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Category: Godlessness • Humor
Posted on: December 7, 2009 8:47 AM, by PZ Myers
For those of you who haven't been following the story line, Mr Wiggles, the sociopathic teddy bear, has recently filled in for God, and really messed up the universe. Only not really — it was all just a dream. But at least it has a happy ending.
It makes me happy, too.
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Comments
Posted by: Silič O'Nopolitanopoulos, Färschdbischuf Beesknees aus Ulm und Klein Elguth, Elector Pharynguline.
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December 7, 2009 9:16 AM
Well, I think I'm happy that mr Wiggles isn't God.
Come to think of it, I'm pretty damn fucking happy that God isn't God either.
Posted by: Ephemeriis | December 7, 2009 9:24 AM
Yeah...
The idea that somehow, something out there actually made the world like this on purpose... And we're going to have to send the rest of eternity with that being? Not terribly reassuring...
Posted by: Torrie | December 7, 2009 9:34 AM
Religion is synonymous with slavery. How convenient God even put slavery verses in the Bible and promoted them. The whole Bible's theme is that slavery is eminent and good. Why did God make Abraham Lincoln? That could have destroyed his whole slavery gig; Luckily, Christians were too brainwashed already to notice this, and any other contradictions. A few of us did notice, however. The rest of the world just needs educated now.
Posted by: Aratina Cage
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December 7, 2009 9:40 AM
I share Sili's and Ephemeriis's sentiments about God/Creator. Just thinking about "eternity" brings to mind how tragic it would be and how nonsensical an idea it is. I'm sure theists have their woo-wy ways around it, but at some point in the afterlife, wouldn't you have to resort to throwing away some of your memories for lack of space to be able to form any new ones? Having to decide what memories to throw away in the hopes that new memories would be better would be heartrending to say the least.
Posted by: Anwar | December 7, 2009 10:11 AM
Eternity would probably get pretty boring after a while. What would you talk about after a million years? And all those damn cherubs and their noisy harps! Who could get any rest?
Posted by: Levi in NY | December 7, 2009 10:29 AM
Forget about what you would talk about after a million years. What would you do after you had already experienced every possible experience for the googolplexth time?
Posted by: otrame
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December 7, 2009 10:35 AM
I remember a very sweet and loving friend who was terribly worried about me (I was the first openly atheist person she ever met). She was one of the ones who described hell as "separated from god for eternity".
She asked me, "What if you are wrong?" I said, "If I'm wrong and you are right, I go to hell. I can't worship a god with worse morals than my own. And frankly, if hell is being separated from the god described in the Bible, I'd rather be in hell."
To me one of the most fascinating things about religion is watching good-hearted people dealing with the evil behavior of their god (as described in the Bible). I had another friend--self-described fundamentalist--whom I asked, "How does it make you feel to know I am going to hell?"
She said, calmly and absolute certainly, "You will not go to hell. God will find a way to save you."
See, that is real faith. It was the first time I really realized that you can tell what kind of person an individual is by what they believe within the context of their religion. Good people have good, loving religion. Mean-spirited people had mean-spirited religion. Evil people have evil religion. All from the same damned book. Fascinating.
Posted by: F
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December 7, 2009 10:48 AM
well, that was a pretty decent payoff after the Slim Pickens bombing.
Posted by: Jim Baerg | December 7, 2009 10:49 AM
I clicked a few pages back in the comic strip & saw the bit about 'they just killed god'.
This reminded me of something that many readers of this blog might like:
http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?t=118771
It's a novel posted on that forum: The premis is that Yahweh has sent 'The Message' that everyone is now going to hell & you should just lie down & die. Some of the population does that & most of the rest declare war on Heaven & Hell :-)
Posted by: Glen Davidson
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December 7, 2009 10:58 AM
God looking on makes our actions seem important, even if he's a psycho killer who designed P. falciparum specifically to cause us pain and death.
That's why not too many are happy as Mr. Wiggles to find out that we're free, but really not very important--if at all.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Posted by: Kite | December 7, 2009 12:02 PM
in response to aratina cage-
Shouldn't be a problem, we appear to be excellent at losing memories, which we hold like a sieve holds sand. See research into the neuropharmacology of cannabinoids for insight on the mechasisms (and importance) 'active' memory loss. And then, of course, we do get older. For example, I suppose that, projecting linearly towards eternity, I'll not be able to remember anything in about, oh...5 years.
Posted by: Aratina Cage
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December 7, 2009 12:12 PM
Kite #11, then I guess "you" won't be "you" in five years, right? More to the point, with a limited memory capacity, at some point "you" will paradoxically cease to exist anyway given an eternal life.
There is also the problem of replicating the organic mechanisms of the brain in a non-corporeal substance if you are going to go down that route, in which cannabinoids matter not.
Posted by: JRD_2 | December 7, 2009 12:24 PM
These comments sound like a lot of sour grapes to me. There isn't such a thing as eternal life, but I'd certainly not turn it down if there were, even for fear of getting "bored" after a million years. I'm not particularly happy about death, but I see no point in rationalizing it as anything other than big inevitable bummer.
Posted by: DaveH_of_Lundun | December 7, 2009 12:40 PM
An afterlife is sour grapes. Eternity is raisins. Death is just no more grapes.
Posted by: PlaydoPlato | December 7, 2009 12:48 PM
Death is only a bummer if you're not, at least, trying to live the best life you can now. I've come to grips with the fact that I'm going to die.
My plan is to forestall this inevitable event for as long as I can and to try to enjoy my life as much as I can so that I'll have fewer regrets when the big day arrives.
After I'm dead, I won't have the capacity to care... about anything, so no worries then either.
Religious belief is based on the lie that if you don't adhere to a bunch of arbitrary rules, that include worshiping a mythological creature, you'll suffer after you die.
Once you get past that nonsense and realize that being dead is, actually, quite painless, it removes a lot of the fear about death. Of course, once you realize that this life is all you've got, it can add some stress to your life if you've been wasting it not pursuing the things that matter most to you.
This doesn't mean that I don't fear death, but I can honestly say that since I gave up religion, death isn't anywhere near the bogyman it used to be.
Posted by: DLC
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December 7, 2009 2:09 PM
Are we important ? as important as we should be.
We are the only life we know of which has the ability to do this, which makes us something.
In the grand scheme of things, perhaps it's not anything of important, but somehow I like to think that while we are not the best or ultimate in evolution (to think that would be hubris), we are somewhat above zero. perhaps not very much, but still, I look at the good things we have created and think its something. oh well, call me an optimist. . . BrB, the Glass is half full.
Posted by: Marcus B. | December 7, 2009 2:29 PM
I wouldn't turn down a thousand year life. Maybe not even a ten thousand years. But eternity?
So say that you're right, and that you're just "bored" after a million years. Do you think that you'll be bored for real after another million? How about ten million more? Well, you have another ten million to go after that. And a hundred million more after that. And a billion more after that. And a ten billion years after that. And a billion billion more years after that, and so on...
Imagine an earthly activity, like watching TV. Imagine watching every single movie that was ever made and and every episode of every TV-show that ever was. Then imagine reading every book, every magazine, every newspaper and diary and piece of poetry ever written... Well, after all that you'll still have eternity ahead of you. And after you do every other thing that can possibly be imagined, you'll still have just as long an eternity ahead of you. Even if you do every activity twice. Or a million times, for that matter.
Eternal life, taken literally, is an idea that truly scares me. Me not wanting to life forever is not a case of "sour grapes."
Posted by: DLC
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December 7, 2009 3:06 PM
Marcus B @17 :
To acquire infinite knowledge requires infinite time, and so it is impossible of achievement.
however, given eternity, I would love to make the best try at it I could. There's just so much to do and to see! I'd love to fly into orbit over one of the known exoplanets, just to do it! but, as faster than light travel is not going to happen, the trip would take longer than several human lifetimes. Still, I can look at the stars and wonder, a bit wistfully, "what is it like over there ?"
Posted by: JRD | December 7, 2009 3:38 PM
Marcus B,
You know, I've been really bored from time to time and yet I've never wished for death to end it. Maybe after a billion years I would tire of life enough to wish to end it, but neither you nor I nor any other creature whose life is bounded to a mere twinkling if geological time can make that prediction with any confidence. So, yes, it sounds to me like most of the commenters here are just trying to rationalize away a desire for something they can't have anyway. Personally I'd far rather give immortality a try than cash it in after the 70 or 80 years I can expect to live, if I'm lucky. That option is of course not open to any of us, but at least I can admit my disappointment about that.
Posted by: Aratina Cage
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December 7, 2009 3:46 PM
Isaac Asimov addressed the theme of eternal life in The Bicentennial Man, which, for different reasons (I think...) than Mr Wiggles, ends with the android happily killing itself. The loneliness of being the sole immortal is what drives the android to become mortal and find death more attractive than eternal life.
Posted by: amphiox | December 7, 2009 3:56 PM
re: #20 and others
There is a rich literary tradition regarding eternal life and immortal characters.
The strange thing is, the dominant recurring theme in the vast majority of it is that eternal life is a curse, a terrible torture, and the greatest desire of an immortal being is to figure out how to die.
Posted by: Aratina Cage
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December 7, 2009 4:05 PM
Erm... that didn't come out right. The android in The Bicentennial Man and Mr Wiggles share elation over the thought of the finality of death, but for different reasons. I have no clue if Mr Wiggles will end up dying happy by his own hand or not.
Posted by: curiosity
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December 7, 2009 4:16 PM
I'm fairly satisfied by the fact that we don't live eternally: to me, that my life has a definite conclusion means that what I do now is that much more important. I'm not sure if I'd have the same motivation to accomplish stuff or to make the world better _now_ if I thought that I was going to live forever.
Also, if we lived eternally, would we keep aging or would we just be stuck at one static age? Growing endlessly older is my idea of hell, and I don't think I would find as much joy in life if I were living in a static state.
Like Mr. Wiggles, though, I'm happy that there's no god - if there were one, he or she or it would have to be fairly malevolent.
Posted by: Dahan | December 7, 2009 4:25 PM
Life can't exist without death. As Ursula K. LeGuin put's so nicely "Only in dark the light" Doesn't mean you have to rush to death, but life is a useless concept without it.
What the heck, one more from her
"Belief is the wound that knowledge heals."
Posted by: Janet Holmes | December 7, 2009 6:30 PM
I don't want to believe we're alone in the universe, I'd rather believe that there's probably other life forms out there, even if we never meet. I'd feel very lonely if I thought that we we're definitely all there was that's alive.
The thought of eternal life appalls me.
Posted by: uncle frogy | December 7, 2009 6:46 PM
I have always wondered what "it" was that was going to exist forever when the body stops being?
Am I my memories? my thoughts and ideas? my sensations? my emotions? All of those can be found in the body(brain). What is time any way? What is eternity when we can see that all we know of time is that it had a beginning with the Big Bang?
Posted by: Jim | December 7, 2009 6:50 PM
A few minor modifications and we would not mind living forever. Patient HM would agree... Then again, he might not.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_HM
Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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December 7, 2009 7:50 PM
JRD @ 13:
I don't think so. I don't want to die, but the notion of spending eternity shackled to a PsychoGod, whose idea of a good time is everyone on their knees has no appeal whatsoever.
I'm not so sure about immortality either. I wouldn't mind a lifetime in the thousands, but the idea of never having the option of death leaves a bad taste in the brain.
Posted by: Crudely Wrott | December 7, 2009 8:24 PM
Open minds relish surprise endings.
Shades of O. Henry.
*sound of fading chuckles*
Posted by: Marcus B. | December 8, 2009 7:26 AM
JRD:
I didn't say that I wished for death either. What I'm saying is that any boredom we feel in a normal life is not possible to even compare to the boredom we would feel after we had done literally everything to the point of boredom and still had an infinity of life left.
"Give immortality a try" is most certainly not the same thing as living the forced immortal life of religious teachings of the afterlife. If you're just "giving it a try" then you can still die, eventually. In that sense I'd like to give it a try too. Like I said I have no problem with a long life - I'd love being able to live thousands of years. But we were talking eternity here - the idea that after you die, things go on forever and that's that.
I'll be grateful if you stop trying to say that you know what I think and feel better than I do myself. In this you sound just like the people who try to convert me and attack my atheism with statements where they "explain" to me what I really feel.
They tell me that I'm not Christian (or whatever) because I hate God. I tell them that they are wrong - I actually don't hate God because I don't believe in God. But they never believe me, they just keep assuming that they know that I hate God, whatever I say. And you seem to be assuming that you know better than me whether I want to die eventually or if I'm hiding bitter disappointment over not getting to live forever.
DLC:
Sure, I'd like to have some extra time to do some extra things. But with infinite time you could (given some appropriate mode of transportation) visit every single planet. Then you could spend some time examining every single speck of dust in the universe. And you'll still have eternity ahead of you after that.
Living forever is very, very different from living a very long time. One I would do, the other scares me.
Posted by: JRD
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December 9, 2009 12:22 PM
Marcus B,
I think much of the source of our disagreement is that we're not really defining the parameters of the concept of immortality very clearly. My initial comment was largely in response to those earlier in the thread that seemed to say that the idea of potentially indefinite life is itself horrific, undesirable, etc. I wasn't suggesting a world in which death was impossible-- the universe is going to run down eventually and I assumed, perhaps without making it explicit, that the second law of thermodyniamics would remain in effect even in any hypothetical world in which human life was otherwise unbounded. (I'm also not hypothesizing a world in which suicide or even accidental death is impossible.) So "eternity" itself doesn't mean endless time, it just means the amount of time left in the universe. I'm fairly certain I could keep myself occupied for that amount of time, and again, at the very least I'd prefer it to the current state of affairs.
As to your other comments, I retain my view that many of the knee-jerk disclaimers of a desire for potentially indefinite life reek of sour grapes and rationalization. I don't believe I said anything about you specifically, but I still suspect that if an immortality serum were invented tomorrow, many of those currently protesting the "horror" of such a thing would be lining up with me to get it. Obviously reality will never provide the opportunity to test that hypothesis.
Posted by: Aratina Cage
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December 9, 2009 4:14 PM
JRD,
Your concern is noted (and stupid). An "immortality serum"? Get real.