And Man Created God… And it was good… because it explained lightning… and helped people cope with existential death anxiety… and explained how I got that AWESOME car park today… and…..
Every one thinks they have common sense. Your rationale of God reminds me of myself years ago, then common sense made me see the light. Yours will too. Eventually
Beating one drum? You have no explanation other than faith. No one really knows what happened and maybe it has always been here. The only reason it requires the god theory is because you’re to insecure in the fact that things just are. Calling me stupid? It is not obvious to anyone, nor has it ever been an easy answer. The Christian 7 day model is a silly notion that even a ten year old sees the idiocy of that. But if you puns it into their brains long enough they become stupid too. Like you
I think he favors happiness, not to say there is not suffering. The Gospel, meaning Good News, paints a picture of a loving God. One who would take upon himself flesh and blood, to teach us about love and forgiveness, and to suffer a brutal death to free us from the Law, a law that we find trouble in fulfilling. The Jews rejected their prophesied Messiah because he did not come bearing a sword to kill the Romans who were vicious in their rule over Judea. Now the Jews wait for a Messiah who isn’t coming. Well, he will return, but to bring judgement. Our finite minds cannot fully comprehend a infinite being, or why he chooses to do, or not do, things.
No, SOM, you are that stupid. You are a coward that runs away from claims you have made. Please do show that your version of your god is he creator. Still waiting. You’ve failed in providing evidence for months now. Again, why should we accept your claims and oh, not ones for Tezpoltipoca? Still waiting for the evidence, my dear coward.
thanks for showing again that you are ignorant of what you claim, SOM. Again, please do show that your god is the one and only creator god. It should be simple, right?
I’m waiting.
Look up “big bang theory evidence”, SOM. And do show us your rebutals. Why should we believe you, SOM? What evidence do you have tht isn’t exactly what other theists claim?
We do not know how things happy by itself. You have made the positive claim, that you know how your version of your god is the only creator god. Show how this is true. If you can’t, then you fail.
No, SOM, BB is not evidence for your god. It is lovely evidence that your bible is terribly wrong and written by ignorant men a couple of thousand years ago because there is nothing in your bible that even remotely describes what we have evidence for. The bible can’t even get its two genesis stories synched up, with different sequences of events.
And we still see that SOM isn’t a true Christian because he can’t do what his bible promises.
I don’t get the whole 3.5 billion year thing. We made charro beans in the crock pot this past weekend and they cooked 8 hours. I had to soak the beans over night. I fried bacon and made chicken stock, we added a bunch of spices and a 12 oz can of Modelo Especial. Is 16 hours a long time to wait for done for killer beans? Is 3.5 billions years a long time too wait for done. Is our perspective of time different than a being who creates life. My prayer is God cook me for as many years as it takes to get me done, His done. Not my idea, but His.
Reality doesn’t care if you get it or not, Leroy. John has mentioned that it took that long for life to be able to be “happy”, thanks to brain chemistry. But shucks, for people who believe in talking snakes, and rib women, thinking about chemistry and biology seems to be very hard.
There is no evidence your god exists at all, much less has a different perspective of time. Indeed, if your myths are to be believed, this god can’t have a different perspective of time, or how could it interact with humans? And let’s go with the bit in the bible that says a thousand years is a day to this god of yours. JC said that he’d be back within the lifetimes of those standing there. Now, we can give him the benefit of the doubt, and say that 40 years will pass (and he failed). But if a day is a thousand years, and there are 14,600 days in 40 years, and now we’ll times that by a thousand… well, it seems that maybe JC was just a little confused and really meant he won’t be back for 14,600,000 years. Your god isn’t much of a cook, considering how it can’t even get Christians to agree on some rather basic things, like how one gets “saved”.
I will donate John but it won’t be till the third quarter. We have other commitments already promised for our charitable dollars for the first half of the year. My wife does the books and it takes three months in advance to make a change. She’s a little anal that way, most like all accountants I imagine. But I emailed her the link and slot request.
Cheers Roy, but not to worry. The campaign won’t be running then, but thanks for the thought. It’s appreciated. And at least we can see eye-to-eye when it comes to animals.
There is no reply for Leroy’s comment above at 2:42, so I will reply here.
God created the Law, so God created suffering.
God’s endurance of brutal death was completely his own choice…a rather masochistic choice at that.
Many scholars have proven that the writers of the New Testament badly mangled, misquoted, or downright fabricated the prophesies used by said writers to justify the Jesus myth. In addition, the early Christians themselves were an End Times cult that, far more than the Jews, anticipated the quick return of their Messiah.
The very concept of eternal punishment and judgment by an entity who created us this way, knowing we would fall, and placed in an already fallen world is a vile and evil story in itself. Christianity is an immoral belief system at its very core.
poor Leroy, who again hasn’t read his bible. there is nothing to support his claims in his bible.. A shame since so many Christians never read the bible.
oh that’s fine with me, SOM. WE can ignore the bible, per your claim. So what other evidence do you have?
I am more than happy to see that a TrueChritian says that the bible is wrong.
I wouldn’t be so fast to dismiss history Club. You say there is nothing to support claims from the Bible. How is it that in a very short time there burst upon the scene Christians.
The only two events subject to “almost universal assent” by historians, are that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist and that, between one and three years later, he was crucified by the order of the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate.
The fact that there were hundreds, most likely thousands of Christians, points to the fact that, like the Bible states, he returned from the grave to testify and that the Holy Spirit was let loose.
Historian Michael Grant wrote that:
If we apply to the New Testament, as we should, the same sort of criteria as we should apply to other ancient writings containing historical material, we can no more reject Jesus’ existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned.
Ah more excuses. Christians have been looking for how many millennia now, looking for anything to support their nonsense? There is no evidence that Jesus was baptized, though it is possible, and there is nothing to support the claim that Jesus was cruxifed by anyone, much less Pilate. There is also that problem that no one noticed the sky darkening a massive earthquake *and* the dead walking around Jerusalem all on one day (a day that Christians can’t even agree upon).
Hmmm, so if you want to claim that the numbers of Christians mean that the myth is true, we can also say that Osiris was put back together by Isis, that Thor does bring the thunder, that Ganesha does grant wishes of prosperity, etc.
Michael Grant was simply wrong then, since there is no evidence for Jesus Christ, son of God, and there is plenty for other historical personages. There may have been some itinerant rabbi who claimed to be the messiah. But that isn’t who you worship, is it, Leroy? No one noticed this dead man wandering around, and heck the bible says he did so much after he resurrected that not all of the books in the world could hold all of those events. Quite a busy fellow for doing all of this and no one noting one actual instance of something happening. It seems your bible is fibbing quite a bit.
Like I said Club, deny history. Nothing ever written back then is true, no matter who recorded it, Roman historians, Jewish historians, the fake Christians, the hostile and friendly alike. Nothing ever written in the 1st century is true. Feel better now?
Isaaih 28:11 “Very well then, with foreign lips and strange tongues God will speak to this people”
This so-called foreign language is Greek.
About 60 years after the crucifixion of Christ, a group of Rabbi’s (survivors of the Roman annihilation of Jerusalem) met at Jamnia and canonized a Hebrew scripture specifically devoid of Greek writings. Any work of scripture not originally written in Hebrew was discarded as unclean.
This codification of the Hebrew Bible by the Jewish Rabbi’s cancelled for the Jews the authority, not only of the contested books we now call apocryphal, but also the popular Greek Old Testament itself that foreign Jews had been using for the previous 300 years. That work had earlier been authorized for publication by the Jewish Sanhedrin in Jerusalem for use by the Jews of the Dispersion whose language was primarily Greek.
Jamnia was a seminal decision because it isolated Christians from Jews on the basis, not just of scripture, but of language as well.
The early Christians stuck to the Greek Old Testament and the Jews concreted themselves on the Hebrew Old Testament decided on by the Rabbi’s at Jamnia.
The early Christians had good reason for their decision to retain the Greek scriptures. Not only did the entire pagan world speak Greek, but according to the Talmud, at the time Jesus preached, Hebrew and Greek scrolls hung side by side in Herod’s Temple. Even the Dead Sea Scrolls from Qumran include fragments written in both languages. When Christ’s disciples wrote the New Testament books, they, too were composed in the same Greek language, allowing the world at large to read them.
The Jewish action, fixated as it was on the Greek language, nullified both sets of Christian books. The New Testament and the apocryphal books were both relegated to pagan classification and permanently discarded.
In prophecy, this is why Jesus, quoting Isaiah, announced that He would speak to the Jewish people in a foreign language. Obviously, that ‘foreign’ language was Greek.
The Jews rejected their Messiah because he did not do what they wanted him to do.
Of course God favours suffering over happiness. How else to explain the fact that when major leaders (George W Bush, Tony Blair, Theresa May) turn to him for advice, the advice He gives is so appallingly bad
LOL! I was thinking more along the lines of life on this world existing for some 3.5 billion years before it, life, stumbled upon the mechanisms (enkephalin and opioid receptors) just 210 million years ago needed to even physically experience the first spasms of something resembling “happiness.” That being said, I like your answer better.
As a simple old dog I like simple.
The universe is simple, God ain’t.
God contradicts Himself and His holey profits*, and such contradictions make me run from the room holding my head and screaming … as the great prophetess Ayn Rand said (quoting Aristotle) “There can be no Contradictions, just False Premises”. Spot on.
* Once would be quite enough, but many many lots of make my head hurt. And no, that isn’t a typo.
Since history is an inescapable part of everyones life, and since it was poorly questioned, I felt compelled to explain why it is inescapable and vital to know. For example…
I mentioned Eostre because I descend from a very predominate Franco-Germanic heritage. The festivals surrounding Eostre in both my maternal and paternal families are quite popular and include upwards of 200 to 1,000 immediate and extended family, close friends, and MANY colleagues and acqaintances from local and nearby towns. This LONG tradition goes as far back as the 15th-century with my maternal Waldensian ancestors and them escaping the Roman Catholic Church’s persecution and incredible atrocities and massacres — in particular The Piedmont Massacre by the RCC. See, there’s many reasons to remember history, particularly UNcivilized history. 😉
Our Franco-Germanic Eostre festivals were/are so popular that many of my cousins, aunts, uncles, etc, have birthdays in December, January (me 😛 ), and February — do the gestation math. Hahahaha! After all, the Eostre “celebration” was all about fertility and maintaining another family tradition: Independence and Freethinking! For any interested, I share these Franco-Germanic stories in two of my blog-posts:
Nevertheless, most people are naive and ignorant of their own family or cultural or national heritage beyond their grandparents. Very unwise because there are also those (e.g. Nazis, Catholics, Jews, Christian Crusaders, etc.) that would rather HIDE their own murderous histories, of course. Thus, unless we apathetically choose to ignore what happened before us, as they say… we are doomed to repeat it and/or allow it. The definition of insanity.
History is just rampantly replete with appointed(?) — not annointed — proclaiming prophets/messiahs DYING (pun intended!) to be self-fulfilling. Very popular in Antiquity as demonstrated by MULTIPLE messiahs in several various religions. All one must do to make any one of them (in)valid is to twist, distort, and rewrite history 60 or more years after the fact. LOL 😛
Nonetheless, in modern psychoanalysis it is called the Saviour Complex with narcissistic personality disorder. Quite common actually. 😉
Yep. He was the easiest one to diagnose back in the 80’s and 90’s.
Oh John! Have you seen this new 1-min Volkswagen commercial? This is actually the more popular, truer, accurate modern human version of Easter! As Dean Martin sings…”Time to learn about the facts of life” Hahahaha 😀
Meanwhile the rest of humanity understands that Christianity ordered barbarian paganism to reality and thus brought about Christian Western Civilization…
…the greatest, most prosperous, most technically advanced, most just civilization in human history.
Hitler was a Catholic … Catholics are Christians … the catholic Hitler fired umpty millions of Jews up the chimneys and generally upset a few other folks too.
(But Christers have been doing similar for centuries, only on a smaller scale … ya godda love them Christers, by God, they get things done!
“To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.” — Marcus Tullious Cicero
Lots of (codependent?) infants, toddlers, and children in the world. (yawns)
An indulging half footnote — And how many “nobodies” did you count SoM? What’s your source for that personal opinion/assertion? That’s a rhetorical question by the way! LOL
Are you an evangelical creationist? I believe it was mostly humans (not ‘man’, because we must change this silly sexist ‘neutral’ terminology in our language of choice (even if men do actually take the blame for most of the religious mess)). But some of the gods must be real. Right?
You should really put some more thought into this. Start doing some more reading on L. Ron Hubbard and Joseph Smith. When you have a great idea there’s proper cash to made – and a legacy of converts is just what you deserve. Your story is just as convincing as any other, so just remove the sarcasm and references to your atheism, add tithing and – bingo!
Aggravetics is a hard sell, and people tend not to like dressing up as Roman Senators these days, which is, naturally, a prerequisite for practicing good aggrevetics.
Okay, so if your god favours happiness over suffering could you explain then why it waited 3.5 billion (billion, with a B) years before it created the chemicals (enkephalin) and physical structures (opioid receptors) which life needed to actually experience happiness?
He introduced himself and asked who he was talking to.
I was really, really excited and proclaimed, “Silence of Mind, speaking.”
God answered, “Sorry wrong number.”
So I’m afraid that if you want to know why God waited 3.5 billion years to create chemically induced happiness in reptiles and mammals, I must inform you that I definitely am not in God’s inner circle.
Maybe you can talk to Insanity, or Branyon & spawn, or Isaiah 12353:14523132 or THE Great Lion.
No, it’s not induced. The stimulus is external. We are not talking about that. We are talking about the physical mechanisms necessary to experience happiness, which only emerged 210 million years ago. That means for some 3.5 billion years untold billions of generations of living things suffered enormously without as much as the hope of corporeal relief. Suffering existed long before pain. Suffering has always existed. So, how does this historical fact square with your claim that your god favours happiness?
Or to express that in strictly mathematical terms: The universe was formed 13.82 billion years ago (I believe it was a Wednesday afternoon! – just kidding around) and the natural evolutionary process brought about humans some 200,000 years ago. 200,000 as a percentage of 13.82 bn is 1/10th of 1% or in longhand 0.0000145.
Mathematically speaking, what do you think the odds are that nothing changed itself into molecular factories that use software to mass produce precision tools that build living organisms one molecule at a time?
That would be quite remarkable, if it happened all at once. It didn’t. This, below, started from proton-powered rocks. A single pre-metabolic process which couldn’t help but grow more complex.
Yes, I would, as it’s already happened. I’m using it right now, shaping it with the brain that developed from proton-powered rocks 3.8 billion years ago in that ferociously strange time before even RNA where something smelling like life, but not life, existed. Isn’t the universe becoming conscious marvellous! 😉
Here’s another fantastic cellular/molecular-factory map for you. I really love these.
But it is, because it has. Not the way you’re framing it, of course, but the fortuitous electrochemical interaction between alkaline geothermal vent fluids and acidic seawater gave rise to acetyl phosphates and catalysing pyrophosphates that kicked this whole adventure off.
SilenceofMind, I’m not sure if I understand the point you are making. Want to run it past me again? Are you referring to humans, robots, or am I missing something obvious??
Well, no, as you said it all happened at once… Poofed into existence, complete and performing millions of operations per second. That never happened. If it did, well then we’d be having a very different conversation.
No, you get your cosmogony from the Pentateuch. If you want to jettison it, then by all means jettison it, but you can’t simultaneously claim to be a Christian while dressing yourself in some other (more rationally/historically comfortable) cloak. Wear the assigned (inerrant) cloak assigned to you by your particular club, or not. It’s your choice.
It is interesting John, these maps, how everything perfectly “maps”. Is it coincidence that it is perfect, and if so why? A 1 in a billion to the billionth power of chance. The second image you describe it as a factory. The word denotes an architect. From the complexity one would think the “factory’s” architect has planed every stage in the evolution of the finally product in advance. It is very interesting, these maps of design.
They are interesting, but to your point, why not then just produce it as is in one hit, rather than slowly over 3.8 billion years, contradicting the cosmogony your religion presents?
The Bible was never meant to be a scientific book on the makings of the Universe. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” These are the first words in the Bible. It goes on to state the various other things God created, each in a day. As well there are medical and sanitation instructions in the Bible, again, all without specific scientific explanation.
No scientific method can prove the age of the earth and the universe. Although age indicators are called ‘clocks’ they aren’t, because all ages result from calculations that necessarily involve making assumptions about the past. Always the starting time of the ‘clock’ has to be assumed as well as the way in which the speed of the clock has varied over time. Further, it has to be assumed that the clock was never disturbed.
Ages of millions, or billions of years as you state, are all calculated by assuming the rates of change of processes in the past were the same as we observe today—called the principle of uniformitarianism. If the age calculated from such assumptions disagrees with what they think the age should be, they conclude that their assumptions did not apply in this case, and adjust them accordingly. If the calculated result gives an acceptable age, the investigators publish it.
Science is based on observation, and the only reliable means of telling the age of anything is by the testimony of a reliable witness who observed the events. The Bible claims to be the communication of the only One who witnessed the events of Creation: the Creator himself. As such, the Bible is the only reliable means of knowing the age of the earth and the cosmos. In the end I believe that the Bible will stand vindicated and those who deny its testimony will be confounded.
No scientist has any alternative or better ‘birth certificate’ for the earth or the universe. All scientific estimates of earth and universe age require a whole lot of assumptions. The key assumption is uniformitarianism, which is atheism disguised as science, because it assumes no miraculous interventions in history. Christians have no reason to accept, and every reason to reject, atheistic assumptions about the universe.
I think when one looks at the major religions one must look at the authority of the claimant, the fruit it bears, and direction it takes us, is it positive or negative. Like SOM likes to say, the ‘something from nothing theory’ is bogus. The likelihood of the extreme complex ‘maps’ John posted happening accidently, on it’s own, is also bogus. To think that it took 13 billion years for the map to create itself is a stretch beyond reasonable. There has to be a catalyst or first cause. There has to be a plan and you can call it the planner, or composer, or architect, or God.
The Five Majors
1. Hinduism
Most Hindus worship one Being of ultimate oneness (Brahman) through infinite representations of gods and goddesses. These various manifestations of gods and goddesses become incarnate within idols, temples, gurus, rivers, animals, etc.
2. Buddhism
Buddhists do not worship any gods or God.
3. Islam
Muslims believe there is the one almighty God, named Allah. To be a Muslim, one has to follow five religious duties: 1. Repeat a creed about Allah and Muhammad; 2. Recite certain prayers in Arabic five times a day; 3. Give to the needy; 4. One month each year, fast from food, drink, sex and smoking from sunrise to sunset; 5. Pilgrimage once in one’s lifetime to worship at a shrine in Mecca.
4.Judaism
Judaism is the oldest of the monotheistic faiths. Monotheism is the belief that there is only one god. Judaism affirms the existence of the one God, Yahweh, who entered into a covenant, or agreement, with the descendants of Abraham, who were God’s chosen people. Judaism’s holy writings reveal how God has been present with them throughout their history. These writings are known as the Torah, or the five books of Moses.
5. Christianity
Christianity is based upon the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. In his life on Earth, Jesus did not identify himself as a prophet pointing to God or as a teacher of enlightenment. Rather, Jesus claimed to be God in human form.
He performed miracles, forgave people of their sin and said that anyone who believed in him would have eternal life. He made statements like, “I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
Christians regard the Bible as God’s written message to humankind. In addition to being an historical record of Jesus’ life and miracles, the Bible reveals God’s personality, his love and truth, and how one can have a relationship with him.
Whatever circumstances a Christian is dealing with in their life, the Bible teaches that they can confidently turn to a wise and powerful God who genuinely loves them. They believe that God answers prayer and that life takes on meaning as they live to honor him.
As a dumb dog I still can’t get over that Creation thing. Either way it’s a bit unbelievable, that out of absolutely Nothing (zero, zilch, foxtrot alpha) a Great God created first Himself/itself and later (how later? How measured, before there was any Time?) He (She, sometimes) created the universe also out of nothing … no energy, no matter, no science to argue with: zug all. (Please excuse, my head hurts …)
Reeally? Then I expect you to come to the US to show that you, as a TrueChristian, to clear out our wards in every childrens’ hospital and veterans’ hosptital. But funny how that will never happen and we see that SOM is a liar. I live in Harrisburg, PA where we have a childrens’ hospita/ (Penn State Hershey)l and a first class trauma center ( still Penn State Hershey), where my own blood goes to for trauma victims. A few miles away is a US gov’t veterans hospital in Lebanon, PA. I will be happy to meet you, SOM at either place to witness your claims. If you cannot tell me when to meet you to see your miracles, then I have little reason to believe you.
It seems that yet one more TrueChristian is a liar. I would be more than happy to show that I am wrong, if just one person is helped. If you cannot show that your god “favors happiness over suffering”, then you are a liar, SOM.
I’ll even pay for the camera crew, SOM. But I’m guessing you are a liar as usual.
All I’m pointing out is that you arent’ a Christian, SOM. You fail, and why should we believe a liar, per the bible itself? The bible claims that any baptized believer can do any and all of the miracles that Jesus Christ did. Why can’t you, SOM?
Oh, I’d forgotten Zombie Day! Odd how no one seemed to have noticed the dead rising and walking into Jerusalem all those many, many years ago. I guess it’s a working example of Douglas Adam’s SEP: Somebody Else’s Problem
“An SEP is something we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it’s like a blind spot …
The Somebody Else’s Problem field… relies on people’s natural predisposition not to see anything they don’t want to, weren’t expecting, or can’t explain. If Effrafax had painted the mountain pink and erected a cheap and simple Somebody Else’s Problem field on it, then people would have walked past the mountain, round it, even over it, and simply never have noticed that the thing was there.”
The media has taken a page out of the religious playbook. Make up or skew the news and then tell you what you should think about it. Everyone is continually preoccupied discussing things that never happened. Today we have Easter bunnies, but we’re told to believe in resurrection. Observing what is going, I’d say we still make up stuff to believe. This old way is still with us.
That is indeed, how it would seem like at first, and propably did to the dudes who came up with the most popular god concepts. However, as it is the case with so many ohter things, the price to pay often comes later, and the intrests are surmounting to appalling. Look at the price of the invention of all of these gods has made us pay in human suffering.
Thanks John, I got a laugh out of this. A bit bitter laugh, though.
This is why I am very much a positive atheist. Not because it sounds “positive”, but because as a student and researcher of history and pre-history, I see that there are more than adequate evidence to take the position, that there are no gods. That is, instead of simply expecting for the evidence and proof for the claim that there are gods, wich is quite sufficient for a person to be an atheist and even a positive atheist.
To the simple human mind it often enough is too much to accept, that things happen without agency, or as our good friend Silenceofmind puts it “all by itself”. We are biologically and evolutionarily so impaired to suspect agency behind every incident, that it makes us like the intelligence services of many a nation – Paranoid. A kind of Darwinian twist of the problem, that if we suspect a danger and violent intent on our physical existance, we are more likely to survive, than if we dismissed some things as unexplainable. The “intelligence” service, that warns the nation of a non-existant danger is more likely to continue getting to be funded, than an intelligence agency that dismisses most unlikely threats as what they are – unlikely – but one of them proves to be a real danger, like a terrorist, albeit even if only a couple of people get killed by it. Because for most of us, the couple of people are too many. The politician that forbids people in from Muslim countries is seen as protecting the possible victims of terrorism, because people can relate themselves to the victims of a Muslim terrorist. But if a Christian terrorist attacks an abortion clinic, or a church full of only black people, people do not relate to the threat or demand any overt action to prevent it. Why? Because they have to be pregnant with an unwanted child, or black to relate to the victims?
However, most things in the universe do happen without agency, that is “all by themselves”. Do they not? Like the tide, the comets and asteroids colliding, the suns burning nuclear furnaces. Where does agency step in? When the micro-organisms actively reproduce themselves? When a predator kills a nother animal? Or when a tribe of humans decides to conquer a nother tribe of humans for one chieftain to fill in an empty self-esteem, by putting others down? When a schoolyard bully attacks the weakling, to fill in a low self esteem? When the capitalist tries to fill in their empty self-esteem by digits on a bank account and kick out work force to get better profits? When a scientist comes up with an a naturalistic explanation to why the tide happens? Or when we as a society decide to protect the environment we realize we are dependant on?
Finding agency in nature was a fantastic evolutionary trick, it’s in-part the reason for why we’ve been so successful, but you’re absolutely spot on, its now an “impairment” that has enabled the survival of ancient (fabulously faulty) memes
Hahahahaha!!!! Sirius Bizinus, I thought you had posted (intentionally) the perfect meme of God — which forces all us primates to conjure and illicit our supreme powers of imagination and invention! Damn. And it’s just your tech-savvylessness. 😛
It is beyond our imagination to emphathise with what those species that were the fore-runners of the first humans thought about. Especially in a natural world that was practically wall-to-wall hunting and scavenging on each other. Scary doesn’t even get close to what it must have been like! The creation of icons, good-luck charms and gods was so logical a response. Even this old atheist still uses the phrase, “Touch wood” and physically reaches out to so do.
No wonder that when one day, after humans had been around for about 100,000 years, someone somewhere reached out to offer a tit-bit of food to a rather frightened wolf and started the long and fabulous relationship of humans with wolves, come tame wolves, come domesticated wolves, come dogs.
To sleep curled up with a dog or twelve while the lightning storms crashed and thundered overhead would have been comforting, again beyond our imagination.
The beauty of your conclusion is that it explains 100% of religions whereas the idea that religion comes from a creator deity can only explain one of the multitude of religions as their mutual contradictions means that no more than one of the world’s religions could be correct.
Just so happens most folk feel they are truly lucky that the religion of their culture happened to be the correct one, it is only those of other cultures that are human creations.
Six words … enough to get you decapitated, stoned, burned at the stake.
Aaaah, another time, another place—and then, you heathen bastard, we’d show you the REAL meaning of God’s infinite love, compassion, and above all … His mercy.
(In the meantime I’m grateful for them choccie Easter eggs … boom boom!)
SOM: Sorry to put my reply waaaaay down here, I gave up looking for the appropriate ‘reply’ button. So, you said—
“If atheism is anything but a 100% faith-based religion, the atheist MUST be able to explain how everything happened all by itself”
—which in the absence of anyone else asking the obvious—the religious must be able to explain how God happened all by itself?
Or was God created by a Godier God, and then, of course, who created that One? (Answer: a yet more Godier God than the Godier God … and it becomes an infinite progression of ever more divine divinities.
Yes man created his gods. Man is also far too easily fooled by the tapestries and fables involved in belief. If enough people got together and proclaimed pink unicorns lived under our beds, and developed a long logically inconsistent story all about it, slowly but surely followers would follow.
When you read SOM’s comments, or Colorstorm’s for that matter, if you close your right eye, squint and lean back away from the screen it blurs a little and looks just like this:
Since we can never tell whether there is even a world outside our conscious experience, we can only be sure that whatever we experience as ‘our’ reality is not created by men, but only by our individual selves.
However, I’m willing to accept that there is a reality out there and by extension, that all of what we experience was created by man, our joint consciousness. That includes God’s and Big Bangs.
But I’m even willing accept that there was a Big Bang event but very much doubt that there was a God event. He (the macho evil doer) is probably the first and most convenient, necessary and inevitable meme ever conceived by our species.
But frankly, it is all a random mess out there. We are just random eddies in space-time looking for meaning. Just that idea: looking for meaning, is very strange when you consider it. It lacks confidence.
BTW, congratulations on creating a blog where a one line post auto-generates 20 pages of comment content!
Dawkins would tell you memes are the most powerful things in human culture 🙂
Perhaps panpsychism is true, Max Tegmark believes it is, and we’re gathering conscious mass as we (all things) move forward through time. On the larger scale, that consciousness is being assembled and stored at certain nodes in the universe (the Great Attractor and the even more massive attractor near the Shapely Super Cluster being two which we’re aware of), which are a kind of Cloud Storage, except for consciousness. This would explain why we can’t “locate” consciousness, and that solves the Hard Problem of Consciousness. Makes for a great story 😉
If I start with human consciousness and climb down our evolutionary family tree, I end up atoms with a minute amount of consciousness and intelligence. Add up all of the atoms in the universe and we have a godly conscience. Right.
As much as I could buy into the logic, I don’t buy into the conclusion. My mind may be different from the rest of humanity but it appears to be a hall of mirrors. It looks complex and intriguing. It appears to be infinitely deep but is terribly shallow. Thoughts bounce around forever and ever. I can never reach the depths of all this. Ergo, there must be a god. No really. 2 mirrors explain it all.
Thanks for the pointer to Max Tegmark and panpsychism – you always teach me something!.
JZ:
please … will you stop sending me to my blasted dictionary! Sheesh! (Panpsychism … mutter mutter … aha! Yes! I thought so (sort of). (Us dogs is clever, but as God’s favourite creatures what else do you expect?)
And you hairless apes invent gods and things all over the place to explain yourselves … might as well use Noddy and Big Ears, and have done with it.
thesuperstitiousnakedape.wordpress.com 
Well said, John. I’m currently reading a book by Selina O’Grady titled, “And Man Created God” .
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Timely!
And Man Created God… And it was good… because it explained lightning… and helped people cope with existential death anxiety… and explained how I got that AWESOME car park today… and…..
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The ‘man of the memes’ is JZ. 🙂
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The medium is the message 😉
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I am a different kind of creationist.
I believe God created the universe, otherwise that leaves the utterly stupid conclusion that everything just happened all by itself.
OOOPS!
Atheism is the utterly stupid conclusion that everything just happened all by itself.
I’m not stupid, so that means I can’t be an atheist.
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Fair enough.
Do you believe your god favours happiness over suffering?
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John,
Why do you feel the need to change the subject?
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That is the subject: Creationism.
So, do you believe your god favours happiness over suffering?
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John,
If you admit that you aren’t stupid, that means you can’t be an atheist.
That means that you and I were created by the same God.
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Sound.
Concise.
Persuasive.
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John,
Your arguments against the existence of God are religious and philosophical in nature.
My argument in favor of the existence of God is common sense (simple reasoning).
Stupid is the rejection of common sense.
Atheist willfully reject common sense, therefore they are willfully stupid.
A worthwhile religious or philosophical discussion is not possible if one of the participants chooses to be willfully stupid.
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Agreed. So can we start at answering this question: Does your god favour happiness over suffering? 😉
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(I never miss a chance yourself advertise) See my blog pieceon common sense:Nonsense from Nagel, and the myth of “common sense” https://paulbraterman.wordpress.com/2012/10/13/nonsense-from-nagel-and-the-myth-of-common-sense/
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Paul,
Understanding the obvious is only a mystery to stupid people, which includes atheists.
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Every one thinks they have common sense. Your rationale of God reminds me of myself years ago, then common sense made me see the light. Yours will too. Eventually
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Jimin,
The obvious isn’t open to interpretation.
And what you remind me of is a person who once was smart and then for some odd reason, chose to be stupid.
If atheism is anything but a 100% faith-based religion, the atheist MUST be able to explain how everything happened all by itself.
There is no evidence that everything happened all by itself.
But there is conclusive scientific proof that God exists.
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Beating one drum? You have no explanation other than faith. No one really knows what happened and maybe it has always been here. The only reason it requires the god theory is because you’re to insecure in the fact that things just are. Calling me stupid? It is not obvious to anyone, nor has it ever been an easy answer. The Christian 7 day model is a silly notion that even a ten year old sees the idiocy of that. But if you puns it into their brains long enough they become stupid too. Like you
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Jim,
Since I have explained everything quite clearly in simple language, you must be a troll.
Goodbye, farewell. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.
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Clearly what is clear to you is a very weak explanation. You seem the troll, not me. Pompous Christian ass.
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I think he favors happiness, not to say there is not suffering. The Gospel, meaning Good News, paints a picture of a loving God. One who would take upon himself flesh and blood, to teach us about love and forgiveness, and to suffer a brutal death to free us from the Law, a law that we find trouble in fulfilling. The Jews rejected their prophesied Messiah because he did not come bearing a sword to kill the Romans who were vicious in their rule over Judea. Now the Jews wait for a Messiah who isn’t coming. Well, he will return, but to bring judgement. Our finite minds cannot fully comprehend a infinite being, or why he chooses to do, or not do, things.
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No, SOM, you are that stupid. You are a coward that runs away from claims you have made. Please do show that your version of your god is he creator. Still waiting. You’ve failed in providing evidence for months now. Again, why should we accept your claims and oh, not ones for Tezpoltipoca? Still waiting for the evidence, my dear coward.
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Club,
I don’t know what’s going on in Tezpotipoca.
But if you had a brain in your head you would be able to see that atheism, the claim that everything just happened all by itself, is stupid.
Please explain the stupid for us.
How does everything just happen all by itself?
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thanks for showing again that you are ignorant of what you claim, SOM. Again, please do show that your god is the one and only creator god. It should be simple, right?
I’m waiting.
Look up “big bang theory evidence”, SOM. And do show us your rebutals. Why should we believe you, SOM? What evidence do you have tht isn’t exactly what other theists claim?
We do not know how things happy by itself. You have made the positive claim, that you know how your version of your god is the only creator god. Show how this is true. If you can’t, then you fail.
As usual.
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Club,
The Big Bang is one of the great discoveries of modern science that prove the existence of God.
Look at the great map Zande posted here. That’s another proof of God’s existence courtesy of modern science.
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…Which seems to prove your god does not favour happiness over suffering. Remember that whole 3.5 billion years thing? 😉
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John,
Some people take great joy by inflicting suffering on themselves and others.
Are you calling those joy seekers, sinners?
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Who’s talking about people? Aren’t we talking about your particular Middle Eastern god, Yhwh?
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John,
“We” would be you and the rat in your pocket.
You don’t have to be religious not to be an atheist.
You just need to understand the obvious, that everything just didn’t happen all by itself.
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No, SOM, BB is not evidence for your god. It is lovely evidence that your bible is terribly wrong and written by ignorant men a couple of thousand years ago because there is nothing in your bible that even remotely describes what we have evidence for. The bible can’t even get its two genesis stories synched up, with different sequences of events.
And we still see that SOM isn’t a true Christian because he can’t do what his bible promises.
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I don’t get the whole 3.5 billion year thing. We made charro beans in the crock pot this past weekend and they cooked 8 hours. I had to soak the beans over night. I fried bacon and made chicken stock, we added a bunch of spices and a 12 oz can of Modelo Especial. Is 16 hours a long time to wait for done for killer beans? Is 3.5 billions years a long time too wait for done. Is our perspective of time different than a being who creates life. My prayer is God cook me for as many years as it takes to get me done, His done. Not my idea, but His.
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Roy, if you’re up for it. My wife’s sister started this small campaign
https://www.gofundme.com/vistaverdehelpfundforstrays
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Reality doesn’t care if you get it or not, Leroy. John has mentioned that it took that long for life to be able to be “happy”, thanks to brain chemistry. But shucks, for people who believe in talking snakes, and rib women, thinking about chemistry and biology seems to be very hard.
There is no evidence your god exists at all, much less has a different perspective of time. Indeed, if your myths are to be believed, this god can’t have a different perspective of time, or how could it interact with humans? And let’s go with the bit in the bible that says a thousand years is a day to this god of yours. JC said that he’d be back within the lifetimes of those standing there. Now, we can give him the benefit of the doubt, and say that 40 years will pass (and he failed). But if a day is a thousand years, and there are 14,600 days in 40 years, and now we’ll times that by a thousand… well, it seems that maybe JC was just a little confused and really meant he won’t be back for 14,600,000 years. Your god isn’t much of a cook, considering how it can’t even get Christians to agree on some rather basic things, like how one gets “saved”.
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I will donate John but it won’t be till the third quarter. We have other commitments already promised for our charitable dollars for the first half of the year. My wife does the books and it takes three months in advance to make a change. She’s a little anal that way, most like all accountants I imagine. But I emailed her the link and slot request.
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Cheers Roy, but not to worry. The campaign won’t be running then, but thanks for the thought. It’s appreciated. And at least we can see eye-to-eye when it comes to animals.
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There is no reply for Leroy’s comment above at 2:42, so I will reply here.
God created the Law, so God created suffering.
God’s endurance of brutal death was completely his own choice…a rather masochistic choice at that.
Many scholars have proven that the writers of the New Testament badly mangled, misquoted, or downright fabricated the prophesies used by said writers to justify the Jesus myth. In addition, the early Christians themselves were an End Times cult that, far more than the Jews, anticipated the quick return of their Messiah.
The very concept of eternal punishment and judgment by an entity who created us this way, knowing we would fall, and placed in an already fallen world is a vile and evil story in itself. Christianity is an immoral belief system at its very core.
“Created Sick
Commanded to be Well”
Awful stuff. My stomach rebels.
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Poor Leroy and SOM get very quiet when they have no pat answers for their unpleasant religion. Well argued, BB. Do you have a basenji?
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poor Leroy, who again hasn’t read his bible. there is nothing to support his claims in his bible.. A shame since so many Christians never read the bible.
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Club,
The Bible isn’t even part of the conversation.
Can’t you get that brain of your working so that it can at least think for itself, just a little?
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oh that’s fine with me, SOM. WE can ignore the bible, per your claim. So what other evidence do you have?
I am more than happy to see that a TrueChritian says that the bible is wrong.
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I wouldn’t be so fast to dismiss history Club. You say there is nothing to support claims from the Bible. How is it that in a very short time there burst upon the scene Christians.
The only two events subject to “almost universal assent” by historians, are that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist and that, between one and three years later, he was crucified by the order of the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate.
The fact that there were hundreds, most likely thousands of Christians, points to the fact that, like the Bible states, he returned from the grave to testify and that the Holy Spirit was let loose.
Historian Michael Grant wrote that:
If we apply to the New Testament, as we should, the same sort of criteria as we should apply to other ancient writings containing historical material, we can no more reject Jesus’ existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned.
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Ah more excuses. Christians have been looking for how many millennia now, looking for anything to support their nonsense? There is no evidence that Jesus was baptized, though it is possible, and there is nothing to support the claim that Jesus was cruxifed by anyone, much less Pilate. There is also that problem that no one noticed the sky darkening a massive earthquake *and* the dead walking around Jerusalem all on one day (a day that Christians can’t even agree upon).
Hmmm, so if you want to claim that the numbers of Christians mean that the myth is true, we can also say that Osiris was put back together by Isis, that Thor does bring the thunder, that Ganesha does grant wishes of prosperity, etc.
Michael Grant was simply wrong then, since there is no evidence for Jesus Christ, son of God, and there is plenty for other historical personages. There may have been some itinerant rabbi who claimed to be the messiah. But that isn’t who you worship, is it, Leroy? No one noticed this dead man wandering around, and heck the bible says he did so much after he resurrected that not all of the books in the world could hold all of those events. Quite a busy fellow for doing all of this and no one noting one actual instance of something happening. It seems your bible is fibbing quite a bit.
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Like I said Club, deny history. Nothing ever written back then is true, no matter who recorded it, Roman historians, Jewish historians, the fake Christians, the hostile and friendly alike. Nothing ever written in the 1st century is true. Feel better now?
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Curious Roy, have ever read any of the 70+ so-named “apocryphal” books written between 100 CE and 300 CE?
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Yes I am. They are books which were published in the original 1611 King James Bible but removed in 1885. A link to the books can be found here- https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Apocrypha-Books/
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Isaaih 28:11 “Very well then, with foreign lips and strange tongues God will speak to this people”
This so-called foreign language is Greek.
About 60 years after the crucifixion of Christ, a group of Rabbi’s (survivors of the Roman annihilation of Jerusalem) met at Jamnia and canonized a Hebrew scripture specifically devoid of Greek writings. Any work of scripture not originally written in Hebrew was discarded as unclean.
This codification of the Hebrew Bible by the Jewish Rabbi’s cancelled for the Jews the authority, not only of the contested books we now call apocryphal, but also the popular Greek Old Testament itself that foreign Jews had been using for the previous 300 years. That work had earlier been authorized for publication by the Jewish Sanhedrin in Jerusalem for use by the Jews of the Dispersion whose language was primarily Greek.
Jamnia was a seminal decision because it isolated Christians from Jews on the basis, not just of scripture, but of language as well.
The early Christians stuck to the Greek Old Testament and the Jews concreted themselves on the Hebrew Old Testament decided on by the Rabbi’s at Jamnia.
The early Christians had good reason for their decision to retain the Greek scriptures. Not only did the entire pagan world speak Greek, but according to the Talmud, at the time Jesus preached, Hebrew and Greek scrolls hung side by side in Herod’s Temple. Even the Dead Sea Scrolls from Qumran include fragments written in both languages. When Christ’s disciples wrote the New Testament books, they, too were composed in the same Greek language, allowing the world at large to read them.
The Jewish action, fixated as it was on the Greek language, nullified both sets of Christian books. The New Testament and the apocryphal books were both relegated to pagan classification and permanently discarded.
In prophecy, this is why Jesus, quoting Isaiah, announced that He would speak to the Jewish people in a foreign language. Obviously, that ‘foreign’ language was Greek.
The Jews rejected their Messiah because he did not do what they wanted him to do.
It’s all history, recorded and forever alive.
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God created the universe, ‘cos everything needs a creator, no?
Which leads to “Who then, created God?”
And as I said years ago, the obvious answer is a more Goddy God. So who created that Guy?
Awwww … come on, it’s obvious!
He was done by a more Godier God, and He too etc etc etc ad infinitum. There—you may email me my Nobel Prize via JZ.
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Hey, good to see you, Dog!
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Yay! Your welcome makes my waggy tail go into overdrive!
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Nice reframe.
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TheTruth™ always fits well 😉
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Fyes!!!
Wasn’t it Pascal who said that if God didn’t exist we would have to invent him?
We did.
Btw I bought your latest book.
I love your mind John.😊
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Who DOESN’T love John’s mind?? 😉
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Not my hat?
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Carmen,
I love John.
But his mind makes my cockles droop.
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I much prefer his to a silent one. 😉
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Carmen,
Evidently you are without cockles that can droop.
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Good point!
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Thanks! If only I could turn that mind to do good instead of mischief 😉
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Mishief is good; it unsettles and rattles cages… and even an alternative way of looking. It’s all good John!
And yes, I like the hat too.:-)
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Of course God favours suffering over happiness. How else to explain the fact that when major leaders (George W Bush, Tony Blair, Theresa May) turn to him for advice, the advice He gives is so appallingly bad
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LOL! I was thinking more along the lines of life on this world existing for some 3.5 billion years before it, life, stumbled upon the mechanisms (enkephalin and opioid receptors) just 210 million years ago needed to even physically experience the first spasms of something resembling “happiness.” That being said, I like your answer better.
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As a simple old dog I like simple.
The universe is simple, God ain’t.
God contradicts Himself and His holey profits*, and such contradictions make me run from the room holding my head and screaming … as the great prophetess Ayn Rand said (quoting Aristotle) “There can be no Contradictions, just False Premises”. Spot on.
* Once would be quite enough, but many many lots of make my head hurt. And no, that isn’t a typo.
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Hahahahaha! Baam! *mic drop*
A true fair-minded skeptic would also be skeptical (always?) of his own reasoning and logic too, yes? 😉
Btw John, Happy Eostre to you!
http://www.godchecker.com/pantheon/germanic-mythology.php?deity=EOSTRE
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Happy Easter to you, too, Professor. Hope you’re a having a great one 🙂
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John,
Since history is an inescapable part of everyones life, and since it was poorly questioned, I felt compelled to explain why it is inescapable and vital to know. For example…
I mentioned Eostre because I descend from a very predominate Franco-Germanic heritage. The festivals surrounding Eostre in both my maternal and paternal families are quite popular and include upwards of 200 to 1,000 immediate and extended family, close friends, and MANY colleagues and acqaintances from local and nearby towns. This LONG tradition goes as far back as the 15th-century with my maternal Waldensian ancestors and them escaping the Roman Catholic Church’s persecution and incredible atrocities and massacres — in particular The Piedmont Massacre by the RCC. See, there’s many reasons to remember history, particularly UNcivilized history. 😉
Our Franco-Germanic Eostre festivals were/are so popular that many of my cousins, aunts, uncles, etc, have birthdays in December, January (me 😛 ), and February — do the gestation math. Hahahaha! After all, the Eostre “celebration” was all about fertility and maintaining another family tradition: Independence and Freethinking! For any interested, I share these Franco-Germanic stories in two of my blog-posts:
My Heretical Heritage (and)
Legacy
Nevertheless, most people are naive and ignorant of their own family or cultural or national heritage beyond their grandparents. Very unwise because there are also those (e.g. Nazis, Catholics, Jews, Christian Crusaders, etc.) that would rather HIDE their own murderous histories, of course. Thus, unless we apathetically choose to ignore what happened before us, as they say… we are doomed to repeat it and/or allow it. The definition of insanity.
Great meme by the way! 😉
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A (Christian) rebirth story landing on a pagan (Spring) fertility/rebirth celebration is just a wonderful coincidence! 😉
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History is just rampantly replete with appointed(?) — not annointed — proclaiming prophets/messiahs DYING (pun intended!) to be self-fulfilling. Very popular in Antiquity as demonstrated by MULTIPLE messiahs in several various religions. All one must do to make any one of them (in)valid is to twist, distort, and rewrite history 60 or more years after the fact. LOL 😛
Nonetheless, in modern psychoanalysis it is called the Saviour Complex with narcissistic personality disorder. Quite common actually. 😉
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I believe you have one living inside 1600 Penn?
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Yep. He was the easiest one to diagnose back in the 80’s and 90’s.
Oh John! Have you seen this new 1-min Volkswagen commercial? This is actually the more popular, truer, accurate modern human version of Easter! As Dean Martin sings…”Time to learn about the facts of life” Hahahaha 😀
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Hilarious! And we drive a VW. . . (Have since the early 80’s). 😉
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And it is of course NO coincidence that VW is a German manufacturer, so I found it even doubly apropos for my family history and traditions! 😛 😈
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Professor T’Bo,
Nobody remembers “Eostre” except history geeks.
Meanwhile the rest of humanity understands that Christianity ordered barbarian paganism to reality and thus brought about Christian Western Civilization…
…the greatest, most prosperous, most technically advanced, most just civilization in human history.
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Hitler was a Catholic … Catholics are Christians … the catholic Hitler fired umpty millions of Jews up the chimneys and generally upset a few other folks too.
(But Christers have been doing similar for centuries, only on a smaller scale … ya godda love them Christers, by God, they get things done!
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“To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.” — Marcus Tullious Cicero
Lots of (codependent?) infants, toddlers, and children in the world. (yawns)
An indulging half footnote — And how many “nobodies” did you count SoM? What’s your source for that personal opinion/assertion? That’s a rhetorical question by the way! LOL
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Professor T’Bo,
I recommend that you listen to Cicero. He was a good man.
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Of course man created god! Was there really any doubt? Even better than the wheel and much cheaper.
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A veritable Swiss Army Knife, and you can dress him/her up whichever way you like depending on the day and the need.
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Absolutely. I suppose it’s too late to hand out a Nobel?
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There’s always 2018. Which category, literature?
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erm…I was thinking more…fantasy?
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🙂
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Are you an evangelical creationist? I believe it was mostly humans (not ‘man’, because we must change this silly sexist ‘neutral’ terminology in our language of choice (even if men do actually take the blame for most of the religious mess)). But some of the gods must be real. Right?
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I was about to say, you want to actually put this mess on women’s shoulders, too?
Of course I’m evangelical. Spreading The Good News is the Great Commission… and my book is only $5.99 🙂
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You should really put some more thought into this. Start doing some more reading on L. Ron Hubbard and Joseph Smith. When you have a great idea there’s proper cash to made – and a legacy of converts is just what you deserve. Your story is just as convincing as any other, so just remove the sarcasm and references to your atheism, add tithing and – bingo!
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Aggravetics is a hard sell, and people tend not to like dressing up as Roman Senators these days, which is, naturally, a prerequisite for practicing good aggrevetics.
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This time last year, I thought Trump was a hard sell. We’re in a time of rapid, and odd, change!
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True.
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Of course I’m real, Miss Wisp …
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John,
OUR God favors happiness over suffering.
I recommend that you study a little of the worldview of the Fredrick Nietzsche, history’s greatest Christian atheist.
He drew upon pre-Socratic Greek history to meld their concept of tragedy (suffering) with the human experience.
That’s exactly what the Passion, death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ is all about.
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Okay, so if your god favours happiness over suffering could you explain then why it waited 3.5 billion (billion, with a B) years before it created the chemicals (enkephalin) and physical structures (opioid receptors) which life needed to actually experience happiness?
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John,
Where did you get the idea that people need drugs in order to induce happiness?
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I didn’t say ‘induce.’ I said ‘experience.’
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Same difference.
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John,
I got a call from God just the other day.
He introduced himself and asked who he was talking to.
I was really, really excited and proclaimed, “Silence of Mind, speaking.”
God answered, “Sorry wrong number.”
So I’m afraid that if you want to know why God waited 3.5 billion years to create chemically induced happiness in reptiles and mammals, I must inform you that I definitely am not in God’s inner circle.
Maybe you can talk to Insanity, or Branyon & spawn, or Isaiah 12353:14523132 or THE Great Lion.
If anyone has the inside track they do.
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Do they use the hair dryer to talk to (their) god? 😉
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How should I know! I use my shoe as a telephone.
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Again, not “chemically induced happiness,” rather the very mechanisms necessary to physically experience happiness.
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John,
Both pleasure and pain are caused by chemical reactions.
Thus, pleasure is chemically induced as are all our thoughts and feelings.
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No, it’s not induced. The stimulus is external. We are not talking about that. We are talking about the physical mechanisms necessary to experience happiness, which only emerged 210 million years ago. That means for some 3.5 billion years untold billions of generations of living things suffered enormously without as much as the hope of corporeal relief. Suffering existed long before pain. Suffering has always existed. So, how does this historical fact square with your claim that your god favours happiness?
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John,
Okay, I get it. FINALLY!
Thanks for dumbing it down for me…
…about 15 times.
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Or to express that in strictly mathematical terms: The universe was formed 13.82 billion years ago (I believe it was a Wednesday afternoon! – just kidding around) and the natural evolutionary process brought about humans some 200,000 years ago. 200,000 as a percentage of 13.82 bn is 1/10th of 1% or in longhand 0.0000145.
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Can’t rush a good cake, Paul
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Paul,
Mathematically speaking, what do you think the odds are that nothing changed itself into molecular factories that use software to mass produce precision tools that build living organisms one molecule at a time?
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That would be quite remarkable, if it happened all at once. It didn’t. This, below, started from proton-powered rocks. A single pre-metabolic process which couldn’t help but grow more complex.
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John,
It would be quite remarkable if it happened at all.
There is not enough time in the entire universe to play out those kinds of odds.
Say, do you think the software you used to WordPress would develop from nothing, all by itself, if given enough time?
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Yes, I would, as it’s already happened. I’m using it right now, shaping it with the brain that developed from proton-powered rocks 3.8 billion years ago in that ferociously strange time before even RNA where something smelling like life, but not life, existed. Isn’t the universe becoming conscious marvellous! 😉
Here’s another fantastic cellular/molecular-factory map for you. I really love these.
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John,
Just because it happened and you use it, is not proof that it happened all by itself.
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But it is, because it has. Not the way you’re framing it, of course, but the fortuitous electrochemical interaction between alkaline geothermal vent fluids and acidic seawater gave rise to acetyl phosphates and catalysing pyrophosphates that kicked this whole adventure off.
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Now JZ, you know perfectly well that SoM’s god waved its magic wand (or did it wiggle its nose?) and POOF! – there everything was!
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As Tildeb would say, “Poofism!”
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Poofism makes PERFECT sense. . . for simpletons.
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SilenceofMind, I’m not sure if I understand the point you are making. Want to run it past me again? Are you referring to humans, robots, or am I missing something obvious??
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John,
Nice map.
If you had any idea what it meant, you would understand that you just proved my point for me.
I love arguing with atheists.
You people always argue with yourself and lose, saving me lots of effort.
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Well, no, as you said it all happened at once… Poofed into existence, complete and performing millions of operations per second. That never happened. If it did, well then we’d be having a very different conversation.
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John,
Creation happened in a second.
But as modern science has proven the universe is constantly changing.
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Yes, which contradicts your cosmogony.
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John,
I got my cosmogony from modern science.
Where did you get yours?
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No, you get your cosmogony from the Pentateuch. If you want to jettison it, then by all means jettison it, but you can’t simultaneously claim to be a Christian while dressing yourself in some other (more rationally/historically comfortable) cloak. Wear the assigned (inerrant) cloak assigned to you by your particular club, or not. It’s your choice.
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It is interesting John, these maps, how everything perfectly “maps”. Is it coincidence that it is perfect, and if so why? A 1 in a billion to the billionth power of chance. The second image you describe it as a factory. The word denotes an architect. From the complexity one would think the “factory’s” architect has planed every stage in the evolution of the finally product in advance. It is very interesting, these maps of design.
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They are interesting, but to your point, why not then just produce it as is in one hit, rather than slowly over 3.8 billion years, contradicting the cosmogony your religion presents?
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The Bible was never meant to be a scientific book on the makings of the Universe. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” These are the first words in the Bible. It goes on to state the various other things God created, each in a day. As well there are medical and sanitation instructions in the Bible, again, all without specific scientific explanation.
No scientific method can prove the age of the earth and the universe. Although age indicators are called ‘clocks’ they aren’t, because all ages result from calculations that necessarily involve making assumptions about the past. Always the starting time of the ‘clock’ has to be assumed as well as the way in which the speed of the clock has varied over time. Further, it has to be assumed that the clock was never disturbed.
Ages of millions, or billions of years as you state, are all calculated by assuming the rates of change of processes in the past were the same as we observe today—called the principle of uniformitarianism. If the age calculated from such assumptions disagrees with what they think the age should be, they conclude that their assumptions did not apply in this case, and adjust them accordingly. If the calculated result gives an acceptable age, the investigators publish it.
Science is based on observation, and the only reliable means of telling the age of anything is by the testimony of a reliable witness who observed the events. The Bible claims to be the communication of the only One who witnessed the events of Creation: the Creator himself. As such, the Bible is the only reliable means of knowing the age of the earth and the cosmos. In the end I believe that the Bible will stand vindicated and those who deny its testimony will be confounded.
No scientist has any alternative or better ‘birth certificate’ for the earth or the universe. All scientific estimates of earth and universe age require a whole lot of assumptions. The key assumption is uniformitarianism, which is atheism disguised as science, because it assumes no miraculous interventions in history. Christians have no reason to accept, and every reason to reject, atheistic assumptions about the universe.
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In the end I believe that the Bible will stand vindicated and those who deny its testimony will be confounded.
Your “Bible” is but a book written by men and represents ONE religion. It has no more authority than the scientists you discredit.
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There’s so much wrong with this comment that it’s simply not worth the time or effort.
Science is based on observation
Really? So forensics, for example, is voodoo, is it?
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Hi Nan, it’s been awhile, hope your well.
I think when one looks at the major religions one must look at the authority of the claimant, the fruit it bears, and direction it takes us, is it positive or negative. Like SOM likes to say, the ‘something from nothing theory’ is bogus. The likelihood of the extreme complex ‘maps’ John posted happening accidently, on it’s own, is also bogus. To think that it took 13 billion years for the map to create itself is a stretch beyond reasonable. There has to be a catalyst or first cause. There has to be a plan and you can call it the planner, or composer, or architect, or God.
The Five Majors
1. Hinduism
Most Hindus worship one Being of ultimate oneness (Brahman) through infinite representations of gods and goddesses. These various manifestations of gods and goddesses become incarnate within idols, temples, gurus, rivers, animals, etc.
2. Buddhism
Buddhists do not worship any gods or God.
3. Islam
Muslims believe there is the one almighty God, named Allah. To be a Muslim, one has to follow five religious duties: 1. Repeat a creed about Allah and Muhammad; 2. Recite certain prayers in Arabic five times a day; 3. Give to the needy; 4. One month each year, fast from food, drink, sex and smoking from sunrise to sunset; 5. Pilgrimage once in one’s lifetime to worship at a shrine in Mecca.
4.Judaism
Judaism is the oldest of the monotheistic faiths. Monotheism is the belief that there is only one god. Judaism affirms the existence of the one God, Yahweh, who entered into a covenant, or agreement, with the descendants of Abraham, who were God’s chosen people. Judaism’s holy writings reveal how God has been present with them throughout their history. These writings are known as the Torah, or the five books of Moses.
5. Christianity
Christianity is based upon the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. In his life on Earth, Jesus did not identify himself as a prophet pointing to God or as a teacher of enlightenment. Rather, Jesus claimed to be God in human form.
He performed miracles, forgave people of their sin and said that anyone who believed in him would have eternal life. He made statements like, “I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
Christians regard the Bible as God’s written message to humankind. In addition to being an historical record of Jesus’ life and miracles, the Bible reveals God’s personality, his love and truth, and how one can have a relationship with him.
Whatever circumstances a Christian is dealing with in their life, the Bible teaches that they can confidently turn to a wise and powerful God who genuinely loves them. They believe that God answers prayer and that life takes on meaning as they live to honor him.
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As a dumb dog I still can’t get over that Creation thing. Either way it’s a bit unbelievable, that out of absolutely Nothing (zero, zilch, foxtrot alpha) a Great God created first Himself/itself and later (how later? How measured, before there was any Time?) He (She, sometimes) created the universe also out of nothing … no energy, no matter, no science to argue with: zug all. (Please excuse, my head hurts …)
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Reeally? Then I expect you to come to the US to show that you, as a TrueChristian, to clear out our wards in every childrens’ hospital and veterans’ hosptital. But funny how that will never happen and we see that SOM is a liar. I live in Harrisburg, PA where we have a childrens’ hospita/ (Penn State Hershey)l and a first class trauma center ( still Penn State Hershey), where my own blood goes to for trauma victims. A few miles away is a US gov’t veterans hospital in Lebanon, PA. I will be happy to meet you, SOM at either place to witness your claims. If you cannot tell me when to meet you to see your miracles, then I have little reason to believe you.
It seems that yet one more TrueChristian is a liar. I would be more than happy to show that I am wrong, if just one person is helped. If you cannot show that your god “favors happiness over suffering”, then you are a liar, SOM.
I’ll even pay for the camera crew, SOM. But I’m guessing you are a liar as usual.
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Club,
Your idea that since I can’t cure the world’s ills, therefore God doesn’t exist is just stupid.
You should expect more than just stupid out of yourself.
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All I’m pointing out is that you arent’ a Christian, SOM. You fail, and why should we believe a liar, per the bible itself? The bible claims that any baptized believer can do any and all of the miracles that Jesus Christ did. Why can’t you, SOM?
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Club,
The point around here is the one on the top of your head.
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Well, SOM, glad to see you have nothing but pathetic attempts at insults. How Christian of you 🙂
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Club,
I know. I am shameless.
But it’s so much fun!
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SOM’s a Catholic
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So he isn’t a Christian? Other Christians have told me this.
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LOL! He’s the more flexible kind 🙂
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Is this the Harrisburg Midnight Oil sung about?
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Yep it is. Three Mile Island is about 7 miles from me downstream. Never heard that song before.
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Really?
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LOL! Finally out of the closet, eh, John?
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I feel so much lighter
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Hey, can that pillar of fire in the photo talk? Do you have a recording?
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Gurble, gumble, gurble, gum
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Man had to in order to make sense of things around him….so I guess he accepts the explanation too.
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Hard not to.
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Happy Zombie Day, my friend. Nice post.
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Oh, I’d forgotten Zombie Day! Odd how no one seemed to have noticed the dead rising and walking into Jerusalem all those many, many years ago. I guess it’s a working example of Douglas Adam’s SEP: Somebody Else’s Problem
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I likes that! 🙂
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If I could, I would swim in Douglas Adam’s mind
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Brilliant guy.
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The media has taken a page out of the religious playbook. Make up or skew the news and then tell you what you should think about it. Everyone is continually preoccupied discussing things that never happened. Today we have Easter bunnies, but we’re told to believe in resurrection. Observing what is going, I’d say we still make up stuff to believe. This old way is still with us.
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This old way is still with us.
Stubborn things… At least we do it in digital form these days.
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Gods, I hear are some of the cheapest things to make. A good imagination is sufficient
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I believe the equation goes something like:
1 Apple = 1 God
1 Red Bull = 10,000 Gods
1 Slice of Cheese Cake = 10,000,000 Gods
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And one full bottle of vodka equals a night praying over the porcelain goddess.
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Yeah, something like that
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That is indeed, how it would seem like at first, and propably did to the dudes who came up with the most popular god concepts. However, as it is the case with so many ohter things, the price to pay often comes later, and the intrests are surmounting to appalling. Look at the price of the invention of all of these gods has made us pay in human suffering.
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Thanks John, I got a laugh out of this. A bit bitter laugh, though.
This is why I am very much a positive atheist. Not because it sounds “positive”, but because as a student and researcher of history and pre-history, I see that there are more than adequate evidence to take the position, that there are no gods. That is, instead of simply expecting for the evidence and proof for the claim that there are gods, wich is quite sufficient for a person to be an atheist and even a positive atheist.
To the simple human mind it often enough is too much to accept, that things happen without agency, or as our good friend Silenceofmind puts it “all by itself”. We are biologically and evolutionarily so impaired to suspect agency behind every incident, that it makes us like the intelligence services of many a nation – Paranoid. A kind of Darwinian twist of the problem, that if we suspect a danger and violent intent on our physical existance, we are more likely to survive, than if we dismissed some things as unexplainable. The “intelligence” service, that warns the nation of a non-existant danger is more likely to continue getting to be funded, than an intelligence agency that dismisses most unlikely threats as what they are – unlikely – but one of them proves to be a real danger, like a terrorist, albeit even if only a couple of people get killed by it. Because for most of us, the couple of people are too many. The politician that forbids people in from Muslim countries is seen as protecting the possible victims of terrorism, because people can relate themselves to the victims of a Muslim terrorist. But if a Christian terrorist attacks an abortion clinic, or a church full of only black people, people do not relate to the threat or demand any overt action to prevent it. Why? Because they have to be pregnant with an unwanted child, or black to relate to the victims?
However, most things in the universe do happen without agency, that is “all by themselves”. Do they not? Like the tide, the comets and asteroids colliding, the suns burning nuclear furnaces. Where does agency step in? When the micro-organisms actively reproduce themselves? When a predator kills a nother animal? Or when a tribe of humans decides to conquer a nother tribe of humans for one chieftain to fill in an empty self-esteem, by putting others down? When a schoolyard bully attacks the weakling, to fill in a low self esteem? When the capitalist tries to fill in their empty self-esteem by digits on a bank account and kick out work force to get better profits? When a scientist comes up with an a naturalistic explanation to why the tide happens? Or when we as a society decide to protect the environment we realize we are dependant on?
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Finding agency in nature was a fantastic evolutionary trick, it’s in-part the reason for why we’ve been so successful, but you’re absolutely spot on, its now an “impairment” that has enabled the survival of ancient (fabulously faulty) memes
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Dangit, JZ, it didn’t work. It was a funny picture, too. I am not tech savvy enough to link pictures in comments. 😦
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I want to see!
You need a photobucket account. Save your pics there then copy the links. Works a charm.
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Hahahahaha!!!! Sirius Bizinus, I thought you had posted (intentionally) the perfect meme of God — which forces all us primates to conjure and illicit our supreme powers of imagination and invention! Damn. And it’s just your tech-savvylessness. 😛
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It is beyond our imagination to emphathise with what those species that were the fore-runners of the first humans thought about. Especially in a natural world that was practically wall-to-wall hunting and scavenging on each other. Scary doesn’t even get close to what it must have been like! The creation of icons, good-luck charms and gods was so logical a response. Even this old atheist still uses the phrase, “Touch wood” and physically reaches out to so do.
No wonder that when one day, after humans had been around for about 100,000 years, someone somewhere reached out to offer a tit-bit of food to a rather frightened wolf and started the long and fabulous relationship of humans with wolves, come tame wolves, come domesticated wolves, come dogs.
To sleep curled up with a dog or twelve while the lightning storms crashed and thundered overhead would have been comforting, again beyond our imagination.
Just my two-cents worth!!
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Our dogs run into our bed when its stormy. They’re hopeless!
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The beauty of your conclusion is that it explains 100% of religions whereas the idea that religion comes from a creator deity can only explain one of the multitude of religions as their mutual contradictions means that no more than one of the world’s religions could be correct.
Just so happens most folk feel they are truly lucky that the religion of their culture happened to be the correct one, it is only those of other cultures that are human creations.
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Funny that! Imagine the odds 🙂
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Reblogged this on The Secular Jurist.
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Brilliant!
Now, if only the Pope would own up as to who really created Jesus.
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You think there’s a Eusebius letter lurking in the Vatican library? Now that would make for a thrilling story. Get to work 🙂
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I’ll leave that one to Dan Brown and Tom Hanks!
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Oh come on… I can even think of the title, The Letter
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BTW, On the Problem of Good is now downloading no problem in the UK
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Which puzzles me; how come God allows such good things to happen? I suppose I’d better hurry up and read the book to find out
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Short answer: because “good” does not exist 😉
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Yeah, after talking to you I changed the channels to include the UK. Let me know what you think of it, OK.
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poor SOM, he’s such a coward.
JZ, does life allow you to come to Washington, DC for the march, this weekend?
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Life does not. Will be travelling, but shy of DC by a few thousand kilometers. You going?
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Still not sure yet. Am getting over the dregs of a nasty cold.
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Six words … enough to get you decapitated, stoned, burned at the stake.
Aaaah, another time, another place—and then, you heathen bastard, we’d show you the REAL meaning of God’s infinite love, compassion, and above all … His mercy.
(In the meantime I’m grateful for them choccie Easter eggs … boom boom!)
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Fortunate to be born post-Enlightenment 🙂
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SOM: Sorry to put my reply waaaaay down here, I gave up looking for the appropriate ‘reply’ button. So, you said—
“If atheism is anything but a 100% faith-based religion, the atheist MUST be able to explain how everything happened all by itself”
—which in the absence of anyone else asking the obvious—the religious must be able to explain how God happened all by itself?
Or was God created by a Godier God, and then, of course, who created that One? (Answer: a yet more Godier God than the Godier God … and it becomes an infinite progression of ever more divine divinities.
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It’s turtles all the way down
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You been reading Pratchett again? (My hero, ol’ TP … love that BFG guy, and he’d get my vote if ‘God’ ever became optional).
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Yes man created his gods. Man is also far too easily fooled by the tapestries and fables involved in belief. If enough people got together and proclaimed pink unicorns lived under our beds, and developed a long logically inconsistent story all about it, slowly but surely followers would follow.
SOM is a fine example.
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Heathen. The unicorns live in our shoes!
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I’ve an anaconda living in my trousers, fyi.
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Blasphemy! Thou willeth beith condemndith toith theith Unicornith bad place!
(Whatever that may be, moldy corn and unicorn farts?)
Funny how all of the religions through history and even today, no matter how silly, are the ONLY true path to ______ (fill in the blank)
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When you read SOM’s comments, or Colorstorm’s for that matter, if you close your right eye, squint and lean back away from the screen it blurs a little and looks just like this:
Som: Imanindoctinatednob Imanindoctrinarednob Imanidoctrnatednob Imanindoctrinarted Imanindoctrinared.
I’m serious! Try it! So cool.
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I do that, but with sound, and hear, gurble mumble slumble thrumble. But you have to admit, SOM can be a Poe’s Law genius.
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So you think Priapus was just the horny imagination of the Greeks?
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Oh no, Priapus is real. How else can you explain the existence of male underwear? 😉
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Since we can never tell whether there is even a world outside our conscious experience, we can only be sure that whatever we experience as ‘our’ reality is not created by men, but only by our individual selves.
However, I’m willing to accept that there is a reality out there and by extension, that all of what we experience was created by man, our joint consciousness. That includes God’s and Big Bangs.
But I’m even willing accept that there was a Big Bang event but very much doubt that there was a God event. He (the macho evil doer) is probably the first and most convenient, necessary and inevitable meme ever conceived by our species.
But frankly, it is all a random mess out there. We are just random eddies in space-time looking for meaning. Just that idea: looking for meaning, is very strange when you consider it. It lacks confidence.
BTW, congratulations on creating a blog where a one line post auto-generates 20 pages of comment content!
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Dawkins would tell you memes are the most powerful things in human culture 🙂
Perhaps panpsychism is true, Max Tegmark believes it is, and we’re gathering conscious mass as we (all things) move forward through time. On the larger scale, that consciousness is being assembled and stored at certain nodes in the universe (the Great Attractor and the even more massive attractor near the Shapely Super Cluster being two which we’re aware of), which are a kind of Cloud Storage, except for consciousness. This would explain why we can’t “locate” consciousness, and that solves the Hard Problem of Consciousness. Makes for a great story 😉
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If I start with human consciousness and climb down our evolutionary family tree, I end up atoms with a minute amount of consciousness and intelligence. Add up all of the atoms in the universe and we have a godly conscience. Right.
As much as I could buy into the logic, I don’t buy into the conclusion. My mind may be different from the rest of humanity but it appears to be a hall of mirrors. It looks complex and intriguing. It appears to be infinitely deep but is terribly shallow. Thoughts bounce around forever and ever. I can never reach the depths of all this. Ergo, there must be a god. No really. 2 mirrors explain it all.
Thanks for the pointer to Max Tegmark and panpsychism – you always teach me something!.
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2 mirrors explains it all. I like that!
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JZ:
please … will you stop sending me to my blasted dictionary! Sheesh! (Panpsychism … mutter mutter … aha! Yes! I thought so (sort of). (Us dogs is clever, but as God’s favourite creatures what else do you expect?)
And you hairless apes invent gods and things all over the place to explain yourselves … might as well use Noddy and Big Ears, and have done with it.
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Man is stupid enough to believe he created God…….
but smart enough to know he is an idiot for believing it.
There jz. Glad to be of service.
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As a dog I’m neutral in this discussion, but I did read something that really made my tail wag ‘cos it really made good sense:
In the Beginning God made Man—
—and man returned the compliment.
Wag wag wag wag wag
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BRILLIANT!!!
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Well jz, it IS Portland…………. 😉
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