yayyyyyy God

[Kanada Kev]

[Kanada Kev]

http://www.madatoms.com/site/blog/how-religious-people-feel-god-and-the-devil-spend-their-time

[Kanada Kev]

not really a wtf, but a great pic anyway.

Found it in the comment section after all these fun Pope protest signs:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/the-funniest-pope-protest-signs

[Esau.]

Pope's astronomer says he would baptise an alien if it asked him.

An alien – 'no matter how many tentacles it has' – could have a soul, says pope's astronomer

Aliens might have souls and could choose to be baptised if humans ever met them, a Vatican scientist said today. The official also dismissed intelligent design as "bad theology" that had been "hijacked" by American creationist fundamentalists.

Guy Consolmagno, who is one of the pope's astronomers, said he would be "delighted" if intelligent life was found among the stars. "But the odds of us finding it, of it being intelligent and us being able to communicate with it – when you add them up it's probably not a practical question."

Speaking ahead of a talk at the British Science Festival in Birmingham tomorrow, he said that the traditional definition of a soul was to have intelligence, free will, freedom to love and freedom to make decisions. "Any entity – no matter how many tentacles it has – has a soul." Would he baptise an alien? "Only if they asked."

Consolmagno, who became interested in science through reading science fiction, said that the Vatican was well aware of the latest goings-on in scientific research. "You'd be surprised," he said.

The Pontifical Academy of Sciences, of which Stephen Hawking is a member, keeps the senior cardinals and the pope up-to-date with the latest scientific developments. Responding to Hawking's recent comments that the laws of physics removed the need for God, Consolmagno said: "Steven Hawking is a brilliant physicist and when it comes to theology I can say he's a brilliant physicist."

Consolmagno curates the pope's meteorite collection and is a trained astronomer and planetary scientist at the Vatican's observatory. He dismissed the ideas of intelligent design – a pseudoscientific version of creationism. "The word has been hijacked by a narrow group of creationist fundamentalists in America to mean something it didn't originally mean at all. It's another form of the God of the gaps. It's bad theology in that it turns God once again into the pagan god of thunder and lightning."

Consolmagno's comments came as the pope made his own remarks about science this morning at St Mary's University College in Twickenham. Speaking to pupils, he encouraged them to look at the bigger picture, over and above the subjects they studied. "The world needs good scientists, but a scientific outlook becomes dangerously narrow if it ignores the religious or ethical dimension of life, just as religion becomes narrow if it rejects the legitimate contribution of science to our understanding of the world," he said. "We need good historians and philosophers and economists, but if the account they give of human life within their particular field is too narrowly focused, they can lead us seriously astray."

The pope's astronomer said the Vatican was keen on science and admitted that the church had got it "spectacularly wrong" over its treatment of the 17th century astronomer Galileo Galilei. Galileo confirmed that the Earth went around the sun – and not the other way around – and was charged with heresy in 1633. He spent the rest of his life under house arrest in Tuscany. Only in 1992 did Pope John Paul admit that the church's treatment of Galileo had been a mistake.

Consolmagno said it was a "complete coincidence" that he was speaking at the British Science Festival at the same time as the papal visit.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/sep/17/pope-astronomer-baptise-aliens?CMP=twt_gu

[Kanada Kev]

Bam Bam Bam Bam Bam Bam Bam Bam Bam Bam = NEW HIP!

how induhviduals get duped by this bullshit is completely beyond me. They deserve to lose their money to these snake oil salesmen.

[Kanada Kev]

Electricity? What is it?

Bob Jones University explains:

http://www.prosebeforehos.com/image-of-the-day/07/05/bob-jones-university-explains-electricity/

So, if you need a copy for your children to learn and to beef up your home-skoolin' library, you can purchase on amazon.com.

http://www.bjupress.com/about/electricity-is-a-mystery.php

Hey, if more than a million kids are learnin' from these books, then they can't be wrong ... right?

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/BJU_Press

[bradm]

afGkv0IT4dU

(The two men seated on stage are Richard Dawkins and Neil deGrasse Tyson.)

Aloha,

Brad

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

That was so very nicely worded. All I hope for, too.

[Kanada Kev]

Love that guy. Amazing to listen to. Frequent guest of Jon Stewart's

[Thorgnor]

How exactly was that question "Trollish"? The guys are there to speak about Agnostic and Atheist beliefs, no? or is this debate not actually about the debate, but instead the idea that both camps have a deep insecurity about being wrong, either because god grounds their faith in humanity, or because their faith in humanity is shaken by claims of religious rightness. The question was apt. Can you take reason with you into an "afterlife"? Do we need to rely on an idea of god in order to form an idea of an afterlife? These are reasonable questions, but they played the kid out instead. Very forward thinking and open minded.

Scientists are just as depressing as religious wingnuts these days. Neither will accept that the other has taken comfort in their beliefs, and neither can accept that they don't actually have all the answers. Here "reason" itself becomes a tool for social control... don't believe that or you're simply unreasonable... but thought police are bad, right?

That said I agree partly with his answer, although, ash is still a part of the ecosystem, and does serve as a necessary component of plant fertilizer the mushrooms need to eat too.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

I didn't care for the "religious troll" label either, though I tend to ignore how people label their videos anyway. I did think it was an important question in the dialogue that has to take place between theistic and atheistic thinkers (and who's to say that the questioner wasn't just playing devil's advocate here).

I still think the answer was spot-on, though there is lots of tension between the humility that it aimed at, and the smugness in the room that it seemed to generate.

[Thorgnor]

fair enough. I think the question deserves some very serious consideration, as does the idea of "reason" itself. There is so much stupid "reasoning" in our thinking, and so much of it ignores sensation as legitimate experience. I find the recourse to reason usually expresses a personal lack of experience. Those who "experience" god use a type of "reason" only others who chose to identify with can "understand", and those who use reason as a barrier to what god might feel like retreat further into a logic contextualized by a separation from a possibility of the divine; a recourse grounded in refusal.

I'm looking for new ways to make life productive.

debates like these feel like the same old vapid pep rallies. no offense intended by these comments, but the video irked me, it was irksome.

Edited October 3, 2010 by Guest

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Irking was occasioned?

As far as the experience thing goes, I can't help but remember the God helmet.

[Birdy]

Scientists are just as depressing as religious wingnuts these days. Neither will accept that the other has taken comfort in their beliefs, and neither can accept that they don't actually have all the answers.

...

I'm looking for new ways to make life productive.

debates like these feel like the same old vapid pep rallies.

if i were dead, i may have just rolled over in my grave.

i hate this thread, have always hated it, have come in here from time to time over the years to express my dislike, always unsuccessfully communicating what you just successfully communicated.

with my reason, what makes the videos, images and articles quoted, rejoiced and laughed at in this thread any better than buddy on the bus trying to convert you with his evangelical wisdom? nothing. there's no difference (to me at least).

moral superiority is the devil in disguise.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Well, you're still checking in, which is saying something .

Birdy, are you saying that you're identifying with the evangelical voice in this? I'm not sure where you're going with this, except to ask everybody to stop talking about it, which doesn't seem to make much sense to me. Please disabuse me of this prevarication. (sorry, new word of the day, had to use it)

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Re. the video above - I had to laugh when I read further into the wiki on Persinger's God helmet:

A report of an experiment on Richard Dawkins in 2003 said:

The experiment is based on the recent finding that some patients with temporal lobe epilepsy, a neurological disorder caused by chaotic electrical discharges in the temporal lobes of the brain, seem to experience devout hallucinations that bear a striking resemblance to the mystical experiences of holy figures such as St Paul and Moses. Such associations have been noted by researchers for over a century, including Dr. Wilder Penfield's work, published in the 1950s.[5]

Dawkins was reported not to have experienced a religious feeling. The report said:

Dr. Persinger explained his lack of effects. Before donning the helmet, Prof Dawkins had scored low on a psychological scale measuring temporal lobe sensitivity.

[Kanada Kev]

with my reason, what makes the videos, images and articles quoted, rejoiced and laughed at in this thread any better than buddy on the bus trying to convert you with his evangelical wisdom? nothing. there's no difference (to me at least).

moral superiority is the devil in disguise.

Nobody here is threatening others with eternal pain, damnation, fear, etc. if they do not follow their beliefs. Big difference. I guess you find the parody of others in every situation deplorable then? You never laugh at stand-up comedy either do you?

Moral superiority? How can one be morally superior to another when that other person fully believes that THEY are morally superior to the first one? Ha! Sounds more like YOU are exerting your moral superiority by stating that all those that participate in this thread (posting/viewing) are beneath your high moral levels.

[color:purple]Birdy = Devil In Disguise!!!

So say we all ...

[Birdy]

Haha!

To threaten with eternal pain, damnation, whatever, or to threaten with shame, ridicule and a label - the level of poison depends on who it falls upon. I could care less if someone says to me believe this or you'll burn in the fiery depths of hell, or conversely, if they call me crazy or absurd for believing something different, which is really, in effect, what this thread does (maybe not intentionally). I'm not trying to claim moral superiority AT ALL, but rather to point there's always a 'this' and always a 'that'. The sooner we allow ourselves to shrug it off with indifference, the sooner each side loses it's audience, which really, is what these vapid pep rallies are all about.

This has absolutely nothing to do with my ability to find something funny, but rather finding it sad that as a community, judging by the size of this thread, we generally aren't that accepting. Just because 'they're' not accepting in the first place, doesn't excuse us either.

Edited October 3, 2010 by Guest

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

[rant]

"Community"? That's a helluva thing to try to posit, especially a place like this. In my experience, I have near and dear friends here that I see eye to eye with, along with others where we get on but don't know each other that much, and so on. (Meanwhile, Birdy, you haven't responded directly to anything I've written in, like, the last two years!)

Fact is, there are people out there frothing at the mouth around questions about religion, and too often it devolves into violence (see the news around Ayodhya this week). Is anything that happens in this thread, relatively speaking, worth whinging about, as if it really affected our lives?

If push came to shove, ok, sure: I would say that people that dug their heels in to defend theism were in fact deluded and threatened to fuck things up for the rest of us. That doesn't mean that theism is bankrupt for me - it works perfectly well on the level of poetry. But this literalism that is new to religion in modernity (i.e. the last 200 years or so) is undeniably catastrophic.

So when such stupidity in the world of religion comes up, and someone sees fit to throw it in this thread, I love it - it's still the first thread I check out when I pull this site up - and want to see how it's responded to.

[/end rant]

[Birdy]

Well to each their own, I suppose. I've said my yearly piece in this thread and really have nothing more to say other than what i've posted. You may love it for your reasons just as much as I hate it for mine. To each their own - continue on!

And for what it's worth Dr. Evil Mouse, I haven't been posting on this site for over a year, only came back recently, did respond to you in my 'Veganism can't save us' thread... and before then, you were on a jambands sabbatical. I'm not ignoring you.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Pay no mind, I was just being shitty (and yes, I also had to force myself take a sabbatical away from here, to thin out my addiction). I guess I still can't fathom why it is that you disagree with this thread so much after all this time, is all. Can you put it simply?

[Birdy]

Simply? Because everything in this world starts with the simplest idea. It's like the class clown in school who bullies, poking fun and then when the bullied kid becomes upset, retorts 'whaaat!? we're just having a little fun, what's your problem!?' The bullied kid feels less because someone is telling him he's different, he's something to be laughed at. Is it right that he should feel less? Why? Because he's not the same as his nemesis? Doesn't believe what they do?

And then, instead of listening to his parents who tell him to walk away, he decides to fight back, looking for the ugly in his nemesis to start a war with, and so it continues, and it gets uglier and uglier as time goes on.

Yet, if the bully didn't bully, or if the bullied simply walked away like he was told, the war wouldn't have continued. What's there to fight when you don't let it affect you? This is what i was referring to when i said we'd be better off in letting indifference take over.

I get that some of this stuff is funny and i'm not trying to be a buzz kill. Generally, i steer clear of this thread - but Thorgnor posted and i wanted to see what he was saying - we have a history of fun debates over religion. But funny as it may be, it's the kind of humour that comes at another's expense - and the consequences of that... well, i've outlined above.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

I hear you. But it does take me aback that it's the non-religious who are cast in the role of the bully. Statistically, that's just not the case, and I have to be careful even now not to trip over people's toes at the college I teach at.

I grew up as an evangelical, and all I remember being told was that it was the others who were wrong, and who should be our targets. Hell, my grade 9 locker partner was as full-on evangelical as it gets, and he bullied the hell out of me for reasons that I'll never know. Evangelicals are a group that - and I know this from living within their midst for too long - feel that they have a right to take things back, whether or not anything was actually was taken from them.

I stick to this thread because maybe there's going to be that space for the middle ground. It does happen; that's what lends ambiguity to the thread title, after all.

[Birdy]

I avoid this thread because i think the hopes of a middle ground too far gone. I seem to be becoming less idealistic as time goes on. Trait of age maybe. Kind of sad.

It doesn't matter who is cast in the role of the bully or the bullied, the only thing that matters is that both are participating.

Fwiw, i hear you as well.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Too far gone? Then hell, just push back - please! Everybody needs that.