There is this strange site that has collected testimonials for the existence of god. If I were a believer, I'd be embarrassed at the painful lack of logic in these rationalizations. To the question "I believe in god because…", answers are non sequiturs like "because he is the creator" or "because god is real" or "because I don't do bad things".
There is also, of course, a poll, because nothing says shallow like adding a pointless poll to a web page. The question is " Does God exist?. The answers so far suggest that some doubters have already started pharyngulating it.
No! 51.6%
Yes 47.5%
Not Sure 0.9%
Another possibility is that random readers who stumble across the site read a few of the testimonials and are so appalled at their inanity that they immediately lose their faith in a sudden fit of enlightenment. Go ahead and read a few. They will simultaneously confirm your disbelief and disappoint you with the inadequacy of the average human mind.
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Urgh, from just the first testimonial:
"I believe in God because he is not only the creator of all lfe, he is also interested in each and every human life and passionately loves every single human being, even those who seem the least lovable - even those who hate him or mock him."
Even those he allows to be tortured and starved to death, and those who will be in pain all their lives due to some disease which he supposedly created, right?
The site's homepage says:
"Read the stories of normal everyday people who aren't stupid, and haven't been brainwashed, but will talk honestly and openly about their experiences of the true and living God!"
Most of the testimonials I've read do sound like the authors are very much stupid and brainwashed.
(Y'know, that would be the perfect proving ground for Poe's law)
Reading the one that starts (weirdly):
it's sad but clear that her real answer, as often seems to be the case, is that she believes because the alternative would simply be too painful to accept. Much as i wish people could just accept the truth I have no problem with belief like this. The danger is that it's the sharp end of the wedge.
um hummm
The mind boggles. Could you try and come up with worse answers?
It seems to be the religion as consoler issue with a lot of these (mainly female) commenters.
I like how the added an exclamation mark to the No! answer in the poll. Is that supposed to "prove" that atheists are short tempered or something like that?
Campbell or Progresso? Avoid MSG !
Looks like the sort through submissions before posting them.
we'll see....
I've just entered a really obviously ridiculous story about why God is real, in which I repeatedly mention the lack of evidence for God (and then dismissing this inconvenient fact in a really pathetic manner).
Even thought it was patently absurd, I'm pretty certain it'll get through.
From the "About" page on that site:
Spelling errors...check
Logical fallacies....check
Yup,looks authentic christian !
Im just wondering what the atheist bus is....
Aw... I get to look at the same kind of crap in the local newspaper.
Letter: Free speech or blasphemy?
I am seriously tempted to submit something along the following lines:
"Hi, I started believing in God after the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004, which wiped out a quarter of a million people. I went and re-read my Old Testament carefully, and started to realise that such devastation is perfectly in character for God. Also, it must have been thoroughly deserved: nearly all the people killed were Muslims (who are following a false faith), Hindus or Buddhists (worshipping other gods), or animists, who hate God even more than the Muslims (note that the epicentre was very close to the Andaman Islands which is infested with animists). Many children were killed, and this is because God says on several occasions that he will visit the iniquity of the fathers on the children unto the third or fourth generation." (Ex 20:5 and34:5; Numbers 14:18; Deut 5:9, 23:2 and 28:18; etc.). And what a glorious re-enactment of the Flood! I decided that if God treats people like that, I need to start seriously sucking up to Him."
Or maybe simply:
"I started believing in God after a terrible plane crash where all my family died, and only I survived with only fractured cervical vertebrae which paralysed me from C7 downwards. Praise the Lord for sparing my phrenic nerve and allowing me to breathe!"
NB. I do not subscribe to any of the opinions expressed in the proposed testimonies, and would never wish such things to happen to others.
The Atheist Bus is the longer one.
"Im just wondering what the atheist bus is"
http://www.justgiving.com/atheistbus
Seems to have put the willies up a few people!
*snicker
#11 Those stories just leave me absolutely breathless. The writer of that letter should simply try god next time and leave out the medical care part and see how far s/he gets. Not to mention why god isn't praised for the divine gift of the staph infection in the first place. I'm sure it was given with all the love with which it was taken away (ignoring the excellent medical care, of course).
Teh stupid! It burns.
@#11: ...yea, I guess that God is what makes the meds work. My, how blind I have been!
Doctors and science never get the deserved gratitude from these wackos...
DuckPhup> obvious i know but i can't resist doing the true version:
Here you are...
Note the bit about editing. Have you seen the TXTspk garbage on there?
Many thanks for your submission to There Probably Is...!
We will check your submission and reserve the right to edit it for spelling, grammar and general readability. We hope that's ok with you.
Please ask your Christian friends to join in with sharing the Good News of Jesus to a world ready to ask questions!
God bless,
yours in Christ,
Rev. Evan Cockshaw
There Probably Is ... !
Submit your story about God
Name * Dave Faring-Hughlar
Age * 37
Location * Swindon
Email * dFaring-Hughlar@xxxx.co.uk
Phone
Brief Biography I am a 37 year old man from Swindon who likes obscure pop music like Cliff Richards, Paul Myers, Eugenie Scott and Dick Dorekins.
I try to go to church at least four times a day, but sometimes I only manage one.
I am big and fat and like laughing at good jokes and all the local children call me 'Mr Jolly', which is funny, because I am a bit lonely, really.
Submit your story
I believe in God because it is simply to difficult to believe that life could come about by any other means.
Many years ago, when I was at school, I believed that evolution was real on acount of it being based on facts and evidence. However, when I was older, I met a man at a Cliff Richards concert who explained that you didn't need facts or evidence, you just needed to put your faith into Jesus. He explained how Jesus loves me and died for my sins. I am not a stupid man, and I said to him, 'Where is your proof?' and he showed me the Bible. I took the Bible away and read it and even though there's no proof whatsoever that the Bible is genuine, it's words made me feel a bit less lonely and so I committed to Jesus.
You can keep your facts and evidence. Jesus is the real deal.
How did you hear about There Probably Is...? via a fiend
I believe in god because...{mind goes blank, again :)} thinks 'this thinking is hard'
...
...
...
...
Nope, got nothing. Come on people, somebody help me out here.
I believe in God because...
Someone is responsible for my life being such a stinking mess and it sure ain't me!
I didn't know what I believed
I thought perhaps I was deceived
By Satan, but I felt relieved
To see through the façade.
I opened up the Holy Book
At random, to a page and took
A skeptical and doubting look
But there, of course, was God!
That's all there was; I took a chance
And gave the Holy Book a glance
Then saw the Truth and took my stance
Because I'm not naïve:
You think perhaps I misconstrue?
You think my thoughts have gone askew?
They couldn't print it if not true--
And that's why I believe!
I think you'll find the reason the poll was already about half atheistic is because the respondands are British. Look at the locations of the positive testimonials and it'll give you an idea where most of the sites traffic is coming from.
I think I'll submit a "I don't believe in gods because..." story.
Well then I believe in Batman, because he's the protector of Gotham!
The logic seems perfect.
@John Phillips, FCD: Pick your choice ---> god
BTW, when I voted, the "No!" bar had increased in size to about 81% of all votes :)
I believe in god because I ain't no monkey-man.
Hmm... the link doesn't work. Here http://www.abbreviations.com/GOD
By the way folks. Don't forget to submit your story.
Brainwashed and clueless about it in England...
"I believe in God because ... my parents not only told me who Jesus is but demonstrated what it means to be one of his followers."
I mean what more proof could one need?
Batman? Did you know he's having a secret affair with a nudibranch
That poll has either been crashed pretty hard already or they missed their target audience. I can't picture the creators of the poll being happy with an 84-15 loss... Now I just have to submit a story... just can't decided between a disbelief story and a pile of complete and utter rubbish. Since we won't be able to distinguish between our intentionally moronic fake stories and the real ones, maybe I'll stick with disbelief.
I believe in Winnie the Pooh because he's just great. Also, the book I read taught me that I can be like him, ie nice and helpful to my friends, curious and inquisitive, and that it will make me a slightly better person. I couldn't be good without it, you see, because you can't understand goodness by yourself, you have to see it defined for you in a book. And, by the way, this book does exist, and a great number of person have read and liked it. So, yes, there's no doubt for me that Winnie exists, somewhere. The fact that he doesn't interfere with my life is one more proof, because he's too polite to be intrusive.
I believe in god because...
My pastor told me that if I didn't, I'd go to hell and burn forever. My goodness, who wants that?
I submitted a "I do not believe in gods or goddesses .." story. It won't show up, but it may annoy the editor.
i also believe in sauron because he built barad-dur and it says so in the lord of the rings.
unfortunately, after submission, they say they cannot use every story. this suggests they actually selected the drivel on the front page. incredible.
(85% no, now)
Current standing:
No!
626 83.8%
Yes
108 14.5%
Not Sure
13 1.7%
I'd say it's been Pharyngulated.
I believe in God because I am a fucktard, and people like me wouldn't be viable organisms if He didn't exist. After all, if it wasn't for His constant intervention, I'd surely have done something so stupid as to render me a candidate for a Darwin Award...
Did I get that right?
Hi there,
as the creator of the site let me just explain.
you're right - many of the testimonies coming in right now are not that helpful. But I'm being kind and honouring people who've submitted stuff for now, hoping that the more useful sensible testimonies will come in too and rise to the surface in time.
the site has only existed for just over 1 week, so it's very early days.
My purpose here is very simple. I believe in God, and in the face of the atheist campaign saying "there's probably no God" to stand up and say, "actually, I don't agree, and this is why". It is simply to provide a place to present our experiences of of the true and living God so you can read them if you want to and think "Maybe there is! These people have experiened something, maybe we shouldn't write it off so soon!".
Can I ask please that people from here stop submitting stupid submissions. It's taking up my time and I've got better things to do. I don't go around atheist websites harranguing them for what they wrongly believe to be true, and all I ask for is the same respect.
Thanks!
Rev. Evan Cockshaw
Three mistakes in one sentence. Also, the main page link to the diocese of Lichfield site doesn't work. Tsk.
By their works shall ye know them indeed.
(I wouldn't let these people edit anything "for spelling, grammar and general readability"!)
8:50am EST
No! 85.4%
Yes 12.9%
Not Sure 1.7%
Probably not quite the response they were hoping for.
When I first found this site this morning (UK time) it was about 93% in favour of God with around 100 votes. I emailed the link to PZ, then set about Pharyngulising it myself. By the time I got bored it was a much more even 52% against god. Glad to see it's been hit by the rest of you guys now. :)
Submit a story?, bad enough to subject my eyes to the drivel long enough to vote!
Are we doing fake submissions? Here's mine:
I believe in a loving god because the belief comforts me and I don't want anyone to take away my comfort. He may not be able to save lives and heal amputations, but he is all-loving and that is enough.
It's amsuing how some of them seem to be unable to differentiate between "God helps people" and "Having a belief in God helps people". When I was a kid having a belief in santa made my life a lot better, that doesn't make Santa more likely to be real. It's not like faries in some cartoon where if we all believe enough they'll be real. Seeing believing in god making people behave in a different way isn't the same thing as proof for a god.
With all due respect, reverend, I wouldn't hold my breath.
In addition, it would be slightly false to judge the site just yet as I've only had a few days to work on it. I am busy with a full time job doing other stuff. There is plenty still to do on it, such as sorting out the diocesan link and such like.
Maybe you guys can find something better to do with your important time! ;-)
The poll is missing an important option: who cares?
As Stanislaw Lem pointed out, if god exists, nothing follows from that premise. It does not follow that we owe it anything, since by definition, if it is omnipotent, then everything is already as it wants it to be.
-jcr
OMG UR BREECHIN TEH CONTRACT!!!!
Rev. Evan Cockshaw #38,
I thought that's what you wanted. After all, why else would you put this on your front page:
@Mikael Hiort af Ornäs: I know a guy named Guy, so a Guy On Drugs I could believe in :). But probably more accurately, Generator, Operator, Destroyer or Guardians Of Darkness seems to fit the bill here. After all the former lives up to the claims of his followers and the latter fits the behaviour of many of his followers.
I think they've sincerely misunderstood the question. I think they are using "believe" is the sense of "believe is a good thing", like a parent might say "You can do this, kid; I believe in you". I can imagine saying "I believe in the scientific method because it has proven effective" or which is formally similar.
That they think this is the question is pretty odd. It suggests that the question of the existence of god really doesn't occur to them.
Hey Rev. Evan Cockshaw:
Why not use this thread to tell us why you believe in god? How good is your answer?
I believe because... I see god in every rainbow, sunset, and on the face of every child! ... My parents believed ... Science is hard ... I'm scurred o' dyin' ... You can't be good without god ... life would be pointless otherwise ... prayer really works! Really! ... etc.
Yay,party time !!!
Ahem,Rev.Cockshaw,
thank you for clearing this up for me,I never knew I wrongly believed....Good to see the usual christian self-centered smugness at work once more !
So let me get this straight,youd rather not have any reality-based,rational people posting on your site? Fair enough,maybe you should put up a disclaimer stating that.
In comment #19, the reply from the site upon a submission of a "I [don't] believe because..." says
How can an execution that took place in year 33 (+-4), that's 1 975 years ago, the story of which was published around year 100, and which has been scrutinised over and over again in various media after that, be considered news?
BTW, I believe in life before death. And cinnamon buns, I looove cinnamon buns, and it is my profound belief that they exist. At least prior to me ingesting them.
I'm not coming here and being rude about what you believe. I would kindly ask you to show us the same courtesy. That's all.
Awww, has the Rev Cockshaw spat the dummy? The poll has been removed. Heh heh heh. :)
Let me just cut to the chase and post this link to all the arguments I've ever seen for the existence of a deity:
http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/GodProof.htm
Evan, If you have a new one, go for it.
-jcr
If you are all keen on helping out the British Humanist Association (the backers of the Atheist bus campaign) you could do a lot worse than make a donation to their <>.
The fund is to employ a campaigner who will work full-time to co-ordinate campaigns to oppose the current expansion of faith schools in the UK and to enable state-funded schools to become secular.
Rev. Cockshaw?
"Cocksure: Feeling perfect assurance, sometimes on inadequate grounds."
Are you a poe?
I guess this means I should believe in you, right?
The following came up when I tried to access that website from work:
"This Websense category is filtered: Potentially Damaging Content."
Ahh good old websense looking out for my well being.
LOL....the poll has been removed! Bad arguments are still there however.
This is almost as good as The God Poll .
Well, I just swung by and saw a nice 87% majority in favour of rationality. Strangely, after refreshing the page I can no longer see the poll. I guess that's because "The truth is most of the population of the world believe in God!".
Though I imagine cowardice also played a part.
Andro
OK, something went awry in my last post, so here it is again.
If you are all keen on helping out the British Humanist Association (the backers of the Atheist bus campaign) you could do a lot worse than make a donation to their campaign against faith schools at http://www.justgiving.com/faithschools.
The fund is to employ a campaigner who will work full-time to co-ordinate campaigns to oppose the current expansion of faith schools in the UK and to enable state-funded schools to become fully secular.
Rev. Cocksure, so what you are only really interested in is lots of confirmation bias. Got that, dishonest to the end. Especially when you consider that your festering beliefs are still the state religion in this country with representatives in the second chamber affecting all of us. It is us Atheist who need to 'hit' back as we have had to put up with your interference in our lives for long enough. Over 2000 years of evil in the name of your god and still counting. See the article by the UK RC bishop the other day, where he claimed that educated people are ruining the RC church by questioning? That just about says it all about the endarkenment named religion. Believe your silly little stories if you haven't the wit to see through the man made BS that is religion, but stay out of my life and the government.
@Rev Cockshaw,
You claim not to go around harranging atheists for what they believe, however a quick look at the headers of your site suggests that you are actively trying to get us there. The use of the following meta-keywords seems to indicate that we are indeed your target audience:
"Richard Dawkins, God, Jesus, Christianity, Atheism, Atheist Busses, atheist, atheist bus, atheist poster, probably no God, Church of England, Church, meaning of life, deism, theism, agnosticism, agnostics, agnostic, The God delusion"
I believe in god because the bible says that he has created man in his image. This must be true, because god likes wars, floods, burning up cities, plagues, etc. And so does most humans! Isn't it wonderful?
I think randomly copying submissions and changing 'god' to 'allah', 'Zues', 'Odin', etc. will be fun.
Someone write a script, wouldja? =)
It would make it far more interesting.
from the site: The poster campaign by a group of atheists and part funded by the author Richard Dawkins has been really very succesful, in some ways at least. Raising 10 times more than the £11,000 originally hoped for they will now be placing posters all over the UK. We'd like to say 'Thanks Dicky'!!!
Uh... wha??
It probably blocked it for the "atheism" keyword, though.
Keywords: Richard Dawkins, God, Jesus, Christianity, Atheism, Atheist Busses, atheist, atheist bus, atheist poster, probably no God, Church of England, Church, meaning of life, deism, theism, agnosticism, agnostics, agnostic, The God delusion
Wow, you sure as hell don't want us there, do you?
Still waiting for Cocksure to answer his own question. Oh, and Cocksure, make sure to dumb it down for us dullard atheists, please.
I just enjoyed a big bowl of stupid mixed in with my morning pumpkin granola.
Maybe you guys can find something better to do with your important time! ;-)
Funny - I was about to make the same suggestion to you, Reverend.
The Wall Street Journal has a piece on how atheists are annoying believers by reminding them that they don't believe:
Oh really. Then why say this on the paragraph right before
You may not "go to atheist websites" but you are promoting a website for just that purpose. What's the point of having that website if not to try and convince those who know you are wrong?
Cat fight on pharyngula. Groooowl. Therefore, god exists.
Ahem. We don't believe. I think that's the whole point. Ah, just another religionut whose imagination is so limited that he can't imagine that there are people who have no need to believe, so whatever they say must be based on some "belief" (which belief is treated "courteously", implying some virtue on the side of the religionut, because actually he thinks our "belief" is silly and not worthy of respect, but he forces himself to be courteous. Which, without a belief in god, he obviously wouldn't be able to, because he would be amoral, just like us).
They appear to have taken the poll down, at least I can't find it!
Rev. Evan Cockshaw,
All your base are belong to us.
Cockshaw's site might turn out to be useful, in a sense. After being allowed to percolate for a couple of weeks, the entire content ought to be suitable for submission to FSTDT... en masse.
Here's one I've abridged slightly:
I believe in God because... I... my life... my life... me me... me personally... my life... my life... me... I... I... my youth... my dream job... give me... I was completely wrapped up in myself and my unmet emotional needs, and once God started to fulfill those needs I was able to look outside myself... me... I...
On this topic about why people believe in the mystical imaginary sky fairy, let us not forget the over 900 people that were suffering from their delusional beliefs that killed themselves in Guyana 30 years ago today, because they "believe". Why do all these idiot groups seem to come from the US? (Jim Jones, Southern Baptists, Mormons, Jehovah Witness, Scientology and all those other strange cults)
Poor Rev. Cockshaw, upset in finding out that not everybody agrees with him. Remind anybody of someone else?
Of course the Abrahamic God doesn't exist. Just ask the hard-core "good Hindus." They'll set you straight...
Better, yet, I'm looking forward to the day Focus on the Family" doesn't exist. They laid off 202 more yesterday. That, over the past three years, means they've laid off just under 600 of somewhat over 1500 employees during the past three years.
Burn Dobson, burn!
Can I ask please that people from here stop submitting stupid submissions. It's taking up my time - Rev. Cocksure
Well, that seems a pretty good reason for doing it. While that's taking up your time you won't be telling children stupid lies, at any rate.
Come on guys, this has to be a joke. "Evan Cockshaw"?
Please.
I mean, he does sound as though he's rather cocksure he'll get into heaven, but...
Posted by "Godwin":
I believe in God because ...He's answered my prayers to the specifics countless number of times.I talked with Him this morning!God is an incredible promise keeper.He has kept all His promises to me.I have tasted Him and can say that God is GOOD!
Okay - which one of you was that ... ?
Funniest. Site. Evah.
The opening graphic scored a coffee spray, but it was well worth the time it will take to wipe down the monitor. The slideshow opens with a renaiassance painting of a muscled, seductive model - obviously Michelangelo's Adam from the Sistine chapel with the Pythonesque god figure removed. The caption asks the reader to consider what's "missing from life" in a picture like this.
I submitted a testimonial, but I don't expect that it will be among those that they highlight. :-)
Apparently "me, a few chilled bottles, and a long weekend" wasn't the answer that the authors were looking for.
He's real, check out his new church
Cats don't believe in Ceiling Cat, they believe in themselves. They only let you make comments about Ceiling Cat to humor you -- much like they let you clean their cat box or feed them.
I'd like to call a Poe on the website.
I call Poe on Martin from West Bromwich. It's the "there 4" that does it:
there is acually no posibiliy that this world could be made by a human being not 1 man could make a single plant from no thing not even from chemicals so there 4 the big bang thoery can't be true... there 4 i have come 2 the conclusion that god him self is real
Mr Evan Cockshaw (not going to use Reverend, as I think it does you no credit).
Here is the first sentence on your site: "The truth is most of the population of the world believe in God! Here you will find the stories of ordinary people who explain why they believe so you can think for yourself whether there really is or not."
How on earth do you expect to think for themselves when your site only has stories from people who BELIEVE? If you really wanted people to think, you would allow stories from NON-BELIEVERS too.
I know you don't want people to think (thinking is anathema to religion), but at least you could try to be honest about it.
Rev. Cockshaw,
Congratulations on figuring out where the traffic arises from, and your politeness is appreciated.
However, note that your religion likely holds that atheists are evil and going to hell. It probably spreads this message on a regular basis. If you are Christian, it also promotes the message that atheists cannot be good citizens of the US and specifically undermines US science education and research. Given that, a little website mockery is a bit minor, don't you think?
Reverend Cockshaw,
This site, unlike yours, allows both sides. You claim we are wrong, pony up the evidence. We're all rational people here. You pop up real proof, not pathetic anecdotes, and we'll evaluate it.
I know my submission to your site was not rude, or stupid. It was purely rational.
... a Wikipedia page entirely written by Cockshaw himself: I'm surprised that such blatant self-promotion hasn't been summarily deleted.
I realize I'm yelling into a black hole here (and the fact that I am therefore standing in a vacuum further complicates matters :P ) but I would like to just mention that there is at least one Christian in the world (myself) who is embarassed by other believers that use circular logic or non sequiturs as arguments for the existance of God, the divinity of Jesus, etc.
My own faith comes from a combination of my logical understanding of the world, my own personal experiences, and yes, the organized faith I belong to. To actually define God and Their role throughout history or just within my life would be a rather large task to undergo myself. Knowledge (reliable knowledge, for the sake of argument here) passed down makes it easier to grapple with the concept of a being that is said to be infinite.
I suppose had I been raised in a different part of the world I would be a Hindu, Muslim or Buddhist instead, because at the core I would believe there is more out there than science has yet examined/explained/quantified.
And with regards to my own personal experiences, this is why I don't really act as a witness to anyone. I'm never going to write an email to PZ Myers saying "Well this, this, and this happened to me in my life, and it proves to me that God exists, so it should prove it to you as well." There is no logic to that argument, I know this.
Rev. Cockshaw:
I'd like you to answer a question honestly...
If you saw that your "poll" results were heavily skewed in the direction that favors your belief, and you even knew it was because members of a religious website community came and caused those results, similarly... would you have taken down the poll? You already know the answer...
Now ask yourself how completely dishonest you are willing to be in the name of your religion? And then ask yourself, if that's what you're willing to do, is it really the right thing to do? And then connect the dots between your religion and the need to be dishonest to support it...
Don't come here and lie to us about your honest intentions... you're not looking for honest feedback... you're looking for views that support your own. Don't you get enough of that at church?
Religion has been around long enough for those of us with rational minds to understand the god meme really serves no useful purpose. Indeed, even the biblical character of jesus confirms one need not be a christian to be a good person - the 'good Samaritan' of the parable could not possibly have been one.
Religion (and its followers) has had it all its own way for thousands of years. And now should I choose to ridicule christianity, or any other religion for that matter, in whatever way I want, I will not be stopped. The time has come to expose the slack-jawed excrement that is faith and those mind-screwed numpties who proudly profess it.
So... two questions for Evan 'Cocksure': If one conjoined twin is a christian and the other is not, where do they both go after death? And why does your god hate amputees?
Cryptic, he's British. C of E types don't say much about Hell (although they'd probably say they believe in it if pushed) and they rarely if ever trot out the "you can't be a good citizen if you're atheist" line.
British Christianity is summed up very well in that website: all subjective I-just-know-God-exists anecdotes about how you used to do drugs/sex/the occult before God told you it was bad. I've been there myself. Reading that site brings back the taste of weak orange squash.
There's not one single rational evidence based argument for one's belief in God on that site ?
What a big surprise !
@ Missus Gumby,
Holbach,is that you??
Hmmm... somebody with Wikipedia editing credentials ought to add Westboro Baptist Church to the Affiliations section, and Landover Baptist Church to the External Links.
The C of E is a broad church and the rev seems to be from the evangelical wing. Those guys are usually happy to reach for the fire and brimstone. They do serve the fire and brimstone with tea and cake though.
Nope.
Who is Holbach, and why would I be mistaken for him/her?
You pop up real proof, not pathetic anecdotes, and we'll evaluate it.
This is the problem - and is the point which drives the fundamental wedge here between believers and nonbelievers. Religion is not about objective empirical proof. If there were unequivocal empirical evidence in favour of the existence of a particular God or gods, then self-evidently there would be no atheism, and no dispute between religious sects about which God or gods exist. So repeated demands for "proof" are pointless and vacuous.
Empiricism and reason can only take a person so far. As regards the Christian faith, the only conclusion we can reach, based solely on known fact and rational inference, is that we simply don't know whether Christ was a divine being who was resurrected from the dead. We have a number of third- or fourth-hand written accounts, but beyond that, we can't know for certain what Jesus did, what he taught, or even whether he existed. So normal academic methods simply don't give us an answer to the question.
Faced with this paucity of evidence, people's reaction depends entirely on their character. Those people of a sceptical character - ranging from the doubting disciple Thomas, to the intellectual atheists of today - refuse to believe such an extraordinary claim without unequivocal evidence. And this is understandable.
But as Christ said to Thomas, "You believe because you have seen; but blessed are those who have not seen, and yet still believe." What the Christian faith asks people to do is very simple: to put their trust in Christ despite the lack of unequivocal proof.
It's rather like this. Imagine that you are standing on the edge of a dark abyss. You can't see the bottom. But you are with someone who you trust deeply, and he tells you to step out into the abyss, trusting that you will land safely in soft ground. He can't offer you proof of this, and you can't see with your own eyes that there is soft ground at the bottom of the abyss. But he asks you to simply let go of your doubts and trust him. That's what religion is like. And if you are of a sceptical or wary mindset, you're unlikely to trust your friend enough to step over the precipice - which is why belief and unbelief cannot be reconciled, even though either can be held by a rational person.
From the Rev:
No, you're coming here being a dishonest priest from a dishonest organisation that demands too much political power. Diddums to you. From your site:
Quit with the crybaby winging. You have seats in the house of Lords. You have billboards up in every church in the country. You run "Alpha course" adverts on buses, you have a dedicated programs on the BBC, and you're upset over *1 poster*.
You've been provided with ample opportunity to "explore the other side", and ample tax-payers money to do so. Grow up.
Celtic_Evolution @99,
Maybe Rev. Cockshaw doesn't like it when his poll is not Evan.
Missus Gumby,
this :
was very Holbach-worthy...A commenter here...
Muwhahahahha- way to rate all of the testimonies, pharyngulites.
The site's dumb, of course, but that thing on the front page where you can rotate the authors and find the popular ones based on the enlarging of the name is pretty slick.
Moses (of all people) @ # 85, Of course the Abrahamic God doesn't exist. Just ask the hard-core "good Hindus." They'll set you straight...
The ancient people (Aryans) who moved into India & who destroyed the Indus Valley civilization were closely related to the Mesopotamians. They carried the same god concepts as Abraham, who worshipped El ******, (I've forgotten the name - it meant the god of the mountains), as the only god, but historically there were always other gods creeping in & out. The Hindu gods Brahma, Vishnu, & Shiva can be viewed as different aspects of one god. Where exactly does one draw the line between minor gods, & angels, cherubims, etc.?
I think that the Hindu superstition, although different in observance & doctrine, probably isn't that different from Xian superstition, compare to Buddhism, or Taoism. It seems to me that they are both generally polytheistic, but the Xians, more so than the Hindus, engage in Kathenotheism.
Of course the big thing that they have in common is the suspension of rational thinking.
Equally valid.
I would believe there is more out there than science has yet examined/explained/quantified. - Philip P.
Of course there is, as I think all scientists would agree. There'd be little point in being a scientist if everything was already known, would there? What has this to do with religion?
clinteas:
Thank you. I feel honoured! And should the occasion arise, there's lots more where that came from. Heh heh.
The poll appears to be gone now.
@Walton: Your comments are very often a bit tl;dr. Have you considered registering your own blog if you've got things that long to tell the world?
Walton @ 107,
Yeah,pretty stupid,is what religion is like really.....But then again,so was your example
Richard Harris@113,
No the "Aryans" spoke an Indo-European language, not an Afro-Asiatic one. Their pantheon was related to that of the Greeks and Romans. For example, Indra (the chief deity in the Rig Veda) clearly corresponds to Zeus/Jupiter, and Krishna to Dionysus/Bacchus.
It's interesting when members of an overbearing majority act like a disenfranchised minority.
Rev. Cockshaw, you say your site was a response to the atheist bus ads? What on earth do you think those ads were a response to?
We live in a society where you literally can't sneeze without someone talking about God. To be an atheist in America or England is to be constantly bombarded with pro-religion messages -- some very subtle, some downright blatant -- in every walk of life.
And when a bunch of atheists decide to do something very small-scale in response, posting some ads on buses, you feel so threatened by it that you construct an entire website to respond?
The poll hasn't reappeared. I think comment 80 nails it: not only is the argumentum ad populum a logical fallacy, but its very premise ("the truth is[,] most of the population of the world [...]) would have looked a bit silly had the poll stayed up!
Comment 33 wins the thread.
Tssss.
Emmet Caulfield at #114: Yes, I won't deny that belief in leprechauns is perfectly possible in principle. However, there are two points of distinction between that and Christianity:
(1) To the best of my knowledge, there are no major written accounts, dating from a known period in recorded history and claiming to have been compiled from a number of different eyewitness testimonies, of people who claim to have seen leprechauns. (I could be wrong about this, as I personally haven't studied the history of leprechaun mythology.) In contrast, the Christian faith claims that Jesus lived, died and was resurrected in a specific Roman province, within a specific historical timeframe, under a named Roman magistrate (whose existence is corroborated by extraneous evidence); and it presents several accounts which, while not themselves written by eyewitnesses, do purport to have been compiled from eyewitness accounts, and do genuinely date back to the late 1st-early 2nd centuries AD (though the exact dating and provenance are hotly disputed among scholars). So while neither is backed by unequivocal proof, there is somewhat better evidence for Christ than for leprechauns.
(2) Also, a belief in leprechauns has no major consequence for one's lifestyle or ethical choices. I therefore feel quite comfortable being equivocal about the existence of leprechauns; they might exist or they might not, but it doesn't really make any difference to me. Not so with religion.
Phillip P at 98;
You say you base your faith on your own experiences and logic, yes?
I assume that you feel that you could be, nay probably are wrong on parts of your logic (as are we all from time to time)? Do you consider yourself to be a philosopher, scientist, or any other kind of specialist on the natural world?
I assume the answer will be "no" here.
If that is indeed the case, why do you choose to follow the directions of an organisation which offers nothing in the way of proof over a dynamic, self-correcting body of evidence which is mutually supportive and is a product of the finest minds that have ever existed?
What the Christian faith asks people to do is very simple: to put their trust in Christ despite the lack of unequivocal proof. - Walton
Well "despite the lack of any evidence" would be more accurate. But even with your formulation, what it's asking them to do is be stupid.
Shiiit. Have you seen people in the depths of a pot of gold binge?
Oh, and they've put up a snotty "Thanks Dicky!" message now. There goes their pretence at courtesy.
@ Walton---The default position for any rational person must be skepticism, not credulity. Otherwise, where do you draw the line on what you will believe? Your desire to reify the unseen and untested and unsupported will ultimately lead you to deny any sort of objective reality. You will live in a dream world of ghosts and goblins and unicorns and underpants gnomes.
With faith, there is no test for falsity, and everything (even logical contradictions) must be true.
Walton @ #107,
That was satire, right? Poe's Law makes it difficult to tell.
Emmet @ #114 already devastatingly pointed out that the evidence-doesn't-matter-I-have-faith approach works equally well for any invisible being(s), and completely removes any non ad populum reasons why anyone would choose Jesus over, say, Dionysus.
What I would like to comment on is your all-too-apt metaphor, getting people to jump into a deep and evidently deadly abyss for no good reason. (To complete the metaphor, you see other people jumping, and never hear from them again.)
It brings to mind kids dying while their parents pray (and while evangelicals push anti-stem cell legislation), dead snake-handlers, meaningless wars, sexism, racism, and homophobia.
Why are we doing these stupid, dangerous, deadly things?
Oh, because of faith. Jump in the hole.
You want us to jump?
You go first, and send us word.
Out of interest, Walton, what would you do if your trusted friend told you to kick a puppy? Or harass women going into Planned Parenthood clinics? Or vote to take people's marriage rights away?
There's little if any evidence for that, incidentally. The Indus Valley civilization seems to have cut down more forest and used more water than that region was able to sustain.
Incidentally, who's Dyaus Pita again, he of the could-not-be-more-Indo-European title? Krshna?
MissPrism at 82
That were funny as hell - and so true.
Lotus #44 wrote:
Yes, that's just it, isn't it? Most of the testimonials I read were exactly that: testaments to a useful product that "works" to help you with problems. It's not that people believe in God: they believe in themselves, and they look for what benefits them. When it gets right down to it, God "working in my life" is nothing more than the equivalent of explaining that it's easier to cope with things when you view it all in a comforting framework. You're reassured that you're important, and everything is going to turn out fine. The universe cares about you.
And then, somehow, they manage to describe this as thinking there's "something out there bigger than myself." A large, indifferent universe is something "bigger than ourselves." They don't want something bigger: they want the universe personalized and brought down to the level of a doting mother figure.
But how is any of that relevant to the serious question of deciding whether God exists or not? It isn't -- because it doesn't matter to them if God exists. They believe, very much, in belief.
As Dyaus Pita translates as "Sky Father", I'd expect that he's a conceptual descendent of whatever Proto-Indo-European sky god who also became Zeus pater and Iuppiter (Jupiter).
An interview with Evan Cocksure which I'm sure you'll enjoy:
astrophysicist is pioneer missionary in West Bromwich
Walton wrote:
OK... so replace leprechauns with any of the popular Greek gods of old... that should meet your requirement of written accounts and eyewitness testimony... there... any more valid now?
*cough, cough* Well, there you have it, folks. I suppose we'd better re-do our homework and try to get a better grade on it.
The problem with your analogy, Walton, is that the person asking you to jump off the cliff isn't your friend, she's a con artist, a huckster, a shill. The truth is that the pit is in fact, a pit, filled with a quagmire of bigotry, hatred, and irrationality.
Guys, I'm really not quite sure why you're behaving like this. You want to make the case that those of us with a sincere christian faith are hate mongering bigots, but we're not the ones currently chatting on this blog slagging off and offending individuals who have never done anything to harm or hurt you. I've not said a bad word about any of you and yet you've poured out a huge amount of hatred towards me.
Perhaps it would be wise for you to step back and think clearly about what you're saying and what you're doing. You might spot the irony.
Best wishes!
I'm not coming here and being rude about what you believe.
Begging your pardon, Rev, but that's exactly what you did when you said you don't visit atheist websites to mock what they wrongly (your word, not mine) believe to be true.
Great. Why don't you explain---in astrophysical terms, if you prefer---the honesty in taking down the poll when its results were perhaps antithetical to what you'd wanted?
The default position for any rational person must be skepticism, not credulity. Otherwise, where do you draw the line on what you will believe? Your desire to reify the unseen and untested and unsupported will ultimately lead you to deny any sort of objective reality.
I think the issue here relates to our conceptions of "reality" and "existence". Existence is not necessarily a binary property; it's IMO too simplistic to assert that a thing either exists or does not exist. There are different types of "existence" beyond the merely material and physical; and to constrain one's epistemology to the narrow bounds of empirical observation and logical inference leads to an incomplete and imperfect view of reality. I would argue that an element of subjectivity is not just possible, but positively essential, in a proper understanding of reality.
At one extreme, the chair on which I am currently sitting undoubtedly exists, in a physical sense. It has measurable physical properties which can be analysed in a laboratory; and even if no human being perceived the chair or knew of its existence, it would still exist, in a purely material sense.
But this is not necessarily the only type of "existence" which is possible. I would argue that love and beauty exist, for instance. They are not tangible or quantifiable physical phenomena which one can see, touch or analyse in a laboratory. And they are also subjective; if there were no human beings to perceive things as beautiful, then beauty would not be a property of those things, and beauty itself would therefore not exist. It is not a material quality, nor an objective one. But I would contend that it nevertheless exists.
Or how about music? Music, as a concept differentiated from mere "sound" or "noise", does not exist in a physical sense. But it exists in a conceptual sense; because it is self-evident that a piece of music is, in our perceived universe, something different from, and greater than, the sum total of the notes which compose it. The same for other abstractions: "society" is not a material physical phenomenon, but rather refers to the patterns created by human beings and the complex web of interpersonal relationships which connects them.
And to return to the example of the chair: while the chair, as an object, has an objective material existence independent of human perception, this is not necessarily the only sense in which the chair exists. The chair qua concept - the identification of a physical object, consisting of four legs and a seat, with the concept of "chair" is, inevitably, a subjective matter of human perception. In other words, if there were no human beings to perceive the chair, then while the object would exist in a physical sense, it would not, in a conceptual sense, be a chair; it would be nothing more than a purposeless lump of matter. The concept of "chair" would not exist, and therefore the chair itself would not exist.
It's rather like the old question "If a tree falls and no one's around, does it make a sound?" In a physical sense, the falling of the tree still generates vibrations in the air; but it does not make a sound, because there are no human beings there to perceive it.
I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but I'll come to a conclusion eventually. :-)
#136
Don't forget Scientology. We know exactly who invented it and when (very recently, actually, so the historical sources haven't degraded as much), so that's even better evidence, right?
Walton #107 wrote:
And, once you're "put your trust in Christ," what is it supposed to look like if He lets you down? If it turns out that you're wrong -- there is no God, and Christianity is not true -- how do you find that out, so you can self-correct and change your mind?
This is where I see the real problem here. The faith isn't being placed in Christ or God: the faith is being placed in the individual. They're making a personal commitment to become a spindoctor, and from henceforth turn every event, every experience, into something that is going to "confirm their faith."
You pray and get what you want? God is strengthening your faith. You pray and don't get what you want? That's because God is strengthening your faith even more. God is not infallible and constant. The believer is infallible and constant.
The leap of faith is not like the analogy you describe. It's like someone offering to make you incapable of error. All you have to do -- the little leap you have to make -- is keep saying "yes, this confirms what I already believed" -- no matter what.
You're going to find your trust supported. As you're falling. If you land on soft ground. If you land on hard ground. Or even if you end up crippled for life -- because now you really need God, and that's how He showed you. You were not wrong! You could never, ever be wrong! God exists just as you thought, or God exists even more than you thought before.
If someone has taken that little leap of faith, the chance of finding out that they've been wrong is now equivalent to the chance of God being wrong. That's a problem: if you care about truth.
If you really just wanted to be sure of something -- well, then it worked.
Richard Harris:
I believe it's "El Shaddai" who is the "El" you're looking for.
Cockshaw @ #139
Thanks for the sermon, Rev... really not interested.
You've been asked a few very pointed questions here, namely my own at #99.
If you can answer that honestly, I'd be willing to engage in a dialog further. Since that's not going to happen... you can just go back to preaching to those who actually want to be told what to do and how to do it.
Which comment struck you as the most hateful, Rev? I can only see criticism, pertinent questions which you have conveniently omitted to answer, and a dig or two at your name.
I took the poll down because it was clear that the site generally is being multiply spammed by you lot. I didn't believe it reflected the true beliefs of visitors to the site either way, for or against, but had been very heavily weighted by a few individuals repeatedly voting for their own view.
A pity really.
I Wanted to call Poe-nannigans on 'Evan Cocksure, but it turns out that he's really real (at least acording to the C of E news-sheet):
http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=31792
One for the nominative determinism file?
#105:
Cake... or death?
Me no understand. Why put up poll if only want people agree? Why spam if no agree? Why no reflect true belief if answer no?
A pity? No. A sham? Yes. Another priest/preacher showing himself to be an empty cassock, adding nothing at all to human discourse.
Cockshaw @ #148
First, you need to brush up on your definition of "spammed".
Second, putting up a poll and having it responded to is wrong in what way? Except that the results were not what you wanted to see....
So, you can HONESTLY say that you would have similarly taken down the poll if the results were skewed in a direction favorable to your beliefs? Truly? Even if you knew it was done by a religious website community? Answer that honestly, Rev... and remember... Jesus knows when you're lying... and lying is a sin...
And, once you're "put your trust in Christ," what is it supposed to look like if He lets you down? If it turns out that you're wrong -- there is no God, and Christianity is not true -- how do you find that out, so you can self-correct and change your mind?
Erm, presumably you find out after your death?
"But as Christ said to Thomas, "You believe because you have seen; but blessed are those who have not seen, and yet still believe." "
And as I'd like to add:
"And for those blessed ones, I have a wonderful opportunity for getting rich quick, which I'll reveal to them for a very modest fee."
Certainly not the best thing Jesus said (or is said to have said). But to err is human.
The comments here have become vicious and invective-filled, and for no very good reason. This is the CoE, not Westboro Baptist Church we're dealing with.
There is a very big difference between voting honestly in an online poll, and thereby incidentally skewing the results towards the natural biases of Pharyngula readers, and maliciously wasting the time of the people compiling the website by submitting hoax stories. By submitting hoax stories, you may well be overwhelming the resources of the website's owner. If you succeed in breaking the site, or forcing the site to close, then I would say that it comes very close to suppression of a legitimate (if misguided) opinion. It certainly counts as bullying tactics. It isn't very much different from a denial of service attack.
Are we simply going to prove that we have enough numbers to kick the Lichfield Diocese off the web? Not very clever, I'd say. It is certainly childish and vindictive, and damages the reputation of this website. It makes you absolutely no different from the stupid, infantile, fundie trolls we get here.
Ah. Given that every person has a weight of +1 or -1 to his or her belief on any given subject (std. deviation---or whatever measure of spread you'd like---of zero), you'd have a point.
Who are you, though, to tell me that my belief is of the same weight of a random net-surfer? Help! Help! I'm bein' repressed!
Most polls, online or not, are worthless. We've just shown that. There was simply the added bonus of slagging on some people who used ganz falsch reasoning.
Walton @ #153
Presumably? Where's the evidence for that presumption?
I believe in god because it's allowed on license plates.
No, not really. I believe god is an idea and nothing more.
The good Rev.Cockshaw is sparing our feelings by not engaging our questions since we would no doubt be devastated by the weight of careful reasoning, logic and...and...
Nah, he's got nothing.
Bernard Bumner:
Wait for it.... wait for it...
Your concern has been noted. Thank you.
Maybe I'm wrong on this, but here's what I don't understand - why is there all this bickering about the existence of God anyway? If someone wants to believe that God exists, more power to them. It's a 'free country' as they say. And if someone doesn't believe, kudos. There's no argument between religion and science - religion studies "why" and science studies "how." Now, literal creationists might get a little pissy at science, but screw them - they're a radical subset of Christianity. Evolutionary theory is supported by the Catholics, Protestants, Batptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Unitarians, Congregationalists, and members of the United Church of Christ... need I go on? Just because you believe in God doesn't mean you're Anti-science, and vice versa. I wrote a post on this recently... Religion v. Science
@127: Yeah, and they've got it hopelessly wrong too.
Um, no, it's 20 times more than the £5,500 originally hoped for.
http://www.justgiving.com/atheistbus
Walton # 142:
Didn't Margaret Thatcher say: "There is no such thing as society"?
Nick Notts #120:
I agree with Richard Harris. Too much is made out of common IE languages and gods. The the priest centric culture of Vedic India is that of West Asia.Of course, I'm not interested in non-hereditary medicinal men of Celts. For that matter all those nature gods became irrelevant anyway in Hinduism(A tragedy I suppose). IE were not the only Steppe/Cenrtral Asian population to spread their language and ironically to lose their cultural identity.
Apologies for irrelevant post.
Bernard Bumner @ #155
That's the point, Bernard... they're ALL hoax stories.
Evan, discussing our opinions of religion on this and other blogs can hardly be compared with the actions of a vastly wealthy, privileged, multi-national organisation that uses it's political power to not only spread intolerance, ignorance and bigotry but to have it signed into law.
OK, something went awry again, so here is one last attempt to get the link right;-)
If you are all keen on helping out the British Humanist Association (the backers of the Atheist bus campaign) you could do a lot worse than make a donation to their campaign against faith schools at: http://www.justgiving.com/faithschools
The fund is to employ a campaigner who will work full-time to co-ordinate campaigns to oppose the current expansion of faith schools in the UK and to enable state-funded schools to become fully secular.
Walton #142 wrote:
Of course. But this line of argument is going to support atheism, not theism.
Look at the categories of non-physical "existence" you invoke.
Emotions
Evaluations
Concepts
Ideas
Abstractions
Are any of those things "beings?" Are they invisible energy forces with magic sparkles? Are they persons who can love and feel, and make choices, change their environment, and relate to others?
It's the atheists who claim that God is an abstraction. It's a concept, a way of feeling, an idea like "liberty" which has been personified and made into a symbol like that figure of the woman Liberty falling out of the top half of her toga. We extract bits and pieces of our experience and emotions which have something in common, and turn them into broader concepts. The concepts are not literal things in themselves, that float around in some other reality. They're patterns of experience, arranged and condensed for easy reference.
God is not supposed to be an emotion, an evaluation, a concept, an idea, or an abstraction. That's what the atheists say it is. It's supposed to be a Spiritual Person which has emotions, which judges, which conceives of things and creates them.
You can't say God is real just like the number "5" is real -- but it's like a number 5 which loves you, and cares about you, and maybe can go for a walk with you, somehow.
Walton---I agree that none of us directly perceives 'objective reality' due to the filters of our senses and brain. The best we can do is intersubjectivity while admitting that we could be wrong. This is what Science is---a process of subjective observation, hypothesis, experiment, and inference. What makes it intersubjective is the idea that the observations, experiments, and data should be subject to peer review, repeatability, and logical criticism. These processes lead us to 'accept' certain ideas, which are only a provisional approximation to objective reality.
The problem with faith is that it has no such process.
My web filter at work refused to let me go to this link because it is flagged as "occult"... LOL
@ Christie # 161
You're new here, aren't you? Do you really think it's just a simple matter of belief vs. non-belief, and that's why we fight against it? Do you live in the real world?
Spend some time here reviewing the content, and the comments, and then you might get an idea of why we take such issue with religion. And stop pretending that if we would just leave the religious alone they's leave those who aren't religious alone. Catch up with reality, dear...
Christie's blog:
Christie, kudos on studying biology, and everything nerdly. And kudos on having the guts to post about it. However, you need to study up on catalysts and cellular processes if you think that slow, catalysis-limited reactions are what any origin-of-life positers are contemplating.
I notice that the Mr Cockshaw's disrepectful reference to Professor Dawkins ("Dicky") is still on the front page of his website. How christian. Again, a christian mind exposes itself in its true colours.
I suspect the reason Mr Cockshaw used the snide contraction of RD's name is nothing but pure jealousy. Jealousy of Professor Dawkins' intelligence, eloquence, fame, wealth and everything else that comes with his world-class intellect.
Fuck off, E.V.
I'm a regular here as much as anybody. Don't try to brush away my concerns with a lazy flick of the hand. If you really can't see the difference between crashing a poll, which I heartily support, and stomping all over some insignificant website, then you aren't being very intelligent.
Apparently, observations are not enough to perceive reality. Care to tell me how you determine anything, then? If you just believe it really hard, does it become true?
It's true, Christians do have this wondrous ability to change a person's mind posthumously. Just ask Charles Darwin.
The atheist bus and other ads have been amazingly effective. We are saturated with god babble along with the occasional murder and occasional defective country wrecking president like Bush from the Haters, Liars, Killers Morons for Jesus crowd.
Then someone puts up a few billboards and they go fruitbat crazy again. They can dish it out by the trainload but can't take a teaspoon's worth of propaganda.
Ironically, the greatest creator of atheists are humanoid toads like Hagee, Falwell, Kennedy, Robertson, Dobson and the like. When xian becomes synonymous with fruitbat crazy dumb wingnuts, who would want to be one?
Ms Gumby, I found it particularly amusing that the "Dicky" comment comes from someone named Reverend Cockshaw. People who live in stained-glass houses...
Dear Missus Gumby,
thank you for pointing that out about my comment on "Dicky!". It was meant to be humourous, but I can see that it could be taken as disrespectful.
I have removed it. I meant no offence to anyone.
Step away from the internets. No-one is "behaving" like anything other than normal internet commenters. This may not be the "more tea vicar", but no-one hear has even vaguely approached the arrogant condemnation metted out by the clergy in the pulpits or the broadsheets. You're not a martyr. Stop pretending you are.
Erm, vicar, they said you were wrong.
ROFLMAO. You found an atheist blog, blithely started spouting nonsense, and you were called on it. You provided not one shred of evidence to back up your position, and all of a sudden you're offended! Christians really are thin-skinned.
Wrong. You took the poll down because you're a CofE vicar: a charlatan with absolutely no useful function in society (*that*, incidentally is an insult. As a UK taxpayer, I despise the CofE). The poll results clearly and accurately reflected the views of the visitors to your site. You just didn't like them. Which is pretty much how the CofE has treated every poll that shows that are descending into obscurity whilst retaining unwarranted political clout.
Bernard...
Read the posts... and read the author's own statement on his reason for creating the site... and who he's targeting. And also take into consideration the action of removing the poll because he didn't like the results. I think it's more than acceptable to counter abject dishonesty by mocking the "witness testimony" process. And I don't think it's up to you to act as the "moral authority" to say otherwise.
I didn't see any poll. Do you think someone who didn't like the results might have pulled it down? Nah...that would be bearing false witness. Definitely a non-x-tian thing to do.
OK, I'm now going to try and reach a conclusion based on my earlier line of reasoning.
I would conclude that there is really no such thing as "objective reality". Reality is what we perceive it to be. Even observable material objects, like chairs or the Sun, don't actually "exist" in any objective sense. If there were no human beings to perceive it, there would still be a flaming ball of gas at the centre of our solar system; but it would not be "the Sun", because the Sun qua concept is a matter of human perception, and possesses the properties that we ascribe to it.
The Sun is a good example, in fact. Early people worshipped the Sun as a deity, and understandably so. Many of them ascribed anthropomorphic personal characteristics to the Sun, sacrificing animals to appease it and conducting ceremonies in its honour. They, with their limited knowledge of the universe, did not have the understanding of the Sun's nature that we have today; but they could observe the fact that it provided them with warmth and light, and, to try to make sense of this, they tried to understand the Sun in terms that made sense to them.
Similarly, "God" is the shorthand we use for a concept which is fundamentally beyond our limited understanding - for the force of good, simultaneously natural and supernatural, personal and impersonal, which drives the universe. We can't understand the true nature of God, so we ascribe to Him anthropomorphic characteristics, so as to reduce Him to a concept which we can understand. And don't forget that most of the major religious traditions stem from a much more primitive time. If the Genesis creation myth, for instance, were any more scientific or sophisticated than it is, the people of the time would not have had the means to understand it.
So I would assert that just as we do not seek to live our lives by the creed of early Sun-worshippers, but yet do not deny that the Sun exists and that it gives us light and warmth, so too, while acknowledging that the Hebrew Bible (and the scriptures of most other faith traditions) stems from a primitive and unsophisticated era and that it should not be taken literally as a picture of God or as a guide to morals, we should acknowledge that God, in a sense, exists.
No.
Many of them are simply the intellectually disjointed ramblings and wrong-thinking miscomprehensions of people with a fervent need to share their religiosity with the world. They are all wrong. However, that is very much beside the point.
The point is that we aren't meant ot be in the business of closing down silly websites just because we disagree with them. That is just bullying.
Crash the poll, tell the organisers they are wrong, send them disbelief/deconversion stories (which they will ignore, I'm sure), but don't just try to break their website with your own fiction. If we simply shut them down then we don't win the argument, we just provide them with another story to illustrate how badly behaved those on the atheist side of the argument are.
It is a lazy stereotype that theists like to throw around, and I can see no reason to satisfy it...
I've noticed the poll has magically disappeared. Obviously someone is upset by the way it was going.
Good thing I voted earlier.
Trust someone who doesn't have evidence in his favor. I don't trust people blindly.
Analogy falls apart if we don't have this trusted friend who has reason to know what's at the bottom of the abyss.
Sastra:
At the pro-marriage-equality rally this past Saturday, I saw a fellow walking around with a sign portraying Liberty and Justice locked in a passionate embrace. It went over well.
Addendum to my previous note about "El Shaddai": it is doubtful that Abraham né Abram was a historical figure, and people in the nebulous period he might have inhabited were far more likely to be polytheist and/or henotheist than monotheist. Even if you knew Yahweh was the supreme god of Israel, just over the border, Chemosh was the supreme god of Moab.
Now, I don't believe in God. I'm an atheist.
I also don't believe in being a total dick for no good reason. There's no need for the abuse going on on that website from some of you guys. You should be ashamed, really.
For the record,
the number of votes on the poll clearly outstripped the number of unique site visitors from today.
that means individuals were repeatedly voting for their chosen view, rather than just once. Hence I took it down. You'd managed to skew the results making them pointless.
Bernard Bumner:
Bernie, if you didn't catch the facetious lead in then you are a humorless crank. I was Joking. You're being an ass.
Your opinion is valued, but the condescending tone is, shall we say, a little off-putting. Incidently, I'd be a little more discerning with the" Fuck You"s, Bucko. You come off as hot headed and irrational.
Funny how ads on buses force the religious to suddenly shout from rooftops their strong "beliefs." Why the need to continutally show this? Is the faith that weak that a simple ad on a bus can erode the foundations of a belief system? I'd like to hope so.
I'm thinking the dear reverend is getting all red and puffy under his dog collar, now that he's been called on several sins he committed in connection with his website and the poll, not to mention all the bearing of false witnesses here. Do you think he'll go confess and ask for absolution now (do they do confession in the CofE?). Nah, neither do I.
Bernard -
Age:
Post-Bronze
Who am I?
I am a gullible, self-regarding twerp who believes this enormous, wonderful and, for the most part, unknowable universe was created just for me.
What do I believe?
I believe in God because I am intellectually inadequate and am unable to think for myself believing only in things which make me feel happy. I have serious trouble with reality.
I haven't studied the Bible to any great extent so do not understand how the idea of God evolved from the vicious psychopath of the Old Testament to the loving personal God most Christians believe is portrayed in the writings of St Paul through to the much later gospels. I ignore the re-emergence of the thoroughly weird theology set out in Revelation, a book written by someone I would not wish under normal circumstances to have to sit next to on a bus.
I know what I believe is true because God answers my every prayer. However, I do also admit in secret that I have no way of knowing how different the world would be if I stopped praying. I am told that it would be exactly the same but who knows? Certainly not my imaginary sky fairy.
MissPrism:
I also notice Mr Cockshaw self-aggrandizes with the appellation 'Reverend'. I am quite sure there is nothing about him to be revered. Especially when reading the childish knee-jerk reaction concerning the atheist bus adverts section on his website.
Christie #161 wrote:
Good question, and a much too brief answer:
Because the method and process involved in arriving at belief in God is sloppy, intellectually dishonest, and focused the needs of the believer -- and yet it is promoted as wisdom, humility, and character. This has two unfortunate results. It allows dogmatic beliefs to flourish with no way to check them -- and dogmatic certainty is dangerous, particularly when it's coupled with ideas of perfection, obedience to authority, and world separated into simplistic divisions of Good and Evil. And, second, it creates and villifies outsiders -- especially those outsiders who have exercised more rigor and caution in their methods. If eagerness to confirm one's prejudices and make one's beliefs unfalsifiable are seen as the "beginning of wisdom," then it is going to be difficult to draw lines in reasonable places, so that faith doesn't go "too far" and get out of rational control.
Most people do not think that, if someone doesn't believe in God, then kudos. They think that person who doesn't believe in God lacks wisdom, humility, character, and the ability to love. And, if we're lucky, they just stop at feeling very, very sorry for us.
dammit, dammit, dammit...
blockquote fail.
*headdesk*
Do you think the Right Reverend will catch the absurdity?
Walton #153 wrote:
Not much rigor in that kind of test, is there? The Church of the Subgenius guarantees salvation or "triple your money back." They boast that there's been 100% satisfaction and no complaints -- so far.
Well, here in the USA the most annnoyingly visible xians are, in fact, hate mongering bigots who lie constantly and kill occasionally. Something we see every day.
To be sure, the fundie Death Cultists are a minority of xians and not well regarded by the majority, mainstream protestants, catholics, and many evangelicals and pentacostals. The majority rarely speaks up or does anything although they did vote out their representatives, the Theothuglicans this time around.
Wrecking and impoverishing the country was not a great move on the cultists part, bad PR.
No, no, no. You're missing the point.
I'm not worried about mocking the testimonies. I'm not worried about engaging the Rev. on the comments section of this blog, or by writing to express distaste at the website and the contents of the website.
I was worried, when I wrote the original post, that people from this site might break the website via malicious submissions (and in a semi-organised manner). That simply becomes an exercise in throwing our collective weight around - bullying. It also looks a bit like censorship or supression of ideas.
If there is something that I do believe in, then it is the right to express opinions, no matter how foolish they may seem to me.
We should hold ourselves to a higher standard of intellectual conduct than we have come to expect from theists.
Much like Pascal's false wager, most of the posts on that site are reasons to follow and practice religion, not reasons to believe in God. It's mostly circular logic that presupposes that God exists.
I don't suppose all the ones who post about what effects belief in God by themselves and others have in the world realize that those effects of belief are independent of the existence or non-existence of any god. Belief is a very powerful tool that doesn't require the belief to be correct in any way.
Haha, Samphire, that's well composed!
My brother, whose brain I greatly envy, says that the God of the Bible is clearly drunk. The Old Testament is the aggressive "Come on then! I'll fight the lot of yoush!" and the New Testament is the "You're my besht friend" he comes out with five minutes later.
This is the point in the cartoon where the anvil drops on his head.
Cockshaw:
The poll was useless before we got there...
What have we learned today about the internet, Rev?
Hey, Miss Prism - I like your brothers take on the summary of the Bible. I might use it in a sermon one day! Thanks! :-)
Walton @ 142. Come on - this has to be a Poe! It starts out with a new-agey "other kinds of knowing" type argument, then goes on to the "love exists" argument. Seriously?
Although to be honest, I did like the admission that "love" (etc) exists in a "conceptual" sense, but you left out (I believe) that such concepts have no objective reality. Sure, if there were no humans around, the word "chair" would not exist even while the object did. Unless there was intelligence of some sort to recognize the differences, even the idea of "something to sit on" would not exist. But, again, the object itself would. It's really just an argument over semantics. I am not aware of anyone, atheist or not, who would dispute that gods exist in the conceptual sense - clearly people do conceive of such things. The issue at dispute is whether there is any evidence to point to an objective god, and so far the "pro" side has presented none.
When talking about gods, all you have is the conceptual sense, and not an objective one. This post-modern argument seems to be an admission that without human beings around, gods would not exist.
ps - regarding the historicity argument, you really need to read a bit more on textural & higher criticism, as well as archaeology and history. Despite some claims, there is far more evidence that Julius Caesar existed than there is for Yeshua (assuming that the hypothesis that Jesus was a title or name change does not bear out), and that if you accept evidence for miracle claims and the like from this Jewish fellow, you need to explain on what evidential grounds you deny the claims of every other civilization (Roman emperors have done miracles, so has Asclepius, Pythagoras and Buddha, to give a few examples).
Reverand,
The poll results were pointless the moment the first person voted, regardless of whether or not the polling software is so poorly designed that it allows people to vote multiple times.
#200:
After that very modulated response, I am willing to consider your point.
Irish mythology is about as well-recorded as Biblical "history", including 11th century copies of 6th century accounts of 3rd century happenings. There is no more reason to believe the Bible than the Tuatha Dé Danann. Belief in the sí, including leipreacháin and mná sí (pl. of bean sí or banshee), was widespread in Ireland until the early 20th century, despite pervasive Catholicism. Indeed, one of my own grandfathers, a pious Catholic, earnestly claimed to have seen a leprechaun and to have heard a bean sí.
There. Fixed.
Says who? if you believe in leprechauns/Jesus, it has such consequences, but not if you don't.
Your comfort level with a proposition has exactly zero bearing on the truth of that proposition.
Samphire:
What? Someone who commands infinite punishment for finite misdemeanours cannot possibly have even a mustard seeds worth of love in them. This New Testament punishment revelation is the very definition of pure hate. By comparison it makes the Old Testament God look but slightly ticked off.
Bernard:
Unless of course you wish to express that opinion on the good Rev. Cockshaw's site and it disagrees with his own...
Are you catching on yet?
I am unconvinced from your arguments that Rev. Cockshaw has gotten anything other than exactly what he deserves... and I'm certainly not going to be made to feel guilty for supporting that notion.
Feel free, Rev. Cockshaw, but please provide a link to his website in the order of service that week. I'm sure your lecturers taught you that it's not nice to present other people's ideas as your own.
Fair enough. I missed it.
But, Concern Troll has become a pretty fashionable debate-bomb. It pisses me off, because it is an easy way of derailing valid points.
You should have seen what I originally wrote...
Really, a Fuck off was simply my way of indicating mild displeasure. My eyeballs weren't popping, and the vein on my head was nearly invisible. It is a good illustration that t'Internet can be a blunt instrument in conveying the intention behind a piece of language.
As for being condescending; never my intent (other than in my reply)...
Why the debate over whether or not God exists? To me it seems important b/c of all the hurtful things people do in the name of God, thus making the question viable.
As a child of 6-8 years old, I had a neighbour-kid named Eddie who's father was a Babtist Preacher (and his mom was a rather large[read rediculously obese]housewife) who taught Eddie that going poo was the work of the devil. I wonder if anyone can guess what comes next?
Outside the front door of these Lovely Christian's house was stationed a pickle-bucket eternally filled with dirty water in which floated several pair of soiled kid's underpants. Eddie would periodically go into fits, clenching his hands to both his backside and front while running in circles, moaning and crying with the discomfort of an obstructed exctratory system. He did this at school, around the nieghborhood, and at home.
The few times I actually witnessed him go into the bathroom to do his thing, he would wail and scream with pain (it really MUST be the work of the devil, doncha-know), and I remember even at the time feeling both repulsed by and incredibly sorry for him. (Why was I hanging around? B/c there were only two other kids in my "nieghborhood", which was very rural.)
I often wonder what other types of abuse this kid had to endure, how he grew up, and what has become of him. But really, my guess is he's got his own little wifey now to pop out his progeny so's he can bring-em up just like he was. A frightening thought, but not an unlikely or uncommon happenstance.
Please remember, this kid's dad was a Preacher! Aren't families supposed to trust preachers around young people? (rhetorical)
Gah! God messed up my html. Here's the link.
Sorry, Walton, but 'love' and 'beauty' are just labels we attach to chemical reactions in the brain. I love my wife because her presence releases endorphins in my brain. I find the Book of Kells beautiful for the same reason. 'Beauty' is not postulated as having a measurable effect on the universe, it's purely a personal esthetic, a label for things I like.
Dieties of all stripes are postulated as having visible, measureable effects on the universe. So, show us the evidence.
LMAO!!! It was pointless before we skewed it. Online polls are useless because they don't have a random sampling. They show absolutely nothing. That's the point of skewing them.
Don't take this personally. One of our hobbies is to go crash online polls to show how useless they are (it's actually funner than it sounds).
My comment:
"I believe in God because one day, in my moment of deepest despair, he spoke to me. He told me that my troubles, my worries, my problems were as nothing on the scale of worlds. That I could find peace, and release from torment, should I follow him. And I did! Glorious Kali will drown the world in blood, and and all men shall be equal in their suffering before the God of the End! Praise Kali, the living, eternal god!"
It won't go through, but I figured it was important for Cocksure to know that people believe in other gods, too.
I stopped when the first one I read was 'I believe in God because when I was raped at knife point at the age of 13...'
Didn't bother reading any further.
rev @ 188:
"individuals were repeatedly voting for their chosen view"
Which really means that you don't know how to design an online poll at all, making it even more meaningless than it would have been otherwise.
Don't blame nasty atheists for your lack of skill.
"Posted by: Rev. Evan Cockshaw"
I was going to call Poe on someone having such a blatantly stupid name, but apparently he's real and is one for the Bad Astronomy guy to explain away (though do note that Sussex is hardly a good UK university!).
Nick Gotts, No the "Aryans" spoke an Indo-European language, not an Afro-Asiatic one. Their pantheon was related to that of the Greeks and Romans. For example, Indra (the chief deity in the Rig Veda) clearly corresponds to Zeus/Jupiter, and Krishna to Dionysus/Bacchus.
The point that I was trying to make is that Hinduism really isn't that different fundamentally from the Abrahamic religions, because they are related.
Blake Stacey, I believe it's "El Shaddai" who is the "El" you're looking for.
Yes,El Shaddai sounds right. The word El is simply god, but as most of the people in the Middle East were polytheists, there was a term, such as Shaddai, to indicate which one. So El Shaddai was 'god of the mountains' & Abraham worshipped that one as the only god, according to my recollection. The Hebrews maintained a monotheistic belief system from then on, although some of them deviated from time to time.
Certainly, these religious ideas have also infected Buddhism & Taoism at a further remove.
But as they're all nonsense, without a shred of evidence, they keep changing their doctrines, & split into sects that sometimes survive, sometimes disappear. Look how many different sects there are in Xianity! You'd think that the believers would question how their god-thing could let such a mess evolve, but that presupposes that they could think rationally about such matters.
SEF, oi - there's nothing wrong with Sussex. It counts two Nobel prizewinners among its staff, and has particularly strong chemistry and evolutionary biology departments.
"Posted by: Rev. Evan Cockshaw"
I was going to call Poe on someone having such a blatantly stupid name, but apparently he's real and is one for the Bad Astronomy guy to explain away (although do note that Sussex is hardly a good UK university!).
(Realised too late that the last link was missing a close quote.)
PS This thread is also moving far too fast to keep up with it!
Walton #182 wrote:
The problem I see here is that you're going back and forth between atheism and theism, and blurring them together.
With atheism, "God" is the symbol or metaphor which stands for the Known and the Unknown. It represents our sense of mystery, the good things we value, our happiest experiences of love, and the ideas we want to live by. It's no more real than Santa Claus -- but, like Santa Claus, it's associated with very real things in the world.
With theism, God is neither a concept, nor the shorthand for a concept, but an actual Force, Energy, or Being which is Mind-like. It doesn't just live in our thoughts, it exists "in spiritual essence" (whatever that means.) God drives the universe in a direction it determines, for the best result and purpose, using will as power.
This isn't "mystery" or "the unknown." We may not know exactly what it is, or how it works, but it is definitely tied to human-centered concerns and ideas like Good and Evil. And we understand what God "must be like" by looking at our human experience with how we think, how we feel, and how we deal with other people. A God that is too "impersonal" is no God at all.
There's a sense in which "God" "exists," and yet atheism is true. God becomes a cosmic Santa Claus -- no, not literally real, but figuratively real. Ending up with a God which is figuratively real is not really a victory over nonbelief. I think it's just being pretty darn clever with words.
Bernard:
Thank you for the clarification. I know that Concern Troll has become a tool fashionable to use against any dissenters. I thought my lead-in was tongue-in-cheek enough to diffuse any actual concern troll bombing. Evidently it wasn't -my bad.
"Back off!" will suffice as a first warning. A primary "Fuck off" just begs for escalated retaliation in my region of the world. Just sayin'.
Shorter Walton: solipsism therefore Yahweh.
Mr Cockshaw, I notice you have removed the 'Dicky' reference to professor Dawkins on the front page of your site. Why? After all, you have kept the smarmy, nose-thumb "We'd like to say 'thanks'!!!" insult at the end of the same paragraph. Like you, we know when we are being slighted - did you not think one of us notice it?
which are not subjects the person in question even attempted to study (the link which didn't work in the earlier version of the post had included the claim of an astrophysics background).
Oh no, I understand. The Rev. wanted a nice PR/recruitment website, and is now ex-pharyngulating the honest results of an online non-poll.
Actually, he probably genuiunely believes that we have unfairly biased the results. Which is also amusing. It is often the reaction of would-be web pollsters when their expectations are disappointed.
I'm not trying to defend the Rev. Certainly not. Clearly; he wanted one thing, and got another. Even clearer is that he is now trying to take the moral, and intellectual high ground. My only concern was that some commenters might inadvertantly hand it to him.
My only concern - based on the magnitude of previous responses from the Pharyngula readership - was that a commenter-organised flood of testimonies would overwhelm the site. Part of the problem is the gap between my starting to compose nmy original message, and the time/place it appeared on the comments.
Guys and girls. Just so that you are aware, you have really taken this thread and your atheism to the lowest limits I've ever encountered.
why you are attacking me so personally I really don't know. I'm a normal guy, married, with kids with my wife cooking tea right now. But she was on here earlier reading through this stuff and she is really hugely upset at how nasty you have been towards me personally. You've even stooped as intellectually low as picking on my name. I think the last time that happened I was about 6 years old.
Now come on. Have your free speech, write your blogs and chat on your forums. But talk about your beliefs, don't just bully and pick on individuals you've never met. I've done nothing to hurt any of you, I've been as polite as I can manage, and yet you persist in this silliness.
I am sure you must have more meaningful things to do now than make people miserable. No? Well if not, then perhaps that says just a little bit too much about you than you would care to admit.
I wasn't aware that being "flip" required a scholarly discussion, that I was talking about ancient migratory patterns of various ethnic sub-populations, or beliefs in a religious tradition that actually pre-dates the history of man, and even the earliest forms of the Abrahamic God Tradition which, I think fairly to state, didn't arise until 1600BCE in its more recognizable form.
:)
And the name you were looking for is probably El Shaddai. There are others. Izer. Eli. Etc. Etc. Etc. Also, while it is commonly accepted that Shaddai should be translated as "Mountain" it could have been taken from the name of a city "Shaddai" or it could be a mistranslation/mis-transcription of many other possible concepts. That's the problem with those ancient language religious texts. They're so poorly preserved and so full of transcription errors that they can be pulled in many directions. All of them equally valid.
Anyway, time to pick out carpet. Have fun.
Theoretically, yes - but only if you go to some trouble to ask for it. Routinely, no.
I think we've got enough to criticise about the man without bringing university snobbery into it, particularly if said snobbery is inaccurate.
Rev., Ok personal attacks(?) aside.
What did you expect from an on-line poll? That people on-line wouldn't vote on it?
On-line polls are inherently worthless. You have no control over who votes on them.
Samphire @ # 193, "I haven't studied the Bible to any great extent so do not understand how the idea of God evolved from the vicious psychopath of the Old Testament to the loving personal God most Christians believe is portrayed in the writings of St Paul through to the much later gospels.
I don't think that the bugger's changed its spots. It's just got different P R.
I ignore the re-emergence of the thoroughly weird theology set out in Revelation, a book written by someone I would not wish under normal circumstances to have to sit next to on a bus.
Yes. Consider the rather nasty ending of the New Testament... Revelation 22:
13I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.
14Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.
15For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.
16I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star.
17And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.
18For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book:
19And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.
20He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.
21 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.
Yes, that must've been written by a really nasty bit of work. (For those who aren't familiar with the bible, those are its final words.)
Evan Cockshaw denies that his job is to dumb-down Christianity to make it relevant to young people. - From the interview at http://www.inspiremagazine.org.uk/news.aspx?action=view&id=734&usg=__7q….
I'm sure that's true: his job is to dumb down young people to make them susceptible to Christianity.
Leave atheism out of it. Atheism is no guide for living, or for conducting debate.
Sastra: The problem I see here is that you're going back and forth between atheism and theism, and blurring them together... With atheism, "God" is the symbol or metaphor which stands for the Known and the Unknown. It represents our sense of mystery, the good things we value, our happiest experiences of love, and the ideas we want to live by. It's no more real than Santa Claus -- but, like Santa Claus, it's associated with very real things in the world... With theism, God is neither a concept, nor the shorthand for a concept, but an actual Force, Energy, or Being which is Mind-like. It doesn't just live in our thoughts, it exists "in spiritual essence" (whatever that means.) God drives the universe in a direction it determines, for the best result and purpose, using will as power.
Yes, sorry I wasn't clear. I wasn't arguing that God exists solely as an abstract concept in the minds of human beings, or as a metaphor or symbol - that would, as you say, merely be atheism with a slight semantic variation.
Rather, let's run with the Sun comparison. As I said, early people worshipped the Sun as a deity. They saw that it provided them with light and heat which they needed to live; and since they did not have the capacity or breadth of perception to understand the Sun's true nature, they instead do what humans often do with concepts beyond their understanding - they anthropomorphised it, ascribing to it human qualities which they could understand. We can now see that it does not appear to possess such qualities; but this does not mean that the Sun does not exist. It merely means that our forefathers could not fully understand its true properties.
I am arguing that God, for us, exists on a similar level. He, as the will and force for good which drives the universe, is simply beyond our limited human understanding. Thus, just as those early people took the Sun, a reality beyond the scope of their perception, and reduced it to a more limited concept which they could comprehend, so our varied religious traditions represent limited human attempts to make sense of the true nature of God. The Bible is flawed, therefore, because it consists of the writings of fallible human beings who tried to make sense of their encounters with the divine. And this is why much religious doctrine doesn't appear to make sense; because it represents a flawed, imperfect human conception of something which is beyond human understanding.
Cockshaw @ #231
Nice speech. Now, other than having your name being picked on (and honestly, I'd think you'd have thicker skin by now over that sort of thing... how long have you had that name?), how is anything we've claimed about you incorrect? And how does calling out your dishonesty make us evil? You can cry foul over the name-bashing if you want... it's juvenile... yeah. But the rest of it? It sounds to me like you're somehow demanding our respect out of hand? Is that it?
Remember, Rev... you set up the site and the metatags, YOU are the one that targeted us with that site...
I'm surprised more people haven't come out in this guy's defense. All he's done is made a website. Sure, it's kind of silly and pointless, but he's not picketing funerals. He even seems to be quite friendly, albeit wrong about religion.
Let the man have his website and leave him alone. Nobody on this site likes it when trolls come on here, do they? And yet those same people would then go troll another website? I call shenanigans on your hypocrisy.
Mr. Cockshaw;
I see nobody here making fun of your name. I do see people who think you are a hypocrite. You say you encourage people to think about god, yet you only present opinions from one side.
Stop playing the victim.
Mr Cockshaw. Concerning your latest post:
TOUGH
... get used to it.
Maybe turning the other cheek is not in the christian lexicon any more?
And another thing, you started it with your insult of professor Dawkins. Good grief, you have such a short memory.
What do you mean Hinduism and Abrahamic religions are related? I believe Hinduism and Judaism arose independently.
There are clear similarities between the two. I think this speaks more to human nature and to why some religions fail and others succeed.
I know I'm late to this particular party, but:
Walton @ 107:
Here's (another) problem with this analogy: in the religion version, who is the "trusted friend"? Religion itself (or Jesus)? Then you're simply begging the question, trusting faith because faith tells you to trust it. That's not rational.
In the non-religion version, I know my friend. I have years of experience from which to evaluate his honesty, intelligence, and reliability, and can weigh those along with whatever the supposed benefit is of jumping into the abyss. But you might as well be telling me that Harry Potter is there telling me to jump into the abyss.
Or is the "friend" in your analogy the church itself? Then I'd say you fare even worse. If a "friend" was urging me to risk my life based on arguments as riddled with logical fallacies as those used by churches, I'd stay put thank you very much.
Welcome to the internet. Leave your ego at the door, and please don't trip over all the diversity lying around. There's a lot of it.
@ MissPrism #234:
That's research (done in one vaunted period) and not undergraduate study (of someone probably even attending in a different period, judging by stated age). There's a difference.
We have hit a new low with this thread? What a lack of perspective on the part of Rev. Cockshaw. Our debate here has been very civilized for us. Minor little flames, but nothing major, and even a bit of humor into play. I detect a sense of we don't agree with him, so we must be wrong somehow. The old godbot problem. Everyone must agree with them. Not the case Rev. Cockshaw.
Cockshaw @ # 231, "I've done nothing to hurt any of you,..."
Yes you have. By spreading your silly superstitious nonsense, stopping people from thinking about things rationally, you hurt us all. It may even be worse than this. If you are a moderate believer, you help provide the anti-intellectual environment in which extremists can occupy their perverted place.
Here's my submitted testimony:
Never mind whether I look like a genuine theist; am I believable posing as an Englishman?
To answer the above question about the poll - it was just a bit of nonsense anyway. I wasn't exactly trying to do anything worthwhile or meaningful.
The site's been up just a few days. I threw it on as a nothing more than a bit of space filler. But if you're just going to come and vote over and over again then it's even more pointless.
For those of you wishing to criticise the work I do, just bear in mind that intellectual arguments aside I've moved into one of the most deprived areas in the UK and we actively love people who live almost wholly love-less lives. This year so far we have fed hundreds of literally starving individuals and families who have fallen through the benefits net and find themselves with no food and no means of food. That's just one thing we do.
We do a wide range of work with children and young people who have lived in the worst kinds of poverty and we aim first of all to love them and give them a happy and good time. That means games, colouring, food, fun, music.
If you want to say that I'm a worthless individual and that the CofE is something to be hated and a burden on the taxpayer (by the way - we don't receive anything from the government!), then please first at least speak to the people we actively and practically love and support.
I don't need to be here doing this job. No one forced me to come here. But I came, and I work by butt off to help other people less fortunate than myself.
I'm not trying to get any medals from any of you, but I do wish you'd open your eyes a little and stop being quite so full of hatred and anger towards someone you have no clue about.
Now... as for Kamikaze189 @ #241...
Let's hear it, E.V...
Reverend Cockshaw,
Why have you ignored the repeated requests for your justification of theistic belief? If your belief is not ridiculous then please enlighten us with your explanation.
You instead focus on the mocking posts, surely you are capable of turning the other cheek? I think that is a quality a good Christian is supposed to have?
Matt #242: there have been a few name jokes if you scroll up. The Pharyngulites have, however, shown unusual sophistication in calling Rev. Cockshaw "Rev Cocksure" rather than just "Rev Cock," so they're one up on the good Rev. and his "Dicky" Dawkins quip.
Manjappa@164,
Good point.
Hatred and anger? Are you lying for Jesus?
What we actually need to see is the evidence that Evan Cockshaw ever genuinely understood and could properly use his specific area of science (ie what his own publication record is like for a start, although even that isn't entirely reliable as an indicator). Or whether he shows any genuine science aptitude in general at all, regardless of field, rather than being a rote learner (which is the norm for all humans, with thinkers being very much the exception).
His website (as well as his religion) argues against him having any such ability.
Ummm Evan, this must be your first time on the internet. It is always this way and this thread is quite polite considering the norm.
You have yet to address any of the substantive points directed your way. Instead you are just babbling like any other brain dead god bothering troll.
Try to say something interesting and intelligent. If you can, which is looking doubtful right now. You can start by explaining why the fundie Death Cults destroyed the USA and then are dumb enough to be surprised when people end up despising them. Polls show that a majority of the US population are sick and tired of them, including mostly other xians.
I'm not engaging with your questions about my beliefs because I respect the purpose of this website. This website isn't set up for broad discussion about my beliefs it is set up to be a blog from a biologist and people commenting on his views.
all I have tried to do in engaging with you is to ask for the same level of respect.
and on the Dicky quip - I've apologised for that and removed it already.
Having looked at the testimonials, I am actually quite saddened by many of them, but especially the one by Laura, aged 20:
"I believe in God because he has saved my life by showing me hell!
When i was thirteen I was raped at knife point, and that started my downward spiral. Through the following years I battled with so many things, abbusive relationships, suicide attempts, eating disorders, drugs, soliciting, self harm, the list goes on.......
I had met two youth workers through my troubled years and they indirectly saved me, they told me about church. ....
Most things didnt change over night, but through the support of my church and God I managed to pull my life back on track...."
Just sounds like someone very messed up, who met some nice people and through friendly support, was able to turn their life around. Nothing to do with 'god'. What's even sadder is that this person will now ascribe their turning their life around to divine help, not to their own strength and the love of fellow humans.
I submitted my entry explaining my belief in the FSM. I don't expect it to show up.
Walton
Why does my trusted friend want me to jump into an abyss? Are we being chased by a hungry bear? Or is it just a trust experiment? If there's a bear chasing us, I say we step aside at the last moment and let the bear plunge into the abyss. If we eventually hear a very soft thud and faint growls emanating from below, and my friend says, "See? I told you there'd be a soft landing; it's safe to jump-let's go!" I'd say, "Are you nuts? There's a hungry bear down there!"
If it's just a trust experiment, no thanks. My response would be "You go first, then crawl back up and let me see what shape you're in."
I posted this:
I believe in God because it is so much easier to believe what people tell me than to think for myself. I was once a heathen; my thoughts got in the way of my salvation. As soon as I stopped thinking about all of the contradictions and logical fallacies involved with believing in an omniscient and omnipotent God and just learned to love him as he was described to me by those ancient books and my parents, my faith became indestructible. To those of you who keep thinking rather than "knowing," do yourself a favor and just believe in Him!
Rev. Evan Cockshaw @231,
Evan, I agree that some of the attacks on you have been juvenile, but I don't see much that could really be considered very personal; nobody is forcing you to stay. If you jump into a shark-tank while bleeding, you get bitten. Let me assure you, this is nothing compared to the feeding frenzies that creationist trolls are subject to.
To help you understand what's gone wrong here, you did a few things: 1) getting your knickers in a knot over the atheist bus ad when there's an order of magnitude more religious advertising; 2) the "wrongly believe" clause in your initial post here was smug and invited scorn; 3) the "Dicky" reference seemed disrespectful to some people who reacted negatively to it; 4) taking down the poll, and failing to address the question of whether you would've taken it down if a Christian group had voted en masse, made you seem cowardly, dishonest, and hypocritical; 5) you misinterpreted the message we were trying to send, which is "online straw-polls are meaningless"; 6) you censor comments on your own site, but demand to be heard respectfully here, which is hypocritical.
HTH
Rev. Cocksure. We pointed out that your poll was worthless, and that the "There Probably is a God Because" stories on your site are logically fallacious. Big deal.
If you find our criticism of your Bronze Age myths upsetting, don't read the comments. Nobody is forcing you or your wife to come here. I presume you believe that you possess 'free will'?
@241: "Let the man have his website and leave him alone. Nobody on this site likes it when trolls come on here, do they? And yet those same people would then go troll another website? I call shenanigans on your hypocrisy."
You seem to be confusing the expression of a contrary argument with trolling. Most Pharyngulites don't object to theists who are willing to honestly engage in discussion; it's the drive-by, AiG-quoting nimwits who just want to preach at us and ignore all rebuttals that annoy us.
Mr. Cockshaw's website is one gigantic argumentum ad populum, with or without the poll. It loudly proclaims "The truth is most of the population of the world believe in God!"
He wants to participate in a discussion of atheism, but without all that tedious business of allowing the other side to present its arguments. That's what attracted PZ's attention in the first place. There must be hundreds of thousands of church web sites that don't claim to be addressed to the general public, and we're not bothering them.
Rev @ 231: This must be your first day on the internets if you think that playing the my-feeling-are-hurt card will *decrease* the amount of criticism headed your way.
Also, I think that every time your name was mentioned it was in the context of determining if you were a Poe's Law case, ie if it was a clue that your website was religious satire rather than religious promotion (religious promotion is often so absurd that it is difficult to differentiate from satires of religion).
The one exception was when someone pointed out that you weren't really in any kind of position to call someone else "Dicky".
And none of this changes the fact that you have been ignoring the very relevant questions asked of you here, in several posts.
You, sir, are a professional fraud, and the nature of your fraud is protected by law and even enshrined in government.
On top of that, you are dishonestly running a badly designed and utterly pointless website, the sole purpose of which is to draw even more people into your scam.
A few choice words are the least that you deserve.
In a sane world, you would be in jail for massive fraud.
How does it feel lying to kids and taking old peoples' money for a living?
Hmmm, I don't think I agree with that I'm afraid.
I'm not asking to be heard respectfully here - just as a human to be afforded the same respect anyone deserves anywhere.
I've not engaged with everything posted here simply because there's been far too much - as I think someone else commented too.
And I'm only hanging around because I am still receiving spam from you lot on the site and to my inbox. Some of it has been incredibly offensive. I am also sticking around on here because of the personal attacks being made about me personally on here. If it were you, I think you might want to say something about it too.
Cockshaw @ #251
Wow... that's quite the martyr syndrome you've developed. You know, you could achieve the same lofty and commendable goals without the religion part attached to it. Don't try to conflate the two for us, if you don't mind.
Secondly, I really have a hard time accepting your "persecution" complex here... PZ started a thread discussing your website, we began a debate, and you came in of your own volition and decided to engage us in the debate. Did you really think that would happen without us questioning your honesty and asking you to show us why we should accept anything you say? I mean honestly, Rev... do you think if I went to a religious website the posters there wouldn't try to get me to see things their way? Of course they would... and the last thing I would do is get offended when they did!
I don't see the survey.
Do you have to submit a story to see it?
@Rev Cocksure #148,
I'd say the poll was very accurately showing the views of your visitors. It's just the visitors weren't exactly what you wanted. But then again, given the Meta-Keywords you used, are you at all surprised?
You have no-one to blame but yourself.
Celtic_Evolution
if all that had happened is what you say, that it was all going on here, then that would be fine. but you lot started spamming my site and my inbox with quite a lot of abusive content. So I was rather forced over here to see where it was all coming from.
I didn't come looking for a fight, and I haven't got a martyr complex. All I was saying was give me a break - I'm actually trying to love people in lots of ways, without the need to always be ramming Jesus down people's throats. But perhaps you can't see that.
SEF, you said Sussex was not a good university, and then that it was not a good university for space science, and now that it is not a good university for space science undergraduate teaching, all without any evidence at all, except the existence of Rev. Cockshaw's degree, which while surprising is only one datapoint. Stop digging and apologise to the non-existent ghost of John Maynard Smith.
I don't think Cockshaw has even the slightest clue of what real anger and hatred is. It certainly is NOT the act of making a couple of juvenile puns out of someone's last name (although it seems the juvenile pun is turning out to be increasingly accurate).
Asking someone to justify their baseless claims is NOT anger and hatred, my smug and arrogant friend. Of course, when you believe in all-seeing sky fairies and reanimated 2,000 year-old corpses, I suppose it's easy to get confused about the usage of words and their meanings.
How dare you try to play the victim when you're busy victimizing others with your lies. You should be ashamed of yourself.
Reverend, no one is mocking your humanitarian work. But that's what it is, humanitarian -- its value is in the assistance it gives to other people, not to God. Everyone here agrees that, in many circumstances, religion can be a motivation to do good things. But a) that is irrelevant to whether religious beliefs are actually true, and b) religious beliefs are also often a motivation to do bad things as well (see Prop 8 in the US).
So telling us you help people may make us think more highly of your personal ethics, but it isn't an intellectual defense of your religious beliefs. (And, just to note, I too work at a charity, so I also help people, even though I'm an atheist.)
Alright Mr. "Cock"shaw,
You are arguing hopelessly with the same illogical useless, illogical bull"cock" as most do in their sad attempts at religious reasoning.
I think that the first half of your last name (on your screen name at least) says enough about you as it is...nuf said....
Feynmaniac @ # 244
What do you mean Hinduism and Abrahamic religions are related? I believe Hinduism and Judaism arose independently.
There are clear similarities between the two. I think this speaks more to human nature and to why some religions fail and others succeed.
Yes. But it was the Aryans who invaded northern India & took their beliefs with them. These beliefs eventually were modified by influences of the native peoples & general evolution over time & place, as with all other religions.
No, the idea of Abraham as the founder of monotheism is a legendary one, which has difficulty finding support in actual history (see my comment #186). Monotheism was a late development.
Mr Cockshaw, if you want to see persecution you only have to look in the archives on this site. PZ has had several death threats - by christians no less - check them out. Our arguments against you are nothing in comaparison.
Also, you seem to think charity is only in the realm of the religious. Not so.
Cockshaw:
This is a joke, right? You've seen your own website, haven't you?
If you are getting submissions to your site that are truly "abusive", that is certainly a shame, and is certainly not my intent, or the intent of most of the participants and regulars here. But I have honestly not seen anything that reaches the level of "abusive" within this thread, Rev. Picking on your name (which incidentally hasn't been done since the early posts on this thread) is juvenile, but hardly qualifies as "abusive".
Emmet Caulfield outlined above for you the reasons why you have been taken to task on this thread... and I think they are valid, and have thus far not been answered or addressed by you.
Don't feel bad... where that kind of behavior is concerned, you are in good company.
WEll I was refering specifically to these comments:
No idea how to do quotes on here:
"Wrong. You took the poll down because you're a CofE vicar: a charlatan with absolutely no useful function in society (*that*, incidentally is an insult. As a UK taxpayer, I despise the CofE)."
Rev. Cockshaw, if you expect us to apologize, we will do so only after you apologize for all the grief your religion has caused, including wars, witch trials, etc., over the years. Otherwise, I suggest you just stop posting. You are only digging youself in deeper and the first rule of holes is to stop digging if you are in too deep.
Screechy Monkey @ #265: "You seem to be confusing the expression of a contrary argument with trolling. Most Pharyngulites don't object to theists who are willing to honestly engage in discussion; it's the drive-by, AiG-quoting nimwits who just want to preach at us and ignore all rebuttals that annoy us."
It isn't "contrary argument", in my opinion, to go onto his website and enter fake accounts. That act fits my definition of trolling.
"Mr. Cockshaw's website is one gigantic argumentum ad populum, with or without the poll. It loudly proclaims 'The truth is most of the population of the world believe in God!'"
It's his website, and it may be covered with logical fallacies. It does seem to be. Discuss that with him, argue it, but abusing the site doesn't do anything but waste his time and yours. Kind of like when a troll comes on this website.
And that is wonderful work. My wife and myself donate a good portion of our free time to charity.
My question is do you then make these people whom you are no doubt helping listen to a sermon about your religion?
Ah, I see Tulse has beaten me to it...
This year so far we have fed hundreds of literally starving individuals and families who have fallen through the benefits net and find themselves with no food and no means of food. That's just one thing we do.
Are you saying that without your belief in God, you would not help people who need it? That your religion is the only thing that compels you to give aid to your fellow men and women? That indeed, you would not do good for goodness' sake, but only because of the threat of hellfire if you didn't? I surely hope not. As Tulse said, your charity is indeed a good thing, but it has nothing to do with whether there is a God. And if your charity is dependent on you believing there is a God watching and/or that the person accepting the aid listen to you talk about that God, then it has a rotten core indeed.
Can you give examples of what you consider to be "personal attacks". The numbers of a few posts should suffice. This is the Internet. Thick skin required.
If you consider the above to be "personal attacks", it seems like you have a very thin skin. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, we conclude that the threshold of what you consider "incredibly offensive" may be similarly low.
Bear in mind that, from our perspective, you're in the afterlife-peddling business and promote the notion that belief without evidence is superior to belief based on evidence, two things that many of us consider immoral and corrupt. You shouldn't expect any more respect here than a self-confessed fraudster.
So, Walton, you're making essentially a 'god of the gaps' argument? For ancient peoples, 'god' filled up the 'what we don't know about the sun', and now that we know what a sun is and (mostly) how it works, there is no room for 'god' there. So with your 'god'. It fills up what we don't know about the universe, but with every bit our our deepening understanding, gets squeezed into an ever shrinking space.
Cockshaw:
Yes... that is indeed a sharp and pointed criticism. Abusive? Come now...
thereprobablyis.com
probably is? O ye of little faith!
I would conclude that there is really no such thing as "objective reality". Reality is what we perceive it to be. - Walton
Drivel. Walton, if a rabid dog bites you, get yourself vaccinated as quick as you can. Otherwise, you're going to die a particularly horrible death, because the dog was real and the rabies virus is real. If you were right, the victims of such bites could just refuse to perceive them and they'd be fine.
Still, at least now I understand how you manage to remain a believer, in God and in "libertarianism", in the face of all the evidence. You think you, Walton, create the universe as you go along.
Rev. Cockshaw, you complained about the "hatred" in comment 139 and the comment you claim you were specifically referring to is number 179. It's a miracle of prophesy!
Evan, stop digging your hole deeper.
We in the USA just came through an 8 year nightmare brought to us by the Haters, Liars, and Killers for Jesus crowd. People are angry because the country is wrecked and heading downhill, that recession-banking failure-war thing.
At this point, anyone claiming to be xian can get lumped in with the fundie Death Cultists and get blamed for it.
Try to think and address the substantive points directed your way. Don't expect 300 million mad as hell people to automatically assume you are some benign moderate xian. We've all dealt way more with the other kind, malevolent extremist bigots, and rather involuntarily at that.
Walton #239 wrote:
If God is "beyond human understanding" then it should probably be left alone (per Wittgenstein). But it's not supposed to be beyond what we can understand: on the contrary, God is very familiar. It's recognizable. It "makes sense" of the world for people. It could hardly do that if it was some vast, abstruse, unintelligible Unknown.
If we follow through on your analogy with the sun, God would lose the anthropomorphisms completely. Just like the sun, God does not think. God is not a person. It can't recognize values, and is indifferent to human events and well-being. It's inert and impersonal. Now there's a problem. You've got "God" -- but who cares? It's turned into "the universe." Or maybe "reality." And you have to start from scratch to work at personalizing it and infusing it with Cosmic Meaning (and not just meaning to us.)
"Force and will for Good" is an anthropomorphism. It makes God human-like -- brings God down to our level of comprehension, makes God like ourselves. Just as your own mind is a disembodied spirit, God is a disembodied spirit. Just as your own thoughts can move your body just by an act of will, so God moves things in the universe by acts of will. And God likes what we like.
Except, of course, our minds are not disembodied spirits, and we don't move our fingers by psychokenetic power. And God didn't evolve and develop its likes and dislikes in order to mate, survive in an environment, and relate within a group-dwelling species. No, God's values exist as they are, for no reason, and no purpose, and before there was anything else but God. Just the way God can be "male" even though there is no female God.
On a personal note, I should mention that I wasn't raised as a Christian, or in any religion. My family were "freethinkers" -- and my concept of God was as a kind of Life Force, an energy which runs through all things and knits them together with Love. Or something.
I no longer believe in that, but I rejected that version of God by a careful analysis using science and rational reflection. The more complicated Gods with more attributes -- such as the God of the Bible -- fall away if that one falls away.
So my basic arguments are, as you can probably guess, for a very basic kind of God. Least Common Denominator God. There are even more flaws -- and points of attack -- when you start getting specific. Or silly. Or wicked.
In which case, arguments that some versions of God are silly or wicked, but maybe God is much better, and much vaguer, than that, don't really impress me. If the only way to 'rescue' the concept of God is to turn it into Mystery and call into question everything that exists, it looks like a rescue attempt for a failed hypothesis -- and not like something you would conclude if you started out without it.
Rev Cockshaw, I commend your efforts to help the poverty stricken people of West Bromwich. Just don't expect us to not criticise your beliefs because of your good deeds. And if your motivation to help the poor is not just to alleviate suffering, but to prey on the vulnerable in order to spread divisive beliefs, do expect us to be angry.
Rev., Taken at face value, this more of an indictment of the UK social security system than it is a commendation of the Church.
The church does some good charity work, but that doesn't exempt it or you from criticism of your beliefs, PR campaigns, or working-practices.
Other than charitable tax status? Government-funded recruitment centres schools and educational institutes?
I'd happily pay for the worthwhile - listed - buildings and churches, but I don't want to support any religion. Personally, I strongly object to many of the archaic and unnecessary deferences paid by the judicial and governmental machinery to your notional State religion.
Still, you have unrealistic expectations if you expect any internet dialogue to be entirely civil. The readership and commenters of this site represent a cross-section of society, with various degrees of tolerance and/or patience, for your views. They will approach any discussion or argument with varying levels of hostility or reserve.
Don't attempt to plead for civility in discourse whilst tarring everybody with a broad brush, ignoring polite questions, and misrepresenting the views of many.
@The Rev #251
Erm, the CofE doesn't get any money from the government? Well, technically that's true, but the fact that you don't pay taxes does mean you get government assistance at my expense (I'm a UK tax payer).
Let's be open and honest here.
@ MissPrism #272:
As indeed it isn't, within the UK scheme of things, ie as a university for admitting students and generating graduates. How it matches up to US universities etc is another matter, of course, ... as is its semi-separate life as a research institution.
I'm not digging, merely correcting the original post's link failure (which would have pre-empted some of your issues had you found that page yourself and/or read it) and correcting your continuing errors.
You must have different kinds of friends than I do, because if my friend knew it was safe, he or she would just jump in & yell back to say "I'm OK, come on down!". They wouldn't push me to go first, like a royal food taster...
I feel that the answer choices are very limited, and it would be embarassing for me to chose one. In fact, they do not ask about belief, but knowledge. The absolutes yes and no are not options when you talk about knowledge of the existence of God, because we can't know for sure. The semi-grey area "not sure" seems on the other to describe someone who is almost sure, but not quite.
Thus where is the valid option for us all, which would be the other grey area : "God's existence is very, very, very unlikely, and therefore it's not worth considering it as true without further proof"?
C'mon Rev. we're waiting...
I hardly think that PZ would mind you sharing your reasons for belief here.
Mr. Cockshaw says he is getting abusive submissions to the site. For the record, here is what I submitted:
"I do not believe in god for the same reason I do not believe in the tooth fairy, Santa Claus or the easter bunny. There is no evidence for any of these characters, so the logical and rational position is not to believe in them. Christians are atheists too, about the thousands of other gods that humanity has invented over its history. I just go one god further."
Is that abusive?
What the Christian faith asks people to do is very simple: to put their trust in Christ despite the lack of unequivocal proof. - Walton
question: why?
More than that. My estimate is that at peak traffic times, PZ gets several hundred hate emails a day with several being death threats. This is per day!!!
Because of course, xianity is a religion of peace, love, and tolerance.
I'm inclined to believe Evan is probably a benign moderate xian. He just doesn't realize that in the US they have become somewhat invisible while the malevolent, extremists have tried with some success to destroy our American civilization and head on back to the Dark Ages.
I've said for a while now that the fundies would do some serious damage to the religion. The backlash is here and about what one would expect. People don't like being poor, they don't like their country and freedoms destroyed, and they aren't crazy about their friends and kids coming home from wars maimed for life or in a box.
Walton..
Derived ***entirely*** from experience, and therefor "is" material, since different experiences alter the physical framework from which the definitions of love and beauty are derived. In fact, both can even be so badly distorted that you and me would find someone else's version completely incomprehensible. So, this is hardly a valid example of something "outside" the world. You have it entirely backwards. Without the world **and** personal experience of it, the two can't exist.
Umm. Well, no it doesn't. Our personal "taste" in it is conceptual, in the sense that we become "used to" a particular type of music, and everything else becomes "noise", but the basic principles of how the sound effects us are based on very precise mathematical models, and if a note falls outside of the "acceptable" range of values, it automatically sounds either dissonant, or disconnected. I.e., we either find it to be out of place, and not part of the music, or we find it contradictory to the overall pattern, and disruptive. Its not even something we can, based on what I have seen about it, "unlearn", its hardwired into the brains auditory system, as a means to differentiate between unconnected noises, and things like speech, where the sounds follow, one after the other, in a clear pattern, and where breaks and gaps "provide" the dissonance or tonal qualities that tell us a) someone just spoke a new word, or b) someone else is speaking.
Just because you don't have a "clue" how or why someone is derived from, or connected to, the material world, doesn't mean you get to make up just so stories about how its somehow "different", and therefor science can explain it, and you need "other ways of knowing". Nor is it valid to "dislike" the answer, and therefor insist there is one you like better, because its more "personal", which is the other argument I see a lot. "Well, science *can* explain X, but I just don't like the explanation, it doesn't explain me *precisely*, so what is really going on is some fuzzy thing in the corner." Ugh! Its like someone arguing that science can't explain the sand pile in their own yard, because its a "unique" sand pile, and has a different configuration from any other sand pile, and they just don't like the generic, statistical, physics based, arguments, which describe how sand piles "in general" form, and why the frack they all look similar. Just makes you want to bang your head against your desk until you are too stupid to see what the problem with those arguments are.
SEF, how do you define a good university and in what way does Sussex fall short of those standards?
And enough of the snide "your issues" bullshit. Let's have a PROPER flame war and show Evan what rudeness on the internet really looks like. Go jump in a volcano!
SEF@229,
At least when I was there (some time ago), Sussex also had a fine reputation in astrophysics. There's no reason to believe Cocksure didn't get a respectable science degree from a respectable university. He can still be a religidiot.
Are they on to us or something? I can't find the poll or a link to it anywhere...
Sorry Walton@182, still nonsense.
The Sun does have the properties we ascribe to it through scientific methods - whether we're here to do so or not. It's the pseudo-properties ascribed to it by its worshipers that fail to exist. Unfortunately for them, those properties don't exist while they're believing, either.
The problem with the whole god concept is that there's no evidence. Earlier, E.C. rewrote some of your text showing that its reasoning applied equally well to leprechauns, to which you pointed out that there's "better evidence" for Christianity. Sorry, but you're wrong there, too.
The evidence is quite weak that Jesus even existed. There's no evidence ''at all'' outside of Christian scripture, and what's in that scripture is pretty limited. Two of the gospels are rewrites of the first, the fourth one is too late in time to be independent corroboration. Even the epistles fail to corroborate some key points in the story.
It boils down to indoctrination - most people who believe this stuff do so because they were told it was true from a very early age, and never seriously questioned it. The rest saw something appealing and, like Mr Cockshaw, studiously avoid analyzing it critically, ignoring a mountain of counter-evidence for a few scraps of weak justification, and allowing themselves to be sold.
Rev Cocksure, I played with your name in one of my posts, though it wasn't a play on the cock part, but in the shaw part, i.e. cocksure, as most religidiots are. And yes, that label is deliberate and, from experience, accurate.
However, like a lot of religidiots, you always manage to get one thing wrong and that is your statement "But talk about your beliefs". See we DON'T believe. I know many religidiots have a hard time understanding this, but again, we DON'T believe so there are no 'our' beliefs to talk about. Now if you were to say "But talk about your lack of beliefs", fine, we would agree with you, but you never seem to grasp that, unlike religidiots, we don't need to believe to live a 'good' life.
As to your good works, big deal, before my health collapsed I spent most of my spare time working with the homeless, substance abusers etc. etc. for no money. Much of it with various religious organisations doing the actual work like counselling, helping sort out benefit problems etc.. While the religious members looked down their noses at us godless doing the actual valuable work with clients while they made tea. Nothing wrong with making the tea, but how that equates to feeling superior to the godless giving up their spare time without thought of any reward other than the satisfaction of helping people, I'm not sure.
But then again, unfortunately, most xians don't actually get the real point of the parable of the good Samaritan. So does that make me a better person than you, as the implication of your post is that you should be allowed your little foibles regarding xianity, ignoring the cost to society, because of all the good work you are doing. But surely it is your obligation by your own beliefs that you do such things. I on the other hand, being a godless amoral atheist, have no such obligation yet still chose to spent my spare time doing such things.
However, I am glad that you are doing something useful with your life, hopefully if it minimises the time you have to fill people up with garbage or abusing children with your propaganda.
Sorry Matt7895,
Stephen Roberts said it much better:
Oh no! It looks like you lot with your anger and hate-filled comments have gone and run off the poor Right Reverend. With the extreme level of abuse directed at him (asking him to justify his beliefs? Picking on the CofE?? FOR SHAME, people!), I'm surprised the poor bugger lasted even this long.
Well, at least he'll have some fodder for his next sermon. Maybe he can tell the poor starving people of West Bromwich (speaking of them: why did God put them in that terrible situation to begin with?) how the evil and terrible atheists hurt his wittle feewings.
"You took the poll down because you're a CofE vicar: a charlatan with absolutely no useful function in society."
Vicars and other religious leaders are very useful, and fulfill important functions -- when they concern themselves with practical, worldly, humanist values: helping the sick, the poor, the hungry. Of course. We honor them for that. Human to human.
Whether or not they are 'charlatans' depends on several things, I think. First, whether God exists. And second, whether they know that -- or ought to know it.
Judging just by the level of reasoning on the website (which is probably unfair), a reasonable person ought to figure out that no, there's "probably" no God. God is simply a psychological crutch, and religion is a useful prop on which to hang reasonable philosophy, reasonable ethics, and reasonable behavior. They can stand on their own, of course -- but it's easier to work with God, because it shortcuts a lot of work in reasoning.
Just please do tell them that, if they hear God's voice telling them to slaughter the infidels, they should not obey even if it is God. Telling them they shouldn't do it unless it really is God, and it almost certainly is not God, doesn't help much if you've already put emphasis on personal experience with God, and therefore conflated feelings that "God is there" with the fact that God must, therefore, indeed be there.
clinteas @ 103 & 110
Your complimentary comments has compelled me to return after a spell of being away, computer problems, and just taking a break from blogging.
And Missus Gumby @ 116:
Your honored comment is warmly noted, and I should add that clinteas is one who recognizes worthiness in those who love to do battle with those cretins of self-inflicted insanity, namely, religion. Welcome to the fray!
Oh and Rev Cockshaw, on the 'upsetting' scale, how does a few people making fun of an adult's name compare to telling a child that if he doesn't do certain things he is going to roast in Hell for all eternity? Don't you think the latter is many orders of magnitude more offensive?
I admit that I did comment on the Reverend's name in a private email to him but only to copy him in on a funny story I have been aware of for some years and which always makes me laugh. I don't suppose he would mind if I copied it here:
"Dear Reverend Cockshaw,
What a marvelous name you have for someone whose whole philosophy, I assume, is based around faith rather than certainty. It reminds me of a letter once written by the British Ambassador to Moscow during the Second World War to his colleague Lord Pembroke at the Foreign Office.
6th April 1943
My Dear Reggie,
In these dark days man tends to look for little shafts of light that spill from Heaven. My days are probably darker than yours, and I need, my God I do, all the light I can get. But I am a decent fellow, and I do not want to be mean and selfish about what little brightness is shed upon me from time to time. So I propose to share with you a tiny flash that has illuminated my sombre life and tell you that God has given me a new Turkish Colleague whose card tells me that he is called Mustapha Kunt.
We all feel like that, Reggie, now and then, especially when Spring is upon us, but few of us would care to put it on our cards. It takes a Turk to do that.
Sir Archibald Clerk Kerr,
H.M. Ambassador
If you can weave the story into your next sermon I shall be happy to donate £10 to your favourite charity.
Regards"
Now we have had our little bit of fun couldn't we show to Evan that we are really quite nice people by contributing to his charitable works? Christmas is coming up, after all.
I'd be happy to donate £20 to get the ball rolling if Evan would give us an address to which to send the cash. I leave it to Evan to come and tell us in a few days time how generous we have been.
Indeed, that is one of my favourite quotes, E.V. But I wanted to write it out in my own way, instead of just coping all of it.
I don't have to do so - the UK already has a competitive entry system which reflects the regard in which various institutions and their degrees are held. There are just a few obvious big players in that league, which even people not in the UK would be expected to know. The remainder are much of a muchness apart from certain "fake" ones (created from other institutions). Ditto all the fake degrees which have sprung up recently (and that category probably should have included certain other subjects such as theology all along!).
One of the simplest ways of telling how good a UK university is used to be by the sort of 'A'-level result offers they routinely made (though a couple of universities are so high ranking that they previously had their own entrance exam system!). Universities requiring something like 4 A grades were the most selective because they could afford to be. Those taking in people with just 2 C grades etc were those who couldn't afford to be selective. However, this was ruined by the government lowering 'O'-level/GCSE and 'A'-level standards so far that they were virtually giving grades away for free.
Getting back to the real point though: Evan Cockshaw's unevidenced faith in his religion and his naive belief that his internet poll could mean anything worthwhile (even without Pharyngula people voting on it) and his selection of what passes for argument in favour of (a particular) god which he expects to impress site viewers, etc etc all argue against him being noticebly scientific in reality. Having checked out that he wasn't simply making up a silly fake name but genuinely did exist as a person with a checkable background (hence my particular choice of links rather than wikipedia), I was merely commenting that even his degree didn't have much provenance given its source.
It's a matter of statistical probability rather than any sort of guarantee that all or no people from Sussex Uni would be good/bad. Very much like the way not all polls are alike in accuracy / reliability! Although, even a bad poll (eg those on the internet) might accidentally come up with a correct result once in a while. You'd just never know without checking it against a more reliable measure.
Oh no! Holbach has finally managed to chew through the straps!
Now, if Bob C shows up, our poor Reverend will eat his words. Yes, it can get worse...
;)
I believe in God because one time when I was at a party I took like 5 hits of acid and that helped me see the light. Most people believe in God because they just "know." This is logically fallacious. Anyone should know that lol. I believe in God because after taking that acid, he talks to me everyday, literally. Sometimes he wakes me up when I'm late for class or tells me where I left my keys, or tells me what spices would go well in my soup. Some people say I'm crazy or that I went insane after those hits of acid. I say, I might be crazy, but at least I'm crazy for Jesus! Yeehaw!
and then where it says: how did you hear about There Probably Is...?
i wrote: GOD TOLD ME LOL
alright now your turn to spam the hell out of their submission box
I would use the 'Indo-Europeans' rather than 'Aryans' due to the negative connotations of the term.
I'm sorry but I don't quite understand what you are saying. Is it that the Indo-Europeans shared a common mythology with the people from Mesopotamia and that when they invaded northern India they brought this mythology with them ?
As regards the Christian faith, the only conclusion we can reach, based solely on known fact and rational inference, is that we simply don't know whether Christ was a divine being who was resurrected from the dead... So normal academic methods simply don't give us an answer to the question.
This has been adequately addressed, but that "normal academic methods" struck me. I just read a bit by John Dominic Crossan in his The Birth of Christianity that I thought was quite good. He juxtaposes the account in Luke of the annunciation to Mary with the conception of Augustus by Apollo as related by Suetonius. His point, in a nutshell, is that many who employ "normal academic methods" are quite comfortable treating the divine nature of the emperor as nothing but imperial propaganda, but insist upon erecting a fence around questions pertaining to Christian articles of faith and taking the same line as Walton here.
Crossan: "It is not morally acceptable to say directly and openly that our story is truth but yours is myth; ours is history but yours is a lie. It is even less morally acceptable to say that indirectly and covertly by manufacturing defensive or protective strategies that apply only to one's own story." (my emphasis)
Now, vis Walton's original comment, I'm not saying that "normal academic methods" have given us an answer with regard to the divinity of Jesus, I'm saying that it's illegitimate to claim that those methods are simply incapable of providing an answer unless you're willing to extend that incapacity to any and all claims of the supernatural.
Walton:
Dang, it, son! I wrote a long reply to you in another thread before I realized you were so wrapped up in this one that you'd probably never get back to that conversation.
I confess I've only skimmed the arguments here, but it seems as if you're advancing the idea that "God," as a concept, is a shorthand for some real, but poorly understood, pervasive universal life force... that we're simply personifying this force in the same way that Apollo-worshipping ancient Greeks personified the Sun.
OK, let's work with that idea: Historically, belief in the supernatural (broadly) and theism in particular have been humanity's self-narrative for explaining phenomena they could not explain in physical terms. As we have come to physical understandings of more and more phenomena, supernatural explanations have fallen away (just as now that we understand the physical nature of the Sun, we no longer believe in a god-driven chariot of fire in the sky).
Now, let me suggest that "God" is, rather than a personification of a real-but-poorly-understood universal life-force, instead an umbrella concept for everything about the universe that we don't yet have physical explanations for. That it, I'm suggesting an analog to Clarke's Third Law on the order of "Any sufficiently poorly understood natural phenomenon is indistinguishable from supernatural," followed by the idea that we lump everything "supernatural" (in the foregoing sense) together and call that "God."
In this formulation, "God" does, as you suggest, stand for "real" things... but the atheist position would be one of confidence that all as-yet unexplained phenomena have physical explanations, even if we haven't learned them yet. This confidence is not based on blind faith, but on the consistent, progressive increase, throughout human history, in evidence that the universe is governed by physical laws, along with the total lack of any evidence to the contrary. That is, if "God" consists of what we don't have physical explanations for, then every scientific discovery makes "God" a little smaller... and the logical conclusion is that "He" will ultimately disappear altogether.
And so, if it's true that once we know all that we can know, we will know there is no God, isn't it reasonable to just "flip to the end of the book" and start living without God right now?
SEF,
Further to my #305, from wikipedia:
"Sussex is a leading research university, as reflected in the 2001 national Research Assessment Exercise. All subjects at Sussex were rated as either grade 4 or 5, recognising research of national and international standard respectively. Over 90% of staff are researching at this high level, the majority in areas of international excellence.
In respect of teaching quality, 13 of the 15 subjects assessed under the current teaching quality assessment scheme have scored 21 or more points (out of 24), with Philosophy and Sociology achieving the maximum score."
In other words, you're full of it. You make an offhand comment that turns out to be wrong, but you just can't let it go and admit you were wrong. Pfft.
Rev Evan Cockshaw @ 139
There is no irony in anyone who insanely believes in anything that does not exist, so that this condition is truly attributable to insanity. You only have to prove that your imaginary god exists and the yoke of insanity will be lifted and will be rescinded both in reality and in apology. Since the blatant proof will never be offered by you or anyone of same affliction, then you will be forever branded as insane and an apology will be rendered moot and useless. Your imaginary god will be the only rescue from a perpetual life of insanity, which means that you will also die in that state.
Rev. Cockshaw,
Can I ask please that people from here stop submitting stupid submissions.
Does this mean you will continue to allow those from elsewhere to submit stupid submissions? Or are you saying some of your legitimate submissions are stupid?
I agree with you, though, that atheists should probably not submit fraudulent accounts. It's just that many of the stories are so hilarious, it's hard to resist getting in on the fun.
As for the supposed nastiness of the comments, the worst it seems is calling you "Cocksure", which is pretty mild. Other than that, the comments have at least a germ of substance to them -- people really do wonder whether you're being honest when you solicit opinions with specific content and don't show any opposing content. I think you might be able to ameliorate this with a link from your website to an atheist website with a note that you're only showing one side of the story. You don't need to pick Pharyngula, given your feelings about it probably aren't particularly warm.
Sorry about confusing your beliefs if you don't subscribe to the ideas about hell, etc. It's so hard to keep up with various Christian denominations and what they subscribe to.
He hasn't indicated any willingness to discuss it or argue about it. All he's done is whinge. Discussion and argument we can handle, but naked whingeing invites scorn. IMHO, the opprobrium has been extremely mild by Pharyngula standards.
Quite different. Pharyngula is targeted at liberal atheists interested in science, not Christians. Even so, intelligent, thoughtful Christians who make a half-reasonable case get heard and argued with. Even rabid fundagelicals, though they are ridiculed, lampooned, and insulted, are very rarely banned.
Evan Cockshaw, OTOH, included metatags that targeted us, inviting our attention, but only our passive attention. Christians contribute their moronic drool, so he doesn't have to create any content himself, and atheists are expected to read it, without having any way of responding. Now, tell me again, who's interested in dialogue and argument and who's not?
The chink in the armour was the online poll. His fatal flaw was to leave a way for us to say what we think in a way that he didn't expect. So, when we indulged in a little harmless poll-crashing fun, he came here, not to engage with us -- which was clearly never his intention -- but to whinge about it: (paraphrasing) "how dare you mean atheists come and take the piss out of my propaganda piece", "how dare you not lap up gallons of vacuous drivel", "how dare you make me do some work today filtering user-generated content".
Frankly, if he'd had a tither of Internet horse-sense, he would've just silently shut the poll down, worked through the stuff that people here submitted for a day or two, and kept the nauseating righteous indignation to himself.
I'm still laughing at Ploon's" The Atheist Bus is the longer one" remark.
Comeback of the year.
Excuse me, I have to go feed cute starving puppies...
Sorry to flog a dead thread, but for me this just demonstrates that theists and atheists have different meanings for "to believe in God". When you say you don't believe in God, they think you mean you don't trust him or have faith that he loves you, blah di blah. When you ask them why they believe in him, they tell you all the things he's done to earn their trust and faith. They don't even realise you're talking about whether or not the guy *exists*.
Always say "believe that God exists", not "believe in God". It's just unnecessarily ambiguous.
So you're another person regarding wikipedia as an authority rather than the way universities compete among themselves (in an approximation to peer review). Revealing ...
See #97 as one example for why it's dangerous to trust wikipedia implicitly. So we can add unevidenced faith to your belief in authorities (which you'd already demonstrated on another thread, where you falsely accused me of doing the bad thing which you yourself were actually guilty of doing and then threw a strop when I outed you for it).
Oh, come on, SEF. Many of those "much of a muchness" universities provide excellent teaching and research opportunities for undergraduates, particularly in newer subjects like genetics or space science. The lack of snob value and accumulated historical capital, more than any deficiency in quality, keeps their entrance requirements lower than Oxbridge.
My own degrees happen to be from institutions with international reputations, but if I thought for a second that I was superior to a Sussex graduate because of that I'd deserve to be slapped about the head with a blue-ringed octopus.
ekcol is right. And the fact that I said roughly the same before and it was lost in the dogpile on the vicar doesn't make him or her any less right.
@Miss Prism, but does our blue ringed friend deserve it, I think not.
@ MissPrism #329:
I'm not talking about space science as being a new fake subject, but meejah studies and homeopathy and the like!
Again you're missing the point of it being only a statistical probability requiring a more direct test of the individual concerned - as I already suggested might plausibly be provided by his own publication record (in astrophysics) for a start.
SEF,
You have offered absolutely no evidence for your contention that Sussex is not a good university. The criteria mentioned in the wikipedia article are those which determine how much government funding a university gets: external assessments of research and teaching quality, department by department. Now it's possible that the wikipedia article is full of lies, but given that, as you say, universities compete, is it likely all the others would just let these lies go? Now, do you have any actual evidence for your claim? If so, now's the time to produce it. If not, now's the time to STFU.
I've absolutely no idea what you're talking about in your last paragraph - but then I don't keep a mental record of all the disagreements I've had with people. Care to elucidate?
John Phillips - I should have known better than to suggest any form of cephalopod abuse on this site!
Box jellyfish?
Poor kid believes in god because his parents hated him/her:
Luke 14:26 If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children,and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.
No, I think it should be. That's the point. What gain is there by attacking - and I do mean BOTH sides attacking each other, viciously? Attacking the reasons why someone believes in God is useless. The 'religious' are not right either - they're just as bad if not worse. But in the end does it matter who started it? Both sides need to learn to live with each other. Now, I don't disagree with the post (you're still allowed to make fun of other people - and some definitely deserve it), and I don't disagree with a majority of the discussion - you post a religious comment on an atheist board and you are asking for it.
Don't get me wrong - I am very much against Intelligent Design, Creationism, and whatever else is spewed by the angry, radical right. My boyfriend believes that I will go to hell, and it is very upsetting to him to think about that. But he, and I, believe that people have the right to choose their beliefs and, for whatever reasons, if someone chooses to believe in God they can do so. Judgement in Christianity (in biblical theory, anyway) is not our job - it's God's.
What I disagree with is the attitude that there needs to be some war waged between science and religion. Waging war begets what exactly? More war. That's it. You don't need to show that believing in God is stupid - if you feel that way, that's fine. I don't believe in God, Buddha, or whatever you want to call him/her/it/them. But that doesn't mean we should attack the intelligence of people who do - does that make us any better? So we're not amoral because we're godless - we're just pompous asses who think we know better than everyone else. How does that help anyone? All it does is rally the other side to launch a counter assault.
Is it too idealistic to think that we might be able to live in the same country and 'get along' well enough to respect each other as individuals? Maybe I do need to 'catch up with Reality', then...
Howdy Folks,
I know I'm late to the party, but here's my $.02
While I don't agree with Rev. Cockshaw's religious beliefs, I don't see why anyone needs to personally attack him or make fun of his name. As another commenter said, his humanitarian works (granted they are self described) sound commendable. I don't think I'd invite him to tea, but I would hardly paint the man himself as an incarnation of evil. Religious institutions in general seem to become evil while gaining/perpetuating worldly power but I try not to generalize to the individuals who are part of them.
I don't understand the urge to vote more than once on any internet poll. I think that there are enough people who read this blog to skew almost any poll without resorting to repetitive voting to show the pointlessness of the results.
I understand why the poll was taken down by the Rev. if it wasn't representing a one person one vote result. Crashing a poll where we outvote the silliness with sheer numbers is fun and I've joined in lots of times, but a few people voting dozens or hundreds of times is just not sporting.
The people commenting on Rev. Cockshaw's website may be wrong, silly, whatever but I don't see where they could be described as insincere. Posting your own story making fun of them could be amusing in its own way (I don't believe there is any intent to damage his website) but why bother? I don't think we are going to sway anyone there by that action.
Anyway, just a few thoughts that hit me while I read through the comments here.
Cheers,
Ray
Untrue. I already told you what the evidence was. So we can add falsehood-telling to your many any various crimes against rational argument.
For your new-fangled version of rating universities (and note the inherent dodginess of it being a government-sponsored scheme!) you'd still have to show what the situation was at the time in question (which is currently a matter of guesswork based on his age in the absence of knowing his actual admission year). None of which would trump checking his own personal form for science, since it's still only a probability game.
Christie:
Christie, again... I need to ask you to look around you at the reality... this is NOT an "equal opportunity attack" issue. When, in the entire HISTORY of christianity, has it ever been simply content to just "live with" people of dissenting views? You are missing the entire point of our need and responsibility to rail against religion. You are operating from a faulty position whereby there exists some "live and let live" scenario. Do you not know enough about christianity's (and other religions, for that matter) history, both modern and ancient, to know that this is NOT the position of religion?
As I've said countless times before, if religion would simply stop insisting itself upon, and imposing itself onto science, there would be no need of any confrontation between science and religion. The two, in and of themselves, need not ever intersect, and science is perfectly happy to allow religion its goofy beliefs and fantasies right up to the point where religion insists upon being given equal footing in the scientific realm. Now tell me... which side is the cause if this problem? And the issue isn't that religion insists itself upon science, it further imposes its morals and world-views on society and politics. Have the last 8 years in the US shown you nothing?
I think you're asking the wrong side that question. Ask gay people in California that question...
Christie #336 wrote:
I gave a brief response in #195, but I'll ask a question:
Does truth matter to you?
It does seem to matter to a lot of religious people. At least, that's what they say. They have it, and atheists clearly don't. And there's more of them, than of us.
The only real strength we atheists have, is in the force of our rational arguments -- our reasons. But we're not supposed to use them, because it makes a big deal out of nothing. And besides, people won't like us. They like atheists much better when we don't use our arguments. That's why they don't like us. We argue.
Plus, of course, that part where we don't believe in God.
Not that it matters to anyone.
Christie @336
Live and let live is the principle to which most here aspire.
The point is that religions pay lipservice to this principle but don't embrace it. What people here object to for the most part is the insinuation of religion into government and the unwillingness of the religious to differentiate between their religious beliefs and secular reasoning when it comes to civil rights, legislation, and both government and private services.
I've no desire to exercise control over what another person believes, if that were even possible, but I do expect them to keep their sanctimony out of my bedroom, my classroom, my courtroom, and my hospital.
@Miss Prism. what have you got against innocent members of the animal kingdom. You get stung by a box jellyfish, your fault as you are in its environment. Pick on something your own size, perhaps a Fred Phelps :)
@Christie, we are not the one who started 'the war' against science, nor are we the ones trying to impose a theocracy on all. If all religidiots just kept their beliefs to themselves and their fellow believers, none of us would really care. We would still think them delusional, but hey, live and let live and all that. However, they are the ones constantly attacking the secular. As an example, look at what is happening in the UN. You have the Saudis heading a committee that is trying to make simply criticising religion against human rights. Seen any atheist trying to do the reverse to the religious. All we want is for them to keep their religidiots beliefs to themselves and not try to force me to kowtow to their religidiocy. Without being constantly on our guard against the religidiots we would soon end up in theocracy. However, unlike the religidiots, who really do love themselves a bit of heathen burning for all their talk of having changed, we use logic, rational argument and ridicule.
Wow, the Rev. is a wuss. We should throw his site to the 'chans and see how he holds up then.
Seriously, Cockshaw, you're playing the victim here, but you've done NOTHING to defend your point. You're practically trying to flood this site with your tears rather than engaging in the same intellectual discussion that you so fiercely demand.
Relatively recently there was a news item where a (UK protestant of some sort) Christian religious leader said that in order to gain respect from Muslims it would be necessary to be more aggressive in trying to convert people from other faiths to Christianity. At least he didn't go as far as insisting his rivals should all be killed and/or tortured (as seemed to be the favourite method when there was less opposition against that behaviour). The Pope also relatively recently claimed once again that all other Christian religions weren't proper and should become Catholics.
SEF@338,
In which comment do you claim to have offered evidence that Sussex is not a good university?
Ray #337 wrote:
I agree. As has been discussed elsewhere, "crashing" is supposed to be like "crashing a party." Not breaking stuff down with some wicked little program doing multiple votes. And the excuse that "they should know enough to put up security to keep me out" has never impressed anyone. Well, at least, not me.
Holy cow - the diocese of Lichfield. I went to school with the Bishop of Lichfield - Jonathan Gledhill. I even rowed with him in the same boat.
It was a streamed grammar school and he was in the "arts" side so he missed out on a full science education.
I think his father was in the clergy too. Our religious knowledge teacher definitely taught the bible as allegory - Rev Joe Preston - known as Holy Joe.
Aaaaaaaaaarrrrgghhhhh.
Chris P
I posted this one. What do you think odds are they'll publish it?
"I believe in God because who else would create the botfly Dermatobia hominis, to lay its eggs in a human host, so beloved of the creator, where they hatch and develop as larvae crawling into the happy victim's eyeball, causing blindness sepsis, and a great deal of pain and misery. All part of His Holy Plan. Or the Ichneumonidae, wasps with such tender loving maternal care that they inject their brood directly into the flesh of caterpillars paralysed and so preserved alive to act as a foodsource for the hungry emerging larvae. SIDS of course shows our creator's love for us, the silent death of newborn infants. As well as the host of other gifts: AIDS, cancer, leukaemia, and of course God's great love for amputees, maintaining their de-limbed status. Halleleuia!"
Sastra # 346
Agreed... vote-botting is dirty pool, and I certainly don't advocate anything that could intentionally cause DOS attack results, etc...
Besides, it's generally not necessary... our sheer numbers are more than enough to overwhelm most polls to get the point across about the pointlessness of internet polls...
The school could not have been too bad at biology because another guy rowing in the same boat was Dr Mike Painter, consultant in communicable disease control and an expert on Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease.
This guy isn't relying on prayer for a solution to Bovine spongiform encephalopathy.
Chris P
Feynmaniac @ # 319
I would use the 'Indo-Europeans' rather than 'Aryans' due to the negative connotations of the term.
I'm sorry but I don't quite understand what you are saying. Is it that the Indo-Europeans shared a common mythology with the people from Mesopotamia and that when they invaded northern India they brought this mythology with them ?
Yes, more or less.
From Wikipedia:
Aryan is an English word derived from the Sanskrit "Ārya" meaning "noble" or "honorable". The Avestan cognate is "Airya" and the Old Persian equivalent is "Ariya". It is widely held to have been used as an ethnic self-designation of the Proto-Indo-Iranians. Since in the 19th century, the Indo-Iranians were the most ancient known speakers of Indo-European languages, the word Aryan was adopted to refer not only to the Indo-Iranian people, but also to Indo-European speakers as a whole.
There is evidence of an Indo-Aryan language in Mesopotamia around 1500 BC in the form of loanwords in the Mitanni dialect of Hurrian, the speakers of which, it is speculated, may have once had an Indo-Aryan ruling class. At around the same time, the Indo-Aryans associated with the Vedic civilization, which dates back to the same period. They are sometimes called Vedic Aryans because it is believed that they brought the Vedas to the Indian subcontinent after the Aryans migrated into that region (this theory is contrary to the Out of India Theory). In ancient India, the term Aryavarta, meaning "abode of the Aryans", was used to refer to the northern Indian subcontinent.
Since ancient times, Persians have used the term Aryan as a racial designation in an ethnic sense to describe their lineage and their language, and this tradition has continued into the present day amongst modern Iranians. In fact, the name Iran is a cognate of Aryan and means "Land of the Aryans." However, many of these usages are also intelligible if we understand the word Aryan in its sense of "noble" or "Spiritual".
AlanWCan:
Pah! A stroll down Lovers Lane compared to the wonder of god's own Candiru. Google it if you are not already familiar the Candiru's particular expression of god's comforting magnificence. However, if you do, be prepared to do some extra-strength teeth clenching. And the clenching of all your other bodily parts too.
In my second post on this thread, I called him 'Cocksure.' I've never been more ashamed. All I wanted was an answer to my question, and I thought that using this pejorative might goad him into giving one. And now his wife is crying in her crumpets. I am so insensitive!
People---all he wanted was a little respect for the irrational, unsupported beliefs of his flock, and the ability to make argumentum ad populum statements. Oh, and whine endlessly. And to say that we're wrong. Is that so much to ask?
I feel so ashamed. Why can't we all just get along?
There might be some influence on Canaanite religions (including the earliest stages of Judaism) by the Hittite religion: some say Yahwe seems to have started his career like an Indo-European weather god, standing on a mountain, making rain, and making thunderstorms. Having an Indo-European language and religion, the Hittites had such a god* -- though his name, Urhi-Tessup, comes from a completely different language of the region...
* Imagine Abraham buying the cave of Machpela and a weather god from Ephron the Hittite ;-)
I saw this and thought,"oh no...here they go griefing some guy who just wants to help His community to reaffirm their faith. Why can't you guys just leave people alone...you're just giving them more ammo."
Then, I saw the metatags. The good reverend wants atheists to come to his site, so he can prosthletize, as if the only reason we're atheists is that we haven't heard enough Christians talk about what Jesus means to them. As if we haven't been in tragic and difficult situations or admired the beauty of nature or been in a situation there believing in the existance of a giant caring cosmic daddy would have made dealing with the world so much easier. As if he thought that if he could only preach to atheists,they'd magically see the light and be born again.
The reverend isn't angry because the population of pharyngula visited...he's angry that we're not living up to his fantasies. He's angry because we're a bunch of complicated humans and not a one-dimentional boogeyman.
So, rev, you deserve the griefing-- let that be a lesson! :)
Oh yeah, what I forgot to mention: I've been told this blog has 60,000 visits per day. That translates into a lot of readers who don't need to vote multiple times to change the results of even very large polls. We've done it on plenty of occasions (check out the category "Pointless Polls").
Couldn't see a poll. Submitted this:
I don't believe in God because there is no reason too. The Bible appears to be the only evidence for this God. Given its terribley self contradictory nature; racism; bigotry; rape and incest of innocents; factual innaccuracy; messages of hate to non-believers and the alterations and mistranslations it has seen over the years, it is not to be trusted. So why believe in God?
Further, people's experience isn't evidence, otherwise you would have to conclude all religions are equally valid, given the personal experience and conviction of the believers all over the world. This cannot be the case, given that all the religions can't be ture.
There is actually more historical evidence for Mohammed than there is for Jesus. But I wouldn't want to go believing in him either.
You're all welcome to your beliefs. The atheist poster campaign should realy say "There almost certainly is no God" (for one cannot disprove his existance in the same way as you cannot disprove Allah, Thor, Zeus, Horus or any of the other deities that have been produced from cultures all over the world).
There probably is no God. There probably are no pink unicorns (or white ones for that matter).
Given that religion is basically determined from one's upbrining, I suspect most people here believe in God because they were brought up to believe. You are all atheists to most religions. I've just gone that one god further. Take care, think for yourselves.
Joseph Merrick said: "I'm not asking to be heard respectfully here - just as a human to be afforded the same respect anyone deserves anywhere."
The problem as I see it is that you want a special kind of respect, a respect normally afforded only to children and the mentally handicapped. If my child expresses a belief in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, I indulge her. The belief is mostly harmless and will probably soon go away. Let her have her fun. If my retarded cousin offers me a hot dog made of Play-Doh, I don't rub it in his face and call him an idiot. As long as he isn't harming himself, I let him be. However, you are, as far as I can tell, neither a child nor a retard. You are an adult and your adult beliefs are subject to the scrutiny of other adults. When those beliefs are challenged, rather than seeking a retard's refuge, make a case for them. However, I suspect this is why the Bill Donahues of the world cry about Wars on Christmas and Eucharist desecration and Persecution. Telling them that crackers and wine really don't transform into flesh and blood is no different to them than mocking my retarded cousin because he believes his Play-Doh hot dog is the real thing.
Here is the quote from the Reverend
"For those of you wishing to criticise the work I do, just bear in mind that intellectual arguments aside I've moved into one of the most deprived areas in the UK and we actively love people who live almost wholly love-less lives"
I do find it rather annoying that the textbook case involving a Christians response to a skeptical inquiry into the assertions of the religious beliefs often deteriorates into a complete change of subject involving the feeding of children and the bringing of happiness through play into the lives of the unfortunate.
Why do you think this has a bearing on the criticism of religious belief since the one has not a thing to do with the other?
It is telling that you qualified your remark by opening with the phrase "intellectual arguements aside" since I do not believe you have presented any as yet in response to the criticisms herein.
Rev. Evan Cockshaw the whiner:
How many people on this site have declared, in all seriousness, that you deserve to be tortured without end? How many have celebrated the thought of you enduring such extreme and endless suffering? None that I have seen. Yet this sickening hatred is something christians display toward atheists on a daily basis. Do you think this is right?
How many people on this site have claimed that your beliefs make you less than human? Again, none I have seen. And again, this is a disturbingly common attack that your fellow christians make against atheists. Do you think this is right?
How many people on this site have threatened to murder you? Not a single one. Take a look back at the death threats PZ got during Crackergate, and is still getting. How many death threats has "Dicky" Dawkins gotten from your fellow cultists? How many people have actually BEEN murdered in the name of your imaginary god through the centuries? Who was that guy who said to look to the beam in your own eye before criticizing the mote in another person's? Oh, never mind, it was probably just some damned godless sinner.
So, what are you whining about "Reverend"? What are these horrible, horrible attacks you have to endure?
People have dared to ask you for evidence of your god, when YOU YOURSELF created a website collecting testimonials about why people believe in god. How terrible! People actually asked you to do what you were asking of other people!
People called you a liar and a fraud, after you made clearly false statements. What slander! Someone accurately described your actions!
People called you a coward when you refused to address valid questions, censored all stories that disagreed with you, and took down your poll when it didn't go your way. How dare they! How dare they call you a coward solely because of your obvious cowardice?
And finally, oh horror of horrors, people made fun of your name. Yes, such unendurable agony it must have been. I'm sure no one's ever made fun of "Dicky" Dawkins' name. Oh, wait, YOU DID!
Face it, "Reverend", you are a whining, hypocritical, lying coward, and you worship an imaginary tyrant. We both know you don't have the slightest speck of evidence that your god actually exists, because if you did you would have presented it by now. Your faith is too puny and weak to stand up to even a billboard on the side of a bus. You're just too scared to even try addressing any criticism honestly, because you know you'll lose. So you whine and whimper and pull out your persecution complex. But your whines are worth nothing. Your fellow cultists perpetrate attacks on atheists that are infinitely worse than anything you whine about, and you can't bring yourself to find anything wrong with that. You can't see anything wrong with you lying and insulting others for the glory of your imaginary friend. But the slightest criticism of you, however accurate, and there go the waterworks. Cry us a river, someone called you on your lies, someone dared ask you for evidence, someone showed you the tiniest fraction of how your cult treats us.
One thing I find amusing is how hard it is to distinguish the "fraudulent accounts" from atheists from those apparently seriously submitted from theists. Except, of course, that those from atheists are actually coherently written.
Isn't that Poe's law? That you can't distinguish serious theist comments from intentionally goofy stuff?
HumanLight? Really? Is that a new thing?
"It is simply to provide a place to present our experiences of the true and living God"
And of course the true and living God happens to be the god of _your_ culture. How incredibly naive.
"so you can read them if you want to and think "Maybe there is! These people have experiened something, maybe we shouldn't write it off so soon"
If a Pagan told you she experienced the Great Goddess and Horned God, would you assume that Christianity is false, or that she merely interpreted her experience according to what she already believes. If the latter, why do you not apply this reasoning to yourself?
Robert Morane
Rev. Evan C. gave a poor account of himself. I've seen this with Catholic priests as well.
I always just thought they were just dumb but am revising that notion. Many undoubtedly are.
My newest theory is that they are so used to babbling on about god this and jesus that, with no challenge whatsoever, that, whenever anyone does ask them to actually think, they don't.
In other words, no one has ever challenged the Reverend to justify or rationalize or explain anything he says, does, or believes. When people on a skeptic site do so, he acts like he has run into a brick wall. He has, and one he hasn't even seen before.
Whatever, actually he seemed to be otherwise a benign nondogmatic sort of xian. If they were all like that, Militant Atheists wouldn't exist and the USA wouldn't be sinking into quicksand.
Cockshaw #38:
You'll get it when you've earned it.
I believe in God because I can't afford the good drugs.
;-)
I think the phrase you are looking for is "calling his bluff"
There probably is a God because when the poll showed overwhelmingly that he didn't exist, he made it disappear.
Take that, secularists!
I have seen the work Evan does in west brom first hand, and yes i have a brain and can think for myself. He does not con or deceive people into becoming Christians, but seeks to help those that nobody else will go near. That can not be a bad thing.
You also ask for proof or facts that God exists. I studied philosophy of religion and therefore the arguments for the existence of God. All you can conclude is that it is down to each individual person to decide what they believe. But at some point everybody needs to decide. To simply deny that Jesus existed at all is non-sense you might as well right off any historical accounts. (although i hear some people are trying to say now that the holocaust didn't happen). If someone could show facts to prove God existed then there would be no need for faith. I guess the only advice i could give is to ask God yourself genuinely if God exists. Then i guess you will have your answer. No one can decide for another person, everyone must think it through for themselves knowing ALL the options and then decide what they believe.
Someone
So there is as much proof for Jesus as there is for the holocaust?
Also, what exactly do you mean by all of the options?
Yeah the choice is superstition and make believe versus reality.
God's supposedly an omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent being and the best you can come up with is philosophy? Here's an idea, take every argument you have for God, and see how many fit other deities. Maybe you'll understand that when it comes to reality, arguments are nothing more than mental masturbation.
*asks* No, no God doesn't exist. You've wasted your life on a fairy tale.
Someone
I assume you are a christian.
Perhaps by "all the options" you are only speaking of the 30,000 various christian sects. Or maybe you do mean all of them? Seems an awful waste of time.
"To simply deny that Jesus existed at all is non-sense you might as well right off any historical accounts."
There is absolutely zero evidence that a historical Jesus Christ existed, except for what is written in the bible. There is absolutely no record of such a person having lived or been executed, even though the Romans are well-known for having kept extremely detailed records of everything they did, especially executions. There is no mention of Jesus by any of the major Greek or Roman historians living at the time. We have scores of written records of many other historical figures who existed two thousand years ago. We have none of Jesus except for the self-validating bible...which is to say we have none.
"I guess the only advice i could give is to ask God yourself genuinely if God exists."
Hahahah. You can't be serious?
Ask which deity? Find value in unsupported guess work? Disregard ages of magic-worship proven wrong?
No.
Faith is evil. It disrupts rational thought. It's deceptive at its core. It lies. It gives false comfort. It caters to fear. It promotes willful ignorance.
At an earlier time faith had its value. Not anymore. All faith will bring humanity at this point in our development is armageddon. Funny, just what the faithful wish for.
Yes, the existence of God is a subjective experience. He may exist for you, but he doesn't for me... *roll*
Either God exists or he doesn't, it's not a matter of belief, it's a matter of reality. Does the Flying Spaghetti Monster Exist? Does Ra exist? Does Odin exist? Does Apollo exist? Does Bigfoot exist? Does Santa exist? These are not personal questions, these are positive indicators of reality. Ra doesn't exist for the Ancient Egyptians and no-one else, his existence is external to belief. What makes the Judao-Christian deity any more tangible than the pantheistic entity known as Brahman?
Yeah, but there's so many flavours of superstition. Which to choose? Which to choose? A portion of light Christianity in a holistic homeopathy sauce, a little Reiki on the side, and batons of astrology and crystal healing, perhaps?
Nick Gotts at #289: Drivel. Walton, if a rabid dog bites you, get yourself vaccinated as quick as you can. Otherwise, you're going to die a particularly horrible death, because the dog was real and the rabies virus is real. If you were right, the victims of such bites could just refuse to perceive them and they'd be fine.
You misunderstand me (which is my fault; my last few posts weren't my most coherent). Obviously I'm not seriously arguing that we choose what is real by choosing what we perceive. And to an extent I was talking nonsense in arguing that there is "no objective reality"; I just wanted to throw that idea out there to see whether it stood up to examination.
But it is arguable, in a certain sense, that we each experience our own personal universes, and that we mould them subconsciously according to our pre-existing beliefs, expectations and general paradigm of perception.
A good example (which was discussed earlier in a different context) is those people who have religious visions or near-death experiences. It's not my intention to discuss whether these are psychological delusions or real manifestations of the supernatural; I haven't investigated them and I'm not qualified to discuss the topic. But the relevant point for my purposes here is that, among all the people who have such experiences, most report visions or encounters with the God or gods in which they already believe (or which is prevalent in their culture). A Christian having a vision or NDE is unlikely to see visions of Vishnu, or Zeus. Why? The nature of the phenomenon itself (whatever it may be) is not different. But we filter it through our own perception and our own understanding of the universe.
My contention, and general belief, is that there is a God - a universal, living force which drives the universe - which is beyond human understanding, and which each culture accordingly perceives in different ways, according to its own context. For those of us raised in the Abrahamic tradition, the cultural roots of our faith are in a nomadic desert civilisation; and those desert nomads perceived God in a certain way because that was all they could understand. Other cultures and traditions have very different images of God; and some (such as Hinduism) ascribe many different faces and identities to God. But we're all talking about the same, universal God.
The Bible - which, unlike some other religious texts, has never claimed to have been dictated directly by God - is flawed, because it was written by fallible human beings recording their encounters with the divine, encounters which they understood only imperfectly. And the teachings fit into their cultural context; which is why we need not follow every moral injunction in the Bible.
But I do think religious teachings reveal something deep - some limited insight into the reality of the divine. For instance, where Christ remarked "Before Abraham was, I am," (evoking one of the names by which God identified Himself to the Israelites), was He not perhaps hinting at the mysteries of the pan-dimensional nature of God - God being outside time, and therefore experiencing all times and all places simultaneously?
Anything put up by someone who writes this "...We're not after weirdo's or wacko's..." won't get any of my time.
As an aside, I am wondering what it is that the weirdos and wackos have that those people want?
Someone from West Brom,
The bible is full of stories of god interacting directly with people - he spoke to Noah, to Moses, sent angels to save Lot and his family - and then turned his wife into a pillar of salt; similarly, Jesus performed many miracles while people looked on.
Surely the best way for god to ensure our salvations (which you'd think would be what he wants, since he's good and all) would be to continue with the occasional miracle, lecture and/or burning bush.
Why do you think god suddenly chose to stop acting in such a way as to make his existence unambiguous?
Wait, you're using history to prove religion? That's not faith. What good is faith if you are appealing to history?
Now you must distinguish between a godlike Jesus and a historical Jesus. Is there any evidence that Jesus performed miracles and rose from the dead? No. Is there any evidence that the jewish cult leader even existed? Very scant evidence written well after the rise of Christianity. There's simply no real evidence to support the gospels, and given the tales the gospels tell, that's a lot of faith in them being real.
Someone from West Brom:
OK. Provide your canon of contemporary historical accounts. Actually, even if you could (and you won't - you'll do exactly what everyone else of your ilk does) it wouldn't get anywhere near close enough to provide the divinity of the biblical character.
It's time for you to crack open a history book or two. People have been denying the Holocaust since WWII. It is not a recent phenomenon. Why didn't you do your research before you posted here?
Eh? "knowing ALL the options"
How is someone likely to manage that? How is it possible to know that we even have the first inkling of what all options would be?
It's possible to do good, be honorable and have no adherence to a deity of any kind. If someone needs to claim adherence to a deity to do good, they have a serious problem of conscience. Either good is done, or it isn't. The question of deity has nothing what so ever to do with it.
Either God exists or he doesn't, it's not a matter of belief, it's a matter of reality... These are not personal questions, these are positive indicators of reality. Ra doesn't exist for the Ancient Egyptians and no-one else, his existence is external to belief. What makes the Judao-Christian deity any more tangible than the pantheistic entity known as Brahman?
That's exactly the notion that I'm trying to challenge. I'm arguing that, in this context, existence is not a binary quality; it's a false dichotomy to claim that each of these, individually, either "exists" or "does not exist". Rather, I'm arguing that the Judeo-Christian deity, Brahman, Ra, and most other deities you might care to name are hazy, limited and flawed human perceptions of the reality of the divine, something which is inherently beyond our understanding. To argue that they simply "do not exist" in any sense beyond human imagination is, with respect, closed-minded. I choose to believe that there is a force of life which drives the universe - albeit that it is locked in constant battle with the forces of evil. Admittedly, this thesis is empirically untestable; but it is consistent with observed reality (since it explains both good and evil in the universe), and circumvents the logical flaws inherent in the constraints of conventional/orthodox theistic belief.
Like what? How best to mutilate the genitals of your children? How best to massacre and rape those who aren't part of your paternalistic, misogynistic in-group? What, specifically, are you talking about?
"There is one notable thing about our Christianity: bad, bloody, merciless, money-grabbing and predatory as it is - in our country particularly, and in all other Christian countries in a somewhat modified degree - it is still a hundred times better than the Christianity of the Bible, with its prodigious crime- the invention of Hell. Measured by our Christianity of to-day, bad as it is, hypocritical as it is, empty and hollow as it is, neither the Deity nor His Son is a Christian, nor qualified for that moderately high place. Ours is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilt." [Mark Twain, "Reflections on Religion"]
Moreover - why no mention of DNA in the bible? Atoms? How about an explanation of Advance of perihelion of Mercury's orbit? That would have been some pretty convincing information that a deity should easily be able to put in his special book. Instead, nothing compelling. Ancient fantasy. Ignorant garbage.
Here's the problem. If it's beyond human imagination then we can't know about it. So if we can't know about it, then the concept of God has as much credulity or chance to exist as the concept of the Invisible Pink Unicorn or Ziltoid The Omniscient. Again, it's a game of mental masturbation. If you say it's beyond imagination, then we can't know and anyone who claims to know is only deceiving themselves and others.
You can't have your cake and eat it too. Either the divine is beyond imagination or it isn't. If it's beyond imagination, we don't know, we can't know and there's no point in trying to know. The question of whether the Judao-Christian deity exists or not can only have a binary answer. Either Bigfoot exists or he doesn't. Either the giant squid exists or it doesn't. Either alien life exists or it doesn't. Some things are beyond our knowing, others aren't.
I feel just a little bit sorry for Rev Cockshaw, who being British and Anglican is probably not much aware of the US religious culture. Raven @ #291 explained it very well; I urge Rev Cockshaw to read and reread that post.
He's being lumped together with a very nasty bunch of people, and I suspect that he doesn't *entirely* deserve it. He may be woolly-minded and fluffy, and very naive in expecting his site to have anything at all useful to say to atheists. But, ya know, he's no Fred Phelps. He seems kindly and polite, and hasn't threatened anyone with hellfire.
Rev: I urge you to come to grips with the company you're keeping. You asked for this interaction, and you got it. A lot of people here are VERY pissed off with religion at the moment, and if you keep up at all with US politics you will soon learn why.
wow i am surprised by some of the comments about my post.Saying Christianity is a fairy tail, saying it is a matter of make believe versus reality. Before it was said that Christianity preys on the weak and vulnerable. I mentioned philosophy of religion because that studies the greatest Philosophical thinkers of all time and not from any religious point of view, especially not Christianity. I was also very respectful to the fact that at the end of the day it is up to each individual to decide and yet some of the responses, like those i mentioned, completely lack any kind of intellectual level.
I notice that no-one has responded to the good work that I have personally seen Evan doing, i.e. helping people who need help.
What I think is being discussed here is Deut 23:13 - god's preferred method for the disposal of solid bodily waste. Expressly ordained to help god avoid treading in the stuff!
Heh heh. You couldn't make it up could you? Well you could if you were a bronze-age goat herder.
Walton,
Only if you assume the divine in the first instance. Classic question-begging.
No. First, that statement clearly presumes chronological sequence, and second, it's also clearly referring to "I am" as the name of God, whose name was not meant to be spoken (cf the tetragrammaton). It's saying God existed before Abraham, and indeed before God's creation itself.
Walton,
There is simply no evidence for the existence of any sort of deity whatever, nor any reason to believe in one. To say that is not closed-minded, just truthful. The simplest hypothesis is that THERE IS NO "DIVINE". If that hypothesis is true, and there is absolutely no reason to believe it is not, then Allah, Thor, Ra, etc. etc. simply DO NOT EXIST. Exactly the same way as leprachauns and werewolves DO NOT EXIST.
You give the game away when you say you "choose to believe". It's wishful thinking, Walton, plain and simple. If I "choose to believe" I'm immortal, it's not going to make the slightest difference: I'm still going to die.
This sounds much more like Star Wars than reality.
fairy tale, not fairy tail. And it is a fairy tale, the concept of God is nothing more than a mythological construct by a superstitious tribe of herders in the middle east. It's as much a fairy tale as the tale of Ra, of Zeus, of Thor, of Mithra, of Mazda (who Yahweh is actually based on), of Brahman or the Giant Rainbow Serpent. They are all explanations in the absence of knowledge, divine intervention to explain a then unexplainable world. The concept of Yahweh as about as much credibility as the concept of Brahman. So why do you believe in Yahweh instead of Brahman? Aren't you scared that you'll reincarnate as a rodent if you don't follow the Hindu doctrine?
Um, blockquote failure @392. "What religious teachings reveal is about humans." is mine.
Rev. Evan C. wrote:
You "believe"? Got any evidence? Remember that thing about bearing false witness...
phantomreader42:
Good rant :) The ironic thing is that in #178 the reverend to his credit admitted that he had done just that, and in #231 he complains about people stooping "as intellectually low as picking on his name"! Short memory, I guess.
If you think you can come in here, start spouting platitudinal religious nonsense, and not be challenged on it...well, then you're in for a lot more surprises.
His doing or not doing of "good work" has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion here.
If you think you can come in here, start spouting platitudinal religious nonsense, and not be challenged on it...well, then you're in for a lot more surprises.
His doing or not doing of "good work" has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion here. Atheists also do "good work" all the time without feeling the need to appeal to sky fairies, indoctrinate the vulnerable with lies, or martyr themselves all over the Internet.
God doesn't exist. He told me so.
To simply deny that Jesus existed at all is non-sense you might as well right off any historical accounts. (although i hear some people are trying to say now that the holocaust didn't happen).
Absolute bullshit. Setting aside the execrable dishonesty of trying to tar skeptics in one area with the brush of anti-semitism and holocaust denial and the despicable cowardice of using the holocaust as a debating point at all; setting aside the obviousness of the historical situation with regard to 20th century events versus those in antiquity and the necessarily different standards we apply in each case, there simply are no historical accounts of the life of Jesus.
The gospels are theological fictions, and they bear all the marks of such. They were never supposed to be read by the intended contemporary (Jewish) readers as biography or history. It's the (Hellenized) gentile and modern imagination that has caused them to be delusionally read in this way. The passage from Josephus in Antiquities is an interpolated forgery, and the brief description of Roman Christianity in Tacitus is a) probably derived from confessions by captured Christians (likely obtained under torture), and, as such, merely describes the movement, the existence of which no one denies, and the beliefs of its adherents, and b) has likely also been 'touched up' by those ever-so-honest early Church Fathers. A good clue leading to b) is that Tacitus, a highly placed imperial secretary, gets Pontius Pilate's title wrong. Seems unlikely.
So fuck off, illiterate moron. You don't have any idea what history is, why it matters, or what others' motivations may be for taking an honest look at the meager facts and determining that Jesus was never anything more than a mythical figure and a fantasy of triumph and redemption for a beleagered people. But please keep believing it, since you weak-willed scum are always telling us you'd be psychopaths if you didn't think your savior was coming back, any minute now, for the last 2000 years.
Whoops. Hit "post" when I meant to hit "preview" :p Sorry for the double post.
Flaunting one's charitable work is not a badge of honour to be worn proudly on one's metaphorical sleeve. Get over it.
OK, Mr Cockshaw does wonderful charity work. Happy now?
Now perhaps you will answer our questions, or are you not aware of the biblical precedent on your part to do so?
Cath i can completely appreciate the current climate, and i am sure Evan would admit that people who say they are Christians often make mistakes and there are many cults out there claiming to be Christian. As for people like George Bush i guess you will know a lot more about this than i.
post 381, miracles do still happen today and God does still work, that is what the website Evan set up is trying to report. But it is new and will take time. Take the example of one young lad that Evan worked with. He had just come out of prison, was on drugs, regularly stole and became a Christian (not i might add because of anything Evan said, he was very much an atheist, he told Evan he had become a Christian because of a book he read and an experience he had). He is now not on drugs, does not steal and does anything he can to help his local community. I understand the image some people have of religion but is this story really that bad? You can not lump everything under the umberella of religion into one box and label it bad. If you do not choose to believe yourself then that is your choice and your reality. For those who choose to believe that is their choice and their reality.
So there's testable evidence for this, or is it just anecdotal accounts that carry as much weight as Muslims who see Allah's work?
Someone from West Brom @ 369
You have as much a chance to prove that your imaginary god exists as I have in walking to the Andromeda Galaxy. Do you know where the Andromeda Galaxy is located and my chance of eventually reaching it by way of bipedal locomotion? Whose chance would you say would be more credible? We can see Andromeda from our Milky Way Galaxy, but we have never seen your nonexistent god from the time of the Big Bang to the formulation of that insane idea in the brains of the human species which would never have been an idea if it were not for that very brain. The very idea of gods never existed before the human species evolved the brains to create these imaginary gods. I'll make a deal with you. You bring your imaginary god down for all of us to see and believe, and I'll begin my walk to Andromeda. How's that? I'm sure you can cajole your god to take up this challenge. I have no intention nor chance to walk to Andromeda, but my intention will always be more of a chance at reality than your impossible one of proof. Let's see your imaginary god.
Ah, the 'no true Scotsman' fallacy. We win! Tadaa! (And from one so clued-up on philosophy. Methinks someone is breaking the 9th commandment here.)
"...your choice and your reality..."
So, I reject your reality and substitute my own. Hmmm.
FAIL!
Reality is that which persists after you are gone. What you are talking about is referred to as delusion.
Someone from West Brom #390 wrote:
"It's up to each individual to decide?" As opposed to what? This sounds so open and warm, but it doesn't mean anything. All sides can say it. Technically, everything is up to each individual to decide. You can go with what the experts say, you can do with the reason and evidence, or you can go with your gut feelings. Were you just announcing that you didn't have a gun to anyone's head? That's nice, but we didn't think you did.
If you've been following this thread at all, you've noted that we've been severely critiquing the intellectual level of the reasons people give for believing in God. Most of them appear to simply use belief itself as a prop for personal therapy. The philosophical arguments against the existence of God -- which some of us have been putting forth -- are very strong. None of our views are going to make it onto the website. Not a chance.
And yet you have the cheek to write "everyone must think it through for themselves knowing ALL the options and then decide what they believe." Yes. There's 'nonbelief' over there on the bus slogan, and then a lot of really bad reasons to believe over here. And people who try to tell you that we're wrong are being rude. Debate is rude. Criticism is rude. Critique is rude. Niceness is a sign of being right.
That's because it's got nothing to do with the issue. Are you saying atheists couldn't do good things? No. Are you saying that if you found out that atheists do good works -- or that Mormons do, or Wiccans, or people in some other religion you don't believe in -- do good works, then by golly you're going to renounce Christianity, because clearly only people with proper theology are capable or motivated to do good things? No.
So how is it any sort of point? Nobody is attacking the good reverend's kind heart.
OK, say we stipulate that he is a very nice guy who does great work in the community. What bearing do these things have on any point under discussion here?
holbach @406
Firstly i have not actually expressed any of my own personal view of whether God exists or not, i stated that every must decide for themselves. As i said though if you want proof i would suggest that you genuinely ask God yourself and watch out for a reply. If God doesn't exist then what time have you wasted?
"When you give alms, do not blow a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets to win the praise of others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.
But when you give alms, bang on about it on the internet to avoid having to explain your reasoning."
Someone from West Brom wrote:
That is a positive, uplifting story, and is indeed a testament to how people can change.
But how is directly attributable to god? I mean, specifically your god? There are people in every culture who have 'found' your god - Yahweh - but then there's those who found Allah, Vishnu, Thor, Marduk, Wotan, Ahura Mazda, Shiva, Kali, Quetzlcoatl etc. - and each god has had the same impact on them.
Someone who turned to Thor for help, and was helped, clearly wasn't turning to Yahweh. He's made it pretty darn clear in the bible that he's not keen on the competition. So he wouldn't have helped a person praying to some other god.
So, how were the people turning to the other gods helped?Are you saying that all the gods are real and equally valid?
Why do the apologists like Someone constantly confuse the religious community and the positive effects of any supportive community and the truth (or lack thereof) of religion tenets?
Have you asked the Flying Spaghetti Monster whether he exists? Of course asking a question is only going to give an answer you are wired for anyway. All those eskimos and native amazonians who have never even heard of God can't ask that question. They simply have never heard of it. When you ask your mind, all your mind can do is give an answer it was geared to. It's nothing more than self-confirming tribe, apologetic nonsense to justify the absence of any real evidence.
Either God exists as a force in the universe of he doesn't. It's not a personal question, it's an objective claim on reality!
Plenty... if we do it for every deity that every credulous theist in the world believes in.
I mentioned the good work thing, because a few people on here said Christianity was evil and that Evans life was meaningless, i was arguing against this, i did not say non-christians are not capable of doing good. I was pointing out that Christians are capable of doing good.
That was meant to read "self-confirming tripe" not tribe. Damn typo
Dear all,
this is my final post on here because I don't want to get hammered any more by you lot to be honest. I've worked my socks off today, as I do everyday, and in all honesty I just don't have the time to give you the answers you keep asking me for. I wish I did, truly I do, but I just don't. So all that will happen is you will keep saying "why don't you answer the questions!" and so on, and in your eyes I'll just keep 'avoiding' the question etc. I'm not doing that, but I'm an honest hardworking man who's been working non stop since 7am this morning, and it's not 11.30 at night. I'm tired and I've got a busy week. So sorry if I can't stay here all week and chat. I'm not trying to whinge - I'm just being honest about my human limitations. There is a world outside the internet you know.
In terms of the website I've created, let me just say this to you. I've not created it as a personal site. I've created it on behalf of a much larger church organisation. So singling me out for the criticism is a little bit unfair. The testimonies are from other people anyway and that is the purpose of the site.
It ISN'T a site which aims to provoke online discussion, anymore than the bus poster campaign is designed to provoke discussion. It is purely an attempt to honestly present the other side of the coin to the atheist poster campaign happening in the UK which says "There's probably no God! Now stop worrying and enjoy your life!". We think it's fine for Richard Dawkins and the British Humanist Association to have this poster campaign. That's what freespeech is all about. But we don't agree with it's statement and so we use freespeech too to present the reason why we don't agree.
As an astrophysics student I debated long and hard with many people, from many different backgrounds. I learned one thing - when people come to a discussion with a preformed conclusion discussion wasn't going to happen, just a fruitless argument. And in that I include myself. I'm never going to be convinced by an atheist that God doesn't exist, and likewise a convinced atheist isn't going to be convinced that He does (although a lot of you seem to believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster and his noodly appendages! I wish my God had noodly appendages cos they sound like a lot of fun!). Anyway, I'm honestly accepting the fact that if I were to begin to try and convince you on here it would really be a truly fruitless task. That's all. And I know full well in saying that a lot of you will want to say "aha! He doesn't have any useful arguments to offer! What an idiot!". Well, ok. Say what you will. To be frank, I really dont much care right now. For me, philosophy has little to offer this debate. That's why I created the site that I have. It isn't about discussion and philosophy you see. It's about normal everyday people saying "Hey look, I know you don't think God exists, but these are my experiences, and it's because of these that I believe in God still today!"
Some of the testimonies, for sure, have been less than I expected and are just circular arguements. I accept that, but hope in time there will be some genuinely useful testimonies from people who want to say "Look, this happened to me, and I can't explain it any other way other than God existing. Call me an idiot if you like, but that's what I believe. Ok!"
From that all we expect people to do is weigh up for themselves what makes more sense to them.
We're honestly not hate mongering bigots. We're just normal everyday people who don't agree that God doesn't exist. And it's not because we've bought into lots of philosophical arguments but because geuninely we have experiences in our lives which fit with the idea of a God interacting with us in some way.
the stuff I've written above about doing good work and stuff was in no way meant to be a whinge or an avoiding of tough questions. It was simply in response to a few people's posts saying what an obviously nasty and useless person I am. I don't think those comments were necessary, fair or in any way useful. I thought that highlighting how I do actually contribute to society in a meaningful way might help. Obviously I was wrong.
I believe in freedom of speech and the freedom for atheists to have poster campaigns saying there's no God. but as I agree with that, I hope you too can agree with our freedom to have websites which say "hey, we don't agree with that".
That's all we're doing here, nothing more. I ask you simply to respect it even if you don't agree with it.
you may think that this has all been in good humour and that I deserve everything I've got here today, and maybe I do. But to be truthful my wife has gone to bed this evening dreadfully worried that we're going to end up with a letterbomb or something from some hatefilled atheist. Maybe she's being naive about that, but please understand the impact of the nastiness you've engaged in today and the impact it's having on real people with real feelings. This banter you've enjoyed today has genuinely made someone else incredibly unhappy, and I don't think that is what any of you intended, but it is unfortunately the outcome.
I am not personally responsible for all the ills of religion as you see it. I leave you now in peace and will go to bed praying for God's blessing upon all of you. that won't mean much to most of you I'm sure, but it is my only way of ending this with love and peace.
yours sincerely,
Evan
So you have no opinion on if god exists or not, but you want me to ask god if god exists for you? Huh??
Oh and which god am I supposed to be asking? There are thousands to choose from.
If you do not choose to believe yourself then that is your choice and your reality. For those who choose to believe that is their choice and their reality. - Someone
Tripe. Unutterable tripe. Either God exists, or he doesn't. And we don't in general "choose to believe". Did you sit down and say to yourself "OK, now I'm going to believe in God"?
Clicking the link provided seems to redirect to Google UK, but typing it manually takes you to correct site. It seems they're redirecting traffic coming from Pharyngula, but can't confirm.
copy and paste :)
http://www.thereprobablyis.com/
"I was pointing out that Christians are capable of doing good."
"With or without [religion] you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion." - Steven Weinberg
@419
hahaha! Oh boy. This is going to be fun to watch.
Actually I find it kind of pathetic. Here you are asking an omnipotent and omniscient being to bless people. God already knows everything and has a plan for all of us does he not? You asking for God to change his plan for us is nothing more than mental masturbation. "Look, I'm loving my enemies." You pray for yourself, don't delude yourself into thinking that you can actually affect our lives through prayer, that either undermines the will of God or the free-will of man.
Wowbagger @413
I mentioned this story specifically because earlier on someone on this forum laughed and mocked at this persons entry on the website.
I wanted to point out that we can differ on what we see as reality but what has happened in this persons life is a good thing, and not something which should be laughed at just because his english skills are not very good.
Someone from West Brom @ 404
Your last sentence is profoundly insane. "For those who choose to believe, that is their choice and reality". The first part is a no brainer, but the second part is the epitomy of irrationality. So if I choose to be Mencken, then I will certainly be the real H L Mencken? I may think and say I am Mencken, and this makes me Mencken? I may try to get you to believe and accept that I am Mencken, and you will most assuredly tell me that I am not and am probably insane. And yet when you tell me that you believe and talk to an imaginary god you expect me to believe this and proclaim you blessed and holy? Are you mad? Only an unsound mind mired in religious insanity can formulate such madness and never be concerned with the results of that very derangement. It is a fact that insane people do not realize that they are insane and therefore have no concept of what constitutes reality or soundness of mind. did your imaginary god make you this way or was it the wayward process of thoughtless evolution? Ask your imaginary god for the answer and get back to me. I wait with bated breath and baited vitriol.
Mr Cockshaw, to help allay any fears you or your wife have, ask yourselves this:
When have you ever heard of any non-believer physically attack anyone in the the name of non-belief?
I can assure you that everyone here on my side of the fence knows that such a thing will not happen. And as I said in this thread earlier, sadly, the same cannot be said of those on your side of the fence.
But to be truthful my wife has gone to bed this evening dreadfully worried that we're going to end up with a letterbomb or something from some hatefilled atheist.
This is one of the worst divergences from reality I've seen in a long time. You claim to spend all your time doing charitable works but you might want to read a newspaper once in a while.
See if you can find the "atheist letter bombers" stories...
I leave you now in peace and will go to bed praying for God's blessing upon all of you. - Evan Cockshaw
Do you really not realise how offensive it is to say to atheists "I will pray for you"? The traditional answer to Christians who come here and say that is:
"And a hearty FUCK YOU to you too!"
Reverend. Two requests before you go:
1) Please don't pray for me or anyone else here. It's condescending and insulting for you to sploog your mentally-masturbatory jism all over those who don't believe in your fairy tales.
1) Take your wife to a qualified doctor or therapist. You make her sound like she is extremely high-strung and in need of medical assistance. Getting this upset and delusional over a couple of posts on an Internet blog is not healthy behavior.
Rev Evan Cockshaw @ 419
Don't go away mad (sic!); just go away, and take your imaginary god with you.
The FACT remains that we both believe that we are right and that that our reality is the real one. That is what i am saying. You are confusing a persons perception of reality with the truth. I guess when you die you will know the truth if i am right, or not if you are right because you will cease to exist, or maybe you will be reincarnated. Its your choice though, and until you die it is your reality. People thought the world was flat until someone changed that perception of reality. Until Jesus comes back or the time you die, whichever comes first, your perception of reality can not change unless you decide to change it.
Walton #385 wrote:
No it's not -- I mean, it's not consistent with observed reality. Belief in a "life force" which animates dead matter is simple, intuitive, and common throughout most cultures. Small children instinctively picture it. It's technically called vitalism. And it's scientifically wrong. There is no special kind of living energy which gets into cells in order to make them alive, and leaves when they're dead. Chemistry and biology threw out the hypothesis even before the theory of evolution.
So a belief in vitalism contradicts the findings of modern science -- unless you make an extra special exception for God, and ignore that the instinctive belief that natural life was due to an extra "force" was what lead to belief in God in the first place. And picturing "Evil" as a thing -- instead of an abstraction derived from behavior and feelings -- also goes against modern science. It feels intuitively graspable. Our brains tend to reify abstractions and think literally -- just as, in the story of Sleeping Beauty, the Good Fairies can give the baby princess "Beauty" and "Charm" and they both fall out of the magic wands in the form of sparkles. Leaving out that part about the sparkles doesn't rescue the idea, or argue away the mental process which went on behind it. Evil is not a thing that 'gets into' people or events. It's how we evaluate people and events, when we react to them.
So even this stripped-down version of God doesn't "explain" anything. Explanations are bottom-up, and detailed, with cause and effect chain. You can't explain why people enjoy helping others by invoking a "Goodness Force." Love comes from a Love Source. Reason comes from a Reason Force. How does the brain think? Thought Force. How does the car engine move the car? Car-moving Force.
The less details you give God, the fewer conflicts it has with reality. But you're looking for a God which is consistent with observations, and not trying to derive God from the observations. It's still a premise. You won't get there, unless you start there in the first place.
This all looks to me like what I call "fingernail theology." You're losing faith in faith, and desperately trying to find some way to keep God around, hanging by your fingernails onto something so vague and unspecified that it can't really be shown to be wrong. Not by other people, or even by you. Even if it is wrong. Because it doesn't matter to you if it's wrong -- as long as you don't have to find out you're wrong.
Werd Nick, that "I'll pray for you" line is nothing more than condescending garbage in order to take the moral highground. Why do any of us need to be prayed for? We don't, it's just that Reverend Cocksure wants to condemn our behaviour in the nicent possible manner. "I can't judge your behaviour, so I'll let God do it".
Blimey, a modified Pascal's Wager! Again, from the well-versed-in-philosphy poster above. SFWB, you paid no attention in your philosophy lectures at all did you?
And we are saying that you've based your reality on credulous nonsense, and that there's nothing substancial behind your beliefs. Perception of reality may be subjective, but reality is not subjective. There's one objective reality (as far as we can tell), and that's why we shy away from subjective experience. Your testament for God is about as credible as a Muslim's testament for Allah, or a Zoroastrian's testament for Mazda. We are saying that surely given the magnitude of your beliefs that you would have something substancial to back them up. But no, all you have is faith.
Nothing, of course, but remember that this guy is a professional promulgator of a death-cult that believes that everyone is born so despoiled that it takes the torture and murder of an innocent man to redeem them in the eyes of his bloodthirsty bronze-age maniac god. And he asks why we think religion is evil.
"The FACT remains that we both believe that we are right and that that our reality is the real one."
Baloney. It's not a 50/50 proposition.
Every time a deity is proposed to explain some natural phenomena, like say, the rising of the sun, fire, disease, etc., those propositions have been shown to be wrong. It's not belief. For centuries, materialism and the scientific method have proven their superiority over magical notions of mysterious ghost beings controlling the universe.
That is exactly the point of the belief that it is down to faith. Muslims, Jews and Christians all believe in the same God but have very different ways on how to relate to that God. This is also my last post as it is late here and i also have to work tomorrow, but you attack the lack of substance on being able to prove there is a God, and yet offer no substance to the fact there is not a God. This whole thread started because you unfairly high jacked a website for people to share what they believe. There is also a website for the bus campaign and no Christians have high jacked that!
And finally to say that religion makes good people to bad things is an interesting statement as i see lots of people in the news who do not believe in a God doing bad things, so please spare me this idea that Atheists are perfect!
Someone from West Brom @ 411
You suggest that I genuninely ask god (note the lower case as my regard always for this nonsense) myself and watch out for a reply. And engage in the very insanity for which we excoriate you and your insane ilk? And since this imaginary god does not exist, then what time have I wasted? The waste is the mind put to such useless and insane mutterings to imaginary crap. Just think; your life has been a wasted pile of insane rantings to nonexistent crap, and you will die in the same state with a wimper to your god, and you will pass away without a prayer and your imaginary god will die with your insane brain. When you do die ask your god to come down and beat the crap out of us in physical form so that we can benefit from the real flesh pounding on real flesh. Can you do this? Come on, your imaginary god can do everything for you, whether you are alive or dead. Wow, some god. Wow, some bullshit.
"And finally to say that religion makes good people to bad things is an interesting statement as i see lots of people in the news who do not believe in a God doing bad things..."
So you either didn't read the entire quote or your comprehension needs work, or your being dishonest. Re-read the quote. There are plenty of non-xtians that do good things as well. Get it?
Neither deities nor magic are not necessary to explain anything. This has been shown throughout the centuries.
Emment Caulfield #438:
Don't forget the jitter-bugging zombie saints. I'm sure they were important. And I bet they put on a cracking act too!
"Faith is a cop-out. It is intellectual bankruptcy. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits." - Dan Barker
So basically, you have an alleged omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent God and the only way you can believe is by faith? What a silly concept God is, nothing more than a fairy tale.
"you attack the lack of substance on being able to prove there is a God, and yet offer no substance to the fact there is not a God."
First No True Scotsman, then Pascal's Wager, and now Russell's Teapot. Pretty much hitting the illogic trifecta here.
We don't have to. The default position is that something is assumed not to exist until there's empirical evidence that it does. Otherwise, we have to entertain belief in every magical invisible thing ever conceived.
"Neither deities nor magic are not necessary to explain anything. This has been shown throughout the centuries."
Correction:
Neither deities nor magic are not necessary to explain anything. This has been shown throughout the centuries.
"Freethinkers reject faith as a valid tool of knowledge. Faith is the opposite of reason because reason imposes very strict limits on what can be true, and faith has no limits at all. A Great Escape into faith is no retreat to safety. It is nothing less than surrender." - Dan Barker
"There are many gods which Christians reject. I just believe in one less god then they do. The reasons that you might give for your atheism toward the Roman gods are likely the same reasons I would give for not believing in Jesus." - Dan Barker"I am an atheist because there is no evidence for the existence of God. That should be all that needs to be said about it: no evidence, no belief." - Dan Barker
i never said it was logical, i said it was true! I hope one day you will open your heart and realize this.
@445
Great summary. After all that typing it boils down to Dodge, Dip, Duck, Dive, and Dodge.
Pathetic.
SFWB, please take a while to consider you are the one who believes in such things as human-headed chickens with serpents tails. You don't know what I'm talking about? Well, I suggest you actually read the bible and discover exactly what is written there.
If you are not all that conversant with the biblical bestiary, I'll enlighten you tomorrow.
Reverend Cockshaw #419 wrote:
Of course we believe you have the freedom to have a website. But like it or not, this doesn't mean that it's going to be free from criticism or counter-argument. You're offering up reasons to believe in God. That's debate. Disagreement is not censorship: technically, you can think of it as support. It's positive engagement.
No, don't sell yourself short. That is discussion and philosophy. Poorly done.
Tell your wife she has nothing to worry about. This is a science blog, and the atheists on this site are overwhelmingly committed to method as a virtue. We think it wrong to believe in unlikely propositions for dubious epistemic reasons. That is not the mindset of people who send bombs. It is the mindset of geeky people who want to convince through rational persuasion. And, in some cases, strong language.
And love and peace go with you, too, Reverend. I'll accept the good wishes behind the prayer, which is custom and habit, and not to be taken as a personal attack. That's only fair -- because you got a rather jolting taste of the custom and habits of those who argue over the internet, and they were not meant to be taken as attacks on you as a person, either.
The best thing about Christianity is not Christianity. It's the people.
And now an appeal to emotion! This person just brings fallacy after fallacy.
"Surely the greatest sign that God isn't omnipotent is the ineptitude of those who represent Him." - Kel
"Open your heart". Please. You don't even know what the fuck you're saying. You're just repeating platitudes that have been rammed into your tiny skull over and over. Do you honestly believe this sort of platitudinous nonsense does anything but make you look more foolish?
"i never said it was logical, i said it was true!"
How do you know it's true without logic, reason, and evidence? How do you know you're not deluding yourself. That statement is completely delusional!
And stop with the mysterious language of "opening hearts". Let's all use concise terminology. An open heart would rapidly depressurize rendering its owner unconscious, with brain death following shortly after.
For a proposition about reality to be "true" means that it corresponds with the available empirical evidence. There is no other reasonable meaning of "true". You're just redefining "true" to admit things which are not supported by evidence, which deprives "true" of any sensible meaning.
And that's how conversion to Christianity works. ;)
Someone from West Brom #411 wrote:
If God doesn't exist, then what result can I expect?
That's the problem with this "test." A test means that the results matter. But tell me, by your reasoning, what would have to happen for the person doing this little exercise to legitimately conclude "well, okay -- there's no God."
Something good happens -- there's a God. Something bad happens -- there's a God. Nothing much happens -- God is teaching you His nature, which is not that of a magic genii.
There's a bad habit of thought called "confirmation bias" -- finding evidence for what you're looking to confirm. When confirmation bias is being deliberately used as a tool -- and conflated with having an "open heart" -- there's a problem.
#457
For sure Kel. They hijack the language by inventing terms that are mysterious. They love explaining their "truths" and their "facts" with this mysterious language. I'd love to compile a complete list.
sin, soul, heaven, open heart, hell, angel, demon, god, salvation, savior, prayer, miracle, blasphemy, blood of the lamb....and on and on and on.
Ok, here's something to ponder:
Atheists like to make claims to rational thought, free thinking, clearmindedness and so on. Logical coherence is commonplace in the arguments of a rational atheists nomenclature.
1. God does not exist! There is no proof, no evidence, nothing coherently logical to grab hold of.
2. The universe exists. There is plenty of proof, plenty of evidence, plenty of logically coherent stuff to grab hold of.
3. Conclusion. The universe exists without God!
4. Question. If the universe exists without God - from whence did it come?
5. Conjecture. Hmmmm. Not sure yet, but it must have something to do with the laws of physics being able to create it - universe/big bang or multiverse or steady state or ... it's in the laws of physiscs somewhere - we'll find it.
6. Problem: Aren't the laws of physics all contained within the known universe and space-time continuum? If so, how can they be responsible for creating that which contains them?
7. Conjecture: Well, they must have existed OUTSIDE the space-time continuum as we understand it. Before anything material existed, or anything at all, there must have at least been the laws of physics.
8. Evidence to support conjecture? Er ... none.
9. And that's a logically coherent, evidence based conclusion then, that God doesn't exists and the universe does all by itself? Yes?
10. Er, well, sort of. Ok, no... But we don't like tricky stuff like this, we just like slagging off nice people who believe in God!
It's funny to see someone actually take the Colbert approach to reality.
Someone from West Brom @ 449
Your comment: "I never said it was logical, I said it was true! This is a insane statement that is infuriating to respond to! A boopaloop is not logical, but it is true! Are you conscious and lucid when you vomit out these crap statements? Your god is not logical, therefore it is true? Wow, and I thought all religions were not logical, but all are true! The mind reels with the abject insanity of it all! You are not logical, but you certainly are true, a true example of a mind bent to the extreme with religious insanity!
Sorry I'm late.
I was mailing out my weekly batch of atheist letter bombs.
Did I miss anything?
Seriously, what the hell was that?
I want to feel good about the charity work he does, but why does he have to spout off that kind of bile?
I wonder who convinced his wife to fear the hate filled immoral atheists?
He can rub his prayer across my sweaty taint.
So the building blocks of the universe can't just exist, but the omnipotent omnicent God of the bible can? That's just silly, you violate your own principles. And we have even less evidential basis to believe that is so, the only way to create an intelligent being as we know it is through the evolutionary process. You don't just have complexity existing, it comes through a series of interations.
But of course, if you want to believe that the beginning of the universe means that God came down in manform and died on the cross, then go ahead. But next time you try and make a mocking example of "atheist" logic, pick something better than the argument from first cause.
Has Evan or any of his crowd felt the need to address the good work Dawkins and the BHA are doing in other areas before putting up a response to the "probably no God" campaign?
PS. Now the site is set to redirect incoming traffic from Pharyngula to google.co.uk. Classy.
I'm glad you agree!
Although, you got conjecture 7 wrong.
Oddly enough, that there are problems with cosmology does not mean that God exists, nor that people who think that God exists are nice.
A.N Other @ 460
You have but to prove that your imaginary god exists, simple as that, as I can prove I have a twenty dollar bill in my pocket. What is the problem? Here is my twenty, where is your god?
A.N. Other #460 wrote:
That depends on how you're defining "universe." If it's defined as "this particular configuration of matter, energy, and space-time," then that is a science question, and requires an answer which is arrived at through careful and cautious inquiry in related fields -- not through cheap intuitions about how everything is a person, because it all comes down to us at the center of everything.
If, on the other hand, you define "universe" as "all that has ever existed, in all and every form it has ever existed in and will exist" -- then by definition it couldn't "come from" anywhere. It's ground for everything -- including a thinking, feeling, conscious God, if there is one.
Minds evolved as brain processes so that an organism could deal more successfully with an environment. It makes no sense to posit a mind which is the process of nothing, and which exists for no reason, and has characteristics which make no sense because they're not in an environment where they'd be needed or even useful.
A.N.Other @460
The fallacy of argumentum ad ignorantiam is no less fallacious for being presented in 10 points and with the conclusion dangling like a limp penis dribbling santorum onto the carpet.
Sastra, #452:
"The best thing about Christianity is not Christianity. It's the people."
Are you sure about that? :)
If God exists, from whence did God come?
There's some blatant false advertising on that site, such as this: "Read the stories of normal everyday people who aren't stupid, and haven't been brainwashed..."
Which is followed by stories of normal everyday people who are stupid and brainwashed.
And the claim that Christianity has always allowed people to decide for themselves? Yeah, on "the rack."
But while I don't see anything wrong with playing with a poll, I won't trying to post on there or doing anything that would generate unwanted email to them. Yeah, I know Xians do that kind of thing all the time. They don't mind messing up our websites (and if we have a screening process to prevent that, they just lie to get in), or harassing us by email. But we can't expect them to know right from wrong, as their "morals" are based on fairy tales. We have the ability to reason, so we should demonstrate that we're better people than they are.
Yet they do have a whole hell of a lot of nerve complaining about a few ads, after shoving their religion up our asses all our lives.
A.N.Other [nym] @460:
That would be some atheists - note that Buddhists, Raelians and other fuzzy thinkers are atheists too.
Also, in that straw man argument, conflating theism with metaphysics is just plain silly. The latter has no need for the former, yet the former is based on a non-rigorous version of the former.
Really? How lame. I knew I disabled the HTTP Referer header for a reason.
bsk #470 wrote:
Sure -- because the best thing about any ideology is the people. Christians are better than their nasty theology. Look at how they take what's at face value a pretty ghastly, creepy story about sin and blood atonement and damnation and blithely come up with the encapsulation that it all means "God is LOVE!"
They sure as hell didn't get that from what's written. They got it by spinning what's actually written through their own ordinary niceness and modern enlightenment values, picking out what makes sense and ignoring or somehow twisting the rest. That's intellectually dishonest -- and it can lead to some dangerous results -- but it's a good idea to remind ourselves from time to time that good intentions aren't everything -- but they're something.
@Walton
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sola_scriptura
Many denominations have taken the bible as the inerrant word of God, it's all the rage in protestantism. To claim otherwise is naive, of course there are many who take it as divine. There are those who do the absolutist gambit on the bible that if any of it can't be taken literally then none of it can.
Emmet Caulfield @469: Mollyworthy.
Thus spake Happy Trollop @477:
*bow*
You crashed their poll! It's down due to a mysterious surge in traffic exposing a software flaw.
Happy travelling! Give yourself some weekends off to recover.
@A.N.Other
Oh, for crying out loud, the whole problem is that religion, which is delusional in itself, causes people to behave in a way that ignores reality, and obediently do what they are told.
Sometimes this works out ok, but there are many times when it doesn't. And because there is no reality behind religion, it is very easy to be led astray in a big way. Think Incas and blood sacrifice.
Recent examples are the organised efforts to get ordinary people to distrust science, starting with evolution. This is, of course, the main reason why Christians get short shrift on this blog.
Religion can be used to perpetuate hatred against the "other" quite effectively.
As for Christianity, read this quote from Martin Luther about the Jews, and ponder if the writings of this influential German had anything to do with the Holocaust:
Wow, best discussion I've seen for ages...shame the Rev. didn't lay his cards on the table about his own belief.
Some really interesting insights into the nature of the religious response- I liked the "standing on the edge of a pit and being asked to jump" analogy. It struck me that maybe the reason for our differences in opinion are that atheists respond to the god question in an intellectual manner and xians in a social manner - that is, they judge a belief based, not on reason and evidence, but on whether they trust the person who claims it- using social skills instead of intellectual ones. It should be noted that this is perfectly adequate 99% of the time, but the wrong way to respond to this question - a "misfiring" of an evolved instinct, like Dawkins' explanation of moths circling into candle flames.
Anyone there? You're not all hiding in foxholes are you?
If you're getting bored I could try out my devil's advocate lines...
Ben Edmans #481 wrote:
Studies in neurology have shown that, when viewed through brain scam imagery, different parts of the brain light up when different types of questions are asked: social questions and responses are dealt with in a different area than rational questions like math. I'm not sure if this is just a hypothesis on my part, or whether I actually read a study, but I think that they once showed that religious questions evoked activity from the emotional, social center of the brain.
This would account for why so many theists consider the question of God's existence the way they consider whether they ought to trust in a friend, or stay true to their principles, or something else relationship-related. They hear "does God exist?" and they respond as if they were asked "do you want to accept God?" They're not processing it like a fact to evaluate as true or false. They're processing it like an offer to consider accepting -- from someone.
Theists usually don't say "I chose to believe my authority figure." They say "I chose to believe God." They conflate their feelings about God with God itself.
If so, I'm not sure whether this is cause, or effect.
Someone needs to start posting long verses of bible scripture STAT!
A-HA! I knew that sciencey technologicalish brain scanner stuff was just another dastardly trick of the Devil!
I have killfile installed in case of just such an emergency.
There was an interesting study that Michael Shermer mentioned in Why People Believe Weird Things, and while we think that the reason other people believe is because of things like emotional reasons, we think that our own beliefs are based upon evidence. It seems we put far more credulity into our own ability to assess evidence than others.
How many of these believers will say it's faith, then point to the bible as a historical account? Maybe they have faith it's a historical account, but the reason it would seem for their beliefs is that the evidence (the account of the bible) points to their beliefs. If you take away any means to transmit the meme, you have nothing. So while they appeal to emotion, use apologetic techniques like pascals wager, and justify it all with faith, in the end they base their beliefs on evidence just like the rest of us.
Yeah, I find a bit of introspection on this fascinating. Another angle on this is that rational, scientific people make an effort to make distinctions, split up problems using reductionism while mystics and children see everything as one. I wouldn't say this sort of thing in the heat of a real debate, but we ought to recognise there are important non-rational processes in the mind e.g. intuition, pattern finding, imagination, sensation without interpretation...
And of course: "The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing"- Pascal
How do you respond to someone who just values these things differently (less) then reason and evidence?
Sorry, "more than"
That's clearly the intention of the text. And? What is your point? That people back then were too stupid to think such deep thoughts, which they obviously weren't?
And aren't people capable of enough evil that the assumption of a separate force of evil is simply not needed?
Sorry, "more than"
But we do recognise these things and we also recognise that they are utterly useless for arriving at conclusions about what is true and what is false, which is precisely why the scientific method is so valuable and useful: it allows us to generate new knowledge in spite of these human frailties, not because of them.
That that's unreasonable. :^)
(Not my idea. Was first brought up by a medieval philosopher.)
@490
I think there sometimes is "deep meaning" in religious texts but it's interpreted wrongly - often some insight into human nature is hidden in with the rest of the nonsense.
Remembering Sam Harris' defence of spirituality in The End of Faith, there may (occasionally) be value in reinterpreting some of these statements - looking for the psychological points, which ironically the faithful will miss entirely!
Ben Edmans @ 481 and 481
A close reading of your comments leads me to suspect that there is a tinge of religion and mysticism couched in indirect inquiry. Are you an atheist, agnostic, or as yet undecided as your manner of compromise seem to suggest?
Pattern-finding has an extremely low false-negative rate, but the false-positive rate is so high that the whole process is useless for distinguishing true from false positives. Three words: Face on Mars.
(That's not surprising. If you see leopards all over the bushes even though there are none, you'll be a little scared. If you don't see a leopard in the bushes even though there is one, you'll be dead, and not just a little. So we have been selected for minimization of the false-negative rate, but the false-positive rate has hardly been under selection at all.)
I'm "almost definitely" atheist. Maybe this is off the topic, but seems to me that knowledge isn't so important to everyone. A lot of people put more emphasis on their subjective experience and relationships with people. I would point out that several philosophers of science e.g. Arthur Koestler have drawn attention to the non-rational elements found in the scientific process, such as the ideas from earlier philosophy that inspired Newton and Kepler.
I believe the scientific method really is the only method for determining objective truth and the sciences can be used to further human happiness and progress - "enlightenment and emancipation". The mysticism may be due to the fact it's 2.40 am here and the Red Bull is just starting to wear off ;-)
Quite simply they don't value reason and evidence any less, they just don't value reason and evidence that contradicts their worldview.
several philosophers of science e.g. Arthur Koestler
Ah, the well-known and respected rapist! Of course, that doesn't mean his ideas can't have any validity, but I don't think they were that profound. No-one, I think, denies the non-rational aspects of arriving at new ideas: what's important is that irrationality is excluded from the winnowing of true (or usually, still possibly true) ideas from false - and this is far more a social than an individual process.
Ben Edmans @ 497
Your "almost definitely" is akin to being "killed lightly". Your mention of Koestler and Newton confirms my suspicion that you are still in the unsure grip of religion and mysticism. Koestler claimed to be an atheist but was involved in mysticism and parapsychology. Newton, his great science notwithstanding, was also religious and prone to erratic nonsense. You may espouse atheistic ideas and arguments, but your colored remarks will show through many a debate. Your choice and ideas are yours to dispense, but half an atheist is still half religious.