The Big Picture: Nerd Gods

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Krantos

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Jun 30, 2009
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mesoforte said:
Atheist=/=Hating religion

Probably wasn't intentional, but the subtext was there.
Well, he did add the descriptor "Militant" so I don't think he was directing it at all atheists. Though, as an agnostic myself, it's been my experience that atheists are considerably more like religious folk than they like to admit. While I've never seen atheists standing on the corner yelling (yet), they do seem eager to share their opinion in personal conversation and don't like being disagreed with, which is pretty much status quo for obnoxious religious people.

Referring to the video, Moviebob (and everyone else) should check out Brandon Sanderson's works. I've never seen an author deal with religions in quite so many different and interesting ways without being preachy one way or another, but he pulls it off. Here's a quick list of things that happen in his books:

In one book a character becomes God.

One book deals with a Romanesque (or Greek-esque) Parthenon of deities.

Another book deals with a similar faith, but the Gods have fallen.

(Here's the kicker) And in one book, God dies.

And this is all from a guy who teaches at BYU. Crazy, but there it is.
 

dark-amon

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Aug 22, 2009
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Falseprophet said:
dark-amon said:
Actually the philosophers have had a pretty static perception of what the term 'God' means (refering to Bobs comment on humans perception of gods changing over the course of history). The premises is actually more than 2000 years old.
Why do I mention this? Because philsophers or people with a certain degree of philosophical knowledge seem to be the only people who work on the question on higher metaphysical entities on a rational level. I rarely see anyone from any church do it and amny of the atheist community that writes books on the subject lacks knowledge on metaphysical analysis.
And about the latter half of the episode, although many younger philosophers would probably find the ideas cool, but if one where to show up everyone would sigh: "another scientolgy-church!"
If you seriously think there has been no change in the metaphysical perception of God from Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Philo, Origen, Tertullian, Augustine, Aquinas, Kempis, Descartes, Leibniz, Hobbes, Spinoza, Berkeley, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Teilhard de Chardin to Marcel, then your ignorance of the history of philosophy speaks for itself.
Not no change. however we still define god by the three premises of power, knowledge, goodness presented presocratic. Deny that these are the three premises isn't used througout history in defining godly perfection and you really don't fit calling other people ignorant.
 

WarpGhost

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Jan 5, 2009
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Considering a large portion of the religious stuff that people rely on to shape and justify their faith actually is fan fiction, I'd certainly put a lot of rise-and-fall stuff down to bad fan fiction. For example, things like the received notions of Hell and Satan and the like in Christianity are purely fabrications made up by writers in subsequent ages which have no basis in scripture (the Hell of the Bible is simply an empty shadow realm where a few angels are exiled, not a fiery realm of punishment and damnation where humans go). One of the oldest extant Christian sects (one of a number of such ancient groups in Iraq) actually worships God through 'Satan', but have to downplay the reality of their faith because all that bad fan-fiction that grew up around 'Satan' subsequently has been used as an excuse to persecute them for hundreds of years. Likewise, something like the Islamic ban on making depictions of Muhammad post-dates his death by hundreds of years and has no scriptural basis, a reality of bad fan-fiction most starkly driven home by the fact that very early Muslim artwork does actually depict him! Something that makes the fact that people have died in riots over the subject in recent years particularly tragic.
 

Dorian6

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I really like this idea.

Here begins the 1st national Church of Stan and Jack (working title)

And there's no shortage of religious texts with underlying moral themes.

1. The importance of family (Fantastic 4)

2. Responsibility and sacrifice (Spider Man)

3. Accepting people regardless their differences (X-Men)

4. Repentance for past wrongs (Iron Man)

5. Humility (Thor)


I'm also partial to the Trekkie Church. It's just like Secular Humanism, but using Star trek metaphors
 

Namewithheld

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Apr 30, 2008
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I bow to no god...except for the Unconquered Sun. And possibly Autocthon, but...he's not really a god, and more of a god-shaped spaceship thing that people live inside...
 

Wintermoot

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Aug 20, 2009
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Frank_Sinatra_ said:
The Church of Gundam

So who is the head honcho?
Katoki?
Tomino?
Char?
we already have a diety Mobile Suit the GOD Gundam I think we can appoint Amuro as Jesus and Tomino as God
 

Dobs141

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Nov 10, 2009
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This reminds me of this one time I was watching a documentary on the discovery channel about how a lot of supernatural events in the bible and other things could be explained by aliens. And I was like, "You know, that's a lot more reasonable than what most religions would say..."

Agnostic club!
 

dark-amon

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Aug 22, 2009
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Falseprophet said:
dark-amon said:
goodness presented presocratic.
What the hell does that even mean?
sorry, missed the -button. pre-socratic (that wich was before Socrates) there was three premises presented in the definition of divine perfection power, knowledge and goodnes. They have been used in presenting arguments on both sides of the god-argument since.
 

munx13

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Dec 17, 2008
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If I'm going to worship someone, he might as well be badass.
 

abhoho

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Aug 11, 2009
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dark-amon said:
Falseprophet said:
dark-amon said:
goodness presented presocratic.
What the hell does that even mean?
sorry, missed the -button. pre-socratic (that wich was before Socrates) there was three premises presented in the definition of divine perfection power, knowledge and goodnes. They have been used in presenting arguments on both sides of the god-argument since.
This presumes that God is divinely perfect. Plato's 'god' was more of an imperfect molder of matter.
 

Sylocat

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Nov 13, 2007
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I was hoping Bob would mention that "Rosalina as God of the Mario Universe" theory that he espoused in the second Game OverThinker episode [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iNs5iG2h34]. I know I'd go to the Church of Rosalina.
 

dark-amon

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Aug 22, 2009
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JBrasington said:
dark-amon said:
Falseprophet said:
dark-amon said:
goodness presented presocratic.
What the hell does that even mean?
sorry, missed the -button. pre-socratic (that wich was before Socrates) there was three premises presented in the definition of divine perfection power, knowledge and goodnes. They have been used in presenting arguments on both sides of the god-argument since.
This presumes that God is divinely perfect. Plato's 'god' was more of an imperfect molder of matter.
however Platos god was not a relevant part of his philosophy. Like Aristotle the god was just an explanation in their philosophy. Religious philosophy was hardly a relevant part of philosophy before Augustine.
I do however when re-reading my first post see that I did a poor job writing it. It does seem like I say that the perception of gods where neverchanging. Tp be more precise: There was a lot of different views on how the world existed in pre-socratic times. They became more non-changing with Augustine and the ending of the ancient period. However Augustine and those after did take alot of inspiration from the greek philosophers, on one part the three parts of Gods perfection wich is highly relevant in Augustines defence of the free will
 

k-ossuburb

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Jul 31, 2009
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mesoforte said:
Atheist=/=Hating religion

Probably wasn't intentional, but the subtext was there.
Yeah, but there is an unfortunate correlation between the two since we've got to defend our position all the damn time even though we're not the ones trying to prove anything other than WYSIWYG.
 

Kumomaru

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May 21, 2008
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The problem with nerd gods is A) it's pretty well determined that they're total fiction B) if any of them are in the DC continuity you already have hundreds of interpretations before the 'church' even starts branching and C) if you allow one fictional comic-book or literary character to be worshipped, you have to allow all of them.

Imagine: A joker cult. o_O (though a batman cult would be awesome)

Dorian6 said:
I really like this idea.

Here begins the 1st national Church of Stan and Jack (working title)

And there's no shortage of religious texts with underlying moral themes.

1. The importance of family (Fantastic 4)

2. Responsibility and sacrifice (Spider Man)

3. Accepting people regardless their differences (X-Men)

4. Repentance for past wrongs (Iron Man)

5. Humility (Thor)


I'm also partial to the Trekkie Church. It's just like Secular Humanism, but using Star trek metaphors
Tony isn't so much making up for past wrongs as he is for wrongs he's committing now. =P