…and this is a 
Disappointed again
Category: Kooks • Religion
Posted on: March 6, 2008 10:07 AM, by PZ Myers
Somewhere south of San Francisco, there is a billboard that declares that there is physical proof of the existence of a god, and which suggests that you read their website. A reader sent it to me, and being the sort of open minded fellow who doesn't believe in any gods but is happy to look at any evidence someone might find, I looked.
I'm still an atheist. You can stop here if you want.
This thing is one big tease. It starts with a splash screen:
THE TIME HAS COME FOR YOU TO
WITNESS A MIRACLE
ARE YOU READY?
Sure, I'm ready. Although, really, this is the web, that nest of lies, so it's probably a bad idea to raise expectations so high right at the very beginning. So you click through to the next page and …
There now exists physical evidence...
for a message from God to the world. This marks the advent of a new era in religion; an era where FAITH is no longer needed. There is no need to "believe," when one "knows." People of the past generations were required to believe in God, and uphold His commandments ON FAITH. With the advent of the physical evidence reported on this site, we no longer believe that God exists; we KNOW that God exists.
Wow. OK. So tell me what this evidence is, already! It's not a miracle for some wanker on the internet to make grandiose claims. Someday, I want to go to a site that proclaims a miracle and see a real miracle, like a pie miraculously floating above my keyboard, or a MySpace page that doesn't look like technicolor vomit.
So I click through again. I want my floating pie.
The first physical evidence proving the existence of GOD.
There now exists physical evidence for a message from God to the world. This marks the advent of a new era in religion; an era where FAITH is no longer needed. There is no need to "believe," when one "knows." People of the past generations were required to believe in God, and uphold His commandments ON FAITH. With the advent of the physical evidence reported in this book, we no longer believe that God exists; we KNOW that God exists.
Hey, didn't I already read that?
Such knowledge is ascertained through God's final scripture, Quran, wherein overwhelming physical evidence has been encoded. Employing the ultimate in scientific proof, namely, mathematics, the evidence comes in the form of an extremely intricate code. Thus, every word, indeed every letter in Quran is placed in accordance with a mathematical design that is clearly beyond human ability.
Not only does the evidence prove the authenticity and perfect preservation of the Qur'an, but it also confirms the miracles of previous messengers including Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and Jesus. None of us witnessed the parting of the Red Sea, or the virgin birth of Christ. However, upon reviewing the evidence presented here, and examining the appropriate narrations, the reader will be as positively certain as an eyewitness.
Wait; what? That's the "miracle," the "proof" — an exercise in numerology, another Bible code game, this time using the Quran? And when you dig a little deeper, it all consists of some enthusiastic moron declaring that it is amazing that the Quran uses the word "month" precisely 12 times.
I'm beginning to suspect that maybe we atheists are a bunch of mutants with weirdly wired brains, because without fail, every time I am presented an argument for the existence of a god, it is a pungent pile of watery crap. It's never pie; I'm disappointed every time. And it's not as if they even come close, like maybe they come up with a small biscuit or a tiny sliver of pastry; no, every goddamned time it's this malodorous, reeking inanity accompanied by some squeaking, quacking idiot of an acolyte who tries desperately to reassure me that the maggoty filth he is bearing truly is a splendid pie.
This is true of every "proof" and scrap of "evidence" for any gods that Western culture provides: Anselm, Aquinas, Pascal, Paley, they're all bakers of shit-pies. I read these with the same incredulity I do some crackpot Muslim who argues that the number 19 proves the existence of Allah. What is wrong with these people who try to make excuses for the inexcusably stupid? How can anyone read the Kalam Cosmological Argument and not break down laughing? All I can imagine is that the people who deal with these arguments are so used to raking over steaming offal and excrement and just plain bad arguments, that when they find one that the author did not intentionally take a piss in, they feel compelled to "ooh" and "aah" over it as a relative miracle.
Here's a real miracle: I can take a pen, and drop it. Every time, it falls to the floor. I can drop it from different heights, I can drop different objects of different weights, I can measure its velocity and acceleration, I can go down the hall to a physics class and see students doing similar experiments, and getting similar results. I can find formulas that describe the behavior of dropped objects with amazing precision; I can even find equations that describe the behavior of objects outside my personal experience, like the movements of entire planets or of objects traveling near the speed of light. And these observations, measurements, laws, and theories are even useful, whether it's for lobbing artillery shells at a target 10 miles away or sending a probe to the moon 250,000 miles away. I'm pretty well satisfied that gravity exists. I may not comprehend how it works, but the phenomenon has at least been satisfactorily dmeonstrated.
Yet when people try to tell me that there is something far more powerful and important than gravity, something that permeates the entire universe and has awesome knowledge and powers, that is greater than all and in control of the entirety of space and time, which personally and directly affects each individual on earth and offers them great gifts, like immortality and enlightenment and dominion, what do we get? Facile sophistry like petty farts in the wind.
Maybe it's the premise that is the problem. The theologically minded all seem to believe that you can manifest a pie if only you believe fervently enough and wave your hands fast enough…but we all know that really, if you want a pie, you need flour and sugar and fruit and lard and effort and a hot oven and a bit of real-world expertise, and that the proof will be in the eating. We atheists may not be truly mutant; we just have practical standards that seem to have been cored out of the brains of people who fall for these silly "proofs" that are generally simply pulled out of a well-exercised sphincter.
Comments
Posted by: bill r | March 6, 2008 10:21 AM
Great, now I'm hungry for pie. I wonder if Biscuits has a recipe?
Posted by: ennui | March 6, 2008 10:26 AM
Sort of on topic...Have we seen any Quoran Codes yet, ala Bible Code? THAT would be funny, and if the codes were really juicy perhaps Dembski might become a Muslim. He is after all such a fan of the Bible Code.
Posted by: Mr Miles | March 6, 2008 10:29 AM
Well said PZ. I think you've successfully pinched off another one of their attempts at a movement.
Posted by: SteadyEddy | March 6, 2008 10:30 AM
hey PZ don't you know that the modal ontological argument from ignorance says that just because you can do that with your pen doesn't mean that there is a law determining this outcome, you are just being shown an example of the Grace of God who has chosen to allow this pen to act in such a way that seems to conform to a law but really it is just a manifestation of His Divine Will and if you cannot account for that then you cannot account for why you love your wife anyway. and you are an atheist on a daily basis.
Basically when you presuppose laws of nature you are stealing the theology of the God of the Bible without giving proper credit, since according to this argument science is only possible if the gods of the bible exist.
But that is all a bunch of bullshit. I just went round and round and round with one such presuppositionalist and it really opened up my eyes to just how stupid that shit can make a person.
Posted by: Erasmus, FCD | March 6, 2008 10:31 AM
I forget where I saw it, but there's a line to the effect that science works because it doesn't attempt to cast spells on the universe. Magic and prayer both assume that if you ask really nicely the universe will give you privileges.
Posted by: Stephen Wells | March 6, 2008 10:33 AM
I can go down the hall to a physics class and see students doing similar experiments, and getting similar results.
Now, if they got the same results, that really would be a miracle. I've never known physics undergraduates get the same result in anything, let alone the correct one.
Posted by: hinschelwood | March 6, 2008 10:33 AM
Numerology is pretty lame. Always makes for a good conspiracy theory though. Like 23. But most of their "proofs" work just as well if you had picked 38 as the magic holy number, or pretty much any factor of 19. I hate people who try to make a big deal out of these "magic" numbers. I'll show you a magic number, 1. It divides into everything and BECOMES that number. HOLY CRAP! It's all powerful, all knowing. 1 is omnipresent. 1 is omnibenevolent. Fuck it, I'm starting a church for the number 1. I just have to find a way to market around that whole loneliest number bit.
Posted by: zer0 | March 6, 2008 10:34 AM
The pie is a lie.
Posted by: Ah Clem | March 6, 2008 10:35 AM
No, PZ, we are mutants, and I am perfectly content with that.
What? You think I would be happy being a pre-biotic?
Posted by: Mike Haubrich, FCD | March 6, 2008 10:36 AM
If figuring out the code isn't beyond human ability, then why would making the code necessarily be beyond human ability?
Posted by: Rey Fox | March 6, 2008 10:42 AM
I think we should each send PZ a pie, so we can talk about the wonderful miracle of atheism that an atheist can magically turn a blog post into a whole mailbox full of pie.
That, at least, would be a tangible miracle.
Posted by: Carlie | March 6, 2008 10:44 AM
then i started reading Dawkins and thought "fuck it".
haven't looked for 23s since.
i imagine that prayer works like the 23s. i recognise the 23-hunting mentality in my Christian friends when they're knee-bending.
Posted by: alex | March 6, 2008 10:46 AM
#8, did you realize how funny your post is, with proper regard given to your nick?
Posted by: BlueIndependent | March 6, 2008 10:49 AM
*scans crazy quranic numerology website*
Yep, I'm convinced.
Do I get my 72 virgins now?
Oh for chrisakes it's enough to make you want to go out and contact a Danish cartoonist. That is the worst thing you can do to an Islamist isn't it?
Posted by: shane | March 6, 2008 10:49 AM
Coming soon from Dan Brown, author of that book that pisses of Christians AND people that like well-written books, The Danish Cartoon Code. What dark secrets of the Qu'ran code are hidden inside these depictions of the prophet? What deep conspiracy is sending an impossibly brilliant researcher of indiscriminate type and his attractive cohort on a race against time? How many people will believe there's a shred of fact or that it matters a whit?
Posted by: Patrick | March 6, 2008 10:54 AM
Yeah, I could have stopped reading when you said, but I would have missed the gems in your response. "Bakers of shit-pies". I love it. The lesson to be learned: If you want pie, you have to bake it yourself!
Posted by: Cappy | March 6, 2008 10:54 AM
Yet when people try to tell me that there is something far more powerful and important than gravity, something that permeates the entire universe and has awesome knowledge and powers, that is greater than all and in control of the entirety of space and time, which personally and directly affects each individual on earth and offers them great gifts, like immortality and enlightenment and dominion, what do we get?
I don't know about the knowledge and the gifts, but listening to a cosmology theorist talking about dark energy comes very lose to the rest. They even got mathematical models for it. Luckily, the ID people don't understand them, so they don't dare to subvert them for their purposes.
Posted by: Mu | March 6, 2008 10:55 AM
"Yep, I'm convinced.
Do I get my 72 virgins now?"
Sadly no, they're too busy playing a rousing game of D&D with a new resident of Heaven (Sorry, couldn't resist).
Posted by: Patrick | March 6, 2008 10:56 AM
Makes perfect sense if you applied it to the Jesus Bible instead of the Quran.
PZ Myers said:
You misspelled "demonstrated" and, therefore, evolutionary biology has been thoroughly debunked. Score one for Team God!
Posted by: Kyle R. | March 6, 2008 10:57 AM
A few years ago, Skeptic had an article about putting some works by Tolstoi through the same treatment and were able to find the same types of target words as the Bible Code.(Hitler, war, and so on) The argument was that one could do the same thing to any work that was long enough.
Posted by: Janine | March 6, 2008 10:57 AM
From the "basic facts":
Omega-9? God's a fatty acid?
Posted by: Armchair Dissident | March 6, 2008 10:59 AM
Didn't I read something recently about some guys who wrote a computer program to scan the text of books like War and Peace and Moby Dick looking for predictions and so on? You'd think the Bible Code people would be smart enough to realize how easy it is to find whatever you look for in a book that big, if they're smart enough to "crack the code" in the first place.
Posted by: Susan B. | March 6, 2008 11:01 AM
Theists are in an odd position today, in that those who offer "proofs" of God will have such proofs shredded, and those who smugly fall back on the "of course one can't demonstrate that God exists; that's why it requires faith" argument will now end up having the concept of "faith" shredded.
That's really what's infuriating them about the so-called New Atheists -- they're refusing to go along with the blanket cultural approval given towards 'having faith' as a sign of character and depth. Thus the desperate attempt to make bad analogies to "believing in your mother's love even though you can't see it" or "believing that kindness matters" or "believing the sun will rise tomorrow." It's all damage control for an idea which really can't stand up to critical scrutiny. Better then to change the subject to something having to do with values, then, and hope nobody notices the category switch.
Posted by: Sastra | March 6, 2008 11:02 AM
My mother died a few weeks ago. I sat in the chapel with a huge american flag on one end and a huge backlit cross on the other.
The pastor said, without any doubt, that mom was in heaven eating candy with real sugar, has a perfect body and is singing with all of her dead friends.
He said it like I would point and say 'that ford pickup is blue'.
They have built this intelectual gated community around their understanding of the world. They have developed a mechanisim to insulate themselves from anything scary.
And that is truely scary.
I love this blog and pz is to be commended. I can only aspire to be as eloquent.
Posted by: glbrown | March 6, 2008 11:04 AM
And the further trouble is that even if the Quran, Bible, or Danielle Steel's writings contained some impossible-to-code numerical or verbal messages, how would that prove God? That it would be a mystery (like ID, if they actually were able to show that evolution couldn't account for the adaptation we see), I don't doubt, but "mystery" does not automatically equal "God"--one significant problem being that we still don't know what this "God" is supposed to be.
Almost always in these "chains of reasoning" is some enormous logical lacuna such as the notion that mystery=god. I'm left wondering every time what they missed in the second grade, that they've never been able to reliably work through the simplest logic.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Posted by: Glen Davidson | March 6, 2008 11:09 AM
mystery=gap
Posted by: Kseniya | March 6, 2008 11:14 AM
I'm completely baffled by this bit:
"This mathematical system is easily superhuman. This is especially awesome in light of the fact that (1) no person was aware of its existence until recently and (2) it was revealed during the Dark Ages of Arabia before the existence of the modern number system."
I'm not going to ask the meaning of "easily superhuman," because I really don't want to know.
But what does point 2 mean? The number 19 hadn't been invented yet? Or that Mohammed's 19 was different from the 19 of the "modern number system"? Should I be amazed that ol' Mo used 19 in our modern understanding of 19-ness? And how many was 19 in the Dark Ages of Arabia, anyway?
Posted by: Billy | March 6, 2008 11:14 AM
You did indeed. Check out the below for the predictions they found in Moby Dick using the Bible Code (Herman Melville had a thing about political assasinations, evidently):
http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/moby.html
Posted by: Lilly de Lure | March 6, 2008 11:15 AM
Of course the problem with analogies like a mother's love, kindness mattering, and the sun rising can all be shown as either hypothetical constructs or logical conclusion from evidence. Any lay-person can safely assume the sun will rise because it does every day and physicists can demonstrate WHY it rises every day. We don't have to believe in love as a construct when it's defined as showing affection, providing help, etc. Kindness tends to result in better treatment from others overall. There are exceptions of course and it's impossible to know a person's true feelings (or even our own) with any absolute certainty. But we can experiment and demonstrate that these things agree with our agreed upon constructs. From a strictly numerical view, you can certainly find more people across the entire human population that could agree on what love and kindness are. Compared to the vast differences in what even defines "god", let alone the tiny details of religion, and there's just no comparison.
And on a totally random note...if Expelled is such a big deal and a massively popular movie, why the heck is it so much harder to find a copy of it in torrent form then any other movie released in the United States? I mean not that I would EVER want to download something for free to have a good laugh at what passes for fact among those folks but come on...that big a film and NOBODY wants to get it free?
Posted by: Patrick | March 6, 2008 11:15 AM
Heh, I saw that last night. I don't go down on the peninsula often, but I was down there for work the last two days. Driving home last night I saw that and though, "oh boy, what idiotic 'proof' have they come up with this time" I thought about writing down the website to investigate later, but then thought better of it. Why waste my time. I'm sure if the evidence is good, I'll hear about it thru "normal channels".
I also noticed a billboard (much smaller) further north on the 101 for "Christian Radio" (possibly "Christian Talkradio"). Both of those signs seem very out of place here in Silicon valley...but maybe with all the immigrants, both from other countries and from the midwest of people coming for the economic benefits. Interesting sociological study to be done.
Posted by: Robert Thille | March 6, 2008 11:15 AM
Stephen Wells #6 :
Is this the quote you were thinking of :
"Man masters nature not by force but by understanding.
That is why science has succeeded where magic failed : because it has looked for no spell to cast on nature."
Jacob Bronowski, 'The Creative Mind', Science and Human Values (1956)
Posted by: prof weird | March 6, 2008 11:16 AM
That's false, P.Z. You've been shown the proof. You just refuse to believe.
Okay, thanks for making Dew come out my nose (OW!) -- but other than that...
T-shirts for everybody!...
Posted by: Bob | March 6, 2008 11:16 AM
You're the Professor PZ, you're going to have to figure it out. I don't know what goes through their head or why they think the way they do. It blows my mind personally. It's like trying to understand the irrational. You can't.
Posted by: Geral | March 6, 2008 11:18 AM
"Yep, I'm convinced.
Do I get my 72 virgins now?"
Sure but they have to remain virgins! See there is catch, but you it's not mentioned explicitly for obvious reasons.
Posted by: baley | March 6, 2008 11:23 AM
I think "The Floating Pie" would be a good name for an eatery.
As for mother's love and all that, I do believe in that stuff even though I can't see it, just as I believe in alternating current, in air, in the electro-magnetic waves being picked up by the antenna of my radio, in the beautiful and selfless gravitational attraction the earth itself has for my body, and any number of other things I cannot see but for which I have abundant evidence of their existence.
Posted by: Kseniya | March 6, 2008 11:24 AM
Why not? Worked on the cutie down the hall. It certainly explains why, in my younger religious days, prayer left me feeling fucked by the universe.
(Think "friends with privileges")
Posted by: Abby Normal | March 6, 2008 11:24 AM
Of course the key to this whole miracle is actually demonstrating that the code was intended and that the decoder is not rationalizing or retrofitting. Never yet has this been deomonstrated (in fact the opposite has), so people should be able to see why we atheists are unimpressed.
Posted by: Ric | March 6, 2008 11:24 AM
There's none so dumb as those who won't think, particularly when thinking might mean they have to give up their favourite cuddle-blanket.
A depressing thought I know, but it's the only one I've come up with that explains how otherwise perfectly intelligent people can eat up this dreck without so much as a hiccup.
Posted by: Lilly de Lure | March 6, 2008 11:29 AM
...and which also proves that God counts in base 10.
And they're all pimply-faced 15-year-old boys.
(I keed, I keed -- I also play D&D, and am well past 15, alas.)
Posted by: Tulse | March 6, 2008 11:29 AM
Virgins wouldn't play D&D... what? Oh...
Posted by: shane | March 6, 2008 11:30 AM
(.)(.)
Posted by: wÒÓ† | March 6, 2008 11:32 AM
Sometimes I wish I wasn't raised Jewish with the freedom to choose my own way (credit to my parents; thanks Mom and Dad). I know enough that the chance of me ever receiving a good reason to believe in a deity is microscopic, but I've been taught to think scientifically and to be open-minded, so I at least agree to hear what the crap-pusher has to say. Then, because I haven't heard the vast majority of shit-arguments because I didn't pay attention at synagogue - it wasn't a crazy poo-flinging synagogue, either - I have to waste more of my valuable time testing it in my head and recalling all of my philosophical beliefs to make sure that, yes, they're wrong again, and to come back when you have something substantive.
I also haven't been trained to the point that I give up when I'm arguing philosophy with someone who believes in God. It's so easy to forget the incredible leaps that one has to make to accept a deity we also forget that the leaps back are treacherous, and sometimes longer than the leaps they took getting there.
Posted by: FishyFred | March 6, 2008 11:33 AM
"cored out the brains" indeed!
This concept of compartmentalizing your rationale is fascinating to the extent it takes place in the minds of believers. Case in point: An award-winning molecular biologist in my lab seriously believing that it didn't rain on earth before Noah's flood. I'm still struggling to wrap my mind around it.
Posted by: caynazzo | March 6, 2008 11:35 AM
Pie is awesome. What we all need is more pie and less superstition.
Posted by: brtkrbzhnv | March 6, 2008 11:39 AM
"Do I get my 72 virgins now?"
"Sure but they have to remain virgins!"
And this is a problem for the guy HOW?
It still leaves *plenty* of options.
Posted by: TheOtherOne135 | March 6, 2008 11:40 AM
I don't know whether you have seen Michael Martin's TANG (Transcendental Argument for the Nonexistence of God)? It is pretty useful for shutting up some of the less well equipped presuppositionalists.
Essentially it argues that science, logic and morality presuppose the nonexistence of God, not the other way around.
A quick version: Consider logic. Logic presupposes that its principles are necessarily true. If logic is dependent on God, according to TAG, it is contingent on God, and not necessary. Therefore, God could make the law of non contradiction false, which is an absurdity (i.e. New Zealand is south of China and not south of it, at the same time).
Consider Science. It presupposes the uniformity of nature and that natural laws govern the universe. Christianity presupposes miracles that violate natural laws. Science presumes that in so far as there is an explanation, it has a scientific explanation - one that does not presuppose God, and that miracles do not occur. Therefore, doing science assumes that the Christian world view is false.
Consider morality. TAG assumes a type of morality similar to the divine command theory - that moral obligation is dependent on either the will or nature of God. This is incompatible with objective morality, as morality becomes arbitrary. In other words, if God willed that baby eating was good, that would be moral. Is something good because it is part of His character, or is his character that way because it is good? The first interpretation makes morality arbitrary, and the second means that there must be an independent standard of good that God's character exemplifies, and therefore, morality is not based on religion, but religion on morality.
Also, there is no objective basis for picking what God commands between the various religions, or the interpretations within the same religion. There are also thousands of modern moral issues that none of the Holy books address, so how does a theist decide what to do?
Posted by: Damian | March 6, 2008 11:41 AM
I can. I break down groaning and reaching for the paracetamol. Blessed are they that can laugh at inane religious arguments.
Posted by: Stephen | March 6, 2008 11:42 AM
We are apes, with ape brains.
Much of this ape brain is dedicated to seeing the leopard that is about to pounce, hearing the cave bear crashing through the underbrush, distinguishing the voice of a mother in the babble of a crowded camp, remembering which berry takes us up and which one brings us down, and keeping track of the car keys.
In the end, there may not really be much space left over for abstract reasoning, after all.
Posted by: xebecs | March 6, 2008 11:42 AM
I see what you did there with the background image for the quote blocks. Very nice.
"My brain hurts!"
Posted by: Anonymous Prime | March 6, 2008 11:43 AM
I'm still trying to get my head around the stupid,
lets see, Quaran mentions 'month' 12 times.
12 months in a year.
Oh, I see, proof god does exsist! - NOT
Nevermind the fact that the Islamic calendar is off by something like 10 days per solar year (they alternate 29 and 30 day months IIRC) and that one can just as easily make a calendar of 10 months or 14 months just by changing the number of days in each. It is a human invention and quite arbitrary.
IF however, a solar year was exactly 360 days where all 12 months had 30 days, and THAT calender was spelled out in the Quaran, it might warrant further thought. or if a year was exactly 367 days (a prime number) that would be cool too.
Posted by: Mr_p | March 6, 2008 11:45 AM
So basically our pies have to be made the hard way, but at least they are real...and the more you make, the better you get at it.
Posted by: Richard Eis | March 6, 2008 11:47 AM
People, people, surely, you must know that cake is the true pinnacle of pastry goodness, and far better than pie. If you're going to hope for a miracle, please remember: cake > pie.
Posted by: Shawn Smith | March 6, 2008 11:48 AM
"Thus, every word, indeed every letter in [the] Quran is placed in accordance with a mathematical design that is clearly beyond human ability."
Self-contradictory statement, ergo a false statement.
If the mathematical design is clearly beyond human ability (to design), then how can we perceive it in the first place? We cannot perceive the design without being able to imagine it; if we can imagine it at all that means we could have thought it up and delineated it ourselves, so clearly it is not beyond human ability.
The author's premise is clearly false. His argument has failed. End of discussion.
All this talking has made me hungry. I'm gonna go boil me up some minimalist octopus now.
Posted by: Forrest Prince | March 6, 2008 11:57 AM
Patrick @19: Deflowered and Delighted? He'd better not get too many rolls of that dice or there'll be lots of expectant martyrs arriving with lover's balls, and imagine how mean they'll be when they find no virgins.
Posted by: Peter Mc | March 6, 2008 11:58 AM
There is a "w" in my name. "W" is the 23rd letter in the English alphabet. "W" is followed by "a" in my name. "A" is the 1st letter in the alphabet.
23+1=24;
24/4=6;
There are 6 beers in a six-pack.
Ergo,
God exists!
Posted by: waldteufel | March 6, 2008 12:01 PM
Posted by: Voice 0'Reason | March 6, 2008 12:01 PM
I didn't see the number 42 mentioned anywhere on the that site (although I didn't stay that long). Got to be a hoax.
Posted by: Dahan | March 6, 2008 12:01 PM
Sorry, Rey Fox at #11. I missed your comment as I was scrolling down, and I didn't mean to rip you off. Obviously us mutants are at least on the same page.
Posted by: Forrest Prince | March 6, 2008 12:01 PM
I had a student bring me a more interesting one (we were discussing evolution): The gist of it was that the Big Bang violates the 2nd Law of Thermo so it is a miracle. Of course, it is just begging the question to say the unexplained can only be explained by "God". You might as well say that gravity itself is a miracle.
Posted by: uncle noel | March 6, 2008 12:08 PM
I'm an apieist.
There's enough evidence for tarts, flans, custards, puddings, quiches, pasties, crème brûlées, crème caramels, baklavas, and jelly doughnuts that it's possible to be intellectually and gastrointestinally fulfilled without invoking pie as an hypothesis.
Posted by: Brownian, OM | March 6, 2008 12:09 PM
Yep. It never ceases to underwhelm me what might constitute 'evidence' for a god you've already made up your mind to believe in.
Posted by: AJ Milne | March 6, 2008 12:14 PM
Mmmmm... Pie!
Posted by: Michael Svihura | March 6, 2008 12:16 PM
I just checked my spam folder in Gmail and saw that I had exactly 72 emails, proving that a) the Qu'ran is right; b) I am a Muslim martyr*; and c) whether paradise is full of grapes or virgins, you'd better stock up on V18GR8 before you get there.
*Best.Kim.Mitchell.song.ever.
Posted by: Brownian, OM | March 6, 2008 12:22 PM
Pies? Sure!
"Brandy! - Throw more Brandy!
Rum? I never mix my pies!"
Posted by: Benjamin Franklin | March 6, 2008 12:25 PM
We are supposed to glean something from this insane crap?
What a waste of time, print, and brain cells trying to
comprehend this utter moronic dreck! These religious
cretins will never relent on trying to prove and hope
their insanities will unleash critical thinking in the
already hopeless and insane.
Posted by: Holbach | March 6, 2008 12:29 PM
Einstein said that you can live as if nothing is a miracle or you can live as if everything is a miracle. Theists hold on to the idea that there are supernatural miracles that defy our everyday experience.
Therefore, while gravity may be everywhere and be very powerful, theists don't point to something like gravity as a "godlike" power because of its darned predictability -- it is never a miracle (or always a miracle).
Posted by: Sonja | March 6, 2008 12:29 PM
So have I, but not because of sites like that. After all, I don't think that "proof" will convince many other theists either. I bet you Dembski, Vox Day, Jonathan Wells, Ben Stein, Hagee, Bush, bin Laden and even Huckabee could see what's wrong with that site as easily as PZ does. (Then again, you might ask them, maybe I'm wrong.)
Posted by: Norman Doering | March 6, 2008 12:30 PM
Which reminds me of a book I saw yesterday in a local mega-bookstore: "The Reason for God" by Timothy Ferris. Subtitled "Belief in an Age of Skepticism," the author "single-handedly dismantles each of [the most frequently voiced 'doubts' skeptics bring to his Manhattan church]."
Wow. One-handed dismantling? Sweet.
Any Pharyngula readers read this? I mean all the way through? Without vomiting?
Didn't think so.
I'd love to hear this guy's arguments for the existence of his sky fairy but I'm afraid of a text-induced coma. Can someone summarize?
Posted by: apk | March 6, 2008 12:30 PM
All this talk of poop and pie reminds me of the old joke about "whoever complains about the cooking next, has to do the cooking". The unfortunate sap who gets saddled with the job tries to get out of it by fixing up a steaming fresh moose turd pie. The first grizzled old 'hand to take a bite, gags and exclaims "this tastes like shit!", but quickly recovers with "but it's GOOD shit!" The faithful have tasted the pie, but proclaim it to be "good shit", to avoid the dreaded duty of thinking for themselves.
Oh, and #31, there's a San Francisco joke in there somewhere...
This could also solve the dilemma of the 72 virgins remaining virgins.
Posted by: Kerry Maxwell | March 6, 2008 12:31 PM
I know what you mean. If it ain't spelled out in hundred-foot-high letters of fire on the side of a mountain, it ain't from God.
Posted by: markbt73 | March 6, 2008 12:33 PM
PZ, you really should do a book of essays. This one definitely deserves preservation between the covers of a book!
TIME TO GO BIG TIME!
Posted by: CalGeorge | March 6, 2008 12:47 PM
I'm baffled by that bit for a different reason. If this was supposedly "revealed during the Dark Ages of Arabia", how is it that "no person was aware of its existence until reently"?
Posted by: phantomreader42 | March 6, 2008 12:51 PM
"The Reason for God" was written by Timothy Keller, not Timothy Ferris. Ferris is a fine science writer who wrote "The Whole Shebang", among several others.
Posted by: RamblinDude | March 6, 2008 12:51 PM
apk @ #69 I saw that book by Ferris and I would not take
it if it were offered free. I used to have several books
by this quasi astronomer in my astronomy library, but
have since thrown them all out. He maintained good
science in his earlier books on astronomy, but then either
went bonkers or found religion, heck, the same situation,
and then interjected religion into all subsequent books.
I just could not stomach it any further and wrote him off
my list of worthwhile astronomy authors. What a phony
piece of crap he turned out to be by showing his true bent
on the irrational. He is not worth reading in any subject.
Posted by: Holbach | March 6, 2008 1:00 PM
Sonja wrote, "it is never a miracle (or always a miracle)."
You remind me of one of my favorite bits of Chesterton;
From The Man Who Would be Thursday by G.K. Chesterton.
Yeap, I'm another atheist who loves Chesterton's works.
I'm not too annoyed by religous types who find their deity in the daily repeatable miracles. I get annoyed by the religous types who think a written text describes the world better than repeatable tests, or believe that a petition to a deity is more powerful than taking direct action.
If only the first type would denounce the second type rather than tolerate them.
Posted by: Flex | March 6, 2008 1:02 PM
Some things that never seem to occur to these folks, yet were instrumental in my loss of 'faith', are the implications of a subtle God. Let's assume that God exists, loves us, wants us to go to heaven and not hell, and requires us to pass a test by following a difficult set of rules to get in (Heaven's SATs, if you will.)
He knows that there are competing religions out there, and that most people on Earth will have been thoroughly enculturated in a different (ie 'wrong') religion before they ever get to hear the 'Truth', if they hear it at all. He knows that his test will be difficult enough to pass, even for those who never doubt the 'Truth'. Most salient of all, He knows our eternal souls are on the line. Why then, be subtle about his existence? How come we have to rely on douchebag preachers and slimy missionaries to hear His message? Why not write his signature in unmistakable 1000 foot high letters in the sky? It's no skin off his ass; He's God, for Chrissake! What's with the game of Hide 'n' Seek?
I'd like for these retards to stop trying to 'prove' the existence of God and start trying to prove how, if He exists, He's not the most psychologically abusive being the universe has ever seen.
Posted by: Brownian, OM | March 6, 2008 1:07 PM
Brownian -- SCREAAAAM!!
Ahem. I feel so much better now.
19 is definitely a super-cool number in the context of anything Arabic, but that's really only because of how cool a real Arabic 9 looks.
I'm beginning to think that theists are worse misanthropes than even cranky misanthropic atheists like me. I mean, why are you trying to give God the credit for stuff that people pretty obviously did? Isn't that, uh, kind of disrespecting those people? I mean, instead of saying, "Oh, wow, whoever that was wrote a work of literature that has continued to be widely read for centuries," you're saying "Goddiddit." Yuh. Sort of reminds me of how much anti-feminists actually hate men.
Posted by: Interrobang | March 6, 2008 1:10 PM
Numerology is like seeing shapes and faces in clouds. It's forcing an artificial structure in a place where it shouldn't be. Dante's Inferno is suppose to be so full of double, triple, and more meanings that people are still studying it today and finding new things. But it was written by a man. Just like the Qaran and every other holy book.
Posted by: Alverant | March 6, 2008 1:22 PM
I've heard of this guy before-- If I recall correctly, his life is actually in danger because some extremists see him as a wild-eyed heretic. So be careful whose faith you set out to prove! (There was a similar, if less extreme, negative response to Burnet's efforts to ground Genesis and the flood in a scientific/geological story, which was seen as downright disrespectful messin' with the faith... It may well have cost Burnet a shot at being Archbishop, IIRC.)
Posted by: Bryson Brown | March 6, 2008 1:24 PM
I'm beginning to suspect that maybe we atheists are a bunch of mutants with weirdly wired brains, because without fail, every time I am presented an argument for the existence of a god, it is a pungent pile of watery crap. It's never pie; I'm disappointed every time.
I don't think our brains are wired differently -- theists seldom have trouble seeing when other people's arguments for a different religion don't work. And plenty of atheists can be irrational in other areas.
It may come down in good part to a different attitude on the value of having "faith" -- and an analytical ability to tell the difference between factual claims you want to be true but should remain objective on, and the value of having a general attitude of reasonable