Pharyngula

Posted by: Randy | June 10, 2008 11:20 AM

One doesn't like to blow one's own horn, or in this case, pimp one's own blog, but...

I think this can all be explained by the fact that He's on vacation.

http://deusexeverriculum.wordpress.com/

Posted by: Serena | June 10, 2008 11:23 AM

Yippie!!!

Philip Pullman had it right all along, just as I'd hoped.

Posted by: Glen Davidson | June 10, 2008 11:27 AM

Mission accomplished...uh, except for the continued bombings, guerrila attacks, etc.

A lot nicer place to occupy than Iraq, anyhow. Unless, that is, perhaps heaven isn't quite what the seers and prophets said it was. Heaven forbid that to be the case.

Glen Davidson
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7

Posted by: Blake Stacey | June 10, 2008 11:44 AM

Strolling into a deserted realm isn't quite as exciting as riding into combat on an armored bear.

Posted by: Dan | June 10, 2008 11:53 AM

Cool beans. Let me know if they find any barber shops up there. I look a complete mess.

Posted by: Jason Failes | June 10, 2008 12:18 PM

This is perfect, and gets at something I try (unsuccessfully) to describe to front-door godspammers all the time:

1. There's no evidence for any God.
2. If there were evidence for a God, the likelihood of it being the particular God you are peddling (or that anyone else is peddling for that matter) is vanishingly small.
3. If it turned out to be your God, as depicted in your holy books, I still would not worship it, due to the anachronistic morality and general monstrosity of the character. Indeed, "regime change" in heaven would be warranted, if we could pull it off.

Posted by: Holbach | June 10, 2008 12:30 PM

He may mean to align with the forces of reason and denigrate religious bullshit, but the effort, to me, was wasted in the manner in which he couched this scenario. When you use words that give credence to the very idea that you are mocking, then the result you wish to convey loses its seriousness. Just by presenting it as he did lends credence to the idea that it exists, nothwithstanding his capitalization of the word "god". To me, this is analogous to so-called atheists who wear tee shirts that say "Thank God I am an atheist." You don't eliminate one idea and replace it with another that only establishes that which you are trying to dispel.

Posted by: Jason Failes | June 10, 2008 12:59 PM

Holback @ 13: "When you use words that give credence to the very idea that you are mocking, then the result you wish to convey loses its seriousness."

This must be a "framing" issue of some kind, because I don't understand how the joke is diminished by using religious language.

Indeed, I don't know how the joke would have worked without it.

Posted by: alex | June 10, 2008 1:06 PM

good grief, but there are some really Woo comments on that article (at the guardian site, pharyngula is, as usual, very Woo-free).

Posted by: Randy | June 10, 2008 1:36 PM

Good God, Holbach! I'm going to tell Santa not to visit you this Jesus H. Christmas.

Posted by: Brownian, OM | June 10, 2008 1:37 PM

Damn. Heaven's been sitting there, ripe for the plucking for millennia, and a mere four days after I post my nefarious plan for its conquerance I find out I'm too late.

Nevertheless, I submit that Heaven was actually conquered years ago.

Consider this:

1. Hell sucks. In fact, it sucks so much that there's no place worse. No place worse means nothing to lose for trying to escape Hell. No place worse means nothing to lose for trying to conquer Heaven.

2. History's bloodiest, most evil, most conniving, most dangerous, and--if I may infer from the Christians I've met who certainly won't be going to hell--smartest people are all in Hell.

3. God has an army, the Heavenly Host. God wouldn't need an army if there weren't external or internal enemies to worry about, or if there weren't the threat of invasion.

4. Nobody's heard from God or Jesus in nearly two millennia.

At this point it's all circumstantial, but the evidence so far suggests the castle was probably stormed quite a while ago.

Posted by: Jason Failes | June 10, 2008 2:00 PM

Holbach @ 22: "Hey, it isn't that irony is lost on me so much as it is that I detest religion so vehemently that it is not even worth joking about."

Ok, well my position is that since religion lost the logical and evidential arguments long ago, yet continues to thrive even today, I'm going to try mocking it out of existence, to see if we can't make the next generation of children more than mildly embarrassed at the childish theology of their parents.

I'm not disagreeing, mind you. If anything, I'm suggesting we utilize all available tools, attack from all ends and meet in the middle to trade stories of battles hard-fought and hopefully, eventually and inevitably, won.

Some funnies:
http://www.jesusandmo.net/
http://cectic.com/
http://russellsteapot.com/comics/
http://religiouscomics.net/

Posted by: Longtime Lurker | June 10, 2008 2:17 PM

"Hell sucks. In fact, it sucks so much that there's no place worse."

Brownian, you mean to say that all those metalheads are wrong?

Posted by: Slaughter | June 10, 2008 2:43 PM

Funny how this threat of God goes away when you quit thinking about him. We could do the same thing, like the Star Trek episode "Sprectre of the Gun" where the crew imagined themselves at the O.K. Corral. They needed a Spock mind meld to eliminate all doubt. Anyone know how to do one of those?

Posted by: Longtime Lurker | June 10, 2008 3:03 PM

Nice!

Computer models of climatic change reveal that increased CO2 emissions will result in the Scorpions rocking harder.

Posted by: Peter Mc | June 10, 2008 3:52 PM

Blake @7. I'm afraid the British armoured bear procurement programme is late and over budget. When we invade Iran, we'll just have to borrow yours if you want us to tag along, in the tapeworm-trailing-out-of-a-sick0-dog's-arse way we did in Iraq.

Posted by: mothra | June 10, 2008 4:31 PM

@21
4. Nobody's heard from God or Jesus in nearly two millennia.

Species (showy vertebrate varieties only) are considered extinct if they have not been seen in 50 years.
---

We invaded heaven, I wonder who we sent. . . .{hears distant rumbling and voice) "I love it when a plot comes together."

Posted by: Janne | June 10, 2008 8:47 PM

"One doesn't like to blow one's own horn, or in this case, pimp one's own blog, but..."

Of course one likes it! And now that it's been brought up as a subject, here's a post about Stirling engines; I drew pictures and everything: http://janneinosaka.blogspot.com/2008/05/stirling.html

Posted by: Nothing Sacred | June 10, 2008 11:15 PM

And they managed this without Æsahættr? Wow. I'm impressed.

Posted by: defaithed | June 10, 2008 11:39 PM

@Jason Failes: "If it turned out to be your God, as depicted in your holy books, I still would not worship it, due to the anachronistic morality and general monstrosity of the character."

Well put. There's always this unwarranted cognitive leap, among believers and agnostics alike, that goes directly from "If God is real, then..." to "... we must worship Him". Whereas there actually need to be some questions in between the two: "What is He like?", followed by "How should we react to Him?" An honest consideration of those may lead to your answer above!

I made a short post recently, coming to an even harsher conclusion that's been in my head for years:

If the monstrous, murderous God depicted by the religionists is indeed real, then how do we kill the damn thing?? ( http://www.defaithed.com/blog/defaithed/2008/06/strong_antitheist )

(Yes, a silly proposition; it's the same as asking "How do we catch the Trix Rabbit"? But I like it all the same.)

Posted by: Thor | June 11, 2008 5:33 AM

Gods. Ignore them they go away... eventually.

Ha! Beware my thunderbolt, shane!

Posted by: Lilly de Lure | June 11, 2008 6:32 AM

defaithed said:

If the monstrous, murderous God depicted by the religionists is indeed real, then how do we kill the damn thing??

I think the late, great Douglas Adams had the answer to this one in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The exchange went something like this:

God: I refuse to prove that I exist, because proof denies faith and without faith I am nothing.

Man: But the Babel Fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? it proves you exist and therefore you don't.

God: Oh dear, I hadn't though of that. And promptly disappeared in a puff of logic.

According to Adams's logic therefore those insipid religious apologists we come down so hard on are actually, secretly on our side even if they don't know it. Should they succeed in actually producing the Babel Fish (any conclusive proof of God's existence) they will promptly become, not the intellectual defenders of God, but his murderers.

And there will be much rejoicing :o)

Posted by: Lilly de Lure | June 11, 2008 6:45 AM

Matt Heath:

LOL!