He’s still promoting his cheesy little home video, this time with a video featuring me. He has me briefly stating that “Evolution is an amoral process, a cruel and harsh process…” and then — well, watch it for yourself. You’ll be stunned at the crude response he makes, but you probably won’t be surprised.
I had to laugh. The man really is a simpleton with no moral compass, or as he would think, a typical product of evolution.
Somebody needs to remind Ray Comfort that the “God with us” belt buckle belonged to the German army, the Nazis. Nazi-ism didn’t rise up because they accepted evolution — they didn’t, and Darwin’s books were condemned by the Nazis — nor were the Germans atheist.
In fact, much of what Comfort claims is exactly what was claimed by the Nazis. They argued that others should be suppressed, that some German citizens should be disenfranchised, persecuted and eventually murdered, because they “believed in evolution,” and right and wrong, and that they were not of the “proper” faith.
Obviously, Ray Comfort wants to play Shakespeare. Queen Gertrude.
We should worry about what is living in the “living waters” Comfort drinks. It’s not what he thinks.
So true! Before Darwin enunciated the theory of evolution, there was no fornication or adultery or homosexuality. Thanks, Chuck!
Evolution leads to fornication? Well I wasn’t a fan beforehand, but sign me up!
This video is spectacularly dishonest. I’m not surprised, but WOW! It’s really, really bad. Ray Comfort doesn’t seem to want to keep it classy.
Louis
Ugh, what a perverse, lying fuck.
That whole ‘would you save a neighbor or your dog?’ bit, notice how the interviewer’s face is never showed. Is Ray the same guy who last time asked one question during interview then voiced over a different question for his video, or was that another lying scumbag?
I wonder how many Christians will watch that and think, “Gee, I’d save my dog too–my neighbor’s a damn atheist!”
Evolution leads to understanding.
Not a fact in its favor, for Ray.
Glen Davidson
I had to go back and listen to the opening voice-over again because it didn’t seem to make sense. So I carefully transcribed it so I could read it and look at it and it still doesn’t make any sense, at all, in any way. Quoth the professional voice-guy:
I mean, like, lolwut.
Abortion! Fornication! Adultery! Homosexuality! Pornography!
Yes, please!!!
Would I save my neigbour or my dog? Well, usually I would say that I would obviously save the self aware human being. As much as my dog is important to me, another sapient person has to come first.
That said, I think the more honest answer would be that it would depend entirely on the neighbour. If that neignbour was a truly repugnant waste of space – a ranting, misogynist MRA perhaps (for some reason I feel compelled to type the letters ‘P. Elam’ here, I can’t imagine why), or maybe a fundagelical liar for jebus (perhaps named ‘Ray’, just to pick a name entirely at random) – then that might a different story altogether…
But according to Ray’s beliefs the human neighbor can go to heaven and be happy eternally. The dog will just be dead. So, why not let your neighbor go on to his or her heavenly delights and save Fido from oblivion?
Note how all the items in the second sentence do not, in and of themselves, harm anyone. Yet they’re set up as being worse than the systematic eradication of millions of people by class.
Think on that for a bit, Ray. Really think on it.
(Probably a pointless request. I’ve read enough of the Bible to realize that God is way more okay with wholesale slaughter, whether by him or his chosen people, than he is with sexual practices outside a certain narrow definition. And burning incense to the wrong gods.)
(Really, why does anyone think that collection of shitty myths is at all transcendent?)
wait, why is the dog drowning?
PZ did compliment Ray for the gift basket which was sent afterwards. Now we know why it was sent, methinks.
He truly is a cunning culinarist. First the gift basket, now some word salad to go with it :)
Depends on which neighbour…
You know who else made propaganda films? Nazis.
I object to “believing in” evolution, but that’s probably how Ray thinks of it.
Notice that Ray says “your pet dog and your rotten neighbor”. “Rotten”. Ray is selling a religion where the “rotten” people are condemned to Hell, not rescued. Ray is busy rotting on all the atheists. Ray could have trolled the streets for days to find the three folks who answered the way he wanted, or just paid them. And, frankly, he set it up—your pet or a rotten person. If he’d said a dog and a person, he might have found different answers. Which would Ray have saved?
I’m gonna go look at pornography now, and cleanse my mind a bit.
First thing I thought was “Are there going to be Nazis in it?”, and the first comment had to spoil it ):
Something is bugging me about the interviewers question. Given how dishonest Ray is, I wonder if the responses have been edited. For them to pick the dog in each case, which just so happens to line up with Ray’s theory about atheists is just too convenient.
Tony!:
Nah. Probably just changed the question and edited it in afterwards. After all, lying isn’t lying when you’re doing it to save soles.
Tony!:
Nah. Probably just changed the question and edited it in afterwards. After all, lying isn’t lying when you’re doing it to save soles.
Tony!:
I think you and I need to stop communicating. You make my comments multiply.
I find things like this exhausting. I don’t even know how to go about beginning to critique it, there’s just so, so much that’s wrong. How would you even argue with someone like this? The premises are so far past rational, is it even possible?
Yeah, too many problems here. Are all those people atheists? How did he phrase the dog question? How many atheists did he ask before he found three that would save their dogs? Would more atheists or more Christians save the dogs? Ray is an enigma to me. He’s dishonest but even more than that he’s so actively dishonest, editing video so that he obviously knows he’s lying.
Oh, and what does a wet (but living) dog have to do with evolution?
Didn’t he once describe pinniped evolution as “a dog falls into the water and decides to grow flippers”?
Or was that some other ignoramus?
If the neighbor is Ray, I’ll sic the dog on him.
Ray would throw water on as drowning man.
If I were all about evolution, the survival of my species, or even just the survival of my own genes, of course I’d save the drowning human. He’s of my species, has many of the same genes, and might save my life someday. Why would I rescue a Carnivora?
If I were a Christian, I’d not save either one, because that would be interfering with God’s plan.
Tony! #18 wrote:
It was no doubt edited, sure — but I’ve read elsewhere that this is a disturbingly common response coming from surveys of teenagers. Iirc the hypothetical involved a situation where you could save either a drowning ‘stranger’ or your pet. A lot of kids chose their pet — a much higher proportion than in past years.
Blaming this on evolution is of course stupid. Same with blaming it on atheism or the lack of religion/Christianity. Hypotheses which were advanced when this was reported included the rising tendency for people in countries like the US to consider their pets to be “a member of their family.”
Personally, I think answers like this seem to reflect the religious view of human beings as wicked, sinful, and grossly inadequate … combined with a desire to find a ‘perfect’ devotion, acceptance, and love which asks for nothing in return except a relationship. An ideal one.
The relation of humanity to God is not that of equals, nor is it really like a parent and child. I think it’s very similar to that of master and pet.
Religion may not be blame for the common choice of dog over stranger — my guess is that it’s probably cultural and runs the same across religious beliefs (or lack thereof.) But it’s not the fault of humanism. Christians may say that man has value only because he was made in the image of God — but a dog is a higher role model for the submissive, slavish attitude. Make the alternative a nonbeliever or ‘modern liberal’ and watch what happens.
For me, the most offensive part was the terrible kerning on “EvolutionVsGod.com” that appears at the end. And Jesus wept.
Louis:
And fornication leads to evolution. It’s the circle of life.
I believe the original question posed to students prior to editing was “Whom would you save, your dog or Hitler?”
Boom, double Godwin.
ChristineRose:
I think Ray is trying to show how devoid of morals atheists are by the choice to save a wet dog vs a human. He seems to think that atheists do not value humans.
Wait, did I just say he ‘thinks’?
Jaybee:
You’d think Jesus would be out of tears by now. He sure does cry a lot.
Moggie,
But do either lead to dancing? Which is, of course, the important question.
Louis
Tony! The Virtual Queer Shoop:
I thought he was trying to say that evolution leads us to apply “survival of the fittest” in our lives and that means killing Jews and saving dogs that are too stupid to keep out of the pool. In Ray’s world the next generation will be devoid of neighbors and dominated by stupid wet transitional form dogs.
You know what else is “an amoral process, a cruel and harsh process”? Nuclear fusion. Won’t somebody think of the lighter nuclei?
To be fair, they all live next door to Ray Comfort.
Can’t really say much for a process that gave the world Ray Comfort.
But then there are hummingbirds…
Glen Davidson
Change “my dog” to “my cat”, and let the human be Ray Comfort, and yeah that might be a hard choice. A (somewhat) social being with whom I have a relationship of mutual affection and benefit vs. an anti-social being who, notwithstanding all the blather about “love”, despises everyone like me, as shown by his constant lying about and maligning of us?
Yes, actually: my cat, in his short life, will do more good in the world than Ray Comfort will in all of his.
Please visit the facebook page Bananas About Evolution.It is there to counteract Ray Comfort’s tactics be revealing what goes on behind the scenes at his interviews, his tactics, etc
Exactly. George Zimmerman told Fox News that it was “God’s plan” that he shoot Trayvon Martin. It’s all god’s plan, even Ray Comfort’s lame brain. US News link.
There’s nothing we can do but watch dogs drown in a pool of drowning humans surrounded by praying Ray Comforts.
I wonder what Martin Luther’s response would be [or just about any theologian prior to 1700]. Especially of the neighbor was a woman
Democracy! Whiskey! Sexy!
Actually, I think Ray is making a very good point. IF evolution is true, then mankind is no more than simply a primate (or a primate + pig hybrid – as the latest evolutionary hypothesis contends – see http://phys.org/news/2013-07-chimp-pig-hybrid-humans.html), then it follows that there is no absolute moral standard by which to live by. The only morality we are left with is determined by our personal choices, culture, and society. And who is to say one society’s idea of morality is wrong compared to the morality choices of others? It basically puts an end to any kind of moral concept of absolute right and wrong. How can we then say that Naziism was wrong, if it was “right” in their eyes? Or how can we say that countless other societies were wrong when they killed, tortured and raped, if those things were legal according to their societies? This is a very good and thought provoking point the Ray is making.
No if for evolution. The IF has to be for imaginary deities.
Have you ever read the babble cover to cover. Genocide didn’t start with the Nazi’s, it started in the OT, along with slavery, sexual slavery, rape, etc., to justify what the scribes thought what their deity wanted (usually what they wanted). There’s a reason a major cause of atheism is reading the babble, and seeing the lack of morality being presented by Yahweh.
“No if for evolution. The IF has to be for imaginary deities.”
Wow, that was a thought provoking answer. You are deep.
Wow, they would save their dog, before their neighbor. Interesting. Very very interesting. Disconcerting even.
I love my dogs very very much. However, I know that the loss of my dog would only effect me and maybe a couple other people. The loss of another human, however, can impact an unforeseeable amount of people….So, even if I knew that other person was an unbeliever, I would certainly endeavor to stop all that pain from being spread to so many people as opposed to stopping my own pain and loss
On a side note, this entire “blog” seems to be no more than a slanderous attempt for PZ Myers to distract from the fact he is truly inadequate in defending his stance.
And your evidence is WHERE?
If there is absolute morality, how did the Holocaust occur?
Glen Davidson
And if you believe in phanstasms like deities, your depth is about a nanometer.
Nerd of Redhead: Methinks you are biblically illiterate. History is full of genocide, slavery, sexual slavery, rape, etc. Does this mean that history approves of these things? Just because the Bible records the history of these things, does not mean that God approves of them.
And by the way, since we are just primates, then why are any of these things wrong? Hmm? Survival of the fittest after all.. According to morality-free evolutionary concepts, Ghenghis Khan is a champion of survival of the fittest because of the number of offspring he fathered. Does it seem wrong to you that this was all due to rape?
God may have disapproved of the genocides he ordered?
Glen Davidson
Because, of couse, before Darwin made evolution plausible, there was no genocide [check out Numbers 31], abortion, fornication [snicker!], pornography [snicker times two], adultery [has the man even read the Bible?], or homosexuality [that bit in Leviticus was just theoretical, you see].
Oh, right! If evolution is true then his constipated view of religion is false and he can’t stone people to death for that! Wait a minute! We don’t let him do that [in some parts of the world, at least] now, do we?
The worse thing about evolution is that it lets people laugh at morons like Comfort without the least sense of guilt.
Nerd of Redhead: If you say it was wrong, then why aren’t you honoring his morality and the morality of his culture and society? Why is your notion of right and wrong better than his?
If you say it wasn’t wrong, then you are a hypocrite based on your whining about what is in the Bible.
I’ve read it cover to cover twice. What’s your sorry excuse for no knowing what your imaginary deity approved of, which was everything I mentioned.
Something called EMPATHY, show by atheists, not by the religious.
Glen Davidson: “If there is absolute morality, how did the Holocaust occur?”
Is this a serious question? Mankind are by nature lawbreakers. We have laws on the books that forbid murder, but that never put an end to murder.
BTW: how does one quote someone on this thread?
You are logged in through Facebook. That is telling.
Toodle-pip!
Whose morality? Evolution has no morality. Morality is what it always has been, whatever was necessary to keep the tribe together. Your deity doesn’t exist, so there is no morality based on that until you can show conclusive physical evidence, like an eternally burning bush, for it. Biblical morality is just what fuckwitted scribes wrote down 2500 years ago showing their prejudices.
Evolution DOES lead to fornication, but not in the way Ray Comfort believes.
I got it! He is doing fornication all wrong if he is making it all cruel and harsh. I mean he may be into it… but surely not harsh????
Weren’t the Nazis believers? And did his god call for the killing of firstborns among all the other series of infanticide he had his followers commit. And why is homosexuality cruel?
Gee, what a non-sequitur. It doesn’t matter if the book was written by drunk scribes, delusional misogynistic bigots, or congress. Just words on a piece of paper.
Never trust a creationist.
“Whose morality? Evolution has no morality. Morality is what it always has been, whatever was necessary to keep the tribe together. ”
BINGO!!! That is the point that Ray is making. You get it now! Congratulations
Now, if you admit that there is no morality, then your commenting on anyone committing wrongdoing is pointless, because there is no such thing as wrongdoing.
@ Chris Nielsen:
I don’t see how evolution being true would necessarily mean that there are no moral absolutes. What does evolution being true have to do with whether or not moral absolutes exist?
But we know that our understanding of morality is influenced by our personal choices, culture, and society. Even if tomorrow scientists made a shocking discovery proved that our understanding of evolution was totally wrong, that would not change this fact.
I’d argue that we could look at the outcomes different concepts of morality have. If a moral concept, when put into practice, leads to a happier society, it’s a good idea. If a moral concept, when put into practice, leads to a society where their is greater unhappiness, it’s a bad idea.
This might not lead to an absolute morality, but I don’t think that we need that. Our visions of morality should have some degree of flexibility. We ought to be able to update them when new facts come to light. But that doesn’t mean that anything goes either. We can use objective criteria to determine what is right and wrong.
See above. Naziism leads to excessive and unnecessary suffering. The personal beliefs of the Nazis do not change the consequences of their actions.
You do realize that “legal” and “moral” are not synonymous, right?
No, it’s not. And the fact that you think that it is tells me that you really haven’t put much thought into the matter at all.
Wow, that answered nothing at all. You glibly restate a bunch of nonsense that religidiots spout, and pretend that it’s an answer.
No, moron, why does your God of the Absolute Morality blandly ignore wholesale violations of this supposed Absolute Morality? Or worse, command something similar as “recorded” in the Bible?
You have no answer, whatever gibberish you might repeat.
Glen Davidson
Chris:
Ray is not right.
Nor are you.
Morality does not come from divine inspiration (you must prove the existence of your flavor of divine vs all the others, past and present before any reasonable person will entertain your delusion). Morality comes from humanity. It stems in part from the fact that we are a social species who often dwell together. In the interests of all, we must ask:
What actions can we/should we take that bring minimal harm and maximum benefit to ourselves and the world around us?
Additionally, the human rights that we possess were also decided by humanity and apply to all, by virtue of being human.
Thus, in the case of the Nazi’s, their actions are condemned as wrong because of the tremendous harm they wrought against other humans.
Moral answers are often nuanced and complicated. From a human rights perspective it is wrong to kill. However, justification for killing can be found in cases of self defense. The right to free speech should be held by all, yet there are situations where the exercise of free speech is necessarily curtailed.
In the absolute moral world you and Ray pretend to exist in, there is no nuance. There is no understanding of the complexities of human interaction. All you have are outdated, largely inhumane, commandments that exist not to assist humanity in making correct choices and guide our lives, but to treat us as slaves who exist to please our master.
You may be content to dance on the cruel whims of an imaginary puppetmaster, but I, and many others, are not.
Fuck that noise.
The answers to moral questions do not come from a divine template (one of which-Ray’s-does not see fit to condemn slavery or rape) which is touted as unquestionable.
The answers come from us and are not inviolable (though a sufficiently strong justification for abrogating human rights should be found before said violation).
You’re not the sharpest bowling ball in the drawer are you?
The mechanism the brought us the biodiversity of life on this planet, just like the universe, is amoral.
Humans have tens of thousands of years of social interaction that guide our morality.
Nope, the point Ray was presupposing was the existence of his imaginary deity. Since he has only asserted, and not evidenced that claim, it can be dismissed as fuckwittery.
There is morality, as defined by humans for humans. If you want a divine morality, show us conclusive physical evidence for your deity. Equivalent of an eternally burning bush, or you have no point.
Anathema2: “I don’t see how evolution being true would necessarily mean that there are no moral absolutes. What does evolution being true have to do with whether or not moral absolutes exist? ”
Because if there is no God, then our morals are all subjective, as they are based on mankind and nothing “higher”.
Can someone tell me how to make a nested quote in this thread?
Now, if you admit that there is no morality, then your commenting on anyone committing wrongdoing is pointless, because there is no such thing as wrongdoing.
How the heck does that follow? Why does “morality” have to be enforced from without? The Bible says nothing about driving at 80 mph while drunk. We can’t say that doing so is wrong?
Our nature and how we got here has no “moral code” but what makes you think we can’t (imperfectly, to be sure) invent one ourselves?
Oh,its our lucky day.
Two godbots to provide entertainment.
Michael Thomas@47:
Wow.
You characterize the entire blog by your distaste for one post. Your dimwitted opinion is dismissed because you have no fucking clue what you are droning on about. Go back a few years and read, oh say, 6 months of blog posts. Then come back and maybe you won’t be laughed at, though honestly, you probably will still be mocked.
Thats what happens when you form opinions from your bowels or your holy book, rather than fact based evidence.
This is why God invented life jackets.
Since you haven’t shown anything higher, the claim is dismissed as irrelevant. Either prove your deity exists, or shut the fuck up about it. It is nothing but vaporware.
Nerd of Redhead “Nope, the point Ray was presupposing was the existence of his imaginary deity. Since he has only asserted, and not evidenced that claim, it can be dismissed as fuckwittery.”
You are being dishonest, this is not what the promo video was about. But who cares about honesty right? As long as nobody was hurt and everyone is happy, then there is nothing wrong with a little dishonesty — at least that is what I am hearing from several people on this thread.
Oh a godbot calling anyone biblically illiterate. How droll.
Chris @51:
So your murderous god was not condoning genocide when he slaughtered retty much everyone in the Flood?
[Meta: I wonder if he will pull a WLC…]
@ Chris Nielsen:
“Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did in opposing the Israelites when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’” (1 Samuel 15:2-3, NRSV)
But, of course, just because that the Bible explicitly says that God ordered his chosen people to commit genocide doesn’t mean that God actually approved of it, right?
Chris Nielson is one big argument from consequences fallacy. Oy vey!
Hey, a living example of religionists who highjack “objective morality” and try to make it necessarily come from a god, just so they could use it as some kind of circular proof of God. Cool, we were just talking about that the other day. The argument sucks just as much as I thought.
Anathema2 “But we know that our understanding of morality is influenced by our personal choices, culture, and society. Even if tomorrow scientists made a shocking discovery proved that our understanding of evolution was totally wrong, that would not change this fact. ”
Right, for atheists and humanists, morality is subjective. So do you agree with Nerd of Redhead when he wrote ““Whose morality? Evolution has no morality. Morality is what it always has been, whatever was necessary to keep the tribe together. ”
Do you think Ghenghis Kahn was wrong for fathering so many children via rape?
Hilarious coming from someone defending Ray Comfort
@ Chris Nielsen:
Evolution being true does not necessarily mean that there is no God. I think that evolution knocks the legs out from under certain arguments for God, but I don’t think that the fact of evolution alone can demonstrate that God does not exist.
God is irrelevant to whether or not our morality is objective or subjective. The only system of morality which can apply only in a theistic universe but not in an atheistic one is divine command theory. And divine command theory basically says that morality is based on God’s subjective whims. Divine command theory leads to all sorts of absurdities — like the idea that committing genocide would be moral if God commanded it. Any system of supposedly absolute morality which states that things like genocide, rape, and slavery can be moral, so long as the right person commands it, seems like a pretty shitty system of morality to me.
Also, I previously explained to you how we can use objective criteria to determine whether something is right or wrong without bringing God into the picture. I notice that you completely ignored that part of my post.
this is not what the promo video was about
Really? What was about if not to claim that accepting the overwhelming evidence for evolution leads to genocide, and all the other “bad” things Comfort claims? (Some of which, like making love, heterosexually or homosexually, are not obviously “bad”).
But who cares about honesty right?
And, of course, you have never asked yourself that question, based on what I’ve seen you saying here.
Chris:
A- we dont do nested quotes here.
[Blockquote] place quoted text here [/Blockquote]
Replace brackets with less than,greater than signs
B- Ray comfort is a dishonest, cherry picking shit head who seesnothing wrong in selectively quoting people. That you defend him shows how fucked up your moral compass is.
Now, if you are actually interested in discussion, how about replying–WITH SUBSTANCE–to comments #64 and #66.
We have established that morality comes from humanity not a divine source (as seen in the simple fact that your god is as real as Hephaestus or Isis).
Ok, go.
As long as he married each woman after he raped her the bible and I are both cool with it!
It depends… was God in the
mood or maybe
those days?
Of course dumbass. We know what rape does to people. It’s a disgusting damaging violent act.
Do you think your god was wrong for Numbers 31:7-18
This is a non-sequitur. Your imaginary expected his Israeli troops to rape and take into sexual slavery virgin girls instead of killing them. So, where do you get off thinking morality is derived from your IMAGINARY DEITY. Either show your deity exists, or shut the fuck up about its existence.
“But, of course, just because that the Bible explicitly says that God ordered his chosen people to commit genocide doesn’t mean that God actually approved of it, right?”
When God wipes out the wicked, it is not genocide, it is justice. It would be like God telling Gen. Douglas MacArthur to wipe out the Nazis. As I am sure you are aware, women and children are killed in warfare. The allies indiscriminately bombed German cities, and of course there was Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If you believe in God, then you believe in good and evil and right and wrong. If you don’t, then how can you say you have a problem with any genocide? Because of course “Evolution has no morality. Morality is what it always has been, whatever was necessary to keep the tribe together. ”
C’mon people, Chris is obviously right. It’s all about the unchanging morality of this here book (can’t use theirs, that won’t work, it’s all lies, gotta use mine). That’s why, um, what is your religion there, Chris? Well, whatever it is, I’m sure its moral precepts have never changed. We must burn people who deny our god exists. And enslave people to provide our labor. And not allow divorce. None of these things have ever changed in any religion, which is how we know all religions are true. Sheesh, how hard is that?
Chris Nielson,
If God told you to rape, would you?
Nerd, it is not a non-sequitur. Are you afraid to answer the question? Or do you realize that you have already been trapped by your previous statement? I know you keep trying to change the subject and make this about God. This should be a really simple question to answer.
Funny. I was thumbing through the popular science section at McKay’s today and happened to see a copy of “Origin of Species 150th Anniversary Edition…with Introduction by Ray Comfort.” I didn’t even know this existed, but I decided to give it a quick flipthrough and saw that the “Introduction” ran on for pages and pages, and some parts of it were even illustrated. Longest intro I’ve ever seen in a book by someone who wasn’t the author.
I also noticed the sticker said it belonged in the “Christianity – Apologetics” section, so I can’t even assume it was misfiled by the staff. I had to conclude someone else put it there on purpose.
Do you think Ghenghis Kahn was wrong for fathering so many children via rape?
Heh! Do you think Solomon was wrong for essentially raping (fornicating out of one man one woman marriage) hundreds upon hundreds of women? But he was a favorite of your “god.”
Yes, I think rape is wrong and I have good evolutionary reasons to think so. Your “god” sometimes favors genocide [Numbers 31] but mouths “Thou shalt not kill.” There is no objective “morality” in the Bible.
Chris:
Rape is wrong because it violates the bodily autonomy of another individual. Bodily autonomy is a right that we humans have decided to grant all other humans. The logic there is easy. I do not want to be violated, so I should not violate others. If I have that right and treat others as having equal rights, then all humans have the right to bodily autonomy.
Do keep up.
Humanity has advanced since the bronze age creators of your guide to immorality, aka the bible.
Chris Nielson #43 wrote:
IF God exists, then what makes God’s standard the “absolute moral standard by which to live?”
This is a very tricky question, when you think about it.
If you can come up with good reasons for God’s standards — if you can show and tell why they “work,” why they are the best way for us to achieve our highest common goals — then you are appealing to human standards in order to justify God’s. God is right and the Nazis were wrong because …. (complete this sentence.) If you can do so in a way that gains our support, then we’re dealing on common ground –reason and the world.
Keep this in mind: God is only as absolutely right and as absolutely wrong as WE can recognize, relate, and respond to. If there is no possibility of human consensus about Good then there cannot be a God to arbitrate disputes. We couldn’t know that God was “good” because there’s no agreement on the meaning of Good.
On the other hand, let’s say that you can’t (or won’t) come up with good reasons for what God calls “moral.” God doesn’t have to make sense to everyone — or anyone. God is right because of some non-moral reason: He is powerful or He is dangerous or He “owns” us because He made us.
Now justify that. Justify why might makes right.
You can’t … because you don’t believe that yourself. So now you see the dilemma: the very thing you’re introducing to solve and settle all disputes AWAY from ‘Might Makes Right’ ultimately rests on that very ‘moral’ principle. You’ve contradicted yourself. It ‘s not the atheist who is confused; it’s the divine command theist.
Do you see the problem here? You’re really no further ahead than the atheist if you want a moral God which makes sense, which meets our ideals — and which allows us to say what God can and cannot be like in order for it to be the “real” God of Goodness and not some false God which advocates what you and I and people of sense think is evil.
Think about this.
As for the theory of evolution, it is amoral in the same sense that gravity or mathematics is amoral. It’s a description of a process. Using evolution to decide right and wrong would be like using trigonometry to decide right and wrong. Morals and ethics always have to deal with fair relationships between living things which have goals and connections. You can’t throw someone out the window and then insist that you had to do it because “gravity is the law.” Category confusion. Don’t.
When God wipes out the wicked, it is not genocide, it is justice.
What more needs to be said? There is no arguing with a moron.
What a disgustingly evil statement this is!
What’s Nielson really “asking”? Basically, if the world isn’t how he claims it to be, how can it be how he “knows” it is because of his and others’ claims?
So it’s completely circular. Morality has to be absolute when it comes from God (how this even can be so isn’t explained–it’s magic), so how can it be anything but absolute, since it comes from God?
The fact that morality is basically what you’d expect from evolution of social animals–something that has to be followed by the majority–if with a lot of checking and enforcement–yet frequently violated, doesn’t matter because it’s never been considered for anything but rejection.
Of course one can’t get through such an benighted set of beliefs that demand the believer to reject any competing ideas. That it can’t explain the world doesn’t matter, for it only “explains itself” as a superior form of belief, and anything inferior is to be rejected.
Play with him if you wish (I may a bit more, but probably not much more), however the only thing one can receive from him is how “absolute morality” admits of nothing but its own presumed supremacy.
Glen Davidson
@ Chris Nielsen:
Read what I wrote again. Even if morality is objective, our understanding of morality is influenced by our personal choices, culture, and society. If it wasn’t, you wouldn’t see the proportion of people who hold certain ideas about morality to change across cultures and societies. But people’s conceptions of morality clearly do differ by society. Do you think that the average 21st century American and the average 15th century Mesoamerican have the exact same ideas about the morality of human sacrifice? I suspect that their opinions on the matter would be rather different. How can you explain that except for the influence of society and culture on our understanding of morality?
Nerd of Redhead is right when she states that evolution has no morality. Evolution has no more morality than plate tectonics or gravity does. It’s just something that happens in the natural world. Our sense of morality might be in part a byproduct of evolution, but that does not make evolution moral in and of itself.
But I don’t think that morality is entirely subjective. As I’ve said, we can use objective criteria to determine the morality of our actions.
Yes. Because rape causes suffering. People who live in a society where rape is considered unacceptable are generally going to feel happier and safer than people who live in a society where rape is widely accepted.
Now, you tell me, do you think that the Israelites committing genocide against the Amalekites, as portrayed in the Bible, was wrong?
Chris:
Yup, you just used the same fucking argument in support of genocide that William Lane Craig did.
Genocide is ok if god does it.
But when humans, like the Nazis, followed the religiously inspired commands of Hitler, genocide is wrong.
Man, your moral compass is deeply fractured. You should get that fixed.
So you recognize that rape is wrong. Why didn’t Ghenghis Kahn know this? How do you explain this?
Ignore my last question in post #100. I see that Chris Nielsen already answered my question in comment # 89. Apparently, he thinks that genocide is a-okay so long as God commands it.
And he has the gall to come here and tell us that we’re the ones without a sense of morality!
Chris Nielsen,
So, if God says something is moral, then it is moral.
If God told you to rape, would you do it?
Virgin girls being taken for “yourselves” is justice.
Got it.
Sure, good Nazi “justice.”
So, you’re the person with the most relative “morality” here, I see. Funny how that is the typical fact underlying these discussions.
Glen Davidson
What, you want me to read Genghis Khan’s mind? How should I know what Genghis Khan thought about this? For all I know, Genghis Khan understood full well that rape was wrong but decided to do it anyway.
Actually IT IS about your imaginary deity. If it doesn’t exist, there is no such thing as absolute divinely inspired morality. Nothing but mental wanking from a presupposed position. If it does exist, you must prove it in order to show you aren’t just farting B-flautus. Which is why this is about your imaginary deity. PUT UP OR SHUT THE FUCK UP.
There is an order to things. If Barack Obama kills someone via a drone strike, that is okay, because of his stature and position. If a PETA agent kills a litter of kittens, that is okay. Right? It all depends on who is doing the killing and who is being killed, right? A person on death row is killed in Texas for mass murder. The state is killing the criminal. That is okay because of who is doing the killing and who is being killed, right? An Obama voter kills her baby at an abortion clinic. That is okay right?
Have you always been this stupid or has years of indoctrination rotted your brain?
Different time, different circumstances, less forgiving environment.
Still wrong though.
Didn’t stop Moses.
Rape is wrong. Why are Catholic priests raping young children? Where is your morality, without a real deity to zot those who go against the imaginary law from your imaginary deity?
Well there you go, morality is relative, all right, but only to absolute rank.
Might makes right, essentially.
Glen Davidson
Nope, thing but chaos. Your deity doesn’t exist, ergo no order, no divine morality, not plan, no purpose. Get used to reality. You are divorced from it.
Which of the following are examples of killing that is okay: (multiple choice)
A) Barack Obama kills someone via a drone strike
B) a PETA agent kills a litter of kittens
C) A person on death row is killed for mass murder. T
D) An Obama voter kills her baby at an abortion clinic.
E) An American soldier kills 8 Taliban who appear to be planting an IED
F) An Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood group crucifies and beheads a Christian pastor
Chris wrote:
No — humanists try for “intersubjective.” Common ground.
That’s also what you have to appeal to if God is not to be what we humans would consider a moral monster.
“Objective” morality is meaningless: all it means is that it is the discernible moral system of ONE subject . You can read Mein Kampf and write down Hitler’s objective morality. Ghengis Khan has an objective morality. You have yours and I have mine and God has His and hypothetically there’s no need for any OVERLAP. Big deal.
Drawing the subjects together — ah, there we go. And the only way to do that is to try to appeal to what makes sense.
That’s your Achilles’ heel. You and Comfort are a product of the Enlightenment as much as we are — so you want God’s right and wrong to make sense. It’s not enough to say that God is Right because He can punish everyone who goes against His tyrannous, self-important, kingly will. You want to bring in love and mercy and fairness and kindness and being reasonable….
Gotcha.
Ugh, all this stuff is hurting me to read. Why is it so hard to grasp the idea that just because evolution is an amoral process, that doesn’t mean that people must behave amorally? This kind of thinking is absurd on its face. Ya can’t get an ought from an is.
Gravity is amoral. Weather is amoral. The rain falls on the just and the unjust, you know.
Why is it only theists who seem to insist that atheists “should” be amoral because they recognize evolution? We clearly aren’t, although doubtless you’d like us to be.
Only after you provide conclusive physical evidence for your imaginary deity. No deity, no divine morality. Nothing but mental wanking on your part.
So… has God changed his mind about rape being bad (since he seemed pretty cool with it for a while there), or does he have some memory problems?
You know, that God-given absolute morality is hardly absolute if the dude changes his mind about it every other day or century or whenever mood strikes him to encourage some guys to rape some virgins for his entertainment.
The most common excuse for genocide throughout history.
Glen Davidson
@ Chris Nielsen:
You are confusing “authority” with “morality.” Sure, Barack Obama might have the authority to kill someone with a drone strike, but that does not make it the right thing to do. Just because someone has the power to do something does not mean that they should do it.
You know, the drone strike example was probably a very poor one on your part. I doubt that there are very many people here who think that Obama’s drone strikes are okay.
Another terrible example on your part. I’m opposed to the death penalty as well.
I do not think that abortions are immoral, regardless of the political inclinations of the woman involved. A woman is a thinking and feeling being. She is capable of feeling pain and suffering. A fetus is not. If a woman chooses to get an abortion, no harm is done. Killing someone who is sapient and sentient is different than killing something that isn’t.
But even if, for whatever reason, I thought that abortion was immoral, I would still think it should be legal. Much in the same way that I think that what Fred Phelps does is immoral, but I still think it should be legal. As immoral as what Fred Phelps does is, it would be more immoral for our society to create laws which censored speech that the majority approved of. In the long term it would do more harm than anything that Fred Phelps does.
Likewise, if I thought abortion was immoral, I would realize that passing a law which violated a woman’s right to her bodily autonomy would be detrimental to our society in the long term. In no other circumstance do we allow anyone the right to use someone else’s body against their will, even if their life depends on it. When a woman gets an abortion, she is essentially acting in self-defense. We don’t consider people who end up killing others in self-defence to be murderers, even if we wished that they hadn’t killed someone else in order to defend themselves. Why should this change when the person acting in self-defense is a woman and the “person” killed is a fetus?
This video makes interesting viewing
http://youtu.be/itEZF5qAAzw
He’s pushing sales of his tracts. One selling feature he repeatedly promotes is ‘getaway time’ i.e. to allow the tract pusher to get away before the recipient realizes he’s been godbotted. Clearly his evangelists don’t like to be challenged.
He also explains how he steals material from reputable sources like Nat Geo to lend credibility to his evangelizing by pretending to review it
It’s an interesting business line that’s made him quite wealthy. Stealing material from somewhere else, adding a bible verse and selling it. He claims 160,000,000 sold. He charges around 5c each. Production costs are negligible, his profit has to be around 4c – multiply by 160,000,000 – that’s not a bad snake oil business
I wonder if anyone, anywhere has ever been converted by a tract?
Yeah. So?
Yeah, I do. Because I realize how horrible it would be to be raped. I suppose you have to have an old book of myths tell you not to rape people. And yet you think you’re more moral. Strange.
What made people “wicked” in the Bible was burning incense to the wrong gods. So YHWH would have a tantrum and kill everyone. I’m glad to say that I have a more developed moral sense than him. I’m even more glad to say that God doesn’t exist, and so the point is moot.
What does this have to do with anything?
I think you’d be better off addressing Sastra’s comments.
I would like Chris to explain why fornication, adultery, pornography, and homosexuality are worse than, or at least in the same class of sin as, genocide.
Chris:
Assume for the moment that you are right and we are wrong: God exists.
Okay. So far so good.
Now assume for the moment that you discover that you’ve been mistaken about what you think God approves of and what God doesn’t approve of — and it’s really drastic. None of this “gay marriage has His blessing after all” fiddle faddle. Let’s make the moral surprise a big one: God thinks that the highest good is for the strong to take pleasure in the torture of the weak. The objective morality that guides the universe is one that not only condones torture of those who seem completely innocent, but positively revels in it.
Okay…. now. Please choose one:
1.) If this is what God thinks is good, then it is automatically GOOD. (Please explain why.) You will spin your entire moral viewpoint on a dime and adopt the ethics of a psychopath and do everything you can to enjoy it. Praise Him.
2.) Uh huh. Fine — IF this were the case, then yes, God would be evil. But I just KNOW it’s not true. That’s only a hypothetical.
3.) Sorry, I cannot answer because you have made God hypothetically EVIL and that is a logical impossibility.
Only the first answer is one available only to the person who insists God and only God grounds morality. Both of the other responses (yes, #2 AND #3) are humanist. They appeal to standards outside of God and held between ourselves.
Chris Nielsen
6 July 2013 at 3:53 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
How can we then say that Naziism was wrong, if it was “right” in their eyes?
Seriously, Christians talking about morality like they have any. These people never venture outside the bubble they create for themselves do they?
If everything is made of subatomic particles, and subatomic particles have no morality, why not just murder everyone for the fun of it, huh?
What about THAT, huh?
You stupid evilutionists with your subatomic particles.
*like they are supposed to have any
Sorry, should stay accurate.
Ray Comfort doesn’t believe in God. This is why he behaves so dishonestly. He doesn’t believe in a god who rewards the just and punishes the wicked, or else he wouldn’t be lying about atheists and evolution to argue for his beliefs. Ray Comfort doesn’t believe in absolute morality because he lies and lies and lies.
No, Ray Comfort believes in a God that will punish everyone, unless they grovel at His feet. Then it doesn’t matter what you do, you are instantly forgiven.
How do we tell which genocides are the ones god wanted and which are the ones he didn’t?
I kinda suspect Ghenghis Khan, like many tyrants, probably thought he was doing the will of God. The divine smiled on his mighty rule. I bet.
It’s a lot harder to argue people out of doing wrong if they think they’re doing the will of God, isn’t it?
It’s also damn hard to argue people into switching gods — or their ‘interpretation’ of the same one you have. “I understand God better than you” is a tough sell.,
I think the only decent chance we have is when we start out standing as human equals in the world we all know. Otherwise, you’re up against metaphysics, religion, spirituality, and other ways of knowing — and the other side has placed you on the low side of the “order of things.”
Good luck with that. Bet you don’t enjoy arguing with a godbot either.
Tangent:
So I decided to go back up to the top of this chain, and I found this:
Let’s be clear on one thing, Chris: This “latest evolutionary hypothesis” is crap. See this post from just a few days ago: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/07/02/the-mfap-hypothesis-for-the-origins-of-homo-sapiens/
I guess it’s nice that creationists are finally starting to grow out of the irrational shame they have about being a “monkey’s cousin”, and now they have to bring the humble swine into the mix in their misguided attempts to shame us.
Of course, I feel no shame about what did (didn’t) happen millions of years ago, probably because I don’t subscribe to that whole “sins of the fathers” thing that God loves so much.
Deuteronomy 20:10-14
Wow, I should have come here sooner! This place is like shooting fish in a barrel! So many comments I could address! But alas, I am only one person. I feel like Bobby Fischer in a large room moving from opponent to opponent.
Anathema2 your answer about abortion I find repugnant and absolutely sickening. Don’t you know that fetuses are little babies? Haven’t you heard that they have been heard screaming during abortions? Absolutely sick.
In the interest of discussion and full disclosure, here is how I would answer these questions:
A) Barack Obama kills someone via a drone strike
Answer: This could be justified assuming we know that the target is indeed an enemy and that no innocent people were harmed collaterally. Even then, it has to be done lawfully.
B) a PETA agent kills a litter of kittens
As much as I abhor this, I have to say that it is not morally wrong for the PETA agent to kill the kittens in the name of population control. Animals are lower than mankind and we have dominion over them, therefore killing them in this case and for food is not wrong.
C) A person on death row is killed for mass murder.
This is an example of “lawful” killing. When the state lawfully executes a criminal for the crime of murder, the state is not wrong. Though I would say that it would be wrong if the state was run by atheists who began to execute Christians for the “crime” of believing in Christ.
D) An Obama voter kills her baby at an abortion clinic.
Definitely wrong. Regardless of who the mother is and what the circumstances are. We are supposed to protect the innocent, not cut their little arms and legs off.
E) An American soldier kills 8 Taliban who appear to be planting an IED
Justified. It is legal and right to kill the enemy during wartime. This is not to say that all wars are just though.
F) An Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood group crucifies and beheads a Christian pastor
Wrong. This is murder.
For an added bonus:
G) God wipes out most of the world in the great flood. God nuked the towns of Sodom and Gamorrah. God assisted the Israelites in smiting their enemies. God gave all of mankind the death penalty for our rebellion against him.
These are all justified. He is God and we are his creation.
Calvinball.
Glen Davidson
let me guess, Christians crucifying and beheading a member of Muslim Brotherhood would be fine and dandy because God.
You act like we care about your inevidenced OPINION. We don’t.
Since you haven’t shown your imaginary deity exists, you answers are your PERSONAL UNEVIDENCED OPINIONS, which can and are dismissed as fuckwittery.
Your deity doesn’t exist until you demonstrate that with conclusive physical evidence, evidence that would pass muster with scientists, magicians, and professional debunkers as being of divine, and not natural (scientifically explained), origin. Ergo, your presupposigtion of your deity is false.
Chris,
Quotes are done by <blockquote>quoted words</blockquote>, which gives
Your god kills people just because he feels like it. Are you going to claim that everyone in Sodom and Gomorrah, even children under the age of reason, deserved to die? If “I’m all powerful and kill at a whim” is a basis for morality then I want no part of it.
Since I’m not getting an answer from Chris Nielsen, I guess I can, going by his other comments, conclude that he would in fact cheerfully go forth and rape if (he thought that) God wanted him to.
He is welcome to deny that and explain why he would go against his God’s wishes, and what decision would be moral in that case.
Chris Nielsen #135 wrote:
Why is that important to morality? Please explain and defend the connection.
I don’t think you can justify the connection. It’s ethically irrelevant — even if it’s true.
(And yes, it is busy for you. Take your time and don’t worry about addressing every single point. You’re outnumbered and we can see that. Also wrong — but that’s up for dispute, isn’t it?)
Game theory, study it.
As far as that disingenuous little “quiz” goes, (with the hilariously specific/false equivalent “Obama voter” in D, who is apparently more evil than a Republican doing the same, no need to even bring up the fact that no one “kills a baby” at an abortion clinic…), obviously people will have differing answers based on their different ideas of what is moral to them, but what’s missing is a little more information, and that matters. Why are these agents taking the actions they take? Are the kittens rabid, healthy? Are there resources to care for them? Are they feral & destroying a local ecosystem & spreading disease? What if they were cows being killed for food?
All these things inform your decision, and in the absence of “God endorsed” morality, people will all come to differing conclusions, and can be justified or not with the “greater/lesser suffering” test. I bet you anything the “godlier” folk will support the drone strikes, the capital punishment & the Taliban killing.
Chris, without being able to evidence your deity, you had lost the argument before you even started. Your inability to understand that logic meant you keep putting your foot into your stomach. Either demonstrate your imaginary deity, or shut the fuck up about if you have honesty and integrity. Being a godbot, you have neither. And we here know that. So meanwhile, we point at your and laugh at your inability to muster a logical evidence based argument….
Sigh….abortion talk is always, ALWAYS a distraction. Let me just state a few things that should by obvious but aren’t.
First, no one likes having to get one. Period. It’s not a choice a woman makes lightly. Generally if that is her choice she’ll have a damn better reason for doing so than you will have for her not to do so.
Second, you’d make a better case arguing for the development of the nervous system and a capacity to feel pain than a doctrinal belief that conceptuses are equivalent to fully developed infants. You’ll find there’s actually some contention on this issue. I might actually even by sympathetic if you were to simply say that a woman terminating a late-term pregnancy once the fetus has developed the capacity to feel pain is a bad thing….Except I would say that to refer to my first point, no woman would do this without a damn good reason. Like her own health. Or the fetus’s viability outside the womb. Or any of innumerable considerations which the ironclad laws of those who seek to restrict abortion would prefer to ignore.
Chris Nielsen, if you heard voices in your head (claiming to be from God) demanding you kill someone, would you do that unquestioningly? No moral qualms, because, your deity ordered it? Just you keep well away from rational folk, you hear.
ONLY if God exists.
If God does not exist then they are simply great evils excused by a lie.
Thus the very first thing that is required to demonstrate their justifiability is EVIDENCE that God exists.
Lacking such evidence, there is no justification.
So Chris, if certain Buddhist sects assert that no killing is moral, and this is based on their personal concept of God, how do you justify your excuses for killing? Is your “God” somehow better or smarter or less moral than the other god?
And, incidentally, a creator does not automatically have the right to do whatever he or she wants with his or her creation.
The designers and builders of a bridge do not have the right to blow that bridge up whenever they want to.
In the same way that an acorn is a little oak tree.
As I explained earlier, even if I accepted your premise that a fetus was the moral equivalent of a person, I would still be reluctant to make abortion illegal. As I said, in no other circumstance would we force someone to sacrifice their bodily autonomy in order to save the life another. Why do you think we should make an exception when the life being saved in that of a fetus?
That’s funny. A fetus isn’t capable of feeling pain until the third trimester. Most women who don’t want to be pregnant don’t wait around until the third trimester to get an abortion. The women who go in to get abortions in the third trimester often do so because something went wrong with a wanted pregnancy. (For instance, it could be that continuing the pregnancy will put the mother’s life or health in serious danger or that the fetus has a disorder that means it will only be able to live for a few painful weeks after birth.) Abortions that occur at the point that a fetus might be capable of feeling pain are often necessary for medical reasons. But even then, I doubt that anyone has ever heard a fetus screaming in agony during a safely performed abortion. Where would it get the air in order to scream while it’s inside the womb anyway?
Maybe someone saw a fetus open it’s mouth during an abortion once. But seeing fetus opening it’s mouth is different from hearing a fetus scream in agony.
How would that conversation go?
Chris Nielsen the intellectually dishonest fuckface who condones genocide:
No, drone bombings under Obama are not right. Innocent people are dying in a pointless attempt to root out terrorists.
No, killing kittens is wrong. Human life is not the only thing progressives value.
A person on death row is there because our laws currently state this is a possible consequence of illegal activities. That does not make capital punishment ok. I oppose the death penalty.
Do you really want to highlight more of your ignorance by discussing abortion?
Ok.
It is not murder when a fetus is aborted. It is the termination of a pregnancy. A fetus is not a person, thus it does not have the rights we grant persons. A fetus does not have the rights of an existing human being. A fetus does not have self awareness.
What stupidity do you have next?
Care to answer why god mandated genocide is ok, but when done by humans, such as Hitler-in gods name-it is suddenly wrong?
Hell, for that matter, do you understand what genocide is?
So the almalekite infants really had it coming eh? Yet the Midiante women who were virgins were spared even though they’d have been more culpable in their culture’s “crimes” against god then the amalekite babies were
I wonder why the virgin women were spared?
Oh right…for the ancient Israeli soldiers.
Ah, but it’s not “murder” if Islam is true, is it? If Allah is the True God then it’s all justified. It’s a killing which follows the order of things.
That’s why humanism is better than Christianity when it comes to right and wrong. We humanists would approach this issue of beheading the infidel using and applying concepts of fairness, liberty, human rights, and equality. We’d approach it rationally and with respect for the other person.
Not you. Nothing like that. The only thing Christians have — the only unique thing — is “MY God is true and YOUR God is false.” Nothing about good and evil, right and wrong, and/or concepts of fairness, liberty, human rights, and equality. No being reasonable: we’re following God. The authority which needs no consent.
In the Christian world view, there is nothing wrong with beheading the infidel. Hell — there’s nothing really wrong with anything, including rape and genocide. The only question which matters is “who is right about God?”
That’s not even a moral question. It’s a fact question and it’s a fact question that every damn last one of you has decorated and obscured and wrapped in “faith” and what people subjectively want and what people subjectively know and the whole world can burn for all anyone cares because you’re reaching beyond humanity for something higher.
And that “higher” something just looks like what the strongest tyrant wants: a creator who literally owns people and can treat them like a means to an ends as opposed to an ends in themselves.
Nope. Sorry. Humanism is better. You guys lose.
I always love when godbots try to play the “you don’t got objective morality like me, so therefore you can’t say killing, rape, and torture are wrong neener neener”. With all the convoluted logical problems aside, the fuckers don’t even realize that their own source for “objective morality” doesn’t actually/clearly forbid rape or torture, and is kind of wishy-washy about killing. It is like fucking clockwork. The examples they give for horrible actions that we supposedly can’t justify opposition to are horrible actions that the fucking Bible doesn’t give much of an opposition to (or sometimes things that it actively supports, as is arguably the case for rape, slavery, subjugation of women, and child abuse). Their argument is dead in the fucking water and they are such mindless, obedient, devout rabble that they haven’t ever cracked their beloved Bible open wide enough to find that fact out.
Chris Nielsen,
Richard Dawkins explains Game Theory and the evolution of human behavior (including ethics) in this video called “Nice guys finnish first” : http://tinyurl.com/mexulpx You have accused us of not reading the bible, which is not true. How much time have you spent studying evolution and behavior? You remind me very much of Hamza Tsortzis, same arguments, same ignorance.
[OT]
Chris Nielsen:
According to the Babble (1 Kings 11:3), Solomon had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines*; mind you, that was not a problem to his (your) god, but when he started appeasing other gods because of them, well… his god was pissed-off and told him he would punish his successor son for it instead of him, since Solomon’s dad (David) was a really good goddist.
(Of course, that Biblical deity is into vicarious punishment, which is a fine moral stance to Abrahamists)
—
So the morality your deity preaches is not the morality it practices.
sbuh:
Slight correction.
We have heard women at Pharyngula state that they liked getting an abortion because it was the right thing for them.
Also, not all women think it is a difficult choice. For some it was quite an easy choice to make.
***
anathema2:
You may want to take note of Nerd’s nym. It is amusing that people refer to Nerd as “her” based on nothing more than a nym.
Nerd: It has been my experience that most atheists actually do not want evidence for the existence of God. I come to this conclusion because evidence is provided over and over and over ad nauseum and it is rejected. Besides, I believe that everything we see in nature is evidence for the existence of God. So here is a high level outline:
1. Creation and the intricacies thereof
2. The existence of logical absolutes (see TAG argument)
3. The resurrection of Jesus after three days of being in the tomb and his appearance before hundreds of witnesses
4. The fulfillment of numerous Biblical prophecies that add credence to the authority of the Bible.
5. Personal experience of what God has done in my life and continues to do via his Holy Spirit and answering of prayers.
6. The more I discover about mathematics, the more I see evidence for God being the creator. For example, there is a new pattern found in prime numbers.
Reminds me of Vox Day’s Video Game Designer God: What if humans are basically analogous to game characters in God’s game? Well then it is no more morally reproachable for God to kill us than it is for a video game designer to delete those characters! (Or something along those lines).
Here’s the thing: If you are creating something that actually thinks and feels, you don’t then get to do whatever you want with that thing, with no moral implications at all, just because you created it. You don’t get to treat living things like objects just because you are responsible for their existence. You don’t get to treat living things likes objects just because you are a superior kind of living thing.
Christians actually do seem to disagree with these sentiments at some level, and I’m not sure why.
I didn’t say difficult. I said it was not a choice made lightly. Although I suppose even that is a generality.
John Morales:
I noticed you inserted the word atrocities. This is your opinion, based on your view of who God is and who we are. Let me remind you that we are all filthy, condemned sinners, lest you forget. The death penalty is our appropriate punishment. In this context, the word atrocities is not appropriate. The appropriate word is justice.
Chris Nielsen,
Can God lie? If no, then God is not omnipotent. If yes, then how do you know when God lies?
Chris Nielsen:
On behalf of all mankind, “Fuck you.”
Man-made laws, Chris, made by those you condemn as natural lawbreakers.
We have made laws to get along with one another, and we made laws about what to do about lawbreakes. We didn’t just throw up our hands and climb back into the trees.
Hoo ha! Atheists are usually more bible savvy than Christians. Reading the bible is waht turned us atheist. Who amongst you has read the entire bible?
I can quote you most of the bit where God hardened Pharaoh’s heart just so God could kill Egyptian children, to so God could show off.
The Bible doesn’t just record them, it presents them as instructions for life.
Genghis Khan, whose boots you are not worthy to lick, was not a rapist. He married several wives, and he kept a large harem, as did his brothers. If your god disapproved of his life, he could have taken it.
Your god, by the way, got the Virgin Mary pregnant, while she was engaged to be married, and there is no way to define that act as not rape. Mary was one of his creation, his child, as we are all his children, so it was at least incest. She had no choice—was she going to disrupt God’s plan—so it was rape. Even if all that coerced her was fear of Hell, it was rape.
You, personally seem to approve of rape, it’s just the children that concern you, right? Not the women.
Thanks for the snarky condescension. And for missing the point so gloriously.
And who says they were wicked? God, right? How can we tell if he was correct?
And who did the wiping out? The people who wrote the book did all the killing. They may have just been justifying their genocide. God could have killed all the “wicked” people with lightning, couldn’t he?
Chris Nielsen @ 159
None of your six points constitutes evidence. Incredulity yes, evidence no. Study harder.
Isn’t it funny when people bring up evolution as the cause for the Holocaust and Nazism, when Hitler referenced God numerous times in why he believed he was right.
No One: //You remind me very much of Hamza Tsortzis, same arguments, same ignorance.//
Which arguments?
I love Ray Comfort and can’t wait for his movie to come out. It sounds like you are just worried about looking silly because you are wrong.
Maybe because your “evidence” for your imaginary diety doesn’t hold up to skeptical scutiny? Which means your WORD IS CONSIDERED NOTHING BUT LIES AND BULLSHIT, AND ONLY THIRD PARTY EVIDENCE WILL BE LISTENED TO….
Scientifically explained, yawn…
Presuppositional bullshit, only good if one accepts the presuppositions, which atheists don’t.
Since you babble is nothing but post hoc rationalization, and it NOT A COMTEMPORARY HISTORY, dismissed As fuckwittery.
Written as much as 500 years later to show the babble is true *snicker*. Why are you godbots so ignorant on how the babble was put together?
That is TESTAMENT/OPINION, not physical evidence. What a loser if you think it is anything other than OPINION.
Funny, I minored in mathematics, and saw no evidence what soever for your imaginary deity, and besides, it is your OPINION, which needs third party evidence to back it up. Nothing, ergo DISMISSED AS FUCKWITTERY.
NOW, SHOW ME WHERE TO FIND THE EQUIVALENT OF THE ETERNALLY BURNING BUSH. Something you can point to and the conclusion is obvious.
My mistake. Thank you for pointing that out. I do not know Nerd’s gender.
Nerd, I’m sorry if I misgendered you.
No One:
Funny thing, the whole point of evolution is to explain precisely how “intricate” or complex systems can arise naturally from very simple beginnings with no conscious direction required. So that is, as has rightly been said, an argument from personal incredulity. You can’t imagine how it could have happened that way. But have you ever really thought about it?
Chris Nielsen:
You’re doing a great job here! :)
Cobe Holden:
Why do you think that? If nothing else, reading this thread ought to convince you that no, we really do think we are right — and we also really do think Ray Comfort is silly.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/07/06/sleazy-ray-does-it-again/comment-page-1/#comment-647982
Oh, *do* tell!
Evidence is legitimate from outside of your OPINION/CONTROL, and nothing you said meet the minimum criteria. You must presume you are wrong, until you show THE ETERNALLY BURNING BUSH OR EQUIVALENT. YOUR OPINION IS DISMISSED BEFORE YOU SAY IT….
S
Leaving aside the culpability of the livestock, not to mention the children and infants, what about the Amalekite women (presumably, for the sake of argument, wicked) who were in various stages of pregnancy when they were slaughtered by the command of God. God, then, apparently ordered the abortion of an unknown number of the innocent unborn.
When you offer arguments like this, do you really expect anyone to take you seriously?
Your 6 points are all familiar to us.
By the way, you shouldn’t use both TAG and an evidential argument. Presuppositionalist apologetics reject the need for evidence and argument.
Neither argument works, of course — but you’re not being consistent even so.
Pretty much all of what you have posted so far. Islamists use the same tired pre-suppositionalist arguments.
Chris- You didn’t answer my question.
Some people feel any and all killing is wrong. Some of those people either believe in God or in nothing. You obviously feel a lot of killing is ok. By your logic, shouldn’t that make you less moral? Are you ok with that?
Nerd:
Its funny how all atheists want their evidence for God to be tailor made to their liking, very specific things according to their own imaginations.. If God is real he would do THIS to show me, THEN I would believe.
Here is what Jesus said about that:
A wicked and adulterous generation looks for a sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah.” Jesus then left them and went away. Matthew 16:4
Corey @166, this comes up often enough*, but good luck trying to get creationists to have more than a passing acquaintance with reality and so realising Hitler was on their side. ;)
—
For example, some time ago Raven noted an excerpt from a much longer essay by Alan MacNeill documenting Hitler’s creationism:
I’m sure. I doubt it has been your actual experience that you atheists have asked for evidence, you gave them utter illogic, question-begging, ass-pulled “evidence”, and they laughed at you. I’m sure that it was atheists just not wanting to see your incredible evidence.
Can’t possibly be that your arguments are wrong! And that you repeat them anyway without grasping counterarguments! Nope, atheists just be stubborn.
And that’s how we know you are a bullshitter. If everything counts as evidence for an idea, then that’s a good sign that someone has rigged the game.
Ah, even better than moral presuppositionalism:
“God gives us absolute logic because reasons!
Logic based on evidence and a small number of axioms doesn’t fucking count because I say so!
Therefore, we have absolute logic, therefore God, I win!”
I think you and everyone who makes this argument should be automatically disqualified from serving on a jury. Because you think that one witness saying “yeah, like, 50 other guys totally saw all that shit” counts as 51 eyewitnesses.
Biblical prophecies fulfilled later in the fucking Bible, fulfilled if you interpret the poetic language just so, or fulfilled because they were virtually guaranteed to be fulfilled at some point in time! Such incredible evidence! Praise be to the Space Ghost and the Jewish Magician Also Known As Space Ghost!
Always with the personal experiences. Rarely ever with the specifics about the personal experiences. If your answered prayers are anything like everybody else’s answered prayers, this is probably the most embarrassingly poor line of “evidence” yet.
If you think math is proof of God being the creator, you really need to read the Bible. The world being created in seven days, people living for centuries, pi equaling three, insects having four legs, and that all the world’s species could fit in roughly 80,000 cubic meters . And then there’s Christian doctrine that claims that one equals three, and you’ve got some God-blessed fuzzy math going on.
Sastra, the whole site seems angry and defensive. Like its a deep wound that is sensitive to the touch. That’s God knocking. Get by yourself and ask Him to reveal Himself. He will. Just ask.
Actually being evidence would be nice. The biggest problem here seems to be that you don’t understand what constitutes evidence in general.
rabbitwink:
Sorry I missed your question. I don’t claim to be very moral. I am a sinner that is a work in progress. However it is my understanding that not all “killing” is wrong. Would you agree? For example: killing the enemy in wartime is not wrong, killing bandits that are attempting to kill your family is not wrong, the state killing murderers as punishment is not wrong.. Curious as to how you would answer each of those questions in the multiple choice I posted.
@ Chris Nielsen:
That list of “evidences” is not impressive in the least.
The theory of evolution does a much better job at explaining the complexity of living things than any deity does.
The logical absolutes are formulations which we use to describe how reality works. They are abstract concepts. God did not create them — they apply to God as much as they do to anything else.
And how do we know that Jesus rose from the dead? Because the Gospels, written by anonymous authors some 30 to 70 years after Jesus is supposed to have died, say so.
The Florentine Codex was compiled during a period of around 30 to 70 years after the Conquest of Mexico. It tells me that Montezuma was forewarned of the coming of the Spaniards because a couple of Aztecs out hunting on Lake Texcoco caught a bird with a magic mirror growing out of its head and brought it to him. When Montezuma looked in the mirror, he saw a vision of soldiers on the march, so he went to his advisors and told him this, and they wanted to examine the bird. But in the meantime, the bird had disappeared.
Why should we belief what the Gospels when they say that Jesus rose from the dead but not the Florentine Codex when it says that Montezuma briefly had a mysteriously vanishing bird with a magic mirror growing out of its head?
You do realize that the authors of the New Testament had access to the Old Testament, right? It’s easy to make it look like Jesus fulfilled prophecies when you can edit the story of his life after the fact.
But Hindus and Muslims have personal experiences which they believe vindicate their faith as well. Are you planning on converting to Islam or Hinduism?
How on earth do prime numbers prove God?
Awww, isn’t that precious. I bet you think you are being clever. If you actually knew anything, you would see us getting far more “angry”, far more often, on things that don’t have to do with everpresent creationist stupidity. We are angry because this shit should be outrageous. Incorrectly smearing atheists, doing so in order illogically dismiss evolutionary theory. It should raise our ire and should be something that the religious would try to distance themselves from. But the religious and even some non-religious people basically agree that Nazis were godless and atheists are assholes, so anything goes. Ray’s contribution is completely unoriginal and unsurprising.
To sum up: We aren’t as angry as you think we are, we should justifiably be more angry, and the fact that you think possible outrage over this as evidence of God is laughable.
Why is your God so inconsistent at meting out “justice” then? If everybody in a given country was a criminal, and deserving of arrest, and police just went around arbitrarily deciding to toss seemingly random people in jail, how well would that reflect on the justice system? According to you, all sinners are equally sinful and equally deserving of death, so why does God pick and choose? How does that make sense? How is that not completely arbitrary and therefore unjust?
Did you miss Tuesday’s lecture? Here are the notes.
then it follows that there is no absolute moral standard by which to live by.
I should repeat the topic for the weekend discussion group! If A is true and B happened then C. A is true, therefore C. Deconstruct.
*burns offerings to quorkbote*
Immorality, Evolution., Hitler, Abortion, Holocaust, Gay Marriage. Put them together in any order and the mugs in the pews will lap it up. Ray Comfort is in the business of making money and he sells the people what they want.
Okay, so you come here mocking us for not having your precious objective morality when admitting:
1. That you yourself aren’t moral.
2. That your belief system already says that people don’t follow this objective morality and aren’t expected to.
3. That killing, despite “thou shalt not kill”, despite it being one of your first fucking examples of objective morality, is not objectively immoral in all circumstances.
Are you fucking with us or did you not bother to work on how internally consistent your belief system was before coming here to proclaim that it is the End All Be All?
Here is a suggestion: treat this less like a game to win and more like a discussion. You might gain something other than a few “victory” notches on your belt.
Hey, I sided with the Nazis too! Sucks we lost, huh?
He’s gain no such thing.
Chris is rape ok if someone believes God commands them?
Cobe Holden:
1. Your wishful thinking is amusing in its obliviousness.
2. Your god is like a knocking on a deep wound? Sorry, I’m not into masochism.
(Quaint mixed metaphor, though)
3. So, your god is not actually evident, it is hidden.
4. But if someone is by themselves, there’s nobody else of whom one can make a request — unless you think invisible friends count.
(So your god is like Drop Dead Fred, eh?)
—
Heh, I think it’s pretty clear who seems angry and defensive, O godbot.
fucking Chris fucking Nielsen thinks that killing during war is just cool if it’s done on the orders of his fucking genocidal deity. Who is missing morality now? An avowed Christian or an atheist? Not me, I do not advocate killing anyone.
@168:
Is that you Chris Neilsen? Stooped to sockpuppetting because you are outnumbered?
Yes, Cobe, it’s almost like someone was defending genocide, people are so oppositional.
Oh that’s right, someone is defending genocide, just so long as it’s the “right God.”
You didn’t notice? How…usual.
Glen Davidson
Anteprepro:
Biblical prophecies fulfilled
Israel coming back into existence in 1948 is a fulfilled prophecy 2000 years after the Bible was completed.
I don’t know that the world wasn’t created in seven days. Could have been seven literal days as far as I know, or it could have been much longer, as a day is like a thousand years to God.
I see no reason why people couldn’t have lived longer in the early days. Science has discovered that our lifespans are biologically controlled. I see no reason why this couldn’t have been adjusted by God, just as the Bible said.
Pi = 3? http://creation.com/does-the-bible-say-pi-equals-3
Bugs with 4 legs: Here is some common sense: http://www.tektonics.org/af/buglegs.html
//that all the world’s species could fit in roughly 80,000 cubic meters//
Not ALL of the worlds species were on the arc, only the major “kinds” http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-c013.html
// then there’s Christian doctrine that claims that one equals three, and you’ve got some God-blessed fuzzy math going on//
You mean the trinity? This is not as you say 1 = 3. The persons of the trinity are three aspects of the same being. An analogy would be time. We have the past, present, and future, but together all three are known as time.
Prime numbers are the best argument for God. Let’s examine the possibilities:
Case 1: The Twin Primes Conjecture is true.
In this case (which is the one most mathematicians think is likely), God used his omnipotent fingers to push the primes close together. Because there are infinite pairs of twin primes, God had to do this infinite times. Only God can do something infinite times. Therefore, God. Also, the Bible predicts this result.*
Case 2: The Twin Primes Conjecture is false.
In this case, God used his omnipotence to keep infinitely many prime pairs from collapsing together. It is well known that otherwise this would happen for reasons. Because there would otherwise be infinite pairs of twin primes, God had to do this infinite times. Only God can do something infinite times. Therefore, God. Also, some mathematicians are atheists and believed the conjecture would be true. God has shown them to be fools.
By transfinite induction, not only does God exist, but He is exactly the God that Chris Nielsen is thinking of.
*Proverbs 22:6
Train [pair] up a child [prime number] in the way he should go [with another prime number, 2 away]; even when he is old he will not depart from it [i.e., there are infinite twin primes].
anathema2 //How on earth do prime numbers prove God?//
Patterns. What we are seeing is obviously the work of a creator. I haven’t seen any other plausible explanations. Patterns indicate the existence of a mind. If astronauts saw piles of rocks arranged in sequential prime numbers, wouldn’t you conclude that someone arranged them like that? Of course the answer is yes, then ask the question why are there ordered patterns in numbers? Shouldn’t everything be chaotic if there were no God?
How would I answer?
Drone strikes are wrong. Legal? Maybe. Correct/good? Never.
Capital punishment is wrong.
Killing kittens can be wrong yet necessary (but never “because we have dominion”– that’s BS),
Killing in war is wrong (though I’m sure we’ll never see a time without war, that still doesn’t make it right)
Killing to make a stupid religious point is wrong
Abortion is about physical autonomy, period. It’s not a “moral” or even medical issue. You wouldn’t force someone to donate their kidney, or to force them to allow a cancer to grow because it’s a living thing too, or be used as an incubator to grow monoclonal antibodies. Why force them to do anything that does not impact anyone else?
I thought the commandment was “thou shalt not kill” not “thou shalt not kill except for political gain, people we probably have incorrectly incarcerated, and others that basically do not suit my special personal purpose”? How is some killing ok? Wouldn’t “no killing” be the morally superior position? How do you justify that? How do you answer the question about other beliefs/nonbeliefs being of greater moral quality than your supposed “God says these sixteen forms of killing is ok?”
Chris:
How do you know that Zeus is not the source of everything in existence?
How do you know that Odin is not the creator of Earth?
You clearly have no clue what Nerd is talking about. If multiple people look at your “evidence” and reach different conclusions, that ain’t evidence.
Personal testimonials are not evidence either. Devout Jews, Hindus, and Muslims all have their own personal stories to tell. You cannot all be right. Unless those personal stories can stand up to intense scrutiny and outside verification, they are meaningless.
Your view of humanity as sinful wretches is disgusting. You scrape at the heels of your murderous imaginary deity in the hopes of catching favor so that you can sit eternally at his right foot, licking it and touting his greatness til the end of time.
Yeah, you can keep that asinine fantasy. I want nothing of it.
Of course. Because we never see patterns form naturally. . .
Tell me, do you think that the Giant’s Causeway was made by actual giants? Do you think that each snow flake is individually created by Jack Frost?
What mind creates moire patterns?
Cobe @184:
Given the atrocities committed in the name of various gods throughout history, as well as the continued subjugation of women, the relegation of queers to second class status, and the endorsement of rape and slavery, I’d say there is plenty to be mad about. And there is nothing wrong with anger.
Tell me though, which god you are referring to. There are thousands to pick and choose from and no way of knowing which is real.
Yeah, a self-fulfilled prophecy . Countries forming and disappearing aren’t natural events. They are human activities. And the Bible isn’t exactly an obscure tome.
We’ve already done this post. No matter what you make each “day” equal to, the creation order is still screwed up. Also: What happened to absolutes!!?1!!?!1
“Our lifespans are biologically controlled”. Stellar insight. Must be doing some cutting edge creation science.
The reason why people couldn’t have lived longer is because it doesn’t make fucking sense and there is no possible reason why they would. Especially not living for several centuries. You don’t understand how evidence works do you? “Well, it’s not impossible” is not how find things that are worth asserting as true.
“B-b-but, God wasn’t wrong, because the Hebrews didn’t count the last two legs as legs!”
I love apologetics.
Gotta love when creationists have to resort to defending pseuodoscience with more pseudoscience. Mmmm, it smells like victory. Also, the fact that this means that creationists are supporting a kind of evolution that is far more extreme and rapid than anything actual proponents propose is just par for the course.
HERESY! Past, present, and future are distinct portions of time. Time is all three combined. The Father, the Son, and The Holy Ghost are each God, separately and combined . God is the Father. God is the Son. God is the Holy Ghost. And God is all three together. Time itself is not the past alone, nor the future alone, nor the present alone. It is all three combined and only that.
Know your own dogma, please. Then you might understand why every Trinity that tries to capture the entire Trinity doctrine fails.
(Because the concept of the Trinity is incoherent, self-contradictory bafflegab)
[OT]
Chris Nielsen:
Why do you imagine that? :)
I am sitting at home, all by myself and asked god to reveal himself.
It has been 30 seconds already. Oh he must be playing with his cock.
Well yeah, but what about all of the circles we see in nature? How do the circles get pi right every time (or at least very close)?
Must be God, since who else would know an irrational number?
Back to the earlier point, though, who’s ever heard of patterns just appearing in numbers? They’re not even material, so any such pattern must be caused spiritually.[/Chris channeling]
Glen Davidson
Anteprepo:
I like to strive to be moral according to what God says in his word, but just like you, as a sinner I am not perfect.
Are expected to. Jesus says we are to repent and turn from our sins and follow him.
There is a difference between murder and justifiable killing. Is there not? Thou shalt not kill means thou shalt not murder, depends on the English translation you prefer.
Yeah, this is pretty much what a shit-ton of theological arguments boil down to.
Argument from design.
Fine-tuning argument.
Transcendental arguments for logic.
The law-giver arguments.
All just rely on observing order or something resembling order, and then having a spectacular failure of the imagination afterwards. It relies on scientific illiteracy, abject ignorance. They can’t possibly bother or dare to imagine how natural processes might have been involved. Order is artificial, natural is chaos. Order cannot come from chaos, order cannot come from nature, this order wasn’t caused by humans, therefore MAGIC!
Lol. I think that God placed easter eggs throughout his creation – interesting little things for us to find. If you look with an open mind, you can find all kinds of jaw-dropping things in creation. Laminin shaped like a cross would be another example..
The people who wrote the Bible did not speak English. Furthermore if the Bible is inerrant then there can only be at most a single correct translation, and the others must be false.
Chris Nielsen!
Stop promulgating your vile heresies! For it is written that only the Elect shall be called into Heaven! This “evangelism” of yours is nothing more than making a mockery of the Sovereignty of the Lord! If the Lord wishes this “blog readership” and this “PZ Myers” to be joined in salvation, then He alone will make His will known!
I commend you to study the doctrine of supralapsarianism with a grave heart and to listen to the teachings of Herbert Khaury on TULIP theology.
Laminin really?
Your gullibility and confirmation bias is showing.
Oh shit.
I just looked out the window and one of our tree’s limbs is crossing another tree’s limb at a perfect 45 degree angle.
That’s it, I’m fucking converted. Nothing could possibly cause that to happen. It has to be one of God’s Eostre eggs.
You are allegedly still not moral, allegedly still a sinner, and yet you also allegedly follow him. And now you claim that Jesus expects his followers to turn from sins. So, what, do them slightly less? Even though any minute amount sin is Just As Bad as a massive amount and just as worthy of death? Yeah, I’m calling bullshit.
Please, entertain me: What constitutes “murder”? From where do you determine what is and what is not “murder”? And why did God, in his perfect objective moral laws, presuppose that we knew under what conditions killing somebody counts as “murder” and when it doesn’t?
Possible answers:
“Hah, murder really does just basically mean killing and I am being sophist!”
“Well, if you squint at the Bible really hard…”
“From the American English dictionary, of course!”
“Well, obviously God was referring to what the locals considered ‘murder’ and thought it was a good idea to make his timeless objective moral laws crib legal terms from other manmade legal systems!”
“I know it when I see it!”
Ladies and gentlemen, the creationist defending his belief that a vaguely T-shaped protein is a sign from God! Give him a hand, everyone!
…so, to summarize: laminins look like an ancient torture and execution implement supposedly used to kill the subject of your favorite myths, therefor G
@ Chris Nielsen:
Really? Would you say that everything listed here is nothing more than an example of confirmation bias?
Look, I don’t expect you to read everything at the link I’ve just provided right away. But if you really want to continue to discuss evolution, I suggest that you bookmark that page and read it later.
I wonder: Is everything that isn’t cross-shaped evidence that God really isn’t there?
Is the lack of Jesus on a tortilla proof that God is Dead?
If we find patterns that look tentacles or clouds that look like dreadful, bloated mounds, is that evidence for Cthulhu?
Why does the pareidolia only work in one direction!? It’s so unfair.
Chris Nielsen
Pareidolia is strong in this one:
http://www.pnas.org/content/94/19/10189/F4.large.jpg
Argument by graven images?
You are a reprobate!
Of course, the patterns of evolution found throughout the fossil record and in current life have to be magic. Magic! And the whim of the Magic Designer.
Doing science with patterns indeed. What a croc! Next you’ll be telling me that the patterns of atoms in crystals are just due to geometries and bonding, and not a magical deity.
Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of coincidence—ID philosophy.
Glen Davidson
Except for all of the actual science backing it, unlike the not real science you creationists rely on.
Its been a hoot. Thanks for all of the entertaining sarcasm and mockery. Atheists never disappoint. I need to go for a walk and sign off for the night. God bless.
A mythical/fictional character. Try Harry Potter, just as convincing…
Gee, never looked at the gennome evidence, have you…Sciecne a trillion, your creationism, zip, zero, nada, nil, zilch. Funny how that keeps happening since science keeps moving forward, you are stuck in no-go….
And he runs off leaving nothing but a stinking pile of unsupported assertions.
Does it ever occur to anybody that creationists learn words, not meanings?
Most of what’s wrong with Chris’s various evidence-free pronouncements seem to fail at the level of meaning–which does include his lack of regard for evidence. Even as simple and seemingly absolute meaning as “absolute” appears to evade his grasp.
Glen Davidson
Isn’t it just like a creationist to justify genocide and run.
True, any wit (let alone evidence), seems to come from our side.
The dull plodding of insipid ignorance was largely Chris’s doing.
Glen Davidson
Rey Fox @#133 said
… which I then re-said. Sorry. I did check, but I missed it!
—
You really ought to study your WW2 history. Hey, start here: http://www.bombsight.org/#15/51.5050/-0.0900
Zoom out (the little minus button on the zoom bar on the left). It’s … enlightening.
(That was just London, of course.)
You should probably also read up on Curtis Le May, and look at this (it helps to zoom in):
http://nuclearsecrecy.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Japanese-firebombing-map.jpg
That’s before Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
—
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1540443/Man-swallowed-by-great-white-says-it-was-like-being-trapped-in-a-cave.html
Fuck you too ignorant asshole.
I LOLed. :-)
….Why does it not surprise me that the godbot turns about to be a bloodthirsty warmonger?
So, just to be clear, if God told you to kill someone, you would?
Makes sense. It is either that or they are deliberately playing word games, etc.
Reminds of the “Fundie Word Redefinition Project” meme from FSTDT.
Chris Nielson
See this analysis of the TAG argument.
Logical absolutes are just mind devices used to help make sense of the observations around us. They are not physical things that need to be “created”.
Such an idea would imply that the bible: “gods’ word” would never contradict itself.
It does, see one of the links later on dealing with mathematics. Look at the entire site.
Names please…or give at least a few examples of some of what must be hundreds of written statements. Instead all you have is ONE single bible verse that says that there were “hundreds of witnesses” with nothing else to back it up.
You’re joking right?
http://web.archive.org/web/20120418064313/http://www.godlesshaven.com/articles/bible-prophecy_pg1.html
And when a prayer goes “unanswered” that’s just god saying “no” right?
Baloney. See the previous statement on logical absolutes.
Besides, how then to explain the many mathematical mistakes in the bible?
Bible vs. Archeology for the hell of it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BP5LdELd_0o
Oh, and to the original topic of the Ray Comfort video again linking evolution to the holocaust?
Bullshit.
Chris:
You know nothing about evolution, nor do you understand comfirmation bias. Hell, you do not even know your own bible.
Stop talking about things you do not understand.
What I find amusing is that Chris Nelson the presuppositionalist couldn’t come up with one new argument for his imaginary deity. All he mentioned has been shown here over the last few years, soundly and irrefutably refuted, and he come in and thinks he saying something that isn’t “Yawn, saw and refuted that a couple of months ago”. Yes, we don’t accept your “evidence” if it isn’t new, physical, and conclusive. Like the equivalent of the eternally burning bush, but if they stop to think about it, is is something physical, something than an be examined, and something not explained by science. And in the last five years, zip, zero, nada, nothing, nil. The evidence is lacking…..
Gen. Douglas MacArthur to wipe out the Nazis.
MacArthur? nazis? Who in Hades was fighting the warlords in the Pacific arena?
I guess Chris holds that consistency is the bugbear of small minds.
@181:
@215:
Chris Nielsen:
Were any of the women that drowned during the Noachian Flood pregnant?
Wouldn’t that be abortion? Or had those fetuses been prenatally wicked?
If it was justified because their parents were wicked, does that allow wicked women to have abortions?
Lastly, did it work? Did the world remain free from sin after the Flood? Or did God save the wrong family?
This sophisticated theology sure is tricky stuff!
Does anyone else imagine that as Chris left he was thinking, “Ha! I didn’t understand a word they said. Silly atheists, writing gibberish.”
Sure Chris thinks the Bible-god’s rapes and genocides are A-OK. As a believer, he’s safe. God won’t smite him, because he believes. He doesn’t need to be moral, he just needs to obey and grovel when he fails to obey. But most of all, he needs to believe. Doubt is risky. Education is dangerous. Because if his belief should be shaken, the sky tyrant might just turn his “justice” on Chris. Belief keeps him safe from the wrath of this violent god. He sees himself vile and…whatever he described humans as earlier. He believes in a god who is justified in anything he does, no matter how cruel. What are facts and empathy compared to motivated reasoning like that? Raised to live with the fear of divine retribution from a magical tyrant like that from childhood on, I think some people would believe in Russel’s Teapot if they were told that belief would protect them.
It”s sad, really.
Good catch John.
Apologies, borked the quoting @244. The “Gen. Douglas MacArthur to wipe out the Nazis” confusion is from the magic faerie minion (@89).
Chris Nelson
I have never committed a sin.
How does God™ feel about me?
Man did I pick the wrong career. But I’m too moral and honest to be a Christian.
[meta]
chigau, I think he answered that @162. :)
(Genesis 3 — and of course, as a woman, you are subject to verse 16)
@ Chris Nielsen,
As a professional ethicist, with all due respect:
Are you shitting me?
John Morales
yeah. I’m toast.
However, I am confident that a disgusting, filthy, putrid sinner like Chris Nielsen will never pray for me.
Because how could that help?
docfreeride
What (in the name of all that is wholly) is a “professional ethicist”?
What gets me is the utter hypocrisy shown between just these two answers. So God created us, and He can destroy us however He sees fit, that’s His undeniable right as our Creator – But a woman who’s in the midst of creating a new life inside herself is wrong to terminate it, no matter the situation. Why? Isn’t she that life’s creator? How does god get the undeniable right to destroy his creations, but somehow you think it’s always wrong for a woman to destroy hers? That’s ‘Christian logic’ for you, I suppose..
Why can’t people like Chris manage to say ANYTHING without contradicting themselves? Way to go Chris! Go ahead and chalk up another ‘Victory’! You’ve certainly earned it, haven’t you?
Nobody has ever committed a sin.
And not much word from the other Comfort-ing supporters either…sigh…such high hopes I had for them.
John Morales:
There are times when you simply amaze me. ;)
Ermine:
I’m going to put on my True Believer Hat™ (it’s cone shaped and may or may not have “DUNCE” scrawled up the side) and attempt to answer:
*ahem*
You don’t understand: God created that baby.
*takes off hat*
How’d I do with my sophisticated theology?
The poor guy is stuck on the second horn of the Euthyphro dilemma. If we define good as “whatever God does” then we are confused, left with no meaning at all. I am especially touched by his insistence that abortion is always morally wrong even though the one explicit reference to abortion in the Bible is a repulsive command to force abortion on women suspected of adultery. (If the fetus survives, the man has to acknowledge it has his own.) So yeah, Chris is forced to say that killing fetuses is fine when God commands it but not when a women chooses it.
Also, his understanding of the trinity is heretical, although I suppose it could be whatever his sect teaches.
You can argue this way until you hit a grand old age, but you will never get any moral benefit out it. It strikes me a slap in the face of God to declare that it’s all right for him to be evil-ish because he’s too mysterious and powerful for the rest of us to comprehend. If He really did gift me with a conscience, I am morally obligated to question the Bible and find it wanting. At least us atheists can actually talk about morality without having to defend genocide.
[meta]
Thanks, Alexandra.
Here’s the ObVideoLink: Drop Dead Fred (1991) Trailer.
chigau (違う) @ 255, “professional ethicist” = I make my living teaching, thinking about, and writing about ethics.
And, on that basis, I’m inclined to say that what Chris Nielsen seems to take to be “ethics” really, really isn’t.
Geez, go out for the evening and miss all the fun (though we did get to watch a crew moving a replacement freeway bridge into place, all in one piece!)
But seriously: Chris thinks he’s like Bobby Fischer trying to play umpteen simultaneous chess games? And then does the debating equivalent of moving a pawn like it was a queen, and otherwise demonstrating he doesn’t even understand the basic rules of the “game”. Must be that Christian humility I hear so much about, but see so rarely.
I’m not sure we should be trying to convince Nielson that he’s full of shit on the God thing. He’s made it amply clear that the only reason he is not personally a serial rapist and murderer (that we know of) is that he’s afraid of a large invisible security camera in the sky. If that nonsense is the only thing holding him back, I’m frankly feeling safer with him being ridiculously, pompously full of shit. That lack of any morality or empathy does seem to be a trademark of that kind of fundie, though. The defence of genocide, though, never ceases to terrify me.
And really, I’d love it if people stopped treating the Holocaust as some kind of surprising aberration, and not the entirely logical progression of centuries of Christian, theologically-based, clergy-approved anti-Semitism (as well as equally religiously approved antiziganism, homophobia, ableism etc.)
docfreeride
You have a pretty groovy job.
I think that Chris Nielson has not thought about much about anything ever.
I notice that Chris danced around the question of whether he would rape someone if his god told him to. I suggest that this is because to answer in any way would show how broken his morality is. Instead he threw down a smokebomb by asking those stupid “which murder is moral?” questionnaire
He also did not answer why he believes that the patterns he thinks were created by god were made by YHVH instead of a norse god like Odin or Loki, an Egyptian god like Osiris or Thoth, a Greek god like Zeus or Hermes, or Vishnu, Krishna, Kali Yuga, Madoka, Aradia, The Overlord of Darkness, Getter or any other deity from any other fiction. I suspect it’s because he has none. He also was unable to answer why followers of other religions have religious experiences exactly the same as his.
But in the end while Chris was unable to provide a single actual piece of evidence, respond well to any argument, or provide any support for his religion he was able to walk away feeling smug and superior. Since that was his goal the whole time I guess it’s a win for him, and a lose for his god. Perhaps if Chris stopped trying to “Win” the argument maybe he’d start listening.
He didn’t make any effort to reply to any of the tough, substantive comments and questions he got. A disappointing godpeddler indeed.
Yeah, I’d really like to hear one of these pious “Morality comes from God!” types explain why the Midianite infants and livestock were culpable for the alleged Midianite wickedness, yet the nubile young virgins weren’t.
Ah, well. Yahweh’s mind is just unfathomable, I guess. Ours is not to question why.
*shudder*
Chris Nielsen no.43
Good point. You got to be joking all it is moving things back one more step. Saying God made morality doesn’t give us an “objective” morality at all. How do we “know” that it is “objective morality”? Saying it comes from God proves nothing even if that is true. All it is, is a might makes right sort of rule. I.e., God said this is right and that is the end of discussion. That proves nothing about whether or not something is “moral” or not.
As for supposedly leaving no basis for condemning Nazism etc., if there is no “objective” morality and everything becomes situational. Well you do realize that believers like Ray are also situational thinkers. They have absolutely no problem with God killing and slaying countless multitudes in the Bible. Further they have zero problem with the infamous Ban passages in the Bible in which the Israelites allegedly slew everything that breathed in various cities, down to the very last man, woman and child and including the animals. The reason given to approve of those acts is that God ordered it so it is “good”.
As for your comment about a chimp / pig hybrid being the latest evolutionary theory? The idea is beyond stupid, it is moronic.
I was wondering for a while when he tried to deflect the conversation away from the existence of God whether he considered “divine morals” to be necessary to control the human population independent of any actual God, and that our dreaded subjective morals would necessarily lead to chaos and horror, and we had to have some sort of objective morality regardless of where it came from. All subsequent discussion showed that, of course, he hadn’t really thought that far. God takes the burden of thinking away.
Are you really surprised that after Chris showed zero knowledge of the bible, science, or reality in general he also had apparently zero knowledge of who was where doing what during the Second World War?
Oh.
Well, in that case, there’s no such thing as murder.
When the Muslims behead the Christian pastor, the pastor is just another filthy condemned sinner, given the appropriate death penalty. Justice is served, according to you.
When the mother gets an abortion, that fetus is just a filthy condemned sinner, getting its death penalty early. Justice is served, again, according to you.
Drone strike? Justice, according to you.
IED explosion? Justice, according to you.
Killing someone for setting an IED? Justice, according to you.
Killing anyone at all for no reason? Justice, according to you.
Maybe you want to think about what your concept of “justice” is.
According to you, no killing is wrong.
But it’s also not wrong for bandits to kill you and your family, or for the killers (wrongly called “murderers”; there are no murderers, according to you) to kill.
Everyone is a filthy condemned sinner deserving death, according to you, so killing people for any reason at all, or no reason, is good, according to you.
Of course not — according to you. We’re all filthy condemned sinners deserving death, so if anyone causes the death of another, that’s just “justice”, according to you.
If God created logical absolutes, and can change them, then logical “absolutes” are not actually absolute.
If logical absolutes are actually absolute, then they exist as they are regardless of God’s existence.
. . . Because God magically makes numbers not have factors? What does he do with the factors? Eat them? Shove them up his transcendental butt?
And best of all, God made us that way! :D
And then He ends up looking more like Yog-Sothoth than anything remotely benevolent.
Vaiyt: Hey now! I’ll note Yog-Sothoth, more often than not, was more than okay with the destruction of his more morally unpleasant cultists.
What I got from my reading of the Old Testament is that Chris’s god liked to make arbitrary rules and woe betide us if we break any of them. Then Jesus came along and said: “Ha ha, just kidding, you can have a ham and cheese sandwich without fear of being stoned or going to Hell.” Except, of course, that not all of the rules were put in abeyance. Cotton-polyester shirts are now good but masturbation is still bad. It’s okay to eat shrimp but homosexuality is a sin. Cafeteria religion at its finest.
And if you don’t know that, your life has no meaning.
Glen Davidson
Ahh, religious apologetics. How quaint.
Listen, Chris, the only thing you’ve succeeded at here is reinforcing my belief that it is lucky indeed that the God of the Bible in particular does not exist. Why? Because he is an evil fucking bastard, and if he did exist, it would be the responsibility of all morally upright people to oppose him, and, if possible destroy him, in order to allow for justice, equality, and prosperity to flourish in the world. Because from your own testimony, it’s clear that the God if the Bible is against those things.
Oh, I don’t know, I think it has something to do with statements like this:
Wow! In one relatively short sentence, you have successfully demonstrated the utter moral bankruptcy of Christianity and completely justified my abandonment of it 16-years-ago. Congratulations!
Owlmirror @ 272:
And “justice” for what crime? Because two mythological people who didn’t understand the difference between right and wrong to begin with were convinced by a talking snake to eat a piece of magical fruit? THAT requires supposed misdeed warrants that the descendants of this fictions couple, who could have had no part in what had occurred, be tortured for all eternity? And to add insult to inanity, Chris’ deity is supposed to be omniscient (although it couldn’t find two humans in a garden when they hide from it) and knew from the very beginning that that all would unfold in this way. Yet, this god of his is somehow holding us accountable for a “sin” that we are not responsible for that it knew was going to happen anyway as part of a “plan” that we mere mortal are incapable of understanding or have a say in.
That is not “justice.”
Just fucking pitiful. The Chris Nielsens of the world come here and leave refreshed and revitalized after their near brushes with atheist sarcasm; they’ve braved the lions for god. I really think it’s the evangelical version of a haunted house (oooh, spooky! Can you leave with your faith intact?). Because these are questions that seriously begged consideration for most of us at some point in the past( it’s probably why most of us are here apart from the science), most of us will address the questions more or less in good faith. They revel in stupid rhetorical tricks(just answer these 6 questions) and gasp at the sarcasm and don’t for one fucking second consider the actual arguments. They work on a completely different set of definitions(‘personal revelations of god in my life’ is EVIDENCE?) and you are supposed to work within their skewed definitions even if no one else uses them.Babies screaming during abortions? I’ve been to a dozen deliveries at 25 weeks gestation;deliveries, mind you where the fetus has a chance to expand it’s non surfactant containing lungs, unlike an abortion. To claim they scream requires a tremendous lie or a vivid imagination. Then they leave , completely oblivious to actually thinking, as opposed to dreaming up apologetic positions.
No Chris, no one here saw Bobby Fischer when you arrived; I dare say most of us saw a one more sad assed dodge ball player, running away from fact and information as fast as his little legs can carry him.
And yes, morality is subjective, your bible is the best evidence for this. We all more or less agree on most simple moral issues because we all come from the same general group of primates(though I think that that your justification of genocide if god says so is a little twisted).
1. You don’t need to go to Genghis Khan, there are plenty of good Christians in American prisons who don’t have any better a moral clue about rape than he did. The point is that some have a more finely tuned conscience than others, which is what one would expect in a large population of animals…..a particular feature that is expressed variably throughout the population. And the funny thing is their religion made no difference in either their view of rape or their choices.
2. Morality IS subjective to atheists and humanists…..and Christians and Muslims and Hindus, yadda yadda. It matters little what they SAY is their moral foundation, because e the minute most good people of conscience read their good book and it conflicts with what they acknowledge to be good and useful behavior as defined by society they do one of two things….they make the objectionable part of the book ‘allegorical’ or just ignore its existence altogether. It only becomes a problem when their good book leads them to heinous acts of antisocial behavior and they are unwilling to consider the good of society as a whole as perhaps more important than their fundamentalist zeal. It’s what leads people to fly planes into buildings and bomb abortion clinics.
I see that Chris never did answer that question about if he’d rape and consider it moral if he thought God commanded it. I wonder why he kept avoiding that….
Then again, I clicked his name and saw his Facebook page with a giant image of Ronny Raygun at the time, and a “defense of Christian traditional marriage” image a bit below, so maybe it’s not so surprising.
Chris has one thing in common with Bobby Fisher – bizarre beliefs. The difference is that Bobby Fisher was very good at chess while Chris is hopelessly inept at arguing for his god.
Chris, like John Belushi in Animal House, probably thinks the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor.
@coffeehound – are a fetus’ lungs filled with liquid when it is aborted? I would think this would make screaming impossible.
If a guy exhibiting the Dunning-Kruger effect thinks that he is Bobby Fisher for shooting fish in barrels is that itself also an instance of the Dunning-Kruger effect? Or has the surname confused his recollection of what chess is?
Who cares about the c?
159Chris Nielsen
6 July 2013 at 6:29 pm (UTC -5)
1) The existance of nature is only proof that nature exists. When people are arguing whay something exists, you can’t just say “Well, it does exist, therefore my explanation is correct”.
2) Huh?
3) Pics or it didn’t happen.
4) Only true for the vague and/or trivial ones. (Not the really clear and significant ones, like “the Second Coming will happen during the lifetime of people who were around at the first one”).
5) How do you (or I) know that’s not confirmation bias / hallucination / Zeus?
6) Patterns can occur naturally. You need to demonstrate that they could not exist without divine design (and if so, that it wasn’t Marduk, for example, who put them there).
Although I wrote all that before seeing this:
162
Chris Nielsen
Anyone who thinks everyone in the world should be executed is evil and/or deranged beyond belief.
Any god who thinks everyone in the world should be executed is up there with Cthulu or Khorn, and you are no better than a Cthulu/Chaos Cultist. (Or worse, given that they are as fictional as their – and your – deities, but you actually exist).
Happiestsadist has a point. God apparently being the only thing standing between Chris Nielsen and going on a raping spree (or killing spree), better if he keeps believing in him.
Unless, of course, God “tells*” him that rape is suddenly moral.
Ugh, I’ve creeped myself out with this line of thought.
*no actual hallucinations needed. Just Chris thinking up that he wants to do it, and going through some acrobatics to think of a reason why God would be cool with it.
From that perspective, no.
From the perspective that the fruitcake seems to be an authoritarian warmonger, perhaps.
I mostly just thought it was an amusing error. However, I don’t consider it a very telling error unless he’s made similar errors about recent-ish historical events. As you correctly say, it’s only “apparently zero knowledge…”.
287
Beatrice (looking for a happy thought)
7 July 2013 at 4:09 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Given that he exhibits the theology and morals of a Chaos Cultist, I’m not at all sure that his religious beliefs would be an effective break on such behaviour.
@55. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls :
False. Empathy is a trait almost all humans have regardless of their philosophical views.
Plenty of religious people are strongly empathic and there are also a number of atheists such as “Thunderfoot” and “The Amazing Atheist” and so on who are apparently lacking in empathy. Note a lot of atheists are former religious people too.
Don’t ‘other’ religious people please.
PS. What’s with all the caps lock shouting you’ve been doing on this thread, Nerd of Redhead?
gravityisjustatheory,
Yeah, he sounds like a dangerous piece of shit. And there is nothing evil one can do, that they can’t pretend their God would approve of since God seems to be inclined to hate same people/approve of same actions as his believers.
I’m just so disgusted by seeing someone openly and proudly admitting to such horrible positions.
@ 114. Chris Nielsen :
A & E are wartime conditions where enemy forces are legitimate targets and its kill or be killed so also justifiable homicide by reason of self-defence and /or defending others so usually considered okay by most people incl. me.
B would depend on the context and circumstances with further information needed to answer properly –why are the kittens being killed or euthanised? Also far as I’m aware, PETA = People for Ethical Treatment of Animals so, huh?
D again depends on what on earth you’re referring to. A woman killing her baby is infanticide and probably murder since you’ve implied the killing is deliberate whereas a woman having a termination of pregnancy is a legitimate medical procedure to safeguard her life and exercise her human rights. A fetus or embryo or zygote is NOT a baby despite the ill-informed, anti-choice “coathanger abortion” lobbyists propaganda claiming otherwise.
F is clearly murder and thus NOT legitimate as well as literally overkill on the Muslim brotherhood’s part since either crucifying or beheading by itself suffices nastily.
Now having answered your questions (one of a few here to do so) can I please get you to answer the question asked by
#91. Beatrice (looking for a happy thought) :
Well, Chris Nielsen?
PS. Oops nearly forget C is okay in my view because it protects the rest of the world from the mass murder and worst of criminals and is arguably also more merciful than forcing the condemned killer to pointlessly live out agonising life in custody during which (s)he and others – guards, inmates and victims of crime suffer.
Militantagnostic, #283,
YOU MUST NOT MAKE SIMILES THAT COMPARE MY HERO, THE LATE GREAT JOHN BELUSHI, IN THE BEST FILM EVER MADE, WITH AN INANE, WITTERING GODBOT LIKE THIS CHRIS BOZO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Have some standards! Is there no justice in the universe? I hope the TRUE gods of comedy smite you very thoroughly for that.
Tchoh!
Louis (Outraged from Oswestry)
@ StevoR
Which part of:
do you NOT understand to be an act of terrorism?
More of StevoR’s bloodlust on display. The murderer is incarcerated for fuck’s sake. Who are they going to kill? How the fuck is yet another death going to solve anything?
Hey Chris Nielsen!
Kinds is not scientific nomenclature Chris, you’re going to have to define and demonstrate the boundaries of a kind at the very least.
That’s just a nitpick though, i’m sure the luminaries of the goddidit hypothesis did that work for you somewhere. The other problem is the fact that your suggested population bottleneck doesn’t show up the genome of any species.
That kinda bombs your guess at how your ark myth is supposed to have happened in the real world.
Given that you were wrong, Could you inform the people at your link and so advance the knowledge of mankind?
It was fun to watch the creobots waltz in here and think it they were dazzling the horde with brilliance, only to get beaten like a gong. I know it’s piling on but I can’t help but ask the jebus twits where in the geological column would evidence for the flood be located. Too bad ya’ll were soooo rough on them what with the use of data and intelligence. It’s enough to make the baby jebus cry. Or something.
theophontes:
StevoR justifies his support of drone strikes that kill innocent men, women, and children by noting that they are justified under wartime conditions. The racist asshat does not comprehend that George W Bushs’ War on Terror =\= wartime conditions. This bloodlust is a problem that he needs to work on. He is doing his best to not live up to humanist ideals.
M
Danced around? More like completely ignored. Also ignored the question if he would kill someone if God told him to. He, in fact, said that nswering quesitons here was like “shooting fish in a barrel” after Sastra asked him that several times and he had already ignored it several times. Funny how loud a silence can be.
Hmmmm. riddle me this theist crutch-holders. Do you see any irony in Ray using a elagory about saving a man over a dog when you bible thumpers believe Noah was a hero for saving a whole boatload of animals at the expense of the rest of humanity!?!?
Queen to knight 4. Check mate.
I have seen the argument that it’s preferable to life imprisonment without parole, because it saves the state the cost of incarcerating them for all that time. Seriously.
Sometimes from the same people who’ll argue that it’s unethical to have an abortion because you’re unable or unwilling to financially support a child. “Human life is priceless” my arse.
Why is it that when StevoR quoted the idiot murder test which includes numerous questions about killing Arabs I KNEW he would say something racist?
A couple of states actually looked at the costs. Given the costs of numerous court appeals and retrials (a few million), it turns out it is cheaper to keep a convicted murderer locked up without the appeals than to try to execute the prisoner.
Fascinating. Do you have a source for those studies? I’d love to be able to pull it out when arguing against the death penalty.
A better analogy for Chris might be ‘it’s like sticking your dick into a barrel of piranhas’ You’re certainly getting a lot of bites, but no fish are getting caught.
The Fischer analogy also displays considerable hubris – Fischer actually knew the rules of chess and won games.
Bing! Time for another link to: The Defeat of Flood Geology by Flood Geology, by Phil Senter.
Heh.
Good point.
“Ray, the bible clearly tells us that all humans are filthy condemned sinners, and that killing humans is ‘justice’. That must include the neighbor. So our priority must be to save the dog.”
Wow, these trolls are a disgusting piece of work. Apparently they can walk and talk, and do a fair job of typing, but the thought process is all screwed up. It is amazing what religion can do to otherwise normal appearing apes.
It is this type of person, that leads me to say on a fairly regular basis, “nothing scares me more than a bunch of good x-ians.” Whatever genocide of the day is ok, justified even, cuz their damn invisible friend said so. \…and if I had the choice between saving anyone similar to these people, or saving a dog, I’d pick the dog every time. The dog has reasoning skills, and a greater sense of morality.
Snoof, I found this interesting article on the death penalty after a brief search: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/29552692/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/t/execute-or-not-question-cost/#.Udl9KM9lmRs
But it really tics me off that news sources do not cite their own sources so I did not find the actual studies.
Google Scholar search for death penalty costs:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=death+penalty+costs&btnG=&as_sdt=1%2C14&as_sdtp=
Fischer also descended into hateful batshit lunacy in his later years (and he was already half crazy during his famous 1972 match with Spassky), so at least that part of the analogy is apt….
Owlmirror, I had that paper in mind but wasn’t going to link to it given the fundie got blown out of here. One thing I’ve tried to point out to creobots is that the founders of geology back in the early 18th century were LOOKING for evidence of the flood and, finding none, abandoned the idea. You know, doing science. If there you don’t find evidence for a hypothesis you shit-can it and start over. You don’t insist it’s true because it’s in some old book.
Chris Nielsen @ 162;
This calls for the vicious abuse of poetry in the name of satire;
Shall I compare your god to a genocidal butcher? It is more ruthless and more inhumane. Religious bloodlust does lead you to call mass murder ‘justice’, And reason’s lease hath all too short a date. Sometimes even in the eyes of a godbot may reason shine, Though often is their compassion dimmed; And even the ‘true believer’ from their beliefs sometimes wonders, By chance, or their clergy’s changing course, untrimmed; But thy eternal hatred shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that bigotry thou ow’st, Nor shall reality brag thou wand’rest in hir shade, When in eternal zealotry thou grow’st. So long as humans can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives delusion, and this gives ‘faith’ to thee.
With profuse apologies to all lovers of the Bard.
Seriously though – all people are ‘sinners’, and it is ‘just’ that all ‘sinners’ should be summarily murdered? Do you ever stop to listen to yourself? You sound like a cartoonishly evil caricature of a supervillain.
gravityisjustatheory 286;
I also get the impression, from his attempted apologia for religious genocide, that Nielsen might be more comfortable dropping all these droning xian prayers and replacing them with the straightforward, honest simplicity of ‘blood for the blood god, skulls for the skull throne!’.
It is merely a choice between two fictional characters, afterall, and Khorne is frankly a more morally upstanding sort than this shifty Yahweh fellow anyway…
It is interesting though, that once again we see in action a comparaison between fictional belief systems that were specifically written to be as morally repugnant and downright evil as possible – the Code of the Sith, the worshippers of the Elder Gods, the Choas Cultists of the Ruinous Powers etc – and an actual, real world religion whose various forms are observed by over a billion people worldwide… and in every case when we come to look at the scoreboard for evil, it is bonkers fictional cults maybe 4 or 5,
bonkers real world cultsactual religions about a million.It really is difficult to create a fictional monster that is as sadistic, capricious, manipulative and downright evil as Yahweh. It is actually quite the literary feat if one stops to think about it; consistently, the ugliest, most reprehensible and nauseatingly evil character in the entirety of fiction has been the Abrahamic god. That so many people chose to worship this nasty product of the untrammelled patriarchal mindset, despite readily available scientific knowledge that demonstrates that there is no evidence that it has ever existed at all, speaks volumes about the vulnerability of the human mind to toxic memes.
shelldigger @308
It’s even more amazing what otherwise normal appearing apes can do to religion.
Gregory Greenwood, your abuse of poetry in the name of satire is beyond marvelous. I’m rolling on the floor and holding my sides. I feel the great Bard would approve. Well done, sir, very well done.
Just have a large enough sample size and you get the “right” answer. Just ask enough people and somebody will answer “4” to “How many sides does a triangle have?”
Glen Davidson
And if Christians are so morally superior, how come that they commited it?
Chris Nielson
So, now that we agree on that, here’s the obvious question: What does that have to do with whether evolution is true or not?
That shit stinks is an unpleasant truth, but true it is.
Ahh, and you’ve lost it again.
So, evolution is a moral-free process. That doesn’t meant that it didn’t favour social behaviours in some species (you and me and wolves and penguins…) and it also doesn’t mean that we can’t figure out which behaviours lead to greater universal happieness.
It’s pretty obvious that you don’t have a problem with genocide. You just define as “just” and have your problem solved.
Duh, if it’s already a baby she’s way too late. No use going to an abortion clinic then.
Oh, and I’m at comment #125, I’m wondering whether you’re going to answer beatrice’s question….
Yes, we especially like it when the fish come here and bring their own barrel.
Do you realize that laws don’t equal moral? There are, were, and will be unjust laws. The goal is to minimize those
You don’t know who PETA is, do you?
You’re really authoritarian, aren’t you?
I’m going to assume that you mean abortion and not infanticide. So, you’d rather let the woman die of HELLP (which means the fetus dies, too) than let her have an abortion?
Urgh, you’re disgusting
But abortion is lagal, too. What was your argument again?
Hey, cool. Is it equally wrong to burn a woman at the stake for witchcraft?
so, the rules don’t apply to god. What was objective about them again?
Also, my children are my creation, too. Why can’t I just kill them now that they’re preschoolers?
So, please, where’s the historic, extra-biblical evidence that Jesus:
-existed
-did miracles
-died
-got resurrected
You know, the kind of historical evidence for things like Cesar conquered the Gaules
Funny, atheist me thought that there were things in the babbe like “Thou shalt not kill” and the thing about casting the first stone and all that shit. Doesn’t look like you’re getting your exceptions from god, does it?
Speak for yourself.
Yeah, my daughter believes in the toothfairy. Must be true ’cause she hasn’t seen any other plausible explenations for the teeth vanishing and the gifts appearing.
Where does god make that point? Oh, and what’s your definition of murder?
We’re at 213 now, let me repeat beatrice’s question:
If god told you to rape, would you do it?
rabbitwink
Well, you’re clearly somebody who can think in nuance, unlike poor Chris.
sbuh
Stop that, please. Many women are glad to have one, women died to have one.
Cobe Holden
Good enough?
Jafafa Hots
Speak for yourself, I like them ;)
+++
Hey, and when the fun is almost over our very own atheist genocidal maniac turns up…
That the original Hebrew text best translates as “murder” rather than kill is a claim I’ve seen quite a few times, and I’ve also seen several old murals of the Ten Commandments in historic churches that phrase it that way.
Now, I’m not a Biblical scholar, so I can’t comment on the accuracy of this translation, but it seems reasonable, especially when you consider all the times the Bible permits or mandates killing (e.g. as a penalty for murder, blasphemy, disrespecting your parents, etc).
Of course, given that “murder” just means “deliberate illegal killing”, a law against murder is hardly revolutionary, and leaves plenty of lee-way for deliberate legal killing. I think just about every society in existance has prohibited killing (and rape, robbery, etc) – but usually with exceptions such as “unless in war / against forigners or other people who are not “us” / they really deserved it / as lawfully imposed punishment / if the government says it’s OK. (The Vikings outlawed murder, but defined “murder” as “killing someone not in a fair fight”, or so I’ve been told). Which is hardly surprising because a society that didn’t outlaw all those things simply wouldn’t last – it would either collapse due to infighting, be overthrown from within by reformers, or be conquered by another society that had agreed to direct all its looting/pillaging urges against outsiders.
As I pondered Ray’s question about whether I would save my drowning pet dog or my rotten neighbor, I kept wondering: Am I the rescuer sent by God in the first boat, the second boat, or the helicopter? Or is he sending those later?
And when the video is over, YouTube suggests an hour-long video by or about Louis Farrakhan.
Delicious. :-D
Chris Nielsen, when you come back, please keep two things in mind:
1) There’s no reason to feel overwhelmed by the number of comments here. You’re not somehow obliged to be quick; the thread won’t be closed.
2) Tell us: would you rape and would you kill if God told you to? If not, why not?
Exactly. The dog can probably swim.
Tssss. Of course God’s plan is for you to save everyone. You’ll fail; it’s a Kobayashi Maru test. :-) Builds character or some such piffle.
Thread won.
It’s funny because it’s true!
I find it telling, and bizarre, that you see this in terms of “more” and “simply”.
Morality isn’t inbuilt in the universe the way the laws of physics are, that’s true.
Haaaaaang on a second. It’s possible to derive a surprising amount of morals just from sheer selfishness.
For instance, I don’t want to be killed. What do I do to keep sociopaths (with no empathy) or berserks (with the ability to temporarily lose empathy) from trying? I convince everyone that life is a human right. :-|
LOL. It’s not good, it’s superficial; it’s not thought-provoking, but thousands of years old – it’s been thought to death many times over.
Wow, work on your reading comprehension! What is needed “to keep the tribe together”, what is needed to keep society working to everyone’s advantage, is pretty much the same everywhere and at any time.
I am thunderstruck.
Have you never stopped to think what else you could justify because of the stature and position of who did it!?!?!
Such authoritarianism is the root of a lot of evil!
Mbuuuh… no? Of course not!
Of course not!
What does it help anybody to murder the murderer? Will it teach the murderer that murder is wrong, LOL?
Besides, Texas has executed innocent people several times, and I mean people who were proven innocent by a court of law… after they were dead. Oops. If you lock someone up by error, you can release them, and you can try to compensate them for their time behind bars by such things as money. If you murder someone by error… seriously, have you never thought of this?
IOKIYAR.
(That’s probably all I need to say this far down in the thread; several people have mentioned the real issues.)
Nope. Not only is the death penalty plain murder, a punishment must not occur without due process. Plus, lots of innocent people have been indiscriminately killed by drone strikes.
Seriously, why would they do that?
Nope, see above.
See above.
No. It’s not OK to be persecuting attorney, judge, jury, and executioner all at once.
Nice try. That, too, is murder.
So, you flat-out say that might makes right.
Listen:
I will do everything I can to keep you from power, because you are a dangerous madman.
Wow. In the very first word you’re begging the question!
Compare:
“Why is the world intricate?”
“Because God, for (presumably) some reason, made it so.”
“Why does God exist?”
“Nope. God just exists.”
…that doesn’t explain anything, does it? It “explains” everything and nothing. It’s a completely useless idea.
That’s not an argument, it’s a DOS attack.
Hundreds of witnesses, to the very existence of whom there is no witness other than a book written decades later.
Are you even trying?
Ah. Really.
Reading from the book of Ezekiel.
“26:15 Thus saith the Lord GOD to Tyrus; Shall not the isles shake at the sound of thy fall, when the wounded cry, when the slaughter is made in the midst of thee?
26:16 Then all the princes of the sea shall come down from their thrones, and lay away their robes, and put off their broidered garments: they shall clothe themselves with trembling; they shall sit upon the ground, and shall tremble at every moment, and be astonished at thee.
26:17 And they shall take up a lamentation for thee, and say to thee, How art thou destroyed, that wast inhabited of seafaring men, the renowned city, which wast strong in the sea, she and her inhabitants, which cause their terror to be on all that haunt it!
26:18 Now shall the isles tremble in the day of thy fall; yea, the isles that are in the sea shall be troubled at thy departure.
26:19 For thus saith the Lord GOD; When I shall make thee a desolate city, like the cities that are not inhabited; when I shall bring up the deep upon thee, and great waters shall cover thee;
26:20 When I shall bring thee down with them that descend into the pit, with the people of old time, and shall set thee in the low parts of the earth, in places desolate of old, with them that go down to the pit, that thou be not inhabited; and I shall set glory in the land of the living;
26:21 I will make thee a terror, and thou shalt be no more: though thou be sought for, yet shalt thou never be found again, saith the Lord GOD.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyre,_Lebanon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_prophecy#Ezekiel
You’ll have to tell us testable details, or we won’t be able to evaluate this claim.
Or in more modern terms: pix, or it didn’t happen.
Has been dealt with above.
Well. I don’t think women were asked much before they were married off to any of those guys.
That much, however, is only logical.
Note that in the story, she doesn’t say “yes”, she says “I am the Lord’s slave”.
See comment 318.
…What, why?
Snowflakes are shaped by nothing but electrostatic attraction and repulsion. Storms in the sea create fining-upwards sediments. Shake stuff, and the biggest chunks will end up on top, simply because the smaller ones can fall through temporary holes between bigger ones more often than the inverse. I could go on for hours.
LOL! There isn’t even such a thing as a “theory of macroevolution”! All there is is a theory of evolution in general! There is no magic division between micro- and macro- or anything.
If you somehow stretch it out and then boil it in helium, maybe… :-)
gravityisjustatheory
That’s part of the discussion, isn’t it?
Murder isn’t any more clearly defined as “the kind of killing we disapprove of”.
Actions that are totally cool in group A are murder to B.
Sure, we can all agree that murder is bad, but unless we agree what murder is, that’s not getting things any further
Laminin, shlaminin.
http://www.snopes.com/glurge/laminin.asp
I want to hear more about the wildebeests that are hiding in prime numbers.
Oh, wait, NEW pattern. Sorry, thought it was the GNU pattern.
Never mind.
This was the first thing I read this morning at 6:30 am. I was displeased; shouldn’t days start off better than this? A just and loving god would ensure it.
I would like to take a moment to sincerely thank Chris Nielsen for demonstrating so vividly exactly how evil religion-derived morality actually is, and in so doing making one of the best ethical/moral arguments in favor of atheism I have ever witnessed.
Bravo, Chris, bravo!
Chris Nielsen, like many creationists, finds the argument from personal incredulity to be evidence not only that gods exist but that the default is his particular god.
Chris Nielsen:
Well, it isn’t okay just because he’s the president, if that’s what you are thinking. But it’s nice that you realize that he is ultimately responsible and accountable. I say he is wrong, given the way drones are used, and the causes of the “wars” and the effects of using drones to kill.
PETA is supposed to be for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, but there are rumors that they are killing a lot of unwanted pets, in order to wipe out the whole concept of pets. That, I think is wrong.
But I’ve had a litter of kittens killed, because they were feral beasts with birth defects, so I’m going to say it’s situational, of course.
It’s wrong, useless and can’t be revoked. I say that once a person is in the legal system, in the hands of the state, the state must not kill them.
See, now, that one is just sick.
Why an “Obama voter”? Do you hate this country so much that you will class anyone who votes different form you as a baby killer? The assumptions in that term are as twisted as anything you’ve said.
Once again, no one is killing babies. The people who have abortions do not regard the fetal mass as a baby. (And, if they could get abortions quickly, nobody possibly could.) Your god does not hate abortions—the anti-abortion movement is not founded on anything in the Bible, it is an anti-woman program, with a few people making money off fund-raising.
How does he know they are Taliban, and what appears to be happening, and why can he not wait? See, it’s a short little scenario that only makes sense to you. You live off such snippets, and are willing to kill for them—-the ten commandments, especially. (Life is not a bumper sticker.)
If I was your soldier’s sergeant, I’d ding him for being hasty and for being out alone. And, again, if the “war” is wrong, any killing within it is wrong. The president is guilty.
Most IEDs are made from ordnance that American inspectors left unlocked, by the way. And the Taliban are in the position of fighting against an invader—that doesn’t make them right, but we are not in the right.
You are gruesome. Why Egyptian? Why are you fixated on the Muslim Brotherhood—do you even know who they are? Why a pastor?
Is the guy in their country illegally? I’ve seen Christians do that.
Yeah, I’d not crucify a pastor, it makes them martyrs. I’d just shoot anybody that I decided needed killing, but then, I’m not religious.
What were the right answers here, anyhow, and how can you objectively prove that?
Oh, comment 135.
The drone strikes are not lawful.
The PETA person could have spayed the kittens, and let them live.
“The state is not wrong.” But the state allows abortion, and that’s wrong, right?
“We are supposed to protect the innocent, not cut their little arms and legs off.” Again with the gruesome and the loaded language. Who says we are supposed to protect the innocent? You know that a fetus in the womb has no option but to be innocent, and that there’s really nothing there to be innocent. And your god damned the entire human race for the innocent eating of an apple, one time—-they didn’t know what they were doing, as they had no knowledge of good and evil before they ate the apple.
“It is legal and right to kill the enemy during wartime.” Legal? Wartime? Enemy? Right? Looks like all those conscientious objectors were wrong, then.
So it’s murder to kill someone for being of another religion? What about condemning them to Hell?
Chris, why is murder wrong? They’ll be off to the afterlife a bit sooner than otherwise, but given an eternity ahead of them, a few years early hardly count. Why would your god object to murder?
Is murder interfering with God’s plan? Why is murder wrong, Chris?
Why does the commandment not say “murder”? How do you absolutely define murder, since God didn’t even use the word? Huh?
You just gave us a quiz on murder, which makes it clear there is no right answer, and your god isn’t saying. Now what? Remember, you get it wrong, you go to Hell.
Let’s do another!
Nausea is probably the case. It doesn’t occur to you that maybe your evidence is wrong, that you are wrong? How can you think that people would willfully seek damnation, would ignore evidence if there were any chance at all of encountering your psychotic afterlife?
You believe. See, there’s the trouble. You are a believer, not a thinker. You believe you are smart, you believe you make good arguments, you believe whatever you blessed well please. Where does your belief end, then? Will you believe God spoke to you? Will you believe there are purple monkeys living under your bed? Will you believe that you are not insane?
What is not a matter of belief? What is an actual, real fact? What would you call a system that dealt only in real, testable facts, and how they relate to each other?
Why is your religion called the Christian “faith”? Why isn’t it called a fact?
Calling it “creation” is loading it your way, right up front. The people who study the world conclude that it was not created, nor was it ever flooded.
Those are matters of logic, not of your god. (And that’s lame.)
As has been said, the book saying there were witnesses doesn’t make them real. There are many non-witnesses, so to speak—-nobody but the Bible noticed anything at all, no historians, not archeologist, no monuments, no earthquakes, no eclipse.
Jesus wasn’t in the tomb for three days, nitwit. Are you trying to get sent to Hell? He was in the tomb from Friday evening to Sunday morning.
Oh, yeah, it was prophesied that it would be three days and three nights, wasn’t it? So 36 hours fulfills that, right? You don’t think things over, do you? You just believe.
Speaking of Jesus, one gospel account has him saying something on the cross, and says it’s just to fulfill a prophecy. It’s a stark admission that the writers were just hammering their stories into old prophesies.
There are many places where the word “prophesy” could be replaced with “sing” and make a lot more sense. King David was prophesying to the sounds of music, and doing it poorly. Half your prophecies aren’t even, the rest are retconned.
The first prophecy in the Bible was God saying that Adam and Eve would surely die that day if they ate the apple. They didn’t die. The serpent spake sooth.
The Bible is wrong, many ways, many times. It contradicts facts, it contradicts itself. Yeah, there’s a lot of money in telling people otherwise, but that doesn’t make it so. It is not an authority—it isn’t even a thing, really, with versions, and translations and religions, and apocrypha and lost gospels and all. To which bible do you nail your immortal soul?
Yeah, you, personally, is what this is all about, isn’t it? What you think, what God gives you, that all you. What does anything or anyone else matter?
You see evidence. YOU. It isn’t absolute, it’s all about you. Damn the mathematicians, damn anyone who doesn’t agree with you, damn all of science. Chris fucking Nielsen has the absolute truth.
Tell us, Chris, if everything we see in nature is evidence for the existence of God, why is there any doubt at all? Where does faith come in? Why does God not respond to prayers as well as my mom responds to e-mails? I don’t always get what I want, but I don’t doubt her existence, so why is God so different?
Why is there a pope in Rome, instead of Jesus on a golden throne in Jerusalem? Why do you call it faith? Why do you use the word “believe” so much? Why do you believe that Genghis Khan was a rapist, and not doubt his existence?
Where did science go wrong, exactly, and why haven’t you written a paper and won the Nobel Prize?
============
Genghis Khan was not a rapist, and I will have the heart of anyone who speaks otherwise. Except David Marjanović—I’ll eat his brain and gain his wisdom.
—-
Thanks, David, for the Mary/slave item.
Yeah, with so many women captured in war, ol’ Temujin and his brothers probably didn’t staff their harems with volunteers. You are wise.
For shits and giggles, I clicked Chris’ nym. I got a boring FB page and saw a Reagan quote about government, the obligatory xtian ‘one man, one woman’ pic and the only interesting image–some wrird, oddball vehicle.
Let. Down.
You’re far braver than I am. And I hope your antivirus/malware program is up to date.
Speaking of Jesus and fulfilled prophecy: There’s an entire religion that says that Jesus wasn’t the messiah. Judaism isn’t based on that belief, Judaism is the ground-state religion in this case Christianity is based on the belief that Jesus was the messiah, based on Judaic scriptures.
I’m trying to avoid giving anyone the idea that Judaism is based on Christianity being wrong—Christianity is based on Judaism being wrong. Wrong now, I mean. It was right before Christ, now it’s wrong. Clear?
It is my experience that Jewish scholars know a hell of a lot more about the scriptures than Christian “scholars” do, and the general mass of the faithful definitely knows more in the Jewish half of things. (Which makes me think the Jewish believers have to twist harder to make what they know work in the real world, so it’s a toss-up as to which religion I’d prefer.)
My point is that when a whole mess of very educated, very smart people, very religious and very familiar with your scriptures, say you have misunderstood the scriptures, and when they won’t change their minds despite two thousand years of abuse, you might listen to them.
Trick question: Abortions don’t happen to babies, they happen to fetuses; also, they’re not killing so much as choosing not to allow another feature to feed on you any longer. Jackass.
The persecution complex is so palpable I can hear the mostly nonexistent lions roar.. Doesn’t matter to you that the Coptic Christians, you know, the actual fucking Christians who shoulder any risks that might exist, have traditionally not minded the Muslim Brotherhood one bit? That it’s a little bit more complicated than your persecution complex never entered your empty little head, did it?. Jackass.
Legal, maybe. Right depends on the ‘enemy’, what made them an enemy, the way the killing was carried out (Even in the military), and dozens of other factors. Shoot, I’ll bet anything that if a Coptic Christian rebelled under what he considered religious oppression, there’s not a chance in hell you’d say that anyone in the Muslim Brotherhood – even if they were also in the military – was right to kill that rebelling Coptic Christian. Jackass.
Something that can be explained wiithout the work of deities is evidence for deities? Principle of Parsimony, motherfucker, do you understand it?
That’s… got nothing to do with the existence for a god. Evidence for a god would involve actual evidence of their existence (Baseline), and then their intervention. I might as well say the Oreo Pizza is proof there is no form of god, for all that this establishes the existence of any deity (let alone yours).
Thousands allegedly saw God blessing Muhammed, but I notice you pay those thousands any mind. There isn’t even proper contemporary evidence that a messianic claimaint named Yeshua was executed in Nazareth by the Romans, and you’re going to claim repeatedly editted texts on which nobody can agree on the details (including the remaining gospel writers) constitutes evidence for your god?
Just an FYI, Revelations was supposed to happen ~1900 years ago. Prophecy phailed.
Absent independent evidence for a deity, I will chalk this up to a combination of simulating your own deity (You think God would tell you to do X, so you ‘hear’ what you imagine God to sound like telling you to do X when it’s just your own mind conjuring this for you) and confirmation bias. I’m nice like that.
Only works if you assume God was the creator, and if you assume he’s leaving messages in bullshit like that. Elsewise, it’s just a pretty pattern in numbers.
His daughters lead warbands and were in the running to inherit control of the Empire, fyi. FFS, modern Christians REALLY need to stop assuming they win gender equality forever. Yes, things were historically bad, but they weren’t particularly worse within the Khanates than they were in the Roman Empire or in the various Christian and Muslim states the Khanates were knocking over; in fact, they were in a lot of ways better. (Even truer of the Vikings, whom trained women to fight, although primarily for defense, and let them have a great deal of autonomy.)
No, if that were the point Ray were making, he wouldn’t (and couldn’t) flog a historically major moral code. His point stopped at ‘evolution has no morality’. Which, well, fucking duh. It’s a natural law. Neither does gravity, but I don’t see you whinging on about it.
Well, Mary could have consented. Then by definition it wouldn’t be rape. At least, according modern definitions that are built on actual fucking ethics (and ethics of fucking), rather than the notion that rape was a property crime.
Technically, Jesus was never the messiah. At least, not until Christians were burying the judaism they sprang from. IT’s not possible for him to be the sole annointed of God (Which is all the title means), because there were numerous bearers of the title before him. He could be the LAST messiah (This is more or less the stance of Islam on Muhammed), but not THE messiah. But I guess ignoring all that lets Christianity look more Special.
Or, as a null hypothesis, they are simply stubbornly stupid. Depends on what your other hypotheses are.
@ Meynyambal
Shit, hoss, they kill each other over over football games:
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/fans-kill-and-quarter-football-referee-brazil
Behold the morality of Mohammed Atta, Adolf Hitler, the perpetrators of genocide in Rwanda, and anyone else who has killed in the name of a “higher” ideal.
And Chris Nielsen.
I think the idea is that they were immortal up to that point. That’s not explicit in the text, though.
I know, I know. Still, marriages were arranged for political reasons.
I’m reasonably confident he attributed most of it to his own skill as a general and administrator, and to the strength of his people, but the PFFFT of all knowledge only mentions that he went to great effort to entertain multiple schools of religious thought. Also, was fairly tolerant of religion in general, which is a strike against ‘divine right of kings’ style thought, although it’s by no means a proof against it(See: Enlightenment Islam).
Also, can we not knock it off with the necromancy? It’s seriously annoying to sit up dead people as sock puppets and assume they believe the way our ideological opponents. It’s one thing when you have actual evidence (See: Nazis and Christianity), or their actual words, or whatnot. It’s rather another to do this half-assed bullshit.
Pretty safe bet, but I don’t really know or care about the dude’s personal life.
Apparently at one point Genghis Khan did tell the leaders of a Persian Muslim city that he’d just conquered that he was the Scourge of Allah, but that appears to have been more in the nature of propaganda for the conquered than personal belief, in that he wasn’t a Muslim.
Speaking of Christians lying about dead people, check out #5 and #3 in this countdown.
http://www.cracked.com/article_20536_5-ridiculous-lies-you-believe-about-ancient-civilizations.html
Ah, good old argument from consequences, followed by quotes from people who are probably taking the piss out of Ray but he is too dumb to get it. Good argument, banana man. I’m convinced.
Aw, why am I never here when creationists show up? :(
what on earth ever gave you the idea that theological scholars have never changed their minds?
they’ve changed their interpretations constantly, for millenia.
WHY IN THE HOLY FUCK DO YOU THINK THERE ARE OVER 40 THOUSAND DIFFERENT XIAN SECTS?
there’s even 5 Judaic Sects, and dozens if not hundreds of Islamic ones too….
not changed their minds?
yer fookin delusional.
..to be specific, there are actually dozens of Judaic sects as well, but only 5 are “officially” recognized as categorical sects.
Dear god…. #28 is so right.
That kerning is downright sinful. Oy, that’s terrible production values. :)
As for the actual message, it is replete with the usual creationist (or climate denialist, or pretty much any other delusional “causes”) techniques. Quote mining out of context, and of course the edited street polling.
How many people actually answered dog? What proportion of them were atheists? How was the question asked? Did Ray indicate in any way that he was an evangelical christian (that would naturally skew the results, since it would immediately be recognized as a religious issue)?
So much fail.
Itkovian
And props to #11.
Making all those things out as being worse than Genocide is sick and twisted.
Notice that in the clip he says “Would you save your rotten neighbor or your dog”. There’s no doubt in my mind that there’s a preface to that question describing why exactly the neighbor is rotten that’s been edited out, as many have suggested. Much like a previous video where he edits out prefacing information about how a woman is being abused by her husband before asking people if they would kill the husband for a million dollars. So its surely entirely dishonest.
But even if it weren’t, what is it supposed to mean that he found people who believed in evolution who said on the spot that they would save a beloved pet whom they spend a good portion of every day with over a person they don’t know, even if you leave out why they’re rotten? So what? Does he think I can’t go out and find Christians who would say that? I know one right off the top of my head would surely say that.
Beyond that, it’s just the argument from final consequences with no justification whatever for assuming those consequences. Obviously facts don’t change just because of their implications, even if he was remotely correct about those implications. And man, that was the fastest Godwin I’ve ever seen. That certainly escalated quickly. Wait, is he saying fornication is worse than the Nazis?
I suppose if you are fornicating in a Nazi uniform, it is.
Ichthyic, thanks for the information on Jewish sects. I was just trying to say that Jews, as a whole, haven’t given up on what distinguishes them from Christians. And however many sects they have now, it’s less than Christianity. I was just popping in to make that point about Christianity, and to make it as a point against Christianity. And here you’ve done that for me, with enthusiasm.
“My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross. As a Christian, I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice.”
–Adolf Hitler
Same cherry picking strategy as modern godbots. Convincing yourself that another person is “less than” you is the first step to mistreating them. The Bible is a veritable list of justifications for why “outsiders” are unclean, unworthy and unnecessary. Even noble tendencies like peace & love become the tools of the abuser:
“If only you were more deserving of my love, I wouldn’t have to beat you so much” — god (paraphrased)
Wow, it looks like you broke the chew toy! Put the Christmas lights away every year for the parent, carefully in a sealed plastic container, yet every year when I go to put them up they’ve wrapped themselves into incredibly complicated patterns, bet you’re all going to claim it’s the physical properties of the wire or some such nonsense, I know it’s the influence of the auditors of reality trying to stop hogswatch..I mean Christmas.
On an unrelated note look what I found http://api.greatnonprofits.org/reviews/living-waters-publications/page:1/
From a review at the site linked by @350: “They do not use gimmicks or modern slang language, but they present the gospel the way the Bible does.”
They don’t use gimmicks? Comfort and Cameron’s dumb-ass theatrics and dumber-ass questionnaires? What else are they but gimmicks?
They do present the gospel the way the Bible does—different versions, disjointed, retconned and ridiculous.
@Menyambal – I refuse to even think about fornicating Nazis, given rule 34. Although the big dance number in the Producers counts as fornicating according to some religionists.
IF evolution is true, then mankind is no more than simply a primate (or a primate + pig hybrid – as the latest evolutionary hypothesis contends – see http://phys.org/news/2013-07-chimp-pig-hybrid-humans.html), then it follows that there is no absolute moral standard by which to live by.
No, the latter does not follow from the former. The two aren’t even related in any way. Evolution is a scientific theory, like quantum mechanics, and neither such theory has anything to do with the existence or nonexistence of any “absolute” moral standard, or with how tightly we humans follow such a standard.