Pharyngula

Posted by: forthesakeofscience.wordpress.com | October 14, 2009 7:10 PM

Make it look worse? Why would you want us to vote "yes"?

Posted by: Smoggy Batzrubble OM4Jesus | October 14, 2009 7:15 PM

SB: Dear God, do You exist?

GOD: I'm not sure yet Smoggy. I'm waiting to see what the polls say.

SB: Have you voted?

GOD: Oh yes, and so have most of the angels.

SB: So, are you the 'Yes' votes?

GOD: Oh no, we're all 'No' voters, I don't want to give the game away. Heaven's a small place, and I'm relying on most humans ending up in hell. Too many believers in Paradise and I'll have to upgrade the toilets.

SB: Why don't you just rig the poll in your favor?

GOD: Too easy. I've spent thousands of years mucking with the heads of the faithful. I'm not big on changing policy.

SB: Bless you God. Stasis and stagnation are so comforting.

GOD: They are to Me.

AMEN

Posted by: sizzzzlerz | October 14, 2009 7:26 PM

Done and done!

Posted by: Richard Healy | October 14, 2009 7:27 PM

Can't explain why but my above link takes you to the 11th week.

This is the link for the start of the blog.

http://alphacoursereview.wordpress.com/2008/09/09/week-1a-introduction/

Posted by: kopd | October 14, 2009 7:41 PM

How about "yes" "no" and "maybe"? That would probably change the outcome a bit.

Posted by: muffinman | October 14, 2009 8:23 PM

Wow, even the graph itself is giving Alpha Course the finger!

Posted by: Nebula99 | October 14, 2009 8:51 PM

Ironically, their rigging of the poll by saying "probably" instead of "maybe" to make it look like the agnostic vote favored God's existence probably made the agnostics turn to "no" out of resentment. I love watching Xtians shoot themselves in the foot. It's like hunting only not immoral and you don't need to be good with a firearm.

Posted by: Ryan F Stello | October 14, 2009 9:07 PM

I like their idea for Youtube-submitted questions to Guhd.

I'd ask: "Why do your followers think that you can't answer a question without their involvement in some way?"

Posted by: Charlie Foxtrot | October 14, 2009 9:15 PM

HA! Done.
(I typed in the URL manually, just in case they decide to prune the Pharyngula votes)

Posted by: sqlrob | October 14, 2009 9:20 PM

Good old fashioned bookburning

Posted by: Gregory Greenwood | October 14, 2009 10:22 PM

"I love watching Xtians shoot themselves in the foot. It's like hunting only not immoral and you don't need to be good with a firearm."

I like to think of it as more like watching them apply several pounds of high explosives to themselves as a sopository and then sit down on the detonator. Absolutely hilarious.

So they are banning votes from Pharyngula? They want your opinion on the existence of god unless, of course, you are a 'god-hating' atheist.

Typical Xian pseudo-logic.

Posted by: tiltingatwindmills.myopenid.com | October 14, 2009 10:40 PM

Just below the poll they ask you to make a YouTube video with the question you want to ask god.

Posted by: Noel | October 14, 2009 10:50 PM

Nice... 93% say 'No' as at 1.48pm Eastern Summer Time (Oz).

So, do they close the site down now?

Posted by: Eamon Knight | October 14, 2009 11:06 PM

Another Alpha review:
http://inthenuts.blogspot.com/search/label/Alpha%20Course

Posted by: lordshipmayhem | October 14, 2009 11:57 PM

There are billions of gods.

It isn't that a god created us in his own image: each human being who believes in a god, creates that god in his/her own image. No, not in the sense of a bipedal creature vaguely resembling a well-muscled man, but in the sense of the attitude, power and interests of such a supernatural being. It can look like a man, like a cat with a human body, like a giant serpent with a feathery frill, like an IBM Selectric typewriter, or be entirely non-corporeal, like your legislator between elections. The appearance isn't important. If you think your god should be angry and vengeful, poof! that's your god. If you think your god should be of the "turn the other cheek" variety, that's your god. No two people have exactly the same god, because no two people are exactly alike.

Personally, I believe in being anesthetized when I'm being operated on, so my god resembles the ether bunny.

Posted by: Charlie Foxtrot | October 15, 2009 12:50 AM

Reality: "95%"
Alpha: *sniffle*
Reality: "Well, you asked."

Posted by: Fil | October 15, 2009 1:02 AM

Bugger religion and who needs gods?

I has a beer and (finally) the library came through with my hold of The Greatest Show on Earth.

Bliss...

Posted by: Desert Son | October 15, 2009 2:21 AM

lordshipmayhem at #30:

so my god resembles the ether bunny.

You've been waiting all week to use that joke, haven't you?

This groan's for you, sir.

No kings,

Robert

Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/RYWI8OFvgpWaRTLmPcxTSqdonAPChoMHlLdZExmA#3f21a | October 15, 2009 2:46 AM

They put Bear Grylls on as a spokesperson!!!? Now there's a hack if there ever was one. Not exactly the best way to score credibility.

Posted by: Walton | October 15, 2009 3:53 AM

#5: Reading the link, this is very much consistent with my experience of church in the UK as a kid. (While I never did an Alpha course, the church in which I was brought up - an ecumenical Protestant church which included Anglicans, Methodists and Baptists - ran Alpha courses and promoted them enthusiastically.) My former church was full of nice, inoffensive, mainly elderly people. Unfortunately, there is really no intellectual self-examination; people hold beliefs because those beliefs make them feel warm and fuzzy inside. There is not one bit of rational reflection or openness to criticism of their own ideas. The Anglican Church, in practice, is about socialising, tea and biscuits, listening to middle-aged ladies chat about their kids, raising money for charity, and the like - all good things, but none conducive to any sort of reflective intellectual outlook. Hence why otherwise intelligent people are able to completely ignore the distinct lack of empirical evidence for their beliefs.

Churches, in short, are intellectually bankrupt - and in the worst possible way, because many of them are populated by genuinely nice and sincere people, who one can't help but feel guilty about challenging. If all Christians were batshit-insane fire-and-brimstone fundamentalists, life would be simpler; any decent person would be repulsed by them and everything they stood for. But coming from a moderate-to-liberal Christian background, I never despised or even disliked the religious milieu in which I grew up. This is why I clung to a very liberal, watered-down version of Christianity for so long. But eventually I had to accept the objective truth: there is no evidence for the Christian God, nor for the historical accuracy of the gospels, and the whole edifice is no more founded in reality than the average fairy tale. And while the moderate Christians with whom I grew up were nice people for the most part, I also became more and more aware of the fact that the Christian mythos is used, around the world, as a pretext for working some very great evils - oppressing women and gay people, for a start - and that many of the core doctrines of Protestant Christianity, such as "justification by faith alone", are morally iniquitous on a very fundamental level. And so I had no choice but to become an agnostic and a secular humanist. An intellectually honest person cannot pick and choose beliefs on the basis of aesthetic preference, but, rather, must follow the empirical evidence wherever it may lead.

Posted by: Crewvy | October 15, 2009 4:18 AM

96% LOLOLOLOL

Posted by: Walton | October 15, 2009 5:16 AM

woozy,

Well, one can in matters of abstractions such as, say, morality, justice, political opinion, philosophy, and, of course, art appreciation.

For the sake of clarity, I'd classify those as tastes rather than beliefs. Aesthetic preferences are fine, but we don't pretend that they represent a universal objective reality. I prefer country/western music to punk rock, for instance, but I don't pretend that I'm objectively "right" and that those who differ are "wrong".

The problem with religion, a lot of the time, is that it uses these personal aesthetic reactions to try and justify assertions of fact about the nature of reality and the universe. When a Christian says "God exists and He loves me", s/he isn't just making a statement of aesthetic taste, but rather making a claim of objective fact. Yet that claim isn't backed up with any kind of empirical evidence, and there is no basis - other than emotion, cultural tradition and aesthetic preference - to take it seriously.

When I was beginning to seriously question Christianity, and discussed Christian beliefs in-depth with several believers, many of them commented that I was looking at the question from too cold, rational and academic a perspective. In my experience, many educated and intelligent moderate Christians will admit candidly that they don't have objective, empirical hard evidence for their beliefs. But they claim to "know" God exists because of the emotional and "spiritual" feelings they get from prayer, attending worship and being part of a church community.

However, from my perspective, this is intellectually dishonest. The fact that many people get good vibes from participating in religious activities, and find it enhances their lives, has precisely no bearing on the objective truth or falsehood of religious claims.

I sometimes muse upon the question as to whether a religion nescessarily requires that its "beliefs" be "real".

Most religion does claim that its beliefs are in some sense objectively "real" and "true"; and religion, qua social practice, makes very little sense without some sort of acceptance of religion as a set of fact-claims. Admittedly, some very liberal believers, like John Shelby Spong (recently discussed at length on another thread), seem to want to preserve Christianity merely as a set of cultural traditions and rituals, without actually claiming that Christian theistic beliefs are objectively true. But that kind of ultra-liberal religion, while attractive and perfectly reasonable, seems to me ultimately pointless; it strips religion of its essential nature and purpose. Similarly, I'm not personally attracted by Unitarianism, or by those secular humanist organisations which try to emulate religious ceremonies and rituals with the god-bits taken out.

Posted by: Rorschach | October 15, 2009 5:23 AM

In both cases, we get along fine by never discussing religion.

There is those people where you just know that you are going to totally burn all bridges and kill all pretense benevolence by even mentioning religion, so unless I already dislike the person for other reasons, I usually dont bother.

Posted by: echidna | October 15, 2009 5:45 AM

The problem is that those nice, moderate Christians are used to uncritically taking in whatever is said from the pulpit. A relative used to be moderate, but for the last few years has been regurgitating creationist anti-evolution nonsense, but doesn't seem to realise that the arguments he was spouting (found on all good Creationist bingo cards) belong to a YEC perspective.

When he disparaged evolution to my middle- and high school kids, that marked the outbreak of on-going hostilities. It's not about religion, really. It's about not lying for Jesus.

Posted by: Flea | October 15, 2009 5:59 AM

"Hey, they locked out votes from Pharyngula!"

Why not use one of these for future poll Pharyngulation?:
http://anonym.to/
http://linkblur.com/
...

Posted by: Joe Bloe | October 15, 2009 7:19 AM

They also suggest submitting "Questions To God" on You Tube.

I'd ask him to provide a solution to the Reiman Hypothesis and then collect a million dollar prize from the Clay Mathematics Institute.

There are six more prizes available...
http://www.claymath.org/millennium/

Posted by: Will Graham | October 15, 2009 8:14 AM

Has it occurred to anyone that stacking a poll is dishonest in itself?

Probably not. After all, with atheists anything goes.

And I do mean anything.

Now, before anyone gets made and starts righteously posturing, KMA.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | October 15, 2009 8:30 AM

Awww, it looks like we hurt poo' little Willie's feelings. We are such meanies to go to a public internet poll and vote. And poo' Willie shows he has no understanding of what it means to be an atheist, or that atheists are less likely to commit crimes than believers. Something to do with actually using the Golden Rule rather than just mouthing it...

Posted by: John Morales | October 15, 2009 8:44 AM

Will:

I knew that would get you riled!

Q.E.D.

IOW, you're trolling.

Posted by: Sniomhaiche | October 15, 2009 9:21 AM

Oddly enough, I was was able to visit the site, look around, click the fun little links and chuckle at the stories...until I voted "no". Now their front page won't even load. I wonder if my vote has anything to do with it? Can't wait till I get home to test this idea with a different IP.
BTW, poll showed 3% yes, 96% no, 1% probably.

Posted by: BdN | October 15, 2009 9:46 AM

Er, by Will's luminous logic, which is on display at Bill Tammeus' blog, Nietzsche hated God because of his well known remark, which, in itself, is a common mistake, but where it becomes interesting is when he claims that because he was Hitler's favorite philosopher, it automatically means Hitler was an atheist...

1-It's not that clear that Nietzsche was an atheist.
2-One of my favorite authors is Céline : does it mean I hate Jews ?

Posted by: Chuck Lunney | October 15, 2009 11:10 AM

Will and AdamH (from other comments) are a couple of teenage Christian Dominionist wannabees from the Kansas City area. They troll several local blogs, most notably Bill Tammeus' blog.

They're not too interesting or intelligent, but Bill usually posts some interesting things each day to comment on. Unfortunately, he tends to veer into the woo-factor a little (he is a Christian, after all). But the comments can sometimes get lively and generate some good discussions.

Posted by: chgo_liz | October 15, 2009 11:21 AM

Now that they've used the creative idea of the transit "vandal" for their own benefit, do you think they'll drop charges against him? Pay him a licensing fee? Buy him lunch? Something?

Posted by: woozy | October 15, 2009 1:07 PM

Has it occurred to anyone that stacking a poll is dishonest in itself?

Only to the extent that the poll no longer represents a random sample. But by this logic though publically protesting politics, writing letters in congressmen, and even voting itself[1] is dishonest.

Has it occurred to you that the very fact the poll can be stacked makes it worthless from the beginning?

Dang. Wish I said that.

[1]... because, you know, voting stacks the results in favor of people who can be bothered to get off their asses and into the booth, people who know that there's an election going on,...

Posted by: aratina cage | October 15, 2009 1:22 PM

Has it occurred to anyone that stacking a poll is dishonest in itself?

Probably not. After all, with atheists anything goes. -Will Graham Cracker

Posted by: Roger | October 15, 2009 2:09 PM

Bear Grylls did Alpha because he's a blithering idiot. On his show "Man vs. Wild," I was absolutely rooting for "Wild"--and then I found out that he was faking his "life in the wild." Figures. He probably also lies for Jesus, too.

Posted by: Knockgoats | October 15, 2009 2:28 PM

Bear Grylls did Alpha because he's a blithering idiot. - Roger

Plus, he's not even a real bear! What sort of wally calls himself "Bear"? (I checked -it's not his given name.)

Posted by: Tim Danaher | October 15, 2009 4:16 PM

Hmmm...

Can't see the results any more: clicking on the 'view' link just shunts me down the page.

And another recommendation for Stephen Butterfield's blog. +1

And the dishonest shits deserve everything they get for that including that 'probably'.

Posted by: woozy | October 15, 2009 7:31 PM

more on #40:

An intellectually honest person cannot pick and choose beliefs on the basis of aesthetic preference, but, rather, must follow the empirical evidence wherever it may lead.

And yet...

Somehow, I felt that when you got down to fuzzy-wuzzy wobbly bits of "beliefs" that "aesthetic preference" and "empirical evidence" might be really difficult recognize. I mean, sure, a belief that the world is 6,000 year old and species never change is easily overturned by elementary empirical evidence, and, yes, the sky-fairy policeman and that holodeck in the sky for dead people have a hard time standing to empirical evidence, but what about other religious "beliefs"? i.e. morality, personal validation, spirituality (whatever the heck that is). Well, I'm not sure that "aesthetic preference" is a wrong way to choose.

For example: I believe "slavery is always wrong". This belief follows logically from my belief "all human beings have equal worth". (Okay, I'm going to need to work on the exact wording of that. I don't mean monetary worth or intellectual worth, etc. And I sure as *hell* do not mean an people have souls. "I'd like to say all people's desires and needs are equally valid" but nitpickers can just as easily pull that apart.) But so far as I can tell, that belief is entirely an "aethetic" one with not only no "empirical evidence" but also impossible to define in terms of "empircal evidence". Well, at any rate *I* believe solely on aesthetic reasons and ... I'm fine with that.

I guess, I think the problem with such "leaps of faith" is when they aren't properly scrutinized and examined for what they are. (e.g. "Slavery is always wrong" = a inescapable logical conclussion were one to accept the aesthetic belief the all people have equal worth = logic + aesthetics I'm unwilling to discard = scrutinized "faith"; "God loves me and won't let anything bad happen to me" = wishful thinking at odds with evidence = unscruntinized faith, etc.)
===
'nother example: Chick Tract says everybody who doesn't accept sonny-boy as his special pal burns in hell and 'good works' won't cut it. Okay, empirically I don't believe this because empirical evidence causes me to doubt the existence of the hurty holodeck in the ground.

*But* aesthetically I'd have to reject it as well. (The *sole* reason to believe in the happy holodeck in the sky and/or the hurty holodeck in the ground is the aesthetic belief that there is some "fair" accounting and aethetically, well, aesthetically the idea of the *only* way out being to poke holes in yourself so sonny boy can permeate you with his holy gas which has *nothing* to do with intent, actions, circumstance, behavior, etc. etc.... well, that just sucks.)

Posted by: Bandnot | October 16, 2009 5:16 PM

Just voted no on this poll and it's up to 97% No. I would love to see their faces.

Posted by: PDT | November 7, 2009 7:11 AM

According to adherents.com approximately 2.1 billion people claim to be Christians. Either they didn't vote, or perhaps they were secure in their beliefs and didn't need an online poll to validate them.

Recent polls put the percentage of god-believers in the UK at around 75-80%

If you follow the logic:

Anyone who believes in God is an idiot.
Most people believe in God.
Therefore most people are idiots.

Good-luck with that wordview.