Only very special people* can get God out and pray/suggest to him. For all the ordinary people, he’s not accessible. For them, hollow idolatry and instant induction into Jesus’ circle of coffee morning friends is the consolation prize.
*People who’ve invested so much time climbing up their own arseholes that they daren’t ever come back out, or admit they’re wrong.
What good is prayer in the Muslim faith, after all? Islam is “submission to God” so any entreaties to a deterministic god like Allah would, quite literally, fall on deaf ears.
Nice for them to admit that god can’t stand in the sunshine of logic and reason.
It’s funny that the religious fundies would have everyone believe that their all powerful, all knowing god must be protected from a minority of the population – the same way that they insist that the minority population of gays/lesbians will also destroy our civilization.
minorities really have the majority shaking in their boots
Martin Luther had the same idea : Die Vernunft “ist die höchste Hur, die der Teufel hat.” My translation: “Reason is the worst whore of the devil”. He also said that to be a christian you should rip out the eyes of reason. So if those theologians use any form of reason…
If I understand Armstrong correctly, God is “ineffable, suckers!” So why do god-ites pray? Why claim to have insight into his grand plan? Why speak on his behalf at all? Why, in fact, bother with the whole god thing at all? Clearly (and forgive my shameless recycling of a famous feminist slogan), if god is beyond our ken, then mankind needs a god like a fish needs a bicycle.
“If I understand Armstrong correctly, God is “ineffable, suckers!” So why do god-ites pray?”
Because religion is all about having your cake and eating it too. Religion always tries to unify two or more contradictory beliefs and then use the “it is a mystery” dodge to avoid charges of self-contradiction.
CS Lewis argued that prayer was an attempt to tune in to the deity, rather than an attempt to change her mind. Hmm. Not sure how that applies to petitionary prayer, which has always seemed patently childish to me, but I thought I would add my two-pennorth.
BTW. JaMoers might enjoy http://imhalal.com/
Try searching for “Mohammed is a paedophile” or similar
Daoloth: CS Lewis’s definition would make prayer more like meditation, which would be a huge disappointment in itself to every faith-head begging the sky fairy for a lotto win.
Nice find Daoloth on the imhalal site! It’s a fun challenge to come up with searches that it finds “halal” but generates totally haram results. I tried “Mohammed married a nine year old girl”
@nina – I think religious people all consider themselves a persecuted minority because they are so, um, ‘diverse’. Each little splinter group considers everyone else not to be a TRUE whatever-they-are, and so they are only a tiny minority, despite the fact that a large chunk of the U.S. is made up of these tiny minorities… 😛
You’ve hit upon a topic that I am puzzling on – this insistence by True Believers that only they or ones like them or that they approve of are True Whatevers and other people who say that they are whatevers are not.
What’s interesting is that it’s not just a particular religion, but other areas, like fans of an entertainer.
On an Elvis forum, I had a woman tell me that I wasn’t a true Elvis fan because I was willing to accept certain claims about Elvis being realistic and likely.
And it was funny to me that my listening specifically to him for the last 33 years, collecting albums, cds, books and DVDs somehow didn’t mean I was a true fan if I accepted certain claims as fact.
To me it was very much like people in one splinter group of xtianity claiming members of other splinter groups weren’t true xtians to be the same thing.
So, funny that it’s not enough to be in the club, now you have to be in the correct chapter.
and wouldn’t you expect that the oldest chapter – the Catholic Church – is the correct one?
Do you think this is an American thing – that anything European is rejected and the authority must be local?
Is that why Mormonism took hold, because it claimed a third testament right in the US?
Is it that religious American’s can’t cope with the Bible, allegedly the word of god, making no mention of America?
Daoloth, your mentioning the imhalal website reminded me to check if those Goodies have taken any notice of my e-mail correcting a mistake on their blog page.
“YOUR in charge of your own actions”. It now reads YOU’RE in charge ……., but did they thank me?
@azurefrog and @nina
It’s a well known fallacy (“no true scotchman”) and a defensive position. You can’t argue with them that “some” of their leaders weren’t behaving according to their words, because then “they weren’t true “whatever””
For example, those ministers who abuse childs aren’t true christians.
I still am wondering if there is a “true” christian 🙂
Besides, keep in mind that they all are reading the same book and reaching -by the intervention of the same holy spirit- different conclusions, so the only explanaition is that the other sects are not “true christians” and then they can’t receive the “true holy spirit”. And to some extent, there are not two christians who believe the same about their god’s will -yeah, that holy spirit is a bit inefficient
I, for one, am utterly convinced. As a result of such overwhelming evidence I have already put sugar in my tea (twice), started smoking again, and plan on asking out the cute girl who works in my local tabac. No point in putting these things off any more, what with the end of the world and everything…
I’m STILL working my way through J&Mo from the very beginning, having stumbled across this site, via Pharma-whatsit, via a comment in ‘ZeroHedge’ a week or so ago. Out of curiosity, I tried to access ‘imhalal.com’ (kudos Daoloth) and got this:
“In late 2011 I’mHalal had to close its search service due to lack of funding. This page has been set up to keep the memories and great achievements of I’mHalal alive.”
Just like the Egyptians didn’t realize they had drowned in the flood. They just went on keeping records and building buildings and making sculptures etcetera,
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
July 17, 2019
Nice one 😉
Brilliant! as always
Wow, that god of theirs certainly is well-protected from the onslaught of reason.
I wonder where I can get one of those ontological bomb-shelters. I may need one after what I’m planning for International Blasphemy Day.
Beautiful. Fontor, when’s I.B.Day, anyway? My invitation must have gotten lost in the mail.
Only very special people* can get God out and pray/suggest to him. For all the ordinary people, he’s not accessible. For them, hollow idolatry and instant induction into Jesus’ circle of coffee morning friends is the consolation prize.
*People who’ve invested so much time climbing up their own arseholes that they daren’t ever come back out, or admit they’re wrong.
What good is prayer in the Muslim faith, after all? Islam is “submission to God” so any entreaties to a deterministic god like Allah would, quite literally, fall on deaf ears.
Nice for them to admit that god can’t stand in the sunshine of logic and reason.
It’s funny that the religious fundies would have everyone believe that their all powerful, all knowing god must be protected from a minority of the population – the same way that they insist that the minority population of gays/lesbians will also destroy our civilization.
minorities really have the majority shaking in their boots
an ontological bomb-shelter can only exist apart from reality… so gods only, I’m afraid. And also perfect bananas.
Martin Luther had the same idea : Die Vernunft “ist die höchste Hur, die der Teufel hat.” My translation: “Reason is the worst whore of the devil”. He also said that to be a christian you should rip out the eyes of reason. So if those theologians use any form of reason…
Sooo, ML knew he was talking cods wallop! I suppose I naively thought he believed it…..
Just as well I didn’t want to edit that then, the edit facility has disappeared again.
Smiting will always bring folks around….
P.s just got a whole cage full of gerbils!!!!!!
Don’t smite the gerbils. It’s mean. And don’t put them *there* either. I’m pretty sure that’s a sin.
If I understand Armstrong correctly, God is “ineffable, suckers!” So why do god-ites pray? Why claim to have insight into his grand plan? Why speak on his behalf at all? Why, in fact, bother with the whole god thing at all? Clearly (and forgive my shameless recycling of a famous feminist slogan), if god is beyond our ken, then mankind needs a god like a fish needs a bicycle.
Hey, edit is back! So there is a god after all…
As Wise Richard said, “Ontology recapitulates scatology.” We could all use a shit shelter, no?
@Intelligent Designer:
One definition of prayer is “asking an infallible being to change his mind”
“Sooo, ML knew he was talking cods wallop! I suppose I naively thought he believed it…..”
Who says he didn’t believe it? More likely he did believe it; he just didn’t think he had to justify his belief rationally.
“If I understand Armstrong correctly, God is “ineffable, suckers!” So why do god-ites pray?”
Because religion is all about having your cake and eating it too. Religion always tries to unify two or more contradictory beliefs and then use the “it is a mystery” dodge to avoid charges of self-contradiction.
CS Lewis argued that prayer was an attempt to tune in to the deity, rather than an attempt to change her mind. Hmm. Not sure how that applies to petitionary prayer, which has always seemed patently childish to me, but I thought I would add my two-pennorth.
BTW. JaMoers might enjoy http://imhalal.com/
Try searching for “Mohammed is a paedophile” or similar
Daoloth: CS Lewis’s definition would make prayer more like meditation, which would be a huge disappointment in itself to every faith-head begging the sky fairy for a lotto win.
Nice find Daoloth on the imhalal site! It’s a fun challenge to come up with searches that it finds “halal” but generates totally haram results. I tried “Mohammed married a nine year old girl”
@nina – I think religious people all consider themselves a persecuted minority because they are so, um, ‘diverse’. Each little splinter group considers everyone else not to be a TRUE whatever-they-are, and so they are only a tiny minority, despite the fact that a large chunk of the U.S. is made up of these tiny minorities… 😛
Ineffable? Well eff him!
Shouldn’t it be, “You cannot touch him with your logic, NOR your reason…?”
Still, brilliant.
azurefrog
You’ve hit upon a topic that I am puzzling on – this insistence by True Believers that only they or ones like them or that they approve of are True Whatevers and other people who say that they are whatevers are not.
What’s interesting is that it’s not just a particular religion, but other areas, like fans of an entertainer.
On an Elvis forum, I had a woman tell me that I wasn’t a true Elvis fan because I was willing to accept certain claims about Elvis being realistic and likely.
And it was funny to me that my listening specifically to him for the last 33 years, collecting albums, cds, books and DVDs somehow didn’t mean I was a true fan if I accepted certain claims as fact.
To me it was very much like people in one splinter group of xtianity claiming members of other splinter groups weren’t true xtians to be the same thing.
So, funny that it’s not enough to be in the club, now you have to be in the correct chapter.
and wouldn’t you expect that the oldest chapter – the Catholic Church – is the correct one?
Do you think this is an American thing – that anything European is rejected and the authority must be local?
Is that why Mormonism took hold, because it claimed a third testament right in the US?
Is it that religious American’s can’t cope with the Bible, allegedly the word of god, making no mention of America?
Daoloth, your mentioning the imhalal website reminded me to check if those Goodies have taken any notice of my e-mail correcting a mistake on their blog page.
“YOUR in charge of your own actions”. It now reads YOU’RE in charge ……., but did they thank me?
Perfect contradiction! It never ceases to amaze me that true believers never seem to spot it!
Most amusing, indeed.
Jesus an’ Mo, and others, make an apperance in moi’s wee YouTube parody film
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_m6qC6FCiY0
Stay on groovin’ safari,
Tor
You can all relax: jesusandmo.net is Halal.
HAHAHA J&Mo Halal!! Totally 😀
Nice one Stephen
@azurefrog and @nina
It’s a well known fallacy (“no true scotchman”) and a defensive position. You can’t argue with them that “some” of their leaders weren’t behaving according to their words, because then “they weren’t true “whatever””
For example, those ministers who abuse childs aren’t true christians.
I still am wondering if there is a “true” christian 🙂
Besides, keep in mind that they all are reading the same book and reaching -by the intervention of the same holy spirit- different conclusions, so the only explanaition is that the other sects are not “true christians” and then they can’t receive the “true holy spirit”. And to some extent, there are not two christians who believe the same about their god’s will -yeah, that holy spirit is a bit inefficient
PZ Myers has pointed out that the world is going to end today.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/09/oh_no_warning_alert_alert_aler.php
Or rather, the Rapture is today, because the war of Gog and Magog is starting today.
Or something. Put it in your diary anyway.
@Stephen Turner
Wow – that’s an amazing find. This graph in particular is just splendid:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/upload/2009/09/oh_no_warning_alert_alert_aler/time_wave.php
I, for one, am utterly convinced. As a result of such overwhelming evidence I have already put sugar in my tea (twice), started smoking again, and plan on asking out the cute girl who works in my local tabac. No point in putting these things off any more, what with the end of the world and everything…
The world ended two days ago? Shit… I missed it. I guess none of you are out there anymore. But that’s okay, because I’m not here either.
I’m STILL working my way through J&Mo from the very beginning, having stumbled across this site, via Pharma-whatsit, via a comment in ‘ZeroHedge’ a week or so ago. Out of curiosity, I tried to access ‘imhalal.com’ (kudos Daoloth) and got this:
“In late 2011 I’mHalal had to close its search service due to lack of funding. This page has been set up to keep the memories and great achievements of I’mHalal alive.”
“Dog works in mischevious ways.” ;=))
Never play cards with a man named Doc, nor hide and seek with a guy called God.
RE:Gelfling
Just like the Egyptians didn’t realize they had drowned in the flood. They just went on keeping records and building buildings and making sculptures etcetera,