I understand why religious leaders would try to push that “lesson”, but it’s one point where faith and I part ways. I speak to God (actually, also to small-g gods and spirits), and I would say they speak to me, and irrespective of whether I may simply be delusional or not, their answers don’t supercede my conscience or common sense. I do regard their input the way I regard the advice of close friends that I trust by and large, but that doesn’t absolve me of the responsibility for my own actions. How is “God told me to” any more of an excuse than “I was just following orders” during the Nürnberg trials?
@raymondm: Ismail (or Ishmael) was Ibrahim’s (or Abraham’s) first son, with his servant Hagar (ie. the “handmaid”), before he got Isaac with his wife Sarah and kicked Hagar and Ismail out.
Actually it was pretty forward thinking for the time. It was common place to have human sacrifice and Abraham became the first person to go against the societal norm and do away with that practice and instead have animal sacrifices.
One of my favourite bible stories, that one. My father was fond of saying “Every man has his Isaac.” By which he meant everybody has someone or something they love more than they love the lord. His theory was that if you are willing to sacrifice your “Isaac”, whatever it might be, then the loving god will not require it of you. But you need to be willing to make that sacrifice.
Since I was his eldest son, this was not a very comforting thing to hear from my father. I didn’t have his faith in the benevolence of the voices in his head. Nor did I, nor do I, think that blind obedience to the voice in your head is the mark of a moral, god fearing and faithful, person. Son of Sam comes readily to mind.
I’m with Freefox to that extent, eh. (But only to that extent. I still suspect him of falling back on his old con man ways when he claims to speak to gods and spirits. Pretty sure he knows better.)
What was civilization like 4,000 years ago? Kind of a stretch going back that far to make a point about the “faith” of people today.
And where is the “proof” that Abraham merely heard a voice in his head and not an actual voice? The “science” of Psychology proves it? Modern thinking proves it? Pretty shabby proof you’ve got there.
Here’s a thing: When we giggle at others, we usually do it because we think those others are doing something silly.
Is “faith” in God silly?
Do you “comics” go to hospitals for dying children, share your strip with people who have just lost their life-long partners, etc.?
You’re not just doing comedy here, you know. You’re attempting to replace something truly powerful with something not so much. Giggling is okay … but not the stuff of genius.
Knowing the truth and living it … now that’s genius.
So, laugh it up, fuzzballs. But if you’re gonna judge great things, look in the mirror once in awhile. It’s only fair.
According to one Biblical scholar I read a few years ago, there is linguistic evidence in the text that the ram is an interpolation, i.e. added by a different writer. If you read the story without that, Abraham returns alone.
A scene immortalized in song – Oh God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son.”
Abe says, “Man, you must be puttin’ me on”
God say, “No.”
Abe say, “What?”
God say, “You can do what you want Abe, but.
The next time you see me comin’ you better run”
Since the seventeenth century xtian violence in Europe and the Americas and the book “Malleus Maleficarum” followers of the Nazarene mythman have been reasonably pacifist. Now unfortunately it is 21st century mullahs with the inerrant word of God killing unbelievers. So the Qur’an and the hammer of witches are similar? Is that islamophobic?
@donn: Awesome quote, man. Been on Highway 61 many times myself, and that is the rub. Ignoring God’s commands (parse that as try to cheat fate or in the words of Wesley Snipes, trying to ice-skate uphill, for the non-theists) often comes at a hefty personal price. But I think being willing to pay that, when your conscience tells you to, is what makes you a decent human being.
Yes, I’ve heard of Occam’s Razor. It was mandatory reading in getting my Philosophy degree.
So what you’re telling me is that atheists possess the truth about the existence of God because atheists use the simplest explanation for human history’s obsession with God, the significant existences of Jesus and Muhammad, all those crosses in the sky, the depth of the human condition, and on and on.
And this simplest explanation is a psychological one. It’s all about the human mind and no other reality.
Now let me ask you a question …
Have you heard about “spirit”?
In my mind, with its two college degrees and five years of monastic experiences, the simplest explanation for a human history’s obsession with God is a human being’s subjective experience of a spirit of God, not some dry and rattling analytical thoughts.
Anonymous. Let’s drop the atheist tag for a moment. I prefer secular freethinker as a tag to hang on me. I think that on the balance of probabilities the god of Abraham is very unlikely to exist. You however, have just created god from the vague subjective feeling of spiritual woowoo people get when they have meditated or taken lsd. Evolution primed our young to believe what they are told. Those that didn’t often removed themselves from the gene pool. Thus gullibility is selected by natural selection and such gullibility perpetuates religion. That’s as good a theory as most….
It has been remarked here before: god-believers (certainly the monotheists) are mostly right.
Of the about 40,000 alleged gods, they claim MOST are illusions.
I just believe one more to be illusionary…
Well Joey, I guess it comes down to which god do you have faith in and how did you come to that conclusion?
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If you answer the Abrahamic god and you know because you read the bible then I won’t giggle at your beliefs, I will roar with laughter. And I would note that not all college degrees imbue an ability to think critically (many are more focussed on rote memory of the course syllabus) and you definitely didn’t come across critical thinking in any monastic setting. Feelings …. not exactly scientific … and often many limitations in determining how to live life well.
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I would say you’ve wasted considerable effort with very poor results. And the fact that you’re here suggests that you still have questions. If you were truly faithful you wouldn’t care what others thought.
when in my cathequesis training, around 10y/o they told us that history. My friends and I were shocked and looked like: this people is crazy. That was the moment that I started thinking: hum, something is wrong about this… Author: you made my day, as always! for another funny version, see here: https://youtu.be/ZyX4LPUeDoE
Joey, when it comes to logic; show dont tell. Show us your logical thinking, don’t tell us your credentials (rest assured that plenty in here have lots of letters before and after their names, have published in the peer reviewed literature, and so on and so forth–none of that matters during a conversation).
That small bit of housekeeping out of the way: You put psychology as a science in scare quotes. That’s taking rather a lot for granted. Psychology is the predictive and explanatory study of human behavior.
Now–you may be saying that it isnt a science yet (physicists often say things like this with a rather airy tone and then get a little ashen faced when we invite them to come over to our discipline and use their huge brains to solve our petty little problems…) You may be one of those? (in which case–come along, doors are always open)
Or–you may be of the opinion that science can never be applied to human beings? Well–that’s tantamount to saying you believe we run by magic.
From context (given that you seem to believe in magic, or at least “spirit”) this seems the more likely interpretation?
If so well, yes, we can say some things in response. We can show which bits of the brain go wrong in those that hear voices (e.g. Stephane, M. (2013). Auditory verbal hallucinations result from combinatoric associations of multiple neural events. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 7, 239.). We can get people to hear voices by appropriate drug and/or electrcial stimulation–showing that it has an entirely material cause (e.g. Hoffman, R. E., Boutros, N. N., Hu, S., Berman, R. M., Krystal, J. H., & Charney, D. S. (2000). Transcranial magnetic stimulation and auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia. The Lancet, 355(9209), 1073-1075.). And we can treat those poor benighted folks who do hear voices by teaching them cognitive methods (e.g. Dimeff, L. A., & Koerner, K. E. (2007). Dialectical behavior therapy in clinical practice: Applications across disorders and settings. Guilford Press.)
That’s what we’ve been doing “sciencing” away while others were content to believe in spirits. In the interim we’ve stopped spiritual folk from burning people, hanging them, exorcising them, or locking them away in gothic buildings. There’s this thing called progress. Some of us are rather keen on it.
jb, Re: “Well, the main difference is that nobody is going to be cornering God in a bunker somewhere and destroying his power. Almighty makes right.”
In practice, as an individual you often don’t stand much of a chance against non-almighty tyrants either. It may make submission understandable, but not necessarily morally right.
I always thought that the most straightforward response to the “disbelieve just one more deity” conceit is, that of course all those literal minded Bible/Quran-thumpers are silly gits, but just as “the universe can’t have sprung from nothing” doesn’t prove a deity, neither does “different human attempts to comprehend God/the gods resulted in errors and incongruities” disprove it. Even with Occam’s razor, it’s hard to conclusively decide whether they’re all entirely wrong or they might all just be somewhat right. And if you are so keen on using a tool like Occam’s razor, considering that non-theists are in a significant minority, shouldn’t the possibility of their psychological blindness be also thought about?
Also, thank you wnanig for clearing that up. That’s exactly what I meant. Though you failed to correct jb’s last sentence. After all, it clearly must be “almighty makes righty”. ^_^
People! People! FAR To many @… references being made here. I’m now thoroughly confused. Are we doing that or not? Help! Also – Joe Mello or Anonymous – well done mate. Always good to see the faithful come down and spend some time with us mortals. It’s Easter after all – and I’m reminded of Kinky Friedman’s great line – “May the God of your choice bless and keep you. I respect Him as long as He does not circumcise me anymore.” Don’t eat too much chocolate everyone.
Joe Mello says:
March 28, 2018 at 10:49 pm
What was civilization like 4,000 years ago?
Full of people with the same potential for intelligence as today, but lacking the knowledge to exploit it.
Pretty shabby proof you’ve got there.
As opposed to your vague notion of ‘spirit?
Is “faith” in God silly?
Yes.
Do you “comics” go to hospitals for dying children, share your strip with people who have just lost their life-long partners, etc.?
No, that would be cruel. But it is possible to empathise, sympathise, and console without resorting to ancient mythology. Apparently, for all of your claimed education you don’t understand the concept of humour.
Knowing the truth and living it … now that’s genius.
Truth requires evidence, genius. The truth is, there is NO evidence of a God or gods. Your vague notion of ‘spirit’, of a feeling of a ‘higher power’ is proof of nothing except for curiosity.
But if you’re gonna judge great things, look in the mirror once in awhile
I’ll take that compliment, thank you.
In my mind, with its two college degrees and five years of monastic experiences, the simplest explanation for a human history’s obsession with God is a human being’s subjective experience of a spirit of God,
And you think that’s somehow making your point? The very notion of subjective experience is a psychological one.
For your ‘two college degrees’ you are merely a lukewarm troll.
Joe Mello, “And where is the “proof” that Abraham merely heard a voice in his head and not an actual voice? … Pretty shabby proof you’ve got there.”
The main concern is there is no absolute proof that the voice is real/right. You need to take into account the risk of following false/pernicious orders. This is where thinking for yourself comes in.
“Here’s a thing: When we giggle at others, we usually do it because we think those others are doing something silly.”
Not necessarily. There is enough similarity between humans that we are in fact often giggling at our collective hopelessness as a species. You need to look beyond the offense.
“Is “faith” in God silly?”
Depends on what you mean by faith. Does it have to be blind? There is a point to being silly, though. It is a good antidote to megalomania. Don’t disparage silliness.
“Do you “comics” go to hospitals for dying children, share your strip with people who have just lost their life-long partners, etc.?”
Humour is often one of the few things that can mitigate the unbearable. Don’t underestimate dark humour. My theory is that it allows you to keep enough of an emotional distance to things to actually be able to function, analyse it rationally and do what constructive things you can do, rather than just being reduced to a sobbing heap or shut down emotionally. Solace is one of the more redeeming qualities of religion, and in the specific instances you mentioned it can be discussed if it even matters whether it is just placebo or not. Beliefs of different kinds may also be a cohesive factor that human societies have difficulty functioning without. But that is not the part of religion that is most problematic. The blind obedience that can lead to atrocities, and the passiveness that can result from delegating responsibility to someone else, is. Collective beliefs are powerful, and all powerful things are potentially dangerous, which is why allowing criticism is necessary. The world is complex and our best option is to use our collective intelligence to try to figure out the least harmful way to exist in it. Blind faith does not necessarily achieve that.
“But if you’re gonna judge great things, look in the mirror once in awhile. It’s only fair.”
Looking in the mirror to judge a great thing? Not quite what I expected, but I guess megalomania is in order then :). Not exactly sure how that is fair though? Btw, as a non-native English insult recipient I had to look up fuzzball. One suggestion was “true quantum description of black holes”. Hmm.
Freefox, sorry about leaving you hanging. The only “Isaac” my father ever mentioned to me was this situation: My aunt, the wife of my father’s brother, was in kidney failure. My father thought that buying a dialysis machine might save her. That would have required selling the family farm, which, as he explained to us, was his Isaac. He claimed to be willing to do that, but after talking to the doctors he found that it would not help and wasn’t a good idea. But I guess he felt good about being willing to make the sacrifice, and relieved that “god” was letting him off the hook. Not exactly killing his eldest son, but in his mind somehow equivalent.
There were many disturbing aspects to my father’s thought processes. In his dying days he became very religious, adding a layer of hypocrisy and sanctimoniousness to his fundamental emotional dishonesty. Despite this harsh judgment on my part, he was, in all, a good father and good provider. He’s been dead for thirty years now. I miss him.
wnagig, Acolyte, HelenaHandbasket, DC Toronto, thanks mate for addressing the troll in such a polite and civilized manner. I don’t have time nor energy for such.
Just this: “Do you “comics” go to hospitals for dying children, share your strip with people who have just lost their life-long partners, etc.?”
Oh yes, cruelty is our thing. We specialize in tormenting those in grief. (And there I go breaking the First Agreement again.” ) No, Joe Mello. That was sarcasm. We usually try to say something comforting and supportive without cliches about being in a better place or being called home to Jesus.
You have been treated quite politely here. More politely than you deserve with your nasty assumptions and insulting questions. Don’t push it. We haven’t had a good chew toy on these threads since Mohamed got banned. (And that was a long time ago.) Your credentials don’t impress us at all.
Oops. I think I conflated Joe Mello with Anonymous (Whom some suspect of being a Nassar sock puppet.) He’s the one presenting credentials. Joe just presented insults.
Thanks for that, Darwin. Isn’t it strange, how long we come here, talking every now and then, and yet we barely know anything about each other? I’d never have guessed that you come from a farm, or from a religious family.
As for your father’s Isaac, I think I like his interpretation of the story. Whether that’s what its original authors had in mind or not, there’s some truth to his insight. Sometimes life requires us to let go of what we thought of as the key to our happiness in order to find peace and contentment in the universe, but if you cling to it too unrelentingly the true price turns out to be the very happiness you sought to preserve.
Darwin, I think that this Anonymous and Joe Mello are one and the same, given the writing style and one sentence per paragraph format. I thought at one time that Nassar was also posting anonymously because the default pattern in place of an avatar was the same for both, but it seems that all anonymous comments get that same pattern. My apologies to Nassar for my error.
Speaking of our poet-in-residence, I see he’s added an ‘e’ to his forename today.
When it comes down to it. Evolution of the third chimpanzee and the proofs regarding the development of the most powerful organic computer on planet earth. This is the best explanation we have for the state of reality we find today. The best model. The only show in town! Darwin’s dangerous idea!
First, my second post, which was a reply to the posts after my first post, had the name mistakenly posted as “Anonymous”.
Now …
All your responses to me, as both Joe Mello and Anonymous, amounted to the usual atheist talking points — the many names of God disqualify there only being one God, God is “woo” or “magic”, skeptic historians are most qualified to get to the truth, psychological studies of some human beings prove what all human beings are doing — and adolescent attempts to “chew” on someone you see as beneath your false idea that discoveries in science have irrefutably proven that God does not and cannot exist.
And only a person without credentials sees no importance in credentials.
Where is the logic in this? Is a car mechanic someone who read about fixing cars or someone who actually has experience in fixing cars?
How obvious it was that not one of you atheist talking heads read “Philosophy degree” and “five years of monastic experience” and missed a step in presenting your prefab arguments that truly come from inexperience and negative agendas.
How can you call yourselves “free thinkers” when your thinking refuses to be challenged or is simply inexperienced in the things you claim to know?
No. Being a believer in nothing except the writings of skeptics who believe in nothing except the writings of other skeptics makes you “poor thinkers”.
Our thinking becomes “free” the more we educate ourselves and the more we allow our experiences to meld with our educations.
For example, no atheist talking head will admit that the discovery of our physical universe expanding and accelerating can be seen as even “a possibility” that an omnipotent power was behind the Big Bang. Our experience and logic tells us that a finite push on something slows down after a time, not speed up.
Anyway, I’m just wasting my time.
The Big Bang was introduced by a scientist who was also a Catholic priest.
William of Ockham was a Franciscan Friar.
These men were truly “free” thinkers.
You mutts are chewing on your own legs and not “free” at all, but chained to your silly personalities that growl at passersby.
You had the opportunity to debate with a former Franciscan and Catholic mystic, but you couldn’t get free from your atheist leash.
I get it. Someone shoved the Bible up your ass when you were young and you’ve been trying to pull it out ever since.
But don’t blame me. I’m not religious. But I did experience the living God in many more ways than subjective. And I do have an education pertinent to any discussion about God.
I’ll leave off this post with a philosophical principle that provides the logical foundation under the limitations of science to answer a single hard question:
“No combination of lesser things can account for the creation of a greater thing unless something even greater than this greater thing is added to these lesser things.”
Oh … and “Laugh it up, Fuzzball” is from Hans Solo to Chewie. You not knowing this reveals just how young you mutts are. “Joey” is 65.
FreeFox — Yes, “Almighty makes righty” is clearly better! For some reason I didn’t think so at the time, but looking back I have no idea why.
The Catholicism of my family when I was growing up, although not extreme, was was quite serious, and I remember being explicitly told when I was about five or so, in response to my own questioning, that the definition of “good” was “what God wanted.” “So if God wanted me to kill somebody, then killing him would be good and not killing him would be bad?” I asked. “Yep” I was told. While this definition does not accord with our intuitive feelings about right and wrong, there is nothing logically wrong with it. And if the power of God is so overwhelming that even in principle there is no possibility of ever overthrowing it, then doesn’t refusal to accept this definition kind of look like bone-headed, self-destructive pride?
The Catholic Church teaches the pride is the greatest of all sins, which seems odd to the modern sensibility. But I once read a Catholic oriented analysis of the Fall of Satan, in which it was pointed out that Satan, being vastly more intelligent than any human, was at the moment of creation instantly aware that rebellion against God was hopeless, and yet rebelled anyway, out of prideful refusal to be subordinate. Looking at it this way, and squinting a bit, you can sort of see why the Church might consider pride to be the worst sin of all. In any case, getting back to the point I was trying to make in my original comment, it does seem to me that “I was just following orders” is a rather more compelling defense when the orders come from God rather than from Hitler.
Joe Mello: If one accepts that the creation of the universe in the “Big Bang” proves the existence of a supernatural (or extranatural) creator, it does not follow that that creator is anything like the deity (or different and contradictory aspects of that deity), depicted in the Old and New Testaments, or indeed the Koran, etc, particularly in regard to requiring human sacrifice, whether of a willing adult victim, or of a child.
Re “I’m not religious. But I did experience the living God in many more ways than subjective.”:
In reply to the one person who did actually ask me a question — what I think about Hell:
Here is the most important question to ask:
What is the meaning of our lives?
Here is the true answer to reply:
To live fully alive in this life and the next and thereby give the greatest glory to God we can.
It’s all about God first, and then us, in that order, so we should be all about God, and we should never think that we can be too much all about God.
What does it mean to become “fully alive”?
To become fully alive means to become the largest vessel possible for God to fill, in this life and the next. Both a thimble and a 55-gallon barrel can be filled, but both are not filled with the same amount.
Hell is what happens to us when we do not live fully alive and therefore cannot receive God’s goodness and love and understanding and truth and etc. fully in this life and the next.
In this life there are degrees of Hell. In the next life there is also a place called Hell. And in this life and the next, what degree of Hell we experience and how long we remain in this Hell are both dependent upon the goodness and love and understanding and truth and etc. we have failed to accept in our lives, and so have failed to “become” a true vessel for them.
God doesn’t throw us in Hell, we throw ourselves there through the evil and hate and ignorance and ect. that become a part of who we are, and that keep us from experiencing God. The greatest pain in Hell is the absence of God.
An analogy would be if we spent time in a dark basement and our eyes became used to the darkness, then the bulkhead was thrown open to a bright sunny day and we could not look at this brightness without pain, so we turn away from it.
God’s goodness and love and understanding and truth and etc. are not automatically approached but gratefully, joyfully, lovingly approached. The person who cannot approach God in such a manner ends up in his or her own Hell, in this life and the next.
Joey’s back!
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Lots of words but short on specifics or testable proof of his claims. Helena gave a quite specific rebuttal to your contention and you’ve waived it off without a second thought. Is this your idea of a “debate” with a former fransican and catholic “mystic”? Thats some weak sauce my mystic friend.
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You claim that you are not religious. I take from that you don’t follow a specific text. Yet you seem to know from experiencing a living god that there is a higher power. Yet again, no specifics. Is this a single god? Many gods? Is there a name? What were these interactions? Did he/she/it speak to you? Is that the reason for your preoccupation with proving that Abraham had voices in his head?
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rather than relying on some vague reference to degrees, why not list them. which degree from which institution? Where did you spend your monastic years? go ahead, start an actual debate. But if your starting point is to accuse a group of people you’ve never met with scaring sick children, you should expect some pushback. didn’t you learn this with your 2 degrees and monastic living? didn’t they teach you the basics of debate?
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Your lack of debating skills, your lack of specific details and your lack of tact lead to skepticism of your claims. Your sanctimonious attitude points to another true believer who feels they are better than those who have not experience a “living god”. Joey, you’ve been recognized as the preening fraud that you are … and you’ve not provided any evidence to the contrary.
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This community would welcome your input if you have anything more than feelings and insults. We don’t always agree with each other … but there is an opportunity to put forward ideas and debate them. You’ve failed across the board.
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I’ll ask again. What are your views on hell? Here is a chance to debate a specific issue. Think you have it in you Joey?
Son of Glenner, I used the word “possibility”. And I used the concept of an omnipotent power. You lept to a defense of nature and an attack on religious views of God.
In what way does “nature” become a stand alone reality, the author of its own existence, the evolution of its own complexities, the intelligence behind its own laws? If you cannot logically attribute to nature alone much of what nature is about, then something “supernatural” should not be immediately judged to be something “unnatural”.
Furthermore, there is nothing about nature that we have discovered that has proven that its creator and intelligence behind it is not also a personality as depicted in religious texts throughout human history.
In fact, when I observe reality, from the crushing of a rock to the death of a human being, I logically conclude that the greatest reality is not the rock but the human being. And the human being is greater because of the human personality. So I further conclude that any creator of nature must also be greater with a personality. I simply cannot conclude that mindless energy and forces is something greater than a divine being with the power and the will to create the reality we now experience.
To me, I find it incredulous that modern thinkers conclude that reality came into being from the bottom up and not from the top down. This thinking, to me, is akin to thinking that our cars designed themselves, manufactured themselves, and then drove themselves into our driveways so we could jump into them and drive ourselves to work in the morning.
And I have never been religious. Even when I was living in a monastery and spending hours sitting privately in a church. My focus was always upon the living God who never failed to reveal himself when I stopped pretending to be him. That’s what you’re doing, you know — pretending to be large and in charge. You’re not. None of us are. And we shouldn’t want to be. We should want things to be just as they are, for there can be no greater fulfillment to our lives then the infinite possibilities that the existence of God provides for us to reach.
When Neil deGrasse Tyson (who even admitted that Dark Energy was a pretty good argument for the existence of God) was asked what he expected the fulfillment of his life to be when he died, he replied, “To feed fauna.” And he got applauded for it.
This is modern thinking brought to an absurd conclusion through an inflated sense of one’s intellect through a lop-sided education in a single branch of science.
I couldn’t help but to judge him as nothing but a fool for saying it.
” I couldn’t help but to judge him as nothing but a fool for saying it.” should read ” I couldn’t help but to judge him as nothing but a food for saying it “. Learn how to type, fool.
Joe Mello: You do not appear to understand my remarks, or you are deliberately misrepresenting them.
Re your appeals to authority: the mere fact of your having studied theology and practised meditation holds no more water for an atheist than having studied astrology or homeopathy. And how can you speak of the “living God” and deny being religious? (I’d genuinely like to hear you explain the apparent contradiction!)
jb, Re: “there is nothing logically wrong with it”
You are asked to accept the premise that the humans claiming this speak for God. Without proof, but possibly with a fair bit of bullying. We are actually currently hearing this type of argument from a jihadist in court. Moving down people with a van is what God wanted him to do. So is it pride to question that? Why is their religious experience any less valid? How could we question any tyrant or bully claiming to speak for God?
If the very nature of existence actually consisted in something that has the attitude of the God depicted in parts of the Old testament and the Koran, then I am with the Buddhists – striving to be free of existing seems the better choice… The game of a vindictive sadist does not seem worth playing. If you cease to oppose nutcases who claim power and obedience in the name of a god, then that really is the way to create hell on earth.
Mello. You have nothing to offer in terms of concrete proof. However your assertion that human beings are somehow outside of the other objects made from the same base elements makes you as ignorant as an Egyptian peasant 3000 BCE….thick as pigshit. How dare you belittle an eminent physicist you jumped up little Jesuit.
You atheist bobble heads don’t have any other ability than to bobble.
I never said anything about “theology” or “meditation”. So all your bobbling makes it impossible for you to read clearly.
That you mutts think you’re on the frontline of the debate about the living God revealing himself to humanity throughout human history would be what is truly comedic on this lame website, if it wasn’t so pathetic.
You missed another opportunity to not be the ridiculous people you are, just like you do every time you stand before a mirror and abscond into your head to avoid seeing the fool looking back at you.
I spoke to you about the living Go, and you could not even understand the concept.
To equate God with religion, and then to continue to judge God by bringing up religion, is circular reasoning at its worst.
@Joe Mello [yes.., I know, I know…] Your frustration at your inability to convert the heathens with the brilliance of your arguments is just adorable!
Tell me though, why would you even imagine that a “lame website” like this one would be “on the frontline of the debate about the living God”? People have been arguing God and religion for millennia, so of course the arguments you get from us are all going to be talking points that have been made before; why would you expect otherwise. That doesn’t mean they’re wrong though! And you know, while this might result in a hit to your own self esteem, you should really consider the possibility that your own talking points are not that original either. Frankly, you are far too impressed with yourself. You aren’t that good.
The sentence “The living god revealing HIMSELF to humanity” tells me everything I need to know about you. Now bog off before the nurses arrive with your medication.
Joe Mello: OK; I apologise for interpreting your “philosophy” degree as a “theology” degree and assuming that your sojourn in a monastic establishment would involve meditation, but you have not commented meaningfully on my remarks re a presumed creator of the universe versus the “god” depicted in the Old and New Testaments, the Koran, etc.
I would still like to know how you can say you have no religion and yet clearly believe in a “living” God.
The other people on this forum would show you a great deal more respect if you would present your beliefs in a comprehensible (even if unbelievable) form, instead of resorting to abusive language. If you are indeed a troll, as seems likely, please restrict your aggression to billy goats, but don’t blame me if you get butted in the backside.
Joe Mello, Re: “You mutts are chewing on your own legs and not “free” at all, but chained to your silly personalities that growl at passersby.”
You seem to be doing a fair bit of growling yourself :).
“You had the opportunity to debate with a former Franciscan and Catholic mystic, but you couldn’t get free from your atheist leash.”
…and be a little conceited and condescending.
“No combination of lesser things can account for the creation of a greater thing unless something even greater than this greater thing is added to these lesser things.”
Perhaps you should consider adding a couple of degrees in Chemistry and Biology to the list?
“Oh … and “Laugh it up, Fuzzball” is from Hans Solo to Chewie. You not knowing this reveals just how young you mutts are. “Joey” is 65.”
American by any chance? This may come as a surprise to you, but not all of the world considers every aspect of American pop culture required knowledge.
Joe Mello’s comments are hilarious. He reminds me of a priest from years ago who insisted his flock bring unbelievers to their ground in order to win the argument.
The context of the fuzzball quote:
Leia and Han are arguing, Han is being smug and condescending, he implies that Leia has feelings for him.
Leia calls him delusional and “laser brain”.
Chewbacca laughs.
Han says to Chewbacca, “Laugh it up, fuzzball!”
and to Luke, “You didn’t see us alone in the south passage. She expressed her true feelings for me.”
.
I don’t grok what this has to do with our visiting mystic.
Perhaps our visiting Jesuit has periods of time off his meds where he thinks HE IS the wookie Chewbacca co-piloting the Millennium Falcon in a Galaxy far far away?
Far too many comments on this thread. I’m sorry, I just don’t feel like reading all of them so I apologize in advance for a possible redundancy.
I once argued with my father (he’s a Catholic) about this story. I told him I found it immoral to be willing to kill your own son, and that if Abraham had actually been moral, he would’ve said “NO”. Then, my father started explaining to me what he understood as the true meaning of the story, linking it to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and how Abraham’s not sacrificing his own son is the announcement of the *much* later atonement, by which the Christians don’t have to sacrifice themselves because Christ has already sacrificed himself.
I thought that was just a very specific and rather convenient interpretation of the story. To me, Abraham’s story about willing to gut his own son is so far away in time from Jesus Christ that its meaning must be much simpler: God wants you to submit to his will no matter what, and he wants to know that you’re obedient to the extent of killing your own offspring… He might not require you to do it in the end, but he wants to know that you would do it if you were asked to.
That’s not a very moral god to me. That’s just a sadistic tyrant.
P.S.:
@laxeyman: thanks for that Hitchens’ quote, I never get tired of listening to it. He perfectly destroys this stupid and immoral story in just a minute.
Some of you are calling “Joe Mello” a jesuit. I think this may be a little unfair on the jesuits; my understanding (which of course may be mistaken) is that jesuits are fully capable of sophisticated debate. But they would not engage with the customers of the C&B pub, fully realising that they would never convince us.
On another line: A real “Joe Mello” (our troll may be using an assumed name) is the COO of a USA Healthcare company. If he and our troll are one and the same, I fear for the patients/customers of that company!
I have christened him “The Jesuit” a supposedly intelligent member of xtian dogmatic thought police. I thought it would wind him up because he probably thinks he possesses an intellect of Einstein and Hawking added together. If he was an ice cream he would suck himself…..
The Bible story was advocacy for an idea, that is, “god’s will supercedes human morality”. More importantly, from the viewpoint of human control, “what you’re told by the god’s human representatives supercedes human morality”.
I don’t think I ought to be controlled in that way. If someone tells me to kill because god wants that, that’s proof they’re evil and should be incarcerated.
One other thing: Joe Mello is a pompous thimble-sized twit.
So, between Darwin Harmless‘s and Some Dude‘s talks with their respective dads about this story, I think we have some very interesting thoughts (and a much more interesting conversation than with that idiot doing his best to justify the bad name of theists around here). DH‘s dad thought that God required you to give up what’s most valuable to you, and Some Dude concluded that the moral was to show willingness to suspend your own morals before God. Or as JB agreed to put it: “Almighty makes righty.” ^_^
Most of the arguments against this seem to revolve around the fact that we all pretty much agree that anyone making such a demand, whether it be a painful sacrifice, or a submission of morals, is a total dickhead. And I would very emphatically agree. But I think there is another question that is being ignored here. Let’s for a moment disregard the notion that God should be be a nice guy (I would argue that he really isn’t), or indeed the notion that this God person must be a real person for this story to make any sense. Let’s, for the sake of the argument, just replace God with Life, or Fate, or Happenstance here. Not the scientifically examined hardcore “reality” we can find with laboratory conditions, statistical analysis, big number crunchers, complex models, and all those wonderful tools we have developed to make our planes fly and our telephones smarter than ourselves, but that “life” and “fate” that we meet on the street, in our relationships, our jobs, the stupid accident that blindesided you on a wet Tuesday morning.
Is that something that life does to us? Does life demand we let go of what’s most precious to us in order for us to find our way, as DH‘s dad would have it? Or does life demand of you to make moral choices we neither understand nor feel good with and can only submit to by trusting in a faith in some greater good that we are not in the position to understand? Is life that kind of a tyrant?
I would hazard that most men and women in armed services could identify a number of moments when that was true for them. And speaking as a dad, yeah, being repsonsible for a family seems to lead me at least occasionally into either sitatuation. I would guess that people working in the medical field might know similar choices. What about you lot? Do these kinds of situations ring any bells?
Can the fable (and yeah, aside from the silly clowns not worth talking to, we can all agree on that if anything, this story is a fable, not a historic or otherwise literal truth, right?) help us come to terms with such a situation? At least it seems to stir up quite a lot of strong emotions, going by the vehemence of the discussion here and the recollections some of us had about discussing it with fathers and other people in our lives. So at the very least it makes us think about these questions. I for one think that makes it one of the better stories in the bible.
It helps me. I find one of the wisest insights of one of the wisest men I know of in there. As the great Joseph Campbell said (at least according to editor Diane K. Osbon) “We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” And yet, I still quite often tell the gods to go piss against the wind when they gimme these tests. And more often than not end up paying the price.
Hey, JB, about that notion that whatever God decides is automatically good, aye, indeed, that “good” is whatever God wishes, I understand the desire to nitpick that point. When you try to resolve it in terms of mathematical logic it seems like one of these annoying paradoxes, like the one about all men from Crete being liars. If it is only by God’s will that something becomes “good” and God could just pick any other act and decree that “good” or “evil” on a whim, then “good” is arbitrary. But if “good” and “evil” exist independent of God, and he can only recognize it and must follow it, how omnipotent is he really?
In a way, I guess, this is sort of the “free will” question for God, isn’t it? Does God have a free will? But I think therin also lies the answer – the question itself is flawed, just as it is when we try to speak about human free will (or as most here would have it, the only real free will if we leave aside Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny.) The thing about “free will” that seems to be never asked is, free of what?
For humans this applies just as much as for God. Is your will free of your experiences, your assumptions about the consequences, your character, the situation you are in? How free is your will to turn the steering wheel when your car is hurtling towards a chasm. Sure, you CAN go on ahead. But you probably only will do so when there is a very pressing reason. Maybe you want to die. Maybe you would rather die than be caught be whoever is pursuing you. Maybe you want to spit someone in the face rather then lose a debate about free will. But is your will really free then? Isn’t it either compelled by your desire to live, or your desire to die? Truly “free” will, free of ANYTHING, is just random. And I think few of us would consider Two-Face as a moral guide, would we? So, at least in “theological” terms free will only means free from the direct influence of God. (This runs into a new problem with omniscience, but that’s for another day.)
As for God’s “free” will, in this case it would have to be “free” of someone else making up rules about good or evil, right? That’s the question here – can God “freely” make up what’s good and evil and tell us, or did someone else make it up and is now forcing it on God.
But how about good and evil aren’t arbitrary concepts. I mean, sure, they are words in the english language and thus their literal meaning is determined by convention, like that of any other word. But given the fact that all cultures that I know of have a concept of ethics, and at least in the broad strokes, those concepts are pretty similar all over the world, and where they differ it usually is not very hard to track down the cultural, historical events that shaped those differences, to all but those most deluded fanatics to their particular interpretation it seems almost obvious that real ethics are less a question of moral principles than of knowledge about long term consequences.
As much as I disagree with Sam Harris on other subjects, I very much like his approach to ethics as the wish to minimize sentient suffering as much as possible, while maximizing sentient happiness. And his idea that as such the “moral landscape” as he calls it is not a single line, but a three-dimensional plane with moral peaks and valleys that allow us to elevate sentient happiness in various ways.
As such, goodness isn’t an assigned value at all, but an inherent one. Something that is built into the nature of the world, and of sentience itself. In that case, God is neither able to arbitrarily decide what is good or evil, nor is he a powerless subject of it – it something that He (again, replace with Life, Fate, the Universe, Coincidence, Evolution, or whatever agent you want to attribute this to) built into the fabric of reality from the start, and to change it would have to change everything back down to the beginning of life itself.
In that case, your parents would be right in a way – their version of God did “make” good and evil. But you would be right just as much: Even God could not decree any act “good” that resulted in a net reduction of sentient happiness or a net gain in sentient suffering.
I also have a question for HelenaHandbasket, though I am a bit apprehensive to ask it. Given the local confrontational climate it may sound facetious or even belligerent, but I really do not look for any kind of, er, argument here. It’s a question that I not only take quite serious, it also is of not inconsiderable significance to my life. I tried to follow up on the links you provided, but for one, scientific journals seem to at best show excerpts online unless you cross a pay gate, and also, I am not a neurologist, or even high school graduate, so I have some trouble getting through what little I can access.
I understand that many if not most what we collectively understand to be hallucinations can be traced to specific electrochemical events in the brain, and there is no great mystery there, at least in general terms, whats going “wrong”. But as far as I understand, those processes at their core are pretty much the same as those that are at work when things go “right”, ie. when our sensory aparatus and our neural processing produce “shared” experiences. In many cases it is possible to trace back the “divergence” to chemical influences, such as drugs, chemical imbalances due to acquired or congenital diseases, or to neural damage, such as head trauma. But even when we know on the mechanical level how the altered brain produces divergent experiences from those someone with a “normal” brain would have, again that is not altogether different from how for example being a teenager makes you experience love or conflict different from the way a child or an adult experiences it, right?
What I try to say is, pointing out the mechanism of how hallucinations (experiences not shared by others) occur is in a way like describing the chemistry of cooking, say, a soufflee or making a lemon meringue pie. It is not very hard to understand how you begin with eggs in both cases and yet end up with something entirely different. But that doesn’t by itself make the soufflee or the meringue pathological.
Sometimes hallucinations can be part of some overall pathology, say, in case of a high fever, and there indubitably the fever itself is dangerous, and the hallucination a (probably somewhat random) byproduct of the illness. But for example, as far as I understand it, under many circumstances the experiences and insights gained from certain hallucinogenic drugs have very positive effects on people, helping with anything from clinical depression to simply gaining wisdom and finding your path in life.
So, would you really say that hallucinations – however the precise elctrochemical mechanism behind them – are always pathological and bad, or isn’t the only problem with hallucinations that the person experiencing them react to experiences not shared and often not understood by those around him? In other words, are hallucinations themselves independent of other effects that may be caused by the same event automatically bad or are they just cause for social problems and could just as well be dealt with in a social context?
Happy Feast of Ostara (or Eostre) everyone, especially our dear Author, of course, and I apologize for that wall of text. I still hope it’s interesting for some of you and might further our conversation, not stop it. ^_^
I see you mutts have decided together that you have thoroughly chewed me up and spit me out. Well, that’s convincing.
And you’ve also decided together that I brought nothing new to the table. I guess that’s why you didn’t chew on anything on the table, but only my leg under the table.
And one of you mutts even warned me about how, when you get together, I better watch out. Thanks. I’ll be more careful getting too close to the end of your atheist leashes, if I was to even walk back into this tiny yard full of dog shit, that is.
Anyway …
Giggle away in your grandiose delusions.
Take into account, however, the lack of respect you’re getting from your families and friends.
A tree is known by its fruit, not by how many mutts can piss on it at the same time.
The living God will not me mocked without serious repercussions for the one doing the mocking. It’s a spiritual thing. Mock God, and become alone with your weak humanity.
But you can’t light another joint to figure this one out.
Well Freefox, yeah, (to condense that a lot) life may someday cause Abe to have to strike down his son. So in the story does God stand for the exigencies of Life? No. It’s saying more like, “see, you might be called upon to do it some day for real reasons, and might not be able to bring yourself to do it – but you’ll do it for me!”
I read the thread with Joe Mello hoping for something substantive to come from it (an argument at least would be nice) but found it floundering where many theists end up.
Make your case. Provide evidence for your position, provide rebuttal for positions offered by others, or go away. Bleating that God will not be mocked and threatening hellfire is the surest way to signal to a sceptical audience that you lost the argument, indeed that you had no argument in the first place. Shallow and lazy thinking.
Mello. Hello. This dawg is about to crack open a few nice bottles of real ale. Have a nice evening grovelling to your imaginary friend. For the rest of the dawgs. Have a chilled night and don’t forget to treat your bitches with respect. Woof woof…..
Dissecting Joe Mello’s last two replies:
(Long boring rant comparing atheists to mutts chewing things)
Hmm, another word for mutt is dog. Dog spelled backwards is god. So, you’re basically calling us atheists gods? Well, thank you for the compliment, sir!
Also, any good dog owner will know to feed their pup, clean its shit, walk it daily without a care in the world who notices (for indeed, it is a both a chore and a gift) and adore it with all their energy to receive its love in return. All without question. Rather like religious folks with whatever god they believe in, but a dog’s love is tangible and so much more gratifying.
Wow, you’ve really given me something to chew on. Woof.
“Giggle at your grandiose delusions”
Funny, that’s what I tell the vitriolic street preacher at the train station damning all passers by to Hell if they don’t believe whatever version of Christianity he’s spewing out whilst he smugly asserts his position by his messiah’s hand.
“Take into account, however, the lack of respect you’re getting from your families and friends.”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…(deep breath)…HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Yeah, my family and friends are also atheists. I will grant my mother is a lapsed Catholic and many of my extended family are also believers but none of them give a shit that I haven’t believed in nearly 20 years. They might have been perturbed at first but when they saw I hadn’t otherwise changed, nor do I go out of my way to insult them for still being Catholic, it became a non-issue.
I cannot speak for others on this forum but I’m presuming they also found mirth at the above quote.
“The living God will not me mocked without serious repercussions for the one doing the mocking.”
Wait, are you saying that you’re God now? Are the “serious repercussions” you speak of a warning of more acrimonious/impotent insults to come from your keyboard? Is it appropriate that the names with hyperlinks all lead to a web page of content whereas yours leads to a wall of nothingness – no substance, no answers? Maybe you are God, for when we try to search for your credentials we find nothing in return!
“But you can’t light another joint to figure this one out.”
Oh yeah? Watch me!
Nah, I’m kidding, I don’t smoke. I also know this is another typo but Joe Mellodamn, you are really walking into these ones.
“I did provide you with much to discuss, and you did ignore it all to gather together with your practiced smugness.”
But there has been discussion, and dismissal summarily.
“And that is why everyone has said goodbye to you idiots.”
BYE-BYE!!
*Waves arm like an excited 5 year old*
P.S. Anyone else who wants to compare religious beliefs to owning a dog, cat or any other pet, please feel free to chime in!
Let’s chew this bone for all it’s worth.
jb, I’ve got a few more “mutts” to give before I’ve evened the score from all the names that you mutts have called me, and anyone else who comes here and doesn’t have a dog collar with “atheist” written on it.
And our “feelings” only have meaning when we think well and act sincerely. So your feelings are not my aim, for I know they are mostly meaningless emotions of a meaningless person.
And I call you idiots “mutts” because your level of humanity is about that of a dog who licks its own balls.
To the other mutt who wrote a long poorly-written (don’t use emotional-looking language, but write so well that emotions are revealed … Professional Writing Graduate degree) diatribe:
Your family no doubt got “perturbed” with you because at the beginning of your delusional atheism you had a first fervor and were a complete asshole. So it was you who changed by now only insulting faceless people on the Internet.
And you exchanged one belief for another, for all atheists believe all kinds of stupid shit, like that they woke up one day and became the wisest people on the planet for becoming atheists. That’s some delusional shit. That’s why the atheist has to further believe that nothing can be true unless a mathematician or a biologist or some other third science major says it’s true. How asinine is that?
Anyway … use exclamation points about once every twenty posts, or they’ll just become a crutch for writing poorly.
And nobody uses the word “mirth”, so don’t write it.
To the other mutt who wrote a long poorly-written (don’t use emotional-looking language, but write so well that emotions are revealed … Professional Writing Graduate degree) diatribe:
Your family no doubt got “perturbed” with you because at the beginning of your delusional atheism you had a first fervor and were a complete asshole. So it was you who changed by now only insulting faceless people on the Internet.
And you exchanged one belief for another, for all atheists believe all kinds of stupid shit, like that they woke up one day and became the wisest people on the planet for becoming atheists. That’s some delusional shit. That’s why the atheist has to further believe that nothing can be true unless a mathematician or a biologist or some other third science major says it’s true. How asinine is that?
Anyway … use exclamation points about once every twenty posts, or they’ll just become a crutch for writing poorly.
And nobody uses the word “mirth”, so don’t write it.
To the other mutt who wrote a long poorly-written (don’t use emotional-looking language, but write so well that emotions are revealed and created … Professional Writing Graduate degree here) diatribe:
Your family no doubt got “perturbed” with you because at the beginning of your delusional atheism you had a first fervor and were a complete asshole. So it was you who changed by now only insulting faceless people on the Internet.
And you exchanged one belief for another, for all atheists believe all kinds of stupid shit, like that they woke up one day and became the wisest people on the planet for becoming atheists. That’s some delusional shit. That’s why the atheist has to further believe that nothing can be true unless a mathematician or a biologist or some other third science major says it’s true. How asinine is that?
Anyway …
Use exclamation points about once every twenty posts, or they’ll just become a crutch for writing poorly.
And nobody uses the word “mirth”, so don’t write it.
I think I’m bored now. Go away because you are taking up storage with your infantile blathering. We haven’t replaced a failed hypothesis with science we use science to try to fill in all the gaps where your self invented living god has been hiding to salve the weak minds of delusional knobs like you!!!!
Joe Mello,
First, if you’re going to insult somebody, perhaps you should just say who they are and not hide behind passive-aggressive timidity. Or is that the Christian thing to do?
Second, just because “mirth” isn’t widely used these days does not invalidate its use.
Third, you must not know how the Edit button works to have posted the same thing three times.
Last, calling my reply a long poorly-written diatribe with a few other choice critiques to my writing style is quite laughable considering the posts you have contributed thus far, especially considering how much you’ve missed the mark in several respects.
Please, feel free to go away and not come back. Or be an infantile jackass and reply to this post with more of your inane ranting. Entirely up to you but I think I have given you enough of my time and energy.
Wow, I came late to J&M this week, and it has taken almost all morning to get through the comments. I think all the regulars have to be commended for their relatively polite responses to a troll who seems incapable of bringing any evidence to support his position, and who refers to us as mutts. I think Author will be pleased that you have stuck to the rules at the foot of the page, even if he didn’t. I enjoyed sitting in on the dialogue, one-sided as it was, but think that it is now time to stop feeding the troll.
Happy Easter/Eostre to one and all, and to M27Holts, yes we did!
Well,
1st of april being a special holiday here (spanish occupation kicked out of town for the first time in Holland, 1572), celebrated with great re-enactments and LOTS of drink, I wish you all a happy liberation from Papism (and from other religions).
The constitutional “godsdienstvrijheid” (literally religion-freedom) then established really should translate into “freedom FROM religion”, not freedom OF it, and certainly not the present-day interpretation of freedom FOR it.
But it looks like the Dutch fought an 80 year war just to have that lost to forgetfulness….
This post isn’t a discussion of religion, but rather one of personality.
When a person goes somewhere that they’re not welcome in order to annoy the people there, what is that person? Merely impolite? If they’re told they’re annoying and continue to stay and annoy people, they’re not merely annoying, they have a personality problem: a need to argue and feel dominant.
Such a person has “thimble-sized” confidence in themselves and their beliefs. The only thing to do with such a twit is to ignore them until they get bored and go annoy someone else.
Such a twit is Mello and his sick (sic) puppet Anonymous.
Especially, don’t kill someone because he tells you to. 😉
I posted three or four posts without a single name being called. Then, one of you mutts called me a “lukewarm troll”, and another warned me against being chewed upon, and a third mutt condescended to me with a long poorly-written post while calling me “Joey”. Look it up.
So, being rather observant, I realized that this forum was simply another bridge for atheist human trolls to hide under because they can’t come out into the light and mingle with attractive human beings. And I responded with the appropriate labels for you mutts because I knew from experience that this forum is littered with dog shit leaving no place to walk without getting in on my shoes.
If you mutts were truly worthy of being “commended”, you would have given some effort to understanding my claim that equating God and religion and then ridiculing all discussions about God is circular reasoning at its worst; that Hell is thought of by the modern atheist in pre-Vatican II terms or not at all; that my response to a question about my thoughts on Hell were deserving a response of equal sincerity; that my logic against a bottom up explanation for reality is not illogical in the least; that science and science alone is not the spokesperson for what is true; that atheists cannot even voice the “possibility” of an omnipotent power behind the expansion and acceleration of the universe; that psychological studies of some human beings cannot be evidence applied to every human being; that credentials absolutely do matter because experience trumps reading; and many more things besides that should have been worthy of a discussion.
You mutts turned very quickly to ad hominem attacks upon me because you had no intentions of debating any “theist” about anything.
All your accusations against me for having “poor logic”, or boasting of credentials, or giving you nothing to discuss, or thinking too much of myself — these were all defensive responses because you have no offense against anything theologically advanced and philosophically talented.
What was your response to the metaphysical principle I gave to you and that you have never heard before nor even imagined? Silence and one pathetic demand that I take a science class.
So … keep giving yourselves undeserved flattery, for that is about all you will get out of each other, other than the false belief in Internet-learned atheist talking points and the lame attempts at claiming scientific acumen through Google searches.
Thank you for not welcoming me into your delusions.
Mr Mello does not give up easily, does he? After much abusive to and fro, he is showing some signs of rationality. At least he has not (yet) thrown the first line of Psalm 14 at us – the last refuge of the theist who does not know how to debate.
He either missed the point of my comment about the Big Bang (possibly) being the work of a Creator versus the God of the O.T., or he refuses to address it. Would he like me to repeat it?
Mr Mello appears to claim that he has a Professional Writing Degree (I’m sorry if I have misinterpreted him); if so, I suggest he goes back to the academic body that awarded the degree and asks for his money back.
I’m beginning to regret calling him a troll. His behaviour is more like that of a billy goat, repeatedly head-butting an inanimate target.
I think in one of the Krauss books I read recently. He discusses at length the fact that future astronomers will have no reason to believe that there is anything beyond their galaxy because all other galaxies will have disappeared over the event horizon so to speak. However he didn’t postulate that this universal expansion was due to intelligent design. He rather put it in terms of classical physical terms and gravity and dark matter and whether the quantum system was closed or flat. He may as well not bothered with his book however, because the Jesuit was given all the details by the universal power god when living as a monk for several years. That’s that for physics then.
My thinking up until now has been that Joe Mello was simply an unusually good illustration of the Dunning–Kruger effect. (Does he really think he is putting forward ideas that we “have never heard before nor even imagined”)? However I’m seriously starting to wonder now whether there may not be a touch of dementia involved. He says he is 65, and that’s only a little earlier than the age at which my mother started drifting towards emotional instability and incoherence. And the first rule of dementia is don’t argue with them!
I’m not sufficiently aware of UK politics to get this, so maybe someone can explain.
The term “absolute boy” is often applied to Corbyn, and here in this J&M to Abraham, nominally the first Jew. I know Labour had had some problems with anti-semitism, including having some important people leave the party. Is this in any way related? I can’t help but feel that there’s a deeper joke that I’m missing. Is there?
Here in America, some are celebrating Charlton Heston’s victory over Yul Brynner, including better special effects. 😉 And Jim Caviezel’s ability to take punishment and still act. 😀
jb, here are some other versions of the Dunning-Kruger effect that I like.
W.B. Yeats, in the poem “The Second Coming”: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.”
And there’s Darwin: “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge”.
And Bertrand Russell: “The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.”
You might like this too: https://m.xkcd.com/1954/
There’s an extra joke if you either hover over the comic or click on it (which depends on whether it’s computer or mobile).
Son of Glenner, when I responded to you by telling you the logic behind a “Creator” having a “personality” as his greatest attribute, and not being some mindless energy or force, I did address your dismissal of the God of the Old Testament.
The God of the Old Testament became the God of the New Testament, and in so doing revealed himself to be a God with a personality.
The skeptic notion that we anthropomorphize God when we attribute to him a personality is ass backwards.
Our human abilities separate us from all other created beings in real and true ways. And these abilities may be seated in our physicality and biological functioning, but they are divine abilities nonetheless. Every power needs a seat, but the seat is not the power. So to say God’s greatest attribute is his personality is to say that our personalities are the greatest creation because they are a gift from God that makes us like God.
We think because God thinks is a far more profound truth than we think because our thinking is seated in our brain.
A skeptic demands “proof” about such things from the bottom up. But where is it written that this sort of proof is the only proof that matters? Where does mathematics fit into the love we have for our families, the meaning in our lives, the intellectual principles that govern the scientific method, etc.?
Anyway …
I did address your post. And now I did repeat it for you.
Finally. I got thought all the comments and now get to say the thing I’ve been burning to say…uh…if only I can remember it.
Oh yes. Mr. Mello’s insistence that he is not religious reminds me of a conversation I had once with a man who told me he had taught “creation science” at a university in America. He was a surprisingly competent and intelligent fellow, an Olympic level bicycle racer who could calculate power to weight ratios and otherwise seemed to understand cause and effect. He insisted that Jesus was the big boss, and that creation was a result of intelligent design. Yet he also insisted that his views were not religious. Why? Because what he believed was the truth. Apparently, in his mind, religion involved dogma and speculation. His beliefs were reality, therefore not religious. Not at all.
Laripu, thanks for the link to that XKCD. My idea of intelligent humour, and a delightful statement with the hover. Cracks me up to think that the only people willing to present on the Dunning Kruger effect are undergrads.
FreeFox, good to hear from you at such length. I wish I had the time and strength left to adequately respond. I will toss this one thing at you though: Neuroscience has now revealed that we make a decision BEFORE we are aware that we have made a decision, or what that decision is. If this is true, can there be such a thing as free will? Or are we, rather, merely meat robots controlled by our brains.
I have come to the conclusion that the ego, the “I am” of who we are, is an illusion. As an analogy, I imagine it like this: The being I call “I” is the CEO seated at the head of a very long boardroom table. Other beings (in reality, brain functions) sit at the table, and have various interests such as impulse control or goal setting or emotional yearnings or caution or sexual desires or status evaluation etc. I can communicate with some of these beings, and am aware of them. Some of them I am not aware of and can’t talk to. Some of them are loud. Some are very quiet. It’s a long table, and these beings stretch off into the murky distance. But all have a vote in any decision. When the decision gets made, a balancing of all the conflicting voices, it gets passed along to me and I adopt it as “my decision”. I immediately and conveniently forget all of the other beings seated at the table. I have decided.
I think this is what Daniel Dennett had in mind when he said that we have a soul, but it’s composed of thousands of tiny robots.
Anyway, free will is hard to imagine if this is the reality of who we are and how decisions get made.
When I was in Australia, there was a tragedy on the news. A man had stopped his car in the middle of a bridge, grabbed his three year old daughter from the back seat, and thrown her over the railing into the river below to her death while his son screamed at him “Daddy. She can’t swim.” Of course the public reaction was outrage. Everybody wanted the guy hanged drawn and quartered. My reaction was a bit more…empathetic. I think the poor guy’s brain was hijacked by his amygdala, the emotional part of the brain which sits much closer to the action areas than does the cerebral cortex. After doing the horrible deed, and regaining some control of his brain, the man was distraught and begged the police to kill him. Apparently he had had an emotional and stressful time in divorce court arguing a custody issue and just snapped. Of course there is not justification for such a crime, but one has to wonder where free will resides in a situation like this. Is this what they call temporary insanity? And does that override free will?
Hey, Darwin Harmless, thanks for the great post. You have just hit the nail on the head. What you just described is exactly the way I view God (and, indeed, the gods). As you say, there is no “I”. None of us is a singular entity with one coherent free agency. And yet, in real life, as we interact with each other, the illusion of self-ness (in ourselves and in those around us) is too useful, too convenient, and too comfortable for us to constantly run around viewing ourselves and each other as “thousands of tiny robots”.
“God” (or “Athena”, “Mate Carrefou”, “Ganesha”, “Ded Moros”, etc.) are such Masks for the universe (or parts of the universe). Beneath them are “thousands of tiny” natural processes, and just like our neurology well worth studying and worth keeping in mind – like we should keep the way brains function in mind when judging a poor soul like that Australian father you mention – but in the end, for me, it is too useful, too convenient, and too comfortable to adress the universe as “God”, or to think about my own strength to overcome obstacles as a gift by “Ganesha”, etc not to do so. Just as I will keep thinking of you as the singular entity known as Darwin Harmless, in spite of both of us knowing that really there is just this ever-changing, multifacteded, many-voiced gestalt behind the mask.
(And can you really deny the majesty and splendour of our mistress Eostra working her miracles all around us outside at the moment? Does she not deserve praise and celebration?) 😉
Does that answer your question whether I am just trolling you with my claims of theism, or if I actually can have such a worldview without by necessity stooping to the intellectual dishonesty and incompetence of Jello. ^_^
Wow. Joes super advanced education and his 5 years of monastic living (during which he was not religious!) have really helped him hone his debate skills. Lots of cogent arguments complete with references to testable theories. I don’t know why everyone is so mean to him.
Maybe because in his first post he suggested that the patrons here would enjoy tormenting sick children. That might have got him off on the wrong foot.
I suspect his “education” taught Joe this was a good way to make a point. I’m sure his god will reward him well for his efforts to save the godless atheists.
Freefox, I think that the guardian author is again suffering from “physics envy”. Why mention quantum mechanics at all? Unless he he drawing false equivalence between science and religious woo. He might not understand the complexity of quantum theory when expressed as equations in the standard model. However he can buy a new QLED telly to watch a rerun of “Ben hur” and see empirical proof that quantum effects can be witnessed to produce startling colour differentials at even better resolutions! Yet another classics graduate spouting shite I’m afraid! Or am I wrong? Do I spot such false equivalency gratuitously
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Joe Mello: You addressed me directly re Creator God versus Old Testament/New Testament God. I respectfully submit that you did not answer my question (not an assertion!). I did not dismiss anything, I simply asked a question.
For the sake of debate, let us accept the possibility that an omnipotent being created the universe in the Big Bang, including creating the physical laws which underly the continuing universe, and let us call that omnipotent being the Creator God. That is a reasonable standpoint, although I personally do not agree with it, and it may even be factually true (making my beliefs wrong).
Then let us consider the God of the Bible, who appears capricious and short-tempered towards the “sin” of the human race, although He has a soft spot for the Hebrews/Jews, his chosen people. He frequently advocates/demands genocide and treachery. He eventually incarnates himself as Jesus, so that Jesus can be executed as a human sacrifice (to Himself) and thereby frees the human race from “sin” – but only if they accept Jesus as their Saviour. I hope you will accept that this is a reasonable description of the God of the Bible, although obviously written from my highly biased point of view.
Now, my question to you, Joe Mello, is how you reconcile the idea of a Creator God with the idea of the Biblical God. To me, it appears that you can believe in one or the other, but not in both, as they seem to me to be mutually exclusive.
I have gone to some trouble to spell out the details of my question. If you reply, I hope you will apply similar clarity.
If you will allow me to add a personal assertion to the above question, I believe that the Creator God may exist, contrary to my beliefs, while the God of the Bible is a totally imaginary invention by a variety of human writers, unworthy of the allegiance of thinking people.
Son of Glenner. The postulated creator god must be a being of ridiculous complexity? Thus, are you suggesting that such a being can bootstrap herself into existence? Otherwise the godmother of the universe needs a mother herself and……regression ad nauseam…..I will stick to the model currently in favour by most serious physicists. A safe bet on current evidence me thinks.
I know that. But further to your concession that a creator god may exist I was just reinforcing your argument v the Jesuit. Think of us as a comic duo. I was merely being your straight man. No offence meant.
Son, what separates you from most skeptics I have listened to, and they have been myriad, is that you admit to your position on the existence of God as “belief”.
Now, when you separate God into categories, such as Biblical and Creator, you take your eye off the ball. For God, to be God, he must be the only God, an all-powerful God, a God who created the physical universe and the human being, a God who is the author of reality and the power behind it, etc.
Your friend Holt, who you felt the need to placate, throws out all sorts of nonsense about God because he refuses to take the simplicity of God as the only God and think on that. The concept of “ridiculous complexity” attributed to God is a concept derived from philosophical ignorance. Only a finite being would need to be ridiculously complex to be the Creator of reality. To understand this one needs to think on the level of an Aristotle, not a Krauss. Aristotle wrote his Physics first and his Metaphysics second. To stop at his Physics is what all skeptics do. In his Metaphysics, Aristotle reasoned quite profoundly step by step, and he came to the profound conclusion that a universe of finite things cannot account for itself, so there must be another being who is not finite that the universe is within. All this skeptical nonsense calling God a her and using mythological language to make a point is a clear revelation of that skeptic thinking at a very low level of reasoning.
Don’t placate such skeptics, for you seem to be functioning at a higher level than them.
There are no scientific “theories” that answer the hard questions. Period.
Any physicist worth his salt simply responds “we don’t know” to the hard questions.
So for a skeptic to act as if the existence of God is some bizarre and complicated theory not worth thinking upon is just b.s.
The Bible, as every skeptic has been told, was written by human beings “inspired” by the Holy Spirit. For a skeptic then to continuously claim that all theists believe the Bible is written from the perfect hand of God, like Bill Maher just won’t stop doing, is for a skeptic to beg the question about God.
Your question to me about the God of the Bible kinda reeks of this begging the question.
What is so hard to understand that human beings write things down as human beings see them to be?
What is so hard to understand that God created the universe and then revealed himself by respecting his creation?
Were the “myths” of ancient times total fabrications in the imagination, or were they revelations of God in respect to human history and human cultures?
Where is it written that God, to be God, must only reveal himself as he is perfectly in himself? And what would happen if he did? Wouldn’t we all stop being ourselves and spend our time kissing his ass to get paid?
God is invisible for a “reason”. And that reason is to give us our time to become who we will become through our own thoughts and actions.
Why does a “free-thinking skeptic” not find this separation from God to be a good thing, rather than proof that there is no God?
Answer: The skeptic has taken the second degree of abstraction, mathematics, to be the place where truth is found, rather than taking his thinking to the third degree of abstraction, metaphysical imagination.
Looking for proof of God’s existence and true being in the same manner that you look for a cockroach is about as dumb as it gets. Yet that is what the modern skeptic demands continuously. That is what you and your friends here at this forum have been demanding from me. Sorry. A cockroach is a cockroach, and God is God. If you can’t admit that there is a difference, I cannot help you to see one, for there is no back door to your thinking that I can sneak into to avoid the guards you have put in the front of your house.
Freefox: “Does that answer your question whether I am just trolling you with my claims of theism, or if I actually can have such a worldview without by necessity stooping to the intellectual dishonesty and incompetence of Jello. ^_^”
It seems I have no arguments with your world view if you would just stop confusing us by attaching leftover labels from ancient religions to it. I suppose this dresses your beliefs up in more attractive garb, with more historical resonance, but…okay. Now that you have more fully explained yourself, no problem. I will stop accusing you of dishonesty.
I too hold at least one totally irrational belief. It is this: Everything in my reality is a result of my thoughts, beliefs, and actions.
When I first heard this, at a touchy-feely and rather expensive seminar, I leapt to my feet and cried bullshit. If I’m walking through the park and a meteor comes out of the sky and smacks me on the head, how is that a result of my thoughts, beliefs, and actions?
The facilitator obviously had faced this objection before. “Maybe this isn’t (making those quotation marks in the air) the truth in capital letters,” she said. “But it’s a very useful thing to believe. The more you believe it, the more it will seem to be true. The alternative is to be a victim and deny responsibility for your life.”
Okay. I guess I made the decision to walk in that park without my garbage can lid or tinfoil hat. I suppose I assumed that walking in the park was a safe thing to do. I suppose death by meteor was a result of my decisions. So I decided to try this on. And, like your professed beliefs in mystical beings, it turned out to be very useful. It’s a great way to think about anything I don’t like about my life, a way to question which of my thoughts, beliefs and actions causes my current reality. Almost always I can come up with a thought, belief or action that could have been different and lead to a better result. Sometimes I even manage to change my behavior for the future.
Mello fellow. A Cockroach is as evolved as any mammal including homo sapiens. And given that they can withstand a lot more radiation than mammals. Cockroaches may inherit the earth! You numpty.
D.H. Neuroscience has proven that some decisions are made by the brain BEFORE the conscious mind is aware that a decision has been made. Are we just mere automatons playing out a quantum controlled existence that was set in motion at the point of the rapid expansion of the original singularity. That would suggest that free will does not exist! However, the bye-bull is still a pile of steaming horseshit!
Hey Joe. Okay, now I’m starting to find your arguments slightly interesting, though still not persuasive. Perhaps you would have found a better reception here if you hadn’t stumbled into the C&B slinging insults and daring my mates to knock the chip off your shoulder.
Your presence in our favorite pub reminds me of a new theory – that we developed the ability to reason not as a tool to find the truth but as a tool to argue for the beliefs we already have. Some might think you argue well. I’m sure my mother would have been impressed.
I still feel no impulse to debate with you, but I will admit that your arguments seem slightly more nuanced than they first appeared. Still nothing we haven’t heard before from the sophistimacated apologists who seem to care about this kind of speculation.
It’s a beautiful Spring day here. I think I shall go out and breath some of god’s wonderful air, infused as it is with a delightful petrichor. 🙂
M27Holts, if there was a creator ‘god’ it wouldn’t (couldn’t?) be one that bootstrapped itself into existence (or thought itself into existence, as I’ve heard said by many). In my opinion, it would have been a scientist in a much older, larger universe, playing with some kind of cosmic-scale atom smasher. The entire existence of our Universe would then be taking place within the confines of an unimaginably vast machine.
On that scale, our existence wouldn’t even be suspected by that grand physicist; the largest galaxies would be even less easily detectable to it than the fundamental particles are to our scientists.
Or is our Universe merely an expanding fart-bubble in a cosmic baby’s bathwater?
Joey, you’ve made the classical mistake. Stopping your search and calling it a day when you found your god. If a universe of finite things must have a creator …. where did the creator come from? If you are not willing to look for that answer then you’ll find very little agreement here (from what I’ve seen).
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you’ve also conveniently moved the goalposts for god as believers have been doing for centuries. As science finds answers, god becomes smaller and smaller.
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I don’t think you ever answered which god it is that you believe is the living god. You’ve said you’re not religious …. which leads me to believe this is a god of your own creation. If so, my hats off to you for being able to conjure your very own omnipotent being. You really must be very learned.
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If you’ve decided to follow one of the existing texts ….. then I guess you are able to reconcile the many many contradictions in those texts …. also quite a feat. Your mother is probably very proud.
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regarding your third degree of abstraction … is akin to saying you believe in magic. Or to quote you … imagination. That is the nub of it Joe. Your god comes from your imagination. Small wonder the rational world doesn’t believe a word of your silliness.
A.c. I just thought it was a useful non offensive grouping name? I would prefer pre-modern alamanacs of unadulterated dog turds mixed with weasel spit….but that’s a bit of a mouthful…
Ld50 this geezer Joe, thinks he is god. He is an analyst’s dream ticket. Delusion loaded upon delusion. Post modernist, humanities, religious apologist of the worst kind!
Joe Mello: Thank you for your prompt reply and its relative freedom from abusive language. Just to make sure I’ve got it right, are you saying, in brief:
“God, the Creator of the universe, exists as an infinite and omnipotent Being, but the so-called Holy Bible (and, perhaps, other ‘religious’ texts) is a load of man-made rubbish and definitely NOT the word of God.”?
If that is a correct, if (admittedly) skewed account of your beliefs, you and I must agree to differ on the first part (existence of a Creator) but I totally agree with your second part (Bible is rubbish).
You have shown that you are perfectly capable of reasoned debate, although not very good at it, so please refrain from gratuitous insults to other drinkers in the old C&B pub. Some of them are quite decent fellows and ladies. There will be another strip from our beloved Author tomorrow, Wednesday. Let’s hope it’s as brilliant as the current one, re sacrifice of Isaac, and gives you something new to get your teeth into. I look forward to what you have to say.
From reading the Jesuits posts. He most certainly is religious. His stance that human beings stand outside of the animal kingdom (and indeed seemingly outside of elemental physics as well) is the litmus test for the tiny-minded. I imagine that not being able to understand even basic equations fuels his disdain of intellectual writers of science and tries to bolster his ignorance by claiming that his invisible friend has told him that physics is all lies. That’s Mello in a nutshell.
I get the feeling that Joe Mello can’t have been doing this for very long, so in the spirit of good fellowship I’ve put together some pointers on Internet debate for him.
1. Your brilliant arguments will often fail to convince. If you can accept this inexplicable fact your time here will be much more pleasant.
2. Some of the people you encounter will be rude. Some will be idiots. The overlap between these groups is nowhere near as complete as you might think.
3. Nobody is going to defer to your credentials. You may be lying about them, and even if you aren’t, the world’s libraries are full of nonsense written by people with credentials.
4. If you lose your temper and start calling people names you will look like a fool.
5. If you lose your temper and start calling people names you will look like a fool.
6. If you lose your temper and start calling people names you will look like a fool. Even if you are right, and everything you have to say is true, you will still look like a fool!
Welcome to the Internet Joe; I hope this introduction proves helpful.
This forum has been the home of one adolescent troll since you began posting Joey. What would your fransican brothers think about the term motherfuckering? That is what you meant by mf correct? What would jesus say? Did he use language like that?
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Maybe you didn’t leave the monastery of your own accord Jeoy? Maybe you couldn’t hack it and were shown the door – is that the source of your frustration? Maybe they saw you for the fool that you are. Even the devout were tired of your nuttiness. Is that the root of your issue Joey?
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I’ll give you this. You live up to many of the stereotypes of the religious fool. I guess it’s a stereotype for a reason.
Laripu, stop bleating. This forum is not what you think it is, and you are not who you think you are. The uneasy feelings you get reading my posts is a movement of the spirit within you, the spirit that is responsible for all good and true things in your life. Your mundane intellect is bamboozling you. I’m helping you.
Son of Glenner, do you actually believe that your so very transparent self-serving response above got by me as something different? Please. Only in your head did I infer that the Bible is rubbish. I wrote plainly that the Bible is a written account of human beings inspired by the spirit of the living God.
God’s spirit reveals God to us in respect to human history, human culture, and each individual human personality.
As an example of what I am speaking about:
Buddha was a very important human being in the revelations of God he provided. That Buddha was an individual person living at a certain time in human history and at a certain place are all truly significant to understand the revelations he provided to us.
Skeptics are either poor thinkers or have a bigoted agenda that blinds their thinking, or both (which is the usual case), for you have to search far and wide to find a single one of them who even thinks upon such a thing as a “spirit”. That is why you “thinkers” keep regurgitating the atheist talking point about how the many names for God nullifying any reality of one God behind all of these names. “Which God do you believe in?” This is the atheist mantra that reveals the level of thinking the atheist is working at. And it ain’t pretty.
Anyway …
You telling me that I’m not very good at debating is a meaningless judgement from someone who hasn’t even understood most of what I have written.
How can you not understand that arriving at “truth” is hard work demanding personal sacrifice, talent, and achievement?
You and your faceless “friends” here on this forum trust that Google searches are all the work that is needed.
Having seen this comic again recently, it reminded me of our friend Joe. Considering his attitude we have seen thus far, it would not surprise me if he took it literally.
Edit: that above reply wasn’t there when I started.
Cannot help but notice this line:
“Laripu, stop bleating. This forum is not what you think it is, and you are not who you think you are.”
I’m afraid that statement applies more to you, Joe. I know I said I was done with you, but I can’t resist.
I have to say then, that I have found some of your language surprising as regards its profanity, rudeness and even sloppy logic.
“Holy shit, …
Not one of you even knows that an ellipsis is only three dots, yet all of you think you have the answers to reality.
[one of us was sloppy with his dots, but you extrapolate that none of us know what an ellipsis is? I’ve known since I was a teenager that the word comes from the Greek ellipsein meaning to leave out. And that it is properly a single symbol ‘…’ as opposed to three full stops (or periods) ‘…’ (you can get it, on an iPhone, by pressing and holding the full stop key)
And I, and many others here, I’m sure, don’t claim to have the answers to reality.]
… your poor educations … you idiots.
And … is pathetic.
This has to be the dumbest …”
Anyway, perhaps you were provoked?
Still, this is undignified behaviour, unworthy of even an ex Franciscan, but also of us.
How about we all stop calling Joe names (other than Joe and/or Mello, obviously:-) and Joe stops calling us stupid?
Because we rarely get proper theists around here and I did actually have a question. Something that’s been puzzling me for some time.
How come Muslims believe things (e.g. that Jesus Christ was merely a prophet) that are obviously wrong? Do Christians have an explanation for this?
Dear Author, I have scrupulously followed your injunction to not tell anybody to fuck off on these threads. As you said, that is a right you reserve for yourself. Now, isn’t it time you told this obnoxious jerk stinking up your pub that it’s time to go home. Apparently nothing the regulars can say to him will alter his behavior.
We’ve heard him out, and some have even tried to engage him in polite debate. I think we’ve listened to his abuse long enough, don’t you?
Of course if you still find him amusing, keep him around. I’m just letting you know that I’d rather have Mohamed back. He was more fun and possibly more intelligent.
Jesuit Joe. You are forgetting that a lot of the fellow space apes you are sharing this site with have read the buybull. You have read NONE of the popular science books that are backed up with years of repeatable experiments. The works are based on empirical evidence. Neuroscience has proved that the neurons inside your brain developed by natural selection and that the subroutines that control your idea of self are just millions of automatic algorithms that are intrisinctly controlled by a subconscious that most people never learn to control and in fact can’t control because it’s mainly chemical messaging is still being studied and will eventually be totally understood. Your god is peering out of the tea pot. You can’t prove nish. And anything that can be invoked without evidence can immediately be dismissed as infantile delusion. Now go and join a silent order and do us all a favour!
LD50 – Joey was never an ofm. He doesn’t have any degrees. He’s a flake and a religious nutbar. He uses the tired tactic of berating others towards his views by namecalling and questioning their intelligence. He is a fool who gets all the respect he deserves. You can join in and troll him a bit or you can ignore him. IF you think you will have a rational conversation with him you are sadly mistaken.
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DH – let him wear himself out. There is a minute chance that enough time around here will help him. IF not, he’ll get tired and go berate someone else.
LD50 “Because we rarely get proper theists around here…”
This is the only thing that made me hesitate to request the ban hammer. We so rarely get theists in this pub, and I’m all for a visitor who doesn’t just dismiss our logic as “atheist talking points” but actually addresses the points we make. I know this is possible. I’ve heard it done.
Anyway, I had very mixed feelings about sending off my note to Author. But in the end I decided that this is not the kind of theist we need around here.
PeterN “I always thought the story of Isaac was a parable for sending kids off to war.”
Interesting thought. Never occurred to me, but sort of makes sense, given that wars were often fought in god’s name, i.e. a war really was god asking a guy to sacrifice his son. Maybe there ARE more ways to read the buybull than are obvious to us literal minded types. Whoda thunk it, eh.
DH. On a more serious note. Your anecdote about the man who threw his daughter to her death. Momentary insanity which used to be also called the “crime of passion”. Should all murders made under mental instability be exonerated? If so, where is the line drawn as to determine if a murder is premeditated. Especially as as you said in another post that all actions are brought upon oneself which of course includes your own death by murder?
It seems the bleating has spread, just like in an actual flock of sheep.
My attitude toward some of you is no worse than your attitude toward theists. And my ad hominems are often included with descriptions of why the names fit.
But besides all this bleating, what type of forum is this that a dozen regulars get to choose who is posting well?
The posts above that use the pronoun “we” with an authoritative importance are delusional. You skeptics claim to be knowledgeable in psychology but that doesn’t ring true here. Have you heard of this? —
“Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome.”
Whoever “Author” is, and I have no idea, if he is more concerned with placating some regulars, who have obvious deficiencies in learning and problems in personality, than creating a forum that draws in some good posters on the Internet, then I guess your bleating will attract this shepherd. But if he is not an unlearned person with personality problems, then he will probably discern that some of his sheep are in no real danger and let them bleat out.
But the most important point of all is that all this bleating is simply a smokescreen that hides the true problem you regulars here are having with my posts — most of you cannot understand anything philosophical or care about anything beyond critiquing religion.
And that is why some of you have to focus on me rather than on what I am telling you.
Thinking that I am a liar or religious or some other third thing reveals more about you.
Joe Mello, in an attempt to berate us for not taking your credentials seriously, you asked “Where is the logic in this? Is a car mechanic someone who read about fixing cars or someone who actually has experience in fixing cars?”
The difference is, a car is a tangible object as are the components. The mechanic can point out the faulty component(s); we can see the object of the mechanic’s expertise and can judge the results.
Show me the object of your expertise, just a wee bit of tangible evidence, and you might be taken a little more seriously. Until then, your expertise is in nothing more than your own subjective notion of ‘spirit’, and an expertise in the unprovable carries no weight around here.
You have also lambasted sceptics for ‘regurgitating an atheist talking point’. A tad hypocritical considering that the religious have been spouting the same nonsense since the Bronze Age, namely the ‘God is totally real but you aren’t allowed to see any proof until you’re dead. Oh, and if you don’t believe you’ll roast in Hell for eternity’ spiel. Tell me, Joe; what kind of organisation asks people to devote their lives to something they’ll never live to see, and threatens the most sadistic punishment for those who refuse?
As to your claim that the Bible was inspired by the spirit of God, how can you possibly know that with any level of certainty? Read with an un-biased eye, Genesis is clearly a pre-scientific attempt at explaining the existence of everything (you’ll note that ‘God’ is pre-supposed, and that it just happens to be the god of the tribe that the book was written for), whilst the entire O.T. is an assumed history of one tribe, combined with a rule book for that tribe. After that, the God of the O.T. has been taken in countless directions, each variation dependent on the prejudices, agendas and whims of their writers and preachers. Divine inspiration – not so much in evidence.
M27Holts, I’m sure Darwin will have an interesting response but as I too remember reading about that event, I’d like to throw in my thoughts.
In that particular instance, I was disgusted by the father’s actions and hoped that he would get locked up for life, or at least a decade or two. Admittedly I don’t know what happened to him but I’d rather not look it up. I can only hope he’s been given sufficient time in some sort of institution.
For murders classified as a “crime of passion” or temporary insanity, I think it ultimately depends on the nature and context of the event. For instance, I’m more likely to pity someone who assaults and/or kills a child molester who had violated one of their kin, even if I’d rather said horrid offender be thrown in jail and receive due punishment. That doesn’t mean however I expect them to be instantly commended for their actions by the justice system, as a fair trial should still be conducted.
Somebody who goes out of their way to kill an innocent for no reason other than not being able to keep their temper is a different story. For cases like that, I don’t believe they should be returned to society with a shrink and prescription for pills to keep them in check; at least not until they’ve given years of their own lives in prison or a sanitarium first.
Cold-blooded, premeditated murder of course should get the fitting punishment. I’m fine with Australia no longer having the death penalty as with life sentences in prison for those who commit unforgivable crimes can still be issued.
To summarize, whether or not one pities the person who commits a violent act is practically immaterial, as justice should still be served appropriately. Determining whether or not the crime was a break in sanity or thought through should be examined by those investigating and prosecuting, and the right sentence applied should guilt be declared.
Acolyte, which one of us could possibly have the “experience” of God necessary to no longer believe in God but “know” God? You, by reading or me, by sacrificing everything to acquire this knowledge? That is the reasoning behind the car mechanic analogy. You claim nothing tangible can be found in a search for God. I claim much is tangible. Is there such a thing as tangible suffering, or tangible hate, or tangible addition, etc.? Of course there is.
I can’t really share with you the far more tangible experiences of God I had because you can’t even accept as possible the basic experiences of God.
Have you heard the story of Aquinas writing his whole life until the day he experienced such a tangible experience of God that he stopped writing on that day?
And many more people have claimed these incredibly tangible experiences of God, and you probably have heard about them.
Do these people need to duplicate them for you for you to hear about them and question your atheism? If so, then that is a demand by you that doesn’t make much sense, for if you really were philosophically astute, you would know that it is each individual person as an individual that God is concerned with most profoundly, not some group of people, even a group of people as large as the whole human race.
Skeptics use the term “subjective” because they don’t have the philosophical chops to understand the importance of the individual. In fact, modern skeptics must deny the importance of the human being completely for their thinking not to be judged absurd. Human beings are eminently important in creation, and as individuals.
And the account of creation in Genesis is not dissimilar to what science has discovered. Read it again. If science discovered that all the matter and energy in the universe was always here, and that life was always on our planet, I would throw the Bible in the garbage. But science has discovered nothing of the sort. In fact, science has failed to discover anything that disproves any part of the Bible, or, more importantly for our discussion, any reasoning of Aristotle that makes the existence of God a necessity.
And the reality of human beings having differing revelations of God’s existence and God’s being does not rule out the reality of one revelation being the most profound of all.
And arriving at this most profound revelation of all is not guesswork, but hard work.
Only a person who is giving to God a five-cent attempt to know him would deny the reality of a million-dollar reward in finding him.
The skeptic concept of “lazy thinking” is puny compared to the theistic concept of “superficial living”.
First, I’m a Portuguese guy who had a full-time job in 10th grade working from four to midnight on the back of a garbage truck, a guy who painted a triple-decker when he was fourteen 51 years ago and now has a 35-yr-old painting business with four employees, a guy who at 65 years old looks forty-something because he does all the hard work on his crew and loves it.
My knowledge and love of God hasn’t changed me into a cookie-cutout religious person, but into a spiritually powerful person. And spirituality is about the power we receive to do great things despite our human weaknesses, not about the power to talk sweetly to other persons all of the time. I can work hard for 12 hours without stopping while sipping Gatorade. And I do all the time. And I enjoy it. I can give away money without thinking about it. And I do all the time. And I enjoy it. Spirituality is the stuff of these things more than the stuff of playing nice with people of dubious character. Read the Gospel of John to see a pissed-off Jesus responding to the fools around him trying to stop him from doing what he knew he was born to do.
Second, take your eyes off of the differences in human beings to see the similarities in them. The details in the differing revelations of God are not important to the degree that the similarities are.
If you want to discover the significance of Jesus in your life, you must take advantage of this moment in time and all your personal talents. To simply dismiss Jesus because of what other persons tell you about him is not intelligent nor honest. Do the work needed. God can’t be somewhat important, he has to be either not important or supremely important. So if you’re gonna ask questions about God, you gotta know that the amount of effort you put into the answers will dictate the answers you get.
wow joey … just wow. 2 degrees, a former friar minor AND the best painter I’ve never heard of. On top of it all … you don’t even drink Gatorade!!!
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I said it before but it bears repeating. Your mom must be very proud.
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You are non stop fun my friend.
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One little question. Why was jesus pissed off if his mantra is turn the other cheek? Did he forget what he stands for?
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LD50 – you’re wasting your time. Joey hasn’t a clue what he’s talking about. He is a true believer.
You’re mixing me up with someone else. I didn’t ask about you, how hard you work, or whether you are spiritually powerful. I wasn’t dismissing Jesus because of what anyone else might have said.
— So if you’re gonna ask questions about God, you gotta know that the amount of effort you put into the answers will dictate the answers you get.
It’s not a question about God directly, but I certainly feel I’m putting some effort into asking it.
I asked:
“How come Muslims believe things (e.g. that Jesus Christ was merely a prophet) that are obviously wrong? Do Christians have an explanation for this?”
But perhaps I’m making assumptions here. Would a Christian even say that Muslims believe things that are wrong?
Dear Author, I take it back. This particular theist is a classic. Well worth a bit of studying.
He displays all the classic symptoms of the classic troll – a grandiose sense of self worth, boundless ego, pugnacious attitude. He has no idea to whom he is talking, what our experiences are, how old we are, what we have read, what we have considered. All he is totally sure of is that he is our superior in every way.
He makes the assumption that none of us can ever have done a lick of work; none of us have ever run a business, or given away money; none of us can possibly be his equal in any way, far less his superior. Classic troll. Classic narcissist. Not really good company, but worth studying.
I hereby retract my request that you tell him to fuck off. Let him talk. He reveals so much of himself, and I find him suddenly interesting.
Thanks
M27Holts, “Should all murders made under mental instability be exonerated? If so, where is the line drawn as to determine if a murder is premeditated. Especially as as you said in another post that all actions are brought upon oneself which of course includes your own death by murder?” Sorry but that’s too big a question for me to tackle after a couple of scotch and reading Joe Mello. Common sense says that people who do terrible things should be kept from the rest of us, no matter what the reasons or cause of their behavior. I can feel sorry for the guy who threw his child to her death, but I don’t think that’s any reason to let him run around loose. Lock him up and throw away the key. Or at least lock him up until he recognizes that he has killed a child because his feefees were hurt and that’s something he should never do again.
Mello. Many top notch historians and philosophers think that, on the balance of probabilities. The man Jesus never actually existed. He is simply another mythical creation like Myrhras or Dionysus. How do you account for homo sapiens skeletons dated at hundreds of thousands of years before the middle eastern holy books were cobbled together. God is a man made construct. The arrow of certainty is 99.9% in that direction. Now prove me wrong!
Joe Mello: I find it quite hilarious that you accuse the regulars at the old C&B pub (ie this forum) of “groupthink”! I have been here for several years and have witnessed many ding-dong arguments between the regulars, on a variety of different topics.
I wish you well with your paint business. I don’t doubt that you are an excellent hardworking businessman. Afraid you are less competent as a debater. You have literally given a new meaning to the word “tangible”.
“Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome.”
“behold the man”
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that’s a great line joey. I applaud your restraint. I was expecting at least one exclamation maybe 2 or 3. Of course even from this one can easily parse out information about you. If you were really the super man that you say you are it would have been ALL CAPS. That’s how you show people you really mean business.
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I don’t see Joey dressed as Bonaparte while typing. Given his stated ethnic background, I see more Infante Dom Henrique, o Navegador. Although there are a lot of short portugese dudes out there so he could be more napoleonic. Maybe that’s the source of his fury … short man syndrome.
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in any event, he’s been good for a chuckle and has reinforced the stereotype of the religious fool. Thanks for that Joey.
A take on this from a rival comic. I can’t post the link because of the anti-spam script, but call up webtoons.com and then paste in this part of the URL:
Most scientists today believe that the Earth is around 4.6 billion years old. They also believe that human beings and chimpanzees evolved from a common ancestor that lived around 6 million years ago, an ancestor that we would consider to be a ape.
I consider these claims to be scientifically well supported and almost certainly true. Would you agree? If not, what do you believe instead?
I’ve tried to make this question as simple and straightforward as possible, and if you can give me a simple and straightforward answer that would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
M27:
IIRC Don Quichote (as it is the spelled in my memory) was Espagnol…
(Maybe I should check with my daughter, fluent in Spanish, and with a Portugese partner).
Son of Glenner, I have literally given you the meaning of “tangible” that you will find in any dictionary. This is one of the advantages of going to Graduate school for the language you speak and write — you become fluent in the meanings of words and skilled in the sharing of these meanings. Like writing that you found it “hilarious” that you and your “friends” are guilty of groupthink. No you didn’t — not by the reason you gave to doubt it. You found it “confusing” and off the mark. If you would have written the proper words for what you were feeling and thinking, I would have read your response to me with more interest and more respect for your ability to relate the truth about yourself.
LD50, I’m beginning to suspect you have difficultly moving past basic questions in your head and the basic answers you want my head to give to you. You questioned my language and undignified behavior for most of your post, and then at the last sentence asked me a question about the differing interpretations of Jesus. I answered you on both accounts. For you to then say that I didn’t, and then to further say that I am mixed up, simply leaves me not trusting in your intellect or sincerity. I have posted extensively on the how the differing interpretations of God’s revelations (and his Incarnation at the fullness of time in a single human being named Jesus, a human being who obviously changed human history by becoming the greatest hope, joy, and love any suffering lowly human being could have, was and is the greatest revelation of God imaginable) do not matter to the reality of who God truly is and who we truly are because of who God truly is. You want me to get religious with you. Sorry. I don’t do religion. I do knowledge and experience through personal sacrifice, gifts by God, and personal talents. And you claiming that
you really put some effort into your question about Muslims differing with Christians about Jesus must have strained you greatly, I guess. When I left for the monastery and watched out the window of my car at my cat laying beneath a tree, knowing that I would never see that cat again until I returned a year later; when I went to dinner with my family the night before and said goodbye to them not knowing if I would ever be part of their lives again; when I gave away my sports car and most of what I owned — all of these experiences were the stuff of a serious effort to discover the truth I am now sharing with you. So forgive me for not writing some words in a sentence that you, in your struggle to ask a question on the Internet, find sufficient as an answer. Look to the similarities in the Muslim and the Christian, and the Greek and the Roman for that matter, not in the differences. There is only one God and one spirit of God. And human history holds a very profound account of God and his spirit working in the midst of vast collections of people and in the minds and hearts of each individual person. Your agenda to promote your bigotries against any of this being true means, if possible, less than nothing to me.
DC, you can’t write well. Period. Your “Appeal to Emotion” arguments are poorly done, and therefore fall to pieces when read. I use this tool often, for often there is no other recourse than to slap a fool. … See? That’s how it’s done.
M27, sorry, but your writing is even worse. And “top-notch” to you can’t be a good thing. Jesus existed. You can’t drive for long before seeing a cross in the sky, so he more than existed — he changed human history. It’s the reality and meaningfulness of your existence that is in question.
jb, the evolution of our physical bodies in the physical universe is part of our story, not the whole story, for the reality of the physical universe is part of reality, not the whole of reality. Every power in the physical universe needs a “seat”, but no seat is the power itself. Our bodies are the “seat” for our existence in the physical universe, not our existence itself. And our brains are the “seat” for our thoughts, not thought itself. You wish to now tell me that scientists have shown to us that the physical universe, and in turn our physical bodies, is the only reality that matters? Well … go ahead. I don’t see it that way. And it doesn’t work that way, either. What scientists “believe”, as you say, cannot be separated for the personalities of each and every scientist. Einstein “believed” that it was his imagination that made him Einstein, not his mathematics. Our evolution from the first ancient bacteria (you need to go that far back to make your “beliefs” complete) could have only happened if something even greater than us (remember the metaphysical principle I gave to you awhile back?) was present and added to this first manifestation of life. Nothing in science comes even close to disproving this.
I don’t think I’m going to get my question answered. I thought it was fairly straightforward. Perhaps not the why, but Joe won’t even confirm that Muslims are wrong when they say that Jesus was just another prophet.
It’s pretty much a core tenet of Christianity that Jesus is the son of God but also a part of the trinity (that’s one god, obviously). Not very contentious amongst Christians, I thought.
Perhaps Joe thinks I’m trying to trap him with a trick question?
Socrates never had this sort of hassle. He’d corner some innocent passerby and say something like, “surely you agree that what is divine is what is beloved of the gods” or some such drivel. And they’d simply reply, “well yes, obviously” — as if the words had been put in their mouths (by Plato). And after a couple of these questions Socrates would show that that which they had thought was wrong or inconsistent or whatever. After which they’d go away enlightened.
All that reading these ancient philosophers has taught people nowadays is — don’t answer the question! Even a simple one is merely the thin end of a slippery wedge. Deflect! Distract! Whatever.
But now I’m confused. Where did you answer the question? Was it this:
“Second, take your eyes off of the differences in human beings to see the similarities in them. The details in the differing revelations of God are not important to the degree that the similarities are.”
That’s not really a straightforward answer to “are they wrong?” That’s really the sort of question that can be answered with a straightforward yes/no. No Muslim is going to come after you just because you (a Christian) say they’re wrong about something. (If only because you’re xnonymous here).
So if I have this right. Joe’s main argument is “Jesus existed because people think he did” That must also hold for Sherlock Holmes then… Right out of “Small God’s” by Terry Pratchet…but he was taking the piss!
— LD50, I’m beginning to suspect you have difficultly moving past basic questions in your head and the basic answers you want my head to give to you.
Yes, I was having difficulties here, but now you’ve cleared this up. Thanks.
— You questioned my language and undignified behavior for most of your post,
I wasn’t questioning it. I just noted it.
— and then at the last sentence asked me a question about the differing interpretations of Jesus. I answered you on both accounts. [dubious. Discuss]
— For you to then say that I didn’t, and then to further say that I am mixed up, simply leaves me not trusting in your intellect or sincerity.
You posted your life history, including something about drinking Gatorade. Even that wasn’t clear — I thought you drank it. Someone else here thought you didn’t.
— I have posted extensively on the how the differing interpretations of God’s revelations … do not matter to the reality of who God truly is and who we truly are because of who God truly is.
You have indeed posted extensively about this sort of stuff. But we can’t talk about that yet because we’re not even agreed on any axioms.
However, it has to be said that you (if not the Catholic and other churches) have made immense strides if the deity of Jesus is a minor trifle in the grand scheme of things.
— You want me to get religious with you. Sorry. I don’t do religion.
That’s a shame. But ok.
— I do knowledge and experience through personal sacrifice, gifts by God, and personal talents.
I don’t know you personally so your knowledge and experience are no more relevant to me (or anyone here) than anyone else’s. That’s not to say they’re necessarily uninteresting just that there are over 7 billion people around and time is limited…
— And you claiming that you really put some effort into your question about Muslims differing with Christians about Jesus must have strained you greatly, I guess.
No, what required effort was getting you to answer the question. But I’ve failed. That’s ok.
— When I left for the monastery and watched out the window of my car at my cat laying beneath a tree, knowing that I would never see that cat again until I returned a year later; when I went to dinner with my family the night before and said goodbye to them not knowing if I would ever be part of their lives again; when I gave away my sports car and most of what I owned — all of these experiences were the stuff of a serious effort to discover the truth I am now sharing with you. So forgive me for not writing some words in a sentence that you, in your struggle to ask a question on the Internet, find sufficient as an answer.
There you go again. Nobody is interested in your cat or your feelings about it. But you’re forgiven.
— Look to the similarities in the Muslim and the Christian, and the Greek and the Roman for that matter, not in the differences.
Indeed there are similarities. That’s what I would have got to eventually.
— Your agenda to promote your bigotries against any of this being true means, if possible, less than nothing to me.
I abjure my bigotry. I am relieved to know that Christians, Muslims and atheists are all merely part of God’s great plan and will all be welcomed to live in perfect harmony with God in the end. In the meantime we can blow each other up and destroy the planet. All is good. Peace be with you.
“When I left for the monastery and watched out the window of my car at my cat laying beneath a tree, knowing that I would never see that cat again until I returned a year later; when I went to dinner with my family the night before and said goodbye to them not knowing if I would ever be part of their lives again; when I gave away my sports car and most of what I owned — all of these experiences were the stuff of a serious effort to discover the truth I am now sharing with you.”
Actions that suggest you were planning to make this move to the monastery permanent. What happened? Was there nothing left for you to learn?
JDW. I did know that Quixote was Spanish. And Joe is Portuguese. Just couldn’t resist the tilting gag. I am not that illiterate. Seems that basically we are all wrong because we don’t speak with our invisible friend inside our heads. I’m ok with that. I’m probably wrong about something every day. But that’s life.
joey – you don’t know my writing. you only know me as someone who trolls fools on the internet. This is a good example of the depth of your search for answers joey. Scratching the surface without looking any deeper. Finding a simple answer and calling it a day.
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God did it.
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Whew, must have been tough. So hard you had to give away your sportscar and not see your cat for a year. You truly have made sacrifices my friend. Your mother must be very proud.
Joe Mello
Funny fellow
Don’t call him odd
He’s mates with God.
Joe, I get it now; you’re not religious because being religious requires faith, whilst you don’t need faith since you know God is real because of your totally subjective and totally unprovable, intangible, subjective, personal feelings. OK!
Also, we are inferior because you have a degree in thinking and another in how to do writing. Cool. It’s a pity you didn’t get one in animal behaviour, Joe, because then you’d know that dogs (as you referred to us) don’t bleat. That’d be sheep or goats, Mr. Mello, you funny fellow.
Aye. I will second that. Once upon a time, before horrible grubby scientists started to prove all sorts of interesting things, Mello would be lauded as a wise and sagacious man. Now his subjective nonsense is considered laughable. Very soon the thin veneer of religious pride will be stripped away. Leaving a very naked and bewildered ignoramus. That day cannot come soon enough.
Joe Mello says:
April 4, 2018 at 3:33 am
Bleating has given way to panic.
There’s nothing DC can do. He was so sure that all theists read books on God like he reads books on atheism.
But now … “Behold the Man”.
A theist who is a living man with a living God.
No one saw that coming.
Yeah, because you’re the first ever theist who claimed a relationship with a living God; all the others believe in a dead ‘un. Joe, you’re not at all original or special. Get over yourself a little.
And the account of creation in Genesis is not dissimilar to what science has discovered. Read it again.
Not remotely close. Genesis had light before stars, and the Earth before our star. It had made man from clay and woman from man. It had the Universe created as it looked to the writers, so had the entire gamut orbiting Earth as it appears to do, but as a creator would know is false (and anybody with a modicum of mathmatical nous knows is impossible).
The entire Abrahmic religious traditions stand or fall on the creation as per Genesis. Genesis has failed scientific scrutiny. It’s just another story.
Acolyte: You forgot to mention that there are two different accounts of the creation of woman in Genesis. One is the Adam’s rib story, which you reference. Elsewhere it says that humans were created as male and female, like the animals, which is far more believable, but the rib story provides an excuse for treating women as second-class citizens.
Yes, my expectations were that I would leave my normal life behind and do something totally new for the rest of my life. But as it turned out, a religious setting was not the place I could keep myself occupied fully. While I was there in the monastery, I was very successful. I was a Holy Land Franciscan in D.C. training to take care of the holy sites throughout the Middle East. I studied Arabic, Italian, and Spanish, for those are the languages I needed. I was the editor of the monastery’s newsletter that went out throughout the Middle East. And I took the minutes from a rare meeting at the monastery of all the Holy Land Franciscan leaders throughout the world. These minutes I then wrote into a form that was published and even read by the Pope. When the summer came for me to take “solemn” vows in a ceremony, the invitations were printed out and there was a bedroom set aside for me on the Jerusalem Wall in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. To make my final decision, one day that summer I took the Metro to Georgetown, went into a bar, propped up a picture of my family, and had a couple of beers. Then … I walked out of the bar, took the Metro back to the monastery, walked into the superior’s office and said, “I’m going home”.
LD50, you shouldn’t be so smug. Nothing in your response to me equated to more than a person believing in himself for no other reason than because he is himself. Yes. Islam does not have the revelation of Jesus as the Incarnation of God who sits at the throne of God as the only begotten Son of God. Now … what else do you want me to say now that I have stated something so obvious? I gave to you answers that were not so obvious because nothing truly profound or meaningful is simply obvious. But that’s the rub isn’t it? The skeptic demands the profound to be obvious, for God to be present as he is and not as his wisdom sees fit for him to be present. Have fun hanging out with the obvious. I’m gonna go over here now.
Acolyte, no, you didn’t get it. And the order of creation in Genesis, from the void to the emergence of human beings, is correct. And the light of a star is from the interactions of the elements and physical forces within that star, which is a process that the Big Bang initiated, and therefore which produced a lot of light. I guess more than a modicum of scientific acumen is needed to understand this.
Joe Mello: I’m sure that enjoying family life and running a successful painting business were of far greater value to Humanity and yourself than a lifetime churning out ecclesiastical documents in a cell in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre or custodianing ruined buildings in the Middle East. Did you also manage to win the love of a good woman and beget and raise a family of your own? If so, I hope that they gave you great satisfaction in being a husband and parent and that the fruits of your loins are now a credit to you. And enjoy your couple of beers now and then. I would offer to buy you one, but, alas, the old Cock & Bull is only a virtual pub.
Joey – to borrow a phrase – wrong again god boy. In genesis the earth existed before there was light. That would be before the big bang which you suggest was the source of that light. But I guess more than a modicum of logical thought is required to understand this.
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just making it up as you go along is hardly the stuff of an omnipotent god Joey. You contend that he has created all things yet he is unable to communicate clearly to his favorite creations. Maybe your god is dyslexic. Maybe he’s old and senile and doesn’t remember how it all happened. Maybe he’s just a figment of your delusional imagination.
Son of Glenner, your description of monastic life isn’t correct, but I’m sure you already knew that.
My five years of a contemplative life were completely different than today’s worldly life, but also completely fulfilling. God is only a no-show to persons who look for God through a skeptical squinting of their eyes. God not only showed up during those years, but, because he is pure action, showed up with a constant barrage of things to do and things to experience. I watched more sunsets, walked under the stars more times, felt more goodness, experienced more joy, and on and on during those years than I could even imagine doing today. I have no memory of ever trying to fall asleep, but only of falling immediately asleep when my head hit the pillow. My life today, however, did not take a complete 180 degree turn, for those years of contemplation gave to me lasting results. The spirituality I now experience as a normal state of affairs is a direct result of the hard work I put into it back then. What comes from God is truly powerful and everlasting. So your judgement of a life dedicated to God as not as valuable as painting a house or raising a family is simply not true. And humanity receives much by a single person becoming close to God. Again, it is a spiritual thing.
Furthermore, I owe to God the family I now have. We have great parties, but no one gets drunk. No one smokes. We all get along and get together often and whenever we can. I know that God has given to me the only family that I wanted. And I know that my relationship with God has given to my family much of what they needed to become “my” family. They would even admit this. And I seldom, if ever, talk about God. And nobody in my family is religious.
But here’s another thing: I have four grandchildren now, ranging from 19 to 13. Three of them are regular kids, but the 14 year old is far from regular. When he was 3 he started taking Taekwondo. And when he was a few months away from his black belt at 6, he decided to quit (on his own) and become a hockey goalie. He never skated before, but within 18 months he won a state championship, and this trophy is the only one in the local hockey rink to this day. The next year he was scouted by teams near Boston and became a Boston Terrier. Fast forward, he has played in Italy representing the U.S., at the Q in Quebec at the 12 year old world championships, won many championships, and has received offers this year from elite high schools. He is ranked first or second on the East Coast, and is right now taking a week out of school to play in a national championship of sorts. He has been a vegetarian since he was 10. And one day, when he was about 5, he saw the stations of the cross and inquired about them. When I told him the story, he got angry and wanted to know more. Today he thinks about God sometimes and wants me to tell him more of what I know. … This is an example of the importance of each individual person as an individual. To judge each person’s experiences as equal to everyone else’s, which all skeptics do when they insist that experiences of God are all as meaningless as theirs are, is a false judgement that fails to admit that there are better or worse persons among us.
Joe, I didn’t mean to sound (and didn’t feel) smug.
I’ll explain what I was trying to get at, because it’ll take too long to do it in little bits. I don’t suppose it’s very original but I’ve never heard a satisfactory response to it.
I think that’s because we have fundamentally different ways of thinking and using language.
Here goes. Muslims believe stuff which is wrong. But Muslims know that they are right. Partly because they have a book which tells them what is right but presumably also because they have “personal experience” of their living God and all that stuff. They certainly have faith.
So, they have a holy book, they have mystical experiences, they have faith etc. They know they are right and that all of us, you included, are going to burn in hell.
How do they differ from Christians (other than in the obvious fact that they’re wrong and Christians (some of them, the others are going to burn in hell) are right?
This is genuinely puzzling. I can tell in advance that I’m not going to understand your response. I’m interested in this inability of ours to communicate.
You say things like “you’re nothing but a person who believes in himself for no other reason than because he is himself”.
I don’t understand what you’re talking about. What is meant by “believe in”? Do I believe I exist? I don’t doubt it, but honestly, I don’t think about it much. I am myself because I am myself? Ok. Seems reasonable to me. Sounds a bit like cogito ergo sum. But really, what a waste of ink that was.
So I assume you’re trying to say something else, but I honestly have no idea what it is.
Assuming that you’re more intelligent than I am, can you formulate your responses in plain, simple English that you think I might understand?
LD50, how many times have I written “It is a spiritual thing”?
Your burning desire to inquire about the intellectual ideas within religions is misplaced.
A Muslim can be extremely close to God through God’s spiritual gifts and the fruits that flow out of these gifts.
Jesus said that when we even give a cup of water to someone who thirsts we give it to him.
Your intellectual judgement of who Jesus truly is, and what it means to be his follower, doesn’t come from any other place than your own head and the heads of others like you.
Jesus is the true God and the true man. And we fulfill the truth about him when we live as he lived, not when we intellectually make a statement about him.
We are a body, a mind, and a spirit, in that order of importance.
The usual metaphysical metabollocks, in other words. Reminds me a bit of one of our old trolls, Epphy. He could never answer a question without resorting to flowery fantasy.
It always amuses me hen I see people like Joe get so close to realising the truth without actually realising it. With just a tad more insight, his –
Your intellectual judgement of who Jesus truly is, and what it means to be his follower, doesn’t come from any other place than your own head
– would have been right on the money;
Your intellectual judgement of who Jesus truly is, and what it means to be his follower, doesn’t come from any other place than your own head .
I say something like “do you believe that the Quran is the literal word of God as related to Mohammed by some angel?” expecting you to answer “no, it was made up by Mohammed to get people to do what he wanted. Especially the bit about virgins.” so that I can then ask “so why do you think that anything written in the bible is true? How do you know what Jesus said?”
But instead you answer “We are spirits. God is in the water and the water is in God, just as Jesus is in us and we are fulfilled in him. The true truth comes not from your head. Renounce reason, intellect and inquisitiveness! It’s spiritual.”
So I give up. I never expected you to say, “fair point you have there — I suppose I just believe because it makes me feel good.” But this “conversation” is just too weird.
LD50, what else did you expect? Joe knows he can’t dazzle with science or convince with reason, so his default setting is to baffle with bullshit.
It’s metabollocks all the way down.
Yes, in your dazzling reason you have figured out that to win you amazing fellows over I have resorted to making stuff up. You are just that important. And your Google “science” is just that impressive. My scholastic education and monastic experience and love of God and all other things that brought me to this moment were all to fool great thinkers such as yourselves. I bend to your superior intellects for having found me out.
Joe, what were you expecting? Did you think you could waltz in with your degrees in thinking and writing(the latter certainly not in evidence; too many comments with a paragraph for each sentence, for a start) and your spurious natter about feeling God therefore God, and expect us to slap our foreheads and have a communal, Huxley-esque ‘How stupid of me not to have thought of that’ moment?
I get it that your experiences, whatever they were, seemed to you to be proof of a god, and a very specific god at that; I get it that you’re frustrated because your experiences and your certainty of what they signified to you aren’t impressing anybody here; I get it that you are so invested in your non-religious knowledge of God that you no longer dare to even imagine not believing, but you should, because if you were to re-read your comments here with an unbiased eye, you’d realise that you’ve given us nothing new to contemplate, and certainly nothing that would remotely convince anybody that your ‘knowledge’ of God is no more or less than we’ve heard a million times.
Your personal feelings are proof of nothing except that you claim to have those feelings. Right now, my feeling is that it’s time for bed. Good night.
I think you guys have missed the fact that Troll Mello is not any of the things he says he is. His story is inconsistent and when pressed for details he falls back on ad hominem attacks (you are not smart enough to understand) and gibberish about feelings and how he just knows these things, then back around in a circle to how smart he is. He bolsters this with claims of being so very hard working (and not Gatorade for 12 hours!), his teenage grandsons hockey prowess and ability to get a black belt at 6. As if this has anything to do with some imagined god. (what about that shot the kid wiffed on? Where was god then? And why couldn’t he hack the black belt grading? Sounds like a quitter). All in an attempt to bamboozle the crowd the way he has bamboozled himself.
.
The story has so many holes it would make the writters of the bible blush. He’s trolling … or he’s a true believer that ticks every box on the bible thumper play book. He’s not worth our time other than to remind ourselves why we arrived here in the first place. Sanctimonious twits like Joey who couldn’t follow a train of thought if they were tied to the back of it.
My very religious grandmother tried to teach me that lesson when I was about 10. She was trying to get me to agree what a good believer Abraham was and I was looking for the exits and assessing whether I could take her down if need be, if she decided that she was motivated to display her own dedication in similar fashion, as she looked about that motivated right then.
I remember that lesson very well and it did nothing to make me think it was a good idea to follow a religion that made a man think it good to killy his own son. Nothing at all. I felt much better when I grew a bit more and thought I’d be able to defend myself against her if need be in future too!
Jesus & Mo (the characters) are absurd, blinkered, and oddly very sweet. J&M (the cartoon) is brilliant: sharp, delicious, irresistible. Salman Rushdie
Jesus and Mo cartoons are wonderfully funny and true. Richard Dawkins
Jesus and Mo make the world a better place, bless their little hearts. Ophelia Benson
In a world defined by outrage and offence and liberal spinelessness, Jesus and Mo is a treasure, whose value we should never fail to recognize. Read them. Laugh. And think. Kenan Malik
The brilliant, celebrated, freaking hilarious atheist comic strip ... Greta Christina
...rays of sanity in a befuddled world. Keri Hulme
The liveliest depictions of Muhammad currently available... Malise Ruthven
J & Mo is the funniest and most consistently thought-provoking cartoon strip on the Net. In a saner world, it would run in a major newspaper. Nelson Jones, Heresy Corner
Consistently amusing, frequently thought-provoking and often heart-warming. New Humanist
Jesus & Mo is one of the most wonderful things on the internet.. JT Eberhard
Wittily captures much of the absurdity of religious apologetics. Mano Singham
I love jesusandmo.net cartoons - witty and sharp! Katha Pollitt
Often hilarious, frequently wry, these cartoons do what all the best cartoons do: they tell the truth through humour. Terry Sanderson, NSS President
...a wonderfully acid British cartoonist... Nick Cohen
I love the scrappy mockery of Jesus and Mo. Freedom of speech
includes the freedom to mock any person, any thing, any activity, and
any belief -- and J&M stands up for this unflinchingly Richard Stallman
...empowering, important and deeply progressive, not to mention hilarious... Council of Ex-Muslims
November 28, 2018
Hitch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVoloVvsupM
I understand why religious leaders would try to push that “lesson”, but it’s one point where faith and I part ways. I speak to God (actually, also to small-g gods and spirits), and I would say they speak to me, and irrespective of whether I may simply be delusional or not, their answers don’t supercede my conscience or common sense. I do regard their input the way I regard the advice of close friends that I trust by and large, but that doesn’t absolve me of the responsibility for my own actions. How is “God told me to” any more of an excuse than “I was just following orders” during the Nürnberg trials?
(Isn’t it Ishmael for Muslims?)
This is my favorite of all your cartoons.
Britten, Kierkegaard, Voltaire, Author.
Bravo.
@raymondm: Ismail (or Ishmael) was Ibrahim’s (or Abraham’s) first son, with his servant Hagar (ie. the “handmaid”), before he got Isaac with his wife Sarah and kicked Hagar and Ismail out.
It’s ok, now and then
To murder your children
Dispose of the bad
Alla will make you glad
With a replacement that is not as dumb.
@FreeFox https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishmael_in_Islam#The_sacrifice
“Frowned upon nowadays”. Lovely punchline Author, thank you.
Actually it was pretty forward thinking for the time. It was common place to have human sacrifice and Abraham became the first person to go against the societal norm and do away with that practice and instead have animal sacrifices.
One of my favourite bible stories, that one. My father was fond of saying “Every man has his Isaac.” By which he meant everybody has someone or something they love more than they love the lord. His theory was that if you are willing to sacrifice your “Isaac”, whatever it might be, then the loving god will not require it of you. But you need to be willing to make that sacrifice.
Since I was his eldest son, this was not a very comforting thing to hear from my father. I didn’t have his faith in the benevolence of the voices in his head. Nor did I, nor do I, think that blind obedience to the voice in your head is the mark of a moral, god fearing and faithful, person. Son of Sam comes readily to mind.
I’m with Freefox to that extent, eh. (But only to that extent. I still suspect him of falling back on his old con man ways when he claims to speak to gods and spirits. Pretty sure he knows better.)
What was civilization like 4,000 years ago? Kind of a stretch going back that far to make a point about the “faith” of people today.
And where is the “proof” that Abraham merely heard a voice in his head and not an actual voice? The “science” of Psychology proves it? Modern thinking proves it? Pretty shabby proof you’ve got there.
Here’s a thing: When we giggle at others, we usually do it because we think those others are doing something silly.
Is “faith” in God silly?
Do you “comics” go to hospitals for dying children, share your strip with people who have just lost their life-long partners, etc.?
You’re not just doing comedy here, you know. You’re attempting to replace something truly powerful with something not so much. Giggling is okay … but not the stuff of genius.
Knowing the truth and living it … now that’s genius.
So, laugh it up, fuzzballs. But if you’re gonna judge great things, look in the mirror once in awhile. It’s only fair.
According to one Biblical scholar I read a few years ago, there is linguistic evidence in the text that the ram is an interpolation, i.e. added by a different writer. If you read the story without that, Abraham returns alone.
A scene immortalized in song –
Oh God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son.”
Abe says, “Man, you must be puttin’ me on”
God say, “No.”
Abe say, “What?”
God say, “You can do what you want Abe, but.
The next time you see me comin’ you better run”
How is “God told me to” any more of an excuse than “I was just following orders” during the Nürnberg trials?
Well, the main difference is that nobody is going to be cornering God in a bunker somewhere and destroying his power. Almighty makes right.
Since the seventeenth century xtian violence in Europe and the Americas and the book “Malleus Maleficarum” followers of the Nazarene mythman have been reasonably pacifist. Now unfortunately it is 21st century mullahs with the inerrant word of God killing unbelievers. So the Qur’an and the hammer of witches are similar? Is that islamophobic?
@raymondm: Hmm. Interesting. Thanks. I’ll investigate this further. ^_^
@DH: Nope. Every day. But not making money off anyone through it. So, double nope. ^_^
@donn: Awesome quote, man. Been on Highway 61 many times myself, and that is the rub. Ignoring God’s commands (parse that as try to cheat fate or in the words of Wesley Snipes, trying to ice-skate uphill, for the non-theists) often comes at a hefty personal price. But I think being willing to pay that, when your conscience tells you to, is what makes you a decent human being.
@DH: So, what was your father’s Isaac in the end? And did he give it up or defy “the lord”? You can’t leave us hanging like that.
Joe Mello. Have you heard of occam’s Razor?
Yes, I’ve heard of Occam’s Razor. It was mandatory reading in getting my Philosophy degree.
So what you’re telling me is that atheists possess the truth about the existence of God because atheists use the simplest explanation for human history’s obsession with God, the significant existences of Jesus and Muhammad, all those crosses in the sky, the depth of the human condition, and on and on.
And this simplest explanation is a psychological one. It’s all about the human mind and no other reality.
Now let me ask you a question …
Have you heard about “spirit”?
In my mind, with its two college degrees and five years of monastic experiences, the simplest explanation for a human history’s obsession with God is a human being’s subjective experience of a spirit of God, not some dry and rattling analytical thoughts.
Anonymous. Let’s drop the atheist tag for a moment. I prefer secular freethinker as a tag to hang on me. I think that on the balance of probabilities the god of Abraham is very unlikely to exist. You however, have just created god from the vague subjective feeling of spiritual woowoo people get when they have meditated or taken lsd. Evolution primed our young to believe what they are told. Those that didn’t often removed themselves from the gene pool. Thus gullibility is selected by natural selection and such gullibility perpetuates religion. That’s as good a theory as most….
Anonymous:
It has been remarked here before: god-believers (certainly the monotheists) are mostly right.
Of the about 40,000 alleged gods, they claim MOST are illusions.
I just believe one more to be illusionary…
Well Joey, I guess it comes down to which god do you have faith in and how did you come to that conclusion?
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If you answer the Abrahamic god and you know because you read the bible then I won’t giggle at your beliefs, I will roar with laughter. And I would note that not all college degrees imbue an ability to think critically (many are more focussed on rote memory of the course syllabus) and you definitely didn’t come across critical thinking in any monastic setting. Feelings …. not exactly scientific … and often many limitations in determining how to live life well.
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I would say you’ve wasted considerable effort with very poor results. And the fact that you’re here suggests that you still have questions. If you were truly faithful you wouldn’t care what others thought.
when in my cathequesis training, around 10y/o they told us that history. My friends and I were shocked and looked like: this people is crazy. That was the moment that I started thinking: hum, something is wrong about this… Author: you made my day, as always! for another funny version, see here: https://youtu.be/ZyX4LPUeDoE
Joey, when it comes to logic; show dont tell. Show us your logical thinking, don’t tell us your credentials (rest assured that plenty in here have lots of letters before and after their names, have published in the peer reviewed literature, and so on and so forth–none of that matters during a conversation).
That small bit of housekeeping out of the way: You put psychology as a science in scare quotes. That’s taking rather a lot for granted. Psychology is the predictive and explanatory study of human behavior.
Now–you may be saying that it isnt a science yet (physicists often say things like this with a rather airy tone and then get a little ashen faced when we invite them to come over to our discipline and use their huge brains to solve our petty little problems…) You may be one of those? (in which case–come along, doors are always open)
Or–you may be of the opinion that science can never be applied to human beings? Well–that’s tantamount to saying you believe we run by magic.
From context (given that you seem to believe in magic, or at least “spirit”) this seems the more likely interpretation?
If so well, yes, we can say some things in response. We can show which bits of the brain go wrong in those that hear voices (e.g. Stephane, M. (2013). Auditory verbal hallucinations result from combinatoric associations of multiple neural events. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 7, 239.). We can get people to hear voices by appropriate drug and/or electrcial stimulation–showing that it has an entirely material cause (e.g. Hoffman, R. E., Boutros, N. N., Hu, S., Berman, R. M., Krystal, J. H., & Charney, D. S. (2000). Transcranial magnetic stimulation and auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia. The Lancet, 355(9209), 1073-1075.). And we can treat those poor benighted folks who do hear voices by teaching them cognitive methods (e.g. Dimeff, L. A., & Koerner, K. E. (2007). Dialectical behavior therapy in clinical practice: Applications across disorders and settings. Guilford Press.)
That’s what we’ve been doing “sciencing” away while others were content to believe in spirits. In the interim we’ve stopped spiritual folk from burning people, hanging them, exorcising them, or locking them away in gothic buildings. There’s this thing called progress. Some of us are rather keen on it.
jb, Re: “Well, the main difference is that nobody is going to be cornering God in a bunker somewhere and destroying his power. Almighty makes right.”
In practice, as an individual you often don’t stand much of a chance against non-almighty tyrants either. It may make submission understandable, but not necessarily morally right.
I always thought that the most straightforward response to the “disbelieve just one more deity” conceit is, that of course all those literal minded Bible/Quran-thumpers are silly gits, but just as “the universe can’t have sprung from nothing” doesn’t prove a deity, neither does “different human attempts to comprehend God/the gods resulted in errors and incongruities” disprove it. Even with Occam’s razor, it’s hard to conclusively decide whether they’re all entirely wrong or they might all just be somewhat right. And if you are so keen on using a tool like Occam’s razor, considering that non-theists are in a significant minority, shouldn’t the possibility of their psychological blindness be also thought about?
Also, thank you wnanig for clearing that up. That’s exactly what I meant. Though you failed to correct jb’s last sentence. After all, it clearly must be “almighty makes righty”. ^_^
People! People! FAR To many @… references being made here. I’m now thoroughly confused. Are we doing that or not? Help! Also – Joe Mello or Anonymous – well done mate. Always good to see the faithful come down and spend some time with us mortals. It’s Easter after all – and I’m reminded of Kinky Friedman’s great line – “May the God of your choice bless and keep you. I respect Him as long as He does not circumcise me anymore.” Don’t eat too much chocolate everyone.
Full of people with the same potential for intelligence as today, but lacking the knowledge to exploit it.
As opposed to your vague notion of ‘spirit?
Yes.
No, that would be cruel. But it is possible to empathise, sympathise, and console without resorting to ancient mythology. Apparently, for all of your claimed education you don’t understand the concept of humour.
Truth requires evidence, genius. The truth is, there is NO evidence of a God or gods. Your vague notion of ‘spirit’, of a feeling of a ‘higher power’ is proof of nothing except for curiosity.
I’ll take that compliment, thank you.
And you think that’s somehow making your point? The very notion of subjective experience is a psychological one.
For your ‘two college degrees’ you are merely a lukewarm troll.
Joe Mello, “And where is the “proof” that Abraham merely heard a voice in his head and not an actual voice? … Pretty shabby proof you’ve got there.”
The main concern is there is no absolute proof that the voice is real/right. You need to take into account the risk of following false/pernicious orders. This is where thinking for yourself comes in.
“Here’s a thing: When we giggle at others, we usually do it because we think those others are doing something silly.”
Not necessarily. There is enough similarity between humans that we are in fact often giggling at our collective hopelessness as a species. You need to look beyond the offense.
“Is “faith” in God silly?”
Depends on what you mean by faith. Does it have to be blind? There is a point to being silly, though. It is a good antidote to megalomania. Don’t disparage silliness.
“Do you “comics” go to hospitals for dying children, share your strip with people who have just lost their life-long partners, etc.?”
Humour is often one of the few things that can mitigate the unbearable. Don’t underestimate dark humour. My theory is that it allows you to keep enough of an emotional distance to things to actually be able to function, analyse it rationally and do what constructive things you can do, rather than just being reduced to a sobbing heap or shut down emotionally. Solace is one of the more redeeming qualities of religion, and in the specific instances you mentioned it can be discussed if it even matters whether it is just placebo or not. Beliefs of different kinds may also be a cohesive factor that human societies have difficulty functioning without. But that is not the part of religion that is most problematic. The blind obedience that can lead to atrocities, and the passiveness that can result from delegating responsibility to someone else, is. Collective beliefs are powerful, and all powerful things are potentially dangerous, which is why allowing criticism is necessary. The world is complex and our best option is to use our collective intelligence to try to figure out the least harmful way to exist in it. Blind faith does not necessarily achieve that.
“But if you’re gonna judge great things, look in the mirror once in awhile. It’s only fair.”
Looking in the mirror to judge a great thing? Not quite what I expected, but I guess megalomania is in order then :). Not exactly sure how that is fair though? Btw, as a non-native English insult recipient I had to look up fuzzball. One suggestion was “true quantum description of black holes”. Hmm.
Freefox, sorry about leaving you hanging. The only “Isaac” my father ever mentioned to me was this situation: My aunt, the wife of my father’s brother, was in kidney failure. My father thought that buying a dialysis machine might save her. That would have required selling the family farm, which, as he explained to us, was his Isaac. He claimed to be willing to do that, but after talking to the doctors he found that it would not help and wasn’t a good idea. But I guess he felt good about being willing to make the sacrifice, and relieved that “god” was letting him off the hook. Not exactly killing his eldest son, but in his mind somehow equivalent.
There were many disturbing aspects to my father’s thought processes. In his dying days he became very religious, adding a layer of hypocrisy and sanctimoniousness to his fundamental emotional dishonesty. Despite this harsh judgment on my part, he was, in all, a good father and good provider. He’s been dead for thirty years now. I miss him.
wnagig, Acolyte, HelenaHandbasket, DC Toronto, thanks mate for addressing the troll in such a polite and civilized manner. I don’t have time nor energy for such.
Just this: “Do you “comics” go to hospitals for dying children, share your strip with people who have just lost their life-long partners, etc.?”
Oh yes, cruelty is our thing. We specialize in tormenting those in grief. (And there I go breaking the First Agreement again.” ) No, Joe Mello. That was sarcasm. We usually try to say something comforting and supportive without cliches about being in a better place or being called home to Jesus.
You have been treated quite politely here. More politely than you deserve with your nasty assumptions and insulting questions. Don’t push it. We haven’t had a good chew toy on these threads since Mohamed got banned. (And that was a long time ago.) Your credentials don’t impress us at all.
I’m curious what Joe Mello thinks about Hell. Is he concerned about going to hell if he doesn’t have faith?
Oops. I think I conflated Joe Mello with Anonymous (Whom some suspect of being a Nassar sock puppet.) He’s the one presenting credentials. Joe just presented insults.
Thanks for that, Darwin. Isn’t it strange, how long we come here, talking every now and then, and yet we barely know anything about each other? I’d never have guessed that you come from a farm, or from a religious family.
As for your father’s Isaac, I think I like his interpretation of the story. Whether that’s what its original authors had in mind or not, there’s some truth to his insight. Sometimes life requires us to let go of what we thought of as the key to our happiness in order to find peace and contentment in the universe, but if you cling to it too unrelentingly the true price turns out to be the very happiness you sought to preserve.
Darwin, I think that this Anonymous and Joe Mello are one and the same, given the writing style and one sentence per paragraph format. I thought at one time that Nassar was also posting anonymously because the default pattern in place of an avatar was the same for both, but it seems that all anonymous comments get that same pattern. My apologies to Nassar for my error.
Speaking of our poet-in-residence, I see he’s added an ‘e’ to his forename today.
When it comes down to it. Evolution of the third chimpanzee and the proofs regarding the development of the most powerful organic computer on planet earth. This is the best explanation we have for the state of reality we find today. The best model. The only show in town! Darwin’s dangerous idea!
First, my second post, which was a reply to the posts after my first post, had the name mistakenly posted as “Anonymous”.
Now …
All your responses to me, as both Joe Mello and Anonymous, amounted to the usual atheist talking points — the many names of God disqualify there only being one God, God is “woo” or “magic”, skeptic historians are most qualified to get to the truth, psychological studies of some human beings prove what all human beings are doing — and adolescent attempts to “chew” on someone you see as beneath your false idea that discoveries in science have irrefutably proven that God does not and cannot exist.
And only a person without credentials sees no importance in credentials.
Where is the logic in this? Is a car mechanic someone who read about fixing cars or someone who actually has experience in fixing cars?
How obvious it was that not one of you atheist talking heads read “Philosophy degree” and “five years of monastic experience” and missed a step in presenting your prefab arguments that truly come from inexperience and negative agendas.
How can you call yourselves “free thinkers” when your thinking refuses to be challenged or is simply inexperienced in the things you claim to know?
No. Being a believer in nothing except the writings of skeptics who believe in nothing except the writings of other skeptics makes you “poor thinkers”.
Our thinking becomes “free” the more we educate ourselves and the more we allow our experiences to meld with our educations.
For example, no atheist talking head will admit that the discovery of our physical universe expanding and accelerating can be seen as even “a possibility” that an omnipotent power was behind the Big Bang. Our experience and logic tells us that a finite push on something slows down after a time, not speed up.
Anyway, I’m just wasting my time.
The Big Bang was introduced by a scientist who was also a Catholic priest.
William of Ockham was a Franciscan Friar.
These men were truly “free” thinkers.
You mutts are chewing on your own legs and not “free” at all, but chained to your silly personalities that growl at passersby.
You had the opportunity to debate with a former Franciscan and Catholic mystic, but you couldn’t get free from your atheist leash.
I get it. Someone shoved the Bible up your ass when you were young and you’ve been trying to pull it out ever since.
But don’t blame me. I’m not religious. But I did experience the living God in many more ways than subjective. And I do have an education pertinent to any discussion about God.
I’ll leave off this post with a philosophical principle that provides the logical foundation under the limitations of science to answer a single hard question:
“No combination of lesser things can account for the creation of a greater thing unless something even greater than this greater thing is added to these lesser things.”
Oh … and “Laugh it up, Fuzzball” is from Hans Solo to Chewie. You not knowing this reveals just how young you mutts are. “Joey” is 65.
FreeFox — Yes, “Almighty makes righty” is clearly better! For some reason I didn’t think so at the time, but looking back I have no idea why.
The Catholicism of my family when I was growing up, although not extreme, was was quite serious, and I remember being explicitly told when I was about five or so, in response to my own questioning, that the definition of “good” was “what God wanted.” “So if God wanted me to kill somebody, then killing him would be good and not killing him would be bad?” I asked. “Yep” I was told. While this definition does not accord with our intuitive feelings about right and wrong, there is nothing logically wrong with it. And if the power of God is so overwhelming that even in principle there is no possibility of ever overthrowing it, then doesn’t refusal to accept this definition kind of look like bone-headed, self-destructive pride?
The Catholic Church teaches the pride is the greatest of all sins, which seems odd to the modern sensibility. But I once read a Catholic oriented analysis of the Fall of Satan, in which it was pointed out that Satan, being vastly more intelligent than any human, was at the moment of creation instantly aware that rebellion against God was hopeless, and yet rebelled anyway, out of prideful refusal to be subordinate. Looking at it this way, and squinting a bit, you can sort of see why the Church might consider pride to be the worst sin of all. In any case, getting back to the point I was trying to make in my original comment, it does seem to me that “I was just following orders” is a rather more compelling defense when the orders come from God rather than from Hitler.
Joe Mello: If one accepts that the creation of the universe in the “Big Bang” proves the existence of a supernatural (or extranatural) creator, it does not follow that that creator is anything like the deity (or different and contradictory aspects of that deity), depicted in the Old and New Testaments, or indeed the Koran, etc, particularly in regard to requiring human sacrifice, whether of a willing adult victim, or of a child.
Re “I’m not religious. But I did experience the living God in many more ways than subjective.”:
Is that not an oxymoron?
In reply to the one person who did actually ask me a question — what I think about Hell:
Here is the most important question to ask:
What is the meaning of our lives?
Here is the true answer to reply:
To live fully alive in this life and the next and thereby give the greatest glory to God we can.
It’s all about God first, and then us, in that order, so we should be all about God, and we should never think that we can be too much all about God.
What does it mean to become “fully alive”?
To become fully alive means to become the largest vessel possible for God to fill, in this life and the next. Both a thimble and a 55-gallon barrel can be filled, but both are not filled with the same amount.
Hell is what happens to us when we do not live fully alive and therefore cannot receive God’s goodness and love and understanding and truth and etc. fully in this life and the next.
In this life there are degrees of Hell. In the next life there is also a place called Hell. And in this life and the next, what degree of Hell we experience and how long we remain in this Hell are both dependent upon the goodness and love and understanding and truth and etc. we have failed to accept in our lives, and so have failed to “become” a true vessel for them.
God doesn’t throw us in Hell, we throw ourselves there through the evil and hate and ignorance and ect. that become a part of who we are, and that keep us from experiencing God. The greatest pain in Hell is the absence of God.
An analogy would be if we spent time in a dark basement and our eyes became used to the darkness, then the bulkhead was thrown open to a bright sunny day and we could not look at this brightness without pain, so we turn away from it.
God’s goodness and love and understanding and truth and etc. are not automatically approached but gratefully, joyfully, lovingly approached. The person who cannot approach God in such a manner ends up in his or her own Hell, in this life and the next.
— That is what I think about “Hell”.
Joey’s back!
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Lots of words but short on specifics or testable proof of his claims. Helena gave a quite specific rebuttal to your contention and you’ve waived it off without a second thought. Is this your idea of a “debate” with a former fransican and catholic “mystic”? Thats some weak sauce my mystic friend.
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You claim that you are not religious. I take from that you don’t follow a specific text. Yet you seem to know from experiencing a living god that there is a higher power. Yet again, no specifics. Is this a single god? Many gods? Is there a name? What were these interactions? Did he/she/it speak to you? Is that the reason for your preoccupation with proving that Abraham had voices in his head?
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rather than relying on some vague reference to degrees, why not list them. which degree from which institution? Where did you spend your monastic years? go ahead, start an actual debate. But if your starting point is to accuse a group of people you’ve never met with scaring sick children, you should expect some pushback. didn’t you learn this with your 2 degrees and monastic living? didn’t they teach you the basics of debate?
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Your lack of debating skills, your lack of specific details and your lack of tact lead to skepticism of your claims. Your sanctimonious attitude points to another true believer who feels they are better than those who have not experience a “living god”. Joey, you’ve been recognized as the preening fraud that you are … and you’ve not provided any evidence to the contrary.
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This community would welcome your input if you have anything more than feelings and insults. We don’t always agree with each other … but there is an opportunity to put forward ideas and debate them. You’ve failed across the board.
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I’ll ask again. What are your views on hell? Here is a chance to debate a specific issue. Think you have it in you Joey?
Son of Glenner, I used the word “possibility”. And I used the concept of an omnipotent power. You lept to a defense of nature and an attack on religious views of God.
In what way does “nature” become a stand alone reality, the author of its own existence, the evolution of its own complexities, the intelligence behind its own laws? If you cannot logically attribute to nature alone much of what nature is about, then something “supernatural” should not be immediately judged to be something “unnatural”.
Furthermore, there is nothing about nature that we have discovered that has proven that its creator and intelligence behind it is not also a personality as depicted in religious texts throughout human history.
In fact, when I observe reality, from the crushing of a rock to the death of a human being, I logically conclude that the greatest reality is not the rock but the human being. And the human being is greater because of the human personality. So I further conclude that any creator of nature must also be greater with a personality. I simply cannot conclude that mindless energy and forces is something greater than a divine being with the power and the will to create the reality we now experience.
To me, I find it incredulous that modern thinkers conclude that reality came into being from the bottom up and not from the top down. This thinking, to me, is akin to thinking that our cars designed themselves, manufactured themselves, and then drove themselves into our driveways so we could jump into them and drive ourselves to work in the morning.
And I have never been religious. Even when I was living in a monastery and spending hours sitting privately in a church. My focus was always upon the living God who never failed to reveal himself when I stopped pretending to be him. That’s what you’re doing, you know — pretending to be large and in charge. You’re not. None of us are. And we shouldn’t want to be. We should want things to be just as they are, for there can be no greater fulfillment to our lives then the infinite possibilities that the existence of God provides for us to reach.
When Neil deGrasse Tyson (who even admitted that Dark Energy was a pretty good argument for the existence of God) was asked what he expected the fulfillment of his life to be when he died, he replied, “To feed fauna.” And he got applauded for it.
This is modern thinking brought to an absurd conclusion through an inflated sense of one’s intellect through a lop-sided education in a single branch of science.
I couldn’t help but to judge him as nothing but a fool for saying it.
” I couldn’t help but to judge him as nothing but a fool for saying it.” should read ” I couldn’t help but to judge him as nothing but a food for saying it “. Learn how to type, fool.
Joe Mello: You do not appear to understand my remarks, or you are deliberately misrepresenting them.
Re your appeals to authority: the mere fact of your having studied theology and practised meditation holds no more water for an atheist than having studied astrology or homeopathy. And how can you speak of the “living God” and deny being religious? (I’d genuinely like to hear you explain the apparent contradiction!)
By the way, I’m 77; so what?
jb, Re: “there is nothing logically wrong with it”
You are asked to accept the premise that the humans claiming this speak for God. Without proof, but possibly with a fair bit of bullying. We are actually currently hearing this type of argument from a jihadist in court. Moving down people with a van is what God wanted him to do. So is it pride to question that? Why is their religious experience any less valid? How could we question any tyrant or bully claiming to speak for God?
If the very nature of existence actually consisted in something that has the attitude of the God depicted in parts of the Old testament and the Koran, then I am with the Buddhists – striving to be free of existing seems the better choice… The game of a vindictive sadist does not seem worth playing. If you cease to oppose nutcases who claim power and obedience in the name of a god, then that really is the way to create hell on earth.
Mello. You have nothing to offer in terms of concrete proof. However your assertion that human beings are somehow outside of the other objects made from the same base elements makes you as ignorant as an Egyptian peasant 3000 BCE….thick as pigshit. How dare you belittle an eminent physicist you jumped up little Jesuit.
Did anyone else click on the link Joe Mello’s name?
It shows where he’s coming from.
As I said, I’m wasting my time.
You atheist bobble heads don’t have any other ability than to bobble.
I never said anything about “theology” or “meditation”. So all your bobbling makes it impossible for you to read clearly.
That you mutts think you’re on the frontline of the debate about the living God revealing himself to humanity throughout human history would be what is truly comedic on this lame website, if it wasn’t so pathetic.
You missed another opportunity to not be the ridiculous people you are, just like you do every time you stand before a mirror and abscond into your head to avoid seeing the fool looking back at you.
I spoke to you about the living Go, and you could not even understand the concept.
To equate God with religion, and then to continue to judge God by bringing up religion, is circular reasoning at its worst.
Bobble if you understand.
@Joe Mello [yes.., I know, I know…] Your frustration at your inability to convert the heathens with the brilliance of your arguments is just adorable!
Tell me though, why would you even imagine that a “lame website” like this one would be “on the frontline of the debate about the living God”? People have been arguing God and religion for millennia, so of course the arguments you get from us are all going to be talking points that have been made before; why would you expect otherwise. That doesn’t mean they’re wrong though! And you know, while this might result in a hit to your own self esteem, you should really consider the possibility that your own talking points are not that original either. Frankly, you are far too impressed with yourself. You aren’t that good.
The sentence “The living god revealing HIMSELF to humanity” tells me everything I need to know about you. Now bog off before the nurses arrive with your medication.
Joe Mello: OK; I apologise for interpreting your “philosophy” degree as a “theology” degree and assuming that your sojourn in a monastic establishment would involve meditation, but you have not commented meaningfully on my remarks re a presumed creator of the universe versus the “god” depicted in the Old and New Testaments, the Koran, etc.
I would still like to know how you can say you have no religion and yet clearly believe in a “living” God.
The other people on this forum would show you a great deal more respect if you would present your beliefs in a comprehensible (even if unbelievable) form, instead of resorting to abusive language. If you are indeed a troll, as seems likely, please restrict your aggression to billy goats, but don’t blame me if you get butted in the backside.
Joe Mello, Re: “You mutts are chewing on your own legs and not “free” at all, but chained to your silly personalities that growl at passersby.”
You seem to be doing a fair bit of growling yourself :).
“You had the opportunity to debate with a former Franciscan and Catholic mystic, but you couldn’t get free from your atheist leash.”
…and be a little conceited and condescending.
“No combination of lesser things can account for the creation of a greater thing unless something even greater than this greater thing is added to these lesser things.”
Perhaps you should consider adding a couple of degrees in Chemistry and Biology to the list?
“Oh … and “Laugh it up, Fuzzball” is from Hans Solo to Chewie. You not knowing this reveals just how young you mutts are. “Joey” is 65.”
American by any chance? This may come as a surprise to you, but not all of the world considers every aspect of American pop culture required knowledge.
Joe Mello’s comments are hilarious. He reminds me of a priest from years ago who insisted his flock bring unbelievers to their ground in order to win the argument.
Good luck.
The context of the fuzzball quote:
Leia and Han are arguing, Han is being smug and condescending, he implies that Leia has feelings for him.
Leia calls him delusional and “laser brain”.
Chewbacca laughs.
Han says to Chewbacca, “Laugh it up, fuzzball!”
and to Luke, “You didn’t see us alone in the south passage. She expressed her true feelings for me.”
.
I don’t grok what this has to do with our visiting mystic.
“thinking brought to an absurd conclusion through an inflated sense of one’s intellect through a lop-sided education” … there’s your mirror Joe.
machigai, I don’t think he knows how the Force works. Pretty sure Han would be the first to tell him.
Perhaps our visiting Jesuit has periods of time off his meds where he thinks HE IS the wookie Chewbacca co-piloting the Millennium Falcon in a Galaxy far far away?
Far too many comments on this thread. I’m sorry, I just don’t feel like reading all of them so I apologize in advance for a possible redundancy.
I once argued with my father (he’s a Catholic) about this story. I told him I found it immoral to be willing to kill your own son, and that if Abraham had actually been moral, he would’ve said “NO”. Then, my father started explaining to me what he understood as the true meaning of the story, linking it to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and how Abraham’s not sacrificing his own son is the announcement of the *much* later atonement, by which the Christians don’t have to sacrifice themselves because Christ has already sacrificed himself.
I thought that was just a very specific and rather convenient interpretation of the story. To me, Abraham’s story about willing to gut his own son is so far away in time from Jesus Christ that its meaning must be much simpler: God wants you to submit to his will no matter what, and he wants to know that you’re obedient to the extent of killing your own offspring… He might not require you to do it in the end, but he wants to know that you would do it if you were asked to.
That’s not a very moral god to me. That’s just a sadistic tyrant.
P.S.:
@laxeyman: thanks for that Hitchens’ quote, I never get tired of listening to it. He perfectly destroys this stupid and immoral story in just a minute.
@Author: great, as always.
At the time of writing, the current score seems to be:
Billy-goats 3 – 0 Troll
Some of you are calling “Joe Mello” a jesuit. I think this may be a little unfair on the jesuits; my understanding (which of course may be mistaken) is that jesuits are fully capable of sophisticated debate. But they would not engage with the customers of the C&B pub, fully realising that they would never convince us.
On another line: A real “Joe Mello” (our troll may be using an assumed name) is the COO of a USA Healthcare company. If he and our troll are one and the same, I fear for the patients/customers of that company!
I have christened him “The Jesuit” a supposedly intelligent member of xtian dogmatic thought police. I thought it would wind him up because he probably thinks he possesses an intellect of Einstein and Hawking added together. If he was an ice cream he would suck himself…..
The Bible story was advocacy for an idea, that is, “god’s will supercedes human morality”. More importantly, from the viewpoint of human control, “what you’re told by the god’s human representatives supercedes human morality”.
I don’t think I ought to be controlled in that way. If someone tells me to kill because god wants that, that’s proof they’re evil and should be incarcerated.
One other thing: Joe Mello is a pompous thimble-sized twit.
So, between Darwin Harmless‘s and Some Dude‘s talks with their respective dads about this story, I think we have some very interesting thoughts (and a much more interesting conversation than with that idiot doing his best to justify the bad name of theists around here). DH‘s dad thought that God required you to give up what’s most valuable to you, and Some Dude concluded that the moral was to show willingness to suspend your own morals before God. Or as JB agreed to put it: “Almighty makes righty.” ^_^
Most of the arguments against this seem to revolve around the fact that we all pretty much agree that anyone making such a demand, whether it be a painful sacrifice, or a submission of morals, is a total dickhead. And I would very emphatically agree. But I think there is another question that is being ignored here. Let’s for a moment disregard the notion that God should be be a nice guy (I would argue that he really isn’t), or indeed the notion that this God person must be a real person for this story to make any sense. Let’s, for the sake of the argument, just replace God with Life, or Fate, or Happenstance here. Not the scientifically examined hardcore “reality” we can find with laboratory conditions, statistical analysis, big number crunchers, complex models, and all those wonderful tools we have developed to make our planes fly and our telephones smarter than ourselves, but that “life” and “fate” that we meet on the street, in our relationships, our jobs, the stupid accident that blindesided you on a wet Tuesday morning.
Is that something that life does to us? Does life demand we let go of what’s most precious to us in order for us to find our way, as DH‘s dad would have it? Or does life demand of you to make moral choices we neither understand nor feel good with and can only submit to by trusting in a faith in some greater good that we are not in the position to understand? Is life that kind of a tyrant?
I would hazard that most men and women in armed services could identify a number of moments when that was true for them. And speaking as a dad, yeah, being repsonsible for a family seems to lead me at least occasionally into either sitatuation. I would guess that people working in the medical field might know similar choices. What about you lot? Do these kinds of situations ring any bells?
Can the fable (and yeah, aside from the silly clowns not worth talking to, we can all agree on that if anything, this story is a fable, not a historic or otherwise literal truth, right?) help us come to terms with such a situation? At least it seems to stir up quite a lot of strong emotions, going by the vehemence of the discussion here and the recollections some of us had about discussing it with fathers and other people in our lives. So at the very least it makes us think about these questions. I for one think that makes it one of the better stories in the bible.
It helps me. I find one of the wisest insights of one of the wisest men I know of in there. As the great Joseph Campbell said (at least according to editor Diane K. Osbon) “We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” And yet, I still quite often tell the gods to go piss against the wind when they gimme these tests. And more often than not end up paying the price.
Hey, JB, about that notion that whatever God decides is automatically good, aye, indeed, that “good” is whatever God wishes, I understand the desire to nitpick that point. When you try to resolve it in terms of mathematical logic it seems like one of these annoying paradoxes, like the one about all men from Crete being liars. If it is only by God’s will that something becomes “good” and God could just pick any other act and decree that “good” or “evil” on a whim, then “good” is arbitrary. But if “good” and “evil” exist independent of God, and he can only recognize it and must follow it, how omnipotent is he really?
In a way, I guess, this is sort of the “free will” question for God, isn’t it? Does God have a free will? But I think therin also lies the answer – the question itself is flawed, just as it is when we try to speak about human free will (or as most here would have it, the only real free will if we leave aside Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny.) The thing about “free will” that seems to be never asked is, free of what?
For humans this applies just as much as for God. Is your will free of your experiences, your assumptions about the consequences, your character, the situation you are in? How free is your will to turn the steering wheel when your car is hurtling towards a chasm. Sure, you CAN go on ahead. But you probably only will do so when there is a very pressing reason. Maybe you want to die. Maybe you would rather die than be caught be whoever is pursuing you. Maybe you want to spit someone in the face rather then lose a debate about free will. But is your will really free then? Isn’t it either compelled by your desire to live, or your desire to die? Truly “free” will, free of ANYTHING, is just random. And I think few of us would consider Two-Face as a moral guide, would we? So, at least in “theological” terms free will only means free from the direct influence of God. (This runs into a new problem with omniscience, but that’s for another day.)
As for God’s “free” will, in this case it would have to be “free” of someone else making up rules about good or evil, right? That’s the question here – can God “freely” make up what’s good and evil and tell us, or did someone else make it up and is now forcing it on God.
But how about good and evil aren’t arbitrary concepts. I mean, sure, they are words in the english language and thus their literal meaning is determined by convention, like that of any other word. But given the fact that all cultures that I know of have a concept of ethics, and at least in the broad strokes, those concepts are pretty similar all over the world, and where they differ it usually is not very hard to track down the cultural, historical events that shaped those differences, to all but those most deluded fanatics to their particular interpretation it seems almost obvious that real ethics are less a question of moral principles than of knowledge about long term consequences.
As much as I disagree with Sam Harris on other subjects, I very much like his approach to ethics as the wish to minimize sentient suffering as much as possible, while maximizing sentient happiness. And his idea that as such the “moral landscape” as he calls it is not a single line, but a three-dimensional plane with moral peaks and valleys that allow us to elevate sentient happiness in various ways.
As such, goodness isn’t an assigned value at all, but an inherent one. Something that is built into the nature of the world, and of sentience itself. In that case, God is neither able to arbitrarily decide what is good or evil, nor is he a powerless subject of it – it something that He (again, replace with Life, Fate, the Universe, Coincidence, Evolution, or whatever agent you want to attribute this to) built into the fabric of reality from the start, and to change it would have to change everything back down to the beginning of life itself.
In that case, your parents would be right in a way – their version of God did “make” good and evil. But you would be right just as much: Even God could not decree any act “good” that resulted in a net reduction of sentient happiness or a net gain in sentient suffering.
What do you think?
I also have a question for HelenaHandbasket, though I am a bit apprehensive to ask it. Given the local confrontational climate it may sound facetious or even belligerent, but I really do not look for any kind of, er, argument here. It’s a question that I not only take quite serious, it also is of not inconsiderable significance to my life. I tried to follow up on the links you provided, but for one, scientific journals seem to at best show excerpts online unless you cross a pay gate, and also, I am not a neurologist, or even high school graduate, so I have some trouble getting through what little I can access.
I understand that many if not most what we collectively understand to be hallucinations can be traced to specific electrochemical events in the brain, and there is no great mystery there, at least in general terms, whats going “wrong”. But as far as I understand, those processes at their core are pretty much the same as those that are at work when things go “right”, ie. when our sensory aparatus and our neural processing produce “shared” experiences. In many cases it is possible to trace back the “divergence” to chemical influences, such as drugs, chemical imbalances due to acquired or congenital diseases, or to neural damage, such as head trauma. But even when we know on the mechanical level how the altered brain produces divergent experiences from those someone with a “normal” brain would have, again that is not altogether different from how for example being a teenager makes you experience love or conflict different from the way a child or an adult experiences it, right?
What I try to say is, pointing out the mechanism of how hallucinations (experiences not shared by others) occur is in a way like describing the chemistry of cooking, say, a soufflee or making a lemon meringue pie. It is not very hard to understand how you begin with eggs in both cases and yet end up with something entirely different. But that doesn’t by itself make the soufflee or the meringue pathological.
Sometimes hallucinations can be part of some overall pathology, say, in case of a high fever, and there indubitably the fever itself is dangerous, and the hallucination a (probably somewhat random) byproduct of the illness. But for example, as far as I understand it, under many circumstances the experiences and insights gained from certain hallucinogenic drugs have very positive effects on people, helping with anything from clinical depression to simply gaining wisdom and finding your path in life.
So, would you really say that hallucinations – however the precise elctrochemical mechanism behind them – are always pathological and bad, or isn’t the only problem with hallucinations that the person experiencing them react to experiences not shared and often not understood by those around him? In other words, are hallucinations themselves independent of other effects that may be caused by the same event automatically bad or are they just cause for social problems and could just as well be dealt with in a social context?
Happy Feast of Ostara (or Eostre) everyone, especially our dear Author, of course, and I apologize for that wall of text. I still hope it’s interesting for some of you and might further our conversation, not stop it. ^_^
I see you mutts have decided together that you have thoroughly chewed me up and spit me out. Well, that’s convincing.
And you’ve also decided together that I brought nothing new to the table. I guess that’s why you didn’t chew on anything on the table, but only my leg under the table.
And one of you mutts even warned me about how, when you get together, I better watch out. Thanks. I’ll be more careful getting too close to the end of your atheist leashes, if I was to even walk back into this tiny yard full of dog shit, that is.
Anyway …
Giggle away in your grandiose delusions.
Take into account, however, the lack of respect you’re getting from your families and friends.
A tree is known by its fruit, not by how many mutts can piss on it at the same time.
The living God will not me mocked without serious repercussions for the one doing the mocking. It’s a spiritual thing. Mock God, and become alone with your weak humanity.
But you can’t light another joint to figure this one out.
Well Freefox, yeah, (to condense that a lot) life may someday cause Abe to have to strike down his son. So in the story does God stand for the exigencies of Life? No. It’s saying more like, “see, you might be called upon to do it some day for real reasons, and might not be able to bring yourself to do it – but you’ll do it for me!”
That looks like a goodbye from Mr Mello.
I see that he does not realise that he has not, in fact, given us anything whatsoever to chew on!
Bring on a real jesuit!
I read the thread with Joe Mello hoping for something substantive to come from it (an argument at least would be nice) but found it floundering where many theists end up.
Make your case. Provide evidence for your position, provide rebuttal for positions offered by others, or go away. Bleating that God will not be mocked and threatening hellfire is the surest way to signal to a sceptical audience that you lost the argument, indeed that you had no argument in the first place. Shallow and lazy thinking.
Mello. Hello. This dawg is about to crack open a few nice bottles of real ale. Have a nice evening grovelling to your imaginary friend. For the rest of the dawgs. Have a chilled night and don’t forget to treat your bitches with respect. Woof woof…..
Why do you think everyone has say “goodbye” to you mutts?
Your Google searches of psychological testings?
I did provide you with much to discuss, and you did ignore it all to gather together with your practiced smugness.
And that is why everyone has said goodbye to you idiots.
Hey Joe — if you call me a “mutt” another… oh I don’t know… five or six times, it might actually start to hurt my feelings!
Dissecting Joe Mello’s last two replies:
(Long boring rant comparing atheists to mutts chewing things)
Hmm, another word for mutt is dog. Dog spelled backwards is god. So, you’re basically calling us atheists gods? Well, thank you for the compliment, sir!
Also, any good dog owner will know to feed their pup, clean its shit, walk it daily without a care in the world who notices (for indeed, it is a both a chore and a gift) and adore it with all their energy to receive its love in return. All without question. Rather like religious folks with whatever god they believe in, but a dog’s love is tangible and so much more gratifying.
Wow, you’ve really given me something to chew on. Woof.
“Giggle at your grandiose delusions”
Funny, that’s what I tell the vitriolic street preacher at the train station damning all passers by to Hell if they don’t believe whatever version of Christianity he’s spewing out whilst he smugly asserts his position by his messiah’s hand.
“Take into account, however, the lack of respect you’re getting from your families and friends.”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…(deep breath)…HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Yeah, my family and friends are also atheists. I will grant my mother is a lapsed Catholic and many of my extended family are also believers but none of them give a shit that I haven’t believed in nearly 20 years. They might have been perturbed at first but when they saw I hadn’t otherwise changed, nor do I go out of my way to insult them for still being Catholic, it became a non-issue.
I cannot speak for others on this forum but I’m presuming they also found mirth at the above quote.
“The living God will not me mocked without serious repercussions for the one doing the mocking.”
Wait, are you saying that you’re God now? Are the “serious repercussions” you speak of a warning of more acrimonious/impotent insults to come from your keyboard? Is it appropriate that the names with hyperlinks all lead to a web page of content whereas yours leads to a wall of nothingness – no substance, no answers? Maybe you are God, for when we try to search for your credentials we find nothing in return!
“But you can’t light another joint to figure this one out.”
Oh yeah? Watch me!
Nah, I’m kidding, I don’t smoke. I also know this is another typo but Joe Mellodamn, you are really walking into these ones.
“I did provide you with much to discuss, and you did ignore it all to gather together with your practiced smugness.”
But there has been discussion, and dismissal summarily.
“And that is why everyone has said goodbye to you idiots.”
BYE-BYE!!
*Waves arm like an excited 5 year old*
P.S. Anyone else who wants to compare religious beliefs to owning a dog, cat or any other pet, please feel free to chime in!
Let’s chew this bone for all it’s worth.
jb, I’ve got a few more “mutts” to give before I’ve evened the score from all the names that you mutts have called me, and anyone else who comes here and doesn’t have a dog collar with “atheist” written on it.
And our “feelings” only have meaning when we think well and act sincerely. So your feelings are not my aim, for I know they are mostly meaningless emotions of a meaningless person.
And I call you idiots “mutts” because your level of humanity is about that of a dog who licks its own balls.
To the other mutt who wrote a long poorly-written (don’t use emotional-looking language, but write so well that emotions are revealed … Professional Writing Graduate degree) diatribe:
Your family no doubt got “perturbed” with you because at the beginning of your delusional atheism you had a first fervor and were a complete asshole. So it was you who changed by now only insulting faceless people on the Internet.
And you exchanged one belief for another, for all atheists believe all kinds of stupid shit, like that they woke up one day and became the wisest people on the planet for becoming atheists. That’s some delusional shit. That’s why the atheist has to further believe that nothing can be true unless a mathematician or a biologist or some other third science major says it’s true. How asinine is that?
Anyway … use exclamation points about once every twenty posts, or they’ll just become a crutch for writing poorly.
And nobody uses the word “mirth”, so don’t write it.
To the other mutt who wrote a long poorly-written (don’t use emotional-looking language, but write so well that emotions are revealed … Professional Writing Graduate degree) diatribe:
Your family no doubt got “perturbed” with you because at the beginning of your delusional atheism you had a first fervor and were a complete asshole. So it was you who changed by now only insulting faceless people on the Internet.
And you exchanged one belief for another, for all atheists believe all kinds of stupid shit, like that they woke up one day and became the wisest people on the planet for becoming atheists. That’s some delusional shit. That’s why the atheist has to further believe that nothing can be true unless a mathematician or a biologist or some other third science major says it’s true. How asinine is that?
Anyway … use exclamation points about once every twenty posts, or they’ll just become a crutch for writing poorly.
And nobody uses the word “mirth”, so don’t write it.
To the other mutt who wrote a long poorly-written (don’t use emotional-looking language, but write so well that emotions are revealed and created … Professional Writing Graduate degree here) diatribe:
Your family no doubt got “perturbed” with you because at the beginning of your delusional atheism you had a first fervor and were a complete asshole. So it was you who changed by now only insulting faceless people on the Internet.
And you exchanged one belief for another, for all atheists believe all kinds of stupid shit, like that they woke up one day and became the wisest people on the planet for becoming atheists. That’s some delusional shit. That’s why the atheist has to further believe that nothing can be true unless a mathematician or a biologist or some other third science major says it’s true. How asinine is that?
Anyway …
Use exclamation points about once every twenty posts, or they’ll just become a crutch for writing poorly.
And nobody uses the word “mirth”, so don’t write it.
Did this lame website just post three times something I edited twice after reading it?
I think I’m bored now. Go away because you are taking up storage with your infantile blathering. We haven’t replaced a failed hypothesis with science we use science to try to fill in all the gaps where your self invented living god has been hiding to salve the weak minds of delusional knobs like you!!!!
Joe Mello,
First, if you’re going to insult somebody, perhaps you should just say who they are and not hide behind passive-aggressive timidity. Or is that the Christian thing to do?
Second, just because “mirth” isn’t widely used these days does not invalidate its use.
Third, you must not know how the Edit button works to have posted the same thing three times.
Last, calling my reply a long poorly-written diatribe with a few other choice critiques to my writing style is quite laughable considering the posts you have contributed thus far, especially considering how much you’ve missed the mark in several respects.
Please, feel free to go away and not come back. Or be an infantile jackass and reply to this post with more of your inane ranting. Entirely up to you but I think I have given you enough of my time and energy.
Anyway it’s the pagan festival of birth. I hope you all had “Hot monkey sex” this morning. I’m drinking more beer ad well. Tally Ho…….
Wow, I came late to J&M this week, and it has taken almost all morning to get through the comments. I think all the regulars have to be commended for their relatively polite responses to a troll who seems incapable of bringing any evidence to support his position, and who refers to us as mutts. I think Author will be pleased that you have stuck to the rules at the foot of the page, even if he didn’t. I enjoyed sitting in on the dialogue, one-sided as it was, but think that it is now time to stop feeding the troll.
Happy Easter/Eostre to one and all, and to M27Holts, yes we did!
Well,
1st of april being a special holiday here (spanish occupation kicked out of town for the first time in Holland, 1572), celebrated with great re-enactments and LOTS of drink, I wish you all a happy liberation from Papism (and from other religions).
The constitutional “godsdienstvrijheid” (literally religion-freedom) then established really should translate into “freedom FROM religion”, not freedom OF it, and certainly not the present-day interpretation of freedom FOR it.
But it looks like the Dutch fought an 80 year war just to have that lost to forgetfulness….
This post isn’t a discussion of religion, but rather one of personality.
When a person goes somewhere that they’re not welcome in order to annoy the people there, what is that person? Merely impolite? If they’re told they’re annoying and continue to stay and annoy people, they’re not merely annoying, they have a personality problem: a need to argue and feel dominant.
Such a person has “thimble-sized” confidence in themselves and their beliefs. The only thing to do with such a twit is to ignore them until they get bored and go annoy someone else.
Such a twit is Mello and his sick (sic) puppet Anonymous.
Especially, don’t kill someone because he tells you to. 😉
Happy Fool’s Day, Joe. 😀
For the record:
I posted three or four posts without a single name being called. Then, one of you mutts called me a “lukewarm troll”, and another warned me against being chewed upon, and a third mutt condescended to me with a long poorly-written post while calling me “Joey”. Look it up.
So, being rather observant, I realized that this forum was simply another bridge for atheist human trolls to hide under because they can’t come out into the light and mingle with attractive human beings. And I responded with the appropriate labels for you mutts because I knew from experience that this forum is littered with dog shit leaving no place to walk without getting in on my shoes.
If you mutts were truly worthy of being “commended”, you would have given some effort to understanding my claim that equating God and religion and then ridiculing all discussions about God is circular reasoning at its worst; that Hell is thought of by the modern atheist in pre-Vatican II terms or not at all; that my response to a question about my thoughts on Hell were deserving a response of equal sincerity; that my logic against a bottom up explanation for reality is not illogical in the least; that science and science alone is not the spokesperson for what is true; that atheists cannot even voice the “possibility” of an omnipotent power behind the expansion and acceleration of the universe; that psychological studies of some human beings cannot be evidence applied to every human being; that credentials absolutely do matter because experience trumps reading; and many more things besides that should have been worthy of a discussion.
You mutts turned very quickly to ad hominem attacks upon me because you had no intentions of debating any “theist” about anything.
All your accusations against me for having “poor logic”, or boasting of credentials, or giving you nothing to discuss, or thinking too much of myself — these were all defensive responses because you have no offense against anything theologically advanced and philosophically talented.
What was your response to the metaphysical principle I gave to you and that you have never heard before nor even imagined? Silence and one pathetic demand that I take a science class.
So … keep giving yourselves undeserved flattery, for that is about all you will get out of each other, other than the false belief in Internet-learned atheist talking points and the lame attempts at claiming scientific acumen through Google searches.
Thank you for not welcoming me into your delusions.
Mr Mello does not give up easily, does he? After much abusive to and fro, he is showing some signs of rationality. At least he has not (yet) thrown the first line of Psalm 14 at us – the last refuge of the theist who does not know how to debate.
He either missed the point of my comment about the Big Bang (possibly) being the work of a Creator versus the God of the O.T., or he refuses to address it. Would he like me to repeat it?
Mr Mello appears to claim that he has a Professional Writing Degree (I’m sorry if I have misinterpreted him); if so, I suggest he goes back to the academic body that awarded the degree and asks for his money back.
I’m beginning to regret calling him a troll. His behaviour is more like that of a billy goat, repeatedly head-butting an inanimate target.
I think in one of the Krauss books I read recently. He discusses at length the fact that future astronomers will have no reason to believe that there is anything beyond their galaxy because all other galaxies will have disappeared over the event horizon so to speak. However he didn’t postulate that this universal expansion was due to intelligent design. He rather put it in terms of classical physical terms and gravity and dark matter and whether the quantum system was closed or flat. He may as well not bothered with his book however, because the Jesuit was given all the details by the universal power god when living as a monk for several years. That’s that for physics then.
My thinking up until now has been that Joe Mello was simply an unusually good illustration of the Dunning–Kruger effect. (Does he really think he is putting forward ideas that we “have never heard before nor even imagined”)? However I’m seriously starting to wonder now whether there may not be a touch of dementia involved. He says he is 65, and that’s only a little earlier than the age at which my mother started drifting towards emotional instability and incoherence. And the first rule of dementia is don’t argue with them!
Just a thought.
I’m not sufficiently aware of UK politics to get this, so maybe someone can explain.
The term “absolute boy” is often applied to Corbyn, and here in this J&M to Abraham, nominally the first Jew. I know Labour had had some problems with anti-semitism, including having some important people leave the party. Is this in any way related? I can’t help but feel that there’s a deeper joke that I’m missing. Is there?
Here in America, some are celebrating Charlton Heston’s victory over Yul Brynner, including better special effects. 😉 And Jim Caviezel’s ability to take punishment and still act. 😀
jb, here are some other versions of the Dunning-Kruger effect that I like.
W.B. Yeats, in the poem “The Second Coming”: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.”
And there’s Darwin: “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge”.
And Bertrand Russell: “The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.”
You might like this too: https://m.xkcd.com/1954/
There’s an extra joke if you either hover over the comic or click on it (which depends on whether it’s computer or mobile).
Damn
Son of Glenner, when I responded to you by telling you the logic behind a “Creator” having a “personality” as his greatest attribute, and not being some mindless energy or force, I did address your dismissal of the God of the Old Testament.
The God of the Old Testament became the God of the New Testament, and in so doing revealed himself to be a God with a personality.
The skeptic notion that we anthropomorphize God when we attribute to him a personality is ass backwards.
Our human abilities separate us from all other created beings in real and true ways. And these abilities may be seated in our physicality and biological functioning, but they are divine abilities nonetheless. Every power needs a seat, but the seat is not the power. So to say God’s greatest attribute is his personality is to say that our personalities are the greatest creation because they are a gift from God that makes us like God.
We think because God thinks is a far more profound truth than we think because our thinking is seated in our brain.
A skeptic demands “proof” about such things from the bottom up. But where is it written that this sort of proof is the only proof that matters? Where does mathematics fit into the love we have for our families, the meaning in our lives, the intellectual principles that govern the scientific method, etc.?
Anyway …
I did address your post. And now I did repeat it for you.
Finally. I got thought all the comments and now get to say the thing I’ve been burning to say…uh…if only I can remember it.
Oh yes. Mr. Mello’s insistence that he is not religious reminds me of a conversation I had once with a man who told me he had taught “creation science” at a university in America. He was a surprisingly competent and intelligent fellow, an Olympic level bicycle racer who could calculate power to weight ratios and otherwise seemed to understand cause and effect. He insisted that Jesus was the big boss, and that creation was a result of intelligent design. Yet he also insisted that his views were not religious. Why? Because what he believed was the truth. Apparently, in his mind, religion involved dogma and speculation. His beliefs were reality, therefore not religious. Not at all.
Laripu, thanks for the link to that XKCD. My idea of intelligent humour, and a delightful statement with the hover. Cracks me up to think that the only people willing to present on the Dunning Kruger effect are undergrads.
FreeFox, good to hear from you at such length. I wish I had the time and strength left to adequately respond. I will toss this one thing at you though: Neuroscience has now revealed that we make a decision BEFORE we are aware that we have made a decision, or what that decision is. If this is true, can there be such a thing as free will? Or are we, rather, merely meat robots controlled by our brains.
I have come to the conclusion that the ego, the “I am” of who we are, is an illusion. As an analogy, I imagine it like this: The being I call “I” is the CEO seated at the head of a very long boardroom table. Other beings (in reality, brain functions) sit at the table, and have various interests such as impulse control or goal setting or emotional yearnings or caution or sexual desires or status evaluation etc. I can communicate with some of these beings, and am aware of them. Some of them I am not aware of and can’t talk to. Some of them are loud. Some are very quiet. It’s a long table, and these beings stretch off into the murky distance. But all have a vote in any decision. When the decision gets made, a balancing of all the conflicting voices, it gets passed along to me and I adopt it as “my decision”. I immediately and conveniently forget all of the other beings seated at the table. I have decided.
I think this is what Daniel Dennett had in mind when he said that we have a soul, but it’s composed of thousands of tiny robots.
Anyway, free will is hard to imagine if this is the reality of who we are and how decisions get made.
When I was in Australia, there was a tragedy on the news. A man had stopped his car in the middle of a bridge, grabbed his three year old daughter from the back seat, and thrown her over the railing into the river below to her death while his son screamed at him “Daddy. She can’t swim.” Of course the public reaction was outrage. Everybody wanted the guy hanged drawn and quartered. My reaction was a bit more…empathetic. I think the poor guy’s brain was hijacked by his amygdala, the emotional part of the brain which sits much closer to the action areas than does the cerebral cortex. After doing the horrible deed, and regaining some control of his brain, the man was distraught and begged the police to kill him. Apparently he had had an emotional and stressful time in divorce court arguing a custody issue and just snapped. Of course there is not justification for such a crime, but one has to wonder where free will resides in a situation like this. Is this what they call temporary insanity? And does that override free will?
Hey, Darwin Harmless, thanks for the great post. You have just hit the nail on the head. What you just described is exactly the way I view God (and, indeed, the gods). As you say, there is no “I”. None of us is a singular entity with one coherent free agency. And yet, in real life, as we interact with each other, the illusion of self-ness (in ourselves and in those around us) is too useful, too convenient, and too comfortable for us to constantly run around viewing ourselves and each other as “thousands of tiny robots”.
“God” (or “Athena”, “Mate Carrefou”, “Ganesha”, “Ded Moros”, etc.) are such Masks for the universe (or parts of the universe). Beneath them are “thousands of tiny” natural processes, and just like our neurology well worth studying and worth keeping in mind – like we should keep the way brains function in mind when judging a poor soul like that Australian father you mention – but in the end, for me, it is too useful, too convenient, and too comfortable to adress the universe as “God”, or to think about my own strength to overcome obstacles as a gift by “Ganesha”, etc not to do so. Just as I will keep thinking of you as the singular entity known as Darwin Harmless, in spite of both of us knowing that really there is just this ever-changing, multifacteded, many-voiced gestalt behind the mask.
(And can you really deny the majesty and splendour of our mistress Eostra working her miracles all around us outside at the moment? Does she not deserve praise and celebration?) 😉
Does that answer your question whether I am just trolling you with my claims of theism, or if I actually can have such a worldview without by necessity stooping to the intellectual dishonesty and incompetence of Jello. ^_^
Also this: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/01/atheists-logic-easter-faith-belief (It starts a bit silly, but I think the last paragraph is worth considering.)
Wow. Joes super advanced education and his 5 years of monastic living (during which he was not religious!) have really helped him hone his debate skills. Lots of cogent arguments complete with references to testable theories. I don’t know why everyone is so mean to him.
Maybe because in his first post he suggested that the patrons here would enjoy tormenting sick children. That might have got him off on the wrong foot.
I suspect his “education” taught Joe this was a good way to make a point. I’m sure his god will reward him well for his efforts to save the godless atheists.
Freefox, I think that the guardian author is again suffering from “physics envy”. Why mention quantum mechanics at all? Unless he he drawing false equivalence between science and religious woo. He might not understand the complexity of quantum theory when expressed as equations in the standard model. However he can buy a new QLED telly to watch a rerun of “Ben hur” and see empirical proof that quantum effects can be witnessed to produce startling colour differentials at even better resolutions! Yet another classics graduate spouting shite I’m afraid! Or am I wrong? Do I spot such false equivalency gratuitously
?
Joe Mello: You addressed me directly re Creator God versus Old Testament/New Testament God. I respectfully submit that you did not answer my question (not an assertion!). I did not dismiss anything, I simply asked a question.
For the sake of debate, let us accept the possibility that an omnipotent being created the universe in the Big Bang, including creating the physical laws which underly the continuing universe, and let us call that omnipotent being the Creator God. That is a reasonable standpoint, although I personally do not agree with it, and it may even be factually true (making my beliefs wrong).
Then let us consider the God of the Bible, who appears capricious and short-tempered towards the “sin” of the human race, although He has a soft spot for the Hebrews/Jews, his chosen people. He frequently advocates/demands genocide and treachery. He eventually incarnates himself as Jesus, so that Jesus can be executed as a human sacrifice (to Himself) and thereby frees the human race from “sin” – but only if they accept Jesus as their Saviour. I hope you will accept that this is a reasonable description of the God of the Bible, although obviously written from my highly biased point of view.
Now, my question to you, Joe Mello, is how you reconcile the idea of a Creator God with the idea of the Biblical God. To me, it appears that you can believe in one or the other, but not in both, as they seem to me to be mutually exclusive.
I have gone to some trouble to spell out the details of my question. If you reply, I hope you will apply similar clarity.
If you will allow me to add a personal assertion to the above question, I believe that the Creator God may exist, contrary to my beliefs, while the God of the Bible is a totally imaginary invention by a variety of human writers, unworthy of the allegiance of thinking people.
Son of Glenner. The postulated creator god must be a being of ridiculous complexity? Thus, are you suggesting that such a being can bootstrap herself into existence? Otherwise the godmother of the universe needs a mother herself and……regression ad nauseam…..I will stick to the model currently in favour by most serious physicists. A safe bet on current evidence me thinks.
M27Holts: I thought my remarks made it quite clear that I do not believe in a creator god!
I know that. But further to your concession that a creator god may exist I was just reinforcing your argument v the Jesuit. Think of us as a comic duo. I was merely being your straight man. No offence meant.
Son, what separates you from most skeptics I have listened to, and they have been myriad, is that you admit to your position on the existence of God as “belief”.
Now, when you separate God into categories, such as Biblical and Creator, you take your eye off the ball. For God, to be God, he must be the only God, an all-powerful God, a God who created the physical universe and the human being, a God who is the author of reality and the power behind it, etc.
Your friend Holt, who you felt the need to placate, throws out all sorts of nonsense about God because he refuses to take the simplicity of God as the only God and think on that. The concept of “ridiculous complexity” attributed to God is a concept derived from philosophical ignorance. Only a finite being would need to be ridiculously complex to be the Creator of reality. To understand this one needs to think on the level of an Aristotle, not a Krauss. Aristotle wrote his Physics first and his Metaphysics second. To stop at his Physics is what all skeptics do. In his Metaphysics, Aristotle reasoned quite profoundly step by step, and he came to the profound conclusion that a universe of finite things cannot account for itself, so there must be another being who is not finite that the universe is within. All this skeptical nonsense calling God a her and using mythological language to make a point is a clear revelation of that skeptic thinking at a very low level of reasoning.
Don’t placate such skeptics, for you seem to be functioning at a higher level than them.
There are no scientific “theories” that answer the hard questions. Period.
Any physicist worth his salt simply responds “we don’t know” to the hard questions.
So for a skeptic to act as if the existence of God is some bizarre and complicated theory not worth thinking upon is just b.s.
The Bible, as every skeptic has been told, was written by human beings “inspired” by the Holy Spirit. For a skeptic then to continuously claim that all theists believe the Bible is written from the perfect hand of God, like Bill Maher just won’t stop doing, is for a skeptic to beg the question about God.
Your question to me about the God of the Bible kinda reeks of this begging the question.
What is so hard to understand that human beings write things down as human beings see them to be?
What is so hard to understand that God created the universe and then revealed himself by respecting his creation?
Were the “myths” of ancient times total fabrications in the imagination, or were they revelations of God in respect to human history and human cultures?
Where is it written that God, to be God, must only reveal himself as he is perfectly in himself? And what would happen if he did? Wouldn’t we all stop being ourselves and spend our time kissing his ass to get paid?
God is invisible for a “reason”. And that reason is to give us our time to become who we will become through our own thoughts and actions.
Why does a “free-thinking skeptic” not find this separation from God to be a good thing, rather than proof that there is no God?
Answer: The skeptic has taken the second degree of abstraction, mathematics, to be the place where truth is found, rather than taking his thinking to the third degree of abstraction, metaphysical imagination.
Looking for proof of God’s existence and true being in the same manner that you look for a cockroach is about as dumb as it gets. Yet that is what the modern skeptic demands continuously. That is what you and your friends here at this forum have been demanding from me. Sorry. A cockroach is a cockroach, and God is God. If you can’t admit that there is a difference, I cannot help you to see one, for there is no back door to your thinking that I can sneak into to avoid the guards you have put in the front of your house.
Freefox: “Does that answer your question whether I am just trolling you with my claims of theism, or if I actually can have such a worldview without by necessity stooping to the intellectual dishonesty and incompetence of Jello. ^_^”
It seems I have no arguments with your world view if you would just stop confusing us by attaching leftover labels from ancient religions to it. I suppose this dresses your beliefs up in more attractive garb, with more historical resonance, but…okay. Now that you have more fully explained yourself, no problem. I will stop accusing you of dishonesty.
I too hold at least one totally irrational belief. It is this: Everything in my reality is a result of my thoughts, beliefs, and actions.
When I first heard this, at a touchy-feely and rather expensive seminar, I leapt to my feet and cried bullshit. If I’m walking through the park and a meteor comes out of the sky and smacks me on the head, how is that a result of my thoughts, beliefs, and actions?
The facilitator obviously had faced this objection before. “Maybe this isn’t (making those quotation marks in the air) the truth in capital letters,” she said. “But it’s a very useful thing to believe. The more you believe it, the more it will seem to be true. The alternative is to be a victim and deny responsibility for your life.”
Okay. I guess I made the decision to walk in that park without my garbage can lid or tinfoil hat. I suppose I assumed that walking in the park was a safe thing to do. I suppose death by meteor was a result of my decisions. So I decided to try this on. And, like your professed beliefs in mystical beings, it turned out to be very useful. It’s a great way to think about anything I don’t like about my life, a way to question which of my thoughts, beliefs and actions causes my current reality. Almost always I can come up with a thought, belief or action that could have been different and lead to a better result. Sometimes I even manage to change my behavior for the future.
May your gods be with you.
Mello fellow. A Cockroach is as evolved as any mammal including homo sapiens. And given that they can withstand a lot more radiation than mammals. Cockroaches may inherit the earth! You numpty.
D.H. Neuroscience has proven that some decisions are made by the brain BEFORE the conscious mind is aware that a decision has been made. Are we just mere automatons playing out a quantum controlled existence that was set in motion at the point of the rapid expansion of the original singularity. That would suggest that free will does not exist! However, the bye-bull is still a pile of steaming horseshit!
Hey Joe. Okay, now I’m starting to find your arguments slightly interesting, though still not persuasive. Perhaps you would have found a better reception here if you hadn’t stumbled into the C&B slinging insults and daring my mates to knock the chip off your shoulder.
Your presence in our favorite pub reminds me of a new theory – that we developed the ability to reason not as a tool to find the truth but as a tool to argue for the beliefs we already have. Some might think you argue well. I’m sure my mother would have been impressed.
I still feel no impulse to debate with you, but I will admit that your arguments seem slightly more nuanced than they first appeared. Still nothing we haven’t heard before from the sophistimacated apologists who seem to care about this kind of speculation.
It’s a beautiful Spring day here. I think I shall go out and breath some of god’s wonderful air, infused as it is with a delightful petrichor. 🙂
M27Holts, if there was a creator ‘god’ it wouldn’t (couldn’t?) be one that bootstrapped itself into existence (or thought itself into existence, as I’ve heard said by many). In my opinion, it would have been a scientist in a much older, larger universe, playing with some kind of cosmic-scale atom smasher. The entire existence of our Universe would then be taking place within the confines of an unimaginably vast machine.
On that scale, our existence wouldn’t even be suspected by that grand physicist; the largest galaxies would be even less easily detectable to it than the fundamental particles are to our scientists.
Or is our Universe merely an expanding fart-bubble in a cosmic baby’s bathwater?
M27Holts, you’ll gain more points with your arguments if you watch your spelling. It’s buybull. 🙂
Joey, you’ve made the classical mistake. Stopping your search and calling it a day when you found your god. If a universe of finite things must have a creator …. where did the creator come from? If you are not willing to look for that answer then you’ll find very little agreement here (from what I’ve seen).
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you’ve also conveniently moved the goalposts for god as believers have been doing for centuries. As science finds answers, god becomes smaller and smaller.
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I don’t think you ever answered which god it is that you believe is the living god. You’ve said you’re not religious …. which leads me to believe this is a god of your own creation. If so, my hats off to you for being able to conjure your very own omnipotent being. You really must be very learned.
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If you’ve decided to follow one of the existing texts ….. then I guess you are able to reconcile the many many contradictions in those texts …. also quite a feat. Your mother is probably very proud.
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regarding your third degree of abstraction … is akin to saying you believe in magic. Or to quote you … imagination. That is the nub of it Joe. Your god comes from your imagination. Small wonder the rational world doesn’t believe a word of your silliness.
There is a book that explains how the term “Abrahamic religions” started to be used globally in the recent decades completely ahistorically:
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/abrahamic-religions-9780199934645?cc=at&lang=en&
Hint: an “Islamist” (those who respected him called him so!) was involved.
A.c. I just thought it was a useful non offensive grouping name? I would prefer pre-modern alamanacs of unadulterated dog turds mixed with weasel spit….but that’s a bit of a mouthful…
Holy shit, this is a home for the adolescent troll.
Not one of you even knows that an ellipsis is only three dots, yet all of you think you have the answers to reality.
All your insulting and poorly-written nonsense isn’t helping to hide your poor educations and screwed-up personalities, you idiots.
And Google searching to give to your posts some weight of authority is pathetic.
This has to be the dumbest mf forum on the Internet.
Joe,
“You had the opportunity to debate with a former Franciscan and Catholic mystic, but you couldn’t get free from your atheist leash.”
Are you claiming to be a (former) Franciscan? I.e. a member of the Order of Friars Minor?
Ld50 this geezer Joe, thinks he is god. He is an analyst’s dream ticket. Delusion loaded upon delusion. Post modernist, humanities, religious apologist of the worst kind!
Joe, you wrote “This has to be the dumbest mf forum on the Internet.” So leave.
You don’t like it here. People here don’t like you. So leave.
Your posting here annoys others, and from your comments, annoys you too. So leave.
Between the Jell-O and the infantry rifle the neighborhood has gone a bit to the dogs. To think that this used to be such a classy place. :/
Joe Mello: Thank you for your prompt reply and its relative freedom from abusive language. Just to make sure I’ve got it right, are you saying, in brief:
“God, the Creator of the universe, exists as an infinite and omnipotent Being, but the so-called Holy Bible (and, perhaps, other ‘religious’ texts) is a load of man-made rubbish and definitely NOT the word of God.”?
If that is a correct, if (admittedly) skewed account of your beliefs, you and I must agree to differ on the first part (existence of a Creator) but I totally agree with your second part (Bible is rubbish).
You have shown that you are perfectly capable of reasoned debate, although not very good at it, so please refrain from gratuitous insults to other drinkers in the old C&B pub. Some of them are quite decent fellows and ladies. There will be another strip from our beloved Author tomorrow, Wednesday. Let’s hope it’s as brilliant as the current one, re sacrifice of Isaac, and gives you something new to get your teeth into. I look forward to what you have to say.
From reading the Jesuits posts. He most certainly is religious. His stance that human beings stand outside of the animal kingdom (and indeed seemingly outside of elemental physics as well) is the litmus test for the tiny-minded. I imagine that not being able to understand even basic equations fuels his disdain of intellectual writers of science and tries to bolster his ignorance by claiming that his invisible friend has told him that physics is all lies. That’s Mello in a nutshell.
I get the feeling that Joe Mello can’t have been doing this for very long, so in the spirit of good fellowship I’ve put together some pointers on Internet debate for him.
1. Your brilliant arguments will often fail to convince. If you can accept this inexplicable fact your time here will be much more pleasant.
2. Some of the people you encounter will be rude. Some will be idiots. The overlap between these groups is nowhere near as complete as you might think.
3. Nobody is going to defer to your credentials. You may be lying about them, and even if you aren’t, the world’s libraries are full of nonsense written by people with credentials.
4. If you lose your temper and start calling people names you will look like a fool.
5. If you lose your temper and start calling people names you will look like a fool.
6. If you lose your temper and start calling people names you will look like a fool. Even if you are right, and everything you have to say is true, you will still look like a fool!
Welcome to the Internet Joe; I hope this introduction proves helpful.
You’re welcome! 🙂
This forum has been the home of one adolescent troll since you began posting Joey. What would your fransican brothers think about the term motherfuckering? That is what you meant by mf correct? What would jesus say? Did he use language like that?
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Maybe you didn’t leave the monastery of your own accord Jeoy? Maybe you couldn’t hack it and were shown the door – is that the source of your frustration? Maybe they saw you for the fool that you are. Even the devout were tired of your nuttiness. Is that the root of your issue Joey?
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I’ll give you this. You live up to many of the stereotypes of the religious fool. I guess it’s a stereotype for a reason.
Yes, LD50, I was an OFM for five years.
Laripu, stop bleating. This forum is not what you think it is, and you are not who you think you are. The uneasy feelings you get reading my posts is a movement of the spirit within you, the spirit that is responsible for all good and true things in your life. Your mundane intellect is bamboozling you. I’m helping you.
Son of Glenner, do you actually believe that your so very transparent self-serving response above got by me as something different? Please. Only in your head did I infer that the Bible is rubbish. I wrote plainly that the Bible is a written account of human beings inspired by the spirit of the living God.
God’s spirit reveals God to us in respect to human history, human culture, and each individual human personality.
As an example of what I am speaking about:
Buddha was a very important human being in the revelations of God he provided. That Buddha was an individual person living at a certain time in human history and at a certain place are all truly significant to understand the revelations he provided to us.
Skeptics are either poor thinkers or have a bigoted agenda that blinds their thinking, or both (which is the usual case), for you have to search far and wide to find a single one of them who even thinks upon such a thing as a “spirit”. That is why you “thinkers” keep regurgitating the atheist talking point about how the many names for God nullifying any reality of one God behind all of these names. “Which God do you believe in?” This is the atheist mantra that reveals the level of thinking the atheist is working at. And it ain’t pretty.
Anyway …
You telling me that I’m not very good at debating is a meaningless judgement from someone who hasn’t even understood most of what I have written.
How can you not understand that arriving at “truth” is hard work demanding personal sacrifice, talent, and achievement?
You and your faceless “friends” here on this forum trust that Google searches are all the work that is needed.
And that’s just dumb.
Having seen this comic again recently, it reminded me of our friend Joe. Considering his attitude we have seen thus far, it would not surprise me if he took it literally.
Edit: that above reply wasn’t there when I started.
Cannot help but notice this line:
“Laripu, stop bleating. This forum is not what you think it is, and you are not who you think you are.”
I’m afraid that statement applies more to you, Joe. I know I said I was done with you, but I can’t resist.
Oops, that should have said “couldn’t”. Too late to edit.
My poor writing-style strikes again.
Joe,
I have to say then, that I have found some of your language surprising as regards its profanity, rudeness and even sloppy logic.
“Holy shit, …
Not one of you even knows that an ellipsis is only three dots, yet all of you think you have the answers to reality.
[one of us was sloppy with his dots, but you extrapolate that none of us know what an ellipsis is? I’ve known since I was a teenager that the word comes from the Greek ellipsein meaning to leave out. And that it is properly a single symbol ‘…’ as opposed to three full stops (or periods) ‘…’ (you can get it, on an iPhone, by pressing and holding the full stop key)
And I, and many others here, I’m sure, don’t claim to have the answers to reality.]
… your poor educations … you idiots.
And … is pathetic.
This has to be the dumbest …”
Anyway, perhaps you were provoked?
Still, this is undignified behaviour, unworthy of even an ex Franciscan, but also of us.
How about we all stop calling Joe names (other than Joe and/or Mello, obviously:-) and Joe stops calling us stupid?
Because we rarely get proper theists around here and I did actually have a question. Something that’s been puzzling me for some time.
How come Muslims believe things (e.g. that Jesus Christ was merely a prophet) that are obviously wrong? Do Christians have an explanation for this?
I always thought the story of Isaac was a parable for sending kids off to war.
Dear Author, I have scrupulously followed your injunction to not tell anybody to fuck off on these threads. As you said, that is a right you reserve for yourself. Now, isn’t it time you told this obnoxious jerk stinking up your pub that it’s time to go home. Apparently nothing the regulars can say to him will alter his behavior.
We’ve heard him out, and some have even tried to engage him in polite debate. I think we’ve listened to his abuse long enough, don’t you?
Of course if you still find him amusing, keep him around. I’m just letting you know that I’d rather have Mohamed back. He was more fun and possibly more intelligent.
Anybody else feel like beckoning to the bouncer?
Jesuit Joe. You are forgetting that a lot of the fellow space apes you are sharing this site with have read the buybull. You have read NONE of the popular science books that are backed up with years of repeatable experiments. The works are based on empirical evidence. Neuroscience has proved that the neurons inside your brain developed by natural selection and that the subroutines that control your idea of self are just millions of automatic algorithms that are intrisinctly controlled by a subconscious that most people never learn to control and in fact can’t control because it’s mainly chemical messaging is still being studied and will eventually be totally understood. Your god is peering out of the tea pot. You can’t prove nish. And anything that can be invoked without evidence can immediately be dismissed as infantile delusion. Now go and join a silent order and do us all a favour!
LD50 – Joey was never an ofm. He doesn’t have any degrees. He’s a flake and a religious nutbar. He uses the tired tactic of berating others towards his views by namecalling and questioning their intelligence. He is a fool who gets all the respect he deserves. You can join in and troll him a bit or you can ignore him. IF you think you will have a rational conversation with him you are sadly mistaken.
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DH – let him wear himself out. There is a minute chance that enough time around here will help him. IF not, he’ll get tired and go berate someone else.
LD50 “Because we rarely get proper theists around here…”
This is the only thing that made me hesitate to request the ban hammer. We so rarely get theists in this pub, and I’m all for a visitor who doesn’t just dismiss our logic as “atheist talking points” but actually addresses the points we make. I know this is possible. I’ve heard it done.
Anyway, I had very mixed feelings about sending off my note to Author. But in the end I decided that this is not the kind of theist we need around here.
What think you all?
PeterN “I always thought the story of Isaac was a parable for sending kids off to war.”
Interesting thought. Never occurred to me, but sort of makes sense, given that wars were often fought in god’s name, i.e. a war really was god asking a guy to sacrifice his son. Maybe there ARE more ways to read the buybull than are obvious to us literal minded types. Whoda thunk it, eh.
DH. I think he must be under a shrink. I imagine him typing furiously away. Dressed as Napoleon Bonaparte!
DH. On a more serious note. Your anecdote about the man who threw his daughter to her death. Momentary insanity which used to be also called the “crime of passion”. Should all murders made under mental instability be exonerated? If so, where is the line drawn as to determine if a murder is premeditated. Especially as as you said in another post that all actions are brought upon oneself which of course includes your own death by murder?
It seems the bleating has spread, just like in an actual flock of sheep.
My attitude toward some of you is no worse than your attitude toward theists. And my ad hominems are often included with descriptions of why the names fit.
But besides all this bleating, what type of forum is this that a dozen regulars get to choose who is posting well?
The posts above that use the pronoun “we” with an authoritative importance are delusional. You skeptics claim to be knowledgeable in psychology but that doesn’t ring true here. Have you heard of this? —
“Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome.”
Whoever “Author” is, and I have no idea, if he is more concerned with placating some regulars, who have obvious deficiencies in learning and problems in personality, than creating a forum that draws in some good posters on the Internet, then I guess your bleating will attract this shepherd. But if he is not an unlearned person with personality problems, then he will probably discern that some of his sheep are in no real danger and let them bleat out.
But the most important point of all is that all this bleating is simply a smokescreen that hides the true problem you regulars here are having with my posts — most of you cannot understand anything philosophical or care about anything beyond critiquing religion.
And that is why some of you have to focus on me rather than on what I am telling you.
Thinking that I am a liar or religious or some other third thing reveals more about you.
Joe Mello, in an attempt to berate us for not taking your credentials seriously, you asked “Where is the logic in this? Is a car mechanic someone who read about fixing cars or someone who actually has experience in fixing cars?”
The difference is, a car is a tangible object as are the components. The mechanic can point out the faulty component(s); we can see the object of the mechanic’s expertise and can judge the results.
Show me the object of your expertise, just a wee bit of tangible evidence, and you might be taken a little more seriously. Until then, your expertise is in nothing more than your own subjective notion of ‘spirit’, and an expertise in the unprovable carries no weight around here.
You have also lambasted sceptics for ‘regurgitating an atheist talking point’. A tad hypocritical considering that the religious have been spouting the same nonsense since the Bronze Age, namely the ‘God is totally real but you aren’t allowed to see any proof until you’re dead. Oh, and if you don’t believe you’ll roast in Hell for eternity’ spiel. Tell me, Joe; what kind of organisation asks people to devote their lives to something they’ll never live to see, and threatens the most sadistic punishment for those who refuse?
As to your claim that the Bible was inspired by the spirit of God, how can you possibly know that with any level of certainty? Read with an un-biased eye, Genesis is clearly a pre-scientific attempt at explaining the existence of everything (you’ll note that ‘God’ is pre-supposed, and that it just happens to be the god of the tribe that the book was written for), whilst the entire O.T. is an assumed history of one tribe, combined with a rule book for that tribe. After that, the God of the O.T. has been taken in countless directions, each variation dependent on the prejudices, agendas and whims of their writers and preachers. Divine inspiration – not so much in evidence.
M27Holts, I’m sure Darwin will have an interesting response but as I too remember reading about that event, I’d like to throw in my thoughts.
In that particular instance, I was disgusted by the father’s actions and hoped that he would get locked up for life, or at least a decade or two. Admittedly I don’t know what happened to him but I’d rather not look it up. I can only hope he’s been given sufficient time in some sort of institution.
For murders classified as a “crime of passion” or temporary insanity, I think it ultimately depends on the nature and context of the event. For instance, I’m more likely to pity someone who assaults and/or kills a child molester who had violated one of their kin, even if I’d rather said horrid offender be thrown in jail and receive due punishment. That doesn’t mean however I expect them to be instantly commended for their actions by the justice system, as a fair trial should still be conducted.
Somebody who goes out of their way to kill an innocent for no reason other than not being able to keep their temper is a different story. For cases like that, I don’t believe they should be returned to society with a shrink and prescription for pills to keep them in check; at least not until they’ve given years of their own lives in prison or a sanitarium first.
Cold-blooded, premeditated murder of course should get the fitting punishment. I’m fine with Australia no longer having the death penalty as with life sentences in prison for those who commit unforgivable crimes can still be issued.
To summarize, whether or not one pities the person who commits a violent act is practically immaterial, as justice should still be served appropriately. Determining whether or not the crime was a break in sanity or thought through should be examined by those investigating and prosecuting, and the right sentence applied should guilt be declared.
Of course, these are just my opinions.
Joe,
Did you miss my question? I asked it in all seriousness.
Acolyte, which one of us could possibly have the “experience” of God necessary to no longer believe in God but “know” God? You, by reading or me, by sacrificing everything to acquire this knowledge? That is the reasoning behind the car mechanic analogy. You claim nothing tangible can be found in a search for God. I claim much is tangible. Is there such a thing as tangible suffering, or tangible hate, or tangible addition, etc.? Of course there is.
I can’t really share with you the far more tangible experiences of God I had because you can’t even accept as possible the basic experiences of God.
Have you heard the story of Aquinas writing his whole life until the day he experienced such a tangible experience of God that he stopped writing on that day?
And many more people have claimed these incredibly tangible experiences of God, and you probably have heard about them.
Do these people need to duplicate them for you for you to hear about them and question your atheism? If so, then that is a demand by you that doesn’t make much sense, for if you really were philosophically astute, you would know that it is each individual person as an individual that God is concerned with most profoundly, not some group of people, even a group of people as large as the whole human race.
Skeptics use the term “subjective” because they don’t have the philosophical chops to understand the importance of the individual. In fact, modern skeptics must deny the importance of the human being completely for their thinking not to be judged absurd. Human beings are eminently important in creation, and as individuals.
And the account of creation in Genesis is not dissimilar to what science has discovered. Read it again. If science discovered that all the matter and energy in the universe was always here, and that life was always on our planet, I would throw the Bible in the garbage. But science has discovered nothing of the sort. In fact, science has failed to discover anything that disproves any part of the Bible, or, more importantly for our discussion, any reasoning of Aristotle that makes the existence of God a necessity.
And the reality of human beings having differing revelations of God’s existence and God’s being does not rule out the reality of one revelation being the most profound of all.
And arriving at this most profound revelation of all is not guesswork, but hard work.
Only a person who is giving to God a five-cent attempt to know him would deny the reality of a million-dollar reward in finding him.
The skeptic concept of “lazy thinking” is puny compared to the theistic concept of “superficial living”.
Sorry about that, LD50.
First, I’m a Portuguese guy who had a full-time job in 10th grade working from four to midnight on the back of a garbage truck, a guy who painted a triple-decker when he was fourteen 51 years ago and now has a 35-yr-old painting business with four employees, a guy who at 65 years old looks forty-something because he does all the hard work on his crew and loves it.
My knowledge and love of God hasn’t changed me into a cookie-cutout religious person, but into a spiritually powerful person. And spirituality is about the power we receive to do great things despite our human weaknesses, not about the power to talk sweetly to other persons all of the time. I can work hard for 12 hours without stopping while sipping Gatorade. And I do all the time. And I enjoy it. I can give away money without thinking about it. And I do all the time. And I enjoy it. Spirituality is the stuff of these things more than the stuff of playing nice with people of dubious character. Read the Gospel of John to see a pissed-off Jesus responding to the fools around him trying to stop him from doing what he knew he was born to do.
Second, take your eyes off of the differences in human beings to see the similarities in them. The details in the differing revelations of God are not important to the degree that the similarities are.
If you want to discover the significance of Jesus in your life, you must take advantage of this moment in time and all your personal talents. To simply dismiss Jesus because of what other persons tell you about him is not intelligent nor honest. Do the work needed. God can’t be somewhat important, he has to be either not important or supremely important. So if you’re gonna ask questions about God, you gotta know that the amount of effort you put into the answers will dictate the answers you get.
wow joey … just wow. 2 degrees, a former friar minor AND the best painter I’ve never heard of. On top of it all … you don’t even drink Gatorade!!!
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I said it before but it bears repeating. Your mom must be very proud.
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You are non stop fun my friend.
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One little question. Why was jesus pissed off if his mantra is turn the other cheek? Did he forget what he stands for?
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LD50 – you’re wasting your time. Joey hasn’t a clue what he’s talking about. He is a true believer.
— Sorry about that, LD50.
No problem.
— First, I’m a Portuguese guy who …
You’re mixing me up with someone else. I didn’t ask about you, how hard you work, or whether you are spiritually powerful. I wasn’t dismissing Jesus because of what anyone else might have said.
— So if you’re gonna ask questions about God, you gotta know that the amount of effort you put into the answers will dictate the answers you get.
It’s not a question about God directly, but I certainly feel I’m putting some effort into asking it.
I asked:
“How come Muslims believe things (e.g. that Jesus Christ was merely a prophet) that are obviously wrong? Do Christians have an explanation for this?”
But perhaps I’m making assumptions here. Would a Christian even say that Muslims believe things that are wrong?
Bleating has given way to panic.
There’s nothing DC can do. He was so sure that all theists read books on God like he reads books on atheism.
But now … “Behold the Man”.
A theist who is a living man with a living God.
No one saw that coming.
Dear Author, I take it back. This particular theist is a classic. Well worth a bit of studying.
He displays all the classic symptoms of the classic troll – a grandiose sense of self worth, boundless ego, pugnacious attitude. He has no idea to whom he is talking, what our experiences are, how old we are, what we have read, what we have considered. All he is totally sure of is that he is our superior in every way.
He makes the assumption that none of us can ever have done a lick of work; none of us have ever run a business, or given away money; none of us can possibly be his equal in any way, far less his superior. Classic troll. Classic narcissist. Not really good company, but worth studying.
I hereby retract my request that you tell him to fuck off. Let him talk. He reveals so much of himself, and I find him suddenly interesting.
Thanks
M27Holts, “Should all murders made under mental instability be exonerated? If so, where is the line drawn as to determine if a murder is premeditated. Especially as as you said in another post that all actions are brought upon oneself which of course includes your own death by murder?” Sorry but that’s too big a question for me to tackle after a couple of scotch and reading Joe Mello. Common sense says that people who do terrible things should be kept from the rest of us, no matter what the reasons or cause of their behavior. I can feel sorry for the guy who threw his child to her death, but I don’t think that’s any reason to let him run around loose. Lock him up and throw away the key. Or at least lock him up until he recognizes that he has killed a child because his feefees were hurt and that’s something he should never do again.
Mello. Many top notch historians and philosophers think that, on the balance of probabilities. The man Jesus never actually existed. He is simply another mythical creation like Myrhras or Dionysus. How do you account for homo sapiens skeletons dated at hundreds of thousands of years before the middle eastern holy books were cobbled together. God is a man made construct. The arrow of certainty is 99.9% in that direction. Now prove me wrong!
Joe Mello: I find it quite hilarious that you accuse the regulars at the old C&B pub (ie this forum) of “groupthink”! I have been here for several years and have witnessed many ding-dong arguments between the regulars, on a variety of different topics.
I wish you well with your paint business. I don’t doubt that you are an excellent hardworking businessman. Afraid you are less competent as a debater. You have literally given a new meaning to the word “tangible”.
joe mello posted
“Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome.”
perfect discription of religion.
“behold the man”
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that’s a great line joey. I applaud your restraint. I was expecting at least one exclamation maybe 2 or 3. Of course even from this one can easily parse out information about you. If you were really the super man that you say you are it would have been ALL CAPS. That’s how you show people you really mean business.
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I don’t see Joey dressed as Bonaparte while typing. Given his stated ethnic background, I see more Infante Dom Henrique, o Navegador. Although there are a lot of short portugese dudes out there so he could be more napoleonic. Maybe that’s the source of his fury … short man syndrome.
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in any event, he’s been good for a chuckle and has reinforced the stereotype of the religious fool. Thanks for that Joey.
Perhaps Quixote. He is definitely tilting at windmills here!
A take on this from a rival comic. I can’t post the link because of the anti-spam script, but call up webtoons.com and then paste in this part of the URL:
en/comedy/adventures-of-god/ep-8-life-hack/viewer?title_no=853&episode_no=8
A straightforward question for Joe Mello:
Most scientists today believe that the Earth is around 4.6 billion years old. They also believe that human beings and chimpanzees evolved from a common ancestor that lived around 6 million years ago, an ancestor that we would consider to be a ape.
I consider these claims to be scientifically well supported and almost certainly true. Would you agree? If not, what do you believe instead?
I’ve tried to make this question as simple and straightforward as possible, and if you can give me a simple and straightforward answer that would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
M27:
IIRC Don Quichote (as it is the spelled in my memory) was Espagnol…
(Maybe I should check with my daughter, fluent in Spanish, and with a Portugese partner).
Son of Glenner, I have literally given you the meaning of “tangible” that you will find in any dictionary. This is one of the advantages of going to Graduate school for the language you speak and write — you become fluent in the meanings of words and skilled in the sharing of these meanings. Like writing that you found it “hilarious” that you and your “friends” are guilty of groupthink. No you didn’t — not by the reason you gave to doubt it. You found it “confusing” and off the mark. If you would have written the proper words for what you were feeling and thinking, I would have read your response to me with more interest and more respect for your ability to relate the truth about yourself.
LD50, I’m beginning to suspect you have difficultly moving past basic questions in your head and the basic answers you want my head to give to you. You questioned my language and undignified behavior for most of your post, and then at the last sentence asked me a question about the differing interpretations of Jesus. I answered you on both accounts. For you to then say that I didn’t, and then to further say that I am mixed up, simply leaves me not trusting in your intellect or sincerity. I have posted extensively on the how the differing interpretations of God’s revelations (and his Incarnation at the fullness of time in a single human being named Jesus, a human being who obviously changed human history by becoming the greatest hope, joy, and love any suffering lowly human being could have, was and is the greatest revelation of God imaginable) do not matter to the reality of who God truly is and who we truly are because of who God truly is. You want me to get religious with you. Sorry. I don’t do religion. I do knowledge and experience through personal sacrifice, gifts by God, and personal talents. And you claiming that
you really put some effort into your question about Muslims differing with Christians about Jesus must have strained you greatly, I guess. When I left for the monastery and watched out the window of my car at my cat laying beneath a tree, knowing that I would never see that cat again until I returned a year later; when I went to dinner with my family the night before and said goodbye to them not knowing if I would ever be part of their lives again; when I gave away my sports car and most of what I owned — all of these experiences were the stuff of a serious effort to discover the truth I am now sharing with you. So forgive me for not writing some words in a sentence that you, in your struggle to ask a question on the Internet, find sufficient as an answer. Look to the similarities in the Muslim and the Christian, and the Greek and the Roman for that matter, not in the differences. There is only one God and one spirit of God. And human history holds a very profound account of God and his spirit working in the midst of vast collections of people and in the minds and hearts of each individual person. Your agenda to promote your bigotries against any of this being true means, if possible, less than nothing to me.
DC, you can’t write well. Period. Your “Appeal to Emotion” arguments are poorly done, and therefore fall to pieces when read. I use this tool often, for often there is no other recourse than to slap a fool. … See? That’s how it’s done.
M27, sorry, but your writing is even worse. And “top-notch” to you can’t be a good thing. Jesus existed. You can’t drive for long before seeing a cross in the sky, so he more than existed — he changed human history. It’s the reality and meaningfulness of your existence that is in question.
jb, the evolution of our physical bodies in the physical universe is part of our story, not the whole story, for the reality of the physical universe is part of reality, not the whole of reality. Every power in the physical universe needs a “seat”, but no seat is the power itself. Our bodies are the “seat” for our existence in the physical universe, not our existence itself. And our brains are the “seat” for our thoughts, not thought itself. You wish to now tell me that scientists have shown to us that the physical universe, and in turn our physical bodies, is the only reality that matters? Well … go ahead. I don’t see it that way. And it doesn’t work that way, either. What scientists “believe”, as you say, cannot be separated for the personalities of each and every scientist. Einstein “believed” that it was his imagination that made him Einstein, not his mathematics. Our evolution from the first ancient bacteria (you need to go that far back to make your “beliefs” complete) could have only happened if something even greater than us (remember the metaphysical principle I gave to you awhile back?) was present and added to this first manifestation of life. Nothing in science comes even close to disproving this.
I don’t think I’m going to get my question answered. I thought it was fairly straightforward. Perhaps not the why, but Joe won’t even confirm that Muslims are wrong when they say that Jesus was just another prophet.
It’s pretty much a core tenet of Christianity that Jesus is the son of God but also a part of the trinity (that’s one god, obviously). Not very contentious amongst Christians, I thought.
Perhaps Joe thinks I’m trying to trap him with a trick question?
Socrates never had this sort of hassle. He’d corner some innocent passerby and say something like, “surely you agree that what is divine is what is beloved of the gods” or some such drivel. And they’d simply reply, “well yes, obviously” — as if the words had been put in their mouths (by Plato). And after a couple of these questions Socrates would show that that which they had thought was wrong or inconsistent or whatever. After which they’d go away enlightened.
All that reading these ancient philosophers has taught people nowadays is — don’t answer the question! Even a simple one is merely the thin end of a slippery wedge. Deflect! Distract! Whatever.
Oh well.
Ooops. You posted while I was writing.
But now I’m confused. Where did you answer the question? Was it this:
“Second, take your eyes off of the differences in human beings to see the similarities in them. The details in the differing revelations of God are not important to the degree that the similarities are.”
That’s not really a straightforward answer to “are they wrong?” That’s really the sort of question that can be answered with a straightforward yes/no. No Muslim is going to come after you just because you (a Christian) say they’re wrong about something. (If only because you’re xnonymous here).
So if I have this right. Joe’s main argument is “Jesus existed because people think he did” That must also hold for Sherlock Holmes then… Right out of “Small God’s” by Terry Pratchet…but he was taking the piss!
— LD50, I’m beginning to suspect you have difficultly moving past basic questions in your head and the basic answers you want my head to give to you.
Yes, I was having difficulties here, but now you’ve cleared this up. Thanks.
— You questioned my language and undignified behavior for most of your post,
I wasn’t questioning it. I just noted it.
— and then at the last sentence asked me a question about the differing interpretations of Jesus. I answered you on both accounts. [dubious. Discuss]
— For you to then say that I didn’t, and then to further say that I am mixed up, simply leaves me not trusting in your intellect or sincerity.
You posted your life history, including something about drinking Gatorade. Even that wasn’t clear — I thought you drank it. Someone else here thought you didn’t.
— I have posted extensively on the how the differing interpretations of God’s revelations … do not matter to the reality of who God truly is and who we truly are because of who God truly is.
You have indeed posted extensively about this sort of stuff. But we can’t talk about that yet because we’re not even agreed on any axioms.
However, it has to be said that you (if not the Catholic and other churches) have made immense strides if the deity of Jesus is a minor trifle in the grand scheme of things.
— You want me to get religious with you. Sorry. I don’t do religion.
That’s a shame. But ok.
— I do knowledge and experience through personal sacrifice, gifts by God, and personal talents.
I don’t know you personally so your knowledge and experience are no more relevant to me (or anyone here) than anyone else’s. That’s not to say they’re necessarily uninteresting just that there are over 7 billion people around and time is limited…
— And you claiming that you really put some effort into your question about Muslims differing with Christians about Jesus must have strained you greatly, I guess.
No, what required effort was getting you to answer the question. But I’ve failed. That’s ok.
— When I left for the monastery and watched out the window of my car at my cat laying beneath a tree, knowing that I would never see that cat again until I returned a year later; when I went to dinner with my family the night before and said goodbye to them not knowing if I would ever be part of their lives again; when I gave away my sports car and most of what I owned — all of these experiences were the stuff of a serious effort to discover the truth I am now sharing with you. So forgive me for not writing some words in a sentence that you, in your struggle to ask a question on the Internet, find sufficient as an answer.
There you go again. Nobody is interested in your cat or your feelings about it. But you’re forgiven.
— Look to the similarities in the Muslim and the Christian, and the Greek and the Roman for that matter, not in the differences.
Indeed there are similarities. That’s what I would have got to eventually.
— Your agenda to promote your bigotries against any of this being true means, if possible, less than nothing to me.
I abjure my bigotry. I am relieved to know that Christians, Muslims and atheists are all merely part of God’s great plan and will all be welcomed to live in perfect harmony with God in the end. In the meantime we can blow each other up and destroy the planet. All is good. Peace be with you.
“When I left for the monastery and watched out the window of my car at my cat laying beneath a tree, knowing that I would never see that cat again until I returned a year later; when I went to dinner with my family the night before and said goodbye to them not knowing if I would ever be part of their lives again; when I gave away my sports car and most of what I owned — all of these experiences were the stuff of a serious effort to discover the truth I am now sharing with you.”
Actions that suggest you were planning to make this move to the monastery permanent. What happened? Was there nothing left for you to learn?
JDW. I did know that Quixote was Spanish. And Joe is Portuguese. Just couldn’t resist the tilting gag. I am not that illiterate. Seems that basically we are all wrong because we don’t speak with our invisible friend inside our heads. I’m ok with that. I’m probably wrong about something every day. But that’s life.
joey – you don’t know my writing. you only know me as someone who trolls fools on the internet. This is a good example of the depth of your search for answers joey. Scratching the surface without looking any deeper. Finding a simple answer and calling it a day.
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God did it.
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Whew, must have been tough. So hard you had to give away your sportscar and not see your cat for a year. You truly have made sacrifices my friend. Your mother must be very proud.
Joe Mello
Funny fellow
Don’t call him odd
He’s mates with God.
Joe, I get it now; you’re not religious because being religious requires faith, whilst you don’t need faith since you know God is real because of your totally subjective and totally unprovable, intangible, subjective, personal feelings. OK!
Also, we are inferior because you have a degree in thinking and another in how to do writing. Cool. It’s a pity you didn’t get one in animal behaviour, Joe, because then you’d know that dogs (as you referred to us) don’t bleat. That’d be sheep or goats, Mr. Mello, you funny fellow.
Aye. I will second that. Once upon a time, before horrible grubby scientists started to prove all sorts of interesting things, Mello would be lauded as a wise and sagacious man. Now his subjective nonsense is considered laughable. Very soon the thin veneer of religious pride will be stripped away. Leaving a very naked and bewildered ignoramus. That day cannot come soon enough.
Yeah, because you’re the first ever theist who claimed a relationship with a living God; all the others believe in a dead ‘un. Joe, you’re not at all original or special. Get over yourself a little.
Not remotely close. Genesis had light before stars, and the Earth before our star. It had made man from clay and woman from man. It had the Universe created as it looked to the writers, so had the entire gamut orbiting Earth as it appears to do, but as a creator would know is false (and anybody with a modicum of mathmatical nous knows is impossible).
The entire Abrahmic religious traditions stand or fall on the creation as per Genesis. Genesis has failed scientific scrutiny. It’s just another story.
Acolyte: You forgot to mention that there are two different accounts of the creation of woman in Genesis. One is the Adam’s rib story, which you reference. Elsewhere it says that humans were created as male and female, like the animals, which is far more believable, but the rib story provides an excuse for treating women as second-class citizens.
Hello, oake.
Yes, my expectations were that I would leave my normal life behind and do something totally new for the rest of my life. But as it turned out, a religious setting was not the place I could keep myself occupied fully. While I was there in the monastery, I was very successful. I was a Holy Land Franciscan in D.C. training to take care of the holy sites throughout the Middle East. I studied Arabic, Italian, and Spanish, for those are the languages I needed. I was the editor of the monastery’s newsletter that went out throughout the Middle East. And I took the minutes from a rare meeting at the monastery of all the Holy Land Franciscan leaders throughout the world. These minutes I then wrote into a form that was published and even read by the Pope. When the summer came for me to take “solemn” vows in a ceremony, the invitations were printed out and there was a bedroom set aside for me on the Jerusalem Wall in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. To make my final decision, one day that summer I took the Metro to Georgetown, went into a bar, propped up a picture of my family, and had a couple of beers. Then … I walked out of the bar, took the Metro back to the monastery, walked into the superior’s office and said, “I’m going home”.
LD50, you shouldn’t be so smug. Nothing in your response to me equated to more than a person believing in himself for no other reason than because he is himself. Yes. Islam does not have the revelation of Jesus as the Incarnation of God who sits at the throne of God as the only begotten Son of God. Now … what else do you want me to say now that I have stated something so obvious? I gave to you answers that were not so obvious because nothing truly profound or meaningful is simply obvious. But that’s the rub isn’t it? The skeptic demands the profound to be obvious, for God to be present as he is and not as his wisdom sees fit for him to be present. Have fun hanging out with the obvious. I’m gonna go over here now.
Acolyte, no, you didn’t get it. And the order of creation in Genesis, from the void to the emergence of human beings, is correct. And the light of a star is from the interactions of the elements and physical forces within that star, which is a process that the Big Bang initiated, and therefore which produced a lot of light. I guess more than a modicum of scientific acumen is needed to understand this.
Joe Mello: I’m sure that enjoying family life and running a successful painting business were of far greater value to Humanity and yourself than a lifetime churning out ecclesiastical documents in a cell in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre or custodianing ruined buildings in the Middle East. Did you also manage to win the love of a good woman and beget and raise a family of your own? If so, I hope that they gave you great satisfaction in being a husband and parent and that the fruits of your loins are now a credit to you. And enjoy your couple of beers now and then. I would offer to buy you one, but, alas, the old Cock & Bull is only a virtual pub.
Joey – to borrow a phrase – wrong again god boy. In genesis the earth existed before there was light. That would be before the big bang which you suggest was the source of that light. But I guess more than a modicum of logical thought is required to understand this.
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just making it up as you go along is hardly the stuff of an omnipotent god Joey. You contend that he has created all things yet he is unable to communicate clearly to his favorite creations. Maybe your god is dyslexic. Maybe he’s old and senile and doesn’t remember how it all happened. Maybe he’s just a figment of your delusional imagination.
Son of Glenner, your description of monastic life isn’t correct, but I’m sure you already knew that.
My five years of a contemplative life were completely different than today’s worldly life, but also completely fulfilling. God is only a no-show to persons who look for God through a skeptical squinting of their eyes. God not only showed up during those years, but, because he is pure action, showed up with a constant barrage of things to do and things to experience. I watched more sunsets, walked under the stars more times, felt more goodness, experienced more joy, and on and on during those years than I could even imagine doing today. I have no memory of ever trying to fall asleep, but only of falling immediately asleep when my head hit the pillow. My life today, however, did not take a complete 180 degree turn, for those years of contemplation gave to me lasting results. The spirituality I now experience as a normal state of affairs is a direct result of the hard work I put into it back then. What comes from God is truly powerful and everlasting. So your judgement of a life dedicated to God as not as valuable as painting a house or raising a family is simply not true. And humanity receives much by a single person becoming close to God. Again, it is a spiritual thing.
Furthermore, I owe to God the family I now have. We have great parties, but no one gets drunk. No one smokes. We all get along and get together often and whenever we can. I know that God has given to me the only family that I wanted. And I know that my relationship with God has given to my family much of what they needed to become “my” family. They would even admit this. And I seldom, if ever, talk about God. And nobody in my family is religious.
But here’s another thing: I have four grandchildren now, ranging from 19 to 13. Three of them are regular kids, but the 14 year old is far from regular. When he was 3 he started taking Taekwondo. And when he was a few months away from his black belt at 6, he decided to quit (on his own) and become a hockey goalie. He never skated before, but within 18 months he won a state championship, and this trophy is the only one in the local hockey rink to this day. The next year he was scouted by teams near Boston and became a Boston Terrier. Fast forward, he has played in Italy representing the U.S., at the Q in Quebec at the 12 year old world championships, won many championships, and has received offers this year from elite high schools. He is ranked first or second on the East Coast, and is right now taking a week out of school to play in a national championship of sorts. He has been a vegetarian since he was 10. And one day, when he was about 5, he saw the stations of the cross and inquired about them. When I told him the story, he got angry and wanted to know more. Today he thinks about God sometimes and wants me to tell him more of what I know. … This is an example of the importance of each individual person as an individual. To judge each person’s experiences as equal to everyone else’s, which all skeptics do when they insist that experiences of God are all as meaningless as theirs are, is a false judgement that fails to admit that there are better or worse persons among us.
Joe, I didn’t mean to sound (and didn’t feel) smug.
I’ll explain what I was trying to get at, because it’ll take too long to do it in little bits. I don’t suppose it’s very original but I’ve never heard a satisfactory response to it.
I think that’s because we have fundamentally different ways of thinking and using language.
Here goes. Muslims believe stuff which is wrong. But Muslims know that they are right. Partly because they have a book which tells them what is right but presumably also because they have “personal experience” of their living God and all that stuff. They certainly have faith.
So, they have a holy book, they have mystical experiences, they have faith etc. They know they are right and that all of us, you included, are going to burn in hell.
How do they differ from Christians (other than in the obvious fact that they’re wrong and Christians (some of them, the others are going to burn in hell) are right?
This is genuinely puzzling. I can tell in advance that I’m not going to understand your response. I’m interested in this inability of ours to communicate.
You say things like “you’re nothing but a person who believes in himself for no other reason than because he is himself”.
I don’t understand what you’re talking about. What is meant by “believe in”? Do I believe I exist? I don’t doubt it, but honestly, I don’t think about it much. I am myself because I am myself? Ok. Seems reasonable to me. Sounds a bit like cogito ergo sum. But really, what a waste of ink that was.
So I assume you’re trying to say something else, but I honestly have no idea what it is.
Assuming that you’re more intelligent than I am, can you formulate your responses in plain, simple English that you think I might understand?
LD50, how many times have I written “It is a spiritual thing”?
Your burning desire to inquire about the intellectual ideas within religions is misplaced.
A Muslim can be extremely close to God through God’s spiritual gifts and the fruits that flow out of these gifts.
Jesus said that when we even give a cup of water to someone who thirsts we give it to him.
Your intellectual judgement of who Jesus truly is, and what it means to be his follower, doesn’t come from any other place than your own head and the heads of others like you.
Jesus is the true God and the true man. And we fulfill the truth about him when we live as he lived, not when we intellectually make a statement about him.
We are a body, a mind, and a spirit, in that order of importance.
The usual metaphysical metabollocks, in other words. Reminds me a bit of one of our old trolls, Epphy. He could never answer a question without resorting to flowery fantasy.
It always amuses me hen I see people like Joe get so close to realising the truth without actually realising it. With just a tad more insight, his –
– would have been right on the money;
I say something like “do you believe that the Quran is the literal word of God as related to Mohammed by some angel?” expecting you to answer “no, it was made up by Mohammed to get people to do what he wanted. Especially the bit about virgins.” so that I can then ask “so why do you think that anything written in the bible is true? How do you know what Jesus said?”
But instead you answer “We are spirits. God is in the water and the water is in God, just as Jesus is in us and we are fulfilled in him. The true truth comes not from your head. Renounce reason, intellect and inquisitiveness! It’s spiritual.”
So I give up. I never expected you to say, “fair point you have there — I suppose I just believe because it makes me feel good.” But this “conversation” is just too weird.
LD50, what else did you expect? Joe knows he can’t dazzle with science or convince with reason, so his default setting is to baffle with bullshit.
It’s metabollocks all the way down.
Yes, in your dazzling reason you have figured out that to win you amazing fellows over I have resorted to making stuff up. You are just that important. And your Google “science” is just that impressive. My scholastic education and monastic experience and love of God and all other things that brought me to this moment were all to fool great thinkers such as yourselves. I bend to your superior intellects for having found me out.
Joe, what were you expecting? Did you think you could waltz in with your degrees in thinking and writing(the latter certainly not in evidence; too many comments with a paragraph for each sentence, for a start) and your spurious natter about feeling God therefore God, and expect us to slap our foreheads and have a communal, Huxley-esque ‘How stupid of me not to have thought of that’ moment?
I get it that your experiences, whatever they were, seemed to you to be proof of a god, and a very specific god at that; I get it that you’re frustrated because your experiences and your certainty of what they signified to you aren’t impressing anybody here; I get it that you are so invested in your non-religious knowledge of God that you no longer dare to even imagine not believing, but you should, because if you were to re-read your comments here with an unbiased eye, you’d realise that you’ve given us nothing new to contemplate, and certainly nothing that would remotely convince anybody that your ‘knowledge’ of God is no more or less than we’ve heard a million times.
Your personal feelings are proof of nothing except that you claim to have those feelings. Right now, my feeling is that it’s time for bed. Good night.
I think you guys have missed the fact that Troll Mello is not any of the things he says he is. His story is inconsistent and when pressed for details he falls back on ad hominem attacks (you are not smart enough to understand) and gibberish about feelings and how he just knows these things, then back around in a circle to how smart he is. He bolsters this with claims of being so very hard working (and not Gatorade for 12 hours!), his teenage grandsons hockey prowess and ability to get a black belt at 6. As if this has anything to do with some imagined god. (what about that shot the kid wiffed on? Where was god then? And why couldn’t he hack the black belt grading? Sounds like a quitter). All in an attempt to bamboozle the crowd the way he has bamboozled himself.
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The story has so many holes it would make the writters of the bible blush. He’s trolling … or he’s a true believer that ticks every box on the bible thumper play book. He’s not worth our time other than to remind ourselves why we arrived here in the first place. Sanctimonious twits like Joey who couldn’t follow a train of thought if they were tied to the back of it.
DC Toronto, all you say is true, but he’s so funny!
My very religious grandmother tried to teach me that lesson when I was about 10. She was trying to get me to agree what a good believer Abraham was and I was looking for the exits and assessing whether I could take her down if need be, if she decided that she was motivated to display her own dedication in similar fashion, as she looked about that motivated right then.
I remember that lesson very well and it did nothing to make me think it was a good idea to follow a religion that made a man think it good to killy his own son. Nothing at all. I felt much better when I grew a bit more and thought I’d be able to defend myself against her if need be in future too!