solve
October 7th, 2015
Tip of the hat to WEIT.
Congratulations to Patreon supporter WW from London, the winner of this month’s raffle prize (a signed J&M book).
Latest book…
Random oldie…
September 7, 2022-
- NICE T-SHIRT (Thank you for not provoking my uncontrollable lust). Currently unavailable.
Good one! Extra “the” in panel two đ
Gah! Thanks, Markywarky. I hate it when that happens. Takes bloody ages for the caches to clear.
Richard Dawkins made this point very nicely on real time with Bill Maher this past Friday…
Seems like the barmaid believes God exists. The great problem with atheism is that you cannot believe in nothing. So you have to define the undefinable in order to reject what you have defined.
Nonsense ebs001! barmaid doesn’t suggest at all that she believes in God. The unspoken, because it’s not necessary for anyone but a pedant to have it spoken, long hand version of her question is “I don’t believe he does, but IF God existed as you suggest he does, why would that be?”. You don’t have to accept someone else’s hypothosis in order to question it’s logicality.
And by the way, atheism does not and never has claimed to believe in nothing. It simply doesn’t believe the hypothosis put forward by religions.
Even saying “I don’t know, it just does” is not stating that the answer is “nothing”, it’s just saying that so far there is no valid explanation that I’m aware of.
In my case I believe that there must be SOME natural explanation, but I’m content to accept not knowing what it is until we have a proper answer. I see no point in making something up in the meantime!
PPS, I’m posting from Kuwait today. The adrenaline rush isn’t as great as I’d hoped!! I think having free ice creams available in the airport lounge takes the edge off the feeling of daring-do!!
Must buy one of your t-shirts before I come again. Good idea do you think?
If you wear it under a jumper, yes!
The problem with ‘eternity’, ‘first cause’ and ‘why’, is that the human brain didn’t evolve enough to understand them.
Our brain had a rapid evolution so that we got more brain power than needed just to survive-which is why we have art and science. But not enough for the above three things.
From the TV series: “Cosmos”.
PERFECT! Author you are the Michelangelo of poetic irony!
Not quite. It should be “âI donât believe it does, but IF God existed as you suggest it does, why would that be?” I’m confident that the barmaid would never assume God is a he.
Simple,she should have said”why does your God exist”
Markywarky Nonsense. If you say I don’t believe God exists you need to define God. Your also making shit up. The barmaid said what she said and if you read the rest of the cartoon you would understand that the barmaid understands the difference between a problem and a mystery, two completely different ways of knowing but I guess only a pendant would know that there are different ways of knowing.
It is what it is, right? I found the cartoon wonderful – real, i.e. if both sides (most philosophical conflicts) look at things honestly they just don’t know, and say so – but always from their own perspective, of course…
“If you say I donât believe God exists you need to define God.”
Why? It’s very simple to take the position that no evidence for any type of god has been persuasive.
We’ll let theists define what it is they are proposing.
“The barmaid said what she said…”
Can you be serious?! You claim to know what a cartoon character meant? I often ask just such questions of theists (Why does god want this or that, why does he exist, etc.) and it is certainly not the case that I believe a god exists!
“The great problem with atheism is that you cannot believe in nothing.”
Oy; I cannot wait til theists get some new talking points. This one is SO tired.
“Iâm confident that the barmaid would never assume God is a he.”
I don’t frequent this establishment, so I don’t know the barmaid at all, but it is quite often the case that both theists and atheists refer to a god as male.
And no less of an authority than Billy Graham reminds us that “He is Father, not Mother, and even in the Incarnation chose to come to us as a man, Jesus Christ.”
I think it would not be surprising that someone, including the barmaid, refer to the god in which they do not believe as a he.
ebs001 Ah, you’re back are you. With all due respect, didn’t I ask you politely to fuck off the last time you showed up at the C&B. Take your Philosophy 101 bullshit with you when you leave. Only a complete idiot is going to tell me that saying unicorns don’t exist affirms their existence.
Author, you have a way with words that is a pure delight.
ebs001 any one who knows the barmaid well knows she does not agree with your interpretation. It is a shame you don’t know the barmaid well as she talks sense you need to hear.
Thanks for another smile Author!
ebs001 sez: “If you say I donât believe God exists you need to define God”
As an atheist I don’t believe that any gods exist. Hindus believe there are 30 million gods so you can take that as a lower limit of the number of gods I don’t believe in. I don’t believe in the vague, deist deity who some people say spun up the universe and then retired into the background, never to be seen again. I don’t believe in the old geezer with a long, white beard who helps believers find their car keys and has an unhealthy obsession with sex. I don’t believe in any gods anywhere on the spectrum between the deist deity and the old geezer. Give me an example of a god, I won’t believe in him, her, it, or hir.
The barmaid has the same beliefs towards gods that I do.
In the context of a ‘deity’ what does ‘exist’ actually mean.
‘God’ exists as a figment of the imagination which is existence of a sort.
Also if the universe is infinite with infinite probablity there has to be at lwast one universe with a ‘god’ and at least one where there is no ‘god’
This indicates that if ‘gods’ exists then it is not omnipotent as there is one universe it is absent from .
But it ‘god’ if not all powerful then it is not ‘god’
why does ‘god’ exist
thats easy – same reason as why any other human invention exists
ebs001 says:
… that you cannot believe in nothing.
You are just wrong in so many ways. You see, I do believe in nothing. Great awesome mind-boggling gobs of nothing. As I understand it, the Universe is mostly made of Nothing. Every tiny bit of Something is separated from every other bit of Something by many times greater amounts of Nothing. In fact the real question is not, “Why is there something instead of nothing.” The real question is, “Why is there so much nothing in this something.”
Thank you for playing. Come back again when you have something instead of nothing.
Why does the universe exist?
If it didn’t, would it be missed?
How trivial of humanity
Involved in philosophical insanity.
The ongoing saga of metaphysical banality.
The universe exists because I choose to create it in my mind. iow, You are all figments of my imagination.
From reading some of the above comments, it is clear my imagination needs a tune-up.
*groans and facepalms* I am so embarrassed by other deists… where are the Thomas Jeffersons of this age – or at least the C.K. Chestertons, hell, even the C.S. Lewises – instead of these jokers who give my kind a bad name…
@ebs001
I don’t understand how a pendant comes into it?
ebs001 does highlight a notable issue among a lot of people – that of the notion that one must necessarily “believe” in something. Especially that that one must have a deeply invested position, and can’t accept a simple “don’t know, don’t care”(or equivalent) attitude. As the Ghod question is so important to believers, they then project that it must be important to non-believers, and that non-believers are simply being dishonest in their responses.
Nice go see that the athiests are so openinded that they have to tell anyone who questions their theories to fuck off instead of presenting an argument. So much for the “profound philosophical discussion”
ebs001 Thank you. You actually gave me a laugh with my morning coffee.
Hey, Freefox, great to hear from you. Could you give us a bit of your usual profundity? I seem to be all out of the stuff, leaving me with nothing but a fuck off to offer our erudite interloper.
Firstly, I would question as to whether you could put forward a convincing argument that Atheism is a “theory” and look forward to your response.
Secondly, your assertion that “The great problem with atheism is that you cannot believe in nothing” has a number of logical problems. For a start, the use of “believe” in this context is highly suspect, because it means “the acceptance of something without the need for supporting evidence”. However, I know it’s often used in a careless manner in this way, so I’ll leave it at that for the moment.
Either way, your phrase “believe in nothing” just doesn’t make sense. Sorry, but it doesn’t. However, if you translate it into what you actually mean, namely “Atheists don’t accept the existence of God* without supporting evidence”, then yes, you’re perfectly correct.
*you can substitute fairies, dragons, slimy green blobby magical stuff, whatever.
So I don’t believe (see what I did there?) that you present any cogent arguments to support your thesis, or even that you’ve expressed that thesis properly and I look forward to any response.
Going back to the J&M strip, it actually makes a great deal of sense. J&M are expressing the religionist’s problem with causality – you can’t have Y without it being caused by X. They are then confronted with the Barmaid’s manoeuvre, forcing J&M to proffer the assertion that you can have Y without it being caused by X. QED
In the actual, real world, Physicists study the notion of “nothing” with great enthusiasm, and the current thinking is that there ain’t no such thing as “nothing”.
My advice to you is to stop playing, poorly it has to be said, at the semantic gymnastics of pseudo-philosophy and start dealing with reality.
Sorry, the above was @ebs001
ebs001- Fair enough, “don’t know, don’t care” isn’t much of a deep philosophical discussion. But to me, the issue of Ghod is not a matter of philosophy, but psychology and the cognitive processes that seeks pattern, structure, and social hierarchies and how those desires drive the emotional artifact of Ghod. “it’s all in your head” isn’t meant to be dismissive, but, ultimately, that’s what it boils down to. I guess that is technically an ad hominem argument, but the whole business of belief is about processing reality, and lacking Ghod-in-fact, one has to wonder where/why/how Ghod-as-idea comes about.
Before a discussion can take place, what is an “atheist”?
Believe in god? Which one, at last count there seems to be several thousand of them and I wouldn’t want to piss off a real one if there is such a thing, I have no interest in spending eternity in a lake of flames.
And by the way:
ebs001 sez: âIf you say I donât believe God exists you need to define Godâ.
No, I don’t have to define anything unless I choose to. And now that you’ve pushed me back into the 4th grade transactional analysis base mode,
“Who died and made you god?”.
‘belief in ‘god’ is identical to ‘belief in nothing
as both refer to non existence
why does the universe or ‘god’ exist?
is the Q why those exist instead of non-existence
or is the Q ‘what ultimate purpose do they have/serve?
ebs001- what is an atheist? Doesn’t believe in Ghod and that kind of stuff? I’d WAG you are looking for a deeper intellectual/philosophical answer. Why does there need to be? Science seems to be covering the bulk of the obvious material questions of existence. Looking for deeper means and all that kind of naval-gazing seems to be just the emotional needs of the seeker looking for questions and answers that simply don’t exist.
It does seem to me that the question “why does anything exist?” opens the door, just a crack, for the existence of God. It’s true that theists can’t answer the question either, but what bothers me is that it’s so difficult to imagine how there could be an answer of any sort. That difficulty opens the door to the possibility that the underlying nature of reality is so radically different from anything in our experience that, well, maybe it could be God after all. Maybe not the Iron Age barbarian king we all know and love, but something.
Of course, if what we’re talking about is really that far beyond anything in our experience, then why do we think we can even talk about it sensibly? For me, atheism is much more mundane. I see no strong evidence for the supernatural being at work in the world; I see undeniable evidence that human beings are given to making stuff like this up, and do so all the time; and I conclude that most likely it’s all made up, rather than just some of it. Hardly a proof, but good enough for me. I think if you try to go deeper than that you are basically just entertaining yourself with word games.
@ebs001
It has been very well established throughout the existence of this webcomic that the barmaid doesn’t believe that any god exists. She is merely asking why Jesus and Mo believe that the Abrahamic god exists in much the same way as one might ask “Why did Harry Potter attend Hogwarts?”
Atheism is NOT “believing in nothing”, it’s “not believing that a specific kind of fictitious being (gods) exists in reality”. Atheism is simply regarding gods in the same way everyone, including YOU (presumably), regards elves, gremlins, goblins, leprechauns, vampires, werewolves and the Loch Ness monster.
Your fixation on “defining” gods intrigues me. How do you define gods and how does it differ from the dictionary definition?
Robert+Andrews says: October 7, 2015 at 2:53 pm
The problem with âeternityâ, âfirst causeâ and âwhyâ, is that the human brain didnât evolve enough to understand them.
What makes you think so?
Human brains, if properly educated, understand very well that there is no such thing as causality at quantum level, which implies that there is no necessity for a ‘first cause’ and the question ‘why’ is therefore irrelevant. and eternity (infinity) has been understood since the ancient greek and probably chinese and others before them.
Raymond,
Is it possible that two or more solipsists can exist simultaneously?
Here at the C&B, I normally just sit quietly in the corner, supping my ale and listening to the more erudite people around me.
But ebs001 – you are getting me riled. Why should we have to define “atheist” or “god” before a discussion can take place? All of us here are in agreement about those definitions, by common understanding. We don’t need to define them.
Would you go into a football supporters pub and ask them to define what football was before discussing it? Good luck with that one.
Atheism is usually defined as not believing in God which needs a definition of God, otherwise the statement makes no sense. and actually I probably don’t believe in that God either. For example, Catty says God is “a being” Stop, I don’t believe God is a being. J&M said He is the “the ground of being”, not the ground of a being. Just “being” which is a mystery and cannot be solved.
Science cannot answer all questions and Barmaid seems to know that when she answered the question, “why does the universe exist?” I don’t know it just does.
Someone said God is nothing. “I am an Atheist I don’t believe in nothing.”
Shaughn says “infinity has been understood for years” An alternate word used for infinity is undefined meaning we cannot understand it.
I think jb says it quite well. It really depends on what level you want to take Atheism. He chooses, in his words “the mundane”.
I just thought this strip might open the door to look at Atheism and God and mystery.
I thought Author actually has J&M come to a new level that God just is. No doubt they will soon fall back into defining God in Christian Fundamentalist or Muslim Fundamentalist terms.
In case your wondering, I don’t call myself a theist. I will not say I believe in GOD nor I will not say I don’t believe in God.
@ ebs001
Don’t like “not believing that a specific kind of fictitious being…”? Try “not believing that a specific kind of fictitious entity…” or “not believing that a specific kind of fictitious thing…”
The words ‘god’, ‘atheism’ and ‘atheist’ are defined in dictionaries, so look them up if you are uncertain.
I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, but if you continue down this rabbit hole of petty obscurantism it’ll compel everyone to write you off as a troll and ignore you.
Definitions:
“god” : a superbeing slightly more powerful than the 1980’s DC Superman. An example would be Thor or Odin in the same era. Or a non-physical identity which can manifest physical objects and processes by force of will so being able to create entire cosmoses including this one yet who concerns itself with whether Suzy bends over too low and I get a glimpse of her teats.
“Atheist” : a thinking being who has no need of a belief in Thor, Thoth, Zeus, JHV Rama or Kali. Nor does he have need of a belief in vampires, ghouls, IronMan, Dormannu, Ghantu or Vishnu. For the sake of completeness, an atheist has no need of a belief in any god as defined above. Atheists may have other beieefs, some of which may be very strange, but they are universally classifiable by a lack of faith in the reality of gods and by that alone.
Right, ebbsy, you have definitions. Now for some reality checks.
There are no gods by either definition. No Olympian or Norse superbeings, no Amerind great spirits, no Chinese star gods. There never were. This is reality. There are no gods. There are no gods. There are NO gods..
In the real, sane world, there are no gods.
This is fact. Not belief, not theory, not a guess. Fact.
There is no Barsoom, no Trantor, no Satrship Enterprise (though there have been many ships with the name, one of which was a Shuttle’s shell) and no Terminators from the future. Similarly, there are no gods. This is *THE* *TRUTH* *OF* *THE* *UNIVERSE*.
All of the “sacred texts” were written by collections of men (and they were vastly, overwhelmingly men, usually elderly, not women) in attempts to codify their societies’ laws and customs, to perpetuate and preserve their oral histories and creation myths and to give themselves a leg-up in the dance of power, prestige and social position. If the priests were the only ones who could “interpret the will of Tssae” then Tssae would insist on them being wealthy, comfortable, safe and miles away from the drudgery of farm work. That the interpreters of the will of the local gods would also get the best food, wine and females was a bonus and a welcome one.
Religion, all religion, is a lie. A confidence trick, a fraud. The people pushing religion are charlatans, frauds and hypocrites on the same moral level as “mediums” and “spiritualists”. They are “astrologers” writing for newspaper columns. They are, in short, liars.
All of them know this.
All of the priests, of all religions, know for solid gold facts that they and their religions are lies and frauds.
This is why they dislike education, Science, The Enlightenment, reason, thinking and sane people.
They know we see through their frauds and can both mock them and crowd them into a corner where their idiotic little stories and derivative little cults look more and more insane, less and less relevant and further and further from anything resembling reality.
Religion hates us because they know we will, eventually, break them. We will kill them all. Not the people, the churches. With reason and love and the sheer naked power of the scientific method of looking at Reality instead of getting our physics from cartoons and comic books we will eventually make churches unnecessary, un-needed, redundant and extinct.
Islam, to take a random and slightly contemporaneously relevant example, can not tolerate any sort of dissent, not even dissenting schisms of itself, because Islam pretends to be the one universal truth and having other truths, or even other ideas shows that it may well not be. If you read two books, the koran comes off poorly in comparison to the other, almost any other. The priests of Islam know this, they know, for true and for certain, that Islam is a gigantic fraud, a massive lie, that it is not the universal truth and that much of it is insanely daft, so they try to stamp out thinking, rebellion, dissent, argument, reason and even other religions. They know that if their followers were to think they would be led to the ineluctable observation that not all people and not all ideas are of Islam and that directly contradicts their source book.
So they do not tolerate atheists. They make Science a demon. They demonise anyone not “enjoying the peaceful rule of Islam”.
Because were they not to they would be participating in their own extinction. To a religion, any religion, all religion, toleration is death.
It was not always so monochrome.
Imperial Rome had a policy of allowing any and all religions. They had their own, which were given huge temples and much political patronage, but they accepted the truth of every other religion. They didn’t care whether you worshipped Tssae or Thoth, so long as you also paid a little to their gods they were content. In their relatively enlightened multi-cultural world-view, Thoth and Tssae were just different names for Zeus, IUpiter, Venus and Hera. Or different aspects of them.
Then came the monotheists, the alienists, the bigots, the true horror of religion. The worshippers of the “one, true god”. The Jews and their many septic offshoots, Christians, Maryans, Islamics, Scientologists, Satanists, Baptists and the whole rotten, temporary, little squalid, argumentative cult.
That lot insisted that their religion would be the only, one true faith and that bowing to any other would be cause for death and worse.
And that is where we are now.
We have a freak show, a horror show, where the Romans had niceness and coolness. We have armed gangs of mutant thugs screaming that books are evil (“Boko Haram” = “book lurrnin is bad”; the mantra of some Americans, too) while kidnapping hundreds of girls and mass, serially raping them. We have demented legions of gangsters raping their way across what was the Cradle of Civilisation and destroying everything in their path including their very own histories. We have churches banning tools that are cheap and effective and protect against overpopulation and diseases for the most insane and demented of “reasons”. And we have this vast, yammering mass of hate and fury and destruction roiling like a festering pot of ooze simply because they can see their own extinction, their own loss of power and pomp and prestige and they don’t like it.
From baptists bringing cakes to a Saturday gathering to help to support their churches to Boko Haram savages cutting people to pieces and raping children the entire Abrahamic religion is a savage mass of guilt, bigotry and horror.
Fortunately, with modern communications, it can’t last much longer. Even uneducated barbarians are getting the message of The Enlightenment.
Slowly.
Ebs001, your religion is a stinking, foetid miasmic cesspool of hatred, horror, bigotry and rape. You are guilty by merely supporting it. You are part of Boko Haram and Isis. As are your priests.
Isis is merely the childish expression of some of the more prominent parts of your religion let loose without the restraint of reason and compassion. The truth is that your very own church would behave in an identical manner were its priests allowed to.
All of the many, many schisms of the Abrahamic cult are identical.
They all hate reason, they all hate us, they all hate dissent, heresy “blasphemy” and rational thought. For they all, without exception, fear to lose their power.
And all of them will kill to preserve it.
The Imperial Romans, and many other societies, showed that it was possible for religions and the scientific method of rational investigation of reality to co-exist so long as those religions fully accept that none are the one true Truth. This is no longer even a remote possibility. The demonic loathing the Abrahamic cult has for anything opposing it, anything even questioning it means that ultimately the resolution will become an “us or them” confrontation.
Fortunately, “us” has computers, fibre-optics, antibiotics, robotics, nuclear fusion and the hope of a galactic empire on our side.
All they have is an incohate scream of impotent rage and small dicks.
They were beaten two thousand years ago. They are just too stupid to know it.
We’ve already won.
Not only are there no gods but soon there won’t even be believers.
Note: I don’t use Dormannu’s official title, “The Dread Dormannu”, not because I wish in any way to diminish or belittle him but because I always rather sympathised with the poor, little godling. I liked him. Stephen Strange was mean to him at every encounter. I wanted Dormmy to win.
Of course that would have rather shortened the run of the comics but I didn’t have a financial interest in them continuing so I didn’t much care. đ
And, yes, I once read comics. I also read histories of the empires of pre-Columbian America, “Executioner” novels, the ingredients list on the packs of pre-cooked ready-meals and “New Scientist” articles. So? đ
jb, the cosmos exists for two reasons:
because and
because we are in it.
Not teleology or the anthropic principle. Simply facts. The hole in the ground exists because the puddle fits it. The puddle is not causing the hole in the ground but were the hole not there neither would be the puddle.
We are here to argue the point therefore a “here” exists for us to be in. We may not be causing the “here” to exist and it did pretty well, apparently, for some 13 milliard years before we arrived to discuss the matter but the fact of our existence necessary encourages the fact of its existence. If it wasn’t here, neither would we be.
We are the puddle, marvelling at how precisely the depression in the ground fits our shape.
The primal reason for the cosmos being is that is is.
It happened. It exists. Had it not, it wouldn’t.
That sounds like arguing in a circle and it may well be but it is nevertheless the fundamental essence of the scientific method. We can probe the cosmos all we want with our theory, our mathematics and our technologically enhanced senses but we begin with the axiom that what we are probing is a real thing. That the cosmos exists for some useful definition of the word.
The cosmos is. We can poke at it. We can explore it. We can even model how it works and derive useful stuff from those models, like the keyboard I am using and the many fabrics it is made from.
Gods do not exist. Though we can model them, and the five trilliard names of the various gods, demi-gods, urges, aspects, avatars and sons illustrate that ability to an astonishing and fascinating degree, they have no use. They have no utility that a simple code of morlas and ethics cannot supplant with far less baggage.
I may not enjoy life all of the time and it may not be pleasant all of the time but the good bits are worth having so I wish to live so long as possible. I don’t want to die. Specifically, I don’t want some bigoted bastard with a sword to cleave me asunder for the glory of his daddy in the sky. I fondly imagine that many, many erect bipeds with the ability to speak have this same preference so I do not kill them.
I am not fond of massive jolts of pain. Having recently done something amazingly stupid to my back I know that I can have these and I am very much in favour of not having them, so I don’t hurt those other mammals that are wandering about. Y’know, the ones that so humorously call themselves “Man The Wise”. People. I don’t hurt them because I imagine that they, too, dislike having gigantic bolts of agony. (Yes, I know about masochism, but that is limited pain in a fun and safe setting and is mutually consensual playing.)
I don’t steal stuff because its your stuff and I only have the right to take it if you give it to me. Or if it is abandoned or was public domain. I will pick up a stick to throw for a dog to fetch as the stick was public domain and the dog will abandon it soon enough, but I won’t take your wallet without asking.
And I will not make a lady cry for that is an inexcusable sin.
There, “Ten Commandments” without the need for gods. I won’t hurt you if you won’t hurt me. That includes killing you, hitting you, burning you at the stake or with the steak, taking your ass or your arse without permission and being mean to you with words.
No gods need apply.
Gods do not exist. There is no need for them to.
The cosmos does exist both because it does and because our presence shows that it does.
Don’t you just love it when everything is all neat and tidy?
Stating that atheists do not believe in god pre-supposes that there is a god and the atheists choose not to believe in it / him/ her. So in a nutshell, theists believe in the existence of god(s), atheists do not. As for the argument that science doesn’t have all the answers, well if it did then there would be no need for science.
Catty, re. ebs001 you wrote: “I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, but if you continue down this rabbit hole of petty obscurantism itâll compel everyone to write you off as a troll and ignore you.”
I’m amused that, by continuing his babbling, ebs001 is convincing everybody that my initial reaction to him was the correct one. Just a common garden variety troll.
No doubt he thinks he’s smarter than everybody here. Note his refusal to actually take a position, which would leave him open to an actual argument: “In case your (sic) wondering, I donât call myself a theist. I will not say I believe in GOD nor I will not say I donât believe in God.” No, ebs001, I wasn’t wondering. I’ve had you pegged from the start and my mates here are coming around to the same opinion. Just fuck off.
@ebs001
Why do you have to name “mystery” (whatever that is to you) God? Why do you have to name/define what you currently don’t know/understand at all? And why don’t you seem to allow for the possibility that part of that mystery might actually be your own mind’s way of coping, rather than something valid for everyone?
You really don’t get the point of satire, do you? Atheists care about the religious definitions of fundamentalists since they are the ones causing harm to other people, since they try to use dogmatic ideas to control other people and even as an excuse to kill (!) other people. As long as people want to talk to any green goblins at home and don’t force anyone else to, they are free to do so. What concerns me though, is that if you get large amounts of people believing in “mystery”, that makes them easy targets for authoritarian people who want to use them as a power base. It makes them fall more easily for the “Emperor’s new clothes” types of arguments (read H.C. Andersen) – “If you don’t see the truth my way it is because you are too stupid to understand the great mystery, therefore you should blindly obey people like me, who do”. A “different way of knowing” you call it? Well that is straight from the conman manual, isn’t it? Describe things in a way that can’t be checked or questioned and use psychological mechanisms and social needs to get the victim to comply. Satire can hopefully contribute to making you sceptical enough to resist by shining a light on things from different directions and holding up mirrors to humanity.
There are a lot of things we don’t know. You can choose to call it a mystery. But why do you have to “believe” or worship it? Just accept uncertainty.
I don’t believe in invisible space dragons. Does the preceding sentence demonstrate that I am acknowledging that such things exist? I don’t think anyone would conclude that I meant that they do exist.
One can’t “choose” to not believe that something exists. We are ALL born atheists and, later when we’re told about god(s), some of us find the claims/arguments that such a thing exists unconvincing. It’s a matter of credulity, not preference. I didn’t “choose” to be unconvinced of the existence of a god, just as I didn’t “choose” to be unconvinced of the existence of invisible space dragons.
Darwin, you are a valued long-time commenter here at J&M, but could you please stop telling people to ‘fuck off’? Only I am allowed to do that.
What about “take thyself henceforth and multiply”?
Nobody except esb001 said God is nothing. Nothing is real, it’s not a matter of faith. “Nothing” in the meaning of empty space. Of course nothing isn’t the only real thing. “Nothing” in the meaning of empty space.
“Believe” can mean anything from a hunch to a well tested opinion to a willfully chosen irrational opinion. Ya wanna play word games, jumping to a new definition at your convenience. The contempt is mutual. (contempt: noun A manner that is generally disrespectful)
God is a black box made of ignorance and held together by uneasiness with things unexplained. Evolution taught our ancestors that ignoring things that don’t fit the usual patterns might get you killed. Most people use “God” as a catch-all explanation for all the questions that have no answer, as well as all the questions they don’t want to take the time to understand.
@Darwin
Just ask if they like sex and travel.
“Nothing” in this cosmos is not “nothing”. The space between quark point particles that makes up the bulk of protons and neutrons is “filled” with the buzzing of those quarks, their attendant gluons and the epiphenomena we call the fields of force between them all. The space between the nuclear mass and the point particles that are electrons in atoms is filled with electomagnetic charge and a teentsy bit of gravity.
The spaces between atoms in a macro-scale body, like a cat or a planet, is full of gravity and charge.
The spaces between worlds are filled with vague lumps of gases and dust and debris and of course gravity.
The spaces between the clouds of stars we see as galaxies, clusters and super-clusters are full of … well, we’re currently not entirely sure what this is full of but some of it is real stuff.
The cosmos is soaked in the cosmic microwave background radiation. This is real light that is absolutely everywhere. It cooks the entire universe to a minimum temperature of just over two Kelvins. Which, admittedly isn’t tropical. It it about two hundred and seventy Celsius below the solidifying point of water. Maybe fifty Celsius warmer than Summer in Scotland.
The entire universe rings with the echo of the event that started it, this CMBR is the remnant of that echo.
In addition to all of this, the cosmos is full of the light from world and clouds and stars, their heat and light radiations reach everywhere. As does their gravity. The gravity of the mass that makes up the Earth has been touching the universe for all thirteen milliard years of its existence. Not as one coherent, slightly bent spherical lump but as other objects and clouds of chaos.
And then there is the neutrino.
The cosmos roils with the scream of uncountable trilliards of neutrinos. The little things are literally everywhere, zipping in every direction at light-speed so near as makes no difference. And every star, every radioactive event in the cosmos is busily producing more and more of them. Poll the cosmos and you will find neutrinos, photons and a tiny, tiny number of particles that make up the mass and the worlds we need.
But there is more. The very metric itself is “stuff”. It has properties. It has rules and properties. What “stuff” the metric is we have no idea at present but it is real.
“Nothing” is a damned difficult thing to find in this here plenum.
“You do have a religion, you believe in Science …”
Actually, no.
I do not “believe” at all. I start from the assumption, unproven and unprovable, that I exist. I notice that things that are essentially not me also exist. I note that something very like Time exists. From these axioms and some others I can create a relatively sturdy framework in which the scientific method of observation and enquiry can lead me to useful models of the not-me stuff and how it affects me over time.
I don’t need belief, I have reasoning.
I am not perfect. Indeed, I am exceedingly lazy at times so I take intellectual short-cuts. Instead of investigating whether drinking a gallon of oleum will harm me, I learn some Chemistry and take it that the damage oleum can do to other stuff will, in all likelihood, be done to me-stuff. Similarly with white-hot magma that has just become lava and many other sources of annoyance and irritation. In short, I don’t investigate everything, I sometimes, if it makes some logical sense, take the word of people who have done so.
The Chemists of the Victorian era played with poisons and explosives so I can accept their work and avoid their accidents. {That is can, not must, sometimes, playing with chemicals can be rather good fun.} That is like the scientific method of enquiry and observation but it is watching someone else do the work. So long as their results are consistent with what happens next it is a somewhat valid method of learning.
Which brings us to “what about MY SACRED BOOK” type arguments.
If I am going to accept what the Lady Curie said about radium eating away at my bones why not accept what Moses said about bushes burning and bricks carved full of instructions?
Simply because those are two entirely different things.
A certain Professor Asimov once wrote about a Galactic Empire and a man living therein who could remotely control other people by the power of his mind.
A Professor Einstein wrote about the effect photons have on the electrons of the outer shells of atoms.
A Doctor Smith wrote of people who could move planets and stars by means of their mental powers, aided by machinery and other tools, and who thus devastated an entire galaxy.
An Andrew Wiles wrote a paper professing to the world that he had proved a theorem that others had struggled with for many years.
Marvel and DC produce comics full of colourful characters doing amazing things.
The Ordnance Survey used to produce maps of UKland.
Bibles and sacred stories of all sorts exist.
Tourist guides exist in great numbers.
Televised advertisements happen.
Food packages list ingredients.
The difference between real Authorities who actual know real things by doing real work and making real observations of the real world and the other stuff is that one is fact and the other is fiction.
I can often tell the difference.
Sane people usually can, once they pass the age of about six. Though we may cling onto the notion of talking dogs (“Watchers” by Dean Koontz, no WikiLinky as I don’t want to spoil the story) as a sort of sentimental wish.
Religion is insanity if you truly believe it. It is fraud, lies and hypocrisy if not.
There are no gods, never were and never will be unless Man and his technologies become them.
Man or woman. Probably the latter. đ
ebs001 says:
October 9, 2015 at 3:02 pm
Shaughn says âinfinity has been understood for yearsâ An alternate word used for infinity is undefined meaning we cannot understand it.
“We” cannot? Please, don’t project your inabilty to understand the undefined to others and speak for yourself only. Logicians and mathematicians often use undefined variables, such as ‘x’ and ‘y’ and ‘a’ and ‘b’ etcetera. Yet, for the educated mind they are perfectly understandable. Logicians and mathematicians too, use the concept of infinity, literally meaning without end. Which of those two words do you not understand?
Spaceman One says:
October 9, 2015 at 7:41 pm
âNothingâ is a damned difficult thing to find in this here plenum.
So it is. Even an absolute empty space is defined by space and time and therefore something, thanks to good old Alby E.
Probably the best experience of something close to ‘nothing’ is unconciousness (by anesthetics or dreamless sleep).
Shaughn, I’ve been in the nothing of anaesthesia. They were plugging in the drip feed that was to pump poison goop into the back of my hand —— cut — I was in a recovery ward and it was over a day later.
There was nothing, not even a gap, between the two. It was entirely like a poorly spliced edit in a movie. No warning, no fade-in, no rush from one scene to the next, just a continuous memory trace with a bit missing.
I did not exist for that time.
Ever so cool. đ
Ebs001, I, for one, do understand the idea of infinity, and that of nothing. I can manipulate both to produce useful concepts and models. I can’t accurately picture infinity, but I can picture it, however unrealistic my images may be. I can even picture infinities that are “larger” than infinity itself. There are more than infinite numbers of those. đ
You need to read more mathematics books.
Also more good SF.
Robert Forward, Peter Hamilton and Stephen Baxter would do to start with. They handle physics and mathematics exceedingly skilfully.
Author, are some of my comments unprintable? Have I been moderated out? If so, could I be told what was so offensive, please, so I don’t ever do it again?
Thank you.
And you do good work, sir. The barmaid is very wise and funny. I would buy her a beer but I have run out of virtual change. đ
You guys are really special. You cannot even answer simple questions without becoming angry and insulting or just telling people to fuck-off for asking in the first place. I guess it doesn’t matter whether you are a fundamentalist Christian or a fundamentalist atheist, both have all the answers and there will be no questions. At least fundamentalist Christians are polite.
ebs001
“fundamentalist Christians are polite”
On what planet?
Nassar,
Loved it! In my opinion, you could have stopped after the first two lines:
“Why does the universe exist?
If it didnât, would it be missed?”
Sometimes less is more.
ebs001
ermm .. but your questions, such as they were, have been answered. But you choose to not engage.
“fundamentalist atheist”. Now where have I heard that before?
You’re very reminiscent of the “pigeon and chess” trope, except maybe not so much a pigeon, more of a parrot.
Nothing offensive, Spaceman. You got caught in moderation when your username acquired a + (don’t ask me why)
@ ebs001
Spare us the poor-little-me routine and try to look at your contributions from others’ point of view. Don’t complain about being on the receiving end of contempt you provoked utterly gratuitously. And don’t tar as all with the same brush. Several of us have been exceptionally tolerant of your contributions.
“Fundamentalist atheist” is a nonsensical phrase (“fundamentalist aleprechaunist”, “fundamentalist aunicornist”, “fundamentalist awerewolfist”?) “Both have all the answers and there will be no questions” is even more absurd.
In my experience some fundamentalist Christians are polite – at least until it’s pointed out that they have no reasonable basis for their Christian beliefs – but the typical fundamentalist Christian Internet debater is far from polite.
And for the last time, if you are unclear about the definition of a word, consult a dictionary.
Spaceman One’s posts are now available in paperback.
Humour:
He: Have you heard about the “Existentialist Dyslectic Society?” (Do try to say that phrase out loud – it’s a mouthful!)
She: No – what do they do?
He: They sit around all afternoon and discuss whether or not there is a dog.
Author, oops, my error. I should have noticed it. Many apologies.
Hotrats, not in paperback, no. In glossy, expensive hardback and in even more expensive e-book format. I like the money. đ
Or was that a subtle hint that I do, at times, seem to go on, and on, and on a bit?
Point made well and kindly, also taken. đ
Catty, you make a good point, too. The only reason the word “atheist” exists is because theists insist on it. Personally, I prefer to be bigoted and carve the world into two types, theists and sane people. đ
We don’t have a one-word term for sane, normal, rational, reasonable people who can think because them is the norm. We only need a term for those outside the norm such as loons, nuts, wierdies and theists.
“Atheists” are just people. Theists are the exceptional ones. Fortuately there seems to be a cure.
Hotrats, sorry, I did it again, didn’t I? đ
This is the basic argument of those who insist in the creation myth of the Abrahamic religion. This one could be said to be the basic thought patterns or “logic” of those who insist on the various books of that religion and its many schism being “the one true truth”.
Another version of this argument came up in a quite funny film called “Mystery Men” when one of the heroes claimed to be able to turn invisible but only when no one was watching.
I found these through wiki-trawling when I was looking for “pigeon and chess”. Many, many thanks to the lovely Macha for introducing me to the game of pigeon chess. đ
For my last cite from this site, I offer the Atheists’ Nightmare, the humble banana. Proof, if any more were needed, that Creationists are dumber than dirt and twice so ignorant. đ
Catty, not poor me at all. Perhaps you’re not an FA but there are others here who certainly are and dislike being challenged. Yes, in that way, I brought on contempt but is that the reaction of thinking people to questions? It certainly stifles any hope of dialogue.
I am aware that the dictionary defines words but if one is going to discuss something one has to agree on terms. For example, I put forth the definition of atheism from the dictionary and was immediately challenged because the definition presumed the existence of God. Google “God” and you will see the problem with using a dictionary.
@ebs001
No one is a “fundamentalist atheist”, because, as I pointed out, that term doesn’t make any sense.
I have been involved in discussions about atheism/theism for many years and yet you’re the first person I’ve ever come across who’s had a problem with dictionary definitions of the principal terms used in such discussions.
machigai: Oddly enough, one of my most cherished friends is a fundamentalist Christian creationist. He’s far more polite than I am. Just today my wife was marvelling that he still talks to us, invites us to visit his home in the deep south, and manages to ignore my suggestion that he’s an idiot.
Author, I was wondering where that line was, and I deeply regret crossing it. Please bear in mind that my use of “fuck off” is more an expression of disgust than an instruction, since they never seem to do it, witness ebs001’s continued attempts to prove his intellectual powers here.
I’m actually quite fond of trolls, and rather glad that ebs001 did not heed my advice. He’s stimulated quite a bit of interesting discussion from the more tolerant patrons of the the C&B. When I have a bit more time I intend to pay more attention to the responses he provoked.
Speaking of trolls, I still miss Mohamed. We had such fun with him. Chew toys of that texture are hard to find.
ebs001 says:
October 10, 2015 at 4:36 am
[..]You cannot even answer simple questions without […]
May I kindly remind you to the fact that until that moment you merely made statements and asked no questions (i.e. sentences ending with a question mark) at all save one: “what is an “atheist?” (October 8, 11:16 pm). Your second question dates from October 10, 9:51 pm, well after your unjust complaint.
Your statements up to October 8 5:29 pm are not questioning theories ((your plural) unless you can state what and whose theories?) nor do they thereafter. At best your statements criticise a cartoon; for whatever that might be worth.
Please find hereunder your posts collected, for easy reference; I boldly emphasized your two questions.
ebs001 says:
October 7, 2015 at 1:43 pm
Seems like the barmaid believes God exists. The great problem with atheism is that you cannot believe in nothing. So you have to define the undefinable in order to reject what you have defined.
October 7, 2015 at 6:38 pm
Markywarky Nonsense. If you say I donât believe God exists you need to define God. Your also making shit up. The barmaid said what she said and if you read the rest of the cartoon you would understand that the barmaid understands the difference between a problem and a mystery, two completely different ways of knowing but I guess only a pendant would know that there are different ways of knowing.
October 8, 2015 at 5:29 pm
Nice go see that the athiests are so openinded that they have to tell anyone who questions their theories to fuck off instead of presenting an argument. So much for the âprofound philosophical discussionâ
October 8, 2015 at 11:16 pm
Before a discussion can take place, what is an âatheistâ?
ebs001 says:
October 9, 2015 at 3:02 pm
Atheism is usually defined as not believing in God which needs a definition of God, otherwise the statement makes no sense. and actually I probably donât believe in that God either. For example, Catty says God is âa beingâ Stop, I donât believe God is a being. J&M said He is the âthe ground of beingâ, not the ground of a being. Just âbeingâ which is a mystery and cannot be solved.
Science cannot answer all questions and Barmaid seems to know that when she answered the question, âwhy does the universe exist?â I donât know it just does.
Someone said God is nothing. âI am an Atheist I donât believe in nothing.â
Shaughn says âinfinity has been understood for yearsâ An alternate word used for infinity is undefined meaning we cannot understand it.
I think jb says it quite well. It really depends on what level you want to take Atheism. He chooses, in his words âthe mundaneâ.
I just thought this strip might open the door to look at Atheism and God and mystery.
I thought Author actually has J&M come to a new level that God just is. No doubt they will soon fall back into defining God in Christian Fundamentalist or Muslim Fundamentalist terms.
In case your wondering, I donât call myself a theist. I will not say I believe in GOD nor I will not say I donât believe in God.
October 10, 2015 at 4:36 am
You guys are really special. You cannot even answer simple questions without becoming angry and insulting or just telling people to fuck-off for asking in the first place. I guess it doesnât matter whether you are a fundamentalist Christian or a fundamentalist atheist, both have all the answers and there will be no questions. At least fundamentalist Christians are polite.
October 10, 2015 at 9:51 pm
Catty, not poor me at all. Perhaps youâre not an FA but there are others here who certainly are and dislike being challenged. Yes, in that way, I brought on contempt but is that the reaction of thinking people to questions? It certainly stifles any hope of dialogue.
I am aware that the dictionary defines words but if one is going to discuss something one has to agree on terms. For example, I put forth the definition of atheism from the dictionary and was immediately challenged because the definition presumed the existence of God. Google âGodâ and you will see the problem with using a dictionary.
From Ebs001: Before a discussion can take place, what is an âatheistâ?
A theist is a person who, for some childish reason, needs a big daddy in the clouds to tell him what is right, what is wrong and that fucking Mummy is naughty. A theist needs a big daddy in the clouds to tell him how to wash his hands and his bum and to give him intricate and technically weird instructions about building a temple. A theist needs a big daddy in the clouds to hold his hand when he looks at the world and to tell him that all insects have four legs and that bats are birds.
An atheist does not need a deity, a vampire lord, a demon lover (though those are amazingly cool) or a big daddy in the clouds. An atheist has no theon, no gods. It is not a matter of believe versus non-belief. It is a matter of being an adult, reasoning, human being. Atheists do not need a big daddy in the clouds to tell them that raping children and fucking Mummy are bad things, we can work those out for ourselves and we can stand by our own moral and ethical codes.
Atheists can work out what the hot tap into the mains water supply is for, what soap is for and how to use them on our bums. sometimes, some of us, though I do admit that there are a few who could use more instruction on bathing and showering. đ
Atheists can work out for themselves how to build pyramids, though why anyone would want to is a mystery. We can CALCULATE all of the sizes, masses, necessary components and required numbers of free lunches for the bricklayers. If not in person, we certainly know how to hire someone who can.
Atheists can count past six. We don’t think “forty days and forty nights” is an eternity, and we are certainly not awed into speechlessness by a timespan so short as “a thousand years”. Atheists can cope with, and manipulate, times in chunks of trilliards of years. Lifespans of red dwarf stars and cloaked singularities, we can easily think in terms of generations of red dwarves and of the echoing gulfs of time that comes after. And we can count the legs on arthropods of all kinds, even millipedes. Atheists can also distinguish between fur and feathers and do not make the idiotic assumption that anything flying is a bird – sometimes it is an aeroplane. đ
Atheists can face reality on their own, with only the aid and succour of seven milliard of our fellow sentients and a few related creatures. Atheists are adults, they are Real Men (even the women) and they have no need of or desire for a pathetic, psychopathic deity.
Ebbsy, you have you definition. Now what?
From Ebs001: Perhaps youâre not an FA but there are others here who certainly are and dislike being challenged. Yes, in that way, I brought on contempt butis that the reaction of thinking people to questions? It certainly stifles any hope of dialogue.
It can be.
It depends on the question and the questioner.
I have a sister who insists that the workings of the scientific method of observation and enquiry (let’s call this “Science” to save typing, yes?) is only an opinion and that her opinion, her feelings about such drivel as astrology, aromatherapy, “neurolinguistic programming” and a whole bunch of other fluffy stuff are equally so valid as centuries of scientific experiment and observations. She insist that “Science” hasn’t given us much. Certainly nothing of value to offset the expense.
I mentioned, once, and tried to explain how, a blue-sky, highly theoretical and “utterly useless” piece of scientific enquiry gave us multi-trillion dollar industries but this was dismissed with a wave of the hand as “so what, we would have done that anyway”. I mentioned another, and another. All treated dismissively.
[CERN gave us this nice cartoon, YouTube and Google. Investigations into coherent light beams gave us medical scanners, supermarket checkout scanners and blu-ray recorders. Playing with bits of impure silicon and electricity gave us the transistor, the micro-circuit and the GPU in my Mac. Multi-trilliard currency unit industrial complexes from “useless” blue-sky research. Fundamental scientific research ALWAYS pays off.]
I no longer discuss anything deeper than what to have for lunch with her.
And, if ever she asked any question of me I would probably dismiss her enquiry with utter contempt. I would assume that she was only trying to start one of her special snowflake “poor me’s fee-fees” rants and was not genuinely asking to sip from my vast knowledge and experience that she might learn from it. For one thing, she doesn’t think I have any useful or worthwhile knowledge or experience, never mind anything like a vastness of them, and for another she treats Science and the firm, factual, repeatable and observable results of Science as merely fluffy opinion. She is not a scientist, she can not think that way. She is no more religious that I but she is soaked in magical woo and tree-huggery pseudo-egalitarianism. (She does have other admirable qualities. She does nursey stuff and does it exceptionally well. She is far better with people than I will ever be.)
She is so soaked in the idea that “all opinions are equally worthy” that she is utterly unable to see or to understand that Knowledge is not opinion. That actually poking the jelly to see it wobble can tell you far more about its properties than discussing it for years in chat-rooms or publishing philosophical texts about whether it is obscene or not.
She is, in short, an idiot. She is ineducable. She can never see the wonders and the magics and the beauties of Bose-Einstein condensates or Fermi-Dirac statistics.
So, yes, in her case I have learned to answer any scientific or technical question so shortly and non-committally as possible.
I treat all priests the same way. I have learned never to try to teach anything to a priest, any priest. This may be unfair to some who genuinely wish to learn but it saves wear on my patience when I would be wasting my efforts on those who would, eventually, at some point dismiss all of my earnest efforts with a ” … but it says in Genesis …” slab of foetid, irreducible, invincible and wilful ignorance. It also prevents me from strangling the stupid bastards.
Atheists, thinking people in general, have learned how to recognise idiots who just will not learn. Morons who refuse to think. Shitbags who ask questions merely to poke at the sores from our many encounters with your kind. We have the scars of many years of non-debate with sub-simian lunatics who are utterly deluded and who need Daddy to tell them how to wash their arses.
We have met you. Or your legions of mental clones. We have tried to talk to you as one civil being to another. All we get is “goddidit” and “itsezsointhebooks” and berated for our troubles as being satanic, cowardly or both.
We are told, over and over and over and over again, even here in our favourite virtual pub that we *D*O* want a silly, brainless big daddy in the clouds in spite of all evidence and our witness to the contrary but we are too scared or ashamed to admit it.
And you wonder why our first reaction is to savage you?
Hell, child, you are fortunate we don’t burn believers at the stake.
Yet. đ
Ask civil questions in a civil manner. Pretend you are talking to one of your boss priests and treat us with that sort of respect. Don’t assume we want your tiny, local, temporary little cult. (We see cults like yours rise and fall with tedious regularity like ripples on a lake leaving behind only the suffering they have caused and a few statues. We know yours will die, eventually, just as all of the others do. We see Stars flare and die. Your cults are meaningless in comparison to the Big Picture.) Don’t assume we are ignorant of your daddy, or all of the daddies and mummies on mountains and in clouds, assume we have read your idiotic, rambling, violence-stuffed, pornographic trash and that we far prefer sane and sensible things like Marion Bradley and Julia Eklar.
In short, come here for a conversation and not a fight and we will accommodate you.
But if you come for a battle of wits know this, we have a fleet of fucking Star ships and you are completely unarmed. Such a confrontation would not end well for one of your limited capacities. đ
Welcome to our pub. Want a pint? đ
Sorry, hotrats, I did it again, didn’t I? đ
Markywarky, please be careful.
Those loons are serious about their little rules and regulations.
I was once given a Christmas present. It was labelled as a “stress boob”. It was supposed to be squeezed very firmly and even thumped with a closed fist when the stress of dealing with Management or customers became unendurable and one wished to strangle some simpering nonce. She thought it was funny.
I never took it into work.
Had it been a simple stress blob I may well have but as it was the PC special snowflakes would have had me gutted, sued for damages to their fee-fees and fired within a timespan too short to measure.
I also received a tee-shirt with the printed message “Same shit, different day” which I did not wear to work for the same reason.
I may be in contempt of people who feel the need to smack their heads into the floor, wave their arses in the air and pretend to point themselves at a big, black brick (which might actually be one of their less slim women, who could know?) every few hours but I thoroughly respect their machine-pistols, swords and whips and want no taste of any of them.
“When in Saud, shut-the-fuck-up” may not be my motto, exactly, but, Markywarky, I would offer it as earnestly intended and well-meant advice. And I would agree with the Good Author …
Wear a jumper over that shirt. đ
And an anorak, just in case the jumper rides up. đ
Sometimes, self-censorship is sanity.
esb001
I used to try to point out that there’s no empirical evidence to support the theist hypothesis. More honest adult theists would freely admit that it wasn’t a matter of proof, it was about faith. (Faith: an opinion held without, or contrary to, any evidence. see also: Delusion)
The great problem of atheists is that it’s not possible to have a rational discussion with an irrational person.
I have experienced nothing-ness, enduring the worst pain in my life attempting to pass a kidney stone (viz: giving birth to an angry badger) and then receiving an injection of a morphine based pain killer called Dilaudid, it was like the operation of a light switch on the wall, bright lights and then click, NOTHING. Prior to that injection I would have agreed to anything someone offered for solace, fortunately there were no priests in the E.R.
The nothing I was referring to is the awesome large scale nothing I see on a clear dark night. When my eye intercepts starlight that has been traveling a thousand years, in a very real sense, there was nothing between my eye and that star.
There seems to be a consensus among the regulars here that there can be no such thing as a fundamentalist atheist, and that there is no evidence for the existence of God. Both of those assertions seem plainly false to me.
Fundamentalism is not a matter of specific doctrine, but of attitude. Fundamentalists are closed minded, and have no respect for the thinking of anyone who disagrees with them. They believe that their truths have been conclusively proven beyond any possibility of doubt, and that anyone who disagrees must therefore be an idiot, or perhaps a villain, or at best a poor soul who has yet to hear the Good News. In many cases (but not all!) they are evangelical, and are intensely focused on converting others (and eventually the entire world) to their way of thinking. There are plenty of atheists with attitudes like this, and it strikes me as perfectly fair to characterize such people as “fundamentalists.”
There is also plenty of evidence for the existence of God! There are thousands upon thousands of first hand accounts of encounters with the divine — people who say they have witnessed miracles, or conversed with spirits, or experienced the presence of God directly — that would be admissible as evidence in a court of law. In my own opinion, when you look at the evidence closely it falls apart, for all sorts of reasons that I won’t go into here. But that’s just my opinion, and I’m as human and fallible as anyone else. In any case, the fact that I don’t personally find the evidence persuasive doesn’t mean it isn’t evidence. The testimony of such a large number of people has to carry some weight, even if in the end you feel you have to dismiss it.
jb – you are just being reasonable.
plainsuch says:
October 11, 2015 at 6:57 pm
When my eye intercepts starlight that has been traveling a thousand years, in a very real sense, there was nothing between my eye and that star. Except for at least the starlight, which is not ‘nothing’, I’d say… otherwise you wouldn’t see it, is it?
Spaceman One, your first link didn’t work for me. Was this what you meant to point to? http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Last_Thursdayism
jb, not all fundamentalists are closed minded. I used to be a fundamentalist, and I deconverted because I wanted to find out the truth. At the time, I thought that desire would lead me closer to God. Ironic, I guess.
Some atheists are closed minded, but I wouldn’t call them fundamentalists. They don’t have enough in common. They may reject the idea of a biblical god, but they don’t have any mutual belief system. If you want to call them that, go ahead, but realize that you may contributing to the general misunderstanding of what atheism is about.
I would not call first hand accounts of divine encounters evidence, at least not good evidence. Eye-witnesses are notoriously unreliable. The only truly first hand spiritual experiences I know of are my own. I have experienced events and feelings that I interpreted as coming from divine intervention, and others I perceived as originating from dead souls or faery-like beings. It now seems most likely to me that the source of those impressions was mainly within my psyche.
Were someone to gather many of those impressions from different people and subject the data to scientific analysis, it should be possible to determine if there is anything meaningful there. So far, all such attempts have been fruitless.
Re the question what is an atheist, I take the word literally: a-theist. Anyone who is not a theist is an atheist. At least in the views of a theist, I guess.
As for the xtian an jewish god: that one is allegedly impossible to know or understand – says the holy book itself (viz. Isaiah 55:8 for instance). Therefore, in all we don’t know and cannot know and even do not know we do not and cannot know, there might be a single fact that turns all that seems to be known true into its contrary. Given the infinity of this transcendent god, that fact must exist.
So there is nothing sensible to say about that god for we cannot know; which is essentiallly the a-gnost (not-knowing) point of view.
Re: Chiefy, “I would not call first hand accounts of divine encounters evidence, at least not good evidence.”
…and then there is also the problem of assuming things even objectively observed are related:
http://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
esb001
“God, to me, it seems
is a verb,
not a noun,
proper or improper.”
(Buckminster Fuller; No More Secondhand God 1963)
Maybe you could say something about what it seems to you that god is doing, here and now (or there and then, if you prefer). This might advance discussion.
JB- Being that you can find multitudes who will insist that their cats are psychic, the earth is flat, or that people of different races/classes/faiths are not “real people” at all doesn’t add weight to their positions. So it is with “spiritual” experiances, the numbers are meaningless without independent evidence.
jb
Fundamentalists also are usually conservative authoritarians that insist on absolute conformity to the group rules. Their leaders expect blind obediance and tolerate no questions, and in turn followers demand unquestioning obediance from their inferiors. Women and children are inferior to men but above those outside the group.
I don’t think you will find conformity or blind obediance in this group, most of us are allergic to it. Tolerance, respect and a tendency to question authority common here, that and enjoying a chance to ridicule the sincerely held beliefs of millions.
Shaughn says:
October 11, 2015 at 10:00 pm
plainsuch says:
October 11, 2015 at 6:57 pm
When my eye intercepts starlight that has been traveling a thousand years, in a very real sense, there was nothing between my eye and that star.
Except for at least the starlight, which is not ânothingâ, Iâd say⌠otherwise you wouldnât see it, is it?
The photons that struck my eye are no longer between my eye and the star. Future photons along the same path may or may not be there. Some seem to say those future photons don’t really exist until they have been observed. If you can see them in your mind, good for you.
Watch out, Plainsuch! Incoming photons between your eyes and their source! đ
How will they make it through all that stuff that’s in their way?
Nassar+Ben+Houdja
Why does the universe exist?
If it didnât, would it be missed?
That’s beautiful.
Chiefy, yes, you are right, that was the URL I intended. Sorry, I should have been more careful.
And now for the sad news. “Jesu is Charlie Hebdo” may have been a worthy cry to non-battle but the savages seem to have won. No more cartoons of Mohamet boffing sows from Lulz. The world has just got a little drearier, a little darker and a little less fun.
From “anti-terrorist” laws that only serve to restrict, spy on and inconvenience us, through the insane and idiotic pseudo-security that isn’t in any way security at airports and other public sites to all the censorships and self-censorships the stupid, vapid, moronic vermin are winning. Their pathetic little, temporary, parochial, fraudulent cult is winning.
And that is ever so sad.
I am glad I’ll be well dead before they bring down everything we hold precious.
Ooops, there should have been a “” thingy after “non-battle. But whatthehell, I may as well go out in a huge error rather than a small one.
Edit function? đ
,i>plainsuch says:
October 13, 2015 at 1:46 pm
How will they make it through all that stuff thatâs in their way?
Speeding through at light speed, what else? đ Unless it’s something solid that stops them from reaching your eye.
I have this strange feeling that mr ebs001 has left the building…
I am surprised that so far nobody pointed out the fact that the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything is 42 (or did I miss it?)