There’s a whole site dedicated to polling visitors on one question: Do you believe in God?. Just as it is, it’s a testimonial to the worthlessness of internet polls (100% of the residents of Saint Lucia are atheists! n=1), so it seems superfluous to send the Atheist Legion in, but hey, go ahead, push this poll towards more disbelief. As a special bonus, if you come from a small country you’ll be able to wield greater unrepresentative power!
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Baseline:
US – 52% yes, 48% no with 13,420 votes
UK – 37% yes, 63% no with 3,011 votes
I hate bifurcated polls.
I like “Yes” / “No.” Better than having a 5 point Likert scale between “God talks to me every day,” and “There is no God,” with “Show me the evidence” at 4 and “Not sure” at 3.
Just like asking a man if he has sex with men is a much better question than asking him if he is gay with “wide stance” at 3.
Forget St. Lucia. 50% of the Vatican are athiests. I’d say that’s a result!
Speaking of wide stances.
Well hey, personally I find it a great resource to find a country’s flag. All nicely together in one place. With the chance to bias a stupid internet poll as bonus. What’s not to like!
The funny thing, of course, is that you can’t choose your country. The site recognizes where you are. This was not some prankster, this was really someone sitting in .va.
If you feel like freeping a stupid poll you could do worse than http://countryaboveself.com/ . Did the USans amongst you know that Alberto Gonzalez is your greatest patriot?
They do explicitly reserve the right to ignore your vote if the consider it “obnoxious” (i.e. non-wingnutted) so you might want to be subtle
Which is to say, someone who’s visible IP address traced back to .va – in other words, it probably was some prankster, just a technically proficient one. Or a tourist, perhaps, checking their e-mail and having a bit of a laugh.
David @ # 7, how do you know This was not some prankster, this was really someone sitting in .va. ? It could’ve been the Pope that voted. And maybe he’s the prankster, & not the feckin’ edjit we think he is? Maybe he only pretends to believe all that Catholic crap? And one day he’ll strike a blow fro Reason, & tell the faithfull that his feckin’ Church has been deceiving them.
One can only hope.
Im moving to the Caymans……
100% atheists,yay !!
Two thirds no where I come from… :D
as for that wingnut poll…
*checks out site*
My eyes! The goggles, they do nothing!
In other news, John McCain boots John Hagee and Rod Parsley out of his big tent. Could this be a sign that the Senator does have a shred of integrity left?
Its a sign that someone read him a poll and suggested it would be of benefit to him to distance himself from them……
It would be nice if they at least mentioned which god they are talking about and what attributes he is supposed to have.
Clinteas, that is a plausible and parsimonious explanation.
In other news, John McCain boots John Hagee and Rod Parsley out of his big tent. Could this be a sign that the Senator does have a shred of integrity left?
No, just that he realizes that continuing to surround oneself with people who think that Hitler was sent on a mission from God is the kind of thing which is rather a poor choice in an election, even when one is running as a Republican.
He’d continue to stand by Hagee and Parsley if their comments hadn’t become so inconveniently public.
Interland?? Wherever that is, they have 1440 votes so far (51% yes, 49% no).
Where “crash” is the optimal word.
Those poor yesnogod.com servers.
One odd thing, the list of countries appears to be alphabetized by non-english rules.
Spain is between Egypt and Ethiopia (España.)
Switzerland is right after Canada.
Sri Lanka is next to Lithuania.
U.K. in the G’s (Great Britain).
Yay! My home country, Estonia, seems to have the highest ‘No’ rate, when looking at countries with over 5 votes.
71% (though i believe this should be higher, because atheist normally do not surf the internet for the sole reason of answering god polls (with the exception of PZ :) )
Most countries with over 1000 votes have a massive percentage of atheists, I must say. Not often a majority, of course, but with the minimum at 24% and rapidly going up (Mexico at 36% NO, yay!) this is a rather impressive showing. I mean, the US is at 50/50 but people who outright reject god in the overall population is probably more like 10 – 15 %. So this means that (roughly) people on the internet are far FAR more likely to be atheists, no matter the general religiosity of their home countries.
I dunno, I kinda like that, the internet is growing obscenely at the cost of other communication media, so as more people migrate here maybe they might find their faith challenged and de-convert.
I do agree with PZ that internet polls are mostly stupid, but they do have a tiny smidgeon of truth value, which in this case might be encouraging.
How odd. Hard to imagine that some fundie leaders are so lame and evil that even McCain can’t afford to be seen with them.
OT sort of. I just got an email from a friend this morning. She was laid off from her job in the housing industry for obvious reasons. She is panicking because gas is $4.00/gallon and she can barely afford to pay it. I don’t think she is going to vote Theopublican this year.
We are legion… US now at 51% saying “No”.
Nimibia is 100% Atheist also. All one of them.
This really is a very silly poll.
Sure, it is a skewed demographic. Are there religious equivalents to PZ in popularity pointing at this poll from the myriad faiths around the world? Doubtful.
However, at least when you read it you can see a bit of a breakdown. The numbers here in the Great White North feel encouraging.
Ahh, Saturday morning. Sleeping in, drinking coffee, and living in a country with 64% atheists. It’s a dream.
Yes, go Oceania. I had to bolster the UK/Europe but good to see the folks back home are just as sensible. No essential difference between Aus and NZ either.
The bastarding site wont let me ruddy vote!
Meh, not that I really need to. Atheists are ahead 65/35 in my country.
And it’s now wonder we’ve always been at war with Oceania.
ISO? The Helvetian Confederation is .ch so as to offend all four official languages equally and the official ISO 3166 for the UK is GB, even though .uk is used as their internet TLD.
Wikipedia knows all.
#20 – I think it’s alphabetized by domain. Switzerland, for example, is .ch, which would come right after .ca for Canada
Mmmm… Africa 80% Yes/20% No. Why am I not surprised? Africa must be the most superstitious continent. South Africa is the most modern developed country in Africa, yet we have two witchdoctors as members of parliament. No, I kid you not! Two of our sitting MPs are witchdoctors…they wear inflated goat-bladders on their heads…
I just nominated Deborah Palfrey as an assistant to David Vitter. Lets see how much research they on their submissions.
Hagee was right about one thing. Hitler himself believed he was fulfilling the will of God by exterminating the Jews – an embarrassing little fact that I love to shove down the throats of Christians.
Two of our sitting MPs are witchdoctors…they wear inflated goat-bladders on their heads…
Do their goat bladders tell them to get involved in pointless wars?
If not, consider yourself lucky to be a South African.
Damn, in retrospect I should have nominated Clinton Dawkins.
Woo-Hoo! My country, Canada, at 64% unbelief!
Now if we can just get rid of our Prime Minister Stephen Harper . . .
“Do their goat bladders tell them to get involved in pointless wars?
If not, consider yourself lucky to be a South African.”
Well, we have the highest murder rate in Africa, outside of a war zone. There are so many problems we have to cope with, I hesitate to go into it on this forum. Suffice it to say, our future president believes taking a shower cures AIDS. His signature song is “Umshini Wami”, which translates to “Bring me my machine gun”. He has also said; ” The ANC will rule until Jesus comes back”….
Someone should do a study to see if there are more atheists online then religious people, because it sure seems that way. Maybe there is a connection with using the internet and becoming an atheist, would be interesting to see if that were true.
My own country of Norway has a assuring lead of 71% who don’t believe in God.
Re: Interland
Geo-IP mapping is not exact, it relies on a database mapping blocks of IP addresses to countries, but IP addresses are not entirely allocated on that basis. Many large blocks are allocated to companies who move parts of their allocations from one country to another. There was a period of time when anyone in Microsoft or IBM in Ireland appeared to come from the USA before the database got updated to reflect the internal allocations within those companies.
There are/were errors in the most popular database (GeoIP) because of the way the data is gathered. For example, some data mined from RIPE used “NI” to refer to Northern Ireland (the data is user-entered and “NI” is commonly used as an abbreviation for Northern Ireland in both the UK and Ireland), but it’s actually the TLD for Nicaragua, so many people in Northern Ireland showed up as being in Nicaragua.
The geographical location of some IP address ranges is unknown because where they have been allocated to by their owners is not known. This may be true because the address owners don’t want it to be known (intelligence, military) or simply because the database compilers couldn’t find the info anywhere. It’s likely that this is what “Interland” means.
Some geo-ip databases are better than others. Most are at “very high nineties” accurate, but none is 100% accurate.
‘Someone should do a study to see if there are more atheists online then religious people, because it sure seems that way. Maybe there is a connection with using the internet and becoming an atheist, would be interesting to see if that were true.”
I think more educated and literate people use the internet than otherwise. There is a direct correlation between education and literacy and atheism IMHO. With the exception of the USA of course…
There is considerable evidence that both measured IQ and level of educational attainment are positively correlated with atheism, so (nitpick) it’s not a matter of opinion.
“There is considerable evidence that both measured IQ and level of educational attainment are positively correlated with atheism, so (nitpick) it’s not a matter of opinion. ”
Agreed. Was just covering all my bases here :-)
“The Atheist Legion“, aw, that made me feel warm and fuzzy in my soulless, mechanical valve pump (although to be specific my valve pump only felt warm and fuzzy as a by-product of chemical fluctuations in my behavioural motivator circuiting).
It’s funnier when you know the context; Saruman means “Man of Skill” in Sindarin and he was intended by Tolkien to represent the over-reach of science.
Besides, 65% disbelief is pretty good for a snowball. Oh Canada, my home and native land!
I’m only saying it wasn’t some American or someone else from a secular country who wanted to have fun at the Vatican’s expense. B-}
LOL!
LOL! It’s a sign he has a shred of fear left! Having understood that he has — against all expectations — misundreshtmated the average intelligence of the US public, he turns his coat once again and backpedals, lest Obama utterly pwn him.
Of course, in this particular case, this is better than if he had a shred of integrity left.
As of 2:44 EST, The Vatican City is at 50/50?
You’d think that would be a bastion of 100%.
I think the question should really be “Do you believe in A god (or gods)?”
My experience with religious people has taught me to assume that whenever I hear the question “Do you believe in god”, I must interpret it as “Do you believe in MY god?” – and as I reckon every single person on the planet has a different idea what “god” actually means, the only honest answer always has to be “no”. i.e.: Do I go along with whatever personal delusion you (who are asking me that question) happen to base your life around? Absolutely not.
Matt @ 8:
What a find!
I cast votes to condemn Olbermann, Maher, and Moyers.
Go Samoa!!!
Hey, this poll is missing a “Hell No!” button. Doesn’t that skew the results a smidgen?
Faroe Islands 100% no! Yay :D
(Long time lurker, just had to say that)
Yes, “interland” is just a word for “we have no idea where the hell you are.” When I was in my apartment using my comcast connection, I was correctly mapped as being in the United States, but the Randolph St Chicago Argo Tea location, which uses Webbeams internet, is in “interland.”
@#8 Matt Heath —
I like their bio of Stephen Colbert (who is nominated as a “patriot”):
It’s hard to tell whether this is meant satirically, but I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt.
This poll, “Do you believe in God” is just plain silly.
Push these polls into silliness; Do you believe in “God” or “god” or “a God” or “a god” or “Goddess” or “goddess” or a “Goddess” or “a goddess” or …? WTF ever!
May His or his or Hers or hers squiggly appendage never wrap around your neck.
RAMEN
Interland is 1/2 a light year East of Uranus
It is hard to believe that Atheists on here can be so fundamental about their beliefs that they would have to do something like this to get any kind of victories in their lives.
Dawkins provides damage control and says this is passion. It’s not passion at all. It is being a fundamentalist for your cause. This is not rational, but irrational behavior.
Blah, Blah, Blah, Kenny, Blah, Blah, Blah…yawn
Would have liked to leave the vote for Australia poised at 666, but had to weigh in. I guess that makes me [cue drumroll] the neighbour of the beast?
As a literary aside, Kenny’s comments make me think of Mark Twain’s quote:
OK, I give up. Just how do you vote on that page? The only live links I could find anywhere were to 3 links to the same page advertising pop ‘surveys’ and 2 email links to send the page to ‘friends’.
Once again kenny misses the point. Not that it shocks me, but it’s nice to point out.
The point is Kenny, that these types of online polls are inherently bullshit and fucking with them like this is what they deserve because they prove nothing.
It’s harmless fun messing with something that has zero worth.
You really are a myopic tight ass.
Well, if we’re looking for “polls” to crash, we may as well put some votes in for Colbert on http://countryaboveself.com/ . The video of Colbert that’s been linked to tells me that the person who nominated him must have been joking, but hey, it’s fun anyway.
Actually that is a perfect way to wreck that moron poll.
The Kenny sez:
It is hard to believe that Atheists on here can be so fundamental about their beliefs that they would have to do something like this to get any kind of victories in their lives.
Cartman: “I hate hippies! I mean, the way they always talk about “protectin’ the earth” and then drive around in cars that get poor gas mileage and wear those stupid bracelets – I hate ’em! I wanna kick ’em in the nuts!”
I judge that close enough to be worth 2 pts.
challenges?
gibbering idiot!
now, let’s see, on the drinking game front, any points in The Kenny’s latest missive?
1 point for just posting.
ooh, 15 points for mentioning Dawkins.
16 points in one post. for those playing along, that’s one over if you are going the liberal route, 4 under if going the conservative route.
translation:
one drink for me!
here’s the rules for the drinking game again (ala Etha):
I think we should also add another one:
10 points for saying “atheist fundamentalist” or implying it (as in his last post).
I thought there were immediate points for gibbering idiot. Humm. Well points or not, he is one.
gibbering idiot!
close, but I believe for full points it is correctly stated as:
“Kenny, you gabbling limpet!”
which of course means I get those 10 points.
;)
I wish there was a place to post “stickies”, but until then, here’s the rules for the “Win a Cartman Hat” contest:
son of a..
Okay, I’ve been out of the hacker loop for a while, but can’t we flood their poll with hits from various remote IP addresses? Spoofing or proxies?
..yeah, just to be clear, some of worked out two games to play with Kenny, one that has “winners” every night (the drinking game), and one that will have a single winner when all the points are tallied up at the end of the year (the Cartman Hat game).
those playing the drinking game have two options:
drink one for every 15 points tallied within Kenny’s posts, or drink one for every 20 points (I’m going with 15 points, but when Kenny really gets going, it makes for a rather short night – and a large headache the next day).
Kseniya is the one who came up with the idea for the Cartman contest, so I’m happy letting her keep a running tally, and each person who posts should keep their own as well.
Humm, seems I started the drinking game before he posted…
Humm, seems I started the drinking game before he posted…
heh.
I started during the Celtics/Pistons game myself.
consider it a test of your durability…
or willingness to pay any attention at all to what The Kenny is saying.
:p
I’m not yet familiar with this Kenny character, but something tells me I will be? It’s a good thing there is already a drinking game established, as “atheist fundamentalist” as a phrase or implication makes me froth at the mouth in a way that can only be dealt with with liquor.
Malaysia fails :( Oceania rules tho
OMG… what have I done?
OMG… what have I done?
heh.
a small price to pay, since you’re here often enough.
;)
It’s a good thing there is already a drinking game established, as “atheist fundamentalist” as a phrase or implication makes me froth at the mouth in a way that can only be dealt with with liquor.
indeed.
make sure to thank Etha when you see her. I’m just the messenger.
oh, btw, for those unfamiliar with The Kenny:
http://www.google.com/cse?cx=017254414699180528062%3Auyrcvn__yd0&q=Kenny+site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fscienceblogs.com%2Fpharyngula%2F&sa=Search
you can catch up with his antics on those pages.
Oh dear. The Kenny is an interesting character, isn’t he? Hm, well, they say variety is the spice of life.
Oh dear. While The Kenny was busy racking up points here, I was busy pregaming.
Well, I’ll play by the liberal rules. One more drink for me.
(Also, I agree wrt atheist fundamentalist = 10 points. In which case it’s a drink under either rule set.)
Well, I’ll play by the liberal rules. One more drink for me.
fortunately, he’s been a little slow on the posting front tonight.
;)
One place they do seem to believe in god is Washington D.C. Here is a report on 16th Street.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/23/AR2008052302750.html
“If 16th Street is famous for leading straight to the White House, it is also God’s Boulevard, with at least 45 congregations lining the seven-mile stretch between Lafayette Square and Silver Spring.”
Blogger Superfrenchie comments,
“There are 45 red dots. There are 85 blue dots. That’s 130 churches, or more than 18 churches a mile. Put another way, that’s one every 94 yards, or less than the length of a football field.”
>The point is Kenny, that these types of online polls are
>inherently bullshit and fucking with them like this is
>what they deserve because they prove nothing.
>
>It’s harmless fun messing with something that has zero
>worth.
It doesn’t matter what the excuse is to justify what you are doing. It is what it is.
>You really are a myopic tight ass.
No, I just don’t like how people on here try to act like they are not fundamentalists and they are just as bad in many ways the religions that they put down.
If you have not learned common sense by now and how people are people no matter if they have a religion or if they have science as an excuse for their own religion.
People will act the same without religion or with it. With science or without it.
This entire crock of garbage that oh now I am enlightened because I follow something that isn’t religion does not fly at all. Everyone has to bet on something and that is why Atheism really falls on faith. You have to have a lot of faith that God does not exist. I know faith is really like a curse word in here but it is true. Everyone on here is betting that there is no God. That is the entire point or there would be no Atheists in here.
Just to make sure you understand that when you die and you cross over to the next dimension you will not be an Atheist anymore. There are no dead Atheists. It doesn’t matter that you don’t believe in God, that will be a very nieve point of view. However, only a few of the ex-Atheists get second chances.
Those millions of people that have died and come back and told people that there is more over there is a warning and I honestly would take that warning seriously.
Look at it this way. If I am wrong and there is no God then you can laugh at me (more than you already do now) and I would have been a fool. However, no harm done and I die and go back into the ground.
However, if you are wrong and there is a God and you get judged by a fair and loving God and you were told but you choose not to believe well that is up to God, but judging from where these ex-atheists came from they ended up in Hell. You can laugh at the Bible all you want, but can you really afford to laugh at people that have died and experienced what it was like over there? Can you really seriously take that chance?
If I even thought there might be a chance of burning in Hell, I would take that chance and believe. I mean don’t you people ever have any doubts about what you believe?
Sorry folks, I am not going to take that chance. I am not going to burn in Hell and I don’t want anyone here to do that either.
Do Atheist ever have doubts about what they believe ever?
I am sure you have heard all of this before and you laugh and call them idiots, but can you afford to be wrong? Think about it rationally. Can you afford to be wrong? Just in case?
Here is a radio program with an ex-atheist
and a current atheist.
Howard Storm had an NDE and was an atheist.
He also has a book that he wrote: My Descent into Death
Here is the book on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0385513763/qid=1115389542/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/103-5729478-3610235
If I find out, when I die, that the heaven/eternal torment in hell model of religion actually is the reality I’d be very disappointed in the universe. There would be nothing the ‘popular’ christian vision of hell (stolen from the moslems by the way) could do to me that would be worse than the disappointment in the knowledge that the creator put all that effort into creating an infinite universe just to turn out to be such a juvenile delinquent.
>If I find out, when I die, that the heaven/eternal torment
>in hell model of religion actually is the reality I’d be
>very disappointed in the universe.
Why? You had made a choice and blew it. That would be your decision. There is also more to life than just heaven and hell, there are other dimensions and probably other universes. Quantum physics with the String theory and membrane theory are already trying to prove that.
I admit if there is a Hell and I do believe there is just based on people who have seen the other side, then if you made the wrong choice you are probably not going to get to see the good stuff.
Like if I kill someone just because I was bored and not out of self defense, I probably won’t see the outside of a jail cell for the rest of my natural life. The same for Hell, you deserve what you get. You reap what you sow.
However, if you do get to go to Heaven, you probaby can travel all over the place and not just to stay there. You can explore the universe as fast as a thought. Why not?
I am just saying that I would not want to miss heaven or my freedom. That is what I am saying. Do Atheists ever doubt about what they believe?
Kenny, when will you understand that atheism means a lack of belief? Lack. Absence. Void. Nothing. No belief. Not an alternative faith but the absence of faith. Try hard to wrap your mind around that.
And you may want to Google ‘Pascal’s Wager’ sometime.
>Kenny, when will you understand that atheism means a lack
>of belief? Lack. Absence. Void. Nothing. No belief. Not an
>alternative faith but the absence of faith. Try hard to
>wrap your mind around that.
I understand that you think there is a lack of evidence and thus a lack of belief, but none of that matters. You have to have some doubt that maybe you are wrong and maybe it is possible. What if I am wrong?
Scientists thought that the Earth was flat and they were wrong, there is always room for error. Scientists also didn’t know about ATOMS, but they found that out. Not everything in the universe is known as a fact and there is room for error.
Humans are flawed and can make mistakes and can make errors and misjudgements and can make wrong decisions.
Your faith is that you don’t believe because of the lack of physical evidence, but what if you are wrong?
Humans are not perfect and doubt is perfectly normal.
I get it, I really do. However, just like religious people sometimes have doubt–atheists have some doubt too.
If religious people are wrong, then they just look silly and get laughed at. However, what happens if they are right and Atheists are wrong. That in my mind is a bigger problem because now there is more than just getting laughed at.
So, while you deny that it is faith, it is simply semantics. We are talking about a belief system and what the consequences are for that belief system.
No-one deserves eternal torment. That is just over the top and totally out of proportion to anything a human could do. Pushing it is just a terror tactic by the religious to keep control over the minds of the ‘faithful’.
Did Kenny ever provide an answer as to why NDEs reflect the culture/religion of the claimant?
Kenny, I’m sure I’m not the first to tell you so, but anecdotes are poor evidence, as are eyewitnesses. Forensics (science) has trumped eyewitnesses in courtroom after courtroom, and exonerated many that were wrongfully convicted on eyewitness testimony. The brain is far from perfect, and perception and memory easily distorted, altered, or corrupted. All those accounts seem to confirm is that crazy shit can happen to your mind in certain conditions and under certain stresses.
Your “evidence” for NDEs is on equal standing with those who claim abduction/rape/experimentation on themselves by aliens. Do you believe extraterrestrials are busy anally probing and artificially inseminating residents of our rural communities? It could be your butt on the line the next time you see a strange light in the sky.
Sure there’s compelling stories. Some may be interesting enough to be starting points for investigation, but unless they start providing results, unless they lead to actual evidence, they remain just stories.
>Did Kenny ever provide an answer as to why NDEs reflect
>the culture/religion of the claimant?
The ones that I read did not have a culture or religion experience. I have provided this several times of course.
So millions of eyewitnesses are wrong? Please tell me how. I sure would love to know how you can get across that one.
It’s not about the lack of evidence, it is more about the lack of focus on anything other than themselves. That is why people don’t trust atheists. They are self centered.
I mean lets be totally honest here.
Who would I trust?
An Atheist who is self centered, self focused, extremely narrow minded to the point of insanity and then claiming that they are rational. Taking only parts of science and not all of science and claiming their vision of science to be fact and without a doubt 100 percent correct and not flawed to the point of insanity. A person who has basic morals but lacks a moral compass. A person who denies all evidence if it does not fit his/her self centered world view. Deny everything but what fits your world view. Extremely militant and has an agenda to push which usually is surrounded by themsleves as again they are self centered. Full of pride about whatever they do and a denial of anything anyone else does that does not fit their world view of self interest. They don’t really care about the rest of humanity just themselves.
or
Millions of normal people that are not completely hung on themselves and think they their own gift to humanity and they had an experience that is beyond anything that they could just make up and there are millions of them that have died and come back to say there is a God in another dimension.
Some of these people that happened to go over there just happened to be atheists and they changed their tune really fast.
These people talk about love and doing things to help humankind and their lives have been changed in ways that we can’t explain unless it is true.
You don’t have a totally changed life unless something serious happens to you and I mean beyond death.
Use your head, use the so called logic and reason that you say you have and open up your mind, even a little bit.
oh FYI, I am going back to bed.
kenny is a live one, “So millions of eyewitnesses are wrong?” Eyewitnesses to what? Nothing.
Many early xian sects didn’t have hell as dogma. I supposed those “bad” xians are going to your hell.
Suppose your god is not the “real” one. Maybe allah or zeus would be displeased because of your lack of belief.
Re #91, and the self imposed filters come crashing down –
Kenny, take this as helping or insulting, but truly, seek some kind of advice or, better yet, therapy. It is worth the money and will make you better able to cope. You inflict so much pain on yourself and that is just not healthy or useful. Your comments are not an anodyne to atheism here and you are doing more harm to your “cause” than good by being a laughingstock. Kenny, they have made a drinking game out of you! You are not a martyr for your faith, you are just a figure of fun.
I know you probably will not listen to this, you do not listen to any evidence, so why would you listen to advice. I do not wish you harm nor do I particularly wish you well. For me, you have moved from amusing to pathetic to ignored and now back on my scope by the sheer volume of your posts. I do see you as closing onto the point where the news story ends with, ‘…and then turned the gun on himself’. If nothing else, take a break, talk with someone you trust, and see if might not just need to think about what is happening to you.
Go Aussie!
There’s something quite poetic about this Interland, where no one can find you…
Current stats:
Europe 65268 45% 55%
Middle East 458 69% 31%
Asia 2329 47% 53%
Caribbean 259 62% 38%
Africa 284 80% 20%
South America 8455 54% 46%
Oceania 978 29% 71%
Central America 2498 64% 36%
North America 18704 42% 58%
Kenny, #91: Truly, I don’t give a damn who you don’t trust. But I will say that I have never encountered any atheists who are “self centered, self focused, extremely narrow minded to the point of insanity and then claiming that they are rational.”
I’ve seen NONE. What I HAVE seen, again and again in profusion, are exactly these traits being exhibited by people just like you.
For individuals afflicted by it, the ultimate motivation behind their religious observance revolves around “ME”, big time. It’s all about an insane amount of attention wasted away on worrying about the state of one’s “spirit” (whatever that is, however it is confounded with one’s actual living body and mind) and whether it deserves “salvation” based on some reward/punishment scheme meted out by some scary deity who somehow calls all the shots…but who’s Final Judgement is oddly forecast by human authority-figures who love to maintain the terror, which is what really counts when one is trying to preserve power.
Be honest now. Religious folks are just plain scared of dying, period. But that’s okay. No, really. It’s alright. All of us are. We’re ALL face precisely the same mortality monster. It just takes a little more courage, strength, principle, independence, grace and integrity to deal with it without the crutch of superstition…or the cozy feeling of belonging one gets from identifying with a group of people who are superstitious.
That, sir, is the basic difference.
Wow. Look at Spain. Over 21000 votes (more than the US) and 65% vote no. Go Spain!
Doubly worthless since “God” has even more definitions than believers
I nominated PZ for Patriot on countryaboveself.com. So far, he hasn’t shown up, but neither have I been banned.
So, I voted for Colbert.
The Kenny Drinking Game:
Puts us up to 56 points. I think we should include militant atheist as part of atheist fundamentalist, though, and also add 15 points for “atheists are self-centered/have no morals” diatribes. Also, 5 points for “scientists thought the earth was flat” or “scientists didn’t know about atoms.” And though he didn’t say it on this thread, “I love science” should be included at 8 points.
Yeah, I know, I’m just asking for liver damage.
But that bring us up to 91.
Are there any points for kenny invoking Quantum mechanics and string theory? It seems like that would speed the game up a little bit.
I’ve noticed that the religious seem to have a crazy hard-on for string theory(my second year EM prof managed to mention it every class, hes the guy whho wrote this: http://arxiv.org/abs/0801.0246 ) and the only explanation I have for why is that its completely unfalsifiable(the appeal is obvous). Most of my profs and TAs who are athiest(usually a rather difficult thing to figure out, which is a good sign) always seem to have a rant about how useless string theory is and/or how much better E8 is.
Also kenny: most of the readership here are biologists (as is Dawkins), they ignore strings and membranes because they have a limitted understanding/interest in them. Since QM implies absolutely nothing about spirituality or gods, it doesn’t matter in the scope of thier lack of beliefs.
Wow, I’m so horrifically off topic there…
I’ll have to redeem myself by pointing out that Canada is at 68% out of about 2500 Which is think is about double the actual national average(and it seems like about a million times the average here in alberta). hooray for teh internets!
@#103 nanoAl —
Two of our sitting MPs are witchdoctors…they wear inflated goat-bladders on their heads – Valis@31
That’s nothing. In the UK, many of our sitting MPs wear inflated goat-bladders as heads.
So, again, I’m new to the Kenny show, but I feel the need to point something out here:
“An Atheist who is self centered, self focused, extremely narrow minded to the point of insanity and then claiming that they are rational
or
Millions of normal people that are not completely hung on themselves and think they their own gift to humanity and they had an experience that is beyond anything that they could just make up and there are millions of them that have died and come back to say there is a God in another dimension.”
Um. First, the “I don’t care who you trust” bit has already been said, so I’ll skip it.
What I want to point to, instead, is how very predictable and uniquely religious your statement there is. I’m an atheist. I don’t personally know any atheists that would pigeonhole people as self centered and self focused based simply on their religion or lack thereof. I’m not saying they don’t exist, only that I’ve yet to meet any. However, it’s a pretty common viewpoint amongst religious people, this “atheists are bad bad people who only care about hedonistic pursuits and themselves.”
It’s pretty hilarious to call one group of people narrow minded in the context of what you just said. And.
It doesn’t do a lot to recommend joining your happy god party, pal.
now we just need annother five points to make it a multiple of fifteen. 7 drinks is a good start at 3 in the afternoon on a sunday :)
Does the insult have to be “gabbling limpet”?
I mean, there are so many other possibilities for invective, logomachy, and maladicta.
“gabbling idiot” seems sufficiently crude to me, but I think all such would need to be prefixed by “Kenny, thou (&c)”.
I myself would prefer something a wee bit more classical:
“Kenny, thou kenneth not, and thou kenneth not that thou kenneth not”.
first forgive my typing. I’m on a very very small laptop and my typing sucks already.
Kenny
Yes and science was what was used to make that correction and to make that discovery. They didn’t fall to their knees and have it revealsed to them through prayer or some holy moly hand waving. They did it through the ways that science does things today. Just not with out the same tools.
That argument is again an ignorant one, and probably willfully ignorant.
But Kenny if we insert god as the answer to unexplained, undiscovered and misunderstood occurneces then what is the motivation to keep looking. If we said god did it to everything then we’d never make discoveries like the atom or any other scientific discovery. Religion stiffles discovery. If the answer to the big questions can be explained by simply saying the creator did it that way for a reason, that stops the scientific process.
You need to look up the defintion of faith and doubt.
They are not the same thing
>It’s pretty hilarious to call one group of people narrow
>minded in the context of what you just said. And.
>
>It doesn’t do a lot to recommend joining your happy god
>party, pal.
It’s not just me that thinks that. You will see that most people think that. I mean you have to be self centered as an atheist. There is no other way to run your life.
Your world view controls the way you live. I sure hope you didn’t think I was putting anyone down. That is not the point.
Kenny, thou kenneth not, and thou kenneth not that thou kenneth not.
Oh do tell. Please, tell me how how I am self centered how I live my life.
>You need to look up the defintion of faith and doubt.
>They are not the same thing
I know they are not the same thing. If you are an atheist you are putting your faith on something. I don’t care how the english language defines faith. I am telling you that you have to put your money behind something as you THINK that you are right. You can’t prove that God does not exist. All you can do is take the proof that he does and tear that down as it’s not proof enough for you.
Since there is no proof that God does not exist then you are putting your faith/trust/whatever into what you believe. What if what you believe is wrong?
That is the single question that nobody has answered so far. Again, if I am wrong and all the evidence is false including those millions of people that just saw beings of light and relatives and all of them just happen to be something of the brain and even though their lives were changed and they have seen something they have never seen before or knew about then I would be laughed at and nobody would care.
However, if there is a God and you do not believe (an unlike some silly person who said that God will reward them because they did not believe) you will be judged by God. Would you really seriously take that chance?
>Oh do tell. Please, tell me how how I am self centered how
>I live my life.
I don’t know why don’t you tell us. Or better still why not confess your sins to God and ask him into your heart.
Kenny, I would not say that all theists are self-centered, but you, like many religious fanatics, are only self-centered. It shows in every argument you make: You don’t care about other people, only about yourself. It’s pretty obvious that you bring up NDEs all the time because you are terrified of not existing any more: again, the whole point is the hope that you, personally, will not stop existing. And your selfish world view certainly controls the way that you live; how you express yourself, here and elsewhere.
All that you care about is yourself.
Ok. You are an idiot. You can’t even stay on line with your own arguments. And yes I mean it.
You accused us as being self centered, then you can’t back that up because it is like everything else you say here just shit that spills out of your mouth with no support to any of it. You made that accusation, now back it up.
Pascal’s Wager
I don’t have to prove a negative. You however have to provide evidence for a positive asertions. How many times do you have to be told that for it to sink in?
Prove to me that Quetzalcoatl and Shiva do not exist. Now. Don’t back off from it like everything else when you get painted into a corner.
Gimme an “N”!
Gimme a “D”!
Gimme an “E”!
What’s that spell?
Kenny’s idiocy!
>kenny is a live one, “So millions of eyewitnesses are
>wrong?” Eyewitnesses to what? Nothing
I have posted the links above. You should really read them.
one psychological exaplanation for NDEs
And there are others. NDEs can easily be explained as one’s brain dealing with the shock of a traumatic experience.
In the same way that abuse victims, or crime victims mentally seperate themselves from their bodies during periods of extreme stress.
Heres the difference, science is trying to explain these occurences. People like you chose the easiest answer available when faced with these questions.
I have posted the links above. You should really read them.
blah blah blah blah blah
Kenny, apparently you have been told (by some authority you choose to continue to believe, despite the evidence) that all atheists are self-centered. Doesn’t it strike you are even slightly ironic that you would choose to come to a blog where atheists hang out and presume to tell such a group of people something about themselves that they . just . might . be in a better position to know? That has more than a whiff of self-centeredness about it, right there. Most atheists I know recognize that, as members of a social species, we all do better when we all do better, and are thus motivated by rational self-interest to act so as to benefit those around us. How is that more self-centered than religious believers who act so as to benefit those around them because they are afraid – as you so vividly tell us you are – of what some God will do to them if they don’t? Especially when how we act is based on what we see, from the evidence, actually causes benefit, compared to True Believers’ actions based on purely theoretical, and wrong, ideas about what will cause benefit.
However, if there is a God and you do not believe (an unlike some silly person who said that God will reward them because they did not believe) you will be judged by God. Would you really seriously take that chance?
how many points is Pascal’s Wager worth?
sweet plastic jesus on my dashboard, why are you people STILL giving Kenny the same answers to the same bullshit he has posted for weeks now?
Since the rules of the game haven’t caught on, I’m voting for sending Kenny off to the dungeon simply for Insipidity:
I rather think that rule was written with Kenny in mind!
…and once tossed there, PZ can have the satisfaction of saying “I killed Kenny” next to his entry in the dungeon.
sweet plastic jesus on my dashboard, why are you people STILL giving Kenny the same answers to the same bullshit he has posted for weeks now?
Thus, “blah blah blah blah blah”. Kenny isn’t anything mere than noise anyway.
Not only that but I act out of a genuine care for others.
Christians have to act a way becuase of fear. Now, don’t get me wrong, I know plenty of christans that do care about others, but thet don’t use their religion as the reason. Because ultimately if their religion is the reason it is based on a fear of punishment.
My motivation isn’t fear, it’s love of my fellow man.
shit, sorry. I can’t help it. It’s a bad case of SIWOTI
again sorry for the many typo. Typing on this laptop is like torture. For everyone apparently.
@#114 Kenny —
This is one of the funniest things I’ve read all day.
Then I will be wrong, but I will still have lived my life with integrity, seeking out the truth to the best of my ability and trying to do what I can to make the world a bit better. If some powerful being wants to punish me for that, he’s an immoral, unjust, psychopathic being deserving of no respect (much less worship), in whose presence I certainly wouldn’t want to spend eternity.
What if you are wrong about Allah?
Kenny, if you do one intellectually honest thing today, at least stop saying “millions of people” in relation to your yammering about NDEs. Many? Yes. I’m sure there’s hundreds of accounts, possibly thousands. But unless you can show otherwise, “millions” of documented claims about NDEs is pure bullshit IMHO.
But then again, maybe I’m expecting a bit too much from someone that clings to Pascal’s Wager so earnestly. Seriously dude… it’s about the weakest argument there is and marks you as a true lightweight among those arguing for a god’s existence. If you took that game to the Internet Infidels forums, even your fellow believers there would laugh.
And STFU about telling me to “open my mind”. I was deeply religious for most of my life and actively involved in my church and youth ministry for nearly a decade. Opening my mind is what made me see the utter absence of evidence there was for my beliefs and the reliance on emotional arguments and faulty reasoning that were the foundations of religious “faith”. “Open my mind”? Physician, heal thyself.
So, inquiring minds want to know… Do you believe in alien abductions?
@#123 Ichthyic —
Hmmm…it’s not terribly original, so 6 points?
This brings us up to 142 points on this thread…
@#86 Kenny —
Try to step back from your indoctrination for just one minute (it’s hard, I know). Do you honestly think that disbelief is on par with murder?
Also, jail is an clearly existent, objectively verifiable place. It thus has some deterrent properties. OTOH, if one does not believe in the Christian god, one also does not believe in the Christian conception of Hell. Thus, for the atheist, the threat of hell has no power as an incentive to believe (hence why your attempts at Pascal’s wager are so ineffective).
” It’s not just me that thinks that. You will see that most people think that. I mean you have to be self centered as an atheist. There is no other way to run your life.
Your world view controls the way you live. I sure hope you didn’t think I was putting anyone down. That is not the point. ”
Please explain to me why you believe that one has to be self centered, and run their life in a self centered fashion, if one is an atheist. I really want to understand the “logic” behind that…
I’m being sincere, by the way. I want to understand.
Because I am an atheist, but I can’t imagine that anyone who knew anything about my life, personally or professionally, would ever describe it as lived in a self centered fashion…
Could it be that Kenny is a parrot that learned how to peck out letters? The parrot named Kenny just taps out words that it has seen others tap out and has conception of the symbolic meaning.
NDE
‘squawk’
atheists are immoral
‘squawk’
atheists want to kill me
‘squawk’
the bible is the most accurate historical document
‘squawk’
If Kenny is a parrot, I am very impressed.
And here I’m going to double post.
Because it occurs to me that I’d also love it if you’d explain to me why it is you believe that being religious is the only way to define a morality that takes into consideration the well being of others. Yeah. That would be super. Could you do that? Could you explain your reasoning on that, as well?
Well, I tried, and as expected, it was a waste of time. Still pretty sure that someday Kenny will be the subject of the news report that ends with, “…and then turned the gun on himself”, while all the neighbors talk about how he seemed like a nice person. Still think therapy is worth the time and money.
It was worth the try, but Kenny’s wisdom can be likened unto that of gawd, fill out the rest of the quote for yourselves as a class exercise.
For what it is worth, I do not think Kenny should be endungeoned, just starved of attention. Best not to feed a martyr by banning.
Ciao y’all
The one statistic that I find most interesting (and also shows how useless this poll is) is that half of the people who are citizens of Vatican City do not believe in God (total sample size 2).
Stop wasting your time.
A bow and a good morning nod to Kseniya for #138.
Far be it for me to cast the first stone when it comes to wasting time in that particular way. ;-)
And a good morning to you, too!
It’s unfair! I always miss Kenny by several hours! And since he doesn’t read most of any thread, I’ll never get to ask him why Muslim NDEs — complete with the Muslim paradise with the four rivers of milk, coffee, wine and I forgot what else — exist, or tell him that vertebrates physically cannot help getting a bright light in their NDEs because of the way their eyes work (cephalopods would see dark instead)!
David, it’s pointless to tell Kenny anything. He doesn’t hear.
I just can’t see Kenny as the “…then turned the gun on himself” type. He is, however, part of a large subculture of contemporary American Christianity – the one exemplified by this kind of thing – that drones on and and on about the beauty and goodness of God’s creation, and yet acts and speaks as if the whole, dark world has a flashflight under its chin.
One might ask, “What are they so afraid of?” Well, let’s look to Kenny’s view of homosexuality for an answer. If we take his words at face value, we learn that it’s not homosexuality that troubles him, it’s his god’s response to our acceptance of homosexuals that has him worried, to the point where he supposes that marriage rights for gays will lead to the nuclear annihilation – condoned, if not outright sponsored, by his own kind of loving god – of his country.
The ubiquitous reliance on some form of Pascal’s Wager betrays a similar fear: Whatever you do, don’t piss him off.
Still pretty sure that someday Kenny will be the subject of the news report that ends with, “…and then turned the gun on himself”, while all the neighbors talk about how he seemed like a nice person. (#136)
No, that is not his brand of courage.
Finland:
YES 23%
NO 77%
n=1231
Lookin’ good!
After all, that’s what is written all over the Old Testament: if you allow other people to sin, God will hold you responsible, and “allow to happen” means “belonging to the same people, whatever that means, and not throwing the first stone”.
Kenny hasn’t stoned any abominations today. Kenny is scared shitless.
At this point, he’d probably prefer the Sumerian afterlife, if he had any idea what that was supposed to be like.
I would suggest that Muslim NDEs don’t bother him, because his notions of God are probably sufficiently vague and incoherent that he doesn’t see Allah as being that different from the Christian God. Alternatively (or additionally), the Muslim NDEs are just fakes or dreams — not like those True Christian™ NDEs.
The same goes for the optic signal being the source of the white light. That doesn’t explain the visions of loved ones, or the life review, or the experiences of Hell and Heaven, right?
OK, enough of trying to think as badly as he does.
Kenny, thou depraved and rotting shrieking fungus with a puffed-up goat-bladder for a brain!
It’s not the Kenny turning the gun on himself part that I have trouble with, it’s the “all the neighbors talk about how he seemed like a nice person” part that rings false.
Unless all his neighbours are the kinds of assholes that share his beliefs, I’d guess that there are at least a few nearby that wouldn’t mind seeing his house go up for sale. Unless of course he’s really a quiet milquetoast who reserves his OPINOINS for the interweb.
In any case, I urge you, Kenny, not to use firearms. Solely for the sake of those around you and the risk of collateral damage (and what is the Rapture if not the biggest collateral damage fantasy ever?), please study this resource for safe and effective ways to speed up your ascent into Heaven.
Happy last-will-and-testament writing, Kenny! We won’t miss you!
Dude. Right on that very page, it has a link that says: “Why assisted suicide for the mentally troubled is so problematic”.
“Kenny” needs help in getting his brain to work rationally, not in turning said brain off permanently.
At the very least, think of his poor wife. Think of his poor atheist brother-in-law. Maybe he has pets.
Kenny is convinced he’s fine. Who am I to argue with him?
Yeah, well, I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony, but that’s not going to happen either. Besides, I’m not telling him he should off himself, just that he should open his mind to other options should he choose to do so.
I am.
Hoo boy, am I ever.
And waste money on pet food and vet bills when there are so many poor and starving people out there he could be helping instead? Not our selfless God-believing Kenny. But if it makes you feel better Owlmirror: “Please everyone, remember to have your pets and evangelicals neutered or spayed.”
I’m with Ich and Jeff on this one. Kenny’s no fun anymore. It’s the same, insipid shit over and over and over. He contributes nothing but mistakenly condescending trollfrass to any discussion and he’s too easy to parodize to make even that any fun.
KENNY FOR PLONKITUDE!
Plus, he tries to jack every thread.
Plonk him.
If we were in Frank Zappa’s world we could get the gay-bob robot to “plook” him. That or the magical pig with marital aids suck all over it.
Seems like a fitting “punishment” to fit his blabbering about homosexuals here.
/random probably unknown reference off.
I’d much prefer it if FZ were still in ours. *sigh*
Vatican City State 2 50% 50%
Uh oh. Someone’s about to get pope-slapped.
@Kenny
I get it, I really do. However, just like religious people sometimes have doubt–atheists have some doubt too.
No, Kenny, you don’t get it, not one tiny eeny-weeny bit.
I have had OBEs and maybe one NDE-can’t be sure-I was only 4, but I was aspirating on my own vomit while being raped. It was at least an OBE, and I assume my rapist grandfather brought me back to save his own skin, and to have me around for his future enjoyment. But the episodes you’re so fond of are nothing more than ingenious mind transports to help us compartmentalize trauma. Fight or flight syndrome of the brain. So to quote Jack Nicholson, “Go sell crazy somewhere else.”
I didn’t know about the drinking game. I was gone all weekend and am just catching up and reading all these posts of Kenny’s at once, so I’m post-dating my 5 shots of Cuervo Gold the other night and attributing them to Kenny. Is that allowed? I’d never had Tequila before, so some kind Christian friends introduced me to it. I didn’t really like the salted hand and the lime,(gave that up after the first one) but the shots were fine. I didn’t even start to get a buzz till the 5th one. They all decided it was because I like Scotch so much.
Sure, if you want to ruin the entire drinking game economy with your high finance antics.
On a serious note, thanks for sharing such a traumatic incident.
if you must, but I think the better choice is to start again.
yes thank you