142: In His Name We Pray, Ramen

[lordcabal]

Thank you singing gremlin for making me smile.

"Ah but the Babel fish is a dead give away and
proof denies faith, and without faith your nothing
QED we know you exist so therefore you don't" says man.

"Oh dear, I hadn't thought of that" said God,
and promptly disappears in a poof of logic.

Man then proofs black is white and promptly gets killed on the next zebra crossing.

(not a exact quote but the best i could do from memory)

PS i love that book

 

[oneplus999]

(not a exact quote but the best i could do from memory)

http://youtube.com/watch?v=dcncPpQ8loA
It's pretty close to the original radio show I think.

Sorry, I don't believe in souls, so all Soul-Related debates are rendered meaningless to me. At what point does a fetus develop it's own soul?

You may have missed the original posts about souls, but all of the logical incoherencies about a soul are exactly the reason I brought them up in the first place as a problem for christians who accept evolution as god's mechanism for creating diversity, and not ID.

 

[PurpleRain]

I have nothing wrong with religion. I think it's great. It can provide hope, peace, yada yada yada, but what I can't stand is fingers in ears fanatics of it. Creationists are just that, fanatics. You can love god, you just need to abosre some facts.

If you'd like evidence, look at the rise in various childhood conditions, such as ADHD (which I know, like anybody else, isn't always true for every kid that claims it), autism (also linkable to flu vaccines containing minute amounts of mercury thought to be in-potent till recently), bipolar disorder, etc. etc. think about it and our life spans, the only reason they are increasing in comparison to the past few centuries is better living conditions.

It's because we choose to ignore people with these deseases. Lock them away in metal homes or let them die. It's horrible that only now we are starting to look at these symtoms and allow it into society, and not because they have recently poped up due to imbreding.

There's the Stupid Faith that values obedience and submission and order above curiosity and observation, the kind that demands you not eat certain foods or mix with certain people or take your children to the doctor.

So it's now stupid to take your child to the doctor and eat healthy. Your arguement keeps getting stronger.

Then there's the Smart Faith. The kind that brings people together, provides the Hope that will keep you going when everything is lost. The kind that brings Strength out of nowhere, because it's bigger then what you can see, simply by it's nature it exists against and above all reason and words and intellect that could be leveled against it.

That's the kind of faith that we smart-ass Atheists can't really make fun of. The kind that gives strength out of nowhere.

Us smart-arse Atheists can find strength and faith from other things besides religion. The shoulder of a friend. The company of a loved one or just my own inner strength. Sorry, but there's a good reason we don't believe in religion

Yes, but they update their theories to be as close to creationism as possible without breaking the first amendment, as opposed to updating a theory to be in line with conflicting observations

They're trying to change the language to be more inclusive. Not necessarily to infiltrate our schools and teach scientific heresy.

Sorry, but that's EXACTLY what they did. The courts rejected teaching of creationism in schools because it was a violation of the separation of church and state. They replaced god with "an outside force" and tried to get it in again. Read up on the history of "Of Pandas and People" before you speak so kindly of their intentions.

When Darwin created his theories he was shot down when they tried to teach it in school. "People aren't monkies! That blasthemy! etc."



Ok. I'm going to end my rant before this becomes to big and people start getting banned. I just want to leave you all with something... terrible I guess. A childrens creationist website. This is the main reason behind my hate. It's still very very funny:

http://objectiveministries.org/kidz/

 

[Mausenheimmer]

I gotta admit, this article has nothing to do with any aspect of gaming and I really question why it was given the go-ahead, considering that it was really a one-sided argument (namely, he never tries to give a defense intelligent design, he mostly points at them and says "You stupid idiots", which reeks of lazy writing). But it doesn't really matter, in a few days, all new articles will be up, hopefully ones that have something to do with the point of this website.

 

[Easykill]

Ahh!! They don't deserve to live! Damn Zealots! Did you see the Occult page?

 

[BrainFromArous]

I think that's an incorrect view of the birth of science. Science was always tackling those sorts of things: really, religion is in part born of early science.

Religion is in part born from the search for answers, I'm with you there. The problem is that lacking the ability to properly discover them, humans took answers which were incomplete, provisional or just plain wrong and simply DECLARED them to be true under an unimpeachable divine imprimatur. That, at essence, is what "religion" and "faith" are. They are volitional states of mind.

I agree that one needn't resort to supernaturalism to fall prey to this. Plenty of people have espoused all manner of nonsense in the name of "science" and "reason" and what have you.

The difference - and here is where the rubber meets the road - is that science is an investigative process whereas "faith" is not. "Faith" is an act of will. Science can self-examine and self-correct whereas "faith" can only be abandoned or swapped out for "faith" in some other kind of magic.

(I'm not saying that to be snarky. "Magic" - more specifically, theurgy - is what we're talking about here. "God did this," "God did that" are inescapably magical claims.)

Religious persons are not the only ones with this problem. Anyone who believes 'all men are created equal' has to deal with the ways in which the creation of humans is very unequal. Anyone who believes in human rights has to deal with the same issue as religious people deal with in deciding when a leaky sack of amino acids acquires a soul: when does, in the words of Bill Mahr, "a pile of goo" become a person worth marching on Washington to demand civil rights for.

1) "All men are..." poses no problems when seen as a profession of egalitarian principles and a repudiation of social systems based on hereditary castes. "Equality" doesn't - and need not - mean that we are all literally the same any more than "the brotherhood of man" requires us to be actual siblings, or indeed, to even be male siblings.

2) Is this about the Pro-Choice/Pro-Life thing? My personal answer is: at the point of extra-maternal viability*. This is a flawed answer, to be sure, but then I'm not one of those "people of faith" claiming that the Creator of the Universe whispers things into my ear.

Just two things to think about: are we using the word religion to refer to faith in "prophecies, clerical decrees, books declared to be the Word of God, sacred traditions" OR are we using it to refer to any 'faith' in the sense of a belief that starts with a conclusion and works backwards to the facts?

I use the terms somewhat interchangeably and I should not. "Religion" is the concretion and systematization of "faith."




*Unless, of course, they are Yankees fans. Then it's open season on 'em.

 

[maniac626]

religion is the enemy of god

 

[Singing Gremlin]

Apple pips contain cyanide. Yet we can eat them.

For the most part, apple seeds aren't digested. They pass unharmed, and thus get to be trees, with a handy source of fertilizer.

But, as a general thing: nearly anything can be bad for you or be irrelevant, depending on the dose. Not enough water? Bad. Enough water? Good. Too much water? Bad (drowning/hyperhydration). Small enough amount of mercury/cyanide? Meh. Threshold amount? Death.

Dammit man, stop proving me wrong!!

Edit: And to the babel-fish chap, you're quite welcome. Nothing like a Douglas Adams reference to make one smile.

 

[FunkyJ]

I think a more appropriate to a game related discussion could have been about the Digiclipse believers.

> http://digiclipse.digi-pop.net/about

 

[Melty Blood]

It's lovely when a comic sums something up better then you possible ever could've.

(Hrrm, perhaps I should've posted a link instead)

 

[Anton P. Nym]

It's lovely when a comic sums something up better then you possible ever could've.

(Hrrm, perhaps I should've posted a link instead)

Probably would've been best. Oh well, 'tis done.

I remember that strip... I seem to recall that XKCD readers ended up holding a party [http://thephoenix.com/article_ektid48208.aspx] at those coordinates, just as a lark... and for the irony, I guess. But yeah, I think this is representative of most prophecy, as either false (in the comic), self-fulfilling (as the comic turned out to be), or so vague that those wishing to believe can ret-con it later.

(Dangit, now I'm tempted to go searching for double-blind prophesy trials. Not now... I've got work to do!)

-- Steve

 

[Geoffrey42]

There's the Stupid Faith that values obedience and submission and order above curiosity and observation, the kind that demands you not eat certain foods or mix with certain people or take your children to the doctor.

So it's now stupid to take your child to the doctor and eat healthy. Your arguement keeps getting stronger.

At least if you're going to bash someone's argument, you might put a little more effort into parsing it. I read it as "the kind that demands you not (eat certain foods, mix with certain people, or take your children to the doctor)". All 3 of which have been proscribed by religion in one way or another over the years. You can fault him grammatically for not using "nor", but does it really get in the way of his point?

 

[BrainFromArous]

True--just like Genesis poses no problems when seen as a metaphor.

(R)Amen, brother! The problem is that the "metaphor" approach is something retroactively imposed on scripture as part of a rescue operation by the faithful once literalism becomes untenable in the light of increasing knowledge.

Their dilemma, then and now, is that once they admit that any part of God's Word is wrong - sometimes hilariously so - how can they claim ANY of it is accurate?

So I'm all for the "metaphor" thing, personally. But it's still just a tactical retreat for believers, as opposed to what will really set them free: Admitting to themselves that human beings, not God(s), wrote their scriptures.

This is more a 'even if you don't claim supernatural beings are whispering in your ear, you have metaphysical beliefs that can be undercut by science' thing. What if science pushes extra-maternal viability back to the point that even a non-implanted fertilized egg can be extracted and grown into a healthy baby in some sort of nutrient tank? Are you saying that a mother can't choose abortion for a group of cells that is no more complex than, say, the bacteria we kill with mouthwash, just because it has human DNA different from hers?

I don't see where metaphysics enters into this. I don't believe there is a binary distinction between "entitled to rights" and "not entitled."

In the case in question... Ok, we could grow the new human-in-progress in a tube somewhere. However, if it's NOT in a tube and instead takes place inside an actual woman... what are her rights and powers over her own body?

There may never be a final, satisfactory answer to things like this.

Another one: Should we shut down NASA and spend that money on medicine and food for people in need RIGHT NOW, or keep funding it because of the potential benefits to all mankind from future space exploration? Even the most optimistic estimates for the Space Program admit that asteroid mining and orbital pharma labs are nowhere in sight, nor likely to be in the near future. There are, of course, sick and starving people aplenty who could use that money.

Tricky, tricky problems... which will NOT be solved through "faith" in some Bronze Age collection of fairy tales about the Sky-Father spirit.

 

[kylereardon]

The Bible does not give any claim as to the age of the earth. People make assumptions about it based on the English translation. The six "days" that are mentioned in Genesis are written simply as "periods of time" in the original Hebrew. In fact, the interaction between the sun and the earth is not even truly established until around the fourth "day", so our concept of "day" can not be applied.

Please do not spread false assumptions about the faith of millions of people.