(This is the text of the talk I’m giving at the Global Atheist Convention; I also thought it would make a good Sunday Sacrilege, so here you go.)
I must apologize for some topic drift — I came up with a title for this talk some months ago, but the as I was working on it, it…evolved. So what I’m actually going to talk about today is my plan to assault heaven and kill God. You don’t mind, do you?
A little background, first. You may have heard this common phrase.
In the beginning was the Word.
But, wait, no…that’s not true. In the beginning of human society, there was the Blood. The marker of our identity was the family, the tribe, the clan. What united us into functioning social units was our pedigree: the web of familial ties that knit us together. Unfortunately, that union was limited to a fairly small group of people, and could only be expanded by the commitment of marriage and birth. It limited us.
So next was the Word, right?
No, next was the King. The king was a proxy for the Blood: you declared allegiance to the big man, the chief, the royal family. Maybe you werenÕt directly linked by familial relationship, but the King or Pharaoh represented you–he was a symbol of your identity. The size of the social unit grew.
Now we come to the Word?
No, next was the City. In the ancient world, the large social unit was the city: Babylon. Athens. Rome. Kings come and go, but Rome was eternal. People didn’t say they were Greek; there was an awareness of a similarity of language and history, but when you asked who they were, they thumped their chests and said, “I am an Athenian!” or “I am a Spartan!” Rome built a whole empire with an arrogance of pride in that special Roman citizenship, so it was even an identity that could be expanded to a remarkable degree; people standing on Hadrian’s Wall in farthest Britain or on the frontiers of Syria would find honor in calling themselves Roman.
So now we come to the Word.
There’s a problem with basing your identity on a city. Cities fall. When Alaric the Goth sacked Rome in AD410, St Augustine could sit back in the relative safety of his home in North Africa and note the event with both horror and triumph: the Fall of Rome was an immense cataclysm that shook the ancient world, shattering that sense of identity and constancy, but was also an opportunity for an alternative way of thinking about ourselves to come to ascendancy: the way of the Word, the People of the Book.
Augustine didn’t think of it. It had been tried for a long time. The most notable people of the book are the Jews; they attached their sense of identity to a collection of laws and stories and commentaries and books, part of which is the Christian Old Testament. They acquired a persistence that cities couldn’t have. When Jerusalem fell, the Jewish people were not destroyed; the event became a chapter in their books, a remembered part of their history. It strengthened their identity. A Roman couldn’t be landless, cityless, countryless, but a Jew could: you could take everything away from the Jewish people, you could make them homeless and scattered, and still they knew who they were.
The most brilliant thing Christianity ever did was to take that idea of the Word, that concept of identity wrapped up in an abstract set of ideas and stories, and to open it up to everyone. Aww, Rome fell? YouÕre all alone? Here, we can help you find yourself, we can give a new meaning to your life, we have a standard that you can hold high and find unity with a greater people. It’s called the Bible.
I repeat, absolutely brilliant. It made Christianity bulletproof.
Cities fall. Kings die. Bloodlines fade. But ideas can go on and on and on. Now, a 21st century person can feel continuity with a 5th century priest; an American can share a central element of their self with someone in South Africa, with someone in China, with someone in Australia; heck, with someone on the space station, or walking on the moon. We can have the concept of an ecumene; people tied together by a common belief that crosses borders. It’s a powerful tool. It’s widely used, too; what is a United States citizen but someone bound by a set of documents, the Constitution?
There’s also the power that comes from an unkillable idea. You’ll find a version of this in V for Vendetta, Alan Moore’s graphic novel or the movie, which is precisely what the story is all about. Here’s what Evie had to say:
“We are told to remember the idea, not the man, because a man can fail. He can be caught. He can be killed and forgotten. But four hundred years later an idea can still change the world. I’ve witnessed firsthand the power of ideas. I’ve seen people kill in the name of them; and die defending them. But you cannot kill an idea, cannot touch it or hold it. Ideas do not bleed, it cannot feel pain, and it does not love.”
You were probably dubious and wondering what the heck I was doing saying the Bible was powerful and important, but maybe now that I’ve cited nerd god Alan Moore for the concept you’ll accept what I’m saying.
You can kill a man, you can sack a city, but Alan Moore says you cannot kill an idea. And ideas can change the world.
Ideas can change the world.
Say it again: Ideas can change the world.
Live it: Ideas can change the world.
This is something atheists share in common with Christians; you’ll get no argument from the believers in any religion that ideas can change the world. It’s what they’ve been doing for thousands of years, usually for the worse.
But I have to disagree with Alan Moore on one thing. You can kill an idea. This is also something that the people of faith are all aware of — perhaps unconsciously, perhaps not in any intellectual sense. But they know, and they are afraid. History is littered with dead ideas. Christians struggled hard to kill some of them, and succeeded in some cases, failed in others. They know it’s hard, but they also know from experience that it can be done.
Read the pronouncements of popes and archbishops, read the newspapers and web columns, look to the priests in their pulpits, and you’ll see something wonderful: they are reacting to the rise of the New Atheists in the same way the Roman establishment reacted to the Visigoths appearing on the horizon. I cannot blame them for being fearful; we are galloping towards the central ideas of their identity, and we aim to tear down their walls and replace their obsolete myths with change and something more vital.
Deep in their heart of hearts, they fear that a sequel to St Augustine’s City of God is in the works, and it’s going to be written by an atheist…and it will speak of a brand new world and new opportunities, it will create a new ecumene of people united under something other than the folly of faith.
So how do you kill an idea? How will we sack the city of faith?
By coming up with a better, more powerful idea. That’s the only way we can win.
Now I’m not so arrogant that I’d come in front of you all to tell you that I’ve come up with the grand idea that will be a religion-killer. This isn’t the kind of thing that pops into existence out of one guy’s mind — it takes refinement over time, lots of smart people hammering it out, just like those holy books weren’t magicked into existence in an instant. Fortunately, our idea has been incubating for a few centuries, and has involved multitudes of our civilization’s greatest minds.
It’s called science.
Science is our weapon, our god-killer. It’s the greatest tool humanity has ever invented — it’s taken us from a hodge-podge of bickering near-savages living in the mud and dying young of disease and childbirth and starvation and sword-pokes to a hodge-podge of bickering near-savages who sometimes walk on the moon, who sometimes cure diseases, who live twice as long as our predecessors, who can look deep into cells or far out to distant galaxies. It has given us great power to accomplish marvelous things or to screw up the whole planet.
Science also has the power to transform our sense of identity. Some of us are no longer People of the Word, members of a special tribe bound together by the narratives and rules in quaint old books. We are instead the People of Reality: we are united by common knowledge, by a sense of universality, by our commitment to evidence. Personally, I find no sense of myself in the Judeo-Christian fairy tales I was brought up with–they are too narrow, too bigoted, too false. The words of my people are written in the strands of DNA I find in every cell of my body, and the story they tell is clear and inspiring. We are all products of the natural world; stars died to create the elements we are made of, and 4 billion years of churning life struggled and was born and died to shape us. We are close kin to every single human being on the planet, without exception — there is no tribe that is outside our family. And even deeper, we are related to every living thing on earth. You simply cannot get any more universal than the scientific story of life.
I take far greater pride in the accomplishments of science than I do of my ethnic group, or my place in Western culture, or my particular ruling form of government, or least of all, the church I was brought up in. Science bridges differences: I can find common ground with American scientists, Canadian scientists, Mexican scientists, Chinese scientists, Iranian scientists, Australian scientists. Maybe you aren’t a scientist, strictly speaking, but you’ve read the latest book by Dawkins or Hawking, or you love David Attenborough’s TV shows, or you’re a bird watcher or like weekend hiking in the Mountains. You are my people! We are one, united in an appreciation of the natural world!
There’s another reason I can take pride in science. Science has real power. Science actually works. But maybe I should actually take a moment to define what science is.
Science is the process that does its damnedest to figure out how stuff actually works, rather than how we wished it worked.
You know, I kinda wish peach pits actually cured cancer, but I think it’s more important to do the experiments and measure the results and see if they really do…because if they don’t, I think it would be a good idea for people to move on to more effective treatments.
You know, when I’m shopping for a used car, I kinda wish that cherry shiny sports car that I look so good in and that the seller is dumping for cheap also had a smoothly functioning engine and a trouble-free transmission, but I’ll still take it for a test drive and bring it to a mechanic for inspection.
You know, my ancestors probably wished the shaman’s magic talisman kept tigers away, but he probably trusted more in a fire and palisades and a spear close to hand.
The real power of science comes beyond that immediate effect, though. It turns out that if you’re disciplined and careful, if you reject ideas based on superstition, revelation, and tradition and actually require confirmable evidence for any suppositions about even mundane things, you find yourself on good stable ground, and are able to ask even deeper questions, and get answers. And before you know it, you find yourself in possession of a strong chain of evidence that leads you to answers about the fundamental nature of the universe. That’s real power.
When theologians argue, they try to resolve differences by turning to murky sources remote from anything fundamental: they open their holy texts, they cite fellow theologians, they try to reinterpret words that have been reinterpreted many times before. Have you ever heard scientists argue, though? They do all the time. But they don’t resolve issues by appealing to higher authorities: they don’t usually argue that because Richard Dawkins said it, it’s settled. They don’t argue that we have to parse Charles Darwin’s words a little more finely to arrive at the truth.
No, they say, “I’m going into the lab and do an experiment to test that proposition.”
They say, “I’m going to build a new instrument to measure that and see who’s right.” Our only authority is reality, and that’s what we test all of our inferences against. When you’re studying the world, your source of information is the world.
I’ll have more respect for theologians, whose object of study is god, when they actually start querying their subject directly. OK, they can start small and begin by pinning down ghosts or angels and asking them the tough questions that will eventually lead to collaring the deity, but you know, it’s just absurd that people who make so many assertions about the supernatural never seem to actually study supernatural sources of information.
It’s almost as if they don’t exist.
Now I’m sniping a bit at religion, and there’s a reason for that. Science and religion are in opposition. Faith is the atheist’s enemy. Remember, science is a process for figuring out how the world actually works. If you short-circuit the process and declare that you already have the answer, you just have to believe, then you are an enemy of science. If you simply assert your desired conclusion, and ignore the fact that reality is rarely about the answer you want, you’re an enemy of science. Truth is often uncomfortable, you have to value it because it is true, not because it makes you feel good.
The clearest examples of the dangers of religious thinking can be found in issues of science policy. Questions about the environment, for instance, ought to be resolved by careful examination of the evidence and by weighing the costs and benefits of proposed solutions, right? That’s what you and I would do. That’s how reasonable people operate.
Not George Pell, as you Australians know lives in a state of denial. Not James Inhofe. Not John Shimkus. These are our American representatives, who have influence on energy and environmental policy, who endorse the “Green Dragon” philosophy and actively deny the evidence of the world around us. What is the green dragon, you might ask? Here’s a statement from one of its proponents. The green dragon is environmentalism.
“Around the world, environmentalism has become an unbalanced, radical movement. Something we call “The Green Dragon.” And it is deadly, deadly to human prosperity, deadly to human life, deadly to human freedom and deadly to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Make no mistake about it, environmentalism is no longer your friend. It is your enemy. And the battle is not primarily political or material, it is spiritual. As Christians, we must actively trust God and obey His word. So when it comes to environmental stewardship, we must reject the false world view, the faulty science and the counterfeit gospel that threatens to corrupt society and the church.”
So in addressing the problems of the world, they deny evidence of the world to favor of mysticism and dogma. Both Inhofe and Shimkus have come out with unbelievably clear statements: we don’t have to worry about climate change, global warming, and CO2. Why? Because, in the bible, God said we don’t have to worry about a flood anymore, he promised it wouldn’t happen. And besides, god is also going to end the world soon, so it’s out of our hands.
Oh, yeah, it’s the End Times, don’t you know. Would you believe that, according to a recent Pew survey, 40% of Americans believe that Jesus is finally going to get around to fulfilling that promise he made 2000 years ago of global death and judgment, and it’s going to happen in our lifetimes? Aren’t we lucky? And here’s the creepy thing: those affirmative respondents all think that yes, we are lucky. Hooray for Armageddon and Apocalypse! Bring on famine, war, plague, and death! The demented ghouls of the end times are actually a significant political lobby, fighting to support Israel, no matter what. Why? Because they have a prophecy in Revelation that the Jewish state must be restored, in order that it be destroyed in a nuclear holocaust, after which the surviving Jews will convert en masse to Christianity. Go on, read the Left Behind books, which spell it all out, so it must be true.
If a scientist saw a cataclysm coming, say a meteor on collision course for earth in 2050, we wouldn’t be saying, “Hallelujah, physics is true, bring it on! Our faith in mathematics is strengthened!” We’d be trying to stop it. Which makes the Christian reaction puzzling. If I actually believed Jesus was coming to end the world, I’d be preparing by stocking up on timber and nails. They were pretty effective last time.
Now wait, there might be some people saying (not anyone here, of course) that that’s no fair. Maybe you’re a liberal Christian, and I’m picking on the extremists (although, when we’re talking about roughly half the United States being evolution-denying, drill-baby-drill, apocalypse-loving christians, it’s more accurate to say I’m describing a representative sample). Perhaps you’re a moderate, you support good science, education, and the environment, you just love Jesus or Mohammed, too.
I’m sorry, but I don’t like you. I’ll concede that you are doing less direct harm, and I will thank you for your support of shared causes, and I’ll also happily work alongside you in those causes, but I also think you are still doing indirect harm to foundational principles of a rational society. You believe in some outrageous bullshit; the christian myths of a virgin giving birth to a god who dies are illogical lunacy, and the Christian doctrines of original sin and redemption through blood sacrifice by proxy are crippling psychopathological abominations. You promote unreason by telling people that it is OK to believe in some things without evidence, and even in contradiction to evidence and reason. You are cafeteria realists, and you undermine the essential goal of bringing the whole of humanity out of the darkness of ignorance and into the light of the real world.
I tell such people that the universe is clearly lacking in gods and supernatural forces, so grow up and set all that nonsense aside. Join us and become a good atheist — you’ll be much happier and will waste less time in pointless just-pretend foolishness.
So, what does it mean to be a good atheist in the 21st century? How do you live as a good atheist? What should our values be?
We’re a diverse group, and we never agree on everything, so I’ll give you just a few: truth, autonomy, community.
Truth
This one is so fundamental that it’s hard to say much about it. If you aren’t dedicated to learning and discovery, to finding out the factual truth of matters, then you can’t be a good atheist. Goodbye.
You might be saying to yourself, but this isn’t a very good criterion, because doesn’t everyone seek the truth? Don’t Christians say they value truth, too?
Unfortunately, they say it, but they don’t practice it. If that were true, all the major Christian denominations wouldn’t have denial of the mechanisms of evolution as core parts of their doctrine. Now I know right away that many of you will be protesting that the Catholic church nominally accepts that humans evolved over time; so does the church of latter day saints and many other denominations. But note that I said the mechanisms of evolution; we have a battery of well-supported, unambiguously factual mechanisms driving evolutionary change, and none of them involve fairies, aliens, angels or gods. The only process of evolution endorsed by any of these religious institutions is of god-guided, directed, teleological change, a mechanism completely unsupported by any evidence, in direct contradiction to known processes, and propped up only by an irrational need to make their holy dogma relevant to human origins.
They’re all intelligent design creationists, in other words, and they’re all wrong.
I left my liberal Lutheran church when I was 13 years old and learned that I was expected to believe in a lot of false ideas to be a member. This has been a lifelong value for me; how much of the facts and data and evidence are you willing to compromise? My answer was zero.
Autonomy
For many years, atheists have been in the minority; I have talked with so many people who thought for so long that they were the only one, the only person in their community who saw through the godawful babble of the church. (of course, now that we have the internet, those same people are discovering that they are part of a global movement). What that means, though, is that many atheists are nonconformists, boat-rockers, weirdos, and outcasts.
And we like it that way.
We are not sheep. We love people who stand up for themselves, we detest people who try to impose rules on us — I have to be very careful to keep my description of values general, and be clear that I’m not dictating them to you, but describing what I see emerging as a consensus, because otherwise I’ll be pilloried by my own kind. We’re a pitiless bunch.
But what it means is that we find common cause with the people who have also been oppressed by this racist patriarchal culture we live in. People should be free to be who they are…and more, they should be free to stand up loud and proud and be that person with impunity. We will not live in a monoculture. We’re going to find strength in diversity.
I can think of no clearer example than a struggle that has riven the online atheist community for the last year or two, the effort to acknowledge the role of women in atheism. For years, the face of atheism has been white, male, and middle-aged, and a certain complacency had settled in — women by default had their role, as wives or organizers, and we had adopted a casually masculine expectation that all of our intellectual leaders would look like, well, me. Atheist meetings looked a lot like meetings of the Mormon leadership.
That’s changing. We’re telling people to come out, join us, be free of the straitjacket of convention, and what’s happening is the discovery that women have even more reason to be pissed off at religion than men, and they are a fast-growing segment of our community. Some people resent that — I cannot and will not argue that being an atheist makes you free of irrationality — but I can say for myself and the majority of atheists that we are all overjoyed. Our ranks are swelling with fierce independent women who are changing us, making us stronger and louder, and standing up for their causes and making all of us fight for women’s rights, reproductive freedom, and equality of opportunity. This is atheism, too.
Are you LGBT, wanting equality and social justice? You are atheism.
Are you a member of a minority, seeking recognition for your rights as a human being and respect in a society you helped shape? You are atheism.
If you are a human being with real world concerns, who wants to change the world, who wants to contribute in a unique way that encourages those diverse views, then you should be one of us.
The club is only closed to people who fuss about an imaginary afterlife, getting right with an imaginary god, conforming to an arbitrary dogma, and who think the most useless act of all, prayer, is a contribution you deserve thanks for.
Community
There is a tired stereotype of atheists current in conservative circles. We are all cranky curmudgeons, grim nihilists and loners. Not a word of it is true. When you’re a social pariah, as so many atheists have been, is it any wonder that some of us might be a bit lonely and bitter? As my colleague on freethoughtblogs, Greta Christina, has been arguing, we also have good reason to be angry with a discriminatory society that does stupid things in the name of the Lord.
But atheism is blossoming. Atheists are coming out everywhere, speaking up on the Internet and public spaces, gathering together in meetings and discovering that we are not alone, and yes, it is good. We like each other. We work together. We’re happy together.
Three weeks ago, we had a wonderful meeting in Washington DC,the Reason Rally. 20,000 people gathered together in utterly miserable weather — it was cold, and it rained all day. I walked around in the crowds, and you know what? Everyone was smiling. Nobody was complaining (except for the cranky protesters on the fringe). The policemen monitoring the crowd were smiling. Goddamn, if I were the Grinch my heart would have grown three sizes that day.
I was also privileged to be backstage with all the speakers and celebrities and leaders of atheist organizations, and they were all jubilant, too. We were all damp and soggy — I remember watching Tim Minchin doing his set, barefoot on a stage puddled with water and strung with cables to Bad Religion’s amps and speakers, and thinking one good short and the atheist movement could be decapitated today — and every one of us had big goofy smiles on our faces.
And now this weekend we meet 4000 strong in Melbourne–and what an amazing crowd this is.
This is not surprising. We are a social species, and we thrive in communities, it’s how we have survived and grown so far. And atheists, contrary to some of our critics, are fully human, not aliens at all.
This willing cooperativity is something we have to value. Not only is it who we are, but it’s how the good atheists of the 21st century will win in the end.
We humans are different from other species in this regard. I have a favorite story from the primatologist Robert Sapolski to highlight this human attribute. We are not baboons.
“When baboons hunt together they’d love to get as much meat as possible, but they’re not very good at it. The baboon is a much more successful hunter when he hunts by himself than when he hunts in a group because they screw up every time they’re in a group. Say three of them are running as fast as possible after a gazelle, and they’re gaining on it, and they’re deadly. But something goes on in one of their minds — I’m anthropomorphizing here — and he says to himself, “What am I doing here?I have no idea whatsoever, but I’m running as fast as possible, and this guy is running as fast as possible right behind me, and we had one hell of a fight about three months ago. I don’t know why we’re running so fast right now, but I’d better just stop and slash him in the face before he gets me. ” the baboon suddenly stops and turns around, and they go rolling over each other like Keystone cops and the gazelle is long gone because the baboons just become disinhibited. ÊThey get crazed around each other at every juncture.”
I think that’s cool. That’s not us, we aren’t baboon-like at all. Even though baboons are really scary animals — they’re stronger than us, individually fiercer, and they have those savage huge fangs — they have this weakness, and we have this strength. We work together.
You know that in the childhood of our species, we were prey to the predators of the African continent. Alone, we were soft, weak, and tasty, and I’m sure the lions and leopards enjoyed a hominid snack. But together…I’m sure that when some ferocious big cat came upon a tribe of humans, together, and when they all turned 10 or 15 pairs of eyes on the predator and reached for stones and sharpened sticks, that cat felt fear and slunk away. Those eyes, those hunter’s eyes on the front of the face…when a group of us turn those eyes in cold calculation on any problem, when our hands work together, we are the most powerful force on the planet.
Yesterday I was listening to our Christian protesters outside, and I thought, “Huh. So that’s what you get when you give a sheep a microphone, amplified bleating.” There they were, calling on everyone to deny the richness of human experience and join the flock in the narrow boring confines of the sheep pen, so mindless they didn’t even realize they were calling to the wolves.
I have a different metaphor for us, my brothers and sisters in atheism. We are not sheep; there are no shepherds here. I look out from this stage and I see 4000 pairs of hunter’s eyes, 4000 hunter’s minds, 4000 pairs of hunter’s hands. I see the primeval primate hunting band grown large and strong. I see us so confident in our strength that we laugh at our enemies. I see a people thinking and planning, fierce and focused, learning and building new tools to conquer new worlds.
You are not sheep. You, my brothers and sisters in atheism, are a fierce, coordinated hunting pack — men and women working together, and those other bastards have cause to fear us. So let’s do it: make them tremble as we demolish the city of god.
It was a nice read, I’m starting to regret not being there now.
If all the talks were published as a book, I’d buy it.
We need an atheist equivalent for “Amen!”
Ramen?
god DAMN
Great speech, I can’t wait to hear that delivered on video of the event. Hope that will be soon. It’s inspiring, I want that vision of all people working together for reality instead of dogma to happen. I think the small group of atheist friends I know need to organize. Maybe we can help others escape the sheep pens.
Being there during the presentation, I was inspired, entertained, and educated listening to someone who engaged the 4000-strong crowd with wit and clear reasoning for athiesism. Congratulations P.Z. on a fine presentation, and very privileged to have been able to attend the conference with all these wonderful “hunters”.
Damn. You were on fire, PZ. Thanks.
“stocking up on timbers and nails, they were pretty effective last time”
Greatest quote ever and all over my next T-shirt
Bravo! Bravo! Wish I was there to hear it. Well done!
uhhhhh…. can’t you just post the video. Reading is so finished.
I’m glad to see you were putting your time to such good use while I sat through a 4 hour party planning meeting for SkepchickCON! :D
Srsly, tho, GREAT talk. Really inspiring!
Bravo PZ! Bravo! Brafucking O!!!
Rick:
Well, it’s certainly not worth the effort when it comes to your contributions in writing.
Heh, when I read “if I were the Grinch my heart would have grown three sizes that day”, I mistakenly read Gingrich instead of Grinch. My response in my mind was: that is pretty unrealistic…
Then why are you here?
Fucking, epic.
Dear sweet merciful Cthulhu I wish I was there :/
Every priest who reads that speech will be up in the pulpit next Sunday imploring the flock to make sure their children are home-schooled. It’s going to be a long, hard, battle.
“…so mindless they didn’t even realize they were calling to the wolves.” Hehehe…Love it.
grumpyoldfart:
It’s been a long, hard, battle. It won’t get better if we play happy faitheists with the religious. Loud, howling, uncompromising voices are needed. We’ve been silent too fucking long.
(Howls in appreciation)
Funny about wolves, though. As far as I know they weren’t around in the motherland, so what did we think of them, or they of us, when we first met? And how soon after that encounter did we start living together?
*standing ovation*
That was one hell of a speech.
Please link to a video when (and if) possible. It was a great read, but hearing the passionate delivery can only make it better, as well as let those of us who can’t travel to conferences experience at least a small part of the fun.
So say we all.
Huzzah!
Yes, I would really love to see a video of this!
Science is our weapon, our god-killer.
Science is not your weapon. Please do not pollute science with your dogmatic beliefs. Science is what it is, and it has nothing to do with atheism, or theism.
rajkumar, stuff a bushel of Quantumn Tomatoes™ up your arse and stop your incessant babbling.
Masterly, I can’t remember being so moved by anything you’ve written.
Just as well I wasn’t there to hear it live because I would’ve been a wreck.
Rajkumar, the only way science wouldn’t have a say on the God question was if God doesn’t have any meaningful impact on the world. Otherwise, if God is a part of our world then surely science has something to contribute on claims of the supernatural. You can’t have theism without having at least the principle of science having something to say on the matter.
PZ,
A very good talk. I’ll read it again on the flight home from Melbourne. It’s a dreadfully long flight to Perth. Three and a half hours. Can you imagine the tedium of such a long flight?
I’d personally reverse Truth-Autonomy-Community to give an easier to remember acronym ‘CAT’.
What a great event and your talk was fantastic. Accommodation will get us nowhere. Being part of the wolf pack is too much fun.
Wow. That was one hell of a tub thumping talk!
#17 – I hope that the priests who read it realise that their sermons have no chance of being anywhere near as inspiring, moving or eloquent. A girl can dream …
Clare
Since the word “Amen” doesn’t have anything to do with gods (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amen) I don’t see why we can’t just use “Amen” ourselves.
Great speech, PZ. Though it does make me think: there is no City of God to sack. There are only the Cities of Priests, each one pretending to be the City of God.
One important lesson everyone should be taught is the concept of annealing – to use the metallurgical term.
In science the same process is used to refine our understanding. Knowledge is squeezed and relaxed so our more and more accurate understanding of it crystallises out.
It is also worth noting that annealing does not necessarily produce a complete crystal in the product being annealed. There has already come a time when the annealing can not produce the single crystal of truth and the energy and time required to melt down and re-anneal the knowledge we have far exceeds the capabilities of a single human.
Still beats the shit out of a lunatic wish list though.
Fantastic talk, PZ, I enjoyed reading it almost as much as hearing it. I only regret not having the opportunity to have met you in person (couldn’t get to the dinner)
I was pleasantly surprised at the many young faces in the audience, so many to follow your example and those of other leading atheists.
I hope you have a great trip back to the states,
rajkumar, stuff a bushel of Quantumn Tomatoes™ up your arse and stop your incessant babbling.
I am sure you can take a bit of constructive criticism, can’t you? After all, I am not addressing some radical believers here who believe in some magic sky daddy, or the fairies at the bottom of their garden? I am addressing the defenders of reason, logic and science, and people who are going to use ‘science’ as a ‘weapon’ to kill ‘god!.
If Einstein was alive, I am sure he would have committed suicide seeing what have people like you done to science.
Fan-Fekkin-tastic!
My other half and I were at the 2010 in Melbourne ,we jetted in from jhb south Africa ,I so regret not attending this one,I will not miss the next one!
rajkumar #34
This is unsurprising. I get the very quick but obvious impression that you are sure of a great many stupid things.
The impression that your level of surety is directly related to how much you’d like to believe something regardless of what reality, evidence, and critical thinking might have to say on the issue.
It was an exceptionally well delivered talk and I have an ever increasing respect for the Man who is P.Z. Myers
Bachfiend
I have a 3.5 hour trip ahead of me too, but in the opposite direction. It was a fantastic convention wasn’t it?
PZ,
You were on fire, and inspiring. The whole GAC was a great event; it was so good to see people in real life.
Rajkumar, could you please drop the faux-enlightened attitude? Coming on here to tell everybody that they’re doing it wrong while offering no substance of your own is tiresome. And if you object to this characterisation, I’ll remind you that you wouldn’t read a paper that refuted a claim you made and chastised others for not considering, as well as not shoowing the slightest understanding of the topic you were making that pronouncement on. Constructive criticism from you? Here’s some from me – if you’re going to try to engage in an argument over concepts, have some understanding before you condemn others for not seeing it your way.
Yesterday we had the Christians bleating, and today it was the Muslims, about 10 of them. I almost felt sorry for them (almost).
It was great to see the atheists present laughing at them, particularly the many confident atheist women.
It’s just a pity they weren’t here the same time as the Christians – we could have just left them to it.
Does anyone know if the “counter protest” to the convention that the Christians were going to organize in Federation Square took place?
Yeah, really. What could POSSIBLY be less relevant to science than true facts about the nature or history of the universe around us?
It was great watching them try to maintain their Angryman Faces as laughing teenage girls posed in front of them for pictures and then their confusion as we sang ‘Always look on the bright side of life’ to them.
Champagne comedy all around.
And once we’d all taken our pleasure of them, we returned to lunch and that was that.
Rajkumar, could you please drop the faux-enlightened attitude? Coming on here to tell everybody that they’re doing it wrong while offering no substance of your own is tiresome. And if you object to this characterisation, I’ll remind you that you wouldn’t read a paper that refuted a claim you made and chastised others for not considering, as well as not shoowing the slightest understanding of the topic you were making that pronouncement on. Constructive criticism from you? Here’s some from me – if you’re going to try to engage in an argument over concepts, have some understanding before you condemn others for not seeing it your way.
I already told you why I didn’t read that paper. I don’t like reading philosophy. If you don’t mind, you can still explain what’s in that paper in your own words. And how did I not show the ‘slightest’ understanding of the topic I was making pronouncements on? I tried to explain to you, many times, my position.
Did I condemn anyone for not seeing my concepts my way? Sorry if I did, but I thought I really didn’t have the power to condemn anyone. I am only a human being, not a god… only gods condemn, and only in holy scriptures….
Rajkumar, please…
Whether you like it or not, science has slowly but surely been killing gods. Gods used to be invoked to explain thunder and rainbows and the diversity of life. Now he have physics and biology. As science grows, god becomes smaller and smaller, retreating into the gaps of our knowledge. If things continue as they have the last couple of centuries, god will die at the hands of science. Either that, or the god idea will be redefined into something so vague and abstract that it will have barely any meaning left.
Face it, there is no need for a god any more. There is no evidence that he exists or ever existed, therefore belief in such a thing is unjustified, just like belief in unicorns and pixies. It’s science, or at least scientific thinking, that tells us this. Science IS our weapon! Now stand aside, or be obliterated by it!
Also, I’d like to add ‘Hystrix cristata’ and ‘your anus’.
rajkumar – why do you object to Professor Myers description of science as a weapon? It seems similar to me to the idea of saying that science is a ‘light in the darkness’ and I think he is correct in what I understood him to be presenting: an argument for science being a methodology by which we can determine what is real vs what is unreal and that it combats, or acts as a weapon, against the fallibility of our intuition and senses. Do you not agree?
rajkumar
There is an army out there with a shared goal. That of destroying any part of society that they cannot control. Different factions of that army use different tactics with some using sharia law to justify the destruction of women that do not mindlessly obey. In America they use the ballot box to force our children to learn and trust creationism over reality. Many feel genocide is acceptable if it will lessen the numbers of those who will not follow blindly the dogma supporting their right to rule. There are so many factions that fighting them all individually will succeed only after tremendous losses of innocent men, women and children. The fastest and least destructive way to stop them is to do away with their murderous unjust leader, in this case God. If you have a better weapon to employ here than science bring it out. Otherwise I’m siding with P.Z. in an effort to stem the carnage as quickly as possible. Science must be our God-killer.
Arm the Science Cannons! There be Gods on the horizon!
Also, rajkumar is a bad person and I don’t like him. Not one bit.
Awesome stuff, PZ! Pretty damn inspiring.
And the crowd went wild.
Thanks for this
That was a seriously rabble rousing speech. Perfectly placed in the bill too. Thanks PZ, that was the highlight of my weekend. Listening was pure FUN.
Here Fucking Hear! (or is it here here, hear hear? I dunno,) but Here Fucking Here PZ!
why do you object to Professor Myers description of science as a weapon? It seems similar to me to the idea of saying that science is a ‘light in the darkness’ and I think he is correct in what I understood him to be presenting: an argument for science being a methodology by which we can determine what is real vs what is unreal and that it combats, or acts as a weapon, against the fallibility of our intuition and senses. Do you not agree?
I agree. But science is evolving, right? Our understanding of the universe is evolving, right? Science is open to **any** concept pending proper evidence, even if it means concepts that contradict atheism, right? Are atheists open to this possibility? If they are, how they could possibly use science as a weapon to kill god? And if they are not, they are simply using science as a promoting tool for their atheism. This is why I objected.
Rajkumar, at the very least, learn to using the fucking quoting system here.
Reading bold is much harsher on the eyes than just reading something offset a little bit from the rest of the text.
If you need to know what the exact HTML is, it’s:
[blockquote] text [/blockquote]
Except with >< symbols instead of square brackets.
Yes, most of us recognize there’s a very small possibility there is some deity that exists, but given the complete lack of evidence so far, we have no reason to not continue using science to as our spear and palisades.
Thanks. Here is some balm to soothe your eyes….
One thing science shows us is that there is no evidence at all for the kind of deity that intervenes in the Universe. Using the null hypothesis principle that must lead the conclusion that no such deity exists.
Of course if a deity does not intervene in the Universe then science would not be able to find any evidence of its existence since there could be no such evidence. Such a deity would be not really be worthy of being called a god though, since it could do nothing nor know nothing. It certainly would be not be anything like the types of god that people worship.
That there is no god is simply a conclusion we arrive at given the lack of evidence of for a god.
What a pathetic, transparent excuse of rank intellectual dishonesty.
Hint: when an honest person engages in a debate, and is presented with evidence against his position, an HONEST person reviews and considers that evidence before returning to the debate.
You are not worth talking to UNTIL you read that paper.
Goodbye.
Fine. If you like to contradict yourself so openly, who am I to object? Keep on doing this. I take back my objection. Sorry Professor Myers. Science is your ‘smart’ weapon’
Strangely enough, rajkumar, this is not about you. It is not about the difficulties you seem to be having with your brain – or is it with distinguishing different concepts?
It is about how fucking amazing PZ is, about how that was one of his best speeches – there is competition – and how even in pixels and with typos it reads like the rallying cry it clearly was in meatspace.
Meantime, Mr Troll, give a little thought to where the phrase “trying to steal someone’s thunder” comes from and what an insecure little creature it makes you seem.
Indeed we are and should be open to all ideas, but I don’t think that means that we abandon the idea that we should fight for what we know to be real until it is shown to be otherwise. Right now, our best understanding of reality gives no indication of supernatural beings and the best way we have to come to understand reality is science. Thus, science is currently a weapon against belief in the supernatural.
You know that in the childhood of our species, we were prey to the predators of the African continent. Alone, we were soft, weak, and tasty, and I’m sure the lions and leopards enjoyed a hominid snack. But together…I’m sure that when some ferocious big cat came upon a tribe of humans, together, and when they all turned 10 or 15 pairs of eyes on the predator and reached for stones and sharpened sticks, that cat felt fear and slunk away. Those eyes, those hunter’s eyes on the front of the face…when a group of us turn those eyes in cold calculation on any problem, when our hands work together, we are the most powerful force on the planet.
There is a wonderful example for that in the documentary “Human Planet” with David Attenborough. Three African Hunters walk up to a pride of fifteen lions, scare them off and steal part of their kill from them.
The BBC has a clip of that online:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/humanplanetexplorer/environments/grasslands#p00f0xy8
(If it doesn’t work search for the clip “Three men and 15 lions” from the grassland episode)
Oh I am sorry. I didn’t know how any criticism of the amazing PZ was not allowed here. What next? Do I get banned for posting the objection? You are the xpert…. tell me
Yet you are making a philosophical argument. It would be like dismissing climate change as impossible, then complaining when someone shows you papers on climate change that you don’t like reading science. Your preference is no excuse to ignore arguments to the contrary.
I did. Your response? “Try coming out of your cages …. if only for a minute. All of you.”
You: “What’s bottom-up design, in simple words?”
You: “I think the process of evolution itself could be called intelligent, because the process can and does create intelligence. In other words, it is no accident that we have evolved as intelligent being on planet earth.”
You: “I am saying intelligence simply cannot from no where or nothing.”
You: ” Intelligence cannot come from no where, and it must come through some greater intelligence.”
You: “So, any such assertion that leaves no room for a possible discussion in a certain direction, has basically no meaning in science, because it appears very dogmatic, and gives the impression that you are just trying to defend your atheism.”
You: “This is because science and reason can never make anyone as close-minded and as dogmatic as most people here are.”
You: “Otherwise, stay happy and content in your … not cages, but in your happy little worlds.”
I suggest you stop playing the fool. It is tiresome and rude.
I will tell you what will get you banned around here, and that is wilful ignorance, such as your refusal to read a paper that was cited as refuting an argument you made. There is no excuse for that. Claiming as you did that you simply could not be bothered is just pathetic and suggests you are not an intellectually honest person.
Now you have not made a good start here, but there is still time to fix that. I suggest you apologise, go read the paper, and then come back in a few days.
That was beautiful, PZ.
It seems the concept of infinite regression is an alien one to Kumar.
Matt Penfold
OK. Thanks for the Info. Basically, it was a discussion between Kel and I, not you and I. And I don’t have to read anything I don’t like, and insisting that I should just because someone has cited it, and because these are the rules here, is actually what is tiresome and rude .. I can cite a million papers to you if you like. Don’t be rude and tiresome when I do.
Kel:
I answered your questions as best as I could. Why don’t you read up the thread again? Maybe you will plenty there you didn’t read previously? But if you don’t **like** my answers, what can I do???
Sorry. In the post above: Maybe you will **find** plenty there…
The point is that irrespective of whether you read the paper I linked to you or not, that you had to ask me to explain a basic part of the discussion topic in simple words indicates you should really read more about it.
[meta]
rajkumar:
You can stop repeating yourself ad nauseam.
(We get it; you’re a pantheist)
No, nothing has been done to science. You are trying to do something to science with your drivel though. Science is built on evidence, including Einsteins ideas, and he knew that. You, like religion, want to ignore the evidence for your narrative. That is why you are a failure of an idea, and are being told to take your fuckwittery elsewhere. No do that.
I agree, and that’s the problem. As best as you could showed a fundamental ignorance of the topic at hand. Yet you still made lofty pronouncements despite this ignorance, and had no trouble talking down to people here who actually know something about the topic. That’s what I object to: “As best as I could” and an unwillingness to read up on the matter is no platform from which to argue.
Then you must stop with the philosophy. You need to study that which you do. Ignorance is your Achilles heel. And you are ignorant and unevidenced. Nothing but a noise in a sea of sound exchange of ideas based on science and inquiry.
Shut the fuck up. The answer is easy if you lose the attitude that you are the smartest person on the thread. You are the dumbest person on the thread due to your arrogance.
Ok. Point taken. I am always open to new ideas, any ideas.
As for why I asked you to explain the concept in ‘simple’ words? Because I wanted to hear what you had to say, in your own words, and this is a good way to make someone do that. This is why I didn’t read the paper. This is why I never asked you to read any paper.
This is arrogance on your part. You aren’t here to teach Kel, as you have no worthy evidenced idea to teach. He is here to teach you how to think, so you get the evidence to back up your idiocy. He told you to read. Your inability and resistence to learn is noted, and goes against you. Lose the arrogance.
Its one thing to talk about killing an idea…Marx had similar ideas about religion…but the problem is that when Atheists bave actually obtained control of certain countries they have moved on to killing People
By the way, that is one angry rant on PZ’s part.
I can see why people would not vote for men or women who hated that much.
Whatever side you are on, that kind of anger eats away at your reasoning abilities, and inspires extremists…on both sides.
You know what else is ironic?
For all the talk of “End Times” Science has actually made it possible.
Paranoid godbot talking. Political power with the person as a cult of personality is not atheism, but a form or religion. Atheism is simply the disbelief in your imaginary deity. You know that. Why do you lie?
And there is no hate in you lying and bullshitting, and exaggeration of the truth to form falsehoods?
Still no point other than you are scared and ignorant. Try again when you calm down. Take your own advice cricket.
Well, technically they weren’t called VISIgoths in 410AD, they were just goths. They only got called Visigoths one hundred and fifty odd years later when the monastic writer Cassiodorus coined the term in the mistaken belief that the Gothic word “Wesi” meant “western” (it actually just means “good” or “strong”). The Visigothic kings themselves only used the term in official correspondence from the seventh century onward. There was a group of gothic people called the Vesi in fourth-century, but most historians of the period think that this identity was geographical, did not survive the hunnic displacement and danube crossings in the 370s and 380s, and does not form the basis for Visigothic identity in any way.
But, pedantic quibbles aside, I’m certainly grabbing my sword and shield for a bit of light pillage after that. Though I wouldn’t be too hard on Augustine – in many ways his City of God is an exhortation to christian secularism, since it argues that the “City of God” to which christians belong is NOT an organized social community in this world but a primary allegiance to something in the next world. To Augustine the inhabitants of City of God and City of Man are indistinguishable, and will only be resolved one from another at the last judgement. To Augustine the christian community on earth is not the true City of God, but rather an imperfect image of it with no ultimate soteriological value. And thus it shouldn’t concern itself with temporal power or political authority. Augustine’s christians would participate in temporal government in exactly the same way as non-christians, the only difference being one of ultimate ends – they “use” the temporal world (uti) to get to their post-mortem destination, while the non-christians enjoy the world for what it is (frui). Use and Enjoyment are not readily distinguishable pre-mortem however.
Where are atheists killing people?
So, that’s your “argument”, Joachim?
1. Atheists kill people
2. PZ will make the other side mad
1.So christian and muslim ruled societies don’t? Totalitarians do that. Don’t make me go all Godwin on you.
2. So, you’re saying that all Christians are sweet and reasonable, unless a Bad Atheist stirs them up? You’re really arguing that?
Centuries of real evidence against that or the Internet today.
As the kidz say, Bitch,please.
Some concepts are meaningless or self-contradictory, like much of your wanking. No rational person should be “open” to them, scientists, atheists or anyone else.
If you stop spewing inane, ignorant bullshit for a minute and think about what you’re saying first, you’ll probably notice that even you aren’t open to some concepts. For example, a unicorn can’t be both invisible and pink. Leaving aside whether or not there are unicorns, there is no possible way there is any color we’d call “invisible pinkness,” so there is no invisible pink unicorn. We don’t need to scour the universe looking for evidence to know there is no such thing, as if it were a black swan, because we already know the concept is broken. There are many, many, many more concepts like it which are also totally fucked right from the start.
But if you were ignorant enough or were motivated enough by wishful thinking, I guess it’s possible you could convince yourself of it anyway, as absurd as it is. You can come up with excuses for why the idea is impossible to verify or imagine we never quite understand this very profound invisible pinkness you keep jabbering about; but the fact is that it’s nonsense, meaning we ought to reject it. Now that doesn’t mean I’m not rejecting you, because you’re an idiot, even though that is how you’ve acted here. I’m rejecting your ideas, because they’re worthless. However, if you won’t even recognize the shit you’ve been saying suffers from these kinds of problems, there’s very little reason to think you’re anything other than a dishonest asshole, in which case, I’ll say again: fuck off.
This is a public forum. Not entirely sure why you thought otherwise, but it is becoming clear you are not that intelligent.
It is true we cannot make you read anything, but we can point when you refuse to do so that you are being dishonest, and carry on point out you are dishonest whilst you carry on commenting here. And sorry, but when you enter a forum you do have to follow the rules. To suggest otherwise is just arrogant. I suspect you and arrogance are on very close terms.
I was trying to offer you some friendly advice, but it seems you are too stupid to take it. I suspect your stay here will not be a long one.
Now it is clear you simply do not know how to behave like a decent person. That may be your parents fault, or they may have done their best and your are just a nasty little shit.
What exactly is an ‘evidenced idea’, Nerd? I thought ideas happened first, and then those ideas were substantiated with evidence. This is why I have already told you many times, why asking for evidence at this stage is simply irrelevant. This is just a discussion about an idea, and no one is saying it is an idea that can be backed by evidence. Maybe it can’t be, maybe it can be. Are you not even open to a discussion?
Joachim,
Don’t even go there, asshat. No atheist ever started killing people because of their atheism. And don’t pretend the religious are innocent: crusades, the cathars, the Spanish inquisition, terrorism, Nazi Germany (hate to go all Godwin on you, but you know, Got mitt uns, and all that jazz),… Remember those?
Ah, a little attempt at tone trolling. Such fun.
Wow, way to go all Ben Stein on us. You know, science flies you to the moon, religion flies you into buildings. It’s an old saying, but still true you know.
Hystrix cristata, anus… You know how it works, right?
Sorry, didn’t intend the double negative. Though, to be honest, I’m probably not going to send you a Valentine’s day card next year, since I’ll be doing laundry.
Oh dear, you still are still are it.
I suspect you are just lazy, and have a problem with words of more than two syllables. It is not Kel’s job to take a paper and re-write so you can understand it. If you cannot understand the paper, and it is clear you cannot, then just admit as much. There is no shame in being intellectually impaired, only in pretending you are not.
Joachim
No doubt you’ve heard about the hellhole Australia turned into after the openly atheist Julia Gillard took over as Prime Minister. It’s an absolute bloodbath, with Gillard cutting people down left and right – and PZ’s there. Get him out, now! Hmm, strangely enough, he hasn’t seemed all that worried, his biggest concern being that he might get ambushed with Vegemite.
So are atheist leaders really a murderous lot? You might want to rethink that. PZ delivered a speech that turned it up to 11. Please take hold of your brain knob and turn something else up from 11.
Matt Penfold
I am sure you don’t get paid to act as a policeman here. But if this is some volunteer work that you are doing here by speaking on behalf of this forum, still I don’t give a damn about your friendly suggestions. Staying here, getting banned, or whatever other threat you have on your mind, these are all trivial things for me. Couldn’t care less. Does that help?
Fine.
You have made it very clear you are not here to engage in a discussion. You are just a trolling scumbag.
However you are lying when you say you do not care, otherwise why would keep replying ?
In a sense, you might say ideas come first (though ideas pulled out of your ass completely, and not based on any observation in reality are hardly scientific; a hypothesis needs some basis in reality). However, untill there is evidence for this ‘idea’, it’s unjustified to believe in it. Being open to new ideas does not equal taking seriously every piece of batshit crazy drivel out there. No evidence? Well, then your ideas don’t deserve to be taken seriously. It’s that simple.
Great line, that.
PZ, would it be OK if I translate this for our atheist site in Spanish, SinDioses.org?
rajkumar
Troll or idiot?
Never mind, either way, you’re terrible at this and the difference is negligible.
No, ideas tie evidence together. You don’t understand the process of science, hence you don’t sound coherent talking about it. Scientific progress usually comes from doing something in the lab, and noticing a result not exactly expected, and saying “that’s funny”. Then figuring it out. Big ideas happen rarely, and tie together volumes of evidence. Ideas can’t exist without evidence in science. Ideas without evidence is called philosophy or theology, not science.
You don’t have any real or new ideas. If you were well enough read, you would realize that, and the problems associated with those ideas. Unevidenced ideas, like positing an intelligent universe, then not defining said intelligence, has been done. We called them druggies in the past. You sound like them with your ideas you can’t support with evidence.
You thought wrong. A hypothesis must attempt to explain reality, and we know the nature of reality through evidence.
It is not that hard. The scientific method is something every educated person understands.
Could someone please ban the damned troll already, then?
We all act as policemen with stupidity and ignorance like you keep showing us by your trolling. Who the fuck are you to tell anybody here anything??? Arrogance plus. Fuck off until you come to the following conclusion: You have a lot to learn.
Because I can’t resist telling you how much I would like you to shove your friendly suggestion up your own … You know what I mean, don’t you? Unless, of course, your … is already jammed up by those friendly suggestions that you gave to other people in the past. It’s kind of become an addiction for you, I guess.
Now please tell me the kind of decent person you are.
Either way, less integrity than wet toilet paper.
tkreacher said:
A very very stupid troll would be my guess.
Nerd said:
Well it is clear he is not well read. He has even admitted he does not read.
The kind who offered you some friendly advice when he saw you making a fool of yourself, and was more than little pissed off you not only ignored that advice but made it clear you are not an honest person and that he had been wasting his time on such a contemptible little shit.
Back to the topic.
Excellent and well thought out Sunday Sacrilege PZ. Wish I was there to have heard it in person.
Rajkumar,
your insipid remarks are not welcome here. We have standards, and you are falling short of them. Specifically, you are running foul in the areas of “trolling” and “stupidity”.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/08/01/pharyngula-standards-practices/
On the topic of the GAC, if not PZ’s talk, Barney Zwartz has written an impressively accurate article on Dan Dennet’s talk:
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/expastors-helping-hand-for-colleagues-losing-faith-20120414-1x0li.html
Anger ≠ hate
There are a lot of reasons for being angry at religion and religious people. There are some religious people who are doing so much evil that I can’t condemn others for hating them. I wouldn’t chastise a member of LGBT community for hating the pope.
But anger isn’t the same as hate. I sure hope you don’t hate everyone you are angry with.
Someone’s been feeding PZ raw meat again
Very, very nice speech
He did pretty alright in that talk, the old geezer, didn’t he ! I just walked past Mr Deity on my way to my hotel room, it’s a shame it’s all over now, and PZ’s talk was among the best, together with the Krauss one, who for some reason seems to have taken more that one paragraph out of Victor Stenger’s book “The God Hypothesis”, or maybe they’re just working on the same topics.
You’re obviously from the Cardinal Pell school of oblivious obfuscation. Go and read a book, ffs.
Religion’s death knell was sounded when Pierre-Simon Laplace declared he had no need for god in his mathematical theorems. Less than two centuries later, Darwin was triumphantly reinforcing the same sentiment with regard to life on earth. In response, religious supporters have been desperately trying to convince us that we do need god and religion. With thunderous but trembling voices, they’ll bluster that we need belief in god to stay out of hell, to prevent social collapse, to be morally sound. But each time a religious person follows Laplace’s example and decides that no, they don’t need god, religion dies a little bit more.
Science is one of the main cudgels in helping people to reach this conclusion. It’s used the microscope and telescope to survey a colossal amount of ground, and not turned up the slightest trace of god in any of it. Sure, the apologists can whisk their deity into an ephemeral wonderland when the skeptics come calling, chanting arcane nadsat to try bamboozling people into accepting that god kinda sorta exists somewhere or other. But there’s wind in that curtain, and the man behind it is getting nervous. Look at the world, and it runs perfectly well without god. Look at nonbelieving populations, and they do the same. Sure, they’re never perfect, but there’s nothing about their lives that religion would improve.
Nobody, theist or otherwise, needs god. When the last religious person realizes this, religion will die. All that the pious have ever had to refute Laplace’s simple observation is a bunch of scaremongering, and right now, a lot of those people are damned scared. We’re onto them.
Agent Silversmith, Post Palladium Isotope,
HELL YEAH!
Damn straight it’s angry. Fuck, *I’m* angry and I don’t have to deal with near the amount of idiocy that someone in the States has to. People who condone, promote and practice the things he’s angry about really shouldn’t vote for someone who puts reason and evidence above bible based bigotry. This is no news to us, for we threaten their privilege, deliberately, knowingly.
No atheist I’ve met thinks that religion will every fully go away, but the time is coming when no religion will have no power to fuck with the lives of those who do not follow it. The time is coming when everyone will be free to love whomever they wish and have society acknowledge that love. The time is coming when everyone, regardless of sexual preferences, abilities, genitals or skin colour will be considered a fully autonomous person. A fucking PERSON. Not a slave, not an incubator, not an inferior, not an abomination. The time is coming when idiots like you will never again be the source misery and dread. And I swear on my sleeping four year old daughter’s head that I will do everything within my power to make that a reality.
Anger is an energy. Justified anger is damn near unstoppable. Tremble in fear little sheep, the wolves are coming and your shepherd is no where to be seen.
Quite a nice read.
Had dinner with this lovely couple from New Zealand tonight. They were absolutely appalled at the fact that the Catholic Church here gets exceptions in law to discriminate against people with regards to employment in Catholic institutions, say for example gays or single mothers, or that there is exceptions in Catholic(yet still state-funded) private schools with regards to corporal punishment. Damn right we have reason to be angry.
Excellent, another of the slices of pure awesomeness that keep me coming back to this blog. Don’t get me wrong, there’s always something new here worth reading, but these longer, more ‘serious’ posts are in a class of their own.
Thanks PZ! Interesting, inspiring, exciting stuff.
Ah shit. I didn’t know that and here I am about a year away from being eligible to get my Australian citizenship. Adding that to the list of things to be angry about along with Catch a Fire Ministries and the AVN. If my daughter inherits a world no better than the one I did it will not be for lack of effort on my part.
Great speech, yeah baby! And we’ve got plenty of ammo to sack that 1800 page biblical city, PZ.
We have intellectual standards: clarity, accuracy, precision, relevance, logic, depth, breath, significance and fairness which when applied to a purpose or question or assumption or point of view or data, information, observations and evidence or concepts and ideas…becomes the powerful weapon of religious mass destruction – science.
The challenge I see is to contain this science mass destruction to the area between the ears of the “believers” to minimize disruptions.
Joachim: You seem upset at PZ’s tone, well, get this: you’re goddamned right we’re pissed off, we’re pissed off because your religion has done absolutely jackshit except deny human rights to gays, blacks, women and anybody else you don’t like. We get pissed off when religiturds try to wedge their bronze-age myths into sciencs classes. We get enraged when assclams like Inhofe deny AGW when the evidence has been clear to all but the most obtuse ( or have vested interests in short-term gain at the expenselong term survival )since the late eighties. So, if you don’t like the world we’re creating, go off to some little Jebus-land and wallow in ignorance and leave us the fuck alone. And, BTW, don’t go away mad, just go away.
Oh, and Joachim, show me where an atheist sent a letter to Michelle Bachman or Sarah Palin threatening rape and other kinds assault for their ( to my mind ) repulsive philosophies as was done to Jessiaca Ahlquist. Rajkumar, are you one of those post-modernist twits who seem to think that ALL ideas are equally valid? And, as a PS, I meant to write “short-term gain at the expense of long-term survival.
A little slice of Aussie life in a small, rural town:
The players:
Me: Balding, bespectacled Canadian ex-pat with Skeptical notions.
Em: My 4 year old daughter. Obviously the smartest, most perfect child ever. :)
Muppet 1: A 10 year old girl
Muppet 2: Another 10 year old girl
The Scene:
A public playground.
Em, M1 and M2 are playing hide and seek. The big girls are being quite kind and tolerant to Em.
In a break between games they come over and sit in the shade with me.
M1: How old is Em?
Me: Four.
M1: So she’s going to school next year?
Me: Yup.
M1: Which one? We go to St. Mary’s. (A Catholic school)
Me: She’s going to the P-12. (The state run school)
M1: Oh. (Turns to M2 and say in a pointed stage whisper): Needles.
M2: Oh yah.
Me: What was that?
M1: Nothing.
Me: You know, you’re probably too young to understand this but I’m going to say it anyway. That kind of bigotry is why we’re sending Em to the P-12. I don’t want her learning to look down on people because of the school they go to.
M2: The let anyone go there. (clear negative emphasis on “anyone”)
Me: Yes, yes they do. And that’s one of the reasons we like it. Everyone has a right to get an education, everyone.
M2 Looking uncomfortable: We should go.
Australians don’t wear their religion on their sleeves like Americans do. But those prejudices are still here and it doesn’t take much to expose them. Well, in this little town anyway.
“needles”?
Carlie: She was referencing the idea that drugs are rampant at the P-12. It’s pure bullshit of course, but I have to say I was a little surprised to hear that from a 10 year old. It shows how far down the prejudice goes.
FossilFishy – good grief. I wouldn’t have even made that connection while talking with a 10 year old about a 5 year old. Amazing.
I’m glad you said something, though. Even though it probably won’t sink in, those girls at least now know that not everyone thinks the way they do, and that some people actively disapprove of how they think.
I doubt it did much good give the kind of narrative they must have been fed to say such a thing, but I had to say something. Silence is prejudice’s best friend.
Brilliant speech, PZ. One of your very best posts.
And by way of the maximum possible contrast:
1) This is an open, public blog. It is not the place for private conversations.
2) Your refusal to read the paper shows that you are the one who is closed-minded, scared of ideas that undermine your stupid, boring waffle.
3) Go ahead, cite some scientific papers that support your cack-brained notions.
Yep, Kings against science and religion. When totalitarian regimes come into control the 1st thing they do is go after the educated class i.e. the intellectuals. Pol Pot murdered every one who wore glasses, the Nazis went after the atheist/humanist societies first. Then they re-purpose religious fervor to suit their needs, setting themselves up as god-kings. And then they re-purpose science to their desires, often with disastrous results, such as famines.
So my question to you is:
Since your postulation has been shown to be erroneous from several posters will you adjust your thinking (and language), or will you just hit the reset button?
A most excellent speech, PZ.
Yes indeed.
That was great!! Thanks for the message. You expressed the feeling that has been driving me to blog and work tirelessly to get our local freethinkers group going.
Many working together is a powerful and fearful force and I’m happy to see more and more of it materializing.
Great rant PZ! Now that sounds like an ‘idea’ whose time has come!
Absolutely wonderful talk PZ. I wish I could have been there. One of these days an atheist convention will happen close enough to where I live that I’ll be able to afford to go. Until then, reading freethoughblogs will definitely suffice. Please post a video if you find one.
The “Word” you are referring from the opening passage of John’s gospel was actually the Greek word Logos. King James’s translators choose “Word” instead of ‘Reason’, or ‘Logic’, which would have been more accurate. The ID people and creation ‘scientists’ are not the first religious fanatics to tried to co-opt reason and logic to justify their pre-conceived beliefs. The Christians, at the time John’s Gospel was written probably some 200 years after Jesus died, had incorporated Greek philosophy and ideas of Plato – Neoplatonism actually- into their worldview, completely ignoring St. Paul’s advice. Christianity, like Greek philosophy, was a radical new idea. Christianity, like Atheism today, destroyed gods, temples, idols, and superstitions. Most Romans felt threatened by it. It came at a time in Roman history when things just started to fall apart. Immigrations, in the form of ‘barbaric’ invasions and well as forced labor, was on the rise, ‘terrorist’ states like the Sassanid Empire, kept Romans in fear, and China was driving Roman to trade inbalance with their monopoly on silk and other products Romans were buying. Economic stability was crumbling, corruption and vice (blood and circus) was on the rise. Christians, and the dangerous ideas they were spreading, was considered to be the anti-human, pessimistic, destabilizing force that was leading Rome’s downfall and making Rome vulnerable to enemy attacks, in much the same way Atheists are blamed for the ‘moral decay’ and the downfall of American society. You compare Atheists to the Visigoth barbarians, but a much better comparison would be the Christians. Atheists are being blamed for the same destruction that the Romans blamed Christians for. Perhaps Atheists will triumph in the end and create a rational society, like the Christians triumphed and created a Christian Europe. I think Atheists will do a better job.
You’re absolutely right. As long as goddists insist that everyone live by their arbitrary rules based on what some bigots think the gods want, then atheists will continue to be angry.
Boo ya!
PZ wrote:
Too true. I’ve pasted in a link below to a photo of the top LDS leadership. Mormon leaders are mostly white, male, and old. Old enough to have hardening of the dogma brain disease. And they are not casually masculine, but rabidly patriarchal. A lot of older mormons point out that women used to have more power, and wider spheres of influence, in the church than they do now. Which just goes to prove the point that patriarchal societies are bad for women to begin with and then they get worse over time.
These patriarchs recently told women how many earrings they could wear per ear.
http://store.lds.org/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Product3_715839595_10557_21095_-1__213502
One hopes that this organization, with it’s emphasis on currying favor with old men, old men suffering from the kind of brain atrophy mormonism induces, will eventually implode.
Oh, that was absolutely lovely, PZ. Bookmarked.
How many are women allowed to wear ? And what was the reasoning(*) given ?
*. My use of the word reason is quite incorrect of course.
[Just found this site, and don’t yet know the quoting conventions. Sorry about that.]
PZ says: “The club is only closed to people who fuss about an imaginary afterlife, getting right with an imaginary god, conforming to an arbitrary dogma, and who think the most useless act of all, prayer, is a contribution you deserve thanks for.”
I agree with the speech as a whole, but this paragraph is too much focussed on the conventionally religious. There are plenty of people who hold to arbitrary dogmas but who do not fuss about the afterlife, etc. One can be rabidly or mindlessly non-scientific without being religious. Given PZ’s emphasis on finding the Truth about the world, I think the paragraph should have been much shorter:
“The club is only closed to people who … conform to an arbitrary dogma.” The rest of the text as written lets too many anti-scientific people off the hook.
Agent Silversmith, Post Palladium Isotope @ # 113: … Pierre-Simon Laplace declared he had no need for god in his mathematical theorems. Less than two centuries later, Darwin was triumphantly reinforcing the same sentiment …
Less than one century later; closer to half, in fact. But who’s counting?
Timcliffe, look just above the box where you enter your comments. The codes can be found there.
If you want to see what it will look like before you post, hit “preview”.
And welcome to this site.
Rejection of science is, as your point out, not a characteristic that is unique to religion, but only in religion is it a required characteristic.
I believe it may have been the Vegemite.
How about “Daaaaamn right!”.
I’d say jet lag treated you pretty well.
You flatter yourself: your inane burblings don’t rise to the level of ideas.
Wow, that’s a point none of us have ever heard before! You mention Marx. With a single possible exception (the earliest stages of the French Revolution), all the atheist-controlled states have been Marxist-Leninist controlled. On the other hand, as this book demonstrates, the least religious of modern societies are also, by and large, free, peaceful and prosperous. So unless you are willing to take responsibility for the crimes of every theistic government in history, or have evidence that the atheists on this blog are Marxist-Leninists, I suggest you find a new talking-point.
Except that the followers of Marx who have actually taken power seek not to remove religion, but rather replace the worship of gods with the worship of the historical dialectic. Which has led, every time, to a personality cult surrounding the person who leads the dictatorship of the proletariat. In other words, communist Marxism is a religion of state rather than a religion of gods.
rajkumar at 59:
The hell does this even mean? What is a “smart” “weapon” and what’s the contradiction supposed to be? It’s contradictive to not be a “dogmatic” 7 out of 7 atheist?
Of course. Admitting that you can change your mind based on evidence shows that you are not a good atheist. After all, if atheists were willing to consider alternative explanations based on new evidence, where would we be?
The term political religion was coined to cover exactly this.
Hadn’t run across the term before (most of my readings are pre-1850). I wonder if TeaPartyism could be considered a political religion? Reagan is god, bodily autonomy is anathema, and taxes/regulations are evil seems to cover the holy trinity.
FossilFishy:
Howls in agreement. Also, QFMT.
Actually, the adoption of Christianity by Constantine may have been a response to the rise of the Sassanian Empire, at least in part. The Persian Sassanians, who overthrew and replaced the rather decentralised Parthian Empire, looked back to the Achaemenid dynasty of the 5th-3rd centures BCE, and as part of this, sponsored a reinvigorated form of Zoroastrianism, usually referred to as Mazdaism after its top deity, Ahura Mazda. This was employed as a unifying ideology for the empire, and Constantine, who could certainly pick a winner (as his founding of Constantinople also demonstrates), may have felt the need for a more effective counter than either the old Graeco-Roman pantheon, or simple Emperor-worship, could provide. Peter Heather, in The Fall of the Roman Empire, notes that the switch from paganism to Christianity was surprisingly easy, with the Emperor and the Empire itself retaining their divine validation, with a mere change of deity. The switch also gave Constantine the use of a pretty effective administrative and propaganda cadre of bishops and priests. The Pope still bears one of the titles of the Roman Emperors: Pontifex Maximus.
It possibly could.
There is a related term, civil religion, which is less encompassing than the term political religion. Civil religion can certainly be used (and has been) to describe the American right with its love of flag and god.
While I agree it could have been worded better, in context those just sounded like examples, not so much as a definitive list. I read it as saying that we shouldn’t impose rules or dogmas like those; and we shouldn’t exclude or condemn people on the basis of race, gender, sexuality, etc.
In any case, even if that’s wrong, it doesn’t seem like letting them off the hook. Assuming the “club” refers to atheists, the fact is there are atheists who believe in various sorts of woo, whether we like it or not. For that matter, there are even atheists who believe in dualism or an afterlife; they just don’t believe in a god, so even those wouldn’t be “religious” beliefs if that term is construed very narrowly as beliefs related to some kind of theism. I take a somewhat broader view of what counts as religion, so your point about the “conventionally religious” doesn’t hold up very well. I mean, we could argue whether believing in libertarianism, homeopathy or Nessie is “religious,” but unfortunately people believe a whole lot of weird shit. To me, sometimes it seems impossible to fix a label to anyone other than “human being” because we’re just too damn complicated. Maybe it’s better that way.
Ogvorbis, just because Ronald Reagan is an american saint does not mean that there is a religious underpinning to the actions of his followers. That is reserved for atheists and secularists.
[meta poor humour]
Little known fact: they also invented the Rotary Club.
So Saint Ronald is not the actual god of the neoconservative movement? Considering the revisionism, along with the determination to create something federal named for him in every state and the repeated attempts to add him to Mount Rushmore, you could’ve fooled me.
They also make cars!
If we did not have his name plastered on everything, we people from the US just might forget his superhuman efforts to save the US from the endless hordes ot international communism and the subversive unionists and leftist academics within this country.
Magical thinking at it’s finest.
Matt @139, about the earrings.
This is from an ex-mormon: “[Apostle] Bednar gave a talk in which a woman neglecting to remove her second pair of earings was interpreted as a deeper refusal to obey the prophet…who has said one set of earrings/piercings was the standard.
Bednar apparently thinks the same think about women wearing sandals to church…it’s a mark of a deep moral character flaw, not following the prophet.
Here’s an ex-mormon thread about the ban on wearing two earrings:
http://www.exmormon.org/mormon/mormon400.htm
Apparently, the original ban came from the Prophet, Gordon B. Hinckley, that preceded the present prophet. “Mormon women were told in 2000 by the prophet Gordon B. Hinckley not to wear more than one earring in each ear.”
More backup detail:
In typical mormon fashion, there’s also a quote taking back the edict just issued:
In the field reports from mormon women report that not only are multiple piercings discouraged, but that Relief Society matrons will actually take you aside and ask you to remove earrings.
Thanks Lynna.
Where does the Mormon hierarchy find the time to worry about this theological minutiae ?
I don’t know. That may have played a part, but he converted while he was still gaining control of the west, while “the empire” was under the tetrarchy. Though it seems over time he did get more devout (or at least enacted more policies to make Christianity dominant as he got more powerful), I don’t think he’d be too concerned about the Sassanians when he first converted. If he saw Christianity was growing elsewhere in the empire, or as a more useful political tool, or preferred Christians as allies over the pagans, Zoroastrians, or other factions, then it seems less like trying to respond to the Sassanians and more like getting the support of the largest number of people within the empire.
It is not a question of where they find the time. It is more a matter of this, they have to give their followers a lot of details to worry about. It is about making sure that the rank and file do not have time to think and explore freely.
That is one bad ass speech. We are like a freight train roaring down the track. Except we are not out of control. We are in control.
The top 15 doddering, old, addlepated men and have many servants, or volunteers, working for them, plus an army of paid mormons who also do their will.
And the 15 men who make up the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve, are not required to do any real prophesying. This leaves them with a lot of free time to expend oppressing women and gays.
They do some work related to their for-profit enterprises, and related to finding ever sneakier ways to hide the mistakes and idiocies of the past. (The recent scheme to keep prying eyes out of the database that lists the people they have necrodunked in the dead-processing plants, i.e. “Temples,” is one example.)
Underwear, earrings, shoes, length of skirts, sexual acts, …. everything is controlled. But, of course, they are not a cult. No. Of course not.
consciousness razor@163,
I admit the idea is somewhat speculative (I should make clear Heather doesn’t discuss it), but I’m not sure where you’re getting your confidence in when his conversion took place. According to the pfft of all knowledge, his mother was a Christian, but he was not baptised until just before death. He was promoting Christianity, and intervening to bring about doctrinal unity among Christians considerably before this, which suggests to me the attraction was at least as much political as religious.
@Lynna
I want that on a T-shirt :D
@Lynna again: Whoops, reading attention failure on my part there, somehow managed to fail to perceive you were taking that phrase from PZ’s text. And apologies for the double-post as well…
Shorter version of mormon prophets on the number of earrings a woman may wear:
We do not take an official position on the number of earrings you may wear, but if you wear more than one pair it is a sign that you are disobeying the Prophets. If you disobey the Prophets, you will never enter the Celestial Kingdom.
*pounce* *hug*
I don’t think calling ourselves “hunters” to oppose the Christian “sheep” metaphor is a good idea, it reeks way too much of “Man the Hunter”. But with the rest you’ve surpassed yourself, and that’s saying a lot. It made me very happy. :-)
But I so badly want to hear you speak in Comic Sans…
Wolves aren’t much different from Cape hunting “dogs” (Lycaon pictus) and occur(ed) north of the Sahara.
You have no idea how long a transatlantic flight takes, do you? And reading that speech won’t take you anywhere near 3 1/2 h.
Good point, but it goes without saying, doesn’t it?
:-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-)
It is “hear, hear”. You know, “listen, listen” – addressed to the audience, not to PZ.
You’re reading this the wrong way around. PZ is not saying “we want to kill God, what could our weapon be – perhaps science”, he’s remarking on the fact that science has been killing gods, closing gaps that gods used to be stuffed in, for centuries now. There are now explanations (as opposed to “goddunit”) for everything from thunder and lightning to the universe as a whole – comment 113: Sire, je n’ai pas besoin de cette hypothèse.
Bullshit. You’re discussing on a blog, in public. Everyone and their dog can participate in that discussion as long as they have a working Internet connection and speak enough English.
You don’t have to read it – but the only alternative is to shut up about its topic.
You have fallen among the scientists.
When you don’t know enough about a topic to form an opinion about it, you can’t form an opinion about it. That’s… another rewording of the scientific method.
Why isn’t that obvious to you?
This is not about like or dislike. This is about science. I am right now in the process of showing that the hypothesis I like best about the origin of the modern amphibians is the one that is least compatible with the data. :-| When we find that your answers are built on a lack of knowledge, either demonstrate that we’re wrong or go learn!
Oh, it has made it easier, but big rocks fall from the sky every once in a while, and on rare occasions flood basalt eruption ignite huge coal fields, for instance.
On the other hand, war and genocide aren’t recent inventions either.
Read up on Fritz Haber. He invented poison gas that was used to kill thousands of people in WWI – and he invented a method to make fertilizer out of air and water. Two thirds of the nitrogen in our bodies come from the Haber/Bosch process. Fritz Haber has, in other words, saved the lives of over four billion people, or rather made them possible in the first place.
Science is a tool. As you say, it makes things possible. What you do with it is your business.
Dude, this is such nonsense. Ideas happen, and then they’re immediately compared to the evidence to see if they’re wrong. Immediately, not months later as you seem to believe.
Ideas that cannot be compared to the evidence, ideas that cannot be falsified even in principle, are useless; there is no point in publishing them.
+ 1
Holy wrath! :-)
I hate that rhetoric. It plays straight into joachim’s hands for no good reason.
…what… …the fuck.
…only to replace them by its own. Wasn’t worth it.
Sure. It’s been called Americanism.
No. That was introduced during the Renaissance and refers to the title of the highest Roman priest during the times of the Republic.
That’s almost identical to the one you quote before…
@ 157:
Hmmmmmm…
Very nice, PZ. I would only add that early Christianity offered the benefit of gaining the “Book” without losing part of your penis. Probably on of the greatest PR inventions of all time.
Mazda, rotary engine, Rotary Club . . . ?
Heh?
Ah, well, I’m not at all confident about ancient history! What I had in mind was whatever happened at the Battle of Milvian Bridge, which was seems like an important turning point, though I admit his conversion probably wasn’t a sudden, Road-to-Damascus sort of thing (if that even happened). There is Pfft for that.
Indeed, he may have been somewhat sympathetic to Christianity fairly early in his life (from the influence of his mother). His death, along with the baptism, happened not so long after he actually controlled the whole empire, when he really did need to contend with the Sassanians, so there’s not quite as much to point to that he did as a result of this conversion (if it’s marked at his baptism), and there was quite a bit before it that could be explained if for all intents and purposes he had converted earlier. However, politics can be complicated, and I could see how even when he only controlled parts of the West, the Sassanians would still be a major force to worry about, so it’s better to ask historian than me. But I wouldn’t put too much significance in the baptism. It probably didn’t have quite the same significance as it does now, in identifying one as a Christian. I agree that it was more political than religious, if such a distinction could even be made at that time.
[OT]
DDMFM:
I hate/love it when that happens.
I think I would like to start an open-source journal called Annals of How We Were Wrong About Everything. The first issue will be a series of reviews. I invite you to write about the amphibians. I am already working on my soon-to-be-somewhat-less-than-seminal-work, “What the fuck is an Anthocerophyte? I wish there were dogma to even question”.
[/OT]
PZ: Outstanding.
Rick, #10: I can read an essay faster than I can listen to it being read. I’m sorry you’re not sufficiently literate to do so. Oh, and you do realize that slow computers, slow connections, and auditory disabilities mean that not everybody can enjoy the video even if they’d like to, right?
Raj Kumar:
If by “people like you” you’re alluding to individuals like, say, Oppenheimer and Bohr, it’s not clear what their precise religious beliefs or lack thereof were.
Let us know when you’re done and we’ll pass you a towel.
If there’s anything more pathetic than a clueless and arrogant troll, it’s a clueless and arrogant troll who considers itself too refined for “earthy” expressions.
Also, really, it’s not anybody else’s job to read something complex for you and pre-digest it into small, chewable bits.
Joachim, thanks for your concern, as well as your sense of superiority to both sides.
Quite honestly, if you’re not angry at what the enemies of science have wrought in the world today, I question your moral perception.
FossilFishy: Nicely done, regarding the two muppets.
tl;dr (thoughtful lecture;deadly to religion
From a slightly different angle, some of the same thing:
Throwing Out Leftovers, Civilization-Wide.
Okay, I’m an atheist, and of course this is an atheist website — and yet I’m bothered by the emphasis on the badness of religion.
PZ is a scientist, and he argues that the scientific method is the antidote to unreason: “Science is the process that does its damnedest to figure out how stuff actually works, rather than how we wished it worked.”
Of course that idea is antithetical to orthodox religious beliefs, but also to all the not-necessarily-religious biases to which the human mind tends to cling. (One does not need to be religious to be, say, racist, or misogynist.) The problem is belief-without-evidence. Religious faith is just a (very large) subset.
My religious friends are aware I cannot fathom what motivates their faith. But we are still friends; I try not to rail at them about the absurdity of god, and they don’t try to convert me. And, just to be clear, my religious friends are good people in every important sense, despite what you and I consider to be their delusions.
Furthermore, all of my religious friends also believe in science to one degree or another, although obviously they mark out an exception where their faiths are concerned. (I think it’s a general and interesting propensity of humans to hold mutually incompatible beliefs.) So when we do argue, I try to talk Evidence, Evidence, Evidence, and I avoid rolling my eyes and saying “Bullshit,” even though I am tempted to. (This would also apply if I were arguing with, say, a convinced racist, although it would be harder to keep my temper. Since none of my friends are racists, the issue doesn’t arise.)
PZ said the answer to a bad idea is a better idea, and that science is that better idea. The question is, how do we get that better idea across? I submit that it is more productive to persuade people of the value of evidence and facts than to shout at them that god does not exist. Shouting is seldom effective at changing minds.
Gah, I’m tired of this old bit of misdirection. It perpetuates the ridiculous myth/image of the evil mad scientist, alone in his lab but for his hunchbacked assistant, cackling madly and shaking his fist at the heavens while creating world-destroying weaponry, all because they laughed at him back at the university.
The reality, of course, is somewhat different; the most fearsome weapons we have were developed first in a massive, government sponsored project in Good Christian America under pressure of a war with three countries with their own strong religious traditions. And the one time those weapons were used was at the direction of one Harry S Truman, a man who began his presidency with the words “I ask for your help–and God’s.” Within a few months the military he commanded had destroyed two large Japanese cities with that fearsome new weapon, and not long after that he had ordered the development of the hydrogen bomb, an even more powerful weapon of mass destruction.
Scientists don’t work in a vacuum, don’t fund the massive projects that develop modern weapons, and certainly don’t make the decisions to use them.
@rajkumar, #34:
If Einstein were alive today he’d be 133 years old and would probably say “Sprich lauter! Was haben sie gesagt?”
What an entertaining read. Great blog post PZ.
I hope you enjoyed Australia.
timcliffe,
Why does that bother you? Religion is bad. Your nice friends are probably nice despite their religious belief not because of it.
I don’t want to invalidate your experience and maybe your friends really are good when it comes to all the important issues, but are you sure there are no left-over damaging religious beliefs they still hold (you know, besides believing in things that don’t exist which I think is pretty damaging in itself)?
I was taught the nice and fluffy kind of Catholicism. Jesus loves you, you should love your neighbors and puppies and kittens… But when you dig a tiny little bit under the surface, there is always some kind of “but”.
That really isn’t true.
Sometimes, all the niceness in the world won’t change a stubborn mind, but a good yelling at will work as a wake-up call.
Different strokes for different folks. You do what you want to do, but leave his passionate justified anger to PZ. Because it works.
Timcliffe, I cannot be nice to people who use their religious beliefs as an excuse to limit my rights and freedoms.
PZ –
I’m a big fan! Thanks for all of your hard work! But I’m a little disappointed in this speech. Religious people may argue about the “truth” and about “science”, but I think that their attempts at adjusting the truth to fit their personal beliefs (like creationism, intelligent design, etc.) follow from their primary goal, to establish an emotional sanctuary that has a level of stability. People aren’t believers because they believe it to be true description of the universe. People are believers because they gain emotionally and psychologically by believing. This can also describe many atheists. I think that some people are atheists, not because it is true or reality based, but because they gain emotionally and psychologically from not believing. People will abandon faith when there are better alternatives for emotional and psychological well being – and not I think – because science is reality based.
I think to encourage people to leave religion, one has to point out the various moral problems it creates (frame it as an emotional and psychological net loss), and show case the moral, emotional, and psychological gains that atheism can provide. I believe that atheism can provide these things or at least, atheists can find ways to provide these things in their lives, but I also think that because the current atheist culture places an overwhelmingly emphasis on “facts” and “truth” about the universe that we don’t do enough to cultivate emotional reasoning.
And yes, emotional reasoning is true, even for atheists. I may describe my romantic love I experience as a result of cultural and biological factors, but that doesn’t necessarily overlap with the reality that it is meaningful to me, and that I crave ways to express the meaningfulness of my relationships. Current atheism struggles with how to package emotional reasoning when talking to the masses. And unless we figure out how to do that, atheism membership will always be low. (Well, unless religious answers become more and more unpalatable).
First, do you know of anyone who merely shouts at people that god does not exist? Second, do you have any evidence that being rude or confrontational (or whatever “shouting” is supposed to be code for) is less often effective? Third, do you think there are ever times when being rude or confrontational is warranted, even though doing so in that instance will probably not change that person’s mind?
Because religious beliefs aren’t bad in any important sense. Hmmm… you may need to rethink that.
Um, atheism isn’t low NOW, in many countries. The biggest obstacles seem to be religious indoctrination and religious bigotry, not atheism being unsatisfying or unemotional.
Look around the United States today. What socially destructive societal meme does not have the full support of a large chunk of Christians? Anti-science, global-warming denial, ignorance only sex education, anti-public education, anti-regulation, anti-environment, anti-woman, anti-GLBT, anti-social contract, anti-safety net, all have been embraced by the religious right here in the US and in other countries. Religion is bad. The reliance on fantasy to make policy decisions is very destructive.
However, Christianity, Islam and Judaism all, as practiced by the mainstream to conservative sects, require belief in the righteousness of the subjugation of women for one to be right with the heirarchy.
That describes me, too. What, in all of that, precludes me from fighting against the attempts by believers to create a world in which I would not be a citizen, in which I would not be tolerated?
If anyone ‘believes’ in science, they are doing it wrong. Science is not about belief. Science is about following evidence, forming a hypotheosis, and then trying to disprove it. No belief involved.
Yeah. All it took for desegregation was for the blacks to shut up. All it took for women to be allowed to vote was for them to shut up. Shutting up didn’t work for atheists for thousands of years. Why should it work now?
The theocratic right is screaming constantly about the dangers of gays, lesbians, liberals, atheists, scientists, Democrats, Muslims, and any other group they can use to frighten their adherents. Murmuring nice platitudes will not help us, but it will help the theocratic right in their attempts to turn back the clock to the days of the coathanger and the closet.
Well, sure, if you’re white, male, and straight.
Actually, I think it’s more about this:
It is about creating a culture of subservient obedience. It’s like the old trick in sales. Ask a bunch of questions to which the customer answers, “Yes.” and they are more likely to answer, “Yes.” when you ask they if they want to buy your product.
The Mormon culture is one of unquestioning obedience to authority. You are trained from a young age to toe the line on every minute detail of your life. What you wear, what you eat, who you associate with, etc. For many people raised in this culture it is second nature to seek the approval of Mormon leadership for every issue. This is why the idea of a Mormon POTUS is very scary to me. Regardless of what Romney may say, I believe that the Mormon religion would have a strong influence on him and his office.
Bullshit. Shouting and mocking are the two most effective things I know to achieve change. It won’t work for everyone, sure, but ‘seldom effective’? I beg to differ. Tell me, what great social movement do you know of that achieved its goals through quietly smiling and nodding?
You know how the Church used to change people’s minds? They tied them to some wood and then burned it.
It was very effective at changing minds. And if the particular mind in question didn’t change quickly enough it vanished.
I wonder how that stacks up to “shouting”?
I doubt that PZ was shouting. Speaking forcefully, probably. Speaking in an entertaining manner, most certainly.
Whatever his tone, or his volume, religious people will call it “shouting.”
You can’t win this tone/volume argument against Christians, so you may as well shout if it suits you.
What Christians really mean when they complain about “shouting” is, “Speak so quietly that I can’t hear you.” (“And please be invisible while you’re at it.”)
Ah, but I’ll bet he was gesturing while he spoke. And you know who else gestured while he spoke to his audiences? That’s right…that’s right…
PZ, you get a standing ovation from me, with stomping and whooping. That was beautiful.
I love how you mixed science and poetic images together. This speech could stand as a declaration of freedom, of honorable intent, and as a stirring example of how scientists are not cold and calculating, nor are they acting from fear and unreason.
Joeroy, thanks for the BBC clip “Three men and 15 lions” . That was very inspiring. I’d like to salute those gentlemen on behalf of the whole human race, for showing that we are no longer the helpless prey of lions. It fitted in beautifully with PZ’s speech–which was saying that we can let go of a lot of our old fears, such as religion.
PZ, a speech like this one of yours is a lot like standing up to a horde of lions–beautiful and bold, and proud and dignified–a shining example of what humans can do.
Sadly, humans can also misunderstand completely. Rajkumar, you were being an ass. I appreciate your efforts to stand up for what you think is right, but you are wrong. Listen and learn, dude.
PZ, again, applause.
Aaaaand the accommodationists come crawling out of the woodwork.
For all those who think us nasty, howling Gnus are just too mean, how about for once, you just go do your own thing – go completely change all the evil of religion by being nice and accommodating, rather than spending time telling us we’re doing it wrong.
Just once, I’d like to see that.
Dammit, I was an atheist decades before some accomidatists starting whining about Gnus.
That would be “started”, not “starting”.
Janine:
Yeah, me too. Lots of others, as well. What bothers me most about the whining and complaining is that the accommodationists seems to feel that’s the most productive use of their time.
Definitely way more productive than reminding their friends that they think they are delusional but are willing to tell strangers on the Internet that, “My friends are nice, but delusional!” Weird.
Wouldn’t it be better to help them not be delusional. If they’d hate you for that, you’re better off without them.
I have been an atheist since I was 16 or so. I was confirmed into the C of E, but that had more to do with cake than belief in god. Until about 10 years ago or so I never gave much thought to my atheism. I saw no evidence that gods exist, and did see a lot harm done by religion and concluded that even if he did exist god was a bastard.
I was an accommodationist for a while but came to my senses even before reading Dawkins et al.
A: “Gnu atheists were rude to me.”
R: “Me too! I was nice, but they called me stupid.”
A: “See, we have so much in common.”
R: “You’re still going to burn in hell.”*smooch*
(and then the accommodationist woke up)
Matt:
Gotcha beat by 8 years. ;D
Oh, yeah? I was an atheist the day I was born.
Then I sorta lapsed into liberal Christianity, then deism, then universal deism, then agnosticism. But I was back to being an atheist by age 40 or so!
Well I only say 16 since there was the 18 months or so I was toying with the idea of belief, but as I said I think in the end it was belief in Victoria Sponge rather than god. Before that god had never really played a part in my life. I recall my brother and I persuading my mum and gran to take us to church when we around 10 or so, but I think that was just basic curiosity. We only went the once, so I obviously had no Road to Damascus conversion.
Hell, I’ve got you beat by 8 more years. Been an atheist since birth!
Now what do I win?
Lynna # 195
Invisible and unheard, wouldn’t that make us, in the minds of christians, gods?
pentatomid:
I wasn’t. I was dipped into Catholicism straight out of the gate. It was almost choking to death on Jesus which led to my atheism when I was 8.
Having one less delusion then religious people.
It is not much but is is something.
My family on my Mother’s side were Catholic, but not very good ones it would seem.
My grandfather got threatened by the Bishop with excommunucation of two occasions. The first was when a friend’s daughter was marrying a non-Catholic in an Anglican church. My granddad’s friend was wondering if he should attend the wedding, so my granddad told him to stop being an idiot(*) and go. The second time was when he was overheard to say that that god could hear your prayers no matter where you were, and that there was nothing special about being church to get your prayers heard.
My mum gave up on Catholicism when the Pope thought he had the right to tell her and my dad what they could and could not do in the bedroom.
(*) His language woudl have been more colourful being a retired chief petty officer in the Royal Navy. My gran could not bring herself to use his actual words.
Ouch… Well, I say I’ve been an atheist since birth, but I should note that I was baptised and confirmed in the catholic church (purely for traditional reasons) and I even was an altar boy for a while. I never believed in God, though.
Neither of my parents are very religious and God or religion just weren’t something we bothered talking about when I was a kid. I got religion in school, but considered the stories told there on the same level as Greek and Egyptian myths, which I loved as a child. It actually took me awhile before I understood that there were people who took the whole God thing, including talking snakes and bushes, seriously.
I remember the first time I actually said that I didn’t believe, though. It was a couple of weeks before my confirmation. I really couldn’t be bothered with the whole thing anymore, and just said to my mother: “why am I doing this? I don’t believe this stuff anyway. It’s all just silly.” I must have been 11 or something. My mother said that didn’t matter, it was just a tradition, a celebration… And there was cake to be had… And presents!
I am beginning to suspect that cake has a more significant role in religious indoctrination than previously suspected.
Matt:
Only outside the United States of Religion.
Oh definitely only in the more civilised parts of the world :)
PZ wrote:
rajkumar@24 wrote:
That’s pedantic. It’s not that science exists to kill god, it’s that science shines a light into the dark corners where gods once hid. We’ve found those corners vacant. It’s not our fault that god keeps no fixed address.
We may come up with some new evidence that points directly to one god or the other. When we do, then science will become a god finder. For now, however, science doesn’t need god and neither do we.
The cake is a lie… the religion is a lie… we may have a trend here.
The cake I had was real. Trust me, I might have been a bit confused about god at the time but no fucker is ever going to do me out of cake!
Indeed, the cake was very real. In stark contrast to the religion.
Traditionally, the Dark Side offers cookies. Perhaps a change to cake is in order.
Try reading that through to yourself, grouperfish. It’s not really coherent, is it? What does “emotional reasoning is true” mean? How about “I amy describe my romantic love I experience”? This kind of muddled, fuzzy language is, in my experience, generally the product of muddled, fuzzy thinking. This certainly seems to be so in your case.
A Victoria Sponge, with jam and butter icing should do the job!
Matt:
I foresee DEEP RIFTS as the Atheistic Dark Side argues over whether or not there should be an official cake, and if so, what kind of cake…
Yes! And please, please bring back Sunday Sacrilege as a regular item! I always love them.
Addendum to mine @ 225:
of course, you can buy my soul with a box of Jaffa Cakes.
Science tells us our religions are bogus, the gods of these religions are bogus. Do you know the god concept in Zen, or Sufism or how Indian Shamans see it???? Yours is a war between mainstream Abrahamic religions and atheism.
Cheap!
Great, one has to investigate every religion before one can reject it.
I will not have time to learn anything else during my lifetime.
Matt:
Hey, I never said I wasn’t easy. Seriously though, we don’t have Jaffa Cakes here. I’m fully dependent on my Brit friends taking pity on me to keep me supplied.
We don’t need to.
Either gods intervene in the Universe or they do not. If they intervene they will leave evidence of such intervention. We see no evidence of such intervention. Conclusion: These gods do not exist.
Now if you have such evidence provide it, otherwise you will be expected to withdraw the claim. Doing neither will mean you are considered intellectually dishonest, or in your case even more intellectually dishonest since you have already admitted to such dishonesty.
Personally I hate things, but if I ever travel to your neck of the woods I will come supplied.
Yeah, actually I do. Comparative religion, fuckwit. It doesn’t take a lifetime to figure out it’s all bullshit and it all stems from the same base desire – the desire for power. *shrug*
Look, little fuckwit – there have been thousands upon thousands of gods, created in the fevered imaginations of humans. One by one, they (and the religion created around them) have died. The idea of that god, that word, that religion, those holy books/scrolls/whatever, died.
What kills gods? Knowledge. We get our best knowledge from? Science.
It’s all easy peasy, really. You just want to keep taking a shit in the middle of the carpet because for some reason, you think taking a shit in the middle of the carpet is so impressive, everyone must stop and ponder it.
It’s a pile of shit, Cupcake. Some of us would appreciate it if you would amend your habit to shitting in private. Ta.
First of all, sorry about the last night. Second, I am sorry again, but your is an extremely stupid argument. It is based on the assumption that we know what gods do, and how they do it. This is stupid because we are humans, and you as atheist do not believe that gods exist. How can you know about their behaviours then?
But suppose god’s intervention in one form was you writing this rubbish, I mean some stupid god’s interventation. In that case, you were probably going to say, oh gods do not intervene like this. But the question is, how do you know how exactly gods intervene, when you know nothing about gods and they do not even exist for you?
I don’t think I could ever eat a Jaffa cake, given that my first and only impression of them is trying to make people share germs in an elevator by licking it.
What a severe case of begging the question.
Carlie, uhhhhh, that’s disgusting. Jaffa Cakes, however, are delicious, no matter what
NoraMatt says.People tell us. People make claims for what their gods do. We can test those claims, and see if they stand up to scrutiny. We have done this, and they do not.
Again, People tell us and we test their claims, and again their claims do not pass scrutiny.
You apology for your previous behaviour not accepted, since you are carrying on as before.
This is what I said in one of my previous posts today. You only talk to a select group of people. Have you ever spoken to a Zen monk, or a Hindu monk, or a Buddhist monk, or a Sufi Dervish, or a Shaman, on this God issue?
rajkumar@228
No, science currently tells us that mystic powers play no part in the known universe. We still have many things to explore, but we haven’t seen a reason to give up and go the magic route for any of it.
God is a coffee cup, I’m drinking coffee, therefore god exists? No, coffee cups exist. Choosing to call it god just muddies the water.
If someone has another way of looking at reality, and it produces useful results in the general sense, then by all means trot it out. If it’s of the “reality is a cookie and raisins are love” type, don’t waste people’s time. Raisin cookies are nasty.*
(*) Raisins hide in cookies and pretend to be chocolate chips. Raisins are the bastard of the cookie world.
Even notice how this god creature was just not powerful enough to make sure that all peoples had the same concept of god.
Poor execution on it’s part.
If they make no claims about their god intervening in the Universe then what the fuck are you on about ? If they do, produce evidence or admit you lied.
rajkumar, I see you plan to keep taking a shit in the middle of our room. You could act like an actual human being and stop it. Always an option, agúyabskuyela níškola.
@Rajkumar #235
So you are admitting that you don’t know what gods do, or how they do it? If that’s the case, why bother even discussing it? If that’s not the case, please, tell me what you know about the various actions of the various gods.
Until there is evidence of godly intervention, there is no reason to discuss the existence of gods. Monotheistic/polytheistic differences are equivalent to the different wing markings of dragons.
@rajkumar #235
How can you?
Or perhaps closer to your main point:
How can Zen monks, Zen, Sufi priests or Indian Shamans know about the behaviors of the gods?
If Euthyphro cannot tell us about the nature of the gods, why should we expect anyone else to be able to do any better?
Oh they do. But not in a way you would understand. You expect lightening storms and thunderbolts, and people walking on the water????
Oh, fuck, it is too subtle for people who come from outside the culture.
Janine:
So….gods are to be found in containers of yogurt? Petri dishes?
Exactly right. And I guess this is what really bothers people who come from outside the culture. Just like Osama Bin Laden couldn’t understand American culture, and decided to destroy it instead….
*facepalm*
I think that’s the most simplistic and least accurate description of any act I’ve ever heard.
@rajkumar #247
Don’t be coy, Raj.
What are these ways that they claim the gods intervene in the universe to which you are privy, but that you presume we would not understand?
???The use of multiple punctuation marks is a sign of a diseased mind. Might want to note that, nasúla čhaŋháŋpi wičhánata háeče.
Of course, God could also have been acting through Bin Laden.
Once you allow that gods can do anything, there’s no point in assigning agency to anything, because a possible answer is always maybegoddidit.
Maybegodmademewritethat.
rajkumar:
Zen monk: yes. Hindu monk: several, yes. Buddhist monk: yes, frequently. No Sufi Dervish, though. Would a few Sunni imams do, instead? And sorry; I haven’t met any real shamans, just Shaman wannabes. May as well add Sikh leaders to the mix; they have an interesting concept of god; half Muslim, half Hindu in origin.
You know what? The more I talked with all of these, and carefully read every scrap of literature they gave me, besides, the more what they were saying sounded the same as Christian apologetics. All weasel words and no substance, but always tending to the same result; “Believe what we tell you because we tell you to.”
But Brownian, you do not come from a culture that would allow you to understand how god works.
rajkumar
I wonder if you have ever heard of Epicurus. He said “If God is both unwilling and unable to stop evil, why call him God”
From that one could infer; If God intervenes in a situation and the results are indistinguishable from those resulting from no intervention at all, why call him God?
On the other hand I can almost see your head tilted slightly to one side as you mumble “epic-who”
rajkumar,
First of all, I call bullshit on your claim that Zen monks believe in a sooper sekrit gawd.
Your stupidity aside, you’re one of the worst kind of magical thinkers. The kind that believe there is some special ability imparted to particularly magical people that cannot be accessed by outsiders. It’s the worst kind of arrogance.
Magical, personal, special arrogance that exists because you say so. What evidence do you have for your claims? We wouldn’t understand.
It has the added bonus that when people call you out on bullshit they’re just jealous because they don’t have your superpowers.
Fuck off, troll. You aren’t fooling anyone. Nobody is buying what you’re selling here.
Oh, mocking and arguing on a blog == flying planes into buildings now.
Wow.
Don’t you realize people, pharyngula is a weapon of mass destruction !!111!1!1
Seriously, rajkumar, come back with this comment when we start advocating burning churches, okay ?
Then it will have at least a bit of justification.
tkreacher:
I’m waiting on those superpowers, too. I want an example from rajkumar, nasúla čhaŋháŋpi wičhánata háeče. C’mon, baby, tie on your cape and let us have it. What’s it gonna be, Gnostic Knowledge Rays?
Hurry up, we don’t have all day.
Well, my cousin is a buddhist-tibetan monk, one of my good friends in a Sikh, several are hindu, among which one is a brahmin and a priest schooled in the vedas.
Is that enough ?
Nope, science only tells us that there is no need for imaginary deities. It makes the concept of deities look silly, but actually doesn’t refute deities, as negatives cannot be proven. Without deities, religion, holy books, and theology is so much mythology/fiction. An implosion of rationality caused by showing the concept of deities is silly.
You can’t seem to get the ideas straight.
Who gives a shit what bullshit you say? You are a proven liar, bullshitter, and egotist extraordinaire. The odor de jour from your posts is apparent.
Shamanism… how to get the hunters to give you meat.
They generally equate God in its original form with ‘non-being’. They talk about polar opposites to explain the concept of God. Such as up/down, right/left, black/white, and being/non-being. To understand the concept of God from their standpoint, you need to first have a concept of polar opposites. Do you know them? Such as atheism/theism?
Maybe God is a waffle.
What do you mean? I am not mocking anything or anyone here. I am in a serious love affair with (most of) American culture, and (most of)American movies.
@Rey Fox #266
A waffle wascally wabbit?
@Rajkumar
I spent two years living in Thailand. In that time I met many monks and indulged my employer’s penchant for meditation camps. The trappings of Theravada Buddhism as practiced in Thailand include guardian angels, ghosts, infinite heavens and hells and every building requiring a shrine. It’s a mix of Buddhism and SE-Asian traditional folklore, and not a shred of evidence for any of it, other than that there was once a man who found enlightenment. Woop-de-fucking-do.
It’s all bullshit. Layers and layers of psychobabble dressed up as wisdom. Please, inform us of these other cultures with their wisdom we know not of.
@rajkumar #265
無
So, they’re atheists, then.
I spent several years studying under Mahayana Buddhists, though not Buddhism specifically.
You are a pretender.
@rajkumar
I’m still interested to see what kind of answer you would give for comment #246.
My apologies, you have informed us…
They? They? Citation needed. Just because “They” say or talk about something, doesn’t make it true.
I understand the concept polar opposites. You say that God is non-being, in contrast to humans, who are being? Great, consider me profoundly unimpressed by this awesome wisdom.
Please, explain further as to how these non-being gods affect our universe in a measurable way.
Then you are the worst kind of fool.
Wačhíŋtȟuŋ šni. If you’re attempting to pretend you grok Taoism, I have bad news. You don’t.
Rajkumar, English isn’t your first language, is it?
How do you know that we aren’t expressing concepts that you simply do not understand? You know, like us and the gods we don’t understand.
As for asking if we have investigated all the gods before condemning them, this is the blog where that issue has been covered, before you ever got here. We have heard from atheists all over the world who have been fully informed about their local religion, and who became atheists. No one person or culture has to explore all religions in order to reject them–we communicate with other atheists who have done what we have done.
And, as we have said to you before, we have no reason to suspect that there are gods anywhere. Why should we even bother to look anywhere for them? We do, in fact, look around, and we find nothing. You blatting about incomprehensible gods just makes it that much less likely that we will look.
But we are not closeminded, no matter what you think.
Your brain is well and truly broken. Tsk.
Late to the Rajwanksinpublic party as usual
Dismissing people like that, when it is a public forum is tiresome & rude.
Consciousness razor
You’re forgetting that we can redefine pink to be a colour that is beyond human understanding or perception [/snark raj channel]
Strictly speaking, observations come first, then ideas to attempt to explain those observations, with hypotheses developed to test those ideas against available evidence.
You tacitly admitted that when you noted on The Other Thread that the laws of the universe were very accurate. Surprisingly so & then you went on to develop an idea to explain that accuracy. The idea was rubbish, as it did not follow & it failed the logic test, so you doggedly hung onto it, suggesting that we redefine intelligence to make it fit the idea. That’s where you mis applied scientific method. If you’d stopped when it was pointed out that you that the idea you presented was rubbish (with supporting reasons) you would have come across much less like a psuedo intellectual wanker.
Given, of course, that one of the Catholic schools in middle SE suburbs of Melbourne, had a bad reputation locally for exactly the same problem. And there is the on going threat of being too near priests.
Bah! You’ve just crushed my dreams! ;-)
It’s up to those who wish to claim those as The One True Truth ™ to provide a coherent definition of their idea & then to provide evidence for it.
The Abrahamic religions are the most influential & affect the lives of the most people not connected with them. The others less so, and so they do not get targetted directly.
Don’t forget everyone, the Universe is intelligent, and you don’t get it because “intelligent” doesn’t mean what you think it means…. [/snark]
QFFT!
Nope, don’t need that mental masturbation. Just no solid and conclusive physical evidence for their imaginary deity, hence all they have is delusional thinking. Boy, you are having trouble with concept of what evidence is. Testament is not evidence. It is OPINION.
Yes you are. You are also seriously challenged in the idea of what is and isn’t comedy. Your whole series of inane and utterly OPINION posts is one big exercise in comedy. With you as the butt of the joke.
Wait wait wait, hold on…
Those are the people who are apparently equipped to understand the subtle ways in which god/gods intervene in the world, yet you assert that
This sounds vaguely similar to what Zen monks say about the nature of reality, except that they omit the step of assigning the label “god” to “non-being”. Buddhist monks, well, it depends on which sect you’re talking about, but the ones I practiced meditation with also made no positive claims about the existence of god/gods. The ones who ran temple services in Thailiand, on the other hand, seemed to believe in various supernatural beings just like most other Thai people did. Hindu priests, well, I never heard any of them claiming that Durga, Parvati, Siva, or any of the other deities to whom they devoted their prayers and offerings were really a fancy way of talking about the void or something like that. Those who were self-conscious enough to recognize how ludicrous it is to believe in the literal existence of Hanuman or Krishna were prone to claiming that these were symbolic representations for atman, the over-soul, the source or ground of all being, similar to pantheistic Westerners who assign the label “god” to the totality of things in existence. (Not coincidentally, those Westerners often borrow a lot from Indian philosophy.)
My pediatrician, and the obstetrician who delivered my brother and sister, is a Sufi, and so is her husband. She’s not, as far as I know, a dervish. But Sufis are an esoteric sect of Islam; they interpret the faith in somewhat radical ways but they still worship a deity that’s pretty recognizable to any adherent of one of the Abrahamic religions. I will say that Sufi poetry is some of the finest on the planet. But that isn’t evidence for the existence of Allah or any other supernatural being.
I had an ex-boyfriend who once claimed he was a shaman, but he’s a bit off in the head.
I am, frankly, a bit skeptical that you have talked with all these classes of people you think we should all talk to before ruling the existence of god/gods as impossibly improbable. It doesn’t sound like you have a firm grasp on the philosophical basics of any of them.
Of course, you’ll be unable to explain why those particular types of people have more knowledge on the subject than anybody else.
Huh ?
Do you have a bit of a problem with english ? It’s ok, it’s not my mother tongue either.
You were equating mocking belief in god(s)/religion with flying planes into buildings – at least that’s what I understood from your post.
Maybe that’s not what you meant.
Seriously, the person who insists we need to speak with Zen monks, and Hindu monks, and Buddhist monks, and Sufi Dervishs, and Shamans on this God issue wrote this:
rajkumar, you should come to the US. You’d fit right in with the fundamentalist Christians. You’re stupid, dishonest and hypocritical in exactly the same ways that they are.
You can make all the noise you want about Eastern traditions of mysticism you want, but you might as well have a personal god who smites the unbelievers on command for the duplicity you exhibit. You defend your beliefs in exactly the same way that the Abrahamists do: with dishonesty, lies, and arrogance.
Daniel Schealler
+1
rajkumar
What you appear to know about “shamanism” could dance on the head of a pin.
Is it anything like this ?:
http://www.rationalistinternational.net/article/2008/20080310/en_1.html
’cause the shaman looks pretty stupid here…
No One, that is one of my favorite stories of recent years. The second screen captures says all that needs to be said, a rational man laughing at the fury of the religious leader.
Brownian:
Oh c’mon, have mercy. We’re already drowning in fuckwits. We don’t need anymore.
Note to self: Try to persuade Brian Tamaki to move to America. End note.
One thing I really don’t understand: Is this a science blog, or some kind of circus that has hired some of the finest clowns from all over the world? You make people laugh, your jokes are funny, and the languages used is superb — though people like Nerd are very repetitious. I admit all that, but this is not science, this is ‘clownism.’
And for this … please, I never insisted anyone. I just asked a question, which simply asks ‘Have you done so or not’?.
Two propositions:
1. There exist fairly reasonable and intelligent theists in the world. Yes, they are cafeteria realists, yes, they are adding to the problem, and yes, we should confront them. But for the most part, you can have a perfectly tolerable conversation with them without your brain melting and dribbling out of your ears.
2. If a theist is trolling Pharyngula, xe ain’t them.
BINGO!
@rajkumar #290
Good.
The smell of enlightenment is not enlightenment.
I’m still interested to see what kind of answer you would give for comment #246.
Whenever someone says that I always read it in the voice of Catherine Tate doing Lauren Cooper. “I’m just asking a question!”
@chigau
I nearly responded with: 0x00
^_^
Assclown, I have a question to ask of you. Why do you care if this is a science blog or not? You had made is clear that you think that the proof of god is beyong science and, frankly, beyond what people from the western hemisphere can detect.
Also, quite a few people have related their experience with your list of religious leaders. It is too bad that you could not understand that.
Just who is the clown?
I didn’t understand that comment. Sounded more like you were doing poetry instead of asking questions.
@Rajkumar #297
So one cannot use poetry to ask questions?
@Rajkumar #297
Or perhaps: So questions cannot be poetic?
This, from you, who thinks questions without evidence is science??? Try this: it is nonsense like you post. Utter and total drivel, making us laugh at you…
Damn, Oggie called Bingo! first. Anyway, that ^ is what it says on my Cupcake button. Heh.
Excerpt from the Gospel according to Raj Kumar, Ch12, verses 21-24
Lo, He but asked a question! A simple question, to be fair. And verily they did respond to his questions, with simple answers and simpler questions of their own.
But the answers and questions were not to His liking, and He showed His displeasure by ignoring their answers and questions, and they waxed wroth at His ignorance.
“Where is thy rebuttal?” they cried, and scorned his butt.
You are making me laugh, so I guess it is you who is a clown.
rajkumar @ #290
This reminds me of a cat stopping to nervously groom itself in the middle of a fight.
PZ never claimed this as a science blog. Read the headline. There are science articles from PZ here. Dig around and you’ll find them. The rest is … well you know… western culture… just like in the movies.
Of course, one can do anything one likes. But since I am here on a science blog, I didn’t expect to meet poets who were part time scientists. You can ask that question again, this time objectively, and I will answer it.
Assclown, if only you could hear the laughter of not only the regulars toying with you but all of the lurkers.
What is it like to have a nose that honks?
@rajkumar #305
How can you?
Or perhaps closer to your main point:
How can Zen monks, Sufi Priests or Indian Shamans know about the behaviors of the gods?
If a clown inspires laughter, but he does not hear or intend it, is he still a clown?
…
Probably.
What on earth gave you the impression that this was a “science blog”?
Any relationship between your insipid mental masturbation posts and real science isn’t even coincidental. They are at least several galaxy clusters apart.
Janine to rajkumar
*Reaches out and beeps Rajkumar’s nose* HONK.
You have a very weird impression of just what a scientist is.
To echo your own question, have you ever met one ?
Physicist, chemist, biologist ?
If so, you should have realized that they are actual humans, and that they don’t spend every waking moment talking about their area of expertise. And have you noticed the title of this blog ?
Hint : While the owner is a biologist, this is above all an atheist blog.
First, why would rephrasing the question as prose make a difference?
Third, what makes you think that you, or anyone here, can make demands of other commenters?
On the top and bottom of this page:
Not a science blog. That’s twice…
Because, they believe it is possible to know these things, but not under our ordinary states of consciousness. We need to increase our awareness, or ‘raise our consciousness’. Sam Harris would know a lot about this stuff, as he claims he has spent a lot of time with great mystics of the East. And once while under the influence of LSD, or some similar mind altering substance, he claims to have merged with a redwood tree in an ‘ego less eternal communion’. Yes, this oneness that he experienced, according to Zen Monks, was an experience of God in one of its infinite forms. Of course, we do not need drugs to get there. They recommend different forms of meditations.
One of the things I like about this blog is that the scientists here do treat those of us without a science background seriously.
Yes, I agree. But they don’t also devote 100 percent of their energy to making people laugh? They talk about science when you ask them to do so, don’t they?
And yes, I get it now. It is NOT a science blog. My mistake. Now every piece of the puzzle has fallen in its right place. Now I now when I am laughing so much. The picture that has emerged has a very big red nose.
Sorry…
Now I now when I am laughing so much. should read
Now I know why I am laughing so much.
Yeah, LSD is god.
@rajkumar #314
I did not ask how these people attain an experience of oneness.
I asked how they can know about the behaviors of God.
These are not equivalent terms: Enlightenment is not-knowledge.
For the hard of thinking (this means you, rajkumar), here’s a bit of the Pharyngula Standards & Practices, which someone already linked to you, but as usual, you seem incapable of clicking a link or reading.
If one’s consciousness is raised, how would that manifest on observation equipment such as an EEG? Or is this one of those supernatural consciousness raisings that does not intersect with reality?
Drug trips? That’s your ‘raised consciousness’? Are you kidding?
If gods have infinite forms, and intersect with the material world, where is the evidence of such?
But, oddly, the one trip you can cite did involve drugs.
And I know people who can lower their pulse and blood pressure a few points through bio-feedback. Otherwise known as meditation.
Okay, I may regret this, but I have to ask you: What is your point? If you could distill all of your (heh) arguments into one point that you want us to grok in fullness, what is that one point?
Bullshit. Taking hallucinogenic drugs is not like meditation.
Rajkumar, I wish you would get your act together enough to at least be coherent. At this level you’re honestly not even worth arguing with. Do you actually think you’re insulting us by saying this isn’t a science blog? When we’ve been sitting here telling you that? Do you think the fact that you’re laughing at people patient enough to try to reason with you makes you look superior? All I see is a braying ass. Do you think “some people feel oneness with the universe while under the influence of drugs” is a real argument for any deity’s existence?
Janine:
Me too. I’ve been damn lucky and have been receiving a free education for a lot of years here.
Amount of solid physical evidence from Rajkumar to support anything:
Zip, zero, zilch, nada, nothing, [and what is evidence?].
Amount of mental masturbation and fuckwitted apologetics going nowhere, meaning nonething from rajkumar: almost infinite.
Amount of laughs for the regulars generated by Rajkumar with its insipid and uninspiring fuckwittery: Enough to fill the solar system.
Borked the quote.
What is quoted is me, the unquoted beginning is rajkumar and what I meant to quote.
Also note that “spiritual” or “transcendental” experiences (described as such by patients) can be reliably induced by electrodes to the proper portions of the brain. From Oliver Sacks, IIRC.
rajkumar, agúyabskuyela níškola, do the world a favour – go pop a handful of hallucinogens and mind trip off in search of Timothy Leary.
At least you wouldn’t be boring us half to death with the same fucking shit over and over and over and over.
100% ?
It’s sunday. For most people, sunday is a day off, rajkumar. You came on a single thread. That happens not to be on a scientific subject. On an atheist’s, who happens to biologist, blog ! On Freethought Blogs, which is dedicated mostly to atheism !
Where are are pulling your 100% from, by Merlin’s hairy left ball ?
Do you think you are somehow funny, or that you even make sense ?
Kemist:
Not quite. The Cupcake and his amazing idiocy has infested and derailed more than this thread.
At the GAC, Sam Harris treated the 4500 atheists there to a meditation exercise. The context was that buried under layers of lies and social control of religion, there is a kernel of something useful in the idea of paying attention to the your senses in the present, rather than incessantly either ruminating on the past or worrying about the future. What you get is a technique to control your own thoughts.
There was no suggestion of anything mystical involved.
Oh.
I thought he was new. And that english was not his mother tongue.
So, this means the profanity filter can come off then.
When you attain an experience of God, you kind of get to know a little bit about God and the universe? It is like a ‘knowing’ that this is how things are in their totality. You just know.
But you need to have at least some idea of the basic terms here. Such as, what is meant by “raising the ‘consciousness”? It is like saying that you turn your unconscious mind, which is a much larger part of the psyche than the conscious mind, into the conscious mind temporarily. Your senses, so to speak, start processing much more input and information, as it happens during LSD trips.
Kemist:
That xe is, however, all their shit was already vomited up, over and over and over and over here first:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/04/09/dawkinspell-on-qa/
For science AND clowns google ignobels.
Further to Echidna’s post…
The kernel is great, but the religious reasoning is appalling. The reason why buddhists attempt to control their thoughts is part of the reincarnation cycle. In between reincarnating physically, which is based on your actions throughout life, time is spent in heavens and hells based on your thoughts during life, the last few thoughts before death being the most important. If scared/angry/etc before dying, YOU ARE CONDEMNED TO HELL for x amount of years, after which you get reincarnated physically.
The techniques are great for helping stay task-focussed or providing some mental/emotional equanimity, but for keeping us out of theoretical hells? Quatsch.
@rajkumar #334
You are still describing a method of attaining an experience of oneness.
The only knowledge one gains from the experience of oneness is how the experience seemed to be, the kinds of things that lead to this experience taking place, and (perhaps) the transformational effects this can have over one’s subsequent experience and behavior.
An experience of oneness is not the same as knowledge of the behaviors of God.
How can these people know the behaviors of God?
Also, I appreciate the sentiment and desire behind trying to educate me regarding basic terminology you are using. But attempting to do so is in error. There is no Zen: What is there then to be explained? The smell of enlightenment is not enlightenment.
Nope. Your mind makes shit up. None of which is a greater revelation of the universe. It’s just fantastic shit. I know the feeling you’re talking about, having played around with LSD and peyote (the latter had a greater effect, probably due to relative dosage). I’ve had mystic feelings of universal love while raving on ecstacy, but none of that meant it was real. Most of my hallucinations followed existential plots somewhat similar to the ending of Sophie’s World. It was all fantasy, inspired by the myriad stories I’ve heard/read in my life.
Deep meditation is also bullshit. The fine parsing of different types of meditative experiences by eastern mystics is no different to the parsing of biblical texts by christian mystics.
This ‘Oneness’ is the experience of God in Zen terms, in Sufi terms, in Hindu terms, in Buddhist terms, in Shaman terms. Shamans have used Peyote for thousands of years for sacred purposes, because it looks like they don’t prefer meditation. But, use a drug or use meditation, this is how God is experienced, they all say. By raising your consciousness, and subjectively. There is no other way.
rajkumar @ # 334
Adrenalin can have the same effect. So fucking what? Nothing you have described so far is evidence of the supernatural.
Rajkumar, you’re just defining God as a particular kind of brain activity. Literally all in your head. Is that all you have to offer us here? Because if so, you’re a worthless waste of time.
No. This is how hallucination is experienced. What they claim is immaterial. Some Christians claim that they see gods in a sunset but that doesn’t mean they have a clue either!
Rajkumar sounds just like a guy I used to work with in Missouri, here in the USA. He was`a Hindu from India, and thought he knew everything there was to know about America. He had watched a lot of American movies (and didn’t realize they weren’t real) and loved his “American-type music” (which was some strange Indian-sounding stuff), and said all his friends spoke English (which was a lot of Hindi phrases translated into English). He never listened to any of our corrective help, and wound up being best buddies with the hateful Baptist deacon.
@rajkumar #340
To experience a thing is not equivalent to having knowledge of the behaviors of that thing.
To experience God is not equivalent to having knowledge of the behaviors of God.
How can these people know the behaviors of God?
It’s spelled raze not raise. For that, you need a razor, because bad ideas won’t just shed themselves.
I used to do Sufi-esque whirling, just for fun. It certainly was not a way of connecting with god.
Calling every slightly freaky experience “god” is just a spiritual version of the god of the gaps.
rajkumar
What is a “shaman”?
Bravo, PZ. Great stuff.
PZ wrote:
Actually, the LDS church doesn’t even deserve this small amount of credit when it comes to the theory of evolution. The most recent official word on the topic of evolution from LDS church leadership is printed in the February 2002 issue of Ensign – the official magazine of the LDS church and outlet for monthly ‘revelations from god.’ The article itself is a reprint of a statement issued by the LDS leadership back in 1909. It reads in pertinent part (emphasis mine):
The original message and its 2002 reaffirmation leave little wiggle room in arguing the official stance of the LDS church: the creation account of the Old Testament is literal, and the theory of evolution is merely a theory of men (bonus points for sexism).
That’s the result of mental masturbation
Well on the Dawkins Q&A thread, he was trying to redefine the word intelligence so that he could call the universe intelligent. [Therefore God].
Not sure if we have progressed, or regressed on this thread
I don’t think you actually know how drugs work.
This is because you are still likely confusing God as a separate entity or being. You are probably imagining having this experience of God as in kneeling before God while God is seated in his throne? This is not the case.
So you’re a pantheist. How wonderful for you. That doesn’t change the fact that you haven’t a shred of evidence for your beliefs. Quoting the beliefs of pantheistic priests isn’t evidence, it’s twaddle.
Pantheism: the belief that the entire universe is a porcupine, located in the arse of the entire universe? Sounds like a doctrine of universal suffering.
@rajkumar #352
You’re speculating as to my inner mental state. Easily done and I don’t mind – but still a mistake.
To set you straight: My position on God in the general sense is one of ignosticism. If you do not want to click through that link, then rest assured that this is not a typo. I use the ‘i’ with intent. If you give me a specific deity description then, depending on the definition I may have a more concrete position. But without a definition I can’t really commit to much.
I am coming at this from a stance of extreme ignorance, a beginner. I do not begin to pretend to have the earliest inklings of what you might possibly be thinking about meaning when you refer to ‘God’. After all – you haven’t given me a definition yet. Assuming that I just magically and automatically know what you think about the subject would be extremely presumptuous of me.
—
However, you have connoted (perhaps unintentionally) in earlier comments here that God might be the kind of entity that can be said to have behaviors, and that some special people can be said to know about these behaviors.
My question to you has been: How can these people know the behaviors of God?
You have answered repeatedly: The experience of oneness.
But that is not an answer to the question. That might even be knowledge of God depending on how we define ‘God’ and ‘knowledge’. But I cannot see how this could construe knowledge of the behaviors of God.
So I’ll ask again, in the hope that you’ll have an answer.
How can these people know the behaviors of God?
or
@ Ogvorbis 174:
Yeah, dating myself—the old Mazda commercials…”and the Mazda goes ‘Hmmmm'”
So… Mazda heft mere ‘mmmmm’?
No, you’re wrong about that. Zen Buddhists have very little to say about the existence of a deity one way or another. They talk about non-duality and enlightenment a lot, but they generally don’t take this as evidence for god/gods. Generally.
I’ve experienced some of the mind-states you’re talking about, Raj. So what? I’ve decided they’re evidence of the fact that my brain can do amazing things when provided with the proper stimuli. I even blogged about it, you can read by clicking on my name. And apparently, your question of whether people here have talked to monks and shamans from various cultural traditions is a resounding “yes.” Plenty have also experienced transcendent oneness and universal love through drugs or meditation. Neurons firing in ways that give us crazy-ass but awesome experiences isn’t evidence of any sort of deity. Now what?
Also, I must repeat what Daniel Schaeller said:
I had very little religious training growing up. My first conception of what god might be was more akin to your pantheistic deity than anything else. What DO you think you’re talking about? How can you possibly object to people dismissing a concept that you can’t even define?
So, all of the people who have experienced god, and had god tell them to hate, and kill, and rape, and make war… were they experiencing god correctly?
Or were they experiencing just some bit of god?
To put it another way, when you experienced god, which of god’s opinions on things did you disagree with?
If you just happened to agree with them all, that would certainly be a massive coincidence, wouldn’t it?
Any thoughts on the African American church’s role in leading and organizing the Civil Rights movement?
Derail. Take it to the endless thread.
@rajkumar #352
Bloody hell, you’re an idiot. We’re atheists. We don’t have a conception of any type of god. Whatever you conceive a god or gods to be – we don’t believe it. It’s not up to us to define what you’re thinking of.
duane#361
I’d ask Malcolm X but he’d just raise an eyebrow and correct me with “mosque?”
Well, he wouldn’t do or say anything because he’s dead, but you know what I mean.
Shouting, again.
First, I had meant to thank Janine for welcoming me to the site and providing some useful information. I appreciate that.
I won’t bother with the responses to my last post that strike me as merely rude, or beside the point. But I can see I was not clear enough what I meant by “shouting,” and I apologize for that.
Instead of “shouting,” I should have said “calling people morons and such like.” Even if they are morons, it won’t get you anywhere.
I did NOT mean one should “shut up” or merely “mouth platitudes” about important issues. (Nor did I say those things, but I understand the impulse to put words in someone’s mouth is irresistible to some people.)
So, let’s talk about people who have actually won some very important arguments.
I think it’s fair to say that all of America’s recent civil rights movements said something like this to America at large: “We’re human beings, like you, and we’re citizens, like you. It is wrong and unacceptable to treat us otherwise, and we will not put up with it anymore.”
They did not generally say “You all are idiot bastards and you better be nicer to us,” although I imagine everyone involved wanted to from time to time.
And America actually listened, and changed its mind. Slowly, incompletely, with backsliding — but the Black and Women’s and LGBT civil rights movements won. And they won because a great many people who had good reason to let anger get the better of them were smart enough not to blow the argument.
If atheists want to win, they ought to pay attention to their forebears. Even the ones (like MLK, remember him?) who were religious.
P.S. I find myself in the unprecedented position of saying nice things about (some) religion. I could say you all forced me to do it, but don’t feel bad, because actually my own mention of MLK reminded me. l’ll limit myself to one syllogism:
Many churches feed the poor.
Feeding the poor is good. (Perhaps you don’t agree. That’s your right.)
Therefore, those churches are doing good.
Now, many of those churches are also doing bad, in other ways. You really don’t have to convince me. But the notion that religion is all bad is just not true. (To forestall a foreseeable but unnecessary set of comments, I didn’t say or imply that the goodness of some churches and of many religious people means that god exists.)
Echidna, you are confused. That question was directed TO Rajkumar, from Daniel Schaeller, in #355.
BWAHAHAHAHAH
Oh… *wipes tear of mirth away* honey child, that was a good one.
Yes, it’s too bad that Malcolm X is no longer around to answer questions like these.
Help me here. They know about the gods because they believe they know? That’s your evidence?
That comment of mine was directed at rajkumar.
Please read the history of MLK moving to Chicago in the mid sixties. It is a rather ugly story. Not as bad as Mississippi but it was not from lack of trying.
As for feeding the poor, you are aware that the Chicago chapter of the Black Panthers also set up places to feed the hungary and to teach children. Mark Clark and Fred Hampton were murder by the CPD for their efforts.
And there were a lot of angry women and angry LGBT activists who fueled those movements. Please,tell me that ACT-UP was a polite and well mannered group. Please tell me that women’s rights activist did not get actively angry with male activists of the late sixties and early seventies who dismissed them.
There is a time and place for being calm. And there is a time and place to raise hell.
How fucking dare you lecture us that we should be more demure. If I have known that you would immediately act like a tone troll, I would have ignored you.
Fucking back off!
Yes. It is so easy to describe these states as ‘our brain doing amazing things’, but that doesn’t really explain anything at all, does it? If you ask me, it actually creates more confusions. It is like is describing every event in the universe as ‘atoms doing amazing things’, which is true, but still doesn’t explain anything.
You say you have experienced these states? Tell me, what was you experience of time? How did you experience time during these states?
Your ignorance is not a substitute for an argument, rajkumar.
So, assclown, how did you experience time after you passed out from self asphyxiation?
Honk!
Now rajkumar, after nearly 400 posts, isn’t it about time you admitted that ‘god’ is your special pet name for certain activities your brain undergoes now and then? Which is all very nice, but hardly a reason for anyone else to believe that you have some special, secret insight into the Grand Intelligence behind all that exists.
At the Global Atheist Convention all of the speakers walked on to different pieces of music. I would love to know what the song was PZ walked on to and if he chose it himself. I don’t have a very good ear for music but it sounded a bit more country than some of the other songs selected ( I think at least one of the other speakers used Coldplay)
You seem to be making the assumption here that it is Churches that are doing good. In fact it is people doing good.
The church may provide some framework for people doing good, but don’t conflate the good that people do with church. People do good irresepective of church.
People also do evil, irrespective of church*.
The real objection is that people also do evil because of church.
If religious people want to waste their lives in cow towing to imaginary friends, without any expectation that others will follow suit, and without any impact on others, then you would find no reasonable person objecting.
What we all object to, is that the churches provide frame work for evil to be perpetrated against large** numbers of people with impunity.
*for all instances of church, you can substitute any religious organisation.
**and as long as large>0, then churches/religion are bad
It never happened. But It’s funny. Happy that I laughed, and probably a thousand others laughed too?
Lucky I didn’t ask you. If you ask me, it’s not very confusing.
You didn’t direct the following questions at me, but I’ll answer: I don’t recall time being an important factor in any of my hallucinations. I was mostly interested in colours, movements and finding the ‘corners’ of the world. Some hallucinations lasted only a few minutes, others lasted longer, the longest was about 8 hours. That was an epic night. However, I fail to see the relevance.
Do you plan to continue asking questions that lead hither and thither, with no apparent point? If not, what is your point? A nice, concise statement of your belief system, if you please.
Don’t forget the Dawkins thread at >600 posts.
Awwww! A special pet name! The rest of us describe it as Raj wanking…
rajkumar
What is a “shaman”?
That’s the problem. Can’t give you more than I have already given you. Those who have experienced these states, they all say it is impossible to put them in words — we have no words, as yet. God can’t be defined, but can be experienced, which is an experience that cannot be defined. Have a listen to what Dr Raymond Moody has to say about NDEs, and about his patients who went through these experiences.
In your position, you can think of God as something that created everything and is everything including you, but it is beyond any definitions. You can’t understand it but you can experience it. But once you have an experience, then you kind of start to get a handle on things. The mind settles down a little knowing it was just trying to achieve the impossible. In other words, you kind of start acknowledging your mind’s limitations. That’s all.
Have you consulted a professional regarding these hallucinations?
I had this discussion 40 years ago.
Haha, you said something slightly substantive, rajkumar. You do realize that this means you’re doomed, right?
Really, easy? Hmm, for thousands of years, people experienced these states and attributed to various and sundry supernatural agents, whose descriptions are vague and inconsistent with each other. Then, science came along and biologists and neurochemists put a lot of fucking work into figuring out exactly what DOES happen inside our brains when we’re tripping or meditating. Seems to me like the god hypothesis is the easy one. It requires zero work, just a handful of ‘shrooms and a highly developed sense of arrogance. Defining these states as what they actually are, however, takes work–the work of generations of engineers and scientists to provide the technology to be able to peer inside the mind while it is still working, and the work of thousands of scientists and technicians to analyze the results of all these observations, and, last but not least, the work provided by myself and anyone else who’s ever taken time to read a book or peer-reviewed article on neurobiology.
It explains why you hallucinate on LSD but feel an expansive sense of transcendent love while on ecstasy. It explains why the experiences of Zen monks parallel those of Christian ascetics. It explains a whole fucking lot of things. The fact that you can’t be bothered to understand what it understands only shows that you are intellectually lazy and incurious. And possibly dumb, but I don’t think you are. Just lazy and arrogant, which makes it hard not to feel contempt for you.
“Atoms doing amazing things” is far more accurate and explanatory than “goddidit.” It is supported by evidence, and it yields useful and explanatory questions, such as, “WHAT amazing things are these atoms doing, pray tell?” And then you can sign up for a chemistry 101 course and learn about those amazing things. And perhaps you will think of new and interesting questions to ask about the atoms’ amazing activities, and further expand human knowledge about the universe.
Humans have been taking peyote/mushrooms/LSD/meditating/spinning in circles since prehistoric times. Lovely experiences, yielding some great poetry and perhaps some useful philosophical insights into the intrinsic unity of all life, but they haven’t opened up any new vistas of knowledge for us. And altered states of consciousness aren’t a prerequisite to understand the value of empathy.
It varied a lot. Sometimes time slowed, sometimes I forgot about the concept of time for a while. So? What’s your damn point? Oh right, I forgot, you’re just JAQing off, making everybody else do the heavy lifting while your intellectually lazy ass sits around, just asking questions!
What sort of professional are you referring to?
Uh-huh. Because “psychedelic experience is among the only authentic ways to experience the presence of a divine entity (which I conveniently refuse to define)” is so much less confusing and more of an explanation than “psychedelic experience is a chemical-induced brain state”.
Gotta love when the True Believer actually points out their favorite Other Way of Knowing. And gotta love the even rarer occasion when the answer turns out to be “fucking up your brain chemistry with hallucinogens until you see strange shit”. Therefore God, of course. This is all very serious, intellectual stuff! So, when’s rajkumar going to finally get around to the balloon animals?
@rajkumar #383
I have tacit assumption A) Knowledge requires understanding, by definition. In the absence of understanding there cannot be knowledge. There may be something else, but whatever else that something may be, it cannot be knowledge.
If your concept of God is such that it cannot be understood, then if we accept A) as a given then we have arrived at an actual answer to my original question:
Q) How can these people know the behaviors of the gods?
A) They cannot.
—
Do you find this an acceptable reading of your latest answer?
If not, then why not?
So why do you insist on defining it as “god”?
Taking drugs to get closer to God? They are clearly forgetting the 3rd Commandment:
Thou shalt not take the Lord thy God’s name intravenously.
If you define “god” as “the entire universe and everything in it,” then yes. God totally exists.
If you define “god” as “that feeling you get of loving everybody and everything and feeling like there’s no separation and the ego is totally bullshit, man, because you’re tripping balls or have been fasting and meditating for three days straight,” then yes. God totally exists.
Of course, the question then arises: what the fuck is the point of using the word “god”? We already have words to mean those things. And “god” means something quite different to most people.
I didn’t read the other thread, but apparently Raj tried to pull this same shit with the word “intelligent.”
Hey, Raj. Here’s a cultural reference for you: Alice in Wonderland. The Red Queen declares that words “mean precisely what she wants them to mean, no more no less.” It makes communication with her impossible. You’re the Red Queen. If you want to communicate, you’re going to have to knock it off. If you don’t knock it off, then it’s safe to assume that you’re more interested in intellectual wanking than you are in communication.
Because we have to use **some** word here, since we are using words to communicate. The word is like a ‘pointer’ here, which means the word in itself has no meaning, but its job is to point us towards something. And what’s that something? I have already explained. Might as well use X instead of God. But god sounds and looks and feels better.
timcliff:
1. Give me your citiations that honey works better than vinegar in matters of wresting one’s rights from under foot of bigoted, tribalistic ignorance. I’ll be waiting.
I suspect forever.
Instead I’d wager on either you ignoring the challenge, or hand-waving anecdotal declarative statements amounting to bullshit.
2. Stop telling people how angry to be and how to express their anger, you piece of shit. IF YOU CAN DEFEAT DELUSION AND IGNORANCE WITH SOME OTHER METHOD, GO DO SO.
rajkumar:
I’ve had these experiences you want so badly to believe are some sort of traffic with invisible wizards. They aren’t. They can be quite remarkable. They can even be transformative. But they are experiences of the god damned brain, which is god damn physical, and to pretend that it is somehow outside of physics or the universe or material makes you a god damn liar or a god damn moron.
Of course, I’m open to you provided me evidence to the contrary. I’ll be waiting.
I suspect forever.
Instead I’d wager on either you ignoring the challenge, or hand-waving anecdotal declarative statements amounting to… wait, where I have said this before?
It’s difficult to be creative when dealing with assholes.
Bullshit is bullshit. And there are only so many ways one can avoid stepping in bullshit.
I am sorry, but isn’t this mental wanking at its best? You people are biased. When I do it, you attack me like a pack of weasles, and when someone from your group does it … well, you insist that I should join the wanking party and then come up with a better wanking solution.
Apologies, but I find myself wanting to click a “like” button after reading this great blog post from Professor Myers.
Regarding rajkumar’s comments, while interesting, they offer little more than what you’ll see from the typical religionist’s subjective experience who hasn’t yet found the courage to puncture their bubble of indoctrination and step outside of it. Once outside you tend to look back with far, far different eyes as well as a much better perspective the more distance you can make. As a photographer I think of this as having had the courage to pull back on the lens. Its amazing how much more of the picture you’ll see as well as ability to crop out useless information after only cursory observation.
Doesn’t feel better to me. It grates.
I guess we’re at an impasse.
You can go away now.
Says Mr. Ecstasy Therefore God. Please spare us your sad attempts at argumentation.
Sure we are. Now go away.
rajkumar,
Epistemology. Axiom. Learn what these are, and what we know about each. Learn about how some axioms work in relation to reality and how some do not. Mull it over for awhile.
Do a little leg work.
Or continue to live in your silly ass world of fuzzy thinking, cognitive bias, compartmentalization, shifting definitions (which happen to keep your magical world view from suffering any actual scrutiny), and abject nonsense for the sake of feeling good about yourself and what you think is your wisdom.
No, it doesn’t.
Because in English, a god is a _person_. Zeus is a god, Allah is a god, Amaterasu is a god. When the Pope talks about god, he’s not describing an experience due to hallucinogens, he’s talking about a person with wants and desires.
It’s like deciding that “chicken” is a good word to describe a coal-powered machine that moves along rails. Chicken already means something else, and you don’t get to redefine it.
More’s the point, you can’t redefine “chicken” as above and then claim that people who enjoy eating chicken are clearly wrong because nobody should be eating coal-powered machines that move along rails, which is exactly what you’re doing.
I’m with the “go away” vote.
@rajkumar #394
There’s no need for that, Raj.
I don’t like to hide my assumptions away in the shadows. Whenever I spot one that might be relevant to whatever subject is under discussion, I bring it out into the light precisely because I want it to be questioned.
If I hold an assumption that cannot stand up to scrutiny and questioning, I want to know about it so that I can adjust or discard it accordingly.
I stated A) explicitly as an assumption. This isn’t an assertion that my assumption must be true: It is an acknowledgement that my assumption is actually just that, an assumption. Assumptions can be wrong. Assumptions are a fitting area for criticism.
I stated A) explicitly as an assumption in order to open it up to your criticism.
Recall that I asked if you felt my reading to be fair or not – and if not, to explain why. A justified rebuttal to why my assumption is flawed would be a fitting objection.
So if you have a problem with how I’ve presented this assumption regarding the relationship between knowledge and understanding, or how I have applied this assumption to my reading of what you have said most recently: Then by all means, then please, state your problems.
I am, as always, very much open to criticism.
I am also interested to see how you plan to describe a form of ‘knowledge’ that does not require understanding that is also coherent and in agreement with common usage.
I played with LSD and peyote on numerous occasions. Apparently you haven’t even read this whole thread, despite your involvement. No wonder you didn’t read links provided for your education.
I’ve answered your questions: I know what feeling you’re talking about, but I choose to not call it god.
Consiousness raising is bullshit. Hallucinogenic experiences of oneness are bullshit. Nothing you’ve said can be used as evidence to support your beliefs. They are irrational and wrong.
No, this was defining the word Knowledge. Knowledge clearly requires understanding. You cannot have knowledge without understanding it. Otherwise you just have words that you can regurgitate. Not the same thing.
Daniel Schealler was simply pointing out that your alternate way to “knowledge” was not really that. It might be something else, but it isn’t knowledge that you are getting. it might be warm fuzzy feelings, but it isn’t knowledge. (Hope I have not misrepresented your point Daniel).
Daniel hasn’t been called a wanker by others here (apart from you Raj) because there is nothing logically wrong with his post. He simply has refuted your claim that all those holy people’s “knowledge” is no such thing.
You on the other hand, have been attempting to redefine words, introduce ideas not in evidence. Suggest that all sorts of nonsense provides evidence of god when they do no such thing. For example, you have tried to redefine Intelligent to include the force of gravity. You have now tried to redefine God to mean something that no english speaker would understand it to mean.
Inspite of being called on it, you continue to do this. Consequently you get called for wanking. If you don’t want to be called out for wanking, then don’t do it iin this forum.
Like I said in another thread (almost). You get to say what you like. Postulate what you like. We get to point and laugh, until & unless you provide something to back up your “ideas”.
You haven’t yet done that.
I’m amazed at the patience people here have for you.
Bye. Thanks.
So I should use sensory pleasure as my guide to choosing the word which will best describe what I mean. No problem if it’s misleading or vacuous. Just choose the X that doesn’t mark any spot.
So words can’t describe the ‘nature’ of what you experienced? Yeah, sometimes I imagine this transcendent, otherworldly music that can’t be written down in notes divided by bars. No sequence of crotchets, semibreves and quavers can capture this music. Neither the G, C or F clef can provide the right pitch frame for it, and this amazing music is so ineffably pure and magical that it can’t actually be played on any instruments. Yet I know it exists, and can be heard if you turn on, tune in and drop out in just the right way! You might as well call it &.
OK, it’s mean to say that you’re wanking. That constant rapid flailing and all those strained expressions must have some other cause.
Pfffft, coherent? In agreement with common usage? How provincial of you, Daniel. Surely Indian shamans eschew such dualistic concepts. Why don’t you slough off your mental oppression and join Raj in defining words to mean exactly what you want them to mean, for precisely as long as you need them to mean it, no more no less?
I have a simple plan. I will address only those who didn’t take a philosophy major. In other words, everyday people.
And I have to go now. I really didn’t have any plans to do any discussions here, but that line by Professor PZ kind of stood out, and I just posted that fateful comment.
Sally: You still haven’t answered that question about time. I won’t be posting any more, but I may still hang around as a lurker. I will wait….:)
Bye
That describes me.
And most people posting on this thread.
But weren’t you going away? I find myself completely uninterested in your simple plan.
Here’s what I wrote about my experience of time when I was tripping and/or meditating:
You can control+F it.
So, are you a liar? Lazy? Or just stupid?
So you refuse to argue philosophy with those people with actual training in it?
That’s a pretty cowardly way to behave.
(Not even a philosophy minor, here.)
OK. Sorry. I must have missed. Back for another question:
Were you ever in a ‘no-time’ zone, where you just felt time had no existence? Like, Sam Harris’ ‘eternal’ communion? Plus, did you have an experience of losing your ego boundaries? As in, losing yourself completely by merging into some larger reality?
You don’t need to take be a philosophy major to have at least a basic understanding of what knowledge is, what words mean, or to use the internet to find out something about either.
This is why people have been calling you intellectually lazy, intellectually dishonest, and, in my case, calling you an asshole.
You come into these threads making claims and arguments. Then you are faced with a torrent of people who have far more experience and knowledge on the subjects who lampoon your childish conceptions with logic, reason, and evidence.
Instead of dealing with the logic you shift definitions around and obfuscate ideas with jibber-jabber.
This is intellectually dishonest.
Instead of taking the information and links provided to you and heading off to educate yourself when shown your ignorance, you continue to plod along making incoherent arguments.
This is intellectual laziness.
The entire time presenting yourself arrogantly as this sagacious soul, teeming with mystical knowledge and truth, incomprehensible and deep truth too vast to impart to us poor, delusional machines trapped in the samsara of reality.
This is being an asshole.
Just stop.
Go and learn some shit, if not for our sakes, for your own.
You are not fucking Yoda.
Sheeeeee-it.
And he misses the flounce, too.
@rajkumar #408
Ha! I choose to take that as a wonderful compliment.
While I do have a degree, it’s a BSc majoring in Computer Science. No minor, and no honors.
In all fairness, I suppose I did take PHIL101 (Introduction to Logic) at Auckland Uni in my third year as an elective paper. And a few years after graduating I did do an after-hours course on Critical Reasoning at Auckland Uni.
But other than that I am simply a consumer of public-outreach-type philosophical texts. For enjoyment, mainly.
I’ve always envied the casual command over logic and subject matter exhibited by some of the actual philosophy majors I know. So I’m very pleased to have been confused for one, even if it is untrue.
Sorry to see you
fleego, Raj. If you change your mind, either on grounds of me not being a philosophy major, or simply from a change of heart, I’ll still be subscribed to comments here.Until then: All the best. Keep well.
@Catnip, Not a Polymath #404
That’s pretty much right.
To be picky, I wasn’t intending to come across so strong as asserting a definition insofar as I was just presenting my assumptions behind my reading.
But otherwise, yes, your representation was pretty much spot on.
I’m sitting here trying to enjoy my mandatory second cup of tea before attempting to face the world this morning, but I keep getting irritatingly distracted by a somewhat vaguely heard, middle-distance, rhythmic ‘fapping’ sound. Fap fap fap fap. Whatever could it be?
Oh wow, he’s still going. Rajkumar, are you going to admit that you were wrong with your statements about intelligence requiring a greater intelligence yet?
So, just lazy then?
And also a liar–you said you were going.
No.
I felt that way, yes, but it doesn’t actually make any zone I was in a literal no-time zone.
Sam Harris is not a reference point for me.
Many times.
That what losing one’s ego boundaries usually entails, yes.
Allow me to predict where you’re going with this: get me to be specific enough about my experiences, then point to where they don’t match the experiences of this or that monk or shaman or something, which then, in your mind, means I’m not quite qualified (or something) to dismiss the experience as just a bunch of neurons firing.
Please. Surprise me. I beg you.
A question for you (and you had better damn well answer it since I’ve been patient and generous with my answers): If it’s not just neurons firing, then what is it?
And if you just don’t know, then why the fuck are you on my case about it? Present a viable alternative hypothesis or shut the fuck up. It’s not just the scientific method, it’s common courtesy. Don’t waste our time.
@ Sally
Waste not His Tender Mercies!
Please forward all your unwanted trolls to TZT. We are aiming at responsible, sustainable blogging here. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle … there is lot of mileage in that one yet, and it can be made as good as new with just a few prods of a sharp stick.
Nope. I have no problem with these firing neurons. They do fire, and we do see them doing these firings. Happy?
Now, I have a question:
If’d lost your ego boundaries, and your sense of self in the process, then who experienced all of this events? You had no self who would have experienced all of this…. Have you ever thought about that?
Regarding time, if you felt you were in a ‘no-time’ zone, then you should know what ‘eternity’ means? It just surprises me that you are still acting so naive, as if nothing has happened. You have just been to ‘eternity’, and then back to time again from ‘eternity’….. It is a very rare experience. Celebrate. Those monks are saying the same thing, only in a different way.
Ugh, when I begged you to surprise me, I didn’t mean to surprise me with the depths of your arrogance, condescension, and stupidity.
*hand wave, tap dance, fail to stick flounce*
This sure gets old. So the whole argument he made boils down to “it’s maaaaagic, because I say so.” Never heard that one before. Nope.
Why it’s just … useless.
*hands over obligatory porcupine and a sledge*
I have, and so have the researchers in cognitive neurobiology I mentioned earlier… pity you couldn’t be bothered.
What’s to celebrate? It was an illusion. It was not actually eternity. I wouldn’t even describe it that way. I would say it was timeless, or that I was purely in the moment. I have no reference point for eternity, it is a mathematical abstraction which no human will ever truly experience.
I’m now kind of curious as to whether or not you have the capacity to experience being embarrassed at being so wrong. You are calling me naive? It is to laugh. I’d say it was ironic except that it was so very predictable.
Also, it should be pointed out that the experience of timelessness and loss of ego is actually fairly common, and would probably be more so if LSD and other psychotropic drugs weren’t illegal.
Basic facts, Raj. It makes you look stupid when you just make them up.
I had completely the wrong mental image when I first read this line….
I know we all have Google these days, but you don’t even know the mistake you are making here. If you lose your sense of self by losing your ego boundaries, then there is no “I” any more. There is no “I” any more who experiences all of this. How did you experience all of this? Who was the experiencer, when you had no ego self?
People bullshitting and bragging about these experiences is what is fairly common, not the actual experiences. These experiences are still fairly rare.
Oh come on, during your meditative state you might feel as though time has stalled, but you haven’t been to ‘eternity’ any more than someone watching Star Wars has been to outer space.
Interpretation is not explanation. The phenomena you experience – no sense of self, perception of eternity, and the sensation of melding with a larger part of reality – may, at best, give clues as to how the brain functions. But it doesn’t point to a magical time-bending ether world or whatever your mystical buddies like to dream up.
Also, funny way of not posting any more. If you can dissolve your ego, why did you need to be heard again?
Actually I think it was me who experienced It for hir
As an aside, Julian Baggini’s new book The Ego Trick is an interesting and accessible exploration of the notion of self.
[meta]
Odds are rajkumar the liar will spew forth inanities for a while yet.
(Another Matthew Segall wannabe)
Such stupidity!
The self that perceives no self perceives it and thus recollects it upon regaining the sense of self.
(Duh)
(Or Shiloh with added condescension)
[meta]
rajkumar’s many variations on the semantic shift will fail equally, but they no doubt will be forthcoming.
(Not just inanity, but needless inanity. :| )
<sigh>
Which self perceive no self if there is no ego self?
OK, that was officially boring. He doesn’t even tap dance well.
See y’all.
I’m still waiting for rajkumar to acknowledge he was wrong on his unsubstantiated assertions about design, and admit that his personal ignorance isn’t platform from which to argue. Come on, rajkumar, you were shown how you were mistaken. Be intellectually honest and admit you were wrong.
Actually there is no self, the perception we have of a unified consciousness is an illusion. It’s a necessary one for making plans, interacting with other people, and generally surviving in the world though.
Or so I am given to understand.
I’ll have to check out that Baggini book.
Then you’re probably experiencing that sense of eternity.
Projection is a motherfucker.
Caine @231,
You need mail order Jaffa cakes? I can {looks shiftily around} hook you up. If you have Josh’s email, he has mine, give him the Sooper Sekret Handshayk and he’ll pass it on.
Louis
Catnip, Not a Polymath #426
I actually realized sexual congress with Yoda might immediately come to the reader’s mind as soon as I wrote it, and kept it that way because, not in spite of this. Feature, not a bug.
So your image was oh so right.
On a side note, I want to apologize for the multitude of grammatical mistakes, repetitive words, and the quote fail I’ve made in this thread.
My laptop is broken (and I can’t afford a new one at the moment) and there are big lines running down the screen that block out much of the text, and I can’t be bothered to move the page all around while typing to fix errors that would otherwise be easy to spot.
Well, I could be bothered to do so, but I’m too lazy to do so every time I post on the interwebs. Hence the apology. :D
It’s really annoying because I am so prone to call somone an idiot – and it’s embarrassing when, in the course of doing so, I make some rudimentary fucking error in grammar and don’t fix it.
Oh crap, I’m getting a smugburn. Raj, bullshit ≠ profundity.
“The perception we have of a unified consciousness is an illusion”????
Again you are making a mistake. A BIG one. There is no one to perceive here, dear. You have already lost yourself in this ‘unified field of consciousness’. There is no “you” any more. So, again, who is the one experiencing or perceiving when you have no ego self left?
Feels futile.
WTF?
((((The self that perceives no self) perceives it) and thus recollects it) upon regaining the sense of self).
I am using your very own terminology!
Here, lemme waffle it for ya — ahem…
—
(Also, sorta what SallyStrange wrote @437. Not sure it’s necessary)
Shorter Rajkumar:
I am just asking questions, you’re all biased, I don’t have to read anything, or to deal with anyone who knows actual philosophy because wah I don’t want to, and I could totally quote hundreds of articles if I wanted to, like any time now.
Y to the fucking AWN.
This is a very familiar dog and pony show.
Raj, bubala, many of us have taken mushrooms and had Fun-Times-On-Drugs. Very few of us were stupid enough to believe them. New schtick please, you’re being laughably unintelligent.
Louis
I see Kumar is still crapping on, and becoming more and more incoherent as he does so.
I also note that on the other thread Philo flounced, seemingly because wiminz was talking to him.
rajkumar,
First of all, drop the “dear” when talking to SallyStrange. It reeks of misogyny coming from you.
Second, you are taking the psychology of “self” and confusing it with something other than a mechanism of the brain.
The brain, and the information it holds, is what makes the “self”.
I know you’ve read some books. I know you’ve read some D.T. Suzuki. I realize you’ve contemplated “self” and “other”.
Listen, some of us went over this line of inquiry decades ago.
You do not have some insight we are not aware of. “The bottom falling out of the bucket” is not what you think it is. “Emptiness” is not what you think it is. Losing your sense of self is not what you think it is.
There is no magic to any of this. There is no grand mystical secret involved in these sort of experiences.
Please stop thinking you’ve had some grand enlightenment, or satori, or “flash of lightning from a clear blue sky” that people here have not. We are decades ahead of you.
I could go on at length about this, but it would bore the ever living fuck out of many of the regulars here.
You just need to understand that your magical, stupid, and clearly juvenile misapprehensions concerning numinous experiences will rightfully be met with ridicule here.
No, I think you have just given a very good example of how escapism in one form can be applied in daily life. I thought Dawkins was a winner when he swung between atheism and atheism/agnosticism on his own 7-ponit scale…It’s you now.
OK. Going now. Will wait for Sally’s answer though.
Bye
Tedious specimen:
1. People vanish when they lose their sense of self?
1a. Trying to push buttons, eh?
(Bad strategy, worse tactics!)
2. Losing awareness of self no more implies the disappearance of self than losing sensation in a limb implies the disappearance of a limb.
3. Still summarising your silly semantic shift? (cf.1 above)
@tkreacher #441
What’s more, I keep hearing it in my head in Liam Neeson’s Qui Gon voice with the wave of the hand.
I’m then compelled to look around nervously, to check that some Jedi isn’t playing silly buggers with my catbits, whilst I’m off flying astral planes with Raj for company.
It’s very disconcerting
I think Kumar is an excellent example how tedious someone who thinks he has gained some enlightenment by getting stoned can be to those who have shown enough self-restraint to keep their minds intact.
Yawn, still no one ounce of evidence from rajkumar for anything. OPINION is not evidence. OPINION is fuckwittery when drugs are required. Nothing new there. Happened with the cultural revolution back in the ’60s. Not even something fresh and new. Old trite bullshit.
*HONK*
[meta]
Argumentum ad nauseam was a Shiloh technique.
(What are the odds of that favourite* of Shiloh’s being invoked by this specimen, who has purportedly left for the umpteenth time?)
—
* Regulars will recall.
@tkreacher
Also, if you have any skill with a screw driver, you may want to try repairing your laptop, rather than buying a new one. You can replace the screens in many laptops for a fraction of the cost of a new system. It’s not really super hard, if you get the right instructions. I replaced the screen in my laptop about 2 months ago, for just over A$120. Compared to A$900 for an equivalent new one, or A$300 for the same model second hand.
Just google your laptop model & “screen replace” or something similar.
OK. When you have the sensation of losing a limb, it is you aka John Morales, which is your ego self, who is having this sensation. When you lose your entire ego self, when you lose being John Morales, who is aware of losing this self called John Morales? This is the question I asked Sally. Not pushing any buttons. You were just too busy doing programming here…
Matt,
You take that back! It’s perfectly possible to get stoned, exercise self restraint and keep one’s mind intact.
Granted it’s not perfectly possible to do this every day, which I suspect Raj-Parjy is doing, and it’s certainly not possible if you think the dancing lights in front of your eyes are telling you the truth. But (very) occasional use of {ahem} recreational pharmaceuticals is not anathema to a coherent and well trained mind.
Louis
I though rajkumar had flounced. Funny how liars and bullshitters can’t stick the flounce, but people of honor and integrity can. What are you rajkumar? Show us your integrity. Stick that flounce evidenceless delusional cupcake.
Oh, I quite agree. My point was that unrestrained use tends to have a detrimental effect on the mind, and often leads to the spouting of the psuedo crap that Kumar is peddling. Also, people who are stoned tend to act in way that is rather tedious to those are are not stoned at the time.
rajkumar, you, me, everyone’s True Self is their body. ;)
Your vaunted self (and supposedly mystical sense of self) is an epiphenomenon of the body.
When one has such experiences, they are in one’s head; others would look at you and probably note you’re seem lost in your own little world.
(Predictably tedious, you are)
John Morales
OK. But I think you are doing your thing again. It is not a good idea to interfere if you are going to escape like a little pussy later.
[meta]
You forgot ““, you disingenuous drongo.
Ok, here goes
{knuckles crack}
I experience it when Sally loses hir ego.*
John is onto me, when my ego goes walkabout*
I’ll bet that Louis is there experiencing John’s lack of being.*
And to close the circle, Sally is right there recording all of Louis’ pharmescapades*
Raj continues to lose his marbles (and integrity) in the middle, all by himself, to the sound of {fap fap fap fapping}
*This may or may not be true. Identities may (or may not) have been changed to
hideprotect theguiltyinnocentYawn, druggie godbot doesn’t know how to shut the fuck up (flounce). Typical behavior from one who isn’t in their right mind. The regulars will get in the last word. That always happens.
[meta]
rajkumar, you stand fully exposed.
(@461: )
SallyStrange @439: Projection is a motherfucker.
(Prophetic, she is :) )
Catnip,
Ahhhh but what is the sound of one hand fapping?
If a man talks in a wood and no woman is around to hear him, is he still wrong?
And most importantly: Smoke weed. I accidentally god.
Louis
Regulars …
First Sally, then this John Morales character pulled me back here. I was leaving. 20 posts ago.
So, a goodbye.
Bye
Nerd: Ask Dawkins. I am sure he has connections in the British Royal Family, and I am sure the royal family still hires clowns, if only secretly. How about becoming a Royal Clown????
Another sexist fuckwit I see.
@louis,
If a man is in wood, with no woman around, is it wrong for his one hand to make the sound of fapping?
{wow man} (spoken in a high pitch, strained voice){must remember to lay off Raj’s weed}
Catnip,
It depends. Is it a shamanistic, pot infused, fap-circle event to get in touch with your inner male and possibly a badger?
If so, it’s probably all good.
Louis
Louis
Well, if Raj opines when there’s no Pharyngulites around to hear him, he’s still not even wrong.
You can’t expect any better from someone who keeps getting his departure tangled up with Zeno’s Paradox.
Agent,
No no no no no!
You’re not getting the full meaning of the words “wrong” and “departure”
They could be expanded to include things which the human mind cannot even comprehend yet! Or ever!
It’s really just an alternate way of being one with god*. You know experiencing god.
*this is not the god you think it is {Jedi hand wave}
Agent Silversmith,
Good point, good point.
Those paragons of sexual equality and women’s rights support Motley Crue have a song for Raj.
Raj, don’t go away mad. Just go away.
Louis
@Louis
Ah!
It’s all good then
Can it stick the flounce? I know not. Liars, bullshitters, and druggies have no honor and integrity, and aren’t funny, even though they think they are. Just like Rajkumar, no idea of how to do humor, logic, or integrity.
Still going? I am not a violent person. Really.
But right now, after reading more of this zendribble, I have the urge to hear the sound of one hand slapping.
Rajkumar dribbled:
Go fuck yourself.
So, Raj is expressing a kind of Meta Courtier’s Reply then?
“You can’t deny god because you don’t clearly understand every possible interpretation of god, therefore god.”
That pretty much sums it up.
Not very original thinker, but then, what’s to be expected?
Catnip, Not a Polymath
I chuckle out loud.
Rare, that. :D
rajkumar:
Way too obvious in trolling directly after being called out about how you used “dear”.
Go away.
Catnip, Not a Polymath
Nice, I’ll give that a shot until I can get a new one. (This particular device was a second-hand-given-to-me as a stop-gap, and has other problems with speed, inability for updates due to its obsolete hardware, ect. ect… it’s really old, and in desperate need of replacement.)
@TKReacher
Good luck with the screwdriver & your yoda comment got a very rare guffaw. Made my son ask….
It isn’t a matter of a person not having a self, as if those are two different entities. The person’s brain ordinarily creates an experience of being a self in relation to the rest of the world, but the brain functions involved in doing that can work incorrectly for some amount of time if the person is in an altered state, has certain cognitive disorders, or in other cases like phantom limb syndrome where the feeling continues even when it shouldn’t (e.g., feeling one still has an arm even though you know it was amputated). It can even be partially induced with various illusions for those who are otherwise functioning normally.
So the answer is that the person is experiencing those things, because having the experience of being a self does not comprise everything about one’s experience. It is just a particular aspect of awareness that can be modified in different ways, without losing awareness of other things.
It has doesn’t have any grand metaphysical implications like souls or gods or being eternal or whatever sophistry you’re going to dream up next. It can be explained quite well with science, but not with religious bullshit. Anyone can safely have those kinds of experiences themselves, because it isn’t some mysterious undefinable garbage that only a monk or people taking hallucinogens can understand.
If by “Meta” you mean mind-rendingly tedious, vapid, yet condescending and pretentious with a tang of misogyny, then yes.
Is there something special is the air ? Is it the full moon or something ?
What is it with misogynist asscake trolls these days ?
My theory is that the Rick Santorum Home for the Religiously Insane has cut back on staffing levels again.
LOL! You guys are brilliant. And Raj darling (if you can call me “dear,” I can call you “darling,” right?), if you’re still reading, John Morales and Consciousness Razor pretty much covered it. There’s nothing I would add to their answers.
And honey? You’re no Zen monk. Your koans aren’t.
I’m not an expert in pharmaceuticals and neurochemistry, but I called it back in comment #351.
Sally:
The answer is that it makes these drug trips seem more important than they are, or as important as they feel at the time.
Raj:
I rest my case.
Nonsense. Our experience of time is directly related to how fast we are moving through four dimensional space-time. No matter what drugs you take, or emotional state you are in, the earth still revolves around the sun, as it has for the past four billion years. The sun still orbits the center of the Milky Way, as it has, for much longer. Sometimes when I’m bored, time seems to slow down. Sometimes, when I’m having a grand ol’ time, I look at the clock and think, ‘Where did the time go?’, time seemed to go faster than normal. But these are simply illusions. I know this. You know this. It doesn’t take drugs to figure out that our brains to not give us a 100% accurate depiction of the reality around us. Though, they do help sometimes.
The only way, that I’m aware of for, a person to “experience infinity” is in the middle of a black hole. Which doesn’t sound to me like a very nice time.
Sorry, I used ‘infinity’ where Raj said ‘eternity’. But the point remains.
Also, I loved the speech, PZ!
Fantastic read! As a Christian it is always of benefit to see what those who disagree with us come up with. It is also refreshing to know it isn’t really anything new, or something which has not been addressed and refuted before. Thank you for your insights, humor, and entertaining writings, we may not agree, but you do make the substance of our disagreement a little less unbearable and you do well at articulating points which not all atheists will readily admit.
QFT
I don’t really want a friend who isn’t willing to be honest with me. Spare me the loyal lackeys, I can’t be one.
stevemiller:
Aaaw. You keep patting yourself on the back there while singing lalalalalalalalala, as if atheists were the ones who have a problem with honesty.
stevemiller, show us where you address the solid and conclusive physical evidence for your imaginary deity. Evidence that will pass muster with scientists, magicians, and professional debunkers, as being of divine, and not natural (scientifically explained), origin. You know, something equivalent to the eternally burnin bush.
Inquiring minds that have never seen said evidence, but have asked for years, want to know.
If you lot come up with something new, so will we.
You seem to be using “refreshing” and “refute” in odd ways.
Herp derp?
Louis
Such as?
Why do you idiots do this? So go ahead and refute it then. We can handle being proven wrong, if you’re actually up to the challenge. Don’t dangle your (imaginary) refutations out of reach, that’s just childish and certainly not productive.
How old are you? Because you sound exactly like my blithertarian ex when he was seventeen and also high. Even he grew out of this phase in a couple of years, and he wasn’t exactly the brightest bulb. Dude, don’t try to ask Deep Philosophical Questions when you a.) won’t read actual philosophy and b.) don’t know what the fuck you’re doing. It’s embarrassing to watch.
OMG.
I had the “right” mental image until you said that, and then boom. I like the wrong image better – so thanks!