3:26 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

The only conspiracy theory I’ve ever been tempted to buy into is that anything powered by electricity hates me.

You know, that’s one of the signs of psychic ability. Maybe you’re a genuine phenomenon.
604

Beatrice (looking for a happy thought)

30 March 2013 at 3:36 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Why else did the couch move so that I hit my toe on the corner? And that door frame!

But do the walls ever move? Because walls sometimes turn out to be much closer to my shoulder than it appeared.
And doorjambs are out to kill me.
605

JAL: Snark, Sarcasm & Bitterness

30 March 2013 at 3:36 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

601
Caine, Fleur du mal

Thanks, Carlie. It’s been one of those years. Mister’s laptop dies, mine dies 5 days later. One space heater dies, 3 more follow suit inside a week. Two more wireless units die. And so on. The only conspiracy theory I’ve ever been tempted to buy into is that anything powered by electricity hates me.

There’s a word for that! I just learned it today in fact.

Resistentialism: The seemingly spiteful behavior shown by inanimate objects —
606

Caine, Fleur du mal

30 March 2013 at 3:41 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Resistentialism! That’s it. Thank you, Janine. I might have to adopt wonder-wench, I love the sound of that, even though it doesn’t quite describe me. And with squirrel will get used at every opportunity.
607

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 3:45 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Aaargh, I meant JAL. Sorry!
608

JAL: Snark, Sarcasm & Bitterness

30 March 2013 at 3:46 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

No worries Caine! =)
609

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 3:47 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

LykeX:

You know, that’s one of the signs of psychic ability. Maybe you’re a genuine phenomenon.

Well, you have the ability to make tea be snorted up my nose. Perhaps I should run off to convince James Randi to hand me a million smackers.
610

LykeX

30 March 2013 at 3:59 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

@Caine

Well, you have the ability to make tea be snorted up my nose

Pour the cup with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
611

proudchristian

30 March 2013 at 4:07 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I’ve taken my questions to this thread (the Thunderdome), at the request of one of the posters at the Lounge.

I’m wondering if anyone has read the old justifications for God’s existence by eminent men like Augustine and Aquinas? Men who dedicated their lives to the study of philosophy? Do you really claim greater intellectual capacity than such geniuses? Richard Dawkins evidently does.
612

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 4:07 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

LykeX:

Pour the cup with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!

Oh thank goodness. The journey has been so very long.
613

nightshadequeen

30 March 2013 at 4:08 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

proudchristian

I claim that they are ignorant in comparison to most modern humans.

After all, garbage in, garbage out, and frankly, sir, your beliefs are garbage.
614

WMDKitty -- Survivor

30 March 2013 at 4:08 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Walls, door frames, furniture, trees, parking meters… they tend to jump out in front of me or sneak up behind me.

My usual reaction is something along the lines of, “Who put a(n) [obstacle] there?!”
615

Goodbye Enemy Janine

30 March 2013 at 4:09 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

As an outside spectator, I have to say, I find it completely unsurprising that the atheist community has been wracked with issues regarding misogyny, feminism, and the like. When you’ve got no moral code, it’s a chaotic free-for-all, everyone for himself. Members of my community simply follow the Golden Rule- handed down by Christ- and there’s no need for all this shouting. Everyone is treated with respect, men AND women.

Yes. Christianity is the fucking home of respect for women. The husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church.

Absolutely no misogyny there.

Thee big sky daddy condemns all women because of the action of Eve.

Absolutely no fucking misogyny there.

You have no fucking room to speak, proudassface.
616

Goodbye Enemy Janine

30 March 2013 at 4:12 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Also, proudassface, the idea of the golden rule (golden mean) goes back to Greek philosophers.

But you, being a proud and ignorant parasite, all willing to believe that your favorite mythical being taught it to you.
617

proudchristian

30 March 2013 at 4:13 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

This is a post addressed to me at the lounge, re. gender and my religion.

Yes. Christianity is the fucking home of respect for women. The husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church.

Absolutely no misogyny there.

Thee big sky daddy condemns all women because of the action of Eve.

Absolutely no fucking misogyny there.

You have no fucking room to speak, proudassface.

Yes, there exists anti-woman sentiment in the Bible, I don’t deny this. However, like THE MAJORITY OF CHRISTIANS, I am a liberal Christian. My community are not literalists. We adapt the Bible to a modern sensibility… it would be ridiculous to do otherwise.

In my mind, this is justified, because the Bible was dictated to men, by God. Naturally, the men were fallible, and products of their time. Thus, the anti-woman sentiment, among other anachronisms, which do not reflect God’s true will. God is an equalist, as far as I’m concerned, and that’s how we organize our community… again, like MOST CHRISTIANS.
618

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 4:14 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

proudchristian:

I’ve taken my questions to this thread (the Thunderdome), at the request of one of the posters at the Lounge.

Thank you very much for that, it’s appreciated. Just so you know ahead of time, this thread is unmoderated and rudeness is highly tolerated, if not actively encouraged. I advise you to ignore naughty words and the like and concentrate on the substance of what people are saying. This will make your time here well spent. I’ll also add that things tend to be very slow on the weekend, so you might want to check back periodically through the week for the wide variety of responses you’re likely to garner.

I’m wondering if anyone has read the old justifications for God’s existence by eminent men like Augustine and Aquinas? Men who dedicated their lives to the study of philosophy? Do you really claim greater intellectual capacity than such geniuses?

Well, simply because a person is intelligent is no guarantee against being wrong, and it certainly doesn’t guard against self-delusion, a desire to have power over others or corruption of any kind.

Yes, I’ve read Augustine and Aquinas. In depth. I grew up Catholic. Old school Catholic. After that, I was a different flavour of xian for a while. (Jesus Freak, SoCal, Calvary Chapel in the tent days.) Personally, I have little respect for Augustine, he was a rather terrible person who managed to do what he wished on a personal level, while making sure others lower down on the ladder were treated in abominable ways.
619

Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls

30 March 2013 at 4:14 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I’m wondering if anyone has read the old justifications for God’s existence

Three is no evidential justification for your imaginary deity’s existence, which was acknowledged by Augustine. At best, it couldn’t be disproved by logic and total mental wanking (which is irrelevant to science, skepticism, and reasoning). Solid and conclusive physical evidence is another story. Nothing shown there.
620

proudchristian

30 March 2013 at 4:16 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I’ve followed the blog before; I’m aware of how heated things can get, and I’ll accept that. Currently, I have obligations, but I will be back to address responses.
621

Beatrice (looking for a happy thought)

30 March 2013 at 4:16 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Thus, the anti-woman sentiment, among other anachronisms, which do not reflect God’s true will.

I love this kind of cherry picking.

All the half-acceptable bits are God’s word and meant to be obeyed, and all the murder, rape and other nastiness are just men getting distracted and not copying down God’s words properly.
How convenient.
622

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 4:17 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

proudchristian:

Everyone is treated with respect, men AND women.

No, that’s not true. If you’re interested in a very good take on this issue, give Misogyny: The World’s Oldest Prejudice by Jack Holland a read.

Also, the Golden Rule didn’t come from Jesus or the bible. You might want to be aware of the fact that most of the people here have in depth knowledge of the bible, because we’ve read it. Every single word. So, you might want to step a bit carefully there.
623

Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls

30 March 2013 at 4:18 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Absolutely no misogyny there.

Your unevidenced OPINION is *floosh* dismissed.

Yes, there exists anti-woman sentiment in the Bible, I don’t deny this.

Then you acknowledge you have no point, as your OPINION is *floosh* dismissed as fuckwittery and presupposition.

In my mind, this is justified,

Sorry, your OPINION is never justified until you can provide third party evidence to back it up. Your OPINION will always be dismissed for what it is. Self-serving delusions.
624

Goodbye Enemy Janine

30 March 2013 at 4:18 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Yes, there exists anti-woman sentiment in the Bible, I don’t deny this. However, like THE MAJORITY OF CHRISTIANS, I am a liberal Christian. My community are not literalists. We adapt the Bible to a modern sensibility… it would be ridiculous to do otherwise.

The eternal word of god is not so eternal.

Which leads to the obvious question. Which words are literal and which words are to be dismissed.

Sorry god, some of your laws do not fit into our modern sensibilities.
625

Goodbye Enemy Janine

30 March 2013 at 4:20 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Absolutely no misogyny there.

Nerd, I said that. Proud cherry picking assface does not know how to quote.
626

Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls

30 March 2013 at 4:21 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Currently, I have obligations, but I will be back to address responses.

Unless you bring citations from places like this, a library of science, you have nothing to say other than your mere OPINION, which will be *floosh* dismissed without evidence, as it should be. Show us you have the mental maturity, honesty, and integrity, to acknowledge you have nothing but unevidenced presuppositions. Which means your OPINION is worthless, and your words probably lies.
627

Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls

30 March 2013 at 4:23 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Forgot the link to the science library in #626. Evidence, after all…
628

LykeX

30 March 2013 at 4:24 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I’m wondering if anyone has read the old justifications for God’s existence by eminent men like Augustine and Aquinas?

Why, yes and I expect that the average ten year old should be able to refute them, given a proper education.

Take the Five Ways of Aquinas.
The first cause and prime mover arguments both boil down to: Something must exist that doesn’t follow the normal, everyday, macroscopic rules that we observe and that must be god. Obviously, that’s complete bullshit.
The contingent existence argument fails monumentally not only on the same point as the previous two (assume that the unknown must be god), but also because it never rules out the possibility of a chain of contingent beings.
The fourth way is basically an ontological argument; i.e. if I can imagine it, it must exist. Obviously, that’s not true. The teleological argument is fundamentally flawed, e.g. because the appearance of purpose is not he same as actual purpose. And, of course, Aquinas didn’t understand anything about emergent properties and complex systems.

If you have something relevant to say, feel free to spell it out, but if you’re only going to spout arguments that were refuted several centuries ago and that I can refute in less than ten minutes, you shouldn’t waste your time,
629

Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls

30 March 2013 at 4:25 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Nerd, I said that. Proud cherry picking assface does not know how to quote.

Sorry Janine, mea culpa. Have some swill and a bacon sammich on me.
630

proudchristian

30 March 2013 at 4:27 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Well, no, the Golden Rule isn’t explicitly laid out in the Bible. However, it can be very obviously inferred from Jesus’ teachings.
631

Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls

30 March 2013 at 4:28 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

However, it can be very obviously inferred from Jesus’ teachings.

Then why don’t Xians use it in real life? They don’t. Your lies continue…
632

Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls

30 March 2013 at 4:30 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Oh, and your flounce/quick reappearance, prima facie evidence you aren’t a person of honesty and integrity. Typical of godbots. Can’t put up, can’t shut up. Nothing but lies, lies lies….
633

proudchristian

30 March 2013 at 4:32 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Apparently, Douchebag of Redhead thinks he is above providing citations for his or her assertions while requiring them of others.
634

Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls

30 March 2013 at 4:35 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

thinks he is above providing citations for his or her assertions while requiring them of others.

Apparently you failed to notice I supplied citations to the library where your alleged evidence should reside if it means anything. But then, why should you not keep showing your inability to evidence every claim you make? You are witnessing for your imaginary deity. If it isn’t imaginary, the evidence should be there for all to see. Not just you with your delusions…
635

Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls

30 March 2013 at 4:37 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Who the fuck is proud xian? Pilty the fuckwit?
636

nightshadequeen

30 March 2013 at 4:43 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Hey proudchristian:

Please use blockquotes: <blockquote> YOUR TEXT HERE </blockquote>
637

broboxley OT

30 March 2013 at 4:47 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

here proudchristian, have a vid that will make you feel better
638

Ze Madmax

30 March 2013 at 4:48 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

proudchristian @ # 630

Well, no, the Golden Rule isn’t explicitly laid out in the Bible. However, it can be very obviously inferred from Jesus’ teachings.

The issue isn’t whether or not it was explicitly stated in the Bible, but rather that it is not unique to it (indeed, there are several examples of reciprocity in morality from before the Gospels)
639

carlie

30 March 2013 at 4:49 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

In my mind, this is justified, because the Bible was dictated to men, by God. Naturally, the men were fallible, and products of their time.

So how do you know which parts were true, and which parts were mistakes made by fallible men? See, I was raised fundamentalist, and we had no truck with liberal Christians for that exact reason. Once you allow that there can be some mistakes, there’s no way of knowing which parts are mistakes and which parts aren’t. And then pretty soon you’re at the whole thing being a wash.
640

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 4:50 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

proudchristian:

Well, no, the Golden Rule isn’t explicitly laid out in the Bible. However, it can be very obviously inferred from Jesus’ teachings.

That’s evading the point. You’ve adopted the golden rule for pretty much the same reason others have, and do. Because it makes a brief point of being ethical via compassion and empathy. That really wasn’t what Jesus was up to in the bible. Jesus held up the laws of the Old Testament and oft cited that yes, you should well be not only prepared, but enthusiastic at the idea of killing your brother, parent, child, whoever else at the parting of belief. Jesus preached hell and punishment.

It’s not as though a person can’t find nice, gentle, hippie Jesus if they go looking. It’s there, albeit not much of it. That’s why actually reading the bible, and taking your time and comprehending it is important. It really doesn’t say the stuff a lot of people think it does.

Most people tailor their god to fit themselves and their outlook on life. Ever notice just how much a person’s god loves the things they love and hates the things they hate? Even within the parameters of a holy book, there’s lots and lots of room for shifting things about. That’s why there are over 38,000 different flavours of xianity alone, which really says something, if you’re listening.
641

Jadehawk

30 March 2013 at 4:54 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I’m wondering if anyone has read the old justifications for God’s existence by eminent men like Augustine and Aquinas

1)yes; it’s mental masturbation in defense of what they already believed
2)argument from authority. who cares whether they were “eminent men”? either they have good arguments, or they do not. in this case, they do not.

God is an equalist, as far as I’m concerned, and that’s how we organize our community… again, like MOST CHRISTIANS.

what sort of definition of “most Christians” are you using? Because given global data about Christians, this is absurdly false. “most Christians” are neither “liberal” nor egalitarian in any sense. And even many of those Christians who are liberal and egalitarian still give money to some of the most oppressive, criminal organizations in the world today as a result of their membership/allegiance to these organizations.

as for the turd you left in the lounge:

Why do you all feel the need to build an entire community based around hating another community?

lol. pointing out the harm that comes from religion and the acceptance of evidnce-free fancies as valid bases for ethics systems is not “community based on hating”; this is the equivalent to responding to criticisms with “you’re just jealous”.

he much larger, much more respectable community of Christ

and here’s the problem: why should a community that claims to base its ethics on untrue, imaginary things be considered very respectable?
Besides, here in the thunderdome, you already admitted to cribbing from secular ethics to change the ethics of your religion; so again, why should that be more respectable?

But there is ample evidence that evolution doesn’t give us an entirely plausible timeline.

no, there really isn’t.

Also, I maintain that there appear to be a few “jumps” that simply cannot be explained by evolution. For example, consciousness.

lol. the “jump” between non-human primates and humans is very very tiny. we have plenty of evidence for self-aware-ish animals (ones that pas the mirror test, for example)

That can’t be just a “chemical reaction”; it’s far too mysterious and complex.

argument from incredulity. “mysterious” is a human construct, a combination of “i don’t get it” and “i’m awed by it”; “complex” evolves all the fucking time, no problem.

There’s also no real justification for it, under survival theory.

lolwut? “justification”? “survival theory”? you’re confused.

humans, at least, have divine attention, because we have this precious gift of self-awareness.

“precious gift” my ass. it’s natural and not unique to humans: http://www.lavoisier.fr/livre/notice.asp?ouvrage=1396732

The entire atheist community has made a name out of being “rude” to me. PZ Myers made his bones defacing a Christian artifact.

to you? personally?
huh. guess you must have been one of those Christians who threatened Cook, then.

When you’ve got no moral code, it’s a chaotic free-for-all, everyone for himself.

you’ve already admitted that you steal from secular ethics to modify the bible, so no one is going to buy this bullshit. Christians, just like every other group of people ever, create their moral codes the same way secular people do: by social compromise and cultural acceptance/rejection of ideas. The main difference is that the secular community at least tries to use actual evidence in the construction of its ethics, while religious groups use authoritarian proclamations and wishful thinking.

the Golden Rule- handed down by Christ-

lol. the golden rule is not a christian thing; it’s existed before that and in regions that were never christian, as well.

there’s no need for all this shouting. Everyone is treated with respect, men AND women.

your denialism is precious but not convincing; sweeping problems under the carpet is not the same as there not being problems. Christian communities are no more, and the large ones tend to be less, egalitarian than secular ones. And the idea that the supreme being is a “he” is in itself already non-egalitarian.
642

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 4:56 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Helpful html, to aid clarity and conciseness:

To quote someone, use: <blockquote>Place Text Here</blockquote>

For italics, use: <i>Text Here</i>

For bold, use: <b>Text Here</b>

If you use Firefox, there’s a nifty add-on, called the Text Formatting Toolbar. http://codefisher.org/format_toolbar/
643

Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls

30 March 2013 at 4:56 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

(inanely)ProudXian,
These are the null hypotheses you must overcome with solid and conclusive scientific evidence:
1) Your deity doesn’t exist
2) Evolution is a fact
3) Your babble is work of mythology fiction
4) You are nothing but a liar and bullshitter
Refute each with some real evidence (third party, preferably scientific literature) other than your OPINION , which *floosh* is dismissed when it is posted. You know, expect we see you as a liar and bullshitter until you show otherwise….
644

Rutee Katreya

30 March 2013 at 5:01 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

However, like THE MAJORITY OF CHRISTIANS, I am a liberal Christian.

Oh if only.

God is an equalist, as far as I’m concerned, and that’s how we organize our community… again, like MOST CHRISTIANS.

MOST CHRISTIANS are ‘equalist’ (a red flag for an asshole if ever there was one)? Then how is anti-woman bias so damn common in the USA?

I’m wondering if anyone has read the old justifications for God’s existence by eminent men like Augustine and Aquinas? Men who dedicated their lives to the study of philosophy? Do you really claim greater intellectual capacity than such geniuses?

A: Yes. They were hardly untouchable thinkers whom only ever said intelligent things, also.
B: Don’t need to, because they present no evidence for God’s existence, only ever logical proofs that require equally supernatural premises.

Once you allow that there can be some mistakes, there’s no way of knowing which parts are mistakes and which parts aren’t. And then pretty soon you’re at the whole thing being a wash.

To hear wozzername, the guy who disassembles Left Behind in detail, tell it, you basically guess based on what’s ethical anyway. Not a great argument for the bible having value, but better than just going fire and brimstone based on the OT and the more jackass moments of YHWH’s son..
645

Jadehawk

30 March 2013 at 5:01 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Most people tailor their god to fit themselves and their outlook on life.

almost literally so. When people try to figure out what their gods might find ethical, they use the part of the brain that tells them what they themselves find ethical, not the part that tells them what others might (simplified, but that’s approximately how it works). In other words: gods are sockpuppets.
646

LykeX

30 March 2013 at 5:03 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Proudchristian, I don’t know if you subscribe to the idea that morality comes from god/the bible, but it’s common enough that it’s worth addressing. If you accept that morality comes from the bible, then you run into the problem that you have no guideline for how to interpret the bible. You don’t know which parts are relevant and which can be ignored. You have no way of saying that one thing should be take literally and another should be interpreted.

See, if you’re interpreting the bible, then you’re interpreting it according to a standard outside the bible. Once you do that, you’ve essentially accepted that morality is whatever we say it is, since you have to choose the standard by which you interpret.
If your opinion is not reliable, you can’t choice a standard of reference. If your opinion is reliable, you don’t nee the bible. That’s the problem with basing anything on the bible: You either have to go srict literalism (which inevitably leads to absurdities) or you have to open the door to interpretation, which will necessarily wither away the bible until nothing’s left.

That is the inherent problem of authoritarian/non-realist dogma. Eventually you’ve got to either toos the dogma aside, or go off the cliff of complete insanity.
647

chigau (not my real name)

30 March 2013 at 5:03 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

proudchristian
Do you have any eminents more recent than Aquinas?
Say within the most recent century or so?
648

Dalillama, Schmott Guy

30 March 2013 at 5:03 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Goodbye Enemy Janine

Also, proudassface, the idea of the golden rule (golden mean) goes back to Greek philosophers.

In fact, it occurs in basically every formal system of ethics or morality in history, including pretty much all religious traditions. The Golden Mean isn’t the same thing, though; that’s the one that says you should steer a middle course between extremes, and its usefulness is very limited.

Arrogantjackass
Blockquoting goes like this:
>blockquote< stuff someone else said > /blockquote < It will make your driveling much easier to read.
Like so:

I’m wondering if anyone has read the old justifications for God’s existence by eminent men like Augustine and Aquinas? Men who dedicated their lives to the study of philosophy? Do you really claim greater intellectual capacity than such geniuses?

Possibly so, but it’s really more that they were making shit up without referent to empirical evidence, so none of their arguments have the faintest validity in discussions of reality.

We adapt the Bible to a modern sensibility… it would be ridiculous to do otherwise.

Then what’s the point of the bible at all? If you admit that it’s mutable according to the dictates of a changing society, why not just accept that all it ever was was a record of the mores of the societies that created it (yes, societies, because the different bits were written up over the course of many centuries, in multiple wildly different societies).
649

Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls

30 March 2013 at 5:03 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

*start setting up grog, swill, popcornz, and bacon sammiches for all those responding to ProudXian.
Others, deflect the Pullet Patrol™ with some grog soaked corn (sets out bowl)*.
650

John Morales

30 March 2013 at 5:04 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Golden rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

Silver rule: “Do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you.”

Bronze rule: “Be as nice to people as they are to you.”

Iron Rule: “Do unto others before they do unto you.”

Tin Rule: “Tin Rule: “Cozy up to those above you, and intimidate those below you.””

(Cribbed from here: The Golden Rule (and some Silver, Copper, and Tin Rules, too)
651

Jadehawk

30 March 2013 at 5:09 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

just can’t get over the deep silliness of calling secular folks morality free, and then admitting to changing the supposed base of christian morality to fit the zeitgeist. it’s hilarious when religious people basically admit that their ethics are made the same as everyone elses, but with the added step of trying to make their holy text fit and justify it somehow
652

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 5:12 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Jadehawk:

In other words: gods are sockpuppets.

Yes, they are. They are specifically sockpuppets for those who have placed themselves in a position of privilege and power, with their sockpuppet imbued with boundless power and the terrifying ability to punish in the most horrible ways. Oh, there’s a little parental type love tossed in here and there, but not much. Fear is a much better way to oppress people and keep them ignorant and obedient.
653

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 5:15 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

John:

Tin Rule: “Tin Rule: “Cozy up to those above you, and intimidate those below you.””

:Snort: That’s a fine descriptor of much religious strategy, no matter which god you happen to be discussing. It’s also a way of life for assholes in general.
654

chigau (not my real name)

30 March 2013 at 5:15 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I think proudchristian’s participation may be sporadic (tomorrow being zombie day).
Shall we argue amongst ourselves?
where to start … where to start…
655

Rey Fox

30 March 2013 at 5:18 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Do you really claim greater intellectual capacity than such geniuses? Richard Dawkins evidently does.

Dawkins and other thinkers from this era have the advantage of being able to draw on vast bodies of scientific and philosophical knowledge that were unavailable in the time of Aquinas. So it’s not that big a stretch.

Yes, there exists anti-woman sentiment in the Bible, I don’t deny this. However, like THE MAJORITY OF CHRISTIANS, I am a liberal Christian.

I’d love to see the survey data on this. So many assumptions.

My community are not literalists. We adapt the Bible to a modern sensibility… it would be ridiculous to do otherwise.

I’d rather just keep the modern sensibility and toss out the old book.

Ah, it’s been said better already by the other folks in this thread. Carry on.
656

Jadehawk

30 March 2013 at 5:20 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

where to start … where to start…

hello. thank you for calling the argument clinic. please select your preferred argument topic now:
for veganism, press 1.
for free will, press 2.
for anti-depressants, press 3.
for pointless misunderstandings, press 4.
657

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 5:22 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Jadehawk:

for pointless misunderstandings, press 4.

This one, please!
658

Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls

30 March 2013 at 5:22 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Shall we argue amongst ourselves?
where to start … where to start…

*sets up more drinks and food*
don’t look at me, I’m waiting for evidence, not mental wanking…
*the special for atheists is egg salad sammiches,
for godbots, bunny berry salads*
659

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 5:24 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

So, what are people’s plans for Zombie Day? Just going to be the same old here, work and more work. If the sun (the big ball o’ gas one) is out tomorrow, perhaps I’ll take the monster dogs and myself on a photo walk. It’s been a while. Of course, the only thing to photograph is mud, but…
660

Jadehawk

30 March 2013 at 5:26 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

most likely I’ll be working; might meet with some local A+/FTB folks in the evening, depending on whether they’re up for it
661

Rey Fox

30 March 2013 at 5:26 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Bike ride to the grocery store, and possibly GIS work.
662

Brother Ogvorbis, Fully Defenestrated Emperor of Steam, Fire and Absurdity

30 March 2013 at 5:27 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

One of the major difficulties I have with the ‘golden rule’ is epitomized by a comment I had dropped on my old and totally defunct blog. One of the commenters wrote (not verbatim) that the golden rule meant that he should treat others as he wanted to be treated and that if he were an atheist (he claimed to be an ex-atheist), he would want as many Christians as possible to witness him to the love of Jesus so when he came to my blog and proselytized, he was following the golden rule and given atheists what they wanted but would not admit they wanted.

Is that proudchristian’s goal here?
663

LykeX

30 March 2013 at 5:28 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

You know, I’ve never encountered atheist who was willing to stand up to their god. To me, the epitome of integrity means the willingness to stand up to a power that you can’t possibly hope to defeat, knowing you’ll fail, but doing it anyway because you’d be betraying your own ideals if you didn’t. Doing something because the authority will reward you; that’s not admirable. It’s just ass-kissing.

In fact, it parallels the idea of Judas being the true Christ. Jesus ascended into heaven, so he never really sacrificed much. Judas was despised by everyone, remembered as a traitor and went to hell for eternity: He was the lamb. If you’re not willing to suffer in obscurity forever, for people who don’t give a shit, you can’t be the true savior. Sacrifice means giving without reward. Jesus got his reward.

Not that I believe any of that hogwash. I point it out in order to emphasize the bullshit that is Christian doctrine. Jesus didn’t sacrifice jack shit. Suffering for a day and a half and then going to heaven is a cushy deal. If I believed it was real, I’d take that job in a second.

It’s just one of many points where Christian theology doesn’t really make any sense and has to invent special exceptions and get-out-clauses to patch up the ratty sackcloth that is its doctrine.
664

David Marjanović

30 March 2013 at 5:29 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Inflation event? I like the theory of eternal inflation.

Kunming [...] dinosaurs (don’t tell David M)

As if I didn’t already know, LOL! Kunming is famous for its great heaps of dinosaurs! :-)

Here’s Artemis doing some happy thievery in the Ratmas tree: http://ratifiedtwentyfive.wordpress.com/2012/12/21/artemis-wins-photo-of-the-day/

I’m out of words. ♥

They are trumpeting the announcement by the Daily Fail that global temperatures have dipped below the 5% CL of the IPCC projections, ignoring that:

4) Don’t aerosols from coal burnt in China play a role, too?

I was no child at 14

I was – by most criteria I can come up with.

Just saying that, in addition to variation between cultures, there’s individual variation to deal with here.

The fourth way is basically an ontological argument; i.e. if I can imagine it, it must exist. Obviously, that’s not true.

More specifically, it’s a silly word game, and that’s been obvious for 1000 years.
665

chigau (not my real name)

30 March 2013 at 5:30 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Jadehawk
pressing 4
666

John Morales

30 March 2013 at 5:31 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Well, broboxley*, you endorse this: “I want to keep believing but it’s a struggle”?

(Why anyone struggles to deny reality is beyond me)

–

* Obviously I don’t watch crap music such as the video you embedded, but the lyrics are freely available.

(Semi-literate mange, they are)
667

proudchristian

30 March 2013 at 5:32 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

If you accept that morality comes from the bible, then you run into the problem that you have no guideline for how to interpret the bible. You don’t know which parts are relevant and which can be ignored. You have no way of saying that one thing should be take literally and another should be interpreted.

Well, yes of course, but we do our best. Our culture is, I think, slowly progressing toward a general sentiment that more and more closely reflects God’s will (that is, equality for all, provision for all, empathy for all). So I think we can assume that, even if we make mistakes, on the whole, us liberal Christians are interpreting the will of God more accurately than previous generations. So yes, we (that is, my community) discard sentiments that are indicative of what we see as mortal corruption of His word.
668

Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls

30 March 2013 at 5:32 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

So, what are people’s plans for Zombie Day?

Taxes, mostly deductions related to the Redhead’s stroke.
669

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 5:34 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

David:

I’m out of words. ♥

She’s a cutie pie. Spoiled beyond belief, too.
670

Brother Ogvorbis, Fully Defenestrated Emperor of Steam, Fire and Absurdity

30 March 2013 at 5:36 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Well, yes of course, but we do our best. Our culture is, I think, slowly progressing toward a general sentiment that more and more closely reflects God’s will (that is, equality for all, provision for all, empathy for all).

If this is what gods wanted, then why did your omnipotent, omnipresent, eternal, omnigood include that in what you and your fellow travelers claim to be the eternal word of gods? Is your version of gods really that incompetent?

========

So, what are people’s plans for Zombie Day?

Work.
671

Jadehawk

30 March 2013 at 5:38 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Our culture is, I think, slowly progressing toward a general sentiment that more and more closely reflects God’s will (that is, equality for all, provision for all, empathy for all).

So yes, we (that is, my community) discard sentiments that are indicative of what we see as mortal corruption of His word.

LOL

like I said: gods are sockpuppets.

and somehow it’s the folks who are honest about the source of their ethics who are moral-less. LOLOLOL
672

John Morales

30 March 2013 at 5:40 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

proudchristian:

Well, yes of course, but we do our best. Our culture is, I think, slowly progressing toward a general sentiment that more and more closely reflects God’s will (that is, equality for all, provision for all, empathy for all). So I think we can assume that, even if we make mistakes, on the whole, us liberal Christians are interpreting the will of God more accurately than previous generations. So yes, we (that is, my community) discard sentiments that are indicative of what we see as mortal corruption of His word.

So what? Your best is no better than anyone else’s.

Bah.

What decency you have and what good you do, you do despite your Christianity, not because of it.

–

PS I see humility is not one of those purported Christian virtues to which you subscribe.
673

myeck waters

30 March 2013 at 5:40 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I suspect that every Christian group ever, if they happened to notice the discrepancies between their own practices/teachings and those depicted in the bible, patted itself on the back and concluded that they were acting closer to God’s will than those earlier people.
674

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 5:40 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

LykeX, I often bring up this quotation attributed* to Marcus Aurelius:

Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout
you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are
gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you
will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your
loved ones. I am not afraid.

Even if El Shaddai were a reality, and I ended up standing before this god the monster after death, I’d just have one hell of a lot of questions, and I’d want answers. Who in their right mind would want to worship, let alone spend eternity knob polishing the ego of such a petulant, sociopathic child? Sorry, not me.

*No, I can’t cite. That’s why I said attributed.
675

Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls

30 March 2013 at 5:41 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Our culture is, I think, slowly progressing toward a general sentiment that more and more closely reflects God’s will

Since your imaginary deity doesn’t exist, and you are a liar and bullshitter to pretend it doesn, all you shown it that HUMANITY, without your imaginary deity, is going toward the goals your fuckwittedely presuppose your imaginary deity wants. Which means what you want. You don’t need your delusions to join those trying to better society.
676

Chris Clarke

30 March 2013 at 5:41 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

We adapt the Bible to a modern sensibility

Ah, right. Kind of like those ‘Shakespeare in The Park” things where they, say, reboot The Tempest as an episode of Gilligan’s Island.
677

shouldbeworking

30 March 2013 at 5:41 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

So, what are people’s plans for Zombie Day?

Since Spring Break ends on Tuesday, it might be a good idea to get some marking and lesson planning done.
678

LykeX

30 March 2013 at 5:42 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

…God’s will (that is, equality for all, provision for all, empathy for all)

How do you know that’s god’s will?
679

Jadehawk

30 March 2013 at 5:42 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

how do you not notice that, if you claim to know gods will but what you claim is gods will isn’t even described in the only source-material you have, that you’re quite obviously just making it up as you go?
680

Jadehawk

30 March 2013 at 5:43 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Ah, right. Kind of like those ‘Shakespeare in The Park” things where they, say, reboot The Tempest as an episode of Gilligan’s Island.

or how “Taming of the Shrew” became “10 Things I Hate About You”
681

proudchristian

30 March 2013 at 5:44 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

If this is what gods wanted, then why did your omnipotent, omnipresent, eternal, omnigood include that in what you and your fellow travelers claim to be the eternal word of gods? Is your version of gods really that incompetent?

I don’t claim to know His mind. All I know is, the men whom He dictated His will to were logically fallible, just men. So OF COURSE things are a little screwy.

Since your imaginary deity doesn’t exist, and you are a liar and bullshitter to pretend it doesn, all you shown it that HUMANITY, without your imaginary deity, is going toward the goals your fuckwittedely presuppose your imaginary deity wants. Which means what you want. You don’t need your delusions to join those trying to better society.

Yes, because He doesn’t interfere will free will; we succeed and fail on our merit. This is why Hell exists, you idiot.
682

chigau (not my real name)

30 March 2013 at 5:45 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I’ll start with myself (without refreshing).
Why am I so unobservant?
Caine is now Wonder-wench (which when I finally noticed, I read as Wonder-wrench).
When did that happen?
683

Jadehawk

30 March 2013 at 5:46 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I don’t claim to know His mind.

God’s will (that is, equality for all, provision for all, empathy for all).

we (that is, my community) discard sentiments that are indicative of what we see as mortal corruption of His word.

fish. barrel.
684

LykeX

30 March 2013 at 5:46 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

@ Caine
That sounds eminently sensible. Maybe it’s time I got my act together and actually read the meditations. I’ve had them lying around for years.
685

Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls

30 March 2013 at 5:46 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

discard sentiments that are indicative of what we see as mortal corruption of His word.

Since you can’/won’t provide that conclusive physical evidence for your imaginary deity, why should we take your word for anything other than self-appointed and presuppositional bullshit. Get real. Either evidence your imaginary deity, or shut the fuck up. Either is what a person of honesty and integrity would do. You, on the otherhand, without honest integrity, will keep pretending you have an imaginary deity, showing us prima facie evidence you are nothing but a liar and bullshitter…..
686

Brother Ogvorbis, Fully Defenestrated Emperor of Steam, Fire and Absurdity

30 March 2013 at 5:48 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I don’t claim to know His mind. All I know is, the men whom He dictated His will to were logically fallible, just men. So OF COURSE things are a little screwy.

You do know that we can scroll up and read previous responses, right? You claim you know the will of your gods. You wrote:

Our culture is, I think, slowly progressing toward a general sentiment that more and more closely reflects God’s will

You claim, right there, that you know the will of gods.
687

LykeX

30 March 2013 at 5:48 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I don’t claim to know His mind

Then what the hell did you mean by the thing I quoted earlier?
688

Jadehawk

30 March 2013 at 5:48 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Yes, because He doesn’t interfere will free will

you have pressed 2 – free will. is this the argument topic you meant to chose? if yes, press 1. if no, press 0.
689

proudchristian

30 March 2013 at 5:49 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

How do you know that’s god’s will?

Again- it’s inferred in Jesus’ teachings, which I would say are the essence of God’s will. All the rest is, ultimately, secondary. We make reasonable assumptions.

Jesus is and remains of a piece with Gandhi- and this was 2000 years (!!!) before Gandhi, in a much less “modern” society. How is this possible? He was divinely prescient.
690

Jadehawk

30 March 2013 at 5:49 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

This is why Hell exists, you idiot.

it doesn’t. Even the bible is a wee bit vague on that topic actually.
691

Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls

30 March 2013 at 5:49 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I don’t claim to know His mind. All I know is, the men whom He dictated His will to were logically fallible, just men. So OF COURSE things are a little screwy.

Admission you lie and bullshit. Thank you.

because He doesn’t interfere will free will; we succeed and fail on our merit. This is why Hell exists, y

Evidenceless assertion *floosh* dismissed and incoherent fuckwittery. Try real evidence. YOU OPINION WILL BE DISMISSED EACH AND EVERY POST.
692

LykeX

30 March 2013 at 5:50 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

@Jadehawk
I do hope he presses 1. I’ve got some great lines I’m dying to use.
693

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 5:50 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

…God’s will (that is, equality for all, provision for all, empathy for all)

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha. *gasp* Okay, now I know you have not only not read the bible, you ignore it entirely. High up on your god’s list of things to do: murder, murder, make his chosen people suffer endlessly again, murder, murder, murder, mass slaughter, make his chosen people suffer endlessly again, magic people into suffering hemorrhoids, rape, rape, more rape, mass rape, kidnapping, child killing, mass infanticide, murder, murder, murder, mega-wars (about every other fucking page), stoning, gang rapes, murder, murder, murder, oh hey, that concubine you tossed to the rapists? cut her body up in twelve pieces and send a piece to each leader of the twelve tribes, time to punish people unconnected to raping her to death, murder, murder, more war, genocide, genocide, genocide, genocide (really, it was fucking miracle there was anyone left), magically resurrect all the people wiped out in their entirety so they could be wiped out again, destroying whole families on a whim, rape, stoning, murder, murder, murder.

Empathy: not El Shaddai’s strong suit.
694

David Marjanović

30 March 2013 at 5:51 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

That’s why there are over 38,000 different flavours of xianity alone, which really says something, if you’re listening.

“There are no sects in geometry.”
– Voltaire

almost literally so. When people try to figure out what their gods might find ethical, they use the part of the brain that tells them what they themselves find ethical, not the part that tells them what others might (simplified, but that’s approximately how it works). In other words: gods are sockpuppets.

Just to be clear: I’m too lazy to look for the paper right now, but scholar.google.com should find it; which parts of the brain are used is an observation by positron emission tomography or some other such method.

Dawkins and other thinkers from this era have the advantage of being able to draw on vast bodies of scientific and philosophical knowledge that were unavailable in the time of Aquinas. So it’s not that big a stretch.

Standing on the shoulders of giants and all.

In fact, it parallels the idea of Judas being the true Christ. Jesus ascended into heaven, so he never really sacrificed much. Judas was despised by everyone, remembered as a traitor and went to hell for eternity: He was the lamb.

A bit like a bodhisattva.
695

throwaway, extra beefy super queasy

30 March 2013 at 5:51 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

This is why Hell exists, you idiot.

BAHAHAHHAH! Man, what a joker you are.
696

Chris Clarke

30 March 2013 at 5:52 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha. *gasp* Okay, now I know you have not only not read the bible, you ignore it entirely. High up on your god’s list of things to do: murder, murder, make his chosen people suffer endlessly again, murder, murder, murder, mass slaughter, make his chosen people suffer endlessly again, magic people into suffering hemorrhoids, rape, rape, more rape, mass rape, kidnapping, child killing, mass infanticide, murder, murder, murder, mega-wars (about every other fucking page), stoning, gang rapes, murder, murder, murder, oh hey, that concubine you tossed to the rapists? cut her body up in twelve pieces and send a piece to each leader of the twelve tribes, time to punish people unconnected to raping her to death, murder, murder, more war, genocide, genocide, genocide, genocide (really, it was fucking miracle there was anyone left), magically resurrect all the people wiped out in their entirety so they could be wiped out again, destroying whole families on a whim, rape, stoning, murder, murder, murder.

Why do people always leave out the part about children eaten by bears?
697

Brother Ogvorbis, Fully Defenestrated Emperor of Steam, Fire and Absurdity

30 March 2013 at 5:52 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Jesus is and remains of a piece with Gandhi-

Except that we have actual historic evidence that Gandhi existed. Contemporary, legal, press, popular writings in extraordinary numbers. Something we do not have for Jesus. And remember, according to Jesus’ followers, Gandhi is burning forever in a lake of your gods’ love.
698

Jadehawk

30 March 2013 at 5:53 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Jesus is and remains of a piece with Gandhi- and this was 2000 years (!!!) before Gandhi, in a much less “modern” society. How is this possible? He was divinely prescient.

very easy to be “divinely prescient” after you modern Christians are done editing the text to modern sensibilities.
699

John Morales

30 March 2013 at 5:54 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

proudchristian:

I don’t claim to know His mind. All I know is, the men whom He dictated His will to were logically fallible, just men. So OF COURSE things are a little screwy.

Such spry squirming! Such shallow rationalising!

–

You do claim to know his Sex.

Since God is a man, he is Fallible and didn’t realise he should perhaps not have dictated his Will to just men.

(Tell me, since God has no Goddess to fuck, is not the only purpose of his penis to Piss?)
700

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 5:54 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Chigau:

Caine is now Wonder-wench (which when I finally noticed, I read as Wonder-wrench).
When did that happen?

Up thread, with JAL’s wonderful link @ 605. It means ‘sweetheart’. Not a good descriptor, but I find it too charming to resist.
701

Brother Ogvorbis, Fully Defenestrated Emperor of Steam, Fire and Absurdity

30 March 2013 at 5:56 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Caine:

I am prescient. Even with that nym, you will still be called ‘him’.
702

chigau (not my real name)

30 March 2013 at 5:56 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Chris Clarke

Ah, right. Kind of like those ‘Shakespeare in The Park” things where they, say, reboot The Tempest as an episode of Gilligan’s Island.

Have I mentioned recently that I adore you?
In a good way.
Not like you’re god or anything.
703

LykeX

30 March 2013 at 5:56 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Why do people always leave out the part about children eaten by bears?

Now, now, Chris. You’re being dishonest. The bears didn’t eat the children, they only tore them apart.
704

John Morales

30 March 2013 at 5:57 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

proudchristian: This is why Hell exists, you idiot.

<snicker>

Hell exists because your system is a carrot-and-stick system and you’re donkeys.
705

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 5:57 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

John:

(Tell me, since God has no Goddess to fuck, is not the only purpose of his penis to Piss?)

El Shaddai has a wife, she just doesn’t care for him much. El Shaddai is also the youngest in a family of gods (daddy and brothers) and is the least powerful and wise. Reading Genesis is a good thing. I recommend Robert Crumb’s illustrated Genesis.
706

proudchristian

30 March 2013 at 5:57 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Well anyway, why the fuck do you care so much what we liberal Christians do? I understand setting yourself against the bin Ladens, or the Phelpses, or even the Falwells, to a point. But so you think our modern, liberal reinterpretation of the Bible is based on flawed logic. Fine, you can think that, if you don’t want to try to understand. But why is it such an imperative to “expose” us, if we’re causing no trouble?
707

Brother Ogvorbis, Fully Defenestrated Emperor of Steam, Fire and Absurdity

30 March 2013 at 5:58 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Now, now, Chris. You’re being dishonest. The bears didn’t eat the children, they only tore them apart.

So LykeX claims that god encourages playing with your food?
708

John Morales

30 March 2013 at 5:59 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Caine, I think I’m getting the Knack of this random capitalisation Thing. :)
709

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 5:59 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

proudchristian:

Well anyway, why the fuck do you care so much what we liberal Christians do?

You came here, remember? What is it you wish to convince us of? We care what liberal xians do, because no matter how much they try to water their monstrous belief system into something better, they still shore up the evil, corrupt institutions of major religions and all the active harm they cause, like that being done in Uganda.
710

LykeX

30 March 2013 at 6:00 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Only if you’re a bear.
711

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 6:00 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I’ll add, that rather than yelling at us, perhaps you should be actively and loudly and visibly fighting all the evils of xianity. That would speak loudly indeed.
712

proudchristian

30 March 2013 at 6:00 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

And God has no gender. He is often referred to as “He”, because that’s how it’s always been done; men were the dominant sex when the Bible was written.

So, there’s an example of mortal corruption right there.
713

Chris Clarke

30 March 2013 at 6:01 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Why do people always leave out the part about children eaten by bears?

Now, now, Chris. You’re being dishonest. The bears didn’t eat the children, they only tore them apart.

I find it hard to believe that a bear wouldn’t swallow at least a mouthful of brat in the process.
714

Chris Clarke

30 March 2013 at 6:02 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Have I mentioned recently that I adore you?
In a good way.
Not like you’re god or anything.

Awesome. So my work here is done, and I can stop rewriting the Gilligans Island theme song in iambic pentameter.
715

David Marjanović

30 March 2013 at 6:03 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

What decency you have and what good you do, you do despite your Christianity, not because of it.

“With or without religion, good people do good things, and evil people to evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”

Admittedly, that’s true for a very wide sense of religion. Several political ideologies count.

Jesus is and remains of a piece with Gandhi-

One of those said no jot or tittle of the law would be changed.

The other said “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”.

it’s inferred in Jesus’ teachings, which I would say are the essence of God’s will

…and which were infallibly copied by all those fallible humans. So infallibly that they contradict each other on occasion.
716

Brother Ogvorbis, Fully Defenestrated Emperor of Steam, Fire and Absurdity

30 March 2013 at 6:04 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Well anyway, why the fuck do you care so much what we liberal Christians do? I understand setting yourself against the bin Ladens, or the Phelpses, or even the Falwells, to a point. But so you think our modern, liberal reinterpretation of the Bible is based on flawed logic. Fine, you can think that, if you don’t want to try to understand. But why is it such an imperative to “expose” us, if we’re causing no trouble?

I have no real problem with lukewarm Christians (though your version of gods does. big time.). Except that you and your ilk stand idly by while the Christian right aims for a Christian version of the Muslim republic in Iran. You and your ilk stand idly by while the Christian right guts education. You and your ilk stand idly by while the Christian right tells women that their only use in the world is as living incubators. You and your ilk stand idly by while the Christian right uses faith-based reasoning to deal with things like pollution, regulation, poverty, and global warming. You and your ilk stand idly by while the Christian right spend much of your time complaining about us atheists while ignoring the mote in your own eye — the conservative, fundamentalist, dominionist, and Christianist Christians. You enable the radical Christianity that is rapidly dragging the United States in the direction of a third world oligarchy. I have no problem with liberal Christians. I have a problem with what you and your ilk are willing to ignore.
717

Jadehawk

30 March 2013 at 6:04 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

why the fuck do you care so much what we liberal Christians do?

what part of “give money to oppressive organizations”, “undermine science”, and “promote the idea that morality based on fiction is a good thing” do you not understand?

But so you think our modern, liberal reinterpretation of the Bible is based on flawed logic.

um. yes. as in: we think you’re making shit up, and that’s a rather unsafe way to create ethics.

But why is it such an imperative to “expose” us, if we’re causing no trouble?

but you are causing trouble. science denialism and marginalization of atheists in your case, for example.
718

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 6:04 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

John:

Caine, I think I’m getting the Knack of this random capitalisation Thing. :)

I have noticed, John. I quite liked penis to Piss?. Most droll.

Ogvorbis:

I am prescient. Even with that nym, you will still be called ‘him’.

I’m banking on it.
719

Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls

30 March 2013 at 6:04 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Well anyway, why the fuck do you care so much what we liberal Christians do?

You stupidly and inanely come here to lecture us. Why don’t you go and lecture the fundies about their perversions of yourimaginarydeity’s laws? Put up or shut the fuck up. By that standard, you have shown by prima facie evidence you are nothing but a liar and bullshitter. Why should they believe your weasel words any more than we do?
720

Jadehawk

30 March 2013 at 6:05 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

And God has no gender. He is often referred to as “He”, because that’s how it’s always been done; men were the dominant sex when the Bible was written.

So, there’s an example of mortal corruption right there.

LOL
721

LykeX

30 March 2013 at 6:05 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I find it hard to believe that a bear wouldn’t swallow at least a mouthful of brat in the process.

Well, young unruly boys are not the most conscientious bathers. That’s a good reason to abstain.
722

Brother Ogvorbis, Fully Defenestrated Emperor of Steam, Fire and Absurdity

30 March 2013 at 6:06 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

And God has no gender. He is often referred to as “He”, because that’s how it’s always been done; men were the dominant sex when the Bible was written.

Then how did he impregnate Mary? Or was this a non-biblical garriage?
723

Jadehawk

30 March 2013 at 6:06 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

if you genuinely believed god wasn’t a man, you’d stop referring to your god as “he”; it’s the only decent thing to do, and English offers you plenty of alternatives to chose from.

Also, this “god is genderless” thing is once again something you made up. And it’s something you made up you can’t even convince yourself of, given that you still say “he”
724

proudchristian

30 March 2013 at 6:08 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Point is, I think dangerous fundamentalists, especially dangerous fundamentalist Christians, aren’t nearly as numerous as the atheist community says, or maybe propagandizes. They are like your nonexistent boogeyman. I find militant atheist fundamentalists to be more common.
725

LykeX

30 March 2013 at 6:08 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

if you genuinely believed god wasn’t a man, you’d stop referring to your god as “he”; it’s the only decent thing to do, and English offers you plenty of alternatives to chose from.

“They” seems especially appropriate, given the doctrine of the trinity.
726

chigau (not my real name)

30 March 2013 at 6:09 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

proudchristian

Jesus is and remains of a piece with Gandhi- and this was 2000 years (!!!) before Gandhi, in a much less “modern” society. How is this possible? He was divinely prescient.

OK. Now I know you’re just kidding.
727

David Marjanović

30 March 2013 at 6:09 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

genocide, genocide, genocide, genocide (really, it was fucking miracle there was anyone left)

BTW, proudchristian, don’t bother trying to justify those or downplay them or whatever – they never happened. Up to and including 1 Kings it’s all fiction.

And God has no gender.

And you know this how exactly?
728

LykeX

30 March 2013 at 6:09 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Point is, I think dangerous fundamentalists, especially dangerous fundamentalist Christians, aren’t nearly as numerous as the atheist community says, or maybe propagandizes

How many do we say there are? Please provide quotes.
729

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 6:09 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

proudchristian:

And God has no gender. He is often referred to as “He”, because that’s how it’s always been done; men were the dominant sex when the Bible was written.

Not true. “God” (that would be El Shaddai/Yaweh/Jehovah) made no secret of his sex – male. That’s right there in Genesis, dear. Read the damn bible, already. El Shaddai had brothers, El Shaddai had a wife. El Shaddai had a penis. Remember all that “made in my image” stuff? Yeah, he was talking about those people with a penis. Eve was an afterthought, in the sort of the same fashion Pandora was, and by the way, the Pandora myth came long before the whole fucking Adam and Eve and your god business. As gods go, yours is a latecomer.
730

proudchristian

30 March 2013 at 6:10 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Then how did he impregnate Mary? Or was this a non-biblical garriage?

She was the Virgin Mary. It was a miracle, freaking THE POINT OF IT ALL. You science types might call it parthenogenesis.
731

Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls

30 March 2013 at 6:11 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

They are like your nonexistent boogeyman. I find militant atheist fundamentalists to be more common.

And without a citation (link), you OPINION is *floosh* dismissed as fuckwittery. Nothing said. So,when will you evidence your inane claims? Or, acknowledge is you don’t have evidence, you are WRONG?
732

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 6:12 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

proudchristian:

Point is, I think dangerous fundamentalists, especially dangerous fundamentalist Christians, aren’t nearly as numerous as the atheist community says, or maybe propagandizes. They are like your nonexistent boogeyman. I find militant atheist fundamentalists to be more common.

Let’s have a chat about Catholicism, shall we?
733

Jadehawk

30 March 2013 at 6:12 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

They are like your nonexistent boogeyman.

oh yeah. So nonexistent, they’ve just outlawed women’s bodily autonomy three times over in my state. so nonexistent, my geology professors get a constant barrage of negative student-evaluations complaining about the non-biblical perspective in their classes. So nonexistent, gays still can’t get married.

And this is why folks like you are dangerous: you minimize the problem, marginalize those trying to solve it, and promote diluted versions of the very same BS (like you evolution-deniaism from earlier) that the fundies do.
734

John Morales

30 March 2013 at 6:13 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

proudchristian:

And God has no gender. He is often referred to as “He”

You wrote this with such obliviousness that it is remarkable.

because that’s how it’s always been done; men were the dominant sex when the Bible was written.

No shit.

But, theologically speaking, isn’t Jesus supposed to be the son of God, and is not Jesus also God, and did not Jesus have a penis?

(The inference is inescapable)
735

Jadehawk

30 March 2013 at 6:13 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

You science types might call it parthenogenesis.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

so Jesus wasn’t a dude, either?
736

Brother Ogvorbis, Fully Defenestrated Emperor of Steam, Fire and Absurdity

30 March 2013 at 6:13 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Point is, I think dangerous fundamentalists, especially dangerous fundamentalist Christians, aren’t nearly as numerous as the atheist community says, or maybe propagandizes. They are like your nonexistent boogeyman. I find militant atheist fundamentalists to be more common.

They have their own political party that is supported, reliably, by about 45% of the population. They have their own ‘news’ network that relentlessly politicizes a fictitious war on Christmas. Every time that a public school, or a courthouse, or a council meeting, use a prayer, it is a Christian (usually evangelical) prayer.

So please provide your citation that shows that atheists are more common than activist Christians. Or admit you are lying. Either one.
737

LykeX

30 March 2013 at 6:13 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

You science types might call it parthenogenesis.

Except that’s not miraculous. Parthenogenesis has a specific meaning in science. It’s not just a metaphor for “whatever I want it to mean at any particular moment.”

Incidentally, that’s one of the things I find infuriating about you supposedly “reasonable” Christians: You keep trying to appropriate science to support your harebrained doctrines. You want to pretend that science and your religion are compatible, even thought it’s often directly contradictory.
738

Rey Fox

30 March 2013 at 6:14 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Yes, because He doesn’t interfere will free will; we succeed and fail on our merit. This is why Hell exists, you idiot.

No coercion there, surely.

Jesus is and remains of a piece with Gandhi- and this was 2000 years (!!!) before Gandhi, in a much less “modern” society. How is this possible? He was divinely prescient.

What, exactly, was he divinely prescient about? The notion that people should be nice to each other for a change? You got to back this one up a bit more.

Well anyway, why the fuck do you care so much what we liberal Christians do?

I don’t know, what liberal Christian stuff has PZ been ragging on lately? I mean, we’re arguing with your liberal Christianity because you strutted in here and declared us all to be parasites. Other than that, liberal as you might be, we still think you’re wrong about God (and we know you’re wrong about evolution), and liberal and conservative Christianity all still springs from the cognitive cop-out of “faith”, and we have a problem with real-world issues being argued on that ground.
739

Lofty

30 March 2013 at 6:14 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Proudchristian, your entire argument rests on the premise that your personal chosen mind-picture of the Creator God (insert name here) exists so thoroughy that It needs no physical proof in the here-and-now. If you take this initial premise away, your belief castle crashes like a house of cards, like when atheists find out the truth that there is NO GOD. A belief in a God is as silly as believing that one plus one is three, and constructing a new mathematical system around it.
.
You know, proudchristian, just for once I’d like one of these omnipotent deities that are being bandied about, to show up in person. Shouldn’t be hard, after creating the cosmos and all that. Why, if the deity concerned is all powerful, does it keep sending such gormless believers instead of doing the job Itself? It’s as if, they don’t exist.
.
Like for example, the minor god Quetzovercoatl showed Itself to Its people then the Luggage got It.*
.
*For proof of this Amazing Fact, see T. Pratchett et al for reference.
740

David Marjanović

30 March 2013 at 6:14 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Caine, having a penis does make pissing a lot easier in many circumstances. You’re missing out.

I think dangerous fundamentalists, especially dangerous fundamentalist Christians, aren’t nearly as numerous as the atheist community says, or maybe propagandizes

Some of us live in places where almost everyone is a Christian fundamentalist. Much of the USA is like that (the Bible Belt isn’t a belt).

I find militant atheist fundamentalists to be more common.

Militant?

Wake me up when an atheist throws a bomb into a church.
741

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 6:15 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

proudchristian:

It was a miracle, freaking THE POINT OF IT ALL.

No it wasn’t. It was made up bullshit. Pretend. Stories. And a story about the ghost aspect of your god raping a child. Yeah, the morality, it just keeps on keepin’ on.
742

carlie

30 March 2013 at 6:18 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

<blockquote Our culture is, I think, slowly progressing toward a general sentiment that more and more closely reflects God’s will (that is, equality for all, provision for all, empathy for all).

You have no idea that’s what he wants. In fact, he spends most of the Bible picking sides and obliterating the people he doesn’t like.

Well anyway, why the fuck do you care so much what we liberal Christians do?

Because a great many of you still support bad ideas. Because you provide legitimate-looking cover for the Phelpses etc. by saying Christianity has good parts. Because you still pour huge amounts of money and energy into doing things that are demonstrably not helping humanity (how many tax-exempt liberal churches that stand empty 6 days out of every 7 are taking up public space that could be taxed again?) Because you still look down on people who don’t believe the way you do, evidenced by the things you’ve said about us right here. Shall we go on?
743

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 6:18 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

David:

Caine, having a penis does make pissing a lot easier in many circumstances. You’re missing out.

Yes, I’m aware of the pissing advantages, but I’m quite happy with my modified one. I was commenting on John’s increasing talent with random capitalization: penis to Piss?
744

Rey Fox

30 March 2013 at 6:21 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I find militant atheist fundamentalists to be more common.

What do you mean by “militant”? And what are the “fundementals” to which we adhere? Words mean things. So do numbers, and I really have to wonder where you’re getting yours.

She was the Virgin Mary. It was a miracle, freaking THE POINT OF IT ALL. You science types might call it parthenogenesis.

You didn’t answer the question.

David’s Gandhi comparison (or shall we say, contrasting?): Love it.
745

Brother Ogvorbis, Fully Defenestrated Emperor of Steam, Fire and Absurdity

30 March 2013 at 6:21 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

. . . having a penis does make pissing a lot easier in many circumstances.

Such as writing your name in the snow?
746

David Marjanović

30 March 2013 at 6:23 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

You science types might call it parthenogenesis.

So, God gave Mary a handjob, she ovulated, something went wrong, and the oocyte ended up diploid and divided?

Seriously, that’s what you’re saying. You’re saying Jesus was not the son of God, but the son of Mary and Mary alone. (Which leads us straight to comment 735, BTW.)

There are parthenogenetic lizard species that need to engage in girl-on-girl action to trigger reproduction. There are also parthenogenetic species, IIRC, where only sex with males of closely related species triggers reproduction – sperm is required, but doesn’t fuse with the egg, it just triggers cell division.
747

John Morales

30 March 2013 at 6:24 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

proudchristian:

You science types might call it parthenogenesis.

It couldn’t have been; Jesus wasn’t female.

(Funny when you claim “miracle” but still try to justify it with your inchoate appeal to science)
748

Rey Fox

30 March 2013 at 6:24 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Something I wish to complain about, and I know it’s awfully petty, but THIS IS THUNDERDOME so I might as well do it here: Inserting a period or a similar placekeeping punctuation mark in between paragraphs. You don’t have to do that. I know that paragraph breaks don’t show up in the preview, and I don’t know why they don’t, but I swear to God (heh heh) that if you hit enter twice while writing a comment and then submit it, you’ll get a nice paragraph break.
749

Brother Ogvorbis, Fully Defenestrated Emperor of Steam, Fire and Absurdity

30 March 2013 at 6:25 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

You didn’t answer the question.

Of course proudchristian didn’t answer it.

Xe also has not explained why xe is a lukewarm Christian when hir very own holy book says that the lukewarm are wrong?

Revelation 3:15-16 ESV
“‘I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.

Revelation 3:14-22 ESV
“And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: ‘The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God’s creation. “‘I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see. …

1 John 2:15-16 ESV
Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world.

Matthew 5:13 ESV
“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.

In short, proudchristian claims to be a Christian. But is xe?
750

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 6:25 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

This is a very fun Pre-Zombie Day.
751

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 6:27 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

David:

So, God gave Mary a handjob, she ovulated, something went wrong, and the oocyte ended up diploid and divided?

Very fun.
752

Rey Fox

30 March 2013 at 6:28 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I like to think of it as Nietzsche Day. Because God is Dead. But of course, that’s silly for a number of reasons.
753

David Marjanović

30 March 2013 at 6:28 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

And a story about the ghost aspect of your god raping a child.

To be fair, that whole business about Mary being 13 years old is nowhere in the Bible. It’s just tradition.

Words mean things. So do numbers

Subthread won.

Such as writing your name in the snow?

Yes, but even more so the more practical equivalents of that. As well as some completely different things.
754

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 6:30 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

David:

To be fair, that whole business about Mary being 13 years old is nowhere in the Bible. It’s just tradition.

True. That doesn’t take away from the rape aspect of it.
755

David Marjanović

30 March 2013 at 6:32 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Very fun.

Hey, I’m a scientist. I’ve trained long and hard to call a spade a spade. :-)

(…Actually, no, I didn’t – it comes naturally to me. I’m deep enough in the autism spectrum for that.)

I like to think of it as Nietzsche Day. Because God is Dead. But of course, that’s silly for a number of reasons.

So full of win!
756

LykeX

30 March 2013 at 6:33 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Since you’ve ignored it so far, I’ll just remind you:

First, do you claim to know the mind of god or not?
If yes, what did you mean by: “I don’t claim to know His mind”
If no, what did you mean by: “…God’s will (that is, equality for all, provision for all, empathy for all).”

Second:

Point is, I think dangerous fundamentalists, especially dangerous fundamentalist Christians, aren’t nearly as numerous as the atheist community says, or maybe propagandizes

How many do we say there are? Please provide quotes.

Whenever you’re ready.
757

Rey Fox

30 March 2013 at 6:33 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

To be fair, that whole business about Mary being 13 years old is nowhere in the Bible. It’s just tradition.

I guess that’s just part of humankind ever asymptotically converging on God’s true will.
758

Lofty

30 March 2013 at 6:33 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Proudchristian practices Fig Leaf Theology.
759

nightshadequeen

30 March 2013 at 6:34 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

.She was the Virgin Mary. It was a miracle, freaking THE POINT OF IT ALL. You science types might call it parthenogenesis.

If Jesus was just a product of parthenogensis, where did the Y chromosome come from? Or do you not understand science at all?

And declaring something a miracle is like throwing your hands up and saying “Fuck it, I don’t understand this.” It’s not the same as, you know, actually proving something.

Finally, fundies cause demostrative harm. Can you prove that “atheist fundamentalists” a) exist, b) are not strawpeople you created and c) cause demostrative harm?
760

David Marjanović

30 March 2013 at 6:34 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

That doesn’t take away from the rape aspect of it.

Yeah. Explicit consent is given, but the whole “I am the Lord’s handmaiden” business doesn’t really sound like she felt she had a choice. IIRC, I noticed that the very first time I got that far in my Children’s Bible.
761

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 6:36 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Sergeant Howie: What religion can they possibly be learning jumping over bonfires?

Lord Summerisle: Parthenogenesis.

Sergeant Howie: What?

Lord Summerisle: Literally, as Miss Rose would doubtless say in her assiduous way, reproduction without sexual union.

Sergeant Howie: Oh, what is all this? I mean, you’ve got fake biology, fake religion… Sir, have these children never heard of Jesus?

Lord Summerisle: Himself the son of a virgin, impregnated, I believe, by a ghost…

The Wicker Man (1973)
762

LykeX

30 March 2013 at 6:39 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I recently saw that for the first time and I can highly recommend it, both for the cultish religion and for the spooky shit. I don’t remember the last time I saw a really scary scene that took place in full daylight.
763

Rey Fox

30 March 2013 at 6:40 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

NOT THE BEES!!! AAAARRGG THEY’RE IN MY EYES!!!!

The Wicker Man (2006)
764

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 6:43 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

LykeX:

I recently saw that for the first time

I’m the happy owner of the collector’s edition, which includes the full version as well as the theatrical one. I can’t recommend the full (extended) version enough. Even though it’s only a matter of minutes, Howie’s character is much more fleshed out in the beginning, graphically illustrating the brutal suppression he imposes on himself, due to his religious beliefs.
765

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 6:44 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Rey:

The Wicker Man (2006)

*spits* That piece of shit deserves no further commentary.
766

myeck waters

30 March 2013 at 6:50 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

penis to Piss? That is one big fucking set of encyclopædias.
767

Brony

30 March 2013 at 6:50 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

@John Morales 650
Coyote’s Rule: Do unto others as they give you license to do unto them.
768

Goodbye Enemy Janine

30 March 2013 at 6:53 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Point is, I think dangerous fundamentalists, especially dangerous fundamentalist Christians, aren’t nearly as numerous as the atheist community says, or maybe propagandizes. They are like your nonexistent boogeyman. I find militant atheist fundamentalists to be more common.

It is a damned good thing that these assholes are not doing anything like passing personhood laws, making vouchers for evangelical schools or trying to fund the teaching of creationism in the classrooms.

Oh, wait, you already think that there is a fundamental problem with evolution.

You still have not shown a coherent argument, proud cherry picking assface.

And you are a fucking parasite on people who actual use ides to create real impact on people’s lives.
769

UnknownEric is GrumpyCat in human form

30 March 2013 at 6:55 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

You science types might call it parthenogenesis.

No, the band was named Shreikback, not You Science Types.
770

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 6:57 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Coyote’s Rule

:eyeroll:
771

Goodbye Enemy Janine

30 March 2013 at 6:58 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Proud cherry picking assface. Osiris was murdered, resurrected and fathered a child. It is a miracle.

That is the fucking point of it all.
772

Maureen Brian

30 March 2013 at 6:59 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Hang on, John Morales @ 747!

Maybe Jesus was a woman and they’ve been keeping it quiet all these years.
773

Dalillama, Schmott Guy

30 March 2013 at 7:00 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

patheticchristian

Point is, I think dangerous fundamentalists, especially dangerous fundamentalist Christians, aren’t nearly as numerous as the atheist community says, or maybe propagandizes. They are like your nonexistent boogeyman. I find militant atheist fundamentalists to be more common.

So, your argument is that there are no religiously based laws being passed in the U.S.? That ‘militant atheists’ have multiple nationally syndicated TV programs espousing their views, providing renumeration in the tens of millions of dollars to their figureheads? That there are no instances of people being harassed, physically assaulted and/or killed for not adhering to the whims the people thousands of years dead attributed to their imaginary friend? That’s what you’re going with? Are you really that stupid?
774

myeck waters

30 March 2013 at 7:02 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Am I supposed to be impressed with Osiris? Dude couldn’t even get his head and his shoulders pointing the same direction.
775

David Marjanović

30 March 2013 at 7:02 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I don’t remember the last time I saw a really scary scene that took place in full daylight.

“It wasn’t a dark and stormy night. It should have been, but that’s the weather for you.”
– Terry Pratchett

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”
– George Orwell
776

LykeX

30 March 2013 at 7:04 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I said “saw”.
777

John Morales

30 March 2013 at 7:04 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Been a while since a Christian goddist came to chastise us.

–

How’s it working for you, proudchristian?

(Does your pride yet swell within your breast?)
778

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 7:04 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

myeck:

Am I supposed to be impressed with Osiris?

Hey, don’t be dissin’ the Lord of the Dead, man. Osiris had Isis, which puts him way over on Jesus.
779

David Marjanović

30 March 2013 at 7:06 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Osiris was murdered, resurrected and fathered a child.

And not even in this order! He was murdered, hacked to pieces, and the pieces buried in different parts of Egypt; then his wife (and sister) gathered the pieces, miraculously put them back together, sat down on the miraculously erect penis (no blood pressure, remember!), miraculously got pregnant from this act of necrophilia, and then she resurrected him.
780

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 7:06 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

LykeX:

I said “saw”.

We’re talking about Saw now?

Sorry, I’ll get me coat…
781

Brother Ogvorbis, Fully Defenestrated Emperor of Steam, Fire and Absurdity

30 March 2013 at 7:08 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

And Isis has Bob Dylan. Trump, strike and punt!
782

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 7:09 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

David:

sat down on the miraculously erect penis (no blood pressure, remember!)

Er, I don’t want to get into detail here, but I was once treated to a graphic description of how to manage an erect penis on a male corpse by female necrophiliac.
783

Brother Ogvorbis, Fully Defenestrated Emperor of Steam, Fire and Absurdity

30 March 2013 at 7:11 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Er, I don’t want to get into detail here, but I was once treated to a graphic description of how to manage an erect penis on a male corpse by female necrophiliac.

One of the advantages of hanging out here is that, sometimes, y’all make me feel almost normal.
784

LykeX

30 March 2013 at 7:11 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Is it weird if I’m kinda interested in the details?
In my defense, I am a biologist. I’m allowed to get into weird physical stuff.
785

Goodbye Enemy Janine

30 March 2013 at 7:11 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Shit, David, put that way, a virgin birth is a minor miracle at best.
786

Goodbye Enemy Janine

30 March 2013 at 7:13 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Caine, I do not envy you for having that talk.
787

John Morales

30 March 2013 at 7:13 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Caine,

I don’t want to get into detail here, but I was once treated to a graphic description of how to manage an erect penis on a male corpse by female necrophiliac.

I know you don’t mean to tease.

(I guess tumescence is a hydraulic system, after all)
788

David Marjanović

30 March 2013 at 7:13 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I said “saw”.

I know; I tried to have fun with the concept of scary scenes in broad daylight.

Sorry, I’ll get me coat…

Too late.
789

Jadehawk

30 March 2013 at 7:13 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

If Jesus was just a product of parthenogensis, where did the Y chromosome come from? Or do you not understand science at all?

maybe god just injected mary with some T while she was pregnant? to get around the lack of Y-Chromosome?
790

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 7:14 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

LykeX:

Is it weird if I’m kinda interested in the details?

No, but I’m not gonna. It was quite a while ago, and I’m sure I’d get it wrong anyway. Let’s just say that the corpse needs to be at a certain stage and manipulation of corpse gas is involved.
791

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 7:16 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Janine:

Caine, I do not envy you for having that talk.

Given that necrophilia is rare, it was fascinating. Weird as all hell, but fascinating.
792

David Marjanović

30 March 2013 at 7:17 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Er, I don’t want to get into detail here, but I was once treated to a graphic description of how to manage an erect penis on a male corpse by female necrophiliac.

o_O
793

broboxley OT

30 March 2013 at 7:17 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

#690 Jadehawk, everyone knows hell is a town in california and Jesus mows lawns there
794

LykeX

30 March 2013 at 7:19 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Interesting. The sad thing is that you can’t really get corpses to play around with outside medical schools and they’re very particular about what you do to them.
I swear, you haven’t lived until you’ve had your hand inside a dead human being.
795

David Marjanović

30 March 2013 at 7:20 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

maybe god just injected mary with some T while she was pregnant? to get around the lack of Y-Chromosome?

Testosterone? Why not…

manipulation of corpse gas is involved

…Still hard to imagine.
796

Brother Ogvorbis, Fully Defenestrated Emperor of Steam, Fire and Absurdity

30 March 2013 at 7:20 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

everyone knows hell is a town in california and Jesus mows lawns there

Never been to Hell, California. Been to Happy Camp, Covelo, Forks of Salmon and Orleans, though. Which is close, I guess.
797

Jadehawk

30 March 2013 at 7:21 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Xe also has not explained why xe is a lukewarm Christian when hir very own holy book says that the lukewarm are wrong?

must be one of the parts that got edited to better reflect gods will.

why does this remind me so much of a certain ‘pedia’s bible-fixing project, to remove all the liberal bias from it?
798

Brother Ogvorbis, Fully Defenestrated Emperor of Steam, Fire and Absurdity

30 March 2013 at 7:23 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I swear, you haven’t lived until you’ve had your hand inside a dead human being.

I stand by my previous statement: one of the advantages of hanging out here is that, sometimes, y’all make me feel almost normal.

I’m also amazed at how much better this conversations got (these conversation?) once our lukewarm goddist ceased commenting.
799

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 7:25 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

LykeX:

The sad thing is that you can’t really get corpses to play around with outside medical schools and they’re very particular about what you do to them.

You can if your job happens to entail picking up and transporting corpses. Which is how I found out about all that stuff – her job entailed those things.

David:

…Still hard to imagine.

Yes, I’m sure. Considerable manipulation was required, both external and internal. She, uh, preferred partners who were less than fresh.
800

broboxley OT

30 March 2013 at 7:26 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

proudchristian are you just batshit stupid?

Point is, I think dangerous fundamentalists, especially dangerous fundamentalist Christians, aren’t nearly as numerous as the atheist community says, or maybe propagandizes. They are like your nonexistent boogeyman. I find militant atheist fundamentalists to be more common.

was it fucking atheists that turned North Dakota into state ownership of wombs? Is it the fucking atheists that are running around jamming prayer in schools down everybodys throats? In every state government in the nation there are fucking christian loons patting themselves on the back for turning the nation christian as quickly as possible. Fuck That
801

LykeX

30 March 2013 at 7:33 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

You can if your job happens to entail picking up and transporting corpses. Which is how I found out about all that stuff – her job entailed those things.

Aah, I see.
By the way, I’ve decided that when I die, I want to be cremated on the spot, in full view of witnesses. If you’re not pouring gasoline on me, I don’t want to be touched.

Yes, I know I won’t feel it, but do it anyway.

I stand by my previous statement: one of the advantages of hanging out here is that, sometimes, y’all make me feel almost normal.

That’s the purpose of any good community, isn’t it?
802

chigau (not my real name)

30 March 2013 at 7:34 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I ♥ this place.
803

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 7:36 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

LykeX:

If you’re not pouring gasoline on me, I don’t want to be touched.

It’s my wish to be crispy crittered as well, however, I will be providing the thrill of poking about in my corpse to many – we’ve gone with full body donation, with whatever bits remaining to be incinerated with the ashes returned to next of kin.
804

broboxley OT

30 March 2013 at 7:38 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

She was the Virgin Mary. It was a miracle, freaking THE POINT OF IT ALL. You science types might call it parthenogenesis.

if true then jesus could not have been the savior, rule sez you have to be of the line of david, mary was not.
805

LykeX

30 March 2013 at 7:38 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

…with whatever bits remaining to be incinerated with the ashes returned to next of kin.

Who was it that wanted his ashes thrown in the face of some opponent?
806

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 7:42 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

LykeX:

Who was it that wanted his ashes thrown in the face of some opponent?

I don’t know, but that’s funny. Sounds like something a Narn would do. I wouldn’t even bother with the crispy crittering in light of the donation, but I consulted Mister about this and he was firm about wanting my ashes. Sentimental, Mister is.
807

LykeX

30 March 2013 at 7:50 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Soooo, this is the point where I have to draw on the community myself:
Would it be out of line to do a cannibalism reference at this point? Sometimes I find it difficult to tell whether something is amusingly over the line or just plain offensive.
808

Goodbye Enemy Janine

30 March 2013 at 7:54 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Ah! The Monty Python funeral home scene.

Tasteful.
809

Brother Ogvorbis, Fully Defenestrated Emperor of Steam, Fire and Absurdity

30 March 2013 at 7:55 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

LykeX:

Depends. Does it involve Catholic missionaries? Specifically friars?
810

LykeX

30 March 2013 at 7:57 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

It involves my mother’s recipe for heart casserole.
811

Brother Ogvorbis, Fully Defenestrated Emperor of Steam, Fire and Absurdity

30 March 2013 at 7:59 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

It involves my mother’s recipe for heart casserole.

One more time. One of the advantages of hanging out here is sometimes y’all make me feel almost normal.
812

chigau (not my real name)

30 March 2013 at 8:02 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

After reading Mary Roach’s Stiff, I want to be composted.
813

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 8:04 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

LykeX:

It involves my mother’s recipe for heart casserole.

Have a heart!

Yeah, I went there.
814

NateHevens, resident SOOPER-GENIUS... apparently...

30 March 2013 at 8:04 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

proudchristian:

Point is, I think dangerous fundamentalists, especially dangerous fundamentalist Christians, aren’t nearly as numerous as the atheist community says, or maybe propagandizes. They are like your nonexistent boogeyman. I find militant atheist fundamentalists to be more common.

Wait. So the Christian who stuck a shotgun in my face because I checked out “The God Delusion” from my local library didn’t exist? The two Christian employers who separately turned me down for a job because I was open about my atheism on Facebook didn’t exist? The group of Christian boys who chased me from an atheist meet-up so they could “teach [me] what hell is gonna be like” didn’t exist? That Christian in Taco Bell who flipped his shit because the cashier was gay didn’t exist?

Fox News doesn’t exist?

Bill O’Reilly doesn’t exist?

Sean Hannity doesn’t exist?

Rush Limbaugh doesn’t exist?

Glenn Beck doesn’t exist?

Jerry Fallwell and Oral Roberts and Pat Robertson and Kenn Hamm and Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron and Kent Hovind don’t exist?

The Tea Party doesn’t exist?

All those Republicans passing laws to destroy the bodily autonomy of women don’t exist?

All those Christians fighting anti-bully laws because it won’t let them bully homosexuals and the transgendered “in the name of Jesus” don’t exist?

David Barton doesn’t exist?

Go fuck yourself you dishonest shit.

Caine:

Er, I don’t want to get into detail here, but I was once treated to a graphic description of how to manage an erect penis on a male corpse by female necrophiliac.

I…

Don’t even…

What?

You mean this is a thing outside of twisted movies and pornos (don’t ask)?

Although… with rigor mortis…

But… also… it’s not like a corpse can consent…

It’s my wish to be crispy crittered as well, however, I will be providing the thrill of poking about in my corpse to many – we’ve gone with full body donation, with whatever bits remaining to be incinerated with the ashes returned to next of kin.

I wanna be shot off into the sun. From stardust we were made, to stardust I want to return…
815

chigau (not my real name)

30 March 2013 at 8:04 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

and I second (third, fifth, whatever) Oggie’s comment(s) about normalcy.
816

NateHevens, resident SOOPER-GENIUS... apparently...

30 March 2013 at 8:06 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

What is normal, anyway?
817

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 8:06 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Chigau:

After reading Mary Roach’s Stiff, I want to be composted.

Oh, after reading that, both Mister and I were opining such a thing wasn’t available here. We don’t own enough property to get away with the dig a deep hole and there ya go method.
818

Brother Ogvorbis, Fully Defenestrated Emperor of Steam, Fire and Absurdity

30 March 2013 at 8:07 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

chigau:

A fifth, maybe? Scotch?
819

Brother Ogvorbis, Fully Defenestrated Emperor of Steam, Fire and Absurdity

30 March 2013 at 8:08 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

What is normal, anyway?

Wasn’t Normal the kitten that irritated Garfield?

[checks]

Oh. Nermal.

Nevermind.
820

Portia

30 March 2013 at 8:10 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Still working my way through the flurry of responses to Mr. Lukewarm, but wanted to tell you all that I think you’re all great. It’s really entertaining and edifying and satisfying to read you all eviscerate the stupid so effectively and cleverly.

~~I have avocado/bean/turkey tacos if anyone is interested.~~ Woops, sorry, forgot where I was for a moment. ;)

♥♥♥
821

broboxley OT

30 March 2013 at 8:11 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

cremation for ease of transit back north then scattered at the base of a low range of hills in the arctic
822

Brother Ogvorbis, Fully Defenestrated Emperor of Steam, Fire and Absurdity

30 March 2013 at 8:13 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Wife and I both want to be cremated and scattered in Hayden Valley, Wyoming.
823

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 8:15 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Broboxley:

cremation for ease of transit back north then scattered at the base of a low range of hills in the arctic

Water for mine. Ocean for preference, but given my location, a river will do.
824

Amphiox

30 March 2013 at 8:17 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

And not even in this order! He was murdered, hacked to pieces, and the pieces buried in different parts of Egypt; then his wife (and sister) gathered the pieces, miraculously put them back together, sat down on the miraculously erect penis (no blood pressure, remember!), miraculously got pregnant from this act of necrophilia, and then she resurrected him.

Hmm.

I thought his penis was, in fact MISSING (eaten by a crocodile), and so she fashioned a new one for him out of ivory, and THAT was how she managed to make it erect….
825

LykeX

30 March 2013 at 8:17 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

OK then. I didn’t mean to imply that my mother was a cannibal. It’s just that my mother used to make this great heart casserole (from pig’s hearts). It was heart, tomato and carrots over rice. It’s one of the few things I really miss from my childhood and since I’ve grown up (and become completely demented) I’ve wondered what it would be like with a human heart (I blame television).

I assure you, my conscience is sufficiently active that it won’t really be relevant, but I can’t shake the thought. I guess it’s just one of those things that come with being overly cerebral and socially detached.
826

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 8:19 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Ogvorbis:

Wife and I both want to be cremated and scattered in Hayden Valley, Wyoming.

If we could do the special place thing, I’d want my ashes to go out to sea from Pirate’s Cove, Corona del Mar, SoCal. We were married on the bluffs overlooking Pirate’s Cove, and have a long history of all good things there.
827

Amphiox

30 March 2013 at 8:19 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Although… with rigor mortis…

I don’t think rigor mortis actually would work for that, because rigor mortis only affects muscle tissue, and, many individual protestations to the contrary, that particular organ does not have that much muscle….
828

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 8:21 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

LykeX:

I’ve wondered what it would be like with a human heart (I blame television).

Given the similarity between pig hearts and people hearts, it would probably be pretty much the same.
829

carlie

30 March 2013 at 8:25 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I swear, you haven’t lived until you’ve had your hand inside a dead human being.

Palpating arteries that are almost entirely full of crispy plaque is quite eye-opening as to the consequences of certain types of diet. I assume the embalming was responsible for the crackly nature of said plaque, but still.

Everybody’s donating all of their good stuff for transplant before disposal, I hope.

My super-religious grandmother is donating her body to the local medical school, because she’s pretty awesome like that. I’m leaning towards cremation, but something in me is vain enough to want a tombstone, although I don’t know where in the world i’d want it to be.
830

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 8:28 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Carlie:

Everybody’s donating all of their good stuff for transplant before disposal, I hope.

Assuming there’s anything worth transplanting, yes. Then the corpse gets picked up and parceled out as necessary to medical research, students, and so on.
831

chigau (not my real name)

30 March 2013 at 8:31 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

carlie

Everybody’s donating all of their good stuff for transplant before disposal, I hope.

Absolutely. (insofar as I can control it)
832

Dalillama, Schmott Guy

30 March 2013 at 8:33 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I personally lean towards a variant on the compost, to wit: dig a big hole, chuck any bits that haven’t got any use left into it, then plant a fruit tree and put the dirt back. For preference, I’d like the tree to have branches grafted on from as many different fruits as possible (yes, you can do gross species limb grafts on fruit trees).
833

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 8:38 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Dalillama, you have to own a specific amount of property to do the dig a deep hole and there ya go method, and it depends on individual state law. If we had enough property, it would be my first choice.
834

LykeX

30 March 2013 at 8:39 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I’m sorry for getting weird. It’s just that I get confused around boundary situations and then I start over-thinking things and it just goes into this big spiral where finally I decide it’s better to just not deal with it at all and so I stay away from people altogether.
However, that tends to lead to me wanting everyone to die, so that’s probably not healthy and so I’ve been trying not to do that. It doesn’t always work out well.

And of course when I try to explain that, it sounds stupid. That’s part of the spiral. No offense to anyone, I’m just weird.
835

chigau (not my real name)

30 March 2013 at 8:41 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

carlie
You don’t need a corpse to have a tombstone.
You could buy one now and put it on the patio….
ooohh
what am I doing tomorrow?
836

Dalillama, Schmott Guy

30 March 2013 at 8:42 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Caine
Or you need to live near a big enough national park that no one will notice until you’ve already got it done with. :) (Although this requires that your survivors be somewhat adventurous.)
837

chigau (not my real name)

30 March 2013 at 8:44 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

LykeX
No worries.
Have some pizza.
838

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 8:44 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

LykeX:

I’m sorry for getting weird.

We have been discussing the bible, a treatise on how to be a sociopath, the deaths, resurrections and erections of various gods, the technique of raising an erection on a decaying corpse for sexual purposes, various methods of corpse disposal and sundry things, like palpating arteries full of plaque. I really don’t think an apology is necessary.
839

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 8:47 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Dalillama:

(Although this requires that your survivors be somewhat adventurous.)

And a serious disregard for possibly being suspected of murder, and even if that doesn’t happen, not caring about possibly doing time for said disposal. That said, I’d be up for it. I used to live in Idyllwild, California and there are places I know in the National Park where a corpse would never, ever be discovered.
840

chigau (not my real name)

30 March 2013 at 8:49 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

LykeX
Besides, think of what proudchristian will have to wade through to find their argument.
teehee
841

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 8:51 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

And given our interesting round table, I just want to say that Bubba Ho-Tep is one of my all time favourite movies. Never fails to cheer me up.
842

broboxley OT

30 March 2013 at 8:52 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

quite often in males at time of death a diamond cutter appears. Not sure why or how long it lasts
843

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 8:54 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Chigau:

Besides, think of what proudchristian will have to wade through to find their argument.

The screams of outrage, the cries of “disgusting, immoral atheists!” will be as music to our ears, there to soothe the silence of our black, still hearts.
844

carlie

30 March 2013 at 8:55 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

No problem, LykeX. I didn’t even register your comments as any stranger than any of our other ones. :)

You don’t need a corpse to have a tombstone.
You could buy one now and put it on the patio….

Oh, but what it would do to the resale value…
845

Dalillama, Schmott Guy

30 March 2013 at 8:56 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Caine
Similarly, I live in Portland, where we have a municipal forest that merges with the State Forest outside city limits, and the latter runs pretty much all the way to the coast; there’s millions of places to dump a corpse.
846

chigau (not my real name)

30 March 2013 at 8:57 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

The first time I watched Bubba Ho-Tep, I was drunk and spent the whole moving saying, “Wait. What?”
It made more sense the next time.
847

Dalillama, Schmott Guy

30 March 2013 at 8:58 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I love Bubba Ho-Tep, but L and D do not; the scarabs are a problem for them.
848

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 8:59 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Carlie:

Oh, but what it would do to the resale value…

:thump:

Fell over laughing there.
849

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 9:02 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Dalillama, that was no scarab, it was big cock-a-roach! Heh.
850

chigau (not my real name)

30 March 2013 at 9:04 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

carlie
I was not thinking of permanently mounting the tombstone,
more like something to set the plant pots on.
—
broboxley
We’ve got lumps of it round the back.
851

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 9:14 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

The rats and I are enjoying tomatoes with balsamic vinaigrette.
852

broboxley OT

30 March 2013 at 9:21 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

#849 chigau was the rofl intentional?
853

chigau (not my real name)

30 March 2013 at 9:27 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

broboxley
It was a silly, personal, in-joke.
Years ago, in my in-crowd, when someone said something that was not ~~understandable~~ understood, the rest of us would use that line.
854

cicely (mumblemumble-SomethingHalf-Witty-mumblemumble)

30 March 2013 at 9:38 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I don’t claim to know His mind.

Except that you do so claim, when you choose which parts of the Bible are Real.

All I know is, the men whom He dictated His will to were logically fallible, just men.

Who in their time claimed to know the Mind of God.
It’s why they wrote what they wrote; unless you contend that they screwed up the Divine Message deliberately?

Yet His Omnipotence either does not know about this…difference…between His intent and their (and your) Knowledge of the Mind of God, or does not care that He is being extensively misquoted? Or lacks the power or interest to say, “No, you misinterpreted that; I meant this“? It isn’t important enough to see it fixed?

Jesus is and remains of a piece with Gandhi-

Only in your cherry pickery.

But why is it such an imperative to “expose” us, if we’re causing no trouble?

Because you are. And your “No-True-Christian-izing” your fellow Christians who don’t agree with your interpretation isn’t helping your case.
*aside*
I think proudchristian is here to earn a merit badge for Witnessing Unto the Heathen.
-

Awesome. So my work here is done, and I can stop rewriting the Gilligans Island theme song in iambic pentameter.

That…sounds pretty awesome, actually.
-
855

Rey Fox

30 March 2013 at 9:43 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Who was it that wanted his ashes thrown in the face of some opponent?

Kinky Friedman in Dallas: “When I die, I want my ashes thrown in Rick Perry’s hair”

Linda: When I die I want you to cremate me and throw my ashes in Tom Selleck’s face.

That’s all I got. I also seem to remember a Mad Magazine comic where somebody wanted his ashes thrown in his wife’s face.
856

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 9:46 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Wouldn’t it be more satisfying, opponent-wise, to have someone sneak up on your opponent and pour your ashes down their pants?
857

cicely (mumblemumble-SomethingHalf-Witty-mumblemumble)

30 March 2013 at 9:54 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

And God has no gender. He is often referred to as “He”, because that’s how it’s always been done; men were the dominant sex when the Bible was written.

And yet, in early days, had a consort.

A female consort.

No gender confusion, there.
-

You science types might call it parthenogenesis.

lol
No, we wouldn’t. You non-science types only use it as a buzzword in an effort to put some kind of reality base under your mythology, the same way some use the word “quantum” to try to put a base of fact under there.
-
858

chigau (not my real name)

30 March 2013 at 9:59 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

That’s it!
Quantumn Parthenogenesis!!!1!!
[and tomatoes]
859

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 10:09 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Chigau:

That’s it!
Quantumn Parthenogenesis!!!1!!
[and tomatoes]

Oh noes. We’re in trouble if dog piss gets in there anywhere.
860

cicely (mumblemumble-SomethingHalf-Witty-mumblemumble)

30 March 2013 at 10:24 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

*sigh*
That should be, “to try to put a base of fact under theirs.”
-
And why does God need to piss? He’s Officially Omnipotent, and does not need to convert food for energy, or intake water. Or beer.
-

I ♥ this place.

+1
So very much.
-
I would like (my left-over, un-usable bits) to be cremated, the ashes placed in a jar, the jar buried—and a tree planted over the spot. A holly tree. Nice and prickly.
-
861

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 10:24 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

For anyone who happened to miss the Quantumn Tomatoes Phenomenon (and is interested): http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/11/03/why-i-am-an-atheist-doubting-thomas/comment-page-1/
862

broboxley OT

30 March 2013 at 10:46 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

666 John Morales
I’m glad you took the time to check out the lyrics. Like most lyrics they are lame, perhaps if you watched the vid with the sound off while reading the lyrics they may have been less incoherent. most lyrics to most of what passes for modern music is semi coherent. It is more of a visually oriented medium now. Im sure that back in your day the Beatles song “I wanna hold your hand” was much more concise and meaningful.

The link was for proud christian, first to see if he would watch it, second to see if he would affirm it or deny the meanings presented and whether there was room in “his” christianity for scrubbers. (scrubbers is a self described term for ICP followers)

If you had watched the vid, you would see at the end people following the crosses, help lift the crosses then genuflect with the blood still dripping from their fists, and skulls. Interesting imagery from a performance standpoint. I was hoping Zinnia would tear this down frame by frame like was done for miracles.
863

broboxley OT

30 March 2013 at 10:48 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

dammit my left arrow sarcasmright arrow didnt show up on post 861, I had wrapped my comment about the beatles just so john would know I was trying to pull his chain a tad
864

chigau (not my real name)

30 March 2013 at 11:19 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Caine #860
Thanks for the link.
I’d forgotten how strange that thread was.
865

Asher Kay

30 March 2013 at 11:29 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

@UnknownEric

You science types might call it parthenogenesis.

When I saw that, I immediately wanted to comment, “No one move a muscle as the dead come home”. Then I thought, “Nah – nobody will get that”.
866

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 11:36 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Chigau:

I’d forgotten how strange that thread was.

That was a hell of a thing. I still don’t know what the fuck that was.
867

Caine, Wonder-wench

30 March 2013 at 11:41 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Cicely:

A holly tree. Nice and prickly.

Nice. It would be a weeping willow for me, my all time favourite tree. Best people watching hideout perch nature ever made.
868

PZ Myers

30 March 2013 at 11:45 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

NEW THREAD.