Does God exist?

It's considered a sin to challenge God to do something for you. God doesn't like emotional blackmail; and failing to jump to the rescue is the appropriate response.

The article quotes the man as saying "God will save me, if he exists." So perhaps he gave his life to prove once and for all that there is no God. He's an atheist martyr.

I don't trust the results. We need some independant replications. A lot of them.

(Is my 12% evil showing?)

Maybe God was answering the lion's prayer.

I'd say that the record in the series of Lions vs. Christians is pretty one-sided. Do we really need to keep playing the games at this point?

that could be noise in the data. let's keep testing.

8->

"And that's the name of that tune."
I hope at least the people that witnessed this were impressed. I'm sure that the majority knew how this would come out. It sounds like a proper test to me. Sort of like playing with poisonous snakes. Is this settled?

Seeking proofs that God does not exist is as silly as seeking proofs that He does. Waste of time and internet bandwidth.

I reckon he probably had a more than an even chance that the lions wouldn't have killed him, depending on how tame they were, how long it had been since they were last fed, etc. If he had been able to approach the lions without harm no doubt there are people who would take that as proof of God's existance rather than proof of massive stupidity. Of course these people would never accept his being eaten as negative proof. God gets all the breaks.

Finally a good test for gods!

Obviously the man was demented. (The appellation to a god is a certain giveaway.) Which is why a loving god should have saved him.

In fairness to the lion, she was in an extremely bad mood when the man jumped into the enclosure. You see, she had gotten a thorn stuck in her paw, and it was irritating her something fierce....

Bah, worthless experiment, blatant waste of reagents. Who knows if this guy was a REAYULLL Christian? For an exacting exercise of this sort you gotta go with high purity, experimental grade reagents. The GOOD stuff! Falwell, Robertson, that Phelps guy, W.. (nah... I'm not sure he's serious). We need THESE guys jumping in lion's dens and walking up to the lioness. C'mon, boys! Make me BELIEVE!!!
Uncle Don

This strikes me as evolution in action. Take that, Discovery Institute!

I'm sorry but you all missed the point. The lioness IS god and was she ever pissed that this Ruskie was that stupid. She was also exacting about 90 years of revenge for the Communists denying that she existed. I have it on good authority that this November she will take the form of an elephant and plans on testing the true faith of a few congressional members of the GOP. Those who campaigned for stupid things like the flag amendment and the gay marriage ban will be stomped.

"Falwell, Robertson, that Phelps guy, W.. (nah... I'm not sure he's serious). We need THESE guys jumping in lion's dens and walking up to the lioness."

Robertson would just kick the lioness with his awesomely mighty legs, and everything would be fine. Right?

"A lioness went straight for him, knocked him down and severed his carotid artery."

A paradox. Such an efficient killing-machine could only have been made by an intelligent creator™. But any fool could have coughed up the lioness' prey.

It is a puzzlement.
.

Poorly designed experiment with negative results.

If instead Jack Bauer jumped into the cage, he would've survived long enough to get a definitive outcome.

Sounds like someone really wants that Darwin Award.

When I was in college some buddies and I in the Poli Sci department used to have a saying that we applied when observing some particularly stupid person or action, "If we all lived in a true State of Nature, he/she/they would have been eaten by wolves a long time ago." Over the years this got shortened to a significant look and just, "Eaten by wolves."

Considering the ancestry of humanity and our origins in the African savanna, today's Reuters dispatch from Kiev, henceforth we will now use the more antropologically accurate, "Eaten by lions."

If he had faith in the glorious FSM (creamy be his sauce), this would not have happened.

I don't know what's going to be worse for America, russians with nukes or russians with a bible.

MYOB'
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My dad suggests a double-blind protocol for the replications: We blindfold the guy and lead him into a cage where there may or may not be a lion.

More lions! And let's bring back the sabre tooth tigers while we're at it! And Tasmanian tigers!

As Niven would say, "think of it as evolution in action..."

The problem here is that the man wasn't specific. He asked God to save him, but save him from what? Perhaps while the man was being mauled by the lion, God was switching his auto insurance to Geico.

I don't believe I'm the first ot the "Lions 1, Christians 0" joke....

1. "If God exists, He'll immediately give me a billion dollars!"
2. [nothing happens]
3. Therefore, God does not exist.

Same old. More here (most of which courtesy of yours truly).

I want to know why PZ put this in the humor category -- the monstrous godless atheist that is must be.

Category: Godlessness ⢠Humor, indeed. 'Though I have to admit that I wanted to chuckle when I thought of the image (I wonder if he was on his knees as she approached). But I was a little chagrined afterwards. (Didn't Heinlein(glorious writer that he was) say that you get more mileage from your sins by regretting them afterwards?)

Wow. Need to proofread before posting -- sorry.

PZ, the null hypothesis seems to have survived this particular round of falsification. I didn't read the entire article, just the abstract. Was the fellow's name Daniel?

Scott

Jason, I think this was quite an unnecessary experiment. It is not even a question of whether god is there or not. How about the thousands of children who perish in Africa every day as a result of starvation and AIDS? Barring god existing only for the areas covered by the CNN, I have to conclude that for those who need him the most, he is not there. Neither I, nor the man who fed himself to the lions, can claim entitlement to god's mercy or attention any more than the Africans can. If he is not there for them, he won't be there for me. That's all I need to know.

By the way your sure heard this.
This missionary was traveling through the Amazon to rich a remote tribe, when suddenly he came facing a starving lion.
He got down on his knees and prayed:"father, give this poor beast Christian feelings".
A moment later the lion got down on his knees and prayed."Father, bless the food I am going to receive..."

Maybe the experiment failed because the guy had made fun of a bald guy earlier that day.

That just seems dumb; why play into the theist hands by presenting them something that they have a pat answer for? Someone demanding that god save them from self-inflicted death? Lack of faith, don't demand direct proof of god blah blah blah.

A more interesting presentation would be something like the parasitic wasp -- basically the inspiration for the xenomorphs in the "Alien" movies -- parasitic wasps lay their eggs in living hosts and the larvae later burst out. Okay theists; why did a benevolent creator make *those*?

God made parasitic wasp lavae to show us the terrors we face in hell if we turn away from him. Or possibly being eaten alive by grubs is good for your soul, even if it does leave you feeling hollow inside.

God was hungry.

Greco - you may have created the first schism in the Church of FSM: Creamerians vs. Marinarafarians.

Oh man there are some good lines in the responses here.

The lion sure ended the debate fast.

Mmm mmmm, Red meat.

"The man shouted 'God will save me, if he exists', lowered himself by a rope into the enclosure, took his shoes off and went up to the lions," the official said.

Does this remind anybody else of "Grizzly Man"?

Basically, this was a rather unusual film created by a rather unusual guy buy the name of Timothy Treadwell.

At first, Treadwell goes to Grizzly country in order to become an "advocate" for grizzly conservation.

Over time, he starts to lose it and begins to think he can "communicate" with all the wildlife in the area, including the grizzlies.

He painted himself as their "protector, and the only one who can protect them"; one supposes because he thought he had a "special" relationship with them.

To make a long story short, both he and his girlfriend were eaten by their "charges" who apparently disagreed that he had a special relationship with them.

oops.

There was some excellent photography, tho..

oooh, I'm itching to tell a really bad joke Ron White made about this incident. Might be in bad taste tho....

Um, where does it say that God is required to save a determined idiot from his fate?
What about that old adage about fools treading where angels fear to step?

He reminds me of Timothy Treadwell, too.

If he had just been mauled and survived, what would that have proved? God can't make up his mind, come back tomorrow?

So, does he get nominated for a Darwin Award?

Meanwhile...

http://www.wsbtv.com/news/9293414/detail.html

Best part of the article?
"The 65-year-old Brown said she is blessed to be alive."
Thank you God, for your massive ball of lightning.

Well, duh. Everyone knows that God's will can only be tested with pieces of sheep's wool and nighttime condensation. Lions are right out!

"If he had just been mauled and survived, what would that have proved? God can't make up his mind, come back tomorrow?"

that's it, i gotta tell it now, or at least use the punchline to address your comment

What it would tell us is that Treadwell didn't amount to sh*t... until he was actually eaten by the bear.

sorry, I just had to.

Yeah, the discussion about children in Africa starving and suffering reminded me of a story.

So this guy is walking home at night and sees a young woman, looking frail, begging on the streets. He walks on by and when he gets home he angrily asks why God would let her suffer like that, and why doesn't God just DO something? Since it's a story, God responds, "I did; I made *you*." Moral of the story being that some people suffer because other people let them and people should help each other.

Problems:
1. God doesn't answer people, and I think the switchboard operator tends to drop your call when you ask for voicemail.

2. Why would you make one suffering person, and one not-suffering person, and then figure that the not-suffering person is going to help the first? I can see it as a tool, which is the way I see institutionalized religion. So you tell this story at youth group or something and the kids think about it and it A: encourages them to be active in helping other people but also B: intends to negate a major source of disbelief in God. If God is good, why is there suffering? If God is real, but God isn't good, why do I care?

3. When thinking about Problem 2 you can pull out the "testing us" question but really, now. Your God is going to starve and murder children in Africa to test the moral mettle of some middle-class suburbanite a continent or two away? Gee, sign me up for that.

This missionary was traveling through the Amazon to rich a remote tribe, when suddenly he came facing a starving lion.

Lions in the Amazon, eh? Looks like this missionary was part of this expedition from one of Jules Verne's novels.

|BronzeDog: My dad suggests a double-blind protocol for the |replications: We blindfold the guy and lead him into a cage |where there may or may not be a lion.

We should add an element of quantum theology: the people leading him into the cage should also be blindfolded, and no one is allowed to observe the result. If I understand Heisenberg properly (which I probably don't), within the cage God should and should not exist simultaneously.

"A lioness went straight for him, knocked him down and severed his carotid artery."

Well, of course he wasn't going to be saved. If Aslan deprived his wife of a meal he'd never hear the end of it.

Algerine wrote:

Perhaps while the man was being mauled by the lion, God was switching his auto insurance to Geico.

I've been wondering if P Z Wossisname has switched to AiG yet so that the guy in the commercial has to eat the uncooked calamari.

Quoted from "The Edge":

Dawkins's Law of Divine Invulnerability

God cannot lose.

Lemma 1
When comprehension expands, gods contract--but then redefine themselves to restore the status quo.

Lemma 2
When things go right, God will be thanked. When things go wrong, he will be thanked that they are not worse.

Lemma 3
Belief in the afterlife can only be proved right, never wrong.

Lemma 4
The fury with which untenable beliefs are defended is inversely proportional to their defensibility

Which is dumber: Daring lions to eat you to prove there's a God, or washing one's clothes in gasoline?

http://www.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=126460

Turns out it's pretty close to a draw.

The fatal flaw with this lion episode is the statement, "If he exists." A true believer wouldn't say "if he exists;" a true believer KNOWS he exists.

Plus, just look at the history. This approach didn't work for persecuted folks in Rome, did it?

Oh well. More chlorine for the gene pool.

To make a long story short, both he and his girlfriend were eaten by their "charges" who apparently disagreed that he had a special relationship with them.

Come now, what relationship could be more special than that between predator and prey? As someone once (allegedly) said, "Take, eat; this is my body....Drink ye all of it; For this is my blood of the new testament"

Does anyone remember this story from November 2004?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6396422/

"TAIPEI, Taiwan - A man leaped into a lion's den at the Taipei Zoo on Wednesday to try to convert the king of beasts to Christianity, but was bitten in the leg for his efforts..."

"We should add an element of quantum theology: the people leading him into the cage should also be blindfolded, and no one is allowed to observe the result. If I understand Heisenberg properly (which I probably don't), within the cage God should and should not exist simultaneously."

Nice! But we also have a Schroedinger's lion, which may or may not be well fed.

It seems the purpose of quantum theology is the purpose of all theology, to keep us uncertain about the state of the universe. This is called a super position by the believers.

"One should not test God" is from Matthew 4:7, where the Devil challenges Jesus Christ to jump off of the highest point of the Jerusalem Temple. But someone wanting stronger evidence is not the Devil.

Also the Bible has at least two "who has the more powerful god" contests:

In Exodus 7:8-13, Moses and the Pharaoh's sorcerers have a contest; they both turn staffs into snakes, but Moses's snakes eat the sorcerers' ones.

And in 1 Kings 18:16-40, the prophet Elijah challenges some priests of Baal to have another such contest; they are to convince their respective deities to set their respective offerings on fire. Baal doesn't deliver, and Elijah taunts his priests with "Shout louder! Surely he is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened." But according to the Bible, Elijah's god does deliver.

When someone once complained about someone else bringing this up, he mentioned this news story: Farmer is mauled by 47-stone pig (that's 660 lbs or 300 kg).

However, that farmer did not have faith that an allegedly omnimax being would protect him; the most faith he had was that his pig would continue to be gentle.