I read this and thought, “but you’re alone either way!”
It tells you all you need to know about the people who endorse that kind of message, anyway.
(Sharing because I disagree!)
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Wow. That’s a terrible message.
I would like to walk with, to paraphrase Sagan, a candle in the dark.
This message brought to you by Muggers Anonymous. Mugging people who walk about in the dark for 2000 years.
Yeah, but God’ll just laugh at you every time you walk into a tree, so…
Wait. I think I completely disagreed with that whole message. So much fear of the light, so much lack of one’s own abilities. *sigh* Trust in god, indeed. He’ll take you nowhere, but you’ll feel special!
It’s word salad, phrased to appeal to a certain type of person but entirely lacking any real meaning.
I always thought coming into the light was a pretty-pretty-bad-poetry way of saying “find God”, so the whole thing may even qualify as an oxymoron of sorts.
See, that’s just prejudiced against darkness. Nothing wrong with it. Easier to see the cosmos, lots of interesting nocturnal animals out and about, often nicer weather than the daytime in high summer, and peace and quiet.
Carl Sagan and normal people.
Fundie xian idiots
Whatever. It’s a free country, after all.
But there are problems with that idea.
1. There are demons and satan in that dark. Created by that god who lets them run around doing whatever they do.
2. God is imaginary and doesn’t do anything in the real world.
3. Try walking in the dark with “god” and without a flashlight and you will soon run into an obstacle, fall, or get stuck in a thicket. You will just have to wait for day light like everyone else.
Anyone else wondering if “darkness” and “light” are metaphors for “ignorance” and “knowledge”?
I don’t get it.
What are they trying to say?
How many metaphors were mangled to produce that?
But that’s probably just me.
thumper1990
I am now.
And I’d rather own a unicorn than never eat cheese again.
Must be those people I see driving at night with no headlights turned on.
People like that need to realise that even if God walks with you in the dark it doesn’t mean he’s actually going to help you if something bad happens. Plans beyond mortal ken and all that rot.
At least they admit that religion is “dark”.
Because I don’t need to see in order to know.
I just won’t open my eyes, and all will be fine.
Glen Davidson
@composer99 #7
Agreed. I know that in general, light and dark have universal use as cross-cultural metaphor because we’re diurnal mammals.
But I always get a sour taste in my mouth when those metaphors are used in a religious context, because of my Mormon upbringing. The idea that the color of your skin is an indication of your, or your race’s righteousness or lack thereof, is disgusting.
Jeez. I know that last sentence might seem like a non-sequitur, but I promise it made sense in my non-caffienated mind.
Pinterest is full of this same kind of shit, although to give credit where due there’s also a lot of atheist pinning going on.
The one that grinds me the most isn’t religious but is posted in the Science category all the time and says, “Stars can’t shine without darkness.” Oh, FFS! They shine all the time, we just can’t see them sometimes because our own star is shining too brightly.
And then of course below stunning photos of incredible landscapes or space nebulae (or really, anything breathtaking) there are the usual comments left praising god for his handiwork.
*then
;-)
Some more mixed metaphors, this time from the Bible:
Zinc Avenger
Ah.
That clears things up.
Ah, but it’s better to tapdance with a crustacean than play Yahtzee with the devil. Or something. Seriously, Demotivators called out this pap with their poster that read “If a pretty picture and trite saying are all it takes to motivate you, you probably have an easy job. The type machines will be doing soon”.
Reminds me of the old bumper sticker: God said it, I believe it, that settles it. To which I add, OK, you’re a dumbass.
It reminds me of this cartoon:
http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n261/philipcarter/humour/hit.jpg
Though I walk through the valley of the shadows* I will fear no evil…because I’ve got a cell phone with a flashlight app that lets me see where I’m going and I can call 911 if anything in the valley scares me. Thank you scientists, engineers, and city planners.
*Yeah, I know, that’s not actually the quote, but I see it misquoted that way often enough to feel justified in using the misquote.
Ah, yes, the people who curse the glare when someone lights a candle.
Only very sad people would prefer to be stumbling around in the dark while other people are off getting shit done because they’re making use of all the resources available to them. Of course, religion in general and fundamentalist religions in particular extoll the very most useless activity.
The gist of “I would rather walk with god in the dark than go alone in the light” is:
“Ignorance and god is preferable to knowledge and enlightenment”.
So, given that the metaphor is dark=ignorance and light=knowledge, does this mean their invisible friend is ignorant now? I thought this friend knows all and farted out light on whim. I’m going to stop now before my brain implodes into a singularity.
Obligatory movie!Gandalf quote:
“You cannot pass! I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the Flame of Anor. The dark fire will not avail you, Flame of Udûn! Go back to the shadow. You shall not pass!”
(movie!Gandalf because I don’t have the books handy. Sorry.)
“Anyone else wondering if “darkness” and “light” are metaphors for “ignorance” and “knowledge”?”
I’m not wondering. That’s exactly how I read it. If you’re walking with Gawd, you ARE walking in “darkness.” Lighten up and take a look at the real world. It’s amazing!
Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I shall fear no evil…for I am the evils asshole in the valley.
evils = evilist. My tribute to Tpyos
In the company of our imaginary friends…
thumper1990 @ #9:
Anyone else wondering if “darkness” and “light” are metaphors for “ignorance” and “knowledge”?
Not me. I’m quite sure that that’s the message they intended to convey.
Even with all the abhorrent misogyny and what not pouring from the fingers/mouths of a subset of my atheist confreres, I do have to hand it to religion. Pretty much any religion. When it comes to banal slogans that make my arse clench with the stupidity of them, they truly do take the biscuit.
Religionists and sundry woomeisters have all the same drivelling bigots that any other segment of society has, perhaps more, I’ve never counted, but by fuck can they take perfectly pleasant individual words and mash them into a shit salad of mind bending nature. Just goes to show, eh?
Louis
I did not realize that Portishead was quoting the Bible inthis cool song.
I get several similar ones every single day on my facebook wall, I’ve blocked the ones who do it 2-3 times a day but still get plenty. If you point out how irrational or disturbing the messages really are, you becoem the bad guy.
Found the source!
Clarifies the meaning somewhat but the issue I have with it is that there’s not a choice between ignorance of the future and theism. You have pretty much the same data to work with whether or not Mr. Deity is out there because his communications to us are indistinguishable from people making it all up.
@38: Indeed [quickly hunts through MP3 player, presses “play”].
Everyone should have at least a passing acquaintance with the Bible, the way they should have an acquaintance with Shakespeare [/shameless_anglocentrism], because our culture is full of references to both of them. (But the latter, on the whole, is a better read)
Many, many years ago, a close friend invited me to watch a church choir rehearsal. The song title was: “Life is worth the living, just because He lives.” Conversation ensued later. My friend was not happy with me.
I KNOW!
composer99 @7
You must not live very far north, where especially winter nights are long, dark and dreary, instead of cool, calm and lovely as they are further south.
Don’t forget that AM radio waves conduct better at night, so the winter gives me more chances to pick up Kansas City or somethin’.
Note which gender is explicitly targeted by this dreck.
How can women function without a daddy nearby to help them, poor things?
re kemist@11:
You evil, evil sith, you. Technology is only for you evil siths. How dare you imply that is the best way to walk in the dark. Better to walk in the dark and
bump intoencounter trees directly. For shame, tsk, tsk, tsk.There’s already a name for this. It’s called theolojizzing.
Er, considering that the Christian God likes calling himself “Father of lights” and a “lamp in the darkness”, this doesn’t even make Christian-babble sense.
John 8:13
When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
So….you’re certainly not walking with the right god. Maybe try again, Christians?
You know who else likes it when we are all sitting around in the dark? Thieves. Rapists. Murderers. Thugs of all kinds.
Kind of like the Christian God.
Man, they sure prefer life gloomy, don’t they? What a depressing image of life they harbor.
Of course, there is a strong motivation of sorts: they must then rely on a savior to rescue them from the gloom of their own making.
As Christine Rose has found:
“I would rather walk with Him by faith than walk alone by sight…My heart shrinks back from trials which the future may disclose…”
In other words, they abrogate their responsibility to determine their course in life, because:
“Yet I never had sorrow but what the dear Lord chose;…So I send the coming tears back with the whispered word, “He knows.””
Isn’t it funny how an irrationally inspired “whispered word” that appears in the head, and something as arbitrary as ‘faith’, should trump the illuminating flashlight of human knowledge and the reason and science and the consequent know-how technology that makes it available for useful application in a real natural world within which any creature or society of them must survive, dare I say so, in peaceful coexistence – interaction via trade as opposed to war, for example. There’s obviously a lot more coming from outside the head than a ‘whisper’ coming from inside it.
Based on history , on the particular Abrahamic tradition, its certainly not as if any of those pesky offshoot commandments about not coveting your neighbor’s property or wives (or any other ethical or moral tradition they claim) have any force when it comes to relations with the other. They conveniently suspend their ‘god-given’ ideals for ANY potential prize. So they might as well conquer them – completely dominate them.
The mindset runs internally: it all boils down to the establishment of a common view of a means of acquiring power, which regards everything as property, potentially to be exploited – to be absorbed and dominated – including their very own women and children and anybody who is weak, as well as anything perceived to be ‘other’, including other races, people of ‘contrary’ sexual-orientation and, strangely enough, other creeds.
Its always a system specifically designed to separate the wheat from the chaff, but that’s how the system works: by enabling and enforcing a rule that is NOT applicable to everybody.
What is perhaps most amazing is not so much that such a despicable environment of institutionalized schizophrenia and the rampant supernaturality it spawns and preserves can become the basis for cultures, or even that they can become dominant across the globe, but that such cultures haven’t swiftly extinguished themselves for the anti-natural and anti-reality world views they operate under and have continued to promote over the last 5000+ years or more.
There can be only one reason for this, I suspect and submit, and that can only be due to civilization. Most if not all of them have functioned on the premium of political and economic control of property largely orchestrated by an elite patriarchal class that have historically run societies.
That’s how economic and political power has been systematically obtained, and that long tradition has been quite effective in training the inhabitants of various cultures (like ours) to reap power and influence by exploiting and dominating those who are least able to protect themselves.
As long as people continue to cleave to the preposterous idea that “He Knows” more than they do when it comes to the serious business of conducting one’s own life based on the challenges which actuality in nature presents, we as a culture will continue to give this horrible idea a voice which it doesn’t deserve. Its high time to make another separation, and once and for all make it stick: the difference between the culture of ignorance/stupidity and the culture of reason/science.
There is no other way that will see humanity and the rest of the biosphere beyond the next century or two. And the first thing that must accomplished is that our numbers on this poor planet must be reduced to at least a tenth of our current numbers – or we are inevitably doomed.
/end rant
ack…so read beyond the obvious boo boos
Just when you thought bioluminescent species couldn’t get any cooler…they’re probably atheists too!
You know, one thing I think makes for a good father figure is one who does not actively try to make you vulnerable all the time so you constantly require his salvation.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
> what is a grue?
The grue is a sinister, lurking presence in the dark places of the earth. Its favorite diet is adventurers, but its insatiable appetite is tempered by its fear of light. No grue has ever been seen by the light of day, and few have survived its fearsome jaws to tell the tale.
So I’m obviously thinking too hard about this quote, but the part that really angers me — that I think does real harm — is the “go alone in the light” bit. The idea of a god as the only one who can keep us from being “alone” in the world, that he is this thing that knows us better than anyone and is the only one besides ourselves who can truly know us, is harmful, and it’s just untrue. Reach out to your fellow people! We are here, all around you, and we want to make you known and knowable! I want to know you, and I want you to know me. Let us keep each other from being alone. Let us care for each other, and foster human communication and intimacy and love. I don’t want to know and love an invisible perfect omniscient robed dude who doesn’t exist, I want to know and love real, living, breathing, fallable, imperfect, awesome people.
Stop pretending your only important connection is to god, and go out and engage with your fellow humans.
Of course, anyone walking in the dark with God should also mull over the that any horrifying misfortune that befalls them will bring out the the God apologists talking about how the omniscient, omnipotent God could not intervene on their behalf because of free will.
I’m starting to think that Catch 22 must be a chapter in the Bible.
This reminds me of the dwarf theology in “Thud!”; since dwarves spend most of their time mining underground, they’ve evolved to see better in the dark than in light, so they associate darkness with knowledge and light with ignorance, ever using the word “endarken” instead of “enlighten.”
Nonsense. There is nothing in the dark except what you bring with you.
Oh, but be careful on that first step!
They’re walking with god in the dark because they ran into a wall and had a concussion?
You can tell a lot about people by what they fear. “Lucifer”, after all, means “bringer of light”.
ChristineRose,
Clarifies it plenty (illuminates it): she thinks she is God’s perpetually-surprised toy and she loves it so.
(Sublimated masochism)
If you agree with this sentiment you are in the dark.
Those sadly afflicted with chistianity have developed a talent for creating words and statements that sound fabulous without having any real meaning, like calling the jesus nonsense ‘ good news’ which it obviously isn’t good or news. Walking alone with god or the bay jesus is no different than being alone, as stated by PZ.
“I’d rather walk alone on the beach in the dark with God than with a light ”
“but god why are there only one set of footprints in the sand ?”
“because I don’t exist, you stupid pillock!”
Don’t go into the dark, there be Christians.
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.
Truly we shall all be saved, for as it is written in the good book:
Pretty sure Alan Scott is a biblical character. right?
“We have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night. ”
Originally from some poem, I believe. Used as the epitaph of a married couple of astronomers, and quoted from there by Carl Sagan as an opening to a chapter in one of his books, IIRC chapter 8 of COSMOS.
I see little choice I will not cower in the dark with god I will walk out into the light and face my destiny and fate because I know that there were others that went before and there may be others that will follow
============>
Nobody know what I’m talking about
I’ve got my own life to live
I’m the one that’s gonna have to die
When it’s time for me to die
So let me live my life the way I want to. (jimi hendrix if 6 was 9)
uncle frogy
– Dolan Chirosius http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Ecclesiarchy_Quotes#.UY4K9MqXmM0
-Bool of Cataclysm, http://syndicate.lubie.org/swars/html/swars_book_cataclysm.php
First, something truly Dark…from Pensacola Christian College:
http://www.stufffundieslike.com/2013/05/act-iii-keeping-up-appearances-no-matter-the-cost/
The fallout from this?
From The Friendly Atheist blog
Now, some Light. From, of all places: Ireland/
No quotes, as it’s a short article, but it is completely made of win.
There’s apparently a russian proverb that goes : “‘Night hides the world but reveals a universe.”
I’d rather walk in the dark and see a multitude of stars than just our one Daytime Star.
But that wouldn’t mean there’s any god.
@2. angrymudcrab : “I would like to walk with, to paraphrase Sagan, a candle in the dark.”
Seconded.
@8.raven :
Or hope its a full Moon or very close to that lunar phase.
Or there’s been a really nearby (but not too close!) supernova that’s shining like a full moon or more or a close passing O-B type star or just maybe a really great comet!
Or frequent bright bolts of lightning, nature’s fireworks although that has obvious risks attached. Ditto volcanic eruptions and the “white nights” produced by a Tunguska level bolide event.
@50. barbyau :
Except, they also need light to see with don’t they – usually?
The idea that thieves and rapists benefit from hiding in the darkness as opposed to other (ugh) techniques is a somewhat misleading one I think.
I’d rather go in the dark without people telling me I’m going to get raped than try to shove God into any time of day.
And I would rather walk alone in the night, knowing that the darkness holds nothing more terrible than me.
Sometimes a flamethrower is the right thing to take with you in the dark.
(Also, I’m angry today because of the football coach thread.)
Thread won.
+ 1
+ 2
“Food chain” is misleading. It’s “food web”.
Victims Of The Darkness
If I need to walk in the dark, I would prefer to go with night vision goggles.
StevoR:
One cannot both see starlight and be in the dark simultaneously.
*sigh* “Dark” isn’t restricted to absolute darkness.
[OT]
David, how dark is a dark room? ;)
@81. John Morales : Sure you can – I do that all the time and could do so right now but for the fact its 100% overcast.
Nothing says the darkness has to be total and darker skies make the stars (& planets) stand out more.
@80. Amphiox : I prefer to take my 7 X 50 binoculars.
I don’t get what your point is or where the humor is.
David, in that original poetic sentiment, the darkness refers to the unknown.
(It’s allegorical)